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A Jury has been told about the moment emergency services discovered Bethany Hills body in the bathroom of a Stratford flat last February.

Paramedic Mark Lawson, who was on duty on the evening of 3 February last year, told Warwick Crown Court today about what happened when he arrived at the flat on Hertford Road.

When he arrived Mr Lawson was warned by control not to enter the property and to await the arrival of police officers, being told that it may be a volatile situation.

When two police officers arrived they entered the communal area of the flat through the unlocked front door, finding the property in darkness.

One of the officers told Mr Lawson that there was somebody in the bathroom and Mr Lawson managed to manoeuvre himself inside, with access limited because Bethanys body prevented the door from opening fully.

Bethany was lying in a right lateral position, similar to the recovery position.

Mr Lawson said: There was a lot of blood around her, on her and around the bathroom. It became obvious that the patient was unresponsive and deceased.

Mr Lawson said that although he suspected the woman was dead he did some simple tests such as trying to find a pulse.

As he moved Bethany he noticed the patient was stiff with rigor mortis set in and said he saw a large laceration on her neck.

Mr Lawson and the jury were shown pictures of the inside of the flat after Bethanys body had been removed.

In the bathroom the pictures showed blood on the walls, the lavatory, the floor and in the bath.

During the afternoon the jury also heard evidence from Cher Anne Beard, the aunt of Kayleigh Woods, about the communications between the pair on the evening before Bethanys death and on 3rd February hours after her death.

Ms Beard, who said she had always been close to Kayleigh Woods, like a sister, said on the evening before Bethanys death she received text messages from her niece saying she wanted a counselling session with her.

Ms Beard asked why and Woods said she just did, but it was probably not best that night as she was planning to get drunk.

The next day at around 6.37pm Ms Beard said she received a text message from Woods asking her to deactivate her facebook account, and provided the log in details.

Ms Beard asked what had happened and Woods asked if she would give her a call at 7pm.

Ms Beard deactivated the account and called Woods at 7pm to find out what had happened.

Ms Beard said: I asked what had happened and she said that Bethany was dead on the bathroom floor. I said what do you mean shes dead? I told her she needed to call an ambulance. She said that it was far too late for that.

When Ms Beard asked where Woods was she replied that she was out walking the dog looking for somewhere safe to put her pet.

Ms Beard added: She said theyre going to think I did it, but I didnt do anything wrong.

She said she thought she was going to go to jail. She added.

Ms Beard said she didnt know Woods address to tell the police so called relatives to try and find out.

She said that she had assumed Bethany had killed herself after seeing messages on Facebook suggesting that she had committed suicide.

The court also heard from PC Carrie Garlic, who located Woods out with her dog on Paddock Lane at around 7.20pm on 3 February.

After confirming her identity police asked Woods about the events of that day.

PC Garlic said that without mentioning Bethany by name Woods said: Shes a mess, shes always been suicidal. She took tablets at 3am this morning and she drank bleach.

PC Garlic took Woods back to the police station so she could make a statement, with Woods asking if she could use the toilet when they arrived.

After returning to the interview room PC Garlic went back to the toilet cubicle used by Woods, discovering a mobile phone discarded in the sanitary bin.

PC Garlic informed her commanding officer who said Woods could be arrested for murder.

PC Garlic then arrested Woods before showing her the phone and asking Woods who it belonged to, to which she replied it was Beths.

As PC Garlic accompanied Woods to a police car to transport her to the Leamington Custody Suite, Woods asked: Im going to have to talk now arent I?

On arriving at Leamington, Woods said to the custody sergeant you know Im next right?.

The final witness of the day was Rosanne Elizabeth Hume, an intelligence analyst at Warwickshire Police, tasked with examining the mobile phone records of Woods and Williams before and after Bethanys death.

The records showed both communicated with friends during the day on 3 February, laughing and joking in some text messages.

Williams also swapped his phone sim card on 3 February, texting his contacts to tell them his new number.

The trial continues.

More on the trial on our website tomorrow.
Travelers are evacuated out of the terminal and onto the tarmac after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Zachary Fagenson

By Zachary Fagenson

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) - Police in Alaska took a handgun from the man accused of killing five people at Fort Lauderdale's airport on Friday, but they returned it to him last month after a medical evaluation found he was not mentally ill, authorities said on Saturday.

Esteban Santiago, a 26-year-old Iraq war veteran, had a history of acting erratically and investigators are probing whether mental illness played a role in the latest U.S. mass shooting. According to court papers, he told agents he planned the attack and bought a one-way ticket to Florida.

Santiago was charged on Saturday in federal court and could potentially face the death penalty if convicted in the case, U.S. prosecutors said.

Marlin Ritzman, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's office in Anchorage, told a news conference Santiago walked into the office in November and said his mind was being controlled by a U.S. intelligence agency. He was turned over to local police, who took him to a medical facility for a mental evaluation.

"Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believed he was being influenced by ISIS (the Islamic State militant group,)" Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley told the news conference.

A handgun police took from Santiago during the evaluation was returned to him early last month, Tolley told reporters. The police chief said it was not clear if it was the same weapon used on Friday.

Officials in Anchorage said the gun was returned because Santiago had not been adjudicated to be mentally ill.

"As far as I know, this is not somebody that would have been prohibited (from having a gun) based on the information they had," U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler told the news conference.

Investigators said they have not ruled out terrorism as a motive and that the suspect's recent travel is being reviewed.

Federal prosecutors charged Santiago with carrying out violence at an airport, causing serious bodily injury, using a firearm during a crime of violence and causing death to a person through the use of a firearm, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

He will appear in court in Fort Lauderdale on Monday.

Five people were killed and six wounded in the rampage, while about three dozen were taken to local hospitals with bruises or broken bones suffered in the chaos as passengers fled the crowded baggage claim area.

'METHODICAL' SHOOTING

Authorities say Santiago arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on a connecting flight from Alaska and retrieved a Walther 9mm semi-automatic handgun from his checked luggage before loading it in a bathroom and shooting indiscriminately.

According to the criminal complaint, Santiago fired the weapon 10 to 15 times, aiming it at his victims' heads.

"He was described as walking while shooting in a methodical manner," the complaint said.

Witnesses said the gunman, who was wearing a blue "Star Wars" T-shirt, said nothing as he fired and surrendered to police only after running out of ammunition.

The Broward County sheriff has said it took the first deputy about 70 to 80 seconds to contact the suspect after the first shots rang out and that when the deputy confronted him, he dropped the gun and was taken into custody.

Authorities said three of the six victims who suffered gunshot wounds are in intensive care. The others are in good condition. Those killed included a volunteer firefighter in his sixties and a retiree on holiday with her husband.

Santiago served from 2007 to 2016 in the Puerto Rico National Guard and Alaska National Guard, including a deployment to Iraq from 2010 to 2011, according to the Pentagon.

A private first class and combat engineer, he received half a dozen medals before being transferred to the inactive ready reserve in August last year.

An aunt said Santiago returned from his deployment "a different person," MSNBC reported.

Santiago's brother Bryan, who lives in Puerto Rico, told CNN he believed authorities did not do enough to help his mentally ill sibling.

"They had him hospitalized for four days, and then they let him go. How are you going to let someone leave a psychological center after four days when he is saying that he is hearing voices?" Bryan Santiago told CNN.

The attack was the latest in a series of U.S. mass shootings, some inspired by Islamist militants, others carried out by loners or the mentally disturbed.

Last June, Florida was the scene of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, when a gunman apparently inspired by Islamic State killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the gay nightclub "Pulse" in Orlando.

(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Alex Dobunzinskis in Los Angeles, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)
Portland, Maine (PRWEB) January 06, 2017

Accountex USA announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Society of CPAs, the association representing Massachusetts certified public accountants. MSCPA will partner with Accountex in offering the accounting technology conference and expo to their 11,000 members.

Accountex announced in November the relocation of the accounting technology conference and expo to Boston for 2017. The move puts a leading independent event for accounting professionals in the mecca of cities for finance careers. Accountex USA will be held at the Hynes Convention Center September 6-8, 2017.

"Accountex presents an excellent opportunity to learn first-hand about the latest innovations in accounting technology that impact the practices of our CPA members," says Julia Ekelund, MSCPA Vice President of Learning and Development. "They will also reap the added benefits of networking with peers at a global event."

Accountex, a division of Diversified Communications, is the only independent technology event aimed at accountants and finance managers. It brings together a global audience of attendees and provides education and training workshops in all aspects of accounting technology. It also features a major trade show exposition which will showcase over exhibits from the leading app developers offering the latest technology to accountants, finance managers, and bookkeepers.

RD Whitney, Group Vice President, explained the move of Accountex USA: "Boston was recently named by Investopedia as the top destination for financial careers, so it is only natural that the leading independent accounting technology event relocate to the mecca of professionals. Diversified Communications is committed to investing in the growth of Accountex, an agnostic community for all financial and accounting professionals, which relocates in 2017 to foster the demands of a progressive group."

Whitney continued, "We are privileged to partner with the Massachusetts Society of CPAs to bring our content focused accounting technology trade show and educational conference to their members. We believe it will be a highly-valued member benefit. MSCPA members will be invited to attend the exposition and participate in the education conference at a substantial discount. The beautiful fall of New England will welcome attendees and app developers with innovation, inspiration, and disruptive thought leadership. It is the 2017 Accounting Tech event of the year!"

Accountex USA provides a three-day learning experience that focuses around the technology that moves accounting forward as well as the business processes and organizational success needed in the marketplace. As an independent conference, the content offers more than a single perspective on solutions. In addition, the expo brings together the largest selection of solutions and offers professionals face-to-face time to learn about the latest upcoming trends available from the innovators in technology. The conference is the premier event of the year for the accounting and financial professionals and the add-on developer community interested in cloud accounting or business accounting technology. Registration is now open at AccountexUSA.com.

About Accountex

Accountex is the leading independent expo and conference focusing on accounting technology. Accountex USA focuses on the technology that moves accounting forward as well as the business processes and organizational success needed in the marketplace. It is an independent conference meaning that it offers more than one viewpoint of solutions. Accountex features the most accounting technology solutions at one major event, plus latest trends and the traditional technologies that still dominate, without any focus on a singular suite of products. http://www.accountexusa.com.

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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/01/prweb13961366.htm
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) recently announced the results of their evaluation of proposals for the 2017 HealthChoices Medicaid managed care contracts. As a result, Gateway Health was selected to proceed to contract negotiations in all five HealthChoices zones, which include the Southeast, the Southwest, the Northeast, the Northwest and the Lehigh Capital zones. The new HealthChoices contract is slated to be effective June 2017 and may give Medicaid eligible residents in all Pennsylvania counties the opportunity to select Gateway Health as their managed care organization (MCO).

In the fall of 2015, DHS originally issued bids for the new HealthChoices contracts with the intent for the new contact year to begin on January 1, 2017. After a rebid was issued in the fall of 2016, health plans that resubmitted proposals were notified of the rescoring results and bids were awarded late last year. Pending readiness review and agreement negotiations, the new contracts will expand Gateway's footprint to serve residents Commonwealth-wide, which total approximately 1,600,000 Medicaid recipients. Formerly, Gateway provided healthcare coverage in the Southwest, Northwest and Lehigh Capital zones. The Pennsylvania HealthChoices zones are comprised of the following counties:

Southeast Zone - Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties

- Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties Southwest Zone - Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Green, Indiana, Lawrence, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties

- Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Green, Indiana, Lawrence, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties Lehigh/Capital Zone - Adams, Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Northampton, Perry and York counties

- Adams, Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Northampton, Perry and York counties Northwest Zone - Cameron, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, McKean, Mercer, Potter, Venango and Warren counties

- Cameron, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, McKean, Mercer, Potter, Venango and Warren counties Northeast Zone - Bradford, Carbon, Centre, Clinton, Columbia, Juniata, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lycoming, Mifflin, Monroe, Montour, Northumberland, Pike, Schuylkill, Snyder, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Wayne and Wyoming counties

"Gateway Health is overwhelmingly pleased with the decision by DHS to grant us the potential to provide services to Medicaid eligible consumers in all HealthChoices zones. We intend to work diligently with DHS through the agreement negotiation and readiness review phases to show how our organization and our provider network can provide unrivaled access and quality healthcare to all Medicaid recipients, said Patti Darnley, President and CEO, Gateway Health. "As one of the State's original Medicaid MCOs, we feel particularly well-equipped to provide outstanding and responsive care to this vulnerable and deserving population. Our belief is that the health and wellness of Pennsylvania is directly tied to the health and wellness of its residents and our mission is to see that both remain as healthy as possible."

In addition to being scored on quality, community outreach and clinical outcomes, Gateway's proposal also included their plans for utilizing Small Diverse Businesses (SDBs) in their operations. As a Pennsylvania based not-for-profit business, Gateway Health is proud to support Pennsylvania SDBs as an indication of their commitment to the responsible stewardship of state tax dollars. Without the need to answer to shareholders, Gateway places a strong emphasis on reinvesting this money back into the Commonwealth and its residents.

About Gateway Health Gateway Health is a nationally ranked managed care organization that focuses on providing the best possible healthcare to a growing number of Medicaid and Medicare Advantage consumers. A not-for-profit organization, Gateway Health serves the needs of at risk and vulnerable citizens with not only healthcare coverage, but services such as disease management, health and wellness programs and preventive care. The organization provides Medicaid services in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia and Medicare coverage in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina. Our commitment to helping our members and their communities get and stay healthy is what keeps members, providers, communities and partners "Good with Gateway." To learn more about Gateway Health, visit us online at www.gatewayhealthplan.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gateway-health-awarded-bids-to-provide-medicaid-managed-care-in-all-pennsylvania-counties-300387167.html

SOURCE Gateway Health
PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Regulatory News:

Gecina (Paris: GFC) has signed a 10-year lease with the Renault Group for the entire Le Cristallin building (11,600 sq.m) in Boulogne-Billancourt. Under this lease the space will be made available to the tenant from February 2016.

This next-generation building, delivered in 2016 following a redevelopment operation, is ideally located next to Pont de Sevres metro station on Line 9, as well as the future Line 15, which is scheduled for delivery in 2022 as part of the Grand Paris project. This asset is covered by a number of environmental certification frameworks and is notably the first Gecina building to be Factor 4 certified (greenhouse gas emissions divided by four).

This building's redevelopment has delivered a yield on cost of nearly 8.2%.

This iconic operation illustrates Gecinas strategic ambition to create value by gradually rolling out its project pipeline, valued at 3.7 billion euros at end-September, with 1.2 billion euros of projects already underway and primarily scheduled for delivery in 2018.

On this operation, Gecina was advised by BNP Paribas Real Estate and the law firm Taylor & Wessing.

Gecina, a leading real estate group

Gecina owns, manages and develops property holdings worth 11.7 billion euros at July 1, 2016, with 97% located in the Paris Region. The Group is building its business around Frances leading office portfolio and a diversification division with residential assets and student residences. These data exclude the healthcare portfolio, which was sold for 1.35 billion euros on July 1, 2016. Gecina has put sustainable innovation at the heart of its strategy to create value, anticipate its customers' expectations and invest while respecting the environment, thanks to the dedication and expertise of its staff.

Gecina is a French real estate investment trust (SIIC) listed on Euronext Paris, and is part of the SBF 120, Euronext 100, FTSE4Good, DJSI Europe and World, Stoxx Global ESG Leaders and Vigeo indices. In line with its commitments to the community, Gecina has created a company foundation, which is focused on protecting the environment and supporting all forms of disability.

www.gecina.fr

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006559/en/

GECINA CONTACTS

Financial communications

Samuel Henry-Diesbach , Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 52 22

[email protected]

or

Virginie Sterling , Tel: + 33 (0)1 40 40 62 48

[email protected]

or

Press relations

Brigitte Cachon, Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 62 45

[email protected]

or

Armelle Miclo, Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 51 98

[email protected]

Source: Gecina
AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Genprex, Inc. today announced positive interim data from an ongoing Phase II clinical trial (NCT01455389) evaluating its investigational immunogene therapy candidate Oncoprex in combination with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) erlotinib (Tarceva) for the treatment of late stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.

The clinical trial, which is ongoing at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is designed to evaluate the Oncoprex/erlotinib treatment combination in up to 57 patients with late stage NSCLC, with and without EGFR mutations, who have failed at least two drug regimens. The clinical trial results in nine (9) patients evaluable to date show an overall disease control rate (stable disease, partial response or complete response) of 78%. One (1) EGFR negative patient with multiple targeted lesions experienced a durable complete response. One (1) EGFR negative patient experienced regression of targeted lesions by 24%. One (1) EGFR negative patient experienced regression of 30% in one targeted lesion, and regression of 18% over all targeted lesions. One (1) patient who was EGFR positive, but without the T790M mutation, achieved stable disease, tumor regression, and decreased metabolic activity by PET scan in multiple tumors. Three (3) additional patients achieved stable disease characterized by lack of disease progression after at least two treatments, each 21 days apart. The EGFR negative patients' disease had progressed following chemotherapy or immunotherapy. The EGFR positive patient's disease had progressed following treatment with Tarceva. The data from the patients treated at the time of analysis show a favorable safety profile similar to what was observed in two previous Phase I clinical trials.

"These interim data suggest that this targeted therapy may provide a viable treatment option for late stage NSCLC patients, with or without EGFR mutations, whose disease has progressed following currently available treatments," said Rodney Varner, CEO of Genprex. "If these positive interim results are sustained in either of these populations through the trial's conclusion, we plan to ask the FDA to grant accelerated approval for this therapy."

Systemic, cytotoxic chemotherapy is the standard treatment for the majority of NSCLC patients. A subset of NSCLC patients (10-15 percent of Whites and 30-50 percent of Asians) carry an EGFR mutation which makes their tumors sensitive to first generation TKIs such as erlotinib (Tarceva). However, tumor resistance to TKIs frequently develops within two years, resulting in eventual disease progression. While next generation TKIs show promise in targeting resistant EGFR positive tumors that carry the mutation known as T790M, approximately one-half of EGFR positive patients (5 to 7.5% of all White and 15 to 25% of all Asian NSCLC patients) do not carry the T790M mutation. These patients do not currently have a targeted treatment option and have a very poor prognosis. Oncoprex in combination with erlotinib may be an appropriate treatment for these patients.

About Lung CancerLung cancer is the second most common cancer in the U.S. There are approximately 225,000 new lung cancer cases in the U.S., and 1.8 million worldwide, every year. Lung cancer is also the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and the 5-year survival rate of stage IV non-small cell lung cancer patients is less than 1%.

About OncoprexGenprex is developing Oncoprex to be a targeted treatment option suitable for a majority of NSCLC patients. Research has shown that over 80% of cancer cells of many types of cancer, including NSCLC, lack a tumor suppressor gene called TUSC2 (formerly known as FUS1), a kinase inhibitor which has been shown in-vivo to affect cell proliferation and programmed cell death. Oncoprex is an optimized TUSC2 gene encapsulated in a fatty, positively charged nanovesicle (a nanoscale hollow sphere) injected intravenously, which can specifically target cancer cells and insert wild-type TUSC2 into cellular DNA, effectively taking the place of the defective TUSC2 gene and inducing cell death.

Oncoprex immunogene therapy is designed to 1) target and kill cancer cells, 2) block mechanisms that create drug resistance, and 3) stimulate natural immune responses against cancer. Oncoprex combines features of gene therapy and immunotherapy in that it up-regulates the tumor suppressor gene TUSC2 (formerly FUS1), increases the anti-tumor immune cell population, and down-regulates PD1 and PD-L1 receptors thereby boosting the immune response to cancer.

Pre-clinical data also indicate that Oncoprex can be combined with several other approved cancer therapies to improve efficacy with minimal side effects and become a complementary therapy for other cancer treatments.

About GenprexGenprex is a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing immunogene therapy treatments to increase the treatment options for various cancers. Genprex's lead product candidate, Oncoprex, has shown synergistic anti-cancer activity when combined with EGFR inhibitors and other drugs. The company is also working with world-class institutions and collaborators to in-license and develop further drug candidates. Genprex controls a portfolio of 30 issued and 6 pending patents covering tumor suppressors, therapeutics, diagnostics, nanovesicle delivery systems, and manufacturing processes. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit www.genprex.com or www.facebook.com/genprexinc.

Editor's Note: Tarceva is a registered trademark of the Roche Group including Genentech, Chugai and Astellas Pharma.

Contact:Stephanie CarringtonICR, Inc.646-277-1282[email protected]

MediaJames HeinsICR, Inc.203-682-8251[email protected]

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genprex-announces-positive-interim-data-from-phase-ii-clinical-trial-of-oncoprex-for-late-stage-non-small-cell-lung-cancer-300386946.html

SOURCE Genprex, Inc.
Bloomington, Ind. (PRWEB) January 06, 2017

A presentation by Tom Quigley, chief executive officer of the Indiana Limestone Company, was featured recently in the first annual Growth Conference held by Lincoln International, a middle-market investment banking firm based in Chicago.

Quigley's talk at the conference included a brief history of Indiana Limestone Company, a review of the firm's robust recovery and accelerated growth over the last two-and-a-half years, and a detailed analysis of the marketing, product development, acquisition and overall investment efforts that helped make it possible.

The Indiana Limestone CEO was one of several leaders on hand from high-growth companies in the building and infrastructure category, which is one sector of focus for Lincoln. Other featured categories included health care and technology/media.

In all, more than 45 presenters, mainly company chief executives, took part before an audience of some 300 representing private equity funds, venture capital funds and other investment organizations. The event also allowed time for one-on-one meetings between presenting executives and investment-firm attendees.

"We felt that Tom's presentation on effective efforts from a CEO's perspective was very much in line with the spirit of the conference," said Michael Fineman, Director at Lincoln international. "He revealed the key historical drivers of growth for Indiana Limestone and the key drivers going forward it was very well received."

For more information on the Indiana Limestone Company and its products, call (812) 824-2621 or visit indianalimestonecompany.com.

About Indiana Limestone Company

Indiana Limestone Company is unmatched as the premier supplier of Indiana Limestone in a range of beautiful and lasting building products. Founded in 1926 (with predecessor firms that had been quarrying limestone since the mid-1800s), ILCO today remains the provider of choice for this internationally renowned natural stone. Throughout an illustrious history in which its stone has made such iconic structures as the Empire State Building, National Cathedral, and the Pentagon, ILCO has reliably provided the highest quality products and services carefully tailored to the needs of the market with an environmental, natural focus. For more information, please visit http://www.indianalimestonecompany.com.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/01/prweb13958324.htm
Greensboro, NC (PRWEB) January 06, 2017

With the highly-anticipated film "Hidden Figures" set to open in theaters across the nation on Jan. 6, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) is sharing the story of alumna Virginia Tucker (Class of 1930), a trailblazer for the female mathematicians known as "computers" highlighted in the film.

Tucker was one of five women to join the first human computer pool at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now Langley Research Center) in 1935. Langley was the main research center for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA.

When World War II broke out in 1939, more women were recruited as computers to conduct wind tunnel testing and other critical research for the military. Tucker recruited heavily at institutions across the East Coast, including UNCG (known then as the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina). According to Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book that inspired the movie, UNCG graduated one of the largest cohorts of women who went on to work as human computers.

By the early 1940s, Tucker was the head computer, tasked with managing hundreds of women in computing sections across the laboratory. In her book, Shetterly writes:

"Over the course of twelve years, Virginia Tucker had ascended from a subprofessional employee to the most powerful woman at the lab. She had done so much to transform the position of computer from a proto-clerical job into one of the laboratory's most valuable assets. & Between 1942 and 1946, four hundred Langley computers received training on Tucker's watch."

In 1947, Tucker left civil service for a position as an aerodynamicist at Northrop Corporation, one of the nation's leading aviation companies. Although she was no longer at Langley, her legacy continued to pave the way for female mathematicians, including the three African-American women whose inspiring stories are told in the movie "Hidden Figures."

To learn more about Tucker and to schedule an interview with UNCG's university archivist, please contact Alyssa Bedrosian at (336) 334-9769.

About The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a high-research activity university as classified by the Carnegie Foundation. Founded in 1891 and one of the original three UNC system institutions, UNCG is one of the most diverse universities in the state with more than 19,600 students and 2,500 faculty and staff members representing more than 90 nationalities. With 86 undergraduate degrees in over 100 areas of study, as well as 52 master's and 28 doctoral programs, UNCG is consistently recognized nationally among the top universities for academic excellence and value, with noted strengths in education, health and wellness, the performing arts, business and the arts and sciences, among others. For additional information, please visit uncg.edu and follow UNCG on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/01/prweb13961816.htm
An AT&T sign is seen outside a branch in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, U.S., October 24, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Inc expects to be able to bypass a powerful telecommunications regulator in its planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX), the companies said in regulatory filings on Friday.

Time Warner said that since it does not plan to transfer any Federal Communications Commission licenses to AT&T, it would likely not need FCC approval and would only need the consent of the U.S. Justice Department.

AT&T could forego the FCC by unloading a Time Warner broadcast station, analysts say. Despite its big media footprint, Time Warner has only one FCC-regulated broadcast station, WPCH-TV in Atlanta. But it has other more minor FCC licenses.

Time Warner said in its filing it does not anticipate it "will not need to transfer any of its FCC licenses to AT&T in order to continue to conduct its business operations after the closing."

The deal faces other hurdles. For example, President-elect Donald Trump has said he opposes the merger, and on Friday a transition official told Reuters that Trump still was against the deal the deal.

Time Warner shareholders will meet on Feb. 15 to decide whether to approve the deal.

The Justice Department has to prove a proposed deal harms competition in order to block it. But the FCC has broad leeway to block a merger it deems is not in the "public interest" and can impose additional conditions.

AT&T and Time Warner filed a premerger notification with the Justice Department on Nov. 4, and on Dec. 8 the Justice Department issued a second information request.

AT&T, which has repeatedly clashed with the FCC over the past several years over major industry regulations, said in October that one benefit of its purchase is that Time Warner is "lightly regulated compared to much of AT&T's existing operations."

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Police in the Austrian city of Innsbruck are trying to identify a group of foreign men believed to have sexually assaulted 18 women during New Year's Eve celebrations, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The women have reported that unidentified assailants had groped and tried to kiss them that evening as they stood in or near a crowded central square for a concert and fireworks display. Most described a group of five or six men, the police spokesman said.

In neighboring Germany last year, hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed at New Year's celebrations in Cologne and suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance. Police there said they prevented a repeat of this year by screening 650 mostly North African men on the night.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has boosted support for far-right parties in both Austria and Germany after both countries took in waves of migrants, many of them from the Middle East and North Africa, during Europe's migration crisis in 2015.

Witnesses in Innsbruck, a city in the Alps in western Austria, said the New Year's assailants were in their 20s or 30s and had dark complexions, but their nationality was not clear.

"It has definitely been proven that they are foreign," the spokesman for the police in the western province of Tyrol said, adding witnesses reported they spoke English or poor German. "We are investigating. We have videos of poor quality but we are trying to make the best of them."

The assaults happened despite a police presence reinforced because of the Cologne assaults and last month's truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, the spokesman said.

Roughly 25,000 people gathered in the area of the central Market Square for a concert and fireworks display, visibility was limited, he added.

"We have never seen anything in this form," he said. "I cannot remember (an attack) of this intensity, on this scale and with this modus operandi."

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Germany was sued for damages in the United States on Thursday by descendants of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia, for what they called a genocide campaign by German colonial troops in the early 1900s that led to more than 100,000 deaths.

According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Germany has excluded the plaintiffs from talks with Namibia regarding what occurred, and has publicly said any settlement will not include reparations to victims, even if compensation is awarded to Namibia itself.

"There is no assurance that any of the proposed foreign aid by Germany will actually reach or assist the minority indigenous communities that were directly harmed," the plaintiffs' lawyer Ken McCallion said in an email. "There can be no negotiations or settlement about them that is made without them."

The proposed class-action lawsuit seeks unspecified sums for thousands of descendants of the victims, for the "incalculable damages" that were caused.

U.S. representatives of the German government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The slaughter took place from roughly 1904 to 1908, when Namibia was a German colony known as South-West Africa, after the Herero and Nama groups rebelled against German rule.

According to many published reports, victims were also subjected to harsh conditions in concentration camps, and some had their skulls sent to Germany for scientific experiments.

Some historians view what occurred as the 20th century's first genocide, and a 1985 United Nations report said the "massacre" of Hereros qualified as a genocide.

Germany has paid victims of the Holocaust, which occurred during World War Two.

The plaintiffs on Thursday sued under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 U.S. law often invoked in human rights cases.

The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the law's reach in a 2013 decision, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, saying it was presumed not to cover foreign conduct unless the claims sufficiently "touch and concern" the United States.

McCallion said Kiobel and later rulings "leave the door open" for U.S. courts to assert jurisdiction in genocide cases.

The plaintiffs, including some from New York, also brought federal common law and New York state law claims.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Half of all Liberians think their West African nation could plunge back into conflict more than a decade after civil war ended, due to widespread corruption and rows over land, an aid agency said on Thursday.

Systemic corruption in the public sector, disputes over land ownership and high rates of youth unemployment were cited by Liberians as the three main factors that could incite violence in a survey carried out by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

"Liberians are telling the world that the causes of the long civil wars are still there and they have genuine fears of their country returning to violence," Jennifer Overton, regional director for CRS in West Africa, said in a statement.

The country is still recovering from two brutal civil wars, which spanned 14 years before ending in 2003, and an Ebola outbreak which killed some 4,800 people between 2014 and 2016.

The survey was published as Liberia gears up for presidential elections in October to replace Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, in what would be the first democratic transfer of power since the 1970s.

Political leaders were considered most likely to instigate renewed violence by 72 percent of respondents in the survey of more than 1,500 Liberians across the nation's 15 counties.

Around 60 percent believed unemployed youths were most likely to spark violence.

More than four in five of the respondents said they felt that victims of wartime violence did not receive justice through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up in 2005 to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"Both the Liberian government and the international community cannot afford to be complacent about peace in Liberia," said Pilate Johnson, acting director for the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Liberia.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission that was sent to Liberia in 2003 to restore order after the conflict withdrew last June, beginning a new phase of self-reliance for the country.

(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
BAMAKO (Reuters) - A local worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross was shot dead in the northern Mali town of Gao late on Wednesday night, a spokesman for the aid organization and local residents said.

"We are trying to confirm the details, but we can confirm the worker was killed," Saoure Barthelemi said on Thursday, without providing further details.

The Malian man was not working at the time of the shooting and was visiting family, Barthelemi said.

Kader Toure, a resident of Gao, said the worker had been shot by two men on a motorcycle late at night. He was taken to hospital where he died from his wounds, Toure said.

Northern Mali has been beset by attacks over the past year from resurgent Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Gao - seized by Islamist militants in 2012 before French forces drove them out a year later - is considered the most secure town in northern Mali, with multiple U.N., French and Malian army checkpoints along main roads.

Even in Gao, however, problems persist. A French aid worker was kidnapped there on Dec. 24, and in November the offices of the U.N. peacekeeping mission located next to the city's airport terminal were razed by a truck-bomb explosion.

(Reporting By Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako, writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Joe Bavier and Gareth Jones)
Syria's Minister of National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haidar speaks to media after a meeting with Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in Damascus, Syria February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

By Tom Perry

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria is prepared for "open battle" against insurgents in the province where Damascus has been allowing them to gather under ceasefire deals, said the government official in charge of negotiations that have seen rebels yield swathes of territory.

The past year has seen President Bashar al-Assad's government recapture many key areas from rebels, including suburbs of the capital in what Damascus calls "reconciliation" deals. Insurgents agree to give up territory in return for safe passage out.

Fighters have been given safe passage to Idlib Province, the biggest remaining rebel stronghold, which is in the northwest of the country. The government has sent buses to take them with their families.

Idlib was also the destination for many of the 35,000 rebel fighters and civilians evacuated from eastern Aleppo last month in a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia, Assad's most powerful ally, after insurgent groups were routed in the city.

Ali Haidar, who as national reconciliation minister has been responsible for negotiating local deals, said he expected more accords in coming months to send thousands of fighters to Idlib from areas near Damascus and south of it, as the army advances.

But in an interview in Damascus, he said the state could not allow Idlib to remain in insurgent hands indefinitely. Unless there was an international deal that addressed the situation, "then the other option is to go to an open battle with them", he said.

"The Syrian state is clear in its policy when it said it will not forego any patch of Syria, and I think Idlib is one of the coming hot areas," Haidar told Reuters.

He said foreign fighters must leave and rebel supply lines via Turkey be cut off.

HORIZON CLOSING

Allowing fighters who surrender elsewhere to escape to Idlib has emerged as the basic offer on the table wherever government forces have rebel-held areas under siege.

Damascus says its deals permit Syrians to stay as life returns to normal after a ceasefire. The opposition says the deals amount to forced demographic change to drive out Assad's opponents, an aim which the government denies.

Idlib province at the border with Turkey is almost entirely controlled by rebel groups fighting to topple Assad, including powerful Islamist factions such as Ahrar al-Sham and Fateh al-Sham, formally known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Around Damascus, the pace of local deals has picked up in recent months, notably since rebels agreed to leave Daraya southwest of the capital in August for Idlib some 300 km (200 miles) away.

Rebels now face the firepower of an army backed by Russian air support and ground troops from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement. Haidar said more local deals were being concluded as armed groups found the "horizon" closing in on them.

"The experience of Daraya accelerated the final conviction on the part of the militants that the state cannot be confronted forever," he said.

Haidar said some 10,000 fighters had been given safe passage to Idlib so far from areas other than Aleppo, and he expected about as many more in the next six months "if we complete the reconciliations in the rural Damascus areas, Deraa and Quneitra".

NO DEAL YET FOR DOUMA

Rebels still hold territory in those areas and near Damascus, including Douma in the Eastern Ghouta area.

Haidar said efforts to conclude a reconciliation deal there had yet to yield a result, blaming Saudi Arabia which wields influence over the main rebel group there, Jaish al-Islam.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the main backers of the insurgency against Assad, along with Qatar, Turkey and the United States. In the Damascus area "the problem remains specifically Douma, because everyone knows that there is an armed group in Douma linked with Saudi Arabia", Haidar said.

He also indicated a local deal could be reached soon in the Wadi Barada valley near Damascus, where government forces and their allies are currently battling rebels. A deal could be completed "in a very short period, not months", he said.

Rebel groups have cited the assault on Wadi Barada as proof that the government is not committed to a new ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia. The United Nations says it has received reports that the latest fighting has displaced at least 7,000 people from the area where an estimated 45,000 people live.

Syrian rebel groups said on Monday they had decided to freeze any talks about their possible participation in proposed peace talks unless the government and its Iran-backed allies end what the rebels say are truce violations.

Haidar accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of trying to obstruct the meeting in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. Turkey, on the other hand, was "searching for an exit far removed from its previous Saudi and Qatari allies," he said.

"So far Astana is an expression of positive intentions, and these intentions have not been translated into real actions," he said, though it was possible that a first meeting could still be held there at the end of the month.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)
Julio Borges, deputy of Venezuelan coalition of opposition parties (MUD), takes the oath after being elected president of the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela January 5, 2017. REUTERS/Marco Bello

By Andrew Cawthorne and Diego Ore

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition, still smarting from its failure to remove President Nicolas Maduro last year, installed a new congress head on Thursday who demanded across-the-board elections and sought military help to end "dictatorship".

In a renewal of Venezuela's bitter politics after the holiday lull, the ruling Socialist Party responded that the National Assembly was in contempt of the law.

Maduro forecast its imminent "self-dissolution."

The opposition coalition won control of the Assembly at the end of 2015 thanks to voter ire at Venezuela's unrelenting economic crisis. But authorities blocked their attempt to oust Maduro via a plebiscite last year.

That has split the opposition between hardliners who believe civil disobedience is the only way to dislodge Hugo Chavez's unpopular successor, and moderates who fear that could spark bloodshed and backfire in the OPEC member nation with the world's largest oil reserves.

Julio Borges, a veteran politician and lawyer, tore into the president as he took the post of assembly president. But he backed the moderates' push for solutions at the ballot box given what he deemed Maduro's "abandonment" of responsibilities.

"With the greatest oil riches in the world, Venezuela's people seek food in rubbish ... the elderly faint in lines to seek food and medicines. It's as if we are victims of a curse," he said in an inauguration speech.

"What to do faced with a government gone from authoritarianism to dictatorship? ... Fight, fearlessly and in every space, to save the constitution, Venezuela and the right to vote," Borges added, calling for fresh elections for mayors, governors, president and legislators.

Given opponents' failure to hold a referendum in 2016 after government-leaning courts ruled a signature drive was fraudulent, it was unclear how they plan to force Maduro's hand.

Mayoral and governorship elections are due anyway this year, but Maduro has said repeatedly he will not cut short his presidential term ending in January 2019.

Borges, 47, who was hit in the face by a pipe-wielding government supporter last year and beaten up in congress in 2013, urged the armed forces to support new polls.

"Turning a blind eye to tyranny is to deny history and your raison' d'etre," he said. "Do you want to be the proud heirs of Simon Bolivar's liberating army, or be remembered as the guardians of Nicolas Maduro?"

The opposition was hoping to enact new laws to grant property rights to slum-dwellers, allow workers to own state businesses, fight crime, and improve crop production on land nationalized by the state, Borges said.

The Supreme Court annulled nearly all the assembly's measures in 2016 at the government's behest.

Government supporters recall Borges' support of a 2002 coup against Chavez and say he wants the same for Maduro.

Late on Wednesday, the president said the assembly should stop defying the Supreme Court. "It looks on track for self-dissolution and new elections," he said.

(Additional reporting by Eyanir Chinea; Editing by Alan Crosby and James Dalgleish)
A Volkswagen logo is pictured at the newly opened Volkswagen factory in Wrzesnia, Poland, September 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG and former Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn must defend an investor lawsuit in California over the company's diesel emissions cheating scandal, a U.S. judge has ruled.

The plaintiffs, mostly U.S. municipal pension funds, have accused VW of not having informed the market in a timely fashion about the issue as well as understating possible financial liabilities, according to the 41-court document seen by Reuters.

The pension funds include those representing Arkansas State Highway Employees and Miami Police. The lawsuits said VW's market capitalization fell by $63 billion after the diesel cheating scandal became public in September 2015.

The plaintiffs had invested in VW through American Depositary Receipts (ADR), a form of equity ownership in a non-U.S. company that represents the foreign shares of the company held on deposit by a bank in the company's home country.

"Volkswagen is convinced that the accusations raised by buyers of the corporate securities (so-called American Depositary Receipts) lack any foundation," a spokesman at VW's German headquarters said by email.

"It's our intention to make this clear in the further course of proceedings," he added.

VW shares did not react to the latest legal developments and were trading up 0.7 percent at 139.7 euros as of 1115 GMT (6:15 a.m. ET).

SECRET SOFTWARE

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer rejected a request by VW brand chief Herbert Diess to have the proposed securities fraud lawsuits tossed out of a California court. Other defendants include VW's U.S. unit and its Audi of America unit and the former head of its U.S. unit, Michael Horn.

Volkswagen argued that German courts were the proper place for investor lawsuits.

Breyer said in his ruling that "because the United States has an interest in protecting domestic investors against securities fraud" the lawsuits should go forward in a U.S. court.

CEO Winterkorn resigned days after the scandal became public and much of the company's management has changed since 2015.

VW in September 2015 admitted using sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with 11 millions vehicles worldwide affected. The cheating allowed nearly 580,0000 VW's U.S. diesel vehicles sold since 2009 to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution levels.

The lawsuits said VW and its executives misled the investing public "assuring them to the contrary  namely, that the diesel vehicles met all applicable emissions standards" and it "understated the liabilities that it would suffer as a result of its known emissions non-compliance."

Volkswagen has agreed to spend as much as $17.5 billion in the United States to resolve claims from owners and federal and state regulators over polluting diesel vehicles.

Volkswagen could still spend billions of dollars more to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation and federal and state environmental claims; come under oversight by a federal monitor and face other conditions.

The Justice Department and VW are in settlement talks and it is possible a deal could be reached before Jan. 20, when President Barack Obama leaves office, according to sources briefed on the matter.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer in Berlin; Editing by Grant McCool/Keith Weir)
1. Name and Address of Reporting Person * WALTON MERCEDES (Last) (First) (Middle) 10050 CROSSTOWN CIRCLE SUITE 500 (Street) EDEN PRAIRIE MN 55344 (City) (State) (Zip)

2. Issuer Name and Ticker or Trading Symbol

DATALINK CORP [ DTLK ]
A severe infestation of the papaya mealybug (Paracoccus marginatus) nearly wiped out papaya orchards in Pakistan before the largely farmed country decided to replace conventional chemical pesticides that were ineffective with natural predators that proved to be successful.

The system was developed by agro-biotechnologists and entomologists at the Pakistani chapter of the UK-based Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) who introduced the use of Acerophagus papayae, a parasitoid (insects whose larvae parasite upon and eventually kill the host), to effectively control the mealybug infestation.

Farmers are happy with this cost-effective, pesticide-free technique to deal with the mealybug and now see possibilities of recovering their papaya farms, says CABI research coordinator Abdul Rehman.

He regrets though that by the time the biological method became available many farmers had already shifted to other crops.

Papaya once covered some 921 hectares in the two coastal provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, according to the National Agriculture Research Council (NARC). But, after the first mealybug attack on papaya was reported in 2008, the area under papaya had shrunk to 307 hectares by 2014.

Demonstration of the bio-control technique and awareness building among farmers helped wide-scale adoption and resulted in over 80 per cent control of the papaya mealybug.

Amjad Pervez, NARC

Rehman tells SciDev.Net that after the pest had gripped almost 80 per cent of the papaya orchards, CABI, US Development Agriculture and the US Agency for International Development initiated the biological control programme in close collaboration with NARC to stop the pests possible spread to other more important commercial crops.

In 2014, under CABIs papaya pest management programme, A. papayae specimens were collected from the coastal areas near the port city of Karachi, reared in the laboratory and then released into papaya plantations after screening and environmental assessments.

CABI researchers also set up a Natural Enemies Field Reservoir on the farmers fields to breed the A. papayae parasitoid as well as eight other natural predators of the papaya mealybug.

Amjad Pervez, director-general at the NARCs Karachi-based regional office, says that the advantage of the bio-control approach lies in its simplicity and in the fact that it is self-sustaining.

Demonstration of the bio-control technique and awareness building among farmers helped wide-scale adoption and resulted in over 80 per cent control of the papaya mealybug, Pervez says. Besides, the process was non-laborious, highly affordable and simple enough for farmers not to need support from government agencies.

Rehmans team has hammered out a three-pronged plan to promote the field reservoirs through public-private partnerships.

The bio-control approach has saved the papaya (farming) and also increased profits by reducing expenses on the pesticide sprays once used to fight the pest.

Abdul Majeed Nizamani, Sindh Abadgar Board

The plan shall be implemented to boost research and development to strengthen the bio-control process to completely contain papaya mealybug. Sindh and Balochistan provinces farmers organisations and vegetable and fruit traders associations will also be engaged in this regard as key stakeholders, Pervez explains.

Controlling the papaya mealybug has helped contain its potential spread to commercial crops like citrus, tomato, aubergine, peppers, mulberry, beans and peas, sweet potato, mango, cherry, and pomegranate. Annual losses, had these crops been affected, would have run into millions of dollars, says Pervez.

Rehman says Pakistans experience in safely controlling the mealybug has been shared with CABI chapters in the Asia-Pacific, European, and African countries.

Entomologists and fruit pest experts have already communicated possibilities for replication of the bio-control approach, with some necessary modifications in countries like Congo, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand he says.

Mealybugs have great resistance to most pesticides. For one thing they exude waxy secretions that can insulate them against chemicals and for another they have developed resistance to most commonly used chemical insecticides, according to a comprehensive Indian study published by Springer earlier this year.

First detected in Mexico in 1955, the papaya mealybug had spread to the Caribbean and Latin America by the 1990s and to the Pacific and South Asian countries through the first decade of this century.

Abdul Majeed Nizamani, president of the Sindh Abadgar Board, a farmers organisation, believes that papaya farming would have been completely wiped out in Pakistan if not for the bio-control measures. The bio-control approach has saved the papaya (farming) and also increased profits by reducing expenses on the pesticide sprays once used to fight the pest, Nizamani says.

(This article was originally published on SciDev.Net.)
The state-of-the-art King Hamad University of Nursing and Allied Medical Services is being established with assistance of Bahrain. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif laid foundations of the country's first nursing university in Islamabad on Friday.

The state-of-the-art King Hamad University of Nursing and Allied Medical Services is being established with the assistance of the brotherly country Bahrain.

Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister said the Government is committed to improve the quality of human resource in the nursing profession and to further enhance its prestige.

He expressed the confidence that the university will bring quality of nursing care in Pakistan at par with international standards.

The Prime Minister said health is one of the top priority of the Government. It has introduced major reforms and initiated projects focused on poorest of the poor.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced construction of fifty state-of-the-art hospitals in densely populated and marginalized areas throughout the country.

He said the goal of the Government is to provide integrated healthcare spanning over entire health spectrum from primary to tertiary care. He said this programme is unprecedented in terms of its magnitude. He said the programme is being implemented in a phased manner and would provide coverage to 100 million people eventually. Work in this regard is being undertaken expeditiously.

The Prime Minister said besides healthcare, the Government is also focusing on preventive side. National immunization programme is providing free of cost vaccine facility to every Pakistani child and pregnant mother. There has been significant improvement in the coverage of the programme and concrete steps are being taken to arrest the spread of polio.

The Prime Minister described the proposed university as a significant leap forward in improving healthcare sector in the country as it would help fill an important gap in the healthcare field. He said there was dearth of properly qualified and trained nurses and the project would help overcome this problem.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thanked people and Government of Bahrain and especially King Hamad for generosity in offering the support for establishment of this quality university. He said the university symbolises strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between the two countries. This is reflective of leadership of Bahrain's love for the people of Pakistan and its commitment to help improve the quality of life of our people.
A five-member bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa resumed hearing of the Panama Leaks case.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz submitted her reply in the Supreme Court which included five-year details of her income.

She said that there were five houses in the Raiwand estate. In the first house her grandmother Shamim Akhtar lived. In the second house her parents, the Prime Minister and the first lady, lived. The third house is occupied by her late uncle Abbas Sharif's family. In the fourth house Shehbaz Sharif lived. And in the fifth house she lived.

Read more: Panama Leaks case: PM's legal team submits written reply to SC's queries

She said that signatures on documents related to Nescol company are fake. These documents are not linked to the Panama Leaks.

The hearing was adjourned till Monday.

Naeem Bukhari

In his arguments Imran Khans lawyer Naeem Bukhari said that the London Flats actually belonged to Nawaz Sharif. He argued that the Benami flats were bought between 1993 and 1996 in Maryam Nawazs name. When the flats were bought Maryam was a minor, he said, adding that later a Benami Steel Mill was set up in Dubai.

Bukhari said that Maryam Nawaz was beneficiary in the London Flats, but that is just a hoax.

Justice Azmat Saeed asked when was Maryam Nawaz made shareholder in the Chaudhry Sugar Mill.

Bukhari replied that in 2011 the Prime Minister gave his daughter Rs37 million as a present to his daughter.

Justice Ijaz said that Bukharis argument do not clarify the issue of dependency of Maryam Nawaz. He said that he appreciated his efforts.

Also read: Maryam will prove to be beneficiary of Mayfair flats: Imran

Bukhari explained that investigation agencies had asked Mossack Fonseca for details on the offshore companies. They replied that the London flats had not been rented out. In fact they were in use by Maryam Nawaz and her family. He added that the Samba Bank had confirmed that Maryam Nawaz was their account holder.

Justice Ijaz Afzal asked for documentary evidence over the transfer of property to Maryam Nawaz. Do you have any documents to prove that the 2006 trust deed is fake? he asked.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan submitted an interview by Nawaz Sharifs financial advisor Haroon Pasha in the court as evidence. He requested the court to include Haroon Pashas interview to Geo News on December 6, 2016 in the court records.

Fawad Chaudhry

Speaking to the media, outside the Supreme Court, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Fawad Chaudhry said that we have submitted all evidence in the Supreme Court.

"In the proceedings today we asked how Hussain Nawaz began his business worth billions," he said.

"All of Nawaz Sharif's transactions roam around Maryam Nawaz. Actually Maryam Nawaz is Nawaz Sharif's Benami," he said.

"The court has said that they will get to the bottom of this," he added.

Sheikh Rasheed

Speaking to the media outside the apex court, Awami Muslim League (AML) President Sheikh Rasheed said the Panama Leaks cases would conclude this month.

During Thursdays proceedings, the prime minister's lawyer Makhdoom Ali submitted his reply which included details of the prime minister's public office tenure.

The reply states that the prime minister was provincial finance minister from 1981 to 1985, after which he occupied the office of Chief Minister Punjab till 1988. During the period of April-May 1988 he was acting chief minister. Till 1990 he was CM Punjab again. He went on to become prime minister till 1993 for the first time, and then from 1997 till 1999 he was prime minister for the second time. From 1993 till 1996 he was opposition leader. He was exiled in 2000, and his exile ended in 2007.

Copies of the reply were submitted to PTI.
British High Commissioner Thomas Drew held a meeting with Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa at Rawalpindi on Friday and discussed matters of mutual interest and regional security.

Army Chief underscored the importance Pakistan attaches to the support of all nations in Pakistans efforts against terrorism.

The visiting dignitary acknowledged and appreciated Pakistans continuous efforts for peace and stability in the region.
The United States added Hamza bin Laden, son and heir of the late Osama bin Laden, to its terrorist blacklist on Thursday.

Hamza, who is in his mid-twenties, has become active as an Al-Qaeda propagandist since his father's death at the hands of US special forces in 2011.

According to letters found in the Navy SEAL raid on Osama's hideout in Pakistan, Hamza wrote to the Saudi-born Al-Qaeda leader asking to be trained to follow him.

A CIA analyst who examined the letters told AFP that in July 2009, when Hamza wrote the letter to his father's Abbottabad hideout, they had not seen each other for eight years.

But the elder bin Laden was making plans to send for his son, who was at the time under house arrest in Iran, and planned to groom him to become Al-Qaeda's leader.

Since Bin Laden's death, his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has taken up the reins of the organisation, but Hamza has issued audio messages to supporters.

The State Department order lists Hamza bin Laden as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist," meaning that US citizens are forbidden from dealing with him, and freezing any assets under US jurisdiction.

In July 2016,Hamza had threatened revenge against the United States for assassinating his father, according to an audio message posted online.

He promised to continue the global militant groups fight against the United States and its allies in the 21-minute speech entitled We Are All Osama, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
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A Tauranga woman who went into premature labour was rushed to the National Womens Hospital this morning.

A Philips Search and Rescue Trust spokesperson says the Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter was dispatched to transfer the 28-year-old woman from Tauranga Hospital to the womens hospital in Auckland.

The woman was in premature labour and required specialist care at the National Womens Hospital.

The spokesperson says the helicopter was used due to the urgent nature of the patients condition.

Philips Search and Rescue Trust is a charitable organisation which operates rescue helicopters throughout the Central North Island. For more information about the trust visit: rescue.org.nz
Representatives of five religious communities came together to celebrate Hanukkah in Torremolinos

The representatives of five religious communities light the Hanukkah. :: SUR

More than 1,000 people gathered in the centre of Torremolinos last week to enjoy the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

The Hanukkah festival, also known as the festival of lights, or the lighting of the candles, was attended by representatives of five religious communities, as well as the mayors of several surrounding towns.

Hanukkah is observed for eight days, starting on the twenty-fifth day of Kislev, according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar.

Hanukkah is celebrated with a series of rituals that are performed every day throughout the holiday; some are family-based and others communal.

Families exchange gifts each night, and fried foods, such as potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts are eaten to commemorate the importance of oil during the celebration.

Hanukkah is the Hebrew acronym for eight candles, and the festival includes the ceremonial lighting of the candles; one for each night of the holiday.

This ceremony was carried out by Samuel Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Torremolinos; Jesus Catala, Bishop of Malaga; Dual Ramon, the Evangelist Church of La Palma; Dushi Sharma, representative of the Hindu community of Torremolinos and Benalmadena, and Doukkali Rachid, the president of the Muslim community in Torremolinos.

The festival was also attended by the mayor of Torremolinos, Jose Ortiz, and the mayor of Cordoba, Maria Isabel Ambrosio, who is also the president of the Network of Jewish Communities in Spain.

The mayors of Marbella, Alhaurin de la Torre and Lucena were also in attendance.

David Obadia, president of the Jewish Community of Torremolinos, gave a well-deserved tribute when reflecting on the touching story of Fanny Cohen, a survivor of the Holocaust who was present at the festival.

There were also performances by several Jewish musicians and the Romany community of Mijas, as well as the choir of the Church of Philadelphia, who performed songs dedicated to the Hanukkah holiday.

Sephardi cuisine was available and visitors could enjoy a variety of sweet and savoury dishes associated with this popular Hebrew festival.

The event had the support of the Jewish community of Torremolinos, the Sephardic Center Israel and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain.

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire.

The name Hanukkah derives from the Hebrew meaning to dedicate.
Francisco Olveira, painting the mural with local children. :: SUR

Paco his name is Francisco Olveira, but nobody at Isla Maciel calls him that: he is Paco or simply the priest- discovered shortly before Christmas, surrounded by tins of paint and boys playing pranks, that he has been awarded the VIII Provincial Prize for International Solidarity and Human Rights.

There were rumours, but this is the first time I have heard about it officially, he said to me, on the phone. It was 2.30pm in Argentina and the 51-year-old priest from Malaga, who has spent 29 years in Latin America, was painting a Christmas mural with residents of one of the most deprived areas of Buenos Aires, Isla Maciel. It is an old port district with high unemployment and a major drugs problem. Paco was sent there 12 years ago by Pope Francis, when he was archbishop.

The mural, like this priests conception of Christianity, has a strong social message. In Argentina there was a programme called Plan Qunita: every mother who gave birth was given a kit with a cot and necessary items for the baby. The government has cancelled that, which is hitting the poorest families hard, so we are painting a Christmas mural with baby Jesus in one of those cots, explained Paco, who was intending to spend Christmas Eve holding a sit-in with 58 local factory workers who had lost their jobs. He immediately began to think of giving some of his 10,000-euro prize from the Malaga provincial government towards the workers cause.

Small loans

This money will be tremendously useful for the Maciel Foundation, from which Olveira leads the social transformation of this district, because the 10,000 euros will be divided among numerous needs. For example, we have a programme to help people improve their homes, Casitas de Belen. It works like a fraternal bank and gives small loans to the families. We need more funds for that, he explained. He also wants part of the money to stay in Spain, where there are people in great need.

At Isla Maciel, a place which until not long ago was a hell in which drugs, misery and violence were common, Paco has found his place in the world. Before, he had travelled across much of South America with different humanitarian projects. Im happy here, he says, and he is grateful to the Pope for having guided him to this suburb of Buenos Aires 12 years ago. Olveira was returning from the Colombian jungle and looking for a new placement in Argentina. He told me he had found the perfect place for me, he recalls.

Since then, Paco, who is also a qualified nurse and a lawyer, has been immersed in a crusade to bring dignity back to the district. The key to his success is that he knows how to get local people involved. A centre for prevention and rehabilitation of addictions, social canteens, housing improvements, free legal advice... Life is still hard at Isla Maciel, but there is hope. The person who runs things receives all the praise, but it is the people who do the work who deserve it. My job is to bring people back together, he says. Olveira is also an activist: he is currently fighting for the release of Milagro Sala, an Argentinian social leader jailed early last year for political reasons.

In 1999, in conjunction with the San Pedro Apostol church in Malaga, Paco set up the PIBE project, which operates as a bridge of solidarity between Malaga and Argentina. Next summer he will return to his home city to try to attract more sponsors for the Maciel Foundation, then he will return to his place in the world which, thanks to him, is becoming less marginal.
The list in the New York Times of destinations that should be visited in 2017 includes Antequera and Madrid as the only Spanish places recommended

Two visitors inside the El Romeral dolmen in Antequera. :: Reuters

The New York Times publishes a list every year of the places that are a must to visit. This year, of the 52 top international places in the world that are listed, Antequera and Madrid are the only Spanish locations recommended. Madrid is specifically mentioned because of its gastronomic potential and the Michelin-starred Bibo restaurant, owned by Malaga chef Dani Garcia, is named.

Antequera appears at number 38 on the list of 52 and is referred to as the Spanish Stonehenge. The title no doubt refers to the Antequera dolmens, the 5,000-year-old megalithic burial sites that were made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July last year.

The granting of World Heritage status has provoked a major upturn for Antequera which has already seen a huge increase in visitors and foreign tourists.

When the town was included in this list, the mayor of Antequera, Manuel Baron, welcomed the fact that this symbolic recognition is a further step towards international recognition. The task of opening Antequera to the world continues, the mayor said in a statement.

Its not the first time that Malaga province has been highlighted in the USdaily paper; Malaga city has been recommended in previous editions. The last time was in August, when The New York Times promoted the city as a tourist destination.

The city was covered in the travel section with an article by Shivani Vora and entitled A cultural axis takes shape in Malaga. The article promoted the museums in Malaga: In the last decade more than 20 museums have opened in the city with samples of everything from world-famous artists to rare cars. In short, something for everyone.
Amid heightened security after recent terrorist attacks using lorries, parades take place all over the country under perfect starry skies

Police in Malaga carry out security checks on the floats for Thursdays parade. :: Fernando Gonzalez

It was easy for the Three Wise Men to follow the Star in the East across mainland Spain last night, as clear skies ensured perfect conditions for the annual parades welcoming Their Majesties.

The only umbrellas to be seen were the upturned ones used by children to collect the tonnes of sweets launched from the colourful floats carrying Balthasar, Gaspar and Melchior around towns and villages.

This year the main concern for organisers was how to protect the millions of people on the streets after terrorist attacks involving lorries in France and Germany in the last few months.

Extra precautions

In Madrid, where the largest procession involving twelve floats and two thousand participants took place, the city council and police banned vehicles over 3.5 tonnes from entering the nearby area after 4pm. Similar measures were also announced in Barcelona and other large cities, including checking the police records of the drivers of the floats. The government said that 100,000 National Police officers, in uniform and plain clothes, would be on duty.

Children across the Costa del Sol were also able to get a glimpse of the Three Kings and hand over their last minute letters to pages or postmen with their wish lists for presents.

In Marbella, the Kings arrived by catamaran and in Velez-Malaga and Fuengirola they arrived by air. Four million sweets were distributed to eager bystanders in Malaga city, which held the largest local parade.
Blog_2016-06-07-tsk-COR2.JPG

COR Development Co., the state's preferred developer for nanotech projects in Central New York, is building a manufacturing facility for Soraa at Collamer Crossings Business Park in DeWitt. Photo shot June 7, 2016.

(Tim Knauss)

DeWitt, N.Y. - Contractors have stopped work while they wait to be paid, but construction is expected to resume soon on a $90 million manufacturing plant that New York state is building for LED lighting company Soraa.

The 82,500-square-foot facility in a suburb of Syracuse is expected to create more than 400 permanent jobs, but construction has fallen about a year behind schedule.

Work on the Soraa plant halted recently in the wake of a federal corruption probe that included criminal charges related to contracts for the Soraa plant and other facilities. State officials delayed payments to contractors while the records were scrutinized and authority over the projects was reassigned.

But New York officials say they remain in contact with Soraa executives and expect the company to move in after the plant is completed, most likely late in 2017.

"We are in regular communication with the company, and this project is moving forward,'' said Jason Conwall, speaking for Empire State Development Corp., the state's economic development agency.

Empire State Development recently inherited responsibility for the Soraa plant and other projects that had been managed by SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Alain Kaloyeros, the former president of SUNY Poly, was among eight individuals indicted in November following a federal investigation of state-funded development projects.

Kaloyeros pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Another former SUNY Poly project, the Marcy Nanocenter near Utica, suffered a huge blow last month when Austrian chip maker AMS abandoned its plans to establish a fabrication plant there with hundreds of new workers. The Marcy project was not implicated in the federal corruption probe, but AMS officials blamed state delays for their decision to walk away.

State officials said they do not anticipate a similar outcome with Soraa. Construction of the Soraa facility is expected to resume in about a month, after the state catches up on payments owed to contractors, officials said.

The exterior of the Soraa building is largely complete, and most of the remaining work will be done inside.

Cor Development Co. is building the Soraa plant at Collamer Crossings Business Park, a 200-acre tract owned by Cor. An affiliate of SUNY Poly bought the 14-acre building site from Cor for $4.52 million in April 2016, property records show. The purchase price included a 2.5-acre easement on an adjacent parcel in case additional parking lots are needed.

Including the land cost, the building is expected to cost $60 million to construct and another $30 million to equip, according to documents from Empire State Development.

Some $70 million of the funding will come out of the $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative grant awarded to Central New York in December 2015. The other $20 million will be drawn from the State and Municipal Facilities fund.

Two Cor executives were indicted in November along with Kaloyeros and five other individuals. Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi, of Cor, pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. Among other things, Aiello and Gerardi are accused of colluding with Kaloyeros to rig a request for proposals that preceded construction of the Soraa plant.

Cor remains the general contractor on the Soraa project.

Soraa agreed to hire 250 workers at the DeWitt plant and to work with its contractors and suppliers to develop another 170 jobs in the area. The company manufactures high-quality LED lighting.

A team of professors, including a Nobel Prize winner, founded Soraa in 2008. The company is based in Fremont, Calif., where it manufactures LED lighting products using a unique technology that provides a "quantum leap in light quality,'' according to a recent review in the Wall Street Journal.

Soraa officials could not be reached for comment.

Contact reporter Tim Knauss anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3023


STERLING, N.Y. -- An Oswego County man is accused of hitting a pedestrian with a pickup-truck and then leaving the scene without reporting the incident, the New York State Police said.

Timothy J. Oleyourryk

Timothy J. Oleyourryk, 47, of Oswego, was charged Friday with leaving the scene of a personal injury accident without reporting, a felony.

State police said they began investigating a hit-and-run that occurred around 10 p.m. on Dec. 11. The accident was reported at the time as having happened on state Route 104 near state Route 104A in the town of Oswego.

While investigating, troopers learned the accident had actually occurred on Old State Road near Green Road in the town of Sterling in Cayuga County.

State police said Oleyourryk was driving a Chevrolet 2500 pickup on Old State Road when he hit a 19-year-old man who was walking home. Oleyourryk returned to the scene as a second vehicle came upon the scene, state police said.

He is accused of asking the people in the second vehicle to take the victim to the hospital and then leaving without reporting what happened to police.

The 19-year-old man suffered a broken leg and injuries to his back. He underwent surgery at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse and was later released.

Oleyourryk was arraigned in Sterling Town Court and released.
Asa Bordies.jpg

Asa Bordies was charged in connection with the shooting of Ismael Hernandez that took place in the village of Phoenix in November, state police said.

(Provided photo)

PHOENIX, N.Y. -- A second Syracuse man was charged in connection with the November shooting of Ismael Hernandez in the village of Phoenix, according to New York State Police.

Asa S. Bordies, 20, was charged with first-degree assault and first-degree robbery, both felonies, state police said. Bordies is accused of shooting Hernandez during a robbery on Nov. 13.

Hernandez answered an ad to purchase merchandises on a social media site and arranged to meet the seller on Cherry Street in the village of Phoenix. Hernandez arrived with a friend, who waited in a nearby vehicle, state police investigators said in November.

Hernandez gave the men the cash, but before receiving the item, Hernandez was shot in the chest and the car sped away.

Tommy Washington

State police said in November that Tommy E. Washington, 20, of 128 Amherst Ave., Syracuse, used his real name when he posted the ad that Hernandez responded to on a social media site. But investigators do not believe Washington and his friends intended to give Hernandez the item after he paid for it, police said.

"We believe their intent was robbery," state police Investigator Ben Miller, who works with the state police Troop D Major Crimes Unit, said in November.

Washington was charged Nov. 14 with first-degree robbery, a felony. He is being held in Oswego County Jail.

Bordies was arraigned in the Schroeppel Town Court and was remanded to the Onondaga County Justice Center in lieu of $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Under the humming, fluorescent lights of Marshalls in DeWitt, a striking young woman caught the eye of Catherine Cushman.

Customers packed the store for the holiday season, so Cushman zipped around the clothing racks and other shoppers to get a better look.

"She had the longest legs I've ever seen in my life," said Cushman, who has been scouting models for six years. "She has this strong, elegant, beautiful face too. I thought, if she's not already a model, she should be one."

Armed with an offer, Cushman approached Angok Mayen, a teenage refugee from South Sudan. That was two years ago. Fast forward to 2017.

Angok Mayen of Syracuse (holding her daughter) appears in the January 2017 issue of Vogue Magazine, photographed by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. (Vogue Magazine)

Mayen, 20, now appears in the January issue of Vogue Magazine, holding her daughter, Alyieth, who was born 14 months ago in Syracuse. It's a two-page spread titled "Model Citizens."

Several South Sudanese models are pictured (Grace Bol, Ajak Deng, Achok Majak and the trailblazing Alek Wek), but Mayen is the only one with refugee status. She escaped the brutal civil war in her home country and settled in Syracuse in 2013.

For money, she took part-time jobs at T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, hanging clothes and organizing racks. Fashion shoots were less consistent but they brought in higher paychecks. Since meeting Cushman in Marshalls, Mayen has appeared in two issues of Vogue Italia, an Esprit clothing campaign and several American catalogs and magazines.

Mayen had stumbled upon the glamorous opportunities so many people seek when moving to America. However, as a refugee, her version of the American dream features stability and education.

"My daughter will go to school," said Mayen. "I will go to school someday."

Angok Mayen of Syracuse appears in Vogue Italia, photographed by Mario Sorrenti. (HEROES Model Management)

Joining Heroes

When Cushman first approached Mayen with an offer to model in New York City, they encountered a language barrier. Mayen hesitated to give out her phone number.

"I asked her to think about it," Cushman said. "I said, 'I'll be over here looking at some sweaters.'"

Cushman doesn't often frequent Syracuse stores for models. She was visiting for the holidays and shopping at Marshalls with her sister-in-law. As the creative director for the moving image collective F16X9, Cushman knew potential talent could emerge anywhere.

Angok Mayen of Syracuse, photographed by Natalie Fong. Mayen is a refugee of South Sudan who arrived in Syracuse in 2013.

Mayen considered the offer and settled on a yes. The women exchanged numbers and shot test pictures to show agencies. "Everyone was fighting over her."

With Cushman's guidance, Mayen signed with HEROES Model Management based in SoHo. She waited to give birth to Alyieth before taking jobs in Manhattan.

Cushman's partner, Stephen Blaise, remembers the first time he saw Mayen walking in heels.

"She was falling with every step, but she practiced," said Blaise. "She had never gone to the gym before, never worn sneakers before."

In Mayen's native country, sandals are the footwear of choice.

Mayen speaks quietly and briefly about her escape from South Sudan. Her cheerful voice lowers as she explains how she came from the village of Bor. Her people, The Dinka, are the country's largest ethnic tribe.

South Sudan split from Sudan in 2011 to end a long civil war, but a new conflict broke out between the Dinka and Nuer tribes in 2013. National news outlets reported how the clash claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions.

Angok Mayen of Syracuse, photographed by Anthony Goble. Mayen is a refugee of South Sudan. She arrived in Syracuse in 2013. (HEROES Model Management | @heroesmodels)

In a brief article accompanying the Vogue photo spread, model Achok Majak explained the anxiety refugees feel when they arrive in the U.S.

It was a blur for Mayen, to flee her home village in one of the world's poorest nations and appear in a lavish magazine a few years later, wearing a $2,295 Michael Kors Collection dress.

Modeling jobs of that caliber can earn thousands of dollars in one day, but they're not steady for a young mother in Syracuse. Blaise said Mayen faces plenty of challenges here other models do not.

If her agency wants to send her to Paris or London, her refugee status means applying for extra paperwork. Transportation between Syracuse and New York City takes time, child care is expensive and everyone speaks English.



"Maybe I can do modeling here in Syracuse," she said.

Mayen's family doesn't know she is modeling for major American brands, even appearing in the flagship U.S. fashion magazine. She's in no rush to tell people. Raising a child is her priority.

Katrina Tulloch writes music and culture stories for Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact her: Email | Twitter | Facebook
Lukoil outlines cylinder oil use optimisation

At an IMarEST meeting in Dubai last month, LUKOIL presented its approach to optimising cylinder oil use.

The presentation was aimed at ensuring ideal engine lubrication at minimum feed rates, as well as outlining the latest in fully saturated ester oils that are claimed to offer excellent oxidation and hydrolytic stability. Some 76 shipowners/managers, executives from shipyards, engineering firms, oil & gas exploration and services companies, suppliers/service companies, marine consultants, independent surveyors, classification societies managers, inspectors from regional flag administrations & port officials from the Middle East attended the meeting. Nikeel Idnani, IMarEST UAE honorary secretary told the attendees that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the vessel general permit (VGP) regulating discharges from commercial vessels to protect US waters from shipborne pollutants and mitigate the propagation of invasive species. He spoke of the critical role cylinder oils play in neutralising corrosive sulphuric acid formed as a by-product of combustion. As such, appropriate oils must be fed depending on a fuels sulfur content to prevent scuffing or cold corrosion during economic engine operation. Sanjiv Wazir, LUKOIL Marine Lubricantss regional technical manager explained the VGPs requirements necessitating ships sailing in US waters to use Environmentally Acceptable Lubricants (EAL) in all oil-to-sea interfaces unless technically infeasible. He revealed the challenges ships face in correctly identifying lubricants on board that need to be changed to EAL or alternatively deciding not to do so when deemed technically infeasible. Although environmentally preferable, many conventional rubber stern tube seal materials are not compatible with the new EAL. The EAL also absorb more water than mineral oils, so monitoring water content becomes important to maintain lubrication and keep the risk of corrosion and bacteria growth under control. With environmental regulations prescribing the use of different fuel types in different regions, every ship operating in more than one geographical area needs to store several cylinder oils on board. Wazir also introduced LUKOILs iCOlube, an intelligent cylinder oil lubrication unit designed to blend fresh or even used system oil with 100 BN oil commensurate with the engines operating conditions and fuel quality, consistently. The advantages are claimed to be that only one grade of cylinder oil needs to be stored on board and the engine is always supplied at the optimum feed rate. The only manual input needed is the sulfur content of the fuel. This innovative approach enables efficient engine operation, optimum maintenance, environmentally friendly technology and reduced oil costs, Wazir said.




Mediterranean exports hold the key

Late last year, the Mediterranean market saw a change in supply fundamentals, as easing political conflicts and upstream developments revitalised crude production in the region.

Last month, McQuilling Services examined the potential impact on tankers from higher Mediterranean crude supply in the context of the recent OPEC production cuts. New barrels are entering the Mediterranean market as Kazakhstan restarted its massive Kashagan oil field. In the coming months, crude production at the field is expected to reach an initial plateau of 180,000 barrels per day and then slowly rise to the fields current maximum potential of 370,000 barrels per day before the end of this year. This could result in an average production level of around 1.75-1.8 mill barrels per day for 2017, contributing to the growing supply (JBC Energy), McQuilling said. Neighbouring Russia ramped up oil output throughout last year, boasting a crude and condensate production level of 11.29 mill barrels per day in November, supported by higher output from mature oil fields and new projects launched earlier in the year. The incremental gains in Russia were likely strategically accelerated in anticipation of concerted efforts to balance the market. In conjunction with the OPEC decision to cut oil production, Russia has agreed to reduce output by 300,000 barrels per day over the course of 2017; however, production will still remain above last years average, which was 4% higher than seen in 2015 and is expected to increase in 2017, as refinery runs decline by 55,000 barrels per day and the Russian oil export duty decreases. Additional supply growth in the region may stem from Libya, which has struggled to maintain stable oil output for years, as political factions clash over the nations export infrastructure. However, in November, crude production averaged 575,000 barrels per day, a significant jump when compared to the 340,000 barrels per day witnessed through the first nine months of 2016. While geopolitical risks are high, it was McQuillings view that production will exceed 600,000 barrels per day this year, despite recent reports from Libya suggesting production may approach 1 mill barrels per day (Bloomberg), the consultancy said. Traditionally, the majority of these Mediterranean barrels remain within the European refining system. Through July, 2016 about 21.9 mill tonnes (47%) of Russian crude exported from the Mediterranean was shipped to Northern Europe, while 17.6 mill tonnes (38%) remained in the Mediterranean. In the case of Libyan oil exports, 49.2% remained in the Mediterranean, while 31.8% was sent to Northern Europe. As the volume of crude supply increases, it might be expected that more barrels will enter the European refining system. However, crude runs in Europe are expected to decline slightly this year. As a whole, crude intake in the Continent is forecast to average 60,000 barrels per day lower than in 2016 (12.9 mill barrels per day), with crude runs at Mediterranean refineries on track to fall 45,000 barrels per day. With this in mind, McQuilling predicted an excess crude supply to go to Eastern markets, potentially India and the Far East. Indian crude demand has been steadily increasing since the beginning of 2016 and is expected to average 130,000 barrels per day higher this year. A substantial amount of Indian refining capacity runs lighter crude grades. Traditionally, Nigeria has been a main source of this supply but persistent attacks on Nigerian oil infrastructure has caused domestic output to decline by over 490,000 barrels per day since January, 2016 to average 290,000 barrels per day lower than in 2015. These supply disruptions have necessitated Indian refiners to source barrels from alternative production centre. Gibsons data showed increased volumes of Black Sea/Mediterranean crude shipped to the sub-continent during these disruptions. Despite recent reports indicating Nigerian production is to recover, history has shown there remains a high level of uncertainty regarding the Nigerian situation. In the Far East, Asian oil demand will continue to grow, widening the supply deficit as China decreases oil output levels. Chinas oil production in 2016 averaged 5.6% lower year-on-year, which has supported an increase in imports of 440,000 barrels per day from January to September last year. For 2017, production is expected to average 200,000 barrels per day lower than current levels and contribute to a 490,000 barrels per day widening of the Asian supply deficit. Traditionally, Asian refiners have sourced about 65% of their feedstock from the Middle East. However, as the regional producers participate in the OPEC output cut, less barrels will be available for export to Asia in the first half of 2017 and potentially longer. A majority of the cuts may stem from cheaper, heavier grades leading refiners to substitute heavy barrels from alternative production centres, such as the Caribbean, Latin America and perhaps Northern Europe. Less complex refining operations in countries, such as China may require blending heavy barrels with lighter grades. Therefore, McQuilling foresaw Chinese refiners increasing their imports of Mediterranean light crude streams this year, supporting Suezmax tonne/mile demand. As Kazakhstans production increases and Russia maintains a crude and condensate output upwards of 11 million barrels per day, pricing for Urals-linked grades (Russian) and Brent-linked crudes (CPC) should remain relatively attractive to refiners. With the expectation of higher prices for Middle Eastern grades, these crude spreads could widen in 2017, which may incentivise traders to offset the higher transportation cost of Mediterranean/Black Sea cargoes. Arbitrage opportunities may be seen where the Urals/Dubai price spread is greater than the cost variance between transporting cargo on a VLCC AG/China, versus a Suezmax Black Sea/China. In the first quarter of 2017, McQuilling forecast this cost variance to average around $1.79 per barrel and increased voyages from the Mediterranean to the East will be seen if the Urals/Dubai spread trades above this level as expected. The substitution of Middle Eastern barrels by Mediterranean/Black Sea crude should support tonne/mile demand for Suezmaxes to the East (similar to 2015), as these voyages are longer than the conventional intra-Mediterranean trade routes. Another possibility to be considered is that increased loadings in the Black Sea could translate into longer transit delays through the Turkish Straits, as evidenced by recent market events. In late-November, delays grew up to 15 days on the back of increased activity and inclement weather, supporting a boost to both Suezmax and Aframax rates in the Mediterranean. Combined, these demand (more tonne/miles) and supply (vessel delays) fundamentals could help mitigate the expected downturn in freight rates in 2017 from the high delivery schedule, McQuilling concluded.




Shturman Albanov gains first Polar Ship certificate

Sovcomflots (SCF) Arctic shuttle tanker, Shturman Albanov, has become the first vessel to receive a Polar Ship Certificate.

This certificate confirmed the vessel's compliance with the requirements of the Polar Code, which took effect this week. It was issued by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) on 22nd December, 2016.



Shturman Albanov is the lead ship in a series of Arctic shuttle tankers ordered by SCF under a long-term contract with Gazprom Neft. They are designed to carry crude oil from the Yamal Peninsula (YNAD) to Murmansk all year round. Each tanker is of about 42,000 dwt. RS had assigned the vessels an ice class - Arc7. She flies the Russian flag and is registered at St Petersburg. Her technical characteristics are claimed to be unique, as the vessels design takes into account the specific features found in the Gulf of Ob, where some areas are relatively shallow  about 10 m deep  and which is covered with ice from October to July. Shturman Albanov is capable of operating in the Arctic at temperatures down to 45 deg ?. Her propulsion system consists of two ABB Azipod thrusters with a total capacity of 22 MW, which provide a high ice-breaking capability and good manoeuvrability in sailing through ice drifts and heavy ice fields. She was built and operated under the RS technical supervision. RS class notation is KM (*) Arc7 AUT1-ICS OMBO LI CCO ECO-S BWM(?) BLS-SPM Oil tanker (ESP) CSR. Konstantin Palnikov, RS director general, said: In a technical sense, the tanker meets the highest requirements of safe navigation in the Arctic seas. Application of the RS rules allowed to comply with the Polar Code requirements as early as the design stage, due to the fact that our requirements correspond to the Polar Code provision in advance.  Thus, the ships having Arc7 in their class notation correspond to the Category A of the Code in respect of compliance with the requirements to hull structure, machinery installation, intact stability and damage stability, he said. Polar Code compliance is a pre-condition for ships operated in the Barents Sea, Cara Sea water area south of 60 deg S and in other seas included in Polar waters. The Polar Ship Certificate confirms the ship's compliance with the Code requirements related the safe navigation - for example, the ability of the ship's hull to withstand severe temperatures and ice conditions, anti-ice arrangements, the ability of ship's navigation systems and communication systems to provide the ship with the required information at the high latitudes. In addition, RS has completed research on the preparation of proposals regarding procedures for the development of the Polar Water Operational Manual (PWOM) for the RS classed ships, the contractor being Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping (SUMIS). The PWOM must now be available on board in compliance with the Polar Code. To assist shipowners, a detailed structure and the requirements to the content of the manual have been developed within the framework of the research, provided with recommendations for each section. A list of the ice navigation risks and the measures for their prevention and the minimisation of their negative impact was compiled, based on the analysis of ships operating experience in polar waters. The practical significance of the research work was discussed by experts at the Scientific and Technical Council Section Human element problems, including the representatives of shipowners and ship operators, as well as the maritime educational institutions providing the personnel training for the industry. SUMIS presented its recommendations on the PWOM preparation in full compliance with the Polar Code requirements in October, 2016 at the conference Polar Code and Safety of Ice-going Ships, organised in co-operation with SCF.




Tarbit upgrades fleet management system

Swedish tanker owner Tarbit has signed a contract with Logimatic to implement SERTICA management software across its fleet.

Tarbit currently operates 14 tankers and has another two on order, which will bring the company up to 16 vessels this year. The vessels carry bitumen, petroleum products and chemicals  making safety a critical issue. Joakim Hermansson, Tarbit technical superintendent, said; With modules such as SERTICA Inspection and Analytics, we are now able to continuously improve our tanker operations and fulfil all relevant industry demands even better than we are doing today. As an example, we can easily extract reports on our current status in relation to the TMSA stages. Tarbit is to install SERTICAs full fleet management solution, including maintenance, procurement, performance and HSQE. Ulrich Krgaard, senior consultant at Logimatic, said; A full SERTICA package benefits the entire organisation, as they only have one system supporting most work processes. This results in an overview of the entire fleet across departments, which enables optimisation of internal work processes.  Anders Hermansson, Tarbits technical manager, added; One of the reasons for choosing SERTICA was that we no longer need to jump from one system to another  we get one system for all internal work flows. Tarbit has thoroughly evaluated the market through dialogue with seven different suppliers. Hermansson explained; Logimatic entered this dialogue at a late stage. At this point, we were very clear on which kind of system we were looking for and SERTICA matched our needs perfectly. This combined with the positive feedback we heard from other SERTICA customers contributed to our quick decision. Logimatic offers a very good support and SERTICAs data exchange is recognised in the maritime industry as being very stable. For these reasons, I am confident that SERTICA is the right tool in our mission to streamline our internal work flows and reduce the total cost of ownership, he said. Hans Christian Jensen, Logimatics head of sales, said: We are pleased to announce this contract with Tarbit, who is actually our first customer in Sweden. During my many years in Logimatic, I have never experienced a potential maritime customer act so swiftly and efficiently in the decision-making process. I guess it was a perfect match between Tarbit and SERTICA. Our first project meeting took place only a few days after signing the contract and I am confident that implementation will be completed during 2017 as scheduled. he concluded.








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One of the biggest concerns about self-driving cars is how the vehicle would react to unpredictable road situations. Nissan believes it has the answer: human intervention.

The Japanese automaker plans to launch up to 10 vehicles with semi-autonomous capabilities by 2020, but admits that there are times when the AI's struggle. Construction work that forces vehicles to ignore road rules, for example, or police officers directing traffic by hand, can confuse the software.

Nissan's R&D chief, Maarten Sierhuis, told Wired that a truly driverless car able to handle any situation "is not gonna happen in the next five to ten years," no matter how smart it is. "We will always need humans in the loop," he added.

At CES, Nissan Chairman and CEO, Carlos Ghosn, showed off the company's Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM) system. Instead of requesting help from the vehicle's passenger when an unexpected situation arises, SAM comes to a stop and contacts someone at a call center.

Once the car is connected, the "mobility manager" will analyze the situation before using the car's sensors and cameras to map out the correct course of action. Control will then revert back to the AI, which carries out the instructions.

"Show me an autonomous system without a person in the loop, and I will show you a system that is practically useless," said Maarten Sierhuis, director of the Nissan Research Center (and former NASA scientist) in Silicon Valley. "Even fully autonomous vehicles will not be able to handle every possible situation they encounter. The world is too simply too complex."

One of SAM's best features is the way it learns from these incidents. After encountering them several times, the system can figure out how to handle them on its own.

SAM is based on NASA's Visual Environment for Remote Virtual Exploration (VERVE) software, which works in a similar way. Nissan thinks SAM could be used in all self-driving cars, not just its own.

"What we are doing at Nissan is finding a way so that we can have this future transportation system not in 20 years or more, but now," added Sierhuis.
Federal regulators have accused D-Link of failing to reasonably protect its routers and webcam devices from widely known threats, exposing thousands of American consumers to targeted security breaches.

Specifically, the alleged security failures detailed in the 31-page complaint amounted to D-Link hard-coding login credentials or backdoors that allowed unauthorised access to live feeds in its camera software - "username: guest / password: guest" - leaving a private key code that could be used to sign into the company's software publicly available for six months, failing to take reasonable steps to prevent a known vulnerability allowing attackers to remotely control and send commands to routers, and storing users' mobile app login credentials in clear, readable text on their mobile devices.

The FTC called the risk of attackers exploiting these vulnerabilities "significant", and took issue with D-Link's promoting its products as "easy to secure," and armed with "advanced network security."

"In many instances, remote attackers could take simple steps, using widely available tools, to locate and exploit defendants' devices, which were widely known to be vulnerable," according to the complaint. "For example, using a compromised router, an attacker could obtain sensitive files from the router's attached storage. They could redirect a consumer to a fraudulent website, or use the router to attack other devices on the local network, such as computers, smartphones, IP cameras, or connected appliances."

The lawsuit comes almost a year after the agency settled with Asus over its insecure routers that allowed attackers to remotely log in to them and change security settings or access files stored on connected devices. The FTC is seeking to improve the security of all IoT devices in the wake of compromised devices being used to launch high-profile DDoS attacks over the past few months.

For its part, Taiwan-based D-Link has denied the allegations and will defend itself it court.
Following the collapse of suspension bridge in Gujarat's Morbi, Sandeepsinh Zala, chief officer of the local civic body has been suspended. At least 135 lives were lost after a suspension bridge in Gujarats Morbi district collapsed on Sunday evening. Following the tragic accident, calls to bring those responsible to justice echoed nationwide. A criminal case has been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. In a key development, the head of Morbi's civic body had previously said that the bridge was reopened without the permission of the authorities.
China is shooting for the moon and planning to conduct some 30 space launch missions in 2017  a record breaker in its own space history, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

The country will use its Long March-5 and Long March-7 rockets to carry out most of the missions, a China news service said.

According to reports, Long March-5  Chinas largest carrier rocket successfully test-launched back in November  will bring Change-5 mission to space, a probe that will pursue a moon landing and return lunar samples to Earth.

Long March-7 rockets, on the other hand, will blast the countrys first cargo spacecraft called Tianzhou-1  which is anticipated to dock with the Tiangong-2 space station and experiment on propellant supplement  into space in the first half of the year. In 2016, this rocket was successfully tested, heralding the countrys gradual shift to new-gen rockets with decreased use of toxic rocket fuels.

China launched 22 missions last year and 19 missions in 2015.

Last Dec. 27, Chinas white paper titled Chinas Space Activities in 2016 outlined its ambitious goals for deep space exploration, space science research, and human spaceflight. These include landing its lunar probe on the far side of the moon in 2018 and the launch of its first Mars mission by 2020.

In its desired first soft landing on the distant side of the moon, the nation seeks to conduct in situ as well as roving detection, and then transmit communications at Earth-moon L2 point.

According to the white paper, in the next five years, China will continue to enhance the basic capabilities in its space industry and fortify research on leading technologies.

China along with other countries have already landed a rover on the moons surface, but the superpower targets another landing to explore the dark side of the moon  in part as a display of the required technology, said Shanghai Universitys He Qisong.

As for its Mars probe, China said it would conduct studies based on the samples it would bring back from the red planet to assist scientific inquiry on the solar systems evolution and the continuing quest for alien life. However, it is yet to disclose further details on this mission and the actual launch date.

While the United States and Russia remain most experienced in manned space probes, China has made great strides in previous year, with its two astronauts recently returning from a month-long stay on the Tiangong-2. In the same month, the country also launched the TanSat satellite into space onboard the Long March-2D, the predecessor of the Long March-7.

The white paper adds that in the next five years China will offer space and aviation services to other countries that are part of the One Belt and One Road program, such as navigation, weather forecasting, and satellite communications.

This year also provides major space travel prospects for NASA and private space companies, including SpaceXs return to flight, Blue Origins tendency to surprise people with its fully functional vehicle, and the end of the Cassini space mission on Saturn.

NASAs budget may have been slashed $300 million from last year, but its expected to keep pushing the envelope in space exploration.

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Men who maintain low levels of vitamin D may have increased risk of chronic headache, a new Finnish study warns.

The research team from University of Eastern Finland analyzed data from around 2,600 Finnish males from ages 42 to 60, who provided blood samples and answered questionnaires delving on the frequency of their headaches. The subjects were part of the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study, which assessed risk factors for heart disease and studied the men from 1984 to 1989.

The study found that almost 70 percent of the male subjects had vitamin D levels in the blood that are below 50 nanomoles per liter, generally deemed the threshold for vitamin D deficiency. Chronic headache happening every week at the least was reported by 250 males  all having lower levels of the nutrient than others.

Poor vitamin D status is a notable concern in Nordic countries such as Finland, as they are located farther north and experience less sun exposure that the body demands in order to naturally synthesize vitamin D.

The study participants were divided into four groups based on the blood vitamin D levels. Men with the lowest levels (below 28.9 nmol/L) had a twofold increased risk of frequent headaches versus those with the highest levels (above 55 nmol/L). Men who were tested outside the summer months of June to September  a time when the average blood levels of the vitamin are definitely higher thanks to ultraviolet-B radiation  revealed more headaches.

The research, however, was done at a single period, which makes it difficult to tell if the low vitamin D or the headaches came first, but since it was conducted in Finland, it can be concluded that people generally have less sun exposure and that their frequent headaches are unlikely to be rooted in a mere lack of outdoor time (to enjoy sunlight), according to the team.

It also remains to be seen if the findings are also applicable to women.

No scientific proof of the benefits and potential adverse effects of long-term vitamin D use in higher doses exists yet. The same university is currently conducting the Finnish Vitamin D Trial, a five-year endeavor that investigates the effects of high everyday vitamin D doses on disease development and risk factors. The trial provides its participants either 40 or 80 micrograms of vitamin D supplement each day.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

A separate study showed that maintaining high vitamin D levels can help prevent and treat metabolic syndrome, a group of symptoms that occurs in over 25 percent of adult populations worldwide and serves as key to chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Another benefit was the improvement in the balance of gut bacteria or the ratio of good to bad bacteria in the intestine.

This mice study is currently being validated to see if the same effects can be seen in humans, who are typically advised to have plenty of sun exposure or take oral vitamin D to reap the nutrients benefits.

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The long wait is over after Samsung finally unveiled two brand new Chromebooks that were made in partnership with Google at CES 2017.

The two Chromebooks could very well be the two laptops that will expand Samsung's user base in the hybrid laptop space, and will compete against Microsoft's Surface hybrids: the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.

All four devices will be great options for people who are looking into 2-in-1 laptops. All four models come with a stylus: the Samsung Chromebook Pro/Plus has a stylus similar to the one the company used in Galaxy Note 5, while the Microsoft models have the Surface Pen.

Appearance / Weight

The Samsung Chromebook Pro and Plus are built with an all-metal chassis, weighing in at almost 2.4 pounds. On the other hand, the Surface Pro is built with a magnesium silver casing and weighs in at 1.69 pounds at its lightest.

The Surface Book is the heaviest of the three as it weighs in at 3.34 pounds if a keyboard is included.

Display And Resolution

The Samsung Chromebook's 12.3-inch display is protected by a Gorilla Glass 3 LED touchscreen, but its 2,400 x 1,600 display resolution pales in comparison with the other two. The Surface Pro's 12.3-inch PixelSense display has a resolution of 2,736 x 1,824.

The 13.5-inch PixelSense display of the Surface Book is the clear winner in this department because of its 3,000 x 2,000 resolution.

Processor

The differences between the Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro are their processors and, of course, their price: the Plus comes with an ARM processor, while the Pro version packs a more powerful punch by using an Intel Core m3 dual-core Skylake chip.

Microsoft's Surface Pro comes in three variants: the Intel Core m3, i5, or i7, while the Surface Book has two: the i5 or the i7.

Memory And Storage

Samsung's Chromebook offers 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. The Surface Pro, on the other hand, starts at 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of hard drive.

If you are looking for a lot of space in your laptop, the Surface Book is the best candidate among the three because it can have up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 1 TB of hard drive.

Connecting Ports And Expansion

The Samsung Chromebook Pro and Chromebook Plus come with two USB-Type C ports that can be used for charging and for 4K video output, as well as a MicroSD card slot. The Surface Pro has one USB 3.0 port and a microSD card reader as well.

Again, the Surface Book emerges as the clear winner in this aspect with its two USB 3.0 ports and a full-size SD card reader.

Price

The Samsung Chromebook is the cheapest among the three since the Plus model can be purchased for $449. The price for the Pro version remains a secret, but it should definitely cost more. The Surface Pro starts at $899, while the Surface Book starts at $1,499.

Modes

Both the Samsung Chromebook laptops and the Surface Pro have a 360-degree rotating hinge that allows users to use the device in different modes.

However, the Surface Book trumps both models when it comes to its spectacular dynamic fulcrum hinge when switching in between laptop, tablet, and drawing modes.

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The purported Samsung Galaxy S8 has just leaked in the wild, with real-life images showing a sleek design with no home button and virtually no side bezels.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 has been leaking extensively as of late, and the hype is getting stronger by the minute, especially since the handset is expected to be a truly impressive powerhouse in order to make up for the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco.

The latest leaked images showing the alleged device portray a sleek smartphone with extra screen real estate, thanks to the lack of a physical home button and the extremely thin side bezels. The frame of the smartphone also seems slightly more curved than what previous leaks have shown, but it looks good nonetheless.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Home Button Removed

Rumors of Samsung ditching the physical home button with the Galaxy S8 have been making rounds for quite some time now, and the latest leak seems to bolster such claims.

The new images surfaced on Weibo (via Techupdate3) and show the purported Galaxy S8 with no home button below the display. The images don't show any onscreen buttons either, which indicates they're activated when touching the display.

Samsung branding is prominent below the display, where the physical home button used to be on previous Galaxy smartphones, and the images show a gold-colored version of the device.

The right side of the smartphone seems to have the physical power / lock button, while the volume rocker buttons are located on the left side. The images don't show the rear of the device, so it remains unclear whether the Samsung Galaxy S8 would have a dual rear camera setup after all. Recent rumors indicated that Samsung gave up on the idea, and the Galaxy S8 would have a single main camera.

Earlier reports also claimed that Samsung has already started testing the Galaxy S8 in China, which could explain why the user interface (UI) of the device shown in the newly leaked images seems to be in Chinese.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Release Date Rumors

While the Samsung Galaxy S8 was initially expected to debut in February at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 and go on sale shortly after that, recent reports revealed that Samsung has delayed the launch to April.

Samsung is expected to introduce two Galaxy S8 models this year: the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. The regular Galaxy S8 might have a flat screen, while the Galaxy S8 Plus could have a curved edge display and support the company's S Pen stylus, typically found in the Galaxy Note series.

Galaxy S8 rumors also indicated that a smart A.I. assistant called "Bixby" could also be in the mix, but it remains to be seen whether it would actually happen. Google could reportedly kill off Samsung's A.I. assistant plans based on a patent-sharing agreement the company signed back in 2014.

That agreement apparently included a non-compete provision that would prevent Samsung from making any major software changes, and an A.I. assistant would be pretty major a change.

Keep in mind, however, that Samsung has yet to disclose any official information regarding its Galaxy S8 plans, which means that it's all in the rumor state at this point. As always in this case, take all leaks and rumors, including these newly leaked images, with a solid grain of salt.

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In its first appearance at the annual event, Xiaomi unveiled several products at CES 2017, one of which is the ultra-thin modular TV named the Mi TV 4.

CES 2017 is filled with eye-catching TVs, but the Xiaomi Mi TV 4 was able to stand out due to its unique design, both externally and internally.

Xiaomi Mi TV 4: Thinner Than The iPhone

The Mi TV 4, as described by Xiaomi VP International Hugo Barra during the company's presentation, is the thinnest TV yet, with a thickness of only 4.9 millimeters at its thinnest point. Barra claims that the Mi TV 4 practically disappears when viewed from the side, which is not an exaggeration at all despite the processing section taking up about less than a third of the display's back.

Xiaomi said that the Mi TV 4 is 30 percent thinner than the iPhone 7 and 37 percent thinner than its Mi Mix smartphone. It has no frames and almost no bezels, with a transparent stand and a metal back cover. It comes in three sizes: 49 inches, 55 inches, and 65 inches.

Xiaomi Mi TV 4 As A Modular TV

Xiaomi's Mi TV 4 is more than simply an ultra-thin TV, though, as it is essentially split into two components. The first one is the ultra-thin panel, and the second one is the bar located under the screen wherein all the TV's internal components are located. The two components are connected by a single cable.

The decision behind such a design for the Mi TV 4 is that with the internal components of the television separated, it will be much easier to install upgrades or make repairs. For example, Mi TV 4 owners will be able to swap out the display unit of the television for a better screen or provide a boost in the television's capabilities by replacing the motherboard with a more powerful one. Xiaomi noted that the motherboard, which is the component that users would want to upgrade most frequently, is only 20 percent of the cost of the television.

Other Xiaomi Mi TV 4 Details

The Mi TV 4 is powered by Xiaomi's Patch Wall, which is a software skin on top of the Android operating system that is capable of learning through the browsing history of users. The system then makes intelligent recommendations on content that the user might want to watch.

Also included with the Mi TV 4 is an independent home theater system that supports Dolby Atmos surround sound technology. Through the system, users will be able to hear sound in 3D, meaning that sounds will be heard from locations around the user instead of only coming from the direction of the television.

Xiaomi Mi TV 4 Price And Availability

Xiaomi has not revealed the exact price for the Mi TV 4, but Barra did say that the 65-inch model will be sold for a price that is well under $2,000, while a version without the Dolby Atmos system will be under $1,500. The 49-inch and 55-inch models will be cheaper than that, of course.

No specific release date was also mentioned for the Mi TV 4, only that it will be released in China within the year. There is currently no timetable on when the Mi TV 4 will be coming to the United States.

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The advent of zombie-themed movies and TV series has prompted questions about what could happen if a zombie apocalypse indeed happens in the real world.

One study has looked at the best places to hide once a zombie apocalypse happens. Real estate experts even released a map showing the worst U.S. cities to go to if the cataclysmic event would happen.

Now, another team of researchers has conducted a study that offers insight on how fast a zombie infection could devastate and possibly wipe out humanity.

Students from the University of Leicester in the U.K did math to investigate the spread of the zombie virus using a basic epidemiological model, the SIR model that describes how an infectious disease spreads through a population.

Between 100 To 200 Survivors By Day 100

The researchers worked on the assumption that each zombie could only find one victim per day and has 90 percent chance of infecting this person with a zombie virus making the virus about twice as contagious as the pathogen responsible for the black death. The zombies are also assumed to have an undead lifespan of 20 days.

With these parameters applied into the epidemiological model, the researchers found that within a period of only 100 days, the human race would only have a few hundred survivors left from a zombie apocalypse.

Using the SIR model and with only one person infected at day zero, the researchers found that the surviving number of people by the 100th day of infection would only be between 100 and 200.

The researchers, however, noted that they did not account for other factors that can possibly influence the number of people who would survive. For one, birth and death rates were not factored in. The researchers did not also include the possibility that humans can kill zombies which can give mankind a better chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.

The assumption of one zombie turning only one person into a zombie per day also becomes less realistic when the zombie to human ratio increases.

"Natural birth and death rates have been neglected since the epidemic takes place over 100 days, so the natural births and deaths are negligible compared to the impact of the zombie virus over the short time frame," the researchers wrote in their study. "We have also not included the possibility for the humans to kill the zombies. Including this may give the humans a better chance at survival."

Hope For Humanity

In a second study, the researchers accounted for the survivors being able to kill the zombies as well as the reproduction rate of the population. The findings show that if humans fight zombies, the future of mankind is not as bleak as the one suggested by the first study.

"We investigate the SIR model applied to a zombie epidemic and introduce new parameters such as the rate at which zombies are killed," the researchers wrote. "We find that it is actually possible for our population to survive the zombie epidemic under these conditions."

The findings of the two studies were published in the student-run journal of University of Leicester, The Journal of Physics Special Topics, on Nov. 22.

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A NASA mission will send a robotic probe to the main asteroid belt to study one of the strangest objects in the solar system, a giant metal asteroid called 16 Psyche.

One Of A Kind Asteroid

Psyche is an irregularly shaped asteroid measuring about 130 miles (210 kilometers) in diameter, which orbits the sun at a distance of between 3.3 and 2.5 astronomical units. It is one of the largest known asteroids.

It is also one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt containing a little less than 1 percent of the total mass of the entire asteroid belt. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in March 1852 and was named after the Greek mythological figure Psyche.

The object is a one-of-a-kind in the solar system because unlike most asteroids that have rocky and icy bodies, 16 Psyche is primarily composed of pure nickel-iron.

Currently the most massive known M-type (metallic) asteroid, the body is composed of 90 percent iron and nickel and 10 percent silicate rock, which is similar to the Earth's core. Just like Earth's nickel-iron core, which produces a massive magnetic field around our planet, Psyche is believed to also generate a magnetic field that is possibly nearly as strong as that of the Earth.

Possibly A Core Of A Planetary Body

Scientists suspect that 16 Psyche could be the core of a planetary body whose outer layers were blasted off by violent collisions billions of years ago. Astronomers said that 16 Psyche is the only core-like object in the entire solar system.

Scientists are keen on studying this strange body because it offers an opportunity to learn more about the interiors and layers of planets and other bodies such as moons, whose cores lie beneath miles of rock.

"We know a lot about stony and icy bodies, but what about metal ones?" Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton, from Arizona State University, said. "What does the surface of a metal world look like?"

NASA Psyche Mission

In just a few years, scientists would finally be able to study Psyche more thoroughly as a robotic probe would gather data from this strange world in close proximity.

On Jan. 5, NASA announced that along with sending a robotic mission that would visit Jupiter trojan asteroids, the space agency will also send a robotic probe to visit 16 Psyche.

The mission is targeted for launch in October 2023, and the probe is expected to arrive at the asteroid seven years later by 2030 following an Earth-gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a flyby on planet Mars in 2025.

Scientists said that the mission that would explore an odd asteroid that is neither a rock nor ice offers learning opportunities for scientists.

"This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world  not one of rock or ice, but of metal," said Elkins-Tanton. "16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space."

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Consumer Electronics Show 2017, one of the biggest tech shows in the world, brings in its folds massive expectations regarding the arrival of exciting devices such as smartphones, drones, laptops, TVs, and more.

This year's event is no different and has not disappointed tech buffs. The CES 2017 marked the launch of several top-notch TVs from companies such as Sony, LG, Xiaomi, and Samsung to name a few.

Here's a look at the Top 3 TVs to have debuted at the CES 2017  the Xiaomi Mi TV 4, Sony's 4K XBR-A1E Bravia OLED TV series, and LG's Signature OLED 4K HDR W TV series.

Xiaomi Mi TV 4

Xiaomi took the wraps off its uber-thin and modular Mi TV 4, which is practically bezel-less and just 4.9mm thick. The Mi TV, Xiaomi asserts, is 30 percent slimmer than the iPhone 7.

The TV has a "patch wall' software and a soundbar which boasts 10 speakers, two wireless speakers, a subwoofer, and support for Dolby Atmos surround sound.

The Mi TV 4 will be available in three sizes  49 inches, 55 inches, and 65 inches. Xiaomi is expected to release the Mi TV 4 in China later this year. The company has not disclosed an exact date of release. Hugo Barra, the company's CEO, has revealed that the 65-inch variant without Dolby Atmos will be priced below $1,500, the Dolby Atmos variant will be pricier and should be under $2,000.

Sony 4K XBR-A1E Bravia OLED TV Series

Sony's XBR-A1E Bravia 4K OLED TV holds the promise of "'unprecedented black levels, rich and lifelike color, dynamic contrast, blur-less image, and a wide viewing angle."

"Sony delivers incredible innovation and excitement to customers with all of our premium 4K HDR TVs through a powerful mix of technology and our exclusive image processing," said Sony's COO Mike Fasulo.

The A1E Bravia series will come in three screen sizes  55 inches, 65 inches, and 77 inches. The display has a thin form factor courtesy Sony porting the innards of the TV onto the stand that the display uses for support.

Sony has not disclosed the HDR compatible TV lineup's pricing as well as the release date.

LG Signature OLED 4K HDR W TV Series

LG outed its Signature OLED 4K HDR W TV series at the CES 2017. The W stands for "wallpaper" and is a reference to the company's new "picture-on-wall" design.

Like the Xiaomi offering, the LG HDR TV series also packs in the Dolby Atmos soundbar, which is located at the bottom. The 65-inch variant of the TV is just 2.57mm thick.

"The W7 OLED TV series builds on LG OLED's revolutionary pixel dimming control technology, which renders perfect black without any light leakage to offer a limitless contrast ratio, with one billion possible colors," notes the company.

LG has not spilled the beans on the pricing and release of the 65-inch and 77-inch models.

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By Press Trust of India: Lahore, Jan 6 (PTI) In a tragic accident, at least seven children were killed today and four others injured when a train hit a motorcycle rickshaw amid heavy fog at a railway crossing in Pakistans Punjab province.

The incident took place near the town of Lodhran when the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the Karachi-bound train due to heavy fog while crossing the tracks.

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The injured were shifted to District Headquarters Hospital Lodhran for immediate treatment.

Expressing grief and concern over the incident, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif directed authorities to provide medical facilities to the injured, Radio Pakistan reported.

In September, six persons were killed and over 150 others injured when a Karachi-bound passenger train rammed into a stationary freight train near Multan in Punjab province in a pre-dawn accident. PTI AMS NSA AKJ AMS

--- ENDS ---
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro assured on Thursday that the time has come for his country to return to the Andean Community of Nations with all the productive and commercial capacities... | Read More
By Varun Bidhuri: AAP is set to replicate its hugely successful Delhi electioneering model in Punjab with less than a month left for assembly polls in the state, as the party looks to expand its footprint beyond the national Capital.

READ: India Today-Axis My India opinion poll: Punjab poll big takeaways

One lakh AAP workers assigned to campaign

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Volunteers will visit every household and entice them with a slew of campaigns targeting various groups of professionals as well as both urban and rural voters.

More than one lakh Aam Aadmi Party workers have been assigned their roles, sources say. "There will be fewer rallies in Punjab. Instead, the party will focus on reaching the masses. Door-to-door campaign has been the 'mantra' of AAP in the Delhi elections. We are confident of repeating the same," said Manpreet Randhawa, media coordinator of AAP in Punjab.

The upstart party crushed the BJP in the Delhi elections two years ago, smashing an aura of invincibility built around Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he swept to power at the Centre in 2014. The Congress failed to win a single seat.

As part of the Punjab strategy, 10 to 30 members would campaign for AAP at every booth.

READ: No issues with same polling date for Punjab, Goa, prepared for elections: AAP

"Each group of volunteers will reach out to different sections such as women, doctors, lawyers, traders and workers unions in urban pockets, while in rural belts we will be reaching out to large joint families to consolidate our votes against the BJP and Congress," Randhawa said.

Arvind Kejriwal holds "inquilab rallies" in Punjab

Till now, AAP has held at least two mega public meetings called "inquilab rallies" addressed by party convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as well as its state leaders.

Randhawa said, "The campaign style would be same like Delhi but the way we would be connect to people would be different because Punjab is very geographically different. Delhi itself is a territory and metropolitan city with migrants. Punjab is agro-based large state. So the campaign would be very different. The demographic structure of Punjab is rural and 60 to 70 per cent of people living in 13,000 villages while there are around 360 villages in NCR."

Volunteers to inform families about AAP ideology

Apart from helping residents with getting voters id cards and their names on the electoral list, the volunteers have been taught to inform the families about the AAP ideology and how party plans to bring qualitative changes in their lives, something the ruling SAD-BJP combine and Congress have failed to do.

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READ: With AAP, SAD-BJP, Congress in fray, Punjab to vote for new government on February 4

AAP manifesto focuses on youth, farmers, trade and Dalits

The party has so far launched different manifestoes for different sections such as youth, farmers, trade and industry as well as Dalits. A comprehensive manifesto for Punjab is in the final stages of preparation.

AAP scared to debate with Captain Amarinder Singh

The Congress, which is looking to wrest the state, says people of Punjab do not trust Arvind Kejriwal. "How can they expect people would vote for AAP after insulting the Golden Temple and after accepting the funds from radical organisations?" Congress national spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said.

"Kejriwal has already given up the fight as he doesn't want to debate with Captain Amarinder Singh. Whatever style they have adopted, it will have no affect at the ground level. People are very familiar with AAP's use and-throw policy."

READ: India Today-Axis Opinion Poll on Punjab: Congress to make stunning comeback, AAP second largest party

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AAP targets SAD leader Sukhbir Singh Badal

Targeting the ruling coalition, the Aam Aadmi Party launched the "Sukhbir da gapp, AAP da sach" and "Chalo Punjab" campaigns in December.

The first is a dig at state deputy chief minister and SAD leader Sukhbir Singh Badal, describing him as a "Gappi" (someone who makes false promises and claims). With "Chalo Punjab", the party is appealing to Punjabis living across the country and abroad to "free their homeland from the clutches of a corrupt regime."

--- ENDS ---
BBC Worldwide is producing its first virtual reality content after striking a partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus.

Three virtual reality experiences are being produced by BBC Earth, which will immerse viewers in the daily adventures of a Caracal Cat, an Oogpister Beetle and Black Bears.

All three virtual reality experiences will be released separately on Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR platforms this January and will be available free to download for the first three months.

Julia Kenyon, Global Brands Director for BBC Worldwide said, We are delighted to be partnering with Oculus to give audiences a completely different insight into the natural world. By allowing users to immerse themselves in the environments of these three animals, we are hoping to bring people rich and unforgettable adventures different from any traditional natural history series.

Included in the three experiences will be Cat Flight, featuring the incredible leap of the Caracal Cat. By integrating computer generated imagery into 360 degree video, users will be able to uncover the mystery behind how these predators survive in the wild.

The second experience, Oogie, will be an interactive CGI game featuring the Oogpister Beetle as it scurries through the African Savannah. Based on real life footage from BBC Earth, the player will get to take on the form of the beetle and encounter the daily challenges of the creature.

The third experience, Bear Island, presents an interactive 360 degree video where users will join Black Bears on a journey to the banks of an Alaskan river full of life.

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AAP spokespersons have denied any such rift and said that Kumar will feature prominently in all campaigns of the party.

Sources close to Vishwas say that he is yet to take any decision on his campaign involvement for AAP.

By Ankit Tyagi: In a bid to quell reports of differences between AAP and its popular leader Kumar Vishwas, party has included the poet-cum-politician in its list of star campaigners for Goa.

A list of 17 star campaigners was submitted by AAP to Election Commission of India (ECI) for the Goa polls. The list includes party chief Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, minister Gopal Rai, Spokesperson Ashutosh, Goa Chief Minister Candidate Elvis Gomes among others.

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Vishwas is listed at Number 9 in the list just below party Delhi MLA Alka Lamba.

Speculation was rife about a fallout between AAP and leader Kumar Vishwas after his name was missing from the list of party campaigners for Punjab.

AAP spokespersons have vehemently denied any such rift and said that Kumar will feature prominently in all campaigns of the party.

But, sources close to Vishwas say that he is yet to take any decision on his campaign involvement for AAP.

Barring a few personal visits to meet Delhi CM Kejriwal and his childhood friend Manish Sisodia, Vishwas has more or less been missing from action since AAP's historic victory in Delhi.

Also read: AAP promises creation of 50,000 jobs if voted to power in Goa

Also read: No issues with same polling date for Punjab, Goa, prepared for elections: AAP

Also read: AAP not serious contender in Goa polls: Shripad Naik

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Capt. Simraptal Singh filed suit to be allowed a religious accommodation to wear his beard and turban as required by his Sikh faith. The U.S. Army has changed its policy and will allow soldiers to wear these Sikh symbols.
State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said Thursday he's asked for and expects two weeks advance notice before the U.S. Department of
Rohatgi said she and her partner Sangram Singh were to fly Jet Airways from Mumbai to Thiruvananthapuram in the business class and despite reaching at 6:20 am for a 6:50 am flight, the Jet Airways staff offloaded them.

By India Today Web Desk: Actor Payal Rohatgi went on a not-so-epic rant on both Facebook and Twitter early morning on January 3 from the Mumbai airport after two Jet Airways ground staff denied her and her partner Sangram Singh permission to board a flight to Thiruvananthapuram.

Going live on Facebook on January 3, Rohatgi said that the couple were to fly Jet Airways from Mumbai to Thiruvananthapuram in the business class and despite reaching at 6:20 am for a 6:50 am flight, the Jet Airways staff offloaded them.

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Before telling you how Payal gave the entire incident a communal angle, let us first inform you that reporting 30 minutes prior to the gates could be considered late. Most airlines request passengers to check-in at least 75 minutes before the departure time and get to the gates at least 45 minutes before the take-off.

Payal, in the live video, then took things a step ahead in the wrong direction. She said she was stopped by Nadim, a supervisor, and his assistant Abdul -- "two Muslim guys" in her own words -- and said it could be an "act of secularism" or that these staff members could have been having a bad day.

She also said that the supervisor denied her permission stating she was late, and that they wrote on the boarding passes that they reported at 6:36 am and the couple were being offloaded since the gates were closed.

@jetairways I am standing at gate and I am not being allowed to board the flight pic.twitter.com/i2wJpBFgxG PAYAL ROHATGI (@Payal_Rohatgi) January 3, 2017

@jetairways Nadeem supervisor and some Abdul was so shocking rude and held us at gate. And wasted our time at gate. Never fly jet. Pathetic pic.twitter.com/nO9BhA9G35 PAYAL ROHATGI (@Payal_Rohatgi) January 3, 2017

@jetairways please refund my money. No way to treat passengers and waste my day on my holiday plan. Third class airline to fly. PAYAL ROHATGI (@Payal_Rohatgi) January 3, 2017

Am I being subjected to this treatment because I am a Hindu, Nadeem/Abdul Muslim. We reached the gate 6.20 am @jetairways @Sangram_Sanjeet PAYAL ROHATGI (@Payal_Rohatgi) January 3, 2017

Payal's boarding passes. Photo: Twitter (@payal_rohatgi) Payal's boarding passes. Photo: Twitter (@payal_rohatgi)

Meanwhile, Payal also managed to annoy Malayali friends by getting the spelling and pronunciation of Thiruvananthapuram (or Trivandrum) wrong, thanks to her ignorance about south India.

Rohatgi's rant on social media did get attention, but people were not on her side. Social media users slammed her for giving the situation a communal angle and were of the opinion that she should have reported on time. Payal, who in a Facebook post said that she hopes Jet Airways sacks Nadim and Abdul, was trolled.

Here are some of the replies she got for her video and tweets:

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A double-murder suspect's 39-day stay in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison came to an end Friday when a judge ordered him sent back to Tennessee to face charges that he stabbed and dismembered his parents in their Knoxville home Thanksgiving weekend, then tried to dissolve their remains in a homemade acid-based solution.

Joel Michael Guy Jr., 28, who last month refused to waive his right to an extradition hearing, had been held in the parish lockup since his Nov. 29 arrest at his Nicholson Drive apartment in Baton Rouge.

But Friday morning in a 19th Judicial District courtroom where two Knox County sheriff's officials were standing by to escort him back to Tennessee, Guy stipulated to his identity and softly answered, "Yes," when ad hoc Judge Bruce Bennett asked if his name was Joel Michael Guy Jr.

The judge also found that extradition papers signed by the governors of Louisiana and Tennessee were in proper order.

East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney John Russell asked for Guy's expedited release from Parish Prison so two Knox County sheriff's officials, who were in the courtroom, could escort Guy back to Knoxville on Friday ahead of the inclement weather expected late Friday.

Lindsay Blouin, one of Guy's court-appointed attorneys in Baton Rouge, told Bennett that Guy invoked his right to remain silent and did not wish to be questioned on his way back to Tennessee.

Bennett advised the Knox County sheriff's officials that they were not to question Guy on the drive back to Knoxville. The judge, however, said he could not prevent Guy from making any spontaneous statements during his transport.

Guy is accused of killing his parents, Joel Guy Sr., 61, and Lisa Guy, 55, in their Knoxville home sometime between Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving, and midday on Nov. 26. He is expected to face first-degree murder charges.

An arrest warrant included in the state of Tennessee's extradition request states that Guy was captured on video buying items at a Knoxville Walmart the afternoon of Nov. 26 items that were found in his parents' Goldenview Lane home.

The warrant says the items "were apparently used in the attempted destruction of the crime scene."

Sheriff's officials believe Guy spent at least one night in his parents' home after they were dismembered.

He is accused of trying to dissolve the remains of his parents in a homemade acid-based solution.

Deputies discovered the bodies of Guy's parents in an upstairs bedroom Nov. 28 after receiving a call that Lisa Guy did not show up for work that morning.

Guy's parents, according to authorities, had been paying many of their son's bills while he lived in Baton Rouge and planned to speak with him over Thanksgiving about cutting off some of that financial support.
A Baton Rouge woman accused of manslaughter in the 2014 death of her 82-year-old mother, who was found naked in a wheelchair in feces and riddled with infected bedsores, was sane at the time, a state judge ruled Thursday.

District Judge Mike Erwin made the finding after receiving reports from a psychologist and a neuropsychiatrist who examined Joleslie Looney, 55, and agreed she was sane at the time of Bessie Looney's death on Sept. 29, 2014.

In July, the judge found Looney competent to stand trial. Her 19-year-old daughter, Lauren Looney, also is charged with manslaughter in the case.

+2 Judge: Baton Rouge woman competent to stand trial in mother's death A 55-year-old Baton Rouge woman is now competent to stand trial in the 2014 death of her eld

Erwin decided in May that Lauren Looney, who was 17 when her grandmother died, was sane at the time and is competent to stand trial.

Joleslie Looney's court-appointed attorney, Stephen Sterling, said he disagrees with the doctors' findings regarding his client.

Joleslie and Lauren Looney were Bessie Looney's primary caregivers, authorities have said.

She died in their North Acadian West home. Coroner Beau Clark ruled her death a homicide after an autopsy showed she died from a blood infection caused by infected bedsores. He also said malnutrition, dementia and heart disease were contributing factors in her death.

The elderly woman was found sitting atop a soiled disposable pad that investigators suspect had been there for a while. She also was surrounded by trash, gnats and fruit flies, according to police.

The Looneys told police they were aware of her condition but it "did not appear to be severe to them," according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Joleslie Looney appeared in Erwin's courtroom Thursday in green East Baton Rouge Parish Prison clothes. Lauren Looney is free on bail.

Prosecutors intend to try the mother and daughter separately. They each face up to 40 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.

Joleslie Looney's next court date is March 6. She does not have a trial date. Lauren Looney, who turns 20 next week, is due in court Jan. 27 for a status hearing.
A Honduran national wanted in an armed robbery earlier this month in Baton Rouge is now also accused of raping a women and cutting her throat 
Baton Rouge residents placing new piles of flood debris on their curbs need to do so by Monday, Jan. 16, and notify the city-parish, or else the debris might not get picked up by the final day of removal operations on February 7.

City-parish leaders report that contractors have picked up more than 1.78 million cubic yards of flood debris so far. The final debris removal date fits into the Federal Emergency Management Agency's window for debris removal that qualifies for federal reimbursement, which is 180 days post-disaster.

The agency reimburses parishes for most of their flood-related debris removal expenses.

+3 Last call! Final flood debris pickup starts Monday in Baton Rouge Flood debris pickup contractors will make their final sweep starting Monday in Baton Rouge t

Debris removal crews have been making their final pass through the parish since November 7.

People can notify the city-parish that they have piles of debris that need to be picked up by going online to http://gis.brla.gov/reportdebris or calling 1-888-721-4372. They can also check the status of debris removal in their neighborhoods by visiting http://gis.brla.gov/debris.

After February 7, people with flood-related debris will have to bring it themselves to the North Landfill at 16001 Samuels Road. Smaller pieces of debris can be put in garbage carts for normal garbage collection.

As people begin to rebuild, construction materials cannot be picked up as part of debris removal operations and are not eligible for FEMA reimbursements. Homeowners and contractors are responsible for picking up their construction debris themselves.

Ascension Parish officials also announced the winding down of major debris removal services, although they plan to ask for an extension from the federal government.

Ascension Parish President Kenny Matassa said the parishs major debris removal contract would end Jan. 20 unless the parish can get the FEMA extension.

But we do have two trucks of our own, and we are going to help people out; I just want to tell yall straight up on that, Matassa told the Parish Council Thursday night at the courthouse in Donaldsonville. Theres a lot of people that are still in a lot of trouble.

The parish plans a final debris pass between Monday and Jan. 20 but only to those homes already entered in a registry that allows debris removal on private property.

Matassa said the parish continues to get a lot of calls from residents about their homes, their debris and home demolition.

In explaining the need for an extension of debris removal, he said it is going to be a long time before many homes are ready for demolition because owners dont have the money to get to all of that work yet.

He said grant dollars could eventually be available for that kind of work, but its just not here yet.

In a statement Friday, parish officials added that the parish is not authorized to pick up debris at demolished homes, so residents must arrange for removal through their insurer or by another method.

Also on Monday, a debris question hotline the parish had set up with contractor Tetra Tech will shut down and a company representative will no longer be at the parish complex in Gonzales.

Debris questions should be directed to the Ascension Parish Department of Public Works at (225) 450-1013.
Kristy Ruth Allen, 37, and Ryan Christopher Allen, 42, were arrested Wednesday evening after the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office said they uncovered evidence the couple had created a meth lab in their home in Luling.
By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Jan 6 (PTI) Afghanistan continues to face challenges today even as the unity government in the war-torn country has kept alive the chances of future progress, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.

"We played a pivotal role in forging a national unity government in Afghanistan that, while still facing challenges, has kept alive the chance for future progress," he said at his final press conference as the Secretary of State yesterday.

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Kerry had played an instrumental role in the formation of the unity government led by President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

"We all know how difficult that could have been when an election had serious problems, and the country was poised to perhaps see the government fall apart and maybe even enter into civil war and yet we helped broker and pull together the parties into a unity government that still today is managing to move forward in Afghanistan," Kerry said.

When Obama came to power in 2009, there were more than 100,000 troops in this war-torn country, which has now reduced to less than 10,000. Afghanistan now has a well-trained armed force which has been successfully meeting the challenge posed by the Taliban and other terrorist groups, he said.

Despite best efforts, the Obama administration has not been able solve all the global problems, Kerry acknowledged.

"Obviously we have not solved every problem. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict continues, but we are absolutely right to support a two-state solution and to warn about the danger of actions on any side that could obstruct that possibility.

"We are also right to insist that a diplomatic path is the only way out of the disastrous situation in Syria, one of the most intractable and complex conflicts in modern history and the worst humanitarian catastrophe since World War II," the top American diplomat said.

Kerry said that despite the US best efforts to mobilise a unified response from the international community, and to ease tensions and reduce violence and save lives, obviously war has continued at considerable human cost.

"It is only through a political solution that ultimately the country can be unified, the country can be rebuilt, and the violence can actually be stopped. It is only through a political solution that actual peace can finally come to Syria," he said.

The military strategies that are pursued by the regime and its backers in Moscow and Tehran, if thats all there is, will only lengthen the war and generate more extremists and further inflame sectarian fighting, Kerry warned.

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"That is why the US continues to support diplomatic efforts to achieve and effective cessation of hostilities and to transition to a government capable of uniting the Syrian people," he added. PTI LKJ CPS

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A group of dissident shareholders seeking to take control of troubled baby formula group Bellamy's Australia will meet next week to map out their push to topple the company's board.

Bellamy's Australia is due to issue its long-awaited trading update next week after its shares were suspended from trading on December 12.

The company sought the trading halt to renegotiate onerous supply contracts after sales collapsed in the key China market, where it had begun selling discounted product which has undermined the group's market position.

However the prolonged suspension to trading in Bellamy's shares has prompted a group of shareholders commanding an estimated 35 per cent of the capital to come together in a bid to unseat the four independent directors out of the six directors on the Bellamy's board.
Don't be surprised if we continue to see changes in the gaming market in 2017  with the next one looking like a tie-up between James Packer's Crown Resorts and ClubsNSW.

It's a deal that everyone in the industry is talking about but one that lots of industry players are uneasy with.

ClubsNSW isn't saying much other than that it is actively looking for a digital partner and that as yet a deal has not been signed. It's not saying that this will be Crown  but everyone else in the industry is saying it.

ClubsNSW, which has 1200 member clubs from your local bowling club to big rugby league clubs, has plenty of members that play pokies and love to gamble  a veritable big data gaming paradise.
But in the annual review, which involves the Department of Education and Training providing advice to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the government has so far decided against the recommendation to remove all medical professions from the list, instead making only minor exclusions. Lucky for Ms Ley the news broke in the silly season so she won't face a grilling in Parliament. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The president of the The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Bastian Seidel, has urged the government to remove GPs from the skilled occupations list. He said getting overseas doctors to fill shortages in rural areas by requiring them to work there for a 7 to 10 year period was a short-term fix that treated overseas doctors like second-class citizens.

"I am quite positive that our Australian graduates can meet workforce needs in rural Australia," Dr Seidel said. "I think it is far more attractive now for Australian graduates to work in rural areas. "The priority is to expose Australian medical students early to rural areas. That's how we build capacity." 'Uncoordinated decision-making' The department's submission on doctors warned "unco-ordinated decision-making in the past has seen a boom and bust cycle in medical training and resulting doctor numbers".

The department has also warned that its future workforce modelling "provides enough evidence that there will be insufficient nurses to provide the future care required by all Australians". "It is for that reasons that we recommend that all nursing categories should be left on the Skill Occupation List," the submission says. A spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Health said the Skilled Occupation List identifies occupations that would benefit from independent skilled migration for the purpose of meeting the medium to long-term skill needs of the Australian economy. "Following the submission process, a number of changes were made to the 2016-17 SOL (Skilled Occupation List), which came into effect on 1 July 2016," the spokeswoman said. "These changes included flagging 15 health occupations, including medical specialists, for possible removal from the 2017-18 [skilled occupations list]. For now, these specialties remain on the [list] but have been flagged for review in future years.

"The process of updating the [list] for 2017-18 is now underway. The 2017-18 [list] will come into effect on 1 July 2017." A spokeswoman for the Minister of Health, Sussan Ley said the government has "noted and is further examining projections and estimates suggesting a looming oversupply of doctors". Specialties shortages "The medical workforce comprises a wide range of specialties and while there might be an emerging aggregate oversupply, there are some specialties where shortages persist especially in some regions, often in disciplines where need is increasing such as geriatrics, psychiatry and palliative care," she said. "The government is also mindful to ensure that rural and regional areas have adequate access to medical services."

A new report by the Australian Population Research Institute at Monash University echoes the department of health's warnings and is critical of the federal government's failure to remove medical professions from the skilled occupations list. The institute has repeatedly called for changes to Australia's skilled migrant program in order to provide more opportunities for citizens and permanent residents. The report by the institute's immigration expert Bob Birrell and country doctor Mike Moynihan says many overseas-trained doctors who have completed a compulsory period of service in rural and remote locations to fill doctor shortages eventually move to metropolitan areas. It says the use of migrants on 457 visas can only ever provide a short-term fix for rural doctor shortages. The report says employers sponsored 2320 overseas trained doctors on 457 visas in 2015-16, which is more than the 1529 training places for local graduates who began their careers as GPs in 2015.

Doctor makes the move Having completed his specialist GP training in the UK after doing his preliminary medical training in South Africa and Germany where he was born, Bastian Seidel arrived in Australia in 2007 on a skilled migrant visa. Dr Seidel, who has established his own medical practice in the Huon Valley in rural Tasmania where he plans to stay for the long term, says the majority of GPs in regional Australia are overseas trained. "When I started work in Huonville in 2008, no one wanted to work here," he said. "It was extremely difficult to get a qualified doctor here.

"So we trained our own doctors up. We got them very early as medical students and they are staying on." As the president of the The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Dr Seidel is now confronting a looming oversupply of GPs in Australia. He says the number of medical graduates has doubled in the past 10 years. The importation of overseas-trained doctors like himself provided a workforce solution when Australia could not train its own graduates quickly enough. Nor could it convince enough of them to work in understaffed rural areas. But Dr Seidel says that approach is short-sighted and the attitudes of Australian medical students have shifted over time, resulting in fewer workforce shortages in rural areas.
Illustration: John Shakespeare The economic powerhouse  homeland of Goethe, Heidegger, Hegel and Nietzsche, famous around the world for its engineering acumen and innovation  was performing well below the OECD average. A quarter of its young people were functionally illiterate and innumerate. Deutschland was dismayed. The way schools are currently funded is contributing to inequality. Credit:Janie Barrett The nation's education leaders mobilised, and by 2012 Germany had pushed its PISA results above the OECD average.

There are lessons for Australia in this. Research suggested inequality was the main driver of Germany's poor results, exacerbated by the ghettoisation of migrants. Funding per student was equal, according to OECD education head Andreas Schleicher, but the outcomes were far from it. That is, due to the natural disadvantages some kids have compared with others  if they're learning in a second language or have a disability, for example  a system that aims at equality of outcomes has to provide extra resources to lift up those kids. And with what we will stereotype as ruthlessly Germanic efficiency, Germany turned things around by tackling structural inequalities in the high school system; investing in early childhood education; and closing the equity gap by focusing resources on the most disadvantaged students. Now for the opportunity.

Australia's results in the 2015 PISA and other tests confirmed worrying trends. Real and relative student performance is declining, STEM capability is slipping, inequality is widening. Students from disadvantaged schools on average are three years behind their most advantaged counterparts. Our best students are still among the world's best, but the spread is wider. Inequality is dragging down our PISA results. The way we fund schools is fuelling inequality, rather than mitigating it. For over a decade, money has flowed to the wrong places and policies. That's because we have a school funding system that is a mess of sweetheart deals for special interests and historical curios, unburdened by logic or fairness. There is overfunding of wealthy schools and underfunding of disadvantaged schools.

Without change, $2 billion in taxpayer funds over the next decade will continue to flow to schools that are already technically overfunded. It's not so much a camel designed by committee as an engine assembled in the dark by Amish. It is not working well. But the most comprehensive solution to the problem presented in a generation, the 2011 Review of Funding for Schooling report, known universally as the Gonski review, is potentially just weeks from its political grave. "This is a really critical moment to get funding right," says NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli, who has been among the Gonski system's noisiest champions. "The Gonski report lives and dies in the next three months. We're either as a country going to run with it or we're going to drop it, and ultimately that's going to be a decision made by the Commonwealth."

That's the deadline. The current arrangement expires at the end of this year, so the Prime Minister, premiers and education ministers have just a few short months to come up with a new deal for schools at the April COAG meeting, before the May budget. Right now, we have political gridlock, and no one seems to want to meet in the middle. States including NSW that signed a deal with Julia Gillard's Labor government for six years of additional Gonski money from 2014 are holding out for that original deal. WA says it should get more federal money than it does, and should not be punished for funding its schools better than the other states have.

The federal government, which first tried under Tony Abbott the surprise move of ditching Gonski altogether before backflipping and offering a shrunk-down version in the 2016 budget, says there will be no further money forthcoming. In an added complication, the Commonwealth has signalled it wants to find a new way to carve up the pie, to make up for states like WA and SA getting less federal money per student in the past. If this happened the eastern states would lose up to a billion dollars each over the next four years and it would effectively exacerbate funding inequalities between schools, according to the Grattan Institute's Peter Goss. You can bet the ministers in Queensland, NSW and Victoria are disinclined to sign that deal. The Catholic sector could lose out too, which is why it has been particularly vocal in its irritation with the lack of clarity over funding. The federal government could ignore the states and take a new education plan direct to Parliament, but with Labor, the Greens, Nick Xenophon's independents and Jacqui Lambie expressing their public support for "the full Gonski", they are unlikely to find much joy there.

Without an amenable Senate or a deal with the states, it appears the Gillard-era legislation stands. So the federal government is rather boxed in. Unless they roll over and find the extra money  which they insist is not going to happen  or the states do, we're still at an impasse. The frustration for educators concerned with improving Australia's schools at a systemic level is that politicians of both stripes have hobbled the best chance the country has had at major education reform in a generation. While the politicians have dawdled and squabbled over fixing problems identified six years ago, another generation of kids just finished high school. The Gonski review identified disadvantage and inequity as major drivers of Australia's declining performance in 2011, and laid out an evidence-based, long-term plan to fix it.

It enjoyed consensus support across the school sectors, and from both sides of politics in most states. It didn't have to be preposterously expensive, although some increased funding was required. Then Gillard made the political inoculation of a decision to say "no school would lose a dollar", which made Gonski suddenly a lot more expensive, and the consensus began to crumble. With its allergic reaction to anything proposed by Labor  even the good ideas  the federal Coalition has always been rather lukewarm on tackling inequality in the system. It prefers to talk about other things. Teacher quality, engaging parents and strengthening curriculum all get a lot more emphasis than needs-based funding in its rather slim schools policy document, Quality Schools Quality Outcomes, released around the last budget.

But education minister Simon Birmingham has since reiterated that he wants a needs-based funding model, albeit one with special conditions. So is there a way forward? The Grattan Institute came up with a rather ingenious compromise late last year, which would get all schools to their needs-based funding target by 2023. It does so by lowering the indexation rates for funding increases to a rate closer to actual wage growth. The money freed up gets redistributed, and it doesn't cost any more than the Turnbull government has said it would pay. A handful of over-funded schools would get less money, those in the middle would just have their funding grow slower, particularly disadvantaged schools would see their funds grow much faster. Birmingham, in Parliament, called it "a thoughtful contribution".

Piccoli says it would be moving the goalposts mid-game, and shrinking the quantum of additional Gonski funds from what was agreed. "Gonski laid out a strategy that we're adopting and you need to give it 10 years. We're currently in year four," he says. In Germany, after the 2000 PISA shock, state and federal leaders got together and agreed on a set of common standards and reforms. They stuck with it. It took a decade, but it worked. Here? Well it's one of those Canberra riddles. All three major political parties, along with Nick Xenophon's team, say they want needs-based funding for Australia's school system. So why haven't we got it?
If it really is true that people start the year as they intend to go on, there are some solid indications from Canberra that we are in for a long year full of small ideas.

Malcolm Turnbull set the tone with a New Year's Eve address that suggested he no longer believes it to be such an exciting time to be alive in Australia. Rather we should consider ourselves lucky to be alive at all.

"Our police and security services have foiled a number of terrorist plots designed to undermine our society and scare us into changing our way of life, which is the envy of the world," the PM lamented.

"We will continue to root out Islamist terrorists and violent extremists and put them behind bars, just as our Defence Force will continue to combat and destroy them in Syria and Iraq."
The first week of a new year always feels different  unless you are still hung over, in which case it feels very familiar. But with a clear head, the sense that anything is possible, that things will be changed and better, is almost palpable.

In fact you can almost imagine Malcolm Turnbull bouncing from his (presumably) imported Egyptian cotton sheets on January 1, padding over to his (probably) gold and marble bathroom while humming Auld Lang Syne.

With the rise of Pauline Hanson clipped by the woes of Senator Rod Culleton, several contentious pieces of legislation passing through the "unworkable" Senate, and his old foes in the conservative wing of the Liberal Party falling to infighting: the end of 2016 gave Turnbull cause to hope that many of his problems would be manageable in the new year.

"Sure the budget is in as bad shape as ever. But it's been 10 years of deficits now and no one has been kicked in the pants for it," he may have mused.
The organisers of Australia's Falls Festival have issued a strong statement condemning the alleged assaults of women at their Tasmanian event, stressing that men must "stop taking liberties" when it comes to the treatment of their female counterparts.

Police said five women in their teens and 20s have now reported being sexual assaulted at the New Years' event in Marion, but police believe there may more victims who are yet to come forward.

Crowds at the Falls Festival in Lorne. Credit:Ian Laidlaw

In a statement on their Facebook page on Thursday night, the festival's management group said they were "disgusted and angry that some people feel they can inappropriately touch others without their consent."

All-too-often the narrative surrounding sexual assaults places the spotlight on the vigilance of women, but as their statement pointed out, a cultural shift can only occur if Australians change the discussion to men having "some respect" in the first place.
Three snakes have been discovered by Australia post staff in a parcel sent from a post office near Newcastle.

A man presented himself to Waratah police station on Friday after police released images of a person wanted for questioning over the posting of the snakes on Wednesday.

Snakes found at a post office in Glendale, near Newcastle. Credit:NSW Police

A police statement said officers were contacted by staff at a mail sorting centre "in Newcastle's north-western suburbs" about 10.30pm on Wednesday.

"Staff had discovered reptiles inside a parcel at the location," the statement said.
Gold Coast assault victim Thomas Dover is out of a coma, after he was attacked at Surfers Paradise three days ago.

Dover's sister Candice Dover took to Facebook and Instagram to share the news.

"Thom has been taken out of the coma and finally responded well," she wrote.

"He's opened his eyes, nodded, waved and showed us his butt crack....and is now snoring as loud as ever."
The AMA said the Cancer Council's Peppa Pig sunscreen is safe for most people, after a mother's complaint about the product went viral on Facebook.

Earlier in the week, Queensland mother Jessie Swan posted to the Cancer Council Australia Facebook page detailing her son's three-day hospital stint after using their Peppa Pig sunscreen.

Jessie Swan posted to the Cancer Council Facebook page after her baby was hospitalised for an averse reaction to sunscreen. Credit:Jessie Swan

The post has been shared almost 10,000 times, and has more than 4,000 comments, with plenty of other people noting similar reactions to the Peppa Pig sunscreen and other Cancer Council branded sunscreen products.

However Richard Kidd, former AMA Queensland president and current chair council general practice, said the sunscreen was safe for most people to use.
According to senior officials at Air India, the airline is looking to take advantage of the surge in rail ticket prices after Indian Railways introduced flexi-fares in Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and Durontos.

By Mail Today Bureau: Taking on the reduced prices in Rajdhani Express, national carrier Air India will launch a three-month long sale of tickets priced at par or below Rajdhani fares. The national carrier claims the move is part of Republic Day offer and the sale begins from January 6 and will be open till April 10. Travel period for the discounted tickets are January 26 to April 30.

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READ: Demonetisation: Air India swings into action, carries cash to remote northeastern states

Airfares to start as low as Rs 1,080

Officials claim that depending on the distance between the destinations, the airfares start as low as Rs 1,080 with the maximum fare at just Rs 4,730. However, other private airlines claim that they would not enter into a price war with state-run machinery and that too, for such a long period as it would not be sustainable.

Air India to take advantage of surge in rail ticket prices

According to senior officials at Air India, the airline is looking to take advantage of the surge in rail ticket prices after Indian Railways introduced flexi-fares in Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and Durontos.

"Train ticket prices have really gone up after flexi-fares and the travel still takes a lot of time compared to a flight. Around 20,000 passengers travel in Rajdhani Express trains on a daily basis across the country. Passengers booking their tickets under this scheme, can reach their destination at the same cost of Rajdhani Express in much lesser time," senior official said.

READ: Air India to perform blood tests on pilots to check if they are tipsy

Not the first time

This is not the first time that Air India has pitched its domestic flight rates as cheaper than Rajdhani Express. Soon after Indian Railways introduced the attract last minute passengers, Indian Railways recently announced that it would offer a 10 per cent rebate on vacant berths after finalisation of the reservation charts.

The latest offer from Air India is bound to cause further pain to Railways, especially given the time that people save in a flight.

These special fares will be available for sale through all distribution channels-Airlines City Booking Office (CTOs), Airline Airport Office (ATOs), Travel Agents, Call Centre, Air India's website and Mobile Application for sale, 20 days or more prior to departure of the flight.

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Drones are needed in every major police station in Queensland and cameras at all intersections if police are not able to chase fleeing cars, a union representative has argued.

Central region representative Bill Feldman slammed the Queensland Police Service's policy on pursuits, claiming it increased crime.

A police union representative suggests better cameras are needed at every single intersection. Credit:Kirk Gilmour

"We actually stop our marked police cars and get out to perform traffic duty, stopping other traffic and road users from interfering with the criminals doing burnouts in their stolen motor vehicles while giving the QPS the finger," Sgt Feldman, a former One Nation MP, wrote in the latest union journal.

"If we are still to be serious about a no-pursuit policy then we had better get serious about prevention and detention of offenders by having better cameras installed at all intersections and at intervals on every road."
Ram raiders have smashed a car into a shopping centre at Mill Park, in Melbourne's north, reversing through the front doors of the complex early Saturday to rob a lotto store.

Victoria Police spokeswoman Natalie Webster said the incident happened at 4am.

Police are hunting would-be ram raiders. Credit:Georgia Matts

"Police are investigating a ram raid at a Mill Park shopping centre this morning," Ms Webster said.

"A car has reversed through the front doors of the McDonalds Road store shortly about 4am.
A man with a Turkish flag walks past a police officer during a memorial outside the Reina club. The killer remains at large four days after the attack. Credit:Emrah Gurel But Erdogan casts a much wider net. In the wake of the failed coup, he has surpassed Iran and China as the world's leading jailers of journalists  about 150 are now believed to languish in Turkish prisons. They are not alone  more than 40,000 from the ranks of the parliament and the military and civilian services are also behind bars. Almost half of the admirals and generals have been axed from the military services and more than 110,000 have been sacked from their government jobs  teachers and cops, prosecutors and judges. The media has been shackled or shuttered and companies with assets valued at as much as $US10 billion have been seized as suspected coup sympathisers. A man adjusts a victim's photograph displayed with floral tributes and Turkish flags outside the Reina night club following the New Year's Day attack in Istanbul. Credit:Emrah Gurel Anyone outside the Turkey cognoscenti might be forgiven for asking a "WTF" question  what transformed Turkey so suddenly from a seemingly westernised, relatively liberal, bucket-list destination for tourists to an authoritarian regime that rules by decree, arresting journalists among tens of thousands of others and imposing media blackouts?

The answer, of course, is that this Turkish transformation has not been sudden. The bloodbath is newish, but the collapse of a country once held up as a model blend of democracy and Islam  but now is destined to be just another basket case in a region that festers with intolerance, repression and autocracy  has been years in the making. A framegrab on Sunday, January 1, 2017 of an attacker carrying a gun in the Reina nightclub in Istanbul. The gunman fired 180 rounds for seven minutes, killing 39 people. Credit:AP By one count, lawyers for the absurdly thin-skinned Erdogan have launched almost 3000 actions against Turks accused of insulting him, including a former Miss Turkey and a bunch of school kids. As the Turkish economy tanks, Erdogan obsesses about absolute power. Displeased by the outcome of one election, he calls another; using each terrorist attack as a building block in a Trump-like barrage of non-sequiturs, he emulates Russian leader Vladimir Putin's lunge at power  shifting from the prime ministership to the titular office of the presidency, into which he then demands that virtually all executive and government powers be vested  for the sake of the nation, of course! A power package that will go before the parliament soon and, if approved, then to a national referendum, will give Erdogan near-absolute power in this country of about 80 million people  he'll be able to appoint and sack deputy presidents, government ministers and a slew of state officials; retain leadership of the ruling party; impose emergency rule unilaterally; and hold office till as late as 2029.

A Turkish special security force member patrols near the scene of the nightclub attack. Credit:AP Farewell Jefferson; hello Saddam. In the aftermath of the nightclub massacre, Erdogan insisted yet again that the fight against terror would unite the country  "we will retain our cool-headedness as a nation, standing more closely together, and we will never give ground to such dirty games." Police have reportedly arrested the man responsible for the attack. Credit:AP Seemingly lost on Erdogan is that despite every crackdown and his claims that each will bring stability, the attacks keep coming  if not from within the ranks of his own military and security services, then internally from Kurdish separatists, and externally from Islamic State forces in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

Apart from his general hunger for power, Erdogan's crucial recent mistakes were to allow foreign fighters to transit Turkey to join the Syrian civil war, thereby supporting IS which now launches attacks in Turkey; and in triggering a brutal new war with Kurdish militants, in which cities in the Kurdish southeast have been reduced to rubble, there was sufficient chaos in the country for elements in the military to believe it was time for them to invoke their assumed historic right to take corrective action  either by a real or threatened coup. After IS and the Kurdish militants, Erdogan's third security challenge is the movement headed by his former ally turned critic, the Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Most recently Erdogan charged that Gulenists were behind the attempted military coup in July 2016 and the assassination of the Russian diplomat. But as the fear of violence mingles with the stark consequences of a collapsing currency and declining tourism and foreign investment, Turkish writer and European Council on Foreign Relations fellow Asli Aydintasbas told The New York Times: "nothing that the government is doing is helping make Turkey more secure  the crackdown on domestic dissidents is further destabilising the country, and when it is not destabilising, it's increasing the dangerous polarisation here." But Turkey is not an island. In the near century since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it has sat at a geopolitical crossroads and in the main it has looked westward, both as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and as a long-aspiring member of the European Union  and, it should be noted, much frustrated by Europe's decades of inconclusive dawdling on the membership issue. Now that geopolitical construct is in play. In what might prove to be more a deliberate strategy than a feint to win concessions from Europe or Washington, Turkish officials charge that it is Europe that has rejected Turkey, not the reverse.

Somewhat diminished by the failure of his expectations to emerge as a regional powerbroker in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Erdogan these days seeks the company of those he mimics  just weeks ago, as the EU seemed to be bolting the door against him, he suggested that Ankara might join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security and political pact between Russia, China and the smaller, mostly Turkic states of Central Asia. The SCO could give Turkey a new sphere of influence among countries with a shared linguistic and cultural heritage stretching all the way to Xinjiang in China's far west. And in the meantime, Erdogan is cosying up to Moscow in Syria, deferring to Putin despite significant strategic differences. Erdogan does have sticks with which to beat the West. Washington needs access to Turkish defence facilities to prosecute its air campaign against IS in Syria and Iraq  and though Erdogan has tempered his early criticism of Trump, his future relationship with the US will hinge on whether Trump and/or the American legal system will approve the extradition of Gulen from his exile's retreat in Pennsylvania. Though Brussels can't quite find the voice to say explicitly that it doesn't want Turkey as a EU member that does seem to be the message, which poses grave questions about the viability of the multi-billion euro deal by which the EU pays Turkey to check the flow of refugees to Europe.

Worth more than 5 billion Euros over three years, the deal helps Turkey to host nearly 3 million refugees in Turkey rather than have them travel to EU member countries. And for the Europeans, that's a price worth paying  the rate of refugee arrivals in Greece in November was as low as 100 a day, compared with 2000 a day a year earlier. Reacting to the EU rejection, Erdogan threatened Europe with a new migrant flood  "You did not keep your word  if you go further, those border gates will open. You should know that," the president said. Erdogan's domestic opponents watch uneasily. "[His] real aim is to take Turkey out of the Western bloc, out of the civilised world, and to turn Turkey into a Middle Eastern country where he can continue to rule without any obstacle  he wants to turn Turkey into a country where there is no secularism and where people are divided along their ethnic identity and beliefs," according to Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). "It's becoming a nation that faces internal conflict, just as we have seen in Iraq, Syria and Libya," Mr Kilicdaroglu told The Wall Street Journal.

The historic challenge for Turkish leaders has been to effectively manage the country's internal fault lines  be they religious or ethnic. His predecessors followed the secular path of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern state, who suppressed religion and airbrushed the Kurds out of existence by insisting that all were Turks in his one-party state. But while Erdogan has veered towards his own Islamist leanings, he is driven more by his own autocratic sense of power and a Putin-like chip on his shoulder about big-power respect for his sense of his own importance, on the regional and world stage. Erdogan doesn't quite have the parliamentary numbers he needs and as argued by Soner Cagaptay, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: "Herein lies the permanent crisis into which Erdogan's agenda has thrown Turkey. "As Erdogan moves forward to make himself executive-style president, half of the country will never embrace his agenda. Even more worrisome in this crisis, the country is torn, with the pro- and anti-Erdogan blocs' hatred of each other overshadowing their fear of terrorist attacks by the [Islamic State ] or the Kurdistan Workers' Party." Critics were quick to note that the attack on the Istanbul nightclub came in the wake of a recent sermon, distributed to mosques across the country by government-appointed religious leaders, denouncing New Year celebrations as a part of "other cultures and other worlds" and that it was "never suitable for a believer to forget himself  [by exhibiting] illicit manners and behaviours that don't comply with our values."

Professor Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St Lawrence University in New York, pounced after the attack, tweeting: "Disturbing + not very difficult line to draw between official Turkish anti New Years campaign + tonight's violence. Rhetoric has consequences." Historically, Turkey has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, a political art form in which Erdogan has proved as adept as incoming US president Donald Trump. Many Turks still insist that Washington was complicit in the Turkish military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980  and these days Erdogan's surrogates readily claim the US was complicit in the failed coup of 2016, the rise of IS, and the Istanbul nightclub massacre. Erdogan has made effective political use of conspiracy theories, pulling voters his way with grand claims that his or the country's enemies must be thwarted  and famously retorting when challenged in 2013: "if it's a witch hunt to fire those who engage in treason, then it is a witch hunt." By the reckoning of some observers the notion that modern Turkey had been "westernised" is something of a misnomer. Eastern and central Turkey, where Erdogan draws his most loyal support, have never westernised; and the tourist regions of Istanbul and the Aegean coast were liberalised more from a tourist's or an economist's perspective than they were from a citizen's or a dissident's. These days those tourist regions are suffering blowback from Erdogan's ham-fisted efforts to tame the southeastern Kurdish militants and his meddling elsewhere in the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
Road America Official Carl Jensen Passes Away

ELKHART LAKE, Wis., January 5, 2017 - Carl Jensen, a profound racer and vintage racing event official for Road America, passed away on January 5. He was 74. "Everyone is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Carl Jensen, he was family to us, a member of a long-standing kinship amongst racers and promoters throughout the country," said Road America President and General Manager, George Bruggenthies. "He's been racing at and a part of Road America for so many years, to say he played an integral role in our success - especially with planning and officiating our vintage racing events - would be an understatement. He was a mainstay of this facility, and more importantly, he possessed a humility and character that made him a person that fellow racers and partners alike enjoyed being around. His presence, charisma and graciousness will be missed but never forgotten at Road America. The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Road America and our extended family of partners and friends are with the Jensen family in this difficult time."

Jensen is survived by his beloved wife Ellie, and two brothers Dick and David. Funeral arrangements are pending and additional information will be made available at a later date.

About Road America: Established in 1955, Road America is located midway between Milwaukee and Green Bay in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. The world's best racers have competed at this legendary four-mile, 14-turn road circuit for over 60 years. The 640-acre, park-like grounds offer amazing viewing opportunities, fantastic concessions and high-speed excitement to hundreds of thousands of spectators each year. In addition to public race weekends, Road America offers a variety of group event programs, the Road America Motorplex for karting and supermoto, and the Road America Motorcycle and Advanced Driving Schools.
Auto Lab Radio Talk - LIVE From NYC Saturday January 7, 2017 7-9 AM (Eastern)







Auto Lab Talk Radio

The Auto Lab Radio Show is Broadcast every Saturday 7 to 9 AM On New York City's WNYM Radio AM 970 and Streamed Worldwide On The Auto Channel

Broadcast Date: January 7, 2017

Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234

Auto Lab is a 28 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice.

Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format.

Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com.

Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures

Broadcast Date: January 7, 2017

Auto Lab In-Studio Experts Discuss - Repair Second Opinion, Regular Maintenance, How To's, Safety, Used and New Car Buying, Ombudsmen Suggestions

Harold Bendell- Major Auto

Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College, CUNY

Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix

Audra Fordin-Great Bear Auto Repairs & What Women AUTO Know

Joseph Guarino-Joe Guarino's Auto Repairs

Jerry Pastore-D & J Diagnostic

Johanna Pastore-D & J Diagnostic

Joanne Porcelli, Esq

Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR

Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY

Auto Lab Correspondents Report Auto Safety News, New Car Reviews, Technology and Latest Auto World Information That May effect You!

Broadcast Date: January 7, 2017

Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England

OTHER'S LOGIC

Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

NEW YEAR'S DAY IS DEADLIEST FOR ALCHOL - RELATED CRASHES

Audra Fordin-What Women Auto Know

AUDRA FORDIN EMPOWERS WOMEN AITH AN AUTOMOTIVE EDUCATION
Ahead of the upcoming UP elections, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is facing a lot of stress, thanks to the ongoing "PariWar". Here are the five issues he could be worrying most about.

By Pranav Priyadarshi: 'Tipu', as Akhilesh Yadav is fondly called at home, has shown the might of his sword as the young warrior of the PariWar. He has slashed his opponents into pieces, gained vice like grip over the party, cornered the trio of father, chacha and uncle and emerged as the most popular choice as the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

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Yet, far from being content and elated, Akhilesh is rattled. And it is just one word that is making Akhilesh nervous in spite of being victorious.

'Tipu' is afraid of being called 'Aurangzeb', the Mugal emperor who incarcerated his father Shah Jahan to win the battle of thrones.

Here are the five reasons because of which Akhilesh is still looking for an olive branch from the rival camp even as he is all geared up to walk alone.

1. Aurangzeb, the traitor

Elections are all about perception.

Even as his supporters chant "Jai Jai Jai Jai Jai Akhilesh", the young leader can see that a wave of sympathy for Mulayum Singh can sweep across the state if the patch up bid fails and if he goes to the polls as an old, dejected father who was dumped by his own son, Akhilesh knows he will be in trouble.

The image of Akhilesh as a decent, soft spoken and amiable young son can come down crumbling wiping off the goodwill in just one stroke. With an aide like Amar Singh, it is quite possible that Mulayum can break down publicly in rally during campaigning. That one video of Mulayum crying publicly with Shivpal by his side will go viral and can leave Akhilesh defenseless.

BJP and BSP are already ready with the punchline "one who can ditch his own father, can ditch anyone else!"

Akhilesh is not naive not to sense this peril. It is well known that when an English newspaper published an article, indicating Akhilesh as Aurangzeb, he was furious. What will he do when the same word echoes across the hinterland?

2. Nothing dependable as Cycle Akhilesh Yadav government may have hugged the limelight by landing fighter jets on Expressway, but he knows it quite well that to navigate the labyrinth of UP politics, nothing can beat the goodold cycle. With the war to wrest cycle already at Election Commission, Akhilesh may not get to ride cycle this time. The symbol may be frozen, or still worse, if the tug-of-war continues, Mulayum faction may get it. Akhilesh Yadav supporters may boast they will go to elections on the strength of brand Akhilesh, but it is easier said than done.

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With election processes already on, it may be an uphill task for Akhilesh to take a new symbol and make his voters aware about it. Motorcycle may sound fancy, but cycle is tried and tested.

3. Yadav No. 1 Akhilesh Yadav may be the youth icon and the development champion, but anyone in the cowbelt will tell you that the Yadavs consider only, and only Mulayum Singh Yadav as the real hero of their clan.

Mulayam Singh's politics has always been blatantly cast around the caste calculations and Yadavs have been the corner stone of the MY winning formula mastered by senior Yadav. Without the blessings of Mulayum, Akhilesh is sure to lose a big chunk of Yadav votes, especially in the Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah, Agra belt where Sama party is most dominant.

4. M for Mulayum, M for Muslims The opponent's of Mulayam Singh Yadav may have coined the term 'Mulla Mulayam' to ridicule him, but the senior leader prefers to wear this identity on his sleeve. He doesn't miss a single chance to mention how he ordered firing on the Kaesevaks in Ayodhya to protect the Babri mosque. Muslims have seen Muzaffarnagar riots under Akhilesh but would have still voted for the Samajwadi Party to halt BJP's march in Uttar Pradesh.

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But without Mulayum, will they be confident?

To make the things more difficult, the BSP is betting heavily on Muslims and giving them about hundred seats. If sensing a total confusion in Samajwadi party, Muslims decide to switch over to Dalit-Muslim combine of Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav has absolutely no chance.

5. Family comes first

Wherever you go, you come back to the family.

Akhilesh Yadav may have isolated Mulayum Singh and Shivpal Yadav politically, but at home, Mulayum still commands maximum respect. You may have noticed that Dharmendra Yadav, who was constantly standing by Akhilesh during the feud, is missing for last few days. The reason being his father Abhay Yadav scolded him for being part of the conspiracy to sideline Mulayum.

Challenged by Akhilesh, Mulayum has summoned both of his brothers Abhay Yadav and Rajpal Yadav to Lucknow from Etawah. Both of them are solidly behind him along with Shivpal in his hour of need. So there is tremendous pressure on Akhilesh from within the family to bow down before his father who made him the chief minister and mentored his political career.

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Deep inside his heart, Akhilesh also knows that at the end of the day, family is family. He also knows that many of the people he is surrounded by these days -- like Naresh Agrawal, Kiranmoy Nanda, Azam Khan, Gyatri Prajapati -- are only good-weather friends and will not be around if things turn against him.

It is also well known that earlier, Akhilesh Yadav was not very fond of Ram Gopal Yadav, his chief advisor these days. It was only to neutralize his bete noire Amar Singh that he joined hands with Azam Khan and Ram Gopal Yadav.

--- ENDS ---
Calling demonetisation and surgical strike against Pakistan two big decisions of the Narendra Modi government, Amit Shah said success in municipal elections is a clear sign that people are happy with the way this government is working.

By Brijesh Pandey: The two-day BJP National Executive began in New Delhi on Friday. The meeting began at 10 am and was presided over by party president Amit Shah.

In this meeting of national office bearers and state presidents, evaluation of task given to them was done. While addressing the gathering, Amit Shah hit out at the opposition parties for their undemocratic attitude.

Here's what Amit Shah said: Amit Shah said some opposition parties were trying to disrupt government's war against corruption. They were not even letting the Parliament function. Calling demonetisation initiative and surgical strike two big decision of the Narendra Modi government, Amit Shah said success in municipal elections is a clear sign that people are happy with the way this government is working. He also said the whole world is praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his figuring in the list of people's choice of Time magazine was also discussed. Stressing upon the violence unleashed on the BJP cadre in West Bengal, Shah said TMC cannot fight ideologically and this is the reason why they are resorting to violence. Constitutional institutions and party offices are being attacked. All this is being done because instead of fighting legal battle based on evidence they are resorting to violence. Amit Shah also accused the West Bengal government of communal violence in the state. During the meeting, the agenda of National Executive was also finalized. After the presidential address by Amit Shah, political resolution will be presented by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. It will be supported by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and Rahul Sinha from Bengal.

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ALSO READ: Why Amit Shah thinks BJP will return in 2019 with a greater majority

Congress wants BJP leaders probed in demonetisation drive

--- ENDS ---
Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of unused or expired medications. Crush the Crisis will take place...

Alzheimers Foundation to host free conference The Alzheimers Foundation of America will host a free virtual educational conference from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tues., Nov. 15. The event is part of the foundations 2022 national Educating America Tour. The conference, which is free and open...

Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it

The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in...

Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,...
Anushka Sharma and Malaika Arora took to their social media accounts to strongly condemn the Bengaluru mass-molestation incident.

By India Today Web Desk: Bengaluru began the New Year on a shameful note, with several women being groped and molested on the city streets in the name of revelry. The horrific incident has invited condemnation from several B-Towners.

ALSO READ: Bengaluru mass molestation - Aamir to Varun, B-Town is angry, sad and disappointed

ALSO WATCH: Akshay Kumar's angry, emotional video message on Bengaluru molestation

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Anushka Sharma was full on angst and expressed her ire on Twitter. Writing that the silent bystanders were as much at fault as the molesters themselves, Anushka said that we as a society had failed that night. She wrote, "Teach your kids to respect women instead of making sons feel more entitled and important."

Malaika Arora chose Instagram to pen a powerful note expressing her anger. Choosing a Julius Caesar-esque "But Brutus is an honourable man" kind of rhetoric, Malaika tore down the people who defend the molesters and indulge in victim-blaming. She concluded with, "Girls wearing short clothes and drinking and partying are copying the Western culture. Boys who molest them r copying the Indian culture???"

ALSO WATCH | Bengaluru mass molestation: A victim recounts the ordeal

--- ENDS ---
This time of year, booze writers usually try to predict what the following year will bring. We can do this because were secure in the knowledge that the more devoted our readers are the less likely they are to remember in December what we wrote in January. Im not going to do that, mostly because I dont want to think about how 2017 is going to unfold. I suspect Ill be spending most of it on hold with Blue Cross-Blue Shield, unless Im cowering in the coal cellar hoping Ive got enough saltines and canned water to last until the street stops glowing. And who wants to think about stuff like that?

Instead, Id like to talk about some things Id like to seein the world of drinks, I mean, not the one where the President wants to loaf on Twitter all day trolling his enemies (who seem to include the majority of the American people) and his cabinet seems to be more interested in working the American people than working for them.

Ten years ago, I published a book called Imbibe, an in-depth look at how drinks were made in the nineteenth century, before the advent of sour mix and peach-flavored schnapps and anything in a bar coming out of a gun but lead slugs. In it, I had to propose a whole bunch of work-arounds for ingredients you couldnt get in America. Some, in fact, you couldnt get anywhere. Now, you can get all of them. High-proof Jamaican Punch rum, rich old genever, every kind of bitters imaginable (and some that, in my naivete, I would have thought unimaginable). Weve even got Batavia arrack, creme de violette and aged peach brandy, things not seen here since World War II. In other words, weve got plenty of hooch. There, are, however, still a few little things I would appreciate having around, and a couple of other things Id like to see in bars.

Korn

One is Korn. Not the bandbut you knew that. No, here I mean the German grain spirit, made in various parts of that country since the 1500s and unavailable here since we made our own version and called it rye whiskey. That was in the 1700s. Nowadays, I have to admit that this isnt the most fascinating spirit on earth: its distilled from rye or barley or a mixture of them, to a pretty high proof, meaning there isnt a surfeit of flavor left. When its aged, its in well-used barrels, so it doesnt get very oaky. If, however, you get a good one, you end up with a smooth, light and creamy spirit with a hint of grain. Sort of a midpoint between Jameson and, say, Absolut. On its own, perhaps not very useful, but when mixed into a cocktail, Ive found it allows for some lovely, subtle drinks that dont taste of whiskey but nonetheless have more body and richness than vodka will give you.

Canadian Corn Whisky

Another thing from that same, subtle slice of the whiskey pie that we cant get is old Canadian corn whisky. Brands up there took their time in embracing the modern whiskey craze and all that it entails, including special bottlings. The last few years, however, have seen distillers bottle up and market some of their blending rye and a couple of their other flavoring whiskiesthe things they mix with the light corn whisky to make the blends. Over the last couple of years, though, by visiting some of the countrys huge distilleries, Ive had the chance to taste that corn whisky. It comes in two kinds, it turns out. One of them is essentially barrel-aged vodka: thin and neutral and forgettable. But theres another kind that some of the distilleries, such as Crown Royals huge one in Gimli, north of Winnipeg, make: its still 100-percent corn, but its distilled to a little lower proof and, after eight years or so of aging in well-used barrels, it has a lot more flavor and a light creaminess thats damned appealing. Its like the distilled essence of caramel popcorn. Im hoping it will get its turn.

Cordial Medoc

Theres one more bottle Id love to see on liquor store shelves, and thats Cordial Medoc. One of those venerable local liqueurs in which France used to abound, this brand, made since 1878 by the G. A. Jourde company in Bordeaux, is a brandy-based thing, not oversweet and lightly flavored with various fruits and spices. The company will tell you its primarily Curacao oranges that you taste, but I think theres a lot of peach in there. In any case, this is one of those things, like maraschino liqueur or a good orange curacao, where a splash wakes up a simple cocktail and makes it just a wee bit mysterious. I got a couple of the slim, 375-ml bottles that this liqueur comes in early last year from a European website and, looking through the little notebook where I record my cocktail creations such as they are, I seem to have used it in about 30 different drinks. It would be nice to be able to buy it in the U.S.

Italian Bar Snacks

On to more important matters. If you order a cocktail at a cafe in Italy, the waiter brings you your drink, of course. But invariably he also brings you a little caddy with small dishes of potato chips and olives and, often, some nibbles of pizza or fried tidbits. This may be the most civilized drinking ritual on earth, and I wish American bars would copy this practice. It slows the drinking a bit, gives you something to do with your hands and makes you feel like the establishment wants you to be happy. Plus, the potato chips will give the hipsters something else to work their competitive craftiness on. And these are our house-made bulgogi-flavored potato chips. On second thought.

Virtual Jukebox

Finally, theres the jukebox. I love a good jukebox more than anything else a bar has to offer. If there were a watering hole that had only swill beer, not even very cold, and butterscotch schnapps, but had a working Rock-Ola with the 45 of Ripples 1973 classic, I Dont Know What It Is But It Sure Is Funky, I would do all my drinking there. Ideally, of course, Id be able to also have great drinks with my killer jukebox. But jukeboxes are fragile thingsand by jukebox, I dont mean those digital Internet things; those are to 45-rpm or CD jukeboxes as our 45th President is to our 16th (thats Abraham Lincoln, just so you dont have to look it up). Even when I find the real McCoy in cocktail bars, they seem to usually be out of order. I guess there arent a lot of jukebox mechanics left floating around out there. But as much as I love the physical device, what I love most about the jukebox is the fact that its a negotiation between the house and the customer; that, as youre drinking, you get some control over the music youre listening to, but theres not so much control that some tipsy nimrod could abuse it by playing 114 Journey songs in a row. The house picks the pool of songs (and theres nothing better than a bar that does this well), and you and your fellow lushes pick which and what order.

What Id like to see, then, is some clever cuss cobble together an iPad app that could do this; one that made the infernal little device into a virtual Rock-Ola: 100 records, each with an A-side and a B-side by the same artist, with settings for the house to determine whether the songs are played first-come, first-served or, like the old mechanical jukeboxes, according to which comes next in the order theyre listed in. You could even put a credit card reader on the thing; Lord knows, back in the day I used to spend as much money on the box as I did on beer and Overholt. But if someone does this, I hope they do it quick, cause pretty soon were gonna have a whole new crop of punk bands to listen to.
Sen. Chuck Schumer is acutely aware that one moment you can be basking in the golden glow of Donald Trumps compliments and the next freezing in the shade of his Twitter feed.

Like how on the one hand Trump said he gets along with the New York senator better than his Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell, but on the otheras of this weekthe president-elect called Schumer a clown.

Schumer couldnt care less either way.

It doesnt faze me in the least, he said in an interview with The Daily Beast on Thursday inside his new Capitol Hill office. The name-calling doesnt bother me and Im not going to engage in a petty, babyish street fight of name-calling. Im going to stick to the substance.

Schumer is in the process of literally and figuratively moving into the role of the leader of the Democratic Party. His office suite is cluttered with boxes and his head is filled with ideas for how a depleted Democratic minority can still make progress despite being outnumbered at every turn.

He made part of those plans clear during a meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Wednesday. If the Trump administration wants Schumers help getting presidential appointments through in a quick and timely manner, he said, theyll have to give Democrats something in return: fair hearings.

I told him, Look, what we are asking for is fair, and if you can help us with that, that would be great they want to try to fill up particularly the national-security appointments quickly, he said. But I told them that if they dont give us fair hearings on the eight people we ask for, none of whom are national security, then we couldnt cooperate on anything.

The eight nominees in the Democratic crosshairs include Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Tom Price, Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, Office of Management and Budget director nominee Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, Labor Secretary pick Andy Puzder, and Trumps pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

Schumer has asked for extra scrutiny for the eight nominees, including at least two days of hearings for each, the completion of their full paperwork, and their tax returns.

Schumer added, Ive been talking to Mitch McConnell, weve been having fruitful discussions, and if he can give us what we need here, we are not going to demand everything, we can be more flexible on the schedule on the floor and on moving fairly quickly on other nominees that are less controversial.

So far, the hearing schedule for Trumps nominees appears daunting. At least half a dozen are scheduled for the same day, a feat that hasnt been attempted since the early days of the Bush administration, when six nomineesseveral of them controversialwere slated for the same day in 2001.

Look, these nominees, there are three points about them, Schumer said. One, they havent gotten in their paperwork. Second, there are huge conflicts of interest Third, the ones we picked are all out of the mainstream and most of them are different than what Donald Trump campaigned on.

Schumer acknowledged that the glut of hearings will make it hard to get their message out that day, and Democrats dont have the votes to block Trumps Cabinet picks. But he promised that Democrats will take their arguments to the Senate floor if they feel like they were not heard during the committee process.

They have the right to schedule the hearings, but we can hold things up on the floor for a very long period of time, he said.

Thats not to say the next four years (at least) will devolve into a partisan standoff. During a recent meeting with Trump, Schumer remarked that the president-elects trillion-dollar infrastructure plan could be an area where deals could be made.

I said, You have to remember a few things if you try to do it by tax breaks. Youll get nothing thats really needed to be built and theyll be huge tolls, he said. So youve got to do it by real spending, and your hard-right people will not want to do that. So you are going to have to work with us if you need a major infrastructure built.

I said, To do it with us, you are going to have to break with the hard right, and he acknowledged that.

Another area in which Schumer said he could personally work with Trump is tradean issue where he is closer in principle to the incoming president than President Obama.

I dont agree with his solutions, but my trade position is closer to Trumps than it has been to Obamas and Bushs. I voted against NAFTA, Schumer said. I havent talked to any of them about trade. But I could work with them.

And thats not all.

I told Jeff Sessions that I didnt like his positions as attorney general, but tell Donald Trump to make you trade rep, and I will support you.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated throughout.

The gunman who attacked Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday was being prosecuted on charges of domestic violence, The Daily Beast has learned.

Esteban Santiago, 26, of Anchorage, Alaska, allegedly opened fire with a handgun at a baggage claim at the airport, killing five people and wounding eight others. After he ran out of bullets, witnesses reportedly said Santiago threw his gun to the ground and laid face down while he waited for officers. Santiago was taken into custody without incident.

According to charging documents provided by the Anchorage prosecutors office to The Daily Beast, on January 10, 2016, Santiago verbally assaulted his then girlfriend, a 40-year old mother of one child from a previous marriage whom The Daily Beast is not naming, through a locked bathroom door, telling her to Get the fuck out, bitch. After he forced his way in by breaking down the door, he smacked her in the head and strangled her. By the time police arrived, Santiago had fled the scene.

Santiago was arrested days later and released on the condition that he have no contact with the victim, but in February, Anchorage police found him at his girlfriends residence and he was charged for violating the conditions of his release. That case is still pending.

Alaska court records show a criminal record under Santiagos name for minor traffic infractions including operating a vehicle without insurance and a broken taillight. Records also show his landlord evicted him for non-payment of rent in February 2015.

The assault case was resolved in March when Santiago entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, an alternative to adjudication where prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charges in exchange for Estebans completion of requirements, the details of which are unknown. Anchorage municipal prosecutor Seneca Theno told The Daily Beast that the charges are unlikely to be dropped now, considering Santiagos alleged attack in Florida.

The attack began after Santiago arrived at the airport on a flight that originated in Alaska. Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca wrote on Facebook that Santiago had checked a handgun in his luggage and retrieved it at the baggage claim. LaMarca added that Santiago loaded the gun in a bathroom then came out and opened fire. NBC News, citing law enforcement officials, confirmed LaMarcas story.

Santiago served in the U.S. military, first in the Puerto Rico Army National Guard in 2007, according to the Department of Defense. He was deployed to Iraq in April 2010 as a combat engineer and returned to the U.S. in early 2011. In November 2014, after moving to Alaska, he joined the Alaska National Guard.

Santiago was given a general discharge from the military in August for unsatisfactory performance, a spokesperson for the Alaska National Guard told the Associated Press. Santiago went AWOL several times before he was kicked out.

Santiagos sibling, Bryan, described his brother as pro-American and spiritual.

Santiago visited an FBI office in Anchorage in 2016, claiming voices were telling him to fight for ISIS, according to CBS News. Santiago also reportedly believed he was being controlled by the CIA to watch ISIS videos. Santiagos brother said he had since been receiving psychological counseling.

According to his aunt, Santiago became a father in September. More recently, he was hospitalized for two weeks.

Like a month ago, it was like he lost his mind, Maria Luisa Ruiz of New Jersey told the Bergen Record newspaper. He said he saw things.

Additional reporting by Olivia Messer and Kimberly Dozier
PARISMarine Le Pen, 48, who could very possibly be the next president of France, speaks positively but with a certain reserve about U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump. Its the kind of hesitation one hears when someone talks about a potential ally or partner who might, just might, be crazy. Because Trump does give that impression in Europe and, whatever one might say about her, Le Pen does not.

So, for all the general approbation shes expressed about Trumps election, and all the nice things Trump counselor Stephen Bannon has said about her Front National party, and especially about her comely young niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen (Europes New Rock Star of the Right, as Breitbart headlined), according to Marine Le Pen, nobody in her party has had relations  with Mr. Bannon or any other member of the provisional administration of Donald Trump.

In fact, the mention of her niece and Bannon seemed to set Marine Le Pen off her stride. There are some figures in the Front National, she said, who have longstanding ties to a few Republican leaders, but not exactly to Trump. Me, I I  she said, hesitating and calculating, I think that these relations will deepen when I will have been elected president.

So Trump, Bannon, and her niece seem to be points of some confusion for Marine Le Pen. But in an hour-long conference with the Anglo-American Press Association here which ignored almost entirely the likely opponents she will face in the French presidential elections next April, there were two figures she spoke about with perfect clarity: Hillary Clinton, who seems to represent everything she hates; and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who appears to be able to do no wrong. Indeed, she often seemed to be reciting Kremlin talking points.

Asked whether Russian cyber espionage and hacking might pose a threat to French elections, Marine Le Pen turned the question to a vitriolic diatribe describing Clinton as the chouchouthe pet or darlingof all the interests Le Pen claims to be fighting.

The cyber attack scenarios sketched by the American intelligence community are hypotheses about nefarious plots that sound like old diatribes in which whenever something bad happens the Russians are the reason, said Le Pen.

There may be some facts involved, she suggested, but she meant the ones that were filtered out through WikiLeaks, according to the American intelligence establishment, after being leaked to Australian anarchist Julian Assange by Russian intermediaries. Specifically, her references were to materials that turned up in the hacked emails of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.

One cant say that the people who carried out the cyber attacks brought about the election of Mr. Trump, said Le Pen. What might possibly have brought about the election of Monsieur Trump is the revelation of Madame Hillary Clintons deepest thoughts, and the commitments she made to some of the great financial powers, and thats what its about.

(Among Podestas emails siphoned through WikiLeaks were the texts of speeches Clinton made behind closed doors to Goldman Sachs and other groups.)

Le Pen said she finds it stunning that the Americans would be trying to teach a lesson about dirty tricks in cyber espionage given that it was revealedby former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now resident in Russiathat the United States carried out illegal taps on virtually the entirety of the European leadership.

The least one can say, said Le Pen, is that is not a friendly act, and neither altogether respectable or worthy.

So, as Le Pen put it, she feels no misgiving at all about Russian hacking having an impact on the French electionsand then she riffed on Clinton, saying the hacking story was just an excuse for the failure of she who was the favoritelets say it, the chouchou of the system, the chouchou of the media, the chouchou of the global political class, the chouchou of those who are looking, precisely, to put in place this world government, the chouchou of the banks, the great multinationals.

To blame the Russians because people voted against all that is pathetic, said Le Pen.

Nor should the Russians (Soviets) be blamed for the Cold War. As Le Pen recently told CNBC, the Americans started that. So, too, with the war in Ukraine: it all began because the European Union tried to turn Ukraine against Russia, then staged an illegal coup, then, backed by the United States, set up an anti-Russian government in a country where we all know part looks East and part looks West.

Nor should Putin be blamed for the slaughter in Syria, because, we all know, as Le Pen told the Anglo-American Press Association on Friday, that there is no moderate opposition to the Assad regime there. Russia, France, and the United States need to unite against the really big threat, Islamic Fundamentalism.

And so on.

Did it matter, she was asked, that she had gotten financing for her campaign from a Russian bank? Her answer: no French bank would finance the campaign, which is true, and when you get a loan from a bank it doesnt control your life, you just have to pay it back.

Le Pen is smart, capable, articulate, and when she talks about France her combination of nationalism and socialism may very well take her to victory in the second presidential round in May.

Listening to Le Pen talk about the United States and Russia, one came away with the impression she has learned the talking points wellmuch better and in much more detail than Trump.

The only moment she seemed off balance was when we mentioned her niece, Marion, who has sided with her father, Jean-Marie, who founded the Front National and spent years playing the press with feints at fascist rhetoric. Marine, looking for a broader constituency, expelled him from the party and at least since then her relations with Rock Star Marion are said to be testy. The internal feuding in the Front National is the talk of the town.

Ironically, for all of Marine Le Pens skill at mobilizing a large part of the French electorate, her enumeration of Clintons sins, and her photographic memory of Russias virtues, her family feuds may be her partys fatal flaw.

Thats a common analysis in France these days.

But, like the common analyses before Brexit and before Trump, maybe thats just wishful thinking.
He dropped off a stray pooch at a shelterand half an hour later, cops fatally shot him for refusing to show ID.

On Dec. 30, 2014, Robert Lawrencea 30-year-old Alabama mandrove a stray dog to an animal shelter near his home in Dothan. Shelter staff asked Lawrence for his license and he refused, citing personal beliefs. He continued to refuse to show ID after police arrived on the scene. Minutes later, an officer fired a fatal shot into Lawrences abdomen.

Everything about the events of that day is under dispute, including Lawrences reasons for refusing to provide identification. After Lawrence died, the Dothan Police Department released a statement claiming hed identified as a sovereign citizen, a person who believes themselves exempt from most national laws. The loose movement has been associated with a series of extremists, some of whom have carried out ambush attacks on police officers. But according to a new lawsuit, Lawrence was unarmed and unthreatening when police shot him in the stomach outside the animal shelter.

And those who know him say he wasnt a sovereign citizen at all.

Robert was no sovereign citizen, his former lawyer Terry Bullard told The Daily Beast. Bullard represented Lawrence through years of brushes with police, which included several incidents in which Lawrence lacked proper identification or drove on a suspended license, public records show. Police came up with that sovereign citizen crap from somewhere else.

Bullard said he knew the officer who shot Lawrence; that she was overcome with guilt; and that he did not believe polices description of Lawrence as a sovereign citizen was an attempt to smear the dead man.

But the detail is important to those who knew Lawrence.

Sovereign citizens, while not a unified group, have a fraught relationship with the law, which they believe often does not apply to them. Though the movement exploded on the far right during the early Obama years, its roots are in a cluster of old conspiracy theories that claim the current U.S. government is invalid. Sovereign citizens might claim all currency is a fraud (since its not based on the gold standard), or believe every American is secretly a corporation (each of which has a personal trust fund worth millions of dollars that is being withheld from them by the Treasury), or that any authorities above the county sheriff are ineligible to enforce laws (thereby freeing sovereign citizens of nearly any law they do not wish to follow). Believing themselves to be the victims of a tyrannical conspiracy, some sovereign citizens have carried out brutal murders of authorities, swiftly becoming one of the leading groups of cop-killers in recent years. In 2010, the FBI characterized the group as a major terrorist threat, and police websites have published countless guides on safely dealing with possible members.

While not all sovereign citizens are necessarily violent, the group is known for sometimes-tense relations with police. And so those close to Lawrence do not want the term to justify his death. After the shooting, his family also allegedly disputed his characterization as a sovereign citizen, according to one blogger who claimed to have spoken with them.

Lawrences refusal to provide a drivers license at the animal shelter is among the only details on which both his friends and law enforcement agree.

Shelter employees demanded that Lawrence provide a drivers license as identification, reads the new excessive force lawsuit filed by the administrator of Lawrences estate last week. The suit names the city of Dothan and three police officers as defendants. The city declined to comment on the suit, and Lawrences lawyers were unavailable for comment on Thursday.

Lawrence provided his name but refused to provide a drivers license based on his personal convictions and beliefs, the suit reads.

Shelter staff called police on a disorderly conduct complaint, during which officers accused him of growing belligerent.

One officer refused to let Lawrence leave the shelter until he produced a drivers license, the suit alleges. The officer allegedly tackled Lawrence, then let him up without cuffing him, and continued to ask for Lawrences license, while Lawrence continued to refuse to produce. Eventually, the officer announced Lawrences arrest, at which point Lawrence backed away with his hands up to resist his arresting officers, the suit claims. At this point, the officer tased Lawrence while another officer arrived on the scene for assistance.

But Lawrences lawyers say he presented no threat. Lawrence did not assault or attempt to assault any officer, the suit reads, adding that Lawrence who openly carrie[d] a handgun, removed his gun and put it in his glovebox when [police] arrived.

Despite the lack of any threat of death or serious bodily harm to any officer, [the second officer] drew her weapon, the estates lawyers claim. With the first officer allegedly looking on, the second officer then shot Lawrence in the abdomen. Lawrence died from the gunshot wound.

Police gave a different story.

After repeatedly being told to calm down, Lawrence was advised he was being placed under arrest, Dothan Police Sgt. Maurice Eggleston told Alabama.com after the shooting. A physical altercation ensued, to which Lawrence was shot in the abdomen.

But two years after the shooting, little evidence has been made public. Police have not released a police report on the incident, and refused to release one to The Daily Beast unless served with a subpoena. An investigation by Alabama District Attorney Doug Valeska concluded with a secret grand jury proceeding which declined to indict Lawrences arresting officers. During the proceeding, the jury reportedly viewed three videos of the incident, none of which have been released to the public.

In their suit, Lawrences lawyers wrote that the videos would prove excessive force by the officers.

Despite reviewing evidence, including video recordings, clearly showing that Lawrences rights were violated, city policymakers determined the actions of the officers were within policy and constitutional limits, the suit claimed.

Lawrence should never have been made to produce his license, his estates lawyers argue, adding that his failure to do so was not grounds for arrest.

Because the detention and arrest were unlawful, under Alabama law Lawrence had a right to resist the arrest, his suit claims.

Bullard, Lawrences former lawyer, said Lawrence was stubborn, maybe not a sovereign citizen, but the type of person to refuse police on principle.

Robert had an unusual personality. He was a deep-thinking person, Bullard said. He was a good guy, always getting into minor stuff with police because he was hard-headed. He believed police should follow the rules.

Lawrences brushes with the law were more than minor. Earlier in 2014, Lawrence was the subject of restraining orders from two women with whom hed had children, the Dothan Eagle reported. One woman claimed he had choked her, while the other claimed he had threatened to kill her. Court records also show a 2006 arrest on aggravated stalking charges, and at least three later charges of driving without proper identification or registration.

In 2013 he was charged with making terrorist threats in a 2013 call to the State Department of Human Resources, during which he threatened to take a child hostage. A 2014 plea deal reduced the charge to a misdemeanor. Lawrence made the threat in order to get attention in a custody battle, his lawyers said.

Even then, authorities struggled to identify his ideology and exactly what threat he posed, Geneva County District Attorney Kirke Adams told the Dothan Eagle at the time.

During his call to the Department of Human Resources, Lawrence did not identify as a sovereign citizen, Adams said, but he sure showed signs of being anti-government.
Sometimes, in his covert influence campaign against America, Vladimir Putin need do nothing but sit back and chuckle mirthlessly while U.S. officials shoot themselves in the foot. Such was the case last week when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a technical expose of Russias hacking that industry experts are slamming as worse than uselessso jumbled that it potentially harms cybersecurity, so aimless that it muddies the clear public evidence that Russia hacked the Democratic Party to affect the election, and so wrong it enables the Trump-friendly conspiracy theorists trying to explain away that evidence.

At every level this report is a failure, says security researcher Robert M. Lee. It didnt do what it set out to do, and it didnt provide useful data. Theyre handing out bad information to the industry when good information exists. At issue is the Joint Analyses Report released by DHS last Thursday as part of the Obama administrations long-awaited response to Russias election hacking. The 13-page document was widely expected to lay out the governments evidence that Russia was behind the intrusions into the Democratic National Committees private network, and a separate attack that exposed years of the private email belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

Instead, the report is a gumbo of earnest security advice mixed with random information from a broad range of hacking activity. One piece of well-known malware used by criminal hackers, the PAS webshell, is singled out for special attention, while the sophisticated Russian SeaDuke code used in the DNC hack barely rates a mention. A full page of the report is dedicated to listing names that computer security companies have assigned to Russian malware and hacking groups over the years, information that nobody is asking for.

Rather than focusing on the Russian intelligence services, the U.S. seemingly opted to gather all Russia-sourced hacking under a single rubric, code named Grizzly Steppe, putting everything from online bank heists to identity theft in the same bucket as the Kremlin-linked intrusions into the White House, State Department, and the DNC.

Though the written report is confusing, its the raw data released along with it that truly exasperates security professionals. The department released 876 internet IP addresses it says is linked to Grizzly Steppe hacking, and urged network administrators everywhere to add the list to their networking monitoring.

Lists of IP addresses used by hackers can be useful indicators of compromise in network securityadmins can check the list against access logs, or program an intrusion detection system to sound the alarm when it sees traffic from a suspect address. But that assumes that the list is good: carefully culled, and surrounded with enough context that administrators know what to do when they get a hit.

The DHS list is none of these things, as Lee, founder of the cyber security firm Dragos, discovered when he ran the list against a stored cache of known clean traffic his company keeps around for testing. The results stunned him. We had thousands of hits, he says. We had an extraordinary high amount of false positives on this dataset Six of them were Yahoo e-mail servers.

It turns out that some, perhaps most, of the watchlisted addresses have a decidedly weak connection to the Kremlin, if any. In addition to the Yahoo servers, about 44 percent of the addresses are exit nodes in the Tor anonymity network, The Intercepts Micah Lee reported Wednesday. Tor is free software used primarily for anonymous web browsing. Russian hackers use Tor, but so do plenty of other people.

If you just create a list of all the IP addresses that could deliver you a virus or an attack, Tor exit nodes belong therethats true, says security expert and blogger Robert Graham. But its not useful. If its Yahoo, its not useful. Its not something that you can blacklist or watchlist. Yahoo servers, the Tor network, and other targets of the DHS list generate reams of legitimate traffic, and an alarm system thats always ringing is no alarm system at all.

The consequences of the over inclusive list became apparent last week, when a Vermont utility company, Burlington Electric Department, followed DHSs advice and added the addresses to its network monitoring setup. It got an alert within a day. The utility called the feds, and The Washington Post soon broke the distressing news that Russian hackers penetrated [the] U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont.

The story was wrong. Not only was the laptop in question isolated from the utilitys control systems, the IP address that triggered the alert wasnt dangerous after all: It was one of the Yahoo servers on the DHS list, and the alert had been generated by a Burlington Electric employee checking email. The Post article was later corrected, but not before Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy issued a statement condemning the putative Russian attack.

The incident illustrates why the DHS watchlistwith a high false-positive rate, and no explanation of why a particular address made the listis useless to network administrators already fighting alert fatigue, says Lee. When they alert you, you have no context, you dont know what to do, he says. Your only course of action then is to call the government.

The Grizzly Steppe report also gives succor to those who argue that the identity of the DNC and John Podesta hackers is unknown, and perhaps unknowablea position reiterated by President-elect Donald Trump this week. [A] 14 year old could have hacked Podesta, Trump tweeted Wednesday, quoting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Much of the skepticism about the Russian hacking, including Donald Trumps, follows a simple and intuitive narrative: The administration is publicly accusing Russia, while jealously hoarding whatever evidence it has to support that accusation. The press is guilty of regurgitating the governments claims on pure faith, just as it did with Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

By kind-of-but-not-really publishing forensic data on the DNC and Podesta hacks, and mixing it with other material, the administration fed right into that story line and fattened it up.

WikiLeaks made hayand 6,500 retweetsoff the reports random inclusion of the PAS webshellcommon malware that nobody has connected to the DNC hacks. Russian hacking sample provided by U.S. government is common malware, the group wrote. The Kremlin-controlled news outlet Sputnik News latched on to the reports many problems to write the headline Experts Destroy White House Proof of Russian Hacking.

The administration, though, never claimed that the Grizzly Steppe report would prove anything, and thanks to a recent BuzzFeed scoop, we now know that the FBI didnt even examine the DNCs harddrives, a development that was perplexing Trump late Thursday. (So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? Trump tweeted. What is going on?) Instead, it was a respected computer security company called Crowdstrike that examined the servers, and publicly revealed Russians involvement in the DNC hacks last year. It backed up the claim with specific technical information far more useful than anything in the DHS report. Crowdstrike competitors, including Symantec and FireEye, have examined the forensic data from the DNC hack themeselves, and endorsed Crowdstrikes conclusion that two particular hacking groups were the culprits: Fancy Bear and The Dukes.

To skeptics, those hacking groups are shadowy apparitions, as likely to be Julian Assanges 14-year-old hacker or Donald Trumps 400 pound guy as any national government. But to analysts in the computer security industry, the hackers are old, familiar adversaries that theyve been watching under a microscope for the better part of a decade.

The first group, called Fancy Bear or APT28 has been active since at least mid-2007. The group typically begins its attacks with targeted spearphishing emails crafted to trick the recipient into clicking on a link or downloading a malicious file. Then the group installs backdoors controlled through a cloud of command-and-control servers deployed around the world. Its targets have included NATO, several U.S. defense contractors, the German parliament and, after Russias doping scandal began, the World Anti-Doping Agency. One of the command-and-control servers used in the DNC hack was reportedly also used in the Bundestagand intrusion.

The other group, commonly called the Dukes or APT29, was first spotted operating in Chechnya in 2008. Stealthier and more cautious than Fancy Bear, the Dukes have nonetheless been detected infiltrating the White House, the State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Known for innovationone attack campaign used Twitter as a command-and-control channelthey have their own fleet of customizable malware, including a program called Seaduke that they only bring out for the really important targets, and which was found again on the DNCs network.

Security companies can tell you much more about these groups, their code, their infrastructures, and their methods. (The Finnish security firm F-Secure has an excellent 34-page write-up of the Dukes, and FireEye has a deep dive into Fancy Bear, among many other reports by different companies.) (PDF) From analysis of the dozens of malware packages used exclusively by these hackers, researchers can tell you that theyre usually compiled on machines with the language set to Russian. Both groups operate during working hours in Russia, and take Russian holidays off. Their targets are radically different from those of for-profit criminals hackers in Eastern Europe or anywhere elseno banks, no retailers with credit card numbers to stealalways governments, companies, journalists, NGOs, and other targets that the Russian government would be interested in.

In other words, these hackers dont operate like 14-year-olds. They sometimes use off-the-shelf hacking tools, but more often they deploy industrial scale malware no teenagers have access to. They hit targets of interest to spies, not kids. And virtually all the public analysis of these two groups concludedwell before it became a political issue with the DNC hackthat they are likely controlled by the Russian government.

The evidence, then, that Russia interfered with the election is already solid, and is supported by years of work by the security industry. If youve been following along, all the evidence that matters is already public, Lee notes. This is one case out of hundreds that theyve investigate involving the same hackers. Its all very, very consistent, it all makes sense, its all very, very solid, he says. Its just that the government is now confusing everyone.

DHS defends the broad list, and urges network administrators to follow up on any hits. We know the Russians are a highly capable adversary who conduct technical operations in a manner intended to blend into legitimate traffic, the department said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. Because the IPs are in the logs does not mean there has been malicious activity. It is, however, cause for a further look to determine if malware, for example, may be resident.

Just dont tell that to Graham, the cybersecurity specialist who found a watchlisted Yahoo address in his own logs. He says the discovery didnt move him to call DHS, nor to examine his hard drive for evidence of attack.

The Russians didnt hack my browser, he says. I just used Yahoo.
Far rightwing figureheads immediately invented an elaborate and racist conspiracy theory that CNN had lightened a photo of alleged Fort Lauderdale airport shooter Esteban Santiago shortly after the Friday attack.

In reality, CNN had yet to air a picture of Santiago, let alone lightened a picture of him. The conspiracy also used a picture of an entirely different man named Esteban Santiagonot the alleged shooter.

Still, writers at websites like InfoWars and Gateway Pundit tweeted about CNNs nonexistent Photoshop job. Former Republican Florida Congressman Allen West, who represented Fort Lauderdale itself, even tweeted about the conspiracy and linked to an article about it on his own website.

Why is CNN attempting to make the shooter look more white? Bizarre, reads InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watsons tweet, which had 3,500 retweets at press time.

Gateway Pundits Jim Hoft even wrote a story about the so-called incident, titled Look How CNN Doctored Photo of Ft. Lauderdale Shooter Esteban Santiago, which had 2,500 shares in its first hour on Facebook, according to BuzzSumo.

It appears CNN doctored the photo to make the suspect look more white, wrote Hoft. Sad.

The attached picture, which was neither aired nor lightened by CNN, is of a 39-year-old Esteban Santiago, who lives in New York state. The image was pulled from a Florida sex offender registry.

Instead, the Esteban Santiago who shot 13 people and left five dead in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport on Friday was born in New Jersey and spent the last several years living in Anchorage, Alaska. According to officials, he is 26, not 39, and is currently in police custody.

A real image of the shooter circulated on the internet hours later, confirming that he is not the 39-year-old Santiago showed in Watsons tweet and Gateway Pundits article.

Alt-right Twitter accounts appear to have helped create the confusion. After media personality Tariq Nasheed tweeted, there are reports that the identity of one of the Ft. Lauderdale shooting suspects is a white Hispanic named Esteban Santiago, verified alt-right Twitter user @BakedAlaska tweeted a screenshot of Nasheeds tweet, along with a picture of the wrong Santiago.

Esteban Santiago is not white. Hes hispanic, wrote @BakedAlaska, whose real name is Tim Treadstone and recently made headlines for anti-Semitic comments.

Hofts story links to a tweet by the user @alphakangz, whose account has only existed since November.

UNDOCTORED PHOTO vs. photo @CNN USED PHOTO of Esteban Santiago, the alleged FLL airport shooter #FortLauderdale pray for the victims, the account tweeted.

Minutes later, a copy of the lightened photo of the 39-year-old Santiago, falsely claiming CNN attribution, appeared on Watsons Twitter feed.

Update 6:31 p.m.: Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft emailed The Daily Beast about an hour after this story's initial publication.

"I pulled the post," he said.

"UPDATE  THIS MAY BE A DIFFERENT ESTEBAN SANTIAGO," the story now reads.

The Daily Beast reached out to Watson for comment. His tweet is still visible on his account.
The last time most Americans saw Keegan-Michael Keys Luther, he was serving as anger translator for the real President Obama at 2015s White House Correspondents Dinner. Since then, Key & Peele ended its five-season run on Comedy Central and Donald Trump was elected as Obamas successor.

So there was plenty to be angry about when Keys Luther and Jordan Peeles Obama came together again on The Daily Show Thursday night, just 14 days before the 44th presidents second term will come to an end.

As Key told Trevor Noah, one of the sketch shows former writers decided to write a final Obama and Luther sketch and the guys jumped at the chance to perform it. We thought it only apropos, and everybody on Twitter was, like, What are you doing? You have to do something! he said. So were doing it, and its happening right now.

Introducing his anger translator one last time, Peeles Obama said, Ive told Luther he can join me for this last address but that his being on his very best behavior is crucial to healing the divide in this country.

Keep it chill, Luther, Key told himself. Go against every natural instinct in your body. When Obama brought up the election, Luther held it together for a couple of seconds before screaming, Trump!? How did this happen, man? Get the fuck out of here!

As Obama said, the country is going to have to accept somebody else calling the shots. Luther added, Vladimir Putin! Weve got a naked Ruskie on horseback whos going to be running the show. In Obamas words, the people have spoken, but as Luther put it, They voted for Hillary Clinton but this outdated Electoral College mumbo jumbo bullshit

Obama told the country that he enjoyed his time as president, before Luther clarified, except for when the Republicans wouldnt let me do shit and that one dude said I wasnt born here, but then yall elected him, so you know what? Didnt love that part so much. So pretty much the beginning, middle, and end sucked! Obama wants Trump to succeed, but Luther added, Unless he succeeds with all the shit he promises to succeed with. In that case were fucked.

Luther even read aloud Obamas confidential note to incoming President Trump: Go fuck yourself. And just when you thought he was done, he threw in one last threat: I got my eye on you, pussy-grabber.

And thats when it hit America: The end of the Obama era is also the end of the Key & Peele era.
A lone gunman opened fire at Floridas Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday afternoon, killing five people and injuring eight others, according to the Broward County Sheriffs Office. Law enforcement has said the gunman is in custody. The shooting occured at about 1 p.m. in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2. The FAA ordered a ground stop to all flights from the airport. The airport was also evacuated and is now closed.

"All of a sudden I heard screaming and running, people coming from security, yelling 'He has a gun, he has a gun!,'" said Gene Messina, who was reportedly at the airport to pick up his friends.

Sen. Bill Nelson told reporters on Friday that the alleged shooter was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago. According to Nelson, Santiago has a military ID and was armed with a handgun.

Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca posted on Facebook that Santiago was a passenger on a flight with a checked gun. "He claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it," LaMarca wrote. "Came out shooting people in baggage claim."

"He was holding a black handgun and he was just shooting randomly into the crowd," witness John Schicher told MSNBC. "There were elderly people who were shot and killed, there were two people to my left and two people to my right that were shot."

NBC News reports that two eyewitnesses said a young man opened fire with a handgun. He apparently ran out of bullets, then laid down and waited for police to come.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said in 3:30 p.m. press conference that Santiago is unharmed and that law enforcement officials fired no shots during his arrest. Israel said he believes it is too soon in the investigation to determine whether terrorism is a factor in Friday's attack.

The Army National Guard told ABC News that Santiago was honorably discharged four months ago. His last post was in Ft. Greely, Alaska. His brother, Bryan Santiago, reportedly told NBC News that Santiago received psychological treatment while he was living in Alaska, where he moved two years ago. He served in Puerto Rico and Iraq. He was "pro-America," Bryan told reporters.

National Security Council Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that President Obama is aware of the situation. The President was apprised this afternoon by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco of the shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport and will be kept updated as the investigation unfolds, he said.

Gov. Rick Scott said in an afternoon press conference, "Pray for the individuals who ended up in the hospital, pray that every one of them survives." He added, "Whoever is responsible will be held accountable to the full extent of the law."

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted about the shooting on Friday afternoon. He wrote, Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said airborne flights within about 50 miles of the airport will be landing but that any other flights will be delayed or diverted to other locations. Travelers headed to FLL should check with their air carriers, the statement said.

The airport saw nearly 27 million passengers in 2015. It handles 650 commercial flights per day.
Joe Scarborough and Sean Hannity are trying to out-repulsive each other.

Early on Friday, the Morning Joe host marveled on MSNBC at how stupid Republicans who once viewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as enemy number one but are now embracing him as a more reliable source than U.S. intelligence officials look.

Aside from President-Elect Donald Trump, no one better represents this phenomenon than Fox News Hannity, who once accused Assange of waging war against the U.S. and called for his arrest, but just this week traveled to London for a friendly sit-down with him at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Sean Hannity istheres a bromance there? Scarborough remarked on Friday morning. Its repulsive!

Apparently, Hannity caught wind of the criticism. A few hours after Scarborough made his comments, Hannity began laying into him on Twitter, latching onto the one word that seems to have gotten under his skin.

As a jumping off point, Hannity used a back-and-forth argument Scarborough was having with former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon about the leaking of classified documents. But that issue was not Hannitys biggest concern. Instead, he went on a Trumpian Twitter rant about Scarboroughs ratings.

Hannity then pivoted to accuse Scarborough of trying to get hired by Fox News just as Foxs Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren are moving the other way.

Hannity went on to accuse Scarborough of lying about his attendance at Trumps New Years Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Despite the fact that he was photographed schmoozing with Trump poolside, Scarborough said on his show that he and co-host Mika Brzezinski were only there for a meeting with the president-elect about a future interview.

Labeling Scarborough Repulsive Joe in the same way Trump coined Lyin Ted and Crooked Hillary, Hannity then began openly questioning the MSNBC hosts conservatism.

And finally, he dug all the way back to 2010 to make fun of Scarborough for having his syndicated radio show canceled.

So far, at least, Scarborough has resisted the urge to take Hannitys bait on Twitter.

More than anything, the fiery feud between to two cable news stalwarts demonstrates how each man plans to position himself as the Trump presidency begins later this month. Hannity was staunchly loyal to Trump throughout his presidential run, even defying his networks standards by appearing in an official campaign ad. Scarborough, on the other hand, has careened back and forth between declaring himself #NeverTrump and gloating over his accurate predictions that Trump could win.
By Press Trust of India: Jammu, Jan 6 (PTI) Bad weather conditions today forced new Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat to end his 3-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir on the second day.

Gen Rawat visited forward areas in Akhnoor sector in Jammu district this morning, army sources said.

Due to extreme weather conditions in Kashmir and Ladakh region, he skipped his visit to those areas and flew back to New Delhi, the sources said.

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On his maiden visit to Jammu and Kashmir after taking charge, Gen Rawat yesterday reviewed the security situation and favoured a dynamic strategy to handle the "proxy war".

Rawat commended the soldiers for "strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan".

The army chief had begun his day tour by visiting the Udhampur-based Northern Command where he was briefed by Lt Gen Devraj Anbu.

"The army chief chief reviewed the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir and also operational preparedness of Northern Command at a high-level meeting," officials said.

General Rawat lauded the role of the Northern Command in restoring peace and normalcy during the recent unrest, they said.

"We need to evolve a dynamic strategy to handle the proxy war and defeat enemys nefarious designs in Jammu and Kashmir," the army chief said.

Gen Rawat also flew yesterday to 16 Corps headquarters based in Nagrota and visited some forward areas in Akhnoor and Rajouri sectors where he interacted with troops.

Praising the soldiers for responding effectively to ceasefire violations,the army chief has said, "Every soldier of our army plays an important role towards security of the nation because it is the contribution of every soldier that makes the army efficient and strong."

Northern command looks after the operational command of Jammu and Kashmir and Line of Control (LoC), Actual Ground Position Level (AGPL) with Pakistan and Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in Ladakh.

General Rawat was slated to visit Srinagar?based 15 Corps headquarters and forward areas in Kupwara, counter insurgency formation in Anantnag besides 14 Corps in Leh and Siachen Glacier sector during his tour.

He was also scheduled to be visit formations at Kupwara and Anantnag.

Gen Rawat took charge on December 31, succeeding Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag, who retired after 42 years of service. PTI AB BSA

--- ENDS ---
A young seaman cook named Jose Andres was up in a mast of the Spanish navys tall ship Juan Sebastian Elcano as it joined a great parade of sailing vessels into New York Harbor in the late 1980s.

Coming under the Verrazano Bridge with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, being high up the mast hundreds of boats flying the American flag surrounding us everywhere, Andres would recall years later in the food website Eater. Manhattan, with its Twin Towers, gave me the most amazing welcome that anybody could have after being 30 days at sea The stars on the American flag equaled the stars in the skystars that, for sailors like me, were somehow guiding you forward, so you would not get lost in the ocean, you would not get lost in life.

Andres went on, To me, Americas flag is a symbol of a country trying to become a beacon of liberty, of freedom, of hope, a fighter for what is right in the world.

He was in his late teens, young enough to imagine anything for his future, maybe even becoming a celebrity chef and owner of nearly two-dozen restaurants.

He could never have imagined that the same principles he saw embodied by the American flag would lead him into a legal fight with a soon-to-be president of the United States who got elected by promising to Make American Great Again while stirring up profoundly un-American fears and prejudices.

All that was decades away in 1991, when Andres left the Spanish navy and came to America on an E2 visa. He had less than $50 and his cooking knives. He worked in a Spanish restaurant called Paradise Barcelona.

I came just to be one more cook in a restaurant, bringing the traditions of the country I was born into, he would recall to Eater. I didnt realize I was about to start working hard to earn the right to belong.

He proved to be a chef of uncommon ability and he soon had his own restaurant and soon after that half a dozen restaurants and then a dozen and then 20. He married a woman who worked in the Spanish embassy and they had three daughters.

On Nov. 14, 2013, he and his wife, Patricia, went to a Baltimore courtroom to be sworn in as U.S. citizens along with 72 other immigrants. He tweeted his joy afterward.

People of America! 4 hours ago my wife and I became AMERICAN CITIZENSthanks to all for being part of our world!

The official who administered the oath had reminded these newest Americans that true citizenship involves more than paperwork. Andres had already embraced that truth.

Ive learned that passports and official papers are not what really makes you belong somewhere, he later told Eater. What makes you belong is the hard work, the desire, the happiness that you bring to yourself, your loved ones, and to others, working hard to improve your community, to improve the lives of the people around you, to say, I am here to make a difference. You are not giving me the right to be part of something. I am working hard to earn my right to belong to something.

He saw a lesson in his story, telling a reporter, I need to make sure everybody understands that many immigrants like megiven the right opportunity like I was givenwe can have a positive impact in this amazing country.

On Nov. 19, 2014, one year and five days after he became a citizen, Andres signed a lease for his latest restaurant, this in Donald Trumps latest hotel, in Washington. D.C. Everything proceeded much as it had at Andres other ventures until June 16, 2015, when Trump formally declared his candidacy for president.

When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best, Trump said in his speech. Theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists.

In the days that followed, word reached Ivanka Trump that Andres was disturbed by the remarks. They had a conversation.

And I said, you know, its America, youre entitled to your political views, she would recall in a deposition. And I even told him hes entitled to express his political views, as is my father. And they are his views.

Jose has his own views.

She added, And thats one of the beautiful things about this country. But, you know, theres notheres no relevance to our collective project.

Andres suggested that Donald Trump might want to disavow his remark. Trump instead repeated much the same sentiments in a statement on July 6.

What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring in across the border. The United States has become a dumping ground for Mexico.

Andres announced that he could not continue in such circumstances and was abandoning plans to open a restaurant in the hotel. He noted in legal papers that he was suddenly confronted with the task of recruiting Hispanics and Hispaniophiles to work at a place closely associated with a man whose statements had made him a pariah for a majority of the Hispanic community.

And Andres had his own, personal feelings, first stirred when he stood on that mast as a young seafaring cook, sailing into New York Harbor.

I am an immigrant at heart, and I feel the value of immigrants like me, he subsequently wrote. We are bridges, we are not walls, walls that humanity has been working centuries to bring down.

Trump declared that Andres had broken the lease without legal justification and filed suit in District of Columbia Superior Court, seeking $10 million in damages. Trump filed a similar suit against another celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, who had also abandoned plans to open a restaurant at the hotel. Trumps deposition in the Zakarian suit took place on June 16 of 2016 in Washington, D.C., on the anniversary of the speech when he declared his candidacy and started the trouble with the chefs.

So a year ago today, Zakarians lawyer said.

6/16. Exactly today, Trump confirmed.

Trump said of the chefs, I dont understand why, why they did this. Im running for office. I obviously have credibility because I now, as it turns out, became the Republican nominee running against, we have a total of 17 people that were mostly senators and governors, highly respected people. So its not like, you know, like Ive said anything that could be so bad.

Trump reasoned as only Trump can, Because if I said something that was so bad, they wouldnt have had me go through all of these people and win all of these primary races.

Trump added, And Im pretty even in the polls or close to even in the polls right now.

Trump went on, So I was very surprised that [Zakarian] wanted to get out of the lease.

Zakarians attorney said, I think your daughter told me in her deposition that you dont email, and I observed that thats because youre a very smart person.

Trump replied, Yes. weve figured that out. Took a lot of people a long time to figure that out. Thats right.

The attorney asked, But do you make notes, do you have anything on paper related to this case?

Trump answered, No, I dont.

Trump revealed that he does, in fact, have a bedrock principle.

Well, over the years Ive seen many, many landlord/tenant disputes, and Ive seen horrible things said both ways. But Ibut thebut the tenant is never released from paying his rent.

He reiterated this tenet for tenants.

Ive seen unbelievable disputes where people are fighting like cats and dogs, and the tenant keeps paying the rent.

Zakarians attorney asked Trump, Did you give any thoughts to the effect that your statement relative to Mexicans and immigrants would have on tenants in your current or future projects?

Trump answered, No. No, I didnt. I didnt at all.

The attorney asked, Did it cause you any concern that all of these entities wanted to apparently distance themselves from you in the wake of your comments?

Trump answered, No. Im a big boy. I understand. Ive been making these statements, by the way, for many years. This is not just new.

Trump suggested that a business might in fact draw more customers by being associated with him.

They like to be around the name and maybe me, he said. I think people really dig it.

Both chefs countersued, but likely would have just let it all end if Trump had agreed to drop the matter. Trump refused, saying through a spokesman that if he settled he would make himself a target for other suits.

But Trump had no sooner been elected than he had paid $25 million to settle a civil fraud suit involving the now-defunct Trump University.

His real fear may be that if he lets these two chefs just walk away then others may follow.

And then there is that one bedrock principle to which Trump seems to ascribe, that crystalline tenet for tenants.

Pay the rent!

Trump did seek to avoid submitting to a deposition for the Andres case as well. His attorney argued in court papers that his children negotiated the lease and that he has not been involved in this dispute and, therefore, has only limited knowledge of the facts at issue. The attorney further argued that now Trump is the president-elect, he is extremely busy handling matters of very significant public importance.

The court noted that Trump personally signed the lease and that his statements regarding Hispanics were at the heart of the case, which Trump himself initiated. The court further observed that Andres had stated in his reply, The perception that Mr. Trumps statements were anti-Hispanic made it very difficult to recruit appropriate staff for a Hispanic restaurant, to attract the requisite number of Hispanic food patrons for a profitable enterprise, and to raise capital for what was now an extraordinarily risky Spanish restaurant.

The court continued, With respect to Plaintiffs claim that Mr. Trumps schedule renders it difficult for him to be present in the District of Columbia, Defendants have agreed to conduct the deposition in New York City.

The court ended with this:

ORDERED, that Plaintiff must produce Donald J. Trump for a deposition on the date agreed by the parties in the first week of January in New York City to last up to seven hours on the record. 

Friday was out, because Trump was scheduled to meet with FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding the allegations that the Russian government influenced the election with a cyber variation on the Watergate burglary.

So Thursday it was. Trumps attorney in the matter, Rebecca Woods, arrived at Trump Tower before 9 a.m. and left before noon. The deposition is said to have taken less than two hours, or around the same amount of time as the one focused on Zakarian.

Observers noted that the first and only sitting president required to submit to a deposition was Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case. Clinton fought it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but lost. The brief for Jones was written by none other than George Conway, husband of Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.

Conway summed up his positon in an op-ed where he wrote, In a case involving his private conduct, a president should be treated like any private citizen. The rule of law requires no moreand no less.

The rule of law could put President Trump on a witness stand if he presses on with his cases against the chefs who have broken that tenet for tenants.
The Senate confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trumps controversial pick for Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, is less than a week away. There remains much that the American public and even his fellow senators need to know about Trumps nominee.

Thus far Sessions has quietly waged a corrupt campaign of obfuscating and whitewashing his own troubling record, which includes a failed Senate confirmation hearing in 1986 to be a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Alabama.

This year, Sessions returned his Senate Judiciary questionnaire with many questions left unanswered. Yet still Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley approved his questionnaire, and on that very same day, Dec. 9, Grassley confirmed that Sessionss confirmation hearing would take place 32 days later. In comparison, it took 104 days from submitted questionnaire to confirmation hearing for current Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Additionally, it is incredibly unorthodox to hold Senate confirmation hearings for a president-elects nominee while the sitting president is still in office.

In response to Sessionss incomplete questionnaire, civil rights groups demanded answers, and on Dec. 23, Sessions submitted a more complete response. From this trove of data, civil rights grouped determined that pertinent information from 20 years of his record still remained omitted. The Alliance for Justice has compiled a 43-page document detailing the significant omissions (PDF).

Sessions and the GOP have shown a complete disregard for the democratic processes that form the bedrock of our government and ensure that qualified individuals represent the American people and defend our laws.

The American public and Senate Democrats should have many questions to ask Sessions  since he seems more inclined to hide information. Here are seven that I believe are essential.

1. Why did you think it was appropriate to return an incomplete questionnaire, and furthermore why have you still chosen to omit 20 years worth of pertinent information that includes your stints as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama from 1981-1993, Attorney General of Alabama from 1995-1997, and even your first five years as a U.S. Senator from Alabama (1997-2002)?

The lack of oversight of Sessionss confirmation process thus far speaks to an institutionalized level of corruption and cronyism in which government officials are more interested in giving lofty promotions to their unqualified friends than they are with the well-being of the American people. Sessions has shown a complete disregard for the procedure and significance of this nomination process.

Not surprisingly, much of the information that Sessions omitted consists of issues that ruined his 1986 hearing: namely, the looming suspicion that Sessions is a racist. Witnesses at the time testified that Sessions had referred to the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference as un-American because they attempted to force civil liberties down the throats of people, and that he stated that he had a problem with the Ku Klux Klan only after he found out that some of them smoked marijuana.

2. Do you still believe that the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference are un-American and work to force civil rights down the throats of people? And if you disavow these statements, could you explain why these are institutions are not un-American in your current view?

3. Apart from their possible use of marijuana, can you explain why you find the Ku Klux Klan and similar white nationalist and/or supremacy groups to be problematic and would you describe these hate groups as un-American?

Additionally, in 1986, Sessions was accused of agreeing that white lawyers who defend black clients were traitors to their race, regularly referring to his black assistant as boy. He did not entirely refute either of these accusations. So he should also be asked:

4. Do you still believe that white attorneys who defend black clients are race traitors?

5. Did you refer to Thomas Figures, who was your black assistant when you were a U.S. Attorney in Mobile, Ala as boy? And do you recall ever referring to other African American males as boy?

In 1986, the Senate did not explicitly label Sessions as a racist, but in the eyes of many senators, these controversies made him unfit to be a federal judge. Yet not surprisingly Sessionss disqualifications at the federal level made him a perfect fit for defending Alabamas constitution.

Alabamas current constitution was created in 1901 after the fall of Reconstruction with the intention of circumventing federal law, ignoring the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, reestablishing white supremacy in the state, and oppressing African Americans. Poll taxes, literacy exams and Jim Crow were the byproducts of this constitution. African Americans along with poor whites, women and other minorities have been electorally and economically displaced ever since as a result of this constitution. So, a sixth question:

6. Do you believe that Alabama should create a new constitution founded on the principles of racial equality instead of racial division and inequality? And if you currently do or have ever approved of Alabamas existing constitution, do you feel that your apparent tolerance of legally ratified injustice and inequality as youve represented Alabama makes you ill-equipped to be Attorney General of a diverse democracy that promotes racial equity?

Additionally, Sessionss main engagement with civil rights has been to level spurious claims of voter fraud against African Americans in Alabama. One case in particular seriously derailed his 1986 hearing. And recently, he also condoned the closure of DMV offices in Alabamas Black Belt that issued voter IDs during this presidential election. The Department of Transportation has found that these closures disproportionately harmed black voters. Hence, another question:

7. During all of your years in government how many successful cases of voter fraud have you prosecuted or overseen, and do you believe that your efforts have done more to encourage or discourage voter participation?

There are many more questions that Sessions should be asked, but these speak to his character and fitness to represent the American people. His nomination process has been a disgrace. He still has not addressed the concerns that torpedoed his 1986 nomination, and he displays a greater willingness to support and sustain institutions that perpetuate racial and economic inequality and injustice instead of defending the civil rights of the American people. At every pass, Sessions has shown that he is unqualified to be Attorney General, and now he needs to be asked the tough questions.
Model and TV star Amber Rose once told Complex, Im extremely open with my sexuality. I can be in love with a woman. I can be in love with a man  I definitely find beauty in everybody whether theyre heavy-set, super skinny, if theyre white, black, Indian, Asian, Spanish.

But apparently she draws a hard line at bisexual guys.

The revelation that Rose, herself bisexual, would not consider dating a bi man first highlighted by radio.com on Thursdaycame toward the tail end of a new episode of the revamped Loveline radio show, a long-running relationship and dating advice program made famous by former host and reality TV star Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Would you ever date a bisexual guy? was the discussion question, submitted to Rose via Facebook Live.

No, Rose responded, almost immediately. Personallyno judgmentI wouldnt be comfortable. I just wouldnt be comfortable with it and I dont know why.

Her co-host, sex therapist Dr. Chris Donaghue, was genuinely shocked at Roses answer and prompted her to go further, suggesting that she might be under the impression there would be more competition for a mans affections if he were bisexual. (As Donaghue later reminded her, the sheer number of people on the planet means that there is more than enough competition for anyone, regardless of orientation.)

Maybe! Maybe thats it, Rose replied. But after Donaghue prodded her for a few more minutesprompting Rose to reveal that she has been rejected by men because of her own bisexualityshe finally opened up: Maybe Im not secure enough to be with a man that likes other men because I would feel like when hes out with his boys, its just more of a moment.

The painfully honest conversation perfectly illustrated the stigma that bisexual men still face in the dating world, with Donaghue challenging Rose to explain what, exactly, she meant by the term uncomfortable. Rose struggled to piece together a clear answer and promised to revisit the subject in next weeks episode of Loveline, saying that she cant fully articulate it right now.

One member of the Facebook audience, in particular, elicited a strong reaction from the hosts by writing, This is a problem with people accepting bisexuality in women and not men. And although it would be a stretch to claim that bisexual women are socially accepted, the commenter was certainly onto something: bisexual men are especially disliked. An October nationally-representative study of social attitudes from researchers at Indiana University found that all participants attitudes were generally more positive toward bisexual women than bisexual men. Even though attitudes toward bisexual people as a whole were in the negative-to-neutral range, that gendered difference was still statistically significant.

Given that disheartening data, youd expect to find bisexual men at or near the bottom of the dating worlds pecking order. And thats exactly where they seem to be. Less scientific studies have borne out this conclusion. In early 2016, for example, Glamour surveyed 1,015 women ages 18 to 44 and found that, although 47 percent of women said they had been attracted to another woman, nearly two-thirds63 percentsaid they wouldnt date a man who has had sex with another man.

Those numbers suggest at least some overlap between women who have bisexual patterns of attraction themselves and women who would not date a man who has had sex with another man. Rose, who said on Loveline that she is indeed attracted to women or [she] has been in the past, would fit squarely in the middle of that Venn diagram.

But this phenomenon isnt so much a simple case of do as I say, not as I do hypocrisy as it is a byproduct of the unique stereotypes and stigmas that surround bisexual men. As bisexual writer and activist Eliel Cruz wrote for Mic, there is a deeply ingrained cultural misconception that a man cant date another man and still be sexually interested in women as well. In other words, many people question whether or not men can even be bisexual.

Rose, for her part, said on Loveline that she think[s] its amazing when a guy is bisexual, suggesting that she doesnt necessarily doubt that men can be attracted to more than one gender at a time but she did admit that she would just think about it too much if she dated a bisexual guy and that it would bother [her] in a way. That begs the question: What, precisely, is she thinking about and why, precisely, would it bother her? What nagging feeling would she find herself unable to shake off?

Popular media could contain some clues. Television, for one, has reinforced the notion that bisexual men are simply closeted gay guys who should be automatically disqualified from a womans dating pool. After going on a date with bisexual man, Carrie Bradshaw famously opined in an episode of Sex and the City, Im not even sure bisexuality exists. I think its just a layover on the way to Gaytown. 30 Rocks Liz Lemon followed suit in 2009, telling a woman with a bisexual boyfriend, Theres no such thing as bisexual. Thats just something they invented in the 90s to sell hair products.

And a 2013 episode of the Zooey Deschanel-led sitcom New Girl featured Jess instantly ending a conversation with a man at a bar after he came out as bisexual. (Three years later, the same show shamed a male character for being uncomfortable with the fact that his fiancee had once hooked up with another woman.)

On Loveline, Rose did express some concern that a bisexual male partner would naturally gravitate toward sex with men and, therefore, have trouble remaining loyal. When Donaghue asked her what she would do if her current boyfriend came out as bisexual, Rose speculated that she might ask him if he was going to see other men behind [her] back.

Theres not much distance between that reaction and the layover on the way to Gaytown theory of bisexuality. It also seems to be tied to one of the stereotypes Cruz highlighted, namely that bisexual people are inherently promiscuous, or theyre cheaters who are unable to be monogamous. (As health researcher Sean Cahill noted in a report for the National LGBTQ Task Force, that stereotype is a myth: Most bisexuals describe themselves as monogamous in their committed relationships.)

Ultimately, though, Roses sex life has been publicly dissected enough, whether its a tabloid calling her a freak for dating a transgender man, ex-husband Wiz Khalifa publicly airing details about their relationship, or Kanye West slut-shaming her on Twitter. What she does in her bed is her business.

But if more women took the time to do some rigorous self-examination about their aversion to being with bisexual menon a radio show or otherwisethe dating world might get a little more tolerable for a struggling sexual minority.
1

Former CIA Director Leaves Trump Team

OVER AND OUT
Pakistan forces in its military operations have abducted several women and children from Sui region of Balochistan.

By Anil Kumar: Pakistan conducted military operation in different areas of Sui and abducted 9 women and 8 children. Many houses too were burned down and several people were reportedly tortured.

According to Baloch Republic Party (BRP) Media Cell, Pakistani forces conducted a heavy military operation in different areas of Sui and Naseerabad including Matt, Darenjan, Uch, Shari Darbad, Chattar and Sheerani, earlier in the morning.

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Seventeen people including women and children of Mitta Khan Bugti and Saeed Khan Bugti were taken by Pakistani army in Chattar.

Some of abductees have been identified as Naaz Khatoon, Roz Bibi, 3-year-old Hameed, 9-month-old Ramzan Bugti, Bakhto Bugti, and Zarnaz Bugti.

Shah Nawaz Bugti from the BRP Media cell further detailing about the operation said that the women were brutally tortured before being abducted.

"Earlier it was Baloch political activists, now women are abducted, beaten up and detained by Pakistan army. Human rights group should take immediate notice of the situation," he said.

Also read:

Pakistan army brutality in Balochistan: 1 dead, several women taken hostage

Keeping Balochistan on the boil

No end in sight to Pakistani army atrocities in Balochistan

--- ENDS ---
According to Dhaka Police, the terrorists, who coordinated the attack on Gulshan Cafe last year killing 23 people, has been killed in an encounter with the security forces.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: The main handler of the Gulshan Cafe attack and neo-Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh operator Nurul Islam alias Marjan and his associate were killed in an encounter with security forces early this morning in Dhaka.

Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CCTC) unit chief Monirul Islam confirmed this to India Today.

A prominent cafe in the Bangladesh's capital had come under attack by terrorists on July 1 last year, when 23 people including 17 foreigners were killed. An Indian student was also among the victims.

Marjan, the main handler of the Gulshan Cafe terror attack, was killed in a gunfight in Dhaka. (Photo: Sahidul Hasan Khokon)

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GULSHAN CAFE ATTACK: THINGS TO KNOW Neo-Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh operator Nurul Islam alias Marjan and his associate were gunned down by the security forces. The gunfight took place at Beribadh area of Mohammadpur in Dhaka around 3 am today. Confirming the encounter, CCTC unit chief Monirul Islam told India Today, "One of the militants killed in the gunfight is Marjan, the identity of the other militant not ascertained yet." On the other hand, CTTC deputy commissioner Mohibul Islam said, "Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a drive around Rayerbazar Martyred Intellectuals Killing Ground in Mohammadpur Beribadh area around 3 am." "Sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us, in retaliation we fired back that left the two injured. Doctor declared them dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital," Mohibul Islam said. An eye witness said that he heard several explosions followed by numerous gunshots around 3 am. Confirming the incident, another local slum dweller said that the sound of non-stop gunshots had scared them. Police said that former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the neo-JMB. Neo-JMB is a new faction of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is affiliated to Islamic State. Marjan also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Police also said that Marjan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshan's Holey Artisan Bakery that killed 23 people, including 17 foreigners. An Indian girl, identified as Tarishi Jain, who was a student of University of California in Berkeley, was among those killed in the terror attack.

--- ENDS ---
One of my dream holiday destinations is Iceland. The land of amazing natural beauty, stunning waterfalls, glaciers, hot springs and the northern lights, has to be seen to be believed.



I am so lucky to be visiting this beautiful country in March this year, so I hope you are looking forward to my posts in the near future. Now I have started to plan my trip I realise that there is a lot of information out there on what to do and where to go, so I have compiled a list of planning tips for a holiday to Iceland from bloggers that have been there.



I hope this will help you plan your trip, and if you have been I hope it will give you some great memories.

Reykjavik





Ensure you have plenty of money (you'll find most people, both tourists and Icelanders, use their bank card as opposed to cash) as things are so much more expensive than you'll have anticipated. A meal that costs 40 for 2 in the UK costs over 100 in Iceland. Also, don't bother buying bottled water as Icelandic water is the purest you could possibly drink. The hot water does stink of egg though so prepare for a smelly shower.

Mel

Hallgrimskirkja church





I just went in December and it's very expensive. We took a Mastercard and pretty much just used that and had about 6000ikr (50) in the purse for emergencies or souvenirs. We decided not to bother with the Blue Lagoon after several locals told us about Fontana. It's gorgeous but I suppose BL is more touristy so it just depends on your personal preference. We also took a portable phone charger but never needed it. G et the Reykjavik card w hich gets you on the buses and into several museums/zoo etc for free and discounts at restaurants, other museums etc. Also, the tap water is literally the best water I've ever had. Crisp, clean, pure. Enjoy.

Rebecca Pocahontas Jane

The Northern Lights



I recommend booking a northern lights trip for your first night there because if the lights don't show they can rebook you for free for the following night and so on until you get to see them. If you visit Blue Lagoon, don't pay for a facial pack, as there are mounds of the stuff by the water which you can just help yourself to. All the public buses have wifi so you can upload your pics to social media on the go so I recommend taking a portable phone charger too.

If you're planning to chase the northern lights, get familiar with this website . It's the Icelandic Met Office and has a handy Aurora forecast page which will give you an indication of the likelihood of seeing the lights.

Remember: Storms and heavy cloud cover is not your friend when it comes to the Northern Lights.

Roma





The Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is a must and if you can push the boat out go VIP. We also did the half day tour of the glaciers and geysers and it was brilliant.

For drinks visit Kaffibarrin which is the cool little bar part-owned (if not all) by Damon Alburn. For a truly memorable meal, I can recommend The Fish Company restaurant in Reykjavik - an amazing meal but not cheap.

Catherine Battle Mum





Lucy Iceland was the best holiday of my life! I did a trek in 2009. Would definitely recommend the Blue Lagoon!!! It was stunningly beautiful and very relaxing. There was a bar in the pool with electronic wristbands to purchase. Was so refreshing and my skin felt epic afterwards.Lucy Real Mum Review



Take your own towels to the Blue Lagoon, and your full makeup kit; you'll need it! Erica I'm Being Erica







Ethnographic open air museum







Emma Move away from the obvious, Iceland has some of the strangest, weird and wonderful museums in the world. Do your research before travelling and you can see so much more than whales and geysers.Emma Fashion Mommy



My biggest tip is to hire a car - it's the best way to see the country in your own time instead of relying on tour buses that rush you around. You also don't need to hire a 4x4 if you're planning on sticking to the Ring Road and not going on mountain roads so car hire doesn't have to be too expensive.

Kaleigh www.jolliesandjaunts.com







Jokulsarlon

My one top tip would be to not just concentrate on Reykjavik. It's a fantastic place, but we really loved South Iceland in particular. It's a long drive (especially if it's snowy!) to Jokulsarlon, but it's so worth it to go to the beach where the blue icebergs crash onto the volcanic shore. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Ally Dowsing-Reynolds Digital Diva

Make sure you are prepared for any kind of weather and make an Icelandic music playlist.

Anne-Sophie City Cookie




Salman Khan is mighty upset with Swami Om, and you really can't blame him.

By India Today Web Desk: Reality show Bigg Boss 10 has been creating history on Indian television ever since its inception. But not always in a good way.

Also read: BB10: Former contestant Swami Om thinks host Salman Khan is an ISI agent!

Yes, you guessed it right. We are talking about Swami Om's disgusting behaviour when he threw pee on Bani Judge and Rohan Mehra, which finally prompted the host of the show Salman Khan to make his entry in the show and begin the Weekend Ka Vaar a day early. As we mentioned before, the show is creating history.

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Swami Om is finally thrown out of the house

Swami will be shown the door by a few security members who will be called in to take the contestant with them after he had locked himself in the washroom.

The rest of the housemates will stand up and clap as Swami will make his exit from the show, much like they had when his 'beti' Priyanka Jagga was asked to leave the house.

Salman Khan's entry

Host Salman Khan will kickstart the Weekend Ka Vaar a day early thanks to Swami Om's antics. The host will applaud Bigg Boss' decision to throw him out of the house. He will even call Swami a "ghatiya aadmi."

Salman will discuss the entire issue with the housemates in detail in tonight's episode.

Bani Judge breaks down

While speaking with Salman about the incident, Bani will have a breakdown. The actor will try to calm her down and will advise her to move on with her life. But will she able to? Only time will tell.

Bigg Boss Season 10 airs every Mon-Fri at 10:30 pm, and every Sat-Sun at 9 pm.

--- ENDS ---
Mumbai-based group has initiated an online campaign in protest of the Bengaluru mass molestation during new year celebrations.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: A Mumbai based group called 'I will Go Out' has flaoted an online petition in support of Bangalore molestation survivor. In this petition they have also asked politicians like Abu Azmi and G Parameshwara to publicly apologize for their comments regarding Bangaluru incident.

"We are raising our voice against leaders who made such loose comments against women and preaching them what dress they should wear and what not. We started online campaign and we urge all citizens to support us," said Haresh Iyer a member of the group.

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This group is also planning to take out mass rally against the perpetrators of Bangluru incident on January 14 across all major cities.

MEMORANDUM TO BE SUBMITTED TO POLICE COMMISSIONER

They are also planning to send a memorandum to the commissioner of Police demanding action to increase safety measures for women.

Whole nation was shocked when the incident of mass molestation came to light. No one could believe that such horrific incident will happen in a IT capital of India. The group has asked citizens who wish to support the cause to visit their website Change.org.

"We know these movements, protests and hashtags are just another brick in the wall. Why not keep adding the bricks, we say. So let's unite against this incident," said Iyer.

Also read:

Bengaluru mass molestation survivors: First time ever we felt unsafe

Bengaluru nightmare: On New Year's Eve, women molested in police presence; no cases filed yet

--- ENDS ---
May 18, 1918 - January 4, 2017

M. N. Bostick, known since childhood as "Buddy," was born May 18, 1918, east of Moody, in the Liberty Hill community in McLennan County, Texas. He was the son of Veda Welborn Bostick and Seth Pendleton Bostick. He passed away at St. Catherine's Center on January 4, 2017.

Bostick graduated from Moody High School and entered Baylor University. He treasured his Baylor education and the relationship he had with then president, Governor Pat Neff. During his college years, he began announcing on WACO Radio and imagining the day that he would have his own station. At the beginning of his junior year, he met a new Baylor transfer, Virginia Muller; they married in the fall of 1939, following their graduations. After working as a radio announcer in Memphis, Tennessee, Little Rock, Arkansas, and then in Dallas, Texas, he entered the United States Army. He became a part of the Army Air Corps and eventually trained as a fighter pilot. He was ready to fly the P51 Mustang into battle just as the war ended. He later purchased a P51 from the Canadian Air Force, refitted it as a private plane with a passenger seat, and had a joyous era flying and showing off his plane to anyone who might be interestedand there were many.

Upon his return following WWII, he continued to pursue his goal of having his own radio station. He learned of a group of local men who had become business associates with Governor Buford Jester and were pursuing a license for a station in Waco. He landed the job of manager of that station, which he put on the air in 1946. The studios were located at 508  South Sixth St. In 1952, he built new studios at 4520 Bosque Blvd, and in 1955, he competed and was successful in obtaining a license for KWTX-TV, Channel 10, to serve the Waco television market. He next added KBTX-TV in Bryan/College Station in 1957. After that he added KNAL radio in Victoria, Texas, KWTX-FM radio, KXII-TV in Sherman-Dennison, Texas, and KLFY-TV in Lafayette, Louisiana.

In 1976, Bostick and W. W. Callan bought controlling interest in the Bellmead State Bank, changing its name to American Bank. They were later approved for a branch bank on the west side of Waco and built the American Plaza Building, with the American Bank occupying the first floor.

When he was not working, he was striving to perfect new skills. He loved to snow ski, practicing diligently to execute all the basics as well as he possibly could. He loved fly fishing in Colorado, tying his own flies and aiming to land the trout with finesse. He became an avid bow hunter, practicing many hours so that he would be ready for the big moment. He loved quail hunting, and raising and training his own hunting dogs. His first love remained flying, piloting his King Air until the age of ninety.

His sister, Mildred Brinegar, predeceased him on December 23, 2016. Virginia predeceased him in May of 2014, and they are survived by their two daughters and their families: Ellen Deaver and husband, Ray, and Martha Phipps and husband, Jim; their grandchildren, Kyle Deaver and wife, Diane, John Deaver and wife, Karina, Jenny Powers and husband, Roy, and JB Phipps and wife, Leisha; and their great grandchildren, Nick Deaver and wife, Anna-Louise, Morgan Snyder and husband, Scott, Alexandra Deaver, Ryan Powers, Connor Powers, and Wesley Phipps.

The family extends special gratitude to Deborah Harrington for her faithfulness and care for him during the past two years.

There will be a private graveside service at Moody Cemetery. Should anyone wish to send a memorial, the family requests that such be sent to one's charity of choice.

The family invites you to leave a message or memory on our "Tribute Wall" at www.WHBfamily.com
We are concerned by an apparent total disregard by some Chinese nationals for Namibia's wildlife, conservation, and animal welfare laws and values. Namibians are proud of their environmental heritage, their rich wildlife resources and the institutional mechanisms that are in place to sustainably manage them.

Namibia as a nation has worked hard to protect and nurture these natural assets. Namibia's wildlife management provides an international example for good conservation and sustainable use. We have not made these investments so that some Chinese nationals, or anyone else, can pillage them.

Adding insult to injury

The illegal commercial interests of some Chinese nationals towards Namibia's protected wildlife has exploited the vulnerability of poor Namibians and divided societies. It undermines local ownership of natural resources and the empowerment of communities to managing their wildlife wisely, for long-term communal benefits. It undermines Namibia's globally acclaimed Community-based Conservancy programme, and it does considerable damage to Namibia's international conservation and sustainable development reputation.

The recent announcement by the Chinese business community that it is contributing N$30,000 to counter rhino poaching, while acknowledging that Namibians are deeply concerned about the situation caused by some Chinese nationals, totally fails to understand the economic scale of the problem. Indeed, it is an insult to the environmental sector in Namibia and to Namibia's environment.

An initial very conservative estimate of the extent of the losses to Namibia's wildlife and ecosystems caused by Chinese nationals is about N$811 million. And this does not include the significant additional resources that Namibia's government, donors, communities, private sector, and NGOs have had to commit to combat escalating wildlife crimes. These funds should rather have been spent on more productive activities such as continuing to develop the wildlife and tourism sectors to improve the lives and livelihoods of rural communities.

We do not claim to fully understand the relationship between Chinese nationals and the Chinese state. It appears that Chinese nationals are not at liberty to obtain passports and travel independently around the world, bringing their personal capital and starting businesses in their own names in whatever country would have them, independent of the Chinese state.

As such, Chinese nationals in Namibia appear to be part of a state supported system. So, as the highest ranking Chinese official in Namibia, we would expect all Chinese nationals in Namibia to fall under your authority.

As such, we now call on you to put an immediate stop to the illegal wildlife crimes perpetrated, encouraged, funded, incentivized or otherwise committed and supported, by some Chinese nationals in Namibia.

And now, please help us to repair the damage caused!

Further, we call on the Chinese government to make good, by investing in Namibia's environment sector in a transparent and internationally recognized manner, and in proportion to the damage caused, to help rebuild Namibia's wildlife populations, ecosystems, management systems and reputation.

This letter does not represent only the views of the 40 environmental organisations listed below, but also represents the views of countless members of the Namibian public and our international friends.

The sentiments expressed in social media over the past months, from across a broad spectrum of Namibian society, and their outrage at the leading role that Chinese nationals play in wildlife crime have surely been noted by you and members of your embassy.

You will also be aware of the sentiments expressed by our President, by the Minister of Environment and Tourism, and by the Namibian Police Inspector General as reported in the local media. The time for inaction is over.

China has a policy of non-intervention and yet these actions by some Chinese nationals, and the apparent inaction of your embassy to address the problem, are direct and indirect interventions that have disastrous impacts on our policy and legal framework, on our environmental culture and ethics, on our natural heritage and on our national conservation and development programmes. They also have huge negative impacts on our people and their livelihoods, and on our international reputation.

In late 2014 the out-going US President Barack Obama, in an interview with the New York Times, accused China of being a "free rider" for the last 30 years in not taking on more of its international obligations. In the last couple of years, particularly under the leadership of your President Xi Jinping, China has taken a decidedly more active leadership role in global issues. It is time to extend that leadership to natural resources and in particular, to wildlife conservation.

Indeed, the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, almost 2,000 years ago, may have been amongst the first to advocate for ecological sustainability within a philosophy of coexistence between man and nature. If China is to live up to its stated aims of having positive interactions between peoples and countries then this, for us in Namibia, is a critical issue.

Time for China to take responsibility!

We support our government's policy of attracting foreign investment to stimulate growth, employment and development. And we counter all forms of xenophobia and profiling. However, we expect foreign investors and their nationals to abide by Namibia's laws, and to embrace Namibia's cultures, ethics, and values.

Too many Chinese nationals have abused Namibia's environmental laws, and this is causing growing resentment and anger amongst Namibians. By their criminal actions, some Chinese nationals have drawn attention to themselves and their nationality through their blatant disregard of Namibia's legal and environmental values. We are also concerned at how little action the Chinese embassy in Namibia appears to be taking to address the problem.

We as concerned Namibian Environmental NGOs and businesses, who it should be stated, are pro-sustainable use, stand ready to work with a China that willingly takes on greater responsibility and leadership in addressing the illegal trade in wildlife and, in particular, commits to putting an immediate stop to all wildlife crimes in Namibia by its Chinese nationals.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Chris Brown, CEO, Namibian Chamber of Environment; and other environmental organisations.

Namibian Chamber of Environment members

African Penguin Conservation Project

Africat Foundation

Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF)

Desert Elephant Conservation

Earthlife Namibia

Eco Awards Namibia

Edu Ventures

Environmental Compliance Consulting

EnviroScience

Frank Bockmuhl

Giraffe Conservation Foundation

Jaro Consultancy

Naankuse Foundation

Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust

Namibia Animal Rehabilitation, Research & Education Centre (NARREC)

Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF)

Namibia Scientific Society

Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organizations (NACSO)

Namibian Hydrogeological Association

NamibRand Nature Reserve

Ongava Game Reserve

Otjikoto Environmental and Education Trust

Progress Namibia TAS

Research and Information Services of Namibia (RAISON)

Southern Africa Institute for Environmental Assessment (SAIEA)

Save The Rhino Trust (SRT)

Scientific Society Swakopmund

Sustainable Solutions Trust (SST)

The Namibian Environmental and Wildlife Society (NEWS)

Tosco Trust

Venture Publications

Other Namibian Environmental Organisations supporting this letter

Botanical Society of Namibia

Brown Hyena Research Project

Gondwana Collection Namibia

Game Rangers Association of Africa (GRAA)  Namibian Chapter

Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC)

Kavango Open Africa Route (KOAR)

Legal Assistance Centre (LAC)

Namibia Bird Club

Wilderness Safaris - Namibia
Swami has been making all sorts of claims about the show's host and its contestants.

By India Today Web Desk: Former Bigg Boss 10 contestant Swami is in the news again. After getting thrown out of the house for throwing his pee on contestants Bani Judge and Rohan Mehra, Swami was asked by Bigg Boss to leave the house. But he didn't obey the boss' command and locked himself in a washroom. Later, security was called to take Swami with them.

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Also read: Thank you Bigg Boss, for finally throwing Om Swami out of the house!

And guess what he did after he left the house? He gave an interview to a news channel and made all sorts of tall claims about the show's host and other contestants.

He said that Salman Khan was an ISI agent and alleged that other contestants wanted to kill him (Swami) by putting drug in his food.

Obviously, no one believes him. At least we hope so.

Anyway, after creating havoc in the house, he was bound to create some tension in the outside world as well.

He even said that Bani had been sleeping with contestant Jason Shah in the house.

Tonight's episode will see Salman Khan addressing the issue of Swami and his abrupt exit from the house.

We wonder what the actor has to say about Swami's claims?

To find out, tune in to Bigg Boss 10 at 10:30 pm on Colors TV.

--- ENDS ---
Ahead of upcoming UP assembly elections, the BJP revamps its publicity campaign strategy and has decided to drop pamphlets in major UP cities and villages from helicopters and paragliders.

By Siraj Qureshi: Taking a step further in publicising the achievements of the Modi government in the past 30 plus months, the BJP has decided to take the publicity campaign to the air, quite literally, by air-dropping pamphlets into the populated areas of the major cities and rural areas of Uttar Pradesh from helicopters and paragliders. Discussions are underway with various private aviation companies for the same.

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Taking a step further in publicising the achievements of the Modi government in the past 30 plus months, the BJP has decided to take the publicity campaign to the air, quite literally, by air-dropping pamphlets into the populated areas of the major cities and rural areas of Uttar Pradesh from helicopters and paragliders. Discussions are underway with various private aviation companies for the same.

THE AIR-DROP

Taking a step further in publicising the achievements of the Modi government in the past 30 plus months, the BJP has decided to take the publicity campaign to the air, quite literally, by air-dropping pamphlets into the populated areas of the major cities and rural areas of Uttar Pradesh from helicopters and paragliders. Discussions are underway with various private aviation companies for the same.

He said that the BJP will attract voters by solely relying on the work the Modi government has done till date. The party strategists believe that when these pamphlets rain down from the sky in rural areas, people will have a natural curiosity to pick them up and read them, whereas most people do not read the pamphlets that are distributed by party workers. These pamphlets will also focus on the various failures of the state government.

THE MODI STRATEGY

He said that the party is running continuous refresher programmes for its workers to keep them abreast with the latest information about the Modi government's achievements and in every assembly constituency the party's 'Prachar Rath' will show audio-visual programmes specially created for the elections which will showcase PM Modi's initiatives towards the development of India and Uttar Pradesh.

Every street corner and village chowpal will be visited by these 'Raths' and these programmes will be shown to the people to make them aware of PM Modi's work for the country.

BEATING SAMAJWADI PARTY WHERE IT HURTS

The party has also prepared some hoardings that outline the various failures of the state government. Some of the hoardings also mention the objectionable statements made by the Samajwadi Party leaders including its Supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in the context of rapes.

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The party will make an effort to connect emotionally with the female voters through such hoardings. Similar hoardings that outline farmer issues under the SP governments will target the large rural population of the state and attempt to bring it closer to the BJP.

Folk songs are also being recorded for the party's publicity through the audio-video raths that will move through every assembly constituency in the state.

The local party units are now awaiting for the list of the candidates to be announced before the final preparations begin for elections.

--- ENDS ---
When I decided to publish my first ever travel post on Frugal Foodie Mama in 2013 , I really didn't set out with the intention of merging my predominantly food & recipe blog with a family friendly travel blog. My family and I had stayed at a bed & breakfast in Virginia for a little weekend getaway, and I was impressed with how the innkeepers had went above and beyond to accommodate us. I wanted to show my appreciation and gratitude, so I thought why not write up a little review of our stay on my blog and share it with my social media followers as a way to thank them for their generous hospitality? I had no idea how my loyal readers would react to a travel piece, but I figured it was just one post so why not?
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 ...
A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar said, "will hear the matter in due course of time, but not now."

By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today refused to give an urgent hearing into a plea seeking that the Budget be presented after March. Opposition parties demanding Budget dates to be postponed in view of Assembly elections in five states - Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur.

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar said, "will hear the matter in due course of time, but not now."

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On Thursday (January 5), a delegation of Opposition parties led by the Congress approached the Election Commission demanding Budget to be presented after state elections get over. The government has announced that the Budget will be tabled on February 1 while polls while Assembly polls will begin from February 4.

'PRESENT BUDGET AFTER MARCH'

"We have a simple solution. Present the budget after March 8 and get it passed before March 31, there's plenty of time," Trinamool Congress's Derek O'Brien said. Polls will get over in all the five states by March 8 and counting will take place on March 11.

"We demand that budget be presented after March 8, which is when polling in states will be over," Azad told reporters outside the Election Commission office in New Delhi.

Congress leader Anand Sharma said the presentation of the budget prior to the polls will vitiate the free and fair polls.

"It is the mandate of the EC to ensure that no situation arises that may vitiate the free and fair polls. We have already informed President Pranab Mukherjee about the issue," Sharma said.

THIS IS A NON-ISSUE: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, said it was a non-issue and slammed the opposition for politicising the government's constitutional duty.

"The budget is a constitutional duty of the government and not related to any one state. The presentation of the budget is not a sudden decision rather it has been decided beforehand with prior information to the stakeholders," Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.

WATCH: Budget row: Opposition meets Election Commission, demands budget after March 8

ALSO READ:

Opposition parties to meet President today, to raise Budget Session clash with poll dates

Budget battle: Congress, other parties knock the Election Commission door

Watch the video here

--- ENDS ---
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.
Connaught Place will be made vehicle-free from February for next three months in a pilot 'smart city' project.

By Mail Today Bureau: Connaught Place will be made vehicle-free from February for next three months in a pilot 'smart city' project aimed at decongesting the middle and inner circular roads of the central Delhi's commercial hub.

The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu and attended by officials from the urban development ministry, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Delhi Police.

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NDMC yet to finalise modalities

NDMC is yet to finalise the modalities for implementing the decision but urban development ministry said 'park and ride' service will be available from major parking areas at Shivaji Stadium, Baba Kharak Singh Marg and Palika parking.

The officials also added that total parking at these three locations can accommodate 3,172 vehicles, but on an average, only 1,088 vehicles are being parked.

The unutilised capacity could be fully used by promoting 'park and ride' concept, they added.

Battery-operated vehicles to take people to the heart city

Battery-operated vehicles would also be deployed to take people to the heart of the city for carrying out business.

The decision has already hit a roadblock with traders who have not received the decision well and believe that the move will not only cause discomfort to visitors but also affect the business.

New Delhi Traders Association President calls the move absurd

Calling the move to make CP a vehicle-free zone an absurd idea, Atul Bhargava, president, New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA) said, " CP is a commercial centre, not a tourist destination. The moment inner circle will be made vehicle-free, the outer circle will be choked. We have already seen a demo on the Yoga day."

"There is already 20-ft walking space in all the blocks for pedestrians and there is already shortage of parking space. How many visitors will prefer parking their vehicles at Shivaji stadium or Shankar Market and take a shared ride to CP to shop or eat? The business will obviously suffer," he added.

The urban development ministry had previously asked concerned agencies in a four-point formula to focus on smart roads, vehicle-free zones, Wi-Fi and clean drinking water in public places, in order to materialise the "Smart City" project.

--- ENDS ---
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NORWALK  A group of United Nations human rights experts praised the Norwalk Public School District this week for pulling an offensive textbook from fourth grade classrooms.

The textbook, removed from schools in December, was criticized for its description of slavery in Connecticut.

The U.N. human rights office in Geneva said in a statement Thursday that the book paints an inaccurate picture by saying that slaves in Connecticut were often treated like family members, taught to be Christian and sometimes taught how to read and write.

Ricardo Sunga, chairman of the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, says that depiction is a distortion of the true nature of enslavement.

The U.N. panel says school administrators elsewhere should emulate last month's decision by the Norwalk school district.

District officials responded to the praise, thanking the U.N. officials and the parents that brought their attention to the issue.

Were very appreciative of the support that the United Nations gave to the Norwalk Public Schools and were very thankful for the collection of parents that brought the issue to us, said Michael Connor, chief academic officer for the district. And were proud to have addressed the situation in a very swift and appropriate manner.

Concerns over The Connecticut Adventure by John Ifkovic were raised by parents in late November. The school district responded within a week, and pulled hundreds of copies of the textbook from classrooms. Officials said the curriculum was due for an update in 2019 anyway.

A new textbook is to be selected by the start of the next school year. In the meantime a committee has been established to pull together resources to use in teaching fourth grade social studies for the remainder of the year, in the books absence.

This week, Connor met with Mary Yordon, Norwalk Federation of Teachers president, Board of Education member Artie Kassimis and Sue-Ellen OShea from the Norwalk Association of School Administrators to identify individuals for a social studies integration team that will construct the requirements for a new textbook.

At the Jan. 20 Board of Education meeting, Connor will present a list of parents, teachers and district officials who will make up the team.

The team will host a vendor fair in February for publishers to present viable textbooks, and tentatively select a book and conduct a six-week pilot evaluation in March. Connor said the final decision is expected to be made in May.

Kevin Schultz and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
The Aam Aadmi Party has so far has backed Jain terming the income tax department's action as politically motivated.

By Ankit Tyagi: There's fresh trouble for Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain as the Income Tax department has issued another notice to him in connection with his alleged hawala transactions.

The notice, issued on December 26, has been issued by an additional commissioner on the income tax department in Delhi. Jain has been asked to reply to the notice within the next 30 days.

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HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

In 2011-12, Jain reportedly showed an annual income of Rs 8 lakh. However, while probing the hawala link and after questioning Kolkata hawala operators, it was found that Jain through several companies had indulged in alleged money laundering.

In the assessment year 2011-12, Jain through his companies had done illegal money transaction of Rs 3.53 crore. In September 2016, the I-T department had issued notice to Jain's companies after some irregularity was found in the financial records.

The AAP government is already crying conspiracy on behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On Thursday (January 5), deputy CM Manish Sisodia had claimed that Jain has already replied to allegations.

Jain and Delhi government are yet react over the reports of new notice being issued by the income tax department.

AAP believes there could more such attempts before Punjab elections to discredit Kejriwal and the party.

Sources say they are even preparing for surprise arrest of few senior ministers in Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party has so far has backed Jain terming the income tax department's action as politically motivated.

WATCH: AAP minister Satyendra Jain's daughter appointed Delhi health department adviser, CBI to probe

ALSO READ:

Delhi Minister Satyendra Jain under I-T scanner over hawala transactions

CBI to probe appointment of Satyendra Jain's daughter in his ministry; Delhi L-G gives nod

--- ENDS ---
To most people, getting a manicure in Norwalk or Stamford is a time to relax, to decompress. You sit in a comfy chair, let your mind wander from your daily stress, and relax. The same cannot be said for manicurists, some of whom are the victims of wage theft. We know. We have spoken to manicurists in several salons.

Many talked about long hours, little knowledge of the states minimum wage, and pay below the minimum wage. This should not come as a surprise. In August, 2015, the state Department of Labor temporarily closed five salons in Stamford and five in the Darien-Fairfield-Westport area for not following labor laws.

According to the state Department of Labor, manicurists are not considered tip workers. Therefore, unlike bartenders and waitresses, they must be paid the states minimum wage. But I leave a good tip, is a comment we hear over and over when we tell people about our work on behalf of salon workers. Thats great, but it does not ensure adequate pay for manicurists. Some salon owners pay less than the state minimum mandate and use pooled tip money to make up the difference. A generous tip should pad the workers wage, not replace it.

In both cities, you can get your nails painted for as little as $10. Thats great for consumers, but you have to question how salon owners meet their costs, make a profit and pay manicurists the minimum wage. The question takes on added significance after Jan. 1, which is when the states minimum wage increases to $10.10 an hour; overtime pay increases to $15.15 an hour for every hour worked after 40 hours a week. Again, tips are extra.

In May, 2015, The New York Times, in an editorial about the nail salon industry, stated: Americans have gotten used to a bounty of cheap services and goods, basking in ever-cheaper luxury while ignoring the pain and injustice that make it all possible. We have vowed to end our silence.

We continue to visit nail salons to talk to manicurists about their rights; e.g., last week we gave workers/managers at several salons a minimum wage card that was written in Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish and English. Our public education campaign with teens and adults continues. And we will follow the work of a state-wide task force as it examines the nail salon industry. The task force was created in 2016 by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to lobbying by our members and other advocates (see House Bill 5537 and Public Act 16-66, section 44).

Now we need you to use your voice and, if necessary, your pocketbook, to help end the exploitation of nail salon workers. During your next visit to a salon, talk to the owner, manager and manicurists. Ask if they are aware of the states new minimum and overtime wages. Ask if the workers are paid those wages, excluding tips. If they are not, ask when they will be.

If you are not satisfied with the answers you receive, we suggest you: (1) remind the manager and workers of Connecticut Public Act 15-86, which allows victims of wage theft to collect double the amount due them; (2) tell the owner that you will boycott the salon until the wage theft has stopped; (3) tell your friends to boycott the salon; and (4) report suspicions of wage theft to the Connecticut Department of Labor, Division of Wage and Workplace Standards, at 860-263-6000.

This is the time of year to resolve to end the exploitation of workers in our communities, including some in the nail salon industry. Your indifference should end, too.

Delaney Lyons and Nikhil Rao, Mayors Youth Leadership Council, Stamford

Derek Lue and Keara Meyerson, Center for Youth Leadership, Norwalk
The CISF, responsible for security of Delhi Metro, has decided to allow women commuters carry small knives for self-defence.

By Manideep Sharma: Now women travelling in Delhi Metro trains can carry small knives, lighter and match-boxes to ensure their safety.

The decision was taken in the view of such articles being regularly recovered from women commuters in huge number by the security personnel.

WOMEN TO CARRY KNIVES IN DELHI METRO: THINGS TO KNOW The Central Industrial Security Force, responsible for the security of Delhi Metro, have decided to let women keep these items as weapons of self-defence. With this decision, small knives, lighters and matchboxes are off the restricted items list for Metro travel in Delhi. The decision was taken by the CISF in the wake of thousands of these articles piling up at its depot in Shastri Park, an official of the force said. Though the items have never been counted, CISF officials said 100-odd lighters and matchboxes are seized on an average daily at present at different stations. "Apart from one lighter and one matchbox per passenger, we have also allowed passengers to carry tools. We received several requests as labourers travel by metro and carry tools for work," a CISF official said. "However, we examine the tools and make an entry in a register so that the passenger can be traced if needed," he added. This practice is followed in the case of passengers of certain faiths, who are allowed to carry certain items, the official said. Incidentally, a CISF report in December last year stated that 91 per cent of the pickpockets held last year in the Delhi Metro were women. It was 93 per cent the previous year. The CISF data also raises a question about security of other passengers as these pickpockets would also be allowed to carry small knives in the Delhi Metro.

--- ENDS ---

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Unavailability of facility to exchange demonetised notes, NRI's in Punjab are busy visiting cities having RBI offices to get their notes exchanged.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Having failed to get the scrapped currency notes exchanged at bank counters by December 30, people holding demonetised currency, NRIs in particular, are now queuing up at the Reserve Bank of India branches.

However, the conversion facility is now only available at a select RBI counters including Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Nagpur. Availability of this facility in five cities has also created confusion among those in possesion of the scrapped currency. They are now also knocking at the doors of other cities having RBI offices.

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Chandigarh is one such city where senior citizens and NRIs were seen struggling with cash. India Today spoke to citizens to do a reality check after nearly two months of demonetisation drive.

CITIZENS ASKED TO VISIT DELHI BRANCH

Young NRI couple who is settled in London and hails from Navanshahar Inderjit Kaur and Jaswinder Singh were in India and wanted to get demonetised currency notes worth Rs 10,000 converted into a new currency. However, when they contacted the bank officials they were told to go to the New Delhi branch of RBI.

"We were told to go to New Delhi . We have no time to get Rs 10,000 converted .This is scrap for us now," said Inderjit Kaur.

Inderjit's husband Jaswinder said that they wanted to go for shopping but gave up the idea after the ATM machine dispensed only Rs 4500.

"Demonetisation has slowed down everything. One Cannot do business. BJP will get a negative marking in the elections for demonetisation," said Jaswinder Singh.

Like Inderjit,Kanchan Sharma and NRI who is a native of Ludhiana also struggled with her Rs 18,000 currency notes. She said there was no clarity whether she will be able to get the scrapped currency notes converted in New Delhi or will if she have to return empty handed.

THERE IS NO GUARANTEE

"I am struggling with Rs 18000. I had come to Ludhiana where relatives told that I will be able to get new currency but now the RBI officials suggested to visit its Delhi branch. There is no guarantee . Modi ji is not aware about the problems being faced by us," said Kanchan Sharma.

Another NRI Manmohan Singh Dhingra who is a native to Chandigarh but lives abroad. Dhingra wanted to renew his old currency notes worth Rs 15,000 which he could not exchange before December 30 as he was abroad.

"Chandigarh is my home town. Why should I go to New Delhi to get new currency? They should streamline these things. One cannot spend lakhs to return home to deposit a few thousand rupees," said Manmohan Singh Dhingra.

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Gurdarshan Singh had come to find out whether the Chandigarh branch of RBI was offering currency conversion facilities as his relatives were visiting India to exchange scrapped currency.

Interestingly, most of the people owning smaller amounts of scrapped currency were common people and not moneyed.They could not convert their currency in time as they were out.

Also read:

Demonetisation may slow down economy: President Pranab Mukherjee

Modi's BJP weathers demonetisation storm, set to win Uttar Pradesh: Key takeaways from India Today-Axis Opinion Poll

Bitcoin hits highest level post demonetisation

--- ENDS ---
Visits to Louisville rose 4% to 24.2 million person trips according to the latest research. These are among the findings of a newly released impact study of Louisvilles domestic tourism business in 2015.

The study was conducted by Longwoods International using its proprietary Travel USA program with the most current data available (2016s impact will be released in 2017). It is currently the largest ongoing study ever conducted of American travelers. The report provides an overview of what Louisville travelers look like and how they differ from the average US traveler.

This report validates what we already knew to be true, said Karen Williams, president & CEO of the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau (LCVB). Louisville has increasingly become the hot spot for travel. The city, with its unique mix of attractions, events, bourbon and food, and its accessibility and affordability, is the perfect meetings and getaway destination.

Key findings from the report:

In 2015, Louisville had 24.2 million person trips, increasing 4% from 2014. Of these trips, 33% were overnight trips. The rest were day trips.

The overnight trips generated $1.235 billion in spending, increasing 10% from 2014.

Percentage of marketable overnight trips to Louisville are up 8% to 39%. These are trips influenced by marketing efforts; coming for a special event/festival.

People are 7% more likely to come to Louisville for a special event/festival than the national average.

Louisville is a social/media/online travel agency/word of mouth destination for booking and its visitors are young (41.5 vs 44.9 for the US), increasingly female (56%, a 4% increase over 2014) and like to talk about us on social media (13% compared to 9% for the US).

The top five overnight trip Louisville activities and experiences were shopping, fine dining, visiting a landmark/historic site, museum and bar/club.

While these are just a few of the key findings, the report goes into detail on several areas including, expenditures on both overnight and day trips, characteristics of both types of trips and the size and structure of the U.S. Travel Market. To read the full report, visit https://www.gotolouisville.com/about-us/research-publications/miscellaneous-reports/.

Louisvilles convention business is also on track to increase in future years. Much of that is attributed to the expansion and renovation of the Kentucky International Convention Center (KICC) in downtown Louisville, along with the new hotel development currently under construction or proposed. KICC closed in August with plans to reopen in summer 2018.

Doug Bennett, senior VP of convention development for LCVB, reports that the Bureaus booking pace for 2019 and 2020 continues to be very strong. He also said that between the anticipated opening date of August 2018 through August 2020, the Bureau has worked with 24 groups that will utilize the new center.

Since 1968, the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureaus (LCVB) primary goal has been to enhance the city and countys economy through tourism development - to promote and sell Louisville as a destination for conventions, trade shows, corporate meetings and pleasure and business travel on a worldwide basis. The LCVB was one of the first Destination Marketing Organizations to become accredited in 2006, by the independent, international standards program developed by the Washington, D.C. based Destination Marketing Association International. Louisville hosts more than 24 million visits annually for an estimated economic impact of $1.6 billion which supports 36,000 local tourism-related jobs.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is introducing a cooperative PhD in environmental resources and policy (ER&P) with the Carbondale campus that will be available for the fall 2017 semester.

The central focus of the ER&P program is advanced interdisciplinary training and research on physical, biological, and social processes responsible for natural resource and environmental problems facing contemporary society. The program features concentrations in water resources, ecology, climatology, energy and mineral resources, earth and environmental processes, forestry, agricultural and rural land resources, environmental policy and administration, and geographic information systems and environmental modeling.

Jerry Weinberg, PhD and dean of the SIUE Graduate School, said the time had arrived for the two campuses to collaborate in this particular academic endeavor. To address environmental problems that can have potentially global impacts, it is crucial that our natural resource policies be informed with solid scientific discoveries, he noted. The cooperation between the two campuses does this by bringing together the study of policy and resource use with the scientific inquiry of the environment.

The interests of the two faculties mesh together in important areas such as toxicology and river resource use. We anticipate interesting and impactful research to be produced through this cooperative program.

SIUE College of Arts and Sciences Dean Gregory Budzban pointed to additional advantages. After the introduction of the bachelors program in environmental sciences in fall 2016, this cooperative PhD program will enable environmental sciences program faculty to offer environmental education and training opportunities from bachelors to doctoral level at SIUE, he said. The cooperative PhD program will enhance the research faculty collaboration between the two campuses. Given the current increased focus on environmental issues, this new program offers students the professional credentials needed to have access to the entire range of career opportunities available.

For more information, contact Zhi-Qing Lin, PhD, director, SIUE environmental sciences program at 618-650-2650 or zhlin@siue.edu.

By preparing the next generation of leaders in a knowledge-based economy, SIUEs Graduate School fulfills the regions demand for highly trained professionals. Graduate school offerings include arts and sciences, business, education, engineering, nursing and interdisciplinary opportunities. SIUE professors provide students with a unique integration of theoretical education and hands-on research experiences. Students can obtain graduate certificates or pursue masters degrees, and be part of a supportive learning and rich intellectual environment that is tailored to the needs of adult learners. The Graduate School raises the visibility of research at SIUE, which ranks highest among its Illinois Board of Higher Education peers in total research and development expenditures according to the National Science Foundation. Doctoral programs are available in the Schools of Education (Ed.D.) and Nursing (DNP). The School of Engineering and the Department of Historical Studies feature cooperative doctoral programs (PhD).
It promises to be a busy first month of the year for new state rep Katie Stuart. First comes the swearing in; then a meet-the-candidate-style get-together in downtown Edwardsville; then the opening of a local office in Collinsville.

The hour-long event in Edwardsville  dubbed Coffee With Katie  is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 14 at Sacred Grounds Cafe at 223 North Main St.

I just want to be accessible to constituents, Stuart explained during a brief phone interview Wednesday. Its a really good way to get out and be in a place where they can meet me and let me know what theyre thinking about.

In the months ahead, Stuart says she will be hosting other Coffee With Katie stops in Collinsville, Caseyville and Granite City.

It has been about a year since Stuart began a leave of absence from SIUE, where she had been teaching mathematics. The move gave her more time to focus on her bid to unseat incumbent Republican Dwight Kay, whom she eventually defeated in the race for the 112th District.

Three days before the Sacred Grounds event, Stuart will be sworn in to office. The ceremony starts at noon in the Sangamon Auditorium at the University of Illinois-Springfield campus.

At some point after that, Stuart will open an office in Collinsville. The 112th District covers parts of Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Maryville, Caseyville, Collinsville, Granite City, Fairview Heights and OFallon. Stuart chose Collinsville for a local office because of its central location within her district.

Earlier this week, Stuart was out knocking on doors. On Wednesday she went out again to meet them where they are and find out what concerns they have.

Of the many hurdles facing the state of Illinois, the toughest to clear will most certainly be the one currently standing in the way of a state budget.

The impasse has devastated social service organizations, higher education and local school districts, although there seems to be no solution on the horizon. Even a stop-gap budget, passed last summer, is set to expire soon.

On Wednesday, Stuart was asked what she, as just one of 118 state representatives across the state, can do to help the state resolve its budget crisis.

What I can do as an individual is try to build consensus with other reps who feel the same way, she said. Its paramount in everybodys mind and its first and foremost what we need to accomplish.

"Im willing to work with anybody who wants to see the problem solved, ignoring any construct like a party line or anything like that. She will be focusing, she said, on the task at hand.
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Linkedin Al Araf and Evitarossi S. Budiawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017 09:24 2128 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0b9da0ee 3 Opinion antiterrorism,antiterrorism-law,bill,law-enforcement,military,human-rights Free

The revision of Antiterrorism Law No. 15/2003, which deals with prevention, prosecution and post-incident response, has pushed for a few significant changes in the existing law so as to help the state fulfill its responsibility to protect the people from acts of terrorism.

Nevertheless, such obligations cannot justify the establishment of a political security regime that could threaten human rights and democracy.

Counterterrorism policies should therefore be formulated within the order of a democratic state, rule of law and human rights standards and norms. To that end, building equilibrium between the states obligation to ensure safety and to protect human rights is a must so as to avoid potential abuse of power.

Unfortunately, the revision bill that is currently tabled at the House of Representatives contains some serious shortcomings that could potentially jeopardize the countrys protection of human rights and its criminal justice system. One of the main problems in the bill is the plan to provide a more active military role in fighting terrorism.

Principally, in a democracy, the main duty of the military is to be prepared for war. Military personnel are recruited, trained and armed to perform their main function, which is to face foreign military threats. This is the raison detre of the military (Samuel Huntington, 1993).

Although the militarys main duty is to face the threat of war, to a certain degree, civil authorities can involve the military in Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW).

Even so, under MOOTW, especially in dealing with domestic security, the militarys role should be reduced to temporarily assisting law enforcement, serving as the last resort and only in a state of emergency, and be subject to a political decision by the civilian government.

The Indonesian Military (TNI) is no exception. TNI Law No. 34/2004 allows it to carry out military operations of war and military operations other than war. In this context, the efforts to fight terrorism are part of military operations other than war.

Through MOOTW, military involvement in tackling terrorism is only possible under certain circumstances: when it is threatening the sovereignty of the country, and it should be based on a state political decision. This means TNI involvement in the fight against terrorism is already regulated under the TNI Law and should not be duplicated in the draft revision bill of the Antiterrorism Law.

The deployment of the military through the law enforcement corridor will adversely affect the countrys criminal justice system. Involving the military in combating terrorism (Article 43B) is a transgression, incorrect and off-target.

Such a shift in approach is dangerous and potentially catastrophic as it will lead to a much more repressive and excessive way of countering terrorism.

The involvement of non-law enforcement authorities in addressing the threat of terrorism will undermine the rule of law.

Moreover, such pernicious involvement, unaccompanied by military obligation to abide by the general judiciary system, would cause serious problems in the accountability of its operations.

The military is not a law enforcement agency; it is a tool for national defense and therefore does not fall under the Antiterrorism Law. It would be injudicious for policymakers to authorize a non-judicial authority (military) to become involved in law enforcement.

The act of terrorism is a crime, therefore it should be addressed through law enforcement with regard and respect for the rule of law and protection of human rights.

The current criminal justice system to handle terrorism is already apt and correct. What we really need when amending the Anti-terrorism Law is to ensure the principle of human rights is guaranteed and reinforced in our counterterrorism measures.

Revocation of the citizenship of alleged terrorists, as stipulated in the draft revision of the Antiterrorism Law, presents another problem.

Citizenship is a constitutional right for citizens. The right to citizenship is as precious as the right to life and liberty. Revocation of citizenship is a punishment with concrete and fundamental implications resulting in the loss of elemental rights, including the right to property, the right to form a family and descendants, the right to survival, growth and development, the right to protection against discrimination, as well as the right to cultural identity and the rights of indigenous people.

Besides, Indonesia adheres to the principle of single citizenship and therefore revoking citizenship will result in statelessness. An individual who is stripped of their citizenship will no longer have access to protection or assistance from the state and is consequently vulnerable to human rights abuses.

The government and the House should make human rights principles the basis for amending the Antiterrorism Law. The principles of international and national human rights laws should therefore be thoroughly considered in doing so. As a consequence, such amendments should remove the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment.

The Constitution places the right to life as a non-derogable right.

Indonesia has also ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and claims to uphold human rights principles embodied in Law No. 39/1999 on human rights.

Departing from the principle of human rights, the draft revision of the Anti-terrorism Law extends the period of arrest and detention for suspected terrorists without an objective control mechanism. This practice will lead to abuse of power.

On a more extreme matter, the provision on deradicalization, in which state officials are authorized to arrest and place suspicious people in certain places for a period of six months without trial for the purpose of deradicalization essentially justifies arbitrary arrests.

This arrangement is extremely dangerous to the protection of human rights as this mechanism clearly violates the principle of due process of law and is a violation of human rights norms.

In addition, the draft revision of the Anti-terrorism Law does not comprehensively address hate speech as a threat to freedom of opinion and expression.

The state has an obligation to regulate hate speech, but it should be devised carefully, comprehensively and be clearly defined, or else it will undermine freedom of opinion and expression and lead to arbitrary arrests and other violations of fundamental rights.

Maintaining a balance between, on the one hand, the need of the state to ensure the safety of the people and, on the other hand, their rights is indeed a difficult task.

But that is not an excuse to defend the one at the expense of the other. If  and only if  we have the political will and proper approach, we can reach such equilibrium.

---------------

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 Sylvia Hui (Associated Press) London  Fri, January 6, 2017

Letters sent by Britain's late Princess Diana  including one in which she described a young Prince Harry as being "constantly in trouble" while at boarding school  sold for thousands of pounds at an auction Thursday.

The six handwritten notes were sent to Cyril Dickman, a former head steward at Buckingham Palace, during the 1980s and 1990s.

In one, sent five days after Harry's birth in September 1984, Diana thanked Dickman for a card he sent during what she called "this particularly happy time" and described how affectionate Prince William was toward his baby brother.

"William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near!" she wrote.

Diana added that she was overwhelmed by the reaction to Harry's birth.

"I can hardly breathe for the mass of flowers that are arriving here!" she said.

(Read also: Prince Harry's office condemns media coverage of girlfriend)

That note, which had been expected to fetch up to 600 pounds ($745), sold for 3,200 pounds ($3,975), Cheffins auction house in Cambridge said.

In another letter, written in 1992, Diana said both her sons were enjoying boarding school, "although Harry is constantly in trouble!"

Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

The letters were part of a collection that included about 40 royal memorabilia items. The auction house, said bidding took place online and in the saleroom, with bids from Australia, Japan and America.

Other items include photos and Christmas cards from various members of Britain's royal family, and a boxed piece of cake from Queen Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947.
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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Fri, January 6, 2017 10:34 2128 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0b9e07ed 4 Art & Culture indigenous-people,marriage,Incest,indigenous-people-rights Free

Gorontalo, Sulawesi Island bears, witness to the existence of the Polahi, a group of residents that abandoned their homes for the woods in the 17th century to avoid taxes imposed by the Dutch colonial administration.

The community has been living in nature for generations in the forests of the Boliyohuto mountain range located 2,065 meters above sea level, which spans from Gorontalo to Boalemo regencies.

Some also live in the mountain ranges of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in Bone Bolango and Bolaang Mongondow regencies in North Sulawesi.

Yet, until now, the lifestyle of those living in this community  Polahi  literally meaning fugitives, remains a mystery for many. There is no exact data on the communitys population, but it is predicted to continue decreasing, as some members of the community have opted to mingle with or marry local villagers.

One of the remaining groups of the Polahi community is the Tahilu family, which comprises 10 members and lives on the Hatibi River, Paguyaman, Gorontalo regency. The family made headlines recently for its marriage system that allows males to marry their own mothers.

Tahilu, for instance, has two wives, who are sisters, namely Ipa and Lumeya. Ipa was later released and married her son Maulya.

An online media outlet in Jakarta once wrote a story bearing a bombastic headline mocking their way of life. A television program also presented the Polahi as people who walked around half naked, while in fact they dress like those in any ordinary community.

(Read also: Local culture should be taught in schools, activist says)

Polahi people continue to be exploited, including by the mass media, Polahi researcher and professor of sociology Rauf Hatu of Gorontalo State University, said.

He said the Polahi were often misunderstood and depicted as living with no rules, wild, impolite and knowing no religion.

The latest research on the Polahi was conducted by NGO Burung Indonesia and Gorontalo State University at the end of 2016.

Burung Indonesia archeologist Marahalim Siagian, who led the research team, said the Polahis marriage system should be seen from a scientific angle, such as from the medical aspect. He said no child had been born out of the incestuous marriages.

The incestuous marriage can be seen as a survival measure considering that the Tahilu family has more male than female members, Marahalim told The Jakarta Post recently.

(Read also: Legal uncertainty 'at root cause' of mistreatment of indigenous people)

The research, he added, also confirmed that not all things regarding the Polahi had negative connotations. The Polahi people survived through hunting and cultivating. They also have wisdom that is in accordance with conservation.

The Polahi, for example, do not eat the meat of particular animals, such as the endemic and protected rangkong and maleo birds. They do not eat Celebes monkeys either, as they believe that the animals are human incarnations. They also believe eating pork causes skin irritation. According to Polahi cosmology, Marahalim added, there were three balancing powers: Pulohuta, Lati and Lausala. As such, when they cut down a tree, for example, they must ask for permission from one of these three powers.

Marahalim said there were many other Polahi wisdoms that were in line with conservation efforts and that the Polahi people could be considered guardians of Gorontalo forests.

Many want to change their lifestyles, modernize them, take them out of the woods. But, for what? he said.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

In a break from the previous tradition of releasing its latest Galaxy S line during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the South Korean company will reportedly release the Galaxy S8 smartphone in New York, United States, in April.

According to Antara news agency, Samsung has ordered up to 10 million units for the new smartphone's first batch. The first internal components are estimated to arrive at the factory next month and full production of the device is slated to begin in March.

(Read also: Samsung's smartphone brand takes beating from Note 7 fiasco)



News outlets also reported that the first five million units would be manufactured in March and the next five million in April.



Samsung sold around 10 million units of Galaxy S7 in the first month sale last year and it expects similar success for S8. (kes)
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Linkedin Youkyung Lee (Associated Press) Seoul, South Korea  Fri, January 6, 2017

A South Korean court sentenced the former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser to seven years in prison Friday after the company's disinfectant for humidifiers killed scores of people and left hundreds with permanent lung damage.

The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Shin Hyun-woo, Oxy chief from 1991-2005, was guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising the deadly product as being safe even for children. Seven years is the maximum prison term the court could issue.

Choi Chang-young, chief judge of the case, said the disaster could have been prevented if Shin and others in the company, a subsidiary of British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, had tried to ensure the chemicals' safety.

Former and current officials at Oxy's research and development department were also sentenced to prison terms of between five and seven years. However, the judge acquitted John Lee, Google Korea's CEO, who was chief at Oxy Reckitt Benckiser from 2005 to 2010, citing a lack of evidence proving he knew about the products' risks while in charge.

Executives at Lotte Mart, Homeplus and other retailers were also found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of three to five years for selling the toxic product without assuring its safety.

The consumer product disaster affected many households in South Korea, where infants and pregnant women often battle dry winter seasons with humidifiers, and the rulings could set a precedent for punishing businesses that put profit ahead of safety.

(Read: Health costs of smoking may be higher than tobacco profit)

Businesses have resisted such efforts.

The fatal disinfectant was first sold by Oxy in 2001 and later by other companies seeking to tap demand from hygiene-conscious consumers. The hazards of breathing in the disinfectants were discovered only in 2011, when authorities investigated mysterious lung diseases that were killing pregnant women and concluded the disinfectants were to blame.

The government halted sales and urged victims to come forward to report their cases. After prosecutors launched investigations, Reckitt Benckiser, whose products caused the most injuries and deaths, apologized last year and promised to compensate them.

More than 5,000 cases believed to be related to the disinfectant products had been reported to the government as of December, including about a thousand deaths. The government is still reviewing cases.

A group of victims said Friday they were unhappy with the ruling since prosecutors had sought harsher sentences for those implicated in the case. Prosecutors had urged that Shin be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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Linkedin Fabian Koh (The Straits Times/Asia News Network) Singapore  Fri, January 6, 2017

The Washington Post Express drove feminists nuts globally and gave social media users a field day on Thursday after it used a male symbol as the cover art for an article on the women's rights march.

The Women's March on Washington is expected to be the largest demonstration linked to the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

Over 150,000 women and men have responded on the march's Facebook page that they plan on attending.

On Thursday's edition of the Washington Post Express, instead of the female symbol, the many individuals in the cover artwork formed the male symbol instead.

(Read also: Newsweek recalls commemorative edition with Clinton cover)

The Washington Post Express is the free daily newspaper of the Washington D.C-based publication.

It has apologised for the mistake on its front cover.

In a Facebook post, the publication posted a picture of the cover art with the correct gender symbol, with the words: "We made a big mistake on our cover illustration this morning and we're very embarrassed about it."

"We erroneously used a male symbol instead of a female symbol. This is how the cover should have looked. We apologize for the mistake."

In typical Internet fashion, netizens jumped on the error.

Facebook user Rebecca Renfro commented: "This is exactly why women need to march. Patriarchy is so ingrained, you couldn't even get the correct symbol."

Another user, Erin Sutherland, suggested the paper run a correction note about the mix-up in the next day's paper.

This article appeared on The Straits Times newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
India Today met some people outside RBI's Patna branch to know the reason behind the delay in depositing banned notes by December 30. They had some ingenious excuses. Read on to know what they said.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: They are not NRIs nor were they abroad when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced scrapping of of Rs 500, 1000 notes on November 8 but still they did not show any haste or interest in exchanging their old notes or depositing them in banks December 30, the stipulated deadline. Now, they all are rushing to the Reserve Bank of India to exchange, deposit the banned notes and they have some bizarre and ingenious excuses to satisfy bank officials. However, the RBI has made it clear they will not be exchanging or depositing even a single old currency, come what may.

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India Today met a few such people at the Patna branch of the Reserve Bank to listen to what they have to say.

Ram Chandra Prasad, a fruit seller had come to the RBI to deposit Rs 5000 in old currency. When asked why he did not deposit the money within the deadline, he said," I just cleaned my house yesterday and found Rs 5000 which my wife had kept hidden. She has gone to her mother's place."

Also read | RBI may have received deposits of about Rs 15 lakh crore in old Rs 500, Rs 1,000 notes

One Manoj Kumar said he has Rs 2500 in old currency and when questioned about the reason for not depositing the money in bank before by December 30, he said," I had kept old notes in a trunk and forgot about it. When I opened the trunk to take out some clothes I found the money."

Chandu, a farmer had Rs 3000 in banned notes. When queried about the reason for the delay, he said, "I was in Munger and was not present in Patna. I was stuck there due to the farming season and therefore could not get old notes exchanged ro deposited." (Just for your information, Patna is five hours away from Munger.)

"I had deposited old notes within stipulated time but on January 1, I found few more old notes under my bed about which I wasn't aware," said Animesh Kumar, a student who had come to the bank with Rs 1000 in demonetised currency.

Also read | Demonetisation woes: Who should we listen to? Modi or RBI, ask harrowed citizens in Kolkata

"I had got my old notes exchanged but there was a marriage in my house. I recovered Rs 2000 in old notes kept in a wedding dress only recently, so I am here now," said one Amit Prasad.

WATCH VIDEO

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

When incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama went on campaign leave, he believed that anyone appointed as acting governor would meddle with his plans and policies.

Acting governor Sumarsono, a senior bureaucrat from the Home Ministry, has made several moves during his first month leading the administration.

After increasing the city budget from Ahoks draft on Tuesday, Sumarsono promoted several officials that had been previously demoted to regular staffers by Ahok.

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

Lawyers for non-active Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, are preparing to report Novel Bamukmin, the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) city chapter secretary, to the police for perjury.

"We are now still transcribing Tuesdays hearing. We want to use Novel's exact words in the hearing as our basis for the report," Fifi Lety Indra, one of the lawyers, told The Jakarta Post, adding that Ahoks legal team aimed to finish the transcription on Friday evening.

Fifi said that Novel, a former employee of Pizza Hut restaurant, had lied under oath while testifying against Ahok, together with the other three witnesses during the hearing at the North Jakarta District Court.

"Novel said Ahok had killed two of his assistants without any evidence. He also said Ahok had orchestrated his imprisonment back in 2015," she said.

(Read also:Ahok should not make fuss about my personal background: FPI leader)

In April 2015, the Central Jakarta District Court sentenced Novel to seven months in jail for public disturbance during a rally in front of the City Council during which several people were injured including police officers.

On Tuesday evening after the hearing, Ahok said he hoped Novel would be imprisoned if he was found guilty of perjury.

"If it is later proven that Novel gave false testimony in court, I hope he can be imprisoned for seven years, Ahok said, referring to provisions in the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) concerning perjury. (jun)
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Linkedin Alison Mutler (Associated Press) Bucharest  Fri, January 6, 2017

Blizzards swept parts of eastern Europe on Friday, closing roads and causing traffic accidents, travel delays and leading to medical evacuations.

In Romania, one of the worst affected areas, authorities said main highways in the south and east were made impassable due to the heavy snow. More than 40 trains were not running due to snow on the track.

Senior emergency situations official Raed Arafat said authorities evacuated 622 people who needed dialysis and 126 pregnant women.

Serbia's state television reported that 17 people, including six children, were injured in a pileup caused by the wintry weather on the outskirts of the southern city of Nis.

Heavy snow and strong winds disrupted traffic in southern Serbia and snow piled up to two-meters (6.6 feet) high, closing several roads. Local official Dragan Dimitrijevic said emergency crews were "helpless against the wind."

"New piles form almost immediately after we clear up," he said.

Bulgarian authorities said some 650 villages across the country were without electricity due to high winds and heavy snow, while the national road service said that snow plows were unable to operate due to the conditions.

Temperatures are forecast to drop to minus 20 C (minus 4 F) at the weekend and Bulgarian authorities issued a severe weather warning for 20 out of the country's 28 regions, telling people to stay indoors.

In Croatia, the temperatures dipped below freezing even along the country's Adriatic coast where high winds halted some ferry traffic to the islands and over the bridges along the coastline.

In Montenegro, bad weather caused traffic delays and authorities urged people to stay indoors. Villages were virtually cut off in the worst-hit northern part of the country.

Elsewhere, temperatures in Germany plunged as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit) overnight, after storm "Axel" sucked in icy air from the Arctic.

In northern Europe, which is accustomed to subzero temperatures, it was bitterly cold but sunny, plummeting to minus 23 C (minus 9.4 F) Friday morning in Helsinki, Finland, the same temperature recorded in Latvia.

Strong gales off the coast of western Norway caused the cancellation of a ferry and on a major rail section west of Copenhagen, Denmark, there were delays due to the icy weather.

__

Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia; Frank Jordans, in Berlin; Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The panel of judges at the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) has granted the lawsuit filed by Bukit Duri residents against an eviction notice issued by Tebet district head Mahludin, declaring that the eviction violated the law.

Bukit Duri resident lawyer Vera Soemarwi said on Thursday that the court had declared that the eviction, conducted as part of the Ciliwung River normalization program in September and October, was illegal.

She further said that the panel of judges had ordered the Jakarta administration to revoke the eviction notice because it was against the law and unprofessional.

Vera said it was also stated in the courts ruling that the Bukit Duri eviction was conducted without proper procedures as mandated by Law No 2/2012 on land procurement for public needs.

The procedures include data collection and identification processes of land ownership, she added.

The city administration is obliged to give compensation to the evictees because they have owned their land for generations, since the 1920s,Vera said.

She further explained that Bukit Duri residents had evidence of land ownership in various forms, ranging from land certificates to girik (customary land appointments) letters, verbonding, purchase agreements, building use permits (HGB) to building ownership statements.

In September, hundreds of families were evicted from Bukit Duri despite legal proceedings in court. Besides submitting a lawsuit at the PTUN, the residents have also filed a class action lawsuit at the Central Jakarta Court against the eviction. The trial is still ongoing. (ebf)
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian has called on those who bought copies of Jokowi Undercover, a book with alleged defamatory content about President Joko Jokowi Widodo, not to make copies and circulate it further. He has asked the book owners to instead hand over their copies to the police.

Citing the writer of the book, Bambang Tri Mulyono, Tito said 300 copies of Jokowi Undercover had been circulated.

Those who have copies of the book are encouraged to hand them over to us as evidence, Tito said on the sidelines of a visit to Bhayangkara Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta, on Friday.

Those who reproduce the book will be charged with violating the 2008 ITE [Electronic Information and Transactions] Law for distributing false information.

(Read also: Police continue investigating publisher of 'Jokowi Undercover')

The National Police are investigating the case after they arrested the book author, Bambang, and named him a suspect for allegedly providing false and unreliable information in the book. The writer failed to provide reliable data to support the content of his book, the police said. They are currently looking for parties responsible for publishing the book as the author was considered incapable to have either written the book or provided the information.

Apart from searching for more witnesses to hunt down the possible publishing masterminds, Tito said the police would accelerate their investigation into the Jokowi Undercover book so they could be brought to court. (ebf)
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

While warning the public about the dangers of news portals that produce fake news, the Press Council will also recommend that the government ban portals run by buzzers who provide news-like information to boost the image of particular politicians or officials.

Press Council chairman Yosep Stanley Adi Prasetyo said like unreliable news portals, buzzers were also sources of misleading information that jeopardized journalism. Unfortunately, news outlets run by buzzers had become information sources often quoted by mainstream media companies.

Buzzers mostly use social media platforms to promote those who pay them, Stanley told The Jakarta Post. It is OK for them to run campaign websites to promote certain officials or politicians, for example, but it is not OK if they provide the information in the form of news as if its factual.

(Read also: Mainstream media responsible for rise of fake news: Press Council)

The Press Council is set to join a council of experts formed by the Communications and Information Ministry to identify questionable news outlets that the government will close down. The effort is being made following the widespread circulation of fake news in the country.

The National Police will also step up law enforcement efforts to hunt down producers of fake news on the internet by strictly imposing the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The government has pushed up the value-added tax (PPN) on cigarettes to 9.1 percent this year as part of its gradual effort to increase the rate to 10 percent, a number that already applies to other consumer goods.

The raised tax, which is up from 8.7 percent last year, has been effective since Jan. 1, according to Finance Minister Regulation No. 174/PMK 03/2016.

The Association of Indonesian Light Cigarette Producers (Gaprindo) has protested the new measure as the rise breaches the governments agreement with industry players.

Earlier, both approved of the rate at 8.9 percent for this year and 9.1 percent for next year, said the groups chairman Muhaimin Moefti as quoted by Kontan on Friday. The government, in this case, showed its inconsistency in making its policy, he added.

(Read also: Court puts end to tobacco expansion plan)

So far the groups members had no choice but to comply with the rules, although they might have further discussions on this issue, Muhaimin said.

The higher value-added tax follows a 10.54 percent increase on average for cigarette excise tax, also coming into force early this month.

The double taxes may pose another challenge for the local cigarette industry to expand its business following the Supreme Courts ruling late last year that annulled an Industry Ministrys tobacco road map.

Under the road map, cigarette production is set to reach 524.2 billion units by 2020. Five anti-tobacco activists challenged it last year on public health concerns. (lnd)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono has said that a Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) ruling in favor of Bukit Duri residents in a lawsuit against their eviction in a hearing on Thursday proves the move was inhumane.

We dont want such a thing to happen in the future, in which they [authorities] act inhumanely and the residents win in court, Agus said on the sidelines of campaign activities in East Jakarta on Friday.

On Thursday, the courts panel of judges declared that the eviction of Bukit Duri residents conducted by Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnamas administration in September violated the law because it was not done according to proper procedure.

Agus said that with the court ruling, the Jakarta administration should learn to act carefully when it wanted to relocate residents.

A lesson has been learned with this incident. It shows that every step taken by the administration should be measurable and conducted carefully and humanely, he said.

(Read also: Bukit Duri eviction declared illegal)

Agus earlier said should he have to relocate any residents, he would do it humanely by involving them from the beginning of the relocation process.

He further said that he would dispatch social workers assigned to explain to would-be-evictees what apartment life was like.

Agus said he wanted to construct 300,000 apartments in 700 towers. He said the concept of "vertical housing" applied would be similar to rusunami (subsidized low-cost apartments) with ownership rights, he said. (ebf)
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The first official debate of Jakarta gubernatorial candidates slated for next week is expected to be a stage for a battle of ideas and shift public focus from sectarian debacles, an expert has said.

Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) political analyst J. Kristiadi said sectarian issues, used by political elites for their own agenda, had stolen the spotlight and diverted peoples attention from concentrating on the quality of the candidates.

"[The debate] is a good thing because it will provide a stage for rational discussion and will restore the sanity of the people," he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

(Read also: Agus Yudhoyono ready for debate, seeks advice from father)

He said that exposure through the debate could open peoples eyes and make them realized that they should invest more time in assessing the gubernatorial hopefuls based on ideas and solutions offered to bring betterment to the city.

"The candidates should engage in a more intellectual battle like this. Don't let the public judge candidates based on ethnicity or religious background and overlook the candidates competence in social or law issues," he said.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission has scheduled the debate for Jan. 13, picking social, economic, education, health and transportation issues as the topics. (jun)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The defamation report filed by Novel Bamukmin, Islam Defenders Front (FPI) Jakarta chapter secretary, against governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama over the 'Fitsa Hats' issue is nonsensical, one of Ahoks lawyers has said.

"The report made me laugh because Fitsa Hats was written in his dossier. This is ridiculous," the lawyer, Fifi Lety Indra, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Fifi added that during the hearing at the North Jakarta District Court on Tuesday, Novel told the judges that he stood behind his statement in the case dossier and claimed Ahok had blasphemed the police.

"If he says he stands behiind what is in the dossier, how can he say that the document contains a spelling mistake?" Fifi said, adding that Novel had signed each page of the report.

(Read also: Ahok defamed Islam repeatedly: FPI leader)

During the press conference after his fourth hearing, Ahok said that Novel had stated in the dossier that he was a former employee of Fitsa Hats", instead of Pizza Hut.

Ahok suggested that the misspelling was intentionally made as an attempt to cover up the name of the restaurant, saying that Novel was ashamed to have worked for a company owned by infidels.

Novel denied Ahok's accusation, saying that it was a police officer, not him, who had made the error in the investigation report.

"[Working at Pizza Hut] is my personal background, something he should not make a fuss about. Why should he make a comment about it? Novel said at the Jakarta Police headquarters on Thursday after reporting Ahok for defamation.
BJP president Amit Shah said the party is seeking to make demonetisation, which it has termed as a "war against black money and corruption", a major poll issue.

By India Today Web Desk: The BJP's national office-bearers meeting began on Friday at NDMC convention centre here. The party's office bearers and state presidents are taking part in the crucial meeting ahead of the Assembly elections in five states.

BJP president Amit Shah inaugurated the meeting which would finalise the agenda of the national executive which is expected to give final shape to party's poll strategy in Assembly elections in the five states.

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BJP'S TWO-DAY NATIONAL EXECUTIVE MEET BEGINS

Addressing the office-bearers ahead of the two-day National Executive meet, BJP president Amit Shah said the party is seeking to make demonetisation, which it has termed as a "war against black money and corruption", a major poll issue, besides encashing on the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the "pro-poor" schemes.

Shah finalised the party's resolutions to be passed in the two-day national executive meeting that will be inaugurated with his address later in the day.

AMIT SHAH TO MOTIVATE PARTY LEADERS BEFORE POLLS

The BJP chief will seek to motivate the party leaders to steer the party to victory in five states that go to polls in February-March, especially in high-stakes Uttar Pradesh.

The party leaders will discuss and review the ground situation in the poll-bound states, BJP leaders said.

The party will use the occasion to burnish its pro-poor and pro-weaker sections credentials by citing several government schemes, including the recent sops announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

BUDGET BATTLE: BJP TO TARGET OPPOSITION

The top BJP brass is also expected to target the Opposition over its attack on the government for advancing the Budget Session of Parliament and may project it as yet another attempt by the Congress and the other rival parties to derail Modi's "pro-poor" agenda.

With the mood in the saffron camp optimistic following the prime minister's huge rally in Lucknow recently and what it believes to be a positive public response to the currency ban, the party is expected to project the Opposition's criticism of the exercise as an attempt to protect the corrupt.

Two resolutions, one political and the other economic, are likely to be passed at the meet.

The army's surgical strikes last year to target terror launchpads across the border could also find a mention at the meeting.

ELECTION COMMISSION ANNOUNCES ASSEMBLY POLL DATES

The Election Commission has announced the dates for Assembly polls in five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand.

BJP's central election committee is likely to announce the names of party candidates after the auspicious 'Makar Sankranti' which falls on January 14.

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- With inputs from PTI

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Linkedin Philip Isa (Associated Press) Beirut  Fri, January 6, 2017

A large explosion rocked a Syrian government-held coastal town on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens  an attack that was a stark remainder of the prevailing insecurity in the war-torn country despite a nearly week-old cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

The explosion shook a main street in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad and the heartland of Syria's Alawites, a Shiite offshoot to which Assad's family also belongs.

It was the first such large-scale bombing since the cease-fire was agreed on last week, to prepare the way for peace talks between Assad's government and opposition in Kazakhstan later this month.

Videos from the scene of the blast, which state media said was a car bomb, show extensive damage to shops lining a commercial street near the town's municipal stadium. Blood pooled on the pavement and several cars lay charred or overturned as fire fighters scrambled to put out fires.

Qusay al-Khalil, the head of the local hospital, said the blast also severely wounded at least 30 people. "The explosion shook the town," he told state TV, adding that it prompted a state alert at his hospital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war, put the death toll at 15, including a son of a leading Syrian military commander. The monitoring group relies on a network of activists on the ground in Syria.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Although explosions are rare in government-controlled Latakia, Jableh was rocked in May last year by a string of blasts that first hit in a crowded bus station, then outside a hospital receiving the wounded, killing a total of about 120 people. Those attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.

IS and the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front are not part of the broad truce that the Syrian government and the opposition agreed on last week.

The cease-fire, which came into effect on Dec. 30, has mostly held but not altogether halted fighting in the country. Fierce clashes continue in the Barada Valley, a major source of water for Damascus, and in other isolated regions. Both the government and the rebels have accused the other side of violating the truce.

The United Nations said Thursday it has received reports that at least 7,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the Barada Valley. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said an estimated 45,000 people live in the area.

Dujarric also said the UN has rehabilitated and equipped 120 wells in and around Damascus that cover about one-third of the city's daily water needs.

Syria's al-Qaida-linked group in comments published Wednesday called the cease-fire "humiliating" and said that those who agreed to it made a "big mistake."

Latakia province police chief Yasser al-Shariti told state TV the explosion hit during rush hour, when government employees and students would have been crowding one of the town's busiest streets.

Others said the area was packed with shoppers, many coming from or going to a popular vegetable market nearby. Jableh is also home to thousands of internally displaced Syrians who have sought refuge in the relative calm of the government-controlled town.

Under the new cease-fire, Russia and Iran are tasked with ensuring compliance by the Syrian government and its allies, while Turkey is serving as a guarantor for the rebels. On Wednesday, Turkey called on Iran to rein in the pro-government forces. Tehran countered by accusing the opposition of dozens of violations and called Turkey's comments "unconstructive."

The government in Damascus says the truce does not apply in the Barada Valley because of the presence of al-Qaida-linked fighters. But activists and rebel groups have challenged the government claim, with some arguing the militants don't operate in the area. The rebels have said all areas not ruled by IS are covered under the agreement.

In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria said Thursday he welcomed preparations for the Russia- and Turkey-brokered peace negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, saying the gathering could undergird new UN-mediated talks between the warring sides. Staffan de Mistura acknowledged violent "incidents" in Syria the truce began, but added that he believed the powers would "succeed in overcoming them."

However, nearly a dozen rebel groups announced on Monday they were suspending talks about the negotiations because of cease-fire violations.

A senior Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujaerdi, on a visit to Damascus, stressed on Thursday that as the al-Qaida-linked group and IS are not part of the agreement, "matters are settled with them on the battlefield." Boroujaerdi, who is in charge of foreign policy and national security portfolios in Iran's Shura Council, said that for any truce to hold, all militant groups must leave Syria.

The presence of al-Qaida-linked militants, who fight alongside other rebel factions and have been credited with some of their biggest victories, has undermined past truce attempts. The Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as the Nusra Front, announced last year that it had severed tied with al-Qaida, but is still widely believed to be linked to the global terror network.

Fatah al-Sham spokesman al-Shafei said in an interview published late Wednesday by Al-Jazeera Net that the current truce only protects Assad and allied Iranian-backed militias.

"The people of (Syria) didn't offer all these sacrifices to be handed this humiliating agreement," he was quoted as saying. The Syrian rebellion "today needs someone to ... strengthen its political position by battlefield achievements," he said.

The rebels demand that any future solution for Syria include Assad's exit from power.

But Boroujaerdi said peace talks should not put any conditions on the Syrian leadership. He also chastised Turkey for sending troops into northern Syria as one in a series of Ankara's policy "mistakes." He added that any troops in Syria without the government's approval or permission should leave "immediately."

__

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report. (**)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The government is mulling on a new import mechanism for fruits and vegetables that will urge importers to accommodate local harvests, as part of efforts to strengthen the horticulture industry in the tropical fruit and vegetable-rich country.

Trade Minister Enggartiasto Enggar Lukita said he would maintain fruit and vegetable import levels but would ask importers to also buy and distribute local harvests. Further details on the new mechanism would be announced soon.

If we can ask them [to buy local harvests], the welfare of our farmers can be better secured. Production keeps falling because there aren't many buyers as they are limited to traditional markets, he said after a national meeting for agricultural development on Thursday.

The ministry, in cooperation with the Agriculture Ministry, is going to map areas based on their horticulture product prominence so that importers can better track suppliers.

Indonesias fruit exports amounted to US$775,922 in 2015, mainly to Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand, while imports totaled $666,373 primarily from China and the United States, according to data from Trade Map. (ags)
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Linkedin Erica Werner (Associated Press) Washington  Fri, January 6, 2017

A few years ago President Barack Obama came under conservative fire for choosing, at times, to read his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receive them in-person. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was among those piling on.

"I have a hard time comprehending that, because the primary job of the commander in chief is to keep the country safe," Ryan said in an October 2014 interview on Fox News Channel. "And you need to get from your intelligence community, your defense community  especially when we have troops in harm's way  what's going on."

Yet now, as President-elect Donald Trump refuses daily intelligence briefings, questions US spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trump's back. Far from strongly defending the US intelligence community, they're siding with the new leader of their party, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

(Read also: VP Biden to President-elect Trump: 'Grow up')

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, unfailingly supports the military and joined with European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Asked at a press briefing Thursday whether he had full confidence in US intelligence agencies, now-Speaker Ryan offered a tepid endorsement that began and ended on a note of criticism.

"Well, they don't always get everything right. We've seen that clearly," Ryan said. "But I do have faith that our men and women in our intelligence community are doing an incredible job, sacrificing for our country. But there's always room for improvement."

Earlier Thursday, in an interview with WTAQ radio in Wisconsin, Ryan passed up the chance to distance himself from Trump's elevation of Assange in a tweet earlier this week, when Trump cited Assange's claim that Russia had not been the source of Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks revealed.

Instead, even while criticizing Assange, Ryan defended Trump, saying that what the president-elect is "rightfully concerned about is partisans are trying to use the Russian hacking incident to ... call into question the legitimacy of his victory."

And Ryan endorsed Trump's claim, disputed by intelligence officials, that intelligence leaders had delayed a briefing for Trump on the hacking issue. In dismissing the intelligence on Russia, Trump highlighted a glaring intelligence failure  the claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion and war.

With a couple of exceptions  most notably Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina  other GOP lawmakers and leaders have also stayed largely quiet as Trump lauds Putin and derides U.S. intelligence.

During a hearing Thursday with intelligence agency officials on the alleged Russian election meddling, Republicans on the panel largely avoided making comments that would contradict Trump's well-publicized skepticism that Russia had anything to do with hacking Democratic emails. The exceptions were McCain and Graham.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas even appeared to try to build the case for Trump, ticking off several Trump proposals, from increasing defense spending to accelerating nuclear weapons modernization, to challenge the notion that Putin would favor Trump over Hillary Clinton.

"There is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia," Cotton argued.

The hearing provoked an angry outburst from Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

"The notion that the soon elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military ... no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there should be howls," McCaskill said. "And mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side."

In most cases, Republicans haven't actually embraced Trump's stances, they've just declined to call him out on them, noted Gary Schmitt, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer before serving as executive director on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during Reagan's second term.

"It's a normal situation in which the nominal head of your party, you don't want him to be undercut," Schmitt said. "But my view is if it looks like the substance is clearly on the side of the intelligence community, you're not doing anybody any favors by protecting him."
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The Transportation Ministry has revealed that it will disburse more funds through its public service obligation (PSO) for state-owned railway operators to Rp 2.1 trillion (US$ 157.03 million) this year, an increase of 15 percent from last year.

About 65 percent of the money would be allocated for inner city rail services at Rp 1.8 trillion, such as the commuter line run by state railway operator PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek (KCJ), a subsidiary of PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), ministry director general for railway Prasetyo Boeditjahjono said recently.

We are giving high priority to the inner city railway that is used by the public daily, he said recently.

(Read also: KAI to spend Rp 7.5t for expansion in 2017)

The PSO was also given to the company with consideration that it has managed to increase the number of passengers to its current rate of 900,000 people daily, from some 450,000 before the company started to improve its services, Prasetyo said.

The company has set a target to increase daily passenger numbers to 1.2 million by 2019, he added.

The rest of the funds will be allocated for the intercity railway, both for medium and long routes, as well as for preparation for the Idul Fitri holiday, in which millions of people take part in the annual exodus from urban areas to their hometowns.

From the PSO, PT KAI will get Rp 745.3 billion and KCJ will receive Rp 1.34 trillion. (bbn)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has raised the non-tax revenue (PNBP) target for the fishery sector this year to Rp 950 billion (US$71.05 million), 2.79 times higher than that of in 2016 at Rp 340 billion.

The ministrys acting director general of fishing Zulficar Mochtar said the target would be supported by the integrated online regional ship licensing system (Simkada) that had been implemented since mid-2016. The ministry would also increase levies for several type of ships.

"We will increase levies for ship larger than 30 gross tonnage [GT] and there are some ships that have to be re-registered because of the mark-down practice. It will add some revenue," he said at the press conference in Jakarta on Thursday.

Major ship owners were found to be marking down the size of their ships in a bid to get lower levies. Seventy percent of 2,000 ships that the ministry had inspected in the latest operation were found to be marked down from their actual size.

Zulficar said there were around 630,000 registered ships in Indonesia, 89 percent of those had a capacity less than 10 GT. Meanwhile, around 8,900 units with the capacity of 30 GT and above were operational but only 3,600 of them were legally licensed.

"Our ship registration system was still unstable in 2015, so we saw sluggish revenue collection," he said, adding that the 2016 PNBP collection had exceeded the target, reaching Rp 360.86 billion. In 2015 the PNBP collection from the sector was only Rp 77.49 billion. (ags)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

The government has promised to strengthen the enforcement of rules on airport safety measures in the wake of a recent revelation of a lack of predeparture checks leading to a high-profile case of an allegedly drunk pilot of state budget carrier Citilink.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said on Thursday that the ministry would prepare additional airport safety measures, having instructed the ministrys director general for air transportation, Suprasetyo, and the state airport authority to introduce new procedures to monitor safety.

Among other things is the requirement to monitor via CCTV and to set preventive measures if any officials or air crew members behave suspiciously when passing [security checks], Budi said recently, stressing that the enforcement of standard operating procedures (SOP) was the obligation of each airline.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The government will continue its program to develop 1 million houses this year, taking into account significant backlog in the program.

Public Works and Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said the government built 805,169 houses in 2016, compared to 699,770 houses in the previous year.

The demand for houses is still high. We have to continue the program, he said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Friday.

(Read also:Informal workers can enjoy low housing down payments in 2017)

He expressed hope that all stakeholders would support the governments program to provide people with affordable housing.

Meanwhile, ministrys directorate general for housing Syarif Burhanuddin expressed his optimism that the government would be able to develop more houses this year because of reform in the permit arrangement.

Syarif said the smooth funding support for the public houses would also help the smooth roll-out of new housing.

The composition of houses to be developed this year will not change: 700,000 houses for low-income families and 300 houses for those who have higher income, the official said.

Last year, the government managed to develop 569,382 houses for low-income families and 235,787 for other members of society. (bbm)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The government wants to settle the spatial planning (RTRW) adjustment of the Indonesia-Japan joint megaproject of Patimban Seaport in West Java, ahead of a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Jan. 15.

Transportation Ministrys director general for sea transportation Antonius Tonny Budiono said the government still had to adjust the spatial planning for the regency, provincial and national level.

I hope that under the coordination of Pak Luhut, it can be done this month if it is possible, he said on Thursday, referring to Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan.

The adjustment of the spatial planning is one of the administrative requirements in addition to the detailed engineering design (DED) and environmental impact analysis (Amdal) in the governments bid to secure the loan from its Japanese counterpart for the Patimban project next year.

The government aimed to get the loan from Japan by May for the project. The Blue Book, composed by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) that contains projects to be funded by foreign loans from 2015 to 2019, shows that as much as US$1.7 billion in foreign loans are expected to be channeled into the deep-sea project.

The future Patimban Port will be located about 70 kilometers from the Karawang Industrial Estate in Bekasi, West Java. It will have a container capacity of 1.5 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) once it is partly completed by 2019. (bbn)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

National Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Awi Setiyono denied the force had hampered the media from covering the blasphemy trial of incumbent Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama at the makeshift courtroom in the Agriculture Ministry building in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, on Tuesday.

Awi claimed the police were only following the judges orders.

Inside the courtroom, authority is reserved for the panel of judges, he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

Sri Handayani, 25, filed a report to Central Jakarta Police on Thursday after she had been asked to pay Rp 40 million (US$3,000) to get her two-and-a-half-year-old son, identified only with the initial D, back who was being kept by her relatives.

Sri, a single parent, gave the baby to her aunt several months ago because she had to take care of her other son who was being treated in a hospital.

However, three months ago, she found out that the baby was no longer with her aunt who later said that she had given D to a person with the initial S.

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Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marjan and another unidentified extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital.

One is identified as Marjan and another still unknown, Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, confirmed the incident to The Daily Star.

Police say Marjan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshan's Holey Artisan Bakery that killed 22 people, including an Indian.

Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a raid around 3am, sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us.

In retaliation, we fired back that left the two injured, Monirul said.

Later, they were declared dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

According to an investigator, former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the Neo-JMB, a new faction of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) affiliated with Islamic State, Dhaka Tribune reported.

He also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Marjan had expertise in operating heavy arms.

Marjan had stayed in the militant den of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha for a long period where he reportedly gave motivational training to seven militants. Of the seven, five took part in the Gulshan terror attack.

On July 1, militants stormed Holey Artisan Bakery. The attackers took diners and restaurant staff hostage and had confrontations with police, killing two police officials.
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

The Foreign Ministry confirmed Thursday the recent capture of an Indonesian man by Malaysian authorities for the possession of materials linked to radical terrorist groups, but fell short of confirming the man was seeking to perform jihad in Myanmar.

The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and its Consulate General in Johor Baru received a tip-off from Malaysian security officials about an Indonesian migrant worker who was detained as he was about to leave for Singapore, ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir said Thursday.

We received word [] that they detained an Indonesian citizen who possessed several pictures and writings linked to radical terrorist groups on his [confiscated] cell phone. The person in question will be detained for 28 days for questioning, he said.

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Linkedin Adri Wanto and Leonard C. Sebastian (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Fri, January 6 2017

The use violence to resolve religious disputes has grown since 1998 with a wave of violent incidents by Islamic vigilantes against religious minorities like Buddhists, Christians, Ahmadis and Shiites.

Yet now Indonesia is on the precipice of something more dangerous. The legal justification to support intolerant attitudes is becoming entrenched at various levels of government. For instance, we are now witnessing local governments impose restrictions on particular religious sects, like the decree by the governor of East Java prohibiting the practice of Shia Islam in the province.

Bigoted interpretations of religious texts have shaped intolerant attitudes among Indonesian Muslims. However, we do not subscribe to the view that in a democratic society where people are free to read bigoted texts and think bigoted thoughts, acts of intolerance are inevitable and intolerance is normal.

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Linkedin (Associated Press) Tokyo  Fri, January 6, 2017

Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea in response to the placing of a comfort-woman statue in front of its consulate in the Korean city of Busan.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Friday that both the ambassador in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan would be temporarily recalled.

Many Korean and other women in Asia were forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the "comfort-woman" system.

Japan and South Korea reached an agreement to resolve their differences over the issue in late 2015, but some South Koreans have continued to protest. A comfort-woman statue has remained standing in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, and a similar one was put up in Busan recently.
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The rising circulation of fake news as an alternative for readers to obtain information is partly due to the questionable impartiality of the countrys mainstream media, according to Press Council chairman Yosep Adi Prasetyo.

Yosep told The Jakarta Post that public trust in the mainstream media has been decreasing since the 2014 legislative and presidential elections that saw media companies openly supporting candidates contesting the presidential race while at the same time, the owners also became involved in politics. The situation has turned gloomier with some journalists favoring certain politicians.

This is why people no longer trust the news provided by the mainstream media and have instead turned to social media as an alternative source of information, Yosep said. This also explains why people are quick to trust information circulating on WhatsApp chat groups, for example, because people no longer see the mainstream media as an authoritative source of facts.

The Press Council is planning to restore the credibility of the countrys mainstream media by creating a special logo for those that pass the councils verification to show that they are reliable and trusted. This is part of national efforts to counter mounting circulation of fake news particularly through online platforms. The government is also heightening measures to ban any unreliable online news portal, and is working with the Press Council to help identify them.

Yosep called on mainstream media to support the efforts to protect the Indonesian public from being misled by fake news. (dmr)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

The government hopes to develop an ambitious maritime highway program to include 13 routes, three more routes than originally planned, in order to further increase connectivity between the archipelagos vast islands.

The maritime highway is President Joko Jokowi Widodos flagship program to provide scheduled freight lines connecting major ports such as Tanjung Perak in Surabaya, East Java, to several main ports in remote areas.

The three new routes had been added into the plan and would be offered to private companies via a tender, said Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi on Thursday.

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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

Amid growing religious intolerance across the country, particularly against minority groups, the National Police have urged religious clerics and all relevant stakeholders to take tougher measures to help tackle bigotry.

National Police spokesperson Awi Setyono said the root causes of intolerance cases the police had handled were diverse but often included persistent rejection among certain groups to accept differences. He suggested that religious clerics use their influence in a greater capacity to tackle intolerance by providing a narrative that promotes acceptance.

When it comes to issues on the protection of religious tolerance, everyone should get involved. Its not only the duty of the police, Awi said during a discussion held by the Wahid Foundation in Jakarta on Thursday.

(Read also: NU to encourage young Muslims to promote moderate Islam)

He lamented the issuance of religious edicts deemed discriminatory against certain society groups. It was more important for religious clerics to back police actions in protecting the rights of minority groups.

National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) religion and faith freedom desk coordinator Jayadi Damanik said during the discussion that in recent years, cases driven by religious intolerance had consistently increased and the trend might continue if law enforcers enforced laws against minority groups only.

In 2014 there were 74 cases, whereas in 2015 there were 87 cases. We have yet to compile the figure for 2016, but I can assure you the number is higher, Jayadi said, adding that the cases included tough restrictions in construction permit issuance for houses of worship and the forcing of someone to hold certain beliefs. (ebf)
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Linkedin Eileen Sullivan and Richard Lardner (Associated Press) Washington  Fri, January 6, 2017

Brushing aside Donald Trump's dismissiveness, the nation's intelligence chief insisted Thursday that US agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an "existential threat" to the nation.

Did Russian hacking sway the results? There's no way for US agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, "The intelligence community can't gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made." But he did say Russian hacking "did not change any vote tallies."

Clapper's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence community's standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.

(Read also: Top US intelligence officials to testify on Russian hacking)

That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the US intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference.

Shortly after Thursday's hearing, news leaked that Trump would soon name former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana to replace Clapper after the new president takes office.

The intelligence agencies' classified report, which was shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russia's interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous US officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the US intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details are included in the classified report.

In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the US was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails.

"We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement," Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russia's interference was aimed at helping Trump win.

An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That version, expected to be a fraction of the length of the classified one, is not likely to answer all the questions about Russia's actions. Exactly how the US monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper told the senators. "And so we'll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here."

Clapper was less shy about declaring Russia "an existential threat to the United States." That's strong rhetoric that harkens back to the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union, language Obama has avoided. For his part, Trump has embraced the possibility of warmer US-Russian ties.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russia's actions constituted an "act of war." The intelligence director said that was "a very heavy policy call," more appropriate for others in the government to decide.

Obama announced sanctions against Russia late last year, a move Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said was akin to throwing a pebble.

"I'm ready to throw a rock," Graham said.

The GOP is divided over how to deal with Russia. Once Trump takes office, he is certain to face opposition from Democrats as well as some in his own party regarding his posture toward Russia.

Trump has criticized US intelligence findings, even citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails.

But in new tweets early Thursday, he backed away and blamed the "dishonest media" for portraying him as agreeing with Assange, whose organization has been under criminal investigation for its role in classified information leaks. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump wrote.

In fact, Trump has been skeptical to the point of dismissive about the certainty of the assessment of Russian hacking, bringing up past failures, specifically intelligence reporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war there.

Trump has derided the intelligence community on Twitter, his comments widely reported by The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Clapper said Thursday, "I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers  to include policymaker No. 1  should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama is confident that the intelligence assessment on Russia is "unvarnished."

"The president has insisted that the intelligence community should not hesitate to present to the president what could be considered bad news, because a whitewashed assessment doesn't serve anybody well," Earnest said. He added that anyone who consumes intelligence "using rose-colored reading glasses is not going to be able to make good decisions."
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Linkedin Rendi A. Witular and Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

A recent draft government regulation, the fourth revision to Government Regulation No. 23/2010 on the management of mineral and coal businesses, leaves open the possibility for nickel and bauxite exports.

Under the draft, dated Jan. 4, which a copy was obtained by The Jakarta Post late on Thursday, mining companies can still export partly processed mineral products, and that a decree from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry will determine the commodities eligibility for export.

"It's like giving the energy and mineral resources minister carte blanche in determining which commodities can and cannot be exported," an official involved in discussing the draft told the Post on Friday.

(Read also: Latest draft regulation to allow partly processed mineral exports)

The latest draft was put together by the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, with input from various officials. The draft was submitted to the Law and Human Rights Ministry on Wednesday.

(Read also: New regulation on raw mineral exports inches away from becoming official: Minister)

In a previous draft, submitted by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry to the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister on Dec. 28, it had clearly prohibited nickel and bauxite from being exported.

"With the prohibition lifted for nickel and bauxite from the previous draft, it is very possible the commodities can be exported as it will only need ministerial approval," said the official.

(Read also: Minister Luhut opposes ease in raw mineral exports)

Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Ignasius Jonan remained tight-lipped on the issue, saying only that he had sent the draft to Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution.

We have already sent the draft, it is all up to him [Darmin], he said on Thursday.
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

The government remains optimistic about its ambitious program to procure 35,000 megawatts of electricity by 2019 despite a shortfall prediction.

Both the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and state-owned electricity company PLN have predicted that with the programs current progress and the countrys economic growth, only 20,000 to 22,000 MW will be procured by 2019.

However, the government has decided to maintain the target in the General Planning for National Energy (RUEN), which will be issued this week as a presidential regulation (Perpres).

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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Fri, January 6 2017

Gorontalo, Sulawesi Island bears, witness to the existence of the Polahi, a group of residents that abandoned their homes for the woods in the 17th century to avoid taxes imposed by the Dutch colonial administration.

The community has been living in nature for generations in the forests of the Boliyohuto mountain range located 2,065 meters above sea level, which spans from Gorontalo to Boalemo regencies.

Some also live in the mountain ranges of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in Bone Bolango and Bolaang Mongondow regencies in North Sulawesi.

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By Press Trust of India: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Jan 6 (PTI) In a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in Chinas repeated efforts to block Indias bid to slap a UN ban on JeM leader Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should "adjust" its stand accordingly.

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In his lengthy blog on social media WeChat public account about the India-China stalemate over Azhar, Mao Siwei - who previously served as Chinas Consul General in Kolkata - said China should take advantage of Indias complaint against Azhar and "get rid of the passive diplomatic situation" between the two countries.

The blog published on December 28, two days before China refused to lift its technical hold on Indias application, allowing it to lapse, Mao highlighted the history of Pakistan- based terror organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Muhammad and how they carried out violent attacks whenever India and Pakistan made efforts to normalise their relations.

Referring to the Indian evidence furnished against Azhar in Pathankot terror attack, he cited the charge sheet that the evidence included Facebook and telephone records as well as DNA samples through food wrapping paper and walkie-talkie.

"In the light of the above, I deeply feel that now is the time China should take Indias complaint as an opportunity to seriously study and adjust the position, get rid of the passive diplomatic situation, on the listing of JeMchief in the (UN) 1267 list," he wrote.

"First, is Azhar a terrorist? Second, was the Pathankot attack perpetrated by the Jaish-e-Mohammed group? To the first question, the answer should be yes," he said.

Though his appeal went unheeded, it reflected a different opinion among sections of Chinas diplomatic community which is concerned over the negative fallout of the issue on India- China ties and Beijings claims that it followed a "very objective, just and professional attitude" in blocking Indias application at the UN.

Responding to remarks made by External Affairs Minister of State M J Akbar on the Azhar issue, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters here yesterday that "we have taken a responsible and constructive part in relevant discussion in a professional and objective way".

His comments are a rare instance of public expression of differing opinions in China.

Efforts by PTI to reach Mao, a prolific commentator on India-China ties in the Chinese social media, were not immediately acknowledged.

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"As a result of (Chinas technical hold), the issue of sanctions against Azhar became a major issue affecting Sino- Indian relations and constitutes an important factor for the decline of Sino-Indian relations in 2016," Mao wrote.

He served as Consulate General of Chinas Consulate in Kolkata between 2007 to 2010. Before that, Mao also worked as a diplomat in Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and served as a visiting scholar at JNU, Delhi. (MORE) PTI KJV SAI AKJ SAI

--- ENDS ---
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

Amid increasing acts of intolerance occurring in the country recently, the police have admitted that their role in enforcing the law against intolerant groups needs to be strengthened.

National Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Awi Setiyono said many police officers were still not firm in carrying out their duties, particularly when dealing with cases related to religious issues.

One factor that fuels the growing intolerance is the weak law enforcement by police personnel on intolerant religious organizations, Awi said during a dialogue on religious tolerance in Indonesia hosted by rights group the Wahid Foundation on Thursday in Jakarta.

Awi said although National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian had repeatedly taken a bold stance against intolerant acts such as those based on circulating fatwa issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), it had yet to influence police personnel across the country in taking a stand.

In Surabaya, for example, instead of dissolving a radical Muslim group that carried out a raid, the police escorted them, Awi said, referring to a raid by Islam Defenders Front (FPI) members on shopping malls in the East Java capital to check whether outlets had ordered employees to wear Christmas attire, such as Santa hats.

Throughout 2016, Awi said, the police had recorded 25 major cases related to religious intolerance, which included a case in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, where an Islamic extremist threw Molotov cocktails into a church, which killed a toddler and injured several others. (jun)
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

As the first official debate between the Jakarta gubernatorial candidates approaches, an expert suggests the three gubernatorial candidates offer realistic solutions to tackle problems in the capital to win voters' hearts.

"The public can assess whether the programs campaigned by the candidates are realistic," said Hendri Satrio, a political expert from Paramadina University said Friday.

Hendri predicted that in the first debate, the public would be eager to hear solutions related to traffic congestion, floods and the price of goods, which he considered the main problems currently faced by Jakartans.

"Voters' preference will be significantly affected by how candidates present their solutions in solving problems in the capital. They can directly compare the capability and quality of each governor hopeful," he said.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) will hold three debates. All three candidate pairs, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni, Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama-Djarot Saiful Hidayat and Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno, will take part in the first debate on Jan. 13. (dmr)
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

Major retailer Trans Retail Indonesia will open dozens of new stores this year in a bid to attract more visits to its physical stores despite the booming online retail industry.

We will open 30 new stores under the Transmart Carrefour brand in 2017, Transmart Carrefour corporate communications general manager Satria Hamid told The Jakarta Post on Friday. However, he declined to mention the amount of capital expenditure (capex) that the firm had earmarked to support the expansion.

Despite Indonesias surging domestic retail business, Trans Retail Indonesia, part of business tycoon Chairul Tanjung's CT Corp business group, has decided to step up to the challenge posed by the burgeoning online retail business.

(Read also: Transmart Carrefour to open 10 more outlets this year)

The retailer says it is determined to be more creative by way of promotional activities, intensive marketing and sales of fresh products to lure customers to its stores.

We will refresh several stores with a new concept, Satria said, in reference to a combination of retail and culinary experience, department stores and child play areas.

Currently, the company operates 94 Carrefour stores nationwide, of which 15 stock the Transmart Carrefour brand and the remainder will gradually follow suit. (lnd)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6 2017

Indonesia revised down its export growth target of non-oil and gas products from 11.9 percent to 5.6 percent due to the slow recovery of global demand.

Because of the current global economic condition, weve set a realistic target this year of 5.6 percent export growth through more products and country diversification, said Trade Minister Enggartiasto Enggar Lukita on Wednesday evening. Well approach local businesses to explore more products that can be exported.

With the 5.6 percent export growth target, Indonesia expects to earn US$136.2 billion compared to $129 billion last year. Government-projected exports in 2016 would go down by 14.14 percent to $129 billion from $150.2 billion in 2015, hampered by weak global demand.

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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017 10:45 2128 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0b9e0b15 4 National setya-novanto,#SetyaNovanto,trump-victory,Donald-Trump,presidential-inauguration,Golkar,GolkarParty,house-of-representatives,House-speaker Free

As United States president-elect Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated this month, concerns may revolve around his businesses and political connections with top Indonesian politicians, including House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto.

Setya, the Golkar Party chairman who recently regained the top legislative body post, may attend the inauguration, where Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president, on Jan. 20 at the US Capitol Building.

Setya will likely attend the inauguration, Golkar executive Eni Maulani said on Wednesday.

Relations between the two tycoons have raised speculation that Setyas return to the House and Trumps inauguration may solve long-strained problems, like the contract of mining giant Freeport Indonesia.

Setyas and Trumps relations will definitely affect [the Freeport deal], but whether the affect is significant or not, we dont know yet. Their good relations will not likely be merely ceremonial, said political communication observer Hendri Satrio of Paramadina University.

The copper and gold mine company is a subsidiary of the US-based giant mining firm Freeport McMoRan Inc. The companys contract to continue mining the worlds largest gold deposit in Papua will expire in 2021.

Freeport had been seeking the governments approval to extend its contract, but if it complied with the 2010 government regulation on mineral resources and coal operations, it could apply for an extension two years before the expiration date, or in 2019.

US media reported earlier that Trump, the real estate tycoon, had enlisted Carl Icahn, a top shareholder of Freeport-McMoRan, as his special adviser on business regulations.

Freeport having a smooth way to accelerate its contract extension is not what we want to see happening. The people have given a second chance to Setya, so hed better not waste it. Their relations [between Setya and Trump] should have good impacts on national interest, not vice versa, Hendri added.

A photo posted by Setya Novanto (@s.novanto) on Nov 9, 2016 at 12:43am PST

Setya and House deputy speaker Fadli Zon of the Gerindra Party showed up at a campaign event staged by Trump during his visit to the US in September 2015. Trump introduced Setya as a special guest during the event.

Setya, Fadli and Golkar politician Aziz Syamsuddin were in the US to partake in the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament in New York. They met the then US House speaker, John A Boehner, in Washington, DC, and visited Indonesian diaspora living on the countrys west coast.

Less than three months after the meeting between the two tycoons, Setya was embroiled in controversy surrounding the extension of Freeports contract. Setya stepped down from his speakership post, after which Golkar politician Ade Komarudin took over. However, in less than a year, Setya regained his seat.

Politician Ahmad Rofiq, secretary-general of a new party, the United Indonesia Party (Perindo), said party founder Hary Tanoesoedibjo had introduced Setya to Trump, who he said was Harys long-time acquaintance. The owner of Global Mediacom or the MNC Group aims to seek candidacy in the 2019 presidential election.

Ahmad suggested relations between Hary, Setya and Trump would bring many advantages such as the development of resorts, investment, industrial and technological sectors, though he did not elaborate.
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Linkedin Ock Hyun-ju (The Korea Herald/ANN) Seoul  Fri, January 6, 2017

South Korea President Park Geun-hyes lawyers denied all the charges against her during the second hearing of her impeachment trial Thursday, taking issue with the political neutrality of the ongoing investigation into the scandal involving Park and questioning the validity of evidence.

At a separate trial also held Thursday, key figures accused of being involved in Parks alleged corruption -- including the presidents longtime friend Choi Soon-sil -- also denied the core allegations against them.

An administrative staff of the presidential office Yoon Jeon-choo testified as a witness for Parks trial at the Constitutional Court and offered some clues on what Park did at the time of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014. Her seven-hour absence is a key controversy, which contributed to Parks impeachment.

The top courts nine justices, headed by chief Park Han-chul, proceeded despite her absence, according to the Constitutional Court Act. She will likely remain absent for the hearings, her lawyers said.

Park has never let her aides meddle in state affairs and appointed government officials through legitimate procedures, said Parks lawyer Lee Joong-hwan during the hearing. She also took necessary measures to cope with the Sewol ferry accident. There is no evidence for her alleged bribery, abuse of authority and coercion based on objective facts.

He asked the court to look into the evidence presented by the parliament sternly, as he claims it is only based on what he called politically biased investigation by an independent counsel and false media reports. The denial of the validity of the evidence is seen as an attempt to prolong court proceedings.

The parliamentary impeachment committee, which serves as a prosecutor in the trial, said that the president seriously violated the Constitution and law in performing her presidential duty by using state affairs as a tool for her personal gains.

The charges center on allegations that President Park colluded with her longtime friend Choi to extort money from local conglomerates, failed to protect peoples lives at the time of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 and allowed Choi, who has no official government post, to manipulate power behind the scenes for her personal gains.

Through the decision to impeach the president, we will reconfirm the principle that the people are the owners of this country and the presidents use of authority against public trust, Rep. Kwon Seong-dong, chairman of the parliamentary legislation and judiciary committee.

Ousting the president is aimed not only at recovering the national loss and vacuum in the running of state affairs but at restoring the constitutional order.

In the hearing, three of the four key witnesses -- Parks closest secretaries Lee Jae-man and Ahn Bong-geun, and an administrative employee Lee Young-sun -- refused to appear at the court. Only Yoon Jeon-choo attended the session.

Yoon, who was in charge of helping Parks personal and private affairs, said that she was called in at 8:30 a.m. in the morning and attended to unofficial business with Park at the presidents residence.

I dont remember what business exactly it was about, but I remember it was about her personal stuff, she said without elaborating further.

She also offered new testimonies that the president met ex-presidential aide Ahn Bong-geun in the morning on the day of the Sewol accident and two hair stylists visited Park in the afternoon. She also denied rumors that Park held a religious cult ritual or received a plastic surgery at the presidential office while the ferry was sinking.

The ex-presidential aides did not respond to the court summoning, remaining in hiding, while the administrative employee Lee is set to be brought back in to testify Thursday.

Parks other lawyer Seo Seok-gu appeared to taint the meaning of the candlelight vigils that have taken place for the past two months against the president, which had prompted her impeachment.

The sentiment shown during the candlelight vigils does not reflect the public sentiment, given it was led by a labor union group, he said. Seo added that the majority rule can be dangerous when it is based on inaccurate media reports, citing the Greek philosopher Socrates who was sentenced to death and Jesus carrying the cross.

Kwon immediately shot back, asking the court to stop him from talking about matters unrelated to clarifying the charges listed in the impeachment motion. Who led the candlelight vigils has completely nothing to do with the impeachment trial, he said.

The Constitutional Court explained the key points in the impeachment trial and confirmed the list of evidence and witnesses during the hearing. It also asked for cooperation from both sides not to distract from its main focus while reminding them that the trial is not a criminal trial.

The National Assembly voted to oust Park on December 9, stripping her of substantial executive powers, over the corruption scandal. The top court has until early June to decide whether to uphold or overturn Parks impeachment.



For the hearing scheduled for Tuesday, other key suspects -- Choi, former presidential aides An Chong-bum and Jeong Ho-seong -- are expected to testify before the justices.

This article appeared on The Korea Herald newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

State airport operator Angkasa Pura (AP) II stated its intention to take over two airports, namely Tanjung Pandan Airport in Bangka Belitung and Raden Inten II Airport in Lampung.

We have delivered the letters to the Transportation Ministry director general [of air transportation] to also conduct a survey of those airports, AP II operational director Djoko Murjatmodjo said on Thursday.

He said the proposal was inspired by the commercial appeal of the state-run airports and the expansion of its current airport.

For the airport in Lampung, it is close to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport [in Banten], so we hope it can be an alternative airport for the overflow of passengers. For the Tanjung Pandan airport, it is a tourism spot, so we want that, too, Djoko added.

The firm would first see the operational burden and cost as well as the prospect of the airports to commence with the plan, although he admitted that based on initial research, both airports had not yielded a profit.

The Raden Inten II Airport is cited to see 1.3 million passengers annually, while the Tanjung Pandan Airport is cited to have 1 million passengers annually.

AP II is currently managing 13 airports across the country, including Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, which is one of the main gateways to the country. (bbn)
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Linkedin Julie Pace, Deb Riechmann and Jonathan Lemire (Associated Press) Washington  Fri, January 6, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community that Trump has publicly challenged, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday.

Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after 9/11 to improve coordination of US spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trump's decision was not authorized to discuss the pick publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly questioned intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf. On Friday, senior intelligence officials will brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama, who was briefed on the conclusions Thursday.

Vice President Joe Biden said an unclassified version will be released next week and will show evidence that the Russians tried to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump's campaign rival. In an interview with "PBS NewsHour," Biden said the report will also show "there was wider hacking than some people thought."

Against that backdrop, Trump has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Transition officials have been looking at changes at both ODNI and the CIA, but those plans are said not to be aimed at gutting the intelligence agencies or hampering their capabilities.

The person said the discussions reflect the views of intelligence officials who have told Trump's team that there is room for streamlining within the multi-agency intelligence community.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday night that Trump was considering changes at the intelligence agencies. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer disputed the report Thursday morning.

"There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure. It is 100 percent false," Spicer said.

The CIA declined to comment on the potential changes. Outgoing National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate panel Thursday that his office has not been engaged in such discussions with the Trump transition team. He noted that lawmakers created his office.

"Congress, I think, gets a vote here," said Clapper, who was testifying on Russia's election interference.

Trump's administration wouldn't be the first to initiate reforms in the intelligence community.

A few years ago, CIA Director John Brennan ordered sweeping changes to the CIA to make its leaders more accountable and close intelligence gaps amid concern about the agency's limited insights into a series of major global developments. The aim was to break down barriers between the CIA's operations and analytical arms.

Coats' nomination is likely to soothe those who fear Trump will significantly overhaul the intelligence community. The 73-year-old is a Capitol Hill veteran who served eight years in the House before moving to the Senate in 1989 to take Dan Quayle's place when he became vice president. He stayed in the Senate until 1998, then left to become a lobbyist.

After a stint as ambassador to Germany under President George W. Bush, Coats joined the high-powered Washington firm of King & Spalding. He helped lead the company's government affairs division and lobbied for pharmaceutical, defense and energy companies.

Coats, who earned $600,000 in his final 13 months at King & Spalding, downplayed his lobbying work when he returned to Indiana for a successful Senate comeback bid in 2010. He served one term and did not seek re-election last year.

Coats was a harsh critic of Russia and pushed the Obama administration to harshly punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. When the White House levied sanctions, the Kremlin responded by banning several lawmakers, including Coats, from traveling to Russia.

Trump has called for improving the relationship between the US and Russia, and has also spoken favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin. His refusal thus far to accept the intelligence community's assessment that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election has sparked concern among lawmakers in both parties.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that there is no question that Russia was behind hacking of political computer systems  something they say could only have occurred with the approval of top Kremlin officials. That conclusion is detailed in the classified report Obama ordered up on Russia and other foreign influence in US elections dating back to 2008.

_

AP writers Tom Davies in Indianapolis and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

_

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC , Deb Riechmann at http://twitter.com/debriechmann , and Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/jonlemire (**)
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Linkedin Dusan Stojanovic (Associated Press) Istanbul  Fri, January 6, 2017

Turkish police are closing in on the gunman who killed 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub, a senior government official said Thursday, insisting the suspect's possible whereabouts and contacts have been established.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told A Haber news channel in an interview that the gunman who attacked Istanbul's upscale Reina nightclub was probably from China's Muslim Uighur minority and a "specially trained member of a (terror) cell."

"The security forces have determined his identify, his possible whereabouts have been determined... His contacts have also been determined," Kaynak told A Haber. "We can say that the circle is closing in on him."

Kaynak said authorities think the man, whose name hasn't been revealed, is still inside Turkey, although they haven't completely ruled out the possibility that he may have escaped after the New Year's attack.

"Because we have taken utmost measures at our airports  even though we don't rule it out completely  we believe that we will get results from operations inside Turkey," he said.

His comments came hours after police conducted more raids in their hunt for the gunman and detailed several people at a housing complex on Istanbul's outskirts, the state-run news agency reported.

Anadolu Agency said gendarmerie police and special operations teams detained an undisclosed number of Uighurs during the raids. The Anadolu report said they were suspected of "aiding and abetting" the gunman.

At least 39 other people  including 11 women  already were in custody over suspected links to the attack.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, saying the nightclub attack was in reprisal for Turkish military operations in northern Syria. Most of the victims were foreign nationals from the Middle East.

The nightclub massacre was the latest in a string of attacks by either the IS or Kurdish militants that have rocked the country since the summer of 2015.

On Thursday, suspected Kurdish militants opened fire at police who stopped them at a checkpoint in the western city of Izmir before detonating their explosives-laden vehicle. A policeman and a courthouse employee were killed in the attack, while two assailants also were shot dead.

Izmir Gov. Erol Ayyildiz said preliminary indications pointed to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which resumed attacks in Turkey after a fragile peace process collapsed in 2015.

The nightclub gunman reportedly escaped in a taxi after the attack. Turkish media have widely published images of the suspect, including a selfie video filmed at Istanbul's Taksim Square.

Security has been tightened around Istanbul and at border crossings and airports to prevent him from fleeing Turkey.

Another deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus suggested in an interview with the Hurriyet Daily news newspaper and other sister publications that "foreign intelligence services" could be behind the attack, pointing at the "professional" manner in which it was carried out.

"I am of the opinion that it's not possible for the perpetrator to have carried out such an attack without any support. It seems like a secret service thing. All these things are being assessed," Hurriyet Daily News quoted Kurtulmus as saying in the interview published on Thursday.

A group of about 20 suspects were also detained on Wednesday in a police operation in Izmir, western Turkey.

Anadolu said the suspects are from the largely Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan, as well as members of China's Muslim Uighur minority and from Syria.

They are thought to have lived with the gunman in an alleged IS cell house in the central Turkish city of Konya, the agency reported. About 20 children who were with the detainees were also taken to a police station.

___

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report. (**)
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Linkedin Matthew Pennington (Associated Press) Washington  Fri, January 6, 2017

North Korea's weapons capabilities have shown a "qualitative improvement" in the past year, the No. 2 US diplomat said Thursday.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with his counterparts from key US allies Japan and South Korea, said the North conducted nuclear and missile tests with unprecedented intensity during 2016 and that the threat it poses grows by the day. The North Koreans learn from every single test, including failures, he said.

"They apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test, and in our assessment we have seen a qualitative improvement in their capabilities over the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity," Blinken told a news conference.

(Read also: South Korea to create unit to decapitate North Korean leadership)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Sunday preparations for test launching an intercontinental ballistic missile have "reached the final stage."

If such a missile were wedded to a nuclear warhead it could pose a new level of threat to the US mainland, but it remains unclear when the secretive nation might achieve that goal. President-elect Donald Trump responded in a tweet Monday, "It won't happen!"

Blinken said that the US and its allies were not "sitting still," and had bolstered defenses to stay ahead of the threat with additional missile defenses and radars on sea and on land.

North Korea conducted two nuclear tests last year and more than two dozen ballistic missile launches.

Japanese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Shinsuke Sugiyama said that North Korea's nuclear and missile programs represent a "new level of threat." He said some missiles tests have failed, and others have succeeded, but their accuracy has increased.

He said that security cooperation among the three allies was "indispensable."

Sugiyama said that although some changes were expected in US policy toward Asia, he predicted the importance of the US alliances would endure under Trump.

Despite political uncertainty in South Korea, where the president is facing an impeachment trial, First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Lim Sung-nam said Seoul still plans to deploy within this year an advanced US missile defense system opposed by China.

The US, Japan and South Korea reiterated their long-running call for the complete and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea and for the proper implementation of sanctions which they hope will pressure Kim's government to return to long-stalled disarmament talks.

Blinken said that there were "positive signs" in China's implementation of new UN restrictions on imports of coal from North Korea but that it needs to be sustained.

To date, sanctions have failed to stop the North's weapons development, but Blinken said the experience of Iran showed that applying sanctions takes "determination and patience."

"It's not like flipping a light switch," he said.
The National Investigation Agency has nailed Pakistan in its chargesheet against Lashak-e-Taiba terrorist Bahadur Ali. The NIA has given extensive details about the training facilities of the LeT operating from PoK.

By Mausami Singh: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today filed a chargsheet against Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Bahadur Ali in a Special court at Patiala House Court in New Delhi.

Bahadur Ali was apprehended last year from Jammu and Kashmir on July 25, when he was on his way to receive terrorists, who had freshly infiltrated.

The NIA investigation found crucial details, which the agency considers to be of great significance in cracking the terror network in the country.

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READ| Exclusive: Meet the new face of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir

LASHKAR TERRORIST BAHADUR ALI: THINGS TO KNOW Bahadur Ali has been slapped with multiple charges by the NIA in the chargesheet that it filed today in a Delhi court. The case relates to conspiracy of committing terrorist acts in India on behalf of the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba. Bahadur Ali hails from a small village named Jia Bagga in Lahore, Pakistan. Bahadur Ali has been slapped with multiple charges under Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act-1967, Explosives Act-1884, Explosives Substances Act-1908, multiple sections of the Arms Act-1959, Foreigners Act-1946 and Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act-1933. Bahadur Ali was on a mission to disrupt peace in the Valley. He was in constant touch with his handler across the border through satellite phone. During this period, Alfa-3 communicated to Bahadur Ali that the LeT cadres had been successful in fueling large scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid following the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir. The handler instructed Bahadur Ali to mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley. Bahadur Ali entered into Indian territory on June 12 along with Abu Saad and Abu Darda. But he got separated from them. Bahadur Ali managed to stay by himself in the Valley with the help of local support till July 24, when he got directions from his Lashkar handler in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK) to receive a group of freshly infiltrated terrorists of the LeT. Handler Alfa-3 provided a Grid Reference, where Bahadur Ali was to receive the group of terrorists. But, before he could receive these terrorists, Bahadur Ali was apprehended by the security forces.

WATCH:

LASHKAR'S TERROR MACHINERY

Interrogation of Bahadur Ali revealed that the LeT has set up well-organized machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan as part of a conspiracy to wage war against India by the commission of terrorist acts in various parts of India.

These terrorist are equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

READ| Interrogation report of Lashkar terrorist Bahadur Ali

Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalizing their worldview and providing them with 'military' skills.

Subsequent to their training, the LeT cadres are illegally pushed into Indian territory, where they commit terrorist acts with the help of network of their supporters and facilitators.

RECOVERIES FROM BAHADUR ALI

After his arrest, Bahadur Ali disclosed that he had concealed arms, ammunition and other articles near a big tree in the forest near village, Yahama. Upon identification of the spot, several articles were recovered and seized by the NIA.

READ| Another Kasab? Arrested terrorist Bahadur Ali confesses he is from Pakistan

Many of these seized arms, ammunition and other items had the label 'Made in Pakistan'. The list includes:

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(1) One Rifle AK-47

(2) Five AK-47 magazines loaded with ammunition (30 rounds each, total 150 rounds)

(3) One UBGL

(4) Five live UBGL shells

(5) Two live hand grenades (Chinese)

(6) One ICOM Wireless Set

(7) One magazine pouch

(8) One black coloured bag containing medicines and other items of daily use

THE SECRET CODE

The NIA found during investigation that prior to their infiltration, Bahadur Ali and his associates- Abu Saad and Abu Darda- were provided with codes in the form of nine alphabets for communication.

This nine-alphabet-code was to be used to record numerals such as Grid References and phone numbers. An analysis of Grid References indicated that Bahadur Ali and his associates infiltrated via the Line if Control from Handwara.

READ| NIA releases video confession by LeT's Bahadur Ali, terrorist admits he was guided by Pakistan forces

A DIARY AND FAKE CURRENCY

The pocket diary recovered from Bahadur Ali contains names of cities including Delhi. Several towns of Jammu and Kashmir, namely, Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, and Udhampur were also mentioned in his diary.

Given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns and cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

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The evidence handed over to the court by the NIA also includes Rs 23,000 including three fake Indian currency notes.

ALSO WATCH:

--- ENDS ---
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Linkedin Rendi A. Witular and Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, January 7 2017

As the deadline nears for a total ban on the export of raw and partly processed mineral products after Jan. 11, a recent government regulation draft aims to extend the current easing of export restrictions.

Under the draft, dated Jan. 4, a copy of which was obtained by The Jakarta Post late on Thursday, mining companies can still export partly processed minerals, and that a decree from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry will determine the commodities eligibility for export.

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Linkedin Nicholas Cheng (The Star) Kuala Lumpur  Fri, January 6, 2017

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean will end in two weeks, after which Malaysia, China and Australia will meet to decide on what to do next.

The Australia-led search has combed most of the 120,000 sq km search area and has cost the three countries up to RM650 million (US$145 million).

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said an announcement on whether the search will be extended beyond the 120,000 sq km area or suspended, would likely come before the end of January.

"We are in the final lap. The search will be completed in the next two weeks, then after that we will let people know. We will have a tripartite meeting.

"We really hope we can find the plane and we really pray hard that the search will bear fruit so we can locate the plane," he said at a road safety campaign at the Sungai Besi toll plaza on Friday.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.

This article appeared on The Star newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin (The Nation/ANN) Bangkok  Fri, January 6, 2017

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha said that the current political road map would have to be followed to pave the way for the next general election to be held early next year, as per information posted on the government website.

The PM made the remarks to Canadian Ambassador Donica Pottie when she called on him at Government House Thursday, Deputy Government Spokesman Lt. Gen. Werachon Sukondhapatipak said.

This is the first time the prime minister has hinted that the elections were not likely to be held this year as set out in the road map.

In the discussion with the Canadian ambassador, the premier spoke about the countrys political situation and stressed on the implementation of the road map and national reforms, the spokesman said.

Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said Thursday that he was not worried about the next general election being delayed until next year, as long as the political road map remained intact.

He said the next national vote would be held in 2018 if the timeframe allowed for the drafting of its organic laws  240 days  and the preparations for the voting  150 days  were fully utilized.

The count for the timeframes start after the new constitution is promulgated, which is expected early next month. The draft charter was submitted for royal endorsement in early November and His Majesty the King has 90 days to decide whether to endorse it.

The Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) is drafting the four organic laws required under the new constitution for holding the next election  ones on political parties, the Election Commission, the election of MPs, and the appointment of senators. The National Legislative Assembly (NLA) will have 60 days to complete deliberations on those draft laws.

Dont be overly worried. You should get worried when they say the road map is no longer valid. I understand that the prime minister remains firm on the current road map, Abhisit said.

He said the new law on political parties was expected to be completed first to allow political parties to prepare for the next election. I think the drafters know the process well. We should not be worried too much, the Democrat leader said.

Abhisit, a former prime minister, said as far as he knew the people responsible for holding the election were planning a smooth poll. After the four organic laws are completed, it would be time to start counting down to the election, he added.

Meanwhile, NLA members said they were convinced the next election would be held this year, as had been originally planned under the road map set by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

General Noppadon Inthapanya, who is also an NLA whip, said he believed that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha would exercise his power as the NCPO chief to make sure that the next election could be held this year.

He said the NLA members would have to work overtime to ensure deliberations on the organic laws were completed within the timeframe under the road map.

Wanlop Tangkhananurak, another NLA member, said he was sure the next election would not be delayed.

He said he did not think the CDC would need the maximum timeframe of eight months to complete the four organic laws. At most, they could complete the work in six months. There are no reasons for a delay, he said.

This article appeared on The Nation newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, January 6, 2017

The Diplodocus skeleton cast, popularly known as Dippy, is no longer the center of attention at the Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom. The dinosaur that had delighted the museum's visitors for over 100 years will be replaced by a 25.2-meter long blue whale skeleton that was found stranded in Ireland in 1891.

"The beloved dinosaur will travel the length and breadth of the UK from early 2018 to late 2020," the museum stated on its website. "Dippy will visit Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and five regions across England."

Museum director Sir Michael Dixon said he wanted Dippy to visit unusual locations so he can draw in people who may not traditionally visit a museum. "Making iconic items accessible to as many people as possible is at the heart of what museums give to the nation, so we have ensured that Dippy will still be free to view at all tour venues," he added.

(Read also: Learn about Java Man at this East Java museum)

The conservators reportedly needed 12 months to prepare "the delicate plaster-of-Paris cast for its journey".

According to Antara news agency, more than 90 million people have marveled at Dippy since it was put on display in the museum by Andrew Carnegie in 1905, following an excavation in Wyoming, United States, in 1898.

The 21.3-meter long and 4.25-meter high skeleton dominated the museum's Hintze Hall since it was moved there in 1979, attracting children and adults upon entering the place.

Not everyone is happy with the decision though. (kes)

Oh, what a shame they've finally removed my old (as some people see it) dinosaur skeleton from The British Natural History Museum! #Dippy  Karen Lees (@Phoenix5432100) January 5, 2017

oh no! I'll miss Dippy the Dino! https://t.co/qOTALQMgAN  Kushan Mitra (@kushanmitra) January 5, 2017
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Linkedin James Gaddy (Bloomberg) New York, United States  Fri, January 6, 2017

On just about any given day, at any given altitude on an Emirates flight, you can order a glass of Dom Perignon. If you're flying first class, you might find a Premier Grand Cru Classe from Chateau Figeac, a highly rated red in the Saint-Emilion region of Bordeaux. And if you're really lucky, you might be able to order a 2005 Sauterne from Chateau d'Yquem, the superior first-growth winery that was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson and is now owned by LVMH.

Since the Dubai-based airline began its wine program 12 years ago, it has spent more than $500 million to develop the best wine list in the sky. Joost Heymeijer, a senior vice president who runs the inflight catering service at Emirates, says at any point the airline is flying about 70 different types of wine across its network. The list is fluid, based on the flight path and what vintage is drinking best at that particular time. Over a 12-month period, more than 300 vintages will be served, and it's this breadth that Mark Oldman, author of How to Drink Wine Like a Billionaire, finds most impressive. "To rotate the wines out like that is the most labor-intensive part of it," said Oldman.

The company's secret weapon, though, is a nondescript group of warehouses that Emirates owns in Burgundy, France. Many of the wines served on an Emirates flight were bought years ago, and they are stored until they're ready to serve.

"If you have a vision of limestone cellars with cobwebs, I'm sorry to disappoint you," says Heymeijer. "Ours is more of a Fort Knox-style facility."

(Read also: Organic wine tastes better: Study)

It's a modern, temperature-controlled, light-deprived location that stores 3.75 million bottles of wine in their original packaging, in boxes and on palettes. The company chose Burgundy for the simple reason that ports are a few hours south with temperature-controlled containers where bottles can be shipped to the preferred destination. "It's not very sexy," he says. "But it is highly effective."

"Just because youve got the money doesnt mean you can buy."

It would be easy to chalk it up as just another advantage that the airline gets from its government subsidies. After all, it allowed its parent company, the Investment Corporation of Dubai, to assume its fuel hedging contracts, and the lobbying group Partnership for Open & Fair Skies has said Emirates received $7.6 billion to construct the Emirates terminal at the Dubai International Airport, giving it a competitive advantage over the Deltas and Lufthansas of the world. (Emirates disputes these figures.) But when it comes to wine, the airline has bought smartly over the years, buying heavily in good vintage years and finding jewels among lesser ones that it believes can age into respectability.

"Its an investment," said Heymeijer. "We look at it like a commodity."

What Money Cant Get

Most airlines employ a wine consultant who will use a number calculated by the finance team to put together a list of 20 wines that are available both in the market and in the volume required. Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, wanted its wine list to be a differentiator. So the airline made the decision to partner with MMI and buy as directly as possible from merchants and vineyards and in smaller quantities, if necessary10,000-bottle parcels instead of the typical 24,000 or 48,000.

The toughest challenge for Emirates, at the beginning, was getting credibility in these wine-producing regions. Even though the airline considered its first class the right audience, it still had to show that it would treat the wine in a way that old-school French vintners would appreciate: Pour it at the right temperature and test how altitude and cabin pressure have an influence on what you smell, taste, and eat.

"Just because youve got the money doesnt mean you can buy," said Heymeijer. "They want you to do justice to the wine."

(Read also: Kitty in a bottle: introducing Hello Kitty wine)

The airline added space for bigger Champagne glasses instead of the traditional flute, so fliers get a more generous glass than what a restaurant might pour. Reds and whites also have a larger glass. Wines are not served out of a bottle but instead decanted into a personal carafe. And Heymeijer maintained that the airline is constantly working from an engineering perspective to provide better humidity and air pressure in its cabins.

"The conditions inside our aircraft are the same as if you were in a mountain in the Swiss Alps," he said. "If you were in a restaurant in the Alps, you wouldn't be asking a sommelier about the altitude."

Buy Early, Buy Smart

The volume involved still requires some compromises.

"They aren't going after houses with microscopic output," said Oldman. "It just wouldn't make sense." Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, for example, makes only 450 cases a year. But other chateaus, including Smith Haute Lafitte, Latour, Haut-Brion, and Mouton-Rothschild, make their wines in much larger quantities.

"We were able to buy decent volumes at first," said Heymeijer. One of the first investments he made was in a dessert wine, a 2005 Sauternes from Chateau d'Yquem in Bordeaux. "It is one of the grand wines of the world," Heymeijer continued. "It is unbelievably beautiful and intense." It sat in the storage facility until a couple of months ago, when the airline started serving it.

"Its an investment. We look at it like a commodity."

The Sauternes has been a huge successthe airline can't keep it in stock nowbut this method comes with risks, as well, trying to split the difference between hard-core aficionados and those who want to feel they are living large.

"Most collectors want their d'Yquem to be 30 or 40 years old," said Charles Antin, senior wine specialist for Zachys. "A 2005 Sauternes is just a baby."

But Oldman said that getting those bragging rights, and the loyalty, of a high-net-worth traveler is worth the the acquisition cost. "It's reinforcing the luxury experience," he said.

Case in point: More than 9 million glasses of Champagne were poured on Emirates flights last year. Along with Costco, the company is one of, if not the largest, buyer of Dom Perignon in the world.

Some of the wines the airline bought many years ago for $350 would now run more than $2,000 a bottle. Buyers attend the futures market in the spring and place orders. And most chateaus have some back stock that they could have put out on the market 10 years ago but wanted to see how the wines age over time. So Emirates will also buy some stock that is not on the market and still in the cellars and release it earlier on the flight. "We buy early, and we buy smart," Heymeijer said.

(Read also: Trend alert: Next generation blue wine)

Bordeaux and Beyond

The airline has been expanding its list, with recent purchases from Burgundy locations in Chevalier-Montrachet and Echezeaux, and in 2015 it purchased 2,000 casesequivalent to 10 percent of the total productionfrom the Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru region, considered to be one of the finest whites in Burgundy. It added such Italian wines as Solaia and Ornellaia for first-class fliers and the Tuscan wine Tignanello for those in business class. You can find New World wines, as well, such as Mount Mary Chardonnay from Australia and a Stag's Leap Chardonnay from Napa Valley.

But it's more Bordeaux than anything else, and by the middle of this year, a number of first-growth options will appear on the menu. The area is well suited to the airline's needs: It has the volume, quality, and name recognitionMargaux, Cheval Blanc, and Latour are chateaus that are part of an oenophile's vocabulary, wines that they would look forward to drinking en route to their next destination.

"We serve Chateau Palmer in business class. Most airlines, youd be lucky if they served that to you in first class," Heymeijer said.

Emirates embraces some risk and buys in years that are not known as being terrific vintage years, knowing it can stash them in the Burgundy facility and wait for them either to be rediscovered or to ripen to their best selves.

"People have written off the 2012 and 2014," he said, "but I've tasted some of them in the last few months, and the right chateaus have made some beautiful wines." As for the 2015 vintage? "Im very excited," he said. "Not as good as 2010, but in Saint Emilion, Passat, and Margaux, it will be very good, probably better than the 2010."
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Linkedin Panca Nugraha (The Jakarta Post) Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara  Fri, January 6, 2017

Due to predicted extreme weather between January and March, the hiking trails on Mount Rinjani in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, will be officially closed until the end of March.

"We will stop hiking activities in Mt. Rinjani from Jan. 1 until March 31 due to extreme weather, and also to restore the ecosystem at the Mount Rinjani National Park [TNGR]. We will open the park again on April 1," TNGR Agency head Agus Budi Santosa told The Jakarta Post on Friday in Mataram.

Rainfall of between 101mm and 400mm is predicted throughout the three-month period. "The potential of heavy rainfall accompanied by strong wind could endanger visitors' safety," he said.

Warning signs have been placed on the park's two entrances, namely Senaru in North Lombok and Sembalun in East Lombok, as well as strategic locations like the Lombok International Airport and Senggigi tourism area. The announcement has also been spread to all related parties, including hiking tourism agencies and the regional police.

(Read also: Mt. Rinjani cleaner after 1 ton of plastic trash brought down)

During the closure period, the agency is set to conduct restoration along mountain's hiking trail and repairs of bridges, toilets and clean water. "This closure period is very important to restore the park's ecosystem, including its flora and wild fauna," said Agus.

The 3,672-meter mountain is Lombok's tourism icon and has attracted more and more tourists every year. In all, 30,847 foreigners from 112 countries have reportedly climbed Rinjani's peak. "This number is an increase from last year, when the figure was around 27,188 foreigners," Agus said, adding that over 89,000 tourists had climbed the mountain in total throughout 2016; also an increase compared to 2015, when it reached 68,000.

Agus commented that Rinjani was the only national park or mountain in Indonesia with visit figures in which foreign tourists made up more than 40 percent. "In terms of total visits, Bromo is more popular with around 1 million tourists per year. But only about 5 percent of that figure was foreigners."

In addition to the beauty of its mountain top, Rinjani is also home to a crater lake shaped like a crescent moon named Segara Anak and a sub-volcano called Mount Barujari. (kes)
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the nations largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization, applauds the U.S. House of Representatives for passing House Resolution 11  Objecting to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 as an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and for other purposes.

The bipartisan resolution was introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). It had 104 other co-sponsors and was approved Jan. 5 by a vote of 342-80, with four voting present.

The House resolution rejects the United Nations Security Councils Dec. 23 vote to approve Resolution 2334, which casts Israels building of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Rather than exercising its veto power, the United States abstained from voting, threatening the trust and support Israel has long placed in its most important ally.

House Resolution 11 calls for the UN resolution to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel; and supports direct bilateral negotiations between the parties as the only legitimate path toward security and peace.

The Orthodox Unions support for the House resolution was entered into the Congressional Record by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.).

After the House vote, Nathan Diament, Executive Director for Public Policy for the Orthodox Union stated:

We deeply appreciate the Houses clear bipartisan rejection of the UN Security Councils latest calumny against Israel and the Houses repudiation of the Obama Administrations failure to veto UNSC Resolution 2334 as it should have. We appreciate the strong leadership by Congressional friends of Israel including Representatives Ed Royce, Eliot Engel and so many others.
1.

One of the most celebrated and terrifying poems of the second half of the 20th century  and one of poetrys great treatments of insomnia  is Philip Larkins Aubade. The 1977 poem describes an experience all of us have at some point, that of waking up much earlier than wed intended and, unable to get back to sleep, lying in a hazy torment in which all our lifes anxieties are amplified tenfold. The anxiety that hounds Larkin turns out to be the prospect of his own death:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see whats really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

Larkin wants us to see that these states prefigure death itself: death too will be an affair of soundless dark in which all thought [is] impossible and the individual  supine, rigid, gaping at nothing in particular  is quite alone. We are all speeding toward the endless acreage of death, and its a paradox of life that we only fully glimpse that fact against the clarifying backdrop of night and darkness. Insomniac poets glimpse it with particular sharpness, and often seem proud of this: afflicted by a crippling illness, they yet occupy a place of lonely, privileged insight, gazing out from an observatory of solitude and sleeplessness at a misguided humanity, lost in a hypnosis of daily tasks that divert it from its destiny.

If the rest of his oeuvre is any indication, Larkin had a devilish time with sleep. Poems like Sad Steps (which begins, Groping back to bed after a piss) testify to the woes he encountered falling and remaining asleep; another, Love Again, which starts off, Wanking at ten past three, provides a glimpse into one of his time-tested remedies. But in this he is hardly an anomaly: poets are notoriously wretched sleepers, hopeless insomniacs whove developed bizarre rituals around bedtime and sleep. The Internet loves a good story about the sleeping habits of geniuses, particularly great writers  witness the BrainPickings article, Famous Writers Sleep Habits vs. Literary Productivity, Visualized, which probably wafted across your Facebook feed back in 2013 when it was published. Of the 37 writers featured in that piece, though, only around three were poets.

And yet poets occupy the most special relationship to sleep. Partly this is because poetry is itself a form of sleep: it beckons readers  aloud into altered breathing patterns, and its rhythms, as W.B. Yeats once observed, serve to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols. In other words, poetrys repeated beats can exert a narcoleptic force that seduces the mind into a state of heightened receptivity, an openness to the dreamlike succession of images the poem initiates.

But its also because poets have historically developed so many sleep-related idiosyncrasies, so many WTF-caliber bedtime tics, that one begins to wonder whether nighttime anxieties are part and parcel with the trade. Take Lord Byron, who went to bed at dawn and rose at 2 p.m. Prior to sleep, Byron punctually swallowed a single egg yolk whole while standing, then retired to his chambers, where he slept with two loaded pistols at his bedside and a dagger under his pillow. The weaponry served two purposes: to arm him against cuckolded husbands who might invade his bedroom in search of revenge (were talking about someone who, during his first two years living in Venice, slept with around 200 women, to say nothing of men and boys); and to offer him a shortcut to oblivion in case he decided to off himself while in bed. An aggressive teeth-grinder during sleep, Byron habitually awoke from nightmares that left him awash in suicidal gloom. I awoke from a dream! he recorded in his journal in November 1813, but she  his dead mother, we think  did not overtake me. I wish the dead would rest, however. Ugh! how my blood chilled,and I could not wakeandandheigho! An animal-lover and vegetarian, Byron also kept a pet bear, Bruin, while a student at Cambridge, and according to some accounts the bear lived with him in his lodgings, a sentry while he slept.

Vita Sackville-West  a friend and lover of Virginia Woolf and a poet herself  combated her insomnia by collecting as many dogs as possible and inviting them into bed with her. Amy Lowell, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926, would check into a hotel and rent out her own room as well as those above, below, and on either side of it. William Wordsworth had younger sister Dorothy read aloud to him; Dante Alighieri, his contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio tells us, kept vigils late into the night, frustrating for his wife and children, during which he read, and may have suffered from narcolepsy. Sylvia Plath, during the febrile, end-of-life stretch of creativity that yielded the poems in Ariel (including Daddy and Lady Lazarus), began her nightly routine by swallowing one sleeping pill after another, lying back and waiting for them to take hold. Then, Every morning, when my sleeping pills wear off, she wrote her mother, I am up about five, in my study with coffee, writing like mad  have managed a poem a day before breakfast.

Other poets have turned to nocturnal walking: Emily Bronte walked around and around her dining room table for hours until sleepiness overtook her; Walt Whitman, in Hours Continuing Long, tells of a sickening unrequited love that brings him Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding swiftly the country roads, or through the city streets, or pacing miles and miles, stifling plaintive cries.

Still others have used drugs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworths friend and collaborator, suffered nightmares as a child so frightful and overmastering he woke entire households with his screaming. He attempted to stave these off by repeating a rhyming prayer before sleep: Four Angels round me spread, Two at my foot & two at my head. As an adult, notoriously, he used opium, initially to ease the pain from various physical ailments, and later simply as a nighttime relaxant. This fueled additional nightmares that still have the power to harrow, certain of which bear an uncanny resemblance to Byrons nightmare mentioned above. His notebooks relate one of these, which reads today like a thinly veiled drama of castration anxiety: A most frightful Dream of a Woman whose features were blended with darkness catching hold of my right eye & attempting to pull it out  I caught hold of her arm fast  a horrid feel  Wordsworth cried out aloud to me hearing my scream  [ . . . ] When I awoke, my right eyelid swelled.

2.

Whatever the nature of their sleep hang-ups, their poems have furnished these writers with spaces in which to record their nocturnal trials. Quite literally: stanza is Italian for room, station, stopping-place  and many of the most formally masterful poems possess the structural elegance of floor plans. Language, wrote the modernist poet Hart Crane, has built towers and bridges, but itself is inevitably as fluid as always. He mightve added that it builds houses, too, complete with rooms we readers traverse, stanzaic stations we might think of as thought-progressions, sequences of emotion, attics of memories, spatially realized. We dwell for a time in this stanza and then that, breathing the air it stores through its particular respiratory patterns, thinking and feeling in time with the poet.

Poets plot paths through these dwelling spaces, and the paths often lead us to, or at least through, bedrooms. John Donnes 1633 poem The Sun Rising, spoken from within a bedroom, indeed under the covers, is an extended complaint addressed to the sun, which Donne chides for interrupting his all-night lovemaking with its intrusive beams. In the end he brags to the sun that its journey round the earth is redundant, since his own bedroom, rightly seen, is a microcosm in which all the truth and goodness and riches in the world are concentrated: Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; / This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere. Our love nest, he insists, is the real sun, that other one the merest satellite in its orbit.

In The Canonization, Donne explicitly plays on the conceit of stanzas as rooms, imagining his own poetry as a verbal mausoleum replete with chambers that house  immortalize  the memories of his relationship with his lover. And if unfit for chronicle we prove, he writes  he and his love are no conventional saints, after all, and so arent fit for hagiography  well build in sonnets pretty rooms. These are the chambers through which we wander as readers, marveling at relics of a love shared by two people long since claimed by death and granting them, in reading the poem aloud, a secular sainthood: through their bedroom ecstasies theyve martyred themselves to Eros.

Over the top? Absolutely. But then, a penchant for the dramatic gesture does come with the poetic territory. Thomas Hardy, who wrote novels such as Tess of the DUrbervilles but considered himself foremost a poet, lost his long-estranged wife to heart failure and impacted gallstones in 1912, and had her body placed in a coffin at the foot of his bed for the three days and nights leading up to the funeral. I shall traverse old loves domain / Never again, he vowed in At Castle Boterel some months later. (He remarried the following year.) Hardys work may be the quintessential example of poetry as an architectural construct. A trained architect, Hardy brought a formal rigor to poetic making that drew heavily on the Gothic aesthetic hed been taught as an apprentice draftsman. In the hewn angularity and symmetry of his stanzas one sees the imprint of an obsessive designer; here are verse-rooms adorned with complexly irregular stress patterns that embellish like molding, tracery, or cornice  meticulous masonry.

3.

Hardys morbid, beyond-emo vigils with his wifes freshly coffined body reinforce how, again and again, poets imaginations return to a vision of the bedroom as a sepulcher, a prefiguration of endings  and of sleep as a forerunner of that vaster slumber toward which were all hurtling. Larkin lying in bed at 4 a.m. broods on eternity; Mark Strand writes in Dark Harbor, The end / Is enacted again and again. And we feel it / In the temptations of sleep; Edgar Allan Poe is said to have remarked, Sleep, those little slices of death  how I abhor them. Poes comment makes explicit a darkly fascinating possibility: that the desperate, thwarted desire of insomniacs to fall asleep is really a cover for a deep-down fear of sleep, itself at bottom a fear of death. Perhaps my insomnia only conceals a great fear of death, Franz Kafka (not a poet but a kindred spirit to these other writers) once speculated. Perhaps I am afraid that the soul  which in sleep leaves me  will never return.

Insomniacs, in other words, may harbor a fear of sleep that amounts to a fear of self-loss and an abandonment of control  a resistance against self-unraveling, both the one that will eventually happen for keeps, and the one that nightly happens and asks each of us at bedtime to do a dry run for death. What if you arent quite the same when you wake? And to what alien terrains, what modes of being and desiring that run counter to whoever you thought you were, will sleep waft you? Resisting such self-dissolution, such loss of control, the insomniac hangs on, clinging to consciousness that is the binding agent of identity and our way of retaining our hold on the world.

It may be true that, as Greg Johnson has suggested, this holding fast to consciousness  a clutching at cognizance that fends off self-loss  is most pronounced in writers. Insomnia for Johnson is the very symbol of the writers condition, the image of his unblinking consciousness, his stubborn refusal to conclude, however briefly, his voracious scrutiny of the world and of his own mental processes. Johnson points to Emily Dickinson as his prime example of an insomniac poet whose stoical resistance to sleep stemmed from her unwillingness to relinquish consciousness. In one poem Johnson spotlights, Dickinson muses on a gift given to me by the Gods  her poetic genius  and remarks that she refuses even to sleep for fear it would be gone. So she stayed awake (I would not stop for night, she boasts in one poem) writing late into the night, the very icon, with Kafka maybe, of nocturnal industry among writers, in a bedroom where she lived a sort of death-in-life  she seldom left it  and a burial place where she interred her (largely unpublished) poems, her sole progeny: here, after her death, Dickinsons family discovered some 1,800 poems written on the backs of envelopes and edges of newspapers, and collected in hand-sewn books she herself had made.

What insomniac poets like Dickinson have held onto, though, isnt just a vigilant watch over reality but a coherence of self. Theyve jealously safeguarded the intactness of their identities  and in this they are proxies for the rest of us abysmal sleepers. I suspect its not coincidental that Coleridge  that great romantic evangelist of the imagination who defined poetry  writing as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM  had such a horrendous time with sleep. During creativity, Coleridge thought, the poet ascends to godlike stature, refashioning reality so that it accords with his own unique vision  a brash imposition of ego onto the surrounding world that mimics Gods creation of the cosmos in Genesis. But proximity to sleep carries us to the brink of our own psychic disintegration, and, contrary to Coleridges formulation, forces us to look forward to a moment in the future when we arent.

4.

Of course, beds arent simply sites of sleep; theyre sites of sex. That numerous poets have approached the business of sex with a trepidation to match their fear of sleep is practically proverbial. John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic who doubled as a poet during his youth and struggled with insomnia, legendarily refused to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray because, as she wrote in a letter, he was disgusted with my person  a comment historians have interpreted to mean that she had body odor, or was menstruating, or, most interestingly, that he was scandalized to discover she had pubic hair. Yeats and T.S. Eliot remained virgins till 30 and 26, respectively; Christina Rossetti, gorgeous and much sought-after as a young woman, never married, and in Goblin Market imagines fleshly pleasure as an addictive, otherworldly fruit capable of depleting and devouring the soul.

Its hard not to speculate that the two anxieties are intertwined. Sleep is an occasion for self-loss, but so is sex. Its well known that during the Renaissance people began referring to orgasm as a death of sorts; to ejaculate was to expen[d] a portion of ones spirit, as William Shakespeare memorably phrases it in his Sonnet 129  a figure that elegantly gets at the notion of sexual climax as self-departure, an instant in which some of the pith of ones inner being flees one. To reach bodily bliss was to expire, according to one way of reading Shakespeares Sonnet 73; orgasm was deaths second self, an interval of perfect oblivion wherein pleasure eclipsed the exigencies of the here and now, blotted out self and world.

Here then is the crux of the matter: beds drive home an abstract coupling  of which many of us are at least dimly aware, whether we can articulate it or not  of death and sex. Beds are where we go to lose ourselves. Most of us will die in a bed  the phase just prior to dying is, of course, called ones deathbed  and sleep, as so many poets have recognized, is a nightly rehearsal for death. But sex too entails a kind of dying: as one of the surest ways to break the boundaries that normally delineate you, sex like sleep can bring out anti-selves, identities, and impulses you may not have known you harbored. And it can lead to intervals of self-annihilation and a communing with otherness that few other pastimes can.

5.

But this might be a thing to embrace rather than fear. The capacity of sleep and sex both to catalyze a death-like self-abandonment has been, historically, what certain poets have most cherished about these phenomena. Each night, when I go to sleep, I die, said Mahatma Gandhi, himself an unsung poet. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. Sleep for Gandhi represented a welcome interment from which he might rise at daylight, transfigured if only slightly. For John Keats, meanwhile, the bedroom came to seem, as it had for Larkin and Hardy, a sepulchre into which he retired each evening  yet it was precisely the sepulchral aspect of the bedroom and the deathlike dimension of what happened there that Keats excitedly seized on. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, he wrote fiancee Fanny Brawne, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. Keats dreamed of a concentrated instant that joined mortality and sexual activity, the twin components of human experience that promised to liberate one from the constraints of individual identity.

The perspective of Keats and Gandhi  which looks enthusiastically on the nightly metamorphoses of self that happen under the covers  may be an altogether healthier one than dread. It may be, too, a perspective consistent with recent advances in microbiology. That is, those who dread self-loss would do well to ask themselves what it is they are holding onto, and whether their endeavor to retain it might not have been doomed from the get-go. We now know, as microbiologist Ed Yong has shown in his gripping I Contain Multitudes, that our bodies play host to trillions of immigrant microbes and quadrillions of viruses that momently multiply on our faces, hands, and in our guts, making up roughly half our being and forcing us to reconsider what we even think of as a self. For that matter, the majority of our own bodies cells have a lifespan of just seven to 10 years, and though you might like to think of yours as a permanent construct, the better part of it exists in a state of constant flux. Most of what you think of as you gets completely renewed as often as your passport.

Yet insomniac writers have been grappling with how to make sense of this fact since at least the Victorian era. Walter Pater, like Ruskin a Victorian essayist who wrote poetry as a young man  and, when struggling to write, suffered grey hours of lassitude and insomnia  brooded over the prospect that human beings were merely confluences of particles in time and space, continuously in motion. Such thoughts, wrote Pater, seem desolate at first; at times all the bitterness of life seems concentrated in them. They bring the image of one washed out beyond the bar in a sea at an ebb, losing even his personality, as the elements of which he is composed pass into new combinations. Struggling, as he must, to save himself, it is himself that he loses at every moment.

If for Pater this thought was desolate at first, in the most famous paragraphs he wrote  the Conclusion to his Studies in the History of the Renaissance  he imagined a new perspective, one that likewise looked on life as a billion discrete instants in which the physical world and human identity itself were in ceaseless unrest; where individuals were subject to a strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves  but saw this condition as liberating and galvanizing. Only by recognizing the uniqueness and immediate decay of each moment could we position ourselves to relish it, make it gravid with effort and enjoyment, and so attain a quickened sense of life.

Death is a moment-to-moment phenomenon; the self shivers with all the ephemerality of a drop of dew, shifting and altering with each instant. Lying awake at night and contemplating our eventual demise, we fret over an event that is already behind us, that has played out unendingly since we came into being and will repeat itself innumerable times in the future. Accepting this, we might more cheerfully brave the windows of self-loss that lie in wait for us in bedrooms: the manifold deaths, the transfigurations these make possible.

Image Credit: Wikipedia.
By Saurabh Vaktania: Parents of a 5-year-old girl in Kandivali of Mumbai filed an FIR against a school after their daughter's finger was dismembered in a tragic incident. The terrifying incident took place in Thakur International School in Kandivali on Wednesday.

Five-year-old Jeevika Mistry studies in Senior KG in Thakur International School in Kandivali. Jeevika's finger was reportedly crushed between door hinges. The family came to know about the incident after the school called them to inform that Jeevika was injured.

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Speaking to India Today Hemant Mistry said that the incident was a result of the carelessness of the teachers and school administration. He said that for the school the cries of his daughter did not merit the need for emergency medical attention.

FAMILY KEPT IN THE DARK

Hemant Mistry said that his wife who got a call from the school was asked to pick up Jeevika. however, the school did not mention the gravity of the injury caused to the girl. At first the family, thought it was a minor injury, however, they were appalled to learn that her finger was dismembered. The family said that the school authorities did not took their daughter to the hospital and waited for them to rush her to the hospital. The family alleged that Jeevika's finger got crushed between the frames of the door when her teacher closed it.

They added that instead of rushing Jeevika to the hospital along with the dismembered finger - which could have been reattached, had the school acted in time the teacher and the school administration thought it was prudent to take no action and merely inform the parents.

Adding to the woes of the family, the school authorities simply bandaged Jeevika's hand and handed over the her dismembered finger in a plastic pouch in ice, and asked them to take her to a doctor.

The family said that the incident took place in the school premises, and therefore they expected the school to take the child to a hospital to ensure that immediate emergency medical care was made available. However, Thakur International School not only refused to ensure medical assistance, but also shrugged off their responsibility.

DELAY COSTS DEAR

Upon reaching the hospital, doctors informed the parents that they could have reattached the severed finger had they reached the hospital immediately. However, in Jeevika's case, due to the delay, the nerves were damaged and the dismembered finger could not be reattached.

Five-year-old Jeevika Mistry hospitalised after the incident.

"Me and my wife are still in trauma and completely shocked. My daughter lost so much of blood her haemoglobin count was just to point 6 after the incident. The pathetic state the school authority took my daughter to washroom and washed her finger. They hide the matter throughout. Just imagine the pain my small child has gone through. She was inconsolable. On human ground if animal is injured we help them here my child has gone through something which cannot be described," said Hemant.

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On Friday several parents reached the school and protest. Shiva Sena's Haji Arafat Sheikh helped parents file case at Kandivali police station. Arafat will take matter to CM and education minister.

Also read:

12 school children injured as bus overturns in Delhi

Amritsar: Five children killed, 10 hospitalised after school bus falls into canal

--- ENDS ---
In a new essay, Pico Iyer says our lives are shaped by unexpectedness. Nothing has been truer of 2016. England voting to exit the European Union, Donald Trump winning the US presidential election, the worsening Syrian refugee crisis, unabated terrorist attacks across the world and India declaring 86 per cent of its currency illegal were only some of the highlights. It was a truly topsy-turvy year. Everything that the pundits predicted of the world was upended. The consequences of all that happened will be played out in the coming year, and it may not be a pretty sight. It seems that it will be the Year of Living Dangerously but it is also true that every ending has a new beginning .

In that spirit, we have a great collection of essays from the finest scholars of the world who point us towards what is new and newsy in the Brave New World. On December 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the public response to demonetisation nothing short of a satyagraha. UCLA anthropologist Akhil Gupta acknowledges the transformative nature of that decision but points to Cuba and two parallel movements that made Fidel Castro such an enduring icon-the mass mobilisation that got citizens involved in the task of raising literacy and the government-initiated institution-building that ensured equitable access to health, provision of good primary healthcare, and training of a large cadre of medical professionals. For demonetisation to morph into a long-term war on corruption, Gupta says certain wide-ranging structural changes are required in India which need tough political and bureaucratic reforms.

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Our January 31, 2000 Cover

In the global arena, the big event was the unexpected win of business tycoon Donald Trump as President of the United States and according to international affairs expert, Kishore Mahbubani, it could be the best thing to happen to India, as it repositions itself as a geopolitical equal to both America and China. This will not be easy. America's GNP is $18 trillion, China's is $ 11 trillion while India's is only $2.1 trillion. By turning adversarial against China, says Mahbubani, Trump has effectively put China and America at two opposite ends of a see-saw. India should seize the opportunity by leaping on to the middle of the see-saw, even as it grapples with the bitter aftertaste of its overtures to Pakistan going up in flames. Mahbubani assigns a new meaning to a familiar acronym CIA-China ,India, America. There are other trends to watch out for in 2017-the retreat of liberalism, the rise of artificial intelligence and the decline of internationalism. The economy remains a concern and Credit Suisse's Neelkanth Mishra flags four continuing effects of demonetisation-on the real estate market, the informal economy, banking economy and revenue collection.

2017 will also witness politicians being forced to engage with domestic forces, with as many as seven state elections coming up, including in Uttar Pradesh where a family drama has captured eyeballs with its daily sack-and-salvage operations, and in Gujarat which saw unprecedented demands for backward status from seemingly better-placed castes, which raises a fundamental question about the nature of affirmative action in India. The implementation of the Goods and Services Tax Act will test the notion of cooperative federalism, one of Prime Minister Modi's favourite mantras. It is perhaps no accident that this year's theme for the World Economic Forum in Davos is responsive leadership. Every political leader wants his nation to aspire to and achieve greatness-from Trump's Make America Great Again slogan to Boris Johnson's claim that Brexit would be Britain's Independence Day. But how many can summon the will to bridge the distance between rhetoric and reality, making inclusive development and equitable growth more than mere slogans? Those who want to track the answers to that question and many more, use this special issue as your own personal GPS to 2017. It will get you there.

--- ENDS ---
This year, theatre producer Sonia Friedman has topped the list for the first time. She has previously won The Stage award for Producer of the Year twice, but this is the first time she has claimed the top spot on this list. Not only is she the first woman to win since Stoll Moss Theatres boss Janet Holmes a Court in 1998, but she has made history by becoming the first winner not to own or operate any West End Theatres. She took the title from by Sir Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, the co-founders of Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) who had held the top spot since 2009. They stepped down this year, making them drop to 30th position. But even had the pair not stepped down, it is clear that Friedman has been having a heavy influence on the industry. Friedman has had an undoubtedly successful career. Having established Sonia Friedman Productions in 2002, she has won many awards over the years. In 2014 she made Olivier Awards history by winning the most awards for any producer, and since then she has moved from one hit show to another. She came in second last year, having had hits including The Book of Mormon, but it was 2016 that really cemented her as one of our best (if not the best) theatre producers. Her credits of the past year have been outstanding with new hit musical Dreamgirls, and revivals such as Funny Girl. She produced Mark Rylances new play Nice Fish, not to mention the incredibly successful Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She beat vetran theatre maker Andrew Lloyd Webber, who came in second, and upon winning she said she was very grateful. "I feel extremely lucky to do a job I love so much and to have had such a stimulating and creatively diverse year," she added. The top ten were as follows: 1. Sonia Friedman2. Andrew Lloyd Webber3. Cameron Mackintosh and Nicholas Allott4. Mark Cornell and Adam Kenwright5. Rufus Norris, Lisa Burger and Ben Power6. Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer7. Gregory Doran, Catherine Mallyon, Erica Whyman8. David Lan and Lucy Woollatt9. Josie Rourke and Kate Pakenham10. Emma Rice and Neil Constable
Indeed, my journey to Iceland was so breathtaking I needed to write two whole pieces about it! You can find Part I here. Once you've done that, let's keep discovering...

Godafoss

The second half of the journey starts there, at the Waterfall of the Gods, just a few miles away from Akureyri. Its emerald waters and the contrast they create with the waterfalls surrounding reddish-brown soil are among those things youll remember when on your flight home.

Despite its moderate height, Godafoss is worth of a careful contemplation, even under a heavy rain; its aura of spirituality and lightness is alien to all the other waterfalls in the country.

Godafoss, the waterfalls of the Gods

After this almost divine experience, the ice land you saw in the first part of your journey wont be there anymore. Almost like in a post-industrial reality, geothermal power stations, sulphurous explosions, a couple of fumy rock masses (Hverir) and a 400-meter-high black crater (Hverfjall) will make their appearance. The Myvatn region with its homonymous majestic dark lake is the most precarious spot of the country.

Hverir: fumy rock masses in the Myvatn region

Hverfjall: black crater in the Myvtan region

A condensation of anomalies, the lakes average temperature is extremely low, whereas underneath its crust, theres a thick layer of lava at about 1100C. Both a gold mine in touristic terms, and, more importantly, the biggest green energy producer in Iceland, the Myvatn is a gem full of highly interesting sites. Pay attention not to wear valuable clothes, as youll get muddy before you could realise it.

Geothermal power stations.

Yep, visiting Iceland isnt like walking on a catwalk. Youll finally understand it, when in Dettifoss, the highest (44 m) and most powerful (193 m3/s) waterfall in Europe. In this case more than ever, it seems fine to say that its the journey, not the destination. Perhaps, its because its edge is partially obscured from view, the real attraction of the area seems the road to the waterfall rather than Dettifoss itself. Imagine the moon, if you can. No trees, no bushes. A black terrain: endless. The same, everywhere you look. No horizon. Inhospitable even for the sheep. And you know how many are there.

Be quiet, your zoological ego wont wait for long to see a much more exciting fauna. Husavik, aka the European capital for whale-watching is only 50 km away. Despite the patience you need to get there, as the main and sole road is dirt, the village deserves your efforts. Truly popular among tourists, Husavik has a couple of very good restaurants and a picturesque port.

Beware that the full whale-watching experience will cost you a lot. Considering that in the bay of Husavik there are 11 different species of whales, youll probably have the chance to see at least one cetacean jumping off the water from the port. So, carefully evaluate whether it is worth spending your money.

Now, you can stop in the eastern regions for a day, or head towards the south  the most exciting part of your journey. If you want to take it slowly, sojourn in Seyisfjorur. According to several tourist guides, it is the only remarkable village of the region. Landing port for all the cruise ships coming from Denmark, Seyisfjorur was an Anglo-American military basis during WWII.

The south will surprise you from East to West, moving from its glacial to its almost Mediterranean flora. Hofn, the first settlement youll encounter, is just a basis for all the tourists who crowd the region, so rest only if strictly necessary. A short distance away from there, theres what you were thinking of when imagining what Iceland would have been like. Or, more simply, what you have seen on your friends Instagram pages a million times . The Jokulsarlon is on your right.

Jokulsarlon

The deepest and most fascinating attraction of the country fronts directly onto the A1. This lagoon is almost an open-air gallery, hosting numerous icebergs slowly proceeding to the ocean. Situated on the back end of the Vatnajokull glacier, these icy sculptures are constantly substituted by new ones in a perpetual cycle.

Enriched by a couple of clumsy seals fluttering about in the water and flocks of seagulls using the moving icebergs as free rides to reach the ocean, the Jokulsarlon inspires peace. Pity for all the selfie sticks and those annoying tourists who regularly use them, taking photos in positions that you people wouldnt believe.

Skaftafell, the National Park

Skaftafell, the National Park

The Jokulsarlon is entrance to the Skaftafell National Park, a wide area that covers most of Iceland southern part. Horse riding, mountain excursions, boat and jeep rides respectively in the lakes secret icy caves and on the top of the glacier are a must in every season of the year. Along the way back to Reykjavik, remember to look out of your window. Beautiful waterfalls, snow-capped peaks and a sandur  an outwash plain formed by meltwater from glaciers  will keep you company for a long stretch to the town of Vik.

Vik

There, you could spend some time in the Vikurprjon Wool factory to see how a simple ball of yarn is transformed into a prestigious woollen article. Dont leave quickly, once youve finished. Spend at least a minute admiring the three high stacks visible from Viks black seaside. Capri? It could have been  you think  when the cold temperatures overwhelm you, again.

From Vik your journey has almost come to an end. 100 kilometres separate you from the Golden Circle, the first or last touristic site  it depends on how your direction of travel  outside Reykjavik. Golden exclusively because of marketing reasons  do not expect to find any gold, the Vikings were quite a minimal clan  the Circle gathers together three of the countrys most remarkable natural attractions. The National Park of Thingvellir with its rift valley, a split between the American and Eurasian plates, is a quiet oasis where to pleasantly get lost.

Thingvellir

Forget Thingvellirs peaceful silence when in Geysir, a hot spring area full of geysers that reach up to 30 meters with a single explosion. Historically, the place takes its name from the now asleep Geysir, the Earths oldest geyser, that reached a height of 170 meters in 1945.

Geysir

Last comes Gullfoss, a wonderful waterfall, in which the waters of the river Hvita plunges in two stages of 11 and 21 metres, creating multi-coloured effects and spraying those famous selfie-stick tourists with its freezing waters.

Gullfloss

At the end of this sort of circumnavigation, youll feel a bit lost. Probably you are already hating all the people squalling back home. Youll miss Iceland and feel that it still has hundreds of hidden secrets. It has showed you how bright are its colours. It has probably toughened you up with its temperatures. But, its soul remains somehow enigmatic. Not only ice and fire. An oxymoron, indeed.

*I've left out the Highlands of Iceland from this journey since they are dominated by the desert and I would have needed to be equipped with a 4x4 to visit them.
I studied in Dublin just shy of four months. In that time I made strong attachments to the people, culture and most of all, the city; an emotional attachment which surprisingly no one could have prepared me for and one which made the farewells difficult.

Since its inception in 1987, the Erasmus+ plus programme has placed emphasis on students accessing both opportunity and learning in another European country. It works using three easy steps; gain a second family, gain new friends and become a local.

My choice to study at University College Dublin was easy. Being a Scot means that some way down the line there is family heritage here, but also it helps to have a passion for Guinness, (aka "the black stuff").

On an unrelated note, Im told that Guinness in fact makes your hair darker - a usefully useless tip.

So, after making my choice and having signed all the necessary paperwork, I packed some belongings into a holdall and headed off for Ireland - easy. Well almost. See, the truth is, the Erasmus experience does not come easy at first. The few weeks prior to heading out to Dublin had been busy prioritising lists, flights, and accommodation so much so that nothing would prepare me for the "parent send-off" at the airport. From the car journey to departure gate there was a game of careful seating and glances rather than words; avoiding eye contact at all costs. Then came some hugs and goodbyes - tears, surprisingly, at one point too. Less than one hour into my semester abroad I sensed the year was going to be a learning curve.

Then came the initial period of host-family introductions, locating UCD and general settling in. The city soon became a list of endless opportunities. Being a friendly city I found the streets bustling with tourists and students. According to the Irish Times, the Erasmus scheme brings 7,200 students to study or work in Ireland annually, contributing an extra 14 million Euros each year to the national economy.

In an increasingly populist world, amidst deep economic uncertainties, surely students learning from and interacting with other cultures abroad is essential? Id imagine these figures would be higher for the UK and Id argue its a cherry in the cake to keep when negotiations begin to withdraw the UK from the European Union.

Second to the location and setting of what becomes a new home for a year are the people and the friendships you make. I found university classes function just as well socially as academically. Through my classes my knowledge of Irish political and social history has improved, giving me and my fellow classmates opportunities to investigate and research key topics of interest, such as the Easter Rising of 1916.

My courses varied slightly but allowed me to pursue humanities courses unavailable at Strathclyde University, in particular those that focused on the Irish economy. Exposure to these new courses opened up new avenues, such as being invited to a guest lecture by Art OLeary, secretary-general to the Irish President. This lecture brought me into contact with influential figures and provided me with further lines of enquiry for my dissertation research, but also contacts for future work in this field - perhaps.

During my first week there were a vast array of orientation events, from movie nights to ceilidhs. Being an Erasmus student requires a certain amount of energy. Suddenly, you are faced with a completely unknown environment, with new transport and buildings. Less than a week had passed and my Facebook friends had doubled, with new friends from all corners of the globe, who I know with a single email would jump at the chance of a beer if I was to fly and visit them.

Yet, ask exchange students what they enjoy doing most in their spare time and I guarantee that the most common answer is travelling. Life as we know isnt patient - in a few years you could well find yourself stuck in a routine, work or family commitments; or simply stuck due to insufficient funds. Galway city, Co. Kerry and Northern Ireland are just a flavour of some areas I visited.

The Erasmus experience has definitely made a positive contribution academically, professionally and personally. That is not to say it came easily. The options available to me during my year abroad were not handed to me but were the result of maintaining an open mind and attitude, as well as a determination to develop and work hard.

For all students out there thinking about taking the plunge, my advice would be to get out there. Take full advantage of the trips, the different classes, and all thats offered on your doorstep. Its definitely an experience that should be embraced by all those fortunate enough to have the opportunity. But this, perhaps like all unfamiliar endeavours, requires a fine print: this experience will change your life.
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By Press Trust of India: Gandhinagar, Jan 6 (PTI) The Gujarat government has decided to redevelop the Gandhinagar Railway Station at a cost of Rs 250 crore and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to perform its ground breaking ceremony on January 9, a top official said.

As part of the redevelopment, there is a plan to build a five-star hotel on top of the railway station to accommodate delegates coming here to attend the Vibrant Summits held every two years.

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"The project will commence as soon as Prime Minister Narendra Modi performs ground breaking ceremony at the railway station on January 9, a day before the inauguration of 8th edition of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit at Mahatma Mandir near the railway station," Gujarat Chief Secretary, J N Singh said in a press conference today.

State Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has already given his go-ahead for the formation of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the station re-development project, he added.

"The total cost of the project is estimated at Rs 250 crore. We want to complete the entire project, including the five-star hotel, before the next Vibrant Summit of 2019, so that delegates can be provided with world-class stay in Gandhinagar," said Singh.

The station is being developed through the SPV between Government of Gujarat and Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd (IRSDC). The proposed name of the SPV is Gandhinagar Railway & Development Corporation Ltd (GARUD), the official said.

"The project includes redevelopment of the railway station and construction of a 300-room five star hotel in the airspace above the railway track. The hotel will have three towers. Total height of the hotel will be around 65 meters, highest in state capital," Singh said.

Providing details about the financial components of the SPV, Additional Chief Secretary, Industries and Mines, P K Taneja told reporters that the state government will hold the majority share with 74 per cent, while Ministry of Railways will hold 26 per cent.

"Both, the Railway Ministry as well as Gujarat Government, will invest Rs 50 crore each, while we will take loan of Rs 120 crore to complete the project. Since the hotel will be just 10 kms away from Ahmedabad airport, we expect that it will get a very good response from business delegates and other tourists upon completion," Taneja said. PTI PJT PD NP JMF

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: Baghpat (UP), Jan 6 (PTI) Four persons allegedly tried to rape a 20-year-old girl and cut off a portion of her ear when she resisted the attempt in Asara village in Baghpat district. Police today said it was looking into the gruesome incident and trying to arrest the culprits.

The four men had dragged off the girl when she came out of her house and shut her mother inside a room when she rushed to her rescue. They later cut off a part of her ear, her family members said.

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As villagers rushed the spot, the culprits fled, leaving the bleeding girl and her mother behind.

When they approached police to lodge a complaint about the incident which occurred on December 30, the authorities did not lodge any report, they alleged.

Asara village was in the news after its panchayat barred women from using mobile phones and wearing jeans in 2012 and 2013. PTI COR SMI BSA

--- ENDS ---
Kabir Khan says he is glad to have had Om Puri on board for Tubelight.

By Press Trust of India: Om Puri, who passed away this morning after suffering a heart attack, will be seen next in Salman Khan-starrer Tubelight and director Kabir Khan says he is glad to have had the veteran actor on board.

"He is a very talented actor who can play any kind of role. We were glad to have him on board for Tubelight. He has a good, positive role. Its not a cameo like Bajrangi Bhaijaan," Kabir told PTI.

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ALSO READ: Om Puri dies of heart attack at 66, funeral at 6pm

ALSO READ: Karan Johar to Anupam Kher, Bollywood mourns Om Puri's death

ALSO READ: New York museum pays tribute to actor Om Puri

ALSO READ: When Om Puri had to work in a tea shop

ALSO READ: Domestic abuse to anti-Army statements, major controversies in Om Puri's life

The Ek Tha Tiger helmer, however, did not divulge details about Puri's role in the film.

"He had already shot for his part. We will miss him, his warmth," Kabir said.

According to sources, Puri plays the role of a Muslim Gandhian. However there is no official confirmation about this yet.

Tubelight is an upcoming historical war drama film which has been produced by Salman Khan and Kabir.

Set in the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the film stars Salman, Sohail Khan and Chinese actress Zhu Zhu.

Another film that Puri was supposed to start shooting for was Vivek Agnihotri's yet to be titled movie which will be on the lines of 1957 American noir courtroom drama 12 Angry Men.

"I had met him sometime back for this film and I was happy that he was supposed to work on the film. We were to start work since April. He was the first person I went to for casting and I am glad he said yes to the film," Vivek said.

"He (Puri) was going to play one of the most important characters of the film. I am still busy casting for the film so I cant give out names," he said.

--- ENDS ---
2017 worst New Year death toll on record

BANGKOK: A total of 478 people were killed and 4,128 injured in road accidents during the Seven Days of Danger from Dec 29 to Jan 4, making the 2017 New Year death toll the highest in the 10 years that records have been kept.

transportdeathalcoholpolice

By Bangkok Post

Friday 6 January 2017, 08:57AM

Emergency service crews finish extinguishing the fire that killed 25 people after a passenger van swerved and crashed into a pickup truck in Ban Bung district, Chon Buri, on Monday. Photo: Sawang Rescue

Deputy Interior Minister Suthee Makboon, chairman of the centre for the prevention and reduction of road accidents under the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department, said Wednesday (Jan 4), the last of the seven-day campaign, there were 340 accidents across the country in which 52 people were killed and 367 injured. The fatalities included people injured in previous days who died on Wednesday.

In total, 3,919 accidents occurred between Dec 29 and Jan 4, killing 478 and injuring 4,128 people.

Most of the accidents (36.6%) were caused by drink driving, followed by speeding (31.31%). Most, or 81.82%, involved motorcycles, and 8% pick-up trucks.

The majority of the accidents, 61.78%, happened on main highways, followed by 36.92% on rural roads.

Most of the accidents, 29.24%, took place between 4.01pm and 8pm, and 52.22% of the killed and injured were of the working age.

Four provinces which recorded no deaths were Mae Hong Son in the North and Yala, Ranong and Satun in the South.

The provinces with the highest number of accumulated accidents, 152 each, were Udon Thani in the Northeast and Chiang Mai in the North.

Chon Buri topped the death toll with 33, while Udon Thani and Chiang Mai recorded the highest number of injured, 164 each.

The 2017 New Year death toll of 478 was the highest over the past 10 years when the number of those killed in road accidents was recorded at 449 in 2007; 401 in 2008; 357 in 2009; 347 in 2010; 358 in 2011; 321 in 2012; 365 in 2013; 366 in 2014; 341 in 2015; and, 380 in 2016.

Mr Suthee said during the seven days, 4.4 million vehicles were checked by the authorities and 727,438 people were charged with traffic-related offences.

During that period, the number of vehicles leaving and arriving in Bangkok was about 11 million in total, 26.10% up from 8.7 million on normal days, a factor that increased risks of accidents and caused higher numbers of deaths and injuries, he said.

Mr Suthee said lessons from the increased New Years death toll would be taken to mete out measures to be carried out before the Songkran festival.

Read original story here.
By Press Trust of India: Panaji, Jan 6 (PTI) Alleging that Goa Government is deliberately not relieving certain officers despite transfer orders issued against them to "benefit" ruling partys nominees in Assembly elections, the Congress today demanded the Election Commission to take cognisance of the matter.

"There are some officers who were transferred as a part of the mandatory procedure followed during elections, but they are not being relieved by state government," AICC secretary Girish Chodankar told reporters.

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He said the Election Commission had strictly asked the Goa government to relieve the officers from their posts and shift them to the transferred places.

"But these officers still continue serving though the model code of conduct has set in," Chodankar added.

He alleged the officers were not shifted in a bid to "benefit" the ruling partys candidates and "harass" the Congress contestants in different constituencies.

Elections will be held for 40-member House on February 4.

"ECI should take suo motto cognisance of such thing. If they dont, the Congress party will submit a formal complaint to ECI," Chodankar said.

He took a dig at the BJP over its statement that oncoming elections would be a referendum on the issue of Medium of Instruction in local schools.

"Current policy of the MoI was drafted by the previous Congress-led Goa government. The same policy has been continued by the BJP-led government. So when they say elections are referendum on MOI, that means they are virtually endorsing Congress party," he said. PTI RPS NSK

NSK

--- ENDS ---
One dead as watermelon truck slams into Phukets Heroines Monument

PHUKET: One man has died and another is injured after their pickup truck carrying four tons of watermelons slid out of control and slammed into a steel barricade protecting the Heroines Monument in central Phuket before dawn this morning (Jan 6).

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By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 6 January 2017, 10:07AM

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The pickup truck was carrying four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong when the driver lost control on the wet road and slammed into the barrier before dawn today (Jan 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thalang Police led by Capt Kraisorn Boonprasop along with Kusoldharm rescue workers were called to the accident at 5:45am.

At the scene, the pickup truck driver, Sonsitthi Raeden, 43, from Krabi, was unconscious and unresponsive in the cab.

Rescue workers used hydraulic cutters to free him and rushed him to Thalang Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The passenger in the vehicle, Sarawut Prawong, 18, had suffered a back injury and was also taken to Thalang Hospital, said Capt Kraisorn.

Mr Sarawut said that they were carrying more than four tons of watermelons from Krabi to markets in Patong, Capt Kraisorn explained.

It was raining and the road was wet and slippery, and the driver lost control of his vehicle at the monument and hit the barrier, he added.

Police are still investigating the accident and have yet press any charges, he added.
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By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Drug firm Granules India today said it has received 11 observations from Portugals health authority INFARMED for its manufacturing facility located at Gagillapur in Telangana.

INFARMED had conducted a renewal inspection of the facility.

"In this respect, the company has received the inspection report with 11 observations," Granules India said in a regulatory filing.

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The plant manufactures pharmaceutical formulation intermediates (PFIs) and finished dosages.

The company said it has initiated necessary steps to address the observations of the inspection agency and will submit its response with a corrective and preventive action plan within the stipulated time.

Besides, the drug firm said, it will also be requesting the INFARMED for re-inspection of the Gagillapur facility at the earliest.

"The company is committed to comply with all the required regulatory requirements and follow the best practices of the industry," it said.

Shares of Granules India today ended at Rs 112.25 apiece on the BSE, up 0.31 per cent from previous close. PTI MSS JM

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: From Aditi Khanna

London, Jan 6 (PTI) Nearly half a million people over the age of 60 in the UK suffer from such extreme loneliness that they spend an entire week without meeting anyone or getting any phone call, according to a new report.

The UKs largest charity working with older people, Age UK, had commissioned a research which highlighted that 1.2 million elderly people in England have experienced loneliness for several years, which can cause chronic health problems.

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The group has launched a pilot programme to train neighbours and workers to identify older people who are at risk of loneliness.

"Unfortunately, there is no simple solution for loneliness...our pilot programme shows we really can make a difference. We have learnt that to be effective in helping lonely older people we have to recognise their individual needs and we also have to channel the skills of professionals in the NHS and beyond, and the goodwill of local communities," said Caroline Abrahams, director of Age UK.

The charity believes that this extreme loneliness among the elderly is putting additional pressure on already strained health services and has called on local politicians to make combating loneliness a key consideration in funding decisions.

People identified as lonely by Age UK groups were provided with telephone support and short-term, face-to-face companionship, with the aim of helping them reconnect with their communities.

Many were introduced to existing social groups, such as lunch clubs.

Others were enabled to set up their own social networks, via introductions to people with similar interests, or via IT skills enhancement that allowed them to use Skype to stay in touch with friends and family.

The results of the pilot scheme will feed into Age UK?s submissions to the Commission on Loneliness, devised by Labour MP Jo Cox before she was murdered last year by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair.

Research agency TNS polled UK residents aged over 60, asking them how many days a week they usually spent alone with no visits or telephone calls.

Out of 2,241 people, 498 said they spent seven days on their own and 464 said five or six days.

The results were then extrapolated to reach the UK-wide figures. PTI AK PMS

--- ENDS ---
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.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Disapproving of the tussle over posting of a central government official in the Delhi Assembly, the Delhi High court today said such matters should be resolved amicably without coming to the court.

"A Speaker coming to court is an extraordinary circumstance. This should not be thrashed out in court. He is not such an officer that two governments (Delhi and the Centre) should fight over him. Why cannot it be resolved amicably without either party coming to court," Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said.

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He made the observations during hearing of a plea by Delhi Legislative Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel who has challenged the then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jungs order repatriating Delhi Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara, an officer belonging to Newsreader-cum-Translator (Telugu) cadre, to the All India Radio (AIR), his parent organisation.

However, the Speaker had refused to relieve him.

The court issued notice to the Centre, the bureaucrat and the Delhi government, which was made a party in the matter today, and sought their reply by the next date of hearing on January 17.

The lawyer representing the Centre agreed with the courts suggestion not to insist on repatriation of the bureaucrat till the next date of hearing.

The Speaker had contended that as he also holds a constitutional office, the LG cannot repatriate the Assembly secretary without his concurrence.

Goel, in his plea, has also challenged the memorandums issued by AIR to Suryadevara directing him to join his parent organisation immediately failing which he will be treated to be on "unauthorised absence".

The bureaucrat, who has served in the office of the Lok Sabha Speaker for five years and that of the Rajya Sabha Chairman for over six years, was appointed to the post of Delhi Assembly secretary in July 2015 for a year, on expiry of which AIR had directed him to return.

When the Speaker refused to relieve him and sought his extension for another two more years, AIR turned it down and thereafter, the LG ordered his repatriation.

Despite the LGs order, the Speaker refused to relieve the bureaucrat.

AIR had also issued a show cause notice to the bureaucrat on why action for "misconduct" should not be initiated against him over a newspaper article written by him in June -- Neither Office, Nor Profit -- finding it "critical" of the Centre, which is in "violation of the Conduct Rules".

This too has been challenged by Goel in his plea, but the court said this issue has to be taken up by the bureaucrat himself and not the Speaker. PTI HMP ABA PPS VSC SC

--- ENDS ---

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By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Jan 5 (PTI) The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has opened a new facility for the visually- impaired students at the Central Library in the Powai campus.

The facility has modern aids and appliances such as the latest version of the Jaws-screen reading software, Plextalk pocket daisy player and recorder, Perkins smart Brailler, Braille embosser/printer, Kuzwell or Open book scan and read software, Zoom X or Pearl- document camera-works as instant reader, Sangeeta Software to convert txt files into mp3 files, Eye-Pal Rol portable scanners and readers and Prkins standard Brailler, the institute said in a statement.

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IIT-B director Devang Khakhar said the centre is a positive move towards social inclusion and hinted at the possibility of individual facilities for each visually- challenged student in future.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to bridge the barrier between emerging technology and emergent users through a bottom-up approach, the students of the Industrial Design Center of the IIT-B, in collaboration with Swansea University of Britain developed a physical web for residents of the Dharavi slums to help them promote their business.

This is part of Googles Internet of Things Technology Research Award. As part of the project, 100 devices called beacons provided by Google are being deployed in the largest slum in Asia in the heart of the megapolis.

In the the first phase of this plan, 30 shops in Dharavi are being connected to the physical web through these beacons. PTI BEN NRB JMF

--- ENDS ---
The latest opinion poll by Axis My India for India Today TV suggests that the Grand Old Party may end up very close to the majority mark in next month's elections.

By Rahul Kanwal: Captain Amarinder Singh seems set to assume the mantle of the chief minister of Punjab once again. The latest opinion poll by Axis My India for India Today TV suggests that the Grand Old Party may end up very close to the majority mark in next month's elections.

READ: Captain Amarinder wants more star power, invites Priyanka Gandhi to campaign in Punjab

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The survey projects that the Congress could bag between 56 and 62 seats in the 117-seat state assembly. If this opinion poll result holds on counting day then it will come as great relief for the beleaguered party that has lost state after state since a humiliating defeat in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is projected to finish second with a tally in the range of 36-41. The opinion poll suggests that the tally the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine could crash to around 18-22 seats.

The previous opinion poll for Punjab had been put out by Axis My India in October. When the results of the two surveys are compared, it emerges that the Congress' campaign in the state has been gaining momentum. The party's expected tally has gone up by seven seats over the past three months. On the other hand, AAP's campaign, which had peaked at the beginning of 2016, has been on the wane. The party is projected to have lost six seats in the past three months. AAP was hit by a series of local-level controversies and high-profile exits and the party does not seem to have recovered fully from those blows.

Poll race

"People in Punjab aren't going to cast their votes for cyclical replacement, said AAP's national spokesperson Ashish Khetan. "People want systematic change. They want a party which is new, which is fresh."

READ: Ahead of Punjab polls, SIT to reopen 286 anti-Sikh riot cases

Akalis recover to some extent

The Akalis were down and out in October, but they seem to have recovered to some extent. The SAD-BJP vote share in December (24 per cent) is 2 per cent more than the alliance's projected vote share in October.

"I think Akalis are going to go even further down. And this survey has been done before the election process started," said Partap Singh Bajwa, Rajya Sabha MP and former Punjab Congress chief. "Once you have this survey, you see that the Congress is going up and the Akalis are going down."

Captain is top choice to be state's next chief minister

Congress' Amarinder Singh is by far the top choice to be the state's next chief minister with 34 per cent of the respondents indicating that he's their preferred pick. The incumbent, Parkash Singh Badal, comes in second with 22 per cent support. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who has not indicated whether he is willing to move to Chandigarh, comes in third in the popularity sweepstakes, with 16 per cent support.

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Drugs still a major problem in Punjab

READ: Narendra Modi to assess performance of ministries ahead of polls

Despite the loud protestations of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal and others in the Akali leadership, 70 per cent of the respondents in the survey felt that drugs were a major problem in Punjab. Roughly the same number of respondents (69 per cent) blame politicians of the ruling Akali-BJP government for the menace. However, when asked which issue would determine their voting preference, the majority of respondents put employment (41 per cent) and development (33 per cent) well ahead of drug control (8 per cent).

SAD unhappy with opinion poll results

SAD was, understandably, not happy with the opinion poll results. "I think there is something fundamentally wrong with your survey," said Jangveer Singh, Sukhbir Badal's media advisor. "I don't know what kind of questions you asked and how you came up with this kind of result."

Punjab inconvenienced by demonetisation

Respondents in Punjab seemed more inconvenienced by demonetisation than voters in Uttar Pradesh. In UP, 58 per cent of the respondents said they were facing problems because of the PM's move. In comparison, a whopping 82 per cent of the respondents in Punjab said they were facing problems because of note ban. Despite the problems that are being faced, 72 per cent of the respondents said they supported demonetisation.

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Axis My India survey criteria

READ: India Today-Axis My India opinion poll: Punjab poll big takeaways

The opinion poll was done using the face-to-face interview method from December 12-22. A team of 26 surveyors did the poll with a sample size of 3,081 respondents.

The data for age-wise vote share in the survey make for interesting reading. Among all age categories, the Aam Aadmi Party's popularity is highest among youngsters with 32 per cent of the youth backing it. This is 3 per cent more than the party's overall vote share of 29 per cent. Despite not having a prominent Sikh face, AAP seems to have penetrated the upper caste Sikh vote bank as well. 30 per cent of the upper caste Sikhs said they would vote for Kejriwal's party. This is the same as the number of upper caste Sikhs who said they would vote for the Congress. The Congress's popularity seems highest among upper caste Hindus and Hindu OBCs. Despite its image as a saviour of the Sikh faith, the Akalis have lost favour with upper caste, OBC and SC Sikhs.

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While the general impression around AAP is that Kejriwal's party is an urban phenomenon with limited appeal in the villages, the opinion poll suggests that the party's popularity is actually higher in rural areas than it is in urban pockets. The Congress' popularity peaks in urban areas while the Akalis fairly poorly both in the cities and the backwoods.

Axis My India will put out its final opinion poll for Punjab in the last week of January, just ahead of the crucial elections scheduled for February 4 with the results to be announced on March 11.

READ: With AAP, SAD-BJP, Congress in fray, Punjab to vote for new government on February 4

--- ENDS ---
Veteran actor Om Puri, who wooed the audience with his stellar performances in movies across different genres for decades, breathed his last on Friday morning after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 66.

Confirming the news, a family source said, He passed away this morning due to a massive heart attack at his residence in suburban Andheri. Its shocking.

Actor Shabana Azmi shared more details on Twitter. She posted, Om Puri undergoing postmortem at Cooper Hospital. Will be taken to Trishul around 3 pm funeral at Oshiwara electric crematorium around 6 pm.

Saddened by his death, Bollywood actors and filmmakers took to Twitter to express grief.

Anupam Kher wrote: "Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm can't believe that one of our greatest actors Om Puri is no more. Deeply saddened and shocked."

Priyanka Chopra tweeted: "The end of an era . The legacy lives on.. RIP Om Puri".

Akshay Kumar wrote: "Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films Heartfelt condolences to the family."

Riteish Deshmukh tweeted: "Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. Had the privilege of working with Om ji in two films 'Malamaal Weekly' and 'Tere Naal Love Hogayaa'. I still can't believe he is no more."

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt said a part of him was gone."Goodbye Om! A part of me goes with you today. How can I ever forget those passionate nights we spent together talking about cinema and life," wrote Bhatt.

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai said Om Puri's life is "an inspirational journey of ordinary man to the extraordinary international actor for next generation."

The versatile actor worked not only in mainstream Bollywood, but also contributed in Pakistani, British and Hollywood films. Om Puris unparalleled acting skills earned him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, in the year 1990.

However, the actor had his fair share of controversies as well. In the wake of Uri attacks which happened in 2016, he drew heavy criticism for making a controversial remark against the martyrs, arguing that nobody asked the dead soldiers to join the army and pick up weapons. After a severe backlash that included his own industry colleagues criticising him, the actor apologised publicly to put an end to the episode.

Puri was an alumnus of FTII, Pune as well as National School of Drama, Delhi. His several years in the acting institutes had been greatly instrumental in shaping the artiste in him. Some of his critically acclaimed films are Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Mirch Masala (1986) and Dharavi (1992).

The veteran actor would always be remembered as one of the finest actors in the history of Indian cinema. May his soul rest in peace.
The trailer of one of the most anticipated movies of 2017  'Rangoon'  is out and as expected, it reveals an intriguing side of the film.

Set in the backdrop of World War II, Vishal Bhardwajs Rangoon features three stellar actors, Shahid Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut, who will share screen space for the first time.

While viewers cannot help talking about Shahids performance in Haider, Kangana in Queen and Saif Ali Khan in Omkara, the interest level has been piqued 10 folds with the coming together of these splendid actors.

The 30-second trailer presents Kangana as a theatre artiste, who is sent to Burma by Saif Ali Khan, the anglicised filmmaker, there she meets the army man Shahid Kapoor. Kangana is projected as a seductress, who is romantically involved with both the male actors, hence leading to a love triangle.

Of late, love-triangle has been the most sought after theme of Bollywood filmmakers but the harsh backdrop and the raw storyline is what sets 'Rangoon' apart from the archetypal Bollywood stories.

Being a Vishal Bhardwaj film, 'Rangoon' bears the brunt of high expectation. But with the kind of performances shown in the trailer, the expectations are most likely to be met.

'Rangoon' is all set to hit the theatres on February 24.
The 44th World Book Fair, slated to begin here on Saturday will focus on women authors and writings on women.

The fair, to be held from January 5 to 15 at Pragati Maidan, will exhibit the rich tradition of women writings and their fight for emancipation under the theme Manushi'.

This year's edition also marks the 60th year of the National Book Trust (NBT).

The NBT will have a special exhibit, showcasing its journey in promoting books, including book fairs being organised by the Trust across India, participation of the NBT in international book fairs, publishing programme among others.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar will inaugurate the theme pavilion on January 10.

The 10-day fair will have noted Odia Author and Jnanpith Awardee Dr Pratibha Ray and H E Tomasz Kozlowski, ambassador of the EU delegation to India as its guest of honor and special guest respectively.
Himachal Pradesh will finally share space with other states to showcase its rich culture this year at the Republic Day parade at Rajpath, New Delhi.

The opportunity came following the state featuring in the R-Day tableaux list, after having jostled with other states, while competing for it.

The break has brought cheers to the state as it has come after giving the R-Day celebrations a miss for four years in a row.

As many as five models of tableaux were prepared by the state Language, Art and Culture (LAC) department out of which the tableaux theme Chamba Rumal impressed the selection committee of the ministry of defence.

Pradesh is amongst the 15 states and UTs which has been selected for showcasing their tableau in the R-Day parade.

State Language, Art and Culture Director Shashi Thakur confirming of the development said, The department had put in its best effort in preparing five models with various themes for selection. It was the Chamba Rumal that made an impact on the selection committee.

Prior to its selection a number of meetings were held by the officials of LAC with the expert committee of Union Defence Ministry on the tableau for R-Day parade.

The designs that were sent for selection were made by the Himachal Pradesh University chairman Him Chatterjee and officials from the state LAC department, she added.

It was in 2013 last, that Himachal Pradesh had got an opportunity to exhibit the rich tribal culture of Kinnaur district.

On earlier occasions, in 2007 the state showcased the monasteries and monks of Lahaul and Spiti, while in 1998, the Raghunath Chariot of Dussehra festivity of Kullu was displayed.

1993 the state made a mark by winning an award in the tableau round for showcasing tourist enjoying snowfall and also an appreciation award for the tableau on famous Rock temples of Masrur.

The Chamba Raumal is a beautiful pictorial craft that represents unique embroidery on cloth, with a technique of double satin stitches known as do-rukha-tanka(double sided) making the designs on both sides that look equally identical.

It depicts the phase when the style of miniature school of painting translated itself to the field of needle work.

The exquisite Chamba Rumal originated and flourished in Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh in the 17th-18th century.

In 2007 to boost its commercial prospects manifold, it has been conferred legal protection under Geographical Indications of Goods Act of 1999.This is was also aimed to prevent the unauthorised production and use of Chamba Rumal by any unauthorised producer outside the geographical region of Chamba district.
Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday challenged AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal to fight him in the coming Assembly elections and said he is ready to take on and defeat Kejriwal from any constituency in the state.

It will be the first time in the history of Army that a Capt will beat a General, Captain said.

Capt was interacting with the media at a press conference to announce the joining of former Akali minister Ranjit Singh Balian, along with family members, as well as a large number of AAP workers and others.

Capt denied that the delay in distributing tickets would impact the campaigning of the Punjab Congress candidates, and added that there was enough time for the polls as scheduled for February.

Tickets could not be announced six months before the elections as decided at the Jaipur session of the party, he added.

He said that the final list of the candidates is likely to be released on January 9.

Responding to a question on dissidence in the Punjab Congress, he said that tickets could not possibly be given to all deserving prospects but the party is working hard to bring the dissidents around.

He said that after coming to power he will accommodate all those who voluntarily opted to be out of the race and are extending support to the official candidates.
A sensational case of extortion by dubious Right to Information (RTI) activists have come to light in Uttarakhand.

The activist used RTI to obtain information about expenses made by Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM)- a agency involved in reconstruction work in flash-flood hit Kedarnath- and later started for asking money to settle issue.

NIM has filed a police complain against the fake RTI activists with Uttarkashi Police.

Acting on the complain the police has started investigation against four persons from Dehradun. NIM has produced video and audio of the RTI activists demanding money as evidence in support of their case.

Uttarkashi police has registered a case against Sumit Rawat, Sadanand Sati, Sunil Bodai and Digvijay Bisht of Dehradun under section 384 and 385 of IPC. Uttarkashi Police said that they have started investigation in the case.

NIMs registrar G S Bisht said, If the RTI applicants were not satisfied with the information provided, they should have approached the Uttarakhand State Information Commission. But, they started demanding money and we recorded their conversation (audio/video). It is rather sad that when no agency was willing to do work in disaster hit Kedarnath, NIM went there and some people have started asking for extortion from us.
The Bombay High Court on Friday turned down activist Anna Hazares plea seeking a probe against former Union Minister Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar in an alleged sugar cooperative factories scam.

Turning down the plea, the bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka asked Hazare to first file a police complaint against the former Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and the former Maharashtra Irrigation Minister Ajit Pawar and approach higher authorities, if necessary.

Hazare had moved the Bombay High Court on January 3 asking for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into what he called a Rs.25,000 crore scam.

The activist filed two civil PILs and one criminal PIL, claiming that the scam had pulled Maharashtra back by 50 years and has put the state under financial debts to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees.

The PILs allege that fraud had been committed in governance by first burdening sugar cooperative factories with debts and thereafter selling these sick units at a throwaway price, causing a loss of Rs.25,000 crore to the government, cooperative sector and members of public.

With inputs from agencies
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national and suspected Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT) member Bahadur Ali alias Saifullah, accused of attempting to attack security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet accuses Ali of planning to carry out terror activities against India at the behest of the LeT.

Ali, at present is in the custody of the NIA after his arrest on July 25, 2016 from Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the NIA, Ali had thrice attempted to throw grenades on the army and police in Handwara area of Kupwara district but failed every time.

With inputs from agencies
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor along with other party leaders were on Friday detained by the Kerala Police for protesting against demonetisation outside the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) office. The leaders were released later.

"We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office but we were arrested by police and were later released," Tharoor said.

The Congress party in Kerala has been protesting against the Union government's note ban and Tharoor had earlier said that the entire exercise was implemented badly and in an "astonishingly incompetent manner".
For over 12 lakh aspirants across the country is gearing up for JEE, which is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education. Though one must have already gone through diligent preparations, assessments, and would have gained as much knowledge as possible from a wide variety of sources, we offer some advice which might help in the last minute preparation.

First, the distribution of marks is tending towards uniformity in chemistry across important topics. When we look at subject-wise distribution, in physics, last year, more weightage was given to Class +2. And math has always been favouring Class XI. Now, if we look at the difficulty level, it has increased over the course of three years and that is clear from the cut-off as well. In 2014, the cut off was 115, in 2015, it was 105, and last year with the prediction of most institutes in the 90s, the cut off was 100.

This year, considering that Class +2 marks will not be considered for ranks, the cut off is expected to rise a little. You can consider the following points to decide the result at the end of May.

Those who have not dedicatedly studied previous year papers do analyse the previous three years paper (by solving it completely) and get an idea of the topics on which questions are asked frequently and the pattern of these questions.

Solve topic wise questions on these topics. Focus more on questions which have asked in the previous years. CBSE has a habit of repeating questions or type of questions every year.

Keeping that in mind, solve at least one full length paper every day. While solving these papers, mark the questions you are absolutely sure of. Basically, dont guess. You need to find out where you stand and how many marks you are going score. Maximise that score.

Make concise notes on these topics and revise them every day. Try to recall all the major equations and formulas when you wake up. The reason is JEE asks a lot of questions which are directly fact based or formula based. Having them at your tips can save a lot of time and get you a lot of marks.

A few topics which we generally dont focus on and are very important are: modern physics and semiconductors, waves and SHM in physics, chemical bonding and P block in chemistry. Last year, chemistry gave highest weightage to inorganic even though we spend a lot of time on physical and organic.

Maths has repeated its pattern for at least three years now and it wont be wrong to assume that it wont be repeated this year. So focus on easy topics such as coordinate and 3D and topics of algebra.

Above everything, keep a healthy schedule and avoid stress. Do activities that you enjoy, daily, as it will help you stay in a healthy and sharp mind-set.

The writer is Head- JEE exam preparation community, Gradeup
Much of the fun of reading is in the anticipation. Before its spine is cracked open, every book is perfect, unsullied by boredom or disappointment or, worst of all, abandonment. These are some of the year's most eagerly awaited titles. And don't worry about the books you won't finish or won't even crack open. Regrets and recriminations are for endings not beginnings.FICTION

Few second novels can have been more freighted with expectation than The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Arundhati Roy's Booker-winning debut, The God of Small Things, turned her into a literary superstar and a symbol for India's growing self-confidence.

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But instead of rushing another novel into print, Roy abandoned fiction-writing to become an activist and a dogged critic of untrammelled state power. Now, though, Roy has finally written the second novel she's put off for two decades, and her publishers have been ratcheting up the hype. "Language of the utmost freshness, joyfully reminding us that words are alive too," fawned one acolyte. "Utterly original... well worth the wait," gushed another. Expected out in June, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness will be the literary spectacle of the year.

If no novelist will want to be competing with Roy for column inches in June, there is much to look forward to in the first half of the new year. Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid, best known for The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits familiar territory with Exit West-a love story set in a country on the cusp of civil war. An advance notice has described the novel, due out in March, as "one of the most bittersweet love stories in modern memory". Presumably modern memories are not as short as modern attention spans.

Balli Kaur Jaswal's Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, also out in March, sparked a bidding war among British publishers. Deborah Moggach, who wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, has provided a blurb. But there is reason to hope that the novel will not just be nostalgic, sentimental kitsch for British audiences, as Jaswal won prizes in Australia for her debut Inheritance, set among the Sikh diaspora in Singapore.

Hari Kunzru, a British novelist with Kashmiri Pandit antecedents, won several awards for his 2003 debut, The Impressionist. He has since moved to New York and written three more novels and hundreds of pages of incisive journalism. His fifth novel, White Tears, spills America's dirty secrets via early blues music. In 2012, Kunzru joined a small group of writers who responded to Salman Rushdie being prevented from attending the Jaipur Literature Festival by reading from The Satanic Verses, still banned in India. Jeet Thayil was among their number. A poet whose debut novel, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the Booker that year, Thayil's second novel, The Book of Chocolate Saints, is expected in the summer.

Another poet publishing her second novel in 2017 is Meena Kandasamy, whose When I Hit You, or A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, is slated for May. The book portrays a young woman bullied out of life as an academic and writer by her abusive husband, a university professor for whom a marriage contract is akin to indentured labour. Other notable novels include Shanthi Sekaran's Lucky Boy, her second, expected in January. A teacher of creative writing, based in Berkeley, Sekaran is not particularly well known in India but she asks an interesting question of economically successful Indian immigrants to the US-who have long been portrayed as the 'model minority'. How does your good fortune reflect in your attitude towards other immigrants? A debut novel by another Indian American writer, Rahul Mehta, out in February, tells the story of a young boy coming to terms with being gay. Set in India and rural New York in the 1980s and 1990s, No Other World has already been called a work of "astonishing emotional subtlety". It shows that while some jaded readers complain about diaspora fatigue, there are parts of the immigrant experience that remain underexplored. Incidentally, Sahitya Akademi award-winner Jerry Pinto's new novel, Murder in Mahim, out on January 12, is a murder mystery set among gay men in Mumbai.

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NON-FICTION

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This year is not just the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Indira Gandhi was born in 1917, too. Making the most of the anniversary, Juggernaut has announced a new biography to be written by the journalist and novelist Sagarika Ghose. Titled Indira Gandhi: Her Life and Afterlife, the book is expected around June and will be Ghose's first work of non-fiction. Jairam Ramesh, former minister for rural development, is reportedly working on an "environmental biography" of the 'Iron Lady', drawing on unpublished letters to shed light on a little examined part of her legacy.

2016 was a difficult year for people who style themselves as politically liberal, or even moderate centrists. What are the origins of the popular anger that, analysts argue, has manifested in growing nationalism, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump? The man with the answers is Pankaj Mishra, described by his publishers as "one of our most important public intellectuals". His contention in his new book, Age of Anger, out in February, is that it is "impossible to understand the current upsurge of anti-western sentiment in China, Russia and India without acknowledging the role played by humiliation".

Early in 2017, there are a number of important state elections in India, not least in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Milan Vaishnav, an academic and senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is the author of When Crime Pays, a comprehensive study of the nexus between politicians and criminals in India. In stores by March, the book promises to explain how Indian democracy became so infected by wrongdoers, and why the criminal backgrounds of candidates appear to matter so little to both political parties and voters. Political Corruption in India is the prosaic title of a book by N. Ram, publisher of The Hindu newspaper, expected to be out in the summer. Ram draws on Hegel to muse on the "great and general corruption" that infects India to its very core. Aleph, Ram's publishers, promise that the book will end with a "forecast on whether India will be able to root out corruption from its polity in the conceivable future". Our guess: The answer is no. Jaya Jaitly's memoir, out next winter, is called Life Among the Scorpions. Given how vigorously she continues to defend herself from charges of accepting a bribe as leader of the Samata Party, the scorpions of the title could well be journalists.

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Kuldip Nayar's new book Close Encounters: People I Have Known from Jinnah to Modi (slated for summer) focuses, like most Indian non-fiction, on the elite. But two other anticipated books by journalists Yashica Dutt and Tripti Lahiri focus on Indians of less power and renown. Dutt, in the wake of Rohith Vemula's suicide, wrote a widely shared post about using her education and a skin tone that was "dusky but still not dirty" to hide being a Dalit. She has now expanded that post into a book, Coming Out as Dalit, about "living a lie" that will be published in the autumn. Nothing "can change the fact that we were born as Dalits", Dutt writes. "Any effort towards erasing that necessary detail will only confine us in inferiority. Ultimately it is about discovering pride in our history."

Out this spring, Lahiri's Maid in India aims to demystify the complex relationships between domestic help and their employers-who live side by side if not under the same roof. Training a reporter's gimlet eye on the upper-class homes of Delhi and Gurgaon, Lahiri tells the stories of maids working to secure a white-collar future for their children, and the abusive, benign and sometimes generous people who employ them. Far from urban centres, people scratch out a meagre living in border towns, peripheral in every way to mainstream India. Journalist Pradeep Damodaran travels to these places to interview local people who cling to their Indian identities despite their isolation. Borderlands is an inquiry into how the 'idea of India' can take root in areas where alienation should by rights be the more common experience.

THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS

On the back of the success of his debut novel, The Sympathiser, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction among a host of other prizes, Viet Thanh Nguyen will publish a collection of short stories in February. Born in Vietnam in 1971, Nguyen came to the US with his family when they fled their homeland after the North Vietnamese took Saigon in 1975. Drawing on that experience, the stories in The Refugees move back and forth from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City, telling the stories of people displaced by the war and making their lives anew. Several big-name American novelists have new books out in the early months of the year, including Paul Auster, who turns 70 this year. A once iconoclastic writer turned grand old man of literature, Auster hasn't published a novel in seven years. But 4321, due at the end of January, is already being described as a "tour de force". George Saunders, a writer's writer known for his brilliant short stories, has finally written a novel. Coming in February, Lincoln in the Bardo is an unconventional historical novel about the death of Abraham Lincoln's 11-year-old son. A number of writers have turned to Greek tragedy as inspirations for new novels, including Kamila Shamsie, whose Home Fire, out in August, retells Antigone as a story of two British Muslim families in contemporary London. Hitting the shelves later this month, award-winning journalist Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark unveil "the extraordinary inside story of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the years after 9/11" in The Exile-which draws on first-person testimony from bin Laden's family and closest aides to unpack mysteries from Abbottabad to the rise of the Islamic State. A number of books mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution, but one of the most intriguing is October by China Miville-a writer much admired for his science fiction. Miville's book is out in May. And though the new year has only just started, appetites are already being whetted for Hit Refresh, the autobiography Satya Nadella, the Indian-born CEO of Microsoft, out in November.

-Compiled by Shougat Dasgupta and Jason Overdorf

--- ENDS ---
In the wake of demonetisation of high-value currency notes, the Opposition has accused the Union Government and the ruling party at the Centre of destroying the countrys economy. In the forefront of the crusade is the Trinamul Congress followed by the Congress, BSP, SP, NCP, CPI-M, CPI and sundry other sign-board parties. In their agitation against the move, they have levelled several motives, some of them weird and sometimes, ridiculous. The most vociferous of these criticisms have been articulated by Trinamul supporters, led by Mamata Banerjee. The latest salvo relates to the alleged granting of an escape route to the parties in the context of the exemption provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961. In the frenzy, the point that has been missed is that such provisions apply equally to her own party. It is alleged that the provision has been introduced with an ulterior agenda, though, the same remains unspecified till date. It would be fit and proper to examine the legal provision in some detail to remove the mental cobwebs distorting the thought process of the common man.

Exemption to political parties from the rigours of paying Income Tax has been provided in Section 13A of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Such a provision on exclusion is not new. It has not been enacted with a view to enabling such parties or their members to convert their non-tax paid income, hoarded in currency notes of Rs 500/1000, in the aftermath of demonetisation. The provision has in fact been on the statute book since 1 April 1979 as part of the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Act, 1979. It would be incorrect to state that it has been enacted to help unscrupulous people or political parties to convert their non-tax paid income into legitimate money through this exemption route. Further, as initially enacted, it did not exempt income from capital gains earned by the parties. The exemption was extended to capital gains on sale of capital assets by the parties with retrospective effect from 1 April 1979 by the Finance Act 2003 once again by a coalition government, this time led by the National Democratic Alliance.

Trinamul Congress has taken advantage of this politically beneficial piece of legislation almost ritually, every financial year. The latest example is for the 2015-16 fiscal when the party got exemption for Rs 65,00,002 received as contributions from 12 persons, in excess of Rs 20,000 (earlier, the limit was Rs 10,000 till 11 September 2003). In every case, the largest contributor was its MP, Subhendu Adhikari who paid Rs 1500000 by cheque. (Source: Election Commission website). These exemptions were availed of by the party when the currency notes were legal tender. So it is inappropriate to state that the exemption provisions in Section 13A are discriminatory or are designed to serve the illegitimate interests of people who have been encouraged by the political parties in power to avoid payment of taxes by wrongful conversion of the currency notes.

It is another matter that other parties, which have filed their latest annual returns to the EC, show relatively larger amounts received as contribution and have been exempted from the levy of Income Tax. Such exempted amounts run into hundreds of crores. It is also interesting to note that the Election Commission in its latest reform proposals has suggested that the limit be scaled down to Rs 2000 only.

Even though the recognised and registered political parties u/s 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 enjoy a tax holiday on such receipts, they are not immune from the probing eyes of the Income Tax department. Moreover, the tax authorities can always call the payers to disclose the source from which the contributions emanated or their own financial capability to make such contributions. Take, for example, the contribution of an entity named Satya Trust which donated about Rs 47 crore to the two main parties in FY 2015-16. It may legitimately be called upon to prove the sources of its own receipts. Such exemptions are not allowed across the board. There are conditions attached to claim the same. That the Income Tax Department has not undertaken any such endeavour is another matter. In fact, most of the parties have not been following the law in making the required disclosures.

Another provision permits a political party to receive unlimited donations below Rs 20,000 from anybody without disclosing the donors personal data, such as PAN , name and address etc. For example, the Bahujan Samaj Party denied having received any donation exceeding Rs 20,000 from a single entity and yet, received crores of rupees as donation. These receiving parties deliberately split the donations to a level below Rs 20,000 to get away under this loophole. Further, even though donations above Rs 20,000 require the parties to disclose the identification details of the contributors, PAN, addresses and the cheque details, most parties ignore the prescription. Significantly, the Election Commission raises no objection and the parties go scot-free.

There is another loophole. There are more than 1800 registered political parties. The Election Commission has recognised less than 50 parties as national /state parties. There is thus a distinction between registered parties and the recognised ones. This is a meaningless and potentially subversive distinction. The Election Commission should be tasked only to give recognition to the parties based on well-defined and transparent criteria. There is absolutely no need to register a political party to open an opaque avenue for a group of people or even one person, as has been found of late by the Commission, to abuse the exemption provision of the Income Tax Act. It is encouraging to note that the Commission has woken up after several decades to the danger of this invidious distinction in the context of demonetisation. The latest missive sent by the Commission to the Central Board of Direct Taxes to delist 255 such paper entities is most welcome. But it is imperative to abolish the distinction between the registered and recognised parties and make only the second category entitled to the exemption benefit. It is open to question though whether such abolition will curb the menace of money-laundering by the political class.

The country awaits the order of the Supreme Court at its next hearing on 11 January in a PIL petition. One would strongly commend the proposal of the Commission to remove the privilege to allow the receipt of anonymous donations of less than Rs 20,000 and restrict the amount to Rs 2000 only.

It would be pertinent to examine the propriety and economic consequences of the proposal to make elections state-funded. While very few countries in the world have such provisions, its adoption in India would be fraught with serious consequences. It would be virtually impossible to devise a fool-proof, enforceable and transparent systemic framework to make the proposal workable. The chances of unscrupulous political groups taking the state for a ride would be considerable. For instance, what would be the numerical standards on the basis of which such funding would be allowed. For instance, the Trinamul Congress or Bahujan Samaj Party or Nationalist Congress Party do not have any presence in most of the states. How would the share of the total kitty be determined and disbursed? Given the bogey of tax exemption, it could open another floodgate of corruption and money-laundering.
France is not secretly planning a UN Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after a major conference in Paris this month, the president of the French Senate said on Thursday.

Gerard Larcher said he was not aware of any country working on a resolution to put before the Council between the January 15 meeting and the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president on January 20.

Speaking to the press in Jerusalem at the end of a four-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Larcher said that many Israeli interlocutors had expressed fear France would try to translate the outcome of the conference into a UN resolution.

The French-organised talks, to be attended by around 70 countries  but not by Israeli or Palestinian representatives  are being held to reiterate international support for a two-state solution to the conflict.

"There is no secret proposal for a resolution prepared by France at the UN after the Paris conference to date," Larcher said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently spoken out against the French initiative since its announcement early last year, insisting that anything but direct talks between the sides will make peace more distant.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu told Israeli diplomats that the French conference would be "futile," warning however that "there are signs that there will be attempts to use decisions that are taken to vote on a new UN resolution against Israel."

The Palestinians support the French initiative.

On December 23, the UN Security Council for the first time since 1979 condemned Israeli settlement of occupied Palestinian territory. The United States did not use its veto and abstained in the vote.

Netanyahu rejected the resolution at the time as a "shameful blow against Israel" and claimed that outgoing US President Barack Obama was behind it.
Russia on Friday began planned reduction of its military presence in Syria, led by aircraft carrier group "Admiral Kuznetsov", the chief of the Russian armed forces said.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, (President) Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Army General Valery Gerasimov as saying.

Gerasimov said Russia's naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, which has been operating in the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, would be the first to leave.

The Russian President last month ordered a partial pullout of military forces from Syria after negotiating a ceasefire deal with Iran and Turkey. He said it offered an opportunity to end the six-year armed conflict in the Middle Eastern nation.

As the Russian military pulls out of Syria, Damascus reiterated its gratitude for Russia's help in the conflict.

"The support that the Russian Air Force offered was crucial for our victories, which paved the way for a ceasefire and created the conditions for launching a political settlement of the Syrian crisis," the chair of the general staff of the Syrian armed forces, Lt. General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, said, as reported by Russian news agencies.
The US has forged a "strategic partnership" with India in the eight years of Obama administration which also considerably improved America's standing in the world, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, two weeks ahead of demitting the office.

"In Asia, we have been standing side by side with our friends, strengthening sanctions on North Korea, improving regional missile defence capabilities, supporting the rule of law in the South China Sea and forging a strategic partnership with India, enhancing our ties with Vietnam and spurring democratic progress in Myanmar where a freely elected parliament has been seated for the first time," Kerry said.

In what was described as Kerry's last press conference in his capacity as Secretary of State, the top American diplomat, while addressing reporters at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, said because of the policies undertaken by the Obama administration in the last eight years, the US' standing in the world has improved from what it was in 2009.

"We will turn over to our successors a country whose international standing is much improved from 2009 when President (Barack) Obama took office eight years ago. No one should forget the incredible fertility of the global economic crisis as a consequence of the late 2008 early 2009 economic disaster that we faced on a global basis," he said.

Economically, the country has moved from the depths of crisis to robust levels of exports, the longest sustained period of private sector job growth in US history, Kerry said.

"Our overseas alliances in Europe and Asia are vigorous and strong. We have strengthened what we do in Asia, strengthened the relationship between Korea and Japan, strengthened our relationship trilaterally with Korea and Japan, worked effectively with China to try to define a new model of how important powers need to work in the world.

"We have strengthened our alliance with NATO, strengthened our alliance with the frontline states. Our level of security support to a democratic Israel is unprecedented.

Across the globe, we have helped ensure that a child entering the world today is more likely to be born healthy, more likely to receive the necessary vaccinations, more likely to be educated, more likely to live a long life than any previous generation and that is just as true for women and girls as it is for men and boys," Kerry said.
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The chairman of a board that oversees the privately run federal prison in Central Falls where an inmate escaped New Year's Eve says he's happy


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25 Safdarjung Road, the official residence of the vice-chief of army staff, thrums with activity early on a foggy January morning, just days after General Bipin Rawat assumed office on New Year's Day as India's 27th chief of the army staff. (His official 4 Rajaji Marg residence is under renovation.) His twin Dachshunds, Dash and Tickle, shoot around like little guided torpedoes clad in identical red-and- black-trimmed winter fleece. Staff officers and Tavor rifle-wielding bodyguards of the special forces flank the fleet of black armoured Scorpios waiting to make the short two km drive to his office deep within the sandstone corridors of South Block. The general appears in the verandah of his home, proffers a firm handshake. He's of medium height, stockily built, with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed white moustache. He listens carefully, looks you in the eye when he speaks, and the clearly articulated sentences are delivered like a military drum roll. He clearly plays on the front foot. There is simply no question that will induce any hesitation on his part, from tackling China and Pakistan, surgical strikes, the controversial Cold Start war doctrine to the polemic around his selection as army chief, superseding two senior army commanders. As he sat down for an extensive interview with Executive Editor Sandeep Unnithan, General Rawat revealed why he was supremely confident of navigating the minefield that lies ahead in his three-year tenure. Excerpts:

What do you see as your main security challenges and how do you plan to handle developments like the reorganisation of China's armed forces?

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The primary role of the armed forces is the defence of the borders, preparation for conventional warfare, maintaining internal security and focusing on disaster relief. We are studying the restructuring of the PLA to see its efficacy. We will study their reforms and see whether they have relevance in our context. If so, we will put them across with modifications to the government.

The army's China-specific Mountain Strike Corps has been languishing for want of funds. Is this relevant in our context?

We raised the Mountain Strike Corps (MSC) as part of a transition from dissuasion and deterrence to credible deterrence. All adversaries respect credible strength, which comes from such formations capable of striking across the border. We are expected to remain defensive in order to ensure there are no incursions and the sanctity of the borders is maintained. But you cannot always remain defensive. We must also have the capability to conduct offensive operations. Whether these forces are going to be used physically will depend on the situation, but surely these forces meet the purpose of credible deterrence. So, we'll certainly give impetus to raising the corps. The government has given us permission to induct manpower, infrastructure development along the border is taking place, weapons and equipment are coming in.

Did the army's September 29, 2016 surgical strikes define our new red lines in a strong response to a high-casualty attack by terrorists?

All nations and armies define their own thresholds. The December 13, 2001 Parliament attack was a threshold. In a terrorist attack, it is the nature of the attack and the success the terrorists are able to achieve-sometimes what happens is that the terrorists get success because of incidental damage caused. Uri, for example, was an incidental success because there were troops in tents, troops who were grouped together. In Nagrota, they did not get so much success, they did not get so many people, we were able to eliminate them before they could do damage. So the threshold level will vary and [determine] the kind of reaction, because our nation is not a warmongering nation. We want peace and tranquility, and if we find that something can be resolved through negotiations, an attempt is always made to resolve it through negotiations but if we find these incidents getting repeated, we define a threshold, a decision is taken, recommendations are made, and we will go across again. It is very difficult to say if there are red lines (in response to terrorist attacks). What I can say is that there are dotted lines, and those dots are then joined together by us to draw a red line.

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Is the Cold Start doctrine-instituted after Operation Parakram in 2001-still an option in response to attacks like the one on Parliament in 2001 or 26/11 in Mumbai?

The Cold Start doctrine exists for conventional military operations. Whether we have to conduct conventional operations for such strikes is a decision well-thought through, involving the government and the Cabinet Committee on Security.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, in the combined commanders' conference in 2015, said that future conflicts will become shorter, and wars will become rare. Do you have any strategy for short, intense wars?

In our case, we prepare for short, intense conflicts, and at the same time have to be prepared for wars becoming long-drawn. Based on that, we have a well-defined strategy. What the PM said is right; wars will be intense and short because there'll always be international pressure in wars between two nations. We have to be aware of that; whatever action we take, therefore, has to be quick; forces have to be ready and have to achieve success.

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The modernisation of the Indian Army has been an area of major concern for you and your predecessors. Have you identified any key areas for delivery during your tenure?

Technology is constantly changing. You cannot be using older technologies for your weapons systems and equipment. My thinking is that you have to look at emerging technology because of the time it takes for a weapons system to be inducted into the armed forces. So you have to look at tomorrow's technology for inducting weapons. With that in mind, we have also focused on certain weapons systems. Infantry is the most affected-deployed along the border round the clock, in internal security situations, and in the face of frequent ceasefire violations on the border-we need to give them modern weapons technology best suited to such an environment. The mechanised forces need future battle tanks and Infantry Combat Vehicles, new aviation assets, air defence systems, artillery and other longer ranged weapon systems that have more lethality and accuracy. We are also looking at upgrading operational logistics systems. The modernisation priorities have been spelt out by my predecessor [Gen. Dalbir Singh] and we are continuing with the same vision and thrust areas because I feel they have been thought through and holistically define the army's requirements.

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Do you see an emerging threat in the new China-Pakistan proximity and how do you propose to respond to it?

National security strategy by any nation is defined by its national interests. China has defined its national interests by coming close to Pakistan in looking for access to the Indian Ocean Region, for energy security, trade. Today, economics defines national strategy and wherever people find economic gain, there are cooperative mechanisms and alliances. We also have to look at our national interests and continue doing whatever is best in our national interests. We will also counter such mechanisms through our own means; our government is quite capable of handling [these]. We are also carrying out actions to negate the nexus developing between China and Pakistan.

Would you elaborate on these measures?

We are addressing the neighbourhood, the extended neighborhood and the Far West. We are looking at certain countries on China's eastern seaboard, and the Americas. There are groupings that are taking place. While we are proud of being non-aligned, there are times when you have to get into some groupings, which is of course in the domain of foreign policy, so I wouldn't like to really comment. We have masters in foreign policy and they do it really well. Our diplomacy is moving well, the prime minister's focus is on the global arena, we will be able to counter whatever is happening through our foreign policy.

What are your expectations from a closer military partnership with the United States?

Our expectations are that we must live like friends - the economic partnership will grow stronger and everything else will fall into place. We are sharing expertise but that is more in the field of humanitarian assistance and disaster response. We do try out some joint training as far as counter-insurgency [is concerned]. The US does consider us a lead nation in Counter Insurgency Ops; they have specialisation in special forces operations which we look at. As for equipment, we have a system of global tendering, and I feel we should go for whoever gives us the best. Finally, we should support our domestic industry. What it will depend on is who is willing to come here, share technology and help our domestic industry grow and help us in becoming self-reliant, so we needn't be country-fixated.

We have been hearing a lot about the rivalry between the infantry and the armoured corps. Would you set the record straight on this?

Is somebody out to create such a rivalry? This is like prejudging a case without even hearing the witnesses? the judgement should come out only after seeing the results. I have commanded mechanised forces in the southern command and I can say that they are as professional as any other fighting arm in this field. Possibly because of infantry seeing more action in counter-insurgency, there is more limelight on field commanders who are constantly under observation. But by virtue of constantly being under observation you are also constantly under pressure. There are bouquets and brickbats.

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GOUVEIA: Democracy goes up in smoke

Legislators arrogance was in full view during the secret vote on delaying the pot law
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 ...
The next hearing for the case is on February 13 before which Hazare will have to register the case.

By Vidya : Social activist Anna Hazare was today instructed by Bombay High Court to first register case in the alleged sugar industry scam. The division headed by Justice Abhay Oka was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the anti-crusader. The next hearing for the case is on February 13 before which Hazare will have to register the case.

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Justice Oka said, "Without complaint how can court pass the order for CBI probe in this matter?" Hazare had filed a PIL seeking direction from Bombay High Court to order investigation into the illegalities committed while selling and privatising 47 cooperative sugar factories either by the Maharashtra government or the Maharashtra State Cooperative Banks (MSCB).

WHAT THE PETITION SAID Hazare had claimed in his petition that the scam involving the sugar factories had taken back the state by 50 years as it had caused a loss of Rs 10,000 crores to the state exchequer. There were four committees set up by state government to look into why these industries were going sick had recommended greater accountability and transparency but it was never implemented. It has copies of Comptroller and Auditor General's reports of 2007 along with performance reports of sugar factories in Maharashtra apart from audit reports of MSCB by charted accountants. All the strings were pulled by the political heavyweight Sharad Pawar who was then the Agriculture minister at the Centre. It also adds that most of the sugar factories have been sold to the politicians who are associates of Sharad Pawar. The petition claims to outline all the circumstances connecting these persons and their aides and associates to the illegal sale of the 47 cooperative sugar factories and asks for transparent and fair investigation of the matter. There are 24 respondents including Sharad Pawar, his nephew Ajit Pawar, Ministry of Agriculture, Maharashtra government among others.

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By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Boy beauty blogger, Manny Mua has become the first male ambassador of Maybelline and here's why it's a big deal.

By India Today Web Desk: Manny Gutierrez identifies as a man and has no qualms in being a makeup fanatic. Oh also, his YouTube channel replete with incredible makeup tutorials boasts of over 2 million subscribers. And now, he's become beauty giant, Maybelline's, first male ambassador.

Gutierrez who's fondly referred to as Manny Mua in the social media universe, believes beauty transcends genders and belongs to the wave of 'Boy Beauty B/Vloggers' who are garnering attention.

Manny Mua's YouTube channel has over 2 million followers. Picture courtesy: Instagram/ Manny Mua

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Maybelline's appointment of Gutierrez as its ambassador comes just weeks after CoverGirl magazine put internet sensation, James Charles, on its cover. Charles will reportedly also be the face of BlastPro Mascara's soon-to-be launched So Lashy! range.

Also Read: After a male face, CoverGirl names a hijab-clad blogger as its newest ambassador

Gutierrez's expressed his excitement via an Instagram post captioned,"2017 you are off to an AMAZING START OMG! So excited to finally announce that I am part of the @maybelline #bigshotmascara campaign! Honestly I couldn't be more honored thrilled! Thank you to Maybelline for taking a chance on me! I look forward to working together so much more."

Also Read: Meet National Geographic's first-ever transgender cover star, Avery Jackson

The inclusion of a male beauty vlogger by a makeup giant sure seems like a stepping stone in the direction of beauty not being confined within the shackles of a particular gender. Way to go Gutierrez!

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"I knew zilch, he said during the launch of his biography Unlikely Hero: The Story of Om Puri, written by his wife Nandita C. Puri, in Delhi, in 2011. He was referring to his lack of knowledge in English, and why, with little knowledge and limited vocabulary, he could not have written an autobiography. In these few years as a journalist, I have not come across a person, especially of his repute, being so forthcoming and accepting ones shortcomings the way he did.



But that's how he was mostlystraightforward. At many chat shows in the last few years, the actor accepted how he used to be conscious of his English all the time while studying at the National School of Drama. Yet, in a career spanning almost half a century with more than 100 films, Puri has been a part of some of the most critically acclaimed films, including Ardh Satya, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Drohkaal, Gandhi and Sparsh among others.



Sai Paranjpye's Sparsh (1980) was one of the first films in which I noticed him. If I remember correctly, I had watched Sparsh on a VCR in the 90s as a school-going girl. Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi played the lead roles in the movie, while Puri played a small roleof a blind man. Even then, he was so convincing that he left an indelible mark. Later, when I watched films like Chachi 420 (2006) or more recently Malamaal Weekly (2006), I wondered how an actor could be so credible in both intense as well as frivolous, comic roles. He knew a little more than many others in the industry who are often typecast. He was critics' favourite, and often took unusual roles. Films like Aakrosh (1980), Arohan (1982) and Drohkaal (1994) are a testament.



Born in Haryana to a Punjabi family in 1950, Puri went to the National School of Drama, in New Delhi, and later joined the Film and Television Institute of India, in Pune. He was one of the few actors to have actively worked in British and Hollywood films, including My Son the Fanatic (1997), East Is East (1999), City of Joy (1992), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), and the more-recent The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014) with Hillen Mirren. The actor was honoured with the Padma Shri Award and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the Empire (OBE) status.



Puri was in news off late for not-so-good reasons, but that can't take away his contribution to the Indian cinema over the years. 2011 wasn't a remarkable year for the Puri. Just after the launch of his biography, he openly revealed his displeasure with his wife for mentioning stories of his sexual escapades in the biography. What followed was an ugly fight between the couple, the details of which were on public domain. In the same year, when he addressed a crowd at the Ramlila Maidan, in Delhi, during Anna Hazare's famous protest, many thought he was drunk.



A friend, who handled his PR mandate during the time, recalls how the actor was little scared for being in the news for wrong reasons, and how he wanted his work to always do the talking. In interviews at that time, the actor had clarified, In my 35 years in this profession, I've never felt so humiliated except when my wife [Nandita] wrote that book about me. I don't deny that I enjoy my drinks. But not in the afternoon. And that, too, when I'm at a venue where history is being created.



Earlier this year, the actor was slammed for being insensitive towards the Uri soldiers who lost their lives for the country. A police complaint, too, was filed. But Puri accepted his mistake soon and was willing to be punished. He went to the extent of considering a retirement from films. It is sad that within a few months we lost himan actor par excellence, a person who fought adversity to live his dream, and someone who will always be remembered for films that evoked emotions.
Six years. Thats how long it took actor Jennifer Lawrence to travel the distance between complete obscurity to top-notch Hollywood stardom. The 26-year-old, who got her first Oscar Best Actress nomination at the age of 20, has achieved much more than even the most famous women of Hollywood had at her age. She seems to have it allan Oscar, great roles written for her and an extraordinary lineup of films with directors like Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky and Adam McKay.

At first glance, she might look like just another blonde girl. But, right from her first acting gig, which was at age 9 in a church play in her hometown Kentucky, Lawrence stayed away from the usual blonde girl stereotypes. Because, her first outing was as a prostitute! This pretty much explains the choices that Lawrence made after an agent discovered her and brought her to Los Angeles at 14. She skipped the whole teen-movie-to-rom-com progression and jumped right away to meatier roles in drama films like The Poker House and The Burning Plain, in which she played deeply troubled teens. It was her role as a poverty-stricken teenager who is forced to save her siblings in the indie drama Winters Bone that landed her the Oscar nod and some much-awaited mainstream attention.

Lawrence then appeared in her role as Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games franchise and is also a part of another hugely successful franchise X-Men, in which she plays the shapeshifting mutant Mystique. The actor, who is the youngest person to be nominated for the most number of Oscars ever, won her first Academy Award playing a depressed widow in David O. Russells Silver Linings Playbook just four years ago. And, whats more, with her latest film Passengers, which is all set to hit Indian screens today, Lawrence became the highest paid actress in the world having negotiated for a paycheck of $20 million, a whole $8 million more than her co-star, Chris Pratt.

Playing Aurora Lane, an ambitious journalist, in director Morten Tyldums sci-fi drama, Lawrence says, in an exclusive email interview to THE WEEK, that the intriguing and huge decision her character makes to leave planet Earth to make a 120-year journey to start a life on a brand new planet was what attracted her to the film. Why would anyone want to take such a journey that when you arrive back, everyone you know is going to be dead? Thats what interested me, she says. The film tells the story of two passengers aboard a spaceship on this journey who wake up 90 years too early due to a malfunction in the ship. How they work together to save the rest of the passengers onboard from the imminent collapse of the ship is what constitutes the rest of the film.

The makers and her co-star Chris Pratt agree that when she came on board the project, the scale took a massive shift. It became a Jennifer Lawrence film, which in this day and age means a lot in terms of its economics. For Lawrence, this film was not in her plan. I wanted to do a few more years of independent films, she says. I had done a few big films and I thought it was time to go back to where I started. But the script, written by Prometheus fame Jon Spaihts, convinced her otherwise.

Aurora, says Lawrence, is a very complex character. It was hard for me to reason out with her at first, she says. Then I slowly started getting where she was coming from. She is very smart, driven and curious. Her purpose is at once both ambitious, yet selfless. That is an interesting mix. She wants to be the first person who takes this journey and writes about it. And, she also has this whole other aspect of her wanting to break away from the shadow of her famous author father, come into her own and have her own name.

Much like her character, Lawrence, too, is fiercely ambitious in real life. But despite her quick rise to stardom, she has remained quite grounded and down-to-earth, says her friends and co-workers. Pratt says that with Lawrence what you see is what you get. She is a real fighter and I love her for that, he says. As a co-star and person, she is refreshingly direct. It was so easy for me to work with her because if she is happy or if she is angry, she just lets you know. Theres no pretense or artificiality. Defying the common notion that actresses can never be friends, Lawrence also shares good relations with her contemporaries like Emma Stone and Amy Schumer, both of whom have opened up in recent interviews about her quirky and twisted sense of humour.

Workwise, her plate is full as of now. Lawrence has bagged a slew of interesting projects, one of them with the master filmmaker Spielberg, in which she plays war photographer Lynsey Addario. The film, titled Its What I Do, is also produced by Lawrence. Apart from that she gets back with her Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence in Red Sparrow, in which she plays a Russian ballerina-turned-spy. She also plays Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the controversial Silicon Valley company Theranos in Bad Blood, directed by McKay and appears in Aronofskys horror film, Mother, alongside Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer.

In a way, says Lawrence, she understands why Aurora takes the decision to leave Earth and everyone she knows and loves behind. Whenever I go to film a movie, I kind of leave everything behindfamily, friends, everythingand give my full energy to it, she says. But would she ever want to leave for a new life on another planet? No. I cant imagine saying goodbye to my family and friends forever. I dont think I would be able to do that. But then again, it would depend on how bad things on Earth are! she says, in her characteristic wit.
Hinting at a jump in budget spending on infrastructure, BJP chief Amit Shah said that earlier governments used to allocate Rs 4-5 lakh crore to this sector due to poor collection of taxes. Now, after the demonetisation, government's tax collections are expected to rise manifold, which in turn will be utilised for benefit of the poor.

Shah, who addressed BJP's two-day national executive meeting in Delhi, termed demonetisation and army's surgical strike as the two historic decisions of the Modi government. The saffron party is expected to go all out in listing the benefits of these events in the coming elections to five states, which Shah said his party will win.

BJP felicitated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for these two 'successes' as party's highest decision making body - parliamentary board  congratulated him on stage, while the other leaders gave a standing ovation.

After lauding the first ever surgical strike across the enemy lines which raised country's profile across the world, Shah spent considerable time explaining the demonetisation decision to the assembled party men. He said that the government had taken two and half years in preparation as it first opened jan dhan accounts, increased mobile phone penetration and other means so that people could easily shift to the less cash economy when the strike on blackmoney was carried.

The issue had caused concerns among the party leaders that the inconvenience caused to the people could adversely impact BJP's fortunes. However, Shah was emphatic that it was well-received by people despite 50 days of hardships. He quoted results of recent municipal elections in various states and some of the surveys which gave an indication that people were supportive of the decision.

HRD Minister and senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar addressing a press conference quoting Shah said, BJP chief said the party's relationship with the people changed after the demonetisation....Our government took the step not for temporary popularity but long term view of the society.

The poor have now turned towards Modi and BJP, Javadekar said quoting Shah's speech.

Shah said earlier said 4.10 lakh to 4.70 lakh crore rupees were spent on new developmental projects out of country's budget of 19 lakh crore. This was a low figure. But after the strike on blackmoney, shift towards less cash. The tax collections will rise, which will be used for the benefit of the poor, Javadekar said.

Modi government is preparing to come out with a budget on Februray 1, which is expected to give relief to the poor, farmers and the middle class as a reward for going through the demonetisation exercise.

BJP's two strategic session is aimed at revving up the organisational structure, now particularly in view of the elections in five states. The party would pass political and economic resolutions hailing Modi government's contribution. Modi is expected to address the gathering on Saturday.

The BJP is now expected to push for simultaneous elections to state assemblies and Lok Sabha as Shah set up a panel to look into the issue.
India may have lost the battle to China on Masood Azhar, but it is determined to win the war. Refusing to give up, India has dug its toes in on getting Masood Azhar listed as a terrorist in the United Nations security council. India is reaching out to other members to side-step Chinas blocking the motion.

We are examining all options and consulting with other co-sponsors, said sources in the ministry of external affairs. China, however, has maintained that the technical hold-out is to give the committee and relevant parties time to consult with each other on the relevant issue, spokesperson for Chinese foreign ministry Geng Shuang was quoted as saying.

India, for its part, has its task cut out. While no time-frame has been set to revive the resolution, India is determined not to let the issue die out. Reaching out to Russia, UK, France and US, it is attempting to build further pressure on China. Already, China is the lone hold-out with 14 out of the 15 members choosing to brand Azhar as a terrorist. India will also be working with other members of the security councilItaly, Bolvia, Egypt, Japan, Kazakhstan among others. India is also hoping to convince China to drop its opposition against the move. The relationship between the two countries may have become a little more fractious over the past few monthseven more so now with the two sparring over Dalai Lamabut India is still hoping to bring China around to its point of view.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on Friday, extended an olive branch to BJP and asked it to remove the prime minister.

Mamata, apparently confirming that he is not against BJP but Modi, said, I have no problem if BJP leads another government. But it has to change the prime minister.

I will ask president of India to take action to save the country. I have no issues if L.K. Advani or Arun Jaitley or Rajnath Singh becomes prime minister. I am not against these people, Mamata said on the sidelines of her administrative meeting at Town hall.

The BJP laughed at Mamata by saying the chief minister was out to divide the BJP.

But she will not succeed because BJP is not like her party. Modiji was our prime ministerial candidate before election. We won under his leadership and our government is doing excellent work under him, said Rahul Sinha, national secretary of BJP.

Another BJP leader said, Tomorrow, if we say we want to change Mamata Banerjee and make Subrata Mukherjee as chief minister  how will she react?

Mamata wanted to shift the focus from chit fund scam to demonetisation again.

She said around 1.8 lakh people of Bengal are in distress because of Modis dreadful policy.

Around 85 lakh people have lost their jobs in Bengal, she said.

The chief minister also said West Bengal has lost around Rs 5500 crore this year due to demonetisation effect.
In a grim reminder of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, India, yet again, is in possession of clinching evidence of a well hatched conspiracy by Pakistan to carry out terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country including the national capital. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a chargesheet against alleged top Lashkar terrorist Bahadur Ali, who had claimed in his confession that the recent unrest in the Kashmir valley following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani had been orchestrated by Pakistan.

After the NIA made public his confessional statement causing deep embarrassment to Islamabad months ago, it has now chargesheeted Ali alias Saifulla Mansoor, a Pakistani national hailing from Jia Bagga of Lahore in Punjab. Pakistan accused him of conspiring on behalf of the proscribed Lashkar to carry out terror strikes in the country. In its chargesheet, NIA said that the data retrieved from GPS device recovered from Ali contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli launching pad of the LeT.

The pocket diary, among many other things, recovered from Bahadur Ali contains the name of several towns in JK  Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur besides Delhi. The NIA has said that as part of the conspiracy of LeT, Ali along with his two associates, Abu Saad and Abu Darda, illegally infiltrated into Indian territory by crossing the LoC. At the time of crossing into Indian territory, on the intervening night of June 12 2016 and June 13 2016, these terrorists were equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists entered Indian territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of the LeT based in Pakistan/ POK, it says.

"After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists, Bahadur Ali (A-1), Abu Saad and Abu Darda, walked for about seven days following the Grid References with the aid of the GPS devices that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli launching pad. The infiltrating terrorists had been provided with eight Grid References, the eighth denoting their final destination," says the chargesheet.

Investigation conducted by the NIA has once again thrown light on the well-oiled terror machinery that continues to operate from Pakistani soil and terror launching pads in Pakistani territory continue to give training and recruitment to vulnerable Pakistani youth to wage war against India. "Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalizing their worldview and providing them with military skills. Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of network of their supporters and facilitators," says an NIA official.

Investigation has established that Ali was provided Grid References and map sheets depicting parts of PoK and JK. It has been affirmed by the Surveyor General of India in Dehradun that Ali had indeed plotted the Grid References correctly. "This clearly establishes that Bahadur Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject," says NIA.

The NIA chargesheet also lays bare the new techniques being employed by the Lashkar to avoid interception by Indian agencies once they start communicating with the infiltrated terrorists. When the infiltrating terrorists reached a hillock at about noon on June 20, 2016 near village Wadar in Handwara (J&K), which was the sixth of the eight Grid References, Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, Walid Bhai, by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by the LeT to avoid interception.

The NIA has evidence to prove that Bahadur Ali had established contact with Alfa-3, the LeT control station based in PoK, through his wireless set . He was also asked to contact local persons, for food and logistics support, whose identity is still being established by the probe agency. "During this period, Alfa-3 communicated to Bahadur Ali that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir. He instructed Bahadur Ali to mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley," says the NIA.

Ali was apprehended by the security forces on July 25, 2016 when he was supposed to recieve a group of terrorists to assist him in his nefarious designs. Ali also disclosed that he had hid arms and ammunition near a big tree in the forest near village Yahama. Based on his disclosure, Indian agencies recovered one AK-47 rifle, five AK-47 magazines loaded with ammunition (30 rounds each, total 150 rounds), one UBGL, five live UBGL shells, two live hand grenades (Chinese) and several items having the label Made in Pakistan.
NIA, on Friday, filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, suspected to be a member of Lashker-e-Taiba terror group, for allegedly planning to carry out subversive activities in India at the behest of the banned outfit.

The chargesheet was filed before district judge Amar Nath as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had registered a case against Ali, who was arrested on July 24 last year from North Kashmir's border village Yahama.

The chargesheet has also highlighted the gaps along the Line of Control (LoC) as Ali, along with two other terrorists, had been walking for seven days undetected before they reached to their destination. The trio had entered India between the intervening night to June 12 and 13 last year and reached their destination only around June 20.

The area is expected to be dotted by security personnel as part of counter-infiltration grid, official sources said.

According to the NIA chargesheet, investigation had established that Ali, who is a school dropout and originally a resident of Jia Bagga village of Raiwind in Lahore, Pakistan, was also provided a map depicting parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

He was provided with the grid references (GRs) that had been recovered from his possession. Ali plotted these GRs on the map sheet which was sent for examination to the Surveyor General of India at Dehradun which affirmed that the terrorist had plotted them correctly.

"This clearly establishes that Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject. A GPS device was recovered from the possession of Ali at the time of his arrest.

"The data retrieved from the GPS device contained coordinates of the Mandakuli 'launching pad' of LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in J&K, like Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur, besides Delhi.

"Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns or cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including in Delhi," the chargesheet said.

NIA also sought an opinion of General Examiner of Questioned Document (GEQD) who had said that his ability to plot GRs on the Google maps and on the topographic sheets after which the agency slapped the charge of waging war against the country on Ali, it said.

NIA has slapped charges under Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Explosives Act, the Explosives Substances Act, Arms Act, the Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act.

Ali has been been in judicial custody since August. A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18
The decision of Trinamool Congress leaders to march to the prime minister's residence, in protest against the arrest of TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, without prior notice has attracted criticism from various political parties in West Bengal.

The CPM leaders were the first to call it a deplorable incident and said the TMC MPs misused the power vested in them.

Its true that we, the MPs, are given free entry to highly secured central government offices including the PMO. This is because MPs have to visit offices to present the problems of people to various ministries when the parliament is not in session. But what they have done was complete misuse of power. Probably, after this MPs would not get such free access. They have created a bad precedence, said Mohammed Salim, a Politburo member.

West Bengal Congress too has condemned the act. Whoever may be the prime minister, he is the countrys prime minister. Its totally unacceptable to march to prime ministers residence by breaking all barriers. They forgot that they are MPs, West Bengal Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, dubbing the act a political circus.

Why dont they deal with it politically? Why dont they go to the Supreme Court against the arrest of Sudip Bandyopadhyay?

BJP delegates, who met Home Minister Rajnath Singh at his office in Delhi, said Singh told them that he would seek a report from West Bengal government regrading law and order.

The home minister said he would seek a report and asked all of us to register all violent incidents in the local police stations. If the local police station refuses, then they should inform the home department of the state, said Rahul Sinha, national secretary of BJP.
Nurul Islam, one of the top accused in the 2016 Dhaka cafe attack, was gunned down by the anti-terrorist squad of Dhaka police on Friday.

A top official said Nurul was second in command, after ISIS Bangladesh chief Tamim Chowdhury.

"He was hiding in the outskirts of Dhaka. Based on a secret tip, we raided the hideout and Nurul was killed in an encounter," said Anwar Hossain, a senior officer of Dhaka police.

Nurul took charge of new JMB (Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh), which is the nodal group of ISIS Bangladesh.

The Dhaka attack, in 2016, claimed around 21 lives, most of them foreign nationals. He was one of the prime suspects behind the expansion of terror groups in West Bengal.

The encounter took place at around 7 am on Friday morning.

The officer said that JMB was still active in Bangladesh.

"The raids will continue," said the officer.
By Press Trust of India: Dhaka, Jan 6 (PTI) One of the masterminds of Bangladeshs worst terror attack at a popular cafe here and another top militant behind the murder of a Hindu priest were killed today in a gunfight with police during a pre-dawn raid in the Muslim-majority country.

Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideens wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marjan and another extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital.

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"One is identified as Marjan and another is Saddam Hossain, an accused neo JMB member," Daily Star newspaper quoted Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, as saying.

Police say Marjan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshans Holey Artisan Bakery that killed 22 people, including an Indian girl.

Saddam was wanted for at least ten murder cases, including Japanese national Kunio Hoshi murder, Jogeshwar Dasadhikari murder and attempt to murder a Bahai community leader in Rangpur, Monirul said.

Jogeshwar was hacked to death during an attack on a temple in Bangladesh?s Panchgarh district in February last year.

"Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a raid around 3am...Sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us. In retaliation, we fired back that left the two injured," Monirul said.

Later, they were declared dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

According to an investigator, former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the Neo-JMB, a new faction of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) affiliated with Islamic State, Dhaka Tribune reported.

He also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Marjan had expertise in operating heavy arms.

Marjan had stayed in the militant den of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha for a long period where he reportedly gave motivational training to seven militants. Of the seven, five took part in the Gulshan terror attack.

On July 1, militants stormed the bakery. The attackers took diners and restaurant staff hostage and had confrontations with police, killing two police officials.

Next morning, a joint commando force stormed the bakery, killing all the attackers and rescuing the captives, ending the terror siege of nearly 11 hours. PTI NSA

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: Srinagar, Jan 6 (PTI) Militants opened fire at the residence of an opposition National Conference lawmaker in Shopian district of south Kashmir today, police said.

The house of MLC Showkat Ahmad Ganai at Chitrigam in Zainapora area of Shopian was attacked at 5:30 AM, a police official said.

"Ahmad is in Jammu for the ongoing Budget session of the State Legislature. No one has been hurt in the incident," the official said.

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He said the ultras fled from the spot after the security personnel deployed at the residence of the MLC returned fire. PTI MIJ GVS

--- ENDS ---


[COMMUNICATED CONTENT]

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.

CLICK HERE to help Tzipporah

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.

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 Tzipporah

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 Tzipporah

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.
"In the current situation, a national government should be formed with another BJP person at the helm, could be any among Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji. He (Modi) has to go", she said.

By Romita Datta: A belligerent Mamata Banerjee continued her attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, demanding that he must abandon his post and be replaced by another senior BJP leader as the head of the government.

"In the current situation, a national government should be formed with another BJP person at the helm. He (Modi) has to go," the West Bengal Chief Minister said in Kolkata.

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Mamata even had the names who could replace Modi. "To save the country, let a national government be formed: Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji can head it," she said.

Also read | Furious over MP's arrest, Mamata demands jail for PM Modi, Amit Shah for Gujarat riots

Mamata said she will urge President Pranab Mukherjee to help in the matter. "Only he can rescue the country. We feel he has a great role to play," the Trinamool Congress chief said.

TMC PROTESTING SINCE BANDYOPADHYAY'S ARREST

Mamata's Trinamool Congress has been on the streets since Tuesday after their Member of Parliament Sudip Bandyopadhyay was arrested on charge of involvement in the Rose Valley chit fund scam and sent to six-day custody.

Another Trinamool MP Tapas Paul is already in CBI's remand in the same case, triggering accusations of "political vendetta" by the party.

On Thursday, Trinamool Congress MPs staged a protest march to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) but were detained on their way. A day earlier, they had protested at Modi's official residence.

Speaking after the administrative meeting, Banerjee once again trained her guns on Narendra Modi for creating a financial and agrarian crisis in the country.

She said, around 82 lakhs of people are jobless in West Bengal and around 2 crore are in huge economic distress. According to her the crisis in agrarian sector is driving the state to a famine like situation.

Also read | Bengal BJP Chief accuses Mamata of inciting violence, demands President's rule

The Trinamool Congress has also accused BJP member and Union Minister Babul Supriyo of not only involvement in the scam, but also "tricking" him into the fraud, a charge reiterated by Paul's wife Nandini.

Mamata said that Modi might slit her throat for being vocal, but she will not stop from criticizing the Prime Minister. Her party will continue with the campaign against notebandi and she will visit a BJP ruled state soon to demonstrate against demonetisation.

Supriyo, meanwhile, said he will file defamation suits against the TMC leaders and Paul's wife.

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--- ENDS ---
An incitement campaign is ongoing via social media against the three military justices who presided over the trial of IDF Sgt. Elor Azariya. As reported, Azariya was found guilty of manslaughter for the Purim day killing of an incapacitated terrorist. the sentencing will take place in a month.

The justices are seen with mustaches like that of Adolph Hitler YSVZ along with other derogatory messages about them, especially lead justice Colonel Maya Heller.

In an unrelated incident, police report that on Wednesday evening 6 Teves, a person was arrested for running an incitement campaign against Justice Heller, threatening her and the other justices. The 53-year-old Jerusalem resident has a psychiatric history and was remanded on Thursday morning and released with restrictions. A number of others were reportedly arrested too in connection to their Facebook posts.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
[PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

A live fragmentation grenade was found in an electric box of the Haganah Museum on Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv on Thursday morning 7 Teves. The Israel Police bomb squad was summoned and it was determined the grenade is quite dated, removing it without incident after closing off the area.

According to the experts, the grenade is a remnant from the 1920s, probably used by underground fighters during the pre-state days.

Because of its age and its activation system the experts explain, the bomb demolition technicians had to use extreme caution removing it. It will be neutralized and then placed in the museum as another piece of the history of the pre-state days.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Doctors at Schneider Childrens Hospital in Petach Tikvah removed a chain containing 14 magnets from the abdomen of a 3-year-old girl from the Rishon LTzion area. The girl was referred to the hospital by a local doctor who learned she ingested the earth magnets which were attached to one another.

An abdominal x-ray revealed the magnets in her stomach. Doctors explain the need for intervention was immediate to avoid the possibility of a serious infection or worse.

The child was transferred to the Institute of Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Liver Diseases. She was anesthetized for the purpose of performing a gastroscopy in an effort to locate the magnets. The magnets were revealed below the duodenum. The doctors removed the magnets with great care via her stomach and esophagus. The child was sent home in good health after reawakening from the procedure.

Senior gastroenterologist Dr. Ari Silbermintz said that unfortunately, children swallow things and in this case, it was strong magnets, which posed a real danger to the digestive system and actually posed a life-threatening situation.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
In the ongoing battle in Arad between the Gur community and City Hall, each side accusing the other of discrimination and being unreasonable. The city has instructed the chareidim to remove signs of a religious nature, signs that include Arad children wear yarmulkes and In Arad we eat kosher. Angry residents would not hear of it, accusing City Hall of anti-Semitism, taking the case to a local court.

The hearing was held two weeks ago and Justice Ruth Avida explained the decision was not an easy one, but ordered the removal of the signs.

Attorney Tzvi Rosenthal, who represents the Gerre Chassidim in Arad, decided to take it to the High Court of Justice, with the latter issuing a temporary injunction on removal of the signs. Justice Manny Mazuz accepted the petition on behalf of Gur and instructed the city to hold off removing the signs.

So for now, at least over the coming Shabbos, Gur in Arad scores a victory in the High Court against City Hall in the ongoing battle.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Police are now reporting the double shooting in Haifa earlier this week may have been acts of terror. As reported by YWN-ISRAEL, Haifa Dayan Rabbi Yechiel Iluz was wounded by gunfire and a second man, Guy Kafri, a bus driver for children with special needs, was killed by gunfire about 30 minutes later.

Note: It was originally reported that Kafri zl was a rabbinical pleader but this was not so. Kafri, 45, was a bus driver for special needs children. According to the limited information released in the case, police have not found anything linking the victims to one-another.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Israel is to release a Palestinian U.N. employee, seven months after he was arrested for allegedly assisting Gazas Hamas rulers.

Israel arrested Waheed Borsh in July, accusing him of using his position as an engineer for UNDP, the U.N. development agency, to help the Hamas terrorist organization.

According to court documents obtained on Thursday, Israel reached a plea deal with Borsh in which he was sentenced to time served after confessing. Borshs lawyer argued he had no criminal intent to assist Hamas. He is expected to be released next week.

A statement by UNDP says the outcome confirms there was no wrongdoing by the agency.

Borshs arrest came days after Israel charged the Gaza manager of the international charity World Vision for allegedly funneling millions to the group.

(AP)
Israeli police are questioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time over corruption allegations.

Israeli media reported that police investigators arrived on Thursday evening at Netanyahus official residence to grill him on suspicions that he improperly accepted gifts from wealthy supporters. Investigators had questioned Netanyahu on Monday for more than three hours.

Israels Justice Ministry has said Netanyahu is being questioned on suspicion of receiving benefits from business people.

Israels Channel 2 TV has said that Netanyahu accepted favors from businessmen in Israel and abroad and that he is the central suspect in a second investigation that also involves family members.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing. He has portrayed the investigation as a witch hunt by a hostile media against him and his family.

(AP)
President Recep Tayyip Erdogans spokesman says Turkey has relayed to U.S. president-elect Donald Trumps team its unease over U.S. support to Syrian Kurdish militia, considered as terrorists by Turkey.

Ibrahim Kalin told Turkeys 24 channel on Thursday that he was under the impression that an administration under Trump would pay more attention to Turkeys sensitivities.

We have told them  and we continue to tell them  that a strategy against (the Islamic State group) that puts (Syrian Kurdish militia) at its center is not the correct strategy and needs to change, Kalin said.

He also repeated warnings made the previous day that Turkey could bar U.S.-led coalition planes from using its southern base of Incirlik in anti-IS operations.

We hold the right to close Incirlik, Kalin said.

(AP)
British anti-European Union politician Nigel Farage says he will attend Donald Trumps inauguration as U.S. president.

Farage, one of Trumps strongest U.K. supporters, told Sky News that he had been invited by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant. He called the Jan. 20 ceremony in Washington a great, historic event and Trumps election a political revolution.

Farage led the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party until November, and was a key player in Britains vote to leave the bloc. He sees Trump as an anti-establishment ally, and visited the president-elect soon after the Nov. 8 U.S. vote.

Despite his animosity to the EU, Farage has been a member of the European Parliament since 1999. Starting next week he will also host a daily radio phone-in show on Londons LBC, the station announced Thursday.

(AP)
President-elect Donald Trump is considering plans to restructure and slim down a top U.S. intelligence agency, a person familiar with the discussions said Thursday. The move comes after Trump questioned the intelligence communitys assessment that Russia interfered with the presidential election on his behalf.

Trump still is expected to name a Director of National Intelligence, but he is said to be looking at ways to reorganize the agency. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate other U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Trump also is said to be considering changes at the CIA.

Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer denied Thursday that Trump was considering restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure. Spicer did not specifically address possible changes to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was looking at changes to the intelligence agency. The person familiar with the plans said Trump was not intending to gut any intelligence agency, but was looking for ways to streamline operations and improve efficiency. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats is a leading candidate for the post but is also under consideration for an ambassadorship. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO who ran against Trump in the Republican primary, has also been considered for the job.

Since winning the election, Trump has publicly challenged U.S. intelligence officials conclusion that Russia meddled in the presidential race to bolster his prospects. A full intelligence report on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other groups arrived Thursday at the White House.

Trump was scheduled to be briefed on the report Friday in New York. CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and outgoing DNI James Clapper were among those expected to lay out the reports evidence and conclusions to the president elect.

Clapper was testifying about the Russian hacking Thursday on Capitol Hill. Asked by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., if his office had discussed a restructuring of his department with the Trump transition team, Clapper said, No, we have not.

Trump has questioned Russias involvement and challenged the intelligence communitys track record, particularly the information that led to the Iraq war. On Wednesday, he appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization publicly released the hacked Democratic emails. Trump noted in a tweet that Assange said he had not received the materials from Russia.

Trump shifted course Thursday, saying it was wrong to say he was in agreement with Assange, adding that he had simply repeated what the WikiLeaks head said. Trump disputed that he was against the intelligence community, writing, in fact I am a big fan!

(AP)
The 28-year-old Mumbai woman who was reported to have been stabbed near Racecourse yesterday actually hurt herself after fight with boyfriend.

By Mustafa Shaikh: A 28-year-old woman, who was believed to have been stabbed by a stranger near Mahalaxmi Racecourse yesterday, has confessed to have actually attacked herself. She changed her statement today morning.

Read more: Mumbai woman stabbed while waiting for friend at Race Course

The woman, identified as Priyanka Hetpure, told the police that after getting into a fight with her boyfriend, she took out a butter knife and slashed her chest on the left side. To hide the incident, she initially told the police that someone had attacked her.

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Given the incident in Bengaluru which had already raised serious questions about woman safety, Mumbai Police swung into action to take all possible steps to trace the accused. A case for attempt to murder was registered at Tardeo police station and cops were going through CCTV footage of Racecourse to get a lead.

DOCTORS CALLED HER BLUFF

Meanwhile, doctors suspected the injury on Hepture to be self inflicted as the assault didn't cause pierce injury and was not vertical in shape.

When senior inspector Sanjay Surve, of Tardeo Police Station, questioned her boyfriend, the truth came out.

"The couple met at Mahalaxmi. Hetpure was supposed to register her marriage at Bandra court on Friday, but her neighbor with whom she was in a relationship tried to delay the marriage. She was in a depressed state due to her divorce and got upset about the delay after which she assaulted herself in front of him. We had to wait till she confirmed these facts," said DCP Pravinkumar Padwal.

The police is now seeking legal opinion to register a case against Hetpure for giving false information to the police.

--- ENDS ---
The Obama administration imposed sanctions Thursday on a son of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, saying the younger bin Laden poses a risk to U.S. national security.

The State Department said Hamza bin Laden has been added to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list after he was determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security.

Hamza bin Laden was officially named an al-Qaida member in 2014 by his fathers successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The State Department says the younger Laden  in a 2015 audio message  called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals. In an audio message last year, he threatened revenge against the U.S. and warned Americans they would be targeted at home and abroad.

Hamza bin Laden also has called for lone wolf, or solo-operative, attacks against U.S., French, and Israeli interests in Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv.

Hamza bin Laden is actively engaged in terrorism, the State Department said, adding that terrorism designations deny individuals access to the U.S. financial system and can assist or complement the law enforcement actions of other U.S. agencies and other governments.

Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

The State Department also announced penalties against Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Banna served as that groups security chief and provided military and security guidance to its leadership.

He wrote a 2010 article in AQAPs English-language magazine, Inspire, hailing the Sept. 11 attacks as virtuous, according to the State Department, and threatened to target Americans both domestically and abroad.

(AP)
Authorities say New York City police officers shot and wounded a man who drew a gun on them in a Staten Island neighborhood.

NYPD officials say the officers were checking out reports of shots fired in the boroughs Charleston section around 1:10 a.m. Thursday when they were confronted by a 26-year-old man wearing a bulletproof vest. Police say the man drew a 9mm handgun then they opened fire and hit him several times.

Hes listed in stable condition at Staten Island University Hospital. The officers werent injured.

Police say a second man who ran into nearby woods during the encounter was later taken into custody. While searching the woods, police recovered a semi-automatic rifle, several spent shells and a large hunting knife.

(AP)
Top state lawmakers in New York are skipping Gov. Andrew Cuomos state of the state addresses.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Republican Senate Leader John Flanagan and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins have no plans to attend one of the six addresses by the Democratic governor next week.

Many lawmakers blame Cuomo for killing a proposed legislative pay increase, the first in 18 years.

New Yorks governor typically delivers a single address to lawmakers in Albany at the start of the legislative session. This year, as relations frayed with lawmakers, Cuomo announced a new approach involving six regional addresses in New York City, Buffalo, Syracuse and other locations.

A spokesman for Heastie says the speaker will be in Albany, where he says lawmakers have lots of work to do.

(AP)
President-elect Donald Trump says hell ask Congress to investigate leaks to the media on U.S. intelligence alleging Russia meddled in last years election by hacking Democratic emails.

Less than an hour before he was to be briefed Friday by the directors of the FBI and CIA and the Director of National Intelligence on their findings, Trump tweeted that he was asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.

How did NBC get an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented? Who gave them this report and why? Politics! Trump said in a tweet. He later demanded a congressional investigation of the leak.

NBC aired a report Thursday that said the briefing would identify Russian actors involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

Trump has been deeply skeptical of the intelligence communitys findings on Russia, suggesting that it was being used to de-legitimize his election.

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

(AP)
Russia said Friday it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and other warships from the waters off Syria, following orders from President Vladimir Putin to scale back his forces as he casts himself as a peacemaker for the Middle Eastern country.

Russias military support changed the course of the 6-year-old civil war in favor of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, bolstering his forces with long-range missile attacks and precise airstrikes, military advisers and a beefed-up naval base on the Mediterranean coast.

It is not clear how far Moscow intends to draw down its forces. Putin said Russia would continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Assads military, an indication that Russia has no intention of leaving altogether.

But the withdrawal is a show of confidence after the decisive victory last month by Assad and his allies over rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. A week ago, Russia helped broker a cease-fire with Turkey, which supports the opposition, paving the way for new peace talks, this time in Kazakhstan, a Moscow ally.

A day before the cease-fire took effect, Putin ordered the scale-back.

The successes of the Syrian armed forces in the liberation of Aleppo have created the necessary conditions for the peaceful settlement of the conflict, said Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Im confident that it will lay the basis for the political settlement of the conflict.

The first forces to leave, he said, will be the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which was deployed in November at the height of the Aleppo offensive, and other, accompanying ships.

Moscow began its military intervention supporting Assad in September 2015. It announced a reduction in its forces once before, in March 2016 during a brief U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire and the launch of peace talks in Geneva. A few air units withdrew, but that truce quickly collapsed, peace talks went nowhere, and Moscow again threw renewed military might behind the Syrian government.

At the time, the U.S. estimated that there were 3,000 to 6,000 Russian military personnel in Syria, a number that likely rose before the Aleppo offensive.

Airstrikes from the Kuznetsov began in mid-November and marked the first time it was used in combat. The ship has lost two aircraft  an Su-33 fighter jet that crashed in the Mediterranean in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria. In November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the vessel.

Weeks of intensive airstrikes and a tightening siege on Aleppo caused rebel defenses to crumble, and they were forced to finally evacuate a small enclave of the city they controlled since 2012. The government declared Dec. 22 it had full control of the city, once Syrias bustling commercial capital.

Syrias army Chief of Staff Gen. Ali Ayoub visited the aircraft carrier Friday, according to Syrian state television.

He said the vessel has become part and parcel of the history of war on terrorism, according to Al-Ikhbariya TV. He added that signs of victory loom after all the Syria military sacrifices and Russias honorable position.

The recapture of Aleppo by Syrian troops and the subsequent cease-fire make Russian forces less critical to Assad at this juncture of the war. The rebels are mostly concentrated in Idlib province, a stronghold in the north on the border with Turkey. They also have a presence around the capital, Damascus, where government and allied forces are focusing their efforts. Opposition groups say the fighting there violates the cease-fire and threatens the peace talks.

The cease-fire is meant to pave the way for negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstans capital, later this month. The gathering could give new impetus for U.N.-mediated talks between Syrias warring sides. The truce, however, doesnt include areas controlled by the Islamic State group.

On Friday, Syrias Kurdish-led forces in the north said they have taken control of a medieval castle perched on a hilltop over a strategic town held by IS militants, less than 32 kilometers (20 miles) from Raqqa, the extremist groups self-declared capital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces gained control of Jaabar Castle, which dates to the 11th century, following days of intense clashes with IS militants. Seizing control of the castle brings the Kurdish-led forces within 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) of the dam and Tabqa, the second most important town in the province, after Raqqa, SDF spokesman Talal Sillo told The Associated Press. The castle, which IS leaders have used for cover, was in good condition, he said.

The castle sits on the northern bank of Assad Lake, overlooking the strategic Tabqa Dam and the town of the same name.

Built in the late 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, Tabqa Dam is believed to be Syrias largest. It has created the countrys largest reservoir.

We try to take control of the dam with the least possible damage, so we are not depending heavily on airstrikes, Sillo said. The U.S.-led international coalition backs the SDF forces with airstrikes.

Tabqa also houses a number of prisons. Sillo said there are intelligence reports that IS militants have been transferring captives from there to Raqqa.

(AP)
Security has been increased at New York-area airports after a gunman fatally shot multiple people and injured several others at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida Friday afternoon.

Authorities say five people were killed and eight others injured, and that a lone shooter was in custody. They were investigating reports of additional incidents, though none was substantiated.

As a result, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that Port Authority police are stepping up patrols and deployment of officers with heavy tactical weapons at agency airports, including John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and LaGuardia.

(AP)
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar shared dais in Patna, the Janata Dal-United has lashed out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for seeking removal of the PM.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar at a function in Patna on Thursday. (Photo: @ANI_news)

By Anindya Banerjee: The Janata Dal-United has hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for seeking removal of Narendra Modi as the prime minister.

JD-U leader KC Tyagi condemned Mamata Banerjee's statement calling upon President Pranab Mukherjee to intervene to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi and replace him with another leader to head a 'national government'.

READ| Modi must go, let Advani, Jaitley or Rajnath head government, says Mamata Banerjee

JD-U LASHES OUT AT MAMATA: THINGS TO KNOW KC Tyagi said, "We respect Mamata Banerjee, but this is not a statement we expected from her. How can she decide who should lead a democratically elected government?" "If some says remove Mamata Banerjee or remove Rahul Gandhi from their respective positions, will it be acceptable," asked Tyagi. Tyagi also hit out at the Congress for supporting Mamata Banerjee's remarks. "I don't know how the Congress is supporting it. Gandhi-Nehru philosophy doesn't allow it. So, count us out," said the JD-U leader. Earlier, Mamata Banerjee had said, "In current situation a national government should be formed with another BJP person at helm. He (PM Modi) has to go." Mamata further said, "To save country, let a national government be formed in India with Advaniji as the prime minister. We don't mind even if Arun Jaitley or Rajnath Singh is made the PM. But we must save the people in the last two years." "We urge the President for help. Only he can rescue the country. We feel he has a great role to play," Mamata went on to say. JD-U's support for PM Modi came a day after he shared dais with the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar during a function to commemorate the 350th birth anniversay of Guru Govind Singh in Patna. PM Modi praised Nitish Kumar for implementing liqour ban in Bihar despite opposition from all quarters. Nitish Kumar returned the favour by lauding Modi for having done the same in Gujarat when he was the chief minister of that state. Nitish Kumar has also supported PM Modi over demonetisation even as most of the opposition parties have been organising protests against note ban.

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ALSO WATCH:

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The letter states that the MP shall be given chairman status in the Telephone Advisory Committee (TAC).

By Indrajit Kundu: In a move that can ruffle a few feathers in the Trinamool Congress, party's suspended Member of Parliament Kunal Ghosh has been nominated as a member of the Telephone Advisory Committee for Kolkata by the Department of Telecom, Government of India.

READ: Saradha scam: Suspended TMC MP Kunal Ghosh granted interim bail after 3 years

An official letter to this effect has recently been sent by the Ministry of Telecom to the Chairman & MD Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. The letter states that the MP shall be given chairman status in the Telephone Advisory Committee (TAC) and has requested BSNL to seek acceptance of the MP regarding the nomination.

Kunal Ghosh appointment letter

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According to sources, Ghosh has shown interest in taking up the post. Ghosh, who used to head the media wing of the Saradha group is currently out on bail in the chit-fund scam after being arrested in 2013. The suspended Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP was finally granted interim bail in November last year by the Calcutta High Court after being behind bars for nearly three years.

READ: Corruption allegation has hurt me most, says Saradha scam accused Madan Mitra

In fact, in a huge relief to the Trinamool MP, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not name him in its recent charge sheet pertaining to Case No. RC-5 filed before the Bidhan Nagar court this week.

While his party may have suspended him, Ghosh still maintains that he is a part of the Trinamool family. However, while party chief Mamata Banerjee had termed the recent arrests of TMC MP Tapas Pal and Sudip Bandopadhyay in the Rose Valley as pure political vendetta, Ghosh had opposed her view.

READ: Saradha accused Bengal minister Madan Mitra granted bail

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Landlords with just one or two buy-to-lets are likely to see mortgage rates cut in 2017 but professionals with larger portfolios may find they are forced to pay more.

Mortgage broker John Charcol is predicting a buy-to-let mortgage rate war in the so-called 'vanilla' end of the market, as a wave of tax and regulation changes cause the big high street lenders to drop rates for smaller scale landlords with lots of equity, who they consider lower risk.

But the broker warns that fierce competition for these smaller private landlords isn't likely to extend to professionals - in fact, landlords with more than three buy-to-lets may even see the rates on offer from high street lenders start to climb.

Landlords with more than three buy-to-lets may see mortgage rates start to climb in 2017

Simon Collins, of mortgage broker John Charcol, says: 'I definitely believe that we may well see a bit more competition in the very vanilla section of the buy-to-let market.

'Whether this will lead to higher pricing in the complex end of the market is really yet to be seen but the whole buy-to-let market is undergoing a real sea change.'

According to Collins, the widening gulf on rates will emerge partly as a result of tougher lending rules forced on lenders by the Bank of England.

These apply from 1 January and mean the vast majority of buy-to-let mortgages will only be approved if the landlord can demonstrate their rental income would cover their mortgage payment by a ratio of 145 per cent if their mortgage rate went up to 5.5 per cent.

This is a significant jump from the recent norm applied by lenders, of 125 per cent rental coverage at a lower rate, and has lead landlords to warn they may be forced to hike rents to afford it.

It also means seeking a new mortgage is likely to get more expensive for some landlords who can't meet the criteria. Those landlords who are unable to raise rents enough to meet them will have to take smaller mortgages, potentially injecting a large lump sum to qualify.

What effect will cutting landlords' tax relief have?

Also tied into this increasing split between vanilla and portfolio landlords is the pending removal of tax relief on mortgage interest.

WHAT IS A VANILLA LANDLORD? There's no textbook definition for vanilla but broadly speaking it means low risk for the lender and no unusual circumstances. This is likely to include buy-to-let loans made to individuals with only one or two properties. It is also likely to apply to landlords who have large deposits or a big slug of equity in the property. High rental income compared to mortgage payments will also fall into this bracket. Limited company, houses in multiple occupation (with multiple tenancy agreements), multi-unit blocks, semi-commercial and commercial properties and portfolio finance need not apply.

From April, landlords will start to lose full mortgage interest tax relief on buy-to-let loans.

Tax relief will fall from a landlord's income tax level over the next four years - meaning it can be a maximum of 45 per cent - to be replaced with a flat rate 20 per cent tax credit.

This will eat into profits as landlords will effectively be taxed on turnover, not just their profits after mortgage costs.

However, this won't apply to those who hold their properties through a limited company rather than in their own name.

Landlords who hold their properties in a company will still be able to claim back finance expenses in full - including mortgage costs - and will have to pay corporation tax on profits rather than revenue.

Corporation tax is currently set at 20 per cent and is due to fall.

However, those seeking to do this should be aware that they are likely to face further tax if they withdraw money from the company.

Recent research from Kent Reliance indicates that many landlords are already preparing for increased costs by incorporating companies. Its analysis suggested 100,000 buy-to-let mortgages were given to limited companies in the first nine months of 2016, double the total number in the whole of 2015.

Landlords have seen gains from house price rises over the past year, but these have varied substantially across the UK, Nationwide figures show

Will I be able to get a mortgage for a limited company buy-to-let?

While incorporating goes some way to solving the increasing cost of paying tax on buy-to-let, it has traditionally made it much harder to get a mortgage.

High street lenders such as BM Solutions, part of Lloyds banking Group, The Mortgage Works, part of Nationwide, Santander and Barclays have all focused on small scale private landlords, leaving more 'complex' and company buy-to-let to smaller specialist lenders such as Paragon Mortgages.

This division could continue or intensify next year when further regulatory changes are expected for landlords who have a portfolio of four or more buy-to-lets.

From October next year the Bank of England is making it mandatory for lenders to assess financial details on every single mortgaged buy-to-let in these landlords' portfolios - even where the mortgages are held with different lenders.

Thereafter, the cost for lenders of arranging a straightforward buy-to-let mortgage will be significantly less than dealing with the administration involved in assessing the financials across a portfolio of properties. And lenders' costs are all too often passed straight back to the borrower.

It's for this reason that Collins believes professional landlords might not see mortgage rates fall to the same extent as smaller landlords.

'Its been noticeable that battle lines have been drawn between those lenders who have already said that they are capping their buy-to-let borrowers at no more than three properties, excluding portfolio landlords way ahead of the October deadline for the new specialist underwriting that they must now go through,' he says.

David Hollingworth, of mortgage broker London & Country, says that so far the high street lenders have shown no sign of wanting to offer complex buy-to-let mortgages.

'Fewer lenders lend to limited companies and that has naturally meant that they've been priced a bit higher. But that would change if the big lenders were to move into that space,' he says.

So what are my options if I have more than three properties?

While it's likely there will be more finance options for smaller landlords, Collins does offer some hope for portfolio landlords looking to borrow next year.

'We could see further changes to rental calculations throughout 2017 as lenders assess what impact their different calculations have on their ability to attract new business,' he says. 'And we could also see other lenders taking a bigger slice of the pie away from the old favourites BM Solutions and The Mortgage Works.'

These lenders have traditionally dominated lending in the buy-to-let market but over the past few years a raft of smaller challengers have emerged. Indeed Hollingworth highlights Clydesdale Bank, Coventry Building Society and Virgin Money as growing players in buy-to-let.

There are also a raft of challengers focused on buy-to-let including Fleet Mortgages, Vida Homeloans, Foundation Home Loans, Keystone, Aldermore and Shawbrook Bank.

Precise Mortgages is another of these and Collins suggests that if its approach is anything to go by, the challengers won't penalise professional landlords with higher rates.

'Rather than opt for a blanket 145 per cent rental income cover 5.5 per cent, Precise has has introduced a range of calculations, and is even offering bespoke solutions as well,' he says. 'They arent charging a premium for limited company business, and the rental income cover ratio for these cases is 125 per cent.
Adolescent enthusiasm: Next's 4.8m-a-year boss Simon Wolfson

Careers of High Street bosses tend to follow a familiar path. Typically they've started out as trainees, slowly progressing through the ranks of middle management until a vacancy arises in the boardroom.

Arriving in the top job, a press release heralds them as honest trundlers who know the company inside out after years of toil and hard graft.

But casting Next's 4.8m-a-year boss Simon Wolfson, 49  or Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise to give him his correct title  as an up-by-his-bootstraps shopfloor Johnny is beyond the burnishments of even the most accomplished of public relations reptiles.

Educated at Radley and Trinity College, Cambridge, to say that Wolfson's elevation up the corporate ladder has been meteoric would be somewhat underplaying it.

Arriving in 1991 at the Kensington branch of Next  his father David was company chairman  he was swiftly promoted as assistant to the firm's then boss David Jones.

Within ten years, aged just 33, the eager whippersnapper succeeded Jones as the youngest ever chief executive of a FTSE 100 company.

His inexorable rise is perhaps even more understandable when you consider his lineage.

His grandfather was Sir Isaac Wolfson, the brilliant financier behind Great Universal Stores, the one-time powerhouse which owned Burberry and Scotch House. His aforementioned father has been an adornment to numerous company boards.

But while howls of nepotism have accompanied his career, there is no doubt that after 16 years Wolfson has established himself as one of the more respected members of British business.

Certainly those who meet this rather gawky figure testify to his impressive character. Mild mannered and cerebral, he fizzes with adolescent enthusiasm and lofty ideas beyond just flogging affordable clothing.

Record: Aged just 33, Wolfson became the youngest ever chief executive of a FTSE 100 company

Three years ago, he launched the Wolfson Economics Prize, an annual 250,000 contest which seeks blue skies solutions to infrastructure problems.

Unusually for a FTSE 100 boss, he chooses to takes sides politically. Ennobled by the Conservatives in 2010, he maintains strong links to the party's fluffy modernisers.

He was an early backer of David Cameron's 2005 leadership campaign, and despite his anti-EU views  he was one of the few business leader to come out in support of Brexit he remains on friendly terms with Sir Oliver Letwin and George Osborne.

His wife Eleanor, 37, daughter of Charity Commission head William Shawcross and with whom he has a son, served for eight years as the former chancellor's economic adviser.

Habitually dressed in nondescript 100 suits  Next, natch  and swotty-looking wire-framed spectacles, he retains modest tastes for someone said to be worth 112million.

The only immediate signifier to his vast wealth is a beautiful 17th century country pile near Milton Keynes and a townhouse in desirable Primrose Hill, which he purchased after liquifying 3.28million of his shares before his wedding in 2012.

Proof of his considerable significance in British business emerged this week, after Next reported a 0.4 per cent drop in sales at Christmas, wiping 948million off the company's value.

The retailer has for some time been a bellwether for the High Street's fortunes. When Next is struggling, it usually means trouble's a-brewing.

Sure enough, Wolfson's bleak warnings about future trading has had a knock-on effect to rivals Marks & Spencer and Primark, all of whose share prices have taken a tumble.

Like many traditional clothing brands, Next struggles to keep pace with more modish arrivals such as Zara and New Look.

Once the epitome of 90s chic, the brand is beginning to feel a little long in the tooth.

And while it was quick to adapt to the challenges of the internet, younger generations prefer to spend their lunch hours scouring cheaper, more fashionable online stores.

Wolfson's relations with staff remain mixed. They were delighted when in 2013 and 2014 he chose to share with them his bonus, worth a combined 6million.

But he remains a hate figure among the unions over his opposition to the living wage. In 2015, the GMB accused him of having 'a total disregard for family life' after abolishing extra pay for staff on Sundays, deeming it a normal working day.

For now, Wolfson insists he's going nowhere, but with a young family he may be beginning to wonder if it's all still worth it. After all, 16 years seems an unusually long time to remain in charge of a FTSE 100 company.

For a time there was speculation he might be appointed a Cabinet minister. Judging by his wildly mediocre appearance record in the Lords  he's spoken less than half a dozen times in five years  it would appear he didn't accept a peerage to just sloth among prune-chinned members of the Upper House.
At the end of last year I temporarily moved to Spain while recovering from a heart condition and as my Vodafone phone contract was due to end in January, I gave notification that I wanted to terminate.

I've been a customer for more than 20 years but trying to get a bill breakdown from Vodafone of how much I owed was a huge problem and no matter how many phone calls or emails I made I was never any the wiser as to what the final payment should be.

In total frustration I even called the head office in Newbury but after two months and numerous emails and calls from Spain, in desperation I cancelled my direct debit payment in February.

At this point I was then bombarded by emails telling me how much was owed but again no breakdown as to how the sums had been worked out.

Why is my credit score being threatened when I paid my final mobile phone bill in February?

Once again I got on the phone to try to get an answer but had no luck so to stop my abject frustration, and to prevent my heart condition returning, I paid the final amount from my bank account (the same one I used to make the monthly payments) to prevent further hassle.

Imagine my horror when in October I received a letter from the Lowell Group saying they were acting as collection agents for Vodafone for an amount outstanding since February.

As someone with a high credit score I was extremely unhappy about how this would impact my credit score, especially as I had cleared the amount months earlier.

I've sent proof that the payments were made but I've still heard nothing back and my credit score is under threat.

I have never come across such appalling customer service and the inability to find someone (anyone would do) in Vodafone who would actually take ownership and accountability to sort this out, Ian Munro, via email.

Rebecca Rutt, of This is Money, replies: When you sign up to a contract you do so knowing exactly how much you're paying and what you're getting, therefore when you cancel the contract and you're charged a sum of money, you should be told how the sum has been worked out.

If not, how do you know what you're paying out for and whether a mistake has been made?

ARE YOU HAVING A PROBLEM WITH VODAFONE? Are you having problems with a Vodafone contract? This is Money would like to hear your story. E-mail: rebecca.rutt@thisismoney.co.uk

In your case you eventually paid out the money to save yourself more stress but for some reason this wasn't registered with Vodafone and you were contacted by a debt collection agency eight months later.

We got in contact with Vodafone to try and find out what has happened.

A spokesperson said: 'When Mr Munro cancelled his account with us in January we sent him a final bill in line with our normal process. We also sent copy bills covering the period November to January.

'We didn't have a record of his final payment but Mr Munro has provided the relevant documentation.

'We have confirmed that nothing is owing on the account and his credit file will be corrected. We have also offered a goodwill payment by way of apology for the issues he's faced.'

Vodafone was fined 4.6bn in October yet we're still being flooded with complaints by readers

You have told us Vodafone is willing to send 100 as a goodwill gesture for the problems you've encountered for the past year. However, while you said you're happy for the 100 to be donated to The Salvation Army, you are going to escalate your complaint to the regulator.

This is because despite being a customer for more than 20 years, you've been given no explanation as to why the problem happened, or how Vodafone intends to fix it.

All it would have taken is someone to call you up and explain the charges in your final bill and you would have paid it and the matter would have been resolved.

Instead you've ended up spending a year trying to get an answer from the mobile giant and even having your credit score threatened.

When you go to the ombudsman it will look into your case independently and it could rule that Vodafone pays you compensation, above the 100 offered, and it also might ask it to change the way it operates.

Vodafone has had a catastrophic year in 2016 and yours is one of many emails we've seen from our readers who are caught in long-standing battles with the firm.
Expedia has launched a new travel reward programme offering discounts on holidays and perks such as free flight upgrades.to customers booking through its website.

The scheme, called Expedia +, is free to join and members can collect points by booking holidays, car hire and travel through the website.

It has three tiers of membership with everyone beginning on a basic level and having the opportunity to access more rewards when they spend more.

Expedia has launched a free new loyalty scheme offering points in exchange for bookings

The loyalty programme works in a similar way to other reward schemes, such as the Tesco Clubcard and the Boots Advantage card.

For every 1 spent on flight and hotel packages, car hire or other travel activities booked on Expedia and for every 1 per 5 spent on a flight bookings members will earn two points.

The points don't expire and can then be redeemed against bookings through the website. It's free to join and those who sign up will automatically be assigned a 'blue tier membership'.

Once they've spent more than 5,000, or booked seven hotel nights (which it says can be done for 350), in one calendar year, the membership is upgraded to 'silver'.

If the member spends more than 10,000, or has 15 nights of accommodation booked (which it says can be done for 750), in one calendar year, the membership will be upgraded to gold.

Then once a member becomes 'silver' or 'gold' this status lasts for the whole of that year, the next year and until the 28 February the following year. For example, someone booking seven nights to France today would become a silver status member until February 28 2019.

Members can also earn points if they are booking for other people in their party  if booking for a family of four, for example, and they can pick up extra points when using the app.

The basic free membership is rather limited and aside from earning points when using the site and there being no black-out dates when redeeming your points there's little else on offer.

Expedia's reward scheme is free but you'll need to spend on it to get the best freebies included

The silver membership includes benefits such as; spa discounts, free drinks at selected hotels, exclusive travel offers, priority customer service and bonus points for booking certain hotels.

While the gold membership gives all the benefits above plus room upgrades and flexible check-in and check-out times.

Collecting points through booking on the site is a nice added perk, if you're already planning on using Expedia, although you do need to spend at least 5,000 in 12 months to access the perks included.

It's also important to check the cost of the booking against other travel agents, as it's not worth buying through Expedia just for the points if you can find a cheaper deal elsewhere.

Alison Calvert, director of Expedia+ marketing, said: 'With Expedia, you're already guaranteed the lowest price on flight and hotel package deals  or the difference back. Now, on top of knowing you're getting the best price, you can be rewarded for your loyalty.

'Add to this the fact you can collect Nectar points, airline miles and any credit card cash-back, as well as falling air ticket prices globally  it really is a fantastic time to travel the world for less.'
The FTSE 100 yesterday finished at 7210.05  the seventh day in a row that it has closed at a record high.

But how high can it go? Some experts believe a strong start to the year could be a sign of a strong year to come.

Since 1984 the FTSE 100 has gained in January in 19 out of 32 years, according to figures from Fidelity.

In 15 of those 19 years, the market went on to finish the year higher than it began. So it's a good omen.

High point: The FTSE 100 yesterday finished at 7210.05  the seventh day in a row that it has closed at a record high

In its first year of trading in 1984 the FTSE finished 6.2 per cent higher in January. It went on to gain a further 15.9 per cent, rising from 1000 to 1232.2 throughout the year.

The stock market started 1997 at 4118.5 and, after adding 157 points in January, went on to climb another 20.1 per cent to finish the year at 5135.5.

The so-called January effect seems to have a remarkably high hit rate. Only in 1987, 1994, 2001 and 2015 has the market broken this pattern.

But with so much uncertainty on the horizon this year, there is no guarantee that it will continue its stellar rise.

Brexit has been centre-stage for more than six months now, but it will be a major consideration for investors this year.

The market has been given a short-term lift from the fall in the pound, which is boosting the overseas earnings of many firms. But as increased import costs start to weigh on firms, this may not last.

Although the UK is unlikely to leave the EU for at least another 18 months, Naeem Aslam of Think Markets believes the negotiations, as they unfold, could push the FTSE towards the 9000 mark.

Jordan Hiscott, chief trader at Ayondo markets, says: 'If it looks like we are headed for a so-called hard Brexit, this will lead to a weaker pound, which will boost the profits of many FTSE international companies and push the market higher. I think the FTSE could reach 7500.'

Tom Becket, chief investment officer at Psigma, is expecting FTSE company earnings to grow around 8 per cent this year because of the weakness in the pound, and two-thirds of blue-chip company earnings coming from overseas.

He says: 'However, I don't think it will go much higher than 7400 because I think optimism in 2016 meant a lot of this year's growth was already borrowed last year.'

The fortunes of the oil and mining sector is likely to be a major decider in the outlook for the stock market.

A fragile pact among the Opec cartel members has led to a recovery in the price of the black stuff. But the production cut is yet to come into play and many experts are unsure how long it will hold.

If any member reneges on their pledge it could send the oil price spiralling again, damaging the prospects of the FTSE oil giants.

Fiona Cincotta, market analyst at City Index, says: 'I am looking optimistically at the FTSE for the year. Levels of above 8750 could realistically be within reach.'

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, says: 'When I drew up my forecasts in mid-December, I thought a year-end point of around 7350 for the FTSE looked pretty fair, but that looks a bit tight-fisted after the recent surge.

'But I do fear it might not take a lot to shake things up, given the prevailing buoyant mood, so I would be wary of getting too carried away just yet.'

For those who do think the FTSE has further to climb, Jason Hollands, managing director at Bestinvest, says investing in a simple tracker fund is a cheap way to get access to this growth.

The iShares FTSE 100 tracker charges just 0.07 per cent a year. Investors can also pick funds which focus on blue-chip business.

Hollands likes the JO Hambro UK Opportunities fund which invests in BP, National Grid and Unilever. It has returned 15.5 per cent over the past year.
The owner of Ryman, Robert Dyas and lingerie brand Boux Avenue has warned that retailers face a 'perfect storm' this year.

Theo Paphitis said his firm Theo Paphitis Group has had to adjust its business plan to accommodate changes in shoppers' habits and the fall in the pound.

He also urged reform of business rates, which he described as archaic and unsuitable for the current retail climate.

Bleak outlook: Theo Paphitis said his firm Theo Paphitis Group has had to adjust its business plan to accommodate changes in shoppers' habits and the fall in the pound

He said: 'Retail, especially within bricks and mortar in the UK, is facing the perfect storm.

The facts are that footfall and activity on our high streets and town centres are in decline but businesses like ours are about to see an overall increase instead of a decrease in their rates bill in the next 12 months.'

Ryman and Robert Dyas saw turnover fall in 2016 by 2.5 per cent and 4.4 per cent respectively.
The accused, identified as John Kennedy Chukwuemeka Okoro (36), had sneaked out of the custody of Anti-Narcotics Cell on January 2 and was arrested from Borivali.

By Saurabh Vaktania: After having been on the run for almost five days, a Nigerian national convicted in a drug case was today arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) of Mumbai police.

The accused, identified as John Kennedy Chukwuemeka Okoro (36), had sneaked out of custody of Narcotics Cell and was on his way to Bengaluru when cops arrested him from Borivali in the wee hours today.

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ANC officials had been left red-faced after Okoro escaped from their custody and were desperate to catch him.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL Okoro, who used to live in Navi Mumbai's Kopar Khairane, was caught by the Anti-Narcotics Cell of Azad Maidan unit in 2014 with cocaine. A Mumbai court had sentenced him to three years of rigorous imprisonment. He had served his jail term in Nashik prison. After being released on December 31 from there, Okoro was brought to Mumbai to start his deportation process and was kept on the first floor of the ANC located in the premises of Azad Maidan police station. The cops were finalising documents for his deportation when at around 2 am on January 2, Okoro managed to flee from the roof of the detection room of the ANC. He jumped out from the first-floor building. The cops tried to catch him, but Okoro jumped over the eight-feet-high gate and disappeared. A departmental inquiry was initiated in the case against the errant cops and action would be taken against them. Sources said that Okoro was staying with some of his friends after he escaped. The cops received a tip-off that he was planning to leave the city when they laid a trap at the Borivali highway and arrested him. Okoro told the police that he did not want to be get deported. The cops have again initiated the process of his deportation and he will be sent back to his country soon.

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Economists have suffered a Michael Fish moment over the financial crisis and the impact of the Brexit vote, a top Bank of England official declared yesterday.

In a frank admission, the Banks chief economist Andy Haldane said his profession was in crisis after bungling so many major calls in recent years.

He admitted that despite dire warnings of recession from the Bank and the Treasury, it had been business as usual since the EU referendum, with households carrying on as if nothing had happened.

Mr Haldane, 49, compared economic forecasters to weathermen  in particular Mr Fish who in 1987 famously told the nation there would be no hurricane.

A top Bank of England official compared economic forecasters to weathermen  in particular Mr Fish who in 1987 famously told the nation there would be no hurricane (pictured)

Just hours later the worst storm for 300 years battered the UK, claiming 20 lives, flattening 15 million trees and causing 1.5billion of damage.

Lets go back to a different crisis, which is a crisis not in economic forecasting but in weather forecasting that resulted from the 1987 Great Storm, he said.

Michael Fish getting up, saying someones just called me, hurricane coming. Theres no hurricane coming but it will be very windy in Spain.

Thats very similar to the sort of reports central banks, naming no names, issued pre-crisis. There is no hurricane coming but it might be very windy in the sub-prime sector.

Mr Haldanes comments came as figures showed the economy grew by more than 1 per cent in the six months after the vote to leave the EU  adding to the deluge of upbeat data published since the Brexit vote.

In a boost to savers and pensioners with money tied up in the stock market, shares in London also closed at a record high for a sixth day running, a feat last achieved in 1997.

HOW HE CHANGED HIS TUNE Andy Haldane I would rather run the risk of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut than taking a miniature rock hammer to tunnel my way out of prison. - July 2016, on why interest rates should be cut following Brexit. The EU referendum result has thrown up a dust cloud of economic uncertainty, making it harder for companies to plan, with potentially adverse implications for future investment and jobs. - August 2016 If you look at how the British consumer performed during the course of last year, it is almost as though the referendum had not taken place. It's pretty much business as usual. - January 5, 2017 Advertisement

The FTSE 100 index edged 5.57 points higher to 7195.31  taking gains since the referendum to 13.5 per cent or 216billion.

Mr Haldane, a key lieutenant of Governor Mark Carney, conceded that the Bank was too gloomy following the EU vote.

Fair cop, we had foreseen a sharper slowdown in the economy than has happened, he said. If you look at how the British consumer performed during the course of last year, it is almost as though the referendum had not taken place.

In terms of many of the real things like pay and jobs, its pretty much business as usual.

Conceding the Bank was too gloomy about the impact of Brexit, Mr Haldane said: The profession is to some degree in crisis. He added: If an economist ever tells you they are certain about anything, that is the time to worry.

Fresh figures yesterday showed the economy grew by 0.5 per cent in the final quarter of 2016, having expanded by 0.6 per cent in the previous three months.

That means output is now 1.1 per cent higher than it was at the time of the EU referendum in June, according to the report by research group IHS Markit.

The Treasury had warned that a punishing recession would see the economy slump by as much as 1.4 per cent in the six months after a Brexit vote.

But IHS Markits index of activity  where scores above 50 show growth  rose to a 17-month high of 56.4 in December.

Manufacturing activity reached a 30-month high while services firms enjoyed their best month since July 2015 and builders recorded their strongest performance for nine months. Separate figures yesterday showed sales of new cars hit a record high of 2.69million last year.

The Bank of Englands chief economist Andy Haldane (shown right) said his profession was in crisis after bungling so many major calls in recent years. Shown left, weatherman Michael Fish

The UK economy ended 2016 on a high, said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit. The UK economy continues to defy widely held expectations of a Brexit-driven slowdown.

John Longworth, co-chairman of Leave Means Leave, said: The New Year has brought an avalanche of upbeat data which demonstrates the continuing strength of the UK economy and confounds the predictions of the referendum doom-mongers.

Mr Haldane said that although the Bank was wrong about the immediate impact of the Brexit vote, he still expected the economy to slow this year.

I think near-term the data has surprised to the upside  greater resilience, in particular among consumers and among the housing market, than we had expected. Has that led us to change our view on the fortunes of the economy looking forward over the next several years? Not really.

We are still expecting a slowing, not a huge slowing, but nonetheless a material slowing, during the course of next year as the effects of higher prices in the shops begin to chew away a little at the spending power of consumers.
Veteran actor Om Puri passed away this morning from a heart attack.

By India Today Web Desk: Om Puri, veteran actor and Padma Shri winner, passed away this morning due to a heart attack. He was 66.

ALSO READ | Om Puri separates from wife Nandita after 26 years of marriage

The actor, best known for films like Ardh Satya and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, is survived by his estranged wife Nandita Puri and son Ishaan Puri.

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Om Puri's sudden death has left the industry in shock and his colleagues have expressed their sadness.

Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP. Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) January 6, 2017

Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked.

Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

Shabana Azmi took to Twitter to reveal more details. The actor's body has been taken to Cooper Hospital for post-mortem and the funeral will take place at Oshiwara, Mumbai, at 6pm today.

OM Puri undergoing postmortem at Cooper Hospital.Will be taken to Trishul around 3pm Funeral at Oshiwara electric crematorium around 6pm Azmi Shabana (@AzmiShabana) January 6, 2017

--- ENDS ---
MBABANE  Swazi-born actress, Noma Dumezweni is making waves abroad and international stars like Emma Watson cant get enough of her.



Emma Watson has said she felt as if she was meeting her older self as she embraced the actor who plays Hermione in JK Rowlings new stage play.

Watson portrayed Hermione Granger in eight Harry Potter films and now Noma Dumezweni is starring as an older version of the character in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Londons West End.



Watson posted a series of photographs on Facebook of herself with Dumezweni and the crew of the play backstage after watching the show, and said the production helped her reconnect with the character.



Amazing



She wrote: Yesterday I went to see the Cursed Child. I came in with no idea what to expect and it was amazing. Some things about the play were, I think, possibly even more beautiful than the films. Having seen it, I felt more connected to Hermione and the stories than I have since Deathly Hallows came out, what a gift it was, said the Oscar winning actress.



She further said that meeting the Swazi-born actress and seeing her on stage was like meeting her older self. Watson said this was because she related to the type of person that Dumezweni is and that she knew that her instincts about her were right, as Dumezweni told her that everything was going to be all right upon seeing that the star was worried about her new role.

The cast and crew welcomed me like I was family and Noma was everything I could ever hope she would be. Shes wonderful. The music is beautiful, I could go on and on, she raved.



Version



Watson is currently taking a year off from acting but will soon be seen in Disneys live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, which is due for release next year.

Directors of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stirred the cauldron when they cast Noma Dumezweni in a traditionally white role.

The award-winning British based actress, who plays Hermione Granger in J.K. Rowlings staged sequel to the wizarding series, has been battling backlash and internet trolls ever since she nabbed the role last year.

The 47-year-old actress recently opened up about the challenges of taking on the role made famous by Emma Watson, and the racial abuse she faced after the casting announcement hit the internet.

Its ignorance, she told the U.K. Sunday Times of the controversy. It drives me crazy, its limitation.
A picture showing twins joined at the abdomen. These are not the twins who were born in the country.

MBABANE  The new year has come with a shocking surprise for a teenage mother who gave birth to conjoined twins.



The babies are joined at the abdomen and are females.

The 19-year-old gave birth to the rare twins on Tuesday at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki, but both mother and children have been moved to the Mbabane Government Hospital.

Conjoined twins are identical twins joined in the utero and this is an extremely rare phenomenon and its occurrence is estimated from one to 49 000 births with a higher incidence in Africa and South East Asia.



Spe



According to highly reliable sources, after the discovery of the birth, doctors and specialists were called to assess the situation and the twins were transferred to the neonatal ward at the new Mbabane Government Hospital Maternity Unit.

The children both have two legs each and arms and they are feeding independently from feeding bottles.

It is unknown whether the children will be able to be separated as several tests have to be conducted by specialists to ascertain whether they do not share major organs such as the lungs.

Sources revealed that this was the teen mothers third birth.



The twins are reported to have weighed around 4.8 kg.

Contacted for comment, the Minister of Health Sibongile Simelane, confirmed that this rare incident had occurred in the country.

She said a team from the ministry, officers from the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), senior medical officers and the Principal Secretary in the ministry, Dr Simon Zwane, had already paid a visit to the hospital.



We are still to compile a report and clearly we will engage specialists from South Africa who have dealt with such cases, said the minister.

The minister said if all was okay after tests, they would probably send the children for operation in South Africa through the Phalala Fund.

It is believed that the children could have shared the same placenta yet normal twins ordinarily have different placentas.




EZULWINI  Chief Executive Officer of Ezulwini Town Board Vusumutiwendvodza Matsebula has alleged that businessman Nqaba Dlamini threatened to beat him up.



This was after the CEO allegedly wrote him a letter demanding that he removes water tanks he had placed at an area that was outside the boundaries of his plot situated at the fast-growing town.

Matsebula made the allegations during his fourth appearance before the commission of inquiry yesterday.



The veracity of the allegations is yet to be determined by the commissioners and all parties remain innocent until the finalisation of the inquiry.

Nqaba is the same man who allegedly colluded with the Town Boards former Inspector of Works, Dumisa Zwane, where the businessman ended up developing a plot into eight flats when the agreement with the organisation had been four.



Matsebula alleged that when he informed Nqaba that he was flouting the rules of the town board and asked him to remove the tanks, the businessman told him in no uncertain terms that he was not going to do that.

He alleged that when Nqaba threatened him, he called his security guard who assisted him but that he then visited his office again over the same issue.



I told him that he had placed the tanks on the town boards no-mans land, which was against the Building Act whose aim is to avoid informal structures, Matsebula alleged.

To justify his allegation, Matsebula then shared a conversation which the two had when the businessman visited his office to discuss the issue for the second time. In the conversation, the man said to be Nqaba is heard telling Matsebula that he had put up the tanks in order to address the water problem which was affecting his client being the American Embassy.



If you want to do something that is outside the boundaries of your property, it is simple, you just have to write a letter to the council and apply. All I am doing is ensuring that procedures are followed, Matsebula is heard saying during the conversation.

As the conversation continues, The man said to be Nqaba accuses the CEO of being used by people to sabotage him and insists that he was not going to remove the tanks. Ningamane ngiyo-appealer to the minister noma ngiboshwe, the man is heard saying.
A SIDE VIEW OF NGCOSENI CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL.

NGCOSENI  Sexy teachers in miniskirts who exposed cleavages through their low-cut garments, is what some pupils say contributed to their poor performance in the 2016 Junior Certificate (JC) exams at Ngcoseni High School.



The pupils claimed that the sexy teachers resulted in some of them losing concentration in class.



This is according to some Ngcoseni Central High School pupils, who were repeating the Form III class last year. In the schools Form III class of 2015, a total of 94 pupils failed but 78 of them came back to repeat. However, they were separated from the group that came from Form II as they learnt in two classrooms.

Again in 2016, a majority of the pupils failed as the school recorded a massive 166 failures.



The pupils, mostly males, who asked to remain anonymous because they feared victimisation, said the dress code of their female teachers was disturbing to them as they were old enough to be attracted to sexy women. They called for formal dress code for teachers in the school to avoid the disturbances.



Again, the pupils said there was division in the staffroom as some teachers were willing to teach them while a majority were reluctant to do so. The unwilling teachers used to come to class 10 minutes before the end of their period and would just browse through the topics and say they will not teach us because we covered it the previous year, the pupils claimed.



They said the educators used to give them homework on topics which they had not taught them on because of the assumption that they knew it as they had done it the previous year. On the same note, the pupils claimed they were not given textbooks for the reason that they knew what was inside since they had learnt it when they did Form III in 2015. We were just not treated like pupils and we went to school for the sake of attending, not because we were learning, they said.



On top of that, the pupils alleged that the language of some of the teachers was unpalatable as they used to tell them that they did not deserve to be in class because they were already imbibing alcohol and were addicted to dagga.

Some alleged that other teachers threatened to punish them with blows for the same reason that they were like adults since they were drinking and smoking.

They said some teachers only taught them when the examination was about to start and they were under pressure, so they couldnt master enough information from the lessons.
By Press Trust of India: Islamabad, Jan 6 (PTI) Pakistans recently retired army chief Gen Raheel Sharif will head a Saudi Arabia-led 39-nation Islamic military coalition formed to combat terrorism, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said today.

Asif, while speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back.

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He, however, said he did not have much information about the details of the said agreement.

Asif said the decision was taken after taking the incumbent government into confidence and "it was finalised here first". The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.

The Defence Minister said any such assignment or posting requires proper clearance from the government and General Headquarters (GHQ) both and confirmed that the due process was followed before finalising the agreement.

"As you are aware that this thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the Prime Minister was also part of the deliberations," Asif was quoted as saying by Dawn News.

He was of the opinion that formation of such an alliance is a good step, as the "Muslim Ummah (community) is in a spot of bother right now and needs unity among its ranks".

Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Pakistan had initially found itself in the cross-hairs of Middle Eastern politics as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly-formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent.

However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

The coalition was envisaged to serve as a platform for security cooperation, including provision of training, equipment and troops, and involvement of religious scholars for dealing with extremism.

The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Iran, Saudi Arabias arch-rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional powers rage from Syria to Yemen, the report said.

The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others. PTI ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---

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By Bill Parry

Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a new proposal at LaGuardia Community College Tuesday that would make SUNY and CUNY college tuition free for nearly a million families making less than $125,000 a year. With Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at his side, Cuomo announced his new Excelsior Scholarship program to alleviate the crushing burden of student debt.

A college education is not a luxury  it is an absolute necessity for any chance at economic mobility, and with these first-in-the-nation Excelsior Scholarships, were providing the opportunity for New Yorkers to succeed, no matter what zip code they come from and without the anchor of student debt weighing them down, Cuomo said. New York is making a major investment in our greatest asset  our people  and supporting the dreams and ambitions of those who want a better life and are willing to work hard for it.

Sanders, who pushed for free tuition nationwide during his presidential bid, called Cuomos program revolutionary and urged state legislators to approve the plan and make it a model for the rest of the nation.

If we are going to do justice to the working families of this country, to the low-income families, if we are going to have an economy that creates jobs, we must have the best-educated workforce in the world, Sanders said. Our job is to encourage every person in this country to get all the education he or she can, not to punish them for getting that education.

In 2015, the average student loan debt in New York was $29,320. If approved, the Excelsior Scholarship program will work by supplementing existing aid initiatives such as the Tuition Assistance Program, which provides nearly $1 billion in grants to students statewide, and federal aid.

The plan is expected to cost about $163 million a year when fully implemented by 2019. Cuomo plans to institute the program in stages, beginning by offering it to families making up to $100,000 starting in the fall of 2017, increasing to $110,000 in 2018, and reaching $125,000 in 2019.

College is a mandatory step if you really want to be a success, Cuomo said. And this society should say were going to pay for college because you need college to be successful. Other countries have done it. Its time this country catches up.

State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flushing), ranking member of the Higher Education Committee, sponsored a similar bill in 2015.

In todays world, college has become not a privilege, but a necessary step for working individuals of all fields, Stavisky said. Unfortunately, college comes with a price tag that few can afford without burdensome loans. The proposal presented by Gov. Cuomo and supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders is an important step toward equal access to higher education. While families who make less than $125,000 will be able to send their children to SUNY and CUNY school for free, we must also ensure no hikes are implemented on students who are paying tuition to off-set the costs. Last year, we were able to secure a tuition freeze for public college and university students  a trend I would like to see continue. I congratulate and thank the governor for his commitment to higher education and I look forward to working with him to better our states higher education system.
By Press Trust of India: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Jan 6 (PTI) Pakistans recently retired army chief Gen Raheel Sharif will head the Saudi Arabia-led 39-nation Islamic military coalition formed to combat terrorism, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said today.

Asif, while speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back.

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He said the decision was taken after taking the incumbent government into confidence and "it was finalised here first". The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.

Asif said that both the government and army were on board regarding the decision to let General Raheel take charge of the alliance.

He, however, refused to share the details of agreement under which Raheel has been appointed the chief of the Saudi-led alliance.

"As you are aware that this thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the Prime Minister was also part of the deliberations," Asif was quoted as saying.

Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Pakistani leaders were initially taken aback when Saudi Arabia, without proper consultation with them, had announced in 2015 that Islamabad was also part of the new alliance to combat militancy.

Iran was not included in the grouping which appeared as a vague attempt to forge a Sunni Muslim alliance against Shiite Iran to curtail its influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and rest of the Middle East.

Pakistan was in an unenviable position as it has good ties with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. It was also not ready to be dragged into the politics of Middle East. Hence, the government had announced that a decision about joining the group would be taken once its details were known.

Later, Pakistan confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

After remaining dormant for months, the group is trying to reassemble.

The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others. PTI SH/ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
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Yes, the Upper East Side of Manhattan has hijacked the Q train from Astoria for the stunning new Second Avenue subway, but Queens got the W line back in return.

This was not a completely fair exchange. But Queens straphangers who ride the F train can walk right across the platform at the redesigned 63rd Street stop in Manhattan and catch the Q train on its long journey downtown to Coney Island.

After nearly a century of false starts, New York City got its act together to open a subway line that can make the most cynical of city dwellers proud. MTA employees are working the crowds at the three new stations  96th Street, 86th Street and 72nd Street  passing out subway maps, smiling (thats right) at gawking passengers and answering questions about the art on the walls.

This is not your typical underground experience and well see how long the inspiring settings in the stations can be maintained before the NYC Transit regulars  rats, trash and vagrants  move in.

As a public space, the new stations function as efficient transportation hubs with long escalators carrying riders many flights down. Once the riders enter the turnstiles, the white tile walls on the block-long corridors do double duty as an inviting passageway and a subterranean art museum filed with mosaics by well-known artists.

Its not every day that straphangers stop to take selfies next to artworks depicting typical New Yorkers who confront life on the subways.

The extended Q train brings much-needed service to the far East Side, a transit orphan since the Second Avenue el shut down in 1942 and the Third Avenue el closed in 1955.

But the real test begins this week. The lines other role is to siphon off 200,000 riders from the nearby Lexington Avenue line, where the notoriously packed 4, 5 and 6 have been carrying 1.3 million people daily.

Only then can the MTA be sure its ambitious East Side Access project to bring Long Island Railroad riders into Grand Central Station in 2022 will work. Adding LIRR commuters to the unrelieved Lex at Grand Central would be catastrophic.

Amid all the fanfare, kudos to U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Astoria and Upper East Side congresswoman who waged a fierce battle to get the Second Avenue subway rolling. She, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast made a formidable team and reminded us that miracles can happen after all.
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By Mark Hallum

A new play out of Queensborough Community College exploring what it means to be the other in America was selected to open the main stage performances at the regional-level Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival this week.

The piece, entitled anOTHER, which took the stage at the festivals main auditorium at Montclair State University in New Jersey Wednesday, is a collaboration between the QCC Theatre Ensemble and writer-director J. Julian Christopher, an assistant professor in the schools Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts.

We are thrilled to be given this opportunity, said Christopher. Throughout this exciting experience, we read, talked about ideas, experimented with various physical movements and challenged each other. I drew from the interaction of our student ensemble before I wrote the script. During the rehearsal process, we looked to different Hindu deities and Kirtan meditation to serve as a jumping off point. I chose Indian mythology in part because it is filled with theatricality and interpretive storytelling.

The production uses the last names of the actors for character names and tells their stories through monologues and dialogue. Using English as a base, the show is performed in five other languages  including Chinese, Spanish, French, Portuguese and American Sign Language.

Actors also showcase their singing talent, with music composed by Nirmal Chandraratna, as they swing from ropes and move about the stage. Used scripts are recycled into falling snow.

I want to lift the veil on theater, Christopher said. Students on sound and light boards, as well as the stage manager, are on stage for the duration of the play. Everyone comes together as a community in order to be aware that we are all in a play so that it is less emotional and more a call to action. This is an ensemble effort in the truest sense of the word.

anOTHER has been performed at Queensboroughs Shadowbox Theatre six times

The QCC Theatre Ensembles play, and those from seven other schools, were chosen for the festival from among 66 other productions throughout the region.

The high quality of work by our excellent faculty, students and administrators has led to this outstanding accomplishment, said Professor Georgia McGill, the chair of the QCC Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts. Our student actors, along with the dedicated support of their faculty mentors, have a strong record of being nominated for their superlative performances at prestigious regional and national festivals.

QCCs theatre program is the only CUNY institution to be accredited by the National Association of Schools of Theatre.
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.
The trailer of Rangoon starring Shahid Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut and Saif Ali Khan is finally here. What to expect from the new film by Vishal Bhardwaj?

By India Today Web Desk: When you get to know Vishal Bhardwaj is making a new film, be ready to expect greatness! The trailer of his upcoming film Rangoon, his next film after 2014's Haider, was released on the internet today, and well, we cannot keep calm!

Rangoon starring Saif Ali Khan, Kangana Ranaut and Shahid Kapoor is a love story based on the backdrop of World War II. Saif plays a rich, Mumbai-based theatre owner while Kangana Ranaut is the prime attraction at Saif's establishment. When Kangana is sent to Burma (now Myanmar), where the Indian National Army is stationed, she falls in love with Shahid Kapoor who is an Indian soldier fighting for the British in World War II.

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ALSO WATCH: Shahid and Saif battle for Kangana's love in Rangoon trailer

ALSO READ: I don't go to work to make friends, says Kangana on tiff with Shahid Kapoor

ALSO WATCH: Koel Purie talks about Haider, the Hamlet of Kashmir

Soon, begins a tumultuous love story, filled with deceit, in the backdrop of war, and with Vishal Bhardwaj in the director's chair, it is difficult for anything to go wrong.

Here are five things you can expect from Vishal Bhardwaj's Rangoon

1. Fantastic war scenes

India has rarely had a good, well-made war film where the war scenes were shot with grace and finesse. Sure, Border (1997) is a great Indian war film but its war scenes are severely tacky and amateurish compared to Hollywood war films of the same time (Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan). With the exception of the 2004 film Lakshya, India has never had a technically well-made war film. By the looks of Rangoon's trailer, it seems like this one might just make the cut as a world-class war film.

2. World War II, Fearless Nadia, Noor Inayat Khan...history unfolding on the big screen

World War II has never been captured on the Indian big screen. So, for audiences, watching what India's role was in the greatest war of the modern era will be exciting. On top of that, the role of Kangana Ranaut, who is playing a popular dancer in Rangoon, is said to be based on A. Fearless Nadia, the actor and stuntwoman who was one of Indian cinema's first female-leads and B. Noor Inayat Khan, the spy who worked for the Allied forces during World War II. Expect a few history lessons in the middle of love, war and deceit in Rangoon.

3. Shahid Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut's sensuous chemistry

Shahid's performance in Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider followed by his loony act in the 2016 film Udta Punjab showed what a class act he is. On the other end is three-time National Award-winning actor Kangana Ranaut. In the Rangoon trailer, Shahid and Kangana share a passionate relationship, filled with a lot of kissing and...well, a love-making scene in the middle of mud and grime. We cannot wait!

4. Shahid vs Saif, over a woman!

Shahid Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan are sharing the big screen for the first time. As we all know Saif Ali Khan is married to Kareena Kapoor Khan who at one point was Shahid's girlfriend. To see the two men pitted against each other over a woman, played by Kangana Ranaut, will expectedly create some intense on-screen moments.

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5. Vishal Bhardwaj + The Haider team

Vishal Bhardwaj has employed his best from his Haider team to work on Rangoon. The music is being taken care of by Vishal himself and lyricist Gulzar. Pankaj Kumar who shot Haider (and the 2012 film Ship of Theseus) is taking care of cinematography while Aalaap Majgavkar who has been a part of several Vishal Bhardwaj productions (Haider, Talvar, Dedh Ishqiya, Ek Thi Daayan) has edited the film. If not anything, at least, rest assured, Rangoon is going to be very good-looking and very well-made!

Rangoon is scheduled to release in theatres on February 24.

--- ENDS ---
The U.S.-Canadian border crossing at the northern end of the Northway has reopened after a bomb threat earlier Friday, according to NBC 5 in Plattsburgh

The station reports the border was closed to southbound traffic on Route A-15 in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec.

The closure was reported at 10:24 a.m. Friday. It reopened about 1:30 p.m.

American officials confirmed there was a bomb threat but would not give more information about the incident except to say that it was being handled by Canadian investigators, the TV station said. Sgt. Ingrid Asselin said police received word that a menacing phone call had targeted the busy crossing.
ALBANY  Police charged dozens of reputed Albany gang members and associates Tuesday in a large-scale takedown of a violent multi-state drug ring tied to 27 shootings, three killings and two shootings at police officers.

In early morning sweeps, investigators working for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman charged 52 defendants, including alleged members of the South End-based Original Gangsta Killas and Bloods street gangs.

The bust netted a reputed Bloods member who works for the SNUG anti-violence organization, one alleged associate of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Vermont and the wife of notorious drug dealer Michael "Murder" Hoffler, who was accused of killing police informant Christopher Drabik in 2003.

It is the largest crackdown in the history of the attorney general's Organized Crime Task Force, officials said.

"Shutting this down has made our state safer," Schneiderman told reporters at a news conference Tuesday, joined by State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico, Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, Police Chief Steven Krokoff and several of the 18 guns seized in the bust. "This is one of the most violent, vicious and ambitious criminal enterprises we've ever seen."

The 261-count indictment included allegations that defendants sold large amounts of heroin, cocaine and prescription painkillers such as hydrocodone, oxycodone and Percocet. The ring dealt drugs from New York City to Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer, Warren, Greene, Orange and Rockland counties.

More Information 1) Guy Anderson, 34, Albany: 17 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges and being a major trafficker, carrying possible life sentence 2) Anthony Lugo, 37, Manhattan: 4 counts, including being a major trafficker, conspiracy and selling drugs 3) Mario Perez, 34, Troy: 66 counts, including major trafficker, conspiracy, weapon possession, drug counts 4) Michael "Jigga" Williams, 26, Albany: reputed Blood faces 26 counts, including being a major trafficker, conspiracy, drug counts 5) Haneef Washington, 32, Albany: 25 counts, including being a major trafficker, conspiracy, weapon possession and drug counts. Allegedly tied to Bloods gang. 6) Gaston Avendano-Nilo, 27, Ellenville: 4 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 7) Allen Bace, 29, Albany: reputed OGK member faces 8 counts, including conspiracy and drug sale. 8) Randy Beach, 36, Rensselaer: 2 counts, including conspiracy and drug possession 9) Raquel Brace, 23, Albany: 4 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 10) Richard Cabrera, 38, Albany: 2 counts, including drug sales 11) Richard Collier, 20, Glens Falls: 5 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 12) Jerry Cooley, 31, Albany: alleged OGK associate; 2 counts of conspiracy and drug charge 13) James Crew, 24, Troy: 7 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 14) Charles Faust, 42, Saugerties: 4 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 15) Drew Green, 34, Troy: 3 counts, incluiding conspiracy and drug charges 16) Lamont Green, 35, Albany: 1 count, conspiracy 17) Charles Guadalupe, 40, Kerhonkson: 3 counts, conspiracy and drug charge. 18) Ashanti Harris, 26, Newburgh: 2 counts, conspiracy and drug charge 19) Bethany Haynes, 27, Vermont: 3 counts, conspiracy and drug possession 20) Muslima Hoffler, 31, Troy: 5 counts, including conspiracy and drug counts 21) Phil Hollendonner, 49, Vermont: 4 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 22) Tahreen Jeanotte, 28, Albany: alleged OGK member faces 2 counts, including conspiracy and drug charge 23) Jasmine Johnson, 34, Albany: 12 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 24) Marquese Johnson, 35, Albany: reputed OGK member faces 6 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 25) Chester Jones, 34, Albany: reputed Bloods member faces 3 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 26) Elshay Jones, 26, Albany: 2 counts, including conspiracy and drug charge 27) Aleshia "Lisa" Keener, 27, Schenectady: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 28) James Keyes, 21, Albany: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 29) Brandon Langston, 32, Albany: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 30) Justin Laurel, 30, Wawarsing: 4 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 31) Terrance Lee, 22, Troy: 7 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 32) Michael Marable, 30, Albany: alleged OGK associate faces 4 counts, including drug charges 33) Kevin "Kunta" Mason, 34, Schenectady: 5 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 34) Matthew McQuain, 43, Glens Falls: 5 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 35) William Mendez, 34, the Bronx: 6 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 36) Lauren Murray, 23, Albany: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 37) Travis Nutbrown, 33, Vermont: alleged associate of Hells Angels; 7 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 38) Christopher Padelsky, 38, Troy: 2 counts, weapon possession and drug charge 39) Dayerling Paez, 24, Troy: 4 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 40) Jamel Pearson, 24, Troy; reputed OGK member faces 8 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 41) Gilbert "HB" Pilet, 25, Albany: reputed Bloods member faces 7 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 42) Jeffrey Pitts, 41, Saratoga Springs: 1 drug count 43) Franklin Russell, 39, Schenectady: 5 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 44) Jesus "Jose" Santiago, 26, Troy: 15 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 45) David Sibincich, 53, Troy: 10 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 46) Schyla Silburn, 39, Albany: 1 count of conspiracy 47) Gaelen Smiley, 38, Rensselaer: 9 counts, including conspiracy, drug charges 48) Anthony Smith, 39, Watervliet: 4 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 49) Anthony Taylor, 31, Albany: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 50) Davon Tolliver, 32, Poughkeepsie: 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 51) Richard Williams, 36, Albany: alleged OGK associate faces 3 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges 52) Christopher Zielinski, 47, East Greenbush: 13 counts, including conspiracy and drug charges See More Collapse

The ring would rent hotel rooms where they hired underlings to "bag massive quantities of drugs," said Schneiderman, who said defendants were caught on tape discussing "dividing up their territories."

More than 150 officers hit at least 60 locations in Albany, Cohoes, Troy, New York City and Bennington, Vt. The case was dubbed "Operation OGK," after the street gang. In 2009, federal prosecutors in Albany charged 25 members and associates of the "downtown"-based gang with racketeering that included wide drug-dealing and 14 shooting incidents. That followed a 2006 racketeering case against the Jungle Junkies, OGK's "uptown"-based rivals in West Hill and Arbor Hill.

One of Tuesday's defendants, reputed OGK member Jamel Pearson, 34, of Albany, known as "Melly Mel," allegedly planned to use a handgun to shoot uptown rivals to avenge the Nov. 29 murder of Richard "50 Cent" Gibbs, an OGK-linked drug dealer, in Albany. Gibbs, who had served four years in prison for selling cocaine, would have been part of Tuesday's indictment, authorities said.

Authorities said Pearson was set to get the gun from defendant Mario Perez, 34, of Troy, who was storing the weapon with another defendant, Christopher Padelsky, 38, of Troy.

Schneiderman cited thousands of hours of wiretaps in which the defendants would "openly talk about trying to get weapons to retaliate against each other." He said authorities needed to act quickly to get the defendants off the street or risk more bloodshed.

"These people were shooters  they were out shooting each other," the attorney general said. "We know that there are at least 27 confirmed shootings associated with this enterprise, two officer shootings and three fatalities among them."

Details on the shootings, other than the Gibbs killing, were not immediately disclosed.

Schneiderman said the case began with a tip to Albany police, who contacted the attorney general's task force, he said, noting the trail of smaller drug dealers led investigators to the top of the chain.

Perez had been among five defendants charged as major traffickers of narcotics, which means they could face life in prison if convicted. The other four were Anthony "Ant" Lugo, 37, of Manhattan, allegedly at the top of the drug ring; Guy Anderson, 34, of Albany, allegedly the leader of the ring in Albany; Haneef Washington, 32, of Albany, who has alleged ties to both the Bloods and OGK; and Michael "Jigga" Williams, 26, of Albany, a reputed Bloods member.

The charges for all 52 defendants included conspiracy, drug dealing and attempted drug dealing. Evidence at prosecutors' disposal includes wiretaps from an investigation that lasted more than six months and a chart detailing connections between defendants.

One defendant, Gilbert Pilet, 25, of Albany, known as "HB," works for the city-and-state-funded SNUG anti-violence program. Trinity Alliance Chief Executive Officer Harris Oberlander says Pilet had only been an outreach worker there since Monday. Trinity oversees SNUG. Pilet was charged with second-degree conspiracy and drug counts.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's good that we identified him early," said Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings. "I'm sure he would have stood out in the (scope) of things."

The bust included Muslima Hoffler, 31, of Troy, the wife of Hoffler, who was charged with second-degree conspiracy, which carries up to 25 years in prison, and Travis Nutbrown, 33, of Vermont, identified by authorities as a Hells Angels associate. Michael Hoffler is serving a 15- to 30-year sentence in state prison for drug dealing.

Another defendant in Tuesday's indictment was Jerry Cooley, who was shot in August 2007 on a porch in the South End. He had been wounded with Deontint Davis, who was critically wounded and later died.

Defendants were arraigned before Albany County Judge Stephen Herrick, with Assistant Deputy Attorney General Michael Sharpe representing Schneiderman's office.

It marks the office's second major gang case in the last 18 months. In September 2010, under then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, 41 members and associates of the Bloods were charged with a series of drug-related crimes. All have taken guilty pleas or been convicted.

The investigation, directed by Organized Crime Task Force Special Investigator Dennis Guiry, included Special Investigator William Charles, Deputy Chief Investigator Gene Black, Chief Dominick Zarrella, Albany Police Commander Anthony Ryan, Lt. Jeff Roberts, Sgts. Brian Quinn and Ed O'Leary, Detectives John Monte and James Wood; and State Police Senior Investigator Samuel Mercado and Lt. Michael Tietz.

Police from Troy and Bennington, Vt., the Rensselaer County Task Force, New York National Guard Counterdrug Task Force; and the U.S. Marshals Service also were involved.

rgavin@timesunion.com  518-434-2403  @RobertGavinTU
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I don't often roam Rensselaer County's outlying towns in search of fine dining. For one thing, it's slim pickings. Not that there's any shortage of pizza and chain takeout, or the occasional town pub. But whether it's worth a pointed drive is somewhat moot. Every town needs a spot for locals to grab a beer or take the family for dinner. I'll credit anyone brave enough to open a rural tavern even as I think twice about a miscast sushi app. Some do well, others not.

Now Saratoga County's growing residential campuses are influencing the rolling hills of Rensselaer County, and developer Edward Patanian is offering similar amenity-rich housing communities in Sand Lake and Averill Park. But what feels like a softly contained Huxleyan future in restaurant-rich Saratoga is more public service here. Westfall Station Cafe, the first commercial eatery in Patanian's new Westfall Village  "a traditional neighborhood development"  is swiftly becoming a popular meeting point.

More Information Westfall Station Cafe 13A Averill Ave. Averill Park Phone: 674-6258 Web: westfallstationcafe.com Reservations: Suggested. Walk-ins welcome. Credit cards: All major. Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 3:30 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; brunch, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner 2:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday. Parking: On-site parking lot. Disabled access: ADA accessible. Attire: Casual. Prices: Appetizers, $7.95 to $14.95; salads, $6.95 to $12.95; entrees, $11.95 to $21.95; desserts, $7; coffee and cocktails, varies. Food: (**) Popular steaks and seafood with Italian classics and some less-authentic global fare. Higher-end spin on popular bar food. Beverage: (**) Full bar, draft beer and a dozen practical, inexpensive wines from the bar. By the glass, $7 to $8; by the bottle, $25 to $48 (most under $30). Service: (**) Green, attentive, apologetic young staff. Ambiance: (**) Apartment complex clubhouse. Popular spot for area residents. Personality: (**) New American pub with family-friendly dining. Ticketed event nights, including Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 5. Overall Rating: ** See More Collapse

Westfall Station's spanking newness is everywhere. The white exterior siding and the bar's shiny wood high tops and floors bear the hallmark of an apartment-complex clubhouse. Peculiarly, the boxy dining room pairs the showroom finish with exposed industrial duct pipes, and an effort to evoke the 19th-century Van Rensselaer farmland on which it's built by pinning hayforks to walls is lipstick on a pig, even a very nice one. Upstairs and beyond are rental apartments; in the distance, half a dozen single family homes  a fraction of the condos and houses yet to come.

Staff is fresh-faced and jumpy. Our greeter looks around wildly before deciding which way to go. At 6 p.m. it's empty, but by 7 p.m. the bar is socially bustling and the dining room a third full. The teen bussers and food-runners are from next-door Averill High  a genuine plus in my mind, having worked many such jobs  but inexperience comes with the territory. Smiling, earnest kids deliver sopping wet glasses to the table; wines are the practical kind you order by varietal, and a young waitress struggles with the screw cap on a cheap Prosecco split. Inbound plates are consistently deposited in the nearest space, so we helpfully pass them round. It's camaraderie building. We're in it together.

Running bar and kitchen are industry veterans: Bar manager Victor Simeone, a 15-year fixture at the old Arlington House, once ran a cocktail school, and Executive Chef Arthur Wise, a former Mazzone catering chef, restaurant consultant and recipe developer for Shoprite Supermarkets, cuts a patriarchal figure, appearing frequently in the dining room to summon staff. The sight of his black chef's coat sends them skimming into the kitchen like pebbles across water.

The menu goes global. It makes me nervous to see steak specials squaring off against dishes from Europe to Asia Pacific, and when Wise says, "We're all over the place," he's not kidding. There's New Orleans shrimp, a schizophrenic meatball duo ("each one with its own personality") and a crazy-sounding, honey-and-walnut baklava salmon inspired by the Greek dessert.

They're out of Hawaiian poke  I'm glad, as no one wants the last serving of poke midweek  and the udon noodles accompanying pan-seared tuna are claggy, greasy strands more foreign legion than Asian. On top, tuna is clamped inside an impenetrably thick sesame girdle as effectively as a chastity belt.

Luckily, meats prove a strength. Bleatingly rare, marinated lamb lollipops easily outplay a subtly flat mint pea puree ($12.95) and, sneaking in a 2016 trend, Wise grills teres major  a flavorful, affordable everyday shoulder cut soft as tenderloin  with frites for less than $18. Paired with clams, chimichurri and chorizo (also on the menu as Spanish steamed clams, $14.95), it's part of the Argentine Surf and Turf ($21.95) with "chefs" ham-salted shaved Brussels sprouts and buttery mash for sideline support.

A small kitchen means food is generally made to order, but it's no surprise breads and pastas are Sysco fare. Unusually for a small-town cafe, Wise, a CIA graduate, boasts two more culinary grads on staff, who tackle Sunday brunch solo. The pastry chef, Katie Johnson, turns out creditable desserts. In spite of the dated martini glass and canister whipped cream, the Godiva chocolate mousse ($7) is marvelous.

Skills slip with deep-fried Carolina egg rolls ($7.95), double-barreled mortar shells packing squishy pulled pork either once frozen or in some final worldly incarnation and best without the food-service barbecue sauce. Hotly anticipated chicken-fried bacon ($7.50), "a Westfall original," takes everything good about bacon and punishes it in mushroom clouds of greasy batter. (Had it been accidentally conceived in college, it might be irresistible to the intoxicated.)

The menu's quest for mass appeal is a common flaw, but there are promising seasonal plates deserving a try: Wise's grandmother's braised short ribs thickened with immolated root vegetables, pork chops brined in apple cider and maple syrup girded with an apple-fennel sauerkraut, and Iowa beef burgers (pre-made, natch) topped with fried eggs, bacon, even those NOLA shrimp.

Westfall Station offers a kids' menu, Sunday brunch, a patio with fire-pit, event nights, $5 drafts, half pints, and not a chicken wing in sight. East of the Hudson, this neighborhood spot is looking up.

Dinner for a family of four  including four appetizers, three full entrees and one kid's main, one dessert, two beers and a glass of wine  came to $177.23 with tax and 20 percent tip.

Susie Davidson Powell is a freelance writer from East Greenbush. Follow her on Twitter, @SusieDP. To comment on this review, visit the Table Hopping blog, blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping.

Westfall Station Cafe

13A Averill Ave.

Averill Park

Phone: 674-6258

Web: westfallstationcafe.com

Reservations: Suggested. Walk-ins welcome.

Credit cards: All major.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 3:30 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; brunch, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner 2:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday.

Parking: On-site parking lot.

Disabled access: ADA accessible.

Attire: Casual.

Prices: Appetizers, $7.95 to $14.95; salads, $6.95 to $12.95; entrees, $11.95 to $21.95; desserts, $7; coffee and cocktails vary.

Food: (**) Popular steaks and seafood with Italian classics and some less-authentic global fare. Higher-end spin on popular bar food.

Beverage: (**) Full bar, draft beer and a dozen practical, inexpensive wines from the bar. By the glass, $7 to $8; by the bottle, $25 to $48 (most under $30).

Service: (**) Green, attentive, apologetic young staff.

Ambiance: (**) Apartment complex clubhouse. Popular spot for area residents.

Personality: (**) New American pub with family-friendly dining. Ticketed event nights, including Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 5.

Overall Rating:**
I had the privilege to know a visiting scholar from China. Like many from his background, he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

We shared mostly small talk at an event. I wanted to ask him a probing question without giving offense. I got my chance when he and his wife invited me to dinner.
The Rangoon trailer sees a rugged Shahid Kapoor and a suave Saif Ali Khan battling it out for the fiesty Kangana Ranaut.

Shahid Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut (L) and Saif Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut in a still from Rangoon

By India Today Web Desk: The much-awaited trailer of Shahid Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut and Saif Ali Khan-starrer Rangoon is finally out, and it does not disappoint. Vishal Bharadwaj is known to extract phenomenal performances from his actors - Saif was unforgettable as Langda Tyagi in Omkara, and Shahid's acting chops in Kaminey and Haider left everyone rivetted to their seats - and Rangoon looks no different.

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ALSO READ | Kangana on cold war with Shahid during Rangoon: I don't go to work to make friends

Kangana plays Miss Julia, a popular film actor loosely modelled on Fearless Nadia, while Saif plays a producer. The film is set in the early 1940s, around the time World War II was raging and India was determined to get its independence. In these times of struggle, Julia is sent to Burma to motivate the soldiers. It is enroute Burma that she meets Shahid Kapoor, who plays a soldier, Nawab Malik, entrusted with keping Julia safe.

What ensues is an intense love triangle, which results in the feeling between the two men that "ab hum dono mein se ek hi bach sakta hai...main ya woh."

The cinematography is astounding and complemented by the background score, transporting one back to the 1940s. Kangana is her firebrand self, and was not wrong about being the "third hero" of the film.

Rangoon is scheduled to release on February 24. WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:

--- ENDS ---
Borrisokane Players are delighted to announce their 2017 production of Micheal Ginnellys Wake in the West on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 13th/14th/15th January in the Clarke Memorial Hall, Borrisokane, with curtains at 8.30pm nightly.

Set in a small fishing village in the West of Ireland during the 1970s, this three-act comedy drama tells the story of the last wishes of Tom Healy, a local fisherman fond of the drop and the hilarious repercussions his dying wish brings for his family and friends. A sequence of events ensures a wake full of chaos and commotion!

The cast has been working hard to ensure a quality production and Borrisokane players are delighted to welcome the debut of 5 new actors to the Clarke Memorial Stage. Eddie Kennedy plays the role of Tom Healy, the deceased at the center of this wake. Playing a corpse is no easy feat and even being robbed of his most worthy possessions doesnt rattle the quality of this corpse. Toms only daughter Mary, played by Margaret Cormican, has her work cut out for her trying to orchestrate the chaos of this wake but she makes light work of the obstacles thrown her way. Damien Hough oozes with confidence as he takes on the role of Toms son Martin, just home from New York to a funeral arrangement he never expected. Laura Molly makes her first appearance on stage as the next-door neighbour and the unrequited love of Martin. She has her hands full between the wake, the antics and the return of an old flame, but she handles it all with beginners ease. Maura Kennedy ends the list of first appearances to the stage as she takes on the role of Margaret, neighbour to the Healys. Margaret finds herself assisting with more than just the wake and her quality performance sharpens the comical edge of this drama.

With first appearances also comes the return of the quality old stock of the Borrisokane Players. Following on from the success of Thy Will Be Done in 2013, Brendan Carroll, Dermot McDermott and Ciara OMeara make a welcome return for 2017s production. Brendan Carrolls experience shines through as he takes on the role of Barney, Toms drinking buddy and the local drunk, with sheer ease. The comical quality of Brendans performance carries throughout. Dermot McDermotts role as the local priest brings an air of calm and sensibility to the chaotic situation as only Dermot can do best. Ciara brings her humour and wit to the role of Rose Dawson, the elderly neighbour who causes mayhem from the moment she arrives and makes sure her antics makes this is a wake to remember! No stranger to the stage, Borrisokane Players are delighted to see the return of Paul Hough as the local doctor, the instigator of Toms dying wishes.

Borrisokane Players and the Clarke Memorial Hall would be unknown entities without the hard work and tireless effort of our chairman Gay Hackett. Gays determination and enthusiasm are evident in the casting and production of this years play and for that we are so very grateful. Gay has ensured a quality drama by enlisting the direction of Eddie Lillis. No stranger to the stage himself and making his directorial debut, Eddie has brought his own experience and comical understanding to this production. His attention to detail and delivery has ensured a performance not to be missed!

So hold onto your teeth and dont miss the wake of the year! People are advised to come early to avoid disappointment! Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 13th, 14th, 15th January. Curtains up at 8.30pm sharp, Adults 10, Children 5.
Nenagh councillors are demanding that Irish Water meets them over its plans to run a pipeline from Parteen Basin below Lough Derg to Dublin.

The councillors are not convinced that the 800m to 1.2bn project is the correct way to go about solving any issues with water that might be affecting the capital.

The call comes after a group called Fight the Pipe was set up by landowners along the proposed 170km route before Christmas following a meeting in Ardcroney.

The people affected by this pipe have a lot of questions, said Cllr Joe Hannigan.

He described the battle beween Irish Water and those against the proposal as being like David and Goliath.

Irish Water can employ consultants and the people on the ground haven't the same level of funding to see if the correct thing to do is to bring a pipe across the country to supply Mid-Ireland, he said.

We have an obligation to ask them why other options were not chosen, said the Independent councillor.

He said that many farmers did not have an issue with the pipe itself, but questioned whether it was the right thing to do.

Irish Water don't inspire confidence, said Cllr Hannigan.

He asked that the State agency be brought back to Nenagh so that questions that had not been asked at a full Tipperary County Council workshop and two public consultations in November could be asked.

He has been supported by Cllr John Carroll who highlighted the significant waste in setting up Irish Water.

He said that 40 per cent of the 330 million litres of water to be taken from the Parteen Basin daily would be wasted by the time it reached Dublin.

Would it not be advisable to identify the conservation element. They will talk about conservation but they won't do it, he said. Where is the cost / benefit analysis?

The Fianna Fail councillor believes that rural Ireland is in a worse place than before the 2016 election.

And Fine Gael's Cllr Ger Darcy said Irish Water should come back to the local councillors because they were at the coalface.

The councillor and farmer said there were questions to be asked about compaction of land, access to land, loss of income and loss of the Single Farm Payment as well as security.

He described any information given so far as sketchy, warning bits of land would become useless.

Cllr Darcy has called for a hydrologist to look at the effects of putting the pipe through the land, and pointed out that only local people could tell them the impact of the pipe on turloughs, lakes and streams.

Irish Water needs to get its act together, he declared.

rebalance ireland

Another councillor supporting the call for a fresh meeting is Cllr Michael O'Meara, who wants the agency to meet local councillors only and not the full council.

Cllr Hughie McGrath has also supported the call, but pointed out that there had to be a move at Government and EU level to rebalance Ireland and bring people to the water and not the other way round.

We have the infrastructure. The M50 is becoming a giant car park. We need to take the pressure off Dublin, said Cllr McGrath, a member of the EU's Committee of the Regions.

However, area manager Marcus O'Conor has warned that, while he will bring the councillors' request back to Irish Water, he didn't think they would agree to engage on a local level as they had met the full council.

There was a workshop in Thurles and a number of you asked questions and they did try to answer them tughtfully, he said.

Tipperary County Council has engaged its own consultants to handle the project and meet Irish Water, but their work was not complete, said Mr O'Connor.
Tipperary residents are set to take to the streets along with thousands of people from across the South East in a major new march against the downgrading of our regional hospital.

The march follows last Septembers protest when thousands braved the pouring rain and wind to highlight the lack of cardio services at University Hospital Waterford (UHW).

And organisers are predicting an even bigger turnout next Saturday, January 14, amid mounting concern across the South East at the Government's failure to deliver on promises made to region.

The march will kick off in Ballybricken in Waterford city at 2pm and will be supported by campaigners from across the region, UHW doctors, opposition parties and local trade unions.

Organisers of the march this week urged people from across the county to come out and have their voice heard on what they describe as a life and death issue for everybody living in Tipperary - and the entire region.

We are urging everyone in South East to unite again on Saturday, January 14, said Hilary ONeill of the South East Patients Advocacy Group (SEPAG).

Every extra voice makes us stronger, every extra pair of feet on the street makes it harder for this Government to ignore us. Because if we dont make our voice heard, make no mistake about it, they will continue to wield the axe at our regional hospital's services.

The protest comes amid the backdrop of a deepening political fallout that threatens the stability of the Government. Last year the controversial Herity report ruled out a second cath lab - regarded as vital to provide a proper cardio service for the South East - for the hospital.

It also rejected widespread appeals for a 24/7 cardio service at UHW and recommended the transfer of existing key services to Cork.

Hospital campaigners warned this would be a disaster for the South East and would pave the way for further cuts at the hospital.

Ms ONeill added: Even if they cut one more service, UHW could be downgraded to a mere general hospital. This would be a disaster for everyone living in the South East.

*Protesters will assemble at Ballybricken, Waterford city at 2pm on Saturday, January 14th.
A Thurles family looking to repatriate their mother who was in residential care in the UK had their Christmas wish come true this year thanks to the heroism of volunteers from Thurles Order of Malta.



Majella Lanigan had spent the last four years in a nursing home in Liverpool after suffering a stroke in 2012.

Her family had tried on several occasions to repatriate her back to Thurles; however due to high costs and red tape were unable to bring her home. This year her daughter Regina Lanigan O'Meara contacted the Thurles branch of the Order of Malta with the hope of bringing her mother home in time for Christmas.



On Monday December 12 Regina's brother Morgan, along with three volunteers, set sail for Liverpool with the ambulance unit - the first overseas relocation the branch had ever embarked upon. The team stayed overnight in Liverpool before collecting Majella from the nursing home in the ambulance the next morning and set off for the ferry once again eventually docking in Dublin port after the near 1000km round trip.



We want to thank all the volunteers who gave up their time and helped in any way to bring my mam home, Majella's son Morgan told the Tipperary Star. She's now in Padre Pio nursing home here in Thurles and we couldn't be happier. There's someone with her every day and the care she's receiving is top class, he added while also paying a special mention to his sister Regina for helping to organise the trip and coordinating with the different agencies.



Officer in Charge of Thurles Order of Malta unit Joe O'Halloran was one of the volunteers who made the journey to Liverpool, along with Irene O'Loughlin and Brenda O'Meara, all of whom took time out of their annual leave to help in the relocation process.

It was a great experience to be a part of especially when you see how happy the family were once they were reunited. To my knowledge it is the first overseas relocation the Order of Malta has ever done so of course you are apprehensive when someone has been so ill but it was a real privilege to be a part of, said Mr O'Halloran who has been a member of the local unit for 18 years.

My mother wasn't home for Christmas for the last four years so it was very special this year. The lads from the Order were just brilliant and words can't describe what this means to our family, added Morgan.







Thurles Order of Malta volunteers Joe O'Halloran and Brenda O'Meara on the boat to Liverpool
[January 05, 2017] Health Partners Plans Selected to Serve Medicaid Beneficiaries in Pennsylvania's Southeast and Lehigh/Capital Zones

Nationally recognized for its innovative approach to health care, Pennsylvania-based managed care organization Health Partners Plans (HPP) announced today that the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) has chosen to contract with HPP to provide coverage to Medicaid beneficiaries living in the state's Southeast and Lehigh/Capital Zones. The award will expand HPP's reach from Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties in the Southeast Zone to an additional 13 counties in the Lehigh/Capital Zone, more than tripling the size of its service area. The Lehigh/Capital Zone includes approximately 484,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in Adams, Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Northampton, Perry and York counties. Pending regulatory approval and successful completion of a readiness review, the three-year HealthChoices agreement is expected to begin in June 2017. "Expanding our best-in-class Medicaid services to the Lehigh/Capital Zone heralds a new era for our organization," said William S. George, president and CEO. "For more than 30 years, we have remained firmly committed to improving the health outcomes of our members in the Greater Philadelphia region. From increasing staff and expanding leadership, to building a robust network of providers and hospitals, to educating and preparing employees for the increased membersip, HPP is well-equipped to extend its award-winning, nationally-recognized plan to the Lehigh/Capital region of the Commonwealth."



DHS made its selection based on managed care organizations that were not only high performing, but also equipped to provide innovative, value-based programs with positive health outcomes for its members. HPP is the top-rated Medicaid plan for preventive care in Pennsylvania, receiving 4.5 out of 5 according to the National Committee for Quality Assurance's (NCQA) Medicaid Health Insurance Plan Ratings 2016-2017.

About Health Partners Plans Nationally recognized for its innovations in managed care, Health Partners Plans is among the top fifteen Medicaid plans in the country, one of the highest-rated in Pennsylvania and receives strong ratings for member and provider satisfaction according to the National Committee for Quality Assurance's (NCQA) Medicaid Health Insurance Plan Ratings 2016-2017. Health Partners Plans is a not-for-profit managed health care organization serving more than 274,000 members in Greater Southeastern Pennsylvania. It provides a broad range of health coverage options through Health Partners Medicare, Health Partners (Medicaid) and KidzPartners (Children's Health Insurance Program) plans. Founded more than 30 years ago, Health Partners Plans is one of the few hospital-owned health plans in the country. Learn more about how Health Partners Plans is doing it right at HealthPartnersPlans.com, twitter.com/HPPlans and facebook.com/healthpartnersplans. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006454/en/

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Hub International Acquires the Assets of Pennsylvania-Based Hubbard-Bert

Hub International Limited (Hub), a leading global insurance brokerage, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Hubbard-Bert, Inc. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Based in Erie, Pennsylvania, Hubbard-Bert specializes in employee benefits. Hubbard-Bert's leadership team of David Ciacchini, Joe Kelly and Mark Salvia will join Hub's wholly-owned affiliate, The HDH Group, Inc. (Hub HDH) and report to Tony Kocis, President, Hub HDH. Additionally, Hubbard-Bert's BAI (News - Alert) and Wealth Management and Pension Services lines of business were inclued as part of the acquisition. BAI offers full-service third-party administrator services, specializing in COBRA administration, spending accounts, dental, vision, and ACA reporting. Wealth Management and Pension Services offers retirement and financial planning services.







"Hubbard-Bert is the leading employee benefits consulting firm in Northwestern Pennsylvania and has been an innovator for many years. The well-rounded approach Hubbard-Bert provides makes them an invaluable partner to their clients. Hubbard-Bert joins Hub HDH and strengthens our presence in Western Pennsylvania and furthers our goal to be the premier employee benefits brokerage in the region," said Kocis.

About Hub's M&A Activities

Hub International Limited is committed to growing organically and through acquisitions to expand its geographic footprint and strengthen industry and product expertise. For more information on the Hub M&A experience, visit WeAreHub.com.

About Hub International

Headquartered in Chicago, IL, Hub International Limited is a leading global insurance brokerage that provides property and casualty, life and health, employee benefits, investment and risk management products and services from offices located throughout North America. For more information, please visit hubinternational.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005042/en/
[January 05, 2017] Galvanize to Host All-Star Lineup of Tech Leaders at "How to Break into Tech" Event

On January 11, 2017, Galvanize-the dynamic learning community for technology-will bring together distinguished technology leaders from local and national companies at an all-star educational and networking event. Technology game changers will share the stories of their journeys into the tech industry, and offer tips and advice about how to find a fulfilling career in technology. Galvanize will host this "How to Break Into Tech" event from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the bustling Phoenix Warehouse District at Warehouse 215, just a few doors away from the new Galvanize Campus, scheduled to open February 13, 2017 at 515 E. Grant. Phoenix Suns VP & Chief Information Officer Steve Reese will offer the keynote address, which will kick-off a panel discussion filled with technology luminaries who will share their inspiring stories and advice, and take questions from the audience. For this "Break Into Tech" event, Galvanize has harnessed the brainpower and diverse experience of CIOs, CEOs, founders and engineers from companies including PetSmart, Infusionsoft, WebPT, Coplex, Rare Labs, Picmonic, Palladium IT Advisors, SaaS (News - Alert) Industries, Integrate and more. "This is truly a killer lineup of technology superstars coming together in one place on one evening to share their invaluable career advice and to make their expertise available to guests," said Galvanize CEO Jim Deters. "This is exactly the sort of gathering of talent and brainpower that makes the Galvanize ecosystem unique. We are committed to doing everything we can to help build Phoenix's already thriving community of technology innovators and entrepreneurs. We couldn't be more grateful for the support from the community." Panel topics will include overviews like: "The Phoenix tech scene: Why it's hot and where the opportunities are." And guest-panelists will share personal reflections on, "What keeps you up at night? And what do you wish you would have known then that you know now?" Galvanize's CEO, Deters, will talk about why Galvanize is thrilled to be opening in Phoenix and how anyone with the determination and drive, the ability and aptitude, can level up their career with Galvanize's programs and community network. Before the event, which begins at 5 p.m., guests will be offered the opportunity to take hard hat tours of the future Galvanize Campus, a beautifully designed tech space in the heart of the historic Phoenix Warehouse District, a redeveloping area where creativity and entrepreneurship thrive in a collection of vintage offices, art galleries, and one of a kind venues. The campus features seven classrooms, workspace for up to 400 entrepreneurs and startups, as well as collaborative event space.







"How to Break Into Tech" Schedule: 4:30 & 5:00 Hard hat tour of Galvanize Campus, 515 E. Grant 5:00 - 6:00 Doors Open at Warehouse 215 at Bentley Projects (appetizers & bar) 6:00 - 6:20 Keynote by Steve Reese, VP & Chief Information Officer for the Phoenix Suns 6:20 - 7:15 Q&A Panel with local visionaries 7:15 - 8:00 Drinks, snacks, and ask us questions!

About Galvanize Galvanize is a dynamic tech learning community that offers education, workspace and networking for students, startups and large companies. Galvanize teaches web development, data science and data engineering to students; offers support and workspace to member companies and provides over 200 networking events across seven urban campuses throughout the nation. Galvanize campuses bring together entrepreneurs, students, investors, mentors, and great people and companies to develop the skills, mindset and networks necessary to thrive in a technology driven world. To learn more about Galvanize, visit http://galvanize.com or like us on Facebook (News - Alert): https://www.facebook.com/GalvanizeHQ or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @Galvanize. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006482/en/

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[January 05, 2017] FDA Approves Genentech's Lucentis (Ranibizumab Injection) for Myopic Choroidal Neovascularization

Genentech, a member of the Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY), announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Lucentis (ranibizumab injection) 0.5 mg for the treatment of patients with myopic choroidal neovascularization (mCNV), a complication of severe near-sightedness that can lead to blindness. Lucentis is the first FDA-approved anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy to treat mCNV in the U.S. This is the fifth FDA-approved indication for Lucentis since the medicine was launched in 2006. This approval is based on the results of the Phase III RADIANCE study, which demonstrated that treatment with Lucentis provided superior visual acuity gains in people with mCNV compared to verteporfin photodynamic therapy (vPDT). At three months, average visual acuity gains for patients treated with Lucentis were more than 12 letters, compared to 1.4 letters for those treated with vPDT. "Myopic choroidal neovascularization often strikes adults in the prime of their lives, and can lead to severe vision loss or blindness," said Sandra Horning, M.D., chief medical officer and head of Global Product Development. "With Lucentis, people with this condition now have a new FDA-approved treatment option that has been shown to provide a significant improvement in vision in a clinical study." Pathological myopia causes the eye to grow too long from front to back, resulting in nearsightedness. In mCNV, new, abnormal blood vessels grow directly into the retina. These vessels may break and leak blood or fluid into the retina, which can cause irreversible central vision loss. Symptoms of mCNV include spots of central blurred or distorted vision, a sudden worsening of central vision or difficulty distinguishing colors.1 Myopic CNV is believed to affect approximately 41,000 people in the U.S.2 and is a vision-threatening complication of pathological myopia, or severe nearsightedness.1 People with pathological myopia who are between the age of 45 and 64 are more likely to develop mCNV,2 and the condition affects more women than men.2 About the RADIANCE Study RADIANCE is a Phase III, randomized, double-masked, active-controlled study comparing the efficacy and safety of Lucentis (0.5 mg) versus verteporfin photodynamic therapy (vPDT) in 276 patients with visual impairment due to myopic choroidal neovascularization (mCNV). Patients were randomized into three treatment groups: two groups of patients randomized to Lucentis received injections guided by pre-specified retreatment criteria and the third group received treatment with vPDT. At month 3, the Lucentis groups I and II had a mean change in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) of +12.1 and +12.5 letters from baseline, respectively, demonstrating a statistically significant improvement over the vPDT group III, which had a mean BCVA change of +1.4 letters from baseline. The efficacy between groups I and II were comparable. Adverse events were similar to those seen in other Lucentis trials. About Lucentis Lucentis is a vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitor designed to bind to and inhibit VEGF-A, a protein that i believed to play a critical role in the formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis) and the hyperpermeability (leakiness) of the vessels.



Lucentis is FDA-approved for the treatment of patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD (News - Alert)), macular edema after retinal vein occlusion (RVO), diabetic macular edema (DME), diabetic retinopathy (DR) in people with DME and myopic choroidal neovascularization (mCNV). Lucentis safety and efficacy has been studied in more than 9,000 patients, across nine pivotal and 24 clinical trials. Lucentis was developed by Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. The company retains commercial rights in the U.S. and Novartis has exclusive commercial rights for the rest of the world.

Outside the U.S., Lucentis is approved in more than 110 countries to treat patients with wet AMD, for the treatment of DME, and due to macular edema secondary to both branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO), central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) and mCNV. Lucentis Important Safety Information Patients should not use Lucentis if they have an infection in or around the eye or are allergic to Lucentis or any of its ingredients. Lucentis is a prescription medication given by injection into the eye and it has side effects. Some Lucentis patients have had detached retinas and serious infections inside the eye. If the eye becomes red, sensitive to light, or painful, or if there is a change in vision, patients should call or visit an eye doctor right away. Some patients have had increased eye pressure before and within one hour of an injection. Uncommonly, Lucentis patients have had serious, sometimes fatal problems related to blood clots, such as heart attacks or strokes. Serious side effects include inflammation inside the eye and, rarely, problems related to the injection procedure such as cataracts. These side effects can make vision worse. The most common eye-related side effects are increased redness in the white of the eye, eye pain, small specks in vision and increased eye pressure. The most common non-eye-related side effects are nose and throat infections, headache, lung/airway infections, and nausea. Lucentis is for prescription use only. Patients may report side effects to the FDA at (800) FDA-1088 or http://www.fda.gov/medwatch. Patients may also report side effects to Genentech at (888) 835-2555. For additional safety information, please see Lucentis full prescribing information, available here: http://www.gene.com/download/pdf/lucentis_prescribing.pdf About Genentech in Ophthalmology Genentech's vision for ophthalmology is to bring innovative therapeutics to people with eye diseases. Currently, the company is investigating treatments for giant cell arteritis, a form of vasculitis that can lead to blindness, platforms for sustained drug delivery and is conducting Phase III clinical trials for people with geographic atrophy (GA), an advanced form of AMD. Additional focus includes using bispecific antibodies to simultaneously address multiple targets for patients with AMD and diabetic eye disease. About Genentech Access Solutions Access Solutions is part of Genentech's commitment to helping people access the Genentech medicines they are prescribed, regardless of their ability to pay. The team of in-house specialists at Access Solutions is dedicated to helping people navigate the access and reimbursement process, and to providing assistance to eligible patients in the United States who are uninsured or cannot afford the out-of-pocket costs for their medicine. To date, the team has helped more than 1.4 million patients access the medicines they need. Please contact Access Solutions (866) 4ACCESS/(866) 422-2377 or visit http://www.Genentech-Access.com for more information. About Genentech Founded 40 years ago, Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. The company, a member of the Roche Group, has headquarters in South San Francisco, California. For additional information about the company, please visit http://www.gene.com. 1 National Eye Institute. Facts About Myopia. Available at: https://nei.nih.gov/health/errors/myopia. Accessed May 19, 2016. 2 Willis J, Vitale S, et al. The Prevalence of Myopic Choroidal Neovascularization in the United States. Ophthalmology, 2016;123:1771-1782. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006494/en/

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[January 06, 2017] AR Smart Glasses HiAR Glasses Showcased at CES 2017

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China's first binocular all-in-one AR smart glasses HiAR Glasses will be showcased at CES in Las Vegas from the 5th to the 8th of January. The product was displayed at last year's Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona in November, during which it garnered the attention of AR/VR professionals worldwide. Visitors to the booth remarked that it is an impressive AR product with a set of features that are not any less than what is available with Microsoft's HoloLens. HiAR Glasses integrates the core resources of the global AR industry chain, and takes full advantage of its developer HiScene's rich experience in AR technologies. Having taken the lead in terms of appearance, performance, interaction and content, HiAR Glasses is already a leading AR product in China and is expected to become so worldwide. The world's first AR glasses based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor HiAR Glasses comes equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, one of the most advanced mobile processors currently available, as well as the Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU and new Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP, endowing the product with powerful computing and graphics processing abilities. In addition, the product comes with 4GB Dual Channel LPDDR4 memory, resulting in a faster data transmission rate and a power consumption rate that is 40% less than that of DDR3. Voice interaction with artificial intelligence + natural 3D gesture HiAR Glasses is the first AR glasses in China that enable voice interaction with artificial intelligence and natural 3D gestre operations. The voice recognition feature does not need to be awakened and is always stand by. The product supports personalized artificial intelligence-based voice services in Mandarin Chinese, and its calling interface for voice services will be fully open sourced.



For operations with natural 3D gestures in both indoor and outdoor scenarios, and to ensure efficiency and portability, HiScene, in association with two of the world's leading developers Inuitive and Heptagon, designed a depth camera module based on its own gesture recognition technology, minimizing module profile and maximizing CPU efficiency, the quality of the depth map acquisition and the ease of use for gesture operations. The most cost-effective optical solution designed for mass production

HiAR Glasses, powered by an optical projection system with free-form waveguide, provides a high-definition 3D AR visual experience, while allowing for the thinnest, high-comfort lenses. The optical projection system with free-form waveguide is the best existing AR optical solution that combines thin lenses, cost performance and capability in mass production. A highly customizable operating system for AR glasses HiAR Glasses runs on the highly customizable Android operating system and is powered by an AR engine that integrates the company's image recognition, object recognition, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) functions, among other core technologies developed in-house. In addition, the combination of a highly customized user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) helps create a more suitable operation system for AR glasses. With the aim of improving the visual experience, the product pushes the boundaries in terms of screen designs and connects the real with the virtual world by building a space-based UI. The functionality for easy interaction goes well beyond traditional click and touch, creating an holistic interactive system that integrates the gaze, intelligent voice, natural 3D gesture and object touch features. Extensive partnership HiScene, the developer of HiAR Glasses, is a startup specializing in the research and development of core AR technologies and products. Since its inception in 2012, HiScene has formed partnerships with leading global companies, including Tencent, SAP, OPPO and DJI. In 2016, HiScene, which is serving over 700 million users worldwide, provided technical support for Tencent's Rio Olympics campaign and for leading Chinese e-commerce firm Suning.com's promotion campaign launched on November 11, China's biggest shopping day of the year. The company has proven its leadership in the industry by expanding its presence in the manufacturing, medical, travel, gamer and education markets. The HiAR Glasses, developed based on HiScene's core technologies, was put into practical application within less than two months following launch. The product was selected by Hebei Normal University, one of China's leading institutions of higher learning, for the creation of an AR sand table that displays geographic information with real and virtual elements, in addition to supporting the equipment maintenance of Zoomlion, one of China's largest construction equipment makers. HiAR Glasses is a noteworthy product for the global AR industry. It provides the industry with an integrated solution by combining the company's extensive experience in developing core technologies with resources across the global AR industry chain, and, by doing so, is making a significant contribution to the growth of China's AR industry. Welcome to visit HiAR Glasses at LVCC South Hall, Booth 26926 during the CES 2017. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ar-smart-glasses-hiar-glasses-showcased-at-ces-2017-300386970.html SOURCE HiScene

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Anupam Kher writes exclusively for IndiaToday.in about his first meeting with Om Puri and his time spent today at the residence of the departed actor.

By Anupam Kher: My first encounter with him was in April 1973, in my hometown Shimla. I was in the final year of graduation, and used to both act in local plays and keenly follow theatre.

We got to know that two extremely talented young actors who had finished their stint at the National School of Drama (NSD), were coming to Shimla to perform two plays - Bhukhey Naavik (The Hungry Sailor) and Paanchwa Sawar (The Fifth Passenger).

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The two were Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri.

When I saw them acting on stage, I was mesmerised. They made acting look so simple.

SEE PICS: Vidya to Kabir Khan, Bollywood visits Om Puri's residence to pay last respects

ALSO READ: Shah Rukh to Amitabh, Bollywood mourns Om Puri

ALSO READ: Glad to work with Om Puri, says Tubelight director Kabir Khan

ALSO SEE: These rare photos of Om Puri will remind you of the man that once was

ALSO WATCH: Om Puri passes away at 66 due to heart attack

But something happened before the play which magically triggered my lifelong association with Om. I was the errand boy backstage, and was bringing samosas and chai for the actors. There was a commotion because Om's Jodhpuri coat, needed for his role, had not been packed. He was distraught.

My moment had come. I gingerly walked up to him and said, "Mere pitaji ka ek coat hai. Aap pehnengey? (My father has a coat. Will you wear it for the play?)"

"Lao," he said.

I went home, stole my father's coat from his trunk, and brought it back for Om. It fit him so well that after the play, he asked if he could keep it.

I said no. My father would kill me if I did not quietly put it back in his trunk.

Om and I would recall this episode again and again, even in our last conversation which was just four days ago.

ALSO READ: Domestic abuse to anti-Army statements, major controversies in Om Puri's life

ALSO READ: Karan Johar to Anupam Kher, Bollywood mourns Om Puri's death

ALSO READ: When Om Puri had to work in a tea shop

ALSO READ: A marriage on the rocks, a son caught in the middle and old lovers

In spite of the tumult in his personal life in the last years, Om Puri will always be remembered as one of the finest actors in India and internationally. He is a cult figure.

He was the first Indian actor to break the myth that actors had to have certain kind of look and physical features. He not only excelled in parallel cinema but did extremely well in the mainstream. He has left behind much more work in international cinema than I have or all of us put together.

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Whether it was a David Dhawan or a Steven Spielberg film, his commitment was unwavering, his performances, effortless.

He never changed as a person. Most of us change... try to impress the world. He didn't. Inside, he was always a warm, simple Punjabi man.

I once asked him how his performance looks normal when one is acting with him but on screen, it would turn electric. He said, "Personality bhi koi cheez hoti hai (there's something called personality)."

A month ago, actor Salman Khan called me from Kullu, where he was shooting for a movie with Om. "Please ask Puri saab to get into shape and not waste himself. He still has many years ahead of him," Salman told me and gave the phone to Om. I earnestly advised Om to start working on himself once he was back in Mumbai.

When I went to their house after hearing the news this morning, I found his son Ishaan quietly standing there. I told him, "Your father was one of the greatest actors and a wonderful human being."

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He looked a bit lost. "Really? You think so?"I said yes.

He suddenly hugged me and said, "Thank you for saying this."

What I particularly feel terrible about is that Om had a lonely death. He died alone, with nobody at home.

The secretary of his Versova housing society told me that Om returned past midnight last night. They had a brief, pleasant conversation. The secretary requested him to take more care of his health.

To this, almost like an eerie premonition, Om said: "Zyada se zyada kya hoga? Zindagi nahin rahegi. Mera kaam toh zinda rahega (what could happen at worst... I'll be no more... my work will live forever)."

(As told to Abhijit Majumder)

--- ENDS ---
[January 06, 2017]

BSH Appoints New Vice President for Africa

ISTANBUL, January 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Allan Geoffrey Opiyo Oyier is the new Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Africa at BSH.

Effective immediately, Mr Allan Geoffrey Opiyo Oyier has been appointed as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Sub Sahara Africa at the home appliances manufacturer BSH, reporting directly to Head of Region and CEO.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454023/BSH_Logo.jpg )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454024/Allan_Geoffrey_Opiyo_Oyier.jpg )



In his new position Mr Oyier will be directly in charge of all business operations of BSH covering the whol of Sub Sahara Africa including South Africa. He will be responsible for developing, monitoring, coordinating and advising on strategies to grow the market share and availability of the BSH brands and products in the market. He will also, develop dialogues with all third country operations regarding their business operations and strategies.







Mr Oyier has vast working experience in diverse locations across 27 countries in Africa including Director for Consumer Electronics and Home appliances with Samsung in East and Central Africa,Region Key Accounts Manager for Nestle Equatorial African region and Operations Marketing manager for Coca-Cola East and Central Africa Business unit.

BSH Head of Region Turkey, Middle East, Africa and CIS Mr. Norbert Klein said, "I am delighted to have Allan Join BSH. He will certainly add value to our business from his vast experience and local knowledge both in home appliances and fast moving consumer goods in Africa. The appointment reinforces our commitment to grow Africa using local talent and capability."

Mr Oyier is married and father of two.

With annual sales of around 12.6 billion in 2015 and more than 56,000 employees, BSH Hausgerate GmbH is one of the global leaders in the home appliances sector. BSH manufactures at around 40 factories, operates over 80 companies and has a presence in about 50 countries.

http://www.unite.com.tr

http://www.bsh.com.tr

SOURCE BSH
[January 06, 2017] Owlstone Medical Announces $11.55M USD (9.3M GBP) Fundraising

Owlstone Medical Ltd, a diagnostics company developing a breathalyzer for disease, today announced that it has successfully raised $11.55 million USD (9.3 million GBP) financing. The investment round was led by existing investors, and will be used to commercially launch the company's breath biomarker R&D services, including the opening of a new high volume clinical facility, and to fund ongoing clinical trials in lung and colon cancer screening. The funding follows the original investment of $7 million (4.9 million) that spun Owlstone Medical out in June 2016. Owlstone Medical is leveraging proprietary and proven Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS) technology in its disease breathalyzer product range. FAIMS measures volatile organic compound (VOC) metabolites in patient's breath or bodily fluids which are specific to disease. Measurement of VOC biomarkers allows non-invasive diagnosis of disease at a very early stage, to enable more effective treatment and better patient outcomes. Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical commented: "Securing this funding is further validation of our FAIMS technology and breath biopsy as a new diagnostic modality. We've made fantastic progressin our LuCID lung cancer trial, which will recruit up to 3,000 patients across 21 sites in the UK and Europe, making it the world's largest breath-based study ever undertaken for early cancer detection. The commercial launch of our R&D services will, for the first time, allow clinical and pharma partners to easily identify breath biomarkers for novel diagnostics and precision medicine applications."



Regius Professor Christofer Toumazou, advisor to Medtekwiz and Non-Executive Director of Owlstone Medical, said: "Owlstone Medical has made tremendous progress in clinical trials for the diagnosis of colon and lung cancer, which are two of the biggest cancer killers worldwide. I am delighted that with this additional investment we are a step closer to making breath biopsy a reality for patients." The potential of the technology to enable rapid detection of disease, without the need for costly, invasive medical procedures, has seen Owlstone Medical's breath sampling and analysis technology recently named Invention of the Year in the 2017 Top 50 in Digital Health Awards. Hosted by Rock Health, Fenwick & West, Goldman Sachs, and Square 1 Bank in the run up to the J.P. Morgan Conference, the accolade recognizes exceptional progress in bringing technological advancements to healthcare.

Owlstone Medical will be attending the J.P. Morgan 35th Annual Healthcare Conference, 9 - 12 January 2017 in San Francisco. To find out more about Owlstone Medical visit: www.owlstonemedical.com ENDS Notes to Editors For a high resolution image please contact [email protected] View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006104/en/

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[January 06, 2017] Chinese E-commerce Giant Suning Makes Debut Appearance at CES

LAS VEGAS , Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Suning Commerce (Suning), one of China's largest e-commerce retailers, is present for the first time when the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world's largest annual consumer technology tradeshow, throws open its doors in Las Vegas on the morning of January 5, local time. In line with the avalanche of "smart retail" and "smart home" products that are sweeping into the marketplace, this year's CES highlights the technologies that have made the advent of the smart era possible and the conveniences that these newest technologies create for users. Suning showcases zc.suning.com, IT smart home products and other novel solutions in its exhibition zone. An app created by Suning enables interconnection between the Hisense intelligent air purifier, the UCON intelligent remote controller, the Blomberg intelligent refrigerator, the Whirlpool intelligent air conditioner and PPTV televisions. Joshua Xiang, executive vice president of IT at Suning Commerce and he top executive from Suning in attendance at the show, said that the firm is in the process of creating a smart home ecosystem for users by leveraging its online retail platform and bringing together brands.



CES, the world's largest and most influential consumer electronics tradeshow, attracts many of world's top companies who attend annually. As a pioneer in China's home appliance 3C retail sector, Suning, in collaboration with several of China's home appliance manufacturers, hosts the "China Innovation" summit forum. The company also teams up with AVC and CHEARI to present awards to the many excellent companies and products that have contributed to the "China Innovation" transformation of the country's economy, as the economic giant exits its earlier "Made in China" role and executes on the "Made in China 2025" initiative. Suning attends CES for the first time, with the aim of not only showcasing its "China Innovation" line of products and solutions, but also providing a model for other Chinese brands who are preparing to enter global markets. China Information Technology Industry Federation executive secretary-general Gao Sumei said that several Chinese manufacturers attend the tradeshow where they introduce innovative Chinese consumer electronic products to the world, giving retailers and consumers worldwide an opportunity to learn more about products created in China and paving the way for other excellent Chinese home appliance manufacturers to take their rightful place on the international stage. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chinese-e-commerce-giant-suning-makes-debut-appearance-at-ces-300386979.html

SOURCE Suning Commerce

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[January 06, 2017] Online Resource Center to Assist in Treating Obesity Launches

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) has taken the lead in developing an online resource hub geared to assist physicians and other health care professionals with the latest treatment guidelines and helpful instruction on caring for patients diagnosed with obesity. The AACE Obesity Resource Center contains educational tools for AACE members and other health care professionals who care for patients with obesity in developing an individualized care plan, starting with diagnosis to treatment and management. Features of the online tool include the AACE/ACE Algorithm for the Medical Care of Patients with Obesity that has an interactive component enhancing its use by health care professionals in the medical care of patients with obesity; a comprehensive library of informational slides; guidelines for the treatment and prevention of obesity, and other resource materials. Also included is the Obesity Resource Toolkit which contains suggested information on medical office layout, resources and guidance on coding and billing. In 2013, AACE sponsored a resolution that was adopted by the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates, recognizing obesity as a disease state requiring a range of treatment interventions and strategies for prevention, and in 2016, published evidence-based Comprehensive Clinical Practice Guidelines for Medical Care of Patients with Obesity, upon which the treatment algorithm is based. "According to the CDC, more than one-third of U.S. adults have obesity that translated into an estimated annual medical cost of $147 billion in 2008," said Alan J. Garber, MD, PhD, FACE, Professor of Medicine, Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and chair of the Obesity Resource Center. "With proper treatment and management by a trained specialist such as an endocrinologist, obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer can be prevented. The development of this new Obesity Resouce Center is one way endocrinologists and other healthcare professionals can look to for resources to help in the management and treatment of patients with obesity."



"The AACE Obesity Resource Center was developed to serve as guide for AACE members and others who treat patients diagnosed with obesity and related complications," said W. Timothy Garvey, MD, FACE, Vice Chair of the Obesity Resource Center and Chair of the AACE Obesity Scientific Committee responsible for developing the guidelines. "It's a service to benefit our AACE members and their patients who suffer the complications of untreated overweight and obesity, and their widespread prevalence in the population including sleep apnea, arthritis, loss of productivity and absenteeism in the workforce, including increased disability as well as diabetes and heart disease." "As obesity prevalence continues to rise and comorbidities continue to burden our society, having a resource for physicians and other medical professionals to turn to for treatment guidelines and recommendations is invaluable," said Etie S. Moghissi, MD, FACP, FACE of Marina Del Rey, CA (News - Alert), and Vice Chair of the AACE Obesity Resource Center. "The goal of the Resource Center is to assist AACE members and others in developing an individualized treatment plan based on the available resources when treating patients with obesity."

Furthermore, the AACE Obesity Resource Center offers live conferences, symposia and online education to AACE members. The Resource Center is supported by Ethicon and Novo Nordisk. Click here to view the AACE Obesity Resource Center. About the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) represents more than 7,000 endocrinologists in the United States and abroad. AACE is the largest association of clinical endocrinologists in the world. A majority of AACE members are certified in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism and concentrate on the treatment of patients with endocrine and metabolic disorders including diabetes, thyroid disorders, osteoporosis, growth hormone deficiency, cholesterol disorders, hypertension and obesity. Visit our site at www.aace.com. About the American College of Endocrinology (ACE) The American College of Endocrinology (ACE) is the educational and scientific arm of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE). ACE is the leader in advancing the care and prevention of endocrine and metabolic disorders by: providing professional education and reliable public health information; recognizing excellence in education, research and service; promoting clinical research and defining the future of Clinical Endocrinology. For more information, please visit www.aace.com/college. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005086/en/

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[January 06, 2017] AVI-SPL, an H.I.G. Capital Portfolio Company, Completes Acquisition of VideoLink

H.I.G. Capital, LLC ("H.I.G."), a leading global private equity investment firm with $21 billion of equity capital under management, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company, AVI-SPL (News - Alert), Inc. ("AVI-SPL"), has acquired VideoLink, LLC ("VideoLink"). AVI-SPL is the global leader in enterprise grade audio visual ("AV") systems integration and collaboration solutions. VideoLink's best-in-class broadcasting and production technologies, including its patented ReadyCam video studio and EnhancedIP transmission network, will enhance AVI-SPL's leading broadcasting capabilities and bolster its unmatched collection of technology solutions essential to today's organizations. Headquartered outside Boston, VideoLink has provided broadcast quality production solutions to simplify live, on-air appearances for top cable and network television organizations worldwide since the company was founded nearly 25 years ago by Doug Weisman and Gina Chudnow. Deploying the same high-quality, easy-to-use technology, VideoLink is a trusted partner for Fortune 500 and enterprise companies, as well as institutions seeking a wide variety of video services to achieve their marketing and communications goals. With a rising number of millennial workers triggering digital workplace transformation worldwide, AVI-SPL's one-stop-shop provides top technology solutions to support the vast needs of its customers. The acquisition will expand AVI-SPL's leading enterprise video platforms and continues its enrichment of technology solutions offerings. "Recognizing the growing demand for video among global enterprise companies and institutions, strengthening our leading broadcast capabilities to further support our customers' workplace transformation needs became a top priority," said AVI-SPL CEO John Zettel. "We are thrilled to combine AVI-SPL's and VideoLink's best-in-class broadcasting technology, and bring high-quality video and production to our customers." "Combining with AVI-SPL brings tremendous benefits to our customers and our employees, and will rapidly accelerate growth for VideoLink. Our products and services are highly complementary, and we are excited to now have the access to the resources and market presence that AVI-SPL has buit," said Richard Silton, President and CEO of VideoLink." Silton has joined AVI-SPL and will continue to lead the VideoLink team.



Doug Weisman, Founder of VideoLink commented, "Gina (Chudnow) and I are excited to see this new partnership grow and further enhance the business. We are so grateful for the dedication and creativity of all VideoLink employees; there is no doubt that combining with AVI-SPL provides tremendous growth potential for all parties involved, including our customers." Todd Ofenloch, Managing Director at H.I.G. Capital, said, "We look forward to working with the VideoLink team and building upon their work to make AVI-SPL the undisputed leader in the fast-growing video production and broadcast markets." Richard Stokes, Managing Director at H.I.G. Capital added, "We are excited to support the VideoLink transaction and continue AVI-SPL's strategy of creating the leading global service and solutions provider in the Audio Visual and Video Conferencing market."

About AVI-SPL AVI-SPL designs, builds, integrates, and supports systems and environments that enable communication and collaboration. AVI-SPL has highly trained and certified system engineers in offices throughout the United States, Canada, and EMEA in addition to an international network of solution providers in 30 countries. Visit www.avispl.com for more information. About VideoLink VideoLink provides clients a full suite of video production services. From video strategy consulting to cost-effective video distribution, they help clients use video strategically to create better outcomes. As a strategic video marketing partner, VideoLink uncovers new ways to use video communication and help produce flawless video projects - from live TV and live video web broadcasts to creative video presentations, satellite media tours, and highly-effective corporate communications. About H.I.G. Capital H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with $21 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogota, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/ value-added approach: 1. H.I.G.'s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses. 2. H.I.G.'s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance. 3. H.I.G.'s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices. Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 200 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com. * Based on total capital commitments managed by H.I.G. Capital and affiliates. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005024/en/

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[January 06, 2017] Seagull Scientific Named Best Channel Vendor for Record Ninth Year

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The readers of Business Solutions Magazine have recognized Seagull Scientific, manufacturer of BarTender software, as a "Best Channel Vendor" for the ninth year in a row. The magazine's subscribers cited Product Features and Product Reliability as Seagull's top two areas of strength in the category of Labeling. "We are proud that our reseller partners have honored us for the ninth straight year, and that Seagull has been the only barcode label software company to be recognized for the past two years," said Harold Boe, President and CEO of Seagull Scientific. "The strength of our channel relationships has been a vital part of our continuing success, and we look forward to deepening those relationships in the coming year." Business Solutions conducts its annual surey in partnership with Penn State University, and does not consider vendor advertising in the magazine as a factor in the results. The full results and methodology were published in the January 2017 issue.



BarTender software by Seagull Scientific enables organizations around the world to improve safety, security, efficiency and compliance by creating and automating labels, barcodes, RFID tags, plastic cards and more. Hundreds of thousands of companies in manufacturing, chemicals, healthcare, food and beverage, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, supply chain/logistics and other industries trust BarTender with the labeling and marking processes that keep their businesses running. With corporate headquarters and software development in Bellevue, Washington, USA, and branch offices in Madrid, Taipei and Tokyo, BarTender is available in more than 150 countries through a global network of local partners. Learn more at www.seagullscientific.com This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/seagull-scientific-named-best-channel-vendor-for-record-ninth-year-300386900.html SOURCE Seagull Scientific

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[January 06, 2017] Bristol-Myers Squibb and GeneCentric Diagnostics Announce Exploratory Biomarker Research Collaboration

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) and GeneCentric Diagnostics, Inc. today announced a biomarker research collaboration to explore whether the application of GeneCentric's Cancer Subtype Platform (CSP (News - Alert)) might be able to identify translational biomarkers for Opdivo (nivolumab), which may help inform future clinical trials. Additionally, GeneCentric announced it has secured equity funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb that will support the clinical development of GeneCentric's CSP and build-out of GeneCentric's new laboratory in Research Triangle Park. CSP, GeneCentric's proprietary core technology, identifies biologic subtypes of cancer through an integrated analysis of tumor genomics. Cancer subtypes can support rational clinical trial design, as biomarkers to identify patient cohorts optimally suited for certain therapeutic compounds, and as companion diagnostics. "We are very excited to have Bristol-Myers Squibb as both a collaboration partner and an investor in GeneCentric," said Myla Lai-Goldman, M.D., CEO of GeneCentric. "Bristol-Myers Squibb is an industry leader in oncology, and we look forward to engaging with them to advance research that may benefit patient prognosis." "GeneCentric's innovative approach to cancer biomarkers offers an opportunity to accelerate translational and exploratory biomarker research, with the potential to optimize assays that can better inform decisions about patient care and treatments," said Fouad Namouni, M.D., head of Development, Oncology, Bristol-Myers Squibb. "We are very pleased to support GeneCentric's long-term goals as a company and to explore the application of its technology towards more targeted approaches to help patients." Bristol-Myers Squibb & Immuno-Oncology: Advancing Oncology Research At Bristol-Myers Squibb, patients are at the center of everything we do. Our vision for the future of cancer care is focused on researching and developing transformational Immuno-Oncology (I-O) medicines that will raise survival expectations in hard-to-treat cancers and will change the way patients live with cancer. We are leading the scientific understanding of I-O through our extensive portfolio of investigational and approved agents, including the first combination of two I-O agents in metastatic melanoma, and our differentiated clinical development program, which is studying broad patient populations across more than 20 types of cancers with 11 clinical-stage molecules designed to target different immune system pathways. Our deep expertise and innovative clinical trial designs uniquely position us to advance the science of combinations across multiple tumors and potentially deliver the next wave of I-O combination regimens with a sense of urgency. We also continue to pioneer research that will help facilitate a deeper understanding of the role of immune biomarkers and inform which patients will benefit most from I-O therapies. We understand making the promise of I-O a reality for the many patients who may benefit from these therapies requires not only innovation on our part but also close collaboration with leading experts in the field. Our partnerships with academia, government, advocacy and biotech companies support our collective goal of providing new treatment options to advance the standards of clinical practice. About Opdivo Opdivo is a programmed death-1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitor that is designed to uniquely harness the body's own immune system to help restore anti-tumor immune response. By harnessing the body's own immune system to fight cancer, Opdivo has become an important treatment option across multiple cancers. Opdivo's leading global development program is based on Bristol-Myers Squibb's scientific expertise in the field of Immuno-Oncology and includes a broad range of clinical trials across all phases, including Phase 3, in a variety of tumor types. To date, the Opdivo clinical development program has enrolled more than 25,000 patients. The Opdivo trials have contributed to gaining a deeper understanding of the potential role of biomarkers in patient care, particularly regarding how patients may benefit from Opdivo across the continuum of PD-L1 expression. In July 2014, Opdivo was the first PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world. Opdivo is currently approved in more than 58 countries, including the United States, the European Union and Japan. In October 2015, the company's Opdivo and Yervoy combination regimen was the first Immuno-Oncology combination to receive regulatory approval for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and is currently approved in more than 51 countries, including the United States and the European Union. INDICATIONS OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma. OPDIVO (nivolumab), in combination with YERVOY (ipilimumab), is indicated for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations should have disease progression on FDA-approved therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving OPDIVO. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) that has relapsed or progressed after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and post-transplantation brentuximab vedotin. This indication is the approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) with disease progression on or after platinum-based therapy. Please refer to the end of the Important Safety Information for a brief description of the patient populations studied in the Checkmate trials. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION WARNING: IMMUNE-MEDIATED ADVERSE REACTIONS YERVOY can result in severe and fatal immune-mediated adverse reactions. These immune-mediated reactions may involve any organ system; however, the most common severe immune-mediated adverse reactions are enterocolitis, hepatitis, dermatitis (including toxic epidermal necrolysis), neuropathy, and endocrinopathy. The majority of these immune-mediated reactions initially manifested during treatment; however, a minority occurred weeks to months after discontinuation of YERVOY. Assess patients for signs and symptoms of enterocolitis, dermatitis, neuropathy, and endocrinopathy and evaluate clinical chemistries including liver function tests (LFTs), adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) level, and thyroid function tests at baseline and before each dose. Permanently discontinue YERVOY and initiate systemic high-dose corticosteroid therapy for severe immune-mediated reactions. Immune-Mediated Pneumonitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated pneumonitis. Fatal cases have been reported. Monitor patients for signs with radiographic imaging and for symptoms of pneumonitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or more severe pneumonitis. Permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 and withhold until resolution for Grade 2. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, fatal cases of immune-mediated pneumonitis have occurred. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 3.1% (61/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 6% (25/407) of patients. In Checkmate 205 and 039, pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 4.9% (13/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 3.4% (9/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 2 (n=8). Immune-Mediated Colitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated colitis. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of colitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 (of more than 5 days duration), 3, or 4 colitis. Withhold OPDIVO monotherapy for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 or recurrent colitis upon re-initiation of OPDIVO. When administred with YERVOY, withhold OPDIVO and YERVOY for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 or recurrent colitis. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated colitis occurred in 2.9% (58/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, immune-mediated colitis occurred in 26% (107/407) of patients including three fatal cases.



In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal (diarrhea of =7 stools above baseline, fever, ileus, peritoneal signs; Grade 3-5) immune-mediated enterocolitis occurred in 34 (7%) patients. Across all YERVOY-treated patients in that study (n=511), 5 (1%) developed intestinal perforation, 4 (0.8%) died as a result of complications, and 26 (5%) were hospitalized for severe enterocolitis. Immune-Mediated Hepatitis

OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated hepatitis. Monitor patients for abnormal liver tests prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater transaminase elevations. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 immune-mediated hepatitis. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 1.8% (35/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 13% (51/407) of patients. In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal hepatotoxicity (AST or ALT elevations >5x the ULN or total bilirubin elevations >3x the ULN; Grade 3-5) occurred in 8 (2%) patients, with fatal hepatic failure in 0.2% and hospitalization in 0.4%. Immune-Mediated Neuropathies In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, 1 case of fatal Guillain-Barre syndrome and 1 case of severe (Grade 3) peripheral motor neuropathy were reported. Immune-Mediated Endocrinopathies OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated hypophysitis, immune-mediated adrenal insufficiency, autoimmune thyroid disorders, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of hypophysitis, signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency, thyroid function prior to and periodically during treatment, and hyperglycemia. Administer hormone replacement as clinically indicated and corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater hypophysitis. Withhold for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hypophysitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Administer hormone-replacement therapy for hypothyroidism. Initiate medical management for control of hyperthyroidism. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hyperglycemia. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, hypophysitis occurred in 0.6% (12/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, hypophysitis occurred in 9% (36/407) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 1% (20/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 5% (21/407) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis resulting in hypothyroidism occurred in 9% (171/1994) of patients. Hyperthyroidism occurred in 2.7% (54/1994) of patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis resulting in hypothyroidism occurred in 22% (89/407) of patients. Hyperthyroidism occurred in 8% (34/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, diabetes occurred in 0.9% (17/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, diabetes occurred in 1.5% (6/407) of patients. In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe to life-threatening immune-mediated endocrinopathies (requiring hospitalization, urgent medical intervention, or interfering with activities of daily living; Grade 3-4) occurred in 9 (1.8%) patients. All 9 patients had hypopituitarism, and some had additional concomitant endocrinopathies such as adrenal insufficiency, hypogonadism, and hypothyroidism. 6 of the 9 patients were hospitalized for severe endocrinopathies. Immune-Mediated Nephritis and Renal Dysfunction OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated nephritis. Monitor patients for elevated serum creatinine prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grades 2-4 increased serum creatinine. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 increased serum creatinine. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 1.2% (23/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 2.2% (9/407) of patients. Immune-Mediated Skin Adverse Reactions and Dermatitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated rash, including Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), some cases with fatal outcome. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 rash. Withhold for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 rash. For symptoms or signs of SJS or TEN, withhold OPDIVO and refer the patient for specialized care for assessment and treatment; if confirmed, permanently discontinue. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated rash occurred in 9% (171/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, immune-mediated rash occurred in 22.6% (92/407) of patients. In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal immune-mediated dermatitis (eg, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, or rash complicated by full thickness dermal ulceration, or necrotic, bullous, or hemorrhagic manifestations; Grade 3-5) occurred in 13 (2.5%) patients. 1 (0.2%) patient died as a result of toxic epidermal necrolysis. 1 additional patient required hospitalization for severe dermatitis. Immune-Mediated Encephalitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated encephalitis. Evaluation of patients with neurologic symptoms may include, but not be limited to, consultation with a neurologist, brain MRI, and lumbar puncture. Withhold OPDIVO in patients with new-onset moderate to severe neurologic signs or symptoms and evaluate to rule out other causes. If other etiologies are ruled out, administer corticosteroids and permanently discontinue OPDIVO for immune-mediated encephalitis. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, encephalitis occurred in 0.2% (3/1994) of patients. Fatal limbic encephalitis occurred in one patient after 7.2 months of exposure despite discontinuation of OPDIVO and administration of corticosteroids. Encephalitis occurred in one patient receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY (0.2%) after 1.7 months of exposure. Other Immune-Mediated Adverse Reactions Based on the severity of adverse reaction, permanently discontinue or withhold treatment, administer high-dose corticosteroids, and, if appropriate, initiate hormone-replacement therapy. Across clinical trials of OPDIVO the following clinically significant immune-mediated adverse reactions occurred in <1.0% of patients receiving OPDIVO: uveitis, iritis, pancreatitis, facial and abducens nerve paresis, demyelination, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune neuropathy, Guillain-Barre syndrome, hypopituitarism, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, gastritis, duodenitis, sarcoidosis, histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis (Kikuchi lymphadenitis), myositis, myocarditis, rhabdomyolysis, motor dysfunction, vasculitis, and myasthenic syndrome. Infusion Reactions OPDIVO can cause severe infusion reactions, which have been reported in <1.0% of patients in clinical trials. Discontinue OPDIVO in patients with Grade 3 or 4 infusion reactions. Interrupt or slow the rate of infusion in patients with Grade 1 or 2. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, infusion-related reactions occurred in 6.4% (127/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY, infusion-related reactions occurred in 2.5% (10/407) of patients. Complications of Allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO Complications, including fatal events, occurred in patients who received allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO. Outcomes were evaluated in 17 patients from Checkmate 205 and 039, who underwent allogeneic HSCT after discontinuing OPDIVO (15 with reduced-intensity conditioning, 2 with myeloablative conditioning). Thirty-five percent (6/17) of patients died from complications of allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO. Five deaths occurred in the setting of severe or refractory GVHD. Grade 3 or higher acute GVHD was reported in 29% (5/17) of patients. Hyperacute GVHD was reported in 20% (n=2) of patients. A steroid-requiring febrile syndrome, without an identified infectious cause, was reported in 35% (n=6) of patients. Two cases of encephalitis were reported: Grade 3 (n=1) lymphocytic encephalitis without an identified infectious cause, and Grade 3 (n=1) suspected viral encephalitis. Hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD) occurred in one patient, who received reduced-intensity conditioned allogeneic HSCT and died of GVHD and multi-organ failure. Other cases of hepatic VOD after reduced-intensity conditioned allogeneic HSCT have also been reported in patients with lymphoma who received a PD-1 receptor blocking antibody before transplantation. Cases of fatal hyperacute GVHD have also been reported. These complications may occur despite intervening therapy between PD-1 blockade and allogeneic HSCT. Follow patients closely for early evidence of transplant-related complications such as hyperacute GVHD, severe (Grade 3 to 4) acute GVHD, steroid-requiring febrile syndrome, hepatic VOD, and other immune-mediated adverse reactions, and intervene promptly. Embryo-Fetal Toxicity Based on their mechanisms of action, OPDIVO and YERVOY can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with an OPDIVO- or YERVOY- containing regimen and for at least 5 months after the last dose of OPDIVO. Lactation It is not known whether OPDIVO or YERVOY is present in human milk. Because many drugs, including antibodies, are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from an OPDIVO-containing regimen, advise women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment. Advise women to discontinue nursing during treatment with YERVOY and for 3 months following the final dose. Serious Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 037, serious adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO (n=268). Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 42% of patients receiving OPDIVO . The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse drug reactions reported in 2% to <5% of patients receiving OPDIVO were abdominal pain, hyponatremia, increased aspartate aminotransferase, and increased lipase. In Checkmate 066, serious adverse reactions occurred in 36% of patients receiving OPDIVO (n=206). Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions reported in =2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were gamma-glutamyltransferase increase (3.9%) and diarrhea (3.4%). In Checkmate 067, serious adverse reactions (73% and 37%), adverse reactions leading to permanent discontinuation (43% and 14%) or to dosing delays (55% and 28%), and Grade 3 or 4 adverse reactions (72% and 44%) all occurred more frequently in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm (n=313) relative to the OPDIVO arm (n=313). The most frequent (=10%) serious adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm and the OPDIVO arm, respectively, were diarrhea (13% and 2.6%), colitis (10% and 1.6%), and pyrexia (10% and 0.6%). In Checkmate 017 and 057, serious adverse reactions occurred in 46% of patients receiving OPDIVO (n=418). The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in at least 2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, dyspnea, pyrexia, pleural effusion, pneumonitis, and respiratory failure. In Checkmate 025, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO (n=406). The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in =2% of patients were acute kidney injury, pleural effusion, pneumonia, diarrhea, and hypercalcemia. In Checkmate 205 and 039, among all patients (safety population [n=263]), adverse reactions leading to discontinuation (4.2%) or to dosing delays (23%) occurred. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in =1% of patients were infusion-related reaction, pneumonia, pleural effusion, pyrexia, rash and pneumonitis. Ten patients died from causes other than disease progression, including 6 who died from complications of allogeneic HSCT. Serious adverse reactions occurred in 21% of patients in the safety population (n=263) and 27% of patients in the subset of patients evaluated for efficacy (efficacy population [n=95]). In Checkmate 141, serious adverse reactions occurred in 49% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in at least 2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were pneumonia, dyspnea, respiratory failure, respiratory tract infections, and sepsis. Common Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 037, the most common adverse reaction (=20%) reported with OPDIVO (n=268) was rash (21%). In Checkmate 066, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) reported with OPDIVO (n=206) vs dacarbazine (n=205) were fatigue (49% vs 39%), musculoskeletal pain (32% vs 25%), rash (28% vs 12%), and pruritus (23% vs 12%). In Checkmate 067, the most common (=20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm (n=313) were fatigue (59%), rash (53%), diarrhea (52%), nausea (40%), pyrexia (37%), vomiting (28%), and dyspnea (20%). The most common (=20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO (n=313) arm were fatigue (53%), rash (40%), diarrhea (31%), and nausea (28%). In Checkmate 017 and 057, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) in patients receiving OPDIVO (n=418) were fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, cough, dyspnea, and decreased appetite. In Checkmate 025, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) reported in patients receiving OPDIVO (n=406) vs everolimus (n=397) were asthenic conditions (56% vs 57%), cough (34% vs 38%), nausea (28% vs 29%), rash (28% vs 36%), dyspnea (27% vs 31%), diarrhea (25% vs 32%), constipation (23% vs 18%), decreased appetite (23% vs 30%), back pain (21% vs 16%), and arthralgia (20% vs 14%). In Checkmate 205 and 039, among all patients (safety population [n=263]) and the subset of patients in the efficacy population (n=95), respectively, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) were fatigue (32% and 43%), upper respiratory tract infection (28% and 48%), pyrexia (24% and 35%), diarrhea (23% and 30%), and cough (22% and 35%). In the subset of patients in the efficacy population (n=95), the most common adverse reactions also included rash (31%), musculoskeletal pain (27%), pruritus (25%), nausea (23%), arthralgia (21%), and peripheral neuropathy (21%). In Checkmate 141, the most common adverse reactions (=10%) in patients receiving OPDIVO were cough and dyspnea at a higher incidence than investigator's choice. In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, the most common adverse reactions (=5%) in patients who received YERVOY at 3 mg/kg were fatigue (41%), diarrhea (32%), pruritus (31%), rash (29%), and colitis (8%). CHECKMATE Trials and Patient Populations Checkmate 067 - advanced melanoma alone or in combination with YERVOY; Checkmate 037 and 066 - advanced melanoma; Checkmate 017 - squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); Checkmate 057 - non-squamous NSCLC; Checkmate 025 - renal cell carcinoma; Checkmate 205/039 - classical Hodgkin lymphoma; Checkmate 141 - squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information, including Boxed WARNING regarding immune-mediated adverse reactions, for YERVOY. Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information for OPDIVO. About the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Collaboration In 2011, through a collaboration agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Ono), Bristol-Myers Squibb expanded its territorial rights to develop and commercialize Opdivo globally except in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where Ono had retained all rights to the compound at the time. On July 23, 2014, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono further expanded the companies' strategic collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies - as single agents and combination regimens - for patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. About Bristol-Myers Squibb Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb, visit us at BMS.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. About GeneCentric GeneCentric Diagnostics, Inc. is a privately-held precision medicine company that is redefining the advanced classification of cancers through the development and commercialization of its proprietary Cancer Subtype Platform (CSP). By defining subtypes of cancer, CSP can better enable drug developers to predict drug response. GeneCentric was founded in 2011 and is based in Durham, NC. In addition to Bristol-Myers Squibb, its investors include Hatteras Venture Partners and Laboratory Corporation of America. For more information, please visit www.genecentric.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005072/en/

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[January 06, 2017] XPay Cash Wallet Conferred With the 'Skoch Order-of-Merit'

KOCHI, India, January 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Excellence in the innovation of XPay Cash Wallet has moulded UAE Exchange India to pave its way towards the glory of numerous glittering awards. XPay Cash Wallet has recently achieved India's highest independent civilian honour, Skoch New Economy Award 2016, during the 46th Skoch Summit on 15th December, 2016 at Constitution Club of India, New Delhi. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454599/PRNE_UAE_Skotch_photo.jpg )

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161121/441477LOGO )

The triumphant endeavour made by UAE Exchange India on its advanced initiative in XPay Cash Wallet, a mobile wallet with multiple user-friendly features has gained wide acceptance and massive appreciation.



Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Mr. Jos Babu has received 'Skoch Order-of-Merit' for XPay Cash Wallet which was rated as the 3rd best among the top 100 nominated projects. Awards were given by the most professional and renowned panel of experts and was adorned by an array of dignitaries including several Union and State Ministers in addition to CEOs, industry captions, economists, consultants and academia. Gem of appreciation from the most professional and renowned panel of experts has made this award recognize the company's brands that are set to blaze new benchmarks in the industry in keeping with quality standards.

About UAE Exchange UAE Exchange India is one of the pioneers of financial services renowned for its penchant quality and optimized service trends, creating a niche for itself in the industry. Connecting people and creating progress with the finest of quality is the vision of the company that has an extensive reach of 372 branches serving a population of 1.25 million people under the proficient support of 3375 employees. The company has been instrumental in providing cost-effective services in foreign exchange, money transfer, air ticketing and tours, loans, XPay Cash Wallet, insurance and share trading.

Media Contact:

Reeba V K

[email protected]

+91-9656004356

Public Relations

UAE Exchange India



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[January 06, 2017] Two Harbors Investment Corp. Secures Competitive Affordable Housing Program Grant for Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

Two Harbors Investment Corp. (NYSE: TWO), a leading hybrid mortgage real estate investment trust, today announced that it has secured a $410,000 Competitive Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines (FHLB Des Moines) for Twin (News - Alert) Cities Habitat for Humanity. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization focused on providing affordable housing and improving the quality of life for low-income families in the Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota metro region. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity will use the funds to invest in 41 new construction housing units over the next year allowing qualifying families earning up to 50% of area median income, safe and affordable housing. "With our continued commitment to the community and through our sponsorship, we are pleased to announce that Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity is a 2016 FHLB Des Moines AHP grant recipient. This grant will help Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity provide affordable single family housing for families in the Twin Cities metro region," said Thomas Siering, Two Harbors' President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are thrilled that through our association with the FHLB, we were able to assist in this process and we're proud of our association with all of the charitable organizations we support. We extend our warmest congratulations to Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity." "In an increasingly challenging funding environment for public affordable housing projects, Two Harbors, through its subsidiary TH Insurance Holdings Company, has stepped up in a big way with is Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity/ FHLB partnership," said Susan Haigh, President and Chief Executive Officer of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. "Partners like Two Harbors inspire our mission to eliminate poverty housing from the Twin Cities area and to make decent, affordable shelter for all people a matter of conscience."



AHP - FHLB Des Moines

As a member of the FHLB Des Moines, TH Insurance Holdings Company, LLC, a Two Harbors subsidiary, was eligible to support Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity in its application for a 2016 AHP grant to make affordable housing available in Minneapolis. The AHP is one of the largest sources of private sector grants for housing and community development in the nation. This competitive grant program encourages member financial institutions to partner with local housing providers (sponsors) to secure funds for the purchase, construction or rehabilitation of affordable owner-occupied or rental housing units. Projects serve low-to-moderate income households, and may include households with special needs including seniors, persons with disabilities and the homeless. FHLB Des Moines returns 10% of its net income annual to communities in its district through the AHP. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

Two Harbors is a proud supporter of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization committed to building the quality of life, health and prosperity for families of the 7-county metro region through the production and preservation of homeownership. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity's mission is to eliminate poverty housing from the Twin Cities and to make decent, affordable shelter for all people a matter of conscience. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity is an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, which since 1976 has helped build and repair more than 800,000 homes around the world, providing more than 4 million people a safe, decent, and affordable home.

Two Harbors Investment Corp.

Two Harbors Investment Corp., a Maryland corporation, is a real estate investment trust that invests in residential mortgage-backed securities, mortgage servicing rights, commercial real estate and other financial assets. Two Harbors is headquartered in New York, New York, and is externally managed and advised by PRCM Advisers LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pine River Capital Management L.P. Additional information is available at www.twoharborsinvestment.com. Additional Information

Stockholders of Two Harbors and other interested persons may find additional information regarding the company at the Securities and Exchange Commission's Internet site at www.sec.gov or by directing requests to: Two Harbors Investment Corp., 590 Madison Avenue, 36th floor, New York, NY 10022, telephone 612-629-2500. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005351/en/

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[January 06, 2017] Telit to roll out LTE Category M1 module in the U.S. with Verizon and Qualcomm

Telit, a global enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that it is collaborating with Verizon as a key supplier of IoT modules for the carrier's LTE (News - Alert) Category M1 (LTE-M1) service. In cooperation with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Telit is delivering IoT modules in full alignment with Verizon's (News - Alert) features and timing requirements. IoT integrators and providers in the U.S. and other regions looking to export to North America will be able to apply knowledge and experience designing for the popular form xE910 factor to take advantage of Verizon's nationwide LTE-M1 coverage planned to occur by the end of Q1 2017. The ME910C1-NV, is a LTE-CAT M1 IoT module based on Qualcomm (News - Alert) Technologies' MDM9206 modem. Qualcomm Technologies' CAT M1 products are fundamental to the rollout planned by Verizon, and Telit is working closely with both companies to ensure the timely availability of its module. Because the module is a member of Telit's best-selling xE910 family, it can be applied as a drop-in replacement in existing devices based on family models for 2G, 3G and even higher categories of LTE. The ME910C1-NV natively supports Verizon's ThingSpace platform, the carrier's Web-based developer platform for IoT.



"We are excited to work with both Telit and Verizon to support the rollout of LTE Category M1 for IoT services," said Jeffery Torrance, vice president of business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The MDM9206 modem brings many enhancements and optimizations to LTE that can help reduce IoT device complexity, supports multi-year battery life and allows IoT products to function in a diverse set of operator deployments worldwide. We look forward to working with Telit and Verizon to help deliver and grow exciting new IoT services."

"There is an enormous sense of urgency in the IoT ecosystem to make LTE-M1 commercially available everywhere, particularly in North America," said Manish Watwani, Vice President Global Product Marketing, Telit. "A collaboration like this one, among partners that are leaders in their respective spans of the IoT value chain, is a tried-and-true strategy to achieve results the market expects and demands from IoT solution providers. By leveraging the global popularity of the xE910 form factor, the flexibility and robustness of the Qualcomm Technologies' modems powering the module and the coverage and reliability of Verizon's 4G LTE nationwide network, this strategic partnership is delivering some of the shortest paths to the market for the much anticipated arrival of LTE-M1 in the U.S." For more information about the xE910 family of wireless modules, visit http://www.telit.com/cellular/. About Telit

Telit (AIM: TCM), is a global leader in Internet of Things (IoT) enablement. The company offers the industry's broadest portfolio of integrated products and services for end-to-end IoT deployments - including cellular communication modules in all technologies, GNSS, short-to-long range wireless modules, IoT connectivity plans and IoT platform services. Through the IoT Portal, Telit makes IoT onboarding easy, reduces risk, time to market, complexity and costs for asset tracking, remote monitoring and control, telematics, industrial automation and others, across many industries and vertical markets worldwide. Copyright  2017 Telit Communications (News - Alert) PLC. All rights reserved. Telit and all associated logos are trademarks of Telit Communications PLC in the United States and other countries. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Qualcomm MDM is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Qualcomm is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005367/en/

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Veteran actor Om Puri breathed his last today at the age of 66 due to a heart attack. His funeral is scheduled to begin at 6pm today.

By India Today Web Desk: Veteran actor Om Puri passed away today morning due to a severe heart attack. He was 66 at the time of his death.

In a career spanning over four decades, the actor won two National Awards along with the Padma Shri - the highest honour for civilians in India.

Some of Om Puri's best work include Aakrosh, Ardh Satya, Paar, Mirch Masala, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Drohkaal, Gupt and East is East.

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Despite having a career with some great films, Om Puri was often the eye of the storm because of several controversies, for example, his public dispute with wife Nandita and his recent anti-Indian Army comments last year.

Om Puri's funeral is scheduled to begin at 6pm today.

Actor Vidya Balan and filmmaker Shyam Benegal were spotted at Om Puri's residence in Mumbai, minutes ago.

Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah

Kabir Khan is at Om Puri's residence.

Photo: Yogen Shah

So, is Javed Akhtar.

Photo: Yogen Shah

--- ENDS ---
[January 06, 2017] Reverend Al Sharpton Speaks Out On Behalf Of The Word Network Against Comcast

DETROIT, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Rev. Al Sharpton speaks out against Comcast for their decision to decrease distribution of The Word Network, the largest African American religious network in the world reaching 3 billion people worldwide. Comcast is following the form not the substance of the conditions of the merger deal with NBC Universal. The Memorandum of Understanding, which was signed by NAACP, National Urban League and the National Action Network, provided for more African American programming, not less. The Word Network has the support of the AfricanAmerican community and all the religious and civil rights leaders throughout the world.



The Word Network will also review all its legal options with the FCC including looking at their 28 full power TV stations, reviewing their licenses for lack of candor and being socially responsible to the African American community. We will also have them review their egregious behavior of retransmission agreements to affiliates. We will reach out to the municipalities where they have a charter to disclose our findings of their treatment to the African American community and work with the local church groups in these communities to revoke their charters if necessary. MEDIA CONTACT: MORT MEISNER ASSOCIATES, MORT MEISNER, 248-545-2222

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reverend-al-sharpton-speaks-out-on-behalf-of-the-word-network-against-comcast-300387070.html SOURCE The Word Network

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Trescal Acquires Exphil Calibration Labs Inc.

Trescal (www.trescal.com), the international specialist in calibration services, announces the acquisition of Exphil Calibration Labs Inc., a calibration services provider based in Long Island, NY. This transaction expands Trescal's geographical footprint and technical coverage in the United States.

"We are pleased to have the Exphil team of instrument specialists join the Trescal U.S. family," said Kathy Boyd, president of Trescal Inc. "This acquisition further strengthens our nationwide instrument services offering and brings new capabilities to customers across the New York region."

Founded in 1977, Exphil is a one-stop-shop A2LA accredited laboratoy with strong technical skills in DC/Low Frequency. Exphil employs 17 people and is mostly active in the aeronautics sector. Annual revenue is $2 million (USD).







Guillaume Caroit, Trescal SA Deputy CEO, said: "This new acquisition is fully consistent with our strategy to build our network in North America to better address national contracts and serve customers with geographically-disbursed requirements."

This acquisition brings Trescal's network in the USA to 17 accredited calibration laboratories in 14 states, with more than 400 employees. This is the company's 19th acquisition worldwide since 2013.

ABOUT TRESCAL

Trescal, international specialist in calibration, provides a broad range of services for the test and measuring equipment market. Trescal is represented in 20 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Morocco, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Romania, Tunisia, United Kingdom, and United States. Trescal SA is the global holding company based in Paris. Trescal's U.S. headquarters is located in Hartland, Michigan. Learn more at www.trescal.us.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005500/en/
[January 06, 2017] 4th Edition of the bilingual Les Tablettistes conference

Digital Learning Trends: Creativity and Innovation, Two Essentials OTTAWA, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Today, the 4th edition of the bilingual Les Tablettistes conference, organized by Groupe Media TFO, is held at the College d'arts appliques et de technologie, La Cite, in Ottawa. Virtual reality and design thinking are among the themes that will be covered throughout the day. The conference will welcome over 30 experts, including Gillian Ferrabee from Cirque du Soleil, Jade Raymond from Electronic Arts (EA), Ernest Webb from Schoolu and Graham Brown-Martin, author and speaker with Learning {Re}imagined.



"The Tablettistes conference is a sort of dynamic laboratory to discuss some of the essential issues related to challenges of education and new technologies. With this discussion forum among experts, we turn towards the future to define new ways to produce innovative educational content for young learners. We are betting a great deal on this collaboration, which brings forward Canadian and Francophonie experts."

- Glenn O'Farrell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Groupe Media TFO.

Les Tablettistes is now an essential destination in the world of education, technology and the media. The conference creates concrete partnership and collaboration opportunities between content producers and education experts. The following four great themes will be covered during the day: The Intersection of Art and Science

Opportunities to Create

The Magic of Imagination

of Design to Fail, Learn to Succeed The Honourable Marie-France Lalonde, Minister of Francophone Affairs, and Nicolas Chapuis, Ambassador of France in Canada, have spoken on the stakes of digital education. Other diplomatic representatives from Europe (Switzerland, Germany) and Africa (Burundi, Gabon, Madagascar) are also present to underscore their own countries' collaboration in their efforts to rethink learning in the 21st century and the 4th industrial and digital revolution. The full list of lecturers is available here.

The day's full schedule is available here. About Groupe Media TFO

Groupe Media TFO is an essential destination for audiences seeking innovative educational and cultural content in French, at the vanguard of digital learning. TFO serves two million students and 30,000 teachers in Ontario and in Canada, and hosts a French-language YouTube channel that is now number 1 in Canada. Its content has been awarded multiple prizes, from Austin to Amsterdam: Kidscreen Awards, Gemini Awards, Cassies, IBC Awards, SXSW Film Design Awards, and many more. SOURCE Ontario French Language Educational Communications Authority (TFO)

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[January 06, 2017] Applications Now Available for BGE Scholarships

Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) today announced that applications for the BGE Scholars Award are now available online through April 1. The nine new scholarships are part of BGE's legacy gifts that marked the company's 200th anniversary last year. Central Scholarship, a Baltimore-based nonprofit, is administering the scholarship program on BGE's behalf. "We view this scholarship program as another way for BGE to support the development of our local workforce, by providing individuals with the means to successfully compete for opportunities," said Valencia McClure, BGE's vice president of Governmental, External Affairs and Corporate Relations. "We are honored to partner with Central Scholarship to help people receive an education that will lead to the future he or she envisions." The merit-based scholarships provide eligible students with awards of up to $5,000 each year to support post-secondary students pursue their educational goals. BGE Scholars will demonstrate academic excellence and share BGE's commitment to serving the communities where they live and work. To be eligible, applicants must: Be BGE customers or dependents of BGE customers

Be accepted to attend or currently enrolled in an accredited undergraduate or post-secondary program, including vocational programs

Have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher

Demonstrate service and commitment to community, ivic or related organizations

Not be employed by, or related to a person employed by, BGE



bge.com. About BGE

BGE, founded in 1816 as the nation's first gas utility, is Maryland's largest natural gas and electric utility. Headquartered in Baltimore, BGE delivers power to more than 1.25 million electric customers and more than 650,000 natural gas customers in central Maryland. The company's approximately 3,200 employees are committed to the safe and reliable delivery of natural gas and electricity, as well as enhanced energy management, conservation, environmental stewardship and community assistance. BGE is a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), the nation's leading competitive energy provider. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. About Central Scholarship Central Scholarship, founded in 1924, awards over $1 million annually in scholarships and interest free loans for career training and undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. Central Scholarship also offers College Cash education sessions to help students and their families become more informed consumers of higher education and reduce their loan burden. For more information, visit www.central-scholarship.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005624/en/

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Top 3 Emerging Trends Impacting the Global Low Voltage Ceramic Capacitor Market From 2017-2021: Technavio

Technavio's latest report on the global low voltage ceramic capacitor market provides an analysis on the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2017-2021. Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005632/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global low-voltage ceramic capacitor market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The leading application segment of the global low voltage ceramic capacitor market is consumer electronics. This market has been witnessing robust growth since the advent of smartphones, especially in developing markets. Increasing demand for upgrading to high-speed applications such as video applications and developments related to machine to machine (M2M) and the Internet of things (IoT) contribute to the replacement demand for capacitors.

The global low voltage capacitor market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of almost 5% through the forecast period, reaching a value of USD 14.75 billion by 2021. APAC is the market leader with a share of over 75% (2016 figures), and more than 85% of the incremental growth over the forecast period will originate from here.

Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=55486

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

The top three emerging trends driving the global low voltage ceramic capacitor market according to Technavio heavy industry research analysts are:

Rise in number of capacitors in smartphones

Growing demand for LEDs and need for improved ceramic capacitors Increased sourcing from APAC







"The average number of capacitors used in a smartphone has been rising steadily with the increase in the functionality and complexity of smartphones. At present, on an average, 500 capacitors are used in a standard smartphone. The latest addition to the iPhone (News - Alert) series smartphones, the iPhone 6, comprises over 700 capacitors. The increasing use of capacitors in smartphones is expected to impact the market in the forecast period significantly," says Anju Ajaykumar, one of the lead analysts at Technavio for tools and components research.

Low-voltage ceramic capacitors are being increasingly adopted in every component of a smartphone due to rising technological complexity, enhanced functionality, and the need for efficiency. This contributes to the growing number of capacitors in smartphones. The trend is expected to contribute significantly to the growth of the market with increasing demand for high-end smartphones

Growing demand for LEDs and need for improved ceramic capacitors

The need for advanced ceramic capacitors, especially multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) in light emitting diode (LED) lighting, is gaining momentum globally due to the growing need for power conservation, efficient lighting, and advanced lighting features. With the current advances in technology, vendors such as Murata Manufacturing are offering MLCCs with acoustic noise reduction and direct current (DC) smoothing for LED applications.

Additionally, the average selling price (ASP) of LED lighting sources is expected to decline substantially during the forecast period, which will lead to increased adoption. With the phase-out of incandescent lamps, governments of different countries are promoting the use and adoption of LEDs owing to their power-saving capabilities. This, in turn, will enable vendors to reduce the ASP of LEDs further during the forecast period.

Increased sourcing from APAC

Since the last few years, capacitor manufacturers have been slowly setting up their manufacturing hubs in APAC. In 2015, APAC housed the most number of top capacitor manufacturers. The top five vendors of low-voltage ceramic capacitors generate most of their revenue from APAC. This shift is mainly driven by the imports from low-cost countries in APAC such as China and India, which have had a substantial impact on the profit margins of traditional suppliers in Europe and North America.

"With the current trend of rising manufacturing costs, existing players are shifting their operations to countries where they can get cheap labor, raw materials, and other facilities. Additionally, several automotive companies in Western Europe outsourced their manufacturing operations to China and India. This trend of outsourcing manufacturing to APAC by original equipment manufacturers is expected to continue during the forecast period, which is further pushed by positive government initiatives," says Anju.

Browse Related Reports:

Become a Technavio Insights member and access all three of these reports for a fraction of their original cost. As a Technavio Insights member, you will have immediate access to new reports as they're published in addition to all 6,000+ existing reports covering segments like engineering tools, test and measurement, and unit operations. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected].

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005632/en/
A look back on all of our reporting of the Delphi murders since 2017
Om Puri passed away earlier today at the age of 66. In an illustrious film career spanning more than four decades, Om Puri has had his fair share of controversies.

By India Today Web Desk: Om Puri passed away on Friday morning, reportedly after a heart attack. The actor's friends and colleagues thronged to his Andheri residence to pay their final respects to the two-time National Award-winning actor and Padma Shri winner.

Apart for being known for his stellar acting on screen in not just Indian but British, Pakistani, Hollywood and several independent and art-house films, Om Puri was also known for his controversial off the cuff comments on headline-making issues as well as his tumultuous personal life.

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ALSO READ: Om Puri dies of heart attack at 66, funeral at 6pm today

ALSO READ: Karan Johar to Anupam Kher, Bollywood mourns Om Puri

ALSO READ: PM Narendra Modi condoles Om Puri's death

ALSO WATCH: Om Puri passes away at 66

Here are five major controversies that Om Puri had to grapple without throughout his life, and sadly, even in his last years.

1. When Om Puri said that nobody forces any Indian to become a soldier

During a televised debate on IBN-7 in October last year, in the wake of the Uri attack and the surgical strikes that followed, Om Puri said, "Who had asked the soldiers to join the army? Who told them to pick the weapons?", thereby insulting an army soldier and his son who was martyred at Uri.

After the debate, a case was filed against Om Puri for insulting Indian soldiers. Om later apologised for his comments and added, "I want to be tried by the army, I should be court-martialled. I want a constructive punishment. The army should teach me how to use weapons and send me on the same site where that brave man has sacrificed himself for the country. I don't want to be forgiven. I am pleading to the nation I want to be punished."

2. When Om Puri's scandalous fight with his wife made headlines

It all began with Nandita Puri's book on her husband 'Unlikely Hero: The Story of Om Puri'. Om was miffed with his wife Nandita for writing about her husband's past relationships explicitly; these included Om Puri's sexual relationship with his maid when he was 14, followed by another deep, sexual equation with the caretaker of her old father. Om thought that Nandita's book tarnished his image.

ALSO SEE: Om Puri's sudden demise leaves Kabir Khan's Tubelight in a fix?

THE OM PURI STORY: A marriage on the rocks, a son caught in the middle and old lovers

ALSO SEE: RIP Om Puri - 10 Best performances of the legendary actor

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Meanwhile, Om had moved in with his ex-wife Seema Kapoor while Nandita Puri filed a case of domestic violence against Om. Eventually, Om and Nandita were separated.

3. When Om Puri called politicians illiterate at Ramlila Maidan

Back in 2011, Om Puri was a part of team Anna when Anna Hazare and his followers gathered at Ramlila Maidan to launch a vicious attack on politicians.

Om Puri's rant on politicians caused a huge backlash. Speaking to a crowd of thousands, Om said, "Yeh (MPs) anpadh hain,inka kya background hai? Aadhe se zyaada MP ganwaar hain? hum dekhte hain TV pe,yeh kaise ladte hain House mein." (These ministers are uneducated, what is their background? More than half the MPs are illiterate, we see on TV, how the keep fighting in the House.)

Consequently, Om Puri apologised.

4. When Om Puri criticised beef ban

Referring to the controversial Dadri lynching of 2015, speaking to a group of journalists in Pakistan, Om Puri said, "Those who wanted to put a ban on slaughtering cows in the country were hypocrites. We export beef and earn dollars from it." The Dadri lynching case involved a mob of Hindus who attacked a Muslim family on the night of September 28, two years ago, in the village of Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. Om Puri received a lot of flak for this comment.

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5. When Om Puri said that Naxals are not terrorists, but fighters for rights

While shooting for Prakash Jha's Chakravyuh in 2012, Om Puri said that Naxals are not terrorists but people who take up arms for the common man. Om went on to justify the kidnapping of District Collector Alex Paul Menon by saying that Naxals kidnapped Menon as he represented the social system that is anti-people.

"They (Naxals) are not terrorists because they don't resort to irresponsible acts of terror by planting bombs on streets. Naxals are fighters who fight for their rights. They don't harass the common man and the poor," Om Puri said. As expected, Om's comments once again sparked furore.

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More trouble is brewing for Trinamool Congress as the CBI looks set to question three more party leaders including two ministers of the Mamata Banerjee government in connection with Rose Valley scam.

Protesters took to streets in Kolkata on Thursday as CBI proceeds against people involved in Rose Valley scam. (Photo: PTI)

By Indrajit Kundu: At a time when two Trianmool Congress MPs have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection to the Rose valley chit-fund scam, names of three more party leaders, including two senior ministers of the Mamata Banerjee government have surfaced.

As the central agency pushes ahead with its investigation in the multi-crore scam, presumed to be bigger than the Saradha group's, speculation is rife that several Trinamool Congress leaders may be summoned for questioning.

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READ| Rose Valley chit fund scam: TMC leaders' nexus with the investment firm

TMC LEADERS IN ROSE VALLEY SCAM: THINGS TO KNOW India Today has accessed an Enforcement Directorate report that reveals how several top Trinamool ministers are under the scanner. While investigating the money laundering angle in the chit fund scam in West Bengal, the Enforcement Directorate stumbled upon evidence against several Trianmool leaders. The Enforcement Directorate shared its report with the CBI for further investigation. The ED report, which was submitted in 2015, names two ministers of the Mamata Banerjee cabinet including one senior minister. The other minister hails from north Bengal. The report also mentions a former president of Trinamool Congress' students wing as being involved in the scam. In the report, ED states that the minister from Kolkata had helped Rose Valley chairman Gautam Kundu in "influencing cases lodged against Rose valley group of companies at consumer courts." The report alleges that the minister had also "introduced his daughter" to Kundu to float her interior decoration business. Referring to the minister from north Bengal, the report states that he had introduced the Rose Valley owner to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during one of her visits to north Bengal. "He also influenced education and hotel business of Gautam Kundu at Siliguri and Dooars," the Enforcement Directorate says in the report. The other Trinamool Congress leader named in the report is a former president of the party's student wing Trinamool Chatra Parishad. The youth leader had been under the scanner for his alleged role in the Saradha scam too. The ED report states that the youth leader was "heavily after money marketing business of Rose Valley Group of companies and imparted training to the agents about raising of funds from market." "He (the youth leader) also utilised his position as a general secretary of the party and assured the accused person that he will take care of the complaints lodged against the Rose Valley group of companies in future by influencing the local police," the report further adds.

ALSO READ:

TMC-BJP clashes across Bengal over MP Sudip Bandhopadhyay's arrest in Rose Valley chit fund scam

ALSO WATCH:

--- ENDS ---
Unfortunate news today, with Blood Orange cancelling his entire Australian tour  including his Sugar Mountain performance and both Melbourne and Sydney shows.

I was looking forward to visiting Australia this year, Dev Hynes says of the cancellation, which is said to be cause by a family members ill health. Unfortunately due to personal and family matters, and after much consideration, Ive decided to cancel these shows to spend time with my family. Sending love in the new year.

In light of this cancellation, Sugar Mountain have expressed their regret and offered their apologies in light of the cancellation, and have managed to add four great acts to the bill: The Avalanches, Baltimores Spank Rock, 21-year-old NZ rapper Young Tapz, and Melbourne duo HABITS.

With tremendous regret Frontier Touring, Sugar Mountain and I OH YOU wish to advise the cancellation of Blood Oranges upcoming Melbourne and Sydney performances, organisers tell us. Dev Hynes current tour commitments have been cancelled due to a family members ill health. Frontier Touring, Sugar Mountain and I OH YOU sincerely apologise to fans effected by this cancellation, and wish Dev and his family the best.

While its a great selection of new acts to be added to the Sugar Mountain bill, itll come as cold comfort for the many fans who would have been eagerly awaiting his appearance. Sydney fans are eligible for a refund through Ticketek.
New Year's Day marked a watershed in Uttar Pradesh's politics. All along the roads leading to Lucknow's Janeshwar Mishra Park, walls were plastered with posters of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Hoardings came up overnight. The venue of the special national convention organised by the Samajwadi Party (SP) was a picture of Akhilesh's dominance in the party. On the dais, a big chair with a table had been placed in the centre of the front row, for Akhilesh. Flanking him were loyalists of father Mulayam Singh Yadav: SP veteran Rewati Raman Singh, party general secretary Kiranmoy Nanda, Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Agarwal, among others. In the course of the event, the long-speculated power shift in the party was formalised. Akhilesh was unanimously chosen the SP's national president and former boss Mulayam was declared the party's patron. While Akhilesh-baiter and Mulayam's brother Shivpal Singh was removed as the party's president in UP, Mulayam confidant Amar Singh got the boot.

The development, and the rapid turn of events leading up to it, may have left many shocked, but insiders say the 'coup' was merely the climax of a game plan scripted by Akhilesh over the past two years to secure his own identity in the political landscape of UP, and India. Through 2016, as the Yadav family tug of war turned into a full-blown public spectacle and touched new lows, Akhilesh looked every bit a leader slowly turning a party-family crisis into an opportunity. By September, he had roped in political expert Steve Jordan of Harvard University to help strategise his party's 2017 assembly election campaign. Jordan got down to business, studying the Akhilesh government's welfare schemes and gathering constituency-level specifics by meeting SP MLAs. SP sources say Jordan is working on creating seat-specific election manifestos for Akhilesh.

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Many believe that under the Akhilesh government, the SP the SP has begun to shed the legacy of the years when the party was associated with UP's criminalised politics. To achieve this, the Yadav scion has played a leader determined to push development in UP. On December 22, the very day Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Varanasi, Akhilesh inaugurated a section of the upcoming Varuna river corridor in the city that showcased 50 metres of developed riverfront area. His government plans to develop another 10 km of the Varuna riverfront by December 2017. "As a counter to Narendra Modi's development face, Akhilesh Yadav has inaugurated all major projects of his government on time," says Dr Arvind Mohan, professor of economics at Lucknow University. "He is trying to draw advantage from projects like the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, Lucknow Metro, and the IT city project in Lucknow."

Last month, Akhilesh inaugurated over a dozen projects worth over Rs 5,000 crore in Lucknow. In eastern UP, where the SP commands a strong base, his government is developing the 354-km Samajwadi Purvanchal Expressway. Each of his 25 ministers from eastern UP has been instructed to popularise the government's pension and farmers' insurance schemes in their constituencies. "Akhilesh Yadav is directly monitoring each constituency with the help of volunteers," said a minister in the UP government. "He knows the political situation in each constituency."

Akhilesh has also been making sure he gets the caste arithmetic right. On December 22, his cabinet passed a resolution considering changing the status of 17 backward sub-castes to Scheduled Castes in the state. Comprising nearly 14 per cent of the population, these sub-castes can be game-changers in select seats. The cabinet's move appears to have its origins in the non-Yadav OBC vote going to the BJP in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Once at the SP's helm, Akhilesh appointed Naresh Uttam, a prominent Kurmi leader close to Mulayam, as state president. "In the 2012 assembly polls, the SP won over 60 per cent of the seats in eastern UP," says Dr V.S. Sharma, a former political science professor at Kanpur University. "Uttam will be crucial in getting this community's support." A pre-poll alliance with the Congress, too, has been on the agenda. SP sources claim Akhilesh met Priyanka Gandhi in December.

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Akhilesh has been preparing for the larger battle, but hasn't taken eyes off the immediate threats. While Mulayam met Election Commission (EC) officials on January 2, and staked claim to the SP's poll symbol (cycle), the Akhilesh camp had last year scouted for an alternative symbol-should the need arise. Akhilesh's uncle Ram Gopal Yadav had met EC officials in November and discussed 'motorcycle' as a symbol in the event of a split. No matter which way the family feud goes and how the SP fares in elections, Akhilesh has decidedly emerged out of Mulayam's shadow. In post-liberalisation India, he is perhaps the first politician to defy family and create an identity of his own. Now, the challenge for him will be to command organisational support even if the party fails to notch a win in the elections.

Follow the writer on Twitter @ashimisra

WATCH THE VIDEO

--- ENDS ---
When you think of Ryan Gosling, romantic ideal for millions of women around the world, do you imagine the wah-driven funk of sex-obsessed Californian Red Hot Chili Peppers? You dont? Well, thats all about to change, with the news that RHCP and Ryan Gosling will share the screen in Terrence Malicks forthcoming feature film, Song to Song.

Gosling stars alongside Natalie Portman, Rooney Mara and Michael Fassbender (he is a little more RHCP, to be honest) in the film, which is a musically-themed flick that was shot at Austin City Limits in 2012. The IndieWire blurb reads: In this modern love story set against the Austin, Texas music scene, two entangled couples  struggling songwriters Faye (Mara) and BV (Gosling), and music mogul Cook (Fassbender) and the waitress whom he ensnares (Portman)  chase success through a rock n roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.

So, no, you wont be seeing Flea emote, unless its with a bass slung down around his kneecaps, and the Chilis are but one band included in the film, which will also feature Florence and the Machine, Patti Smith, and Iggy Pop.

Song to Song will be out in the US this March  no word on an Aussie release date yet.
Daily Mail: Four people arrested after footage of a young man being beaten and tortured was streamed live on Facebook

















LA Times: What the reaction to a viral Facebook video of a hate crime tells us about postelection America

DON'T FRET KANSAS CITY . . . AS THE LOCAL CRIME AND ROBBERY SPREE CONTINUES . . . SPECIAL REPORTS SENT TO TKC REVEAL THAT COWTOWN CROOKS ARE NOW LEARNING SPANISH!!!

Talking Kansas City Winter crime with some of the TOP ECHELON denizens of our blog community . . . They shared a story of Spanish-speaking-dominant victims doing a bit of shopping in the urban core (@ the Aldi on 39th and Prospect) as they were approached by two nearby residents who weren't completely bilingual but showed some enthusiasm for the language as they yelled "DAME TU DINERO!!!" at the pair while drawing guns and stealing about $800 in cash along with mobile phones . . .

Just because we know the late night is home to only the most strident local news junkies . . . We should probably talk about a controversial and tragic national news story and its local implications.For the record, just about every white person over the age of 30 is angry about this horrific tale of more Chicago crime now turning political . . .The link roundup . . .Rancor and hateration rule the Internets on this topic (and most things) . . . And for all of the self-rightous indignation and pablum . . .Now here's the local leap in logic and how all of this stuff relates to Kansas City . . .Yes, this is a (stupid) jump but hear me out . . .Postscript . . . It's nice to see that local denizens of the urban core are getting familiar with one another and using the informal verb tense. But I digress . . .Luckily, nothing was hurt but pride . . . However, this bit of multicultural news offers a bit of hope for Kansas City as the nation now seems intensely divided and mired in a political slap-fighting even when confronting the most callous sort of crime thatearn universal rebuke.You decide . . .
Pola Roupa, who was arrested by Greek police on Thursday for her involvement in terrorist activities, is facing a series of new penal charges for the creation of a new terrorist group

Pola Roupa, who was arrested by Greek police on Thursday for her involvement in terrorist activities, is facing a series of new penal charges for the creation of a new terrorist group by Greek justice.

According to the case file being drawn up, Roupa, along with a 25-year-old woman who had offered her refuge in her house in Ilioupolis, are both being charged with setting up a new terrorist group. Roupa, 48, and her accomplice have been prosecuted on two felony and two misdemeanour accounts:

The formation of a terrorist group with the aggravating charges of making, possessing and disseminating weapons and drugs, aggravated theft with intent to commit a terrorist act, while the two misdemeanours involve forgery and refusal to comply with authorities on providing their fingerprints.

In a note found in their hideout in Ilioupolis, the two women make reference to a war against the state, and dub the institutional governments as terrorists. Both have started a hunger stirke since they were arrested on Thursday morning, while Roupas accomplice admits she is a member of the terrorist group Revolutionary Struggle.

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
Arun Jaitley, who is the Indian Finance Minister told at the sixth ministerial Heart of Asia conference which was held in Amritsar to enhance the connectivity with Afghanistan was a core issue for the country.

At the Heart of Asia-Istanbul process that the Amritsar Declaration was accepted by all, said Mr Jaitley. The connectivity with Afghanistan was a major issue, he talked about it and for developing connectivity in Afghanistan, and India is also open.

It was declared that in the Heart of Asia area at the Amritsar Declaration, for the promotion of regional connectivity and economic integration, Afghanistan can be the natural bridge.

Arun Jaitley also informed, On Indias aspect, we are also involved bilaterally with Afghanistan to update our connection linkages with the aim of creating Afghanistan, in the language of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a location of serenity.

The External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj has not been keeping well; in the conference, Arun Jaitley represented India. From Amritsar, to promote the land trade route, he told, as the venue for the conference was a deliberate one, the choice of Amritsar as the venue intended to highlight the potential for regional connectivity and the benefits that it can bring to landlocked Afghanistan.
By Arpan Rai: Service charge at restaurants will no longer take a bite out of your wallet as the Centre this week made the levy optional. However, the move has triggered turbulence with heated spats breaking out between patrons and employees at pubs and eateries.

READ: NRAI's take on levy of service charge in restaurants

Altercations have become almost inevitable, suggested scores of managers across restaurants in Delhi, awaiting a final verdict over the advisory. FHRAI, the apex body of hotels and restaurants in the country, has appealed to the department of consumer affairs for withdrawal of the notification.

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Sevice charge refusals at an alarming rate

Service charge is over and above the service tax and other tariffs levied on a restaurant bill and usually ranges from 5-20 per cent.

"It was not a mandatory charge before January 3 and customers could refuse, but now we are seeing refusals at an alarming rate. Yesterday, I resolved a number of fights over service charge payments," Vikas Bhat, manager at the Warehouse Cafe in Connaught Place, told MAIL TODAY.

Experts say

Experts feel the government should completely abolish the service charge to avoid any confusion or friction. A statement from the department of consumer affairs clarified on Monday that in cases where the customer is not satisfied with the service at hotels and restaurants, payment of service charge is "completely discretionary and should a customer be dissatisfied with the dining experience, he/she can have it waived off".

READ: Don't like paying service charge in restaurants? You have an option now

Bhat, however, voiced the industry concerns, stressing that the levy was important for the health of the hospitality sector. "It is not right to make the customers the judge to decide on paying for services rendered by my staff in all circumstances. But I don't have a choice any more as being a server I cannot indulge in a fight with my customers," he said.

Delhiites welcome Centre's decision

Many Delhiites have welcomed the government move that, some said, had softened to an extent their demonetisation woes. "If I want to appreciate the service extended by a restaurant, I will tip the waiter, like I always do. To my surprise, the hotel stewards have received me with more generosity and courtesy in the last two days and I have been made to feel like a king," said Anmol Kawatra, an executive with a top private firm in Delhi who was visiting an eatery.

Clashes between foodies and restaurants

The clash of interests between foodies and their favourite eating joints does not bode well for the business, say observers.

"I am most definitely expecting fights if this confusion prevails," said a manager of a renowned restaurant in Khan Market. Harry, manager of the city's Lord of the Drinks chain, has acted swiftly. "To avoid any untoward situation with patrons, I pasted a notice at the entrance of my establishment that we will collect 10 per cent service charge," he said.

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Restaurants have also rejected allegations that they "pocket the service charge". Many in the industry also raised questions over the future of the workers. "The advisory will impact a workforce of 5.8 million," said Riyaaz Amlani, president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI).

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If you are a frequent traveler, there is a better chance that you are familiar with the Google Flights application. It's a travel search engine that does everything like most travel agents do. And the best thing is, it's cheaper!

Google Flights alerts you when prices are about to skyrocket. Therefore, giving you enough time to book before the prices increase. Make sure you pay attention to it. You will get pop-up notifications on your phone for specific flights when the prices are most likely to spike. However, this feature is not available on some routes.

Let Google Flights help plan your dream trip with its "I'm feeling lucky" feature. Just click on the map, select the departure spot and let it choose the best destination for you based on popular search history. It will also provide you with a graph to let you know the cheapest price available.

In times when you are undecided on where to go but wanted to travel, just search "flight to the US" and click the flight's tab. The entire US map will be given to you together with the prices. It will allow you to compare prices to fly from various states to another. And you have the option to filter the airline of your choice and the flight duration as well. It all depends on your budget and how much you are willing to pay.

If you are already decided on where to go, just hit the "save this itinerary" button and leave the price monitoring to Google Now app. You also have the option to get notified via email when the price drops significantly.

How about a tip on similar yet less expensive flight option? Google Flights does this for you too! It will tell you how much savings you can get when you fly from another airport or take an earlier or later flight. You can decide after weighing the pros and cons.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Traveling across the United States by train is one of the world's ultimate travel experiences. Incredibly, it is also one of the world's supreme travel bargains, the 3,400-mile trip can cost as little as $213.

The train does not technically depart from San Francisco but in Emeryville. The train, California Zephyr begins its journey running alongside the serene waters of the San Francisco Bay Area for some magnificent coastal views. At Sacramento, you will pass the Donner Lake, with a haunting story of the Donner Party who were stranded in the place in the winter of 1846. Several of the 87 members resorted to cannibalism and only 48 survived. From Sacramento, the train will climb into the Sierra Nevada, a few hours later, the landscape turned into an immense, barren desert. If you fall asleep and wake up, it is almost as if you were transported to a diverse planet.

With a gleaming casino in the distance, the train crossed into Nevada. The train calls at Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World. During the night, the train crossed from Nevada into Utah. Entering a new time zone, with the clocks are adjusted an hour forward. At three in the morning, the train pulls into Salt Lake City.

The trip between Utah and Colorado is considered to be the most remarkable train ride in all of the United States according to Derek Low. The train follows the southern rim of the astonishing Book Cliffs. The California Zephyr climbs into the Rocky Mountains and snakes for hours through beautiful Colorado canyons. The train trails the path of the Colorado River. The train eventually appeared from the Rockies onto the Great Plains as it approaches Denver. The next trip includes Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. The California Zephyr completes its journey at Chicago's Union Station, a historic landmark in its own right. The California Zephyr gets you as far as Chicago.

To complete the trip to New York, you need to transfer to the Lake Shore Limited. The train travels through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, before entering New York State. The train finally pulls into New York Penn Station, ending the journey on the east coast of the United States.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Travel vlogging has become a lucrative industry the past few years with the improvement of camera and video systems and Internet connectivity. Everyone can start a travel vlog. Here are the top 5 things you need need to know if you want to start a travel vlog.

It's Not About The Gadgets, It's Really About The Story

Sure, shooting a scene with a high-end camera and video system will make audiences pay attention to your travel vlog. However, a scene without a story is like a subject without a verb or a food that looks good but doesn't have any taste. People are most interested in the story behind the sceneries: the what, who, where, when, and why behind the story. Couple the 5 W's with "how" and you're on your way to creating a highly informative travel vlog that would keep your audiences engaged.

Start Out With Different Angles, But Focus On What Works Best For You

Starting out a new endeavor is not always easy. You need to try out different things, sometimes multiple times, to get to it right. Travel vlogging is the same. Try out stories focusing on locations, food, attractions, backpacking, or budget traveling. While having a diverse travel vlog can attract different audiences, CNN suggests that it is best to vlog about one subject and offer a unique perspective of that subject.

Details, Details, Details: Information Is The Key

We've mentioned the 5 W's and the "how" to pique the interest of your audiences. Now, you must provide the little details that would make your travel vlog standout. Include travel tips such as the cost of travel to a particular place or the cost of the particular item, tips on how to cheaply get to one place to another, or provide a brief history of a place or an item. Those little details are more informative than you or your audiences might realize.

Do It For The Right Reasons. It's Not Always About The Money

A timeless advice: love what you do, do what you love. You don't want to start out travel vlogging thinking that it will earn you money and fame. Needless to say that the money will come after you've become successful in travel vlogging. Doing something out of passion will immensely help in bringing worthwhile travel vlogs to your audiences. And that in itself is a satisfaction enough to do it.

Get Started And Do It

If you're still hesitant about starting a travel vlog, our best advice for you is this: just do it. Like they say, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Wishing about starting a travel vlog will not magically make it come true. There's work involved there, so go out, get your smartphone or camera, and just do it. Arm yourself with this top 5 things you need to know if want to start a travel vlog and you're practically there.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
The Sundance Film Festival is back for another round of innovative, in-depth storytelling in Park City on Jan. 19 to 29 and comes with more surprising turns this year. Other than the 'interactive and immersive haptic Virtual Reality story experiences,' it seems like actors and filmmakers will also be planning to stage an anti-Trump protest to kick off the celebration on January 21.

For two hours, celebrities will join the community and their sister group in Washington D.C. to voice out concerns for women's rights - an area where the president-elect is highly criticized for. At the moment, according to their Facebook page, the Women's March on Main Street has 600 attendees but is seen likely to explode now that Hollywood stars are planning to march with them.

"We have an opportunity in the creative communities to spread hope, tolerance, and inclusiveness in our art and with our voices. We relish the chance to join Park City, its organizations and citizens, and our larger nationwide community on this day," the group stated on their event page. The Sundance Institute is not connected to the rally. Celebs voluntarily joined the march to protest for women's rights.

While that is seen in America, Australia has groundbreaking the news that has their movie slated under the New Frontiers with a new Australian artist collective keen to producing virtual reality films. The brainchild of the new media is London-based Australian artist Shaun Gladwell, which is made of Australia's filmmakers with VR productions.

"The most amazing thing about VR is you can effect a scale crisis," Gladwell told Sydney Morning Herald. "The skull can be the size of a planet. I really wanted that idea that you almost inhabit the skull as if you were a thought running around neural pathways of a brain that no longer exists," he said. Either way, the Sundance Festival is sure to rev up the growing interests of the audience.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Resorts that allow hunting during safaris and apparently paying for all-inclusive tour packages are damaging the environment and contributing indirectly towards global warming. Despite more than a hundred countries agreeing to the provisions of the Paris Agreement on climate change and reducing the carbon footprint, travelers in select resorts can consume huge energy, oil and water supplies and give back so little to the vacation spot's sustainability.

According to Responsible Travel, all-inclusive resorts, hunting, animals as tourist attractions are examples of irresponsible tourism. Most alarming is the offer of all-inclusive vacations from resorts.

According to the travel watch website, travelers are forced to stay in a single location thereby exhausting all energy and water supply from a vacation spot quickly en masse. It can attract many visitors to the vacation spot but the amounts they pay -- which are usually discounted as per vacation packages -- are little in return of investments when it comes to environmental destruction.

Immense consumption of energy and oil indirectly affects the demand for oil and energy production. Many developed and developing nations still use coal plants to generate electricity and the higher the demand, the more coal is burnt to produce the energy needed.

According to Greenbiz, it is possible "staycations" might only be the safest and the most sustainable type of vacation to have -- but only if it can "develop a larger sense of community necessary to address global threats," meaning raising awareness on tackling climate change.

The environment campaign website said services like Airbnb can lower energy and water activities of huge hotel resorts and chains as based on the company's studies, Airbnb guests only consume 63% less energy than hotel guests.

The website added that airlines are also looking for ways to reduce the carbon footprint. It cites aircraft manufacturer Boeing's efforts to develop new fuel efficiency technologies and going for biofuel as aircraft fuel effectively reducing its greenhouse gas contributions and possibly lowering ticket prices worldwide. Airlines generate 2 percent to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Syria is currently the center of the world's biggest ongoing conflict of five years. But before the uprising of 2011 that led to its civil war, Syria was a hub of culture showcasing the beauty of its blacksmith heritage during the Ottoman Empire era, amazing mosques, old Ottoman ruins and exotic Khan architecture.

According to Huffington Post, Syria has forsaken us the Khan As'ad Pasha in Damascus. Located in the "old city" of Damascus dating back in the 17 century, As'ad Pasha who ruled Syria as governor for the Ottoman Empire highlighted the beautiful architecture of the country during the time. The site had been preserved before -- and is currently abandoned during the ongoing conflict.

The news website also said the Damascene Sword Monument in Damascus showcases the beauty and sturdiness of "Damascus Steel" -- a well-known essential sword development element of its traditional blacksmiths. The Damascene Sword Monument is a memorial of the strength and achievements of the Syrian people. Recently, it was under threat of mortar fire from warring factions.

According to Lonely Planet, the Umayyad Mosque is one of the most beautiful. It said Muslims practicing their faith worldwide consider the mosque as "the holiest in the world." During the rule of the Umayyad's, Damascus became the Islamic capital of the world before Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during the clashes between Syrian regime and rebel forces.

The Islamic State militant group once occupied the great ruin city of Palmyra. Presently, it is the center of crossfire between government and Arabian forces and is likely damaged from the crossfire. Before the conflict, the Palmyra ruins told the story of Palmyrene Pantheons -- the local mythology -- and its dedication to the god Bel who had his own temple along with the rest of traditional pre-Ottoman culture of Syria.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Traveling is great but traveling would be extra fun and exciting when it's done with some close friends. Visiting and going to places with the best friends are major '#FriendshipGoals.' However, it's not always that great to travel with friends.

There are pros and cons on that matter; one of the pros is that when going on an adventure with a close friend, they could make things way more epic and memorable. The con, on the other hand, is that they could ruin the whole thing single-handedly or in a snap. Here's what they should and shouldn't do while traveling with friends:

Discuss what everyone wants to do. The group must discuss whether they want to do the things that one of them suggests and decide to agree or disagree with it. This is the best way to make the trip go smoothly. The discussion must be done before the trip. Although spontaneity is awesome too, but it would be time-consuming, especially if complications would arise.

Be an easy going type of companion, be flexible. Learn that some people from the group are okay with a lot of walking or spending the night in a cheap hostel. Don't be that type who's too sensitive and picky with the food, the place, or just about everything. Going with the flow is not that hard.

Forget about the digital world for a while. The most annoying thing to see when traveling with friends is when they couldn't take their eyes off of their phone's screens. That they could hardly embrace and appreciate the beauty of the place that they're visiting because they're too busy finding the right angle to take a photo of the landscape. Don't be that kind of companion.

Don't always worry about the expenses. It's okay to worry about the money spent but it's best to discuss this matter before further planning the trip. Discussing it during the trip would just be frustrating and might ruin everything. Check out Travelers Today for more travel news and tips.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
For a Middle Eastern nation that is almost half the size of the state of New York, Jordan seemed a pretty diverse country in terms of geographical contrasts. It is also one of the fewest Arab countries to have maintained a positive impression worldwide. Considering a low-cost strategy in getting into Amman, visiting the neighboring top 5 travel sights will be much easier in terms of budget.

Petra

Once designated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, the ancient cavernous city of Petra was lost for centuries until it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer named Johann Burckhardt in 1812. It has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Visitors are led into a 1.2 km trek through the Siq chasm leading to an insular community of 3,000 dwellings, altars, dining halls and tombs once housing a total of 20,000 ancient Nabateans.

Wadi Rum

The Wadi Rum is one of the best places in Jordan for a desert safari. Home to the ancient Bedouins, these native Arabs have maintained a pastoral nomadic way of life unchanged since the Biblical times. The Bedouins are very accommodating to the guided tourists, usually sumptuous roasted meats into their sheepskin tents after a break from extensive camel-riding.

Jerash

What makes Jerash a fascinating location is that it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Ancient Roman architecture is preserved in good condition. The ruins feature a mere shadow of a once bustling overseas Greco-Roman community. Despite lacking definitive evidence, the widely accepted historical narrative is that Alexander the Great founded this city in 331 BC.

The Dead Sea

Apart from its several Biblical references, the Dead Sea is also a unique scientific anomaly by itself. With a dense 33% mineral content, its lagoon is practically 6 times saltier than four of the world's oceans. Although no sea creature inhabits this marine zone, no human being has ever drowned in it as well.

Aqaba

Anyone looking for Jordan's beast beaches could find no rival in Aqaba. It is virtually a much cleaner and historically rich version of Long Island. One may probably compare this location to Bondi beach in Australia, minus the deadly marine fauna.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Greece gave the world democracy, Olympic Games and a mythology that single-handedly provided the largest reference to modern psychology. Hence, tourists have found the top 5 reasons to visit Greece. Anyone looking for monuments, history, culture, cuisine and the spectacular landscape is glad to get lost in this part of the Mediterranean.

However, one has no need to tour all over Greece to experience these wonders. In fact, the island of Crete provides the same package within a much smaller geographic coverage. Here are the top 5 reasons to visit Crete:

Healthy Local Cuisine

One of the best reasons to visit Crete has a lot to do with their healthy cuisine. The sight of an 80-year old lady or a 90-year old man foraging for herbs at the nearby forest is nothing unusual for Cretans. The locals make the same sumptuous traditional meals endemic in all of Greece. However, Cretan dish has that organic trademark that seems to unlock the secret of longevity.

Pristine Beaches

The beaches in Greece are renowned for their crystal clear turquoise hue. But what makes the shores of Crete special is that they are far quieter than those in the mainland hosting luxurious Mediterranean cruises. More importantly, Crete boasts the relative absence of sharks.

The Minotaur's Lair

Whether or not the bull-headed anthropomorphic beast was real is beside the point. As far as history is concerned, Crete fostered a civilization that preceded Ancient Greece during the early Bronze Age - and its people have an unhealthy obsession with bovine reverence. The ruins of Knossos are all that is left of Europe's oldest city.

Extreme Hiking Experience

Crete has a number of lush mountains, all of them relatively steep and treacherous. Anyone up for a challenge would learn to appreciate the resilience of Ancient Olympian athletes. Trailing "Europe's longest gorge" (Samaria) is easier said than done.

Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave

Cretans are a proud and free people who are not reticent about sharing their ideals to the visitors. One of the most intriguing people in Greece also proved to be one of the bravest. How brave? It took 11 days for Nazi Germany to conquer this island - making the same exact mistake Persians did with the Spartans.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
The Opposition Congress is holding state-wide protests against the banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes last year.

By India Today Web Desk: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and Kerala Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala among other Congress leaders today courted arrest during a protest march to the Reserve Bank of India's Thiruvananthapuram office in protest against demonetisation.

The Opposition Congress is holding state-wide protests against the banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes last year. The march to RBI's Thiruvananthapuram branch was part of the protest.

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"We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside the RBI office, but we were arrested by the police and were later released," Tharoor told reporters.

The Narendra Modi government had announced demonetisation on November 8 last year, leading to a massive crunch, serpentine queues outside banks and ATMs, and a belligerent opposition protesting the move.

Also read: Tharoor: Rahul must have earth-shaking proof which govt didn't want shown in Parliament

Also read: Congress seeks apology from PM Modi for demonetisation move, calls it failed exercise

Also read: Don't assume that patient people are not angry with demonetisation: Chidambaram to Modi

--- ENDS ---
Hotels and resorts aren't just accommodations but they are also tourist destinations as well. There are travel-worthy hotels and resorts that could give you a mix of adventure and relaxation at the same time. Here are the top 3 hotels and resorts of 2017 that travelers should watch out for.

Six Senses Bhutan

Six Senses Bhutan is a group of lodges expected to open in August 2017. According to The New York Times, the resort is set in five different areas so there's going to be so much to do with a big location like that. The five areas each have attractions for visitors to see like Gangtey being a migratory location for black-necked cranes and Bumthang being popular for its old monasteries.

Kokomo Island, Fiji

Kokomo Island is not a cheap place but it's definitely worth a visit. It's a private 140-acre island with just 21 rooms but there will be a small luxury hotel about to open for visitors this March. However, the place is just full of stunning scenery and rich marine wildlife where you could go snorkeling around the Great Astrolabe Reef.

Hoshinoya Bali, Ubud, Bali

Hoshinoya Bali is a Japanese-owned resort set to open this month. Inspired by the traditional rice-terraced villages of Ubud, each villa has a semi-private pool that looks like an irrigation canal that partially connects one villa to another. The temperature of the pool also changes throughout the day which is really a nice experience for guests.

The Silo, Cape Town

According to The Royal Portfolio, this luxurious hotel that is included in the top 3 best hotels and resorts will open in March. The Silo towers over the former grain silos of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, hence the name. Thomas Heatherwick was the one tasked to recreate the building so as to maintain the structure's cultural essence but still beautify the hotel.

For those travelers still looking for hotels and resorts to go to, these top 3 best hotels and resorts of 2017 are a must see. These places are going to open this year so it's worth a try.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Trying to figure out what could be the best vacation? Perhaps you see a deserted tropical island or even a snowy peak, but what about an overwater bungalow? Elevated over the ocean, these orthodox hotels are most often found in the Maldives and the South Pacific, but these overwater bungalows can also be found in some parts of Europe and Asia.

According to Fodors, the best overwater bungalows usually comes with a private pool, elegant glass paneled floors where you can see the beauty of the ocean underneath from corals to colorful fishes and a ladder that will lead you down to the water wherein you can snorkel or just relax. With all these amenities and stunning beauty around, for sure you won't be leaving your far from your hotel anytime soon. Here are some of the best bungalow resorts around the world.

Diamonds Thudufushi, Maldives. The Bungalows in Diamonds Thudufushi are designed and painted with white which makes it very attractive against the clear blue skies and water below. The bungalows look much more like country houses that those of a tropical and typical bungalow over the ocean. Inside, it comes with two bedroom water villas which has the luxurious Italian light look, hand made wooden polished floors and a canopy king sized bed to top it all off.

According to Luxury Escapes, the bungalow also comes with an Apple computer which has music and movies stored on it, double showers, climate control which is very important, Coffee machines and a jacuzzi that will keep you feeling complete all the way throughout your stay.

Hilton Bora Bora Nui Resort And Spa, French Polynesia. The bi level houses features a private pool, deck and whirlpool that make up an entire private outdoor living area with plenty of sun beds. The villa hosts two bedrooms, three bathrooms with lagoon view tubs, living room consists pretty much everything. The rooms also include a dressing room, a sauna and massage room which is just superb, talking about a major vacation.

The water villas at Six Senses Laamu, Maldives are made using renewable resources. These water villas feature the best outdoor deck at different levels made of wood and cloth screens, it also has sunken glass bathtubs, private pools, glass bottom outdoor tables which is just super nice and an outdoor shower and bathroom to soak yourself after a dip on the ocean.

Partying in the villas won't be a problem since it has technology written all over it from the high quality stereo systems and iPods that already has music and they also provide a coffee machine where you can brew on every morning to chill, relax and see the beauty nature has to offer but these villas are expensive so you better save up early.

Cayo Espanto, Belize is a four-acre private resort has seven villas around it. Cayo Espanto villa is an overwater villa which is surrounded by the Caribbean Sea. Guest of the villas can take a sun lounge at the end of their docks where they can relax all day long or have a private dinner served in there.

Hotel Palafitte, Neuchatel, Switzerland is the only overwater bungalow found in Europe. The bungalows are built on stilts over a lake with a modern design to its architecture.The rooms in the place just looks like shipping containers, others have ladders which you can use if you want to take a dip on the lake. For more on the latest news and current destinations to visit around the world stay tuned to Travelers Today.

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In terms of cost and activities, February is the best time to visit South Korea. As this is your last chance to sample Korea's brand of winter, here are our top 5 reasons why February is the perfect month to visit South Korea if you are a budget traveler.

Cheaper Travel Costs

Traditionally, the hotel and airfare costs eat up the majority of a traveler's budget. As it is still winter season in South Korea, you can get hotel rooms and airline tickets for less than the average price for any time of the year.

Take In The Sights & Ice Skate at Yeouido Park

You may already have experienced winter and have no inclination to go through it again, on your native country or any other country. But give winter in South Korea a chance. Seoraksan National Park and the Naksansa Temple are a must see for budget travelers. Visitors can also ice-skate at the Yeouido Park. The park will be open until February 17, 2017.

February 2017 Korean Events & Festivals

After spending the day outdoor, it's time to get away from the cold for a little while and sample South Korea's events and festivals held this year on February. Visit the Smithsonian Photo Exhibit at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (open until March 15, 2017), catch an art exhibit by Alphonse Mucha at the Seoul Art Center's Hangaram Art Exhibition (open until March 5, 2017), and go through a K-pop Experience Program and learn via the K-pop dance program.

Traditional Food Feast

Visitors get to sample South Korea's traditional food especially after the Korean Lunar New Year. Travelers can visit the local markets like Gwangjang Market or the Namdaemun Market and try traditional Korean sweets (Hangwa), pancake (Jeon), sliced rice cake soup (Tteokguk), and honey cookies (Yakgwa).

Valentine's Day In South Korea

Most countries celebrate Valentine's Day with the men and women give cards, flowers, or presents to their partners. In Korea, however, February the 14th is a special day for women. Valentine's Day in Korea means only women give chocolates to men. Yes, it is fun for men in February but women also get the chance to receive their non-chocolate candies every March 14th , called the White Day.

Did we miss something in our top 5 Reasons why February is the perfect month to visit South Korea if you are a budget traveler? Tell us your suggestions by visiting our website!

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For those who are planning a trip or even for the ones who are traveling constantly, its easy to say that most people are lucky enough to visit Europe even once in their lives. For sure many people are inspired by a first time trip and will continue to go back and explore the destination, but for others, they just don't have the time or the means and their first trip might be their only trip to that destination.

Europe is one of the best continents in the world and truly is recommended by the best. Here are some of the great cities of Europe to visit especially for first time visitors.

London is one of the best English speaking cities in Europe where it is among the easiest to begin and adapt with from the culture and style of Europe. The downside of the place is that if you don't know where to find the best places to fit your budget then you might feel this city is the most expensive city in the world.

Though there are many way to keep your trip in London on the go and cheap. All museums in London are free for you to visit and see history itself, you could visit the Tower, the famous clock of london the Big Ben, and the Buckingham Palace.

Paris is a city that so many people flock over because of its beauty and wonders. Walk for thirty minutes from anywhere near the city center and you will keep seeing buildings and bridges and public art that you only see in television and magazines. Though Paris is a very expensive city, there are many ways to keep everything on your budget.

According to Lonely Planet, A high speed Channel Tunnel train will take you almost to all major and famous site in paris. For cheap dinner yet taste great, try Montmartre.

Rome can be very frustrating in so many ways, from the crazy traffic, the city can be hard to adapt to, but there's also no denying that it's one of the world's greatest and most important cities. You can choose to visit the famous attractions of the Colosseum, Vatican City, Pantheon, Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. For dinner try eating out in Trastevere.

Venice is one of the most beautiful cities to visit though now its just full of tourists making crowds a big problem in the area. Even though hotels in Venice tend to be very expensive, the best way to visit is to probably spend a night or two on the main island to really feel the Venetian atmosphere. According to Price of Travel, Venice is also small enough that a day and a half of time is enough to see the best locations.

Most of Amsterdam's city center is perfectly preserved from its beginnings in the 17th Century, and it's been quite wealthy ever since. From the weirdness of the Red Light District, and its pleasant overall nature, Amsterdam is worth a visit in spite of its relative high prices for the most part. For more travel tips and guides feel free to visit Travelers Today.

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To everybody's surprise, the Kinder Egg has been increasingly losing its appeal to a lot of food authorities in the world. More and more countries have been deliberating on officially banning this product. It would be best to research before thinking of bringing Kinder Eggs as souvenirs or snacks when traveling.

Everybody knows that Kinder Eggs are banned in the US. This because of the policies of the Food and Drug Association in the country that strongly bans candies with embedded toys since 1938. Toys embedded in food can become a choking hazard for children. For this very reason, since Kinder Eggs have surprise toys inside, they have been and currently still are banned in the United States.

According to a report from DW, Chile also officially bans Kinder Surprise from their country not because of the toy found in. Instead of the choking hazard of the Kinder Surprise, Chile has banned the chocolate egg because of the health risks it could give people.

The country has revised their policies regarding unhealthy food for children like those containing high amounts of sugar, salt, calories and saturated fat. They have considered the nutritional aspect of the product and has deliberated fully that Kinder Eggs are unhealthy for children. In fact, they have banned McDonald's Happy Meals as well.

A report from Independent has shown that certain chemicals that have been found in the chocolate are not only carcinogenic but mutagenic as well. A certain mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbon (MOAHs) are oily byproducts of the chocolate which can pose danger to those who have experienced excessive consumption of Kinder Surprise.

This particular find has pushed German Food Authorities to deliberate on officially banning the Kinder Egg as well. Although the outcome mostly looks like it would be going downhill, there have been no official announcements yet.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
In a recent interview, British supermodel Naomi Campbell shared her life-threatening attack from robbers in Paris. The 46-year-old said she what she underwent was a terrifying ordeal.

According to the E! News, the iconic model and actress told the Wendy Williams Show that in 2012, she took a plane from Switzerland to Paris and didn't call security because it was just a quick trip to visit fashion designer Azzedine Alaia. The incident happened outside Alaia's shop.

She said that she didn't want to make the issue so public but robbers followed her from the airport and attacked her. "They opened my car door and said, 'Naomi Campbell, we're going to kill you," Campbell recalled. She said it was weird that when she went to the car, it wasn't her normal driver and he had the windows rolled down despite the freezing cold November weather.

Campbell said the driver was in on it. The attackers swooped on her and demanded her bag, Daily Mail reported. She said that she had to decide in a split moment whether to let the guy take her bag with all her passports or if she should fight for it. She decided to not let go of her bag.

The supermodel added that she sympathized with what happened to Kim Kardashian and that she felt for her right away. Campbell said that she hated hearing stories that what happened to Kim wasn't true. It can be remembered that Kim was robbed of 5.2million worth of jewellery by several men wearing police uniforms.

"It was absolutely true and it happened to me, and it's happened to a few other people-but it's not for me to say-who are well-known also." Campbell also said that her Paris attackers could be the same criminals who attacked the Kardashian Wests.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Multiple people were reportedly shot at Fort Lauderdale international airport of Florida in United States. One suspect in custody.

By Agencies: At least five persons were killed after a gunman opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida on Friday, officials said.

The shooter has been taken into custody. The motive for the attack is yet to be known, according to law enforcement officials, CNBC reported.

US Senator Bill Nelson says the Fort Lauderdale airport gunman was carrying a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago, though it's not clear if it belonged to him or to someone else.

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All flights were grounded and additional areas of the airport were being evacuated.

The Broward County sheriff's office tweeted that there were unconfirmed reports of additional shots fired on airport property and it was conducting an active search.

Update: 5 ppl dead; 8 injured were taken to an area hospital. Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) January 6, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence tweeted about the situation.

Trump tweeted: "Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!"

Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and our first responders in Fort Lauderdale, FL," Pence wrote on Twitter.

In a news conference, the law enforcement officials said the situation was "fluid and active". They confirmed the shooter was unharmed and in custody. Law enforcement did not fire any shots, officials said.

The Transportation Security Administration warned people at the Fort Lauderdale Airport to shelter in place and described it as an active shooter situation.

The airport tweeted the shooting, in which five persons lost lives, took place at the Terminal 2 baggage claim area in the lower level. It said the airport would be closed for an extended period of time.

Hundreds of passengers and airport workers could be seen gathering and evacuating via the tarmac.

The airport has four terminals and serves more than 73,000 travellers every day. It ranks 21st in the US in total passenger traffic, with more than 650 commercial flights a day.

(With agency inputs)

Also read:

Houston shooter killed by police was Indian-origin lawyer

UCLA shooting: Gunman who killed professor, self, identified as Indian origin student

--- ENDS ---
Over hundred tourists are stranded in Solangnala valley some 13 kms away from Manali due to heave snowfall.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Over hundred tourists are stranded in Solangnala area of Manali due to incessant snowfall. Vehicles were stranded after 4 pm when it began to snow heavily in the area.

The area is witnessing an eight-hour long traffic jam.

Solangnala, a famous tourist spot, is located some 13 kilometres from Manali. The stranded tourists told India Today that they did not have access to food.

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Also read: Kashmir: Incessant snowfall cripples normal life, impacts traffic, flights

The tourists even tried contacting the local administration through the dial 100, however their calls fell on deaf ears.

The snowfall has caused a massive traffic jam in the region. Tourists said that their vehicles were moving very slowly.

The stranded tourists also include a family from Delhi that had reached Manali on Thursday. The family consists of eight members including children.

WATCH VIDEO

--- ENDS ---


Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : VILASA LUXURY TRAVEL LAUNCHES NORTH AMERICAN CAMPAIGN Industry: Tour Ops

Customizable Itineraries Reveal the Fascinating Natural Beauty, History and Culture of India



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - January 5th, 2017 - Minar Travels, one of India's leading destination management companies since 1992 with expertise in travel, tourism, aviation, and MICE, announced the launch of Vilasa Luxury Travel, the newest luxury brand specializing in upscale, customizable travel to India. Leveraging their extensive partnerships with India's finest hotels and service providers, experience and knowledge of India, and proven record of world-class service, Vilasa Luxury Travel will work with North American travel agents to provide their clients with unique and memorable experiences in one of the world's most fascinating destinations. Clients will explore beyond the conventional tourist paths to experience the true heart of India and its neighboring countries  all while traveling in utmost comfort and enjoying the highest standards of personalized attention.



Vilasa offers culinary, adventure, sports, and spiritual tour programs, as well as inland journeys such as authentic luxury train and private jet rides, and cruises such as sailing in a traditional Kettuvalamequipped with the latest luxuries and safety features. Travel agents can work with Vilasa's experienced staff to create highly customized itineraries for several clients or groups of any size that precisely meet their needs. Agents can also choose from a growing list of sample programs on a wide range of themes, selecting them just as they are or modifying them as needed. All fixed programs pay 10% commission on published prices. Customized itineraries are priced at net cost, allowing agents to set their own prices with clients.



"The dramatic beauty, heritage and splendor of India and its neighboring countries have been a source of fascination to travelers for centuries," said Mr. Harvinder Singh Duggal, Managing Director for Vilasa Luxury Travel and a highly respected entrepreneur and businessman. "Vilasa Luxury Travel helps guest to discover all of the world-renowned attractions as well as the little-known gems that make India and its neighbors an unforgettable experience to everyone who visits."



Travel Like Royalty, Feast Like a King

Among the many experiences offered by Vilasa are Royal Living and Dining, which introduces guests to the magnificent heritage properties and diverse cuisine of India's palaces, forts, royal residences, and luxury hotels. These residences are often surrounded by serene environments that are attractions unto themselves and furnished with object-d-art pieces that recall the elegant lifestyles of the royalty that once ruled India. Call of the Wild features jungle safaris across natural habitats through many of India's national parks. Highlights include a visit to Ranthambore National Park, a former royal hunting ground known for its diverse population of tigers, with hotel accommodations that consist of posh tents.



Vilasa also offers culinary tours that explore the finest Indian gourmet available in the best restaurants, hotels and roadside eateries, from traditional Indian Thali to regional delicacies. Another experience, Luxury in the Air, takes guests aboard a fleet of luxurious aircraft, including light, midsized and heavy jets, helicopters and VIP aircrafts, flying across India and neighboring countries, accompanied by a team of aviation experts.



Sample fixed programs include the 17-nights Best of West and North India encompasses Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Murudeshwara, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi. Highlights include a visit to the Hilton Shillim Estate Retreat & Spa in Pune, situated in the Sahyadari Mountains, and a visit to the famous Raja Gopura Temple and Shiva statue in the town of Murdeshwara. An elevator ride to the top of the Temple provides a breath-taking view of the 123-feet Shiva idol. Excursions also include a visit Khajuraho  "the city of gods"  to see its magnificent temple complex, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.



"India is one of the most captivating regions of the world, notable for its sprawling natural landmarks, diverse cultures, incredible temples, and sumptuous palaces," said Duggal. "Vilasa is ready to help every travel agent find the perfect vacation for their elite clients, transporting them in absolute luxury through this magical kingdom."



About Vilasa Luxury Travel

Vilasa Luxury Travel is the luxury brand of Minar Travels, India's leading destination management company since 1992 with expertise in travel, tourism, aviation, and MICE. In addition to receiving numerous industry honors and awards, Minar is a nine-time winner of the prestigious National Tourism Award from the Tourism Ministry of India. Vilasa draws upon Minar's in-depth knowledge of India and commitment to quality to ensure that their luxury travel tours in India and beyond are the very best of their kind. Its thoughtfully designed tour programs meet the highest standards for luxury travel, guiding guests on a "voyage of discovery" that allows them to explore India and its neighboring countries beyond the well-worn paths of conventional travel to find the heart and soul of the land and its people. Vilasa's experienced and dedicated team of travel professionals are in constant contact with their vast network of exceptional heritage properties and top hotels in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives to provide their guests with experiences that are distinctive and unforgettable, all while traveling in style and total comfort. Vilasa creates customized itineraries for travel agents at net pricing, which agents can then provide to their clients at their own pricing plans. It also provides fixed programs at 10% commission. For more information, call toll-free 1-844-358-1024 or visit vilasaluxury.com. ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Mario Almonte Company: Vilasa Luxury Travel Phone: 212-616-1190 Email: malmonte@herman-almontepr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS


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23rd Annual World Travel Awards 2016



(TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - January 6th, 2017 - Kairali - The Ayurvedic Healing Village at Pallakad, Kerala has for the second year in a row, been voted as India's Leading Spa Resort at the 23rd Annual World Travel Awards 2016.



The Ayurvedic Healing Village is part of the Kairali Ayurvedic Group, a leading name in Ayurveda.



While receiving the award Abhilash K Ramesh, Executive Director, Kairali Ayurvedic Group said, We are thanking all Kairali members again for their work and dedication to get more such honours in future. We will further strive to achieve perfection and make the Ayurveda experience offered by the group even better.



These awards, also known as The Oscars of Travel Industry, were held at the Inter Continental, Danand, Sun Peninsula Resort at Vietnam on October 15, 2016.



Kairali - The Ayurvedic Healing Village was bestowed this honour as "India's Leading Spa Resort 2016" among nine other nominations from India.



World Travel Awards was established in 1993 to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all sectors of the tourism industry. Today, the award brand is recognised globally as the ultimate hallmark of quality, with winners setting the benchmark to which all others aspire.



Kairali Ayurvedic Group has, over the years, bagged many prestigious awards and recognitions such as AYUSH Brand of the year 2016, Best Destination Spa Award by India Salon & Wellness award 2016, Hospitality Excellence awards by Brand Academy 2014 and many more. Kairali is spread across nine countries with 35 treatment centers, and residential Ayurvedic health retreats, Kairali Ayurvedic Group is famous for its medicinal and cosmetics products and a prominent name in spa and wellness industry.



The groups business practices also extend to traditional Ayurvedic medicine created from the precise instructions of the ancient Vedas. ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Kairali Ayurvedic Group Company: Kairali Ayurvedic Group Phone: 8826021114 Email: mylinkexchangepartner@gmail.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS
These fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy in the last two months. Over 100 of their trawler boats were taken into custody.

By Akshaya Nath: The Sri Lankan government today released 51 Indian fishermen who were under its custody. Most of these fishermen were arrested for venturing into the Sri Lankan waters for fishing.

For more than 20 years now, the fishermen issue has been a much-talked-about subject. "Fishing is our only means of livelihood. If we cannot go fishing, what are we supposed to do? How will our children survive?", asked a worried Emanuel, a fisherman from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu.

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In the last two months, 51 Indian fishermen have been arrested and over 100 trawler boats taken into custody by the Sri Lankan navy. On January 5, 10 fishermen and two trawler boats were taken into custody. These 10 boats will remain under the Sri Lankan custody until the next court order.

OUR REQUESTS GO UNHEEDED: FISHERMEN

"We have sent multiple requests to the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government but our fishermen keep getting arrested. If we can't fish to eke out a living, our only option is to die. What else can we really do?", said Kaniappan, another fisherman from Rameswaram.

Also read | Tamil fishermen in Sri Lankan custody: CM Panneerselvam writes 4th letter to PM Modi

The request for the release of 51 Indian fishermen was granted in the joint meeting of the Sri Lankan and Indian officials. On January 5, 10 fishermen and two trawler boats were taken into custody by the Sri Lankan Navy. The fishermen from Jegathapattinam in Pudukottai district were fishing in Neduntheevu when they were arrested by the Lankan Navy.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 2, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Paneerselvam had sought the central government's intervention to resolve the fishermen issue in the state. His letter also criticised the veiled threats from Sri Lanka that the fishermen's gears and boats, which were under the Sri Lankan government's custody, would be acquired by Sri Lankan Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera.

FISHERMEN'S RELEASE A RELIEF

The release of the 51 fishermen has come as a sign of relief for the Indian fishermen, who are now hoping that their expensive fishing gears and trawler boats too will also be returned to them soon.

Also read | 10 Indian fishermen, 2 boats taken into custody by Sri Lankan Navy

"Our life depends on the decisions made by the government. We don't know what will happen to us every time we venture into the sea. We have no life without fishing. We have been in this profession since the time of our ancestors. Who are we to stop it?", said Emanuel.

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: State-run Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) on Friday said it had received an in-principal approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for divestment of 26 per cent of the government stake. The government has communicated in-principal approval of the CCEA for strategic disinvestment of 26 per cent equity shares out of governments shareholding of 54.03 per cent, the firm claimed. IANS

New Delhi

After Rajdhani fares, AI offers enhanced baggage

A day after announcing its ticket prices at par with AC II of Rajdhani trains, National carrier Air India on Friday came out with another lucrative offer for its passengers allowing enhanced free check-in baggage on its jumbo 747 flights operating on the trunk Delhi-Mumbai route. The revised check-in baggage limit is effective from tomorrow, it said. PTI

New Delhi

India, Kazakhstan to amend tax treaty

India and Kazakhstan on Friday agreed to amend an existing treaty between the two countries and effectively exchange tax information to deal with avoidance of double taxation. "India and Kazakhstan signed here a Protocol to amend the existing Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) for the avoidance of double taxation," the Finance Ministry said in a statement. IANS

New York/New Delhi

Apple app developers earned $20 bn in 2016

Apple on Friday announced that its app developers earned over $20 billion in 2016-up over 40 per cent from 2015 and several of those talented minds are from India-stating that New Year's Day was the highest single day ever for the App Store with nearly $240 million in purchases. ians
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 5

A 50-year-old woman was allegedly set on fire after pouring petrol on her in Sector 20 late last night.

Sources said Amrita, a resident of Housing Board flats, Sector 42, complained to the police that she had gone to her relatives house in Sector 20-C when they allegedly poured petrol on her and her aunt Rajni (50).

The complainant has alleged that she somehow saved herself while her aunt was set on fire.

Navdeep Singh Brar, SP (City), said Amrita had levelled allegations against her relatives, which were being verified. The police were informed about the incident and the victim rushed to the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32. The sources said the victim suffered 40 per cent burn injuries. Police officials said Amrita was giving contradictory statements following which they were waiting for her aunt to get fit so that they could record her statements. We are investigating the incident from all angles, said a police official.

Sister of notorious criminal

Amrita is the sister of notorious criminal Sandeep Kumar, alias Sunny, a resident of Sector 38 (West). Sunny has several cases registered against him in Chandigarh and Punjab. He had fled from the District Courts Complex on October 6, 2014. Six days later, he forcibly took away an Indica car from a Mohali resident near the Kalibari temple light point in Sector 31. He was re-arrested on November 6, 2014.

Amrita was held in 2014

Amrita was arrested by the UT police along with two others on October 24, 2014, for creating a ruckus in a drunken state at the Sector 18/19 light point.
The growth story of Gujarat is one of a state punching above its weight. With only 6 per cent of India's land mass and barely 5 per cent of its population, Gujarat has managed to account for 7.6 per cent of the country's GDP and 22 per cent of its exports. Its annual Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) growth from 2001 to 2013 (growth has slowed down since) averaged nearly 10 per cent, which is faster than India's. This is an extraordinary accomplishment. Between 1980 and 2013, Gujarat grew at an average rate of 5.1 per cent. If Gujarat were a country with a 10 million-plus population, this would be the third-fastest growth rate in the world, after China and South Korea.

What were the factors that helped Gujarat accomplish this extraordinary growth? Was it geography, native entrepreneurship, a historical edge in commerce and trade or simply good governance? The reasons for Gujarat's growth can be debated. Did the fact that Gujarat has the longest coastline-1,600 km-contribute to its rapid growth? Gujarat has served as an integral native trading hub for centuries, one of the most dominant in the Arabian Sea. After all, in India, most coastal states have shown higher growth than the BIMARU (an acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP, referring to their poor economic standing) states. A coastal state has the twin advantages of greater global access as well as lower transportation costs. Other coastal states, such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, have also performed well. But sustaining rapid growth, as Gujarat has done, is not easy. Almost 25 per cent of India's sea cargo passes through Gujarat's ports.

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Was it the renowned Gujarati entrepreneurial spirit that helped bring about Gujarat's transformation from being only the seventh richest big state in 1980-81 (in terms of per capita GSDP) to the third richest in 2013-14? Gujaratis have dominated businesses all over India for centuries. The Indian diaspora is dominated by Gujarati businessmen. Or was it good governance under successive regimes in Gujarat that brought about such development?

Gujarat has been among the fastest growing states even in the past. Despite poor rainfall, it has made strides in agriculture. Unlike Punjab and Haryana, states which launched the first Green Revolution with government support, Gujarat's agricultural transformation came via the market route. Cash crops such as cotton, oilseeds and tobacco dominated the farm growth story. A milk revolution and largescale exports of fish accompanied the growth in horticulture and sharp increase in agricultural productivity. The agricultural turnaround-with growth rates as high as 11.1 per cent between 2000 and 2013-was accomplished despite water scarcity. Gujarat knows the art of turning every calamity and tragedy into an opportunity. Despite the plague in Surat and the earthquake in Kachchh, the state's economic growth rate has surged in the last one-and-a-half decades. The good governance story of Gujarat, however, takes a knock when it comes to inclusive growth and social sector development. Gujarat is a 'model state' in economic growth but a 'middle state' in social sector growth. Both agricultural and manufacturing growth is in double digits, but of the 20 major states in India, Gujarat's ranking is always between 9 and 12 on all major social sector rankings. This is irrespective of how the measurements are done. Education, health and other social sectors have grown much more conservatively. The challenge for the leaders in Gujarat is finding ways to bring about inclusive growth, alongside the remarkable growth rate.

STATE OF THE STATE REPORT

With a firm belief that the future of the country lies in its states and Union territories, the State of the State (SoS) survey, started in 2003, emerged as the gold standard for analysing the performance of states. The State of the State report was the next logical step. It analyses the performance of districts in each state over a period of time, and across various categories. Each category is usually a composite index of a few parameters, which are measurable across time, provided data is available. In the case of Gujarat, ideally one should compare all 33 districts. Seven of these districts were created in 2013, and eight were created over the period of 1997 to 2010. Data for the recent seven is not available. For the eight districts created earlier, data is available sporadically. Thus, the district analysis presented in this report is for the 18 'original' districts.

GUJARAT VERSUS SIX STATES

How well has Gujarat performed in terms of GSDP growth, education, health and in other key categories can be best assessed by comparing its performance with that of other states; in particular, states closest to it in terms of socio-economic development. If 1999-2000 is taken as the 'base' year, it is found that across a wide array of indicators, Gujarat is closest to these six states-Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. Three of them are coastal states, like Gujarat. These states will be referred to as C7 (comparable seven). Performance is measured in terms of various indicators of improvement (e.g. growth) over the period of 1999 to the latest year for which there is data-generally 2011 (latest year for National Sample Survey, NSS, data on education) and 2013 (latest year for GSDP).

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Per capita GSDP growth: This is where Gujarat has excelled. The analysis of GSDP performance is conducted over two time periods- 1980-1999 and 2000-2013, for which there is data. The intention behind the comparison between the two time periods is to analytically separate the influence of history from good governance in later years. If per capita GSDP is the criterion, Gujarat was the seventh richest big state in India in 1980-81, fifth richest in 1999-2000 and third richest in 2013-14.

In per capita growth, Gujarat was the third-fastest growing state among C7. The fastest growing state was Maharashtra (4.3 per cent), followed closely by Tamil Nadu (4.1 per cent) and Gujarat (4 per cent). Despite being a relatively rich state, Gujarat pushed itself into becoming the second-fastest growing state for the period 2000-2013 (average of 6.5 per cent annually). The fastest growing state was Uttarakhand (9.2 per cent), a relatively smaller and newer state.

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Inequality: Was growth accompanied by growing inequality in the C7 states? Yes. Six of these states witnessed a rise in inequality (measured by the Gini index, which assigns a value of zero if everyone has equal income and a value of 1 if one person has all the income). Only one state, Tamil Nadu, witnessed a decline (-0.3 per cent annual decline for the 12 years from 1999 to 2011, according to NSS data). Gujarat was the third-best performer, with an annual Gini increase of 0.7 per cent.Education: Gujarat hasn't performed well here. NSS data on educational achievement (highest class attainment) is a much better index of educational attainment than provided by the literacy variable. Literacy tells whether a person is literate; educational attainment offers a measure of educational achievement.

In 1999-2000, Gujarat had about the same educational level (average educational achievement of 5.3 years) as Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. In 2011-12, the state improved its average education level to 6.3 years; however, this improvement was the second worst, behind Kerala. It should be emphasised that Kerala had the highest education level in 1999-2000 (7.4 years) and maintained its highest education level position in 2011-12 (8.8 years). As with income, there is a catch-up phenomena with education (and health), i.e. higher attainment states tend to improve at a lower rate. Hence, that Kerala improved its educational attainment at a rate of 1.4 years per annum is not a surprise; that Gujarat's rate of growth in education was only 1.5 per cent per annum is a big, negative surprise.

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Health: If measured by improvement in (the lowering of) the infant mortality rate (IMR), Gujarat does better in health than education-a decline in IMR by 3.6 per cent per annum, identical to Haryana's achievement. Kerala has the lowest rate of improvement (a decline of only 1.3 per cent per annum, from 14 deaths per 1,000 births in 1999 to 12 deaths in 2011). Himachal Pradesh, too, has a low average rate of decline (IMR fell from 54 to 38 deaths per 1,000 births or by 2.9 per cent per annum).

REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF GUJARAT

Gujarat was formed in May 1960 with 17 districts. Over the next six years, two more districts were added, one of which became the state's capital. Another 14 districts were formed from 1997 to 2013. Consistent data for all variables is only available for the initially created 17 districts and for most variables for 18 districts. The analysis is done at the district level, taking these 18 districts as individual units, and at a regional level by classifying them into groups as described below. For ease of analysis, the entire state has been divided into three broad regions: Western Gujarat, Central Gujarat and the Eastern Corridor. The demarcation is done on the basis of income and poverty levels in 1999, weighted by the population of each district. Such an exercise shows Central Gujarat as most prosperous, followed by Western Gujarat and the Eastern Corridor (see graphic: Centre Drives Growth). Any regional data provided is computed as a simple average of all the districts in the region.

Overall income: Since overall income comprises three categories-real wages, per capita household consumption and absolute level of poverty-we look at all of these individually. The most prosperous area, Central Gujarat, has shown maximum improvement in wages-an increase from an average wage of Rs 136.7 (2011-12 prices) to Rs 200.9 in 2011-as well as per capita household consumption. In terms of wages, Central Gujarat was followed by the Eastern Corridor (Rs 124.1 in 1999 to Rs 163.4 in 2011) and then Western Gujarat. Western Gujarat, which used to be best in wages in 1999-2000, shows maximum improvement in reducing absolute poverty (from average absolute poverty of 26.5 per cent in 1999 to 9.5 per cent in 2011). In consumption, Western Gujarat is most improved, followed by Central Gujarat, then the East.

Education: In education, Western Gujarat has shown the best improvement from 1999 to 2011, across all the variables for education: mean years in education completed by an average 15-64 year old for overall, male-female as well as female-male ratios. While Central Gujarat ranks second followed by the Eastern Corridor, the latter beat the former in improvement of female to male education, which could be attributed to the performance of one of the Eastern Corridor districts-Valsad. Valsad is the winner in the category of gender equality for education.

Health: Central Gujarat performs the best in lowering IMR, followed by the Eastern Corridor and Western Gujarat. In 1999, the Eastern Corridor showed the worst IMR, followed by Central Gujarat and Western Gujarat respectively. Central Gujarat improved from 58.4 to 39.4 over the period of 1999-2011 to overtake Western Gujarat. This clearly indicates improvement of healthcare in the region. The Eastern Corridor, too, has closely followed, from 59.5 to 41.8 IMR. One of the Eastern Corridor districts-Bhavnagar-has witnessed a significant drop in IMR.

Overall rank: Central Gujarat is the best in level of development. It also shows the highest improvement among the three regions. The conclusion is based on achievements in income, health and education. Western Gujarat and the Eastern Corridor take the second and third positions respectively.

Gender equality in education: There are three measures for educational achievement in 2011-years of education (male), years of education (female), and female education as a fraction of male education. The female-male education ratio captures gender equality. In India, educational discrimination against girls is rampant. But with programmes such as Beti Bachao Beti Padao, there is a new consciousness about education of the girl child. The closer the girl to boy education ratio is to 1, the district is that much closer to gender equality.

Valsad shows a level higher than 100 (equality in male-female education achievement levels) for 2011; this number is the highest in the country. The data was taken from NSS, which, for some districts, can have small sample sizes. However, even in 2009-10, Valsad had the highest gender equality in education in Gujarat, with a ratio of 95.5 per cent. In 1999-2000, the education gender equality ratio was 72 in Valsad, i.e. girls had only 72 per cent of the education of boys. So no matter how the data is sliced (1999-2000 to 2011-12 or till 2009-10), Valsad shows the highest rate of increase in girl-child education compared to boys.

DISTRICT-LEVEL PERFORMANCE

This section will analyse performance in terms of levels, circa 2011, and the next section will look at performance as measured by changes (or growth) between 1999 and 2011. All rankings are on the basis of the 18 districts for which consistent data are available: Ahmedabad, Amreli, Banaskantha, Bharuch, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Jamnagar, Junagadh, Kachchh, Kheda, Mehsana, Panchmahal, Rajkot, Sabarkantha, Surat, Surendranagar, Vadodara and Valsad.

RANKINGS BY LEVEL-2011

Income: In 2011, for the three income variables (real wages, real per capita income, and level of absolute poverty), Ahmedabad is the number one district. It has a score of 8 (the best score possible is 3, a rank of 1 in each category), followed by Kachchh (score of 11). At third place is Rajkot with a score of 12.

Education: There are three measures for educational achievement in 2011-years of education (male), years of education (female), and female education as a fraction of male education. The best score is a sum of ranks of 3. For the first category, Gandhinagar ranks the highest. Ahmedabad ranks the highest for the second category of female years in education. Valsad ranks the highest for the third category. If we look at the overall education, incorporating all three, Ahmedabad holds the top position, followed by Rajkot and Bharuch. It is interesting that Ahmedabad and Rajkot are tied at an overall score of 8, and some distance behind is Bharuch. In the race for best district, it would appear that for income and education, Ahmedabad is in the lead.

Health: IMR is the major indicator of health in 2011. Bhavnagar has the lowest IMR of 8.3. This is followed by Surat at 11 and then, after a long gap, Amreli, Kachchh, and Mehsana at 27.5, 28.4 and 30.5 respectively.

Overall rank: The overall ranking is estimated as the sum of ranks for income, education and health. The implicit weighting is that each category has one-third weight. However, as we have noted above, no matter what the weights, Ahmedabad is the unambiguous winner. The best (minimum) possible sum of the ranks is 7-3 (income) + 3 (education) + 1 (health). Ahmedabad scores 23. Next is Rajkot (28), then Kachchh (38).

Law and order: While there is data for various crime variables from 1999 to 2011, the ranking for crime is not included in our assessment for the best district. Nevertheless, an assessment of how each district has performed with respect to crime is relevant. Four indicators are combined to obtain an overall assessment. These variables (per hundred thousand of population) are murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and rape. The best score obtainable is 4. The district with the least crime rate is Sabarkantha (score of 15), followed by Valsad, Junagadh and Kheda at 18, 19 and 24 respectively. Bhavnagar has the fewest rapes per unit of population, followed by Panchmahal and Junagadh.

CONCLUSION

Gujarat has shown it can achieve rapid growth for an extended period. From 1980 to 2013, average per capita GSDP increased at a rate of 5.1 per cent per annum. Gujarat could rank as the third fastest growing country in the world with a population over 10 million. India ranks sixth for this time period. Gujarat's record in education and health is not as good. Education improved at 2.2 per cent per annum, about the same as India's (2.1 per cent). This would place Gujarat as ninth in the world. For Gujarat, the strategy should be to improve its education system, healthcare and other social sectors on a war footing as these could become obstacles in its growth. The government must focus on the economic-social transformation of the Eastern Corridor and Western Gujarat. The state must uplift the tribal, Dalit and minority communities from the remote, rural areas, who have been left out by the market-led growth. This will lead to inclusive development and reduce inequality-the best recipe for growth.

(With Uday Mahurkar)

--- ENDS ---
Mary Dejevsky

BARACK Obama will leave office on January 20, with his approval ratings rising to approach those of Bill Clinton when he bowed out 16 years ago. Despite this, his presidency is already being dismissed by many as, if not actually a failure, then a bitter disappointment. He will now be condemned to stand by as his successor  the very opposite of him in so many ways  sets about shredding his legacy.

Clinton, for all his perceived success, also failed to secure the election of another Democrat and had to watch as much of the international goodwill he had built up was destroyed by the reckless decisions of George W. Bush. And the cornerstone of that memorial could be the supposed foreign policy passivity for which Obama has been most vilified. It is true that his record abroad is mixed, and his great overture to the Arab world which he had planned as his opening gambit came to little, largely due to forces  the Arab Spring  beyond his, and anyone's, control. But the real failures  an early surge that delayed the promised withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos produced by the  arm's length  US intervention in Libya were where he was persuaded to act against his better judgement, by General David Petraeus in the first instance, and by the UK and France in the second. They are also vastly outweighed by the successes, though they would not be classed as such in the conventional way success might be measured by many Americans. Top of the list would be Obama's much-maligned decision not to act on his "red line" on the Assad government's use of chemical weapons in Syria. That, according to his critics, sent the message that the US would not honour its commitments and left a regional vacuum that Russia was able to fill. Another way of looking at it would be  as Obama explained in his interviews for Atlantic monthly - that he feared being tricked into an unwise intervention that would suck the US into yet another unwinnable war.

He was right here. He was also right to step back from direct intervention in Ukraine, and in particular to resist requests from the Kiev government for weapons. In so doing, he treated Ukraine as at most a regional, rather than proxy superpower, conflict, and helped to keep it geographically confined. I wonder whether the early verdicts on Obama will endure so well. It is not just that the current script is being dictated disproportionately by his critics, but that they seem to be looking backward rather than forward. I would venture to bet that at least some of the very policies for which Obama is facing the fiercest attack could turn out to be historic achievements which will constitute a formidable memorial. The thinking behind these non-actions, as Obama himself has explained, is that the US has to pick its fights according to the national interest, and there are some fights  as Clinton partly said  where the US simply does not have a dog; indeed, where intervention may actually damage US security. On other issues, Obama has shown a more collegiate approach than has habitually been US policy. These would include the US part in the Iran nuclear agreement, Washington's support for the Paris climate change accord, and  one of Obama's parting shots  the abstention in the recent UN Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements. Far from demonstrating US weakness, however  or, as some of his opponents chide, the abandonment of US exceptionalism  Obama's willingness to join international coalitions shows a realistic appreciation of the new world in which the US now finds itself. While still dominant militarily and economically, it faces more different challenges from more directions than before.

The question is not just how, but whether, to respond. And it is worth asking here whether Donald Trump's foreign policy will veer significantly away from the course Obama has set. A general reluctance to play the world's policeman; smart interventions, if there are interventions, with special forces and drones; a reliance on deterrence  these are the US foreign policy changes made by Obama, and they look unlikely to be reversed.

The same continuity is unlikely to be observed in domestic policy, where Trump has been withering about Obama's economic priorities and has vowed to repeal "Obamacare".

Without Obama's success in steadying the economy, however, Trump might not have the luxury he now has to promise new infrastructure development and repatriating jobs. As for Obamacare, extending health insurance to so many more Americans was an enormous feat, and, for all the vested interests ranged against it, such progress will not be so simple to turn back.

The bigger conundrum, though, remains. If Obama has achieved so much more than his many detractors proclaim, why is there this disconnect? And why does the social advance that his election represented seem so summarily to have stalled?Among the reasons must surely be the sky-high expectations of the man who was inaugurated as the country's first black president eight years ago. He proved unable to realise the hopes his campaign had raised, whether for prosperity and racial harmony at home or for peace abroad. He was cursed with a recalcitrant Congress that he never really learned to tame. He will be judged rather more kindly in the future than he is now.





The Independent
Srinagar, January 6

Unknown gunmen attacked the house of National Conference (NC) legislator Showkat Ganai in south Kashmir's Shopian district, but the guards repulsed the assault.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

According to police, unidentified gunmen on Thursday night fired at Ganai's house in Chitragam village. "Guards posted at the house retaliated the attack, forcing the gunmen to flee," police said here.

The legislator was not present inside his house when the attack took place as he is in Jammu to attend the budget session of the state legislature.

Two days back, Ganai had told the media that Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was a "martyr to the cause he stood for".

The legislator's remarks had ruffled many a feather in the mainstream political camp of Jammu and Kashmir.

IANS
Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 6



A top local militant commander was killed in brief gunfight in Srinagar outskists during the intervening night of Thursday and Friday.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Police said the militant commander identified as Muzaffar Naikoo alias Muza Molvi was challenged by forces at Muchoo Budgam after an input about his movement.



As he was challenged, he opened fire, which was retaliated, triggering a gunfight. Naikoo was killed in the gunfight .A policeman was also injured in the gunfight, a police officer said.



Naikoo, a resident of north Kashmirs Sopore, was formerly associated with Lashker-e-Toiba and was active from 2008.

He was presently associated with Al Badr militant group and was one among the most wanted militants in Kashmir.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 6

Staff and students of Green Land schools paid a tribute to the founder president of Green Land Schools, Ram Labhaya Rudhra on his 23rd death anniversary.

Chairman Rajesh Rudhra said Ram Labhaya Rudhra was an honest police officer who was awarded with three gold medals for his honesty and bravery. During his tenure, he proved his mettle by solving gravest problems and always stood victorious by executing exemplary courage.

He said he was the only police officer who was awarded thrice for his honesty and valiance. Ram Labhaya Rudhra studied at Gujrat High School, Pakistan and it was during this time he developed a strong bond of friendship with the first IG of Punjab Police, Ashwani Kumar, who was also known for his honesty.

At the time of partition, he was posted at Lal Musa Police Station which is now in Pakistan. When he came to India after partition his first posting was at Division No. 5.

Ram Labhaya Rudhra Award of Excellence which includes cash amount is given every year to the meritorious students who excel in the CBSE boards and to the teachers who give results of par excellence, Rajesh Rudhra said.
Johnson Thomas

Juan Antonio Bayonas The Orphanage may have relegated him to the cult genre mold but its his The Impossible which really caught the critics eyes and won him his slew of awards. A Monster Calls embraces both worlds. It has a monster in it and tells a searing tale of pain and guilt that merges conventional plot forms with deeply involving reality to create a metaphoric allegory that consumes illness, death and grief all through the eyes of a 12 year old Conor (Lewis MacDougall) who seems all about to go over the edge while the sole anchor of his life, his young single mother (An achingly real Felicity Jones) grapples with preparing her son for the foregone outcome of her terminal illness. This is a powerful film that gains its ideology from an award winning YA novel by Patrick Ness, who also wrote the screenplay (the book itself was initially conceived as an idea by the late writer Siobhan Dowd).

Highly imaginative, this film provides an intimate glimpse into a traumatised adolescent mind. The boys father, (Toby Kebbell) who lives with his new family in Los Angeles and his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver), a stern intimidating figure, who at the outset seems entirely disagreeable, are aliens in his troubled mind. Conor knows that all the adults in his life, however well-intentioned, are lying to him. So his grief-savaged sub-conscious mind conjures up a frenemy, tree monster (Liam Neeson), that will help him come to terms with the unassailable truth of his existence. But Conors conscious mind is still not ready for that eventual catharsis. Will he be able to return to consonance before his mothers eventual demise, is a question were all left grappling with right up to the heart-stopping climax.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona attempts to recapture the books unique appeal and manages it with great similitude. The result is an amazing array of taut emotion wracked moments combined with inspirational animation special effects that open out the ravaged mind of a troubled youth with explosive depth. The visuals are arresting and compare favorably even to Guillermo del Toros Pans Labyrinth  which is saying a lot about the cinematographer-director duo involved here. Spielbergs BFG may bear emblematic resemblance but this one is far deeper and more resonant and makes the entire experience a catharsis for pent-up grief. The wisdom exemplified in the telling , philosophy entrenched in garnering the truth and overreaching compassion in assay makes this experience so involving that it will make you release your own demons in the process. Such is the power of this unique experience!

English Film Review

Johnson Thomas

A rarefied romantic sci-fi adventure

Film: Passengers

Cast: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne

Director: Morten Tyldum

Rating: * * *

Runtime: 116 min.

What if you were trapped on a super luxurious cruise ship travelling in outerspace, for the rest of your life? This is the premise for this beautifully appointed sci-fi adventure romance directed by Norwegian director Morten Tyldum- him of The Imitation Game fame.

Avalon, an ultra-automated luxury interstellar space ship is ferrying 5,000 paying passengers and 200-odd crew members, all enclosed in pods designed to keep them fresh and healthy and inanimate for the next 120-year journey from Earth to Homestead II- the antidote to an overpopulated and ravaged home planet.

Jim Preston(Chris Pratt) is the first one to awake unexpectedly on board and after one year of trying to come to terms with his solitary existence decides to wake up a suitable partner, Aurora(Jennifer Lawrence), to make his solitary confinement more bearable.

The film raises ethical questions and answers them in a harebrained manner, by throwing a spanner in the works- putting the forced-to-be-loved-up lives in peril and thus obliterating the need to face up to the challenging issues raised. The romance is a given, nothing mysterious or challenging about it..what else could they do marooned on a ship with no other human inhabitants awake? And the grappling with existential issues created by malfunctions in the nuclear gear of the ship makes for some hackneyed mid-space adventure thrills. Theres some Gravity in it but not enough to draw you in entirely. Jon Spaihts screenplay doesnt quite aim for any deeper inveiglements. So there's nothing beyond the serene, intriguing, facsimile representation of space travel to keep you entranced here. The well imagined, striking visual design, seamless digital effects, along with Thomas Newmans tempting background score is what is wondrous about this experience!

Johnsont307@gmail.com
Shiv Kumar



Tribune News Service

Mumbai, January 6

Veteran actor Om Puri, who gave countless memorable performances in movies of diverse genres, died at his residence here on Friday morning after a massive heart attack. He was 66.

He passed away this morning due to a massive heart attack at his residence in suburban Andheri. Its shocking, a family source said.

The body was taken to Cooper Hospital from his residence in suburban Andheri for post-mortem, according to a tweet by former colleague, actress Shabana Azmi. Puris funeral is scheduled for 6 pm on Friday, according to his colleagues.

Shabana tweeted that Puri would be cremated at the Oshiwara electric crematorium.

From Bollywood to Hollywood, from independent to art films, the noted actor, known for his versatility, gave several acclaimed performances.

Puri featured in several Indian, Pakistani, British and Hollywood mainstream commercial films.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

He was awarded the Padma Shri, the countrys fourth highest civilian award, in 1990. Puri was also a recipient of the OBE.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled Puris demise and recalled his long career in theatre and films.

Also read: Om Puri: Bollywood mourns the loss of an exceptional talent

Om Puri: An acting giant who traversed both East and West

Friends in Patiala shocked at Om Puris death

Born in Ambala, Haryana, in a Punjabi family, Puri graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He was also an alumnus of the 1973 class of National School of Drama, where Naseeruddin Shah was a co-student.

He made his film debut in the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal.

Some of his most notable films include Bhavni Bhavai, Sandgate, Ardh Satya, Mirch Masala, Dharavi, Aakrosh, Maachis, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan.

He earned international fame in many British films, such as My Son the Fanatic, East Is East, The Parole Officer and others.

He also appeared in Hollywood films like City of Joy, Wolf, The Ghost and the Darkness among others.

With Agencies
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 6

The Bharatiya Janata Party said on Friday that it was confident of winning elections to all five assemblies, as the party faces its biggest test since the central government's shake up of the country's financial system.

Addressing a press briefing after the party's national executive meeting, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the party had a team that was working on identifying and strengthening the partys weaknesses.

"Organisation is the biggest strength of the BJP. A review of meetings held after last national executive was also held. The message, which we wanted to percolate to the grassroots, has been disseminated by our lakhs of members, Javadekar said on Friday. The team will also focus on regions where it did not do well in the general elections of 2014.

"The BJP will also win in Manipur, which saw the most corrupt period under chief minister Ibobi Singh. Blockade free, bandh free Manipur is the new slogan by the BJP for Manipur, he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Partys parliamentary board congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his measure to invalidate old high-value banknotes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000, the minister said, as he criticised the opposition, particularly the Congress, for opposing the measure.

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Every paisa has been accounted for. Along with digital transaction, there will be an increase in taxes and money will be available for development. Unless there is more money for development, you cannot bring changes in India's growth story, Javadekar said, quoting BJP national President Amit Shah at a press briefing after the meeting. Congress, which made people stand for milk, rations, are questioning the government on the move. The people have supported the move because they understand its benefits. The opposition parties have been exposed.

The minister said the central government began planning the shake up two-and-a-half years ago.

The decision for demonetisation has taken place after a lot of consultations and deep thinking, Javadekar said.

All surveys have given overwhelming support to the move, poor people are standing by government. Both demonetisation and surgical strikes will go down as historic decisions. Party's wins in the various elections in the interim period pointed to the big acceptance to the move. If people have to be given more benefits, the government needs more money and collecting it through better tax collection is the only way to do it after 70 years of mismanagement, Javadekar says, quoting Shah.

The partys national executive also denounced the Trinamool Congresss recent attacks at BJP offices and office-bearers in West Bengal.

Shah, who addressed a meeting of party office-bearers before the meeting, called demonetisation and the Indian Army's military strikes against terrorist launch pads on Pakistan's soil two "histroic" decisions taken under the Prime Minister and said that India would be willing to undertake more "out-of-the-box" measure against the neighbour if it engaged in "proxy war".

The various schemes announced by the Prime Minister in his recent speech were also mentioned.

The Trinamool Congress had vandalised BJP offices and attacked some leaders during protests against the arrest of a TMC Parliamentarian, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, for his suspected involvement in the Rs 15,000 crore Rose Valley Chit fund scam.  With agencies
New Delhi, January 6

Undeterred by China blocking its move to list Pakistan-based JeM Chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India has initiated discussions with several member countries of the UN Security Council and is exploring various options on the issue.

We are examining all options and also consulting with the other co-sponsors, government sources said.

India had reacted sharply to Chinas resistance to its proposal at the UN on December 30, saying Beijings decision reflected prevalence of double standards in the fight against terrorism.

India was hopeful that China would support the proposal at the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as it came days after NIA filed charge sheet against Azhar in the Pathankot terror attack case.

The sources said India has not set any time frame for making a fresh start in getting the JeM chief designated as global terrorist by the UN.

Chinas technical hold on New Delhis move on Azhar had expired on December 31 and India or any other UNSC member country has to now make a fresh listing request for the terrorist to be banned by the global body.

UN Sanctions Committees listing would have forced imposition of asset freeze and travel ban on Azhar by countries including Pakistan.

China was the only member on the 15-nation UNSC Sanctions Committee to have opposed Indias application.

China had dismissed Indias criticism, saying it had adopted a just, objective and professional attitude in deciding the issue.

Earlier this week, India had asked Beijing to hear the voice of the world in dealing with terror and hoped it would be able to persuade the country to understand the depth and evil of the menace.

Meanwhile, in a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in Chinas repeated efforts to block Indias bid to slap a UN ban on JeM leader Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should adjust its stand accordingly.

In his lengthy blog on social media WeChat public account about the India-China stalemate over Azhar, Mao Siwei  who previously served as Chinas Consul General in Kolkata  said China should take advantage of Indias complaint against Azhar and get rid of the passive diplomatic situation between the two countries.

The blog published on December 28, two days before China refused to lift its technical hold on Indias application, allowing it to lapse, Mao highlighted the history of Pakistan- based terror organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Muhammad and how they carried out violent attacks whenever India and Pakistan made efforts to normalise their relations.  PTI
New Delhi, January 6

The National Investigation Agency formally charged a suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist from Pakistan with terrorist activities on Friday.

Bahadur Ali was arrested on July 24 from Yahama, a village on the India-Pakistan border in north Kashmir.

The agency claims that that Ali, and two other suspected militants, had sneaked into India on July 13.

Ali, a school dropout who is originally from Jia Bagga village in Lahores Raiwind, had a map of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir  including Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir  as well as grid references (GRs).

"This clearly establishes that Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject. A GPS device was recovered from the possession of Ali at the time of his arrest.

"The data retrieved from the GPS device contained coordinates of the Mandakuli 'launching pad' of LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in J&K, like Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur, besides Delhi.

"Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns or cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including in Delhi," the charge sheet said.

The charge sheet points to lapses in surveillance along the Line of Control, as the trio walked for seven days before they reached their destination.

The agency has charged Ali with sections Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Explosives Act, the Explosives Substances Act, Arms Act, the Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act.

Ali has been been in judicial custody since August.  PTI
Islamabad, January 6

Pakistan has provided UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres details of Indian terrorism and interference in the country, its foreign office said in a statement on Friday.

Pakistani Prime Ministers Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, said the countrys Pakistan's envoy to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi met the new UN secretary general to hand over a dossier.

"The dossier contains additional information and proof of Indian/RAW interference in Pakistan and involvement in terrorism particularly in Balochistan, FATA and Karachi. This is a follow up to the three dossiers, which were shared with the United Nations in October 2015," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

In a covering letter sent, Aziz claimed that the arrest of "Indian RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav from Balochistan and his confessional statement admitting involvement in activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan, and support to terrorist elements vindicated Pakistan's long-standing position about India's involvement in such activities".

Jadhav has been accused by Pakistan of planning "subversive activities" in the country. India has acknowledged that Jadhav had served in the navy but said he was not connected to the government.

Aziz also said Indias "hostile intentions" could be drawn from recent statement by its political and military leadership, as he asked the UN to restrain India from activities that were in clear violation of international law and threatened regional and international peace and security".

"Pakistan continues to desire peace with all its neighbours including India. It is convinced that the common objectives of economic development and prosperity for our people can best be promoted through regional cooperation, conflict resolution and peaceful settlement of disputes," the Foreign Office statement said.

"At the same time, however, Pakistan will resolutely defend its territorial integrity and take all necessary measures to counter any threat to its security," it said.  PTI
While several tomes have been produced on the Gujarat growth model, these are by and large zoomed-out macro pictures of the state. The India Today State of the State report - the third in an ongoing series of state reports - presents a micro-analysis of performance at the district level. Releasing the report in Ahmedabad on December 23, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said, "This study will help us gauge the development in the districts of Gujarat. This objective and highly credible study will help the government map and plan Gujarat's growth."

The chief minister also gave away the awards to the district magistrates and police superintendents of the best performing and most improved districts at the third edition of the State of the State Conclave. The conclave is a signature india today event, where a special report is released on the various growth indicators of a state. All districts in the state are ranked on various social and economic parameters, and categories and awards given to the best performing and most improved ones. "There was a need to create an environment of healthy competition between districts," the chief minister said, "and this study has made that beginning. We'll study it and work on sectors that need to make progress."

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Recalling Gujarat's legacy as one of the most developed states in the country, Rupani gave Narendra Modi credit for institutionalising a structure in the state to improve efficiency and delivery when he was chief minister. "This pushed the state on the path of growth," he said, "and we are continuing in that direction."

The daylong event saw several stimulating panel discussions on Gujarat's growth trajectory. Politicians, bureaucrats, policy experts, filmmakers and actors commented on and debated what more the state needs to do to balance economic growth and social indicators. The state seems to have woken up to this sore point in its growth narrative and is taking corrective measures. "Last year's budget allocated 48 per cent of the total funds to the social sector; this year too it will be in the same range," Gujarat Chief Secretary J.N. Singh said.

With the entire country discussing demonetisation, the issue came up several times during the interactions. Dismissing criticism that it has stalled economic activity, resulting in job losses, the chief minister said, "Note ban caused inconvenience to people initially. But let me assure you, there has been no layoff in any industry in Gujarat, including the diamond industry."

The chief minister found support in industry expert Sunil Parikh's observation. GST and demonetisation, he said, were in a way complementary to each other.

Reacting to a question on the rising violence against Dalits, Rupani said the Una incident, where Dalit youth were flogged for skinning dead cows, was politically orchestrated to needle the NDA government at the Centre. "No government has taken stricter measures than we did after the Una incident. We are ensuring the harshest punishment is meted out to the perpetrators. We created a fast track court and suspended all police officers found to be neglecting duty," he said. When asked about the popularity of Hardik Patel, who has been demanding reservations for his community, Rupani said reservations is a nationwide issue but took an ugly turn in Gujarat because of vote bank politics. Rupani, however, was non-committal when asked about the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in next year's assembly elections. "I cannot say if I'll be the CM candidate, the party will decide," he said. "To win in Gujarat, we don't need any other face. Modi's name is enough. Modi and Gujarat are two sides of the same coin."

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The conclave was inaugurated by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan. Commenting on the Gujarat growth story, Pradhan said the best part of the Gujarat model of development was that it was a balanced one. "The state progressed in industry, services and agriculture. No sector grew at the cost of another," he said.

The conclave was also attended by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Agriculture & Farmer Welfare, Panchayati Raj Parshottam Rupala; Gujarat Minister for Tribal Development, Tourism and Forest Ganpatsinh Vasava; Gujarat Minister, Revenue, Education, Legislative and Parliamentary affairs Bhupendrasinh Chudasama; Gujarat Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare, Medical Education, Environment (all independent charge) and Urban Development Shankarbhai Lagdhirbhai Chaudhari; Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Energy, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Pradipsinh Chudasama; National Spokesperson for Indian National Congress Shaktisinh Gohil and economist and public policy specialist Tushar Shah. Economist and academic Yogendra K. Alagh; National Dairy Development Board chairman Dilip Rath; actor Paresh Rawal and filmmaker Ketan Mehta were also present.

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Commenting on Gujarat's phenomenal agricultural success, Tushar Shah said, "Nowhere in the world have we seen a region with agricultural growth of over 7-8 per cent; in Gujarat it was around 9 per cent for over a decade." However, Rupala said the challenge was to work for the betterment of small and marginal farmers. Alagh pointed to the imbalance between grains and non-grains in the state. Rath lamented that despite the success of the milk revolution, it had not reached all corners of the state.

Speaking about the future of Gujarati cinema, Rawal said good films will always have an audience. "I want Gujarati films to be of international standard, the way Malayalam and Bengali films have got global recognition," he said.

--- ENDS ---
Patna, January 6

Exclusion of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad from the dignitaries, who shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the Prakash Parv here, on Friday drew flak from the RJD and the Congress.

RJD vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh voiced the partys grievance.

The mega arrangements were made by the state government, of which RJD is an ally, to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, yesterday.

It did not look like the arrangements to mark Guru Gobind Singhji Maharajs 350th Prakash Parv were made by the alliance government. Rather, it looked more like they were made by one party in power, Singh told PTI.

This (Lalu not being accommodated on the dais) has not gone down well with the people. Lalu Prasad was made to sit below (the dais). Everybody praised Nitish Kumar for making the grand arrangements. Was RJD not part of the management for the preparations and arrangements for the Prakash Parv celebrations? he asked.

Firing yet another salvo at Kumar, Singh, whose frequent digs at the chief minister have drawn sharp reactions from the JD(U) in the past, said, It was one man who got his photo clicked to take credit for the arrangements.

Lalu and his two minister sons, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, sat in the VIP enclosure with others during the function.

Kumar, along with two Union ministersRavi Shankar Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswanand Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind, shared the dais with the prime minister at the concluding function of the 350th Prakash Parv.

The Congress also expressed its displeasure over the denial of seat to Lalu on the dais and blamed the Prime Ministers Office and the BJP for it.

Lalu Prasad was not given a seat on the dais on instructions from the PMO and the BJP, Bihar Congress chief and state minister Ashok Choudhary alleged.

Everyone knows that the PMO guides the SPG as regards who will share the dais with the prime minister at a function. The question should be raised before the PMO as to why was Lalu Prasad not given a seat at the podium, he told PTI.

Nobody from the Congress, which too is an ally in the grand alliance government in Bihar with the JD(U) and the RJD, was present at the mega event at the Darbar Hall, a replica of the Golden Temple in Amritsar erected at Gandhi Maidan for the Prakash Parv celebrations.

We had invitations but we chose not to go, Choudhary, who sat on a dharna today as part of the Congress agitation against demonetisation, said.  PTI
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 6

The Supreme Court on Friday dropped two contempt of court cases against its retired judge Markandey Katju after he offered an unconditional apology for criticising apex court judges.

A Bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and UU Lalit accepted the apology and closed the instant proceedings against Katju.

Appearing for Justice Katju, senior advocate Rajiv Dhavan said the former judge had also stated in the affidavit that he had great respect for the judiciary and judicial proceedings. Justice Katju had also removed the two blog posts containing the allegedly offensive remarks, the Bench was informed.

On November 11, 2016, a three-member Bench headed by Justice Gogoi had issued a contempt of court notice to Justice Katju for posting the blog posts. On September 15, the Bench had set aside the death sentence awarded to a man convicted for raping a 23-year-old in a train in February 2011 while the victim was on her way home. The victim had died two days later.

Justice Katju immediately found fault with the verdict in a blog post, stating that the Supreme Court should have upheld the death penalty, instead of giving the convict the benefit of doubt by relying on the hearsay versions of two passengers who had gathered the details from another passenger who was not traceable subsequently. Subsequently, he wrote on two more blogs scaling up his attack, which prompted the Supreme Court to ask him why action should not be taken against him for committing contempt of court.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 6

Taking advantage of its deployment in anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden, a nuclear-powered submarine of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now constantly lurks in the Arabian Sea, the west coast on India.

The Indian Navy on its own and through intelligence gathered by friendly nations has found that Pakistan Navys base at Karachi is often used by one of the submarines to replenish and provide rest to sailors.

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During entire 2016, a submarine of the PLAN has been noticed through satellite imagery whenever it surfaces. The vessel has been sighted in international waters, but the most recent sighting has been at Karachi. India estimates that the submarine also keeps tabs on the movement of Indian warships. India has conducted specific sorties over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea using the P8-I aircraft capable of spotting submarines lurking under the waters. In the past 18 months, the PLAN has deployed a nuclear submarine accompanied by three warships as part of the anti-piracy task force on duty off the east coast of Africa. It is a four-month deployment. The vessels on their inward or outward journey stop in Colombo, Sri Lanka or at Karachi.

Submarines are the favoured platforms of naval commanders when tasked to launch attacks, deter enemies or for securing the vital sea lines of communication (SLOCs)  used by merchant ships carrying goods, crude oil, equipment and produce for trillion dollar economies like China or India.

The US has been vocal about the lack of transparency and intent on the part of China and the very fact that a submarine is deployed for anti-piracy operations. Sources said its hard for a maritime commander to understand how a submarine could support anti-piracy operations.

The US Department of Defence, in its annual report to the Congress titled Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2016 says, Chinas Ministry of National Defense assured regional nations that the submarines deployed in the Indian Ocean were in support of Chinas counter-piracy patrols; however, the submarines were probably also conducting area familiarisation, and demonstrating an emerging capability both to protect Chinas SLOCs and to increase Chinas power projection into the Indian Ocean.

It said the PLAN places a high priority on the modernisation of its submarine force.
New Delhi, January 6

After ousting him as Chairman, Tata Sons has called a shareholders' meeting on February 6 to remove Cyrus Mistry as director of the holding company of the US$ 103-billion Tata Group.

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Tata Sons had abruptly removed Mistry as its Chairman on October 24 and sought his ouster from operating companies like Tata Motors and TCS.

Mistry subsequently resigned from the board of six companies, but dragged Tata Sons and his interim successor Ratan Tata to the National Company Law Tribunal.

After the board meeting of October 24, 2016, Tata Sons had resolved that Mistry shall, notwithstanding his ceasing to be the Chairman, continue as a director of the company.

"Subsequent to his replacement, Mistry has made certain unsubstantiated allegations, which cast aspersions not only on Tata Sons Limited and its board of directors, but also on the Tata group as a whole. Internal communications, including confidential, were made public. Mistry's conduct has caused enormous harm to the Tata group and its stakeholders, including employees and shareholders," Tata Sons said in a note for extraordinary general meeting (EGM).

The ousted chairman's conduct, it said, "resulted in significant erosion of the market value of the Tata group companies, which has consequently resulted in harm to Tata Sons Limited and indirectly losses to its shareholders".

The notice said continuation of Mistry as a Director of Tata Sons is "untenable" and therefore, he should be removed.

The resolution, which has been moved for his removal, said: "The board of Tata Sons Ltd is of the view that the integrity of the board proceedings is being jeopardised by Mistry's continuation as a Director and the confidentiality of the board decisions and proceedings cannot be ensured as the documents presented to the board have been leaked and made public in a distorted and untruthful manner." PTI
Washington, January 6

The US has forged a strategic partnership with India in the eight years of Obama administration, which also considerably improved Americas standing in the world, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, two weeks ahead of demitting the office.

In Asia, we have been standing side by side with our friends, strengthening sanctions on North Korea, improving regional missile defence capabilities, supporting the rule of law in the South China Sea and forging a strategic partnership with India, enhancing our ties with Vietnam and spurring democratic progress in Myanmar where a freely elected parliament has been seated for the first time, Kerry said.

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In what was described as Kerrys last press conference in his capacity as Secretary of State, the top American diplomat, while addressing reporters at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, said because of the policies undertaken by the Obama administration in the last eight years, the US standing in the world has improved from what it was in 2009.

We will turn over to our successors a country whose international standing is much improved from 2009 when President (Barack) Obama took office eight years ago. No one should forget the incredible fertility of the global economic crisis as a consequence of the late 2008 early 2009 economic disaster that we faced on a global basis, he said.

Economically, the country has moved from the depths of crisis to robust levels of exports, the longest sustained period of private sector job growth in US history, Kerry said.

Our overseas alliances in Europe and Asia are vigorous and strong. We have strengthened what we do in Asia, strengthened the relationship between Korea and Japan, strengthened our relationship trilaterally with Korea and Japan, worked effectively with China to try to define a new model of how important powers need to work in the world.

"We have strengthened our alliance with NATO, strengthened our alliance with the frontline states. Our level of security support to a democratic Israel is unprecedented.

Across the globe, we have helped ensure that a child entering the world today is more likely to be born healthy, more likely to receive the necessary vaccinations, more likely to be educated, more likely to live a long life than any previous generation and that is just as true for women and girls as it is for men and boys," Kerry said. PTI
Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, January 5

The poll announcement has had the big, fat wedding industry in Punjab worried. More dry days and stringent checks on carrying liquor have left revellers dispirited.

With the state going to the polls on February 4, the Election Commission will in all probability prohibit liquor sale on February 2 and 3, besides the polling day. January 26 (Republic Day), too, will be a dry day.

Also, in view of the model code of conduct, carrying liquor from one place to the other for even those with valid permission will not be without hurdles. Already we have suffered a loss of Rs 700 crore post-demonetisation. More dry days during the peak wedding season will make it worse for us, lamented a liquor trader.

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We have our sons reception on February 3 in Ludhiana. This was planned four months ago. The invites have been sent, but now we are told that February 3 is a dry day, said a lawyer whose application for a liquor permit was turned down. We may have to shift the venue outside Punjab, he said despondently. He is not the only one in this predicament.

Punjabi marriages are inconceivable without liquor. Punjabis consume almost 30 crore bottles per fiscal. The Excise Policy for 2016-17 expects to collect about Rs 400 crore more than that in the last fiscal.

After the November 8 note ban, even wedding planners find themselves in a soup. Already 10 functions have been postponed. I dont know whether they would want to re-hire me or have their advance payment back, said an alarmed wedding planner Jaideep Narula, pointing out that local orchestras and those selling flowers too had been hit.

The Excise and Taxation Department has been told not to issue liquor permits for the dry days. We have had to reject these, said the Patiala Assistant Excise and Taxation Commissioner.

As 60 per cent liquor trade is in the hands of politicians and their aides, the misuse of liquor permits to influence voters cannot be ruled out, said another officer.
London, January 6

British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the "exceptional" contribution of British Sikhs in the UK's economy, charity and armed forces as the community marked the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.

Describing the occasion of Prakash Parv as a "very special anniversary", the British Prime Minister said the occasion highlighted the values of equality, respect and fairness, and helping those less fortunate.

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She said in her message: "Time and again I have seen these values put into practice, from visiting gurdwaras to attending the Sikh war memorial in Derby. Indeed, when we celebrate Baisakhi soon, we will be reminded once again how the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh Ji enrich our wider society.

"This anniversary is also a chance to remember that British Sikhs have made  and continue to make  an exceptional contribution to business, professions, charity and our armed forces.

So may I take this opportunity to wish all those celebrating a very blessed and happy Gurpurab."

The new Indian High Commissioner to the UK, YK Sinha, Deputy high commissioner Dinesh K Patnaik and other senior officers of the Indian High Commission in the UK also joined Sikh devotees in the UK on Thursday in prayers at the historic Shepherd's Bush Gurdwara Sahib, the oldest gurdwara in Europe.  PTI
Dhaka, January 6

One of the masterminds of Bangladeshs worst terror attack at a popular cafe here and another top militant behind the murder of a Hindu priest were killed today in a shootout with police, the latest success in the anti- terrorism drive in the Muslim majority nation.

Islamic State-linked Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideens most wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marzan and another extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital during a pre-dawn raid.

One is identified as Marjan and another is Saddam Hossain, an accused neo JMB member, Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said.

Police said Marzan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshans Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhakas posh diplomatic area that killed 23 people, including 17 foreigners. An Indian girl was among them.

On September 10, police detained three persons from Azimpur including Marzans wife Afrin alias Prioti.

Earlier, a Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and the key player in the recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27.

Saddam was wanted for at least 10 murder cases, including Japanese national Kunio Hoshi murder, Jogeshwar Dasadhikari murder and attempt to murder a Bahai community leader in Rangpur, Monirul said. Jogeshwar was hacked to death during an attack on a temple in Bangladeshs Panchgarh district in February last year.  PTI
SEJONG, January 6

China is suspected to be taking indirect action against South Korea's decision last year to deploy a US anti-missile system, South Korea's finance minister said.

China worries that the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system's powerful radar can penetrate its territory and it has objected to the deployment.

South Korea and the United States say the missile system is aimed solely at countering any threat from North Korea. It is due to be deployed this year.

"China is officially denying it, but we feel their actions are linked and that there have been indirect responses taken," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho told a news conference on Thursday at the ministry's headquarters in Sejong City, south of Seoul. "It's hard to ask them what they're up to when they have been denying it officially."

Yoo did not elaborate on what he meant by "indirect action" but China recently rejected applications by South Korean carriers to add charter flights between the two countries.

Yoo said on Sunday the government was looking into whether China's decision to deny the airlines' applications, which came ahead of a traditional surge in Lunar New Year travel, was related to the deployment of the anti-missile system.

Asked about Yoo's comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing on Friday that China has an "open and positive attitude" towards trade relations with South Korea, but that "this requires a foundation of close friendship". He did not elaborate.

Yoo also said South Korea planned to make efforts to reduce its trade surplus with the United States in response to an assertion by President-elect Donald Trump that the United States had been hurt by what he considers an unfair trade agreement with South Korea.

Another finance ministry official said separately the government could look into importing more US raw materials and machinery parts as part of the effort to reduce the surplus.  Reuters
Washington, January 6

US Vice-President Joe Biden has suggested President-elect Donald Trump to grow up and behave like an adult.

Grow up Donald, grow up, time to be an adult, youre President. Time to do something. Show us what you have, EFE news quoted Biden as saying on Thursday.

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Biden had criticised two of Trumps recent messages in which he labelled Senate minority leader of the Democrats Chuck Schumer as head clown and another in which the President-elect criticised President Barack Obama for his incendiary comments.

Its going to be much clearer what hes (Trump) for and against, and what were for and against, now that its going to get down to actually discussing in detail these issues that affect peoples lives, Biden said.

The Vice-President also said it was dangerous for Trump to be sceptical of US intelligence agencies.

During the campaign and after being elected President, Trump has been using Twitter compulsively for all sorts of purposes, such as insulting opponents and his colleagues, threatening companies or criticising the intelligence community.

New York Republican Representative Chris Collins, a member of Trumps transition executive committee, denounced Bidens response.

Thats a pathetic response, Collins said on Thursday.

I think its beneath the Office of the Vice-President. It shows just the angst of the loss of this election by Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Trump is the adult in the room. This isn't the first time Biden has been outspoken against Trump.

Biden in October slammed Trump saying the Republican presidential nominee "lacks any sensibilities about the American people".

Hes not a bad man, Biden said at the time. But his ignorance is so profound, so profound.

IANS
External Affairs Minister tweeted saying she will resolve the issue of 41 Indian sailors stranded without passports in UAE's Ajman anchorage. The sailors tweeted that they have been surviving on dal and rice and few of them have not been paid since 15 months.

By India Today Web Desk: Over 40 Indian sailors are stranded in UAE's Ajman anchorage and have sought help from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

Tweeting to Sushma Swaraj and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the sailors and their families shared their plight and asked them to save their lives. Apparently, two out of the four ships are leaking and the passports of the sailors have been seized by the owner who remains untraceable, reported Indian Express.

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Also read: Norway child case: Aryan's Indian mother formally seeks help from Sushma Swaraj

@SushmaSwaraj mam our ship have holes and to much water coming in!Comp not taking responsibility please help us we want to go back home! pic.twitter.com/DyieErOMXO Anoop Pathak (@Anoop01699240) January 5, 2017

@MumbaiMirror respected sir My hubby along with 40 sailors stranded in ajman anchorage uae without pay from 15 months Pls help jan4rvj@gmail.com (@jan4rvj) January 5, 2017

The sailors have also tweeted to International organisations like Sailors' Society and Seafarers UK.

Many sailors tweeted that they have run out of diesel and few of them have not been paid for almost 15 months. They had been surviving on dal and rice and even their owner has not been taking their plea seriously.

Also read: Sushma Swaraj tweets to respond to ISIS-abducted Indian priest's video appeal

The owner reportedly asked them to call "only when the ship begins sinking or someone dies." The Indian embassy in Riyadh has directed the sailors to approach the Consulate General of India in Dubai.

Sushma Swaraj, today, tweeted that she "will resolve this" issue.

I have seen the news report. We will resolve this. pic.twitter.com/QfuzZkiaXo Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) January 6, 2017

Also watch:

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By Press Trust of India: MBA holders jailing

New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today sought a report from the Indian Mission in Saudi Arabia about a 32-year-old man from Hyderabad being sentenced to one years imprisonment and 300 lashes by a Saudi court after being convicted in a robbery case.

Swarajs direction came after the family of Mohammed Mansoor Hussain, a resident of Malakpet in Hyderabad who holds an MBA degree, reached out to her through Twitter seeking her intervention in the case.

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"I have asked for a report from Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia," Swaraj tweeted tonight.

As per reports, Hussain is lodged in Wadi Al Dawasir jail in Saudi Arabia. He had been working as a marketing auditor at Abdel Hadi Abdullah Al Qahtani and Sons Limited in Riyadh since 2013.

Hussains family claimed on August 25 last year he had gone to a bank to deposit nearly one lakh Saudi Riyal when he was allegedly robbed by some miscreants. When he went to a police station to lodge a complaint on the advice of his boss, he was taken to custody.

According to reports, he has been sentenced to one years imprisonment and 300 lashes. PTI MPB SMN

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The funeral of a Taiwanese politician saw 50 pole dancers, dancing on top of convoy jeeps, blocking the traffic. Family of the politician said they wanted to honour the late leader who loved having a lively fun time.

By India Today Web Desk: A video showing at least 50 pole dancers dancing on top of convoy jeeps during the funeral of a Taiwanese politician is taking the internet by storm.

The funeral of local politician Tung Hsiang took place on Tuesday. The funeral procession saw pole dancers dancing away on top of colourful convoy jeeps, bringing the traffic to a halt and left onlookers amused.

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The local media reported that the late leader's family said they wanted to honour him and this was the best they could think of as he "loved having a lovely fun time."

The BBC reports that Hsiang's brother, Tung Mao-hsiung said to Taiwanese broadcaster CTS that the late leader, through a dream a couple of days before his funeral, told that he wanted 50 pole dancers on top of convoy jeeps for his funeral procession.

Watch the video here:

Hsiang was a local councillor has been a renoned public figure and was active in politics since many past decades. The BBC report says that he died at the age of 76, from an unspecified illness, in December last year.

Here is another video showing the colourful convoy jeeps and the pole dancers:

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Security forces launched an operation today morning following an information about the presence of a wanted LeT commander hiding in Gulzarpora village.

By Indo-Asian News Service: A top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) outfit was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Kashmir's Badgam district.

According to police, the security forces launched an operation today morning following an information about the presence of a wanted LeT commander hiding in Gulzarpora village.

"The security forces were fired upon after they closed on the house where Muzaffar Ahmad Naiku ali alias Muza Molvi was hiding," the police said.

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"The militant was killed in the encounter which has ended now. Searches are still going on in the area."

The police said the slain commander was one of the longest surviving militants and the most wanted guerrilla in Jammu and Kashmir.

WATCH: Al-Badr terrorist killed in encounter with security forces in J-K's Budgam district

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The actress is setting fitness goals for all of us.

By India Today Web Desk: TV actress Sonarika Bhadoria is talented alright. But she is also quite stunning, not to mention super-hot. And to prove this we have a few pictures of the actress.

Also see: Telly Calendar 2017: The hot avatar of these TV bahus will blow your mind

Apparently the Devon Ke Dev...Mahadev actress is a water baby. She recently posted a picture of herself in a stylish bikini, and captioned the picture as "Seas the day! #saltyairsandyhair."

Seas the day ! ???????? #saltyairsandyhair ?? A photo posted by Sonarika Bhadoria (@bsonarika) on Jan 5, 2017 at 12:59am PST

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The actress has obviously been seen in traditional attire before as goddess Parvati in the aforementioned TV show, but Sonarika shocked everyone when she posted her bikini pictures on social media site Instagram a while ago. In fact, she was taken to task for donning the swimsuit as she had portrayed a goddess on the Indian television before.

More than you may know, you are completely perfect. I wish you saw that. #selflove A photo posted by Sonarika Bhadoria (@bsonarika) on May 27, 2016 at 2:55am PDT

But Sonarika took no heed of the body-shaming bullies and she continues to do so in the new year as she has posted a picture of herself in a bikini again.

Windblown ?? #deletedpost A photo posted by Sonarika Bhadoria (@bsonarika) on May 26, 2016 at 2:01am PDT

Keep being you, Sonarika.

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No Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but one serviceman was wounded in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine in last day.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at a press briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"No Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but one serviceman was wounded as a result of military hostilities in Donbas in last day," Motuzianyk said.

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Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Ukraine Martin Hagstrom and Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Deputy Minister for European Integration Olga Trofimtseva have agreed on joint preparations for the Swedish-Ukrainian Business Forum scheduled for spring 2017, involving the representatives of Ukraine's agricultural sector and Swedish companies interested in both trade relations and joint investment projects, the Government portal reports.

According to Trofimtseva, the Kingdom of Sweden is a promising market for Ukrainian organic food products.

Sweden is an interesting partner for us in terms of agricultural trade and joint projects. We can cooperate in such sectors as rural development, export promotion, including processed food exports, Trofimtseva said.

The projects of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) have already provided support for some important areas in Ukraine's agricultural sector (for example, vegetable growing in southern regions).

A reminder that the agricultural trade turnover between Ukraine and Sweden has come to $17.07 million over 10 months of 2016. Exports came to $1.5 million, consisting mainly of vegetable oil ($0.56 million); fruit, nuts and zest ($0.25 million); oilseeds ($0.25 million). Imports came to $15.6 million, consisting mainly of margarine ($9.8 million); vegetable oil ($2.05 million); gelatin, peptones and dextrins ($1.2 million); other food products ($0.9 million).

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Ukrainian Canadian Congress and Canadian civil society organizations have sent 11 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

This is reported by the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine.

"January 4, 2017, Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Caravan Logstics Canadian company, and Canadian civil society organizations Ukraine Appeal, GlobalFire, Global Medic, and the League of Ukrainian Canadians collected and sent to Ukraine 11 tons of humanitarian aid, consisting of medical equipment and fire fighting equipment," the statement reads.

As noted, the mentioned aid will be transferred to hospitals and fire stations in eastern Ukraine, particularly, in town of Mariupol.

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| By Karen Robinson

Almost 7,000 individuals with active failure-to-appear (FTA) misdemeanor warrants in Baltimore City are getting a second chance in the new year to obtain a new trial date and vacate their FTA arrest warrants. The second chance is made possible by a partnership among the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and its Access to Justice Clinic, the Office of the Public Defender for Baltimore City, the Baltimore City States Attorneys Office, and the Baltimore Police Department.

Professor of Law and Director of the Access to Justice Clinic Douglas Colbert, JD, announced the program at a news conference at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Community Engagement Center on West Baltimore Street on Jan. 5. Colbert was joined by States Attorney Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Kevin Davis, Baltimore Public Defender Elizabeth Julian, Executive Director of the Baltimore Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Kim Barranco, Deputy Sheriff for Baltimore City Samuel Cogen, and Pastor Todd Yeary of the Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore.

The FTA Second Chance Program (#FTA2ndchance on social media) will run weekdays Jan. 9 to 31, 2017, offering those who missed court dates for nonviolent misdemeanors the chance to obtain legal advice from a lawyer and receive a new court date to resolve their pending misdemeanor charges. Eligible individuals can appear at a public defenders office at one of three district courts, apply for the warrant recall and return home the same day. FTA warrants are eligible only if they stem from any of more than 100 designated misdemeanor offenses. Eligible individuals must have no other unapproved pending charge.

Individuals interested in more information may call the Office of the Public Defender at the following numbers: Wabash Office: 410.878.8114; Eastside Office: 410.878.8600, ext. 0; Patapsco Office: 410.878.8400.

The Access to Justice Clinic began advocating for an FTA warrant relief program in the fall semester of 2015. Students, led by Colbert, argued that such a program would be beneficial for all involved, expediting a court process that costs all parties time and money. Students and Colbert worked closely with the agencies involved to develop a program that benefits everyone.

Maryland Carey Law Professor Doug Colbert and Fall 2016 students of the Access to Justice Clinic pose at the District Court of Maryland.

The students worked with an unlikely alliance of partners to bring the program to life, Colbert noted  prosecutors, police, and the judiciary aligned with public defenders and a nonprofit law clinic.

Its quite unusual to have this type of collaboration, Colbert said. While the students may have initiated the idea, we would not be here today but for this extraordinary collaboration between the principal players in our citys pretrial justice system.

Students played a critical and unique role in developing the initiative, said Maryland Carey Law Dean Donald Tobin, JD.

Im incredibly proud of Professor Colbert and the students in the Access to Justice Clinic, said Tobin. They developed the idea of the FTA Second Chance Program and then worked to make it a reality. Second Chance is a winning proposition for everyone. By working together, people across Baltimore get a chance to resolve their outstanding FTA warrants, while public defenders, prosecutors, police officers, and judges can turn their attention to serious crimes that threaten our safety.

Development of the new program uniquely fulfills the purpose of the law schools clinical law initiatives, said Michael Pinard, JD, professor of law and co-director of the Clinical Law Program at Maryland Carey Law, who also spoke at the programs announcement.

This is the type of collaboration that enhances the law schools mission to access justice for those who otherwise go without in Baltimore and in Maryland, Pinard said.

The Clinical Law Program is a vital resource for the state, Pinard explained. We provide tens of thousands of hours of free legal services each year  and we engage our students in all aspects of lawyering, from individual representation to community education, to legislative advocacy and policy advocacy. Pinard praised Colbert for his leadership and tenacity in bringing the FTA Second Chance Program to fruition and in educating his students.

The speakers at the programs announcement represented the diverse agencies involved in the FTA Second Chance Program. Barranco spoke on behalf of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, a group of 21 stakeholder agencies in criminal justice in Baltimore. Members include judges in leadership positions in both Circuit Court and District Court, as well as the other speakers present at the announcement.

Thank you to all of our partners for your hard work and effort in bringing this program to fruition, Barranco said.

Julian, the public defender for Baltimore City, said the program is a wonderful opportunity for individuals with failure to appear warrants to remove a barrier that has kept them from full participation in the community. Many are afraid to report to even probation for fear of being arrested, further compromising their freedom in future litigation.

Their fear, Julian said, is of being assigned bail they are unable to pay and being jailed, removed from their family, their job and society. We are committing our staff to taking on additional work to achieve this. Our city can only move forward by supporting these kinds of initiatives.

States Attorney Mosby praised Colbert for his determination and persistence in developing the program. Ive always said we need to take a holistic approach -- not just to prosecution, but a holistic approach to public safety in Baltimore City, Mosby said. This is that holistic approach. We have to be able to break down those barriers of distrust in our community, and this program is an example of doing just that. This program is a matter of judicial economy that will rid the system of these old FTA warrants for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses. It allows all of us to be able to focus on those offenders in the city that need to be off our streets. And it gives the opportunity for folks to no longer have this type of barrier thats burdening them. Its freeing them to seek housing opportunities, to seek job opportunities. Thats the holistic approach we should all be taking.

Commissioner Davis also praised Colbert for his persistence in creating the program that will target some of the 6,800 failure-to-appear warrants that are active in Baltimore City, out of 35,000 total active warrants.

Most of the warrants that would be recognized in this program go unserved until there is an interaction between a patrol officer and the person who possesses the warrant, Davis said. If they dont ever have an interaction with the police, they may live their entire lives in fear of that police encounter that will lead to their arrest. We believe this will reduce the tensions that would have existed between people with those outstanding warrant and the police.

This is not a warrant forgiveness program, it has no effect on the underlying crime, Davis added. All of this helps in BPDs goal to be more effective in our community policing by fostering trust between law enforcement and the communities that we serve. It allows BPD to focus our resources on the No. 1 priority for the city, and thats violent crime.

Assistant Sheriff Cogen spoke directly to people with affected warrants. We are really thrilled to be participating in this program, he said. We want you to turn yourself in. We do not want to arrest you, we dont want to stop you on a traffic stop. We want you to come into the public defenders office and have your warrant cleared. For us, its the compassionate thing to do, to encourage you to do that.

Pastor Yeary said that he and other faith leaders have wanted to focus on redemption and restoration in criminal justice solutions.

Weve got to provide opportunities and gateways for folks to address outstanding concerns that actually hinder them from being full participants in their community, in their family, and in our city, Yeary said. We believe we have to approach justice with a capital J.

Colbert said the hard work of the program lies ahead  getting the communitys participation.

We now have to convince a public thats often distrustful of our justice system to trust what we are saying, which is take advantage of this opportunity, Colbert said.
| By Patricia Fanning

The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Southwest Partnership, a neighborhood collaboration that has been showcased in a series of stories on WYPR-FM.

The final part of the eight-part series by reporter Fraser Smith aired on Dec. 27, 2016, exploring ways in which the collaboration can be seen as a template for strengthening neighborhoods throughout Baltimore. The series can be heard below, with all eight parts available in the order in which the stories were broadcast on the radio station.

The series began on July 15, 2015, discussing the leadership role of UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, and featuring an interview in which he stated the underpinnings of the partnership. It is our community, he said. (To listen to part one, start at 0 and go to 7:26 minutes.)

The partnership encompasses seven neighborhoods located to the west and south of campus and six anchor institutions, which are UMB, the University of Maryland BioPark, Wexford Science + Technology, the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), Bon Secours Baltimore Health System, and the B&O Railroad Museum.

The UM BioPark and its developer, Wexford, have played key roles in the partnership, and the UM BioPark engages in its own community outreach, such as partnering with James McHenry Elementary/Middle School to kindle students interest in science. A team from the MdBio Foundation, Inc., conducted hands-on activities in a mobile lab, inspiring sixth- and seventh-graders during Baltimore Innovation Week 2016.

James McHenry Elementary/Middle School students Ti'yah and Robert pose at the Christmas tree in Union Square, one of seven neighborhoods in the Southwest Partnership.

Part two in the series, which aired Oct. 12, 2015, highlights one of the neighborhoods, Pigtown. (To listen, go to 7:27 through 15:10 minutes in the tape below.) Other communities in the partnership are Poppleton, Hollins Roundhouse, Franklin Square, Union Square, Mount Clare, and Barre Circle.

Part three in the series focuses on UMBs CURE Scholars Program, a groundbreaking effort to reduce health disparities by encouraging middle school youngsters to become physicians and cancer researchers. Seeing, Really Seeing, Urban Youth, which aired Dec. 24, 2015, describes opportunities being offered to students from three public schools in Baltimore by a partnership of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, and UMB. At an event launching the program, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, JD 76, of Baltimore thanked Perman and the institutions for truly paying attention to young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods in West Baltimore by creating a pipeline to future careers. (To listen, go to 15:11 through 22:35 in the tape.)

Part four, on the subject of how residents of Southwest Baltimore rallied around young people who were being trained in job skills by CUPs Coffeehouse, aired April 15, 2016. It quotes Southwest Partnership board member Lisa Rawlings, MBA, director of workforce initiatives in UMBs Office of Community Engagement (OCE), discussing the value of social capital. (To listen, go to 22:37 through 29:44 in the tape below.)

The story Leading Edge of a Health Care Revolution aired May 31, 2016, as part five. It includes an interview with Charles Chuck Callahan, DO, vice president of population health at UMMC and a new resident of Union Square. He and others discuss how to improve health care delivery so that people are less likely to seek treatment in hospital emergency rooms as a first resort. (To listen, go to 29:47 through 36:44.)

Part six, which aired Aug. 19, 2016, considers how the proposed South Arlington Avenue Greenway would pull the seven neighborhoods together and bring greater attention to attractions such as the B&O Railroad Museum. (To listen, go to 36:46 through 44:17.)

The CURE scholars were once again in the spotlight in part seven, which aired Dec. 5, 2016. Changing the Face of Medicine and Research features children and mentors at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School discussing aspirations and also includes comments by Gregory B. Carey, PhD, assistant professor of Microbiology and Immunology in the University of Maryland School of Medicine. (To listen, go to 44:20 through 51:06.)

In the final piece, Southwest Partnership board member Ashley Valis, MSW '06, reflects on how the university seeks to build relationships and trust through community engagement. (To listen, go to 51:09 through 58:26).

The story aired Dec. 27, 2016, only days after Valis and others at OCE hosted 90 Baltimore residents at a holiday luncheon held in UMBs Community Engagement Center in Poppleton. (View a photo gallery).

Valis, who is UMBs executive director of strategic initiatives and community engagement in OCE, directs the Universitys outreach, which includes a wide array of activities at the center. The center has been located at 1 N. Poppleton in West Baltimore since 2015 and is a tenant of the UM BioPark.

Jane Shaab, assistant vice president of economic development at UMB and executive director of the UM BioPark, also serves on the Southwest Partnership board.

The series on the Southwest Partnership was made possible through grant support for WYPR from Patricia and Mark Joseph.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Tamil Nadu will become the 21st state to join UDAY scheme meant for revival of debt stressed discoms on Monday, paving the way for covering almost 90 per cent of total utilities debt of around Rs 4 lakh crore.

"The power distribution utility of Tamil Nadu alone has debt of around Rs 50,000 crore. As much as 90 per cent of utilities total debt of around Rs 4 lakh crore would be covered under UDAY scheme once Tamil Nadu joins the scheme," an official said.

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The official said Tamil Nadu would ink a memorandum of understanding on Monday to join the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), which was launched by the Centre in November 2015 for turnaround of debt stressed utilities by 2019.

Power Minister Piyush Goyal would preside over the signing of MoU with government of Tamil Nadu and TANGEDCO (state utility).

Tamil Nadu Energy Minister P Thangamani shall also attend the event in the capital.

Earlier this week, Telangana and Assam joined UDAY and will get overall net benefits of Rs 6,116 crore and Rs 1,663 crore respectively under the scheme.

Under the scheme, states and discoms collectively have issued bonds worth Rs 1.83 lakh crore so far to pay off debt. PTI KKS ABM

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Have you ever thought that a color could be used as a means of torture? Apparently, it is. White Room torture is considered to be one of the most dangerous forms of mental affliction. Though this method of torment has been used for several decades, it became popular quite recently with its usage in Iran.

White room torture is a form of psychological torture concerning complete isolation and sensory deprivation of the prisoners.

White Room torture involves the stay of a prisoner in a cell or a box which has completely white walls. The sheets, prison clothes, door, lights, and everything else in the cell are white. Also, the food served is white rice. Furthermore, sensory deprivation is not only inflicted through the color but also the absolutely mute environment. Therefore, there has to be pin-drop silence around the cell. The prisoner is kept in isolation and cannot talk to anyone. Even to use the toilet, the prisoner has to slip a white piece of paper from underneath the door to the guard. The slippers of the guards are padded so that the prisoner cannot hear any sounds, but the ones made by him.

Everything in the prison cell, including food, is white. Also, there is no sound in and around the cell apart from the ones made by the prisoner.

As is evident, white room torture has nothing to do with beating or pain. Nevertheless, it is worse. Your brain is beaten up very badly even without touching you. The purpose of such kind of punishment is usually to instill fear in the prisoner although the results are way more dangerous than just a scared prisoner. The detainee loses his identity in the process. He cannot remember who he was and anyone from his family. Moreover, there is a conditioning of fear attached to the color white.

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The result of this torture is the loss of identity and numbness of senses. Also, the prisoner abstains from white color and loses his ability to recognize known people.

In the modern times, the white room torture was used in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in a covert detention center. The prisoners were journalists who questioned the Iranian regime through speeches and writings. One of the prisoners was Amir Fakhravar, who explained his experience as deafening and inhumane. Fakhravars case was identified and documented by Amnesty International in 2004, the year he was tortured.

Amir Fakhravar, the Iranian white room prisoner, was tortured for 8 months in 2004. He still has horrors about his times in the white room. I was there for eight months and after those months I couldnt remember my father and my mothers face, Fakhravar stated. When they released me from that prison I was not a normal person.

Such instances came up in Ireland, US, and Venezuela as well. White room torture is a psychological misery which does not spare the prisoner even after getting out of the prison. Besides, the suffering goes on endlessly and the person never restores back to normal. Psychiatric sessions may help to some extent, but complete mental recovery is a distant dream for such prisoners.

Once one becomes a prisoner of white room torture, he/she never restores to normal again. Unfortunately, the desolation lasts for life.

[sources: wikipedia, cnn.com, thetorturereport.org]
Annual VASyR Study with UNICEF, WFP Shows Food Insecurity Rising; Share of Households Below Poverty Line at 71 percent

Syrian refugees in Lebanon remain highly vulnerable after many years living in the country, according to a benchmark study from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and UN partner agencies.

Household surveys conducted by UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP revealed that the economic plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon is, at best, as serious as last year. Under some criteria, their plight continues to deteriorate.

The annual study found families had exhausted their limited resources, and were adapting to survive on the bare minimum, deploying harmful or asset-depleting coping mechanisms to survive. It showed over one third of refugees were moderately to severely food insecure, an increase of 12 percentage points compared to 2015. The share of households living below the poverty line remained at an alarming 71 percent.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon are barely coping, said Amin Awad, Director of the UNHCRs Middle East and North Africa Bureau. They remain extremely vulnerable and dependent on aid from the international community. Without continued support, their situation would be appalling.

The survey, known as the Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees (VASyR), was the fourth of its kind. The findings are used in a variety of ways, including to help determine recipients of funding and other support.

It found that more than half of refugee households had a total per capita expenditure below the Survival Minimum Expenditure Basket (SMEB), a measure of items deemed essential for a households survival. While this figure stabilized at a national level, the share of households in the SMEB category increased more than 50 percent in certain districts. Further serious challenges were identified in the areas of residency, education and housing.

Still, the injection of much-needed assistance was able to halt the sharp decline into poverty that was observed between 2014 and 2015. As of November 2016, USD 1 billion had been received, just 50 percent, of a joint UN, government and inter-agency appeal for the country.

Compared to the previous year, the situation of refugees had not deteriorated dramatically in terms of health, education, shelter, water, hygiene, solid waste and energy, thanks to the financial support of the international community and the careful programming of humanitarian operations.

Lebanon is the second largest host of Syrian refugees after Turkey, with over a million registered in the small country. Syrian refugees in Lebanon are scattered in urban and rural environments, including approximately 2,125 communities and locations.

Data for the report was collected in May and June last year. Survey teams visited 4,500 Syrian refugee households randomly selected from 26 districts. The full report - which is available here - details a series of recommendations that will inform future humanitarian programming in Lebanon.

For more information please contact:
Mohammed (15) helps his mother Nisrine Shiko (34) make a campfire to keep the family warm during the cold hours of the night. Back in 2013 as his father lay dying in his arms he told his son to take care of his mother.  UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is today reiterating its call to accelerate the moving of asylum-seekers from the Aegean islands to the Greek mainland. Even with recent efforts to improve matters, conditions at many sites on the islands remain very poor. The need for better protection will become all the more acute this weekend when temperatures on the islands are expected to drop. We are worried.

Currently, the situation on Samos, Chios and Lesvos is of particular concern. On Samos, around 700 people including young children and other vulnerable individuals remain in unheated tents in the Reception and Identification Centre. While UNHCR and our partners have provided many hundreds of thermal blankets, sleeping bags and winter-protection kits, its clear that people would be better off on the mainland and should be moved there more quickly and in larger numbers. On Chios, at the Souda site, we have been working with our partners to install electric heaters in every accommodation unit and are sending more relief items to help people face the winter conditions. More fuel for heating is also being provided. On Lesvos, two heated Rubb halls have been set up at Moria to increase warm space, and another is on the north shoreline. Additional work is also under way in collaboration with Eurorelief to install insulation and wooden floors in more tents.

Transfers of asylum-seekers from the islands to the Greek mainland are allowed only after people have completed the registration process, or in cases of particular vulnerability. Slowness in registration or identifying vulnerable individuals and, previously, a shortage of suitable spaces on the mainland have been factors delaying moves. Among other things this has contributed to serious overcrowding of facilities built for far fewer people, and increased protection risks.

On the mainland, the challenges we faced just a few weeks ago are diminishing. Over the Christmas and New Year period UNHCR completed the winter preparation work for all the sites assigned to us by the Greek authorities and we are completing additional infrastructural upgrades elsewhere. At a number of sites where conditions were found to be sub-standard we have moved people in to better accommodation. In total UNHCR has created 21,000 accommodation places in apartments, with host families, or in other buildings. Some 700 places have been found for unaccompanied children in dedicated structures.

UNHCR reminds EU countries of the continued, urgent need to help resolve the situation in Greece through relocations of asylum-seekers to other Member States. As of two days ago (04 January), only 7,760 asylum seekers had left Greece or were scheduled to leave under the EU Relocation Mechanism agreed in late 2015 to relocate within 2 years. This represents around 12 per cent of the 66,400 agreed last year and is unacceptably low. UNHCR appeals to EU Member states to respect their previous commitments and offer additional spaces without further delay.

For further information on this topic, please contact:
Local volunteers in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, provide English classes to recently resettled Syrian families.  Laura Padoan

As we say in Northern Ireland, Come on, on, on in!

In the rural town of Lurgan, County Armagh, retired teacher Arthur McKeown welcomes a few late stragglers to the English class he teaches on a voluntary basis at the St Vincent de Paul Societys community centre. This mornings lesson has the most British of themes.

Whats the weather like today? Arthur asks the class.

Rainy! the class chimes back. Cloudy!

Despite the gloomy outlook, Arthurs students are brimming with enthusiasm to learn English and get to know their new home town. Almost all are refugees from Syria and have been resettled to Northern Ireland over the last few months as part of the Home Offices Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, run in collaboration with UNHCR.

One of the keenest pupils in the class is Lina, a former English teacher from Aleppo. Lurgan is a beautiful town, she says. I love it here, and in the future I want to work again as a teacher. She is already volunteering as a primary school assistant and helping out in a charity shop, keen to give something back to the community that has welcomed her in.

Lurgan is a beautiful town. I love it here, and in the future I want to work again as a teacher.

Linas husband Issa - a builder by trade - is also rediscovering his skills in the St Vincent de Pauls mens shed, which offers a carpentry workshop for Lurgans male residents, and has recently opened its doors to Syrian refugees. We do a bit of woodwork, says one long-time mens shed member. But mainly its about the craic, and well have anyone whos keen to join in.

The refugee recruits have even introduced new skills to the mens shed. Some of the Syrians had been garment-makers before the war, and it is hoped that the industrial sewing machine newly donated to the shed will also prove popular with the Lurgan old guard.

One of the Syrian tailors resettled to Lurgan is Mohamad, who arrived in June with his wife Rada and their two children. Three years ago the family had been visiting his parents home in Aleppos old town when the neighbouring house was hit by a bomb, severely injuring their nine year-old daughter Dania. Immediately following the blast, the family managed to get her to a hospital in Kilis, across the border in neighbouring Turkey.

Dania and her family arrived in Northern Ireland from Turkey under Home Office's Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, run in collaboration with UNHCR.  Laura Padoan

"Dania was critically ill, explains her mother Rada. For six weeks the only way I could see my daughter was through a screen. She was so badly injured  in her face, her stomach, the nerves in her legs were cut through and her arms are still covered in scars. In Turkey we couldnt provide anything for her, we couldnt afford the medicines. We didnt even have anywhere to sleep, we were sleeping in a stairwell. The only thought in my head was to get my daughter to a place where she could get better.

The couple scraped together the $7000 needed to pay for surgery. With no interpreter to communicate with doctors, it wasnt until afterwards that they discovered that one of Danias kidneys had been removed. We still dont know why. Maybe it was damaged by shrapnel or maybe they took it she falters, the thought too painful to finish.

In Turkey the family registered with UNHCR, and were identified as being in need of resettlement. The moment I registered with UNHCR Ive been thankful from the bottom of my heart, says Rada. The family recently celebrated Darias tenth birthday in Lurgan. Although she is still in constant pain and her right leg wasted, she will soon receive specialist care and undergo further corrective surgery to help her to walk.

Junior Ministers Alastair Ross and Megan Fearon have paid tribute to all the Syrian refugees living in Northern Ireland. Marking one year since the first families arrived, the Ministers also commended local communities for the welcome and support they had given the Syrian families.

Refugees who are already finding their feet in our society and enhancing the rich and diverse culture in the north. We should not underestimate the courage it has taken for them to embrace the opportunity for a new chapter in their lives.

Junior Minister Alastair Ross said: The Executive has now received nearly 400 refugees under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme, which aims to support victims of violence, women and children at risk and those in need of advanced medical care.

A year after we welcomed the first group of Syrian refugees to Northern Ireland, it is important we acknowledge the tremendous work of those who have supported the Syrian families through a difficult transition to begin their new lives here. I offer my congratulations to all those involved in their successful resettlement.

Junior Minister Megan Fearon said: The relocation and resettlement of Syrian refugee families has been an enormous humanitarian effort to support families who are among the most vulnerable. All those involved in providing sanctuary and support can be rightly proud of the difference they are making to the lives of those people and their families.

I pay tribute to the refugees who are already finding their feet in our society and enhancing the rich and diverse culture in the north. We should not underestimate the courage it has taken for them to embrace the opportunity for a new chapter in their lives.

For the Shiid family, resettlement to Northern Ireland has offered the opportunity to rebuild their lives. After Mohamads mother and brothers were killed in the war, he holds little hope of returning to Syria any time soon. But for the first time in years, Mohamad is optimistic for his familys future. We hope that our children keep studying and that we can give them things we couldnt provide in Syria. Im happy because I know that their lives will be safe in Northern Ireland.

This story is part of a series exploring the incredible ways people across the UK are showing refugees and asylum-seekers a #GreatBritishWelcome.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Terming the demand of opposition parties to defer the Budget Session as "anti-people", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said the Union Budget is for the country and would not be state specific.

"No budget means no development, no welfare. Is this what you want? And no support to poor people, no support to farmers, is that what your wish is? Why are you opposing? Budget is budget," Naidu said.

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He was responding to a question regarding opposition parties demand that the presentation of the Union Budget on February 1, ahead of the Assembly elections in five states, be deferred till March 8, the last day of voting.

Speaking to reporters here, Naidu said the budget would not be state specific.

"The budget will be about the people, their future, what are the taxation proposals, what is the revenue model...It will be presented before the Parliament, that is for the country, it will not be state specific," the Information and Broadcasting minister said.

He said that he was not able to understand the objection raised by the opposition.

"At the end of the day, they are afraid that all their efforts at disinformation against the Modi government have failed and the latest disinformation of the opposition on demonetisation is boomranging on them. They have realised, you have seen survey after survey," he added.

He claimed that even in Uttar Pradesh there is a massive support for demonetisation because of which the opposition parties are rattled.

"Now they have changed their agenda again and are trying to now stop the budget which is an anti-people move again, which will again boomerang on them," he added.

Asked about the feud in Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Naidu said BJP would contest the UP election on the issue of development.

He said the issue was not who is the victor within the family but that people gave the party a chance for five years and it did not fulfill their promises.

He said several of the states which were in the group called BIMARU earlier like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh developed after BJP governments were formed there.

On a question about TMC, Naidu said there were some allegations which were made in the past and the government was allowing investigative agencies to do their job independently. PTI ADS AAR

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The order also allows Muslims to wear hijabs. Muslim men can also keep beards.

The restrictions on having beards still hold if there are risks like exposure to toxic material.

By Indo-Asian News Service: In another milestone for Sikhs, US Army commanders have been ordered to allow those of the faith to wear turbans, karas and keep their beards.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning on Wednesday signed the order that said, "The soldier's brigade-level commander will approve a request for a religious accommodation" by Sikhs.

Till now Sikhs had to get permission from the Army Secretary, a cumbersome process prone to delays and not automatically given.

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Now they need to apply only to their brigade-level commanders, who will have to give them permission except in certain cases involving their safety like exposure to poison gases.

Once it is granted they can keep the exemption for most positions in the military.

SIKHS WELCOME THE MOVE

Sikh Coalition Legal Director Harsimran Kaur welcomed the new rules. "We are pleased with the progress that the new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity by our nation's largest employer," she said.

The order also allows Muslims to wear hijabs. Muslim men can also keep beards.

The New York Police Department, the biggest in the US, changed its rules last month to allow Sikhs to wear turbans and keep their beards.

Last year Captain Simratpal Singh, an Afghan war veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star, and two others filed a case against the army saying the ban on beards and turbans curbs their religious freedom.

The Army Secretary then gave the three of them permission to wear turbans.

Also read: Eliminate Taliban sanctuaries in Pak to win Afghan war: Ex-US Army official

Also read: Triple-checked facts on civilian-army rift story, says Dawn journalist Cyril Almeida

SIGN OF MEANINGFUL PROGRESS

According to the civil rights organisation, Sikh Coalition members of the faith had been serving in the US military from at least World War I. But in 1981, the army changed the rules to ban beards and turbans.

"My turban and beard represent my commitment to pluralism and equality," said Major Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, an army doctor who served in Afghanistan and won a Bronze Star.

"This policy change underscores the military's commitment to these values and is a sign of meaningful progress that will ensure the strength of our democracy."

While the restrictions on having beards still hold if there are risks like exposure to toxic material, Fanning ordered the army to test existing products to see if they can be made safe for those wearing beards and to look for alternative equipment.

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Swarovski Crystal, makers of bejeweled things will soon collaborate with Google and Qualcomm to produce Android Wear Smartwatches.

Swarovski, together with Qualcomm unveiled a teaser during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 which signifies that the coming smartwatch will feature a Qualcomm processor. Though the smartwatch will be Swarovski's first, the company did collaborate for past smartwatches by Misfit and Huawei such as the Huawei Watch For Ladies. Swarovski also did a bejeweled strap for the Samsung Gear S model.

Swarovski's latest venture will primarily target women with their first smartwatch, as the company does with most of its products, Digital Trends reported. Qualcomm who has a processor line solely for wearables might pack the new Snapdragon 835 in the Swarovski watch or it would also be possible that a newer model of the Wear 2100 might be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress.

Notably, fashion labels have started to gravitate into the smartwatch sector such as Fossil, Diesel, and Armani, just to name a few. Considering Swarovski is a premium jewelry brand, it will no doubt command a premium for its own device, reports said.

The Qualcomm teaser during the CES 2017 did not show an image of the watch other than stating that the watch is meant "for her," according to Pocket-Lint. Accordingly, Swarovski said their smartwatch harnesses the power of the Swarovski heritage and combines the industry's latest innovations.

Specific details regarding price, availability and hardware have not been outlined for the Swarovski smartwatch as of yet. However, it is assured that it will be formally launched during the Baselworld 2017 beginning Mar. 23 this year.

Meanwhile, the impending release of Android 2.0 would be a major step up for Android Wear this year. The new operating system is anticipated to feature a major revamp in hopes that it will salvage the declining smartwatch market. Google, for its part, is also expected to release its own line of smartwatches alongside the release of Android 2.0.
While Akhilesh Yadav and his camp are busy sorting out the Samajwadi Party 'Dangal', the Congress leaders are in a huddle reworking on the strategy for the post tie-up situation.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party and the Congress are moving towards forging an alliance and may announce it within the next fortnight.

Both parties are keen on forging an alliance, sources said.

While Akhilesh Yadav and his camp are busy sorting out the Samajwadi Party 'Dangal', the Congress leaders are in a huddle reworking on the strategy for the post tie-up situation.

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Here are the key points emerging from Congress' boardroom brainstorming session: Congress is demanding between 96 to 120 seats. Congress chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh Sheila Dikshit will withdraw her name. She has already expressed an intention to do so in "public interest". Congress' UP poll campaign "27 Saal, UP Behal" will be tweaked because the slogan goes against the Akhilesh Yadav government. Both parties will campaign around five major points - Akhilesh's image, development, job creation, demonetisation impact and farmer welfare. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra may not campaign in other parts of UP. Sources said she might restrict herself to family bastion of Amethi and Rae Bareli. Congress' UP campaign so far was Brahmin-centric. Now they are remoulding their approach and will target Dalit voters because with Muslim-backed SP on their side, upper castes might not find this tie up attractive. Communication strategies are also being worked upon. Party is planning to rope in leaders especially from Dalit, OBC and Muslim communities for their ongoing campaigns. Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi could be seen sharing stage in a few rallies. As most of the Samajwadi party MPs are backing Akhilesh Yadav, Congress quarters said this would strengthen their position in Parliament too. From now on, it will be an Akhilesh Yadav show.

Also read: BJP set to win Uttar Pradesh: India Today-Axis Opinion Poll shows demonetisation is good for Modi

WATCH: India Today Axis-Opinion Poll: BJP set to conquer Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh leads UP CM race, more

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Everybody knows about Ada Lovelace or Marie Curie but when you mention Emmy Noether, a lot of people would most probably say, "Emmy Noether who?" That's how obscure or less popular she is considering the fact that her theorem is considered one of the foundations of modern physics. Moreover, her work was what inspired Albert Einstein.

Amalie Emmy Noether was born in 1882 and was the most remarkable female mathematician only a few people heard of. Yet, her theorem is as important as Einstein's theory of relativity. In fact, Einstein himself acknowledged Noether as a pure mathematical genius who emerged since the "higher education of women began."

Noether had conducted numerous groundbreaking research but the most significant was the theorem that linked the universal laws of conservation and the symmetry in nature. Often considered by scientists and mathematicians as the most beautiful theorems in physics, her work has been applied to every day principles of energy conservation.

Why has Emmy Noether remained obscure despite her work being the most significant in physics and publishing numerous other research?

First of all, Noether was born in a time and era where women were overlooked. In order to have her work published and recognized, she published them using a male pseudonym. Second, Noether was a Jew in a Germany dominated by the Nazis. Despite the fact that it was illegal for women to go to university, she managed to graduate and even became a professor. When the Nazis totally occupied Germany, she was kicked out of her position as a professor.

With all negative factors - being a female and a Jew - prevalent in her life. Noether and her work were pushed into oblivion. However, as the cliche goes, you can never put a good (wo)man down; thus, her genius seeped through the cracks ob oblivion and it shone for all the world to see until she was fully recognized. Unfortunately, she was not there to receive the honor due her.
A professor of Surgery at University of Limerick in Ireland has discovered a new organ in the digestive system - the mesentery, which has long been believed as a fragmented structure that connects the intestine to the abdomen. Because of its nature medical experts and scientists dismiss it as an insignificant piece of the digestive system. With new evidence, however, it's already classified as an organ.

The mesentery is a fold of tissue which generally attaches the intestines to the abdomen. The word, which is often used to refer to the small bowel tissue, acts as the bridge where the blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves pass through the intestine. Other mesenteries, on the other hand, support the other organs of the digestive system, such as the colon and the appendix.

What the researchers discovered during their initial research is that the mesentery is far from being the fragmented pieces they are popularly believed to be. Instead, it is one continuous and complex organ.

Now that the mesentery is classified as an organ, researchers hope that they will be able to understand its function more which will lead to a diagnosis of a more specific type of disease. This could also lead to a new field in science and medicine called mesenteric science.

Furthermore, the researchers also hoped that as further studies and understanding of the mesentery continue, there will be less invasive surgeries and fewer complications as well as patient recovery will be much faster and the surgery cost will be much cheaper.

The research was led by J Calvin Coffey, a professor of surgery at the University of Limerick in Ireland. The study, which was published in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, classified the mesentery as an organ.

The discovery has debunked a century-old belief regarding the anatomy and nature of the mesentery.
President-elect Donald Trump cannot lead a whole country alone. Presidents would need the advice of experts and professionals who are much more knowledgeable in their respective fields. Which is why every president since the second World War has always maintained a personal science adviser to guide them in making critical decisions when it comes to science and technology, in the White House.

Donald Trump is going to take his seat as the next President of the United States soon. And one of his responsibilities include fostering science, technology and innovation in the country. The POTUS can fulfill his responsibilities to science in two ways. One, he can use scientific knowledge on policy decisions and second, policies can affect the course of science, as reported by The Conversation.

Trump has explained during his campaign that he wants to boost the economy's growth rate. In addition to his plans, supporting science and technology is important in this process. The director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is going to be providing Donald Trump the advice he needs. The OSTP is very influential in implementing the POTUS' science, tech and innovation policies.

Before current President Barack Obama steps down and delivers his presidential farewell speech next week, the White House Techies are already leaving Trump and his transition team a "must do" list. According to the White House's official website, Obama's science and technology team has published a memo (written by the OSTP) celebrating the administration's accomplishments over the last two terms along with a check list, as reported by Wired.

The memo lists the Obama administration's investments on research, STEM education, entrepreneurship and more. Trump has already discussed the future of tech with Peter Thiel, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google's Larry Page, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's Eric Schmidt and Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg. But it is not yet clear if he has scanned the memo from the OSTP.

In the meantime, here is Obama in action with his scientific advisors at the White House:
An Irish university has won money for research funding from EU. The school will focus on studying personalized medicine as well as renewable energy.

BBC reported that Ulster University, which is located in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, has been awarded about 20 million in research funding from the Interreg program. The program is a project that supports research in Northern Ireland, a few border counties of the Republic of Ireland as well as western Scotland.

A major part of the funding, which is 7.3 million, will be allocated to the development of a personalized medicine program. This program is expected to focus on five common diseases that is plaguing the human race, including diabetes and dementia.

The Eastern Corridor Medical Engineering Centre (ECME) project will get about 6 million. This is intended to help the project collect more data on cardiovascular and respiratory disease, which is expected to pave the way for the development of early point-of-care detection systems.

The remaining money will be set aside for a project that focuses on creating a range of renewable energy storage devices. According to ITV News, this project will be getting about 5.46 million.

The money was awarded by the European Union's Interreg VA program. It is designed to cultivate cross-border cooperation and see a rise in innovation as well as competitiveness in business.

Economy Minister Simon Hamilton MLA has said that the award may draw in more investment to these places which could lead to additional high value-added jobs. It is also expected to offer high growth potential opportunities to the local economy as new markets open.

In a statement on the school's official website, Ulster University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paddy Nixon, added that the money will help advance exciting research in the field of personalized medicine. He believes that the funding could also generate a secondary output impact of about 19 million in Northern Ireland.
NASA has issued a warning about two massive objects in space are hurtling toward Earth. It is expected to come close to our planet this month or in February.

Express reported that one of the celestial bodies has been identified as a comet named C/2016 U1 NEOWISE. It was first discovered by NASA's asteroid hunting project, the NEOWISE mission last October.

Apparently, the closest point that the C/2016 U1 NEOWISE would reach the Earth is on Jan. 14. Paul Chodas from NASA pointed out that it is highly likely that the comet would even be visible with a good pair of binoculars. However, he did clarify that it is still unsure since the comet's brightness is still unpredictable.

Scientists are still baffled over the other space object, though. It is still unsure whether it's a comet or an asteroid.

The mysterious object has been dubbed as 2016 WF9. It is confusing since it has the same reflective body structure of a comet but its trail does not have icy debris, which is typical of comets.

James Bauer, NASA's Deputy Principal Investigator of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has said that the mysterious space object may have its origin from comets. Moreover, it shows how "blurry" the boundary between asteroids and comets is.

According to Mirror, 2016 WF9 was found by the same asteroid hunting project that discovered C/2016 U1 NEOWISE. It was detected on Nov. 27, 2016.

2016 WF9 is estimated to be about 0.3 to 0.6 miles or 0.5 to 1 kilometers across. It was also said that its orbit is on a "scenic tour" of the solar system.

Next month, it will come near the Earth's orbit at an estimated distance of 32 million miles or 51 million kilometers from our home planet. NASA has also confirmed that it is "not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future."
Astrophysicists have finally been able to trace an intense and bright burst of radio waves back to its home galaxy. Its source is actually a bit surprising considering how powerful the cosmic flashes are.

Space.com reported that scientists were able to identify the source of "fast radio burst," or FRB. This phenomenon, which is characterized by flickers of light, were discovered a decade ago, in 2007.

While the burst just last for a fraction of a second, it emits more energy in that very short period of time than what the Sun can radiate in 10,000 years. 18 FRBs have been detected over the years. However, scientists believe that one of these bursts happen somewhere in space about once every 10 seconds.

It is still unknown what causes these intense burst of radio waves. A new study has found that one burst, which is named FRB 121102, came from inside a dwarf galaxy located about 3 billion light years away from Earth.

This dwarf galaxy is a collection of stars which are smaller than the ones found in large galaxies like the Milky Way. Cees Bassa, an astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), said that it was unexpected to find out that the burst came from a dwarf galaxy.

In a statement with McGill University in Montreal, study co-author Shriharsh Tendulkar described the discovery as surprising since most FRBs are expected to come from large galaxies, which has more stars and neutron stars. The dwarf galaxy source may have fewer stars but it is forming them at a high rate.

Tendulkar added that this may prove that FRBs are linked to young neutron stars. Moreover, their observations also found a continuing, persistent source of weaker radio emission from the same region.

CNN noted that the scientists spent more than 50 hours in examining the skies to detect a signal. This latest discovery could pave the way for finding the cause of these FRBs.
Theology students at the University of Glasgow were given trigger warnings about distressing images on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The school has provided students with a chance to leave if ever they feel that the photos can upset them.

According to the Daily Mail, experts believe that the University of Glasgow may have taken trigger warnings a bit too far. The commotion about schools being politically correct has sparked a debate about how students would learn if colleges and universities always give them the leeway to opt out of a potentially upsetting course that challenges their beliefs or makes them feel uncomfortable.

Advocates of the idea, on the other hand, believe that trigger warnings are important to protect the mental health of students. This is especially intended for vulnerable students such as those who have had traumatic experiences.

Critics are worried that it may be creating a generation of "snowflake" students. These are the ones who are unable to cope with the harsh events happening in the real world.

The University of Glasgow confirmed that it did issue trigger warnings to theology students for the class named "Creation to Apocalypse: Introduction to the Bible (Level 1)." The course is focused on Jesus Christ which has graphic images of the crucifixion.

The school has issued trigger warnings on veterinary students who are tasked to work with dead animals. Those studying "contemporary society" are also given a heads up about the topics illness and violence that they will encounter in class.

RT noted that Scottish Tory education spokesperson Liz Smith has said that universities were designed to be places of learning where ideas are challenged and where tricky subjects are to be discussed and even debated. She described some examples of trigger warnings as "patently ridiculous."

The issue of trigger warnings is also a point of debate in the United States. One professor from New York University was even suspended for going on a tirade against political correctness and student coddling.
Europe's Moto handsets will receive Android 7.0 Nougat update this month as confirmed by Motorola Germany.

Android 7.0 Nougat will rollout to Moto G4 Europe soon

The official Twitter account for Motorola Germany posted the good news on Jan. 4 - confirming the Nougat update for Moto G4 devices in Europe. It mentions no exact date but 'end of January' should not be a long wait.

@SimonIstSoooCoo Meinst Du Android 7? Das gibt es Ende Januar fur das Moto G4 :)  Moto Deutschland (@Moto_GER) January 4, 2017

Android 7.0 Nougat update schedules for Moto Z Play and Droid Turbo 2

Once Android Nougat is rolled out to Moto G4, Motorola will likely bring the update to other handsets such as Moto Z Play and Z Force, Neurogadget reported.

Droid Turbo 2 has reportedly received Bluetooth certification from SIG, and according to GSM Arena, this could mean the handset, including Moto X Force, will get Android Nougat update soon.

Android 7.0 Nougat features

Soon, Moto G4 handsets in Europe will be able to enjoy some of the iconic Nougat features such as multi-window screen and new notification orders including the quick reply option.

The data saver enables background refresh from Wi-Fi option. Thus, it cuts down the phone bill. Doze is also working perfectly for battery saving while on the go. Motorola adds a few tweaks of its own including swipe to shrink for one-handed mode.

For a complete list of Android 7.0 Nougat update features in Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus, click here.

Lenovo has been one of the vendors that quickly rollout the latest Android OS version update to its handsets. The Taiwanese company has also been ambitious in bringing more mid-rangers to the table, including the recently launched, first all-metal phone, Moto M.

Check out Android 7.0 Nougat preview on Moto Z
Virat Kohli, in two videos, lashed out at men who molest, ill-treat women, in the wake of the Bengaluru mass molestation news, and said those who do not respect women and their rights and ensure they are safe have no right to call themselves men.

By India Today Web Desk: Virat Kohli, Indian Test captain, condemned the Bengaluru mass molestation incident in two videos he posted on Twitter.

Beginning the message by saying what happened in Bengaluru is "really really disturbing," Kohli said "to see something like that happen to those girls, and for people to watch it and not do anything about it, I think it's a cowardly act."

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Also read: Bengaluru mass molestation: Aamir to Varun, B-Town is angry, sad and disappointed

"Those people have no right to call themselves men," he said.

Slamming all those bystanders who refused to help women, Kohli said such things happen because many people think it's "absolutely fine" as women dress in a certain way.

"It's her life, it's her decision, it's her choice," Kohli said about women choosing to wear whatever they feel comfortable in.

Also read: Mahendra Singh Dhoni will always be my captain: Virat Kohli

Not sparing politicians who normalise such incidents saying "these things are bound to happen if women go out at night with men who are not related by blood, and wearing short clothes," Kohli said, "people in power trying to defend it [men molesting women] is absolutely horrible."

He tweeted the first video saying, "This country should be safe & equal for all. Women shouldn't be treated differently. Let's stand together & put an end to such pathetic acts."

This country should be safe & equal for all. Women shouldn't be treated differently. Let's stand together & put an end to such pathetic acts pic.twitter.com/bD0vOV2I2P Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) January 6, 2017

In a second video that he ended saying "Jai Hind", Kohli said he is ashamed to be a part of the society that thinks such incidents are acceptable. "I think we need to change our thinking. We need to treat men and women in the same way," he said.

WATCH: Akshay Kumar's angry, emotional video message on Bengaluru molestation

Tweeting the second video saying, "Change your thinking and the world will change around you," Kohli said, "be respectful and treat women with compassion."

Change your thinking and the world will change around you. pic.twitter.com/FinDIYv2aV Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) January 6, 2017

Virat Kohli's message to the public comes a day after Bollywood star Akshay Kumar posted a similar video from his official Facebook, Twitter profiles, schooling men who think they can misbehave with women and telling women that they are no less than men in any way.Watch Akshay Kumar's video here:

The Bangalore incident makes me feel we r evolving backwards,from humans to animals,rather beasts coz even animals are better!Truly shameful pic.twitter.com/FJwJ80Mkby Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 5, 2017

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January 6 2017

Urban Realm starts the New Year with publication of our winter edition , bookended by two complementary tales of riverfront rejuvenation. Opening with an ambitious Ayr masterplan, which seeks to take the Ayrshire town back to the future with a new network of vennels and closes. In many respects Ayr is leading the way over Glasgow, which is still scrabbling to come up with a coherent riverfront strategy of its own. We speak to the teams behind both to see what is in store.The big story this issue is our annual rundown of Scotlands top architecture practices, headed this year by a practice which has taken great strides to bolster its design credentials. Whilst there is work still to do in this area it shows that profit and design neednt be mutually exclusive goals in architecture.In light of these findings we take a close-up look at two centres of excellence which strive to achieve high-end design on a limited budget; Oriam and Kilmarnock Campus. Oriam shows what can be achieved when architects put their best foot forward while Kilmarnock Campus illustrates how further education can kick-start wider regeneration.2017 may signal the end of the Festival of Architecture but despite a year of activities and events the profession is far from being in rude health. Here John Pelan outlines why our built environment is in a state of crisis.Elsewhere Mark Chalmers looks at the myths swirling around Gillespie Kidd & Coia and Sigurd Leverentz, drawing parallels between the cult-like appreciation of both and the discrepancies between their not insignificant achievements, Chalmers separates fact from fiction.Whatever your background, wherever you are an exciting year lies ahead.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) Shares of drug firm Wockhardt today surged over 5.5 per cent following news that German regulator has issued European Union Good Manufacturing Practice certificate to the companys Ankaleshwar facility in Gujarat.

The stock soared 5.55 per cent to end at Rs 710.70 on BSE. During the day, it zoomed 8.12 per cent to Rs 728.

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At NSE, shares of the company jumped 5.56 per cent to end at Rs 710.90.

In terms of volume, 9.16 lakh shares of the company were traded on the BSE and over 64 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day.

"The competent authority, Berlin, Germany has since issued certificate confirming that companys manufacturing facility at 138, GIDC Estate, Ankaleshwar, Gujarat, complies with the principles and guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practices," Wockhardt said in a filing to BSE yesterday.

The certificate issued in this regard is valid for three years, it added.

The nod from the German regulator comes after the issuance of a warning letter by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to the company for violating current good manufacturing practice norms, including its failure to ensure proper clothing for workers at its Ankleshwar plant. PTI SUM ABI

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Called "one of today's best young jazz musicians" by the Boston Globe, bassist and composer Ben Allison will perform with guitarist Steve Cardenas and drummer Allison Miller at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point as part of the Music Department's 26th annual Jazz Festival.

The performance will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, in Michelsen Hall in the Noel Fine Arts Center. The public performance caps a day of jazz study by more than 700 high school and middle school students from around Wisconsin.

Tickets for the concert are $18 for adults and $15 for students and seniors. Purchase tickets through the Information and Tickets Office at 715-346-4100, 800-838-3378 or http://tickets.uwsp.edu.

Allison has an international reputation for creating inspiring jazz arrangements that draw from a range of influences, from rock and folk to 20th Century classical and world music. He has released 11 albums, seven of which have reached number one on the national jazz radio charts. He has served as an adjunct professor and visiting and resident artist at universities and conservatories around the world. He formed the Jazz Composers Collective in New York City, and is an advocate for musician's rights.

Cardenas has been an integral part of the New York City jazz community since 1995 and has performed with several groups and toured around the world. He also teaches at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.

Miller is a New York City-based drummer, composer and teacher whose band, Boom Tic Boom, has released four albums and received critical acclaim. She is a jazz ambassador for the U.S. State Department and has conducted clinics and master classes throughout the world.


Fisher Innovation Challenge Qualifiers Will Share Business Inspirations at e2e Meeting

University of Wyoming students who qualified for the Fisher Innovation Challenge with their businesses will be the guest speakers at the next e2e Wyoming meeting in Laramie Wednesday, Jan. 25, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center. (BHP Imaging Photo)

University of Wyoming students who were named qualifiers in the recent Fisher Innovation Challenge (FIC) will share their new companies at the next e2e Wyoming meeting in Laramie.

Students from six companies will discuss their business stories Wednesday, Jan. 25, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center, located at 222 S. 22nd St. in Laramie.

Those students scheduled to speak are:

-- Torre Roasts founder Emily Beagle, of Sheridan, who is a second-year doctoral student in mechanical engineering.

-- Aktzin Systems founder Dakota Roberson, of Rock Springs, a fourth-year doctoral student in electrical engineering.

-- Ullr Performance Parts founder Kyle Kuhn, of Laramie, a first-year masters student in mechanical engineering.

-- Resono Pressure Systems founder Pourya Nikoueeyan, of Iran, a third-year doctoral student in mechanical engineering.

-- Pralee Eggs and Hatchery founder Jaycee Lindsey, of Wright, a senior in animal science.

-- Lev'sonic founder Levente Papa, of Budapest, Hungary, a third-year doctoral student in chemistry.

The FIC was launched in spring 2016 as a new entrepreneurship competition focused on technology and innovation. It was administered by the Wyoming Technology Business Center (WTBC), which seeks to catalyze Wyoming technology startup businesses. The FIC identified and stimulated the creation of new independent businesses in the seed, startup and early-growth stages, and will provide the qualifying companies an opportunity to approach a $125,000 seed fund for working capital.

A $100,000 seed fund was made possible through the financial gift of Donne Fisher, and it was matched by the UW Office of Research and Economic Development. Additional funding for the first year of the innovation challenge also was provided by UWs School of Energy Resources.

Though inclusive to all UW students, the FIC was conducted in partnership with the College of Engineering and Applied Science, and had a specific focus on business concepts with technical roots and innovation. More than 40 applications were received from UW student-led teams and, over the course of the past year, this field was narrowed to six qualifying teams.

E2e is an educational networking program with chapters in Laramie, Casper, Gillette and Sheridan. It is designed to improve the climate for the startup and growth of entrepreneurial companies. Each e2e chapter meets bimonthly for 45 minutes of networking, followed by a 45-minute program. The programs feature successful entrepreneurs telling their stories, panel discussion on relevant topics and advice from experts in specific businesses.

Administered by the UW Office of Research and Economic Development, the WTBC is a not-for-profit business incubator that provides entrepreneurs with the expertise, networks and tools necessary for success.

For more information on e2e, call the WTBC at (307) 766-6395.
UW Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing Lauds Four Community Partners

Pathways Mental Health Professionals in Laramie received the 2016 DNP Community Partner Award recently from the UW Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing. From left are: James Kuster, a UW DNP student; Glen and Kay Lynn Hammer, clinic owners; and Nancy McGee and JLaine Proctor, UW Nursing PMHNP faculty.

The University of Wyoming Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing recently honored four community partners.

These partners work with the school to provide exceptional clinical educational opportunities for nursing students across clinical programs. The awards were given individually to the agencies during special ceremonies throughout 2016. The agencies recognized:

-- Albany County Public Health (ACPH) received the 2016 Basic BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) Community Partner Award for its work with the Basic BSN traditional on-campus program.

The wonderful nurses at Albany County Public Health work closely with our faculty to tailor experiences to the interests of the students, while still addressing the global aspects of public health, says Program Director Holly Miller.

Miller says ACPH nurses work on building strengths and interests of UW nursing students while keeping a focus on providing the best possible learning experiences. The award was presented during the schools Nightingale Ceremony during the fall.

-- Platte County Memorial Hospital (PCMH) in Wheatland received the 2016 BRAND Program Community Partner Award for its work with the BRAND accelerated second bachelors degree program.

According to UW BRAND Program Director Candace Tull, PCMH nurses went above and beyond to support the accelerated BRAND nursing students clinical education, being extremely supportive in encouraging and facilitating an additional clinical group of students.

As an example of the PCMH commitment to students education, Tull says PCMH developed a Clinical Practice/Shared Leadership Committee, which includes a member of the UW nursing faculty. The purpose of this committee is to ensure coordination of students and quality of clinical experience. Tull says students consistently note the hospital staffs support and encouragement in clinical learning experiences. The BRAND award was presented at the fall Nightingale Ceremony.

-- Laramie County Community College (LCCC) in Cheyenne received the 2016 RN-BSN Completion Program Community Partner Award for its work with the RN-BSN Completion Program. UW Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing Dean Mary Burman says LCCC has been extremely supportive of students attaining their BSN degrees in as timely and seamless a manner as possible.

Encouraging and counseling students to select appropriate classes needed for the BSN has been critical, resulting in 145 LCCC associates degree nursing graduates attaining their BSN degrees from UW between 2010-15.

Looking to the future, many LCCC nursing faculty participated in the development of the ReNEW curriculum, now in effect and transforming Wyoming nursing, Burman says. This is yet another example of LCCC and UW working together to encourage continued education among nurses and ensuring safe, quality, patient-centered care in Wyoming.

The award was presented in early fall by new RN-BSN Completion Program Director David Bodily to LCCC nursing Dean Jennifer Anderson.

-- Pathways Mental Health Professionals (Pathways) in Laramie received the 2016 DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) Program Community Partner Award for its work with the DNP Program. Pathways provided the first clinical rotation in UW Nursings new Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner DNP Program option.

Pathways provided an excellent clinical experience, a friendly atmosphere and an ideal interdisciplinary team approach to treating complex mental health issues, Burman says in the award letter to Pathways. Student feedback also highlighted the willingness of Pathways clinicians to assure variety and depth of clinical experience.

The award was presented last fall at the DNP programs Willow Ceremony.
Wyoming Business Tips for Jan. 15-21

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Susan Jerke, WSBDC regional director

Its 2017. What positive decisions should I consider for my business this year? Jennifer, Greybull

I recently read an article in Forbes that compared resolutions, goals and decisions to grades of beef, and how likely you are to follow through with each. It was particularly intriguing due to my agricultural background.

The more specific and measurable your New Years goals, the more likely you are to achieve them. Some of the comparisons: Beef baloney, 10 percent follow-through on resolutions; grass-fed hamburger, 30 percent follow-through on business goals; and grass-fed steak, 90 percent follow-through on business decisions.

Although I chuckled, I can certainly relate to the concept. If you examine your business, identify real problems and make the decision to implement real, concrete solutions, your results will ultimately be more successful and long lasting.

Here are three decisions that can make 2017 a great year:

-- Polish your leadership skills: Professional development is critical to keep abreast of changes in technology and regulations. Where would you like to be more effective in your organization? What workshops can help you, either online or live in person? Browse your local college classes and investigate the worlds wide array of webinar opportunities. And note, despite current economic challenges, the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services still offers grants to help train your workforce through the Workforce Training Fund.

-- Keep your employees engaged in your company: Consider professional development to keep employees on the cutting edge of your business. They are often the first people who work directly with customers; so, help them prepare. Also, include your employees as you plan the year, and invite their participation. You can all work together to increase efficiency.

-- Re-examine and focus on customer needs: Take some time to review your brand and examine what worked last year and, conversely, what did not work. Is your online presence up to date with accurate information on your website? You might consider having our market research team review your site. Do you post regularly on social media to inform your customers on new products and services? If you blog, do you regularly provide fresh content? Then, get out of the office and go visit with your customers. The most important contact is personal, face-to-face interaction to learn what your customers need.

The Wyoming SBDC Network wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year. Remember, you dont have to go it alone as an entrepreneur. We are always here to help you with your business needs and look forward to seeing you in 2017.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyomingsbdc.org/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
By Mike Vinkenborg

As Ho Chi Minh City battles growing traffic congestion, municipal authorities are considering a range of measures to improve transportation in the bustling city of over eight million. The city is currently debating altering work hours to spread out traffic during peak hours and trimming sidewalks to create more space for vehicles, while also building several new overpasses. These are just a few of the many proposed measures to tackle the gridlock issue that is becoming increasingly problematic.

These are all short-term solutions that fail to tackle the root of the problem, however. Every day, an estimated of 1,000 new motorbikes and 180 new cars are registered in Ho Chi Minh City. In total, 8.5 million motorbikes and 627,000 cars are currently registered in the city, the latter indicating a 500 percent increase compared with the year 2000. And as Vietnam is set to cut tariffs on ASEAN car imports in 2019, thereby reducing car prices by 42 percent, these numbers are poised to increase even more in the future. As a result, cars on major roads didnt exceed an average of eight kilometers per hour during afternoon rush hours as of 2010, and the situation has not improved since then.

To be able to handle this increase in traffic, the municipal Transport Department speculated that road surface needs to be doubled by 2020. Several elevated highways and metro lines are currently already planned, but the Ho Chi Minh City Finance and Investment State-owned Company (HFIC) estimates that the city needs about VND 1 quadrillion (US$44 billion) for infrastructure projects from 2015 to 2030.

Metro development plans

The most sustainable long term solution to tackle congestion in Ho Chi Minh City is not building more roads, but reducing the amount of existing traffic through the development of an extensive metro system. Currently, the city plans to build a total of six metro lines, plus one tramway line and two monorail lines. Of these, construction on line 1 and 2 has started, and are scheduled for completion in 2020. Line 5 is scheduled for completion in 2025, while the other lines are still in the planning phase and require more investments.

May 2016 cost estimates for lines 1 to 6 are (in US$) 2.49, 2.07, 3.69, 4.45, 4.47, and 1.25 billion, respectively, totaling over US$18 billion. To finance this, Vietnam is actively seeking foreign investments. The governments of Japan, Germany, Spain, and South Korea, as well as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are already involved in the development of metro lines 1, 2, and 5 by providing official development assistance (ODA).

RELATED: Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory from Dezan Shira & Associates

Opportunities avail for private investors as well, in particular through Public Private Partnerships (PPP), the workings of which are outlined in Vietnam Briefings two-part series here and here. Before 2020, Vietnam hopes to attract FDI for metro line number 6 adding up to US$1.25 billion through the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) and Build-Transfer (BT) methods. For the two monorail lines and ground tram line, these numbers add up to US$1.12 billion and US$250 million, respectively, using similar investment models.

Ho Chi Minh Citys planned metro system

Additional opportunities

Besides public transportation, investments in several overpasses are also available through the BOT model, currently adding up to US$2.46 billion for three projects, while new overpasses are being proposed as well. Ultimately, Ho Chi Minh City hopes to have a network of elevated highways in place to help ease congestion on main roads throughout the city.

Furthermore, the establishment of metro stations brings new opportunities for transit-oriented development (TOD). Plans for a shopping mall underneath the first metro station, including walking streets, a square, and other infrastructure developments, has already been proposed by Japanese investors, offering opportunities to retailers wanting to leverage the amount of passengers passing through the newly built metro stations. And as more metro lines are being built, more opportunities for the development of TODs will arise in the city.

That being said, investors should always keep restrictions in mind when investing in public development projects in Vietnam. However, the current development plans in Ho Chi Minh City are encouraging. In order to help solve its congestion problems, Ho Chi Minh City encourages foreign investment in its infrastructure sector, opening up numerous opportunities for foreign companies with the relevant expertise.



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 vietnam@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 



Annual Audit and Compliance in Vietnam 2016

In this issue of Vietnam Briefing, we address pressing changes to audit procedures in 2016, and provide guidance on how to ensure that compliance tasks are completed in an efficient and effective manner. We highlight the continued convergence of VAS with IFRS, discuss the emergence of e-filing, and provide step-by-step instructions on audit and compliance procedures for Foreign Owned Enterprises (FOEs) as well as Representative Offices (ROs).

Navigating the Vietnam Supply Chain

In this edition of Vietnam Briefing, we discuss the advantages of the Vietnamese market over its regional competition and highlight where and how to implement successful investment projects. We examine tariff reduction schedules within the ACFTA and TPP, highlight considerations with regard to rules of origin, and outline the benefits of investing in Vietnams growing economic zones. Finally, we provide expert insight into the issues surrounding the creation of 100 percent Foreign Owned Enterprise in Vietnam.

Tax, Accounting and Audit in Vietnam 2016 (2nd Edition)

This edition of Tax, Accounting, and Audit in Vietnam, updated for 2016, offers a comprehensive overview of the major taxes foreign investors are likely to encounter when establishing or operating a business in Vietnam, as well as other tax-relevant obligations. This concise, detailed, yet pragmatic guide is ideal for CFOs, compliance officers and heads of accounting who must navigate Vietnams complex tax and accounting landscape in order to effectively manage and strategically plan their Vietnam operations.
Photo: Duc Thanh

Specifically, on January 3, the company sold 500,000 shares of Vietnams biggest brewer at the negotiated price of VND190,000 ($8.5) apiece, earning VND95 billion ($4.26 million) from the sale.

Sabecos stocks (HoSE: SAB) started trading on December 6, 2016, with the initial reference price of VND110,000 ($4.93). Within a single month, the price has been rising to close on January 5 at VND197,100 ($8.84), an increase of 79 per cent. The highest price recorded was VND225,000 ($10), recorded on December 16.

Ever since the stock started trading on HoSE, foreign investors have been consistently buying in with little selling. However, foreign holdings currently stand below 1 per cent.

The state currently holds nearly 89.6 per cent of Sabecos capital. It plans to divestthe entirety of its share. The divestment plan is projected to be executed in April 2017.

Many foreign investors have expressed interest in buying stakes in Sabeco, including big international beverage makers Kirin, Asahi Group Holdings, Heineken, Singha, ThaiBev, and AB InBev.
Britain's Finance minister Philip Hammond said he hoped to secure a strong trading relationship with the rest of Europe AFP/Rodger Bosch

"Of course the negotiations will be tough and they will be complicated," Hammond told CNBC Arabia television in an interview aired on Thursday (Jan 5).

"We have spent 40 years integrating our economies and now we have to separate them," he added during the interview in Kuwait, where he was visiting as part of a tour of the Gulf.

Britain will have two years to negotiate a deal with the EU once it triggers Article 50 of the bloc's Lisbon Treaty, formally beginning the withdrawal process.

Despite the daunting complexity and scope for conflict, Hammond said he hoped to secure a strong trading relationship with the rest of Europe.

The divorce "will take time and it will take effort, but we have mutual interest in maintaining a close economic, commercial and trading relationship", he said.

"Hundreds of thousands of jobs on the continent of Europe depend on exports to Britain and hundreds of thousands of jobs in Britain depend on our services being delivered into the European Union, particularly financial services from the city of London," he told the broadcaster.

Hammond was criticised by pro-Brexit leaders last month when he backed a transitional deal to smooth the Brexit negotiations. His call for a deal is in line with British industry leaders, in particular in the powerful financial sector, who are concerned about the effect of a so-called "hard Brexit" that would see the country quit Europe's free-trade area and lead to the potential for tariffs and red tape.

Prime Minister Theresa May is under increasing pressure to reveal details of her negotiating demands and strategy ahead of her March deadline for triggering Article 50.

May was also rocked when Ivan Rogers, Britain's ambassador to the EU, quit on Tuesday, criticising "ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking".
Photo : nasa.gov

The US space agency had already pushed back the launch by a day to Tuesday.

If technicians are able to finish their repairs as planned, Discovery and its six American astronauts will now launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 3:52 pm (1952 GMT) Wednesday, NASA test director Jeff Spaulding said.

The flight to the orbiting International Space Station is the fourth and final shuttle flight of the year, and the last scheduled for Discovery, the oldest in the three-shuttle fleet that is being retired in 2011.
Dan Coats served as a Republican senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and then from 2011 to the end of his term on Tuesday. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images/AFP)

Dan Coats, 73, will be nominated by Trump to serve as the powerful coordinator of 16 intelligence and security agencies, according to multiple US media reports on Thursday (Jan 5).

Coats, who served as a Republican senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and then from 2011 to the end of his term on Tuesday, was one of six US legislators and three White House aides blacklisted by Moscow in 2014 in reprisal for US sanctions placed on the country for its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Coats, who had advocated tough sanctions against Russia, called the ban an honor.

"While I'm disappointed that I won't be able to go on vacation with my family in Siberia this summer, I am honored to be on this list," he tweeted at the time.

Coats, who was US ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005 under the George W. Bush administration, served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as economy-related committees during the past six years.

His nomination will have to pass Senate confirmation.

He will replace James Clapper, director of national intelligence under outgoing President Barack Obama from 2010 to the present.

The DNI oversees coordination between disparate agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and others, acting as the president's principal advisor on their work.

As a senator in 2013, Coats defended the NSA after former contractor Edward Snowden revealed it was secretly collecting Americans' phone records en masse.

"The intelligence community is doing exactly what the American people asked for," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

"These programs represent some of the most effective means available to protect the country from terrorist organizations like al Qaeda."

According to reports, Trump wants to reshape and possibly slim down the US intelligence apparatus, a job which could fall to Coats.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer rejected earlier Thursday a Wall Street Journal report that Trump wants to scale back the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and restructure the CIA.

"There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure. It is 100 percent false," Spicer told reporters.

But Senator John McCain said on Thursday that he understood that some changes are in the works.

"They're talking about changing the composition of it and stuff, but they're not talking about doing away with the director of national intelligence," he said.
Environmental campaigners visit Taiji, Japan, every year to protest an annual slaughter of dolphins AFP/Toshifumi Kitamura

A fisherman in the city of Taiji noticed that four bottlenose dolphins from the facility were swimming outside their netted enclosure in the early morning, police said.

"We are investigating the case on suspicion of criminal damage," a police official in the nearby city of Shingu told AFP.

He said two of the nets at the DolphinBase park were apparently cut with a sharp object, allowing the mammals to escape, before three of them returned to the enclosure of their own volition. A fourth dolphin was swimming nearby.

Taiji, a small port in western Japan's Wakayama prefecture, was thrust into the global spotlight after the 2009 documentary "The Cove".

The Oscar-winning film depicted an annual dolphin slaughter in the area, where some of the animals are also captured and sold to aquariums.

Environmental campaigners visit Taiji every year to protest the slaughter and authorities have boosted security to prevent clashes between locals and activists. Defenders of the hunt say it is a tradition and point out that the animals are not endangered, a position echoed by the Japanese government.

In September 2010, a net owned by a local fishermen's union in Taiji was cut, with an Amsterdam-based environmental group claiming responsibility for the act, but no arrests were ever made in that case.

DolphinBase officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday's incident, but expressed outrage on their blog.

"We feel furious about this egoistic and irresponsible act," they said.

Ric O'Barry, the director of "The Cove", was detained in Japan last year for nearly three weeks after being denied entry to the country, and was eventually deported.

O'Barry's Dolphin Project, a dolphin protection and campaign group, criticised the alleged cutting of the nets.

"While we are against keeping dolphins in captivity, we do not condone illegal behaviour," it said on its web site.
Chinese tourists have made up half of international arrivals to Nha Trang City in the central province of Khanh Hoa this year - Photo Zing

International tourist arrivals to the province last year are projected at around 1.1 million, with 600,000 of them coming from China, four times higher than in 2015. Meanwhile, arrivals from traditional visitor-generating markets such as Europe and North America dipped.

It is time for the provincial government to recover the traditional markets and look for new markets, Tran Viet Trung, director of Khanh Hoa Provinces Department of Tourism, told the Daily.

Trung underlined the need to avoid reliance on a single market, saying the province already experienced a sharp fall in tourism revenue triggered by an unexpected slump in Russian and Chinese tourist arrivals in 2014.

The province plans to join hands with air carriers to launch flights to Germany, and resume cooperation with travel firms specializing in Japanese and South Korean markets.

Nguyen Van Thanh, vice chairman of the Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa Tourism Association, said Vietnam Airlines plans to launch service between Nha Trang and Germany in April 2017. The general managers of 15 hotels are expected to work with a new committee responsible for luring tourists from key foreign source markets like Europe and Northeast Asia. This committee is expected to come out this quarter.

Japanese tourists came to Nha Trang in droves around 10 years ago but Japanese arrivals there have declined of late. The province said it would cooperate with tourism companies specializing in the Japanese market to bring Japanese guests back, Thanh said.

Last year saw more than 10 million foreigners visiting Vietnam, including nearly 2.7 million Chinese who came on chartered flights to Khanh Hoa, Danang, Phu Quoc and Dalat among others.

Chinese tour operators often choose to sign huge package contracts with hotels in Khanh Hoa to enjoy low room rates. Some hotel owners however have been seeking to diversify customers.

Nguyen Anh Vu, director of Green World Nha Trang Hotel, said his hotel sets aside around 40% of 228 rooms for the Chinese market.

Some Chinese partners have asked for more rooms but we have declined because we want to serve clients from other markets. It is risky to rely heavily on a single market where partners often demand steep discounts, he said.
Rice packs being loaded at Sai Gon port. - VNA/VNS Photo Dinh Hue

Three years ago, the ministry had issued Decision 6139/Q-BCT that stipulated conditions for becoming a rice export firm and set the maximum rice export licence limit to 150 traders.

Under the decision, firms that applied for licences to export rice had to have at least one warehouse with a minimum capacity to store 5,000 tonnes of rice and one rice husking factory with a minimum capacity of 10 tonnes of paddy per hour. The facilities had to be located in planned areas.

According to experts, because of these stipulations, many companies that had developed their own rice brands and had close relationships with farmers could not actively and directly export their products. Instead, they had to rely on intermediaries.

In addition, once a company has a rice export certificate, it must export at least 10,000 tonnes of rice per year or 20,000 tonnes of rice in two years, if the quota for the first year is not reached.

Because of this clause, exporters would achieve the target by purchasing sufficient volumes of rice, regardless of its quality, experts said.

The regulations on the number of rice exporters and rice export quotas were detrimental to the growth of the rice export sector and should be repealed, experts suggested.

The abrogation of Decision 6139 is one of the steps taken by the ministry to streamline administrative procedures, in accordance with the Law on Investment 2014.

The ministry is expected to create a healthy market for enterprises investing in rice production and trade and to ease farmers difficulties, thereby helping boost high-quality rice exports.

In 2017, the ministry has pledged to abolish 15 legal documents and simplify 108 administrative procedures. The reforms will echo the Governments determination to support enterprises, improve the investment environment and raise national competitiveness.
Toyotas showroom in Nha Trang. The flux of imported cars for 2016 in Viet Nam did not exceed that of 2015, though still clocked in at a high number. -Photo toyotanhatrang.com.vn

In particular, an estimated 16,000 vehicles were imported in December, 4,000 higher than the the previous month, with the imported value jumping from US$190 million in November to $227 million in December.

115,000 vehicles were imported in 2016, thanks in part to the hike in December.

This high import turnover for 2016, though down by 8.5 per cent in number and down by 22.1 per cent in value compared to that of 2015, was still encouraging for the imported car market.

There were several reasons for the decrease in turnover for imported vehicles, the biggest being Viet Nams import tax policy.

Since the beginning of 2016, imported cars had been subjected to the new Special Consumption Tax, calculated based on the bulk import price of the importer instead of the previously used method of adding import tax to the cost insurance and freight price. This change increased the price of imported vehicles by about three per cent in total.

The government should find a much-needed solution to calculate a fair import tax, said Tran Tan Trung, director of Lien A International, Audis distributor in Viet Nam.

Trung said that importers should provide governmental agencies with the needed vehicle data as to easily identify the price and the appropriate tax levels, as indicated by manufacturers.

This proposal is backed authoritative agencies, according to Nguyen Quang Son of the General Department of Customs Department of Customs Supervision and Management. He added that the Department had applied the method and demanded vehicle companies to update the date regularly, even monthly, to facilitate the tax database.

The change in taxation mainly affected imported vehicles, as these had been vehicles with larges engines and higher fuel consumption than vehicles assembled in Viet Nam.

From July 1, 2016, the Special Consumption Tax began to apply to vehicles with engine cylinder capacity of three litres and up, and the added tax value on such cars was pushed to 150 per cent from 60 per cent.

Those that could benefit from this tax included imported cars from Thailand and Indonesia. These vehicles make up the mid-end market with smaller engines.

According to the Ministry of Finance, imported cars from Thailand and Indonesia accounted for two third of total number of imported vehicles in 2016.

Anticipation for the car market in 2017 indicated a significant rise in demand for whole imported cars both new and used. The demand for new cars will increase faster with many brands switching from assembling in Viet Nam to importing whole vehicles in 2017 such as Toyota, Honda, Ford or Mitsubishi, in addition to the market demand for semi-trailer trucks imported from Thailand.

However, import of cars in 2017 might very likely encounter obstacles as procedures on imports, clearance and tariffs will be tightened.

Additionally, Viet Nam spent $1.4 billion last year on car accessories and spare parts.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye's impeachment trial gets under way, with her lawyers arguing there no evidence to back corruption allegations. (Photo: AFP/JUNG Yeon-Je)

Parliament voted to impeach Park last month over an influence-peddling scandal that has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets every week demanding her removal.

Park is accused of colluding with a longtime friend, Choi Soon-Il, to strong-arm donations worth tens of millions of dollars from top firms which were then funnelled to dubious foundations.

She is also accused of using her influence to ensure the merger of two Samsung units in 2015 in order to help facilitate a father-to-son power succession of Samsung's founding family.

The National Assembly, which must have its vote upheld by the Constitutional Court, accused Park of a serious breach of the constitution during the first full hearing in the impeachment case.

"The court is requested to fire the president so that impaired constitutional order can be restored", said Kwon Seong-Dong, a lawmaker representing the parliament.

"She ignored her duty as the head of state and chief administrator of the country."

The Constitutional Court's initial hearing on Tuesday was curtailed after Park failed to attend. It decided to proceed on Thursday regardless of whether she was present.

Park's lawyers urged the court to overturn the vote, saying the impeachment motion had been based on "high possibility at best" and insisted she be reinstated as president immediately.

"There is no solid evidence to back the impeachment", Park's lawyer Lee Jung-Hwan told the court.

Park has repeatedly denied the corruption allegations in sometimes tearful televised addresses, while apologising for lapses.

In a rare meeting with journalists on Sunday, she said she had only sought to listen through Choi to ordinary citizens' opinion on her polices and speeches.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc made the statement as part of his conclusion at the regular government meeting on inefficiencies at some projects and companies under the management of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The conclusion stated that besides fluctuations in the global economy, there are inherent weaknesses in the management of state-owned companies that have been incurring huge losses recently. In addition, the Prime Minister pointed out that these companies are expected to continue incurring losses in the near future unless actions are taken.

He asked the companies to restructure themselves by addressing their weaknesses. The restructuring of inefficient companies and projects should follow market mechanisms, minimise the loss of state assets, and should not cause a domino effect rippling over to other companies.

The government is adamant about not using the state budget to rescue inefficient projects. SOEs have to stop making direct investment in these projects, use their own resources and be responsible for the projects, the conclusion stated.

The Prime Minister assigned the MoIT to work with related government agencies to review the projects and submit plans on what to do with them as soon as possible.
US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to address major corporations like Toyota, Lockheed Martin and General Motors Corporation. (AFP/KAZUHIRO NOGI)

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," Trump said in a tweet, his latest attack on auto manufacturers investing abroad rather than in the United States.

Toyota in November celebrated the groundbreaking for the US$1 billion plant in Guanajuato, in central Mexico - not in Baja, which borders California, as Trump said.

A Toyota spokesman said the company is planning to respond to Trump's tweet. The company's share price was down 0.6 per cent from Wednesday's close, with much of the decline following Trump's tweet shortly after 1800 GMT.

Ford this week cancelled plans for a US$1.6 billion plant in Mexico after coming under attack by Trump.

Trump on Tuesday also called for retaliatory taxes to be imposed on General Motors for making some of the Chevrolet Cruze compact cars in Mexico.

According to the company, all Cruze sedans sold in the US are built in Ohio with a small number of hatchbacks sold in the US built at a plant in Mexico.

Toyota is planning to produce Corolla models staring in 2019 and employ 2,000 workers at the Guanajuato plant, the company's 15 manufacturing facility in North America.
Pham Anh Duc, the founder of ViCare

1. On September 5, Yahoo Japan, the largest Japanese fund, announced investment in Offpeak, an app which find food, beverage and dining discounts in SE Asia.

The involved parties declined to give details about the deal, but the investment capital in dollars is a seven-digit one.



Explaining the investment decision, a representative of Yahoo Japan said the fund sees great potential in the food & beverage sector in the market and the growth rate of the company.



Before Yahoo Japan agreed to pour capital into Offpeak, the project received $800,000 in investment capital from Gobi Partners just three weeks after it started Series A capital call. The founders of Offpeak also received $200,000 from Cradle, a fund belonging to the Malaysian government.

The Offpeak project initiated by Christian Nguyen has received millions of dollars from a Japanese investment fund, while Vntrip.vn has called for $3 million worth of capital.

Offpeak is managed by Christian Nguyen, an overseas Vietnamese in France, who can speak six languages, and three Malaysian co-founders. The four businessmen have many years experience in technology and e-commerce.

2. Pham Anh Duc, the founder of ViCare, said he started the app after he and his relatives had problems looking for reliable information about healthcare services.

ViCare can answer questions like What disease do i have? Where should I go to have healthcare services? and What do I have to do to take care of my health?



After eight months of operation, ViCare Corporation completed the second round of capital calls. Two international funds have answered its call  CyberAgent Ventures from Japan and Pix Vine Capital from Singapore - and have agreed to invest VND10 billion.



Four months ago, ViCare successfully completed the first round of capital call, receiving the capital from the investors from Hanoi and HCMC.



A representative of CyberAgent Ventures said that ViCare chose the correct way when focusing on healthcare services, a potential sector in Vietnam where people face overloading at facilities, and a lack of physicians and healthcare centers.



3. Starting from scratch, Vu Quang Trung created a website with data about prices and specifications of 10 million products.



Seven months after establishment, the website was shortlisted for the final round of the Nhan Tai Dat Viet (Vietnamese Talents) national competition. Many investment funds from Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have contacted Trung to discuss the investment.



In mid-2015, So Sanh Viet Nam JSC, which runs Websosanh, the price comparison website, received investments from Yello Shopping Media Group (YSM).



With advantages in technology, Big Data and AI applications, the website now provides information to 3.5 million users a month.
Some 100 demonstrators gathered in Koh Kong province this week to continue their decade-long opposition to displacement by a sugarcane plantation firm owned by a ruling party senator.

The protesters have submitted numerous petitions to the authorities and foreign institutions since December without receiving a response, they say.

Phav Nhoeung, a representative of the group from Sre Ambel district in Koh Kong, said that the company, owned by Cambodian Peoples Party Senator Ly Yong Phat, had expropriated the land in 2006.

The authorities have lied to us again and again, she said. But so far nothing has been resolved.

Prime Minister Hun Sens office has, belatedly, responded to their requests, she added, by issuing a letter to the protesters suggesting they contact the Ministry of Land Management.

Earlier this week Minister of Environment Say Sam Al claimed that all land disputes in the country had been solved.

The protesters are engaged in the dispute over a 782-hectare patch of land that was engulfed by the plantation when it was granted a lease in 2006.

Seng Lot, a land management ministry spokesman, could not be reached.

Buth Pros, another representative of the villagers, said they would continue to protest until the senator withdrew from the land.

However, Yong Phat told VOA Khmer on Wednesday that he was not connected to the dispute and that the demonstration was political.

I don't know anything. Whoever is protesting has nothing to do with me. That's about politics, not about who gained wealth, or who lost wealth. It is all about politics, he said.

Heng Huy, a tycoon who is also accused by the protesters of expropriating some of their land, said: I don't have anything to worry about. I have nothing to do with the citizens because this land has its ownership.

Environment Minister Say Sam Al told reporters that the government would investigate the issue.

In Kongcheth, a rights worker, said the dispute had dragged on for too long and had caused the citizens to fall into poverty because they lost all of their income from farming.
Europe is being buffeted by a succession of simultaneous political, economic and security crises, which are sowing doubts about the future of the European Union and its relationship with the United States. VOAs Jela de Franceschi takes a closer look at the current state of the Euro-Atlantic community, which encompasses the politico-economic union of 28 European member states and the worlds most powerful defense alliance, NATO.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has dismissed the idea that Russia hacked into the recent presidential election process, received a full briefing Friday from top U.S. intelligence officials. Trump later released a statement calling the meeting "constructive" and said that he has "tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation."

However, he did not explicitly endorse the view of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's computers and then released damaging information to aid Trump's bid to become U.S. president.

In the statement, Trump said Russia, China, other countries, groups and individuals are constantly engaged in hacking against U.S. government, business and political organizations. However, he said these efforts had "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election." Trump said he would appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days after taking office to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."

In an unprecedented move for a president-elect, Trump has been highly critical of intelligence agencies. In an interview Friday morning with The New York Times, Trump called the controversy surrounding Russian hacking during the election a "political witch hunt" being carried out by opponents who are still upset about losing to him.

"They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan," Trump said. "They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it's a witch hunt. They just focus on this."

While Trump expressed concerns about state-sponsored hacking, he accused his political adversaries of ignoring past examples of countries hacking the United States.

China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names. How come nobody even talks about that? Trump said, referencing a computer breach in 2014 and 2015 of the Office of Personnel Management computer system that led to the pilfering of millions of sensitive documents.

Pelosi reaction

Speaking to reporters Friday morning at the Capitol, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she has seen part of the classified report on the Russian hacking and called it "stunning in its conclusions."

Pelosi said she hoped to see more of the report, but noted the importance of secrecy when it comes to security matters.

As a long-time intelligence person, I know we have to respect sources and methods, she said, mentioning that a portion of the report will be made public later Friday.

WATCH: Pelosi on Russia hacking report

White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday there is currently "no plan" for President Barack Obama and Trump to discuss the intelligence briefing, which Obama received Thursday, but he said he "wouldn't rule out" a conversation.

"If the president-elect calls the president ... he'll [Obama] call him back," Earnest said.

Multifaceted Russian campaign

On Thursday, America's top intelligence officials testified the evidence is firm that Russia interfered with the November presidential election, but they say there is no way to tell if it helped Trump win.

"The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other people's," National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "But we have never encountered such a direct campaign to interfere with the election process as we have seen in this case."



Clapper told the senators that Russia undertook a "multifaceted campaign" that included not just hacking and leaking Democratic Party emails, but also "classical propaganda, misinformation, fake news."

Clapper said he cannot know for sure if the Russian leaks of sensitive information influenced the choices voters made on November 8. He did say Russia did not interfere with the vote counting or the final result.

WATCH: Clapper on Russian interference in US election

Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Late Thursday, The Washington Post reported that, according to U.S. intelligence, senior Russian government officials jubilantly celebrated Trump's win and regarded it as a geopolitical win for Moscow.

The Post says those Russian officials include some who may have had direct knowledge of the hacking.

"The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on November 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," the newspaper said, quoting a senior U.S. official.

After NBC later spoke with the same unnamed official and published a similar report, Trump responded on Twitter by questioning why a news organization received the secret report before he did.

"I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it," Trump tweeted.

Alexandra Vacraux, executive director at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard University, told VOA she was in Moscow in December, where she said she met with "quite a few Russians" who were happy Trump won the election and optimistic about his coming presidency.

Vacraux said it wasn't that the Russians were excited about Trump's policy ideas, but instead were relieved that Trumps rival, Hillary Clinton, did not win.

"They were convinced Hillary Clinton had regime change in Russia as one of her main objectives," Vacraux said.

She said that many of the people in Putin's administration thought Clinton was responsible for instigating protests in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 following reports of election irregularities across Russia.

Coats tapped for DNI job

Trump is expected to name a new director of national intelligence to replace Clapper when the president-elect takes office later this month.

Trump's pick, former Senator Dan Coats, is a former ambassador to Germany who served two years in the army before he represented the state of Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1989 until 1999 and again since 2011. Coats declined to run for another term in last November's election.

Ousting Obama's ambassadors

News reports also suggest that Trump is poised to call all of Obama's foreign ambassadors home before Inauguration Day, marking a major shift from past precedent.

Both Politico and The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, report that the Trump transition team sent a letter to the ambassadors ordering them to leave their foreign posts "without exception" before January 20, when the president-elect takes office.

According to an unnamed source in the Times, the move is not meant to be political, but to keep the transition on schedule.
Civil rights lawyers threatened Thursday to sue the U.S. government agency that manages much public land in Washington, accusing it of quashing dissent by not issuing permits for protests of Republican Donald Trump's presidential inauguration.

Up to 900,000 people are expected to pack into the nation's capital for the New York businessman's January 20 swearing-in to his first political office. Some plan to criticize Trump's more controversial promises, including plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and deport illegal immigrants.

Only three of the 26 groups seeking to stage rallies either protesting or celebrating Trump's election independently of the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee have received permits.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on Thursday said it would sue the National Park Service, which manages spaces including the inaugural parade route and the grassy Ellipse near the White House, if the permits are not issued by Friday.

"Fifteen days before the inauguration, the National Park Service and the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee are stonewalling and refusing to release permits that are vitally needed by organizers in order to plan and execute peaceful, lawful free-speech activities," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the fund's executive director, told a news conference.

The Park Service and the Inaugural Committee, a private group, had no immediate comment on the lawsuit threat.

The Park Service has maintained it is following a procedure in place since 2008 for presidential inaugurations by turning over control of sites along the parade route from the Capitol to the White House. The Inaugural Committee has said it needs all the space allotted, according to Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst.

Three liberal groups, the ANSWER Coalition, the American Constitution Society and the Black is Back Coalition, have been permitted to hold events near the parade route, but only ANSWER was granted one for Inauguration Day.

Verheyden-Hilliard, a successful litigator for Washington protesters for more than a decade, said the permits sought cover spaces along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route on January 20, and other spaces, including the Ellipse, the following day.

Women's march

Protesters will be among the 800,000 to 900,000 people who Chris Geldart, the District of Columbia's homeland security director, estimates will attend Trump's swearing-in.

Some 3,000 police officers and 7,000 National Guard troops from outside the District will be on hand to help provide security, Geldart said in a phone interview.

The biggest inauguration protest, the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21, will go on regardless of the Park Service dispute since it will be held on city streets.

Marijuana march

At least one protest could come with a cloud of marijuana smoke, as a pro-pot lobbying group plans to distribute 4,200 joints near the inaugural site.

The DC (District of Columbia) Cannabis Coalition will start handing out joints at 8 a.m. January 20 on the west side of Dupont Circle in the nations capital, where recreational marijuana is legal. Then, marchers will walk to the National Mall where the real protest will begin.

At exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds into Trumps inaugural address  420 is the commonly known code for marijuana  thousands of protesters plan to light up.

The main message is its time to legalize cannabis at the federal level, said Adam Eidinger, the founder of DCMJ, a group of D.C. residents who introduced and helped get D.C.s marijuana legalization initiative passed.

The initiative, passed in 2014, made the possession of up to 2 ounces of marijuana legal.

However, smoking marijuana along the parade route would violate the laws of both the District of Columbia  which allows it only in private spaces  and the federal government, which bans it outright.

We are going to tell them that if they smoke on federal property, they are risking arrest. But, thats a form of civil disobedience, Eidinger said. I think its a good protest. If someone wants to do it, they are risking arrest, but its a protest and you know what, the National Mall is a place for protest.
The top U.S. drug enforcement official plans to visit China next week, a sign of intensifying efforts to stop the flow of deadly synthetic drugs from China to the United States.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed Friday that acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg will visit Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong Monday through Thursday, at the invitation of China's Ministry of Public Security.

The visit is part of an effort to raise awareness and continue to build strong relationships with the Chinese counter-narcotics law enforcement authorities, Russell Baer, a DEA Special Agent in Washington, said in an email.

U.S. officials point to China as the top source country for synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its precursors, which have been fueling the deadliest drug abuse epidemic in U.S. history. Chinese officials dispute those claims, noting that the U.S. has produced little data to support its case.

Nonetheless, Beijing has taken significant steps to crack down on the production and export of synthetic opioids, even though these substances are not widely abused within China. China already controls fentanyl, a painkiller up to 50 times more potent than heroin, along with 18 related compounds and is considering blacklisting four more.

U.S. officials have been pressing China to control additional opioids, which can be easily purchased online from vendors in China. China, meanwhile, has been seeking U.S. support to place ketamine, an anesthetic widely abused in China, on a U.N.-maintained list of internationally controlled substances.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte toured one of the two Russian warships docked in Manila on Friday in another gesture of warming ties with Moscow as he shifts his country's foreign policy away from long-time ally, the United States.

Rear Adm. Eduard Mikhailov, deputy commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet, and Russian Ambassador Igor Khovaev and escorted Duterte and several cabinet members around the anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs.

At one point during the hourlong visit, Duterte looked out from the ship's deck and pumped his fist in the air.

He was also shown equipment and weapons on board the ship and peered from binoculars from a chair. He took a group picture with the Russians also posing in his trademark pose - with arm stretched out at chest-level and fists closed.

After signing a guest book, he said Friends, long live! He added: That's from the heart; I hope you can come back more often.

Russia is eyeing naval exercises with the Philippines and deployed the Admiral Tributs and sea tanker Boris Butoma on a five-day goodwill visit to Manila.

Filipinos were allowed to tour the huge ships and Russian marines demonstrated their combat capabilities. Tobacco and beer magnate Lucio Tan, the 4th richest Filipino according to Forbes magazine, was among civilians who toured the ship.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who accompanied Duterte on the ship tour, expressed optimism about the start of a partnership between the two countries' defense establishments when he met with Russian navy officials Thursday night.

May our common aspirations for regional and global peace and security enable us to become good partners, cooperating and coordinating towards tranquil and safe seas for all, Lorenzana said on board the Admiral Tributs.

He said during his trip to Russia in early December, he agreed with Russian defense officials to finalize a memorandum of understanding that will be the basis of future military engagements, including joint military exercises, so it can be signed during Duterte's planned trip to Russia in April.

The visit by the Russian navy ships is the third to the Philippines and the first under Duterte, who took office in June. Duterte has lashed out at outgoing President Barack Obama and his administration for criticizing Duterte's deadly crackdown on illegal drugs which is feared to have left more than 6,000 suspected drug users and dealers.

Contrastingly, he has reached out to China and Russia - whose leaders he has met recently - in a dramatic shift in Philippine foreign policy that has put Washington in a dilemma.

The Philippines has depended heavily on the U.S., its treaty ally, for weapons, ships and aircraft for years, although it has turned to other countries for defense equipment.

After visiting Moscow last month, Lorenzana said the Philippine military was considering purchasing sniper rifles from Russia.
Suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a Niger army base on an island in Lake Chad, leaving many soldiers dead.

Niger military sources said hundreds of armed militants riding on motorized canoes attacked the island of Karamga early Saturday, their second attempt to capture it since February, army and government sources told Reuters.

A second army source told Reuters a counter-attack to clear the island of militants was ongoing Sunday.

The number of casualties was not release, but unnamed officials say the military might have suffered "heavy losses."

The defense ministry said in a statement that operations are ongoing, with the aid of allies, aimed at clearing the island of militants.

Niger along with Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria all border Lake Chad and are part of a multinational force fighting Boko Haram in and along the borders of northeastern Nigeria.

Boko Haram has carried out a campaign of terrorism since 2009 to turn Nigeria into an Islamic state, and has recently spread across the borders to attack towns in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The militants have killed thousands of people in their six-year insurgency.

The United Nations Children Fund said that 800,000 children have been displaced by Boko Haram violence, nearly half the 1.5 million people uprooted by the militants' campaign.

Lake Chad's islands, which lie in dense swampland, are an ideal base for mounting surprise attacks on the countries bordering the lake: Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, Reuters reported.

Some material for this report came from Reuters.
Brazilian prosecutors on Thursday demanded that a multimillion-dollar private prison contract in Amazonas state be axed because of signs of corruption as the government blamed mismanagement for the country's bloodiest prison massacre in decades.

Amazonas' accounting court prosecutor, Carlos Almeida, said he found signs of payment irregularities in a contract the state signed with the Pamas consortium to manage all its prisons, including the Anisio Jobim penitentiary, where 56 inmates died in an uprising this week.

The killings have raised questions about whether private companies should be running prisons in Brazil, especially in Amazonas, where the inmate population has more than doubled since 2010.

The Pamas consortium, made up of Umanizzare Gestao Prisional e Servicos Ltda and LFG Locacoes e Servicos Ltda, received about 400 million reais ($125 million) in 2016 to co-manage Amazonas' prisons, Almeida said.

That was after Umanizzare signed a contract with Amazonas in 2015 for the consortium to run state prisons for 27 years at an estimated cost of 205 million reais a year, and received a payment of 198 million reais at the time of signing, said Almeida.

Suspicious figures

The difference between the 2016 payment and the estimated cost of the contract raised prosecutors' suspicions, as did the original price tag, which was well above those for similar agreements in other states, Almeida said.

"There are indications those payments could have been inflated," Almeida told Reuters, adding that he had warned state authorities about problems with the contract and recommended they not sign the deal.

Umanizzare and LFG did not respond to requests for comment.

Brazilian Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes said the private prison management model was not to blame for the massacre, but pointed to mistakes by the administrators of the prison, which had three times as many inmates as its capacity.

Moraes said Umanizzare failed to act on intelligence reports indicating that inmates planned a prison break during the holidays and that weapons were easily smuggled into the facility during a New Year's Eve party.

Who is at fault?

Umanizzare said in a Wednesday statement the state was responsible for guarding the inmates, while the company was responsible only for cleaning, medical treatment and electronic surveillance.

But Moraes said at a news conference on Thursday that the company was also responsible for security at the prison.

The guards hired by the company were poorly trained and could be easily bribed because of their low salaries, according to a ministry report on conditions at the prison in 2016.

Private management of prisons is relatively new in Brazil, with fewer than two dozen penitentiaries under the model. Yet it remains an attractive alternative for heavily indebted state governments as Brazil remains mired in recession.

Watchdog groups said this week's massacre in Manaus showed that profits and prison management could not mix.

"An inmate is not a commodity and cannot be the object of a contract," said Marcos Fuchs, vice president of the National Council of Criminal and Prison Policies. "This model is ripe for corruption. ... Brazil should not follow in the steps of the United States."

Harsh criticism

The United States has more private prisons than any other nation, but the model has come under harsh criticism by human rights groups, who say it only gives incentive for more incarcerations to sustain profits. The United States has the world's biggest prison population.

In Amazonas, the number of inmates rose to 10,333 in 2016 from 4,979 in 2010, according to prison authorities, a rise state Governor Jose Melo blamed on increased drug trafficking from neighboring Colombia and Peru, the world's top two cocaine producers.

Seven of Amazonas' 19 prisons are under private management.

Melo's press office said that the hiring of the consortium by the state was done through the correct legal means of a public bidding process.
Zimbabwe's biggest conservation group Friday called for full transparency on the governments sale of 35 elephants to China in December. The government, which has been scrambling for cash over the past year, initially denied reports of the sale.

Late Thursday, President Robert Mugabes government confirmed that it exported 35 elephants last month, despite having earlier dismissed the reports by the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

On Friday, Johnny Rodrigues, who heads the conservation group, said the secrecy raises concerns of corruption and inhumane treatment of the animals during their transfer to China.

There is nothing being transparent about it, you can see it in Zimbabwe with corruption and greedy is so deep. These animals belong to Africa," said Rodrigues . "If you're going to export them, export to neighboring countries where the system is conducive and suitable for these animals."

Rodrigues says he doubts the money will be used for the benefit of the animals, as the government claims.

"They keep claiming that the money (out of the sales) is going into conservation," said Rodrigues. " I cant see it. The Chinese donated four-point-something million (dollars). That was to contain poaching, it is not happening. But there are some people with hands on the pipe and making a lot of money at the expense of wildlife."

Last year, Zimbabwe's government said it would sell wildlife and use the proceeds to feed wild animals that were feeling the effects of a drought brought on by the weather condition known as El Nino.

Zimbabwe has an elephant population of over 83,000 - the second highest in Africa. But the number is dropping, as poachers kill the giant beasts for their ivory tusks, which remain in high demand in Asia.
Despite advances in the response to malaria, the death toll among children, particularly in Africa, remains unacceptably high, according to a public health expert.

Kathryn Maitland, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London, is calling on the global community to do more to advance the understanding and treatment of the mosquito-borne, tropical illness. From her outpost in Kenya, Maitland sees the tremendous toll malaria takes on the population in endemic regions in Africa, particularly among young children.

Its been reported that 631,000 people on the continent succumb each year to the disease. Most, says Maitland, are children under the age of five.

In a Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Maitland notes that about 1,200 children in the hardest hit regions die every day. That's one in ten children, even with the best care.

But, Maitland writes, not all of the news is bad. Over the past ten years, she says, there's been an increase in funding for malaria control efforts, such as the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and the widespread introduction of artemisinin combination therapies, the most effective treatments at the moment.

As a result, the burden of malaria has been reduced in some parts of the world. But it remains a serious threat in parts of Africa. And Maitland is calling for a greater focus by the research community on the treatment of malaria.

So, a modest improvement in outcome from any one of the complications of severe malaria could have a substantial impact on mortality across Africa, said Maitland.

Maitland writes that there has been relatively little progress made in the treatment of malaria, including vaccine development and the best ways to tend to victims of the mosquito-borne illness.

She notes that few large-scale clinical trials of malaria treatments have been conducted, and Western assumptions about the best way to manage the disease in children, such as fluid resuscitation therapy, to treat coma and shock, have proven to be ineffective or even harmful. A study led by Maitland showed that the therapy increased the risk of mortality in children with severe malaria by 3 to 4 percent, for reasons that remain unclear.

Finally, Maitland worries about the problems with emerging drug resistance, both to the insecticides that are used to treat bed nets, to guard against biting mosquitoes at night, and to the most effective tool in the medical arsenal, artemisinin-based compounds. Resistance to the drug has begun to show up in Cambodia.

For these reasons, Maitland says the global health and research community needs to elevate malaria on its list of priorities.

You cant give up on thinking malaria is now solved, that we are on our last phase to sort of controlling this disease. It is still a very huge problem in Africa. We need to do more large trials to actually improve the outcome because even on the best anti-malarial treatment, which is artesunate, the mortality is still 10 percent, said Maitland.

Maitland calls the slow progress in the field astonishing, but says high quality, large-scale trials can be done that could generate dramatic improvements in malaria care in Africa and throughout the world.
A high-ranking North Korean defector says clashing with Pyongyang over its nuclear program has strengthened Kim Jong Uns leadership, but continued human rights criticism and increased information from the outside world will over time lead to the downfall of the authoritarian and repressive regime.

Thae Yong-ho, North Koreas former deputy ambassador in London, defected to South Korea in July, and has recently become an analyst with the Institute for National Security Strategy, a research organization affiliated with South Koreas National Intelligence Service.

Thae has started speaking to media outlets in Seoul, providing insight into the mindset of the secretive Kim leadership, and how the international community can best foster change.

Nuclear standoff

The North Korean leader has openly declared his country a nuclear state despite U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the Norths nuclear and missile programs. In 2016 North Korea conducted two increasingly powerful nuclear tests and 24 missile tests from road mobile and submarine launch platforms.

The international community responded to these provocations with two rounds of increased international sanctions that impose new financial and trade restrictions on North Korea.

In his News Years message, Kim implied North Korea would soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile, which drew an immediate rebuke from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted, It will not happen.

Thae says the leadership in Pyongyang is unwilling to give up its nuclear program, and its defiance in the face of U.S.-led pressure has helped solidify internal popular support and earned the leadership a degree of international respect.

Some countries are interested in following North Koreas path to become nuclear powers themselves. Therefore, North Korean diplomats retain their dignity despite the criticisms of the international community, Thae said.

Human rights

He says, however, international criticism about human rights abuses in North Korea undermines Kims standing in the world and with his own people.

In 2014 the United Nations General Assembly voted to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity after a Commission of Inquiry report documented ongoing atrocities in North Korea that include a network of political prisons in the country, as well as widespread and systematic abuses that include torture, enslavement, rape and murder.

The measure stalled in the U.N. Security Council where the Norths allies, China and Russia, would have likely vetoed the measure if brought to a vote.

Thae says North Korean diplomats have faced denunciations from allies and adversaries alike over Pyongyangs human rights record, but the leadership is more concerned about how this kind of criticism could damage the carefully nurtured public image of Kim as a near-infallible leader.

It is not easy for North Koreans to understand the concepts of the ICC or human rights. But they will be greatly interested if they hear that Kim Jong Un will be tried at the international court. It will be a direct sign that Kim Jong Un is a criminal and his regime has no future, he said.

Information war

The greatest threat to the North Korean government, Thae says, is information from the outside world, not only critical news reports and oppositional political messages, but also movies and TV series that show how the outside world has developed.

North Korea will collapse on its own when enough external information introduced through the internet reveals the truth of the Kim regime to the residents, he said.

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch has criticized Kim for tightening controls on citizens through the countrys borders, increasing efforts to restrict expression and preventing outside information from entering the country.

Some analysts have said human rights criticisms only harden Pyongyangs adversarial stance, and will make it more difficult to pursue diplomatic negotiations in the future to halt the Norths nuclear program.

But Thaes views reinforce arguments made by human rights organizations that say promoting basic rights and freedom in North Korea is not an ancillary issue, but perhaps the best way to foster change from within.

VOA's Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday disputed claims that American taxpayers would be on the hook for a border wall with Mexico.

Speaking to the New York Times, Trump said that the wall would initially be funded through Congress, but the money would eventually be repaid by Mexico.

"We're going to get reimbursed," Trump said. "But I don't want to wait that long. But you start, and then you get reimbursed."

Trump's comments came after Friday news reports cited House Republicans who said Trump's transition team wanted to start work on the wall as soon as possible and would seek funding through the appropriations process to do so.

Trump has in the past suggested that Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for the wall's costs. He took to Twitter to call the reports "dishonest."

"The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!" he said.

Now, congressional Republicans are putting forth ideas to build the wall.

The plan revolves around a little-know law passed in 2006 that mandates the construction of 700 miles of "reinforced fencing" along the southern US border.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was never fully implemented, though Republican lawmakers now see it as a viable option to fulfill one of Trump's most prominent campaign promises.

It's an existing law that hasn't been implemented, in part based on the ideology and philosophy of the outgoing president, Republican Congressman Luke Messer told The Washington Post. I see nothing partisan about trying to comply with existing laws.

While taking this route to build the wall wouldn't guarantee repayment from Mexico, New York Congressman Chris Collins, who works on Trump's transition team, said he isn't worried because he believes trade between the two countries is so important, Mexico would have no choice but to comply.

When you understand that Mexico's economy is dependent upon U.S. consumers, Donald Trump has all the cards he needs to play, Collins told CNN. On the trade negotiation side, I don't think it's that difficult for Donald Trump to convince Mexico that it's in their best interest to reimburse us for building the wall.
A 5.3-magnitude earthquake shook southern Iran's Fars province early Friday, killing four Afghan farm workers.

The quake hit the village of Saifabad near the town of Khonj, about 1,000 kilometers south of the capital, Tehran.

The governor of Fars province told state television that rescuers are looking for other victims in the thinly populated region.

Iran lies on major fault lines and experiences frequent quakes.

A 2003 earthquake killed more than 25,000 people and flattened the historic city of Bam.
The government of Eritrea told the U.N. Human Rights Council that its neighbor Ethiopia is planning to launch a full scale war against its territory.

Eritrean and Ethiopian troops recently clashed along their border. The countries are blaming one another for starting recent hostilities that included heavy border fighting around the Tserona central front, an area located south of the Eritrean capital, Asmara.

Eritrea accuses Ethiopia

Girma Asmerom Tesfay, Eritreas U.N. Permanent Representative, said that there is clear evidence that Ethiopia has adopted a hostile policy towards his country.

The evidence is their own statement that they have made in their parliament, and a lot of [Ethiopian] officials have been saying that they will attack Eritrea, they will take military action, they have changed their policy towards Eritrea, they will go for a regime changesupport opposition armed groups to attack, Ambassador Asmerom told VOA.

He said that the June 12th confrontation between the two countries is further evidence that Ethiopia is seeking regime change and seeks occupation of his country.

There was a major military engagement and aggression by Ethiopia using tanks, artilleries and ground forces, he said.

Eritrea also accuses the US of being involved

Last week, Eritreas Foreign Ministry accused the United States of playing a role of instigating the attack on its territory. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby dismissed the accusation and urged the two countries work towards a stable and peaceful region. "The United States, including our missions in both capitals and our mission to the U.N. in New York continues to engage with both Ethiopia and Eritrea, to urge restraint and to prevent escalation.

But Ambassador Asmerom insists that the U.S. relationship with Ethiopia denotes a complicity in the attacks on his country.

They have been supplying them with different equipment and ammunition in the name of fighting terrorism and they have been deploying [the weapons] around the border area, so that is a direct or indirect participation in the aggression against Eritrea, he said.

Ethiopia denies Eritrean accusations

Ethiopian Ambassador to the U.N. Tekeda Alemu dismissed the allegations as preposterous and without merit. He told VOA that the accusations against his country did not warrant a response, adding that perhaps the government of Eritrea should worry more about addressing the concerns of the U.N. human rights court.

Eritrea's Ambassador Asmerom denies that his country is trying to deflect attention from human rights reports that accuse his country of systematic, widespread human rights abuses. A United Nations commission of inquiry recommended that Eritrea be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity that include enslavement of up to 400,000 people.

Asmerom also ruled out any possibilities for talks between the two countries, that have had a long standing border dispute, instead laying the blame on Ethiopia:

"They are the ones who are aggressing the ones who are threateningso the aggressor has to be condemned, very simple" he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki moon recently met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Brussels, where he called on the leaders of the two countries to seek a peaceful resolution through political means.

Ethiopia and Eritrea ended a two year border war in 2000 after talks in Algiers, where the two sides agreed to resolve border disputes through international arbitration.
The government of Eritrea says its forces killed more than 200 Ethiopian troops and wounded more than 300 during fighting Sunday and Monday in a contested border area.

There has been no independent confirmation of the figures, released by Eritrea in a government statement Thursday.

In an interview with VOA's Horn of Africa Service, Ethiopia's Communications Minister Getachew Reda suggested the figures are inaccurate but stopped short of denying them.

"A retreating army and an army in disarray under normal circumstances does not have a sense of what happened," he said.

He also said Ethiopia has no interest in disclosing its assessment of damages during the battle.

Both countries have claimed the upper hand in the fighting, which took place in the area of Tsorona, an Eritrean town that was a flashpoint during the border war the countries fought between 1998 and 2000.

Eritrea said Thursday that its forces "quashed" the Ethiopian attack and forced the troops to retreat beyond their starting points.

Ethiopia has said its force drove back an Eritrean attack and chose to withdaw from the site of the clash "once our objective was achieved."

US urges restraint



The U.S. Department of State expressed concern over the military action, calling on both sides to exercise restraint.

"We also urge both Ethiopia and Eritrea to cooperate in promoting stability and sustainable peace in the region," U.S. Department of State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Tuesday.



Eritrea has appealed to the United Nations Security Council to condemn what it called a military offensive by Ethiopia.



The border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia killed an estimated 70,000 people. Since then, the two countries have fought periodic battles on their boundary, the most recent before this week coming in 2012.



Both governments accused the other of starting the latest battle to distract attention from political problems and internal opposition.
The Pentagon has identified the latest group of detainees released from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as four Yemenis, all of whom had been in custody for at least 14 years as suspected members of the al-Qaida terror network.

The four arrived Thursday in Riyadh, capital of the Saudi kingdom, where they were reunited with family members in a gathering that was both tearful and joyous.

The Saudi interior ministry said King Salman has decided the four men will live in the kingdom and take part in a rehabilitation and de-radicalization program. No specific charges were ever brought against them during their time at Guantanamo.

Fifty-five prisoners now remain at the U.S. detention center on Cuban soil, which President Barack Obama had promised to close down when he took office eight years ago. Disputes over how to handle the prisoners' release, or where to house them, blocked many efforts to thin the camp's population.

More transfers expected

U.S. officials reportedly plan to transfer abroad up to 15 other prisoners before Obama leaves the White House on January 20, but it appears the president's goal of closing down the detention camp completely will not be met.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress rebuffed a series of attempts to move detainees from Cuba to maximum-security prisons in the United States, and President-elect Donald Trump has said he intends to keep Guantanamo open, to load it up with some bad dudes.

Earlier this week, Trump tweeted his opposition to further prisoner transfers: There should be no further releases from Gitmo [a nickname for Guantanamo]. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.

If any more detainees are transferred abroad during the two weeks before Obama's term expires, news reports suggest they could go to Italy, Oman or the United Arab Emirates.

Freed detainees identified

A Pentagon statement issued after the prisoners arrived in Riyadh said: The United States is grateful to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

U.S. and Saudi officials ensured the transfers took place with appropriate security and humane treatment, the statement added.

Saudi Arabia's state news agency identified the freed detainees as Mohammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanem, Salem Ahmed Hadi bin Kanad, Abdullah Yehya Yousef al-Shibli and Mohammed Bawazir. The last had refused an offer to be released to Montenegro a year ago; his lawyer, who named his client as Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bwazir, said he had wanted to go to Saudi Arabia, where his brother and uncle live, and where his mother visits frequently.
Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was among those piling on when President Barack Obama came under fire several years ago for reading some of his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receiving them in-person.

"I have a hard time comprehending that, because the primary job of the commander in chief is to keep the country safe," Ryan said in an October 2014 interview on Fox News Channel. "And you need to get from your intelligence community, your defense community  especially when we have troops in harm's way what's going on."

Yet now, as President-elect Donald Trump refuses daily intelligence briefings, questions U.S. spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trump's back. Far from strongly defending the U.S. intelligence community, they're siding with the new leader of their party, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, unfailingly supports the military and joined with European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Asked at a press briefing Thursday whether he had full confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies, now-Speaker Ryan offered a tepid endorsement that began and ended on a note of criticism.

"Well, they don't always get everything right. We've seen that clearly," Ryan said. "But I do have faith that our men and women in our intelligence community are doing an incredible job, sacrificing for our country. But there's always room for improvement."

Earlier Thursday, in an interview with WTAQ radio in Wisconsin, Ryan passed up the chance to distance himself from Trump's elevation of Assange in a tweet earlier this week, when Trump cited Assange's claim that Russia had not been the source of Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks revealed.



Instead, even while criticizing Assange, Ryan defended Trump, saying that what the president-elect is "rightfully concerned about is partisans are trying to use the Russian hacking incident to ... call into question the legitimacy of his victory."

And Ryan endorsed Trump's claim, disputed by intelligence officials, that intelligence leaders had delayed a briefing for Trump on the hacking issue that is set to take place later Friday. In dismissing the intelligence on Russia, Trump highlighted a glaring intelligence failure  the claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion and war.

With a couple of exceptions  most notably Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina  other GOP lawmakers and leaders have also stayed largely quiet as Trump lauds Putin and derides U.S. intelligence.

During a hearing Thursday with intelligence agency officials on the alleged Russian election meddling, Republicans on the panel largely avoided making comments that would contradict Trump's well-publicized skepticism that Russia had anything to do with hacking Democratic emails. The exceptions were McCain and Graham.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas even appeared to try to build the case for Trump, ticking off several Trump proposals, from increasing defense spending to accelerating nuclear weapons modernization, to challenge the notion that Putin would favor Trump over Hillary Clinton.

"There is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia," Cotton argued.

The hearing provoked an angry outburst from Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

"The notion that the soon elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military ... no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there should be howls," McCaskill said. "And mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side."

In most cases, Republicans haven't actually embraced Trump's stances, they've just declined to call him out on them, noted Gary Schmitt, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer before serving as executive director on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during Reagan's second term.

"It's a normal situation in which the nominal head of your party, you don't want him to be undercut," Schmitt said. "But my view is if it looks like the substance is clearly on the side of the intelligence community, you're not doing anybody any favors by protecting him."
Leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus will resume reunification talks Monday after negotiations broke down last month.

Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci agreed to meet in Geneva to discuss the state of the negotiations and to exchange views on how to move forward in the interest of reaching a comprehensive settlement as soon as possible.

The talks are aimed at drafting an agreement on how much territory each side will control in an envisioned federation.

If the talks are productive, they will be joined Thursday by the guarantor powers of Cyprus  Britain, which is the former colonial power, Greece and Turkey, as well as the European Union.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was in New York Thursday, speaking with new U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Cavusoglu spoke to reporters on his way out of the U.N. and said the Cyprus talks are coming to the final stage.

He said he was more optimistic than ever in reaching a settlement in Cyprus.

A 1974 Turkish invasion following a coup aimed at enosis, or union, with Greece split the island into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a breakaway Turkish-speaking north. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence is recognized only by Turkey, which keeps more than 35,000 troops in the north.

Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this article.
South Korea's newest celebrity took an unusual route to the nation's TV screens  years spent working his way up through the ranks of North Korea's diplomatic corps, followed by months secluded in the custody of the rival South's spy agency.

Since his release, Thae Yong Ho, the former North Korean deputy ambassador to London, has spent the first week of the new year speaking on South Korean variety shows, joking with fellow defectors and espousing South Korea's line that the North Korean government he once defended is unstable and doomed to fail.

In a further propaganda coup for Seoul, the gregarious Thae, newly granted South Korean citizenship following his high-profile August defection, is embracing life in the capitalist South as a public figure.

On a talk show called "Now on My Way to Meet You," which features young, usually female defectors from the isolated North, a video interview between Thae and a panelist was introduced as a chat with the "British gentleman-like Thae Yong Ho."

Thae, 54, spoke of some of his motivations for switching sides between rivals that remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

"On the day we left the embassy and stepped outside, I told my children, 'From this moment on, as a father, I am breaking you free from your shackles,' " Thae said on another show. " 'Now it's up to you.' "

Assassination fears

Thae is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jong Yop, the brains behind North Korea's governing ideology, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism.

By contrast, Hwang made very few public appearances and lived in constant fear of assassination until he was found dead in his bathtub  from natural causes  13 years later.

His fears were not without some foundation. The year he arrived in South Korea, another prominent defector, Yi Han Yong, was shot dead by suspected North Korean assassins, and shortly after Hwang died, South Korean authorities said they had arrested an agent of Pyongyang who had been planning to kill him.

During his years in the South, Hwang was extremely cautious in public. Surrounded by security staff, he was reported never to have touched a glass of water put in front of him at an event.

"The fundamental difference is that Thae is just more laid back and arguably less self-important," said Michael Madden, a U.S.-based expert on the North Korean leadership. "That might be due to Hwang's background as a philosophy professor and senior ideology official, whereas Thae was more of a schmoozer."

Thae, who remains under the protection of South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), said he does not fear for his safety in South Korea. He works at an NIS think tank that employs many elite former North Koreans.

When Thae's defection was announced, the South Korean government said he had fled over dissatisfaction with the rule of Kim Jong Un.

But he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London, where one had earned a place at a prestigious college.

"We can't send our boys back to North Korea," Thae quoted his wife as saying in one recorded interview with a panel show.

Thae's future

Relations between North and South Korea have been especially strained in recent years, with Seoul making renewed efforts to put pressure on Pyongyang's diplomatic allies.

A spokesman for the NIS told Reuters it could not comment on any official future plans that may involve Thae.

There are other well-known North Korean defectors who speak English and have international book deals. Many hail from rural areas bordering China and brought heart-wrenching stories of victimhood and escape.

Thae, however, is from Pyongyang's elite, speaks nearly perfect English with a British accent, and is known to be charming, urbane and charismatic.

"Thae has huge potential in terms of being a defector spokesman and icon," said Sokeel Park of LiNK, an organization working with defectors.

During an interview with broadcaster MBN, Thae was asked about the difference between North and South Korean TV studios.

"Media control is especially strict" in North Korea, he said. "When someone shows up at a studio, questions and answers are agreed upon in advance, and a few practice sessions are filmed before the whole thing is reviewed by the propaganda department."

Daily life in North Korea at times resembles a scripted TV set, Thae said.

On a show featuring defectors called the "Moranbong Club," Thae said he had watched the program when he was working as a diplomat in London after searching "North Korea," in Korean, on YouTube.

He said he had recognized another defector panelist on the show, which typically pays its participants for appearances.

"I told my family that I used to do night shifts with this man!" Thae said, gesturing toward Han Jin-myeong, who replied that Thae, who outranked him at Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry, had sworn at him at the time for not doing his duty properly.

Producers then used visual effects to superimpose North Korean military uniforms on both men.

"Why did you swear at him?" the presenter asked.

"I can't say here!" said Thae, laughing.
A Haitian coup leader who was recently elected senator in Haiti has been brought to the U.S. to face longstanding federal drug trafficking charges.



Guy Philippe was scheduled Friday to make his initial appearance in Miami federal court on a still-sealed indictment. Philippe, 48, was flown to the U.S. following his arrest Thursday in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince while he appeared on a live radio show.



Philippe faces several drug trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. He has long maintained his innocence and blamed the accusations on political enemies.



A former police chief in the city of Cap-Haitien, Philippe was a key part of a violent 2004 uprising that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Philippe had previously fled Haiti amid accusations that he was plotting a coup, then returned to help lead the rebellion.



Philippe, recently elected to the Haitian Senate but not yet sworn into office, has lived in recent years in a remote, mountainous part of southern Haiti where his extensive family and business connections appeared to protect him from authorities.



About 200 protesters took to the streets Thursday in the city of Jeremie to call for Philippe's release. Other pro-Philippe demonstrators gathered outside a heavily guarded police station where he was taken shortly after his arrest.



Radio host Gary-Pierre Paul Charles told The Associated Press the police who arrested Philippe were members of the Haitian anti-drug unit and fired shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.



"It was shocking. People were running everywhere,'' he told the AP.



It wasn't immediately clear if Philippe is represented by a U.S. lawyer.
In a working-class Istanbul neighborhood that Central Asian migrants have called home for decades, there is horror but scant surprise that a gunman who killed 39 people in a nightclub on New Year's Day may have spent time in their community.

Just beyond the ancient walls on Istanbul's historic peninsula, Zeytinburnu could not be farther removed from the upscale Ortakoy district on the shores of the Bosphorus where the gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle last Sunday.

Its bustling streets are full of Kazakh and Uzbek shops and restaurants, their signboards written in Uighur Arabic script.

Old men wearing fur-lined caps greet each other; women, some covered from head to toe, browse in shop windows.

The gunman, whom Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak has said is thought to be an ethnic Uighur, is believed to have traveled by taxi from Zeytinburnu before the shooting and to have returned to a restaurant there afterward, asking to borrow money to pay the driver. He is still at large.

The restaurant remains open, but several of its employees have been detained.

Immigration debate

Many Turks feel strong ethnic and cultural ties with the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia, including western China and the nearby states of the ex-Soviet Union, and have welcomed migrants who live alongside them in areas like Zeytinburnu.

But some in the community say its fabric has changed with a new wave of immigration in recent years.

"Some of those who arrived have set up separate prayer rooms of their own instead of going to the official mosques ... they teach them things we don't know," said Recep Sadettin Akyol, 37, chairman of the East Turkestan Migrants Association.

"Apartments are being rented just for the day. You can't tell who's coming in or who's leaving. Nobody informs the local administrators," said Akyol, who is of Kazakh origin but was born and grew up in Istanbul.

The Uighurs are a largely Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority in far western China with significant diaspora communities across Central Asia and Turkey.

East Turkestan is a name they use for part of China's western Xinjiang region from where hundreds, possibly thousands, fleeing what rights activists say is religious persecution have traveled clandestinely to Turkey in recent years.

Beijing denies restricting their religious freedoms and blames Islamist militants, including those it says come from a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), for a rise in violence in Xinjiang in which hundreds have died.

It says some end up fighting alongside militants in Iraq and Syria. On a trip to China last September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed deeper counter-terrorism cooperation.

"We have our brothers here from East Turkestan who we've lived together with for years, who love our country and who our society is not at all bothered by," said Huseyin Sariyel, a local administrator in one of Zeytinburnu's neighborhoods.

"But there are people here who welcome the ones who are coming to Turkey illegally," he said, adding that local authorities needed more powers to register where they stay.

"There are hotels with rooms for the day, people convert shops into houses and charge per head. If more authority is given to us we can investigate and take precautions," he said.

Wahhabist influence

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the nightclub attack, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria. Security sources believe the gunman, who they describe as well-versed in guerrilla warfare, may be a national of a Central Asian country and may have trained in Syria.

It would not be the first time that an assailant with such a profile had carried out an attack in the region.

Kyrgyzstan's state security service said a suicide bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek in late August was ordered by Uighur militants active in Syria and coordinated through a native of Kyrgyzstan living in Turkey.

"Among the arrivals [in recent years], we have seen people who have been influenced by the Wahhabi movement which is influential in Central Asian and Turkic countries," said Akyol, the chairman of the migrants' association.

"We have said there are those who are exposed to this ideology trying to reach Turkey. They will need humanitarian help but also education ... but we have seen that there is a vacuum," he said.

The austere Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam is the state sect of Saudi Arabia, and the term is also used to describe the ultra-conservative religious ideology of militant groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State.

The Turkish authorities have not named the suspect in the nightclub attack, although they have said they have identified him and know where he might be hiding.

Police in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir detained 20 suspected Islamic State militants, some of Central Asian origin, on Wednesday. Fake passports, mobile phones, and equipment including night vision goggles were seized.

Like other long-term residents of Zeytinburnu, former journalist Osman Kumandan, a 65-year-old Turk of Kazakh origin, is wary of some of the district's more recent arrivals.

"The ones who came recently ... are harsh and somewhat primitive. But it seems they came here deliberately," he said. "There are people in Turkey who provide them with the means, saying many came before and found shelter here, undetected."
Kenyan security forces have launched an operation to oust al-Shabab militants from the Boni Forest, along the Kenya-Somalia border. Officials say the group has established camps in the forest to attack targets in Kenya.

Kenyan officials say about 300 al-Shabab fighters are hiding in the Boni Forest. The government blames those fighters for deadly attacks in parts of coastal and northeastern Kenya.



The operation is Kenya's third major offensive against al-Shabab.

In October 2011, Kenyan forces launched an operation to secure its borders after months of cross-border incursions by the Islamist militants. In 2012, Kenyan troops retook the Somali port city of Kismayo from al-Shabab.



Kenya's interior cabinet secretary, Joseph Ole Nkaissery, was present for the start of the current offensive Saturday. I have been sent by the president to launch this operation to make sure that there is peace and security in Boni Forest," he said.



Residents vacate

A week earlier, the government ordered those living in the forest to vacate the area. According to Kenyan media, 3,000 people so far have followed the order.

One man who lives in the area, however, said residents feel abandoned.



The government told us to leave the forest and we [were] not told where to go, now we have left and we dont know where we are going, said the Boni resident.



The government has assured the residents they will get the assistance they need.



Security analyst Andrew Franklin said a tough battle awaits Kenyan forces since the forest covers more than 100 square kilometers.



The operation, even if it was properly resourced, which it is not, it will be very difficult. The fact is that Boni forest is large," said Franklin. "It also straddles the border with Somalia, which indicates that either we are going to coordinate the operation with the Somali national army, who are thin on the ground or we are going to cross the border at will.



Increased terror attacks

Kenya has faced increased terror attacks since it ramped up operations against al-Shabab  most notably the assaults on Westgate Mall in 2013 and Garissa University College in April of this year.

According to government figures, more than 400 people overall have been killed by the al-Qaida-linked militants.



Homeland Security expert Richard Tuta said al-Shabab is finding it easier to operate in Kenya than in Somalia.



On the Somali side, the KDF have managed to put al-Shabab on the run, but when you come to homeland security in Kenya itself, it is that al-Shabab have managed to be on the move. In Somalia they are on the run, but in Kenya they are on the move because of the conducive environment, said Tuta.

The operation to clear Boni Forest is planned to take about three months, but security experts say it could take longer.
Kosovo's government is calling on French authorities to release a former prime minister who has been detained facing possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges.

A French court Thursday ruled that Ramush Haradinaj, detained a day earlier, should stay in custody until it decides whether to turn him over to Serbian officials.

Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa on Friday urged "the French government to take into consideration that such warrants are fully political and have no legal or juridical base."

France's Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on Kosovo's call for Haradinaj's release.

The French court says it is awaiting the formal extradition request from Serbia before it sets a date for a hearing.

Haradinaj, 48, a guerrilla fighter in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia and now an opposition political leader, is accused by Serbia of committing kidnappings, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.

Hundreds of former Kosovo guerrilla fighters and supporters from opposition parties staged a protest outside the French embassy to call for Haradinaj's release.

In Belgrade, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday expressed hope France would extradite Haradinaj and wouldn't let politics override legal matters.

In a message Friday on Facebook, Haradinaj deplored that France would "still respect decisions of (Slobodan) Milosevic's former regime."

Haradinaj was cleared of war crimes charges in two lengthy trials by a U.N. war crimes tribunal. Two years ago Haradinaj was detained in Slovenia at Belgrade's request, but later released.

"I have a message for Serbia's friends within Kosovo and abroad: Kosovo's road to statehood cannot be stopped by anyone," he said.

Mustafa said the government is planning to take measures if "Serbia, misusing the international law and order mechanism, continues the application of such politically unacceptable and immoral acts to Kosovo's activists and fighters for freedom."

Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said the Kosovo government denied a request from Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to visit Kosovo Friday as a response to Haradinaj's arrest in France.

France and most European countries recognized Kosovo's independence after it seceded from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has not.
His hunger strike began after his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was taken into custody in October and brought up on charges stemming from an unpublished short story that was found in her home during a raid. The story describes a woman burning a Quran after learning about another woman having been stoned for adultery. Amnesty International observed that Sadeghis wife and fellow activist was essentially facing potentially serious punishment for the crime of using her imagination. Sadeghi himself is serving a 15 year sentence on the basis of his peaceful human rights activism, including his defense of persons who have been denied access to higher education as a result of their social views or demographic identities.

Iranian authorities conceded to Sadeghis basic demands after Mondays protests, granting temporary release to Ebrahimi. That release is only schedule to last for a period of days, but can legally be extended. However, the prospects for such an extension are uncertain, as it appears that authorities made their initial concession only to forestall additional protest actions, particularly those that could be expected if Sadeghi had died of starvation. For the time being, Sadeghi has been taken to hospital and is being fed intravenously, and some of his supporters estimated that he was merely hours away from death by the time his hunger strike ended.

The Associated Press quoted Iranian lawmaker Bahram Parsai as seemingly acknowledging that the regime was most concerned with the potential public relations fallout of allowing the activist to die. It was supposed to solve the case resorting to prudence, in a way that would not be misused by enemies, he said of the concessions, apparently referring to Western governments and international human rights groups that have previously targeted the Islamic Republic over its record of human rights abuses. Parsai added, We do not want such cases to turn into a problem for the system.

Tehran has a long history of responding to international criticisms by simply denying accounts of abuses like those catalogued by the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Iran. Iranian political prisoners and their families can be punished under the law for communicating with such investigators, and the families of arrestees have frequently reported having been warned against speaking about their loved ones cases, especially to foreign media.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reaffirmed that this trend is ongoing in its report on the prosecution of people who were arrested while celebrating at the tomb of the pre-Islamic leader Cyrus the Great in October. Last month, more than 70 of those individuals were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in trials that were so secretive that the defendants were brought before the court before theyd even had time to hire lawyers. The father of one such defendant told the International Campaign that authorities threatened more severe punishment for those whose families provided fodder to foreign media.

The October gathering already made some international headlines, at least among human rights defenders, insofar as it illustrated the growing willingness of the Iranian people to defy threats of government reprisal by engaging in unauthorized mass assemblies. The protests on behalf of Arash Sadeghi have been presented as evidence of the same trend, which is underscored by a range of other protest actions including open letters to the Iranian leadership.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran reported upon one such action on Monday, noting that teachers trade union member and former political prisoner Hashem Khastar had joined in the advocacy on behalf of Arash Sadeghi, as well as calling for the release of other political prisoners, especially those who have been engaged in similar hunger strikes. At least four other inmates lives are currently in danger as a result of hunger strikes, and another ended his protest at approximately the same time as Sadeghi.

According to the International Campaign, Morteza Moradpour nearly matched the length of Sadeghis life-threatening hunger strike, having made it 65 days before authorities finally granted him conditional release. But as with Sadeghi, the regime has apparently committed to making the least possible concessions to Moradpour, who was hospitalized due to the effects of his hunger strike but is nonetheless expected to report back to prison each night. This is due to his case being subject to rules usually associated with labor release, as opposed to the probationary rules established for certain inmates who have served more than a third of their sentences.

This goes to show that regime authorities are still making efforts to crack down on political prisoners, even in the face of domestic activism and international scrutiny aimed at exposing such abuses. Where the regime has been compelled to grant conditional release, it has imposed strict and apparently arbitrary limits on that release. And in other cases the regime has taken new and largely unexplained punitive measures against political prisoners.

Another report by the International Campaign highlighted this trend by pointing to the case of Hamid Babaei, who is serving a six year prison sentence in addition to a four year suspended sentence as a result of his having refused to gathering information for the Intelligence Ministry while studying abroad. After issuing a recent complaint with the wardens office, Babaei was accused of insulting the supreme leader and this was used as grounds for banning him from receiving visitations.

In addition to showcasing a tendency toward arbitrary reprisals, this incident arguably demonstrates the regimes efforts to restrict access to information from inside Iranian prisons, like that information which has prompted the above-mentioned protests and the associated concessions. The latter tendency is even more evident when such restrictions target other people who are engaged in the sorts of protest actions that have brought international attention to Sadeghi and others.

In its report on the end of Sadeghis hunger strike, the AP notes that Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and American permanent resident who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Iran on unspecified charges, reportedly went on a hunger strike on December 8. As far as anyone outside the prison knows, that protest continues to this day, but this cannot be confirmed because prison authorities have now barred Zakka from contact with other people, including his lawyer, apparently out of anger over media coverage of his protest.

The reasons for that anger are clear in light of the relative success of Sadeghis protest. Insofar as the public support for his cause was one aspect of that success, it reflects broader social trends. Unauthorized public protests reportedly emerged over other causes the very day after Ebrahimis release. The National Council of Resistance of Iran reports, for instance, that 3,000 Labor Community Union activists had assembled in front of the Iranian parliament building to call for the preservation of a Social Safeguard Fund that is poised to be absorbed into the governments general budget.
Madagascar President Hery Rajaonarimampianina Madagascar President Hery Rajaonarimampianina



-55 years old



-Studied accounting and finance in Canada



-Served as Madagascar's finance minister



-He was backed by 2009 coup leader, current President Andry Rajoelina



-Pledged, as president, to help the unemployed, rebuild economy

Madagascar's electoral commission has declared Hery Rajaonarimampianina the winner of the December 20 presidential poll, although the final tally has been challenged by his opponent.Hery Rajaonarimampianina spent the last four years as Madagascar's finance minister - a tough job in a country's whose tourism and foreign aid were drying up.Friday, he was named the winner in the country's first election since Andry Rajoelina became president after a 2009 coup. Experts hope his election will end a five-year economic and political crisis for the country.Rajaonarimampianina was backed by Rajoelina, while his opponent, Jean-Louis Robinson, was backed by Marc Ravalomanana, the president who was forced to resign in 2009.The vote is being challenged by Robinson, who says there was vote-rigging, despite election observers saying they found no significant faults in the election process.Robinson's team has filed nearly 300 complaints to the country's special electoral court.Because the 2009 government takeover was seen as a coup d'etat by the international community, it meant that foreign aid was suspended. For Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, that meant 70 percent of the national budget vanished.For the Malagasy people, the hope is that this election makes their government legitimate in the world's eyes, and brings back investment."For the average people going to the polls was just to try to move forward, turn the page, get on with life and hopefully bring back what we need the most, which is unfortunately the international donors and investors and so on who went away during this crisis," said Sahondra Rabenarivo, a corporate attorney.Bringing back that international funding and economic opportunity were key issues, she said."They were just galvanized around the idea of putting an end to the illegitimacy of the people in power," she said. "And either by voting them in legitimately, or you know just participating in the poll, and trying to bring the international community back to Madagascar starting with the United States who were the big pullouts really since 2009."John Stremlau is the vice president of peace programs at the Carter Center in the United States. The center was among several intergovernmental groups overseeing the December 20 run-off poll.He says the election process is a big step in the right direction for the country, from an international perspective. He also says he and other observers saw no evidence of the vote-rigging that Robinson has alleged."None of us found anything untoward other than the occasional glitch of a late opening or papers not being delivered, but nothing that would give us the sense that this was not a credible election, very well run by the electoral management body," he said.He says Madagascar is now well-positioned, but the new government must make good decisions moving forward."It has great resources, it has great promise, but it has been hurt by the sanctions that have been in place now for five years," he said. "The per capita income is very low, down to less than, around a dollar a day for 90 percent of the people, so that this is a new beginning, an opportunity, but the hard work of building a democratic process has only just begun."The Special Electoral Court will examine Robinson's appeals and announce a final verdict on the election in about two weeks.
Malawi's president set up a commission this week to investigate Maizegate, a deal involving the recent purchase of maize from neighboring Zambia. Controversy was sparked in November when a local newspaper in Malawi published leaked documents that suggested possible irregularities during a government purchase of 100,000 tons of the staple crop from Zambia.

Malawi has been importing maize to avert food shortages after flooding and drought wrecked last year's harvest.

The leaked documents indicate Malawi's state-owned grain trader, the Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation, or ADMARC, bought a large consignment of maize for $34.5 million from a private Zambian trader. The records allege that ADMARC could have purchased the maize directly from the Zambian government for $21.5 million.

ADMARC and Malawi government spokesman Nicholas Dausi deny those allegations.

"Maize was not bought from a private trader, Dausi told VOA. It was bought from a Zambia Cooperative Federation, a subsidiary parastatal of the Zambian government. And Zambia Cooperative Federation has confirmed that, so I can only say what I have said."

ADMARC officials obtained a court injunction restraining The Daily Times, the local newspaper which published the leaked document, from further reporting on the maize imports from Zambia.

Maizegate has prompted a group of 18 civil society organizations called the National Advocacy Platform to push for greater transparency in the maize procurement process.

"There are suspicions that some steps were not followed, said Billy Mayaya, a rights activist.

The National Advocacy Platform wrote an open letter to President Peter Mutharika asking him to suspend Agriculture Minister George Chaponda, who is accused of direct  and illegal  involvement in the maize purchase.

In a press statement Wednesday, Chaponda said his only involvement was in early December when he met with the president of Zambia to discuss the status of the deal, after Zambia announced that it had banned maize exports.

Chaponda told local radio station Zodiak Broadcasting Service that he will weather the storm.

"When I was minister of foreign affairs, they said I should resign because I was traveling too much, Chaponda said. When I became minister of agriculture, I should resign because I went to Mexico. Now there is this Zambia issue. They will keep on talking, but for me, I will never resign."

The commission of inquiry is expected to submit its findings to the president at the end of the month.

But it may not end there.

In Zambia, leaders of the opposition United Progressive Party say they have evidence of corruption in maize exports. The party said in a press statement that it presented that evidence to Zambia's Anti-Corruption Commission on Thursday for action.
Speaking publicly Friday for the last time as first lady, Michelle Obama addressed young people, particularly those who come from immigrant families, to let them know she thinks they are what makes America great, and that they will carry the country into the future.

"Know that this country belongs to you, to all of you, from every background and walk of life," the first lady said. "If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition  the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, generation after generation  that has made us the greatest country on Earth."

WATCH: Michelle Obama Addresses Young People

Obama spoke at a White House ceremony to honor the school counselor of the year, a tradition she began in 2015. The recipient this year, Terri Tchorzynski, is a counselor at the Calhoun Area Career Center in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Obama became emotional as she spoke about her own experience growing up and the hope her father had that his children would go to college. She told young people she wants them to know that they matter and they belong.

"That's the kind of hope that every single one of us  politicians, parents, preachers, all of us  needs to be providing for our young people," Obama said with tears in her eyes. "Because that is what moves this country forward every single day  our hope for the future and the hope that hard work inspires."

Last month, following the election of Donald Trump to succeed her husband as president, the first lady said many Americans no longer know what it feels like to have hope.

"We feel the difference now. See, now, we are feeling what not having hope feels like," she said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. "Hope is necessary. It's a necessary concept and Barack didn't just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes."

Thursdays event, part of the "Reach Higher" program that Michelle Obama created to promote education, comes exactly two weeks before Trump is to be sworn in as president.

Obama encouraged students to "lead by example with hope" and urged them to never fear for their future, because she will be there to support them.

"To the young people here and the young people out there, do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter, or like you do not have a place in our American story because you do, and you have the right to be exactly who you are," she said.

Youth programs, along with other health and education initiatives, have taken up a large portion of Obama's time in the White House, where she often holds events in support of her chosen issues.
As national parks traveler Mikah Meyer walked through the now-quiet halls on Ellis Island, he couldnt stop thinking of his own family and how they had traveled to America many years ago.

From 1892 to 1954, more than 12 million immigrants were processed in its bustling and often chaotic rooms, making it the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station during those years.

I was just imagining my great-grandparents coming to this country so that I could be here today and visit all these national park sites, he said. It was really incredible.

Those thoughts took on even deeper meaning when during his tour, a park ranger asked for a volunteer to do a little role-playing. Mikah stepped up.

She slammed her hands on the desk and said: Okay, what's your name? And why do you want to come into the country? and she acted as if I was an immigrant, Mikah described. Then she pulled up their little stock photo and she said, Okay, you are coming here from Bremen, Germany, which is actually where my family is from and where they came from to come to the states. So it was this really amazing moment, he said.

Beacon of Liberty

Moments before, Mikah, whos on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the National Park Service, had stepped off a ferry after visiting the Statue of Liberty, another iconic site in New York Harbor off the southern tip of Manhattan.

Lady Liberty was a gift of friendship from France to the United States, and is still regarded as one of the most universal symbols of democracy. Erected in 1886, the statue was the first thing millions of immigrants saw as they sailed into New York Harbor.

There's a few sites on my trip that have barely had any visitors at them and then there's some sites like the Statue of Liberty where it's like a melee to try to get into this place, Mikah said. Its an incredibly, incredibly popular attraction, especially for international visitors.

Around me in the line I heard people speaking all these different languages, he added. It was very apparent that the Statue of Liberty is something that speaks to people around the worldwhether that's just for tourist reasons or because their family came to America.

Taking small bites out of the Big Apple

The iconic sites were among the dozen national park places Mikah visited during his recent trip toand nearNew York City.

New York is so exciting because there's so much going on, and to be there and experiencing the way that these national park sites help to make New York what it is today; it was all just fascinating, he said. His experiences ranged from the beautiful to the historic; all places that help tell Americas story.

Standing at the top of a lighthouse, he described the breathtaking land and seascapes of Fire Island National Seashore as a very thin sandbar, barely large enough to sustain houses and a few roads, but miles and miles of shoreline for those seeking an escape from New York City.

Among the historic sites he visited was Castle Clinton National Monument, which is currently a ticket booth for the Statue of Liberty Tours. Most people don't realize its actually a national park site, Mikah said. Its an old historic fort that was used in the War of 1812 to help defend Manhattan.

Federal Hall, located on Wall Street, is where George Washington took the oath of office. It was home to the first Congress, Supreme Court, and Executive Branch offices. Now it serves as a museum and memorial to Americas first President.

They basically say Federal Hall is where America became America, Mikah said.

And Governors Island National Monument is a former military base thats now a scenic historic site a short ferry ride from downtown Manhattan. I can't believe it hasn't been developed yet because it's just a free 10-minute ferry ride south of the Lower Manhattan tip and it kind of looks like a small middle-American suburban town.

Mikah also got to visit the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War, and then, as president, strove to heal a divided nation and empower all its citizens.

They said at the time of his funeral he had over a million people lining the streets of Manhattan, Mikah said, which at the time was an insane number.

At Hamilton Grange National Memorial, which preserves the home of founding father Alexander Hamilton, Mikah got to spend time with the actor who plays George Washington in the hugely successful Broadway musical Hamilton.

"The cast member Nicholas Christopher stood there right in front of [the portrait of] George Washington and I took his picture," Mikah said. So it was fun for us to meet, but then also to go to this site and to see him learn the history of the Hamilton gravesite and say, Oh, that makes me think about this part of the show differently.'

Mikah says New York was truly representative of the depth and breadth of just how much of America is preserved and protected by the U.S. National Park Service.

For me, as an American who went through the public school system and learned about American history, it is easier to retain knowledge and to understand this history when you're physically standing there, he said. So I think being in these sites makes it a little easier than just reading it in a textbook.

To learn more about his time in New York and the many other sites he visited, Mikah invites you to visit him on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
A visit to New York was deeply personal for national parks traveler Mikah Meyer, whose family emigrated there from Germany many years ago. He visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, two iconic sites off the tip of Manhattan that are particularly symbolic for early immigrants. Meyer also visited about a dozen other historic sites in or around Manhattan and shared highlights of his experience with VOAs Julie Taboh.
As traditional commercial fishing is threatening fish populations worldwide, U.S. officials are working on a plan to expand fish farming into federal waters around the Pacific Ocean.

The government sees the move toward aquaculture as a promising solution to overfishing and feeding a hungry planet. But some environmentalists say the industrial-scale farms could do more harm than good to overall fish stocks and ocean health.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is creating a plan to manage commercial fish farms in federal waters, the area of ocean from three to 200 miles offshore, around Hawaii and other Pacific islands.

The program is similar to one recently implemented by NOAA in the Gulf of Mexico. The farms in the Gulf and the Pacific would be the only aquaculture operations in U.S. federal waters, though there are smaller operations in state waters close to shore.

Fish farming has been practiced for centuries in Hawaii and around the world. But modern aquaculture, some environmentalists say, carries pollution risks and the potential for non-native farmed fish to escape and enter the natural ecosystem.

Most shellfish consumed in America comes from farms, and their methods are widely considered sustainable. However, some farms that grow carnivorous fish such as salmon have raised concerns about sustainability because they use wild-caught fish to feed the captive species.

Values of the ocean

There are three ways to farm fish: fully contained land-based systems that pump water in and out with little, if any, environmental impact; near-shore operations incorporating natural and man-made elements; and off-shore farms.

Sylvia Earle, former NOAA chief scientist and founder of ocean advocacy group Mission Blue, said there are more environmentally sustainable and economically viable options than open-ocean aquaculture, which uses huge floating net-pens or submerged cages.

We have to make a choice with aquaculture, she said. Is our goal to feed a large number of people? Or is our goal to create or to serve a luxury market?

Last year, NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography put an economic value of $17 billion a year on the ocean off the west coasts of North and South America. That includes $4.3 billion from commercial and sport fishing and $12.9 billion for the capture of carbon.

Earle said the ocean is worth more, and no dollar figure can be attached to keeping the ocean, and in turn humans, healthy.

We now have recognition of other values of the ocean beyond what we can extract either for food or for products, she said.

U.S., overseas options

New technologies are being developed for open-ocean aquaculture, and many U.S. companies are sending their crews overseas to farm, according to NOAA officials.

The U.S.'s view is we'd rather have these U.S. companies pursuing these opportunities in a sustainable, environmentally sound way in the U.S., said Michael Tosatto, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service regional administrator.

The NOAA plan would create a regulatory and permitting scheme for the industry. It's reasonably common knowledge that the environmental laws are less where aquaculture occurs the most, [that] being China and other Southeast Asia countries, Tosatto said.

Many foreign operations have U.S. companies supplying the breed stock, then the fish are grown and sold back to the U.S. as imported seafood. U.S.-farmed fish in 2014 was valued at $1.3 billion, Tosatto said, and constitutes 19 percent of the nation's seafood production.

That amounts to only 1 percent of the global farmed product.

NOAA has been trying to establish an aquaculture industry in federal waters for many years. But attempts to get legislation to implement open-sea aquaculture have failed.

And so [NOAA] moved into the fishery management process ... as a means to move forward with ocean aquaculture under the radar of the public, said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition. NOAA received input from thousands of people during a public comment period last year on its plans.

Land-based vs. open ocean

Cufone's New Orleans-based organization has been developing land-based aquaculture systems that are fully contained. Cufone says these types of farms are more sustainable than ocean aquaculture, and Earle agrees.

Controlled systems are the most promising, Earle said. I personally am wary of the open ocean approach to aquaculture.

Meanwhile, NOAA says researchers off Hawaii's Big Island are studying ways to make open ocean farming safe and efficient. They are studying different techniques and species to better understand problems the industry could face.

Native Hawaiians have long practiced sustainable aquaculture. They build walls around shoreline areas, allowing fresh water from the mountains and salt water from the ocean to flow in and out. Fish enter through slotted gates, and can't get back out. The ponds are monitored to make sure they are healthy, mimicking nature.

Our ancestors, they could ... sustainably feed themselves no problem, said Luka Mossman, a Native Hawaiian who grew up working on a traditional fish pond and is now helping study and restore such ponds with the nonprofit environmental group Conservation International.

You constantly watch how the natural system works, and you adapt to that. You don't try and adapt the natural system to work for you, he said.
A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to participating in a hacker conspiracy that targeted CIA Director John Brennan and other government officials.

Twenty-four-year-old Justin Gray Liverman of Morehead City, who used the online name D3F4ULT, faces up to five years in prison after pleading to a single conspiracy count Friday in federal court in Alexandria.

Liverman admitted belonging to the hacking group Crackas With Attitude. Beginning in 2015, the hackers gained access to personal online accounts of senior U.S. government officials and sent them harassing and insulting messages. The officials are not named in court papers, but details make clear that Brennan was among the victims.

Liverman's lawyers said in a statement that their client deserves credit for exposing lax online security practices of Brennan and other officials.
Putting pressure on Republicans, President Barack Obama pledged Friday to publicly support repealing "Obamacare" if Republicans come up with something better, but cast doubt on the GOP's ability to develop a viable alternative.

As Republicans prepare to gut his biggest legislative achievement, Obama implored his opponents not to pursue a two-step approach where the Affordable Care Act is repealed first and replaced after - perhaps years later. He sought to lay the groundwork for Democrats to pile on Republicans for taking health care away from millions of people if the replacement never materializes.

"I am saying to every Republican right now: If you, in fact, can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan," Obama said in a live-streamed interview with online news site Vox. "But I want to see it first."

Obama appeared to be betting on the possibility that Republicans won't be able to unify behind an Obamacare replacement - or that if they do, it won't be one that will pass muster for Democrats. Though Republicans are in agreement that the law should be repealed and replaced, they're at odds over what the replacement should look like, and particularly over how to pay for popular elements they hope to preserve, including coverage for pre-existing conditions and the ability for parents to keep children on their plans until age 26.

Most alarming to Obama and Democrats is the possibility of no replacement at all, given the fact that Republicans have been unable to settle on their own health care vision in the nearly seven years since the Affordable Care Act became law. Hoping to give themselves more time while also fulfilling campaign pledges to quickly abolish the law, Republicans are discussing a repeal that wouldn't take effect for 18 months or longer, during which they'd ostensibly agree on a replacement.

"What you don't want is a situation where they make a promise they can't keep," Obama said. "I've worked on this a long time. If we had had a better way to do this, we would have done it. It would have been in my interest to do it, because I knew I was going to be judged on whether or not it worked."

The president argued he had no "pride of authorship" over the law that colloquially bears his name, adding that it wasn't he who had dubbed it "Obamacare." He tried to dispel the notion he was trying to prevent a repeal in hopes of preserving his own legacy.

"They can call it whatever they want," Obama said. "They can call it Trumpcare or McConnellcare or Ryancare," Obama said, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. "If it actually works, I will be the first one to say, 'Great.'"

Signed into law in 2010, Obama's overhaul has extended insurance coverage to 20 million more people and brought the uninsured rate to a historic low of about 9 percent, reshaping the $3 trillion-per-year health system in the process. Still, the law has failed to win broad public approval, amid persistent concerns about rising premium rates through the insurance marketplaces the law created.

Republicans have set a goal to offer "universal access," but their replacement may cover fewer people than Obama's overhaul. A key GOP focus is to do away with the individual mandate requirement that all Americans have insurance or pay a fine. Absent that requirement, insurers have warned it's not financially viable to force them to accept people regardless of pre-existing health issues.

In his final days in office, Obama has been ramping up a public push to pressure Republicans over their repeal plans and unite Democrats behind a strategy to try to protect the law. He traveled Wednesday to Capitol Hill to strategize with Democratic lawmakers, and penned an opinion piece published Friday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

In the article, Obama said the uncertainty of a repeal with no replacement could lead insurance companies to bail on the health care marketplaces during the phase-out years, leaving millions without insurance. He said it would set up a "cliff" with harmful consequences if lawmakers fail to approve a replacement in time.

Yet Trump's team has said repeal is the first order of business, and leaders in Congress hope to deliver a bill voiding much of the law by late February. Although Ryan said this week that lawmakers will vote on a replacement this year as well, it's unclear how Republicans could move that quickly to replace a law that took more than a year to craft.
Former CIA director and former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus told VOA that he does not know what role, if any, he might play in the incoming presidential administration of Donald Trump, despite being considered for secretary of state.

Petraeus told VOA this week that he had a very good conversation with the president-elect before Trump announced Rex Tillerson as his choice for the nation's top diplomat.



Petraeus said he and Trump talked about the issues Trump had raised during the presidential campaign and the policies that will be created to deal with them. He said the conversation was constructive, good and stimulating.

Supports Tillerson

Petraeus also complimented Trump's choice of Tillerson for the position, saying he will bring something very important to the position.

Petraeus, a retired general, noted that in the four years since he left his position at the Central Intelligence Agency, he has continued to interact with members of Congress and with members of the military. He said he expects those relationships to continue and added, We'll just have to see what transpires in terms of whether there's more than that.

Interviewed by VOA's Kurdish service in New York, Petraeus said he thinks there must be a comprehensive campaign to deal with Islamic State terrorists in the Middle East. He said the effort to eliminate the terrorists must last an entire generation, so that the physical leadership as well as the mindset that the terrorist group creates is eliminated  in his words, the virtual caliphate as well as the physical one.

Independent Kurdish nation

Petraeus said the key to a successful government in Mosul, in northern Iraq, is a provincial government that is representative of the majority but also protects the rights of the minorities. He noted that ethnically, politically and religiously, the area is extremely diverse, which makes it particularly difficult to keep the peace.

Petraeus said he envisions a nation in the near future that retains the current border while providing considerable autonomy for ethnic Kurds, who have long argued for self-government. He said he can foresee at some point in time an independent Kurdish nation, but that at present Iraqi Kurdistan is dependent on oil revenues from other parts of Iraq.

Petraeus, who spoke for nearly an hour with a VOA reporter, also covering such topics as the future of Syria, diplomacy in the incoming Trump administration, the war in Afghanistan, and relations with Taiwan and China.



VOA's Sama Dizayee contributed to this story.

Watch: David Petraeus on foreign policy issues


Police in the Bangladesh capital said Friday they have shot dead the prime suspect in last year's brutal attack on a cafe in Dhaka.

Officials said Nurul Islam Marjan was considered one of the masterminds of the cafe attack in July at the Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, where 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, were killed.

Police say another suspected terrorist was also killed in the early morning shootout. The identity of the second militant was not immediately clear.

While Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bakery attack, Bangladesh officials said the attackers were members of the Jamaat-ul-Majahideen Bangladesh, a domestic group that has been banned for more than 10 years.

Since the cafe attack, security forces have killed at least 45 Islamic extremists.

Bangladesh has experienced a wave of attacks in recent years on dozen of secular bloggers, writers, publishers, members of minority groups and foreigners.
Boko Haram militants attacked two villages in southern Niger's Diffa region overnight, killing at least 30 civilians, two security sources said on Thursday.

It was the second major cross-border attack by the Nigerian Islamist group this week, following twin suicide bombings in Chad's capital on Monday that killed at least 34 people.

The attackers drove into the villages in the Gueskerou area with cars and motorbikes and shot residents before setting fire to the mostly straw thatched houses where others were hiding, the sources said.

"In all, at least 30 were killed. Some of them died when the houses were set alight," said one of the security officials. The source said he expected the death toll to rise because a number of survivors had serious burns.

Gueskerou is along the banks of the Komadugu River separating Niger from Nigeria.

Despite a regional military operation to beat back Boko Haram, southern Niger has been attacked dozens of times this year. Its government has declared a state of emergency for the region and has arrested more than 600 people it accuses of links to the group.
Researchers are closely watching part of a giant shelf of ice in Antarctica that could soon become an iceberg.

It's part of the Larsen Ice Shelf which floats off the coast of Northwestern Antarctica.

Growing, Growing, Gone!

Scientists who study the ice-covered continent have been watching the Larsen Ice Shelf for nearly a decade.

Martin O'Leary is a Research Officer at Swansea University and a member of Project MIDAS, a U.K.-based Antarctic research project. He tells VOA "we've been monitoring this crack since around 2010, when it started to become significantly larger than the surrounding cracks. It's been of particular interest since around 2014, when it became clear that the berg was going to be a large one."

By "large one," O'Leary means a chunk of ice that represents between 9 and 12 percent of the entire country-sized shelf.

But in just the past few months, the rift has been growing quickly, an estimated 18 kilometers just during the month of December.

Today, a strip of ice about 20 kilometers long is the only thing holding an iceberg O'Leary says is now "around 5,000 sq km" (about half the size of Lebanon) onto the Antarctic mainland.

What is an ice shelf?

Larsen C is called an ice shelf because, while it is still attached to the land, it is already floating out at sea. The Larsen Ice Shelf is actually a series of three interconnected shelves, that grew out from the Antarctic Mainland over tens of thousands of years.

Larsen A, the most northern of the three segments, and the smallest, broke free from the mainland in 1995.

The larger Larsen B Ice Shelf, an estimated 3,200 square kilometers of ice, averaging a thickness of 220 meters, disintegrated into the sea in 2002.

And now Larsen C, larger still, with an ice thickness averaging 350 meters, looks to lose the next big chunk of the ice shelf. Adrian Luckman, another member of the MIDAS team, told the International Business Times, "If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazedit's so close to calving that I think it's inevitable."

What happens if it goes?

If that huge chunk does separate from Larsen C, what does it mean for ocean levels around the world? Luckily - not much. The shelf is already displacing a lot of water because it's already floating on the ocean.

Scientists are classifying the calving as a geographic event, as opposed to a climate event. It is something that will change the Antarctic landscape and is not necessarily a result of climate change.

O'Leary backs that up, saying this event "...is a natural process which occurs once every few decades [(the last major event on Larsen C was in the mid-80s]."

Of greater concern is what this suggests for the future of Larsen C.

"The removal of a large chunk of ice," O'Leary says, "may make the ice shelf more vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the future."

In other words, the loss of ice may make Larsen C a bit more unstable, and more prone to more calving events like this one, and eventually to the collapse of the whole shelf.

There's not enough information to predict if or when that might happen, but if it does, it's possible that the ice which the Larsen shelf holds on the land could start sliding into the sea.

Predictions suggest that could raise world sea levels by as much as 10 centimeters.
Florida Governor Rick Scott has called for prayer for the victims of a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport Friday that left five people dead and eight others injured.

Scott spoke to reporters Friday evening, several hours after the shooting took place. He said his "heart goes out to every family impacted" by the shooting. He also said he had called U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence about the shooting and had been assured that they would "do everything in their power" to provide whatever assistance was needed.

Scott said he had not reached out to current U.S. President Barack Obama about the shooting. He said he contacted Trump and Pence because he had a personal relationship with them.

Scott also said his staff had been in touch with airports around the state since the shooting to find out what resources they needed.

"My imperative is to keep everybody safe," he said. "Everybody's working hard to find out exactly what happened, and I don't want this to ever happen again."

An hour after the shooting, claims that shots had been heard in other areas of the airport were reported, but officials said later at a news conference that those reports were unfounded.

The eight people injured at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were transferred to a local hospital, the Broward County sheriff's office said on its official Twitter account. It also indicated that the attack had been carried out by a lone suspect who was in custody.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson told reporters a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago was found on the suspect, though it was not confirmed that the card belonged to him.

The attacker had been a passenger on an incoming flight and had packed the firearm in his checked luggage, officials told reporters at the airport in the hours after the attack. He was first reported to be a passenger on a Canadian flight, but a spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy said later that there was no Canadian connection. She cited U.S. officials who said the suspect had flown in from Anchorage, Alaska, via Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Witnesses told ABC News that the assailant repeatedly yelled, "I'm not Jewish." Other reports indicated he was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and lay spread-eagle on the floor after he shot 13 people, awaiting arrest.

The sheriff's office said the suspect was taken into custody unharmed. They did not disclose a motive, saying they were "uncertain" as to whether the attack was an act of terror.

News helicopters hovering over the area showed hundreds of people waiting on the tarmac as ambulances took victims to the hospital and law enforcement personnel raced to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired, but that the scene had since calmed.



All services at the airport were suspended, the airport announced on its official Twitter account.
Soldiers in Ivory Coast launched mutinies in three cities on Friday in a bid for higher pay.

Witnesses say gunfire erupted around 1:00 a.m. local time in Bouake, the country's second-largest city. VOAs French to Africa service reports that soldiers looted weapons from local police stations and took control of the northern and southern entrances to the city.

Similar mutinies broke out in the towns of Korhogo and Daloa.

In a communique, the Ivorian Defense Ministry said officers in Bouake have entered into discussions with the soldiers.





It said the soldiers are demanding a salary increase, bonuses, and a reduction of time necessary to achieve higher pay grades.

The ministry said it has put Ivorian troops on alert and reinforced security around military installations.

The statement said all soldiers are asked to "remain calm and to return to their bases in order to allow the search for durable solutions for all members of the armed forces."

The soldiers are former rebels who were integrated into Ivory Coast's army after the country's civil war. Bouake was the former capital of the rebellion, which split the country into northern and southern halves between 2002 and 2011.

The country has been stable over the past five years, and conducted peaceful parliamentary elections in December in which the coalition of President Alassane Ouattara retained control of the National Assembly.
The president of Somalia has told VOA that his government will not hold popular elections next year, due to continuing insecurity in the country.

In an interview Wednesday with VOA's Somali Service, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said that "one person, one vote" elections will not be possible under current circumstances.

He added that the polls, when they happen, may take a different shape.

Its the pinnacle of democracy that everyone who is eligible votes to elect, but there is a big gap between there and where we stand, Mohamud said. We never said an election is not possible. There are different phases and different models for elections, and we are aiming for the next best option, but we have not yet agreed on a format to transition in 2016.

Mohamud denied that this will be seen as a failure by his government to honor pledges it made.

We never promised one person, one vote and to make a ballot box available in every meter of the country, he told VOA. We promised a better process than the one that brought us [to power] - an easier and more dignified process.

The current government was mandated to lead Somalia into general elections following the election of Mohamud, a new parliament and adoption of a new constitution in 2012.

However, militant group al-Shabab continues to carry out violent attacks. The group has killed several members of parliament, launched two attacks on the presidential palace last year and car-bombed a popular Mogadishu hotel on Sunday, killing 18 people.

The president insisted his government has made progress since it came to power in 2012. He promised that he will deliver something new and a better process than in the past.

We are not arguing everything is 100 percent correct. We are not claiming perfection," he said in the interview. "We are arguing that theres progress on the political, economic and security fronts. But convincing the people about this will depend on a transfer of power to the next government without conflict, disturbance, friction or chaos. That is a duty on our shoulders.

Several options for elections have been circulated by Somali researchers and think tanks in recent months. One idea is to hold an indirect poll where selected voters pick parliament members who will then vote for a president.

However, Mohamud says no agreement has been reached. He said it will be up to the government, regional administrations and other stakeholders to come to an agreement.

He said he will seek re-election, and categorically denied that he wants an extension of his current term of office.

That is still under discussion between the Somalis, the parliament and administrations, but there wasnt any discussion about extending the mandate," Mohamud said. "We have a chance to say to the people, Elect us, and to present our opinion. There is no reason for us to demand an extension.

The government is still battling al-Shabab militants, to expand its authority and stabilize areas seized from the militant group. Earlier this month, the African Union mission AMISOM and Somali government forces launched a new offensive to drive al-Shabab from the mostly rural territories it still controls.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will start a trip Saturday to the United States with the possibility of advancing relations with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after a surprise call last month, and to Central American countries that could someday switch allegiance from Taipei to its powerful rival China.

The trip viewed at home as a test of Taiwans stable but fragile foreign relations in the Americas has raised alert in Beijing, which already protested the U.S. stopovers and is expected to react if Tsai shows new signs of getting close to Trump.

China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, not as a state entitled to foreign relations. It frets when the islands leaders make inroads overseas.

Stops in Houston, San Francisco

Tsai has not said who she might contact while in Houston for about a day on her way to Central America or in San Francisco for about the same length of time en route home from her nine-day journey. She has ruled out no one.

The de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei - the American Institute in Taiwan - says Tsais stopovers, a courtesy Washington normally gives Latin America-bound Taiwan leaders, are for private business only.

Tsai probably hopes to contact people in the future administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office January 20, observers say. She called Trump December 2 and spoke for 12 minutes.

She will again have a chance to sit down with members of Congress of both parties, and, as she and all other Taiwan presidents have done in the past, she will again make phone calls to senior senators and representatives, said Coen Blaauw, executive director of the Washington-based, pro-Taiwan advocacy group Formosan Association for Public Affairs.

And the big unanswered question on everybodys mind this time around is will a Donald Trump surrogate request to meet with her on or off record, he said.

Trump-Taiwan relations

A stronger link with Trump following Tsais call to the U.S. president-elect last month could bring Taiwan more military exchanges with its staunchest informal ally and more access to advanced weapons for defense against China. Taiwanese leaders also want a free-trade deal that would help local exporters. Exports to the United States, Taiwans second biggest trading partner after China, were worth $48.5 billion in 2015.

Washington broke formal ties with Taiwan in 1979 in favor of the larger and faster-growing China.

A publicized encounter with Trump or with a transition team member might prompt China to show military might or offer aid money to win over more of Taiwans 21 remaining diplomatic allies, including the Central American countries Tsai plans to visit next week, analysts say.

Since the phone call, China has passed an aircraft carrier through waters near Taiwan and officials in Taipei suspect it paid Sao Tome and Principe, a country in Africa, last month to switch recognition to China.

Some Taiwanese also fear Trump might use closer relations with Taiwan as a bargaining chip to win trade concessions from China and sideline Taipei if the concessions come through. China says its claim over Taiwan is not negotiable.

Bolstering relations in Central America

The mostly poor countries in the Americas, Africa and the South Pacific that recognize Taiwan give it a voice in the United Nations in exchange for development aid. China has more than 170 diplomatic partners, including the worlds most powerful nations.

Tsai will visit El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua next week for meetings with heads of state. She plans to talk with Central American officials about projects they can do together and to see how people live.

Of course some things have happened recently, but we think that basically the countries where were going count as stable, Tsai told a news conference Saturday. We will use the normal attitude to negotiate with those countries about what we can do together and carry out our foreign relations in a way in which both sides can obtain some substantive benefits.

A Honduran diplomat in Taipei said Thursday he had heard of no urge to switch ties to China. The two sides may talk next week about working together on farming, fishing, tourism and infrastructure, he said.

Tsai must step up development aid to hold onto relations, said Huang Kwei-bo, associate diplomacy professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Tsai can offer money for specific projects, such as airports, rather than giving it directly to politicians to avoid the perception of checkbook diplomacy, he said.

The foreign minister said after the loss of Sao Tome and Principe that Taiwan would avoid money diplomacy with other governments.

The achievement in her hands I think would be to provide more aid to the allies, Huang said. If you give them more humanitarian aid or more infrastructure development aid, thats all a positive. Another plus is to show that Tsai Ing-wen at least is going to Central America. She meets their heads of states and for the time being those relations perhaps wont change.
The chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that abrupt rejection of the Iran nuclear deal by the incoming Trump administration could create "a crisis" and that he did not expect such an approach.

"To tear it up on the front end, in my opinion, is not going to happen. Instead, we will begin to radically enforce it," Senator Bob Corker told reporters on Friday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

He said he expected strong enforcement of the international agreement, announced in July 2015, in which Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions.

Concern about the Iran deal under Trump, who at times has pledged to pull Washington out of it, has led to worries that Tehran would be unable to attract foreign investment and that its economy could collapse.

"To me the prudent course of action is to make sure you enforce it, that you hold the UN Security Council accountable," Corker said. "And in the event the agreement falls apart, it's someone else that is causing it to fall apart, not a president coming in on day one and ripping up the agreement."

Every Republican in the U.S. Congress, including Corker, objected to the nuclear pact, signed by the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, Germany and Iran. Dozens of Democrats also objected, but there was too much support for it to prevent its implementation last January.

At times on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to scrap the agreement, although he said at other times he would seek a better deal.

The Obama administration and other supporters of the nuclear pact said Washington's backing out would upset the U.S. partners that also signed and risk destabilization by allowing Iran to resume its nuclear development.

Corker said Washington had a choice, to strictly enforce the deal or come in and tear it up. "And you can create a crisis on the front-end by doing so," he said.

Corker advocated a wait-and-see approach. "In spite of all the flaws in the agreement, nothing bad is going to happen relative to nuclear development in Iran over the next few years. It's just not," he said.
The end of the 2016 presidential election is at hand.

A joint session of Congress is set to count the Electoral College votes Friday, a traditional ending to a most unconventional presidential election.

Friday's vote count marks the last chance for Democrats and other anti-Trump forces to disrupt Donald Trump's election. But even if they are successful, the most Democrats could do is slow the process because they don't have the votes to overturn the outcome.

Barring something bizarre happening, Trump will be declared the winner and will be sworn in at his inauguration January 20. Vice President Joe Biden will preside over the vote count in his role as president of the Senate.

All 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes. Trump finished with 304 votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton with 227, according to a tally by The Associated Press. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

Trump won even though Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes. His election has generated much angst among Democrats and others who oppose the billionaire businessman. But they have been powerless to change the outcome.

Despite rumblings of a revolt, only two Republican electors  both from Texas  cast protest votes for someone other than Trump. Clinton lost four Democratic electors in Washington state and one in Hawaii.

The secretary of state's office in Washington said the faithless electors would be fined $1,000 apiece.

During Friday's session, Democrats will have an opportunity to file objections, questioning the validity of the vote count.

Under federal law, if at least one senator and one House member object to the vote from any state, the House and Senate would meet separately to debate the merits of the objection.

Several House Democrats have talked about filing an objection, but no senator has publicly backed the idea. Regardless, with Republicans controlling both chambers, any objection would have little chance of affecting the outcome.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she isn't encouraging people to object. But, she added, I will be there and I will support those who object.

Some Democrats want to register their objections because of U.S. intelligence community findings that Russia engaged in computer hacking to sway the election in favor of Trump. America's top intelligence official told Congress on Thursday that Russia undoubtedly interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

It's not going to have an impact at the end of the day, Pelosi said of the objections. But, she said, People don't want the day to pass without registering concern.

Trump has not fully embraced the findings of the intelligence community. In fact, he has repeatedly mocked America's intelligence officials.
U.S.-backed forces in Syria are closing in on a strategic dam on the Euphrates River occupied by Islamic State fighters as part of their offensive to free Raqqa, ISs de facto capital.

Commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led alliance, say their objective in the coming days is to recapture the Tabqa dam, the largest in Syria, which is nearly 45 kilometers upstream from Raqqa.

The Pentagon said that SDF forces have made significant progress in western Raqqa and that they are only seven kilometers away from the dam, also known as the Baath Dam.

Liberating the dam will allow us to control the town of Tabqa as well, said Nasir Hajj Mansur, an SDF commander who is involved in the ongoing offensive. It will also break the back of (IS) as it is one of the last defense lines before Raqqa city.

SDF fighters Friday took control of the nearby strategic Jaabar Castle. The historic citadel was used as a training and planning center by IS, an SDF spokesperson said.

The dam, which IS has controlled since 2014, is a hydropower facility that is one of the main sources of electricity in the country. It has also been vital for the irrigation of farms in the fertile region around Raqqa.



Tabqa town, located three kilometers away from the dam, is considered a major security hub for IS fighters. It has two large prisons where several Kurdish commanders and female prisoners enslaved by IS have reportedly been held for months.

In anticipation of an imminent assault, IS has reportedly moved nearly 150 prisoners from the prison to a different location, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday.

If the Kurdish-led forces succeeded in retaking the Tabqa, it would be the second dam on the Euphrates to be captured from IS fighters. With the help of U.S. airstrikes, SDF fighters took control of the Tishrin Dam in December 2015.

IS is expected to create as many hurdles as possible for the U.S.-backed forces heading to the dam.

Similar to what they did with Tishrin Dam, IS will likely destroy all roads and supply lines that lead to the Tabqa Dam to delay the advancement of SDF fighters, said Baz Ali Begari, a journalist at Syrias Qasioun news agency, who closely reports on the Raqqa offensive.

There are fears that if IS decides to sabotage the 60-meter-high dam, it could cause a humanitarian crisis in eastern Syria.

The dam was built nearly 50 years ago and it hasnt been maintained for a long time, said Tammam Baroudi, an agricultural economist at the Syrian Economic Forum.

Baroudi fears that heavy fighting between IS and opposing forces could damage the dam severely.

Military commanders on the ground acknowledge the risks involved in retaking the dam from IS.

Blowing up the dam (by IS) could put the entire region, including Deir Ezzor, in danger, said Kurdish commander Mansur. Thats why we and our partners in the U.S.-led coalition are very careful not to target the dam directly.

Recent U.S. airstrikes have struck IS targets around the dam, including IS fighting positions and weapons depots in Tabqa.
Amid speculation surrounding North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the U.S. government said this week that Pyongyang has yet to acquire the ability to outfit an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

The latest assessment came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's statement that the preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile had "reached the final stage." His claim, in a New Year's Day address, immediately sent ripples across the world's capitals, prompting President-elect Donald Trump to tweet, "It won't happen!"

Despite the U.S. rejection of North Korea's purported capability, experts are raising concern about the threats emanating from the regime.

Olli Heinonen, former deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told VOA that Pyongyang might be approaching or might have already hit a "milestone" in its arms development, after conducting five nuclear tests since 2006.

"If we look at the historical examples like Pakistan, India, China, Russia, France and the U.K., they, after five tests, started to have a nuclear weapon which they can deliver," the 27-year veteran of the IAEA said, "and I think the North Koreans have reached that milestone."

The most recent nuclear test, in September 2016, produced an explosive yield of around 20 to 30 kilotons, said Heinonen, adding, "That is very sizable."

Concerns about unknowns

According to Heinonen, "the unknowns" surrounding the North's nuclear and weapons programs are posing the greatest threat, because they make it difficult to determine current and future capabilities.

The size of North Korea's current stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, its uranium enrichment capacity, and its progress in developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems are among the many things that are subject to uncertainties, he said.

Heinonen also maintained that additional, clandestine nuclear facilities of unknown scale could exist, other than the widely known Punggye-ri nuclear test site and Yongbyon nuclear reactor facility.

Another nuclear expert, David Albright, president and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security, said North Korea already possessed the technical sophistication to miniaturize a nuclear warhead that could be placed atop a ballistic missile, and was on track to achieve substantial nuclear yield, probably in the 50-to-100-kiloton range.

"I think if you look at this technically, divorce yourself from the politics of Northeast Asia, you would have a hard time arguing that they didn't miniaturize [the nuclear warhead]," Albright said. "It would make them the worst nuclear program in the world, that after five nuclear tests they couldn't miniaturize."

The scientist also warned that North Korea could hold around 12 to 20 uranium-based nuclear weapons, and by 2020, it might have enough material to build as many as 80 nuclear weapons.

"They appear to have mastered fission weapons using plutonium or weapons-grade uranium," Albright said.

ICBM capability questioned

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raised doubts about the communist state's ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

"I think that they are probably still five years away from an ICBM," said the astrophysicist, who tracks international satellites and rocket launchings. He said Pyongyang, whose intermediate-range missile tests mostly ended in failures, not only lacked in its basic launch technology, but also had not obtained upper-stage rockets, solid-fuel engines and the missile re-entry technology necessary for longer-range strikes.

On Thursday, North Korea's state-run news agency KCNA reiterated its position "to bolster a nuclear deterrence," accusing the U.S. of making a direct nuclear threat against the country.

Blinken: 'Qualitative improvement'

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a joint news conference after a meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts that North Korea had conducted 24 missile tests in the past year, as well as two nuclear tests, and learned from each one.

"Even a so-called failure is progress because ... they apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test. And in our assessment, we have a qualitative improvement in their capabilities in the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity," he said.

"With every passing day the threat does get more acute," Blinken said, and referred to comments by North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, on Sunday that his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of a kind that could someday hit the United States.

Blinken said it was vital for the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries to boost cooperation to defend against the threat.

"At the same time, it's absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained, comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programs, to come back to the negotiating table, and to engage in good faith on denuclearization," Blinken said, referring to international sanctions.

Lee Jee-eun and Reuters contributed to this report, which was produced in collaboration with VOA's Korean service.
American soldiers have begun training units of Niger's army at the edge of the Sahara Desert, in what a U.S. official calls a new wave of military support for African states battling Boko Haram militants.

More training will follow for national armies in Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad, the official told VOA, speaking on condition of anonymity. Extremists from Boko Haram are based in northeastern Nigeria, but they have carried out notorious attacks throughout the Lake Chad region - Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria.

Training in Niger began on October 19 at Agadez, the largest city in central Niger, once a center for caravans crossing the Sahara.

The Niamey government requested the U.S. mission to Niger, U.S. Africa Command spokesman Chuck Prichard told VOA Wednesday.

What training will cover

Boko Haram Boko Haram

Based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri

Self-proclaimed leader is Abubakar Shekau

Began in 2002 as a nonviolent Islamist splinter group

Launched uprising in 2009

Has killed tens of thousands since 2010

Boko Haram translates to "Western education is sinful"

Wants Nigeria to adopt strict Islamic law

About 40 American soldiers who arrived last week at Niger-controlled Air Base 201 will provide eight weeks of training to about 150 Nigerien troops. Prichard said instruction will cover basic soldier skills, including small-arms marksmanship.

"This training benefits Nigerien military personnel and U.S. Army soldiers who share the mutual security goal of regional stability and security in Africa," said Major General Daryl Williams, the commander of U.S. Army Africa.

The U.S. embassy in Niger says the training program is expected to last a few months, with a goal of enhancing the professional skills of the Nigerien military personnel with an emphasis on airfield security procedures."

U.S. Air Force participation



Some U.S. Air Force members also will be involved in the training at Agadez. The U.S. Africa Command spokesman said airmen will arrive in early 2016, after the Army's two-month program is completed, to teach those same 150 Nigerien soldiers airfield security procedures.

Prichard said the U.S military has recently carried out other training in Niger, but "nothing as big as what's going on now."

The U.S. Defense Department has about 250 personnel in Niger, providing embassy security, training and intelligence gathering.

Cameroon support to evolve

Current U.S. military efforts in nearby Cameroonnow set to help with airborne surveillancewill eventually evolve into training as well, a U.S. official told VOA on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama ordered about 300 U.S. military personnel to Cameroon to conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

The troops were invited by Cameroons government as part of a larger international effort to stop the spread of violent extremists in West Africa, a U.S. defense official said at the time.

The need for international action has become more urgent as Boko Haram and other organizations ramped up their violent activities, the defense official added.

Lake Chad region

Nigeria, the home base of Boko Haram militants, and Chad also are expected to receive training and other military support from the United States in the coming months, according to the U.S. official.

The short answer is, yes, there is something going on in Nigeria, the official said.

The United States started training Nigerian forces to fight Boko Haram militants last year, but Nigerias government canceled the training for unspecified reasons.

While U.S. officials have urged that training be used to fight extremists, military aid has been sent to these African countries without restrictions on the purpose of U.S.-funded programs.

"This training is part of U.S. AFRICOM's core mission to help our partners strengthen their defense capabilities," Prichard said. "The skills gained during these military-to-military exchanges can be used by the participants for a broad range of activities to secure their home countries or contribute to a regional security effort."
Veteran Indian actor Om Puri, who successfully straddled movie careers in Bollywood and the West, died Friday in Mumbai of cardiac arrest, his friend and actor Anupam Kher told Reuters.

Puri, 66, cut his teeth in the 1980s with alternative art cinema that found a niche audience in India, playing several memorable characters that depicted the angst of the times.

He also worked in several Hollywood and British films, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist, East is East, and most recently in The Hundred-Foot Journey, opposite Britains Helen Mirren.

Actor broke barriers

He showed that you didnt have to be fair and good-looking to be a protagonist, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, who directed Puri in one of his earliest films, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai (Why does Albert Pinto get Angry?), told Reuters.

It was just the force of his personality and his performance.

Several Bollywood stars, fans and Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to pay their respects.

Who dare say Om Puri is no more? He lives through his work, actor Kamal Hassan tweeted.

Bollywood, Hollywood, Britain

An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India and later, the National School of Drama, the actors work in Govind Nihalanis Ardh Satya (Half-Truth) and later Aakrosh (Rage) won him several accolades.

Along with Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, Puri was seen as one of the stars of the alternative cinema movement that contrasted sharply with Bollywoods often crass content.

His distinctive baritone and ability to switch seamlessly between art house, Bollywood, Hollywood and British film, made him an international star, one of the few Indian actors to cross over to the West before the likes Irrfan Khan and Priyanka Chopra made the jump.
West African leaders will make a "major decision" on the political impasse in Gambia at a meeting in Ghana on Saturday, a spokesman for the Nigerian presidency said Friday.

The West African ECOWAS bloc said last month that it would take all necessary steps to uphold the result of a December 1 election in Gambia, in which President Yahya Jammeh lost to Adama Barrow but later said he would not step down.

ECOWAS placed standby forces on alert in case Jammeh attempts to stay in power after his mandate ends on January 19. Jammeh called the bloc's stance "a declaration of war" and said he would defend himself.

"A major decision on the impasse is expected to be taken at that all-important meeting," said Garba Shehu, spokesman for Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari. "President Buhari is the chief mediator of the crisis and he is committed to ensuring that the logjam is resolved."

Jammeh initially accepted his election loss, shocking Gambians who have lived through his repressive rule since he took power in a 1994 coup and triggering celebrations in the streets.

But a week later he changed his mind, saying the electoral commission had been biased by "foreign influences" and vowing to hang on despite regional and international condemnation.

Jammed said ECOWAS had no right to interfere in Gambia's internal affairs, and that Gambians should await the outcome of a legal challenge that his APRC party has lodged at the Supreme Court.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has dismissed the position of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia hacked into the recent presidential election process, receives a full briefing from the leaders of the intelligence community Friday.

In an unprecedented move for a president-elect, Trump has been highly critical of the intelligence community, but Thursday he softened his tone somewhat with a Tweet that he is a big fan of U.S. intelligence.



Firm evidence points to Russia



On Thursday, Americas top spies testified that the evidence is firm that Russia interfered with the November presidential election, but say there is no way to tell if it helped Trump win.

The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other peoples, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee. But we have never encountered such a direct campaign to interfere with the election process as we have seen in this case.

Clapper told the senators that Russia undertook a multifaceted campaign that included not just hacking and leaking Democratic Party emails, but also classical propaganda, misinformation, fake news.

WATCH: Clapper on Russia's campaign to interfere in election

Clapper said he cannot know for sure if the Russian leaks of sensitive information influenced the choices voters made November 8. But he did say Russia did not interfere with the vote counting or the final result.

Many Democrats believe the Russian hacking was specifically aimed at helping Trump win the White House over Hillary Clinton. Some Republican lawmakers say outside interference targeting any U.S. political party is a crime.



Clapper joined National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers and other senior U.S. officials Thursday in saying there was no way Moscow could have meddled in the election without the direct approval of Russias senior-most officials.

Clapper provided little concrete evidence against Russia Thursday, saying public disclosure would damage U.S. intelligence operations.

We have invested billions and we have put peoples lives at risk to glean such information, Clapper said. He told the senators an unclassified version of the top secret report will be released next week.

I think the public should know as much about this as possible, and so well be as forthcoming as we can. But there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here, Clapper said.



Admiration for Putin



Trump, who has made no secret of his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has said he has serious doubts Russia was involved in the hacking, and has not spoken highly of the U.S. intelligence community.

I think theres an important distinction here between healthy skepticism which policymakers, to include policymakers number one, should always have for intelligence, Clapper said when asked about Trump. But I think theres a difference between skepticism and disparagement.

Late Thursday, The Washington Post reported that, according to U.S. intelligence, senior Russian government officials jubilantly celebrated Trumps win and regarded it as a win for Moscow.

The Post says those Russian officials include some who may have had direct knowledge of the hacking.
Photo: Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images

Whats a gala these days without a boot-stompin rendition of Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy? Country duo Big & Rich, also known as Big Kenny Alphin and John Rich, will perform at the Great America Alliance Inaugural Gala in D.C. the day before the inauguration. They will be joined by country rapper Cowboy Troy. According to Rolling Stone, the gala, held on January 19, is being thrown by the GOP of New York and the Great America Alliance, an organization comprised of members of the Great America Super PAC. Were thrilled to be performing in our nations capital during this historic moment in time. A presidential inauguration is a uniquely American event, so we are honored to be a part of it and hope to help make it a memorable event, Rich said in a statement. As you might recall, back in 2008 Rich penned Raisin McCain in support of presidential candidate John McCain. Hopefully the pair are working on a tune in Trumps honor right this very moment. So, what rhymes with the ratings machine DJT?
L-R: Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Photo: Fisher Family Archives/courtesy of HBO

Bright Lights, a portrait of the perpetually intertwined lives of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, would be an intimate, moving documentary in any context. But after Fishers recent death at age 60 and the immediate subsequent passing of her mother, Reynolds, at 84, Bright Lights is now infused with so much bittersweetness that, at times, it hurts to watch it.

Bright Lights first screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and was originally slated to debut on HBO in March, but the back-to-back holiday-season losses of its subjects prompted the network to air it sooner: specifically, this Saturday night at 8. Viewing it is therapeutic and wonderful, but also like going through an additional step in the stages of grief. Lets call it Processing Via Premium Cable Documentary. I think it comes after depression but before acceptance.

Fisher Stevens, the producer-director and character actor, and his girlfriend, documentarian Alexis Bloom, made Bright Lights in 2015, and did so at the behest of Fisher, who wanted to record her mothers last performances before officially retiring. As the movie unfolds, Fisher is in the process of getting back in shape to reprise the role of Princess Leia in The Force Awakens, while Reynolds is growing increasingly frail but no less hungry to perform. At the time, no one could have predicted that Fisher would leave this earthly realm first, followed so closely by her mom. That hindsight gives numerous moments in this documentary an extra layer of meaning and an additional jolt of poignancy.

What does he get in the will and what do I get? Fisher asks Reynolds, referring to her brother, Todd, via a voice-over that provides the soundtrack to family home movies.

Oh, Im not going to tell anybody that, her mother responds. Later, after Fisher voices concern that her mother is pushing herself too hard, Reynolds responds by repeating something George Burns once said: Im going to stay onstage until I drop dead. And then Im going to have myself stuffed, like Trigger, and then Ill put me in a museum.

The two lived footsteps away from each other, on the same Beverly Hills compound thats captured, in all the whimsical detail with which Fisher infused it, throughout the documentary. (In one laugh-out-loud sequence, Fisher shows off her collection of ugly children portraiture, a room filled with random, old-fashioned paintings of kids, one of whom she describes as Shia LaBeouf as a Dutch underage prostitute. Even this womans walls had a great sense of humor.)

Within that shared space, Fisher and Reynolds function the same way that so many mothers and daughters do, which is one of the reasons their back-to-back deaths hit so many so hard. They openly fret over each other. They each bemoan the risks the other one takes, as well as the risks never taken. (Fisher, who has a singing voice that could knock off socks, shoes, and perhaps some toenail polish, says she rebelled against her mother by refusing to ever do her own nightclub act. I love that voice, Reynolds says at one point through tears. Isnt that a great voice? I wish I had it.) Theyre stubborn and do things that arent in their own best interests. (Reynolds wont slow down, Fisher wont stop drinking unlimited Coca-Colas and smoking cigarettes.) They bicker about everything, from ancient personal history to why Reynolds is still using a 90s-era cell phone.

Stars like this: Theyre just like us. But then, theyre also not, as clips from their many screen and stage appearances remind us, even the ones based on them that dont feature their faces, like Postcards From the Edge, the movie based on Fishers memoir.

Reynolds and Fisher had relationships with fame that were just as interesting as their relationship with each other, and the filmmakers capture that, too. The mother, who had a wry wit that her daughter would inherit and amplify, was pure Old Hollywood. Even in her 80s, we can see her trying to always put her best possible face forward, which is why, on a day when shes not feeling well, she makes sure the cameras stay outside her front door.

Fisher, on the other hand, lives by the maxim This is me, deal with it. So the camera is there for everything, including a conversation with longtime friend Griffin Dunne, in which they discuss how Fisher lost her virginity to him; one of Fishers manic episodes (the actress and writer was bipolar and admirably vocal about it); and a heartbreaker of a moment, when Fisher attempts to make sure her mom will have a place to rest backstage at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where Fisher presented her mother with the lifetime achievement award. While assistants and ceremony organizers reassure Fisher that her mother will be accommodated, Fisher breaks down crying.

The SAG Award tribute winds up going just fine. After its over, Todd and Carrie Fisher, back at home with their mother, ask if shes prepared to handle getting more lifetime achievement awards.

I cant answer it because its too special, she says. And I wont be here then. I will have gone on.

As she speaks these words, she has her arm around her daughter. Theyre sitting next to a twinkling Christmas tree that probably should have been taken down but is still standing there in January, defiantly bright. They didnt know it then, but the two of them would only have a couple more Christmases together. No matter how unsinkable you are, no matter how hard you try to use The Force, its impossible to look at that image of mother and daughter, fiercely by each others sides, and do anything other than cry.
Whos fired? Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his Friday dissing Arnold Schwarzenegger, suggesting the Hollywood superstars debut as host of the Trump-produced Celebrity Apprentice had been a ratings failure compared to the ratings machine, DJT. Part of PEOTUSs latest tweet was correct, as we noted Tuesday: What NBC is officially calling The New Celebrity Apprentice opened to sharply lower Nielsen numbers than the last Trump-hosted edition of the reality franchise. And yet, as is often the case with Trump, that one element of truth is overshadowed by a much bigger lie. No matter how much Trump tries to gaslight the country on this matter, the fact is The Apprentice  with or without DJT hasnt been a ratings hit for many, many years.

One neednt actually go back very far to disprove Trumps claim that he was a ratings machine as host of Apprentice. His most recent, and presumably final, season on the show aired midway through the 201415 television season. Per Nielsen, the show averaged 7.6 million viewers over the course of its run during the winter of 2015, including people who watched via DVR. Now, getting nearly 8 million people to watch anything is not nothing, particularly for a decade-old show like Apprentice. But Trumps series ranked No. 67 among broadcast series during the 201415 season, attracting fewer viewers than quickly canceled series such as CBSs Battle Creek and NBCs State of Affairs. And even among network reality shows, Apprentice wasnt very popular with American audiences that season. It ended up with fewer viewers than NBCs The Voice and Americas Got Talent, CBSs Big Brother and Survivor, Foxs American Idol, and ABCs Dancing With the Stars and Shark Tank.

The contrast with the other big celeb-driven reality show  Dancing with the Stars  is particularly sharp. The ABC competition, which also makes heavy use of B-level stars (Suzanne Somers and Redfoo of LMFAO were among the cast in spring 2015), drew 15 million viewers that year, basically doubling the Donalds boardroom bantering. And while the Apprentice franchise has been around slightly longer  it bowed in 2004, a year before DWTS  the latter series has churned out far more installments over the years. The same holds true for CBSs Survivor, which is even older than Apprentice (it bowed in 2000) and yet averaged 11.6 million viewers for its two cycles during the 201415 season. With all due respect to the incoming president, DWTS and Survivor are far more deserving of the title ratings machine than the former host of The Apprentice.

Of course, Trumps insistence on inventing his own ratings reality is hardly new. As a TV editor for showbiz trade Variety during the 2000s, I was the lucky recipient of a couple of phone calls from Trump in which hed gamely spin the shows numbers in a way which, to be blunt, was detached from reality. The late Jim Dowd, an NBC publicity exec assigned to The Apprentice early in its run, told PBSs Frontline last year that Trump refused to accept the shows Nielsen decline once it began.  [A]ll of a sudden ratings were not 20 million anymore, Dowd told PBS. They were substantially lower, still doing well, but not winning the time slot necessarily. Demos were good, but overall viewers continued to  every season it declined. [Trump] never saw it that way  Theres about 10 people who cover ratings in terms of the publications that matter most. And he would want to make sure I called all those 10 people and told them, Number one show on television, won its time slot, and Im looking at the numbers and at that point, say season five, for example, we were number 72. I cant tell that to him. I cant say that. Maybe I should have, maybe I should have gotten [thenNBC chief] Jeff Zucker involved, but he became kind of a monster when it came to these ratings.

None of this is to suggest The Apprentice under Trump was some sort of Nielsen dud. Among the key demo of adults under 50, the last DJT-anchored Apprentice did a bit better than among American audiences as a whole, edging out Shark Tank and tying DWTS. And in its earliest days, the show was certainly a legit phenomenon. The Apprentices season one finale back in 2004 drew 28.1 million viewers, briefly putting it in the same universe as reality megahits like the aforementioned Survivor and American Idol at their heights. But whats also true is that The Apprentice flamed out quickly as a ratings juggernaut. Just two years after it exploded on to TV, the shows June 2006 season finale attracted just 11.3 million viewers  a more than 60 percent audience collapse. To put it in terms Mr. Trump might better appreciate these days, thats a Jeb! Bushlevel free fall. The ratings decline was so pronounced, NBC cut back production of the show (from two cycles per year to just one) and then abandoned the original format, subbing in celebrities for real people entrepreneurs. Eventually, even the star-driven edition of the show began to fade. Since 2013, the Peacock has demoted Celebrity Apprentice to a once-every-two-years affair. As one broadcast industry insider told Vulture Friday, It became filler for NBC. If only the network could get Russia, or a 400-pound guy on his couch, to hack into Nielsens computers and make Apprentice ratings great again.
the inside game

The Most Important Senate Race Is Also the Most Ignored

The Most Important Senate Race Is Also the Most Ignored
[January 05, 2017] Dell's Innovative PCs Actively Engage the Senses with Stunning Sights and Sounds

Dell: This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105005271/en/ Dell Canvas is the world's first horizontal QHD smart workspace with digital touch, totem and pen capabilities for natural creation. (Photo: Business Wire) Consumer Electronics Show News Summary: Dell Canvas is world's first horizontal smart workspace of its kind with touch, totem and pen capabilities

World's smallest 13-inch 2-in-1 with InfinityEdge screen added to award-winning XPS portfolio

XPS and Precision All-in-Ones provide best sound of any AIO in the market

Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K Monitor is world's first 32-inch 8K display

Dell Precision 7720 is Dell's most powerful VR-ready mobile workstation

World's first wireless charging 2-in-1 delivers the ultimate "no wires" experience Full Story: At the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES (News - Alert)), Dell unveiled a series of world-first innovations that are redefining personal computing. The entire Dell PC portfolio features Windows 10 and new 7th Gen Intel Core processors, helping people maximize productivity and creativity while enjoying lifelike viewing experiences. Dell Canvas - Work at the speed of thought What began as the Dell smart desk concept in 2014 evolved into Dell Canvas-a new category of smart workspace technology that expands creative productivity for content developers and designers. The 27-inch QHD smart workspace can be used at an angle or flat on a desk so professionals can create, communicate and express their thoughts and ideas as naturally as they do with pen on paper. For example, through the use of touch, digital pen and totems, the Dell Canvas turns drawings into part of the digital workflow and enhances collaboration. Developed in partnership with Microsoft Corp. and powered by virtually any Windows 10 device, Dell Canvas plugs seamlessly into software solutions from partners including Adobe (News - Alert), Autodesk, AVID, Dassault Systems, SolidWorks and Microsoft to unleash the creative genius in everyone. The best just got better - XPS 13 adds convertible model; XPS 15 more powerful Dell XPS has won more product awards than any other brand in Dell's history. Building on that success, Dell is adding the XPS 13 2-in-1, the world's smallest 13-inch 2-in-1, to the beloved XPS family. It offers a 360-degree hinge for multiple productivity and viewing options using Continuum, up to 15 hours of battery life and eye-popping clarity with a gorgeous QHD+ (5.7M pixels) InfinityEdge touch display-another first for a 2-in-1. The fan-less design keeps it silent and the quick-booting solid state drive has it up and running in seconds. And for business customers, the XPS 13 2-in-1 can be configured with 7th Gen Intel Core vPro processors and Dell BIOS and manageability software-all backed by Dell's global ProSupport services. Also, Dell has updated the XPS 15, the smallest 15.6-inch laptop on the planet, with 7th Gen Intel Core processors, NVIDIA (News - Alert) Pascal architecture - GeForce GTX 100 graphics and a fingerprint reader for password-free logins via Windows Hello with the swipe of a finger. XPS & Precision AIOs - The best sound quality of any all-in-one PC Some All-in-One (AIO) PCs on the market today treat the audio experience as an afterthought. Co-created with Jack Joseph Puig, Grammy award winning producer and director of creative innovation at Waves Audio, the new XPS 27 AIO, and its Precision business sibling, crank sound to a whole new level with built-in audio quality that previously required an external sound bar. With full frequency range high-fidelity audio built in, they deliver the best sound available in an AIO with 10 speakers pumping out sound at 50W per channel. The viewing experience is equally impressive with a beautiful 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) edge-to-edge touch display supporting 100 percent Adobe RGB color gamut. The Precision AIO delivers more performance options with Intel Xeon processors, AMD Radeon Pro graphics capable of powering VR and outstanding reliability with ISV certifications for top programs like AVID and SolidWorks, as well as leading security and manageability software. Dell's first VR-ready mobile workstation cements Dell's leadership as virtual reality PC authority Dell is a world leader in virtual reality (VR) with the most PC options in the market including XPS, Alienware and Precision workstations supporting Oculus and HTC headsets. As more headsets fly off the shelves, there is a huge opportunity-and demand-for VR content creators. Enter the Dell Precision 7720 mobile workstation-Dell's first VR-ready mobile workstation designed specifically for VR content creation. It's Dell' most powerful mobile workstation, thanks to the latest 7th Gen Intel Core and Intel Xeon processors and NVIDIA Pascal Quadro professional graphics. And since it's a mobile workstation, creators can now develop VR content from anywhere they find inspiration.



5K is so yesterday Dell expands displays leadership with UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K Monitor The Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K Monitor is the world's first 32-inch 8K resolution display. It has more than 1 billion colors, 33.2M pixels of resolution, 100 percent Adobe RGB and sRGB color gamut and an unprecedented 280 ppi-which is four times more content than Ultra HD 4K resolution and 16 times more content than Full HD. Monitors offering this extreme level of resolution and Dell PremierColor clarity and gradation are important in commercial fields where in-depth image zooming is critical-such as photo and video editing, medicine and diagnostic research, and oil and gas exploration-all among the early adopters of this technology. Plus its near borderless display gives customers 32 inches of screen real estate in a highly compact package.

Additionally, Dell is announcing several new monitors with its new HDR (News - Alert) feature to enhance the visual experience through a wider range of colors for exceptionally vivid images, higher clarity with visibly vibrant textures and increased contrast to capture a multitude of natural shades and hues. New monitors with the HDR feature include: the Dell 27 Ultrathin Monitor with a contemporary design, the world's thinnest profile in its class, InfinityEdge display, Quad HD technology and USB Type-C connectivity as well as the Dell 24 and 27 InfinityEdge Monitors, which also feature dual 6W external speakers professionally tuned by award-winning Waves Maxx Audio. The ultimate "no wires" experience coming soon with the world's first wireless charging 2-in-1 Wireless connectivity has been widespread in notebooks for years, but there's one wire that has always remained in the equation-the power cord. Dell will deliver a true wireless experience by incorporating WiTricity magnetic resonance wireless charging technology in the 12-inch Latitude 7285 2-in-1 available later this year. When combined with a charging mat and WiGig wireless dock, users can take the Latitude 2-in-1 with them without disengaging any wires or a physical dock. And when they return to their desk and set the 2-in-1 on the charging mat, it begins charging, automatically reconnects to the WiGig dock and content appears on the external display. More information about the Latitude 7285 2-in-1 and wireless charging will follow at Dell EMC World in May. Dell consumer and commercial devices refresh Dell's line of XPS, Inspiron and Alienware consumer devices and OptiPlex, Latitude and Precision commercial products get upgraded with 7th Gen Intel Core processors, USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity options and updated professional graphics from NVIDIA and AMD. Dell is also refreshing its monitor lineup, continuing its global leadership in displays. Products built for business also feature 7th Gen Intel Core vPro and Xeon processors and new ultrathin notebook and 2-in-1 designs-reflecting customer demands for thin and light professional products that don't compromise on productivity, security and manageability. For example, Dell expands its leadership in workstations with the Precision 5520, the world's lightest 15-inch mobile workstation and a darling among creative professionals. The Latitude 7000 Series Ultrabooks and an award-winning 12-inch Latitude 5000 Series 2-in-1 are also added to the lineup. This detachable 2-in-1 weighs less than 2lbs, features a unique auto-deploy kickstand that extends up to 150 degrees for multiple viewing angles and has multiple connectivity options. For desktop lovers looking for space-saving designs, Dell has redefined the desktop experience with the new OptiPlex 5250 AIO and an updated line of OptiPlex small and micro form factor desktops. These sleek products provide full desktop performance and productivity in compact chassis that can be mounted behind corresponding displays with our innovative AIO stands or under a table to free up desk space. Perfect for pairing with a desktop or laptop, new monitors also include the Dell 24 Monitor for Video Conferencing, which features a two megapixel Full HD IR camera with privacy shutter, noise-canceling microphone and dual 5W speakers built in, and the Dell 24 Touch Monitor. Click here for more information on our full monitor lineup. Consumer Electronics Association honors Dell innovations with CES 2017 Innovation Awards Dell Canvas (Honoree, Tech For a Better World category)

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (Honoree, Computer Hardware and Components category)

Dell XPS 27 AIO (Honoree, Computer Hardware and Components category)

Dell Latitude 5285 2-in-1 (Honoree, Computer Hardware and Components category)

Dell 27 Ultrathin Monitor S2718D (Honoree, Computer Peripherals category)

Dell Alienware 17 with Tobii Eye Tracking Technology (Honoree, Gaming category)

Dell Premier Wireless Keyboard and Mouse KM717 (Honoree, Computer Accessories category) Pricing and availability January: Starting Jan. 5: Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is available exclusively on Dell.com and at Best Buy (News - Alert) in the U.S. starting at $999.99. Dell XPS 27 AIO is available on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,499.99.

Available Jan. 12 on Dell.com in the U.S., the Dell 24 Touch Monitor (P2418HT) starts at $399.99, and the Dell 24 Monitor for Video Conferencing (P2418HZ) starts at $329.99 February: Available Feb. 7 on Dell.com in the U.S., the OptiPlex 5050 Micro starts at $599 and the OptiPlex 5250 AIO starts at $879.

starts at $599 and the starts at $879. Available Feb. 23 on Dell.com in the U.S., the Dell 24 InfinityEdge Monitor (S2418HX) starts at $289.99 and the Dell 27 InfinityEdge Monitor (S2718HX) starts at $379.99.

(S2418HX) starts at $289.99 and the (S2718HX) starts at $379.99. Starting Feb. 28: Dell Precision 7720 VR-ready mobile workstation will be available on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,699. New Latitude notebooks, including the Dell Latitude 5285 2-in-1 , will be available on Dell.com in the U.S. The Latitude 5285 2-in-1 starts at $899.

March, April: Available March 23 on Dell.com in the U.S., the Dell 27 Ultrathin Monitor (S2718D) starts at $699.99, and the Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K Monitor (UP3218K) starts at $4,999.

(S2718D) starts at $699.99, and the (UP3218K) starts at $4,999. The Dell Canvas will be available March 30 on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,799.

will be available March 30 on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,799. The Dell Precision AIO (5720) will be available April 6 on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,599. Coming Soon Dell XPS 15 notebook is available on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $999.99.

is available on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $999.99. Dell Precision 5520 15-inch mobile workstation will be available on Dell.com in the U.S. starting at $1,399. Visit #DellExperience at the Venetian during CES 2017 At CES, Dell is hosting an interactive gallery and a series of events at the Yardbird Southern Table & Bar at the Venetian. The #DellExperience will be open Jan. 5-7 for all CES badge holders. Stop by each day beginning at 9 a.m. PT to check out virtual reality and gaming demos and hands-on experiences with new technology. Visit dell.com/CESpressroom for all materials. About Dell With award-winning desktops, laptops, 2-in-1s and thin clients, powerful workstations and rugged devices made for specialized environments, monitors, endpoint security solutions and services, Dell gives today's workforce what they need to securely connect, produce, and collaborate from anywhere at any time. Dell, a part of Dell Inc., services customers from consumers to organizations of all sizes with the industry's broadest, most innovative end-user portfolio. Based on Principled Technologies Report of November 2016, the smallest refers total surface area of the notebooks. Full report found here. http://www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/XPS_15_9560_comparison_0117.pdf MobileMark 2014 battery benchmark: XPS 13 2-in-1 tested with 7th Gen Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD and FHD display. Based on testing using the MobileMark 2014 battery life benchmark test. For more information about this benchmark test, visit www.bapco.com. Actual battery life may be significantly less than the test results and varies depending on product configuration and use, software, usage, operating conditions, power management settings and other factors. Maximum battery life will decrease with time. Dell's HDR feature has been designed with a PC user in mind and supports specifications that are different from existing TV standards for HDR. Please review the specs carefully for further details. Dell HDR monitors require HDR10 enabled content from a compatible source like your service provider, a Blu-ray disc or a game. Offers subject to change, not combinable with all other offers. Taxes, shipping, and other fees apply. Free shipping offer valid only in Continental (except Alaska) U.S. Offer not valid for Resellers. Dell reserves the right to cancel orders arising from pricing or other errors. Weights vary depending on configuration and manufacturing variability. Intel, Intel Core, Xeon and Thunderbolt are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105005271/en/

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A 50-year-old Waco woman likely will spend the rest of her life in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl in 2009.

Jurors in Wacos 54th State District court deliberated less than an hour before recommending two life prison terms and a 10-year prison term for Donna Kay Steggall, a former girlfriend of one of the victims mothers.

Earlier Thursday, the jurors deliberated about an hour before convicting Steggall on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child younger than 6 and one count of indecency with a child by exposure. Jurors also recommended that Judge Matt Johnson fine Steggall $10,000 on each of the three counts.

Steggall, who formerly worked at Sanderson Farms, cried after she was convicted, but showed less emotion after the jury returned the maximum penalty on all three counts.

Steggall, who will serve the sentences concurrently, is not eligible for release on the first two charges because the law precludes the possibility of parole for those who abuse children younger than 6. Barring a reversal of the conviction, Steggall will spend the rest of her life in prison.

My client was disappointed in the outcome, defense attorney Phil Martinez said. I respect the jurys decision and she is wanting to appeal the sentence.

Prosecutors Hilary LaBorde and Liz Buice asked the jury to give Steggall life sentences, saying she robbed the young girl of her innocence and forever changed how she will view her roles as wife and mother.

Steggalls testimony

Steggall, who testified Thursday in the first phase of the trial, denied the allegations. She said the girl was lying and attributed her story to the hatred the girls biological mother and her mothers former partner feel for her.

The girls biological mothers partner had a relationship with Steggall after she and the girls mother broke up, but they continued to act as the girls co-parents.

That would be something a monster would do, Steggall said. I am not capable of doing that.

Steggall acknowledged that she has a felony conviction in Missouri for intoxication assault and two misdemeanor convictions for assaulting two different women.

Steggall downplayed her relationship with the girls other mother, saying she never really lived with her, they argued a lot and merely used drugs and had kinky, twisted sex.

She said the girls biological mother hated her and forbade her to be around the girl. Consequently, she was never alone with the girl, Steggall said.

The girl, who is now 13, testified Wednesday that she was staying with her other mother and Steggall at their North Waco home in the summer and Steggall took her swimming at Steggalls sisters home in Woodway.

Steggall took a pool toy and rubbed it on the crotch of Steggalls swimming suit, the girl said. Later, after they got home, Steggall performed oral sex on her and gave her a vibrating sex toy and showed her how to use it while Steggall used one too, the girl said.

She reported the abuse five years later, two years after her mom and Steggall had broken up, according to trial testimony.

It wouldnt leave my head. I had to tell somebody, the girl said.

Judge Matt Johnson excused a juror Thursday morning after the juror reported that he was around Steggall and the victims two mothers at a bar one night but didnt remember the incident or the women until after they testified.

The juror told the judge that he already had formed an opinion about the defendant based on his observations that night and her testimony Thursday only solidified his feelings that she is guilty.

The judge excused the man, and the remaining 11 jurors, who were unaware of the mans feelings, returned verdicts in the case.
Connally Independent School Districts Early College High School is one of 19 school districts statewide to recently receive grant funds to form an innovative academy as part of an initiative announced by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The governors office said on Dec. 21 a total of $7.1 million was awarded to the school districts by the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Workforce Commission and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to form the academies. Connally ISD is expected to receive more than $200,000 once paperwork has been completed, Principal Hermann Pereira said Thursday, the day Connally ISD students returned from winter break.

The academy will help school districts develop stronger partnerships between colleges, regional employers, the local workforce and area industries, according to the governors office website.

The academy will allow Connally students to focus on specific course work related to high-demand occupations like advanced technologies and manufacturing, aerospace and defense, biotechnology and life sciences, energy, information and computer technology and more.

Providing tools for future generations to succeed in the workplace is essential in building a brighter future for the State of Texas, Abbott stated in a press release. By uniting employers, educators and local leaders in this initiative, Texas students will have even more opportunities to gain the skills they need to excel in the economy of tomorrow. I am confident these Innovative Academies will serve as exemplary models for workforce development across industries and educational institutions throughout the Lone Star State.

Because of its current partnerships, Connally High School already has an advantage in some of the areas, giving students a direct pipeline into those career fields. The Early College High School is already partnered with Texas State Technical College, and recently partnered with McLennan Community College for the first time in late 2016 to offer course credit, certificates or even an applied associates degree in criminal justice or paramedicine beginning in August.

The grant was initially expected to only cover additional resources, curriculum and teachers in the classroom, Pereira said. Now, it will allow the campus to directly expand on the health care side of education, Pereira said. The academy will be geared more toward biotechnology and life sciences, including health sciences, said Sara Rudd, the schools business education teacher and community partnership liaison.

We wanted to be able to branch off into health care because thats a big push our students have an interest for, and its a job in education thats always kind of going to be there, Pereira said. Were trying to give our kids options to go into, so they can prepare and go into the job market.

Pereira and Rudd hope the new focus on health sciences will bring in at least another 30 to 40 students to the early college high school next year, they said.

This will really get them the hands-on learning they enjoy so much, and really find the career theyre interested in and learn fully what its about, Rudd said. This will allow them, early on as freshman to their senior year, to explore life sciences and really anything in the healthcare field. Being able to hire a health-science teacher, which we dont currently have, will allow students who want to learn more about health care to really kind of get into it before they start taking their college classes.
Local transportation planners still are pressing for full funding of Wacos Interstate 35 reconstruction project to begin by early 2019, but they are considering alternatives that could spread the work out over two or three phases.

The fastest and most cost-effective way to widen and rebuild the eight-mile I-35 section inside Loop 340 is to bid it as a single project, Waco-based Texas Department of Transportation leaders told the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization on Thursday. But scraping together $433 million for the entire project is a challenge.

That would be ideal, and we are still hopeful that will happen, but realistically, probably not, said Bobby Littlefield, Waco TxDOT district engineer. The longer we stand here and wait, the higher that (price) goes.

He said he is hoping as early as March to learn how much in discretionary funds the Texas Transportation Commission is willing to commit. The Waco district has its own funding streams to add to the project, but if the total falls short of $433 million, he has backup plans that the MPO could consider to get the project started on time.

Plan B would be to build the section from 12th Street to North Loop 340 at a cost of $301 million, starting in fiscal year 2019. The second phase, from 12th Street to South Loop 340, would begin in fiscal year 2022 and cost $191 million. The total cost of the project would be $492 million.

Littlefield said if the commission agrees to fund 50 percent of the project, Plan B would be a possible alternative.

If its less, then officials could consider Plan C. Under that plan, work would begin in fiscal year 2019 with a $146 million segment between 12th Street and Forrest Street. A $167 million phase two would begin in 2021, extending from Forrest to North Loop 340, and work would begin in 2024 on the $207 million third phase from 12th Street to South Loop 340.

That plan would cost a total of $520 million and extend construction time until 2027.

Unappealing option

Waco Mayor Kyle Deaver, chairman on the MPO policy board, said thats an unappealing option.

The disruption for the citizen goes way up, he said.

In an interview, MPO director Chris Evilia said he expects the Texas Transportation Commission would have to pay for 80 percent of the Interstate 35 to ensure the whole project can be done at once.

The local MPO, which sets transportation priorities in McLennan Countys urbanized areas, has discretion over a stream of TxDOT funding and is expected to contribute some of it to Interstate 35. The funding stream is expected to be $15 million in 2018, rising to $34.25 million in 2019 and $20 million in 2020.

Littlefield, who sits on the MPO board, said state transportation officials dont expect the MPO to dedicate its entire portion to the Interstate 35 project.

They know we have other priorities in the region, he said.

The second priority is a new $35 million interchange at Speegleville Road and Highway 84, which is tentatively set to begin in late 2018. Littlefield said that project can still happen on time along with Interstate 35.

The MPO board will likely vote in April on whether to phase the I-35 project or hold out for more money, Evilia said.

The eight-mile Waco project is the final segment to be reconstructed in the Interstate 35 Central Texas corridor, which runs 96 miles from north of Hillsboro to south of Salado. The entire corridor project is expected to cost $2.5 billion.

The Waco section is expensive because of its scope, which includes:

 Reconstructing the decades-old main lanes of Interstate 35 and expanding them to eight lanes.

 Rebuilding and widening frontage roads.

 Rebuilding and relocating ramps, with a reduction from 42 to 26 ramps. A new braided ramp north of Elm Avenue would allow southbound traffic exiting the main lanes to cross over an entrance ramp to get to Elm.

 Replacing all highway bridges, including the three-level interchange at Business 77, which will be simplified and reduced to two levels. The 11th Street overpass will be converted to an underpass and will have pedestrian connections, as will the reconstructed Fourth and Fifth Street overpass.

 Rebuilding the main lanes on the bridge spanning the Brazos River, which are currently several feet lower than the new frontage road bridges.

The view you get now is of the bridges, which are pretty, but you cant see the river, Waco TxDOT district transportation planning director Michael Bolin told the MPO.

TxDOT officials assured the MPO that four lanes of the interstate would remain open during daytime hours throughout construction. Loop 340, which is being widened in two places, will serve as an alternate route, but traffic will be diverted there only if theres an accident, Littlefield said.
We are not through the first week of the new Congress and already Democrats have jumped rather successfully on three issues, which just so happen to be strong ones both substantively and politically for them.

First, Democrats are making hay out of Republicans failure to take seriously their own drain-the-swamp promise. They jumped all over the plan to gut the congressional ethics office. Then on Wednesday, Sen. Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Peter Welch rounded up dozens of fellow Democrats to sponsor legislation stating that President-elect Donald Trump should comply with the Constitution and follow the precedent established by prior presidents and convert his assets to simple, conflict-free holdings, adopt blind trusts managed by an independent trustees, or take other equivalent measures.

In their news release announcing the legislation, Democrats set the basis for a constitutional standoff. The resolutions note that in the absence of such actions by the president-elect before he assumes office or without specific authorization by Congress, Congress will regard dealings by Trump-owned companies with any entity owned by a foreign governmental actor as potential violations of the Constitutions Emoluments Clause. Cardin explained that voters need to know that the president of the United States is making decisions based on what is in the public interest and not because it would advance the presidents private interests. This resolution is intended to send a clear message to the president-elect that he must take appropriate action and avoid any potential conflict with the Constitution before he takes an oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution in two weeks.

Democrats are on solid footing, according to Hart Research Associates poll in 14 battleground states conducted for the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund:

When asked to rate the importance of 13 potential priorities for the new president and Congress, voters in the Senate battleground states put an exceptionally high premium on cleaning up corruption and financial conflicts of interest in the government  rating it only slightly behind protecting Medicare for senior citizens, the number one item. . . . . It is significant to note that only 34 percent of voters say that Donald Trump is doing enough to avoid conflicts of interest between his business holdings and his role as president, while 52 percent say he should be doing more to avoid conflicts of interests. . . . Voters may not be constitutional experts on the emoluments clause, but they believe that Donald Trump should not be allowed to receive payments from foreign governments through his business holdings while serving as president (71 percent agree, 18 percent disagree). Trump voters agree by 53 percent to 31 percent. Moreover, a 54 percent majority of all voters want Congress to take action to prevent Donald Trump from receiving payments from foreign governments while serving as president, while 17 percent say that President-elect Trump should not be allowed to accept foreign government payments, but do not think that congressional action is warranted at this time.

No wonder Democrats are pushing the issue.

Obamacare repeal

Then there is the issue of repealing Obamacare with no replacement in sight. Republicans are already getting weak in the knees, and for good reason. The Los Angeles Times reported, After demanding for six years that the Affordable Care Act be gutted, Republican leaders refused Wednesday to outline concrete steps to repeal and replace it, even as members of their party voiced growing reservations about rolling the law back without a viable alternative. The report continued:

The lack of detail underscored the complexities of undoing the biggest expansion of the social safety net in decades without interfering with health care for tens of millions of Americans. Republicans wavering just a day after the start of a new Congress also may give opponents additional time to shore up support for preserving Obamacare in some form. . . .

This week alone, leading physician groups, including the American Medical Association, joined the push to slow the repeal campaign. Others urging caution include the American Diabetes Association and the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society.

A growing number of Republican senators are also voicing reservations about the lack of a clear plan, jeopardizing GOP leaders vision for swift repeal in a chamber where just three Republican defections could torpedo legislation.

 Were not sure exactly what direction were going to go to have a full and careful transition period, said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, whose state has seen a dramatic drop in its uninsured rate thanks to Obamacare.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., piped up to argue (accurately) that a full repeal would increase the debt, something he was not prepared to do.

Maybe both sides are eyeing the polling. By one poll, only about 25 per- cent of Americans want to repeal Obamacare. Moreover, only 52 percent of Republicans (a severe drop from 69 percent last month) want it totally repealed. More Republicans now say they want the law scaled back under Trump and the Republican-controlled, with that share more than doubling from 11 percent before the Nov. 8 election to 24 percent after. The Hart poll found that by a margin of 59 percent to 32 percent, battleground voters dont want to repeal Obamacare without a replacement.

Even a majority of Trump voters feel this way. Again, its not hard to figure out why Democrats have seized on Republicans inability to tell voters what their replacement plan is.

Trump & Russia

Finally, Democrats are vociferously attacking Trump for sidling up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, denigrating (and now threatening to slash) our intelligence agencies and citing Julian Assange favorably. (Most Republicans are rejecting a pro-Putin line, but few are criticizing Trump for taking one.) A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found: Fifty-five percent of Americans say they are at least quite a bit concerned about the Russian hacks. . . . Broadly, at 31 percent, more Americans said Trump is too friendly toward Russian President Vladimir Putin than the 24 percent who said hes not too friendly. Another 44 percent had no opinion.

Once again, Democrats (and in this case, some Republicans) are on firm ground; Trump is not. If Republicans are not sufficiently resolute in the confirmation hearings in rejecting pro-Putin nominees or nominees not prepared to deal sharply with the Russian autocrat, you can bet that Democrats will pounce.

In sum, we see three key issues  corruption, Obamacare and Russia  all of which are important to voters and on which Trump is on shaky ground even with his own supporters. Republicans would be a whole lot safer to demand that Trump divest himself of his businesses, come up with an alternative to replace Obamacare before repealing it and denounce Trumps efforts to cozy up to Putin and disable our intelligence agencies. (It remains to be seen whether sounding anti-Putin but supporting Trump and his nominees is a workable strategy for straddlers such as Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.)

The Trumpized GOP is fumbling on these three issues, essentially disasters of their own making. Republicans could have demanded (even before the nomination) that Trump divest his business holdings. They could have been ready to go with an Obamacare plan alternative. Republicans could have rebuked Trump during the campaign for his pro-Putin rhetoric. If they now find themselves in a corner, with an untenable repeal-and-delay plan and tied at the hip to a conflict-ridden Russian sympathizer in chief, they have only themselves to blame.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
[January 05, 2017] Samsung Introduces Stylish, Powerful and Practical Galaxy A5 with Enhanced Camera

Samsung delivers intuitive innovation with the latest addition to the Galaxy A smartphone series MISSISSAUGA, ON, Jan. 5, 2017 /CNW/ - Samsung Electronics Canada announced the addition to the Galaxy A series at CES 2017 in Las Vegas: the 5.2-inch Galaxy A5 smartphone, with refinements that deliver a beautiful design, powerful performance and ultimate convenience. "At Samsung, we want to ensure Canadians have access to the latest innovation to get them closer to what they are passionate about," said Paul Brannen, COO and Executive Vice President, Mobile Solutions, Samsung Canada. "The Galaxy A5 is a testament to this; we integrated our unique approach to design with features Canadians have come to love to provide added performance to fit their connected lives." Crafted with premium metal and glass, the Galaxy A5 seamlessly fuses 3D glass and a metal frame with a modern finish. Zero camera protrusion on the front and back complete its sleek, attractive design. The Galaxy A5 is available in two stylish colours: Black Sky and Blue Mist. Capture important memories with the enhanced front and rear 16-megapixel cameras, which are now stable with accurate autofocus, resulting in vibrant and clear photos, including selfie in low-light conditions. With the Galaxy A5, taking selfies is now super easy. The 16MP front and rear cameras with Light+ Camera ensure your shts are clear and bright, even in low-light environments. The new Floating Camera Button helps you comfortably take selfies with one hand and the front flash ensures brightness, even when captured in dark settings. The camera on the Galaxy A5 offers a simplified UX design, including easy swipe to quickly change modes or instant filters to activate picture effects. Users can leverage modes such as the Food Mode, to optimize photos and enhance the colour of images.



Galaxy A5 takes the hassle out of everyday tasks. The smartphone offers IP68 water and dust resistance1, allowing it to better withstand the elements, including rain, sweat, sand and dust, making the device suitable for a variety of activities. The Galaxy A5 provides more memory with expandable storage with microSD support up to 256GB. With a longer battery life to keep up with users' active lifestyles and Fast Charge, the device powers up in no time. The Galaxy A5 is equipped with reversible USB Type-C port for easy connectivity, including hassle-free charging. It also features Always On Display so users can quickly glance at the time and calendar without waking up the device, saving time and battery.

Samsung Cloud allows users to easily back up data and images, and with security top-of-mind, they can also separate private data and keep the contents safe in a Secure Folder, which supports biometric authentication. About Samsung Electronics Canada Samsung Electronics Canada inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, cameras and digital appliances. In 2016, Samsung was ranked in the top 10 most influential and reputable brands in Canada, based on studies by Ipsos Reid & Leger. Committed to helping Canadians live connected and make a difference, its Samsung Hope for Children corporate giving program supports children's education, sustainability and health-related issues in communities across the country. To discover more, please visit www.samsung.com. Follow Samsung Canada at facebook.com/SamsungCanada, on Twitter @SamsungCanada 1 This device has been tested and received an IP (Ingress Protection) rating of IP68, which tests for dust intrusion and for water submersion up to 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes. SOURCE Samsung Electronics Canada

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ASHLAND  Mike Pomeroy will be the featured speaker at the Men in Mission breakfast meeting on Saturday, Jan. 7 at American Lutheran Church in Ashland. Coffee is served at 6:30 a.m. and the free-will-offering breakfast begins at 6:45 a.m.

Pomeroy is a Lincoln-based planter and missionary with Christ for the City International, a mission agency based in Omaha with operations in 17 countries. He has served in full-time evangelism and discipleship ministries for 30 years and in the marketplace for 12 years.

In 1994 he founded and became executive director of Real Men of Integrity, a Christ-centered resource focusing on the transformation of men, their marriages and their communities. In 1997, he served as the Nebraska Promise Keepers field representative. In 2004, he started the annual Lincoln Leaders Prayer Summit.

From 2010 to 2013, Pomeroy wrote a blog (www.markpomeroy.com) explaining the story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. In 2014, he founded Sync with God, a nonprofit ministry whose purpose is to use 21st century technology to create a discipleship experience relevant to the millennial generation (ages 18 to 34).

He is the author of Sync: Connecting Your Life to Gods Story so older adults can mentor younger adults in spiritual intimacy, prayerful unity and sacrificial service to the community. He trains others through a network, NoPlaceLeft (noplaceleft.net).

He has a bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Iowa State University and a masters of arts in journalism and mass communications from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has been married for 41 years to Karen. They have three sons.

The Men in Mission Romans Bible Study will be held Saturday, Jan. 21 at 7 a.m. at Ashland Bible Church.
WAHOO  Bumpers of all makes, models and uses began to display an assortment of new Nebraska licenses plates beginning Jan. 3.

But the rush Saunders County Treasurer Marilyn Kelley anticipated was not in anticipation of the new Sower plate.

The state changed the way they do farm and commercial plates and there is no law or statute that says owners have to have the same numbers, Kelley said.

Kelley said that farm trucks will now have the letter R at the end and commercial plates will have a letter A at the end.

According to the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles, the additional letters were added to plates due to an increase in errant parking notices across the state.

The new plate numbering sequence will eliminate approximately 500,000 duplicate numbers, according to the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles.

On Jan. 3 at 8 a.m. it was first-come, first-serve on all farm truck license plates.

This means, however, that farm trucks with license plate numbers that have been together for potentially four decades, will now be separated due to the addition of a letter at the end of the license plates.

Ive had a lot of people say they will be here as soon as we open to get the number one tag, Kelley said last week.

But not all county residents have been eager to simply be first in line.

Kelley said shes had many people request special accommodations to obtain specific plates prior to Jan. 3.

Even in the courthouse, some have asked for special treatment, Kelley said.

When one individual was told he could not have special accommodations for a plate, he fussed that Kelley would not get re-elected over this.

She considered asking for a sheriff deputy to be on site for what she believes might be a competitive struggle for first in line.

In addition to the new Sower, farm and commercial plates, there are several other new plates available.

These plates include a Husker, mountain lion, breast cancer, Nebraska Cattlemen, Nebraska Corn Growers, Ducks Unlimited and sesquicentennial in addition to the normally offered military and university plates.

Kelleys office has been stocked with most of these plates in addition to the 14,000 Sower plates.

There is an additional cost for some of the new plates, but not all.

For example, there is no cost for the breast cancer plate, unless the purchaser orders a specialty message on it.

The cost for a mountain lion plate will be $5, but an additional $40 for a specialty message.

The sesquicentennial plate will cost purchasers $70 for the plate and $70 additionally for personalized message, but a portion of those funds goes to local cities where purchased for sesquicentennial events.

Another new license plate option this year is for owners of cars that do not come with a front license plate bracket on them.

Instead of installing an after-market front bracket, these cars will have a rear plate at a cost of $50 and a sticker on the front windshield that will cost an additional $100, Kelley said.

This option is for cars that come from the manufacturer without the bracket, she said.

Though there are many new options, Kelley said this will not assuage those looking strictly for their old farm truck license plate number.

Kelley said she planned to tow the line and start the morning with 6-1R.

And if the first guy has five trucks, hell get one through five, Kelley said.
The guest speaker will be Denette Lickiss of Indianola, Iowa. Lickess topic will be From High Heels to Wagon Wheels. In addition, Tom Teckmeyer of Teckmeyer Financial Services will share how to achieve financial goals. Lunch will be catered by Cookies and Cream Cafe of Wahoo.
[January 06, 2017] Bttn Launches a New Low-cost Connected Hardware Button for the US Mass Markets

HELSINKI and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Button Corporation, creator of the world's first physical push button always connected to the Internet, today launches the new product aimed specifically at companies operating in the US mass markets. At present connected devices in general remain complicated, expensive to deploy and not easily scalable. The new bttn device sets out to democratize the connected devices market by combining utter simplicity, versatile APIs, cloud based management and configuration toolset, and the leading IoT connectivity technology from Sigfox. "The new low-cost device together with our new cloud service make the deployment of any size easy and risk-free. With this combination we can make our connected hardware button an accessible solution for any company that wants to improve their customer experience and offer physical on-demand triggers," said Juuso Pesola, CEO of The Button Corporation. "We are proud to support The Button Corporation in their international development strategy, especially in the U.S. where we are rapidly deploying the Sigfox network," said Michael Orr, Sigfox Vice President Sales and Partners, North America. "The Bttn illustrates the competitive advantages of Sigfox connectivity: very low and predictable energy consumption and simplicity of use." The cost of the new bttn devices start from $2 per month for BttnInc's signed, local solution providers. Pre-orders start immediately, shipments in March.



About Sigfox Sigfox is the world's leading provider of connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). The company has built a global network to connect billions of devices to the Internet while consuming as little energy as possible, as simply as possible.

Sigfox's unique approach to device-to-cloud communications addresses the three greatest barriers to global IoT adoption: cost, energy consumption, and global scalability. Today, the network is present in 29 countries and on track to cover 60 by 2018  covering a population of 451 million people. With millions of objects connected and a rapidly growing partner ecosystem, Sigfox empowers companies to move their business model towards more digital services. Founded in 2010 by Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet, the company is headquartered in Labege near Toulouse, France's "IoT Valley". Sigfox also has offices in Paris, Madrid, Munich, Boston, San Francisco, Dubai and Singapore. For more information, see www.sigfox.com and follow us onTwitter, Facebook and Youtube About The Button Corporation The Button Corporation / Bttn Inc. is the creator of the bttn, the simplest internet user interface in the world. It brings the power of Internet-of-Everything to businesses with its elegantly designed physical push buttons always connected to the internet. The Button Corporation is based in Helsinki, Finland and New York, U.S. Read more at www.bt.tn/sigfox For further information, please contact: Saku Everi

The Button Corporation

Tel. +358 40 717 7776

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bttn-launches-a-new-low-cost-connected-hardware-button-for-the-us-mass-markets-300387028.html SOURCE The Button Corporation

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[January 06, 2017] Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto Receives Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Irdeto, a world leader in digital platform security, has received the 2016 European Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation. Drawing upon nearly 50 years of experience in developing anti-hacking solutions, Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto is a highly reliable digital security platform for connected car security. It is built on the company's core software security technologies, which also protect the application data on the system during storage and while in use. The solution is a multi-layered, multi-faceted product that resolves issues relating to obfuscation, integrity verification, anti-debug, whitebox cryptography, diversification and renewability. Click here for the full multimedia experience of this release - http://bit.ly/2hW2EUA "As Irdeto understands the behaviours of non-ethical hackers, it does not rely on a perimeter security model; instead, it employs an in-depth security strategy for connected cars," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Consultant, Sriram Venkatraman. "Its security solution is paired with both telemetry and dynamic policy management features to aid the investigation of hacking events. Cloakware for Automotive then provides measured responses to these events, based on analyses of the details communicated through telemetry." In addition to robust crypto products, such as public key infrastructure (PKI), firewalls, anti-virus and intrusion detection systems/intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS), connected cars require another layer of security. Irdeto believes in deep-level software security and security lifecycle management, which turns an OS into a secure operating environment through the use of anti-hacking technology. These features help the solution notify the original equipment manufacturer of the type of tampering that is being attempted in a specific vehicle, making it a unique and highly useful tool. "Conventional cryptographic algorithms used to protect software keys and data are ineffective when operating in whitebox environments where a hacker has full visibility and control over the executing code. The Cloakware for Automotive solution has the unique capability of not revealing keys or data while the cryptographic computations are being observed in complete detail," noted Venkatraman. "Irdeto's full suite of patented technlogies and cybercrime services not only protect the vehicle environment, but also itself from being reverse engineered and modified by hackers."



Irdeto has solid plans to build an ecosystem of unparalleled solutions that will help create a compelling software-defined car. For example, Irdeto recently announced that Link Motion has implemented Cloakware for Automotive into Link Motion's connected carputer, Motion T. The Cloakware for Automotive solution helps Motion T block hackers and cybercriminals from altering the carputer, preventing cyberattacks targeting connected cars. Irdeto's approach includes using the Cloakware for Automotive solution to protect autonomous and connected cars. Irdeto provides flexible business model options for various tiers of customers, wherein OEMs can pay for a complete solution up front, development of a solution and then a recurring fee over the life cycle of the solution or just a recurring fee.

In addition, Irdeto's global network of partners covers law enforcement and industry bodies and agencies, as well as consumer and technology sectors. Its partnerships in the automotive space, including its collaboration with Tata Elxsi to provide automakers with secure in-car display systems for automobiles, provide automakers with the ability to create secure vehicles. "As vehicles have become increasingly more connected, the attack surface of today's automobiles has grown considerably," said Daniel Thunberg, Global Head, Internet of Things at Irdeto. "This has resulted in hackers evolving their attack methods to exploit vulnerabilities that exist in automobiles, making it critical to employ a solution that gains insights into attack attempts to quickly take measured actions. Irdeto solutions include strong anti-hacking protection with renewable security, making it virtually impossible to reverse engineer vehicle software. By understanding methods used by hackers and mitigating attack attempts, Irdeto helps ensure that automakers provide consumers with cars that operate as intended." Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognises the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it offers customers. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About Irdeto Irdeto: Your Partner for Automotive Irdeto is a pioneer in digital platform and application security, with its software security technology and cyber services protecting more than 5 billion devices and applications against cyberattacks for some of the world's best known brands. For nearly 50 years, Irdeto has worked with software application providers, connected device manufacturers, pay media operators and content creators to secure their products and business models. Combining patented technologies and services, the Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto solution helps automakers and tier-one suppliers protect their brand and save cost in the battle against cybercriminals by creating a secure, tamper-proof environment for vehicle software. Irdeto, a subsidiary of Naspers (JSE: NPN), is headquartered in the Netherlands with more than 15 locations worldwide. Visit http://www.irdeto.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. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact: Chiara Carella

P: +44 (0) 207.343.8314

F: 210.348.1003

E: [email protected] Stephen Russell

Manager, Public Relations, Americas

Mobile: +1 774-273-3890

Email: [email protected]

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Police have removed fishing wire from a road in Kewdale after it was strung across a street on Friday morning.

A motorist alerted Belmont Police to the incident after driving their vehicle through the clear wire, causing it to hit their windscreen and go over the top of the car.

The male officer has been stood aside. Credit:Rohan Thompson

The line was tied to a street sign pole on one side of the road and a tree on the opposite side.

Belmont Police senior sergeant Peter Woollons said the incident occurred on Acton Avenue near Cottage Park, with another resident reporting fishing wire across their driveway on nearby Kew Street.
Jakarta: An internal Indonesian military cable issued last month states the suspension of co-operation between the Australian and Indonesian military only affected activities under one sub-committee, suggesting Indonesia never intended to completely suspend military ties.

The December 29 cable, seen by Fairfax Media, was sent on behalf of military chief Gatot Nurmantyo, and said activities under the joint operation and exercise sub committee were being halted.

There are four sub-committees under the Australia Indonesia High Level Committee, which brings together the chiefs of both Australia and Indonesia's defence forces and convened for the first time in April 2013.

Other sub-committees include intelligence and logistics.
Hundreds of people were evacuated to the tarmac amid the shooting at Fort Lauderdale. Credit:AP "He [the suspect] is unharmed. No law enforcement fired any shots," he said. Witnesses told MSNBC that the shooter was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and was shot by police as he attempted to reload. A shooting victim is unloaded from an emergency vehicle and taken into Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale. Credit:AP Eyewitness John Schlicher described the shooter as a "slender man" who was "directly firing at us" while passengers waited for their bags to come off the carousel.

"I put my head down and prayed," he told MSNBC, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head. Police officers stand on the perimeter road along the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Credit:AP His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that victim was already dead, Schlicher said. The shooter reloaded once for a second burst of shooting, he said, but he could not say how many bullets were fired. The airport has been evacuated and all flights to and from the airport have been cancelled.

Less than three hours after the gunman was taken into custody, panic gripped passengers again following unconfirmed reports that additional shots had been heard at a second terminal and police were searching for a possible second active shooter. The Broward Sheriff's office confirmed that an "active search" was underway, while the Transportation Security Administration ordered people to "shelter in place", tweeting "Active shooter at #FLL". In another Facebook post from the airport, La Marca said that police were searching the parking garage for "a possible second active shooter". Sheriff Israel told reporters at a press conference at the airport that the suspect did not appear to have acted with anyone else.

"At this point, it looks like he acted alone," Israel said. However, he added that "this scene is considered fluid and active" as police search the rest of the airport. Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC "there was no rhyme or reason to it." "He didn't say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didn't yell anything," Lea said. The 53-year-old financial adviser from Minneapolis told another news outlet he was in the baggage claim when a man came in and started shooting.

"I was dodging bullets and trying to help people get out of the way," Lea told NBC News. "At first we thought it was firecrackers," he said. "Everyone started screaming and running. The shooter made his way down through baggage claim. He had what looked like a 9mm and emptied his entire clip. People were trying to run." Lea told ABC News that he was "about 20 feet away" when the gunman was arrested. "Once he was out of ammunition, he threw the gun on the ground and he lay on the ground spread eagle. He was basically waiting for the officers to come get him," Lea said. Florida Governor Rick Scott described the shooting as "a senseless act of evil".

"It's horrible what happened here," he told a press conference at the airport. "This is a senseless act of evil and we are going to hold whoever did this accountable." He said he had "reached out" to president-elect Donald Trump and vice president-elect Mike Pence but it was not "the time to be political". "The biggest thing to do now is to mourn for everyone who lost their lives and pray for those who are still fighting for their lives," he said. In the US, travellers are allowed to bring firearms on flights, as long as they are unloaded, locked in hard-sided containers and are in checked baggage, according to the TSA. Ammunition can also be placed in checked baggage, but are prohibited from being taken in carry-on, along with magazines, bolts and other gun parts. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian Embassy in Washington was making enquiries to determine whether any Australians have been affected by the shooting.



It advised that people concerned about Australians who may be in the region should attempt to contact them directly.
Patrick Norman Pat Chapman is a 34-year-old, Caucasian male who was last known to be in Piedmont which is near the area of Greenville, Missouri on May 10, 2020.

Pat had stayed the night with a friend and his wife at their home. In the early morning when the friend woke to go to work.

Pat was gone in his own Burgundy color 1995 Ford Escort. That is the last anyone was known to have seen him. The vehicle was later recovered on May 29, 2020 in Mill Spring, Missouri.
Under the auspices of the WCO-INAMA project (funded by Sweden, US Department of State, GiZ and the CITES Secretariat) the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) received support from the WCO in strengthening its intelligence function. The primary objective of this activity was to enhance the Intelligence capacity of the Zambia Customs administration to collect, process and disseminate intelligence with a focus on illegal trade in endangered species.

This support was provided through a WCO experts mission to the ZRA headquarters in Lusaka, held from 12th to 16th December 2016.

The mission started with a meeting with the Commissioner for the Customs Services of ZRA, Mr. Dingani C. Banda. The Commissioner stressed the importance of using intelligence in Customs.

The support focused on revising the draft strategic intelligence framework of ZRA and on developing a detailed work plan to strengthen the Intelligence function. A working group, composed by personnel from the ZRA, was set up to implement this project.

On the final day of the mission, the project manager appointed by the ZRA for the process of strengthening the Intelligence function presented the work done during the mission to the Commissioner for the Customs Services, who expressed his wholehearted support for this new initiative as well as his commitment to the implementation of the work plan.

This mission was funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GiZ).

For more information about this mission and the WCO-INAMA Project, please contact the WCO-INAMA project manager, Marco Foddi (marco.foddi@wcoomd.org).


CHARLESTON -- Officers and directors of the Corn Belt Shrine Club for 2017 were installed at the clubs annual Potentates Night celebration in Charleston in early December.

New officers shown at the installation are Eric Cresap, secretary; Mike Titus, first vice president and treasurer; Gerry Williams of Springfield, Chief Rabban of Ansar Shriners and installing officer; Tad Freezeland, president; and John Nay, secvond vice president; directors Robin Hood, Jamie Temples, Larry Clapp and Steve Ballinger. Paul McKillip, director, was absent.

The clubs 2016 president, Jamie Temples, announced that the club contributed $78,500 to Shriners Hospitals for Children during the past year. The money was raised at several events, including raffles and a tractor pull, with the cooperation of other community organizations.

Shriners Hospitals for Children is a health care system of 22 locations dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing specialty care, conducting innovative research, and offering outstanding teaching programs for medical professionals. Children up to age 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate are eligible for care and receive all services in a family-centered environment regardless of the families ability to pay.

The new Shriners Hospital in St. Louis, Mo., is located at 4400 Clayton Avenue. Information about patient referral is available by telephone at 1-800-850-2960. More information about Shriners Hospitals for Children may be found on the Internet at www.shrinershospitalsforchildren.org.

More information about activities of the Corn Belt Shrine Club is available on the club website at www.cornbeltshriners.com.
MATTOON -- The Lions Club recently heard a presentation from Tim Yow of Charleston about long-distance motorcycle riding.

Yow grew up in Central Illinois and became interested in riding bicycles and later motorcycles of all types. He enjoyed just taking off riding to nowhere special and it became a habit.

Later, Yow learned of a club called the Iron Butt Association and became involved in long-distance trips that eventually earned him multiple awards in the club.

Yow and a friend, Alan Leduc from Indiana, did a 23,500-mile-long distance trip that took 37 days, staring from the club headquarters in Key West, Fla. They circumnavigated the United States and Canada, including traveling on 2,500 miles of gravel roads in Alaska.

LeDuc wrote a book about their trip, Passion in the Wind, which is available on Amazon  Kindle.

Yow's advice is to plan in advance for everything. Traveling in sparse population areas make it a must that you carry all your needs, including food, water, medical needs, tools, spare parts, fuel, air, tires, etc.

Concern for safety is a given, especially in the West. Bears, wolves, moose, and buffalos, etc., rule the road and sometimes sleep there. Mosquitoes and spiders can also be a problem.
MATTOON -- The Illinois Community College Board announced on Friday that Lake Land College and six other community college districts will each receive $428,571 in emergency funding.

Lake Land President Josh Bullock said this supplemental funding will help offset some of the $5.7 million in budget cuts that the college has made to balance its budget amid a state funding shortfall. He said Lake Land's staffing level is "down to the bone" due to job cuts and vacant posts left unfilled.

"It is not a tremendous amount of funding, but it is enough to allow us to do a few things to help," Bullock said.

For example, Bullock Lake Land plans to fill the vacant administrative assistant post in the Allied Health Division to help serve students and faculty. He said they are looking into additional options for the funding, with the ongoing goal of maintaining the quality of the education available at Lake Land.

Lake Land reported that this additional financial appropriation brings the total state funding received by the college for fiscal year 2017 to 54.2 percent of fiscal year 2015 levels for general operations.

A press release from the Illinois Community College Board reported that the other emergency funding recipients are Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Kaskaskia College, John A. Logan College, Rend Lake College, Shawnee Community College, and Southeastern Community College.

The districts were selected based on criteria established by the board during a special meeting on Dec. 7. The criteria was formulated on the assumption that districts with the least amount of local property tax funding will have the hardest time operating without state funding.

Bullock said Lake Land met the criteria that at least 60 percent of a college's total operating revenue be from state funding and local property taxes and that less 25 percent of this revenue be from property taxes. He said 17.8 percent of Lake Land's revenue in 2015 was from property taxes.

Colleges meeting this criterion were also required to demonstrate evidence of measures taken to reduce expenditures that required a reduction in staff and programs. Bullock said Lake Land has reduced the operating budgets of each of its divisions by 25 percent.

Board Chairman Lazaro Lopez said in the press release that the emergency funds will help ensure those community colleges with the fewest financial resources can continue to operate while "we wait for the General Assembly to pass a full, comprehensive balanced budget.

Despite todays action, community colleges across the state will continue to struggle without the adequate resources and predictability that comes with a full-year state budget and structural changes to fix the overall system, Lopez said.

The board reported that the emergency funding will help the states most vulnerable community college districts, but there remains a great need system-wide.

In September, the board passed a resolution declaring a state of emergency for the entire community college system due to the drastic loss of state revenue over the last two years.

The Illinois Community College Board is the state coordinating board for community colleges. Illinois is home to 48 community colleges in 39 districts and has the third largest community college system in the nation, serving nearly 850,000 residents each year in credit and non-credit courses.
Mattoon fire

Firefighters responded at 6:50 a.m. to a false alarm at the Mattoon train depot, 1718 Broadway Ave. They cleared the scene at 7:05 a.m. The cause of the alarm is undetermined.

Charleston fire

Firefighters responded to fire alarm pull box activation at 11:33 a.m. Wednesday at 521 Seventh St.

Charleston police

Ebony Augustin of Charleston struck a concrete post with his vehicle at 3:37 p.m. Dec. 30 at 2148 Woodfall Drive.

-- -- --

Raymond Klawonn of Charleston lost control of his vehicle and struck an object in the road at 8:52 a.m. Dec. 13 at the intersection of Illinois Route 16 and Douglas Street.

-- -- --

Allyson French of Trilla swerved her vehicle to the side to avoid another vehicle at 2:12 p.m. Dec. 22 at 1629 W Polk Ave. As result, French hit a mailbox owned by Tim Keefe of Charleston.

-- -- --

A vehicle driven by Abbie Simpson of Charleston went off the road and into a ditch at 6:53 p.m. Tuesday at the intersection of Lovers Lane and Cortland Drive.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

by Daniel J. Mitchell

Ive always viewed Ayn Rands most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, as a warning about the dangers of over-regulation, over-taxation, and excessive redistribution.

I wont spoil the plot for those who havent yet read the book, but its basically a story about what happens to a society when the people pulling the wagon decide thats no longer how they want to spend their lives.

And as these highly productive people begin to opt out, politicians come up with ever-crazier ideas of keeping the economy going.

The most absurd example, something that could only happen in a dystopian work of fiction rather than real life, was Directive 10-289, an edict from the government to prevent continued contraction by requiring everybody in the economy to do exactly the same thing next year that they did this year. This meant no changing jobs. No starting new companies. No closing down existing companies. No changes in pay. Or employment. No changes in anything. Freeze the economy at current levels.

In other words, take Nixon-style wage and price controls and apply them to every bit of economic activity.

Unfortunately, some politicians think Atlas Shrugged is a direction manual rather than a warning. In Montreal, theyve come up with a crazy idea to apply a version of Directive 10-289 to the restaurant industry. Im not joking. In a column for Reason, Baylen Linnekin explains this surreal new policy.

lawmakers in Montreal have moved to crack down on new restaurants, in an odious attempt to protect existing ones. Montreal has one of the highest restaurant per-capita ratios in North America and the amount of places to eat is worrying local politicians, reads a Canadian Press piece from earlier this week. Data shows Montreal trails only New York City in terms of restaurants per capita in North America. As in New York City, that competition is great for Montreals consumers. But it puts pressure on incumbent restaurateurs. So lawmakers have decided to side with the latter.

The new law isnt quite as bad as Directive 10-289, but its guided by the same attitude: Everything that exists now should be preserved and whats new is bad.

a ban on new restaurants from opening within 25 meters of an existing one along the citys Rue Notre Dame Notably, the action comes as a number of commercial and retail properties remain empty in this same part of Montreal. The law risk[s] turning the citys restaurant scene into a heavily bureaucratized nightmare like the provinces construction industry, says the head of Quebecs restaurant association

So who could possibly support such an initiative?

Unsurprisingly, the greatest enemies of genuine capitalism arent just politicians, but also incumbent firms that dont want competition.

some protectionist restaurateurs support the measure. In Montreal you can apply for a restaurant permit and get it immediatelythats a problem for me says David McMillan, a supporter of the restrictions, whose high-end restaurant, Joe Beef, is an intended beneficiary of the ban. Hes not alone. I dont believe in the free market anymore, says restaurateur Carlos Ferreira. We have to protect the good restaurants.

Gee, I thought consumers were the ones who were supposed to determine which restaurants are good. But Mr. Ferreira wants politicians and bureaucrats to now have the power.

Though we shouldnt mock the Canadians too much. After all, Barack Obama imposed a version of Directive 10-289 in the United States.

Heck, he must be a big fan of Atlas Shrugged because he also mimicked another part of the book.

Of course, there are some cities, and even entire nations, that apparently want to replicate everything in Ayn Rands classic novel.

And the results in these real-world experiments are similar to what happens in the book. Except the book actually has a happy ending, whereas theres little reason to be optimistic for a rebirth of freedom in places such as Greece and Venezuela.

Republished from Dan Mitchell's blog.

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Cloudy early with isolated thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 83F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 58F. S winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 05, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 05, 2017 | 02:22 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Paducah Police are asking for the public's help in their investigation into a shooting on Monday night.



Police say they were dispatched to the 500 block of South 9th Street about 8:15 pm, after getting complaints about gunshots. They spoke to the resident who said someone had fired two shots into the home, while several people were in various parts of the house.



Detectives say one of the bullets entered the home and grazed the right arm of 70-year-old Rita Story, causing minor injuries.



Anyone who might have information about this incident is asked to contact the Paducah Police Department at 270-444-8550 or call Crime Stoppers at 270-443-TELL. Tipsters can also find an online tip form at http://paducahky.gov/west-ky-crime-stoppers. Information leading to an arrest or indictment may result in a reward of up to $1,000.
By The Associated Press Jan. 05, 2017 | 10:24 PM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY





An arrest has been made on a contempt of court charge related to a pending Graves County District Court case.Last summer, 27-year-old Christopher Bouland lived in Farmington and was charged with harboring a vicious animal after his two dogs attacked Mitchell Slayden, causing serious injuries. Slayden had to be flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for treatment of injuries.Both dogs were seized by Kentucky State Police and Graves County Animal Control, but they were returned to Bouland under the conditions that they dogs be removed from Graves County and kept inside or on a leash. Bouland told the court that he was taking the dogs to Tennessee.On Wednesday, Sheriff's deputies responded to the a home on KY 129, between Wingo and Pilot Oak, for a dispute between neighbors. When deputies arrived they found Bouland lived there, and had two dogs on his property.Deputies said one of the dogs went into a neighbors yard and made aggressively movements toward a neighbor, who shot the dog in self-defense. The dog was taken to a local veterinarians office for treatment.The Sheriffs office and the Graves County Attorneys Office later determined that the dog that was shot had been one of the dogs involved in the attack of Slayden last summer, and the other dog was also on the property.Bouland's violation of the orders by the Graves County District Court led to his arrest Thursday night on a contempt of court charge. He was also arrested on a separate warrant for bail jumping.The second dog was seized by Animal Control. The dog that was shot will also be seized when it is released from the vet.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 05, 2017 | MURRAY, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 05, 2017 | 05:07 PM | MURRAY, KY

A Thursday morning disturbance call in Murray led to the arrest of two people.



The Murray Police Department says officers got a call around 10:30 am about a man trying to break into an apartment on South 4th Street. Upon arrival officers made contact with 36-year-old Ryan Cothran of Benton. Officers said they noticed damage to the door of the home, and suspected that Cothran was under the influence of some type of drug.



At the scene officers also learned that Cothran was driven to the home by 35-year-old Kristi McKendree of Hardin. While speaking with McKendree officers noticed evidence that led to discovery of a small baggie with a white powder that was tested to be cocaine and also found multiple pills hidden on her person.



Cothran was arrested and charged with Public Intoxication and Criminal Mischief. McKendree was arrested and charged with four counts of possession of a controlled substance. Both suspects were booked into the Calloway County Jail.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 04, 2017 | 09:28 PM | MAYFIELD, KY

Two people face drug charges in Mayfield.

Mayfield police officers received a complaint on Monday about people possibly manufacturing methamphetamine inside a home on South 16th Street. Officers made contact with 35-year-old Daron Bostic of Mayfield and 36-year-old April Stacey of New Concord.

Officers conducted a search of the home and a vehicle and found methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Stacey and Bostic were cited at the scene - charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of marijuana.







(This story has been edited at 11:15 am on Thursday to report those involved were NOT arrested as originally indicated, but were cited at the scene.)
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
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Satyrs were followers of the wine god, Dionysus; half-human, half-goat, all mischief. Onstage, they were more like half-man, half-penis. They ran around with lumbering, foot-long erections, encapsulations of all of our baser instincts. They boozed. They bonked. They basically just dicked around.

None of the ancient Greek satyr plays survived in full. Tragedy and comedy, yes, but not these raucous, hybrid affairs; subversive as satire, but rowdier, earthier, more Bacchanalian than that. We only know of them through secondary sources, depictions on vases or written accounts (God bless Greek theatre critics), but we don't have the texts themselves. They are lost to time. Culture gone missing.

It's a point Tony Harrison's extraordinary verse play pulls into the present. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus is a mock satyr play. Its first outing, in 1990, remains a highlight of National Theatre history, as a dozen actors with beards, boners and tails rampaged around the Olivier. Harrison put them in clogs, to stomp up a storm, and in doing so, his play draws a thread from one lost art-form to another. It is a clarion call against the marginalisation of working class culture; one that feels all the more pressing today, albeit it arguably too little, too late.

Trackers starts with two Oxford dons, Bernard Grenfall (Tom Purbeck) and Arthur Hunt (Richard Glaves) sifting through scraps of papyrus in Egypt. Searching for fragments of Sophocles' lost satyr play, Ichneutae, they chuck out daily petitions in search of high art. Purbeck's cream-suited, cut-glass academic cuts an increasingly manic figure, until, one night, he's possessed by Apollo, god of music and poetry, who summons the satyrs to find his cattle.

They are quite something, the satyrs. Even only six-strong, Jimmy Walters' chorus fill the small space of the Finborough: their felt cocks flopping about between their legs; their clogs clattering into the ground. Harrison's play contrasts words with bodies: the nimbleness of his verse slams into the thomp of their feet. It's fair to say, the shoes have it.

But the writing is mighty satisfying too  unfussy in its rhythms, but no less smart for that, and witty in its rhymes. It swerves from elegant expression to bawdy asides, and, in sitting the two together, pushes against the "unbridgeable split" of high and low art.

The satyrs are ultimately shut out of high art, and wash up in shellsuits, culturally disenfranchised and more destructive than creative. When they turn on their leader Silenus (Glaves), Walters has them pull out their phones to film the attack.

His staging is gnatty and homespun, yet thanks to Amy Lawrence's clog choreography, carries a charge. Nonetheless, it makes you itch to see Harrison's play at full strength, with enough scale and space for its satyrs to run wild. Purbeck has a haughty intensity as Apollo, finding a real fluidity in both words and physicality, but its Glaves' Silenus, raging against the gods and the elite, who puts fire into its belly and gives it some balls.

The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus runs at the Finborough Theatre until 28 January.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For fans of classic rock, theatre pieces along the lines of Million Dollar Quartet or Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story have the whiff of religious spectacle, like a high mass or a passion play. They feel more like calls to worship than straightforward musicals.

But at least Royal MTCs 2017 kickoff Million Dollar Quartet comes through with a decent dramatic arc courtesy of its co-writers, music historian Colin Escott and filmmaker Floyd Mutrux (American Hot Wax). At its centre is a fanciful, largely invented re-creation of a recording session in December 1956 that saw a collaboration of current and future stars: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The figure at the fulcrum of these talents is the guy who brought the men together and, indeed, midwifed their careers into the world. Sam Phillips (Andrew Cecon) was a southern boy who promoted himself from radio DJ to record producer out of a belief in his own ear for talent. His company, Sun Records, became a Memphis success story in 1954 when Phillips took a chance on then-teenage truck driver Elvis Presley.

ROBERT TINKER PHOTO From left: Elliot Loran, Greg Gale, Kris Ulrich and Matt Cage.

As the musical begins, Presley has already jumped ship to RCA Victor, the result of Phillips having sold Presleys contract to save Sun Records viability. But the grateful Elvis (played by Presley tribute artist Matt Cage) returns to Suns modest headquarters with a request to entice his mentor into the RCA fold. He is accompanied by his lollapalooza girlfriend Dyanne (Laura Olafson). (Presley really did bring a girlfriend along, but Dyanne is a fictional creation included in the musical mix, apparently to offset all the onstage masculine energy.)

Two other participants are struggling in their commitment to Sun Records. Johnny Cash (Greg Gale) is guilt-ridden by a decision to leave the label, partly due to Phillips stubborn refusal to let him record a gospel album. Carl Perkins (Kris Ulrich) bears a grudge over a decision to let Presley cover his signature song, Blue Suede Shoes.

The fourth participant, the wild card, is young, arrogant Jerry Lee Lewis (Elliot Loran) from Ferriday, La.  as he never fails to remind people. A font of energy and sass, hes a guy whose penchant for bad choices includes freely insulting his more famous bandmates (although he does primp his hair when he realizes Elvis is coming in the room, a sweet bit of business from Mr. Loran).

The songs recorded during the actual session largely consisted of gospel tunes, but the musical is stocked with outright hits that werent actually on the playlist: Blue Suede Shoes, Who Do You Love?, Folsom Prison Blues, Great Balls of Fire and Hound Dog.

At least this makes the most of the opportunity to showcase a superb musical unit, with Loran ripping it up on piano and Ulrich a virtuoso on guitar, backed by bass player/music supervisor Kraig Waye and Ryan Voth on drums. Director Steven Schipper adeptly balances the shows dramatic scenes with its concert elements.

Its not always a smooth ride, even when the cylinders are firing. As pleasurable as it is to hear Olafson authoritatively belt her way through the songs Fever and I Hear You Knocking, the character isnt really integrated into the action beyond the requirements of supportive girlfriend/sympathetic ear/feminine eye candy.

Sam Phillips is a pivotal role here  really, the musical is his story  but Cecon holds back on it as if nervous about drawing attention away from the other guys.

Loran is a scene-stealing dynamo in what is arguably the most difficult role in the piece, but his Jerry Lee lacks the harder edge required. As Elvis, Matt Cage nails Presleys performance choreography like the expert tribute artist he is. But in dialogue, Cage is more tentative, relying on thank-you-very-much notes of parody more than authentic performance.

Greg Gales Johnny Cash, on the other hand, feels more emotionally true to the man who would be The Man in Black, and his voice is excellent, even if his physical resemblance is lacking. (If you saw Tom Hiddleston portray Hank Williams in the movie I Saw the Light, Gale will make you think about what Johnny Cash would look like if he was portrayed by Michael Fassbender.)

Kris Ulrichs performance as Carl Perkins is also a standout, even if Ulrich primarily credits himself as a guitar player. Maybe its a function of the hours hes put in as a working musician, but whether hes expertly riffing guitar or grousing about the credit denied him, Ulrich feels like the real deal.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sears, once the kingpin of U.S. retailers, is closing another 150 stores, selling its Craftsman brand to raise cash and borrowing money to pay down debt, but those steps may not be enough to stop the unravelling of an iconic American company.

The pending store closures, which include 108 Kmart locations, are the latest round of scheduled closings for Sears, which has been selling off properties to reverse a tide of declining sales and revenue.

But it may be too little, too late for Sears, the 131-year-old company whose ubiquitous mail-order catalogues were once as essential to American households as the vacuum cleaners, clothing and washing machines they sold. The one-time biggest retailer in the U.S. is now increasingly irrelevant, retail watchers say, as it struggles to compete with big-box competitors such as Home Depot and Walmart, as well as a bevy of online retailers.

From what I can see, these are very intelligent financial manoeuvres to raise money, said Van Conway, CEO of Van Conway & Partners, who has advised retail companies and other businesses on reorganization and insolvency.

But the whole issue is: is the core business of the retailer viable I honestly dont see a spot for Sears long-term. My mom shopped at Sears. That was the only place she could go. Now you have 50 choices, and Sears is outdated.

The flurry of steps taken in recent days is a stark illustration of the moves Sears is making to try and survive. On Tuesday, it ended the leases on another 19 unprofitable locations, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The government notice was made by Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust that Sears spun off in 2015 and which subsequently bought from and leased back various locations to the retailer.

Those stores are expected to be shuttered in April.

Sears also continues to borrow, even as its long-term debt ballooned from US$2.2 billion at the end of January 2016 to US$3.7 billion by the end of October.

On Wednesday, the company announced it had obtained a US$500-million loan commitment backed by mortgages on 46 properties belonging to its subsidiaries.

Sears said in a statement it planned to use that money to bankroll its operations as it prepares to sell more of its assets in order to help pay off debt. It has already tapped into US$321 million of the loan, and may add on more properties as security if it uses the US$179 million that remains. The loan commitment will provide Sears Holdings with additional financial flexibility and support our operations as we meet all of our financial obligations, Jason Hollar, Sears Holdings chief financial officer, said in the statement.

Those are just a few pieces of the turnaround strategy that has been shepherded by Sears CEO, Edward Lampert, a hedge-fund manager who merged Sears with rival Kmart in the mid-2000s and whose use of the retailers cash flow to bolster his hedge-fund business has been compared to manoeuvres by Warren Buffett.

But in the wake of a December earnings report that showed Sears having a net loss of US$748 million and revenue plummeting 12.5 per cent in the third quarter, Neil Saunders, an analyst for retail industry-tracking firm Conlumino, likened Sears to the doomed ship, Titanic.

While Sears was once a titan of U.S. retail, it now looks set to sink, he wrote in a note on Dec. 8.

The selling off of key assets, including its signature brands, is particularly troubling. The problem with this approach is that the funds raised are not being used to develop or grow the firm, they are being used to prop up an ailing and failed business It is hard to put an exact timescale on Sears demise. However, in our view it is now firmly on a trajectory to failure.

In 2014, Chicago-based Sears Holdings sold off its controlling interest in Toronto-based Sears Canada, which is also struggling with falling sales and mounting losses.

 USA Today
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Clearing a backlog of child-protection cases in Manitobas family court is first on the docket for Court of Queens Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal in 2017.

Delays in court cases across the board  particularly in child-welfare matters  is the top priority, Joyal said in a wide-ranging interview with the Free Press to reflect on the past year and address new challenges facing the justice system as the Court of Queens Bench resumes full session next week.

A new scheduling system with stricter trial timelines is expected to be in place in early March for cases concerning children who have been apprehended by Child and Family Services and the families who want them back. As a result, much more double and triple booking of court resources is on the horizon considering the majority of scheduled child-protection trials  somewhere between 94 and 97 per cent  collapse before their court dates, Joyal said.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chief Justice Glenn Joyal says that clearing Manitoba family court's backlog of child-protection cases will be a top priority this year.

He said the court has often been operating out of a desire to see families reunited and has been willing to wait for the parties involved to take necessary steps in that direction before coming to a decision.

If thats the approach we take, were no longer acting as judges, were acting as social workers and thats not our function. Were almost, in some ways, prejudicing the children and the families with an institutionally misplaced kindness, Joyal said.

Nobody wants more than a judge to see children reunited with their family, but thats got to be done in the context of the agencies and the work with the parents counsel.

The chief justice said he hopes governments will work to establish an administrative system separate from the courts that could deal with child-protection hearings. In the meantime, two additional Court of Queens Bench judges will be shuffled from the general division to hear child-welfare cases each week, and trial dates will need to be set within three to six months. Currently, it can take more than a year to receive trial dates in a child-welfare case.

I think the (CFS) agencies are going to have to be more discerning about how and when they apprehend. And as well, government agencies are going to have to do whatever they can do to work on the prevention side of things to ensure that families  prior to getting to the state where kids are being taken  are given every opportunity to deal with some of the issues that give rise to the apprehension, Joyal said.

Trial timeline changes, which Joyal said will effectively transform the way we do child-protection matters in Manitoba, will come, despite a lack of family lawyers in the province, at a time when courts across Canada are cracking down on delays thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision that made speedier trials the new legal standard in criminal cases.

The decision, known as R. vs. Jordan, should be seen as a welcome opportunity, for the court to move forward with new scheduling guidelines for criminal and civil cases, and even more of an emphasis on resolving civil cases in particular, he said.

The decision in R. vs. Jordan ruled provincial court cases must be completed within 18 months and superior court cases  such as those in Manitobas Court of Queens Bench  must be completed within 30 months. Its impact here is already being felt, he said.

Everyone in the profession is already working to meet those new deadlines, Joyal said, raising the possibility of scheduling more Court of Queens Bench cases during the summer months and fitting in more criminal cases throughout the week.

But its all a juggling act.

We have a limited number of judicial resources. And if, as I say, we are on the one hand prioritizing child-protection matters and at the same time prioritizing criminal matters, you have to find a way to reconcile those equally valuable and important priorities. We are doing it and we are going to continue to try to make that balancing act work.

Joyal said he believes the time is right, especially in light of the Supreme Courts recent recommendations, to revive a proposal Manitobas three chief judges floated in 2014. They wanted to start a pilot project to get rid of preliminary inquiries  the procedural hearings meant to determine whether there is enough evidence for a case to go to trial in the Court of Queens Bench.

The costs of preliminary hearings  in court delays, in memory loss for witnesses, re-traumatization of victims and time spent waiting in custody for the accused  far outweigh their benefits in todays justice system, Joyal argues, to the point that they cant possibly be justified going forward.

The Criminal Defence Lawyers Association continues to object to the elimination of preliminary inquiries, arguing theyre still a valuable part of the system for streamlining trials and bringing new evidence to light. The association takes the position any time saved by eliminating preliminary inquiries would be met with increased time spent on trials in the Court of Queens Bench.

There is room for discussion of streamlining preliminary inquiries in appropriate cases, where all parties agree it is an appropriate avenue to pursue. For instance, in some jurisdictions, preliminary inquiries occur without judges, and have been turned into a form of civil discovery, where witnesses testify under oath without a judge present, said the associations spokesman, criminal defence lawyer Scott Newman, in an email.

To help alleviate pressures on an already over-burdened justice system, Joyal said there are plans to create a new position for a Court of Queens Bench justice who would be tasked with overseeing cases in northern parts of the province. Where that justice would be based and when the position would begin is still unclear.

Were confident were going to have someone in the not-too-distant future to fill that position, he said.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobas aboriginal chiefs have thrown a legal obstacle at Ottawas energy agenda by challenging the Trudeau governments approval for Enbridges Line 3 pipeline.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC), the provinces largest First Nations political group, filed a petition for a judicial review Dec. 27 with the Federal Court of Appeal, naming the attorney general of Canada and Enbridge Pipelines Inc. as respondents.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs filed a petition for a judicial review with the Federal Court of Appeal, naming the Attorney General of Canada and Enbridge Pipelines Inc. as respondents.

The group, which represents leaders from 62 Manitoba First Nations, argues federal approval for the pipeline was based on a flawed regulatory process.

They want the court to quash the federal approval or, at the very least, send it back to Ottawa with strict conditions for cabinet to take indigenous perspectives into account and review the decision again.

You have to understand the history to understand the approach were taking, AMC Grand Chief Derek Nepinak said Friday.

The Line 3 replacement project presents a unique opportunity to seek redress for decades of neglect when it comes to treaty and inherent land-title issues.

The dispossession of lands from indigenous people, through Indian Act policy, residential schools, the laws to prevent people from using their lands or accessing our traditional practices in our ancestral lands.

In November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the green light to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which adds 980 kilometres of new pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby, B.C.

While there were immediate protests from opponents of the Trans Mountain expansion, there was little in the way of public criticism over the Line 3 approval.

The $7.5-billion 1,660-kilometre project would replace a 40-year-old pipeline that runs from Hardisty, Alta. to Superior, Wis., through dozens of treaty land holdings in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Enbridge wants to complete the replacement, which would nearly double its capacity, by December.

At issue is the way the National Energy Board conducted its public hearings in Winnipeg more than a year ago. The board butted heads with the AMC over the kind of evidence elders and knowledge-keepers could present and the setting in which they could be heard.

Indigenous nations and their citizens should have had the opportunity for meaningful receipt and sharing of information, which would have allowed for true consensus to be reached about the project, the petition says.

Instead, the (cabinet) decision relies on a process which treated consultation and accommodation as an afterthought and diminished the ability of indigenous nations and citizens to be heard.

The chiefs contend that the process contravened Canadas constitutional requirements to consult meaningfully with indigenous peoples. They also say it was at odds with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Trudeaus pledges that Ottawa would reset the countrys indigenous relations on a nation to nation basis.

The suit is the AMCs way of reminding Ottawa about the necessity for reconciliation.

We have to come to a place and chose a starting point for the implementation of reconciliation That means creating balance, creating equity in relationships, Nepinak said.

This is an opportunity to create awareness about the history of marginalization, economically, socially and geographically within our own treaty lands.

The National Energy Board approved the project last April. It has White House approval in the United States, but still requires separate state permits. A Natural Resources Canada spokeswoman acknowledged the AMCs action Friday by email.

No relationship is more important to the government than the one with indigenous peoples. However, in this particular instance, we are not in a position to comment further as the matter is before the courts.

A spokesman for Enbridge said the company is working on a formal legal response.

The oil company defended its role in meeting regulatory requirements and Ottawas decision to approve the project.

The review that led to the governments decision was comprehensive, including its enhanced indigenous consultation. Enbridge also engaged extensively with indigenous communities, representing the largest engagement program in the companys history, company spokeswoman Suzanne Wilton said in an email Thursday.

There is strong support for this project. The Line 3 replacement program is an essential maintenance project that will ensure the continued safe and reliable delivery of the energy North Americans need and use for their everyday lives.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brian Pallister appears to be a premier who doesnt use email  a revelation raising questions about how much work he is actually doing while residing at his Costa Rica property.

Records obtained by the Free Press show for the first three months as premier, Pallister had no email communication with any of his senior political staff, including his chief of staff and director of communications.

Moreover, in response to questions from the Free Press, Pallisters office has disclosed the premier is not receiving any documents once he has left Manitoba to spend weeks at a time in Costa Rica.

Premier Brian Pallister: no email trail

A Free Press search has found no indication Pallister has a personal government email account. There is no Brian Pallister registered in the legislatures email database, and premier@leg.gov.mb.ca is a general email account, used by staff for general communication from the premiers office.

The Free Press repeatedly asked Pallisters staff if he sends or receives emails, but no answer was given. There was also no answer given when asked if Pallister used a personal email account.

When Pallisters office made clear the premier would be spending the Christmas holidays and much of January in the Central American country, the Tories went to great lengths to argue he would continue in his role as premier by maintaining regular contact with his cabinet and staff.

It would be surprising for someone to head out of the province for weeks at a time and not have measures in place to be receiving documents securely and be up to speed on what is happening, said Minto MLA Andrew Swan, the NDPs justice critic.

That might have been the way it worked in the 50s, but that is not the way it works now.

Reads briefing notes, writes documents

The Free Press asked Olivia Baldwin-Valainis, the premiers communications director, to explain how Pallister is living up to his claim he will be working while in Costa Rica.

Baldwin-Valainis said while Pallister is away, he reads briefing notes and writes documents. However, no new documents are being sent to the premier. It is also unclear if the premier has an Internet connection in Costa Rica, as no answer was given when the Free Press asked.

The premiers trips to Costa Rica coincide with sessional breaks, and as such his working vacations involve a significant amount of reading of briefing notes, reports and other documents prepared for him on a wide array of government topics, Baldwin-Valainis said.

As the premier participates in cabinet meetings in person, there is no need for secure documents to be delivered to him once he has departed the province.

In a December year-end interview with the Free Press, Pallister revealed he plans to spend roughly two months over the course of the year in Costa Rica.

I hope we can continue to do that because I work about 60 hours a week when I am here, and I work when I am there, too, Pallister said.

Phone calls for urgent topics

An investigation by the CBC last year revealed during his time as Opposition leader, Pallister spent roughly one in five days in Costa Rica.

In a Dec. 19 interview with Global, Pallister said since he was sworn into office he has spent about four weeks in the Central American country.

An order-in-council passed May 3 put in place the mechanisms for when a premier or minister is absent  which is standard practice by all governments. When Pallister is away, the powers of the premier pass on to Justice Minister Heather Stefanson. In the event of her absence, the powers transfer to Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen.

Baldwin-Valainis said in situations where the premiers direct input is required on urgent topics, phone calls are arranged between the premier and senior political staff.

She pointed to the recent meeting between provincial health and finance ministers in Ottawa, where Pallister was made aware of the situation in that manner.

When Pallister returns from Costa Rica, he has prepared numerous speeches and other items have been prepared, which are then tasked to various staff for action, she said.

No staff travel with Pallister to Costa Rica, and there are no government expenditures associated with his trips, she added.

Not a semi-retirement position

Royce Koop, a political studies professor at the University of Manitoba, said modern technology offers the opportunity for Pallister to work remotely and still help govern the province while in Costa Rica  as long as he uses these tools.

You can access information remotely and direct people remotely. But there are also limits to this there is some utility to people coming together and working together in an office, and there is usefulness to being present, said Koop, who said Pallister likely corresponds by phone frequently.

He said when Pallister is in Manitoba, having staff to facilitate communications likely compensates for him not using email.

He can delegate effectively, and if he wants to communicate with someone he doesnt send an email. It just means he picks up the phone and does it. It is just a little bit more old-fashioned, he said.

But if he is going to claim that he is going to be working remotely (in Costa Rica), then asking, How you are actually going to do that remotely?, that is a fair question.

Officials with the NDP said former premier Greg Selinger liked to communicate by phone but did send and receive emails. Swan, who was the provinces justice minister for five years, said being a politician means you have to always be reachable and glued to technology.

I remember being on holidays and sneaking out to the hotel to make phone calls, to receive briefings. I would receive documents by email and review them on holiday time, said Swan.

The premier of Manitoba is not a semi-retirement position.

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @kristinannable
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For years, Manitobas cabinet ministers, MLAs, bureaucrats and staffers have been armed with smartphones all day, every day for sending and receiving the emails and texts vital to modern-day political communication.

Except for Premier Brian Pallister.

Pallister, who took the reins at the legislature nearly nine months ago, has never used his personal government email account  anywhere.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Premier Brian Pallister in his office Friday with a sample of the reading material he had with him in Costa Rica.

I dont like using email; thats going to be abhorrent to anyone under 40, Pallister said Friday following the publication of a Free Press story that raised questions about how much work he gets done and how he does it while enjoying the tropical sun at his Costa Rica vacation home.

Pallister said any communications relating to government business while he is away are conducted on the phone, and hed only use email in an emergency.

The premier was back at the legislature this week after celebrating Christmas in Costa Rica, and will head south again shortly for much of January. He previously said he intends to spend about two months in the Central America country this year, quickly offering assurances that while he might be wearing shorts, hes on the job.

Im available. Im available as needed, he said Friday.

Prior to the interview, Pallister covered his desk in government reports, books and notepads to illustrate the amount of material he packs along with sunscreen. And he said he has an Internet connection there to keep up with current events in the province.

His office has maintained that he is in regular contact with cabinet members and staff when he is away, although details remained a mystery until Friday. He said he covers any long-distance charges from Costa Rica, although some people might consider it a cost of conducting the affairs of government.

I pay for it. Were not billing taxpayers for where I am, he said.

The premier said hes not worried about his emails being released to the public at some point through access to information legislation, citing his commitment to being open and transparent. But he has concerns about the security of government information, he said.

An email address  pally@leg.gov.mb.ca  is linked to his office, but a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act co-ordinator said it has never been used.

The Free Press contacted the offices of Canadas other premiers to find out about their email use and how they conduct government business while on vacation. Only Alberta Premier Rachel Notleys office responded.

Premier Notley has a government email account  she uses it daily, said press secretary Cheryl Oates.

We try to let her enjoy her time with her family, Oates said, adding Notley is available when the need arises.

Notley hasnt taken holiday time outside Canada, she said. Notley communicates with staff via email, texts, phone calls or face-to-face contact when shes away, depending on the urgency of the issue.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba has had a very mild flu season so far, but there are indications that could change soon.

Dr. Pierre Plourde, a medical officer of health with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said a personal care home in the city was reporting influenza-like illness among its residents Thursday, and officials are awaiting confirmation of a flu outbreak there. He would not name the facility.

Flu outbreaks have been reported recently in southern Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. Plourde said there is no reason to expect Winnipeg will be spared.

JOE BRYKSA / winnipeg free press files

Were not any different or special in terms of being protected. Its just a matter of time, he said Thursday.

Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 24, there were only 19 laboratory-confirmed cases of Influenza A in Manitoba and there was just one confirmed case of Influenza B. Typically, confirmed cases make up only a fraction of actual flu cases.

There was only one flu outbreak in the province throughout fall, and that occurred in a rural nursing home in October, the provincial Health Department reports.

The province will release its next flu update Jan. 13.

The predominant influenza strain this year is expected to be H3N2, which hits the elderly particularly hard. That virus caused a lot of havoc across the country two years ago, Plourde said, because of what he termed a vaccine mismatch.

Last year was also an H3N2 year, but the vaccine that was distributed was more effective, he said. Officials are expecting a similarly good match this year and a moderate to normal flu season.

Plourde said, however, fewer people would get sick  or as sick  if more got the flu shot.

As of Dec. 24, Manitoba Health reported 19 per cent of Manitobans had been immunized this season. Annual influenza immunization rates across Canada, Manitoba included, generally range from 20 to 25 per cent  far short of where officials say it ought to be.

Ideally, to get what we call good herd immunity, where were protecting ourselves and those around us, you would want 75 per cent of the population immunized, Plourde said.

So, were nowhere near close to that anywhere in the country. Its definitely a concern.

The Winnipeg health official said its not too late to get the flu shot  even though it takes one to two weeks for the benefits to fully kick in.

Even if were just beginning our outbreak now, it isnt going to peak for another three to four weeks, so theres good time, Plourde said.

The WRHA says the vaccine is widely available (see below) and there are plentiful stocks.

Meanwhile, Plourde said there are several ways to prevent the spread of influenza.

They include being vigilant about washing your hands, coughing into your sleeve and staying home from work and school if youre ill.

While you may miss a few days of work, resting at home will allow you to recover more quickly, and you will likely prevent others from becoming ill, he said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/01/2017 (2129 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last year might not have been a great year if you were an aging musician or a supporter of the Democratic party in the United States, but 2016 was a banner year for The Winnipeg Foundation.

The foundation, which has been working to help Winnipeggers since being founded by banker William Forbes Alloway with a $100,000 donation in 1921, distributed more grants, received more gifts, had a significant return on its investment, and crossed over a significant granting milestone during the year which just ended.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The Winnipeg Foundation CEO, Rick Frost, announces a $600,000 grant to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada Thursday. The donation is just one of the $400 million in grants the foundation has given out in it's 95-year existence.

The foundation has now handed out a total of $400 million in grants since its beginning 95 years ago.

And the grant that put the foundation over that plateau is a $600,000 one to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canadas capital fund to build its new aviation and aerospace facility.

Rick Frost, the foundations CEO, said that its annual report, released on Thursday, shows it has finally left the financial meltdown which started in 2008 in the rearview mirror.

It was a particularly good year for us, Frost said.

And, for me, the $31.6 million we gave in grants is the most exciting number. The markets from 2008 to 2011 were difficult and turbulent and our grant making stabilized around $22 million for a few years.

But now theres been a jump of $3.9 million from last year to $31.6 million after last years $27 million  which was a record for us at the time. Weve not had a couple of really good jumps as a result of the investments and the gifts.

Frost said the $400 million in total grant giving during the last 95 years is also significant because it took 80 years to go from zero to $100 million in cumulative grants.

Now, in 15 years, weve done $300 million more. And, were now at the point, where we can give about $100 million every three years now.

This really benefits the community in a huge way.

The announcement, and the official release of the annual report, was done at a sold-out celebration at the aviation museums current location.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada CEO Helen Halliday, responds to the generous gift from The Winnipeg Foundation of a $600,000 donation to build its new aviation and aerospace facility at a special ceremony held at the museum Thursday.

Helen Halliday, the aviation museums CEO, said the foundations grant will help build a new, world-class facility on Winnipegs international airport campus. The museum is currently housed in an almost 80-year-old former terminal building on Ferry Road.

Halliday said that along with a $1.2 million contribution from the federal government announced in October, the foundations grant brings the museums campaign to $20.3 million of its $40 million target. The museums fundraising target also includes a $5 million goal for an endowment fund.

Were just thrilled this grant has been made, she said.

The Winnipeg Foundation has been a great supporter of the museum over the years and we have really appreciated their support.

Other highlights of the year for the foundation is it received 5,716 gifts totalling $37.3 million, it saw an 11.25 per cent return on its investment, and it now has 3,227 funds after 186 new ones were created in 2016.

The foundations highlight report can be found on its website at wpgfdn.org or in Saturdays Free Press.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The news in 2016 was again dominated by the plight of refugees, people forced by circumstances not of their choosing to look for a new home.

When Hospitality House Refugee Ministries decided this past fall to open the gates for private refugee sponsorships for Winnipeg, they got more than 30,000 applications in six weeks  not skilled immigrants, just people looking to join their families, who want a new home here in Manitoba.

The news was perhaps more dominated by weather, however  the real and projected effects of the Earths changing geology, not just its climate. Geologists have conceded the existence of a new age of the Earth, the Anthropocene, because evidence of human interactions with the planet itself will be found in the distant future by whoever digs through to find our level in the dirt, just as we dug up the dinosaurs.

NASA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Images of Earth from the Apollo missions of the 1960s afforded the human race the opportunity to see beyond the daily struggle for survival.

Dinosaurs did not wipe themselves out, however  as a species, we are the first on Earth to potentially have such a dubious distinction.

So this year, concern for the Earth as our home was paired with the desire for people to find a new home.

When John Glenn, the first American astronaut to circle the planet, died in December, I thought back to those pictures at Christmas in 1968 from Apollo 8 of Earth as the blue dot in space. Those images gave those of us with the opportunity to see beyond a daily struggle to survive a different perspective on how we live together. The race to the moon was a goal set in imagination, however much it was embedded in the Cold War.

The race to Mars, however, seems more of an attempt to escape the mess we have made of our home on Earth  out of desperation, not imagination, because we know the planet is in trouble because of what we have done.

Our instinct is for survival. We actually have to choose extinction, in the same way people must choose to be ignorant when anything we want to know is literally at our fingertips, through a smartphone.

Beyond the primary instinct to survive the moment, however, people everywhere take the next step, in whatever horrible circumstance, to make as much of a home as they can, for themselves and for their children.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of my own arrival in Manitoba, brought here from Alberta as a child when my father took a transitional job, working his way back home to Nova Scotia  and then never left.

As with government-sponsored refugees, who are told where they must land in Canada for their first year, such as the waves of Eastern European immigrants who made it to Winnipeg as the gateway to the West in the early 20th century, many Manitobans did not see this place at first as home.

By choice, however, it became their home. In my 50 years as a Manitoban, I lived elsewhere in Canada for 15 of them and still tried, every year, to come home.

But home isnt just where the heart is. Home is also where the education is  and after a first degree at the University of Winnipeg, I had to roam quite a distance to get the other education I wanted.

Home also is where the job is, and that took me (and many other Manitobans) elsewhere to find work. Some of us found our way home  I live in the community where I grew up, and the classmates from high school in Selkirk I encounter are evenly divided between those who moved away and then came back, and those who never left.

Home is also where there should be opportunity for yourself and for your children. It is only an aberration of the post-Second World War generation that you need to go elsewhere to find education, work or opportunity. It is evidence of progress, we are told  but living out of a suitcase full of gadgets, on the move, chasing some illusion of a better life, makes psychological refugees of us all.

We are all searching for home; and somehow, instinctively, we know when we find it, when we return to it or how to create it when we have the chance to stop running.

The link between wanting and creating a home is intention. Home is not accidental; it is intentional. Some of what makes a home is stuff, things that become imbued with emotional significance, when they are just ordinary things to other people. Some of what makes a home are activities, routines or family traditions that take place when the family gathers. Yet the core of any home is the relationships with other people, family first, but also all of the people with whom you weave together a life over a period of time in any one place.

Some of those relationships are intensely personal, others casual; but all together create the sense of arrival from away when you return to somewhere you know is home. Even years later, I have watched others recreate those relationships in memory with people who have long since died, as they pass by the places where those memories were rooted.

I have many memories myself, of what happened as I grew up here, of people whose lives intersected with mine in Selkirk, in St. Andrews and in Winnipeg. When I walk around the University of Winnipeg these days, I have eerie remembrances of trailing behind one of my history professors, Vince Rutherford, as he steamed through the hallways to correct an injustice on my behalf. Other times, I walk past the offices where, 40 years ago, I got the counsel that shaped my life journey, still expecting somehow the door will open and reveal the faces of friends who are long gone.

There was Father Semen Izyk, the tiny Ukrainian Catholic priest in Rossdale who survived three concentration camps, founded Progress Press and would picket  by himself, if necessary  the Red Army Chorus when it arrived for concerts. One day, he sat with me and told me his story  in broken English  trusting what I would write for the newspaper about what he had written in his Ukrainian book (which I still have), translated many years later as Smiling Through Tears.

There was Geordie Sutherland, who would come to church in Selkirk every Sunday in his blue Legion blazer, wearing his veterans badges with pride, but who could never bring himself to tell me what it was like to be badly wounded as a teenager at Passchendaele in 1917.

There was the Remembrance Day dinner in Clandeboye, hosted by the whole community and feeding thousands of people a meal they would remember, every year.

Walking or driving around town is literally a trip down memory lane when you come home, even for a little while.

Yet those memories are not always happy ones. Our lives are scarred as well as shaped by what we have experienced growing up, by loss and grief that make those familiar places into painful reminders.

They can be reminders of what still needs to heal, over time and at a distance, or of things we promise never to do ourselves because we know how much we were hurt by others.

I have found, though, that Manitobans dont always value what we have here at home as they should  what we need to preserve, what we need to celebrate and what we need to change.

Having moved away and then come back allows some perspective on what you find when that familiar blast of cold air on a clear winter day clears your head, as well as your sinuses.

Clean air, clean water, open skies, green things growing for miles in every direction, tussles with wildlife in our backyards and walks in parks, encountering wilderness where we find things unchanged for thousands of years  these things are increasingly rare in a crowded world where industrial development would be better described as pillaging the planet.

Other places have traded short-term economic benefits for the destruction of local ecology. There is no justification for fouling our own nests, ruining the eco-scape of our own home, in exchange for something shiny that does not pass the test of improving the lives of the seventh generation of Manitobans to come.

When it comes to industrial development, it is much wiser to learn from the mistakes of others, instead of just repeating them here.

We need to celebrate our community life, to intentionally foster it, encourage it and find ways to nurture traditions that are rare elsewhere. For all of our flaws, Manitoba has an incredibly diverse, welcoming, hospitable and generous culture. Folklorama is no accident. Neither is the fact Manitoba consistently leads the country in charitable giving. This especially means fostering the life of small communities that still dot that prairie landscape; its not just all about Winnipeg. If we threw open our doors to the world the way it happened a hundred years ago, new people would rejuvenate those communities in just the same way as they were founded.

Yet we also, unfortunately, need to change how we value each other. For too long, we have celebrated Manitobans who made good by leaving, while at the same time passing over local people for jobs in favour of mysterious strangers from away whom we hoped would make Manitoba their home, once they got past the cold weather and mosquitoes.

Our most important natural resource is our people, the ones who know the communities because they grew up there; the ones who know the land, because they have walked it and worked it; the ones who understand the rivers and lakes because they have lived beside them and on them.

In a climate-changing world, where stability will be a luxury enjoyed by too few, we need to plant our feet, to live close to home  in the communities we understand, with the people we know  and build the foundation right here that we need for the future.

Instead of making excuses for the things we dont have, we should set an example for how other communities around the world can live sustainably with what they have. I could make a long list of what we still need to change ourselves, but that is not the point.

We dont need answers from away, nor do we need more wise men from the East.

Here in Manitoba, we have the means and the opportunity to create a sustainable future  respecting each other regardless of difference, celebrating the relationships in the communities where we live, and showing respect for this small part of the planet that we call home.

We just need to do it ourselves.

Peter Denton is the author of Live Close to Home (2016). He teaches the history of technology at the University of Winnipeg and chairs the policy committee of the Green Action xCentre.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/01/2017 (2128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the end, it was like a Seinfeld episode. Thursdays long-awaited meeting between the Pallister government and the provinces union leaders ended in a whole lot of nothing.

Finance Minister Cameron Friesen and representatives of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union (MGEU), Canadian Union of Public Employees, Manitoba Teachers Society, the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals and United Food and Commercial Workers met Thursday. (The Manitoba Nurses Union did not attend.) It took the government eight months to sit down with these unions collectively, even though it has had its eye on labour costs since prior to the election.

What was discussed is this much-ballyhooed meeting? Not a lot, it seems. The unions walked out of the room without getting a direct answer on whether the province is considering a wage freeze or opening up existing collective agreements. Instead, discussions focused on legislation in bargaining.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Finance Minister Cameron Friesen

While the Opposition NDP wants to pillory the premier for not attending the meeting, it would seem Mr. Friesen is just as capable of sitting in a room full of union people and saying nothing as Brian Pallister is.

This is not going to be an easy year for labour negotiations. The Manitoba government has made it clear its hell-bent on getting the budget under control, and one of its targets is labour costs. However, its not clear if the current government is going to tear up existing agreements already in place. For example, the MGEU signed a five-year contract when the NDP government was still in power. Many of the members of the health-care professions have contracts that expire in 2018, and Manitobas 15,000 teachers have division-by-division collective bargaining agreements through June 30, 2018.

Labour is a logical starting point when any level of government starts to talk austerity. The Saskatchewan government is now trying to deal with its billion-dollar debt and eyeballing its labour costs. However, Premier Brad Wall is focusing first on cutting back employees to make the budget balanced.

Perhaps Mr. Pallister has decided the only way to start these negotiations is by showing a strong opening hand. However, if his cabinet is considering rewriting existing contracts, he will have to balance the savings against the costs of fielding a constitutional challenge in court, something the MGEU has already suggested would happen.

Yes, Mr. Pallister, you won on a mandate to get the deficit under control, but you have to do it efficiently.

Meanwhile, down at city hall, the unions that provide public services are also heading into negotiations. Contracts for the Winnipeg Police Association, the Winnipeg Police Senior Officers Association, the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg and the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 500 all expired at Christmas. Two other unions  the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union and the Winnipeg Fire Paramedics Senior Officers Association  have contracts that expire later this year. This represents all the civic workers except for those in the transit union. There are some contingencies in place in the budget for agreements to be reached with the city. But labour costs do take up a significant percentage of the overall budget, and Mayor Brian Bowman is seeking to limit public-sector spending.

It may mean in the end that 2017 is remembered as the year of the strike. No one wins when that happens.
(TNS) New cars are safer than ever, yet vehicle crashes are on the rise.

Advanced safety systems designed to minimize _ if not prevent _ crashes have proliferated. Yet despite technology such as forward collision breaking, traffic fatalities rose 8 percent in 2015, after years of declines due to public safety campaigns urging seat belt use and condemning driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The number of crashes and fatalities continued to increase in 2016; in the first half of the year deaths were up 9 percent over 2015, according to the National Safety Council.

Distracted driving, mainly due to cellphone use, is to blame, according to most auto safety experts. Despite laws prohibiting texting and driving in 46 states, and handheld cellphone bans in 14 states, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, enforcing it is problematic.

It's up to the driver to practice best driving habits, and most drivers, no matter how old or experienced, could benefit from revisiting safe driving habits learned in driver's education.

Meanwhile, here are some resolutions every driver can embrace to make roads safer.

1. Put down your phone

The temptation to quickly reply to that text or check in with work or home is greater than ever before, in keeping with the amount of information available at our fingertips. You've seen _ or maybe been _ that car drifting into other lanes or crawling along 15 mph under the speed limit. That seeming convenience is a major risk for a great inconvenience _ an accident or worse. The safety council reports that 1 out of 4 car crashes are due to cellphone distraction. That includes hands-free phone calls. These are not accidents _ they are preventable crashes caused by driver inattention.

2. Wear your seat belt

It's stupefying that some people still ignore the simplest way to prevent collision fatalities. More than half of the teens and adults who died in crashes in 2014 were not wearing seat belts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Hampshire _ perhaps adjusting its motto to Live Free and Die in regards to seat belts _ is the only state without a seat belt law. Seat belt use is proven to save lives and limit injury.

3. Get out of the passing lane

By our own experience, Michiganders may be the only people who consistently follow this rule, even though it's a law in nearly every state, even New Hampshire! On highways and interstates (an argument could be made on any road, any time), move out of the left lane if you are not passing other cars, regardless of speed.

4. Do not tailgate

No, not the tailgating where you party in the parking lot. We're talking about following too closely, riding up someone's _ umm _ bumper. Not only does it cause great anxiety to the driver in front of you, which can cause them to make a quick lane change and cut off someone in another lane, it greatly reduces your reaction time and braking ability to avoid rear-end collisions. Maintain the two-second rule by setting a fixed point like a mile marker, then counting how long it takes from the lead vehicle passing it to your vehicle passing it.

5. Do not brake check

Brake checking is often the overly aggressive response to overly aggressive tailgating, when the driver who is being tailgated taps on their brakes to get the tailgater to back off. It can cause the tailgating driver to swerve out of the lane or slam on their brakes, possibly losing control at relatively high speeds, endangering other drivers. Instead, cautiously move into the next opening in the adjacent lane or, if you must retaliate, squirt the wiper fluid so it spittles on their windshield.

6. Use your indicators

Cars communicate in a number of ways, and though they don't yet talk to each other (it's coming), there are clear indicators about a driver's intentions. The most obvious and intentional one is the indicator. Get it? Also known as the blinker, turn signal or clicking blinking thing. Use it when changing lanes and turning so drivers can react accordingly. Don't be a cabdriver _ use your indicator.

7. Get recalled cars fixed

Please get your car fixed. Last year, a 17-year-old in Texas rear-ended a parked car at about 15 mph. The high school senior should've walked away from the fender bender; instead she died from the inflator shrapnel in a car that had been recalled but not fixed.

Check the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website for instructions and expectations. www.safercar.gov/rs/takata/takatalist

There will be 42 million vehicles recalled for the Takata air bag fiasco, affecting 34 makes. Only 12.9 million have been fixed. It's not just Takata in this era of global parts sharing and global suppliers. Check the vehicle identification number, or VIN, through NHTSA.

8. If you're getting pulled over, get off the roadway

First, acknowledge the officer by turning on the right indicator and gradually slowing down. If there's no side road or parking lot to ease into, pull over to the farthest right side of the road to minimize risk from passing traffic for you and the officer. A traffic stop can be anxiety-inducing for both parties. Put the car in park, turn on the blinkers and kill the engine. Keep both hands on the wheel and don't go fidgeting for anything until the officer asks for it. If stopped at night, the Illinois secretary of state recommends turning on an interior light.

9. Put the phone away. Seriously. It's not worth it.
Lanesboro, an artistic community set on the banks of the Root River, will have a new exhibit and series of events flowing through it beginning Saturday.

The Commonweal Theatre will debut an acclaimed traveling exhibit by the Smithsonian Museum called Water/Ways, which focuses on the ways people use water in communities across Minnesota by using storytelling, public art, film, and other exhibits.

Much of the work is created by each community chosen to be part of the traveling exhibit, a series the Smithsonian has launched in several states. In Minnesota, the exhibit has been featured in Red Wing, St. Peter and other cities, and will travel in February to Detroit Lakes in northern Minnesota.

Lanesboros work for Water/Ways features two large public exhibits that focus on water use, interaction with the earth, impact on culture and the need for protection. Lanesboro Arts, the Commonweal Theatre, and other partners have teamed up with a number of businesses and organizations in the small community to create dozens of water-related events and exhibits through Feb. 19.

The whole focus is to get people thinking about water and their relationship to water and its relationship to us, and strike a meaningful chord, said Commonweal director Hal Cropp.

Events this opening weekend include everything from a spiritual blessing of Lanesboro dam by faith leaders to an exhibit by state departments and the Minnesota Humanities Center that lets participants add their story of connection to water to a map thats published online. An opening reception will feature a water bar that lets, as advertised, visitors taste different samples of water. There will be a water-related play at the Commonweal and activities at the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center, and other events.

Were engaging the whole town, said Lanesboro Arts program director Adam Wiltgen.

Lanesboro was one of six town across Minnesota picked for the Smithsonian exhibit.

Were the smallest town by far, Wiltgen said. We dont have the space to do everything in one location, so weve taken a more campus approach.

Sunday, the nonprofit Friends of the Root River will host Science Sunday at the St. Mane Theatre, featuring the film River Sojourn, which takes viewers through the Driftless region as it explores areas untouched by glaciers, as well as plants and animals that can be dated back to the Ice Age.

Throughout January and February, there will be history exhibits at the Lanesboro Historical Museum, art exhibits at Lanesboro Arts, and in February Commonweal will host a series of short plays based on stories of water, among other events throughout town.

Cropp said hes excited for Commonweal to add another element to the events by bringing stories to life to connect others with water.

My hope is that as you would turn the face of a dime and see a different facet, that wed be able to see a different facet of how water has an impact on our lives, he said.

Water is what connects the world, and for the next six weeks, it will connect Lanesboro.

Its been really rewarding to collaborate with these other nonprofits, Wiltgen said. Its great when you can do something bigger and not just be about your own organization.
Winona Area Public Schools began the new year Thursday with a new superintendent.

On a unanimous vote, the board chose Kelly Halvorsen, district director of teaching and learning, to fill the vacant superintendents chair until a permanent replacement is recruited and hired.

The vacancy came after the board at the same meeting approved a separation agreement with superintendent Stephen West effective Thursday night.

West had previously tendered his resignation effective June 30, but recent controversy surrounding his academic record hastened his departure. The agreement, which included payment to West for accrued sick time, vacation and paid leave, was approved on a unanimous vote without discussion.

Halvorsen came to the district in 1997 as a physical education and health teacher. Her administrative experience includes assignments as associate principal at the high school and middle school and Winona Senior High School principal from 2010 until her appointment as director of teaching and learning in 2014. She holds a Minnesota superintendents license.

District human resources director Pat Blaisdell said the open teaching and learning position will be posted internally and filled on a temporary basis, contingent on a successful search for a permanent superintendent.

That search was formally initiated with the boards vote to contract with Peer Solutions  a Minnesota professional search firm. Blaisdell said the firm has a record of successful superintendent searches in a number of Minnesota school districts and brings an unusual level of local experience, in that former WAPS superintendent Eric Bartelson is associated with the firm and will participate in the process.

The timeline for the search calls for recruitment and preliminary screening to be complete by early March, followed by formal interviews with a new superintendent contracted by early April.

Peer Solutions fee is $11,900 plus up to $2,500 in expenses, with the proviso that if the successful candidate does not stay with the district for more than a year, another search will be undertaken at with no additional fee.

Also Thursday, Allison Quam took the oath of office as the newest school board member. She was elected to her first term on the board in November, replacing Brian Zeller, who chose not to seek re-election.
With the 2017 legislative session kicking off this week in St. Paul, Winona-area legislators are getting their priorities in order and have returned with several carryover goals from 2016.

While the last session failed to yield significant results in taxes, transportation and bonding, many hope to get closer this year. Still, questions remain about a Legislature divided: DFL Gov. Mark Dayton will finish out his last term, while the Senate came under Republican control to match the existing Republican control of the House.

Heres a look at some of the top issues local legislators plan to focus on:

HEALTHCARE

With skyrocketing costs for health insurance coming to the forefront this year, legislators and the governor have started off 2017 concentrating on reducing costs.

Dayton introduced proposals this week to provide as much as a 25 percent reduction in health insurance premiums through rebates for the more than 125,000 Minnesotans facing significant increases in the individual market.

The issue is also on the table in the House and Senate.

Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, said the first legislation introduced in the Senate after they convened Tuesday was to address healthcare relief and reform.

Miller said southeast Minnesota is seeing some of the highest premium increases in the state, and while lawmakers are looking at providing millions of dollars to alleviate the burden, reforms are needed to prevent healthcare costs from continuing to rise.

We cannot afford to be in the same position next year, Miller said.

He noted  as Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, did regarding discussions on healthcare in the House  that many of the reforms will still have to come at the federal level.

TAXES

Partially a carryover from the previous session, legislators will make a second attempt at a tax reform bill.

Davids, the House Tax Committee chair, said he saw a lot of support for the bill the first time around, so he expected it to be similar this year.

Youll see many elements of the very popular 2016 tax bill, Davids said.

In addition to property tax breaks for small businesses, the bill included reform that would have let farmers off the hook from disproportionally being taxed in school district referendums as well as relief for student debt.

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS

A bonding bill was also in the works last session, but didnt make it past the Senate following the last-minute inclusion of funding for high-speed rail.

The governor has already introduced his bonding and spending proposals, totaling around $1.5 billion, and the House and Senate will be working on their own proposals.

Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, said they have similar goals as last year and will hopefully be able to implement them.

The governors proposal included funding for WSUs Education Village. Other area projects in the proposal are the Lanesboro Dam and funding for improvements to Winonas port.

Pelowski said the state needs to move forward with the projects, in part because there is a backlog of projects and investment across the state at the moment.

We need to clear the deck, Pelowski said. We have other projects that need to move up.

So far the goals of the Legislature and governor align well with what greater Minnesota cities are saying theyd like to see in 2017.

The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities has said that increasing local government aid funding, funding road and infrastructure improvements, and a bonding bill will be their lobbying priorities.

Bradley Peterson, senior lobbyist for the CGMC, said Thursday that legislators saw a pushback in the 2016 election that indicated rural and smaller municipalities didnt feel they were being heard.

Peterson noted that the tax bill, transportation funding and bonding bill that failed to materialize last year would have all had significant positive impacts for the greater Minnesota.

If these things are addressed it will go a long way toward addressing the feeling in greater Minnesota of being left out, and left behind, Peterson said.

Specifically, Peterson said that the coalition would like to see local government aid increased by $45.5 million dollars  back to 2002 levels  to address the fact that it has been stagnant while costs have continued to rise.

They are also seeking $369 million for infrastructure improvements to reduce bottlenecks and barriers to freight on the highways, $50 million in funding to help cities repair their crumbling streets.
The Minnesota High Speed Rail Commission held its first meeting of the year Thursday, setting priorities that include advocating for increased trains to and from the Twin Cities.

Composed of local elected officials, the commission advocates for a high-speed rail line within the federally designated rail corridor that connects the Twin Cities to Milwaukee and Chicago.

Adding a second daily round trip passenger train running from Twin Cities to Milwaukee and Chicago would increase regional travel have a number of benefits, according to the commission.

The increased traffic, estimated to be 155,000 additional trips, would help local economies through rail investments that can increase freight capacity and strengthen multiple other forms of travel by including connections to airports, intercity bus stations and other transit.

While a second train is something the commission thinks could happen quickly if it receives funding from the state, they are in general advocating the expansion of the Amtraks existing Empire Builder route between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

Jim Pomeroy, Winona County commissioner and rail commission member, said the studies for a second line could be completed in the next year, and if installed it could demonstrate that the demand exists.

Amtraks report for its fiscal year in 2016  which ended in September  show an increase in riders on the Empire Builder by 3.7 percent to nearly 455,000. Six of the 15 long distance trains saw increases last year.

It will show the ridership is there, Pomeroy.

While seeking funding to finish the plans, the commission is also advocating for funding of the MnDOT Passenger Rail office, which they say is needed to finish studies on the potential train expansions and continue representing Minnesota in the development of interstate passenger rail projects in the Midwest.

The high speed rail project has been discussed for several years.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration decided in 2011 that a route running along the Mississippi River would be the preferred line for the proposed system connecting the Twin Cities to Chicago.

The biggest hold-up is that in order for the project to move forward is finding funding and forming a partnership with Wisconsin to achieve the project. In 2011, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rejected $810 million in federal funds for a high-speed rail project, and focused instead on improving existing Amtrak services.
Authorities say a Sauk County man burglarized a gas station and stole firearms from a vehicle in the village of Plain.

A Cenex station employee called to report the burglary early Thursday after noticing that the front door glass was smashed, according to a news release from the Sauk County Sheriffs Department.

Deputies who responded found no one inside the store. But the burglary was captured on a surveillance camera, Sheriff Chip Meister said, and investigators later identified former gas station employee Corey L. Forrester, 24, of Plain, as a possible suspect.

Authorities arrested Forrester after investigators found stolen gas station items in his possession, Meister said. They also allegedly recovered three stolen firearms.

The firearms were stolen from a vehicle in the village of Plain this past weekend, Meister said. He added that the Plain Police Department is conducting a follow-up investigation on the stolen guns.

Forrester was arrested on tentative charges of burglary, criminal damage to property, theft, and bail jumping. In December, Dane County prosecutors charged him with burglary, theft, criminal damage to property, resisting or obstructing an officer, and bail jumping. He was out on bail in that case prior to his arrest in Sauk County.
Baraboo has a new village booksmith now that Rob Nelson has taken over as the proprietor of the downtown bookstore.

The Village Booksmith formerly was operated by longtime Baraboo resident Annie Randall, who passed away in August. Nelson bought the store from Randalls partner, Walter Leutenegger, on Monday.

Nelson said he plans to maintain Randalls commitment to community engagement, service and a wide selection of fascinating books, quirky cards and other offbeat merchandise.

Were going to make sure that we have a lot of quality books that people want to read and other things, he said. Its sort of a refuge for the curious.

Like Randalls beloved golden retriever, Nelson even has a service-dog-in-training named Zoey that hangs out in the store.

Prior to taking over, Nelson worked part time at the Village Booksmith for eight years and was a customer even longer. He said a void was left in downtown Baraboo after Randalls passing, and he wanted to try and fill it.

There seemed to be a lot of public sentiment that people wanted to see the store remain open, so I decided to give it a try, Nelson said. As someone whos familiar with the quirks and systems here, I felt like it was a good fit.

Lydia Scott worked alongside both Nelson and Randall at the Village Booksmith over the past four years and said shes confident hell be able to carry on the creative tradition Randall started.

Hes committed to having the book store be a place thats not just out to make money, but to really provide a cultural value for our city, which is really what the bookstore has been about since ever since it opened, she said.

Nelson said the bookstore is putting together an events calendar and hopes to have it up and running by February. He said the Village Booksmith will continue to host live music, poetry and other performing arts as it did under Randalls ownership.

Im working on trying to track down different musical guests and people who are interested in playing in a low-pressure, public, intimate space, Nelson said.

He added that all credit accounts and gift certificates from the store will continue to be honored as well. The store also will begin buying books again, but sellers should contact Nelson to set up an appointment before bringing them in.

Nelson said it will be impossible to run the Village Booksmith with the same electric creativity as Randall, but hes eager and thankful for the opportunity.

Were happy and excited to carry on the tradition of this great downtown institution, he said.
This month, Beaver Dam Common Council will vote on an ordinance that would require secondhand dealers to register items bought items in a database and the possible change has some retailers confused.

Stacy Freber, manager at Frebers Jewelry, 1740 N. Spring St., said over the phone that the Beaver Dam Police Department hasnt talked to her yet and doesnt know the specifics for the how she will use the database.

The database is called LeadsOnline. According to Beaver Dam Police Chief John Kreuziger, he previously has said the service allows the department access to secondhand dealers and jewelers all over Wisconsin. The amended ordinance wants these retailers to log any items they buy within 12 hours of the sale and then hold that item for one week. This way, if the item is stolen, the police are able to track down the item and the seller fast.

Kreuziger said over the phone the service will cost $2,800 annually for the department to access, but it will cost nothing for dealers in Beaver Dam to opt in. Right now, if the amendment passes, businesses that carry a secondhand dealer license would be required to join LeadsOnline.

Dealers that also set up temporary shops also will need to register with the LeadOnline if they are conducting sales in Beaver Dam, Kreuziger said.

Some dealers in Beaver Dam are already using LeadOnline such as Beaver Dam Gold and Coin, 135 Front St., which has been logging into the service for about six months.

For those who dont register, Kreuziger said the municipal judge will determine a penalty.

I think it will keep everybody fair and thats a good thing, Freber said.

Currently, Frebers holds on to an item in case it is stolen. According to Freber, she has a positive relationship with law enforcement and is willing to go forward with whatever the police department thinks is best.

She suspects that if this ordinance is passed, it will have no affect on how she does business.

Betty Reals, co-owner at Beaver Dam Antique Mall, 142 Front St., said that she has no idea how the potential ordinance will affect her business and is unclear why the database could become a requirement.

For the most part, she said that most of her purchases are through estates.

I dont just buy jewelry off the street, she said.

If she suspects that goods maybe stolen, she said she contacts the police.

Kreuziger said in December that this is an attempt to qualm rising theft reports in Beaver Dam. He said retail thefts are the second most common municipal citation.

According to Beaver Dam Police Departments monthly reports, from January to September, there have been 110 shoplifting incidents with more than $20,000 worth of merchandise stolen.

One other question being raised is that once police connect a person with selling stolen goods, how does the dealer get its money back. According to Kreuziger, businesses will have to go through the court system for restitution in order to reclaim those funds.

Kreuziger also is attempting to open communication streams with local retailers and the police department. Its one other way to halt thefts, he previously said.

The amended ordinance will be voted on at the next common council meeting, Jan. 16.
MADISON (AP)  Republican lawmakers should be allowed to redraw legislative boundaries if the U.S. Supreme Court says they must be recast, state attorneys told a panel of federal judges in a filing Thursday.

Attorneys who challenged the boundaries, meanwhile, contended in their own filing that the judges should redraw the lines immediately and get them in place ahead of the 2018 elections.

A dozen voters sued in 2015 over the Republican-drawn boundaries, alleging they unconstitutionally consolidated GOP power and discriminated against Democrats. The three-judge panel agreed in a 2-1 ruling in November but didnt order any immediate action.

The plaintiffs have argued the judges should redraw the lines but if the Legislature does it the work needs to be done by April. DOJ attorneys, led by Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, argue nothing should be done until the U.S. Supreme Court hears the agencys appeal. They want the panel to issue an order directing the Legislature to revise the districts but not require a plan to be enacted until the Supreme Court makes a decision.

Schimel and Assistant Attorney General Brian Keenan filed a brief Thursday reiterating that nothing should be done until the Supreme Court weighs in, saying that court likely will reverse the panels ruling or provide substantial guidance.

If the panel decides to move forward ahead of a Supreme Court decision, however, the Legislature should get to redraw the maps, the DOJ attorneys argued. Legislators are in a much better position to reconcile constitutional requirements with state policy and courts should step in only when lawmakers fail to act or if elections are fast approaching.

Lawmakers also shouldnt be required to act until early 2018 since the Supreme Court could weigh in before then and thats the year of the next round of legislative elections, they added. Requiring a plan by April would be inconsistent with federal court practice of dismissing or staying litigation redistricting until an election year, they said.

Republicans re-drew the district lines shortly after they seized complete control of state government in 2011. The new boundaries have helped the GOP maintain control of the state Senate and Assembly in every election since then. Republicans will keep control of both houses at least until early 2019, which means that if the state justice department wins the case the GOP would rewrite the boundaries again in 2018.

The voters attorneys filed a separate brief Thursday accusing DOJ of trying to delay things until its too late to get new maps in place for 2018. They asked the court to reject the agencys request to stay the case.

They argued that other courts havent moved so slowly in redistricting cases. The judges should prohibit any further use of the current boundaries and take prompt measures to ensure a new map is in place for 2018. Granting the DOJ a stay would likely cause an illegitimate plan to taint Wisconsins democracy for another two years.

It continues to defy credibility how strongly they argue that Republicans should have the right to draw districts that ensure Republican power, even in the face of condemnation of their unconstitutional, undemocratic behavior by the federal courts, Sachin Chheda, director of the Wisconsin Fair Elections Project, which organized the lawsuit, said in an email.
WAUPUN  A horse died in a town of Waupun barn fire Thursday afternoon when firefighters battled the blaze in brutally cold conditions.

Wind chills Thursday afternoon were well below zero.

According to a press release from Waupun Fire Chief B.J. DeMaa, Waupun Community Fire Department was dispatched to N4637 Amity Road around 4:01 p.m. for a report of a barn on fire.

Firefighters encountered thick smoke and flames coming from the barn. Workers from 11 different agencies were brought in to help with water shuttles due to the extreme cold. It took them four hours to put out the fire and complete overhaul operations.

There were no injuries, but firefighters were unable to rescue a horse in the barn.

The property is owned by James and William Davison. A tenant, Brian Callahan, was home at the time of the fire and was alerted to the fire by a passerby.

The barn was destroyed and damage is estimated to be in excess of $100,000.

The blaze is under investigation.

Agencies assisting the Waupun Community Fire Department included fire departments from Alto, Brandon, Burnett, Fond du Lac, Eldorado, Lamartine, Oakfield, Rosendale, town of Fond du Lac, and city of Waupun; RIT District 2; Lifestar Ambulance; Fond du Lac County Sheriffs Office; Wisconsin State Patrol; town of Waupun and Fond du Lac County highway departments and Alliant Energy.
JUNEAUA 27-year-old former Waupun woman was sentenced to five years in prison Friday after pleading no contest to charges of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old boy.

Cassandra J. Scheuers appeared before Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries. De Vries accepted Scheuers plea and found her guilty of a charge of first degree sexual assaultsexual intercourse with a child under the age of 13.

Scheuers must serve five years of initial incarceration in prison and five years of an extended sentence.

According to the criminal complaint, deputies were contacted to check the welfare of Scheuers on May 27, 2015, but found she was at the Waupun Police Department.

Scheuers reported that she saw Robert J. Moungey on a laptop computer with young naked girls displayed on the screen. She also said Moungey had shown her a video of him sexually assaulting a 1-year-old girl.

Scheuers said that on one occasion, Moungey had tied a 3-year-old boy up to a bed with a restraint system used for bondage. Moungey asked her to sexually assault the boy and she did so while he took pictures.

Scheuers said Moungey contacted her and sent her one of the photos via a message. She said he told her she could face the same criminal charges he might face. According to the criminal complaint, Scheuers told police she assaulted the toddler because she was worried that Moungey would hurt her.

The restraint system was taken to the Waupun Police Station. A detective was granted a search warrant and was able to retrieve a laptop and an external hard drive. Scheuers gave permission for the equipment to be taken. The electronic equipment was taken to the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigations in Madison.

A computer forensic analyst at the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation discovered 16 movies and 473 images containing child pornography on the computer and external hard drive. The analyst said that some of the still photos showed what they believed to be Moungey having sexual relations with a 1- or 2-year-old child.

The photos analyzed showed a number of different child victims ranging in age, gender and nationality. Many of the child victims were believed to be 5 or younger.

Moungey was sentenced to 31 years in prison in October.
The Juneau County UW-Extension department is hosting two special Lunch n Learn seminars this month in Mauston.

On Thursday, Jan. 12, the extension will host a seminar on tax law and accounting changes and how they impact personal and small business taxes. Mary Jo Werner, a partner with Wipfli LLP in La Crosse will provide a presentation from 11:30 a.m.  1 p.m. in the extension conference room on the third floor of its office at 211 Hickory Street.

On Jan. 26, the extension is hosting The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, with guest speakers Art Lersch, an associate professor and community resource development educator with Lincoln Countys UW-Extension office, and Steve Covey, an author who wrote a book on the habits of highly effective people.

Gary Kirking, Juneau County UW-Extension Resource Development Educator, said the Jan. 12 session is ideal because its at the start of tax season.

We were very fortunate to get Mary Jo because she has incredibly background as far as leadership and she has been doing the tax updates for several groups in western Wisconsin so she already has the curriculum and materials ready, Kirking said. Were lucky to have her. And its nice to have this so early, especially before the tax season comes up.

Werner uses her tax and accounting background to help clients reduce their income and state tax exposure and assist them in increasing profitability. Werner, who also has a law degree, specializes in legal support for law firms and provides assistance in fraud and forensic cases.

People can learn about what the impacts will be from the Affordable Care Act on their 2016 tax returns, Kirking said. For our local business owners, we will talk about when they can start taking some deductions and how they can keep track of those if they just started their business in 2016.

Key topics at the session will include the changes for the 2016 tax filing year; why tax planning is important for everyone; the good and bad news for this years returns; updates on changes for small business; accounting and tax planning recommendations; and additional topics.

Werner has won several state and federal awards and is admired for developing close ties to clients.

If people can save a few dollars on their taxes its a win-win for the local economy because its money that goes back into the community, Kirking said.

To register for the Jan. 12 Lunch n Learn, send an email to Mary Nuttall at mary.nuttall@ces.uwex.edu or call 608-847-9212 by Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 4 p.m. Cost to attend is $15 for adults and $10 for students, which includes lunch, a presentation and educational materials.

Meals for the Lunch n Learn sessions are catered, giving local restaurants an opportunity to promote their food.

People very seldom complain about the food, Kirking said. Nobody goes away hungry.

The Jan. 26 Lunch n Learn will be held from 11:30 a.m.  1:15 p.m. Covey, a highly-respected author, has sold more than 20 million copies of his books. He has been recognized as one of TIME magazines 25 most influential Americans and has received the International Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Lersch has used Coveys tips to mentor youth in Lincoln County. He became a certified 7 Habits instructor in 2005. Lersch has an extensive background in entrepreneurship and leadership development.

Kirking started the lunch seminars in 2010 and the sessions are typically well attended.

When I first started here and I met with different groups in the community, they kept telling me they wanted more professional development opportunities here so they dont have to go to La Crosse or Madison, Kirking said. Last month, we went over 2,500 attendees so we average around 30 people each session. We feel really good about the response from the community and the leadership in the area.

After the presentations, speakers spend a few minutes meeting with attendees for any additional questions.

Registration is also open for the Jan. 26 seminar. To sign-up, send an email to Kirking at gary.kirking@ces.uwex.edu or call 608-847-9329.

Kirking said upcoming sessions will include presentations on internet security, business evaluation and leadership.
OREGON  An Oregon High School student was arrested Thursday after a small midmorning fire in a bathroom caused the building to be evacuated and afternoon classes to be canceled.

No one was injured.

Oregon police arrested a 17-year-old student who was tentatively charged with arson after a joint investigation by the Oregon fire and police departments, Fire Chief Glenn Linzmeier said.

Students and staff evacuated the school to nearby buildings in frigid temperatures of 8 to 10 degrees after fire alarms sounded when smoke was detected at 10:25 a.m. in the music wing of the school at 456 N. Perry Parkway, school district Superintendent Brian Busler said.

Firefighters arrived as students and staff were getting out and found thick, black smoke coming from one door of the school and filling one hallway.

The fire was contained to a paper towel dispenser in a bathroom and quickly extinguished, Busler said.

Fire crews from Oregon, Brooklyn, Fitchburg and McFarland then spent several hours pushing a large amount of smoke out of the building using positive pressure fans after the schools HVAC system was shut down, Linzmeier said.

Students and staff were dismissed for the day for safety reasons at 12:15 p.m. Students were told to be out of the high school by 12:45, with only brief returns inside allowed to collect belongings.

School buses were routed back to the school to take students home. Students also were allowed to walk home, leave in their own vehicles or be picked up by parents.

A damage estimate was not available.

Classes were to resume as scheduled Friday.
Items are listed under the day of the event only, running as space permits prior to the event. To submit items, call 745-3511, email jcutsforth@capitalnewspapers.com or visit www.portagedailyregister.com. Include name and phone number.

TODAY

Art exhibit: Portage Center for the Arts Drury Gallery presents the exhibit by the Holy Wisdom Art Group, Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. The gallery is open from 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Call 742-5655 for more information.

Hope House support group: 1 to 2 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Has domestic violence touched your life in some way? Find connections with supportive individuals who have similar life experiences as you at Hope Houses newest support group. All are welcome. Held on the first and third Friday of the month. For more information, contact Katie Fluger, outreach advocate, at 608-356-9123.

Fish fry: 5 to 7:30 p.m. Knights of Columbus fish fry, Knights of Columbus Hall, 918 Silver Lake Drive, Portage. Cocktails at 4 p.m. Public invited. Cost is $10.75.

Unique Singles: 5 p.m. Susies Steak and Seafood, county Highway CX, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers.

SATURDAY, JAN. 7

Columbia County 4-H Drama Festival: 8:30 to 11 a.m. Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Youths will perform in three different plays. The youths are from North Scott, Dekorra Rocketeers and Arlington Prairie Producers 4-H clubs. A judge will evaluate each of the performances. This free event is open to the public.

Free childrens vision screening: 9 to 10 a.m. free vision screening provided by the Portage Lions Club, Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. This service is for children ages 6 months and older; children who may already have glasses should wear them at the screening. For more information on the free vision screening, call 742-4959, ext. 211.

Library event: 10 to 11 a.m. FamilyFunEvent, Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. FamilyFunEvent presents Marshmallow Madness. Beat the post-holiday blues with a family-friendly, marshmallow-themed morning of games, activities, art and refreshments. All ages are welcome; children must be accompanied by an adult. Families will compete in a marshmallow popper game and relay races, paint with marshmallows and more. Registration is not required for this free program. FamilyFunEvent is the first Saturday of every month, October through May. For more information, call 742-4959, ext. 211 or visit the Portage Public Library: Childrens Department Facebook page.

Religion class: 5 p.m. Deliverance ministry classes with Pastor Dale Smalley, Outreach Bible Church, 235 Northridge Drive, Portage. All welcome.

SUNDAY, JAN. 8

Zumba: 5:30 p.m. Rusch Elementary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

MONDAY, JAN. 9

Clinic: 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information.

Clinic: 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Westfield Municipal Building, 129 E. 3rd St., Westfield. Bring childs immunization record. Parents must accompany all children under 18 years of age. If this is not possible, call the Marquette County Health Department at 608-297-3135 prior to the clinic.

Food pantry: 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Portage Second Harvest mobile food pantry, Building No. 8, Columbia County Fairgrounds, Portage. No need to line up earlier than 10:15 a.m. Pantry will not start early. Plenty of food for everyone. Bring boxes, bags, baskets or wagons to carry food. Volunteers are always welcome.

Fundraiser: Portage Family Skatepark Project fundraiser at Papa Murphys Pizza, 2936 New Pinery Road, Portage. Mention the PFSP and 10 percent of your purchase will benefit the PFSP.

Culvers Share Night: 5 to 8 p.m. Culvers, New Pinery Road, Portage. Enjoy your Culvers favorites and meet committee members and volunteers of the Portage Family Skatepark Project.

Sci-Fi Book Club: 6 to 7:30 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. The group will discuss The Martian. The book choice for the Feb. 6 discussion is Dune.

Seniors Bowling Social: 2 p.m. Fireball Lanes, 817 E. Wisconsin St., Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental.

Zumba/Zumba Toning: 6 p.m. Harrisville. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

TUESDAY, JAN. 10

Mystery Book Club: 1:30 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. The group will discuss Die Trying by Lee Child. The book for the Feb. 14 discussion is Geared For The Grave by Duffy Brown.

Zumba Toning: 4:30 p.m. Woodridge Primary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 11

Bingo: 5:30 p.m. 131 Restaurant, North Main Street, Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month.

Clinic: 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information.

Free blood pressure screenings: 1 to 5 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. No appointment necessary. Call 745-6405 for more information. Do not eat, smoke, drink caffeine or exercise for 30 minutes prior.

St. Vincent de Paul free medical clinic: 9 a.m. to noon. Wilz Drugs lower level, 140 E. Cook St., Portage. No appointments needed. Information needed is name, date of birth and a contact number. A chiropractor is available from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesdays. A foot clinic is available every week. The clinic can do exams and prescribe medications. Physical therapist available. Discounted medications are available at Wilz and Walmart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for information.

Zumba/Zumba Toning: 5 p.m. Montello. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

Zumba: 5:30 p.m. 1208 Northport Road (the former Freedom Carpeting building). This is a $5 drop-in class. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com or Rena at 697-6713.

THURSDAY, JAN. 12

Cookie sale: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. front lobby, Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. On the second Thursday of each month, the Volunteer Partners of Divine Savior bake Smart Cookies. Cookies are 50 cents each or $5.50 per dozen. Cookie selection varies month to month, but chocolate chip is always available. All proceeds benefit scholarships for students educating in healthcare-related fields.

Museum: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Portage World War II Museum, 119 E. Cook St., Portage. Free tours for veterans every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The tours take 2 1/2 hours. For information, call 608-697-3690.
ROCK SPRINGS  A Rock Springs student and the local library have helped each other achieve their goals.

On Jan. 5, Ryann Hartzell hosted a presentation about her missions trip to Kenya. The trip cost about $5,000 but Hartzell covered it with sponsors and donations, including a contribution from the Rock Springs Public Library.

This small-town library wasnt always equipped to support non-profit causes; in 2015 it nearly closed due to financial struggles. Rock Springs was one of many Wisconsin communities hit hard by the June 2008 flood and many families lost their homes to the high water.

The town also used to have an elementary school through the Reedsburg School District but the doors closed in 2010. The school was an attractive feature for families with younger children. Now parents need to live in Reedsburg, La Valle or Loganville to be close to an elementary school within the district.

Hartzell said she was saddened when she heard the news about the library. Her family has lived in Rock Springs for generations and she grew up using the library and attending programs. She graduated from Reedsburg Area High School in 2014 and is now a junior studying biochemistry at Anderson University in Indiana. Even though shes going to school out of state she still spends breaks in Rock Springs with her family.

So she decided to use her web knowledge and started a GoFundMe campaign. The effort generated more than $4,500 for the library, said Library Assistant Mary Jo Doepke. She said the library greatly appreciated Hartzells actions.

Unforgettable experience

Now its Hartzells turn to be grateful. She said she found out about missions to Kenya while attending college and wanted to go because of her faith. She said shes attended the Church of God for as long as she can remember and her family still attends services in Reedsburg.

Her dream came true in the summer of 2016 when she spent almost seven weeks near Kisumu. She stayed at the Kima Mission Station and spent a lot of time at Kima International School of Theology, where she met students from around the globe.

Most people spoke English and Swahili as well as tribal languages. Hartzell said she relied on interpreters during special occasions, such as when she visited a local dressmaker or attended a church meal.

She said she had the chance to sing with a church choir, meet village children and see a small hospital. As a biochemistry major, she took great interest in the local health care system, especially the hospital lab. It was quite different from what she knew from the U.S. Conditions werent as antiseptic but care was also cheaper. She said it cost $12 U.S. to have a baby but many other services cost around $1. The lab was busy testing for malaria and typhoid and Hartzell said she accompanied students during trips for diagnoses and treatment.

She said she also had the chance to go on safari and visit a rainforest. Both were breathtakingly beautiful and she took countless photos.

During an interview with the Times-Press, Hartzell said she found it amusing that she has spent more time around lions in Wisconsin than in Kenya. Her family lives near Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue in Rock Springs so shes seen more felines at home than overseas.

Now that shes back home she plans to finish her four-year degree and maybe do some Peace Corps volunteering.
A boat ride through the Upper Dells or a hike around Devils Lake might not sound like the best idea for an afternoons activity at the moment, considering the weather conditions.

But thanks to an enterprising Wisconsin Dells-area photographer and the folks at Google Maps, you dont have to go outside to experience these natural wonders.

A close-up view of the High Rock along the narrows of the Wisconsin River, or a panoramic view from atop the bluffs around Devils Lake  not to mention a ski ride down the slopes of Cascade Mountain  are as close now as a couple of mouse clicks on your personal computer or a screen tap or two on your smart phone or tablet.

Cascade Mountain, Devils Lake State Park and the Upper Dells of the Wisconsin River can now be enjoyed online  from an infinite number of three-dimensional, 360-degree perspectives  thanks to the efforts of Dells-based photographer Christopher Pitts in conjunction with Google Street Maps and Googles Street View Trekker program.

Pitts, a local professional photographer who grew up in the Dells area and who also happens to be an enthusiastic outdoorsman and member of the Stewards of the Dells of the Wisconsin River, stumbled across the Street View Trekker program more than a year ago, when he was looking (online) for new technology and ways to take photos.

He found exactly such an opportunity with the Street View Trekker camera loan program (www.google.com/streetview/trekker), which offers the use of Googles multi-lens, panoramic and 360-degree Trekker camera and backpack for loan to those seeking to promote areas of cultural, historical or touristic significance.

Pitts applied, and by late winter 2016 he was in the possession of the camera and the 50 pounds of technology that comes with it  all worn by Pitts on his back as he took photographic trips up the Wisconsin River, around Devils Lake and down Cascade Mountain.

The results can be seen most quickly and directly online in the following links:

Upper Dells: https://goo.gl/NzQ56M; Devils Lake (West Bluff/Ice Age Trail, one of several designated hiking trails available for virtual tours of the park, all photographed by Pitts): https://goo.gl/lUyasz; and Cascade Mountain (Manitou Hill, with several other hills mapped as well): https://goo.gl/9a0DN9.

Multiple virtual tours of the three regional destinations also can be taken on a smart phone or tablet, using the app titled Explore for Google Street View on Google Maps on an iPhone or iPad, or Google Street View for Android devices.

As a technology-savvy photographer and someone who grew up exploring and enjoying all three of the aforementioned local sites, Pitts was uniquely qualified to take on the task of photographing the three natural areas.

His goal, he said, was to provide a reminder for people of the vast beauty the Dells holds beyond the array of tourist attractions and ultimately sparks a desire to take a boat tour, go for a hike or just take in the vista from a park bench.

He utilized the help and a loaner boat from his former employer Dells Boat Tours and owner Dan Gavinski to make his way up the Wisconsin River all the way to the location of Stand Rock and back and the accompaniment of friends and relatives, including photographer Anthony Marz, who accompanied Pitts at Devils Lake.

The task of toting the 50-pound backpack that held the Trekker camera and its accompanying equipment fell to Pitts alone, which made for some rigorous hikes around Devils Lake  as well as all but the most difficult and challenging ski runs at Cascade Mountain.

I did the easy (green) and more difficult (blue) runs, Pitts said. I was on skis and didnt do the black diamond runs because I didnt think I could stop with the 50-pound pack weighing me down.
Overturning two lower court rulings, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck a blow Wednesday for government secrecy. The courts 5-2 decision in the case involving state Attorney General Brad Schimel was mistaken  twice  and came from the same swamp that produced state GOP legislators efforts in 2015 to draw curtains on government transparency.

First, it was mistaken because the public should have access to the training videos Schimel was keeping under wraps. Schimel made the videos for the Department of Justice when he was Waukesha County district attorney. The Democratic Party filed suit to see whether Schimel had made any questionable comments. He hadnt, according to the lower court judges. But those judges also ruled that the public nevertheless should have access to the videos because there was nothing in them that wasnt otherwise known and the public had a right to see what the government did to protect children from predators.

The second mistake came when Justice Rebecca Bradley, writing for the majority, ascribed a partisan purpose to the Democratic Party in seeking release of the videos. Of course the Dems had a partisan purpose. So what? The motive of those seeking to open government records is never the question; the only question is whether the records legitimately belong to the public. Would those justices deny records to the Republican Party if it sought records from Democrats or a Democratic administration?

Who asks for a record and the motive for asking for that record are not legitimate questions under the states open records law. Nor should they be. The courts must consider all such requests objectively and equally; it must not deny them to certain groups because they may be partisan or for any other motive. Doing so makes a mockery of the states laws.

The court also bought Schimels argument that the videos should be kept hidden to protect law enforcement techniques and prevent victims from being re-traumatized by the release of information about what they went through. We understand Schimels point, and we dont think hes trying to hide something nefarious.

But two lower courts had decided that the videos did not reveal any particularly sensitive law enforcement techniques. And prior court decisions have recognized that the public has a right to records that reveal how law enforcement is performing.

In her dissent, Justice Shirley Abrahamson contended the majority went too far in keeping the two Department of Justice videos from the public.

Today, the majority opinion significantly dims the lights on transparency in government and shuts off some lights by concluding that the Department of Justice may withhold both of the videos in their entirety, she wrote.

Abrahamson got it right. The majority got it wrong, and sent a disturbing message about this courts commitment to protecting the publics right to know how its officials conduct their business.
Friday, January 06, 2017 Friday Clippings From Our Newsroom Floor Working the Beat This is



Employees at the federal governments only underground nuclear waste repository resumed disposal work Wednesday after a nearly three-year hiatus prompted by a radiation release that contaminated a significant portion of the facility. Two pallets of low-level radioactive waste were emplaced in one of the underground disposal rooms at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico, the U.S. Energy Department confirmed.



Reader Ezra Spitzer disagrees with our take and doesn't think imposing the state's gross receipts tax on big online retailers like Amazon.com is the way to go when it comes to raising badly needed revenue for the state:



I'm not a no tax yahoo and consider myself a progressive, but totally disappointed seeing you and others jumping on expanding the gross receipts tax to Internet sales as a "fix" for all that ails us. The gross receipts is a horribly regressive tax...just about as bad as they come and I hate to see folks arguing for its expansion. We should be trying to get the dang thing lowered and fewer things taxed by it instead of expanding what it touches. I also fail to see Macy's or Big 5 or any other big box as a "local business." Amazon just beat them at their own game. There are so many tax solutions that would fix our problems and I refuse to believe any expansion or increase of a regressive tax is the right solution.



In the old days, before today's radicalization of tax policy in which no tax increases whatsoever can be entertained, the short-term solution to the state's budget crisis would be relatively easy. The liberals give by supporting that Internet tax, the conservatives give by agreeing to a freeze on the recently enacted corporate income tax cut and to an increase in the capital gains tax. Both sides agree to a nickel or dime a gallon boost in the gas tax (for a specified time period) and some selective government cuts. And you are on your way. But radicalization has led to gridlock and a never ending crisis. In other words, Susana Martinez is no Garrey Carruthers.



SMILE, TOM







While I appreciate the need for humor (especially these days), I'm a little disappointed that it came at the Mr. Church's expense as he is among the few outstanding appointments made by this administration. Under Mr. Church's leadership, the NMDOT has dramatically increased the number of projects under construction, made progress in delivering big projects on time and under budget (think Paseo del Norte), and has resisted the old patron system of project selection in favor of prioritizing road work based on citizen safety and need. Also, Mr. Church came up through the ranks, he was not placed there as an act of political patronage. We, as a state, would be lucky to have him remain the head of NMDOT after Susana is long gone.



Well, that ought to give Church a needed grin.



Thanks for stopping by this week.



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







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( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2017 This is surprising . Whether it's prudent is another matter:Reader Ezra Spitzer disagrees with our take and doesn't think imposing the state's gross receipts tax on big online retailers like Amazon.com is the way to go when it comes to raising badly needed revenue for the state:In the old days, before today's radicalization of tax policy in which no tax increases whatsoever can be entertained, the short-term solution to the state's budget crisis would be relatively easy. The liberals give by supporting that Internet tax, the conservatives give by agreeing to a freeze on the recently enacted corporate income tax cut and to an increase in the capital gains tax. Both sides agree to a nickel or dime a gallon boost in the gas tax (for a specified time period) and some selective government cuts. And you are on your way. But radicalization has led to gridlock and a never ending crisis. In other words, Susana Martinez is no Garrey Carruthers.When we first posted this pic of Susana and a forlorn looking bystander, we did not know it was Tom Church, the secretary of the state's transportation department. We joked that he looked as if he were in mourning and that perhaps he was thinking that soon he would have to be looking for a new job as Susana's final two years commence. All in good fun, of course, but this reader, who in the past worked with the secretary, says Church may look sad but he's not turning in a sad performance:Well, that ought to give Church a needed grin.Thanks for stopping by this week.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)
On 3-5 October 2017 Kyiv is going to host the Space and Future Forum to network international experts and youth, many of whom will also participate at the first CosmoHack in the world. Joinfo provides media coverage of the Forum, and some of its topics were already discussed ...
S&P 500 3,719.89 DOW 32,001.25 QQQ 260.49 Harnessing Neuroplasticity Allows You to Actually Change the Way You Think. Here's How. 6 Stocks Under 5 Bucks (Ad) eBay or Etsy: Which Is The Better Buy? Paypal Shows Promise With Strong Buy Rating 5 Diamonds in the Rough (Ad) Energy Transfer Raises Guidance, But Stock Lower On Revenue Miss Papa Johns Falls Flat On Earnings, Shares Set To Rise Under $5 a Share (Ad) Bank of England makes biggest interest rate hike in 30 years Mid-Caps CommScope, Dycom Outperform Broader Telecom Industry

S&P 500 3,719.89 DOW 32,001.25 QQQ 260.49 Harnessing Neuroplasticity Allows You to Actually Change the Way You Think. Here's How. 6 Stocks Under 5 Bucks (Ad) eBay or Etsy: Which Is The Better Buy? Paypal Shows Promise With Strong Buy Rating 5 Diamonds in the Rough (Ad) Energy Transfer Raises Guidance, But Stock Lower On Revenue Miss Papa Johns Falls Flat On Earnings, Shares Set To Rise Under $5 a Share (Ad) Bank of England makes biggest interest rate hike in 30 years Mid-Caps CommScope, Dycom Outperform Broader Telecom Industry

S&P 500 3,719.89 DOW 32,001.25 QQQ 260.49 Harnessing Neuroplasticity Allows You to Actually Change the Way You Think. Here's How. 6 Stocks Under 5 Bucks (Ad) eBay or Etsy: Which Is The Better Buy? Paypal Shows Promise With Strong Buy Rating 5 Diamonds in the Rough (Ad) Energy Transfer Raises Guidance, But Stock Lower On Revenue Miss Papa Johns Falls Flat On Earnings, Shares Set To Rise Under $5 a Share (Ad) Bank of England makes biggest interest rate hike in 30 years Mid-Caps CommScope, Dycom Outperform Broader Telecom Industry
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Capturing Jacqueline Kennedy on film is no easy task. Private and secretive and always conscious of image, she created Camelot to mythologize her life with President John F. Kennedy in the White House and worked to ensure his status as an important president, but largely disappeared from the public view for decades after his 1963 assassination.

That is why Jackie is such a revelation.

Director Pablo Larrain, who comes from Chile, which likely is critical in bringing a new viewpoint to the modern American story, and Natalie Portman, in a performance for the ages, have brought her fully to the screen, a complex woman, steely and shy, intelligent and wary and ultimately sympathetic and wise.

Jackie, however, isnt an ordinary biopic. Theres no backstory of Jacqueline Bouvier, no depiction of her 1952 meeting Rep. John F. Kennedy at a dinner or of their lives together. Nor is there any leap forward to her marriage to Aristotle Onassis, her time as a book editor or the end of her life.

Instead, Noah Oppenheims brilliantly conceived screenplay opens a week after Kennedys assassination when a journalist, played by Billy Crudup, turns up at the familys Hyannis Port, Massachusetts compound to interview Jackie.

The writer, whos a composite of journalists including Theodore Teddy White, who did the real Life magazine story, probingly questions Mrs. Kennedy, trying to get inside her thoughts and feelings rather than contribute to the image she was carefully constructing.

Who knows what really happened in the interview, but in the film, he elicits responses that are revealing -- then instantly edited by Jackie, who, for example, lights cigarette after cigarette as she talks, then says I dont smoke.

The interview focuses on the previous week, from the events in Dallas through the funeral, for which Jackie was criticized by some for creating a spectacle that was larger than Kennedys accomplishments, and glances back to her televised 1962 Tour of the White House.

The film moves back and forth between the interview, the previous week and the tour, a technique that is initially jarring but becomes transfixing as we watch Portman reveal all the Jackies that were Jacqueline Kennedy.

While Portman doesnt look exactly like the real Jackie, shes close enough with the famous bouffant hairdo, the Chanel outfits and her poised manner. And she has her clipped East Coast manner of speaking down.

But where Portmans performance really comes alive is in her demeanor, her eyes and her shakiness, the death of her husband and her grieving having unsettled everything, causing jumps from steely resolve to drunken stumbling through a White House that soon will no longer be hers.

Those jumps can happen in seconds -- from strong to uncertain, from the mother who touchingly has to tell her two little children that that their daddy has gone to heaven to be with their brother Patrick to a woman whose world has fallen apart, who has no idea where she will live or go or what she will do.

That is a Jackie never before seen on screen and rarely portrayed in the dozens of books about her and JFK.

Particularly for those of us of a certain age who remember the events of November 1963, there was a requirement for accuracy for Jackie -- in its portrayals of the familiar figures and its depiction of the time and place -- and Larrain, cinematographer Stephane Fontaine and the production, set and costume designers hit it perfectly.

That begins with the casting. While they dont appear much, Danish actor Caspar Phillipson as JFK, John Carroll Lynch as Lyndon Johnson and Beth Grant as Lady Bird Johnson embody their famous characters -- looking and acting right.

The more critical performers -- Peter Sarsgaard as Robert F. Kennedy and Greta Gerwig as Jackies assistant Nancy Tuckerman -- dont have exact resemblances to the people they are playing. But their performances are letter perfect. And John Hurt is just as perfectly cast as the old priest who Jackie turns to on the day of the funeral.

Beautifully structuring the film, Larrain is able to insert actual footage from Tour of The White House and from the funeral, giving the picture a kind of authenticity, and Fontaine makes every shot count -- Jackie is as visually revealing as a film can get.

That includes the closeups in which Portman and Crudup are captured in the interview, the scenes of the uncertain but poised Jackie guiding the hulking TV cameras through the White House and the Dallas depictions, including an unforgettably shocking view of Kennedy on Jackies lap after he has been shot that goes where the Zapruder film does not.

At one point, Portmans Jackie says, Ive lost track of what was real and what was performance, a revealing line about the life of first ladies and presidents. But it also holds true for Jackie.

Theres certainly plenty of imagined history to go along with the rigorously documented events in the film. But as Larrain and Portman mine that material, the real and the performance become one and the same, finally showing Jackie on the big screen.
Lincoln police have arrested a second suspect in the Dec. 28 robbery at Union Bank & Trust.

Shawn T. Brooks, 25, was booked into jail on suspicion of robbery after being picked up as he was walking in the 2600 block of West O Street on Friday morning, Officer Katie Flood said.

Investigators developed Brooks as a suspect through his association with Marcus K. Remus, who was arrested Wednesday in Omaha.

Lincoln police continue to investigate the possible involvement of both men in other recent robberies, and Flood said additional charges are possible.

Remus, 19, remains in the Lancaster County jail.

Employees of the bank branch at 6801 O St. escaped injury when one of two robbers fired two shots in their direction, police said. A bandana covered the face of one of the assailants, and one of them carried a handgun.

They left with some cash likely tainted by a red dye pack that exploded, police said.

Police found bullet holes in the bank's ceiling and a flat screen TV.

When Remus was arrested, Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said they were looking for the man they believe fired the shots.

Investigators are looking into whether the bank robbery is connected to a Dec. 26 robbery at the U-Stop on West O Street. Bliemeister said Thursday they still hope to connect the two.

Two men went into the convenience store at 9:44 that night and one fired a warning shot and took cash while the other stood near the door. No injuries were reported.
News that the Senate Agriculture Committee will convene without a Nebraskan at the table for the first time in 48 years came as a disappointment to farmers and ranchers here.

With the importance that ag plays in the Nebraska economy, its unfortunate, said Daykin-area farmer Steve Ebke, who serves as a government affairs committee member for the Nebraska Corn Growers Association and helps direct policy stances for the National Corn Growers as a member of its board.

Earlier this week, Sen. Ben Sasse announced plans to give up his seats on the Ag and Government Affairs committees in favor of appointments to Armed Services and Judiciary. The Republican senator from Fremont will remain on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

His departure from the Ag Committee marks the first time since Sen. Carl Curtis was appointed to it in 1969 that no Nebraskans are on the committee. At times, both of the state's senators have had seats on the committee, including Sens. Mike Johanns and Ben Nelson and Curtis and Sen. Ed Zorinsky.

The streak ends as agriculture faces financial tumult, and it means Nebraska will have no voice on the committee as debate begins on the next farm bill. The current farm bill expires next year.

Food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, make up about 80 percent of the farm bill's costs.

And some conservative groups have set their crosshairs on the financial foundation of the farm insurance safety net.

Ag Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the panel will vet President-elect Donald Trumps nominees, then will shift straight to the farm bill.

We have immediate problems to address, Roberts said in an emailed statement. We need to hear from those on the ground what works in the current Farm Bill and what can be adjusted. We need to learn what we can do to help as we begin consideration of the next Farm Bill.

American agriculture has suffered three years of declining income, more farmers are seeking loans to stay afloat and repayment rates are beginning to suffer, surveys by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City show.

While Nebraskas senators may be interested in agriculture, theyre no longer directly involved in the messy end of the legislative sausage grinder for ag issues, said Nebraska Farmer's Union President John Hansen.

Youre either on the committee, inside helping craft and trade and represent your areas interests, or youre on the outside looking in, he said.

We lost Representative (Brad) Ashford off the House Ag Committee because of the election and now Sasse voluntarily leaves the Senate Ag Committee.

Ashford, who lost a re-election bid to Republican Don Bacon, was the only Nebraskan on the House Ag Committee.

Ebke, who grows corn, soybeans and winter wheat, said Nebraskas federal elected officials can still help farmers even without seats on the ag committees.

Weve got members of Congress on committees that have pretty significant jurisdiction over commerce, transportation, environment, economic policy, tax policy and appropriation," he said. "All those things have a pretty significant impact on Nebraska farmers.

We will work with what we have and certainly hope for their support once something is crafted and comes out to the floor.

In an interview Thursday morning, Sasse said he will stay in touch with agricultures needs and concerns through listening sessions.

I will engage in no less activity in listening to Nebraska farmers and producers about their priorities and concerns, he said.

The farm bill isnt the only issue of interest to Nebraska producers that will be before the Ag Committee in the early days of the session that started this week. Committee members also vote on appointments to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the markets on which farmers and ranchers sell goods like corn and beef.

Nebraskas absence on this committee comes at a particularly troubling time given the recent volatility in the cattle market and vacancies on the CFTC, Nebraska Cattlemen President Troy Stowater said in a statement. Nebraska Cattlemen hope the committee will continue to protect the nations cattle producers even if there is no representation from the top state for cattle on feed.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts offered words of support for Nebraska's senators and said future farm policy will depend a great deal on who Trump appoints to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Im very confident both Sen. Fischer and Sen. Sasse can make this work, he said at a recent news conference. I certainly leave it up to their discretion how they want to balance that.

Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson downplayed the significance of Sasses move from the Ag Committee.

"While it's great to have people serving on the Agriculture Committee, there are lots of ways for congressmen and senators to serve Nebraska," he said.

Sasse had to get a special waiver to join Nebraskas senior senator, Republican Deb Fischer, on the Armed Services Committee. Fischer will retain her seats on the Commerce and Environment and Public Works committees.

She declined comment on Sasse's committee choices.

Senator Sasse made his own committee selections. Any questions regarding his choices should be directed to him, Fischer said in statement.




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Simulator upgrade for Mexican plant

06 January 2017

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Canada's L-3 MAPPS has been awarded a contract to support modernization of the full-scope control room simulator for Mexico's sole nuclear power plant, the twin-unit Laguna Verde.

Laguna Verde's control room simulator (Image: L-3 MAPPS)

L-3 MAPPS said yesterday it had received an order from Mexico's National Institute of Electricity and Clean Energy (INEEL) to help upgrade the plant's simulator for the state-owned power company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). The value of the order was not disclosed.

Simulators are a vital piece of equipment for plant operators, both at the start of their careers and for their continued training.

In the first phase of the modernization project, INEEL will develop a classroom simulator using L-3 MAPPS' Orchid simulation environment equipped with interactive virtual panels and emergency diesel generator local panels. The overall modernization project is to be executed in multiple phases, with the first phase set to be completed in the second half of this year.

L-3 MAPPS said it will deploy its Orchid simulation suite, to be utilized for all phases of the modernization project, and will train INEEL's simulation personnel. During the first phase, INEEL will replatform the existing plant simulation from a third-party platform to Orchid and will develop the virtual panels with L-3 MAPPS' on-site and remote support. INEEL will also develop new emergency diesel generator models using the Orchid modelling environment.

Michael Chatlani, vice president of marketing and sales for L-3 MAPPS Power Systems and Simulation, said the order represents its first sale into the Mexican market.

The Laguna Verde plant comprises two 810 MWe boiling water reactors and produces about 4.5% of Mexico's electrical energy. Unit 1 came on line in 1989 and is currently licensed to operate until 2029, while unit 2 has been operating since 1994 and is licensed to operate until 2034.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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First Hualong One dome takes shape

06 January 2017

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Assembly of the containment building dome for unit 5 of the Fuqing nuclear power plant has been completed. The unit - the first of two demonstration Hualong One units being built at the site in China's Fujian province - is expected to start up in 2019.

The assembled dome of Fuqing 5's containment building (Image: CNNC)

China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced today the main assembly work for the dome had been completed on 3 January.

The hemispherical structure, weighing about 305 tonnes and with a diameter of some 45 meters, will later be placed upon the walls of the unit's containment structure - a major component for protecting the reactor and preventing the release of radioactive materials into the environment in the event of a serious accident.

In November 2014, CNNC announced that the fifth and sixth units at Fuqing will use the domestically-developed Hualong One reactor design, marking its first deployment. The company had previously expected to use the ACP1000 design for those units, but plans were revised in line with a re-organisation of the Chinese nuclear industry. China's State Council gave final approval for construction of Fuqing units 5 and 6 in mid-April 2015.

The pouring of first concrete for Fuqing 5 began in May 2015, marking the official start of construction of the unit. The first steel lining module for the containment building of the unit was installed three months later. Construction of unit 6 began in December 2015. The units are scheduled to be completed in 2019 and 2020.

Construction of two Hualong One units is also under way at China General Nuclear's Fangchenggang plant in Guangxi province. Those units are also expected to start up in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

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by World Nuclear News

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Paks 3 operating licence extended to 2036

06 January 2017

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The Hungarian National Atomic Energy Office (OAH) has extended the operating licence of block 3 of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant by another 20 years, state news agency MTI has reported. Meanwhile, the government plans to cut the capital increase earmarked for MVM Paks II nuclear power plant - the company responsible for expansion of the plant.

The Paks plant (Image: Paks NPP)

Paks, located 100 km south of Budapest, currently comprises four Russian-supplied VVER-440 pressurized water reactors, which started up between 1982 and 1987. These units provide one-third of Hungary's electricity.

Paks 3 was commissioned in 1986 and its operating licence was set to expire on 31 December last year. OAH said earlier that month it had received an application to extend the operating licence of unit 4 for another 20 years, until 31 December 2037. Units 1 and 2, which received their 20-year licence extensions earlier this decade, will operate until the ends of 2032 and 2034, respectively.

An inter-governmental agreement signed in early 2014 would see Russian enterprises and their international sub-contractors supply two new units at Paks - VVER-1200 reactors - as well as a Russian state loan of up to 10.0 billion ($11.2 billion) to finance 80% of the project.

The European Commission last year cleared Hungary's award of the contract to Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to build the two new units. It has examined two matters related to Paks II - procurement and whether funding of the project amounts to state aid. On 17 November, it closed the infringement procedure it had launched against Hungary over public procurement rules in connection with the project. It is still investigating whether there is state aid.

MVM Paks II received an environmental licence in late September and in October submitted a site licence application for the two new units. A public hearing on the project was launched in the city of Paks on 13 December.

The first Paks II unit is to be completed in 2025 and the second in 2026.

MTI also reported last month that the government plans to amend the 2016 Budget Act and, among other cost cutting measures, reduce spending of HUF113.1 billion ($3.9 million) this year on a capital increase at MVM Paks II by HUF80.8 billion.

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by World Nuclear News

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Though Brazil has the highest number of national parks, only 2.968% of its land area is occupied by the parks. South America accounts for over 40% of the earths biodiversity, thanks to ecological hotspots such as the Amazon Forest and the Andes Mountain Range. The region boasts wide expanses of wild areas, woodlands, wetlands, mountains, and forests as well as rich flora and fauna. This extraordinary wealth in natural resources has rendered South America vulnerable to environmental threats. Woodlands continue to face degradation to satiate the demand for agriculture and human settlement. Other threats include climate change, resource extraction, infrastructure development, and logging. Conservation efforts are thus necessitated in the region, which lags behind on preservation policies.

Top 3 South American Countries With The Highest Number Of National Parks

Brazil

Brazil tops the list with a total of 68 national parks. The first national park to begin operations in the country was the Itatiaia National Park in 1937. The national parks in Brazil protect natural features such as rainforests, canyons, cliffs, mountains, waterfalls, beaches, sand dunes, wetlands, and rock formations. The parks are home to exotic animal species including the jaguar, guara wolves, armadillo, tapirs, and monkeys. National parks are regularly established in Brazil in a bid to protect the countrys natural scenery, biodiversity, and natural wealth. Brazils natural richness is a major driver of the lucrative tourism sector, with the most popular parks being the Tijuca National Park, Iguacu National Park, Brasilia National Park, and the Serra dos Orgaos National Park.

Colombia

Colombia clinches the second spot with a total of 59 national parks covering an area of 14,268,224 hectares. The countrys oldest national park was established in 1960 as the Cueva de Los Guacharos National Park. The parks protect Colombias unique biodiversity, which is about 10% of the worlds biodiversity. The country ranks top on account of bird and orchid biodiversity. A further 314 different ecosystems support a rich flora and fauna as well as other natural resources. The national parks act as protection from environmental threats including deforestation, human encroachment, urban development, and mining.

Venezuela

Venezuela prides in 43 national parks, and it is listed as the 9th country in the world in order of biodiversity. The Henri Pittier National Park, which began operations in 1937, is the nations oldest national park. The Parima Tapirapeco National Park extends over an area of 38,290 km2 to be Venezuelas largest national park. National parks occupy about 21.76% of Venezuelas total area, and they serve to protect the countrys natural resources which include the Amazon basin, Andes Mountains, and the Caribbean coast.

Other South American Countries With High Numbers Of National Parks

Other countries in South America and their respective number of national parks are Chile (36); Argentina (33); Bolivia (17); Paraguay (16); Ecuador (11); Peru (11); Uruguay (7), and Guyana. Biodiversity protection in South America remains critical due to the regions natural wealth. While some countries are making significant strides in conservation, other countries are lagging behind and continue to be overwhelmed by numerous biodiversity threats.
A lynx refers to any one of the four species belonging to the genus Lynx. These animals are medium-sized wild cats that live in parts of North America and Eurasia. There are four species of lynx, the Canadian lynx, Eurasian lynx, bobcat, and the Iberian lynx. Each of these species is discussed below.

4. Bobcat -

The bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a lynx species that is native to North America. The range of this species stretches from southern Canada to central Mexico. The predator inhabits a wide variety of habitats like semi-desert areas, forest edges, wooded areas, swamplands, etc. The bobcat is characterized by a whiskered face, a gray to brown coat, and black-tufted ears. The bobcat is about twice the size of a domestic cat. It shares some parts of its range with the Canadian lynx.

Rabbits and hares are the most preferred preys of the bobcat, but it also hunts rodents, deer, birds, and insects. The animals are solitary and territorial by nature. The bobcat has been extensively hunted for sport and fur by humans, but unlike many other species, it has managed to survive and maintain a stable population in many areas. However, with large-scale habitat destruction and indiscriminate hunting, the species might enter the list of threatened species in the future.

 L. rufus rufus

 L. r. gigas

 L. r. floridanus

 L. r. superiorensis

 L. r. baileyi

 L. r. californicus

 L. r. mohavensis

 L. r. escuinapae

 L. r. fasciatus

 L. r. oaxacensis

 L. r. pallescens

 L. r. peninsularis

 L. r. texensis

3. Eurasian Lynx -

The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) is a lynx that is found in Siberia, parts of Europe and Asia. Populations of this lynx are considered to be stable and widely distributed. Hence, the IUCN classifies the Eurasian lynx as a Least Concern species. It is the largest species of lynx whose length ranges from 80 cm to 130 cm. The animal possesses powerful legs with large furred and webbed paws that act like snowshoes. The Eurasian lynx is also characterized by the presence of black tufts of hair on ears, a short tail with a black tip, and a long white and gray ruff. The color of the coat of the animal changes from reddish-brown in summer to silver-gray or grayish-brown in winter.

The animals prey on smaller mammals and birds in their habitat like hares, marmots, squirrels, rodents, rabbits, etc. The Eurasian lynx populations are protected in many parts of its range since hunting for fur and pleasure had resulted in declining populations which alerted the government to take action.

The Eurasian lynx has several subspecies which are:

 Northern lynx (Lynx lynx lynx)

 Carpathian lynx (Lynx lynx carpathicus)

 Balkan lynx (Lynx lynx balcanicus)

 Caucasian lynx (Lynx lynx dinniki)

 Altai lynx (Lynx lynx wardi)

 Siberian lynx (Lynx lynx wrangeli)

 Turkestan lynx (Lynx lynx isabellinus)

 Baikal lynx (Lynx lynx kozlovi)

 Amur lynx (Lynx lynx stroganovi)

 Sardinian Lynx (Lynx lynx sardiniae)

2. Canada Lynx -

The Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis) is a mammal belonging to the Felidae family. It is found across Canada and into United States Alaska and is also found in some other parts of northern US. The Canadian lynx possesses a silvery-brown coat, tufted ears, ruffed face and is slightly larger than the bobcat in size and nearly twice the size of a domestic cat. The animal is a carnivore which mainly preys on the snowshoe hares found in its habitat. Though the Canada lynx is not yet on the threatened list of IUCN, its populations are steadily declining. The trapping of the animal for fur and habitat loss are the two culprits behind this decrease in number.

Two subspecies of the Canada lynx are recognized: The L. c. mollipilosus and the L. c. subsolanus.

1. Iberian Lynx -

The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is a lynx species that inhabits the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe. It is the most threatened among all lynx species and is classified as Endangered by the IUCN. The loss of the prey base of these wild cats has resulted in the decline of their populations. Populations of the European rabbit, the primary prey of the Iberian lynx, have drastically declined due to overhunting, disease, poaching, and habitat fragmentation. This, in turn, has had an adverse effect on lynx populations. At the beginning of the 21st century, only about 100 Iberian lynxes were surviving in the wild. By 2012, successful restocking of rabbits, relocation, and re-introduction of Iberian lynxes had resulted in a population growth to 326 individuals. The Iberian lynx also occasionally preys on rodents, deer, ducks, etc. This species of lynx is still extremely vulnerable to threats like poaching, accidental kills by vehicles, kills by feral dogs, persecution by humans, and habitat fragmentation.
Kazakhstan is a presidential republic where the President is the head of state. The first president of Kazakhstan was Nursultan Nazarbayev.

5. Early Life

Nursultan Nazarbayev was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, which was part of the Soviet Union, on July 6th, 1940. Nazarbayev grew up as the son of poor Kazakh peasants but managed to graduate from three different schools. In 1960 he graduated from a technical school in the town of Dniprodzerzhynsk, Ukraine. In 1967, he graduated from the Karaganda Metallurgical Combine, a technical school in the city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Finally, in 1976 he graduated from the Higher Party School in Moscow, Russia. During his schooling years, he worked on and off at a steel plant in Karaganda as a steelworker and later engineer. He also joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1962.

4. Rise to Power

After joining the CPSU, Nazarbayev worked his way up the ranks, and by 1979 he became a full member of the Kazakhstan Politburo, the supreme policy-making body of the Communist party in Kazakhstan. From 1984 to 1989 he was the chairman of the Kazakh Council of Ministers. Following this, his rise to power was encapsulated as he became the first secretary of the Kazakhstan party from 1989 to 1991, a full member of the CPSU Politburo from 1990 to 1991 and in 1990 he was elected as the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In August 1991, he resigned his seat for the Politburo and by December Nazarbayev led the country to declare complete independence from the Soviet Union. He also helped to form the Commonwealth of Independent States that December, helping to give the country economic independence from Russia while still cooperating with them economically. Having been the leader of the country since 1989, Nazarbayev has easily won reelection in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2015. In 1999 he won with about 81% of the votes but has won 91% or more in each election since. In 2010 the parliament of Kazakhstan gave him the title of "Leader of the Nation".

3. Contributions

During his time as President, Nazarbayev helped to drastically reform the economy from a system of state ownership under communism to a capitalist system that has led to the country having mostly growth and prosperity. During his time as President, the capital of Kazakhstan officially moved from the city of Almaty to Astana (now Nur-Sultan) in 1997. He has also managed to maintain mostly good relationships with America, Western Europe, and Israel, having done billions of dollars in bilateral trade with them. He has also maintained strong ties with Russia, having signed a treaty with them and Belarus to create the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). In his 2012 State of the Nation address, Nazarbayev announced his Kazakhstan 2050 Strategy, whose long-term goal is to make his nation one of the most developed nations on Earth by 2050.

2. Challenges

In December 2011, the 2011 Mangystau riots broke out as one of the biggest opposition movements to Nazarbayev's government during his time as president. The demonstrators clashed with police in the city of Zhanaozen, where 15 people were killed and about 100 injured. In the few days after this event, the protest spread but eventually it died down. During the trail for the protesters, they accused that they had been abused and tortured by police while in custody. The Kazakhstani newspaper Respublika has reported on the corruption of Nazarbayev's government since it was founded in 2000. The paper has been ordered to close in 2002 and 2005 but continued publishing until 2012 when the publication was suspended again barring a verdict of criminal charges against the paper.

1. Approval and Criticism in Kazakhstan and Abroad

Nazarbayev has been lauded by some for the political and economic reforms he has made during his time as president, helping to guide the country out of the Soviet system and into a more democratic system with a growing economy. Other groups like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSEC) have criticized the politics of the country under Nazarbayev saying that none of the presidential elections have met international democratic standards. His government has also been accused of human rights abuses, corruption, suppressing dissent, conducting an authoritarian regime and promoting favoritism towards certain families.
Azerbaijan is a secular country that constitutionally allows freedom of religion to its citizens. Azerbaijan has separated state affairs from religious activities declaring no faith as a state religion. Therefore, all religious beliefs in the country are equal before the law. Its education system has also been secularized. Islam is the most common religion with about 93% of the total population adhering to one of the two principal forms of Islam- Sunni and Shia.

Religious Beliefs In Azerbaijan

Shia Islam

Shia Islam is the leading religious belief with 80% of the countrys population adhering to the faith, making it the second largest Shia population in the world. The strongholds for Shia Islam were mainly in the areas around Lenkoran and Baku. Some the Azerbaijanis were converted into Shia Islam during the 16th century. During the same period, Shia was declared a state religion by Ismail I of the Safavid Dynasty. The enforcement of the state religion created conflict between Shia and Sunni eventually leading to the migration of the Sunni Muslims in the 19th century, leaving Shia as the largest Muslim belief in the country.

Sunni Islam

Sunni Islam is the second leading religious belief in Azerbaijan with a following of 13% of the total population. The Islam group differs from Shia in that they believe Prophet Mohammed did not appoint a successor. The Sunni and Shia Muslims have been in constant conflict in various Islamic countries based on their beliefs and practices leading to migration of the Sunni from Azerbaijan. Sunni Muslims are mainly found in the northern parts of the country. Conversion into Sunni Islam took place around the 16th century.

Orthodox Christianity

Orthodox Christianity is the third largest religious belief and a minority religion, with a following of a total of 3% of the population. The Russian Orthodox Church was the first to be established after the Russo-Persian War of the 19th century. The Georgian Orthodox is the other Orthodox Christian community in the country. Most of the adherents were converted from Islam and were persecuted during the Soviet period during which the religions were suppressed.

Atheism Or Agnosticism

Azerbaijan is considered one of the most irreligious Muslim countries with most of the people attaching no direct importance to religion. Approximately1% of the population is atheist or agnostic practicing no form of worship. Atheism and agnosticism in Azerbaijan have been attributed to the secular nature of the country.

Other Christian Religious Beliefs

Azerbaijan also has some other minor Christian denominations including Apostolic, Roman Catholic, and Protestant which together constitute about 1% of the whole population in the country. The apostolic community is the largest with various establishments including the Armenian Apostolic Church. Roman Catholicism has less than 1000 adherents mainly in the areas surrounding Baku.

Religious Intolerance In Azerbaijan

Although Azerbaijan is a secular country with high religious intolerance, the government has been accused of denying some religious groups the rights to operate within the country including Jehovah Witnesses, Baptists, and the Assemblies of God members. Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Bahai are other minor religions in Azerbaijan making up about 1% of the population in the country.
Religion in Hungary is predominantly Christian. Historically, the formation of Hungary was based on Christianity as it was declared the state religion by King St. Stephen. Over the last millennium, the percentage of Christians has declined from almost all population to about three-fifths today who proclaim themselves as Christians. The advent of modern ideas means that a lot of people especially the young generation has started identifying themselves as either atheists, agnostics or outright unaffiliated altogether.

Christianity And Its Various Forms In Hungary

The wide majority of the population identifies as Roman Catholic. This is in continuation with the historical tradition on which the state was formed. In essence, Roman Catholicism was the state religion until as late as 16th century. Roman Catholics still form the single largest religious entity with 37.1 % of the people. However, it is important to note that despite being the largest group, this is no longer in clear majority and the share in populace can be observed for evidence of a declining trend.

Quite a lot of Christians have converted from Roman Catholics to the Reformed Church of Hungary. The Reformation dates back to the 16th century when Lutheranism and later Calvinism swept the population. The Reformed Church, along with numerous other minor Protestant Christian denominations, forms about 13.8% of the total population of Hungary.

Only about 1.8% of the people in Hungary practice Greek Catholic Christianity. However, this is a group of very loyal Christians who work on the preservation of their faith. The Greek Catholic Church buildings are famous for their architecture and are subject to numerous visits from tourists and locals alike.

Other Religious Affiliations

The other major religions practiced in Hungary are Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Paganism. Despite the various faiths practiced, the total number is mightily overshadowed by Christianity with only 1.9% of people accounting for all these other religious affiliations. Of these Judaism has the largest share with 0.1 % and the rest account for less than that. However, Hungarians are very tolerant and respectful of minorities and the freedom to practice their faith is given to all citizens.

Atheism or Agnosticism

A total of about 18.2% Hungarians do not believe in a God or proclaim themselves as non-religious. Of these, only 1.5% identify themselves as atheists while the other 16.7% declare themselves as non-religious but do not discount the possibility of there being a God. This trend is fairly modern and can only be dated back to the last two decades and these numbers are expected to be higher in the future as more modernistic thoughts pave their way into the Hungarian society.

Religion In Modern Times In Hungary

A large number of Hungarian citizens did not choose to declare their religious beliefs which may show indecisiveness or a state of transition. Either way, it provides a very interesting contrast to the history when Christianity, and specifically Roman Catholicism, was the major religions. The shift in religious thought process is also in line as reflected in the rest of the European nations.
Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. France colonized it in 1905. Its capital and largest city is Bamako. It is the 8th largest country in Africa covering an area of 480,000 square miles with a general population of 14.5 million. More than 90% of the countrys population are Muslims because of Islamic groups who took control of the northern part of the country with the sole aim of implementing sharia in Mali. Despite the country being majority Islam, there are several other minority religious faiths in the country like Christianity.

Religious Beliefs In Mali

Islam

Muslims in Mali make up to 92.4% of the entire population with the majority being Sunni Islam. Islam was introduced in the western part of Africa by Muslim Berber and Tuareg merchants in the 9th century and continued to spread constantly in the region. Mansa Musa, a king in Mali, played a major role in the spread of Islam as he helped build mosques throughout the country. Being a widely followed religion, Muslims have adapted well and learned how to relate better with various traditional beliefs as well as religions in the country.

West African Folk Religions And Animism

The West African folk religion is majorly the belief the various African beliefs like the veneration of the dead, use of magic, traditional medicine, belief in spirit, and a supreme creator. They view the role of humanity as one of harmonizing supernatural with the natural whereas animism, on the other hand, is the belief that various objects, creatures, and places with which human being interact possess distinctive spiritual qualities. Such believers constitute up to 5.0% of Malis population even though over the years it has been had to know the exact number due to the influence of other religions.

Roman Catholic Christianity

The Roman Catholic Christianity in Mali forms up to 1.5% of the countrys population which is approximately 200,000 individuals. The religion was introduced in the country in the 19th century by France missionaries after the scramble for Africa. The Catholic Church in Mali is part of the worldwide Catholic church in Rome under the leadership of the pope. There are several dioceses and archdioceses in the country which has helped promote the religion in the country.

Protestant Christianity

Protestant Christianity in Mali is one of the minority religions in the country as it constitutes only 0.8% of the entire population. Protestants are generally against the teaching of the Roman Catholic teachings and form one-third of the entire Christian population in the country.

Other Or No Beliefs

Only 0.2% of the Mali people are atheists who do not believe in the existence of a supreme creator or deities, as well as those who do not have sufficient reason rational grounds to justify the existence or non-existence of God.

Religious Freedom And Tolerance In Mali

The Constitution of Mali purports that the country is neutral in matters of the religions and does not support any religion or irreligion and on most occasions, it is mainly referred to as a secular state. Mali also supports the freedom of religion and belief, but in the recent past, there has been a severe persecution of Christians mainly in the northern part of the country. The persecution began after the imposition of the sharia rule in 2012.
WASHINGTON -- You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did last Sunday, that "we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket," you are reaching the end of that road.

Since the early 1990s, we have offered every kind of inducement to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program. All failed miserably. Pyongyang managed to extort money, food, oil and commercial nuclear reactors in exchange. But it was all a swindle. North Korea was never going to give up its nukes because it sees them as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.

The North Koreans believe that nukes confer inviolability. Saddam Hussein was invaded and deposed before he could acquire them. Kim won't let that happen to him. That's why Thae Yong Ho, a recent high-level defector, insisted that "As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, even if it's offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards."

Meanwhile, they have advanced. They've already exploded a handful of nuclear bombs. And they've twice successfully launched satellites, which means they have the ICBM essentials. If they can miniaturize their weapons to fit on top of the rocket and control re-entry, they'll be able to push a button in Pyongyang and wipe out an American city.

What to do? The options are stark:

(1) Pre-emptive attack on its missile launching facilities. Doable but reckless. It is the option most likely to trigger an actual war. The North Koreans enjoy both conventional superiority and proximity: a vast army poised at the Demilitarized Zone only 30 miles from Seoul. Americans are not going to fight another land war in Asia.

(2) Shoot down the test ICBM, as advocated by The Wall Street Journal. Assuming we can. We should be able to intercept a single, relatively primitive ICBM of the sort North Korea might be capable of.

Though such a shoot-down would occur nowhere near North Korean soil, it could still very well provoke a military response. Which is why the new administration should issue a clear warning that if such a test missile is launched, we will bring it down.

(3) Return tactical U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea. They were withdrawn in 1991 by George H.W. Bush in the waning days of the Cold War. Gorbachev's Soviet Union responded in kind. A good idea in general, but not on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang had railed constantly against their presence, but they did act as a deterrent to any contemplated North Korean aggression. Which might make them a useful bargaining chip.

(4) Economic leverage on China, upon which Pyongyang depends for its survival. Donald Trump seems to suggest using trade to pressure China to get North Korea to desist. The problem is that China has shown no evidence of being willing to yield a priceless strategic asset -- a wholly dependent client state that acts as a permanent thorn and distraction to U.S. power in the Pacific Rim -- because of mere economic pressure.

(5) Strategic leverage on China. We've been begging China for decades to halt the North Korean nuclear program. Beijing plays along with sanctions and offers occasional expressions of dismay. Nothing more. There's one way guaranteed to get its attention. Declare that we would no longer oppose Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent.

This is a radical step that goes against our general policy of nonproliferation. But the point is to halt proliferation to the infinitely more dangerous regime in North Korea. China is the key. The Chinese have many nightmares, none worse than a nuclear-armed Japan.

The principal strategic challenge facing the United States is the rise of revisionist powers -- Russia, China and Iran -- striving to expel American influence from their regions. In comparison, the Korean problem is minor, an idiosyncratic relic of the Cold War. North Korea should be a strategic afterthought, like Cuba. And it would be if not for its nukes.

That's a big if. A wholly unpredictable, highly erratic and often irrational regime is acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city by missile. That's an urgent problem.

North Korea may be just an unexploded ordnance of a long-concluded Cold War. But we cannot keep assuming it will never go off.
The principal of a school expressed her outrage after a group of children broke into the building after hours and they drank alcohol, according to police in the United Kingdom.

Wales police said that the incident unfolded over the weekend at the Ysgol Borthyn school in Ruthin.

At some point after school hours, a group of teenagers broke into the building, where they drank alcohol. When the kids became drunk, they urinated on many childrenas toys.

The teachers found the damaged when they came to school the following day. They found empty vodka bottles, and many toys were covered in urine.

Principal Teleri Jones is outraged over the damage, and asked for the community to donate money so that the school should be able to cover the losses.

So far, no arrests have been made.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  A union representing nearly 8,000 state employees has filed a complaint against Gov. Bill Walker and his administration for an alleged violation of contract.

The Alaska State Employees Association filed the class-action grievance Tuesday in response to Walkers recently announced budget plan for next fiscal year. The union takes issue with a part of the plan that calls for downsizing Department of Transportation staff and privatizing the majority of the agencys design team.

The grievance says plans to privatize union member positions must first have a feasibi...
The Republicans may have a way out of their "repeal and replace" Obamacare position, which is proving a lot more difficult than they realized. The catch is that it's phony.

It could be phonier than the "repeal and rename" strategy I anticipated. For years, I've said that Republicans could simply rename the Affordable Care Act and its various components -- so we might have, for example, "Ronald Reagan Freedom Insurance Choices" instead of the current Obamacare marketplaces.

The reasoning is that while Republicans have hated "Obamacare" as a symbol of the president they can't stand, few of them are particularly upset about the law itself.

It's true that a relatively small group of principled libertarian-leaning conservatives don't want government to have anything to do with health care. But most Republican politicians and activists have other priorities -- fighting legal abortion for social conservatives, protecting U.S. interests for foreign-policy conservatives, lowering taxes for economic conservatives.

The job of fashioning a working health-care system is incredibly difficult, given the multitude of interest-group demands and market complications involved. This is why Republicans still haven't agreed to a replacement plan after years of promising one. In fact, it's proving difficult for Republicans even to agree on a repeal-and-delay bill, which would leave some or all of Obamacare in place while they figure out what to replace it with.

Congressional scholar Sarah Binder hints that Republicans may wind up trying to get away with something even more cynical. She notes that Republicans are calling the budget resolution currently under debate in the Senate an "Obamacare repeal resolution."

As she points out, a budget resolution by itself doesn't do anything; it merely contains (nonbinding) instructions from Congress to itself to pass future laws, and enables a future "reconciliation" bill.

Binder suggests, however, that if the eventual repeal bill looks shaky, then Republicans could wind up just celebrating the passage of the budget resolution and calling it a day. "The whole process is complicated, so you start wondering, if they don't do the reconciliation bill, will anyone know?"

That is, instead of "repeal and delay," Republicans would try "pretend and delay" -- pass a nonbinding resolution and hail it as Mission Accomplished.

Could Donald Trump and congressional Republicans really get away with such a brazen maneuver?

I don't see why not.

Democrats wouldn't complain much; they care more about preserving the substance of the policy than about drawing attention to the hypocrisy of a symbolic move. And most Republican voters care more about the symbolism. To avoid getting mired in repealing and replacing a complicated law in a complicated policy area, Trump and the Republicans in Congress could opt for ways to make the issue go away -- not unlike slapping your name on a building but not owning it.

The pivotal factor would be if the Republican-aligned media such as Fox News and conservative talk radio and websites accept the deception.

My guess is they would play along for now, just as they tended to play along with President George W. Bush on various violations of conservative orthodoxy in his first term. Picking a fight with a new Republican president would be risky for those who care only about ratings, and most of those who care about policy have higher priorities, such as the confirmation fight for Trump's first Supreme Court nominee.

Opting for the pretend solution wouldn't end debates and decisions on health care, of course. Republicans would still want to cut some of the taxes involved, and might try to make all sorts of other changes, which Democrats would try to prevent. It would be, that is, politics as usual.
The German foreign secret service (BND) has not only delivered data to the US intelligence services on a massive scale, it has also worked directly with the NSA in developing detection software. This has been confirmed by extensive data published by the WikiLeaks platform at the beginning of December. It documents the close cooperation between German and American intelligence agencies and reveals new details.

The data contains about 90 gigabytes of information. It consists of a total of 2,420 files, which were forwarded in 2015 to the German parliamentary committee that is currently investigating the activities of the intelligence services. According to WikiLeaks, the data originates from several German federal authorities, including the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection (BfV) and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

How WikiLeaks acquired the data is unknown. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung immediately held Russia responsible. The paper alleges that it had been informed by security circles that the data could have stemmed from a hacker attack on the Bundestag in the spring of 2015 for which Russia was responsible. There was a high plausibility for this thesis because none of the documents had been digitized after January 2015. Furthermore, the documents were of the lowest degree of secrecy for circulation within the Bundestag.

But there is no independent confirmation of these accusations against Russia.

The close collaboration between the BND and the NSA is no secret. It was already clear in June 2013 from the material released by Edward Snowden. Snowden revealed that both intelligence services use the XKeyScore software to filter and search worldwide mobile and internet traffic.

The latest publications show that the BND not only used the software, but was also involved in its development. An internal document from June 2013, which reports on cooperation with the US intelligence agencies, shows that a BND employee had been seconded to programme and manage XKeyScore for a period of two years.

The BND was also aware of the spying activities of numerous US companies located in Germany. An email from the German chancellery in January 2014 names Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Edward Snowden had last worked for the latter. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also cooperated with British intelligence services, according to intelligence reports.

The documents now published throw light onto the activities of the German parliamentary Investigation Committee as well as the reaction of the BND and the Registrars Office to the material released by Snowden and the inquiries undertaken by the Bundestag committee. A closer examination of the files gives some sense of how the deep state operates.

The immediate reaction of the BND to the revelations of Snowden was marked by panic. Countless frantic emails in rapid succession, all with short response times, are evidence of how concerned the secret services were to minimise public knowledge of the true extent of worldwide espionage.

Many of these emails dealt with the information that was to be provided to Germanys relevant parliamentary committees. There is discussion about speakers notes to be given to representatives of the secret services in order to be prepared for all conceivable questions. Answers to queries from Bundestag representatives, following the first press reports, were checked and edited by the BND and the chancellery before publication. The answers were brief, noncommittal and generally worthless.

It is not only the intelligence services themselves that are concerned to preserve secrecy about their illegal practices and worldwide spying activities. It is remarkable how hostile the opposition parties in the Bundestag have been towards the WikiLeaks revelations.

Martina Renner, the Left Party deputy in the NSA Investigation Committee, complained that the committee would now have less insight into the secret documents necessary for its work. The intelligence services had always argued that the committee was a risk because information could reach the public. The current leak gives further impetus to such attacks.

With her comment Renner practically admitted that the parliamentary control of the secret services was based on parliamentarians themselves becoming part of the secret service conspiracy.

The representative of the Greens in the committee, Konstantin von Notz, argued similarly. On Twitter he wrote: Anyone who releases such things deliberately torpedoes the information gathering and the necessary control of the services.

In fact, the pretence of parliamentary oversight is torpedoed by the fact that the secret services work completely independently of any control, and all the Bundestag parties are interested in maintaining this situation. Against a background of intensifying political and social tensions, the ruling elite is more than ever dependent on an authoritarian security apparatus.
I have been reading about the troubles of beer sales in Whiteclay for years now ("The cost of a can of beer," Jan. 1). The story is not good for many reasons. We need to write a new chapter. I have driven through Pine Ridge a couple times and I have friends who are from the Gordon area. I think it is time we do some road construction one-eighth mile north of Whiteclay. Tear part of the road out and close it for as long as it takes. Coordinate with the Oglala Sioux Tribe to tear out of their road in South Dakota too. The road north of Gordon needs some work too, right near the border. I think the roads should be closed as long as we can close them.
Two weeks after a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is demanding a fundamental restructuring and centralisation of the security apparatus. The Federal Criminal Agency (BKA) requires strengthening, the various state domestic intelligence agencies must be dismantled in favour of a federally administered organisation and a genuine federal police force must be built, he argued.

De Maiziere published a detailed guest commentary on Tuesday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung titled Outlines of a strong state in difficult times. In it, he proposed a new structure for internal security that calls into question the entire structure of the Federal Republic.

The Interior Minister justified his proposal by stating that Germany had to assume a leading role in Europe. But this obligation begins by putting our house in order, in our country, de Maiziere wrote. This required the federal state to have more competency to manage all security agencies in combatting terrorism as well as deporting rejected asylum seekers and tackling cyber crimes.

The key outlines of a strengthening of the domestic state apparatus include the following:

A strong state requires strong federal agencies. The federalism of the past was not appropriate for the security challenges of the day. Security in the federation must be managed by the federal state. Wherever the federal state and the states cooperate on issues of federal security, the federal state must have management competencies over all security agencies. The previous powers available to the BKA were too narrowly defined and should be significantly expanded, he said.

We should discuss in the domestic intelligence agencies shifting all tasks to a federal administration. The state offices for domestic intelligence should be integrated into a federal administration, he went on.

We need more effective police stop and search powers. The current restriction for the federal police to an area of 30 kilometres from the border is no longer acceptable. The federal police required comprehensive powers of search. The federal police should be gradually transformed into a real federal police force.

He stressed the need for more federal police officers to be sent to Europes external borders, adding that it was of central importance to know who is responsible for overseeing the external borders of the Schengen Zone for the benefit of Europes security. The statement we want to know who is coming to us is correct, he claimed. But for Europe, it is better to apply the sentence to Europes external borders. We dont want a permanent re-erection of internal borders, but rather a strong Europe of freedom, security and of law.

The establishment of a registry for arrivals and departures (EES) at the European level is currently under consideration. The EES should be able to be expanded so that it can identify all travel movements across the external borders, he added.

As far as the German army, he said, it also needs to be permitted to deploy domestically. Already today, the army is a recognised partner in disaster response. If the police reach their limits of capacity, the German army should also find its place there, he continued. The earlier debates on this had been understandable. Now, that is no longer the case.

He further insisted that a strong state must be armed and entrusted with the most modern technology. Terrorist organisations use all available options to communicate: mobile and landline telephones, Skype, emails or instant messengers like WhatsApp, he claimed. Therefore, he said, there should be no restrictions on surveillance by the security authorities. We will therefore be combining the technical capabilities for the creation of IT tools for cyber surveillance this year organisationally into the Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector (ZITis).

De Maiziere connected the domestic strengthening of the state and centralisation of the intelligence agencies with a stepped-up campaign against refugees and asylum seekers. He wrote, Given the anticipated rise in those who must depart following the completion of all asylum procedures, we require a national pooling of resources on the issue of repatriation.

To implement this national pooling of resources against asylum seekers, a joint centre to support repatriation in Berlin is to be established and further improvements made to cooperation between the state and federal authorities in the area of operational repatriation.

Further, it must be made easier to take rejected asylum seekers into custody. We must significantly increase the current limit of four days for detention prior to departure, he said. Sufficient places had to be created for deportation detention and departure custody. Departure centres are already legally possible and could preferably be established close to German airports.

The initiative from de Maiziere, which was explicitly backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, is aimed at dismantling the entire federal structure and division of powers within the security apparatus. The separation of the police and intelligence services codified in Germanys Basic Law and the restriction of the police to the state level were based on fundamental lessons drawn from the Nazi dictatorship. This is now to be done away with. The structures of a police state are becoming ever more apparent, which will not only view all foreigners, but also citizens, as potential enemies of the state and place them under surveillance.

The Interior Minister cited the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market as justification for his proposal. The attack cost a dozen people their lives and seriously injured 50 more. At the same time, de Maiziere declared that a large number of his security outlines had been worked out long before. This raises extremely troubling questions.

Since the horrific attack, a growing quantity of information about the close ties between the security agencies and the suspected perpetrator has come to light. It is now known that Anis Amri, who was shot while fleeing in Italy, carried out his attack quite literally under the noses of the police and intelligence agencies. He was placed under intense surveillance and categorised as unusually dangerous in a profile just days prior to the attack.

According to a report by Hans Leyendecker and Georg Mascolo in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, on 14 December, five days prior to the attack, the security agencies produced the latest version of a personal profile, in which they gathered all intelligence about Amri. It described a man whose career which contains numerous similarities with previous perpetrators acting on behalf of the terrorist group Islamic State.

According to the report by Leyendecker and Mascolo, the intelligence agencies knew almost everything to know about Anis Amri: his activities as a petty criminal who was detained as a youth in Italy, and who allegedly committed theft in a German asylum accommodation centre; his connections with an Islamist cell and the preacher Abu Walaa, whose leaders were arrested in November last year; all eight identities used by Amri and his frequent changes of address and residency.

The fact that the interior minister is exploiting the attack to implement an intensification of domestic security and cooperation between the police and intelligence agencies that violates the Basic Law raises the question: was the attack seen as a means to legitimise precisely this policy of the strengthening of domestic state structures?

Nobody in official politics or in the media dares to examine this question seriously, despite the clear indications that the Christmas market attack and the huge police buildup in Cologne on New Years Eve have been used for the strengthening of the domestic state apparatus.

The reason for this reluctance is that all parties agree on the restriction of citizens rights, the strengthening of the police and the centralisation of the intelligence agencies, including the Social Democrats as part of the government and the opposition Left and Green parties, which are striving for a government coalition with the SPD.

De Maiziere identified the real reason for the strengthening of the state apparatus when he spoke of the German leading role in Europe. In the face of the rapidly deepening economic, social and political crisis in Europe, which has been intensified still further since the election of Donald Trump in the US, the ruling class is preparing for major conflicts.

The intention to intervene more as a leading power in Europe and throughout the world is deeply opposed by the population. The government is not only responding to this with an intensive propaganda campaign, but with the strengthening of the security apparatus and the buildup of the state. The return of German militarism thus goes hand in hand with the construction of a police state, whose powers increasingly recall those of the Nazi secret police (Gestapo).
The US Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on foreign cyber threats to the United States yesterday. Instead of a critical evaluation of the dubious and wholly unsubstantiated allegations by the White House and US intelligence agencies that Russia hacked the email systems of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta, the hearing provided an opportunity for senators to kowtow before the US intelligence agencies and bray for war against Russia.

There were no new facts revealed in the proceedings, which lasted for three hours. The three intelligence officials called to testifyDirector of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA director and head of the US Cyber Command Michael Rogers, and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettrepointedly refused to provide any evidence to substantiate the claim that Russia was responsible for the email hacks. This did not prevent them or the committee from treating the claim, which has never been backed up by any credible evidence, as accomplished fact.

Senators took turns demanding ever more severe retribution against Russia for the countrys alleged meddling in the 2016 US election. John McCain, the Republican chair of the committee and a leading anti-Russian hawk, declared in his opening statement, This appearance of weakness has been provocative to our adversaries, who have attacked us again and again, with growing severity. Unless we demonstrate that the costs of attacking the United States outweigh the perceived benefits, these cyber threats will only grow. He attempted repeatedly to extract statements from the assembled spy chiefs calling the alleged Russian hacking an act of war against the United States.

Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan complained that retaliation against Russia doesnt seem to be happening. Explaining the type of retaliation he favored, Sullivan cited a hypothetical scenario where the United States launched a clandestine cyber-attack to collapse the Iranian financial system, something which would amount to an act of war.

Senators denounced President-elect Donald Trump for questioning the spy agencies findings and for citing the claim of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization published the emails, that the Russians were not the source of the leak.

Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill associated any questioning of US intelligence agencies with treason. I assume the biggest benefactors of the American people having less confidence in the intelligence community [due to questioning its findings] are in fact  Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and ISIS, she said.

The notion that the soon-elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military  I think it should bring about a hue and cry; no matter whether youre Republican or a Democrat there should be howls, she added.

Indiana Democrat Joe Donnelly concurred, declaring I can tell you on behalf of all [residents of Indiana] that when it comes down to a choice between you people, our intelligence agencies, and Julian Assange, we are on your team every time. Senators asked questions about how Trumps remarks had demoralized the intelligence community.

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham demanded that the United States stop throwing pebbles against Russia and start throwing rocks, in the form of devastating economic sanctions. To those of you who want to throw rocks, you are going to get a chance here soon, and if we dont throw rocks, we are going to make a huge mistake.

We are in the fight of our lives, Graham added. Putin is up to no good, and he better be stopped.

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who served as a national security advisor to the Trump election campaign, asked Clapper about the lack of retaliation against China for its alleged role in the 2015 hacking of the federal Office of Personnel Managements database, echoing remarks made by Trumps press secretary last weekend aimed at redirecting the anti-Russian campaign against China.

Clappers response was significant. Citing the character of the Chinese hack as espionage, the spy chief declared, People that live in glass houses shouldnt throw publicly too many rocks. In other words, the United States is guilty of what it accuses its official adversaries of doing, and worse.

Clapper argued before the committee that Russias alleged (but similarly unsubstantiated) promotion of fake news stories on social media and through critical reporting of the election by Russian state-owned news outlets such as RT, formed, with the email hacks, a multi-pronged approach aimed at influencing the outcome of the presidential election. RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc. Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they would exploit it, Clapper declared.

The logic of this argument, which was not challenged by any of the committee members, is ominous. By equating activities on social media and journalism with foreign espionage, Clapper is establishing the basis for expanding the attack against Russia into an attack against the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and of the press.

With consummate hypocrisy, Clapper argued for a massive increase in US government resources aimed at doing exactly what he and the committee accused Russia of doing: covertly influencing the politics of foreign countries. At several points throughout his testimony he called for the creation of a USIA on steroids, referring to the United States Information Agency, which was responsible for the dissemination of anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War. McCain and Graham concurred, lamenting that current US propaganda outfits Radio Free Europe and Voice of America were falling behind.
A representative of Indonesias armed forces, the TNI, confirmed on Tuesday that overall commander General Gatot Nurmantyo had ordered the suspension of all cooperation with the Australian Defence Forces (ADF). A flurry of diplomatic activity has resulted in statements of clarification from the Indonesian government, to the effect that only minor cooperation will be temporarily affected.

The incident nevertheless sheds light on the deep concerns in the highest echelons of the Indonesian military over the prospect of the country becoming embroiled in, and destabilised by, a confrontation with China by the US and its key allies such as Australia.

The rift was triggered by complaints in November by an Indonesian military language instructor who was on exchange in Perth to teach Indonesian to Australian special forces.

The complaints include:

A paper authored by an Australian officer in which the Indonesian province of West Papua was referred to as part of Melanesia and should be given independence.





References by Australian personnel to the 1999 independence of East Timor from Indonesia, which was overseen by an Australian-led United Nations force.





An incident in which former TNI general Sarwo Edhie Wibowo was referred to as a mass murderer for his central role in the US and Australian-backed 196566 Indonesian coup, during which at least 500,000 alleged Communist Party members and supporters were massacred. In 1989, just prior to his death, Sarwo Edhie asserted that the actual number of victims was closer to three million. His daughter is married to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesias president from 2004 until 2014.





A laminated sheet on which Pancasila, the five principles of Indonesian independence, had been rewritten as Panca-gilaor the five crazies.

From the standpoint of the Indonesian military, the allegations have been interpreted as reflecting the underlying imperialist arrogance and contempt within their Australian counterparts. In November, an exchange of letters occurred at the highest levels of both militaries, with the ADF apologising, pledging to carry out a full investigation and reportedly reprimanding at least one Australian officer. Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne was informed of the controversy but made no public statements.

The Australian actions clearly failed to satisfy General Gatot, a vocal Indonesian nationalist with a record of expressing the resentment of the Indonesian elite, particularly within the TNI, over Australias history of neo-colonial intrigue in the country. On several occasions, he has accurately labelled Australian and US support for East Timorese independence in 1999 as a proxy operation to secure Australian ambitions over the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea. Prior to 1999, Australian governments had fully supported Indonesias annexation of East Timor and brutal rule over its population.

Since 2014, Gatot has also stated that international education institutions, non-government organisations, Islamic extremists and drug dealers are examples of proxies of unnamed foreign powersimplicitly linking them to countries such as Australia and the USthat are being used to destabilise Indonesia and threaten its territorial unity.

Gatot was appointed as TNI commander by current President Jokoko Widodo in June 2015. He has presided over a major military build-up by Indonesia to entrench its control over the Natuna Islands group and their rich gas resources, to the south of disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Natunas are not claimed by China, but would be transformed into part of a war zone if conflict broke out, above all by the operations of US and Australian warships and aircraft.

At the same time, Gatot and the TNI, along with police units, have been directing an ever more brutal crackdown against unrest and separatist agitation in West Papua. More than 500 people were arrested during a protest for self-determination on December 18.

Gatot first aired the latest tensions with Australia in a speech in November, in which he asserted that Indonesian officers sent on exchanges to Australia had been recruited in the past and would certainly be recruited in the futurepresumably as agents and spies. Indonesian suspicion of Australian espionage has been intense since the 2013 leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed Australian intelligence was, in 2009, tapping the phone calls of the countrys then President Yudhoyono, Yudhoyonos wife and a number of other leading political figures.

In the same speech, Gatot also raised concern over the rotational basing of US marines in Darwin, northern Australia, just 800 kilometres from resource-rich West Papua, declaring that the TNI had to wonder what its all about.

In a speech in December, he referred to the complaint over West Papuan independence and declared he had pulled the teacher out of Australia and received an apology from the ADF. On December 29, despite the apologies, he sent a cable instructing all elements of the TNI to cease exchanges and training with the ADF.

Gatots statements and actions coincide with the tremendous uncertainty across Asia over the policies that will be pursued by the Trump administration in the US, and their economic and political impact. Since the Obama administration launched its anti-China pivot to the region in 2011, the Indonesian elite has sought to maintain a stance of impartiality and not aggravate relations with either Washington or Beijing. Such balancing is becoming increasingly difficult, under conditions in which the incoming US president is threatening to impose tariffs that will plunge the entire region into economic turmoil and heightening the danger of war.

Figures such as Gatot are well aware that Indonesia, the most populous state in southeast Asia, with 240 million people, is viewed in Washington and Canberra as strategically and economically crucial. The military apparatus is also acutely conscious that the country is rent by class antagonisms, social inequality, democratic grievances among ethnic minorities, sectarian divisions and political conflicts that can be exploited to try and threaten and pressure the Indonesian ruling elite to line up behind the imperialist powersor to plunge Indonesia into turmoil if it does not.

Currently, Indonesian politics is dominated by a bitter power struggle between rival camps of the ruling class ahead of major provincial-level elections this year. Protests, laced with sectarian and anti-Chinese rhetoric, have been held by Islamist parties and organisations demanding the prosecution of Jakartas ethnic Chinese and Christian governor and ally of President Widodo, Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, for alleged blasphemy against Islam.

In response, in November, General Gatot had the TNI mobilise thousands of uniformed soldiers to take part in a 30,000-strong rally in support of inter-faith unity, waving ribbons in Indonesias national colours. He has labelled the anti-Basuki and implicitly anti-Widodo protests as dangerous and ominously declared that the TNI would wage a jihad for national unity.

The sensitivity of the TNI commander to any denigration of Indonesian nationalism within the Australian military underscores the growth of political tensions in Indonesia compounded by intensifying geo-political rivalries throughout the region.
The destruction of full-time jobs in Australia continues because of global stagnation, corporate restructuring and stalling growth in China, the destination for the largest portion of the countrys commodity exports. Companies from mining and manufacturing to retail are laying off workers and shuttering operations.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) official jobs survey, which seriously understates the real level of joblessness, shows the number of people looking for work has persisted at more than 720,000. On average, there are 18 persons for every known vacancy.

The ABS survey counts anyone working for just one hour a week as employed. Even so, ABS recent figures show unemployment rose to 5.7 percent in November from 5.6 percent in October. Youth unemployment stood at over 12 percent.

Such levels of joblessness underscore the fraud of the Liberal-National governments claim in the July 2 federal election that its policies would deliver jobs and growth.

While the ABS survey claims that 39,300 full-time jobs were added in November and 200 part-time jobs lost, the result does not reverse the underlying casualisation of the workforce.

To September, the total number of hours worked in part-time jobs climbed 5.3 percent this year, whereas full-time hours increased by just 0.33 percent, well down from the more than 5 percent pace of five years ago.

Despite the surge in part-time jobs, overall employment growth so far this year has averaged just 4,300 per month, a sharp decline on the average of 28,600 recorded in the 12 months to November last year. This does not keep pace with the population increase, let alone the employment needs of young people, including school, college and university leavers.

Research agency Roy Morganbased on a broader interview process than that used by the ABSestimates that the jobs situation is far worse. By its measure, unemployment in November was 9.2 percent. Underemployment, people in a job but wanting more hours, was 8.4 percent. In other words, 17.6 percent of the workforce, or a total of 2.299 million people, were either unemployed or underemployed.

Key economic indices point to a worsening jobs situation ahead. Australias economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the September quarter, the worst result since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Reflecting the unwinding of the mining infrastructure boom, the value of engineering construction fell by 3.8 percent to $20.3 billion, down from 23.2 percent in the same quarter in 2015.

Major resources projects, including a series of liquefied natural gas (LNG) platforms, have been completed or are near completion. Thousands of workers employed in the construction stage of the projects, such as Chevrons $54 billion Gorgon LNG project off northern Western Australia, completed in March, have been laid off.

In September, Ichthys LNG project in Darwin in the Northern Territory entered its final construction phase. At the peak of construction the project employed around 8,000 workers but this will fall to about 350 to 400 once it becomes operational.

Figures released by the ABS in September showed that investment in onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration in Australia fell by almost two thirds over the previous two years to its lowest level since the first quarter of 2006.

Mining sector job losses continue as companies cut costs to compete for market share and cash in on iron ore and coal price increases that are likely to be temporary. Iron ore prices have roughly doubled this year to around $US80 a tonne, as have the metallurgical coal prices, which are now up to $300 a tonne.

In November, reports emerged that mining giant Rio Tinto plans to axe 500 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce, across its iron ore division in Western Australia. The cull is on top of 170 jobs shed by the company in March.

Anglo American will axe 82 jobs at its German Creek coal mine in Queenslands Bowen Basin after the Fair Work Commission approved forced redundancies, despite 32 of the sacked workers being on strike at the time.

Peabody Energy announced plans to close its Moorvale open-cut coking coal mine in Queensland as part of a major restructure. The mine employs 250 people, including contractors.

In December, Canadian company Kirkland Lake Gold suspended underground mining operations at its Stawell operations in western Victoria, axing 150 jobs.

Flow-on effects of the mining slump are still being felt. In November, mine equipment manufacturer Hastings Deering shed 40 jobs at its Rockhampton and Mackay offices in Queensland. The company axed 400 production jobs from Bowen Basin workshops in July, on top of 200 in June 2013.

At the end of October, rail haulage company Pacific National (PN) announced it will cut 120 jobs across its New South Wales (NSW) operations. The majority of the losses will be train crew positions at PNs Port Waratah coal-haulage operation in Newcastle.

Other data released last month points to further job cuts and company failures in the troubled retail sector. The ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index fell by 4.4 points to 113.4, the lowest level since May and is now only fractionally above its long-run average of 112.8.

Last year electronics retailer Dick Smith closed its operations at the cost of 3,300 jobs, Woolworths announced plans to close or sell off hardware business Masters, threatening 1,700 job losses, and childrens clothing retailer Pumpkin Patch announced the closure of its stores by February at the cost of 1,600 jobs across Australia and New Zealand.

Administrator Ferrier Hodgson announced in December that Payless Shoes would also close in February, destroying 700 jobs across its 132 stores and online outlets nationally. The shoe retailer has been in administration since 2015 after chalking up losses of more than $10 million in 2014 and 2015.

Further public sector job cuts were announced in November and October. Government-owned Airservices Australia, which is responsible for air traffic control, airway navigation and airport emergency services, announced plans to shed 900 backroom support jobs.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will shed up to 150 jobs. The NSW state government will cut 200 jobs at State Transit, which operates buses in the Sydney area, while state-owned NSW power distributor Essential Energy will shed 600. The Western Australian state government will shed 10 jobs at its tourism department, Tourism WA, reducing the current workforce by 10 percent.
Three women cleaners who had staged a near three-month long strike and picket to defend their pay and conditions were sacked just before Christmas.

Lesley Leake, Marice Hall and Karen McGee have carried out a determined struggle against their employer, Barnsley-based C&D Cleaning. They were employed at the primary school in the village of Kinsley near Wakefield, West Yorkshire and between them had nearly 30 years of service.

The school was originally run by Wakefield District Council but in 2015 it became an academy run by Wakefield City Academy Trust. On April 4, 2016, the academy contracted out the cleaning of the school to C&D Cleaning Group.

When they received their first pay packet in April, the three found their rate of pay had been reduced from 7.85 an hour under the council conditions to only 6.70 an hour. They contacted C&D officials who claimed they assumed they were under 25 years of age and only entitled to the minimum wage rate for under 25s of 6.70. The company rectified this and in their May pay packet they were paid the adult minimum wage rate of 7.20 an hour, still below their original 7.85 an hour. They were also paid for fewer hoursunder the Wakefield Council contract they were paid the full 59.7 hours a month they worked. Under C&D, they were only paid for between 47 to 52 hours a month.

In addition to an effective pay cut of around 25 percent, their leave, sick leave and pension entitlements were much reduced.

After failing to get redress for the attack on their conditions, they contacted Unison, the trade union. Unison in turn contacted C&D and, according to a report in the October 9 Guardian, was told by Nick Thorpe, head of human resources, We do not recognise you or your organisation and subsequently we will not be entering into any form of dialogue with you in relation to our employees.

He added, I understand  the impact for you as an organisation when members realise that we are no longer living in the 1980s and they question the actual value of union membership when you have no say, power or influence over their employer.

Faced with the intransigence of their employer, at the beginning of September the women walked off the job and established a picket line at the school and outside C&Ds premises in Barnsley.

Unison took the company to an industrial tribunal. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), the government mediation body, intervened. On December 9, the cleaners returned to work. A union Kinsley Cleaners Twitter account entry on that date announced: After almost 14 weeks on strike the Kinsley Three returned to work today with their head held high. Thanks for all your support and solidarity.

Details of the return to work deal were not made public. However, the company then issued the three with a letter asking them to attend a disciplinary hearing scheduled for December 12. This meeting was then postponed until December 19 and afterwards the three cleaners were sacked on December 22. The day prior to being sacked the three received a Christmas card from C&D.

The Guardian December 23 quoted a statement from C&D Cleaning regarding the sacking. It read, The employees were invited to a disciplinary hearing on an earlier date in December to respond to allegations of gross misconduct. At the employees request, the hearing took place on 19 December 2016, as their chosen Unison representative was not available on the earlier date.

Full details of the allegations were provided to the employees in advance of the hearing. The employees and their representatives were given full opportunity to put their cases. The outcome of the hearing was termination of employment. The individuals have been informed of their right of appeal. The company will not comment further at this stage so as not (sic) prejudice any internal process.

The three women have vowed to continue their fight and win reinstatement. Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis said the union would be consulting lawyers.

The dispute became a cause celebre for the trade unions and pseudo left organisations who sought to utilise the principled struggle of the women as a means of reviving illusions in the moribund unions. At a rally in Barnsley on October 15, Robin Symonds, a full-time Unison regional organiser and a member of the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Labour Representation Committee, said, These are a beacon of hope for the trade union movement I have no doubt whatsoever that the Kinsley Three will win. How could they not win with the support of the trade union movement behind them?

Tosh McDonald, president of the train drivers union ASLEF, a member of the Labour Party and a supporter of Corbyn, said, This movement of ours can support three women as long as it takes, if it takes until we get a Corbyn-led government to take away the riches that these people (C&D) earn we as a movement will sustain you This is a battle we will win.

Jane Aitchison, president of Leeds Trades Union Congress, a rep for the Public and Commercial Services union, a Labour member and joint national secretary of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party-backed Unite the Resistance, added, We could support three women with our movement for a bloody long time we support these women for as long as it takes by any means necessary.

Despite this bluster the three were sacked and the unions did not organise a single one of their members to support them. Wakefield District Branch of UNISON, with approximately 9,000 members, has not yet even reported the sacking with its last article on the dispute dated September 28, 2016.

The Socialist Workers Party responded with a six-paragraph article, two of which consisted of quotes from Unison bureaucrat Symonds. The article concluded with the bogus claim, The Kinsley Three have got the backing of the wider trade union movement in Yorkshire.

The reality is that the sackings are a further indictment of the trade union bureaucracy and its apologists among the pseudo-left. Unison, with a membership of more than 1.2 million and an annual income from dues and other sources of more than 200 million, has proved unwilling and incapable of defending the jobs and conditions of three cleaners.

The sacking of the Kinsley Three took place at the same time as the unions were sabotaging workers struggles in a number of key industries over the holiday period.

On December 20, the UKs largest union, Unite, announced it had reached a deal with Swissport, and called off a planned four-hour walkout by 1,500 workers. A few days later, the union called off a planned strike, due to take place at 18 airports, of British Airways cabin crew.

On Wednesday, Southern Rail imposed its Driver Only Operation (DOO) system, in which drivers close train doors instead of guards, following months of strikes by rail workers to oppose the measure. Thousands of guards jobs are threatened at Southern and nationally as a result. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union and ASLEF have worked to divide workers, in opposition to organising a united offensive against the attacks. In October, the RMT paved the way for the company to impose the attacks by advising their members to sign the new contracts Southern were demandingdowngrading the workers to on-board supervisors.
Police made up to 600 arrests throughout Mexico yesterday as protests continued against President Enrique Pena Nietos cut to gas subsidies, known colloquially as the gasolinazo. One police officer was killed during confrontations in an impoverished neighborhood of Mexico City, and the mayor deployed 9,000 police to guard commercial centers throughout the city.

Yesterday also saw indications that localized protests by workers may be developing into a broader strike movement. Fourteen thousand bus, truck and taxi drivers in the oil-producing state of Veracruz announced a statewide strike of indefinite length, with many leaving their trucks, cabs, and buses parked on the street.

Workers in Veracruz, located on the Atlantic coast, joined transportation workers in the city of Guadalajara, less than 100 miles from the Pacific, who also struck yesterday, though initial reports show the strike as only partial. Truck drivers and demonstrators continued to block several key highways and tollbooths linking major inland Mexican cities.

The protest continued as US President-elect Donald Trump threw further doubt into Mexicos US-export-based manufacturing industry when he tweeted a threat to penalize Toyota for its plans to build an auto plant in Baja California.

In Morelia, 2,000 transportation workers marched demanding the resignation of President Pena Nieto and the revocation of the subsidy cut. El Financiero warned that there are signs of a total strike of transport in Michoacan. In Acapulco, Guerrero, taxi drivers are encircling Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) oil trucks, forcing them to stop and taking turns siphoning the gas from their tankers. When a group of soldiers attempted to stop one group of taxi drivers yesterday, the drivers said that if the soldiers intervened they would light the tanker on fire. The soldiers backed down.

The trade unions are stepping in to prevent the demonstrations from coalescing into a nationwide strike. Trade union bureaucrats who announced the recent strikes stated explicitly that they were forced to do so by workers, who in the words of one trade union official, are becoming violent.

Castelan Cruvelli, president of the Veracruz transport workers union ASTRAVER, denounced striking workers for threatening scab drivers and appealed to the government for help: This has not gotten out of control, we are hoping that a government liaison will engage in dialogue with us, as always in a peaceful way.

Alfredo Dam Ham, leader of the Mexican Transport Workers Alliance (AMOTAC), pledged to the government that the strike would remain peaceful and appealed to drivers to refrain from blocking any roads.

The entire ruling apparatusincluding the trade unions, the corporate press, businesses and the capitalist partiesare fearful that the gasolinazo protests have the potential to ignite into a movement of millions of Mexican workers. Last night, police arrested up to 600 people as riots and looting spread throughout the country, including youth as young as 13 years old.

The main national association of gas stations, shop owners and department stores called for the government to send the armed forces to crush demonstrations. The groups president, Manuel Cardona Zapata, told the television program Despierta yesterday, We need federal intervention, and if necessary the army, because this situation is out of control.

According to Cardona, rioters have looted 250 stores in recent days as protests spread throughout Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Michoacan, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Tabasco, Queretaro and Quintana Roo.

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), said the subsequent police deployment was to guarantee the free expression of ideas. Video circulated yesterday, however, showed police looting stores in the State of Mexico.

Though looting has undoubtedly occurred, it is miniscule compared to the Pena Nieto administrations looting of the oil industry, which was nationalized in 1938 after a major strike by oil workers against British oil corporations. The oil subsidy cut is part of the Mexican ruling classs efforts to privatize Pemex and to hand the countrys oil resources over to private corporations.

Protesters, led by transportation workers, have continued to block several oil processing centers, creating what Pemex described as a critical situation for oil production. Heavily armed riot police confronted demonstrators in at least one location and were able to liberate the Pemex facility when the workers peacefully retreated from the barricades after a tense standoff.

Transportation workers and demonstrators also reportedly established a new blockade around a facility near the border city of Mexicali. Elements of the federal and state police, as well as the army, are guarding other key facilities. Pemex also announced that the blockades are causing severe gas shortages in Baja California and Chihuahua.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, ex-candidate for president and leader of the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), issued a video statement yesterday afternoon and warned of chaos caused by demonstrators who he said were following fascist strategies. We want to put order in the chaos, he said. Lopez Obrador told viewers to put their faith in a legislative resolution to overturn the gas hike, saying, Congress represents the people.

Morena and Lopez Obrador are expected to poll well in next years presidential elections, with many commentators anticipating a Morena victory. Morena is an ostensibly left populist bourgeois party that plays a key role in Mexican politics by directing social opposition back into the safe channels of the Mexican state and away from the class struggle. Morena helped suffocate opposition to the Pena Nieto governments education reforms, paving the way for the government to cover up its role in murdering 43 student teachers in Guerrero in 2014.

The protests in Mexico have been blacked out by the corporate media in the US, despite the fact that millions of Mexican citizens currently reside north of the border. As of Thursday afternoon, the online front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, Fox, and CBS all failed to mention the demonstrations. This is not an oversight. The American ruling class fears that the development of a movement of the working class in Mexico will ignite a parallel struggle by workers of all nationalities in the United States.
The political firestorm over allegations of Russian hacking in the US presidential election campaign reached a new peak with the hearing Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where three top intelligence officials testified for several hours. The three officials refused to provide any evidence to support the claims that the Russian government directed hacking into the email of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Nor is there any such evidence in the 50-page report the intelligence agencies delivered to President Obama Thursday, to be followed by briefings of congressional leaders and President-elect Donald Trump on Friday. According to the Washington Post, US officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report, let alone the declassified version that is to be made public on Monday.

This did not stop the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, from describing the alleged hacking as an act of war and repeatedly urging the intelligence officials to embrace that terminologylanguage with the most ominous implications, given that the United States and Russia, between them, control more than 95 percent of the worlds nuclear weapons.

McCains bellicose comments were echoed by committee Democrats, who attacked Trump for his Twitter comments citing the lack of evidence of any Russian involvement and noting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly denied that Russia was the source for Democratic Party emails his organization made public.

Given the incessant campaign to transform the alleged hacking into a pretext for war with nuclear-armed Russia, let us conduct a reality check. What was actually uncovered by the hacking into the DNC and the Clinton campaign?

The material released by WikiLeaks exposed two major facets of the 2016 presidential campaign: the deliberate sabotage of the Bernie Sanders campaign by the DNC leadership, which put its thumb on the scale in favor of Clinton; and the abject subordination of Clinton to the financial aristocracy, documented in the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms.

The term hacking the election has been thrown about, although US intelligence agencies have said there is no evidence that a single ballot was miscast or miscounted as a result of electronic interference with the conduct of the vote. The sole consequence of the alleged hacking was the publication of true information about actions by Democratic Party officials and Clinton herself that discredited her campaign. It is this which the Democrats and their media supporters wish to suppress.

Press reports Thursday readily conceded that the crime in question was not the hacking of the material from the DNC and Podesta, but the delivery to WikiLeaks to make it public. The New York Times wrote that the alleged Russian hacking group is blamed not just for taking emails from the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Mr. Podesta, but also making them public, an action which amounted to turning a traditional espionage operation into an attempt to influence the election

A Washington Post columnist acknowledged, We will stipulate that governments regularly spy on each other, and the United States also gathers intelligence on governments like Russia, China and India. The difference here is that intelligence operations allegedly led to the release of information to the public, via WikiLeaks and media coverage.

Here, to put it plainly, is the real crime, as far as the US ruling elite is concerned: someonethe identity of the actual leaker or hacker is irrelevantgave the American people access to material that documented the conspiracy of Democratic Party leaders against the democratic rights of the members of their own party who supported Sanders, and also demonstrated the class interests served by Hillary Clinton, the favorite of the party establishment.

It is remarkable that in the vast media furor over the alleged Russian hacking, there has been almost no reference to the content of the material revealed. The attitude of press organs of big business such as the New York Times and the Washington Post suggests that if one of their reporters had received the DNC emails from an unknown sourceas a Times reporter supposedly received Donald Trumps tax returnthe editors would have suppressed the information.

In fact, it is more than likely that this is exactly what happened. No one has asked the Times or the Post when they first learned of the DNC campaign against Sanders or received transcripts of Clintons speeches to Wall Street. It is doubtful that WikiLeaks was the first media outlet to do so. But WikiLeaks conducted themselves as actual journalists, not stenographers for the CIA and Pentagon, and made the secret documents public, damaging the candidate who was the overwhelming favorite of the military-intelligence leadership. For that and other exposures, Julian Assange has earned the undying hatred of American imperialism and its servantsand the thanks of the international working class.

And what of Senator Sanders himself, and his liberal ally Senator Elizabeth Warren? As the campaign over alleged Russian hacking has unfolded in the media, these political cowards have prostrated themselves before the intelligence agencies. This fact exposes yet again the absurdity of their pretense to represent an opposition. They share the basic class outlook of the entire political establishment, Democratic and Republican, which regards the military-intelligence apparatus as its last line of defense against the working class, at home and abroad.

At Thursdays hearing, Republicans and Democrats took turns urging the spy chiefs to denounce Assange for the publication by WikiLeaks of US military and diplomatic communications that document war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and conspiracies against governments around the worldactivities that make hacking the email of the DNC pale by comparison.

The New York Times wrote, The gathering was extraordinary as much for its context as its contenta public, bipartisan display of support for the intelligence community that seemed aimed, at times, at an audience of one (i.e., Trump).

Senators from the two partiesmost of whom supported the Iraq war on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destructionseemed to be in competition to demonstrate the most abject loyalty to the intelligence agencies. They were all speaking from talking points supplied by the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. Senator Joseph Donnelly, an Indiana Democrat, was the most sycophantic, telling the spy chiefs that in a truth-telling competition with Assange and WikiLeaks, Were on your side every time.

This theme was elaborated explicitly in an editorial in the Thursday edition of the Washington Post, which berated Trump for dismissing the claims of Russian hacking of the Democrats, which it described as an effort to deny reality. Declaring that Trump would soon have to rely on intelligence pros to help him conduct US foreign policy, the editorial asked, Why does Mr. Trump give Mr. Assange more weight than the U.S. intelligence agencies?

Trump seemed to retreat in the face of the media barrage, tweeting his disapproval of Assange and his love for the intelligence agencies. But the Posts question should be turned back on the newspaper itself. Why should anyone believe Assange? Because WikiLeaks has conducted actual journalistic investigation, uncovering evidence of US government crimes and making it public.

The intelligence agencies, by contrast, are proven liars. No senator challenged the veracity of the panel of witnesses, who were headed by retired general James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. By rights, Clapper should have been jailed for perjury after his sworn testimony before Congress in March 2013. Asked point-blank, Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper responded with the flat denial, No, sir. Three months later, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA has hundreds of programs to collect the telecommunications and Internet activities not only of every American, but of every human being on the planet.

The public, bipartisan display of support for the intelligence community is aimed at delegitimizing any opposition to the numberless crimes committed by the US military-intelligence apparatus against the population of the world, including the American people, on a daily basis.

The CIA is an organization dripping with blood, detested by hundreds of millions around the world, including in the United States, as the instigator of countless coups, massacres, assassinations and wars. From Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, to Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1973, to the bloodbaths in Central America in the 1980s, to todays mass repression in Egypt and drone warfare in a dozen countries, the CIA is a byword for criminality.

On Thursday, dozens of US senators prostrated themselves before the intelligence agencies. Some 40 years before, in a similar committee room, senators took sworn testimony about how the CIA had been running a Murder Incorporated in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

That investigation was a byproduct of the Watergate crisis that forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon. At the time, it was revealed that former CIA personnel had been employed at Nixons Committee for the Re-Election of the President, or CREEP, and were involved in organizing the burglary of the Watergate hotel. The congressional inquiry led to the exposure of illegal spying on the American people and the infiltration of government agents into antiwar, civil rights, labor and socialist organizations.

Four decades ago, it was possible for the US ruling elite to conduct a limited reform of the CIA, which amounted to removing a few discredited officials and setting some limits on the agencys operationslimits that were quickly breached in practice. Today, even such a largely cosmetic exercise is impossible. Instead, the intelligence agencies demand unquestioning loyalty, and the Democrats and the media salute.
Ricardo Rossello (New Progressive Party, pro-statehood) was sworn in on Monday, January 2 as Puerto Ricos new governor. Later on that day, during his inaugural address, Rosello declared the island in an economic emergency.

In his speech, Rosello admitted that the government will not have the funds to pay public employee wages in February. Were inheriting a deficit of more than $6 billion and a situation so precarious that there is no way to pay the payroll for the month of February, declared the new governor.

Rosello, 37, is a medical doctor who ran on a populist pro-statehood platform with the slogan a new nation is possible. He appealed on a demagogic basis to inequality, the exodus of doctors, poor conditions facing the elderly, and pledged to rescue public employee pensions, which are currently facing a $40 billion dollar deficit.

In his inauguration speech, however, the new governor promised Puerto Ricos Wall Street creditors that he will prioritize their interests over those of the Puerto Rican working class.

Over 200,000 Puerto Ricans have fled to the US in the last few years, including many technical workers, professionals and medical doctors.

For Rosello, statehood is key in the transformation of the Puerto Rican economy. The United States cannot pretend to be the worlds model for democracy as long as it continues to discriminate, under its flag, against 3.5 million of its citizens, with no political, social or economic equality, he said. There is no way of overcoming the current crisis that affects Puerto Rico while maintaining this colonial crisis, said Rosello, referring to the countrys commonwealth status.

Puerto Rico owes its creditors some $70 billion. Rosello declared in his speech that the resolution of the debt crisis will become top priority for his administration.

The administration of Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla imposed heavy taxes and fees for transportation and public utilities in order to generate revenues with which to pay the corporate creditors. These and other austerity policies have further sunk the Puerto Rican economy, which has been unable to recover from a decade-long recession that began in 2006. Last May, Puerto Rico defaulted on more than $400 million in bonds related to the Government Development Bank. In July, the government failed to make a $1 billion debt payment.

In his speech, Governor Rosello called for a public-private partnership to bring investments to the island, including through the expansion of the tourism industry. He also assured that he would work closely with the financial control board.

Last June, US President Barack Obama signed the Puerto Rico Management and Economic Stability Act, PROMESA, which means promise in Spanish. In return for allowing Puerto Rico to engage in debt-negotiations with its creditors, PROMESA established a seven-member financial control board (Junta de Control Fiscal, JCF) to rule over the islands finances in the interests of Wall Street. In addition, PROMESA granted Puerto Rico a brief breathing space, protecting it from being sued by creditors until February 15, 2017.

At a conference in the Puerto Rican beach resort of Fajardo on November 8, the financial control board discussed a report from Rogelio Garcia for the Conway MacKenzie consulting firm. According to Garcia, the government is shut out of credit markets and has been postponing payment to creditors in the amount of $1.3 billion, a policy that is not sustainable. Other participants in the conference voiced their skepticism about the governments debt reduction strategy.

A December 20 letter from the JCF to both Rosello and Garcia Padilla declares, Structural reforms will not be sufficient to allow Puerto Rico to fund its long-term liabilities as they currently stand. The Government budget is simply not large enough to allow it to provide essential services and pay debt service as currently structured, even if it implements extensive fiscal initiatives Education and healthcare are two of the largest areas of expenditure for the Government. While both areas are essential, the fiscal condition requires they be reduced substantially Change is also needed to ensure the pension costs are sustainable and to address the massive pension liabilities built up over decades.

The letter attempts to mask the draconian cuts that are being proposed, with words and phrases such as efficiency, simplification, and thinking outside the box.

On Monday, Rosello indicated that he was declaring a fiscal emergency and cut the budget of all government departments by ten percent, with a 20 percent reduction in politically appointed personnel.
Everyone should be very careful when cheering for increased high school graduation rates ("LPS high school graduation rate climbs," Dec. 24).

For educators whose continued employment is threatened in the name of school reform, there are two methods available to accomplish the appearance of the academic improvement demanded by some politicians and by all corporate school reformers.

One is test fraud. It has been tried many places, including Nebraska, but it is fraught with the danger of getting caught. This danger is related to the trail of evidence left by the process of educator-conducted test fraud.

Fraudulent graduation rates are different. They are much safer because they are much more difficult to detect and prove and their is very little motivation to do so.

All it takes to graduate a student whose academic performance does not deserve a diploma is one or more decisions to issue a pass when an academic performance deserves a fail.

Consider some recent history. In April of 2014 the U.S. Department of Education reported an increase in the national graduation rate. One month later, the same agency reported that the nations high school seniors have shown no improvement in math and reading performance since 2009. That is a mighty fishy combination.

Rob Bligh, San Antonio, Texas
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court has given Florida and Georgia a January 24th deadline, "to reach a framework for settlement" of a contentious legal fight over water rights.

During a two-month trial in Portland, Maine that ended in early December, Florida asserted Georgia's over-consumption of water had reduced freshwater flows from the top of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, near Metro Atlanta, to the Florida Panhandle.

If the two states cannot come to a compromise Special Master Ralph Lancaster is expected to issue his recommendation in the case. Apalachicola River Keeper Dan Tonsmeire assumes that is what will happen.

"Hopefully he got the nuances and the complexities of it, and can make a good decision that will help Florida without jeopardizing the economy of Georgia. I think it is all very possible," said Tonsmeire.

The final decision will culminate a case that began in 2013 when Florida filed the lawsuit. The Apalachicola Bay collapsed in 2012 after a series of droughts and low flows, devastating the local seafood industry.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- Mayor Gillum and his colleagues are being sued by gun lobbyists after they refused to repeal an ordinance that prevented the shooting of guns in public parks.

Thursday morning, the mayor posted a web article saying that this lawsuit against him and his colleagues is just another form of bullying the local government.

WTXL ABC 27 was able to speak with a representative of the National Rifle Association and Mayor Gillum to discuss this lawsuit.

First off, Marion Hammer, an NRA representative, said that the NRA is not suing the mayor, but they do support the lawsuit against him. In fact, the NRA hopes to appear as a "Friend of the Court" to support those organizations suing the mayor.

As far as the lawsuit is concerned, prior to 2011, Tallahassee had an ordinance that banned the discharging of firearms in public parks. Then in 2011, the Florida Legislature passed a law that says firearm regulation is to be left only to the state, not the local government. Any official that knowingly violates this can be penalized with a fine of up to $5000, and could be removed from office.

Moving forward to early 2014, then Commissioner Gillum and some of his colleagues received a petition from Florida Carry, a non-profit organization supporting gun rights. This petition asked for the original city ordinance to be removed. After refusing to remove the ordinance, Florida Carry and a second non-profit, Second Amendment Foundation decided to sue.

For Mayor Gillum, this isn't a lawsuit about gun control. Instead, he feels this this is a way for the state government to bully local leaders into having less and less power for deciding what is best for their individual communities.

"Leaving the power to make the decisions about local issues should remain with local communities," says Mayor Andrew Gillum. "That's what we're fighting for. That's what we're trying to defend. That's what's under attack through this lawsuit and through the numerous bills I anticipate we'll see through this legislative session."

Mayor Gillum and his colleagues are pushing back against the lawsuit in hopes of appealing to the judges that the law passed in 2011 is unconstitutional. Gillum thinks that local governments should be able to decide on measures they feel are appropriate for their community.
GADSDEN COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - A Gadsden County woman has been arrested for two counts of medicaid provider fraud.

The Florida Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit arrested Aretha Derrico, who is the owner of a home community based services company called heavenly choices in Gadsden County.

Court documents show Derrico allegedly stole more than $57,000 from the Florida Medicaid Program.

She was taken to the county jail on bail for $10,000.

If convicted, Derrico faces up to 35 years in prison.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - On Thursday, Leon County deputies said that they arrested three teens in connection to a burglary at Riley Elementary School.

The Leon County Sheriffs Office that the three Leon County students were arrested for burglary and criminal mischief with damage over $1,000.

On Tuesday, deputies began an investigation into a burglary that cost the school almost $40,000 in property damage.

The investigation in ongoing and detectives are currently searching for several other suspects.

If you have any information regarding this investigation please contact the LCSO Property Crimes Unit 606-3400.
An Omaha march will be held to show solidarity with a Washington, D.C., march the same day meant to show support for womens rights, safety and health, and the well being of families.

The marches are set for Jan. 21, the day after Donald Trump is inaugurated president.

The Womens March on Nebraska will begin at 5 that afternoon at the CenturyLink Center, and participants will walk a mile through downtown Omaha.

"The march is designed to send a bold message to new administrations  and to the world  that womens rights are human rights and that the marginalized will be defended," organizers said in a news release. "The march will be the first step toward unifying communities and creating change, starting from the grassroots level and working up."

Local organizers are working on fundraising for music and refreshments and are setting up speakers.
With the fallout from this week's sharp move toward partisanship hanging over the Legislature, state senators engaged in some candid discussion Friday before ultimately approving legislative committee assignments on a lopsided 39-3 vote.

Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha, who lost his leadership position as chairman of the Legislative Council's executive board during the first day of the 2017 session, opened the discussion with his assessment that an organized effort to place virtually all committee chairmanships in the hands of Republicans had fundamentally changed the character of Nebraska's nonpartisan Legislature.

"The first day was the blackest day" that he has experienced in the Legislature, the second-term senator said.

"This is now a partisan legislature," he declared.

In an organized march, senators chose Republicans to fill virtually every leadership position on Wednesday, naming a single freshman Democrat, Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, to a committee chairmanship.

Krist, a Republican, was ousted in the process after a simmering dispute with fellow Republicans over earlier contentious decisions made before the Legislature convened.

Several senators embraced the label of partisan legislature during Friday's floor discussion.

"It is a nonpartisan election (for state senator), but this is a partisan body," Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson declared.

"We are partisan," Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango said. "It's always been there under the surface."

"Finally, this body represents the mindset of the state as whole," Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte said, pointing to Nebraska's voter support for President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans.

"This chamber should follow," he said, "and it did with committee chairmanships."

Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus, a Republican who was not associated with the organized effort to elect Republicans to virtually all positions of leadership, said "we're about to move this Mickey Mouse aside" and move on to the task of governing.

"You're about to have a great, great experience," he told newly elected senators.

Some senators who are Republicans wanted to change the committee assignments that had been agreed to by the Legislature's Committee on Committees after a couple of tense and sometimes boisterous meetings.

"We intentionally have set up some committees to fail," Friesen protested, and Hughes agreed.

The committee assignments, which factor into account member preferences and legislative seniority, have produced mixed results.

The Appropriations Committee appears to be generally moderate in nature; the Revenue Committee appears likely to be amenable to proposed tax cuts.

The Judiciary Committee seems likely to be largely moderate-progressive-liberal; membership on the Education Committee, which Groene will lead, was a contentious issue in the Committee on Committees.

Recognizing that the current system may not be perfect, Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln said, the Legislature should consider creation of a set of guidelines to help reach the fairest assignment of committee seats.

After the floor discussion that bordered on group therapy, Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer of Norfolk and Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, chairman of the Revenue Committee, urged senators to accept the results.

In the end, only Sens. Steve Erdman of Bayard, Bill Kintner of Papillion and John Lowe of Kearney voted against the committee assignments.

Erdman and Lowe are newly elected senators.
Michael Durbin is photographed in Yakima, Wash. Thursday, Jan. 5, 2016. Durbin, with the special assault division, was named Detective of the Year for 2016 by the Yakima Police Department last month. (SHAWN GUST/Yakima Herald-Republic)
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A few weeks ago, I was browsing the website of one of the local radio stations when a banner advertisement caught my eye.
It was an emotionally charged moment: A young German woman, the granddaughter of a Nazi officer, sitting next to a Holocaust survivor and specifying what her grandfather had done to Jews during World War II. There was no anger there, just a lot of sadness.

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Both sides of my family, my paternal side and my maternal side, were devout Nazis, Anna Reiner confesses with a serious look on her angel face. My great grandfather took part in burning the synagogue in the city of Darmstadt, Germany. Another grandfather was a policeman in the Krakow ghetto. Another grandfather was in the Wehrmacht, the German army, and took part in the occupation of Belarus.

Anna Reiner, a descendant of Nazis, and Holocaust survivor Yevgenya Chaika (Photo: Yair Sagi)

While 25-year-old Reiner describes the horrible acts committed by her grandparents, Yevgenya Chaika sits next to her and strokes her arm, calming her down. Its quite possible that Chaika, a Belarus-born Holocaust survivor, ran into Reiners grandfather at some point. She was only eight months old when Hitlers soldiers stormed eastern Belarus and jailed all the Jews in crowded ghettos. Together with her family members, she was tossed like a sack of potatoes into a crate on a large truck, which took her to the ghetto. She barely survived there for four years, a helpless baby. After the ghetto was liberated, the family returned home, only to discover that the house had been bombed and robbed.

Who knows, it may have been Reiners grandfather of all people who threw little Yevgenya into crate on the truck. It may have been he who fired the mortar shell that destroyed her childhood home. And what if it was him? Chaika says in her heavy accent as she keeps caressing Reiners hand. Is she to blame for what her grandfather and grandmother did? Absolutely not. I love her as if she were my own daughter.

No anger

The unusual meeting between Reiner and Chaika was held recently in the Israeli city of Netanya, as part of the activity of German organization March of Life. About 100 Belarus-born Holocaust survivors, wearing caps and glasses and wrapped in their coats, faced some 10 young Germans, tall and good-looking, the descendants of Nazi soldiers and officers. The former spoke about their horrible experiences in the Holocaust, and the latter told them about their families grim history.

The intergenerational meeting. Remember what happened not just through figures and data, but through personal stories too (Photo: Yair Sagi)

Surprisingly, there was no anger in this intergenerational meeting, just a lot of sadness and a bit of comfort, for both sides. Not a single eye remained dry when Asia Bronstein recalled how her father was drafted by the Soviet army and she was forced to flee eastward with her mother. On the way, they found themselves in a small Jewish town just as the German army arrived in the area, encircled the town and turned it into a ghetto.

That wasnt life, just a difficult, daily survival, she recounted. The winter of 1941 was extremely cold, and there was no need to shoot people. They died of hunger, of the cold and of diseases. Every day, a wagon passed between the houses and collected the bodies. Only few survived.

The 25-year-old Samuel Haas took the microphone and said, My grandparents were Nazis. One of them handed out printed propaganda information, and the other three traveled across Europe as part of their job in the Wehrmacht army. They murdered, robbed and looted. And as a descendant of these people, I would like to stand on Israeli soil and say out loud that we must not let such a thing happen again. I want to expose my familys story and support Israel and the war on anti-Semitism.

Haas comments reflect the solidarity at the heart of this event and the agreement that such meetings will help guarantee that horrible events like the Holocaust will never repeat themselves.

Anna and her friends are reaching out to us now, Chaika says with a broad smile. They are very good young men and women. It warms my heart that they are so cute and that they know it was wrong. Im not angry with them, absolutely not. I hope that they wont be like their grandparents now.

The March of Life organization was founded nine years ago in a bid to commemorate the Holocaust and fight anti-Semitism. It encourages young Germans to investigate their families past, break the barrier of silence and uncover the acts committed by their grandparents in the Holocaust.

For years, no one in Germany discussed what had happened only several meters from the German city centers, explains Heinz Reuss, the organizations international director. Not only was there no public debate, there were no family conversations about the past either. People didnt talk about what they did in the war. We started investigating our familys past, started asking questions. Many of us discovered that they grandparents were Nazi criminals. We were shocked.

March of Life founder Jobst Bittner with Prof. Gideon Greif (Photo: March of Life)

Not just in Germany, but in Israel too, there has been a silencing culture about the Holocaust for many years. The main principle of the organization, therefore, is talking. The actual discussion of the matter, after years of silencing on both sides, brings people closer and releases tensions and old hatreds. It aims to guarantee that the past does not repeat itself.

As part of the organization, the young Germans meet with Holocaust survivors around the world, tell them about their families Nazi past and seek their forgiveness, promising to do everything in their power so that those hate crimes do not repeat themselves.

In the meeting held in Netanya, the young Germans even presented a Hasidic dance to the survivors and sang a modern version of Israels national anthem, Hatikva, including a rap segment in German, which was met with loud applause. They then handed out flowers to the survivors.

The March of Life insists that we dont keep silent again, says Reuss, that we speak publicly about what our forefathers did. The goal is to bring together the Nazi criminals descendants with the Holocaust survivors and the victims of the Holocaust. The meeting between them is part of our message  to remember what happened not just through figures and data, but through personal stories too.

Responsibility, not shame

As part of the organization, the young Germans participate in marches that are held in main cities around the world, alongside local citizens and Holocaust survivors, under the banner Never Again. So far, the organization has held 350 marches in 14 different countries. In 2018, in honor of Israels 70th Independence Day, it plans to hold its biggest march in Jerusalem.

In a recent ceremony held in the Israeli capital, the organization presented a lifetime achievement award to Prof. Gideon Greif, an Israeli historian who specializes in the history of the Holocaust.

Dancing and singing to Holocaust survivors (Photo: Yair Sagi)

It would be very easy to change the organizations name from March of Life to Walk of Shame. But Anna Reiner and her young friends are willing to swear that its not the shame which makes them learn the words of Hatikva and perform in front of 100 elderly people in Netanya.

Its the responsibility, she explains. I am the descendant of Nazi criminals, and I am responsible for this matter and for making sure that it doesnt happen again. Before I knew all this information about my family, I had no interest in the Holocaust. Today, I am breaking the silence. Its important to talk about it and not to forget.

Beyond the exposure of the past, the solidarity marches and the personal meetings, one of the organizations basic principles is unwavering support, some would say fanatic support, for the State of Israel. For example, at the end of each testimony, the young German pledges allegiance to the State of Israel and vows to fight any criticism directed at the country.

One of the explanations is the fact that the organization works from churches across Germany and mainly appeals to young devout Christians, deeply leaning on the Holy Scriptures.

I believe in the Bible, I am Christian, and the Bible says that God gave this land to the Jews, Reiner recites. So I think that they have the right to fight for it. Beyond speaking about my familys past, an important part as far as I am concerned is to stand behind Israel.

During the war, the Church, which knew what was happening, kept quiet, Reuss adds. Those people who believe in the God of Israel did the exact opposite of what the Holy Scriptures say. So it is important to us as Christians to speak and shout out against anti-Semitism and against the hatred towards Israel. The best way to understand the meaning of anti-Semitism is to look it in the face, and thats what were doing. We understand the meaning of anti-Semitism and where it can lead, because we look at our familys history and see what our forefathers did. So coming here is a powerful thing which conveys a message in an excellent way.

What usually happens in the meetings with the survivors?

You cant control it and you can never know. There were few cases of people who stood up and shouted that they didnt want to hear us speak, but in most cases we received a warm hug. We didnt expect it, but thats what usually happens. They hug, kiss and say to us, You are our grandchildren. Some find it difficult to hear the German language. For some of them, the last time they heard German was when an SS officer screamed at them or when soldiers locked them up in the ghetto. It often evokes unpleasant memories in them, and we try to respect that and not to speak in German.

You talk about genocide and about never again. Does what is happening now in Aleppo, not far from here, concern you?

Of course it concerns us. If you hold a March of life, its a symbol against any genocide, not just the Holocaust, and I believe its very relevant to what is happening in Aleppo as well and in other places in the world. These are horrible things which should not happen again, and that is our exact message.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was questioned under caution Thursday evening for the second time this week.

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He underwent five hours of questioning on the suspicion that he received illicit benefits from various businessmen.

The questioning also touched on another case which has to do with another, as yet unidentified suspect.

Prime Minister Netanyahu questioned for five hours (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky, EPA)

Earlier, Amnon Abromovitch of Channel 2 said that regarding the police are looking into suspects such as businessman Arnon Milchen, who gifted hundreds of thousands of shekels worth of cigars to the prime minister over the last seven to eight years.

Details of the second case are yet to be revealed.

Netanyahu has insisted that nothing will be found.
WASHINGTON - The House overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan measure Thursday that rebukes the United Nations for criticizing Israeli settlements as Republicans used the debate to accuse President Barack Obama of turning his back on the Jewish state.

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Lawmakers voted 342-80 for the non-binding resolution that declares unwavering support for Israel and insists that the United States reject any future UN actions that are similarly "one-sided and anti-Israel."

"Our government abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN."

The measure divided Democrats. Nearly 80 opposed the measure because they said it contained inaccuracies and distorted the complexities of the Middle East peace process. They also accused Republicans of attacking Obama unfairly in the waning days of his presidency.

US Congress (Photo: MCT)

"The point of the measure seems to be to bash Obama on the way out," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who along with many other Democrats still voiced strong support for Israel. They said Obama deserved credit for engineering last year's new, long-term security agreement that gives Israel $38 billion in US military aid, including $5 billion for missile defenses.

A similar bipartisan measure to reprimand the UN has been introduced in the Senate. "Israel is always the bad guy in the eyes of the United Nations," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the measure's co-sponsors.

Attention from the move by the UN last month could provide fuel for pro-Israel initiatives favored by conservatives on Capitol Hill. For example, a small group of Republican senators is proposing to withhold 50 percent of the State Department's 2017 budget until the US Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to shift the embassy.

But a spokesman for Jordan's government told The Associated Press on Thursday that the embassy move would be a "red line" for Jordan and "inflame the Islamic and Arab streets." Jordan serves as custodian of a major Islamic shrine in east Jerusalem and the Palestinians seek a capital there.

Israel and its supporters lashed out at Obama for his decision to abstain and allow the UN Security Council to approve in December a resolution calling Israel's settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem "a flagrant violation under international law."

Although the US is opposed to the settlements, it has traditionally used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to scuttle resolutions that condemn Israel. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinians must be resolved through direct negotiations, according to longstanding practice and policy.

UN Security Council (Photo: AP)

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, accused Obama of a "shameful ambush" and said he was looking forward to working with Trump, whom he described as his friend.

But Secretary of State John Kerry said in a late December speech that the US was standing up for a two-state solution when it abstained on the resolution. He criticized Israel for settlement building and blamed Netanyahu for dragging Israel away from democracy.

Kerry said expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are leading to an "irreversible one-state reality."

The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, for an independent state. They say that Israeli settlements in these areas, now home to about 600,000 Israelis, are threatening their plans for independence by taking in lands where they hope to establish their state.

The UN resolution, along with Kerry's speech, essentially endorsed the Palestinian position by calling for the pre-1967 lines to serve as the reference point for a final border.

Netanyahu, who opposes a return to the 1967 lines, has condemned the moves as "skewed" and "shameful."

Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the panel's top Democrat, sponsored the House measure. The UN resolution "undermines the prospect for Israelis and Palestinians resuming productive, direct negotiations," according to their legislation, and should be "repealed or fundamentally altered."
The first French supermarket has labeled Israeli products as Made in Israeli Settlements. This comes after the French Government instituted a policy of labeling Israeli produce grown in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights as settlement products two months ago

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The signs were first seen at the Auchan supermarket chain in the Kremlin Bicetre suburb of Paris.

The incident is known to the Israeli Embassy in France, who then turned to French Jewish organizations to ask the chain to take down the offending signs.

Sign in French grocery store saying products are from Israeli settlements

The manager of the supermarket said that it was a localized initiative to put up the sign, and that he had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, he replaced the sign the next day to a sign which simply read Israel.

Israel claims that this is the French governments revenge for Israel refusing to attend the upcoming Paris Peace Conference on January 15.

Original Israel sign restored

The Israeli Foreign Ministry sent a harsh response to the event, saying they condemn the French governments decision to implement the EU Commission guidelines regarding marking Israeli products originating from beyond the 1967 lines. We are sad that it was France who came up with an anti-boycott law, and is now taking these steps which might boost anti-Israel radical elements.

Moreover, the letter continued, its puzzling that France is adopting such a double standard in regards to Israel, especially when there are over 200 territorial conflicts around the world  including in France.

However, Embassy officials said that this seems to be the initiative of a pro-Palestinian employee of the supermarket, and that the store is in a low socio-economic, immigrant area.
AMMAN- Jordanian state media say authorities plan to prosecute 12 Jordanians on suspicion of hate speech aimed at victims of the New Year's nightclub shooting attack in Turkey.

Two Jordanians were among the 39 people killed in the Istanbul shooting for which the extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The Jordan Times, quoting the official news agency Petra, said on Friday that 16 people were initially investigated for abusive online comments. It says the attorney general ordered 12 of the suspects detained for further investigation.

Government spokesman Mohammed Momani says the government is considering new legislation aimed at fighting hate speech.
The state wants the Nebraska Supreme Court to reverse a Lincoln judge's ruling in favor of three same-sex couples who said it kept them from adopting foster kids because of their sexual orientation.

Assistant Attorney General James Smith contended that none of the couples ever was denied a foster-home license, so they shouldn't be able to sue over it.

He said they challenged a policy that hadn't been in effect for at least a year before the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska filed the lawsuit in 2013.

But administrative memo No. 1-95, which said foster home licenses were not to be issued to people "who identify themselves as homosexuals" or to unrelated, unmarried adults who live together, remained on the state Department of Health and Human Services' website until February 2015.

Attorney Gerrard Beeney, who represents Greg and Stillman Stewart, Lisa Blakey and Janet Rodriguez, and Todd Vesley and Joel Busch, said two of the plaintiffs did in fact seek licenses and got letters from HHS saying they were categorically banned from applying.

Two others called HHS and were told the same by phone, he said.

The license is necessary for anyone who wants to adopt a foster child in Nebraska.

After they were denied, the three couples sued, saying the state was treating them differently in violation of their constitutional rights. They asked Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn to find the policy invalid.

In September 2015, Colborn rescinded it and enjoined the state from enforcing it.

At a hearing before that, attorneys for the state argued that wasn't necessary because it no longer was the policy.

On Thursday, Smith doubled down on the same argument, saying the memo was issued by the then-director of a predecessor agency that no longer exists, and current HHS agency heads testified it isn't current policy and hadn't been for at least a year before the suit was filed.

"The current HHS agency heads also testified that all gay, lesbian people who have applied for foster care licenses have been granted licenses," he said.

On the other side, Beeney said they wouldn't know if same-sex couples have been denied because he was told the state doesn't keep records based on sexual orientation.

He argued that the memo remains the only active written policy at HHS even now, even if employees there don't follow it, which has created rampant confusion.

Colborn gave the state an opportunity to withdraw the policy, and it refused to do it.

Supreme Court Justice William Cassel asked about affidavits offered in the case by HHS heads who said it wasn't current policy.

And Beeney said the policy still was in training materials and on the state's website years after the state said it wasn't following it.

Cassel said maybe that should be a question further down the road, rather than for a judge to decide on summary judgment, as Colborn did.

Beeney argued that to go back to the state court "would be nothing but wasteful" and said current policy remains discriminatory because same-sex applicants are subject to a five-step review process rather than the two-step review for heterosexual couples or four-step review for convicted felons.

Smith said foster placements are based on what is in the best interest of the child, and that varies under the circumstances.

But, he said, it is not the standard that a person who is gay or lesbian is disqualified.

The court will rule later on the matter.
ANKARA- Turkish-backed Syrian rebels are fighting street battles with Islamic State militants in the city of al-Bab, and progress in taking it from the jihadists has been slowed by efforts to avoid civilian casualties, Turkey's defence minister said on Friday.

The rebels, backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and war planes, have been besieging the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab for weeks as part of an operation to drive the jihadists out of a strip of Syrian territory along the Turkish border.

Isik was speaking to broadcaster Haberturk.
Several days after an intense search was begun to find the person responsible for the death of Guy Kafri in Haifa, the alleged shooter, aged 21, from Haifa, has turned himself in to the police in Akko.

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Police and Shin Bet investigators have taken the man in for questioning, and have confiscated his weapon.

Investigators say that he went to his uncle and asked the uncle to accompany him to the police station. The suspect allegedly knocked on the door of his house and asked for food before going to turn himself in.

The alleged killer and his girlfriend

This came after residents of his neighborhood recognized him as the central suspect in the case.

The suspects ex-girlfriend said that she is happy he turned himself in, but claims he is innocent.

I hope that the investigation will reveal who really did this. Im 100 percent sure that he isnt connected to this crime. Im his girlfriend, and when this ends, we will be engaged.
MANILA- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte toured one of the two Russian warships docked in Manila on Friday in another gesture of warming ties with Moscow as he shifts his country's foreign policy away from long-time ally, the United States.

Rear Adm. Eduard Mikhailov, deputy commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet, and Russian Ambassador Igor Khovaev and escorted Duterte and several cabinet members around the anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs.

At one point during the hourlong visit, Duterte looked out from the ship's deck and pumped his fist in the air.

He was also shown equipment and weapons on board the ship and peered from binoculars from a chair. He took a group picture with the Russians also posing in his trademark pose -- with arm stretched out at chest-level and fists closed.
The Eros B satellite operated by the Israel based ImageSat International (ISI) has located two long range Russian ground to ground SS-26 Iskandar missile launchers in the Syrian Latakia air base. The base is also used by the Russian Air Force.

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Below are the first high quality photos of the launchers in Syria ever released.

Experts from ISI say that the launchers are hidden under camouflage nets the majority of the time, but the heavy rains seen across the region over the past several weeks forced the Russians to move the launchers out from underneath the nets, thus exposing them to the satellite.

SS-26 launchers

Two other vehicles were seen in the area, and it seems as if they are also part of the SS-26 Iskander system.

The Iskander ground to ground missiles are able to be shot 400-500 kilometers. They are accurate to within 5 meters, and can carry a warhead weighing half a ton. Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa are all within range of these missiles.

Missile sites covered with camouflage nets

Exposed missile launchers and support vehicles

The Russians used the SS-26 during their conflict with Georgia in 2008, and their effectiveness was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. The missile have also seen action in Syria on several occasions.

The Assad regime and the Iranians have both asked the Russians to sell them the missile systems, but have thus far refused their requests at Israels insistence. However, this request hasnt kept the Russians from using the missiles themselves against ISIS and Fatah Jabhat al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra).

Israel is worried that some of the missiles might be stolen from the Russians in Syria and given to Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the West is worried about the missiles presence in Syria in general, mainly due to the heavy warhead they carry.

It seems as if the Russians have put the missiles in western Syria as a deterrence to the West, especially in light of European nations increasing spending on anti-ballistic missile systems, along with Western nations carrying out war games in Baltic countries bordering Russia.

Iskandar SS-26 missile system

Interestingly, Russia announced on Friday its intention to bring back its aircraft carrier, and to draw down its troop presence in Syria. The aircraft carrier and the various advanced missiles the Russians brought with them to Syria were believed to be used as deterrence against Western intervention.

A high ranking IDF official said that Syria has the best non-Western air defense in the world, including S-400, SA-3, and SA-17 surface to air missiles. Foreign sources have reported that these advanced surface to air systems have made their way to Hezbollah, and that some were allegedly blown up by Israel while the missile were en route to the Lebanese terror group.

The Russians are still worried that the US will try to attack their Syrian ally, specifically because of US President Barack Obamas repeated claims that the Syrian regime fights using chemical weapons.

However, with the election of Donald Trump to the Whitehouse, the Russians may believe that there is less of a chance of US military intervention, and are therefore more willing to draw down their troop presence.
SOFIA/BUCHAREST- Snowstorms paralysed traffic and cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of people in Bulgaria on Friday while forcing atomic energy producer Nuclearelectrica in neighbouring Romania to shut down its No. 1 reactor.

Blizzards caused power blackouts in more than 770 Bulgarian towns, authorities said. It also closed parts of the Trakiya motorway in southeastern Bulgaria, all roads in a swathe of the northeast and the main A-2 motorway linking the Romanian capital Bucharest with the Black Sea port of Constanta.

State-owned Nuclearelectrica said it had disconnected its No. 1, 706-megawatt reactor on the Danube river from the national grid because of heavy snow that interfered with a power evacuation line. Nuclearelectrica's two reactors supply about a fifth of Romania's electricity.

The fierce winter weather also forced the closure of Varna airport on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast for at least eight hours, delayed dozens of flights at Bucharest international airport.
Wednesday morning, the state appealed the release from house arrest of MK Basel Ghattas (Joint List), who was indicted for smuggling cell phones to Palestinian security prisoners in Israel jails on Thursday. Footage allegedly showing Ghattas committing this crime was broadcast on Channel 10 on Thursday evening.

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The appeal, filed with the Lod District Court, stated that Ghattas "is somebody who does not obey the law and has no ear of the law, who is not afraid to commit serious crimes inside a security facility, and hence a fortiori, there is a suspicion that he will endanger public safety outside the walls of a security facility, as well."

Footage of Ghattas ( 10)

X

The court will consider the appeal on Sunday afternoon. Approved by the attorney general and state attorney, the appeal seeks to have the MK returned to house arrest for 30 days.

The security footage that Channel 10 broadcast on Thursday shows a visiting room where Ghattas can be seen visiting Basel Bizra, a security prisoner in Israeli detention. The MK is seen walking to the door, which he locks. He then double checks it before withdrawing a package from his long coat. He passes it to Bizra, who stuffs it into his underpants.

Basel Ghattas

A total of four envelopes were transferred. They allegedly contained telephones and SIM cards that were supposed to reach the terrorist Walid Dakawho is serving a life sentence since 1984 for his involvement in the murder of IDF soldier Moshe Tamam.

The offenses Ghattas will be charged with are: Bringing in documents not through the prison administration, bringing in communication devices, use of property for purposes of terrorism, fraud and breach of trust by a public worker, fraudulently obtaining benefits under aggravated circumstances.

Ghattas claimed he did not know what the envelopes he gave prisoners contained.

On Monday, the Knesset's Ethics Committee barred Ghattas of parliamentary activity for the next six months. The MK will not be able to speak at committees or at the plenum and will not be allowed to submit bill proposals, but will still be able to vote and get paid.

The committee dubbed Ghattas's actions a "severe ethical breach," while Ghattas dubbed the decision "vindictive."
BERLIN - Germany says it may make payments to Namibia for the killing of 65,000 tribespeople by German colonial troops during the early 20th century.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer says the two-year talks with Namibia's government "aren't easy because it's a difficult topic."

But he said Friday the negotiations have entered a phase in which both sides are talking "in very concrete terms" about how to treat the events in the future and "this may include further payments." Germany already provides Namibia significant development aid.
The speaker of the Knesset has ordered security beefed up for a Knesset member who came under threats after he said a soldier who killed a wounded Palestinian assailant shouldn't be pardoned.

Yuli Edelstein said Friday he made the decision after "escalated threats" against Erel Margalit, an opposition lawmaker of the Zionist Union party.

Margalit faced abuse on social media after his comments on the case of Sgt. Elor Azaria. Azaria was convicted this week for shooting a Palestinian who lay on the ground incapacitated from shots sustained after he stabbed and wounded a soldier in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the US House of Representatives for approving a bipartisan measure that rebukes the United Nations for its recent resolution condemning Jewish settlements.

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In a video and message posted to all three of his official Facebook pages andall three of his official Twitter accounts, Netanyahu thanked the House and said, "They voted to either repeal the resolution at the UN or change itand that's exactly what we intend to do."

Netanyahu's message of thanks

X

Netanyahu specified, "Democrats and Republicans alike know that the Western Wall isn't occupied territory."

Lawmakers Thursday voted for a nonbinding measure that insists the U.S. reject any future "one-sided and anti-Israel" UN actions.

The Western Wall Plaza (Photo: Eli Mandelbaum)

In December, the Obama Administration abstained from the UN Security Council vote against Israel building settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territory claimed by the Palestinians.

While the two countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between Netanyahu and Obama because of differing views on key issues, including building settlements.
ROME - Italy has expelled a Tunisian man accused of religious extremism and befriending a jailed would-be foreign fighter.

The Interior Ministry said the 26-year old, identified by Italian newspapers as Marouan Mathlouthi, was sent back to Tunisia on Thursday. The ministry said he had befriended another Tunisian from the same city, Ravenna, who was arrested in 2015 on terrorism-related charges because of alleged plans to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria.

A ministry statement said Mathlouthi had jihadist propaganda on him and had written on his Facebook page: "I don't know if I should be good or stage a massacre, I have to think about it."

The expulsion, the second of the year, brings to 134 the number of suspected extremists expelled by Italy since January 2015.
A lawyer for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that there is no substance to allegations he improperly accepted gifts.

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Yaakov Weinroth, speaking to the press from his home's yard in Ramat Gan, added that there is "no scrap of crime" in someone giving his friend cigars as a gift. He explained that he was unable to directly address the content of the questioning, as it constitutes part of an ongoing police investigation.





Netanyahu with a cigar (Photo: Reuters)

He spoke a day after Netanyahu was questioned by police for a second time in a case that local media say arose from allegations involving high-profile figures in international business and Hollywood. Police said Netanyahu was questioned about suspicions that he "allegedly received benefits" as well as about another undisclosed matter.

The cigars constitute one of two lines of inquiry, the details of which remain confidential at this time. In this line of inquiry, the prime minister has allegedly received gifts of cigars and alcohol from billionaire businessman Arnon Milchan worth hundreds thousands of shekels. Milchan is a Hollywood mogul who holds just under 10% of the shares in Israel's Channel 10.

Those close to Netanyahu have maintained that these gifts were not illicit and not intended as bribes, but rather gifts freely given that needn't have been reported. Channel 2 journalist Amnon Abramovitch reported on Thursday that Milchan had been providing the cigars to the prime minister for 7 to 8 years. He revealed that the cigars were Cohiba Siglo VIs, Trinidads, and Montecristos. Abramovitch stated that the price for each cigar is between 100 to 200 shekels.

Arnon Milchan (R) with actor Danny DeVito (Photo: Getty Images)

The alcohol that the Hollywood producer allegedly sent to the Netanyahu residence was for the prime minister's wife, Sara Netanyahu. Abramovitch explained that Milchan sent large quantities of pink champagne, costing 300 to 400 shekels a bottle.

In reply, sources close to the prime minister pointed out that Sara Netanyahu is not being investigated in this matter and that the prime minister is trying to close down Channel 10.

The other line of inquiry is reported to be considerably more significant, but it remains cloaked in mystery whilst the authorities continue their investigation.

Yaakov Weinroth addresses the press

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media.

Weinroth said in his statement to the press, "Any reasonable person understands that if a close friend brings his friend cigars as a gift there is not and cannot be any shred of prohibition, any trace of criminal offence."

He said that after hearing Netanyahu's statement he is "calm." He reiterated Netanyahu's position that the allegations are "baseless."
BEIRUT - A media arm of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has announced that an hours-long cease-fire for a contested valley in Syria has expired.

The Barada Valley is the Syrian capital's primary source of water. Supplies to four million people in and around Damascus have been severely restricted since the government moved to dislodge the opposition from Barada Valley 18 days ago.

Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the government forces on the front lines of Syria's war, announced through its military media arm that a cease-fire declared hours earlier on Friday had expired.

It said a Russian delegation had entered the valley to try to negotiate a resolution for the contested region.

There was no comment from the opposition's side.
Yehuda Kamenitz, a 36-year-old resident of Bnei Brak, is suspected of having managed a database of hundreds of photographs of ultra-Orthodox Israelis in military and police uniforms and having amassed damaging content on them.

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At least four IDF soldiers whose photographs Kamenitz had distributed have complained to the police. Kamenitz is suspected of having violating their privacy, distributed computer viruses and insulting a public servant. He was arrested on Thursday, and his detention was extended by three days.

Haredi Jerusalemites view anti-ultra-Orthodox poster in Meah Sha'arim (Archive photo: EPA)

According to a representative of the Israel Police, the suspect is not cooperating and keeping silent during his investigation. His lawyer, Yisrael Klein, said, "There is no real reason to detain him. The attorney general instructed investigating when there is incitement to violence. The court will see that in his investigation, he was accused of inciting to violence. It's not a shame that the police are discovering that it isn't what they thought. They need to come off it, including regarding the arrest."

Klein added, "The material has been around for two years in the possession of tens of thousands of Haredim who think that Haredi enlistment and military participation is inappropriate. It's not the court's role to get involved in matters of where freedom of expression is detained and what damage to privacy is."

Judge Yehezkel Harel of the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court decided to extend Kamenitz's detention to Sunday, deeming that the evidence presented at this stage justified a reasonable suspicion that Kamenitz may have committed the crimes of which he was accused and that the investigators need to collect further information with the suspect remains incarcerated. Harel emphasized Kamenitz's lack of cooperation.

As part of their fight against the IDF enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, extremist Haredim regularly commit public acts of shaming against the hundreds of soldiers from the sector. Some have posted photographs of the soldiers in uniform to a website, and members of the public are invited to take additional photographs of other ultra-Orthodox soldiers to add their photographs. This is all intended to humiliate the soldiers in their community and lead to their social exclusion.

'Hardak, if you've gotten this far, you've made a mistake!!!' 'Hardakim out' (Archive photo: EPA)

Another campaign with similar goals invented the pejorative "Hardakim," meaning "frivolous Haredim" for those ultra-Orthodox who elect to serve in the military. It portrays them as "unclean" and seeks to shame them, but it did not go so far as assembling a facebook of individuals.

The IDF, Israel Police and state prosecutor's office have created a joint task force to combat incitement against Haredi soldiers, which Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan (United Torah Judaism) complimented. "Incitement against IDF soldiers will not go by quietly and will be dealt with with a firm hand," the Orthodox MK said. "Harm to IDF soldiers and their families is committed against the orders of the Torah that the harms claim to be acting in the name of."
ANKARA - Turkey dismissed more than 6,000 more police, civil servants and academics under emergency rule on Friday, continuing a purge in the wake of a failed coup last July, according to decrees issued in the Official Gazette.

The decrees ordered the dismissal of 2,687 police officers, 1,699 officials from the justice ministry, 838 from the health ministry, more than 630 academics and 135 officials from the religious affairs directorate.

They also stated that individuals overseas who are being sought by the Turkish authorities might have their citizenship removed if they fail to return within three months.
Israel announced Friday it is cutting approximately $6 million in its annual dues to the United Nations this year to protest last month's Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as "a flagrant violation under international law."

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Israel's UN Mission said the amount represents the portion of Israel's contribution to the UN's regular budget totaling more than $40 million allocated "to anti-Israel bodies."

It named the UN agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, The Division for Palestinian Rights, the committee investigating Israeli practices affecting Palestinian human rights, and information programs on "the Question of Palestine."

UN Security Council voting in favor of anti-settlement resolution (Photo: AP)

"It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us at the UN," Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon said. "The UN must end the absurd reality in which it supports bodies whose sole intent is to spread incitement and anti-Israel propaganda."

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, asked to comment, said: "We have not been informed."

Israel's UN Mission said the cut in funding is the first in a series of steps under consideration by the Foreign Ministry and the mission in reaction to the recent Security Council resolution.

The Obama administration's decision to abstain and allow the UN Security Council to approve a long-sought resolution condemning Israeli settlements as an obstacle to a two-state solution was a sharp rebuke to a longstanding ally and a striking rupture with past US vetoes.

Israel's UN Mission said it will move forward on additional initiatives "aimed at encouraging structural change within the UN with the ultimate goal of ending anti-Israel activities" after Donald Trump becomes president of the United States on Jan. 20.

The president-elect has criticized President Barack Obama's green light for the Security Council condemnation.

On Thursday, the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan resolution rebuking the United Nations for criticizing Israeli settlements and declaring unwavering support for Israel. The non-binding resolution insists that the United States reject any future UN actions that are similarly "one-sided and anti-Israel."
YORK  On Tuesday night, Jan. 3, the Columbus City Council voted in favor of hiring Tara Vasicek as their new city administrator.

On Thursday, Jan. 5, the York City Council received a formal letter of resignation from Vasicek in which she wrote that she will be leaving the administrators position here, which she has held for 3  years.

Vasicek will stay in her position until Feb. 10.

Last week, Vasicek verbally notified her staff, department heads, mayor and council of her intentions to leave . . . noting that she would formally submit a resignation letter once Columbus officials voted on her appointment there.

In her resignation letter, Vasicek said, I recently received a progressive career offer I could not turn down. I have enjoyed my time in York. It has been my pleasure to serve you, previous elected officials and the citizens of York as administrator. Yorks progress over the past few years has been significant. I am proud of the state of the city. Your next administrator will be able to pick up and continue the progress with your support.

Vasicek graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in May, 2009, with a bachelors degree in geography and a minor in community regional planning. She worked as a planner with the Lincoln-based engineering and design firm Olsson Associates and was a research team manager from SRC Inc. of Lincoln before joining the City of York team in April, 2010.

She was a project manager for the York Public Works Department for three years and then was named as the administrator.

Many notable events and projects have happened in the City of York during Vasiceks tenure, including that this municipality was named Nebraska Community of the Year by the Nebraska Diplomats; the city received Economic Development Certified Community recertification status; the massive project began that will result in a new wastewater treatment plant; a new  percent city sales tax was passed by voters that will finance the new ball field complex, quiet zone and other projects; DEQ compliance issues at the landfill have been remedied; the citys property tax levy has been maintained to be one of the lowest in the state; and much more.

Thank you for the support you have given as we have faced important issues in York. I will be more than happy to assist you in the process of hiring a replacement. I will also do my best in the coming weeks to finish as much as possible, to facilitate a smooth transition, Vasicek said in her letter.

Vasicek has long heralded the strong city staff and department heads in York, saying shes enjoyed working with all of them, greatly respected them and appreciated their enthusiasm and efforts.

And she addressed them  all the city employees  directly in her resignation letter.

I am genuinely heartbroken to leave you all. Your work ethic, character and dedication were more than I could have wished for. Keep working for what is right and good for the community of York. You all play a huge role in the health and vitality of this city.
YORK  There was clear disagreement between council members, the mayor and administration this week as they discussed whether or not bid-taking was necessary for an over-$25,000 due diligence study regarding industrial property owned by the city.

A request was brought forward by Mayor Orval Stahr regarding a proposed study being requested by the York County Development Corporation (YCDC). The proposal was for the due diligence study to be conducted by Olsson Associates with the city paying the bill because the city actually owns the industrial property.

The city bought the 34 acres of land between Division Avenue and the Nebraska Public Power District operations center over a year ago  for future industrial development.

YCDC Executive Director Lisa Hurley addressed the council about the study.

She explained that site selectors (who scout potential locations for new industrial and commercial businesses) look for hundreds of reasons to eliminate a location when narrowing down the choices.

On Dec. 13, we conducted a tour with a site selector, Hurley said. This was done with YCDC executive committee members and community leaders. The site selector said due diligence (a study) is important. The mayor (Orval Stahr) said he wanted more information so I set up a meeting with an expert in the field. On that call, she said if we work quickly and do due diligence, I would have the details (of that study) to take to the (economic development) expo in February. Then Olsson submitted bids (to do the study), as YCDC does not have bidding requirements. I forwarded their bid to Mayor Stahr and Tara (Vasicek, city administrator). I also spoke to two other firms. I received a bid from one (in which the amount was considerably higher). The other firm works here in the city and they werent interested at this point. Olsson is a very respected firm. So I propose that the city contract through YCCDC and work with the administration and Olsson.

This will give us marketing tools, marketing is what we do, Hurley said. It came up quickly, but I feel it would put us in a good place if we did due diligence.

I agree that is something that we should do, Vasicek said. But I caution you (the council) that the law says you need to put out for bids if the amount is over $20,000. If the department heads, for example, wanted to just do something of this magnitude (without bids), it wouldnt even be on the agenda due to city protocol.

It should be noted that a resolution was passed more than three years ago that requires all city purchases over $20,000 to go through the bidding process unless it is in the event of an emergency.

I am asking that you table this, to make sure that all is done according to the law, Vasicek said. I also want to point out that this has not been budgeted for.

It had been proposed that the funds for the study be taken from the citys land acquisition fund (a sinking fund used to pay for land for future development). But that fund is currently in the negative of about $300,000 because of the actual land purchase for this particular property.

For transparency reasons, so your integrity is held, holding this two weeks (and taking bids) will uphold this, Vasicek said to the council. I just wish protocol had been followed.

Mayor Stahr read the resolution passed in 2013, which says expenditures over $20,000 have to be bid out, unless deemed to be in the public interest. I checked with Charley (Campbell, city attorney) and there are no statutory requirements.

This requires public bidding as the ordinance reads, Campbell said. I concur (with Vasicek) that it should be tabled for public bidding.

Lisa (Hurley), what timeline are we up against? Stahr asked.

Our next marketing event is in February, Hurley said. This is up to the council and the administration. And I realize this all came up rather quickly.

We are up against a timeline in marketing and we have already invested $300,000, Mayor Stahr said. We will be able to recover the money as this is really more of an investment. Is it in the best interest to waive the bidding?

I have a bit of a problem with that, said Councilman Ron Mogul. This should have been brought to us earlier. We all agree that it should be done, but I will go with Charley (Campbell) that we need to table it.

What will we gain if we wait two weeks? Stahr asked.

Id rather that this be done right, said Council member Diane Wolfe. Why the rush?

Yes, lets wait and do it right, said Councilman Ron Saathoff.

But what do we gain by waiting two weeks? the mayor asked again. Do we feel that it is worth it to waive the bidding requirements?

I think it is worth our integrity to wait and do this properly, said Council member Sheila Hubbard. Doing it that way, Id feel like I dont have the integrity I should have. If the vote says otherwise, then I guess my vote doesnt matter.

I did not want to cause dissention among the council, Hurley said. That was never, ever my intention. I do not want this to damage the relationship between YCDC and the city. I want the city council to only do what they are comfortable with and what is allowable.

We are in an unfortunate situation here, Councilman Barry Redfern said to Hurley. We want to do what you want, but we are caught in an unfortunate situation and some people, some of us (on the council) have issues with the process.

Amie Kopcho, a member of the YCDC executive committee, wanted to stress that this is the first time YCDC has been invited to attend the February expo, and we just want to make a good showing by having all the marketing tools possible.

We all feel this is a good thing but there are laws we need to follow, Vasicek said. But if YCDC would go ahead and proceed and we could go through the bidding process . . . I dont know. It might be an option. But we have to go through our procedures. The process still needs to be followed because of city policy and law. This is a good thing as long as the process is legally followed.

Has there ever been an exception? asked Monica Milleson, who was a member of the audience.

No, Campbell responded. The reason for the resolution was for council transparency.

The reason for transparency is for the council, administration, staff and the city, Vasicek said. That is the reason that it was passed three years ago.

So you dont feel it is in the citys best interest to waive the bidding? Stahr asked Vasicek.

It is in the citys best interest to follow the resolution and the citys law, Vasicek said. It is in your best interest, for your integrity.

And I cant say that this is an emergency, Redfern said.

I fully support YCDC, but my job is to protect you, the city, and to not waive the public bidding process, Vasicek said.

As I listen to this, I understand both sides, said Jon Biel, a member of the audience. But I also say that if YCDC has an opportunity to market York, lets not shut Yorks door, lets expand our horizons. This law has only been on the books for three years and it wasnt necessary before. Id hate to see them not have the ability to market how they need to. I just want you all to keep an open mind, make the city grow and not choke it down.

What needs to be said, what Tara (Vasicek) is trying to say, is that this law exists so that someone, by themselves, cant just do what they want without a bidding process, Redfern said. Things have to be bid out, so, for example, a city administrator cant just say yes to something without council approval or the bidding process. Thats why the ordinance was put into place in the first place, to make sure we are protecting the citys assets and the citys money. There is not a person here who is not pro-York.

We are talking about the integrity of the citys ordinances, everyone here is aware of what we did, Mayor Stahr said, noting that he felt by taking bids the project would then cost more. I think we did take care of the integrity issue. We have a rule here and there is an exception and were not sacrificing the citys integrity at all. The issue here tonight is that she (Vasicek) says it is not in the citys best interest, as the administrator.

That is not true, do not put words in my mouth, Vasicek responded. You are all the elected officials. And your comment about the price going up, I dont agree or understand that. I dont want anyone to say that you didnt follow your own rules.

I didnt know that this should have gone out for bids, Hurley said.

Orval (Stahr) did, Vasicek said.

Is it possible for YCDC to fund the study and then come back for a reimbursement? asked Hubbard.

But we cant commit ourselves to pay for something in advance, Campbell interjected, as the city attorney.

If we spent our own money now, would there need to be a bidding process? asked Brad Leggett, a member of the YCDC executive committee.

It is one contract, so it would need to be bid out, Vasicek said. And there are also rules on how much (money) we give YCDC according to our budget.

YCDC has paid for a lot of due diligence and has never come to the city of York, Kopcho said. Personally, I dont think YCDC should do the contract.

Like Barry (Redfern) said, we all want to do this, but . . . commented Hubbard.

I think this is a good reason to spend money, but as the law states . . . I think this needs to be tabled, Saathoff said.

Is that a motion? Mogul asked Saathoff, who then responded that it was.

I dont know that we will accomplish much by doing that, Mayor Stahr interjected.

Mogul seconded Saathoffs motion to table the matter.

Voting in favor of Saathoffs motion to table were Wolfe, Hubbard, Mogul, Saathoff, Pieper and Redfern.

Voting against the motion were Councilman Clarence Hoffman and Councilman Matt Wagner.

At the next meeting, I will be bringing forward a resolution to clarify things, said Mayor Stahr.

He didnt elaborate as to what the clarifications would be.

Editors note: A legal notice asking for bids will be published in Saturdays publication of the York News-Times.
OMAHA  Douglas County officials are trying to resolve an issue with its 911 system that gives callers a rapid busy signal during a system outage, but it could take years to fix.

Officials said that it could take years to fix, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

In September 2015, as many as 225,000 cellphone users in Douglas and Sarpy counties encountered the problem for nearly 13 hours.

Nebraska Public Service Commission member Crystal Rhoades said its unacceptable the county doesnt have a backup plan.

This is ridiculous, Rhoades said of the outages, which totaled to more than 60 in the state during fiscal 2015. It happens all the time and people arent aware of it.

Mark Conrey, the countys former 911 director, said most of the problem will be resolved with system upgrades that could be years away.

Other than giving a rapid busy signal, 911 systems can also choose to reroute their calls to an administrative line or another county in the event of an outage.

Conrey said the countys emergency infrastructure isnt advanced enough to reroute 911 calls and that the county handles too many calls to have them absorbed by a smaller center. In 2015 Douglas Countys 911 received more than 469,900 calls, four times as many as any other Nebraska county.

You should always do the most that you can. In some cases, that might be sending calls to a fast-busy, National Emergency Number Association government affairs director Trey Forgety said. I wish I could tell you that there is some universally applicable best practice.

Conrey said the county decided on a rapid busy signal because they expected that the majority of outages would be due to a system overload, such as a storm or when multiple cellphone users witness a public accident.
Successfully navigate 2017 tax season

The Internal revenue Service is expected to begin accepting 2016 Tax Returns on Jan. 24, 2017. While some of us may be used to getting our refunds in early January, many refunds will be delayed several weeks this year because of a new law and increased safeguards against identity theft and fraud. For those claiming the earned income tax credit or the additional child tax credit (a refundable tax credit for parents), you wont see your money until after February 15, even if you are an early filer.



That said, the IRS has issued numerous statements reminding taxpayers that most refunds will be issued within the normal timeframe - less than 21 days - after being accepted for processing by the IRS. After applying, you can check on the status of a refund by going to www.irs.gov/refunds, downloading the free IRS2Go application to your smart phone or calling the automated refund hotline at 1-800-829-1954.



One issue that is near and dear to our command is combat zone deadline extensions. In a year, we have hundreds of Cannon personnel deploying to places around the world. Spouses: dont stop reading here, this extension applies not only to the deployed active duty member, but also to their dependents.



In general, when deployed, the deadlines for performing certain actions applicable to our air commandos taxes (i.e. filing and making payments) are extended for the period of their service in the combat zone, plus 180 days after the last day in the combat zone. While not all deployments are within combat zones, some of the currently recognized combat zones are Afghanistan, and the Kosovo and Arabian Peninsula areas.



However, just because they may not be in a recognized combat zone, members of the United States Armed Forces who perform military service in an area outside a combat zone qualify for the extension of time provisions if their service is in direct support of military operations in the combat zone, and they receive special pay for duty subject to hostile fire or imminent danger as certified by the Department of Defense. Please reach out to your legal office if you have any questions regarding countries which have been certified by the DoD for combat zone benefits. They range from Pakistan and Djibouti to Jordan and Lebanon.



Generally, the IRS is notified that the Airman is deployed in one of these zones, but to confirm that they have received that information, you should e-mail the deployed member's name, stateside address, date of birth, and date of deployment to combatzone@irs.gov or call the IRS main helpline at 800-829-1040.



If you decide that you dont want to wait to file or you discover a service members spouse is not deployed to a recognized combat zone, be sure to have them create a power of attorney and attach it to your tax return. You will need to use IRS Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative. You can find the form on the IRS web site and if your service member spouse has already left, they should be able to print it out and complete it (with notarized signature) downrange.



Remember that there may be penalties if you do not file prior to the April 17, 2017 deadline. If you want advice regarding any potential tax credits, please contact your legal office to schedule an appointment with an attorney.
Senior Airman Rikel Cifre, 433rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, opens the tail hatch during a C-5M Super Galaxy aircraft tour for the Air Force Wing Moms Jan. 5, 2017 at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland,Texas. The AFWM's mission is to provide support to family members and friends of trainees who are experiencing Air Force Basic Military Training. (U.S. Air Force photo by Benjamin Faske)

The 433rd Airlift Wing hosted Air Force Wing Moms from around the country during a C-5M Super Galaxy aircraft tour Jan. 5. here. The AFWM is the largest non-official support group for family members and friends of trainees who are experiencing Air Force Basic Military Training. Some of the duties of the AFWM include, providing directions to family members visiting the base, where family members can purchase signs and banners, lodging accommodations, and social media discussion groups."We are all virtual admins, we have representatives throughout the entire United States, through Facebook and our official website. We provide positive support and encouragement through education for the family members and loved ones who have members going through Air Force BMT," said Lisa Haar, AFWM founder.
The Lincoln chapter of M.A.D. Dads is moving on without the everyday presence of its founder and board president, the Rev. Don Coleman.

Nearly a quarter-century has passed since the personable pastor was persuaded by Omaha leaders to create a MAD DADS (Men Against Destruction Defending Against Drugs and Social disorder) chapter in Lincoln.

In the early years, the nonprofit made a name for itself through patrolling the streets on weekends and removing graffiti. In recent years, the chapter has been synonymous with bike giveaways and running a recreation center to create healthy alternatives for kids.

The biggest bike giveaway of the year became an annual holiday tradition that put refurbished bicycles in the hands of kids who had none. And the individual with the biggest smile at the holiday events has belonged to Coleman, a kid at heart who never uttered the word "no" when it came to a child wanting a bike.

Nearly 24 years after saying yes to a program thats improved the lives of thousands of children, Coleman is cutting back  but not bowing out  on the time he's able to devote to the organization. Health problems the past two years and chronic back ailments that have plagued the Lincoln pastor since his military days in 1963 have forced the passionate president to pass the baton to Jeremiah Cain, whose methodical approach has kept the bike repair shop at 5610 Seward Avenue humming in Colemans absence.

Health issues

After a decorated career that included three gold keys from the city of Lincoln, Coleman is reducing his activity level to address his health issues. The local M.A.D. Dads board has accepted his resignation, named Cain the new president, and gave Coleman president emeritus status.

Coleman's medical history has included two knee replacements, two heart attacks, and a bout with cancer.

Nothing is going away, except me coming to the office on a daily basis, Coleman said last week from his home at 33rd and S streets. Our mission remains the same, and the rec center continues to have regular hours, he said. Im not severing ties, but I am stepping down as president.

Active leader

Until health issues arose in April 2015, Coleman was a daily fixture at M.A.D. Dads headquarters.

In 1993, he retired on a Friday as senior chaplain for the Lincoln police and fire departments. The following Monday, M.A.D. Dads leader Eddie Staton of Omaha was at his door, reminding Coleman of a promise he'd made to get involved in M.A.D. Dads after he retired.

Since that time, the man perhaps best known for fixing 10-speed bikes has known only one gear: full-speed ahead. The 79-year-old retired disabled Vietnam veteran has always had a soft spot in his heart for kids.

I do it for the love of kids, Coleman said last week. Thats what has made going to the office every day so enjoyable  its all about the kids and the smiles on their faces, knowing what youve done helped put that smile there.

Countless volunteers

Coleman's medical history includes a combination of back problems and diabetes. Several years ago, he battled a severe case of gout. The combination of medical maladies cast a cloud over his ability to attend the annual bike giveaway three weeks ago. Physical therapist Kyle Klebs of CHI-St. Elizabeth and son Dondi Coleman Jr. paid an in-home visit that day and were able to transport him to the holiday party.

They made it happen, said the Rev. Ann Coleman, her husbands key caregiver. Theres no way that happens without their help.

A total of 120 bikes were given away that day to students representing over 20 schools.

Volunteer corps

Coleman says hes been blessed by loyal volunteers who have shared his passion over the years including Dan Petersen (hes like bubble gum that sticks to your foot  hes always there)  (former state senator) Marian Price  (the late) Colonel Paul Adams  Jack Zohner and his employees at John Henrys  Mike Ayars  Ron Wilson, owner of Mattice Lock & Key  Lincoln developer Kent Thompson ... the owners of TMCO ... the list goes on.

In addition, M.A.D. Dads board member Jon Foreman and Apple Roofing combined to replace the Coleman home's roof back in October. Foreman paid the material costs, and Apple Roofing supplied the labor.

M.A.D. Dads suffered a major loss in late 2015, when vice president Davey Green lost his battle with diabetes.

'Blessed'

Six years ago, a rent-free offer courtesy of Veyance Technologies (formerly Goodyear Tire & Rubber) gave M.A.D. Dads sufficient space to expand. That offer remains intact. "We've been extremely blessed," said Coleman.

Theres been so many people  Im sure Im forgetting a lot of them, said Coleman, who hopes to host a retirement dinner in January to thank those who have contributed throughout the years.

Where from here

The bike repair shop is in the capable hands of Cain, a skilled mechanic who has been turning wrenches for nearly 25 years. His disabled status allows him to devote full time to M.A.D Dads.

Coleman said M.A.D. Dads plans for 2017 include the introduction of a new after-school program designed to act as a safe haven for middle school children.

Although the rent-free agreement and volunteer labor allow M.A.D. Dads to exist on a shoestring budget, funds are desperately needed to buy supplies to repair the bikes. The average cost to refurbish a bike exceeds $30.

Weve got only $250 in the treasury at the current time, Coleman reported last week.

If you can help, send your donation to:

M.A.D. Dads

5610 Seward Ave.

Lincoln, NE 68510
RACINE  Meteoric rises to fame can be common in the music world.

But 10-year-old entrepreneur Alex Hart has managed to attract legions of fans with his big heart and bow ties and soon he will make his national television debut.

After gaining the attention of The Journal Times last May for his Build a Bow business  a fashion and special events business where he designs and creates custom bow ties and helps others to do the same  the Gifford Elementary student has netted awards and accolades from Racine Arts Council, Racines main business organization  Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce (RAMAC), and the Racine Unified School District.

Since then he used his notoriety to pay it forward, holding Build a Bow sessions where the proceeds are donated to charity.

Now the pint-sized humanitarian and fashion guru has landed on national TV.

On Friday, Alex will be appear in a segment on Harry, an afternoon talk show hosted by famed musician and actor Harry Connick, Jr.

Folks in the Racine area can watch Alex by tuning into Channel 18 (The CW network) at 5 p.m. or 9 p.m.

Alex was asked to appear on the show after his story, picked up by multiple media outlets, was shared thousands of times via social media, reaching people across the country, his mom, Karee Upendo said Thursday.

They contacted us and said they wanted to do a segment about business kids and people doing things in their community, Upendo said. He got an email from Harry saying they wanted to fly him out to New York (City). That was like two weeks ago.

A few days later, the fourth-grader hopped on a plane to the Big Apple to tape the episode.

Alex has never been to New York before so he was like a kid in a candy store. He kept saying that he felt like a superstar, his mom said.

In addition to highlights, like seeing Times Square and eating the best cookies in the world, Alex and his mom, who is also a designer, got to meet 1990s supermodel Naomi Campbell, who taped her segment the same day.

Alex described his time on the show, which included a set designed with his very own bow ties, as awesome.

We talked about my business, and (Harry) had one of my bow ties on, Alex said.

Alex also got his very own portrait carved into a piece of cheese by another guest.

But youll have to tune in to find out more about that.
LIVE-2 Inning |04-8

AUSTRALIA VS AFGHANISTAN

AUS 168/8 VS 80/2 AFG

Afghanistan need 89 runs in 53 balls at 10.07 rpo
WATERFORD A dispute at the Waterford Public Library has lead to battery charges for a Milwaukee teen.

Ronald D. Graun, 17, is being charged with two counts of misdemeanor battery and one count of disorderly conduct. He had his initial appearance in court Thursday.

On Oct. 21, Graun allegedly punched a 15-year-old male whom he accused of stealing property in his car. A woman was in the room with the victim and was also reportedly punched while trying to stop the fight.

Witnesses told Waterford police that they heard loud shouting and swearing and saw the woman in between Graun and the other male.

Graun is scheduled for a pre-trial conference on Feb. 2. If convicted, Graun could spend up to three years in prison with three years supervision and a fine of $11,000.
A call from Gov. Scott Walker for the Wisconsin Legislature to heighten its focus on fighting heroin and opiate abuse drew widespread praise this week, but some say the proposals still fall short of what's needed.

Walker on Thursday called for a special session to pass a set of proposals based on recommendations from the governor's task force on opioid abuse, headed by Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette.

Included in the long list of legislative proposals are measures to allow school nurses to administer Narcan, to create a recovery charter school for high school students struggling with addiction and to fund additional treatment and diversion alternative programs.

"This is a public health crisis, and thats why Im calling a special session of the Legislature and directing state agencies to ramp up the states response," Walker said in a statement.

The work of the task force, which has held meetings throughout the state since September, isn't done, Walker said. But a report with policy recommendations was released this week to ensure proposals could be considered under the state budget process. The governor is expected to deliver his budget address sometime next month.

State Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, a member of the Joint Finance Committee, agreed elected officials should take additional steps to curb opiate abuse, but said that should include revisiting previous policy decisions made by Walker.

"The opioid epidemic has taken a massive toll on Wisconsins families and communities. As elected officials, we should be doing everything possible to confront this public health emergency," Hintz said in a statement.

But Hintz argued Walker's decision to reject the federal Medicaid expansion has taken away an opportunity for people to access affordable insurance for treatment services.

Walker has stood firmly against accepting the federal funds, arguing the federal government may not be able to follow through on its financial obligations.

Hintz also said Walker should reconsider his 2011 repeal of a program that allowed well-behaved inmates, including drug offenders, to reduce their sentences after completing certain programming or treatment.

"Doing everything we can as a state to help those battling addiction also means disregarding ideology and revisiting past decisions that have negatively impacted the health of those suffering. Specifically, this means accepting the federal Medicaid expansion funding and reinstating sensible corrections policies that dont continue to criminalize addiction," Hintz said.

The liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now also criticized Walker's opposition to the Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act and noted that Walker's 2011-13 budget cut funding for Alcohol and Other Drug Addiction (AODA) programs for youth.

Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, who plans to introduce several additional bills after holding a series of meetings with local leaders to discuss ways to curb heroin and opiate abuse, encouraged people to focus on the future rather than past decisions.

"It's easy to point to a facet of a past budget," Kleefisch said. "The beauty of new legislation is that we can learn from the past and redirect resources where they are most important, like fighting heroin."

Kleefisch said he has bills in drafting that would crack down on production of synthetic opioids and would expand the ability to search for drugs at school-sanctioned events, on or off school grounds.

"While government will never be the solution to the opiate problem, government has to make it as easy as possible for parents, teachers, counselors and law enforcement to help those in trouble before they die," he said.

The liberal advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin issued tepid support for one component of Walker's proposal, which would allocate $100,000 per year in the 2017-19 biennium to expand the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) training program offered by the state Department of Public Instruction.

The SBIRT program is used to monitor high school students for potential drug or alcohol abuse. If a standardized assessment flags those issues, the student receives education about substance abuse and tools to help modify his or her behavior. Students who do not respond to that intervention can be referred for further treatment.

"While we support this critical investment in prevention, the scale being proposed is wholly inadequate. In the face of the public health epidemic that is the opioid crisis, small ball policies will not provide the cure," Citizen Action organizing director Kevin Kane wrote in a memo to lawmakers.

Kane cited a memo prepared for state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, that estimated the cost of statewide implementation of the SBIRT program at $1 million in the first year, with some funding needed for continued training in subsequent years.

Johnson introduced a proposal to fund the program statewide as a state representative last session, and said she may revisit it in the upcoming session.

"I do think we need to devote more resources," Johnson said. "The $100,000 is not enough ... If it's used as a pilot, it could be a start, but it's significantly underfunded."

Johnson also said she would like to see the SBIRT questions or a similar program given to students earlier than high school.

A spokesman for Walker did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the $100,000 figure was chosen.

"We expect to see these funds make an impact through a vigorous effort by DPI to reach more schools with this useful training," task force co-chairs Kleefisch and Nygren wrote in their report to the governor.

The effort to fight heroin and opiate abuse from within the state Legislature started several years ago with Nygren, whose daughter has struggled with addiction.

In 2014, Nygren ushered a package of bills aimed at curbing heroin abuse and deaths through the Legislature with unanimous support. That set of bills was signed into law by the governor that year. Recognizing prescription opiates as a gateway to heroin use, his second round of bills focused on prescription painkillers, and was again passed unanimously and signed into law by Walker.

Attorney General Brad Schimel, who has made fighting opioid abuse a top priority, told the Capital Times late last month he is "encouraged" by the progress state government, law enforcement and the medical community has made in the effort.
One of the most horrifying and venomous faces of terror is dead and gone, bisecting the world into a green hemisphere and a white one. The green coloured hemisphere is mourning the death of their so called hero who fought against the unjust- a hero, who was reportedly hiding behind women to save his life when the US troops barged into the house he was living in. <br><br> News that is doing the rounds clearly suggests that Laden was enjoying the support of Pakistan, the country he was taking refuge in as the US counter terrorism Chief John Brennan did not rule out the possibility of the terrorist having official backing. <br><br> While talking to reporters Brennan said, "It is inconceivable that bin Laden did not have support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for extended period of time. <br><br> However, the other half of the world (now a cohesive unit), is rejoicing every single moment since the death of Osama bin Laden. Rightly so, the nations which believe in peaceful co-existence have been victims of terrorism in some way or the other. <br><br> With the exposure of the fact that bin Laden was indeed seeking shelter in Pakistan only goes to show that a nation that boasts of being a lover of peace is undeniably the epicentre of global terror. <br><br> Recounting agonising moments that are now indissoluble chapters of our post independence history, gruesome terror episodes have often left us teary eyed. And one of the freshest faces of terror is Ajmal Kasab, who is being treated with 5 star luxuries in Indian prison. This leaves millions of Indians wondering if this is what punishment is all about after committing mass murder! <br><br> The man occupying the most powerful chair, Barack Obama, who monitored operation of the US forces where Osama was gunned down, has given the world temporary relief. The death of Laden does not signify the end of terror for he has left behind him an army of warmongers, who run various terror outfits across the globe in the name of jehad. Though Osama is no more, he has become a synonym of terror. <br><br> With vows of revenge coming from bin Ladens accomplices throughout the world, the terrifying community is displaying great venom against those who they think are enemies of God. And this is not a good sign. Nevertheless, as we say Vinashakalay vipareetha buddhi (perverted intellect takes one away from truth), the distorted brains of the crooked shall cease to exist for sure. <br><br> However, the ecstasy that is hanging heavily in the air over the news of bin Ladins death does make many sway in joy, but it also leaves many with unanswered questions. From the Indian point of view, Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind behind the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai and many other devastating missions is out of Indian reach. Why so? <br><br> Our defence mechanism isnt so lame that it cannot get hold of the man who tops Indias most wanted list. Our intelligence agencies arent any inferior that they cannot trap him and monitor his moves. But there must be some nefarious support system which knows how to enervate our defence system. <br><br> Considering the catch-22 situation our nation enjoys with its neighbours, we need to act as collective unit. Its high time we sort out both internal and external security issues and only then will we be able to safeguard our nation. <br><br> The seed of patriotism should be sowed not just once a year but time and again in our hearts. We may take a leaf out of the book of the Americans. We may even learn that being a nationalist does not call for singing patriotic songs and hoisting the national flag and wearing flag badges. That suggests nothing but superficial love for the country. <br><br> To ensure the worlds largest democracy feels safe and sound, we need to gain strategic edge. India needs to be very firm and not let anyone take our politeness for granted. <br><br> As always, we silently believed our neighbours, who repeatedly kept denying Osamas presence have been caught red-handed by the Americans. Can any of us do what the Americans did in a desperate attempt to uproot terror in the name of Osama bin Laden? Can any of us take charge of shooting Kasab (who hailed from Pakistan) point blank - now that the whole world knows that Pakistan was certainly sheltering Osama!
Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues and human interest stories. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
Bhopal gas tragedy is back in the news again nearly 26 years after this ghastly incident took place. Over 20,000 people were killed within days and people continue to suffer till today. Everybody is appalled at the verdict because it seems that the incident has been treated like a road accident. <br><br> Every media channel, whether online or offline, is abuzz with discussions about the tragedy. Media is leaving no stone unturned to blame the government for its inaction. But, a closer look and the media would realize that it is a failure on its part as well. How? The kind of media attention that this incident is getting now could have been given earlier also. Media is very powerful. Had it kept the issue alive, then the government could have been pressurized to act earlier and faster. This has happened in the past in cases of Jessica Lal, Nitish Kataria, 26/11, tiger conservation, Rouvanjit Rawla etc. It is widely known that had the media not followed these incidents, these too would have died their natural death. <br><br> There is no written rulebook for media coverage for such incidents but, it is the medias moral responsibility to act on such issues. Unfortunately, media too is driven by TRPs. That is why some channels prefer to give more coverage to Amitabh Bachchans religious pilgrimages, Shilpa Shettys wedding shopping, the Ambanis handshake etc. <br><br> It is not that the media has not given coverage to the incident but, the focus is event driven. The focus has shifted back to the Bhopal gas tragedy because of the recent verdict. A few weeks down the line, this issue would again fade away. After all, the law of diminishing returns applies to them as well. <br><br> Back in the eighties, media was not so powerful but, now that it is, it can act as a catalyst in bringing a change in our society. After all, well done is better than well said. What has happened in the past cannot be changed, but going forward the media can learn from the same and make sure that this issue does not die down till it reaches its rightful conclusion. It is not the light that we need but, the fire.
Airlines make hay as travellers shun roads

Domestic carriers saw a robust growth in passenger traffic in the first nine months of 2016 as travellers chose to fly rather than drive over bone-jarring national highways.
Annapurna circuit welcomes record 22k foreign trekkers

The world-famous Annapurna circuit received more foreign trekkers than ever before in 2016, thanks to post-earthquake publicity.
Chinese team in CNP to study rhino habitat

A five-member team from the Chinas Ministry of Forestry arrived at the Chitwan National Park (CNP) on Thursday to study the habitat, feeding, breeding and management of endangered one-horned rhino.
Demonetisation blues

Why Modis political stunt is bad news for Indians and Nepalis
Drugs gang 'kills 33 inmates' in Brazilian jail

At least 33 prisoners have been killed in a prison in northern Brazil, just days after 56 died during a jail riot in a neighbouring state.
Donald Trump goes after Toyota over Mexico manufacturing in latest battle with automaker

In Donald Trump's latest Twitter rebuke of an automaker, the president-elect threatened Toyota Motor (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 7203.T-JP) on Thursday with a large border tax if it builds a new plant outside the U.S.





Following the tweet, the company's U.S.-listed shares ticked about 0.7 percent lower, hitting a session low of $120.32.

In response to Trump's tweet, Toyota said in a statement to Reuters that the new Mexican plant will not cut its U.S. employment, adding that it "looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry."

The threat about the Japanese automaker's planned new plant in Mexico is just the latest from Trump, who already has gone after two other automakers.



Earlier this week, Trump issued a separate ultimatum to General Motors (GM): Make its Chevy Cruze cars in the U.S. or expect to pay a big border tax.

He has also been pressuring Ford (NYSE:F) about its own plans for Mexico. Two days ago, Ford announced it was canceling its plans to build a Mexican plant, but insisted Trump was not the main factor for the decision.

Toyota announced on Tuesday that it is beginning to move hundreds of jobs out of its northern Kentucky headquarters as part of a nationwide consolidation.

After Trump's tweet Rep. Jeb Hensarling , R-Tex., said on CNBC's " Closing Bell " that he does not favor a border tax. Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, argued the reason jobs are moving out of the United States is because America doesn't have a competitive, simple tax code.

"I prefer carrots over sticks, and I prefer tax reform over taxes," Hensarling said on Thursday. "What we need to do is make America the most attractive place to site a business, to grow a business, to create a business."

Story continues

 The Associated Press contributed to this story.





More From CNBC


Cynics will argue that Trump's followers don't care if he's lying, but they assuredly care if he's lying about the stuff they're hoping he'll do (otherwise there'd be no trumpgrets); what's more, there's no hope of having a US politics based on rationality and reality if we stop paying attention to facts  otherwise, we're surrendering to the "we create our own reality" army.

That's what makes the Internet Archive's Trump Archive so important, seeded with more than 700 of Trump's TV appearances ("speeches, interviews, debates, and other news broadcasts") culled from the Archive's TV News Archive, running to 520 hours and counting.

We consider the Trump Archive to be an experimental model for creating similar archives for other public officials. For example, we'll explore the idea of creating curated collections for Trump's nominees to head federal agencies; members of Congress of both parties (for example, perhaps the Senate and House majority and minority leadership); Supreme Court nominees, and so on. While we've largely hand-curated this collection, we hope to collaborate with researchers to apply machine intelligence to expand this collection, building others and making search of our entire TV library vastly more efficient. Such experimentation builds on our experience with first prototyping and then developing the the Political TV Ad Archive. Our first collection of political TV ads, covering ads aired in Philadelphia during the 2014 mid-term elections, was built largely by hand. However, in preparation for the Political TV Ad Archive, we created a new open source tool, the Duplitron, that was able to identify ad airings by deploying audio fingerprinting. During the course of the project, we collected nearly 3,000 ads and documented more than 364,000 ad airings.

Internet Archive's Trump Archive launches today

[Nancy Watzman/The Internet Archive]
Three black teens and one 24-year-old were charged with hate crimes Thursday in relation to the brutal attack of a white man with special needs.

News of their arrests had sparked a fierce debate on social media over whether the assault  which was broadcast via Facebook Live  should be called a hate crime.

Screenshot: Facebook via Reuters Video

The victims name has not been released, but police have identified the man as an 18-year-old from suburban Chicago who suffers from mental health challenges and was reported missing by his parents on Monday. His assailants reportedly shouted racially charged taunts during the assault, including f*** Donald Trump, f*** white people, while they held they young man captive in an apartment and physically abused him.

In an earlier statement to media, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stopped short of describing the incident as a hate crime, sparking outrage on social media. He said that despite the fact that the suspects made terrible racist statements, investigators were still not sure of the motive.

We do not believe the victim was targeted because of his race or because of a political affiliation, Gugliemi said then. The incident comes shortly after Chicago closed out its deadliest year in almost two decades, with 762 recorded murders in 2016.

@IngrahamAngle @CNNPolitics This should be a HATE crime plain and simple. Why it is NOT being treated the same exposes THE double-standard.  Danny Dennelo (@dennelo67) January 5, 2017

This is patently insane. It's ON TAPE. https://t.co/pGmCHR6p8G  Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 5, 2017

The details of the incident are violent and disturbing. The young mans parents said that, shortly after reporting their son missing to police in the suburban community of Streamwood, they began receiving text messages from someone who claimed to be holding their son captive. The texts led area officers to a Facebook video depicting [the man] being verbally and physically abused, CNN reported. Not long after, officers in Streamwood received a call from Chicago police, who said theyd found the man, bloodied and disoriented, after responding to a domestic battery call on the citys West Side.

Story continues

The 30 minute video  which was reportedly widely shared before it was removed from Facebook  appeared to show the victim tied up, his mouth covered, as he is beaten and berated by a group of young African-American men and women as they yell profanities about white people and president-elect Donald Trump. At one point, one of the men is reportedly seen cutting a patch of the victims hair, causing his head to bleed.

By Wednesday, Chicago police had arrested four suspects. Initial reports stated that all four of the suspects were both African-American and 18 years old, however the Cook County States Attorneys Office later announced that felony criminal charges had been filed against 18-year-olds Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington.

The suspects are expected to appear in court on Friday, where all four will face charges of aggravated battery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated unlawful restraint, in addition to the hate crime charges.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson described the actions depicted in the Facebook video as deplorable and reprehensible, adding that such actions, along with racism, have absolutely no place in the city of Chicago or anywhere else for that matter.

Johnson also clarified that there was no question whether this attack should be investigated as a hate crime, given the victims mental health status as well as the racial epithets recorded in the video.

Police Cmdr. Kevin Duffin offered new details Thursday on the timeline of events, telling reporters that the victim was last seen by his parents on Saturday, New Years Eve, when they dropped him off at a local McDonalds to meet and spend the night with his friend, Jordan Hill.

Duffin said that Hill arrived at the McDonalds in a van that, unbeknown to the victim, hed just stolen in Streamwood. The two then drove to the West Side of Chicago and spent the next two days driving around and sleeping in the stolen van. Eventually, they arrived at the home of sisters Brittany and Tanishia Covington where, the victim told investigators, he and Hill got into a play fight that escalated into him being tied up in a corner and assaulted both physically and verbally for the next five to six hours.

The victim finally managed to escape when Chicago police officers arrived at the Covingtons apartment in response to a noise complaint from the sisters downstairs neighbors at around 5:15 Tuesday evening. Thats when Officer Michael Donnelly said he spotted the victim bloodied, battered and disoriented, walking outside wearing sandals, jean shorts and a tank top turned inside-out and backward.

After a brief hospitalization, officials said, the victim is now back in the custody of his parents.

Amid the the flurry of reactions that circulated across social media late Wednesday, claims also began to spread that Black Lives Matter was to blame for the horrendous incident, despite the fact that, as Chicago police clarified Thursday morning, there is no evidence to suggest that the suspects were in any way affiliated with the activist group.

Prominent tweeters like alt-right author Mike Cernovich and conservative commentator Glenn Beck had already broadcast the rumor to their tens of thousands of followers. By Thursday morning, #BLMKidnapping was trending on Twitter, as the groups Chicago chapter attempted to maintain its innocence.

Some people are disgusting. Your making jokes!?What happened to the teenager is terrible & tragic. However it has nothing to do with BLM. pic.twitter.com/f7qit5Ym6z  BLMChicago (@BLMChi) January 5, 2017

Donnelly said Thursday that there was certainly no premeditation when the initial play fight broke out between Hill and the victim, but that the totality of the circumstances that ensued, including the victims diminished mental capacity as well as the assailants use of racial slurs, is what led the police to pursue hate crime charges.

Asked why the attackers posted the incident on Facebook, Donnelly replied, I cant understand why anyone puts anything on Facebook.
Friends trying to repatriate the remains of a Moncton man who drowned in the Philippines two weeks ago while trying to save a woman in distress say it's been a long and difficult wait.

"It's really sad for us," said Asied Debly, who described Gerald Arthur as a "dear chum" and part of a brotherhood of friends who attended St. Thomas University.

"Everything's in limbo," said Debly. "It must be horrible for his parents and his sister."

Debly says he gets some updates on Facebook from a mutual friend, Sean Scully, who resides in Hong Kong.

Arthur, 48, was in a relationship with Scully's Filipina nanny, Sally Villareal, and was travelling with her near the small town of Casiguran in the north of the Philippine archipelago on Dec. 21 when the accident happened.

GMA News identified the other drowning victim as Teresita Ramos, a Filipina who had become a U.S. citizen.

Debly said Arthur didn't know Ramos and that's what makes his actions that day so much more extraordinary  though in keeping with Arthur's kind and gentle nature.

"For him, to just [have that] reflex and dive into the water and go after this woman, to me, that's a hero," he said.

Scully told CBC News that Arthur's remains are in Manila and that Villareal is on leave from her job to try to facilitate their return.

CBC News reached out to Villareal, but was unable to establish communication.

Scully believes she is getting some help from the local Canadian embassy.

No date for funeral

Global Affairs Canada, formerly known as the Department of External Affairs, manages diplomatic and consular relations.

According to its Death Abroad fact sheet, "returning the remains of a loved one to Canada requires the help of qualified funeral homes in Canada and in the country where the death occurred."

"The date of the funeral service should not be confirmed before the remains or ashes have been returned and cleared Canadian Customs."

Story continues

Thus far, the Fundy Funeral Home in Saint John has not released a date for a service.

Fifteen days after the accident, staff there say they still don't know when all the paperwork and logistical issues will be resolved.

They say such a wait is not unusual for a death overseas.

"But it's disappointing for the families," said funeral director Billy Tyler.

According to the obituary, Arthur is survived by his parents Frank and Dolores Arthur of Rothesay. He also has a brother who lives in Alberta, and a sister who lives in Ottawa.

CBC News did ask for an update from Global Affairs, but as of early Thursday evening had not received a response.
A Syrian-born doctor, who has been helping refugees from his home country settle in Canada, sees an increasing number of Syrian families from across Canada moving to Windsor.

Dr. Ahmed Chaker, a member of the Syrian Canadian Council, said with the situation continuing to deteriorate back home and more refugees coming to Canada, Windsor should expect to see even more moving into the city.

"Every month I see three, four or five families moving from different towns in Ontario to Windsor," he said, explaining that others have come from as far as Saskatoon and Vancouver, drawn by the lower cost of living and strong support network.

"They find that life here is more smooth and friendly," Chaker said.

Helping each other

In addition to refugees relocating to Windsor, the city has welcomed more than 1,000 people from the war-torn country over the past 13 months. So far, Chaker said, he's impressed by how well the transition is going.

He's starting to see refugees helping each other.

"I see those who came in the beginning. They are helping those (new) guys," Chaker said. "They are introducing them to the systems, and I found that the flow is going very smooth."

The doctor said the revolution in Syria has taken a terrible toll on the country's people, particularly in the past two years as the fighting has intensified.

"Now as you see, town after town getting destroyed, houses demolished, tens of thousands of people are displaced and the story is getting worse and worse," he said.

Public meeting to be held

Although he's frustrated and saddened by what's going on in his home country, the doctor said he's hopeful the war fighting will end.

"Ultimately we have to have hope," he said.

Chaker is organizing a public meeting at the Caboto Club on Jan. 11 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the crisis in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

"We need to pay attention to what's happening in Syria and our job should not be limited to bringing refugees to Canada," he said. "The Syrian crisis needs to have an end soon."

- MORE WINDSOR NEWS | Local business back on track after $5k of meat stolen

- MORE WINDSOR NEWS | OPP identify woman who died in Hwy 401 crash near London, Ont.
Getting the facts straight

Its high time the government and donors made an honest assessment of reconstruction and resettlement works in earthquake-affected areas
CHICAGO (AP)  A judge rebuked four black people accused of beating a mentally disabled white man and broadcasting the attack on Facebook, sternly asking, "Where was your sense of decency?" before denying their attorneys' pleas to set bail so they might be released from jail.

"I find each of you a danger to yourself and society," Cook County Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil said, sounding baffled that the suspects who hold jobs, attend school and, in one case, care for a brother in a wheelchair could be charged with attacking the 18-year-old victim. How, she wondered, could she agree to allow people accused of such "terrible actions" to walk out of jail?

The beating was captured on cellphone video by one of the assailants and has since been viewed millions of times on social media. The footage shows the suspects taunting the victim with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

Prosecutors offered new details of the assault, explaining that one of the suspects demanded $300 from the mother of the victim, who is schizophrenic and has attention-deficit disorder. They also said the beating started in a van when the same attacker became angry that the mother had contacted him asking that her son be allowed to come home.

A prosecutor told the judge that the suspects forced the victim to drink toilet water, kiss the floor and then allegedly stuffed a sock into his mouth and taped it shut as they bound his hands with a belt.

The four are charged with two counts of committing a hate crime  one because of the victim's race and the other because of his mental disabilities.

On the video, the male suspects use knives to cut the victim's hair and his sweatshirt. One of the females can be seen laughing. A female also laughs as she punches the victim.

One of the men pulls the cord from the victim's sweatshirt around the victim's neck and holds him up while the victim groans in pain, according to a document read in court. The victim can be heard screaming when one of the men walks up to him with a knife and asks if he should "shank" him.

Story continues

At one point, the prosecutor said, someone on the video can be heard saying that he did not care if the victim was schizophrenic.

The four suspects were identified as Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covington's 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago.

They stood quietly as the prosecutor read the allegations. Some of their relatives also listened, including a woman who wiped tears from her eyes.

Defense attorneys portrayed the suspects as hardworking, responsible and religious. Cooper, for example, takes care of his twin brother, who is in a wheelchair. Tanishia Covington has two small children. Her sister attends college and has a job. Hill, the judge was told, goes to church with his grandmother.

All four have experienced brushes with the law, some for serious and violent crimes.

Hill, for example, was arrested as a juvenile in 2015 on allegations of armed robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle and residential burglary. Chicago police said they did not know the disposition of those arrests by suburban officers.

Tanishia Covington was arrested in 2007 on attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. Police records do not show any convictions as a juvenile. As an adult, she was arrested on charges of battery and aggravated assault, but those charges were dropped.

The uproar over the beating intensified the glare on Chicago after a bloody year of violent crime and protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a police department that has been accused of using excessive force and hushing-up wrongdoing. The department has also been the subject of a long civil-rights investigation by the Justice Department, which is expected to report its findings soon.

The incident also stirred emotions still raw after a presidential campaign that split the nation. Some conservatives suggested it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.

The incident began New Year's Eve, when the victim and alleged assailant Jordan Hill met at a suburban McDonald's, and then called his parents later to say he was staying with Hill for a sleepover.

Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived, police said.

The victim told police what began as playful fighting escalated. A downstairs neighbor who heard noises threatened to call police. When two of the suspects left and kicked down the neighbor's door, the victim escaped. A police officer later spotted the bloodied and disoriented young man wandering down a street.

The victim's parents reported him missing Monday evening, two days after last hearing from him. They later received text messages from people claiming to be holding their son captive, police said.
My iPhone is quite the world traveler. Its currently in the city of Tanay, just 35 miles east of Manila in the Philippines. I didnt leave it there. Ive never even been to the Philippines.

My backpack was stolen at the San Francisco Airport on December 21, either from the plane or the airports curbside as I loaded sleeping kids and heavy bags into the car on our way to visit my parents. I alerted both American Airlines and the San Francisco Police Department. Neither seemed particularly hopeful that Id see my stuff again. Theyve been right so far. Theres been no sign of my things, but lucky me, I do get to see the people who have my phone. Their photos have popped into my iCloud account.

At first I was hopeful that someone would turn in the bag, but I knew it was gone for good when one week later Apples Find My Phone alerted me that my device was 7,200 miles away. Ive tried to call it. Ive tried to text it. Ive used Google Earth to find the street. Next I called the Tanay Police Department and told them the location. The officer politely asked me if I could come over or if I had any relatives in the Philippines that might be able to come down to the station to help (sadly, I dont).

After no luck getting through to the phone, pictures started popping up in my iCloud feed of people I didnt know. I have no idea if these people had anything to do with stealing my phone or if they even knew it was stolen.

This is a phone I let my kids use so it wasnt locked (stupid, I know). And I didnt want to erase it right away because I wanted to keep trying to get in touch with the people who have itnot because Im looking to make new friends or even get the phone back, but mostly because I had irreplaceable and sentimental jewelry in the backpack and would love a clue as to where that ended up.

Eventually I used Find My Phone to wipe the phone clean and lock it. I also put a message on the lock screen to email me, but havent heard anything.

Maybe its finally time to get that iPhone upgrade.

NOTE: Yahoo Finance was contacted by those in possession of the phone. This post has since been edited.
Hearing on Karki case to continue today

The hearing on the case against suspended chief of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) Lokman Singh Karki has been adjourned until Friday as the defence lawyers could not complete their argument on Thursday.
Novartis enters into an exclusive option agreement with Ionis and Akcea to license two investigational treatments expected to significantly reduce cardiovascular risk in patients living with elevated levels of lipoprotein Lp(a) or ApoCIII, which is a potent regulator of triglycerides





Investment in biomarker-based therapies bolsters Novartis' cardiovascular specialty pipeline and commitment to address unmet medical need of high-risk atherosclerosis/dyslipidemia patients





Atherosclerosis, commonly called the "silent killer", is a major cause of death globally and no options exist today to effectively treat patients whose disease is driven by Lp(a) and ApoCIII

Basel, January 06, 2017 - Novartis announced today a collaboration and option agreement with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and its affiliate Akcea Therapeutics, Inc., to license two novel treatments with the potential to significantly reduce cardiovascular risk in patients suffering from high levels of lipoproteins known as Lp(a) and ApoCIII. The two investigational antisense therapies developed by Ionis-called AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx -have the potential to lower both lipoproteins up to 90% and significantly reduce cardiovascular risk in high-risk patient populations. In addition Novartis entered into a stock purchase agreement with Ionis.

"Novartis is building a robust cardiovascular portfolio of targeted therapies to address unmet medical need of high-risk patients," said Vasant Narasimhan, Global Head, Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer, Novartis. "Lp(a) and ApoCIII are potent, genetically validated cardiovascular risk reduction targets. The importance of predictive biomarkers in achieving successful cardiovascular outcomes will also be essential in the future payer environment. We look forward to working with Ionis and Akcea to develop both treatments."

Novartis will be able to exercise its options to license and commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx following the achievement of specified development milestones and prior to the initiation of Phase 3 studies for each program. Upon in-licensing Novartis will be responsible for worldwide development and commercialization of both assets.

Ionis' antisense technology is currently the most effective way to inhibit synthesis of both lipoproteins in the liver, according to data published in the Lancet[1]. The GalNAc3-conjugated antisense oligonucleotide technology is 30 times more potent than the parent antisense oligonucleotide, leading to a lower dose and the potential for highly effective therapeutic targeting and much improved tolerability.

The deal is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.



About Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is a disease in which plaque builds up inside the arteries leading to gradual narrowing and hardening of the arteries and increased risk of blood clots, heart attack and stroke. Atherosclerosis that affects the arteries of the heart is commonly known as coronary heart disease.

About Dyslipidemia

Dyslipidemia is the elevation of plasma cholesterol, triglycerides, or both, or a low high-density lipoprotein level that contributes to the development of atherosclerosis.

About Lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a))

Lp(a) is a lipoprotein that travels through the blood. Elevated levels of Lp(a) collect in the arteries, gradually narrowing the arteries and limiting blood supply to the heart, brain, kidneys and legs. This leads to increased risk of coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, thrombosis and stroke. Additional information is available through Lipoprotein (a) Foundation at www.lipoproteinafoundation.org

About Apolipoprotein-CIII (ApoCIII)

ApoCIII is a protein produced in the liver that plays a central role in the regulation of triglycerides, a type of fat found in the blood. People with elevated levels of ApoCIII have high triglycerides which are associated with multiple metabolic abnormalities such as insulin resistance and/or metabolic syndrome. People who do not produce ApoCIII have lower levels of triglycerides and lower instances of cardiovascular disease.

Disclaimer

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "invests," "next generation," "option," "investigational," "expected," "pipeline," "commitment," "potential," "building," "portfolio," "will," "look forward," "options," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals for AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx, AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx and the other products in the Novartis cardiovascular portfolio, or regarding potential future revenues from AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx , AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx and the other products in the Novartis cardiovascular portfolio, or regarding the possible exercise of the options to license and commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx , or regarding the intended goals and objectives of the transaction with Ionis and Akcea and the license to commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx . You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the necessary government approvals for the transaction or option exercises will be obtained in any particular time frame, or at all. Neither can there be any guarantee that any other closing conditions for the transaction or option exercises will be met in any particular time frame, or at all. Nor can there be any guarantee that the options to license and commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx will be exercised within the expected time frame, or at all. Neither can there be any guarantee that the transaction with Ionis and Akcea and license to commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx will achieve any of their intended goals and objectives, or in any particular time frame. Nor can there be any guarantee that AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx , AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx or the other products in the Novartis cardiovascular portfolio will be submitted or approved for sale in any market, or at any particular time. Neither can there be any guarantee that AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx , AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx or the other products in the Novartis cardiovascular portfolio will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx , AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx and the other products in the Novartis cardiovascular portfolio, the transaction with Ionis and Akcea, and the options to license and commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx could be affected by, among other things, the potential that the intended goals and objectives of the transaction with Ionis and Akcea and the license to commercialize AKCEA-APO(a)-L Rx and AKCEA-APOCIII-L Rx may not be achieved or may take longer to achieve than expected; the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including unexpected clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally, including an unexpected failure to obtain necessary government approvals for the transaction or option exercises, or unexpected delays in obtaining such approvals; the potential that any other closing conditions for the transaction or option exercises may not be met; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing pressures; unexpected manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2015, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.4 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 8.9 billion (USD 8.7 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

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References

[1] Lancet 2016; 388: 2239-53 Antisense oligonucleotides targeting apolipoprotein(a) in people with raised lipoprotein(a): two randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-ranging trials





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ST. THOMAS, U.S. Virgin Islands; LAUSANNE, Switzerland; FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.; and HAMILTON, Bermuda, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Auven Therapeutics, an international private equity company focused on the accelerated development of breakthrough therapeutic drugs, today announced the successful exit of its portfolio company Ocular Technologies Sarl and confirmed that Seciera, which was discovered and developed by Ocular Technologies, achieved positive top-line results in a confirmatory Phase 3 clinical trial in dry eye disease.



Auven sold the exclusive, worldwide rights to Ocular Technologies Sarl, which owns the worldwide rights to Seciera (OTX-101), to a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. ((Reuters: SUN.BO), (Bloomberg:SUNP IN), (NSE:SUNPHARMA), (BSE:524715), Sun Pharma including its subsidiaries or associate companies).

Seciera is a patented, novel, proprietary nanomicellar formulation of cyclosporine A 0.09% developed by Ocular Technologies for the treatment of dry eye disease. In a 12-week, multi-center, randomized, double-masked, vehicle-controlled Phase 3 confirmatory study in 744 dry eye disease patients, Seciera showed statistically significant improvement in the primary endpoint, Schirmers score as a measurement of tear production (p<0.0001), as well as in several key secondary endpoints, at 12 weeks of treatment.

We are extremely pleased that Seciera has demonstrated significant and clinically meaningful Phase 3 top-line results, as per Sun Pharmas recent announcement, and are proud of our role in the successful development of this product, said Dr. Peter B. Corr, Co-Founder and Managing General Partner of Auven Therapeutics. We believe it is well-positioned for both regulatory and commercial success as an important player in the dry eye disease market worldwide.

Under the terms of the sale transaction with Sun Pharma, Auven received an upfront payment of $40 million at closing. Additionally, it is eligible for substantial contingent development and sales milestones. Auven will also receive tiered royalties on global sales of Seciera.

Secieras successful Phase 3 outcome underscores its clinical and commercial potential in the large market for dry eye therapeutics, and also highlights Auvens ability to effectively invest in and develop novel treatments for important medical needs, said Stephen Evans-Freke, Co-Founder and Managing General Partner of Auven. We continue to advance our portfolio of exciting product candidates and companies that address critical unmet medical needs with large market potential, especially in cancer and ophthalmology.

About Auven Therapeutics

Auven Therapeutics is an international private equity firm that acquires and pursues accelerated development of breakthrough drugs prior to licensing to commercial partners. Auvens in-house team of senior pharmaceutical development executives establishes the preclinical, clinical, regulatory, manufacturing and commercial strategies for all its products and oversees their execution. Auven was founded in 2008 by Stephen Evans-Freke and Dr. Peter B. Corr and maintains operations in Lausanne, Ft. Lauderdale, Bermuda and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For more information, visit www.auventx.com.
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
ICU beds increased from 18 to 52 at Kanti Children's Hospital

The number of ICU bed at Kanti Children's Hospital has been increased from 18 to 52.
Oppn parties organise show of strength in Kathmandu (in pictures)

In a show a strength, nine opposition political parties including the main opposition CPN-UML that have been opposing the constitution amendment bill organised a mass rally in the Capital on Friday.
Maoist, Cong, SLMM leaders for tabling bill

The governing CPN (Maoist Centre) and the Nepali Congress and the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM), an alliance of seven Madhes-based parties, have agreed to table the constitution amendment bill in Parliament.
Oppn will take stern steps if govt tries to push bill: Oli

CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli warned on Thursday that the opposition parties would take stern steps if the government tried to push the constitution amendment bill even after a Supreme Court ruling that provincial boundaries cannot be changed without the approval of the provincial assembly.
When Google launched its Daydream virtual reality platform for Android phones, the only smartphone that officially supported the feature was the Google Pixel (and Pixel XL, if you want to call that two phones instead of one).

Now there are about half a dozen Daydream-ready phones, although not all of them are available for purchase yet.

Google announced late last year that the Moto Z was compatible with Daydream headsets like Googles own Daydream VR or other upcoming Daydream headsets (more on that below). Today, Google announced that four more new or recent phones also work with Daydream.

Or maybe I shouldnt say Google announced maybe I should say the company confirmed Daydream support. Because wed already heard from some of these phone makers that their devices had the low-latency screens and other features necessary for Daydream.

So heres the list:

Asus Zenfone AR

Huawei Mate 9 Pro

Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design

ZTE Axon 7

The Asus model is particularly interesting, since its the first phone to support both Daydream virtual reality software and hardware and Googles Tango technology for creating an interacting with 3D models of the environment around the phone. That means the phone supports the latest virtual reality and augmented reality features from Google.

Asus doesnt plan to release the Zenfone AR until the second quarter of 2017, though. The Huawei Mate 9 Pro is already available in China, and its coming to America starting next week.

Right now the only Daydream-compatible headset available for purchase is Googles $79 Daydream View headset and wireless controller. But Google says Huawei plans to launch its own model called Huawei VR at a later date.

The headset is similar to Googles, but it offers adjustable focus for use without eyeglasses and it has a 95 degree field of view. The wireless controller looks virtually identical to Googles, except that its white instead of grey.
South Africa is still not where it should be in terms of broadband access, with our fixed broadband speeds lagging behind international standards and fibre penetration remaining stubbornly low.

Local mobile users are also keen for mobile data prices to come down, especially with average data use increasing all the time.

The governments Integrated Information and Communication Technology Policy White Paper tries to address some of these issues, but its handling of spectrum drew sharp criticism from industry players.

MyBroadband asked South Africas largest telecoms operators and Internet service providers what they would like to see from the government to improve broadband in South Africa.

Vodacom  Greater access to spectrum needed urgently

Vodacom has said that with greater access to spectrum, it will be able to give South Africans what they want  faster speeds, wider access to 4G coverage, and lower data pricing.

The assignment of spectrum will be transformative from a broadband access perspective and is expected to make reaching the goals set out by governments SA Connect policy more achievable, said Vodacom.

This will also enable us to roll out broadband more efficiently in rural areas and will enable new technologies to be introduced.

Vodacom said the need for the allocation of high-demand spectrum can never be overstated, since it means having to build significantly fewer base stations  which in turn frees up capital expenditure and reduces costs.

MTN  Delays in the allocation of spectrum remain the biggest challenge

MTN said delays in the allocation of spectrum remain the biggest challenge facing the industry.

The proposals contained in the ICT White Paper are a cause for concern and we are making our submissions and hope that the government will reconsider some of these proposals, said MTN.

MTN said speeding up the allocation of high-frequency spectrum will enable it to speed up the roll-out of new-generation networks.

Cell C  We are a strong proponent of a National Broadband Network

Cell C said there is movement in the broadband access space, which is a good thing.

We are still a strong proponent of a National Broadband Network, which will bring high-speed access to more people at the lowest cost, said Cell C.

Cell C believes that infrastructure sharing is beneficial to all parties and brings access to more people at a faster and more affordable rate.

Regulating rapid deployment would also assist in providing high-speed access to a larger set of the population  this would assist us to build towers at a faster rate, which ultimately reduces the costs.

Telkom  The government should focus on enhanced competitiveness, regulatory certainty, and predictability

Telkom said the governments efforts should be geared towards creating an ICT sector underpinned by enhanced competitiveness, regulatory certainty, and predictability.

Government and ICASA should make a concerted effort to reconcile their divergent views regarding the Integrated ICT Whitepaper, said Telkom.

In particular, principle agreement on contentious issues such as the assignment of high-demand spectrum, establishment of a Wholesale Open Access Network, and open access principles applied to the mobile network must be reached in order to expedite the favourable implementation of these policy proposals.
YEREVAN. - The criminal case launched in November 2015 into the death of a newborn in Yerevans Shengavit medical center has been dismissed because of the absence of components of crime in the actions of the medical staff.

The press-service of the Investigative Committee of Armenia informed the aforementioned to Armenian News  NEWS.am.

According to the information of the Investigative Committee, on 28 November 2015 they received a statement from citizen I. Hayrapetyan on that her daughter-in-law was taken to Shengavit Medical Center on November 25, where she gave birth to a boy by a Caesarian section. However, the newborn died on November 27. According to the claimant, the tragedy took place as a result of the improper level of medical service provided by doctors.

A criminal case was launched into the incident under Article 130 (2) of the Criminal Code of Armenia. The baby was recognized as an aggrieved party, his mother being recognized as his successor. Investigative measures were carried out and expert examinations were commissioned in the framework of the case.

According to the results of the expert examination, the baby was diagnosed with cardiac anomaly and critical aortic stenosis.

As per the experts, the doctors provided all the services in due time, no violations having been revealed. The criminal case has thus been dismissed.
YEREVAN.  The change of the US policy in regard to the entire post-Soviet area, including the South Caucasus and Ukraine, is possible, after Donald Trump's officially takes the office. This area will be of less importance for the new administration, at least at its initial stages of governing. This opinion was expressed by the Russian political scientist Alexander Skakov in an interview with Armenian News - NEWS.am.

According to the expert, these regions, as mentioned by Trump, are not included in the scope of the vital interests of the US.

Everything will continue as before. Georgia and Ukraine will continue staying in the fairway of the US politics, but they will receive less support - financial and military - from Washington. Of course, Washington currently does not recognize the independence of Crimea and Abkhazia, but these questions will soon become irrelevant. Instead, other areas will affect the importance of the US policy: China, Southeast Asia and India, North Africa, the fight against terrorism and radical Islam. Here, the new administration will look for ways of a dialogue and cooperation with Moscow. Another thing is that the administrations of Bush, Clinton, and Obama have also began looking for ways of cooperation with Russia, but ended up with tough confrontations. It is obvious, that here a lot depends on Moscow. The Russian government should manifest itself as a partner who is reliable, right, and is able to negotiate. Trump is a businessman, and as a businessman he will appreciate it. And, of course, the beginning of a new full-scale war in the region is not in the interests of any US administration, said Alexander Skakov.

At the same time, the expert noted, that there are no grounds to expect a breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement in 2017.

We must also take into account, that the possibilities of Russia, due to the ongoing economic crisis, are limited. Washington may come into a more direct confrontation with China, and in such circumstances, it will be senseless to continue the confrontation with Russia. The EU is likely to move towards nationalism and isolationism. The time of such politicians-globalists as Merkel has expired.

All these does not mean, that global players would allow this region to slide in a chaos of wars. However, no one would like to waste resources and efforts on establishing here a sustainable peace, concluded Alexander Skakov.
Armenia FM receives EU Monitoring Capacity

Spanish MPs don't approve agreement with Baku as a sign of solidarity with Armenia

Japan says North Korea may go ahead with nuclear test

Belarusian border service: Border guards intercepts Ukrainian training drone

President appoints Ruben Vardanyan as Karabakh Minister of State

US embassy expresses concern about human rights violation in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan continues muscle play on Iran border

Ibrahim Kalin says Turkey will become an important gas center one way or another

Biden: We're gonna free Iran

Reuters: G7 countries and Australia agrees on fixed price for Russian oil

World oil prices dropping

Wizz Air to launch new flights between Venice, Yerevan

EU assesses Armenia, Azerbaijan border commissions meeting in Brussels as constructive

Artsakh President convenes enlarged working consultation

Envoy: China supports Armenians

Azerbaijan MOD disseminates disinformation, Armenia army did not fire

Quake jolts Turkey

Newspaper: Armenia PM once again manipulates topic of negotiations, Karabakh conflict

Newspaper: Studies underway on Armenia MPs business involvement

US wants to prevent Germany, other allies from working together with China

Protests turn violent in Iran's Alborz Province

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
When you watch investors in Macy's (M) and Kohl's (KSS) get their faces ripped off on Thursday because of terrifyingly bad holiday sales, keep this reality in mind as to the root cause of the problem: In the age of digital shopping, there are still too many damn retail stores in America.

"I have said this before, but America is still over-stored," Macy's long-time Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren told TheStreet in an interview Wednesday evening. "My guess is that some rationalization of retail space needs to occur, and I think we were at the forefront of acknowledging that," Lundgren continued, adding that while the online business for Macy's is "booming" it hasn't been enough to offset weak traffic to physical stores.

The numbers support Lundgren's claims of the U.S. continuing to be over-stored.

There is 23.5 square feet of retail space per person in the U.S., drastically higher compared with the 16.4 square feet in Canada and 11.1 square feet in Australia, the next two highest -- according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. The abundance of stores has retailers battling each other with rampant discounts to try and drive business but with little to show for it.

Green Street Advisers recently estimated that the nation's department stores averaged a paltry $165 in sales per square foot last year, a 24% decline since 2006. For department stores to boost sales per square foot, which is vital in driving profits due to the high rents an anchor store such as Macy's pays, Green Street proposed a mind-blowing measure: The department store sector needs to slash about 800 locations in the U.S, or one-fifth of all anchor space in U.S. malls, in order to reach the productivity levels they had a decade ago.

Real estate information firm CoStar gives a more drastic assessment, noting that about 1 billion square feet of retail space will be "rationalized" in the coming years through store closures and conversions to other uses.

To be sure, Macy's and others are taking a sledgehammer to retail space in an attempt to rectify the issue.

Macy's said Wednesday that it will close 68 stores by early spring and dive into a deeper reorganization, which will lead to roughly 10,100 people being displaced. The company reiterated that it expects to close 100 stores over the next few years.

"We have tried to look at the entire landscape of the U.S. and said if we were starting a new company today, where must we have stores," Lundgren explained. "We have looked at where populations are growing, and where they are shrinking, and that's how we came up with our store closure plan," he added.

As for Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) , which unlike rival Macy's is in dire financial straits, it has also kicked off the new year with another major store closing campaign.

The company will shut down 108 Kmart stores and 42 Sears stores by April, or about 10% of its store base.

More announcements along these lines will likely surface as retailers release their fourth-quarter results and 2017 outlooks in February. In reading the tea leaves, struggling Gap (GPS) could be poised to drop a store closure bombshell of its own.

In June 2015, the company detailed plans to close 175 Gap stores in North America over the next few years. Then last May, Gap said it would close its fleet of 53 Old Navy stores in Japan and close more Banana Republic locations, mostly overseas. It also promised to "streamline its operating model" to further cut costs.

Even so, Gap remains a sprawling global enterprise that has to be further corralled to survive the shifts in retail. At the end of the third quarter, Gap boasted a dizzying 3,742 store locations in 50 countries. Total square feet operated by Gap stood at a colossal 37.7 million.

Asked when things would get better in retail, Lundgren pulled no punches. "It's going to take seriously aggressive and different strategies this time that are going to entice the consumers to shop with us," he said.

In the meantime, brace for the next wave of retail store closures.

In more upbeat news ...

Car companies continue to steal the show at CES: BMW wowed the crowd with a concept car featuring its new HoloActive Touch technology (see picture below). It includes a free-floating virtual display projected just above the center console and is operated simply by finger movements, reported CarScoops.

Under Armour wants to boost your sleep: New England quarterback Tom Brady, an Under Armour spokesman, loves his sleep, seeing it as a means to recover from grueling games on the gridiron. So Under Armour will try to tap into that with a new line of clothing, reportedTime. The company unveiled "UA Athlete Recovery Sleepwear Powered by TB12" at CES, fitted pants and shirts equipped with soft bio-ceramic print that can produce infrared energy when combined with the body's natural heat. In short, the clothes are supposed to reduce inflammation and improve circulation, helping the body recover faster.

No word if the sleepwear will allow you to throw a tight, 50-yard spiral like Brady.

Gold prices continue to rock: So much for bullishness on the Trump administration causing investors to flee boring old gold for more exciting equities. SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) has gained about 2.7% over the past seven days (hit tab below). If the strength continues, expect market pundits to start talking about a second-half 2017 recession thanks to a concoction of Federal Reserve rate increases and the wild card that could be President Trump.
Panel to provide suggestion on Mass Com policy

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) has formed an 11-member panel to provide suggestions and execute the National Mass Communication Policy-2073 unveiled by the erstwhile KP Sharma Oli-led government.
DOL Sues Manufacturer After It Fired Employee Who Tried to Call 911

The company's owner insisted the worker drive the injured employee to an urgent care clinic instead, according to OSHA.

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit against Lone Star Western Beef and John M. Bachman, the West Virginia company's owner, after an incident that left an employee with a severed thumb.

The incident occurred in July 2014 when a worker severed part of his thumb. A co-worker attempted to call 911 before Bachman ordered she hang up the phone and drive the injured worker to an urgent clinic. The worker was eventually transferred to a hospital where doctors were unable to reattach the body part; the worker who tried to call 911 was terminated two days later.

OSHA reported the co-worker discussed the incident with a Department of Agriculture inspector.

"Lone Star Western Beef punished an employee for seeking emergency medical care for a seriously injured co-worker. Her efforts were protected under Section 11(c) and showed basic human decency," said Richard Mendelson, OSHA's regional administrator in Philadelphia. "No worker should have to fear retaliation from their employer for calling 911 in an emergency, or taking other action to report a workplace safety or health incident."

The case has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. The lawsuit seeks back wages and punitive damages for the terminated employee.






Record Number of Women Become New South Wales Firefighters

All 24 recruits in the Australian department's most recent class received advanced training in firefighting, road crash rescue procedures, advanced first aid, community risk management, fire science, and hazardous materials response.

For the first time, half of the most recent graduating class of Fire & Rescue New South Wales are women, the Australian state's government announced recently. The uptick in participation by women followed changes to the agency's recruitment campaign in 2016, and the government welcomed 12 women and 12 men of Recruit Class 6/2016 into the ranks of FRNSW at a special ceremony at the State Training College in Alexandria in December.

In 2014, about 20 percent of applicants for 120 firefighting positions were submitted by women.

FRNSW Commissioner Greg Mullins, soon to retire from his post, welcomed the new recruits into what he called the "best job in the world" and said he was proud to see equal numbers of men and women graduate. "I've loved being a firefighter for the past 38 years, and I'm confident that each of them will uphold the high standards of integrity, courage, and professionalism expected of a FRNSW firefighter," he said.

"These recruits have had the opportunity to meet the outgoing commissioner today, which will certainly put them in good stead when joining their stations. Commissioner Mullins has guided the professional careers of many recruits since taking the top job in 2003," said David Elliott, minister for emergency services.

All of the recruits received advanced training in firefighting, road crash rescue procedures, advanced first aid, community risk management, fire science, and hazardous materials response.
Banyan Tree Phuket welcomes acclaimed Chef Andrea Asoli (Michelin Under 35) to Tre Restaurant from 13th -18th January 2017.

Part of an exclusive culinary club of young-gen cooking masters at the renowned Ristorante Venissa in Venice. Chef Andrea Asoli is one of four uncommonly talented chefs to be awarded a first-ever shared Michelin star for his invaluable contribution to this innovative culinary project. His refined 5-course tasting menu celebrates the ages-old traditions and distinctive flavours of Venetian & Milanese style cooking.

Tre Restaurant is located in Banyan Tree Phuket on Bangtao Beach, Cherngthalay, Talang, Phuket.

Daily signature 5-course menu with suggestion wine pairing

Time: 6.30-10.30 pm

Price: THB 3,500 nett per person

Master Class

Day: 13th January 2017

Culinary demonstration follow by 3-course lunch menu with wine pairing

Time: Noon-2.00pm

Price: THB 3,000 nett per person

Chefs Table

Day: 14th January 2017

5-course degustation dinner menu with wine pairing

Time: 6.30-10.30pm

Price: THB 4,500 nett per person

For reservation, please call +66 76 372 400

email: fb-phuket@banyantree.com
Reactivated fracture zones ruptured during Wharton Basin earthquakes in 2012. Credit: Yanfang Qin, Satish C. Singh

(Phys.org)A team of researchers with members from several institutions in Singapore, France and Indonesia has found evidence of a possible new plate boundary forming on the floor of the Indian Ocean in the Wharton Basin. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team reports that they studied seismic and ocean floor topology to learn more about tectonic plate deformations in the region and what they found by doing so.

Most people are aware of earthquakes that occur when tectonic plates push against one another, but there is another kind called a slip-strike quake. It occurs when two plates slide horizontally against one another. Such quakes can be caused by deformations that occur in plates distant from fault lines as pressure builds up across a plate. In some cases, such deformations can cause what are known as interplate earthquakes, and they can also sometimes cause a plate to break, resulting in a new plate boundary, which in turn can lead to even more quakes. It is this scenario that the researchers believe happened in 2012 when two earthquakes struck the Andaman-Sumatran region (northwest part) of the Indian Oceanthe largest interplate earthquakes ever recorded.

To better understand what occurred during the 2012 quakes, the researchers studied seismic data that was recorded before, during and after the quakes and also conducted sea floor depth analysis by venturing into the ocean aboard the research vessel Falkorthat allowed them to create high-resolution imagery of the sea floor, which in turn allowed them to note the deformations that had occurred.

Their analysis revealed a new fault system had developed in the area off the coast of Sumatra that was involved in the 2012 quakes. They noted the system was oriented in a way that set it off against those that were around ita clear indication of deformation. The data also showed that strike-slips in the same area (and distant from known plate boundaries) suggested that the plate had broken along a 1,000k fracture zone, resulting in a new plate boundaryone that is likely to be the site of future fault-slip quakes.

Past fault models (a) and Sing and colleagues new results (b). Credit:Yanfang Qin, Satish C. Singh

More information: Satish C. Singh et al. The discovery of a conjugate system of faults in the Wharton Basin intraplate deformation zone, Science Advances (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601689 Abstract

The deformation at well-defined, narrow plate boundaries depends on the relative plate motion, but how the deformation takes place within a distributed plate boundary zone remains a conundrum. This was confirmed by the seismological analyses of the 2012 great Wharton Basin earthquakes [moment magnitude (Mw) 8.6], which suggested the rupture of several faults at high angles to one another. Using high-resolution bathymetry and seismic reflection data, we report the discovery of new N294E-striking shear zones, oblique to the plate fabric. These shear zones are expressed by sets of normal faults striking at N335E, defining the direction of the principal compressional stress in the region. Also, we have imaged left-lateral strike-slip faults along reactivated N7E-oriented oceanic fracture zones. The shear zones and the reactivated fracture zones form a conjugate system of faults, which accommodate present-day intraplate deformation in the Wharton Basin. Journal information: Science Advances

 2017 Phys.org
How humpback whales use marine habitats off the eastern coast of Africa is only partially understood, and that has become a conservation concern as offshore energy exploration expands in the region. However, a new study published in Marine Ecology Progress Series found that humpback whales that were satellite tagged off the coast of Madagascar during peak breeding season are traveling much further in the southwest Indian Ocean than previously thought. This research can help define potentially sensitive areas that should be protected from the disruption of seismic testing or other industrial development that could be destructive to the humpback population and this globally important marine habitat.

For this field research, twenty-three humpback whales were satellite tagged off Madagascar during the height of breeding season, a scientific first.

The study was led by the New England Aquarium's Dr. Salvatore Cerchio, while working with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, in a broad international collaboration with the University of Paris Sud, the Madagascar-based NGO Cetamada, and NOAA's National Marine Mammal Lab in Seattle. The research team sought to examine movements of humpback whales in the southwestern Indian Ocean where they breed and calf during the southern hemisphere's winter months, after migrating from their sub-Antarctic summer feeding waters.

"It's our hope that this work will help us understand more accurately the breeding and migratory behavior of humpback whales in the southwest Indian Ocean," said Dr. Cerchio who is also affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "As more development and industry encroaches on their habitat, it will be important for us to know how these potentially sensitive areas should be protected for this vital species."

Among the more significant discoveries was that males and females had different movement patterns. Males were more localized as they seemed to establish preferred areas from which to broadcast their famous songs, while females - quite unexpectedly - showed more long distance travel patterns presumably in search of more mates.

Two areas along Madagascar's 900 mile length were also found to be important and possibly distinct breeding habitats. Whales tagged in northeastern waters spent more time on the central east coast, while whales tagged in the southwest frequented the southern coast of the world's fourth largest island. Several whales from the northeast study group swam westward across the Mozambique Channel to near the African mainland where there is also another significant sub-population of wintering humpbacks. This is a movement corridor that was previously unknown.

An historic humpback first was also documented as a male cruising up the east African coast swam all the way to southern Somalia. En route, he crossed the equator making him the first known humpback to do so in the Indian Ocean. Humpback populations are found around the world in both the southern and northern hemispheres feeding during their respective summers in high latitude, cold waters then migrating to tropical waters for the winter to breed and give birth. Humpbacks have been documented crossing the equator in only two other parts of the world. "This was very exciting" added Cerchio, "because there is a highly endangered population of humpback whales in the northern Indian Ocean that is believed to be completely isolated from the Southern Hemisphere populations. That this male from Madagascar crossed into the northern Indian Ocean was very unexpected."

Another impressive long distance traveler was a mother and calf tagged off of Madagascar that swam all the way to Kenyan waters. The movement of individual whales from Madagascar to East Africa suggests there is more to learn about the mixing of regional humpback populations across the southwest Indian Ocean. This has direct relevance to efforts by the International Whaling Commission to more accurately assess the recovery of humpback whales in the region after their depletion by commercial whaling in the 20th Century.

Dr. Laurene Trudelle of the University of Paris Sud noted, "Breeding areas of humpback whales are typically located in coastal habitats and are generally subject to strong human pressures that affect the quality of these breeding habitats." Recently, the southwest Indian Ocean has experienced expanded industrial development with more oil and gas exploration and production, mineral mining, and coastal development. Major processing of mined materials around the central and southern Madagascar coast is occurring, and seismic surveys are increasing throughout the region, which is commonly known to disturb humpback whales and their singing breeding behavior. Trudelle added, "Providing knowledge on the movements and the distribution patterns of humpback whales off Madagascar and more broadly in the southwestern Indian Ocean can be used to assist future management decisions." Dr. Trudelle published a companion paper on the influence of environmental parameters on the tagged whales in Royal Society Open Science, as part of her doctoral dissertation at University of Paris Sud using data from the collaborative study.

Provided by New England Aquarium
PURCHASE, N.Y. On Tuesday, January 31, 2017, Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) will release its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results. The company will host a conference call to discuss these results at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

The dial-in information for this call is 877-201-0168 (within the U.S.) and 647-788-4901 (outside the U.S.), and the passcode is 40272333. A replay of the call will be available for 30 days and can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056 (within the U.S.) and 404-537-3406 (outside the U.S.), and using passcode 40272333.

This call can also be accessed through the Investor Relations section of the companys website at www.mastercard.com/investor [1] .

About Mastercard Incorporated

Mastercard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com [2] , is a technology company in the global payments industry. We operate the worlds fastest payments processing network, connecting consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. Mastercard products and solutions make everyday commerce activities  such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances  easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone. Follow us on Twitter @MastercardNews, join the discussion on the Beyond the Transaction Blog and subscribe for the latest news on the Engagement Bureau. Read more

Other POS news:
- The North Central vice chairman of APC, Zakari Idde has been arraigned for his involvement in the killing of a Chinese miner

- Idde was arraigned alongside nine others on Wednesday, January 5

- The suspects were said to have ambushed and killed the Chinese miner and three others

The Nasarawa state police command has dragged the national vice chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) North Central zone, Mr Zakari Idde, before the state high court in Lafia for his alleged involvement in the killing of a Chinese national, his police orderly and two others.

APC chieftain arraigned for murder

Idde was arraigned along nine others on Wednesday, January 5, but their plea could not be taken because the matter was not listed for mention.

READ ALSO: Opposition parties pass vote of confidence on Tambuwal

The police had earlier paraded before journalists other suspects in the murder but the APC chief, Idde was not among them because he was on bail.

According to the police, the suspects were said to have ambushed and killed the Chinese miner and three others at Wugibi Hills in the Alogani area of Nasarawa, Eggon local government of the state late last year (2016).

The state commissioner of police, Mr Abubakar Sadiq-Bello, told journalists that Idde was among the prime suspects in the murder hence his arraignment in court for murder.

He said: As far as the police are concerned, Mr Idde is also a suspect. His statement was obtained under caution after which he was released on bail.

The APC chieftain had earlier denied involvement in the incident.

The vacation judge, Justice Ayiwulu, adjourned the case till Friday, January 6, for the hearing of the bail application filed by the accused lawyers, Zaidu Abdullahi and A. Idris.

In December 2016, another APC chief in Rivers state, Mr Kachi Wokocha was arrested for his alleged involvement in the murder of a DSP Muhammed Alkali and his orderly who lost their lives during Rivers election rerun.

READ ALSO: Kogi ministerial slot: Crisis in APC as Faleke calls party leaders 'empty vessels'

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has attacked Ekiti state governor Ayo Fayose over his petition to the Chief Justice of Nigeria Walter Onnoghen alleging plots to remove him from office by the opposition party.

In a statement issued by the Ekiti state chapter of the party on Thursday, January 5, the APC mocked Fayose and dismissed his allegations in a petition.

Watch a video of an APC rally below:

Source: Legit.ng
Seed bank helps save endangered plants

Locals of Agyauli in Nawalparasi district have established a seed bank to help conserve endangered native cereals and vegetables.
- A team of 14 members have been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari

- The team is to negotiate 2009 agreement with unions in federal universities, federal polytechnics and federal colleges of education

- The president has also approved the reconstitution of the governing councils of university of Port Harcourt and Obafemi Awolowo University and Ile Ife

In order to ensure sustainable peace and industrial harmony in the nations tertiary institutions, President Muhammadu Buhari has approved a 14-member Federal Government team to renegotiate the 2009 agreement with unions in federal tertiary institutions in the country.

President Buhari selects team to negotiate with ASUU

The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, in a statement issued by the ministry in Abuja on Friday, said the renegotiation team would dialogue with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) and Non Academic Staff Union of Associated & Allied Institutions (NASU).

According to The Nation, the new team is headed by Dr. Wale Babalakin, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).

Babalakin, who was adjudged the best pro-chancellor at the time of the negotiations in 2009, headed the agreement implementation committee then.

The government team comprises the following:

Wale Babalakin, SAN; (Chairman)

M.M. Jibril, Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Lafia

Nimi Briggs, Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Lokoja

Senator Gbemisola Saraki, Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Otuoke

Lawrence Ngbale, Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Birnin Kebbi

Prince Alex Mbata, Pro-Chancellor, Imo State University, Owerri

Olufemi Bamiro, Pro-Chancellor, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun

Representatives, Federal Ministry of Education

Representative, Federal Ministry of Labour & Employment

Representative, Federal Ministry of Finance

Representative, Federal Ministry of Justice

Representative, Federal Ministry of Budget & National Planning

Representative of the National Salaries, Incomes & Wages Commission (NSIWC)

Representative of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF)

Meanwhile, Buhari has also approved the reconstitution of the governing councils of university of Port Harcourt and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, which were dissolved following the recent crises that engulfed the two institutions.

The new governing councils would serve for a term of four years, in the first instance, effective from December 28, 2016.

In the same vein, Buhari has appealed to the leadership of ASUU, to understand that the nation is in recession, hence the inability of his government to meet their demands, Leadership reports.

The president made the appeal in a message through Professor Anthony Anwuka, the minister of state for education, during the convocation ceremony of the Federal University of Technology (FUTO), Owerri.

He said: As partners in progress, I plead for understanding and cooperation as the government is committed to addressing the various issues being canvassed by the Union, as we strive to right the wrongs of the past.

The president noted that he is aware of the anxiety and uncertainties that agitate the minds of the graduands, on what the future holds for them after graduation.

Source: Legit.ng
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

Read more
(Bloomberg) -- Just an hour after Japans first cabinet meeting of the year, the nations top government spokesman surprised reporters by firing a diplomatic salvo at South Korea over a longstanding historical dispute that the two U.S. allies had sought to bury only a year ago.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Tokyo had suspended talks with Seoul over a foreign currency swap arrangement; temporarily recalled Japans ambassador to South Korea; and halted high-level economic talks between the two nations.

The moves were made to protest the installation of a statue symbolizing so-called comfort women near the Japanese consulate in the South Korean port city of Busan. While neither side needs the currency safety net right now, Japans actions are a reminder of how the legacy of its colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 can still weigh on economic and diplomatic relations between the neighbors.

Just over a year ago, the two nations appeared to have settled the dispute over women coerced into Japanese military brothels before and during World War II. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a landmark apology, and his government agreed with South Korean President Park Geun-hyes administration to provide 1 billion yen ($8.6 million) to a fund for compensating victims.

Leadership Vacuum

But South Koreas refusal to remove a separate statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul put the implementation of the agreement in jeopardy. Indeed, the statue in Busan was installed by activists protesting the 2015 deal, and the majority of South Koreans are also against it.

Historians say anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 women -- many of them Korean -- served in Japans military brothels across Asia. Japan apologized in 1993 and set up a compensation fund that was rejected by some victims because it was privately funded.

Now the impeachment of Park over an influence-peddling scandal has effectively undermined the deal, according to Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple Universitys Japan campus.

Story continues

Park is toast in South Korean politics, so agreements made with her are probably not worth the paper theyre printed on, Kingston said. In South Korea this will play out as Tokyo taking advantage of us again when we are down. Here we have a vacuum in leadership and Tokyos suddenly doing this rather harsh reaction.

For more on why Park was impeached, click here

In a phone call with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Abe said it was important for both governments to carry out the agreement, according to a statement released Friday by Japans foreign ministry. Japan had previously called for the statue installed last month in Busan to be removed, saying it goes against the spirit of the agreement.

This is extremely regrettable, Suga said. This will have a negative effect on bilateral relations. Separately, Finance Minister Taro Aso said any swap agreement must be built on mutual trust.

Japanese politicians have also made antagonistic moves recently. Defense Minister Tomomi Inada last week visited a Tokyo shrine seen by South Korea and China in particular as a symbol of her nations wartime atrocities. South Koreas defense ministry said the move embellishes Japans aggression in the past and its colonization of Korea.

South Korean Deputy Finance Minister Song In-chang said by phone on Friday that he hoped Japan would maintain the principle of separating politics and economics.

Swap Deal

In August last year, South Korea proposed the re-establishment of a swap deal that expired in early 2015, with the Seoul Economic Daily reporting that it could be worth more than $50 billion.

Some members of Abes ruling Liberal Democratic Party have sought to make any such deal conditional on removing the statue in Seoul. Aso said in December that there was no way to negotiate a deal because of the scandal that led to Parks impeachment.

Chang Jae-chul, an economist for Citibank Korea Inc. in Seoul, said that additional swaps would be good for Korea but not vital right now considering the nations foreign currency reserves and the fact that external balances have improved since the global financial crisis.

Despite the setback, both nations are still cooperating on North Korea. Deputy foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea agreed to keep up pressure on Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programs during a meeting with U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington on Thursday.

--With assistance from Jiyeun Lee Sam Kim and Jaehyun Eom To contact the reporter on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, Andy Sharp

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
AFP News

Zhang Yao recalls the moment he realised something had gone deeply wrong at the Chinese mega-factory where he and hundreds of thousands of other workers assembled iPhones and other high-end electronics. In early October, supervisors suddenly warned him that 3,000 colleagues had been taken into quarantine after someone tested positive for Covid-19 at the factory. "They told us not to take our masks off," Zhang, speaking under a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told AFP by telephone. What followed was a weeks-long ordeal including food shortages and the ever-present fear of infection, before he finally escaped on Tuesday. Zhang's employer, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, has said it faces a "protracted battle" against infections and imposed a "closed loop" bubble around its sprawling campus in central China's Zhengzhou city. Local authorities locked down the area surrounding the major Apple supplier's factory on Wednesday, but not before reports emerged of employees fleeing on foot and a lack of adequate medical care at the plant. China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks. But new variants have tested officials' ability to snuff out flare-ups and dragged down economic activity with the threat of sudden disruptions. - Desperation - Multiple workers have recounted scenes of chaos and increasing disorganisation at Foxconn's complex of workshops and dormitories, which form a city-within-a-city near Zhengzhou's airport. Zhang told AFP that "positive tests and double lines (on antigen tests) had become a common sight" in his workshop before he left. "Of course we were scared, it was so close to us." "People with fevers are not guaranteed to receive medicine," another Foxconn worker, a 30-year-old man who also asked to remain anonymous, told AFP. "We are drowning," he said. Those who decided to stop working were not offered meals at their dormitories, Zhang said, adding that some were able to survive on personal stockpiles of instant noodles. Kai, a worker at in the complex who gave an interview to state-owned Sanlian Lifeweek, told the magazine Foxconn's "closed loop" involved cordoning off paths between dormitory compounds and the factory, and complained he was left to his own devices after being thrown in quarantine. TikTok videos geolocated by AFP showed mounds of uncollected rubbish outside buildings in late October, while employees in N95 masks squeezed onto packed shuttle buses taking them from dormitories to their work stations. A 27-year-old woman working at Foxconn, who asked not to be named, told AFP a roommate who tested positive for Covid was sent back to her dormitory on Thursday morning, crying, after she decided to hand in her notice while in quarantine. "Now the three of us are living in the same room: one a confirmed case and two of us testing positive on the rapid test, still waiting for our nucleic acid test results," the worker told AFP. Many became so desperate by the end of last month that they attempted to walk back to their hometowns to get around Covid transport curbs. As videos of people dragging their suitcases down motorways and struggling up hills spread on Chinese social media, the authorities rushed in to do damage control. The Zhengzhou city government on Sunday said it had arranged for special buses to take employees back to their hometowns. Surrounding Henan province has officially reported a spike of more than 600 Covid cases since the start of this week. - Distrust - When Zhang finally attempted to leave the Foxconn campus on Tuesday, he found the company had set up obstacle after obstacle. "There were people with loudspeakers advertising the latest Foxconn policy, saying that each day there would be a 400 yuan ($55) bonus," Zhang told AFP. A crowd of employees gathered at a pick-up point in front of empty buses but were not let on. People in hazmat suits, known colloquially as "big whites" in China, claimed they had been sent by the city government. "They tried to persuade people to stay in Zhengzhou... and avoid going home," Zhang said. "But when we asked to see their work ID, they had nothing to show us, so we suspected they were actually from Foxconn." Foxconn pointed to the local government's lockdown orders from Wednesday when asked by AFP if it attempted to stop employees from leaving, without giving any further response. The company had on Sunday said it was "providing employees with complimentary three meals a day" and cooperating with the government to provide transport home. Eventually, the crowd of unhappy workers who had gathered decided to take matters into their own hands and walked over seven kilometres on foot to the nearest highway entry ramp. There, more people claiming to be government officials pleaded with the employees to wait for the bus. The crowd had no choice as the road was blocked. Buses eventually arrived at five in the afternoon -- nearly nine hours after Zhang had begun his attempt to secure transport. "They were trying to grind us down," he said. Back in his hometown, Zhang is now waiting out the home quarantine period required by the local government. "All I feel is, I've finally left Zhengzhou," he told AFP. bur-tjx/oho/je/mca/cwl
Trading up

Integration into the South Asian economy is a golden opportunity for Nepal
AFP News

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was recovering in hospital Friday after a gunman shot him in the leg, with his supporters vowing the assassination attempt will not derail his "long march" bid to return to power. The attack on his convoy, apparently by a lone gunman, killed one man and wounded at least 10, significantly raising the stakes in a political crisis that has gripped the South Asian nation since Khan's ousting in April. Khan "was stable and he was doing fine" at Shaukat Khanum hospital in the eastern city of Lahore, his doctor Faisal Sultan told AFP Friday. Seemi Bokhari, a lawmaker with Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said after visiting Khan the former premier was in high spirits. "The doctors are allowing him to move ... He is feeling perfectly well and he will soon be discharged," she told AFP. The 70-year-old former international cricket star had been leading a campaign convoy of thousands since last week from Lahore to the capital Islamabad when he was attacked. Khan suffered at least one bullet wound to his right leg when a gunmen sprayed pistol fire at his modified container truck as it drove slowly through a thick crowd in Wazirabad, around 170 kilometres (105 miles) east of Islamabad. "Everyone who was standing in the very front row got hit," former information minister Fawad Chaudhry, who was standing behind Khan, told AFP. Senior aide Raoof Hasan said it was "an attempt to kill him, to assassinate him". Chaudhry said party officials would meet later Friday to discuss the immediate fate of Khan's campaign march. "The real freedom long march will continue and the movement for people's rights will remain until an announcement on the general elections," he tweeted. - Threats - Party officials also called for supporters to stage rallies and marches across the country after Friday afternoon prayers, the most important of the week. Protesters lit fires and blocked roads in several cities late Thursday as news of Khan's shooting spread. His campaign truck has become a crime scene for now, cordoned off and guarded by commandos as forensic experts comb the area. Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said Thursday the attacker had been taken into custody. Officials shared an apparent confession video that was circulating online. "I did it because (Khan) was misleading the public," says a dishevelled man in the leaked video, shown with his hands tied behind his back in what appears to be a police station. He says he was angry with the procession for making a racket during the call to prayer that summons Muslims to the mosque five times a day. Pervaiz Elahi, the chief minister of Punjab, said officers who leaked the video would be disciplined. Pakistan has been grappling with Islamist militancy for decades, with right-wing religious groups having huge sway over the population. It has been no stranger to assassination attempts during decades of political instability, and the powerful military has led the country several times. Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot dead at a rally in Rawalpindi in 1951. Another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in 2007 when a huge bomb detonated near her vehicle as she greeted supporters in the city of Rawalpindi. - Kicked from power - Khan was booted from office in April by a no-confidence vote after defections by some of his coalition partners, but he retains huge support. He was voted into power in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform by an electorate tired of dynastic politics, but his mishandling of the economy -- and falling out with a military accused of helping his rise -- sealed his fate. Since then, he has railed against the establishment and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government, which he says was imposed on Pakistan by a "conspiracy" involving the United States. Khan and Shehbaz have for months traded bitter accusations of corruption and incompetence, raising the political temperature in a nation that is frequently at boiling point. Khan has repeatedly told supporters he was prepared to die for the country, and aides have long warned of unspecified threats made on his life. The attack drew international condemnation including from the United States, which had uneasy relations with Khan when he was in power. "Violence has no place in politics, and we call on all parties to refrain from violence, harassment and intimidation," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. sjd/fox/ecl/pbt/dhc
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  Ilhan Omar took the oath as the nation's first Somali-American lawmaker this week, just days after an 8,500-mile journey that retraced her path from her war-torn homeland to Kenya to the Minnesota Capitol.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Democrat said the trip gave her essential perspective as she embarks on her new career as a state representative.

"To walk the same streets I walked as a kid, as a refugee, to think about the other kids who now are adults raising kids in Somalia, who are still living in a refugee camp ... it's hard not to believe there's a bigger purpose," said Omar, 34.

Between her trip to Africa and a whirlwind of national TV appearances since her November election victory, Omar hasn't had a moment to decorate her new Capitol office. It's currently adorned only with two wooden Somali milk containers  one painted with the blue background and white star of the Somali flag.

Omar said she considers her election to be a "counter-narrative" to President-elect Donald Trump, who has proposed a temporary ban on allowing Muslim immigrants into the country. During his lone campaign stop in Minnesota, he said the state had suffered from the influx of refugees.

As a devout Muslim, a refugee and a mother of three, Omar says her politics are influenced by far more than her Somali heritage.

Omar and her family fled Somalia when she was just 8 as civil war tore apart their country, spending four years in a Mombasa, Kenya, camp with tens of thousands of other refugees. At age 12, the family finally got sponsored to move to the United States, eventually settling in Minnesota.

That story is familiar in Minneapolis, home to the largest population of Somalis outside of the country and a neighborhood dubbed "Little Mogadishu," where massive high-rise apartment buildings cast shadows over dozens of east African coffee shops, eateries and markets. More than 40,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, according to the latest census figures, wooed by generous social services and beckoned by the sense of community among the diaspora.

Story continues

But none of her neighbors had risen to the level Omar reached when she was sworn in on Tuesday.

"Oftentimes when people think about the second chance they may get in a new home, they don't think of all the doors being open for them," she said. "It is something they can all point to and say: 'Look at Ilhan,'" she said.

No stranger to politics after working for a city councilor and running campaigns, Omar never asked for permission to run; she said she's never felt she had to. She took on one of the Legislature's longest-serving members, a 44-year incumbent in the Democratic primary and won.

But it wasn't just fellow Somalis who powered her into her seat. While a third Democratic candidate, another Somali-American immigrant, overwhelmingly won the district's Somali-heavy neighborhoods, Omar also built up support among college students at the nearby University of Minnesota, young professionals, retirees and more.

Her November victory in the heavily liberal district was all but assured even before a Republican dropped from the race. Mohamud Noor, a local nonprofit director whom Omar defeated in the primary, said her victory gives Omar a greater responsibility than the average lawmaker, both as a liaison for issues affecting the immigrant community and as a symbol for them.

"She is the reassurance that there is inspiration, there is hope," Noor said. "The divisiveness, the hate  that dissipates because of her being at that level."

But Omar will face the political reality of power in Minnesota's Legislature, where Republicans are in control. Her legislative wish list goes well beyond the issues impacting her community, from streamlining some business regulations to restoring voting rights for released felons and police reforms in the wake of the tide of officer-involved shootings.

Still, Omar said she understands the historic significance of her election  as does her eldest daughter.

"She thinks about the kinds of history she can make," she said.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  A former rebel leader who is wanted on U.S. drug charges, and was recently elected to the Haitian Senate, was arrested Thursday as he appeared on a live radio talk show.

Guy Philippe was being interviewed on the show with another recently elected lawmaker when the host abruptly announced that police were outside the studio in the Petionville district of the capital to arrest him. The host came back on air and said authorities had taken him away.

Radio host Gary-Pierre Paul Charles later told The Associated Press the police were members of the Haitian anti-drug unit and fired shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.

"It was shocking. People were running everywhere," he told the AP.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which barely missed capturing him in a 2007 raid, had no immediate comment on the arrest.

Philippe's lawyer, Reynold Georges, said in a late Thursday interview on Vision 2000 radio that the former rebel leader been taken to the airport and he urged senators to go there to prevent his extradition.

"We can't let this happen," Georges said.

A photo being circulated on social media in Haiti appeared to show Philippe in a white dress shirt being led out of the studio by police. Another image showed him apparently handcuffed in a room while police in camouflage uniforms stood guard with assault rifles.

Miami attorney Richard Dansoh, who said he had worked for Philippe in the past and had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate his surrender several years ago, said he expects the former rebel leader will soon be transported to Florida out of concern about how Haitians might react to the arrest of a senator.

"They don't want to keep him in Haiti because there might be riots," Dansoh said.

At the heavily guarded police station near the airport where Philippe had been taken after his arrest, about 30 demonstrators gathered in the evening saying he should be released.

Story continues

"Our country has no respect for people who are elected," said one of the men, Jean-Marc Denis, who said he was from the same southern province as the former rebel leader.

In the southern Haitian city of Jeremie, about 200 protesters, many carrying photos of Philippe, also called for his release, threatening to set fires if he remained in custody.

Philippe, who has a wife and two children in the U.S., recently won election to the Senate representing a district in southern Haiti but had not yet been sworn into office.

He is wanted on drug-trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. The indictment charging him is sealed and federal prosecutors have declined to discuss it. In Haiti, he is a divisive figure who was one of the leaders of a violent 2004 rebellion that led to the ouster for then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Philippe has spent most of his time in recent years in a remote, mountainous part of southern Haiti, where he had extensive family and business connections and it would have been difficult for authorities to locate and arrest him. Still, he would frequently appear in public and gave an extensive interview to the AP for an August 2016 profile.

In that interview, he insisted that he is innocent of any crimes, blaming the accusations on enemies trying to silence him. "The path I chose, the way I chose, is not easy. But I chose it and I'm willing to die for it," he said at the time.

In 2000, he was police chief of the northern city of Cap-Haitien, the country's second largest city, when he fled to the neighboring Dominican Republic after accusations he was plotting a coup. While in exile, he was accused of masterminding attacks on Haitian police stations and other targets.

He returned in 2004 to join the uprising against Aristide, taking over a band of rebels that captured Cap-Haitien. Aristide left the country aboard a U.S.-supplied jet before Philippe's rebels reached the capital.

After rolling triumphantly into Port-au-Prince, Philippe proclaimed himself "military chief." But he gave up his arms as a U.N. stabilization force geared up.

He ran for president in 2006, finishing a distant ninth. A year later, heavily armed U.S. and Haitian anti-drug agents raided his home in Les Cayes but found only his family and a maid.

_____

Associated Press journalists Ben Fox in Miami and Dieu Nalio Chery in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.
Max Palmer, Aaron Loreth, Cyrus Bennett and Jackson Winner hit the road for a mission from Mexico to New York in Roadtrip, a slice of evocative Americana from Johnny Wilson. The skating itself is spot on, the terrain captures the essence of small town USA and the road trip vibe is strong  watch it, watch it again then book some time off work

The Cirencester Skatepark Scratch and Skate Jam 2018, organised by Decimal Skateshop, can now be seen courtesy of James Harris' lens.

Power moves from Bromley here as Blast Skates welcomes Joe Howard to the team with two minutes of RWTB assisted DIY quarterpipe shredding.

Here are our favourite shots from the #CanonFirsts competition, including the two winners

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Moving your business to the cloud can make it and you more efficient. It also can help you connect and collaborate with others who arent necessarily right next to you.

Actually, there are plenty of benefits when moving your business to the cloud.

Of course, if it were so easy and without worry, youd figure that every small business would be doing it by now. But thats not the case. So obviously there is still some hesitancy on the part of some small business owners to trust their data and their business operations to cloud computing.

But why?

This week were asking the question, why are you waiting to move your business to the cloud? Is it a matter of time or is it just a matter of being unsure whats involved? Are your concerns based on security issues? Or is it something else?

Let us know in the poll below and feel free to provide more details if you wish in the Comments section.

What is the biggest obstacle to moving your business to the cloud? I'm overwhelmed by the logistics of moving all my data. (33%, 137 Votes)

I'm concerned about the time/disruption required to make the move. (25%, 101 Votes)

I'm concerned about the possibility of having my data hacked/lost/compromised. (20%, 80 Votes)

I'm concerned that the costs will be prohibitive. (12%, 50 Votes)

Other (6%, 23 Votes)

I'm concerned about losing control of my data. (5%, 19 Votes) Total Voters: 410 See All Polls
For as much success as Airbnb has had, the home sharing startup has also faced its fair share of obstacles. And those obstacles are not going away anytime soon.

Now, city officials in Paris are blaming the company for declining populations in some of the citys neighborhoods. One official even called it a catastrophe.

And they might have a point. Since Paris is one of the top destinations for Airbnb, many residents have taken to renting out their homes or apartments for most of the year and then purchasing other residences elsewhere.

Airbnb likely isnt the only factor responsible for the drop in population. But even the perception could lead to more regulations for the company and its users. For example, the city could increase taxes on second homes in the city, which would make it more costly for people who want to rent those spaces using Airbnb or a similar service.

Be Ready for The Side Effects of Business Disruption

Obstacles like this are likely to be fairly common for disruptive startups like Airbnb. Since its completely changing how some people live and work, it can have some ancillary effects that werent exactly expected. But its important that that any disruptive business, large or small, be able to navigate the side effects of business disruption and come up with solutions as the need arises.
VR

Facebook Donating 500 Virtual Reality Kits to Arkansas Schools

Facebook is donating 500 virtual reality kits to Arkansas schools under a first-of-its-kind partnership between the social media company and the state, according to the Associated Press.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced the donation Thursday as part of the Arkansas Facebook and Techstart Partnership, which is aimed at generating interest in computer science careers and instruction among students. The kits will include computers, cameras and the Oculus Rift headsets needed for the VR program. The value of the donation is estimated at $1 million, according to news reports.

Under the agreement, the VR kits will be distributed to approximately 250 schools, educational co-ops and STEM education centers. The donations will primarily target high schools with a high percentage of low-income students.

Whenever (students) can touch the technology, can put it on and they can see the reality  the virtual reality  of what coding can do, thats going to inspire a lot of students to say this is a future that I want to be involved in, Hutchinson told reporters Thursday.
"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.

Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.
Valleys public colleges losing their sheen?

Public colleges in Kathmandu seem to be losing their sheen in recent years, with many of them struggling for survival in the wake of a sharp decline in number of students.
In this Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016 photo, Greek Cypriot Michalis Georgiades, left, and Turkish Cypriot Cumar Kamir sit and talk in the house in town of Morphou in the Turkish Cypriot breakaway northern part of the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Greek Cypriot Michalis Georgiades fled the home he grew up in just before Turkish troops seized the town of Morphou 42 years ago. Turkish Cypriot Cumar Kamir, himself displaced, has been living in that same house for almost as long. Georgiades says he wants his home back; Kamir says he'd gladly leave, as long as another home is built for him in his home town from which he also fled. A summit in Geneva on Jan. 2017 aiming at a deal reunifying ethnically split Cyprus could decide who gets what back. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

MORPHOU, Cyprus (AP)  A mud-brick house in northern Cyprus that symbolizes the island nation's decades of ethnic division is the foundation for Cumar Kamir and Michalis Georgiades' friendship.

It's the home Georgiades fled as a teenager more than four decades ago following the Turkish invasion that carved Cyprus along Greek and Turkish lines. Kamir, himself displaced by the population shifts, has lived there almost as long.

If the two men get their way, Georgiades may soon be residing again in the modest structure his grandfather built for a dowry in 1924. The Greek and Turkish leaders of Cyprus are holding reunification talks next week in Geneva, where they hope to resolve how many Cypriots would be eligible to reclaim lost property under an envisioned federation.

"We want to come back, if there's a solution that's fair," Georgiades, 60, a Greek Cypriot, says at his childhood home over sips of unfiltered coffee served by Kamir's wife. "I have very good memories here. There's a lot of joy whenever I visit. But at the same time, I feel sadness, as if I'm a stranger."

Turkish Cypriot Kamir, 63, was raised in southern Cyprus, but moved in the wake of the invasion triggered by a coup aimed at uniting Cyprus with Greece. When the island split into a breakaway Turkish north and a Greek south, Turkish Cypriot authorities gave abandoned Greek Cypriot homes to families like his.

Kamir says he bought Georgiades' home from another man, but would gladly hand it back and return to his hometown, if authorities rebuild the crumbling home he has on several acres there.

"Could I tell Michalis that this is my home?" Kamir says, sitting on a couch under a wall of family portraits.

Property has been at the core of 18 months of negotiations between Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci. The verdant town where Georgiades' grandfather once served as mayor, known by Greek Cypriots as Morphou and called Guzelyurt by Turkish Cypriots, will figure prominently in the summit.

Story continues

Anastasiades has said there can be no peace accord without Morphou's return to Greek Cypriot control in the federation's redrawn boundaries. He insists that giving back the densely populated town would go a long way in meeting the goal of allowing as many as 90,000 Greek Cypriots to repossess homes and property.

However, Turkish Cypriots want to minimize the number of their own who would have to relocate, many of whom  like Kamir  for the second time in their lives. There is also reluctance to hand over Morphou's prime agricultural real estate located relatively close to the capital of Nicosia without major trade-offs.

The connection between Kamir and Georgiades is curiously representative of the contradictions inherent in what for decades has been known as the "Cyprus problem." The two men of the same generation are acutely aware of the legacy of hardship that informs the present and genuine in their desire for peace, but at pains to articulate a solution that won't come at the other's expense.

Between Kamir and Georgiades, though, there are no hints of animosity.

They've built a rapport over the numerous visits Georgiades has made to his childhood home since crossing points opened in 2003 along the United Nations' controlled buffer zone that separates north and south Cyprus. Nonetheless, the awkwardness of a calcified situation that has forced people to plant roots in the homes and property belonging to others lingers in their conversations.

Georgiades, who relocated to Nicosia after the invasion, says he wants the family home in Morphou back for himself and his three children, but that any reunification deal shouldn't recycle the injustices of the past that uprooted people by force.

"If my friend Cumar is not fairly treated in a solution and if I'm unfairly treated, we'll have problems again," the film producer says.

Kamir, a carpenter by trade, says there's no alternative to reunification for Cyprus and that he's ready to do his part to support it even if it means leaving his home of 41 years and experiencing some inconvenience while the home he expects to reoccupy in southern Cyprus is rebuilt.

"I would wait a week in a tent until the home is finished and until they give it to me," he says.

But despite a wish for peace, some Turkish Cypriots are wary of giving up what they've built in the north over so many years.

Djelal Yousuf, who runs a coffee shop in Morphou, is among those who do not want to go back. He pulls out a bunch of yellowed deeds for property he owns in his village Kyvides in the south.

"Why should I go back? My house is ruined," Yousuf, 70, says in near-perfect Greek. "What am I going to do, rebuild? There's nothing left for me there."

Any peace accord that emerges from the Geneva summit would have to be approved by voters in both the Greek and Turkish communities. The two leaders already have agreed that a property commission would examine individual claims, but the details of how the commission would decide cases have yet to be worked out.

Property owners face multiple options and outcomes. They could get some or all of their land back, depending on whether there has been any development on it or not. They also could exchange their titles for other parcels or be compensated for its estimated value.

Back at the house Georgiades' grandfather built, only a rack of hooks remains of the contents Georgiades left as a boy.

At the end of the visit, Kamir invites Georgiades to pick as many lemons as he likes from a tree in the backyard. After all, the tree was planted by Georgiades' father more than six decades ago.

___ Ayse Wieting in Istanbul, Turkey contributed to this report.
By Mike Stone and Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Haley Barbour, former Republican Party leader and Mississippi governor, has been hired by the Ukrainian government to lobby U.S. politicians, according to documents filed this week. The hiring of Barbour and his lobbying firm BGR Group comes at a time when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's public embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased worries in Washington that the new administration may side with Russia in the Ukrainian dispute. Russia has increased its military presence in Ukraine since annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Barbour and BGR agreed in late December to a $50,000 a month retainer to "design and implement a comprehensive government affairs and business development strategy" for the Ukraine government - including "arranging meetings" with U.S. officials, according to a disclosure filed Jan. 1 with the Department of Justice. BGR also said in the federal disclosure filing that it "seeks to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations and encourage private U.S. businesses to invest in Ukraine." American firms that do business with foreign governments are required to file disclosures with the Department of Justice detailing the work they agree to undertake and the amount of payment. A BGR representative declined to elaborate on the specifics of the agreement. Barbour, who served as head of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997, co-founded BGR in 1991. He continued to build an expansive lobbying operation after his term as Mississippi governor from 2004 to 2012. Barbour considered running for president in 2012, but ultimately sat out the race. Barbour and BGR have also done work for other foreign governments, including Kurdistan, India, South Korea and Bangladesh. Barbour's corporate lobbying clients have included Airbus, Caterpillar, Chevron, Huntington Ingalls and Toyota Motor Corp. (Editing by Soyoung Kim and Andrew Hay)
By Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Disgruntled soldiers demanding salary increases and the payment of bonuses seized control of Ivory Coast's second-largest city, Bouake, on Friday, in an uprising that spread to at least two other cities. A statement from Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi read out on state television said a group of soldiers had used their weapons to force their way into the military headquarters in Bouake soon after midnight and then made their demands. Ivory Coast - French-speaking West Africa's largest economy - has emerged from a 2002-11 political crisis as one of the continent's rising economic stars. But its army, thrown together at the end of the conflict from a mixture of former rebel factions and government soldiers, remains an unruly force riddled with divisions. "We are going to talk with our men, listen to their preoccupations and find solutions to this situation," Donwahi said in a later evening statement, after an emergency meeting with other members of the National Security Council, including President Alassane Ouattara and top military officers. Donwahi said the revolt was "understandable but deplorable for the image of the country and for the work the president has done since the end of the crisis." Heavy gunfire was heard from around 2 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) in the city of around a half million inhabitants, but later died down. Shooting also broke out at a base in Daloa, the main trading hub in the western cocoa belt, and residents said soldiers, some of them masked, were patrolling the streets in 4x4s. FORMER REBELS Residents of the northern city of Korhogo reported hearing sporadic gunfire in the afternoon as military sources said some soldiers there had also joined the uprising. Donwahi said the towns of Odienne and Daoukro had also been affected by the mutiny, but said the situation was now calm. Bouake was the seat of a rebellion that controlled the northern half of the country from 2002, until Ivory Coast was reunited following a civil war in 2011. Most of those involved in the mutiny appeared to be former rebels who were integrated into the army. Bema Fofana, a member of parliament representing Bouake who spoke to several of the soldiers, said they were demanding 5 million CFA francs ($8,000) each, as well as a house. Ivory Coast is the world's leading cocoa producer, and prices rose as the unrest prompted a wave of buying. Footage obtained by Reuters showed a pick-up truck laden with soldiers racing through empty Bouake streets. Ami Soro, a teacher living in Bouake, said men in balaclavas were patrolling the city on motorcycles or in cars. A helicopter, which residents said was from Ivory Coast's U.N. peacekeeping mission, buzzed overhead. A Reuters journalist saw some 20 U.N. military vehicles heading toward Bouake from 15 km (9 miles) to the south. During a similar uprising in 2014, when hundreds of soldiers barricaded roads in cities across Ivory Coast demanding back pay, the government agreed a financial settlement. That may have emboldened them to try it again. "If you don't really sort out the real problems and open the door to this kind of behavior, what can you expect?" said Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa project director for International Crisis Group. "You can expect it to happen again." While paying the soldiers off again could worsen the problem in the long run, military action to force them out is made tricky by the presence of rival factions and parallel chains of command within the army. "The only guys they could count on to send in are the Republican Guard or special forces," said a diplomat based in the region. "But the Republican Guard protects the president, and the special forces - there simply aren't enough of them." ($1 = 622.78 CFA francs) (Additional reporting and writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Tim Cocks and Lisa Shumaker)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel said on Friday it would cut $6 million in funding to the United Nations in 2017 in protest against a U.N. Security Council resolution that demanded an end to Israeli settlement building on land Palestinians want for an independent state. The United States abstained from the Dec. 23 vote, allowing the 15-member Security Council to adopt the resolution with 14 votes in favor. Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump had called for Washington to wield its veto. Israel's mission to the United Nations said funding would be cut to U.N. bodies it described as "anti-Israel," including the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights. "It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us at the U.N.," Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement. "The U.N. must end the absurd reality in which it supports bodies whose sole intent is to spread incitement and anti-Israel propaganda." The Israeli mission said it would move ahead with further initiatives aimed at ending anti-Israel activities at the United Nations after Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. Most countries and the United Nations view Israeli West Bank settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace. Israel disputes that settlements are illegal and says their final status should be determined in any future talks on Palestinian statehood. The last round of U.S.-led peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed in 2014. The Security Council last adopted a resolution critical of settlements in 1979, with the United States also abstaining. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Diane Craft)
By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said on Friday his country had retaliated against neighbouring Serbia and would do so again after an ex-prime minister was arrested in France on a warrant issued by Belgrade. The arrest on Wednesday of Ramush Haradinaj, a guerrilla commander in the 1998-99 war against Serbian rule who served briefly as prime minister in 2004 and 2005, has heightened tensions between the Balkan neighbours. Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 2008. Both states want to join the European Union membership but Brussels says they must normalise relations before their applications can go ahead. Kosovo opposition parties have called for their EU-mediated dialogue to be halted. "Yesterday we took reciprocal measures with Nikolic (and) we will do that again in the future," Hoxhaj told reporters in Pristina. "There has to be a revision of our relations with Serbia and a revision of the dialogue." Also on Friday, ethnic Albanian protesters in the western town of Gjakova - mostly families of those killed by Serb forces during the 1998-99 conflict - stoned a bus that was carrying ethnic Serb pilgrims marking Orthodox Christmas Eve. Hoxhaj said Serbia had issued more international arrest warrants for Kosovo citizens, limiting their travel abroad. Serbia does not recognise Kosovo as an independent state and together with its ally Russia is blocking Pristina's efforts to join the United Nations and other international institutions. Haradinaj, who appeared before a French court on Thursday, will remain in prison until Serbia makes a formal extradition order, which will then be examined by the court. Serbia has charged Haradinaj with murdering Serbs in the late 1990s war. That conflict ended after NATO bombed Serbia for 11 weeks to compel it to withdraw forces that had killed some 10,000 members of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority in counter-insurgency operations. Thousands of Haradinaj's party supporters gathered in front of the French embassy in Pristina on Friday holding US and Albanian flags under heavy snow. "Do not offend Kosovo" one banner read. (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Ivana Sekularac and Tom Heneghan)
By Pedro Fonseca and Brad Brooks RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Jailed members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang killed 31 inmates at a penitentiary on Friday, decapitating and cutting out the hearts of most of them, in revenge for a separate prison massacre that left 56 dead this week. The bloodletting in the Monte Cristo prison in the Amazonian state of Roraima, carried out by members of the First Capital Command (PCC) gang, sparked fears that months of violence between criminal groups controlling Brazil's prisons had spiralled out of control. The PCC itself was targeted on Sunday in neighbouring Amazonas state in Brazil's worst prison slaughter in more than two decades. In a cellphone video that circulated widely on social media, self-described PCC members are seen hacking away at bodies littering an outdoor patio inside the prison. "You killed our brothers, didn't you? Look here, look what is going to happen you! This is revenge for what you did to our brothers," a PCC member is heard saying on the video as dozens of bodies lie in thick pools of blood. One victim, bare-chested and wearing sky-blue surfer shorts, began to move on the ground. The inmate taking the video calls out to fellow gang members "We've got a live one!" before another gang member rushes over and cuts off the victim's head with a white-handled barbecue knife. State officials said the riot in Roraima's largest prison was brought under control by elite police forces. Earlier, authorities put the death toll at 33 but by Friday evening lowered that figure to 31 dead. Violence between rival drug gangs at the same jail had already led to 10 deaths in October. Roraima's top security official Uziel de Castro blamed Friday's violence at the state-run prison on the PCC. He later added that it was believed most of the inmates killed Friday were not members of the group responsible for this week's attack on the PCC in Amazonas and indeed had no gang affiliations. Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes insisted that the government had control over Brazil's prison system - the fourth largest in world and home to more than 620,000 inmates. Security experts had predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled penitentiaries in the wake of Monday's massacre. "It's getting really ugly. This situation is clearly snowballing and there is nothing the government can do to stop the violence in the short term," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Sao Paulo. "We are paying the price for 50 years of total neglect of the penitentiary system." UNEASY ALLIANCE In Monday's uprising, PCC members were attacked by the North Family drug faction, which controls the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas, according to officials. North Family is believed to dominate cocaine traffic in Amazonas from Colombia and Peru, according to authorities. The group is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after PCC. For more than two decades, PCC and Red Command maintained an uneasy alliance, ensuring that a steady flow of drugs and guns flowed across Brazil's long jungle border. But about six months ago PCC and Red Command split, as PCC moved to take control of lucrative drug routes across the border with Paraguay and become Brazil's dominant gang. Experts say PCC also has been moving to infiltrate areas in Red Command's home base of Rio de Janeiro, further stoking a turf war that threatens to spill onto the streets of Brazil's biggest cities. Since the split, Red Command has allied itself with smaller regional gangs to confront PCC, primarily in the north and northeast of Brazil, where prison violence boiled over this week. Alcadipani, the public security expert, said Brazil's penitentiary system has been "self-regulated" by the gangs and that mass killings were rare until recent months because of a truce between the country's biggest criminal factions. "But we see that as soon as we have a gang war, these killings are inevitably going to happen because the state has no control over the prisons," said Alcadipani. (Reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Brad Brooks and Alexandre Caverni in Sao Paulo, and Alonso Soto in Brasilia; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown)
Wont let amendment bill pass under no circumstances: Oli

CPN-UML Chairman KP Oli has claimed that the constitution amendment bill should not be allowed to pass under any circumstances.
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that abrupt rejection of the Iran nuclear deal by the incoming Trump administration could create "a crisis" and that he did not expect such an approach. "To tear it up on the front end, in my opinion, is not going to happen. Instead, we will begin to radically enforce it," Senator Bob Corker told reporters on Friday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. He said he expected strong enforcement of the international agreement, announced in July 2015, in which Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. Concern about the Iran deal under Trump, who at times has pledged to pull Washington out of it, has led to worries that Tehran would be unable to attract foreign investment and that its economy could collapse. "To me the prudent course of action is to make sure you enforce it, that you hold the UN Security Council accountable," Corker said. "And in the event the agreement falls apart, it's someone else that is causing it to fall apart, not a president coming in on day one and ripping up the agreement." Every Republican in the U.S. Congress, including Corker, objected to the nuclear pact, signed by the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, Germany and Iran. Dozens of Democrats also objected, but there was too much support for it to prevent its implementation last January. At times on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to scrap the agreement, although he said at other times he would seek a better deal. The Obama administration and other supporters of the nuclear pact said Washington's backing out would upset the U.S. partners that also signed and risk destabilization by allowing Iran to resume its nuclear development. Corker said Washington had a choice, to strictly enforce the deal or come in and tear it up. "And you can create a crisis on the front-end by doing so," he said. Corker advocated a wait-and-see approach. "In spite of all the flaws in the agreement, nothing bad is going to happen relative to nuclear development in Iran over the next few years. It's just not," he said. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Steve Orlofksy)
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - The leader of a 2004 coup that toppled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and who had been wanted for more than a decade by U.S. authorities, was charged on Friday in the United States with engaging in drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies. Guy Philippe, 48, faces a three-count indictment including conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, conspiring to launder money, and engaging in monetary transactions stemming from unlawful activity, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Philippe was ordered held without bond at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber in Miami, the Justice Department said. The hearing came one day after Philippe was arrested in Haiti and extradited to the United States. An arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 13. The indictment dates from November 2005, and was made public on Friday. "The indictment speaks for itself," Richard Dansoh, a lawyer for Philippe, said in a phone interview. "Be that as it may, there are some jurisdictional hurdles that we have to cross." As to the accusations against Philippe, Dansoh said: "Clearly, he's not guilty." Philippe's arrest came four days before he had been expected to join Haiti's parliament as a senator, following his Nov. 20 election from the country's southwestern Grand Anse region. The defendant was arrested after he had given a radio interview in Petionville, near the capital of Port-au-Prince. He was then taken to a police station, where U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents were waiting. According to the indictment, Philippe conspired with others from 1997 to March 2001 to import more than five kilograms (11 lbs) of cocaine into the United States, and from June 1999 to April 2003 to launder money to conceal illegal activity. Philippe was also accused of having in late 2000 transferred a $112,000 check that included sums from drug trafficking, the Justice Department said. Joris Mergelus, head of Haiti's anti-drug unit, said Philippe was arrested after an international drug trafficking warrant. The case is U.S. v. Philippe, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, No. 05-20874. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
A lot can happen in 10 years.

And it can pass quickly.

This is what Adam R. Burnett is experiencing as Buran Theatre celebrates its first decade of existence.

Whats great about this company is that its grown in an organic way, he says. Thats been one of the best things for our growth.

Founded at the University of Kansas in 2007, Buran Theatre expanded to a network of satellite cities in 2008, and further expanded in 2009 with the inclusion of Albuquerque.

The satellite cities now include New York City, Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Kansas City, Kan.

Burnett will kick off its season with Some Are Isthmuses: A Decade of Buran Theatre on Jan. 13-14.

The dual evening celebration will feature an artisan dinner, prepared by Buran Theatres artistic director/chef Adam R. Burnett, and a retrospective of theater productions from the past decade and newly devised material responding to current affairs.

We usually focus on one big project a year, he says. In the coming weeks, the company members will meet in Albuquerque and develop the a new piece. Its going to be a lot of work to get this off the ground in less than two weeks.

Some Are Isthmuses will feature local company members Burnett, Donna Jewell, Marya Jones, Elsa Menendez, Casey Mraz, and lisa nevada, alongside company members from New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Lawrence, Kan.

The Jan. 13 retrospective performance will feature a collage of past works, including selections from 2009s Money Buckets!, 2010s TheHouse of Fitzcarraldo, 2013s Nightmares: A Demonstration of the Sublime, 2014s Magic Bullets, 2015s Mammoth and 2016s Poshlost Saudades!

The Jan. 14 performance will feature devised material created in the days before the performance responding to the most current affairs.

Proceeds from the event will support Buran Theatres 2017 season and the premiere of a new work in Albuquerque in 2018.

Tickets are $32 for each evening or $50 for both, which includes dinner and the performance. Non-dinner tickets are $18. The Jan. 13 menu includes a vegetarian banh mi Cuban sandwich served with sweet potato fries, and the Jan. 14 menu includes vegetarian green chile stew served with artisan pasta salad.
Math class is tough!  Famously controversial comment uttered by Teen Talk Barbie, 1992.

Raise a glass of holiday cheer to Hidden Figures, the Rocky of math movies.

You might just find yourself applauding during certain moments of dramatic triumph in Theodore Melfis unabashedly sentimental and wonderfully inspirational film, and yes, some of those moments feature people working out high-level math problems.

Not just any people, but some key figures  and yes, some hidden figures  in NASAs heroic effort to win the space race against the Russians in the 1960s.

Based on the nonfiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures shines a deserving spotlight on three black female mathematicians working for NASA in the computer division at the Langley Research Center.

Octavia Spencer is Dorothy Vaughan, who does the work of a group supervisor but is thwarted in her efforts to get the title, the pay and the recognition of a supervisor. Her smug and condescending boss (Kirsten Dunst) clearly believes an African-American woman shouldnt be elevated to equal status.

Janelle Monae is Mary Jackson, an aerospace engineer who literally has to take her case to court so shell be allowed to take night classes to pursue an advanced degree. Spencer and Monae deliver beautiful, strong, immensely effective, nomination-worthy supporting performances.

And Taraji P. Hensons Katherine Johnson is at the front and center of the story, as the lone African-American woman working in the vital Space Task Group, the NASA engineers charged with mapping out Americas manned spaceflight programs.

Playing a character about as far away from Empires Cookie as the acting spectrum will allow, Henson delivers the performance of a lifetime. She disappears into the persona of the bespectacled, nerdy, determined, confident, pioneering Katherine, who has to fight to have her ideas heard, has to fight to even get a seat in the room where all the key decisions are made, and even has to fight for the right not to have to run halfway across Langley every time she has to go to the bathroom because the ladies room in her building is for whites only.

Co-writer and director Melfi (who directed the equally sentimental and quite terrific Bill Murray vehicle St. Vincent a couple of years ago) announces the borderline corny tone of Hidden Figures from the get-go, with Mary, Dorothy and Katherine stranded after their car breaks down.

A squad car with lights flashing pulls up, and a white state trooper approaches the ladies and asks for identification. When Katherine shows him her NASA badge, the officer exclaims, NASA! I had no idea.

There are quite a few women working in the space program, Dorothy says.

After the car is fixed  Dorothy susses out the problem  the trooper gives the ladies an escort, and Mary quips, Three Negro women are chasing a white police officer down the highway in 1961. That is a God-ordained miracle.

We get a number of scenes with a similar vibe in Hidden Figures, with the women dealing with long-standing stereotypes and subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) racism. Most of the white characters in the film are basically good people who come to see the light about their prejudices.

Kevin Costner has the Kevin Costner role as Al Harrison (a composite character), the crusty head of the Space Task Group, who goes about his business like Vince Lombardi  barking at his team, telling them theyre losing to the blasted Russians and they better get with it. Glen Powell is John Glenn, who doesnt care about gender or color; he just wants the smartest people available to calculate his path, because hes the one going up in that capsule.

Mahershala Ali is his usual welcome presence as Jim Johnson, the military man courting Katherine (and her children). Katherines so focused on her career she almost has to be reminded shes falling in love.

But mostly and most memorably, Hidden Figures is about Katherine, Dorothy and Mary, three remarkable and groundbreaking American heroes.

Henson, Spencer and Monae are all so good. Each has her individual moments, and theyre wonderful together, even when we get cliched scenes such as the obligatory everybody dances in the living room routine.

Katherines glasses dont hide the unwavering look of determination in her eyes. Dorothy knows exactly how and when to play her trump cards to get what is rightfully hers. Marys speech to a Virginia judge in which she appeals to his ego so hell rule in favor of her breaking the color barrier in night school is a pure applause-inducing moment.

Junior high and high school classes across the country should take field trips to see this movie.
WASHINGTON  The countrys top intelligence official testified to Congress on Thursday that Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign went well beyond hacking to include disinformation and the dissemination of fake news  an effort, he said, that continues.

Whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it, said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr., testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on foreign cybersecurity threats, especially Russian hacking and interference in the election.

The hearing brought one of the most contentious post-election issues directly to Capitol Hill and to a national audience. Predictable partisan political lines were drawn. Most Republicans seemed disinclined to address head-on the intelligence communitys allegations of Russian hacking and used the hearing to criticize President Barack Obamas handling of the cyberattacks.

But Democrats and the leading Republicans on the committee  Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,  eagerly questioned intelligence officials about Russian interference in the election and seemed ready to embrace their conclusions about the Kremlins motives.

Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about the intelligence communitys conclusion that Russia interfered to help him win the White House.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on Thursday took a swipe at Trump. Who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community? she said, adding, Who actually is the benefactor?

Clapper replied that there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers, to include policymaker number one, should always have for intelligence, but I think there is a difference between skepticism and disparagement.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr., a veteran of four presidential administrations, resigned Thursday from Trumps transition team because of growing tensions over Trumps vision for intelligence agencies.

Woolseys resignation as a Trump senior adviser comes amid frustrations over the incoming administrations national security plans and Trumps public comments undermining the intelligence community.

Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Advisor to President-Elect Trump or the Transition, Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for Woolsey, said in a statement. He wishes the President-Elect and his Administration great success in their time in office.

People close to Woolsey said that he had been excluded in recent weeks from discussions on intelligence matters with Trump and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the incoming White House national security adviser. They said Woolsey had grown increasingly uncomfortable lending his name and credibility to the transition team without being consulted. Woolsey was taken aback by this weeks reports that Trump is considering revamping the countrys intelligence framework, said these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly.

At the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and others cast doubt on the idea that Russia would want to help Trump.

Donald Trump has proposed to increase our defense budget, to accelerate nuclear modernization, to accelerate ballistic missile defenses, and to expand and accelerate oil and gas production, which would obviously harm Russias economy, Cotton said. Hillary Clinton opposed or at least was not as enthusiastic about all those measures.

But McCain and Graham, two longtime national security hawks, were adamant that more needs to be done to punish and deter Russia.

In the most dramatic portion of the hearing, Graham asked Clapper whether he was ready to be challenged by Trump, and Clapper said he was. Graham also advised Trump, Mr. President-elect, when you listen to these people, you can be skeptical, but understand theyre the best among us and theyre trying to protect us.

Graham criticized Obamas response to the election-year interference, which included imposing economic sanctions on top Russian spy agencies and officials and expelling 35 Russian intelligence operatives.

What Obama did was throw a pebble, he said. Im ready to throw a rock.

Graham did not specify what form of punishment he would like to see, though he and McCain, the Armed Services Committees chairman, have said in recent days that they want to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.

At the hearing, Clapper said the intelligence community stands more resolutely than ever behind its assessment  first publicly announced on Oct. 7  officially accusing the Kremlins senior-most officials of orchestrating a campaign of interference in the 2016 election.

More details on Moscows array of influence operations will be included in a report briefed to Congress next week, Clapper said. A declassified version will be made public.

Clapper noted that while much of the public focus over the past six months has been on Russian hacking of Democratic Party organizations, the Russian campaign of fake news, often promoted on social media, should not be overlooked. He pointed to Russia Today, also known as RT, a Russian-government-funded international television network that Clapper said is pushing a point of view disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights. Whether it was RT, use of social media, fake news, he said, they exercised all of those capabilities in addition to the hacking.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who was Clintons running mate, said he was the subject of several fake news stories. The mainstream media ignored them, he said, but one of the stories was shared 800,000 times. Some originated within the United States.

He then took a jab at Trumps pick for national security adviser, Flynn, a former military intelligence officer who has drawn criticism from some former colleagues for his strident support of Trump. Without mentioning Flynns name, Kaine alluded to Flynn sharing on Twitter a baseless story claiming that members of Clintons campaign were engaged in a child prostitution ring. Flynn, who has not responded to questions about the story, has since deleted the tweet. Still, Kaine decried an administration that has put in place as the proposed national security adviser someone who traffics in these fake news stories and retweets them and shares them . . . stories that most fourth-graders would find incredible.

Clapper said that to counter Russian propaganda, the United States should undertake a more aggressive counter-propaganda effort, something akin to a beefed-up U.S. Information Agency, which was dissolved in 1999.

Asked why that has not yet happened, National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers, who also testified Thursday, said, I dont think weve come yet to a full recognition of the idea that were going to have to try to do something fundamentally different.

Added Rogers, who is also head of U.S. Cyber Command, I think we still continue to try to do some of the same traditional things weve done, and expecting to do the same thing over and over again yet achieve a different result.

Earlier this week, Trump praised Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, the transparency group that has been criticized by the Obama administration for damaging national security leaks. Trump has indicated that he believes Assanges comments that Russia is not behind the Democratic Party hacks, placing him at odds with the intelligence establishment. Trump on Thursday, though, said his comments on Assange had been misunderstood.

When asked by McCain whether any credibility should be attached to Assanges comments, Clapper responded, Not in my view.

He later added, I dont think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him.

McCain, who has been critical of the Obama administrations responses to cyber-provocations by foreign nations such as China and Russia, pressed Clapper on whether the campaign meddling was an attack on the United States and an act of war.

We have no way of gauging the impact  certainly the intelligence community cant gauge the impact  it had on choices the electorate made, Clapper replied.

Determining whether an action is an act of war is a very heavy policy call that I dont believe the intelligence community should make, but it certainly would carry, in my view, great gravity, Clapper said.

  

The Washington Posts Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.
New Mexicos burgeoning biotechnology industry could blossom into a major force for economic development if the states public and private sectors work together to build it.

That was the central message at a University of New Mexico forum Thursday organized by founders of the states new GrowBio initiative, which launched in December to unite government officials, research organizations and business leaders around policies and incentives to accelerate industry growth. About 150 people attended the forum, where Dr. Richard Larson, executive chancellor at the UNM Health Sciences Center, laid out some critical steps needed to move forward.

First and foremost is creation of an umbrella entity, or industry cluster, that can spearhead pro-industry initiatives and programs, Larson told forum participants.

We need a central, statewide bioscience authority, or center, with public and private participation to oversee all activity, Larson said. All states that have succeeded in building their biotechnology industries have done that.

The entity would provide networking opportunities among industry players, support services, information, resources and possibly co-location centers for public and private organizations. It would also coordinate efforts to create incentives and policies needed to build the industry.

The new entity is a central recommendation in a comprehensive report GrowBio released in December analyzing the current state of New Mexicos life sciences industry and ways to grow it. Other recommendations include efforts to increase access to capital for biotechnology startups, workforce development initiatives, targeted tax incentives, government policies to streamline permitting and regulation, and efforts to strengthen technology transfer programs.

We need targeted tax incentives, co-investment and seed funding, Larson said.

A bottom-up review of government regulations is also critical to better inform investors about requirements for doing business in the state, he said. But most important is closer collaboration by state and local governments with New Mexicos research institutions, private businesses and organizations.

It takes a public-private partnership to make this work, Larson said.

Others stressed the need for businesspeople to take a leading role.

This is all about economic development, and we need people from the private sector to lead it, said Stuart Rose, an industry veteran and founder of the Bioscience Center in Uptown Albuquerque who spoke on a panel following Larsons presentation. We havent really had the private sector step up to lead things. If it does, we have the potential to make a dramatic change in our state economy.

New Mexico State University Vice President and Provost Daniel Howard, another panelist, said new investments and incentives will reinforce the industry foundations already in place in New Mexico.

Weve already invested a lot, Howard said. Significant research is being done here. We need to build on our fundamental strengths.
Every country suffers from corruption, but not every country is a kleptocracy. Kleptocracy, or rule by thieves, arises when a countrys elite begin to systematically steal from public funds on a vast scale. They do so by undermining democracy and the legal system, gaining control over vital economic assets (usually the banking and natural-resource sectors), and ultimately amassing unimaginable wealth. As political science professor Karen Dawisha recently put it, kleptocrats manage to nationalize risk while privatizing profits. Examples are as diverse as Russias oligarchs under President Vladimir Putin, Chinas sprawling Communist Party and South Sudans violently failed state. Could the United States join these ranks? To answer that question, we need to dispel some common myths.

Myth No. 1

Kleptocracies exist mostly in the developing world.

The word kleptocracy often conjures Cold War imagery of despotic tyrants in poor, faraway places. And it is true that many of the worlds most corrupt countries are in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

But a kleptocracy is no longer a corrupt political system in a few poor nations: It is a sophisticated global network whose members include world leaders and powerful business people. Kleptocrats send money around the world with the click of a button, aided by unscrupulous professionals with the expertise to launder it through anonymous offshore companies and secure it in luxury assets in the West. According to the International Monetary Fund, as much as 5 percent of the worlds gross domestic product is laundered money, and only 1 percent of it is ever spotted. Illicit cross-border financial flows have been estimated at $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion per year. A 2012 study put the total private wealth held offshore at up to $32 trillion and suggested that, since the 1970s, elites from 139 low-to-middle-income countries had parked as much as $9.3 trillion in offshore accounts.

Some of the money is hidden right here. As the driving force behind global economic reform for the past three decades, the United States has played an important role in the rise of the globalized kleptocrat. America has become one of the leading secrecy jurisdictions. Delaware, South Dakota, Wyoming and other states do not require disclosure of corporate ownership, meaning that kleptocrats arent parking their assets just in exotic locations like the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands anymore.

U.S. real estate then provides an attractive conduit for securing and legitimizing the laundered funds. A New York Times investigation revealed that, of the properties purchased for more than $5 million in Manhattan in 2014, more than half were bought by anonymous companies that disguised the buyers identities.

  

Myth No. 2

Kleptocracies are strong.

Today, some of the most powerful countries in the world are kleptocracies. Russia, for example, currently seems to be dictating global affairs. China, another classic, is the second-largest economy in the world.

Kleptocracy doesnt necessarily make governments weak. But the skewed priorities of greedy autocratic rulers and the looting of resources that should be used for public services mean that the countries are much weaker than they should be. Russia, for instance, cant afford to honor its obligations to impoverished pensioners, but there is apparently plenty of money available for Putins former judo partner to build a bridge to occupied Crimea and for a new Kremlin propaganda channel in France.

A 2016 report showed that developing countries collectively had lost $16.3 trillion to illicit leakages since 1980. While their people struggled, starved and died, exported corruption effectively made these governments net creditors to the world economy. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that people begin to see government as a criminal racket instead of a legitimate provider of public services. In extreme cases where elites have given up any pretense of government, this includes security: It is no coincidence that the worlds most corrupt countries are also the most internally divided and violent. In the long run, then, kleptocracy doesnt just weaken governments. It destroys them.

  

Myth No. 3

The United States is already a kleptocracy.

Were living in a kleptocracy, Salon claimed in 2015. America robs from its poor  while its infrastructure crumbles. Its not the only one who thinks so. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 75 percent of Americans believed corruption to be widespread in their government, a sentiment Donald Trump capitalized on with his promise to drain the swamp.

Few would argue that corruption doesnt exist in the United States, but fewer seriously believe that it is the sole purpose of their government. Unlike the average Russian, Americans havent watched their presidents friends loot 5 percent of GDP in the past decade. Unlike one-quarter of Ukrainians, the average American hasnt had to pay a bribe to get officials to do their jobs. And unlike the Chinese, Americans dont feel impelled to send trillions of dollars overseas illegally.

The United States has strong constitutional safeguards that guarantee democratic participation, free speech and, most important, rule of law. Prosecutors wield a robust set of mechanisms to address official corruption when it does occur. The United States is far from perfect, but despite the uproar on alternative and social media, it is not a kleptocracy.

  

Myth No. 4

American institutions will shield us from kleptocracy.

In the wake of Trumps election, major news outlets ran pieces on what U.S. institutions could do to protect the country from collapse. Vox told readers, Its now on Americas institutions  and the Republican Party  to check Donald Trump. Slate argued that professional bureaucrats could slow Trumps progress. Writing in the New York Times, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt reassured that no democracy as rich or as established as Americas ever has collapsed (though they said theres reason to worry).

Unfortunately, key political, financial and cultural institutions have yet to be firewalled against new methods of interference and infiltration by bad actors. In Washington, well-remunerated K Street firms exploit weaknesses in foreign-lobbying laws to advance the interests of violent kleptocracies on Capitol Hill (the Kremlin is currently hiring for $30 million to $50 million per year). In the financial world, major U.S. banks are routinely implicated in money laundering scandals and fined huge sums. Even Hollywood is not immune: The Wolf of Wall Street was allegedly produced partly with cash stolen from Malaysias 1MDB development fund.

We are making some progress. The Justice Departments Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative has frozen $2.8 billion in 28 cases since 2010. In July, the Treasury Department announced geographic targeting orders that make it impossible to complete anonymous all-cash purchases of high-value real estate in New York, Miami and four other key jurisdictions. And through the Magnitsky Act and other sanctions regimes, the U.S. government has made life so difficult for some kleptocrats that relief is consistently cited as a major Kremlin priority. At the moment, the United States is simultaneously the worlds leading enabler and opponent of kleptocracy.

  

Myth No. 5

Donald Trump is setting himself up to rule as a kleptocrat.

Alarm bells on this subject began ringing soon after Trump was elected. The Washington Posts Plum Line blog warned of the coming Trump kleptocracy. New York magazine wrote that Trumps kleptocracy is so astounding it already feels like old news.

There are reasons for concern. Trumps personality-based populism, his refusal to release his tax returns or place his assets in a blind trust, the prominent roles played by his family during the transition, financial ties between some members of his inner circle and Russia, and his own stance toward the Kremlin have all raised questions about how he intends to conduct himself in office. On the other hand, Trump campaigned on the principle that his enormous personal wealth would insulate him from financial temptations, which made sense to the millions of Americans who voted for him to drain the swamp.

Ultimately, only Trump knows what his plans for the highest office are. But U.S. constitutional safeguards and institutions are significantly more robust than those in countries where corruption has taken over. If Trump really wants to establish a kleptocracy, there are easier countries to do it in.

  

Duffy and Sibley are researchers at Hudson Institutes Kleptocracy Initiative.
Immigration activists plan to protest potential policy changes under President-Elect Donald Trump during a Day of Action next week that will feature rallies and marches in the District of Columbia and about 20 states.

Organizers said the Jan. 14 action is meant to build momentum in their fight to stop Trump from fulfilling campaign promises to pursue mass deportations and other initiatives.

This is a new world and we are getting ready for the fight of our lives, Kica Matos, an immigrant rights director at the Washington-based Center for Community Change, said during a telephone news conference Thursday.

Theres no question that we will have to use every tool in our arsenal to fight against the xenophobia and bigotry that has infected Trumps plans when it comes to immigration, Mata said. Is civil disobedience on the menu? Absolutely. And, unfortunately it will happen sooner rather than later.

In the District, up to 2,500 people are expected to rally inside the Metropolitan AME Church the morning of Jan. 14, six days before Trump is sworn in.

Other vigils or marches will be held that day in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and a host of smaller cities.

Chief among the concerns of activists is the possibility that Trump will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an executive action under President Obama that has shielded from deportation about 700,000 people who came illegally to the United States as children.

Trump has also pledged to cut all federal funding to local and state governments with so-called sanctuary policies, which prohibit cooperation with federal immigration authorities; build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border; increase penalties for people who overstay their visas; and push for mandatory jail time for anyone previously deported who is caught re-entering the country without proper permission.

Rocio Saenz, international executive vice president of the SEIU service employees union, said Trumps agenda will create an atmosphere of fear in the country that could affect wages and workplace rights for all immigrant workers

This could allow employers to exploit immigrant workers, driving down wages for workers throughout the economy because people will be afraid to speak out, Saenz said.

Cristina Jimenez, executive director of the United We Dream group for DACA recipients, said immigration activists hope to be a thorn in the side of the Trump White House in coming years.

There is no way that we will stand in the shadows and not fight back, she said. There is no way that were going to give up on the victories that our movement has fought so hard to win.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team did not respond to messages for comment.
YEKATERINBURG, Russia  Where is Siberia?

You know the place: bears, vodka, oil, very big, awfully remote, once filled with political prisoners (and now home to some of Russias cutting-edge computer geniuses).

But where does it start?

Encyclopaedia Britannica, for one, describes it as that vast region of Russia that extends from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.

Thats not quite right. At least not from the point of view of the 1.3 million residents of Yekaterinburg, Russias fourth-largest city, which sits just to the east of the range that divides Europe and Asia. Yekaterinburgers will tell you with tightly clenched teeth that they are in the Urals. Not. Siberia.

The Washington Post ran into this when it published a blog post about a Siberian bar in Yekaterinburg that had come up with humorous Russian translations for American cocktails. Facebook shuddered with the umbrage of Uralites (and the Post corrected the wording).

But no one could say for sure where Siberia does start. So the Post traveled to Yekaterinburg to find out, and this became a local news story. A camera crew from Malina.am, a Yekaterinburg television and news website, followed a Post reporter around, trying to help explain the difference between Siberian and Urals culture.

Siberia gets way more news coverage because its huge, comprising 74 percent of Russias land mass, according to Olga Guryevskikh, who teaches geography at the Ural State Pedagogical University. The Urals make up just 6 percent, but the region is also a famous brand  check the price of oil futures.

With that in mind, the Post made its first stop at a restaurant called Pelmeni Club, whose co-owner, Yelena Makusheva, served tasty samples of dumplings from Siberia and the Urals. The Siberian ones had exotic, frontier-sounding names such as Yamal Wild Deer (with real deer meat) and Grandmother in a Kerchief (beef, pork and mutton). The Urals pelmeni were called Duck and Goose and Turnips With Mushrooms.

They all tasted good. Which ones did Makusheva prefer? And what did they say about regional cultures?

There is no better or worse, she said, smiling. Siberian, Urals, were all Russians. The pelmeni are the best wherever we are.

This last couldve been a philosophical statement, or it couldve been a plug for the restaurant she and her partner have opened in the Siberian city of Tyumen. It was time to do an interview at the Malina.am TV studio.

The host, Olga Chebykina, brought in Guryevskikh, who took out a topographical map of Russia and, as the cameras rolled, pointed at the yellow section that indicated the Ural Mountains. On the map, that yellow yields to a sea of green that stretches east. Even though you cant see the mountains in Yekaterinburg, the city is on the yellow part of the map. The green sea is Siberia.

Maddeningly, that boundary did not match modern regional borders.

The Post resolved to find that magical spot.

You might be able to find the physical border, Chebykina said. But the border in the soul is hard to define.

More mystery!

Marina Tchebotaeva, the down-to-earth general director of the Yekaterinburg office of a German water treatment company, tried to explain. The Urals, generally speaking, are populated by descendants of peasants who toiled at factories in the 18th century, when Peter the Great needed iron and copper to fight his wars, she said.

The main characteristic of Uralites is the love of work, Tchebotaeva said. We have a lot of large factories, good engineers, and we really love to work and get good results.

Siberia, on the other hand, was populated by explorers and pioneers, she said  Cossacks who built forts, and the traders and farmers who settled near them.

Siberians have always been brave, freedom-loving and enterprising people, she said. Theyll never leave you by the side of the road. If your car breaks down, theyll help you. Because if youre stuck on the side of the road when its 22 below youll never survive.

As she said this, the temperature outside was descending along with the weak, winter sun. It would hit 22 degrees below zero that night.

Urals people wouldnt leave you, either, Tchebotaeva added.

Tchebotaeva posted on her Facebook page about this reporters quest, prompting reactions that aptly describe the state of U.S.-Russian relations.

Why does he need to know? read one post. Maybe hes trying to divide the country!

Another poster elaborated on this theory. The United States is going to try to separate Siberia from Russia.

It sounds overwrought, but try to imagine an expedition of Russian reporters venturing into Colorado, purportedly to find where the Rockies end and the Midwest begins. Those would have to be spies looking for our missile silos, right?

OK, maybe not.

The next morning, it was a dare-we-call-it-Siberian 13 below as we headed east from Yekaterinburg.

We passed fields and snow, and snowy fields. The sun rose and the temperature actually went down. The road was plowed, and Russia has excellent gas stations with well-stocked convenience stores.

And then, on a wooded upgrade about 200 miles east of Yekaterinburg, we found that mystical border, marked by a faded, primitive sign with the word Siberia scrawled on it, just past a bridge over the trickle of a brook fed by an underground spring At the waters edge, an inscription on a stone described this as the accepted border of Siberia in the 18th century. Nearby, a boarded-up cafe was surrounded by knee-deep, untouched snow, and a large, cinder block outhouse loomed.

The magic of this place was faint, but the cold was not: this reporters iPhone froze, as did the Malina.am crews drone.

A few miles into Siberia lay the town of Ust-Nitsinskoye, a settlement of a thousand souls founded in 1622 on the spot where the Nitsa River flows into the Tura River.

The appearance of TV cameras sent townspeople scurrying. The first who was willing to talk was a retired bauxite miner who gave only his name and patronymic, Boris Mikhailovich, 65. He was wearing military fatigues and feeding chickadees out of his bare hand, seemingly oblivious to the chill.

How very Siberian!

What is the difference between people from the Urals and Siberians, asked Svetlana Smirnova, the Malina.am producer. Is there any?

I dont think so, Boris Mikhailovich said.

Not too helpful. The next person willing to speak to us gave only his nickname, Tolik.

Whats the difference between people from the Urals and people from Siberia? Smirnova asked.

Uhm, I dont know, Tolik said.

You dont notice a difference? Smirnova persisted.

Nope, said Tolik.

Smirnova is a good journalist. She didnt give up.

So are you closer to a Siberian or a Uralite? she asked.

Im a little bit of both, Tolik shrugged.

Here, the search ended. It was dark, and freezing, and 200 miles back to Yekaterinburg.

Some of it in Siberia, the rest in the Urals.

Whatever that meant.



VIDEO:

The Washington Posts Moscow bureau chief, David Filipov, goes looking for Siberia.

URL: http://wapo.st/2j40keV

Embed code:
WASHINGTON  Their employees installed plumbing, air conditioning, baseboards and crown molding in Donald Trumps $212 million luxury District of Columbia hotel.

Afterward, they say, they were stiffed.

Two Washington-area small businesses have filed liens on the Trump International Hotel, saying they have not been compensated for their work completing the 263-room project, which the president-elect routinely heralds as having finished under budget and ahead of schedule.

One business, Joseph Magnolia, is a private, family-owned plumbing firm with offices in Northeast Washington and suburban Maryland that claims it is out $2.98 million. According to a mechanics lien the company filed four days before Christmas, Magnolia worked on the Trump hotel for more than two years, from September 2014 to December 2016.

Magnolia completed all plumbing, mechanical and HVAC work, along with site sewer, water, storm and water services on the project, according to its filing with the D.C. government. The company said it provided labor and materials for the work and named Trumps D.C. hotel company, Trump Old Post Office LLC, and construction manager Lendlease US among the responsible parties.

John Magnolia, the companys president, said in an interview that the Trump family had paid for most of his work on the project. But when the final money did not arrive and criticism grew over the president-elects continued ownership of the project, Magnolia said he worried that the hotel would switch hands before he was paid in full.

They have been decent people and so forth, but the issues that are going on now, with all the talk about removing him from the lease, we are concerned about what is going to happen there. So its basically a business decision that we had to make, he said.

Magnolia said he had not been in touch with Trump or his daughter Ivanka, who spearheaded the project, but was hopeful that his company would be paid before too long.

Were kind of working through that right now. Unfortunately Mr. Trump and Ivanka and so forth, they are, I guess, preoccupied by other matters now. They are trying to go run the country. So well just see what happens, he said.

A smaller firm, A&D Construction of Sterling, Virginia, said in a lien filed Nov. 9 that it was owed $79,700 for wall base and crown molding work performed last year between June 24 and Oct. 5, three weeks before Trump held a grand-opening celebration.

An attorney for A&D Construction, Richard Sissman, said the firm is a Hispanic-owned construction company that had no contract or relationship with the Trump Organization directly but rather with another contractor on the project. We did not contract directly with Trump, Sissman said.

But Sissman said A&D, owned by Osvaldo Tellez, is a small operation that needs the money it is owed and has not heard back on its requests even after filing the lien. A&D describes itself online as available for work ranging from a small bathroom remodel at your home to a complete renovation of apartments to an overhaul of your commercial office space.

I have not heard from anyone. My client is a small-time operator, so he does not have deep pockets, Sissman said.

A representative for Lendlease referred comment to the Trump Organization. In a emailed statement, the Trump Organization did not address the specifics of the legal action.

In developments of this scale and complexity the filing of nominal liens at the conclusion of construction is not uncommon as part of the close out process, a spokesman for the company wrote. In the case of Trump International Hotel, Washington D.C., the Trump Organization has invested over $200 million into the redevelopment of the historic Old Post Office and is incredibly proud of what is now considered to be one the most iconic hotels anywhere in the country.

Trump has a long record of not paying or only partially paying some of the contractors and partners on his projects. Hundreds of small-business owners and blue-collar workers, including painters, dishwashers, waiters, bathroom installers, chandelier sellers and curtain makers, have accused Trumps businesses of leaving them with unpaid bills.

Many of the aggrieved are the sort of businesses and entrepreneurs Trump championed as a candidate. In the past, Trump, who personally signs his companys checks, has sometimes denied not paying bills and other times withheld payment as a negotiating tactic.

I love to hold back and negotiate when people dont do good work, Trump told the Wall Street Journal in May.

Under D.C. law, building contractors and subcontractors may file mechanics liens to protest unpaid work on real estate projects. Because the liens are a claim on the propertys title, they can make it difficult for the projects owner to receive or renegotiate bank loans and payments. Under the law, contractors can file suit 180 days after filing a lien if the dispute has not been resolved.

In Trumps case, the liens could also affect his hotels deal with the federal government. Trump leases the Old Post Office Pavilion from the General Services Administration.

A clause in the lease requires that Trump Old Post Office LLC notify the GSA in writing within 10 days of any mechanics lien being filed. Within 30 days of the filing, Trumps firm is required to have any liens discharged unless it contests the claims being made. GSA spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Magnolia chalked Trumps missed payments up to the president-elect being focused on the country.

I voted for the man, and he seems to be surrounding himself as he has in the past with some pretty smart people and I wish him the best, he said. But weve got to take care of this, thats all.
Some of the most conservative members of Congress say they are ready to vote for a budget that would  at least on paper  balloon the deficit to more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade, all for the sake of eventually repealing the Affordable Care Act.

In a dramatic reversal, many members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus said Thursday they are prepared later this month to support a budget measure that would explode the deficit and increase the public debt to more than $29.1 trillion by 2026, figures contained in the budget resolution itself.

As they left a meeting with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Thursday, some of the conservatives said that spending targets contained in the budget for fiscal year 2017 are symbolic. The real goal of the budget legislation, they argued, is to establish an opportunity to finally make good on GOP promises to repeal President Barack Obamas signature domestic achievement.

I just came to understand all the different ideas about where we go next, said Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., a member of the House Freedom Caucus that typically opposes massive spending increases. Schweikert now says he will probably vote for the budget resolution.

The growing conservative consensus comes nearly one year after the approximately 40-member group announced it would rather torpedo the entire budget process than vote for a fiscal blueprint that increased spending without balancing the budget.

But fiscal discipline now seems to be taking a back seat to the drive to repeal Obamacare.

Id like to see a replacement on Obamacare pretty quick, said Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas. Would I like to see [the budget] balance? Certainly. Absolutely. Ive got 13 grandchildren, and I dont want to see them buried under $30 trillion of debt.

The Freedom Caucus has not taken an official position on the budget  80 percent of them need to agree to do so  but many members said the dramatic spending created in the 2017 budget measure were only technicalities. They contend that voters understand some sacrifices need to be made to gut the health-care law.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told reporters that the group will decide Monday on an official position on the budget.

The real question is: Does it change the top-line number on what were spending? Meadows said. Does it increase spending  or does it become a vehicle that maintains our current spending levels and allows us to repeal the Affordable Care Act?

Others Republicans, including Paul, still question whether it is ever acceptable to support deficit increases, no matter how symbolic. Paul described Thursdays meeting, which attracted 23 Freedom Caucus members and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., as a first step.

I wanted to make sure that conservatives in the House knew that, together, we can have impact and influence on what the budget will be, Paul said. I heard one person say that, well, well vote for this now, but we wont in four months. My point is that the Republican leadership will come back and say, You already voted for it once; why not vote for it a second time? 

Many in the conservative clique emerged ambivalent about Pauls argument.

Im not staking out a position on the budget just yet, Babin said after the meeting.

Mainstream Republicans are urging their typically implacable conservative colleagues to turn a blind eye to the spending numbers for now. Republican leaders are using a complicated quirk of the budget process to repeal Obamacare without the threat of a blockade by Senate Democrats.

Budget legislation is considered under special rules in the Senate that allow a simple majority of 50 senators rather than the normal 60 needed for almost everything else. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate this year, and there is virtually no hope that any Democrat would agree to dismantle Obamas health-care law.

The budget introduced this week in the Senate includes instructions for committees to begin repealing the ACA. GOP leaders want Republicans to focus on language requiring members of four committees to produce bills seven days after Trumps inauguration that each would save $1 billion over a decade by slashing ACA elements.

Not all conservatives are convinced. Paul is joined by deficit hawks such as Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., who worry their voters wont countenance even a seemingly meaningless vote to increase the deficit.

If youre going to do a symbolic budget resolution, why not put in a good number? Brat asked Thursday. People are very cynical, and I need a message so I can go back home with a straight face.

The collective shrug from other conservatives is the latest evidence that Pauls protest would be a familiar, lonely one. His floor speech attacking the budget measure for making no attempts at deficit reduction  it projects a $9 trillion increase in the debt by 2026  was preempted by statements from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., pledging to vote for the resolution anyway.

That position has made Paul one of very few Republicans still talking about the debt as a national crisis worth building legislation around. During his presidential campaign, which ended after the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Paul made a number of attempts to draw attention to the national debt and to promote his annual plans to balance the budget with steep spending cuts.

Months later, most of the Freedom Caucus  17 members  voted against the GOPs 2016 budget on debt-reduction grounds. The new budget resolution makes even fewer concessions on debt reduction. For Republicans who frequently described the debt as a threat to their childrens futures, its a difficult sell.

We want to keep in mind the overall picture, both the deficit and how tired people are of Obamacare, said Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas. I do think theres a danger of the Republicans actually owning this.
One hundred years ago, an iconic Native American died. We do not remember him as a tribal leader, holy man or an activist. His biggest accomplishment was simply enduring.

We know him by the name Ishi because, if he had a name for himself, we never learned it. When he wandered down from his homeland in the California foothills of Mount Lassen and was found huddled in a corral near the town of Oroville, he entered history. His people, the Yahi, had supposedly vanished decades earlier and, because they were the last Natives living freely in the West, Ishi became famous as the last wild Indian.

Anthropologists at the University of California arranged to have him placed under their supervision and he spent the remainder of his life in San Francisco. They called him Ishi, a Yahi word for man, because in Yahi culture personal names were private, not to be uttered casually.

Ishi adjusted surprisingly well to urban society. He was employed as a custodian, rode trolleys, saw airplanes, witnessed surgeries and relished ice cream. But there were darker elements to his story. His home was actually a museum and he was, for a time, put on display. New to modern life, he soon contracted tuberculosis and died fewer than five years after he arrived. His body was then subjected to an autopsy during which his brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where it languished for decades before being returned to the Pit River Tribe to be accorded a traditional burial.

Ishi seems to have always represented something larger than himself. Now, on the centennial of his passing, its time to see him as an individual human being. Ishi, after all, means man. That means trying to imagine what his life was like before Oroville.

Ishi was born around 1860, when the Yahi people and the invading Gold Rush settlers were entrenched in bitter, bloody hostilities that raged for years. By the early 1870s, the Yahi numbered only 15 and all of them went into hiding, adopting such a secretive existence that they were presumed to have died out. Several decades later, only four remained: Ishi, his mother, sister and uncle. Those four persisted in anonymity until November 1908, when everything fell apart.

Surveyors stumbled upon their hidden village while Ishi was away; his uncle and sister fled, and were never seen again. His mother, ill and immobile, was left unharmed, but died soon after. Afterward, Ishi entered an era of solitude the likes of which you and I will never know, let alone comprehend.

For a thousand days, Ishi was utterly alone. Its not the length of time thats so difficult to grasp, its the poignancy and magnitude of his isolation. Hed lived his entire life in a tiny world that had shrunk until he was the only one left in it. He wasnt just the last of his family, he was the last of his culture, of his nation. What toll did that extract from him? What happens to hope when the future offers nothing but more isolation?

How that affected Ishi well never know, for he was reluctant to talk about his life in the wild. I dont know whether anyone ever asked him why he undertook his fateful journey in the summer of 1911. Some say he lost the will to live; others think that he was starving. If he was hungry, I believe it was for something other than food.

People have long wondered what effect civilization had on Ishi. Another question is to wonder what effect Ishi had on society. His greatest impact has been as a symbol  of the end of the Wild West, or of Anglo-Native American relations, a 500-year-old culture clash encapsulated in one mans experience.

Today, there might be another interpretation of his life: Ishi as inspiration. Its not just that he endured, but how he did. Ishi lived out his days in an unfamiliar world, but he was no lackey. He may have been given a suit and tie to wear, but he never did reveal his name. And he never lost his humanity. He didnt withdraw upon entering a strange new world. He forged friendships and made the most of his new life, touching those who knew him with his gentleness and forbearance.

Ishi was much more than the last wild Indian. He was a man who had looked into an abyss of genocide and loneliness, and somehow emerged with his mind and senses intact and alert; he was able to adapt, as much as possible, to the world that had ended his. He handled civilization far better than it handled him.

Joseph Belli is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a wildlife biologist and lives along Pacheco Pass, Calif.
Many Californians woke up the night after the presidential election thinking that they were living in a different country. A few felt so alienated that they publicly raised the possibility of seceding from the United States.

There is no constitutional way, however, to do this. But there is a less radical step that would amount to a limited secession and would require only an act of Congress. Forty-five percent of the land in California is administered by the federal government  including 20 percent of the state in national forests and 15 percent under the Bureau of Land Management. Rather than outright secession, California could try to assert full state sovereignty over all this land.

Until Nov. 8, California wouldnt have cared about this but, with the prospect of a Donald Trump administration soon managing almost half the land in the state, Californians may want to rethink their traditional stance. Otherwise, they are likely to face more oil and gas drilling, increased timber harvesting, and intensive recreational use and development on federal land in the state.

Much of the rest of the West, moreover, might support their cause. In recent years, Utah has been actively seeking a large-scale transfer of federal lands. During the Obama years, Utahs government has deeply resented the imposition of out-of-state values on the 65 percent of the state that is federally owned  just as California may now come to resent the outside imposition of new land management practices by a Trump administration.

Utah, ironically, may now see a comprehensive land transfer as less urgent. That has happened before: The election of President Reagan in 1980 took the steam out of the Sagebrush Rebellion in Utah and elsewhere in the West. In retrospect, however, that proved to be shortsighted, as future administrations reversed course and asserted even more authority over Western lands.

If California were to lead the charge, and with Trump as president, fundamental changes in the federal ownership of land in the West might become more politically feasible than ever before. There are additional strong arguments, moreover, for a transfer of federal lands (excluding national parks and military facilities) in the West to the states today. Over the region as a whole, the federal government owns almost 50 percent of the land, and higher percentages in many rural areas. When Washington, D.C., imposes policies and values that conflict with the majority views of the residents of whole states, the federal government, in effect, takes on the role of an occupying force. It may not be traditional colonialism, but there are resemblances.

Defenders of federal land management argue that the public lands belong to all Americans. Although advocates of a federal land transfer promise to keep the lands in state ownership, many Westerners fear that the states might privatize the lands outright or administer them for narrowly private interests. The implicit assumption in this is that there are core national values that should govern public land management in all the Western states and that the federal government is best placed to advance these values. But the reality is that Americans are today deeply divided on many fundamental value questions  and these divisions are often geographically based.

Since at least the 1990s, many Westerners have become convinced that the management of federal lands in the West is dysfunctional, no matter what party is in power. This should come as no surprise, since much of Washington itself is dysfunctional.

So I propose the following. Congress should enact a law allowing each state to call a referendum on the question: Do you want the federal government to transfer federal lands in your state (excluding national parks and military lands) to state ownership? If the vote is affirmative, a transfer would follow automatically. You might call it a Scotland solution, adapted to American circumstances.

California could pursue its preservationist values, while Utah could allow wider access to its new lands. With public land management decentralized to the state level, where there would be greater basic agreement on ends and means, it might finally be possible to overcome the political paralysis of the current federal land management system centered in Washington.

So I say, let Californians decide if they want to secede, at least in this partial way, and the residents of other Western states, as well.

Robert H. Nelson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a professor in the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland and, from 1975 to 1993, worked for eight different secretaries of the Interior Department.
The bad news for art lovers peering down the road for events in the new year is that the New Mexico Museum of Art will be closed for renovations for a couple of months in the fall. The good news is that its bringing in a landmark international art exhibit before that.

Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now, an exhibit of sketches and more that show how artists plan an artwork, will come to the museum in late May and remain on exhibit until the building shuts down for renovations in mid-September, said museum director Mary Kershaw.

Santa Fe is one of only two U.S. stops for the exhibit, which has been put together by the British Museum from its collection of prints, drawings and other works, she said.

The theme of the exhibit is particularly suited to Santa Fes large population of artists, she said, because it focuses on showing how the idea for an artwork takes root and blooms.

It is arranged to show how artists use drawings in their process, Kershaw said, noting that its something artists through the ages have done. All the majors are there, she said of artists included in the show, who are shown working through various stages of their ideas.

Its dealing in an artists practice, she said.

When the Museum of Art showed Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain, another exhibit that originated with the British Museum, in 2013-14, Kershaw said that a good part of the audience consisted of practicing artists who made repeated visits to examine the artworks and relate them to their own practice, something this upcoming exhibit also can provide.

Its like a conversation through the centuries between artists, she said. That kind of exhibition is a really great one.

Visitors voices

In another project the museum hopes to launch this year, locals and visitors will have a chance to create a record of their own conversations. As part of its centennial celebration, it will be looking for people to share their personal memories of the museum, events that took place there and influences it may have had on their lives.

Miguel Gandert talks about how coming here inspired him to be an artist, said Kershaw, referring to the Espanola-born photographer.

And Albuquerque born and raised Robert Williams, who founded Juxtapoz Magazine and had a recent one-man show at the Center for Contemporary Arts, has said that a painting at the Museum of Art, The Stoic by Joseph Henry Sharp, was what made him want to be an artist, according to Rebecca Aubin, the museums head of education and visitor experience.

Capturing those stories is a really fun and significant thing to do, Kershaw said.

Local collaboration

Just as the museum is working with the British Museum to bring in its exhibit, collaboration with others will be key into the future, according to Kershaw.

This past year, local museums came together to stage aspects of exhibitions about lowriders in New Mexico, modernism in art and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lloyd Kiva New, designer and a founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts here.

There is much more collaborative support among the institutions in Santa Fe, Kewshaw said, adding that that wasnt always the case. I see that only continuing and growing stronger.

I think its a national trend, Aubin added.

And Kershaw is looking beyond our borders to draw upon the Spanish heritage of the state.

One of my ambitions is to bring in strong Spanish art on a regular basis, she said. Id like to build partnerships (with museums and others) in Spain, Mexico and other Latin American countries to bring in world-class art.
Richard Cohens syndicated column, American Century ends with Obama indifference, was just the latest in a long list of opinion columns the Journal has run criticizing Obamas policy in Syria. Most of these were authored by so-called experts, many of whom supported the invasion of Iraq, our support for the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt and the removal of Qaddafi in Libya. Those policies have only created a power vacuum in each of those countries that have allowed extremists like ISIS to move in.

These so-called experts who criticize Obama come from both sides of the political spectrum.

On the right you have the militant imperialists who believe in use of American power to extend our influence. On the left you have the moral imperialists who believe in the use of American power to right every wrong in the world.

Jeffrey Goldblum in a March 2016 Atlantic magazine article on Obamas foreign policy cites a discussion that Obama had with his advisers in which he asked whether they could cite an instance where American intervention in the Middle East actually made the situation better for American interests. If they could, Obama would consider intervening in Syria.

Obamas staff couldnt come up with an instance where U.S. intervention furthered American interests.

As for Syria, despite the repressive nature of the Assad regime, wouldnt the U.S. have been better off had he stayed in power? We tolerate other even more regressive regimes, like Saudi Arabia.

Had Assad stayed in power, it would have avoided the establishment of ISIS in Syria and the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe and Middle East countries.

It would also have avoided the deaths and hardships of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

I have my own concerns about Obamas foreign policy, but my concerns are that he has been too interventionist. Although I dont agree with the libertarians like Rand Paul on economic policy, I agree with their less interventionist foreign policy.

To paraphrase the Serenity Prayer, may the U.S. have the serenity to accept the things it cannot change, the courage to change the things it can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The female inmate whose stomach-churning confrontation with jail officers was captured on video  grabbing national attention and triggering a local protest  is now suing Bernalillo County, alleging a culture of excessive force at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Former inmate Susie Chavez says jail officers illegally abused her and interfered with her medical care, even though they knew she suffered from severe anxiety and depression, according to the lawsuit, filed in state District Court late last month. The County Commission, jail Sgt. Eric Allen and two other correctional officers are identified as defendants.

The treatment of Chavez appeared on a video released last year after a Journal request under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.

In the video, Chavez  a short, 115-pound woman  sobs and shrieks in pain as jail officers shock her with a stun gun, twist her wrist and spray Mace in her face.

The incident started because Chavez had put up photos in her cell, and officers were later frustrated that she wouldnt stop crying, even as they inflicted pain on her, according to the lawsuit.

The county hasnt yet responded in court to Chavezs allegations.

But in an interview Thursday, jail Lt. Stephen Perkins, who heads the union that represents correctional officers, said the officers involved in the Chavez case responded appropriately.

If you break it down, no rights were violated, he said of the video. The force used was appropriate.  When she is screaming the loudest, nobody is touching her.

County spokeswoman Tia Bland said the county takes excessive use-of-force allegations seriously.

The jail has adopted a new use-of-force policy, she said, and 78 percent of correctional officers have already been trained on how to appropriately gauge the amount of force needed to de-escalate a situation.

Allen  the jail officer who wore a camera that captured video of the Chavez incident  has been on paid leave for about a year. Since then, the county has investigated allegations made against him by Chavez and at least two other inmates, though the county hasnt announced whether it will pursue discipline against Allen.

Allen is vice president of the jail union and has helped train other officers on when to use force.

Perkins describes Allen as a good officer with sound judgment. Allen wasnt the highest-ranking officer on scene during the Chavez incident, Perkins said, and hes being targeted unfairly.

Hes the hot guy, and they want to throw the darts at him, Perkins said.

The Chavez lawsuit lists two other jail officers as defendants but doesnt identify them fully by name.

Regardless of rank, Allen can be heard on the Chavez video giving instructions.

At one point, Chavez lies sobbing on the floor after she has been shocked with a stun gun.

Put her in a wrist lock, Allen tells another officer, and twist her wrist until she shuts up and stops crying.

Matthew Coyte, Chavezs attorney, said New Mexico needs a radically different approach to managing its jails.

We must change the culture in our jails that encourages this form of abuse, he said in a written statement.

The 22-page lawsuit alleges that not only did jail officers abuse Chavez, but they prevented her from getting help from medical staff. The suit accuses Allen of stopping a psychiatric evaluation of Chavez and telling a nurse, No, no, were done when she tried to follow Chavez out of the room.

At the time of the September 2015 incident, Chavez had been in jail about 16 days on a heroin possession charge and a warrant. She was later released into a housing program that helps ex-inmates.

Chavez now lives in Bernalillo County and isnt in jail, according to her lawsuit.
New Mexico has seen a dramatic increase in the number of high school students tackling rigorous advanced placement exams, ranking second in the nation for growth, according to new data touted by the Public Education Department on Thursday.

More than 10,000 New Mexico students took at least one AP test in 2016, up from roughly 8,600 the year before, a 17 percent boost.

In total, roughly 15,700 exams were taken and just more than 35 percent were passed, adding up to nearly 17,000 in potential college credits and $3.55 million saved on tuition costs.

These courses are some of the most challenging our students can take, Gov. Susana Martinez said. This just confirms everything Ive always said over and over  that every child can learn. And I believe that from the bottom of my heart, that every single child, no matter your circumstances, no matter where you come from, and no matter what language you speak, every single child can learn.

New Mexico also came in fourth in the nation for providing AP access to low-income students thanks to a state fee waiver program that helps cover the $93 exam cost.

Cleveland High School senior Ethan Sena said he was grateful for the financial support, which helped him pass seven AP classes in the past few years. The aspiring mechanical engineer recently became the first Cleveland student to win an internship at Sandia National Lab.

Ive learned the vigor of what college courses are going to require, and with that, I have also gained college credit, he said. With three other brothers and the many AP exams I take every year, the reduced prices that I get greatly help everything that I do.

Rio Rancho Public Schools performed particularly well on AP tests last year, with about 970 student earning 1,200 credits. Rio Rancho High School came in second in the state for growth in AP participation, and Cleveland High was third. Hobbs High, which receives grant funding for AP classes, was number one.

The positive news came a day after New Mexico received a dismal 49th place ranking in Education Weeks latest Quality Counts study  a review of various measures from pre-K enrollment to graduation rates.

Education Secretary Hanna Skandera noted that the report doesnt include more positive data from this year, including the recent AP growth.

You dont move from 50th to first overnight, she said. We have gone from 50th to 49th, and you jump based on how much you are improving. We are definitely rising in the ranks when it comes to closing gaps with other states.
A man accused of using a puppy to lure a 7-year-old girl into his yard before molesting her pleaded guilty to two felonies Wednesday.

Chad Deignan, 23, faces between three years and seven and a half years at sentencing, which has not been scheduled. He will be required to register as a sex offender and must serve at least five years on parole and between five and 20 years on probation, according to his agreement with the District Attorneys Office.

A criminal complaint filed in November 2012 explains that the girl told deputies that she and her 8-year-old friend were walking by Deignans home when he called them over and said he had a dog to show them.

Deignans defense attorney Jason Wheeless explained during a plea hearing Wednesday that Deignan grabbed the girl from behind and touched her clothed genital area. Deignan pleaded guilty before 2nd Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora to one count of criminal sexual contact of a child under 13 and tampering with evidence.

Deputies arrived at the home on Second near Alameda, where they found the girls father confronting a shirtless Deignan. He later admitted that he threw his shirt into a neighboring yard, which Wheeless said was the basis for the tampering with evidence charge.

According to deputies, Deignan asked the girl to pinky swear that she wouldnt tell anyone about the incident.

The complaint also explains that Deignan said the girls had a puppy and that he asked to pet it before hugging the 7-year-old. When a deputy asked whether he touched the girls genitals, he said he might have, but wasnt sure, according to the complaint.

Wheeless said in court that Deignan has spent nearly four years in custody on the case, and at sentencing he will receive credit for the time he has already served.
Multiple cars and a city bus spun out trying to get down a hill on Irving NW Friday morning. (Jim Thompson/Journal) A car spun out on I-25 northbound at Jefferson Friday morning. (Jim Thompson/Journal) Traffic crawls down Central Ave., which was covered in ice and snow Friday. (Marla Brose/Journal) A truck couldn't make it up the hill at Irving NW on the west side Friday morning. (Jim Thompson/Journal) Ice and snow cover Central Ave. east of San Mateo Friday morning. (Marla Brose/Journal) Traffic creeps eastbound on an icy stretch of Lomas Friday morning. Snow blanketed the roads, causing icy conditions. (Marla Brose/Journal) Ice and snow cover Central Ave. east of San Mateo Friday morning. (Marla Brose/Journal) Interstate 40 eastbound was shut down for icy conditions around 7:30 a.m. (Courtesy of DOT traffic cam) NMroads image Vehicles traveling southbound on Eubank couldn't make it up the hill to the freeway overpass. (Jim Thompson/Journal) Prev 1 of 12 Next

An early morning winter snowstorm left behind slick roads and icy conditions in Albuquerque Friday morning, shutting down schools and government offices and causing road closures and numerous crashes as morning commuters braved the weather.

Albuquerque police spokesman Fred Duran said there were 98 crashes reported to police between 12 a.m. and 10 a.m., none of them fatal. Numerous roads were closed, including I-40 eastbound for a short period Friday morning.

Albuquerque Public Schools cancelled classes at all of its schools, as did the Rio Rancho and Santa Fe school districts. Classes were cancelled at the University of New Mexicos main and west campuses, and the Health Sciences Center was also closed.

The City of Albuquerque offices and Bernalillo County offices were closed, along with both Metropolitan Court and the Second Judicial District Court. Sandia Labs was also closed.

Mayor Richard Berry and other city officials said Friday morning that the timing of the storm  which came at 4 a.m., just before dawn  made it tougher to address. City crews usually have more time to clear streets and apply salt to the roads when a storm hits overnight and temperatures hit freezing much earlier in the morning, they said.

Nonetheless, police and firefighters didnt report any accidents with major injuries, Berry said.

Crews will remain out working on streets throughout the day, he said, but cold temperatures may keep much of the ice from melting on its own.

You should anticipate the roads freezing again this evening, Berry said.

Michael Riordan, Albuquerques chief operations officer, said city crews hit the streets as soon as they could, given the lateness of the storm. The roads cant be treated effectively until the snow and ice have taken hold, he said.

Officers shut down roads across the city during the morning commute. I-40 eastbound was shut down around 7:15 a.m. and reopened by 8 a.m.

On the west side, westbound Ellison from Coors was closed at 5:30 a.m. and wasnt reopened until 10:45 a.m. NM 528 from Ellison to Westside Boulevard was also shut down for hours.

Near downtown, Coal SE was shut down in both directions for a vehicle stuck on ice.Eastbound Rio Bravo was shut down at Second Street and reopened around 8 a.m.

Many other schools across Central and Northern New Mexico will also be closed today. See KOAT for a full list.

The National Weather Service has issued winter storm warnings and alerts for the region and forecasters are warning of significant travel impacts.

Authorities also encouraged residents to have a stock of essential supplies such as food, water, first aid kits and blankets at home, work and in their vehicles.

Forecasters say some parts of northern New Mexico could see as much as a foot of snow by Friday night.

https://abqjournal.com/610454/weather.html

Journal staff writers Dan McKay, Olivier Utterbrouk and Nancy Tipton contributed to this report.
LAS CRUCES  A casting search continues for men 18 years old and older who could become extras in the production of Horse Soldiers, a feature film to be shot at White Sands National Monument.

Sande Alessi Casting is particularly looking for Hispanic, Native American and Middle Eastern men. The casting company is also especially interested in men who consider themselves expert horse riders, according to a casting notice from Sande Alessi Casting.

The paid positions are available to men living in southern New Mexico and far west Texas. Extras who are hired will be bused from Alamogordo to the movies filming location. Men who have beards could get stronger consideration, but beards are not required to be hired as an extra. Applicants should email a photo of themselves to horsesoldierscasting@gmail.com, with Alamogordo in the emails subject line.

Those hired will portray Middle Eastern men in the film.

Applicants can also register at www.SandeAlessiCasting.com for any of the casting companys upcoming projects. Applicants will be asked to upload a current photo of themselves against a white background. A selfie photo is preferred.



2017 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.)

Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at www.lcsun-news.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
FARMINGTON  The Law Enforcement Torch Run is looking for participants to plunge into cold water as part of an annual fundraiser.

The polar plunge started in 2012 at the Farmington Recreation Center. In the past, participants plunged into a small swimming pool filled with icy water. This year, the fundraiser has been moved to a new location at Farmington Lake, and participants will plunge into the lake, rather than a pool.

The plunge is scheduled for 11 a.m. Jan. 14 at the beach area of the lake.

Organizer Shawn Archuleta said the Law Enforcement Torch Run has wanted to do the plunge at Farmington Lake for years, but swimming was not allowed at the lake.

The city of Farmington approved opening a portion of the lake for summer swimming last year. Because the swimming area has already been set up, the polar plunge will take place in that portion of the lake. Archuleta said having it at the lake will make it more like what many people picture when they think about polar plunges.

Each participant must raise $100 for Special Olympics New Mexico. Children who are 10 years old or younger and want to participate may enter the polar plunge if they raise $50. People who do not want to plunge into the lake can still raise money and participate as a chicken.

People or teams who participate are also encouraged to wear costumes. Prizes are awarded for the best costumes and for the most money raised. Archuleta said the Farmington Public Library often organizes a group of participants who attend dressed as penguins.

Theyd waddle up to the pool like penguins, she said.

Archuleta said the costumes are one highlight of the event.

Thats always fun to see the people and how they dress up, she said.

Participants can bring their registration to the lake on the day of the event. Information about the polar plunge is available on the Four Corners Law Enforcement Torch Runs Facebook page or by calling organizers Archuleta at 505-860-7620 or Jenny Dennis 505-320-8379.

Hannah Grover covers government for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4652.



2017 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

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SILVER CITY  The latest case of domestic violence that ended in the death of Marcella Perez on March 15, 2015, has ended. Rudolfo Aguilar pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to the maximum of 15 years by Judge H.R. Quintero.

According to District Attorney Francesca Estevez, Aguilar was charged with first-degree murder, but after speaking with Aguilars attorney they agreed to a plea to a second-degree charge. Estevez said she spoke with the family and they agreed to the plea.

Under New Mexico law, the maximum sentence Aguilar could have received was 15 years and because the crime is a serious violent felony, he will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence (12 to 13 years) before he is eligible for parole.

He murdered his girlfriend and he made statements to indicate that, Estevez said. We felt gratified that the court understood this was an extreme case of domestic violence. A life was lost. The judge took his plea and sentenced him and the family is now able to move on.

The case wouldnt have been an easy one to prosecute as there could have been a lot of factors involved. According to police reports, Aguilar made a phone call to 911 right before noon Sunday, March, 15, 2015, and asked the dispatcher how to perform CPR. Aguilar hung up and officers were dispatched to 705 Cielo Azul in Silver City where they found Perez unconscious in shallow water in the tub.

Officers found blood on the floor, walls, and also some hair on the floor. After officers performed CPR, EMS was called. Perez was transported to Gila Regional Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

Aguilar told police that he and Perez had gotten back together after a recent breakup and that on Saturday night they were partying at a friends house. They both got kicked out of the party and they went to another persons house. Aguilar supposedly got into a fight with a woman and was allegedly stabbed in the leg. They then left that house and went to Aguilars mothers home where Perez began to act like she was possessed.

Aguilar said Perez had a seizure and fell and hit her head on the floor. He said he began to perform CPR on Perez. He later said he was able to get the demons out of her and that God helped him do it, but that he should have handled things differently because he has some issues with anger.

An autopsy was performed on Perez and according to the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, she died as a result of a lung being pierced by extreme force. The report said the injury could not have resulted even in the extreme chest compressions being done by CPR. There were multiple broken ribs and also stab wounds to her head and thigh area. Her body was bruised and neck injuries indicated strangulation.

Aguilar tested positive for being under the influence of methamphetamine and it was later learned that he had a long history of drug abuse. The state had to send the evidence to an out-of-state crime lab because the New Mexico State Crime Lab doesnt perform those tests on defendants unless they are directly involved in a drug or alcohol-related case.

Aguilar had two competency hearings and he was found to have diminished capacity and the intent required for first-degree murder couldnt be formed. His evaluation by the New Mexico Department of Corrections said he had a lack of regard for law and others and that he showed violent and aggressive behavior.

The defendant said he was sorry, Estevez said. She left six children, three grandchildren and five siblings. The court also ordered him to pay $50,000 to the family as restitution when he gets out of prison. But, we felt like it was a good thing that the court ordered that even though it might be like squeezing blood out of a stone.



2017 the Silver City Sun-News (Silver City, N.M.)

Visit the Silver City Sun-News (Silver City, N.M.) at www.scsun-news.com

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BAYTOWN, Texas  A 55-year-old Mississippi man is jailed awaiting extradition to Texas on a murder indictment in the fatal shooting of his common-law wife almost 15 years ago.

Stanley Coring Jr. is in the Rankin County Jail in Brandon, Mississippi, awaiting return to Houston, where hes charged in the May 2002 death of Debra Covalt. Her body was found in a dilapidated horse barn on her farm 26 miles east of Houston.

Coring had long denied killing Covalt. However, a Harris County Sheriffs Office statement Thursday says new witnesses came forward with new, incriminating evidence. A Harris County grand jury returned a murder indictment against Coring last month, and he turned himself in to the Rankin County Jail on Thursday. A jail staffer said he has no attorney.
TOKYO  Just as Japans trains are in a league of their own, so too are its trainspotters.

This country, where a 20-second delay leads to profuse apologies on the platforms and conductors bow to passengers as they enter the train car, has taken train nerd-dom to a new level.

Sure, there are the vanilla trainspotters who take photos of various trains around the country. Theyre called tori-tetsu (tori means to take, and tetsu means train).

But there are also nori-tetsu, people who enjoy traveling on trains; yomi-tetsu, those who love to read about trains, especially train schedules; oto-tetsu, the people who record the sound of trains; sharyo-tetsu, fans of train design; eki-tetsu, people who study stations; and even ekiben-tetsu, aficionados of the exquisite bento lunch boxes sold at stations.

And thats not even getting into the subcultures of experts on train wiring, the geeks who intercept train radio signals, or the would-be conductors.

Its really hard to find people here who hate taking trains, said Junichi Sugiyama, a journalist who writes about trains and the author of train-related books including How to Enjoy Railroads From Train Schedules.

Our railway systems are very well developed despite the small land size and trains are familiar to people. The amount of contact that Japanese people have with trains is very high, Sugiyama said.

Take Tetsuya Suzuki, a 48-year-old yomi-tetsu who has more than 660 volumes of train timetable books dating back to April 1980. He uses the latest edition  yes, Japan still prints phone-book sized schedules  to map out imaginary journeys just for fun.

He began reading timetables in first grade, and started going out on trips by himself to test his itineraries when he was in second grade.

I can do my hobby anywhere, Suzuki said in his apartment, where the living room featured a large train set  he said it was for his young son, who was wearing a sweater with trains on it  and the balcony offered a view of the tracks. Whether Im traveling or at home, I can always have my timetable book with me.

His skill is somewhat in demand. A television program trying to get to seven famous ramen stores around the country in 10 days asked him for advice on the most efficient way to do it  and while the stores were open. Suzuki went through 20-odd different routes before coming up with the perfect itinerary  which he made just for kicks, not for money.

Its a good way to relieve stress from work because its so completely different from what I do during the day, said Suzuki, who runs health screening programs for a hospital.

Then there are tori-tetsu like Muneki Watanabe and Katsuhiko Orido, aged 43 and 49 respectively, who spend many of their weekends taking photos of various trains.

In Japan, there are the famous bullet trains that whiz the length of the country in about the same time it takes Amtrak to get from Washington to New York, and the slightly slower but perfectly punctual commuter trains. But there are the special trains: the retro, 1950s-style cars, the cars festooned with leaves in fall or cartoon characters like Hello Kitty and Pokemon, the trains with indoor playrooms or foot spas.

I cant explain why, but ever since I was little Ive been attracted to trains, said Watanabe, who does sales for a hotel, as the duo headed out on the Tokyo monorail on a recent Sunday. My parents theory is that it was because my grandfathers house was close to the tracks.

Orido even chose his current house specifically because its close to the tracks  he likes to open the windows and watch the trains. When I started doing this, I was still using film, he said. I have the photos stored in the closet at my parents house. The shelves are groaning under the weight.

The friends like to go places where there are no other tori-tetsu, partly because they like to take different photos, but also because they dont like the bun fight at the most sought-after spots.

When a rare train comes along, hundreds of people camp out overnight to secure the best spots, Watanabe said.

Watanabe recalls a trainspotting melee when he was in junior high school: Hustling for the best spot to see a special train, he saw two classmates get into a fight and fall onto the train tracks. (They got up before the train came through.)

The Japanese train system is a microcosm of Japan itself, says Takashi Noda, the author of books including The Way of Tetsu: Riding, Photographing and Making Carefree Stopovers, and a nori-tetsu of 60 years.

Trains and train systems appeal to Japanese people as trains are operated on time and accurately, Noda said. Train fans find joy and get excited when they can make a tightly scheduled transfer. For them trains are not just means of transportation, but their purpose.

For Takafumi Mochizuki, a 40-year-old radio scriptwriter, its the precision of the lunch boxes, not the trains themselves, that is alluring. He always loved eating ekiben  a combination of the Japanese words for station and lunch box  but now its a serious pastime.

Theres so much effort put into an ekiben. They use local ingredients so theyre different all over Japan, and they have to figure out how to keep the ingredients good for some hours, Mochizuki said at the gargantuan Tokyo Station after a day riding the rails.

Hed been out for more than 12 hours and had eaten four ekiben in that time: There was the box containing clams he ate for breakfast; the fishermans meal box containing fish and squid that he ate at his first stop; the sea urchin and clam bento from his second; and finally a whale meat bento.

Mochizuki returned from his journey with four other ekiben, which he planned to take home for dinner with his wife, who wasnt particularly wild about his hobby, he said.

I think my wife and my friends think its strange, Mochizuki said, admitting that there werent many ekiben connoisseurs as fanatical as he is  he even keeps the wrappers of every ekiben he eats.

Another reason for Japans train obsession? Its something that everyone can do, said Hirohiko Yokomi, a well-known train expert who has alighted at every station in Japan.

This is an easy subject to follow, he said. It doesnt require much effort to ride or take photos, and anyone can get into it easily  even schoolchildren  because Japanese trains arrive on time.
New Mexicos U.S. senators this week each met with one of President-elect Donald Trumps key cabinet picks  Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, the nominee to lead the Department of Defense.

Udall met Thursday with Tillerson, the ex-CEO of ExxonMobile, while Heinrich met with Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who is nominated to head the Department of Defense, on Wednesday.

The meetings were in advance of each nominees confirmation hearing. Tillersons hearing is next Wednesday, Jan. 11, while Mattis has not been scheduled. Udall sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider Tillersons nomination, while Heinrich is on the Armed Service Committee, which will consider Mattis.

After both meetings had taken place, Heinrich sounded optimistic about Mattis nomination, but stopped short of saying he would vote for him. Udall voiced a bit less optimism about Tillerson.

Mattiss nomination, while generally viewed more favorably by Senate Democrats than Tillersons, is more complicated. In addition to needing 51 votes for confirmation in the Senate, Mattis needs 60 votes from the Senate to approve a waiver that exempts him from a law that prohibits military officers from serving as Defense secretary for seven years after theyve retired.

In a telephone interview, Heinrich described Mattis as very intelligent and said they talked at length about New Mexicos nuclear weapons labs, as well as the specific roles that different New Mexico military bases play that are unique to the evolving mission set of the military right now.

It was a great first-time conversation, Heinrich said. I put some issues that are incredibly important to New Mexico in particular on his radar screen. He is a very intelligent person and has always been known as such. I think he has spent a lot of his life studying both the history and the strategy of military history.

But Heinrich said hes concerned about a law requiring a 10-year separation between the time someone serves as an active member of the military and them taking control of the Pentagon. The law was designed to preserve ultimate civilian  as opposed to military  control of the nations armed forces.

Im still looking at the issue of the fact that we need to change the law andthe fundamental requirements we have put in in terms of civilian oversight, Heinrich said. There are some strong reasons for why that exists. Were working through that and Ill make a decision about what I think is best for the country and New Mexico in the end.

Its a fundamental change in the law. I think we need to weigh that against the qualifications of this particular applicant.

As for Tillerson, Udall was less upbeat. In a statement issued Thursday, Udall said he was concerned and skeptical about a career executive of a massive oil and gas company  who has no government experience  serving as the nations Secretary of State.

However, Udall also mentioned what he sees as some bright spots in a potential Tillerson tenure at the State Department. Specifically, he mentioned the former oil executives belief in climate science and willingness to keep the U.S. as a party to the Paris Agreement.

Exxons overseas oil and gas interests are vast and spread across the world, including in areas of major U.S. foreign policy significance like Russia, Iraq, and Latin America, Udall said. While I compliment Mr. Tillerson on officially divesting from Exxon, this is an unprecedented nomination for many reasons. I think the American people deserve more assurance than weve received so far that he will be able to represent their values when U.S. policy goals conflict with Exxons ongoing corporate interests. Mr. Tillerson told me in our meeting that he is willing to make his tax information public, and I strongly urge him to release his tax returns before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings begin on .
In the tiny town of St. Joseph, Louisiana, a local preacher has temporarily suspended baptisms, figuring that if officials dont want people drinking the tainted water, he ought not to be plunging them into it, either.

I just dont feel comfortable immersing people in that water, Pastor Donald Scott told the Advocate, a Baton Rouge newspaper, recently. Im pretty sure God understands.

For years, the mostly poor, mostly black, rural seat of Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana has struggled with aging infrastructure and deteriorating water quality. The system is plagued with leaks. Often, what flows from households taps is brown and smelly, the result of high levels of iron and manganese, and residents have grown accustomed to regular notices to boil their water.

But it recent weeks, the problems have deepened significantly.

In mid-December, the states governor declared a public health emergency there after tests showed elevated lead levels in a private residence and at City Hall. Health officials now say they have detected lead levels exceeding the federal action level of 15 parts per billion in nearly 100 of the towns homes and businesses  or more than 20 percent of those tested.

Residents, who have been told to steer clear of their taps, are living off bottled water provided by the state. And while lawmakers have set aside funding for much of the estimated $8 million it will take to fix the towns pipes, change wont come quickly.

This could take a year or longer, Jimmy Guidry, a Louisiana state health officer whos been overseeing the water monitoring in St. Joseph, said in an interview Thursday.

The issues in St. Joseph  crumbling infrastructure, a paltry budget and overwhelmingly low-income residents at risk of being poisoned by their own water  are increasingly the problems of towns and cities across the United States.

How do you pay for maintaining or replacing aging infrastructure? Guidry asked. Flint, Michigan, brought a lot of attention to this. This is not Flint, as far as [the scale of] the lead levels were seeing. But I think this is going to become more and more of a problem for society.

It already is.

An analysis late last year by Reuters found that Flint, where nearly 100,000 people have gone almost three years without access to safe water after an ill-fated decision to switch the citys supply source to the Flint River, is not an aberration. The news service found thousands of other spots around the country with lead-contamination rates double those in Flint, though not all were caused by water problems. Last spring, USA Today examined federal data and found that nearly 2,000 water systems spanning all 50 states had tested for excessive levels of lead in recent years. Those systems collectively provide water to about 6 million people.

Nationwide, an estimated 6 million or more lead pipes remain in use by more than 11,000 community water systems serving as many as 22 million Americans. While some cities, such as Lansing, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, have replaced all their aging lead pipes, doing so is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking  and one many communities simply cannot afford.

For every Lansing and Madison, there are thousands of other cities that simply have not kept up with the problem, Erik Olson, health program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Washington Post last year.

While the greatest concentration of lead service lines is in the Midwest, such pipes remain throughout the country. The American Water Works Association says the cost of replacing them could exceed $30 billion, and neither homeowners nor municipalities are eager to spend that money. But as long as there are lead pipes in the ground or lead plumbing in homes, some risk remains, David LaFrance, the groups chief executive, told The Post. As a society, we should seize this moment of increased awareness about lead risks to develop solutions for getting the lead out.

Back in St. Joseph, a town of less than 1,200 that is perched along the Mississippi River, officials are trying to get the lead out and to overhaul a system that has been deteriorating for years. Until that happens, residents will have to cook, bathe and drink only bottled water.

The truth is, this should have been fixed years ago, the new mayor, Elvadus Fields Jr., told the Advocate.

Fields recently unseated a four-term incumbent by a handful of votes, in an election that the paper said revolved around anger about the continuing water crisis.
Copperas Cove, TX (76522)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread this afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 79F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 44F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
A Chinese American nuclear engineer was to plead guilty Friday to one count of conspiring to produce special nuclear material, in this case plutonium, outside the United States without a license from the secretary of energy.

The prosecution of Szuhsiung Allen Ho and a colleague, also a Chinese American, marks the first time the Justice Department has brought cases under a 1946 Cold War-era proliferation statute.

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors will drop charges that Ho, who owns a consulting business in the field of commercial nuclear energy, intended to illegally help China and that he acted as a foreign agent. That means Ho, 66 and a naturalized citizen born in Taiwan, no longer faces a potential life sentence but a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Nuclear energy experts say they are baffled that the government is pursuing the case at all. They say that the government is taking an old statute meant to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons and is applying it to an export licensing matter involving commercial reactor technology used around the world  activity that had nothing to do with bombmaking.

To make this a case about getting plutonium for bombs is a wild overstretch, and a pretty astonishing display of Department of Energy and State Department hypocrisy, said Victor Gilinsky, a physicist and independent consultant who served two terms on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We urge everybody to build reactors, and we sell reactors. All uranium-fueled reactors make plutonium  even commercial reactors. So if Ho is engaged in a conspiracy to produce bomb-usable plutonium in China, his co-conspirators are DOE and State  and the White House.

But the government insists that Ho endangered national security.

Its a very serious case no matter how insignificant the defense may allude to the technology involved here, said Charles E. Atchley Jr., an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee, in a June hearing. The defendant in this case is charged with procuring and helping to obtain on behalf of the Chinese government technology that it is not allowed to have.

Hos case follows several prosecutions of Chinese American scientists who were accused of sharing U.S. technology secrets with China, but whose cases collapsed. Two of those cases, involving a Temple University professor and a National Weather Service hydrologist, were handled by defense attorney Peter Zeidenberg, who is also representing Ho.

Ho is accused of violating a provision of the Atomic Energy Act by helping the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group, formerly known as the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC), more quickly design and make components for nuclear reactors. Prosecutors in Knoxville, Tennessee, say he paid a colleague, Ching Ning Guey, who worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority, to travel to China in 2013 at the power companys request to provide nuclear consulting. They allege that Ho encouraged Guey to share reports on nuclear power generation that he got through his work at TVA.

Hos assistance to the company focused on advanced fuel assembly research and the validation of nuclear reactor-related computer codes, among other things  all of which he did without a license, the government says.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed off on Hos prosecution, as required by the statute.

Guey in 2015 pleaded guilty to one count of producing special nuclear material overseas without a license  the same charge Ho is set to plead guilty to. The government agreed not to bring other charges in return for his cooperation against Ho. Guey, who unlike Ho was not jailed pending trial, has not yet been sentenced.

The Energy Department has certified that the technology that Ho shared is illegal to export to China without special authorization, according to the plea agreement.

I think that fundamentally this is more about theft of trade secrets than national security, said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It does appear that there was some transfer of proprietary information, he said after reading the indictment. But, Lyman said, my sense is that the U.S. government is trying to make an example out of Ho by escalating the seriousness of the alleged offenses.

Jonathan Poling, a former federal prosecutor who handled export control cases, said it is difficult to say whether Hos case is entirely commercial in nature or whether there were national security issues linked to entities or acts not discussed in the indictment. He said that could be precisely why the government charged the case, to protect the Energy Departments and national security agencies ability to make this assessment from the outset.

China, which tested its first nuclear bomb in 1964, has about 260 warheads and the material to make more. Its main priority has been expanding its commercial nuclear power, with about two dozen reactors under construction. The Obama administration, with the passive approval of Congress, renewed a nuclear cooperation agreement that does not prohibit China from buying reprocessing technology that would help it produce weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear power plant fuel of U.S. origin.

Ho, who used to work for Westinghouse Electric Co., argued that he went to China not to produce plutonium to make a bomb but rather to help commercial nuclear power plants operate safely.

He has said that he sought guidance on whether he needed a license from the Energy Department and received equivocal responses. He said he was told that a license was not needed for his information technology work, but that he might need one for consulting on safety-related issues. He applied for a license for the latter, but months went by without a response. During that time he continued to consult, under the apparent belief that he was permitted to do so, according to the court record.

The Energy Department declined to comment.

Hos defense team noted that in 2005, the government approved Westinghouses sale to China of $10 billion worth of the AP1000, one of the most advanced commercial nuclear power reactors in the world. Westinghouse, now owned by Japans Toshiba, was permitted to share all the associated technology as well as almost 600 tons of enriched uranium as fuel. It makes no sense that Westinghouse could sell such an advanced nuclear reactor to China, but that Ho could be punished with life in prison for advising a Chinese company on how to safely operate a less advanced plant, Hos defense team argued.

Hos detention, which entails lockdown 23 hours every day, has been arduous and unnecessary, his defense team has argued. Ho has been willing to post his home and those of a relative and a friend as bail, wear an ankle monitor, give up his passport and pay for security guards to monitor him around the clock. But the government has said he is a flight risk, and an appeals court has ruled he should remain in jail.
MOSCOW  Russia said Friday it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and other warships from the waters off Syria, following orders from President Vladimir Putin to scale back his forces as he casts himself as a peacemaker for the Middle Eastern country.

Russias military support changed the course of the 6-year-old civil war in favor of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, bolstering his forces with long-range missile attacks and precise airstrikes, military advisers and a beefed-up naval base on the Mediterranean coast.

It is not clear how far Moscow intends to draw down its forces. Putin said Russia would continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Assads military, an indication that Russia has no intention of leaving altogether.

But the withdrawal is a show of confidence after the decisive victory last month by Assad and his allies over rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. A week ago, Russia helped broker a cease-fire with Turkey, which supports the opposition, paving the way for new peace talks, this time in Kazakhstan, a Moscow ally.

A day before the cease-fire took effect, Putin ordered the scale-back.

The successes of the Syrian armed forces in the liberation of Aleppo have created the necessary conditions for the peaceful settlement of the conflict, said Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Im confident that it will lay the basis for the political settlement of the conflict.

The first forces to leave, he said, will be the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which was deployed in November at the height of the Aleppo offensive, and other, accompanying ships.

Moscow began its military intervention supporting Assad in September 2015. It announced a reduction in its forces once before, in March 2016 during a brief U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire and the launch of peace talks in Geneva. A few air units withdrew, but that truce quickly collapsed, peace talks went nowhere, and Moscow again threw renewed military might behind the Syrian government.

At the time, the U.S. estimated that there were 3,000 to 6,000 Russian military personnel in Syria, a number that likely rose before the Aleppo offensive.

Airstrikes from the Kuznetsov began in mid-November and marked the first time it was used in combat. The ship has lost two aircraft  an Su-33 fighter jet that crashed in the Mediterranean in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria. In November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the vessel.

Weeks of intensive airstrikes and a tightening siege on Aleppo caused rebel defenses to crumble, and they were forced to finally evacuate a small enclave of the city they controlled since 2012. The government declared Dec. 22 it had full control of the city, once Syrias bustling commercial capital.

Syrias army Chief of Staff Gen. Ali Ayoub visited the aircraft carrier Friday, according to Syrian state television.

He said the vessel has become part and parcel of the history of war on terrorism, according to Al-Ikhbariya TV. He added that signs of victory loom after all the Syria military sacrifices and Russias honorable position.

The recapture of Aleppo by Syrian troops and the subsequent cease-fire make Russian forces less critical to Assad at this juncture of the war. The rebels are mostly concentrated in Idlib province, a stronghold in the north on the border with Turkey. They also have a presence around the capital, Damascus, where government and allied forces are focusing their efforts. Opposition groups say the fighting there violates the cease-fire and threatens the peace talks.

The cease-fire is meant to pave the way for negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstans capital, later this month. The gathering could give new impetus for U.N.-mediated talks between Syrias warring sides. The truce, however, doesnt include areas controlled by the Islamic State group.

On Friday, Syrias Kurdish-led forces in the north said they have taken control of a medieval castle perched on a hilltop over a strategic town held by IS militants, less than 32 kilometers (20 miles) from Raqqa, the extremist groups self-declared capital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces gained control of Jaabar Castle, which dates to the 11th century, following days of intense clashes with IS militants. Seizing control of the castle brings the Kurdish-led forces within 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) of the dam and Tabqa, the second most important town in the province, after Raqqa, SDF spokesman Talal Sillo told The Associated Press. The castle, which IS leaders have used for cover, was in good condition, he said.

The castle sits on the northern bank of Assad Lake, overlooking the strategic Tabqa Dam and the town of the same name.

Built in the late 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, Tabqa Dam is believed to be Syrias largest. It has created the countrys largest reservoir.

We try to take control of the dam with the least possible damage, so we are not depending heavily on airstrikes, Sillo said. The U.S.-led international coalition backs the SDF forces with airstrikes.

Tabqa also houses a number of prisons. Sillo said there are intelligence reports that IS militants have been transferring captives from there to Raqqa.

___

El Deeb reported from Beirut.
On the same day that scores of celebrity mourners were gathering at the neighboring L.A. homes of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher after their deaths last month, fans and filmmakers were weighing the fate of Fishers most iconic character, Princess Leia.

Cody Christensen, a fan from Cedar City, Utah, has his wish: The father of five daughters has launched a Change.org petition to Make Leia an official Disney princess.

After the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher, we feel that it is only fitting for Disney to do away with the rule that an official Disney princess must be animated and make Leia a full-fledged princess, Christensen writes as part of his petition, which has gained more than 50,000 supporters. This would be a wonderful way to remember Carrie and a welcoming to one of Disneys new properties that is beloved by millions.

What we are asking, Christensen continues, is that the Walt Disney Corporation hold a full ceremony inducting Leia as the newest Disney princess as well as a special service in memory of Carrie Fisher.

What makes this well-meaning campaign a bit awkward is that the Disney Princess line isnt about coronation into some regal circle as much as it is about marketing. The official Disney Princess designation was first bestowed upon the companys animated royalty two decades ago to move plastic product. This is less about legacies and more about tchotchkes. Why peal the court trumpets of composer John Williams simply for merchandising Belles and whistles?

(Perhaps a better tribute would be Make Fisher a Disney Legend, just as Star Wars creator George Lucas became a part of the Class of 2015. Disney Legends is a hall of fame recognizing individual creative contributions to the company.)

HBO, which will debut the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds on Saturday , recently re-aired its televised version of Fishers one-woman show, 2010s Wishful Drinking. In that performance, Fisher  in noting her sometime love/hate relationship with Leia  points to some of the more embarrassing marketed likenesses of the princess-warrior and space slave, including a model figure that she pivots to show off its decidedly adult creep-shot angles.

In that live performance, Fisher notes that she does not even own her own likeness, at least within the Star Wars universe  its owned by Lucas.

Or at least it was, until 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilm, and thus its full Star Wars franchise, for about $4 billion. Now, its the Mouse House that decides how Fishers Leia face will be deployed.

All of this figures into creative meetings set for next week to determine Leias future in the Star Wars films, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Fisher returned as Gen. Organa for 2015s The Force Awakens, of course. For Decembers spinoff film, Rogue One  which is set immediately before the events of 1977s A New Hope  the younger Leias likeness was digitally re-created.

Because Rogue One also featured a digital re-creation of Grand Moff Tarkin as performed by Peter Cushing (who died in 1994), the film has raised anew the issues about the challenges and ethics of posthumous appropriation of an actors likeness.

Fisher, according to multiple reports, had shot her scenes for this Decembers Episode VIII Star Wars film. Yet the Hollywood Reporter says that a larger role was planned for Leia in 2019s Episode IX. Her future scenes, the industry trade reports, were set to include a reunion with sibling Luke Skywalker and a confrontation with her son.

Episode IX director/writer Colin Trevorrow  who reportedly will meet with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy next week to talk creative options  could help decide to scale back Leias role. And of course, Leias appearances could be a CGI creation, which would rear the head of not only technological possibility, but also  yet again  the issue of ethics.

Perhaps no one could have found this all as entertaining as Carrie Fisher herself. She always appreciated that in Hollywood, even amid moments of humanity, business always rolls on.
LONDON  It was a powerful image: soaring high in the sky next to Big Ben was a Mary Poppins figure wearing a protective mask.

And for good reason: London exceeded its annual air pollution limits for the whole of 2017 on Thursday night  a whopping five days into the new year.

London is a world leader in nitrogen dioxide (NO2)  levels are far higher than they are in the U.S.  because of its reliance on diesel-powered vehicles. Many of the citys iconic black cabs and double-decker buses are run on diesel, a major source of NO2.

Activists were expecting London to breach its limits early in the year  in 2016, it took eight days  and the Greenpeace environmental organization responded by staging a protest with a giant mask-wearing Mary Poppins balloon.

According to European Union and British law, no single area is allowed to exceed the hourly limits  of 200 micrograms of NO2 per cubic meter of air  more than 18 times in a year. On Thursday night, an air-quality monitoring station on Brixton Road in south London breached the limit 19 times, reaching 347.7 ug/m3 at 9 p.m.

Clean Air in London, an advocacy group, said that Brixton Road reported 20 exceedances over a 24-hour period, which could be a new world record for an official monitor.

Its director, Simon Birkett, said that with diesel vehicles responsible for 90-95 percent of NO2 from vehicle exhaust, the only way to comply with the law was to ban diesel from the most polluted places.

He also urged pedestrians to avoid Brixton Road and urged locals to abandon outdoor dining.

Emergency measures and action are needed, he said.

Britain, along with other countries in Europe, bet heavily on diesel cars before they understood that they emitted harmful pollutants. As my colleague Griff Witte reported:

Governments across Europe have aggressively promoted diesel vehicles, reasoning that diesels lower carbon-dioxide output makes it gentler on the planet than gasoline. In London, the streets are filled with diesel-powered buses and taxis. Continent-wide, diesel accounts for about half the car market.

But diesel has one glaring disadvantage: It is a major source of NO2, a pollutant that stunts lung growth and has been linked to a range of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The diesel push has meant that although air in Europe is far cleaner overall than in many parts of the globe, it still can be  and often is  deadly.

Its estimated that nearly 10,000 Londoners die prematurely every year as a result of air pollution.

ClientEarth, an environmental law firm that has taken the British government to court for not tackling Britains air pollution crisis, called on the Londons new mayor, Sadiq Khan, to deliver on his promises to reduce air pollution.

This is another shameful reminder of the severity of Londons air pollution, said Alan Andrews, a lawyer at the firm.

He said that the London mayor has promised to introduce a bigger ultra-low emission zone in 2019 and to deploy the cleanest buses on the most polluted roads. While these are vital steps in the right direction, we cant wait another three years for action. We need immediate action to cut pollution in the short-term and protect Londoners health during these pollution spikes.

If cars coming off the production line had dodgy brakes, you know the government would step in to sort it out, said Paul Morozzo, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace. We urgently need to stop the sale of new diesel models until emission testing is truly fit for purpose. Better still, we need car companies to phase out diesel completely and concentrate on hybrid and electric alternatives.

For his part, Khan announced on Friday the introduction of new green bus zones, which will see low-emission buses deployed on some of the capitals most polluted streets.

Londons filthy air is a killer, he acknowledged.



Video: Londoners talk about their citys noxious air pollution

URL: http://wapo.st/2hoSV9F

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  An Army veteran who complained that the government was controlling his mind drew a gun from his checked luggage on arrival at the Fort Lauderdale airport and opened fire in the baggage claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight, authorities said.

He was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, one witness said.

People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs, the witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it.

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, Alaska, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Santiago had walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the U.S. government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

Agents questioned an agitated and disjointed-sounding Santiago and then called police, who took him for a mental health evaluation, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent George Piro, who is in charge of the Miami field office, confirmed that Santiago had come into the Anchorage office and said he clearly indicated at the time that he was not intent on hurting anyone.

Authorities said the motive for the attack was under investigation. Shortly after the shooting, and before details of Santiagos mental health became public, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that it remained to be seen whether it was terrorism or the work of someone who is mentally deranged.

Piro said authorities are looking at leads in several states and have not ruled out terrorism. Were looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle, he said

Santiago, who is in federal custody, will face federal charges and is expected to appear in court Monday, Piro said.

One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition for his handgun, sending panicked travelers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.

Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen.

Bruce Hugon, who had flown in from Indianapolis for a vacation, was at the baggage carousel when he heard four or five pops and saw everyone drop down on the ground. He said a woman next to him tried to get up and was shot in the head.

The guy must have been standing over me at one point. I could smell the gunpowder, he said. I thought I was about to feel a piercing pain or nothing at all because I would have been dead.

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from Anchorage aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

At Fort Lauderdale, after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We dont know why, said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

The attack also exposed another weak point in airport security: While travelers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach the gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggage claim areas, are more lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

In 2013, a gunman with a grudge against the Transportation Security Administration shot and killed one of the agencys screeners and wounded three others during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport. Last November, an airline worker was shot and killed near an employee parking lot at Oklahoma Citys airport, and in 2015 a machete-wielding man was shot to death after he attacked federal security officers at the New Orleans airport.

The fact is that wherever there are crowds, such as at our airports, we remain vulnerable to these types of attacks, Nelson said.

The Fort Lauderdale gunman said nothing as he went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding, according to Lea. The killer went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him, Lea said.

The gunman was arrested unharmed, with no shots fired by law enforcement officers, and was being questioned by the FBI, Sheriff Scott Israel said.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said 30 to 40 people were injured  scrapes, bruises and broken bones  after the shooting.

The condition of the wounded was not disclosed. At least one of the victims was seen lying in a pool of blood with what appeared to be a head wound.

The airport was shut down, with incoming flights diverted and outgoing flights held on the ground. Airport Director Mark Gale said it will try to reopen at 5 a.m. Saturday but urged travelers to check with their individual airlines on flight status. He said 10,000 of the airports stranded travelers were being bused overnight to the citys spacious Port Everglades cruise ship terminal.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said. President-elect Donald Trump said that it is a disgraceful situation thats happening in our country and throughout the world and that it was too soon to say whether it was a terrorist attack.

Santiagos brother, Bryan, told the AP that his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiagos girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months. Bryan Santiago said that he didnt know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was sent to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.

The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted  from specialist to private first class  and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honorable discharge.

John Schilcher told Fox News he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground, said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. The firing just went on and on.

I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me, he said. Thats when I assumed it was safe.

___

Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro and Adriana Gomez-Licon in Miami; Lolita C. Baldor and Eric Tucker in Washington; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; David Koenig in Dallas; and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.
BERLIN  It was every God-fearing Christians worst nightmare about Muslim refugees. Revealed, the Breitbart News headline screamed, 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germanys Oldest Church Alight on New Years Eve.

The only problem: Police say thats not what happened that night in the western city of Dortmund.

The Breitbart report has triggered a backlash in Germany, igniting fresh concerns over the manipulation of information and the societal cost of revenue-generating clickbait.

The report comes amid a rash of rumors and social media claims about refugees in the aftermath of the recent Berlin Christmas market attack, including one missive falsely linking a refugee who once took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a holiday season assault on a homeless man.

As they did during the U.S. presidential campaign, fake and misleading reports are popping up across Europe, particularly as a string of countries including Germany are poised for major elections. Yet the Breitbart report on Germany, critics say, shows how the disseminators of such tidbits trade not only in pure fiction, but also in skillfully sown innuendo steeped in exaggeration.

We shook our heads in disbelief when we saw how this operation was politicized by Breitbart, said Gunnar Wortmann, a spokesman of the Dortmund police.

The report was largely aggregated from the local news outlet Ruhr Nachrichten, which also lashed out at Breitbart for using our online reports for fake news, hate and propaganda.

The story drew blistering critiques from others in the German media, including pundits who worry it signals an attempt by right-wing outlets to poison the public debate as Merkel  blasted by President-elect Donald Trump for her open-door policy on refugees  seeks a fourth term this year. She has declared the spread of false news a pox on Germany that must be cured. The government is planning to introduce a law that could impose large fines on social media firms like Facebook if they fail to take immediate action to take down such stories.

The Breitbart report about New Years Eve in Dortmund could be a taste of the upcoming parliamentary election campaign, warned an editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. Websites such as Breitbart News could increasingly use misinformation and distortion in order to diminish trust in established institutions.

Breitbart  formerly headed by Trumps top aid, Stephen K. Bannon  did not respond to a request for comment.

The way Breitbart tells it in its Jan. 3 piece, a New Years Eve mob in the industrial city of Dortmund began throwing fireworks into crowds of visitors, which also included families with children. Asked by officers to stop, the mob turned to pelt fireworks at police instead.

Fireworks, the story says, were launched at St Reinolds, Germanys oldest church, setting the roof alight. The article strongly suggests, but never directly states, that the responsible parties were unruly Muslim migrants. It cites federal police spokesman Volker Stall as saying a large number of young men from North Africa were in town who displayed an aggressive mood toward the public and police.

The piece also cites a video tweeted by a local newspaper, the Ruhr Nachrichten, that showed men apparently chanting Allahu akbar around the flag of the Free Syrian Army, a group defined by the outlet as al-Qaeda and Islamic State collaborators.

Police in Dortmund do not dispute that several incidents took place that night, nothing along the lines suggested by the Breitbart report. In fact, they said, it was comparatively calmer than previous New Years eves.

As for setting alight the roof of Germanys oldest church? A firework did hit the netting covering the churchs construction scaffold. It caught fire, and was put out without damage to the church  which is not Germanys oldest.

Officials said there were a large number of revelers in the square that night, including Germans. Wortmann said it remains unclear who lit the offending projectile or whether it was even intentional.

In a separate incident, a group of migrants, reportedly celebrating the cease-fire in Syria, did rally together and chant Allahu akbar, a phrase sometimes associated with terrorist attacks but also common in Muslim prayers and celebrations. In the video, they indeed hoisted a flag  of the mainstream Syrian opposition, which is supported by the U.S. government.

In an interview, Stall, the police spokesman quoted by Breitbart, described another incident in far less dramatic terms. He said a group of about 35 people who appeared to be migrants obstructed traffic in front of a McDonalds and, for a brief period, refused to move.

He said the group initially resisted police requests to move on, but he said he was unaware whether any of them had acted aggressively toward the public.

One Syrian migrant appears to have thrown a single firework that landed at the feet of an officer, he said. That same night, a German man, he added, also threw a firework at officers.

Elsewhere in Germany, especially in Cologne  the site of mass sexual assaults a year earlier  authorities did report several arrests of men with migrant backgrounds for aggressive or otherwise illegal behavior. Police in Dortmund said that they did find the number of migrants gathered that night to be unusually high, but nevertheless described the evening as relatively calm.

Recent rumors on social media have appeared to embellish stories to fuel anti-refugee sentiment when the facts themselves may have done the job almost as well. On Christmas Eve, for instance, police said a group of young refugees are suspected of trying to set fire to a homeless person at a Berlin subway station.

Soon afterward, a photo collage emerged on social media blaming Anas Modamani  the young Syrian man who famously took a selfie with Merkel in 2015 that quickly went viral as being emblematic of her open-door approach.

Homeless person set on fire  Merkel made a selfie with one of the offenders in 2015, the collages caption read.

Modamani, however, is not a suspect in the case, and his attorney fired off letters to Facebook and individuals who shared the image, threatening legal action if they were not taken down.

It was one of several viral threads that emerged after the Berlin attack on Dec. 19, when a Tunisian man, now dead, drove a truck into a crowd killing 12, including the vehicles Polish driver.

Its a potpourri of real and fake news that creates the impression that something is happening always and everywhere, said Andre Wolf, spokesman of Mimikama, an Austria-based organization devoted to exposing fake news.
Authorities responded Friday afternoon to reports of possible gunfire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport.

A spokeswoman for the Broward County Sheriffs Office said Friday that officials were looking into the reports of gunshots, but said she could not provide further information.

The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport posted on Twitter about an ongoing incident at the baggage claims in one of the terminals, but did not provide further information. Airport representatives could not be immediately reached for comment.

Local media reports said that at least several people had been wounded in the shooting. Live video feeds from the scene showed swarms of police cars with their sirens flashing at the airport, one of the busiest aviation hubs in the country.

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer posted on Twitter that he was at the airport and saw people running after gunshots were fired.
Elon Musk has ambitious goals for SpaceX in the next couple of years. The company plans to launch its new massive rocket, the Falcon Heavy, as it works toward flying an unmanned spacecraft to Mars next year. It also is planning to fly astronauts to the International Space Station by 2018, a feat that would return the United States to human spaceflight.

Before it embarks on all of that, however, it first has to launch what would normally be a routine flight of commercial satellites to orbit. But that launch, scheduled for Monday, is now anything but routine  and is instead one of the most important in history of the company.

The launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base is the first since SpaceXs rocket exploded on Sept. 1 while being fueled ahead of an engine test fire. That explosion was the companys second failure in less than two years  in 2015, it lost a rocket a couple minutes into flight  leading to questions about its ability to fly reliably.

In addition to the goals of Mars and resuming the nations manned spaceflight program, the company also has a massive backlog of launches that was delayed while the company was grounded during its four-month investigation.

The stakes for this flight, then, are huge, said Todd Harrison, the director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Theyve got to prove it and restore confidence in their system on this flight, he said. If they have another failure, its going to stop them dead in their tracks.

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the way for SpaceXs launch. The agency accepted SpaceXs investigative report on its rocket explosion, closing the case, and issued it a launch license.

On Thursday, Musk tweeted that SpaceX successfully performed an engine test firing and wrote that, All systems are go for launch next week. Originally, the launch was scheduled for Sunday, and it was unclear why the schedule slipped a day to Monday.

Earlier this week, the company said the cause of the September explosion was traced to a problem with a pressure vessel in the second-stage liquid oxygen tank. The tank buckled, the company said, and supercooled liquid oxygen pooled in the lining. The fuel was ignited by breaking fibers or friction.

SpaceX said in the short term, it plans to change the way it loads fuel. Eventually, it plans to change the design of the pressure vessels to prevent buckling.

Every launch carries the risk of failure, said Jim Muncy, the president of PoliSpace, a consulting firm. SpaceXs Falcon 9 is a proven vehicle, he said. SpaceX continually tries to innovate, and had been super cooling its fuel to make it more dense so that the rocket could carry more of it.

The extra fuel was necessary as the company began flying its rocket boosters back to land  or to ships at sea  so that they could be reused. But taking such advanced steps  no one had ever successfully landed an orbital-class rocket before  can cause problems, Muncy said.

As you try to increase performance, you find out if youre pushing the envelope too far, he said. Theyre clearly pulling back and not pushing the envelope as much with this launch.

The launch, which would carry 10 Iridium communications satellites to orbit, is scheduled for Monday at 1:22 p.m. Eastern time  weather permitting.
Donald Trump loves a good construction project, so its no surprise that hes a fan of the Great Wall of China. A couple of months ago, Trump said this about the feat: The Great Wall of China, built 2,000 years ago, is 13,000 miles long, folks. . . . And they didnt have . . . tractors, they didnt have cranes, they didnt have excavation equipment.

Last night, Trump compared his own planned wall on the border with Mexico to the famed barricade:

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!

In that tweet, and on the campaign trail, Trump famously promised that Mexico will foot the bill. But that country has repeatedly declined the invitation, and Congress has other ideas. This week, Republican leaders said construction could start as soon as April  and that it would be paid for by American taxpayers, at least at first.

That means Trumps Great Wall shares something else with its namesake: its funding source.

Chinas Great Wall was started by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the 3rd century B.C. to keep barbarian nomads out. The project lasted thousands of years, one of the most massive construction projects ever undertaken. Like most projects of huge ambition and overrun, it was also tremendously expensive. Historian Walter A. McDougall estimated that the Ming Dynasty alone spent several million ounces of silver on construction costs during its reign from the 14th to 17th centuries A.D. All that silver came from taxes and other government revenue, including the huge amounts of silver the Chinese mined in Peru and shipped back across the Pacific via Southeast Asian trade routes.

How much Trumps wall may cost depends a lot of who you ask. Trump has said itll run about $8 billion, while CNBC predicts that the real price will run between $15 and $25 billion, plus maintenance costs.

Of course, Chinas Ming dynasty was also able to control costs thanks to a relatively cheap labor force. Most construction was done by soldiers, convicts or commoners who were essentially forced to work. It was dangerous and often deadly work, keeping workers in cold and remote places for months or years at a time. The wall earned the nickname of the longest cemetery on Earth because there were so many deaths  400,000 by one estimate.

Another reason for Trump to take note? Historians agree that Chinas Great Wall was a major boondoggle and probably not worth it in the end. It didnt really keep foreigners out. Anyone could sneak in  they just needed to find an unmanned entrance or gap. Eventually the military conscripts sent to guard the wall started mingling and trading with the Mongols, giving the barbarian hordes what they really wanted all along: customers for their wares.

Or, as historian Arthur Waldron told Mother Jones: the Great Wall was bad fiscal and foreign policy, mainly paid for with pain.
ST. PAUL, Minn.  Ilhan Omar took the oath as the nations first Somali-American lawmaker this week, just days after an 8,500-mile journey that retraced her path from her war-torn homeland to Kenya to the Minnesota Capitol.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Democrat said the trip gave her essential perspective as she embarks on her new career as a state representative.

To walk the same streets I walked as a kid, as a refugee, to think about the other kids who now are adults raising kids in Somalia, who are still living in a refugee camp  its hard not to believe theres a bigger purpose, said Omar, 34.

Between her trip to Africa and a whirlwind of national TV appearances since her November election victory, Omar hasnt had a moment to decorate her new Capitol office. Its currently adorned only with two wooden Somali milk containers  one painted with the blue background and white star of the Somali flag.

Omar said she considers her election to be a counter-narrative to President-elect Donald Trump, who has proposed a temporary ban on allowing Muslim immigrants into the country. During his lone campaign stop in Minnesota, he said the state had suffered from the influx of refugees.

As a devout Muslim, a refugee and a mother of three, Omar says her politics are influenced by far more than her Somali heritage.

Omar and her family fled Somalia when she was just 8 as civil war tore apart their country, spending four years in a Mombasa, Kenya, camp with tens of thousands of other refugees. At age 12, the family finally got sponsored to move to the United States, eventually settling in Minnesota.

That story is familiar in Minneapolis, home to the largest population of Somalis outside of the country and a neighborhood dubbed Little Mogadishu, where massive high-rise apartment buildings cast shadows over dozens of east African coffee shops, eateries and markets. More than 40,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, according to the latest census figures, wooed by generous social services and beckoned by the sense of community among the diaspora.

But none of her neighbors had risen to the level Omar reached when she was sworn in on Tuesday.

Oftentimes when people think about the second chance they may get in a new home, they dont think of all the doors being open for them, she said. It is something they can all point to and say: Look at Ilhan,' she said.

No stranger to politics after working for a city councilor and running campaigns, Omar never asked for permission to run; she said shes never felt she had to. She took on one of the Legislatures longest-serving members, a 44-year incumbent in the Democratic primary and won.

But it wasnt just fellow Somalis who powered her into her seat. While a third Democratic candidate, another Somali-American immigrant, overwhelmingly won the districts Somali-heavy neighborhoods, Omar also built up support among college students at the nearby University of Minnesota, young professionals, retirees and more.

Her November victory in the heavily liberal district was all but assured even before a Republican dropped from the race. Mohamud Noor, a local nonprofit director whom Omar defeated in the primary, said her victory gives Omar a greater responsibility than the average lawmaker, both as a liaison for issues affecting the immigrant community and as a symbol for them.

She is the reassurance that there is inspiration, there is hope, Noor said. The divisiveness, the hate  that dissipates because of her being at that level.

But Omar will face the political reality of power in Minnesotas Legislature, where Republicans are in control. Her legislative wish list goes well beyond the issues impacting her community, from streamlining some business regulations to restoring voting rights for released felons and police reforms in the wake of the tide of officer-involved shootings.

Still, Omar said she understands the historic significance of her election  as does her eldest daughter.

She thinks about the kinds of history she can make, she said.
An Iraq War veteran who had complained that the government was forcing him to watch Islamic State videos pulled a gun from his checked bag and opened fire Friday afternoon at the Fort Lauderdales international airport, killing five people and injuring eight, authorities said.

The bloody rampage at a quiet baggage-claim area sent people scrambling through the terminals and across the airfield at one of the countrys busiest airports, shutting down all flights for hours while paramedics and federal and local law enforcement officers flooded the scene.

The alleged gunman, identified by authorities as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, was taken into custody unharmed. He had been given a general discharge from the Alaska National Guard in August after being demoted in rank, military officials said.

In November, he visited an FBI office in Anchorage and told agents that his mind was being controlled by a U.S. intelligence agency and mentioned the ISIS videos, according to a senior federal law enforcement official. The FBI contacted local authorities, who took Santiago to undergo a mental-health evaluation, a senior law enforcement official said.

After interviewing Santiagos relatives and conducting other reviews and checking with other agencies, the bureau closed its assessment of Santiago, the official said.

Friday night, Santiago was being questioned by police and the FBI, and authorities said that his motive remained under investigation. In Anchorage, law enforcement officials descended on a small house where Santiagos name was on the mailbox, along with the names of two others.

This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism, said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. We cant conclude that.

Santiago, a U.S. citizen with ties to New Jersey and Puerto Rico, picked up his bag from the carousel, went to a restroom to load his gun, returned to the baggage-claim area and began firing at people, said federal officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Travelers are allowed to take firearms with them on flights as long as the guns are unloaded, locked in hard-sided containers and placed in checked baggage, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Ammunition can be taken onto flights but also must be placed in checked baggage.

The bag with the firearm was the only baggage that Santiago checked when he traveled alone from Anchorage to Minneapolis and then Florida, said Jesse Davis, chief of police at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, where passengers routinely travel with weapons. Were a big hunting state, so we get quite a lot of that, Davis said.

Everything appeared normal, Davis said. Santiago checked in for his Delta Air Lines flight more than four hours early, which was unusual, Davis said, but didnt call attention to himself at all.

A federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said that the suspect did not appear to say anything during his first interactions with police that suggested a political or terrorism-related motive. According to some witness accounts, he reloaded at least once and continued firing on horrified passengers, then lay down on the floor in a spread-eagle position and waited for authorities to arrest him.

Officials said the suspect had acted alone. Another flurry of nervous activity erupted at the airport later Friday afternoon when there were reports of additional gunfire, but Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said there was no evidence of a second shooting.

The attack took place in the baggage-claim area at the airports Terminal 2, home to departures and arrivals for Delta and Air Canada, according to the airport. Footage from the scene inside the building captured the brutal aftermath of the shooting in the baggage area, on the airports lower level.

Jay Cohen was dropped off at the airport for a flight and arrived after the gunfire had stopped, finding an unusual scene at the usually bustling facility.

The airport was like a ghost town, Cohen, 51, a consultant, said in a telephone interview. I didnt see anyone around.

It wasnt until he walked all the way up to the Delta counter without encountering a line or a single soul that he noticed about 20 people huddled together behind a nearby concrete wall. He said he peeked over the counter and saw the Delta employees on the ground trying to cover their heads with their hands.

Hurry up. Get behind here, someone whispered to him, he said. Active shooter. Active shooter.

As he looked around the terminal he previously thought was abandoned, he now could see people hiding under benches and squished up against windows, he said. Then Cohen saw police officers running at full speed through the terminal, some with guns drawn, others with their hands on their holsters, while police cars began screaming up to the curb.

It went from eerie quiet from when I walked in to pure mayhem in just minutes, he said. It was chaos.

Many of those at the airport expressed frustration with the lack of information Friday. Hundreds were stranded on the airfield and not allowed off the premises for hours as authorities sought to clear the airport, looking for other danger.

Sophia Macris, 35, on her way to vacation in Florida, was on her just-arrived plane from New York when the shooting occurred.

They held our plane on the tarmac, she said in an interview, still standing on the airplane-parking ramp outside the terminal. First, they told us there was fire alarm in Terminal 2. Then they said emergency situation.

After the shooting, dozens of cars pulled over onto the shoulder of nearby Interstate 595. As hundreds of people waited alongside the highway, family members and friends repeatedly tried to call loved ones who were scheduled to be on arriving flights.

Saintnatus Adition paced along the highway as police cars raced past with sirens blaring. His 71-year-old father had just landed from Haiti when the chaos began. He called and said it got very busy all of the sudden, Adition said. He had been frantically calling him to find out whether he was OK but had not reached him as of Friday afternoon. Of course I am very scared, Adition said.

Adition finally heard from his father shortly after 6 p.m.

I was so happy, he said. He told me hes OK.

His father, along with thousands of other passengers, was still waiting in a terminal around 7:30 p.m.

As evening approached, family members and stranded airport employees lining the roads grew anxious. Police kept up a heavy presence, and an access road used mostly by airport employees was also closed and jammed with personnel  maintenance workers, taxi drivers, luggage handlers and others whose livelihoods depend on the busy airport. Most had long finished their shifts and were waiting to go home.

Lee Kospender, 53, a luggage handler, had been waiting in his truck for four hours. We were working a flight and then saw people being evacuated. Now weve been out here in our cars for hours. Pointing towards a group of officers blocking the road, he said, Ive talked to them five times. We cant leave.

All flights were suspended following the shooting, and the airport was closed, officials said. Officials at other major airports across the country, including in Los Angeles and Chicago, said they were beefing up security in response to the shooting in Florida.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the situation and spoke by phone with Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief to extend his condolences on the tragic loss of life, said Ned Price, spokesman for the National Security Council.

This is a senseless act of evil, said Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who traveled to the airport to make his latestpublic remarks in the aftermath of a shooting rampage in his state.



Julie OMalley in Anchorage, Tal Abbady and Michael S. Rosenwald in Fort Lauderdale, and Abigail Hauslohner, Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins, Ashley Halsey and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.



Social video shows baggage claim area where multiple people were shot

http://wapo.st/2iMVOTq



Video: What we know about the shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport

URL: http://wapo.st/2iQVky6

Embed code:
The Marine Corps will send a new task force of military advisers to southern Afghanistans restive Helmand province this spring, returning to a region where tens of thousands of Marines fought during the Obama administration and hundreds were killed.

About 300 Marines with a unit called Task Force Southwest will deploy, advising the Afghan Armys 215th Corps and Afghan national police with the 505th Zone. The forces will work in part from a large Afghan installation known during earlier Marine operations as Camp Leatherneck, but will be based in several other locations throughout Helmand and could face combat, senior Marine officers said Friday.

Were viewing this as a high-risk mission that really requires training that is going to ensure that our Marines are capable of countering a full-spectrum threat, said Brig. Gen. Roger Turner, who will lead the mission. Were not in any way viewing this as a non-combat mission or anything to take lightly.

Army Gen. John Nicholson, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, asked the Marines to replace a similarly sized Army unit called Task Force Forge as it rotates home, Turner said. Marines were pulled from Helmand in October 2014 as part of President Barack Obamas planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, but Afghan forces have struggled mightily since to maintain security against a resilient Taliban.

Turner said the Marines who will deploy are a seasoned, senior force, about half of whom have deployed to Helmand at least once before. The senior ranks of those involved reflect the mission, which primarily calls for advising senior Afghan army and police officials.

We had to pull very senior Marines in all functional areas to match up with their counterparts and really provide a level of expertise, Turner said. Because, the Afghans have made some good progress on a lot of these areas. . . . Its not a simplistic mission. Theyve really gotten to a point where our level of advising needs to be pretty sophisticated to match where their capabilities are.

The headquarters will be formed primarily from members of 6th Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, N.C., with other advisers coming across the service to fill specific needs.
The Smithsonian Institution reported 30.2 million visits were made to its museums last year, a 7 percent increase fueled by the addition of two sites.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture welcomed 733,000 to its galleries in the 14 weeks it was opened in 2016, while the Renwick Gallery, a part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum that reopened in November of 2015, attracted large crowds in the first half of the year. Its 2016 total was 764,000, compared to 164,000 in 2015.

It was the largest total number since 2012, when the Smithsonian reported 30.3 million visits. Still, about half of the Smithsonian branches reported the same or lower visitors compared to 2015.

The most popular branch was the National Air and Space Museum, with 7.5 million visits, up from 2015s 6.9 million. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, a satellite of Air and Space at Dulles Airport, recorded another 1. 6 million.

The National Museum of Natural History was second, with 7.1 million visits, followed by the National Museum of American History, with 3. 8 million, and the National Zoo, which attracted 2.7 million visits, a 23 percent increase from 2015.
A lot more local businesses could soon sell goods and services to in-state film productions thanks to a new partnership between yellCast and Shoot New Mexico.

yellCast, an online search platform that rapidly connects local consumers and businesses, is working with Shoot NM to link film-friendly firms with local production managers seeking supplies. That could potentially spread more Hollywood dollars among more New Mexico businesses while making purchasing easier for film productions, said Tobi Ives, founder and owner of the film-focused consulting firm Minnow Man Media LLC.

Every production seeks anywhere from 50 to hundreds of vendors, depending on how big the production is, Ives said. yellCast can act as a filter to rapidly connect productions with the businesses best geared to serve them.

Film-related purchasing is growing exponentially in New Mexico. Direct spending reached $387 million last year, up from $162 million in fiscal year 2014, and $289 million in FY 2015, according to the State Film Office. That includes everything from hotels, restaurants, and construction materials to costumes, office supplies and everyday items used on set.

But many more local businesses could benefit if they become film-friendly and have ways to connect with production buyers, Ives said.

To sign up on yellCast, businesses must pledge to learn how best to serve the film industry, such as meeting all requirements for purchases to qualify for tax incentives and creating strategies for rapid-response to buyer requests.

Its another way for us to do outreach to vendors, Ives said. With yellCast we can reach firms that are not just film-specific, but who serve more general clientele.

yellCast, which launched in Santa Fe last July, allows consumers to find local products and services and instantly connect them with vendors via phone, text and email. Patented technology allows consumers to choose multiple businesses and send an inquiry to all of them in a single request.

Businesses listed with yellCast pay a small fee if they actually respond to an inquiry.

The service, which is still in beta testing in Santa Fe, has logged about 3,000 consumer searches and 15,000 visitors to date, said yellCast head of community development Kate Noble. About 300 local businesses have signed up.

Were now building a specific listing of businesses with Shoot NM, Noble said. Special icons will make them searchable as film-friendly businesses to create a supply-side market for the film industry.
A former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden filed paperwork Friday to run for lieutenant governor in Virginia, lending some political star power to a race that now has three Democrats and three Republicans vying for the office.

Democrat Susan Platt served as Bidens chief of staff in the Senate for two years during the mid-1990s, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She owns a political consulting firm in Great Falls.

Platt joins a crowded field of candidates to replace Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who is running for governor in November.

Her Democratic opponents are former U.S. attorney Gene Rossi and former U.S. attorney Justin Fairfax, who also ran for state attorney general in 2013.

The Republicans are state Del. Glenn R. Davis Jr. (Virginia Beach) and state Sens. Bryce E. Reeves (Spotsylvania) and Jill Holtzman Vogel (Fauquier.)
SHANGHAI  In a sign of improving cooperation between the U.S. and China to fight the global drug trade, the Drug Enforcement Administration will open a new office there and its top chief will visit next week for the first time in more than a decade.

The DEA said acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg will visit Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong Monday through Thursday, at the invitation of Chinas Ministry of Public Security. The last time the head of the DEA visited the country was 2005.

The planned new office in the city of Guangzhou will likely be staffed with two special agents, pending final approvals, said Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington.

DEA maintains that China is the top source country for synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its precursors, which have been fueling the deadliest drug abuse epidemic in U.S. history. China is also emerging as a laundering destination for drug money, according to a U.S. Justice Department indictment unsealed in 2015.

Intelligence and investigative information have shown that Guangzhou has strong ties to international drug trafficking organizations operating in China and elsewhere, Baer said in an email. These criminal groups in Guangzhou utilize trade-based money laundering schemes to legitimize drug profits, use the port facilities as a transit point to ship illegal narcotics, and purchase synthetic drugs along with precursor chemicals.

Chinese officials dispute claims that China is the main source of fentanyl and precursors, noting that the U.S. has produced little supporting data. Nonetheless, Beijing has taken significant steps to crack down on the production and export of synthetic drugs, even though these substances are not widely abused within China. China already controls fentanyl, a painkiller up to 50 times more potent than heroin, along with 18 related compounds and is considering blacklisting four more.

U.S. officials have been pressing China to control additional opioids, which can be easily purchased online from vendors in China. China, meanwhile, has been seeking U.S. support to place ketamine, an anesthetic widely abused in China, on a U.N.-maintained list of internationally controlled substances.

We believe Mr. Rosenbergs visit will improve both sides understanding and trust. It will help to improve cooperation in cracking down on drug crimes, Chinas National Narcotics Control Commission told AP, noting that Hu Minglang, then Director General of Chinas Narcotics Control Bureau, already visited Washington in September.

___

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.
What does President-elect Donald Trump really mean when he praises Russian President Vladimir Putin? No one knows yet; perhaps Trump doesnt even know. But its curious, isnt it, that so many of his critics take his flattery to be genuine expressions of his attitude, when everything else about his speech and conduct suggests that he often does not mean what he says.

Thats not quite the same thing as saying hes a liar. If Trump is a liar, he is an unconventional one. His inventions and madcap exaggerations seem intended less to deceive than to scandalize and provoke. When he claimed in 2015, for example, that he had watched as thousands and thousands of Muslims cheered the news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he must have known that this was an easily refutable claim. He didnt care. Asked to support his statement on ABCs This Week, he didnt cavil or lapse into an obfuscatory defense. He didnt insist, as an ordinary politician would have, that his words were taken out of context or that he meant something different from what was attributed to him. He simply reasserted the claim. It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it.

There was a lot of talk last year about the term post-truth, Oxford Dictionaries 2016 international word of the year, made popular across the Anglophone world by the Brexit referendum in Britain and the U.S. presidential election. The latter event, particularly as embodied by Trumps campaign, was said to be uniquely bereft of respect for factual truth. Well, maybe; but surely we arent prepared to say that American political culture pre-Trump was characterized by reverence for truth. Long before Trump got here, our political debates teemed with disinformation of every variety: gross hyperbole, calculated non sequiturs, culpable omissions, unfalsifiable accusations, deliberate vagueness, outright lies. It seems wrong to associate only Trump with this allegedly new era of untruth; thousands before him did their part.

What makes Trump different is not that he treats the truth with contempt. What makes him different is that he does so openly, almost gleefully, as if he has discovered the phoniness of a myth that holds everyone else in check.

That myth was a Protestant-evangelical ethic of honesty that defined American political culture from the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century to the Social Gospel of the early 20th century to the Billy Graham crusades of the 1960s and 70s. It was an effort, in one way or another, to make America a Protestant Christian society. Even in our permissive and morally pluralistic culture, the words honesty and integrity are still the most important terms in our political discourse. Almost every campaign speech and political ad will appeal somehow to the ideal of honesty; the candidates words must match his or her actions; rhetoric must match conduct.

We rarely appreciate how American this fixation on honesty is. Other political cultures are not similarly disposed. One example: No high-level married politician in the United States could get away with having an openly discussed relationship with a mistress while still living with his wife, as is frequently done in France. Such a relationship, in American terms, is living evidence that the politicians words are not always the same as his deeds. French voters accept this disjunction in their leaders; most American voters do not. Of course, plenty of American politicians have affairs, but our political culture demands that they pretend they do not and never have.

That Protestant-evangelical ethic has become brittle in recent decades. Trump is the first, or the most important among the first, to snap it. He isnt preoccupied with maintaining a reputation for integrity. He likes to be thought of as honest, but only in the sense that he will say things others wont; he isnt afraid to misstate facts or manufacture his own facts or exaggerate them a hundredfold. He will call others liars and do so with abandon, but he doesnt get too exercised about others calling him a liar. He will say one thing today and another next week, and make only the meagerest effort to pretend he didnt contradict himself. If he wants to do an about-face, he just does one.

Trump perceived, correctly in my view, that political rhetoric in the United States had become empty, a vast collection of platitudes and bogus phrases that no longer bore any real connection to the truth. Everyone else pretended to mean what they said when they didnt; Trump simply dropped the pretense. The result is a post-Christian political discourse of a distinctively American sort: blunt and self-assured and largely free of the obligation to express yourself with sincerity. The new post-Christian discourse uses words, not as vehicles to express thoughts and arguments, but as weapons  as instruments to wrong-foot adversaries and keep them guessing while you seize the advantage.

I find it hard to lament the quickening demise of the old honesty-based political culture. It had become cheap and false. If Trump hadnt snapped it, somebody else would have.



Swaim is author of The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics and a contributing columnist for The Post.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  The horrific beating of a mentally disabled white man in Chicago by four black assailants broadcast on social media is highlighting anti-white hate crimes at a time of increased racial strife in the United States.

But federal statistics and experts say anti-white incidents remain a smaller percentage of overall hate crimes. Anti-black hate crimes are still the largest number of cases.

According to the 2015 FBI hate crime statistics, the latest available, there were 613 anti-white-related crimes out of 5,850 total cases. Thats around 10.5 percent of all reported hate crimes, and within the yearly average, federal numbers show.

By comparison, the FBI reports there were 1,745 anti-black hate crimes or about 30 percent of all reported incidents. Jews were the most targeted religious group that year and were victims of 11 percent of all hate crimes. Its not clear how many anti-Jewish hate crime victims also may have been attacked because of their race.

That data also suggested that blacks and Jews remain disproportionally targets of hate crimes compared to their population as opposed to whites. African-Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population, while non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offenders bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Filing reports for the federal count is voluntary, but guidelines call for reports to be submitted even if they list zero hate crimes.

Even then, experts say the FBI data on hate crimes isnt a full picture since anti-black cases are skewed lower by the lack of reporting participation by some southern law enforcement agencies.

Some large Florida cities, like Miami, reported no hate crimes to the FBI in 2015, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, California State University. I doubt that cities as diverse as those had no hate crimes, he said.

In Chicago, two men and two women  all black  are facing hate crime charges in connection with the brutal beating of a mentally disabled white man that was streamed on Facebook Live. The video shows the victim is tied up and the suspects are making racial slurs and references to his mental capacity, Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin said.

The suspects are accused of forcing the victim to drink toilet water and kiss the floor, stuffing a sock into his mouth, taping his mouth shut and binding his hands with a belt.

The 18-year-old victim, who is from a Chicago suburb, suffers from schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder, authorities said.

The victim also was taunted with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

Eighteen-year-olds Brittany Covington, Tesfaye Cooper and Jordan Hill, and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington also face kidnapping and battery charges in connection with the attack.

The case heightened political tensions on social media and opened yet-to-be healed wounds from a nasty presidential election campaign. Some conservatives suggested the attack highlighted growing anti-white violence and was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, although police said there was no indication of any connection.

The FBI does classify attacks based on disability as a hate crime. Federal numbers show 88 incidents related to attacks on disability in 2015.

In addition to underreporting, Levin said strong federal data of the race and ethnicity of assailants is incomplete because of the lack of consistent reporting.

The 2015 FBI data showed that of the 734 total reported offenses committed against whites  a single incident could have multiple offenses like assault or theft  46 percent of those were committed by blacks.

In contrast, of the 2,125 reported offenses committed against blacks, 58 percent of those who committed by whites.

Still, despite the data, Levin said the Chicago beating is resonating because it was shown via social media and racial relations are tense following the November election. Live streams and 140 Twitter characters inflame the fires.

Levin described the situation as a logjam of motivations for conflict, saying its like nothing hes ever seen.

We are seeing the coarseness that exists in society generally, those embers, have crossed the fire lines to all parts of the racial, ethnic and ideological spectrum, Levin said.

___

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

___

Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/russell-contreras .
Five suspects have been arrested in a gang-style slaying in which prosecutors say the victim was lured to Maryland from New Jersey under a ruse that he would be meeting a woman with whom he had been communicating on Facebook.

This is all MS-13 related, Montgomery County Assistant States Attorney Marybeth Ayres said during a court hearing Thursday for one suspect, Katerine Solorzano-Aparicio, 17, a student at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg. She is charged as an adult in the case.

Ayres asked that Solorzano-Aparicio be held without bond, arguing that her status as an undocumented immigrant made her a flight risk and that her connection to the case put her in danger.

The state feels strongly that for everybodys safety, every conspirator in this case should remain incarcerated, Ayres said.

The gang MS-13  or Mara Salvatrucha  has made a resurgence in the Washington, D.C., area over the past year, according to authorities. Known for its extreme violence and loyalty among members, the gang is active across the United States and in Central America.

On Nov. 12, hikers near Game Preserve Road in the Gaithersburg area found a decomposed body. Detectives later identified the remains as those of Jordy Mejia, 22, of Guttenberg, N.J., who had been missing since Oct. 15.

Officials have not said how they think Mejia was killed; it isnt clear whether they know with certainty, given the condition of his remains.

In court Thursday, District Judge Eric Nee ordered Solorzano-Aparicio held without bond. Four other suspects arrested this week in the case, ranging in age from 16 to 21, also have been denied bond.

Three of the five were most recently living in Maryland, according to court records and hearings. The other two were last living in New Jersey.

The suspects statuses as recent immigrants with ambiguous or illegal immigration status  and limited ties to the community  have played a role in bond decisions in the case.

Of the five, at least three are in the country illegally, according to court proceedings. One of the others has an immigration detainer lodged against him, according to jail officials, an indication he also may be in the country illegally.

An examination of Mejias Facebook account revealed that he had been communicating in October with someone in Maryland he thought was named Shaila Smith. He came to Maryland, believing he was going to meet her, court files show. After arriving, he exchanged Facebook messages with Shaila Smith  which police say was not the persons real name  and was told a car would pick him up to take him to her, the court records say.

Instead, according to police allegations filed in court, Mejia was picked up by Solorzano-Aparicio and her boyfriend, Jose Melendez-Rivera, 18. They drove him to a wooded area, where the three got out of the car, according to the records.

The victim went into the woods with Melendez-Rivera and another male suspect, and Mejia was killed, police say.

Police have identified the three other suspects as Neris Moreno, 19; Reynaldo A. Granados-Vasquez, 21; and Jackelin Leiba-Esperanza, 16, who also is charged as an adult.

The suspects versions of events have not been aired in public.

In court Wednesday, John Lavigne, a public defender representing Moreno and Leiba-Esperanza, said the case is at best very circumstantial.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  The Latest on a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale international airport (all times local):

7:45 p.m.

A law enforcement official says the Florida airport gunman told the FBI in November that the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch Islamic State group videos.

The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke Friday on condition of anonymity.

The official says agents in Anchorage completed their interview with 26-year-old Esteban Santiago and called the police, who took him for a mental health evaluation.

The FBIs Anchorage field office said in a statement that it was aware Santiago was an Anchorage resident and that it was assisting in the investigation, but it declined to comment further.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.

__

6:45 p.m.

An authority says the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport flew out of Anchorage, Alaska.

Jesse Davis is chief of police at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He told The Associated Press that 26-year-old Esteban Santiago flew out of Anchorage, Alaska, on a 9:52 p.m. Delta flight Thursday, and that a firearm was his only piece of checked luggage. He says Santiago flew from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul and on to Fort Lauderdale.

Davis said Santiago didnt call attention to himself and as far as we can tell traveled alone, but he said the investigation is ongoing.

Authorities are trying to track Santiagos movements through Alaskas largest commercial airport using video footage.

Davis noted that its not usual for travelers at the Alaska airport to check firearms because many people hunt.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report from Washington.

___

5:45 p.m.

A military spokeswoman says the suspect in a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport received a general discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance.

Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead did not release details about 26-year-old Esteban Santiagos discharge in August 2016. Olmstead said that he joined the Guard in November 2014.

Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla.

Olmstead also said that Santiago had served in the Army Reserves prior to joining the Alaska Army National Guard.

__

5:45 p.m.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport and is asking people to pray for the families of those slain and wounded in a mass shooting at a baggage claim area.

Scott said Friday during a news conference that he had reached out and spoken several times to President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence and they promised to help with whatever resources the state needs.

Trump doesnt officially take over the White until later this month, so its not clear what sort of federal resources he could authorize.

Scott, a Republican like Trump and Pence, said he didnt call President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and he hadnt spoken with him.

White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price says Obama was briefed about the shooting and will be kept updated.

Scott did not answer questions about gun rights, instead saying it was not the time to be political.

___

5:30 p.m.

The brother of the man who has been tentatively named as the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport says the suspect had been receiving psychological treatment while living in Alaska.

Bryan Santiago tells The Associated Press that his family got a call in recent months from 26-year-old Esteban Santiagos girlfriend alerting them to the situation.

Bryan Santiago said he didnt know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the phone.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico when he was 2 years old. He said Esteban Santiago grew up in the southern coastal town of Penuelas and served with the islands National Guard for a couple of years. Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that the gunman was carrying a military ID that identified him as Esteban Santiago, but that it was unclear whether the ID was his. Nelson gave no further information on the suspect.

___

5 p.m.

A spokeswoman from the Canadian Embassy says the suspect in the shooting at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale has no connection to the country and did not fly to Florida from there.

Embassy spokeswoman Christine Constantin said in an email to The Associated Press that the suspect did not travel from Canada and was not on an Air Canada flight. She says the suspect has no connection to Canada.

The shooting happened at the airports terminal 2, where Air Canada and Delta operate flights. Five were killed and eight wounded.

Constantins email says, We understand from officials he was on a flight originating in Anchorage, transiting through Minneapolis and landing in Ft. Lauderdale.

___

3:35 p.m.

A county official says the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter pulled a gun out of a checked bag, loaded in a bathroom and started shooting, killing five people and wounding at least eight.

Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner, was briefed on the airport shooting by Broward Sheriffs office. He told The Associated Press by phone that the shooter was a passenger on a Canadian flight and had checked a gun.

LaMarca says the shooter pulled out the gun in the bathroom after claiming his bag.

Sheriff Scott Israel says the gunman was not harmed and that law enforcement did not fire any shots. He says it is not yet known if the shooting was an act of terror.

Israel also says there was nothing to substantiate reports of a second shooting at the airport.

___

3:15 p.m.

A passenger says he heard the first gunshots as he picked up his luggage from a baggage claim carousel in a shooting at a Florida airport that left five dead and eight wounded.

John Schilcher told Fox News the person next to him fell to the ground Friday. He says other people started falling, and he then dropped to the ground with his wife and mother-in-law. Schilcher says the firing just went on and on.

He says the shooter emptied his weapon and reloaded during an eerily quiet lull in the gunfire. Schilcher says he didnt assume it was safe until he saw a police officer standing over him at the Fort Lauderdale international airport.

He says he remained on the ground and was told not to move as authorities investigated unconfirmed reports of a second shooting.

___

3 p.m.

Officials say there have been unconfirmed reports of additional shots fired at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a gunman killed five people and wounded eight there.

On Friday afternoon, the Broward County sheriffs office said on its Twitter account: Active search: Unconfirmed reports of addtl shots fired on airport property.

Earlier in the afternoon, the shooting stopped all traffic at the airport. Passengers were evacuated from the terminal 2 baggage claim area. Passengers returned to the airport as officials said the lone gunman was in custody. But TV reports showed some passengers evacuating again, several looking panicked and ducking behind cars or hiding.

Witness Judah Fernandez told CNN he heard what he believes were the first shots, re-entered the airport, but then rushed out again shortly later to the tarmac. He said: Everyones running now. He said both security officials and passengers were running.

___

2:50 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson says the Fort Lauderdale airport gunman was carrying a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago, though its not clear if it belonged to him or to someone else.

Nelson did not spell the name for reporters during a news conference Friday. Nelson says the baggage claim area is a soft target. The airport had initially reported an incident in the baggage claim area.

Authorities say five people were killed and eight wounded in the shooting.

Nelson says a motive still hasnt been determined.

___

2:30 p.m.

Authorities say five people were killed and eight were wounded after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport.

The Broward County Sheriffs Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoons shooting.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2.

News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. Helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and everyone is running.

___

1:50 p.m.

Authorities say multiple people have died after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport.

The Broward County Sheriffs Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoons shooting.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2.

Miami area television stations reported that at least six people were shot. News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. News helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and everyone is running.
NORMAN, Okla.  A winter storm that pushed into the Southern Plains dropped several inches of snow on parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, snarled traffic and closed schools and government offices.

Fridays storm dumped between 2 to 3 inches of snow across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Some areas, such as the Oklahoma Panhandle, saw higher accumulations. The eastern Oklahoma town of Oktaha recorded 5 inches.

Transportation officials in both states cautioned motorists to be aware of slick spots as crews treated highways and bridges.

The National Weather Service says frigid temperatures are in store for both states Friday night, with lows plummeting into single digits.

The wintry precipitation is part of a larger storm system thats expected to intensify as it moves east. Winter storm warnings are in effect for several Southeastern states.
Selig Harrison, a journalist who covered Asian affairs for The Washington Post and later helped shape them as a scholar, author and advocate of diplomacy with North Korea, where he made 11 trips over four decades as a rare guest of the countrys reclusive regime, died Dec. 30 in Camden, Maine. He was 89.

The cause was a blood disorder, said his son, Cole Harrison.

Harrison was hired by The Post in 1962 as bureau chief in New Delhi and swiftly became known as one of the sharpest foreign correspondents in the region.

He later was bureau chief in Tokyo before leaving the newspaper in 1974 to join the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he established himself as a preeminent authority on Asia. Even in academia, he retained his reportorial instincts, once describing himself as a journalist in think-tank disguise.

A reporter, Harrison remarked to a friend, Paul Sack, spends days or less on a story that is printed forthwith. An academic, by contrast, may devote years to his or her research before releasing a book. Harrison said that he wished to spend more time than a reporter could take for a project  and publish his findings within months.

Besides his quarter-century association with the Carnegie Endowment, Harrison had scholarly appointments at the Century Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for International Policy, where he directed the Asia program for a decade.

He achieved his greatest influence on matters involving North Korea, where he traveled for the first time in 1972 as a Post correspondent. He earned a reputation among senior officials in Pyongyang  as well as in Washington  for his fair-mindedness and was granted repeated interviews with Kim Il Sung, the father of Kim Jong Il and grandfather of current North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

Harrison became an important liaison with a country that most Americans knew only through regime propaganda and through the scant information that trickled out after occasional visits from outsiders. He had a knack for describing the personalities in Pyongyang in a way that U.S. newspaper readers could immediately understand.

Hes a rather avuncular man, he once observed, describing Kim Il Sung, and he puts his arm around you like Lyndon Johnson.

Harrison met with Kim Il Sung in 1994 and was credited with helping pave the way for the Agreed Framework hammered out that year. According to the agreement, North Korea received incentives including fuel and light-water reactors in exchange for freezing its nuclear weapons program. The deal broke down in 2002.

Bill Goodfellow, executive director of the Center for International Policy, said in an interview that Harrison felt that a deal was always possible, because of North Koreas economic deprivation and the regimes desperation to stay in power.

The issue is, how do you prevent another war on the Korean Peninsula? Goodfellow asked. That was his whole goal  the prevention of another war.

Harrison was an effective go-between, Goodfellow said, because, while he fully understood the brutality of the North Korean leaders, they always knew that they would get a fair hearing from Selig Harrison.

Selig Seidenman Harrison was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, on March 19, 1927. His father was a lawyer, and his mother ran a summer camp.

After Navy service during World War II, Harrison received a bachelors degree from Harvard University, where he was president of the Crimson newspaper. After graduation, he joined the Associated Press, covering South Asia through the mid-1950s. He later was managing editor of the New Republic magazine.

During Harrisons time with The Post in New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith circumvented the State Department by leaking to Harrison for use in The Post stories he wanted Kennedy to know about, Chalmers Roberts wrote in his book-length history of the newspaper.

In Tokyo, Harrison was the consummate foreign correspondent, reporting on major events of the day as well as cultural phenomena such as a $1.3 million, all-Japanese musical version of Gone With the Wind.

Even after ending his journalistic career, Harrison kept a presence in newspapers through frequent commentary and op-eds.

His books included India: The Most Dangerous Decades (1960) and Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement (2002). With U.N. diplomat Diego Cordovez, he co-authored Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (1995), an account of the end to one of the last proxy battles of the Cold War.

Harrison was a longtime Chevy Chase, Maryland, resident before moving to Maine in 2013.

His wife of six decades, the former Barbara Johnston, died in 2011. Besides his son, of Boston, survivors include a daughter, Kathreen Harrison of Camden; a brother; and four grandchildren.

Harrison at times was considered by critics naive to the limits of diplomacy, particularly where Pyongyang was concerned. But he held fast in his convictions.

Everything Ive ever said about North Korea since 1972 has seemed at the time like screaming into the wilderness, he told the Associated Press in 2009, after his 11th and final trip there, and everything Ive ever advocated has come to pass.
Zee Cinema, the worlds largest theatre for Hindi movies will showcase the action-thriller Khel Power Ka in Hindi on Friday, 6th January at 8 PM. Directed by Pandiraj, the film stars action hero Vishal along with Catherine Tresa in lead roles. With a highly engaging narrative, the film is a fast paced thriller with numerous twists and turns.

Khel Power Ka tracks the story of Amudhavel (Vishal) and his brother who are wrongly imprisoned after they upset a local goon Thamba (Madhusudan Rao). Years later Amudhavel immigrates to the United States, to escape Thamba and his gang. On his return to India, to marry his girlfriend Meenu (Catherine), fate brings him face-to-face with Thamba yet again. Things take an interesting turn when Thamba gets murdered and Amudhavel is being faultily accused due to their age old rivalry. A cat and mouse chase is what follows next.

Will the police be able to unravel the mystery behind Thambas killer?

~Catch the high-octane thriller Khel Power Ka on Friday, 6th January at 8 PM only on Zee Cinema~
Carat, part of Dentsu Aegis Network, has won the Global remit for media strategy, planning and buying for Standard Chartered Bank, led out of Singapore across 60+ markets including India. The win follows a competitive pitch process.

Standard Chartered Bank is an international bank with a presence in 67 countries across the globe. The Bank has operated for over 150 years in some of the worlds fastest-growing markets, across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Sean OBrien, CEO Carat APAC said, We are very pleased to start the year with the win of this prestigious account out of our Singapore hub for the global Carat network. Our strength in strategic thinking, quality of product and consistency across markets enabled us to win this business. Its also testament to Dentsu Aegis Networks collaborative brand value that we have expanded from the pre-existing iProspect relationship. Were looking forward to working with the team at Standard Chartered Bank and their agency partners.

Kartik Iyer, Managing Director, Carat India said, We are delighted to have been appointed the agency on record by Standard Chartered Bank. This is a prestigious account and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership where Carat and Dentsu Aegis Network will brings together all their capabilities to create cutting edge communication solutions that deliver true business value for SCB in India.

The account will be handled out of the agencys Mumbai office. Himanka Das, Executive Vice President - West said, Its a great way to begin the new year with such a prestigious business win.
Keeping in view the current economic revolution in India, TIMES NETWORK  a part of India's largest media conglomerate, The Times Group, today announced the launch of a nationwide initiative urging Indians to mark the next step forward from demonetisation and Pledge for Growth - Remonetise India at an event held in Delhi. The movement seeks to encourage people to spend, enable them digitally, use less-cash and work to partner in Indias growth.

The movement was set in motion with a welcome address by Mr. M K Anand, MD & CEO, TIMES NETWORK followed by a panel discussion hosted by Supriya Shrinate, Chief Editor-News, ET NOW and comprising of eminent panelist that included Dr. Rajiv Lall, MD & CEO, IDFC Bank; RC Bhargava,Chairman, Maruti Suzuki; Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO Paytm and Dr. Rajiv Kumar,Senior Fellow CPR (Centre for Policy Research).

Post the panel discussion, Shri Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable gave the key note address and unveiled the Remonetise India logo after taking the pledge (enclosed below) in support of the movement.

Commenting on the campaign, Mr. M K Anand, MD & CEO, TIMES NETWORK said, India is coming to terms with one of the most revolutionary economic reforms that has taken place in the history of this country. From standing in ATM queues to spending and investing back in the economy, the narrative of demonetisation needs to change from its current sentiment towards a movement that brings the economy back on track. We at TIMES NETWORK take immense pride in announcing this nationwide initiative that will help educate our audience base of 10 crore Indians every month. The subject of the talk will be on how remonetisation and Indias transition to a digital less-cash economy can help India achieve significant growth, and how the citizens can contribute to the same.

Endorsing the movement, Shri Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable said, I would like to thanks Times Network for taking up this cause and supporting the government in its move to Remonetise India. I urge the citizens of our country and various stakeholders to join this movement and support the government in its future endevours.

In support of the movement and as a part of its own contribution to the goals, Times Network will conduct several on-ground activities like Aadhar camps, Investor camps and cashless festivals apart from a 360 degree campaign approach that will involve various channels of communication including on-air, digital and social media promotions.

Campaign Manifesto:

We pledge,

To rise and protect,

the worlds fastest growing economy.

To stop doubting and start acting.

We pledge,

To spend now to revive demand, and Indias markets.

To help workers keep their jobs,

farmers sell their produce.

We pledge,

To teach and bring

those around us into digitization.

To help fellow citizens

participate in our New Economy.

We pledge,

To use less cash,

To make it available for those more needy in our villages,

To bring more activities into the formal economy.

We pledge to Remonetise India.
Starting the year on a high note, Maxus partnered with Big FM to co-create and conceptualize a powerful radio campaign for Sonatas newly launched safety watch ACT App-Enabled Coordinates Tracker, designed exclusively for women. The watch has a button placed at the 8clock position which when double clicked sends distress alarms to 10 designated guardians. Keeping in line the safety features and uniqueness of the watch, an innovative three-tiered campaign using radio as a medium was executed in 21 cities.

The very first phase included time checks sponsored by Sonata; as time-checks have a synergistic fit with the 8oclock button awareness generation. The second phase comprised of conversations with some of the great Indian women achievers like Sakshi Malik, Saundarya Rajesh, Sujitha Bora, Tashi & Nungshi, Deepa Malik, Sneha Mohandass and many more with RJ Richa Anirudh on a show titled as Manzil Pe Nazar, bringing alive their stories of courage & achievement. In the third phase, Big FM will be shifting their studios at various on-ground public locations and bringing in 12 hours live programming from 8 pm  8 am with an all-female crew. This first of its kind activity will take place across 5 metros - Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai, from January 4th till January 7th, 2017.

Elaborating on the campaign, Sanchayeeta Verma - Managing Partner, Maxus South Asia, South India said, Sonata ACT is a smart watch with a purpose, enabling women to courageously follow their dreams. Safety is a need for every woman and concerns not only her, but her family and colleagues as well. However, we also noticed a low adoption of current safety options and realized that we needed de-mystification of the technology, create a wave of collective participation from women to corporates, and build a habit of mindfulness and usage. To do this we needed a platform with relatable real-life people & generate momentum. Our effectiveness studies have shown high ROI for radio. The medium not only helps participation and engagement, but also offers significant digital platforms and multimedia amplification. We therefore worked at creating this unique and mega-scale initiative with Big FM that we believe will show great results.

Talking about the initiative Suparna Mitra- Chief Marketing Officer - watches and accessories, Titan Company Ltd. said, In India, safety is a huge concern for women and their families. As Indian women are evolving and progressing to take on more challenges, we realized there is a huge market for a safety watch which will help women pursue their dreams. With Sonata ACT, we want to bring alive an element of courage and passion. Uniquely priced between Rs. 2,749/- to Rs. 2,999/-, Sonata ACT cuts across all demographics. It is a break-through product from Sonata and our aim is to reach out to every woman and benefit as many consumers through our communication activities.

Commenting on the partnership, Tarun Katial, CEO, BIG Network said, We at 92.7 BIG FM, are thrilled about the initiative that Sonata has implemented on a large scale as part of the brand launching a line of safety watches called ACT-App-Enabled Coordinates Tracker. There are plenty of inspiring stories about women that deserve to be told, and with Sonata ACT we are promoting their unstoppable spirit.
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
Real Estate News What is it like to live in Bostons North End? Nancy Caruso said she never leaves her home without bumping into someone she knows. Salem Street in Boston's North End is a great place to walk. Jonathan Wiggs/GlobeStaff

Nancy Caruso said she never leaves her home without bumping into someone she knows.

The best part of the North End is you see the same people day in and day out, Caruso said, regarding Bostons traditionally Italian neighborhood. Her family immigrated to the North End from Italy in the late 1930s, settling on Endicott Street. Caruso still lives on that street today, but in a different building.

She reflected on the days when the North End was filled with nearly all Italians and when the women would spend Saturday mornings washing their windows and sweeping the steps while the men went to work. All would chitchat on the sidewalks.

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Though Caruso  who is involved with North End/Waterfront Neighborhood Council, North End Waterfront Health, and other local organizations  misses parts of the North Ends past, she thinks the neighborhood still has everything people need.

We have just about everything down here, Caruso said. We have the best butcher shop downtown. Who would go to big markets when you can get fresh meat here every day?

She also mentioned the neighborhoods coffee shops, pastry stores, library, churches, schools, and historical sites and the myriad activities.

In the North End you stay young forever, Caruso said. No one gets old. The years go by, but who cares? Thats just the calendar.

BY THE NUMBERS

1680

The year that the famed Paul Revere house was built, which was long before the patriot owned it. It is one of the only frame structures of its period left in the central part of the city. According to the Boston Landmarks Commission, disastrous fires in 1676 and 1679 encouraged building in the red brick that has been the hallmark of the North End ever since.

90

The percentage of neighborhood residents of Italian heritage by 1920. In 1855, nearly half of North Enders were Irish. The influxes of Polish and Russian Jews and Italian immigrants began in the 1870s, according to the Boston Landmarks Commission.

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21

The number of people killed in the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, which also crushed buildings and tore a firehouse from its foundation. According to a study, the tank was stressed well beyond capacity and made from a steel susceptible to fracture, the Globe reported.

1630s

When the North End was settled. It it considered the citys oldest residential community, according to the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

2,200+

The number of grave markers in Copps Hill Burying Ground. The earliest dates to 1661.

PROS & CONS

Pro

Feasts

There are fewer feasts now, but the North End still hosts five full-scale ones. Hundreds of thousands eat, drink, and watch the processions.

Con

Its not easy being popular

Whether they are walking the Freedom Trail or just coming to eat, tourists fill the neighborhoods winding streets (and wait in line at its restaurants) much of the year.

Pro

Ah, yes, the food

The North End has some of Bostons highest-rated restaurants. Dont forget the cafes, gelaterias, bakeries, meat and fish markets, and delis.

Modern Pastry is a fixture on Hanover Street in Bostons North End.  Jonathan Wiggs/GlobeStaff

Hanover Street in the North End.  Jonathan Wiggs/GlobeStaff

Interior of the Old North Church, in Bostons North End.  Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

Domenic Pizziferri is photographed inside Modern Pastry on Hanover Street. He was picking up a birthday cake for a cousin who is turning 80 years old.  Jonathan Wiggs/GlobeStaff

Saint Leonard Church, in Bostons North End.  Jonathan Wiggs/GlobeStaff

Copps Hill Burying Ground.  Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

A bustling Hanover Street in the North End.  Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

The Paul Revere Statue.  Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

The Paul Revere House.  Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

Megan Turchi, a reporter for Boston.com, can be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @meganturchi.
Zimbabwe's wildlife agency said it has sold 35 elephants to China to ease overpopulation and raise funds for conservation, amid criticism from animal welfare activists that such sales are unethical.

The once-prosperous country's economy has fallen apart and Zimbabwe's government has said it needs to sell wildlife to support its people and conservation efforts.

The government has also sought to sell its ivory stockpile for millions of dollars.

The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority did not say how much China paid for the 35 elephants but said it was "turning to friendly countries to extract value out of our wildlife".

This is the first time Zimbabwe has confirmed the December 23 sale since activists announced a plane was carrying the animals to China.

The wildlife agency did not say whether the elephants were adults, which has been a concern for some conservation groups.

"Why is it done clandestinely and then announced two weeks later? Because we know that at times, calves have been taken away from their mothers, conditions have been atrocious and the money, no-one really knows how it is used," said Johnny Rodrigues, whose Zimbabwe Conservation Taskforce has been vocal about elephant sales to China.

A similar outcry followed similar sales in 2015.

The statement by Zimbabwe's wildlife agency said its conservation efforts have been affected by restrictions on selling the country's ivory stockpile and on trophy hunting of certain species.

In 2014, the United States banned the import of sport-hunted elephant trophies from Zimbabwe, citing a lack of transparency in the use of conservation funds generated by their export.

Zimbabwe's wildlife agency has said the wildlife-rich southern African country has 36,000-plus more elephants than it can support.

The 35 elephants were captured from Hwange National Park and flown to China's Shanghai Exhibition Park, Beijing Wildlife Park and Hangzhou Wildlife Park, the agency said.

It said it followed international regulations in the sale, adding that it previously sold other animals to Europe and the US.
Campus News

Companies can hire UB students and have their salaries paid, too

Rachel Killion, an intern in UBs Career Experience Program at Dimien, a company in the UB Technology Incubator. Photo: Douglas Levere, University at Buffalo.

By GROVE POTTER

We want the companies to learn how great our students are and to have that long-term on-site interview with the hope that they hire them at the end.  Sandra Small, science education manager UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences

Hire UB students to work in your company part time and have their salaries paid by UBs New York State Centers of Excellence. Too good to be true, right? Thats the reaction Sandra Small gets from companies. Small, a science education manager at the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences (CBLS), has to convince some firms that its true. Theres no hitch. The students  undergraduate or graduate  are no-cost labor for those companies that have appropriate jobs for them. The idea behind the Career Experience Program is to let students see the breadth of opportunities in Western New York and to let companies see the quality and talent of UB students. We want the companies to learn how great our students are and to have that long-term on-site interview with the hope that they hire them at the end, Small says. We also want to give our students an opportunity to learn about the companies in our region.

A quarter of the students get hired

Life sciences and advanced manufacturing companies are eligible, but the types of jobs they can offer are wide open. In addition to science and engineering students, others from the business school and elsewhere have helped with accounting, marketing, information technology, web design and other business needs. The program was designed to accept 20 life sciences companies and 20 materials science and advanced manufacturing firms, and that number has been growing. Since its inception four years ago, the program has expanded to 44 companies offering 54 positions this spring semester. Companies do the interviewing and hiring of students, who are paid $13 an hour for 144 to 180 hours of work per semester, which is 12 to 15 hours weekly. Some companies supplement the school subsidy so students can work more hours. Since the program started, 25 percent of the students have been hired either full or part time. Students can apply for the program more than once, but they are not allowed to work for the same company more than once. At ZeptoMetrix, a biosciences company on Main Street in Buffalo, students hired through the program have surpassed expectations. The three students weve had have been amazing, says Kelly Cycon, director of the companys virology department. Theyve learned so quickly. Theyve picked up things in a couple of weeks. ZeptoMetrix works with dangerous viruses and bacteria, so superb laboratory techniques are a must. Were training them how to pipette, how to work in a hood, how to work in a biosafety cabinet safely. They learn how to garb up to work in a bio-level 3 lab space, Cycon says. Securing an internship is not easy. The number of resumes that come in has increased exponentially. We started with a handful and that grew to maybe 10 last year, and this year we received more than 30, she says.

Sharing and spreading knowledge
The Advertising Standards Authority has criticised Friends of the Earth for claiming that the regulator had "dropped" an investigation into a fracking leaflet produced by the charity.

According to the latest statement from the regulator the charity got it wrong and that action taken by the regulator means that misleading claims should not appear again.

Friends of the Earth had described the case as having been dropped and said it stood by the claims in the leaflet and would continue to campaign on the issue.

But the ASA chief executive published a blog in response to the FoE comments, indicating that it felt FoE had not correctly reported the outcome of the case. Friends of the Earth now disputes the ASAs latest blog.

An informal ruling

Over a year ago energy firm Cuadrilla complained to the ASA about claims made by Friends of the Earth in anti-fracking campaign leaflets.

On Wednesday the regulator said that it had resolved a complaint against the charity informally and misleading claims relating to fracking would not be repeated.

But Friends of the Earth published a blog on its website and issued statements to various national media outlets saying that the ASA had dropped its investigation and that the charity stood by the original claims made in the leaflet.

Guy Parker, chief executive of the ASA, published a blog yesterday which said: Amidst the reports, the public comments by the parties involved and the social media chatter, theres a risk that the facts become obscured.

He said the original claims in the charitys fracking leaflet were misleading and that the charity had assured the regulator that it would not repeat those claims, which was why no formal regulatory ruling was made, so it was not an accurate reflection for Friends of the Earth to say that the case was dropped.

Parker added that while fracking is a contentious issue the ASA does not take sides.

Friends of the Earth got it wrong on this occasion, but the businesses behind the fracking that it opposes also have to follow the same advertising rules, he said.

He also said: When advertising claims arent properly supported by evidence and people are likely to be misled, well step in to make sure they dont reappear.

Friends of the Earth dispute the ASAs latest statement, and a spokeswoman said that representatives from the charity would be discussing it with the ASA.

She said: This blog does not accurately reflect the agreement that we reached with the ASA. Our chief executive, and legal advisor, are on their way to speak to them to challenge this.




Saddam Al Qadimi ICRC

The Disasters Emergency Committee has now raised over 13m for people facing hunger and displacement in Yemen.

The DEC launched its emergency appeal for Yemen on 13 December and, according to the last update it gave on the appeal on 23 December, it has now raised over 13m for those left displaced and starving by the region's ongoing civil war.

The DEC said that, alongside the money raised through donations from the public, the UK government has committed to contribute more than 4.5m through Aid Match, while other partners including Comic Relief, British Airways and the Scottish government have also made significant donations.

Saleh Saeed, chief executive of the DEC, said: We would like to thank the UK public for so generously donated to our Yemen Crisis Appeal, helping us raise more than 13m.

Half of Yemens population is going hungry and children are starving to death as we speak. With the funds raised, we will be able to provide emergency drip feeding for those on the brink of starvation, nutritious peanut paste for malnourished children and cash vouchers for families unable to afford food and medicine.

The crisis in Yemen may be far from over but, despite the conflict, DEC member charities are already reaching millions of people across the country with lifesaving aid, and, with extra funds, they can reach many more.

DEC member charities, including the Red Cross, CARE International, Islamic Relief, Oxfam and Save the Children, are already working across the country. Christian Aid and Tearfund are supporting activities of partner charities responding to the crisis.

Donations can be made online, by calling 0370 60 60 900, at high street banks and post offices, or by texting SUPPORT to 70000 to give 5.
The Fundraising Regulator has today announced the appointment of Richard Newton as its new board member for Wales.

The fundraising watchdog has today announced that Richard Newton has been appointed as the regulators board member for Wales. Newton has over 25 years of fundraising experience, and the regulator said he brings an in-depth understanding of the Welsh fundraising sector, as its political and regulatory environments.

Newton founded his own, Cardiff-based fundraising consultancy  Richard Newton Consulting  in 2011. Prior to moving into consultancy, Newton was the Welsh director for Rathbone. He was also head of commercial for The Princes Trust, and had also worked for Barnardos and Marie Curie.

Newton is currently a trustee of the Sherman Theatre and Creu Cymru, a development agency for performance venues and arts centres in Wales. He was also volunteer chair of Cardiff Wales LGBT Mardi Gras.

Newton is the Fundraising Regulator's first representative for Wales.

Speaking on his appointment, Newton said: Joining the Fundraising Regulator is incredibly exciting. I share the boards commitment to protecting donors and strengthening external confidence in the sector and look forward to working with charities and associated organisations to help achieve this.

Lord Michael Grade, interim chair of the Fundraising Regulator, said: Wales fundraising sector is dynamic and complex. It operates in a local, national and European political context and has a broad and diverse range of stakeholders.

"Richards understanding of this environment is highly impressive and his appointment will greatly help the Regulators Welsh operations, as well as its wider work.

Ceri Edwards, director of policy and communications at the Institute of Fundraising, said: We welcome the appointment of Richard Newton to the Board of the Fundraising Regulator. He has an impressive track record as a fundraiser will bring a particularly strong understanding of the Welsh charitable sector to the Regulators work.
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Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. 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. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. 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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Samsung announced in November a valuable addition to Samsung Pay  Rewards. This represents some unique opportunities for credit unions to promote usage of credit-union-branded cards in Samsung Pay, with rewards to the cardholder, at no cost to the issuer.

Samsungs rewards program offers an escalating earnings program: 10 points per purchase, regardless of amount, ramping up to the Platinum level where members earn 40 points per purchase if the cardholder makes 30 purchases each month using Samsung Pay on a Samsung phone or Gear watch. Redemption options include a $20 Visa prepaid card for 2,500 points, a Gear Fit2 for 8,000 points, among other items. That means that power-shopper paying everywhere with their Samsung Pay who achieves Platinum status could earn a $20 gift card every two and a half months, or can get a Fit2 in a little over 6 and a half months. Granted, this is not as rich as most credit card reward programs, but this is in addition to any rewards that a credit union offers, such as ScoreCard  at no cost to the credit union.

The benefits for credit unions to promote, encourage and take advantage of this opportunity are numerous:

Promoting Samsung Pay is a great way to offer a rewards program for your debit card holders and have Samsung pick up the tab. Once your credit unions BINs are enrolled in Samsung Pay, credit unions should encourage members to load their debit card in the app and earn rewards, without any cost or hassle to the credit union.

Credit unions can double down by offering one-time incentives to members to load the credit union-branded credit card into Samsung Pay as their top of electronic wallet default. If the credit union already has a rewards program, this would allow their members to double dip rewards points, with no additional cost incurred by the credit union.

For those credit unions that do not offer a rewards program, this would allow the credit union to enter the rewards space to see how their members respond, with minimal risk and cost.

Unlike the need to accrue for unredeemed points in traditional reward programs, there is no need to account for extra accrual dollars to fund the Samsung Pay program.

Unlike traditional rewards programs, there is no need for credit unions to calculate the cost of points redeemed.

Samsung handles all fulfillment of prizes/gifts.

Credit unions can promote the digital wallet solution that is the most widely accepted by all merchants due to their Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology.

To accommodate the many members that do not have a Samsung device, credit unions can combine this opportunity with promotions to enroll the credit union-branded credit and debit cards into Apple Pay and Android Pay. For credit unions that have not tokenized their BINs and enrolled their BINs into the Pays, they should take advantage of offers from their processors to kick-off this process.

Promote fraud prevention. Samsung Pay, Android Pay, Apple Pay all offer advanced security over card usage at the POS, as these transactions are tokenized, thereby preventing counterfeiting. Even if a breach occurs, fraudsters only end up with a token associated with that specific device and cannot be used from any other source.

Samsung has provided a unique opportunity in the mobile payments space, an industry that is still in its infancy. This is an opportunity for credit unions to use their strength and spirit of community to help their members take advantage of secure and convenient technology.
A lot happens at Dalhousie in the run of a year, and 2016 was no exception.



With 535 articles published on Dal News throughout the year, there was no shortage of stories  ranging from research to student life and everything in between  to consider.

Announcements and honours





It was a year of significant new beginnings at Dal. One of the years biggest stories was the launch of the Dal-led Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI), a $220-million international collaboration  boosted by the largest federal government grant in Dals history  that positions Canada as a global leader in ocean science and management. Dal also unveiled IDEA project, an ambitious $64-million investment (including $32 million from the federal government) to revitalize the universitys downtown engineering and architecture campus, including a new startup incubator/accelerator space called ideaHUB. Construction also got underway on the new fitness centre (slated for 2018 opening) while fundraising and planning is underway on several other capital projects, including an expanded Dalhousie Arts Centre and a new arena.



It was also a year of big achievements for individuals across the Dal community. Nursing student Maike Van Niekerk became Dals 90th Rhodes Scholar. Social Work professor Wanda Thomas Bernard was appointed to the Senate of Canada. Dal battery researcher Jeff Dahn was honoured with one of the inaugural Governor General's Innovation Awards. Researchers from Dal's Faculties of Science and Medicine took home awards in three of the four major categories at the 14th annual Nova Scotia Discovery Awards. Eight new Canada Research Chairs were announced (in two announcements). And Chemistrys Axel Becke added the prestigious Killam Prize to his already impressive list of honours.



It was a banner year for Dal bioethicist Francoise Baylis. She received an incredible series of honours throughout 2016: induction into both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia; the Distinguished Academic Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers; and the Royal Society of Canadas McNeil Medal in recognition of her ability to promote and communicate science to students and the public. Dal Chemistry Professor Mary-Anne White and Social Work Professor Emeritus Fred Wien were also inducted into the Order of Canada last year.



Three Dal researchers were welcomed into the Royal Societys College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, recognizing early-career success. And Medical Physics PhD candidate Lee MacDonald saw research he worked on in collaboration with faculty licensed to Brainlab, an international leader in software-driven medical technology used in cancer treatment around the globe.

Milestones and memories



The year was also one of change and important milestones within the Dal community. The university welcomed its first full-time ombudsperson, and also stepped up its support for Indigenous students with the hiring of a full-time advisor and the launch of a new support centre on campus. Mikmaq flag raisings in both Halifax and Truro, as well as the renaming the Ag Campus's River Road to Sipu Awti, acknowledged the universitys location on traditional Mikmaq territory, while the Schulich School of Law welcomed its first Chancellor's Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy. The university launched a new minor in Black and African Diaspora Studies, and members of the Department of English worked together to launch an Aboriginal and Black Canadian student bursary.



Dal welcomed new deans in Management, Arts & Social Sciences and Health Professions, and named the first two holders of its new Arthur B. McDonald research chair program set up in honour of the Dal alumnus and Nobel Prize recipient. The university published Canadas Food Price Report, launched the new MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance, rolled out a new university-wide mental wellness strategy, helped rescue part of a collection of rare films, and watched as alumni become viral video Bhangra superstars. And as for athletics, it was another banner year for both the Rams and Tigers, with the Tigers taking home seven AUS titles during 2016.



Our top stories of 2016



Heres the list of the 10 most-read Dal News stories of 2016:


The census, considered the world's largest for this group of animals, was published in the journal Zootaxa

Jellyfish are a highly diverse group of aquatic animals. Their diameters range from 1 mm to over 1 m. Most have long tentacles, in some cases reaching more than 10 m in length. They come in a wide array of shapes and sizes. Some are bioluminescent; others are extremely poisonous. There are species that resemble delicate flowers rooted on the ocean floor but that turn out to be voracious predators when small crustaceans or fish larvae come close by. What they all share, besides a gelatinous body, is beauty and an air of mystery.

Detailed information on 958 distinct morphological types of jellyfish that inhabit the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America has been compiled in a census published in Zootaxa, the leading zoological taxonomy journal.

The paper details a study that involved scientists from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay and was coordinated by two Brazilians: Antonio Carlos Marques, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's Biosciences Institute (IB-USP) and the director of its Marine Biology Center (CEBIMAR), and Otto Muller Patrao de Oliveira, a professor at the Federal University of the ABC (UFABC).

The research was conducted under the aegis of the Thematic Project "Dimensions of marine life: patterns and process of diversifications in planktonic and benthic cnidarians", with Marques serving as the principal investigator. This project was part of FAPESP's Research Program on the Characterization, Conservation, Restoration & Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in Sao Paulo State (BIOTA-FAPESP).

"The compilation presented in the article includes animals belonging to the phyla Ctenophora and Cnidaria. The former are commonly known as comb jellies and include jellyfish whose kinship with other animal groups is unclear. The latter include hydras, medusae, polyps, corals and sea anemones. However, the only species of Cnidaria included are from the subphylum Medusozoa, whose life cycle has a medusa, or jellyfish, phase," Marques explained.

The subphylum Medusozoa comprises five classes, he added: Cubozoa, Scyphozoa, Staurozoa, Hydrozoa, and the recently included Myxozoa.

The most toxic species belong to the class Cubozoa. They include Chiropsalmus quadrumanus, the diameter of which can exceed 10 cm and which can be found anywhere from the coast of Santa Catarina State in Brazil to the coast of North Carolina in the United States. Several researchers are currently investigating whether it is a single species found throughout the Atlantic or in fact consists of several morphologically similar species.

"Cubomedusae are widely feared because of the very strong toxin they produce," Marques said. "Some species cause severe envenomation and even death. They don't attack human beings, of course. Contact with humans is always accidental."

The class Scyphozoa includes Chrysaora lactea, an abundant species found along the Brazilian coast that can be as large as 20 cm in diameter.

"Its toxin is relatively weak but causes discomfort around the sting. A few years back, gigantic populations of this species approached the coast of Parana State in Brazil, and more than 30,000 cases of envenomation were recorded," Marques said.

Species of the class Hydrozoa are the most abundant in the subphylum Medusozoa. They occur in all kinds of marine environments as well as in fresh water. The marine species are more diversified, and their life cycle is characterized by two very different phases. Initially, they live as benthic organisms called polyps, attached to algae or rocks on the seafloor. Polyps reproduce asexually by budding, which gives rise to medusae, the sexual form. This form frees itself from the polyp; matures; and, from then on, is able to swim in the water column. An example is Dipurena reesi, which forms small colonies in shells and seaweed during the polyp phase.

"They're two completely different organisms, yet the genome is the same. Moreover, the benthic and planktonic forms coexist. Their life cycle is very complex," Marques said.

The class Staurozoa, which Marques described for the first time in 2004 in partnership with a US colleague, zoologist Allen Collins, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, is the only medusozoan class in which the medusae remain immobile on the seafloor throughout their life cycle. Examples include Haliclystus antarcticus, which can reach 5 cm in height.

"These species mainly inhabit the polar and subpolar regions. They're rare in warmer waters. There was just one species with permanent populations in Brazil - Calvadosia corbini - on the coast of Espirito Santo State, but these populations may have been wiped out by the environmental disaster caused by the collapse of a tailings dam last year near an iron ore mine in Mariana, Minas Gerais State," Marques said.

The phylum Ctenophora has few species but is very important ecologically, according to Marques. "Some species, such as Mnemiopsis leidyi, are known to be invasive in certain marine areas where the populations grow so huge that they damage the native ecosystems," he said.

The census lists 958 morphotypes altogether - 800 of them identified as unique species based on their morphology - and, for each one, provides information on areas of occurrence; previous records produced by other researchers, some more than 150 years ago; and ecological data such as type of habitat, water depth, and attachment substrate in the benthic phase.

Data collection covered the entire continent, from the equatorial waters of Colombia's Caribbean coast to the subpolar region of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, and included the mouth of the Amazon River, the entire coast of Brazil, and the entire Pacific coast of South America.

In addition to an extensive review of the scientific literature, the researchers included data on thousands of specimens held by zoology museums and other institutions dedicated to the conservation of knowledge about marine organisms.

"Much of this material had been collected by authors of the article during oceanographic cruises, for example," Marques said. "We took the trouble of retrieving these collections and studying each of the specimens. The collections contain a wealth of material, and access to them is important. A sizable proportion of the data had never been published. Now, we have an enormous amount of organized information that can serve as a basis for many future investigations."

According to Marques, besides helping researchers understand the evolution and diversification of these animals, the knowledge created by the census project will help to identify the areas most urgently requiring conservation measures.

"As a result of this project, scientists are able to decide which areas have the most species, the greatest taxonomic complexity in the sense of having species in many different groups, and the most endemic species, which occur only in certain areas, as well as any isolated populations. In conjunction with a geographical perspective, this knowledge will enable policymakers to establish priority areas for conservation based at least on data for cnidarians," Marques said.

More information will be included, he added, as well as new data that the scientists continue to collect in underexplored parts of South America. "The census has taken on a life of its own," he said. "It will continue to grow, and the database will be continually upgraded and refined."

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For the second year in a row, a scientific advance by Professor Roberto Morandotti's team at the INRS Energie Materiaux Telecommunications Research Centre has been chosen as one of the top ten discoveries of 2016 by Quebec Science. Quantum computing is one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to the team's breakthrough in optical physics.

Using an optical frequency comb, researchers were able to simultaneously generate multiphoton entangled quantum bit (qubit) states--a historic first. In doing so, they showed that it is possible to generate a wide range of complex quantum states for optical communication in signal processing and spectroscopy.

The discovery is also compatible with current electronics. This represents a significant advantage, spurring Professor Morandotti to predict in the Quebec Science article that the computer of tomorrow will be a hybrid that combines the characteristics of present day computers and those of quantum computers, with their vastly superior computing power.

The breakthrough was made in INRS's ultra high speed light manipulation laboratory (LULMAN) and has been met with keen interest from the international scientific community. It also garnered the attention of prestigious media such as Science Daily, Science, and Optics and Photonics News (the "Optics in 2016" special issue), to name a few.

Researchers Christian Reimer, Michael Kues, Piotr Roztocki, Benjamin Wetzel, Fabio Grazioso, Brent E. Little, Sai T. Chu, Tudor Johnston, Yaron Bromberg, Lucia Caspani, David J. Moss, and Roberto Morandotti presented their results in the March 2016 issue of Science in an article entitled "Generation of multiphoton entangled quantum states by means of integrated frequency combs" (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8532).

2016 Discovery of the Year: People's Choice Award

The public is invited to vote on the 10 jury panel selections to name the biggest discovery of the year. The People's Choice Award will go to the discovery that receives the most votes by February 9, 2017. Vote online at: http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/10-decouvertes-2016/decouverte2016

###

About INRS

Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS) is a graduate-level research and training university and ranks first in Canada for research intensity (average funding per professor). INRS brings together some 150 professors and close to 700 students and postdoctoral fellows at its four centres in Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, and Varennes. Its basic research is essential to the advancement of science in Quebec and internationally, and its research teams play a key role in the development of concrete solutions to the problems faced by our society.
New Rochelle, NY, January 06, 2017-- New evidence-based recommendations from the American Thyroid Association (ATA) provide guidance to clinicians in diagnosing and managing thyroid disease during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Pregnancy has a profound effect on thyroid gland function, and thyroid disease is common in pregnancy. The 97 recommendations presented in the new Guidelines help define current best practices for thyroid function testing, iodine nutrition, pregnancy complications, and treatment of thyroid disease during pregnancy and lactation. The Guidelines, published in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers and the official journal of the ATA, are available free on the Thyroid website.

The "2017 Guidelines of the American Thyroid Association for the Diagnosis and Management of Thyroid Disease during Pregnancy and the Postpartum" were coauthored by an international task force of expert clinicians and researchers in the field of thyroidology. Led by Co-chairs Erik K. Alexander MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and Elizabeth N. Pearce, MD, MSc, Boston University School of Medicine, the task force provides a solid foundation of knowledge on the assessment and treatment of thyroid disease in women during pregnancy, preconception, and the postpartum period. The Guidelines include recommendations related to the diagnosis and management of hypothyroidism, thyrotoxicosis, thyroid nodules, and thyroid cancer, as well as thyroid considerations in infertile women, fetal and neonatal considerations, and directions for future research.

"These guidelines provide a superb overview on the pathophysiology and the clinical management of thyroid disorders during and after pregnancy. In addition, they also define areas where additional research is needed; this will allow keeping the document living with further updates in the coming years," says Peter A. Kopp, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Thyroid and Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago.

"Produced by an international panel of recognized experts, these updated guidelines add to the library of similar documents on thyroid disease that serve as the gold standard for diagnosis and management of thyroid disorders and identify critical areas where more research and knowledge is needed," says, John C. Morris, III, MD, President of the ATA, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.

"With an estimated 300,000 pregnancies impacted by thyroid disease in the United States annually, these guidelines coalesce the best available evidence into clear clinical recommendations, and will improve the health of many, many mothers and newborns alike," say Dr. Alexander and Dr. Pearce.

###

About the Journal

Thyroid (http://www.liebertpub.com/thy), the official journal of the American Thyroid Association (http://www.thyroid.org/), is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly online with open access options and in print. The Journal publishes original articles and timely reviews that reflect the rapidly advancing changes in our understanding of thyroid physiology and pathology, from the molecular biology of the cell to clinical management of thyroid disorders. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Thyroid (http://www.liebertpub.com/thy) website. The complete Thyroid Journal Program includes the highly valued abstract and commentary publication Clinical Thyroidology, led by Editor-in-Chief Jerome M. Hershman, MD and published monthly, and the groundbreaking videojournal companion VideoEndocrinology, led by Editor Gerard Doherty, MD and published quarterly. Complete tables of content and sample issues may be viewed on the Thyroid (http://www.liebertpub.com/thy) website.

About the Society

The American Thyroid Association (ATA) (http://www.thyroid.org/) is the leading worldwide organization dedicated to the advancement, understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of thyroid disorders and thyroid cancer. ATA is an international multi-discipline medical society with over 1,700 endocrinologists, surgeons, oncologists from 43 countries around the world. Celebrating its 94th anniversary, the ATA delivers its mission--of being devoted to thyroid biology and to the treatment of thyroid disease through excellence in research, clinical care, education, and public health--through several key endeavors: the publication of highly regarded professional journals, Thyroid, Clinical Thyroidology, and VideoEndocrinology; annual scientific meetings; biennial clinical and research symposia; research grant programs for young investigators, support of online professional, public and patient educational programs; and the development of guidelines for clinical management of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer. The ATA promotes thyroid awareness and information through its online Clinical Thyroidology for the Public (distributed free of charge to over 11,000 patients and public subscribers) and extensive, authoritative explanations of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer in both English and Spanish. The ATA website (http://www.thyroid.org/) serves as the clinical resource for patients and the public who look for reliable information on the Internet.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com/) is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, Journal of Women's Health, and Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's more than 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com/) website.
WASHINGTON, DC - Janet Heine Barnett, Caren Diefenderfer, and Tevian Dray were named the 2017 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award winners by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for their teaching effectiveness and influence beyond their institutions. The three math professors were honored for their contributions to mathematics education on Jan. 5 in Atlanta at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, the world's largest gathering of mathematicians.

"These educators exemplify the outstanding work of all our members, who demonstrate the MAA's commitment to foster the next generation of mathematicians and elevate their potential," said Francis Su, president of the MAA. "Their dedication to helping students see the history and interdisciplinary nature of mathematics, and to shaping the teaching of mathematics beyond their institutions, is to be admired."

Barnett is a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University-Pueblo, where she specializes in the history of mathematics and secondary mathematics education. Barnett has created primary source projects for faculty to use to introduce students to the works of Euler, Lagrange, and Boole. She is also honored for her work with an NSF-funded program to strengthen mathematics achievement in middle and high school classrooms.

Diefenderfer, a mathematics professor at Hollins University, is recognized for inspiring students in her classrooms and beyond, developing and teaching interdisciplinary courses that also help students develop communications skills. In the wider mathematical community, Diefenderfer has been a pioneer in Quantitative Literacy, a field of education with the goal to improve college students' reasoning proficiency when using quantitative content. She is one of the founders of the MAA's SIGMAA on Quantitative Literacy and recently served as the Director of the Tensor Women and Mathematics program at the MAA.

Dray is recognized not only for exemplary teaching, but also for his interactive curriculum development. A mathematics professor at Oregon State University, he works hard to find non-traditional teaching methods to engage students and make mathematics relevant to broader fields of research. Dray has also helped develop a curriculum that bridges calculus and physics, and served as co-principal investigator of the Central Oregon Consortium, a partnership that provides professional development to middle-school math teachers in rural Oregon.

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The Mathematical Association of America is the world's largest community of mathematicians, students, and enthusiasts. We accelerate the understanding of our world through mathematics because mathematics drives society and shapes our lives. Visit us at http://www.maa.org.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-- A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The new material, a sponge-like configuration with a density of just 5 percent, can have a strength 10 times that of steel.

In its two-dimensional form, graphene is thought to be the strongest of all known materials. But researchers until now have had a hard time translating that two-dimensional strength into useful three-dimensional materials.

The new findings show that the crucial aspect of the new 3-D forms has more to do with their unusual geometrical configuration than with the material itself, which suggests that similar strong, lightweight materials could be made from a variety of materials by creating similar geometric features.

The findings are being reported today in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by Markus Buehler, the head of MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the McAfee Professor of Engineering; Zhao Qin, a CEE research scientist; Gang Seob Jung, a graduate student; and Min Jeong Kang MEng '16, a recent graduate.

Other groups had suggested the possibility of such lightweight structures, but lab experiments so far had failed to match predictions, with some results exhibiting several orders of magnitude less strength than expected. The MIT team decided to solve the mystery by analyzing the material's behavior down to the level of individual atoms within the structure. They were able to produce a mathematical framework that very closely matches experimental observations.

Two-dimensional materials -- basically flat sheets that are just one atom in thickness but can be indefinitely large in the other dimensions -- have exceptional strength as well as unique electrical properties. But because of their extraordinary thinness, "they are not very useful for making 3-D materials that could be used in vehicles, buildings, or devices," Buehler says. "What we've done is to realize the wish of translating these 2-D materials into three-dimensional structures."

The team was able to compress small flakes of graphene using a combination of heat and pressure. This process produced a strong, stable structure whose form resembles that of some corals and microscopic creatures called diatoms. These shapes, which have an enormous surface area in proportion to their volume, proved to be remarkably strong. "Once we created these 3-D structures, we wanted to see what's the limit -- what's the strongest possible material we can produce," says Qin. To do that, they created a variety of 3-D models and then subjected them to various tests. In computational simulations, which mimic the loading conditions in the tensile and compression tests performed in a tensile loading machine, "one of our samples has 5 percent the density of steel, but 10 times the strength," Qin says.

Buehler says that what happens to their 3-D graphene material, which is composed of curved surfaces under deformation, resembles what would happen with sheets of paper. Paper has little strength along its length and width, and can be easily crumpled up. But when made into certain shapes, for example rolled into a tube, suddenly the strength along the length of the tube is much greater and can support substantial weight. Similarly, the geometric arrangement of the graphene flakes after treatment naturally forms a very strong configuration.

The new configurations have been made in the lab using a high-resolution, multimaterial 3-D printer. They were mechanically tested for their tensile and compressive properties, and their mechanical response under loading was simulated using the team's theoretical models. The results from the experiments and simulations matched accurately.

The new, more accurate results, based on atomistic computational modeling by the MIT team, ruled out a possibility proposed previously by other teams: that it might be possible to make 3-D graphene structures so lightweight that they would actually be lighter than air, and could be used as a durable replacement for helium in balloons. The current work shows, however, that at such low densities, the material would not have sufficient strength and would collapse from the surrounding air pressure.

But many other possible applications of the material could eventually be feasible, the researchers say, for uses that require a combination of extreme strength and light weight. "You could either use the real graphene material or use the geometry we discovered with other materials, like polymers or metals," Buehler says, to gain similar advantages of strength combined with advantages in cost, processing methods, or other material properties (such as transparency or electrical conductivity).

"You can replace the material itself with anything," Buehler says. "The geometry is the dominant factor. It's something that has the potential to transfer to many things."

The unusual geometric shapes that graphene naturally forms under heat and pressure look something like a Nerf ball -- round, but full of holes. These shapes, known as gyroids, are so complex that "actually making them using conventional manufacturing methods is probably impossible," Buehler says. The team used 3-D-printed models of the structure, enlarged to thousands of times their natural size, for testing purposes.

For actual synthesis, the researchers say, one possibility is to use the polymer or metal particles as templates, coat them with graphene by chemical vapor deposit before heat and pressure treatments, and then chemically or physically remove the polymer or metal phases to leave 3-D graphene in the gyroid form. For this, the computational model given in the current study provides a guideline to evaluate the mechanical quality of the synthesis output.

The same geometry could even be applied to large-scale structural materials, they suggest. For example, concrete for a structure such a bridge might be made with this porous geometry, providing comparable strength with a fraction of the weight. This approach would have the additional benefit of providing good insulation because of the large amount of enclosed airspace within it.

Because the shape is riddled with very tiny pore spaces, the material might also find application in some filtration systems, for either water or chemical processing. The mathematical descriptions derived by this group could facilitate the development of a variety of applications, the researchers say.

###

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, and BASF-North American Center for Research on Advanced Materials.
Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth.

The exocomets -- comets outside our solar system -- were not directly seen around the star, but their presence was inferred by detecting gas that is likely the vaporized remnants of their icy nuclei.

HD 172555 represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. All of the systems are young, under 40 million years old.

The presence of these doomed comets provides circumstantial evidence for "gravitational stirring" by an unseen Jupiter-size planet, where comets deflected by its gravity are catapulted into the star. These events also provide new insights into the past and present activity of comets in our solar system. It's a mechanism where infalling comets could have transported water to Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system.

Astronomers have found similar plunges in our own solar system. Sun-grazing comets routinely fall into our sun. "Seeing these sun-grazing comets in our solar system and in three extrasolar systems means that this activity may be common in young star systems," said study leader Carol Grady of Eureka Scientific Inc. in Oakland, California, and NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This activity at its peak represents a star's active teenage years. Watching these events gives us insight into what probably went on in the early days of our solar system, when comets were pelting the inner solar system bodies, including Earth. In fact, these star-grazing comets may make life possible, because they carry water and other life-forming elements, such as carbon, to terrestrial planets."

Grady will present her team's results Jan. 6 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

The star is part of the Beta Pictoris Moving Group, a collection of stars born from the same stellar nursery. It is the second group member found to harbor such comets. Beta Pictoris, the group's namesake, also is feasting on exocomets travelling too close. A young gas-giant planet has been observed in that star's vast debris disk.

The stellar group is important to study because it is the closest collection of young stars to Earth. At least 37.5 percent of the more massive stars in the Beta Pictoris Moving Group either have a directly imaged planet, such as 51 Eridani b in the 51 Eridani system, or infalling star-grazing bodies, or, in the case of Beta Pictoris, both types of objects. The grouping is at about the age that it should be building terrestrial planets, Grady said.

A team of French astronomers first discovered exocomets transiting HD 172555 in archival data gathered between 2004 and 2011 by the European Southern Observatory's HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) planet-finding spectrograph. A spectrograph divides light into its component colors, allowing astronomers to detect an object's chemical makeup. The HARPS spectrograph detected the chemical fingerprints of calcium imprinted in the starlight, evidence that comet-like objects were falling into the star.

As a follow-up to that discovery, Grady's team used Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) in 2015 to conduct a spectrographic analysis in ultraviolet light, which allows Hubble to identify the signature of certain elements. Hubble made two observations, separated by six days.

Hubble detected silicon and carbon gas in the starlight. The gas was moving at about 360,000 miles per hour across the face of the star. The most likely explanation for the speedy gas is that Hubble is seeing material from comet-like objects that broke apart after streaking across the face of the star.

The gaseous debris from the disintegrating comets is vastly dispersed in front of the star. "As transiting features go, this vaporized material is easy to see because it contains very large structures," Grady said. "This is in marked contrast to trying to find a small transiting exoplanet, where you're looking for tiny dips in the star's light."

Hubble gleaned this information because the HD 172555 debris disk surrounding the star is slightly inclined to Hubble's line of sight, giving the telescope a clear view of comet activity.

Grady's team hopes to use STIS again in follow-up observations to look for oxygen and hydrogen, which would confirm the identity of the disintegrating objects as comets.

"Hubble shows that these star-grazers look and move like comets, but until we determine their composition, we cannot confirm they are comets," Grady said. "We need additional data to establish whether our star-grazers are icy like comets or more rocky like asteroids."

###

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

For images and more information about the exocomets in HD 172555 and Hubble, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2017/02

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

For additional information, contact:

Felicia Chou

NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

felicia.chou@nasa.gov

202-358-0257

Donna Weaver / Ray Villard

Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

410-338-4493 / 410-338-4514

dweaver@stsci.edu / villard@stsci.edu

Carol Grady

Eureka Scientific Inc., Oakland, California,

and Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

301-286-3748

carol.a.grady@nasa.gov
NASA's two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling through unexplored territory on their road trip beyond our solar system. Along the way, they are measuring the interstellar medium, the mysterious environment between stars. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is providing the road map - by measuring the material along the probes' future trajectories. Even after the Voyagers run out of electrical power and are unable to send back new data, which may happen in about a decade, astronomers can use Hubble observations to characterize the environment through which these silent ambassadors will glide.

A preliminary analysis of the Hubble observations reveals a rich, complex interstellar ecology, containing multiple clouds of hydrogen laced with other elements. Hubble data, combined with the Voyagers, have also provided new insights into how our sun travels through interstellar space.

"This is a great opportunity to compare data from in situ measurements of the space environment by the Voyager spacecraft and telescopic measurements by Hubble," said study leader Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. "The Voyagers are sampling tiny regions as they plow through space at roughly 38,000 miles per hour. But we have no idea if these small areas are typical or rare. The Hubble observations give us a broader view because the telescope is looking along a longer and wider path. So Hubble gives context to what each Voyager is passing through."

The astronomers hope that the Hubble observations will help them characterize the physical properties of the local interstellar medium. "Ideally, synthesizing these insights with in situ measurements from Voyager would provide an unprecedented overview of the local interstellar environment," said Hubble team member Julia Zachary of Wesleyan University.

The team's results will be presented Jan. 6 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

NASA launched the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977. Both explored the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune.

The pioneering Voyager spacecraft are currently exploring the outermost edge of the sun's domain . Voyager 1 is now zooming through interstellar space, the region between the stars that is filled with gas, dust, and material recycled from dying stars.

Voyager 1 is 13 billion miles from Earth, making it the farthest human-made object ever built. In about 40,000 years, after the spacecraft will no longer be operational and will not be able to gather new data, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445, in the constellation Camelopardalis. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 10.5 billion miles from Earth, and will pass 1.7 light-years from the star Ross 248 in about 40,000 years.

For the next 10 years, the Voyagers will be making measurements of interstellar material, magnetic fields and cosmic rays along their trajectories. Hubble complements the Voyagers' observations by gazing at two sight lines along each spacecraft's path to map interstellar structure along their star-bound routes. Each sight line stretches several light-years to nearby stars. Sampling the light from those stars, Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measures how interstellar material absorbs some of the starlight, leaving telltale spectral fingerprints.

Hubble found that Voyager 2 will move out of the interstellar cloud that surrounds the solar system in a couple thousand years. The astronomers, based on Hubble data, predict that the spacecraft will spend 90,000 years in a second cloud and pass into a third interstellar cloud.

An inventory of the clouds' composition reveals slight variations in the abundances of the chemical elements contained in the structures. "These variations could mean the clouds formed in different ways, or from different areas, and then came together," Redfield said.

An initial look at the Hubble data also suggests that the sun is passing through clumpier material in nearby space, which may affect the heliosphere, the large bubble containing our solar system that is produced by our sun's powerful solar wind. At its boundary, called the heliopause, the solar wind pushes outward against the interstellar medium. Hubble and Voyager 1 made measurements of the interstellar environment beyond this boundary, where the wind comes from stars other than our sun.

"I'm really intrigued by the interaction between stars and the interstellar environment," Redfield said. "These kinds of interactions are happening around most stars, and it is a dynamic process."

The heliosphere is compressed when the sun moves through dense material, but it expands back out when the star passes through low-density matter. This expansion and contraction is caused by the interaction between the outward pressure of the stellar wind, composed of a stream of charged particles, and the pressure of the interstellar material surrounding a star.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. The Voyagers were built by JPL, which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech.

###

For images and more information about the local interstellar medium and Hubble, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2017/01

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

For more information about the Voyager mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager

For additional information, contact:

Felicia Chou

NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

202-358-0257

felicia.chou@nasa.gov

Donna Weaver / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

410-338-4493 / 410-338-4514

dweaver@stsci.edu / villard@stsci.edu

Elizabeth Landau

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-6425

elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Seth Redfield

Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

860-685-3669

sredfield@wesleyan.edu
A team of research scientists led by David Cinabro, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, recently published a paper marking the importance of Type Ia Supernovas in measuring the pace at which the universe expands. Type Ia Supernovas are among the very brightest cosmic explosions visible, signaling the death of stars, and their importance to cosmology cannot be understated.

The findings of the study - published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by Cinabro's team at Wayne State University, Daniel Scolnic, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, Rick Kessler, a senior researcher at the Kavli Institute, and undergraduate students Ashley Li and Jake Miller - support a theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and is attributable to a mysterious force known as dark energy - an unknown form of energy hypothesized to permeate all of space. The findings counter recent headlines that Type Ia Supernovae cannot be used as an accurate measure for the expansion of the universe.

"Observations just before the turn of the century provided the first clear evidence of an accelerated expansion of the universe," said Cinabro. "Subsequent observations combined with the clustering of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background further point towards this acceleration being caused by a mysterious anti-gravity-like force called Dark Energy."

According to Cinabro, these observations depend on the assumption that the light output of Type Ia Supernovas relatively near to the earth can be described in the same way as those that are much further away. The observations of two distinct types of Type Ia Supernovas with different amounts of light output by Peter Milne of the University of Arizona and his collaborators in 2015 called this underpinning assumption into question.

Checking this observation with publicly available observations of Type Ia Supernova is not so easy, commented Cinabro.

"Milne and his collaborators observed two peaks in the brightness of Type Ia Supernova in the ultraviolet part of the light spectrum using instruments on the Swift satellite," said Cinabro. "Most of the existing Type Ia Supernova data have been observed with ground-based telescopes which have difficulty viewing in ultraviolet light due to the earth's atmosphere, which would fuzzily smear together two ultraviolet peaks in the light from nearby Type Ia Supernova as claimed by Milne and collaborators."

Based on the researcher's observations, more distant supernova have their ultraviolet light red-shifted - or stretched into lower frequencies or longer wavelengths - into the visible. The high quality visible light observations of Type Ia Supernovas from the SuperNova Legacy Survey (SNLS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) for more distant explosions do not exhibit the two peak structure expected if the earlier results were correct.

"Rather we observe a single, broad distribution of Type Ia Supernova brightness in the ultraviolet agreeing with earlier assumptions and existing models of Type Ia Supernova explosions," concluded Cinabro.

###

About Wayne State University

Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.

Research Background

"Search for Type Ia Supernova NUV-Optical Subclasses," by David Cinabro and Jake Miller (Wayne State University); and Daniel Scolnic and Ashley Li (Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago); and Richard Kessler (Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at University of Chicago and the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago). Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, November 2016. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw3109

Funding for this research was provided by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Kavli Foundation, Fred Kavli, Space Telescope Science Institute, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
New Haven, Conn. -- Older adults who go to the emergency department (ED) for an illness or injury are at increased risk for disability and decline in physical abilities up to six months later, according to a study by Yale researchers.

The study was published on Jan. 6, 2017, in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Most adults aged 65 and older who visit the emergency department each year are treated and sent home. Previous work by senior author Thomas M. Gill, M.D., the Humana Foundation Professor of Medicine (geriatrics) at Yale School of Medicine, and his colleagues showed that older adults are more likely to experience disability and declines in function after a hospitalization. But few studies have examined what happens in this population after a visit to and discharge from the ED.

For their study, the Yale team used prospective data collected on more than 700 older adults over 14 years. The researchers used a scoring system to assess the presence and severity of disability among adults who had visited the ED and been discharged, been hospitalized after an ED visit, or not come to the ED at all (the control group). The research team also analyzed nursing home admissions and mortality after an ED visit.

The researchers found that the discharged group had significantly higher disability scores than the control group. Those patients were also more likely to be living in a nursing home, and to die, in the six-month period after going to the ED. Participants who had been hospitalized had the highest disability scores.

"We know that if older persons go to the hospital and are admitted, they are at increased risk of disability and functional decline. This study shows that patients discharged from the ED, meaning that they were deemed well enough to return home, are also at risk for functional decline," said first author Justine M. Nagurney, M.D., a resident in Emergency Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. "We should be doing something to address that."

Strategies to address the problem might include assessments of function in the ED, which could be conducted by care transition coordinators or geriatric specialists, Nagurney noted. For example, some EDs employ geriatric advanced practice nurses to assess patients' risk for functional decline.

"Patients may benefit from ED-based initiatives to evaluate and potentially intervene upon changes in disability status," she said.

The estimated additional cost of medical care and long-term care for newly disabled older adults in the United States is $26 billion per year, the authors noted.

###

The study is part of the Precipitating Events Project at Yale, an ongoing, longitudinal study of community-living older adults designed to investigate the factors contributing to disability.

Other Yale authors are William Fleischman, Ling Han, Linda Leo-Summers, and Heather G. Allore.

The study was supported in part by the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale School of Medicine, the National Institute on Aging, and the John A. Hartford Foundation Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Training.

Citation: Annals of Emergency Medicine
Like any specialist sport, Formula 1 racing has its own unique lingo. But if youre an F1 newcomer, dont panic. Its very easy to learn - especially when you have the help of our extensive F1 glossary. From DRS to G-force, from oversteer to slipstreaming, and from tyre warmers to turbulence, it provides you with an easy-to-understand explanation of all the most commonly-used F1 terms and terminology. So get reading, and youll soon be talking the F1 talk like a seasoned TV commentator

107% rule

During the first phase of qualifying, any driver who fails to set a lap within 107 percent of the fastest Q1 time will not be allowed to start the race. However, in exceptional circumstances, which could include a driver setting a suitable time during practice, the stewards may permit the car to start.

Aerodynamics

The study of airflow over and around an object and an intrinsic part of Formula One car design.

Airbox

The engine air intake above the driver's head, which also serves as the car's roll hoop.

Apex

The middle point of the inside line around a corner at which drivers aim their cars.

Appeal

An action that a team takes on its drivers' behalf if it feels that they have been unfairly penalised by the race officials.

Autoclave

A device that uses heat and pressure to 'cure' carbon fibre, the primary material Formula One cars are made of.

Backmarker

A term used to describe a driver at the rear end of the field, often when he is encountered by the race leaders. Blue flags are used to inform the backmarker when he should let a faster car past.

Ballast

Weights fixed around the car to maximise its balance and bring it up to the minimum weight limit.

Bargeboard

The piece of bodywork mounted vertically between the front wheels and the start of the sidepods to help smooth the airflow around the sides of the car.

Blistering

The consequence of a tyre, or part of a tyre, overheating. Excess heat can cause rubber to soften and break away in chunks from the body of the tyre. Blistering can be caused by the selection of an inappropriate tyre compound (for example, one that is too soft for circuit conditions), too high tyre pressure, or an improperly set up car.

Bodywork

The carbon fibre sections fitted onto the monocoque before the cars leave the pits, such as the engine cover, the cockpit top and the nosecone.

Bottoming

When a car's chassis hits the track surface as it runs through a sharp compression and reaches the bottom of its suspension travel.

Brake balance

A switch in the cockpit to alter the split of the car's braking power between the front and the rear wheels according to a driver's wishes.

CAD

Short for Computer-aided design, the method used to design Formula One cars.

Camber

The angle at which a tyre leans into or away from the car relative to the vertical axis. Engineers will vary camber to improve a car's handling characteristics.

CFD

Short for Computational fluid dynamics, a tool used by F1 designers that uses complex mathematics and simulation to predict aerodynamic airflow. Normally used in conjunction with traditional wind tunnel research.

Chassis

The main part of a racing car to which the engine and suspension are attached is called the chassis.

Chicane

A tight sequence of corners in alternate directions. Usually inserted into a circuit to slow the cars, often just before what had been a high-speed corner.

Clean air

Air that isn't turbulent, and thus offers optimum aerodynamic conditions, as experienced by a car at the head of the field.

Coanda effect

The tendency of a fluid jet, such as airflow, to be attracted to a nearby surface. F1 aerodynamicists use the effect to help divert airflow to specific areas of the car, for example from the exhaust exit to the rear diffuser.

Cockpit

The section of the chassis in which the driver sits.

Compound

Tread compound is the part of any tyre in contact with the road and therefore one of the major factors in deciding tyre performance. The ideal compound is one with maximum grip but which still maintains durability and heat resistance. A typical Formula One race compound will have more than ten ingredients such as rubbers, polymers, sulphur, carbon black, oil and other curatives. Each of these includes a vast number of derivatives any of which can be used to a greater or lesser degree. Very small changes to the mix can change compound performance.

Debrief

The meeting between a team's drivers and engineers after an on-track session in which car set-up, performance and strategy are discussed.

Degradation

A term used to describe the process by which a tyre loses performance or grip. Different from tyre wear which concerns the process by which the tread is worn away.

Delta time

A term used to describe the time difference between two different laps or two different cars. For example, there is usually a negative delta between a driver's best practice lap time and his best qualifying lap time because he uses a low fuel load and new tyres.

Diffuser

The rear section of the car's floor or undertray where the air flowing under the car exits. The design of the diffuser is crucial as it controls the speed at which the air exits. The faster its exit, the lower the air pressure beneath the car, and hence the more downforce the car generates.

Downforce

The aerodynamic force that is applied in a downwards direction as a car travels forwards. This is harnessed to improve a car's traction and its handling through corners.

Drag

The aerodynamic resistance experienced as a car travels forwards.

Drive-through penalty

One of two penalties that can be handed out at the discretion of the Stewards whilst the race is still running. Drivers must enter the pit lane, drive through it complying with the speed limit, and re-join the race without stopping.

Drivers' briefing

A meeting of all the drivers and the FIA race director to discuss issues relating to that particular Grand Prix and circuit. Other subjects, such as driving standards and safety, may also be discussed.

DRS

Also known as adjustable rear wings, DRS (Drag Reduction System) rear wings allow the driver to adjust the wing between two pre-determined settings from the cockpit. The system's availability is electronically governed - it can be used at any time in practice and qualifying (unless a driver is on wet-weather tyres), but during the race can only be activated when a driver is less than one second behind another car at pre-determined points on the track. The system is then deactivated once the driver brakes. In combination with KERS, it is designed to boost overtaking. Also like KERS, it isn't compulsory.

ECU

Short for Electronic Control Unit, a standard unit that controls the electrical systems on all F1 cars including the engine and gearbox.

Endplate

The vertical panels that form the outer edges of a car's front and rear wings and to which the main wing elements are attached.

Energy Store

The Energy Store (sometimes abbreviated to ES) is an integral part of an F1 car's powertrain and ERS. Located in the fuel cell and weighing between 20-25kg, the Energy Store usually consists of lithium ion batteries. The Energy Store can store (or return to the drivetrain) 4MJ of energy per lap, although MGU-K (see ERS) may only charge the Energy Store with 2MJ per lap.

ERS

Energy Recovery Systems, or ERS for short, consist of Motor Generator Units that harness waste heat energy (from the turbocharger) and waste kinetic energy (from the braking system). This energy is then stored and subsequently used to propel the car. An F1 car has two ERS: MGU-K (which stands for Motor Generator Unit - Kinetic) and MGU-H (which stands for Motor Generator Unit - Heat). These systems are complemented by an Energy Store (ES) and control electronics. ERS is capable of providing 120kw of power (approximately 160bhp) for approximately 33 seconds per lap.

Flat spot

The term given to the area of a tyre that is worn heavily on one spot after a moment of extreme braking or in the course of a spin. This ruins its handling, often causing severe vibration, and may force a driver to pit for a replacement set of tyres.

Formation lap

The lap before the start of the race when the cars are driven round from the grid to form up on the grid again for the start of the race. Sometimes referred to as the warm-up lap or parade lap.

G-force

A physical force equivalent to one unit of gravity that is multiplied during rapid changes of direction or velocity. Drivers experience severe G-forces as they corner, accelerate and brake.

Graining

When a car slides, it can cause little bits or rubber ('grains') to break away from the tyre's grooves. These then stick to the tread of the tyre, effectively separating the tyre from the track surface very slightly. For the driver, the effect is like driving on ball bearings. Careful driving can clear the graining within a few laps, but will obviously have an effect on the driver's pace. Driving style, track conditions, car set-up, fuel load and the tyre itself all play a role in graining. In essence, the more the tyre moves about on the track surface (ie slides), the more likely graining is.

Gravel trap

A bed of gravel on the outside of corners designed with the aim of bringing cars that fall off the circuit to a halt.

Grip

The amount of traction a car has at any given point, affecting how easy it is for the driver to keep control through corners.

Handling

A term used to describe a car's responsiveness to driver input and its ability to negotiate corners effectively. A car that handles well will typically be well-balanced and not understeer or oversteer to any great degree.

HANS Device

Short for Head and Neck Support Device, a mandatory safety device that fits over the driver's shoulders and connects to the back of the helmet to prevent excessive head and neck movement in the event of an accident.

Headrest

The removable energy-absorbing foam that surrounds the driver's helmet in the cockpit. Three different grades of foam are used, depending on the ambient temperature.

Heat cycle

A term used to describe the process by which a tyre is heated through use and then cooled down. This has the effect of slightly changing the properties of the compound and can improve durability.

Installation lap

A lap done on arrival at a circuit, testing functions such as throttle, brakes and steering before heading back to the pits without crossing the finish line.

Jump start

When a driver moves off his grid position before the five red lights have been switched off to signal the start. Sensors detect premature movement and a jump start earns a driver a penalty.

Kevlar

A synthetic fibre that is combined with epoxy resin to create a strong, lightweight composite used in F1 car construction.

Left-foot braking

A style of braking made popular in the 1990s following the arrival of hand clutches so that drivers could keep their right foot on the throttle and dedicate their left to braking.

Lock-up

The term used to describe a driver braking sharply and 'locking' one or more tyres whilst the others continue rotating. Tyre smoke and flat spots are common side effects.

Lollipop

The sign on a stick held in front of the car during a pit stop to inform the driver to apply the brakes and then to engage first gear prior to the car being lowered from its jacks.

Marbles

The small pieces of tyre rubber that accumulate at the side of the track off the racing line. Typically these are very slippery when driven on.

Marshal

A course official who oversees the safe running of the race. Marshals have several roles to fill, including observing the spectators to ensure they do not endanger themselves or the competitors, acting as fire wardens, helping to remove stranded cars/drivers from the track and using waving flags to signal the condition of the track to drivers.

Monocoque

The single-piece tub in which the cockpit is located, with the engine fixed behind it and the front suspension on either side at the front.

Nomex

An artificial, fire-resistant fibre used to make drivers' race overalls, underwear, gloves and boots.

Option tyre

The second - and usually softer - of the two tyre compounds nominated by the official tyre supplier for use at each Grand Prix. Not expected in theory to be as well suited as the prime tyre to that particular circuit's characteristics, but may provide certain advantages in terms of pace or durability.

Out brake

A term used to describe a driver braking either too late or too softly and subsequently overrunning a corner. A common mistake made during overtaking moves.

Oversteer

When a car's rear end doesn't want to go around a corner and tries to overtake the front end as the driver turns in towards the apex. This often requires opposite-lock to correct, whereby the driver turns the front wheels into the skid.

Paddles

Levers on either side of the back of a steering wheel with which a driver changes up and down the gearbox.

Paddock

An enclosed area behind the pits in which the teams keep their transporters and motor homes. There is no admission to the public.

Parc ferme

A fenced-off area into which cars are driven after qualifying and the race, where no team members are allowed to touch them except under the strict supervision of race stewards.

Pit board

A board held out on the pit wall to inform a driver of his race position, the time interval to the car ahead or the one behind, plus the number of laps of the race remaining.

Pit wall

Where the team owner, managers and engineers spend the race, usually under an awning to keep sun and rain off their monitors.

Pits

An area of track separated from the start/finish straight by a wall, where the cars are brought for new tyres and fuel during the race, or for set-up changes in practice, each stopping at their respective pit garages.

Plank

A hard wooden strip (also known as a skid block) that is fitted front-to-back down the middle of the underside of all cars to check that they are not being run too close to the track surface, something that is apparent if the wood is excessively worn.

Pole position

The first place on the starting grid, as awarded to the driver who recorded the fastest lap time in qualifying.

Powertrain

The term used to describe the entire system providing an F1 car's power. The powertrain (or power unit as it is sometimes known) comprises of the engine, two Energy Recovery Systems (ERS) and an Energy Store.

Practice

The periods on Friday and on Saturday morning at a Grand Prix meeting when the drivers are out on the track working on the set-up of their cars in preparation for qualifying and the race.

Prime tyre

Of the two tyre compounds nominated by the official tyre supplier for use at each Grand Prix, the prime is the compound that is in theory best suited to that particular circuit's characteristics. Normally harder than the option tyre.

Protest

An action lodged by a team when it considers that another team or competitor has transgressed the rules.

Qualifying

The knock-out session on Saturday in which the drivers compete to set the best time they can in order to determine the starting grid for the race.

R&D

Short for Research and Development, the term describes activities undertaken by a team to develop or improve a system or component.

Reconnaissance lap

A lap completed when drivers leave the pits to assemble on the grid for the start. If a driver decides to do several, they must divert through the pit lane as the grid will be crowded with team personnel.

Retirement

When a car has to drop out of the race because of an accident or mechanical failure.

Ride height

The height between the track's surface and the floor of the car.

Rumblestrip

A bumpy, often saw-toothed strip of kerbing usually found on the exit of a corner to warn the driver of the edge of the track.

Safety Car

The course vehicle that is called from the pits to run in front of the leading car in the race in the event of a problem that requires the cars to be slowed.

Scrutineering

The technical checking of cars by the officials to ensure that none are outside the regulations.

Sectors

For timing purposes the lap is split into three sections, each of which is roughly a third of the lap. These sections are officially known as Sector 1, Sector 2 and Sector 3.

Shakedown

A brief test when a team is trying a different car part for the first time before going back out to drive at 100 percent to set a fast time.

Sidepod

The part of the car that flanks the sides of the monocoque alongside the driver and runs back to the rear wing, housing the radiators.

Slipstreaming

A driving tactic when a driver is able to catch the car ahead and duck in behind its rear wing to benefit from a reduction in drag over its body and hopefully be able to achieve a superior maximum speed to slingshot past before the next corner.

Steward

One of three high-ranking officials at each Grand Prix appointed to make decisions.

Stop-go penalty

A penalty given that involves the driver calling at his pit and stopping for 10 seconds - with no refuelling or tyre-changing allowed.

Tear-off strips

See-through plastic strips that drivers fit to their helmet's visor before the start of the race and then remove as they become dirty.

Telemetry

A system that beams data related to the engine and chassis to computers in the pit garage so that engineers can monitor that car's behaviour.

Torque

Literally, the turning or twisting force of an engine, torque is generally used as a measure of an engine's flexibility. An engine may be very powerful, but if it has little torque then that power may only be available over a limited rev range, making it of limited use to the driver. An engine with more torque - even if it has less power - may actually prove quicker on many tracks, as the power is available over a far wider rev range and hence more accessible. Good torque is particularly vital on circuits with a number of mid- to slow-speed turns, where acceleration out of the corners is essential to a good lap time.

Traction

The degree to which a car is able to transfer its power onto the track surface for forward progress.

Traction control

A computerised system that detects if either of a car's driven (rear) wheels is losing traction - ie spinning - and transfers more drive to the wheel with more traction, thus using its more power efficiently. Outlawed from the 2008 season onwards.

Tub

Another name for the chassis or monocoque, so called because of its shape.

Turbulence

The result of the disruption of airflow caused by an interruption to its passage, such as when it hits a rear wing and its horizontal flow is spoiled.

Turbocharger

Attached to the engine, a turbocharger uses an exhaust driven turbine to drive a compressor to increase the density of the intake air consumed by the engine. Denser air helps an engine create more power for its size. The residual heat energy contained in the exhaust gases after expansion in the cylinders of the engine is converted to mechanical shaft power by the exhaust turbine. The mechanical power from the turbine is used to drive not only the compressor, but also the MGU-H (see ERS).

Tyre compound

The type of rubber mix used in the construction of a tyre, ranging from soft through medium to hard, with each offering a different performance and wear characteristic.

Tyre warmer

An electric blanket that is wrapped around the tyres before they are fitted to the car so that they will start closer to their optimum operating temperature.

Understeer

Where the front end of the car doesn't want to turn into a corner and slides wide as the driver tries to turn in towards the apex.

Undertray

A separate floor to the car that is bolted onto the underside of the monocoque.

Visor strip

The strip of carbon fibre-reinforced Zylon that is fitted to the top edge of a driver's helmet for added protection.

Wheelbase

The distance between the centre points of the front and rear wheels. An F1 car's wheelbase influences the way it handles.

Yaw

A term used to describe the movement of an F1 car around an imaginary vertical axis through the centre of the car. Often talked about in conjunction with pitch (movement around an imaginary horizontal axis across the centre of the car) and roll (movement through an imaginary longitudinal axis along the car's centreline).

Zylon

A synthetic material often found in bulletproof vests which has strong anti-penetration properties and is used to strengthen drivers' helmets and the sides of the cockpit.
The rule updates - dominated by wider tyres, and lower, wider bodywork - are designed to boost downforce and cornering speeds, but they will also give the cars a very different look relative to their 2016 predecessors.

The extensive regulation changes for the coming season mean that Formula One cars will be even more pleasing to the eye in 2017. That is according to McLarens technical director Tim Goss, who says the revisions have had a dramatic effect on the appearance of his and rival teams new machines.

These 2017 cars are lower and squatter; they just look meaner, Goss told McLarens website. The lower rear wing, big fat tyres and big diffuser look cool - they look mean.

Goss says the changes rank among the most significant ever seen in Formula One racing, with the alterations to the aerodynamic and tyre regulations the most challenging areas for the teams designers and engineers.

Among the most obvious visual differences will be a wider, swept-back front wing - the car itself is now 200mm wider - and corresponding changes at the rear of the car.

The rear wing is also wider and lower - which helps make the whole car look lower and wider, added Goss. And there are some visual styling cues that have been introduced: the rear is swept back in side-view, and the sidepod intakes are angled in plan-view. Its definitely a meaner look.

And theres a detail in the rear-wing endplate regulations; they step in - and that curviness is another styling feature that adds to the general aura around the new shape.

Under the 2017 rules teams will also be able to run much larger bargeboards in front of the cars sidepods and Goss says this is another place where fans will notice an obvious difference in appearance.

In the 2016 regulations, the scope for bargeboard development was quite small, he continued. Now we can run them to the full height of the chassis, they can go a lot further forward and sit wider outboard. We can also stack devices within that area - so youll see a lot more complication in that area, a little like we saw in previous regulatory eras.
Chinese Eye Hospital Opened First Branch in Norway

( January 04, 2017 ) Tonsberg, Norway -- This is an opportunity to partake in the extensive research at the Chinese eye hospital. This is a university hospital of traditional Chinese medicine combined with Western medicine, and all hospitals attached to universities are required to do research, says Erik Vinje Olbjorn, who is part owner of the St. Olav Eye Clinic in Tonsberg.

A Nordic cooperation

Beijing Eye Hospital applied to the Chinese State Administration for permission to open a branch in Norway. It was rejected at first, due to the rather chilly political climate between Norway and China. The Eye Hospital expanded the agreement to cover Scandinavia, and this time the permission was granted.

The State Administration in China would like Chinese medicine to be known around the world, and encourages the university hospitals to connect with foreign colleagues. The branch in Norway will give our hospital recognition, Vice President Li Jing at Beijing Eye Hospital says.

We have included other acupuncturists from Scandianavia in this agreement, so clearly it is a Nordic cooperation, Erik Vinje Olbjorn says.

Research

Co-owner and general manager of the St Olav Eye clinic in Tonsberg, Ole Jorgen Frydenlund is also acupuncturist, and have been visiting the mentors in Beijing with Olbjorn many times. These visits have been for educational purposes, and one of the mentors is Professor Liang Lina, who is an ophthalmologist with her education from the US as well as a doctor in traditional Chinese medicine. Professor Liang is in charge of a number of completed and ongoing researches, which mainly concerns ophthalmology and Chinese medicine - also direct studies on acupuncture for diseases of the eye.

In Norway, the need for this kind of research in this particular area is huge. It doesn't exist here. With the Chinese resources we are now included in their research, and that is good news for our patients and also our profession, says Olbjorn and Frydenlund.

Patient trips to Beijing

The agreement with Beijing Eye Hospital will also benefit the patients at St. Olav Eye Clinic as they can travel to Beijing and be patients at the Chinese hospital. The quality of the treatment is very high and very intensive.

We have already organized two trips, one in October 2015 and in August 2016. We brought seven to eight patients both times, and they were all very happy about the treatments and the results, says Olbjorn.

We are planning a new trip in the spring, and several of these patients will join us, and even some new ones. We plan at least two trips for the patients a year, and doctors and acupuncturists from Beijing Eye Hospital will come to Norway to share their expertise.

Needles for the eye

Acupuncture is well known to be effective to relieve pain and stress. I have worked with acupuncture for eye problems for 15 years, and have found that patients who would otherwise become blind or is visually impaired can retain enough eyesight to keep doing what they like to do - like reading, knitting and crosswords, Erik Vinje Olbjorn says.

Acupuncture can have a positive effect in many diseases of the eye, and particularly age-related disorders. We must emphasize that acupuncture does not cure diseases but can help maintain stability and halt development.

In Norway it is not allowed to claim that the needles can cure, but we hope that the Norwegian-Chinese research should be able to substantiate what we and our patients are experiencing: That it works.

About St. Olav Eye Clinic:

St. Olav Eye Clinic is the very first clinic in Norway built on conventional western medicine combined with acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine TCM, and at the same time between the two countries China and Norway.

St. Olav Eye Clinic of Norway represents also the Chinese Eye Hospital of China Academy of CMS in Beijing and there has been established a formal branch of the hospital here at the clinic in Norway.

For more information visit r



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Robin Hepworths 96.5m Ecclesiastical Higher Income fund has retained its top quartile ranking even after moving to the IMA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector.

The fund moved to the sector on January 1 from the IMA UK Equity and Bond Income sector which dictates funds must invest between 20-80 per cent in fixed income and the same amount in UK equities.

The new sector, which has 143 constituents, will mean Mr Hepworth can have 85 per cent of his fund in equities.

Article continues after advert
Cash-strapped farmers in Wales who are struggling to pay for improvements to their businesses can now apply for grants of up to 12,000 from a new 40m government scheme.

With the average annual income of many Welsh farms less than 20,000, farmers have been unable to invest in much-needed capital improvements.

The Welsh governments new small grants scheme, which will support farmers to improve animal performance, crop management and reduce carbon emissions, has been described as a welcome help by one farm leader.

See also: RPA clears first BPS payment target hurdle

Farmers Union of Wales younger voice chairman Darren Williams, said farmers were continually striving to make their farms more efficient.

With many farm incomes well below the 20,000 mark, finding the money to invest in what is needed can be impossible.

This scheme should therefore provide welcome help on that front, while seeing investment on farms that have paid into the Rural Development Plan for years, but not received anything.

Welsh farmers had seen about 120m transferred from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 supports over the past three years. Mr Williams said the rules should therefore allow every farmer to access the scheme, not just a select few.

Grant scheme aims

The scheme is designed to help farmers reduce carbon emissions and improve resilience and competitiveness through 80 items linked to animal health, genetics and performance, crop management, energy efficiency, resource efficiency and ICT. Projects can be funded by up to 40%.

Announcing the scheme on Friday (6 January), Welsh environment secretary Lesley Griffiths described it as a boost for farmers following the UKs decision to leave the EU.

The new support will be of considerable assistance as our farmers begin to consider how best to shape their businesses to thrive in a post-Brexit world.

The first application window is expected to open from April 2017.




Haiti - Social : Missions of Venezuela to Haiti in 2017





In 2017, the Bolivarian Government will internationalize its urban recovery programs for the benefit of other countries in the region such as Haiti and Cuba.



Manuel Quevedo, the Venezuelan Minister of Housing, stressed that the "Mision Vivienda" as well as the "Gran Mision Barrio Nuevo" and "Barrio Tricolor" are social strategies recognized internationally, he has therefore proposed to export this model to contribute to the generation of foreign currencies.



Quevedo said "2017 will be the year of the offensive. We need to internationalize the achievements of the Revolution and it is one of the strategic lines of President Nicolas Maduro to internationalize these missions, which are positive examples of the Bolivarian revolution for the world."



Moreover he said that in the next few days Nicolas Maduro will approve the annual plan for Habitat and Housing for the year 2017, to advance the construction of more housing across Venezuela.



He recalled that the executive has already started the process in 2016, following the activation of the international corridor to support Haiti and Cuba with supplies for housing construction, delivered to families affected by Hurricane Matthew. https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-19226-icihaiti-venezuela-towards-the-construction-and-rehabilitation-of-housing.html



The Minister considered that "it is the responsibility of States to provide housing policies for the interest and social well-being of their people, providing access and financing facilities."



SL/ HaitiLibre


























Haiti - Politics : UN Security Council congratulates Haiti





The members of the Security Council welcomed the announcement of the final Presidential results from the November 20 elections in Haiti.



They commended Haitian governmental authorities, in particular the Haitian Provisional Electoral Council and the Haitian National Police, and congratulated the people of Haiti on a positive step for the full restoration of Haiti's democratic institutions.



They urged all political actors to accept the final electoral results, refrain from violence, and work together to build a stable and prosperous Haiti.



They reaffirmed their support for timely completion of the remaining elections in Haiti in a fair, transparent, and peaceful manner. They noted Haitian ownership of the electoral process and underlined the urgent need to re-establish a democratically-elected Government and return to Constitutional order.



They also commended Minustah for continuing to assist the Government of Haiti during these elections, and expressed gratitude to the personnel of Minustah and to their countries.



They looked forward to the planned UN Strategic Assessment Mission on the situation in Haiti and its subsequent recommendations on the United Nations' future presence and role.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Communal Electoral Bureau burned

On the night from 3 to 4 January, the Communal Electoral Office (BEC) of Grand-Goave was burned by unknown...



Liberation of Haitians in DR

The Consulate General of Haiti in Higuey has arranged for the release of a group of 13 of our compatriots, that the Dominican authorities Immigration held in an illegal ways.



Final results published in Le Moniteur

The Executive made published in a special issue of the Official Journal Le Moniteur dated January 4, 2017 "the final results of the elections of November 20, 2016".



FPH recommends caution to new President

Pastor Sylvain Exantus, President of the Protestant Federation of Haiti (FPH), wishes good luck to the new legitimate president of Haiti and pleads for an opening government. "I congratulate Jovenel Moise for having won the longest electoral race in Haiti [...] Jovenel Moise must be careful. He should not allow himself to be monopolized by a small group of men who are likely to attempt this act. He must never forget that he is the President of all Haitians."



Rain of congratulations

"Haiti is the only winner of the long electoral process. Let us unite and support our new President Jovenel Moise so that Haiti can regain its dignity. I congratulate Jovenel Moise elected 58th President of Haiti [...]" said Edmond Bocchit, Ambassador of Haiti in London.



"Congratulations to President-elect Jovenel Moise," declared Eric Jean Baptiste, a presidential candidate under the banner of the "Movement for Socialist Action" (MAS), which had given its support to the Pitit Dessalin Party.



Jean-Gabriel Fortune, Mayor of Les Cayes, congratulated the new President of Haiti "I extend my congratulations to Mr. Jovenel Moise, the elected president of the Republic of Haiti"



"I salute the victory of President Jovenel. The Chamber of Deputies is ready to work with you President, to improve the conditions of our brothers and sisters," declared Cholzer Chancy, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.



"The Embassy of Haiti in Canada welcomes the victory in the first round of the candidate of the PHTK, Mr. Jovenel Moise, and congratulates him warmly," said Frantz Liautaud, Ambassador of Haiti to Canada.



"I welcome the victory of the new President Jovenel Moise. Progressive forces in Parliament will be at his side to serve the people," stated the Deputy of Delmas Gary Bodeau, Quaestor of the Lower House Office.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Elections : Reactions of Canada to the victory of Jovenel Moise





Following the victory of Jovenel Moise in the first round of the Haitian presidential election, the Honourable Stephane Dion, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, today issued the following statement :



"Canada warmly congratulates Jovenel Moise on his election as the president of Haiti following a long electoral process.



"Canada applauds the work of the Provisional Electoral Council and the Haitian government for successfully holding the first round of the repeat of the presidential election.



"We welcome the conclusion of the electoral process and the return to constitutional order. We look forward to working with the new president of Haiti and participating in the economic and social development of the country, continuing to promote our common democratic values and working together to forge new partnerships between Canada and Haiti.



"Haiti faces many challenges in the coming years. It is therefore essential that the Haitian political actors respect the definitive results of the presidential election, avoid any and all incitement to violence and work together to ensure the stability of their nation and prosperity for all Haitians."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19705-haiti-politics-portrait-of-jovenel-moise-58th-president-of-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19699-haiti-flash-address-to-the-nation-of-president-elect-jovenel-moise.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19698-haiti-presidential-2016-final-results-jovenel-moise-58th-president.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19690-haiti-flash-bcen-rendered-its-final-decision.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Washington : The United States on Thursday designated al Qaeda leader Hamza bin Laden as a global terrorist.

He is the son of the terror groups slain leader Osama bin Laden.

Nearly year and a half ago, Hamza, who is in his mid-twenties, was officially announced by al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri as an official member of the group.

He has become active as an al Qaeda propagandist since his fathers death in 2011.

The designation by the State Department imposes sanctions on foreign persons determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

As a result of this designation, all property subject to US jurisdiction in which Hamza has any interest is blocked and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him.

The State Department said on July 9, 2016, al Qaeda issued another audio message from Hamza bin Laden threatening revenge against the United States and warned Americans they would be targeted in the United States and abroad.

In 2015, (Hamza) bin Laden called for lone offender attacks against US, French and Israeli interests in Washington, DC, Paris, France, and Tel Aviv, Israel. Additionally, in 2016, (Hamza) bin Laden called on Saudi Arabian-based tribes to unite with al Qaedas affiliate in Yemen to wage war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State Department said, as per PTI.

Simultaneously, the State Department also designated Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior member of al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Al-Banna has served as AQAP security chief and provided military and security guidance to AQAP leadership.

A 2010 edition of AQAPs English online magazine, Inspire, contained an article by al-Banna describing the 9/11 attack as virtuous and threatened to target Americans both domestically and elsewhere, in response to US actions overseas, the State Department said.

Before joining AQAP, al-Banna was a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Yemen from 1996 to 1998 and subsequently was in-charge of the training and intelligence sectors for the group.

About Osama

Osama founded al Qaeda in 1988, which claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States. He was a Saudi Arabian and member of the wealthy bin Laden family and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.

Osama was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) lists of ten most wanted fugitives and most wanted terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings.

The FBI had placed a $25 million bounty on him in their search for him. On May 2, 2011, he was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad during a covert operation conducted by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and Central Intelligence Agency SAD/SOG operators.

Source : Zee News
It is now fifty years since Noam Chomsky published his celebrated article, 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals' . Few other writings had a greater impact on the turbulent political atmosphere on US campuses in the 1960s. The essay launched Chomsky's political career as the world's most intransigent and cogent critic of US foreign policy - a position he has held to this day.

No one could doubt Chomsky's sincerity or his gratitude to the student protesters who brought the war in Vietnam to the forefront of public debate. On the other hand, he viewed the student rebels as 'largely misguided', particularly when they advocated revolution. Referring to the student and worker uprising in Paris in May 1968, Chomsky recalls that he 'paid virtually no attention to what was going on,' adding that he still believes he was right in this. Seeing no prospect of revolution in the West at this time, Chomsky went so far as to describe US students' calls for revolution as 'insidious'. While he admired their 'challenge to the universities', he expressed 'skepticism about how they were focusing their protests and criticism of what they were doing' - an attitude that led to 'considerable conflict' with many of them. [1]

As is well known, Chomsky's university was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught and researched linguistics in one of its research laboratories funded by the military. Although he sometimes understates MIT's military role, Chomsky has never made a secret of its Pentagon connections. Referring to the 1960s, he explains that MIT was 'about 90% Pentagon funded at that time. And I personally was right in the middle of it. I was in a military lab. If you take a look at my early publications, they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics.'[2] By the late 1960s, MIT's various laboratories and departments were researching helicopter design, radar, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the ongoing war in Vietnam. In Chomsky's words: 'There was extensive weapons research on the MIT campus. ... In fact, a good deal of the [nuclear] missile guidance technology was developed right on the MIT campus and in laboratories run by the university.'[3] One of the radical student newspapers of the time, The Old Mole, expressed things still more bluntly:

'MIT isn't a center for scientific and social research to serve humanity. It's a part of the US war machine. Into MIT flow over $100 million a year in Pentagon research and development funds, making it the tenth largest Defense Department R&D contractor in the country. MIT's purpose is to provide research, consulting services and trained personnel for the US government and the major corporations - research, services, and personnel which enable them to maintain their control over the people of the world.'[4] In the light of this, it is hardly surprising that, according to one former MIT student, 'most radical students, as well as many liberal students, wanted first and foremost to stop the war research.'[5] But in 1969, in a contribution to an official MIT report, Chomsky took a significantly different position. Echoing the language of defense and deterrence favoured by the university's military scientists, he proposed that, rather than closing down the military laboratories, 'they should be restricted to research on systems of a purely defensive and deterrent character.' One of the leading student activists at MIT at the time, Michael Albert, later described Chomsky's cautious position as, in effect, 'preserving war research with modest amendments.'[6] I should point out, however, that despite their disagreements, Albert remains supportive of Chomsky to this day, as do other student radicals who have known Chomsky personally over the years. Back in 1969, MIT's student radicals were keen to take direct action against the university's war research by, among other things, occupying the office of its president, Howard Johnson. Again, Chomsky took a different position and at one point, according to one of his academic colleagues, he joined with other professors in standing in Johnson's office to prevent the students from occupying it. As he said later about such occupations, 'I wasn't in favor of it myself, and didn't like those tactics.'[7]

MIT's radicals not only organised occupations, they also organised a mass picket of the university's nuclear missile laboratories. Determined to put a stop to this kind of disruption, the university eventually had six students sentenced to prison terms.[8] One of these students, George Katsiaficas, served time for the crime of 'disruption of classes'. To this day, he remains indignant about his treatment and says that the phrase, the 'banality of evil' - famously used by Hannah Arendt to describe Nazi war criminals - applies equally to President Howard Johnson. Adopting a quite different tone, however, Chomsky told Time magazine that Johnson was an 'honest, honourable man' and it seems he even attended a faculty party held to celebrate Johnson's success at containing the student protests.[9]

Chomsky has acknowledged that some students did suffer from incidents 'that should not have happened'. But, while student leader Michael Albert described MIT as another 'Dachau' whose 'victims burned in the fields of Vietnam', Chomsky has again and again come to the university's defence.[10] In view of the imprisonments, expulsions and job losses suffered by MIT's radicals, it is hard to know what to make of Chomsky's claim that MIT's anti-war activists 'had no problems' from the university. Nor is it easy to recognise his description of MIT as 'one of the most free universities in the world' with 'the best relations between faculty and students than at any other university.'[11]

CHOMSKY AND THE WAR CRIMINALS Still more puzzling was Chomsky's attitude when Walt Rostow visited MIT in 1969. Rostow was one of those prominent intellectuals whom Chomsky had so eloquently denounced in his 'Responsibility of Intellectuals' article. As an adviser to both President John Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, Rostow had been one of the main architects of the war in Vietnam. In particular he was the strategist responsible for the carpet bombing of North Vietnam.

Against this background, it was hardly surprising that when Rostow arrived at MIT, his lecture was disrupted by students furious at his presence on their campus.[12] Far from associating himself with such student rage, however, when Chomsky heard that Rostow was hoping to return to his former job at MIT, he actually welcomed the prospect. Then, when he heard that the university was poised to reject Rostow's job application for fear of more student disruption, Chomsky went to Howard Johnson and threatened to lead MIT's anti-war students to 'protest publicly' - not against - but in favour of Rostow being allowed back to the university.[13]

Rostow wasn't the only powerful militarist at MIT to receive support from Chomsky. Twenty years later, Chomsky was, as he says, 'one of the very few people on the faculty' who supported John Deutch's bid to become university President.[14] Deutch was particularly controversial because, as MIT's radical newspaper, The Thistle, explained, he was both an 'advocate of US nuclear weapons build-up' and 'a strong supporter of biological weapons, and of using chemical and biological weapons together in order to increase their killing efficiency.' In fact, by the late 1980s, Deutch had not only brought chemical and biological weapons research to MIT, he had apparently 'pressured junior faculty into performing this research on campus'.[15]

Fearing that the university was about to become even 'more militaristic', MIT's radicals - with the notable exception of Chomsky - joined others on the faculty to successfully block Deutch's appointment. Then, later, when President Clinton made Deutch No.2 at the Pentagon and, in 1995, Director of the CIA, student activists demanded that MIT cut all ties with him. Chomsky once again disagreed, The New York Times reporting him as saying of Deutch that 'he has more honesty and integrity than anyone I've ever met in academic life, or any other life.... If somebody's got to be running the CIA, I'm glad it's him.'[16] And, of course, the most remarkable thing about all this is that, throughout this entire period, Chomsky was churning out dozens of brilliantly argued articles and books denouncing the CIA and the US military as criminals, their hands dripping in blood.

One way of making sense of Chomsky's various contradictory positions is to view them in the light of the public statements made by MIT's managers at the height of the student unrest in 1969. At this time, President Howard Johnson described his university as 'a refuge from the censor, where any individual can pursue truth as he sees it, without any interference.'[17] Underlying such statements was Johnson's anxiety lest MIT's military scientists suffer 'interference' from protesting students and Johnson himself wasn't too consistent in defending this position, readily abandoning it when he declined Rostow's request to return to MIT. Unlike Johnson, however, Chomsky stuck to the university's principles. He remained true to the MIT's non-interference stance, even to the point of defending the right of a potential war criminal, John Deutch, and an actual 'war criminal' (Chomsky's description of Walt Rostow) to hold important posts at the university.[18]

Part of the explanation for all this may have been Chomsky's reluctance to fall out with fellow faculty members, especially those with whom he associated regularly. As he remarked at one point, 'I'm always talking to the scientists who work on missiles for the Pentagon.'[19] But there must have been more to Chomsky's behaviour than this.

In 1969, one MIT student is reported to have justified his opposition to the university's military research on the grounds that 'one doesn't have the right to build gas chambers to kill people', adding that 'the principle that people should not kill other people is more important than notions of freedom to do any kind of research one might want to undertake.'[20] Chomsky, by contrast, extended the principle of academic non-interference to unusual lengths. It was crucial to him that MIT held strictly to the management ideal of the university as 'a refuge from the censor'. After all, a less libertarian policy might have undermined his own conflicted position as an anti-war campaigner working in a laboratory funded by the US military.

None of this makes Chomsky's opposition to US militarism any less genuine or admirable. If anything, his dissidence was all the more remarkable given the context in which it was expressed. My aim here is simply to highlight how conflicted Chomsky must have felt, being a committed anti-militarist in an institution so closely associated with a war machine that was inflicting so much death and misery across the globe.

Chomsky's moral qualms were particularly apparent at the height of the war in Vietnam when, in October 1968, Chomsky told The New York Times that he felt 'guilty most of the time'.[21] One way to assuage this guilt might have been to resign and, as it happens, around the time that the New York Review of Books published 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals' in its February 1967 edition, Chomsky was thinking of doing just that. The March edition of the Review included a letter from Chomsky saying he had 'given a good bit of thought to ... resigning from MIT, which is, more than any other university associated with the activities of the Department of "Defense"'. However, Chomsky soon had second thoughts which he expressed in a follow-up letter published in the April edition. Whereas in his original letter he had complained that MIT's 'involvement in the war effort is tragic and indefensible', in the follow-up he claimed - in a surprising about-turn - that 'MIT as an institution has no involvement in the war effort. Individuals at MIT, as elsewhere, have direct involvement and that is what I had in mind.'[22]

So it appears that, despite his sincere and often courageous opposition to the US military, Chomsky felt a simultaneous pull in the opposite direction, prompting him to tone down criticisms of MIT in order to protect his ability to continue with the job he loved. My own view is that the intensity of Chomsky's anti-militarist dissidence can be explained in part by his need to square his continued MIT employment with a political conscience that refused to lie down.

I have no space in a short article to explain how such moral dilemmas influenced not only Chomsky's political work but also his linguistics. Suffice it to say that Chomsky was hired to work at MIT by Jerome Wiesner, a military scientist who, in the 1950s, was arguing 'fervently for developing and manufacturing ballistic missiles.' Wiesner was an adviser to both the CIA and President Eisenhower and it is hard to think of anyone in US academia who was more deeply involved in both the technology and decision making of nuclear war than he was.[23]

Wiesner initially employed Chomsky because, as he said, '[we wanted to] use computers to do automatic translation, so we hired Noam Chomsky and Yehoshua Bar-Hillel to work on it.' In this Cold War period, the US military were investing millions of dollars in linguistic research not only to automatically translate Eastern bloc documents but also to enhance their computer systems of 'command and control' for both nuclear war and, later, for the war in Vietnam.[24]

Chomsky, therefore, found himself from the very beginning of his career working in a largely conservative institutional milieu among colleagues more or less happy to conduct advanced weapons research. Given his own political commitments, on the other hand, he needed to ensure that his own particular contribution would not assist the military in any way. He solved this problem by extricating linguistics from practicalities altogether. Language, under Chomsky's novel definition, became non-communicative, non-social and, in effect, little more than a Platonic abstraction. In short, for fifty years, much of linguistics was driven into an academic dead-end from which it has taken decades to emerge. But all that is another story ....[25]

Chris Knight is author of Decoding Chomsky: Science and revolutionary politics (Yale University Press, 2016).

. NOTES

1. R.Barsky, Noam Chomsky, a life of dissent, p122, 131; N.Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins, p17-18.

2. G.D.White, Campus Inc., p445.

3. M.Albert, Remembering Tomorrow, p97-99; C.P.Otero, Noam Chomsky: Language and Politics (2004), p216; S.Bridger, Scientists at War, Ch.6. Of course, any university that restricted its research to the development of military technology would soon run out of new ideas so MIT does a lot of pure science, including linguistics. But, as Michael Albert says, 'War blood ran through MIT's veins. It flooded the research facilities and seeped even into the classrooms.' In the late 1960s, some 500 students worked in MIT's military laboratories. Most worked in the Instrumentation Laboratories that were part of the engineering school and which, in Chomsky's words, were only 'two inches off campus' with people going 'between them all the time'. MIT also did military research 'on campus' for both the Navy and the CIA. Albert p99; MIT Review Panel on Special Laboratories, Final Report, p59-69; Works And Days 51-4: Vol. 26/27, 2008-09, p533; MIT Bulletin, Report of the President, 1969, p237-40, 255; The Tech, 31/10/69, p1, 10.

4. 'Why Smash MIT?', in I.Wallerstein, The University Crisis Reader, Vol.2 p240-3; Albert p113-4.

5. Stephen Shalom, New Politics, Vol.6(3) No.23.

6. MIT Review Panel on Special Laboratories, Final Report, p37-8; Albert p98.

7. J.Segel, Recountings; Conversations with MIT mathematicians, p206-7; N.Chomsky, eMIT 150 Infinite History Projecti.

8. The Tech, 14/12/71, p8 and The Tech, 4/8/72, p1.

9. www.eroseffect.com/articles/holdingthecenter.pdf; Time, 21/11/69 p68 and 15/3/71 p43; H.Johnson, Holding the Center, p202-3.

10. N.Chomsky, Chomsky on Democracy and Education, p311; Albert p9, 16. Chomsky's ambivalence about any kind of illegal or confrontational action at MIT was shown again, in 2011, when the university cooperated with the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for the 'crime' of downloading Jstor journals from MIT's library. Although Jstor agreed to a deal whereby Swartz would avoid prison, MIT apparently rejected this deal and the threat of decades in prison helped drive Swartz to suicide. When asked about this tragic event, Chomsky did say that MIT should have acted differently. However he also implied that Swartz should have been prosecuted - if only for a 'misdemeanour' - and he even said: 'If you take Jstor and make it public, Jstor goes out of business ... [and] nobody has access to the journals. ... You can't just liberate things, pretending you don't exist in the [capitalist] world.' 'Noam Chomsky at the British Library' (video, at 1hr.30mins.); The Boston Globe, 15/1/13; The Atlantic, 30/7/13. See also: 'Passing Noam on My Way Out, Part 2: Chomsky vs. Aaron Swartz'.

11. The Tech, 14/12/71, p8; N.Chomsky, Class Warfare (1999), p137; White p445-6; R.Chepesiuk, Sixties Radicals, p145; S.Diamond, Compromised Campus, p284-5.

12. D.Milne, America's Rasputin; The Tech, 11/4/69, p1, 8.

13. Barsky p141; 'TV debate between Noam Chomsky and William Buckley'.

14. Chomsky, Class Warfare, p135-6.

15. The Tech, 7/3/89, p2, 16 and 27/5/88, p2, 11; The Thistle, Vol.9 No.7.

16. The Thistle, Vol.9 No.7; The New York Times, 10/12/95.

17. MIT Bulletin, Report of the President, 1969, p3.

18. J.Wiesner, Jerry Wiesner, p582; Johnson p189-90; Barsky p141.

19. N.Chomsky, Understanding Power (2013), p10.

20. The Tech, 22/4/69, p1.

21. The New York Times, 27/10/68.

22. New York Review of Books, 25 March and April 1967.

23. The New York Times, 23/10/94; D.Welzenbach, 'Science and Technology: Origins of a Directorate', p16, 21; L.Smullin, 'Jerome Bert Wiesner, 1915-1994, A Biographical Memoir', p 1, 7-10, 20; D.L.Snead, Eisenhower and the Gaither Report, p189; M.Rosenberg, Plans and Proposals for the Ballistic Missile Initial Operation Capability Progam, piii-iv, 6-11, 17-22.

24. S.Garfinkel, 'Building 20, A Survey'; J.Nielsen, ePrivate Knowledge, Public Tensions: Theory commitment in postwar American linguisticsi, p 39-42, 194, 338-42; F.J.Newmeyer, The Politics of Linguistics, p84-6. Wiesner went on to say, 'It didn't take us long to realize that we didn't know much about language. So we went from automatic translation to fundamental studies about the nature of language.' Wiesner later became critical of US policy on both nuclear weapons and on the Vietnam war but this did not stop him from continuing to oversee MIT's huge military research program which he, naturally, justified on the grounds of 'academic freedom'. The Tech, 28/4/72, p5; L.Kampf, 'The University in American Power' (audio, at 48mins.).

25. Another academic dead-end, in the form of postmodernism, befell cultural theory and it is notable that MIT also played a formative role in that intellectual disaster. See: B.Geoghegan, 'From Information Theory to French Theory', Critical Inquiry 38 (2011).
A former prime minister of Kosovo is facing possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges after being arrested at a French airport.

Ramush Haradinaj appeared in a court in Colmar, eastern France, that ruled he should stay in custody during extradition proceedings.

Mr Haradinaj, a former guerrilla fighter in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia, was detained on Wednesday at Basel Mulhouse Freiburg airport, on the border with Switzerland and Germany, on a Serbian warrant.

He was cleared of war crimes charges in two lengthy trials by a UN tribunal, but Serbia accuses him of committing war crimes including kidnappings, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.

Kosovo's government called the charges "illegal, unfair and tendentious".

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, also a former guerrilla leader and a political rival of Mr Haradinaj's who used to be his friend, called the detention "unacceptable".

Mr Thaci said the accusations were "damaging peace and stability" in the Balkans and were an effort to derail Kosovo's push to join international organisations as an independent state.

In Belgrade, Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic expressed hope that France would extradite Mr Haradinaj and would not let politics override legal matters.

"Our prosecutor's office has numerous pieces of evidence against Mr Haradinaj," Mr Vucic said. "He is accused of so many (crimes) that they are impossible to list."

Kosovo foreign minister Enver Hoxhaj spoke by telephone with French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault to express his dismay at the arrest, saying "Serbia's arrest warrants are unacceptable and not valid for Kosovo citizens".

Mr Hoxhaj proclaimed Mr Haradinaj's innocence and called Serbia's pursuit of him politically motivated.

France and most European countries recognised Kosovo's independence after it seceded from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has not.

Mr Haradinaj was detained in Slovenia two years ago at Belgrade's request, but later released.

Pristina on Thursday also denied a request from Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic to visit Kosovo.

Pristina and Belgrade are holding EU-brokered talks to reconcile their differences, and the two states have agreed to give each other advance notice of planned visits by their respective government representatives.

"The Kosovo government considers that Serbia's recent behaviour and continuous statements are against the spirit of inter-state collaboration," a foreign ministry statement said.
Russia has announced it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and some other warships from the waters off Syria as the first step in a reduction of its forces in the war-torn Middle East country.

General Staff chief General Valery Gerasimov said the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier and accompanying ships will be the first to leave.

Gen Gerasimov was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying: "In accordance with the decision by the supreme commander-in-chief (President) Vladimir Putin, the Defence Ministry is starting to downsize the grouping of armed forces in Syria."

Moscow has been a key supporter of President Bashar Assad's government and forces in Syria's devastating civil war.

Gen Gerasimov did not give further details on the force reduction, which follows an order by Mr Putin on December 29.

Syrian forces' retaking of the city of Aleppo last month and a Russian/Turkish-brokered ceasefire, in place for nearly a week, make Russian forces less critical to Mr Assad, but it is unclear how extensive the military reduction will be.

Air strikes from the Admiral Kuzetsov began in mid-November, the first time the carrier has been used in combat. It has lost two aircraft. An Su-33 fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria, and in November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the carrier.

Russia and Turkey, a strong supporter of Syria's moderate opposition, brokered the ceasefire, which came into effect on December 30. The truce has mostly held but not altogether halted fighting in the country, and the government and opposition have blamed each other for violations.

The ceasefire is meant to pave the way for peace negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, later this month. The gathering could give new impetus for UN-mediated talks between Syria's warring sides.

- AP
Whale watchers Martin Colfer and Myles Carroll spotted the mammal diving along with three fin whales, about 3.5km off Hook Head, Co Wexford.

Estimated to weigh about 20 tonnes and measuring 13m in length, Mr Carroll said that the humpback was a massive animal.

The nature lovers said they often spot groups of dolphins or whales while out on their trips.

However, they believe it may be the first humpback whale spotted here in 2017. Mr Carroll said that he knew there would be a good chance of spotting a whale when they set off on their trip as there were lots of herring in the area when they took off from Duncannon harbour.

According to Mr Carroll, a large shoal of herring usually indicates a whale is nearby because they feed on the fish. Mr Carroll, who is an avid wildlife photographer said that he managed to capture the photos from a distance, adding they made sure to keep the boat at a distance so as not to disturb the whales feeding.

To capture the image, he said like all things in nature, you have to hang around.

They were able to determine where the humpback was located due to the steam rising through the water from its breath.

The pair said they have been visiting the area since 2010, when they first spotted a whale jumping out of the water 11 times in 45 minutes.

Mr Colfer said that they christened the whale Hooky because of the proximity of where they spotted him to Hook Head.

They have nicknamed another Boomerang as he always returns to the area.

The whale watchers use the photos captured by Mr Carroll to identify distinctive characteristics of the visiting whales so they can track their travel to the area.

The pair did not recognise any markings on the most recent whale spotted, leading him to believe the humpback is new to the area.

Well have to think of a new name for him, for the new year, Mr Carroll said.

Mr Colfer, who operates chartered whale and dolphin spotting tours off the Hook Head and Youghal coastline, said: When it comes to whale-watching trips, no two days are the same.

Its a sight for sore eyes, he said, indicating on any given day the team can spot large groups of dolphins or whales.

Details about Mr Colfer's tours can be found here.
The agency released a statement on the matter yesterday which said it is taking steps to restore confidence in the charity after last years events.

Last April, Goal and other charities were ordered to halt procurement in Syria (using some US funds) because the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had started an investigation into alleged bribery and bid rigging.

Then last August, it emerged the Department of Foreign Affairs was withholding almost 3m in funding from the charity.

The complaints from the Department of Foreign Affairs was that a story [in relation to the US investigation into Goal] appeared in the media and we didnt give them notification about that in advance, for which we acknowledge we should have done that and we apologise for it, said Goals former CEO Barry Andrews last August.

Mr Andrewss resignation then followed last October.

Yesterdays statement said the seeking of the 25 redundancies reflects a much tighter funding environment for Goal in 2017.

Goal staff were informed about the redundancy proposals in writing on Wednesday. Goal has a staff of 121 in its Dublin and London offices, and the redundancies are open to people in both locations.

In an effort to avoid compulsory redundancies, a two-week voluntary redundancy application period has been opened.

Any expected redundancies, either selected or voluntary, will take place in early March, with staff entitled to a statutory redundancy package.

Goal general manager, Celine Fitzgerald, said the agency has already made strides in recovering donor trust in the group as a result of last years difficulties.

She said: 2016 was a challenging year for Goal as we sought to continue our relief efforts whilst also taking significant steps to restore the confidence of our donors in our systems, controls and management capacity.

The last number of weeks have seen substantive progress in that regard with Irish Aid taking the welcome decision to resume payments to Goal of almost 4m in funds due for 2016, and USAID recently approving the awarding of a grant to Goal for our programmes in Honduras, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Despite this progress and ongoing discussions with our major donors in respect of future funding we need to develop a more sustainable cost base to support our ongoing humanitarian relief efforts and regrettably, this is likely to involve some redundancies.

Since Goal began in 1977 it has spent over 910m on humanitarian programmes in more than 50 countries.

The charity receives support from the European Union, the United Nations and the governments of Ireland, the UK, and the US, as well as from trusts and the general public.
John McGuinness, chairman of the Oireachtas finance committee, invited the chief executive of the tech giant to answer questions on the European Commission ruling next month.

Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty said he had been told the offer had been rejected and branded Mr Cooks rejection a snub to the Irish people and parliament.

Tim Cook has a moral obligation to come before the committee, he said.

Id urge Government ministers to encourage Tim Cook to respond favourably to the request. Its a snub to the Irish people and a snub to the Irish parliament.

Mr Doherty said Apple had told the committee that Mr Cook would not attend because the company is appealing the tax ruling through the European courts.

The EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who issued the ruling on Apple tax bills last year, is due to attend the committee, despite also being a party to the appeal case.

The watchdogs landmark ruling into the iPad and iPhone maker found it paid just 50 in tax for every 1m of profit made outside the US in 2014 after getting assurances from tax inspectors about a complex corporate structure in 1991 and 2007 and how it routed sales figures through subsidiaries in Ireland and on to the US.

Mr Cook previously appeared at a congressional hearing in Washington DC where he explained that Apple effectively paid a 2% tax rate for its subsidiaries in Ireland, where the headline corporation tax rate is 12.5%.

Apple has about 6,000 employees in Ireland, many based in Hollyhill, Cork, and is planning to build a huge data centre near Athenry, Co Galway.

The company wrote to the committee on December 20 last year and rejected the invite, stating that the issue was complex and challenging.

Apple is understood to have said that contacts were ongoing with the Department of Finance, the Revenue Commissioners, and the European Commission, and that given the sensitive nature of the issue it had been advised not to do anything that could prejudice it.

Mr McGuinness described Mr Cooks rejection as more than disappointing.

Apple is a huge employer here. Its not just a question of Tim Cook being given an invitation its about the profile of his company and its attitude to the Irish Government, he said.

I would expect a lot more from his company.
And in another unprecedented response to the crisis, private X-ray and ultrasound providers in Wexford, Portlaoise, Waterford, Limerick, and Letterkenny are to be asked to offer services to GPs so they can divert patients from public services.

Another 63 acute beds are also to be opened nationwide: 28 beds at University Hospital Galway, 15 at the Mater, eight at Kilkenny, and 12 at Tullamore. A discharge lounge will be opened in Waterford.

In the next four weeks, a further 60 step down beds will be made available in Galway, Clonmel, Wexford, St Vincents, St Jamess, Tallaght, Drogheda, Beaumont, Mater, and Connolly hospitals for patients, who would otherwise remain in an acute bed, while their nursing home application is being processed.

Enhanced discharge processes are also to be put in place across the country.

The enhanced Winter Initiative Plan came as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said that the the emergency is spreading from the emergency department to the wards.

Yesterday, there were 578 patients on trolleys or on wards waiting for admission to a bed. There were 60 at at University Hospital Limerick, 40 at Cork University Hospital (CUH), and 37 at Tullamore hospital.

In Cork, up to 40 beds and trolleys have been opened in wards at CUH. However, new nurses have not been hired to bolster staffing on these wards, said the union.

Because there is huge pressure on management to clear EDs, nurses are being put under enormous pressure to take in additional beds or trolleys, said Mary Rose Carroll, industrial relations officer with the INMO. These nurses are already hugely overworked.

Dreadfully dangerous environments are being created for nurses and patients.

At St Vincents in Dublin, and at Cork University Hospital, relatives of cancer patients spoke of them having no choice but to access treatment via the emergency department as they could not access beds through outpatient clinics.

At CUH, one woman said her partner was extremely ill with brain cancer yet could not be given a room or a bed... Hes just sitting on a chair [in the ED] He should be a priority but hes not.

Earlier yesterday, INMO general secretary Liam Doran called for a seven-day hospital consultant cycle, saying hospitals cant sleep, and that consultants should be available around the clock.
The botched 1916 plot by the Germans to ship guns into Ireland to be used in an insurrection against the British will form part of the ever-expanding exhibitions being housed on the island.

Cork County Council, which runs the islands exhibitions centre, has drawn up plans for a further 6.5m investment there.

Conor Nelligan, the councils heritage officer, said it is only fitting that the history of the Aud be part of the islands story.

Spike Island was the only Irish soil that the crew set foot on in 1916 and it is therefore seen as most fitting that an exhibition be launched on the island in honour of this part of our shared collective history, Mr Nelligan said.

The Aud sailed from the Baltic port of Lubeck on April 9, 1916, its hold containing 20,000 rifles, one million rounds of ammunition, 10 machine guns, and explosives.

Most of the rifles were Russian-manufactured, and were captured by the Germans during the 1914 eastern front battle at Tannenburg.

British Naval Intelligence knew the guns were on their way to Irish Volunteers, but didnt know exactly where or when they would be landed.

Extra British patrols were put out to sea to intercept the gun-running ship.

On April 20 she arrived in Tralee Bay to rendezvous with Roger Casement, who had already been captured by the British.

With the plan now in chaos Captain Spindler decided to make a run for it, but was intercepted by two British warships and escorted to Cork harbour.

Spindler scuttled the Aud near the mouth of the harbour using pre-set charges of explosives in the aft hold.

He and the 22-strong crew were taken prisoner and held in cells on Spike Island.

Seven years ago two anchors were removed from the wreck of the Aud.

One is on display at the heritage centre at Cobh railway station and other artifacts from the ship are in Cobh museum.

The new exhibition on Spike Island is being supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

Its yet another attraction which the council hopes will boost visitor numbers to the island. Its hoped to have 100,000 visitors per year there by 2020.

The council is proposing a number of new plans to bolster tourist visits.

These include a new ferry to run from Cobh to Spike; a road train on the island to bring people from the pier into the fort; and the development of a childrens playground.

The project also includes the creation of a reception area and shop and additional interpretive centres detailing the islands military occupation, its role as a prison and a site for convict transportation.
Junior jobs minister, John Halligan, also says that if Britains position or its economy actually benefits through Brexit, then TDs here will begin calling for Ireland to leave the EU.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Mr Halligan also confirmed that Waterford Hospital is set to get a mobile cath (catherisation) lab for cardiac patients  a move that will placate his concerned constituents.

The Independent Alliance TD, who has reservations about the EU, said people may find Britains economy may improve in two years time, the set exit period after Brexit is triggered this March. It wont be long. Youll have people in the Dail standing up, [saying] lets get out of here. It is happening [being talked about already]. Some economists are talking about an Irish Brexit too. [Saying] Maybe we should go with Britain.

British prime minister Theresa May is expected to brief Enda Kenny about the UKs exit plan when she visits Dublin later this month. However, recent indications are it will be a hard Brexit necessitating borders and causing restricted movement which is worrying government figures.

Mr Halligan noted that both Britain and Ireland had joined the EEC in 1973, and not since then had there been alternative trading agreements.

Were in troubled water, he said, suggesting a national conversation may be needed about Irelands membership of the European Union once Brexit goes ahead.

I think well be forced into it, our hand will be forced on it if Britain leaves and Britains appear to be doing OK outside of Europe. Because we all know that the European Union need to reform, the European Central Bank needs to reform. I was on the Council of Europe, a waste of fucking space.

I think a lot of countries are waiting in the wings to see how the British economy will be affected and we will be particularly waiting. It is possible, because of sound economics, we may have to review our position when we see how it befalls England.

Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said earlier this week that he believes Ireland may follow Britain and exit the European Union.

Meanwhile, Mr Halligan says there is now a plan to treat record numbers of cardiac patients in the South-East at Waterford Hospital. He had threatened to leave Government unless a second cath lab was resourced there.

Mr Halligan says there is a waiting list of up to 800 patients for cardiac procedures at Waterford Hospital: This is unacceptable, it is way above the European average. There is now a recommendation on the table that there would be a mobile laboratory which will deal with the waiting list and cardiovascular and stents and so on.

He said Health Minister Simon Harris is expected to agree to this new proposal for Waterford. It would reduce the waiting lists in the hospital on the cardiovascular side I would then say within a year I could see the Government and the HSE being forced to say they need a second cath lab.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (The Newswire - January 6, 2017) Margaux Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:MRL, OTCQB:MARFF) ("Margaux" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement (the "Option Agreement") with Yellowstone Resources Ltd. (a private company, based in British Columbia) for the acquisition of 100% of the Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties (the "Properties"), located in Salmo, British Columbia.

"We are extremely excited to be adding the Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties to our portfolio," commented Company CEO and President, Tyler Rice. "These gold and silver prospective properties are the latest high-quality acquisitions in Margaux's Kootenay Arc regional consolidation plan, providing diversity to our portfolio within our core operating area."

Margaux's continuing evaluation of the Jersey-Emerald mine and the recent acquisition of the Jackpot/Oxide properties has encouraged the Company to acquire additional properties in the immediate vicinity of its Jersey-Emerald mine. "With this acquisition, Margaux is pursuing a regional consolidation strategy targeted at prospective historical mining sites proximal to Margaux' core assets, where we believe there is likely to be untapped polymetallic mining opportunities. Much of the historic mining in this region dates back prior to the turn of the century, when modern exploration and mining technologies were not available, leaving high potential for unexploited opportunities. Today the Kootenay region is also supported with well-developed infrastructure and easy access to nearby smelters and processing facilities" said Mr. Rice.

The Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties are located approximately 42 kilometres and 12 kilometres, respectively, east of Salmo, BC. The Properties consist of 79 Crown granted claims (1,083 ha) and 13 mineral cell claims (972 ha) in the Nelson Mining Division, and are prospective for gold and silver.

The Properties form part of the Kootenay Arc belt in southeastern British Columbia, a northerly trending arcuate structural zone, which includes Proterozoic to Ordivician sedimentary rocks which have been intruded by igneous granitic rocks of the Nelson batholith. It is believed that these intrusives are related to the gold silver mineralization found in the Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties. The belt is characterized by open to isoclinal north-trending folds in the oldest sedimentary rocks, which contain stratisform zinc-lead-silver deposits in Cambrian limestones and dolomites and gold deposits in quartz veins, filling late crossfaults.

Historically, the Bayonne property produced 81,782 tonnes, grading 16.0 g/t gold (42,174 ounces) and 45.9 g/t silver (120,665 ounces) (1).

The Sheep Creek property (Motherlode, Reno, Nugget, Goldbelt and Queen) produced 632,590 ounces of gold with an average grade of 15.12 g/t Au from the Reno, Queen, Goldbelt, Nugget, and Motherlode mines, and 252,461 ounces of silver (2). Between 1899 and 1951 the Sheep Creek Camp exposed 55 Au bearing quartz veins distributed over a roughly 8 kilometres north-south trend. It is noted that 34 of the 55 veins have been past producers.

The Property has the following historic resource:

Bayonne (1) (after Dunn, D., 2008) Measured & Indicated 29,730 tonne 12.8 g/t gold Inferred 95,000 tonne 14.9 g/t gold Sheep Creek (3) (after Price, B., 1988) Proven 36,391 tonne 13.4 g/t gold Probable 31,908 tonne 18.2 g/t gold Possible 114,572 tonne 9.6 g/t gold



Note: The reader is cautioned that a qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current resources and Margaux is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources. The resource/reserve categories disclosed in the historical estimates are not consistent with current definitions. While we believe the estimates were completed to the standards of the day they do not use current mineral resource and reserve categories as required by NI 43-101. The historic resource includes 1,179.2 t at 5.3 grams per tonne in the proven category which is a stockpile owned by an unrelated 3rd party and not included in this transaction.

Margaux has not completed any exploration work on the Properties, and the mineralization that is reported to occur therein is known only from the abundant underground and surface work, dating back to the late 19th century and from reports by third parties. Acquiring the option to purchase the Properties provides Margaux time to further evaluate and explore the historic production and future potential of the Properties.

The Company plans to utilize the data mining process established on the Jersey-Emerald and Jackpot/Oxide to assist with the vetting of the Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties. By applying this methodical approach to the Bayonne and Sheep Creek properties, Margaux will move the historical data into a format suitable to utilize the best of industry technology to gain the most accurate understanding of the resource.

Under the terms of the Option Agreement, Margaux will have the exclusive option to acquire the Bayonne property, by making payments to Yellowstone Resources Ltd. of an aggregate $194,000 cash and aggregate issuance of 550,000 shares, paid in several installments as follows:

within ten (10) business days of execution of the Option Agreement, a non-refundable cash payment of $5,000; within ten (10) business days of completion of title due diligence on the Properties, a cash payment of $9,000; upon receipt of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $10,000 and issuance of 50,000 shares; on or before the first anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $30,000 and the issuance of 150,000 shares; on or before the second anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $60,000 and issuance of 150,000 shares; on or before the third anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $80,000 and issuance of 200,000 shares.

Margaux will have the exclusive option to acquire the Sheep Creek property by making payments to Yellowstone Resources Ltd. of an aggregate $500,000 cash and aggregate issuance of 1,050,000 shares, paid in several installments as follows:

upon receipt of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $25,000; on or before six months, following TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $25,000; on or before the first anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $25,000; on or before eighteen (18) months following, TSV Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $25,000; on or before the second anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $100,000 and issuance of 300,000 shares; on or before the third anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $100,000; on or before the fourth anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $100,000 and issuance of 300,000 shares; on or before the fifth anniversary of TSX Venture Exchange approval, a cash payment of $100,000 and issuance of 450,000 shares.

There can be no assurance that the Company will complete the option payments to acquire the Properties on the time frame required by the Option Agreement or at all. The payments under the Option Agreement are subject to a number of conditions, including Margaux obtaining requisite TSX Venture Exchange approval and being able to source the cash required under the Option Agreements to make the requisite option payments.

Richard Kilpatrick, P.Geo, the Company's Vice President of Exploration, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information contained within this press release.

Sources

Dunn, D., 2008: Technical Report on the Sheep Creek, Bayonne, Ymir and Rossland Mining Camps, Yellowstone Resources Ltd., Private company report. Kushner, W, 2013: Geochemical Assessment Report on the Sheep Creek / Bayonne Property, Yellowstone Resources Ltd, Private company report. Price, B. (P. Geo.), 1988. Geological Summary Report Nugget Mine Sheep Creek Area prepared for Gunsteel Resources Inc.

About Margaux Resources Ltd.: Margaux is a publicly traded mineral exploration company focused on the exploration and development of previously producing properties in the Kootenay Arc, located in southeastern British Columbia, including the Jersey-Emerald and Jackpot/Oxide properties, on which Margaux has options. The Company is directed by a group of highly successful Canadian businessmen with proven track records. Margaux trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MRL and on the OTCQB under the symbol MARFF.
Vancouver, B.C. / TheNewswire / January 5, 2017 -- Vangold Resources Ltd. (TSXV:VAN; "Vangold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an asset acquisition agreement made effective December 16, 2016, with Exploraciones Mineras Del Bajio SA de CV ("EMDB") to acquire a 100% interest in the El Pinguico property (the "Property").

The Property consists of two mining concessions covering 71 hectares, located approximately 5km southeast of the City of Guanajuato in Guanajuato State, Mexico, and contains the historic El Pinguico-Carmen silver-gold mine. The acquisition is at arm's length.

The historic El Pinguico Mine is on strike with the Veta Madre (Mother Lode), and is located approximately 4.5 km from Endeavor Silver's El Cubo mine and 2.5 km from Mina Las Torres, Fresnillo. The Property has excellent access routes, communications, basic mining infrastructure and proximity to processing plants. In 2012, the Mexican Geological Service (SGM) estimated the presence of 320,000 mt of broken mineralized rock underground with an average grade of 1.66 g/t Au and 167 g/t Ag (the "Stockpile") - see also Table of sampling results below 1. EMDB has been conducting a geological assessment of the historic mine with the aim of bringing it back into production and liberating the Stockpile.

Under the terms of the agreement, Vangold will pay US$20,000 on execution, US$30,000 on receipt of TSXV approval, issue 5,000,000 common shares on closing, and make a final payment of US$50,000 on the date that is six months after TSXV approval. Vangold has further granted EMDB royalties equal to (i) 4% NSR and 15% NPI on minerals recovered from the Stockpile; and (ii) 3% NSR (of which Vangold can repurchase one-third (ie. 1% NSR interest) for US$1,000,000) and 5% NPI on all newly mined mineralization. In connection with the acquisition, Vangold has agreed to pay a finder fee equal to 10% of the acquisition value up to $300,000 and 7.5% of the acquisition value in excess of $300,000. The agreement and payment of the finder fee remain subject to a number of conditions, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. All securities issued will be subject to a four month hold period.

Guanajuato State; El Pinguico Mine

Guanajuato Mining District is considered to be one of the top three historic silver mining districts in Mexico, having produced an estimated 1 to 1.2 billion oz silver and 5 to 6 million oz gold [General Direction of Mining Development]. At their peak during the 1700's, the silver mines of Guanajuato were thought to be the largest and richest silver mines in the world.

The historic El Pinguico mine was one of the richest gold and silver mines at the beginning of the 20th Century. It was operated by The Pinguico Mines Company with grades over 50 g/t Au and 700 g/t Ag [1]. First put into production in 1890, the historic El Pinguico Mine was in full production by 1906 (approximately 250 tpd), one of the largest in its day [1]. The mineralization is a classic, low sulfidation epithermal vein system, consisting of disseminations and fracture-fillings of pyrite, pyrargygrite, polybasite and electrum in quartz-calcite veins ranging from 1 to 30 metres thick but averaging 2 to 3 m wide. Multiple historic mineralized zones (now stopes) formed steep-plunging shoots 100 to 500 m long that were mined down to depths of 200 to 600 m [Prof. Robert T. Hill, 1910, Report upon the Properties of The Pinguico Mines Company, The Securities Corporation Ltd. NY, NY].

The following table shows the sampling done by the SGM in 2012. A qualified person has not verified the sampling data, as the original samples were unavailable and new samples will need to be obtained. Although this work was not performed under NI 43-101 and not tested in a certified laboratory, there is considerable exploration potential at the historict El Pinguico mine. Further work is required in these areas, including sampling and mapping.

Vangold intends to commission a 43-101 report to establish a work program and budget for the Property, which is expected to include data compilation, mapping and sampling. The results of this work will be used to outline priority targets to be tested by a phase two, with further mapping and sampling continuing during phase two.

Dal Brynelsen, CEO, states "We are extremely pleased with the opportunity represented by the historic El Pinguico mine. The location and historical reports show significant promise. We are looking forward to a more detailed and systematic exploration of the Property and its potential."

The Company also reports that Ms. Anna Serin has resigned from the office of Corporate Secretary. The Company would like to thank Ms. Serin for her years of devoted service, and wishes her well in her future endeavours.
VANCOUVER, Jan. 5, 2017 /CNW/ - IsoEnergy Ltd. ("IsoEnergy" or the "Company") (TSX.V: ISO) is pleased to report on the first stage of a two-stage drilling program at each of its Thorburn Lake and Radio uranium projects in the eastern Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan. Results of Phase 1 drilling at Thorburn Lake include the intersection of uranium mineralization in drill hole RD16-19, and elevated radioactivity at the unconformity in several other drill holes. The highlight of Phase 1 drilling at Radio was the discovery of a large zone of basement clay alteration with a tenor and scale that is typically found close to significant uranium mineralization, including the nearby Roughrider uranium deposit.

IsoEnergy is undertaking a two-stage drilling program, where land accessible targets were drilled during the period September to November 2016, whilst drilling of targets accessible upon ice formation will be undertaken in Q1 2017. Thorburn Lake, located 7 kilometres east of the Cigar Lake uranium mine, is 100% owned. IsoEnergy has an exclusive right to earn a 70% interest in the Radio property, which is located 2 kilometres east of the Roughrider uranium deposit.

Thorburn Lake  Elevated Radioactivity at the Unconformity

Six drill holes (2,587 metres) were completed at Thorburn Lake to follow up on two previous drilling campaigns in 2008 and 2011 that identified an area of anomalous radioactivity and geochemistry at the sub-Athabasca unconformity. Previous results include 0.43% U 3 O 8 over 0.6 metres in drill hole TBN11-05A. Figure 1 shows the drill hole locations at Thorburn Lake. Depth to the unconformity at Thorburn Lake ranges from 290 to 350 metres.

Elevated radioactivity at the sub-Athabasca unconformity was observed in five of the six recently completed drill holes. The highlight was TBN16-19 where radioactivity up to 1,900 counts per second (30-40 times background) was measured with a hand-held SRAT SPP2 scintillometer in an interval straddling the unconformity. Geochemical results from the radioactive interval in TBN16-19 returned 0.10% U 3 O 8 over 0.5 metres. Other geochemical highlights include 524 ppm U over 0.5 metres (TBN16-17), 71 ppm U over 0.5 metres (TBN16-20), 55.4 ppm U over 0.5 metres (TBN16-15) and 47 ppm U over 0.5 metres (TBN16-16), all of which occur immediately adjacent to the unconformity. Other encouraging features include strongly graphitic fault zones in drill holes TBN16-16, -17, -19 and -20, with zones of moderate to intense sandstone alteration in drill holes TBN16-17 and -20. This zone of mineralization, alteration, structure, and elevated radioactivity is open along strike in both directions and is strengthening to the northeast beneath Thorburn Lake. Systematic sampling through the sandstone column for SWIR reflectance analysis indicates that the sandstone clay alteration zones in TBN16-17 and -20 are dominated by illite and sudoite, similar to sandstone alteration zones around many unconformity related uranium deposits in the Athabasca basin.

IsoEnergy is planning a 10 hole (4,300 metre) winter drilling program to follow up on the 2016 results. Drilling will be carried out in conjunction with a program at the Radio property during the January to March 2017 winter drilling season. The primary target will be the northeast strike extension of the mineralization, alteration and structural zone described above. Secondary targets include several resistivity low anomalies observed in an 85 line-kilometer DC-resistivity geophysical survey completed in October 2016.

Figure 1 - Thorburn Lake Planview

Radio Property - Basement Clay Alteration Zone

A total of 13 drill holes (4,946 m) were completed on the Radio property. Three main target areas were evaluated as shown in Figure 2 below: (1) the central Roughrider Corridor of metasediments, (2) magnetic low anomalies along the Northern Corridor of the property, and (3) weak but extensive clay alteration in 2013 drill hole RD13-08 along the Southern Corridor of Radio. This last target area is the location of the basement clay alteration discovery. Depth to the sub-Athabasca unconformity at Radio ranges from 170 to 190 metres.

Five drill holes were completed in the vicinity of drill hole RD13-08 during the campaign. The initial target was the up-dip projection of weak but persistent clay alteration in RD13-08 toward the sub-Athabasca unconformity on cross section 400E (Figure 3). Drill hole RD16-11 was the first in the current program to target the area and intersected 105 metres of moderate to strong structurally controlled grey and white clay alteration in the basement 280 metres up-dip of RD13-08, and 200 metres down-dip of the unconformity. The zone is associated with several parallel (stacked) graphitic fault zones that are conformable with the geology and foliation.

Drill hole RD16-17 was subsequently collared 75 metres up-dip of RD16-11 (also on cross section 400E) and intersected 130 metres of weak to strong clay alteration in the lower sandstone and upper basement, demonstrating that the zone extends for a minimum of 75 metres along the dip direction. A fourth drill hole, RD16-19 was completed 75 metres up-dip of RD16-17. RD16-19 intersected only 25 metres of weak alteration in the sandstone and basement, suggesting that it over-shot the strong portion of the alteration zone.

Drill hole RD16-21A evaluated the along-strike projection of the zone 200 metres to the northeast on cross section 600E, and it intersected the strongest alteration to date, consisting of 120 metres of moderate to strong clay alteration in the basement, beginning immediately below the sub-Athabasca unconformity. As with section 400E, the zone is associated with parallel (stacked) graphitic fault zones that are conformable with the geology and foliation.

Samples of the graphitic fault zones associated with the basement alteration zone are elevated in common uranium pathfinder elements such as molybdenum (up to 184 ppm), nickel (up to 274 ppm), cobalt (up to 45 ppm) and vanadium (up to 270 ppm). Systematic sampling through the alteration zones for shortwave infrared (SWIR) reflectance analysis indicates that the clay alteration zone is illitic, similar to the clay alteration zone that surrounds the nearby Roughrider deposit.

Figure 2 - Radio Planview

IsoEnergy is planning a 10 hole (4,100 metre) winter drilling program to follow up on the 2016 results. Drilling will be carried out in conjunction with a program at the Thorburn Lake property during the January to March 2017 winter drilling season. The primary target will be uranium mineralization associated with the large zone of basement clay alteration described above.

Figure 3 - Radio Cross Section 400E

Steve Blower, Vice-President Exploration, commented: "Exploration success in the Athabasca basin usually begins with the intersection of significant alteration zones, which have a much larger footprint than the bodies of uranium mineralization they encompass. The volume and intensity of clay alteration in the southern target area at Radio is impressive and is similar to alteration haloes around the recently discovered Roughrider, Arrow and Gryphon basement uranium deposits. I'm also encouraged by the size of the area of elevated radioactivity at Thorburn Lake, especially considering that alteration and structure are improving toward the northeast. Both sites warrant additional aggressive drilling campaigns during the January to March 2017 winter drilling season."

Option Grant

The Company has granted the Chief Executive Officer, an aggregate of 250,000 stock options at an exercise price of $1.00. The options are exercisable for a period of five years and vest annually in three equal instalments commencing on the date of grant. The options will be governed by the Company's incentive stock option plan.

Qualified Person Statement

The disclosure of a scientific or technical nature contained in this news release was prepared by Steve Blower, P.Geo., IsoEnergy's Vice President, Exploration, who is a Qualified Person (as defined in National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects). Mr. Blower has verified the data disclosed. For additional information regarding the Company's Radio project and Thorburn Lake project, including its quality assurance and quality control procedures, please see the technical report dated effective August 19, 2016 and September 26, 2016, respectively, in each case, on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

This news release refers to properties other than those in which the Company has an interest. Mineralization on those other properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization on the Company's properties.

About IsoEnergy

IsoEnergy Ltd. is a well-funded uranium exploration and development company with a portfolio of prospective projects in the eastern Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan, Canada. IsoEnergy is led by a Board and Management team with a track record of success in uranium exploration, development and operations. The Company was founded and is supported by the team at its major shareholder NexGen Energy Ltd.
Chung Yoo-ra



By Jung Min-ho

A Danish high court has rejected Chung Yoo-ra's appeal to overturn a district court decision to detain her.

According to the Danish prosecution, the Western High Court decided Tuesday (local time) that the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in a massive influence-peddling scandal in Korea, must remain in custody until Jan. 30.

It is unclear whether she will take the case to the Supreme Court for a final decision.

Chung and four other Koreans, including her baby born in 2015, were apprehended at a house in Aalborg, Sunday, on charges of staying in the country illegally.

Investigators believe she may return to Korea voluntarily. But if she fights the extradition process in Danish courts, she may not return in time for Feb. 28, the deadline for an independent counsel team's investigation.

The team led by special prosecutor Park Young-soo sent an extradition request as well as legal documents about her alleged crimes to the Danish prosecution through the Ministry of Justice. The ministry is expected to send the documents to Denmark within this week.

Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director at Denmark's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, said in a statement he believes the decision over her extradition will be made within a few weeks. But it depends on "when we receive the necessary documents from South Korea," he added.

Chung is suspected of receiving special favors from Ewha Womans University in admissions and grading owing to the influence of her mother, who allegedly exploited her ties with President Park Geun-hye to benefit herself and her cronies.

Investigators are looking into who was behind the favors. So far, Lyou Chul-gyun, an Ewha professor known by his penname Lee In-hwa, has been arrested. More professors will soon be questioned. Among them is his colleague Kim Kyung-sook.

During questioning, Lyou said it was Kim who introduced Chung and Choi to him in 2015, and asked him three times to give Chung high grades she did not earn.

Speaking to Korean reporters in Denmark earlier this week, Chung said she also wondered about her higher-than-expected grades in 2015 because she did not attend classes that year after giving birth. She claimed to have no idea how it happened, but blamed any special treatment given to her on her mother.

However, according to the education ministry's audit office, which inspected the university in October and November, Chung may know exactly how it happened.

During the inspection, auditors found that Chung and Choi met at least six Ewha professors personally, including Kim and former university president Choi Kyung-hee, during the 2015 spring semester.

According to the audit office, Kim, who was the dean of the College of Physical Education at that time, even gave "specific advice about how to receive good grades" to Chung with two other professors at her office.

The counsel team will summon Namkung Gon, former chief admissions officer at Ewha, today to question him over the allegations. He had earlier said that Kim mentioned Chung before the admissions process, hinting at favors for her.

During a Supreme Council meeting of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Rep. Kim Young-joo criticized Chung's comments, urging the foreign and justice ministries to bring her back as soon as possible.

"She shows no signs of repentance," the lawmaker said. "After enjoying all these unjust benefits, she is now selling out her mother to avoid any blame."
Sacramento, CA Several new or enhanced Several new or enhanced California labor laws relating to employment start this month, which should be of particular benefit to domestic workers and anyone making minimum wage. Here are a few key changes

The CA Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, or SB241 was passed in 2013. It granted domestic workers overtime protection who were previously excluded, including personal attendants. It came with a sunset clause that dictated the overtime protection would expire on January 1, 2017, but SB 1015 repeals the sunset clause. SB 1015 will make sure that domestic workers in California continue to receive a fair wage with overtime for their daily hard work," said Sen. Connie Levya (D-Chino Hills), the author of the bill, and reported by theOn her website, Levya said on her website that SB 1015 validates the important work of the over 300,000 domestic workers that serve as housekeepers, nannies, and caregivers in private homes in California. The bill gives personal attendants overtime pay for "any hours worked over nine (9) hours per day or over 45 hours per week".Bill SB3 will increase the California minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next five years beginning January 1, 2017. Businesses with 26 or more employees must pay a minimum wage of $10.50 per hour. Businesses with 25 or less employees arent required to make this increase until 2018.Opponents of the above bills havent taken into consideration the simple fact that higher wages and overtime pay is good for the economypeople will have more money to spend.From Californias Legislation report in October 2016, thestated the following key employment laws:SB 1001 adds Section 1019.1, to the California Labor Code. It protects individuals from discrimination based on lawful immigration status and it is illegal for an employer to request more or different documents than are required under federal law, to refuse to honor documents tendered that on their face reasonably appear to be genuine, to refuse to honor documents or work authorization based upon the specific status or term of status that accompanies the authorization to work, or to reinvestigate or reverify an incumbent employee's authorization to work."And a change to the California Fair Pay Act, SB 1063, prohibits gender pay disparities based on race or ethnicity.These changes to the California labor code may spell more labor law and overtime complaints in 2017
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Page 1 of 5

Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk was written at the Brest-Litovsk peace conference a mere few months after the Bolsheviks had come to power. It gives an excellent introduction to the history of the Russian Revolution.

Introduction

The present booklet was, for the most part, written in snatches, in circumstances but little favourable to concentrated works. It was at Brest-Litovsk, between the sittings of the Peace Conference, that the different chapters of this sketch, which has for its main purpose to acquaint the workers of the world with the causes, progress, and meaning of the Russian November Revolution, were put together. History willed it that the delegates of the most revolutionary regime the world has ever known had to sit at the same diplomatic table with the representatives of the most reactionary caste among all the ruling classes. At the sittings of the Peace Conference we did not for one moment forget that we were the representatives of a revolutionary Class. We addressed our speeches to the war-weary workers of all countries, Our energies were sustained by the profound Conviction that the final word in ending the war, as in all other questions, would be said by the European working class. When speaking to Kuhlmann and Czernin, we all the time had in our mind's eye our friends and comrades, Karl Liebknecht and Fritz Adler. My own free time I devoted to preparing a pamphlet intended for the workers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and of all other countries. The bourgeois Press of the whole of Europe is unanimous in its slanders and execrations of the proletarian regime in Russia. The Socialist "patriotic" Press, bereft of courage and of faith in its own work, has revealed a total incapacity to understand and to interpret to the working masses the meaning of the Russian Revolution. I want to come to their help by means of the present booklet. I believe that the revolutionary workers of Europe and of other parts of the world will understand us. I believe that they will, in the near future, start on the same Work as we are now engaged in, but that, aided by their greater experience and their more perfect intellectual and technical means, they will perform this work more thoroughly, and will help us to overcome all difficulties.

L. TROTSKY,

BREST-LITOVSK,

February 12, 1918

Source: Marxist Internet Archive
Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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06.01.2017 LISTEN

This banger 'Ebi You' is coming from one of Ghana's promising talents, Bryt. He calls this one "Ebi You".

This tune will get you mad and put you in your dancing mood.

The song was produced by Lexyz Beats.

Bryt has proven indeed that he is an artiste ready to make a strong case in the Ghana music industry.

Download and share across all networks.

Connect on all social media networks as well.
Edmund Kyei (left) dancing with Annet as Nana Poku sprays cash on them

06.01.2017 LISTEN

EDMUND KYEI, the Asokwa Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has announced that preparations are far advanced to host a drink-up for his friends and supporters of the New Patriotic Party Saturday evening.

Top music and movie stars in the country as well as seasoned politicians and friends of Mr. Kyei aka Edmundo, are expected to grace the expectedly big occasion.

The much-hyped party, which is to be held at his residence in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital, will witness performances by all the celebrities who campaigned for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), prior to the December 7, 2016 elections  now president-elect.

The merrymaking event is in connection with Nana Addo's massive electoral victory on December 7, Kyei told BEATWAVES.

Mr Edmund Kyei, who recently tied the nuptial knot with his long time fiancee, Annet Mensah Sarpong, said there will be food and drinks in abundance at the event.

The NPP communicator is one of the hard working guys who campaigned vigorously, which ensured the partys massive electoral triumph in the Ashanti Region.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
Tripoli (AFP) - Escalating tensions between rival Libyan armed forces threaten to plunge the North African country deeper into turmoil only weeks after the fall of the Islamic State group's bastion Sirte.

The deeply tribal nation has been sharply divided since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with rival militias vying for influence and control of oil resources.

The power struggle pits an administration based in eastern Libya, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, against a UN-brokered unity government in Tripoli supported by militias from the western city of Misrata.

"The situation is most likely going to escalate further given that the voices of war are now the loudest" after an air strike by Haftar's forces against the Misrata militias, analyst Mohamed Eljarh of the Atlantic Council said.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) is the centrepiece of Western hopes to stem an upsurge of jihadism in Libya, but it has failed to assert its authority across the country.

Libya's power struggle pits an administration based in eastern Libya, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar (pictured), against a UN-brokered unity government in Tripoli

The rival authority in the east has refused to cede power and has its own armed forces, which call themselves the Libyan National Army (LNA) and are led by Haftar.

Pro-GNA fighters mainly from the Western town of Misrata drove IS from Sirte in December, capping a deadly months-long campaign for Kadhafi's hometown.

The Misrata militias include hardliners determined to fight Haftar's army.

The LNA has battled jihadists in second city Benghazi for more than two years and blames Misrata militias of backing diehard extremists.

On December 7, two days after Sirte's liberation, tensions flared when hardline Misrata militias joined an attack against Haftar's forces launched by an alliance of Islamist and tribal fighters.

Fears of IS regrouping

The assault on a town near Libya's "oil crescent" -- where Haftar had seized four export terminals from pro-GNA forces in September -- was launched from Al-Jufra air base in southern Libya.

A member of the Libyan forces of the National Accord (GNA) patrols Sirte's Al-Giza Al-Bahriya district on December 20, 2016 after they drove the Islamic State (IS) group out of its Libyan stronghold earlier in the month

The LNA repelled it and since then has frequently bombarded the base, calling it a den of "terrorists".

On Monday, an LNA air strike hit a military plane carrying senior Misrata military and political figures who were flying out of Al-Jufra, killing one and wounding several.

The Misrata militias dispatched reinforcements to Al-Jufra as well as the Sebha region further west.

Martin Kobler, the UN special envoy to Libya, said he was "alarmed by the tensions in Libya's south" and urged all sides "to act with restraint and to resolve issues through peaceful dialogue".

US State Department spokesman John Kirby warned that further fighting could embolden the Islamic State group and other jihadists to reorganise.

"We note with deep concern... renewed fighting between Libyans... fighting which we believe will only benefit Daesh (IS) and other violent extremists there," he said.

"The truth is that to date, Libyan forces have made progress against Daesh in Sirte and in eastern Libya, and that's what makes this renewed fighting here of concern," Kirby added.

Body bags on the ground after being pulled from rubble by the Libyan Red Crescent in Sirte, on December 20, 2016

Despite the recapture of Sirte, which had been IS's main base in Libya, the jihadist threat persists in the country where experts say IS cells are present in several other areas including Tripoli.

Hardliners win support

Eljarh said a confrontation between Misrata and Haftar's forces could play out in Tripoli as well as the "oil crescent" and the southern region.

Such an outcome "will have a knock-on effect on Libya's oil and water facilities adding to the suffering of the entire population especially in western Libya and the capital," he added.

Eljarh said that the attack on the plane carrying Misrata dignitaries had inflamed even the most moderate factions in the western city.

"Hardliners ... have now managed to successfully switch public opinion within Misrata in their favour" and could now mobilise public support against the LNA, he added.

A member of the Libyan forces of the National Accord patrols Sirte's Al-Giza Al-Bahriya district on December 20, 2016

Mattia Toaldo, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Haftar was trying to form alliances with Libya's powerful tribes to control the south of the country.

"The south is the most immediate flashpoint where Haftar is trying to replicate the strategy of tribal alliances and limited show of force that allowed him to capture the oil crescent in September," he said.

"Sirte is another flashpoint with Misratan fears that Haftar will use tribal allegiances to strip Misrata of its gains on the ground," he said.


By Richard Kofi Attenkah

Even before his official inauguration as President of the Republic, the President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has released the names of his first batch of appointments.

A 69 year-old development consultant, labour and employment expert with 40 years of experience, as well as a former lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, was named Chief of Staff.

Mrs. Akosua Frema, who is a two-term Member of Parliament for Ayawaso West Wuogon, is also a former Consultant for the United Nations in the 'Women in Fisheries' programme in countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Kenya and Namibia, and a former Deputy Minister for Manpower, Youth and Employment, from 2005 to 2008.

Nana Addo also appointed 39 year-old Francis Asenso-Boakye, a development planning, project management and policy specialist, with over 15 years of wide-ranging professional experience in his field, as Political Assistant to the President & Deputy Chief of Staff.

Also appointed as a Deputy Chief of Staff is 33 year-old Samuel Abu Jinapor, a former aide to the President-elect, a barrister-at-law and a member of the reputable commercial and corporate law firm, Messrs. Kulendi @ Law.

This was contained in a press statement released by the President-elect to the Office of the President and copied to The Chronicle.

According to the statement, Brigadier General Emmanuel Okyere, an engineer who has a solid military background, having served in the Ghana Army for almost 40 years, and also a former Metropolitan Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), has been appointed National Security Advisor.

Nana Addo also appointed Joshua Kyeremeh, a former Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), who worked at the Bureau for about 22 years at command levels in the Northern, Upper East, Ashanti and Greater Accra regions, to the position of National Security Coordinator.

A renowned lawyer, with over 20 years of experience and Managing Partner at Ampem Chambers, a corporate law firm in Ghana, Nana Bediatuo Asante has been penned down as Secretary to the President.

An old pal of the President-elect, Victor Newman, an economist, consultant, financial and research analyst, who worked at the Economic Research and Planning Services of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Western Castings Limited, and the Ghanaexim Economic Consultants, was appointed Director of Research.

Ambassador Hassan Ahmed, who is a career diplomat with Ghana's Diplomatic Service for 34 years, after serving in Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Cuba and Japan as Deputy Chief of Mission, and also as the Chief of Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been named Director of State Protocol.

Furthermore, Nana Addo appointed his Press Secretary and a former Research Analyst at the Danquah Institute Director of Communications at the Presidency.

Again, 48 year-old Lord Oblitey Commey, an accomplished entrepreneur, astute politician known for his tactical, operational and organisational acumen, as well as Director of Operations for the 2012 NPP presidential campaign, was considered Director of Operations at the Presidency.

The position of Personal Assistant to the President went to 53 year-old Saratu Atta, who was appointed NPP Campaign Secretary in 2008, and has been Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the President-elect since 2009.

A campaign aide to the President-elect during the 2016 electioneering campaign period, who worked on contract with the Ghana Health Service and United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) on maternal health issues, Clara Napaga Sulemana Tia, was named a Presidential Staffer.
A former Chief of Staff under the Kufour Administration, Kwadwo Mpiani, has made a staggering revelation that he is surprised president- elect Nana Addo won the December 7 ,2016 polls with 53.85%

The President- elect and Leader of the opposition New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo won the elections with 5,716,026 votes representing 53.85% by beating his closest contender, John Dramani Mahama who polled 4,713,277 votes representing 44.40% based on 271 out of 275 constituencies declared.

Surprisingly, I was shocked Nana Addo could poll such votes, I never dreamt about it Kwadwo Mpiani, the former chief of staff under the President John Agyekum Kuffours administration told HOT FMS Political Show Host BOAMAH DARKO ISAAC in a live interview Thursday afternoon.

Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo won the elections with a difference of 1,002,749 votes representing 9.45%. He indicated he has called to congratulate the President elect and urge him to appoint young and energetic people as ministers and do away with the aged because the youth need to tap experience from the old.

He advised the NDC conduct an investigation to ascertain why the NDC lost the elections and take a cue from that so they may not fail Ghanaians.
Gao (Mali) (AFP) - Former Tuareg rebels on Thursday entered Gao, the main city in northern Mali, to begin joint patrols with government troops, a key part of a peace accord for the troubled region.

"This is the first group of the CMA that has entered Gao to start mixed patrols," said Malick Ag Cherif, coordinator of the former rebel organisation, known as the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA).

In 2015, the rebel alliance signed a peace deal with government and loyalist militias.

The hope was to bring stability to a region that was the cradle of several Tuareg uprisings and a sanctuary for Islamist fighters.

Since then, rival armed groups have repeatedly violated the ceasefire, threatening attempts to give the north a measure of autonomy to prevent separatist uprisings.

A key component of the deal -- joint patrols between regular troops, pro-government militia and former rebels -- remained unfulfilled until now.

On December 30, the CMA complained a "group of armed men hostile to the CMA" had prevented some 200 of its men from entering government-held Gao for the patrols.

Malian Colonel Rhissa Ag Sidi Mohamed said there had been a problem between CMA dissidents and pro-government groups, but insisted: "The state has taken a major step and resolved the problem."

He said fighters from the other groups in the alliance were expected "to join us in the coming weeks and take part in the mixed patrols."

Mali regained control of the northern cities from the jihadists after a French-led international military intervention in January 2013, but insurgents remain active across large parts of the region.
By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA

Daffiama (U/W), Jan. 5, GNA - Naa Dikomwine Domalae, the Paramount Chief of the Daffiama Traditional Area in the Upper West Region, has appealed to the incoming government to abide by the provisions in Article 242(d) of the 1992 Constitution to enhance decentralisation process.

The Article provides for consultation of traditional authorities and other interest groups before appointing not more than 30 per cent of membership to the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

Naa Dikomwine Domalae, made the appeal at the 9th edition of the annual "Duuyee" Festival of the chiefs and people of the area.

He said this particular provision appeared to have been abused since the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution, adding that "many instances abound where various personalities without any experience were appointed merely to do the bidding of the government of the day".

The Daffiama Naa said the inclusion of government appointees in the Assemblies was aimed at appointing people with requisite experience and expertise for them to contribute their quota to the complex administrative set up of the decentralised assembly.

Naa Domalae expressed the hope that the incoming government would take his appeal into consideration this time round, and as well pay attention to the implementation of development projects identified by the people.

Mr Mathias Puozaa, outgoing Member of Parliament (MP) for Daffiama-Bussie-Issa Constituency thanked the people for giving him their mandate and said for the three terms he served as MP, his focus had been in the area of health and education.

Dr Sebastian Sandaare, the new MP of the Constituency, promised to work closely with the traditional authorities so that they could collectively bring development to the area.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By Belinda Ayamgha, GNA

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - The United States Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, will attend the inauguration of Ghana's President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Saturday, January 7.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield was also in Ghana to observe Ghana's elections on December 7, 2016.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and won the December 7 election with 53.85 per cent of the valid votes to beat incumbent President John Dramani Mahama, candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who had 44.4 per cent. Ms Thomas-Greenfield, a member of the Career Foreign Service, has served as the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs since 2013.

In this capacity, Ms Thomas-Greenfield leads the bureau in the Department of State focused on the development and management of U.S. Policy towards sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to this appointment, she served as Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources from 2012 to 2013; leading a team of approximately 400 employees who handled the full range of personnel functions for the State Department's 70,000 strong workforce from recruitment and hiring to evaluations, promotions and retirement.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield's 34-year Foreign Service career includes an ambassadorship to Liberia (2008-2012), and foreign postings in Switzerland (at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations), Pakistan, Kenya, The Gambia, Nigeria, and Jamaica.

In addition to the Bureau of Human Resources, her Washington postings include the Bureau of African Affairs (2006-2008) where she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (2004-2006) where she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By Francis Ameyibor, GNA

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) has commended the media for active role in the energy sector especially scrutinizing players in the petroleum industry.

Mr Kingsley Kwame Awuah-Darko, Managing Director of BOST who commended the media noted that: 'It was you who strengthened our resolve to succeed in the face of all opposition, confirming that you more than anyone else was the brother who stood by this would be orphan BOST, right from our days in the gutter to our time now in the sun.

'May our relationship with you continue to grow and be guided by the truth and nothing else,' Mr Awuah-Darko stated during a farewell interaction with the media in Accra.

He noted that: 'Under my administration the media continued to scrutinize, criticized and also have the same courage to commend us when we did the right thing by the people of Ghana. We implore you to continue to render the support you gave us to our successors on the future and the direction of the downstream petroleum sector'.

Mr Awuah-Darko attributed the turn-over at BOST under his administration to 'God who has brought us far bridled with a very large dose of humility. 'Humility because this was not an individual effort. I am humbled by the men and women at BOST who refused to let the dead goat die.

He also commended the staffs of BOST saying; 'You fought to your last, you grovelled and scraped and grasped at every straw, and by your effort and the grace of our lord, today the ugly duckling BOST has been transformed into a beautiful swan.

'To you I say the battle is not overI urge you to support my successor with dedication and hard work you showed while I was your Managing Directorlet us pick up our tools and let us continue to press forward for God and countrynow is not time for us to relax and go back to our bad old ways. Now is the time for us to press on and pick up the pace'.

Mr Awuah-Darko also commended both the senior and junior staffs as well as the workers union for creating enabling environment and adapting to the transformation agenda instituted by the management under his leadership.

Mr Kakara Essamuah, BOST Board Chairman also noted that the collective efforts of stakeholders, prudent management skills, and sacrifices of staff helped restore the operations of BOST in the last 36 months.

'BOST in 2013 seemed like a large uncontrollable beast, the company was in dire state with employees so dejected, that some sat under trees for lack of a next step to take. No banks would look at us, no Bulk Distribution Company (BDC) would store with us no one wanted to partner with us and the citizens of the country had for the most part forgotten about the entity called BOST.'

Mr Essamuah noted that the staff however stayed resolute, given the option to walk away and call it a day the Local Union refused rising up in one last battle cry for a savour to resurrect this fallen giantand when the dust settled, President John Dramani Mahama appointed a young man, Mr Awuah-Darko.

'All too often the story of the state enterprise is one of corruption, embezzlement, and a complete misuse of taxpayers hard earned money. But today I stand proud to tell you that BOST in partnership with GO-Energy delivered the final nail into the coffin of a non-deregulated downstream petroleum market to ensure that you and I do not pay a pesewa more than we need to at the petrol pump.

'I am proud to tell you that in partnership with the Energy Commission, BOST has delivered a comprehensive strategy to ensure the build out of gas infrastructure throughout this country eliminating our dependence of foreign gas and ensuring that local gas will never again be stranded and flared.

'This obviously we hope will be flowed by the incoming administration.'

Mr Essamuah noted that BOST has transformed from a company where staff survived on their menial salaries by taking money under the table, to a company where staff are well paid and are awarded on the table.

He said through instruments such as the performance based bonuses and the over GHE4.8 million performance based profit share which was approved by the board to be paid to all staff in 2015.

'I believe this set a precedent for us as a country that we should award those who work hard so as not to demotivate them and recognize them for the work they do as a means to not only show appreciation but to encourage them to strive harder,' Mr Essamuah who is also a Member of the National Media Commission stated.

BOST was incorporated in December 1993 as a private limited liability company with the Government of Ghana as the sole shareholder. Until May 2001, BOST was responsible for the distribution of refined petroleum products from its strategic depots located throughout the country.

Additionally, BOST also holds the Natural Gas Transmission Utility License granted to it by the Ghana Energy Commission (EC) on December 19th, 2012. The NGTU as per EC Act 541, 1997, will provide transmission and interconnection services for natural gas without discrimination throughout the country.

Transmission license as per Natural Gas Licensing manual permit BOST: to monitor and control the operation of the national interconnected network for the transmission of natural gas in areas within the country, and to ensure the safe, reliable and economic transportation of natural gas facilities connected to the transmission system.

It also enable it to provide transmission interconnection services without discrimination to other licensees in the natural gas industry; and provide transmission interconnection services to operators of natural gas networks in ECOWAS member states.

GNA
Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - Energy Bank Ghana has schooled a number of exporters on the features, requirements, utilisation of trade finance lines and among other trade products that would help facilitate their business transactions easily.

Dubbed: 'Time with Exporters,' the training afforded the exporters, drawn from Tamale, Kumasi and Takoradi, the opportunity to understand the various trade finance products that the Bank offered, the corresponding bank relationships and its unique selling points.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Christiana Olaoye said Energy Bank had a well-structured trade finance products backed by comprehensive advisory services to support trade between Ghanaian exporters and their foreign partners.

Some of the trade finance products that the bank offers include documentary credits, documentary collections, inward remittances and guarantees.

Mrs Olaoye noted that Energy Bank's selling points were quick turn-around time, excellent service and flexibility, deep understanding and knowledge of trade finance products and services as well as strong correspondent banking relationships and trade lines.

'We are a bank that is committed to helping and facilitating the wants and needs of individuals and businesses to achieve their goals.

'We will consistently provide education for our key customers going forward in 2017,' Mrs Olaoye added.

The bank few months ago took part in a trade programme between Ghanaian and Korean businesses which the Korean Ambassador to Ghana and the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, Mawuena Dumor were key speakers.

Energy Bank is a commercial entity with vitality, strength and power and in its approach to banking is solution driven.

It presently operates 11 branches and one agency in Ghana; five in Accra, three in Kumasi, and the rest in Tema, Takoradi and Tamale.

GNA
By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA

Cape Coast, Jan. 05, GNA - One hundred and thirty-eight (138) people were killed in road crashes in the Central Region last year, the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit(MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service has revealed.

The year preceding recorded 129.

Last year's figure was made up of 109 males and 29 females with 28 of them being below 18 years and 110 above 18 years.

The accidents also left 1,149 persons with various degrees of injuries as against 811 in 2015.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Emmanuel Ofori, MTTU Regional Commander, who made this known to Ghana News Agency (GNA), indicated that a total of 789 road crashes were recorded last year as against 729 in the previous year, indicating an increase of 60 cases.

He said a total of 125 of the cases were fatal, 224 were serious while 440 were minor cases with pedestrian knock downs increasing to 228 as against 141 in 2015.

Of the cases, 538 were commercial vehicles, 494, private, while 136 involved motor bikes.

He said human errors, such as speeding, over loading, drink driving as well as reckless driving continued to be the major causes of road traffic crashes in the Region.

ASP Ofori said the MTTU would continue to collaborate with the Road Safety Commission and other road safety stakeholders to embark on regular and constant educational campaign to ensure that the laws were enforced.

He said although the collaboration with road safety stakeholders had led to some significant reduction in road accidents in the Region in the previous years, the figures were still alarming and called for an intensified collaboration to further bring the figures down.

ASP Ofori called on drivers, passengers, pedestrians and other road users to be cautious when using the road.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday inaugurated an ultra modern Cathlab Machine at the Cardiothoracic Centre of the Korle-Teaching Hospital in Accra.

The new machine, which was installed three months ago, replaces an old one that had outlived its usefulness after 29 years of installation and would help in the diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases.

The facility would diagnose and treat heart patients from the West African Sub-region and train more cardiology staff in the same region on the handling of the equipment and heart conditions.

After inspecting the installation at the centre, President Mahama promised that he would take it as a special project to mobilise resources for the development of the centre even when he leaves office.

He said he was moved to acquire the equipment for the Centre when he once visited a minister of state who was admitted at the Centre, but had to be referred to a medical centre in the United Kingdom because the machine was not working.

President Mahama said his support to the Centre after leaving office would be focused on constructing a new cardiothoracic centre as the existing one was virtually becoming smaller for the growing number of heart patients in the country and beyond.

Dr Lawrence Siriboe, the Head of the Centre, commended President Mahama for fulfilling his promise to replace the antiquated equipment before leaving office.

He said the machine would serve as a life-saving one in the coming years and called on the public not to hesitate to know their status as that could help in keeping them abreast of their health needs.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By D.I. Laary, GNA

Accra, Jan. 4, GNA - Mr Frank Aboagye Danyansah, the Progressive People's Party (PPP) parliamentary hopeful for Obuasi East, has accused the National Democratic Congress for deliberately mishandling certain sensitive national issues in the Ashanti Region for political gains.

He said the posture and utterances of the Regional Minister Mr John Alexander Ackon showed that he did not attach any seriousness in addressing the AngloGold Ashanti Galamsey confrontation in Obuasi and the Asante Akim Fulani menace that claimed lives and destroyed property.

The accusation followed media reports that quoted Mr Ackon of calling on the incoming New Patriotic Party administration to focus on addressing the Galamsey and Fulani disturbances in the Region.

'In my relaxed comfort zone I tend to think more business; less politics, but issues like this story will not make me rest,' Mr Danyansah told the Ghana News Agency.

'As an outgoing Minister you...couldn't handle the very problems with, which you were made minister

'What an advice, Ghanaians were really being taking for a ride and this confirms that the NDC was deliberately mishandling the Obuasi AGA-Galamsey issues and the Asante Akim Fulani issues all for political gains.'

GNA
By Samuel Akapule, GNA

Bolgatanga, Jan. 5, GNA - The World Light Temple Church in Bolgatanga has helped in rehabilitating a number of youth identified as alcoholics and those addicted to narcotic drugs in Upper East Region.

Reverend Simon Asigre, the General Overseer of the Church, said this to the Ghana News Agency during the 25th anniversary celebration of the church held on Tuesday.

Reverend Asigre expressed concern on the spate of abuse of alcoholism by the youth and urged other churches in the region to use their various platforms to effect change in behaviour.

He said the region is endowed with a number of human and natural resources which could be tapped for its development and one of the major challenges that could hinder the process was the increasing social vices linked to alcoholism and the proliferation of drinking joints in the region.

He said the World Light Temple Church has established a youth wing and this is besides the various meetings held to address the concern.

Reverend Asigre said some of the reformed youth later became members of the church who successfully continued with their education and are now lawyers, medical doctors and teachers.

'The youth are our future assets and as churches we must all team up to complement the efforts of government at addressing these problems', Reverend Asigre urged.

He said the World Light Temple Church has contributed to the socio-economic development of the nation and mentioned the empowerment of the women wing of the Church to form co-operative groups and venture into small enterprise businesses as some of the examples.

This, he explained, has helped to improve upon the wellbeing of many families apart from the spiritual needs provided by the church.

Reverend Asigre, who paid tribute to members of the Church particularly the pastors, for their various contributions to the Church, called on the youth to find Bible believing churches to fellowship.

As part of the five day celebration of the anniversary, the church embarked on a clean-up campaign at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital and donated blood to the hospital.

The Bongo District based World Light Temple Church now has fifteen branches throughout the country.

GNA
By Jerry Azanduna, GNA

Bawku (U/E) Jan. 5, GNA - Damba, one of the renowned festivals celebrated by the descendants of the famous Naa Gbawaa in northern Ghana, has been marked by the people of Mamprusi in Bawku.

The festival, which was also used to commemorate the birth of Prophet Mohammed, was characterized by drumming and dancing to signify unity, cooperation and coexistence amongst the indigenes.

Mr Mohammed Tahiru Nambe, a legal practitioner and an opinion leader in the Mamprusi community, said peace was one of the tools that could be used to enhance development and that there is the need for all to give peace a chance.

He urged the people to eschew divisions among themselves as that would retard development in the area.

Mr Nambe said there is the need for people to see themselves as one because it could create a platform that would strengthen the bond between them and promote unity.

Madam Gabiana Gbganwaa, New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidate for the Bawku Central, called on the people of Bawku to maintain the peace of the area so that it can regain its previous renown as the trade hub of the north.

She urged all to treat each other with love, cooperation and tolerance and commended the people for the various roles they played to ensure that the elections was a success.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By Mercy Manukure/Racheal Dwamena Akenteng, GNA

Accra, Jan. 05, GNA - A section of workers at the Ministries in Accra said they could not listen to the President's last State of the Nation Address to Parliament, on Thursday, because of work and other activities.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, in Accra, Evans Ofori, a worker at the Environmental Protection Agency said: 'I was busy going about my duties so I couldn't listen.'

'The duration for the address was short and I missed it because I was running errands for my boss at that moment,'' Ms Edwina Osei said.

Mr James Ofori of the Ministry of Finance said he was not able to watch the full address because he had other duties to perform.

Some of the workers who were interviewed said they were not aware of the date and time of the address because they were not informed appropriately.

Nevertheless, a number of those who watched the President, said the speech was good because it touched on such key areas as Health, Education, Governance, Infrastructure, Economy and Power, which were relevant to national development.

'The President has done well in terms of improving infrastructural projects in the country, ''Imusah Addui, a worker at Ministry of Transport, said.

President Mahama, who assumed office on January 7, 2013, hands over to President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo on Saturday, January 7.

GNA
Ho, Jan 5, GNA - Madam Teresa Dagbey, the Ho Central Market Queen, has called on the Ho Municipal Assembly (HMA) to be fair in the allocation of stores at the yet to be completed new Central Market.

On Wednesday, January 4, 2017, the Ho Market Sellers Association issued a statement alleging that the Assembly had allocated the stores to government workers and people who were not trading at the market.

The traders in the statement threatened to stop paying market tolls should the Assembly fail to allocate the stores to traders on a list submitted by Madam Dagbey.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Madam Dagbey alleged that the Assembly refused to rescind its decision and pleaded with other stakeholders to prevail on the Assembly to 'do the right thing.'

'All efforts to speak to the Municipal Chief Executive on phone proved futile and I will like to appeal to the press to use their medium to get the Assembly to do the right thing,' she said.

Mrs. Dake Charity Fasey, the Assistant Market Queen, also alleged that the warehouses which were initially built for corn and groundnut sellers were not given to them.

Mr Kofi Gbedemah, a local representative of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) who was at the press confab as a resource person appealed to both the Market Sellers Association and the Assembly to go back to the negotiation table on the allocation.

GNA
The telecoms regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA), has been asked to discontinue the implementation of some new policies in the 4G space, Adom News sources reveal.

The NCA board and management had earlier met with the four Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) license holders, namely Surfline, Blu, Goldkey and Broadband Home on Tuesday, January 3, 2017, to discuss their license conditions and localisation among other things.

The meeting focused on major issues regarding the 4G space, which issues were gearing up for immediate implementation, however, on Thursday, January 5, 2017, the transition team of the incoming government contacted the NCA Board and stopped them from going ahead to implement any of the issues agreed on.

Some of the participants at the meeting suspect that either some NCA board members or some management team members opposed to the decisions agreed upon at that meeting contacted power brokers in the transition team to stop the implementation.

Issues discussed

Meanwhile, Adom News can confirm that discussions at that meeting were, in the main, around allowing BWAs to offer voice services soon, by reducing the initial 203 district capitals they had to cover before going voice to just 50 district capitals.

They also discussed how MTN can dispose of its 35% shares after acquiring a 4G license.

That particular issue centred around a proposal for MTN to buy out Goldkey's BWA spectrum, and in exchange, allow the latter to own shares in MTN.

The confusion in that deal is that Goldkey's license allows a foreign entity, like MTN to only own 70% and not 100%, so it was still not clear how a complete buyout would look like in the face of the licensing requirement.

Busy Ghana

Busy Ghana is an authorised (not licensed) 4G player but they were not invited to the meeting because industry players have always raised an issue about a fundamental defect in their status.

Busy Ghana neither paid the required $6million like the BWAs did, nor did they pay $67.5million like MTN did for a proper license, but have been authorised to operate 4G.

The meeting also discussed Busy Ghana's status with some participants suggesting that Busy Ghana should be made to pay same annual fees as the BWAs in order to continue operating as a 4G player.

4G partnerships

There were discussions about a 4G partnership proposal between Vodafone and Surfline and a 4G wholesale deal between Tigo and Comsys, but those were stalled because the NCA's position was that currently there are no policies and regulatory framework for such partnership and wholesale deals.

Vodafone and Surfline are seeking to partner, with Vodafone providing the platform to expand 4G coverage, while Surfline provides capacity for Vodafone to improve service in areas with high density, but the NCA stopped it for lack of regulations.

Tigo also made enquiries about wholesaling for Comsys in the 4G space but that was also stopped for similar reasons.

BWAs disappointed

But the BWAs are most disappointed because they were happy about the prospect of starting voice services soon to at least shore up their revenue and stake their claim as leaders in the data space, but the move by the transition team has scuttled their plans.

The CEO of one of the BWAs is hopeful that this breaks on the NCA from implementing the new BWA policies would be short lived because the BWAs expect the incoming administration to see the wisdom in giving them some relief to grow and make the expected impact.

They maintain that, but for the 800MHz spectrum sold to MTN, the BWAs would have, in a few years, risen fast to the top of the data market and helped to improve the lives of Ghanaians in a significant way.

Indeed, the last NCA report on data traffic within the entire telecom industry indicated that Surfline, for instance, is moving more data than Glo and Tigo combined, while Broadband Home is moving more data than Glo.

Outstanding issues

Meanwhile, some other related issues that the NCA, under the incoming government, would be expected to deal with, would include what to do with the second slot of the 800MHz 4G spectrum that was left after MTN bought one for a whopping $67.5million.

The issue of Expresso has also become an albatross on the industry because till date it is still not clear if the Sudanese owners, Sudatel have sold all the shares in the company or it is still the case that some secret buyer has paid only $5million into an escrow account for 18% of the company.

The company is dying gradually and workers have not been paid salaries for months now, according to reports.

The regulator would be expected to act more decisively in the interest of the country.

Glo has also been falling headlong for more than a year now and it lost coverage in several communities across the country after boasting of over 90% coverage at its launch. The regulator may have to look at what is going on there and ensure Ghana got value for money on the national resource given to Glo.

The next four years also promises to produce some mergers, acquisitions and partnership within the telecom industry. Already, there have been rumours French telecom giant Orange is coming in to acquire two telcos in Ghana and merge them under the Orange brand.

The NCA must, therefore, be quick with the regulatory frameworks regarding the partnership, mergers and acquisitions within the industry.

It would also be interesting to see what the NCA, under the new administration, would do with the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH), as some NPP MPs were in vehement opposition to the ICH while they were in opposition.

In all these, care must be taken not to do anything to incur a judgment debt for the state unnecessarily.
06.01.2017 LISTEN

ROMANS 12:3-8

For through the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each is to exercise them accordingly. If prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness (NASB).

INTRODUCTION

After World War II, a group of German students volunteered to rebuild a cathedral that had been severely damaged by German bombs. As work progressed, they became concerned about a large statue of Jesus with outstretched arms, beneath which was the inscription: Come unto Me. They had great difficulty trying to restore the hands, which had been completely destroyed. After much discussion they decided to let the hand remain missing and change the inscription instead. When they were finished, it read: Christ has no hands but ours. Yes, Christ has no hands. Christians are the hands of Christ that is why He has given us spiritual gifts to serve Him and to bring others to Him. I would like to continue our series on The Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

I. AN APPEAL FOR HUMILITY V. 3

The Apostle Paul underlines the significance of what he is about to teach by reminding the Roman believers of his authority. In verse 3, the grace given to Paul is his calling as an apostle of Jesus Christ. This was a special manifestation of Gods grace to him. That is why Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 3:10, concerning the way we utilize our spiritual gifts. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. Read also Galatians 2:9; Eph. 3:7-8.

We should avoid two thought patterns as Christians. You and I need to guard against two extreme mindsets. The first is to think too highly of yourself. Have you read the Book of Esther? That was the problem of Haman. He thought that if there was any person in the kingdom of Persia who deserved a reward from King Ahasuerus, it was he. That was also the problem of the Pharisee in Jesus parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector (Luke 18). The other extreme is to think too lowly of yourself. Some people have low self-esteem that they think too little of their worth. The key to an honest and accurate evaluation is knowing the basis of your self-worth, which is your identity in Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we are not capable of very much eternal standards, but in Him, we are valuable and capable of worthy service. Evaluating yourself by the worldly standards of success and achievement can cause you to think too much about your worth in the eyes of others and thus miss your true value in the eyes of God (The plight of the Laodicean church in Revelation 3). The apostle Paul is appealing to you and me to have a healthy self-esteem and that is humility. The danger in the use of our specific spiritual gift is this: there is a temptation for Christians whose spiritual gifts put them in the lime light to think too highly of themselves; that is plain arrogance or pride. The other side of the coin is also true. Those who use their spiritual gifts behind the scenes can also think too lowly of themselves. This can happen because you think that you are not appreciated or not recognized, but you forget that Gods evaluation of you is different than that of humans. Therefore, you should prevent pride or false humility in the way you use your spiritual gifts. Christians who fall a victim to pride or false humility have identity crisis.

II. ANALOGY OF THE BODY VV. 4-5

Apostle Paul likens the spiritual gifts to the parts that make up the human body. The brain is the controlling center of the human body. The brain gives direction to the parts of the body for their functions. As the human body works together harmoniously, Jesus the Head and Giver of the spiritual gifts wants the church to function in a similar way. As I always say, God is wise to make every person different and unique. I cannot be you and you cannot be me. Diversity of our human personality is a special gift and design from God. The human body is a unit with different parts that performs different functions. While the parts of the body are diverse, they function in unity. In the human body the arm cannot decide it doesnt want anything to do with the legs. Could you imagine the feet saying to the eye, I have nothing to do with you? When a part of the human body suffers, it affects the other parts of the body.

In the same way, when you decide not to use your spiritual gift to serve Christ in the church, you deprive the church from serving Christ with full potential. God gives us spiritual gifts so that we can be used to build His church. To use them effectively, you must realize that all spiritual gifts and abilities come from God. You must understand that not everyone has the same gifts. When someone asks you why you dont have a certain gift, take that person to Romans 12:4 and Ephesians 4:11. Know who you are and what the Lord has gifted you to do. Then dedicate your gift to Gods service and not personal success. When you dedicate your spiritual gifts to the service of God, He will bless you. Also remember that the gift came to you from God. Therefore, you must be willing to utilize your gifts wholeheartedly, not holding back anything from Gods service.

III. UTILIZATION OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS VV. 6-8

God does not hold you accountable to a spiritual gift he did not give you. However, God holds you responsible for the spiritual gifts He has given to you. First, you have to know your spiritual gifts before you can use them. The word gifts are charismata and they differ in nature, power, and effectiveness according to His wisdom and graciousness, not according to your faith. The word of God does not just talk about these spiritual gifts; it also encourages us to be active in using them for the edification of the church. You cannot pump up more faith and thus be more effective teachers or servants. These are Gods gift to His church, and he gives faith and power as He wills. Your role is to be faithful as you use the spiritual gifts God has given to you. The spiritual gifts are not given just to be admired, neither are they given to be hoarded. The reason Jesus gave you spiritual gifts is to use them to serve Him in His church. This does not mean that you are to use your spiritual gifts exclusively among Christians. You are to use your spiritual gifts wherever God places you. Now lets see the specific gifts that are mentioned in verses 6-8. The word of God begins with prophecy. Last week we dealt with prophecy. Prophecy in Scripture is not always predicting the future. Often it means boldly preaching the word of God (1 Cor. 14:1-3). Prophecy denotes an insight to present circumstances. One thing about prophecy or any of the speaking gifts is that it can be dangerous if it is uncontrolled. Therefore, Paul urges that prophecy be according to analogia of faith. Analogia is the word from which we get the English analogy. The word in our present context denotes a right proportion or relationship. Therefore, prophesying must be in right proportion to faith. In other words, the one who has the gift of prophecy should not say anything beyond what God has given him/her. Moreover, what the prophet says must be consistent with Scripture.

Those who exercise the gift of prophecy need to be careful that you dont interject your own opinions in your prophecy. When you are giving a prophecy through the word of God, and someone you know or a friend has told you about enter the room, dont throw away what God wants His church to hear and begin to prophesy about that person. When you do that you are acting in the flesh and your prophecy is not out of faith. Remember that Romans 14:23, says that anything that is not done in faith is sin.

The next is the gift of service or ministry or helps. The word is diakonian from which we get the word deacon. The word indicates a personal ministry done in service to another. All Christians are called to serve Christ and one another (Mark 10:43-45; Romans 15:25; Ephesians 4:12). But there are some that God has endowed with the spiritual gift of service or ministry. Christians who have this gift are willing to serve cheerfully, joyfully, and unselfishly wherever and whenever God needs them. It is beautiful to see people who have the gift of service or helps using their gift to serve Christ in and outside His church. These people work behind the scenes. They often take the unspectacular and undesirable jobs around the church. The church runs smoothly because of these people. Timothy had a gift of service. He was willing to serve as an assistant to Paul. Martha the sister of Mary had this gift. I know some men and women who have this gift in our church. Christians with the gift of service do not complain when others dont help them in what they are doing. Our church must elect leaders according to their gift mix to avoid too much complaint.

Last Sunday I dealt with the gift of teaching. Preaching is the Spirit-enabling a person to proclaim the word of God. Teaching is the Spirit-given ability to explain Gods word to help Christians cultivate the character of Christ. There is certainly an element of teaching in every good preaching. Most effective teachers also do a little preaching along the way. A gifted teacher has a teachable spirit. He does not teach to win arguments or draw attention to self. A gifted teacher teaches to help others grow in the Lord. Good teachers are avid readers. Some people think that anybody can teach a Sunday school. That is a big lie. There is a definite spiritual gift of teaching. Thank God for wonderful, Spirit-filled teachers. The church needs many of them to grow the people of God spiritually. They are a blessing to the people of God. Some have the gift of teaching but they refuse to utilize it. The Lord will ask them when He returns. Gifted teachers prepare thoroughly before they teach. That makes teaching more lively and productive to Christians.

There is the gift of Exhortation or Encouragement. This is the word parakalon , from which we get Paraclete. This is the word used of the Holy Spirit in John 14:16. It means to come alongside to help. Exhortation is the Spirit-endowed ability of speaking a word that lifts another persons heart. It is speaking the word of healing. People are helped because of the gift of encouragement. When you encourage or exhort a person who is down, you are acting just like the Holy Spirit. Barnabas had the gift of encouragement (Acts 4:36). Dont you love those who speak positive and encouraging words?

Then there is the gift of giving or generosity. This does not mean that if you dont have this gift you dont give your money to the Lords work. Every believer is to pay tithes and offerings to the Lord. The tithe is one-tenth of your income. Some Christians fail to pay their tithes and they turn around and ask why God has not been blessing them. It is plain and simple; God is not blessing you because you are stealing from Him. The spiritual gift of giving helps define the idea of stewardship. People who have this gift are to exercise it with simplicity or liberality. The only place in the Bible where God tells Christians to be liberal is in the area of giving. The word simplicity or liberality literally means to give without folds. This refers to unfolded cloth. It means to give purely without any ulterior motives. You are to give with openness of heart, without self-seeking and without expecting anything in return. Some people want to give to court the favor of the pastor. When you do that God knows your motive. God has gifted some people to make money so that they can give generously to help His work. That is one thing I admire about some American Christians. My caution is this. Christians who have the gift of giving should exercise discretion in their giving so that others won't take advantage of them. They are vulnerable to people who are human parasites. Christians with the gift of giving or generosity need the spirit of discernment to know who needs to be helped and who doesnt.

The next is the gift of leadership or administration. This is the gift of leading. The word literally means to steer a ship. It refers to someone who guides a ship through treacherous waters. This person is skilled to avoid the rocks and shoals of the seas. Some people are gifted to help administer the church and keep it from getting into dangerous waters. This is the Spirit-given ability to lead the church (1 Tim. 5:17; 1 Thess. 5:12). Obviously, some people rise to the top in leadership because God has gifted them to be leaders. Unfortunately, there are some who desire to be church leaders out of impure motives. Their leadership is not a spiritual gift but a carnal desire. They want to be church bosses so that they can control the church. They are like Diotrephes (3 John v. 9).

Finally, there is the gift of mercy or caring. The Bible exhorts believers to be merciful, but God bestows the gift of mercy on some of His people. Those with the gift of mercy are to do it cheerfully. The word cheerfulness means gladness or graciousness. This is the Spirit-given ability to love and care for hurting people. It means to show practical, cheerful, compassionate love to those who are suffering. We need many Christians with the gift of mercy because there are more hurting people in the world today. Gods sunlight shines on believers who have the gift of mercy or caring.

A story is told of a boy who came home from school one day and said, Sally came to school today after missing yesterday. She told us her mother had died. Mom, Sally cried and cried and cried. The mother said, Son what did you do? The boy replied, Mom, I just sat down at my desk and cried with her. All Christians should show this kind of mercy. To be merciful and caring for others is a God-like attribute. The Bible says, God is merciful to the afflicted. Jesus said, Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy (Matt. 5:7). The person whose gift of mercy stands out in our contemporary world is Mother Theresa. She died a couple of years ago in Calcutta, India. She left all her wealth to help and care for the helpless and downtrodden. Why did the Lord give us spiritual gifts? Why am I spending time to preach and teach on these gifts? So that next time our church will choose leaders and workers based upon their spiritual gifts and not their popularity in the church. When a church elects leaders based on their spiritual gifts the Lord blesses the labor and the church prospers.
Contractors owed by Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), will start receiving payment today [Friday].

This past week has seen some contractors working on GETFund projects picket at the Ministry of Finance to demand monies owed them, to the tune of over GHc 300 million spanning a period of six months.

The Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors in the Volta Region also threatened to block access to roads and facilities they have constructed on January 6 if they are not paid monies owed them, with the GETFund singled out as the main defaulter in this regard.

In an interview with Citi News, the Public Relations Officer of GETFund, Stephen Baffoe, said the Fund will start the disbursement of an initial GHc 110 million received from the Ministry of Finance, based on the advice of its Board of Directors.

The Finance Ministry has promised to pay the remainder of the money owed deserving contractors, and Mr. Baffoe is optimistic that the Ministry will honour its promise of paying the remaining money.

We have been having discussions with the Ministry of Finance. We are sure that if the levels of discussions go on, they may be able to top up what they gave us on Tuesday. But given that the week is drawing up to a close, the board has advised management to begin disbursing the GHc 110 million whilst we wait for the Ministry to top up.

So from [Friday], we are going to pay those who, this GHc 110 million, is able to go round to them. We would then expect that the Ministry will top up as has been promised Mr. Baffoe stated.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
New York (AFP) - Representatives of two indigenous groups have filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany seeking reparations for the genocide of their peoples by German colonial rulers over a century ago in what is now Namibia.

The suit filed by the Ovaherero and Nama people on Thursday also demands that their representatives be included in negotiations between Germany and Namibia on the issue.

The two countries have been in talks about a joint declaration on the 1904-05 massacres.

While Germany has acknowledged a genocide occurred, it has repeatedly refused to pay direct reparations, saying that its development aid worth hundreds of millions of euros since Namibia's independence from South Africa in 1990 was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

The plaintiffs said they were bringing the class action suit "on behalf of all Ovaherero and Nama worldwide, seeking reparations and compensation for the genocide" suffered at the hands of the German colonial authorities.

They said they were also seeking a declaration of their right "to be included in any negotiation between Germany and Namibia" and that no settlements can be reached unless they are among the signatories.

In Berlin, foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said his office had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on what it entailed.

But he pointed to the negotiations launched around two years ago with Windhoek over the joint declaration, which he said were aimed at plotting "a common path for the future" on the issue.

"The talks with the Namibian side are going well in our view. The talks are not easy because the topic is a difficult one but they are being held in a spirit of trust and mutual understanding," said the spokesman.

The dispute harkens back to a period in the late 19th and early 20th century when South West Africa, now known as Namibia, was a German colony.

The suit alleges that from 1885 to 1903 about a quarter of Ovaherero and Nama lands -- thousands of square miles -- was taken without compensation by German settlers with the explicit consent of German colonial authorities.

It also claims that those authorities turned a blind eye to rapes by colonists of Ovaherero and Nama women and girls, and the use of forced labor.

Tensions boiled over in early 1904 when the Ovaherero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

The suit alleges that as many 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people died in a campaign of annihilation led by German General Lothar von Trotha.

The plaintiffs include Vekuii Rukoro, identified as the paramount chief of the Ovaherero people, David Frederick, chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association, and the non-profit Association of the Ovaherero Genocide in the USA, Inc.
By Winnefred Zuur, Gideon Ahenkorah, Robert Anane, GNA

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - A number of people have expressed diverse opinions on the State of the Nation Address delivered on Thursday by President John Dramani Mahama with majority saying it was a well delivered address.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Nana Kwame Arthur, a records management consultant, praised the president for a speech well delivered.

He, however, said the President should have thrown more light on certain key issues such as the New Free Zones Board building and contracts that he awarded not long ago.

'In all, however, the address was well delivered,' Nana Kwame said.

Nana Kwame congratulated President Mahama for showing good leadership by not only conceding defeat in the December 7 elections but also facilitating a smooth transition.

President Mahama's last State of the Nation Address to Parliament, described as 'relatively brief' by many, was captured under the topics: Education, Health, Social Protection, Water and Sanitation, Power, Economy, Road/ Transport and Governance.

Mr Mayomga Felix, a businessman, said whilst the delivery was quite satisfactory, he believed President Mahama could have been more specific on some of the issues.

'Facts and figures on the economy were very much unclear. I hope the in-coming government takes note of the need for more clarity and precision when it comes to accounting to the people,' he said.

Mr Franklin Tetteh, a Marketing Executive, described the address as 'brief and brilliant,' but said; 'the achievements of the out-going government should have been listed more specifically.''

He said: 'If you are not specific, it leaves room for open arguments and debate, and that does not help with national development.''

Mr Tetteh also praised President Mahama for showing maturity by conceding defeat and ensuring a smooth transition.

Mr Eddy Squire, a businessman, said he was most impressed with President Mahama's take on 'handing over the baton.''

He said it was very important for an out-going government to hand over power with a very thorough and detailed approach to the in-coming one, 'otherwise, there would be no progress.''

Mr Squire said President Mahama's speech indicated that he had a good understanding of the need for co-operation and collaboration for the sake of national progress.

Many people, however, told the GNA that they did not listen to the address because they were busy at work.

President Mahama, who assumed office on January 7, 2013, hands over to President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo on Saturday, January 7.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN

By Christabel Addo - GNA

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has called on Ghanaians to give their maximum support to the President- elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo just like he has enjoyed during his tenure.

He said was happy that Nana Addo had promised to continue with the infrastructural developments of the out-going administration, saying every President inherited the unfinished work of his predecessor.

President Mahama, who was delivering his last State of the Nation Address ahead of the dissolution of the sixth Parliament, on Friday, January 6, in Accra, equated politics to a relay race in sports, which required teamwork, cooperative effort, as well as individual achievement.

However, he said, the true test was in the passing on of the baton.

He acknowledged the take-off of Ghana's Fourth Republic with the Former President Jerry John Rawlings starting the structural transformation of the economy under the Economic Recovery Programme, which restored the country to a path of growth.

This, he said, became a legacy for President John Agyekum Kufuor, who continued with the Economic Adjustment Programme and under the HIPC initiative achieved significant debt reduction, implementing new social intervention programmes such as the National Health Insurance Scheme and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.

He said the programme was also passed on to the Late President John Evans Atta Mills, who also commenced the Eastern Corridor Road Project, University of Ghana Medical Centre, which was inaugurated on January 4, 2017, the Kotokoraba Market, Cape Coast Stadium and a host of others, which he inherited and completed.

President Mahama stated that regardless of whose tenure in which these visions come to fruition, the success belonged to Ghana and the benefits were for all.

He also noted that political opposition and differences of opinion were vital to the health and growth of a democracy, and such were formed when people of similar ideology, came together to move their agenda forward in a way that best served their country.

However, the wellbeing of the nation and the will of the people must always come first, he said, emphasing that, 'Partisanship for its own sake, in the end, is no better than dictatorship.

'If we look around the world, we can so clearly see the deep divide that blind partisanship is creating in nations with democracies far older than ours. We can see, too, the divide that it is threatening to create in ours if we are not careful,' he said.

He said already, it had taken a toll on the morale and sense of optimism of Ghanaians, which he noted, had given way to a cynicism and that was dangerous as well, to the incoming political party.

President Mahama, who assumed office on January 7, 2013, hands over to President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo on Saturday, January 7. GNA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the failed July 15 coup attempt a gift from God. The Turkish government immediately blamed Erdogans former ally-turned-rival Fethullah Gulen for being behind the plot, the genesis of which remains unclear, but the simple fact is that none of the material Turkish officials have given to their US counterparts has yet risen to the standard of proof  let alone credible evidence  to support Erdogans charges. It is noteworthy that the Turkish press purports to describe the US reaction as accepting of the Turkish material, yet no American officials have ever been quoted as saying anything near what the Turkish press describes. Indeed, alternate narratives about the July 15 coup attempt are equally compelling.

The only certainty is that the attempted coup became the excuse Erdogan needed or crafted in order to purge those opposed to or insufficiently enthusiastic about his agenda. Much of what has been reported in the Western media has focused on the ongoing purge of teachers and university professors . Certainly, there is a newsworthy irony to a man whose university diploma appears to be forged assuming the right to appoint university presidents through a board he has staffed with his cronies. But it is what Erdogan has done in recent days to the police which should put chills down the spines of those who care about Erdogans intent and Turkeys future.

The problem seems not that Erdogan believed all the sacked chiefs disloyal  most were not and many he had appointed in the first place  but rather that he considered them soft

Last week, Erdogan appointed new police chiefs for 61 out of Turkeys 81 provinces. He also assigned 55 police chiefs to central departments that act as police professional bodies. (On page 105 of this book chapter , Turkish academic and counter terrorism specialist Ahmet Yayla explains how these positions relate to Turkish counterterrorism). Some of the police chiefs Erdogan fired were religious and some even supported him. None were followers of Gulen, simply because those who were had long ago been purged. Most of the chiefs whom Erdogan has appointed are fiercely nationalist, very young, and relatively inexperienced, and so are likely to more easily defer to Erdogans orders . The problem seems not that Erdogan believed all the sacked chiefs disloyal  most were not and many he had appointed in the first place  but rather that he considered them soft, unwilling to use the extreme violence Erdogan believes will be necessary to exert not only on Turkeys Kurds but also many liberal or apolitical Turks as he moves to further consolidate control.

Throw into the mix that Erdogan has also just in the past few days extended the time for which Turks can be detained without access to an attorney to six months. What this sets the stage for is a significant augmentation of torture in custody in order to extract forced confessions, a practice that has become more common since July.

Erdogans ruling party has also begun issuing weapons permits to loyalists, especially through the Ottoman Youth Authority ( Osmanli Ocaklari ). I have previously reported Erdogans appointment of former general Adnan Tanriverdi, the head of SADAT, to be his military counsel. Tanriverdi had been dismissed by the Turkish General Staff during the 1997 soft coup and appears bent on revenge against the secular order. SADAT , which has trained paramilitaries and special forces, is increasingly becoming Erdogans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Indeed, SADAT appears to have been behind much of the killing of civilians which Erdogans media blamed, absent any evidence beyond forced confessions, upon Gulenist coup plotters.

All this hints at Erdogans long game. He appears to be consolidating his own religious control through the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey ( TURGEV , a charity on whose board Erdogans son sits ) and Heyrettin Karaman, Erdogans favorite local Islamic leader.

But, as Erdogan seeks to change the constitution, he also wants to win through the point of a gun what he cannot win popularly. The issue at hand is not simply the Turkish public  Erdogan believes he has them cowed  but rather Dogu Perincek, a former Maoist and ultranationalist. Perincek has been the chief beneficiary of Erdogans purges, as they have eliminated many of his opponents as well. Today, Perincek is effectively the shadow defense minister. He has said he will not allow the constitutional change , which means the terms of the showdown are now clear.

Whomever wins, the only certainty is that Turkey is headed for a bloodbath. The only questions are how soon it comes, and whether Erdogan is more prepared than Perincek.

https://www.aei.org/publication/erdogan-prepares-for-a-bloodbath/
People get attached to certain objects in a manner which beats imagination. While emotions are responsible for some obsessions, others are attributable to outright show of authority or a delusion of it.

There are other reasons we cannot put out in the public domain because of their weirdness.

We do not know which category to put the obsession which triggered this commentary and would therefore leave it to our esteemed readers to make their own judgement.

President John Mahama should not be making such headlines as he bows out of public office in a few hours from the time this newspaper lies on your laps or reading desk.

The dying moments of his tenure are being characterized by whether or not the residence he is occupying should be sold to him or not.

Others who lived there never showed such obsession with the property, which we are told is a COCOBOD asset: it used to serve as their guest house.

Outside the package agreed upon for his departure from the Presidency, we have learnt rather disappointingly that our President, considered one of the most affluent personalities in the country, would want to embroil himself in a house affair. Unless he wants to be used as a chewing stick on social media he should not be going anywhere near the property.

As for decorations he has put in the house and the fattened guinea fowls foraging for insects in the lush green grass on the compound, they can easily be moved to his next residence.

Fact is most Ghanaians are not enthused about the President's obsession especially since such after-thought only spoils the broth.

President Mahama would suffer the bad tongues of Ghanaians when he goes ahead with the purchase.

Let him remember the kind of language his boys at Montie FM used on his behalf and be advised accordingly, lest another version of that radio stations skins him alive. That would not be necessary.

A former President should be spared any form of emotional pain in retirement.

Many Ghanaians think that he has amassed so much wealth to the detriment of the state. Whether this is justified or not can only be judged by the originators of such allegations. We are only transmitting what is on the ground. The outcome of the election is enough evidence about his low rating. For him to add another avoidable baggage to his name at this time is to ignore the realities of life. Sometimes damning the consequences of certain actions cannot pass for wise moves but the contrary.

A word to a wise is enough is the saying, and we think that President Mahama is adequately briefed about the implications of his obsession.

We did not know that his obsession for other pleasures include houses of the sort he is currently occupying.

Packing out, as he has done in his office at the Flagstaff House, can save him a few points for his integrity. Although he has lost so much, including body weight, he should not allow this too to constitute another source of worrisome public discourse.

Obsession with an old COCOBOD guest house? Gosh! No Mr. President.
President John Mahama is not resting on his oars over his quest to be allowed to purchase the official residence he is currently occupying at Cantonments, Accra.

Information reaching DAILY GUIDE suggests that he has formally written to parliament to facilitate an outright sale of the property which he occupied when he was vice president.

There has been public uproar since his obsession with the house was made public. Most callers into radio stations questioned the propriety in the president's quest to be allowed to purchase the house he occupies.

Some even asked whether if other occupants of the COCOBOD property had been offered the option of purchase, he President Mahama would have lived in the house at all, let alone purchase it as he is seeking to do.

Some MPs have wondered how such a request can sail through, given the fact that it was not part of the package approved for him when deliberations on his parting package were on the table.

The house under review was the place the late Alhaji Aliu Mahama lived when he served as vice president until the New Patriotic Party (NPP) lost power and he relocated to his personal residence close to the Russian Embassy.

As pointed out in a preceding paragraph, the residence used to be a guest house of COCOBOD but for some years its status has altered, with the late President Atta Mills occupying it before Aliu Mahama took over.

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is expected to move in after the swearing-in ceremony on Saturday.

It remains to be seen whether in the twilight of the life of the current parliament in which the NDC has a majority, President Mahama can pull some strings to have his dream come true.

Top personalities of the NPP have frowned upon the request, describing it as selfish and unnecessary, given the fact that the parting head of state has enough property in plush segments of Accra that he could save himself the embarrassment of acquiring what could haunt him someday, should he insist on having his way.

By A.R. Gomda
With just a day for a change in government, 41 brand new V8 engine Toyota Land Cruiser vehicles have arrived at the Tema Habour scheduled to be cleared by the outgoing Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.

The vehicles arrived at the Tema Habour four days ago, raising concerns about who may have imported them into the country at this time and for what purpose they were bought in.

Checks by DAILY GUIDE indicate that they were brought into the country by the outgoing NDC administration and a letter from the presidency, the Flagstaff House, had been issued for them to be cleared.

According to sources, Customs officers were confused as to whether the vehicles should be released or not since they are exempted from duty.

The officer in-charge at the Port with the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Assistant Commissioner, Confidence Nyadzi, told DAILY GUIDE that he was acting on instructions from the outgoing government until there is a counter directive.

What is not clear is the final destination of these vehicles, except the fact that an 'order from above' has been issued for them to be cleared.

It is also not certain whether the acquisition and subsequent importation of these high-powered V8 vehicles were included in the handing over notes of the outgoing government to the Transition Team of the incoming administration.

But there are talks of some government officials trying to convert ownership of certain state vehicles in their names, including utility vehicles like four-wheel drives.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Nana Obiri Boahen, Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), says he is poised to lead a crusade for the construction of a national party headquarters.

This, he said, is expected to end the office accommodation problems the party has been grappling with over the years.

The move, Obiri Boahen stated, would also bring closure to the era when party executives and visitors hang around the party headquarters in Accra because of the unavailability of office space.

The NPP deputy chief scribe dropped the hint in Accra yesterday during a donation of 4,000 party T-shirts and 20 pieces of Divine car batteries by Divine Batteries Enterprise to the NPP.

Speaking in Twi, he said, I have said that it will not be long, I will be discussing with the National Executives and the National Council for us to build a big national office like that of the NDC.

Nana Obiri Boahen continued, It's my vision as long as I am alive; as long as I continue to hold the position of Deputy General Secretary, we will do that.

The party office, he said, would not be built in a clandestine manner like the way the NDC's attracted huge public suspicion.

While expressing the party's appreciation to the company for the donation, the Enso Nyame Ye Chambers Lawyer noted that it was very important for the NPP because not all party meetings must be held outside.

When we sometimes attend meetings, accommodation and issues of offices become an issue.

For this reason, Lawyer Obiri Boahen stated that the yet-to-be-built NPP office would among other departments, have offices for every Regional Chairman, National Executive Members and deputies, offices for MPs and workers and car parks as well as a conference hall with over 500 seating capacity.

Eric Sappor, accountant of the company, handing over the items, said the T-shirts were for the party supporters to wear and be proud of the party.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]
Reports reaching DAILY GUIDE indicate that the 5th January, 2017  the date second cycle schools were supposed to reopen in the Northern Region  has been postponed. This is because the feeding grants have not been made available to the authorities of the schools.

Information available to the paper reveals that headmasters of the various second cycles institutions have decided to reschedule the reopening date to next week Thursday, January 12.

According to our source, a cheque which was given to the schools for the feeding grants bounced and so the heads were given the assurance that the next government would see to the payments.

The Chairman of the Northern Regional branch of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) of second cycle institutions, Alhaji Abdul Malik Salifu Husseini, who confirmed the rescheduling of the reopening date to DAILY GUIDE, said parents were confident that the incoming government would speed up the process for the students to go back to school.

The new government has given the assurance and we hope that they would not delay because we dont want a situation where the children will come to school without food, he said.

Alhaji Husseini said the PTA was reliably informed that the schools were indebted to food suppliers for three terms.

There are speculations that schools may not be able to re-open for the 2nd term of 2016/2017 if funds are not released for the payment of the outstanding debts.

FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale
Bouake (Ivory Coast) (AFP) - Soldiers demanding more pay and housing protested in several cities around Ivory Coast on Friday, raiding arms depots and taking control of streets, residents and officials said.

The government held a meeting of the National Crisis Committee to discuss the situation, a source close to the defence ministry said.

The protests began in Bouake, the country's second largest city and former rebel stronghold, where heavy weapons fire was heard in the streets, before spreading to two other major urban centres.

In Bouake soldiers "broke into the armoury of the 3rd Battalion", arming themselves with rocket-launchers and other weapons mounted on pickup trucks, a military source said.

Troops also took to the streets in the large western town of Daloa and at Korhogo in the north of Ivory Coast, Africa's leading cocoa-producing nation, according to residents and army sources.

"It's a mutiny by former (rebel) fighters integrated into the army who are demanding bonuses of five million CFA francs ($8,000 / 7,600 euros) each plus a house," an officer in Bouake told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.

"We're not asking for five million CFA francs, but rather for 10 million each and a villa," the soldier said. "If necessary, we will not return to the barracks."

The AFP journalist in Bouake, the country's second largest city, said the firing of Kalashnikovs "can be heard near the 3rd battalion" camp

In a statement read out on national television, Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi called on "all soldiers to remain calm and return to their baracks, to enable the search for lasting solutions for every component of the Ivory Coast's armed forces."

He said the soldiers demanded payment of bonuses, increased pay, faster promotion and an explanation about a purported bonus for serving in a regional multilateral force.

An AFP journalist in Bouake, where ex-rebels have been integrated into military ranks, said troops attacked all seven police posts, manned strategic junctions and put up barricades in the town centre.

"There is no more traffic. The firing of Kalashnikovs can be heard near the 3rd Battalion" camp, the journalist added.

The troops "have taken up positions at different sections of the city. They can be seen parading around in police vehicles."

A police source said the soldiers arrived at one police station at about 3:00 am (0300 GMT) and took away their Kalashnikov rifles.

The police headquarters in the city was also attacked, the source said.

All businesses and schools were closed in Bouake, which became the capital of a rebellion that split Ivory Coast in two after former president Laurent Ggagbo stayed in power after a foiled 2002 coup attempt.

The effective partitioning of the country between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south sparked a decade of clashes and crises.

Rebel forces generally backed current President Alassane Ouattara, who took office in April 2011 after a bloody post-electoral showdown which ended when Gbagbo was arrested.

'We're scared, hiding out'

Several people in Bouake reached by telephone from the economic capital Abidjan said the shooting began in the early morning hours.

"I was really scared. I thought that they were going to come into my station to take petrol for free as they do regularly," Koffi Raphael, who runs a petrol station not far from the barracks, told AFP.

In Daloa, "soldiers on motorbikes are driving around town shooting into the air," one resident told AFP.

"There's gunfire, we're scared, hiding out at home," said another.

"The insurrection has been seen in this town," a military source reached in Korhogo said. "The streets are occupied by soldiers."

In November 2014, a strike by former rebels who had joined the army brought the country to a standstill after spreading to Abidjan from Bouake.

The nearly 9,000 strikers, who joined the army between 2009 and 2011, were demanding full payment of back pay and promotions.

Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where his trial began in January last year for crimes against humanity.
President John Mahama has described government's completion of a new office complex for the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) as an indication of the nation's concern for the sub-region education body.

He said the rare privilege of hosting such a body comes with much responsibility adding the Ghana government has over the years meet its obligations to the Council and as well as other associated international organisations.

President Mahama whose four-year tenure of office ends on January 7 handed over the new facility to the Council Friday said the project is one that he was keen on completing before handing over power.

More soon...

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim
It was an unusual Joy FM Super Morning Show - because it was somewhat not a show.

It began as a general weighing-in about leadership and politics in Ghana. But soon, the lofty, shiny, glamorous subject collapsed into old basics - values.

And in these matters, the three guests had a grasp that was total.

A pastor of the International Central Gospel Church, Rev. Okomeng Mensah also a cost engineering consultant was joined by the Executive Director of Salt and Light Ministries Dr. Joyce Aryee. She was excitedly relieved when the pastor overcame an initial hesitation in calling her 'auntie Joyce', her doctorate vanished in the conversation.

'Yes- auntie Joyce. That is what I like' she giggled.

And finally Dr. Fred Brako, Director of Family Life Enrichment Ministry, a pastor with ICGC Christ Temple and Dean of Students at Central University.

They sat in the studio, very much finished articles as far as life experiences are concerned. They are where every youth is heading to - the age of grey.

But when they look back on the paths they took, they see a road hardly taken.

Take ICGC pastor Okomeng Mensah -



"What I see most people doing is, now they don't value growth".

"Anything that grows fast, dies fast. Go out there and check - mosquito - 7 days, fly 10 days, tomato within three months, corn within three months [but] palm tree 160 years.

"Most people are growing what I call the fibrous roots of life..it is like the grass. anytime a challenge comes...you are gone"

"Most people don't grow into what they are and so they get there and suddenly find out that they cannot sustain it. To sustain it they must do the wrong thing"

And then he let down the hammer - 'We are looking for external labels not internal anchors'.

He proceeded to talk about his life growing up. He remembered having to live with relatives where a heavy schedule of chores grained in him uncommon life skills.

By age 10, he scrubbed four storey-buildings, polished windows until the lord of the house could see his image in the glistening glass.

I never felt it was punishment and he found satisfaction in basic things - a simple bed is nice, dresses are not only few but few was also good enough.

"I had the feeling that you know all is well. I had enough to eat. I had been given a place to sleep"

He was to find out later in Secondary school that while the boys found scrubbing, the greatest punishment, it was a small avenue for a more comfortable life.

"I was a master in scrubber...with no provisions. So I was a contract scrubber. You get punished, I do it and I take a provi. If you ask any of my classmates they would not even know that it ever happened.

"I could scrub for people to get interested in scrubbing because I had learnt how to drag this cloth on the floor in a zig-zag way within two minutes am out of the place."

"It was because I had internal anchors that told me that you will make it in life", he said.

When the host Nhyira Addo asked how parents can impact their children this way when they also have to compete at the work place, he stepped on Dr. Aryee's, passion.

She said passing on values has nothing to do with a person's economic status.

She expressed sadness that children spend Monday to Friday with a caretaker and week-ends with the parents. She urged young women to slow down.

"Children are God's heritage for us. We make them out of a certain affection. So they come because we claim we love one another and out of that love we are having a child. That offspring deserves the same love...

I tell young ladies well, the man is not going to get pregnant. So you have to plan your life. There is going to be a time when you have to slow down because the breast milk is going to come from you"

"You don't have to get your degree when he is also getting his degree", she said urging that men must understand that soon after the woman has put in some sacrifice, the man must have to be ready to put in his shift.

Dr. Fred Brako observed that the generation in Ghana currently has great charisma but little character. This creates great problems finding leaders, he said.

'They have the ability to speak. But once they get into leadership, the character to sustain that position isn't there', he lamented.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected]
The year 2016 was a blessing and excitement with good memories concerning achievements, collaboration and partnership of GaDangmes in Europe.

As it is known to GaDangme people our cultural festival known as Homowo is celebrated each year in Greater Accra. This annual festival is celebrated to hoot and jeer at hunger. This festival is celebrated in August (Manyawale).

GaDangmes in Europe took it upon them this year to bring the culture overseas and also celebrate Homowo within themselves.

I personally witnessed this festival in three States in Germany. These celebrations were extraordinary and wonderful. There was also an Annual General Meeting in Amsterdam that had to do with issues concerning Greater Accra.

Looking back through the year 2015 GaDangme Kpee (Union) Rhein/Ruhr e.V. celebrated a Homowo festival. There were live acts like Kpaa shim and cultural dance as well as libation pouring.

Taking a look at 2016 GaDangme associations in Germany, according to the Ga calendar the Homowo celebration commenced in Hamburg. On the 27th August 2016 GaDangme Community Hamburg celebrated the Homowo festival with a huge crowd. Other clubs like Osu Kpee, GaDangme Kpee (Union) Rhein/Ruhr e.V. and Ga-Ada Network Hannover were present. The present associations like GaDangme Kpee (Union) Rhein/Ruhr e.V. were very active during the programme and depicted an act known as Kpaa shim as well as the traditional right known as Soo bii where GaDangme people arrived home to ceremonialize Homowo. There was a live drumming act from a cultural group situated in Hamburg that played local songs for the visitors. The GaDangme Community Hamburg showed live videos on how Kpoikpoi is prepared and how the Chief sprinkles it through the town. Kpoikpoi is the food eaten during the festival.

Again, Ga-Ada Network Hannover e.V. in Hanover, Germany also celebrated a grand Homowo festival on the 17th September 2016. On this occasion there were huge personalities like Nuumo Gbelenfo III and Nii Ahinsa Sasraku, chief of Tuba, Langma,.... . The youths of Hanover performed acts like dancing cultural dances like Otofo. Libation was also poured by Nuumo Gbelenfo III to open the programme. Other rights were performed by the high priest and sprinkling of Kpoikpoi carried out by the Chief Nii Ahinsa Sasraku.

In all these three celebrations that took place this year and last year GaDangme Community Hamburg, Ga-Ada Network Hannover e.V. and GaDangme Rhein Ruhr e.V. assisted each other to make the Homowo festivals in the States extravagant.

With this solidarity between these associations there was and there is still unity between them and with that the annual festival was commended wonderfully with lots of merriment.

GaDangme Europe an umbrella organization that heads all GaDangme associations in Europe held its annual conference on the 14th and 15th October 2016. Our Ga Chiefs namely Nii Acquah II of Ga Odumase mantse, Nii Quao Donkor II  Asere Tsoro manste Nii Osabu Abbey IV Prampramseitse, Maanye Naa Marmakai Bortobli I, and Nuumo Gbelenfo iii- Osu, Haastoo and Pokuase Gua Wurm III were present. The members reflected on issues concerning Greater Accra and how to move Greater Accra forward and keep Greater Accra stable, as it been the capital town of Ghana. GaDangme Europe came up with good projects like Food Security. GaDangme Europe has had good projects in the past and still has projects running in co-operation with Bokemei Foundation. This shows that GaDangme people outside Ghana are fighting hard to move Greater Accra to a higher level and enable the people of Accra to have a better standard of living.

Abongobi Media a GaDangme broadcast in Switzerland updates Ghanaians especially GaDangme people outside Ghana with news from and about Greater Accra. Everyone is allowed to come on air to give his/ her opinion, advice or solutions on issues been discussed on radio. Abongobi Media makes listeners feel at home by bringing rhythms of Ghana, Ga songs on air.

All in all I can say that GaDangme's abroad really take issues that have got to do with Greater Accra earnest and are coming up with brilliant ideas that will help the youths and Accra as a whole. GaDangme associations have come up with good projects to enable Greater Accra to stand firm. With my observations I think GaDangme authorities in Greater Accra cannot really come up with dominant solutions to help solve issues. I think this is because they only see things from one side and always think or react on one goal and leave other important ones.

I would like to urge and plead with GaDangme authorities in Greater Accra to take complaints and suggestions from people of Greater Accra inside and outside Ghana intent because GaDangme's have lots of ideas and bright suggestions but it is difficult in some areas to put these into action.

Story by Naadiatu-Bagigah Bawah from Hanover, Germany
"...While we wish Akufo Addo all the success he needs to responsibly and accountably administer Unitary Ghana...We must properly and critically evaluate the proposals for internal coherence and the power of those ideas to impact life opportunities of the average Ghanaian...What...prevents the next president from setting aside 75%...How come Akufo Addo...did not select the same...District Assemblies...that Akufo Addo now says he will ensure their Directors...are appointed...through elections?...To recap...Akufo Addo's proposal to directly provide "the equivalent of US$1 million" to each of the 275 voting constituencies every year for purposes of development outside of a Constitution is a voucher scheme precisely the kind we'd expect of from ALEC-inspired American conservatives. It will weaken Unitary Ghana, whether Nana Akufo Addo Dankwa knows it, understands it, or not...", Prof Lungu, 1 Jan 17).

This essay is our first of several non-partisan, objective reviews of proposals advanced by Nana Akufo Addo Dankwa at the height of the 2016 elections, which the winning NPP 2016 presidential team is still doubling down on, and promoting to any Ghanaian who will listen, or watch.

While we wish Akufo Addo all the success he needs to responsibly and accountably administer Unitary Ghana, it is important that those of us in a position to do so, who have time, marry promises made with objective data, as faithfully as we can. We must properly and critically evaluate the proposals for internal coherence and the power of those ideas to positively impact life opportunities of the average Ghanaian and in addition, make Unitary Ghana a lot stronger and less divisive.

To recap for the moment, in the run-up to the 2016 elections in Ghana, Nana Akufo Addo Dankwa and Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia promised to allocate to each constituency "the equivalent of US$1 million" every year as part of a "programme of infrastructure for poverty eradication", at the level of voting districts.

Political expediency that benefits partisan political goals can never by a Ghana-centered value or good, particularly if it is not sanctioned by a Constitution of all the People and pegged to a metric all citizens can understand. Significant proposals that allocate funds year-after-year ought not to have rat-sized loopholes that allow another partisan political party, and still more, to change the parameters of such program(s) just because they can, without recourse provisions in a people-sanctioned and approved Constitution. As such, as far as Unitary Ghana is concerned, we believe strongly that there are several significant issues with Akufo Addo's "Funds-for-Unknown-Constituencies" program. The issues are at ounce constitutional, conceptual, administrative, and rational, and a complex mix of same. The problem require addressing by the proposers not just with talk-talk, but real, objective data.

OPERATIONAL VALIDITY OF VOTING DISTRICTS AS DETERMINANTS OF DEVELOPMENT FUNDING DECISIONS

IS ALIEN TO THE FREE WORLD:

There is no operationally valid reason to peg development funds to voting districts except political. Increasingly, Ghana is getting urbanized. As such, for effective, outcome-based representation and management in urban/peri-urban and rural settings, electoral districts are typically re-adjusted by law, such as after an official census.

Generally, voting districts are not "communities". Consequently, a very big head-scratcher for us is how and when, in the mind of Akufo Addo, a constituency (there were 267 during the last presidential elections, and 275 during the 2016 elections), transform into a "community" with "needs for development" that would justify direct funding from the resource-challenged capital budget of the state.

First, consider that it is "Communities" (i.e., neighborhoods, villages, districts, towns, cities, regions (NVDTCRs)), that normally have shared values and experiences required for faithfully, honestly, and rationally determining socio-economic and other problems; including community goals and objectives, and plans for their resolution and mitigation.

Second, the fact remains that serious professional planners and administrators initiate development plans (national, regional, district), master plans for towns, area development and facilities plans, etc., for the NVDTCRs. In addition, they also do functional master plans (highway and roads, parks and recreation, shoping/services and hotels, railways, ports, communications systems, airports, hospitals/medical, waterfront, etc.). However, these are almost always at the level of one or more of the NVDTCRs, including the national.

In serious, professional practice, planners and administrators they do not directly initiate or develop plans for voting districts (i.e., constituencies). That is quite possibly the major reason the statute that established the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) did not identify "constituencies" as planning or funding "blocks" of any kind, outside the general idea of ensuring citizens have a voice in national development planning.

In Ghana, it is the Electoral Commission that uses constituencies (voting district) as the basic planning blocks for all its work, as it must, given its statutory mission. Political parties, for their own partisan gain, may use constituency information available to the public for their own agenda as long as they alone bear any and every cost. (Please take a moment to review Table 1, as we go forward).

Graphic 1:

Generalized Planning Areas and Infrastructure Systems Development*

Akufo Addo and his team could easily have chosen to use Census Districts (CD) for their program, but didn't. CDs are the greatest and most effective generators of data on communities because that is what effective governments and professional administration do. In Ghana, there were CDs in 2010. CDs are the standards many developed countries rely on to assess community health and needs, including levels of physical/infrastructural development, employment and growth. Those data can them be economically distilled down to the NVDTCRs, but rarely to Voting Districts, except for armchair academic exercise (and partisan/political purposes).

Consider what the Ghana Statistical Services reported following the 2010 Census enumeration:

"...The final census results were presented for the 10 Administrative Regions and the 170 Districts...Questions asked during the population and housing census covered geographical location of the population, Households and Non-household population, Literacy and Education, Emigration, Demographic and Economic Characteristics, Disability, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Fertility, Mortality, Agricultural Activity and Housing Conditions...", 2010 Population and Housing Census, GSS.

So, Akufo-Addo (and Bawumia) want Ghanaians to understand that constituencies are in fact better and more reasonable representatives of their "communities", compared to Census Districts (and the NVDTCRs)!

Problem for Akufo-Addo is that, for all the talk-talk, he and his team have not explained clearly why it is necessary that in 21st Century Unitary Ghana, voting districts must become "political units" for determination of the needs for development funding, including funding levels, at any percentage?

Significantly, having passed over the NVDTCRs and CDs, Akufo Addo further tests the limits of the Constitution and the Local Government Act 462 (1993) that specify that District Assemblies (DA), that is, administrative districts, including metropolitan districts (and their neighborhoods) in the Regions are (1) the "highest political authority" outside the national, "with deliberative, legislative and executive powers", (2) are the development authorities in their areas of jurisdiction, and (3) can partner to develop common resources and facilities that may span more than the geographical extent of one DA.

Akufo Addo and his team do not plan to allocate those resources to the DAs even though from the other side of their mouths they are communicating to Ghanaians that beginning 2018, all DA executives in Ghana will be directly appointed by the people, through elections.

Why must Ghana bear competing and duplicative administration?

How is Akufo Addo going to do all these important things starting in 2017 when his team has not bothered to communicate to the people information about what, when, how, if ever, Akufo Addo will do all these things, but only after he fixes the warts-infested Rawlings Constitution?

Is that not a more important, foundational goal for Ghana today?

We hope that Akufo Addo will tell the People the real, the actual reason, he proposed that nearly 20% of capital budget funds should go directly to constituencies when voting districts are not always communities with shared values, needs, goals, and plans; and another president can just as easily change the parameters of the program without recourse to a duly sanctioned Constitution of all the People.

GHANA'S NEW "CONSERVATIVE PARTY VOUCHER PROGRAM" MAY DESTROY UNITARY GHANA:

What is the Constitutional basis and of what impact on Unitary Ghana, this Akufo Addo proposal, we must ask.

Fact is, in most progressive, developed, and developing countries, NVDTCRs, CDs, and other Administrative "Districts" (including Regions/states/Provinces, etc.), constitute the units of analyses for planning and community development. Those are areas funding is directed for development, health, and growth, beyond agencies who by default have geographic areas of responsibilities that are rarely census districts, except in the case of electoral commissions and bureaus as we've shown.

Throwing all jokes and Trumpian election promises aside, lawyer Nana Akufo Addo Danwka ought to recognize that there is actually no law in Ghana, (in fact, there ought to be no law in Ghana), that gives a solitary president the sole authority to decree from Accra that he/she will set aside a certain percentage of development funds (approx 20% in this case) for the infrastructure development of voting districts many of whom he has never visited.

What, we must ask again, prevents the next president from setting aside 50%, 75%, etc., of all funds dedicated to infrastructure development directly for voting districts, and without consideration of national and regional development priorities, and such? Then, when the constituents fail or squander all that cash without beneficial results, when there is no proper accounting, or when the constituents have incurred unplanned/uninsured liabilities as many surely will, the president can merely point fingers at those constituents.

Dear reader, by not seriously attempting to fix the wrongs in the Rawlings Constitution, but rather, by attempting to assume authority to directly pay voting districts, Akufo Addo is not only making the Presidency even more powerful, he is as well making it less accountable. Those are predictable effect of the scheme to directly fund constituencies.

Significantly, Akufo Addo's promise has great potential to weaken the Unitary Ghana bequeathed to Ghanaians by Kwame Nkrumah and many of the great ones who believed in that nationalistic concept. ALEC1 could not have written a better plan for dissolving Ghana as the rich and the powerful gain more and more control, as they surely will.

Akufo Addo's proposal to directly provide "the equivalent of US$1 million" to each of the 275 voting constituencies every year for purposes of development outside of a Constitution approved by the People is a divisive and diversionary voucher scheme precisely the kind we'd expect from ALEC-inspired conservatives. We see it as a naked vote-buying scheme for purely partisan purposes masquerading as freedom of choice in development for Ghanaians. It will weaken Unitary Ghana in more ways than we can count, whether Nana Akufo Addo Dankwa knows it, understands it, or not. The talk about the promise, in addition to available data and our professional estimates, suggest to us numerous flaws inherently built into the $275 million-per-year proposal, enough to make the cash payments not only unconstitutional, but also administratively ineffective and potentially wasteful of resources.

In fact, as former officials and major politicians in Ghana who surely have access to better and more information, their talk on the cost of their proposal does not even add up as we will show in this paper.

OUR 21ST CENTURY GLOBAL AGE REQUIRES MORE DATA THAN TALK-TALK:

Every person in Ghana knows that Ghanaians talk way too much!

In fact, a Google search of the term "Ghanaians talk too much" the first day of January, 2017, yielded over 4,100 hits.

Ask a Ghanaian and they will also tell you that talk is a lot cheaper than real actions that help Ghanaians and their communities.

(In the next paper(s) we will show with more data and graphics that as well, conceptually, the whole million-dollars-per-constituency- per-year is deeply flawed, if Akufo Addo and Bawumia want Ghanaians to believe what they are saying).

To be continued....

NOTES/SOURCES:

1. ALEC is American Legislative Exchange Council. In the 1980s, ALEC opposed U.S. disinvestment from South Africa, a movement to put pressure on the South African government to embark on negotiations to dismantle apartheid. Today, many people credit ALEC with Stand Your Ground Laws that is used as defense by numerous shooters; discriminatory voter identification laws that penalize and deprive the poor, minorities, and elderly of their votes; privatization of prisons and harsher criminal sentencing guidelines; vouchers for school children using public funds to attend private schools; denial of the role of humans in climate change and sea-level rise, etc., among other conservative agenda mainly geared to support corporate interests and to weaken the role of the governments.

Read more at:

(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

(b) http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed.

2. Each constituency will get $1m every year under NPP - Bawumia, (http://pulse.com.gh/politics/election-2016-each-constituency-will-get-1m-every-year-under-npp-bawumia-id5437995.html).

3. Ghana Statistical Services, 2010 Census Final Results, (http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/docfiles/2010phc/2010_population_and_housing_census_final_results.pdf).

Visit www.GhanaHero.Com/Visions, for more information.

FOIB - Freedom of Information Bill (FOIB/FOI/Ghana), (http://ghanahero.com/FOIB.html).

SUBJ: Winners and Losers: Akufo Addo's Million-Dollar Cash Giveaways to Voting Districts, by Prof Lungu.

Support Fair-Trade Oil Share Ghana (FTOS-Gh) Campaign/Petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ghana-fair-trade-oil-share-psa-campaign-ftos-gh-psa/ .

Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com6 Jan 17.

(Powered by: www.GhanaHero.Com).
UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Ghana Adam Afriyie is expected to attend the inauguration of the President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Saturday, January 7, 2017.

A release by the British High Commission stated that his visit will strengthen and promote the existing trade relations between the two countries, putting partnership at the centre of bilateral relations. As well as meeting key members of the incoming administration, including the newly elected President himself.

Mr Afriyie will also meet members of the newly founded UK-Ghana Chamber of Commerce (UKGCC), leading businesses in Ghana, and infrastructure experts to discuss how the UK can support Ghana to achieve some of its long-term development goals.

Ghana is the UK's fourth largest export market in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, two-way bilateral trade in goods and services totalled just over 1billion. This, however, was a reduction by fully a third from the peak figure of 1.5billion in 2012.

During his five-day visit (January 5-9), Mr. Afriyie will chair discussions to underpin a deeper partnership centered on UK expertise and Ghanaian capability.

The visit will help foster an even stronger relationship with the business community in Ghana. The UK is a global centre of excellence in many areas including: architecture; digital technologies and professional services such as cyber security; fintech and general consultancy services; academia; healthcare; renewable energy; oil and gas, and the mining supply chain, the UK statement added.

The statement added that the UK aims to continue to be a crucial partner in advancing economic development in Ghana, supporting the growth of businesses and expanding trade.

British businesses see Ghana as a valuable investment base in West Africa, and many flagship UK companies are already flourishing here. But there is much more that can be done to promote the right business environment.

We hope that will lead to more vital investment, job creation and an expanding tax base, which can better enable the government to deliver essential public services.

-Starrfmonline
A 15-year old pupil of Feden Junior High school in Begoro in the Fanteakwa district of the Eastern region has been found after missing for four hours.

The young girl, was kidnapped by unknown persons on Tuesday, 3rd January 2017 around 4:00 pm.

According to report, the girl was kidnapped when her mother sent her on an errand and was found 4 hours after the incident.

The victim, Jackline Ohene Agyei in her own narration said she was returning home when someone held her eyes from the back so she thought it was a friend but immediately, the people put tin tomatoes can in her mouth and tied it with a rag. They then put her down and tied the legs and hands and took her away".

She said the unknown men beat her up and left her to her faith until someone came to the scene to rescue her.

According to the victim's mother, Adwoa Fodwoo, her child was not raped according to health checkup but was severely beaten for no reason.

"This is the second time such an incident has occurred to the family as the same thing happened to my 9 year old daughter last year" she stressed.

Meanwhile, she has refused to report the incident to the police because they failed to act on the first incident.
The appeal hearing of former Chadian president Hissene Habre against his conviction for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture opens on Monday 9 January, marking the final stage of proceedings in the landmark case.

The trial of Hissene Habre last year was the result of a tireless battle by thousands of victims and their relatives to ensure justice for crimes under international law committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990. It gave hope to others around the world that it is possible to end impunity even where it is most entrenched, said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty International's Researcher on West Africa.

Hissene Habre was found guilty by the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Dakar, Senegal on 30 May 2016, and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was the first universal jurisdiction case on the continent, and the first conviction of a former head of state by an African court for crimes against humanity.

Alongside other evidence the prosecution relied on research carried out by Amnesty International in the 1980s. A former Amnesty International staff member also testified during the trial as an expert witness.

Hissene Habres defence lawyers are appealing the verdict on the basis of what they consider to be several errors of fact and law.

The court will also hear an appeal regarding reparations awarded to victims on 29 July 2016, as it has been claimed by civil parties that errors were made when establishing eligibility criteria and when putting in place measures to ensure that the reparations were implemented effectively and fairly.

If the reparations decision is upheld on appeal, Amnesty International is urging the EAC, the African Union, the government of Chad and the international community to ensure that sufficient resources are raised and allocated to a Trust Fund from which the reparations can be drawn quickly and effectively.

The judgement on appeal is expected to be issued by 30 April 2017 at the latest, when the mandate of the EAC ends.

Background

The EAC was created in 2012 by an agreement between the African Union and the Government of Senegal. Hissene Habres trial opened on 20 July 2015, and 69 victims, 23 witnesses and 10 expert witnesses testified during the proceedings.

Hissene Habres defence lawyers argue, inter alia, that the defence did not see the full written judgement until after the date on which it was required to file its appeal, and that other factual and legal errors were made by the Trial Chamber, including in relation to who was responsible for armed forces at the time of certain massacres taking place. They also argue that the lack of cooperation by Chad with respect to other alleged perpetrators impacted on the fairness of the proceedings against Habre.

Hissene Habres case prompted the Chadian authorities to finally investigate alleged crimes and prosecute other suspects. This resulted in convictions in March 2015 of 20 Habre-era security agents on charges of murder, torture, kidnapping and arbitrary detention. Amnesty International is urging Chad, and potentially other states, to investigate and prosecute others accused of committing serious human rights violations between 1982 and 1990, including crimes of sexual and gender-based violence, in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty. In particular, Chad should investigate mass killings that were committed in September 1984 in the south of the country.
06.01.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Jan. 6, GNA - Ghana, the world's second largest cocoa producer, has put in place a number of interventions and best agronomic practices to help double output of the crop within ten years.

Ghana's cocoa industry, touted as the nation's economic back-bone, will receive a further boost in its average annual cocoa output to over 1 million tons from the current 800,000 tons, Noah Amenyah, Snr. Public Affairs Manager of the Ghana Cocoa Board, the regulator said in an interview.

Ghana, which lost its position as world's largest producer of cocoa to Ivory Coast its West African neighbour due to factors including diseased tree stock, has distributed over 120 million free high yielding hybrid seedlings to farmers in the last two years to re-cultivate old farms and replace aged trees.

'The execution of the interventions started with the cocoa farm rehabilitation programme which sought to eradicate diseased cocoa farms as well as old unproductive farms. Such cocoa trees are being cut and replaced with early bearing, high yielding and disease tolerant hybrid seedlings,'' Mr Amenyah said.

In the current 2016/17 crop year, COCOBOD is again nursing 60 million hybrid seedlings in over 332 nursery sites across all the cocoa regions for free distribution to cocoa farmers. We expect to add an estimated 50,000 hectares of cocoa farms this year. Thus 500,000 hectares would have been established within the ten-year period,'' Mr Amenyah stated.

It is worth noting however, that the COCOBOD's impressive efforts aimed at increasing production and creating sustainable jobs for farmers and the youth are being undermined by the activities of some business concerns and individuals both local and foreign.

These groups sometimes work through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who undertake similar ventures of raising cocoa seedlings in some cocoa growing areas for distribution to farmers at a cost, this underscores the profit-making motive of such organizations and the individuals involved,'' Mr Amenyah added.

'It is a great source of worry,' Amenyah said. 'Farmers need not incur the cost of seedlings, we have the Cocoa Health and Extension (CHED) and Seed Production Division which produces free seedlings,'' he said.

'This is the reason for which COCOBOD encourages farmers to source their early bearing and high yielding seedlings from respective Cocoa Health and Extension (CHED) and Seed Production Division nurseries sites,'' he said

'We don't only supply free seedlings to farmers but also have a holistic program which provides free fertilizers to improve soil fertility and free mass spraying exercise against pests'.

The Mass Spraying Programme has also seen massive improvement in its structure and form over the past years, he stated.

Of great concern is ageing cocoa farmers, poor road network in cocoa-growing areas and access to education. COCOBOD has therefore introduced the Youth-in-Cocoa Initiative, Cocoa Roads Rehabilitation programme, COCOBOD Child Education Support Programme and also improved upon the cocoa farmers' wards' Scholarship Scheme as a way of addressing these issues while at the same time, promoting cocoa sustainability issues.

Ghana Cocoa Board's modules and programmes have been carefully developed to reduce cost to farmers and improve livelihood of farmers,'' Mr Amenyah said.

GNA
Accra, Jan. 6, GNA - The President-Elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, possesses an impressive record of national political activism and achievements that spans a period of four decades.

Biography of the President-Elect

Nana Akufo-Addo was born on March 29, 1944 and raised in Swalaba in Ghana's Capital, Accra, to Mr. Edward Akufo-Addo and Mrs Adeline Akufo-Addo.

He hails from Kyebi and Akropong Akuapem in the Eastern Region.

His father was the third Chief Justice of Ghana from 1966-1970 and non-executive President from 1970-1972.

His father's residence, Betty House at Korle Wokon in Accra, was effectively the headquarters of the country's first political party, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), after it was formed at Saltpond on 4th August, 1947.

Three of the 'Big Six' - the founding fathers of Ghana - were his relatives: J.B. Danquah (grand uncle), William Ofori-Atta (uncle) and Edward Akufo-Addo (father).

Nana Addo is married to Rebecca Akufo-Addo (nAe Griffiths-Randolph). They have five daughters and five grandchildren.

Educational Background

Akufo-Addo received his primary education at the Government Boys School, Adabraka, and later at the Rowe Road School (now Kimbu), both in Accra Central.

He went to England to study for his O-Level and A-Level examinations at Lancing College, Sussex.

He returned to Ghana in 1962 to teach at Accra Academy Secondary School, before going to read Economics at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1964, earning a BSc (Economics) degree in 1967.

He subsequently studied law in the United Kingdom, and was called to the English Bar (Middle Temple) in July 1971. Nana Akufo-Addo was called to the Ghana bar in July 1975.

Akufo-Addo stayed in France for five years as a lawyer at the now-defunct New York-based international law firm, Coudert FrAres.

In 1975, he returned to Ghana to continue with his legal career.

He joined the chambers of U.V. Campbell from 1975 to 1979 and co-founded the law firm Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co.

Insight into His Business Acumen

Nana Akufo-Addo was the first Chairperson of DHL, Ghana Limited; Chairperson, Kinesec Communications Company Limited, publishers of the Statesman newspaper, and the first Chairperson of the Ghana Committee on Human and Peoples Rights.

Political Career

Akufo-Addo served as the General Secretary of People's Movement for Freedom and Justice (PMFJ).This group led the "NO" campaign in the UNIGOV referendum of 1978 under General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong administration, designed to solicit support against a one-party military government.

In 1991, Akufo-Addo served as the Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Danquah-Busia Memorial Club.

He travelled throughout the country to establish branches of the Club. These branches eventually metamorphosed into local organs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) prior to the 1992 general election.

In 1992, he was elected the first National Organiser of the NPP and later became the campaign manager of the party's first presidential candidate, Professor Albert Adu Boahen.

In 1995, he led the 'Kume Preko' (Kill Me Now) demonstrations of the Alliance for Change (AFC), a broad-based political pressure group, to protest the harsh economic conditions of the Rawlings' administration.

Nana Addo was elected three times from 1996 - 2008 as the Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South in the Eastern Region.

He served his nation from 2001 to 2007 as Cabinet Minister, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and later as a Foreign Minister under the administration of President John Agyekum Kufuor with brilliance and distinction.

As Attorney General, Akufo-Addo had the satisfaction of being responsible for the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, a law that had hitherto been used to intimidate the media and criminalise free speech.

The repeal had enabled the Ghanaian media to become one of the most vibrant on the African continent.

As Foreign Minister, he was fully involved in the successful ECOWAS peace efforts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea Bissau, and was chairman of the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council in 2003.

Akufo-Addo resigned from the Kufuor government in July 2007 to contest for the position of presidential candidate of his Party for the 2008 national elections.

He competed against 16 other candidates in the Party and won 48 per cent of the votes in the first round, but was given a unanimous endorsement in the second round, making him the NPP's presidential candidate for the 2008 presidential race.

In the December 7, 2008 presidential race, Nana Akufo-Addo received 4,159,439 votes representing 49.13 per cent of the valid votes cast, in the first round, but was not enough for the 50 plus one percent needed for an outright victory.

In the run-off, Nana Akufo-Addo lost to the National Democratic Congress's (NDC) Presidential Candidate, Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

Akufo-Addo again contested in the 2012 national elections against the NDC candidate, John Dramani Mahama after the demise of President Atta-Mills on July 24, 2012.

That election generated considerable controversy, and was finally decided by the Supreme Court in a narrow 5/4 verdict in favour of Mr Mahama.

In the 2016 elections, Nana Akufo-Addo competed against six other presidential candidates including President Mahama, of the ruling NDC, Mr Ivor Kobina Greenstreet of the Convention People's Party and Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom of the Progressive People's Party.

The rest were Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings of the National Democratic Party, Dr Edward Mahama of the People's National Convention and Mr Jacob Osei Yeboah, an independent candidate.

Nana Addo polled 5,716,026 votes representing 53.85 per cent as against his main rival, President Mahama's 4,713,277 votes representing 44.40 per cent to win the contest in the first round.

Nana Addo would have the arduous task of fulfilling the high expectations of Ghanaians including creating jobs for the teeming unemployed youth, stabilising the country's foreign exchange rate, ensuring frequent supply of electricity for commercial and domestic users and other key promises he made during the electioneering.

GNA
06.01.2017 LISTEN





By Bernice Bessey..

The Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Ghana and former Chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana, Dr. Rev. Paul Fynn, has urged Ghanaians not to take serious, pastors who advertise themselves under the pretext of spreading the Gospel.

According to him, the product of Christian faith is the Gospel of Christ Jesus, yet the men of God display their pictures on giant billboards to give glory to themselves, instead of Jesus Christ, who is the author and finisher of the Christian faith.

In questioning the motive behind pastors' actions, he said: As has been the practice in advertising, it is the product for sale that is advertised, and not the Managing Director who sells the products. So if our calling as pastors is to sell the good news and saving grace of Jesus Christ, who must we project on huge billboards?

Bishop Fynn was speaking at a press conference he called to condemn some spiritual malpractices in Christendom, in Accra.

In a list of what he termed as spiritual malpractices in tChristendom, are pastors who are using their pulpits to propagate partisan politics, instead of preaching and teaching the Word of God.

According to him, preachers must be neutral when they stood at the pulpit, and that the church is a big refugee camp for people of different inclinations, bonded by common hunger for the bread of life.

With this reason, he said, it was christianly unacceptable for pastors to turn their pulpits into political platforms to campaign for or speak against any political party, as such acts hurt feelings and bring divisios in the church.

Though the once chairman of the Christian Council didn't discourage pastors from involving themselves in politics, he, however, entreated them not to use their pulpits to publicise politics, adding, it a shame that some pastors have deviated from their noble calling, and have rather allowed themselves to be led into political temptation.

Another critical issue he touched on was false prophets taking centre stage of Christendom and luring people to enrich themselves.

To him, the self-acclaimed prophets' activities are not backed by the Holy Bible, which is the reference point to the Christian faith.

He said the Bible itself had cautioned believers in Mathew 24:11: All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my names sake, and 2 Peter 2:1: But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought thembringing swift destruction on themselves.

When questioned why people continue to chase after these false prophets, he answered that self-styled prophets are having a field day, because many people don't seek the truthful unadulterated word of God.

He said people are losing their lives, families are falling apart, and others are losing their life savings because of false prophets, saying, Unfortunately, the gullible followers of these followers of these so-called prophets include poor widows, graduates, academics, professionals and politicians who ought to know the truth.

The Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Church urged Ghanaians to have a change of attitude, in order to facilitate the development of the country.
06.01.2017 LISTEN

The triumph of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2016 presidential elections of Ghana could be said to be a solid reward for nearly 40 years of agitation to free this country and its people from the tentacles of military adventurism.

That Nana Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) have finally romped to victory after two previous failures is news by itself. But the margin of victory, with the incoming President claiming 5,716,026 of the popular votes, representing 53.8 percent, against incumbent President John Dramani Mahama's 4,713,277 (44.40 percent), is overwhelming in every sense of the word.

Significantly, the New Patriotic Party, which the in-coming President led into the polls, also trounced its main adversary  the National Democratic Congress  by 171-104 seats. None of the other nine other political parties which contested the polls won any seat in the 275-seat House of Parliament.

Tomorrow, the world will stop and witness the inauguration of the man who has fought, throughout his life on behalf of the ordinary man of this country. When he raises the bible and lowers it after reciting the famous oath of office under the direction of Mrs. Georgina Theodora Wood, Chief Justice of the land, Nana Akufo-Addo would assume the mantle as the Fourth Head of State since constitutional rule was restored in January 1993, after eleven and a half years of what Flt. Lt Jerry John Rawlings described as 'the culture of silence.'

Tomorrow's event will be graced by as many as 6,000 invited guests and 11 heads of state, and governments drawn mainly from the Economic Community of West African States. According to the official announcement, Mr. Allassane Ouatara, President of nearby Cote d'Ivoire, is the Special Guest of Honour.

At the time of going to press, the full list of invited guests was not available, but this reporter expects the Head of State of Nigeria, General Mahamadu Buhari, to be present in Accra, or represented by a key member of his government.

One envisages that the Head of State of Togo, Mr. Faure Gnassingbe, a very regular visitor to Accra, will be on the guest list. One Head of State, who would definitely miss the gathering of West African rulers in Accra, is the defeated President of The Gambia, Alhaji Yahaya Jammeh.

Mr. Jammeh lost the presidential vote to Mr. Adama Barrow, listed as a property developer, but after making a concession statement, and pledging to hand over on January 19, the 'Butcher of Gambia', who has ruled the tiny West African nation with iron fists for years, reneged on his promise and vowed to continue in office beyond his sell by date.

The Gambian crisis is likely to be one of the first foreign assignments for the newly-inducted Head of State of Ghana, as Nana Akufo-Addo will have to join up with other ECOWAS leaders to try and force Yahaya Jammeh out of Government House in Banjul.

Internally, the new President would have to move quickly to calm nerves on the labour front, as newly qualified teachers and nurses, who have not been paid for nearly two years, continue to beat war drums.

There is also the small matter of the national economy, and a potentially dangerous energy crisis to deal with. But, all these have to wait, as the new Head of State savours the spoils of his office.

On Wednesday, outgoing President John Dramani Mahama and his Vice, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, conducted the incoming President and his deputy, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, round Jubilee House, the magnificent edifice on the Independence Avenue, which would be their office for the next four years, at least.

The cordial atmosphere of the visit is being hailed, in political circles, as evidence of the growing maturity of Ghanaian politics. There are a few cracks oin the way, as the incoming administration formally takes charge and begins dealing with some of the impunities orchestrated by the Mahama regime, at a time when it has lost the mandate of the people.

The signing of new contracts and appointments of people into key positions, at a time when the incoming administration has been waiting in the wings, are some of the issues that are likely to test the cordiality of the relationship between the old and the new.

There is the small matter of how to deal with former office holders who might be found to have abused their offices. Already, the former First Family  Flt. Lt. Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings  have called on the incoming Akufo-Addo regime not to compromise on former office holders found culpable of abusing their offices.

There are hints from the defeated NDC camp of a possible witch-hunt, prompting pro-New Patriotic Party activists to insinuate that so long as they are witches, they ought to be hunted. In the next few months, at least, there is likely to be a cat and mouse game between officials of this nation's two biggest political parties.

Like many things great, the beginning was inauspicious for the incoming Head of State. When, the then young and vibrant agitator became the General Secretary of the People's Movement for Freedom and Justice, formed to lead the movement to campaign for 'No' during the treacherous attempt by the Acheampong military regime to legitimise its illegitimacy in the 1978 Union Government referendum, 33 year-old Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo began the long struggle to lead this nation.

The PMFJ was formed by political heavyweights such as the late Lt-General Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa, a key figure in the overthrow of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the First President of the Republic of Ghana, Mr. William Ofori-Atta of blessed memory, one of the Big Six, Mr. Komla Agbeli Gbedema, Finance Minister in the Nkrumah regime, Prof. Albert Adu Boahen, a university History Professor who later broke the culture of silence imposed by the Rawlings oligarchy, Mr. Godfrey Agama, leader of the opposition in Parliament during the Busia regime, Dr. Jones Ofori-Atta, an economic guru and veteran politician, Mr. K.S.P Juntuah, a Minister of State in the Nkrumah regime, Mr. Johnny Hansen, and Nii Armah Armartefio, alias 'Mr. No.'

This group, drawing support from the student movement, professionals and civil society organisations, resolutely opposed Acheampong's Union Government, a concept sprang on Ghanaians, and obviously aimed at perpetuating the rule of the military at the time. Since that time, the incoming President has never wavered in his quest for an equitable society.

The son of one-time Head of State of Ghana, Mr. Edward Akufo-Addo, grand nephew of Dr. Joseph Boakye Danquah, doyen of Ghana politics, and nephew of Mr. William Ofri-Atta, alias Paa Willie, all of the Big Six fame, politics could be said to be running through the blood of the incoming President.

Politics aside, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is recognised in this society as one of the finest legal brains this country has ever known. His law firm  Akufo-Addo and Prempeh  has groomed some of the finest young legal brains in Ghana. In business, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is a recognised success.

He is credited as one of the brains behind the introduction of mobile telephony to this country with the coming on board of Mobitel, now Tigo, and the introduction of the courier service, DHL into this country.

One would like to believe that the experience in nurturing all these ventures, would serve the next President of the Republic of Ghana, very well.





Ebo Quansah in Accra..
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From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Jacobu

Residents of Jacobu, in the Amansie Central District of the Ashanti Region, were shocked, when a 70-year-old man was killed by a gas cylinder, which exploded when he was cooking.

Agya Amankwa, a brother to the Queenmother of Jacobu, was reportedly heating his soup to eat with a meal of fufu he prepared in the evening.

An eyewitness, Mr. Michael Nimo, told The Chronicle that on Wednesday evening, around 1900 hrs GMT, the deceased was sighted heating soup on his gas cooker which was connected to an apparently faulty cylinder.

According to the eyewitness, in the process, the cylinder stopped functioning, but unaware of the danger, the poor old man turned it on again, only for it to explode, throwing 70 year old from his verandah onto the ground with his chest on fire.

Owing to charred nature of the body, the poor man was buried the following day, our source indicated.

Witness Nimo further indicated that the room of the deceased equally caught fire, but was brought under control before any further damage could be done.

The Chronicle has gathered that personnel from the Police and Fire services from the Bekwai Municipality came to the scene to assess the development.


From Alfred Adams, Takoradi..

32 year old Kobina Gary, a private security man guarding a small scale mining site at Pretea in the Western Region, has been admitted to hospital, after he was shot in the stomach by ten armed robbers, who invaded the facility to rob its Chinese owners.

Police have arrested one of the robbers, whose name was given as Isaac Vaness, immediately he was discharged from hospital after sustaining gunshot wounds.

The robbery incident occurred on January 1, 2017.

Speaking to journalists, Kobina Gary said he was on duty on January 1st around 11pm, when the robbers, numbering about ten, attacked him.

According to him, he was instructed by the robbers, who were all wielding guns, to lead them to the homes of the Chinese miners. When he hesitated, Kobina Gary said the robbers hit him with the butts of their guns.

Whilst on the way to show the robbers the location of the Chinese, the security men guarding the place, who had already got the hint of the presence of the robbers, opened fire and one of the bullets hit his stomach.

The Medical Officer of Prestea Government Hospital, Dr. Kwesi Acheampong, speaking to journalists, confirmed that Garry was hit by a bullet which created a hole around his liver.
06.01.2017 LISTEN





From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi

Members of Parliament, who, hitherto served as ex-officio members of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), would be detached and disengaged under the new Local Government law.

Dr. Eric Oduro Osae, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS), explained that it had been recommended that Member (s) of Parliament representing constituencies within the district as non-voting members (Ex-officio members) at MMDA be dealineated from the MMDAs.

The development follows the realisation that legislators do not report for assembly meetings as required of them under the Local Government Act 642 of 1993, which has been amended and replaced.

Dr. ODURO OSAE

Dr. Oduro Osae said the provision, which engaged MPs under the Local Government Act 462, would be amended and taken off, once the Constitutional Reforms Committee's (CRC) report is fully implemented through a white paper.

He said, during a training workshop for media practitioners in Kumasi, that the amendment forms part of measures to restructure the local government system.

He said the guiding principle of the new system would ensure the right of all persons to be afforded opportunities to participate in decision making at every level of government, as well as enable the central government to transfer relevant functions, powers, responsibilities and resources to local government units in a coordinated manner, and, in turn, local governments to transfer required resources to sub-structures.

Dr. Oduro Osae noted that the new local government law would enhance the capacity of local government authorities to plan, initiate, coordinate, manage and execute policies, in respect of all matters affecting the people in their areas, ensure local government accountability through effective citizen participation, and ensure effective control of persons in the service of local government by local authorities.

He hoped that the new system would help correct the wrongs evidenced in the ineffectiveness of accountable and legitimate political authority at the local level, the bureaucratic road block to the system, started at the regional level as the first tier of government, and ensure that the transfer of functions are accompanied by simultaneous transfer of means and competence, and allow decentralised departments to operate in accordance with the law.

Dr. Oduro Osae called for a review and expansion of the Local Government system to ensure effective governance, where a few people would represent the majority at the local assemblies.

The ILGS head said under the new Local Government law, the Legislative Instrument (L. I.) establishing the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has changed to L. I. 2059.

He called on the media to help rebrand the KMA, by soliciting citizens' participation in governance, and challenging the membership and leadership of the Assembly (KMA) to their functions.

He said for local governance to be effective, it should be devoid of partisanship. Politics should be out of local governance, he advised.

Pix: Dr. Eric Oduro Osae, Dean  Institute of Local






06.01.2017 LISTEN

After deceiving the people of Ho with a dual carriage way which never materialised, and now with the construction of a modern market, which, even though has been started and is yet to be completed, government officials are still not ashamed of themselves, and rather want to rip-off the very people who have given them their support over the years.

All the roads leading to Ho, the regional capital, have been in a deplorable state for years, but nothing was done by the outgoing National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration to repair them.

The road from Asikuma Junction to Ho looks like a village road. It was, therefore, not surprising that the Attorney General of Russia had an accident on that portion of the road, and had to be flown out of the country in a helicopter ambulance to seek further treatment in his home country.

Following a series of protests by the Ho residents, the outgoing government pretended to be turning the road from Sokode-Ho into a dual carriageway, but it turned out to be a hoax.

Only one earth moving machine was brought to execute such a huge project, which kept on breaking down until it was finally moved from the site. Because of the excavation work done on the portions of the road, it has now become a death trap.

This, among others, infuriated the people of Ho and other parts of the Volta Region to turn their back to the ruling party in the just-ended elections, but, instead of soothing the pains of the people with the aim of wooing them back, party officials are rather rubbing salt into injury.

Party and government officials, according to the Ho Market Women Association, are scrambling for stores in the new market, which is gradually becoming a white elephant.

According to the market women, stores in the yet-to-be completed market have already been allocated to assembly members, nurses, and government officials who do not qualify for them.

Addressing a news conference at Ho, the Market Queen, Madam Dagbey Mansah, said, under t normal circumstances, the authorities should have sat down with them upon the completion of the project, to determine how the stores should be allocated.

She regretted that this is not what is going on, as the Ho Municipal Assembly had unilaterally allocated the stores, and ignored women who were legitimately entitled to them.

According to Madam Mansah, when she went to the assembly to question the basis for the sharing of the uncompleted stores, one of the staff arrogantly told her to keep quiet.

The Market Queen further told the journalists that they had 7,000 registered members, but the stores in the market are only 268, the huge deficit, she noted, was already a big problem, but the outgoing government officials are not concerned about that, but rather want to take advantage to share the stores among themselves.

She promised to organise her members to pour onto the streets to protest against the decision of the assembly.

She recalled that stalls built in the market during Kufuor's administration were shared after due consultation with the market women, but NDC, having realised that it was leaving power, had deviated from this convention.

Madam Dagbey also expressed concern over the collection of GH500 before a store is allocated, when the same people had told them that the whole project was being financed by the French government.

She, therefore, appealed to the Ho Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mrs. Fafa Adinyirah, to ensure that the monies collected from people are returned to them.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Adinyirah has refuted all the allegations raised by the market women, stressing that the decision to share the market stores was a collectively one taken by the Assembly, and not her as the MCE.

Mrs. Adinyirah explained that somewhere in May 2016, the Ho market leadership brought a tall list of those market women who deserved to occupy the new stores, and based on that list, the allocation of the stores started.

The Ho MCE stressed that the Assembly would not engage in any activity without the due consultation with the market women leadership, and that she did not understand why the same market women, who sent the list to her outfit, would turn round to say that those on their list were teachers, nurses and assembly members.

From Samuel Agbewode, Ho
The outgoing Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR),Kwame Awuah Darko, has urged his successor to pursue expansion drive and increase the competitiveness of the refinery.

He argues TOR could lose its economic potential if plans are not implemented to strengthen the current benefits accruing to the company.

Mr. Awuah-Darko's suggestions follow plans by Nigerian business magnate, Aliko Dangote to establish a multi-billion dollar refinery with a daily capacity of 650,000 barrels, by 2019.

According to him, the conditions provided for by ECOWAS for refineries producing within the sub-region to enjoy economies of scale should spur TOR to be competitive.

When ECOWAS has sat down and come up with a protocol that says if you are a refinery in West Africa and you refine indigenous oil, your products go into the West African market without paying any taxes or customs, that means that if you have a refinery in Ghana that is producing above Ghana's capacity, Ghana can be a major supplier of petroleum products into the sub region, Mr. Awuah-Darko stated.

Mr. Isaac Osei  tipped to become new CEO of TOR

The exiting MD further explained to Citi Business News a failure to revamp TOR's production to meet the competition will have dire consequences on Ghana's petroleum prospects in the short to medium term.

If we don't take those things serious and conclude in 2017 and Alico Dangote's refinery comes up on stream, it will be difficult to raise money to do that. So leadership must always look ahead and not look at just what is in front of us. By looking ahead, you put your country, economy and society at a competitive advantage, he opined.

The comments come at a time that TOR has announced a ramp up in its production levels by an additional 20,000 barrels of crude.

Currently, the refinery operates at a capacity that allows it to refine up to 45, 000 barrels of crude per day.

The increase follows recent expansion projects carried out by the refinery.

BOST announces turnaround of companys operations

In the meantime, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) has announced a significant increase in the company's assets between 2013 and 2016.

According to the exiting management, its asset revaluation exercise for the period has increased its balance sheet from 314 million to 1.04 billion cedis.

Speaking at a media encounter in Accra, Mr. Awuah Darko was also hopeful that the strides made will propel further growth of the company.

Debt restructuring being a key component of our turnaround, it became necessary for management to ascertain the exact amount of debt stock it actually was obligated to. Fortunately that period is behind us and BOST has a net positive position with regards to its balances with the BDC's in excess of USD18 million. BOST has initiated steps to reclaim the money's owed it by the BDCs, he intimated.



By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
Bouake (Ivory Coast) (AFP) - Soldiers seized control of Ivory Coast's second city Bouake on Friday in a protest over pay, firing rocket launchers in the streets and terrifying residents, as the government called for calm.

The protests in Bouake spread to the central towns of Daloa and Daoukro as well as Korhogo in the north, as angry troops took to the streets demanding salary hikes.

Witnesses said the soldiers had left the streets by nightfall except for Bouake, where troops continued to sporadically fire rocket launchers and spray rifle bullets into the air.

"The soldiers are still in control of Bouake. The town is deserted," an AFP correspondent reported.

"There are only soldiers riding in their own vehicles and in government cars."

The government held a meeting of the National Crisis Committee to discuss the situation, a source close to the defence ministry said.

Several dozen trucks and buses were blocked several kilometres (miles) from Bouake on the main road from Abidjan, Ivory Coast's economic capital.

Bouake is the cradle of the armed rebellion that controlled Ivory Coast's north when the country was cut in two between 2002 and 2011.

An army officer in Bouake told AFP that former rebel fighters -- now part of the army -- were behind the uprising.

"It's a mutiny by former fighters integrated into the army who are demanding bonuses of five million CFA francs ($8,000, 7,600 euros) each plus a house," the officer said earlier Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Police disarmed

One soldier told AFP the troops were asking for 10 million francs each as well as housing. "If necessary, we will not return to the barracks," he warned.

In a statement read out on national television, Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi called on "all soldiers to remain calm and return to their barracks, to enable the search for lasting solutions for every component of Ivory Coast's armed forces."

He said the soldiers were demanding payment of bonuses, salary rises and faster promotion.

Soldiers broke into Bouake's main weapons depot, arming themselves with rocket-launchers and other weapons mounted on pickup trucks, a military source said.

AFP's correspondent in the city said troops there had attacked all seven police posts, manned strategic junctions and put up barricades in the town centre.

The AFP journalist in Bouake, the country's second largest city, said the firing of Kalashnikovs "can be heard near the 3rd battalion" camp

A police source said the soldiers arrived at one police station at about 3:00 am (0300 GMT) and took away their Kalashnikov assault rifles.

The police headquarters in the city was also attacked, the source said.

All businesses and schools were closed in Bouake, which became the capital of a rebellion after former president Laurent Gbagbo stayed in power after a foiled 2002 coup attempt.

The effective partitioning of the country between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south sparked a decade of clashes and crises.

Rebel forces generally backed current President Alassane Ouattara, who took office in April 2011 after a bloody post-electoral showdown which ended when Gbagbo was arrested.

Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where his trial began in January last year for crimes against humanity.

'We're scared, hiding out'

Several people in Bouake reached by telephone from Abidjan said the shooting began in the early hours of Friday.

"I was really scared. I thought that they were going to come into my station to take petrol for free as they do regularly," Koffi Raphael, who runs a gas station not far from the barracks, told AFP.

In Daloa, "soldiers on motorbikes are driving around town shooting into the air," one resident had told AFP earlier.

"There's gunfire, we're scared, hiding out at home," another had said.

In November 2014, a strike by former rebels who had joined the army brought the country to a standstill after spreading to Abidjan from Bouake.

The nearly 9,000 strikers, who joined the army between 2009 and 2011, were demanding full payment of back pay and promotions.
The United States branch of the Graduate Students' Association of Ghana (GRASAG) has commended Ghanaians for the peaceful conduct of the December 7 general elections.

The Association in a statement Friday expressed confidence in President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his ability to deliver on his campaign promises.

"We are of a deep conviction that his resolve to help build Ghana, will inspire hope in Ghanaians both home and abroad to work hard towards the common good of the country," the statement signed by the Association President, Juliet Ohemeng-Ntiamoah read.

Read full statement:

PRESS RELEASE

(7 January, 2017)

GRASAG-USA CONGRATULATES GHANAIANS ON THE SMOOTH TRANSITION OF POWER

The graduate students association of Ghana in USA (GRASAG-USA) extends heartfelt congratulations to Ghanaians for the successful elections held on December 7th 2016 and the subsequent peaceful transfer of power to the new government.

This display of political maturity has once again deepened our democracy and ensured that Ghana remains the beacon of democracy in Africa.

In view of this, GRASAG-USA would like to commend the outgoing president, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama for his statesmanship and dedicated service to Ghana in the past years.

The association also congratulates His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on his ascension to the highest office of our motherland.

We are of a deep conviction that his resolve to help build Ghana, will inspire hope in Ghanaians both home and abroad to work hard towards the common good of the country.

God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation greater and stronger. GRASAG-USA is an organization that seeks to create a collaborative platform for a vibrant community of Ghanaian Graduate Students in the USA.

Thank you.

Signed Juliet Ohemeng-Ntiamoah President,

GRASAG-USA.

www.grasagusa.com

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
At least 10 million primary school pupils across the country will benefit from the newly- introduced school feeding programme initiated by the federal government and tagged Buhari food for the children.

This was disclosed by Senator Chris Ngige, the minister of Labour and Employment, in an interview in Awka, Vanguard reports.

10 million children to benefit from FGs schools feeding programme

READ ALSO: Ngige: Federal government to increase salaries next year

According to him, while five million pupils from Primary 1 -3 would be catered for by the federal government under the programme, the states were expected to feed another five million from Primary 4 -6 through a counterpart funding programme.

Ngige said the programme had begun in eight states, including Anambra state.

The minister noted that it was important that Nigerians to know that it is Buhari food for the children which, according to him, was part of measures to cushion hardship faced by parents.

READ ALSO: FG agencies budget billions for foreign training

While urging other states to key into the programme in view of its benefits to the Nigerian children, Ngige said that Kaduna and Osun states were already embarking on the programme before it was introduced nationally.

He said: To whom much is given, much is also expected. For the federal government to use Anambra as one of the states to begin the school feeding programme shows that President Buhari considers Anambra a very important state. We therefore call on the Anambra state government to fulfill its part of the agreement without delay.

Recall that the vice-president of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, had revealed on Tuesday, September 1, 2016 that the Buhari administration will soon start giving out free meals to school children, therefore fulfilling one of the president's campaign promises.

Osinbajo said that the free meals scheme was a core project of the federal government that would in turn yield about 1.14 million jobs and an increase in food production.

Last month, the school feeding programme commenced in Anambra state according to a statement from Laolu Akande, the spokesperson for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

Source: Legit.ng
In 2017, the Buhari's government is willing to improve. There has been a lot of criticism against the government as problems continue to besiege the country.

Here are a list of major threats that might cause problems for Buhari in 2017:

1. Shiite

Shiites

The Shiites are a group of Muslims who follow the Shia philosophy. The group in Nigeria has had major problems with the Nigerian government.

The Zaria massacre was a massacre carried out by the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna state, Nigeria on Saturday, December 12, 2015. Up to 348 Shiites, including members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria were killed.

El-Zakzaky, their leader is still under detention and protests have been going on. In 2017, it is highly likely that Shiites will be a big headache to the Kaduna state government and Nigeria as a whole.

2. IPOB

IPOB protesters

Another major headache that is decades old is the struggle for Biafra. In the past year, the struggle for an independent state by the Igbo people has led to mass protests, killings and international outrage.

Nnamdi Kanu the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has been in detention by the Nigerian government, for more than a year and in 2017, it is certain that the struggle for Biafra will be something the government will contend with.

READ ALSO: Buhari orders decisive measures on southern Kaduna violence

3. Herdsmen

Herdsmen

Another security issue the Nigeria government will face in 2017 is the so called 'Fulani herdsmen.' Reports of a group of Fulani herdsmen causing havoc and killing people have been rife in Nigeria.

Southern Kaduna is one of the most recent places where this reports have surfaced and while President Buhari has promised to take strong actions on the matter. 2017 has opened with more deaths caused by this people.

4. Ayo Fayose

Ayo Fayose

This headache is in the form of a single person. the governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose. He has been a fierce critic of President Buhari and his government.

Recently, he lashed out at the government, claiming that the N5,000 the FG claims to have given to the vulnerable and unemployed is a mere propaganda.

In 2017, Ayo Fayose has opened with criticism, and he will be a big problem to the federal government.

5. Recession

Recession

Another threat to the Buhari presidency is the economic part. The recession has cast the government in a bad light and in 2016, basic necessities became so expensive, the volatile foreign exchange rate, and a lot of other economic issue led to hardship.

The nation's economy has continued in recession, and conditions remain so challenging with little sign that the economy will exit recession in 2017.

READ ALSO: N5000 stipend: Choose who to believe between Buhari or Fayose  Presidency to Nigerians

6. APC crisis

APC party

Within the All Progressives Congress (APC), there has been a growing sense of distrust, which might affect the President's ability to rule the country properly.

Already, some factions and cabals are fighting for selfish interest and if the party does not get itself together, it will cause major problems in 2017.

7. Prophecies

Tb Joshua

There have been a lot of prophecies about 2017 for Nigeria and its ruling powers. The amount of prophecies far outnumber the amount of prophets the country has.

If the prophecies are anything to go by, Buhari's health, and the possibility of it failing him this year, 2017 is very large.

8. Niger Delta

Niger Delta

The Niger Delta problems continue to plague Nigeria. Though an Upland-based Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate (NDGJM), has taken a break in bombing of oil facilities, the group and other militant groups may stage a comeback if negotiations fail, and their demands are not met. The group, NDGJM, has maintained that its silence does not mean it is dead.

In 2017, we hope the bombing does not plague the Nigerian oil sector.

Source: Legit.ng
Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state has appointed a new Chief of Staff and Head of Service, Premium Times reports.

In a press statement made available to newsmen on Thursday evening, January 5, it was gathered that Amosun appointed Tolu Odebiyi as his Chief of Staff, while Abayomi Sobande was appointed as Head of Service.

The statement signed by Secretary to the State Government, Adeoluwa Taiwo, said appointment of the duo was with immediate effect.

Governor Amosun appoints new Chief of Staff, Head of Service

READ ALSO: Uproar over Governor Amosun's alleged multi-billion naira mansion

Amosuns new Chef of Staff Tolu Odebiyi, 54, was a member of the State Judicial Service Commission and Transition Committee on Housing where he served amongst other notable members to develop a blue print for mass housing delivery in 2012 and 2003 respectively.

He has over 25 years international and domestic Real Estate experience.

Odebiyi holds a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) in Building Construction and Engineering Technology from the Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston Massachusetts.

Until his present appointment, he was a managing partner at Travant Real Estate and Boutique Estate firm.

On the other hand, Sobandes appointment as Head of Services follows the retirement of the former Head of Service, Abraham Adeyemi, who bowed out of service on Wednesday.

READ ALSO: I am not the APC South-west leader - Amosun

The new Head of Service holds a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) in Sociology from the University of Ibadan in 1982.

Sobande joined the State Civil Service in 1985 as an Assistant Secretary (Recruitment & Training) after a stint as a Teacher between 1983 and 1985.

He rose through the ranks and was appointed a Permanent Secretary in October, 2012.

The 56-year-old, who hails from Ewekoro local government area of the state, was until his latest elevation the permanent secretary at the ministry of local government and chieftaincy affairs.

The new appointees, will be sworn-in on January 9 by the state governor at the Executive Council Chambers, Governors Office, Oke-Mosan at 9am.

Amosun's appointments comes weeks after Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state appointed Alhaji Muhammad Bashir Saidu as his Chief of Staff.

Saidu takes over from Hadiza Bala-Usman, who previously held the position before her appointment as the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

Source: Legit.ng
- The scarcity of aviation fuel has forced Arik Air to suspend its domestic and international flights

- The airlines action did not go down well with its stranded passengers

- The airline however warned passengers fond of assaulting its staff

The scarcity of aviation fuel has forced Arik Air to suspend its domestic and international flights, Daily Sun reports.

Nigeria's minister of aviation, Captain Hadi Sirika

The airline has been in the storm this past week as stranded passengers staged a protest at the airport raining verbal abuses and physically assaulting the airline staff.

It would be the third time in the last six weeks that passengers would clash with the airlines staff following the cancellation or suspension of flight operations by Arik Air.

READ ALSO: Chaos in Aviation sector: Unions to shut down Arik Air

The airlines passengers especially those billed to travel to Johannesburg and New York waited endlessly without any boarding announcements being made for their flights.

The airline later explained that it had difficulty sourcing for fuel for the flights and the flights were cancelled.

However, sensing a breakdown of the peace, Policemen from the airport command were drafted to prevent the angry passengers from damaging facilities at the international airport.

In a strongly worded press statement distributed to journalists, the airline's spokesman said:

Arik Air strongly condemns the incessant and increasing number of attacks on our staff and property in the recent months.

As a flag carrier for Nigeria, the airline expresses it disappointment and dismay that the Aviation Security department (AVSEC) of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and all the other security agencies in the country cannot ensure or guarantee the safety of our personnel when on duty across the various airports in the country.

This serious breach of security and lawlessness by some of the passengers to assault and cause bodily harm to the airlines personnel cannot and will not continue to be tolerated.

Passengers continue to take the laws into their hands and the severity and frequencies of such criminal acts are on the rise due to lack of appropriate action or preventative measures from the security agencies.

READ ALSO: Lola Omotayo blasts Arik Airline

Recently, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) announced it has fined Arik Air N6 million over its passengers complaints of delay and inability of the airline to ferry their luggage from London to Lagos from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December, 2016.

Source: Legit.ng
- An indictment released by Italian prosecutors has linked former President Goodluck Jonathan to the Malabu oil scam

- Others named in the reports include Diezani Alison Madueke, Mohammed Adoke, Aliyu Gusau and Bayo Ojo

- The report alleged that Goodluck Jonathan and others mentioned shared in the $1.3b fraudulent oil deal

An investigative report by Italian prosecutors has alleged that ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, former minister of petroleum Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Attorney Generals Mohammed Adoke and Bayo Ojo, former Minister of Defense and ex-National Security Adviser, Aliyu Gusau as well as numerous other senior government officials shared hundreds of millions of dollars.

READ ALSO: US declares Osama Bin Laden's son a terrorist

According to an indictment obtained by Sahara Reporters, the Italian prosecutors alleged that Goodluck Jonathan and several officials of his government as well as top corporate officials of international oil firms, Eni and Shell, met several times between 2010 and 2011 to seal the fraudulent Malabu deal and split a massive loot running into hundreds of millions between Nigerian government and public interests as well as corporate officials.

Former President Jonathan is involved $1.3 billion oil fraud

The indictment shows that former Abacha-era Minister, Dauzia Loya Etete, better known as "Dan Etete" and his Malabu company were at the center of the scam that involved the sale of an oil bloc named OPL 245 he illicitly acquired in 1998.

Italian oil giant, Eni, the owner of the Nigerian Agip Oil Company Ltd (NAOC) and Royal Dutch Shell, contracted to acquire 100 percent of the 245 oil blocks for a deal that totaled $1.3 billion.

However, Italian prosecutors are alleging that much of the funds was set aside for fraudulent payments to Mr Jonathan and other government officials as well as corporate executives working for Eni and Shell.

Picture 2: Indictment documents by Italian prosecutors

Apart from naming numerous officials of Eni and Shell, the indictment also fingered Mr Jonathan, Mr Etete, Mrs Alison-Madueke, Mr Adoke, former NSA Gusau, Mr Obi, Mr Ojo, and Alhaji Abubakar as beneficiaries from the Malabu fraud.

Among the corporate players named in the Malabu deal are Paolo Scaroni, Enis Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, and Claudio Descalzi, the Managing Director of Enis Exploration and Production Division since July 2008.

The indictment states that Mr Scaroni agreed to intermediation by Obi, and was constantly informed by Mr Descalzi of the progress of developments in the deal.

Mr. Descalzi met then President Jonathan in person in 2010 and again in 2011.

READ ALSO: PDP warns APC, Fayemi against alleged plot to remove Fayose

According to the indictment, Mr Descalzi maintained steady contact with Mr. Obi and two key Eni employees in Nigeria, Roberto Casula and Vincenzo Armanna, who helped coordinate a deal in which Mr Jonathan and other senior officials of his government would receive illegal commissions in exchange for approving the Malabu oil deal.

Mr Descalzi also coordinated with his Shell counterpart, Malcolm Brinded, on the $1.3 billion price tag for the oil block.

Other Eni and Shell officials also attended meetings with the then president, Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on August 13, 2010 regarding the OPL245 deal and, again, on February 22, 2011. In addition, the indictment states that the two oil companies executives attended meetings from November 18 to 25, 2010, at Mr Adokes offices in Abuja.

Apart from Mr Adoke, Alhaji Aliyu Abubakar also known as AAA Oil was also present at the meetings during which, according to Italian prosecutors: The financial conditions of the deal ($1.3 billion) were agreed.

Mr Armanna, the Senior Advisor of Nigerian Agip Oil Company Ltd and as Eni Vice President for upstream sub-Saharan activities, reportedly played a major role in the scam.

Italian prosecutors accuse Mr Armanna of facilitating the Nigerian governments active role in the Malabu deal, including the payment of 1,092,040,000 intended for Etete, in addition to the signature bonus of $207,960,000.

Picture 3: Indictment documents from Italian prosecutors

The indictment also states that on October 30, 2010, Ciro Antonio Pagano of Eni, signed his firms offer to Raffeisen Bank, Obi's advisor, for the companys 100% acquisition of Malabus participating interest in OPL 245.

The payments comprised $207,960,000 to the Nigerian government as the signature bonus and $1,053,000,000 directly to Malabu.

According to the indictment, Etete is also being accused of having received authorization from Minister of Petroleum Alison-Madueke to dispose of 100% of OPL245, following the decision of President Jonathan.

In addition, Etete was said to have: Conducted confidential negotiations with Aliyu Abubakar, who acted as an agent of Goodluck Jonathan and accepted, under government pressure, the total sum of $1.3 billion, established by Eni and Shell.

Italian prosecutors also reported that: Mr Etete received $801.5 million from the Nigerian government under the FGN Resolution Agreement, and having transferred to Abubakar Aliyu, directly or through companies attributable to him, funds of approximately $520 million, intended to be paid to President Jonathan, members of the government and other Nigerian government officials.

The indictment also states that the Malabu deal involved an agreement that Dan Etete would use much of the funds from the sale of the oil bloc.

The indictment added that: President Goodluck Jonathan and other members of the Nigerian government in office at the time, including Mrs Alison-Madueke, Attorney General Muhammed Bello Adoke, National Security Advisor Aliyu Gusau, a member of the House of Representatives, Umar Bature, former Senator Ikechukwu Obiorah received huge payoffs from the Malabu deal.

Meanwhile, Mr Mohammed Adoke has revealed in an interview that he was following directives from former president Goodluck Jonathan in the Malabu oil deal and denied any allegation of corruption.

Watch a video of Goodluck Jonathan speaking on corruption below:

Source: Legit.ng
- The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has made some allegations against President Muhammadu Buhari and the British government

- The group the president and the British government are planning to stop the leak of some indicting videos by the groups leader

- The group also said it wondered why the British government will be working against it and for the Nigerian government

IPOB has alleged that President Buhari is working with British government against Nnamdi Kanu

The Indigenous People of Biafra has leveled some allegations against President Muhammadu Buhari and the British government.

The group in a new statement said the president and the British government are planning to stop the leak of some indicting videos by the groups leader.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) can confirm that the British Government is working in tandem with Retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari to stealthily administer a non-traceable poison on the leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB said.

The group had on Tuesday alleged the release of some videos by Kanu.

READ ALSO: Analyst advises Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB, others against sef-harm

The group also claimed it had more evidence that the British government alongside President Buhari and former head of state Yakubu Gowon premeditated genocide against the South-East over 50 years ago.

But in its new statement, IPOB said: Another reason is to ensure that Nnamdi Kanu is dead before Mr. Donald J. Trump takes over as the 45th President of the USA. We have also confirmed that should the plan to poison Nnamdi Kanu fail, a phantom road accident will be arranged for the vehicle conveying Nnamdi Kanu to court on any of the court days beginning from Tuesday, 10th of January 2017.

What bothers us in IPOB is the fact that Biafrans are Christians and a sizeable proportion of whom are Anglican denomination including the parents of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, which was where they baptized and christened him Kenneth or Kenny for short.

The IPOB also said it wondered why the British government will be working against it and for the Nigerian government.

READ ALSO: SAD DAY for Nnamdi Kanu as he misses out on son's 1st birthday (photos)

Why would Britain, a supposedly Christian country and a proclaimed member of the body of Christ, be supporting people of Islamic faith such as Buhari to kill Biafrans in Biafraland?

From where is this British Government hatred on fellow Christians of Biafran descent coming? Perhaps, the British government must tell the world what we, Biafrans, did to them that makes them hate us so much.

Is it because we accepted Christianity that they see us as inferior beings or is it the fact that we have English names that made them see us as people without a proud identity? Even the undersigned of this press release still bear their English names and append same on all documents both personal and corporate.

Why would the British government want Nnamdi Kanu dead in spite of the fact that he is a British citizen? Or is it in line with the British governments standard practice of hating every African freedom fighter? Recall that both Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron called Nelson Mandela a terrorist and demanded he should be hanged.

READ ALSO: Read what ex-governor Orji Uzor-Kalu told Nnamdi Kanus parents

The group further cautioned the British government to retrace its steps in its alleged plan with the federal government of Nigeria.

We are also putting the world on notice that should anything happen to Nnamdi Kanu or those detained with him and elsewhere in Nigeria, the British government shall be held directly responsible for their deaths. We reassure the world that the restoration of the nation of Biafra is a divine project whose time has come.

Both Muhammadu Buhari and the Biafra-hating British government are incapable of stopping the restoration of the nation of Biafra and 2017 is the year that kick-starts the restoration process. To stop the restoration of the nation of Biafra, the British government will have to kill over 70 million Biafrans who have sworn to restore their God-given nation.

We reiterate that the sovereignty of the nation of Biafra is not negotiable, come rain or shine!!!" the group concluded.

Source: Legit.ng
- The Nigeria Police Force has dismissed six officers attached to Rivers state governor Nyesom Wike

- The officers, the police said, were found guilty of misconduct during the election

- The police also said the dismissed officers will be prosecuted in line with the Electoral Act

The police said the officers were found guilty of misconduct during the Rivers state rerun election

The Nigerian police has dismissed sic of its officers who were attached to Rivers state governor Nyesom Wike during the last rerun election in the state.

The officers are: AP/No.177893,ex. Inspr. Eyong Victor; F/No. 400872 ex. Sgt Peter Ekpo; F/No.374585 ex. Sgt Oguni Goodluck; F/No. 385870 ex. Sgt. Orji Nwoke; F/No. 234216 ex. Sgt. Okpe Ezekiel; F/No. 437983 ex. Sgt. Tanko Akor.

The police said the six officers were found guilty of breaching the police conduct despite warnings from the inspector general of police Ibrahim Idris.

Speaking during a press briefing in Abuja, the police spokesperson Dan Awunah said: In the case of the recent parliamentary election in Rivers State, the IGPs resolve to secure the process, was reciprocated with the unethical conduct of some bad eggs within the force.

READ ALSO: Rivers rerun: Wike challenges police over death of DSP Alkali

Awunah said the officers were found guilty of escorting their principals, public office holders and politicians to polling units during the election.

They were also found guilty of firing gunshot in a crowded area on the day of the election.

These aforementioned police personnel while in the convoy of His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Rivers state Barr. Nyesom Wike on the date of election, 10th December, 2016 misused the firearms in their possession contrary to the provisions of Force Order 237.

The service personnel became overzealous, took laws into their hands and opened fire, causing panic in the crowd.

"They joined in storming the Port Harcourt City Council Secretariat and prevented the movement of election results of Emouha polling unit to the appropriate collation centre designated by INEC, in flagrant disregard and disobedience to senior Police officers present at the venue.

Awunah added that the six officers after the conclusion of investigation into this public mischief, were subjected to internal disciplinary measures, found guilty and subsequently dismissed from the force.

He said they will be prosecuted under the Electoral Act to serve as a deterrent to others.

READ ALSO: READ What governors now do to avoid DSS phone conversation leak

The IGP wishes to restate the commitment of the force to carry out its constitutional obligations in accordance to the law of the land before, during and after every election in Nigeria. This will be done in a very professional manner bearing in mind the need not only to be unbiased but to be seen by members of the public as responsive and responsible security agency in election security in the country.

Nigerians should rest assured that the IGP and indeed the entire management team of the Force will not be deterred in its resolve to rid the Nigeria Police Force of personnel who indulge in actions or inactions that amount to unprofessional and serious misconduct.

The IGP commends all officers and men of the Force for their dedication, commitment, sacrifice, hard work and display of utmost professionalism in their service to the country despite daunting challenges. Without doubts, our sacrifices and sincerity of purpose will be commensurately rewarded," Awunah said.

Source: Legit.ng
-Days before leaving office, President Barack Obama has released 4 high profile detainees from Guantanamo prison

- The released detainees are identified as Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim, Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli, and Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir

- President-elect Donald Trump has kicked against release of extremely dangerous people into the battle ground

Controversy as Obama releases Guantanamo prisoners

Against the wishes of President-elect Donald Trump, President Barack Obamas administration has on Thursday, January 6 announced the release of 4 detainees described by Trump as extremely dangerous people.

The released detainees who have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are among over 50 other prisoners being held in Guantanamo prison.

READ ALSO: Muslim soldiers can now wear beards, hijabs says U.S. Army

President Barack Obamas action is against the express wish of President-elect Donald Trump.

Controversy as Obama releases Guantanamo prisoners

According to the Department of Defence, the released detainees are identified as Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim, Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli, and Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir.

The Department of Defence statement read: As directed by the presidents Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the inter agency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of the cases.

As a result of those reviews, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, Al-Shibli and Bwazir were unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force.

READ ALSO: First ever Somalia-American sworn in as USA legislator

Periodic Review Boards consisting of representatives from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State; the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence determined continued law of war detention of Kanad and Ghanim does not remain necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.

Controversy as Obama releases Guantanamo prisoners

As a result of those reviews, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, Kanad and Ghanim were recommended for transfer by consensus of the six departments and agencies comprising the Periodic Review Board.

However, President elect Donald Trump insisted that there should be no more prisoner releases from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

There should be no further releases from Gitmo, he tweeted.

These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield, Trump said.

Recall that President Barack Obama had wanted to close the prison since he came into office in 2009 but couldnt achieve this as a result of opposition from Congress.

Meanwhile, the US Army gave Muslim soldiers and soldiers of other religious minorities approval to wear beards, head scarf or hijabs for women if they so desire.

Such soldiers, while serving in the military are however expected to obtain approval to dress and groom themselves according to their religious customs.

Source: Legit.ng
Uganda prison authorities have rubbished claims by Kasese leaders that another Rwenzururu kingdom royal guard had died as a result of torture.

Kasese Woman Member of Parliament who also the Leader of Opposition, Winnie Kiiza says that although the hospital authorities have told them that 65 year old Yosam Bagheni died of malaria, she is suspicious of what caused his death.

Rwenzururu Kingdom is now calling for an investigation into the cause of Baghenis death.

However Uganda Prison Spokesperson Frank Baine says medical reports clearly indicate that 65 year old Yosam Bagheni died after suffering from severe malaria.

Bagheni was one of the 150 suspects charged jointly with Rwezururu King Charles Wesley Mumbere with treason, murder, terrorism and aggravated robbery, crimes allegedly committed in Kasese district late last year.

The body of the deceased still lies at Jinja Hospital Mortuary but it is still unclear where he will be buried.
Mrs Aisha Buhari, the president's wife has revealed that the State House in Abuja takes care of her meal only when necessary, Daily Trust reports.

The president's wife while dismissing a media report linking her with some top government officials to fleece the Nigerian High Commission in London each time she travels there stated that "other healthy food or variety" needed by her children are her personal responsibilities.

She described the report accusing her of abuse of privileges at the Nigerian High Commission in London as a travesty of investigative journalism.

READ ALSO: Aisha Buhari donates foodstuffs to 300 internally displaced children

Mrs Buhari's special assistant on media, Adebisi Olumide Ajayi, in a statement, on Friday, January 6, said: The State House in Abuja caters for her meal when necessary, and other healthy food or variety needed by her children are her personal responsibility."

"It is on record that the Nigerian Commission in London does not receive Aisha Buhari at the airport with any official distinction or privileges as was accorded other first ladies before her

"Her drivers are privately arranged without any recourse to the embassy for staff. She has never complained or raised dust about any of these acts by the High Commission because of the understanding, as clearly spelt out and practised by her husband that public office must be separated from the private lives of the occupants.

"She has always been an advocate of good governance where officials of government are responsive and appealing to their constituents. It therefore baffles the imagination that one could believe she would corroborate with any government official however highly placed either at home or abroad to short-change the Nigerian people.

READ ALSO: Aisha Buhari deserves kudos for attacking her husband - CAN chairman

"These records are not hidden for a non-mischievous reporter who really intends to inform the people and not to disparage the family of the President just to add weight to a report.

On Thursday, January 5, Sahara Reporters, had reported that Mrs Buhari visited the UK at least seven times last year and that each time she travels there, the High Commission spends a minimum of 7,000 on her hospitality.

The president's wife also said the Nigerian Commission in London had never offered any favour either "monetarily or materially" to her or her so-called entourage on any of her trips to the UK.

Source: Legit.ng
Some Nigerians have accused President Muhammadu Buhari of complicity in the violence and destruction that has ravaged the southern part of Kaduna state.

President Muhammadu Buhari has been accused of reacting too late to the violence in the southern part of Kaduna state.

The accusation against Buhari came after the president ordered that decisive measures be taken to end the recurring killings in southern Kaduna, an action that some Nigerians described as medicine after death.

READ ALSO: Okogie condemns Buhari, El-Rufai over silence on Kaduna violence

Recall that the presidency had earlier explained that Buhari was silent on the ongoing violence in southern part of Kaduna state because the state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was handling the issue.

The killings in southern Kaduna are suspected to be due to violence between the locals and migrating Fulani herdsmen.

Buharis silence over the issue has fueled suggestion from some religious and political leaders that the president and Governor Nasir El-Rufai who are of the Fulani tribe, are siding with the attackers.

But after the president called for decisive action to be taking over the issue, some social media commentators accused Buhari of responding too late after the killings had escalated.

Read what some Nigerians are saying about the issue below:

Prince Bello Omeiza Stephen: "Is Mr president, Muhammedu Buhari waiting for all villagers to be killed by herdsmen in southern Kaduna before he react?s If no, why didn't he react quickly before now. If yes what joy is he deriving from it?"

Daudu Christopher: I said it earlier that this fulani herdsmen is a terrorist group and it's more dangerous than Boko Haram. Any state governor who really loves his people will not allow this deadly group to settle in his state. It's the responsibility of our governors to resist this group with all available means. Given the unbearable security situation we found ourselves today in this country, we will be forced to employ irregularity to correct the irregularities. It's a matter of time."

READ ALSO: Catholic bishop warns of negative effects of killings in Southern Kaduna, others

Iyke Ololo: "Is this the intention of having grazing reserve in all the state of the federation so that the natives will be massacred by herdsmen knowing fully well that the host communities have nothing in common with the herdsmen by the time everybody is armed the nation will become ungovernable then we will ask ourselves what went wrong."

Joseph Ugbameta: "Mr president your order is late and watery after your people has completed their mission the only injection that can put an end to this calamity- restructuring the country."

Nwafor Ndubueze Vincent: "What kind of strong action would that be? After over 800 lives were lost. That's rubbish you know."

Anthony Ijikweonu: "After they has finished of killing humans you react but if it's matter of cows nd cattles u response quickly by sending ur terror squads God will soon answer the prayers of the poor."

Monday Wilson went as far as suggesting that if Buhari's children were involved, he would have reacted to the issue swiftly.

He said: "Assuming her daughter Zahra was involve in the dead, sure federal government would have declared curfew wright from day one when the insurgent happen, beside troupes of army and heavy security guard would ve been sent there immediately, and those involve in the barbaric act would have been caught forthwith.

"Hmmmmmm my take is that let our president as our leader do unto others what he wished others 2do unto him (mathew 7:12) bcus the primary aim of any Government is security of lives and property which this Government seems to have neglected in the killing of Christian in Southern Kaduna"

another group of commentators rained abuses on the president over the issue.

Ayobolu Adefemi Kokumo: "Useless president , you are now responding after the evil deed had been done by your Fulani tribe. The duty of good president is to secure life and property of it's citizens which you failed to do. God will punish all those that contributed to killing in southern Kaduna."

Sunday Ishaku: "You thought we are all going to die abi? Useless president, you are now responding after the evil deed had been done by your fulani herdsmen, God is watching"

Others suggested that the president's slow response was as a result of an ear infection:

Kufre Wilson: "Now people should learn to tell any candidate that would come up in 2019 to go through series of medical test before contesting ... then publish the result on the media for people to know how fit the candidate is! Ear problem is a baaaaad sickness! Imagine it's now that He hears what has happened 3 weeks ago. I can still remember my late great grand father that had this kind of problem, even if the whole community run he is still not aware of what is happening."

READ ALSO: Fulani herdsmen threatening to take our land, Delta community leaders cry out

Arinze Umeh: "You people should not blame the old because he has ear problem , he only react when he get sine. kudos to you sir."

Caroline Monday: "Did you just wake up from ur sick sleep Mr Buhari.... It's a disgrace for such a big country to have u as it's president. Continue sleeping till u never wake again and there will be peace and celebration everywhere."

On her part, Onwordi Amaka described the ongoing violence in southern Kaduna as a plot by Muslims to Islamize Nigeria.

She said: "The truth remains that the aim of these northern Muslims is to islamize Nigeria but God will not permit them as they have started from the southern Kaduna to suppress all minority Christians to forfeit their faith according to their !QU'RAN 8: 39 wage war on non-muslims and kill them until they submit and the only religion is islam!

"The only thing I will beg the Christians all over Nigeria is to support their fellow Christians in southern Kaduna with weapons of war to fight back for their lives and for their unborn generation."

What do you think, Is the president to blame for reacting late to the killings in the southern part of Kaduna or is he doing his best over the issue?

Source: Legit.ng
By Malik Fahad

Police in Lugusulu, Sembabule district have uprooted marijuana planted on a 3 acre piece of land.

Denis Musinguzi the Sembabule District Police Commander says the marijuana was discovered in the middle of a maize plantation after getting a tip off from concerned residents.

Godfrey MpuIima the owner of the land where the uprooted marijuana was found says that he had rented out the land to some youth group to plant maize but he was surprised to get information that they were instead using it land to grow marijuana

Musinguzi says one person has already been arrested in connection with the alleged crime as the hunt for his accomplices continues.
Just few hours after the Nigeria Police Force sacked six of its men and ordered their arrest for alleged unethical practices during the December 10 election rerun in Rivers, the state government has reacted.

Wike alleged that the six policemen were sacked for protecting him during the election

A statement by Austin Tam-George, the spokesperson for the governor, described the action as a sad day for the Nigerian Police Force.

READ ALSO: Why we dismissed officers attached to Governor Wike - Police

"The police officers were subjected to a secret and unfair trial, on totally fictitious charges of professional misconduct, during the rerun elections in Rivers State on the 10th of December 2016.

"This is a tragic day for professionalism and the respect for human rights in the Nigeria police force.

"The dismissed officers committed no crime, other than foil a carefully orchestrated electoral heist by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in collusion with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Nigeria Police force.

"The claim by the Police that the affected officers misused their firearms while in the convoy of governor Wike on the 10th of December 2016, is a wrong and cruel fabrication.

"Governor Wike did not depart from his official premises on the day of the election, and therefore had no use for an armed convoy.

"Two days after the elections, on the 12th of December 2016, thousands of Rivers people, led by Governor Wike, resisted an invasion by the police on the premises of the Port Harcourt City Local Government Council premises, in a brazen attempt to rig the elections in favour of the APC.

These officers committed no crime, other than stopping a carefully planned assassination attempt on the life of Governor Wike.

The officers are the latest victims of the medieval authoritarianism of the APC government that seems to lurch blindly in the miasma of its own incompetence.

The six policemen sacked for alleged unethical practices

We urge Nigerians to demand the immediate reinstatement of these officers, and for the Inspector General of Police to allow an independent inquiry.

The APC government has never hidden its desperation to overrun Rivers state, colonise its people and loot the treasury of the state, but the Rivers people have seen the face of the Lord, and will spare no sacrifice as we resist the satanic agenda of the APC government, the statement said.

READ ALSO: Rivers rerun: Wike accuses police of bias over murder of DSP Alkali

The spokesperson of the Nigeria Police Force, Don Awunah, had said the affected officers who were part of the convoy of the governor on the day of the election, misused their firearms.

He said the affected soldiers were investigated and found wanting and would be charged according to the electoral act.

Source: Legit.ng
- Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar, director of information, Defense Headquarters says Fulani herdsmen attacks will soon be a thing of the past

- Abubakar says that the Nigerian Armed Forces had conducted more than 13 operations in the country to ensure a safer society

Defense spokesperson Rabe Abubakar says Army will soon launch Operation Accord for Fulani herdsmen

The Nigerian Army has launched an offensive against rampaging Fulani herdsmen across the country, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The spokesperson for the Defence headquarters, Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar disclosed on Friday, January 6 that the Army has concluded plans to launch Operation Accord to check illegalities of the herdsmen.

READ ALSO: Southern Kaduna killings: Buhari under fire over delayed response

Abubakar made the disclosure to newsmen in Warri, Delta state during a media tour of some locations on Friday.

Anytime from now, it will become operational and the issues of herdsmen going about innocent citizens will be a thing of the past, he said.

NAN also quoted Abubakar as saying that the Armed Forces had conducted more than 13 operations in the country.

It becomes important to put those operations so as to have a comprehensive security sector to mitigate various security challenges we have been experiencing in the North- East which has just finished.

We are mopping up the rescue operation through operation rescue final and other operations put in place by other services.

On Boko Haram, the defence spokesman said the military was committed to rescuing all individuals held hostage by the insurgents.

READ ALSO: Catholic bishop warns of negative effects of killings in Southern Kaduna, others

The rescue issue of all individuals that have been with the terrorists is ongoing.

 I am assuring Nigerians that the Armed forces and security agents will never leave any stone unturned unless we rescue all those that have been taken hostage by the Boko Haram.

The Nigerian military and security agents are extending their hands of fellowship in a way of collaboration, synergising and seeking your cooperation and understanding.

Just on Thursday, January 5, former minister of aviation Femxi Fani-Kayode released very gory pictures which he claimed were from the killings in Southern Kaduna during the Christmas festivities in December 2016.

The pictures, mostly too graphic to be published, showed scores of people reportedly killed in gruesome fashion by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

Source: Legit.ng
FDA seeks to update the way the term healthy is used on the labels of foods sold in the United States, as explained in an enforcement guidance document released in September 2016. In this guidance, FDA expanded the list of nutrients that can be included in healthy, which were originally outlined in 1993. In addition, FDA updated its thinking on the health effects of certain types of fat. In this podcast, Ivan Wasserman, partner, Amin Talati Upadhye, and Sandy Almendarez, editor in chief, INSIDER, discuss FDAs action on the word healthy, including:

FDAs movements against KIND LLC using the word healthy on its labelling, and the argument the bar brand made that allowed it to keep the term on its packaging.

The definition of nutrient-content claims and how low carb claims are technically misbranded.

FDAs traditional thinking of the term healthy, which determined it could only be used for products that contained certain nutrients and didnt contain excess levels of other ingredients.

The shift of FDAs thinking on what is beneficial for human health, and how the agency is better aligning its practices with the way consumers view their wellness.

Links and resources:

This podcast was recorded at the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) annual conference in October 2016, and INSIDER apologized for the poor audio quality.

*BONUS* stay to the end of the podcast to hear a surprise song in line with the CRN Conference karaoke tradition.

Got feedback? Email Almendarez at [email protected], or tweet to @NatProdINSIDER using the hashtag #INSIDERPodcast.
Looking at a mill model NPS Subscribe | What is RSS News Release Date: January 6, 2017

January 6, 2017 Contact: Phil Lupsiewicz, 978-275-1705 Lowell, Massachusetts. LOWELL, MA  Lowell National Historical Park is waiving museum fees at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum on Monday, January 16, 2017, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The Boott Cotton Mills Museum tells the story of Americas Industrial Revolution, and the rise, fall, and rebirth of Lowell. Come experience the operating 1920s weave room, and learn about the history, heritage and people of Lowell.



For this holiday, the Boott Cotton Mills Museum at Lowell National Historical Park will be open from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. The Mill Girl and Immigrant exhibit, located at 40 French Street, will be open 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to begin their visit to the Park at the Visitor Center, open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., at 246 Market Street. Free parking is available near the Visitor Center at 304 Dutton Street.



For more information about Lowell National Historical Park visit



The National Park Service commemorates the story and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. throughout the country. Visit the place of his birth in Atlanta, Georgia at the

NPS LOWELL, MA  Lowell National Historical Park is waiving museum fees at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum on Monday, January 16, 2017, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The Boott Cotton Mills Museum tells the story of Americas Industrial Revolution, and the rise, fall, and rebirth of Lowell. Come experience the operating 1920s weave room, and learn about the history, heritage and people of Lowell.For this holiday, the Boott Cotton Mills Museum at Lowell National Historical Park will be open from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. The Mill Girl and Immigrant exhibit, located at 40 French Street, will be open 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to begin their visit to the Park at the Visitor Center, open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., at 246 Market Street. Free parking is available near the Visitor Center at 304 Dutton Street.For more information about Lowell National Historical Park visit www.nps.gov/lowe or call 978-970-5000. For information about national parks nationwide that are participating in fee-free events for this and other dates, please visit www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks.htm The National Park Service commemorates the story and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. throughout the country. Visit the place of his birth in Atlanta, Georgia at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site . Get inspired by Dr. Kings message at the site of one of his most famous speeches, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Follow the history of Dr. King and the famous 1965 Voting Rights March through Alabama along the Selma to Montgomery National Historical Trail




On Friday, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva, in the first independent account of the incident, said an estimated 30 civilians had been killed and more than 300 wounded in a Bangui market by the Chadian soldiers without provocation. Rupert Colville, a spokesman for Navi Pillay, the human rights commissioner, said in a briefing that many of the victims included children, people with disabilities, pregnant women and the elderly, as they were less able to run for their lives.

The episode showed the extent to which Chad has become implicated in a conflict in which militias claiming to represent Muslim and Christian civilians attack their rival communities.

Given the alleged civilian killings by Chadian soldiers, it would have been untenable for the U.N. to re-hat the Chadian contingents, said Adam Smith, who studies peacekeeping at the International Peace Institute. The U.N. needs Chad not to play an unhelpful role with regard to resolving the crisis in CAR. Chad has clearly been the most influential neighbor in terms of CARs political stability or instability.

The latest accounts of violence in the Central African Republic came on Thursday in a report by Human Rights Watch that described more killings in remote areas by both Christian and Muslim militias.

These horrendous killings show that the French and African Union peacekeeping deployment is not protecting villages from these deadly attacks, said Lewis Mudge, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The violence has forced almost 640,000 people to flee their homes, including more than 200,000 in Bangui, the capital. More than 80,000, mostly Muslims, have fled to neighboring countries. The country faces the risk of a de facto partition, with the east controlled by Muslim Seleka fighters, and Christians concentrated in the west.

United Nations officials have for months warned of the prospect of ethnic cleansing in the country. Mr. Ban, speaking Wednesday in Brussels to drum up support for a United Nations force, hauntingly referred to it again, pointing out how many people had fled their homes to save their lives. Genocide was avoided in large measure because of the mass exodus of minorities to areas where they felt they were safe  with their own people, he said.
This January, the Uruguayan musician, writer and visual artist Dani Umpi had a solo exhibition in Punta del Este, a resort town on Uruguays eastern coast. It was held at Galerie Xippas, a sleek showroom recently opened by the Paris-based dealer Renos Xippas. Hanging on the gallerys walls were bright collages made of endless tiny scraps of magazine images, and shadow boxes containing bird faces wearing neon wigs, a vivid display of Mr. Umpis penchant for bizarreness and sarcasm.

Cutting-edge art and high-profile galleries are new to Uruguay, a country that is typically associated with modesty and restraint. But its eastern coast  particularly Punta del Este and the nearby villages of Jose Ignacio and Pueblo Garzon  has become a warm-weather winter hangout for wealthy globe-trotters. Between tanning at the beach and shimmying at poolside parties, they are scooping up local paintings and sculptures.
Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal.

If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first American refugee effort in a nation reachable by land to the United States, the White House said, putting the violence in Honduras on the level of humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and Vietnam, where such programs have been conducted in the past amid war and major crises.

Critics of the plan were quick to pounce, saying it appeared to redefine the legal definition of a refugee and would only increase the flow of migration to the United States. Administration officials said they believed the plan could be enacted through executive action, without congressional approval, as long as it did not increase the total number of refugees coming into the country.

By moving decisions on refugee claims to Honduras, the plan aims to slow the rush of minors crossing into the United States illegally from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which has overwhelmed the border this year. More than 45,000 unaccompanied minors from those three nations have arrived since Oct. 1, straining federal resources to the point that some agencies will exhaust their budgets by next month, the secretary of Homeland Security has said.
MEXICO CITY  Maria Jose Alvarado was to travel from Honduras to London on Wednesday to compete with some of the worlds most glamorous young women in the Miss World pageant. Instead, seven months after she was crowned Miss Honduras, the police there said that her body, and that of her older sister, had been pulled from the sand of a riverbank near where she disappeared.

A self-described foodie who loved Prada and lip gloss, Ms. Alvarado, 19, worked as a hostess on a popular television variety show, and was pursuing a degree in computing at a local technical college.

She and her sister, Sofia, had not been seen since last Thursday, when they attended a birthday party for Sofias boyfriend, Plutarco Ruiz, at a water park near their home in western Honduras.

Mr. Ruiz was arrested Tuesday and the police told local news media that he is the leading suspect in deaths of the sisters. Their disappearance has riveted the country, where violence against women is all too common.
ALGIERS  With oil prices at their lowest in five years and showing few signs of hitting bottom, Algeria is feeling the pinch.

Though its problems are dwarfed by the impact on Russia, for example, Algeria may have to rein back many of the policies it has held dear over many years. Generous subsidies, for one, may have to be scaled back despite the potential risk of social unrest.

Oil revenues make up 97 percent of the countrys hard currency earnings and 60 percent of the governments budget. Like Russia, which has seen a full-scale run on its currency, Algeria has made little effort to diversify the economy away from oil and gas. The governor of the central bank, Mohammed Laksaci, has warned that the oil and gas dividend will not last forever, though nearly $200 billion of foreign reserves can help cushion the blow in the short term.

This capacity to resist such shocks will disappear quickly if the price of oil stays at a low level for a long time, Mr. Laksaci said recently, deploring the economys dependence on oil.
Never thought of visiting Ireland? Well, you might be soon. In our Breakout Role series, we take a look at places that have seen huge increases in tourism in the last few years, and try to figure out whats causing all the hype.

For the United Kingdom, 2016 has been a pretty crazy year. After the government held a referendum this past June on whether or not it should leave the European Union, the country voted to exit the EU and its previously well-liked prime minister, David Cameron, resigned from office.

Although there have been signs that Brexit will ultimately help tourism in the UK, as well as a good deal of evidence to the contrary, Ireland, Britains neighbors to the west, have seen a record year, with more visitors than ever planning trips to the island nation.

With 10.5 international visitors coming into the country in 2016, the year has been dubbed Irish tourisms best year ever. This trend isnt anything new though, as foreign visitors have increased by around 3 million people in the past four years alone.

Photo: Giuseppe Milo, CC-BY

Even with the threat of Brexit looming, the Irish hospitality industry is expected to continue its growth in the years to come, with tourism set to earn the country 5.7 billion dollars in 2017 despite Britain beginning the formal EU withdrawal process by this upcoming March. Eric White, the vice president of sales, marketing and operations for European vacation company Celtic Tours says UKs exit from the EU will likely only affect British travellers, leaving most other markets untouched.

[For people in the UK] it used to be really easy and inexpensive to go overeven for a long weekend. Now I think that we could see some of that lessening, White says. But as far as [visitors from other countries] I dont really see Brexit as having much of an impact.

For other English speaking tourists, White says a familiarity with the language and a well-founded sense of safety helps draw more visitors each year. For Americans in specific, common heritage often plays a role as well, as there are around 35 million Americansaround seven times more than the entire population of Irelandwho trace their backgrounds to the Celtic nation.

Photo: David Ramalho, CC-BY

Growth has had its costs, though, and the hotel industryespecially the heavily populated and highly visited capital, Dublinhas not developed enough to keep up. While the problem persists elsewhere, its at its worst in the countrys largest city, with available accommodations decreasing by six percent over the last five years, even as tourism has flourished.

For locals, especially those in more isolated areas outside of the major city centers, the influx of foreign tourists provides a chance to showcase their culture and hospitality. For Bernard McMullan of Tourism Ireland, an organization that promotes the entire island internationally, this helps cultivate the overall travel experience for international tourists.

Its the single most important thing that the folks coming home from vacations tell their friends, McMullan says. [We live in an era where] people are offering opinions and sharing their thoughts immediately, so its up to us to make sure folks are having a good time.

Local hospitality also lends itself to a very specific method of marketing, as it allows Ireland to convince tourists that the country offers an experience unlike that found anywhere else in Europe.

We try to portray ourselves in terms of a unique and authentic offeringthat we provide something different, McMullan says.

Photo: Fred Bigio, CC-BY

When thinking of Ireland, its difficult to avoid thoughts of sharp, green-topped seaside hills jutting out over a deep blue coast. These are the Cliffs of Moher, perhaps Irelands most famous natural attraction. However, highlight-filled sightseeing trails, such as the Ring of Kerry in the southwest and the Wild Atlantic Way, which spans the countrys entire western coast, less prominent landscapes to foreign tourists.

In terms of history, Dublin is practically a full vacation in itself. The city is of course home to the Guinness Storehouse, as well as Trinity College, the world-famous university whose alumni include literary legends such as Edmund Burke, Oscar Wilde and Jonathon Swift. The college is also home to the incredibly historical Book of Kells, a Latin-language book of Gospels dating back to 800 A.D.

Whiskey has brought tourists to the island for years, with tons of renowned breweries offering tours and tastings, but there has long been a perception that the countrys greatest weakness was its cuisine. The assumption that Ireland doesnt have any good food to offer its visitors has plagued the nations reputation in the past, but, according to White, things have changed in a big way.

Over the years, Ireland has had a little bit of a bad rap on the cuisine side of things but its sort of a stereotype that doesnt fit anymore, he says.

Together, all of these elements combine into a truly holistic experience for tourists, one that is especially important on an island that is often the only stop during a vacation. White points to the fact the Ireland is hardly larger than the state of New Jersey, which he sees as a major advantage because it means tourists can see just about anything during their stay, if theyre willing to commit the time.

If youre going there and you spend seven nights or something like that it gives you a pretty good opportunity to see what the country has to offer, White says.

Flights Rates: Current prices can be found for between $632 and $1,167.

Travel Concerns: There are no major safety concerns for travel to Ireland, and a tourist visa is not required for entry.

Currency Exchange: 1 USD = 0.96 Euros

More Info: For international tourists, both Tourism Ireland and Discover Ireland feature accommodation details, flights information and sample itineraries.

Top photo: Andrea Puggioni, CC-BY

Dillon Thompson is a University of Georgia student and freelance writer with a love for travel and an addiction to coffee and hip-hop music.
From breaking plates in Denmark to burning scarecrows in Ecuador, there are many thought-provoking New Years traditions, including quite a few that focus on lucky food. How did these foods get associated with the New Year? Some traditions began in the last few centuries while others may date back to ancient times.

Heres the background on a tasty few.



In Spain and some Spanish-speaking countries, it is said that eating one grape per each stroke of New Years Eve clock at midnight can improve your luck all year long. The tradition of eating 12 lucky grapes, or las doces uvas de la suerte, is at least a century old. Unlike other culinary traditions inspired by ancient practices and rituals, this custom may date back to a bumper grape crop in 1895. There were so many grapes that year it is said that the King of Span distributed them for the holiday.



The Czech Republic, Italy and Brazil are three countries where lentils are associated with the New Year. In the Czech Republic it is traditional to eat lentils on New Years Day. In Italy lentils are served on New Years Eve just after midnight, often with greens, sausage or roast pork. In Brazil the first meal of the year is also likely lentils, served with rice or in lentil soup. The tradition may date back to the ancient Rome, when lentils were a very valuable crop and jars of lentils were exchanged on the first day of the year. Their coin-like shape represents wealth and good fortune.



The scales of fish are also said to resemble coins and that may be one reason the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians think it is lucky to eat boiled cod on New Years Day. While boiled cod might sound a little bland, Kogt Torsk or boiled cod is served with boiled potatoes, mustard sauce, hard-boiled eggs and pickles.



Wishing for prosperity seems to be a theme in the foods chosen for new year festivities and Greeces customs are no exception. Since the days of ancient Greece, the pomegranate has symbolized eternal life and abundance in mythology. Today in Greece, it is customary on New Years Eve to smash a pomegranate on the floor before a homes front door. When the pomegranate splits, the seeds, which symbolize prosperity, are revealed.



Cornbread is a traditional New Years food in the U.S., where it is served in Southern states with collard greens and black-eyed peas. Peas for pennies, greens for dollars, and cornbread for the color gold, goes a saying in the South. But the U.S. is not the only place that serves up corn bead on the first day: In Portugal, eating a meal of cornbread with a green broth, known as Caldo Verde, is a traditional way to start the year.



Seollal, the Korean New Year, occurs on January 28. For that celebration, the most commonly eaten dish is rice cake soup or tteokguk. As well as rice cakes, the soup may be topped with eggs, roasted seaweed, green onions and shredded brisket. One theory about the choice of this food for a New Years dish is that the rice cakes or tteok signify purity and a fresh start. The dish has traditionally been used in religious rites since ancient times, although the first written mention was in an 18th century book. Eating tteokguk on the lunar holiday is so widespread you can ask a Korean person how old they are by asking how many bowls of this soup theyve eaten  in Korea, everyone is a year older on New Years Day.



Algeria celebrates New Years Day on January 1 along with much of the world, but a few weeks later there is also the Yannayar festival, which has been observed for more than 1,000 years. This Amazigh (Berber) celebration takes place between January 12 and 15 and marks the beginning of a new farming year. The traditional meal on that day will include chicken and a couscous dish which includes seven varieties of vegetables.



In Japan, which also observes a lunar New Year, the traditional food is toshi koshi soba. The noodles are eaten while temple bells ring on the eve of the new year and their name means from one year to another. While New Years Day in Japan may be a time for celebrating with family and friends, the eve is usually spent quietly, sipping on soup, slurping up soba noodles, which symbolize good fortune, and sampling toppings of spring onions, tempura flakes and fish cakes.



The Pennsylvania Dutch, who originally came from Germany, brought this custom when they immigrated to the U.S. The tradition may largely be a matter of timing, as pigs were traditionally butchered just before the Christmas holiday and cabbage harvested in the fall took that long to pickle. But pigs were also thought to bring good luck as pigs root forward, unlike some other animals, and this was thought to symbolize progress.
BOSTON Massachusetts continues the 115-year-old tradition of restricting marijuana sales, despite the passing of a ballot initiative in November. The Massachusetts House and Senate passed a bill Dec. 28 in less than half an hour that will push back the timetable for the opening of retail marijuana stores by six months to July 1, 2018.

But never fear. You can still legally have one ounce of marijuana in your back pocket. The law was initially passed on Nov. 8 after a ballot initiative (Question 4) won 54 percent of the vote, and legalization went into effect on Dec. 15. The law allows adults to possess and use limited amounts of marijuana and grow up to a dozen plants in their homes, as long as they dont sell them.

But six legislators met during an informal session the last Wednesday of December to pass an additional bill changing the timetable for recreational shops to open, and without public debate.

Governor Charles Baker signed the bill on Friday, Dec. 30 as a small group of 15 protesters gathered outside of the State House. The time adjustment from Jan. 1, 2018 to July 1, 2018 gives Massachusetts Treasurer Deb Goldberg and her department additional time to assemble a new regulatory body called the Cannabis Control Commission. The treasurer now has until Oct. 1 to appoint the group, and all other deadlines are pushed back by six months.

Activists were not thrilled with the circumstances of the law passing during an informal session. Jim Borghesani, the spokesman for the Yes on 4 campaign, told Paste, We are very disappointed that the Legislature has decided to alter Question 4 in an informal session with very little notice regarding proposed changes. We are willing to consider technical changes to Question 4 so that the new law is implemented in a timely and responsible manner.

On Boston Herald Radio, Senate President Stan Rosenberg told listeners that We came to the agreement for a six-month delay to get it right. He mentioned that in a meeting with advocates, The first thing that we did was say, Nope, were not changing the Dec. 15 deadline, possession and use will be legal Dec. 15 as will home grow. Rosenberg cited recommendations from Colorado legislators, which went through a similar process and timetable when the state allowed recreational shops to open in 2014. Rosenberg supported Question 4.

Rosenberg told Paste in a statement, This short delay will allow the necessary time for the Legislature to work with stakeholders on improving the new law. Luckily, we are in a position where we can learn from the experiences of other states to implement the most responsible recreational marijuana law in the country.

So what exactly can you do when youre in Massachusetts and want to smoke some pot?



 You can grow, possess, and use marijuana in Massachusetts if youre 21 and older.

 Specifically, up to one ounce in public, and use and possession of up to ten ounces at home.

 You can grow up to 6 plants per person at home, with up to 12 marijuana plants per household.

 You can give up to one ounce to another person 21 years or older for free.

 You cant sell it, or transport over state lines, and you cant mail it in a package.

 You cant consume in public or on public transportation, public parks, and schools.

 You will be able to buy recreational marijuana when dispensaries open, on July 1, 2018.

 You can still get an OUI (operating under the influence) charge, with a misdemeanor for the first offense. Massachusetts has no minimum amount of marijuana standard, so if youre pulled over, the judgment will be on a case-by-case basis.

 Once its for sale, it will be taxed 3.5 percent. Municipalities can choose to tax an additional two percent. All tax revenue goes to the Marijuana Regulation Fund.



One thing the new law hasnt changed is the medical marijuana law of 2012. Patients registered with the state and approved for medical marijuana usage can still buy it at one of nine registered marijuana dispensaries.

The states rigorous application process has allowed nine dispensaries to open. Patients have to get a referral from a certified marijuana prescriber to receive cannabis. Norton Arbelaez is the Director of Government Affairs at the states largest dispensary, New England Treatment Access (NETA), which has two locations near Boston. He explained the diverse clientele of NETA in an interview with Paste. We have several pediatric patients. We serve kids with epilepsy, and our oldest patient is 96 or 97 years old. We span the gamut in terms of patients. Regulations do not allow marijuana dispensaries to advertise or even discuss pricing, but some patients discuss pricing on Reddit and keep active spreadsheets. Arbelaez did say that the prices are, very competitive.

NETA has daily menus of different strains, to be digested in capsules, pre-rolled joints, edibles, and even lotions.

The state continues to review applications for new medical marijuana dispensaries. Meanwhile, non-medical consumers will wait until 2018 to buy.

The recreational marijuana law has already survived two ballot measure challenges in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and large sums of cash thrown to the opposition campaign by Sheldon Adelson and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.
Ever since Conan OBrien started doing full remote episodes in countries like Cuba, Korea and Armenia, Ive hoped that one day he would become the comic version of Anthony Bourdain, traveling the globe and making an ass of himself on every continent in a weekly hour-long show. Now, it looks like my dream might come true. But whether Conan himself shares my vision is something I can only speculate about.

On Thursday, a Turner executive at the Consumer Electronics Show suggested that Conans show might go weekly with a stronger emphasis on travel and remote segments. Later that day, another TBS executive issued a statement saying that they have no plans to change the format or frequency of his nightly talk show. Did the first executive speak too soon? Or is Conan going to stay nightly after all?

Theres no doubt that a weekly Conan travel show would be goodalmost too good, like heroin so pure it kills you. OBrien is the best in the business at remote segments and, right now, he has almost no competition. What was once a cornerstone of late-night television is all but gone in the post-Letterman/Leno world. Sure, James Corden went to a Starbucks that one time to make an amateur theater production, but these days, late-night comedians on major networks are sticking pretty close to their desks and chasing the instant gratification of viral success instead of producing more evergreen work. It would be a smart move on TBSs part to have Conan double down on his strengths, especially because none of his competitors seem to share them.

That decision would also be a gift to Conan fans. So far, almost half of his top ten most-viewed segments on Conan have been remotes: riding around with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube in a Lyft, meeting people on Tinder with James Franco, and more. His international segments havent gone mega-viral but they perform solidly across the board because they deliver Conan at his contradictory best: a tall, gangly, awkward, and incredibly intelligent guy who also seems to have an irrepressible need to act like a buffoon wherever he goes. There are few pleasures greater than watching a PR person or a business owner try to corral Conan through a segment while he misbehaves, whether its him comparing sausage-making to late-night hosting in front of a German butcher or him getting plastered at the Havana Club Rum Museum while a tour guide patiently abides his antics, even singing him Guantanamera while he lies on the bar.

Its not easy to pull those international remote segments off, either. In lesser hands, Conans work abroad would come off as mocking or disrespectful, like an American who sneers at other cultures traditions. But the host always makes sure the joke comes back around to him. When he visited a Buddhist temple in Korea with Steven Yeun, for example, he complained loudly about all of the wind chimes. But Yeun, in Korean, secretly informs the resident monk that Conan has lots of issues, and the tone of the segment changes completely, making Conan into more of a pathetic fish-out-of-water than a powerful cultural appropriator invading spaces and traditions that should be closed to him. OBrien ensures that were always laughing at him, not at the culture in which hes immersed himself. We feel like the local making fun of the tourist, not the other way around. As Conan himself once told Jake Tapper during a CNN interview about his Cuba visit, When I behave like an idiot, its a universal language. I did not want this in any way to be snarky, or mean, or cutting about their culture.

But would Conan go along with a weekly, travel-heavy Parts Unknown-type show if thats indeed what the head honchos at TBS have in store for him? On one hand, we have the sentiment he expressed in that same Jake Tapper interview suggesting that hes ready to break free from Burbank: I look for any excuse to leave the studio. After 22 years of hosting a show, I will jump at any opportunity. I will shoot a whole show from your basement in D.C. I will go anywhere. On the other hand, we have the Conan OBrien from Conan OBrien Cant Stop who, when asked whether or not he could have fun without an audience in front of him, pauses for a long time before giving the camera a quizzical look. All performers are needy, of course, but Conan has been especially transparent about the fact that he craves the laughter of a live audience. Thats part of what makes him so endearing and its probably why hes stayed in the late night game for so long, despite the demanding schedule and the major setback he suffered at NBC.

If Conan can cut the studio audience cord, though, he could redefine his career. He spent the first twenty-five years of his career perfecting Letterman-esque zany late-night humor. (When Letterman retired, Conan said, We will not see a man of his talents and comedic integrity again in our lifetimes, but he was also being modest. From my perspective, OBrien has already lived up to his idol.) He could spend the next chapter of his time on television being a wise globetrotting fool, exploring new cultures and bringing different parts of the world together through comedy. As Conan told The Hollywood Reporter, his international work is almost like a form of diplomacy, where the American goes over and theyre laughing at me. Devoting his energy to that kind of comedy full-time would only secure his legacy. A few decades from now, Jimmy Fallon will reflect on his career and see an endless stream of completely forgettable celebrity mini-games. Conan could look back on his career and see an entire planet.

He may not have gotten The Tonight Show, but he could still get the last laugh.

May Saunders is a professional dog walker living in Minneapolis and an occasional freelance writer. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging out with her cat, who does not need to be walked. Follow her on Twitter.
U.S. Online Gambling Progress Carries Over into 2017

January 06, 2017 Matthew Kredell Contributor

As frustrating as last year ended up being to not cross the finish line in any state, there is progress carrying over from last year in Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan that could make 2017 the year that online poker expands to a key(stone) state and solidifies its state-by-state advancement in the United States.

The Pennsylvania legislature already is back in session and there remains $100 million in the state budget earmarked to come from gambling expansion. The governor has asked for that money. One of the legislative branches, the House, passed an online gaming bill in 2016.

There also is the matter of the local tax share for slot machine revenue that needs attention early in the session and the House tied the issue to online gaming by connecting the bills late last year.

There are members of the Senate supportive of online poker. Sen. Jay Costa has announced his plans to introduce legislation that would legalize internet gaming and daily fantasy sports, while re-enacting the local share provisions.

A negative heading into the session is that internet gaming lost its champion in the House in Rep. John Payne, who retired. However, in his role as chair of the Gaming Oversight Committee, Payne already did his part in crafting passable language. Now it's up to the Senate to move or find another way to fund that $100 million. Payne's House colleagues have shown they are willing to keep up the pressure.

Image courtesy of Poker Players Alliance

Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas expects to see a decision on Internet gaming's future in Pennsylvania made between April and June, when the state will want to have its budget resolved. If it's true what he believes, that there are the votes to pass Internet gaming in the Senate if the leadership allows for it, then the first half of the year could be monumental for online poker.

Ultimately, the way around [the Senate leadership's resistance] is going to be the Senate realizing that the few people within their body that don't want to see it need to be overruled because the need for regulation is so apparent, not only from a consumer-protection standpoint but from the fact their state is drowning in deficit, Pappas said. That is not going away. Their budget issues are becoming even more dire.

If Pennsylvania, the sixth-most populous state in the country, passes online poker, that will put pressure on New York to act.

New York cannot have full online gaming because the state constitution prohibits gambling except on state lotteries, horse racing and casinos. The NY Senate got around the prohibition by classifying internet poker as a game of skill.

Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, who introduced poker legislation in his branch, told PokerNews last year that the Assembly was not ready to do the same. Having two neighboring states  Pennsylvania and New Jersey  enter into online gaming is likely to get the Assembly members to figure out quickly that poker is a game of skill before their casinos get left behind.

The New York legislature will be meeting this month to work with the governor on the state budget. The first step for online poker is to get on that budget. If it's in the governor's budget and the Senate moves the bill again, the Assembly will have to take a serious look at the issue.

New York is going to be interesting because Mr. Pretlow seems to have a different opinion about the issue depending on the day, Pappas said. So there's still a lot of work to be done there and we've done outreach as an organization with our membership to encourage the governor to put iPoker revenue in the budget. We're doing the same with Senate and Assembly leaders.

There's still a lot of work to be done there and we've done outreach as an organization with our membership to encourage the governor to put iPoker revenue in the budget.

If Pennsylvania and New York legalize online poker, even Sheldon Adelson doesn't have enough money to turn back the clock on the state-by-state march of regulation.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Michigan, which moved internet gaming through a committee last year, and a whole host of states that previously have given the issue little attention, will be looking to join the fray. The floodgates truly will be open in a way that gaming-centric New Jersey and Nevada and tiny Delaware, couldn't do.

After Darth Adelson couldn't get the newly elected Republican lawmakers he supported to even feign interest in pursuing his internet gambling ban in the Congressional lame-duck session to end the year, the threat level for Adelson to move a new variation of his Restoring America's Wire Act (RAWA) through Congress seems low.

We'll see new legislative attempts, but I don't think they'll receive much enthusiasm, Pappas said. I think every year that passes it makes it more difficult for this to happen through legislative channels.

Even with a Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, and Adelson being the biggest Republican donor, federal interference in the states' rights to decide their role in gambling goes against Republican principles.

Every year that passes it makes it more difficult for this to happen through legislative channels.

However, that doesn't mean the danger of a federal ban is over. Adelson has said he will devote whatever capital needed to get his online gambling ban and the power of a billionaire can never be ignored. Having failed in the legislature, he may look to achieve his goals by other means.

Pappas sees Adelson's best chance at achieving his goal of stopping internet gambling in 2017 is going through the Donald Trump administration.

We're not going to underestimate the power of the purse, Pappas said. It will always be our concern that he tries to sneak it into some bill or go the administrative route and seek a reversal of the Wire Act with a memorandum through the Department of Justice. It's something we need to be aware of and educate the new DOJ of why the Wire Act memo from 2011 is completely consistent with what the courts and Congress have said.

Adelson ultimately backed Trump, and vice president Mike Pence publicly supported the Restoration of Americas Wire Act (RAWA) as governor of Indiana, but Trump himself hasn't expressed any interest in an online gaming ban, and, in fact, once looked into having a casino he owned get involved with the internet.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore

We don't have any reason to believe Donald Trump wants to make this a priority, Pappas said of an internet gambling ban. There's nothing we've seen from him or anyone associated with his camp, other than Mike Pence. There are much bigger issues for this administration to tackle, certainly in the first six months to a year, that I can't imagine this will be on the radar screen.

How Trump's attorney general (he's nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama) wants to handle online gaming is a different story and that's where Adelson's influence poses the biggest threat.

There's nothing we've seen from him or anyone associated with his camp, other than Mike Pence.

In 2014 and 2015, California was the most likely state to legalize online poker. Last year, it fell to second behind Pennsylvania. Entering 2017, California only merits mention at the end of this article.

Entering its 10th year of discussion, online poker legislation in California has become reminiscent of Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology faced an eternity of rolling an immense boulder up a hill only to watch it come back and hit him.

After Assemblyman Adam Gray worked tirelessly to get the horse racing industry on board and build the largest coalition to date in support of online poker regulation, tribal infighting over suitability standards killed the bill.

Gray made a desperate Hail Mary to add a five-year ban for PokerStars to his bill at the end of the session to get the Pechanga coalition to stop its opposition, and in doing so only alienated the Morongo coalition that is partnered with PokerStars.

Now tribes are upset with Gray and Gray certainly can't be happy with the personal attacks he and his representatives received from both sides.

While the Pechanga coalition did come off its demands for a permanent ban to allow for a penalty box, and PokerStars did support legislation that included a hefty $20 million fine, the sides are still far apart with no compromise in sight.

It's unclear who wants to go to the trouble of championing online poker in California this year. Former bill sponsors, Assemblyman Mike Gatto and Sen. Isadore Hall, are no longer in office.

I think there are a lot of hurt feelings after last session, Pappas said. We are not thoroughly engaged in California. It's frustrating to say the least, because it seems as if it's in a perpetual stalemate.

Horse racing's support is what brought the bill closer than ever last year and there's no guarantee the deal for a $60 million stipend that got it done will hold up another year. It always seemed like a tenuous agreement that was only allowed by some tribes because the bill wasn't going to pass anyway.

It's frustrating to say the least, because it seems as if it's in a perpetual stalemate.

The $60 million figure is more annual revenue than any one site is likely to generate and the fact that it comes from the state's end means there is less incentive for lawmakers to pass a bill. But that's another reason California doesn't have any urgency to legalize online poker; it doesn't currently have the financial troubles of Pennsylvania.

Ultimately, I don't think the deal for horse racing money upended the bill last year, but it certainly could be what upends a bill in the future because people point to it as a reason not to do it, said Pappas, who does believe it's important to a bill's passage to continue working with the racetracks. What ultimately is left for California after these other interests get their piece of the pie? It doesn't become an attractive revenue source for California and it's a less attractive revenue source for people operating.

While the progress made in California early in 2016 has rolled down that hill and crushed Sisyphus, the rocks are nearing the top in Pennsylvania and New York. They still may come crashing down in the 2017 or this may be the year for which poker enthusiasts have been waiting.

It's obviously disappointing that we haven't gotten a bill on a governor's desk the past three years and that's certainly something we hope to remedy in 2017," Pappas concluded.

Sharelines With Darth Adelson and his capital, the danger of a federal online gambling ban is not over.
Former Philadelphia deputy city solicitor brings thorough knowledge of high-dollar-value/complex tax cases

By: Chamberlain Hrdlicka

Contact

Rose Strong

***@furiarubel.com Rose Strong

End

-- Chamberlain Hrdlicka is pleased to announce that it has added former Philadelphia Deputy City Solicitor Adam M. Koelsch to its Philadelphia office.Koelsch comes to Chamberlain Hrdlicka from the City of Philadelphia Law Department, where he represented the city in high-dollar-value and complex local tax cases at administrative hearings before the Philadelphia Tax Review Board. He also was involved in agency appeals and collection actions at the Court of Common Pleas and in appeals at the Commonwealth Court.Koelsch joins other former Philadelphia legal department attorneys at Chamberlain Hrdlicka, adding to the legal insight the firm offers in state and local tax law as well as tax controversy. With four offices in major metro areas nationwide, Chamberlain Hrdlicka is one of the nation's most profitable mid-size law firms.Prior to joining the City of Philadelphia Law Department, Koelsch worked at the district attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York, one of the largest prosecutor's offices in the country. He first was an assistant district attorney in the trial division, handling a significant criminal case load. In 2010, Koelsch moved to the Appeals Bureau, where he became a Senior Appellate Attorney in 2012. During that time, he wrote appellate briefs for the state and federal courts in a variety of cases, including homicide and fraud.After earning a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Koelsch went on to earn his law degree from Brooklyn Law School. He is admitted to practice in New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.About Chamberlain Hrdlicka  Chamberlain Hrdlicka is a diversified business law firm with offices in Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Antonio. The firm represents both public and private companies as well as individuals and family-owned businesses across the nation in a wide variety of practice areas, including commercial and business litigation, tax, tax controversy and litigation, federal white-collar criminal defense, corporate, securities and finance, employment law and employee benefits, energy law, estate planning and administration, intellectual property, international and immigration law, and real estate and construction law.
Contact

Nathaniel Moikabi

***@nathanielmoikabi.com Nathaniel Moikabi

End

-- Moikabi Investments is inviting visitors to explore its new website. The new website has been designed to provide the ultimate user-friendly experience with improved navigation and functionality throughout, allowing customers to access detailed services information with the option to share information across all major social networking sites.The site includes extensive services information to help customers understand Moikabi Investment's complete range of Information Technology solutions. Information & graphics work together to provide a detailed overview of Moikabi Investment's capabilities across a wide range of sectors, including retail, office and outdoor.Created with the user experience firmly in mind, the website has been designed using the latest technology so the site is compatible with today's browsers and mobile devices - without the need for Adobe Flash to view it.The new website means that customers can now benefit from richer online content that is easier to navigate and share with others, assisting the specification process. This is a result of talking with customers and gaining valuable feedback.On the Moikabi Investments website, visitors can also stay informed with the latest news of the company, and the whole information technology industry. The News & Media section features the latest announcements and opinion pieces from industry experts.Furthermore, the new website allows users to share products and pages that interest them with others across Facebook, Twitter and Google+.Visit the new website and give your feedback by posting a comment at www.facebook.com/moikabiinvestments.About Moikabi InvestmentsMoikabi Investments is a Consulting and Services company in the Information Technology Industry established in 2012 at Ramotswa, Botswana. Moikabi Investments customer-centric approach comes from understanding that clients need more than technology professionals.They offer a strong tech support team in common and niche skill areas. Their offshore partners in USA work closely with locally situated team as they work to complete projects within time and budget. They currently provide services to a wide spectrum of clients ranging from solopreneurs to small businesses. They are actively engaged in both public and private sector, and are registered under the Laws of Botswana. For more information, visit http://invest.nathanielmoikabi.com
The Philippines welcomes business entrepreneurs and enterprises as it improves the processes for all business systems. Business processes are now streamlined to ensure that everything can get done in just a week.

Media Contact

Rocky Chan

rockychan@enterph.com

6327189503 Rocky Chan6327189503

End

--According to World Bank's annual 'Doing Business 2017: Equal Opportunity for All' report, the Philippines have ranked 99(http://www.manilatimes.net/ph-four-places-ease-business-survey/293387/), upping four places due to the country's upgraded business systems to ease the process for all enterprises and businesses interested in the market.Mara Warwick, World Bank Country Director, said "Authorities have worked toward simplifying business regulations in the Philippines. This is important for the economy to ensure small and medium enterprises can flourish and create jobs for millions of Filipinos."Various agencies and task force of the current administration such as the Ease of Doing Business (EODB), National Competitiveness Council (NCC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) have set reforms in the business agenda to automate and streamline the procedures, which made an impact for the Philippines to rise in business ranking from the previous years.Regarding business procedure, the goal by 2017 ( http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/ philippines- seeks-to-imp... ) is to reduce the process into three steps and be finished within three days. In 2015, the process took sixteen steps and twenty-nine days to complete. By 2016, it trimmed down to six steps and accomplished within eight days. Improvement in terms of online transactions and taxation reforms helped to do business in the Philippines equal and competitive for all.Pursuant to this economic plan, EnterPH, a business consultancy firm in the Philippines, aims to guide both foreign investors and local entrepreneurs from the basics to success in terms of how to do business in the Philippines ( http://enterph.com/ ). Their services range from business registration, bookkeeping and payroll, HR consulting, corporate services, legal services, tax consulting, visa processing, and business matching.For new investors who are testing the waters of the economy, business registration is a challenging ordeal. With EnterPH's mastery of the Philippine business landscape and law, the entire method will become uncomplicated and convenient. As a rising name in the industry, their firm is particular about becoming an entrepreneurial launch pad for foreign investors and clients.True to its name, EnterPH is the entry-point and companion of every business to thrive in the growing competition of the Philippines' emerging and resilient economy. Their firm is comprised of seasoned lawyers and renowned business development consultants to help foreign investors with overall business and investment related needs in the Philippines.All business and media inquiries must be directed to info@enterph.com
End

-- List Properties or Rent a Property in UK through HousesinsaleUK, (January 04, 2017) - For clients who are on the look-out for a flat or a property on rent, or landowners who wish to enlist their property for prospective buyers and tenants, Housesinsale brings a one click away services to connect the two --- prospective buyers and tenants to interested land and house owners. The portal enlists hundreds of properties spread across different cities of United Kingdom at different price ranges.Be it Wolstenholme Square, the most fashionable address of Liverpool, or renting out Churchill Place apartments or the 1-2-3 bedroom apartments at Baltimore Towers, buyers are spoilt for a choice. The portal lists the names of the properties along with their addresses and price tags which makes it easier for the prospective buyer or one who wishes to take it on rent to make a proper comparison between the different properties and choose the best option. There are also lands for sale across counties of Nottingham, Hornsea, Northampton, Bushey, to name a few.The properties on rent are listed separately for convenience. Real estate agents can list the best properties in London, Glasgow or even a country house in Cardiff through Housesinsale. Every property comes with beautiful snapshots of the house and the locality that gives an idea to the buyer as to how it looks like. The properties on sale or rent are both residential and commercial.The portal covers the best of houses and commercial buildings of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. So, next time anyone wishes to sell his property or put it up on rent or buy one, the best choice is just a click away on Houseinsale.Visitst us : https://www.housesinsale.co.uk and
Why not try a weekend wildlife break in Ireland this year? Enjoy astonishing wildlife encounters -- including some of Europe''s best whale and dolphin watching -- on a Discover Wildlife Weekend with Ireland's Wildlife!

Contact

Calvin Jones

***@irelandswildlife.com

+353 21 2348015 Calvin Jones+353 21 2348015

End

-- For the wildlife enthusiast few things beat exploring somewhere new. The heady anticipation of never quite knowing what you might see is intoxicating, and the excitement of a memorable wildlife encounter stays with you forever.Ireland might not be the first place you think of when you're considering a short wildlife trip, but it has a lot going for it as a wildlife destination for UK travellers. Ireland's stunning coastal landscapes offers some truly remarkable wildlife watching opportunities."Wildlife tourism is very much in its infancy here in Ireland," explains Calvin Jones of Ireland's Wildlife, who runs Discover Wildlife Experiences on the West Cork stretch of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way. "It's not widely promoted as a wildlife destination by Irish tourism authorities, so a lot of people are simply unaware of what it has to offer."Calvin's quick to point out that, when it comes to wildlife watching, less people isn't always a bad thing. "Compared to the UK, Ireland's wildlife hotspots are positively peaceful. You can literally go out willdife watching for the day and hardly encounter another soul. It's fantastic."Perched on the edge of the north-east Atlantic, Ireland shares much of its flora and fauna with Britain, but there are differences, and species that you're much more likely to encounter in Ireland, particularly around the coast."Not many people appreciate just how good the Irish coast is for marine wildlife," says Calvin. "It's one of the best places in Europe to see whales and dolphins, for example. I've been whale-watching all over the world, but my best whale and dolphin encounters have all happened right here off the coast of West Cork."2016 was a prime example. In November and December I was showing people lunge-feeding fin whales from a shore-based vantage point overlooking Rosscarbery bay, in October we had the rare treat of an encounter with several mother and calf pairs of Risso's dolphins, and in May were watching breaching humpbacks, dozens of Minke whales and countless basking sharks just off the West Cork coast. Common dolphins are pretty much ubiquitous, as are grey and common seals and the seabird activity can be awe inspiring."Ireland's coastline also has some of Europes best seawatching vantage points, is home to some of its largest seabird colonies, hosts tens of thousands of migrating waders and wildfowl over the winter months, and in recent years breeding pairs of reintroduced white-tailed eagles have spread around the coast from their base in Killarney, Co. Kerry."Ireland is also a stronghold for some species that are hard to see in many parts of the UK, including the charismatic chough, a regular favourite with people on our Discover Wildlife Experiences,"says Calvin, who is keen to raise awareness of Ireland's potential as a wildlife tourism destination, particularly with wildlife enthusiasts across the water in Britain.Ireland's Wildlife has just announced 2017 dates for its Discover Wildlife Weekends based on the West Cork stretch of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way. These dedicated guided wildlife watching weekends run from Friday evening through to Sunday lunch-time, and pack a full itinerary of wildlife watching into the weekend. There are two weekends scheduled for spring (07-09 April and 12-14 May), one for summer (07-09 July) and two for autumn (29 Sep - 02 Oct and 13-15 Oct).For more information visit https://www.irelandswildlife.com/ weekends , email info@irelandswildlife.com or call Calvin on +353 21 2348015.Ireland's Wildlife also offers bespoke wildlife, whale-watching and bird guiding services along the West Cork stretch of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way. Get in touch for details.
Every type of business, whether it sells meat pies or diamond jewellery, should use online strategies to increase awareness of its brand and find new customers. Otherwise, they are losing money to competitors who have strong online presences.

By: Social Panda

Contact

Social Panda

***@socialpanda.com.au Social Panda

End

-- While traditional advertising can help companies promote their products or services to increase sales, to be successful these days, an internet presence is mandatory. Every type of business, whether it sells meat pies or diamond jewellery, should use online strategies to increase awareness of its brand and find new customers. Otherwise, they are losing money to competitors who have strong online presences.It takes more than publishing a website to have a strong online presence. Social Panda creates digital marketing strategies to help businesses build their brand online, generate traffic to their websites and promote their companies using social media. To begin this process, they provide businesses with free assessments of their websites to find out how well their online strategies are working and to find ways to improve them.Social Panda offers a wide variety of services, from web design to search engine optimisation to email marketing so they can create strategies to build a company's online presence. With their services, they can improve a website's search engine ranking so searchers can find them on the first page of search results when trying to find information about the products or services they wish to buy. Social Panda web designers also make sure searchers have access to business websites no matter which devices they are using to search the Internet.With more people using mobile phones, laptops and tablets to go online, it is important for websites to be accessible to those users. By using responsive web design, their webmasters can make sure business websites will adjust to any devices being used so they can accommodate loyal customers and find new ones. To find ways to improve your company's online presence, contact the Social Panda agency ( http://www.socialpanda.com.au/ ) for a free evaluation of your website so they can demonstrate how to improve your online presence and increase sales.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

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By: Heywood Healthcare

Contact

Heywood Healthcare

***@heywood.org Heywood Healthcare

End

-- Heywood Medical Group (HMG) has appointed pediatrician, Sari Miettinen MD, as its medical director effective January 1, 2017.With more than a decade of experience providing high level Pediatric care, Dr. Sari Miettinen joined the Heywood Healthcare family in 2015. In addition to her clinical expertise, Dr. Miettinen brings a strong managerial background to the Medical Director role, focusing on the operational aspects of the growing multi-specialty physician practices and urgent care centers. Additionally, she serves as a liaison to the physicians and advanced practice providers and a member of Heywood Healthcare's senior leadership team.Prior to joining the Heywood Team, Dr. Miettinen served as the Physician site leader at Texas Children's Pediatrics and provided well-child and acute care for Navajo children at the Northern Navajo Medical Center, Shiprock, NM.Dr. Miettinen is also the founder of Optimum Practice Management (OPM), which assists with the development of clinical processes and procedures for new and established medical practices. OPM also assists primary care and specialty practices with transformation into patient-centered medical/specialty homes/practices (PCMH/PCSP). OPM has successfully navigated both multi-specialty and primary care groups through practice transformation and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recognition.Dr. Miettinen received her undergraduate degree from Rice University and her medical degree from the Baylor College of Medicine, where she also completed her residency. She is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics and is Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and active in its Member Section on Administration and Practice Management.###About Athol HospitalA member of the Heywood Healthcare system, Athol Hospital is a 25-bed non-profit, acute care and outpatient facility serving the communities of the North Quabbin region of Massachusetts. Athol Hospital's services include 24/7 Emergency Care, Oncology, Radiology and Laboratory, Diabetes Center and Center for Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation. It is designated as a Critical Access Hospital and Primary Stroke Center, licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and accredited by the Joint Commission.About Heywood HospitalA member of the Heywood Healthcare system, Heywood Hospital is a 134-bed acute care hospital in Gardner, MA, which provides a broad range of high quality medical, surgical, obstetrical, pediatric and behavioral health services on an inpatient and outpatient basis. The hospital's Centers of Excellence include the Watkins Center for Emergency and Acute Care; the LaChance Maternity Center; the Diabetes Center; and the Heywood Heart and Vascular Center, an affiliate of the Heart and Vascular Center of Excellence at UMass Memorial Health Care.About Heywood HealthcareHeywood Healthcare is an independent, community-owned healthcare system serving north central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. It is comprised of Heywood Hospital, a non-profit, 134-bed acute-care hospital in Gardner, MA; Athol Hospital, a 25-bed not-for-profit, Critical Access Hospital in Athol, MA; Heywood Medical Group with primary care physicians and specialists located throughout the region. The organization includes six satellite facilities in MA; Heywood Rehabilitation Center and Heywood Urgent Care in Gardner; West River Health Center in Orange; Winchendon Health Center and Murdock School-based Health Center in Winchendon; Heywood Charitable Foundation; the North Quabbin Community Coalition, an affiliate organization;and upcoming in 2017, The Quabbin Retreat in Petersham.
By: www.britanniacentre.co.uk

Media Contact

Michael Vaughan

admin@britanniacentre.co.uk Michael Vaughan

End

-- A new online shopping centre, Britannia Centre, is pleased to announce that they have space for additional shops and businesses interested in selling their British made goods online to British and overseas customers. All products sold through the website will be made within the United Kingdom, and their business will focus on British and overseas consumers.Vendors who are looking to build an online audience will find that selling goods through Britannia Centre will be an important stepping stone in improving their web presence. Companies will get their own store logo and banner, and they will be able to reach customers more directly than through other websites. All shops are categorized, which will help customers find what they're looking for more quickly and improve their shopping experience.A number of British focused businesses have already begun listing their products on the site, including Silver Sensations, Tricia Cole Jewellery, and Great British Bespoke. New vendors will have the opportunity to build on the success that is already being seen in this market.For customers who are looking to respond to Brexit by building up British manufacturing again, this site is a unique opportunity to buy products made in Britain. This will support both British industry and British businesses. For businesses who already make and sell within Britain, this website will be a way to connect with customers who are engaged in supporting the British economy.To find out more about becoming a seller on Britannia Centre, please visit the company website ( https://www.britanniacentre.co.uk/ ) and peruse the section on becoming a seller. They never charge listing fees or sign up fees, and the company has built in robust front end and back end support to help those who might be less familiar with website design build a strong company online. The first 100 vendors to create seller accounts and add at least twenty items will receive a bonus of only 5% commission on sales for the lifetime of their presence on Britannia Centre. Logon today to find out more!Britannia Centre was conceived pre-Brexit, during the talk from large European countries about the collapse of the British economy and denying trade deals with Great Britain. Despite popular belief, there are a great many high quality items still made in the United Kingdom. The company aspires to make shopping for British products manufactured in Britain easy for our customers.
SANA'A, Jan. 04 (Saba)  Vice President of the Supreme Political Council (SPC) Dr. Qasim Labuza met on Wednesday with charge d'affaires of the Russian Federation embassy to Yemen.



The meeting dealt with the efforts and international exerted efforts to resume the peace talks and the recent developments in the international position on peace in Yemen as well as the Russian role which is a reliable that seek stability and peace in the world.



The meeting also touched upon the repercussions of the Saudi-catastrophic aggression which increasing daily due to the continuous barbaric brutal massacres against the Yemeni people, especially after the decree of the Fugitive Hadi to transfer the Central Bank of Yemen to Aden province aimed at disrupting the bank's function as well as aggravating the humanitarian and economic situation on the Yemeni people.



The meeting discussed the challenges posed by the aggression forces which supports terrorism in the country representing by al-Qaeda and Daesh aimed at destabilizing and destroying the international peace and security.



At the meeting, Dr. Labuza reiterated the initial position of SPC and the Government of National Salvation with any peace initiative could lead to stop the aggression and to lift the siege, including reopening Sana'a International Airport for commercial and civilian air traffic and which also could lead to a political and peaceful and honorable solution that preserves the rights of the Yemeni people.



Dr. Labuza hailed Russia's rejection of the aggression and the blockade on Yemen and its constructive efforts towards peace and justice sought by the Yemeni people.



He pointed out the importance of Russia and the working peace-loving nations to stop the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Yemen and to intensify efforts to prevent further collapse, especially in the health and service fields and to move forward with the initiatives that lead to stop the aggression and to lift the siege and to convince other parties to stop messing perpetrated against the Yemeni people.



The Russian ambassador expressed his thanks and appreciation of facilities for the Russian embassy in Sana'a and its crew which reflect the depth of the Yemeni-Russian authentic and enduring and evolving relations.



He reiterated his country's rejection of the continuation of a military solution in Yemen, stressing that a political solution would bring peace for the Yemeni people in order to achieve peace and stability for Yemen.



HA

Saba
Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences are closer to understanding how the loss of glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru is affecting water resources in a region responding to global climate change.

Laura Lautz G'05, associate professor of Earth sciences, is part of a multinational, interdisciplinary research team doing fieldwork in the northern Peruvian Andes. She and other researchers from A&S have been studying the groundwater hydrology of proglacial valleys -- areas formed by glacier recession -- in the ice-capped mountains, home to the world's highest density of tropical glaciers.

Their findings are part of a major article in Hydrological Processes (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), co-authored by scientists and engineers from McGill University and Ecole de Technologie Superieur, both in Montreal; The Ohio State University (OSU); and the French Research Institute for Development in Marseille.

"Tropical glaciers in the Andes are retreating at an alarming rate," Lautz says. "Meltwater from these glaciers is important because it sustains stream-flow during the driest months of the year. As glaciers retreat and disappear, so does the amount of meltwater. Therefore, groundwater stored in the alpine valleys of the Cordillera Blanca may become increasingly important to downstream areas."

The Andes contain 99 percent of the world's tropical glaciers -- slow-moving rivers of ice whose high elevations are virtually unaffected by balmy tropical temperatures. Such glaciers, however, are vulnerable to climate change. One study posits that, since the 1970s, Peruvian glaciers have lost nearly half of their surface area.

Given the density of glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, communities downstream rely on groundwater discharge and glacier meltwater for their water supply during the dry winter months (i.e., May-September). Runoff from proglacial streams also supports small-farm and commercial agriculture, hydroelectric power generation and transnational mining operations.

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"Because of the region's remoteness and difficult access, there are few field studies that have effectively identified the spatial distribution of groundwater discharge," Lautz says. "We're changing that."

Whereas meltwater comes from the melting of ice and snow, groundwater is the result of precipitation that soaks into Earth's surface; is transported underground and then returns to lakes, marshes and streams.

Lautz estimates that approximately half the discharge in the Cordillera Blanca's proglacial streams comes from groundwater.

What is not understood -- and is the thrust of her research -- is the spatial distribution of the groundwater discharge. Using a model called HFLUX, Lautz and her team, including postdoctoral research associate Ryan Gordon G'13, Earth scientist AnneMarie Glose G'13 and Ph.D. candidate Robin Glas G'18, have created an energy balance model of a stretch of river in Peru's Huascaran National Park.

"We've incorporated stream temperature observations, meteorological measurements and time-lapse, ground-based infrared imagery," says Lautz, who has built a career on studying how hydrologic processes affect water quality and movement through watersheds. "This information has enabled us to determine gross and net groundwater inputs to a reach of the Quilcay River, originating in the Cordillera Blanca."

Lautz's team found that 29 percent of the stream discharge at the reach outlet came from groundwater. Moreover, dye tracing revealed that 49 percent of the stream water exchanged with subsurface water.

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"These insights into pathways of groundwater-surface water interaction can help improve hydrological modeling of proglacial catchments throughout South America," Lautz says.

Annual trips to the Cordillera Blanca are standard for Lautz's research group. Because of the high altitude (upwards of 13,000 feet) and lack of oxygen, she and her team travel lightly -- mostly by foot and pack-animal -- and work for a week at a time.

Lautz marvels at the number of people, many of whom are alumni, involved with her projects. Recently, she, Glas and Ph.D. student Emily Baker G'18 conducted a seismic tomographic survey of part of the Cordillera Blanca, using equipment belonging to Assistant Professor Robert Moucha. They were assisted by Marty Briggs G'12, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey; Jeff McKenzie G'00, G'05, associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at McGill; and Bryan Mark G'01, professor of geography at OSU, where he also works in the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

"It takes a village to pull off these projects," Lautz says. "Students and alumni are vital to our success, on campus and in the field."
The perception that e-cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes fell between 2012 and 2014, a sign that fewer people see them as a safe alternative to smoking tobacco, a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

In 2012, the study found, half of those surveyed thought e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes. By 2014, the number had dropped to 43 percent. During this period, advertisers often represented e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes, the researchers note. E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that convert liquid containing nicotine into vapor that consumers inhale.

The study was based on the Health Information National Trends Surveys conducted by the National Cancer Institute. The nationally representative sample included smokers, former smokers and non-smokers. The study appears online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers were surprised by the findings, given the mixed assessments of e-cigarettes' risk compared to traditional tobacco products. Since they were introduced to the U.S. market in 2007, the devices have been pitched to consumers as potentially safer alternatives to cigarettes, or even a harmless way to stop smoking, given that e-cigarettes contain no tobacco, a known carcinogen that also causes pulmonary and heart disease.

On the other hand, some in public health fear that e-cigarettes could become a gateway to smoking tobacco for young people. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the world.

"It's a good thing that information about e-cigarettes' possible adverse health effects has gotten out there, especially considering there wasn't a government or public health push during the study years," says study leader Eric W. Ford, PhD, MPH, a professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "When misinformation about health effects about any substances becomes widespread, it is usually very hard to reverse the trend. That somehow happened here."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3.7 percent of U.S. adults were using e-cigarettes in 2014. E-cigarettes were more likely to be used by current cigarette smokers and former smokers who quit smoking within the past year than former smokers who quit smoking more than 1 year ago and those who had never smoked.

There is no overriding consensus among researchers about whether e-cigarettes are indeed harmful to human health. There are, Ford explains, two research knowns. On the one hand, e-cigarettes eliminate many of the carcinogenic elements associated with smoking tobacco. On the other hand, e-cigarettes may include flavorings and other ingredients containing the chemical diacetyl, which can cause bronchiolitis obliterans, or "popcorn lung," the thickening and narrowing of the airways due to scarring of the lung's air sacs. (The condition was so named because diacetyl was once used as a butter flavoring for microwavable popcorn.)

Earlier this year, in a much-anticipated move, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would start regulating e-cigarettes the same way it regulates cigarettes -- including banning their sale to anyone under age 18. The FDA has not yet proposed additional regulations around e-cigarettes. Earlier this month, in the government's strongest warning to date, the U.S. Surgeon General urged young people to avoid e-cigarettes altogether, calling them "unsafe." Among children, teens and young adults, e-cigarettes are the most commonly used nicotine product.

For the study, the researchers combined three "cycles" of data from the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Health Information National Trends Survey, an annual survey of U.S. households sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The surveys, which included 3,630 respondents in 2012, 3,185 in 2013 and 3,677 in 2014, were made up of about 60 percent non-smokers, 20 percent former smokers and 20 percent current smokers. The study also found that awareness of e-cigarettes jumped from 77.1 percent in 2012 to 94.3 percent in 2014.

The researchers also looked at whether awareness of e-cigarettes among current smokers influenced their attempts at quitting or intention to quit. They found no association. While some smokers may independently use e-cigarettes to try and quit, doctors are not advising patients to do so. They typically suggest trying nicotine patches or chewing gum.

Smokers who perceived e-cigarettes as less harmful than traditional cigarettes were less likely to have attempted to quit in the previous year.
Have you ever imagined what the world must look like to hummingbirds as they zoom about at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour? According to new evidence on the way the hummingbird brain processes visual signals reported in Current Biology on January 5, you can't. That's because a key area of the hummingbird's brain processes motion in a unique and unexpected way.

"In all four-limbed vertebrates studied to date, most of the neurons in this [motion-detecting] brain area are tuned to detect motion coming from behind, such as would occur for an impending collision or when being attacked from behind by a predator," says Douglas Altshuler of the University of British Columbia. "We found that this brain area responds very differently in hummingbirds. Instead of most neurons being tuned to back-to-front motion, almost every neuron we found was tuned to a different direction. We also found that these neurons were most responsive to very fast motion."

The brain area in question is known in birds as the lentiformis mesencephalic, or LM for short. (In mammals, it's called the nucleus of the optic tract.) The LM is responsible for processing visual signals sent to the brain as images move across the retina.

The primary interest of the Altshuler lab is in understanding flight. To understand how birds fly, the researchers needed to understand how they see the world. Hummingbirds were of special interest because of their remarkable ability to zoom quickly and then stop to hover in place while sipping nectar in midair.

Earlier studies showed that the LM in hummingbirds is enlarged in comparison to that of other birds. Scientists also knew that hummingbirds monitor and correct for any minor drift in their position as they hover. Those findings had led researchers to suggest that the hummingbird brain might be specially attuned to pick up on slow movements.

To test that hypothesis in the new study, post-doc and first author of the new study Andrea Gaede recorded neural activity in the LMs of six Anna's hummingbirds and ten zebra finches as the birds watched computer-generated dots move in various directions. Contrary to expectations, the recordings showed that hummingbirds are most sensitive to fast visual motion. What's more, unlike other birds, the hummingbirds responded to movement in any direction about equally. That is, their LM neurons aren't specially attuned to movements in the forward direction as in other animals. The researchers suggest that their visual abilities may play a role in dynamic behaviors, including competitive interactions, high-speed courtship displays, and insect foraging.

"This study provides compelling support for the hypothesis that the avian brain is specialized for flight and that hummingbirds are a powerful model for studying stabilization algorithms," Gaede says.

Gaede says her next step is to investigate the response properties of other nuclei involved in this visual motion-processing pathway, with the ultimate goal of understanding how neural activity in the hummingbird brain is translated into specific flight behaviors.
Thirty years ago a mysterious disease wiped out long-spined black sea urchins across the Caribbean, leading to massive algal overgrowth that smothered already overfished coral reefs. Now, marine biologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) report that smaller sea urchins and parrotfish may be taking the place of the large sea urchins, restoring the balance on degraded reefs.

As a STRI short-term fellow, Catie Kuempel joined staff scientist Andrew Altieri to explore a large area of the sea floor in Bocas del Toro, Panama, where corals had died but, surprisingly, algae had not taken over. The most common algal grazers they found were a small sea urchin about the size of a ping pong ball, Echinometra viridis, and a tiny finger-sized striped parrot fish, Scarus iseri, which would be of no interest to fishermen. They propose that these tiny organisms may be able to preempt shifts from coral to algae on degraded coral reefs. They may be small, but there are a lot of them: small grazers comprise up to 95 percent of the biomass of all grazing organisms on the reefs in the study. Their combined weight is roughly equal to that of a smaller number of bigger herbivores on healthier reefs.

Intense grazing by the small sea urchins and fish was highest on the most degraded reefs. In an experimental set up involving placing cages on the sea floor to exclude grazers of different sizes, intense herbivory in cages that permitted access to only small herbivores revealed that they can do the job of clearing algae once thought to belong only to the larger species of parrotfish and the long-spined black urchins, Diadema antillarum.

In Jan., 1983, STRI staff scientist Harilaos Lessios noticed that long-spined black urchins, but not other species of urchins were dying near the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal. He contacted dive shops and was able to track the mass mortality of urchins as it spread across the Caribbean from 1983-1984.

Subsequently deprived of this large species of grazer, algae grew unchecked, especially on reefs where overfishing had eliminated large parrotfish. Today, despite the fact that Diadema antillarum has recovered in some areas, the total number of this urchin in the Caribbean is still only about 12 percent of pre-die-off numbers.

"Even those of us who had worked extensively with D. antillarum did not expect that its recovery would be so slow or that its absence would contribute so dramatically to changes in complex ecological communities such as coral reefs," wrote Lessios in a review article of observed changes 30 years later. "Its recovery is the only hopeful ray in the gloomy prospects for Caribbean reefs."

"Given that the frequency of coral disease will probably increase with global warming and that overfishing can be prevented only in protected areas, which cannot expand indefinitely if people continue obtaining their protein from the sea, the best hope for Caribbean reefs is that D. antillarum will recover," Lessios predicted.

Based on their observations in Bocas del Toro, Kuempel and Altieri are more hopeful, suggesting that management and monitoring strategies aimed at preventing phase-shifts from coral to algae on reefs should broaden to include the role and importance of diminutive species of herbivores. "These dollhouse-sized species came the rescue of reefs in Panama, and may be important elsewhere as well," said Altieri.

They will continue to explore whether the algae consumption by these small species that tips the balance back from algal domination of dead reefs is clearing the way for new coral growth.
When summer temperatures rise in Greenland and the melt season begins, water pools on the surface, and sometimes disappears down holes in the ice. That water may eventually reach bedrock, creating a slipperier, faster slide for glaciers. But where does it go once it gets there, and what happens to it in the winter? A new study helps answer these questions.

Scientists have been able to observe liquid water at single points by drilling holes, but those observations are limited. An improved technique developed by a graduate student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and her colleagues is now expanding that view across entire regions, and across seasons for the first time, by making it possible to use airborne ice-penetrating radar to reveal meltwater's life under the ice throughout the year.

The first results, just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveal extensive winter water storage beneath the ice. They suggest that glaciers' response to melting depends not only on the rate at which meltwater flows down, but also on the amount of water stored beneath the ice through the winter, and on the topography and permeability of the land below, said the study's lead author, Columbia graduate student Winnie Chu.

"The distribution of meltwater evolves constantly, switching from one location to another," said Chu. "By knowing how this distribution changes seasonally, we can better understand the spatial linkage between ice and water flow." Chu said that more meltwater is produced as temperatures rise, and the study suggests that Greenland has the potential to store some of it at the base of the ice. This could potentially mediate the impact of meltwater on summer ice flow by maintaining stable subglacial water pressures through the year, she said.

Greenland's ice sheet has a wide range of temperatures and impurities that cause the ice to freeze in different ways, and those variations have made it difficult for ice-penetrating radar to identify pockets of water beneath the ice. Chu and her colleagues developed a way to correct for those variations by using 3D thermomechanical ice-sheet models and knowledge of the ice sheet's chemistry to bring out the reflectivity that indicates water in radar data.

In the study, the researchers describe where water was prevalent inside the ice at the start of the melt season and where it was present at the end of winter in Russell Glacier and neighboring Isunnguata Sermia, in western Greenland. They showed that early in the melt season, most of the meltwater reaching bedrock was along sediment-filled troughs beneath the glaciers. In contrast, during the winter, the bulk of the region's subglacial water could be seen pooling in higher bedrock ridges, while the lower-elevation troughs were mostly dry.

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The scientists suspect that during warmer weather, water pressure opens drainage systems in the ice, allowing meltwater from the surface to flow through to the troughs below. Those channels may close in the winter as less water pours in and water pressure decreases. In the troughs, the sediment-filled floor allows for better drainage. "Any remaining subglacial water then likely continues to seep through groundwater drainage, leaving little wintertime storage at the ice-bed interface," the authors write. But the ridges are made up of less permeable material, so water can pool on them.

The effect of water is evident in the changing speed of the glaciers during the year. During the 2010 melt season, Russell Glacier flowed more than twice as fast as it did at the end of the following winter, the authors write. The glacier speeds up in early summer, suggesting water pressure rises rapidly there, Chu said. It decelerates quickly at the end of summer, suggesting that the formation of channels in the ice creates more efficient, faster drainage of the meltwater from the glacier bed, the scientists write.

Neighboring Isunnguata Sermia accelerates more slowly. That could be associated with its apparent widespread subglacial water storage capacity, which may be maintaining water pressures through the winter, Chu said. Russell Glacier, in contrast, has less winter water storage and would experience a greater increase in water pressure at the start of the melt season.

"Our findings suggest that the winter subglacial hydrological state could pre-condition the glacier response to additional meltwater in the following summer," Chu said.

The technique used in the study provides a clearer view of how water moves beneath the ice than any other existing method, said Joseph MacGregor, a glaciologist and geophysicist at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center who was not involved in the study.

"We have prevailing ideas of how water flows on the surface of ice sheets, through ice sheets, and under ice sheets. What we don't have are great observations of where that water is beneath the ice most of the time," MacGregor said. "This result changes that state of affairs. It also demonstrates the value of airborne remote sensing for testing fundamental glaciological hypotheses."

The paper's coauthors are Dustin Schroeder of Stanford University; Helene Seroussi of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology; Steven Palmer of the University of Exeter; and Timothy Creyts and Robin Bell of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The paper, "Extensive winter subglacial water storage beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet," is available online.
A growing elder care shortage could be eased by worker-owned cooperatives, a little-used business model that also improves the working conditions and the quality of life for caregivers. That's the conclusion reached by University of Georgia faculty member Rebecca Matthew and Vanessa Bransburg, a cooperative development specialist, in a recent, award-winning case study.

Matthew, an assistant professor at the UGA School of Social Work, and Bransburg, a staff member at Democracy at Work Institute in San Diego, California, looked for a successful system of home-based caring labor that puts equal emphasis on the well-being of both the care recipient and the provider. They examined the most popular forms of paid child care -- for-profit and nonprofit services -- alongside worker-owned child care cooperatives. The latter system is popular in other parts of the world, but represents a fraction of the caregiving services available in the U.S.

The cooperatives, which give employees greater control over their working conditions and a share in profits, improved the quality of life of both care recipients and providers.

As an example, they cited a case study of the Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative, an organization that provides home-based child care services to the Sunset Park community in Brooklyn, New York. Women who joined the BCCC as worker-owners reported a 58 percent increase in hourly wages. As wages grew, more than half of the employee-owners -- primarily immigrant women -- were able to reduce their work hours, enabling them to spend more time with their own children and families.

The model could also be applied to the provision of elder care, said Matthew and Bransburg, pointing out that nearly half of people employed in that job sector rely on public benefits such as Medicaid to support themselves and their families. Since home care for the elderly is expected to grow from nearly 40 million jobs now to 73 million by 2030, the potential impact of worker-owned cooperatives could be huge.

"Worker-owned cooperatives provide a truly promising alternative through which to provide quality jobs and care," said Matthew.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding Canadian component of a study to determine the optimal amount of blood to transfuse in anemic patients who have suffered a myocardial infarction.

The University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) has been awarded a grant of US $2 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pilot the Canadian component of a study to determine the optimal amount of blood to transfuse in anemic patients who have suffered a myocardial infarction.

"Most people who suffer a first infarction do not need blood transfusion, but for those who do, the mortality rate is higher. These are often elderly patients who sometimes have other diseases. The problem is that we don't know how much blood we should give them," says Dr. Paul Hebert, head of the medical department at CHUM and co-principal investigator of the study known as MINT, for Myocardial Ischemia and Transfusion.

MINT is a vast clinical trial directed by Dr. Jeffrey Lee Carson, professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical in New Jersey (United States). This randomized trial conducted in more than 70 hospitals in the United States and Canada will compare two blood transfusion strategies -- liberal and restrictive -- in 3,500 patients at risk of myocardial infarction. "We are going to determine whether giving more blood to keep the patient at a threshold of 100 g/L hemoglobin is preferable to giving less blood with a threshold of 80 g/L. We will see the impact on mortality after 30 days," says Dr. Hebert, also a professor in the Department of Medicine at Universite de Montreal and holder of the Hema-Quebec -- Bayer Chair in Transfusion Medicine at Universite de Montreal.

A pilot trial on 110 patients published in The American Journal of Cardiology showed that mortality was higher after 30 days in patients who received less hemoglobin compared with those who received more: seven people died in the restrictive group compared with just one in the liberal group. The researchers therefore believe it is better to give more blood to patients affected by myocardial ischemia, that is, heart disease caused by a cessation of, or decrease in, irrigation of the heart.

Yet in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999 that revolutionized blood transfusion practices around the world, Dr. Paul Hebert and his colleagues demonstrated that people hospitalized in intensive care have a greater chance of survival if transfusions of hemoglobin are limited. "This generally is true, but the heart is a special organ that needs constant irrigation with oxygen. We think that if you have a heart attack and are also anemic, this is a concern and more blood must be transfused," Dr. Hebert says.

Blood transfusions are not without risk of infection or immune responses. Some believe that when a patient truly needs a blood transfusion, it is always preferable to limit the hemoglobin administered. "This clinical trial is the logical follow-up to our research on transfusion thresholds going back more than 30 years. It will help us resolve one of the last major issues in the field," says Dr. Jacques Lacroix, an intensivist at Sainte-Justine Hospital, professor at Universite de Montreal, and contributor to the MINT study.

The MINT team will also assess whether the amount of hemoglobin given to cardiac patients affects the risk of complications such as thrombosis or pneumonia. "Our findings will definitely influence practice and ultimately save lives. We can be more effective when an anemic patient suffers a heart attack, and prevent recurrences," Dr. Hebert concludes.

The World Health Organization says that cardiovascular diseases account for some 17.5 million deaths a year. Myocardial ischemia is the leading cause of death and the risk of dying is especially high among elderly and anemic patients.
Manuel Ramos



The new year has begun and many breathe a sigh of relief. Surely, 2017 will be better than 2016? So many inspirational people passed on, so many negative incidents, so much gritty dust dulling the shine of the collective optimism generated by historic events of the past eight years. It can only improve, no?



We are in a tricky period. We trust that the cycle will reverse itself and brighter days are on the horizon. And yet ... an underlying uneasiness stays with us and a gray foreboding swirls in the January mist as we approach the beginning of a new era. At the same time, good people continue with their good ways. The light of hope dims but does not succumb to the darkness of hate, greed, and fear. Encouraging signs emerge from the shadows. Voices are raised, opposition is organized, and candles are lit.



The various contributors to La Bloga share these mixed emotions with our readers. We're not ones to dwell on the dark side and neither are we Pollyannas with heads buried in sands of denial. We are involved in doing what we can to right the ship that has listed to the starboard side, each in our own way, even if we occasionally lapse into frustration or anger.



It may seem trivial to celebrate "bests" from a year like the one we just went through. I would argue these are precisely the times when we should praise those who deserve it and dance with them in the spotlight of success. With awareness of the complicated nature of human endeavors and the march of time, and in the face of all the bad news, we summon our spirit to look back at 2016 and cite positive examples of noteworthy people and their accomplishments.



I asked our contributors to share with our readers something from 2016 that they would consider best. My guidelines to our writers were simple. Pick a best whatever: book, movie, song, art, meal, exhibit, interview, joke, grandchildren's story , etc . I'll publish the choices on January 6, which happens to be El Dia de los Tres Reyes, a day for gifts and reminders.



Here are the responses I received. These aren't necessarily life-changing or history-making, but I believe they demonstrate the energy and attitude that will be necessary in the days, months and years to come.









AMELIA MONTES





Im sending you two posts I published in 2016.



1. The first one is about the death of my mother on January 18, 2016. She was 92 years old. I miss her very much; at the same time that we knew she was tired and ready to go. No regrets. We did right by her. We were there with her as she traveled to another dimension. Her death was and still is a transition for all of us. Here is my post in honor of mi mama:





http://labloga.blogspot.com/2016/02/attending-to-birthing-with-dying.html Im sending you two posts I published in 2016.1. The first one is about the death of my mother on January 18, 2016. She was 92 years old. I miss her very much; at the same time that we knew she was tired and ready to go. No regrets. We did right by her. We were there with her as she traveled to another dimension. Her death was and still is a transition for all of us. Here is my post in honor of mi mama:









Amelia and Her Mother

















Latina Artists of Nebraska







2. My second posting is much more festive. Im choosing this one because often the midwest is not seen as a Mexican or Latina/Latino area of the country. But it is. We are everywhere. This posting celebrates five Latina artists who are doing work in the midwest. Their work is featured in a fabulous exhibit entitled Mujeres at The Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) in Kearney, Nebraska. It is still on display until February 12, 2017.





















DANIEL OLIVAS







I will not recount the anguish felt by me and my loved ones when Trump squeaked to victory. We will fight on the best we can. Since this is about something positive, let me say that the last few years brought so many wondrous works of literature by so many talented Latinx authors. We are a talented and prolific people! And at La Bloga, we try to sing the praises of such talent to make up for the dearth of coverage from many news outlets. I will not recount the anguish felt by me and my loved ones when Trump squeaked to victory. We will fight on the best we can. Since this is about something positive, let me say that the last few years brought so many wondrous works of literature by so many talented Latinx authors. We are a talented and prolific people! And at La Bloga, we try to sing the praises of such talent to make up for the dearth of coverage from many news outlets.





Though I hate to offer but one book recommendation, I will do so only because of the lack of time and space. One of my favorite books from the last couple years is by Joy Castro who is the author of two memoirs and two post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers. She teaches literature, creative writing and Latino studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where she directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies. I fell in love with her story collection How Winter Began (University of Nebraska Press, $19.95 paperback). As I noted in my El Paso Times interview with the author, with these stories, Castro lulls the reader with beautiful, exquisitely crafted sentences. But before we realize it, she reveals the dark contours of her characters lives  lives that are often desperate and broken, but not without hope for something better.

ERNEST HOGAN

This last year seems more like a decade -- a hell of a lot happened, some of it was good, really. The high point for me was publishing a new edition of High Aztech, but mostly I've been delighted that I have a career as a writer and artist that keeps me busy even if hasn't made me rich yet. Ten years ago I didn't think I had a career, and now it just looks like the beginning. Who knows what it'll be like ten years from now.





















MELINDA PALACIO



It was such a crappy year. This was the year my muse and grandmother died. In the spirit of pulling myself and our readers together, I can think of at least one or two favorite books of 2016, both of which I fully endorse and one of which happens to include by written endorsement or blurb, The Mexican Flyboy by Alfredo Vea and The Sorrows of Young Alfonso by Rudolfo Anaya. My blurb on Anaya's book was included. I don't often write blurbs, but was honored to write one for el maestro Anaya and I loved the book.



For Anaya's book, I wrote:

"This is a gripping glimpse into a writer's early yearnings, a story to end all stories. Rudolfo Anaya offers a mystical meditation woven into an epistolary narrative that is both familiar and extraordinary."





MICHAEL "EM" SEDANO





In an eventful 2016, a road trip with Jesus Trevino to visit with Rudolfo Anaya stands out as the shiniest moment, the best. The three of us spent hours talking about Anayas recent works. I was especially happy when Rudy remarked how much he liked my La Bloga review of The Old Mans Love Story, telling me he shared it with friends, and remarked how you got it.





The excitement of that visit and road trip extended beyond our interviews and Jesus Latinopia videos of the interviews. A few months later, Trevinos book, Return to Arroyo Grande, won a National Book Award.





As it happened, another memorable highlight of the year arrived in February, when my wife and I hosted the launch party for Return to Arroyo Grande in a backyard floricanto at Casa Sedano.













Sedano, Anaya, Trevino, Oso

















Trevino Reading













RENE COLATO LAINEZ









!Bienvenido 2017! After Election Day, my students were shocked to discover who was elected as the next president of the United States. They drew pictures and wrote about their feels and fears for an uncertain future.



But there were also good news in California. It was a long wait but after 18 years of Only English Instruction, Bilingual Education was back in California. Proposition 58 passed with flying colors. As an educator, I am happy for our children to have more dual language and bilingual classes. This is a big demonstration that we are fighting for diversity. It was a great victory, Que viva la educacion bilingue!

XANATH CARAZA





It was twelve years ago the first post on La Bloga came to light. Doce anos de publicaciones se logran with a strong team of writers, La Bloga continues to bring a myriad of news stories to the world. De que escriben los blogueros? Here are some palabras of this team of diverse Chicanos and Chicanas. May these words fill you with strength, dear La Bloga readers.

La Bloga: El Aniversario: Twelve Years and Counting









































OLGA GARCIA ECHEVERRIA







Like so many other people, the presidential election of 2016 knocked the wind out of me. My students at both my job sites were also highly distressed. I work with mostly Latin@ students, most of which are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. The blog I have selected as my favorite for 2016 is one I did on a letter exchange between my college students at Cal State LA and 5th graders at New Academy for Science and Art. The exchange consisted of post-election letters of support where students lifted each other's spirits. What a pleasure to work with these students and what a pleasure to write this blog about their interaction.



http://labloga.blogspot.com/2016/11/you-are-not-alone-uplifting-students.html















MANUEL RAMOS





On a personal level, 2016 was a year of immense change. I think I've finally acclimated to retirement (it's only been two and a half years.) No need to go into detail about what it really means to me; suffice to say life is not what it was three years ago, and that's okay. I've experienced some health setbacks, and these challenges have tested me and, unfortunately, those closest to me. On the other hand, I keep to a rigorous exercise schedule, try to eat right, and I stay involved with our community, family, and friends. Actually, overall, I fe e l pretty good. Flo and I are making plans for travel, projects, goals and more changes, and that's always exciting.



So, what's the "best" about 2016? Well, one obvious answer is that I'm still writing -- just released my ninth novel, and coming down the pike are at least two short stories for upcoming anthologies and a "group" writing project that will be unique, to say the least, if it comes to pass. I 've been invited to speak about Chicano Noir at literary events, libraries and universities ; my publisher just asked if I had another manuscript ready yet , and I was able to answer, well, no, but I do have the germ of an idea and about 4500 words for another book, and that's okay, too.
An international team of astronomers, including Lancaster's David Sobral, has discovered a cosmic one-two punch never seen before.

Two of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe -- a supermassive black hole and the collision of giant galaxy clusters -- have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator.

By combining data from some of the best X-ray, optical and radio telescopes in the world, researchers have found out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters.

"We have seen each of these spectacular phenomena separately in many places," said Reinout van Weeren of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the study that appears in the inaugural issue of the journal Nature Astronomy. "This is the first time, however, that we have seen them clearly linked together in the same system."

This cosmic double whammy is found in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 located about two billion light years from Earth.

The two clusters are both very massive, each weighing about a quadrillion - or a million billion - times the mass of the Sun.

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Optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope, in La Palma and Keck Observatory and Japan's Subaru telescope, also on Mauna Kea, Hawaii detected the galaxies in each cluster.

Dr David Sobral from Lancaster University said: "It was exciting to take deep images of this merger of galaxy clusters with the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope so we could then point the 10-m Keck telescope to the right galaxies to learn more. It turns out that giant telescopes can also "see further by standing on the shoulders" of smaller telescopes like the Isaac Newton."

The comet-shaped appearance is produced by hot gas from one cluster ploughing through the hot gas of the other cluster.

First, at least one spinning, supermassive black hole in one of the galaxy clusters produced a rotating magnetic funnel. The powerful electromagnetic fields associated with this structure have accelerated some of the inflowing gas away from the vicinity of the black hole in the form of an energetic, high-speed jet.

Then, these accelerated particles in the jet were accelerated to even higher energies when they encountered colossal shock waves - cosmic versions of sonic booms generated by supersonic aircraft - produced by the collision of the massive gas clouds associated with the galaxy clusters.

"It's almost like launching a rocket into low-Earth orbit and then getting shot out of the Solar System by a second rocket blast," said co-author Felipe Andrade-Santos, also of the CfA. "These particles are among the most energetic particles observed in the Universe, thanks to the double injection of energy."

These results were presented at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
More people are dying from eating disorders than any other psychiatric disorder, and one Cornell College professor has discovered a way to help women by significantly reducing eating disorder symptoms in those who are struggling.

Professor of Psychology Melinda Green and her team recently examined 47 women in Eastern Iowa who suffered from eating disorder symptoms, recruiting women through social media, fliers posted in practitioners' offices, local schools, and announcements in local media. The researchers used what's called a dissonance-based eating disorder program.

"Our intervention encourages women to criticize media messages which teach women and girls that we must be thin to be considered beautiful," said Green. "We also teach women and girls how to combat societal messages which teach us to define our worth in terms of our appearances."

The results from the four-week program reveal the importance of this type of treatment to help women.

"Women who took part in the program showed fewer eating disorder symptoms. Women also showed lower levels of anxiety and fewer negative emotions," Green said. "Women showed higher self-esteem and greater satisfaction with their bodies. They were less likely to idealize a thin body-type and less likely to define their self worth in terms of their appearance. They were also less likely to show several cardiac risk factors associated with eating disorders."

Green has worked for nearly a decade to research eating disorders. In her work, she has discovered a connection between eating disorders and cardiac risks, identifying markers of cardiac risk which worsen with eating disorder symptoms and improve with treatment. Her research has important implications for learning how to prevent and treat cardiac-related deaths in eating disorder patients. The results of this new study go even further to improve treatment and prevention options.

"Our work has a direct impact on the lives of women in Eastern Iowa since the program improves the lives of women who are struggling," Green said. "On a national and an international level, our results help to inform the best practices in eating disorder treatment and prevention. We are working alongside leading scientists across the world to improve this treatment and prevention paradigm to make it as effective as possible."

The psychology professor is currently conducting a treatment and prevention study and plans to pursue funding for another project to begin in the summer of 2017 to continue to refine this program. She consistently works with undergraduate students at Cornell College, who are involved in all phases of the research from revising the treatment programs to co-authoring manuscripts.

The Cornell College professor is also putting her own work into practice as she treats patients through a new online eating disorder prevention and treatment program.

Green is working with Tanager Place in nearby Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to continue her work. The group is currently fundraising to create a new, much-needed eating disorder treatment center for patients.
African Americans may be less responsive to asthma treatment and more likely to die from the condition, in part, because they have a unique type of airway inflammation, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

Airway inflammation is a key component of asthma, and innovations in treatment are becoming more personalized based on the specific type of airway inflammation in a patient, says Dr. Sharmilee Nyenhuis, assistant professor of medicine at UIC and corresponding author on the study.

"Emerging evidence suggests that differences in airway inflammation can affect a patient's response to treatment, but whether the patterns of airway inflammation vary across race has, until now, been very unclear," said Nyenhuis, of UIC's division of pulmonary, critical care, sleep and allergy.

Black men and women are two to three times more likely than whites to be hospitalized or die from asthma. And while many factors contribute to the burden of asthma in African Americans -- such as access to health care and environmental exposures -- rates are disproportionate even when social and environmental elements are taken into account.

Nyenhuis and her colleagues performed a secondary analysis of more than 1,000 sputum samples obtained from AsthmaNet, a nationwide clinical research network created by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and the Asthma Clinical Research Network. Samples of the coughed-up fluids were from past clinical trial participants over the age of 12 with mild or moderate persistent asthma and who had not smoked within the last year. The samples were tested for the presence of eosinophils -- a type of white blood cell.

The study is one of the largest and most diverse trials conducted in the U.S. on race and asthma, with 26 percent of the patients self-identifying as African American. Researchers found that black patients were more likely to exhibit eosinophilic airway inflammation than whites, despite taking comparable doses of asthma medication, such as inhaled corticosteroids.

The results are published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

"Our findings of higher numbers of African Americans with this type of airway inflammatory pattern suggests a mechanism that may account for more severe and difficult to control asthma in African Americans," said Nyenhuis. "It follows that the persistence of eosinophilic airway inflammation in African Americans may be associated with asthma exacerbations and an impaired response to corticosteroids."

The findings suggest that black patients with eosinophilic airway inflammation may not benefit from increasingly strong corticosteroid treatment -- instead, other targeted therapies may need to be considered and researched as a treatment option for those black patients with difficult to control eosinophilic asthma.
The frequency of large-scale tornado outbreaks is increasing in the United States, particularly when it comes to the most extreme events, according to research recently published in Science.

The study by researchers including Joel E. Cohen, a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, finds the increase in tornado outbreaks does not appear to be the result of a warming climate as earlier models suggested. Instead, their findings tie the growth in frequency to trends in the vertical wind shear found in certain supercells -- a change not so far associated with a warmer climate.

"What's pushing this rise in extreme outbreaks, during which the vast majority of tornado-related fatalities occur, is far from obvious in the present state of climate science," said Cohen, the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor at Rockefeller University and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, who conducted the research while a visiting scholar in UChicago's Department of Statistics.

Tornado outbreaks are large-scale weather events that last one to three days, featuring several thunderstorms and six or more tornadoes in close succession. In the study, published in the Dec. 16 issue of Science, the researchers used new statistical tools, including extreme value analysis -- a branch of statistics dealing with deviations -- to analyze observation-based meteorological estimates associated with tornado outbreaks together with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration datasets.

The researchers estimated that the number of tornadoes in the most extreme outbreak in a five-year interval doubled over the last half-century. This means that in 1965 the worst outbreak expected over five years would have had about 40 tornadoes, while in 2015 the worst outbreak expected over five years would have had about 80 tornadoes.

"Viewing the data on thousands of tornadoes that have been reliably recorded in the United States over the past half-century as a population has permitted us to ask new questions and discover new, important changes in outbreaks of these tornadoes," Cohen said.

To understand the increased frequency in tornado outbreaks, the researchers looked at two factors: convective available potential energy, or CAPE, and storm relative helicity, which is a measure of vertical wind shear.

Earlier studies had projected a warming climate would increase CAPE, creating conditions favorable to a rise in severe thunderstorms -- and potentially tornado outbreaks. But Cohen and his colleagues found the increases in outbreaks were driven instead by storm relative helicity, which has not been projected to increase under a warming climate.

"Our study raises new questions about what climate change will do to severe thunderstorms and what is responsible for recent trends," said co-author Michael K. Tippett, an associate professor at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. "The fact that we didn't see the presently understood meteorological signature of global warming in changing outbreak statistics for tornadoes leaves two possibilities: Either the recent increases are not due to a warming climate, or a warming climate has implications for tornado activity that we don't understand."
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Employers in California can't require workers to remain on duty or "on call" during their rest breaks, according to the California Supreme Court.

"During required rest periods, employers must relieve their employees of all duties and relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time," the state high court said in a Dec. 22, 2016, opinion.

In light of this ruling, employers shouldn't require or suggest that employees carry company pagers, phones or other communication devices during their rest breaks, said Barbara Harris Chiang, an attorney with Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck in San Francisco.

Chiang said she doesn't think the ruling means that employers should say workers can't take their communication devices on rest breaks, just that they are not required to.

Employers need to take a look at the communications provided in their handbooks, policies and breakroom postings and make sure nothing sounds like the company is trying to restrict or control employees' activities during rest breaks, explained Todd Wulffson, an attorney with Carothers DiSante & Freudenberger LLP in Orange County, Calif.

If it appears a company policy is trying to regulate what employees do on their breaks, it should be revised, he added.

Steep Penalties

Nonexempt employees in California are generally entitled to take a paid, 10-minute rest break for every four hours worked (or major fraction thereof). Employers can't encourage employees to work during this time.

[SHRM members-only HR Q&A: What are the meal and rest break requirements for California employees?]

Violations of this law carry significant penalties: Employee must be given an additional hour of pay for each workday that their full rest breaks aren't provided.

In Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc., the state high court was asked to rule on whether a security company violated California law by requiring its guards to carry radios and remain on call during rest periods.

The security guards argued that they weren't relieved of all duties as required by state law. The company, however, said that the guards were merely required to carry a radio or pager and frequently took uninterrupted rest breaks. They only had to respond in rare circumstances or in an emergency.

A trial court found in favor of the guards and awarded them more than $90 million in damages, interest and penalties. The California Court of Appeal vacated the judgment, finding that being on call isn't the same as working during a rest break.

But the California Supreme Court reversed the court of appeal. "What we conclude is that state law prohibits on-duty and on-call rest periods," the state high court said.

Tips for Employers

The ruling says that on-duty or on-call rest periods aren't permitted, at least under Wage Order 4, which is the relevant state wage order in this case, Chiang said.

If a rest period is interrupted, an employer should allow the employee to restart the break, she suggested. If that isn't possible, or if too much time has passed for the rest period to be meaningful, the employer can voluntarily pay the hour penalty.

Chiang noted that rest periods shouldn't be interrupted on a regular basis. "An employee should only be summoned back to work in irregular circumstances, such as emergencies," she said.

She added that employers may want to suggest that employees take their rest breaks away from their workstations, even though the ruling doesn't address this. That way, employers may avoid inadvertently violating the rest-break law.

"Otherwise, a manager might walk over to the employee's workstation and start talking about work without knowing the employee is on break," she said.

The key takeaway for HR professionals is to check the company's policy and make sure it tells employees what their entitlements are while they're on rest breaks and that it does nothing to take those entitlements away, Wulffson noted.
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Until a wild turkey shows up, a novice hunter might not believe the scratchy, squeaky sound made with a turkey call will ever entice a bird into view.

Whether you are an adult or a youth, hunting with a mentor can help, said Mike Kurre, mentoring program coordinator with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Consider applying for one of our mentored hunts. Turkey hunting isnt overly complicated, but it can be baffling for first-timers trying to understand the calling, decoys and where, when and how to sit during a hunt.

Youth and adults can apply through Monday, Feb. 13, to hunt turkeys for the first time under the guidance of experienced National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) volunteers. New this year, the adult and youth hunts are all on the same weekend.

Hunts are Saturday, April 22, and Sunday, April 23, and a pre-hunt orientation is required. The cost of the orientation ranges from $5 to $10, and hunting licenses cost $1 for 12 year olds; $6 for ages 13 through 17; and $27 for hunters 18 and older. All participants will need to have a valid firearms safety certificate or its equivalent and youth must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

This is the 15th year the DNR and NWTF have cooperated for these mentored hunts, and more than 5,000 youth and adults have been a part of the learning experience, Kurre said. New this year, were working with the Minnesota National Guard to introduce military adults and their families to turkey hunting.

Applications and details about how to apply are available on the DNRs website at mndnr.gov/turkeyhunt.

Overall participation in the hunts is restricted by the number of volunteers and private lands that are available. Anyone interested in providing turkey hunting land for the mentored youth hunts should contact the Minnesota NWTF Save the Habitat Save the Hunt Coordinator Keith Carlson at kcanoka@comcast.net.
In late 2016 China announced that it had commercialized its 58 ton LM 11 quick launch satellite launcher as the 78 ton KZ 11 and offered it as a cheaper (less than $5,000 per pound put in orbit) service. Thats half the current price and the KZ 11 takes much less time to get ready. Thats because the KZ 11 uses three solid fuel rocket stages plus a small liquid fuel rocket in the fourth stage to place the payload of up to 1.5 tons into a 700 kilometer high orbit or one of up to a ton into SSO (Sun-synchronous orbit) of up to 800 kilometers high. SSO means the orbit keeps the satellite constantly in sunlight, which is optimal for photographic satellites. China has set up a separate company (Expace) for KZ 11 commercial launches that enable customers to get a satellite into orbit in less than 24 hours. The main competition of KZ 11 is the Italian Vega, which weighs twice as much and costs about twice as much per pound to put anything into orbit.

This all began with LM 11, which was designed for putting military satellites up in a hurry, as in some kind of emergency. An LM 11 can put a satellite of up to 700 kg (1,540 pounds) into LEO (low earth orbit) of under 1,000 kilometers high. LM 11 is considered the smallest member of the Long March family but is very different as it is the only one that does not rely exclusively on liquid fuel rocket engines. The Long March family of rockets has been very successful with few failures. That means since 1970 liquid fuel Long March rockets had 236 launches and a 95 percent success rate.

While military satellites get more media attention, the real business of space, and where the Chinese put most of their efforts, is in commercial satellites. The Chinese have noted that since the 1980s space satellites have gone from big business to huge business. By 2012 there were about 1,000 active satellites in orbit, and nearly half of them were American. The number of satellites has been going down a bit since then because individual satellites last longer and can do more. It is expected that the number of satellites will now start to rise rapidly because of the popularity of mini-satellites (under 100 kg/220 pounds). Some of these mini-sats are much smaller (under ten kg) and still useful. In some cases dozens of mini-sats are put into orbit by one launcher.

About 75 percent of all satellites are non-military. Most of them are commercial, the rest government non-military birds. Since 2001 satellite industry revenues more than doubled, from $86 billion (in 2014 dollars) a year to over $200 billion now. The cost of the satellites is less than ten percent of annual satellite revenues. About four percent of the money comes from launching all those satellites and 36 percent of those launches are military. The U.S. has about a third of the launch business, mainly because of the requirement that U.S. classified satellites be launched by American rockets. About half the satellite launches (and two-thirds of the satellites) were for communications, which generates the most income (mostly for TV, followed by data). The U.S. remains the major manufacturer of commercial satellites, with over half of the market. China sees opportunity in all this and has come a long way in a short time to take advantage of it.

Russia and the United States have both been using retired ICBMs as cheap satellite launchers and that started with older liquid fuel models. For example the Russian RS-18 is a 106 ton, 24.5 meter (76 foot) long ICBM that uses storable liquid fuel, meaning that the missile is inherently more complex to maintain than a solid fuel missile. Thus the older engines, and other components, of the first RS-18s to enter service are expensive to maintain but still in good shape to launch. Instead of nuclear warheads, the retired RS-18s are putting satellites into orbit before their engines become too old to be reliable. So far 94 percent of RS-18s used as satellite launchers have been. More importantly, liquid fuel rockets can lift a heavier load than solid fuel rockets so the last generation of Russian liquid fuel ICBMs (the RS-18 and RS-20) are superior as satellite launchers than American ICBMs (which since the 1980s have all been solid fuel). The last liquid fuel American ICBM, the Titan, was also converted to be a satellite launcher and many were later built just for that. The last of these was used in 2003.

The RS-18 entered service in 1975, and it wasn't until the 1980s that Russia began producing reliable solid fuel rocket motors large enough for ICBMs (the 45 ton RS-12M). The last RS-18s were manufactured in 1990, and Russia expects each of them to have a useful life of 30 years via the equipment improvements and careful maintenance. Older ones will often end up being used for satellite launches rather than scrap.

The RS-18 was developed as a "light" ICBM, in effect, a competitor for the U.S. Minuteman series. The RS-18 was the first Russian ICBM to carry MIRV (Multiple, Independent Reentry Vehicles, which means each of six warheads in the missile had its own guidance system). The SS-19 carries six warheads. The RS-18 ICBM had a range of 10,000 kilometers. The RS-18 is converted into a satellite launcher by adding a third stage. Such missiles can lift 1.8 tons into orbit. Current technology enables small satellites (as small as 100 kg/220 pounds or less) to do useful work, and some RS-18 satellite launchers have carried many of these at once. The heavier (217 ton) RS-20 ICBMs have a max satellite payload of nearly three tons.

China does not have many older liquid fuel ICBMs and has concentrated on developing more reliable and cheaper solid fuel rockets. This is paying off. Moreover China will sell launch service to just about anyone who can pay, no questions asked.
When a major industrial farm caught fire, almost all the pigs were stuck in constricting gestation crates - but Odie was small enough to slip through the bars, which is just what he did.

Pigs in gestation crates at a factory farm in Virginia | Wikipedia Commons

Only one other pig survived that day when the factory farm in Missouri went up in flames. Hundreds of others died.

This browser does not support the video tag. Cotton Branch Farm Animal Sanctuary

This was years ago - the summer of 2012. And while Odie still shows the scars from the terrible burns he suffered as he escaped the flaming building, the day his mother and siblings died seems to remain a dim memory.

Dodo Shows Comeback Kids Family Stops At Nothing To Help Their Great Dane Run

"He is such a happy boy and loves people," Evan Costner, director of digital media at Cotton Branch Farm Animal Sanctuary in South Carolina, told The Dodo. "Odie's favorite thing in the world is a good belly rub!"

A rescuer brought Odie to the sanctuary, where he's been pampered ever since.

This browser does not support the video tag. Cotton Branch Farm Animal Sanctuary

And soon enough, Odie was joined by some friends. At Cotton Branch, Odie met his best friend, Charlotte, who came to the sanctuary from a hoarder in Louisiana.

Then along came Freddie, another friend. He was seized by the police because he was being used as bait for hunting dogs.

Now the whole gang of rescued pigs is living the good life. It almost makes up for what they went through.

"Every person who meets Odie comments on his eyes," Costner said. "They are piercing, and they look into your soul, and reveal a part of his."
It was late one night when Stephanie Oravetz got a call about an opossum with a six-pack holder wrapped around his neck. The opossum had been digging around the trash near a railroad track in Amarillo, Texas, before wandering into a man's driveway on a nearby property.

Stephanie Oravetz

When the man spotted the opossum, he called animal control. Kara Pierce, an officer at Armarillo Animal Management and Welfare, then called Oravetz, the founder of Wild West Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, and drove the opossum to Orvetz's house. The opossum - named Ringo for his predicament - was in bad shape when he arrived at Oravetz's. One of the rings from the six-pack holder was wrapped so tightly around the opossum's neck, his head and neck were badly swollen. Ringo was also cold, underweight and covered in fleas.

Stephanie Oravetz

If the six-pack ring didn't come off, Ringo wouldn't have made it. Six-pack holders tend to injure and kill wildlife if people don't cut them apart and dispose of them properly. "He may have died from infection or possibly starvation," Oravetz told The Dodo. "He most likely would have lost use of his right front arm as the ring was cutting into his muscle." With Pierce's assistance, Orvatez used scissors to cut the six-pack ring from the opossum's neck. This must have brought some relief to Ringo, but his neck was badly infected and covered in maggots.

Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Couple Meets A Beach Dog In Mexico Who Changes Their Life

Stephanie Oravetz

"We flushed out the maggots and cleaned the wounds with chlorhexidine solution, an antiseptic and antimicrobial disinfectant," Orvatez said. "We also treated him for fleas because he was covered in them. They were all over us as well." After this initial treatment, Orvatez placed Ringo into a cage with a heating pad, soft bedding and plenty of water and food, which he devoured.

Stephanie Oravetz

The next day, Orvatez took Ringo to the vet to get him antibiotics. The vet believed the ring had been around Ringo's neck for several weeks, and recommended hydrotherapy, a therapeutic treatment that uses water to heal wounds. "In Ringo's case, we gently spray running water over his wounds for 5 to 10 minutes twice a day," Orvatez explained.

Stephanie Oravetz

Ringo has been in Orvatez's care for a little over a week now, and he's doing incredibly well. "He has a healthy appetite and has already gained 5 ounces of weight," Orvatez said. "His wounds are healing fast with hydrotherapy and antibiotics."

Stephanie Oravetz

Ringo's also been trying to escape, which Orvatez says in an excellent sign. "During the last few hydrotherapy treatments he's gotten stronger and tries to make a run for it," she said. "Wanting to flee from us is a great sign but his wounds are not healed enough for him to be released yet."

Stephanie Oravetz

"The other way we can tell he does not like getting his treatments or anytime we have to mess with him is that he drools profusely, which is a nervous defense," Orvatez explained. "He really is good to work with for a 'wild' animal, but he is not like a sweet cuddly puppy," she added. "He is very much wild and sees us as a threat."

Stephanie Oravetz

Oravetz will release Ringo in about three to four weeks. "The best part of wildlife rehabilitation is releasing them back into the wild where they are intended to be," Oravetz said. "I get great joy knowing that his wounds are treatable and he will be able to be released."

Stephanie Oravetz
Why should Princess Sophia trust anyone? After all, she trusted someone once - someone who dumped her in a crumbling rural spot southwest of Miami.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

Princess Sophia is among scores of dogs that roam the area, which is called Redland, most of them having arrived by way of their old families, who decided this was as good a place as any to abandon them.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

But some people were thinking of these dogs. Members of the Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project have been crucial in keeping these dogs alive, feeding as many as 100 every day and even finding homes for some of them. "The puppies and small dogs and pretty dogs - all the adoptables - they go quick. Rescues take them. But the large dogs are almost impossible to move," Jessie Pena, vice president of the group, tells The Dodo. "What we do is feed them. If we find a rescue, we'll go to that area and pick them up."

Dodo Shows Cat Crazy Fluffy Cat Wants To Sit On His Dad At All Times

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

Princess Sophia is one of those big, not-so-easy-to-find-a-home-for dogs. And recently, she got even bigger. "We saw that she was that she was getting fat and round," Pena says. She's having a baby. But when it came to her precious cargo, Princess Sophia wasn't about to trust humans again. So she completely disappeared from the area. Days later, someone heard that she was spotted with her babies in nearby Homestead, Florida. Volunteers went there and started feeding the local dogs. "As we were placing trays down, we heard the puppies crying," Pena recalls. It was coming from under a house. A moment later, Princess Sophia made an appearance.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

Pena peered past her beneath the house to check on the puppies. There was one ... two ... "Fourteen!" she declared. "Incredible!"

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

Now, to get them out of there. At first, Princess Sophia seemed relieved to see her rescuers. She let Pena get a snare around her neck to keep her still and calm, while the puppies were collected one at a time. Five ... six ... Then Princess Sophia snapped at someone.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

"She was already stressed, tired," Pena says. "There was a lot of us there too. People she didn't recognize." Volunteers waited until Princess Sophia relaxed again. The patient ebb and flow of trust lasted two and a half hours. In the end, all 14 puppies were rescued, including Princess Sophia. After getting much-needed medical care - the entire family was covered in fleas - Princess Sophia and her newborns were taken to a temporary foster home. Again, trust came slowly for Princess.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

"She was terrified," Pena says. "She wasn't coming out of the crate." "We were able to put her in a bigger crate with a pool and the puppies and she was able to get out," Pena adds. "She was a little more trusting."

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project

While this mother's trust is still coming along by fits and jerks - mostly because she had only known the jerks - her puppies will grow up singing a very different song.

Redland Rock Pit Abandoned Dog Project
OTTAWACanadas competition watchdog is dropping its investigation into Apples iPhone contracts with the countrys wireless carriers.

The regulator launched the probe in 2014 after it received information suggesting Apples agreements with the Canadian carriers imposed potentially anti-competitive sales and marketing requirements.

But the federal agency says it hasnt found sufficient evidence that Apples contract terms had a significant effect on competition.

The bureau says the evidence suggests the contracts dont prevent carriers or rival smartphone makers from adopting measures that offset the impact of Apples terms.

It also noted the market share of different manufacturers can fluctuate as new devices are released and that a number of players have entered and left the smartphone market since the iPhone came to Canada in 2008.

However, the bureau says if new information comes to light it will not hesitate to take action.

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MONTREALA U.S. company says it is suing Bombardier, alleging that the Montreal aerospace firm failed to pay for expenses related to the design of wings for the Global 7000 business jet.

The Triumph Group disclosed in a regulatory filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that a subsidiary launched a lawsuit on Dec. 22 in Quebec Superior Court seeking compensation for changes it claims Bombardier ordered for the aircrafts original wing design.

According to the filing, the lawsuit from Triumph Aerostructures is seeking approximately $340 million (U.S.).

A spokesman for Bombardier says it believes the allegations from Triumph Aerostructures are without merit and it will defend its position.

Although Bombardier hasnt yet filed a statement of defence, he says the company believes that changes were made collectively by both sides and were within the scope of its contract with Triumph.

Triumph says it still supports the Global 7000 program.

The Global 7000 had its maiden flight last November and is scheduled to enter into service next year.

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SKOPJE, MACEDONIA  When an earthquake reduced large parts of Skopje to rubble in July 1963, the central train station survived the devastation, with the hands of its clock tower stuck at the exact time the city began to crumble  5:17 a.m.

Nearly 50 years later, an ambitious attempt to reclaim the classical roots of the country through a grandiose architectural re-envisioning of the city has made it feel less as if the Macedonian capital has been stuck in time, and more like it has been transported back several millennia to when men in togas and leather sandals ruled the world.

The neo-classical building program, which began under the watch of current President Gjorge Ivanov in 2010, has seen dozens of drab Communist-era buildings  erected following the earthquake  rebuilt in classical Greek styles replete with robust Corinthian, Doric and Ionic columns and immaculately carved friezes.

The city even has a new triumphal arch, which is not dedicated to any victory in particular but rather pivotal moments in the countrys history, such as its 1903 uprising and its separation from Yugoslavia in 1991.

The architectural facelift has been complemented by hundreds of new statues depicting anything from ancient historical figures, such as Phillip II and the emperor Justinian, through to contemporary Macedonian politicians, revolutionaries and intellectuals, all the way down to modest representations of common people, such as a woman talking on her cellphone or a homeless man begging on the street.

The most impressive of them all is a 22-metre behemoth of Alexander The Great atop a rearing horse with the tip of his sword extended purposefully toward the heavens. Guarded by a team of roaring lions encircling that water fountain below, the bronze incarnation of the former Greek emperor who once ruled half the world is the crowning achievement of Skopjes gaudy revitalization.

While it has attracted international attention, the decision to outfit the capital city with enough bronze and faux-marble to make Nero blush has divided local opinion.

Detractors have called it anything from kitsch and over-the-top to historically insensitive, none of which would be entirely inaccurate.

Indeed, at times strolling along the river near Macedonia Square can feel like having stepped into a 21st-century Hellenic Disneyland.

But in comparison to other ancient heavyweights like Athens or Rome, where the streets are dirty and crowded, and views of the crumbling ruins are blocked either by the scaffolding that is holding them up or tourists brandishing selfie sticks, Skopjes polished veneer feels refreshing in a grotesque imperial way.

While there is no shortage of opinions, Blagoja Varoshanec, who is a curator at the Contemporary Art Museum of Macedonia, says only time will tell whether the new vision of the city is an aberration or a national treasure.

Its like the Louvre. When they put in the pyramid in the 60s everyone was negative and upset about it, he says. Now its a huge tourist attraction.

Indeed one of the arguments in favour of the new incarnation of the city is it would boost tourism. By all accounts the strategy seems to be paying off, with the country witnessing a steady surge of foreign visitors since 2010.

When I was growing up there were only UN missions and soldiers in the streets, now half the people downtown are tourists, says Varoshanec.

The surge in tourism hasnt come without a cost, though.

The price tag for the beautification program has gone from an original estimate of 80 million to more than 500 million. With more than a quarter of the people in the country unemployed, the neo-classical spending spree does not sit well with those who feel the government is ignoring them.

The city is so beautiful, but the people here are so poor, says Stephane Nikolovski, an unemployed auto-mechanic.

While the Hellenistic sprawl has stolen the spotlight in recent years, Skopje still boasts its fair share of authentic historical monuments.

Towering above all the pomp and circumstance of Macedonia Square lies the immaculately preserved 6th-century Kale Fortress, which offers an outstanding view of the city.

Just a few minutes walk from the entrance to the castle there is a 15th century mosque, as well as the contemporary art, one of several impressive buildings which still bear testament to the citys Communist-era architecture. Their permanent collection even boasts works by painter Pablo Picasso and sculptor Alexander Calder. There is also a small museum dedicated to missionary Mother Teresa, who was born in Skopje.

Visitors must also not forget the citys famous bazaar in Albanian old town, where chic bars, Islamic architecture and traditional markets have drawn backpackers making their way through the Balkans for decades.

With such an odd mix of historical monuments and megalomaniacal knockoffs, the local tourism office would do well to adopt the following slogan: Skopje, come for the kitsch, stay for the culture.

Cody Punter is a Yellowknife writer.

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An African dictator-king recently attained a minor victory in a high-stakes international tussle in the unlikely battleground of Toronto.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Swaziland King Mswati III in a debt dispute with a former business associate. But the court refused to release the $3.5 million (U.S.)  currently held in a trust account  used to secure the release of the monarchs once-impounded plane.

In a ruling released last week  about a week after appeal court judges ruled in favour of Mswati  the money was ordered held until September.

So the saga continues  a breakdown of a once-close relationship first reported by the Star in April.

I dont take this personally; this is business, Singaporean businessman Shanmuga Rethenam told the Star after a June 11 hearing. You might have the laugh now, but it might not be the final laugh.

Justices Janet Simmons, Eleanore Cronk and Robert Blair dismissed the appeal launched by Rethenam, who once sold Mswati the plane and accuses the king of owing $3.5 million (U.S.) for modifications to it.

Rethenam had the plane seized in January when it was at a specialized plane modification company in Huron Park, Ont. The $3.5 million (U.S.) is now being held in lieu of the jet, which was released last month by mutual agreement.

Rethenams hold on the plane  invalidated by a lower court on technical grounds  was the question before the court on June 11 and is the issue on which the businessmans entire case in Canada hinges.

If the plane could not have been legally held, then the $3.5 million will have to be released. Rethenam would then have no way of pursing his claim  yet untested before court  in Canada, as Mswati has no known assets in the country.

The judges did not immediately explain why they dismissed Rethenams appeal on June 11, but released their reasons last week. They upheld the lower court ruling that paying for repairs does not qualify one to be a repairer under the Repair and Storage Liens Act, which was cited in the planes seizure; the act allows only those who perform actual work to perform seizures.

However, the judges ordered the money held until the end of the period in which Rethenam can appeal, saying to do so is appropriate as it does Mswatis side no prejudice.

Rethenams lawyer, Sean Zeitz, said he and his client will study the reasons and then determine the next step. Even if Rethenam exhausts his avenues in Canada, the businessman said, the issue is far from over  a plane has to fly, after all.

I will go to other jurisdictions, he said. This fight goes on around the world.

Kenneth Prehogan, a lawyer for Mswatis side, declined to comment, saying only the matter is still before the courts.

Sihle Dlamini, Mswatis private secretary and royal estate manager, had disputed Rethenams claims in an affidavit and reiterated his stance to the Star, but did not respond to numerous subsequent requests for comment.

Swazilands government press office also did not respond to questions from the Star.

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OTTAWAThe federal government is trying to throw a shroud of secrecy over information a Chinese refugee claimant in British Columbia says could be crucial to his case.

A Federal Court judge will hear the governments plea Friday to shield portions of two Canada Border Services Agency documents from disclosure in the case of Shiyuan Shen, who is wanted for alleged fraud in China.

In a filing with the court, the government argues revealing the information would hurt international relations and shatter Canadas credibility in the eyes of foreign allies and sources.

Shen, who runs a kitchen-cabinet business in Richmond, B.C., arrived in Canada 10 years ago. He had lived in the United States since leaving China in February 2002.

He married a Canadian and applied for permanent residence. However, the border services agency arrested him for suspected involvement in illegal activities in China related to the steel trade, based on an outstanding warrant issued by the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai.

In March 2011, Shen applied for refugee protection in Canada. He said he never took part in any illegal activity in China, and that the Chinese authorities have targeted him for political reasons.

At his refugee hearing, Shen argued the Crown was required to disclose all documents obtained from China related to his case.

Shens refugee application was rejected, and he challenged the decision.

Federal authorities concede that more information should have been disclosed to Shen. But they are refusing to release the full contents of the two border services agency documents.

Instead, a public, redacted version of the information was provided to Shen. In addition, a version with more  but still not all  of the information was given to Shens lawyer, Lorne Waldman, and the refugee adjudicator, on condition that it be used solely in future refugee proceedings.

On Friday the Federal Court will evaluate the governments reliance on the Canada Evidence Act to withhold the remaining elements of the two border agency documents. While a portion of the hearing will be public, some arguments are expected to be heard behind closed doors.

The full documents should be disclosed, given the relevance of the evidence to Shens case, Waldman said. Its difficult for us to know how important the redacted material is, because we dont know what it says.

In its filing with the court, the federal government says confidentiality is a fundamental and necessary characteristic of most areas of international relations, including diplomacy, intelligence and security. As such, confidentiality is essential for Canada to pursue its foreign policy objectives.

Global Affairs Canada reviewed the border agency documents and excised the sensitive information in question.

David Hartman, executive director of the Greater China Division of Global Affairs, said in an affidavit that foreign governments, human rights organizations, activists and journalists supply information of interest to Canada with the expectation the source will not be divulged.

If Canada is seen as unreliable because it reveals the names of sources that have been helpful previously, the named source and any other officials with whom Global Affairs deals with are likely to re-evaluate their willingness to provide assistance.

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HALIFAXNova Scotias immigration minister thanked the entire community for its support Thursday, as her husband was released on bail on charges he assaulted, threatened and choked her on New Years Eve.

In her first public statement since the alleged incident, Lena Diab spoke in a quiet, halting voice as she described enduring a very tragic, sad, private and personal matter.

I am grateful for the support that I have received from the entire community, she said after a cabinet meeting. As always, I will continue to be focused on the very good work that we are doing in this very beautiful province of ours.

The cabinet minister and entrepreneur declined to respond to questions, but colleagues offered their support.

Diabs husband, Maroun Diab, was released on a series of conditions in Halifax provincial court Thursday.

Under a court order, he is prohibited from having any contact with Lena Diab and two other people, unless a lawyer is involved. He must not possess any weapons or consume alcohol, and he must not come within 100 metres of the Diab family home in Halifax.

As well, Maroun Diab must tell police if he changes his phone number or address, and he cant use any controlled substances without a prescription.

On Tuesday, Halifax police confirmed the 58-year-old was arrested early New Years Day after they received a call shortly before midnight from the Diabs home near Mount Saint Vincent University.

He was later charged with assaulting, choking and uttering threats toward Lena Diab. He also faces two counts of uttering threats toward two other people.

Premier Stephen McNeil declined to comment on the case Thursday, except to say that his love and support was with his colleague.

Community Services Minister Joanne Bernard said she didnt want to comment on Diabs situation, but she took the opportunity to say domestic violence continues to be an insidious crime that affects people from all walks of life.

It doesnt matter ... what profession you come from or what culture you have, said Bernard, who was once the head of Alice Housing, which offers long-term housing for women and children leaving abusive relationships.

Domestic violence is an issue that pervades families from all walks of life, everywhere. I saw that in my (previous) career. And now I continue to see it.

Bernard, known for her blunt-spoken style, said too many women fail to report domestic because it is such a difficult leap of faith.

Many women simply do not come forward, and they need to come forward ... because there is help there.

The community services minister went on to describe initiatives the province has taken to improve supports for those trying to escape domestic violence, including increased funding for shelters, transition houses and family resource centres.

My heart goes out to her and her family, Bernard said, referring to Diab. I know they are struggling. Like many women before her, she will come through this.

Lena Diab, a lawyer and business owner, was appointed Nova Scotias first female justice minister after winning office in October 2013 in a Halifax-area riding. She has four children and one grandchild.

Maroun Diab is scheduled to return to Halifax provincial court on Feb. 9.

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MONTREALCount back from known events. Late this month the Trudeau cabinet will hold a two-day retreat outside Ottawa. The last time the prime minister summoned his colleagues for one of these occasional getaways, in Sudbury at the end of August, he gave a few ministers new jobs and shook up the committees that organize their work.

Is it time for a larger shuffle? Maybe. Final decisions are the prime ministers, and his public daily agenda still says Personal. But senior Liberals say Trudeau is in a mood to make modest changes to his cabinet whenever trouble and opportunity intersect, rather than wait for an overhaul later.

Wheres the biggest trouble? On the morning of Jan. 20, trouble will be on Capitol Hill in Washington facing the chief justice of the United States, with his left hand on a Bible. At least I hope its a Bible his hand will be on. With this guy, who knows.

About the future, no more can be known. About Thursday, I can report that 300 people showed up at a lunchtime meeting of the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations. The guest speaker was Chrystia Freeland, who for the moment is Trudeaus minister of international trade. The topic of her speech was the intersection of trouble and opportunity.

We are living in complex times, Freeland said in French. Every word of her speech was in French, improvised at first and then read from a text, with good results. (She did say gaucher unique when she meant to say guichet unique. As a result, she seemed to be offering international investors a single left-hander instead of one-stop shopping.)

Complex doesnt mean much, but she wasnt shy about being more specific. Were living in extremely protectionist times, perhaps the most protectionist Ive ever seen.

Millions around the world are unconvinced that the modern economy works for them, she said. They take it out on two easy targets: immigrants or people who look different, and international trade agreements.

And then theres Canada, which keeps welcoming immigrants and refugees, and which last year concluded, knock on wood, negotiations toward a bold trade deal with Europe. For both policies, there is broad support across parties. I am so proud of Canada now, Freeland said. Not of our government but of our country. She thanked Stephen Harper and my friend Ed Fast, the former Conservative trade minister, for their work on the EU trade deal.

Isnt it impressive that in 2016, the year of Brexit and Donald Trumps election, Canada was sealing the largest trade agreement in our history? But Freeland was not here only to run victory laps. Opportunities offer themselves to us. But they wont fall from the sky.

The opportunity is to attract international investment and to encourage Canadian companies to export. To double down on trade while others are recoiling. A week after Trumps election, she said, she was on the phone to leading U.S. investors and CEOs, pitching Canada as a destination. More needs doing, she admitted.

At the news conference afterward I said she seemed to be saying Trumps election presents not only dangers, but a chance for Canada to mow the Americans lawn.

Well, I think youve put a few words into my mouth, she replied. But it sounds like I was generally intelligible.

And indeed, she does think Canadas openness . . . represents very significant and distinctive opportunities for our country.

Now, back to the trouble and opportunities at hand for Trudeau. Stephane Dion is still young at 61 and has been travelling nearly non-stop  Beirut, Lima, The Hague and Hamburg in November and December alone. Reviews are mixed. Hes pushing files forward, including advance work for a peacekeeping mission in Africa and Canadas candidacy for a UN Security Council seat. He is majestically skeptical of anything his colleagues try to sell him, a born Dr. No in a cabinet thats short of them.

Rumours were flying about his exit from elected politics even before Trump was elected. Now is he the best pitchman and advocate for an open Canada, in the face of a highly unpredictable new U.S. president? In Ottawa, Freeland is getting a second look. That woman is one contact away from everyone in Washington, a Liberal insider said this week.

The next move is Trudeaus. But if he sees his economic agenda as worth defending, hell want to put its best advocate, Freeland, in the foreign ministers post.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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OTTAWAHealth Canada is sending rape kits to reserves in northern Ontario amid complaints from indigenous leaders that they lack the resources to properly investigate cases of sexual assault  a widespread problem in indigenous communities.

Only about 60 per cent of northern Ontario communities have the kits  a vital forensic tool for investigating assaults  despite Health Canada assurances to the contrary, said Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.

Fiddler said Health Minister Jane Philpott, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and Status of Women Minister Patty Hajdu were first made aware of his concerns in a Dec. 5 meeting about rampant sexual abuse in indigenous communities.

After issuing a statement saying the reserves were properly equipped, Health Canada surveyed 19 nursing stations and then dispatched the rape kits Friday after The Canadian Press began asking about Fiddlers complaints.

It is disheartening and disappointing to find out that they finally did this inventory, he said.

Sexual assault examination kits are used by medical personnel when examining victims in order to properly collect and deliver DNA evidence to a forensic laboratory, where testing can establish proof of the assault and the assailants identity.

The shortage of such kits has meant victims have had to be sent to hospitals in outlying areas such as Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay, Nishnawbe Aski police Chief Terry Armstrong said in an interview.

Timely investigation is critical in order to properly gather and preserve evidence of sexual assault, he added, warning that a shortage of kits could discourage victims from coming forward.

Armstrong, whose experience includes three decades spent policing in the North, said the prevalence of sexual abuse in Canadian indigenous communities is linked to residential schools, where children were emotionally, physically and sexually abused in church-run, government-funded institutions.

(Now) youve got the abused becoming abusers, Armstrong said. It is multi-generational.

Fiddler, who has drawn a direct link between abuse and the indigenous suicide crisis in northern Ontario, said response protocols need to be developed because girls as young as 11 and 12 are coming forward as victims.

Communities across Canada lack the resources to properly investigate sexual abuse, said NDP Ontario MP Charlie Angus  a problem that he said helps to fuel a cycle of violence against indigenous women.

It starts in the reserves and ends up on the streets and until we start to put the resources there to support women and children who are at risk of sexual violence, the story of murdered and missing is going to go on and on, Angus said.

He took particular issue with the fact it appears to have taken a month for the federal government to take action.

It was brought to the attention of three ministers of the Crown who have a directly responsibility for the health of indigenous women. They didnt do anything.

In a statement earlier this week, Philpotts office acknowledged the concerns that were raised during a meeting in December.

The statement said Philpott instructed her team and department to explore the matter in order to better understand the concerns and the steps necessary to address them.

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Despite a reputation for standoffishness (especially with tourists) the French have invented some of the most important mass communication tools in human history. These include the papermaking machine, the Bic Cristal ballpoint pen (who doesnt have one of those?), and the bane of high school principals everywhere: the mobile software that enables us to share photos on our cellphones en masse, i.e. the DNA of the nude selfie.

This history is interesting and odd, because at this very moment France is not in the business of building on the tools of mass communication; its in the business of restricting them.

Im referring to the countrys new right to disconnect law that went into effect on New Years Day (along with a series of other labour-related regulations): a law that makes it illegal for employers to intrude on employees private time via email after working hours.

More specifically, the law requires that companies with 50 or more staff members work with unions and employees to devise a policy that prevents the intrusion of office emails into workers leisure time. The Right to Disconnect policy comes on the heels of a French study about the scourge of so-called info-obesity: the suffering health of French workers who are constantly connected to their emails outside working hours. Curtail that connection, argues French Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri, and everybody  bosses and charges alike  will be better off.

So it goes that the nation that invented the software that keeps Kim Kardashians selfie empire afloat has taken a vow of technological temperance.

The question now for those of us who live outside of that nation is should we follow suit? Should we do as the French do, and demand: No longer will our vacations be cut short by uncharitable bosses who refuse to respect the authority of our Out of Office auto-replies? Our answer, judging by fawning headlines and editorials heralding the right to disconnect, is a resounding yes. As a rule, liberal North Americans love to heap praise on progressive European social policy, and it appears this case is no exception.

And why should it be? The law, after all, is a step in the right direction toward reviving the fast fading line between work and play (a line that is likely to go extinct without government intervention.)

But unfortunately, the law is also a Band-Aid solution to a much deeper problem. Excessive emailing isnt the prime enemy of leisure time in the modern work world. We are the enemy. That is, our addiction to technology is the enemy.

Its an addiction that motivates 87 per cent of U.S. workers, according to an American survey from 2015, to check their emails outside work hours everyday, and provokes the average smartphone user, according to a study from 2013, to check Facebook 14 times a day. Its an addiction, according to another study, from the U.K., that triggers university students who are separated from their technology for 24 hours to suffer withdrawal symptoms similar to those exhibited by heavy cigarette smokers.

Its an addiction, in other words, that cannot be legislated away, because its pervasiveness is as much the fault of Internet-obsessed employees as it is inconsiderate bosses. (I check my email almost every day when I am on vacation not because I think my employer is emailing me, but because I am addicted to my phone.)

In fact, one could argue that a prohibition against after-hours emailing is almost useless if it doesnt address the job pressures exacerbated by social media. Email, after all, is only one of many online communication tools available to employers. If you happen to work in public relations, or advertising, the line between personal and professional is often even blurrier; many people in these fields are required to post content to social media on behalf of their organizations  a duty that never sleeps and is rife with personal risk. Make a mistake in a rush, and your career and reputation could be in the gutter.

If your job involves social media  and even if it doesnt  it isnt unlikely that you follow your bosses and colleagues on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. If this is the case, so long as you are logged onto to one of those platforms you are effectively never out of reach of your employer.

The truth, then, is that the disappearing line between work and leisure time cannot be restored by legislation alone. It will be restored only if  in addition to the passage of progressive labour laws  we decide to commit to the deeply personal work required to kick any powerful addiction.

Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.

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OTTAWABruce Heyman, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, has formally tendered his resignation, sent packing by an incoming Trump administration that is moving fast to clear out political appointments made by outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama.

Heyman announced the move on Twitter Friday, making clear that he was asked to leave his diplomatic posting. As requested I have resigned as U.S. Ambassador to Canada effective 1/20, Heyman wrote.

He said that he and his wife, Vicki Heyman, would leave Canada around the date of the Jan. 20 inauguration, when Donald Trump moves into the White House. In her own tweet, Vicki Heyman paid tribute to the couples time in Ottawa, which lasted almost three years.

It was been an honor & complete delight to represent the U.S. in Canada. We will miss all of you but promise to stay in touch! she wrote.

While tradition dictates that U.S. ambassadors tender their resignations when a new administration takes over in Washington, American diplomats have often remained in their posts until a replacement was named to help smooth the transition and ensure representation remains in place.

But the incoming Trump administration has taken a different tack, ordering all politically appointed ambassadors put in place by Obama to be out of their posts by inauguration day, the New York Times has reported.

A State Department official confirmed to the Star that per standard practice, the White House requested and received resignations from all politically appointed Chiefs of Mission.

Still, academic Fen Hampson sees the move as further evidence of a souring transition between Trump and the president he replaces.

The bonhomie seen during an Oval Office meeting in November between Trump and Obama has since evaporated in mutual recriminations, said Hampson, director of the global security and politics at Waterloos Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Diplomats are the latest roadkill in this car wreck that is becoming a transition between Obama and Trump, he said.

In real terms, Heymans departure is not expected to have major implications for relations between the two countries. The value of a U.S. ambassador is having the ear of the president on the big files and, as Obamas pick, Heyman would certainly not have had that relationship, said Hampson, who is also a professor at Ottawas Carleton University.

But appointing a new U.S. envoy to Ottawa could take months, meaning the post could be vacant during a critical period as Trump gets started on his agenda.

What is really disconcerting is that Trump is going to be moving fast on his trade agenda, Hampson said, noting the pledge to act on promised reforms to the North American Free Trade Agreement within 100 days of taking office.

The appointment of a new U.S. ambassador would matter less if Trump were expected to be a business-as-usual president, something Hampson acknowledges is not the case.

Its not going to be business as usual, he said.

Heyman was confirmed as Obamas representative to Canada in March 2014. The longtime executive at Goldman Sachs had been an Obama loyalist and fundraiser. During their time in Ottawa, the couple quickly became popular in political and diplomatic circles with parties at their elegant mansion in the upscale Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood.

In a pre-election interview with the Star, Heyman struck an optimistic tone about the future of Canada-U.S. relations, saying that the close relationship would endure, no matter who moves into the White House.

Heyman said that ties between the two nations were broad enough and deep enough to withstand whatever result the election would serve up.

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In the first few minutes of her closing address to the jury, a woman representing herself in her trial for the murder of her husband accused the judge of making decisions based on emotions, declared she still intends to call a witness and urged the jury to keep in their hearts that they are the only ones who can decide the facts.

You didnt give me any rights, Xiu Jin Teng, 40, yelled as Justice Ian MacDonnell told the jury court was done for the day.

It was her third outburst of the day, much of which she spent in a room where she could observe the proceedings by video link, but not be heard  an arrangement used when accused persons are disruptive in court.

Earlier in the day, as MacDonnell explained to the jury how closing addresses were going to work, given that Teng is representing herself, Teng suddenly stood and yelled: Your majesty, I need a defence lawyer . . . what you said is illegal for me.

I need a defence lawyer before you say anything further, she continued, telling the jury she had been segregated from the courtroom in the morning when they were not present.

You are an illegal judge, she shouted as MacDonnell attempted to proceed. I will still call witnesses.

The reason Teng is without a lawyer has not been explained to the jury, although she has repeatedly complained about it in front of them. A lawyer, Richard Litkowski, has been appointed to advise the court on legal issues and provide some assistance to Teng. Both he and Teng have questioned some Crown witnesses.

After Teng was removed from the courtroom to the video-link room, MacDonnell told the jury Tengs assertion that she has been denied a lawyer and the opportunity to call witnesses is incorrect.

Teng would not inform the court who the witnesses she wanted to call were and why, he said. None of the witnesses were produced in court and without knowing who they are, the court could not help subpoena them to come, he said.

The one witness Teng did identify is away until February and she would not explain why she wanted to call that witness, MacDonnell said.

He also reminded the jury that they must decide this case on the facts and ignore Tengs behaviour in the courtroom.

Prosecutor Joshua Levy told the jury in his closing address that the evidence shows Teng killed her husband Dong Huang in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2012, by strangling him to death with a thin piece of twine after hitting him in the head and drugging him.

She then wrapped his body in plastic and hid it in a closet of their Scarborough basement apartment, Levy said. She intended to dispose of the body and collect between $1.6 million and $2 million in life insurance policies, he said.

The plan was thwarted five days later, Levy said, when Tengs landlord knocked on the door and asked for rent. Although thousands of dollars in cash was found on the table by police, Teng did not pay the $750 owed for rent.

Concerned after seeing boxes and other indications that her tenants and their 2-year-old daughter might leave without paying, the landlord, her husband and a neighbour entered the apartment and found Huangs body covered in bleach  possibly, Levy suggested, to conceal the smell.

(Teng) clearly wasnt thinking straight, Levy said. All she had to do was tell Ms. Gu (the landlord), I have the rent money right here, have a nice day. And Ms. Gu might have cheerfully taken the money and gone back upstairs.

Teng told her landlords her husband had died of a heart attack. Levy said there was no indication that Huang had heart disease and that the cause of death was found to be ligature strangulation.

Levy said Teng repeatedly lied to police but that her biggest lie was that she didnt work. In fact, shed been working for a year selling life insurance, Levy said.

Teng took out two life insurance policies on her husband in late 2011, with herself as the beneficiary, Levy said. She also took out a life insurance policy of $1.5 million on herself, with her mother as the beneficiary, he said.

As the salesperson, Teng was paid a commission for taking out these policies, Levy said. In January, she changed her life insurance policy to increase the premium to $40,000 a year from $500  earning herself a $20,000 commission and $33,000 in bonuses, he said.

And she had no intention of sticking around to pay the new high premium, he said.

It is unclear how she intended to collect on her husbands life insurance, Levy said.

It would not have an insurmountable thing to do, it would have required some effort, he said. But I dont want to speculate on how it would be achievable.

Levy also told the jury Teng was making plans to dispose of her husbands body, possibly in the Humber River or Lake Ontario. She bought several items from Canadian Tire in cash, including rubber gloves, a hand saw used to cut up a mattress, several garbage bags, tablecloths, 18 icepacks, rubber mats, a winch, a hydraulic jack and a light, he said.

She also bought a phone in another name.

This is the conduct of a person trying to cover up the murder of their husband, not the conduct of a grieving wife, Levy said.

Teng, who briefly started her closing address to the jury Thursday, is expected to continue on Friday.

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As 2016 came to a close, village presidents Dennis Manthei of West Salem and Gary Althoff of Bangor reflected on a year of challenges and triumphs.

Manthei said despite it being a quiet year for the village government due to a tight budget, that didnt stop the community from moving forward.

He highlighted the completion of the new Lakeview Health Care facility in West Salem and the Hwy. 16 widening project, which heavily impacted traffic between Onalaska and West Salem.

The Hwy. 16, project certainly impacted people, he said. Were delighted to see it done.

Manthei said three housing developments that entered the planning phase in 2016 will be of continued interest to the village. One of these developments would add as many as 37 single-family residential housing plots to the village.

This proposal by local attorney Harry Griswold, Kassandra and Peter Opsahl, and La Crosse County would raze the former Lakeview Healthcare facility. In the healthcare facilitys place, single-family homes would eventually be built.

Manthei said the village is still awaiting a plat mat from Griswold and his partners.

He said the village is also awaiting additional information from two more developers working on multi-family housing, including townhomes and an apartment complex.

None of these developments are close to breaking ground at this point.

West Salem Village Administrator Teresa Schnitzler said, due to the budget constraints, the village has had to scale back planned projects.

She said this problem became obvious when director of public works Scott Halbrucker gave a presentation asking the village to consider replacing two of its snow plowsone of which had more than 500,000 miles on it and the other a non-compliant exhaust.

Halbrucker said both of these trucks would need to be replaced.

However, due to the extreme cost of these trucks, new vehicles were out of the question. This left used vehicles the only option for the village.

Schnitzler said the village board had planned to replace the older truck in 2015, but due to the budget, was put off.

She said a year later, the budget has only gotten tighter, but the village also cant afford to lose the second plow.

Schnitzler said the villages newly hired building assessor may help to remedy some of these financial shortfalls.

This month, Homefield Assessing will begin reassessing up to 80 percent of homes and businesses in the village.

The decision to hire Homefield Assessing came shortly after David Huebsch, the villages building assessor for the past 42 years, retired.

Schnitzler said the new assessor may find that many homes and businesses are undervalued and add to the taxable property in the village.

This year will also mark the beginning of a large road project to resurface North Mark Street and Uland Street.

Bangor

Althoff said Bangors biggest challenge in 2016 was balancing the budget.

He said part of the budget was spent on developing a strategic plan for paying for village needs.

I think it was money well spent, he said. We will have updates for the next 10 years.

Althoff said due to budget constraints, hiring a fourth police officer was not possible.

Police chief Scott Alo had requested on numerous occasions the department hire a fourth officer to ensure adequate coverage should another officer go on vacation or become ill.

Althoff said the board was forced to ask what the village really needed in 2017 and a fourth officer didnt make the list.

One of the biggest gains for the village in 2016 was the annexation of the Nicolai family farm. He said the agreement was reached with the family in the hopes of spurring interest in the purchase of the property.

In exchange, the village grew 30 percent in 2015 to just over 1,000 acres.

Althoff believed the additional land would attract developers to the village.

Last year also marked the completion of a three-year-long project to revamp the villages ordinance book.

Normally, a baby takes nine months, Althoff said. This was three babies before it was done and over with.

He said 2016 wasnt without conflict. The issue of extraterritorial zoning became one that embroiled three communities.

The push for the ETZ agreement was largely due to a wellhead protection plan based that relied on it passing.

Under the ETZ, the village would have adopted the town of Burns zoning ordinances. In addition, if passed, the village would have had a say in any zoning issues within a predefined area in Burns.

Many in Burns felt the ETZ would subvert the towns zoning ordinances.

I regret going that route, Althoff said. We didnt understand how difficult and how much was involved.

It was just one question and one expense after another, he added.

The village eventually voted to abandon the ETZ after hearing the concerns of the towns of Bangor and Burns.

Althoff said the two communities may be their neighbors geographically, but they are also their friends in church and in the grocery store.

He said a new wellhead protection plan is in the works.

Althoff said he hopes to find a use of the three acres donated to the village near the Purple Cow on Commercial Street.

In 2016, the village investigated several uses for the land, including the construction of a new village hall and senior center.
A Hamilton judge who wore a Make America Great Again hat to court the day after the U.S. election and declared his support for president-elect Donald Trump is no longer hearing cases.

Justice Bernd Zabel, appointed to the bench in 1990, stopped being assigned new cases on Dec. 21, 2016, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Court of Justice told the Star in a brief statement Thursday.

I am not able to provide other details. The Chief Justice is not able to comment further on this matter, said spokeswoman Kate Andrew.

As first reported by The Globe and Mail, Zabel showed up for court the morning after the Nov. 8 election wearing a red Make America Great Again ball cap. The Globe reported he then placed the hat on the bench in front of him. Critics said this showed a lack of impartiality, crucial to the role of a judge.

Almost a week later, Zabel apologized for wearing the hat, acknowledging in court that it was a lapse in judgment and a breach of the principles of judicial office. He said it was his attempt at humour.

This gesture was not intended in any way as a political statement or endorsement of any political views, and, in particular, the views and comments of Donald Trump. I very much regret that it has been taken as such, he said.

But the sincerity of his apology came into question when the Star obtained a transcript showing that Zabel explicitly said he supported Trump in court on Nov. 9.

Brief appearance with the hat. Pissed off the rest of the judges because they all voted for Hillary, so. I was the only Trump supporter up there but thats OK, Zabel said just before court closed, according to the certified transcript.

Following the reports of Zabel wearing the hat, a number of individuals and organizations, including the Criminal Lawyers Association, made formal complaints about the judge to the Ontario Judicial Council, which has the power to investigate judges conduct and suspend them or recommend to the Attorney General that they be removed from office.

The council has yet to indicate the outcome of those complaints.

Its clear that the Office of the Chief Justice has taken the complaints seriously, said lawyer Daniel Brown, a Toronto director of the CLA.

Its an appropriate response given the nature of the complaints and should continue until a full investigation is complete.

Counsel with cases before a judge whos no longer presiding in court must wait for direction from the Crowns office, Peter Boushy, a Hamilton defence lawyer noted, but declined to speak specifically about the Zabel matter.

A case could be reheard or continue with another judge handling the proceedings, Boushy said.

All complaints filed to the Ontario Judicial Council are assigned to a two-person subcommittee made up of a judge and a community member for a private investigation.

The resulting report is then put before a four-person panel for review.

From there, the complaint can be dismissed, referred to the Chief Justice of Ontario (who will speak to the judge), or examined in a formal public hearing.

Theres no timeline for when the panel must reach a decision.

If a judge is found to have committed professional misconduct by the judicial council, possible sanctions include a reprimand, suspension or recommendation to the Attorney General that the judge be removed from office.

With files from the Hamilton Spectator

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Toronto officials dont know why B.C.s deadly fentanyl crisis has not yet spread to the city, but theyre aiming to ensure it never does.

On Monday, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Torontos acting medical officer of health, will chair the first in a series of monthly gatherings in a joint effort to prevent any spike in overdoses involving fentanyl and other illicit opioid drugs.

Mayor John Tory, city manager Peter Wallace, paramedics, police, harm-reduction advocates and others in the Toronto overdose surveillance & alert partnership will focus at home while warily looking west to the shocking toll fentanyl, a highly potent anesthetic commonly used for surgery, has taken on Vancouver.

Last month the B.C. coroners office issued an urgent warning after at least 11 people in the province died on one day, six in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside. In B.C. there were 374 overdose deaths involving fentanyl detected between January and October 2016  up 194 per cent over the previous year.

Fentanyl, often mixed by traffickers with heroin or cocaine, is up to 100 times more toxic than morphine. B.C. victims include addicts with jobs, families and children as well as those in Vancouvers infamous shooting gallery.

I dont think anyone truly has the answer to the question why they are seeing so many deaths in Vancouver and were not yet seeing that situation here, said Shaun Hopkins, manager of the Toronto Public Healths The Works harm-reduction program, in an interview Thursday.

By putting preventative measures in place and looking at this issue in a comprehensive way, hopefully we will not experience the kinds of deaths and situations they are seeing in Vancouver.

There are signs in Toronto of increased fentanyl use, including a bootleg version  but nothing like the explosion seen out west.

Toronto paramedics used overdose-reversing drug naloxone 161 times last year, up from 110 in 2015. They caution that naloxone is also used for overdoses involving other drugs and at least part of that jump could be attributed to the fact that all paramedics now carry the antidote.

That figure may also underestimate fentanyl use because family members of addicts can get and administer naloxone themselves, averting overdoses that would not necessarily get recorded by emergency services.

Toronto police seized about three kilograms of fentanyl last year  up from 350 grams in 2015, but still a tiny fraction of all drug seizures.

Weve seen a change from primarily patches in 2015, with some pills primarily disguised as oxy(contin), but now were seeing more fentanyl powder in the last year, said police Acting Insp. Steve Watts.

Toronto police track overdoses, and have recorded one involving fentanyl since starting to specifically look for that drug late last year, Watts said. However, police figures dont capture overdoses when someone is privately transported to hospital.

While acknowledging patient confidentiality concerns, he said it could be helpful, in terms of oversight of the problem, that we do more (information) sharing between public health, hospitals and the police.

As well as real-time tracking of fentanyl and other narcotic deaths, the joint effort being launched Monday could prompt, or call for, wider public access to naloxone, new outreach efforts to drug users and improved treatment options.

One major step already in the works  three supervised injection sites approved by council  is in limbo awaiting federal approval, provincial funding of $1.8 million in annual operating costs and $350,000 in one-time renovation costs.

Ontarios health ministry is currently working with the city to review their (safe-injection) proposal, Shae Greenfield, a spokesman for Health Minister Eric Hoskins, told the Star on Thursday.

Tory, meanwhile, said, I think weve done everything we need to do.

I just hope (the province) takes a look at this and says This is a very small amount to invest to save lives and to address a problem that is increasing in prevalence in our cities. When it comes to saving lives, whats more important than that?

The mayor got personally involved in the fentanyl response after reaching out to Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to ask how Toronto could help with the crisis. Tory was told Canadas biggest city should prepare for its own onslaught.

I piggybacked on top of, and expanded, the group that was coming together to try to make sure we get, under the direction of Dr. Yaffe and Councillor (Joe) Cressy, questions and answers in advance of any type of dramatic fentanyl increase, Tory said. It will also help me be a much louder advocate on this.

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If a person charged with a crime is found to be HIV-positive, that could be enough for police to disclose that very personal and sensitive information to the public.

Thats one takeaway from an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that advocates say is cause for concern for those living with HIV or AIDS, which continue to attract stigma and misunderstanding despite evolving science.

The provinces top court overturned a lower court decision last week, ruling that that Durham Regional Police did not breach former youth pastor Kris Gowdys constitutional rights following his 2012 arrest for Internet child luring when they disclosed in a news release that he was HIV-positive.

Gowdy was arrested after arriving at the home of someone who had been posing as a 15-year-old boy online, to perform oral sex, only to discover the individual was a police officer. Police searched his car and discovered documentation and medication proving he was HIV-positive. The arrest and Gowdys HIV status were widely reported on at the time, making international headlines.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Justice David Watt said the police forces actions in disclosing Gowdys HIV status were clearly in retrospect not advisable.

But the judges held that the release of that information did not violate Gowdys right to security of the person because there had been no finding at trial that the disclosure had a psychological effect on Gowdy beyond the impact already caused by the charge he was facing.

They also concluded that provincial privacy legislation contains an exemption for municipal institutions to release personal information that they have lawfully gathered if it is for a consistent purpose.

In this case, Watt said that the consistent purpose was to further the investigation by inviting responses from other sexual partners of Gowdy who may be at risk of transmission.

The police had reasonable suspicion; reasonable grounds to believe further offences had been committed was not required for the purpose of the media release, Watt said.

The court dismissed Gowdys appeal of the conviction, but allowed the Crowns appeal. The court substituted Gowdys two-year conditional sentence, which he served at home, with a one-year jail term, although it said he should not be re-arrested because he had already served his sentence.

As noted by the Court of Appeal, the lead investigator in the case did not seek legal advice or the permission of the police chief or his designate before issuing the news release, did not seek medical advice to find out the likelihood of transmission of the virus through a sexual activity such as fellatio, and did not seek to confirm Gowdys assertion that his medication had rendered his viral load so low that it made transmission unlikely.

Gowdy also never admitted in his interview with police that he had had sexual contact with individuals who were unaware of his HIV status, the court said.

The lead investigator testified that, to his knowledge, he had never before investigated someone with HIV in his 23 years of policing, Watt wrote. The investigating officer acknowledged he did not consider the Charter rights of Kris Gowdy before requesting the media release.

Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, one of the interveners in the appeal, said in an interview with the Star that police should have turned their minds to what the actual risks of transmission may have been in this case.

I can't think what that reasonable suspicion is actually founded on. I don't think the suspicion is a reasonable one, all the information the officer had was that this accused was HIV-positive, Elliott said.

This is a case in which merely finding out someone has HIV was seen by police as sufficient for putting out a press release, basically engaging in a fishing expedition.

He also described the courts interpretation of the consistent purpose exemption as very, very liberal, saying it sets an extraordinarily low bar that police have to clear before releasing a persons HIV status.

The case highlights what advocates say is a lack of proper training for officers in dealing with HIV-positive individuals and the absence of clear statutes governing the disclosure of such information by police.

Durham police spokesman Dave Selby declined to comment on the courts decision.

In general, I can say that we regularly review our policies to ensure they are consistent with all applicable laws and judicial decisions. We will review this decision carefully, as well, he said in an email. We will continue to respect the fundamental privacy rights of all citizens while balancing our community safety responsibilities.

Gowdys appeal lawyer, Russell Silverstein, said his client is considering whether to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

When it comes to ones HIV status, different considerations apply, its not the same as telling the world that the accused is suffering from cancer or some other disease, he told the Star.

You cant say that the release of such information is per se a Charter breach, its going to depend on the circumstances, and the question is: what should the appropriate test be for the disclosure of that particular information?

A former pastor with the Free Methodist Church of Canada, Gowdy posted an ad on Craigslist in 2012 looking for men interested in receiving oral sex, specifying he was looking for under 35, jocks, college guys, skaters, young married guy.

A detective with the OPPs Child Sexual Exploitation Section homed in on the use of the words young, skater, and under 35 in Gowdys ad, and began an online conversation with him, posing as a 15-year-old boy.

Shortly after agreeing to meet the boy for oral sex, Gowdy was arrested. He maintained in court that he never actually believed the person he was conversing with was 15 years old.

Gowdy, a former pastor with the Free Methodist Church of Canada, had kept his sexual orientation secret from his family and church, his 2014 trial heard. He had no prior criminal record and there were no complaints about inappropriate behaviour from the ministries where he had worked as a pastor.

I regret incredibly my actions, they were foolish and inappropriate, Gowdy told the Star in an interview in 2014. It feels to me like there should be some kind of reprimand to these officers at the minimum.

At trial, Justice Michael Block found that the release of Gowdys HIV status violated his constitutional rights. He circumvented the mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail for the luring offence, and instead imposed a two-year conditional sentence, which Gowdy served at home. Gowdys name was to remain on the sexual offender registry for 20 years.

Mr. Gowdy had a right to make his own choices concerning the disclosure of his HIV status, Block said. No doubt he would have chosen his own method and different timing if he ever determined to inform those near to him. Absent evidence of serious risk of transmission and rigorous compliance with statute, no one had the authority to make that decision for him.

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At night, when the University of Toronto is bathed deeply in shadow, Richard Fiennes-Clinton will show you the mark on the oak door, left 160 years ago by stonemason Paul Diaboloss axe.

Hell tell of another stonemason, Ivan Reznikoff, killed by Diaboloss next blow.

Hell show you the grimacing gargoyles Diabolos carved into the College wall, and tell you that Reznikoffs spirit walked the campus, until his body was discovered in 1890.

But Fiennes-Clinton, owner of Muddy York Walking Tours, will cut some of that spookiness with a disclaimer.

I do tell people that its a legend, its probably been embellished over the years, he says.

The story of Diabolos and Reznikoff has been a beloved part of University College lore since the 1870s, when students began telling tales of a college ghost.

Paranormal sightings aside, the tale of Diabolos and Reznikoff has been presented as practically being historical fact for years.

University College features a colourful retelling of the story on its official website.

The tale was included (with qualifiers like apparently and it was said) in at least two modern histories of the University of Toronto, which drew their research from Studies in Student Life, a series of books about U of T published in the 1920s.

The story was recently shared on a Reddit page of random Toronto facts most people wouldnt know about.

The University of Toronto referred questions about the historical background of Diabolos and Reznikoff to Fiennes-Clinton, who leads historical and haunted walking tours around the city, including U of T campus.

There are some ghost stories in Toronto that have some eerie basis in fact, like we know in some cases a specific person died and it was in the newspapers at the time, Fiennes-Clinton says.

This isnt one of them.

The story goes that the Greek Diabolos and Russian Reznikoff were stonemasons, working on the construction of University College in the 1850s.

Diabolos was in love with Reznikoffs fiancee and planned to steal her from him. He carved one hideous gargoyle, modeled after Reznikoff, into the College wall and another one, modeled after himself, looking on and laughing.

A jealous Reznikoff attacked Diabolos and was killed in the ensuing fight. Reznikoffs body was hidden on campus, and found over 30 years later, after University College burned down in 1890.

Fiennes-Clinton says he has never seen any documentation to support the story of Reznikoff or Diabolos, or the discovery of a body on campus.

I always preface it with the fact that I doubt very highly youre going to find employee records for the stone masons or anything like that, Fiennes-Clinton says.

He stops short of telling his tours that no one ever found a body on campus.

I dont want to kill the mood, he says.

In a search of newspaper archives from the 1890s, the Star found no mention of a body found at University College.

Nor could the Star find anyone with the names Reznikoff or Diabolos included in the census of 1851 or 1861, the years bracketing the period of the supposed murder.

There are some facts that can be substantiated. University College was built between 1856 and 1859, primarily by European workers.

On Feb. 14, 1890, the college caught fire when a kerosene lamp was knocked over.

Most of the original structure was destroyed, but the Croft Chapter House, the section of the building that includes the gargoyles and the axe-marked door, survived.

The scarcity of proven facts hasnt dampened the Universitys passion for Reznikoff and Diabolos.

There are two campus coffeehouses, Cafe Reznikoff and Diabolos Coffee Bar, named after the legend.

And, for generations, University College faculty members have kept a human skull, said to be Reznikoffs.

Theyre very happy with their story, says Fiennes-Clinton. There are other sites in Toronto that have ghost stories attached to them and they dont like people talking about it. But University College is one that has really completely embraced it.

#RandomToronto is an occasional series fact-checking and exploring little-known stories about our city.

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Tom Harpur, a theologian and former Star religion editor who journeyed on foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem, met Mother Teresa and provided spiritual guidance to Torontonians through his weekly columns, died this week at 87.

Born to an evangelical family in Torontos east end in 1929, Harpurs upbringing led him to embark on a life of religion. After attending Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, Harpur studied theology at the University of Torontos Wycliffe College.

He became a priest at St. Margaret in-the-Pines Anglican Church in Scarborough in 1957 and served there for seven years before leaving to teach theology at the University of Toronto.

Harpur joined the Star as religion editor in 1971, where he met his future wife, Susan, who worked in the Stars legal department. They were married in 1980.

He was brilliant, sensitive and just had a wonderful sense of humour, Susan said. His education had given him such a broad exposure to so many things in the humanities, he had such a breadth of knowledge. And, of course, a quote or quip for every occasion.

As the Stars religion editor, Harpur travelled to more than 20 countries, meeting many prominent religious figures  including Mother Teresa (over Christmas) and the Dalai Lama (twice)  as well as embarking on many unique adventures.

In 1976, Harpur made the 161-kilometre trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the first journalist to do so, according to an Israeli official who warned him about flash floods, landmines and terrorist guerrillas. The journey did not get off to a great start.

Using a donkey to carry part of our gear was not our idea and, in fact, it turned out to be a not very good idea for I had to fire it after only one days trek, Harpur wrote of the first days adventure.

Harpurs education combined with a career in journalism, Susan said, helped evolve his views beyond his evangelical upbringing.

I feel a deep compassion and pastoral concern . . . for the untold thousands right now who want to express the new ways in which they are experiencing God today, he wrote in 2007. What is needed, I believe, is not more renewal. . . . The time has come for a radical rebirth of the Church.

Harpur may be best known for his 2004 book, The Pagan Christ, which topped the Stars bestseller list for original non-fiction that year. He wrote it at the age of 75.

In the book, Harpur digs deep into the origins of Christianity, and argues that there is no evidence that historical Jesus existed. In fact, he said the story of Jesus was largely based on an Egyptian man-god and was simply an allegorical tale, meant to act as a guidepost for those striving to be better people. The book was met with controversy among some Christians, and while some may have doubted his devotion, it merely strengthened his faith.

He was a leading voice in the religious field and also in the broader spiritual world, in helping people grow in their lives, Susan said. He was very much hoping that Christianity could be born again, but its very difficult within the established church. That would have been his hope and goal.

In an interview with the Star in 2011, speaking about his memoir Born Again, Harpur said he had never had any experiences with God, but was conscious all my life looking at it.

It would be nice to have a great mystical experience like Paul, but I guess I have my large feet too firmly planted on the earth, he said. Im not really a religious guy, you know.

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For 18 months, Christopher Campbell-Durufle has been trying to convince immigration officials that his mother-in-law in Colombia is a legitimate traveller with no intent to overstay her welcome in Canada.

Since 2015 the Toronto man has made three failed attempts to help Ofelia Chavez Ruiz obtain a visitor visa to see him and his wife but could not figure out the reasons for the rejections, which occurred despite documentation showing the 76-year-old womans strong ties  and desire to return  to her homeland.

However, Campbell-Durufle said a recent response from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to an MP on his familys behalf might have explained the realreason for the decisions.

In the case that interests you, a note to our electronic file indicates that the applicant is a widow and that she was unable to convince the officers of the visa office in Bogota that she was firmly established in her country, the department noted in an email to New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair, whose office took up the familys case.

In previous rejection letters, officials had only cited the womans lack of travel history, wealth and a purpose for the visit, as well as her ties to Canada through her daughter, as reasons for the refusals.

Campbell-Durufle, a University of Toronto PhD student in international law, said he was shocked by the widow reference in his mother-in-laws file.

No one could tell us what they wanted. We had given them all the information, notarized documents and statements trying to meet their criteria in good faith. The last application we presented had 186 pages of proofs, lamented Campbell-Durufle, who met his wife, Carolina Delgado, in Bogota in 2012 and married her two years later.

But we couldnt do anything about the fact my mother-in-law is a widow. Does it mean that all widows and widowers cant travel to Canada? This is ridiculous.

Marital status is not among the listed reasons in the Immigration Departments form rejection letter.

I know refusals of visitor visas are common, but this applicant had a truckload of evidence and a very strong application. In my view, they discriminated against her as a widow, assuming that because her husband died, she wont go home after visiting, said Toronto immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges, who was consulted by the family.

She owns property, has family (two sons and a daughter) in Colombia, has travelled to Europe, is financially sound. The refusal is really out of line.

After the Star inquired into the matter, officials said the Canadian visa post in Bogota has advised Chavez Ruiz this week to submit a new application and promised she will be issued a three-month visitor visa.

Visa applications are considered on a case-by-case basis on the specific facts presented by the applicant in each case, noted Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Nancy Chan. The department does not discriminate based on the relationship status of an individual.

It is not known how many visitors to Canada end up overstaying their visas because Canada doesnt track travellers leaving the country. Some 20 per cent of the one million-plus visitor visa applications are rejected annually.

While he is grateful for immigration officials change of heart, Campbell-Durufle said the costs of the three failed applications $200 each, plus fees involved in obtaining supporting documents  and the stress the family had gone through were unnecessary.

While we do not want to sound ungrateful, we have suffered all this in silence since 2015 and know that our situation is far from being the worst, said Campbell-Durufle, who hopes his mother-in-law can arrive in time to see the birth of the couples first child expected in early February.

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OTTAWAThe federal government is trying to throw a shroud of secrecy over information a Chinese refugee claimant in British Columbia says could be crucial to his case.

A Federal Court judge will hear the governments plea Friday to shield portions of two Canada Border Services Agency documents from disclosure in the case of Shiyuan Shen, who is wanted in China on allegations of fraud.

In a filing with the court, the government argues revealing the information would hurt international relations and shatter Canadas credibility in the eyes of foreign allies and sources.

Shen, who runs a kitchen-cabinet business in Richmond, B.C., arrived in Canada 10 years ago.

The border services agency arrested him for suspected involvement in illegal activities in China related to the steel trade, based on an outstanding warrant issued by the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai.

In 2011, Shen applied for refugee protection in Canada, saying the Chinese had targeted him for political reasons.

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DENVERSome elusive and charismatic lynx have been parading past awe-struck Colorado residents and visitors this winter, electrifying social media and giving biologists reason to smile.

One of the rare, fluffy-looking cats strolled nonchalantly across the Purgatory resort in southwestern Colorado last week, threading through a crowd of skiers and snowboarders who swerved around the animal and stopped to take videos.

Two weeks earlier, a pair of lynx loped along a mountain highway a few feet from Dontje Hildebrands car.

My heart just about busted out of my chest when I realized what I was seeing, said Hildebrand, who was driving over Molas Pass, about 15 miles north of the Purgatory resort, when he came upon a female lynx and her kitten.

Between 50 and 250 lynx live in the wild in Colorado, mostly in the southwestern corner of the state, biologists say. Thats down from previous estimates of 200 to 300, but officials cite better calculations, not a population decline.

They are protected under the Endangered Species Act in the contiguous 48 states.

Lynx, native to Colorado, virtually disappeared from the state by the 1970s because of hunting, poisoning and development. The state brought them back starting in 1999, transplanting lynx from Canada and Alaska.

The medium-size cats have tufted ears, short tails and broad paws that work like snowshoes, letting them walk across powdery snow. They can grow to nearly 3 feet long and 30 pounds.

Wildlife officials dont know exactly how many live in Colorado because they are so hard to find, said Joe Lewandowski, a spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

A few people report seeing them every year, but those sightings dont help with the science of lynx reintroduction because they are anecdotal, Lewandowski said.

But its encouraging, he said.

The state documents where the animals live with a survey using automated cameras mounted in remote lynx country.

The sightings indicate the cats are getting comfortable in the high-altitude forests of southwestern Colorado, which are prime lynx habitat.

The lynx appearance at Purgatory on Dec. 28 was unusual because so many people saw it, Lewandowski said.

Jim Russell was snowboarding that day when he and dozens of others watched the lynx mosey across a ski run.

For being a wild animal, it was pretty surprising to see him so relaxed around people, Russell said.

He and others took cellphone video and posted it on social media, gaining broad attention.

At first it kind of looked like a feral cat, Russell said.

But then he remembered seeing Hildebrands photos of the Molas Pass lynx on the front page of the Durango Herald , and pretty quick I was able to identify it.

Lynx generally are not a threat to people, Lewandowski said.

They are docile, they eat mostly snowshoe hares and they likely would not take on anything as large as a human. But they also are unpredictable, and people should never approach them or feed them, he said.

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BUCHAREST, ROMANIABlizzards swept parts of Europe on Friday, causing at least nine deaths, closing roads and resulting in traffic accidents, travel delays and medical evacuations.

In Poland, the cold snap was blamed for five deaths in 24 hours. Three people died from hypothermia, while two more died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by malfunctioning heaters, the government Security Center said.

Officials in neighbouring Ukraine reported that four people had died from effects of the cold in the Lviv region near the Polish border.

In Romania, authorities said 90 people were rescued from stranded cars and that crews were working to save people stuck in some 30 cars on a major highway. More than 40 trains were not running due to snow on the tracks.

Senior emergency situations official Raed Arafat said Romanian authorities also evacuated 622 people who needed dialysis and 126 pregnant women. The blizzard is expected to ease off late Friday.

Snowfall and heavy winds closed roads and some train services in central Italy, pounded areas hit by recent earthquakes and forced the cancellation of some ferry crossings to islands off Naples and Sicily. Even Naples itself got a rare dusting of snow.

The frigid temperatures cancelled many Epiphany festivities, though about 35,000 people braved the cold to attend Pope Francis blessing in St. Peters Square.

The fierce cold coincided with Orthodox Christmas Eve, when Russian churches are usually packed. The Moscow city transport department said it was deploying 130 buses to stand outside churches as warming stations for worshippers, the Interfax news agency said.

Serbias state television reported that 22 people, including children, were injured in a pileup caused by the wintry weather on the outskirts of the southern city of Nis.

Local official Dragan Dimitrijevic said emergency crews were helpless against the wind and snow drifts that piled up to two meters high.

New piles form almost immediately after we clear up, he said.

Turkish Airlines cancelled 192 domestic and international flights that were scheduled for Saturday after heavy snow, icy conditions and strong winds were forecast for Istanbul.

Bulgarian authorities said some 650 villages across the country were without electricity due to high winds and heavy snow.

Emergency officials rescued snowed-in residents in villages in northern Albania, where up to 120 centimetres of snow fell, leading to power outages.

The temperatures dipped below freezing even along Croatias Adriatic coast, where winds up to 160 kph halted some ferry traffic to the islands and over the bridges along the coastline.

In Poland, where temperatures dropped to minus 25 degrees Celsius early Friday in the southern mountainous region, winds whipped up to 90 kph , and more than 2,000 households were without heating in the southern Rybnik area.

In Moscow, the Emergencies Ministry warned the temperature could plummet to minus 35C over the weekend and urged people not to stay too long outside.

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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.An arriving passenger with a gun in his checked luggage opened fire in the baggage claim area at the Fort Lauderdale airport Friday, killing five people and wounding eight before throwing his weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, authorities and witnesses said.

A Florida official said initially Friday that the shooter had arrived aboard a Canadian flight, but Canadian officials said that was not the case.

Canadian Embassy spokeswoman Christine Constantin said in an email to The Associated Press that the suspect did not travel from Canada and was not on an Air Canada flight. She said the suspect has no connection to Canada.

The shooting happened at the airports Terminal 2, where Air Canada and Delta operate flights.

We understand from officials he was on a flight originating in Anchorage, transiting through Minneapolis and landing in Ft. Lauderdale, Constantins email says.

Global Affairs Canada also said the flight on which the suspect arrived did not originate in Canada, nor was a Canadian carrier involved. Air Canada said it has no record of any passenger with the name of the suspect, nor of any checked guns on any of its flights to the city.

The gunman  identified by authorities as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, an Army National Guard veteran who served in Iraq but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance  was immediately taken into custody. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition, sending panicked travellers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.

Others crouched behind cars or anything else they could find to shield themselves as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen. The airport was shut down.

People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs, a witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it.

Authorities said the motive was under investigation.

This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism, said Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. We cant conclude that.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said.

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

RELATED:Airport shooting suspect lost his mind after tour in Iraq, family says

Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun  said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

At Fort Lauderdale, after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We dont know why, said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The attack exposed another weak point in airport security: while travellers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors and full-body scanners to reach the gates, many sections of airports are more lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

In 2013, a gunman with a grudge against the Transportation Security Administration shot and killed one of the agencys screeners and wounded three others during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport.

In November, an airline worker was shot and killed near an employee parking lot at Oklahoma Citys airport, and in 2015 a machete-wielding man was shot to death after he attacked federal security officers at the New Orleans airport.

In the Fort Lauderdale attack, Lea said, the gunman said nothing as he went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding. The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

He threw the gun down and lay spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him, Lea said.

Sheriff Scott Israel said five people were killed and eight were wounded. Their condition was not disclosed. He said the gunman was arrested unharmed, with no law enforcement officers firing any shots, and was being questioned by the FBI.

The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated the bleeding victims.

At least one person appeared to be lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

Santiagos brother, Bryan, told The Associated Press that Santiago had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiagos girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months.

Bryan Santiago said he didnt know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the telephone.

He said Esteban was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.

The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted  from specialist to private first class  and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honourable discharge.

At the Fort Lauderdale airport, John Schilcher told Fox News said he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground, said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. The firing just went on and on.

I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me, he said. Thats when I assumed it was safe.

Recap: Updates from Ft. Lauderdale

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A: During the winter months, the two large catfish species present in Minnesota behave differently. Channel catfish remain active and will congregate in loose schools in the rivers and lakes they inhabit. Anglers can target these fish through the ice (if ice is thick enough), or even in open water in deeper, slow-moving areas of rivers. The Horseshoe Chain of Lakes near Cold Spring is a popular destination for anglers looking to target channel catfish through the ice.

Flathead catfish, on the other hand, migrate to wintering areas when the water temperatures dip down to 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit. They congregate in deep holes in the rivers, out of the current, and essentially go dormant until the water warms in the spring. Many dozens of these large fish can stack up on top of one another in groups and are highly vulnerable to illegal snagging. A change in Minnesota fishing regulations has closed the angling season for flathead catfish from Dec. 1 to March 31 to protect these large, dormant fish from being overexploited.
In recent years, Greenlands enormous Petermann glacier has lost huge pieces of ice, one four times the size of Manhattan, one two times its size.

What scientists fear is about to happen in Antarctica would make that look tiny.

A growing rift on the floating Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula  a rift that grew dramatically by another 17.7 kilometres last month, according to a team of scientists watching it closely  is setting the shelf up for an imminent loss of nearly 5,180 square kilometres of ice, these scientists say. Thats larger than Rhode Island and almost as big as Delaware.

It is not visible on optical data yet, but the radar data analysis showed a growth of the rift of about 18 kilometres, said Daniela Jansen, a researcher with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany who collaborates with the Project MIDAS team, which announced the rift growth.

The 17.7-kilometre growth of the rift comes on top of a 20.9-kilometre growth that occurred earlier this year, during the polar night in Antarctica.

The researchers with Project MIDAS, a British government-funded collaboration based at Swansea and Aberysthwyth universities in Wales, report that only 19 kilometres of remaining ice now connect the shelf to the emerging mega-iceberg, perhaps more properly called an ice island. The rift itself has now grown by some 80.5 kilometres since 2011 and has widened to well over 300 metres.

The consequences of the break could be dramatic. As the researchers put it:

When it calves, the Larsen C ice shelf will lose more than 10 per cent of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula. We have previously shown that the new configuration will be less stable than it was prior to the rift, and that Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event.

The British Antarctic Survey also released a statement on the growing rift, saying a huge iceberg is set to calve from Larsen C.

Because of the uncertainty surrounding the stability of the Larsen C ice shelf, we chose not to camp on the ice this season, David Vaughn, the surveys director of science, in the statement.

The floating ice shelf is fed by glaciers that sit above sea level on the Antarctic Peninsula. As the shelf loses mass, these glaciers could flow more quickly  which would contribute to rising sea levels. Losses from the ice shelf alone, however dramatic, would not have that effect, as the shelf is already floating on water, just like an ice cube in your glass.

The Larsen C ice shelf is more than 300 metres thick. It is the fourth largest ice shelf in Antarctica, although nothing compared with the two largest, the Ross and Ronne-Filchner ice shelves.

NASA, during a flight in November, captured several spectacular photos of the rift. But that was before further extension of the rift last month.

So what happens now? Swansea Universitys Adrian Luckman, who heads up Project MIDAS, told the BBC, If it doesnt go in the next few months, Ill be amazed.

The Alfred Wegner Institutes Jansen largely agreed in a comment to the Washington Post.

I think the iceberg will calve soon, she said by email. The jumps of the rift tip occurred in shorter time intervals the longer the rift got. This is probably due to the longer lever for the forces acting to advance the rift, such as the up and down of the tides or strong winds towards the sea. Whether it will be months or maybe next year, I dont know.

So stand by. Things in Antarctica have been getting increasingly, er, interesting for somFe time, and that shows no sign of stopping.

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MOSCOWRussia said Friday it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and other warships from the waters off Syria, following orders from President Vladimir Putin to scale back his forces as he casts himself as a peacemaker for the Middle Eastern country.

Russias military support changed the course of the six-year-old civil war in favour of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, bolstering his forces with long-range missile attacks and precise airstrikes, military advisers and a beefed-up naval base on the Mediterranean coast.

It is not clear how far Moscow intends to draw down its forces. Putin said Russia would continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Assads military, an indication that Russia has no intention of leaving altogether.

But the withdrawal is a show of confidence after the decisive victory last month by Assad and his allies over rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. A week ago, Russia helped broker a ceasefire with Turkey, which supports the opposition, paving the way for new peace talks, this time in Kazakhstan, a Moscow ally.

A day before the ceasefire took effect, Putin ordered the scale-back.

The successes of the Syrian armed forces in the liberation of Aleppo have created the necessary conditions for the peaceful settlement of the conflict, said Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Im confident that it will lay the basis for the political settlement of the conflict.

The first forces to leave, he said, will be the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which was deployed in November at the height of the Aleppo offensive, and other, accompanying ships.

Moscow began its military intervention supporting Assad in September 2015. It announced a reduction in its forces once before, in March 2016 during a brief U.S.-Russian-brokered ceasefire and the launch of peace talks in Geneva. A few air units withdrew, but that truce quickly collapsed, peace talks went nowhere, and Moscow again threw renewed military might behind the Syrian government.

At the time, the U.S. estimated that there were 3,000 to 6,000 Russian military personnel in Syria, a number that likely rose before the Aleppo offensive.

The recapture of Aleppo by Syrian troops and the subsequent ceasefire make Russian forces less critical to Assad at this juncture of the war. The rebels are mostly concentrated in Idlib province, a stronghold in the north on the border with Turkey. They also have a presence around the capital, Damascus, where government and allied forces are focusing their efforts. Opposition groups say the fighting there violates the ceasefire and threatens the peace talks.

The ceasefire is meant to pave the way for negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstans capital, later this month.

On Friday, Syrias Kurdish-led forces in the north said they have taken control of a medieval castle perched on a hilltop over a strategic town held by Daesh militants, less than 32 kilometres from Raqqa, the extremist groups self-declared capital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces gained control of Jaabar Castle, which sits on the northern bank of Assad Lake, overlooking the strategic Tabqa Dam and the town of the same name..

The Dam is believed to be Syrias largest and has created the countrys largest reservoir.

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Lets be clear on why Trump won. (Won the electoral college, not the election. A strong enough majority of Americans voted against him.) It wasnt because of racism, fear of immigrants or misogyny. White supremacists and Confederate flag buffs didnt do it  though they backed him.

He won because he carried four states in the rust belt, where factories once guaranteed people decent lives and which Democrats had always taken for granted. Hillary didnt even campaign there. Without them, Trump loses. In those states, the issue was hatred of free trade, largely in the form of NAFTA. Its now so despised that the term, free, is absent. People refer disgustedly merely to trade deals.

Its true Trump is a racist, fear-mongering misogynist. But thats not why he carried those states. His first major post-election act was claiming credit for saving jobs from free trade at a Carrier factory in Indiana, which is part of the rust belt. The workforce there is 50 per cent African-American; half the assembly line workers are women; there are even many recent Burmese immigrants. They didnt vote for racism, anti-immigration or misogyny.

Economists have been arguing that automation, not trade deals, killed those jobs. Thats not the experience of those workers/voters. Its NAFTA that allowed whole factories to be shipped to Mexico, and undermined the power of their unions to resist automations effects. They voted what they know.

The neo-liberalism that has ruled everywhere for 30 years has other elements: privatization, financialization, deregulation. But politically its loss leader was free trade, and thats what sank it in recent campaigns.

The real villains of neo-liberalism werent its natural parents: Reagan, Thatcher, Brian Mulroney. It was their lefter successors: Clinton, Blair, Chretien and Martin, who gave it what Tom Walkom has called a human face. That face made it even more odious, when its effects surfaced.

Why? Because of their sanctimony and moral superiority. How could they be villains? They were so empathic. They dismissed those in pain inflicted by their neo-liberal economic policies as deplorables, (Hillary Clinton) and angry white men (Bill Clinton). At least Trump sees us, said some of the hillbillies dismissed by the Clintons.

Canada is different but here, too, the selling point of neo-liberalism has been free trade  partly because were too few not to trade; our country arose to trade (away) our natural resources. Weve had ferocious free trade elections.

So its unsurprising that Justin Trudeau is looking a lot like the last neo-liberal standing, albeit with his own quirks, like not being a deficit hysteric. Like the Clintons and Blair, he exudes empathy for the excluded  while clinging fiercely to (free) trade deals. I think you can see him trying to resolve the same dilemmas on which Hillary Clinton recently shipwrecked.

She tried renouncing the latest trade deal (TPP) but not the earlier one, NAFTA, which was Bill Clintons deal. Since it was NAFTA that screwed the rust belt, it was a stupid strategy and shes now retired. What are Trudeaus possible moves?

I think you can see him trying to be both a neo-liberal and a populist. As a neo-liberal, he is committed to trade deals like the TPP, and the Canada-Europe deal, CETA. But they would almost certainly cost Canadians jobs. Its what trade deals do. So on the other hand, hes approving new pipelines because they create some jobs, and symbolically, theyre all about job creation. As a next gen empathic neo-liberal, hes also created a national carbon cutting plan, alongside the pipelines, which will increase emissions. Contradictions, anyone?

Yes, its rationally incoherent, but that doesnt really matter in politics, as long as it keeps you in office. And a Nanos poll shows most Canadians happily accept the contradiction. They back the carbon plan and the pipelines. Im not even against the mix myself. Its better to do some good things (jobs, less carbon) than only rotten things (further ugly globalization plus emissions).

Trudeaus fortune at this point is not to have any serious populist opposition (populism is the neoliberals nemesis, because it brazenly rejects free trade): neither Trump nor Sanders nor Brexit, which would put his flaccid platitudes about free trade under pressure. That and, of course, the fact that this is Canada, not the U.S. or anywhere else. He has a reasonable shot at remaining the last  as long as hes also the least  neo-liberal.

Rick Salutins column appears every Friday.

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Every year about 70 per cent of Torontonians roll the dice and choose not to get a flu vaccine, according to Statistics Canada, even though its their best shot at avoiding the life-threatening disease and of passing it on to others.

Thats a public health problem that is playing out now across the GTA, with a hospital in Oshawa establishing a 24-hour command centre to manage an increase in patients flooding its emergency room because of a significant surge of influenza cases.

Public health officials say theres a spike in flu cases across the country, and they warn there could be a new surge in coming weeks.

The good news is that its not too late to get a flu vaccination, available through doctors offices or hundreds of pharmacies across the city. The Ontario Ministry of Health even has an online guide on where to get a shot. And experts say this years vaccine should give more protection than earlier versions against the dominant flu strain thats going around, known as H3N2.

The consequences of not getting a shot can be serious.

In any given year millions of Canadians are infected with the flu, more than 12,500 are hospitalized with complications such as pneumonia, and about 3,500 die.

For thousands of others, it can mean a week or more of symptoms that include a high fever, muscle aches, chills, sore throat, cough, congestion, headaches and exhaustion.

The disease is especially dangerous for the elderly, the very young and people whose immune systems are compromised.

Theres no reason not to get one. The health ministry notes that over the past 50 years hundreds of millions of people have gotten flu shots.

And despite rumours to the contrary, you cant get the flu from the vaccine. If you do get flu after getting a shot it could be because you got a different strain than the ones the shot is designed to protect against, or you already had the flu before you were vaccinated.

So dont delay. Get the shot now. Its the best defence against getting infected  and infecting others.

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A record number of readers weighed in on my annual You be the Editor challenge  almost 11,700 in all.

In all of the real-life situations described, the Stars newsroom had in fact published. A majority of readers were aligned with those newsroom decisions in 11 of the 15 matters in question.

Even when readers disagreed with the newsrooms judgments, these were often close calls, however. For example, the split on whether to publish an editorial cartoon making light of a Valentine of Jian Ghomeshi squeezing his infamous teddy bear, accompanied by the words You get me all choked up was 56% No/44% Yes.

Other publish calls were also similarly split, in line with the reality that in the newsroom there are often no clear black-and-white answers, just judgment calls made with good reasoning that stands up to scrutiny.

Here are all of the results of the 2016 You be the Editor feature:

1. Russian diplomat Andrey Karlov was speaking at a public photo exhibit in Ankara, Turkey, when a man, later identified as a police officer, pulled out a gun and shot him dead in front of a crowd. Do you publish the image of the killer and the dead man captured by Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici on Page 1?

Yes: 77%

No: 23%

2. Two days after Jian Ghomeshis highly publicized, much commented-on trial for charges of sexual assault and choking, in which three women testified that the former CBC radio host had punched, slapped and choked them more than a decade ago, do you publish an editorial cartoon, Last-minute Valentines Day cards depicting an image of Ghomeshi squeezing his infamous teddy bear, Big Ears Teddy, around the neck with the words You get me all choked up! emblazoned on the card?

Yes: 44%.

No: 56%.

3. Toronto Police announce they are investigating an incident in which a Blue Jays fan threw a beer can at Baltimore Orioles left-fielder Hyun Soo Kim as he tried to make a catch during the wild-card game in Toronto. Do you publish a cartoon, Beer Can Conspiracy linking the Toronto beer can incident to the 1963 assassination in Texas of U.S. President John F. Kennedy?

Yes: 63%

No: 37%

4. An Associated Press article reports that an Ohio police department says it is trying to illustrate the impact of the heroin and painkiller epidemic by sharing photos of a 4-year-old boy (with face blurred) sitting in a vehicle behind slumped-over adults who were later revived with an overdose antidote. Do you publish this photo?

Yes: 79%

No: 21%

5. Australias prime minister orders an investigation when a national uproar ensures after shocking video emerges of teens being stripped, beaten and shackled by guards at a juvenile detention centre. Do you publish this frame grab from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Page 1?

Yes: 81%

No: 19%

6. Toronto city staff are investigating after signs targeting white people sick of being blamed for all the worlds problems and urging them to join the alt-right were spotted around the city on Monday morning. Do you publish this photo of the sign?

Yes: 82%

No: 18%

7. A Star wire services story reports that French chef Benoit Violier, hailed by the media as the worlds best chef, was found dead of apparent suicide. Do you publish this headline: Suspected suicide of worlds best chef highlights pressure-cooker of haute cuisine?

Yes: 26%

No: 74%

8. Police report a man believed to be in his 60s was pronounced dead in an apartment fire. Do you publish this subheadline: An elderly man was found collapsed by a door at an apartment building near Shaw St. and King. St. W.?

Yes: 59%

No: 41%

9. After U.S. president-elect Donald Trump criticizes the cast of Broadways Hamilton, a Hamilton, Ont., theatre with the Twitter handle @HamiltonTheatre receives many angry tweets from Trump supporters. Do you publish this headline: Mistaken Trump fans open fire online on Canadas Hamilton theatre?

Yes: 73%

No: 27%

10. In a column published early in December, the Stars popular Ethically Speaking columnist expresses his view that, ethically, it is wrong to tell any child, at any age, that Santa Claus is a real person.  Is it really wise to convince your child that an old guy can enter your house without being noticed, in the middle of the night, prowl around, eat your cookies  and that this is a good thing? Do you publish this column?

Yes: 68%

No: 32%

11. A columnist expressing her view on the death of a pregnant woman shot dead in a car near Jamestown Crescent in Rexdale, where five lives were lost to gunfire since 2012, states: Wring your hands, maybe, shake your head over another incident, another press release, another homicide dick pleading for information. Do you publish this reference to Toronto police?

Yes: 56%

No: 44%

12. A news feature about a powwow held in Toronto to commemorate National Aboriginal Day describes the traditional dance attire of the First Nations people who participated as costumes. Do you publish this?

Yes: 32%

No: 68%

13. A columnist writing about The rich history of Donald Trumps rage refers to cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who built Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 1927 as then the richest broad in America. Do you publish this?

Yes: 44%

No: 56%

14. In describing the body movements of a character playing a rat in a ballet, a dance reviewer states, the rat that inhabits the barn where the party occurs seemed more epileptic than merrily scurrying. Do you publish this?

Yes: 60%

No: 40%

15. BONUS QUESTION: Do you publish the headline, Who gives a sit? with a story about the need for urban seating?

Yes: 85%

No: 15%

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Yahoo! (YHOO) shareholders may have felt a tinge of relief when AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told CNBC on Thursday that he was hopeful that parent company Verizon (VZ) would close its planned purchase of the troubled Internet group's core assets, despite Yahoo's recently revealed massive cyber breaches.

But that assurance likely dipped when Verizon's digital chief, Marni Walden, told investors at a Citigroup conference in Las Vegas shortly after Armstrong spoke that "I can't sit here today and say with confidence one way or the other because we still don't know" whether the telecom will close the $4.8 billion purchase of Yahoo. Walden oversees Verizon's digital operations, Internet of things services and other emerging businesses.

Yahoo! reiterated its faith that the transaction would proceed, however. "We are confident in Yahoo's value and we continue to work towards integration with Verizon," a Yahoo spokesperson said.

Since announcing the purchase of Yahoo's core business in July, Verizon has had to grapple with a pair of troubling cyber breaches at Yahoo.

First, Yahoo! revealed in September that 500 million customer accounts had been hacked in 2014.

If that weren't enough to spook the buyer, Yahoo said in December that another one billion accounts were hijacked in 2013.

Walden explained Thursday that "the strategic rationale" for buying Yahoo was to add to the scale of Verizon's AOL unit.

"Yahoo! has a very, very respected product organization, some capabilities that AOL doesn't have today," she said. "But it was really about taking an audience from hundreds of millions to into the billions."

In light of the attacks, Verizon has to make sure it is not "jumping off blindly off a cliff," she said.

"Has the asset changed in any way?" Walden asked with respect to Yahoo's core digital operations. "Are there other things that will need to happen to that asset?"

Verizon declined to comment beyond Walden's remarks.
There is good news if your mom loves cheaply-priced McDonald's (MCD) coffee in the morning.

The fast-food giant, which is shaking up its coffee brand this year, is offering $1 McCafe signature blend any size coffee and $2 small specialty-hot beverages such as lattes and mochas from January through April.

While the company doesn't share specific coffee sales, it said the McCafe brand generates about $4 billion in annual sales in the U.S.

By overhauling the brand, McDonald's is looking to compete with major coffee players such as Starbucks (SBUX) and Dunkin' Donuts (DNKN) .

"We know preferences are changing and people today are looking for great taste, high quality, value, and even more choice and flexibility than ever before. In order to evolve with those changes, we are enhancing the McCafe experience," a McDonald's spokeswoman said in a email to TheStreet.

These efforts will include new seasonal flavors and enhancements to the company's beverage line up, focusing on sustainable sourcing of espresso and coffee beans, highlighting its McCafe rewards program through its mobile app and crew training.

"We believe a focus on coffee can complement McDonald's food offerings and increase the average spend by customers at its stores. This move can also attract more customers to its stores," Trefis analysts wrote in a recent report.

However, due to strong competition from established coffee giants such as Starbucks, McDonald's might not be able to make this segment a key revenue driver in the short term, according to the firm.

"McDonald's is popular among consumers with young kids, and middle and lower income families who are looking for a value meal. While the company is playing the price advantage to attract customers to its McCafes, this can translate into significantly higher revenues only if the company gets a huge volume of consumers for coffee," Trefis noted.

While customers adding coffee to their meals would increase the average spend at a store marginally, it may be tough for the company to attract coffee-only customers to its restaurants.

In its most recent quarterly report, McDonald's same-store sales rose 3.5%. However, U.S. comps continued to slow, increasing 1.3% in the 2016 third quarter compared to 1.8% growth in the second quarter and a 5.4% jump in the first quarter. The U.S. business was hurt as consumers opted for eating at home due to lower grocery store prices and heightened promotions by other fast-food concepts.
Editors' pick: Originally published Jan. 6.

Starbucks (SBUX) is starting 2017 with several new coffee and food offerings, inspired by customer suggestions and the company's Reserve Roastery in Seattle.

Two new products will launch to all customers nationwide next week as the coffee giant aims to double food growth over the next five years, executives said at a food tasting event in New York on Thursday. Starbucks is a holding in Jim Cramer's charitable portfolio, Action Alerts PLUS.

Sous Vide Egg Bites

Three years in the making, the Sous Vide Egg Bites come in two varieties: egg whites with bacon and Gruyere cheese or with roasted red pepper and Monterey Jack cheese.

Sous vide is a culinary technique in which vacuum-sealed food is immersed in a water bath and cooked at a precise and consistent temperature. Each order includes two Egg Bites of either flavor made from cage-free eggs. The Egg Bites will be available all-day long and are designed for a health-conscious customer on the go.

The idea for the product was born from consumers who wanted a breakfast without wheat and grains. The company receives customer suggestions from its website MyStarbucksIdea.com and customers also speak directly with baristas.

The Egg Bites will be available nationwide on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

Cascara Latte

The company's Cascara syrup combines coffee cherry extract with coconut and cane sugars to create a "delicately sweet flavor," Starbucks said. The latte also comes in decaf and is customizable with a milk type of your choice.

Smoked Butterscotch Latte

Additionally, the Smoked Butterscotch latte, which originally launched last year, will be available to customers on Friday. Cascara lattes will be available early to Starbucks Rewards members tomorrow and to all customers nationwide beginning Tuesday.

Both beverages were inspired by the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle, where partners experiment with the latest coffee innovations to discover new and interesting flavors for Starbucks' customers.

At its investor day last month, Starbucks revealed several other foods it would be launching this year, including a certified gluten-free breakfast sandwich and organic soups.
One week into OPEC's new lower oil output regime and the signs are positive that the cartel's members are delivering on promised cuts, according to Goldman Sachs, providing support to recent oil price rises even as energy traders wait to collect tangible evidence of reduced production.

"Production cut compliance looking good so far," noted Goldman analysts Friday. "Circa 900,000 barrels per day of confirmed cuts (Saudi, Kuwait UAE, Oman & Angola), whilst Venezuela has also announced 95kbpd of "cuts" (potentially declines)."

Announcements of cuts by OPEC members have helped sustain oil prices near 18-month highs following a strong rally since the end of November when the oil cartel and a handful of non-OPEC producers, notably including Russia, announced plans to reduce output by 1.8 million barrels per day. The bulk of that cut, 1.2 million barrels, was due to be delivered by OPEC members from January 1, with the deal due to remain in force for an initial six months.

West Texas Intermediate futures for delivery in February traded Friday at $53.77 in line with their Thursday close and more than twice their Feb. 2016 low of $26.21. Brent Crude for delivery in March traded Friday at $56.90, marginally higher than its Thursday close.

Traders will get their first independent verification of output reductions at the start of February when third party surveys of output, based on trading volumes, depot volumes and tanker shipments begin to emerge. The International Energy Agency, a trade body for oil buyers, will also publish its output estimates early in the month. OPEC won't publish its own data until mid-February.

The results of those surveys are likely to lead to volatility and could undercut oil price gains. Goldman warned that not all the OPEC countries appear likely to deliver on their promised cuts. "Iraq remains more opaque, with Kurdistan refusing to cut production and proposed cuts from the south not confirmed in the loadings," the bank noted.

Production data from non-OPEC producers and OPEC members not included in the production cut deal could also provided volatility in the coming months. Russia has promised to gradually cut 300,000 barrels from its production and evidence of that decline happening faster or slower than expected will weigh on the oil prices.

There is also growing evidence of significant oil production increases from Libya, which is not included in the OPEC deal. The embattled country added 125,000 barrels of output to its production in Dec. And Nigeria could also boost output after reports emerged that it had resumed payments to Niger Delta militia who have disrupted its oil operations.
Sanofi (SNY) led France's benchmark CAC 40 lower Friday after a U.S. court barred the sale of the pharmaceutical maker's new anti-cholesterol drug Praluent until two patents held by rival Amgen (AMGN) expire.

Sanofi, the commercial partner to Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) , which discovered the drug, said in a statement that the two companies consider Amgen's patents "invalid" and plan to appeal the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware's Thursday ruling in favour of Amgen's competing drug, Repatha.

The French drugmaker's shares were down 2.8% as of 10:30 GMT, the biggest single-day decline in six months, changing hands at 75.99. Regeneron's shares were halted at $380.92 following the ruling, while Amgen's stock surged 5% to $160.54 in after-hours trading.

The ban is the latest in the long-running battle over patents covering a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors. Sanofi and Regeneron are already appealing a prior verdict in favour of Amgen.

"It is our longstanding position that Amgen's patent claims are invalid and that the best interests of patients will be greatly disserved by an injunction preventing access to Praluent." said Karen Linehan, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Sanofi

Sales of both Praluent and Repatha have been minimal to date because insurance companies have largely refused to provide reimbursement. Amgen and Regeneron are conducting separate follow-on studies aimed at demonstrating the use of PSCK9 inhibitors to lower cholesterol levels also provide more substantive benefits to patients in the form of lower rates of heart attacks, strokes and death.

Results from these cardiovascular outcomes studies are expected relatively soon.

The court has delayed the ban for 30 days to allow Sanofi and Regeneron to appeal. Praluent continues to be available to patients.
A traffic stop near Potosi, Wis., might also have stopped a burglary spree attributed to a Rockford, Ill., man, accused of stealing 41 different times across the Midwest.

James Stroup, 46, and Nina Patrick, 27, were arrested early Tuesday morning after being informed by Illinois State Police that a GPS tracking device they had installed on Stroup's car had him in the Platteville, Wis., area late Monday night.

Patrick was subsequently released from jail on Thursday and not charged, according to the Grant County District Attorney's Office.

Stroup's Buick was located by GPS near Scott Implement, just off Hwy. 80 south of Platteville. The store previously had been burglarized on Christmas Eve, so a Grant County deputy was dispatched and found that the store had been broken into again.

Lancaster, Fennimore and UW-Platteville police helped in locating Stroup's vehicle, and the traffic stop was made on Hwy. 61 south of Potosi at about 12:20 Tuesday morning.

"Several Stihl chainsaws were located inside the car, and they didn't belong to Stroup or Patrick," said Grant County Sheriff Nate Dreckman.

When interviewed, Stroup allegedly told investigators of 41 burglaries he was involved in, including break-ins in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin.

"There are four investigations in Wisconsin in which Mr. Stroup is a suspect, two in Grant County and one each in Green and Rock counties," Dreckman said.

Charges against Stroup are pending.
Gap's (GPS) namesake brand reported its first increase in same-store sales since April 2014 Thursday evening, setting the retailer apart from peers that this week reported dismal holiday numbers.

The company's Old Navy brand's same-store sales were up 12% and Banana Republic's were down 7%, bringing total same-store sales to a 4% increase.

Analysts were expecting the retailer to report a 2% decline, with the Gap brand projected to post a 3.9% drop and Old Navy to report a 2.3% gain, according to MKM Partners. Banana Republic alone missed analysts' estimates, for a 5.3% decline.

Net sales for the five weeks ended December 31 increased 3% year-over-year to $2.07 billion.

"Based on these results, we now expect full-year adjusted earnings per share to be modestly above the high end of our previous adjusted guidance range of $1.92," CFO Sabrina Simmons said in a statement.

Shares were gaining 1.44% to $23.58 early Friday afternoon on heavy trading volume. Over 8 million of the company's shares changed hands so far today compared to its average 30-day volume of about 6 million shares.

Gap is a "key beneficiary" of current fashion trends, specifically a resurgence of denim, Jefferies analysts said in a note this morning.

"We are encouraged that cash flows are inflecting, Old Navy momentum is strong, The Gap is turning, and strategic moves (e.g., reducing int'l exposure, rightsizing store footprint, reducing expenses) are value-enhancing," the analysts wrote.

Looking ahead, Old Navy will likely demonstrate continued comp and margin improvement as it laps a weak spring last year, MKM analyst Roxanne Meyer said in a note today.

Comparable-store sales were down 6%, 10% and 7% at the brand in March, April and May, respectively.

But Old Navy and Gap must prove they can drive sales year-round following a strong performance by outerwear and cold-weather accessories this winter for Meyer to potentially become more constructive.

Other retailers may have an even harder time driving sales in coming months.

Macy's (M) , Kohl's (KSS) and J.C. Penney (JCP) all reported negative comps for the holiday season of November and December. L Brands (LB) reported negative comps for December alone.

Deutsche Bank consequently cut comp estimates for Target (TGT) , Nordstrom (JWN) , DSW (DSW) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) this morning, citing an expectation that these retailers suffered a shortfall in traffic this holiday season.

Takeaways from this week's reports include consumers' preference for off-price and fast fashion over department stores, a shift to online spending and away from brick-and-mortar stores, promotion-driven spending and weakness in apparel and accessories, Deutsche Bank analysts said today.

"We believe investors are viewing the department store sector on a whole as unownable given a lack of mall traffic, a structural inability to expand margins given the promotional environment and the ongoing need to invest in omnichannel (including shipping), and little perceived hope for top-line initiatives to meaningfully benefit 2017," the analysts wrote.
Huawei is moving to make good on its promise to dethrone top smartphone makers Apple (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics (SSNLF) by releasing its first high-end smartphone in the U.S. on Friday.

The Chinese telecommunications company unveiled the Mate 9 (pictured below), priced at $599.99, on Thursday at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Mate 9 is available at Best Buy (BBY) and Amazon (AMZN) , among other retailers.

TheStreet's Eric Jhonsa is attending CES all this week. He'll be covering news events, reporting from exhibit floors, speaking with industry executives and live blogging. Check out all of our CES 2017 coverage here.

The Mate 9 is the first smartphone on the market to come equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant software preinstalled. It has a 5.9-inch display, compared to the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 and the 5.1-inch Galaxy S7, and is also made to support the Daydream virtual reality headset made by Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google unit.

Huawei is currently the No. 3 smartphone maker in the world, preceded by No. 1 Samsung and No. 2 Apple, according to the International Data Corporation. The company has steadily ramped up its efforts to compete with the handset giants, shipping 139 million smartphones in 2015, a sharp increase from the 3 million it shipped in 2010. It's previously released mid-range smartphones in the U.S. but never its flagship, top-of-the-line models.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, called out Apple specifically in his keynote address at CES yesterday, arguing that the Mate 9 is thinner and has a longer battery life than the iPhone 7. Yu has said that he hopes Huawei will overtake Apple as the second-largest smartphone maker in two years.

Huawei still has a lot of ground to cover, however. Despite concerns about slowing demand for the iPhone 7, Apple has maintained its lead in the global smartphone market, capturing a 91% share of all smartphone profits worldwide in the 2016 third quarter, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. Huawei, meanwhile, only captured about 2.5% of all smartphone profits during the period.

Apple continues to turn its attention toward areas outside the U.S. and, although it saw sales decline in Greater China in its most recent quarter, the company expects the 2017 first quarter to be stronger.

Apple is expected to ramp up business in India's largely untapped smartphone market, as well as South Korea, confirming on Friday that it will open its first retail store there this year, The Wall Street Journalreports. The tech giant faces competition in South Korea from local companies like Samsung and LG.

Huawei will also have to compete with new smartphone launches from Samsung and Apple due out this year. Samsung is expected to release the Galaxy Note 8 later in 2017, hoping to rebound from its Note 7 model that was discontinued after repeated reports of its batteries exploding or catching fire. Apple is also likely to announce a revamped iPhone this year, which is the handset's 10th anniversary.

Apple and Alphabet are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPL or GOOGL? Learn more now.
Updates to include Jim Cramer's comments.

A judge's decision in biotech Amgen's (AMGN) lawsuit against Sanofi (SNY) and Regeneron (REGN) had a domino effect on share prices in the industry.

Amgen saw shares skyrocket ahead of market's open Friday, while Sanofi and Regeneron fell. Others, like The Medicines Co. (MDCO) moved up ahead of market's open, while analysts believe Alder Biopharmaceuticals (ALDR) is poised to see a boost on the news. After opening at $159.89 Friday, up from from $153.25 late Thursday, the shares pulled back by late Friday to $156.87.

The judge in the case, which took place in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, barred the sale of Sanofi's new anti-cholesterol drug Praluent until two patents held by rival Amgen expire. Regeneron discovered the drug, ultimately licensing it out to Sanofi.

"This comes as a surprise, as most investors we've spoken with ultimately expected the companies would settle on some sort of royalty," JPMorgan analyst Cory Kasimov wrote in a note.

This is a "big win" for Amgen, TheStreet's Jim Cramer, co-manager of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, said on CNBC's "Mad Dash" segment Friday. The company's drug could be a life saver for those with high cholesterol, he added.

Cramer noted that analysts at Goldman Sachs have already raised their price target to $218 from $202, while also pointing out that Amgen has a lot of cash overseas. Should a potential repatriation tax holiday occur, it would be very beneficial to the company.

As a result of the ruling, Cramer said the stock is a buy and argued that it can go much higher.

But technical analyst Bruce Kamich of Real Money, our premium site for active investors, cautioned that the stock "is probably hard to trade." Kamich wrote in hislatest analysis of AMGN's charts that the stock's rallies typically "only last one to two months, while the declines or pullbacks have run around two months and have been deep," as this chart shows:

Amgen "rallies only last one to two months while the declines or pullbacks have run around two months and have been deep," Kamich wrote.

Both Sanofi and Regeneron said they will appeal this decision. In the meantime, though, shares of both companies are falling. Sanofi fell 3.4% ahead of market's open, hitting $40.09 per share. Regeneron, meanwhile, fell 5.5% to $360.13 per share ahead of market's open.

But the news was a boost to Amgen, which saw shares rise nearly 5%. The price hit $160.33 ahead of market's open.

"We do believe Amgen offers investors a differentiated investment opportunity versus other biotechs given its capital allocation strategy and the relative consistency of its financial results," Kasimov said.

Kasimov has a neutral rating on both Regeneron and Amgen.

The Medicines Co. saw shares move higher ahead of market's open as well Friday. Shares were up nearly 6% Friday, hitting $37.13 apiece.

"We believe the ruling could have a favorable impact on Medicine Company's inclisiran given that it operates by a mechanism that is completely unique to the monoclonal antibody approach," Jefferies analyst Biren Amin wrote in a note.

He explained that the ruling will likely bar other companies from making monoclonal antibodies, or those that are cloned from immune parent cells, to target PCSK9, which is a molecule that indicates patients could have high cholesterol.

Because inclisiran works differently than Amgen's drug (it interferes with RNA, rather than acting as an antibody), Amin believes this will be a boon to the company.

The Medicines Co. isn't the only biotech that could see a boost from the news.

Analyst Brian Abrahams of Jefferies believes Alder Biopharmaceuticals could also see shares go higher. Alder is currently entangled in a similar case against Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) over its migraine drug.

"The devil is in the details -- while the judge decided this case in Amgen's favor, most importantly, she decided the public interest component in favor of Regeneron -- which is a clear positive precedent for Alder," Abrahams wrote in a note.

Abrahams noted that Alder has already established case law on its side. He previously believed that Alder could lose the court case.

Alder moved up slightly Friday morning, hitting $23.02 per share. Meanwhile, Teva fell 4.5% on a poor earnings forecast, hitting $36.25 per share.
The former governor of Texas and current energy secretary nominee, Rick Perry, has resigned from the boards of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL) , two companies with stakes in the Dakota Access Pipeline project.

According to SEC filings filed on Thursday, Perry resigned from the boards, effective Dec. 31, 2016. His decision to do so was "not due to any disagreement with the Company or the Partnership relating to operations, practices or policies," the filings stated.

Perry's resignation leaves a seat at the table for a new director just as the board will undergo a makeover due to Sunoco Logistics acquiring Energy Transfer Partners. Because the two companies are merging, Perry's position will likely be filled by another board member from Energy Transfer Partners: CEO Kelcy Warren, Ted Collins, Jr., Michael Grimm, Matthew Ramsey or David Skidmore.

Calls to both Sunoco Logistics Partners and Energy Transfer Partners were not immediately returned.

The move immediately removes any conflict of interest for Perry because as energy secretary he cannot receive outside earned income, as stated on page 39 of the Office of Government Ethics' (OGE) Guide for Nominees.

There are, however, a handful of other nominees who are directors for public and private companies, including General James Mattis, Donald Trump's pick to be secretary of defense. If he does not take the necessary steps to resolve this conflict of interest, he would violate the specific regulations regarding compensation restrictions for board members as laid out in the Code of Federal Regulations, title 5, part 2636.306:

A covered noncareer employee shall not receive compensation for serving as an officer or member of the board of any association, corporation or other entity. Nothing in this section prohibits uncompensated service with any entity.

Mattis, who just resigned from the board of Theranos, remains on the board of General Dynamics (GD) and serves on the Finance and Benefit Plans Committee as well as the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. While the company does not list how much Mattis earns as director in its annual SEC filing, General Dynamics does have an equity compensation plan in place for its non-employee board members. The retired Marine Corps General currently owns 1,790 shares, which have a market value of $315,290, according to Bloomberg data.

But Mattis is not the lone Trump nominee with ties to a board.

Wilbur Ross and Todd Ricketts, the president-elect's top two men in the Commerce Department, are both board members. Ross currently serves on 15 boards, per Bloomberg. Ricketts is a director at TD Ameritrade, the company his father, Joe, founded. He is also a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.

Trump's Treasury secretary pick, Steven Mnuchin, is also connected to three boards, according to data from TheStreet's subsidiary BoardEx, which analyzes corporate relationship patterns. He's listed as a director at CIT Bank NA, Sears Brands LLC, which is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings (SHLD) , and Dune Capital Management. (But his board positions may be the least of his concerns after reports on Wednesday said there was "widespread misconduct" his bank, OneWest.)

Now, there are five ways in which these men could resolve this conflict of interest, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics:

An exemption

Establish a qualified trust (either blind or diversified)

Divest the conflicting property

Recuse from the matter

Receive an individual waiver

The Office of Government Ethics has granted exemption before when financial interests are "too remote or too inconsequential to affect the integrity of an employee's service to the Government."

The men could also establish a trust, which requires the government employee to turn over management of the trust assets to a trustee approved by the OGE. But, putting a director position to a blind trust would be far more difficult, even impossible, to do, unlike leaving stocks in a blind trust.

For those holding stock, they may be instructed to divest, if it poses a "substantial conflict."

The seemingly easiest option for them would be to recuse themselves as director, like Perry did, as it eliminates any conflict.

However, they could also be granted an individual waiver, "only if an exemption does not remedy the conflict of interest and neither recusal nor divestiture are reasonable options." Yet, this is unlikely as both recusal and divestiture are sensible ways to remove the conflict of interest.

Employees of TheStreet are restricted from trading individual securities.
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Citizens Bank, National Association that provides retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, corporations, and institutions in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking. The Consumer Banking segment offers deposit products, mortgage and home equity lending products, credit cards, business loans, wealth management, and investment services; and auto, education, and point-of-sale finance loans, as well as digital deposit products. This segment serves its customers through telephone service centers, as well as through its online and mobile platforms. The Commercial Banking segment provides various financial products and solutions, including lending and leasing, deposit and treasury management services, foreign exchange, and interest rate and commodity risk management solutions, as well as syndicated loans, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and debt and equity capital markets services. This segment serves government banking, not-for-profit, healthcare, technology, professionals, oil and gas, asset finance, franchise finance, asset-based lending, commercial real estate, private equity, and sponsor finance industries. It operates approximately 1,200 branches in 14 states and the District of Columbia; 114 retail and commercial non-branch offices in national markets; and approximately 3,300 automated teller machines. The company was formerly known as RBS Citizens Financial Group, Inc. and changed its name to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. in April 2014. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1828 and is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island.
4 injured in 2 rollover crashes in Winona County on the interstate

Four people were injured in separate rollover accidents two miles apart on an icy Interstate 90 in Winona County Jan 2.

Around 2 p.m., Jared D. Leis, 32, of La Crosse, was eastbound near mile marker 265 with Sara Severson, 34, of La Crosse, when he lost control of the vehicle and it rolled into the median. Both Leis and Severson were taken to Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse with non-life threatening injuries.

The Nodine Fire Department and Tri-State Ambulance responded to the accident. The Minnesota Department of Transportation assisted with traffic control.

Later that day around 4:45 p.m., Cherily Jorgensen, 22, of Owatonna was eastbound near mile marker 263 with Nicholas Edmond, 21, of Rochester, when she lost control of her vehicle and rolled into the median. Jorgensen and Edmond were taken to Winona Health with non-life threatening injuries.
The La Crosse Chapter 370 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) will meet Feb. 8 at Perkins Restaurant on Hwy. 16. The gathering will be at 11.30 a.m. with lunch at noon. Any federal employee, retiree or spouse is welcome. Any questions about benefits, call Dolores Barker at 608-399-1408.
For the last week four people in Ukraine died from hypothermia.

Deputy Health Minister Oleksandr Linchevsky said this at a meeting of the interdepartmental operative headquarters of the state commission on technogenic and ecological safety and emergencies on worsening of weather conditions in Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"As of today, 51 cases of hypothermia and frostbite have been registered in health care facilities. Unfortunately, four people died from hypothermia. All victims were from Lviv region," Linchevsky said.

According to him, most cases of hypothermia were recorded in Volyn and Zakarpattia regions during the last week.

ish
The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine urges citizens to refrain from trips to Libya due to extremely difficult security situation in the country.

This has been said in a statement by the Consular Service Department of the Foreign Ministry on Facebook.

"We stress once again the need to refrain from trips to Libya, given difficult security situation and inability of the Libyan authorities to ensure security and law and order in the country. We also remind of limited opportunities of consular protection in emergency situations on the territory of Libya since the Ukrainian diplomatic institution is located in Tunisia," the report says.

ish
WikiLeaks increased the reward for the arrest or exposure of Obama admin officials destroying info to USD 30,000, thanks to a donor stepping forward
Moscow considers that possible participation of the United States in "Normandy" format can be discussed after new US administration comes into power, Russian deputy foreign minister said
Main Christmas ethnic amusement of the capital "Christmas on the Dnieper" will be held in the Spivoche Pole park in Kyiv at 11:00 on January 7.

This is reported by the press service Kyiv City State Administration.

"Kyiv residents and guests of the capital may visit a real Christmas fair, where everyone will be treated with traditional delicacies. Oleh Skrypka and LeGrand Orchestra, Illariya, Joryj Kloc, Bourdon and other musicians will perform on the main stage," the statement reads.

Setting a record of most people singing a Christmas carol simultaneously will be a special part of the celebrations.

ol
Klemm Fellows go abroad to see the world, and they lend a hand
... [ show less Katla has been on elevated alert since Oct 2016 when an intense seismic swarm occurred that triggered fears the volcano might erupt again soon (its last eruption dating back to 1918 and it is thought to be statistically "overdue").

The seismic swarm in Sep / Oct 2016 had been the largest in recent decades. It began on 29 Sep 2016, increased on 30 Sep with several quakes of magnitudes of 3 and higher, and lasted until early October.
Todd Kendhammers arrest came 81 days after he told authorities an airborne pipe pierced his car's windshield and struck his wife of 25 years.

What? he asked while being handcuffed outside the Onalaska Menards. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

He was shaking in the back of a squad car, where he repeated, Oh, my God. Oh, my God, according to newly released case records.

Interviews, crime lab reports, photographs and 911 tapes released through state open-records laws highlight discrepancies in Kendhammers account of the events that led to his wifes death, including 20 minutes during which the two were alone just before he reported she had been injured in a freak traffic accident.

Investigators concluded the crash never happened.

Kendhammer, 46, has stood mute to first-degree intentional homicide in his wife Barbaras Sept. 17 death. He is under house arrest with GPS monitoring as conditions of his $250,000 cash bond while awaiting trial. He returns to La Crosse County Circuit Court on Feb. 2 for a status conference.

His Madison attorneys have refused to respond to repeated requests for comment.

According to the records:

Sept. 16

Kendhammer told authorities the couple left their home at N6617 E. Scotch Coulee Road in West Salem between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m. Sept. 16 for Holmen, where he planned to pick up a truck to replace its windshield.

GPS information retrieved from Google show the couples cellphones at a neighbors house from 7:30 to 7:50 a.m., according to a La Crosse County Sheriff's Department report. The neighbor, who lives in Seattle, said Kendhammer cared for the 80-acre property that he planned to purchase in September.

Barbara was scheduled to work at 8 a.m. at West Salem Middle School  the opposite direction from Holmen. The owner of the truck said he did not arrange for Kendhammer to repair the damaged windshield, according to a sheriff's department report.

A car matching the couples Toyota Camry was captured on surveillance video at 7:57 a.m. traveling north on Hwy. M about one mile south of Bergum Coulee Road in the town of Hamilton.

In his initial statement, Kendhammer said they were driving north on a straight and flat stretch of the highway just south of Bergum Coulee Road when a 53-inch pipe fell from an oncoming flatbed truck, bounced off the pavement and passed through the passenger side of the windshield, hitting his 46-year-old wife, according to the criminal complaint.

En route to the hospital with an investigator, he said the pipe that fell from the oncoming truck did not hit the pavement before breaking through the windshield, according to the complaint.

Kendhammer said he punched the windshield trying to block the pipe, then tried to remove the 10-pound galvanized pipe from his flailing wife while turning onto Bergum Coulee Road, where he accidentally put the car in reverse and rolled backward into a grassy embankment.

He said he then got out of the car and removed the pipe from the windshield, pulled Barbara from the passenger seat and tried CPR for three to five minutes before calling 911 at 8:06 a.m., according to the complaint.

A passerby told investigators he saw the Camry half in the ditch, its windshield intact, the passenger door open and no one around the car, according to a sheriff's department report.

On the phone with 911 dispatchers, Kendhammer was frantic and at times inaudible. He reported blood coming from his wifes nose and mouth and pleaded for paramedics to rush as he said he continued efforts to save her life.

A pipe or something came through the windshield, he told dispatchers. It got her and shes hit in the head and the throat I think.

Minutes later, Youre going to be OK, Barb, he said on the recording.

Barbara was unresponsive when medical help arrived. She never regained consciousness and was declared brain dead at 5:02 p.m. the next day.

The first paramedic at the scene found Kendhammer kneeling at his wifes feet. Her head was toward the road and her blood was on the rear passenger tire. Emergency responders did not find glass shards on Barbara, according to a sheriff's department report.

Authorities found the pipe in weeds behind the passenger side of the car, where Kendhammer said he threw it before trying to save his wife, according to a sheriff's department report. Pressed between the trunk lid and the rubber seal they found a blade of grass.

It appeared as if the trunk had been opened at the scene, reports stated.

Kendhammer was unsteady on his feet and concerned about his wife. He had injures to his knuckles and scratches on his neck and chest. He blamed his injuries on working with glass, according to a sheriff's department report.

The same video that showed a vehicle matching the Kendhammers' car on Hwy. M did not show a flatbed truck traveling south around the time of the incident, according to a sheriff's department report.

Authorities later returned to the site to reconstruct the crash as described by Kendhammer, dropping an identical pipe from a truck traveling at 40 and 50 mph in nine scenarios.

According to the Wisconsin State Patrol, broken glass found in the rear part of the Camrys gear shift housing would only land in that spot if the windshield was damaged while the car was in park.

The autopsy

Barbara suffered extensive blunt impact injuries to her head and neck inconsistent with her husbands account, Dane County Deputy Medical Examiner Kathleen McCubbin wrote in the autopsy report.

She had three bone-deep cuts to the back of her head, a fracture to the back of her skull, a broken nose, bruises and bleeding on the interior of her lips and bruises on her biceps.

Barbara also had a fractured bone and muscle hemorrhaging in her neck consistent with strangulation, according to the autopsy report. She had possible fingernail scratches on her neck and two torn fingernails.

It is 46 quadrillion times more likely that DNA recovered from one of Barbaras fingernail clippings is a mixture of Barbara and her husband than Barbara and a random person, according to the State Crime Laboratory.

Very forceful that the casket would not be opened

Kendhammer was jittery and emotional while making arrangements with the couples grown children at Jandt-Fredrickson Funeral Homes. He stated he wanted his wife cremated, not buried as he had said during an initial phone call, the funeral director told investigators.

He then was adamant his wifes casket remain sealed.

Todd stated that no one will see her from this point forward and he was very forceful that the casket would not be opened and that no one would ever see her after they left the funeral home, the funeral director told investigators, according to a report.

The couples family and friends did not identify problems in their marriage or mention a history of domestic abuse during interviews with investigators, but several of Kendhammers former colleagues described him as snake in the grass and a chauvinist pig from hell capable of violence, according to sheriff's department reports.

Kendhammer was scheduled to work at 6:30 p.m. the day of the incident and the next three nights at Crown Cork and Seal Co. in La Crosse, although the couple was planning their annual camping trip during that time period.

One of his colleagues told investigators he believed the couples daughter and son-in-law were replacing plumbing pipes during a kitchen remodel, according to a sheriff's department report.

Crime lab findings

Evidence recovered from the car indicate Barbara was assaulted and the windshield smashed when she was not in the car, prosecutors said in court.

Bloodstains around the passenger seat and on the inside of the windshield indicate Barbara was inside the car when force was applied, according to a crime lab report. The patterns are consistent with a beating.

Blood drip and flow patterns revealed Barbara was bleeding for a period of time in the passenger seat and that her body was at one time over the center console and passenger-side floor, according to the crime lab.

A crime lab analyst determined the pipe hit the passenger side of the windshield at least once before it broke through.

The spread of glass particles on the passenger seat indicated it was empty when the pipe penetrated the windshield. The analyst also concluded the passenger door was likely open, because there were no glass pieces in the door pocket.

The analyst found sand and an orange soil-like material on one end of the 53-inch galvanized steel pipe. There was no blood on the pipe, according to the crime lab.

The analyst also found what appears to be the same material inside the trunk and on a rolled pad and cloth bag on the floor of the trunk.

The pipe and items from the trunk will be analyzed at an FBI lab, according to the crime lab report.
TECHNOLOGY

U.S. sues Google over compensation data

The U.S. Labor Department has sued Google over its refusal to provide compensation data and documents as part of what the agency said is a routine compliance evaluation.

Google was asked in September 2015 to submit information about its equal-opportunity program and to provide supporting documents for a compliance review, the Labor Department said in a statement.

Google is required to let the government inspect records for an audit because the search giant is a federal contractor, the department said.

The complaint was filed with the departments Office of Administrative Law Judges, according to the statement. Google risks cancellation of its government contracts if it fails to comply, the department said.

Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so, Thomas M. Dowd, the acting director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in the statement. We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation.

Google said that it has provided hundreds of thousands of records to the agency but that a handful of government requests are overbroad or seek data about employees that is confidential.

 Bloomberg News

AUTOMOBILES

48,000 Mercedes SUVs recalled over sensor

Mercedes-Benz is recalling nearly 48,000 SUVs in the United States to fix a sensor problem that could stop the front passenger air bag from inflating in a crash.

The recall covers certain GL, GLE and GLS models from the 2016 and 2017 model years. Mercedes says in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators that a sensor in the front passenger seat may be calibrated incorrectly. It can classify passengers as child seats and deactivate the air bag.

The documents say drivers will get a warning message on the dashboard saying the air bag is off even though a person is in the passenger seat.

It was unclear from the documents whether the problem had caused any injuries.

Mercedes will notify owners, and dealers will update the sensor software free. The recall is expected to start this month.

 Associated Press

Also in Business

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Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. signage is displayed outside the company's Midtown hotel in New York. (Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg News)

Hilton Worldwide completed its split into three independent companies this week as part of an effort to lower the companys taxes and boost value to shareholders.

The new real estate and timeshare spinoffs  Park Hotels & Resorts and Hilton Grand Vacations  debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday with mixed results. The long-term hope, according to company executives, is to create more efficient companies, each with its own objectives and goals.

Does this allow us to be more focused? Of course it does, said Christopher J. Nassetta, president and chief executive of McLean-based Hilton. We are going to be able to create a lot more value for shareholders as three independent companies than we would have been able to as one combined entity.

The move also allows shareholders to choose which parts of the business theyd like to invest in, he said. The timeshare and real estate businesses, for example, tend to be more capital intensive, meaning that they require larger cash investments to grow and become profitable than Hiltons hotel business does. In the past, Hilton shareholders often shied away from accommodating those needs, which may have hindered profits and growth.

What this means is that each company is now in the hands of shareholders that are interested in its specific goals, said Rachael Rothman, an analyst for Susquehanna International Group. Hilton shareholders wont necessarily want to remain in each of the three businesses, so were likely to see a lot of movement.

On the first day of trading, shares of Park Hotels fell 1.98 percent, while shares of Hilton Grand Vacations climbed 1.1 percent. Hilton Worldwides stock, meanwhile, rose 3.2 percent to close at $58 per share.

As part of the deal, Hilton shareholders received two shares of Park and one share of Hilton Grand Vacations for every 10 Hilton shares they owned. Shareholders also approved a stock-split last month that effectively reduced the companys outstanding shares from 990 million to 330 million.

Park Hotels is now the countrys second-largest hotel real estate investment trust, behind Bethesda-based Host Hotels & Resorts. The company, which is based near Hiltons headquarters, oversees 67 Hilton properties, accounting for about half of the properties Hilton owns and leases around the world. Many of them are high-end U.S. hotels, including the Hilton New York Midtown, the Waldorf Astoria beach resort in Key West and the Capital Hilton in downtown Washington.

Thomas J. Baltimore, chief executive of Park Hotels, says he plans to eventually add other, non-Hilton hotels to the companys lineup.

There is significant opportunity for growth, said Baltimore, previously chief executive of RLJ Lodging Trust in Bethesda. When you start with a base of such significant scale  67 properties, 35,000 rooms  its a very attractive proposition.

Real estate spinoffs, popular among large hotel companies as a way to pay lower corporate taxes, were outlawed by Congress in late 2015. Hilton, however, was able to move ahead with its plans because it sought permission from the Internal Revenue Service before the Dec. 7 cutoff that year set by Congress, according to a company spokesman.

Hilton was grandfathered in, so it was a now-or-never strategy, said David Katz, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, a research firm in New York. This is where the industry has been going for a long time, and it was a no-brainer for Hilton.

The companys decision to spin off its timeshare business also follows in the footsteps of a number of major hotel chains that have taken similar measures in recent years, including Marriott International in 2011.

Shares of the timeshare business, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, have more than tripled since then, outpacing the parent companys stock. Hyatt Hotels and Starwood Hotels & Resorts (now part of Marriott) later followed suit.

Hilton Grand Vacations, based in Orlando and led by Hilton veteran Mark Wang, includes nearly 50 timeshare resorts in the United States and Europe. Analysts value the company at about $2.1 billion.

Frankly, all three entities are likely to benefit because of this split, Katz said. The remaining Hilton can operate on a much thinner, leaner capital structure and still grow.

Hilton, which has 4,700 hotels around the world, has been particularly aggressive in building new properties. It has 144 new hotels in the works. The company returned to the New York Stock Exchange in 2013 after six years of private-equity ownership by Blackstone. It raised $2.35 billion in its initial public offering, marking the largest IPO by a hotel firm.
Three new memoirs by people who grew up in the 1980s argue that movies were their saving grace. Those bigger-than-life projections offered a lifeline to worlds of wonder, but not just any kind of movie mattered: Only the teen movies of the 1980s really understood these kids and offered them solace.

Scoff if you like, but several of these movies have already taken their place in the Library of Congresss National Film Registry. Such films as Ferris Buellers Day Off, Back to the Future and Fast Times at Ridgemont High now sit in places of honor next to classics such as Gone with the Wind, Its a Wonderful Life and Lawrence of Arabia.

Kevin Smoklers memoir, Brat Pack America (Rare Bird), is a love letter to those movies that portrayed teenagers as they had never been shown onscreen before . . . real people at the center of their own stories, instead of filtered reflections from adult eyes. Smokler also argues for the importance of place in teen movies, of locations so vividly depicted that viewers want to enter the movie itself. He notes that these stories were generally set in small towns or suburbs, where they projected an innocent atmosphere of poodle skirts, pompadours, and letterman sweaters. Smokler singles out screenwriter-director John Hughes as the cartographer of Brat Pack America, with Hughess fictional suburb of Shermer, Ill., serving as the capital city of teen movies.

Hughes is also the focus of Jason Diamonds coming-of-age memoir, Searching for John Hughes (William Morrow). The founder of Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Diamond was not the cool rich kid who showed up to school with a wealth of ski lift tags hanging from the zipper of his North Face jacket. He grew up in a Chicago suburb that could have passed for Teenland, U.S.A. and was about 13 when he began to think of living his life as a John Hughes story. Diamond points to Sixteen Candles as the movie that established Hughes as the 1980s version of what J.D. Salinger had been to a previous post-war generation: an adult giving voices to teenagers. In his 20s, Diamond decided to legitimize his obsession by writing a biography of Hughes. However, the more things in his own life didnt turn out as he had planned, the more Id cling to his films and their portrayal of the fictional universe that look so familiar to my own world. Eventually, Diamond grew up, went to work and got married. By the end of his memoir, he explains, I was no longer searching for John Hughes. . . . I was my own person and wanted to tell my own stories now.

Hadley Freeman acknowledges that these films have had a rotten reputation, dismissed as being drecky and faintly embarrassing. But in Life Moves Pretty Fast (Simon & Schuster), shes determined to elevate the place of 1980s teen movies in the film pantheon. A writer for the Guardian, Freeman was born in New York and remembers how teen movies captivated her. Everyone I know in my generation feels exactly the same way, she writes. They provided the template for what is funny (Eddie Murphy), what is cool (Bill Murray), and what is sexy (Kathleen Turner). Altogether, they taught me more about life than any library or teacher ever would. In response to the pooh-poohs of previous generations, she smartly invokes the thirty-year rule to put things right: In the natural course of generational change, the teen movies dismissed as trash 30 years ago are now finding redemption as their original fans grow up and insist that the culture of their youth was ACTUALLY really important and ACTUALLY nothings been as good since. She concludes by aptly quoting Ferris Bueller: Life moves pretty fast. If you dont stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Amy Henderson is historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery and writes frequently about media and culture.
Georges Pretre, a French conductor who for seven decades led some of the worlds finest orchestras, found a second home in Vienna and forged close relationships with singer Maria Callas and composer Francis Poulenc, died Jan. 4 at his chateau in Naves, in southern France. He was 92.

His death was announced by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, where Mr. Pretre held the title of honorary conductor, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he was scheduled to lead concerts in March.

The peripatetic conductor led orchestras in cities such as Chicago, New York, Paris and Rome  holding few permanent conducting positions, he said, to avoid overly involving himself with the business and managerial sides of classical-music performance.

He was most closely associated with Viennas world-renowned Philharmonic Orchestra, where he had remained a formidable though itinerant presence since conducting Charles Gounods opera Faust in 1963, and the Vienna Symphony, where he was first principal conductor from 1986 to 1991.

At what amounted to a farewell concert with the Vienna Symphony, Mr. Pretre earned standing ovations for his rendition of Maurice Ravels Bolero in October.

Georges Pretre leads a 2007 rehearsal on the stage of the Opera Bastille in Paris. Beginning in the 1980s, he worked mainly in Vienna. (Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images)

Georges Pretre was both a sound wizard and a musician with an unparalleled intensity, Vienna Symphony Chairman Thomas Schindl wrote on Facebook. He combined concentration and individuality in a unique way and his daring and adventurous personality always spurred us on to perform at our very best  and sometimes beyond of what we believed to be capable of.

Mr. Pretre, whose last name means priest, sometimes conducted as though he were possessed, shaking his arms and writhing at the rostrum in a manner that reminded some observers of his American peer Leonard Bernstein.

He considered himself a musical interpreter, not a hand-waving conductor, and typically sought to extract a maximum of emotion from the works he conducted  orchestral pieces as well as operas, in his native French and also in German or Italian.

Reviewing his performance of Bolero with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1995, Philadelphia Inquirer critic Lesley Valdes noted that under Mr. Pretres baton, the works musical stresses . . . verged on the orgasmic. Not for him the stringencies of Ravels intentionally formulaic layering of color over basic pattern; not for Pretre the chiselings . . . of precise and graduated sonority. This was a siren dying to squeeze out of her girdle, so voluptuous was its interpretation.

Mr. Pretres emotion-driven approach to music made him a favorite of Poulenc, who entrusted him with the 1959 premiere of his opera La Voix Humaine, about the final phone conversation between a woman and her lover.

It also endeared him to Callas, a Greek American soprano with whom he recorded several acclaimed albums, including Georges Bizets opera Carmen in 1964.

Mr. Pretres offstage hobbies, including judo and karate, may have also played a role in the friendship.

He was a man of my own heart, Callas said of Mr. Pretre, according to a 1997 biography of Callas by David Bret. With Georges I could curse to my hearts content, and he never so much as batted an eyelid. Most of my conductors only wanted to take me to dinner after wed finished working. This one, a black belt, wanted me to take judo lessons!

The son of a cobbler, Mr. Pretre was born in Waziers, in northern France, on Aug. 14, 1924. He studied at conservatories in Douai, near his home town, and in Paris, playing the trumpet  not his first choice, the oboe  because the instrument was cheaper to acquire, he said.

He learned conducting in Paris under Andre Cluytens before debuting at the Opera de Marseille in 1946, honing his understanding of the classical repertoire with weekly performances of Tosca, Carmen and The Valkyrie.

Mr. Pretre was music director of the Opera Comique in Paris from 1955 to 1959, when he made his U.S. debut at the Chicago Lyric Opera. He was in New York five years later, conducting the Metropolitan Opera in Camille Saint-Saenss Samson and Delilah, and returned to Paris in 1970 to briefly serve as music director of the Paris Opera.

An early marriage to mezzo-soprano Suzanne Lefort ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Gina Marny, and their daughter, Isabelle Pretre. A son, Jean-Reynald, died in 2012.

Mr. Pretres conducting, which employed an improvisational technique of sometimes slowing and sometimes speeding ahead through the score, was occasionally criticized as erratic. Yet he said his effectiveness was determined more by the nature of the orchestra than by his conducting style.

I have only to set the pitch. They understand me right away. There is no need for many rehearsals, he told the Italian news agency ANSA in 2004. But if the orchestras are mediocre, there is nothing to be done. Further rehearsals are useless.
In the late 1930s, when few doors were open to the son of a poor Chinese immigrant, Tyrus Wong landed a job at Walt Disneys studio as a lowly in-betweener, whose artwork filled the gaps between the animators key drawings. But he arrived at an opportune moment.

Disneys animators were struggling to bring Bambi to the screen. The wide-eyed fawn and his feathered and furry friends were literally lost in the forest, overwhelmed by leaves, twigs, branches and other realistic touches in the ornately drawn backgrounds.

Too much detail, Mr. Wong thought when he saw the sketches.

On his own time, he made tiny drawings and watercolors and showed them to his superiors. Dreamy and impressionistic, like a Chinese landscape, Mr. Wongs approach was to create the atmosphere, the feeling of the forest. It turned out to be just what Bambi needed.

Mr. Wong, who brought a poetic quality to Bambi that has helped it endure as a classic of animation, died Dec. 30 at his Sunland, Calif., home, his daughter Kim Wong said. He was 106. The cause was not immediately available.

Ty had a different approach and certainly one that had never been seen in an animated film before, legendary Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston once wrote of the artist, whose contributions to one of the studios iconic productions went largely unheralded for years.

His grasses were a shadowy refuge with just a few streaks of the actual blades; his thickets were soft suggestions of deep woods and patches of light, Thomas and Johnston wrote. Every time of day and each mood of the forest was portrayed in a breathtaking manner.

Called the films most significant stylist by animation historian John Canemaker, Mr. Wong influenced later generations of animators, including Andreas Deja, the Disney artist behind Lilo of Lilo and Stitch and Jafar in Aladdin.

I was 12 or 13 when I saw Bambi. It changed me, Deja told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. There was something about the way the forest was depicted that had a layer of magic to it. Tyrus Wong really made that film look the way it did.

Mr. Wong worked at Disney only a few years, his employment cut short by a strike in 1941. But Warner Bros. quickly picked him up, and he worked there for more than 25 years, drawing storyboards and set designs for such movies as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Wild Bunch (1969).

When he retired from Warner Bros. in 1968, he continued to paint, turning some of his work into top-selling Christmas cards for Hallmark. He also channeled his artistry into kite-making. He was the subject of Tyrus, a documentary by filmmaker Pamela Tom released in 2015.

Mr. Wong was born in Guangdong province, in Southern China, on Oct. 25, 1910. Pigs and chickens lived under the family roof, which leaked. At 9, he said goodbye to his mother and sister and sailed to America with his father, Look Get Wong. In 1920, they landed at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay.

His father was free to head to the mainland because he had immigrated earlier and had his papers. Tyrus, though, was confined to the immigration station. It was just like jail, he later said of the lonely month he spent there. He eventually reunited with his father, but he never saw his mother and sister again.

He and his father settled in Los Angeles. His father taught him to paint, draw and write calligraphy. Unable to afford proper paper and ink, Tyrus practiced on newsprint with a brush dipped in water.

Mr. Wong lived in Chinatown, but he attended school in Pasadena, where he painted posters for school events. His junior high principal was impressed by his artistic ability and helped him obtain a scholarship at what is now Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

He spent much of his spare time looking at Japanese and Chinese brush painting, particularly Song dynasty landscapes that conveyed mountains, mist and trees with minimal strokes. After graduating from Otis in 1935, he joined the Depression-era Federal Art Project, creating paintings for public libraries and government buildings.

In 1938, he was hired at Disney but did not think he would last long. Being an in-betweener required little creativity and a lot of eye-straining tedium.

Then he heard about Bambi, based on the book by Felix Salten. I said: Gee, this is all outdoor scenery [and] Im a landscape painter. This will be great,  he recalled in a video for the Disney Family Museum, which showcased his work in a 2013 exhibit.

When Bambi art director Tom Codrick saw Mr. Wongs sketches, Mr. Wong recalled later, He said, Maybe we put you in the wrong department.  The rest of the team agreed, including Walt Disney.

I like that indefinite effect in the background  its effective. I like it better than a bunch of junk behind them, Disney said in Thomas and Johnstons book, Walt Disneys Bambi: The Story and the Film. Disney later said that of all the animated films he produced, Bambi was his favorite.

He set the color schemes along with the appearance of the forest in painting after painting, hundreds of them, depicting Bambis world in an unforgettable way, Johnston and Thomas wrote. Here at last was the beauty of Saltens writing, created not in script or with character development, but in paintings that captured the poetic feeling that had eluded us for so long.

In Mr. Wongs last decades, he was known for the magnificent kites he made at home in Sunland and flew on the beach to the delight of passersby.

You get a certain satisfaction in making them, and you get a certain satisfaction flying them, Mr. Wong told the Times in 1995. Some are attention-getters, but thats not what Im after. I used to go fishing a lot, and I love fishing. This is just like fishing, except in fishing you look down. Kite flying, you look up.

 Los Angeles Times
Rex Tillerson, former chief executive of ExxonMobil and President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for secretary of state, meets with Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) on Wednesday. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trumps choice to become secretary of state, disclosed personal wealth of as much as $400 million, including a Texas cattle and horse ranch, ahead of Senate confirmation hearings expected next week.

Tillerson, who met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and others this week, promised to sell and restructure assets and resign from outside organizations that might pose a conflict.

The newly retired ExxonMobil chief executives federal financial disclosure filing shows that he directly holds stock in his former employer worth more than $50 million that he has pledged to sell within 90 days if he is confirmed as the countrys top diplomat.

Tillerson has separately reached a $180 million retirement agreement with ExxonMobil involving additional stock that would be placed in trust.

He also pledged to recuse himself from any government decisions involving ExxonMobil for one year unless he is specifically authorized to participate.

The State Department sometimes helps energy companies as they seek resources, markets and contacts around the world, and it advises many large corporations.

During the decade that Tillerson led Exxon, the State Department supported some of the oil giants deals and opposed others, most notably a 2011 agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq. That deal, which took U.S. officials by surprise, directly contradicted the U.S. goal of a federal oil deal that would benefit Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

The listing of Tillersons stock and bond holdings shows that he invested in competing energy companies including Total and Royal Dutch Shell while running Exxon. His portfolio includes American and international businesses ranging from Walmart and Walt Disney to Novartis, Sony and Yum China Holdings, which franchises KFC and other fast-food chains in China.

Federal disclosure requirements call for the value of individual holdings or proceeds to be given as a range, so it is not possible to pinpoint Tillersons net worth.

Tillerson said he has already resigned from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, and would resign from the Boy Scouts of America, the board of Fords Theater and other organizations. He pledged to remove himself from business decisions surrounding the ranch in Bartonville, Tex., although he would continue to receive passive income from it.

I am committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct for government officials, Tillerson wrote in an accompanying letter to a State Department ethics lawyer.

If confirmed as secretary of state, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest directly and predictably affected by the matter, Tillerson wrote.

The financial disclosure material was sent to the Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday. Senate Democrats say they still want to see Tillersons tax returns before holding what Republicans have said could be a two-day hearing Jan. 11-12.

Like Trump, Tillerson has refused to provide Congress with his tax returns, promising only tax return information upon request, and he has complex business interests from which he must disentangle himself to hold public office.

Tillersons energy-related work in Russia and his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to dominate his confirmation session.

Tillersons Capitol Hill tour does not appear to be winning new supporters, but it is convincing certain senators that when it comes to sanctions, he may not be as pro-Russia as he seems.

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin (Md.), said after meeting with Tillerson for over an hour on Wednesday that the businessman was pretty forthcoming on sanctions and understands the importance of sanctions and recognizes that you need to have the ability to get results. He was referring to U.S. sanctions implemented against Russia in 2014 over its annexation of Crimea and Moscows support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Cardin, the Senates chief architect of comprehensive new Russia sanctions, has not indicated his support for Tillersons nomination. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), with whom Tillerson also met Wednesday, told NPR that he had a productive 90-minute meeting that included tough questions on Russia. Coons said he has not decided how to vote.

Tillersons close personal and business ties to Russia sparked an early backlash from senators, including a handful of key Republicans, who found alarming his acceptance of the Kremlins Order of Friendship award in 2013 and his recorded opposition to Ukraine-related Russia sanctions in 2014.

One of those Republicans, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), met with Tillerson on Wednesday, but he did not appear more favorably disposed to the businessman.

When asked whether he would support Tillersons nomination, McCain told a gathering of reporters sure  theres also a realistic scenario that pigs fly.

Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
Clare Wrobel, 29, and Scott Pierce, 27, at their reception. The couple met at Lou's City Bar in Columbia Heights after the bride's friends texted Clare that they had found a boyfriend for her. (Mark Adrian Photography)

Good friends save you a seat at the bar. Great friends find you a date.

Luckily for Scott Pierce and Clare Wrobel, they have some great friends.

In March 2013, some of Clares pals descended on Lous City Bar in Columbia Heights to cheer on their alma mater, the University of Michigan, in the NCAA tournament. As they zeroed in on the last empty table, they noticed a group of men also making a beeline for the space.

After engaging in a playful standoff, the men graciously conceded the table to the women, and the groups struck up a friendly conversation. Among them was Scott, a recent D.C. transplant after serving more than five years abroad in Pakistan, Sudan, Italy and Kenya as a Marine Corps security officer.

Clares college friends (and later bridesmaids) liked Scotts open and friendly personality and thought he would be a good match for her, so they began texting her from under the table.

The bride and groom dance the night away at their wedding reception at the Colony Club in Detroit. (Mark Adrian Photography)

Meet us here, they wrote. I think we found a boyfriend for you.

Her friends instincts proved correct; she immediately clicked with Scott. Unaware that Clares friends had tipped her off, Scott was impressed by their instant connection and confidently asked for her phone number before he left with his pals.

Since her friends had already prepped her, she instantly gravitated toward me, Scott, 27, recalls, laughing. Here I thought I was doing it all on my own.

Later that evening, they met again on U Street, where the night soon progressed into a full-on bar crawl, says Clare, a director at a nonprofit health-care association and an adjunct professor at George Washington Universitys School of Public Health. They talked all night and made plans to get drinks at Marvins.

But after that great first date, Scott worried when three weeks had passed without a second. Clare attributed it to her busy schedule, but he thought she was giving him the brushoff or, even worse, had become interested in another man.

Turns out it was two men  Gilbert and Sullivan.

[Forget the big wedding. More of todays couples include you through Facebook.]

The groom and the wedding party looked on as the bride opened a celebratory bottle of champagne around midnight. After several failed attempts, the groom handed off the bottle  and his Mameluke sword  to his new wife. She opened it on her first attempt. (Mark Adrian Photography)

Unbeknown to Scott, Clare was performing with the Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society and was in the midst of tech week for the comic opera Trial by Jury.

Its a fairly nerdy hobby, and I was trying to impress this guy, so I didnt tell him any of the details, Clare, 29, says. Plus, my costume was this huge Victorian dress with a giant bustle in the back  not a very flattering thing for someone to see you in that you had just started dating.

After the show wrapped up, the pair began seeing each other more frequently, and in June, they decided to go to the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Del.

You get to know someone rather quickly in a tent with no shower or readily accessible restroom, Clare says. A month later, she invited him to her home in Michigan for the Fourth of July.

Things progressed swiftly, but naturally. We truly enjoy each others constant company, and always seek experiences that help us to grow, learn and help the world around us, Clare says.

In February, they exchanged I love yous, and Clare finally let Scott see her perform, in the Gilbert & Sullivan Societys production of Shakespeares The Tempest.

He went to the show three times.

In July 2015, the pair booked a two-week vacation to visit friends and family members on the West Coast. The night before their trip, Scott persuaded Clare to go on a run to stretch their legs before the long flight. But a few blocks in, Scott asked whether they could detour to Meridian Hill Park, one of their favorite spots since moving to nearby Adams Morgan in late 2014.

There, in front of the parks cascading fountain, Scott surprised Clare with a ring and proposed. Clare leaned back, laughed and said, Absolutely, Ill marry you! as a dozen onlookers applauded.

Im not that kind of girl who had thought a lot about her proposal, but it was the perfect way to do it. It was very us, Clare says.

[Are you getting married in the Washington region? Tell us why we should feature your nuptials here]

A month later, Scott entered the Marine Corps Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Va. During the 10-week intensive course, the couple stayed in touch with stacks of handwritten letters. Scott, now a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, would write his notes after-hours with the help of a red headlamp.

The in sickness and in health portion of their vows also was tested two weeks before the wedding, when the bride needed emergency gastrointestinal surgery. During her painful recovery, Scott was her 24-hour nurse.

Every little milestone, we celebrated together, Clare says. I wouldnt have been able to do it without him. I even started to refer to us in the plural sense. I would say, Yeah, we got the catheter out today! 

Scott said that the ordeal made him realize there was still room for growth in the relationship and that they became even closer.

Thanks to Scotts support and Clares team at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, she recovered ahead of schedule and was able walk down the aisle Dec. 31 in an afternoon ceremony at her childhood church, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church, in Lake Orion, Mich.

Scott, in his Marine Corps dress blues, joined her at the altar.

Surrounded by 160 guests, the Pierce-Wrobels (the couples combined surname) rang in the new year as husband and wife at a reception at the Colony Club in Detroit. They shared a first dance to I Found You by Alabama Shakes, a Southern band they saw at the Firefly music festival.

Above all, we enjoy each others company and want to experience everything in life with each other, Clare said shortly before the wedding. And not to steal Hillary Clintons campaign slogan, but we really are stronger together.

Of all the people in all the world, shes my best friend, Scott added. And I get to marry her.

Are you getting married in the Washington region? Tell us why we should feature your nuptials here at wapo.st/weddings.
The Salvation Army of La Crosse has reversed a decades-old policy and lifted the requirement that every adult checking into its emergency shelter take and pass a Breathalyzer test to be allowed entry and stay overnight.

The change, begun with a soft opening before Thanksgiving and now in full force, represents a giant cultural shift, because the previous rule had been in effect for 30 to 40 years, said Kelley Waddell, social services coordinator for the corps.

The local corps enacted a new policy, after obtaining approval from its division office in Milwaukee and regional headquarters in Chicago, in part to avoid turning people who arent impaired from the shelter in The Salvation Army headquarters at 223 N. Eighth St., Waddell said during an interview Thursday.

Corp officials discussed the change with representatives of the citys Police Department, two hospitals and the La Crosse Warming Center  the other major shelter in town  in part to continue the emerging model of collaboration among all players, she said.

Previously, under the zero tolerance policy, a person who blew even 0.01 percent blood alcohol content was denied access, she said.

Anything over 0.00 was considered a fail, she said.

That policy was in place partly to ensure the safety of children in the shelter, she acknowledged. Some agency board members expressed concern about the potential risk in discussing the change but relented to see how things went, she said.

With our population, a huge number of people are battling addiction, and the question arose about whether the previous policy was helping them, Waddell said.

Now, we are using a harm-reduction model, trying to get people to see the harm they do to themselves with addictions, she said.

The facility, which can accommodate about 80 people, including several families, still administers Breathalyzer tests but does not require everyone to take one, Waddell said.

Mandating the test is based on someones behavior, she said. If it appears that a potential client has imbibed, that person must take the test to help establish a baseline of acceptability and, if anyone needs to be referred to a hospital for detoxification, to provide that number, Waddell said.

If the persons behavior is such that there is no threat to the individual, Salvation Army staff or other shelter inhabitants, admittance is approved, she said.

A handful have been denied entry since the policy began, and three who returned the following night were able to enter, she said.

Actually, its been going great, Waddell said. The biggest thing is that some we would have turned away before now can stay.

That leeway is especially compassionate during sub-zero cold spells enveloping the Coulee Region now, she said.

It also allows the corps to maintain consistent case management and counseling, she said, adding, It is a nice way to keep them within our reach.

Previously, only The Warming Center, which Catholic Charities operates and accepts only people who are 18 or older, allowed people who had been drinking to be overnight guests.

Warming Center coordinator Mark Schimpf welcomed the change, saying, It removes a barrier and enhances the way Im able to collaborate with them and keep people safe.

Its easier than it was before, when I knew I couldnt send somebody there if the person had been drinking but was behaving reasonably, Schimpf said.

The warming center, at 413 S. Third St., can accommodate 40 people overnight in recliners, although Schimpf said, Its been running a little higher than normal, but not as high as I had thought.

Schimpf described The Salvation Armys change as a really positive development, because we can be a lot more flexible, and there isnt as much disparity between us.

We can keep more people safe, he said.
With two weeks left to go until President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration, activists hoping to sponsor demonstrations in Washington say they are being stonewalled by the federal permitting process that determines who can use what land that weekend.

Some groups, including the Womens March on Washington, have secured permits through the D.C. police department, which has jurisdiction over local land in Washington.

The National Park Service  which handles permitting for federal park land, including the Mall and monuments  has issued just a few permits even though more than a dozen groups have applied to demonstrate during the weekend of Jan. 20.

[Womens March on Washington officially has a permit for Jan. 21]

While permits are not necessary for federal land use, the groups do need permission to have speakers, stages, portable toilets and other amenities.

Trumps Presidential Inauguration Committee has first preference on most of the federal land and has been slow in relinquishing any of its access to allow for demonstrators. On Thursday afternoon, the committee said it would not be using the Ellipse near the White House  the first time it has said it would not use a piece of land on which it has dibs during the inauguration.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee did not respond to a request for a comment Thursday.

Federal regulations give priority to the inaugural committee, setting aside prime land, including the entire Mall between First and 14th streets NW. The Park Service, as a matter of standard practice, applies on behalf of the committee for the sweeping permits a year in advance, according to Mike Litterst, a Park Service spokesman. The Ellipse by the White House and the Lincoln Memorial were included in those applications.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee then typically relinquishes some of those spaces, allowing demonstrators to secure their permits.

The permitting process is attracting special attention this year because the bitterly contested election spurred more people to organize demonstrations. Federal officials said that for a typical presidential inauguration, just a few groups seek a First Amendment Permit from the Park Service.

Permitting for the inauguration and associated events is a deliberative, time-intensive process in what is often a rapidly changing environment, and it requires considerable negotiation between the National Park Service and permit applicants, Litterst wrote in an email. We are still working with more than 30 permit applicants on the logistics for their events, and we have continued to receive new applications.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which has fought many legal battles seeking access to federal land for protesters, criticized the Park Service on Thursday, alleging at a news conference that it is violating the Constitution and hoarding permits for the inaugural committee.

[None of the inauguration protests have permits yet. Heres why. ]

While the NPS has said there is no legal deadline by which the committee has to decide on the land it will use, the park agency asked it to inform them by last week. Litterst said he hopes to be able to accommodate a few more groups now that the Ellipse is available.

But activists say they are in limbo and cant properly plan.

There is a point where a delay becomes so long that it constitutes obstruction, said Carl Messineo, the Partnership for Civil Justice Funds legal director.

The National Park Service has issued permits to the ANSWER Coalition  a left-leaning antiwar group that has mounted legal battles to use a portion of Freedom Plaza and part of Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Bikers for Trump also is expected to get a permit to gather at John Marshall Park on Inauguration Day.

D.C. police also have issued a number of permits to demonstrators, including one for up to 200,000 people for the Womens March on Washington the day after the inauguration.
D.C. leaders say they will open a middle school in the citys Takoma neighborhood in 2019 to feed into the under-enrolled Coolidge High School  the latest push in the citys effort to keep families in D.C. Public Schools beyond the elementary grades.

If the city can persuade parents to enroll their children in the new middle school, the addition would be the latest boost to Ward 4, which had lost its only stand-alone middle school, MacFarland, amid a slew of school closures in 2013 because of low enrollment.

Ward 4 is home to some of the citys rapidly booming and gentrifying neighborhoods, including Petworth, Brightwood and Takoma. The city reopened MacFarland as a Spanish dual-language school this academic year to feed into Petworths Roosevelt High School, aiming to attract new families in the neighborhood who have other choices, including public charter schools and private schools.

Everybody in public education in the District will tell you that we are improving at the elementary school level and our focus really has to be how we can have robust options on the middle school level, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in an interview.

The new middle school is slated to open in the same building as Coolidge, which is scheduled for a massive renovation project that is expected to be completed by fall 2019. Coolidge serves the Brightwood, Takoma and Manor Park neighborhoods

Interim schools chancellor John Davis said planning for the middle school is in early stages; the city still doesnt know whether it will have a specific academic focus, or if the school will open incrementally by grade level over three years or all at once.

[Can a revamped Roosevelt High serve everyone in its gentrifying neighborhood?]

Davis said the decision to open the middle school arose from parent feedback, and the school system will look to the community as it makes further decisions about the school.

Overwhelmingly, parents wanted to see a middle school in the neighborhood, Davis said.

But attracting parents could be a challenge. Coolidge High is one of the citys lowest-performing schools, with none of its students considered college- and career-ready in math, and just 11 percent in English, according to results from student performance on the computerized Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) standardized test linked to the Common Core State Standards. In the 2015-2016 academic year, Coolidge had a relatively small enrollment of 384 students.

Davis said the city is hopeful that a new building and the addition of a middle school with a rigorous curriculum will attract parents back to their neighborhood schools and away from charters and other options. A strong middle school could mean a higher-performing crop of students feeding into Coolidge.

We are confident about MacFarland, and we are confident that we will fill the slots in the middle school at Coolidge as well, Davis said. We need to demonstrate to parents that we are going to have a rigorous curriculum and programs  bands, choirs, extracurriculars and sports.

[Some parents are angry about changes to D.C. school-renovation funding.]

Julie Lawson, a Takoma resident for the past six years, is one of the parents who has pushed for a strong neighborhood middle school feeding into Coolidge. Her 5-year-old son, Owen, attends Whittier Education Campus, a Takoma neighborhood school that also has a middle school. She said she wants to keep Owen on the neighborhood school track, but doesnt want to enroll him in Whittier Middle because it is small and lacks robust extracurricular offerings. She is involved in the Coolidge parents community, but said she would not consider sending her son there if the high school is performing as it is now.

I really value the neighborhood school concept and like that it is a five-minute bike ride to school, and we see other kids from school at the park, Lawson said. The reason why people are not trusting the elementary schools in the area is because they dont see a viable path to middle school and high school and they want to get in a long-term path, even at 3 years old, they can use all the way.

Bowser said the city recognizes that families make decisions about their childrens post-

elementary school education at young ages, and that successful middle schools are crucial to attracting young, higher-income families into the school system.

Bowser ran her 2014 mayoral campaign, in part, on the slogan Alice Deal for All, a promise to work to replicate the high-

performing middle school in upper Northwest Washington across the city.

[Bowsers Deal for All aims to boost middle schools, but can programs be replicated?]

It has to be a consistent and sustained focus on the middle grades, Bowser said last month. We are certainly not there yet. Our focus is on making sure that parents have great options in their neighborhoods, and Coolidge certainly should be one of them.
Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trumps pick for education secretary, is not just a prospective Cabinet member seeking confirmation from the U.S. Senate.

She is also a billionaire Republican donor whose familys donations have funded the campaigns of many of the senators now tasked with voting on her nomination, including members of the committee overseeing her confirmation hearing, scheduled for Wednesday.

During the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, DeVos and her relatives gave at least $818,000 to 20 current Republican senators, including more than $250,000 to five members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission records.

DeVos personally made a relatively small percentage of those donations: at least $31,400 to committee members and $96,000 to all senators. But her giving appears to have been coordinated with her family: In most cases, senators received donations from more than a half-dozen DeVos family members, including her husband, his parents and his siblings, on the same day.

View Graphic Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far

[Democrats seek to delay confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, citing unfinished ethics review]

To money-in-politics watchdogs, the DeVos familys contributions create a conflict of interest for senators now charged with judging Betsy DeVoss fitness to helm the Education Department.

Shes acknowledged that her family gives, and gives a lot, because its aiming to buy influence, said Robert Weissman of Public Citizen, who said the scale of the DeVos familys political donations is unusual for a prospective Cabinet member. Against that backdrop, how are the senators supposed to evaluate her nomination in an unbiased way? They cant.

Trumps transition officials and DeVos supporters say that members of the DeVos family have been exercising their right to support candidates who share their political views and that its nothing new for senators  including Democrats  to vote on the confirmation of wealthy nominees who make donations to them.

On Friday, two groups that advocate for reform of money in politics  End Citizens United and Every Voice  called on senators who have received donations from DeVos to recuse themselves from voting on her confirmation. Absent those recusals, it is impossible to be sure she will receive the scrutiny this important position deserves, said David Donnelly, of Every Voice.

[Trump picks billionaire Betsy DeVos, voucher advocate, for education secretary]

DeVos supporters push back against the notion that her track record as a donor is unusual, pointing to billionaire Penny Pritzker, Obamas commerce secretary, as one of several recent examples of Cabinet members with a history of making significant political donations. In the four years before her nomination, Pritzker donated about $20,000 to Democratic senators who then voted on her confirmation, according to FEC records.

If you accept the faulty premise that political contributions create a conflict of interest, then any amount is problematic, said Ed Patru, spokesman for Friends of Betsy DeVos, a group of supporters. I dont remember a single Democrat, citing conflicts of interest, recusing themselves from a vote on billionaires like Penny Pritzker.

Patru said that the DeVos family has given to Republicans for decades, not because they were plotting for Betsy DeVos to become education secretary, but because they are ideologically aligned with Republicans.

They are proponents of limited government, personal responsibility, free markets and a strong national defense, Patru said. Betsy believes labors monopolistic stranglehold on public education holds back progress, particularly in communities of color.

DeVos family members, heirs to the Amway fortune, are consistent major donors to Republicans and groups supporting their candidacies. Since 1989, they have given at least $20.2 million to Republican candidates running at the federal level, party committees, PACs and super PACs, according to OpenSecrets.org. They gave at least $10 million in the 2016 cycle.

Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos Jr., have focused their energy and political contributions on expanding charter schools and taxpayer-funded vouchers for private and religious schools.

She has previously said that her family expects a return on investments in political candidates and causes, writing in Roll Call in 1997 that she had decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.

Now I simply concede the point, she wrote nearly 20 years ago. They are right. We do expect some things in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American values.

[How Indianas voucher program soared, and what it says about education in the Trump era]

DeVos has given to policymakers from both parties who share her values, according to a spokeswoman for Trumps transition team. She emphasized that DeVoss donations are public information, as are the donations to Democrats from teachers unions  who vehemently oppose DeVoss nomination.

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers  the nations two largest teachers unions, which represent more than 4 million workers  spend millions of dollars each election cycle to support primarily Democratic candidates and outside groups aligned with their interests. The two unions gave a total of $546,000 to current senators in the 2014 and 2016 cycles, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Democrats have singled out DeVos as one of eight Trump Cabinet picks deserving of extra scrutiny and skepticism, arguing that she has no experience as an educator or elected official and has a record of undermining U.S. public schools. They are likely to bring up her political donations during her confirmation as evidence of her efforts to influence Congress, according to staffers.

Many Republicans are hopeful that DeVos, an avowed small-government conservative, will shrink the federal governments footprint in education and will continue her efforts to expand alternatives to traditional public schools.

Asked whether Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the HELP committee chairman, has any concerns about conflicts of interest related to DeVoss donations, spokeswoman Margaret Atkinson said that Betsy DeVos is an eminently qualified nominee who has devoted her career to childrens education, and Chairman Alexander looks forward to her hearing.

Alexander has not received individual donations from DeVos family members, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In her home state of Michigan, DeVos has played a key role in shaping a fast-growing charter-school sector that even many charter-school supporters criticize as lacking in oversight and quality. Nationally, she has been a powerful force in successfully pushing for the rapid expansion of taxpayer-funded vouchers, which funnel public dollars into private and religious schools.

Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the HELP committees ranking Democrat, said this week that after speaking with DeVos, she continues to have serious concerns about the nominees long record of working to privatize and defund public education, expand taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, and block accountability for charter schools, including for-profit charter schools.

Murray also said she is concerned about DeVoss extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest.

[School choice advocates divided over Trump and his education pick, Betsy DeVos]

Of the 20 sitting senators who received money from the DeVos family during the past four years, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)  who ran two campaigns in 2016, for president and then for Senate  was the biggest beneficiary. He received at least $81,000 from Betsy DeVos and 11 of her family members, including her husband, Dick DeVos Jr.; her mother- and father-in-law, Helen and Richard Devos Sr.; her brothers- and sisters-in-law, Douglas, Daniel, Pamella, Maria and Cheri; and two nieces and a nephew.

When people contribute to my campaign, they support my agenda, Rubio said. I appreciate that Ms. DeVos agrees with my agenda, and I look forward to supporting her nomination.

DeVoss confirmation must be approved by the HELP committee before it is taken up by the full Senate. Five of the 12 GOP members of that committee  Richard Burr, Lisa Murkowski, Tim Scott, Bill Cassidy and Todd Young  each received more than $40,000 from the DeVos family during the past four years, according to FEC records.

Burr, of North Carolina, received $43,200 from Betsy DeVos and seven of her relatives; all of those donations were made on March 31, 2015, according to campaign finance disclosures. Asked whether Burr believes the money poses a conflict of interest, a spokesman declined to comment.

Murkowski, of Alaska, also received $43,200 from eight DeVos family members, with all of the donations dated March 26, 2015. Jenna Mason, a spokeswoman for Murkowski, said that the senators office does not follow what contributions are made to Senator Murkowskis campaign, nor do we take them into account when considering an issue or taking official action in the U.S. Senate.

[Choice or privatization? A guide to loaded education lingo in the Trump era]

Young, who defeated Evan Bayh in November to become Indianas junior senator, received $48,600 from nine DeVos family members. Cassidy, of Louisiana, received $70,200 from nine DeVos family members in 2014. Scott, of South Carolina, received $43,200 from eight DeVos family members on March 31, 2015, and another $6,000 on June 10, 2014.

Spokesmen for Young and Cassidy did not respond to requests for comment.

Sean Smith, a spokesman for Scott, said the senator does not believe that DeVoss political contributions pose any conflict of interest or affect his ability to objectively evaluate her. Scott is a vocal supporter of vouchers and charter schools who gave the keynote address at a 2016 national meeting of DeVoss advocacy group, American Federation for Children.

Senator Scott has been a strong supporter of school choice and improving our education systems long before he ever met Betsy DeVos, Smith said. His mission is to help kids growing up in poor neighborhoods like the ones he grew up in achieve their dreams, and he does not waver from that position no matter who is leading the Department of Education.
THE DISTRICT

Alleged Pizzagate gunman in court

A federal judge agreed Thursday to seal personal information extracted by police from the cellphones of people who communicated with a North Carolina man accused of commandeering a D.C. pizza restaurant and firing several shots from an assault-style rifle Dec. 4. No one was injured.

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., made his first appearance before U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who said she would grant the request by prosecutors.

Chutkan set Welchs next court date for Jan. 24, as the government turns over evidence including police reports, photographs and a video of Welchs police interview, with witness statements still to come.

Welch has pleaded not guilty to federal and local firearms and assault charges in the incident, which prosecutors said Welchs communications indicate was motivated by a viral fake-news story known as Pizzagate. The conspiracy theory falsely linked Hillary Clinton to a child sex-trafficking ring.

 Spencer S. Hsu

MARYLAND

Metro worker falls

near Bethesda stop

A Metro worker was injured early Thursday after a 35-foot fall down a shaft near the Bethesda stop.

The incident happened at about 1:30 a.m. He suffered back and leg injuries, but none appeared life-threatening, officials said.

Two other Metro workers were injured Wednesday while making track repairs on the Green and Yellow lines. One worker was injured from a shock after a metal rod he was carrying touched the electrified third rail. The other worker was hurt while trying to help him.

 Dana Hedgpeth

VIRGINIA

Two teens are injured

in gang incident

A teenager was shot and another was injured in an incident believed to involve a gang called South Side, authorities in Prince William County said.

The incident happened Wednesday about 3:40 p.m. near Rixlew Lane and Ashton Avenue in Manassas, police said. Two teenagers, ages 17 and 16, were walking along a path in a wooded area when they were approached by two people, police said.

One of them, later identified as Jonathan L. Aviles, 20, pulled out a gun, police said. The 16-year-old was shot in the upper body. The other teen suffered a minor, non-gunshot-related injury to his head, police said.

Aviles and another suspect, a 17-year-old from Manassas, then fled in a vehicle with two other men. Police ultimately charged all four suspects with counts including aggravated malicious wounding and gang participation.

They include Aviles and 18-year-olds Steven J. Roldan and Diego Martinez, all of Manassas. The 17-year-old suspect was not identified because he is a juvenile.

Both victims were taken to hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries.

 Dana Hedgpeth
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday announced a jobs initiative that includes tax incentives for manufacturers and millions of dollars for training and educational programs to prepare people for careers in technology.

The tax measure, which Hogan (R) plans to introduce for the upcoming legislative session, would allow a 10-year state-tax exemption for new manufacturing businesses in high-unemployment areas such as Baltimore and parts of Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. It would also provide tax credits for existing manufacturers who hire more workers in those regions.

Additionally, the proposal would allow deductions by manufacturing businesses for capital investments such as new equipment and plant expansions of their facilities.

Hogans initiative also includes money to open six Pathways in Technology Early College high schools throughout the state; $3 million for grants to fund training in cybertechnology; and $1 million toward a state program that shares up to 50 percent of the cost for manufacturers and technology companies to train their workers.

The P-TECH schools, developed with IBM, combine high school, college and work experience in one program that provides free two-year degrees in careers related to science, technology, engineering and math.

Hogan last year proposed legislation to provide a 10-year tax exemption for new manufacturers and their employees in high-unemployment areas, but neither chamber of the General Assembly voted on the measure.

Some existing manufacturing businesses in the state had raised concerns that the plan would put them at a disadvantage, in part by allowing their competitors to hire their workers away to claim the tax break.

The governor said he expects more support for the plan he put forward Thursday at a Living Classrooms community center in Baltimore, flanked by Mayor Catherine Pugh (D), City Council President Jack Young (D) and state Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden (D).

We now have much more support for this one, and it accomplishes a lot more, he said, noting that his new proposal provides tax incentives for existing companies. Everyone wants to create more jobs, and everyone wants to help these areas.
The highest court in Maryland delayed action Thursday evening on whether to overhaul the states money-based bail system so that most poor defendants do not have to pay bail or are allowed to pay what they can afford.

The Maryland Court of Appeals was considering a rule change that would have directed judges not to set bail higher than what a defendant can afford. A person who is a flight risk or a danger to society would be jailed without bail.

After more than 90 minutes of deliberation, the court decided to delay action on the proposal until next month.

Maryland has been debating whether to limit or eliminate cash bail for more than a decade. Its efforts parallel similar campaigns in New Mexico, Kentucky and New Jersey, where the money-based bail system has been either altered or abolished.

The court heard more than five hours of testimony, including from former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder; state Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, who urged the judges to change the system; bail bondsmen; victims rights advocates; and police officers who raised concern about how limiting bail could impact public safety.

Holder told the court that the states system is likely unconstitutional because it largely jails people based on their ability to post bail.

He called the cash-bail system fundamentally unjust.

Frosh, who tried to make changes to the bail system when he served in the Maryland legislature, said the system has left some impoverished suspects detained for weeks and months while they await trial, causing the loss of jobs. In some cases, he said, innocent people have pleaded guilty to minor charges ahead of their trial dates to get out of jail more quickly.

Frosh mentioned Shannan Wise, a Baltimore woman who spent five days in jail because she had trouble coming up with the $1,000 she needed to get out. Wise, who was profiled in The Washington Post last month, was released from jail after several family members scraped together the money to pay her bail. Two months later, the charges against her were dropped.

She is an example of a very serious problem we have with our pretrial system, Frosh said. People should not be held in jail just because they are poor.

Frosh said the judges had an opportunity to not only make our system fairer, but to make it more effective.

Several people who oppose the proposed changes warned the court against moving too quickly.

In November, the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure recommended the rules change to the full Court of Appeals. Retired judge Alan M. Wilner, who chairs the rules committee, said the panel began discussing pretrial detention changes almost three years ago.

Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Getty, who previously served with Frosh in the Maryland Senate, raised concerns about the court making a rule change before the General Assembly acts on legislation that would create a statewide pretrial release service program.

I think we do a disservice voting on this motion today, Getty said. I would like some time to follow up and research some of the things that have been said.

Mark Adams, a bail bondsman, also said the court was acting prematurely.

This process is moving too quick, he said. The data has not been accurate and has not been complete.

The hearing comes nearly three months since Frosh raised constitutionality questions about the states money-based bail system.

Responding to five Democratic state lawmakers, who asked him to weigh in on whether the state was vulnerable to class-action lawsuits similar to those lodged in San Francisco and other cities across the country, Frosh said the system may violate due process.

He added that if pretrial detention is not justified yet bail is set out of reach financially for the defendant, it is also likely the court would declare that the bail is excessive under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from imposing excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawmakers who support reducing or eliminating cash bail said they planned to use Froshs opinion to push for changes during the 2017 session, which begins next week.

In the meantime, District Court Chief Judge John P. Morrissey advised judges and commissioners to impose the least onerous conditions on those awaiting trial, and Frosh asked the Court of Appeals to consider a rule change.

The bail bondsmen say their businesses have suffered since Morrisseys letter. They say fewer bonds put the public at risk, and they are waging a social-media campaign aimed at stopping any sweeping changes to the system.
A 24-year-old community college student admitted Friday that he helped hack and harass top government official as part of a collective that called itself Crackas With Attitude.

Justin Liverman pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States. He faces up to five years in prison.

Quiet and thin in a wrinkled suit, he said little at the hearing. Under questioning from Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, Liverman said he had been doing well in school, earning a 3.75 grade point average.

U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. were among the victims.

Liverman was not the mastermind behind the scheme, according to his plea agreement. A British teenager operating under the pseudonym Cracka did most of the actual hacking, while Liverman helped in choosing targets and harassing them.

The groups attacks relied not on technology but so-called social engineering, according to court documents. For example, Cracka gained access to Brennans account by posing as a Verizon technician and tricking the companys tech-support unit into revealing the CIA directors account number, password and other details.

And they used the information they found not to blackmail officials or help a foreign government but for juvenile stunts.

[Men accused of hacking top government officials arrested]

It was Liverman who suggested going after the husband of White House communications director Jen Psaki, because of her negative comments about leaker Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor. He called Psakis cellphone and home phone multiple times.

When Cracka got into the Comcast account of former FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano, Liverman paid an online service to call him with threatening messages every hour for 30 days. He also sent Giuliano approximately 1,000 text messages depicting a lewd image of a man, according to the statement of facts filed Friday.

Through Giuliano, Cracka got into the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, which provides detailed police resources from around the country. Liverman asked for information on Miami police officers and posted a list of their names, phone numbers and email addresses online.

Liverman also encouraged Cracka to call in a fake bomb threat to the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office in Florida.

Hopefully they will have a shootout and kill each other, he wrote in an online chat. Viva la revolution.

Other victims included Amy Hess, the FBI executive assistant director for science and technology, and Harold Rosenbaum, chief executive of CIA contractor Centra Technology.

Liverman is currently a student at Carteret Community College in North Carolina, studying computer science. He said he hopes to study at East Carolina University whenever he is released. His sentencing is set for May 12.

Its youthful pranks, in my opinion, that hes owning up to, said Tor Ekeland, one of Livermans lawyers.

Hes very intelligent; its all about directing that intelligence, added Marina Medvin, another of Livermans defense attorneys.

Another North Carolinian, 22-year-old Anthony Boggs, is set to plead guilty for his role in the group on Tuesday.
Three of the five suspects in the killing of Jordy Mejia: from left, Reynaldo A. Granados-Vasquez, Jose Melendez-Rivera and Neris Moreno. (Montgomery County Police)

Five suspects have been arrested in a gang-style slaying in which prosecutors say the victim was lured to Maryland from New Jersey under a ruse that he would be meeting a woman with whom he had been communicating on Facebook.

This is all MS-13 related, Montgomery County Assistant States Attorney Marybeth Ayres said during a court hearing Thursday for one suspect, Katerine Solorzano-Aparicio, 17, a student at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg. She is charged as an adult in the case.

Ayres asked that Solorzano-Aparicio be held without bond, arguing that her status as an undocumented immigrant made her a flight risk and that her connection to the case put her in danger.

The state feels strongly that for everybodys safety, every conspirator in this case should remain incarcerated, Ayres said.

[Earlier: Victim lured to his death under ruse of meeting a woman]

Police say these images they posted  similar to the shirt and shoes found on the victims remains  helped them learn his identity and aided in the arrests of suspects. (Montgomery County Police)

The gang MS-13  or Mara Salvatrucha  has made a resurgence in the Washington area over the past year, according to authorities. Known for its extreme violence and loyalty among members, the gang is active across the United States and in Central America.

On Nov. 12, hikers near Game Preserve Road in the Gaithersburg area found a decomposed body. Detectives later identified the remains as those of Jordy Mejia, 22, of Guttenberg, N.J., who had been missing since Oct. 15.

Officials have not said how they think Mejia was killed; it isnt clear whether they know with certainty, given the condition of his remains.

In court Thursday, District Judge Eric Nee ordered Solorzano-Aparicio held without bond. Four other suspects arrested this week in the case, ranging in age from 16 to 21, also have been denied bond.

Three of the five were most recently living in Maryland, according to court records and hearings. The other two were last living in New Jersey.

The suspects statuses as recent immigrants with ambiguous or illegal immigration status  and limited ties to the community  have played a role in bond decisions in the case.

Of the five, at least three are in the country illegally, according to court proceedings. One of the others has an immigration detainer lodged against him, according to jail officials, an indication he also may be in the country illegally.

An examination of Mejias Facebook account revealed that he had been communicating in October with someone in Maryland he thought was named Shaila Smith. He came to Maryland, believing he was going to meet her, court files show. After arriving, he exchanged Facebook messages with Shaila Smith  which police say was not the persons real name  and was told a car would pick him up to take him to her, the court records say.

Instead, according to police allegations filed in court, Mejia was picked up by Solorzano-Aparicio and her boyfriend, Jose Melendez-Rivera, 18. They drove him to a wooded area, where the three got out of the car, according to the records.

The victim went into the woods with Melendez-Rivera and another male suspect, and Mejia was killed, police say.

Police have identified the three other suspects as Neris Moreno, 19; Reynaldo A. Granados-Vasquez, 21; and Jackelin Leiba-Esperanza, 16, who also is charged as an adult.

The suspects versions of events have not been aired in public.

In court Wednesday, John Lavigne, a public defender representing Moreno and Leiba-Esperanza, said the case is at best very circumstantial.
MADISON  Andrew Steele, a former Dane County sheriffs deputy who shot his wife and her sister to death in 2014 but was found not mentally responsible for the crimes, was ordered released Thursday to live his parents, who will provide around-the-clock care for him until he dies from the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with which he is stricken.

Steele, 42, had been ordered released from Mendota Mental Health Institute in March after Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara ruled that because of the advancement of his ALS, a terminal neuromuscular disorder, Steele no longer posed a danger to himself or others. But it was difficult to find a care facility that would take Steele because of the notoriety of his case.

Late last year, though, a plan for Steeles release was devised, and on Thursday, McNamara approved the plan.

Steele pleaded guilty in March 2015 to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide for the shooting deaths of his wife, Ashlee Steele, 39, and her sister, Kacee Tollefsbol, 38, at the Steele home in Fitchburg on Aug. 22, 2014. But he also pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and a jury agreed with him in April 2015.

Since the trial, Steele has been kept at Mendota. He chose not to be brought to court for Thursdays hearing.

One of Steeles lawyers, Jessa Nicholson Goetz, said that under the release plan, Steele will live in a home with his parents and will have 24-hour in-home care along with supervision. She said Steele has virtually no mobility left at this point and cannot speak or eat on his own.

What were really talking about at this point is end-of-life care, Nicholson Goetz said.

The location of the home is confidential by law. Police will be notified of Steeles location once he is released, she said, but there is no requirement that neighbors be told. She said she did not expect problems to occur with neighbors should they become aware of his presence.

I would expect the next few months of Andys life to be very private ones, Nicholson Goetz said. I dont expect that there will be a lot of interaction with neighbors or community members.

It was not clear when Steele would be moved out of Mendota and into his parents home.

The plan wasnt approved without concerns raised by Brad Putnam, the brother of the two sisters killed by Steele. Putnam and his wife, Rachelle, who live in Minnesota, are now guardians of Ashlee Steeles two children. He said that during Steeles time at Mendota, Steele has called and sent letters to the children, without the Putnams approval.

Once, Putnam said, Steele called his son on his cellphone just to talk to him about his day, like nothing ever happened. And voicemail messages from Mendota on Steeles behalf were left on the cellphone of Steeles daughter.

I could not believe what I was hearing, and thought, how is that monster able to call his kids cellphone from Mendota? Putnam said. Once again, that murderer is reaching out to vulnerable kids who we are guardians of, without our knowledge, on their cellphones.

Steele has also sent several letters to the Putnam home, as recently as Christmas. The children showed the letters to the Putnams without opening them, Putnam said.

If Steele can contact the children from Mendota, Putnam asked, how will he be kept from contacting them once he is free?

McNamara said that while Steele was at Mendota, the court didnt have authority over his actions at the institution. But once he is on supervised release, McNamara said, he will be monitored by a state Department of Corrections agent and any contact violations will be reported to the court.

Putnam called Steeles release from Mendota another blow to a family still trying to pull itself back together.

That murderer ripped our family to pieces and were just trying to put them back together, Putnam said. He said it was hard enough to see this murderer not held responsible for his sisters deaths due to an illness that I know does not affect his brain.

Making what he called the final judicial comments of the case, McNamara turned the focus back to Ashlee Steele and Kacee Tollefsbol, whose surviving family, particularly their children, deserve one last public acknowledgement of their infinite loss.

Each of the women carried an inner strength and a perseverance to work to improve the lives of their children and their communities, McNamara said, along with a relentless sense of hope. Hope that with perseverance there would be better days ahead for themselves and those they loved.

Remembering the strength and hope that Ashlee and Kacee never lost, this should be the focus as this case now concludes, McNamara said.
Prince George's County Fire Chief Marc Bashoor talks to recruits during a demonstration in 2013 in Cheltenham, Md. Bashoor announced his retirement Friday. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

As a boy, Prince Georges County Fire Chief Marc Bashoor would often ride his bike to his neighborhood fire station, where he loved watching the trucks go in and out and crews snap into action with the scream of an alarm.

Those firehouse visits eventually turned into a career for Bashoor, who started as a volunteer firefighter in Prince Georges at 16 and rose up the ranks to lead the department.

But after more than three decades, Bashoor is stepping away. He announced his retirement Friday. Deputy Fire Chief Ben Barksdale will take his place as interim chief and would take over the position permanently with the County Councils confirmation.

Its just time, Bashoor said before pulling up a photo of a sunset casting a glow over a dock at his retirement property. I have a lake in Florida calling my name.

Bashoors retirement marks the end of his six-year run as chief of the nations largest combination of paid and volunteer firefighters.

Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III said that when seven fires broke out in the county in one day, he rested easy.

I was able to sleep because we had the right person at the helm, said Baker, who appointed Bashoor and Barksdale.

Bashoors tenure was marked by physical and financial expansion. The fire departments $130.9 million budget in 2011 will have grown roughly 30 percent by the end of this fiscal year. The departments staff increased from about 700 to nearly 900 in five years under Bashoors leadership. New ambulances and fire houses went into service, with response times for advanced life support calls reduced by 45 seconds.

I hope that Ive created a sense of momentum as chief that will continue to carry the organization to success, Bashoor, 51, said. I hope people will continue to seek bigger and better things.

Bashoor said that he is particularly proud of his work to improve the fire departments community service.

After two fatal fires in December 2014, Bashoor worked with the local union and a pastor to develop an adopt-a-neighborhood program. The program gets firefighters knocking on doors in neighborhoods once a month to install smoke detectors and carbon-monoxide alarms.

Bashoor also created the high school cadet program four years ago, allowing students to train for the fire service and earn college credit. Since the program began, at least 15 students have been recruited or are in the process of being hired.

Under Bashoor, weve made significant advancements in staffing, safety and accountability, said Andy Pantellis, president of the local fire and paramedics union.

Bashoor said one of the most difficult moments of his career came last year, when John Skillet Ulmschneider was fatally shot responding to a 911 call. Ulmschneider and another firefighter were breaking down the door of a home, thinking that someone was suffering a medical emergency. The person inside, fearing intruders, fired at the first responders.

It really drove home to our people how vulnerable we are, Bashoor said. While we have a Superman complex, were not all Superman.

Jan. 20 will mark the 30 years since Bashoors fire-academy graduation. In the corner of his office, he keeps his first helmet  made of leather  from when he was a volunteer at the fire station in Bowie.

Bashoor said he still plans to remain active in public safety work. He was one of the few names the International Association of Fire Chiefs submitted to the Trump and Clinton campaigns for a potential federal appointment.

With or without the federal piece, Im going to continue teaching; Im going to continue to stay engaged, Bashoor said. Ive been going 24-hours a day, seven days a week for six years. You just cant shut that off.
In a year when Metro says it will bring service Back2Good, Thursday morning brought riders back to reality  with systemwide slowdowns and sluggish communications that have become familiar to customers of the nations second-busiest subway.

Metro says a computer glitch struck at the height of the morning rush, stripping the Rail Operations Control Center of its ability to remotely move switches, where trains change tracks  leading to a ripple effect of delays and disruptions across the 117-mile subway. The glitch was a consequence of planned maintenance and testing, leaving the control center unable to communicate with the tracks it oversees, the agency said. As a result, Metro had to dispatch workers to manually move the switches through the end of the morning rush.

[For Metro, Getting Back2Good comes with a six-figure price tag]

The episode postponed scheduled track work and angered riders in what became the systems first major service meltdown of 2017, a year when Metro has pledged to win back riders with a $400,000 Back2Good campaign.

[With no more SafeTrack surges until February, We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.]

Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the problem was detected immediately after maintenance and testing began at 9:22 a.m. He said Metro reestablished the majority of connections within 10 minutes, but problems persisted throughout the day as some devices required reboots even after connections were restored.

The problems meant at least 90 minutes of disruptions for riders, many of whom were back to their normal riding routines because of a lull in SafeTrack work. In preparation for Inauguration Day and anticipated winter weather, there will be no more SafeTrack maintenance surges until February. Other riders are easing into regular work schedules this week after holiday vacations.

Metro said service was fully restored by 11 a.m., but not before riders sounded off about the delays and the lack of information from Metro about what was happening. Although Metro has pledged to be more transparent and responsive to riders, complaints about its lack of communication with customers continues.

[Monday morning meltdown on Metro affects nearly every line]

The train was stopping, then they werent telling us what was going on, and when I was able to get [information], they kept mentioning a 20-minute delay. I saw myself [waiting] longer than that, said Fazli Erdem, 43, whose commute from McLean to King Street-Old Town station stretched an hour longer than usual. Im generally frustrated because, I mean, to me, the problems appear to be on the Orange Line and Blue Line . . . and there is no track work supposedly until February.

[As SafeTrack enters full swing, Metro moves to revamp its social media presence]

Beatriz Lopez, 34, of Burke, Va., said the delays caused her to miss a 9:30 a.m. meeting.

If only it was a 20-minute delay, said Lopez, whose 15- to 20-minute commute from Clarendon to Farragut West stretched to 45 minutes. She tweeted her outrage to @metrorailinfo, the systems official Twitter account for alerts.

Seriously, she said. 4 freakin stops take 45+ mins!!

Metro said it announced the problem at 9:41 a.m., about 20 minutes after discovering the connection issue. But riders complained that they were stuck in delays long before that  possibly because of unrelated congestion  which was exacerbated later by switch and signal problems, according to the agency.

Stessel said a combination of rush-hour congestion, train spacing issues and required reboots slowed trains for much of the morning.

[At least one more Metro track worker fired after allegedly falsifying inspection reports]

In five high-traffic areas, riders faced extended waits, watching in frustration as trains passed by on the opposing tracks. Switches normally move every two to three minutes at those locations: outside East Falls Church, King Street-Old Town, Stadium-Armory, LEnfant Plaza and Pentagon.

Having it under manual control adds a few minutes, and then that cascades, Stessel said. You repeat that process three or four times, and all of a sudden youre in a 10-minute delay.

Though the delays maxed out at about 20 minutes, according Metro, riders complained of trips taking as long as two hours as trains crawled from stop to stop, with extended waits in tunnels and little information on the cause.

You dont even have a signal to your phone, you cant even kill time, Lopez said. Worse off, it was slightly packed  a lot of people, myself included, were standing. It was just a really long, exhausting wait per stop.

Stessel said delays averaged about 10 minutes with isolated cases stretching past 15 minutes.

Because of the problems, Metro canceled scheduled track work on the Red and Silver lines, but maintained scheduled Silver Line turnbacks at Ballston  a knot for those riders, who had the added burden of a transfer during the delays.

Still not sure why #wmata thinks its okay to leave #Silverline riders waiting at #Ballston for a half-hour+ regularly, tweeted one rider.

The agency offered free rides to some customers who had particularly bad experiences. After Erdem logged his complaint, the agency responded by offering three trip credits worth $3.50 each.

We handle customer care on a case-by-case basis, Stessel said. We can review the customers actual trip time versus what it should have taken, and those factors get reviewed, and so anyone who was significantly inconvenienced should get in touch with customer service.

[Whats that mysterious rumble? Petworth residents eye Metros new trains as cause of disruption]

Lopez said her train crawled from Clarendon to downtown, with extended waits at each stop. At one point, she said, riders shot each other confused looks as the train held for what seemed like 10 minutes in the Rosslyn tunnel.

He had literally apologized, I counted, about five times, she said of the train operator, as the train held between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom.

Later Thursday, she canceled a $115 monthly payment to a garage in Clarendon, where she parks her car to ride Metro. She arranged to commute with a friend from Rosslyn instead  using Uber.

I wish it could be the New York system, because Ive ridden the New York City system and its great, she said. But this is the hand thats been dealt to us.

When colleagues emailed to ask if she would make her morning meeting, she shot back a curt response, knowing they would understand.

Nope. Train.
On Friday, the 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee and Metro announced a special SmarTrip sleeve to commemorate the inauguration of Donald Trump. (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority)

The latest fight between supporters and opponents of President-elect Donald Trump found an unlikely battleground: Metros commemorative Inauguration Day Farecards.

After controversy erupted over the decision to use a nondescript design for the special one-day SmarTrip cards rather than a likeness of Trump, Metro decided to release a special commemorative card sleeve with an image of the president-elect.

Metro debuted the sleeve  which features Trumps photo and the slogan Make America Great Again  on Friday. They will be distributed at stations the morning of the inauguration free.

[Metros new Inauguration Day card sleeves celebrate Trump and Make America Great Again]

It is hoped that the eleventh-hour fix will appease critics who were upset when Metro released details of the special commemorative Farecards late last month. The cards feature an image of the White House superimposed over a rippling American flag. There is no reference to Trump  not his photo, nor his name.

Thats a departure from the commemorative cards from the two previous inaugurations, both of which featured pictures of President Obama on the front. Metro officials said they reached out to Trumps campaign before the election for permission to use a photo on this years card, but received no response.

Trumps team did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

[Notably missing from 2017s Inauguration Day Metro card: Donald Trump]

But despite Metros defense, some people took the card design as a slight  intentional or not  to the soon-to-be commander in chief. The story was shared widely on conservative websites, and readers posted comments expressing outrage at Metro, along with the hashtag #MAGA. (Make American Great Again, of course.)

The DC Metro disrespects voters. Very sad, tweeted one Trump supporter. Drain the Swamp!

Even the DC Metro needs draining . . . tweeted another commenter, who posted side-by-side photos of the current card and one from Obamas inauguration.

This is beyond disrespectful, added another. Like him or not the facts are the facts, Trump is president.

Looks like some more bitter liberals! a man from Michigan tweeted.

Metro, responding to pressure from the public and at least one board member, came up with the sleeve, which was designed in conjunction with Trumps inauguration team.

Weve been working with them, and then basically we walked through some options with them, and then they chose the option they wanted to go for, General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said Friday.

With the Farecard controversy, Metro stepped into a minefield of high-stakes political protocol, attempting to avoid offending a famously-thin-skinned celebrity and business mogul who will have a say in the agencys funding and future during his presidency.

I kind of hope that the [incoming] president, and the other people who he delegates to, would have bigger issues to worry about than whether the presidents picture is on the Farecard  I hope that would be the case, said Sara Procacci Wilson, a former Metro chief of staff and communications director who was the agencys inauguration czar for the 2009 event.

But, she added, I would have been a little bit more circumspect.

Wilson said that when it came to Obamas first inauguration, Metro officials simply paid for an image of the president from a stock photography agency. At the time, they figured that Obamas inauguration team would have no problem with honoring him, she said.

As the controversy gained traction in the blogosphere, Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans said he called Wiedefeld and expressed concern that the agency hadnt been more proactive in obtaining a permissible photo before the printing deadline, particularly knowing how sensitive the public can be.

Im sure Trumps people were very busy, and campaigns are chaotic. My admonition to Metro was, Why didnt you try more than once?  Evans said.

He said Metro officials then reached out to Trumps camp to ask what they wanted to do about the cards. Trump officials were unruffled, he said.

They said, We dont want to make a big deal out of this or have it sound like he has his feelings hurt,  Evans said.

Evans said he wanted the agency to print new Trump Farecards, but staff employees were concerned about the expense, so the agency instead opted for the cardboard sleeves and used a photo provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Although the commemorative day passes are part of an effort to avoid crowding at fare machines on Inauguration Day, she said, theyre also an act of welcome and goodwill to the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city who may not often have the opportunity to experience the wonders of a subway.

The cards are part of that  to really make it as special as we can, and make it about the presidency and the history and not so much about the specific person who won, Wilson said. I think that, being in Washington, D.C., we have a special obligation to honor our institutions.

She scoffed at the idea that a Trump-specific SmarTrip card would be too partisan for a public agency. After all, she pointed out, Metro Farecards designed to commemorate a visit from the Pope or the National Zoos visiting panda arent an endorsement of Catholicism or Communism in China.

And Wilson pointed out that she  a registered Republican who volunteered for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during his 2008 presidential campaign  was an advocate for putting Obamas face on his inauguration Farecards.

It doesnt need to take a partisan element, she said.

[Jan. 2013: Former Metro inauguration czar shares experiences of 2009]

The Commemorative Inauguration Day Farecards, which are discounted to $10 from the normal price of $14.50, are not a recent invention for Metro. Before Obamas presidency, Metro also created special cards to celebrate the ascendancies of presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Bush did not receive any special billing on his card. During the 1993 and 1997 inaugurations, Metro passes featured a view of Pennsylvania Avenue looking toward the Capitol, with the signatures of Clinton and Vice President Gore displayed.

The relatively nondescript design of this inaugurations card also is causing concern for another reason: The lack of an image making them easily identifiable as a Trump card might make them less valuable in the future.

The Metro inauguration passes have turned into a unique commemorative item, said Brad Koplinski, co-chair of National Capital Chapter of the American Political Items Collectors. However, without President-elect Trumps name or photo on it, it certainly cuts down on the collectability of the piece.

Koplinski said he was pleased to know that there is a sleeve forthcoming.

With Mr. Trump being the master of name-branding, Im not surprised that Metro is now creating the sleeve, he said. Now there are two souvenirs for attendees to take home and save. Most of the people that go to the ceremony wont have a ticket, so this is what many will hold onto as a keepsake.

Lisa Benton-Short, associate professor of geography at George Washington University and author of The National Mall: No Ordinary Public Space, said such seemingly mundane logistical decisions in the process of organizing and executing an inauguration can cause significant offense and hard feelings between government agencies.

But Metros current, less visibly partisan cards may be the best bet in reflection of the contentious feelings within the American electorate  one part of the larger sense of divide that the country found itself in this election cycle, Benton-Short said.

The flag is a uniter, she said. Its reminding us that inaugurations are about being American, and about democracy, and that kind of image reminds us that were all Americans no matter who we voted for.
A former chief of staff to Vice President Biden filed paperwork Friday to run for lieutenant governor in Virginia, lending some political star power to a race that now has three Democrats and three Republicans vying for the office.

Democrat Susan Platt served as Bidens chief of staff in the Senate for two years during the mid-1990s, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She owns a political consulting firm in Great Falls.

Platt joins a crowded field of candidates to replace Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who is running for governor in November.

Her Democratic opponents are former U.S. attorney Gene Rossi and former U.S. attorney Justin Fairfax, who also ran for state attorney general in 2013.

The Republicans are state Del. Glenn R. Davis Jr. (Virginia Beach) and state Sens. Bryce E. Reeves (Spotsylvania) and Jill Holtzman Vogel (Fauquier.)
Virginia Del. L. Mark Dudenhefer announced Friday that he will not seek reelection in November, opening up a Republican seat in a hotly contested portion of Prince William County that Democrats will likely push hard to capture.

In a statement posted on his website, Dudenhefer (R-Stafford) did not give a specific reason for choosing not to compete again for the seat he narrowly recaptured in 2015 with little more than 50 percent of the vote.

He lost the same seat in 2013 with 49 percent of the vote and was initially elected to represent the district that includes Prince William County and Stafford with 56 percent of the vote in 2011.

It has become clear to me that I can better serve my God, my family and my fellow man by pursuing a different course, Dudenhefer said in his statement. I have not decided exactly what that path will be, but I will always remain a steadfast voice for transportation improvements and better communities.

Republicans control the House of Delegates with 65 seats, a majority Democrats hope to eat into in a November election.

In a statement, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) praised Dudenhefer as a champion of transportation issues and safety in Northern Virginia.

Since his first election as delegate in 2011, Mark has been a tireless advocate for his constituents, Howell said in his statement. He has consistently fought for improved transportation and safer communities.
Wisconsin state superintendent candidate John Humphries has been rehired as a consultant at the school district where he previously worked, freeing him up to focus on the race.

Humphries was hired as a consultant by the Dodgeville School Board on the same day in December that he resigned from his job as the districts director of state and federal programs.

He is challenging incumbent state Superintendent Tony Evers in the race to head the state Department of Public Instruction. Former Beloit superintendent Lowell Holtz is also running. The primary is Feb. 21 and the general election for the top two vote-getters is April 4.

Humphries firm, BrainDance LLC, will receive up to $39,000 under a six-month contract through June. The Wisconsin State Journal obtained Humphries consulting firms contract and emails about his resignation under the states open records law. Humphries told the newspaper that consulting will allow him to insulate his political activities from his work for the district.

Humphries said after he ended his job as a consultant for the Department of Public Instruction in 2011, he held contracts with school districts in Kansas and regional school district organizations in Wisconsin to provide youth suicide prevention training and school improvement services.

Humphries was hired by the district in 2012 and earned $94,360 annually at the time of his resignation, Dodgeville superintendent Jeff Jacobson said, adding that the two have not discussed whether Humphries will be rehired permanently if his bid for superintendent is unsuccessful.

Evers did not respond to a request for comment. Holtz said he retired in June and does not work as a consultant currently.

Scot Ross is executive director of liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, which tracks campaign spending in the race. He said Humphries decision to resign during the campaign is putting his political ambitions before kids.

Humphries defended the move.

Running for office is quite challenging if you are not independently wealthy and I am making a very serious commitment to this effort while also trying to sustain my family, he said.

His firm, BrainDance LLC, will receive up to $39,000 from the school district he had just resigned from.
NATIONAL SECURITY

4 prisoners released from Guantanamo

The United States has sent four Yemeni prisoners from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said Thursday, part of a final rush to resettle detainees before the Trump administration clamps down on movements out of the prison.

The inmates include Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bawazir, whose treatment during a lengthy hunger strike was addressed in a federal court case; Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, who was shot during an Afghanistan prison riot in 2001 but later recovered; Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim; and Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli. The prisoners had been held since as early as January 2002.

Family members held an emotional reunion with the prisoners at the airport in Riyadh, Reuters reported. Under current law, the United States cannot repatriate prisoners to Yemen because of instability and poor security there and has called on allied nations to accept the freed men.

The transfers represent the culmination of years of efforts by Obama administration officials to scale back operations at the controversial detention center. Although President Obama was unable to close the prison as he promised at the outset of his presidency, he has been able to dramatically reduce the inmate population at Guantanamo, which after the transfer stands at 55, far below its peak of more than 700 under George W. Bush.

They may also represent some of the final transfers in coming years, as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to block transfers after he takes office Jan. 20. Obama administration officials have notified Congress of their plans to resettle as many as 15 additional prisoners before Trumps inauguration.

 Missy Ryan

TEXAS

Lawmakers propose bathroom bill

Top Texas Republicans are eager to bring a fight that sparked upheaval and business boycotts in North Carolina to the countrys largest conservative state, unveiling a bill Thursday that would ban transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice.

The Texas Privacy Act requires all Texas residents to use the bathroom or locker room according to the gender on their birth certificates and prohibits local governments from passing ordinances designed to protect transgender rights in public restrooms and other intimate settings.

Its the right thing to do, said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican who oversees the state Senate. The people of Texas elected us to stand up for common sense, common decency and public safety.

Bill sponsor Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from rural Brenham, said her thoughtful and unique bill wont create bathroom police and will allow anyone to lodge complaints upon seeing something in public restrooms that makes them uncomfortable.

The states largest business lobbying group says approving the measure and other anti-gay rights proposals could cost the state up to $8.5 billion in revenue and 100,000-plus jobs. Yet many conservatives in the GOP-controlled legislature, which convenes Tuesday, are expected to embrace the bathroom bill.

 Associated Press
NIGERIA

Chibok girl found with baby, military says

Soldiers interrogating captured Boko Haram suspects have found one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the extremist group nearly three years ago, along with her baby, Nigerias military said Thursday.

Nearly 300 girls were kidnapped by the insurgents from a government boarding school in the remote northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014, a mass abduction that shocked the world. Most of the girls remain in captivity.

In May, one girl escaped. In October, the government negotiated the release of 21 more. Another was freed in November in an army raid on an extremist camp.

An army spokesman, Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman, identified the latest girl to be freed as Rakiya Abubakar and said she has a 6-month-old baby. He said her identity was discovered when soldiers were interrogating some of more than 1,000 suspects detained in army raids.

 Associated Press

IRAQ

Bombing attacks kill 27 in Baghdad

Several attacks in and around Baghdad on Thursday killed at least 27 people in a brutal day in the Iraqi capital.

A suicide bomber, targeting shops and food stands near a bus station in the Bab al-Muadam area after nightfall, killed 11 people, a police officer said. He said at least 22 people were wounded.

Earlier in the day, bombings in and around Baghdad  including a market area  killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens, officials said.

No one immediately asserted responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State, which has carried out a string of bombings in Baghdad over the past week, killing nearly 100 people.

 Associated Press

FRANCE

Ex-Kosovo premier could be extradited

A former prime minister of Kosovo is facing possible extradition to Serbia on war-crimes charges after being arrested at a French airport.

Ramush Haradinaj appeared Thursday in a court in Colmar that ruled he should stay in custody during extradition proceedings as the court decides whether to turn him over to Serbian officials.

Haradinaj, a guerrilla fighter in Kosovos 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia, was detained Wednesday at Basel Mulhouse Freiburg airport.

He was cleared of war-crimes charges in two trials by a U.N. tribunal. But Serbia accuses him of committing war crimes  including kidnappings, torture and killings  against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in Kosovo.

Kosovos government called the charges illegal, unfair and tendentious.

 Associated Press

Looting leaves 1 dead in Mexico: Unrest over gasoline price hikes in Mexico have left one policeman dead, five people injured and 300 stores looted, and more than 600 people have been arrested, authorities said. The countrys business chambers said the highway, port and terminal blockades and looting have forced many businesses to close and threatened supplies of basic goods and fuel. Mexicans were enraged by the 20 percent fuel price increase announced over the weekend as part of a government deregulation effort. Authorities said Thursday that one policeman was killed and another seriously injured when they tried to stop robberies at a Mexico City gas station.

No charges in sex abuse case involving French troops: The Paris prosecutors office said that an investigation into alleged child sexual abuse by French soldiers in the Central African Republic has concluded without charges. Spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Leroux said the inquiry formally ended last month. Several boys had told U.N. investigators they were sexually abused by French troops in the countrys capital, Bangui, in May and June 2014. Fourteen French soldiers reportedly were suspected of being involved.

Brazilian leader calls inmates deaths a dreadful accident: Brazilian President Michel Temer said that the killing of 60 inmates in two Amazon prison riots was a dreadful accident and that public agencies have no clear responsibility because the prison where most died was run by a private company. There were riots in four prisons in the state of Amazonas on Sunday and Monday. Claudio Lamachia, chairman of Brazils bar association, disagreed with Temer, saying that the fact that the prison was run by a third party does not exempt the public agents from . . . policing the facility.

 From news reports
You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did last Sunday, that we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket, you are reaching the end of that road.

Since the early 1990s, we have offered every kind of inducement to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program. All failed miserably. Pyongyang managed to extort money, food, oil and commercial nuclear reactors in exchange. But it was all a swindle. North Korea was never going to give up its nukes because it sees them as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.

The North Koreans believe that nukes confer inviolability. Saddam Hussein was invaded and deposed before he could acquire them. Kim wont let that happen to him. Thats why Thae Yong Ho, a recent high-level defector, insisted that As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, even if its offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards.

Meanwhile, they have advanced. Theyve already exploded a handful of nuclear bombs. And theyve twice successfully launched satellites, which means they have the ICBM essentials. If they can miniaturize their weapons to fit on top of the rocket and control reentry, theyll be able to push a button in Pyongyang and wipe out an American city.

What to do? The options are stark:

(1) Preemptive attack on its missile launching facilities. Doable but reckless. It is the option most likely to trigger an actual war. The North Koreans enjoy both conventional superiority and proximity: a vast army poised at the Demilitarized Zone only 30 miles from Seoul. Americans are not going to fight another land war in Asia.

(2) Shoot down the test ICBM, as advocated by the Wall Street Journal. Assuming we can. Democrats have done their best to abort or slow down anti-missile defenses since Ronald Reagan proposed them in the early 1980s. Even so, we should be able to intercept a single, relatively primitive ICBM of the sort North Korea might be capable of.

Though such a shoot-down would occur nowhere near North Korean soil, it could still very well provoke a military response. Which is why the new administration should issue a clear warning that if such a test missile is launched, we will bring it down. Barack Obama is gone. Such a red line could be a powerful deterrent.

(3) Return tactical U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea. They were withdrawn in 1991 by George H.W. Bush in the waning days of the Cold War. Gorbachevs Soviet Union responded in kind. A good idea in general, but not on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang had railed constantly against their presence, but they did act as a deterrent to any contemplated North Korean aggression. Which might make them a useful bargaining chip.

(4) Economic leverage on China, upon which Pyongyang depends for its survival. Donald Trump seems to suggest using trade to pressure China to get North Korea to desist. The problem is that China has shown no evidence of being willing to yield a priceless strategic asset  a wholly dependent client state that acts as a permanent thorn and distraction to U.S. power in the Pacific Rim  because of mere economic pressure.

(5) Strategic leverage on China. Weve been begging China for decades to halt the North Korean nuclear program. Beijing plays along with sanctions and offers occasional expressions of dismay. Nothing more. Theres one way guaranteed to get its attention. Declare that we would no longer oppose Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent.

This is a radical step that goes against our general policy of nonproliferation. But the point is to halt proliferation to the infinitely more dangerous regime in North Korea. China is the key. The Chinese have many nightmares, none worse than a nuclear-armed Japan.

The principal strategic challenge facing the United States is the rise of revisionist powers  Russia, China and Iran  striving to expel American influence from their regions. In comparison, the Korean problem is minor, an idiosyncratic relic of the Cold War. North Korea should be a strategic afterthought, like Cuba. And it would be if not for its nukes.

Thats a big if. A wholly unpredictable, highly erratic and often irrational regime is acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city by missile. Thats an urgent problem.

North Korea may be just an unexploded ordnance of a long-concluded Cold War. But we cannot keep assuming it will never go off.

Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
WINONA, Minn.  An alcohol-fueled wrong turn onto a set of Winona railroad tracks resulted in felony charges against a Minnesota woman.

Stivalis Yolanda Lizarraga Estrada, 19, of New Hope, Minn., told police she had been drinking Fireball Whiskey before getting behind the wheel Nov. 1, court documents state. Just before 2 a.m. she turned off Sioux Street, mistaking the CP Railroad right-of-way for West Mark Street, and got her automobile hung up on a roadbed designed for locomotives.

Attempting to return her vehicle to the pavement before a train rumbled down the tracks, she put her vehicle into reverse, hit the gas and, gaining sudden traction, struck a woman who was trying to help her out of the situation by pushing the vehicle.

When officers arrived, they found the injured woman lying next to the tracks. She was taken to a Rochester hospital for treatment, court documents state. Police obtained a blood sample from Estrada. Her blood-alcohol contentration was 0.14 percent.

Estrada was charged Tuesday in Winona County District Court with two counts of criminal vehicular operation causing substantial bodily harm. Her first court appearance is set for Feb. 1.
AMONG THE muddled Middle East policies the Trump administration will inherit from President Obama is U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabias bloody and futile intervention in Yemen. Pushed by its ambitious, 31-year-old deputy crown prince, the kingdom plunged into Yemens civil war in 2015 and since then has carried out some of the most brutal attacks in a war-ravaged Middle East with substantial American support. Human rights groups have accused the Saudis of bombing hospitals, schools and other civilian sites and of employing cluster munitions, all in violation of international law.

In response, the Obama administration has withheld some support, but not enough to stop the carnage  a policy that manages to anger all sides while accomplishing next to nothing.

The continued U.S. support includes refueling Saudi aircraft, which have continued to pound Yemeni cities since the administration announced on Dec. 13 that it had decided to block a $390 million sale of guided-munition kits to the Saudi military by Raytheon. The sanction, which was coupled with a reduction of intelligence sharing, could conceivably lead to more civilian casualties, since the kits and intelligence are used to make bombing more accurate. The sale also represents a puny part of the $58 billion in weapons the United States has sold to Saudi Arabia since Mr. Obama took office, including $20 billion in 2015 alone.

Evidently, the White House felt compelled to respond, however ineffectually, to charges that the United States is complicit in Saudi war crimes. Human Rights Watch says it has documented 23 unlawful airstrikes in which U.S. munitions were used, many of which killed civilians, including children. According to the United Nations, at least 4,125 civilians were killed and 7,207 wounded between March 2015 and October 2016, mostly in airstrikes by the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies.

A review of U.S. policy was finally announced after the bombing of a funeral ceremony in October killed more than 140 people . The White House piously voiced very significant concerns about the high rate of civilian casualties. But the measure it adopted allowed the bombing campaign to go forward  and it has, notwithstanding a hasty and unavailing effort by Secretary of State John F. Kerry to broker a cease-fire.

A policy of half-measures and moral compromise might be called for if the Saudi campaign were judged to be a vital U.S. interest; the kingdom claims to be fighting a proxy war against Iran, and Yemen remains a base for al-Qaeda. But the conflict is not that simple: The Houthi sect backed by Tehran is allied with a former Yemeni ruler who was considered a U.S. and Saudi ally until 2011. More to the point, the Saudi strategy of bombing the Houthis until they agree to withdraw from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has next to no chance of succeeding.

The Trump team that will inherit this mess arrives with seemingly conflicting impulses. Defense-secretary nominee James N. Mattis, a former chief of U.S. Central Command, is a firm supporter of the U.S. military alliance with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors, which Mr. Trump has been criticizing since the 1980s . The instinct to reverse the previous administrations policies, combined with a willful disregard for human rights, might prompt the new administration to renew full support for the Saudi bombing. If so, it will be buying itself a place in a quagmire.
Im glad that Donald Trump will finally get a briefing on the unanimous conclusion of Americas intelligence agencies that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign chairman. But he should also request and receive a political briefing on Russia that can shed light on the backdrop to Russias actions. We need to understand why Russia behaved the way it has.

It all started with the Arab Spring. The sudden mass demonstrations and demands for democracy took most of the world by surprise. In particular, they rattled Moscow at a precarious moment. The Kremlin was in the midst of managing the countrys political future and worried about opposition at home. Parliamentary elections were scheduled in less than a year, to be followed by a presidential election. Vladimir Putin was not then president, having stepped aside in keeping with the Russian constitution, allowing Dmitry Medvedev to ascend to the office.

[Why does Trump go googly-eyed for Putin?]

Roland Dannreuther of the University of Westminster in London points out that the crises in both Libya and Syria coincided with the rise of opposition to the re-election of Putin, with unprecedented large opposition rallies in Moscow and other cities in Russia during 2011-12. He argues that the Kremlin watched these countries as street protests morphed into broader opposition, created instability, and then attracted the attention and intervention of Western powers. Moscow was determined that no such scenario would play out in Russia or in any of its close neighbors, such as Ukraine.

In fact, there was a rare disagreement between Putin and Medvedev on how to respond to Libya. Putin bitterly attacked his own president for not vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning an intervention in Libya and lambasted the West for launching a crusade against a Muslim country. Medvedev, who was technically in charge of foreign policy, flatly contradicted him, calling his rhetoric inexcusable. Some Russia hands believe that this disagreement might have sealed Medvedevs fate, ensuring that he served just one term and then made way for Putins return to the presidency. In any event, as Dannreuther writes, for conservative Russian elites, the evidence of the Arab Spring confirms that such factional divisions in the guise of democracy promotion only lead to internal disorder, societal conflict and the loss of the sovereign integrity of the state. (The fact that Clinton encouraged Russian democracy protesters at this sensitive moment branded her an archenemy in the eyes of the Kremlin elite.)

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

About a year later, in 2013, the chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, wrote an article suggesting that Russias key challenge was responding to the underlying dynamics of the Arab Spring and North Africas color revolutions. He urged that these not be viewed as non-military events because a perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war. He advocated that Russia better understand and develop the non-military and asymmetrical methods, including special operations, information warfare and the use of internal opposition to cripple a society.

Since then, Moscow has made information and asymmetrical warfare central to its foreign and military policy. When asserting itself in Georgia and Ukraine, Russia has used a hybrid strategy that involves the funding of local politicians and militias, fake news and cyberattacks. Leading German and Polish politicians assert that Russia has engaged in some such activities in their countries as well. And now there is the apparent involvement in Americas election.

[Trump seems to keep siding with Russia, but what does that get him?]

The idea of information warfare is not new. The Soviet Union developed and practiced a strategy of disinformation throughout the Cold War, complete with fake news and the penetration of Western political parties and media organizations. But the revival of this approach and the aggressive and sophisticated manner in which it is now being used in a social media landscape mark a new and dangerous trend in geopolitics.

This is the political backdrop behind the technical evidence that Russia interfered in Novembers election. It needs to be moved out of a partisan framework and viewed in a much broader context. Since the end of the Cold War, no major country has challenged the emerging international system. But now, a great-power strategy, designed to work insidiously, could well succeed in sowing doubt, division, discord  and ultimately destruction  within the West.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Abby Lunardini was special assistant to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for executive communications from 2006 to 2007. The opinions expressed here are her own.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger taking over Donald Trumps former role on Celebrity Apprentice this past week, weve been treated to another round of comparisons between the movie star who became governor of California and the reality star who will be the next president of the United States.

The New York Times TV critic determined that Mr. Trumps imperiousness and (seeming) impetuousness had made him an ideal reality-TV boss, while Mr. Schwarzeneggers cautiousness and rigidity make him a poor fit. The Los Angeles Times critic, for one, begged to differ, concluding that like his predecessor, Schwarzenegger is entirely comfortable hamming it up as an imperious bad guy and noting that Schwarzeneggers Trump impression was so complete, he even had a younger blond relative, nephew Patrick Knapp Schwarzenegger, playing the Ivanka Trump role. Best yet, Trump himself weighed in Friday: Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got swamped (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT.

No doubt there will be a similar  if more consequential  debate about how the two compare as government executives. After all, both men were icons, moguls and political outsiders who were carried to victory in circuslike elections on waves of throw the bastards out fervor. So perhaps Trump, like Schwarzenegger, will turn out to be a pragmatic social moderate who uses his charm and business negotiation skills to forge consensus. New York magazines Jonathan Chait suggested as much at the outset of the primaries, back when a Trump win was still a far-fetched hypothetical. The prospect of Schwarzenegger governing Americas largest state struck many of us as just as ghastly as the idea of a Trump presidency seems now, Chait sought to reassure liberals. But by the end of his tenure, it was impossible to deny that Schwarzenegger had become a highly effective governor.

As someone who occupied an admittedly narrow perch on the governors communications staff, I can attest that his effectiveness had a lot to do with his enthusiasm for understanding the workings of government and his willingness to partner with his political opponents. Trump doesnt seem inclined toward either. And those who expect him to follow Schwarzeneggers trajectory in office are succumbing to a temptation to defang the Trump presidency.

Yes, Trump sounds a lot like Schwarzenegger did after his victory in the 2003 election that recalled incumbent Gray Davis. Long before drain the swamp, Schwarzenegger showed up with a broom at rallies to clean house in Sacramento. Like Trump, Schwarzenegger often circumvented traditional news outlets, as an early adopter of social media and with the announcement of his candidacy on The Tonight Show. And, somewhat like Trump, he made headlines for his political name-calling. He famously referred to his legislative opponents as girlie men  (a catchphrase borrowed from Saturday Night Lives Austrian-accented bodybuilders, Hans and Franz ) for refusing to stand up to special interests. This sparked the ire of Californias Democratic leaders, who considered it misogynistic, anti-gay and, well, just dumb. (Though, after this past horror show of an election season, it seems as quaint as youre no Jack Kennedy.)

The similarities between Trump and Schwarzenegger, however, are surface-level.

Chait and others are wrong to claim that, like Trump, Schwarzenegger came directly to politics from the celebrity world without bothering to inform himself about public policy. Schwarzenegger was a dedicated student of policy and government. In contrast to Trump  with his legendarily short attention span and almost gleeful blowing-off of debate prep and intelligence briefings  Schwarzenegger prided himself on being the best-briefed person in the room. And he had an almost boundless curiosity about subjects as dry as workers comp reform and rainy day budget funds.

Having his Conan sword on display in the state capitol conference room gave him a pretty great icebreaker. But it wasnt his celebrity that struck most of the people he met with. From Californias mayors to foreign heads of state, health-care chief executives, union leaders and climate activists  if someone was sitting down with him for the first time, you could see their surprise when they realized he knew exactly what they were talking about and had his own ideas on the subject.

Contrast that with virtually any time in the presidential debates when a follow-up policy question was posed to Trump. Or even to Trumps March meeting with The Washington Post editorial board. Reading through the transcript, there are a number of moments that can only be described as baffling, Post political reporter Phillip Bump wrote afterward.

In his first term, Schwarzenegger translated his campaign agenda into nuanced policy initiatives that could only be described as wonky. He sought to bring some fiscal responsibility to spending, curb the unchecked power of the public-employees unions in Sacramento and create a less-partisan redistricting process. And he tried to push it all through with statewide propositions. That was bold. But the substance of the initiatives was not exactly easy for the average voter to understand. The initiatives also directly challenged the juggernaut of entrenched Democratic interests in the state  in particular the public-employees unions, which ran a bruising counter-campaign. And the voters rejected all of them.

It was, to be sure, a crushing blow. But in its wake, the governor showed humility, renewed respect for the complexities of government and an openness to working with his opponents.

He reorganized his staff, bringing on aides with long and distinguished government resumes. For chief of staff, he tapped Susan Kennedy, a respected Democratic political strategist who had worked for Davis . It is hard to imagine Trump or his transition team appointing anyone to a key administration role who had opposed him  from his own party, let alone a Democrat. According to reports, his transition team forbade it.

Schwarzenegger also reached across the aisle to form partnerships and even friendships with Democrats in the legislature, including some of those, such as House Speaker Fabian Nunez, he had called girlie men in the past. With Nunez, he went on to pass what remains the most sweeping climate change legislation ever enacted in this country.

That would be like Trump working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (whom he just called the head clown ) on an Obamacare replacement or with Sen. Tim Kaine (whom Trump called a joke ) on immigration reform. Of course, with Republicans in the majority in Congress, Trump wont have much incentive to extend a hand to Democrats. But he also maintains chilly relationships with House Speaker Paul Ryan (whom he insulted as recently as October) and other potential Republican allies. And his New Years Eve message  wishing Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just dont know what to do. Love!  doesnt suggest a surge of magnanimity.

Although Schwarzenegger did not accomplish all he wanted to in office, given the challenges he faced with a cratering economy, a tough regulatory environment and entrenched special interests, his track record was solid. He ultimately rolled back taxes and implemented redistricting reform , made long-term infrastructure investments, brokered contentious funding deals for the states higher-education system, fixed Californias bond rating, and reformed its long-broken and bloated workers comp system.

These achievements were the result of hundreds of hours of policy work and negotiation. It also helped that Schwarzenegger is an infectiously likable person. (If you dispute this, I would pose the question: Who doesnt like Arnold in Kindergarten Cop? No one, is the answer.) This, too, stands in contrast to a man whose celebrity was cemented by his ability to act like a jerk on one reality show.

But Schwarzenegger is not only a very different kind of celebrity than Trump, he is a different kind of populist. He is fundamentally generous of spirit, self-made, inclusive and optimistic. None of those traits had anything to do with his star power. But they allowed him to lead a big, messy, contentious state of 36 million people  to learn, admit mistakes, course-correct and keep moving forward.

Thats more than we can reasonably expect from Trump  or the new national reality show were about to watch.

Twitter: @alunardini

Read more:

Trumps celebrity won him the presidency  and could destroy it

Is there a parallel between Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger?

The new Celebrity Apprentice is missing something, and its not Trump

Follow The Washington Posts Outlook section on Facebook and Twitter.
Robert B. Zoellick was U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2005 and president of the World Bank from 2007 to 2012.

Trade protectionism could be the biggest risk to President-elect Donald Trumps growth-and-greatness agenda. Trump the dealmaker needs to decide whether to play case-by-case defense or to use Americas leverage to open markets.

The United States has free-trade agreements (FTAs) with 20 countries that account for 10 percent of the global economy but nearly half of U.S. exports. In the first five years of these deals, U.S. exports on average increased three times as rapidly as export growth globally. The United States enjoys a manufacturing trade surplus with FTA partners, while about 60 percent of imports are for intermediate goods that lower costs for U.S producers. U.S. free-trade agreements support innovation by incorporating new rules that help cutting-edge businesses. Congress, the co-owner of these agreements, should push for more.

To make a fresh start, Trump could negotiate a FTA with Britain in parallel with the Brexit bargaining. A U.S.-Britain deal should focus on the core issue that Britain also faces with the European Union: how to devise trade terms for modern service sectors and advanced industries while respecting sovereign decisions about regulation. U.S.-British solutions may suggest ideas to E.U.-British negotiators, and, at a minimum, offer Britain an option if the E.U. decides to make Brexit painful. Trumps team should complement the British deal with an offer to the E.U. to jump-start the stalled transatlantic trade negotiations by dropping controversial arbitration provisions that would enable private investors to challenge foreign governments. Investors should instead look to U.S. and European courts.

Trumps approach to North America should be grounded in his observation that the United States and Mexico need to compete together with China and other economic powers. Each dollar of Mexican and Canadian exports includes about 40 cents and 25 cents, respectively, of U.S. inputs, whereas the comparable figure for China is about 4 cents. Wilbur Ross, Trumps nominee for commerce secretary, recognized this competitive reality a decade ago when he supported the U.S. free-trade agreement with Central America; Ross welcomed provisions that helped his U.S. and Mexican apparel operations integrate with Central America in order to compete with Asia. NAFTA, now more than 20 years old, can be improved with new terms on energy, digital business, anti-corruption, logistics and labor standards.

A Trump trade policy for the Asia-Pacific could concentrate first on the prevention of currency manipulation. Both the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund charters state that economies should not use unfair exchange-rate maneuvers to boost exports and restrict imports, but those directives have not been enforceable. C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics has come up with a solution: The United States could deter currency manipulation through countervailing currency intervention under special circumstances. U.S. counter-intervention would target governments with large reserves, big trade surpluses and no security justification for buying dollars to depreciate their currencies. Congress should authorize the executive to counter-intervene against any economy with a tradeable currency, which would include Japan and now China.

The Trump administration is also likely to use anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases to tax Chinese exports, although such restrictions already cover about 7 percent of Chinese goods and have resulted in price hikes averaging 81 percent. China often retaliates, hurting U.S. workers and farmers. Ross should negotiate reductions in Chinese metal production capacity and transparent restrictions on subsidies, favorable finance and other unfair distortions created by state-owned enterprises.

Whether the Trump administration negotiates country by country, or with groups, it must not ignore the economies of the Asia-Pacific and the potential of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In todays competitive world economy, the United States cannot withdraw in a huff; retreat is defeat. Similarly, the FTAs that the United States already has with 12 countries in the Western Hemisphere could provide a road map for future negotiations with Brazil and Argentina if their reformist governments welcome competition to clean up crony capitalism.

A Trump trade policy also needs a plan to help workers adapt to change and job loss, whatever the cause. The U.S. government spends about $18 billion a year on about 40 employment and training programs run by nine agencies; according to the Government Accountability Office, these schemes have been rarely evaluated. The American Enterprise Institutes Michael Strain and other reformicons have proposed innovations such as wage support, mobility packages and skill-job matching to get people back into jobs. A job offers the dignity of self-responsibility, even if incomes need to be supplemented.

Trump says he is an economic nationalist. From its earliest days, the new American republic pressed for freedom to trade in a world of mercantilist empires. The first American treaties were for amity and commerce. A dealmaker who is an economic nationalist should not just blame the world and revert to costly protections of special interests. Thats the Art of Bankruptcy. Instead, President Trump needs the Art of the Deal to open markets, keep America competitive and leverage U.S. economic strength.
Correction: An earlier version of this review said that Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires during Argentinas dirty war against suspected dissidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He did not become archbishop until 1998. The review also said that the Peron government was responsible for the dirty war. It was the countrys military that carried out the dirty war after removing President Isabel Peron from office in a 1976 coup. The text has been corrected to eliminate those errors.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, center, the future Pope Francis, speaks with a fellow passenger on public transit in Buenos Aires in this undated photo. He was archbishop of that city before being elected pope. (EDICIONES B /via european pressphoto agency)

Kate Moos is executive producer of new content at American Public Media.

Dozens of books have been written about Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936. Weve learned that his forebears emigrated to Argentinas capital city to pursue economic opportunity and succeeded, joining a large Italian-immigrant middle class. Several biographies and his own authorized memoir inform us that his greatest spiritual influences may have been his grandmother Rosas humble Latin American piety mixed with the stern intellectualism of Jesuit formation and scholarship.

So one cant help but ask why we need another biography, almost four years into Franciss papacy, this one by Mark Shriver, whose previous book was a biography of his father, Sargent Shriver. The elder Shriver was an icon of 20th-century liberalism who married Eunice Kennedy and launched the Peace Corps during the administration of her brother John  the first Catholic president in U.S. history. Mark Shriver lets us know that he took up his pursuit of Pope Francis for a handful of reasons. He had been yearning for a church he could believe in. Like many liberal Catholics who were disaffected by the Catholic Churchs sex abuse scandals and the traditionalism of Benedict XVI, Shriver had grown distant from the devoted Catholicism of his youth. His need, he shares, was exacerbated by the deaths of his parents as well as his uncle Ted Kennedy within a short period of time. I needed and wanted more Bergoglio in my life, he writes, and its clear early on that his biography of Pope Francis is a search for his own spiritual father.

Like millions of Catholics who have responded to the new popes humility, his embrace of simplicity and his apparent disinterest in the majesty that surrounds the Vatican, Shriver needed to discover for himself if Bergoglio was for real. He wanted to find out if the new popes devotion to the poor, acts of humility, and early statement that he would not judge gays and others who violate the Catholic Churchs strict codes of sexual morality were designed for show or were deeply seated in his theology, a melding of Latin American heart and Jesuit discipline.

As we discover, the pilgrimage Shriver embarks on takes him naturally to Argentina, where he meets with many of Bergoglios early peers and mentors, tracing Pope Franciss spiritual development from Flores, his childhood neighborhood, through his ordination as a Jesuit and his rise to become archbishop of Buenos Aires, then cardinal and finally the spiritual leader of the worlds 1.2 billion Catholics.

"Pilgrimage: My Search for the Real Pope Francis," by Mark K. Shriver (Random House)

The trajectory of Bergoglios career, its missteps and moral lessons, provide an occasion for Shriver to reflect on his own spiritual growth. Witnessing the full-hearted piety of Argentinian Catholicism prompts a reflection on the emotional stoicism of his Kennedy-Shriver forebears. References to his own life litter the narrative, along with italicized commentaries that reflect Shrivers real-time reactions to certain experiences. As he intrepidly pursues an interview with a priest known as Pepe in the dangerous slums of Buenos Aires, this inner thought interrupts us:

This guy could be killed at any moment, yet he smiles like that? He is this calm, this at peace? He is a medic on the front lines, engaged in healing people, but he is also fighting evil in hand-to-hand combat.

The device doesnt really work, and it contributes to the more vexing problem that Shrivers writing, though heartfelt, just isnt up to the task. All of the rare face-to-face interviews with Bergoglio associates Shriver has managed to secure are captured in language that betrays an innocence ill-suited to the very serious pursuit hes undertaken:

Father Guillermo Marco, who served as Bergoglios spokesperson for eight years, is a tall handsome man who could pass for a mature leading man in Hollywood with his good looks and warm, welcoming smile.

Shrivers enthusiasm for Bergoglio grows steadily as he travels from Maryland to Buenos Aires and Italy in pursuit of the real Francis.

He keeps us wondering right up until the end of the book whether an audience with Pope Francis will be part of his pilgrimage. Spoiler alert: It turns out that he does not meet the pope in person, despite pulling levers available perhaps only to someone of his particular lineage.

The books shortcomings probably will not deter readers who, like Shriver, hope to recommit to, or at least feel comfortable with, a Catholic Church that had focused on teachings on issues such as same-sex marriage and birth control  teachings that many Catholics disagree with. His pursuit of Pope Francis may be useful to that purpose for those who can stick with him.
Russian President Vladimir Putins aggression in Ukraine has raised fears that the Baltic states  all three of which are NATO members  could be next. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite warned of the danger when she spoke this week with The Posts Lally Weymouth . Excerpts:

Q. Do you approve of President Obamas bombing of Syria?

A. Yes, [he showed] some leadership. Lack of leadership today in the world  in Europe and the United States  is one reason these terrorists are growing so fast.

Do you feel the lack of leadership in your part of the world?

Yes. Lack of leadership has allowed terrorist groups such as ISIS [the Islamic State] to grow, and on the question of Ukraine, it has allowed Russia to become a state with terrorist elements.

How do you see the situation in Ukraine?

The situation is still deteriorating. Russian troops are still on the territory of Ukraine. That means that Europe and the world are allowing Russia to be a country which is not only threatening its neighbors but is also organizing a war against its neighbors. It is the same international terrorism as we have in Iraq and Syria.

In Ukraine, it is a real war. The European Union and most of the leaders in the world are trying to talk about it as if it is not war but some kind of support of terrorist elements. We saw Crimea. In the very beginning, it was green men, and it became Russian military. Now it is the same in eastern Ukraine. And Im sure that it is not the last territory where Putin is going to demonstrate his powers.

Where do you think he is going now?

If we will be too soft with our sanctions or adapt sanctions but not implement them, I think he will go further trying to unite east Ukraine with south Ukraine and Crimea. He recently said that in two days he is capable to reach Warsaw, the Baltic states and Bucharest. So that is an open threat to his neighbors.

Might he go to Transnistria?

If we will allow him to go, he will go anywhere. The problem is that Putins Russia today is ready and willing to go to war. Europe and the West are not ready and not willing to go to war. There is no leadership in Europe or in the world able to stop Putin. Afterwards, we will be surprised that new territories are taken, that new countries are partitioned, and it will be a lot more costly and too late maybe to solve it.

Are you worried he will next attack the Baltics?

If he will not be stopped in Ukraine, he will go further.

So Article 5 and NATO are not enough?

No. Everybody declares that NATOs Article 5 will take place. But it will not stop Putin from his plans if he does not see real actions from the European and world leaders. They are only talking. We need to stop him in Ukraine. And until now, that is not understood. That is why I am saying that in Europe today, leadership is taken by Putin, not by the West.

Is Putins aim to split Europe?

The danger of Russias behavior today is not smaller than what we have with ISIS [the Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria.

So you think both ISIS and Russia are terrorists?

Yes. I think that Russia is terrorizing its neighbors and using terrorist methods.

But the world is more concerned with ISIS.

Of course. It is the primary goal. Unfortunately, this is a perfect position for Putin to do what he wants. In reality, these so-called peace negotiations in Minsk were done under the ultimatum of Putin. Western countries and the European Union gave into his conditions, meaning practically the partitioning of Ukraine.

The U.S. sent Ukraine MREs [meals ready to eat] and they were delivered in German trucks so as not to offend Putin.

Why are we so busy trying not to offend Putin, who is today sending his troops to kill and occupy Ukrainian territory? Why are we not sensitive about what Ukrainians are feeling? Sooner or later we will call him a terrorist and a criminal . . .

Does the situation remind you of the Sudetenland?

The situation before the Second World War? Yes, of course. We with open eyes are allowing the partition of Ukraine.

Do you feel you have enough protection after the Wales summit?

After Wales, NATO is revived, not sleeping any more. We have something to improve our security. We need to invest more. But how much time do we have?

So the sanctions are not hurting Putin?

They are not sufficient. But if he will go further, maybe countries will apply more serious sanctions.

The head of Ukrainian intelligence told a U.S. official that they had to agree to the cease-fire.

Yes. The Europeans and other countries asked [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko to agree to conditions that were unacceptable because [they amounted to a partition] of Ukrainian territory.

So Russia got Crimea and now eastern Ukraine?

With the applause of European and other leaders in the world because they didnt help Ukraine at all.

You worry about your own country.

All neighboring countries to Russia are under threat now. He is threatening them and joking that they are not real states.

Will the result be a war?

We can avoid a war. If both sides are ready to go to war, there will never be a war. If Russia is willing to go to war and the West avoids it, Russia will go as far as it will. . . .

The U.S. appears to be more interested in making a nuclear deal with Iran.

That is a problem. If we see that for some reason we are selling out independent countries, what moral values are we fighting for?

You think that is true?

When I see how the process is going, it is very much possible. The conditions of the cease-fire were done on Russias proposal. The West is not militarily supporting Ukraine. Russia is allowed to do whatever it wants on Ukraines territory. It is a shame on all the Western leaders to allow an aggressor to do what he wants with a sovereign country in the 21st century.

I am happy Obama finally showed leadership on Iraq and Syria. I hope this will allow him to show leadership on Ukraine. Leadership comes with learning. You are not born a leader but you can become a leader.

That leaves Lithuania in a difficult position.

We were occupied for 50 years, and we know how to deal with this neighbor. What is surprising is that countries far away that have never been touched by aggressive Russian policy are afraid of dealing with Russia.

Only countries with a border, Baltic states and Poland, are vocal. It is our one tool to fight Russia: to be vocal and courageous and to shame leaders of the West for not taking the responsibility for protecting freedom, sovereignty and democracy in Europe.
Believe it or not, Americans like Obamacare. They just dont know they like Obamacare.

That is, the law known as Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act is relatively unpopular. But most of the things that this disreputable law does are incredibly popular.

Consider the prohibition on denying insurance coverage due to preexisting conditions. Seven in 10 Americans, including 6 in 10 Republicans, support this provision, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

[Poll: What Americans really think about Obamacare]

What about allowing young adults to stay on parents plans until age 26; eliminating out-of-pocket costs for preventive care; providing subsidies to low- and moderate-income Americans to help them purchase coverage; and helping states expand Medicaid to cover more uninsured low-income adults?

(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

At least 80 percent of Americans are fans of every one of these provisions. Among Republicans only, at least two-thirds are, too.

The only major component that a majority of Americans dont like is the individual mandate  that is, the requirement that nearly all Americans sign up for insurance or pay a fine.

But as is often pointed out, you need this unpopular provision to preserve the popular one about preexisting conditions. Without a mandate, only increasingly sick people will buy coverage, sending insurance markets into a death spiral.

Other polls document similar support for most of the ACAs core components, despite antipathy toward the law itself. Theres an entire subgenre of journalism about people who benefit from Obamacare but still oppose the law and/or support Donald Trump, who promised to repeal it. These stories often find Obamacare beneficiaries who dont realize theyre Obamacare beneficiaries.

Of course, the public confusion is understandable. Some elected officials dont seem to know what the law does, either.

What we really need is to get insurance de-linked from employment and allow me, if I'm an individual employer, a business of one, you need to let me pool together easily with large groups so Im a pool of thousands if not millions of people so I don't get this problem of jacking up my rates when I get sick, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Morning Joe.

This pooling of risk and barring of rate hikes once people get sick are exactly what the Obamacare exchanges do.

All of which is to say that Obamacare does not have a policy problem. It has a branding problem.

Thanks to years of Republican fearmongering and (frankly) journalistic malpractice, voters have little idea what Obamacare is. All they know is that its bad, and partisan, and a failure. The law itself has become a vessel for everything people dislike about the U.S. health-care system, including and especially problems that long predated the law: high prices, complexity, opacity, uncertainty.

Americans dont even recognize Obamacares one inarguable accomplishment: the precipitous decline in the uninsured rate.

The share of Americans who lack health insurance has nearly halved since the Affordable Care Act passed and now stands at an all-time low of 8.9 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only a little more than a third of Americans believe the rate has declined.

To the extent that Americans understand anything factual about Obamacare, it seems to be the laws shortcomings, disappointments and holes  many of which could be plugged if Republicans were willing to work on improving it.

For example, insurers have sharply raised prices and pulled out of many state exchanges in part because enrollees have proved sicker and more expensive than expected. This problem could be remedied through some combination of a stronger individual mandate, more generous subsidies and extended risk corridors and reinsurance.

If you care about preserving the law, there are two silver linings to all this.

First, many Republican politicians realize  even if they wont publicly acknowledge  that theyll be in big trouble with voters if they mess with the laws core components. Even top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway promised that no one who currently has insurance will lose it, something impossible under any of the repeal plans on the table.

Second, if indeed Obamacares most pressing problem is branding, the law couldnt hope for a more gifted brand rehabber than the next president.

Trump may have little interest in policy, experts, numbers, details. But he is undoubtedly a marketing genius. One possible outcome of the current repeal-and-replace free-for-all is that congressional Republicans decide to keep essentially the existing system in place, with some reforms, improvements and hole-plugging, and Trump slaps a shiny new name on the whole thing.

Welcome to the revolutionary, gold-plated Trumpcare. Has a nice ring to it, dont you think?
Here we go, down the rabbit hole.

Donald Trump won the presidency by feeding Americans a diet of falsehoods and fake news, and, when challenged, he lashed out: shouting down the opposition, bullying the accuser and, particularly, blaming the media.

It was inevitable that his success would bring imitators. Now they have arrived, and theyre breeding like, well . . .

Consider Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), co-chairman of the Trump caucus in the House and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump. This week he disclosed that he used $600 worth of campaign funds to take his childrens pet bunny on a commercial airplane.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Using campaign funds for personal expenses is illegal, and this mistake is the latest personal expense for which Hunter, under scrutiny, has reimbursed his campaign account $62,000. Among his reported campaign expenditures: $1,400 to a dentist, $1,400 for his childrens private-school lunch deliveries, $1,650 for their tuition, $961 at SeaWorld, $434 to Dicks Sporting Goods, $229 at Disneyland, $217 to an Italian jewelry store, $361 to a surf shop, $1,200 for a garage door, $2,892 to an Arizona resort, $2,000 for a Thanksgiving trip to Italy and $1,302 worth of video games.

Similar abuses of campaign funds landed former representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) in prison and prompted the resignation of Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.). The Federal Election Commission and the House Ethics Committee (acting on findings of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which House Republicans this week attempted to eliminate) are examining Hunters spending.

But Hunter has taken a Trumpian approach: Hes blaming his woes on his local paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, which has been diligently reporting on the abuses. He blames the liberal agenda of the paper because it endorsed Hillary Clinton; he neglected to note that it also endorsed the extravagantly partisan Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

In a speech right now, the President-elect is ripping the news media, calling them the most dishonest people in the world. That certainly goes for our . . . Union-Tribune, Hunter posted on Facebook last month. And now it seems the UT is on a regular crusade against me  but like the president-elect says, who cares . . . it doesnt matter. They deserve to know how irrelevant theyre becoming and how theyre viewed. Not only do I like what the President-elect is saying, I like even more how folks are responding.

His chief of staff, Joe Kasper, followed that with a post saying that the president-elect is right calling into question the dishonesty of the media and that the newspaper doesnt give a hoot about the facts/truth. Hunter posted again, about a BS story on him in the Union-Tribune, and he said the paper suggested Im under investigation when Im not. (The House Ethics Committee last month extended its review of Hunter.)

I asked Kasper for examples of the newspapers factual errors. His beef wasnt really about the substance of the allegations; he argued that the problems were innocent mistakes in Hunters bookkeeping. A Hawaiian resort expense came from a canceled fundraiser, he said; the Italian trip was for an arrangement with the military overseas that was canceled; the Italian jewelry purchase was mistakenly filed as food and beverage; video games were purchased by Hunters son accidentally because both the personal and campaign credit cards were the color blue.

Most certainly  there was bad oversight and bookkeeping over that year and a half, Kasper wrote in an email. But again, his decision was to repay in excess in an absolute abundance of caution.

It will be up to the authorities to decide whether Hunter broke laws. While they generally forgive a mistake or two, should you have a larger pattern and practice of that it doesnt look like a mistake, said Melanie Sloan, founder and former head of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

More troubling is Hunters blaming of others  his son for the video games, his wife (who doubled as his campaign treasurer) for mishandling credit cards and, especially, the local paper for doing exactly what it should. After the FEC in April flagged Hunters video-game and tuition expenses, Morgan Cook, a reporter for the Union-Tribune, tirelessly investigated Hunters dubious expenditures.

Hunter, who succeeded his dad in office, this week supported the failed effort by House Republicans to deny the Office of Congressional Ethics authority to report publicly on members ethics violations; the office is expected soon to release its report on Hunter.

Even as that failed, Republicans revised House rules to shield lawmakers spending records from federal investigators. The change comes after Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) resigned amid probes into his spending of campaign and office funds. The rules change gives members of Congress the power to resist investigations into embezzlement and misuse of campaign money.

That change helps lawmakers to do whatever they want. To hell with the whistleblowers, the media  and the law.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Shirin Sinnar is an associate professor at Stanford Law School. She co-authored an amicus brief in Ziglar v. Abbasi.

At various moments, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to torture terrorism suspects, ban Muslims from entering the country, banish more prisoners to Guantanamo Bay and round up millions of undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration opposes all of these policies and has taken some steps to make it harder for Trump to achieve them. Yet two days before Trumps inauguration, President Obamas Justice Department will argue to the Supreme Court that victims of federal policies related to immigration and national security should not be able to sue government officials for damages  even if those policies were clearly unconstitutional. In the final case of the Obama administration, lawyers for a president avowedly committed to the rule of law will empower a successor threatening to demolish it.

The case, Ziglar v. Abbasi, arises out of the roundup of hundreds of immigrants in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Federal officials arrested more than 750 men from South Asian and Middle Eastern countries, often based on nothing more than vague tips from members of the public reporting suspicious Arabs in their neighborhoods. One man came to the FBIs attention when his landlord called to say that she would feel awful if her Middle Eastern tenants were involved in terrorism and she hadnt called. Another immigrant was detained after someone reported that the grocery store where he and other Middle Eastern men worked employed too many people to run a small store.

After an independent investigation into these detentions, the Justice Department inspector general rebuked government officials for the indiscriminate and haphazard manner in which they classified immigrants as terrorism suspects. It also found that many of these men languished in a maximum-security prison for months in highly restrictive conditions, while prison guards routinely assaulted them. Ultimately, though many had violated immigration laws, none of the detainees were found to have any connection to the Sept. 11 attacks, and none stand convicted of terrorism.

In 2002, a group of these former detainees sued then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and other officials, accusing them of treating them as terrorism suspects purely because of their race or religion, and of confining them under unreasonably harsh conditions. Nearly 15 years have passed since they filed suit, yet they still have not had a chance to prove their claims. Instead, the Obama Justice Department argues that these men should not be able to sue government officials for money damages at all, even if they have no other way of challenging their treatment.

The Supreme Court has explicitly allowed lawsuits seeking damages from federal officials for constitutional violations (known as Biven suits) in several contexts, including for violations of Fourth Amendment rights, for discrimination claims under the equal protection clause and for claims against prison officials for cruel and unusual punishment violations. But it has refused to allow such lawsuits in certain other contexts, and the scope of Bivens claims has long been unclear. Now, Obamas lawyers are asking the court to disallow these suits altogether where individuals are challenging policy decisions at the intersection of immigration and national security, even if they have no other remedies for the constitutional violations they experienced.

If the Supreme Court agrees, not only would these detainees lose any opportunity to prove their claims, but so, too, would many future victims of human rights violations. Trump has virtually promised to enact unconstitutional policies affecting immigrants and citizens. While individuals might challenge some of these policies in court through other means, a suit for damages is sometimes the only opportunity they will have  and thus, an essential mechanism for deterring government officials from violating the law. No one should be above the law. Whether an individual prison guard or a high-ranking official orders the torture of a prisoner or the murder of a prisoners family  as Trump has advocated  neither should be beyond the reach of the Constitution and our courts.

Some have argued that Obama paved the way for Trump to abuse unilateral powers long ago by targeting U.S. citizens for assassination, trying foreigners in military courts and continuing the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects. Yet when Obama made these troubling decisions, administration officials could at least tell themselves, rightly or wrongly, that the president would use these powers with restraint. But Trumps election laid bare the dangers of pretending that the executive branch can adequately police itself.

Or at least it should have. Apparently oblivious to the impending threat, the Obama administrations top lawyers will march up the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 18 and ask the justices to gut one of the few remaining checks on executive overreach. While Washington swells with crowds preparing for the inauguration of a president hostile to human rights and the rule of law, Obamas lawyers will ask our nations highest court to further shield his national security policies from the reach of our courts. History will not judge kindly this final act of the Obama presidency.
One of the most confusing shifts of the Trump ascendancy is, on reflection, one of the most clarifying.

Donald Trumps, Sarah Palins and Sean Hannitys embrace of Julian Assange  who has made a career of illegally obtaining and releasing documents damaging to U.S. interests  is not just a puzzling policy shift. It is the triumph of political tribalism over, well, every other principle or commitment.

All three leaders of right-wing populism once saw the risk. Not long ago, Trump recommended the death penalty for Assange. Now he publicly sides with him against U.S. intelligence services. Palin urged the United States to go after Assange with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda. Now, we have seen her abject pleading: Julian, I apologize. Hannity once called for Assanges arrest. Now he provides a sympathetic platform for Assanges (and thus Vladimir Putins) views.

Lets be clear about what this means. The president-elect of the United States is elevating a man whom the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., holds responsible for putting the lives of operatives in direct danger. The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is bowing and scraping to the man who materially aided the Taliban. Fox News is now an outlet for the Russian version of events.

All this raises practical questions. If I were a prospective intelligence asset  an Iranian nuclear scientist, say, or a North Korean general  why in the world would I cooperate with a country that cant keep secrets and apparently doesnt care to? How will the CIA and other intelligence agencies deal day to day with a president who distrusts and publicly defames them?

But the most illuminating question is this: What changed about Assange between these dramatically evolved judgments? Nothing. Except that Assange hurt John Podesta, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

It would be difficult to formulate a purer example of motivated reasoning and tribal politics. We are dealing with political and moral argument at this level: Trump is good. Assange helped him. So Assange is good.

It does not require Aristotle to understand that this is a childs view of ethics. The enemy of my enemy may be my friend. Or he may be an international fugitive who effectively exposed intelligence sources and methods and gave advantages to Americas enemies.

It is Ethics 201 that some principles should be universally applied, even when they conflict with our immediate interests or the interests of our own tribe (however that is defined). Where do those principles come from? There is the Golden Rule, which pops up, in different forms, in many religions. There is the moral example of parents and mentors, imprinted on our souls. There are various philosophic systems that force us to consider the views and interests of others.

It needs to be said that loyalty to a tribe is not always a bad thing. Being an American is to belong to a flawed but wonderful tribe. Considering yourself a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, the member of a church or club  all can be appropriate forms of loyalty. Our views and loves naturally bring us into contact and friendship with those who share our views and loves.

The problem comes in the order of the loves (with credit to Saint Augustine). The argument we are seeing on Assange  if it hurts liberals, it is good  is a disordered and destructive form of service to Trumpism. And it is particularly disturbing in this case, because Assange has purposely and undeniably hurt our country. So it appears that the tribalism of ideology is actually deeper and more profound than the tribalism of being an American.

I know this endorsement of politically expedient subversion has happened on the left as well. Those who deny it  those who can only identify destructive tribalism in others  are part of the problem. Assange was a hero in seedier back streets of the left when he seemed to be an opponent of militarism and imperialism. Now: Trump is bad. Assange is helping Trump. So Assange is bad (and the CIA is suddenly the voice of reason).

But this problem is currently more pronounced on the right, since it controls just about everything in Washington. For some right-wing populists, anyone who opposes Trump is the enemy. The same attitude, shifted to the White House, might be applied by the president as: Anyone who opposes me is the enemy.

This would be the beginning of a nightmare.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
Watching National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper Jr., a gruff, 50-year veteran of the spy world, answer congressional questions Thursday, you couldnt help wondering whether perhaps this time President-elect Donald Trump has met his match.

To recall a quip made years ago by a prominent Washington lawyer, Clapper is not a potted plant. He has served Republicans and Democrats alike with the same grumpy dislike of political criticism.

The showdown between Clapper and Trump over allegations of Russian hacking will shape public perceptions of the next president in the two weeks before his inauguration. Well learn more about what Russian hackers did during the 2016 campaign. Well also learn more about Trump and whether he will bring his Russophilia into the White House.

After this weeks briefings of Trump and President Obama, the real circus will come next week, when members of Congress receive their own classified reports. Democrats would be wise if they kept their mouths shut and let GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) do the talking.

Trumps post-election line on Russian hacking has been to blame U.S. intelligence agencies and the news media. Bashing the elitist media has been a standard GOP tactic since Richard Nixons day. But Trump at times has actually seemed to be siding with Russia and other anti-American critics and against U.S. intelligence agencies.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

The standard response of a president-elect to any allegation of foreign meddling in the U.S. election, youd think, would be to call for an investigation. Instead, Trump called the allegations of Russian hacking ridiculous, said it was the Democratic National Committees own fault if its cybersecurity was poor, needled the CIA for its Iraq WMD mistakes, and otherwise sought to belittle the intelligence agencies.

Weirdest of all was Trumps embrace this week of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and a person many U.S. officials, Republican and Democratic, see as having damaged U.S. national security by leaking classified documents about nearly every area of foreign policy.

When Assange sought to pooh-pooh Moscows role with a careful denial that his source hadnt been the Russian government or a state party, he got three Pinocchios from The Posts Fact Checker. But Trump treated him like a new friend. He approvingly tweeted Assanges claim that U.S. media coverage was very dishonest and added: More dishonest than anyone knows.

Then, in one of those who, me? reversals that are a Trump specialty, he tweeted Thursday: The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange  wrong. I simply state what he states . . . The media lies to make it look like I am against Intelligence when in fact I am a big fan!

Well soon see how supportive of U.S. intelligence Trump really is. But in recent months, his approach to the hacking story has been worryingly similar to Russias own response: Its all lies, circulated by a dishonest media. Nobody can believe anything.

This sort of information fog is precisely what Moscow seeks to spawn in its own propaganda campaigns. The Russian goal is to corrode democratic norms and institutions by discrediting the electoral process and to tarnish the reputations of democratic governments in order to establish a kind of moral equivalence between Russia and the West, Thorsten Benner and Mirko Hohmann wrote last month in Foreign Affairs.

Anyone who thinks that the Russian hacking charges are simply an attempt to belittle or discredit Trump should study Russias current covert-action campaign in Europe. Benner and Hohmann quote Bruno Kahl, the chief of Germanys intelligence service, who told a newspaper there that cyberattacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit uncertainty. The head of French information security similarly warned last month that Western countries face the development of a digital threat for political ends and for destabilization.

This Russian political assault has been hiding in plain sight. Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist, wrote in July when news surfaced that the DNC had been hacked that Hillary Clinton was seen by Moscow as a tough and uncompromising adversary, that the U.S. elections were the most sensitive problem facing the Kremlin and that only President Vladimir Putin could decide what to do.

And what did Trump say back then about Russian hackers? Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing from Clintons private email server. He egged on a foreign intelligence service to help his campaign, then claimed they didnt do it, then blamed U.S. intelligence for faulty reporting.

And the question is: Why?

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Coming from a presidential candidate, Donald Trumps misty-eyed admiration of Russia and its autocratic leader was weird. Coming from a president-elect, its nothing short of alarming.

I repeat the questions I asked back in September: Whats the deal with Trump and Russia? Does he have financial entanglements with Russian banks, businesses or billionaires that color his views? If not, as he claims, then why wont he release the personal and business tax returns that could put the matter to rest?

The latest sign of Trumps infatuation is his refusal to accept the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community that Russian state-sponsored hackers meddled in our election  a risky and provocative operation that could have been authorized only by Vladimir Putin.

It could be somebody else, Trump told reporters on New Years Eve. And I also know things that other people dont know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation. The president-elect added that I know a lot about hacking, and hacking is a very hard thing to prove.

It is unclear how Trump could know even a little about hacking, since he rarely uses computers. Aides reportedly must print out news articles for him to read. In my experience, experts on cybersecurity know how to use a Web browser.

Trump is scheduled to receive a full briefing on the issue Friday from senior officials, including FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. President Obama has seen the evidence  and was convinced enough to impose new sanctions against Russia as punishment.

When Putin decided not to reciprocate, given that Obama will soon leave office, Trump offered this glowing comment on Twitter: Great move on delay (by V. Putin)  I always knew he was very smart!

Trump has argued that because the CIA was in error about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it may well be wrong about Russian hacking. Thats ridiculous. Its like saying that because Trump was wrong when he claimed early in the campaign to have seen thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11, everything he has said since may well be exaggerated, half-baked or a flat-out lie.

On second thought, maybe I should choose a different analogy.

One possible reason for Trumps stubbornness is that intelligence officials believe the intent of the hacking was not merely to shake public confidence in the U.S. electoral process but also to help Trump win the election. The hacked material that was allowed to surface, mostly through WikiLeaks, contained embarrassing information about Democratic institutions and individuals, including the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clintons campaign chairman. Republicans were almost completely spared.

Perhaps believing that the legitimacy of his victory is being impugned, Trump is willing to take the founder of WikiLeaks  a fugitive from justice on sexual assault allegations  at his word. Trump tweeted Wednesday: Julian Assange said a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta  why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!

Another possible explanation is that Trump is deliberately making a huge shift in U.S. foreign policy regarding the other two global superpowers. Not only has he been much more indulgent of Russia than recent presidents, but also he has taken a much tougher and more confrontational line toward China. This smacks of 18th- and 19th-century balance-of-power statecraft, which became obsolete with the advent of modern weapons. Such machinations cannot be advisable in the nuclear age.

On New Years Eve, as Trump prepared to host a black-tie gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate, two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee  John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)  joined Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in meeting with front-line Ukrainian troops who are defending their country against Russian-backed military aggression. In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea by force. A few years earlier, he sent troops into the sovereign nation of Georgia.

Perhaps Trump doesnt believe all of this is really happening. Maybe he doesnt care.

The senators made clear they want tougher sanctions against Russia to punish its territorial ambitions and its outrageous attempt to influence our election. How to deal with Putin could be the first big foreign policy fight between the new president and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Perhaps McCain and his colleagues will get to the bottom of why Trump, who sounds like such a tough guy with regard to the rest of the world, is such a pussycat when it comes to Russia. Senate committees can issue wide-reaching subpoenas, and should.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Midway through a Senate committee hearing on foreign cyberthreats Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine took a moment to settle a score against an old nemesis  retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

Kaine (D-Va.), the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in the presidential election in November, lit into President-elect Donald Trumps pick to be national security adviser for promoting fake news stories on social media during the 2016 campaign that most fourth-graders would find incredible.

Kaine added: That a national security adviser would find them believable enough to share them causes me great concern.

Flynn, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012-2014, was not testifying, and he was not even in the room, but his presence was palpable as the nations top intelligence officials briefed lawmakers on the extent of Russias efforts to meddle in the U.S. election by hacking into Democrats email accounts.

Flynns tenure at the DIA ended when he was ousted after clashing with superiors in the Obama administration. His proximity to Trump has made him a key voice of influence over a president-elect who has taken a dismissive and at times demeaning stance toward the U.S. intelligence community. And it has made Flynn a top target of critics who question that perspective.

1 of 35 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Heres a look at Trumps administration so far View Photos The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Caption The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Scott Gottlieb, nominee for commissioner of FDA President Trump is set to nominate Scott Gottlieb, a conservative physician and businessman with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a White House official said. Courtesy of American Enterprise Institute/via Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

A Trump transition official said Thursday that the president-elect intends to name former senator Daniel R. Coats (R-Ind.) to be director of national intelligence, overseeing the nations 17 spy agencies. But Flynn also is expected to continue playing an important role in how Trump interacts with them.

Unlike Trumps Cabinet selections, Flynns White House role does not require Senate confirmation. But Kaine and other Democrats have cast doubt on Flynns judgment, including his push for closer ties with Russia.

GOP leaders have clashed publicly with Trump, insisting that the Russian cyberthreat be taken seriously. Flynn has come under criticism from lawmakers for delivering a paid speech last year for the Kremlin-controlled RT television network in Moscow, where he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a lavish party.

Friends of Flynns described him as a decorated former intelligence officer whose blunt manner was not accepted by his former peers, and they called criticism of his views on Russia unwarranted.

Hes a totally straightforward person, said Michael Ledeen, a historian at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who co-authored a book with Flynn last year on the fight against Islamic terrorist groups.

There are a number of false claims about what Flynn said and didnt say, Ledeen said. All these nonsensical stories about Flynn being some kind of tool for Putin, for example  thats all false. Anybody who looks at what hes written sees that its false. In the book, he calls Putin an evil enemy. 

Once an acclaimed intelligence officer, Flynn was removed from his oversight of the DIA over his criticism of U.S. counterterrorism operations and his efforts to reorganize his agency. Angered by his ouster, Flynn turned into a vocal critic of President Obama, calling him a liar during the campaign.

View Graphic Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far

During a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention last summer, Flynn led chants of lock her up! aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server for official purposes while serving as secretary of state.

Robert Blackwill, a deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush, said during a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday that any national security adviser must have a non-disputatious temperament to be fair-minded in presenting options to the president. He declined to speak directly about Flynn.

A Trump transition representative said in an email that Flynn has had a decorated career of more than 35 years in service to our nation. He is widely regarded as one of the most respected generals and intelligence officers, and this has been echoed time and again by world renowned national security leaders.

Trump has refused to receive daily intelligence briefings, and he has publicly dismissed, at times mockingly, the intelligence communitys conclusion that Russian operatives meddled in the U.S. election campaign in an attempt to help him win. He has defended Putin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, both of whom stand accused of abetting the meddling.

Ahead of the Senate Armed Services hearing Thursday, Trump aimed to moderate his stance, tweeting that he is a big fan of Intelligence and accusing the news media of unfairly portraying his criticisms.

But James R. Clapper Jr., who has been director of national intelligence since 2010, raised concerns about Trumps disparaging remarks during his testimony at the hearing, saying it risked eroding public trust and confidence.

Late Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump and his aides were developing plans to scale down the size of the DNIs office and reorganize the CIA, potentially by pushing more agents out of Washington and into foreign posts.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer denied the story on a conference call with reporters. But Ledeen said the plans align closely with policy changes Flynn advocated in his previous Pentagon job.

It would certainly be in keeping with what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ledeen said. The essence of the changes he made was to get intelligence officers out of their offices in Washington or wherever and out into the field so they could accurately report to their superiors what is going on on the ground.
Some of the most conservative members of Congress say they are ready to vote for a budget that would  at least on paper  balloon the deficit to more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade, all for the sake of eventually repealing the Affordable Care Act.

In a dramatic reversal, many members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus said Thursday they are prepared later this month to support a budget measure that would explode the deficit and increase the public debt to more than $29.1 trillion by 2026, figures contained in the budget resolution itself.

As they left a meeting with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday, some of the conservatives said that spending targets contained in the budget for fiscal 2017 are symbolic. The real goal of the budget legislation, they argued, is to establish an opportunity to finally make good on GOP promises to repeal President Obamas signature domestic achievement.

I just came to understand all the different ideas about where we go next, said Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus that typically opposes massive spending increases. Schweikert now says he will probably vote for the budget resolution.

The growing conservative consensus comes nearly one year after the approximately 40-member group announced it would rather torpedo the entire budget process than vote for a fiscal blueprint that increased spending without balancing the budget.

(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

[House conservatives are having a family conversation on the budget]

But fiscal discipline now seems to be taking a back seat to the drive to repeal Obamacare.

Id like to see a replacement on Obamacare pretty quick, said Rep. Brian Babin (R-Tex.). Would I like to see [the budget] balance? Certainly. Absolutely. Ive got 13 grandchildren, and I dont want to see them buried under $30 trillion of debt.

The Freedom Caucus has not taken an official position on the budget  80 percent of them need to agree to do so  but many members said the dramatic spending increases created in the 2017 budget measure were only technicalities. They contend that voters understand some sacrifices need to be made to gut the health-care law.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told reporters that the group will decide Monday on an official position on the budget.

The real question is: Does it change the top line number on what were spending? Meadows said. Does it increase spending  or does it become a vehicle that maintains our current spending levels and allows us to repeal the Affordable Care Act?

Other Republicans, including Paul, still question whether it is ever acceptable to support deficit increases, no matter how symbolic. Paul described Thursdays meeting, which attracted 23 Freedom Caucus members and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), as a first step.

File photo: A small group of demonstrators stand outside of of a hotel before former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint speaks at a "Defund Obamacare Tour" rally in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Nathan Chute /Reuters)

I wanted to make sure that conservatives in the House knew that, together, we can have impact and influence on what the budget will be, Paul said. I heard one person say that, well, well vote for this now, but we wont in four months. My point is that the Republican leadership will come back and say, You already voted for it once; why not vote for it a second time? 

[How to pay for Trumps trillion dollar agenda? Conservatives dont know]

Many in the conservative clique emerged ambivalent about Pauls argument.

Im not staking out a position on the budget just yet, Babin said after the meeting.

Mainstream Republicans are urging their typically implacable conservative colleagues to turn a blind eye to the spending numbers for now. Republican leaders are using a complicated quirk of the budget process to repeal Obamacare without the threat of a blockade by Senate Democrats.

Budget legislation is considered under special rules in the Senate that allow a simple majority of 50 senators rather than the normal 60 needed for almost everything else. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate this year, and there is virtually no hope that any Democrat would agree to dismantle Obamas health-care law.

The budget introduced this week in the Senate includes instructions for committees to begin repealing the ACA. GOP leaders want Republicans to focus on language requiring members of four committees to produce bills seven days after Trumps inauguration that each would save $1 billion over a decade by slashing ACA elements.

Not all conservatives are convinced. Paul is joined by deficit hawks like Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) who worry their voters wont countenance even a seemingly meaningless vote to increase the deficit.

If youre going to do a symbolic budget resolution, why not put in a good number? Brat asked Thursday. People are very cynical, and I need a message so I can go back home with a straight face.

The collective shrug from other conservatives is the latest evidence that Pauls protest would be a familiar, lonely one. His floor speech attacking the budget measure for making no attempts at deficit reduction  it projects a $9 trillion increase in the debt by 2026  was preempted by statements from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), pledging to vote for the resolution anyway.

That position has made Paul one of very few Republicans still talking about the debt as a national crisis worth building legislation around. During his presidential campaign, which ended after the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Paul made a number of attempts to draw attention to the national debt and to promote his annual plans to balance the budget with steep spending cuts.

Months later, most of the Freedom Caucus  17 members  voted against the GOPs 2016 budget on debt-reduction grounds. The new budget resolution makes even fewer concessions on debt reduction. For Republicans who frequently described the debt as a threat to their childrens futures, its a difficult sell.

We want to keep in mind the overall picture, both the deficit and how tired people are Obamacare, said Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.). I do think theres a danger of the Republicans actually owning this.

Read more at PowerPost
Etienne Ouamouno, 31, smokes a cigarette outside his home in Meliandou, Guinea. Meliandou is starting point of the Ebola epidemic, where toddler Emile Ouamouno was the first to die from the virus in December 2013.

Etienne Ouamouno, 31, smokes a cigarette outside his home in Meliandou, Guinea. Meliandou is starting point of the Ebola epidemic, where toddler Emile Ouamouno was the first to die from the virus in December 2013. Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post

A year after the epidemic started in Guinea, there are signs it could be ending.

Officials in Guinea say they are hopeful they are close to extinguishing the outbreak.

Officials in Guinea say they are hopeful they are close to extinguishing the outbreak.

Hope for an end to the Ebola crisis in the country where it began

Hope for an end to the Ebola crisis in the country where it began

Deep within the forest region of Guinea, a tall, charred tree trunk stands at the edge of this village. A year ago, after a toddler became ill and death began to spread from home to home, villagers learned that the bats in that very tree were likely the reason they had become sick.

So eventually they took dry leaves and grass, set them afire and watched as the flames engulfed the trunk. The bats dropped to the ground, dead. But it was too late to prevent what would become the worst Ebola crisis on record.

A year after the Ebola epidemic started here, Guinea hopes it is finally close to extinguishing the outbreak. Government officials say their goal is to wipe out the disease within 60 days, through the diligent tracing of anyone who has come into contact with an Ebola patient. But health experts warn that Guinea may face a far harder time eliminating the disease than did its neighbors because of its geographic size, its large population  bigger than that of Liberia and Sierra Leone combined  and a public that has resisted the message that Ebola is real.

We are very wary about the whole situation throughout the country, said Benjamin Dahl, an epidemiologist leading the response for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Guinea. So every case is really of concern.

Guinea did not experience the dramatic surges in Ebola cases that occurred in neighboring countries, which have suffered higher death tolls. Instead, Ebola has smoldered here, first appearing in the forest region and, later, slowly spreading to other areas of the country. Guinea has also received less international attention than its ailing neighbors.

Cece Kpoghomore is the director of Meliandous school. Ebola started here, but Ebola never ended here, he said. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

They talk about Sierra Leone. They talk about Liberia. But they forgot about us, said Cece Kpoghomore, 45, who heads the village school in Meliandou. Ebola started here, but Ebola never ended here.

For most of January, Liberia and Sierra Leone reported clear downward trends in Ebola cases, although these numbers increased in the past week. In Guinea, the figures have teetered back and forth. In mid-January, officials reported only 20 new cases, the lowest weekly number since August. It was a sign, many believed, that the country had finally turned the corner. But the number of new cases rose to 30 the following week and 39 the week after, according to World Health Organization data. More than 1,900 people in Guinea have died since Ebola emerged at the end of 2013.

There are very much common challenges in all of the three countries, said Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director general at the WHO. She visited Guinea in late January. But what is unique about Guinea is that it has continued for longer  but never to the same level of the other two countries, she said.

There are various reasons that Ebola has proved so difficult to stamp out in Guinea. Health officials warn that the danger posed by the disease never quite resonated in the capital, Conakry, a city of about 1.8 million, as it did in the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone, where case totals spiked much higher and people were dying outside of treatment centers.

Recently, a group of young men drove a car through Conakry, honking the horn and shouting, Ebola does not kill! Residents continue to hug, kiss and shake hands freely, seemingly oblivious to the risk of spreading the disease, which is transmitted by bodily fluids.

In Liberia, no one shakes hands, said Sean Casey, regional director for the Ebola emergency response of the International Medical Corps, an aid group. Something changed in Liberia, and it didnt change here.

Dahl, of the CDC, said medical professionals had always feared that Conakry could become the next Monrovia or Freetown, referring to the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone, respectively. He said that that fear has not gone away, largely because cases rose in January in towns just a few hours from Conakry.

Resistance to assistance

Many health workers say that there has been more resistance in Guinea to anti-Ebola campaigns than in other countries. In September, eight people were killed with machetes and stones in the village of Womey when they arrived as part of a sensitization campaign about Ebola. Last month on the outskirts of Conakry, residents attacked a team trying to identify the contacts of an Ebola patient. WHO data showed that during one recent week, residents of 27 towns in Guinea resisted Ebola-eradication efforts. Liberia and Sierra Leone reported just two and four districts, respectively, experiencing such resistance.

Looking back, officials and health workers in Guinea theorize that some of the initial messaging in the Ebola crisis may have been counterproductive. The messages focused on the killer nature of the disease, which instilled fear in people and discouraged those who were infected from leaving their homes, they say.

It was the communication. Saying to people that Ebola is a disease you cannot cure, and that as soon as you have it, you die . . . so people in the villages said, OK, if its sure that Im going to die, why should I go to the hospital?  said Damantang Albert Camara, the Guinean employment minister.

The U.S. ambassador to Guinea, Alex Laskaris, has gone out with Ebola response teams trying to encourage steps such as disinfecting with chlorine. On a recent visit to Coyah, a town not far from Conakry, he asked to be sprayed down with a chlorine solution to show villagers that it was harmless.

I may have smelled like the pool at the YMCA, but thats okay, he said.

Laskaris said he considers the widespread lack of awareness about the disease to be more troubling than the few instances of violence against health workers.

Everyone is focused on resistance and opposition to Ebola programs, Laskaris said. But indifference is just as big of a problem.

Guineas government is one of the poorest in the world, with few resources to combat the disease. Laskaris noted that the country is roughly the size of Oregon and has about the population of Ohio, roughly 12 million. But the government has a smaller budget  $1.4 billion  than the public school system in Montgomery County, Md.

Guinea, a former colony of France, has primarily relied upon French support to combat the disease.

Right now, more countries are coming to help us. But at the beginning of the epidemic, it was only France for a long time, said Camara, the minister, who also acts as a government spokesman.

In January, Guineas national Ebola coordination committee announced a campaign to stamp out Ebola. But its T-shirts, which say Zero Ebola in 60 Days, lack reference to a starting or ending date for this goal. The omission may be for good reason. The governments previous end-of-Ebola deadline was in December.

It was, how do you say it, wishful thinking, said Camara.

Ground zero, patient zero

As ground zero of the epidemic, the tree in Meliandou has attracted the attention of scientists and anthropologists. They believe that in December 2013, a young boy named Emile Ouamouno contracted the disease from a colony of free-tailed bats that lived in the tree.

His death, followed in quick succession by about 14 others in the village and more in nearby Gueckedou, prompted a frenzy about the mysterious illness. Villagers sold rice, goats, sheep and chickens to pay for a traditional healer to cleanse Meliandou.

But after the ceremony, people were still dying, said Gabriel Kamano, 28.

Official confirmation of Ebola came soon after.

Before the epidemic, the village was known for its cultivation of coffee, palm nuts and rice. Now, it is famous as the origin of an outbreak that has scarred West Africa. The population has dropped from 600 to 400 as residents have fled. There is no one left to staff the health clinic. Kpoghomore, the school director, has one thermometer but no batteries to power it.

Ebola has been gone from Meliandou since last spring. But like many across Guinea, villagers say they are uncertain about when and how the country will finally end the outbreak.

The most important thing for us is that Ebola can never, ever come back to Meliandou, said Kpoghomore.
Muneki Watanabe and Katsuhiko Orido, both tori-tetsu, take pictures of the Tokyo monorail, which runs from central Tokyo to Haneda airport. They spend many of their weekends taking photos of various trains that they sometimes exhibit or put up on their blogs. (Anna Fifield/Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

 Just as Japans trains are in a league of their own, so too are its trainspotters.

This country, where a 20-second delay leads to profuse apologies on the platforms and conductors bow to passengers as they enter the train car, has taken train nerd-dom to a new level.

Sure, there are the vanilla trainspotters who take photos of various trains around the country. Theyre called tori-tetsu. (Tori means to take, and tetsu means train.)

But there are also nori-tetsu, people who enjoy traveling on trains; yomi-tetsu, those who love to read about trains, especially train schedules; oto-tetsu, the people who record the sound of trains; sharyo-tetsu, fans of train design; eki-tetsu, people who study stations; and even ekiben-tetsu, aficionados of the exquisite bento lunchboxes sold at stations.

And thats not even getting into the subcultures of experts on train wiring, the geeks who intercept train radio signals or the would-be conductors.

Even in the internet age, Japan still prints phone-book sized tomes of train timetables. (Anna Fifield/Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

Its really hard to find people here who hate taking trains, said Junichi Sugiyama, a journalist who writes about trains and the author of train-related books including How to Enjoy Railroads From Train Schedules.

Our railway systems are very well developed despite the small land size and trains are familiar to people. The amount of contact that Japanese people have with trains is very high, Sugiyama said.

[In Japan, Md. governor is wowed by superfast trains  with big price tags]

Take Tetsuya Suzuki, a 48-year-old yomi-tetsu who has more than 660 volumes of train timetable books dating back to April 1980. He uses the latest edition  yes, Japan still prints phone-book-size schedules  to map out imaginary journeys just for fun.

He began reading timetables in first grade, and started going out on trips by himself to test his itineraries when he was in second grade.

I can do my hobby anywhere, Suzuki said in his apartment, where the living room featured a large train set  he said it was for his young son, who was wearing a sweater with trains on it  and the balcony offered a view of the tracks. Whether Im traveling or at home, I can always have my timetable book with me.

His skill is somewhat in demand. A television program trying to get to seven famous ramen stores around the country in 10 days asked him for advice on the most efficient way to do it  and while the stores were open. Suzuki went through 20-odd different routes before coming up with the perfect itinerary  which he made just for kicks, not for money.

Its a good way to relieve stress from work because its so completely different from what I do during the day, said Suzuki, who runs health screening programs for a hospital.

Then there are tori-tetsu like Muneki Watanabe and Katsuhiko Orido, 43 and 49, respectively, who spend many of their weekends taking photos of various trains.

In Japan, there are the famous bullet trains that whiz the length of the country in about the same time it takes Amtrak to get from the District to New York, and the slightly slower but perfectly punctual commuter trains. But there are the special trains: the retro, 1950s-style cars, the cars festooned with leaves in fall or cartoon characters like Hello Kitty and Pokemon, the trains with indoor playrooms or foot spas.

I cant explain why, but ever since I was little Ive been attracted to trains, said Watanabe, who does sales for a hotel, as the duo headed out on the Tokyo monorail on a recent Sunday. My parents theory is that it was because my grandfathers house was close to the tracks.

[Nine things about the Tokyo subway that will drive Washingtonians crazy]

Orido even chose his current house specifically because its close to the tracks  he likes to open the windows and watch the trains. When I started doing this, I was still using film, he said. I have the photos stored in the closet at my parents house. The shelves are groaning under the weight.

The friends like to go places where there are no other tori-tetsu, partly because they like to take different photos, but also because they dont like the commotion at the most sought-after spots.

When a rare train comes along, hundreds of people camp out overnight to secure the best spots, Watanabe said.

Watanabe recalls a trainspotting melee when he was in junior high school: Hustling for the best spot to see a special train, he saw two classmates get into a fight and fall onto the train tracks. (They got up before the train came through.)

The Japanese train system is a microcosm of Japan itself, says Takashi Noda, the author of books including The Way of Tetsu: Riding, Photographing and Making Carefree Stopovers, and a nori-tetsu of 60 years.

Trains and train systems appeal to Japanese people as trains are operated on time and accurately, Noda said. Train fans find joy and get excited when they can make a tightly scheduled transfer. For them, trains are not just means of transportation, but their purpose.

For Takafumi Mochizuki, a 40-year-old radio scriptwriter, its the precision of the lunchboxes, not the trains themselves, that is alluring. He always loved eating ekiben  a combination of the Japanese words for station and lunchbox  but now its a serious pastime.

[The Japanese art of making school lunch (and not a PB&J in sight)]

Theres so much effort put into an ekiben. They use local ingredients, so theyre different all over Japan, and they have to figure out how to keep the ingredients good for some hours, Mochizuki said at the gargantuan Tokyo Station after a day riding the rails.

Hed been out for more than 12 hours and had eaten four ekiben in that time: There was the box containing clams he ate for breakfast; the fishermans meal box containing fish and squid that he ate at his first stop; the sea urchin and clam bento from his second; and finally a whale-meat bento.

Mochizuki returned from his journey with four other ekiben, which he planned to take home for dinner with his wife, who isnt particularly wild about his hobby, he said.

I think my wife and my friends think its strange, Mochizuki said, admitting that there arent many ekiben connoisseurs as fanatical as he is  he even keeps the wrapper of every ekiben he eats.

Another reason for Japans train obsession? Its something that everyone can do, said Hirohiko Yokomi, a well-known train expert who has alighted at every station in Japan.

This is an easy subject to follow, he said. It doesnt require much effort to ride or take photos, and anyone can get into it easily  even schoolchildren  because Japanese trains arrive on time.

Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

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A general view of the construction site of the luxury apartment tower the Park, also known as Trump Tower, in Mumbai in 2015. The development bears Donald Trumps name under a license agreement. (INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

One stretch of scaffolding along Mumbais skyscraper-speckled skyline is especially dense. More than a dozen luxury apartment towers stand unfinished, and their concrete hulls reach up into this seaside citys thick haze. Among them, one has generated unusual buzz. It is the one that will soon glimmer with a facade of gold-tinted glass, with the name of the president of the United States emblazoned across it.

Ritesh Shah once worked in New York Citys diamond district, not so far from the original Trump Tower. Hed gaze up at the building in awe. Then, in 2014, Donald Trump announced that hed be lending his name to a 75-story building in Shahs native city, slated for opening in late 2018. Together, more than 50 diamond traders, including Shah, bought apartments  and they got a deep bulk discount in the process, he said.

The discount was important, even for this slice of Indias super-rich. Units in Trump Tower Mumbai are listed at prices roughly 30 percent higher than units in comparable buildings. The premium derives from the brand-licensing agreement the Trump Organization signed with the buildings developers: the Lodha Group, a giant, family-owned real estate empire much like Trumps.

The Lodhas staked the buildings success on Trumps brand value. Trump brags that his brand has only become hotter since his political career took off, and in some partnership deals around the world, that would seem to be the case. But in Mumbai, Trump and his partners may have overestimated his self-proclaimed Midas touch.

Sales windows for the tower in Mumbai have been offered since 2014, yet just over half of the buildings 400 units have sold, according to the Lodha Group. By Shahs estimates, that would mean roughly a quarter of the units sold belong to Shah and other diamond traders.

An artists rendering of Trump Tower Mumbai. (Lodha Group/Courtesy of Lodha Group)

A spokeswoman for the Lodha Group said the company had offered a limited inventory for the Trump Tower until now and that an iconic real estate brand such as Trump demands a unique approach in everything we do, right from planning to selling.

But Suparna Salaskar, a former Lodha Group employee who managed interactions with buyers until just a few months ago, said in an interview that she knew of only one unit being sold since Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. The Lodha spokeswoman did not respond to a request to confirm Salaskars observation but said the most recent of three sales windows was in June 2016.

The Trump Organization also did not respond to a request for comment. In addition to Trump Tower Mumbai, the company has brand-licensing deals for buildings in three other Indian cities.

The Mumbai apartments are not expensive by Trump standards. Three-bedroom units start at $1.3 million. But the building is surrounded by competitors, all facing a market slump, and the president-elects name may not be hot enough to prevail.

[Trumps extensive deals in India raise conflict-of-interest concerns]

The question was always: Does the market value his brand that much higher? said Ashutosh Limaye, head of research at Jones Lang LaSalle in Mumbai.

The building boom in Mumbais Lower Parel and Worli neighborhoods has created a glut of luxury apartments, Limaye said, although most of the towers have yet to be completed. Developers are in a race to finish their projects as prospective customers hold off buying until they can be assured of move-in dates. The Trump Tower is not ahead in this race.

Nevertheless, Shah, the diamond dealer, said part of the reason that he and his colleagues bought at the Trump Tower was that they thought the Trump Organization would pressure the Lodhas to complete construction by the promised date. Their decision stemmed from particularly Indian factors, too.

Shah had an apartment in a different high-rise nearby, but the vastu in the building was totally off, he said, referring to the age-old Hindu science of architecture, similar to feng shui. Vastu purports that a buildings layout profoundly affects its inhabitants harmony with their surroundings  and some business executives think bad vastu can ruin a fortune. Shah has had a priest who specializes in vastu assess his purchase. I know that at least the part with my apartment is relatively good, he said.

He and the other diamond traders moving into the building are all members of the small but financially powerful Jain community, as are the Lodhas. The Trump Tower is going up next to an ornate Jain temple, which is a selling point. Shah explained that Jain diamond dealers had made real estate deals with the Lodhas before but had been disappointed by construction delays. Salaskar said that an average Lodha-built apartment would come into possession two to three years late and that buyers at the Trump Tower have been told that they could have to wait until 2019 for completion.

Salaskar said she had dealt with dozens of potential buyers in Trump Tower Mumbai and that just one or two were ultimately deterred by Donald Trumps politics. In fact, she said, most saw Trumps brash style as an alluring part of his brand. Trump is someone who, in business and politics, gets things done by hook or by crook, she said.

Shah said that the possibility that Trump might be supervising the project, even indirectly, was assuring. If he had been an American citizen, he would have voted for Trump in November, he said. As weve seen in India, democracy has been a mess, Shah said. Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added, Modi and Trump are half-dictators, and thats what we need, actually, in India and in America.

Real estate and politics are often intertwined in India, and the Lodha family is well-placed at the intersection of the two endeavors. The Lodha Group was founded by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, who is vice president of the state branch of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is led nationally by Modi.

Most wealthy Indians, including politicians, invest large sums of untaxed cash, sometimes called black money, in property. And with a little grease, powerful politicians often finagle special permissions or even land for developers, which can yield big financial gains.

In 2011, Indian tax authorities discovered that the Lodha Group had about $30 million in unreported income, according to court documents. The company was ordered to pay $1 million in fines and settled a tax bill for an undisclosed amount.

As Trump has promised to do, Mangal Lodha  who is worth $1.55 billion, according to Forbes  handed over daily management of his company to his sons in 2003 as his own political stature grew. Lodhas elder son, Abhishek, told The Washington Post in a statement that the Lodhas are extremely pleased that Mr. Trump was elected president and wish him all the best as he takes charge of the worlds foremost democracy.

Limaye, the real estate expert, said he wasnt so sure Trumps election would be good for the Lodhas. If the building is delayed by the usual number of years, then it will only open once Trumps first term is finished, he said. And who can predict what his name will signify then?

Swati Gupta contributed to this report.

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Heavily armed police officers walk outside the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo, after dozens of inmates were killed, in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. (Rodrigo Sales/AP)

Thirty-three inmates were slain Friday in northern Brazil, some with their hearts and intestines ripped out, during a prison killing rampage led by the countrys largest gang, authorities said.

The bloodshed comes days after 60 inmates were killed during rioting at two prisons in a neighboring state. It increases fears that violence could spread, including to the streets of major cities, as gangs vie for influence and territory both inside prisons and in slums where trafficking operations often are based.

The incidents also are becoming a flash point for the government of President Michel Temer, whose administration is struggling with an economic crisis and mounting corruption allegations. Authorities in Roraima state, on the border with Venezuela, said that they requested help from Brazils federal government more than once to deal with its prison crisis but that no support was sent.

This is a national crisis, said Uziel Castro, security secretary of Roraima, where the latest massacre happened.

Castro said the violence began Friday at about 2:30 a.m. at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo in the town of Boa Vista. He said it was led by members of the Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazils largest criminal organization.

He said First Command members did not attack those of a rival gang but rather targeted prisoners, although the motives remained unclear.

There was no confrontation  this was a killing spree, Castro said. It was barbaric. Some were beheaded; others had their hearts or intestines ripped out.

Castro said that firearms were not involved and that none of the 1,500 inmates in the prison built for about 700 had escaped.

It was not immediately clear whether there was a connection to the gruesome rioting earlier this week in the neighboring state of Amazonas, which officials blamed on a gang war between the First Command and Family of the North. The two gangs fight over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil along the borders of Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guiana region.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-like riot squad, had been deployed to the prison.

Just as details about the latest disturbance were emerging, Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes announced measures aimed at curbing the violence.

Moraes said that federal police would be more integrated in state capitals and that special task forces would be created to more quickly process criminal charges, a measure aimed at reducing overcrowding. He offered no deadlines for the initiatives but said they would be realistic given the recession in Latin Americas largest economy.

The situation isnt out of control, said Moraes. Its [just] another difficult situation.

The rioting Sunday and Monday in Amazonas included the countrys worst prison massacre since 1992, with half of the 56 slain at one institution beheaded and several others also dismembered. In another of the riots in the state, four prisoners died.

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons during the disturbances. As of Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.

The federal government needs to prepare for a worst-case scenario, and that means accelerating measures to keep the situation from getting worse, said Col. Jose Vicente, a former national security adviser and risk consultant.

In October, a riot at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo left 10 dead. Authorities said that clash involved the First Command and the Red Command, which has its base in Rio de Janeiro. On the same day, eight others were killed in a prison in Rondonia state, which borders Bolivia.

After that clash, Roraimas Castro asked the federal government for help with the prison, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

Castro requested that the national guard be sent in to help because the moving of prisoners deemed to have been leaders of the rebellion had led to threats of retaliation.

Asked about the request Friday, Moraes, the justice minister, said that Roraima had requested policemen to help in patrolling Venezuelans that were entering Brazilian territory  although that is not what the letter stated. He acknowledged that no help had been sent.

Moraes canceled his trip to Roraima after Castro said that the state had repeatedly asked the federal government for help and that this was always denied. Brazils Justice Ministry did not offer an explanation for the decision.

Criminals are trying to kill each other. What we need is the federal governments help, said Castro. This is all over Brazil.
A woman looks at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the attack on a Berlin Christmas market in December. (Maurizio Gambarini/Associated Press)

It was every God-fearing Christians worst nightmare about Muslim refugees. Revealed, the Breitbart News headline screamed, 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germanys Oldest Church Alight on New Years Eve.

The only problem: Police say thats not what happened that night in the western city of Dortmund.

The Breitbart report has triggered a backlash in Germany, igniting fresh concerns over the manipulation of information and the societal cost of revenue-generating clickbait.

The report comes amid a rash of misleading rumors and social-media claims about refugees in the aftermath of the recent Berlin Christmas market attack, including one missive falsely linking a refugee who once took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a holiday season assault on a homeless man.

As they did in the United States during the presidential campaign, fake and misleading reports are popping up across Europe, particularly as a string of countries including Germany are poised for major elections. Yet the Breitbart report on Germany, critics say, shows how the disseminators of such tidbits trade not only in pure fiction but also in skillfully sown innuendo steeped in exaggeration.

We shook our heads in disbelief when we saw how this operation was politicized by Breitbart, said Gunnar Wortmann, a spokesman for the Dortmund police.

The report was largely aggregated from the local news outlet Ruhr Nachrichten, which also lashed out at Breitbart for using our online reports for fake news, hate and propaganda.

The story drew blistering critiques from others in the German media, including pundits who worry that it signals an attempt by right-wing outlets to poison the public debate as Merkel  blasted by President-elect Donald Trump for her open-door policy on refugees  seeks a fourth term this year. She has declared the spread of false news a pox on Germany that must be cured. The government is planning to introduce a measure that could impose large fines on social-media firms like Facebook if they fail to take immediate action to take down such stories.

The Breitbart report about New Years Eve in Dortmund could be a taste of the upcoming parliamentary election campaign, warned an editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. Websites such as Breitbart News could increasingly use misinformation and distortion in order to diminish trust in established institutions.

Breitbart  formerly headed by Trumps top aide, Stephen K. Bannon  did not respond to a request for comment.



The way Breitbart tells it in its Jan. 3 piece, a New Years Eve mob in the industrial city of Dortmund began throwing fireworks into crowds of visitors, which also included families with children. Asked by officers to stop, the mob turned to pelt fireworks at police instead.

Fireworks, the story says, were launched at St Reinolds, Germanys oldest church, setting the roof alight. The article strongly suggests, but never directly states, that the responsible parties were unruly Muslim migrants. It cites federal police spokesman Volker Stall as saying a large number of young men from North Africa were in town who displayed an aggressive mood toward the public and police.

The piece also cites a video tweeted by Ruhr Nachrichten that showed men apparently chanting Allahu akbar around the flag of the Free Syrian Army, a group defined by Breitbart as al-Qaeda and Islamic State collaborators.

Police in Dortmund do not dispute that several incidents took place that night, but nothing to the extremes suggested by the Breitbart report. In fact, they said, the evening was comparatively calmer than previous New Years Eves.

As for setting alight the roof of Germanys oldest church: A firework did hit the netting covering the churchs construction scaffold. It caught fire, and was put out without damage to the church  which is not Germanys oldest.

Officials said there were a large number of revelers in the square that night, including Germans. Wortmann said it remains unclear who lighted the offending projectile or whether the incident was even intentional.

In a separate incident, a group of migrants, reportedly celebrating the cease-fire in Syria, did rally together and chant Allahu akbar, a phrase sometimes associated with terrorist attacks but also common in Muslim prayers and celebrations. In the video, they indeed hoisted a flag  of the mainstream Syrian opposition, which is supported by the U.S. government.

In an interview, Stall, the police spokesman quoted by Breitbart, described another incident in far less dramatic terms. He said a group of about 35 people who appeared to be migrants obstructed traffic in front of a McDonalds and, for a brief period, refused to move.

He said the group initially resisted police requests to move on, but he said he was unaware whether any of them had acted aggressively toward the public.

One Syrian migrant appears to have thrown a single firework that landed at the feet of an officer, he said. That same night, a German man, he added, also threw a firework at officers.

Elsewhere in Germany, especially in Cologne  the site of mass sexual assaults a year earlier  authorities did report several arrests of men with migrant backgrounds for aggressive or otherwise illegal behavior. Police in Dortmund said that they did find the number of migrants gathered that night to be unusually high, but nevertheless described the evening as relatively calm.

Recent rumors on social media have appeared to embellish stories to fuel anti-refugee sentiment when the facts themselves may have done the job almost as well. On Christmas Eve, for instance, police said a group of young refugees were suspected of trying to set fire to a homeless person at a Berlin subway station.

Soon afterward, a photo collage emerged on social media blaming Anas Modamani  the young Syrian man who famously took a selfie with Merkel in 2015 that quickly went viral as being emblematic of her open-door approach.

Homeless person set on fire  Merkel made a selfie with one of the offenders in 2015, the collages caption read.

Modamani, however, is not a suspect in the case, and his attorney fired off letters to Facebook and individuals who shared the image, threatening legal action if they were not taken down.

It was one of several viral threads that emerged after the Berlin attack on Dec. 19, when a truck was driven into a crowd, killing 12. A Tunisian man suspected of being the attacker is now dead.

Its a potpourri of real and fake news that creates the impression that something is happening always and everywhere, said Andre Wolf, spokesman of Mimikama, an Austria-based organization devoted to exposing fake news.

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They are coming to America because a good job here means sewing underwear in a sweatshop for $47 a week.

They are leaving neighborhoods where you can walk down block after block of abandoned houses spray-painted with gang graffiti, with collapsed roofs and jungle plants sprouting in the living rooms.

They are traveling 1,400 miles with hardly any luggage from a bus station controlled by an extortion ring and used for trafficking women and contraband cigarettes; last Thursday the Honduran military police deployed 200 officers to break up the ring.

We are not going to stop sending people, and you guys are not going to be able to stop them from getting in, said Lt. Col. Reyes Garcia, one of the officers leading the bus station operation. You cannot focus on just one reason that people want to leave for the United States.

President Obama has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funding to manage the humanitarian crisis of tens of thousands of Central Americans, many of them children, who have overwhelmed Border Patrol facilities and reopened the national debate about how to handle the pressures of immigration. In this city, home to the largest number of child migrants apprehended at the U.S. border so far this year, there has not been any dramatic new spike in violence or fresh economic catastrophe. Rather, its been all the old exhausting problems, plus the more recent perception that the United States is allowing children to stay if they can make it across the Rio Grande, that have intensified the exodus.

Military police officers at the central bus station in San Pedro Sula during an anti-extortion operation. Police said that gang members have been extorting the shops and taxis who operate at the station. (Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post)

At its core, it is a drama of poverty, said Romulo Emiliani, the bishop in San Pedro Sula. To people here, the United States is a paradise.

Three days a week  Monday, Wednesday, Friday  white buses pull up to a red cinder-block wall downtown and deposit hundreds of people who have failed to reach that paradise. At the government-run shelter for children and families, these people who have been apprehended by Mexican authorities and deported by bus are fed and registered and then must decide whether to give up or make another attempt. The shelter is a desperate roil of anxiety. Children wander around the concrete courtyard barefoot and in diapers. Their parents spontaneously break into tears.

Do you know why people migrate there? Do you know? Because there is no work here. There is no work, said Ana Patricia Mejia, 39, who had tried to make the trip with her kids and her neighbors son but was deported from Mexico. Of course I am going again. I have to have a house. I do not have a place to live. If I want to or not, if the gringos like it or not, I am coming.

Waldina Lizeth Amaya, a 37-year-old mother of four, decided to take her children to America after failing to find a job at the local factories. In the past, she had worked illegally in a restaurant in Mexico and for several years in Honduras in a factory making bras and panties.

I looked all over. I brought my papers to various companies. I have experience, and I couldnt find anything, she said at the shelter.

Many migrants have relatives already living in the United States. Lizeth had two cousins in Dallas, so last month she decided to risk bringing her family to join them. The timing of her decision was partly based on inaccurate but widespread rumors that the U.S. government was offering amnesty for Central American children.

Many people are saying the U.S. has approved a law to receive children, she said. The U.S. is an advanced country, and I want my children to study there. I want them to have a better life. Thats the main reason.

The Obama administration has tried to dispel the notion that officials are welcoming migrants, and that message has started to circulate here. The lead headline on a recent issue of La Prensa newspaper blared: Obama: Do not send more undocumented children to the U.S. President affirms that minors will be deported. The United States already deports Honduran adults  two flights carrying up to 135 passengers each arrive every weekday at the San Pedro Sula airport  and the administration has discussed deporting more children.

Parts of San Pedro Sula, with glistening shopping malls and streets of Nike stores, Office Depots and fast-food restaurants, dont feel out of the ordinary in Latin America. But there are neighborhoods where its easier to see what it means to endure years of gang warfare and one of the highest murder rates in the world. In Chamelecon, more than 300 houses have been abandoned, and military police in body armor patrol day and night on Honda dirt bikes. The two main gangs, 18th Street and MS-13, have fought over the area for years, commandeering houses and demanding that residents pay a war tax.

They bleed you, said Alvin Rolando Baide, 34, who grew up in the neighborhood. They demand 80 or 90 percent of your salary.

They go from house to house and threaten the residents. You have to pay them or you have a limited amount of time before theyll occupy your house.

Rolando, who has five children, has tried to migrate in the past but didnt make it. He earns a better-than-average salary, more than $500 a month, selling beef and pork from a truck, enough to stay afloat but not to save much. In his neighborhood, he said, many children dont aspire to study because education often does not guarantee any greater income, while the gangs are willing to pay kids to be lookouts.

I think the government of the U.S. should lend us a hand, he said. The few sources of work here are not enough. We are so many, and we are hungry.

There are different ways to make the journey. Those with money, often raised by relatives living in the United States, can pay between $4,000 and $8,000 per person for guides to escort them in cars north across Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S. border. Others attempt the journey by bus or cross Mexico on top of a train known as the Beast. The trip can involve days of walking and risks of gang and cartel violence, rape, kidnapping, and theft.

One guide for migrants, a former Honduran military officer, said that he charges $6,500 per person, half paid here and the other half in Houston when the migrants reach their destination. He said that he and other guides pay off police and immigration officials in Mexico and Guatemala to grease the passage, which usually takes about 15 days. He pays for food and lodging in hotels and safe houses for the migrants and works with a large network of others.

We havent had many problems, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the illegal process. Almost everybody makes it there.
Ambassadors in some of the most desirable foreign capitals such as London and Paris have been told they must end their service on Jan. 20 with no exceptions, State Department officials confirmed Thursday.

The unusually stern and specific directive to political ambassadors  often presidential donors and friends  came at the behest of the incoming Trump administration, two officials said. It appears to forbid any extensions for family circumstances such as allowing children to finish the school year, a customary allowance in past administrations.

The Obama administration directed what it calls non-career ambassadors to submit their resignations effective with the close of the Obama presidency Jan. 20, and ambassadors have complied, three officials said. Such orders are standard procedure. But the Dec. 23 directive first reported by the New York Times contained the additional admonition that the resignations would be blanket and final.

During previous transitions, a small number of political ambassadors would either ask or be asked to stay on briefly, after submitting their pro forma resignations, for personal or professional reasons.

Trump transition officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the order or whether it was intended to break with precedent.

The order would apply to high-profile Obama envoys such as Jane Hartley, a Democratic fundraiser who has served as ambassador to France, as well as to Daniel Shapiro, a former Democratic congressional aide and Obama adviser who became ambassador to Israel in 2011. Trump has named his choice to succeed Shapiro  New York bankruptcy lawyer and Trump adviser David Friedman.

Ambassadorial posts are filled from within the State Department ranks of career Foreign Service officers or from outside government. Career diplomats remain in their posts across administrations.

Since it typically takes months to select and confirm ambassadors from outside the State Department, the top spots in key foreign capitals in Europe, Asia and the Mideast could be empty this spring. Career State Department officials stand in when there is no ambassador.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
Dylann Roof, depicted here in a courtroom sketch, was convicted last month of hate crimes for a rampage that killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston. Jurors are now considering whether he should be executed. (Robert Maniscalco/Reuters)

Federal prosecutors are nearing the end of their presentation to convince jurors that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof deserves to be executed, and the presiding judge said he expects jurors will begin deliberations in the case Tuesday.

On Friday, the third day of the penalty phase in the trial, prosecutors again highlighted Roofs racist writings, and the impact his crime had on those whose loved ones were killed. FBI Agent Joseph Hamski read aloud some of Roofs rants in a journal found in his jail cell and his online communications, where Roof proclaimed that white women who date black men are race-traitors and bemoaned that more people would not take hateful action.

If we were to, for example, become completely ruthless with blacks, or implement a harsh eugenics program, who could stop us? Roof wrote in his journal.

[The racist, hate-filled screed that Dylann Roof penned in jail]

Roof, 22, was convicted last month of federal hate crimes for his 2015 rampage at Charlestons historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he fatally shot nine parishioners because they were black. Jurors are now considering whether he should face the death penalty or life in prison.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel said Friday that he will provide proposed jury instructions to prosecutors and Roof over the weekend, and he hopes the case will be in the jurys hands by Tuesday. Prosecutors had already indicated that they expect to rest their case Monday, and Roof, who is representing himself, has said he will present no evidence. Gergel said he will then send jurors home and bring them back for closing arguments the following day.

When jurors deliberations begin, they will weigh whether the aggravating factors in the case  Roofs motivation, his lack of remorse and the impact of his crimes on the victims loved ones  outweigh any mitigating evidence, such as Roofs offer to plead guilty or the possibility that he could change.

Over the past week, jurors have heard emotional testimony from the loved ones of those Roof killed and read chilling passages from a journal Roof kept in prison. In those writings, Roof said that his crime was worth it, and even speculated that he would be pardoned if sentenced to life in prison. Hamski testified that as recently as Monday, just before the penalty phase of Roofs trial began, he saw Roof wearing shoes with racist symbols drawn on them. Online, Roof used the handle LilAryan.

[Charleston church shooter: I would like to make it crystal clear, I do not regret what I did]

Roof has not questioned any witnesses, and he used his opening statement only to tell jurors that he had fired his attorneys because he did not want them offering evidence about his mental health. He did not, he told the panel, have mental health issues.

Theres nothing wrong with me psychologically, he said.

While Roof has said he intends to offer no evidence, he has, in court filings, objected to some of the emotional character of prosecutors presentation and asked that they be limited in the amount of victim impact witnesses they can call. Gergel ultimately rebuffed that request, though he did ask prosecutors to expedite their case.

After Roofs federal trial concludes, he must still face state charges, and prosecutors have indicated that they will seek the death penalty in that case, too. The state proceedings have been delayed until the federal trial is resolved.

Read more:

These are the people Dylann Roof stayed with before the Charleston church shooting

What to expect as prosecutors try to persuade jurors to sentence Dylann Roof to death

What happens next if Dylann Roof is sentenced to death
This Predator MQ-1B crashed while trying to return to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military base in Djibouti, on May 17, 2011. It landed in a vacant lot near a residential area of Djibouti city, about 2.7 miles short of the runway. These photographs, taken by Air Force investigators, were released as part of an unclassified Accident Investigation Board report into the crash.

May 17, 2011 This Predator MQ-1B crashed while trying to return to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military base in Djibouti, on May 17, 2011. It landed in a vacant lot near a residential area of Djibouti city, about 2.7 miles short of the runway. These photographs, taken by Air Force investigators, were released as part of an unclassified Accident Investigation Board report into the crash. U.S. Air Force

As Predator drone missions have escalated from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, so have the number of accidents. Since January 2011, five Predators have crashed while trying to return to the base.

As Predator drone missions have escalated from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, so have the number of accidents. Since January 2011, five Predators have crashed while trying to return to the base.

As Predator drone missions have escalated from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, so have the number of accidents. Since January 2011, five Predators have crashed while trying to return to the base.

The U.S. military has been forced to relocate a large fleet of drones from a key counterterrorism base on the Horn of Africa after a string of crashes fanned local fears that the unmanned aircraft were at risk of colliding with passenger planes, according to documents and interviews.

Air Force drones ceased flying this month from Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. installation in Djibouti, after local officials expressed alarm about several drone accidents and mishaps in recent years. The base serves as the combat hub for counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, playing a critical role in U.S. operations against al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist militia that has asserted responsibility for the Nairobi shopping mall attack, which killed more than 60 people.

The Pentagon has temporarily moved the unmanned aircraft from the U.S. base in Djiboutis capital to a makeshift airstrip in a more remote part of the country. U.S. military officials said the disruption has not affected their overall ability to launch drone strikes in the region, but they declined to say whether it has forced them to curtail the frequency of drone missions or hindered their surveillance of al-Shabab camps and fighters.

The Djiboutian governments growing unease over drone flights casts doubt on its commitment to host the aircraft over the long term. It is unclear whether the temporary drone base can be transformed into a permanent home or whether the U.S. military will have to hunt for another site in the region, according to previously undisclosed correspondence between the Defense Department and Congress.

That uncertainty raises fresh questions about the Pentagons plan to invest more than $1 billion to upgrade Camp Lemonnier into a major regional base, supporting operations throughout Africa, as well as in parts of the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean. Those plans include a $228 million compound to house up to 700 personnel from the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command.

View Graphic An end to drone flights from Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti

More broadly, however, the concerns about drone safety present a strategic challenge for the Pentagon as it begins to shift more of the robot planes to new frontiers, where they must share congested airspace with commercial aircraft.

A rash of accidents

Unlike in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. military essentially has ruled the skies, the drones in Djibouti and other foreign locations have flown from the same runways and relied on the same air traffic controllers as civilian pilots.

At least five drones based at Camp Lemonnier have crashed since January 2011, Air Force records show, including one that plowed into the ground next to a neighborhood in Djiboutis capital, which goes by the same name as the country.

Last year, the Pentagon was forced to suspend drone operations in Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, after two Reaper drones crashed on the runway at the main international airport, which serves half a million passengers a year.

The overseas accidents could have repercussions in the United States, where the military and the drone industry are pressing the federal government to open up the skies to remote-controlled aircraft.

Under a law passed by Congress last year, the Federal Aviation Administration is preparing rules that would integrate drones into U.S. airspace by the end of 2015. Until then, the Defense Department can fly drones at home only in restricted military airspace or with special permits.

In Djibouti, a tiny and parched African country that borders the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the government notified the Obama administration early this year that it was concerned about a series of drone accidents and near-misses. It was time, Djiboutian officials said, to find another home for the aircraft.

Short-term fix

The U.S. military intensified its drone operations at Camp Lemonnier in 2011 as part of a crackdown against al-Qaeda targets in nearby Yemen and Somalia, with up to 16 takeoffs and landings each day.

But elbowroom was at a premium. The base was already crammed with military fighter jets, cargo planes and other manned aircraft. Lemonnier is shoehorned onto a stretch of shore front and shares a single runway with Djiboutis only international airport for commercial flights. French and Japanese troops also have small bases next to the airport, alongside the Djiboutian military.

Rattled by the rash of drone crashes, the Djiboutian government asked the Pentagon to move its unmanned aircraft away from the city to a rarely used airstrip in the desert, Chabelley Airfield, according to the unclassified documents, which were obtained by The Washington Post as part of a public records request.

In a letter to Congress in February, the Pentagon asked for urgent authorization of $13 million in funds and equipment to build minimal facilities necessary to enable temporary operations at Chabelley. To save time on construction, the military used troop labor instead of private contractors.

The construction is not being carried out at a military installation where the United States is reasonably expected to have a long-term presence, the documents stated. No decisions have been made about long-term [drone] operations in the region.

The military gradually transferred the drone operations to Chabelley and flew the last drone flight from Lemonnier this month, U.S. defense officials said.

Air Force Maj. Matt Hasson, a spokesman for a U.S. counterterrorism task force that oversees most military operations at Camp Lemonnier, declined to comment when asked whether the move had hindered drone operations in Yemen or Somalia. But he said that basing the drones at Chabelley enables us to continue to fully support our partners to secure their borders against illegal activities.

Airport safety paramount

The U.S. government has a fixed, long-term lease for Camp Lemonnier and pays Djibouti $38 million a year in rent. Djiboutian officials said that they were happy with their military partnership with Washington but that the armed Predator and Reaper drones were flying  and crashing  too close to their capital for comfort.

The safety of the airport is paramount, said Roble Olhaye, Djiboutis ambassador to the United States. The airport seems to be congested. There are so many military aircraft based at the airport and around the airport  French aircraft, American aircraft, Japanese aircraft.

He said that U.S. and Djiboutian officials were still discussing possible long-term solutions but that Chabelley was the best option available at the moment, for them, for us.

It gives them the necessary leeway, the necessary space, Olhaye said. I think its in the best interest for all.

The presence of the unmanned aircraft remains a sensitive subject in Djibouti. During a telephone interview, Olhaye shied away from using the term drone, chuckling whenever a reporter mentioned it.

In a separate interview, a diplomat from a Middle Eastern country cited rising concern that the civilian side of the Djibouti airport might be targeted by militants looking to retaliate against U.S. drone operations. Regional tensions have risen as the U.S. militarys Joint Special Operations Command has carried out dozens of strikes against al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Yemen.

Once you have military installations in civilian facilities, that civilian facility and the public become endangered, the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. drone strategy in the region.

The same potential problem exists elsewhere.

In Ethiopia, for example, the Air Force flies Reaper drones from a civilian airport in the town of Arba Minch. In West Africa, the Air Force began flying Predator drones in February from a small military base in Niger that abuts the capitals international airport.

Within two months, one of them had crashed while on a surveillance mission in neighboring Mali, according to Air Force records.
Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday.

The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscows role represented a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort beyond previous election-related espionage.

The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances.

The report released to the public is an abbreviated version of a highly classified multiagency assessment requested by President Obama. Even so, it amounts to an extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy.

The 14-page document made public also serves as an explicit rebuttal to Trumps repeated assertions that U.S. spy agencies cannot determine who was responsible for a hacking operation that extracted thousands of emails from Democratic Party computer networks and dumped them into public view via the WikiLeaks website.

(Video: Peter Stevenson: The Washington Post/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In the report, the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded with high confidence that Russian intelligence services penetrated numerous computer systems tied to U.S. political parties and then relayed the email troves to WikiLeaks.

Trump emerged from a briefing by the nations top intelligence officials on the contents of the report acknowledging at least the possibility that Russia was behind election-related hacks. But he offered no indication that he was prepared to accept their conclusions that Moscow sought to help him win.

Instead, Trump said in a statement that while Russia, China and other countries and groups may have sought to breach Democratic and Republican computer systems, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.

The report did not address that issue. It was presented to Trump by officials including Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James B. Comey.

Trump also said that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. That appeared to be consistent with the findings of the report, although it noted that Russia obtained and maintained access to numerous election systems that were not involved in vote tallying.

A footnote on the document said that the conclusions contained in the declassified draft were identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

Obama commissioned the report shortly after the Nov. 8 election, and recently ordered a series of retaliatory measures including new economic sanctions, the expulsion of dozens of suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and the closure of two Russian-owned compounds in the country.

(Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

The report was met with mixed reactions from senior lawmakers. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described the Russian activities cited in the report as a troubling chapter in an ongoing story, and I expect that our nations leaders will counter these activities appropriately.

His counterpart in the House, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), used the report to criticize Obama, saying that the House Intelligence Committee has been warning the Obama administration for years about the need for stronger measures against Russia . . . but our warnings largely fell on deaf ears.

The public version of the report does not explicitly mention some of the most sensitive pieces of intelligence that helped analysts reach their conclusions. U.S. officials have said that spy agencies identified certain actors involved in the cyber offensive, believe Russia was far more focused on penetrating and exploiting Democratic systems, and intercepted communications making clear that top Russian officials congratulated themselves on Trumps win.

One of the reports key judgments is that Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

Moscow did so in part because it developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump, who as a candidate repeatedly praised Putin and advocated policies in Syria and Europe strongly favored by the Kremlin.

But the report also attributed Russias efforts to Putins hostility toward Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state whom he blamed for inciting mass protests against his government in 2011 and 2012.

Overall, the report describes a multipronged campaign that involved not only hacking, but overt propaganda on Russian-controlled news platforms and the extensive use of social media and even trolls to amplify voter discord in the United States and encourage opposition to Clinton.

Despite those exertions, Russia appears to have concluded that a Clinton victory was inevitable right up until election night. As a result, Moscow focused on finding ways to undercut Clintons legitimacy if she won.

One of the more colorful notes in the report describes how pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night, then had to shelve it when Trump won.

The document traces interference efforts that began with inconspicuous probes of U.S. electoral systems in early 2014, carried through the election, and may still be underway.

Russian intelligence agencies first gained access to Democratic National Committee networks in July 2015, the report says. Russias miliary intelligence service, known as the GRU, probably expanded its efforts in March 2016, going after the email accounts of Democratic Party officials and other political figures.

By May, the GRU had stolen what the report describes as large volumes of data from the DNC. In the ensuing months, chunks of that trove began to appear on websites including WikiLeaks, generating a steady stream of headlines that embarrassed Democrats and kept voter attention on Clintons email controversy.

Putin has repeatedly denied that Russia was responsible for the hacked emails. In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Trump called the sustained focus on the issue a political witch hunt.

The intelligence assessment also drew the most direct line to date between Putins desire to aid Trumps campaign and Russias policies and objectives in Syria and Ukraine. In both cases, it said, Putin indicated a preference for President-elect Trumps stated policy to work with Russia, and pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly about what they saw as his Russia-friendly positions in those two countries.

Putin is also eager for relief from economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its support of separatist forces in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea.

As recently as this week, Trump appeared to be siding with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange  who has denied that his website got purloined emails from Russia  over the determinations of the CIA and FBI.

The report provides new details about U.S. intelligence agencies view of WikiLeaks and its relationship with Russia. We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks, the report said. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity.

The report noted that none of the files passed to WikiLeaks contained evident forgeries.

The document said that Guccifer 2.0, the online identity of a hacker purportedly involved in the campaign, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. It was the documents clearest indication that U.S. spy agencies believe they have identified him.

In some ways, Russias intervention in the 2016 election is consistent with a long-standing pattern that traces back to the Soviet Union of espionage against prominent politicians and policymakers in the United States. U.S. spy agencies also devote significant resources to gathering intelligence on Putin and his subordinates.

The report suggests that beyond his animosity toward Clinton, Putin may also have been driven by his own conviction that Moscow has been repeatedly targeted with embarrassing leaks that he attributes to the United States, including the Panama Papers files that showed how wealthy individuals close to the Kremlin had hidden their fortunes, as well as material that helped expose the doping scandal among Russias Olympic athletes.

Putins success in using cyber capabilities and propaganda to disrupt a U.S. presidential race is likely to embolden him to mount similar operations against the United States and its allies in the future. We assess Russian intelligence services will continue to develop capabilities to provide Putin with options to use against the United States, the report said.

Karen DeYoung and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

For photos of Trump since the election, go to wapo.st/trumpgallery.
Within view of the air-traffic control tower at Camp Lemonnier, a Navy HS-60 Sea Hawk taxis onto the tarmac. (Master Sgt Scott Wagers/U.S. Air Force)

The skies above the U.S. militarys counterterrorism hub on the Horn of Africa have become chronically dangerous, with pilots forced to rely on local air-traffic controllers who fall asleep on the job, commit errors at astronomical rates and are hostile to Americans, documents show.

Conditions at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the base for U.S. pilots flying sensitive missions over Yemen and Somalia, have become so dire that American warplanes and civilian airliners alike are routinely placed in jeopardy, according to federal aviation experts and documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

Unlike other major U.S. military bases around the world, Camp Lemonnier is wholly dependent on civilian air-traffic controllers, hired by the government of Djibouti to keep the skies safe. But as the base has increased in size and importance, the Djiboutian controllers hazardous habits and deep dislike for drones have disrupted U.S. military operations and triggered repeated warnings about the risk of an aviation catastrophe.

The military documents, based on observation reports from the flight tower, describe scenes that would be comic if not for the potential for disaster.

Some controllers habitually dozed on the floor while on duty, pulling a blanket over their heads to drown out radio traffic. Others immersed themselves in video games and personal phone calls while ignoring communication from pilots. Still others punished U.S. flight crews for a perceived lack of respect by forcing them to circle overhead until they ran low on fuel.

A common vice in the flight tower was chewing khat, a leafy plant that acts as a stimulant and is banned in the United States but legal and popular in Djibouti, according to the documents.

Outsiders who tried to impose order did so at their peril. One Djiboutian supervisor was beaten up by a controller and tossed down the flight-tower stairs. A U.S. Navy officer was threatened with a pipe.

The documents chronicle an ill-fated $7 million U.S. program in which former Federal Aviation Administration officials were tapped to retrain the Djiboutian air-traffic controllers in 2012 and 2013. The effort collapsed after the Djiboutians stopped showing up for classes and locked the American trainers out of the flight tower.

[How the U.S. military built a secretive drone base on the Horn of Africa]

The controllers actions have exacerbated already difficult conditions at Camp Lemonnier, which shares its two runways with Djiboutis only international airport, a French military base and a small contingent of Japanese military aircraft. As a result, the controllers must juggle civilian airliners with an unusual assortment of fighter planes, drones and cargo jets.

The U.S. military is the airports biggest user. It accounted for more than half of the 30,000 takeoffs and landings last year, military officials said.

In interviews, some of the former FAA officials said they were shocked that the U.S. military would tolerate such unsafe conditions.





Its mind-boggling, said one former FAA official who spent nearly a year in Djibouti and spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. Literally, its the most dangerous airspace Ive seen in the world, and Ive been to Afghanistan.

Although Camp Lemonnier is a joint base used by each branch of the U.S. armed forces, the Navy holds primary responsibility for its upkeep and protection.

Navy officials were slow to respond to queries about aviation safety hazards in Djibouti, taking more than 14 months to process The Posts Freedom of Information Act request. They released the unclassified documents only after The Post said it would file a lawsuit.

The Navy heavily redacted the records, blacking out reports of narrowly averted collisions and mistake after mistake by the Djiboutian controllers. The Post obtained uncensored copies from a source upset about the militarys attempt to conceal the problems.

[What the Navy withheld from records about its base in Djibouti]

Navy Capt. Matthew P. OKeefe, the commanding officer of Camp Lemonnier, played down the risks cited in the documents, saying they did not reflect current conditions.

He said the U.S. military had built a good relationship with Djiboutian officials but could not impose our will on our partners or on how they manage their airspace.

We are here with their consent, OKeefe said. We do our best to work closely with them to provide a safe environment.

Other U.S. officials said the Obama administration has been pressing Djibouti in high-level talks to bolster aviation safety, given the Pentagons increasing reliance on Camp Lemonnier.

In addition to serving as a counterterrorism hub for Somalia and Yemen, the camp is the only permanent U.S. base in Africa, with about 4,000 personnel. Last year, the Obama administration signed a new lease with the Djiboutian government that will keep the U.S. military there for at least two more decades.

We had indicated that we want to see further improvements in aviation, said Tom Kelly, the U.S. ambassador to Djibouti. What I want to know is, is this airport safe for us and our people to fly right now? I believe were making progress.

The Djibouti government denied that there have been any safety shortcomings at the airport.

Issa Saher Bouraleh, a counselor at the Djiboutian Embassy in Washington, said the reports of controllers sleeping on the job, using khat and leaving the tower unattended were invented or exaggerated.

Thats nonsense, he said in an interview. Im sure that the airport is safe. It is more safe than other Arab countries. If controllers were really sleeping on the tower floor or hooked on khat, he added, there would be accidents every day.

Aloof and asleep

The Pentagon is in the midst of a $1.4 billion long-term project to upgrade Camp Lemonnier.

In addition to supporting conventional military missions in Africa and the Middle East, the base houses a large compound for the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs secretive counterterrorism operations.

From Djibouti, the U.S. military flies fighter jets, spy planes, cargo aircraft, helicopters and a large fleet of Predator and Reaper drones. They share airspace with major carriers such as Air France, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways and Ethiopian Airlines.

There has been one fatal accident in Djibouti involving a U.S. military aircraft, along with several drone crashes and dozens of close calls, records show.

In February 2012, a small U-28 spy plane crashed a few miles from the airport, killing its four Special Operations crew members. Moments before, the Djiboutian controllers had denied the crews initial request to land and ordered it to circle the airfield.

An Air Force accident investigation board determined that the controllers were not to blame, but it heard lots of complaints from Air Force personnel.

The air traffic control was dismal, an unidentified U-28 pilot testified before the board. He said the controllers were often aloof, sometimes asleep, sometimes hyper-aggressive.

Every time I flew, I did not understand why I was having to do this for an African controller that my government was giving money to, the pilot testified. Why am I having to rush myself to the ground? And oh, why am I almost out of gas? Why am I in this situation?

In addition to the fatal accident, six U.S. drones based at Camp Lemonnier have been destroyed in crashes.

[Why military drones at civilian airports spell trouble]

Air Force investigators did not pin responsibility for any of the drone crashes on the flight tower. Again, however, Air Force drone crews fumed to investigators, saying the controllers were difficult to deal with.

One drone crew member said he would often have to repeat himself four or five times on the radio before he would get a response. You didnt know from day to day what you were going to get, he said.

A drone unit commander said that the controllers were not sure how to direct remotely piloted aircraft and that the controllers often left them in limbo. Now, we tend to hold a lot when were out of gas because theyre letting everybody else land ahead of us, just in case we have an accident.

The former FAA officials said the Djiboutian controllers considered the drones unreliable aircraft and malign weapons for killing Muslims. On multiple occasions, they said, the controllers abruptly issued edicts declaring that drones were forbidden from taking off or landing.

The drone bans lasted no longer than a week but disrupted U.S. military operations.

The Djiboutians greatest fears were these drones, said one of the former FAA officials. They hated these drones with a passion.

Tensions over the drones became so severe that the U.S. military agreed to move the robotic aircraft in 2013 from Camp Lemonnier to a remote desert airstrip in another part of the country.

Lunch money for drugs

In an attempt to solve the broader air-traffic problem, the Navy in 2012 hired Washington Consulting Group, based in Bethesda, Md.

The aviation consultancy dispatched about a dozen air-traffic-control experts and former FAA officials to Djibouti with instructions to retrain the local controllers. They immediately faced resistance.

The Djiboutians insisted that they did not need refresher training. Within a few weeks, one controller temporarily booted the former FAA officials from the tower, according to the documents.

After some incentives were dangled  free lunch and a free iPad if they completed the course  the Djiboutians agreed to attend some classroom seminars. But attendance dwindled after they insisted on cash payments instead of lunch. Some controllers wanted the money to buy khat, which they used in a break room in the tower, the documents show.

After Navy officers intervened, Washington Consulting Group regained its access to the flight tower. Although the Djiboutians still maintained that they did not need on-the-job training, they reluctantly allowed one U.S. consultant inside at a time to serve as a safety observer.

What the observers saw startled them. The Djiboutians regularly ignored air traffic while listening to music, playing video games, and gabbing and texting on their phones, according to reports that the observers filed each week with the Navy.

Some controllers would abandon the tower to take a cigarette break or to pray, even when aircraft were taking off. Others gave pilots the green light for a landing without looking out the window to make sure the runways were clear.

The late-night shift was the worst, according to the documents. Drowsy controllers would lie down on the job, giving orders to pilots from mattress pads on the floor. On more than one occasion, controllers had to be awoken by a U.S. safety observer after they ignored radio calls from pilots approaching the airport.

Also posing a problem was a lack of modern equipment, including an air traffic radar system. The Djiboutians relied on an aging French air defense radar that was not certified for air traffic. Djiboutian officials said the U.S. military had promised them a new radar but never made good on the commitment.

After monitoring the tower for several months, the U.S. consultants delivered some sobering statistics to the Navy.

When it came to keeping aircraft safely separated in the air, the Djiboutian controllers committed an average of 2,378 errors per 100,000 aircraft operations over a three-month period  a rate 1,700 times the rate in the United States.

That led to numerous close calls in the sky and on runways. In May 2013, a private plane carrying Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh almost collided in midair with a Kenya Airways jet, according to the documents.

One of the U.S. consultants concluded that Djibouti for years had avoided a major aviation disaster only by the grace of God.

In an interview, the consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said he could not believe the risks that U.S. military pilots had to put up with.

My concerns were for those boys and girls flying through there, he said. To have that level of safety that was present, I thought was unconscionable.

Navy Capt. Kevin Bertelsen, the commanding officer at Camp Lemonnier when the consultants arrived, called Djibouti a challenging environment. But he said conditions had improved.

Aviation safety is job one any time the U.S. military is engaged in air operations, he said. We take it very, very seriously. Were talking about our brothers and sisters in arms here. We dont take that lightly.

Fights and tirades

Beyond the errors and distractions, some of the Djiboutian controllers were plagued by short tempers, according to the documents.

One controller screamed at a PC-12 spy plane pilot coming in for a landing  an incident that a safety observer called one of the worst cases of unprofessionalism he had seen in his career. Another controller became extremely agitated with another PC-12 pilot for making a routine request; the plane was forced to circle overhead until the pilot apologized on the radio.

In April 2013, a controller physically beat a Djiboutian supervisor and threw him down the steps in a dispute over a tiny sum of money  about $3.30, according to the documents.

The next month, a controller threatened a U.S. Navy officer with a metal pipe and vowed to slit Americans throats if he ever encountered them away from the base. The incident was reported to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Djiboutian authorities, but the controller kept his job, records show.

In June 2013, a Yemenia airlines plane and an Ethiopian Airlines flight were on a collision course because of an error by an air traffic controller. A U.S. safety observer intervened in time to avert a catastrophe. But the controller erupted with a cursing tirade and accused the American consultants of being spies. The observer fled the tower by climbing out on a catwalk.

In an interview, Jeff Griffith, the Washington Consulting Groups vice president for aviation, declined to criticize the Djiboutians or the Navy. He said the firm did the best it could.

He acknowledged that there were a couple of controllers that were resistant to us being there. But he said Djibouti had a more advanced aviation network than some countries in Africa.

I think the operation overall is safe, he said. Yes, it can be improved. If we had a chance to help them again, wed help them right away.

In July 2013, the Djiboutians kicked the U.S. consultants out of the tower for good.

In one of their final reports to the Navy before leaving the country, the consultants included a chart. It calculated how much time they spent organizing classes that the Djiboutians failed to attend.

Hours Wasted, it read: 2,083.
President Obama announced Friday that about 100 U.S. troops have been deployed to the West African country of Niger, where defense officials said they are setting up a drone base to spy on al-Qaeda fighters in the Sahara.

It was the latest step by the Pentagon to increase its intelligence-gathering across Africa in response to what officials see as a rising threat from militant groups.

In a letter to Congress, Obama said about 40 U.S. service members arrived in Niger on Wednesday, bringing the total number of troops based there to approximately 100. He said the troops, which are armed for self-protection, would support a French-led military operation in neighboring Mali, where al-Qaeda fighters and other militants have carved out a refuge in a remote territory the size of Texas.

The base in Niger marks the opening of another far-flung U.S. military front against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, adding to drone combat missions in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. The CIA is also conducting drone airstrikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen.

Senior U.S. officials have said for months that they would not put U.S. military boots on the ground in Mali, an impoverished nation that has been mired in chaos since March, when a U.S.-trained Malian army captain took power in a coup. But U.S. troops are becoming increasingly involved in the conflict from the skies and the rear echelons, where they are supporting French and African forces seeking to stabilize the region.

View Graphic Drones and spy planes over Africa

Obama did not explicitly reveal the drone base in his letter to Congress, but he said the U.S. troops in Niger would provide support for intelligence collection and share the intelligence with French forces in Mali.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide details about military operations, said that the 40 troops who arrived in Niger on Wednesday were almost all Air Force personnel and that their mission was to support drone flights.

The official said drone flights were imminent but declined to say whether unarmed, unmanned Predator aircraft had arrived in Niger or how many would be deployed there.

The drones will be based at first in the capital, Niamey. But military officials would like to eventually move them north to the city of Agadez, which is closer to parts of Mali where al-Qaeda cells have taken root.

Thats a better location for the mission, but its not feasible at this point, the official said, describing Agadez as a frontier city with logistical challenges.

The introduction of Predators to Niger fills a gap in U.S. military capabilities over the Sahara, most of which remains beyond the reach of its drone bases in East Africa and southern Europe.

The Pentagon also operates drones from a permanent base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, and from a civilian airport in Ethiopia.

The U.S. military has been flying small turboprop surveillance planes over northern Mali and West Africa for years, but the PC-12 spy aircraft have limited range and lack the sophisticated sensors that Predators carry.

U.S. military contractors have been flying PC-12 surveillance aircraft from Agadez for several months. Those planes do not carry military markings and only require a handful of people to operate.

In contrast, Predators need ground crews to launch, recover and maintain the drones. Those crews, in turn, require armed personnel for protection.

The U.S. defense official said it is likely that more U.S. troops will deploy to Niger but declined to be specific. "I think its safe to say the number will probably grow, he said.

The Predators in Niger will only conduct surveillance, not airstrikes, the official said. This is purely an intelligence-gathering mission, he said. Other officials said the Obama administration had not ruled out arming the Predators with missiles in the future.

Information collected from reconnaissance missions will be shared with the French and other African militaries so they can attack al-Qaeda targets, officials said.

There is evidence that al-Qaeda fighters in West Africa are already bracing for drone warfare. The Associated Press reported finding an al-Qaeda document in Timbuktu, Mali, that listed 22 tips for avoiding drones. Among other countermeasures, it advised hiding under thick trees and buying off-the-shelf electronic scramblers to confuse the frequencies used to control the drone.

Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, signed an agreement with the United States last month that provides legal safeguards for U.S. forces stationed there. Nigerien officials are concerned about the spillover of violence and refugees from Mali, which has threatened to destabilize the entire region.

Because Malis coup leaders toppled a democratically elected government, the U.S. government is prohibited by law from giving direct military aid to Mali.

Johnnie Carson, the State Departments top diplomat for Africa, told reporters Friday that security assistance and other aid could immediately resume to Mali if there is a restoration of democracy. Mali has tentatively scheduled elections for July.

The French military launched a surprise intervention in Mali last month after Islamist fighters swept south and threatened to take over much of the country.

Since then, about 4,000 French troops and a coalition of about 6,000 African forces have retaken major cities in northern Mali, chasing al-Qaeda fighters and other militants into remote areas. One French official described combat operations there as a little like Afghanistan.

French military leaders have said they would begin a partial withdrawal next month. Their strategy hinges on enlisting Malian troops and other African forces to act as peacekeepers, while negotiating side deals to persuade some of Malis many militant factions to turn against al-Qaeda.

But al-Qaeda fighters and other Islamist militants have quickly adopted guerrilla tactics and show no sign of disappearing. Car bombs and suicide attacks have flared in recent days and are likely to intensify in the coming weeks, Carson acknowledged.

Theres no question that [al-Qaeda] has not been totally defeated, but they have been significantly degraded, he said at a breakfast sponsored by the Center for Media and Security.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
A Taiwanese American nuclear engineer pleaded guilty Friday to one count of conspiring to produce special nuclear material, in this case plutonium, outside the United States without a license from the secretary of energy.

The prosecution of Szuhsiung Allen Ho and a colleague marks the first time the Justice Department has brought cases under a 1946 Cold War-era proliferation statute.

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors will drop charges that Ho, who owns a consulting business in the field of commercial nuclear energy, intended to illegally help China and that he acted as a foreign agent. That means Ho, 66 and a naturalized citizen born in Taiwan, no longer faces a potential life sentence but a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Nuclear energy experts say they are baffled that the government pursued the case at all. They say that the government is taking an old statute meant to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons and is applying it to an export licensing matter involving commercial reactor technology used around the world  activity that had nothing to do with bombmaking.

[China closely following Trump comments on nuclear policy]

To make this a case about getting plutonium for bombs is a wild overstretch, and a pretty astonishing display of Department of Energy and State Department hypocrisy, said Victor Gilinsky, a physicist and independent consultant who served two terms on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We urge everybody to build reactors, and we sell reactors. All uranium-fueled reactors make plutonium  even commercial reactors. So if Ho is engaged in a conspiracy to produce bomb-usable plutonium in China, his co-conspirators are DOE and State  and the White House.

But the government insists that Ho endangered national security.

Its a very serious case no matter how insignificant the defense may allude to the technology involved here, said Charles E. Atchley Jr., an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee, in a June hearing. The defendant in this case is charged with procuring and helping to obtain on behalf of the Chinese government technology that it is not allowed to have.

Hos case follows several prosecutions of Chinese American scientists who were accused of sharing U.S. technology secrets with China, but whose cases collapsed. Two of those cases, involving a Temple University professor and a National Weather Service hydrologist, were handled by defense attorney Peter Zeidenberg, who is also representing Ho.

[China has an awful safety record  and want to run 110 nuclear reactors by 2030]

Ho was accused of violating a provision of the Atomic Energy Act by helping the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group, formerly known as the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC), more quickly design and make components for nuclear reactors. Prosecutors in Knoxville say he paid a colleague, Ching Ning Guey, who worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority, to travel to China in 2013 at the power companys request to provide nuclear consulting. They allege that Ho encouraged Guey to share reports on nuclear power generation that he got through his work at TVA.

Hos assistance to the company focused on advanced fuel assembly research and the validation of nuclear reactor-related computer codes, among other things  all of which he did without a license, the government says.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed off on Hos prosecution, as required by the statute.

Guey in 2015 pleaded guilty to one count of producing special nuclear material overseas without a license  the same charge Ho pleaded guilty to. The government agreed not to bring other charges against Guey in return for his cooperation against Ho. Guey, who unlike Ho was not jailed pending trial, has not yet been sentenced.

The Energy Department has certified that the technology that Ho shared is illegal to export to China without special authorization, according to the plea agreement.

I think that fundamentally this is more about theft of trade secrets than national security, said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It does appear that there was some transfer of proprietary information, he said after reading the indictment. But, Lyman said, my sense is that the U.S. government is trying to make an example out of Ho by escalating the seriousness of the alleged offenses.

Jonathan Poling, a former federal prosecutor who handled export control cases, said it is difficult to say whether Hos case is entirely commercial in nature or whether there were national security issues linked to entities or acts not discussed in the indictment. He said that could be precisely why the government charged the case, to protect the Energy Departments and national security agencies ability to make this assessment from the outset.

China, which tested its first nuclear bomb in 1964, has about 260 warheads and the material to make more. Its main priority has been expanding its commercial nuclear power, with about two dozen reactors under construction. The Obama administration, with the passive approval of Congress, renewed a nuclear cooperation agreement that does not prohibit China from buying reprocessing technology that would help it produce weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear power plant fuel of U.S. origin.

Ho, who used to work for Westinghouse Electric Co., argued that he went to China not to produce plutonium to make a bomb but rather to help commercial nuclear power plants operate safely.

He has said that he sought guidance on whether he needed a license from the Energy Department and received equivocal responses. He said he was told that a license was not needed for his information technology work, but that he might need one for consulting on safety-

related issues. He applied for a license for the latter, but months went by without a response. During that time he continued to consult, under the apparent belief that he was permitted to do so, according to the court record.

The Energy Department declined to comment.

Hos defense team noted that in 2005, the government approved Westinghouses sale to China of $10 billion worth of the AP1000, one of the most advanced commercial nuclear power reactors in the world. Westinghouse, now owned by Japans Toshiba, was permitted to share all the associated technology as well as almost 600 tons of enriched uranium as fuel. It makes no sense that Westinghouse could sell such an advanced nuclear reactor to China, but that Ho could be punished with life in prison for advising a Chinese company on how to safely operate a less advanced plant, Hos defense team argued.

Hos detention, which entails lockdown 23 hours every day, has been arduous and unnecessary, his defense team has argued. Ho has been willing to post his home and those of a relative and a friend as bail, wear an ankle monitor, give up his passport and pay for security guards to monitor him around the clock. But the government has said he is a flight risk, and an appeals court has ruled he should remain in jail.

This story has been updated to describe Ho as a Taiwanese American not Chinese American.
The state of Illinois enters 2017 in the midst of an ongoing budget crisis that threatens higher education and social services throughout the state.

Since July 2015, Illinois has operated without a full budget, the product of intense divisions in the ruling class over how best to carry out draconian attacks on the living standards of workers and youth in the state.

Illinois has operated since 2015 through a series of court orders and decrees as well as partial and stop-gap budgets. A stop-gap budget which provided minimal funding for higher education and social services expired on December 31, laying the ground for further cuts and layoffs at public colleges and universities and social service providers, some of which may shut down entirely.

Since the budget crisis began, all universities and colleges in Illinois have lost significant amounts of funding, with some public universities struggling to stay open. Including the stop-gap budget which just expired, higher education has received just $1.6 billion so far for fiscal years (FY) 2016 and 2017. Using the budget allocation for 2015 of $1.9 billion as a baseline, this has meant an effective cut of 58 percent. Without funding from the state, universities and colleges have relied on their cash reserves and slashed positions in order to keep open.

Several state universities are in dire financial peril. Chicago State University, on Chicagos far south side, is expected to run out of funding in May and is in danger of closing. The university, which primarily serves minority youth from working class backgrounds, has had to lay off over 300 of its faculty and staff members, amounting to 40 percent of its total staff, in order to keep operating on a bare-bones budget. Its accrediting agency has also placed it on notice of losing its accreditation over its shaky finances.

Eastern Illinois University in Charleston has laid off 300 faculty and staff. Western Illinois University in Macomb laid off 147 of its faculty and staff last spring, with another 500 forced to accept furloughs and budget cuts in order to avoid more layoffs. The university also cut several majors, including African American studies, womens studies, religion and philosophy.

Workers at the University of Illinois, the states largest public university, have been threatened with increases to health care costs that would force workers to retroactively pay increased premiums and force new hires to pay for 100 percent of their health care costs upon retirement.

The loss of Monetary Award Program (MAP) grants for low-income students has affected enrollment in colleges statewide. The agency which awards MAP grants received only $321 million for FY 2016, around 88 percent of FY 2015 funding, and nothing for FY 2017, including the recently concluded fall semester. Since the cuts to the grants, universities and community colleges have suffered from falling enrollment.

For the fall 2016 semester, average enrollment was down 3 percent at state universities and 4 percent at community colleges. Private colleges and universities, who also receive MAP grant funding from low-income students who attend, were also hit financially, and saw enrollment declines of 2 percent.

Social services have also suffered drastic cuts to their funding in the year and a half since the budget crisis began. Under the stop-gap plan, social services received only 65 percent of FY 2015 funding to cover 18 months of expenses for FY 2016 and the first half of FY 2017.

Just this week, Family Services, an organization that provides resources to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in Moline, has announced it will lay off staff and cut positions. One non-profit social service agency, Lutheran Social Services, had to close six substance abuse programs, 10 counseling programs and two youth services programs in the past year, laying off hundreds of workers and cutting off service to thousands.

Mental health programs have been shuttered due to the budget impasse, at a time when need for the services throughout the state is rising. A report by the National Alliance for Mental Illness revealed that 38.5 percent of Illinois residents reported poor mental health since around the time that the budget crisis began.

Despite this the Will County Health Department in the southwest suburbs of Chicago was forced to lay off 28 of its psychiatric staff last year. Sinnissippi Centers, which serves municipalities in north central Illinois, had to shut down some of its mental health programs, as has the Centerstone non-profit organization for behavioral health in southern Illinois.

Metropolitan Family Services, a Chicago-based group that serves some of the most vulnerable residents in the Chicagoland area, had to shut down half of its community-integrated living program in December. The program provides stable living arrangements for people recovering from mental illness.

The stop-gap budget had been approved largely to prevent a collapse of higher education and social services from occurring at the high point of the election season and causing a mass mobilization in opposition to both the Democrats and the Republicans. Now with the election over, both parties are closely negotiating over how to formalize the draconian cuts to state governments which are already occurring through continued budgetary inaction.

Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is making his support of any budget contingent on passage of his Turnaround Agenda, which includes cuts to workers compensation benefits and pensions, attacks on the collective bargaining rights of unionized workers in the state, limitations on lawsuits against corporations and term limits for state legislators.

The Democrats, who control both chambers of the state legislature, agree in principle with the elements of the Turnaround Agenda. Indeed, they have approved similar measures themselves in the past, including a massive attack on pensions which resulted in former Democratic Governor Pat Quinns loss to Rauner in the 2014 election.

The Democrats opposition to Rauners Turnaround Agenda is based on the recognition that it would represent a significant blow to the unions, whom they rely upon for funding and support, and whom they employ to suppress working class militancy and opposition to austerity. They are also worried that such a frontal assault would result in massive protests across the state, reminiscent of those that took place in Wisconsin in 2011 against Republican Governor Scott Walkers sweeping austerity measures and attacks on collective bargaining.

To move forward, workers and youth in Illinois must break with both the unions and the Democrats. Their decades-long assault on the working class has facilitated the rise of right-wing ideologues like Rauner.

The crisis facing the working class in Illinois is part of the international struggle of workers against the global system of capitalism and imperialist war. Workers, students and youth in the state of Illinois must form rank-and-file committees in their workplaces and schools, with the demand to put an end to the bipartisan attacks on their livelihoods and democratic rights. These committees must aim to join in the wider struggle against austerity measures and war in the US and internationally.

Under the incoming Trump administration, with its cabal of millionaires, billionaires and generals, the working class worldwide will face the harshest austerity measures yet as bourgeois politicians are given a green light to enact whatever anti-worker measures they see fit and to prepare for a massive escalation in militarism and war.

In this regard it is notable what the ruling elite are able to find money to fund. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat and close friend of Rauner, has proposed increased policing and surveillance of the working class population in Chicago in the name of combating the violence that has swept the city since the state budget crisis began. His plan includes the hiring and training of an additional 1,000 officers to the Chicago Police Department, as well as a program to equip all officers with body cameras by the end of the year.
Europe

UK rail staff at Arriva North to be balloted

Members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union working for Arriva Rail North are to be balloted between January 10 and 25 for a strike or action short of a strike. Workers have already rejected Arriva Norths low pay increase offer.

British Airways cabin crew announce 48-hour strike

Cabin crew working for British Airways (BA) mixed fleet are to hold a 48-hour strike starting January 10. The low-paid Unite union members have rejected BAs pay offer.

According to Unite, British Airways management is refusing to hold constructive talks with the union.

Prior to a planned strike by BA crews on December 25-26, Unite called off the action in order recommend the pay deal the workers have now rejected.

Staff at Harrods store in London threaten strike over tips

Around 480 hospitality staff at the London Harrods store are in dispute over its policy of only passing on 25 percent of tips given by customers to the staffwith Harrods keeping 75 percent of the tip.

The workers are members of the United Voices of the World (UVW) union.

Following complaints, the store upped the amount given to staff but according to the UVW, the increase is insufficient. The UVW said it was considering balloting the staff for possible strike action.

UK: Planned six-day strike by Southern rail staff reduced to three by union

Train drivers working for Govia Thameslink Southern Rail were due to begin a six-day strike on January 9. This has now been reduced to a three-day strike on January 10, 11 and 13 by the Aslef train drivers union. Aslef said there will be a further three days of strikes on January 24, 25 and 27. The long-running dispute, which also involves members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union that represents conductors, is over extending the use of driver only operated (DOO) trains. The drivers are also imposing an on-going overtime ban.

More Irish health staff to be balloted for strike

Following the announcement that the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) would be balloting its health support members this month, Unite has announced it is likely to hold a ballot of its members.

The ballot will be among support staff including health care assistants, cleaners, porters, kitchen and catering staff.

At issue is the refusal of the employer, the Health Service Executive (HSE), to extend the concessions given to nurses and some health staff to all health support staff in line under the HSE National Evaluation process. This evaluation process was the subject of previous agreements with the unionsthe Lansdowne Road and Haddington Road agreements.

Strike by refuse collectors in Portuguese capital

Refuse collectors employed by the Valorsul company came out on strike between Christmas and New Year on two separate occasions in Lisbon. The first was on December 26, with a further 32-hour strike beginning December 27.

Strikers demanded that the company respect their collective bargaining agreement and provide a pay increase. Workers are also opposed to the performance evaluation measures imposed by the company.

Valorsul is responsible for collecting domestic and commercial refuse in the Greater and Western Lisbon areas of the Portuguese capital.

Greek supermarket staff consider strike action

Staff working for the bankrupt Greek supermarket chain Marinopoulos are considering taking strike action over non-payment of Decembers wages.

Union representatives met with supermarket management Tuesday. The company told them it had run out of money and was awaiting the decision of a court as to whether it would allow the supermarket chain to be taken over by rival chain Sklavenitis. If the takeover went ahead, it would lead to job losses.

Sklavenitis has expressed an interest but so far has not been prepared to put any money into the Marinopoulos chain. It has until February 14 to decide whether it will go ahead with its bid.

Middle East

Egyptian food processing workers arrested

Twelve employees of the IFFCO cooking oil producer, based in the industrial zone in the Gulf of Suez, were arrested while holding a sit-in at their work place.

Two of the workers had previously been arrested for calling the strike.

The sit-in was in response to a 20 percent pay rise for the manual workers and 15 percent for administration and management staff. The workers insist that a 20 percent pay increase on their measly pay represents only a small increase compared to the 15 percent increase for already better paid administrative and managerial staff. They are instead seeking a lump sum payment to bring their wages more in line with the administrative staff and managers.

One day strike by Israeli bus drivers

Drivers working for Egged, which provides bus services in Jerusalem, held a one-day strike Wednesday. Histadrut, the labour federation declared the strike after the company cut the premium paid to drivers in the capital by 6.5 percent. The company in turn blamed the Finance Ministry for delays in payment of subsidies to it.

Partial strike by Israeli school teachers

The Teachers Union, representing Israeli teachers in kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools, announced a partial strike for Tuesday in protest over teachers not receiving their full salary. The union said teachers would start work at 11 a.m. rather than the usual time of 8 a.m.

In October, hundreds of teachers protested outside the Education ministry after not receiving their full September wage.

The Education and Finance ministries petitioned the labour court against the partial strike. The court hearing took place on the day of the strike, beginning at 8 a.m. The court ruled that the strike should be cut short and end at 9 a.m. The late ruling led to chaos as many parents expected not to be able to take their children into school until 11 a.m.

The Education Ministry blames a computer problem for the underpayment of teachers wages.

Strike by Palestinian hospital staff

Around 200 staff at the al-Mezan private hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron held a one-day strike Monday to protest salaries not being paid for three months. Staff at the hospital have not been paid on regular basis for the last year. The hospital is owed around $7 million from the Palestinian Authority.

Africa

Kenyan doctors continue strike

Striking doctors from seven Kenyan counties have not been paid their December salaries. The four-week strike is over a 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that has been constantly reneged on.

The doctors, members of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), in forty other counties that are also on strike, have received their salaries. The federal state has offered doctors who are prepared to scab on the strike government security against any reprisals from their colleagues.

Union Secretary General Ouma Oluga said many of the counties had not paid their doctors for six months.

The doctors union appealed to President Uhuru Kenyatta on the basis that he supported the phased implementation of the registered CBA. The president agreed to the doctors unions request for negotiations, which are now under way. As public hospitals have stayed closed, private hospital have increased their charges beyond that affordable to most Kenyans.

Taita-Taveta Kenyan state nurses return to work

Kenyan nurses union KNUN has signed a return-to-work agreement with the county governor in Taita-Taveta state. The month-long strike was based on the demand to implement a 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Although KNUN officials had claimed they would go to jail to get the CBA implemented in full, the union settled for much less.

The state governor has agreed to pay the nurses monthly allowances on time, some promotions are to go ahead and a further 36 nurses are to be appointed to hospitals. Union representatives and the governors office will meet on a regular monthly basis, ostensibly to discuss issues facing nurses working conditions. Nurses are to return to work immediately.

Kenyan construction workers strike over arbitrary sackings

Building workers employed by the Kenyan road construction company H-Young are protesting arbitrary sackings. Hundreds of construction workers, alongside several vehicle operators, protested at Meru county bypass, blocking the company entrance with bonfires to demand their reinstatement.

The protests started after workers, who were hired on two-year contracts, were fired after only eight months.

Arik Airlines Nigeria breaks wage payment agreement

Arik Airlines Nigeria continues to withhold airport employees salaries and in so doing, is breaking a back-to-work agreement. Workers at the airline agreed to go back to work after a brief walkout paralysed the companys flights.

Workers went into the holiday period without pay and with no indication of when they would be paid.

An agreement was reached between the company, three airline unions and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority on the basis that a months pay would be paid on or before December 23.

Some workers were in arrears of up to seven months pay, with others owed two months. A second months pay was supposed to be paid to the workers following December 31.

Nigerian National orthopaedic workers strike over unpaid wages

National orthopaedic hospital employees in Dala, Kano state, Nigeria went on indefinite strike December 28, demanding unpaid wages.

The strike came after a five-day warning strike, calling on the federal government to address three months outstanding wages, was ignored.

Nigerian National Assembly cleaners strike

Cleaners at Nigerias parliament annexes struck on December 29 after going several months without pay. The 22 workers have not received wages since August, although other employees in other parts of the National Assembly were being paid.

Although the workers had gone five months without pay, as the strike got underway, the contractor for cleaning annexes 1 and 2the cleaners employerssaid wages had now been paid.

Cleaners continued with their strike, saying payment of N13,000 ($41) a month for a new employee and N15,000 ($47) for an employee with three years standing is not enough. Nigerias minimum wage stands at N18,000 ($57) a month.
Vice President Joe Biden spoke about Its on Us. (Photo: David Lienemann/The White House via Getty Images)

When parents drop their daughter off at her freshman dorm, the last thing they want to think about is the likelihood of her getting sexually assaulted on campus. But in the U.S., its a fact as real as finals  one in five women will have been attacked by the time they place the tassel on the other side of their mortarboard.

Weve all followed horrific stories of assault on college campuses, of women, men, and transgender students who have undergone the unthinkable and often faced scorn or suspicion when they needed unwavering support. To have their voices heard, theyve fired back by writing letters addressing victim shaming and by dragging their dorm mattresses around campus.

But counteracting campus rape culture hasnt just been a grassroots effort. Its gone up to the federal level, and Vice President Joe Biden has focused on it in earnest during his time in the White House.

On Thursday, Biden spearheaded the administrations last summit from the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, delivering an ad hoc speech to young supporters on what he called the greatest civil rights issue of our time.

Its fitting that Biden championed the initiative, as he was the original sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, landmark legislation that was passed in 1994 that introduced sweeping reforms over how domestic abuse is handled in the U.S.

An estimated one in five women has been sexually assaulted during her college years  one in five, Obama said. Of those assaults, only 12 percent are reported, and of those reported assaults, only a fraction of the offenders are punished.

The Its on Us initiative set out to change that by not only creating awareness but imposing investigations and financial penalties for campuses that refused to comply with federal standards.

Biden said in an op-ed last year that more than 250,000 students pledged to take action against the crime, vowing to recognize that any time consent is not  or cannot  be given, it is sexual assault, and it is a crime.

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Or, as he said Thursday, Silence is complicity. Silence is a killer.

This was Bidens last address about campus sexual assault while serving as vice president. But dont think hes done with this initiative  Biden revealed (albeit kind of abstractly) that hes by no means done with Its on Us or championing womens rights.

Im no longer going to be the vice president, Biden said, but Im going to be setting up a foundation and devote the rest of my life to dealing with violence against women.

He added that come Jan. 21, a day after the Inauguration, he would continue the work he started and work very hard with the coming administration to combat violence against women.

Biden also wrote a strongly worded letter addressed to college presidents and administrators, imploring them to not only take action against campus sexual assault but change the culture surrounding it.

We havent seen enough of you, the vice president wrote. As presidents, chancellors, deans, and administrators, you have an obligation to stand up, to speak out, to foster the safest and most inclusive environment possible for every student that walks onto your campuses  change depends on your leadership.

What the White House set out to do

In 2011, Biden was joined by former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in creating a guide  including a breakdown of federal civil rights laws  to help colleges and universities prevent and respond to sexual assault. Three years later, President Obama joined Biden in creating the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault and the Its on Us campaign, an initiative launched in 2014 to create awareness of  and put a stop to  sexual assault at universities across the country.

What about the new administration?

Biden didnt mince words when talking about Trumps penchant for talking about grabbing women by a certain part of their anatomy.

After talking about his days as an athlete, he brought up the subject of locker room talk, referring to the Trump campaigns response to his infamous video. I never heard that kind of locker room talk, he said. After pausing a moment, he said: Thats assault.

He said that while he prays the next administration will make violence against women a priority, theres plenty that private citizens can do. We have to continue to organize.

And while Trumps record on preventing sexual assault is uncharted in the political realm, the Obama administrations actions will reverberate for years to come, regardless of the upcoming administration.

In the final report, the task force notes that there are still more than 20 federally funded research projects on campus sexual assault that will yield more information on the epidemic over the next several years.

So, while we cant be sure of what a Trump presidency will mean for campus safety and ending rape culture, Biden encouraged everyone to stay involved and hold their college administrators accountable.

As we reported when the initiative kicked off, Its on Us suggests parents ask every school being considered the following questions:

Does the college or university have a Title IX coordinator? This is the employee responsible for assuring the school is compliant with Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded school or activity. Theyre required by law to have one, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama, explains. Its an indication that they take their responsibility to help to provide a safe environment very seriously. Whats the college or university doing to prevent sexual assault from ever happening? We dont ever want it to ever happen on a campus, she says, and so ask them: What are you doing to ensure my child will be safe here, and free from sexual assault? If it does happen, what is the college or university doing to make sure its properly taking care of the accuser  and the accused? In other words, what kind of a process do they have in place for that? What are they doing to help people who have been victims of sexual assault? In the event that the unthinkable does happen, know what other types of student support services are provided.

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Donald Trump and China's leaders could hardly be more different when it comes to communication style.

China's president Xi Jinping is partial to the carefully scripted policy proclamation impenetrably cloaked in slogans, whereas the U.S. president-elect - as much of the world knows by now - is more partial to the shock-and-awe tactics of a late-night Twitter tirade.

And, increasingly, China is one of Trump's preferred targets.

In several tweets since the election, Trump has struck out at Beijing on issues ranging from trade and Taiwanese sovereignty to the South China Sea and North Korea. Some of the statements suggest a policy view that - if acted upon - would represent a dramatic departure from U.S. diplomatic precedent, possibly inciting tension or conflict between the world's two largest economies.

This week, China's state media made clear that they are growing weary of the provocative missives, essentially telling Trump enough with the Twitter already.

The country's state news agency, Xinhua, ran a commentary piece Tuesday under the headline, "An obsession with 'Twitter foreign policy' is undesirable." "It's commonly accepted that diplomacy isn't a child's game, and even less is it like doing business deals," the article said.

The day before, Trump had issued a characteristically huffy tweet implying that China wasn't doing enough to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017

"Issuing tweets has become a habit for Mr. Trump," Xinhua said Tuesday, adding that the president-elect seemed to think that "making hard-line comments and taking up sensitive issues may perhaps add to his pile of chips for negotiating with other countries."

The news outlet acknowledged that Trump was unlikely to forswear social media, but went on: "Twitter shouldn't become an instrument of foreign policy." (Trump's transition team has indicated that he plans to continue making his thoughts known in 140 characters or less from within the White House.)

Story continues

So far, China's official response to Trump's remarks has been relatively measured, with various statements of "serious concern" emerging from the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Twitter, like most Western social media services, has been banned in China for years, so it's not fully clear how, or where, the Chinese leadership is reading Trump's statements. Apparently, they have a few people on it.

Read more: Trump Slams China on Twitter
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Veteran actor Om Puri, who successfully straddled movie careers in Bollywood and the West, died on Friday in Mumbai. Puri, 66, suffered cardiac arrest, his friend and actor Anupam Kher told Reuters. Puri cut his teeth in the 1980s with alternative art cinema that found a niche audience in India, playing several memorable characters that depicted the angst of the times. He also worked in several Hollywood and British films, including "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", "East is East", and most recently in "The Hundred-Foot Journey", opposite Britain's Helen Mirren. "He showed that you didn't have to be 'fair' and 'good-looking' to be a protagonist," Saeed Akhtar Mirza, who directed Puri in one of his earliest films, "Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai" (Why does Albert Pinto get Angry?), told Reuters. "It was just the force of his personality and his performance." Several Bollywood stars, fans and Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to pay their respects. "Who dare say Om Puri is no more? He lives through his work," actor Kamal Hassan tweeted. An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India and later, the National School of Drama, the actors work in Govind Nihalani's "Ardh Satya" (Half-Truth) and later "Aakrosh" (Rage) won him several accolades. Along with Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, Puri was seen as one of the stars of the alternative cinema movement that contrasted sharply with Bollywood's often crass content. His distinctive baritone, and ability to switch seamlessly between art house, Bollywood, Hollywood and British film, made him an international star, one of the few Indian actors to cross over to the West before the likes of Irrfan Khan and Priyanka Chopra made the jump. (Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Nick Macfie)
antarctica larsen c ice shelf rift nov 2016 john sonntag nasa gsfc

A slab of ice nearly twice the size of Rhode Island is cracking off of an Antarctic glacier, and one scientist says rapid growth in the giant rift between it and the southern continent means its break-off is inevitable in a few months' time.

The giant ice block is part of the Larsen C ice shelf, which is the leading edge of one of the world's largest glacier systems.

It's called an ice shelf because it's floating on the ocean. It's normal for ice shelves to calve big icebergs, since snow accumulation gradually pushes old glacier ice out to sea.

But this piece of floating ice off of Antarctica's prominent peninsula is colossal  more than 1,100 feet (335 meters) thick and roughly 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) in area  and it's destabilizing quickly, likely accelerated by rapid human-caused global warming.

larsen c ice shelf diagram antarctica

Satellite images suggest the crack began opening up around 2010 and lengthened more than 18 miles (29 kilometers) by 2015. By March 2016, it had grown nearly 14 miles longer.

In November, a team of scientists in NASA's Operation IceBridge survey flew over the rift to confirm it's at least 70 miles long, 300 feet wide, and one-third of a mile deep.

Now another group of researchers  this time at Swansea University in the UK  say the entire block of ice is hanging on by 12 miles of unfractured ice.

How long until it snaps off?

"If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed," Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University, said in a January 6 press release. "It's so close to calving that I think it's inevitable."

Here's how the crack has progressed:

Larsen C ice shelf crack rift iceberg swansea university

Right now, researchers have limited satellite coverage of the area; NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, mission ended in 2009, and the next similar satellite, ICESat-2, isn't scheduled for launch until 2018. (President-elect Donald Trump's team has said it plans to strip NASA of funding for such earth science missions, which date back to the formation of the space agency 59 years ago.)

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That's why estimates of the crack vary somewhat, forcing researchers to fly over the region for confirmation.

antarctica larsen c ice shelf rift crack nov 2016 john sonntag nasa gsfc.JPG

NASA's program for this, which is funded through 2019, is (poetically) called IceBridge.

"Rifting of this magnitude doesn't happen so often, [so] we don't often get a chance to study it up close," Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist and geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, previously told Business Insider in an email.

MacGregor was more hesitant in December with his estimate for when Larsen C's iceberg would calve.

"Maybe a month, maybe a year," he said. "The more we study these rifts, the better we'll be able to predict their evolution and influence upon the ice sheets and oceans at large."

But scientists agree the iceberg will calve at some point  and sooner rather than later.

When the block does break off, it will be the third-largest in recorded history. MacGregor said it'd "drift out into the Weddell Sea and then the Southern Ocean and be caught up in the broader clockwise ... ocean circulation and then melt, which will take at least several months, given its size."

Computer modeling by some researchers suggests the calving of Larsen C's big ice block might destabilize the entire ice shelf, which is about 19,300 square miles  roughly two times as large as Massachusetts  via a kind of ripple effect.

MacGregor downplayed this possibility, saying that other "computer models predict that the eventual calving of this iceberg won't affect the overall stability of the ice shelf."

Luckman backed this up.

"We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse, but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable," Luckman said in the release, adding that it won't "immediately collapse or anything like that."

However, a rapid ice shelf collapse would not be unprecedented.

In 2002, a large piece of the nearby Larsen B ice shelf snapped off, but within a month  and quite unexpectedly  an even larger swath of the 10,000-year-old feature behind it rapidly disintegrated. The rest of Larsen B may splinter off by 2020.

If there's any good news about the rift in Larsen C, it's that the ice shelf "is already floating in the ocean, so it has already displaced an equivalent water mass and minutely raised sea level as a result," MacGregor said. "Melting of the resulting iceberg won't change that contribution."

The bad news is that if Larsen C collapses, all the ice it holds back might add another 4 inches to sea levels over the years and decades  and that it's just one of many major ice systems around the world affected by climate change.

NOW WATCH: Scientists have discovered an 'unstoppable' trend in Antarctica





More From Business Insider


A 10-year-old Florida boy shot and killed himself Thursday after his mother sent him to a room in their apartment for a timeout, police said.

Fifth-grader Ian Sevostjanov was acting up before school about 8:30 a.m. when he was told to go into another room. Thats where he found a handgun and fatally shot himself with a single bullet, Clearwater police spokesman Rob Shaw said, according to CBS News. His mother, Olga Grusetskaja, 50, was addressing a behavioral issue and appears to have been the only one home when the shooting happened, authorities said.

Its a tragedy in all respects, Clearwater Police Chief Dan Slaughter said at a news conference. Its a difficult thing. The family is in distress. They were overcome with grief.

Slaughter said the gun appeared to be legally owned. Its unclear which room in the apartment the boy was instructed to go into and where the gun was stored. The boys parents could not be immediately reached Friday.

There are things we have to evaluate even if it is an accident, Slaughter said. Just because an incident is an accident, that doesnt mean [there are] not other things that have to be reviewed from a culpable negligence standpoint. There are rules and laws we have to evaluate.
Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek Discovery

We dont know anything about the new Star Trek series, but its a new Star Trek series, and if youre the star of it, youre going to have a big breakout moment.

Finn Jones, Iron Fist

Marvels latest superhero will do his best to keep up with the likes of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, all of whom have been breakout stars and critical and fan favorites.

Ricky Whittle, American Gods

Bringing a sizable fanbase from The 100 with him, Whittle is set to endear a whole new set of rabid fans in Bryan Fullers Neil Gaiman adaptation.

Camilla Mendes, Riverdale

The entire cast of The CWs teen drama are about to become huge stars, but our safe bet is on the new Veronica Hodge,

Corey Hawkins, 24: Legacy

Stepping into Kiefer Sutherlands shoes is no small task, but could reap big rewards for Hawkins, whos been poised for a breakout since last summers hit Straight Outta Compton.



Rachel Keller, Legion

After impressing Noah Hawley on Fargo, the showrunner is giving Keller an even bigger breakout platform, as the female lead opposite Dan Stevens in FXs X-Men superhero series.

Jermaine Fowler, Superior Donuts

CBS has been high on CollegeHumor alum Fowler and retooled this sitcom for him twice before ordering it to series  time for the world to see Folwers talents.

Jacob Lofland, The Son

As the younger version of the central character, Lofland is central to the sprawling Texas-set family drama, setting the groundwork for his character to grow up to be Pierce Brosnan.

Adria Arjona, Emerald City

Wizard of Oz fans, get ready to meet your new Dorothy. From director Tarsem, NBCs new fantasy drama should be visually stunning if nothing else.

Alison Tolman, Downward Dog

After her impressive turn on Fargo, its about time Tolman got her own show  hopefully that talking pooch doesnt hog all the limelight.

Rose Leslie, The Good Fight

This Game of Thrones alum no longer has to share the spotlight with a cast of thousands as the lead of CBS All Access The Good Wife spinoff.

Story continues

Logan Browning, Dear White People

The Justin Simien movie made Tessa Thompson a breakout star, and Browning is set to take over the role in the Netflix series.

Pearl Mackie, Doctor Who

The new Doctors Companion should prepare herself to become a star. Just ask her predecessors Karen Gillan and Jenna Coleman.

Austin P. Mckenzie, When We Rise

The Broadway alum plays a young LGBT activist in Dustin Lance Blacks chronicle of the early days of the gay movement.

Dylan Minnette, 13 Reasons Why

The Goosebumps star plays the lead in the long-gestating Jay Asher YA novel, from producer Selena Gomez.

Jodie Comer, The White Princess

The star of the sequel to The White Queen could find herself becoming the next Rebecca Ferguson.
Photo credit: Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved

From Cosmopolitan

Chicago police have charged four African Americans with hate crimes for an assault broadcast live on Facebook, during which the alleged attackers beat and tortured a young white man with special needs and hurled insults at him about white people and Donald Trump.

It's a tragic story and, given the prevalence of "fake" news stories, one that seems almost too strange - and terrible - to be true. But authorities in Chicago are treating it as a legitimate crime. Here's what we know so far:

What happened

Photo credit: Associated Press

The 18-year-old man, whom authorities said has "mental health challenges," was reported missing by his parents Monday, according to the Chicago Tribune. He had been dropped off at a McDonald's in suburban Chicago on Saturday, Dec. 31 to meet a friend, 18-year-old Jordan Hill, one of the people charged in the attack, whom he willingly spent time with starting on New Year's Eve. The victim's parents thought he was spending the night with friends.

As police in the Chicago suburb of Streamwood looked into the matter - the victim's parents were reportedly getting texts from someone claiming to hold their son captive - they discovered a Facebook Live video of the man being verbally and physically assaulted.



The 28-minute video, which was shared widely online, shows the victim with his mouth taped shut slumped in a corner as at least two assailants cut off his sweatshirt with a knife, as others taunt him off-camera. The video shows a bloody wound on the top of the man's head, and one person pushing the man's head with his or her foot. A red band also appears to be around the victim's hands. At one point he is forced to drink from a toilet.

Off-camera, people can be heard shouting, "Fuck Donald Trump and Fuck white people. Roughly halfway through the video, someone says the man represents Trump, according to the Washington Post, and threatens to put him in the trunk of a car.

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The Chicago Police Department believes the video is "credible" and said Thursday that the victim was tied up in a corner for about four or five hours.

Shortly after suburban police discovered the video, authorities in Chicago contacted them to say they'd found the missing man wandering along a street. Chicago police were then called to a home near where they found the man and discovered signs of a struggle. Four people were taken into custody.

The victim was able to escape after a downstairs neighbor threatened to call police and two of the attackers retaliated by kicking in the neighbor's door.

Investigators said the victim was with his attackers, including the man he knew previously, Jordan Hill, for up to 48 hours. Hill had driven the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, police said, until they ended up at the home in Chicago.

The victim was later hospitalized for undisclosed injuries and released, according to the New York Times.



"He's traumatized by the incident and it's very tough to communicate with him at this point," Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin said Wednesday.



The video of the torture is "sickening," according to Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that," he said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the incident demonstrates "a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans."



Why was the man kidnapped and tortured?

Police identified the suspects on Thursday afternoon as Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24. All three are from Chicago. The fourth suspect, 18-year-old Jordan Hill, is from suburban Carpentersville, Illinois.

In addition to hate crimes, the four are charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint. Three were charged with burglary.



Photo credit: Associated Press

Police had told The Associated Press that they didn't believe the suspect was targeted because he was white, despite what they called the "terrible racist comments" made in the video. Instead, they suggested he was targeted because of his special needs.

But during a press conference Thursday, Chicago police said there was never any doubt the incident would be investigated as a hate crime. They said the four black suspects face hate crime charges because they were shouting racial slurs at the victim and because they referred to his mental capacity. According to the Washington Post, it is considered a hate crime in Illinois to commit battery on someone due to race as well as physical or mentality ability.

A police spokesman had said it's possible the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim's family.



On social media, people blamed the attack on members of the Black Lives Movement. But there is no evidence to suggest this is actually the case, according to CNN.



2016 was a horribly violent year in Chicago

Photo credit: Getty

The incident comes just days after Chicago experienced its deadliest year since 1997, with 762 murders recorded in the city, according to CNN. That's more than what New York City and Los Angeles saw in 2016 combined. Both cities have larger populations than Chicago, which is the nation's third-largest city.

Roughly two-thirds of the murders took place in five police districts on the city's South and West sides, CNN reported. Those areas, according to the New York Times, are predominantly African-American and Hispanic. And the murders, the Times noted, are often the result of young gang members who are "bored, broke, and armed."

So far, 2017 hasn't seen any improvements: 28 people were shot in Chicago on the first day of January, according to NBC News. And President-elect Donald Trump said in a Jan. 2 tweet that if Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel can't curb the city's violence then "he must ask for federal help."



With reporting from the Associated Press.

This story was updated on 1/4/2017 at 2:45 p.m. ET with details about the charges and the names of the suspects. It was also updated on 1/4/2017 at 5:30 p.m. ET with more details about the chronology of the incident.

Follow Michael on Twitter.

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The last phase of the contentious 2016 presidential election will take place on Friday afternoon, January 6, 2017, at 1 p.m. during a joint session of Congress. Heres what to expect, if you plan to follow the event on C-SPAN.

Link: Watch Live on C-SPAN

As youll recall, the general election on November 8, 2016 resulted in Republican candidate Donald J. Trump besting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the tally of Electoral College votes. The preliminary Electoral College vote count was 306 votes for Trump and 232 votes for Clinton, with challenges expected in three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

On December 13, the 50 states and the District of Columbia filed certificates of ascertainment six days prior to the Electoral College voting. Each certificate confirmed the presidential election results within a state and listed the slates of electors representing each candidate.

On December 19, the electors met in 51 locations around the country. Several faithless electors were barred from voting under state laws, while others were permitted to vote for qualified candidates other than the people that had pledged to vote for.

In the end, Trump received 304 of the 306 votes pledged to him by electors back on November 8. Clinton received 227 of the 232 votes pledged to her. Other electoral votes went to Colin Powell (three), John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders and Faith Spotted Eagle (one vote each). Also receiving votes for Vice President were Elizabeth Warren, Susan Collins, Maria Cantwell, Winona LaDuke, and Carly Fiorina.

After the Electoral College voting, official Certificates of Vote were sent to the Vice President (acting as President of the Senate), state officials, the federal court that had jurisdiction over the state capital area, and the federal Archivist. The vote certificates were due in Washington by December 28. Those have been received and made public on the National Archives website.

On Friday afternoon, current Vice President Joe Biden will preside over the official vote counting in a joint session of Congress held in the Houses chambers. The Vice President will open the vote certificates and pass them to four members of Congress, who count the votes. If there is a majority winner with at least 270 electoral votes and there are no objections filed by members of Congress, the Presidential election is certified and over.

Story continues

However, the Vice President must also ask if anyone objects in Congress during the vote counting as each state result is announced: Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any, the law reads.

If one member of the House and Senate each object, in writing, to the same elector or slate of electors for a state, the House and Senate go into private meetings to vote on the objections. The Senate will retire to its own chambers to meet and the House will remain in its location. Each session can last no longer than two hours and each member can speak for no more than five minutes. The House and Senate must both agree to accept an objection.

The last time this happened was on January 6, 2005. When Ohios votes were announced for George W. Bush, the chair recognized Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a House Representative from Ohio. Mr. Vice President, I seek to object to the electoral votes of the State of Ohio on the ground that they were not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given and have a signed objection, and I do have a Senator, Jones said, acknowledging that Senator Barbara Boxer has signed on to her objection.

Vice President Dick Cheney then called for a recess for each chamber of Congress to discuss the objection in separate sessions. When the joint session resumed, the votes were announced: Only one Senator and 33 House members agreed to the objection. Pursuant to the law, chapter 1 of title 3, United States Code, because the two Houses have not sustained the objection, the original certificate submitted by the State of Ohio will be counted as provided therein, Cheney announced, and the vote tally continued.

Without a delay caused by objections, the vote counting goes quickly. On January 4, 2013, the vote count for the Obama-Romney results started at 1:05 p.m. and concluded at 1:29 p.m. with no objections raised.

This announcement of the state of the vote by the President of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected President and Vice President of the United States each for the term beginning on the 20th day of January, 2013, and shall be entered, together with the list of the votes, on the Journals of the Senate and House of Representatives, Biden announced, ending the joint session.

Back in January 2001, the vote counting was delayed by a protest on the floor about Floridas Electoral Votes led by House members belonging to the Congressional Black Caucus. The presiding officer, Vice President Al Gore, ruled the protest out of order, and he had the distinction of declaring his opponent, Bush, as the winner of the presidential election around 3 p.m.

From Friday afternoon until 12 p.m. on January 20, 2017, the winner is officially the President-elect until taking the oath of office.

Recent Electoral Stories on Constitution Daily

The Interactive Constitution: Understanding The Electoral College

What happened the last time we had a Faithless Elector?

What happens to a vote-switching Elector?
When it comes to investing for retirement, the best advice is often not to focus on the day-to-day blips of the market.

U.S. savers, however, have taken that idea too far. Instead of avoiding daily monitoring of plans, many Americans are ignoring their savings -- or don't even have a strategy. According to a recent survey from Voya Financial, 80 percent of those with retirement plans have avoided reviewing or making any changes over the past year. That's compared to 43 percent of the respondents making changes to a phone, cable or internet plan.

"What we see a lot of times on the retirement plan [is that] they're fearful of the outcome," says Greg Palacorolla, a financial planner at Geier Asset Management in Marriottsville, Maryland.

[See: 9 Psychological Biases That Hurt Investors.]

Whether it's fear, a lack of knowledge or concern, U.S. savers avoid checking their plans to an extreme. The Voya survey found that nearly 40 percent of respondents would rather renew their driver's licenses than review their 401(k).

But this avoidance can lead to long-term threats that can hurt or even cripple one's retirement.

Avoidance creates many dangers to the plan. The fear of doing something wrong can often overtake the fear of doing nothing. That's why it's easy to see why something like retirement planning gets the short end of the stick. But leaving the plan untouched can be just as disastrous.

Stephen Korving, a financial planner at Korving & Company in Suffolk, Virginia, says he had clients who asked him in the aftermath of the Great Recession why their funds performed worse than the market.

He says in the buildup before the recession, some of the clients' specialty investments, like health care-focused funds, did really well. But because the clients didn't pay attention to their accounts, "too big of a portion of the overall portfolio" had become over-allocated into those specialty funds. This gave them less exposure to the broader market.

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Rebalancing once a year, ensuring the majority of the plan is in low-cost index funds, will protect from the higher fees and volatility seen in other investment vehicles. Also, looking for a target-date fund, which matches the allocation to the year one expects to retire, will guarantee rebalancing takes place.

[See: 6 Strategies To Avoid Working in Retirement.]

The fear of knowing where one stands. Palacorolla recalls a couple who was few years away from retirement. They both worked for the same organization for a several years and had savings, but they didn't pay attention to their portfolio. They had never gone through the process to actually determine what they would need for retirement.

A thorough review showed them they weren't on track. Palacorolla says they learned they needed to cut back on expenses and work a couple extra years in order to reach their retirement goals.

Only 22 percent of 50-year-olds are on track to retire comfortably, according to GoBankingRates.com, so it's important to know where one stands, especially when nearing retirement. At 50, an investor can take advantage of catch-up contributions, increasing the amount one can save each year in the 401(k), to get back on track.

But if you don't look at your portfolio, you'll never know how you stack up -- until it's too late.

There are many options -- and some with high fees. Check the fund options and fees before selecting a plan within the 401(k).

First, look at what the different fund options are made of. Whether it's a U.S. index fund or a global actively managed one, make sure it's diversified. If it's a global fund, or a sector-focused one like health care or real estate, then ensure only a limited amount of your portfolio goes into it. These types of funds come with more risk, which means more volatility. While they can serve a purpose in the retirement plan, having a large allocation to these types of investments could leave an investor short as retirement approaches.

"The downside to a 401(k) is the lack of investment options," Palacorolla says. "Making the correct selections in the limited scope is very important."

While Palacorolla suggests having a mix of active and passive funds, this strategy will increase the fee exposure and drain your account. That's the second thing to look for when evaluating the 401(k) strategy -- finding funds with low fees.

"If you don't understand it to begin with, don't let it frighten you," Korving says. "Sit down and try to get through it."

[See: 13 Tips for Singles Nearing Retirement.]

And if that doesn't work, find someone -- either an advisor or the plan sponsor -- to help.

Ryan Derousseau is a journalist with nine years of experience writing about investing and leadership issues. His work has been read in Fortune, Money, CNNMoney and Fast Company, among other publications. You can find more from him on Twitter @ryanderous.
HAPPY 2017!

We may have just celebrated Christmas and the arrival of 2017 but Chinese New Year will be coming soon in a months time!

For those of you who still haven't gotten your hair done, we've collated a list of hair salons with promotions and/or no surcharges this Chinese New Year!

Yes, you heard us right. No surcharges and better yet, promotions!

It feels like there are more hair salons having promotions during CNY this year, so we're bringing you the list of some of the best deals we've found.

20% off all hair services for first time customers

Closed from 28 Jan to 2 Feb for Chinese New Year.

Read reviews about HARTS Salon and see actual customer photos.

40% off bleach NOW $60 (UP: 100)

20% off digital perm + Tokio Inkarami NOW $280 (UP: 350)

17% off cut + colour + MUCOTA Treatment NOW $199 (UP: 240)

17% off cut + perm + MUCOTA Treatment NOW $199 (UP: 240)

11% off colour + Tokio Inkarami Treatment NOW $230 (UP: $255)

Open throughout CNY.

Read reviews about this new Japanese hair salon Bump by AVENTA @ River Valley.

60% off balayage / ombre + 2 Times bleach + Olaplex treatment + FREE Touch Up in 30 Days NOW 288 (UP 720)

Open until 28 Jan.

Simply quote BeautyUndercover when making an advance appointment. No Walk-ins allowed.

Terms and Conditions:

Free colour touch up on bleached areas are available only within 30 days.

Free colour touch up must be booked on the date of visit to avoid disappointment

2 times of bleaching is included in this package

This promotion is valid only for first time customers

Promotion is valid only if you make an advance appointment. Slots are limited, so do book early to avoid disappointment

Please make an appointment at least 3 days in advance

Valid from 26 Dec 2016 till Lunar New Year from 11:00am to 02:00am

Read reviews on Hair by Xavier Leong here.

Stay tuned for Agent Gs first bleaching experience by Xavier.

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30% off all set menu for first time customers

20% off all ala carte services for first time customers

Open until 28 Jan.

Terms and conditions:

Promotion from 1 Jan to 31 Jan

For set menu (i.e. Any combination of two and above like cut+color or cut+perm+ treatment)

Read reviews about RuleR Japanese Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

30% off ala carte hair services

10% off set menu

Read reviews about Branche Hair Salon @ Capitol Piazza and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent Vivs experience here.

30% off if you go for 3 hair services

20% off if you go for 2 hair services

Read reviews about Flamingo Hair Studio and see actual customer reviews here.

Alternatively, read about Agent Fs experience here.

40% off haircut + BH4 treatment + shampoo and conditioner NOW $280 (UP: $470)

21% off haircut + Tokio Sinka perm or rebonding by Yohei / Teru + Rubik Anti Humidity shampoo and conditioner NOW at $450 (UP: $570)

Open during CNY.

Read reviews about Rubik Japanese Hair Salon @ Raffles Hotel and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent AGs experience here.

10% off perm for first time customers

10% off hair colour for first time customers

30% off hair and scalp treatments for first time customers

Read reviews about Hair Mori @ The Centrepoint and see actual customer photos here!

20% off hair services for first-timers

Open during CNY.

Read reviews about Art-Noise Japanese Hair Salon and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent ALs experience here.

20% off all colour service + free 1 step hair treatment (Mon to Thu)

15% off colour service only (Fri to Sun)

Closed from 28 Jan to 30 Jan.

Read reviews about Koinonia Hair Salon and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent Js experience here.

20% off promotion for hair services (except haircuts) if you bring a friend along with you

FREE Haircut with every MUCOTA DYNA Treatment

FREE Haircut AND OMEGA Treatment with every MUCOTA Omega Therapy

Closed from 27 Jan to 31 Jan.

Read reviews about Focus Hairdressing and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent AGs experience here.

20% off promotion for hair services (except haircuts) if you bring a friend along with you

Free haircut with every MUCOTA DYNA treatment

Free haircut and OMEGA treatment with every MUCOTA Omega Therapy

Closed from 27 Jan to 31 Jan.

Read reviews about Focus Hairdressing and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively, read about Agent Ps experience here.

10% off hair services for first-timers

17% off haircut + colour / perm + treatment NOW $199 (UP: 240)

Open through CNY.

Read reviews about new Japanese hair salon Bump Hair Design @ Holland Village here!

Alternatively, read about Agent Is experience here.

10% off hair services for first-timers

Open throughout CNY.

Read reviews about AVENTA Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

Haircut* + Kerastase hair treatment + scalp ampoule for $189

Haircut* + Colour + Kerastase hair treatment + FOC Kerastase shampoo for $299

On 25 and 26th Jan, Picasso Hair Studio will be serving complimentary Cornetto Mini Ice Creams in the salon.

Closed from 27 Jan - 1 Feb. Open on 2 Feb.

Unfortunately, Picasso Hair Studio is often very crowded we hear that their weekend slots are fully filled for January with limited slots left for weekdays!

Terms and conditions:

Haircut by Hair Designer

Additional $20 by Creative Director/ $40 by Master Trainer (This is ongoing even after the festive season)

Closed from 27 Jan to 2 Feb

Read reviews about Picasso Hair Studio and see actual customer photos.

Or read about Agent Ss Volume Perm experience here.

10% off hair services for all first timers from Beauty Undercover

Read reviews about Plan B @ Goodwood Park and see actual customer photos here!

Alternatively read about Agent YFs Hair Colour experience here.

41% off Queen Phyto Cell Facial + Gel Manicure / Pedicure for First 30 Customers NOW $250 (UP: $425)

37% off Queen Phyto Cell Facial + FREE Take-home Makeup Remover + FREE Take-home Facial Wash for First Time Customers NOW $330 (UP: $525)

40% off Gel Pedicure NOW $60 (UP: $100)

27% off Eyelash Perm NOW $40 (UP: $55)

23% off Eyelash Extensions NOW $100 (UP: $130)

Open throughout CNY.

Terms and Conditions

Valid only for First Time Customers

Queen Phyto Cell Facial promotion valid only for first 30 customers

Please make an advance appointment to enjoy the promotion

This promotion CANNOT be used in conjunction with any other promotions in the same visit

Read reviews about Allumer Japanese Beauty Salon and see actual customer photos.

30% off Organic Facials (Herbal Brightening / Lift Up and Firm) for First Time Customers

This unique facial is one of the best we've personally experienced.

Read reviews about Organics Beauty @ Delfi Orchard here.

Alternatively, read about Agent S's experience here or Agent K's herbal facial here.

50% off Facials

Read reviews on Queens Market @ Tanjong Pagar.

Alternatively, read about Agent C's experience here.

20% off Ala Carte Nail Services

If you are looking for nail art of the highest quality and top-notch Japanese service, Branche is probably your best choice.

Read reviews on Branche Nail Salon @ Capitol Piazza City Hall here.

Alternatively, read about Agent Vivs experience here.

30-50% off All Hair Treatments

Instant Win Draw for All Customers

Grand Lucky Draw for Customers who spend above $300

Terms and Conditions

Only valid from now till 26 Jan

Complete any hair service and youll be eligible for an instant draw! Prizes for the instant draw include 1 for 1 hair colouring voucher, 50% off your next visit, $50 hair voucher and so on.

Spend over $300 and youll be eligible for the grand draw which feature prizes such as a 5g Gold Bar, $500 colour and treatment voucher, $100 hair treatment voucher and 50% off all hair services voucher.

Read reviews about J7Image Hair Salon and see actual customer photos here.

Alternatively, read about Agent EBs facial experience here.

Salons with NO SURCHARGES!

These salons may not have promotions but they are keeping their price constant to reward their loyal customers!

Closed from 28 Jan - 30 Jan.

NUA Singapore is one of the first few facial salons we fell in love with due to their professional and knowledgeable therapists who gave solid advice on top of effective treatments!

We hear that they are really popular among the men and ladies for Depilar hair removal treatments as well!

Read reviews about NUA Singapore @ Tanjong Pagar here!

Alternatively, read about Agent SAs facial experience here!

NO SURCHARGES!

Reduce water retention on your face with Geraniums signature Guasha Facial right before CNY.

Read reviews about Geranium Skin Boutique @ Lavender here.

Alternatively, read about Agent LBs experience here.

If youve set your mind on Balayage, Pixelated or Galaxy Hair Colours, you MUST definitely check out 99 Percent Hair Studio the salon we think is the leader among Singapore salons for the above hair colour designs!

There are thankfully no surcharges during CNY and they are also offering lucky draws and give-aways during this period!

Each eligible customer who does a full hair service or full nail service will be entitled to a sure-win of attractive discounts or mystery grand prizes draw.

Discounts of up to 25 per cent off on their full services.

Up to $50 products discount.

Grand prizes: iPad, GoPro camera

Read reviews about 99 Percent Hair Studio and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent Anns Crazy Hair Colour experience here.

Those who know Agent G personally know that Zinc Korean Hair Salon is her favourite go-to salon for perms! Now that theyve moved to the more upscale Millenia Walk and engaged the new Korean stylist Justin, there are even more more reasons to visit Zinc.

Zinc, however, can be really busy during festive periods, so do take note of that.

Read reviews about Zinc Korean Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

If you are looking for reliable and affordable perms by friendly, down to earth stylists, you definitely shouldn't miss Act Point Salon.

Check out about Agent S's recent experience at Act Point here or Agent Ys here.

Read reviews about Act Point Salon and see actual customer photos.

Their specialty is vibrant hair colour, so do check them out if you hope to add some magic to your hair in 2016!

Read reviews about CLEO Hair & Make and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent JM's experience here.

An exclusive salon catering to working professionals, bankers and the like, Kenaris offers quality Mens haircuts and stylish Redken Chromatic hair colour.

Were happy to note that there are no surcharges as well.

Read reviews about Kenaris Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent E's experience here.

Exclusive service and top-notch haircutting skill make Izumi our favourite haircut specialist to recommend.

Closed at 4.30pm on 27 Jan and closed from 28 Jan - 31 Jan for Chinese New Year

Read reviews about Izumi Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent AT's experience here.

Open during CNY.

Read reviews about COVO Japanese Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent E's experience here.

Possibly one of the most value-for-money AVEDA hair salons given its service and skill level!

Closed from 28 Jan - 30 Jan. Open on 31 Jan.

Read reviews about Gene by Ginrich Hair Salon and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent Ds experience here.

It is no secret that we ADORE KJStudios volume and colour lash extensions.

There are no surcharges but do note that KJStudio appointment slots are already reserved for existing customers from 14 Jan till 30 Jan. So you can only request for an appointment before that if you are a first time customer.

Read reviews about KJStudio @ Keong Saik Rd and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent Ss experience here.

Hair Salons with Surcharges!

The following salons have some surcharges but take note of when the surcharges begin, and you may just be able to save some cash.

Surcharge: $5 for 12 Jan - 25 Jan

Surcharge: $10 for 26 Jan

Closed from 27 Jan - 17 Feb and reopens on 18 Feb

Do note that the First Timer promotion is still ongoing for Chez Vous!

10% off Chemical Services for First Time Customers

No surcharges for chemical services!

Surcharge: $2 for haircuts and $4 for haircuts and wash from 1 Jan - 12 Jan

Surcharge: $5 for haircuts and $10 for haircuts and wash from 13 Jan - 26 Jan

Closed from 27 Jan - 17 Feb and reopens on 18 Feb

Although they have surcharges, Full House is still having the following promotion for First Time Customers:

10% off Chemical Services for First Time Customers

Please Quote Beauty Undercover to get the 10% off promotion when you call in for appointment.

Read reviews about Full House Salon @ Tampines Central and see actual customer photos here!

Surcharge: $10 for Haircut / wash and blow, $20 for Rebonding / Perm / Colouring / Chemical Services

Surcharge period: 15 Jan - 26 Jan

Closed from 27 Jan - 31 Jan and reopens on 1 Feb.

Although Kobayashi is having surcharges, vouchers of $5 or $10 redeemable after CNY will be given.

A $5 voucher will be given for haircut and a $10 voucher for single chemical hair services.

Read reviews about Kobayashi Hair Design and see actual customer photos.

Alternatively, read about Agent As experience here.

Surcharge: $5 for Haircut, Childrens Cut, Wash and Blow, Styling, $10 for Perm, Rebonding and $2 for Fringe Cuts

Surcharge period: 1 Jan to 27 Jan

Closed from 28 - 31 Jan

Read reviews about Pro Trim Korean Hair Salon and see actual customer photos!

Visit beautyundercover.sg for hair and beauty tips.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Four agents with the Tamaulipas state prosecutors' office have been killed in northern Mexico, while four federal agents died in a road accident in the same border state.

Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca wrote in his Twitter account late Wednesday that the four agents were killed in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. He said "nothing will stop my administration's actions to return peace to the residents of Tamaulipas."

On Thursday, Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said that a federal intelligence agent and three federal police officers were killed in a crash while travelling to a work-related meeting.

Tamaulipas has been the scene of turf battles between the remnants of the Gulf and Zetas cartels.
Online students: There's a lot in store for you in 2017.

In the past few years, more students enrolled in online courses, more organizations offered alternative credentials such as digital badges and nanodegrees and more employers accepted online degrees from job candidates.

[Learn what employers ask job applicants with online degrees.]

Here are five trends experts say students might see in online education in 2017.

1. Greater emphasis on nontraditional credentials: Companies in recent years have started offering credentials other than degrees to online learners, ranging from digital badges to showcase achievements, to various certificate programs that highlight skills.

In 2017, many experts predict, colleges and universities will become more involved in granting what are often referred to as "microcredentials."

At universities, "I think there's going to be more focus on how to best serve individuals, whether they are new to education or whether they are returning professionals seeking different credentials or different learning experiences," says Karen Pedersen, chief knowledge officer for the Online Learning Consortium, a group that aims to improve online higher education worldwide.

The massive open online course, or MOOC, provider edX expects to launch more MicroMasters programs in partnership with universities worldwide, for example, a company spokeswoman says. Students complete a portion of a graduate degree through MOOCs and can then apply to finish the full curriculum on campus at a lower total cost.

The U.S. Department of Education is also in the process of reviewing federal financial aid opportunities for low-income students in some non-degree programs such as coding boot camps, through eight partnerships between universities and organizations.

2. Increased use of big data to measure student performance: Because online students complete their coursework virtually, course providers and universities are collecting data "in really kind of remarkable quantities," says Richard DeMillo, executive director of Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for 21st Century Universities, which tracks technology innovations in higher education.

Story continues

This year, faculty will increasingly analyze real-time data to measure, improve and predict how their students perform, says Jill Buban, OLC's senior director of research and innovation. That will allow them to tailor curriculums to meet online students' needs and provide support.

"For faculty members to be able to see whether or not a student has logged in, whether or not a student has participated that week, can really help them in assessing whether a student is on track," Buban says.

3. Greater incorporation of artificial intelligence into classes: In an online course at Georgia Tech last year in artificial intelligence, the professor used a virtual teaching assistant -- named "Jill Watson" -- to communicate with students. Many of the students, DeMillo says, didn't even realize they were chatting with a computer.

[Explore five questions to ask about student services in online programs.]

Some experts, including DeMillo, foresee artificial intelligence becoming more widely used to provide student assistance and improve support.

4. Growth of nonprofit online programs: Prospective students will have more nonprofit online program options this year as well-known universities offer more and different kinds of programs, experts predict. Enrollment in for-profit programs will probably continue to fall.

Given that trend, more students will be able to get an online degree from a well-respected nonprofit institution, which many employers prefer over for-profit degrees.

Robert Hansen, chief executive officer for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, which serves more than 400 institutions, says nonprofit colleges and universities are working to catch up and meet the demand for online programs that was once satisfied primarily by for-profit institutions.

[Discover what to know about for-profit, online education.]

5. Online degrees in surprising and specialized disciplines: Fields such as business, nursing, cybersecurity and data analytics, among others, will probably remain among the more popular in online education. But Chip Paucek, CEO of 2U, a company that partners with universities to launch online graduate degrees, says to expect more efforts among schools in 2017 to launch degree programs in disciplines that might not initially seem suited for online learning.

Currently in the works for 2U: an occupational therapy online doctoral program with New York University, for instance.

In collaboration with the Syracuse University College of Law, 2U is also planning a partially online J.D. program pending American Bar Association approval. If that process is successful, Syracuse would be one of just a few blended options.

As online learning continues to attract career changers, some experts say more degrees offered online in 2017 will focus on specialized areas -- such as a bachelor's in real estate or marketing rather than business administration.

"They have to establish why their degrees are better and how they're better," says Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois--Springfield, who also directs UPCEA's Center for Online Leadership. "A key way to do that is to focus on a smaller slice of the field."

Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.
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U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson is about to break another record.

When the 56-year-old took off for the International Space Station in November, she was the oldest woman to ever be in space. On Friday, she'll be the oldest woman to perform a spacewalk.

Were excited to do our first #spacewalk of 2017! The #NASAvillage prepared us for this moment. Learn more here: https://t.co/oxfeaE0sQH pic.twitter.com/5AHEeZz6Ja  Peggy Whitson (@AstroPeggy) January 5, 2017

As part of her six-month stint at the space station, NASA wrote on its blog how Whitson and fellow astronaut Shane Kimbrough (he's only 49) will perform a "power maintenance spacewalk," which means she'll help replace power gear  new lithium-ion batteries for storing solar power  for the station.

SEE ALSO: We're about to find out what part of the solar system NASA will explore next

The walk on Friday, which starts at 7 a.m. ET and continues for 6.5 hours, is the first of two spacewalks coming up. The second on Jan. 13 will wrap up the battery installation that the two astronauts started.

Their out-of-this-world walk is important, but most of the complex work was done back on Earth by someone using a remote-controlled robotic arm and hand, according to NASA.

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Whitson said she's adapting to weightless life in space quicker than her last trip in 2008.

"I love being in space," she said. "I sleep like a baby. I mean, it is amazing the great sleep. Nothing hurts when you're lying in bed. You can sleep the whole night through. It's great."

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http://astropeggy.tumblr.com/post/126700052488

If you add up her three trips, Whitson has spent over a year in space. Next month, she'll celebrate her 57th birthday while in orbit.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.
(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you havent watched Thursdays Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers  American Sons, American Murderers)

Erik and Lyle Menendez, the two brothers who infamously killed their parents in 1989, have spoken out for the first time in 27 years.

ABCs Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers  American Sons, American Murderers examines the case and the subsequent trial while digging deeper into the familys history, revealing a more troubled past than the Menendez family let on.

On Aug. 20, 1989, Lyle, then 20, and Erik, then 18, shot their wealthy parents in their mansion using shotguns they bought just days before the murders. Their father had been a successful Cuban-American business executive, while their mother was a homemaker and socialite. Both had been shot in the kneecap (among other wounds), which made authorities believe the brothers wanted it to look like a mob hit.

Also Read: Menendez Brothers 'Almost Never' Discuss Killing Their Parents

Prosecutors argued that the brothers killed their parents to receive the family fortune, while the defense argued it was a retaliation for enduring years of their parents abuse. Erik testified that he and his brother lived in fear of their father, adding that their father had sexually abused him.

Other shocking revelations include the brothers criminal past, and the alleged shopping spree Erik and Lyle went on following their parents death.

See 9 of the most explosive moments of the documentary below.

1. They thought their parents would kill them

During the trial, Erik Menendez said I was just sitting on the couch with my hands on my head saying were going to die, I cant believe this. This wasnt a kid playfully thinking their dad was going to kill them, he said. No  Dad was going to kill us.

Story continues

Lyle added, I thought they were going ahead with their plan to kill us.

2. The cause: Erik told Lyle their father was molesting him

According to Erik, his relationship with his father was brutal yet he admired him. However, during the trial, Erik said that everything escalated after Erik told Lyle his father had been molesting him. When he was 10 years old, he told his cousin that his father was massaging his dick and that he wanted to know whether this happened to every kid.

Also Read: Dick Wolf's NBC Menendez Brothers Series Names Rene Balcer Showrunner

3. Lyle says he was molested too

Lyle revealed that between age six and eight, his father had sexual contact with him as well. Lyle said that they would have talks and he would fondle me and asked me to do the same with him. 

We would be in the bathroom and he would put me on my knees and he would guide me on my movements and I would have oral sex with him, he revealed, before breaking down crying. He also admitted that his father would use objects such as a tooth brush and a shaving utensil and tried to anally penetrate him.

He raped me, he said.

4. Lyle molested Erik

Lyle admitted he molested his brother during the trial.

I took him out to the woods  and I took a tooth brush also and I played with Erik in the same way, he said. And Im sorry. When the camera panned to Erik, you could see him break down in the courtroom.

5. Lyle slept in a bed with his mom

Lyle was asked whether he still slept in the same bed as his mother when he was 11 or 12 years old. When he said that he sometimes would, he was asked, did you touch your mom?

Yes, he admitted, to which he was asked, where did you touch her? Everywhere, revealed Lyle.

However, abuse claims were denied by their mother Kittys brother, Brian Anderson, who deemed it absolute insanity.

6. Erik wrote a script eerily similar to the murders

Erik would write murder mysteries with his friend, Craig Cignarelli. Erik once wrote a screenplay about a boy who killed his parents to collect insurance.

As time went by, Erik took that screenplay and reworded the first four or five pages to reword what exactly happened at the scene of the crime, so people thought, well maybe this was the precursor to what actually happened, said Cignarelli.

Also Read: 'Law & Order' True Crime Series on Menendez Brothers in Development at NBC

7. Burglaries

When they were young, the brothers started to hang out with a bad crowd and did hot prowls, where they would sneak into a house and think about committing a burglary. Lyle Menendez eventually committed a burglary with a group of his friends. When Erik saw that, he felt like he had to one-up his brother and did the same thing.

The prosecutor in the case, Pam Bozanich, said that they would back a moving van up to a house and clean it out while no one was home.

They eventually got arrested and according to Kittys brother, their father Jose decided that he was going to put it to rest and went to all the houses and wrote a check for the value of things missing.

8. Their mother tried to run away before she was shot

According to neighbor Alicia Hercz, the brothers went after their mother in the most horrible way. During the shooting, the brothers reloaded their guns and came back to finish their mother off while she begged for her life. Erik testified she got up to run during the shootings. Lyle also testified that his dad was coming forward in his direction while he fired directly at him.

I heard a noise from my mom, said Erik. I just ran out of the room.

I ran around and shot my mom. I shot her close, added Lyle.

We fired many, many times, he continued. There was glass everywhere and you could hear the ringing noises from the booms and smoke from the guns.

9. They went on a spending spree after parents death

According to multiple sources, five weeks after the murders, the brothers received an insurance policy payout of $400,000 and went on a huge spending spree, buying a Rolex, a Porsche and a restaurant in New Jersey.

During an interview with Barbara Walters in 1996, Erik said, well, thats not really what happened. Lyle didnt buy anything without first approving it with our uncle and aunt. This idea of a mass spending spree is a figment.

Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers airs Thursday at 9 p.m. PT on ABC.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Amanda Knox-Inspired Crime Drama 'Guilt' Canceled by Freeform After 1 Season

'American Crime Story' Season 3 to Focus on Versace Murder

8 Key Characters in Netflix True-Crime Documentary 'Amanda Knox' (Photos)
On Dec. 29, the owner of a small print shop located in Silver City, N.M., posted a new product on the companys Instagram page  a tote bag selling for $15 where 100 percent of the proceeds would be donated to Planned Parenthood.

Within three days, the company made a donation of $20,000 to the 100-year-old nonprofit organization.

Not sure I've ever had my paws in proximity to this much cash, but THIS feels like the right way to ring in the new year. Thanks to all you beautiful people who made this happen. I am fucking floored. #plannedparenthood #wewontgoback #standwithplannedparenthood A photo posted by Power and Light Press (@powerandlightpress) on Dec 31, 2016 at 8:52pm PST

And the orders keep rolling in  Olivia Wilde and other influencers included.

Its been crazy because I didnt expect it to be as big as it is! Kyle Durrie, the owner of Power and Light Press, tells Style. I thought, Ill post this bag and maybe Ill sell 100 orders. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.

In order to keep up with the high demand of this statement bag  shes been working from 8 a.m. until 2 a.m. over the last week  production will be handled by another print shop, while the order fulfillment will be handled on the premises of her operation.

Durries reason for creating the tote bag is simple: Being a female business owner who employs four women, she and her team felt that selling this item in the name of Planned Parenthood was a way to round out the year and prepare for the incoming administration, she states. It just seemed like a way we could use our abilities, as makers, to make something good happen.

While she is in awe of the amount of positive attention her creation has received, she does have one regret. In the initial design, the text on the bag stated that Planned Parenthood is a place for a woman to have a mammogram.

As soon as it started going viral, I received a lot of comments saying, You may want to check that out, that might not be factually correct, explains Durrie. I did my research before designing the bag, but it was something I misunderstood. Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms. They provide referrals for mammograms, but they provide breast exams. This issue is so divisive that any factual inconsistency can add fuel to the fire. It was a small thing, but a big deal.

Story continues

The wording on the bag has been changed, and everyone who has placed an order will receive the correct version.

You guys are amazing, and the last 48 hours have been insane. Thanks to all of you, we will be making a donation of $20k to Planned Parenthood today, to support them in keeping healthcare services accessible and affordable to all women. THANK YOU ALL for making it happen! The bags will continue to be for sale, and we will continue to make donations on a monthly basis. ???????????? Bags will go into production next week and orders will be shipped ASAP! But definitely not for a couple weeks. A photo posted by Power and Light Press (@powerandlightpress) on Dec 31, 2016 at 1:13pm PST

Her original goal was to have the totes delivered to her customers by the third weekend in January  in time for Inauguration Day (January 20) and the Womens March on Washington (January 21). Though now its pretty unlikely since its going to take a little while longer to fulfill the orders than anticipated, says Durrie. But it should be in everyones hands by the end of January, for people who have placed their orders so far.

Overall, Durrie  who will continue to make donations to Planned Parenthood on a monthly basis or every couple of months, depending on how the numbers work out  hopes the popularity of the tote bag will improve the dialogue regarding this organization.

Its villainized as an abortion provider, but Im trying to change the narrative around it and to educate people that they offer other important health services in addition to abortions.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




(Adds background)

LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Brewer Anheuser Busch InBev (AB InBev) and coffee maker Keurig Green Mountain have teamed up to develop a countertop appliance that could dispense alcoholic drinks in the home.

The companies on Friday announced a research and development joint venture that will focus on the North American market with the aim of developing a system that could work with beer, spirits, cocktails and mixers.

Such a machine would be the first of its kind to deliver the convenience of one-cup dispensers, such as Keurig and Nespresso's coffee machines, but for alcoholic beverages. It also marks the first formal collaboration by the two groups.

The venture will build on the technology used in the Keurig KOLD machine, which was discontinued after disappointing sales. It will also make use of AB InBev's brewing and packaging technology.

The companies did not disclose financial terms for the venture or any other details about the machine, the drink brands to be used or any potential regulatory requirements.

Keurig is part of privately held JAB Holding, the investment vehicle of Austria's billionaire Reimann family. JAB has built a sizeable presence in the coffee sector through an aggressive acquisition spree over the past few years.

JAB Chief Executive Olivier Goudet is also the chairman of AB InBev, the world's largest beer maker with brands including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Editing by David Goodman)
Beit Sahour (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday warned US President-elect Donald Trump that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would be crossing a "red line" and could jeopardise peace prospects.

"Any statement or position that disrupts or changes the status of Jerusalem is a red line which we will not accept," he said in a speech, a transcript of which was published by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Trump has said he plans to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a controversial move bitterly opposed by Palestinians as a unilateral action while the status of the city remains contested.

Abbas said that if the embassy was moved "the peace process in the Middle East, and even peace in the world, will be in severe trouble."

He called on Trump to visit the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinians regard Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel proclaims the entire city as its undivided capital.

The United States and most UN member states do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city's status is one of the thorniest issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump has said he will move the embassy to Jerusalem and has nominated David Friedman, a bankruptcy attorney, as his ambassador.

Friedman supports settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, characterised by successive US administrations as an "obstacle to peace."

In a Trump transition team statement last month, Friedman said he wanted to work for peace and looked forward to "doing this from the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem".

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said last month told a radio channel moving the embassy was a "very big priority" for Trump.

Israel captured Arab east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and subsequently annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

Previous presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, reneged on election commitments to move the embassy.
By Anuradha Nagaraj CHENNAI, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The death of a housemaid who said she was abused by her New Delhi employers after being lured to the city with the promise of a job has raised new concerns over those trapped in domestic servitude in India. Campaigners are demanding a renewed crackdown on unregulated employment agencies that profit from workers from impoverished states attracted to cities hoping to earn money to support their families back home. The 24-year-old housemaid died in hospital on Wednesday, two weeks after she was admitted with multiple fractures and injuries, police said. She had been trafficked from the eastern Indian state of West Bengal three years ago. The woman's cousin, who also works as a housemaid in the city, called a helpline asking for help on Dec. 19. Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Commission for Women, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: "When I reached the hospital, what I saw was horrifying. "She looked starved and could barely move. In her statement to the police she said that she had been beaten with iron rods by her employer for complaining about excess work." There are an estimated 50 million domestic workers in India, most of them women, who are regularly exploited in the absence of any legal protection with a nationwide policy to support domestic workers awaiting cabinet approval, activists say. Traffickers zero in on poor villages in states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, convincing vulnerable families to send their daughters away for employment. But the children and young women are often passed onto unregulated placement agencies and transported in groups to cities where a growing middle class is looking for cheap live-in labor. Rishi Kant of anti-trafficking charity Shakti Vahini, which is assisting the victim's family, said her mother didn't know where her daughter was and kept calling the agency asking them to send her back. "They kept promising they would and now the girl has died," said Kant. "Every day there are cases coming to light and yet people in the capital city are silent." Kant said he hoped this case would be a wake-up call for policy makers and law enforcement to come up with a comprehensive plan to end exploitation. He added that people want maids but don't want to pay proper wages and instead keep them as slaves. There have been numerous previous reports of employers not paying maids, failing to provide them with proper food and shelter, forcing them to work long hours and even locking them up when they go on holiday. (Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Ed Upright; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
Republicans in Congress have started the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act despite great uncertainty about what might come next. As cancer survivors in our 30s, we are all too familiar with lifes uncertainties. That is why we are especially attuned to policies that would adversely affect the 22 million Americans who gained coverage under Obamacare, and specifically the 27 percent of the non-elderly adult population with preexisting conditions who would have been excluded from receiving health coverage before the ACA.

President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP supposedly intend to keep the provision of the ACA that guarantees health insurance coverage to those with preexisting conditions. But without a replacement plan on record, there is no way to determine whether any so-called guarantee would provide them with equal and affordable coverage. Specifically, individuals like us are wary that a replacement plan may force insurers to cover everyone but let them create other mechanisms that limit coverage for those most in need, such as imposing annual or lifetime maximums that would cap total expenses paid by insurance plans. The costs of our treatment illustrate why this is a dangerous proposition for many people with preexisting conditions.

Jen was a new mother when she was diagnosed at age 32 with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, which typically has a survival time of two to three years. Jen began broad-spectrum chemotherapy, along with targeted agents aimed at destroying her cancer. Over the next several years, she underwent multiple surgeries, five weeks of radiation, and either chemotherapy or targeted treatments every three weeks. Jen had nearly 80 of these treatments, which cost close to $15,000 per session. The estimated cost of her care has been well over $1 million. She is now 38, her son is in kindergarten, and, miraculously, close monitoring by specialists and regular scans show no evidence of active disease.

Story continues

Ben was diagnosed at age 33 with a high-grade primary brain tumor called a glioblastoma, which has no known cure. Over the following months, he had a biopsy, a 12-hour surgery, four extended hospital stays, six weeks of radiation, a year on an oral chemotherapy agent, scads of tests, and dozens of appointments with specialists and rehab therapists. Now age 35, the estimated cost of his care is already well over $1 million, with the surgery alone costing over $500,000. While Bens condition has stabilized, he will likely confront a recurrence in the future, which will reopen the gamut of treatment options  and costs.

The two of us are fortunate to have been well-covered by health insurance at the time of our diagnoses. We did not have to choose between lifesaving care or bankruptcy  one of the goals of the ACA.

Read more: Doctors group urges Congress not to dismantle Obamacare without a replacement plan

We had the flexibility to seek out the best care for our diseases. Others in our age group who were struggling to make ends meet or who did not qualify for employee-based health insurance plans may have chosen not to get covered  only to have a life-threatening illness strike out of the blue. Before the ACA, they would have been refused coverage after a new diagnosis. Under the ACA, however, they are protected from being charged more due to their preexisting conditions.

We fear that an immediate repeal of the ACA will not protect people like us with serious health concerns. Speaker Paul Ryans general plan, A Better Way, says, No American should ever be denied coverage or face a coverage exclusion on the basis of a pre-existing condition. But nowhere does it say that insurers or states must offer affordable plans to cover preexisting conditions or expensive medications. That would translate to higher premiums and lower-quality care.

Instead, A Better Way would create state-run high-risk pools for those ineligible for health insurance due to preexisting conditions. The federal government would reimburse states with $2.5 billion a year over 10 years due to anticipated costs, and states would be expected to maintain the actuarial solvency of these programs, meaning they must create programs that the federal government will not subsidize beyond a certain point. The states, many of which are already in dire financial circumstances, would have to negotiate reimbursements with the federal government  and do so knowing that high-risk pools have a history of losing a lot of money.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, the 35 states that offered high-risk pools in 2011 (before the ACA) lost around $1.2 billion and only covered 226,000 people. Actuarial solvency really meant restricting coverage in order to save states money at the expense of patients in need of care.

Californias high-risk pool imposed an annual maximum of $75,000 (which would maybe pay for a week in the hospital) and a lifetime maximum of $750,000 (the equivalent of a couple complex surgeries like the one Ben needed). Yet Californias pool still lost $23 million in 2011. Illinois offered a more generous $2 million lifetime maximum, and lost $115 million in 2011  and Illinois only included 20,000 participants in its 2011 pool.

Read more: Behavioral science suggests that Obamacare may not change as much as Republicans claim

If we had been covered by Californias high-risk pool when we were diagnosed with cancer, we would have easily exceeded our annual maximums even before our surgeons picked up their scalpels. Forcing people like us into high-risk pools is not only financially unsound but ethically questionable. It would provide what researcher Jean P. Hall called coverage that fails to meet the often greater needs of people with chronic conditions, in an article for The Commonwealth Fund.

People like us are not the only ones concerned with an immediate move to repeal Obamacare without a clear plan for a replacement. Major hospital groups have warned against a quick repeal because of the immense revenue losses they would incur if 22 million people were to lose their coverage. This week, the American Medical Association, representing doctors around the country, issued a similar warning. And even conservative health policy analysts have said that a repeal and delay strategy carries too much risk.

We agree with Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senates Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, when he says we need to figure out how to replace it before we repeal it. We hope that Senator Alexander and others will hold hearings so the estimated 52 million non-elderly Americans with preexisting conditions can voice the real-life impact of returning to a world where they would be denied coverage or face annual or lifetime maximums that would cover only a fraction of their lifesaving care.

Jen Campisano is a mom and patient advocate writing about her experiences with stage 4 breast cancer at www.boobyandthebeast.com. Ben Fishman is a member of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorships Policy and Advocacy Team.
A week before she was to give a keynote address at an antifraud conference in Singapore, Clare Rewcastle Brown received an anonymous email. Dear Madam, I want to thank you for exposing all the corruption and wrongdoing in Malaysia, it read.

I am writing to you urgently with regards to your upcoming trip to Singapore, it continued. The [Malaysian] Special Branch knows that you are coming and they have arranged with their Singapore counterparts to arrest you on arrival.

Rewcastle Brown is accustomed to this sort of thing, and she decided to stay in London, where she lives with her family, and deliver her Nov. 21 remarks over streaming video. (Singapores Attorney Generals Chambers told TIME in a statement that there are no special arrangements between Singapore and Malaysia in relation to the extradition of any particular individual.)

She gave her speech from her dining room, which also functions as her newsroom. It is here that she runs Sarawak Report, a nearly seven-year-old investigative news website. Sixteen months earlier, in July 2015, she had published a bombshell of a report: the personal bank accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, she alleged, held nearly $700 million tied to state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

I want to say first how sorry I am not to be able to join you in Singapore as planned, Rewcastle Brown, 57, told the crowd nearly 13,000 km away. Her audience, comprising mostly executives and auditors, was rapt. The loss is entirely mine as it was a huge opportunity for me to meet with so many people of expertise in financial fraud  where I have been stumbling along as a jobbing journalist.

So, where do I fit as a mere reporter into this juggernaut of a story? she asked the crowd. You can hardly expect me not to take advantage of this platform you have kindly provided me with, to put in a plea for the vital role of journalism and free media in exposing corruption that threatens to undermine all our democratic systems.

Story continues

Rewcastle Browns British penchant for understatement is deceptive. The 1MDB controversy uncovered by this mere reporter is the biggest corruption scandal in recent memory to involve a head of government, in terms of both the sum of money involved and the magnitude of the sensational news story it has become. Rewcastle Brown is, as Abraham Lincoln apocryphally said of the antislavery author Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war. Along with the Wall Street Journal, which has also reported the story thoroughly, Sarawak Report has been instrumental in both informing the Malaysian public and bringing the story into the global consciousness.

There are eight governments around the world concurrently investigating 1MDB. In July, U.S. federal prosecutors announced what they described as the largest single action against kleptocracy in U.S. history: they were seizing more than $1 billion in assets apparently obtained with illicit 1MDB funds. The assets include a $30 million penthouse atop Manhattans Time Warner Center and art by Monet and Picasso. Rewcastle Brown was first tipped off about 1MDB in December 2013 when she learned that Najibs stepson Riza Aziz had bankrolled The Wolf of Wall Street. In its complaint, the U.S. Department of Justice said the cash used to fund the film  tens of millions of dollars  was directly traceable to 1MDB. Riza is specifically named by the U.S. Department of Justice; Najib is not, but several mentions of a Malaysian Official 1 refer to him, government minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan told the BBC. The Prime Minister has denied all allegations of wrongdoing  the Saudi government donated the $700 million, say Malaysian officials.

In July 2015, Sarawak Report became the first news website officially blocked in Malaysia by state censors. Anywhere from three to six times a week, it publishes piecemeal updates to its investigations. The site receives around a couple million visitors each year, according to the programmer Rewcastle Brown hired in 2010 to handle the tech side of things. One major story can bring in more than a hundred thousand hits in its first few hours online  most of them from Malaysia, where 7 in 10 people are now online, and where traditional forms of media are controlled by the government. What began in 2010 as a blog about an environmental crisis in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is now the most comprehensive portrait of a diseased body politic and its attendant scandals.

The principal subject of this portrait is Najib, 63, a British-educated career politician who has been the countrys Prime Minister since 2009. He rose to power as a reformer. When he took office seven years ago, many were optimistic that he would establish Malaysia as a model Muslim democracy by easing ethnic tensions and rejuvenating the countrys economy. For us to move up a few notches, we have to address the structural problems, Najib told TIME in 2010. To that end, he instated economic programs to encourage private investment and pledged to repeal internal-security measures that the Human Rights Watch once condemned as a draconian and anachronistic  tool to stifle political dissent. He pushed for stronger ties with the U.S.  an effort the Obama Administration embraced, eyeing the liberalizing country as a strategic counterweight to Chinas clout in the region.

Today, that early optimism is a distant memory. In 2013, Najib only barely won his bid for re-election  his coalition, Barisan Nasional (National Front), in fact lost the popular vote  and in the years since, all principles have become subservient to the principle of self-interest, says Bridget Welsh, a political scientist who focuses on Malaysia. In recent years, a number of Malaysians who have criticized the government have been arrested under the countrys array of antisedition laws  remnants from colonial statute books that Najibs government has expanded. Prime Minister Najib has become a political Jekyll and Hyde character, talking like a moderate on the international stage, but then directing a crackdown on his critics at home, says Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watchs Asia division. (In a July 2016 statement, Najib defended the expansion of security laws as necessary  in the fight against terrorism and said that critics have fear-mongered for political reasons.)

Things have worsened in the wake of the 1MDB revelations, which have continued to mount. Najib has sacked senior figures in his government who have questioned his version of events. His Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin got the ax in July 2015 after airing his criticisms. So did the then Attorney General, Abdul Gani Patail, who had reportedly planned to file criminal charges against Najib. (The apparent warrant for his arrest was leaked to Sarawak Report, which published it.)

In a March 1, 2016, statement, the Malaysian government dismissed the 1MDB controversy as a politically motivated, anti-Najib campaign, which sought to use Western media. Officials in Kuala Lumpur accuse Rewcastle Brown of being unprofessional and allied with local oppositionists. She says: I simply followed the story.

The unlikely fugitive

In the popular narrative, the uprisings of the early 21st century  the Arab Spring, the smartphone-wielding pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong  affirm the triumph of information over repression. This interpretation is a tad naive. Sarawak Reports programmer, who requested anonymity in the interest of his safety, says that he spends much of his time fending off waves of cyberattacks, which Rewcastle Brown believes are coming from groups sponsored by Najibs supporters. In August 2015, Kuala Lumpur notified Interpol that it had charged Rewcastle Brown with disseminating false documents and partaking in activities detrimental to parliamentary democracy  charges that can result in 25 years in prison.

Interpol has rejected Malaysias petition, but Rewcastle Brown, though she affects indifference, is now cautious about where she goes. She has received police protection in London after realizing she was being followed and photographed in Hyde Park. Despite all the threats and posturing, the government has yet to be able to take any real legal actions against her, presumably because she writes the truth, says Wong Chen, a bookish, charismatic member of Malaysias parliamentary opposition.

The truth is written on a MacBook Pro that sits on Sarawak Reports news desk, which is also Rewcastle Browns dining-room table. The headquarters of this national security threat are an apartment with high ceilings on the fourth floor of a central London walk-up. There are spy thrillers on the bookshelves and Christmas cards from relatives on the mantle. She lives here with her husband Andrew and their two college-aged sons, and, on the day I visit, her fathers cheerful Spanish Farm Dog that she volunteered to babysit. Weve done this all on a wing and a prayer, says Rewcastle Brown.

She looks uncannily like Joni Mitchell, all wide eyes and wistful gravity. Her husband (whose brother is former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown) is reading in the living room; the younger of their two sons, Patrick, is playing PlayStation in his room down the hall. And she is logging onto her laptop. It opens to her email inbox, where theres a note waiting from a prominent former ambassador to Malaysia, applauding a recent Sarawak Report update. Theres also an email from a man who identifies himself as a manager at a major Malaysian bank, claiming he has information concerning further missing funds. After six years of doing this, skepticism is Rewcastle Browns baseline  she likes the words fishy and dodgy  and she knows how to vet him. She screens sources by trawling relevant databases and cross-referencing to confirm that people are who they say they are.

Rewcastle Brown has benefited from the fact that many involved in Malaysian politics are increasingly jaded with it. Her biggest scoops have depended on documents and information leaked by quietly disgruntled government and financial officials. Anonymous tips continue to clog her inbox. At the bottom of every Sarawak Report webpage, above the sites teal logo, theres a link with instructions for how to send her an encrypted email. Im fairly practiced at squirreling out stories and sources  I talk to people; I ask people if they know anyone worth talking to, Rewcastle Brown says. But now people have started finding me, because they know Im the only guy on the block who does this.

I didnt grasp the magnitude of what we were doing

You could call Sarawak Report a strange kind of homecoming. In December 1951, a young man named John Rewcastle arrived in the Crown Colony of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. He had studied law at Oxford, but didnt practice it because he sought to avoid the obvious thing. Instead joined the colonial police force and, in the twilight of the worlds biggest empire, made his way up the ranks. In Sarawak, he fell in love with and married a British nurse, and in June 1959, they had a daughter, Clare.

Colonial rule in Sarawak ended in 1963, when the state merged with Malaya to create the nation of Malaysia, but the Rewcastles stayed on for six more years. It was a fantastic place for a child to live, Rewcastle Brown says  a playground of beaches and virgin jungles, where indigenous tribes lived unscathed by civilization. Her mother Karis would go to these villages to work as a midwife, and her daughter would tag along. Rewcastle Brown left Sarawak in the spring of 1967, when the classic British colonial childhood thing was still to get kicked back to boarding school in England at the tender age of 8.

And that was that, she says. But I have this vivid memory of flying over Borneo down the coast to Singapore. It was a two-hour journey in those days, and I remember looking out the window for two hours at this amazing canopy of unbroken jungle beneath me.

Rewcastle Brown spent her childhood in fashionable girls boarding schools and then studied modern history at Kings College London, taking a particular interest in Soviet studies. I was trying to get a handle on how the world works, she says. In 1983, when pursuing a masters degree at the London School of Economics, she took a secretarial job in the BBC World Services current-affairs department. When she graduated, the BBC took her on as a researcher, then promoted her to assistant producer.

While working at the BBC, she was introduced by colleagues to Andrew Brown, a fellow producer whose elder brother Gordon was then an ambitious young Member of Parliament. The future Prime Minister would be the best man at their wedding in 1992. I would stress that she has always been fiercely independent, someone who is free of political influence, irrespective of whos in power and whos running any country, Gordon Brown, tells TIME. Thats what makes us proud of her  shes always been utterly professional.

She then spent 14 years covering the London news  at the BBC, then Sky News and ITV  during which she developed a reputation among colleagues as an aggressive investigator who made no secret of her faith in journalism as a moral enterprise. Her cameramen called her Rocky Rewcastle, after the scrappy boxer from the movies. She has the ability to deliver killer punches to those in the shadows who are up to no good, says Glen Campbell, who worked with Rewcastle Brown at ITV and is now the producer of the BBCs Panorama news program. He recalls one such example, when they camped out in doorways to film corrupt parking wardens who were ticketing innocent motorists. Rewcastle Brown had heard that the wardens got a bonus for every car they ticketed  including hers. For Clare, injustice, even a whiff of it, immediately grabs her attention.

Rewcastle Brown retired from television reporting in 2001 to look after her children, but five years later, an acquaintance who knew about her childhood in Sarawak tipped her off on a media conference that was being held in the state by its then chief minister, Taib Mahmud, to bolster its positive environmental image. Her curiosity was piqued, and so after four decades on the other side of the world, she returned to her birthplace.

There, she found her next story. She was startled by the deforestation she witnessed there, and over the next three years, she traveled back and forth with the intent of making a documentary on it. In 2009, an armed group of officers sent her home. She remained committed to exposing the story and bringing it to an audience in Malaysia, where traditional forms of news media are effectively state mouthpieces. The country ranks 146 out of 179 on the World Press Freedom Index; three-quarters of Malaysians say they distrust the news they read. And so I got a blog, Rewcastle Brown says. They have a totally controlled media, but they also have an Internet.

Sarawak Report went live in February 2010 and, within six months, traffic had climbed from about 300 hits a day to 50,000. Her programmer was on holiday when he got the notification that the site had crashed. I didnt grasp the magnitude of what we were doing, he says. For its first year, Rewcastle Brown ran the website anonymously, out of concern for herself and her familys safety.

In its reporting, Sarawak Report is thorough and transparent. Its stories are almost always accompanied by screenshots of the various documents that sustain their allegations: bank statements, transaction reports, and the like. These, Rewcastle Brown says, were hidden in plain sight in public records databases that no one thought to check. It was a rabbit hole that she fell down nightly, after kissing her sons and husband goodnight and going to her laptop, where she would remain connecting the dots until dawn. I discovered the Internet, she says plainly. I started seeing how much company information was out there  they didnt think it would be accessible to a middle-aged journalist sitting in her kitchen in England.

We have reached something that is unstoppable

In January 2016, the office of Malaysias Attorney General announced that it had concluded its investigation into 1MDB, and exonerated Najib of all allegations. But on Nov. 19 tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Kuala Lumpur to demand Najibs resignation, as spirited and outraged as ever. Protesters were not dissuaded by the fact that the rallys organizer, Maria Chin Abdullah, had been arrested the night before (she was later released), or by the fact that the government had declared the rally illegal. We have to speak out, said 25-year-old Elissa Abubakar, a business student at the University of Kuala Lumpur. Before this not everyone was aware, but now we have this information, and people want to speak out and fight.

We have reached something that is unstoppable, Rafizi Ramli, a popular opposition figure who has been sentenced to 18 months in jail (hes appealing) for leaking government secrets related to 1MDB, said that afternoon as thunderclouds gathered over the capitals iconic Petronas Towers. Its a matter of time before Najib gives in.

Rewcastle Brown is modest about her role in all this, but concedes that this conversation  it would have been unthinkable even a year and a half ago. Said a 25-year-old freelance photographer at the Kuala Lumpur protest who declined to give his name out of concern for his safety: We see [Sarawak Report] as the truth. And the truth needs to be revealed. The media here cant cover it.

Malaysia is a country with a long tradition of diaspora, and there were solidarity rallies in cities around the globe that Nov. 19. Hundreds attended the protest in London, where all attention was on Rewcastle Brown, who addressed the crowd. Ive come here to join you, and I think were all in awe of the bravery of the people who did go out and demonstrate in Malaysia itself today, she said. Ive played just one small part.

A big part! someone in the crowd yelled. Said Zainah Zain, 45, originally from Kuala Lumpur but now living in Cardiff, Wales: Clare stands for justice.

 With reporting by Suyin Haynes / London
The Star Wars family is taking the death of Carrie Fisher hard.

Adam Driver appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Thursday, where he talked about the death of the legendary actress. Driver's Star Wars character, Kylo Ren, was revealed to be the son of Princess Leia (Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in 2015's Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

"As you can kind of tell from meeting her, she burns very bright and has such a great, very generous energy," Driver said. "For that suddenly not to be on set, or we're talking about it in publicity or just in life, when you kind of see her around at a Star Wars event, or anywhere, to have... her character -- not just her character in the movie, but her character missing from that very small unit -- is a tragedy."

WATCH: Mark Hamill Is 'Devastated' Over Carrie Fisher's Death

Driver, 33, said the last time he saw Fisher was on the set of Star Wars: Episode VIII, which comes out in December.

"We finished the second one last summer," he revealed. "I think that was the last time I saw her, actually, on set being Princess Leia."

Driver's The Force Awakens co-star, Daisy Ridley, also commented on the death of Fisher last month. "Devastated at this monumental loss," Ridley, 24, said in a statement to ET. "How lucky we all are to have known her, and how awful that we have to say goodbye."

WATCH: Ellen DeGeneres Pays Tribute to Carrie Fisher -- 'I Miss You, Carrie. I Love You'

A private memorial for Fisher was held on Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills, California, with Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meg Ryan, Courtney Love, Ed Begley Jr. and Ellen Barkin in attendance alongside Fisher's brother, Todd Fisher, and his wife. Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, was joined by her Scream Queens co-star, Taylor Lautner.

Watch below:

Related Articles
Adam Driver has teased what we can expect from Kylo Ren in Star Wars: Episode VIII

Our excitement levels for Star Wars: Episode VIII are pretty high, especially given that the film is being released this year. And now Adam Driver has been chatting about what we can expect from his character Kylo Ren in the upcoming Star Wars sequel.

We know for sure that Star Wars: Episode VIII has wrapped up filming as the cast celebrated completion of the film in spectacular fashion at Londons Natural History Museum, and it seems that we *may* have had a little taster of the first bit of dialogue from the movie, too.

Now Adam Driver has been teasing where things are heading for his character Kylo Ren, and were intrigued.

Chatting to Larry King, Driver opened up about one aspect of how his character might develop.

I think, erm, maybe this is such a general answer but you know  humanity, he revealed. Even though its very much a blockbuster movie, there was no taking that for granted.

Given that at the end of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens we saw Kylo Ren stab his father, Han Solo, with a lightsaber and apparently killing him, were kinda glad that we might get to see a more humane side to Drivers character.

Driver also teased that there were plot points that the cast were aware of in the first movie that have been expanded on Episode VIII, explaining that things would begin to make more sense. Whats more, he also opened up about how the films also represent whats going on socially in the world, too.

They do kind of feel socially active to me, and George Lucas originally, a lot of Star Wars was in response to Vietnam, he said. A lot of what I remember talking about with JJ [Abrams] and Rian [Johnson] was this idea of terrorism, and two sides being morally justified to behave however they wanted to to get whatever they thought was absolutely correct.

Ultimately, were going to have to wait until Star Wars: Episode VIII is released on December 15th of this year to find out exactly what Adam Driver is talking about, but were expecting that its going to have something to do with Rey and Supreme Leader Snoke.

Also, given that we saw Kylo Ren doubting his support of the The Dark Side of the Force, were sure that well get to see more of the good in him.

[H/T metro.co.uk]
When Adele visits Australia next month to kick off her first tour of these parts, she'll do so knowing she's still No. 1.

The British songstress' 25 (XL/Inertia) tops Australia's year-end albums chart for the second successive year, according to newly-published trade data, while The Chainsmokers "Closer" featuring Halsey was the year's best-selling single in the market.

Adele's third album is No. 1 on the ARIA 2016 End Of Year Albums Chart, ahead of Keith Urban's Ripcord (Capitol/EMI), Beyonce's Lemonade (Columbia/Sony), the soundtrack to the homegrown Molly TV series (Liberation/Universal) and Michael Buble's double-diamond certified Christmas (Reprise/Warner).

Adele's 25 spent two weeks at No. 1 in 2016 and hasn't dropped outside the top 30 since its release in November 2015, notching eight-times platinum sales along the way (platinum is registered at 70,000 units). The album has clocked 45 weeks in the ARIA top 10 and its joined in the 2016 best-sellers survey with Adele's previous two albums, 21 at No. 29 and 19 at No. 93.

With its chart feat Down Under, 25 achieves a spectacular double-double. The album also came in at No. 1 for two successive years in the U.K., the Official Charts Company reported earlier this week. The north Londoner joins Pink as the only artists to top Australia's year-end sales chart over consecutive years with the same album (Pink managed it with The Truth About Love in 2013-14). It's not Adele's first time atop Australia's year-end chart; her blockbuster sophomore album 21 was No. 1 for 2011.

Buble's seasonal favorite Christmas album has now spent six consecutive years in the end-of-year top 100. It finished No. 2 in 2011, No. 4 in 2012, No. 7 of 2013, No. 8 in 2014 and No. 7 in 2015.

Meanwhile, American EDM duo The Chainsmokers had the year's highest-selling single with "Closer" (Columbia/Sony), which managed nine weeks at No. 1, the longest streak for the year.

Story continues

"Closer" is seven-times platinum and is one of four Chainsmokers tracks on the ARIA 2016 End Of Year Singles Chart. No other act landed more than three in the top 100, though Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Little Mix, Twenty One Pilots, Shawn Mendes and Zara Larsson all hit that mark.

Drake had the year's second-best selling track with "One Dance" (Republic/Universal) featuring Wizkid & Kyla, while Lukas Graham's "7 Years" (Warner), Flume featuring Kai's "Never Be Like You" (Future Classic) and The Chainsmokers featuring Daya's "Don't Let Me Down" complete the top 5.

Domestic acts enjoyed a strong showing across both main charts with 31 homegrown LP releases and 15 singles making the cut.

ARIA compiles its charts from data supplied by more than 1,200 music retailers, including department stores, chain stores, independent retailers, streaming outlets and digital providers. The trade body does not publish accurate sales figures.

Top 10 Albums of 2016 in Australia

1. Adele '25'

2. Keith Urban 'Ripcord'

3. Beyonce 'Lemonade'

4. Soundtrack 'Molly (Soundtrack From The TV Series)'

5. Michael Buble 'Christmas'

6. John Farnham & Olivia Newton John 'Friends For Christmas'

7. Jessica Mauboy 'Secret Daughter (Songs From The TV Series)'

8. David Bowie 'Blackstar'

9. Justin Bieber 'Purpose'

10. Soundtrack 'Suicide Squad: The Album'

Top 10 Singles of 2016 in Australia

1. The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey 'Closer'

2. Drake featuring Wizkid & Kyla 'One Dance'

3. Lukas Graham '7 Years'

4. Flume featuring Kai 'Never Be Like You'

5. The Chainsmokers featuring Daya 'Don't Let Me Down'

6. Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna 'This Is What You Came For'

7. Justin Timberlake 'Can't Stop The Feeling'

8. Sia 'Cheap Thrills'

9.Twenty One Pilots 'Stressed Out'

10. Justin Bieber 'Love Yourself'
Home: Some pets never have one to call their own. Wed like to help change that by introducing you to an adoptable pet every week. Today, meet Liberty, a young dog currently available at NAWS Humane Society of Illinois in Mokena.

This smiley girl, who was found as a stray in southern Illinois, is funny, friendly and totally happy-go-lucky despite not having a permanent home.

Liberty is the girl that puts a smile on everyones face, says dog adoption program director Tim Jusack. She makes you feel like youre the only person that matters!

The Australian cattle dog/Lab mix, who weighs about 25 lbs., loves everyone she meets, including kids. Confidence may be the only thing this pretty girl is lacking, though, so a forever home without other pets in residence is where she would be happiest.

If you think this girl is the companion for you, email Stacy@NAWSUS.org for more information.

Click here to meet last weeks adoptable pet, Polo.

Adopting a pet is an amazing experience  and a big decision! Before bringing a pet into your home, its important to consider your family circumstances and do your research.




Washington (AFP) - Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group the Islamic State against his organization, in an audio message released Thursday.

In the message found and translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group, the Egyptian extremist accuses IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of slandering his group.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, is locked in a battle with the so-called Islamic State -- which sprang from its Iraqi faction -- for the leadership of a global jihad.

In his message, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Al-Baghdadi had alleged that Al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.

"The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites," Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm.

Zawahiri denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.

"What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia," he said.

And he insisted he had not called for Shiite Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shiite-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.

"I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shiite militiamen," he said.

A husseiniyat is a Shiite place of worship and the Iraqi security forces, in their battle against the Islamic State group, are backed by Shiite religious militias.

The Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda have both carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some Al-Qaeda propaganda has called for less indiscriminate tactics.

Story continues

Zawahiri also denied Al-Baghdadi's charge that Al-Qaeda had supported ousted former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who attempted to rule through the ballot box.

The Al-Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistan's unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.

He communicates with the group's remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating -- as in his latest message -- the need to target the United States.

But Thursday's message did not include any footage of Zawahiri speaking.

The audio message restated the urgency of this goal -- "Tell America, to other than Allah we do not kneel" -- but also argued for a dialogue on tactics with other jihadists.

"We are not infallible, but we are human beings and we hit and we miss. We must listen to advice," he admitted, while rejecting Al-Baghdadi's criticism.

"What we want is to manage a conversation between those who are working for Islam -- and the people of jihad a and wisest techniques to bring victory to the relt their forefront -- around the best method and wisest techniques to bring victory to the religion," he said, according to SITE.
PureWow

There was a small royal family reunion last night and theres a brand-new portrait to prove it. Yesterday evening, King Charles and and Queen Consort Camilla hosted a reception dinner to celebrate the sporting athletes who won the gold, silver and bronze medals at the 2020 Tokyo and 2022 Beijing Winter Games. ISABEL INFANTES/AFP via Getty Images And other royal family members decided to join in on the party: Prince Edward (the Earl of Wessex), Princess Anne (the Princess Royal and Charless sist
Amgen Inc. AMGN received encouraging news when a Delaware district court upheld its patents for PCSK9 inhibitor, Repatha, against Sanofi SNY and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. REGN. Amgens share rose close to 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

Amgens shares have declined 10% in 2016. However, this decline compared favorably with a 27.1% drop registered by the Zacks classified Biomed/Genetics industry during this period. The stocks outperformance was backed by consistently strong earnings results as well as regular positive news flow and regulatory updates.

In a surprising decision, the U.S. District Court in Delaware granted Amgen permanent injunction against infringement by Sanofi and Regeneron of two patents owned by the former for Repatha. The decision bans Sanofi and Regeneron from selling Praluent during the term of the two patents, which describe and claim monoclonal antibodies of PCSK9. On the contrary, market expectations were that Sanofi and Regeneron would be asked to pay royalties to Amgen on sales of Praluent.

The Praluents ban could drive sales of Repatha. However, the injunction has been delayed by 30 days to allow the companies time to appeal. Regeneron and Sanofi have said they intend to appeal to a higher court.

In Oct 2014, Amgen filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sanofi and Regeneron in the U.S. District Court of Delaware to prevent the manufacture, use and sale of Praluent. In March, a Delaware jury had ruled in favor of Amgen declaring that the two patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,829,165, and 8,859,741) were valid, and that Sanofi and Regeneron had failed to invalidate them due to the lack of written description and enablement.

We note that both Repatha and Praluent are used to inhibit a protein known as PCSK9, which lowers the liver's ability to remove "bad" cholesterol (LDL-C) from the blood. While both the drugs hit the markets in 2015 within a month, the companies have been working rigorously on securing deals with health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. However, sales of the drugs have been below expectations since launch due to pricing and reimbursement issues.

Story continues

Both Amgen and Regeneron have a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), while Sanofi has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).A better-ranked stock in the health care sector is Cambrex Corporation CBM sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Cambrexs earnings estimates increased 5.2% for 2017 over the last 60 days. The company posted a positive earnings surprise in three of the four trailing quarters, with an average beat of 19.78%. Its share price was up 14.6% in 2016.

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For the cast and crew on David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake, holiday cheer came courtesy of the indie film's star, Andrew Garfield.

After learning that they would be shooting on Christmas Eve, Garfield, who is nominated for a Golden Globe for his work in Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, organized a food truck to drop by the set and surprise his colleagues since they would all be working on the holiday. His pick? Free Range LA, best known for its fried chicken and egg creations.

Garfield's rep didn't respond to a request for comment. Free Range LA chef and founder Jesse Furman tells The Hollywood Reporter that they were "honored" to be asked. "The event for Andrew Garfield was awesome. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food," he says.

Garfield stars in the modern noir crime thriller for A24 opposite Riley Keough along with actors Jimmi Simpson and Topher Grace.

A version of this story first appeared in the Jan. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Read more: 'Awards Chatter' Podcast  Andrew Garfield ('Hacksaw Ridge' and 'Silence')
On January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died suddenly in his sleep at the age of 60. Overlooked now is that fact that the former President was expected to run again for a third term the following year.

Theodore_Roosevelt_in_1918-452

Roosevelt In 1918

Instead, his fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, appeared on the losing 1920 Democratic ballot as the Vice Presidential candidate. Warren Harding, the eventual winner, wasnt in the mind of most Republicans almost two years earlier, when former President Roosevelt was expected to test the presidential third-term tradition for a second time.

Eventually, Franklin Roosevelts four terms in office led to the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, which limited presidential terms in office to two winning elections, or a total of fewer than 10 years in the White House.

In 1912, Roosevelts bitter split with President William Howard Taft, his hand-picked successor, led to the Democrats and Woodrow Wilson taking over the White House for eight years. (Wilson survived in a close re-election bid against Charles Evans Hughes in 1916.)

But with Wilson not expected to test the third-term precedent, all eyes in the Republican Party were on Roosevelt, especially since the rift between Roosevelt and Taft had narrowed.

Newspapers reported that Roosevelts passing would have a deep effect on the Republicans. Even leaders who were most distressed to hear of Col. Roosevelts death could not prevent being drawn into discussions about the possible effect on the present political situation, which everyone agrees will be tremendous, said the Bismarck Tribune. Democratic leaders  continued to regard him as their probably opponent for the presidency.

In his time outside of the White House, Roosevelt had urged for American intervention in World War I and he continued to promote the Progressive agenda. He was also deeply critical of President Wilson and his last magazine articles appeared to be presenting a campaign platform after the Democrats lost their congressional majority.

Story continues

While Roosevelt was hospitalized after the Republican mid-term victory in 1918, he learned that Leonard Wood, his compatriot from the Rough Riders, was possibly entering the next presidential campaign. The magazine articles followed; Roosevelt, visibly perturbed, shared his platform for 1920 and guessed he would have to declare himself sooner than he had intended, wrote Patricia OToole in her Roosevelt biography, When Trumpets Call: Roosevelt After The White House.

On the night before his death, Roosevelt was correcting copy for a Metropolitan magazine article that partly assailed Wilson, when he experienced breathing problems. The next morning he died from what doctors believed was a coronary embolism.

Whether idea that Roosevelt would have run in 1920 is problematic. He had been in ill health after the death of his son, Quentin, in France during the summer of 1918. The late John Allen Gable, a foremost Roosevelt expert and the head of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, believed Roosevelt had been making plans for another presidential run. By 1918 Roosevelt was again the most prominent leader of the Republican party and the odds-on favorite for the nomination in 1920, Gable said, adding that Roosevelt had selected a campaign manager.

In the aftermath of Roosevelts death, the Republicans entered the 1920 convention in Chicago with no clear favorite. Wood and Illinois Governor Frank Louden were deadlocked through eight ballots. Harding was picked as a compromise candidate on the 10th ballot after a series of backroom negotiations.

Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, easily defeated James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt in the 1920 general election, using the anti-Wilson attacks  but also criticizing Roosevelts brand of progressive activism. The progressive philosophy of Roosevelts Square Deal would be put on hold until 1933, when a second Roosevelt occupied the White House.

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President Obama walks to Marine One prior to departure from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., in June. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

President Obama must like long goodbyes.

The two-term Democratic commander-in-chief is bidding farewell to the country in a formal prime-time address on Tuesday, but he has also met with congressional Democrats, published a Harvard Law Review article, invited his Cabinet to publish exit memoranda detailing agency-wide achievements, and done a round of interviews with regional television. Starting Jan. 12, History.com will publish an eight-part oral history of his administration, featuring commentary from Obama and 23 aides, including Vice President Joe Biden. On Friday night, he and first lady Michelle Obama will host a star-studded soiree with celebrities and major donors, the Washington Post reported.

But on Jan. 20, less than an hour after Donald Trump takes the oath of office, the Obamas will play host to a far more exclusive and emotional goodbye at Joint Base Andrews, the home to Air Force One. The hourlong ceremony will be for administration officials  well, for suddenly jobless former administration officials, about to be replaced by Trumps picks.

All appointees are invited to JBA to say farewell to President and Mrs. Obama at a sendoff ceremony, said an email sent to prospective attendees. The event location is indoors but the site is not well heated so we encourage anyone interested in attending to dress warmly.

Weather permitting, the Obamas are expected to arrive at Andrews aboard the green-and-white helicopter known as Marine One while he is president, but which is typically renamed Executive One when it carries a former commander in chief on that final ride.

Obama has announced his long-term plans, to work on criminal justice reform and his My Brothers Keeper foundation to help young men and boys of color and on building the library that will house his presidential papers. He and Michelle Obama are expected to stay in Washington, D.C., at least through the high school graduation of their younger daughter, Sasha, in 2019.

Story continues

President Barack Obama steps off Marine One, upon his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., in November. (Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

His medium-term plans, he said at a town hall in October, focus on recovering from the grueling job of the presidency. I am going to sleep for two weeks, and then I am going to take Michelle on a very nice vacation, he said.

But his short-term plans  where hell go immediately after the sendoff in a Joint Base Andrews hangar  arent clear. Obama has been rumored variously to be planning to jet off on vacation immediately, to be heading to a rented mansion in Washington, or travel to Chicago.

Things were a little more definite when Obamas predecessor left town. Unlike the current president, whose approval ratings are in the mid- to high 50s, George W. Bush was deeply unpopular, his ratings weighed down by the war in Iraq and the economic crisis of 2008.

Bush also held an Andrews hangar event, pulling in about 2,000 former staffers, some of whom described the event to me back then. Others recalled the details this week as I reported this story. The Republican two-termer described himself as thankful, grateful and joyful and looked forward to being Citizen Bush.

I remember joking that we were attending the largest gathering of unemployed people in the nation, considering the fact that we were all jobless when the clock struck 12, said former White House aide Pete Seat. And, no joke, when our paychecks arrived a week later, we were paid for four hours that day. The Constitution means business!

Bush and Laura Bush flew down to Midland, Texas, for a rally with supporters. The former president joked that his wife told me she was excited about me mowing the lawn and taking out the trash  its my new domestic agenda!

Bush, who had always said hed be long dead by the time history rendered a final verdict on his presidency, also declared: When I get home tonight and look in the mirror, I am not going to regret what I see. Except maybe some gray hair.

Former President George W. Bush leaves Washington, D.C., aboard his helicopter on Jan. 20, 2009 for Andrews Air Force Base after the inauguration ceremonies for President Obama. (Photo: Eric Draper/The White House via Getty Images)

If Obama follows tradition, hell leave a handwritten note for Trump in the top drawer of the Resolute Desk, the Oval Office fixture built from the timbers of the British ship of the same name. Hell also take a final spin through the Oval Office. Obama will call a handful of friends, senior aides, former top advisers and world leaders. Bush said goodbye to his press secretary, Dana Perino, with a big kiss on the forehead, which I will never forget, Perino said eight years ago, as she handed out candies in red, white and blue boxes emblazoned with the presidential seal and his signature. Josh Earnest is more likely to get a handshake and a hug.

Barack and Michelle Obama are expected to host Trump and Melania Trump for coffee before the two couples board the armored presidential limousine dubbed The Beast for the drive down to the west steps in front of the Capitol. That is likely to be Obamas final trip in the official motorcade, with its Secret Service SUVs, heavily armed guards, ambulance and platoon of reporters in two vans.

Once the incoming president and outgoing leader depart for the Capitol, the General Services Administration that oversees the White House facilities will shift into high gear  repainting the offices in the West Wing and adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building, recarpeting, redecorating the Oval Office to the incoming presidents specifications.

Its not clear whether Obamas daughters will follow in the footsteps of Bushs twin daughters, who wrote an open letter urging Sasha, then 7, and Malia, then 10, to ignore the slings and arrows of the press and late-night comics. Trumps son Barron is expected to stay in New York City until the end of the school year.

Surround yourselves with loyal friends, Jenna and Barbara wrote. Theyll protect and calm you and join in on some of the fun, and appreciate the history.

Dont worry so much about seeing harsh portrayals of the president in a sketch in a paper or part of a skit on TV, they wrote.

After the note, the coffee, the motorcade, the oath-taking and the hangar, there may be the most private tribute of all. The Bushes flew down to Midland with a club of longtime aides, including some who had stuck with them since the 2000 campaign. On the flight, the former president and first lady watched a slideshow of some of the administrations highlights.
By Rajendra Jadhav and Swati Verma

MUMBAI/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Gold demand in Asia gathered some steam this week on wedding season purchases in India, with prices swinging to a premium there for the first time in over a month, and traders expecting demand to strengthen due to the upcoming Chinese New Year.

"The physical demand in Asia has been very good," said Brian Lan, managing director at Singapore-based gold dealer GoldSilver Central, adding that premiums are also high due to a production shortage.

Dealers in India, the world's second-largest consumer of the metal, were charging a premium of up to $1 an ounce this week over official domestic prices, compared to a discount of up to $4 last week. The domestic price includes a 10 percent import tax.

"Cash supply is improving. Consumers are making purchases for weddings," said Harshad Ajmera, the proprietor of JJ Gold House, a wholesaler in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

In November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes, or 86 percent of the value of cash in circulation, as part of a crackdown on corruption, tax evasion and militant financing.

"Banks and other agencies have reduced imports in the last few weeks. That's why despite moderate demand they could charge a nominal premium this week," said a Mumbai-based dealer with a private bank.

Gold imports in December fell 71 percent from a year ago to 31 tonnes as the cash crunch squeezed demand, said Sudheesh Nambiath, a senior analyst at GFMS, a division of Thomson Reuters.

In China, the world's top gold consumer, gold was sold at a premium of between $17 and $20 an ounce to the global benchmark, against a $20 to $22 premium in the previous week.

Traders are expecting a seasonally strong demand for yellow metal in China due to the upcoming Lunar New Year.

Gold on Friday slipped from the one-month high touched in the previous session on a surge in dollar, although bullion was on track to end the week about 2 percent higher.

Story continues

Among other gold trading centres, bullion was sold at a premium of $1.40 an ounce in Hong Kong and Singapore, nearly unchanged from last week.

Prices in Tokyo, however, were at a discount of $1 per ounce this week.

($1 = 68.00 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in BENGALURU; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
V838 Monocerotis red nova candidate supergiant star nasa hubble esa

Every once in awhile, the stars actually do align  then merge, catastrophically explode, and spray their guts all over space.

Or at least that's the suspected trigger of rare "red novas," so-named for their characteristic red color.

One of the best-studied red novas happened in 2008. The object, called V1309 Scorpii, was a double-star system (also called a binary) measured for over 6 years before it merged and erupted.

But astronomers are desperate to find more such binary systems before they detonate, since watching the cosmic collisions would not only reveal a lot about the evolution of stars and nebulas, but also how space gets seeded with elements necessary for life.

Part of that effort has been a thorough search for binary star systems that look ready to blow.

However, Larry Molnar, an astronomer at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has gone a big step further with a few colleagues: Over the past 2 years, he's claimed not only to have found such a system, but also predicted when it will blow up as a red nova.

"No one has ever seen a star go into this kind of explosion. No other situation has come up where any astronomer has ever been able to say, 'this is a star about to blow up,'" Molnar said in a preview for an upcoming documentary, called "Luminous."

His prognostication is specific enough to make any astrophysicist squirm: Molnar now says the whole thing will go down just 5 years from now.

In fact, according to Molnar's prediction, the stellar outburst should be visible in the night sky without any help from binoculars or a telescope.

"[I]n the lack of viable alternatives we must take seriously the unlikely hypothesis at hand," Molnar told Business Insider in an email.

A dance of death

KIC 9832227 binary star model peanut shape molnar et al

Story continues

The stars in question are a system called KIC 9832227, and they're locked in a dance of death.

In fact, they're so close together that they share each other's million-degree-plasma atmospheres: an object called a "contact" binary.

If you could magically teleport to the system, which is located about 1,700 light years from us amid the constellation Cygnus, it might appear as a brilliantly glowing bowling pin.

But no one was certain that KIC 9832227 was actually a double-star system; all astronomers knew was that its brightness varied over the years. Many types of stars and star systems "pulsate" their brightness in this way, so Molnar and a Calvin College student had to first rule out any doubt that it was two stars.

What they found in 2015 is that it behaved much like V1309 Scorpii  one of the best-known binary systems to unpredictably merge  and that the stars' mutual orbits were closing in.

"Over the past ten years, the period of KIC 9832227 has been getting shorter at a faster and faster rate," Molnar and his team wrote in a research poster about their discovery. "This implies that the stars are orbiting faster and getting closer together."

The team has recently ruled out more "mundane" explanations for what they see, according to a January 7 press release by Calvin College.

Predicting a violent stellar outburst

Cygnus constellation red nova prediction.GIF

By using data from the few known examples, especially V1309 Scorpii, Molnar has calculated the approximate moment that the two stars of KIC 9832227 will collide: in the year 2022, "give or take a year," according to the release.

Molnar said the explosion should increase the brightness of the star system 1,000-fold, to about magnitude 2  roughly as bright as Polaris, the North Star.

If and when the two stars collide, the aftermath might look something like V838 Monocerotis, a star which suddenly flashed in 2002, temporarily becoming 600,000 times brighter than the sun  and the brightest object in the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers aren't certain V838 Monocerotis is actually a red nova, but ever since 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope has kept its wandering eye on the expanding gas and dust of the object.

Researchers in 2006 morphed eight of those Hubble photos to show off the red nova's evolution. This animation shows 4 years compressed into 6 seconds:

Should Molnar's prediction of the merger of KIC 9832227 prove correct, then astronomers will get one of the greatest heads-ups ever to a relatively rare and important event in the evolution of stars.

And being many times closer than a star like V838 Monocerotis, which is located some 20,000 light-years away, KIC 9832227 may also afford among the closest views of a stellar mega-eruption.

"If the star can completely merge, it can release as much energy as the sun would release in its entire lifetime," he said in the teaser video for "Luminous", adding that there's only "a one-in-a-million chance" to catch an event like this.

"Given the percentages of how many systems we have looked at and how unusual this event is," Molnar told Business Insider, "it seems unlikely that we should have found the next red nova so 'easily.'"

NOW WATCH: NASA just released the most accurate map of where Americans can witness a spectacular total solar eclipse this year





More From Business Insider


VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz said on Friday he wanted to ban public servants, including school teachers, from wearing the Islamic headscarf. Kurz, of the Christian Conservative People's Party (OVP), is working on a draft law with Muna Duzdar, a junior minister from the OVP's senior Social Democrat coalition partner who has an Arab family background and is Muslim. If passed by parliament, the nationwide ban would be stricter than laws in France, where only the full body veil is illegal, or Germany, where the highest court in 2015 restricted lawmakers' scope to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf. "Because there (schools), it's about the effect of role models and the influence on young people. Austria is religion-friendly but also a secular state," Kurz said, according to a spokesman. Christian crosses, widespread in staunchly Catholic Austria, should be allowed in classrooms, Kurz said, referring to the country's "historically grown culture". An adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in March companies should be allowed to prohibit staff from wearing the Islamic headscarf but only as part of a general ban on religious and political symbols. Kurz is revamping Austria's integration laws and would also like to include a ban on full body veils and restrictions on the distribution of the Koran by Salafist Muslims, Kurz's spokesman said. A spokeswoman for Austria's most prominent Muslim group, IGGIO, noted that discrimination in the workplace on religious grounds was illegal in Austria and said: "After such a statement, trust is badly shaken." She said such a ban would send the wrong signal, not least because working women wearing the headscarf could help overcome deep "patriarchal prejudices". Duzdar also told Reuters a person cannot be discriminated against in the workplace on the grounds of their religion and said she wanted to wait for a final ECJ ruling on the issue before sending the law to parliament. "I'm open to discussions about this but in reality one cannot pick individual religions. If you discuss religious dress and symbols, you have to speak about all religions. We work on a dialogue with all religious communities," she said. The coalition has not set a deadline for the draft to be finished. In a hardening of her stance on migrants' integration in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel last month called for a ban on full face veils "wherever legally possible". (Reporting By Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Some electronic music producers never get much attention from outside of their niche, but Avalon Emerson seems likely to avoid that fate. In 2016, she put out critically acclaimed records on Whities -- an imprint of Young Turks, which has had great success with wan, highly accessible indie acts like the xx and Chairlift -- and Ghostly International, an eclectic label that has served as a home for dance producers with indie-rock appeal (Matthew Dear) and instrumental rockers with No. 1 records (Tycho).

These outfits, which are hard to reduce to one sound but consistently put out music that finds an audience across different pools of listeners, are well matched with Emerson. "My style of production and what I'm interested in are constantly changing," she told Billboard Dance over Skype from her apartment in Berlin. "My records sound weirdly different from record to record."

On January 7th, Emerson returns to San Francisco, where she first began to DJ and produce dance music, for a gig at Public Works. (She follows that with a gig at Far Away in L.A. on the 14th.) When she moved to the city in 2009, she was already experienced with recording and using editing programs - she had been helping her friends' bands record in her garage in Arizona as a teen. In San Francisco, "I lived in this quite big communal warehouse thing where a bunch of international students and people from all over lived," Emerson explained. "We would throw some parties and I would DJ there and make edits of songs which turned into original productions." During the day, she worked in San Francisco's start-up world.

Two and a half years ago, feeling "a little bit done with San Francisco," Emerson moved to Berlin; that year she also released her first single on the label Icee Hot. "Pressure" is a statement, a decision to kick open the door rather than knock politely: it's blistering and blown-out, full of tightly clipped vocal samples and a clangorous, glinting melody. It came paired with "Quoi!," which offered a more festive alternative to the black-eye-inducing "Pressure." Tuff City Kids, the highly regarded duo of Gerd Janson and Philip Lauer, contributed remixes.

Looking back, Emerson's move to Berlin seems inspired. "I had more friends out here than either L.A. or New York, the other places I was thinking of going to," the producer said. "Berlin gives me access to Europe, which I hadn't really explored at all." That access, combined with a steady stream of releases -- two more on Spring Theory in 2014, one on the Dresden-based label Shtum in 2015, and a pair of records in 2016 -- has helped with her rapid growth: this year, she finally left her day job to focus full-time on music. "I had to quit," she explained. "I had turned down some opportunities. I was kind of going crazy doing two gigs a weekend and then being at stand-up [developer parlance for the morning meeting] at 10 a.m. on Monday."

In March, a couple months before Emerson walked away from her nine-to-five, she released Whities 006 on Whities. Emerson offered a no-frills description of connecting with Nic Tasker, who runs the Young Turks imprint. "He just emailed me saying, 'I love your stuff, do you have any demos?' I did, I sent it to him, and that was it."

But the results were significantly more dramatic -- a slew of positive reviews and interview requests. "You always listen to your music and think, 'this one's great, this is my best record,' and then it doesn't do that hot, so I try and not to expect anything when I'm putting out a record," Emerson said. But she had an inkling that the songs on Whities 006 might be well received from her DJ gigs: "Before I put it out and before it was a final master, people would come up to me and ask me what 'The Frontier' was or the B-side, '2000 Species of Cacti.'" Justin Carter, who DJs the popular Mister Saturday Night parties in New York City and co-runs the accompanying record label, used just one word for "2000 Species of Cacti" in his recent year-end favorites list: "Transcendent."

The songs that came out on Narcissus in Retrograde in October were already done by the time Whities arrived, and they tend to be more groove-focused, which is immediately apparent in the bounding bassline of the opener, "Natural Impasse." "Dystopian Daddy" echoes canonical Detroit productions like those from Galaxy 2 Galaxy, a melding of serene cool and jittery momentum. But there's no time to settle into a stupor: the next track, "Why Does It Hurt," curdles with jets of grubby distortion.

Emerson has expressed an interest in putting together an album, but she's wary of making what she calls "a DJ/producer/dance-music-person-feels-like-it's-the-right-time-in-their-career-to-release-an-LP LP." "I would like to exhaust more of the short-format thing first," she added. "I'm having more fun creating stuff from the bottom up. I have a more clear view of what I want to make." That's exciting for listeners, regardless of how they end up hearing it.
Symantec Corporation SYMC is one of the technology companies that demonstrated remarkable share price performance in the last six months. The stock has surged roughly 20.6%, outperforming the Zacks categorized Computer-Software industrys gain of 12% in the same time frame.

Whats Driving the Stock?

We believe that the companys restructuring initiatives, which include divestment of certain assets and acquisitions, have reinstated investors confidence in the stock. Notably, over the last several quarters, Symantecs top and bottom line were under pressure due to persistent weakness in PC sales, which particularly hurt its core Norton Anti-virus software business. Apart from this, intensifying competition from Palo Alto Networks PANW, FireEye Inc. FEYE and Check Point Software CHKP eroded its market share in the enterprise segment.

To counter the downside, the company singularly focused on restructuring its business. In doing so, on Jan 29, 2016, Symantec closed the sale of the Veritas business to Carlyle Group for $7.4 billion. We believe that the deal provided Symantec with much needed funds to continue expanding its product portfolio as well as its presence in the fast growing markets.

Symantec also completed the acquisition of Blue Coat, which will enable it to reduce its dependence on the PC market and strengthen its position in the enterprise security space. Revenues from the enterprise security segment are now expected to contribute 62% to the companys top line.

We expect these restructuring initiatives and acquisitions to contribute significantly to this cybersecurity stocks overall growth.

It should be noted that the company has posted impressive results in back-to-back quarters. For the last reported quarter, the company posted in-line earnings while revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. We were also encouraged by the companys overall performance as it exceeded the guidance on all metrics.

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Further, Symantecs guidance for the full year as well as third quarter were encouraging wherein it expects strong revenue and margin improvements.

Going ahead, investment in growth areas such as Enterprise Backup, Storage Management and Security businesses are expected to boost Symantecs long-term prospects. Moreover, restructuring initiatives and synergies from acquisitions are expected to support its bottom line.

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By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladeshi police shot dead two Islamist militants on Friday in a gunfight in Dhaka, including a prime suspect in the killing of 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, in a cafe in the capital last year. Nurul Islam Marjan, 30, a commander of a splinter group of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was killed along with another suspected militant, Saddam Hossain, 35, the chief of Dhaka's counter-terrorism police, Monirul Islam, said. Marjan was on a police wanted list for his role in the attack on the cafe last July, which raised alarm over the rising threat of Islamist militancy and cast a shadow over foreign investment in the poor Muslim-majority country. Hossain was a "leader of killers in most of the sensitive killings in the northern region including a Japanese citizen", Home Minister Asaduzzamn Khan said. Kunio Hoshi, 65, of Japan, was attacked in 2015 by unidentified assailants in Rangpur district, 335 km (210 miles) north of Dhaka and died on the way to hospital. Attacks on foreigners are rare in Bangladesh. But it has seen a rising tide of Islamist violence over recent years, in which online critics of religious militancy have been hacked to death. So far police have hunted down and killed at least 40 suspected militants linked to the cafe attack. Police have attributed several attacks over the past two years to JMB, which says it is affiliated to Islamic State although the government insists Islamic State has no presence in Bangladesh. In September, police arrested Marjan's wife, Shaila Afrin Prioyti, along with another two suspected female militants in Dhaka. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Indian banks' loans rose 5.1 percent in the two weeks to Dec. 23 from a year earlier, while deposits rose 15.2 percent, the Reserve Bank of India's weekly statistical supplement showed on Friday.

Outstanding loans rose 89.40 billion rupees ($1.31 billion) to 73.48 trillion rupees in the two weeks to Dec. 23. Non-food credit rose 38.00 billion rupees to 72.43 trillion rupees, while food credit rose 51.40 billion rupees to 1.05 trillion rupees.

Bank deposits fell 750.80 billion rupees to 105.16 trillion rupees in the two weeks to Dec. 23.

Source text: (https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=39182)

($1 = 67.9869 Indian rupees)

((India Headline News Team; +91 80 6749 1310))
If Barack Obama grows tired of trying to rebuild the wounded Democratic party after leaving office, as he has signaled, there's always money to be made in digital music. The president is said to have joked "I'm still waiting for my job at Spotify" while speaking with former Swedish ambassador Mark Brzezinski at the White House this week, according to the diplomat's wife, podcast host and writer Natalia Brzezinski.

On Instagram, Natalia gave a "word for word" account of her husband's chat with his former boss. "I loved visiting you in Stockholm, it was my favorite trip," he said, referring to his 2013 trip there. "I plan to go back there really soon." He went on to joke about the Spotify gig, riffing that Daniel Ek and company would want him on board "Cuz' I know y'all loved my playlist."

(Mark Brzezinski is the son of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the brother of MSNBC morning host Mika Brzezinski.")

Obama's 2016 Summer playlist for Spotify included contemporary tracks from Leon Bridges, Janelle Monae and Edward Sharpe, as well as classics by Nina Simone, the Beach Boys and Charles Mingus. In October, he dropped a playlist for the gym and he had another one back in 2012 during his campaign for re-election.

Since Donald Trump's surprise win over Hillary Clinton, Obama has been talking about his role in politics going forward. At his last year-end press conference, Obama -- who is staying in D.C. until youngest daughter Sasha finishes high school -- said he'll work to heal his party and find the "next generation" of leaders across all fields.

"With respect to my priorities when I leave, it is to build that next generation of leadership; organizers, journalists, politicians. I see them in America, I see them around the world, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who are just full of talent, full of idealism," he said. "And the question is how do we link them up? How do we give them the tools for them to bring about progressive change? And I want to use my presidential center as a mechanism for developing that next generation of talent."
"It's because I was always fascinated by gender discrimination," says Barbra Streisand when asked about her notorious philanthropic tendencies among an intimate L.A. audience of 200 on Thursday night (Jan. 5). "When I talked about wanting to be in control [in my early years] I remember the response, 'What do you mean you? You're a woman!' When I directed Yentl a piece ran that said that women should stay in their place. What? That's a big factor in why Hillary Clinton wasn't elected. There are still a lot of people -- men and women -- who just can't see a woman in charge. And now look what we've got..."

Streisand knows what it is to challenge societal preconceptions about gender, about appearance, about creed. As this genuine superstar is introduced tonight inside the Clive Davis Theater of L.A.'s Grammy Museum, the list of accolades attributed to her sounds excessive. We're told she's an eight-time Grammy winner, nominated again at the upcoming 59th Awards in February for her latest album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. We're informed that she's a recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, that she's four times inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame, and also winner of the Grammy Legend Award, which has only ever been bestowed upon 15 artists. Then there's her other accolades including the feat that she's the only artist to win an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony, a Golden Globe. And she's the only artist to have No. 1 albums in six consecutive decades. It's staggering. But as Streisand enters the stage for a conversation with the museum's executive director Bob Santelli, you realize it's not intentionally excessive on her part. Actually it's a well-earned byproduct of the necessary feats this self-made, drama-obsessed female upstart from New York had to undertake in order to be taken seriously.

"I was known on the block as the kid who had no father but had a good voice! That was my MO. I knew I had a good voice." Streisand admits that singing was her only path to Hollywood. "I couldn't get a job as an actress," she told Grammy Museum executive director Bob Santelli. Describing acting as "an escape from my dreary little world", Streisand recalls a meeting with the casting director for producer David Susskind. She was trying to get a walk-on role playing a beatnik. "You don't have to act good or bad for a walk-on, you just have to look the part. I said, 'Do I look like a beatnik? I could be Sarah Bernhardt or the lousiest actor but I'm wearing black tights so what does it matter?' Of course I never got the callback." The room falls silent as she contemplates the key to a drive that never relented despite so much rejection. "It's a combination of confidence and enormous self doubt. You're always afraid that you're not good enough but you know you have the vision. You can see yourself doing it and you have to make it happen."

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Tonight is the first 2017 event for the museum's annual public programmes series and all proceeds go towards funding music programmes for underprivileged youth in L.A., which speaks to Streisand's never-ending passion for charity and politics. The audience of die-hard fans and close friends of Streisand's (including husband Josh Brolin and executive producer Jay Landers) laugh, sigh and clap during the 74-year-old's trips down memory lane, taking in stories of her early Brooklyn years, her first forays into film, her directorial feats and her relationship today with touring. She enters and exits to standing ovations. She wears all black. She talks with that New York matter-of-fact swagger that never gets too excited. There's no BS with Barbra Streisand.

Beginning with her latest album, she talks about taking a director's approach in the studio with the likes of Jamie Foxx, Seth MacFarlane and Melissa McCarthy, revealing that they were all intimidated to get in the studio with her. "The first thing Melissa McCarthy said was, 'I can't sing you know!' And I said, 'It doesn't matter!'"

Moving onto her portrayal in the media early on she admits at being baffled by critics who would describe her as "kooky". "Just because I could get a great dress for five dollars?!" she jibes. She offers an anecdote about going to a couch store in Detroit and falling in love with a damask burgundy fabric. She bought a few yards to make a dress with it. Recalling the name of the store's owner, she invited him to one of her most recent shows. He's 95 years-old now.

Streisand's stories are on the tip of her tongue at the moment because she's writing that long-awaited book, finally committing her life to paper with the aid of journals that go back 25 to 30 years. "It's really tough," she says admitting that one of the only reasons she's turned to writing is because there's no money to continue making the films she so wants to make. "I wasn't interested in the money [in the beginning]. I don't even know what I got paid. I just cared about artistic control and I still do."

Throughout the conversation, she repeatedly professes to being lazy. She only likes to do a maximum of four vocal takes ("I get so tired of listening to myself"). She doesn't care for her voice ("I try to do some vocal exercises while I'm rehearsing but it's so boring"). She refuses to sing at house parties, and definitely doesn't sing in the shower ("why would I sing in the shower?!"), preferring only to release her gift in the studio. "When I'm in the house I don't sound very good. I always tell people, Don't ask me to sing happy birthday!"

Despite working on the book, Streisand rejects any joy for nostalgia. She never listens to old albums or returns to the likes of her directorial efforts Yentl and Prince Of Tides. "Oh god no!" She remembers buying a Billie Holiday record in a supermarket ad being impressed by Maria Callas growing up but that's about it. After her breakthrough (which came during the time of the British Invasion) she was disengaged with pop. "I didn't get The Beatles until much later. I was listening to Johnny Mathis!" Even today, she doesn't play music in the house. This past New Years Eve was spent with Woody Allen. "I love him," she says. She couldn't stand the music playing in the room because it distracted from the conversation and asked that it be turned down. "Music is work to me on the one hand. On the other hand it's everything. My mother had Alzheimer's. She didn't know who I was but she remembered melodies. That's powerful."

There were 27 years during which Streisand didn't perform following a performance that turned into an ordeal in Central Park in 1967 during Israel's Six Day War. "Omar Sharif was banned from going to Egypt because he was performing with a Jewess and that was scary. I forgot the lyrics to two of my songs. It left a big imprint on me." As a result she wouldn't charge to sing any more, and instead did fundraisers exclusively. "I don't get stage fright now. Gratitude is my attitude. I'm grateful that I can still sing. But there'll always be that feeling of: what'll I say next where am I now?" Hence her use of a teleprompter at her latest concert at Staples Center across the street just six months ago.

At the moment she only has two more dates in New York in the calendar: one in Nassau County, the other around the TriBeCa Film Festival. She wavers on any questions surrounding future tours. On the subject of another album she teases that she thinks her next one could be a solo record. Does she enjoy performing again? "I wouldn't say enjoy. I challenged myself to get over my fear." Streisand may insist she's lazy but it seems she protests that one a little too much.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  Wildlife officials say it might be time for a toast now that a once-rare bat important to the pollination of plants used to produce tequila is making a comeback.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday proposed removing the lesser long-nosed bat from the endangered species list. Mexico delisted the bat in 2015, and if approved in the U.S., this would be the first bat ever removed from the nation's list of threatened and endangered species.

Federal officials said it has taken 30 years of conservation efforts by biologists and volunteers in Mexico and the U.S. as well as tequila producers in Mexico to rebuild a healthy population.

There were once thought to be fewer than 1,000 lesser long-nosed bats in 14 known roosts throughout the region. Now, there are about 200,000 of the nectar-feeding animals and dozens of roost sites.

Jim deVos, assistant director of wildlife management at the Arizona Game and Fish Department, called the proposed delisting a great achievement.

"Many entities in both the U.S. and Mexico have worked tirelessly toward recovery and this announcement stands as testimony that dedicated efforts and sound management practices can lead to recovery of endangered species," he said in a statement.

The flying mammal ranges from Mexico to southern Arizona and New Mexico. It depends on the nectar of agaves, cactuses and other flowering plants in the desert region.

In Mexico, tequila producers who rely on agaves are integrating more harvest and cultivation practices in recognition that the bats are key pollinators. Some are even marketing "bat-friendly tequila."

In southern Arizona, residents for a decade have monitored night-time bat use of hummingbird feeders. This provided biologists with a clearer understanding of migration timing and allowed for the opportunity to capture bats and affix radio transmitters that aided in finding roost sites.

Federal land managers in New Mexico and Arizona, including at the U.S. Army's Fort Huachuca, are including forage plants such as agaves, saguaros and other cactuses in their resource management plans to help the species.

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Limiting human access to caves with roost sites and abandoned mines in the U.S. also has benefited bat populations, officials said.

Recovery efforts also have included education aimed at changing attitudes about bats and improving identification of different species. Historically, the lesser long-nosed bat was a victim of early campaigns to control vampire bats over rabies concerns and their effects on livestock.

According to a recent assessment, the Fish and Wildlife Service says the threats to the lesser long-nosed bat have been eliminated or reduced to the point that the bat has recovered and no longer meets the definition of an endangered or threatened species.

Biologists also considered the potential effects that climate change may have on the "nectar trail" that the bats follow as they migrate. They say the bat is flexible and adaptive enough to remain viable under changing conditions.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is taking comments on the proposal through March 7. A final decision will follow.

A species of buckwheat once found in only one spot in southeastern New Mexico also has been proposed for delisting. The agency pointed to the discovery of additional populations of Gypsum wild-buckwheat and efforts to limit grazing and off-roading in the areas where the plant is found.
Bella Thorne might be more obsessed with glitter than anyone weve seen. (Photo: Getty Images)

Have you heard of glitter-strobing, the trend of applying glitter to your face the way you would use highlighter? Apparently actress Bella Thorne has, and shes taking it to a whole other level.

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, 19-year-old Thorne posted a pic of herself with glitter on the tip of her nose and down her entire chest, and the next day on Snapchat, she posted a series of shots and videos of herself with even more of the sparkly stuff spread across her cheekbones, eyelids, and collarbone. In one video, shes walking on the beach in the Bahamas in a black, strappy bikini. Glitter girl, the teen captioned one shot. And she captioned her Instagram pic, In love with da glit glit.

In love with da glit glit pic.twitter.com/lSHe1jZv7X  bella thorne (@bellathorne) January 3, 2017

The girl cant seem to get enough of being glittery, and silver appears to be her color of choice. In November, though, Thorne wore silver glitter in her hair instead of on her skin to the American Music Awards (though for her actual hair color, she opted for red and neon green). And in October, Thorne debuted glitter, this time pink, on her brows  entire glitter brows. And we have to admit, they looked good.

The Internet has had mixed reactions to Thornes glitter obsession, though. One Twitter user wrote, Bella thorne covered in glitter n playing w baby pigs in the ocean half naked is the level of freedom i aspire too [sic], while another loved how cute the look was. But others were baffled. Someone explain to me the point of throwing glitter on your body when you are at the beach. I need to have a talk with Bella Thorne, one person tweeted. Another wrote, why does @bellathorne put glitter on her nose? i need to know.

bella thorne covered in glitter n playing w baby pigs in the ocean half naked is the level of freedom i aspire too  chloemarigold (@chloemarigoldr) January 3, 2017

Someone explain to me the point of throwing glitter on your body when you are at the beach. I need to have a talk with Bella Thorne.  huntzmore francisca (@sethcoheen) January 4, 2017

But Thorne may not be the first celeb to bring body glitter back. A year ago, that was actually attributed to Gigi Hadid, who also takes a shine to the product but in a much more subtle way. And, of course, who can forget those dramatic shots Beyonce posted to her website prior to her performance at the 2014 VMAs.

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So where exactly is body glitter coming back from? The 90s, like just about every trend these days! Bustle published an ode to the sparkly cosmetic back in May, and gave shout-outs to glitter OGs such as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears: Back in the mid to late 90s, we used to see celebrities like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera looking like dazzling beacons of light covered in body glitter from head to toe. But since then, the appreciation for sparkling skin has just simply deteriorated.

But everything old is new again. Could body glitter be the new choker? Something tells us this trend has a bright future.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.


From Donald Trump's stunning presidential upset to the untimely deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, 2016 was a year that many Hollywood insiders have been keen to move past. But what does the future hold? THR commissioned readings for 2017 from celebrity psychic Thomas John, tarot card reader Angie Banicki and Astrology Zone founder Susan Miller.

President Trump's First Year

THOMAS JOHN, PSYCHIC Donald Trump will be tested a lot, especially in his first year, by military action from a foreign country. We are going to see few changes on the immigration front: No steps will be made to build a wall, and I don't see big changes in immigration numbers, though he will return to this agenda in late 2017 and early 2018. The biggest controversy will be the Supreme Court, which truly will be his lasting legacy. I see him making two replacements in his first term. But Reince Priebus won't last as chief of staff. Overall, by the end of 2017, Trump's approval ratings will be very high. He will be unconventionally close to the American people, setting up town hall meetings and gatherings so people feel they have access to him. Conflicts of interest will be a major problem, with various instances where he will support legislation that seems to be in collusion with his business interests.

Will Melania Live at 1600 Penn.?

ANGIE BANICKI, TAROT READER Melania Trump feels completely trapped and does not want to move to the White House. The cards first show the eight of swords but then show she will eventually attend to her duties as wife and mother and move in.

Michelle Obama's Future

JOHN First lady Michelle Obama will write a very successful and powerful memoir. She will launch a lifestyle line and donate proceeds to charities. I do not see her in politics. She will stay very committed to her foundations and continue her work with Let Girls Learn. Her legacy as a first lady will last for a very long time.

Story continues

Read more: Oscars: Why the Academy Often Gets Best Picture So, So Wrong

Hillary's Next Steps

BANICKI The cards show the nine of swords for Hillary Clinton - a woman crying in bed. She still is feeling wronged by the election and is allowing herself time to heal. Clinton has a lot of options, though, and is really weighing them. The cards show that she is going to get back out there. She's not going anywhere, people!

Tom Cruise's The Mummy: Hit?

SUSAN MILLER, ASTROLOGER Tom Cruise has a really good chart - one of the most exciting this year. You will hear news about him on Feb. 10, Aug. 7 and Aug. 21 - all pivotal times. He's due for a big resurgence, so his movies look to be hits this year. His whole world opens up like a juicy coconut in October. There will be real estate news in August as well. Expect a move, or perhaps he will sell one home or buy another.

JOHN I sense success in this - it will lead to other movies in a similar theme: Bride of Frankenstein, Invisible Man, etc. I think it might be one of the highest-grossing films of 2017.

How Will Spider-Man Do?

JOHN It will do well.

BANICKI Cards show that this movie is fun but is up against some really great competition. It won't do as well as expected. I'd change the release date if I were the producers.

Read more: Studios' 2017 Forecast: Big Bets, Franchise Fears and Executive Intrigue

AT&T-Time Warner Merger

JOHN I feel like this is going to be blocked and not actually happen.

BANICKI Yes to AT&T and Time Warner merger. A fair contract will come together. It's going to take time, but the Justice and Magician cards show it definitely will happen in 2017. Everyone will need to have patience. Cards are also showing me another surprise merger in 2017.

Hollywood Couples

JOHN I don't see Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie back together, but they will reconcile and co-parent. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will split, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom will split, and Beyonce and Jay Z will split.

MILLER Angelina was unhappy at a time when we thought she was happy. She will recover through 2017. Brad will have a much more delayed reaction to the divorce, processing the aftermath through 2020. I see great sadness, much more for him than for her.

And the Oscar Goes to?

JOHN Moonlight

BANICKI La La Land and Moonlight will get awards but not best picture. Based on my channeling, we know the winner will be about the past, be inspirational and will have some pain. Doesn't feel like Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, Silence. My cards say Fences.

This story first appeared in the Jan. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
She may have finally put an end to her contentious divorce, but Bethenny Frankels legal drama is far from over: The Real Housewives of New York City star is suing her former lawyers for at least $2 million in damages.

According to the lawsuit obtained by PEOPLE, Frankel, 46, purchased a $5 million apartment in New York City in 2011. She retained attorney Jamie Andrew Schreck and his firm to represent her in her purchase of the property.

The suit alleges Frankel wanted the property to be held in her own name, but her husband at the time Jason Hoppy allegedly requested that the lawyers place the residence in a trust and the star obliged.

Frankel alleges that the trust the lawyers set up granted Hoppy a 50 percent interest in the premises and the right to occupy the premises and not pay any rent  despite the fact that Frankel purchased the apartment with her own funds.

The suit also claims Frankels lawyers prepared the trust agreement without discussing the terms with her or seeking any direction from her, nor did they review the terms of the agreement with her or advise her of any potential risks.

Schreck has not yet responded to PEOPLEs request for comment.

As for why Frankel signed the documents agreeing to the trust in the first place, a source close familiar with the lawsuit tells PEOPLE Frankel believed, based on her communication with her husband, that the trust was to maintain privacy given her public recognition.

RELATED VIDEO: Bethenny Frankel Says Divorce Has Turned Her Into a Survivor

Frankel finalized her divorce from Hoppy in July 2016. The settlement came after nearly four years of intense negotiations, many surrounding the N.Y.C. apartment  which Frankel now claims could have been avoided were it not for the trust the lawyers set up.

In the new lawsuit, Frankel alleges her rights to the apartment were impaired by the trust agreement, causing her to expend substantial legal fees and other expenses in her divorce proceedings that were otherwise avoidable.

Frankel is suing the lawyers for at least $2 million in damages for alleged legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duties, falsely acknowledging documents and breach of contract.




By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin plunged by as much as 12 percent on Friday after China's central bank urged investors to take a rational and cautious approach to investing in the digital currency, which is on track for its heaviest two-day drop in two years.

Bitcoin had been on a tear until Wednesday, gaining more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit around $1,139 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163.

But the web-based digital currency, which has shown an intriguing inverse correlation to the Chinese yuan in recent months, plunged as the yuan soared on Thursday, falling as much as 20 percent at one point.

It continued that fall on Friday, with its losses accelerating after the central bank's warning.

It fell as low as $871, down almost a quarter from its peak on Wednesday, before recovering to about $900 by 1455 GMT. That still left it down 10 percent on the day and on track for its worst two-day performance since January 2015.

The Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) noted in a statement that bitcoin prices had shown abnormal fluctuations in recent days, and said those investing in it should do so carefully, with awareness of the currency's volatility.

The PBOC's words carried echoes of its 2013 warning that financial institutions should steer clear of the digital currency, which sparked a $300 slide in bitcoin.

The PBOC also repeated on Friday its 2013 view that bitcoin is not a currency and could therefore not be circulated as a real currency in the market.

For full statement click: http://beijing.pbc.gov.cn/beijing/132005/3230072/index.ht

"This is the Chinese authorities saying: we're watching," said Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency data analysis website Cryptocompare. "The relative size of the bitcoin market is minor, but trading has reached up to $10 billion a day on the bitcoin-yuan pairs."

"The full meaning of the government's comments aren't 100 percent clear, but restrictions and regulation of trading is one avenue that could affect volumes and therefore price."

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Hayter said trading between the yuan and bitcoin had made up about 98 percent of the market for the past six months, according to his analysis. Because there are no trading fees on Chinese exchanges, it is much easier to get in and out of trades and therefore creates a higher trading volume, he said.

Bitcoin can be used for moving money across the globe quickly and anonymously, and operates outside the control of any central authority.

That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as in China, and also to investors who are worried about a devaluation in their currency - one of the reasons often cited for bitcoin's surge in 2016. While the yuan fell 7 percent, its worst year since 1994, bitcoin outperformed all other currencies, with a 125 percent climb.

But many bitcoin experts say Chinese trading volumes are overstated and attribute sharp moves to speculation by, for example, U.S.-based hedge funds.

"VOLATILE MARKETS"

The volatile trading prompted officials from the PBOC's Shanghai branch on Friday to meet representatives of a major bitcoin trading platform in China, BTCC.

"On January 6 the People's Bank of China Business Management Department and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Financial Affairs jointly met with the relevant regulatory authorities of the 'currency network'," the PBOC said in the statement.

BTCC said in a post on Twitter: "BTCC regularly meets with (the) PBOC and we work closely with them to ensure we are operating in accordance with the laws and regulations of China."

"All of our users should be aware of the current policies on virtual goods as well as the risks involved in trading in volatile markets," another Tweet read.

Eric Gu, a blockchain expert and founder of ViewFin, a Chinese blockchain start-up, said the PBOC meets the country's major bitcoin exchanges regularly but had previously never made such meetings public.

But recent volatility has increased risks and has triggered fears that the market could be used as a channel for money laundering, he said.

"Previously, bitcoin trading volume was small, and money laundering was not possible in such a market," said Gu. "Now, the volume is up ... everyday, there are tens of billions of yuan worth of bitcoin changing hands. Volume is still (comparatively)small, but big enough to make the central bank worry."

(Additional reporting by Yiming Shen in Shanghai, and Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao in Beijing; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
The bodies of a family of four from Arizona were discovered in the wreckage of a plane crash Tuesday in the mountainous northern region of Payson, Arizona. The family, which had two teenage daughters, was making their annual holiday ski trip to Telluride, Colorado, when their small plane crashed for reasons that remain unknown, Gila County Sheriff Adam Shepherd said.

Authorities had been searching for the plane since it had been reported missing Monday night. A search team that had been working with a helicopter supplied by Civil Air Patrol spotted debris from the single-engine Cessna 210 plane in the geographically arduous Mogollon Rim, according to local reports on Jan. 4. Police had been able to pinpoint the familys location by tracking one of their cell phones.

The search team on the ground had to hike for almost an hour in order to reach the crash site.

"The terrain up there is just really super rugged," Shepherd told local reporters. "It's pretty rough, steep, straight up and down."

The sheriffs office was able to identify the family and the plane by matching the number found on its tail in the crash site with Federal Aviation Administration records that indicated it belonged to Eric Falbe, the 44-year-old father.

The other family members have been identified as his wife Carrie, 31, and his two children from a previous marriage; Tori, 14, and Skylar, 12. Their bodies had all been recovered from the remote mountainside 14 miles north of Payson. Payson is located roughly 90 miles northwest of Phoenix, Arizona.

Eric Falbe was an attorney who largely dealt with real estate mediation cases. His law partner, Michael Maledon, confirmed that the family had indeed been on the fatal plane ride.

"For those that worked with Eric, he will be remembered as a truly exceptional businessman and lawyer," Maledon told local reporters in an email. "But beyond Erics professional accomplishments, Eric and Carrie will be remembered for their passion for life and warmth toward others."

Story continues

An unidentified man, who is assumed to the grandfather, told authorities in Scottsdale, Arizona, he hadnt heard from his daughter or son-in-law or either of the two girls since their plane took off for Telluride, according to Associated Press Tuesday.

The school the two girls had been attending released a statement offering their condolences for the Falbe family and offered any students grief counselors to combat their emotional instabilities following the news.

Related Articles
- By Mayank Marwah





Boeing (BA) announced an order win for 80 737 Max 8s on Wednesday. The order, valued at $8.8 billion, will help the aerospace behemoth near its annual order win target.

Investors are closely watching the net order inflow as it reflects Boeing's future revenue generation and cash flows. The majority of the company's revenue is recognized at the time of delivery of an aircraft. Here's a closer look at the order book of Boeing and a comparison with year-to-date deliveries.





Order in details

Boeing bagged total orders for 80 737 Max 8s. Of this, Boeing received firm orders for 75 737 Max 8s from General Electric's (GE) commercial aircraft leasing wing, GE Capital Aviation Services. It should be noted General Electric is a supplier of engines for the Boeing airplanes. The order from the company's leasing wing is valued at $8.25 billion at list price.

This contract win takes the total 737 Max order count to 170 planes for GE Capital Aviation Services, which according to Boeing is higher than other leasing companies. The commercial aircraft financing and leasing wing of General Electric presently operates a fleet of 1,950 airplanes.

Boeing's Commercial Airplanes Vice President Brad McMullen said, "We appreciate the confidence GECAS has in the 737 Max and look forward to seeing the airplanes placed with carriers all over the world."

The remaining orders for five 737 Max 8 came from SmartWings, leading airline operating company in the Czech Republic. This order is worth $550 million at list price. Typically, aerospace majors give huge discounts on the list price to promote sales of large orders. Aircraft valuation firm Avitas says that a minimum discount of 54% is offered based on the market pricing data.

Boeing has bagged orders for more than 3,400 units for the 737 Max. The first 737 Max is slated to hit the world's runways in the first half of this year. The current order win has bolstered Boeing's order tally for 2016. The Chicago-headquartered aircraft manufacturer expects to deliver 745 to 750 aircraft for the year.

Story continues

Order vs. delivery

Boeing clinched net orders for 536 jetliner sales last year. That compares with the company's target delivery of 745 to 750 planes. The world's largest plane maker delivered 681 planes through November. The book-bill ratio stands at 0.79, implying that so far Boeing has delivered more planes than received orders during the year. The aero major would ideally want the ratio to be around at least 1.

The overall demand for wide bodies has been sluggish in the recent past, impacting Boeing's order intake. The aircraft maker received orders for 17 747s, 26 767s and 17 777s through Dec. 20, 2016. In fact even the 787 Dreamliner failed to boost the order book. The composite-bodied aircraft racked orders for only 70 units through Dec. 20.

Boeing's current backlog is expected to keep its production lines busy for seven years. However, it should be noted that the majority of the orders are for its narrow-body 737 family. Orders for the more lucrative aircraft such as the 777 family are diminishing.

Boeing is expected to release its total order tally for 2016 Friday. Analysts believe it will be short of the company's expectation of maintaining a book-bill ratio of 1. The American behemoth earlier guided to record sales of as many jets as it delivered during 2016. However, even after sealing the last two orders, Boeing is way behind its initial target.

Disclosure: I do not hold any position in the stocks mentioned in this article.

Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






Om Puri, the prolific Bollywood actor who also starred in several British and Hollywood films, has died. He was 66.

Indian media reported Puri's close friend, filmmaker Ashok Pandit, confirming the actor had died from a heart attack. Pandit later took to Twitter to pass on his condolences.

Over a career that stretched almost half a century, Puri starred in over 100 films. His craggy features and penchant for taking unusual roles made Puri a critics' favorite, and he gave award-winning performances in the films Aakrosh (1980) and Arohan (1982). In recent years he had roles in more mainstream Bollywood films like Singh Is Kinng (2008) and Don 2 (2011).

As well as working in Bollywood and several of the regional Indian film industries, Puri starred in many British films later in his career, most notably 1997's My Son the Fanatic, the hit comedy East is East (1999) and the Steve Coogan comedy The Parole Officer (2001). Puri also had a cameo in the Oscar-winning film Gandhi and worked on television shows Jewel in the Crown and The Canterbury Tales. Though not a citizen, Puri was awarded an honorary OBE in 2004 for his services to British film.

Puri also appeared in a number of Hollywood films including City of Joy (1992), Wolf (1994), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) and notably played Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq in the 2007 Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War. In 2014, he appeared alongside Helen Mirren in the comedy The Hundred-Foot Journey.

Born in the northern Indian state of Haryana to a Punjabi family in 1950, Puri would later attend the Film and Television Institute of India as well as National School of Drama, where he was a classmate of actor Naseeruddin Shah. In addition to the honorary OBE, Puri was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India.

Read more: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2016

The Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi and a number of Bollywood stars took to Twitter to express their shock and sadness at Puri's passing.

Story continues

The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films.

- PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 6, 2017

#OmPuri lent dignity to d medium he worked for. Whether it was stage, TV or cinema. He elevated status of the projects was associated with.

- Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

Cannot believe #OmPuri ji is no more .. spoke to him a few days back .. such an artist had the privilege of working with him recently .. RIP

- Huma Qureshi (@humasqureshi) January 6, 2017

The end of an era .... The legacy lives on.. RIP #OmPuri

- PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) January 6, 2017

Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films...heartfelt condolences to the family. #RIP

- Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 6, 2017

Will miss you Omji ..will miss you..will miss you.#Ompuri

- Sunny Deol (@IAMSUNNYDEOL) January 6, 2017

Shocked beyond words to learn that #OmPuri ji is no more. Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. RIP #HugeLoss pic.twitter.com/REq9vDrtkk

- Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 6, 2017

Had meet #OmPuri sir a couple of months back only and had an amazing conversation.Saddened by his sudden demise. Rip #OmPuri ji.

- Varun Dhawan (@Varun_dvn) January 6, 2017
Sarajevo (AFP) - A Bosnian Roma actor who won a Silver Bear acting award at the Berlin film festival in 2013 says he has sold his trophy because he could no longer feed his family.

Nazif Mujic, 47, was the toast of Bosnia when he won the award for playing himself in the movie "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker".

The film, which tells the true story of Mujic's fight for medical treatment for his wife after she suffered a miscarriage, also won the Jury Grand Prix at the Berlin festival.

But the success did not translate into wealth for Mujic, who returned to his old job gathering scrap metal for a few euros a day, and now he has been forced to part with his Silver Bear.

"First I sold an old car, then some personal items, and then it was the bear's turn," Mujic told AFP by telephone from his isolated and poverty-stricken hamlet of Svatovac in northern Bosnia.

He said the decision to sell the trophy was "very difficult" but "my children had eaten almost nothing for three days".

At the end of December he offered the trophy in an internet post, asking 5,000 euros for it. He accepted 4,000 euros from the landlord of a local bar, Senadin Cosic.

Cosic said he would offer the bear to a museum.

"I am not a collector and I bought the statuette mainly to help Nazif. He is a sick man who cannot work and must feed his three children," he said.

Despite returning to a hero's welcome after the festival, Mujic quickly fell back into anonymity and poverty and had an application for asylum in German rejected in 2014.

He has been on insulin for diabetes for three years and says his family still gets by on his scrap collection, for which he earns six or seven marks (around 3.50 euros) a day.

With the money from the trophy Mujic has been able to pay off debts he owed for electricity and groceries.

He has also bought a bus ticket for this year's Berlin film festival in February, saying he wants to tell the story of his family since winning the award.

Story continues

He also plans to make a new asylum application in Germany.

"I hope that it will be accepted. I just want my children to live a normal life," he said.

Up to 75,000 Roma live in Bosnia, but according to the local NGO Atlantic Initiative only five percent of them have official employment.

In 2016, Human Rights Watch said Roma remain "the most vulnerable group" in Bosnia, facing "widespread discrimination in employment, education, and political representation".
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is planning to meet with President-elect Donald Trump in spring 2017 although no firm timing has been arranged, her office confirmed Thursday evening.

Mays joint chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, travelled to New York and Washington in mid-December on a secret mission to rebuild bridges with Trumps advisors, Downing Street said. May was critical of Trump during the presidential campaign, saying in December 2015 that his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States was divisive, unhelpful and wrong.

The meeting between Trump and Mays aides took place around a month after the President-elect suggested via Twitter that Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage should be Britains ambassador to the U.S.. In response, Mays office put out a terse statement saying that there was no vacancy.

Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016

The prime minister suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful, Downing Street said in a statement sent to TIME. We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the prime minister looks forward to visiting the new president in the spring.

Its just the latest move by May to curry favor with the incoming president, as the U.K. seeks to build new trading relationships ahead of its withdrawal from the E.U. Last week she distanced the U.K. from the current administration in Washington by criticizing a speech made by John Kerry on Israeli settlements as inappropriate.

And, unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel, May gave Trump a wholehearted congratulations on his shock presidential election victory last November, telling him that the U.K. and U.S. are, and will remain, strong and close partners on trade, security and defence.




Getty Image

This week at CES, Hulu is revealing details about its proposed live TV streaming service, and truthfully, it sounds impressive. While the reported price of $40 a month remains high, Hulu has a raft of impressive ideas, from a cloud-based DVR that automatically finds the best version of the show youve recorded to an interface that learns just what you like and recommends shows accordingly. But the real killer app is the ability to livestream broadcast networks over the service, which would put local news, weather, and other programming on Hulu. And thanks to the complicated politics of broadcast TV, that may not happen.

It seems a no-brainer for broadcast networks and local TV affiliates. After all, broadcast television is given away for free in the hopes of drawing enough viewers to sell ad time to sponsors. Having an app on your phone or your set-top box to do that would seem to be ideal, but it largely hasnt happened yet. Instead, to livestream, say, ABC through its app, you have to have a cable subscription and you can only do it in a handful of markets. NBC and Fox are the same way, with Fox not offering any local livestream at all. And while CBS has no market restrictions, it restricts what you can watch live on your phone. The only broadcast network that doesnt seem to care whether youve got a cable subscription or not is the CW, which simply puts the last five episodes for every show up on its app, and has no livestream function.

Why is it this way? There are two main issues: How broadcast networks make the majority of their money, and how theyve built their affiliate networks. The former is the most glaring: Retransmission fees, or what cable networks pay to show broadcast TV, are a major source of money for local networks, so much so major markets can witness total blackouts when the two go to war over how much cable should pay for what the network gives away for free.

The latter is a bit more complicated. In the U.S., television networks are limited in how many stations they can own and operate, based on the percentage of the TV viewing market they reach. For the rest of America, that means privately owned stations broadcast their content, and fill in the hours in which they dont have network shows with local news, syndicated programming, infomercials, and all the other stuff we associate with TV.

Story continues

Thus theres a complex web of rights and negotiations, since technically, these private companies own the local news broadcasts, but the network owns the prime time content, yet the private company sells local ads in both, and the syndication company may not want to livestream their content on an app. Its easier for your local news channel to dump clips on YouTube and have a separate app for local news. Private companies can own multiple stations as well, making nationwide streaming even more complex.

If that werent enough, some networks have bad blood with their affiliates. As of January 1st, Bostons former NBC affiliate, WHDH, has been replaced by a station owned and operated by Comcast, thanks in part to the long, sometimes ugly history between HDHs billionaire owner Ed Ansin and NBC.



All of this makes a consolidated livestream a legally complicated mess, and this issue arrives just as networks are fighting for smaller and smaller pieces of the pie. Only the CW has an average viewer age under 45, and viewers 35 and under are watching less and less live and DVRed TV, preferring to stream TV instead. That puts networks and affiliates in an increasingly tighter bind, as shows like NCIS draw enormous raw viewership numbers, but almost nobody advertisers want to sell to.

This wouldnt be an issue if people were jumping at the chance to shift their cable package to a livestream, but they arent. PlayStation Vue, Sonys attempt, just celebrated racking up 100,000 subscribers. Sling TV appears to be growing only slowly, with 49,000 subscribers added back in July, and while the jury is still out on AT&Ts DirecTV Now service, it doesnt appear to be reversing that trend. Netflix, by contrast, added over five million subscribers in the second quarter of 2016.

Theres a lot of reasons these services struggle, of course. Netflix is $10, has no ads, and is stuffed with content you can watch at any time, while livestreaming TV network packages are at least twice as much, with ads, and may not have as much stuff to watch depending on the service, with what you most want to watch likely not on at your convenience. Cable is even worse: The average cable bill is $103 and thats unlikely to decline any time soon. That viewers pay more for what feels like less, and dont even get local news and weather, likely doesnt help.

And it leaves broadcasters and networks locked, effectively, in a cell of its own making. The network isnt making shows younger viewers want to watch, and even if they did, they dont have the ability to offer a truly convenient way to watch them at a price viewers are willing to pay. Hulu seems unlikely to resolve this problem, but unless networks and affiliates get to work, they soon might be broadcasting to no one at all.
Buh bye KonMari and Hygge! The latest lifestyle decluttering thing is Lagom

So many of us lead stressful lives and coming home to a calm and clutter-free space was a focus for many of us to achieve last year. We got rid of the items we didnt need anymore and made our decor more intentional, and we were all better for it. The terms KonMari and Hygge were big in 2016, but the latest lifestyle decluttering thing is Lagom and were totally here for it.

We had Hygge, the Danish concept of a cozy home, and KonMari the Japanese minimalist trend and both focused on getting rid of the things in the home you dont need. They emphasized decluttering and it spoke to a lot of people who worked to find that balance in their home.

But according to Vogue, those two trends are over and the Scandinavian Lagom concept is where its all at for the new year.

A photo posted by Healthy Mom Miia (@healthy_mom_miia) on Jan 6, 2017 at 8:45am PST

As the site reports, Lagom translates to enough, sufficient, adequate, just right and its all about striking that balance of having things that make you happy, but not letting the clutter take over. You know  that age-old saying that moderation is key.

A photo posted by ROS\E (@r0siel) on Jan 3, 2017 at 3:36am PST

The writer of the Vogue article says a Swedish friend explained the concept of Lagom using a milk analogy and its the prefect way to explain this new trend.

 In Sweden, 1.5 percent fat mellanmjolk is beloved  its not a super-lean skim, but also not a fatty whole, the writer recounts. Or consider the ever-popular Scandinavian design  practical and functional but never overly adorned.

A photo posted by Carlier (@scandinave_et_vous) on Jan 6, 2017 at 5:13am PST

It really sounds like the best of both worlds and since were totally here for moderation, we are excited to see where Lagom takes people.
Founded in 1980, Thor Industries (THO) is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of recreational vehicles (RVs). They operate under two major business segments: 1) Towable RVs including travel trailers, fifth wheels and specialty trailers, and 2) Motorized RVs including bus style and van motorhomes.

They have 197 operating facilities in the US and sell their products through independent retail distributors primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

Impressive Third Quarter Results

The company reported earnings of $78.7 million, or $1.49 a share, up from $50.5 million, or 96 cents, in the same quarter last year. Sales increased 66% to $1.7 billion. Results were boosted by the recent acquisition of Jayco.

The strong revenue and earnings growth reflects the ongoing enthusiastic reception of our product offerings by dealers and consumers alike, as well as our ability to effectively manage our growth and integrate acquisitions successfully," said the CEO.

The company has an impressive record of profitability. They have been profitable every year since their founding in 1980, so thats 36 consecutive years of profitability in different business cycles.

They have grown their earnings consistently, with a 5-year CAGR of 23% for net income and 24% for diluted EPS.

Rising Earnings Estimates

Analysts have raised their estimates for the company after excellent earnings. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current and the next fiscal year have increased to $6.38 and $6.89 per share from $5.81 and $6.46, 60 days ago.

THOR INDS INC Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

THOR INDS INC Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | THOR INDS INC Quote

The management expects double-digit growth in revenues and improvements in earnings throughout fiscal 2017.

Positive Industry Outlook

Baby boomers, representing about 24% of the population are their target market and as they approach retirement age, they will have more time and travel and camping. Of late, the company has also focused on lower priced products with more technological innovations to attract Generation X and Millennials.

Story continues

The Bottom Line

The stock has a VGM score of B. Further Zacks Industry rank of 4 out of 265 (top 2%) greatly increases the likelihood of short-to-mid- term outperformance.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2017

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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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The town of Center, North Dakota, is taking center stage, thanks to a geographer who has figured out that it's in the dead center of North America.

The finding lays to rest the decades-old question on the location of the continent's bull's-eye. It's a question that has long eluded scientists  in a 1964 report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), for instance, experts wrote: "There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center [of any geographic area], and no completely satisfactory method for determining it."

Not much progress has been made since then, although the USGS has certainly tried. In 1931, the USGS called a spot near the town of Rugby, North Dakota (population 2,900), the geographic center of North America, only to update it in 1995 to a small body of water about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the southwest of the town, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Understandably, the question is a difficult one. Researchers have debated whether the center of the continent should factor in North America's islands, and how to account for the constantly changing shorelines. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

"There are all these people out there saying, 'There's no real good way to do this,'" Peter Rogerson, a professor of geography at the University at Buffalo in New York who developed the new geographical method, said in a statement. "[But] as a geographer, my feeling is that if we want to come up with a good way of defining a center, we can and we should."

In 2015, Rogerson published a study in the journal The Professional Geographer detailing his novel method  one that allows researchers to locate the geographic center of a region, whether it is a continent, an island or a country, he said.

The technique accurately takes into account the curvature of the Earth, Rogerson said. This is important, as the curvature affects the true distance between two locations, he said.

Story continues

However, the method doesn't include the continent's islands, and instead focuses on the main landmass, he said.

In late 2016, Rogerson tried out his method to find the center of North America. The result was serendipitously pleasing, given that the point fell in the middle of a small town named Center (population 570), he said.

Center, North Dakota is in the smack-dab middle of North America. Google Maps

Center of attention

A past method that people used to find a region's center was to balance its cardboard cutout on a needle, Rogerson said.

His method is a bit more complex. It accounts for the mathematical definition of a geographic center: the spatial equivalent of the center of gravity in physics, he said. Moreover, its location minimizes the sum of the squared distances to all other points in a region, he added. [The Mysterious Physics of 7 Everyday Things]

The technique uses a so-called "azimuthal equidistant map projection," which preserves essential qualities related to distance when a rounded, 3D model of a planet is projected onto a flat, 2D surface.

Once a 2D projection was made, Rogerson paired it with a computer program and established a mathematical formula for locating the centroids of 2D polygons. This allowed him to narrow down the geographical center that met the mathematical definition of where a center should be located, he said.

But even this new technique isn't perfect. The azimuthal projection assumes that Earth is a sphere, when it's really slightly ellipsoidal.

"It could always be more exact," said Rogerson. He added that other scientists may take different approaches to the problem, and that his answer doesn't close the door to future pursuits.

The town of Rugby and a bar in Robinson, North Dakota, may be glad to hear that. They're in the middle of a ferocious battle to be known as North America's geographical center, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apparently, being the "center" is good for business, which may explain why so many places don't even bother with being in the center of a continent, and instead claim to be the center of the universe, including New York's Times Square, a spot in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
Montreal (AFP) - Canada's international trade minister said Thursday that pressure by US President-elect Donald Trump would not keep American firms from investing in Canada or prompt them to withdraw any investments already made.

"The fact that Canada is now one of the countries in the world that supports an open society and open trade is a good reason to invest in Canada," Chrystia Freeland told a press conference.

"US businesses that have already made investments in Canada understand the intelligence and the quality of Canadian workers," she added.

The minister's comments follow Trump's threats to slap General Motors, Ford and Toyota with import taxes for building automobiles in Mexico intended for the US market.

Ford announced Tuesday it would cancel plans for a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico after coming under attack by Trump.

Canada, the United States and Mexico have been linked since 1994 by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has said he would like to renegotiate.

But Freeland stressed the unique nature of the two countries' economic interdependence.

"I think that this is a very special relationship that we have, a very different relationship, compared to the relationship the US has with other countries," she said.

"I think that it is the most productive trade relationship that we have and the most balanced one we have in the world," Freeland said, noting that Canada is the top export market for 37 US states, with nine million US jobs dependent on such trade.

"There's no question of separating those two economies," she said, adding that it was "very important for us as a government to explain to the new American government just what kind of economic relations exist between our two countries."
(Adds details of release, background)

OTTAWA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Canada posted a trade surplus of C$526 million ($395 million) in November, its first in more than two years, as exports jumped and imports posted a modest gain, Statistics Canada said on Friday.

Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a C$1.60 billion deficit. Canada had not recorded a surplus since September 2014.

Exports increased by 4.3 percent - the most since June 2015 - on higher shipments of metal and non-metallic products as well as record exports to countries other than the United States. Volumes rose by 3.5 percent while prices climbed by 0.8 percent.

Imports edged up by 0.7 percent, largely due to higher imports of energy products. Volumes dipped by 0.3 percent while prices rose by 1.0 percent.

Exports to the United States, which accounted for 73.8 percent of all Canadian exports in November, grew by 2.5 percent while imports slipped by 0.7 percent. As a result, Canada's trade surplus with the United States grew to C$4.19 billion from C$3.16 billion in October.

($1=$1.33 Canadian)

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Ottawa (AFP) - Canada on Friday posted its first trade surplus in more than two years, driven by record exports to countries other than the United States.

The small trade surplus for November amounted to Can$526 million ($397 million), the first since September 2014, following a Can$1 billion deficit in October, Statistics Canada said.

The news came as a surprise after analysts had widely agreed on expectations of a Can$1.6 billion deficit.

Exports rose 4.3 percent to Can$45.6 billion on higher sales of metals and minerals. Imports rose 0.7 percent to Can$45.1 billion mainly thanks to increased purchases of energy, the agency said.

Canada exported $Can33.7 billion worth of goods to the United States, a rise of 2.5 percent that brought the country's trade surplus with its main trading partner to $Can4.2 billion.

However, exports to other countries jumped 9.5 percent to a record Can$12 billion, "the largest monthly percentage increase since May 2008," Statistics Canada said.

Sales to China rose by more than 11 percent to Can$2 billion in November, mainly driven by coal exports.

Imports from countries other than the United States rose 3.5 percent to $Can15.6 billion in November, led by the purchase of crude oil from Algeria, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

Besides metals and minerals, export earnings were driven by sales of farm and fishing products, and aircraft and other transportation equipment, Statistics Canada said.

At the same time, lower purchases of aircraft and transportation equipment helped offset the increase in energy imports.
A woman with dual Canadian and Turkish citizenship has been arrested and charged in Turkey for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to reports Thursday. The arrest was made on Dec. 30 in Kars city in northeastern Turkey.

The woman has been identified as Ece Heper  a resident of Ontario, Canada. She was taken into custody over Facebook posts critical of Erdogan, according to reports. Canadian authorities have not released information about the matter over privacy concerns, but said that they are offering her consular assistance.

Heper is in Turkey since mid-November, Canadian media reported, citing her friends.

She [Heper] is intense and opinionated, for sure, Birgitta Pavic, one of Hepers friends said, according to the Canadian Press. But everything is intense over there right now, especially criticizing the government.

The arrested womans parents are deceased and she is estranged from her brother, Pavic reportedly said, adding that Hepers friends have decided to help her out. They also got in touch with several human rights organizations to help with her case.

Emrah Bayram, another friend of Heper, told BBC that it could take at least a month before her case goes to trial.

Heper lives with her five dogs she rescued from Turkey that are like her children, Pavic reportedly said. She also suffers from some health issues and her friends have expressed concern over her access to medications while she remains in custody.

Heper reportedly had been spending more time in Turkey over the past year after she became friends with a man in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. She told friends that the man was in exile and stayed in a Kurdish region in northern Syria.

She has a real interest about the problems Kurdish people face in the country, Bayram told the Canadian Press.

The Turkish president has drawn flak over increasing crackdown on freedom of speech in recent years with about 2,000 cases being opened for insulting him. These cases include those of a former Miss Turkey and a 16-year-old student. One man was convicted of insulting Erdogan and was handed down a suspended one-year jail sentence after sharing images that likened the president to the fictional character Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

Story continues

According to Turkeys penal code, people who insult the president can end up in jail for up to four years.

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TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Competition Bureau on Friday said it had not found sufficient evidence that Apple Inc had engaged in anti-competitive conduct, closing a two-year investigation into the iPhone maker. The watchdog launched a probe into Apple's business practices in December 2014 to investigate allegations the company's Canadian unit had used anti-competitive clauses to force domestic operators to sell rival devices at higher prices than they otherwise would have and restricting how they could market and sell iPhones. "The Bureau did not find evidence to suggest that the Apple terms resulted in a significant effect on competition," the antitrust watchdog said in a statement. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Paul Simao)
Every year, audiences discover films that they like or dislike, but they only embrace a handful of movies on a personal level, as if the filmmakers created the work especially for them. One of those is Bleecker Streets Captain Fantastic.

Star Viggo Mortensen was honored this week at Varietys Creative Impact Awards in Palm Springs. In his intro, chief film critic Peter Debruge hailed Captain Fantastic as the performance of his career. Debruge is right, but the film is not just a one-man show, as evidenced by the Cannes award for writer-director Matt Ross, and the SAG Award nomination for best ensemble (added to Mortensens own SAG nom).

Mortensen told Variety that audience members reactions have often been fiercely personal, because Ross has created people whose virtues and flaws are rarely depicted in movies. The characters are so well written. Theyre human and complex, which should be true of any script, but it is not easy to do  especially with a wide range of characters. The audience is rooting for them but sometimes wants to strangle them.

Mortensen plays Ben, a widower who has raised his six kids in the wild, teaching them to challenge everything, from conventional thinking to junk food to the digital world. But Bens values are in turn challenged by his in-laws and eventually by some of the kids themselves (led by oldest son George MacKay). The film respects all of their viewpoints.

One aspect of the story that people are identifying with is pride, said Mortensen. Pride often gets in our way. When Ben comes up against hard facts, he has to swallow his pride a bit. And thats something weve all experienced, but it isnt often depicted so clearly.

Captain Fantastic arrived in 2016, when anger and confusion seemed to be spiraling out of control. Everyone wants things to be better, and the idealism and soul-searching are reflected in the film, which shows that there are no easy answers  but there is always hope.

Story continues

Ross reminds audiences There is a way out of this mess, says Mortensen. We just need to listen to each other, and to relate in a different way than weve gotten used to.

After the Palm Springs ceremony, Ross told Variety, I like characters whose imperfections surprise you. And I like characters who change. I didnt make the film to preach or to teach a lesson. If I wanted to do that, I would have made a documentary. I want audience members to each have their own reaction on whos right.

After Mortensen first read the script, he wrote Ross a 15-page letter full of analysis, insight, and questions. Before filming began, Mortensen arrived with literally a truckload of props, costumes, books, and even a canoe.

As Ross smiled to Variety, Film is all about time and money, and you never have enough of either. So you want to surround yourself with people who care. Viggo cares about things that matter.

Ross said hes long been a fan of Mortensen, who first made a splash in 1985s Witness and showed his versatility in films including A History of Violence, The Indian Runner, Eastern Promises, The Road, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a slew of other films (in English and in Spanish).

Ross said with admiration, You dont catch him acting.

To those whove seen the film, its not a surprise that audiences have continued to embrace it or that its getting Oscar buzz. The film encourages viewers to keep questioning everything, but reminds them they dont need to have all the answers  and its OK to be wrong occasionally. Captain Fantastic assures audiences that it is a good thing to be human. Thats a message that is increasingly important, and that people dont get often enough.

Related stories

Pharrell Williams Humbly Accepts Variety Creative Impact Award at Palm Springs Film Festival

Viggo Mortensen on a Kudos Roll With 'Captain Fantastic'

Viggo Mortensen, Jeff Nichols, Pharrell Williams to Receive Variety Creative Impact Awards
(Photo: Getty Images)

Carrie Fisher was laid to rest on Friday in a joint funeral with her mother, Debbie Reynolds. Loved ones including daughter Billie Lourd and friends Meryl Streep and Courtney Love gathered to pay their respects. Though it would have been impossible for all those who loved Fisher dearly to honor her by attending the service, we can do so in other ways. Like watching all her movies, or reading her books, or just reflecting in a moment of silence for her.

And specifically for the beauty lovers out there, theres a relic to take in that only true makeup mavens will find soothing  or heart-wrenching.

After Fisher died, the London Cosmetics Museum (an online archive of vintage cosmetics, ads and moments in makeup history curated by British-based makeup artist Xabier Celaya) found and shared a photo of Fishers makeup chart from her days as Princess Leia. It was from the set of Star Wars: Episode V  The Empire Strikes Back, which was released in 1980.

The Max Factor chart features a printout of a blank face and a list of different products, from Base to Dry Rouge to Body Makeup. Makeup artist Kay Freeborn scribbled on the paper the different products she wanted to use for Fisher, and even drew in some of the colors on the face.

So, if youve ever wondered how Princess Leias look was made, just look at this chart. It took some Clinique Clarifying Lotion 1, Dior Blush, Clinique Skin Freshener, Mary Quant Blush Baby, and much more.

Oh, and being the independent woman that Fisher was, she did a lot of this herself, like her mascara and lip color.

Story continues

We wouldnt judge you if you purchased all these products in honor of the late Princess Leia.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP)  The former cellmate of a Florida woman accused of killing her 3-year-old son told investigators the mother has no remorse because she believed the boy "was the soul of Hitler."

Authorities say 28-year-old Egypt Moneek Robinson remains in custody two years after the body of 3-year-old Aries Juan Acevado was found in a suitcase floating in the swamp behind her Florida Panhandle home.

The News Herald (http://bit.ly/2iPRAN7 ) reports prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Robinson.

Investigators say 28-year-old Tiffany Powell, who's jailed on attempted murder charges, told them Robinson believes she was protecting everyone by killing the boy because he was an evil child.

According to court records, Powell requested to no longer share a cell with Robinson after talking to investigators.

Robinson has a hearing scheduled in February.

___

Information from: The (Panama City, Fla.) News Herald, http://www.newsherald.com
Cher is returning to acting.

After her last major onscreen role in 2010's Burlesque, the Hollywood icon is coming to Lifetime to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

READ: Beyonce Helps Raise $82,000 for Flint Water Crisis Ahead of Formation Tour Stop in Detroit

In Flint, Cher will play a woman affected by the contamination in the city's water. Katie Couric is producing the upcoming TV movie alongside Cher.

This announcement comes after two of Flint's former emergency managers and two water plant officials were charged with false pretenses and conspiracy. The accusations against the four officials include the purported misuse of millions in bonds to finance construction of a new pipeline and make the Flint River the source of drinking water for the city. There have been 13 charges handed out since the water crisis began.

WATCH: Jussie Smollett on Donating $10,000 Towards Relief Efforts for Flint Water Crisis

Flint won't be the first time Cher, 70, has tackled real life issues on film. She earned her first Oscar nomination for 1983's Silkwood, where she and Meryl Streep portrayed workers in a contaminated nuclear facility.

In October, Cher had a sit-down with ET's Kevin Frazier, where she explained why she keeps working at an age when most people are settling down for retirement.

"Because I like what I do," she said simply. "I never knew there was going to be a sell-by date."

WATCH: Cher Opens Up About Her Legendary Romances and Continuing Her Search for Love

Before Flint premieres, Cher is returning to the stage with a residency called Classic Cher that launches at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas next month and moves on to the MGM National Harbor in the Washington, D.C. area in March.

"The one thing I know is that I still like to sing so much," Cher told ET. "I love to sing."

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China's institutional and individual investors should take a rational approach to investing in virtual currencies such as bitcoin, the central bank said on Friday. Bitcoin prices had showed abnormal fluctuations, the Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a notice. This prompted branch officials to meet representatives of a major bitcoin trading platform in China, BTCC. They cautioned against potential risks in the platform's operations and asked it to carry out "self-inspection" according to the law, the bank said. It stressed bitcoin is not a currency and cannot be circulated as a real currency in the market. (Reporting by Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
By Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's 2016/17 sugar production had reached more than 2.3 million tonnes by December, the state planner said on Friday, citing data from the China Sugar Association.

The National Development and Reform Commission did not give comparable figures for last year but a major industry website earlier reported a significant increase in output from the country's top producing region of Guangxi.

Guangxi, origin of about two-thirds of the country's sugar cane, had produced 1.35 million tonnes of sugar by the end of December, up 270,000 tonnes, or 25 percent, from last year.

Analysts have forecast a significant jump in China's sugar output this season, which began in November, thanks to more normal rainfall patterns in the southern sugar cane regions compared with last year.

Expanded acreage of sugar beet in northern provinces is also seen helping lift output to around 9.5 million tonnes from 8.7 million tonnes last season.

One of the world's top sugar importers, sales in the 2016/17 season so far have reached 1.2 million tonnes, added the NDRC.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk and Dominique Patton; Editing by Joseph Radford)
Chris Pratt adds his own hilarious commentary to his ~sexy~ Vanity Fair photo shoot, and somehow makes us fall for him even more

We dare you to give us one reason not to be obsessed with Chris Pratt. Leave it to Chris Pratt to poke fun at his Vanity Fair photo shoot and get away with it. The Passengers actor is the cover star for Vanity Fairs February issue and although we all think he looks totally sexy, the actor isnt buying it.

In fact, Pratt took to Instagram on Thursday to share photos from his shoot and decided to make fun of himself in all of the captions and now we love him even more.

This is a picture of me on the cover of@VanityFair that water was cold AF. The magazine is on newsstands now. Is news stands one word? Is it newsstands or news stands? Siri didnt correct me and put a line underneath it so. That settles that, Pratt captioned the actual cover picture.

Anyways. You can go get it at the place where they sell magazines. Rite Aid or whatever. There is also an online version floating around somewhere. The article is very nice. Please read it. It talks about my upbringing and my faith, he continued.

I remember seeing Heath Ledger on the cover of Vanity Fair when I was a kid. I read the article. Then one day I saw him driving through Hollywood. He had an awesome Ford Mustang, he wrote.

I drove a Suzuki Samurai at the time and was dead broke. Quick questionIf a train of thought left my phone going 80 miles an hour due east  would it still be douchey to post more pics from my @vanityfair shoot? he concluded.

Okay, we seriously cant stop laughing at this.

Cant you just imagine Pratts voice saying this without really taking a breath in between? Its hilarious.

The laughs didnt stop there however, because the Guardians of the Galaxy actor shared even more stories from his handsome photo shoot for you to enjoy.

I remember drinking this beer at the photo shoot and it tasted so good. Which reminds me of the time my friend from work went out with me for beer at this place on sunset about 17 years ago and brought a pitcher to the table and I said, What beer is that? No wait dont tell me. Let me guess,' he wrote on another picture.

And I sipped it. Newcastle! He was like, Yah thats rightThats probably not a good sign Chris.'

And here I am casually sniffing my knuckles, the 37-year-old actor joked on another shot.

And here I am casually sniffing my knuckles. A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 2:02pm PST

Heres me warming up after having to be in that freakin cold ass water forever, Pratt wrote on a fire picture, which is very hot might we add.

Here's me warming up after having to be in that freakin' cold ass water forever. A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 1:57pm PST

Check out the rest of his hilarious commentary on even more pictures from the rugged photo shoot below.

Prepare to laugh uncontrollably.

Here's me waiting for the photo shoot to start. I was like, "well guys, I'll just chill over here by my race car and rub my neck real quick. You know what I'm sayin'." A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 1:58pm PST

Ah, hes so dreamy  and funny  if only he were single!
No one could ever accuse Chris Pratt of taking himself too seriously.

The Passengers star showed off his self-deprecating humor on Instagram this week, posting pics from his recent Vanity Fair photoshoot along with his own joke commentary.

WATCH: Chris Pratt Talks Selling Coupons Before Becoming an Actor

In a post shared Thursday, the actor gave a comical backstory behind one photo in which he stares off into the distance while standing between two stones.

"I have to credit the brilliant photographer @markseliger who discovered me wedged between these two rocks," Pratt joked. "It took him all day to pull me out. I had been stuck there for hours. I had barely enough strength to stare pensively into the distance. I mean, it was bad. Anyways, I almost had to chew off the lower half of my body to get out. But I'm not flexible enough. Bottom line, I could have died. But thanks to the brilliant photographer @markseliger I'm alive to tell the story, which is currently being optioned for a movie."

And here I am casually sniffing my knuckles. A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 2:02pm PST

In another shot, Pratt joked that while fans might have thought he was giving a sultry look to camera, what he was actually doing was "casually sniffing [his] knuckles."

Story continues

Here's me waiting for the photo shoot to start. I was like, "well guys, I'll just chill over here by my race car and rub my neck real quick. You know what I'm sayin'." A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 1:58pm PST

Here's me warming up after having to be in that freakin' cold ass water forever. A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Jan 3, 2017 at 1:57pm PST

Last year, Pratt similarly mocked his photospread for In Style after being named the magazine's Man of Style.

READ: Chris Pratt Gives a Hilarious Behind-the-Scenes Look at His Sexy Modeling Shots

"Full disclosure I did not pick out any of the clothes which is kinda funny for a guy who is called the 'man of style,'" he wrote at the time. "I mostly like T shirts with American flags on them. Usually I go for the one on the top of the 'shirt pile.'"

In this photo I try to casually put my left hand in my pocket but the pants are so tight I get the tip of three fingers in. Also I was sweating so bad they give me that hat. A photo posted by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on Aug 16, 2016 at 9:38am PDT

Inside the pages of Vanity Fair's February issue, the 37-year-old actor opens up about what his life was like before fame and stardom.

MORE: Chris Pratt Reveals Massive Bruises He Got Doing Stunts For 'Passengers'

"I was selling coupons for things like oil changes or trips to a spa. I was great at that," he tells the mag, noting the gig helped prepare him for getting rejected for acting roles later in life. "That's why I believe in God and the divine. I feel like it was perfectly planned. People talk about rejection in Hollywood. I'm like, 'You're outta your f****n' mind. Did you ever have someone sic their dog on you at an audition?'"

Pratt's Vanity Fair issue is on newsstands now.

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In a bizarre state of affairs, women travelling in metro trains in India's capital city of New Delhi, can now carry knives for "self-protection".

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has allowed small knives (up to 4 inches), Hindustan Times reported. Even lighters and matchboxes, which were restricted earlier, have been removed from the list of banned items.

SEE ALSO: Bangalore's 'Night of Shame': Mass molestation in India's Silicon Valley on New Year's Eve

"However, we examine the tools and make an entry in a register so that the passenger can be traced if needed, a CISF official told the publication.

The Delhi metro is regarded as the city's lifeline with more than 3 million passengers riding on the network daily. Public transport in India is hardly safe for its women, as instances of molestation, abuse and assault are on the rise.

CISF's move seems to have come in the wake of what happened in Bangalore just a week ago, when hordes of women were allegedly mass-molested on the streets despite the presence of 1,500 police personnel.

But what if sharp objects in the hand of commoners lead to an increase in untoward incidences?

A CISF official has reportedly said, "We carried a review and found that with these items, passengers safety is not in danger.

Meanwhile, Indians seem to be divided about the development. While some say it's a good move, others have dismissed it as a "stupid" idea.

#BengaluruMolestationCase Just like #Delhimetro rule, start carrying short knives and pepper sprays !

Jizz the mofo who comes to mess with u  Vinuju Nizar Yousuf (@_vinuju) January 6, 2017

#SuperStupid. A deadly weapon doesnt make u safer.

Delhi Metro allows women knives for self-protection https://t.co/UxF2yaFpy7

via @inshorts  Vidushi Khera (@VidushiKhera) January 6, 2017

What the F***? This is a bad move, @DelhiMetro_Rail.

Delhi Metro allows women knives for self-protectionhttps://t.co/dAWssJHzdc  Karthik Kumar (@darklordkk) January 6, 2017

It's pathetic Delhi Metro allows women to carry knives to protect themselves, I feel miserable paying lacs of income tax each year  Dinah Ashiho (@DinahAshiho) January 6, 2017

@SirJadeja This is ridiculous... Its like allowing Americans to have Guns for protection..  Rohith Makam (@Rmakam) January 6, 2017

@SirJadeja Making the daughters self aware & sons gender sensitive will be more sensible measure.  Paridhi Jha (@JhaParidhi) January 6, 2017

And then there are those who are amused, and tensed.

Story continues

2016: 91% of pickpockets caught in #DelhiMetro are women

2017: Women can carry knives for self-protection

2018: Men don't commute anymore  Vivek Choudhary (@typewrider) January 6, 2017

#delhimetro I want to ask a question. Can I?  Deepu Bhardwaj (@DeepuBhardwaj2) January 6, 2017

Woah Mitron it's Delhi Metro

Serial attempted murders are coming up. :P

I'm so gonna be reminded of that old... https://t.co/JuUYYwmfWj  thegreywitch (@VinnyKV) January 6, 2017

Attempted murders? We hope not!

BONUS: Students Develop 'Anti-Rape Lingerie' Equipped with Electric Shocks, GPS
CLEVELAND (AP)  Authorities in Cleveland say a 3-year-old boy died from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning after riding for hours in a van that had no catalytic converter to properly remove the odorless gas.

His father found Lorne Johnson Jr. unresponsive in the back seat after running errands on Sunday. The father called 911 and tried unsuccessfully to revive the boy, who died at a hospital.

Cleveland.com reports police records indicate the boy had earlier told his father that he felt tired and then laid down in the back seat.

The father and a teenage son who had been in the vehicle also were treated for elevated carbon monoxide levels.
The Coca-Cola Co (KO) now has more to combat than just waning consumer taste for sugary drinks.

Praxis Project, a non-profit group, filed a lawsuit in a California district court that claimed the company and trade organization the American Beverage Association participated in "alleged false and misleading marketing of sugar-sweetened beverages," reports Fortune.

The lawsuit names a slew of examples of such statements, according to a news release from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. These include an American Beverage Association statement saying "There is no unique link between soda consumption and obesity," and another saying "Simply put, it is wrong to say beverages cause disease."

Coke's advertising to children is also a part of the lawsuit. "Like the tobacco industry, Coca-Cola needs to replenish the ranks of its customers, and it tries to recruit them young," the filing says.

Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association denied the lawsuit had merit.

"We take our consumers and their health very seriously and have been on a journey to become a more credible and helpful partner in helping consumers manage their sugar consumption," Coca-Cola added in a statement to Fortune.

Coca-Cola's history with health groups has raised eyebrows before, notes Fortune. A prior incident involved a New York Times piece calling out the company for paying scientists that emphasized exercise over cutting calories. Another was a paper from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine highlighting Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's (PEP) nearly 100 health organization sponsorships. The companies were also fighting public health bills aimed at limiting sugary soda consumption, according to the report.

"Coca-Cola executives have known for years that their products undermine health," Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael F. Jacobson said in a statement about the lawsuit. "Nevertheless, for years they have mounted a multi-million-dollar effort to persuade consumers that their products are benign -- even healthful. We hope the end result of this litigation will be that consumers will be permanently protected from Big Soda's fraudulent marketing."

Story continues

The beverage giant recently announced that company veteran James Quincey would be taking over for current CEO Muhtar Kent on May 1, though Kent will stay on as chairman of the board of directors. Quincey is specifically mentioned in the complaint for likening sugar-sweetened drinks to all calories, "dismissing their unique contribution to the obesity epidemic by asserting such beverages contribute only 2 percent of calories overall," notes the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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David Oliver is Associate Editor, Social Media at U.S. News & World Report. Follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, or send him an email at doliver@usnews.com.
Abidjan (AFP) - Trucks carrying thousands of tonnes of cocoa have been blocked in the main port of Ivory Coast, the world's top producer, as authorities have temporarily stalled exports, sources said Friday.

There are nearly "700 trucks blocked here at the port in Abidjan," Ivory Coast's economic capital, said Moussa Kone, head of the national cocoa producers' union.

He said trucks filled with cocoa have also been stranded in San Pedro, the country's second port, for several days.

"Since December 22, we have been coming here in trucks filled with cocoa but are not being received by the authorities at Abidjan port," said Mohamed Toure, a driver.

Industry sources said the authorities were blocking cocoa exports because of a difference in the price set by the national cocoa council and that in the London futures trading price.

Cocoa represents 15 percent of Ivory Coast's GDP and more than 50 percent of its export earnings, according to the World Bank.
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Running out of destinations for your wedding? How about hosting it at a railway station?

SEE ALSO: Amazon launches 'Business' service in India to target enterprise customers

The Indian Railways is thinking about permitting wedding receptions on its platforms. The move comes as the fourth largest railway station in the world scrambles for ideas to boost its profits, according to officials who spoke to Deccan Chronicle.

The Western Railways has picked platforms at Surat and Navapur railway stations, which it is willing to put out on lease to host weddings.

The Rail ministry will take the final call on this, but its almost certain that even if the proposal gets the nod, high-traffic and crowded stations such as those in Mumbai, wont be testing the idea.

"Surat station is massive, and there are people there who would actually pay to have their wedding receptions or parties on platforms as well," an official told the publication.

"We will propose platform no. 4 for the project as it has two-three booking offices, which is ideal for these kind of functions," the person added.

BONUS: French Railways new Trains are too Wide for its Stations
On Friday afternoon, a joint session of Congress is expected to certify Donald Trump as the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Under the current version of the Constitution, does the President Elect have any constitutional duties or rights?

The words President Elect only appear four times in the Constitution, and they didnt appear until 1933, when the 20th Amendment accounted for the unavailability of the President Elect to take the oath of office on Inauguration Day. That almost happened in 1877, when the disputed election between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden was decided and certified in Hayes favor just three days before his inauguration.

Once a candidate is certified by Congress as the winner of a presidential election, or a President is selected by the House in a run-off contingent election, the only constitutional provisions related to the President Elect are related to the winners availability to take the oath of office.

Link: Watch Congressional Vote Counting On C-SPAN

Once a candidate is certified by Congress as the winner of a presidential election, or a President is selected by the House in a run-off contingent election, the only constitutional provisions related to the President Elect are related to the winners availability to take the oath of office.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution requires the presidential oath of office: Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The 20th Amendment was a broad effort to address the long lame-duck period between presidential and congressional elections, and the inauguration of the President. Prior to its January 1933 ratification, the President took the oath about four months after the election. The 20th Amendment established the start of a new Congress in early January, with the presidential inauguration following about three weeks later.

Story continues

It also addressed the possibility of a President Elect not qualifying for office. In several cases in addition to the Hayes-Tilden election, that might have been a possibility. In January 1853, President Elect Franklin Pierce survived a train accident that killed his 11-year-old son. Four years later, President Elect James Buchanan battled a serious illness contracted at Washingtons National Hotel as he planned his inauguration.

And in February 1933, President Elect Franklin Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt in Miami, about a month after the 20th Amendment was ratified. The amendment kept the 1933 inauguration date in March for the last time, but it also put into effect three provisions about a President Elect.

If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified, Section 3 of the amendment reads.

Under the Constitutions Qualification Clause in Article II, Section 1, No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The 20th Amendment allows Congress to pass laws that deal with the unavailability of President Elect and Vice President Elect on Inauguration Day. The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 puts the Speaker of the House as first in position as Acting President until a President Elect or Vice President Elect qualifies for office.

And as for the matter of when the winner of the election actually becomes President Elect, that happens in a literal sense after Congress certifies the election results.

Yale scholar Akhil Reed Amar has written frequently on subjects related to presidential succession and his 1994 law review article is still cited today. (The article was also part of testimony Amar gave to the Senate in 1994.)

Article II and the Twelfth Amendment seem to focus on the formal counting of votes in the Congress as the magic, formal moment of vesting in which the winning candidate is elected as President, Amar argued. Although the legislative history of the Twentieth Amendment suggests that the electoral college winner is President elect the moment the eIectoral college votes are cast, and before they are counted in Congress, the text of the Amendment fails to say this explicitly.

As far as constitutional duties placed on the official President Elect, that person becomes a government official after taking the oath, which qualifies the new President to start the Execution of his Office. The earliest that can happen is at 12 p.m. on January 20. Prior to Inauguration Day and taking the oath, a President Elect is entitled to Secret Service protection and also the use of office space under the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

Recent Electoral Stories on Constitution Daily

The Interactive Constitution: Understanding The Electoral College

What happened the last time we had a Faithless Elector?

2016 presidential election is officially over on Friday afternoon
The FTC filed a complaint about D-Link regarding security issues stemming from an alleged failure to protect its webcams and routers from hackers. According to the FTC, D-Link failed to adequately test their products to recognize security flaws and left them susceptible to attacks.

In a statement, D-Link strongly denied these claims, writing that the "security of our products and protection of our customers private data is always our top priority. The router maker calls the FTC's claims "vague and unsubstantiated allegations" and notes that the Commission fails to mention "any breach of any product sold by D-Link Systems."

Consumer Reports reached out to the FTC for comment and the agency referred us to their public statement.

The FTC's allegations could not have come at a worse time for D-Link, since the company this week is showing off its latest products at the Consumer Electronics Show, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas.

If you're concerned about your router, here's what you should know.



How serious is the problem?

Craig Young, a researcher at the digital security company Tripwire, says the problems identified by the FTC are quite serious. Compromised webcams could have been used to surreptitiously spy on their owners and affected routers could also be used to launch cyberattacks. But Young also pointed out that other router manufacturers have also been found to have serious security flaws.



There is no reason to believe that most other companies are doing any better with security, " Young said. "So there is not much sense in discontinuing use of the router or camera just to move to another likely vulnerable device.

Other security experts concurred. "You don't know if your router is better because there's an almost total lack of information," Bruce Schneier, a well-known security expert and author who has written about routers, said. "There's a lot of really bad stuff out there." Part of the problem comes down to economics, he said: While companies such as Apple and Google can spend heavily to protect their products, router and internet camera makers work with low margins and often source their components from third parties.

Story continues

The solution, according to Peiter Zatko, a prominent security expert better known as Mudge, would be "a security label similar to that of the NLEA [Nutrition Labeling and Education Act] Nutritional Label on food products" that would show how well products met important security and privacy criteria. Then consumers could choose products based on how securely they are engineered. Zatko is the cofounder of Cyber Independent Testing Lab (CITL), a nonprofit that develops methods to evaluate software security. "You need to be able to quantify and measure, to bring data and facts to the forefront," he said.

How do I know if I'm affected?

In its complaint, the FTC has said "As a result of Defendants failures, thousands of Defendants routers and cameras have been vulnerable to attacks that subject consumers sensitive personal information and local networks to a significant risk of unauthorized access."

However, neither the FTC nor D-Link have identified specific model lines that might be the cause of these concerns, so it's impossible to know precisely which cameras and routers might be affected. We specifically asked D-Link if the company could verify that the routers it is currently shipping are secured against all known vulnerabilities. A spokeswoman referred us to the company's official statement, saying "the FTC complaint does not allege any breach of any product sold by D-Link Systems in the US."



According to D-Link, the possible vulnerabilities are not exclusive to its routers but common among all internet-connected devices. D-Link assures potential buyers that they maintain "a robust range of procedures to address potential security issues." On D-Link's support site, the company has many firmware updates that are supposed to address security vulnerabilities, among other things.



But few routers update their firmware automatically. So its possible that, if there is a security vulnerability with your router and there is a fix available, unless you have actively updated its firmware, it may still be exposed. Without these updates, personal data and even information about user bank accounts could be at risk.

Older routers could be at particular risk, since many have passed their "end of support" period, meaning the manufacturer has stopped issuing firmware updates.

What should I do?

Consumers should follow best practices for routers and internet-connected devices in general. Make sure to change any default usernames and passwords that may have been on your device when it shipped. Create different passwords for the different devices in your home and, for that matter, your online accounts. Routinely check for updates for your specific model.



Also consider purchasing a new router. During CES, a number of companies (including D-Link) introduced models with built-in automatic updates. And newer models are more likely to see updates than those five years or older. Internet of things (IoT) devices are increasingly becoming the target for malicious hackers, so automatic updates are increasingly vital for the safety of your data.

For more advice see Young's article, Six Tips to Improve Your Routers Security.

How do I update my D-Link Router?

Visit D-Link's Support Website Navigate to your product's specific page Find and download the latest firmware Once the firmware is downloaded, open a web browser (like Chrome or Microsoft Edge) and enter "http://dlinkrouter" or "http://192.168.0.1" into the address bar to access your router on your home network, then login with your username and password.

Click on the Tools tab and then click on Firmware. Under Firmware Upgrade click on the Browse button and navigate to the .bin file downloaded in Step 3.* Select and open the file. Click on Upload to upgrade firmware. Avoid unplugging, powering down, or otherwise disrupting the router while the firmware is being upgraded. Click on Continue when a prompt appears.



*While the procedure to update routers varies from device to device, most of these steps will be applicable and the differences are relegated to the specific menu items in Step 5. Update: This story has been updated to include comments from Bruce Schneier and Peiter Zatko.



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.
Earth is currently in the midst of a very serious biodiversity crisis. Although estimates of the exact number vary widely, scientists now believe that the rapid loss in species we are seeing today is anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the extinction rate when humans werent around.

So what is the main driver of this ongoing natural disaster? An unsustainable consumption of natural resources that is also leading to a rapid habitat loss for species that are no longer perceived to serve human needs. A widely known example is the destruction of rainforests and wildlife in Indonesia and Malaysia to clear land for cultivation of palm oil  a substance used in a variety of products, ranging from biscuits and ice creams to lipsticks and detergents.

One important challenge in conservation is that, in many hotspots, export industries continue to drive overexploitation, Daniel Moran from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Keiichiro Kanemoto from Shinshu University in Japan write in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Conservation measures must consider not just the point of impact, but also the consumer demand that ultimately drives resource use.

In order to do this, Moran and Kanemoto have now developed a technique that allows them to identify threats to wildlife caused by the global supply chains that fuel our consumption. Using this technique, they were able to create a series of threat maps that show, in explicit detail, the impact exports to the U.S., China, Japan and the European Union are having on over 6,800 vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered species around the world.

However, the maps do not cover the impact of illegal wildlife trade on global biodiversity.

Connecting observations of environmental problems to economic activity, that is the innovation here, Moran said in a statement. Once you connect the environmental impact to a supply chain, then many people along the supply chain, not only producers, can participate in cleaning up that supply chain.

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In the case of the U.S., for instance, the map revealed  unsurprisingly  that consumption was creating threat hotspots in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Cambodia, and throughout Central America, Central Asia and into southern Canada. Unexpectedly, though, the map also revealed that U.S. consumption was affecting species in southern Spain and Portugal, where a number of fish and bird species were under threat.

usa-logscale-terrain

Photo: Daniel Moran and Keiichiro Kanemoto

We find that the biodiversity footprint is concentrated: for threats driven by US consumption, the 5 percent of land area that is most intensively affected covers 23.6 percent of its total impact on species, and at sea the most intensively affected 5 percent of marine area includes 60.7 percent of threatened species habitats, the researchers wrote in the study.

The authors of the study said that the maps, which make a direct connection between consumption and environmental impacts, provide governments, companies and individuals an opportunity to take mitigative measures to prevent further biodiversity loss.

We identified biodiversity threat hotspots that are predominantly driven by just a small number of countries, Kanemoto told Agence France-Presse. This should make it easier to initiate direct collaborations between producers and consumers.

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Doha (AFP) - In bad news for his opponents, 12-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic said on Friday that he may continue his astonishing career until the age of 40.

Speaking after securing a place in the Qatar Open final against Andy Murray, Djokovic said he would play on for as long as he could.

Asked if could still be on tour aged 40, the Serb replied: "Why not? You're going to see a lot of me in the future."

Djokovic, who turned professional in 2003, celebrates his 30th birthday in May this year.

Earlier this week in Doha he played against 38-year-old Radek Stepanek, one of the oldest players on the ATP tour.

After beating the Czech veteran, Djokovic said he was "excited" about the longevity of Stepanek's career.

"It shows me that I can have as long a career as he has. If he can do it, I can do it, too," said Djokovic.

The oldest player currently in the top 20 is 37-year-old Ivo Karlovic.

The Croat is currently ranked number 20 in the world and, notably, was the last player to Djokovic in Doha in 2015.

The oldest ever winner of a Grand Slam in the Open era is Ken Rosewall, who won the Australian Open in 1972 aged 37.
New York (AFP) - Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera has been painting for decades. And painting. And painting. At age 89, she finally sold something.

And now, at 101, true recognition has arrived: an exhibit of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a documentary on her life soon coming out in New York, where she has lived for 70 years.

Herrera may not be in her prime, but her career is going gangbusters.

"It was about time. Good lord! They waited too long," Herrera said in an interview at her apartment and studio in Union Square, where she has lived for nearly 50 years.

Fame, she said, "is pleasant but not that big a deal." She then offered her visitor a glass a of whisky.

Herrera was born in Cuba in 1915 to journalist parents, studied painting as a child, traveled to Paris to study more and then began architecture at the University of Havana.

As a young woman she fell in love with Jesse Loewenthal, a New Yorker who taught English and was visiting Cuba. She moved to Manhattan with him and continued to study art.

Her work is abstract: simple and austere, but showing a strong, vivid sense of color.

Herrera is not a big talker. She does not like to discuss her art and rarely gives interviews.

"My painting is just my painting. There is no feeling associated with it. It is not good for anything," she said with a laugh, refusing to explain what her work might mean.

- A Latina woman -

Her husband, who died in 2000 at age 98, encouraged her to paint every day even though it seemed no one wanted to show her work -- by a woman, a Latina woman at that, and not considered feminine, as watercolors might be.

"No one paid attention to me. No one knew me," Herrera said.

She recalls, angrily, a female gallery owner who once said this to her: "I love what you paint but I am not going to give you a chance because you are a woman." This was particularly hurtful to Herrera because it came from another woman.

Story continues

While Herrera has not changed, the world around her has, says Tony Bechara, a Puerto Rican artist who is her neighbor and has been her friend for many years.

"Suddenly, people were ready to receive her. The first collectors of her work had something in common: they were all women," Bechara said.

"Twenty, 30 or 40 years ago there was no such social phenomenon. There were no female collectors. Women were not in a position to help other women," he added.

These days Herrera is a fragile woman with short, snow white hair. She was never able to have children. She uses a wheel chair, suffers from arthritis, has trouble hearing and rarely leaves home. But in September she did venture out to attend the opening of her exhibit at the Whitney.

It features more than 50 works from the years 1948 to 1978, when, the museum says, Herrera "developed her signature style."

Herrera thought she had forgotten her older paintings, but when she saw them it all came rushing back.

"I never forgot them. It is like an old love story," she said, again chuckling, then launches into a bolera with Bechara about how you never forget a lover.

- Order within chaos -

While living with her husband in Paris after World War II, Herrera joined an association of abstract artists called the Salon des Realites Nouvelles and developed her passion for straight lines and a leanness of color. She came to shun curves altogether, and painted with a maximum of three colors in each work. She later cut it down to two.

"In this chaos that we live in, I like to put order," Herrera says in the documentary "The 100 Years Show," directed by Alison Klayman and coming out January 11 at Film Forum, in Manhattan.

But her large paintings and abstract sculptures -- which predated the emergence of Minimalism by nearly a decade -- were not well received when she returned to New York in 1954. Then and there, the art world was dominated by abstract expressionism done by men.

London's Lisson Gallery, which has a branch in Chelsea, began to show Herrera's work 10 years ago.

Herrera sold her first work in 2004. Since then her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Tate Modern in London and at the Whitney.

They go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that is far less than what is fetched by the works of Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly or Herrera's friend Barnett Newman. These men achieved acclaim back in the 1950s and 60s.

So now Herra can finally pay someone to help her in her studio, someone else to clean her house and a physical therapist.

Shortly before turning 100, Herrera became a vegetarian. Everyday, at midday, she drinks a bit of whisky.

What is her secret to longevity?

"Nothing special," she said. "Do what you like and do it every day. That is what I do. I get up, eat breakfast right away and get down to work."
[Photo: Getty]

Weve all seen  or been  someone shopping in pyjamas, whether thats at the cornershop or giant ASDA down the road.

But some customers certainly arent happy about it, as they are asking Tesco to consider enforcing a dress code in their stores to stop people walking around in sleepwear.

One man posted on Tescos Facebook page to complain about two women he saw wearing dressing gowns and slippers, even posting a photo of them alongside it.

[Photo: Facebook/Chris Cooke]

Dear Tesco, please can you put a rule in place that people like this will not be served in your stores. Its bloody disgusting, he said.

This was at 7pm last night at your Tesco Salford store and I have seen other people dressed similar on a regular basis. I mean who doesnt have the time to get changed into clothes to go shopping.

Sure, pyjamas might not be to everyones taste, but were talking about a Tesco, not a high-end cocktail bar.

And whether you think its a bad habit or not, it doesnt quite warrant this amount of anger  or broadcasting photos of strangers  right?

[Photo: Facebook/Chris Cooke]

In response, Tesco clarified that while theyve been informed of the issue before, there isnt a formal dress code in place:

Many of our customers have told us that they feel uncomfortable when they see other shoppers wearing unsuitable clothing in our stores and we do try to find a balance that everyone is happy with, the store wrote.

Although we dont have a formal dress code in our stores, we rely on our management team to use their discretion and common sense.

Do you think people should be allowed to wear pyjamas in supermarkets? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.

A Sketch Combining The Real Housewives & ISIS Provokes Internet Outrage

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TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / Data Deposit Box Inc. (CNSX: DDB, OTC PINK: DDBXF, Frankfurt: 2DD), a global provider of cloud backup and recovery technology, is proud to announce key award recognition from both ASCII and ChannelPro partners. In 2016, Data Deposit Box received twelve (12) awards, including Best Market Opportunity, Best Storage, Best Cloud, Most Creative and Innovative Solution, and Best New Solution at the ASCII Summit and SMB Channel Pro partner events held throughout North America.

"We have focused our product and services on two main target groups: managed service partners, and the SMB they service," says Tim Jewell, CEO of Data Deposit Box. "We offer our partners the ability to backup and protect mobile devices, PC's, Macs, Laptops Servers, Databases, and entire systems (called bare metal imaging) with one end to end offering at a price the SMB can afford. This will make selling a backup and recovery solution to the SMB an easier conversation for the managed service providers," offers Jewell.

"The Data Deposit Box offering is based on one simple principle: offer a complete SMB backup and recovery solution that is designed and priced for the Small to Medium Business, globally. The awards given to Data Deposit Box by the partners themselves are industry acknowledgments that our products and services are what MSP's are looking for. We thank every partner who voted for Data Deposit Box this past year," says Troy Cheeseman, President and COO of Data Deposit Box.

Data Deposit Box provides both a cloud software and backup appliance solution in a license free, feature rich solution. Data Deposit Box's cloud backup software offers a wide range of backup solutions and the company's Smart Storage appliance solution (which includes 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, and 10TB systems) currently has the ability to perform file based backups, unlimited Bare-Metal Recovery imaging for servers and workstations, and MS SQL based backups completely managed via any browser or device.

About Data Deposit Box

Data Deposit Box, a pioneer of cloud backup and recovery technology, has set a new industry standard by providing the SMB market with the same level of security and protection that is available to large enterprises. Data Deposit Box's patented backup technology, known for its Exabyte scalability, advanced data reduction capabilities and ease-of-use, has won prestigious industry awards and has been featured in many key industry publications.

Data Deposit Box technologies and solutions are currently used daily by SMB customers for online backup and recovery, archiving, disaster readiness, secure file sharing, and remote access.

For More Information Contact:

Troy Cheeseman

President & COO

Data Deposit Box Inc.

Telephone: 647-725-0307

Email: tcheeseman@datadepositbox.com

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan," "expect," "project," "intend," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "may," "will," "would," "potential," "proposed," and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the information is provided, and is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change, unless required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

SOURCE: Data Deposit Box Inc.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f338940%2ffce5dee2-0229-4c17-9154-1b20db44a958

LONDON  David Bowie's son Duncan Jones has made a Twitter appeal on behalf of a homeless dog named after his father.

SEE ALSO: From Bowie to Solange: Here are the top 10 albums of 2016

Bowie is a 3-year-old lurcher  a type of dog that's a cross between a sighthound like a Greyhound and a terrier  currently being kept at Dogs Trust Bridgend in Wales, UK. He has one blue eye and one brown. According to a press release sent to Mashable, his condition has caused him to be overlooked.

Meet Bowie, a young lurcher who needs a home.

Image: dogs trust

The story made the news in Wales, and it wasn't long before it had caught the attention of Jones.

On Thursday, the director posted a series of tweets appealing to people to help Bowie find a home.

Hoping someone near that dog might be able to help him find a home. One of those weird ones that got to me.   Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) January 5, 2017

This is my little sisters dog, Max. Lovely little fellah! pic.twitter.com/LKZve4rsKe  Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) January 5, 2017

David Bowie's eyes appeared to be a different colour due to a condition called Anisocoria, according to this piece in the Independent, which was caused by an injury that left one pupil permanently dilated.

Its such a shame that Bowie has been overlooked so far, but were confident well find a home for him soon," Rehoming Centre Manager Angela Wetherall was quoted in a press release sent to Mashable.

Anyone interested in giving Bowie a home can call the Dogs Trust's Bridgend branch on 0300 303 0292.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Washington's mayor says police won't be looking to arrest people for smoking marijuana in public on Inauguration Day.

Pro-pot activists are planning to give away 4,200 free joints during the inauguration, which is legal in the District of Columbia. They've also pledged to light up during President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural address, which is not.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said police and city leaders want to see people peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Bowser says arrests for smoking pot "wouldn't be our first priority."

Possession of up to 2 ounces of pot for recreational use has been legal in the District since 2015. Growing pot at home and giving it away are also legal. Buying, selling and smoking pot in public are illegal.
SHANGHAI (AP)  In a sign of improving cooperation between the U.S. and China to fight the global drug trade, the Drug Enforcement Administration will open a new office there and its top chief will visit next week for the first time in more than a decade.

The DEA said acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg will visit Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong Monday through Thursday, at the invitation of China's Ministry of Public Security. The last time the head of the DEA visited the country was 2005.

The planned new office in the city of Guangzhou will likely be staffed with two special agents, pending final approvals, said Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington.

DEA maintains that China is the top source country for synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its precursors, which have been fueling the deadliest drug abuse epidemic in U.S. history. China is also emerging as a laundering destination for drug money, according to a U.S. Justice Department indictment unsealed in 2015.

"Intelligence and investigative information have shown that Guangzhou has strong ties to international drug trafficking organizations operating in China and elsewhere," Baer said in an email. "These criminal groups in Guangzhou utilize trade-based money laundering schemes to legitimize drug profits, use the port facilities as a transit point to ship illegal narcotics, and purchase synthetic drugs along with precursor chemicals."

Chinese officials dispute claims that China is the main source of fentanyl and precursors, noting that the U.S. has produced little supporting data. Nonetheless, Beijing has taken significant steps to crack down on the production and export of synthetic drugs, even though these substances are not widely abused within China. China already controls fentanyl, a painkiller up to 50 times more potent than heroin, along with 18 related compounds and is considering blacklisting four more.

U.S. officials have been pressing China to control additional opioids, which can be easily purchased online from vendors in China. China, meanwhile, has been seeking U.S. support to place ketamine, an anesthetic widely abused in China, on a U.N.-maintained list of internationally controlled substances.

Story continues

"We believe Mr. Rosenberg's visit will improve both sides' understanding and trust. It will help to improve cooperation in cracking down on drug crimes," China's National Narcotics Control Commission told AP, noting that Hu Minglang, then Director General of China's Narcotics Control Bureau, already visited Washington in September.

___

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.
Nomination ballots for the 89th annual Oscars have been mailed, or beamed out, to the nearly 7,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Voting is scheduled to run Thursday through Friday, Jan. 13, with nominations to be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 24.

The group-think of awards season can be overwhelming and sometimes it can be all too easy to just fall in line. But wed like to offer a few humble, off-the-beaten-path suggestions for voters to keep in mind as they sit down to make their decisions this week and next. Spare a thought for these contenders?

BEST COSTUME and PRODUCTION DESIGN

Kubo and the Two Strings

Its time for the Academys craft branches to take below-the-line work on animated films seriously. Laika has been deserving in both of these categories virtually every step of the way, and Kubo and the Two Strings is the glorious culmination of the companys aesthetic. This is painstaking, detailed, character-specific design work, telling the story at every turn. Stop being so elitist about this stuff. Find me craftsmanship as rich as this. Be the least bit bold! (Kristopher Tapley)

BEST FILM EDITING

Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day

Peter Bergs dual efforts this year were meticulous procedurals that detailed a pair of American tragedies with precision and care. Much of that boiled down to the way the films were pieced together, whether conveying the chaos of an oil rig explosion or the trenchant investigation of a terrorist attack. Both films are peripheral contenders at best throughout the various races, but hopefully members of the editors branch of the Academy can finally stick up for them. (Kristopher Tapley)

BEST SCREENPLAY

Sausage Party

Somehow, some way, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have become our foremost cinematic theologians. Between This Is the End, Preacher, and the animated Sausage Party, theyve found a way to explore ideas of religion, tolerance, and faith in their own colorful way. Sausage Party deserves to be in the animated feature conversation, but Ill go a step further and say it deserves some love from the writers, too. (Kristopher Tapley)

Story continues

The Lobster

Writers Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou definitely know how to put the original in original screenplays, having previously collaborated on Dogtooth and Alps. But their third work is also their best: the weird, wonderful tale of a dystopian society where people are given 45 days to find a mate or be turned into an animal of their choosing. From that seemingly ridiculous premise comes a lot of dark comedy and biting social commentary, but also a lot of humanity as it raises questions about the very nature and need of love. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Greta Gerwig, 20th Century Women

Gerwig started out as a pretty strong possibility when Mike Mills love letter to the women in his life first dropped, but shes slowly slid down the scale along with other aspects of the movie. Pity, because it might just be her best performance yet, illuminating an incredible inner life for a very complex character. Shes also in three other films this year: Maggies Plan, Weiner-Dog, and Jackie. (Kristopher Tapley)

Kate McKinnon, Ghostbusters

When Ghostbusters hit theaters, I tweeted that the film had just won McKinnon an Emmy Award for Saturday Night Live, not unlike when her co-star Melissa McCarthy won the Emmy for Mike and Molly months after Bridesmaids was released. McKinnon did indeed pick up that Emmy, but an Oscar nomination seems unlikely, which is a shame. Few would argue that her role as Dr. Jillian Holtzmann was one of the star turns of the year, stealing scenes from even the most talented of co-stars. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Ralph Fiennes, A Bigger Splash

Fiennes was mentioned in our halfway mark piece six months ago, along with another contender, John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Both bear repeating, but Fiennes in particular was a man possessed in Luca Guadagninos stylish remake. Hes simply found a new calling in comedy, with performances like this as well as The Grand Budapest Hotel and Hail, Caesar!, showcasing his range  as if we needed reminding. (Kristopher Tapley)

Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight

There are so many standout performances in the ensemble of Barry Jenkins triptych, the supporting actor category could be filled with Moonlight actors alone. Mahershala Ali has deservedly received the lions share of acclaim for the role of a father figure to young Chiron, but Rhodes  who plays Chiron in his final chapter, where he has essentially morphed into his mentor  should also find himself nominated alongside Ali. He is heartbreaking as a man who is all toughness on the outside, pure vulnerability on the inside. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST ACTRESS

Krisha Fairchild, Krisha

Happily, Trey Edward Shults feature debut has been well-remembered on the critics awards circuit, but no one ever went the extra step of handing Krisha Fairchild an award as the eponymous family black sheep. Peeling back personal layer after personal layer, Fairchilds is one of the bravest performances of the year. (Kristopher Tapley)

Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen

One of the sharpest films of the year, The Edge of Seventeen seemed to get lost wherever it went, be it overshadowed in its Toronto premiere or upon theatrical release. But those who sought out Kelly Fremon Craigs feature debut were charmed by its smart script and honest performances. Anchoring the film is Steinfeld, playing a role weve seen a million times before  a disaffected youth wise beyond her years  and yet finding new depths and nuances in the process. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST ACTOR

Anton Yelchin, Green Room

Honestly, Green Room is probably too queasy a prospect for Academy voters; many may not make it through its horrific visuals. But its expert filmmaking from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin) and the films lifeblood is late actor Anton Yelchins performance. He conveys an understated level of in-the-moment terror and human emotion that makes the story all the more unsettling as a result. That kind of work so often goes unrecognized. (Kristopher Tapley)

Jake Gyllenhaal, Nocturnal Animals

Woefully overlooked for his riveting turn in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal seems to be being taken for granted again, considering he plays not one but two complex characters in Tom Fords riveting thriller. He plays Edward Sheffield, the ex-husband of Amy Adams character who writes a novel to express how she made him feel in ending their marriage. As we see the novel play out, Gyllenhaal portrays Tony Hastings, a husband and father bent on revenge. Both performances are perfectly calibrated and complementary of each other, a high-wire act pulled off flawlessly. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST DIRECTOR

Jon Favreau, The Jungle Book

What Favreau did in translating a Disney classic to a new audience and new filmmaking era was pretty staggering. Filmed in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, gorgeously rendered with state-of-the-art effects technology, the vision he maintained throughout was a significant high-wire act. And yet he pulled it off so (seemingly) effortlessly. He certainly turned this skeptic around, so much so that Im eager to see what he does with The Lion King next. (Kristopher Tapley)

Ava DuVernay, 13th

Its not just the best documentary of the year but one of the best movies of the year, and Ava DuVernay should break all kinds of Oscar records for her work on the film. Not only would she be the first African-American woman to be nominated for best director (an honor she should have received for Selma), but it would mark the first time a documentary filmmaker was nominated in the category. DuVernay has made one of the most vital pieces of filmmaking of the year, detailing Americas sorry history of racial inequality in its prison system. (Jenelle Riley)

BEST PICTURE

The Birth of a Nation

The awards prospects for Nate Parkers Sundance stand-out completely fell apart along the way. External circumstances hobbled it and critics who werent fans to begin with felt emboldened to take even bigger swipes. Separating the art from the artist has seemingly become impossible in this instance (not that there arent valid criticisms), but to me, The Birth of a Nation was a thunderbolt from an artists soul that said so much about the here and now. Itll be interesting to see how history treats it. For now, make up your own mind, Academy members. At the very least, it deserves to be seen. (Kristopher Tapley)

Captain Fantastic

Though star Viggo Mortensen is looking more and more likely to land a best actor nom, the film in which he stars deserves attention across the board. Writer-director Matt Ross has crafted an original, smart, and often very funny tale, and though its only his second feature as director, he handles the material with the assured hand of a master, keeping the story from ever feeling preachy or treacly. There are no easy answers in this story, which only makes its existence all the more impressive. (Jenelle Riley)

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Mexico City (AFP) - The death toll in protests against a gasoline price increase in Mexico rose to three on Friday as two men died of gunshot wounds after a clash with police.

The prosecutor's office in the central state of Hidalgo said the men were declared dead at the hospital following Thursday's violent demonstration in the town of Ixmiquilpan.

The statement did not indicate whether police or civilians had shot the victims.

The state public security department had reported on Thursday that five officers and eight civilians were injured and taken to hospitals after the clash.

Protesters who were blocking a road had tossed rocks at police who responded with tear gas, the department said.

The department said "gunfire was heard", but it did not say who was shooting or whether any of the injured were hit by bullets.

The clash followed days of nationwide demonstrations, highway blockades and looting that began when the government hiked gasoline prices by 20.1 percent on January 1.

Hundreds of people have been arrested while hundreds of stores were ransacked this week.

President Enrique Pena Nieto used a nationally televised New Year's address late Thursday to defend the increase, which is part of a deregulation of gasoline prices.

"It is a difficult change but as president it is precisely my responsibility to take difficult decisions in the present to avoid major problems in the future," Pena Nieto said.

He said the government could not maintain "artificial" prices as the international price of oil rose last year.

Fewer highway blockades were reported on Friday.
Washington (AFP) - The US intelligence community released Friday a dossier of evidence to bolster its case that Russia's President Vladimir Putin sought to help Donald Trump win the White House.

The declassified file, based on a more detailed secret report presented to both President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump, contained little that had not been previously leaked.

The bulk of the report seeks through open-source information to demonstrate that Russian state media followed a pro-Trump line through the campaign leading up to the November 8 election.

The sources and methods of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are protected in the report, which will not convince all skeptics.

But it lays out publicly, for the first time, a clear case that the Kremlin picked a side in the poll -- even if it does not attempt to prove that Putin swung what was a tight result.

- Key allegations -

The report assesses "with high confidence" that Putin himself ordered an "influence campaign" to denigrate Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Republican rival Trump.

(An annex to the report reveals that when US intelligence assigns "high confidence" to an allegation it is based on "high-quality information from multiple sources.")

Putin did this, the report alleges, to undermine the US-led liberal democratic world order and expose alleged US hypocrisy in embarrassing the Kremlin after the Panama Papers leak.

Putin also had a personal grudge against Clinton, the report alleges, because he blames her for fomenting 2011 protests against his rule while she was US secretary of state.

The campaign was, according to the report, "multi-faceted" -- involving covert methods such as computer hacking and overt ones such as media propaganda and paid social media "trolls."

- How was it done? -

The report assesses that from July 2015 and until at least July 2016 the GRU, Russian military intelligence, hacked email accounts owned by Democratic Party officials and politicians.

Story continues

This information thus gleaned, some of it embarrassing or compromising to the authors, was then leaked through WikiLeaks, the Guccifer 2.0 online persona, DCLeaks.com and intermediaries.

From 2014, Russian hackers probed systems used by US electoral boards, but the Department of Homeland Security assesses that they did not breach vote tallying equipment.

Russia's state media apparatus, including the well-funded English-language services of RT television and the Sputnik news platform, engaged in a propaganda effort.

The Kremlin also mobilized an online army of paid trolls and sympathizers who deluged US voters on social media with posts and comments designed to hurt Clinton and help Trump.

Both official media and trolls promoted in some cases fake or skewed news stories, as well as those undermining other narratives.

- How does the US know? -

Many observers, including Trump himself, have called the US intel report into question, pointing out past CIA mistakes like its false assessment that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The declassified version of the report does little to shed light on covert counter-intelligence methods and sources, and admits it is hard to attribute cyber attacks with certainty.

But it builds a coherent picture of Putin and his supporters' keen desire for a Trump victory through open sources, including the words of Russian officials and journalists.

- Why did Putin back Trump? -

The report cites evidence supporting several complementary motives that the agencies assess led Putin to back Trump.

It suggests that Putin saw Trump as more likely than Clinton to agree to a military arrangement in the Middle East in which Russian and US forces would work together against jihadists.

Russia has a history of enjoying working with Western leaders whose business interests make them likely friends of Moscow, such as Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi.

And, the report alleges, Russia hoped to tarnish US democracy as a symbol, fearing the global spread of American ideals will undermine the Kremlin's grip on Russia's own citizenry.
By Doina Chiacu and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Friday certified the Electoral College vote that gave Republican Donald Trump his victory in the contentious 2016 presidential election after a raucous half-hour joint session punctuated by Democratic challenges. The Republican businessman, whose presidential campaign was his first bid for public office, garnered 304 electoral votes, compared with 227 won by his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, according to the vote tally read by Vice President Joe Biden. The electoral votes were opened before a joint session of Congress in what is considered a formality for most presidential elections. Members of the House of Representatives objected to the electoral tally in states including Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Texas, Mississippi and the Carolinas in a symbolic move that exposed lingering dismay over a contentious election campaign. Some members complained about long lines at polling stations while others cited concerns over Russian attempts to influence the result in Trump's favor. "I object because people are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our election," said Representative Barbara Lee of California before being overruled. Biden denied the objections one by one, at times jocular and apparently determined to finish the tally. "It is over," he said at one point, to laughter from Republicans. None of the representatives had the backing of a senator, which would have allowed them to suspend the joint session and allow the House and Senate to meet separately to debate the objections. Although Trump, who is set to take office on Jan. 20, won the Electoral College vote that determines the victor, Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. The election has been shadowed by concerns about Russian hacking of Democratic groups and other forms of intervention during the campaign. Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed possible Russian interference, was due to receive a U.S. intelligence report on the situation later on Friday. He told The New York Times on Friday that the focus on the issue was a "political witch hunt." The intelligence agencies did not conclude that Russian hacking changed any vote tallies. But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said concerns about Russian interference cast a pall over the 2016 vote. "That's why people have some level of dismay today on the vote ... about the Electoral College," Pelosi said at a news conference. "How much is known about the foreign disruption of our election?" (Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Leslie Adler)
TALLAHASSSEE, Fla. (AP)  A correctional officer in Florida's capital has been charged with battery after authorities say he used a stun gun on a restrained inmate who kept spitting at people.

The Leon County sheriff's office says in a news release that Derrick Adams was arrested Thursday after the stun gun was used Monday at the county jail. He also was fired.

Deputies say the 48-year-old Adams failed to follow standard protocol when he didn't put a spit mask on an inmate who spit in his face and on a nurse.

Instead, authorities say Adams removed his stun gun and told the inmate, who was fully restrained in a chair, to "do it again" several times. They say the inmate spit again and Adams deployed his stun gun.

It's unclear whether Adams has an attorney.
Farvel, Au revoir, Auf wiedersehen.

This is my farewell notification to you.

I have been your Vernon County Dairy Ambassador for 15 years and am now passing on the opportunity to someone else. I come from a farming background. My grandfather came from the old country (Switzerland) and continued farming in Argyle, Wis. My uncle (his future son-in-law) also came from the old country and continued making cheese in Monroe, Wis. He is listed in the Monroe cheese makers archives. My husband and I each grew up dairy farming. We both know first hand all the hard work and expense that the dairy farmers go through to put food on your table.

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has been a tremendous resource, as well as help from the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee members: Jim Servais, Myrna Fremstad, Myron Hornby, Joe McClelland and Brad Robson. Thank you to Dorothy Robson of the Westby Times who kept me on my toes to reach you bi-monthly. When my husband Richard and I said I do four years ago, a partnership also began with dairy promotion. He has been with me at the dairy freakfasts, the fair, cheese samplings, parades and always manages to make people laugh as hes spreading the word on dairy.

The day I was appointed by Eric Nottestad, then chairman of the Dairy Promotion Committee, I was told to come up with a way to deplete the inventory of the 6-foot Got Milk banners that the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board was phasing out. Driving home that day I noticed an old building along Hwy. 14 and thought, now that is a perfect place for a banner. Thus began the Banners on Barns, Buildings and Businesses which was such a hit in Vernon County that soon other counties were asking for banners and more had to be printed! A lot of interest was created when we held a contest to see how many banners someone could find in the county.

I worked in school food service for the Westby School District when I started, which was an added plus to reach so many children and families. The Dairy Council of Wisconsin was a valuable resource and always willing to give me dairy related items to hand out to the students for a special dairy promotion. Some of those students are now parents of school age children and I can only hope they are passing on the good dairy eating habits to the next generation.

If you are interested in the Vernon County Dairy Ambassador position, contact Jim Servais, chairman, Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee, 608-483-2800.

***

I had hoped to get to the point where people hear my name and immediately think of reaching for healthy dairy and are conscientious of their food selections. Did I do it?
Two men and two women in Chicago were arrested and charged Thursday with kidnapping and torturing a man, slicing off a piece of his hair, down to his scalp, with a knife. Many people were witness to the assault, because it was streamed on Facebook Live.

Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, Brittany Covington, all 18, and Tanishia Covington, who is 24 (police had earlier said she was 18, as well), have each been charged with felony aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. And because the suspects are all black, the victim white, and because video of the assault shows the suspects yelling, fuck Donald Trump, and fuck white people, the four have also been charged with a hate crime. Police said one of the suspects knew the victim, who is 18, from high school. The victim had been reported missing Monday by his family, and is said to have mental-health problems. He was taken in a stolen van from where his family had dropped him off to meet a friend; how he ended up with the suspects is still being investigated. In the video, the man sits in the corner of the room, bound, and with tape over his mouth. The suspects cut the sleeves of his sweatshirt, kick and hit him, and threaten his life. Its a crime Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called sickening. He said it displayed the brazenness of the offenders who assaulted the victim and then broadcast it for the entire world to see. Which raises the question: Why would someone live-stream a crime?

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Theres an easy answer, N.G. Berrill, executive director of the the New York Center for Neuropsychology & Forensic Behavioral Science, told me, which is that theyre stupid.

Most of the approximately 30-minute video focuses on a woman who is apparently holding a cellphone and filming the assault. She blows smoke into the camera, flashes a few bottles of alcohol, even checks her hair. The three others in the live-stream pop in and out and talk to the camera. At one point, dissatisfied with how few people have tuned in to watch the group assault the man, the woman with the cellphone says to her internet following, You all aint even commenting on my shit. Aint nobody watching my shit.

Story continues

A bit later, presumably after someone commented on her live-stream, she says, What up, Devin?During all this, the bound victim can be heard pleading off-camera. Stupidity may be one answer for the suspects actions. But the group also seems oblivious of their actions and callous to the victims suffering. Berrill said part of the reason they might have live-streamed the assault can be chalked up to teen impulsiveness. Obviously, theres not a lot of clear-minded thought here, he said. The more difficult answer, however, cuts close to a recent internet phenomenon that includes cases like Marina Lonina, the Ohio woman who filmed her underage friend being raped last year on Periscope, another live-streaming application.

Recommended: The Astonishing Transformation of Julian Assange

Lonina and her friend, who was 17, went home with 29-year-old Raymond Boyd Gates, who was convicted last October of rape. Lonina told police later she intended to recorded the assault so Gates would stop, but, in the words of the prosecutor, she got caught up in it by the number of likes that her live-stream was getting, so she continued to do it."

Violence will always attract attention. And in the Chicago video clip, the four teenagers boast about their intentions to harm the man, almost feeding and building upon each others claims, until one man tells viewers they plan to stick the victim in the trunk of a car, put a brick on the gas pedal, then let it, errrrrrrr  .

It speaks to a kind of scary place in the culture where people are willing to expose their misled ideas, their sadism, their sexual perversion, their felonious behavior, for the accolades theyll receive through social media, Berrill said.

Police would later find the victim disoriented, wandering the streets on Chicagos West Side, an area that experienced heavy violence this past year, as has much of the city. This context is also important in understanding what happened: Last year the city had 762 homicides, a nearly 60 percent increase from the previous year. In certain neighborhoods, violence is normal. Young kids, especially teenagers, can become desensitized to what may seem to the rest of the country as merely one horrific moment.

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It is a perfect example of chaos, Desmond Patton, an assistant professor of social work at Columbia University, and who studied at the University of Chicago, told me. Number one they are young people, and young people have forever made dumb decisions and mistakes. But when this is embedded in an environment of violence, where violence is unaddressed, and in deprived communities, then these are the types of things that can happen.

The world in which some of the young men and women live can be horrifying, Patton said, and the live-stream is partly a reflection of that. What may seem appalling and evil to the wider world, may not be too far beyond normal for some of these peopleits just not typically broadcast for everyone to see.

Many of the people Berrill studies in cases like this are under-socialized or attention-starved, and, like a child repeatedly dropping a toy on the ground, they have trouble differentiating good and bad attention. This will probably get worse, Berrill said. Facebooks live-stream application is relatively new. It has been used to record the mundane, the exceptionally heroic, the horrific, and in this case the sadistic. In that way, it is a reflection of society. But whats new, Berrill said, is he wonders if this attack would have even happened if the assailants could not have broadcast it. Its an element in these cases that encourages this behavior, because they know immediately theres a built in audience for it, he said.

As people develop online communities and audiences, there will always be a desire to attract more attentionwhether thats through Twitter, or live-streaming. And a shortcut to attract attention will always be to say or do something absurd, contentious, even violent.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
- By Alberto Abaterusso





Goldcorp Inc. (GG) appears at the top of the list of Desjardins Capital Markets for the large-cap stocks that the firm recommends buying for 2017. The firm says "the company will be able to illustrate an attractive multiyear guidance outlook on both production and costs," as reported by the Financial Post.





At the moment, Goldcorp is not the best gold mining stock in the industry, especially when it is compared to its more direct peers, Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX) in terms of gold output and AISC per ounce, and Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM), in terms of gold output.

Goldcorp extracts fewer ounces of gold from its reserves than Barrick and Newmont and at a higher AISC per ounce than the world's largest gold producer.

According to its third-quarter 2016 report, the gold producer says it "remains on track to achieve 2016 production guidance of 2.8 million to 3.1 million gold ounces at AISC between $850 and $925 per ounce."

For 2016 Barrick expects to reach a total gold output of between 5.25 million and 5.55 million ounces and a total copper output of between 380 million and 430 million pounds. At Barrick, gold is being extracted at a cost of sales of approximately $800 to $850 per ounce and at AISC between $740 and $775 per ounce.

The production of copper, which represents about 15% of Barrick's total business, is going to cost approximately $1.35 to $1.55 in cost of sales per pound and $2.00 to $2.20 in AISC per pound.

At Newmont, the attributable gold production is expected to range between 4.8 million and 5.0 million ounces in 2016, at a cost applicable to sales of $640 to $690 per ounce and at AISC of $870 to $930 per ounce.

The largest gold producer in the U.S. expects to produce approximately 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of copper in 2016, at a cost applicable to sales ranging between $1.90 and $2.10 per pound and at AISC of $2.30 to $2.50 per pound.

Story continues

Furthermore, when we have a look at the "Mineral Reserve Grade (g/t)" figures, according to Agnico Eagle Mines' (AEM) presentation, Goldcorp is below the gold stock industry average with a mineral reserve grade (g/t) of 1.06.

Source: Agnico Eagle's Corporate Update - November 2016

The mineral reserve grade is a very important indicator for the quality of the assets base of the gold mining company. The lower the grade is, the higher the cost to extract one ounce from the ground, "making high-grade ore deposits a crucial consideration for all types of investors in mining," writes Mining.com.

But with a reference to the five-year difference between gold production and mineral reserve grade, Goldcorp, with its 29%, seems to be better positioned than Barrick (35%) and Newmont (32%). Ore processing at Goldcorp is affecting the quality of its assets base less than at Barrick and Newmont.

The assets base of Goldcorp has been affected by operational issues over 2016. In particular, Goldcorp missed those investors' expectations on a substantial improvement at operations that once solved will allow the company to generate $250 million annually in two years.

The delay in operational improvements that otherwise would have avoided the company to incur into inefficiencies, is seen by Andrew Kaip, an analyst at BMO, as the main reason for Goldcorp's poor performance in the stock market over fiscal 2016 compared to its peer group and its recent downgrade.

As shown by the graph above, over the last 12 months Goldcorp gained 21% on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), but it was outperformed by Barrick and Newmont with 86% and 67%.

The turnaround in the miner' s operations that investors and analysts are expecting concerns the improvement at the Cerro Negro mine and mineral resource at Cochenour.

Besides operational improvements at Cerro Negro mine and at Cochenour, Desjardins Capital Markets sees other items that should stimulate the growth of Goldcorp's market value. The firm says that "cost savings initiatives at its Red Lake and Pe?asquito projects" plus a "weaker Mexican peso and higher prices for copper and zinc" will also help Goldcorp's stock beat the market, as reported by the Financial Post.

For the current year, analysts expect Goldcorp will generate an EPS of 12 cents on average, ranging between a low estimate of minus 1 cent and a high estimate of 23 cents, a 363.6% increase from one year ago.

Source: Yahoo Finance

As of today, analysts recommend buying shares of Goldcorp; the recommendation rating is 2.3. The analysts' average target price is $18.74 ranging between a low target price per share of $15 and a high target price per share of $28.

Recently, Goldcorp has been upgraded by TD Securities. The Canadian firm has recommended buying shares of the miner and forecasts a target price of $18.50 per share.

Goldcorp closed at $14.94 per share, up 68 cents (or 4.77%) on the NYSE Thursday, and the share price ranged between a low price of $14.49 per share and a high price per share of $15.12. A volume of 12,456,954 shares were traded on the NYSE versus an average volume of 9.56 million shares traded over the last 10 days and an average volume of 8.6 million shares traded over the last three months.

Since the beginning of the new year, the gold stock gained 9.13%, but it underperformed the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) with 0.97%.

During the third quarter, First Eagle Investment (Trades, Portfolio) and David Dreman (Trades, Portfolio) reduced their positions in Goldcorp by 15.44% and 6.01% while Mario Gabelli (Trades, Portfolio) increased his position by 0.06%.

The precious metal for immediate delivery closed at $1,176.70 per troy ounce on the London Bullion Market Thursday, up $12.45 or 1.07% from the previous close.

On the market of gold futures, the Comex, one ounce of gold gained $15.9 or plus 1.37%, from a price of $1,163.80 per ounce on Jan, 4 to a price of $1,179.70 per ounce on Jan. 5.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stock mentioned in this article.

Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






empty mall

Count this as another bad sign for brick and mortar stores.

In a note to clients January 6, a group of Deutsche Bank analysts led by Paul Trussell wrote that investors view the entire department store sector as "unownable" due to the weakness among leading retailers.

That's right. Stock analysts, who are in the business of recommending stocks to investors, are basically saying that those investors think the entire sector is uninvestable. Ouch.

Deutsche Bank said:

"We believe investors are viewing the dept. store sector on a whole as unownable given a lack of mall traffic, a structural inability to expand margins given the promotional environment and the ongoing need to invest in omnichannel (including shipping), and little perceived hope for top-line initiatives to meaningfully benefit 2017."

"We have been especially disappointed by 4Q weakness despite dept. stores entering the quarter with relatively clean inventories and facing very easy compares," they added.

Six of the retailers under Trussell's team's coverage reported holiday/December same-store sales that missed expectations. They included American Eagle Outfitters, L Brands, and Macy's, which just recently announced it is shutting down 68 stores. As a result, it is cutting estimates for Target, Nordstrom, DSW and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Screen Shot 2017 01 06 at 11.09.40 AM

NOW WATCH: How Donald Trump used bankruptcy to stay rich





More From Business Insider


Hardcore Disney fans may know about a few of these upcoming films, but Disney has updated its slate for 2017 with new photos and details of films for the coming year. Heres what to expect from the mega studio that also releases films from Marvel, Pixar and LucasFilm.

MARCH

Coming out on March 17 , Beauty and the Beast is the newest of Disneys live action remakes, following Tarzan and The Jungle Book. The classic tale of romance, trust, and cursed furniture will be told to viewers in an entirely new way. Belle, played by Emma Watson, is captured by Dan Stevens the Beast, a ferocious but misunderstood hermit whose only companions are talking clocks, teapots, and the like. While Gaston, played by Luke Evans, rushes to save the damsel, Belle realizes that the Beast is no monster at all, but her newfound true love. The remake also features Stanley Tucci, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor and Audra McDonald.

APRIL

While we find out the Beast is actually a cursed prince (sorry for the spoilers!), Disneynature is profiling some real live animals in its new film Born in China. Taking viewers along three animal families journey through Chinas most remote and unexplored areas, the new True Life Adventure film will be released on Earth Day (April 21). John Krasinski will narrate as pandas, snow leopards, golden monkeys and more navigate snow-capped mountains and bamboo forests in their quest for survival. The follow-up to Disneynatures 2015 feature Monkey Kingdom should feature some similarly heart-wrenching and heartwarming scenes displaying the reality of life out in the wild.

MAY

Move over, Deadpool. The cool kids are back in town. The newest installment in the gritty, raunchy, and laugh-out-loud funny superhero series Guardians of the Galaxy is on its way. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 will provide fans with more than enough footage of Chris Pratt, AKA Starlord/Peter Quill, to fill the interwebs with endless GIFs.

Story continues

The team, made up of outcasts like the talking raccoon Rocket and adorable newly sprouted Groot, will continue to jet from planet to planet in an attempt to keep the universe in check. Only this time, theyre also struck with the challenge of finding the truth of Quills parentage. Comic book favorites are expected to come to life onscreen in addition to old foes becoming friends. The intergalactic crime-fighting team will hit theaters May 5.

The fifth in the sea-faring Pirates of the Caribbean franchise arrives May 26. Fans have been left without their pirate fix since the last film came out in 2011, but the wait will soon be over. New additions Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario will help the hero (as much of a hero as he can be) Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) as he fights his most formidable and savage foe yet. Another army of the undead, this time ghostly and lead by villain Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), escape the Devils Triangle with a mission Jack cannot ignoremostly because the mission includes his certain death. Old favorite and original antagonist Jeffrey Rush will reprise his role as Captain Barbossa, though its unclear whether or not hell help this films trio stop Captain Salazar from completing his goal: killing every last pirate at sea.

JUNE

Its been six years since the last Cars movie, but 2017 will place viewers back to the land of talking cars and tractors. Cars 3, premiering June 16, brings the red-hot Lightening McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) to life again as the speedster fights to stay relevant while freshly waxed newbies push him off the racetrack and into a premature retirement. With the help of eager race technician Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), McQueen will return to the Piston Cup stage for his comeback. For #95, the race isnt over yet.

NOVEMBER

Chris Hemsworth returns as Asgardian hero Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universes next film Thor: Ragnarok. Following the events of the Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor finds himself imprisoned without Mjolnir, his trusty hammer, on the other side of the universe while a new enemy, Hela (Cate Blanchett) and the threat of Ragnarok (the destruction of Asgard and all Asgardian civilization) loom light-years away.

In the fight to get home, Thor will face old friend the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a gladiatorial battle to end all gladiatorial battles. Also featured are Tessa Thompson, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, and Anthony Hopkins. Watch Thor save his homeland beginning Nov. 3.

Disney-Pixars next film Coco arrives Nov. 22, revolving around a young aspiring musician stuck in a family with a puzzling decades-old ban on music. Miguel, voiced by newcomer Anthony Gonzalez, in his quest to become as successful as his idol Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), falls into the colorful and fantastic Land of the Dead. There, Miguel meets Hector, a charming yet sneaky trickster, who joins Miguel on a journey to learn the truth of the familys history.

DECEMBER

While we dont know much about the plot of the next episode in the Star Wars saga, Rey, Finn, and Poe are expected to return to the screen alongside Luke Skywalker. Will Rey finally learn the identity of her parents? Will Finn and Poe find romance as so many fans hope for? And its not clear how big of a role Princess Leia will have, though she had finished filming scenes before her death. Answers may or may not be revealed when the film heads to theaters Dec. 15.

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MGM

Lifetime is moving forward with its movie about the Flint Water Crisis, and news has started to emerge about what the cast will look like. Specifically, iconic performer Cher will be in the starring role. She will also be executive producing with Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, and Katie Couric. Lifetime is clearly prioritizing the movie  they just bought it last year and in true Lifetime fashion have plans to air it before the topic is too far out of public consciousness. With these early details, though, the question can officially be raised whether Lifetime is planning on committing to accuracy for this project or will it more closely resemble the celebrity biopics and ripped-from-the-headlines larks the network is known for?

Not that theres anything boring or wrong with Lifetimes typical fare. Sometimes there is nothing better than relaxing and binge-watching four or five psycho babysitter stalks a hot husband and his family movies in a row. They never get old! And Cher is an Oscar and Golden Globe-winning actress so her talents should not be denied. But with Zadan and Meron producing things could get tricky. For better or for worse, their film and telefilm work usually prioritizes flashiness or camp, not the subtleties of a city-crippling water crisis that has still not been solved. Cher is also reportedly portraying a Flint resident whose family is severely affected by the disaster. The crisis itself affected a diverse population and much has been made of the fact that this specific city has a larger African American population than many surrounding areas.

With questions still swirling as to whether this water contamination was directed towards Flint because of the population itself  versus the state changing a wealthier or less at-risk citys water supply  it will be important that one of the first films about the ongoing catastrophe respectfully addresses all sides and gives due screen time to the actual lives at stake. Theres more than a chance it will veer into a white-savior narrative taking place in court rooms and government offices in Michigan rather than on the streets where the problem is still negatively affecting real lives for the foreseeable future. Of course, Cher has been supporting the residents of Flint from the very beginning of the problems there so if anyone knows the right way to take the story to the screen it might be her.

(via Deadline)
Donald Trump met with editors at Conde Nast on Friday, in an hour-long meeting where a range of topics were discussed.

The meeting at Conde Nast headquarters at One World Trade Center included Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and New Yorker editor David Remnick, both of whom have been critical of Trump, and it was organized by Vogues editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.

Although it was off the record, Politico reported that there were no fireworks, and that it covered a range of topics, including race, hate crimes, Russia, Vladimir Putin, climate change, women, feminism, and abortion. All of the participants got to ask a question, according to Politico.

A spokeswoman for Conde Nast said that the meeting was off the record and we are not commenting. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, said, It was off the record and I will respect that.

Trump tweeted earlier on Friday, Anna Wintour came to my office at Trump Tower to ask me to meet with the editors of Conde Nast & Steven Newhouse, a friend. Will go this AM. A source confirmed that the company told Trump that the conversation would be off the record.

Anna Wintour came to my office at Trump Tower to ask me to meet with the editors of Conde Nast & Steven Newhouse, a friend. Will go this AM.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Trump has held a series of meetings with major news organizations, including those he has railed against on Twitter. He visited the New York Times in November, in a largely on-the-record conversation with editors and some reporters, and he also met with TV news executives and personalities that month in a gathering that was off the record. At the latter meeting, he reportedly offered sharped criticism of media coverage of the presidential campaign.

Story continues

Vanity Fair was the target of one of Trumps tweets last month, after it published a negative review of an eatery in Trump Tower. It reprinted Trumps tweet on the cover of its most recent issue: Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @Vanityfair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!

Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016

Carter told Politico on Thursday that he offered to sit out the meeting, given the discomfort of the situation, but ended up participating on Friday.

Trump later received a briefing on Friday on an intelligence report on Russian interference with the election campaign and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

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Trump Blasts Arnold Schwarzenegger for 'Apprentice' Ratings in Friday Morning Tweets
In his latest Twitter tirade, Donald Trump called into question the sourcing of an NBC News report about an intelligence briefing on Thursday.

After the network aired a story on NBC Nightly News reporting that Russian officials celebrated Trumps victory in the 2016 election, the president-elect took to social media to accuse NBC of playing into someones political hand.

How did NBC get an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented? Who gave them this report and why? Politics! he asked.

Also Read: Donald Trump Comes Out as 'Big Fan' of US Intelligence While Ripping 'Dishonest Media'

Highly classified intercepts illustrate Russian government planning and direction of a multifaceted campaign by Moscow to undermine the integrity of the American political system, an unnamed intelligence official told NBC.

NBC News did not immediately respond to TheWraps request for comment.

Thursdays tweet is yet another development in Trumps ongoing battle with the U.S. intelligence community, which has repeatedly confirmed that Russian interference played at least some role in Trumps win.

Also Read: Donald Trump Trusts Julian Assange More Than US Intelligence

Trump has repeatedly downplayed Russias involvement in election-related cyber hacking, using Twitter on Wednesday to promote comments WikiLeaks Julian Assange made on Fox News Hannity on Tuesday night.

Julian Assange said a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta  why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! he wrote.

That has put Trump at odds with President Obama, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who have all agreed that the Russian government interfered with the election.

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Related stories from TheWrap:

Donald Trump Comes Out as 'Big Fan' of US Intelligence While Ripping 'Dishonest Media'

Stephen Colbert Mocks Donald Trump for Following 'Emergency Kittens' Twitter Account (Video)

Special Needs Man Tortured, Told to Denounce Trump in Streamed Video
Having access to unbiased, research based information is critical to todays farmers. The University of Minnesota is one source of this type of information and this winter season the University will again be brining important information to our local populations through a number of meetings and educational programs. Below are three such educational opportunities that the University of Minnesota and Minnesota Extension will be offering in the near future.

Taking charge of your finances: How to survive and thrive

The New Year is here and with it comes a blank page to create your financial plan. If you struggle with what needs to be included in your financial management plan or are looking to boost your farm financial management skills, this program is for you.

Producers will walk through how to create balance sheets, income statements and cash flow projections. These financial statements are created using your farm records and aid you in making important financial decisions for your operation. This program is sponsored by the MN Soybean Research and Promotion Council.

This workshop will be in Mankato on Friday, Jan. 13. To learn more, go to z.umn.edu/thriveworkshop. To register go to z.umn.edu/thrive2017. For more information, contact Pauline Van Nurden at pvannurd@umn.edu or 320-235-0726, ext 2008.

Beef home study courses

The University of Minnesota Beef Team is offering three online Home Study Courses in Winter 2017, titled Introduction to Cow/Calf Nutrition, Health Management for the Cow/Calf Herd and Introduction to Cattle Feeding. Each lesson will include online activities designed to encourage participants to become familiar with electronic resources. Participants will also have the opportunity to interact with other producers through online forums.

The first lessons was available Jan. 11 and the following lessons will be posted every two weeks. The fee for course registration is $75 and can be accessed through www.extension.umn.edu/beef. Registration is open through Jan. 17. Internet access and Microsoft Office software are required.

Contact Nicole Kenney Rambo at nmkenney@umn.edu or 320-235-0726, ext 2009 with questions or visit www.extension.umn.edu/beef for further details and a list of lessons offered within each course.

Cow/calf days seminar tour and trade show

The University of Minnesota Beef Team is proud to host the annual Cow/Calf Days Seminar Tour and Trade Show. The 2017 event will feature information on managing scours in calves, results of a U of M study on the impact of different hay rake designs, grazing management, and results of a U of M study on the impact of hay feeder design on hay waste. Updates from the Minnesota State Cattlemens Association will also highlight the event. The corresponding tradeshow will feature vendors with new information, technology, and products with a wide-array of practical uses for the operators in the cow-calf sector.

The program is directed at cow/calf producers, allied industry representatives, and is open to the public. A meal will be served with the program and a registration fee of $10 per person (register and pay at the door) will include the meal, proceedings book, and program materials. Each session is approximately three hours

The seminar tour and trade show will be in Oronoco at the Tony Rossman Farm, 7000 70th Street NW on Jan. 26 at 5:30 p.m. To learn more, go to www.extension.umn.edu/beef. For more information, contact Eric Mousel at emmousel@umn.edu or 218-398-1916.
On The Price Is Right, one contestant excitedly hugged Drew Carey, which is fairly common, but what was uncommon is that she told Carey that he was her boyfriend in high school. This took Carey by surprise at first, but then he shook her hand and told her it was good to see her again. Carey then quoted that perfect get-back-together song by Peaches and Herb, Reunited.

Reunited and it feels so good, Carey joked.

On Jeopardy, Alex Trebek finally found a contestant he couldnt bully. When getting to know the contestants, Trebek was told by a young woman from New York that she studies the German longsword. Not only does she study it, she competes in international competitions against both men and women. As Trebek moved on to the next contestant, he knew hed met his match.

Remind me to be nice to you, Trebek said.

On Match Game, Jason Alexander channeled his inner Costanza with an obscure Seinfeld reference. Though it may not seem too obscure for true Seinfeld fans who remember how fun it is to say, Salsa!

Watch Wayne Brady try to strip on Match Game:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.
Justin Wong is thinking of making the move back to SoCal. (Image: Michael Martin)

Renown fighting game player Justin Wong is considering quitting his current job at Nvidia and moving to Southern California to be closer to the Echo Fox studios.

Wong discussed his thoughts on moving in a recent interview with Yahoo Esports. When asked if he will leave his job, he responded, Its possible. Im actually thinking about it Im not going to lie. Ive been really close to making that decision because [of] how much support Ive been getting from Echo Fox and the potential future of fighting games in esportsIf I quit my job I would actually move back to SoCal, because thats where the Echo Fox studios is. So I would just love to work with them more closely. Have much better personal relationships like I have with [Antonio Javier.]





He also believes the move would benefit him by granting more regular access to strong players in the FGC.

Theres a lot of strong players in SoCal too, and I want to say that SoCal is better than NorCal. I am a fair believer that it is a much better environment to play, and I just like SoCal better, Wong said.

Justin Wong only recently signed to esports team Echo Fox. He is one of multiple names to be acquired by the team as it makes a huge move into the FGC, joined by Hajime Tokido Taniguchi, Yusuke Momochi, and Yuko ChocoBlanka Momochi, Mortal Kombat X players Dominique SonicFox MacLean and Brad Scar Vaughn, Super Smash Bros. Wii U player Leonardo MKLeo Lopez Perez, and former Evil Geniuses FGC manager Antonio Javier.
PALMYRA, N.Y. (AP)  The owner of a weekly upstate New York newspaper says a man bought hundreds of copies in an unsuccessful effort to keep people from reading about his drunken-driving arrest.

State police arrested Joseph Talbot on Dec. 29 in Wayne County and charged him with driving while intoxicated.

Police also charged him with refusing to be fingerprinted or photographed. They say he told troopers he didn't want his mugshot in the newspaper.

The 12,000-circulation Times of Wayne County says it obtained a mugshot from the county jail. It says it printed the mugshot and a story on New Year's Eve and published them online.

Newspaper owner and editor Ron Holdraker says Talbot bought nearly 1,000 newsstand copies at $1.25 each.

A telephone message left at a number listed for Talbot hasn't been returned.
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - EFG Hermes' renewable energy platform Vortex has agreed to buy a portfolio of solar power assets in Britain for 470 million pounds ($580 million) from Sun Edison's Terraforma.

The portfolio includes 24 solar parks, has a combined 365 megawatts (MW) of power and an estimated useful life of around three decades, EFG said on Friday.

The price includes around 300 million pounds of debt, which Vortex said it planned to refinance before completing the deal.

Malaysian utility firm Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) will fund half of the 170 million pound equity portion of the transaction. The remaining 50 percent will be underwritten by EFG Hermes which plans on eventually holding 5 percent of the equity, consistent with previous transactions undertaken by Vortex.

The parent company of Terraforma, Sun Edison, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April after a binge of debt-fuelled acquisitions proved unsustainable.

Vortex was advised by Deloitte and Global Capital Finance.

($1 = 0.8103 pounds) (Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Mark Potter)
The apparent double suicide of an elderly couple who reportedly jumped from the fifth floor of a Las Vegas hotels parking garage has triggered questions about the reasons why afflicted seniors are intending to inflict self-harm.

The elderly couple named Glen and Emi Yamasaki, both believed to have been 63 years old, were seen driving to Silverton Casino Hotels highest floor on Wednesday according to the Daily Mail.

They exited their vehicle, climbed onto the wall and jumped to the ground, Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant C.J Jenkins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal . Both succumbed to their injuries.

About 7,699 people over the age of 65 committed suicide in 2014, according to data by the Center for Disease Control.

Elderly people are believed to be at risk of committing suicide for various reasons, according to Dr. Yeates Conwell, director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Program at the University of Rochester. Conwell, along with other researchers at Rochester, identified particular risk factors associated with late-life suicide attempts.

Apart from the most common factors such as depression, psychiatric diseases, and physical illnesses, other factors such the presence of severe incurable pain that has affected an individuals autonomous functioning capacity are believed to contribute to suicidal thoughts. Other risk factors for seniors include experiencing loss of a loved one, anxiety, social isolation and living alone.

Imagine these to be Venn diagramsTheir interaction, rather than any one of them, helps us understand why a person might take their life, Conwell was quoted saying to The Trace.

Researchers have also found that the survival rate of the elderly who attempt suicide is very low compared to members of any other age group.

Older people who die by suicide arent just more likely to die because theyre frail and less resilient to an injury than younger people but also because they use more lethal methods, and they do so with more thoughtful planning. said Conwell.

Story continues

Another possible reason for this is because of the method of suicide as well, as it has been suggested that using firearms is the preferred method for suicide by seniors. According to one statistic, elderly white men account for 88 percent of all late-life gun suicides, with a rate of 27 deaths per 100,000. Also based on data compiled by Pew Research, the vast majority of gun owners are white, male, and over the age of 50.

When we talk about older people committing suicide, were talking about older white menHistorically, those are the guys who own guns. Dr. Liza Gold, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine told Trace.

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On Thursday, Patriots Day star Mark Wahlberg told Ellen about the time his 13-year-old daughter wouldnt put the phone away at dinnertime. But there was one narrative detail Ellen got really hung up on.

Wahlberg explained that a very successful friend had come over, someone his daughter had been a big fan of, but that shed been on a music app the whole time. When pressed to name the character at the center of this tale of intrigue, though, Wahlberg wasnt telling. Its a young man  and hes a very nice young man. Canadian fellow.

That seemed to be all the audience needed to hear before deducing the identity of the fellow as one Justin Drew Bieber, he of the formerly mop-headed haircut. She liked him a lot, when she was younger, Wahlberg further teased. Turned on him. A lot of people did, Ellen remarked. And then [he] came back with a vengeance, Wahlberg added. Dad, thats gonna be my husband,' he said, imitating his daughter. I said, Over my dead body. Actually, over both your dead bodies, Ill just go back to jail.'

Check out Jimmy Fallons hilarious red carpet mishap story on Ellen:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Two energy companies, a health care company and a law firm with dozens of lobbying clients are the top donors to Republican Gov. Chris Sununu's inaugural committee, each giving $25,000.

They're among at least 40 businesses, law firms and energy and health care companies listed as contributors to the committee, which helps pay for inaugural celebrations. Sununu is hosting inaugural events Friday in Portsmouth, Saturday in Nashua and Jan. 21 at the Omni Mount Washington Hotel. He was sworn in Thursday as New Hampshire's 82nd governor.

Energy companies Eversource and NextEra Energy Resources are two top donors. Eversource is a major utility in New Hampshire and is behind the Northern Pass transmission line project. Sununu supports the project, and Eversource executives contributed at least $19,000 to his campaign. NextEra operates the Seabrook Nuclear Station.

The other top donors are law firm Gallagher, Callahan and Gartrell, which lobbied on behalf of dozens of clients at the Statehouse last year, and Centene, a company that contracts with the state to manage health care for Medicaid recipients for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sununu's predecessor, Democratic U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, also paid for her inaugural activities with donations from Eversource and other businesses and law firms, including Gallagher, Callahan and Gartrell.

"There is a long-standing tradition of leaders from the business community in New Hampshire who participate in inaugural celebrations, regardless of party," Sununu spokesman Dave Abrams said.

Donors that gave $10,000 include national companies such as AT&T and Wal-Mart, as well as New Hampshire businesses such as Beer Distributors of New Hampshire and the utility company Unitil.

Among the $5,000 donors are Sig Sauer, BAE, Anthem, Fairport, Elliot Health System and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen donated $1,000.

Sununu is required by law to file a full list of donors, including individuals, with the Secretary of State by March.

A list of inaugural donors can be found at: http://www.sununuinauguralcelebration.com/sponsors#oursponsors .
PARIS (Reuters) - Engie (ENGIE.PA) Chief Executive Isabelle Kocher said on Friday the French utility has no plans for a full takeover of its 33 percent-owned waste and water unit Suez, responding to a report that Engie was considering such a move.

Kocher did not rule out Engie could change the level of its stake in Suez, but said this was not on the current agenda.

Suez shares (SEVI.PA) rose about 5 percent before Christmas, and have held on to those gains since, after business radio station BFM said Engie was examining a full takeover bid.

"We are happy with the current level of our stake," Kocher told reporters.

Kocher said the municipal authorities that make up a large part of the firm's customers are interested in getting global solutions from their suppliers and that city mayors typically want a range of services from heating networks to public lighting, security, air quality and traffic.

But she added that this does not mean there is a need to integrate Suez more tightly into Engie.

"Dealing with the Suez issue is not a priority today," she said.

In February, Kocher started a three-year transformation of Engie, selling 15 billion euros (12.83 billion pounds) of assets in coal-powered generation and in oil and gas exploration to refocus the group on gas, renewable energy and energy services.

She said that following the sale of its Polish Engie Energia Polska unit to state-owned Polish utility Enea (ENAE.WA) late last year for an enterprise value of about 250 million euros, Engie has realized about half of its planned asset sales.

She added that the company is in no hurry to sell the rest and will bide its time so it can get a good price.

"We will take the full three years to execute our asset sales plan," she said.

Kocher said Engie had closed or sold 9 gigawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity, from 15 GW at the start of the program. She added that Engie's Hazelwood, Australia power station would be closed in coming weeks.

Story continues

Kocher also denied any wrongdoing in a European Union antitrust probe into tax deals granted by Luxembourg to Engie.

The European Commission said in September it had concerns the tax rulings granted by Luxembourg since 2008 appeared to treat the same financial transaction as both debt and equity, leading to double non-taxation of companies in the GDF Suez group, as Engie was formerly known.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Dale Hudson)
From Popular Mechanics

A heavy bomber on a training flight returned to base with one less engine than it started out with this week. Luckily the 55-year-old, eight engine B-52H Stratofortress was able to land safely at Minot Air Force Base.

The Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofan engine fell off the airplane during a training flight yesterday. The pilot declared an emergency and safely landed the jet on the remaining seven engines. According to DefenseNews, there were no weapons onboard the aircraft. The missing engine was found 25 miles from Minot and an Air Force helicopter was dispatched to recover it.

The B-52H bomber first entered service in 1961. The last bomber was delivered in October 1962, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Originally designed as nuclear-armed strategic bombers, these massive warplanes have been continually upgraded and today serve as a jack of all trades aircraft, taking on a variety of missions from maritime strikes to close air support for ground forces. The B-52H is currently under consideration for the role of Arsenal Plane, a Pentagon initiative that envisions large aircraft acting as flying missile trucks for the air-to-air and air-to-ground roles.

The B-52H is unusual among warplanes in having eight engines. The TF33 was introduced in 1961, although it's unclear how old the engine was. That having been said, the problem was likely with the engine mounting and not the engine itself. The B-52H is generally considered a safe aircraft, with only one accident since 1992 attributable to the aircraft itself.

One hundred and two bombers were produced in total, with 58 still serving with the Air Force and another 18 with the Air Force Reserve. Last year Pratt and Whitney proposed an upgrade package for the B-52H that would reduce the number of engines down from eight to four. According to the company, the upgrades would keep the B-52s flying into the 2040s, while saving fuel and reducing overall operating costs. While an attractive idea, the Air Force may be more inclined to save its pennies for the new B-21 Raider bomber, currently under development.

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Learn how to turn an idea, image or emotion into an effective and engaging poem. Poetry, with its artistic flexibility, is one of the most efficient and enjoyable ways share an idea or feeling with someone else. The best part is that with the right instruction, anyone can write a poem. Find out how at these workshops.

Each class in this series stands alone and includes two hours of lecture, writing exercises, and small group discussions. Following each 2-hour workshop, participants can take part in a 30- minute writers roundtable where they can bring one to two pages of written work to read and get feedback from the group. Geared for participants age 10-14 (with a parent) and age 15-adult.

All participants can get written feedback on their writing via email with award-winning author and storyteller Kevin Strauss. On the day of the last session, volunteers can read their work as part of the writers read concert.

All workshops take place from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the La Crescent Public Library.

Jan. 24 Introduction to poetry

Jan. 31  Playing with forms (Haiku, Cinquain, Sonnet and Sestina)

Feb. 7  Free verse isnt free (but it is fun)

Feb. 14  Editing and preparing your poems for publication

Feb. 14  7:30 p.m. Volunteer poetry concert

Come hear the poetry that your neighbors and friends have written.

To register for this free workshop series, contact the La Crescent Public Library, 321 Main St., La Crescent at 895-4047 or lbeach@selco.info.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
By Francesco Guarascio BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker faces renewed claims that he impeded EU moves against corporate tax avoidance when Luxembourg's prime minister, casting a shadow over his political future as a tussle over the bloc's top jobs looms. Juncker has faced criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups in past months over tax deals during his 18-year tenure as Luxembourg premier, including favorable arrangements for multinationals including Amazon and Fiat. Since Juncker took over the top job in Brussels in November 2014, the Commission has launched investigations into those deals. Citing leaks of German diplomats' internal communications, Britain's Guardian newspaper said on Sunday that Juncker had spent years blocking EU attempts to tackle corporate tax avoidance - prompting euro lawmakers to call on him to appear before an EU parliamentary committee of inquiry. Asked on Friday about the allegations, a commission spokesman said Juncker had launched "an unprecedented wave of active fight against tax avoidance" and been "fully transparent" on tax issues while campaigning for the presidency and during his mandate in Brussels. Gianni Pittella, who heads the centre-left grouping in the European Parliament and is running for presidency of the legislature at elections planned this month, said on Friday Juncker should clarify his position at the inquiry and share all relevant documents. "European citizens, the taxpayers, have the right to know the truth about past conduct," said Pittella said. The leftist and green groupings in Parliament, which together account for 102 of the 751 seats, have also urged Juncker to appear before the committee, and the leftists have called on him to step down as commission president. Asked if Juncker would attend the inquiry, the Commission spokesman said: "The President is always ready to cooperate with Parliament... He has nothing to hide." As Commission president, Juncker has pushed ahead ambitious reforms of EU tax rules to curb tax avoidance - which, unlike tax evasion, is not illegal. But with the backing of all 28 EU governments needed for changes to tax legislation, progress has been slow. The parliamentary presidency election may also have a bearing on Juncker's future. The centre-right grouping, the largest in the legislature, is posed to win the vote, a result that would give the conservatives the top three positions in the EU. They already hold the Commission presidency with Juncker and the European Council presidency with Donald Tusk. But the centre-left, the second largest grouping which recently ended a decade-long alliance with the conservatives, wants one of the key posts after the outgoing parliamentary president, socialist Martin Schulz, steps down. (Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by John Stonestreet)
By Sijia Jiang HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE, which is facing U.S. trade sanctions that could severely disrupt its supply chain, is slashing about 3,000 jobs, including a fifth of positions in its struggling handset business in China, company sources said. The sources said the Shenzhen-based company, one of the world's biggest telecoms gear makers, is axing about 5 percent of its 60,000 global workforce. Its global handset operations will shed 600 jobs, or 10 percent of the total, with the cuts concentrated in China, where it has been losing market share. "Cuts in the handset business in China will be beyond 20 percent," said a senior executive who has been briefed on the lay-offs, which are scheduled to be completed within the first quarter. A local manager in one of the company's overseas branches said a 10 percent quota was given to shed staff in his department by the end of January. "I was also given names that must go because they had tried to apply for jobs at (rival) Huawei and are therefore branded as 'unstable factors'," said the manager, who is not in the handset unit and asked not to be identified. The company declined to comment. ZTE is the only Chinese smartphone vendor with a meaningful presence in the United States, where its 10 percent market share makes it the fourth-largest vendor. The U.S. Commerce Department first announced in March that it would impose a ban on exports by U.S. companies to ZTE for allegedly breaking Washington's sanctions on sales to Iran. The ban has not yet come into effect following a series of reprieves, the last of which expires on Feb. 27, but if it does go ahead, the company's supply chain could be severely handicapped. It relies on U.S. companies including Qualcomm, Microsoft and Intel for about a third of its components. The uncertainty hanging over the company weighed heavily on its business last year, with its worldwide smartphone shipments tumbling 36.5 percent compared with 2015, according to industry database IDC. ZTE chairman Zhao Xianming said in his New Year speech to staff that the company, which has annual sales of more than $15 billion, had "encountered its biggest crisis in its 31 year history", according to a transcript on the companys official WeChat account. He vowed to enhance internal auditing and said the company was streamlining its management structure. In 2017 ... businesses that don't fit our strategic direction or with low output performance will be shut, suspended, merged or reconfigured, improving the companys core competitiveness, Zhao said. Internal memos seen by Reuters show the company also created four new senior vice president positions in charge of investment, internal audit, compliance, and tax, respectively. Revenues for infrastructure vendors like ZTE are also being squeezed as Chinese telecom operators' 4G networks near completion and revenues from 5G development remain some years off. (Reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Will Waterman)
By Timothy Gardner and Scott DiSavino WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told French nuclear power company Areva SA it will publish as early as next week the names of U.S. reactors that contain components from its Le Creusot forge that is suspected of falsifying documents despite the company's claim that the information is proprietary. The written notice, dated Dec. 30 and seen by Reuters on Thursday, underscores rising tension between the U.S. nuclear regulatory body and Areva after French authorities opened an investigation last month into decades of alleged forgery relating to the quality of parts produced at the forge and used in power plants around the world. The NRC has investigated whether the suspected falsification of documents poses any risks for U.S. nuclear plants, but has said it has found that the plants are safe. "At this time, there are no indications of any specific safety concerns for U.S. reactors," NRC spokesman David McIntyre said on Thursday. Still, anti-nuclear power advocates, including Greenpeace, have pushed NRC to reveal which U.S. reactors have the components, saying that there could be risks to the public. Areva sent the names of at least nine U.S. reactors with parts from Le Creusot on Dec. 15, but asked the agency not to name them due to proprietary business concerns. The NRC's letter says the agency is not convinced the information is of competitive value, and will release the names 10 calendar days after receipt of the missive unless Areva challenges it. "The NRC does not currently have sufficient information to determine that competitive harm would result from releasing this information," the agency said in the letter. A U.S. government source said that Areva has indicated it will not challenge the NRC's publication of the names, which could occur as early as Tuesday. A U.S. spokesman for Areva did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters has independently identified four of the U.S. reactors that are using components from Le Creusot, a fifth that may contain them, and a sixth that may have them on hand for future installation. All of the owners of the reactors said the components meet their quality standards and their reactors are safe. Florida power company NextEra Energy Inc said it had one reactor with one component from the Le Creusot forge but did not name the part or the reactor. NextEra owns eight reactors - four in Florida, two in Wisconsin, one in New Hampshire and one in Iowa. NextEra spokesman Peter Robbins said the component "has performed its function for over a decade and been subject to detailed inspections and monitoring, none of which has ever detected any design or performance issues." Minnesota power company Xcel Energy Inc said some components of the two reactor vessels at its Prairie Island plant were made at Le Creusot in the early 1970s. "Our testing and inspections are rigorous and have not identified any issues," Colleen Mahoney, an Xcel spokeswoman said. In December, Dominion Resources Inc said that its Millstone station in Connecticut has had a pressurizer from Le Creusot in service since 2006. Spokesman Ken Holt said at the time that the part is fully operational and will remain so for the life of the plant. In addition, FirstEnergy Corp said its Beaver Valley reactor in Pennsylvania has steam generators and reactor vessel heads manufactured by Spain's Equipos Nucleares SA, or ENSA, which may contain some components from Le Creusot. The parts were installed in Unit 1 but will not be installed in Unit 2 for a few years. Another company, Entergy Corp , which is listed on a Greenpeace report as having parts from Le Creusot, would not comment on whether its reactors have parts from the forge, saying it cannot comment on details related to its vendors. There are 99 reactors operating in the United States producing about 20 percent of the nation's power. The Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation in December into Le Creusot alleging forgery, endangerment of lives, and aggravated deception and thousands of documents dating to 1965 were being looked at. Areva said then that it was fully cooperating with the investigation. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Scott DiSavino; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Shumaker)
Guess who makes cars in Mexico: Not just the three automakers Donald Trump has called out for the practice (so far), but just about every big automaker. Is Trump going to go after them all? Quite possibly.

Trump has now targeted Ford (F), General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM) for building cars south of the border, or planning to. But those automakers arent unusual; theyre basically following industry practice. Heres the full alphabetized list of automakers that build cars in Mexico for sale in the United States, with examples of the cars imported from there:

Fiat Chrysler (Dodge Journey, Fiat 500)

Ford (Fusion)

GM (Chevrolet Trax, Cadillac SRX)

Honda (Fit)

Kia (Forte)

Mazda (Mazda 2)

Nissan (Sentra, Versa)

Volkswagen (Beetle, Golf, Jetta)

And here are the carmakers planning to start producing cars in Mexico soon:

BMW (production due to begin in 2019)

Mercedes (production due to begin in 2018, in joint venture with Nissan)

Toyota (Corolla, beginning in 2019)

These two lists represent nearly every big automaker in the world, and most of them pursue the same strategy: building their lowest-margin vehicles in Mexico, to ensure the profitability of small cars they can only charge so much for. The only well-known brands not on the list are Jaguar-Land Rover, Subaru, Volvo and Hyundai, although Hyundai is the parent of Kia, which does build in Mexico.

Every one of the automakers building cars in Mexico also has US factories, except Mazda, which has less than 2% market share in the United States and might not have the scale to build cars here profitably. In general, they build higher-margin vehicles such as SUVs, pickups and large sedans in the United States, since higher prices allow them to cover the higher cost of US labor.

Many automakers also sell cars in the United States that come from other low-cost countries. Hyundai imports many vehicles built in Korea, for instance. Some models from Audi (parent company, Volkswagen) come from Hungary and Slovakia. The new Buick Envision is built in China, where Buick is a much more popular brand than it is in the United States. Theres no big automaker anymore that builds products exclusively in one country or region, from which it sells to the rest of the world.

Story continues

Trump has no obvious strategy in terms of the companies hes picking on, unless his plan is to eventually target every automaker producing in Mexico. But that would amount to more of an industrywide assault that could meet stiffer, unified resistance than if Trump attacks companies one-by-one. So he may prefer to drizzle out his attacks one tweet at a time.

Auto-industry officials tell Yahoo Finance theres no effort underway at the moment for carmakers to band together and battle Trump as a group. But that will likely change as the stakes get higher. One of Trumps key campaign pledges was to change or disband the North American Free Trade Agreement, which drew the big automakers to Mexico in the first place. If Trump were to significantly change or disband NAFTA, it would cause shock waves that would affect virtually every automaker, with no obvious winners.

Losing Mexico as a cheap manufacturing option doesnt mean any of those automakers would bring the work back to the United States. Instead, they might scout other cheap options or see where they can add capacity to existing, lower-cost operations. On the other hand, Trump may be less inclined to force the auto companies out of Mexico than to simply earn some cred for applying heat. Thats what automakers seem to hope, anyway.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
Photo credit: undefined

From Good Housekeeping

Ah, going out to eat feels like the ultimate luxury at times. You've had a long day and making dinner - especially for a big family - is just not happening. Naturally, you head to your favorite local eatery. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, what we gain by eating out (Sanity! Sitting for an extended period of time! Service!) is oftentimes trumped by an unexpected hazard - germs. Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, rounded up a few of the objects in a restaurant that are the germiest. Time to break out the Clorox wipes, my friends.

A few of these might not surprise you. For example, everything you've heard about lemons is 100% true (the juice is fine, but the rind is definitely contaminated, Gerba told Today) and tabletops are rarely wiped down with bacteria-killing cleaning agents.

High chairs and booster seats, however, things you slip your little ones into relatively frequently while dining out, are also in the hot seat. We know that kids are germy, but it's possible that a dirty diaper graced that high chair before you walked in the door. No one wants chicken fingers with a side of E. coli. You'll want to wipe high chairs and booster seats down with Lysol or Clorox before using them.

Eating utensils are also problematic. Often contaminated the moment they touch a dirty tabletop, forks, knives and spoons - yes, the things we put in our mouths without question - should never, ever leave the safety of your napkin. Napkins are home base, you guys. Buffets are the biggest offenders in this arena because they typically offer utensils in bins. Think for a minute. How many hands have reached into that bin? Yep. I wish I could un-read that too.

If you're making a solemn vow to never eat at a restaurant again, there's no need. Simple fixes can help you and your family stay protected against common restaurant germs while enjoying your favorite food joint. Always bring disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer and, hey, just skip the lemon - it definitely can't hurt.

Story continues

[h/t Today]

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Campbell Brown

Facebook has tapped former NBC and CNN anchor Campbell Brown to help strengthen the company's ties with media outlets.

Brown will be the social network's head of news partnerships starting this month, according to a post on her Facebook page Friday. The position is a new one that Facebook created in the wake of sharp criticism it faced for its role in spreading fake news stories during the U.S. presidential election.

"This is a different role for me, but one where I will be tapping my newsroom experience to help news organizations and journalists work more closely and more effectively with Facebook," Brown said in her Facebook post, which was first reported on by The New York Times. "I will be working directly with our partners to help them understand how Facebook can expand the reach of their journalism, and contribute value to their businesses."

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider on Friday that Brown won't have editorial control over content that is shared on its network, and will instead focus on showing Facebook products to newsrooms and hearing feedback from journalists.

The company's job description for the role said that Brown will be its "leading representative with news organizations worldwide" and "clearly communicate and foster transparent dialogue with news organizations globally."

Brown was an anchor on NBC's Weekend Today from 2003 to 2007 before she hosted her own prime-time series on CNN from 2008 to 2010. As a vocal charter school advocate, she's also been called "the most controversial woman in school reform." She most recently cofounded The 74, a "non-profit, non-partisan news site covering education in America."

Like many of Facebook's top executives, Brown is also a critic of President-elect Donald Trump. In a May 2016 op-ed for Politico, she called Trump a "chronic liar," "dissembler," and a "misogynist."

Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have repeatedly pushed back on the idea that they have editorial and ethical responsibility for the glut of low-quality, fake news stories that go viral across their social network. But shortly after Donald Trump won the election, Facebook partnered with third-party fact checkers like Snopes to weed out fake and misleading news stories, a decision that immediately raised concerns from conservatives.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Meet the Facebook star whos turning the 2016 election into hilarious musical parodies





More From Business Insider


(Reuters) - Donald Trump's threat to impose a fee on Toyota Motor in a tweet Thursday made the automaker the latest in a series of companies targeted by the U.S. president-elect. Some of the companies have seen volatile price spikes in their shares after the tweets.

Following is a list of companies targeted in Trump's tweets.

Toyota Motor Corp: Trump, who campaigned on promises to keep manufacturing business in the United States, tweeted that he would impose a fee if the Japanese automaker built its Corolla cars for the U.S. market in Mexico. Toyota's U.S.-listed shares (TM.N) fell 0.6 percent on Thursday and were down just 0.3 percent on Friday.

General Motors Co (GM.N): Trump on Tuesday threatened a "big border tax" on GM for making its Chevy Cruze model in Mexico. GM's shares fell briefly in premarket trade following the tweets, but reversed course to finish the day up 6.5 percent. Upbeat sales data on Wednesday further buoyed the stock for the automaker's best two-day performance early November. The stock has given back some of the gains and is now up 4.4 percent since Tuesday.

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N): Trump on Dec. 12 tweeted about the U.S. defence company's F-35 fighter jet programme, calling it "out of control." Lockheed Martin shares dropped more than 3 percent in the following two sessions, the worst two-day performance for the stock in five weeks.

Lockheed's stock is up 0.4 percent since then, but has underperformed the broad S&P 500 index. It has outperformed the NYSE Arca Defense index (.DFII), which has slipped 0.3 percent, over the same time frame.

Rexnord Corp (RXN.N): Trump on Dec. 2 tweeted over Rexnord's plans to move operations to Mexico and fire U.S. workers. Rexnord shares fell more than 1 percent after the tweet. The shares had dropped nearly 8 percent in the two sessions prior to the tweet after Rexnord announced a convertible offering; they are up 2.6 pct since the tweet.

Other companies Trump has targeted in his tweets include another top automaker, Ford Motor Co (F.N), and other defence-related and aerospace companies, United Technologies Corp. (UTX.N) and Boeing Co (BA.N).

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch and Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Leslie Adler)
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - New orders for U.S.-made goods fell in November, weighed down by a plunge in the volatile civilian aircraft category, but the underlying trend suggested manufacturing is gradually firming.

Factory goods orders declined 2.4 percent, the Commerce Department said on Friday after an upwardly revised 2.8 percent increase in October. November's drop followed four straight months of gains and was the biggest decline since December 2015.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast factory orders decreasing 2.2 percent in November after a previously reported 2.7 percent gain in October.

The department also said orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft -- seen as a measure of business

confidence and spending plans -- rose 0.9 percent in November as reported last month.

Shipments of these so-called core capital goods, which are used to calculate business equipment spending in the gross

domestic product report, gained 0.2 percent in November as previously reported.

A report this week showed factory activity hitting a two-year high in December, driven by a surge in new orders.

Manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the economy, is gaining some muscle after a prolonged period of decline, spurred by a strong dollar and lower oil prices. The sector is getting a lift from rising oil prices, which have led to an increase in well drilling.

Still, manufacturing remains constrained by dollar strength.

In November, orders for transportation equipment tumbled 13.2 percent, the largest drop since August 2014, reflecting a 73.8 percent decline in civilian aircraft orders.

Orders for primary metals jumped 2.2 percent, the biggest rise since December 2015. Machinery orders increased 1.4 percent, the largest gain since January last year.

There were increases in orders for computers and electronic products, and electrical equipment, appliances and components.

Shipments of overall factory goods slipped 0.1 percent in November after rising 0.2 percent the prior month. Inventories of factory goods increased 0.2 percent. That left the inventories-to-shipments ratio unchanged at 1.34 in November.

Unfilled orders at factories dipped 0.1 percent after rising 0.8 percent in October.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all today during our fall fundraiser. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood.

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Palos Verdes' notorious surf gang's reign of terror may soon be coming to an end. They stuck around for quite a while, however, and now it has been revealed that they had a little inside help to do so.Documents filed last Thursday by attorneys suing the city of Palos Verdes Estates and the Lunada Bay Boys revealed that the Bay Boys were tipped off to a sting operation that was planned for February of 2016, reports the Los Angeles Daily News. According to a deposition taken for the lawsuit, Palos Verdes Estates Police Chief Jeff Kepley said an undercover sting against the Bay Boys was canceled at the last minute because someone had tipped off the surfers. In the months leading up to the planned sting, Kepley had asked other local police chiefs for help in the operation.

"It could have been in my department, anyone in Santa Monica Police Department, or any other agency in L.A. County who was at the chief's meeting when I asked for help," Kepley said in the deposition.

The filings are part of a lawsuit originally filed in March, and attorneys are now seeking to make it a class-action lawsuit. A judge will rule on the matter next month.

The city of Palos Verdes Estates and its police department have long been criticized for turning a blind eye to the alleged harassment of outsiders by the Bay Boys, who have surfed at Lunada Bay for decades. Their antics received widespread attention in 2015 after the British paper The Guardian published an undercover video of them, prompting Kepley, who was appointed chief of police in 2014, to vow a crackdown on the surf gang.

In fact, several of the accused Bay Boys have admitted to being close with local officers, and one even owns a city-issued phone as a member of the Community Emergency Response Team, the court documents reveal. And when victims of the alleged harassment and attacks turned to police, many have said they were met with little more than a shrug.

For 2017, rangers from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy will be patrolling Lunada Bay, and surveillance cameras will be installed in order to keep an eye on the surf spot. A makeshift hangout/fort constructed by the Bay Boys has since been torn down.
London (AFP) - Legendary London nightclub Fabric, which closed in September following the drugs death of two teenagers, reopened on Friday with new, tougher security measures.

Globally renowned for its drum and bass, techno and house nights and a pillar of London's dance music scene for two decades, there was a public uproar when its licence was revoked.

Fabric finally reached an agreement with the police and the local authority over new conditions, including a raised entry age and tougher security measures.

Bouncers were out in force for the sold-out opening night, supported by a handful of police, while there were clear warnings outside of the club's "no tolerance" attitude to drugs.

Kris Wright, a heavily-tattooed transport worker among the first in the queue, was unfazed by the new measures and just keen to get back inside.

"I've been coming to Fabric since I was 18 or 19. It's part of your culture growing up," the 32-year-old told AFP.

Like many other regulars, he was surprised when it closed. "The policy they had for searching was always one of the strictest in London," he said.

Klaudia Paw, a 24-year-old student, came with a group of friends she met in the club. "It was devastating when it closed," she said.

"The energy tonight is going to be absolutely massive. It's going to be packed, though."

Fabric has attracted many of the world's top DJs and claims six million people have stepped through its doors since opening in a old meat-processing area of inner London in 1999.

The decision by the local authority to revoke its licence after the deaths of two 18-year-olds made headlines worldwide.

Ryan Browne died in June after taking ecstasy at Fabric and Jack Crossley died in August after becoming unwell at the club.

An inquest into Crossley's death heard Wednesday that he smuggled MDMA, a drug popular with clubbers, into the venue in his underwear before buying more from a stranger inside.

Story continues

His death was caused by "MDMA toxicity" said Mary Hassell, who investigated his death.

"There are issues here with Fabric but this is a problem which is much wider than that," she said.

The club's general manager, Luke Laws, told the inquest that it had improved welfare procedures, CCTV and security ahead of its relaunch.

Back in the queue, wearing a heavy jacket against the winter cold, Paw welcomed the decision to raise the minimum age from 18 to 19.

"There would be people celebrating their 18th birthdays here, getting off their faces. It's going to be so much better now," she said.

But another woman, who asked not to be named, added: "Drugs are everywhere."
The family of the special needs teenager whose alleged kidnap and torture was broadcast on Facebook live is speaking out about the incident.

Were still just trying to get our heads together, the 18-year-old alleged victims brother, Jason Nagel, 32, tells PEOPLE. Hes doing as well as he can. He was with us all last night hes with my mom now. Were just trying to be there for him.

On Thursday, Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, Brittany Covington and Tanishia Covington, all 18, were charged with hate crimes, a States Attorney news release obtained by PEOPLE stated.

In the social media video, the teen was tied up with his mouth covered. The Washington Post said that the four attackers could be heard in the video laughing and screaming  Donald Trump and  white people, as they stood around the teen, kicking and punching him before eventually cutting his forehead with a knife.

 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 teen, who is mentally disabled, was eventually found wandering the streets on Tuesday afternoon, after allegedly being held for at least 24 hours, said Area North Commander Kevin Duffin.

Were so grateful for all the prayers and efforts that led to the safe return of our brother, the teens brother-in-law David Boyd said, reported NBC 5 News. Were fully aware of the charges being brought against the offenders. At this time we ask for continued prayers for all those involved and for our familys privacy as we cope and heal.

The outlet also spoke to the teens grandmother, Sally Sacksteder, who said, I will not look at the video. I do not want to see it. I dont want to watch him suffer. I know he did.

Story continues

 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.

I just dont understand, thats it  why somebody would do what they did, she added, saying, I just have no idea the impact its gonna have on his future.

According to authorities, the teen knew at least one of the suspects from school, CNN reported.

Tanishia Covington has been charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the States Attorney press release said. Brittany Covington and Cooper face the same charges, and, in addition, residential burglary charges. Hill also faces the same charges, as well as robbery and residential burglary charges.

All four are scheduled to appear in court on Friday afternoon, and have allegedly given statements to police admitting their roles in the attack, according to the Los Angeles Times.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.
The family of a mentally disabled teen who is seen in a Facebook Live video being ruthlessly beaten and humiliated by four people have spoken out, a day after the shocking incident exploded into America's consciousness as another potential example of racial unrest.

Four people were charged after videos emerged that allegedly showed them beating, kicking, and even forcing the 18-year-old to drink from a toilet while cops say the suspects made comments disparaging white people and Donald Trump.

Read: 4 Teens Detained in 'Sickening' Torture of Mentally Challenged Man Broadcast on Facebook Live

In a brief statement to the press after the victim made it back home, his family said they were "overwhelmed" but happy to have him home.

"This should never have happened," a family member said Thursday evening before he and the rest of the family concluded their remarks.

Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper and Brittany Covington, all 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, are accused of launching the savage attack on the 18-year-old, who cops say they beat and kicked for hours. They also made him drink toilet water and cut his hair and scalp over the course of the six-hour ordeal, police said.

Each is charged with a hate crime, among other alleged offenses.

In the aftermath, the incident caused enough fury to get a response from America's highest office. In an interview with a CBS Chicago correspondent, President Obama called the attack "despicable."

"What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time," the president said. "Whether its tensions between police and communities, hate crimes of the despicable sort that has just now recently surfaced on Facebook."

As of Friday morning, President-elect Donald Trump has not spoken out on the incident.

The four suspects are all due in court Friday.

Police said the victim had been dropped off by his parents on December 31 at a McDonalds restaurant in Streamwood, where he met one of the suspects, Jordan Hill, with whom he attended school for a period of time.

Story continues

Hill stole a van and drove the victim to the city's West Side, where they visited friends, officials said.

They eventually went to the home of the Covington sisters, where the victim apparently got into a play fight with Hill that eventually escalated, police said.

"They get aggravated at him, tie him up," Police Commander Kevin Duffin said, noting that was when "racial slurs and the deference to his mental capacity started coming out."

The video was initially posted to Facebook Live and quickly spread on social media under the hashtag #BLMKidnapping.

BLM is an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, which condemned the act of violence.

"What happened to the young man who was held captive and tortured is terrible and we condemn the violence that was perpetrated against him. We've stated time and time again, that we're against all types of harm and violence perpetrated and we've never condoned it. So this is absolutely perplexing and twisted that people are associating this atrocity with this organization and movement," Black Lives Matter Chicago wrote on Facebook.

Eventually, the Covington sisters downstairs neighbor called the police complaining of the noise, which allegedly angered the women. They allegedly went downstairs to confront their neighbor, kicking in the door, and at the same time, giving the victim an opportunity to escape.

Police Officer Michael Donnelly said he saw the victim walking down the street with Hill and noticed the young man was only wearing a tank top that was inside out and backwards, a pair of jean shorts and sandals, and was also "bloodied [and] battered."

"He was injured, he was confused," Donnelly said, noting the investigation revealed the victim to be a missing and endangered person.

Authorities believe he was in the physical position pictured in the Facebook Live video  tied up and cowering in a corner as he was attacked  for about four or five hours.

"Thankfully the victim will recover from his injuries," Superintendent Johnson said.

Read: Church Shooter Dylann Roof Tells Jurors During Sentencing Hearing: 'There's Nothing Wrong With Me'

In addition to the hate crime charge, the four suspects also face aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Hill alone faces a robbery charge and a charge of possession of a stolen motor vehicle. The Covington sisters face residential burglary charges in connection to the incident involving their neighbor, during which they are accused of stealing an unknown item.

Watch: Man Crashes After Using Facebook Live To Capture Himself Going Over 100 MPH

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Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher shared a bond like no other. Subscribe now for an inside look at Hollywoods legendary mother-daughter duo  only in PEOPLE.

She already ruled that galaxy far, far away. But can she be a princess for Disney, too?

Thats what fans are hoping: In the wake of Carrie Fishers death, a petition has been launched to officially make the actress most famous onscreen character, Princess Leia, a Disney princess.

Disney owns Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars juggernaut, and the petition states its case for the bid, saying: After the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher, we feel that it is only fitting for Disney to do away with the rule that an official Disney princess must be animated and make Leia a full-fledged princess. This would be a wonderful way to remember Carrie and a welcoming to one of Disneys new properties that is beloved by millions.

It adds: What we are asking is that the Walt Disney Corporation hold a full ceremony inducting Leia as the newest Disney princess as well as a special service in memory of Carrie Fisher.

The petition has now garnered over 55,000 supporters,

Fisher died on Dec. 27 at the age of 60 after suffering a massive heart attack four days earlier during a plane ride from London to Los Angeles. Her mother, legendary Singin in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds, died the following day of an apparent stroke at the age of 84.

On Thursday, an intimate memorial was held for Fisher at her Beverly Hills home to celebrate the actress life and legacy, attended by family members including Fishers daughter Billie Lourd, Fishers brother Todd and her half-sisters Joely and Tricia Leigh, and Billies father, Bryan Lourd. Guests also included Meryl Streep, Penny Marshall, Meg Ryan, Richard Dreyfuss, Buck Henry, Candice Bergen, George Lucas and Gwyneth Paltrow.

According to a family friend, Billie wanted the people her mother loved to gather in that living room one last time.

On Friday, a funeral service for Reynolds will take place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. She will be buried with some of her daughters ashes.




planned parenthood defunding abortion

In a one-two punch, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday that Republicans plan to defund Planned Parenthood when they try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.

Thursday morning, Planned Parenthood launched a national campaign focused on keeping Republicans in Congress from gutting the healthcare law, and from passing legislation to "defund" the organization.

While politicians have popularized the term "defunding" when talking about stripping federal funds for Planned Parenthood, the group's political communications director, Erica Sackin, said this is misleading.

"There's no line item in the budget for Planned Parenthood," Sackin told Business Insider. "We're not funded through the federal budget bill."

Planned Parenthood health centers serve 2.5 million people each year, nearly two-thirds of whom rely on public programs like Medicaid to pay for their care. When lawmakers pass bills to "defund" the organization, (as many states have), those patients then have to pay for healthcare at Planned Parenthood out of pocket.

But the Hyde Amendment already makes it illegal to use Medicaid to pay for an abortion except in the case of rape, incest, or if the mother's health is endangered. Congress first passed the law in 1977, four years after the Supreme Court ruled women have a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.

So while it may seem as if "defunding" Planned Parenthood is a way to prevent abortions, Sackin said, "it's going to affect people who don't have anywhere else to go" get care like cancer screenings.

According to Planned Parenthood's most recent annual report, only 3% of the organization's services are abortions. Most people are getting birth control or STD tests at Planned Parenthood clinics:

planned parenthood services BI Graphics_PP

Story continues

The 'defunding' fight intensifies

paul ryan obamacare

The Obamacare battle on the Hill ramped up Tuesday, when the new Congress took over, with Republicans making their case for repealing and replacing the ACA and Democrats arguing to save it.

If Republicans scrap the law, 47 million women could lose the guaranteed access to birth control without a co-pay that Obamacare provides.

But that's just part of the fight.

The GOP party platform outlines its firm stance against abortion, Trump has said he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Pence has enacted some of the strictest legislation against abortion in the country as the governor of Indiana.

Kelley Robinson, the deputy national organizing director for Planned Parenthood, said one in five women will visit the organization in their lifetimes, and that defunding it would be a "national health disaster."

"The outpouring of need is so, so clear," Robinson told Business Insider. "People need access to Planned Parenthood. We're a part of their community, and we're a critical provider of health care."

NOW WATCH: TRUMP: Women who want abortions may have to 'go to another state'





More From Business Insider


Paris (AFP) - French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon said Friday he would continue to stress his Christian faith during campaigning despite criticism from opponents about the use of his religion.

Fillon clinched the nomination for the rightwing Republicans party in November making clear his Catholic devotion, an anomaly in secular France that has strict rules on separating religion from public life.

The former prime minister invited new scrutiny after stressing earlier in the week during a TV interview that he was guided by the teachings of war-time leader Charles de Gaulle and his Christian faith.

"I am who I am, I'm open," Fillon told French channel BFMTV on Friday from Las Vegas where he is visiting a technology show. "You have to be sincere and it's this sincerity which will be the mark of my political message," he added.

A rival in the Republicans party, Henri Guaino, who is also hoping to run in this April's election, said he had been "profoundly shocked" by Fillon's words.

"It's a mistake and mistakes have consequences," he said on Thursday, saying Fillon was treating Christians in France as a political constituency.

"The president of the Republic is the man who represents the nation. When you forget that, it doesn't work anymore," he said.

Centrist independent Francois Bayrou, who is yet to decide whether to stand again, also condemned Fillon for mixing religion and politics in "this inappropriate way."

"I've known Francois Fillon for a long time. I have never seen him make statements like this. It has to be linked to the elections in one way or another," he said.

Fillon was talking on France's main TF1 channel on Tuesday when he was asked about his radical plans to reform the French social security system. Some critics have accused him of wanting to smash the public safety net.

"I am a Gaullist and furthermore a Christian. It means that I will never take a decision that would run counter to the respect of human dignity, the respect of the individual and solidarity," he replied.

A new online poll of around 900 people published on Thursday by the Elabe group showed the 62-year-old narrowly winning the first round of the presidential election in April, ahead of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

He is then tipped by pollsters to beat Le Pen from the National Front in a run-off vote two weeks later in May, but some analysts urge caution about the predictions after a highly unpredictable year in politics.
Firefighters came to the rescue of a dog stranded on an icy river in Madison County, Iowa, on Monday, January 2.

Jerry Romine of West Des Moines was out walking his own dog when he heard a dog barking from under a bridge. He then spotted a black dog, later identified as 13-year-old Labradoodle Sam, struggling to keep its head above water. Romine tried to save Sam with a 50-foot tow rope but couldnt reach the stranded dog.

This video shows Winterset firefighters sliding across the frozen river in a boat to save Sam, who was then taken for treatment at the Winterset Veterinary Center. Sam was later reunited with its owner, who called to thank Romine and sent along a photo of Sam recovering at home, according to local reports. Credit: Jerry Romine via Storyful
uss carl

The US operates the most aircraft carriers of any country, but for the first time since at least 2000, and possibly since World War II, not a single US carrier was deployed, the US Navy has confirmed to Business Insider.

The US had the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed in the Persian Gulf carrying out an air campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria until late December, but that carrier returned home December 30.

On Thursday, the USS Carl Vinson left its port in San Diego to head for the Western Pacific, where tensions with China have reached an uncomfortable high.

But for about a week, no US carriers could be found away from port anywhere in the world.

"The period of reduced carrier presence was planned for, mitigated, and insignificant due to the deployment of the USS Carl Vinson and the future deployment of the USS George H.W. Bush," a US Navy official told Business Insider.

The Navy official also confirmed, however, that the USS George H.W. Bush was behind schedule, leaving the US with no carrier in the Mediterranean or Persian Gulf.

The lull in US carrier activity happens to coincide with a spike in carrier activity from the US's stiffest competition at sea  Russia and China.

While the US has no presence in the Mediterranean, Russia's sole carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has been deployed off the coast of Syria for months. The Kuznetsov suffered major mechanical issues and some high-profile plane crashes, but overall it managed to achieve its first combat deployment.

kuznetsov russia navy aircraft carrier

In the Pacific, the Chinese Liaoning, China's sole aircraft carrier, just carried out live-fire drills in the heavily contested South China Sea. The Liaoning rattled the Taiwanese as it skirted the island during its deployment. China has been keen to demonstrate its control over Taiwan since President-elect Donald Trump broke with decades of US foreign-policy tradition and accepted a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen.

Story continues

Experts have called for an increased US Navy presence in the South China Sea to deter the Chinese from establishing regional hegemony and to affirm international norms such as right of innocent passage.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook stressed that despite the lack of carrier deployments, the US had "a significant presence in both those areas and will continue to have a significant presence even though we may not at any one particular time have an aircraft carrier there."

Liaoning china pla navy aircraft carrier

The Navy, however, has repeatedly called for more carriers and combat ships to meet rising threats around the world.

While China's and Russia's Soviet-designed carriers pale in comparison to the US carrier fleet, which includes 10 Nimitz-class ships, their deployments have been meaningful in bolstering their perceived strength at a time when the US appears to be losing traction in international conflicts.

NOW WATCH: China conducts a live-fire military exercise with its first aircraft carrier





More From Business Insider


A 10-year-old Florida boy died Thursday after police believe he shot himself at home before school.

WTSP reports a 5th grade student was being punished by his mother for a behavioral issue when she sent him to a room in their Clearwater apartment.

Read: 3-Year-Old Fatally Shoots Himself with Father's Gun

Police say there was a gun in the room, which the boy is believed to have used to shoot himself before 8:30 a.m.

Paramedics did everything they could for the boy, but he died at the scene, police said.

A spokesman with the Clearwater Police Department called it "a tragedy in all respects" and said the boy's death remains under investigation.

Read: 4-Year-Old Girl Accidentally Shoots Herself and Her Mother: Cops

Detectives now want to know how the firearm was stored and how the boy was able to find it.

"There are many angles that we'll have to look at, we're currently still speaking with the family that has been very cooperative and are in a great deal of distress as you can imagine," the spokesman said.

Watch: George Zimmerman Tries to Auction Off Gun Used to Kill Trayvon Martin

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Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey distanced himself from President-elect Donald Trumps transition team on Thursday evening, a source close to Woolsey told Yahoo News. The move was partially a response to the president-elects attacks on the intelligence communitys assertion that Russia was behind cyberattacks on Democrats during the election campaign.

Woolsey served as a senior adviser to Trumps presidential campaign, and he continued to make public appearances as a top consultant following the election. Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for Woolsey, issued a statement ending that relationship on Thursday.

Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Advisor to President-Elect Trump or the Transition, Franks wrote in an email. He wishes the President-Elect and his Administration great success in their time in office.

In an interview on Thursday, Woolsey, who led the CIA from 1993 to 1995, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, told CNNs Erin Burnett he didnt want to give the wrong impression.

I didnt want to fly under false colors, Woolsey said. Im not really functioning as an adviser anymore, and so when Im on the screen, everybody announces that Im former CIA director and that Im a Trump adviser. And Im really not anymore.

A source close to Woolsey explained to Yahoo News that the former CIA director wasnt comfortable being identified as a senior adviser to Trump because he was not participating in many of the transition teams conversations about intelligence issues. The source said Woolsey is still supportive of Trump, but would prefer to not be officially associated.

With all the conversations ongoing and he wasnt involved, its hard to be thought of as senior adviser and referred to as such, the source said of Woolsey. It didnt sit well with him. Hes an extremely honest guy.

Trumps transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

Story continues

Although Woolsey was only a senior adviser during the campaign, the source said the Trump transition team continued to love that he was on television after the election. The source further suggested Woolsey was uncomfortable with multiple events since Trumps victory in November.

Specifically, the source pointed to the fact Trump has suggested he might limit the power of the director of national intelligence. The source said Woolsey would not support changes to that role without congressional approval.

The position was created by Congress, and [Woolsey] thinks, if were going to restructure things, it has to be at least blessed by a vote of Congress, the source explained.

The source also said Woolsey was uncomfortable with the attacks on the intelligence community that have been made by Trump. Even though officials, including current U.S. Intelligence Director James Clapper, have concluded Russia was behind cyberattacks on Democrats during the presidential campaign, Trump has disputed that claim. In an interview earlier this week, Woolsey contradicted Trump and said he believes Russia was involved in the hacking. The source who spoke to Yahoo News said Woolsey didnt think it was appropriate for Trump to question the intelligence communitys conclusions about Russias role in the campaign cyberattacks.

Could it be any more clear that Russia was behind what happened in the election? they asked.
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Onetime Haiti coup leader Guy Philippe, who has long been wanted by US authorities on drug trafficking charges but was recently elected to the country's senate, was arrested, police said.

Philippe, 48, was participating in a live radio talk show in a Port-au-Prince suburb when heavily armed antinarcotics police took position outside the studio, shooting into the air and sparking a panic in the neighborhood, according to journalists at the scene.

Philippe emerged from the building in handcuffs and was loaded into a police vehicle.

A national police spokesman confirmed the arrest but declined to tell reporters the charges faced by Philippe, who has close ties to the country's president-elect Jovenel Moise.

A local radio station reported that Philippe -- who does not yet enjoy immunity from prosecution as a senator because he has yet to take the oath of office -- was the subject of a US extradition request and was being taken to the airport.

A lawmaker who asked not to be named told AFP Philippe was indeed at the airport, without offering further details.

Philippe, who was elected to represent the Grande Anse department in southwestern Haiti, helped lead an armed rebellion against then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 that led to Aristide fleeing the country.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has long sought Philippe on drug trafficking charges. The DEA was not immediately available for comment on the case.

But those charges did not stop Philippe from living in the open in his political fiefdom of Pestel, located 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Port-au-Prince.

Haitian police concluded in July that Philippe was the mastermind of an attack against a police station in Les Cayes in May, which left one officer dead and two others seriously wounded.

Philippe has consistently denied those claims, and Moise, whose election to the presidency was confirmed this week, appeared at the new senator's side at a campaign event in Pestel.

Story continues

Some lawmakers criticized Philippe's arrest as illegal, but until he takes the oath of office scheduled for Monday, he does not enjoy immunity.

In a statement Thursday, the US embassy in Port-au-Prince asked employees to stay home due to an "ongoing law enforcement / security situation" and urged all US nationals to shelter in place.

Supporters of Philippe blocked roads in Pestel with tree trunks and blazing tires.
By Joseph Guyler Delva PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - A Haitian politician and former coup leader was arrested and extradited on Thursday to the United States, where he is wanted for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering, authorities said. Guy Philippe, who led a coup that drove Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidency in 2004, had been due to take up his seat in the Senate on Monday, which could have afforded him immunity from some criminal proceedings. Joris Mergelus, head of the anti-drug unit in the Caribbean nation, said Philippe was arrested by police acting on an international warrant for drug trafficking. Philippe, who was elected senator from the southwestern Grand Anse region on Nov. 20, was picked up after giving a radio interview in Petionville, near the capital, Port-au-Prince. Garry Desrosiers, spokesman for the Haitian national police, said that while agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration did not participate in the operation, they were at the police station where Philippe was taken. Philippe was later put on a plane in Port-au-Prince and extradited to the United States, a Haitian official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Philippe was suspected in 2015 of involvement in an attack on a police headquarters in the southern city of Les Cayes in which at least six people were killed. Haitian officials issued a warrant for Philippe's arrest over the incident, but his lawyers said it was invalid because he was a candidate in the November election. (Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Writing by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Peter Cooney and Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Four African-Americans accused of attacking an 18-year-old man with special needs while making anti-white racial taunts and broadcasting the assault on Facebook were charged with hate crimes in Illinois on Thursday.

Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, and sisters Brittany and Tanishia Covington were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Tanisha Covington was the eldest at 24, while her sister and the two men were 18 years old.

"This should never happen," David Boyd, the victim's brother-in-law, said at a news conference Thursday. He said the family was overwhelmed by support expressed on social media.

The incident, part of which was streamed on the service Facebook Live on Tuesday, drew the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama, who called it "terrible" in an interview with Chicago's ABC-TV affiliate.

"Part of what technology allows us to see now is the terrible toll that racism and discrimination and hate takes on families and communities, Obama said Thursday.

The victim, who is white, has "mental health challenges," Chicago police said. He was not identified.

Police said the victim knew at least one of his alleged torturers, meeting Hill at a McDonald's restaurant in a northwestern suburb of Chicago late last week.

When he did not return home the next day, the victim's parents reported him missing. He was found by Chicago police days later, on Tuesday.

Police said Hill picked the victim up at the McDonald's in a stolen van. While the victim's parents reported him missing, their son and Hill spent the next two days together, visiting friends and sleeping in the van.

On Tuesday, a "play fight" between the two in the Covington sisters' apartment escalated, Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin said at the news conference.

The victim was tied up for four or five hours, gagged and beaten. His scalp was cut and he was forced to drink toilet water, Duffin said.

Story continues

In the video, the attackers could be heard making comments about "white people" as the victim cowered in a corner, his mouth taped shut.

At least one of the attackers could also be heard saying obscenities about President-elect Donald Trump. Police said they did not know whether the victim was a Trump supporter.

Police officers located the victim on Tuesday after neighbors complained about noise coming from the apartment. He was outside in freezing weather wearing only a tank top, shorts and sandals, police said.

He was taken to a hospital and later released. Members of the public alerted investigators to the Facebook Live video.

The four suspects are due to appear in a Chicago court on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Editing by Alan Crosby and Matthew Lewis & Simon Cameron-Moore)
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- She was found wandering in a forest, the first of the nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram to escape on her own and reach freedom. That was in May. Since then, Amina Ali Nkeki has been sequestered by Nigeria's intelligence agency, embraced just once by her family months ago.

Some say Nigeria's government is keeping the young woman silent because it doesn't want her telling the world about military blunders in the fight against the Islamic extremist group, or about her desire to be reunited with the father of her child  a detained former Boko Haram commander.

"I worry, sometimes, that I don't know if she is alive or dead," her mother, Binta Ali Nkeki, sobbed during an exclusive telephone interview with The Associated Press from her remote northeastern village of Mbalala. She said she hasn't seen her daughter since July.

Sunday marks 1,000 days since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted together from a government boarding school in April 2014. Most of them remain in captivity. The few who have been freed, like Amina, have found themselves not completely free.

The mass kidnapping horrified the world and brought Boko Haram international attention. The failure of Nigeria's former government to act quickly to free the girls sparked a global Bring Back Our Girls movement; even U.S. first lady Michelle Obama posted a photo with its logo on social media.

Amina was the first of the kidnapped girls to escape on her own. Months later, in October, the government negotiated the release of 21 Chibok girls. Another girl was freed in November in an army raid on an extremist camp in the Sambisa Forest.

On Thursday, one more was found during military interrogations of Boko Haram suspects, along with the baby she had given birth to in captivity.

When Amina's mother heard last month that "freed" girls would be allowed to come home for Christmas, she borrowed money to reach Chibok, the town where their former boarding school is located.

Story continues

She was welcomed by the 21 girls, who tried to reassure her that her daughter was "fine, in good health," even though she had not been allowed to accompany them.

Human rights groups and lawyers have criticized Nigeria's treatment of the freed girls, who are held in Abuja, the capital, nearly 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Chibok. The government says the girls are getting medical attention, trauma counseling and rehabilitation.

Officials in the government and the presidency did not respond to requests for comment, following a familiar pattern.

People who have spoken to the freed girls say they have stories the government does not want told, including that three Chibok girls were killed during Nigerian Air Force bombings of Boko Haram camps.

Amina, who is believed to be at least 20 though her uneducated mother says she has no idea, has insisted that her child's father is a victim, like herself, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram and forced to fight for the insurgents.

Binta says that when her daughter was rescued  hunters found Amina, her 4-month-old baby girl and the father in a forest  she said she didn't want to go back to school. But her mother and brother, Noah, persuaded her to take up Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's promise to give her the best education possible.

"They told her that soon she will be starting school," Noah Ali Nkeki told the AP in an interview. He got the news in a rare phone call from his sister on Thursday, the first time he had heard from her in three months.

He cannot call her. Officials call him using a blocked number and then put Amina on the line. The girl's mother doesn't get to speak to her because she doesn't own a cellphone and reception in her village is poor.

"I don't know what the government is trying to do. They have had her now for seven months," Noah said.

Binta, a gaunt woman whose eyes mirror the pain of a hard life and whose hands are rough from farming, was widowed five years ago. Eleven of her children have died, in childbirth or soon afterward. Abina and Noah are all she has.

"I wonder how my only grandchild is doing," she said of Amina's daughter, Safia. "Do you think she's walking by now?"

Binta was suicidal after her daughter's kidnapping, community leaders have told the AP. There were reports Boko Haram threatened to sell the kidnapped girls into slavery, marry them off to fighters and force them to convert to Islam. Chibok is a Christian enclave in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.

Binta rallied after she got a message from Amina in 2015.In Chibok, two male Boko Harem fighters accompanied by a teenage girl carrying ammunition came across an elderly woman too feeble to flee.

The girl, speaking the Chibok language that the fighters could not understand, told the woman, "I am Amina. My mother's name is Binta in the village of Mbalala. Please tell her you saw me."

The elderly woman described the encounter to community leaders, who worried that the "proof of life" message might be too much for Binta to bear.

Human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogede stepped in.

"If I had a daughter who was missing and she tried to send a message to me, l'd be very upset if someone withheld it. Amina tried to reach out, let's help her complete the effort," he counseled.

When Amina was freed, she and her family were flown to Abuja, where TV cameras and photographers documented Buhari welcoming her at the presidential mansion. That happened again with the 21 freed girls.

The girls needed trauma counseling and medical care, not exposure to the media, Human Rights Watch said at the time.

On Christmas Day, the freed girls visiting Chibok did not get to see their parents. They were kept in the house of a local legislator until Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima arrived to "present" them to their parents the next day. Witnesses said the girls were angry that they were prevented from going home and to their church's Christmas service.

Shettima's spokesman, Isa Gusau, denied that account, which came from some of the parents.

"I am not sure they were denied access to their parents because that was the essence of them being taken to Chibok in the first place," he told the AP. "If you say their movements were restricted for security reasons and for their safety, I think that makes sense."

Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Chibok association of parents of the kidnapped girls and who is not related to Amina, said the Department of State Security intelligence agents who accompanied the girls deemed it unsafe for them to visit parents in outlying villages. But those with homes in Chibok town were not allowed to stay with their families, either.

Amina's mother, despite her tears, still has some faith in Nigeria's actions.

"Anything that the government wants to do with Amina, I have no problem with that," she said. "But I just want to see my daughter with my own eyes."

On Friday, the Bring Back Out Girls movement criticized the failure to free the 196 girls still missing, saying it "is justifiably worried that the Nigerian government has once again relapsed to the same complacency, lethargy, and inertia that has been recurrent on this tragedy."

Amnesty International also called for the government to "redouble its efforts," warning the abductions could constitute war crimes.

___

Associated Press writers Haruna Umar in Maiduguri, Ibrahim Abdulaziz in Yola and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.
A city council official sent police to a primary school in France to protest the schools decision to offer its students the option of learning the Arabic language. The deputy mayor of Six-Fours-les-Plages in southeastern France was acting on an inaccurate claim on Facebook that said students were being forced to learn the language.

Jean-Sebastien Vialatte confirmed that police officers were sent to the Reynier primary school twice in November to tell school officials that the deputy mayor opposed the teaching of Arabic there, local media reported Wednesday. The incident came to light when a local lawyer disclosed court documents revealing a failed legal suit by the council to halt these classes.

Vialatte added that officials had their doubts about the teacher as well because he wasnt a state employee.

An image shared in September by a parent of one of the children who attends classes at the school inaccurately said the Arabic language classes were mandatory sparking an outcry among parents in which politicians quickly joined.

Frederic Boccaletti, a local politician and member of the far-right National Front, shared the image on his Facebook page blaming friends of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the Moroccan-born minister of education, as the people behind these mandatory classes. He also condemned Vialatte for allowing the classes to continue.

French Muslim activist Yasser Louati said the incident was representative of the normalization of state-sponsored racism.

Sending the police to make sure an Arabic class isnt held shows how much hate government institutions can express for Arabs. In 2015, we had cases of primary school children being humiliated, assaulted, and even taken to the police by their teachers, Louati reportedly said. Then we had school girls being barred from school for wearing a long skirt or the prohibition of substitute meals for Muslims and Jews.

The only solution for French Muslims and any citizen who loves justice and equality is to band together and engage in a power struggle with decision makers. The upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections are an opportunity ... nobody benefits from a society built on hate, he added.

Story continues

The incident comes at a time when France is struggling to come to terms with its sizeable Muslim population, mostly comprised of immigrants from North Africa. France was the first European country to ban Muslim women and children from wearing face veils in public. Muslim children are also banned from wearing headscarves in school. The national debate on a "Burkini" ban  forbidding Muslim women from wearing the full-body swimsuit  raised further questions on Frances stance on womens rights and secularism.

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Nice (France) (AFP) - A French court on Friday acquitted a man for helping migrants sneak into the country from Italy as immigration issues play a major role ahead of this year's elections.

"In France today we have the right to save people in distress," said researcher Pierre-Alain Mannoni, who had faced a six-month suspended jail sentence for aiding Eritrean migrants who came into France from Italy.

The prosecutor said during the trial in November in the southern city of Nice that people had a "duty" to help people, "but not help (illegal immigrants) to stay and circulate" in the country.

The judge ruled Friday that the 45-year-old researcher at French national research centre CNRS had helped three young Eritrean women to "protect their dignity".

A law in effect since 2012 grants immunity to people smugglers who are not paid and if the lives of their charges are considered in peril.

"You can help people," Mannoni said after the ruling. "I recommend it, it does a lot of good!"

He is one of three people in the area to appear in court recently for illegally assisting migrants travelling up through Europe after crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats.

- Folk hero -

Their cases have pitched the spirit of solidarity against the letter of the law at a time when border controls and migration have become hot political issues.

The right-wing president of the Riviera region, Christian Estrosi, has repeatedly criticised activists who help migrants.

He said on Facebook that Friday's ruling was "an insult to the work of the security forces who put their life in danger to protect ours."

Estrosi added that some jihadists had been able to enter France after passing themselves off as migrants.

Mannoni was arrested at a toll booth near the southern town of Menton in October with the three Eritreans including a minor that he wanted to lodge.

Another activist, farmer Cedric Herrou, appeared in the Nice court on Wednesday facing an eight-month suspended prison term for moving some 50 Eritreans into a disused holiday village owned by the state.

Story continues

Security forces emptied the camp after three days.

In addition to the suspended sentence, public prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre called for Herrou's vehicle to be confiscated and for his driving licence to be restricted to driving only for professional use.

Herrou, 37, has become something of a folk hero around the French-Italian border for driving migrants across the frontier, under the noses of the French police, and then putting them up.

The verdict in his case is expected on February 10.

In early December an appeals court in Aix-en-Provence upheld a fine of 1,500 euros ($1,580) against a 73-year-old retired professor for helping two Eritreans avoid a police check.

The controversy comes less than four months ahead of the first round of France's presidential elections.

The Socialist government came under harsh criticism for allowing the infamous "Jungle" migrant camp to develop near the northern port of Calais, which the authorities finally closed in October.
Something long forgotten in the history of North America is just how ruthless the fur trade was and how completely bad ass you had to be to thrive within it. The industry was started by the French in the 1600s (thanks to some rather restrictive trading laws too complex to get into here), and by the 1700s competition was intense enough that it affected the socio-political landscape. It even played a role in the Seven Years War and subsequent American war for Independence.

Thats the backdrop of Netflixs upcoming Jason Momoa-starring series Frontier. Set in the 1700s, the series follows Declan Harp (Momoa), a part-Irish, part-native American outlaw on a bloody quest to undermine the fur trading monopoly enjoyed by Hudsons Bay Company in Canada. No small task however, as at the time the company was the largest single land owner in what would eventually become Canada. Netflix is bullish about Frontiers prospects, having already renewed it for a second season before the first even debuts. But why not: its Khal Drogo gunning to deal major damage to the British Empire. Sold.

Co-created by San Andreas director Brad Peyton with Rob Blackie and Peter Blackie, Frontier stars Momoa alongside Alun Armstrong ,Allan Hawco, Landon Liboiron, Greg Bryk, Shawn Doyle, Tantoo Cardinal, and Jessica Matten.

Frontier premieres on Netflix January 20th, just in time to distract us from the Inauguration.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J5wTsYAh94&w=605&h=340]

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Weeks before George Michaels death, his former manager spoke with him and all seemed to be well.

In the new issue of Billboard, Rob Kahane, who managed the late pop icon at the height of his fame, opens up about a recent conversation he had with Michael  and the new music he was working on.

As Billboard reports, Michael had recently finished an 18-month stint in a Swiss rehab facility when his one-time manager reached out to him in early December.

I called him, and he said, Im good. He sounded fine, Kahane  who had been estranged from the artist for years  told the music magazine, adding that they had plans to meet up for a proper catch-up in January.

In addition to reconnecting, Kahane told the publication he heard some of Michaels new music, describing the tracks as as totally pop, like something that wouldve been on Faith.

The songs werent depressing, Kahane added. Thats why I thought everything was okay with him.

Michael, of course, battled many demons  including depression and addiction  before he was found dead in his bed in Oxfordshire, England, on Christmas Day; Michael was 53 when he died.

At the time, his U.S. rep told PEOPLE he died of heart failure, but police this week said his autopsy results were inconclusive, adding further tests will now be carried out but Mr. Michaels death is still being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

While speculation regarding his cause of death has run rampant on the internet and in tabloids, Michaels family has remained mum in their mourning.

In the week since his tragic death there has been much comment and speculation concerning George and the circumstances surrounding his death, the family said in a statement to Buzzfeed News. There will inevitably be more in the future. The family remain devastated by his passing and have no wish to comment in relation to any such speculation, whether current or in the future.

Michaels boyfriend, Fadi Fawaz, is also staying quiet. Mr Fawaz does not wish to speak to the media and asks that his privacy is respected at this time so he can grieve, the Thames Valley Police told PEOPLE on his behalf.




In the early 1900s, German colonial rulers carried out a series of massacres in modern-day Namibia that came to be known as the 20th centurys first genocide. Now, representatives from two indigenous Namibian groups want justice.

The Ovaherero and Nama people filed a lawsuit Thursday in New York for unspecified sums against Germany to seek reparations and compensation for the atrocities committed over a century ago. Under colonial rule from the 1880s to the early 1900s, Germany killed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people in a clash known as the Herero revolt. The plaintiffs also say Germany stole thousands of square miles of land, used forced labor, and turned a blind eye to colonialists carrying out rapes and other atrocities against the indigenous people.

German officials acknowledged the atrocities as a genocide as early as 2004. But it has repeatedly refused to pay direct reparations to the victims descendants, citing the hundreds of millions of euros of development aid it sent Namibia since the country first gained independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.

Critics cite racism in Germanys slow recognition of the Namibian genocide compared to its forthright and open recognition of the Holocaust. The only difference is that the Jewish are white in color and we are black, Sam Kambazembi, a traditional Herero chief, told New York Times in December. The Germans thought they could keep this issue under the carpet and the world would never know about it. But now we have made noise.

The German Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Foreign Policy for comment on the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs, including Vekuii Rukoro, chief of the Ovaherero people; David Frederick, chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association; and the Association of the Ovaherero Genocide in the USA, are also seeking to be included in any negotiations between Germany and Namibia. The two countries started negotiations about issuing a joint declaration on the massacres in 2016, but the talks havent concluded.

In the 1880s, Germany invaded southwest Africa amid European colonial competitions for control of the continent that precipitated World War I. An estimated 1 million people in East Africa died in World War I during proxy colonial battles between Europes warring powers.

Photo credit: BRIGITTE WEIDLICH/AFP/Getty Images
Gigi Hadid and sister Bella are diving head first into 2017, with joint ad campaigns for fashion houses Moschino and Fendi.

Fashion's hottest sisters reenact their reality of being bombarded by paparazzi cameras every day in Moschino's spring-summer 2017 campaign, shot by photographer Steven Meisel.

MOSCHINO SPRING 2017 AD CAMPAIGN STARRING @gigihadid PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN MEISEL STYLED BY @carlynecerfdedudzeele WITH HAIR AND MAKE UP BY @guidopalau & @patmcgrathreal CASTING @samuel_ellis @pg_dmcasting  A photo posted by Jeremy Scott (@itsjeremyscott) on Jan 5, 2017 at 12:36am PST

MOSCHINO SPRING 2017 AD CAMPAIGN STARRING @gigihadid PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN MEISEL STYLED BY @carlynecerfdedudzeele WITH HAIR AND MAKE UP BY @guidopalau & @patmcgrathreal CASTING @samuel_ellis @pg_dmcasting  A photo posted by Jeremy Scott (@itsjeremyscott) on Jan 4, 2017 at 11:20pm PST

In the shots, the sisters don gowns, lingerie and plenty of ostentatious jewelry.

MOSCHINO SPRING 2017 AD CAMPAIGN STARRING @bellahadid PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN MEISEL STYLED BY @carlynecerfdedudzeele WITH HAIR AND MAKE UP BY @guidopalau & @patmcgrathreal CASTING @samuel_ellis @pg_dmcasting A photo posted by Jeremy Scott (@itsjeremyscott) on Jan 5, 2017 at 12:26am PST

In Fendi's spring 2017 campaign, shot by Karl Lagerfeld, the girls are seen through a more fantastical lens in a setting reminiscent of a dollhouse.

@fendi s/s 17 campaign shot by the one and only @karllagerfeld ! what a dream come true to start off the new year ! thank you @chaos @pg_dmcasting @samuel_ellis and Karl I love you so much A photo posted by Bella Hadid (@bellahadid) on Jan 2, 2017 at 11:08am PST

"Campaign shot by the one and only @karllagerfeld!" Bella posted on Instagram. "What a dream come true to start off the new year! Thank you @chaos @pg_dmcasting @samuel_ellis and Karl I love you so much."

This isn't the first time the girls have teamed up. The models previously posed together for Balmain's fall 2015 campaign, which was released in July 2015. At the time, Gigi, 21, was already established in the world of fashion but Bella, 20, had yet to come into her own.

PICS: All the Must-See Moments of Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2016

The two also appeared in the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show together. See more from their time together in Paris in the video below.

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A year after the "Shuttlegate" debacle, organizers of the Golden Globes have a new set of logistical challenges to contend with for this weekend's ceremonies, not least of which is the trending meteorological term: "atmospheric river."

In addition to heightening security, this year's Golden Globe ceremonies will take place during the largest storm to hit California in a decade, upping the ante for organizers and setting the stage for every cliche about Los Angeles to be laid bare.

A representative for the event said they will be tenting the red carpet, which they hope will be enough to stave off any embarrassing moments, of which there have been quite a few in recent years. Last year, a newly introduced security measure required that invitees be funneled through a shuttle service that ran from Century City to The Beverly Hilton. That system was an epic fail and left some guests stranded, waiting hours to get into the afterparties. In 2014, the red carpet suffered damage hours before the event after an underground sewage pipe burst, soaking the crimson pathway that leads the stars into The Beverly Hilton. This year, any unwanted liquid likely will be coming from a more conventional source.

The National Weather Service describes an atmospheric river as columns of vapor somewhat akin to a "river in the sky." Much of the state is bracing for heavy rains that could bring flooding, avalanches, blizzards and road closures. The brunt of the storm will be felt in Northern California, but rain is expected on Saturday and Sunday evening in Southern California as well.

Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service based in Oxnard, Calif., told The Hollywood Reporter that they did expect somewhere between half an inch to an inch of rain late Sunday night heading into Monday morning. "It is unlikely that we would see this rainfall early enough to have a large impact," he said.

Story continues

As for the event's security, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it will be assisting the Beverly Hills Police Department, and private security is expected to be brought in for the event, as they have been in years past. When contacted by THR, a watch commander for the Beverly Hills Police Department declined to comment, as did a representative for The Beverly Hilton.

Sandy Murphy, the general manager of The Beverly Hilton, said in a statement that they would be increasing the number of shuttles and have reworked the path of travel to remedy the problems that occurred last year: "We have been working with all concerned parties throughout the past year to develop a transportation plan that will allow the guests attending the events surrounding the Golden Globes to be transported in a timely manner, while still maintaining the safety and security of our guests."

Read more: Golden Globes Film: Who Should Win, Who Will Win
Golden Globes Predictions: Heres who we think will take home the top awards this weekend

This weekend kicks off awards season! And Jimmy Fallon will host 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards this Sunday. This year, there are so many amazing films nominated for awards. From small, elegant dramas, to graceful musicals, to Spandex-wearing superheroes, theres something for everyone in the Golden Globes nominations this year. But only one can win in each category, so we took a guess at who we thought would take home top awards. Here are our picks for some of the top film awards at this years Golden Globes.

Best Motion Picture  Drama

NOMINEES:

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

Our Pick: Moonlight

Moonlight

Moonlight is a stunning, emotional movie, and we think it could definitely take home the prize. The films unusual storytelling style makes it stand out even more. Plus, newcomer Travante Rhodes turns in a totally stunning performance thats definitely award quality.

Best Motion Picture  Comedy or Musical

NOMINEES:

20th Century Women

Deadpool

Florence Foster Jenkins

La La Land

Sing Street

Our Pick: La La Land

The stunning musical spectacular that is La La Land seems almost assured to win in this category. And with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling showing off a little Old-Hollywood flair with their dancing styles, were glad its chances are so good. La La Land combines the fun and whimsy of the Musical/Comedy category with deft storytelling and gorgeous cinematography, so this one will be tough to beat.

Best Actress  Drama

NOMINEES:

Amy Adams, Arrival

Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane

Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Ruth Negga, Loving

Natalie Portman, Jackie

Our Pick: Natalie Portman

While she is in a category with some VERY talented ladies, we think Natalie will take this one. Natalies vulnerable and smart portrayal of Jackie Kennedy shortly after her husbands assassination is so captivating, we cant imagine her going home empty-handed.

Best Actress  Comedy or Musical

NOMINEES:

Annette Bening, 20th Century Women

Lily Collins, Rules Dont Apply

Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen

Emma Stone, La La Land

Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Story continues

Our Pick: Meryl Streep

This pick is a bit controversial, because most have assumed that Emma Stone will take home this award. And while both ladies turn in fabulous performances, we think the numbers are on our side. Meryl has won eight Golden Globe Awards, so we think she scores a bit of an upset this year.

Best Actor  Drama

NOMINEES:

Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic

Denzel Washington, Fences

Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge

Joel Edgerton, Loving

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

Our Pick: Denzel Washington

Denzel turned in an all-star performance in Fences with Viola Davis, so we think hell win this. Plus, the Golden Globes love to award big name talent, and when it comes towards, the names dont get much bigger than Denzel. While Denzel does face very stiff competition, this year, we think hell take home the Golden Globe.

Best Actor  Comedy or Musical

NOMINEES:

Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool

Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins

Ryan Gosling, La La Land

Colin Farrell, The Lobster

Jonah Hill, War Dogs

Our Pick: Ryan Gosling

This category feels like its a battle between the Ryans, but even though we love Deadpool, we think Ryan Gosling will take home the prize for La La Land. The Hollywood-set musical feels more like an award performance, and big-budget superhero movies dont tend to score as many wins. Although, we could be proven wrong. Regardless, we think a Ryan takes a Golden Globe home this year.

Dont forget to watch the 74th Annual Golden Globes this Sunday on NBC to see if we were right!
Fun fact: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association only consists of about 90 members. Thats the same number of members as, for example, the Boffer LARP Fighter Practice Meetup group in Austin, Texas. This makes the HFPAs choices for who should win a Golden Globe notoriously tough to predict. The 90 voters dont even need to agree on somebody: a winner just needs a plurality of votes. The actor or actress on stage Sunday night clutching that award could have, in theory, received as few as 16 votes among the six nominees. So who knows if 16 people will think Mandy Moore deserves best supporting actress in a TV series?

We do. We know. For sure. Because why not sound confident in the face of total uncertainty? Here is who will win Sunday:

Best Television Series, DramaThe Crown

Game of Thrones

Stranger Things

This Is Us

Westworld

Who the f knows, wrote one publicist when asked who they thought would win this very tough category. One might think Game of Thrones will take it home given that the fantasy drama had arguably its strongest season and won at the Emmys. But the HFPA often acts as a counter-measure to the more prestigious ceremony and has never been all the enamored with GoT anyway. Last season, the Globes gave this award to Mr. Robot (which isnt even nominated for its frustrating second season). Though I loved HBOs Westworld and Netflixs Stranger Things, both Netflixs The Crown (despite its weak final episodes) and NBCs This Is Us (despite being on a broadcast network, which seems to increasingly face an uphill fight in these contests) are more likely. The Crown is the safest bet of all, but nothing would really surprise here this year.

Best Television Series, Musical or ComedyAtlanta

Blackish

Mozart in the Jungle

Transparent

Veep

Normally Veep would be a contender, but its like the GoT of this category  heavily honored by the Emmys and perhaps too conventional of a choice. Last years look something shiny! surprise pick was Mozart in the Jungle, and its likely the HFPA will look for something new this time too. Id bet on FXs very worthy breakout Atlanta.

Story continues

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionAmerican Crime

The Dresser

The Night Manager

The Night Of

The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

O.J., O.J., O.J. Granted this win would echo the Emmys, but the FX drama was such a powerful and topical accomplishment that an upset would be stunning (though also rather HFPA-y).

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, DramaRami Malek, Mr. RobotBob Odenkirk, Better Call SaulMatthew Rhys, The AmericansLiev Schreiber, Ray DonovanBilly Bob Thornton, Goliath

Can Rami Malek continue his streak now that Jon Hamm is no longer in play? Once again, USAs drama feels like last years buzz. Id love to see Matthew Rhys take this home but suspect Billy Bob Thornton will surprise. That might not be a choice you or I would make, but oftentimes the most reliable Globes prediction hack is to bet on a categorys biggest star.

Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series, DramaCaitriona Balfe, OutlanderClaire Foy, The CrownKeri Russell, The Americans

Winona Ryder, Stranger ThingsEvan Rachel Wood, Westworld

Which goes for this category too. Id love to see Evan Rachel Wood take this for Westworld. Experts say Claire Foy is a total lock to win for The Crown. Balfe and Russell could easily slip in here too. But theres no glory in playing it safe with every category. So Im drunkenly putting my chips on the 40-1 Gold Derby odds that Winona Ryder will end up on that stage.

Best Performance By an Actress in a Television Series, Musical, or ComedyRachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-GirlfriendJulia Louis-Dreyfus, VeepSarah Jessica Parker, DivorceIssa Rae, InsecureGina Rodriguez, Jane the VirginTracee Ellis Ross, Blackish

Who would have thought three years ago that the last two winners of this category would be from The CW? Rachel Bloom and Gina Rodriguez are back again, but I suspect the HFPAs ever-wandering eye will land on somebody new  like Insecure star Issa Rae.

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Musical, or ComedyAnthony Anderson, BlackishGael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the JungleDonald Glover, AtlantaNick Nolte, GravesJeffrey Tambor, Transparent

This category is the one I have the most confidence in predicting: Donald Glover, Atlanta. Its a star-making performance that also extends behind the camera for the future Lando Calrissian. This perhaps the only way somebody could beat out the formidable Jeffrey Tambor.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionFelicity Huffman, American CrimeRiley Keough, The Girlfriend ExperienceSarah Paulson, The People v. O.J.: American Crime StoryCharlotte Rampling, London SpyKerry Washington, Confirmation

As with the limited series category, the O.J. strength feels most likely to power its nominee  Paulson  into a repeat of the Emmys. Though Riley Keough has that dark horse-y feel that Globes voters like.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionSterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J.: American Crime StoryHugh Laurie, The Night ManagerJohn Lithgow, The CrownChristian Slater, Mr. RobotJohn Travolta, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

The category that could upset O.J.s victory lap. John Lithgow gave the sort of historical, actorly, and heart-breaking performance as Winston Churchill that awards voters love. That will be enough to push out the otherwise top choice, Sterling K. Brown, who won an Emmy for his role. (Another contender: Hugh Laurie, who won two Globes for House, so never count him out.) Slater, last years winner, should continue Mr. Robots second season wash-out.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionOlivia Colman, The Night ManagerLena Headey, Game of ThronesChrissy Metz, This Is UsMandy Moore, This Is UsThandie Newton, Westworld

How can Lena Headey or Thandie Newton not win? Headey, as I write annually, has been deserving of an award for GoT since season 1. Newton gave a fearless and devastating performance for Westworlds debut season. The This Is Us actors likely cancel each other out in the voting. Headey is overdue. But Newton feels more likely.

Come to EW.com Sunday night for all the winners and highlights.
By Julia Love

(Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google quickened the pace of its push into virtual and augmented reality this week as its hardware partners announced new devices featuring the companys technology at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas.

Google has been trying to position the vast network of smartphones running its Android operating system for virtual and augmented reality, known as VR and AR, fields that many in the technology industry say are poised to go mainstream after years of niche appeal.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co [HWT.UL] announced on Thursday that two of its phones will soon work with Daydream View, a VR headset released last year by Google. Meanwhile, Taiwanese manufacturer AsusTek Computer Inc announced that its ZenFone AR will support both Daydream and Googles Tango software for AR, in which computer-generated content is overlaid on the real world.

While the announcements expand the line-up of participating phones, Google still has much to do to take its technology to the masses, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research, noting that Samsung Electronics Co, the largest Android manufacturer, has yet to sign on.

Googles ecosystem for both AR and VR is in the very early days, he said.

As growth in the global smartphone market shows signs of slowing, some manufacturers are voicing optimism that AR and VR will revive consumer enthusiasm.

This is the next wave of technology that is really going to get consumers excited about smartphones, Erik Hermanson, Asuss head of marketing for mobile products, said at the show.

But mainstream consumer interest in the technology remains largely unproven. Apps might be expected to stimulate demand, but until Googles technology is available on a wider range of phones, it will be tough to persuade developers to build for the platform, analysts said.

We are waiting for app developers to really use the platform for what its for, Amit Singh, a vice president for VR at Google, told reporters.

Story continues

In addition to supporting Daydream, Huawei said that it is exploring opportunities for Tango with Google. The Asus phone became the first to support both technologies.

Google has stressed that the programs do not overlap for now, but by pursuing both, the company can position itself for success regardless of whether AR or VR becomes a mainstream hit.

By having options for both, they can cover the full potential market, said analyst Bob ODonnell of TECHnalysis Research.

(Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Bill Rigby)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was among those piling on when President Barack Obama came under fire several years ago for reading some of his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receiving them in-person.

"I have a hard time comprehending that, because the primary job of the commander in chief is to keep the country safe," Ryan said in an October 2014 interview on Fox News Channel. "And you need to get from your intelligence community, your defense community  especially when we have troops in harm's way  what's going on."

Yet now, as President-elect Donald Trump refuses daily intelligence briefings, questions U.S. spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trump's back. Far from strongly defending the U.S. intelligence community, they're siding with the new leader of their party, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, unfailingly supports the military and joined with European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Asked at a press briefing Thursday whether he had full confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies, now-Speaker Ryan offered a tepid endorsement that began and ended on a note of criticism.

"Well, they don't always get everything right. We've seen that clearly," Ryan said. "But I do have faith that our men and women in our intelligence community are doing an incredible job, sacrificing for our country. But there's always room for improvement."

Earlier Thursday, in an interview with WTAQ radio in Wisconsin, Ryan passed up the chance to distance himself from Trump's elevation of Assange in a tweet earlier this week, when Trump cited Assange's claim that Russia had not been the source of Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks revealed.

Story continues

Instead, even while criticizing Assange, Ryan defended Trump, saying that what the president-elect is "rightfully concerned about is partisans are trying to use the Russian hacking incident to ... call into question the legitimacy of his victory."

And Ryan endorsed Trump's claim, disputed by intelligence officials, that intelligence leaders had delayed a briefing for Trump on the hacking issue that is set to take place later Friday. In dismissing the intelligence on Russia, Trump highlighted a glaring intelligence failure  the claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion and war.

With a couple of exceptions  most notably Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina  other GOP lawmakers and leaders have also stayed largely quiet as Trump lauds Putin and derides U.S. intelligence.

During a hearing Thursday with intelligence agency officials on the alleged Russian election meddling, Republicans on the panel largely avoided making comments that would contradict Trump's well-publicized skepticism that Russia had anything to do with hacking Democratic emails. The exceptions were McCain and Graham.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas even appeared to try to build the case for Trump, ticking off several Trump proposals, from increasing defense spending to accelerating nuclear weapons modernization, to challenge the notion that Putin would favor Trump over Hillary Clinton.

"There is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia," Cotton argued.

The hearing provoked an angry outburst from Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

"The notion that the soon elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military ... no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there should be howls," McCaskill said. "And mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side."

In most cases, Republicans haven't actually embraced Trump's stances, they've just declined to call him out on them, noted Gary Schmitt, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer before serving as executive director on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during Reagan's second term.

"It's a normal situation in which the nominal head of your party, you don't want him to be undercut," Schmitt said. "But my view is if it looks like the substance is clearly on the side of the intelligence community, you're not doing anybody any favors by protecting him."

___=

Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericawerner
Miami (AFP) - A onetime Haitian coup leader who was recently elected senator has been taken to the United States to face longstanding federal drug trafficking charges, officials said Friday.

Guy Philippe, who has been wanted on US drug charges for more than a decade, was arrested Thursday near the capital Port-au-Prince by heavily armed Haitian antinarcotics police and transported to the United States.

Philippe, who was elected to the Haitian parliament as a senator in November, has close ties to the country's president-elect Jovenel Moise.

Philippe "is in Miami to face federal charges here in the Southern District of Florida," said Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Schall.

Schall said that Philippe was currently in custody in Florida and will face a US magistrate judge.

"The case is under seal," she said, meaning confidential information given to the court will remain private and not released to the public.

Philippe's lawyer, Richard Dansoh, said he was being held in a federal prison in Miami and will appear before a judge Friday afternoon.

A Haitian radio station reported that Philippe was in the process of being extradited to the United States.

The Miami Herald reported that police had transferred Philippe into the custody of US Drug Enforcement Administration agents late Thursday who escorted him to the United States.

He has been wanted on US drug charges since 2005.

Philippe has consistently denied he is involved in drug trafficking. He was elected to represent the Grande Anse department in southwestern Haiti in November.

He helped lead an armed rebellion against then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 that saw Aristide flee the country.

Haitian police concluded in July that Philippe was the mastermind of an attack against a police station in Les Cayes in May that left one officer dead and two others seriously wounded. He denied the allegation.

Some Haitian lawmakers criticized Philippe's arrest as illegal. Under Haiti's constitution, he enjoyed immunity from arrest or prosecution during the election campaign and would be eligible for immunity once sworn into office, an event scheduled for Monday.
Bouake (Ivory Coast) (AFP) - Soldiers seized control of Ivory Coast's second city Bouake on Friday in a protest over pay, firing rocket launchers in the streets and terrifying residents, as the government called for calm.

The protests in Bouake spread to the central towns of Daloa and Daoukro as well as Korhogo in the north, as angry troops took to the streets demanding salary hikes.

Witnesses said the soldiers had left the streets by nightfall except for Bouake, where troops continued to sporadically fire rocket launchers and spray rifle bullets into the air.

"The soldiers are still in control of Bouake. The town is deserted," an AFP correspondent reported.

"There are only soldiers riding in their own vehicles and in government cars."

The government held a meeting of the National Crisis Committee to discuss the situation, a source close to the defence ministry said.

Several dozen trucks and buses were blocked several kilometres (miles) from Bouake on the main road from Abidjan, Ivory Coast's economic capital.

Bouake is the cradle of the armed rebellion that controlled Ivory Coast's north when the country was cut in two between 2002 and 2011.

An army officer in Bouake told AFP that former rebel fighters -- now part of the army -- were behind the uprising.

"It's a mutiny by former fighters integrated into the army who are demanding bonuses of five million CFA francs ($8,000, 7,600 euros) each plus a house," the officer said earlier Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

- Police disarmed -

One soldier told AFP the troops were asking for 10 million francs each as well as housing. "If necessary, we will not return to the barracks," he warned.

In a statement read out on national television, Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi called on "all soldiers to remain calm and return to their barracks, to enable the search for lasting solutions for every component of Ivory Coast's armed forces."

Story continues

He said the soldiers were demanding payment of bonuses, salary rises and faster promotion.

Soldiers broke into Bouake's main weapons depot, arming themselves with rocket-launchers and other weapons mounted on pickup trucks, a military source said.

AFP's correspondent in the city said troops there had attacked all seven police posts, manned strategic junctions and put up barricades in the town centre.

A police source said the soldiers arrived at one police station at about 3:00 am (0300 GMT) and took away their Kalashnikov assault rifles.

The police headquarters in the city was also attacked, the source said.

All businesses and schools were closed in Bouake, which became the capital of a rebellion after former president Laurent Gbagbo stayed in power after a foiled 2002 coup attempt.

The effective partitioning of the country between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south sparked a decade of clashes and crises.

Rebel forces generally backed current President Alassane Ouattara, who took office in April 2011 after a bloody post-electoral showdown which ended when Gbagbo was arrested.

Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where his trial began in January last year for crimes against humanity.

- 'We're scared, hiding out' -

Several people in Bouake reached by telephone from Abidjan said the shooting began in the early hours of Friday.

"I was really scared. I thought that they were going to come into my station to take petrol for free as they do regularly," Koffi Raphael, who runs a gas station not far from the barracks, told AFP.

In Daloa, "soldiers on motorbikes are driving around town shooting into the air," one resident had told AFP earlier.

"There's gunfire, we're scared, hiding out at home," another had said.

In November 2014, a strike by former rebels who had joined the army brought the country to a standstill after spreading to Abidjan from Bouake.

The nearly 9,000 strikers, who joined the army between 2009 and 2011, were demanding full payment of back pay and promotions.
Photo credit: Mark Wallheiserundefined

From Esquire

In other news from Camp Runamuck, if you're wondering if the morning's healthcare tantrum might be meant to distract the country from something else, you will be interested to know that, perhaps as recently as Thursday, the president-elect was due to be deposed in a lawsuit he has brought against a chef. Per The New York Daily News:

Trump filed a $10 million breach-of-contract suit last year after Andres pulled out of a deal to open a Spanish-themed restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. The deposition, which will take place at Trump Tower, could last up to seven hours, according ABC News. Andres backed out after Trump called Mexican immigrants "rapists" that were "bringing drugs" and "bringing crime" into the U.S. during his June 2015 presidential announcement. Settlement talks have stalled in a similar case involving chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who also withdrew from opening a restaurant in the converted post office.

As long as he's got his eye on the ball. I can't wait for the day he sues China for trying to curtail his First Amendment right to be a fool.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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The God of Thunders adventures with his roommate Darryl will continue when Marvels Doctor Strange comes home on Blu-ray this February.

While filming Thor: Ragnarok, director Taika Waititi shot a Thor mockumentary video with Chris Hemsworth about what the Asgardian was up to while the rest of the Avengers were fighting in Captain America: Civil War. The spoof was made in the style of the filmmakers vampire comedy, What We Do In the Shadows, and introduced Darryl (Daley Pearson), Thors flat-mate in Australia.

Part 1 was released online in August after Marvel revealed the footage during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Now, Part 2 will be included on the Doctor Strange Blu-ray and digital releases on Feb. 28. Doctor Strange will be available earlier to fans on Digital HD/3D and Disney Movies Anywhere beginning Feb. 14.

Thor made an appearance in Doctor Strange via the mid-credits scene, in which he appeared in the Sanctum Sanctorum to enlist the aid of the Sorcerer Supreme (Benedict Cumberbatch) in tracking down his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson previously said the scene is part of the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok.

Rounding out the films Blu-ray bonus materials are five behind-the-scenes featurettes on Doctor Strange, five deleted scenes, outtakes, audio commentary, and a sneak peek at Marvels Phase Three film slate, including Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (May 5, 2017), Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7, 2017), Thor: Ragnarok (Nov. 3, 2017), Black Panther (Feb. 16, 2018), and Avengers: Infinity War (May 4, 2018).
A critical version of Hitler's notorious autobiography, "Mein Kampf," is now a best-seller in Germany.

The autobiography has sold about 75,000 copies and spent 35 weeks on the German "Der Spiegel" best-seller list in 2016, The New York Times reported. The book had been banned in Germany for seven decades; the state of Bavaria held the copyright until the end of 2015 and continually thwarted efforts to republish the book. But the copyright expired Dec. 31, 2015, and the new edition of the book was published immediately after the copyright expiration, at the beginning of 2016.

The publishing of "Mein Kampf" (or "My Struggle") was not without controversy. Some argued that the book, which laid out Adolf Hitler's poisonous ideology about an Aryan master race, would fuel the rise of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Others countered that the work offered important insight into one of the darkest periods in German history. Besides that, people were already finding ways to read the book, according to a statement from the new edition's publisher, the Institute for Contemporary History, in Munich.

"Despite all the debates about republication, Hitler's book has long been accessible in a variety of ways: on the shelves of used book shops, in legally printed English translations or a mouse click away on the Internet  'Mein Kampf' is out there and every year manages to find new readers, agitators and commercial profiteers," the publisher wrote in a statement. "The task of an annotated critical edition is to render the debate objective and to put forward a serious alternative, a counter-text to the uncritical and unfiltered dissemination of Hitler's propaganda, lies, half-truths and vicious tirades."

The original version of "Mein Kampf" was written in two volumes between 1924 and 1926, according to the Institute for Contemporary History. Hitler wrote chunks of the first volume while imprisoned after his failed coup attempt in 1923; he completed the remaining pieces, which focus on his ideology and the political beliefs of the National Socialists, or Nazis, while at his mountain retreat.

Story continues

"Perhaps never in history did a ruler write down before he came to power what he was to do afterwards as precisely as Adolf Hitler. For that reason alone, the document deserves attention," historian Eberhard Jackel wrote in 1981, as noted by the Institute for Contemporary History. Once Hitler rose to power in 1933, the book's popularity soared, and by the end of 1945 it had sold 12 million copies and had been translated into 18 languages, according to the institute.

The annotation aims to answer questions such as: What were Hitler's aims in writing this book? What social support did Hitler's assertions have among his contemporaries? And how can one counter-fight and defang such venomous ideology? according to a statement from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
Paris (AFP) - A massive ice block nearly 100 times the area of Manhattan is poised to break off Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf, scientists reported Friday.

A slow-progressing rift suddenly grew by 18 kilometres (11 miles) at the end of December, leaving the finger-shaped chunk -- 350 metres thick -- connected along only a small fraction of its length.

The rift has also widened, from less than 50 metres (160 feet) in 2011 to nearly 500 metres today.

"If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed," said Adrian Luckman, a professor at Swansea University in Wales, and leader of Britain's Project Midas, which tracks changes in West Antarctic ice formations.

By itself, the soon-to-be iceberg will not add to sea levels, the likely consequence of ice sheet disintegration that most worries scientists.

The real danger is from inland glaciers, held in place by the floating, cliff-like ice shelves that straddle land and sea.

The fragile West Antarctic ice sheet -- where Larsen C is located -- holds enough frozen water to raise global oceans by at least four metres (13 feet).

Recent studies have suggested that climate change may already have condemned large chunks of it to disintegration, though whether on a time scale of centuries or millennia is not known.

The breaking off, or calving, of ice shelves is a natural process, but global warming is thought to have accelerated the process.

Warming ocean water erodes their underbelly, while rising air temperatures weaken them from above.

The nearby Larsen A ice shelf collapsed in 1995, and Larsen B dramatically broke up seven years later.

The ice block currently separating from Larsen C contains about 10 percent of its mass, and would be among the 10 largest break-offs ever recorded, Luckman said.

If all the ice held back by Larsen C entered the sea, it would lift global oceans by about 10 centimetres (four inches).

"We are convinced -- although others are not -- that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one," Luckman said in a statement.

Oceans in recent decades have absorbed much of the excess heat generated by climate change, which has lifted average global air temperatures by one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The world's nations have undertaken in the Paris Agreement, inked in the French capital in December 2015, to cap global warming at "well under" two degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial era levels.
Washington (AFP) - The part of the human brain that is involved in face recognition keeps developing into adulthood, a pair of new studies found, surprising scientists who thought brain tissue growth stopped in early childhood.

Researchers led by Kalanit Grill-Spector, a psychology professor at Stanford University, examined the brains of children and adults using a new type of imaging technique, focusing on an area of the cerebral cortex that plays a key role in face recognition.

In a study published in Cerebral Cortex, the researchers showed that regions of the brain that recognize faces have a unique cellular makeup.

In a separate study published in Science, they explained how they found microscopic structures within that region that change as children grow into adulthood.

The growth in tissue mirrored changes in a person's ability to distinguish faces, which would explain why adults are better than children in telling faces apart.

The studies overturn a central notion in neuroscience -- that people are born with excess neural connections that then pare back in early childhood when they stabilize.

"We actually saw that tissue is proliferating," said Jesse Gomez, a graduate student in the Grill-Spector lab who was the lead author of the Science paper. "Many people assume a pessimistic view of brain tissue: that tissue is lost slowly as you get older. We saw the opposite -- that whatever is left after pruning in infancy can be used to grow."

The study involved 47 people -- 22 children between the ages of five and 12 and 25 adults between the ages of 22 and 28.

The researchers determined that the adults had proportionally 12.6 percent more cerebral matter in the fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain that contains face-processing regions, than the children.

The fusiform gyrus is an anatomical structure unique to humans and great apes.

The scientists also looked at other areas of the brain involved in place recognition, but their size did not change with age.

Their observations have been corroborated by a team from the Julich Research Centre in Germany, which worked with brain tissues taken from cadavers from the same part of the cerebral cortex.
Horsepower and fuel efficiency are still top of mind for carmakers, but now so is something else: your mood.

Hyundai Motor (538'A-KR) has unveiled a concept cockpit for a car that it says could "monitor the physical and mental state of the driver."

Determining a driver's mental state will help ensure the "optimum health and mental attitude" for safe driving, Mike O'Brien, vice president at Hyundai Motor Americas, said Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Tracking heart rate, posture, breathing and facial feature recognition, the car would deliver "mood bursts" to make the driver calmer or more alert, Hyundai said in a statement.

The "burst" could include adjusting the seat position for either more alertness or relaxation, as well as adjustments to the warmth of the car's lighting, temperature, music volume and even the scents of lavender or eucalyptus inside the car, Hyundai said.

For now, the "mood bursts" are limited to a virtual reality experience, offered at CES.

Other companies are already taking a similar approach: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang expressed comparable ambitions in his keynote address the show, saying a car should act like an artificially intelligent co-pilot, using facial recognition, lip reading and gaze tracking to tell whether a driver is "too aggravated" and needs to pull over.

An AAA study last year found that nearly 80 percent of drivers "expressed significant anger, aggression or road rage behind the wheel" in the previous year. One such confrontation recently made headlines after a toddler was shot in an alleged road-rage encounter.



Hyundai's simulation is part of a larger push toward autonomous vehicles, which will soon be safer than human drivers, according to proponents like Huang.

For Hyundai, the future of the car is also clean and connected. The company also announced on Wednesday that it would partner with Cisco (CSCO) to ensure security for self-driving connected cars, and that it would release a new hydrogen fuel cell car by 2018.

"We are joining the party by sharing our own vision for future mobility," Hyundai Vice Chairman Eui-sun Chung said in a speech. "It's the start of a new year, and if you spent any time at this show, you will hear people say that we are at the start of a new era.  This has huge implications for mobility."
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f339429%2fe0c0546b-c0f6-4777-aab4-e6fbd59e4751

It's been a particularly frightening month for those in the LGBTQ community, so even small symbols of solidarity matter.

On Friday, IBM announced that they would be rolling out a new logo emblematic of their "pro-diversity advocacy." The company is known for their commitment to the community and is one of the 60 companies involved in the Human Rights Council' Business Coalition for the Equality Act, which advocates for anti-discrimination legislation.

SEE ALSO: IBM's Watson supercomputer discovers 5 new genes linked to ALS

Though they didn't pull operations out of the state, the company previously slammed North Carolina's infamous HB-2 law, which prevent transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice.

IBM is hopeful that their new logo will send a strong message.

"IBM opposes discrimination against anyone for being who they are, and we will continue opposing measures that would negatively impact our employees, our communities and our ability to attract the best and brightest talent to our company," Adam Pratt, a representative for the company, told Mashable in an email.

The move comes as new proposed legislation protecting LGTBQ discrimination has cropped up in state houses across the country.

On Thursday, a Texas Republican state senator introduced a bill, SB6, that would prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice. The bill would further prevent local governments from passing anti-discriminations measures that would allow companies to adopt their own bathroom policies.

Image: laura skelding/austin american-statesman via AP

Virginia lawmaker Robert Marshall recently filed a similar bill in his state, adding a provision that school principals notify students parents if the student asks to be treated as the opposite sex. In 2015, the delegate proposed legislation that would legalize anti-LGBTQ segregation in schools, hospitals and businesses across his state.

Pro-LGBTQ corporations who pulled their business or otherwise challenged North Carolina's HB-2 law had a strong impact on the state, costing the government close to $400 million in revenue.

BONUS: Watch Joe Biden get snubbed by a baby
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A partial breakup of the Larsen C ice shelf is imminent, scientists say, resulting in one of the largest icebergs on recordroughly the size of Delaware.

Researchers who closely monitor a crack cutting across the floating Antarctic ice shelf reported on Thursday that its progress had suddenly sped up, indicating that a collapse may soon be underway. If and when it occurs, it could yield one of the top ten largest icebergs on record, possibly in the top three.

More worrisome is the possibility that the calving eventwhich refers to the breaking off of the iceberg, from the ice shelf that it's now attached tocould speed up the disintegration of the broader ice shelf and land-based ice that lies behind it.

SEE ALSO: NASA photo reveals a startling 300-foot-wide rift in Antarctic Ice Shelf

The area of ice slated to break off the ice-covered continent is more than 1,930 square miles, or greater than than 5,000 square kilometers in area, according to scientists affiliated with Project MIDAS, which monitors the ice shelf with support from the British Antarctic Survey and other partners.

The researchers found that the rift that had been steadily progressing across the floating ice shelf suddenly grew by 11.2 miles, or 18 kilometers, during the second half of December. This leaves only 12.4 miles, or 20 kilometers, of ice left connecting the iceberg to its parent ice shelf.

"We expect that the iceberg will break free within the next few months, although it's hard to be certain about timing," said Martin O'Leary, a researcher at Swansea University in the U.K. who studies the Larsen C Ice Shelf as part of the MIDAS team, in an email to Mashable.

Rifts like this are a natural phenomenon, and we're not aware of any direct link to climate change. This is simply the natural way in which ice is removed from the shelf. That said, events like this are rare (last one on Larsen C was in the mid-80s), so we don't really have enough observations to say for certain whether there's a climate link or not.

Story continues

View is of a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf from our airborne survey of polar ice: https://t.co/VgjxopHHLI @NASA_ICE pic.twitter.com/gt5mpHqbxn  NASA (@NASA) December 3, 2016

The iceberg calving event, which is an extreme example of a typical process in the Antarctic and Arctic, may weaken the larger ice shelf and speed its total disintegration. This has been happening in parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, but it is not guaranteed to happen with Larsen C.

The Larsen C Ice Shelf is the most northerly of the remaining major Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves. This part of Antarctica has been warming rapidly in recent years, and the shelf is being undermined from below by warming ocean waters, as well as from above by increasing air temperatures.

In 2002, Larsen C's neighbor, known as the Larsen B Ice Shelf, disintegrated entirely after a series of similar rift-induced calving events. The Larsen B calving event was featured in the opening scenes of the sci-fi climate change-related disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow.

Larsen B Ice Shelf before its breakup in 2002.

Image: nasa

Larsen B Ice Shelf after its breakup in 2002.

Image: nasa

The researchers from the MIDAS project predict that Larsen C may ultimately meet the same fate as its neighbor, since the upcoming calving event will leave the ice shelf in a less stable position.

"When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10 percent of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded: this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula," the scientists wrote in a blog post.

Progression of the Larsen C Ice Shelf rift.

Image: project midas

Obviously, given the collapse of Larsen B, any large change to Larsen C is something we want to watch closely," O'Leary said.

"It's certainly the case that a large enough iceberg calving could destabilize the shelf. We're not sure if this berg is big enough - we think probably not, but there are large uncertainties here," he said. "Certainly it would leave the ice shelf in a more vulnerable state."

In December, NASA released an astonishing new image taken by researchers flying above the Larsen C Ice Shelf on Nov. 10 showing the crack was growing longer, deeper and wider.

The scientists associated with a NASA field campaign known as Operation IceBridge, measured the Larsen C fracture at that time to be about 70 miles long, more than 300 feet wide and about a third of a mile deep.

Dan McGrath, a research scientist at Colorado State University who studies Larsen C separately from the MIDAS team, said the rift has proceeded in fits and starts, making the timing of a calving event difficult to predict.

"An "imminent" calving is certainly plausible but highly uncertain," he said. "The rift growth over the past few years has been highly episodic  growing rapidly while crossing sections of the ice shelf sourced from glaciers on the peninsula, while creeping slowly through suture zones, regions of material heterogeneity in the ice shelf," he said in an email to Mashable.

McGrath agreed with the MIDAS team that the ice shelf will be in a more vulnerable state after the calving event.

"...Just how vulnerable is a question we're actively seeking to answer," he said.

Sea level implications

Ice shelves breaking off into icebergs don't directly increase sea levels, since their ice is already resting in the ocean like an ice cube in a glass.

However, because they act like doorstops to the land-based ice behind them, when the shelves give way, the glaciers can start sliding into the sea in a process that's difficult (if not impossible) to stop, long-term. It adds new water to the oceantherefore, increasing sea levels.

The entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by another 10 to 15 feet if it were all to melt. This process would likely take centuries, however, though sea level rise is already accelerating worldwide as glaciers melt and ocean temperatures increase.

BONUS: Gov. Jerry Brown says California will build its 'own damn satellite' under Trump
Veteran Indian actor Om Puri, who also starred in a number of Hollywood projects, passed away at the age of 66 after suffering a heart attack at his residence in Mumbai early Friday, local media reported.

Born in 1950, Puri was one of the stalwarts of the Indian film industry and appeared in a number of mainstream Indian, Pakistani, British as well as Hollywood films. A great actor, he also took on a number of projects from the art and independent cinema sphere.

His work has been acknowledged across the world and he was awarded the OBE (Order of British Empire) in 2004, as well as a number of National awards and the Padma Shri, Indias fourth-highest civilian award.

The actors friends and colleagues reached his suburban Mumbai residence to pay their last respects to the actor and the funeral is scheduled for 6 p.m. local time (4:30 a.m. EST), actor Shabana Azmi wrote on Twitter.

Puri worked with the likes of Patrick Swayze, Tom Hanks and Helen Mirren in his distinguished career. Here are some of his international films:

City of Joy (1992)

An adaptation of a novel written by Dominique Lapierre , the movie revolved around the state of poverty in the then-modern India and also starred Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze.

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

A fictionalized version of the story of Tsavo Man-Eaters, the film won an Academy Award for sound editing.

Such a Long Journey (1998)

The film, based on a novel by Rohinton Mistry, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was also nominated for 12 categories at Canadas Genie Awards  including the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director.

My Son the Fanatic (1997)

The British film showed Puri playing the lead role of a hardworking taxi driver for which he received the best actor award at the Brussels International Film Festival .

East is East (1999)

Possibly Puris most well-known work outside India, the film is a comedy-drama about a mixed-ethnicity household headed by a Pakistani father and an English mother and won a number of awards for the best film, story, screenplay and direction.

Story continues

Charlie Wilsons War (2007)

The film, where Puri played the role of Zia-ul-haq (former Pakistani president), also starred Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts . It received many nominations, including at the Academy Awards.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

The 2014 American comedy-drama showed the competition between two adjacent restaurants in a French town. Written by Steven Knight, the film also starred Helen Mirren, Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon.

om puri helen mirren

Photo: REUTERS/Paul Hackett

Related Articles
Devoted daughter Kristin Powers married the love of her life a month early at Indiana University Health West Hospitals ICU so that her mother, who was given a week to live by doctors, could be there.

She is my best friend, my right hand and my person, Kristin, 33, tells PEOPLE of mother Cheryl Owens. Its easy to get lost in the details of a wedding, but at the end of the day, its about commitment to love and I wanted her to be there for this part of my life.

I was just blessed by God that I was able to be there, Cheryl Owens, 55, tells PEOPLE.

Cheryl, who lives with her husband Mike Owens in Monrovia, Indiana, was diagnosed with stage-4 kidney cancer in October and although doctors removed the five-inch tumor in November, it had already spread to her lungs. And on Monday, Kristin received a text from her mom with a bunch of crying emojis in a row.

Cheryl was rushed to the ICU.

I ran to the hospital and doctors said the cancer was spreading fast, she explains. Then they said she probably wouldnt make it through the week.

Kristin and her now-husband Brian Powers, who live in Indianapolis, Indiana, decided to move up the date of their wedding, originally set for February 4.

We had just started dating when we found out about moms cancer, says Kristin, who met Brian at Franklin College 12 years ago, but didnt start dating him until August 2016. Brian proposed the day before Thanksgiving, he wrote me a sweet letter and had it hanging on my door with a ring pop, which is typical of us,very silly.

We knew it was going to be a whirlwind wedding, just not this whirlwind.

Kristin says her mother absolutely adores Brian, who fits into the family so well.

The day she was diagnosed with cancer she told me, Im so glad you have someone to take care of you, since I wont be here anymore,  she adds.

Kristin and Brian were able to pull together the last-minute wedding with help from friends, family and Indiana University Health West Hospital.

Story continues

I cannot thank them enough for pulling it all together, says Kristin. There was a guest book, we had hole-punched paper for confetti. A nurse brought his guitar and sang Amazing Grace, which is my favorite song. It was so special.

The bride, who had her hair and makeup done by her best friend, was even able to pick up her wedding dress early (which was being altered at Davids Bridal). Her dad walked her down the aisle.

She loves love, so I know how important this whole ceremony was to mom, says Kristin. She was always teasing me, trying to set me up with people. Always saying she wanted me to get married and have children.

Im just so glad she got to see it.

Cheryl was wheeled in on a hospital bed for the ceremony, where the flower girl curled up next to her to watch Kristin and Brian exchange vows.

I was worried it would be a somber event around her bedside, but it didnt turn out like that, says Kristin. For me it felt like a real wedding when I walked down the aisle. It felt joyous, like a celebration of love.

Kristin says her mom tells her she isnt done yet and plans to fight for her life every minute.

Shes hopeful for a miracle, but doctors arent sure how long she says, says Kristin. Her lung function has improved a little, so were hoping for another month.

Cheryl will celebrate her 56th birthday on Saturday  but her present came a few days prior when she got to see her daughter tie the knot.

The day after the wedding, a nurse came in and mom told her, I looked up there and saw my baby and I am so proud!  says Kristin. I worried the wedding might upset her because it was a sobering realization of the reality of her situation, but then she told the nurse how happy she was and how beautiful I looked.

To hear her say that meant a lot to me.




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That bootleg "CU in the NT" campaign for Australia's Northern Territory certainly got plenty of attention last year, but of course, it didn't thrill everyone.

One complaint to the country's Advertising Standards Board (ASB) called it "Crass, offensive and not suitable to be displayed where children can see it."

Although it's a sentiment the Northern Territory's tourism department agrees with, it did concede the campaign created plenty of travel buzz for the state.

SEE ALSO: Australia's oldest living prime minister really knows how to chug a beer

"The initial thing about the campaign is that it certainly did get a lot of people talking about the Northern Territory and what there is to see and do up here," Valerie Smith, acting executive director of the NT tourism department, told ABC News on Thursday.

A photo posted by CU in the NT (@cuinnt) on Nov 8, 2016 at 6:43am PST

"While some people might have had a private giggle, it is not something at all appropriate for a marketing campaign.

"It's not something we would do or condone, but at the same time it does hanker to some of that larrikinism that is still up here in the Northern Territory."

The ASB upheld the complaint, determining the campaign was "obscene and inappropriate."

However, the ASB has no real power over the guerilla group of creators, cheekily named "NT Official."

The authority will instead "liaise" with NT Official and Facebook to try and convince them to take campaign down.

Turns out swearing can get you a pretty long way.
Kim Kardashian West and Kanye Wests marriage appears to be in a rough patch, according to multiple sources familiar with the couple.

According to one source close, Things are still not great in their relationship.

Although the A-list duo, who will celebrate their third wedding anniversary on May 24, spent Christmas together with their two children  North, 3, and Saint, 13 months  there are issues at home, continues the source.

Kim and Kanye continue to spend time with the kids. They act friendly, but the passion seems to be missing.

Undeniably, the past three months have been an especially trying time for the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star and the rapper, who wed at Forte di Belvedere in Florence, Italy in May 2014.

While alone in her No Address Hotel room during Paris Fashion Week, the Kimoji creator, 36, was held at gunpoint and robbed of millions of dollars worth of jewelry on Oct. 3. And two months later, West, 39 was hospitalized at the end of November for exhaustion after canceling his Saint Pablo tour.

But a second source told PEOPLE that while Kardashian Wests robbery was an added stress to their relationship, the marriage was strained before West was hospitalized.

The divorce rumors come from before he had the breakdown. She didnt know what was up with him and they werent spending time together. She didnt realize it was a mental breakdown, the source previously told PEOPLE, and added, Its not something she would divorce him over  He had a breakdown, but it does not pertain to them not getting along.

On Tuesday, Kardashian West returned to social media exactly three months after her Paris Fashion Week robbery with two family-centric posts on her website and Instagram accounts.

After updating her Twitter and Instagram profile pictures, she posted a sweet home video of her family, which featured footage of her cuddling with West, going snow tubing with North, and showing son Saint taking his first steps.

Story continues

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In addition to the video, Kardashian West posted an Instagram photo of herself with West and their children, wearing matching white outfits, which she simply captioned, Family.

For more celebrity videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.
- By Tiziano Frateschi





The All-in-One Screener can be used to find insider trades from the past week. Under the Insiders tab, change the settings for All Insider Buying to "$20,000+" and the duration to "December 2016" to "January 2017" and All Insider Sales to "$5,000,000+."





According to the above filters, the following are trades from company insiders this week.

Charles A. Kabbash, director of Southern National Bancorp of Virginia Inc. (SONA), bought 11,000 shares of the company for $9.09 per share on Jan. 4. Since then, the stock price has risen by 81.4% to $16.49.

The company has an institutional ownership of 66.78% and insider ownership of 6.41%. It is the bank holding company for Sonabank. It offers savings accounts, money market accounts, commercial real estate loans, construction to permanent loans, and development and builder loans among others.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 24% and is now trading with a price-book (P/B) ratio of 1.60. The price is 1.73% below its 52-week high and 42.16% above its 52-week low.

Charlest Maxwell, director of Tecogen Inc. (TGEN), bought 29,769 shares of the company for $3.87 per share on Jan. 4. Since then, the stock price has dropped by 0.3% to $3.86.

The company has an institutional ownership of 15.77% and insider ownership of 9.12%. It manufactures combined heat and power products based on engines fuelled by natural gas. Its products include cogeneration units that supply electricity and hot water, chillers that provide air-conditioning and water heaters.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 6% and is now trading with a P/B ratio of 5.37. The price is 40.62% below its 52-week high and 37.86% above its 52-week low.

DCP Midstream LLC, 10% owner of DCP Midstream Partners LP (DPM), bought 48,776,234 shares for $21.17 per share on Jan. 1. Since then, the stock price has risen by 74.4% to $36.92.

Story continues

The company has an institutional ownership of 78.71% and insider ownership of 0.34%. The company along with its subsidiaries is engaged in gathering, compressing, treating, processing, transporting, storing and selling natural gas, NGLs and condensate and transporting, storing and selling propane in wholesale markets.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 52% and is now trading with a P/B ratio of 1.61. The price is 6.51% below its 52-week high and 144.67% above its 52-week low.

Most important sales of the week

Mark Casale, chairman, CEO and president of Essent Group Ltd. (ESNT), sold 250,000 shares of the company for $32.59 per share on Jan. 4. Since then, the stock price has risen by 1.6% to $33.11.

The company has an institutional ownership of 99.46% and an insider ownership of 4.39%. It provides credit protection to lenders and mortgage investors by covering a portion of the unpaid principal balance of a mortgage in the event of a default.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 55% and is currently 2.45% below its 52-week high and 100.79% above its 52-week low.

Howard M. Lorber, president and CEO of Vector Group Ltd.(VGR), sold 300,000 shares of the company for $22.85 per share on Jan. 4. Since then, the stock price has dropped by 0.7% to $22.69.

The company has an institutional ownership of 43.11% and insider ownership of 2.39%. Through its subsidiaries, it is engaged in the manufacture and sale of cigarettes in the U.S. and has a real estate business. Its business segments include: Tobacco, E-Cigarette and Real Estate.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 3% and is now trading with a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 34.46. The price is 4.62% below its 52-week high and 13.34% above its 52-week low.

Brin Sergey, president and 10% owner of Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOG), sold 33,340 shares of the company for $795.26 per share on Jan. 3. Since then, the stock price has dropped by 1.1% to $786.90.

The company has an institutional ownership of 34.92% and insider ownership of 0.37%. Through its subsidiary, Google Inc., it is engaged in improving the ways people connect with information and products, including Search, Android, YouTube, Apps, Maps and Ads. It also produces internet-connected home devices and provides internet services.

During the past 12 months, the stock price has risen by 6% and is now trading with a P/B ratio of 4.15. The price is the price is 3.65% below its 52-week high and 18.68% above its 52-week low.

Disclosure: I do not own any shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.

Start a free 7-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






Photo credit: autofocus

From Road & Track

In the early 1990s, a company called Motion Concept Vehicles began work on what it hoped would be the first Canadian supercar. The plan was to build 100 cars per year, selling them for a quarter-million dollars each. And unlike most pipe-dream auto startups, MCV came scarily close to succeeding, which ultimately made its failure that much more of a disappointment for the founders.

Canada's Autofocus recently wrote an in-depth feature on MCV that you should definitely, absolutely read, and it's fascinating.

The gist of the story is that a group of enthusiasts got together and built a chassis. Then, they hired a designer they found in the newspaper to design a body that would fit around the chassis. The result is the car you see above, called the CH4.

But unlike most supercars, the CH4 ran on natural gas. That decision got MCV a sponsorship deal with two natural gas companies, which helped fund the project. The other benefit was in performance-natural gas is 130 octane.

The car debuted at the Canadian International Auto Show in 1995 and got tons of attention, but then the real work began for the team. They'd built one car, but they had to figure out how to put it into production. Even with a goal of only building two per week, it was still going to be difficult.

Despite the CH4's curvy design and sub-4.5-second 0-60 time, MCV struggled to find funding. Why? According to the founders, it was because the Internet was booming, and investors were putting their money there. They wanted to hit it big with the next popular website, not invest in a natural gas-powered supercar from Canada.

With his wife was diagnosed with cancer, founder Bob Waddell was forced to shut down the company. But he still has that first car. "You look at the car now and it still looks great, and it's aged well," Waddell told Autofocus. "It really hasn't lost its appeal after twenty years."

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IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / 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
By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Elite Iraqi troops bridged a river under the cover of darkness to seize a district of Mosul in an unprecedented night raid early on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle to capture the city from Islamic State after weeks of slowed momentum.

Since last week, Iraqi forces have launched a renewed push to seize ground in the nearly three month-old offensive to capture the city, after progress stalled last month because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Iraqi forces would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said in a speech on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said the overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul had allowed troops to enter the Muthana district.

"We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

Story continues

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the new phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday. Iraqi army units were positioned for an advance on the area from the north, a Reuters correspondent at a military position near the front line said.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in the battle to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

"The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.

'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'

"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said. The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said. Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said. (Reporting by Saif Hameed, writing by John Davison; Editing by Catherine Evans)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Israel on Friday suspended about $6 million in funding to the United Nations to protest a Security Council resolution demanding an end to settlements in the Palestinian territories.

The council adopted the resolution last month after the United States refrained from using a veto to block the measure in a break from its usual practice of shielding its Middle East ally.

The cut to Israel's $40 million annual contribution to the United Nations represented the portion of the UN budget allocated to four committees on Palestinian issues, the Israeli mission said.

"It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us at the UN," Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement.

"We seek to stop the practice where the UN is used solely as a forum for unending attacks against Israel."

The announcement came a day after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in favor of a measure condemning the UN stance and chastising President Barack Obama's administration for abstaining in the Security Council vote.

The cut in funding is the first in a series of retaliatory measures that the Israeli mission said would be taken at the United Nations after the new US administration takes office.
ROME (AP)  Italy has expelled a Tunisian man accused of religious extremism and befriending a jailed would-be foreign fighter, the country's latest effort to crack down on the radicalization of young Muslims by getting rid of them.

The Interior Ministry said the 26-year old, identified by Italian newspapers as Marouan Mathlouthi, was sent back to Tunisia on Thursday. The ministry alleged he had befriended a fellow Tunisian who was arrested in 2015 on terrorism-related charges because of alleged plans to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria.

A ministry statement said Mathlouthi, who had lived in Italy since he was an infant and was married to an Italian, had jihadist propaganda on him and had written on his Facebook page, "I don't know if I should be good or stage a massacre, I have to think about it."

The expulsion, the second of the new year, brings to 134 the number of suspected extremists expelled by Italy since January 2015.

As Italy continues ousting individual extremists for reasons of state security, it also plans to overhaul its expulsion program for the thousands of migrants who simply fail to win asylum each year.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti has said he would ask Italy's Parliament to approve the creation of smaller, regional detention centers to hold migrants undergoing the bureaucratic process of being sent home.

Italy's existing holding centers are overcrowded and have been the subject of recent migrant protests over poor conditions and in a recent case, the death of a young woman awaiting medical care.

Italy has long complained that the European Union has failed to help enforce migrant expulsions, which must be worked out with countries of origin and require funding for plane tickets for both the people kicked out and their security escorts.
Jackie began years ago, but its late-2016 debut makes this the right film at the right time.

The Fox Searchlight release looks at Jacqueline Kennedy in the week after her husbands 1963 assassination. Its about a woman trying to hold herself, her family, and the nation together, while working to define her husbands legacy. Its basically an emotional journey but the film has an added poignancy now: During a national crisis, with the worlds spotlight on her, here was someone in D.C. who was classy, private, and exhibited model behavior. After the past year, this all seems like science fiction, but its an important reminder of the not too distant past.

The project started with Noah Oppenheim, and is the first script from this veteran newsman (who is senior VP of NBC News and runs the Today show).

Oppenheim says, I always look for a side to a story thats never been told. Theres no more familiar story, to Americans at least, than the Kennedy assassination. [Jackie] has been peripheral in most stories.

Darren Aronofsky got the script and talked with his Black Swan star Natalie Portman. When Aronofsky saw the 2015 The Club, he knew Pablo Larrain was the right director; the Chilean filmmaker agreed on condition that Portman starred.

Also on board was producer Juan de Dios Larrain, his brother; the two had collaborated on many other film projects, including the 2012 Oscar-nominated No and the December release Neruda. They create political films with a distinctive point of view. And they retain final cut of their projects.

Pablo Larrain told Variety, The Warren Report describes the assassination of President Kennedy very graphically, and then it ends with a sentence Jacqueline Kennedy, 34 years old, was sitting next to him. We took the same story but asked, What if he was sitting next to her? She was only 34 and alone, so what was all of that like? We of course had a lot of respect for Jackie, and we were fascinated by this woman who created such brightness in such dark circumstances.

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The director suggested a key addition to the script: Inclusion of the 1962 CBS special, A Tour of the White House With Mrs. John F. Kennedy. Television was still a newish medium, but she understood its power to reach people. So the filmmakers re-created moments of the tour, along with backstage footage, all of it intercut with actual scenes from the original show.

The production filmed for 10 days in D.C. Otherwise, Jackie was filmed in Paris, where a team of artisans re-created the Kennedy era, including cinematographer Stephane Fontaine (who also shot this years Captain Fantastic and Elle); costume designer Madeline Fontaine, production designer Jean Rambasse, and editor Sebastian Sepulveda.

Oppenheim says when he was researching the project, he came upon another example of Jacqueline Kennedys savvy: Connecting the JFK administration with Camelot.

JFK was in office less than three years, and his widow was determined his presidency wouldnt be forgotten. She reached out to a journalist, unnamed in the film, but in fact it was Theodore White of Life, to talk, a week after the presidents death.

Oppenheim says, She had the presence of mind to realize this was her last shot to determine how he would be remembered. She could have listed his policy accomplishments. She could have said, He saved the world from nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. Instead, she referenced a Broadway musical and an Arthurian legend, and thats what has stuck with the public for decades. She understood the power of this reference.

As the former first lady says in the film, Jack wasnt naive, but he had ideals. Ideals he could rally others to believe in.

To her, thats what made it Camelot. And thats why the message is a timely reminder in 2017.

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Oscar nominated for 2000s Vatel, starring Uma Thurman and Gerard Depardieu, French production designer Jean Rabasse was thrilled to be brought on board for Pablo Larrains Jackie, a shoot which allowed him to immerse himself in American history and lore, and to visit Washington D.C. for the first time.

Certainly, Jackie presented its share of challenges for Rabasse. With 10 weeks of prep and 27 shooting days in France, Rabasse was floored by Larrains efficiency on the day. I think Ive never seen somebody shooting as quickly, he shared. It was amazing, and everything was done in a very beautiful atmosphere. Below, Rabasse describes Larrains unique approach to recreating a dark moment in American history overseas, and what went into achieving the films elegant, colorful compositions.

How did you get involved with Jackie? And where did the process begin?

As you know, the film has been shot in Paris for production reasons. Also, because Pablo and Natalie Portman were living in Paris at that time. They created a French crewDOP, costume design, and myselfto work on it.

Of course, we were very happy, very surprised to be requested on such a beautiful project. At the same time, it was very frightening to have the responsibility to create that mythic and iconic period of American history.

What we started to do was research, maybe much more than usual, because I wanted to be sure that I could assume the responsibility of recreating that moment. At the same time, Pablo very quickly explained that he didnt want to make a biopic; he wanted to create something more universal. To be more linked to the universe, to the sensitivity of Jackie Kennedy. Just to be sure so that the message is the same about what she left, and the history of the American was still strong.

Ive seen the film for the first time three days ago and I was very happy to discoverI know the set is huge, and very detailed, and we see it very strongly, but at the same time, I didnt have the feeling the set and the aesthetic is above the character. I always had the feeling that we were there to support the actress and the character of Jackie Kennedy.

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How did you go about recreating these iconic American locationsthe interiors of the White House and Air Force One, for examplewhile shooting in Paris?

As you can see, it was difficult to get the furniture. Because we were in Paris, we very quickly understood it was not possible to rent every piece of furniture from Los Angeles or Washington, or from the antiques of New York. We did for some master pieces, but it was too expensive for transportation.

What we did was weve been through all of Europe, especially England, of course. Belgium, and also France. Because the interesting thing is that part of the style is coming from Paristhe style Empire that is present in the White House.

Finally, weve been abroad to get part of it. For the East Room and the dining room, the older master pieces, like the set on the table, the chandelier, the candelabra, it was absolutely impossible to find them. We had to rebuild the chandelier. As we had a very quick prep, we had ten weeks from the very beginning to the shooting day. We also asked a Chinese company to build some master pieces.

We had to request everywhere in the world to be able to create that White House. Very quickly, we had two main constraints from Pablo Larrain. The first one was, he really wanted to have the entire set available for shooting with no lights, no technical props, no tripod or whatever lights on the set. We had to deliver every room of the White House at the same time.

What we did with Stephane Fontaine, the DOP, is that we created a transparent ceiling to light through the pieces of fabric or removable pieces of setting. This was a very big constraint, but it was important to have this thing you are not in a set; youre in the White House, because you are walking with Jackie.

Even in the bathroom, what we did to be with her without any constraint for the camera is we did a very close replica of the bathroom of Jackie Kennedy. I discovered that it was too many mirrors in front, so it was impossible to find a place for the camera. Then we put the camera behind the mirror, with a transparent mirror, and it gives an intimacy. It was important for Pablo to be always framing Jackie, Natalie Portman, around one or two feet, with a wide angle [lens]. It gives the feeling youre not outside the White House, youre with her, and we follow her all the time.

The second thing is, as we had to make different furniture from different countries, we decided to change all the fabric of the furniture. Then, we were able to manage the color, to manage the texture of the fabric. For Pablo, we did a lot of tests with the camerathe White House has to be a very protective area for Jackie. The rest of the film, when youre outside, we had to make it fit with the archive footage, which is more contrast, more saturated color, very aggressive texture.

We did the same with the set. Everything outside is more saturated, contrast, the black aesthetic. Those two main options for the color create a certain atmosphere, and also as Stephane had to fit with the archive footage, we did a lot of tests with the film, and the camera. Do we want digital, do we want the film camera? Maybe we spent three weeks of tests just to be sure the way the pink of the dress will react, the way the yellow of some curtain will react. We were very accurate in those occasions.

We had a very nice contribution altogether with the DOP and the costume designer. Its funny, because after making some choices like that, we went very close to the photography of the White House we discovered in the JFK Library. We found beautiful pictures of the White House at that period. For me, it was a beautiful surprise to see the White House Library and JFK Library deliver every single detail of that moment. From that, we made the many small decisions that finally create a little bit of transposition of the reality.

It seems that theres a certain formalism to Larrains approach with this film, in terms of color and composition. Is that a term that you feel is reflective of your process?

At the beginning, Pablo was not there on the prep. He was finishing another film, but he gave us a very clear position about the film. He really wanted that everything comes from Jackies point of view. Even the details of the kids bedroom, every single detail of her bedroom, with the newspaper, even personal makeup. We went very far in the research to find what Jackie could have had in her bedroom. We found a lot of incredible pictures; even in Love Field, we had so many pictures from everyone, that we could have like an eerie effect, when you see all those pictures at the same time. Its strange.

At the same time, it was a lot of work to look at this research and to understand what it means, and to make some of those decisions. For example, in Love Field, I really wanted to recreate the scaffolding with the TV, with some trucks, fire trucks. I really wanted to go very far in rebuilding that airport. Of course, we had to create a simplification of it.

The fact that we had so much access to so many documents we even were able to find the master plan of the renovation of the White House in 52, so we had a lot of detail. For us, it was not frightening; it was just a tool. Pablo, I think he gave us some very specific direction that was very good for us.

We didnt want to make a period film. Of course, we have done it. I dont want to say its not a period film. But we never wanted that style of the set and the costume start to be in front of the character. Sometimes, Ive done some films where the set is a little bit too heavy for the film, and its difficult for the story to be light.

In that case, with Stephane and with Pablo, we were very aware of that problem. We really wanted that the color respect the atmosphere of the character, or the situation, and not go in front of it. For example, for Hyannis Port, we simplified a lot of the set. It was a location in Maryland, a beautiful house, and we repainted everything in white, just to simplify itjust to recreate the beautiful harmony of that kind of house.

How did you go about shooting the funeral march?

The thing is, as we knew we had a very short time shooting in Washington, we did a huge prep in 3D animatics. As with the research and the documentation, we knew a lot of detail of the funeralwe knew exactly at what time, and on what street. We knew a lot of detail, even for the Dallas assassination. We had the list of every single person in every car. For us, it was important, and we made a lot of 3D animaticsvery simple, but just to be sure on the day we were in Washington, it was easy and fast to produce it. When we did it, it was very simple for us to know what to do, where to go, with all the restrictions the Secret Service gave us to not go too far on Pennsylvania Avenue. But it was OK. It went very fast to do those shoots.

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As 2017 begins, so do festivities marking the 200th anniversary of the death of British author Jane Austen. Alongside events set to take place in Austen's birthplace of Hampshire, fans across the country (and beyond) will see the author featured on banknotes -- and a lucky few already have.

This year, the Bank of England is to release new 10-pound notes featuring a portrait of Austen, author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." Appearing as part of the banknote design will be the "Pride and Prejudice" quote "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"

An 1870 portrait of the author will be joined by an illustration of "Pride and Prejudice" protagonist Elizabeth Bennet as well as an image of the author's writing table and her brother's home at Godmersham Park, which inspired many of her novels.



A scavenger hunt of sorts, meanwhile, is under way to find a handful of 5-pound banknotes featuring minuscule portraits of the artist by micro-engraver Graham Short. Each of the four bills, which were put into circulation in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in December, features a 5mm portrait of Austen encircled by a quote, just to the right of Big Ben.



A first note was discovered in Wales in December, followed by a second in Scotland this week. Keep up with the whereabouts of notes three and four at www.grahamshortart.com/news.

As the year continues, the bicentenary will be celebrated with exhibitions, talks, walks, writing competitions and performances in Hampshire, Austen's birthplace and whose people, landscape and society inspired her work.



Among the highlights, "The Mysterious Miss Austen," an exhibition exploring the author's work and featuring five portraits gathered together for the first time, will run May 13 - July 24 in Winchester Discovery Centre; it will then travel to Gosport Discovery Centre and Basingstoke's Willis Museum.



Find out more about the Hampshire centenary events at janeausten200.co.uk.
TOKYO (AP)  Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea in response to the placing of a comfort-woman statue in front of its consulate in the Korean city of Busan.

Both Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan will be temporarily recalled, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said after a Cabinet meeting Friday.

"Comfort women" was the euphemism for women in Asia forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers at front-line brothels during World War II.

Suga called the placing of the statue "extremely regrettable," since Japan and South Korea had reached what was supposed to be a final agreement to resolve their differences over the issue in late 2015.

Activists in South Korea oppose the agreement. A comfort-woman statue put up front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011 remains in place, and activists installed a similar statue by the same sculptor in Busan late last month.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry called Japan's decision to recall its ambassador "very regrettable," adding that both countries should work toward advancing bilateral relations based on trust "even when there are difficult problems."
Tokyo (AFP) - Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea on Friday to protest the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate in the city of Busan last month.

In a move likely to reignite a feud over the so-called "comfort women", Japan's chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga also announced that Japan is ordering home its consul-general in Busan and suspending discussions over a Japan-South Korea currency swap.

"Japan and South Korea are neighbours," Suga said. "It's a very important country. It's extremely regrettable we had to take this action."

"The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned to quickly remove the statue of the girl," he added.

Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The plight of the women is a hugely emotional issue that has marred relations between the two Asian neighbours for decades and which, for many South Koreans, symbolises the abuses of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

The statue is a copy of one that sits across the road from the Japanese embassy in Seoul and that for more than five years has been a rallying point for supporters of the few surviving South Korean former sex slaves.

The statue in Busan was initially removed by local authorities after South Korean activists placed it in front of the Japanese consulate in the southern port city last week.

But they did not stop it being put back after Japan's hawkish defence minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo the next day.

Suga, however, made no mention of Inada's visit to the shrine, which honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead -- but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes. Her visit drew harsh criticism in South Korea as well as China.

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-- 'Very regrettable' --

South Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-Hyuck lamented Japan's actions as "very regrettable", but struck a conciliatory note.

"Even if there exist difficult issues, the government emphasises again that it will continue developing South Korea-Japan relations based on trust between the two governments," he said.

However, later in the day South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se summoned the Japanese ambassador.

Jiji Press said they spoke for about an hour and that Yun expressed "regret" over Japan's actions.

Activists had first placed the new statue outside the consulate to mark their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the "comfort women" issue.

Under that accord, which both countries described as "final and irreversible," Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women.

But critics said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for wartime abuses.

The statue in Seoul -- a bronze of a young woman seated with a small bird on her shoulder -- has proved a popular symbol.

Japan says it should have been removed after the comfort-women accord was signed, but Seoul argued it had only agreed to look into the possibility of moving it.
By Kaori Kaneko and Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday it was temporarily recalling its ambassador to South Korea over a statue commemorating Korean women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War Two which it said violated an agreement to resolve the issue. The two nations agreed in 2015 that the issue of "comfort women", which has long plagued ties between the two Asian neighbors, would be "finally and irreversibly resolved" if all conditions of the accord - which included a Japanese apology and a fund to help the victims - were met. The statue, which depicts a young, barefoot woman sitting in a chair, was erected near the Japanese consulate in the southern South Korean city of Busan at the end of last year. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said the statue was "extremely regrettable" and that Japan was temporarily recalling its ambassador. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden touched on the issue in a phone conversation on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said. The United States, keen for improved ties between its two major Asian allies in the face of an assertive China and unpredictable North Korea, had welcomed the 2015 agreement. Biden told Abe that Washington strongly expected the two nations to carry out the agreement, which it supports, a ministry statement said. Abe agreed and said doing anything against the agreement was "not a constructive move", the statement added. Suga said Japan would postpone bilateral "high-level" economic dialogue and that it was suspending talks on a new currency swap arrangement with South Korea. "Without building relations of trust, it won't stabilize," Finance Minister Taro Aso reporters, referring to the currency swap arrangement. The term "comfort women" is a euphemism for girls and women, from South Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere, forced to work in Japanese military brothels. South Korean activists estimate that there may have been as many as 200,000 Korean victims. South Korea's Finance Ministry on Friday expressed regret that talks on the currency swap agreement had been suspended due to political reasons. (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko and Tetsushi Kajimoto, writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Jenna Jameson attends Perez Hiltons 10th anniversary party at Hollywood Athletic Club. (Photo: Michael Zorn/FilmMagic)

Oh what a difference a decade (or so) makes. Ex-porn star Jenna Jameson is pregnant with her third child and embracing her ample weight gain. On Thursday, the 42-year-old took to Instagram to share a recent shot showcasing her curvy physique. 27 weeks pregnant and feeling amazing. Just finished my glucose test and now Im in the home stretch! I cant wait to meet this little one, my little star! she gushed in a caption for the pic of herself sitting bare-bellied and cross-legged.

27 weeks pregnant and feeling amazing. Just finished my glucose test and now I'm in the home stretch! I can't wait to meet this little one, my little star!  A photo posted by Jenna Jameson (@jennacantlose) on Jan 4, 2017 at 11:40am PST

This upbeat message comes the day after a controversial tweet storm and just about one week after a less joyful post. Beside a picture of herself clad in skintight workout gear that revealed just how much thicker she was these days, she wrote, I just want to address the stories circulating on all the blogs this week. Yes, Ive gained a substantial amount of weight with this baby, and Im sure a lot of women can relate. But Ive been getting a lot of terrible hate for it, and its really saddening me. She continued, This baby means So much to me and Lior and we fought so hard to have it. It IS an ivf baby, and my body reacted very strangely to the meds (lots of water retention and weight gain) and to be honest it doesnt bother me at all, as long as baby is healthy. It really is disheartening to see people shame me while Im pregnant this is part of the reason I hid from the world when I was pregnant with my twins I gained over 120 lbs. (ICYMI, Jameson has 7-year-old twin boys named Jesse Jameson and Journey Jette with her ex, Tito Ortiz.)



I quickly lost it, but I knew I would be judged and made fun of, she lamented. Anyway, I hope everyone finds it in their hearts to be kind and empathetic this holiday season you never know badly your words can hurt. But I do realize no one is perfect just try! I love all of you! Merry Christmas and happy Hannukah !

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One week before that, she shared a more demure shot of herself seated at a table, midmeal. (For the record, she was eating a salad.) This picture sums up my life right now totally content yet hungry daydreaming of this perfect little baby god gave me! @liorbitt Id usually be mad you snuck this pic, but its fairly decent, she wrote in the caption. Love you babe!

This picture sums up my life right now totally content yet hungry daydreaming of this perfect little baby god gave me! @liorbitt I'd usually be mad you snuck this pic, but it's fairly decent ???? love you babe! A photo posted by Jenna Jameson (@jennacantlose) on Dec 21, 2016 at 2:47pm PST

Jameson announced she was expecting via Twitter in August.

She followed up her first post with a more revealing shot that highlighted her growing baby bump.

The difference in her figure from August to December was significant, but it certainly seems the soon-to-be-mama-of-three is keeping her spirits up despite the criticism shes received. After her third child arrives, she and her fiance, jeweler Lior Bitton, plan relocate the family to Israel. Specifically, they are looking at Bittons hometown of Herzliya, which is a coastal city about 10 miles from Tel Aviv. Jameson was born Catholic but revealed she was converting to Judaism back in October 2015. There was also talk about a reality show chronicling her journey to the altar in Israel, but so far, no formal air date has been announced.

While she clearly states that her figure is not her priority, for what its worth, if she was able to lose 120 pounds last time without anyone even noticing, she can probably do it again.




A 49-year-old Florida woman, convicted in May of the 1991 murder of her 5-year-old son, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison in New Jersey, PEOPLE confirms.

Investigators had long suspected Michelle Lodzinski was responsible for her son Timmy Wiltseys homicide, but for years, they lacked the evidence to file formal charges against her.

That all changed in 2014, after detectives were able to establish a link between Lodzinski and a childs blanket, which was found not far from Timmys remains in 1992.

Initially, Lodzinski told police she did not recognize the blanket. But several relatives later confirmed having seen the blanket in her home while they babysat Timmy.

Lodzinski herself reported Timmy missing on May 25, 1991. She told police he vanished as the two attended a carnival in Sayreville, New Jersey. Lodzinski first told authorities he disappeared when she went to get a soda, and had long denied she was involved in his death.

In subsequent interviews with law enforcement officials, Lodzinski, then a 23-year-old single mom, gave police several conflicting stories about his disappearance, raising detectives suspicions. Hundreds of volunteers spent days searching for the child.

 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.

Eleven months after he disappeared, Timmys remains were found in a swampy creek in Edison, New Jersey, near the fulfillment center where Lodzinski once worked.

Lodzinski eventually moved to Minnesota and then to Florida, settling in Port St. Lucie in 2003 and working as a paralegal for a law firm.

A statement from Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey expressed disappointment in the sentence.

Despite her efforts to conceal one of the most notorious crimes in the history of Middlesex County by killing her son, dumping his remains in a swamp, falsely claiming he was abducted by strangers, and spearheading a desperate search for a child she knew was already dead, Michelle Lodzinski was sentenced to the minimum sentence permitted under the law, the statement read.

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 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.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence, according to Careys statement.

Carey notes in his statement that Lodzinski, who had pleaded not guilty, showed no remorse for the death of her child and declined to address the court before the sentence was imposed.

Judge Nieves reduced Lodzinskis term by 884 days  time shes already spent in custody  making her parole-eligible after serving 27 years and five months behind bars.

Jurors convicted Lodzinski after four hours of deliberations, capping an eight-week trial.

Lodzinskis attorney could not be reached for comment.




Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he is working to convince President-elect Donald Trumps administration to prioritize the issue of sexual assault on campus.

Im no longer going to be Vice President, but Im going to be associated with several major universities and have a significant staff, Biden said, hinting at his post-White House plans. Im going to be setting up a foundation that is going to devote the rest of my life to dealing with violence against women.

Biden made the remarks at the White Houses Its On Us Summit, an event aimed at preventing sexual assault on college campuses.

On January 21, were going to start or were going to continue, and Im working very hard with this incoming administration to convince them that this is, in a sense, the civil rights issue of our time. Its the human rights issue of our time, he said.

Biden made fighting sexual assault one of the key issues of his vice presidency, speaking out for victims and calling on universities to be more responsive. Its not yet clear how Trumps administration will approach the issue, but the president-elects comments about groping women and the accusations against him of sexual assault have caused concern among advocates for victims.

Ive never felt this momentum before, Biden said Thursday. I hope and prayand Im making no judgment, I mean this sincerely, Im not sure what the next administration will doI pray they will continue to make it a priority, as Barack and I have. But whether they do or not, we can do so much of this as private citizens.
Tennessee musician Julien Baker has joined Matador Records and released a new single, "Funeral Pyre," from tender guitar album "Sprained Ankle."

Both "Funeral Pyre" and a reissue of 2015 album "Sprained Ankle," which did not contain the single upon initial distribution, are set for a March 17 physical release, with digital editions available now.

Matador is or at one point has been the home of artists like "Cat Power," "Liz Phair," "Pavement" and "Savages," as NPR notes, with Baker telling the station that the ethereal song was about "figuring out how you should act in your level of responsibility for your own health and to others."

"Funeral Pyre" is available immediately through the a number of services, including Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify, as indicated by smarturl.it/Funeral_Pyre. "Sprained Ankle" is available to stream and purchase through smarturl.it/SprainedAnkle.

Three US dates supporting Ben Gibbard follow on January 18-20, with three more appearances in the US before six gigs in Germany, two in the UK, one in Portugal and one in the Netherlands over the course of May and early June.
Katie Holmes looks unbelievably happy in this makeup-free selfie, her confidence is catching

There is no better way to spend the New Year than by being happy with yourself. And Katie Holmes proved that with a makeup-free selfie on Instagram. She wished her followers a Happy January as she looked sun-soaked and gorgeous. Ideally, this is how we would all feel in the New Year and every day in the bleak winter month of January.

The actress had been out and about in December promoting her new film All We Had, which Holmes stars in and also directed. But in her latest Instagram photo, she looks like work is far from her mind as she appears utterly at peace.

Happy January A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Jan 4, 2017 at 10:51pm PST

According to Us Weekly, Holmes spent New Years Eve in Miami, Florida, with her not-so-secret boyfriend Jamie Foxx , so that might explain the sunny background thats in her photo.

As for her makeup-less look, Holmes is no stranger to sharing her bare face on social media.

She posted the most adorable I woke up like this selfie in August.

I woke up like this #beyonce #bowie A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Aug 6, 2016 at 3:19pm PDT

Then in September, she was rocking the sunny look like she did for the New Year.

Happy Tuesday! #sunshine #dream #gratitude #alterna A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Sep 27, 2016 at 2:38pm PDT

And she was barefaced again in October! She legit averages a makeup-free selfie a month.

A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Oct 9, 2016 at 2:34pm PDT

We cant deny that Holmes has an absurd level of natural beauty, but what we love about these photos is that her carefree, confident style is inspiring. Sure, we might not all look like Holmes, but we can all feel this good in our own skin.

#Friday #Chloe #ruffles #embraceyourfemininity #embraceyourpower #bestrong  @chloe A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Nov 11, 2016 at 9:30am PST

So embrace your femininity and power like Holmes suggests in the above post from November. Perhaps youll even have as blissful of a year as Holmes appears to be having in 2017 if you do so. And in the meantime, all hail Holmes, the makeup-free selfie queen!
Kendall Jenner is pretty (and skinny) in pink. (Photo: Getty Images)

Three weeks ago, Kendall Jenner posted a photo to her Instagram of her Christmas tree  but what many of her fans noticed more was the backdrop: a peaceful pink wall. In the latest post in her app, Jenner addressed her paint-color choice. Its a shade called Baker-Miller Pink, which she claims chills her out and keeps her from overeating.

I decided to paint [the wall] pink because while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the room, I went to dinner with friends and they had just gone to the Human Condition exhibition at a former hospital in LA, she wrote. They were telling me theres a pink room at the exhibit that had an explanation of the color choice: Baker-Miller Pink is the only color scientifically proven to calm you AND suppress your appetite. I was like, I NEED this color in my house! I then found someone to paint the room and now Im loving it!

kenny's pink xmas A photo posted by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on Dec 9, 2016 at 8:35am PST

It turns out Baker-Miller Pink is indeed a color phenomenon. The hue is also referred to as Drunk Tank Pink, as its been used in jail cells to calm violent prisoners, according to Color Matters. And Hillsborough Regional Juvenile Detention Center West in Tampa even employed the color in a room used to simmer down aggressive minors, says Apartment Therapy.

Alexander Schauss, PhD, director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Wash., studied the effects of the color pink on human behavior, and published his findings in a paper published in 1979. In it, he writes, After experimenting with hundreds of shades of pink, I finally identified a shade of pink  that seemingly had a maximal effect on reducing hyperexcitability. This color would later be called Baker-Miller Pink.'

So Schauss suggested experimenting with the color by using it in a seclusion room at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, where he was teaching a course. Instead, the entire interior of one admissions cell at the Center was painted in the hue. After 156 consecutive days of monitoring, staff at the facility reported that since the color had been present in the cell, there have been no incidents of erratic or hostile behavior during the initial phase of confinement.

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In addition, Schauss reported that a maximum of 15 minutes of exposure to the color was all it took for the behavioral effects to become obvious, and that those effects lasted about 30 minutes after the inmate was removed from the cell. He said the color, described as kind of like Pepto-Bismol, only deeper, was more effective in a smaller space.

According to Apartment Therapy, whats happening physiologically is that Baker-Miller Pink lowers heart rate, pulse, and respiration. That may or may not be related to the appetite-reduction component, which Schauss confirmed. In his paper, he said that further research was conducted by the Health, Weight, and Stress Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, and that their research over four years on nearly 1,700 subjects revealed a peculiar appetite suppression effect by Baker-Miller Pink, during their studies of its stress-suppressing effect. This effect, of suppressing the desire for food, was confirmed in more than one-third of subjects seeking methods for weight control at the Hospitals Clinic.

A team at Johns Hopkins studied the colors calming effects as well, and observed that appetite reduction was a peculiar side effect, according to Cabinet magazine.

Sound too good to be true? It might be. Color Matters says, Theres no proof that the [calming] reactions lasted longer than 15-30 minutes. The site adds, Once the body returns to a state of equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state. And Cabinet reports that officials at the county jail in Santa Clara, Calif., painted a holding cell with Baker-Miller Pink and placed inmates in the room. This resulted in the prisoners scratching the paint off the walls with their fingernails, the site says.

That said, no one seems to have debunked the appetite-suppression claim for Baker-Miller Pink, so it seems to actually be true. Want to have your local home-improvement store mix up a gallon of the color? Just tell them to formulate it by combining R:255, G:145, and B:175.

And if youre wondering how Baker-Miller Pink got its moniker, well, according to Therapy Color, Schauss was so appreciative of the two prison directors, warden Gene Baker and commander Miller, who graciously agreed to carry out his experiment that he named the color after them.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


When Kayla Gaytan finished five months of chemotherapy in May 2016, her doctor told her she would likely never be able to conceive.

The next month, she received the good news that her Hodgkins Lymphoma  a cancer of the lymphatic system was in remission. And what followed was more good news: she was pregnant with quadruplets.

I called my husband to tell him and he couldnt believe it, Gaytan, 29, tells PEOPLE. He thought he had misheard me.

The Fort Campbell, Kentucky, mom of two and her husband, Sgt. Charles Gaytan, were preparing to welcome the quads to their family when the unthinkable happened.

In December, Gaytan received the devastating news that her cancer had returned.

With four babies on the way, I just couldnt wrap my head around how it could come back, she says. I thought I had beat it the first time.

The quadruplets were delivered via C-section at 30 weeks on Dec. 30 so that Gaytan could begin the treatments doctors hope will save her life.

They say I have a 50 percent chance of being here within the next five years, she says. But I dont have a choice but to fight. I have an amazing husband and family that need me.

Because they were delivered early, the quadruplets will remain in the hospital for the next month. Gaytan will start chemotherapy again in two weeks, and then undergo a full stem cell transplant.

Now its resistant to most chemotherapies because it came back so quickly, she says. But all we can do is hope that theres a higher power with a different plan for us.

Gaytan says the quadruplets, whom she visits at the hospital daily, and her two older children, Ethan, 11, and Harper, 2, are giving her the strength to carry on.

If I didnt have them I dont know if I could be as strong as I am right now, she says.

Shes sharing her story in the hopes that she can share this strength with others.

You really never know what tomorrows going to bring, she says. You can have four blessings come into the world and then get devastating news.

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But you just have to deal with it and stay positive and not give up, she continues. Because once you give up its going to be harder to fight in the long run.

A GoFundMe page has been established to help with the familys medical expenses.




Nairobi (AFP) - Kenyan doctors on Friday rejected the government's offer of a 40 percent pay rise in the latest bid to end a month-long strike that has crippled public hospitals across the country.

Thousands of doctors in the country downed tools on December 5 to demand a 300 percent pay rise that they say was agreed in a 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), and several rounds of negotiations have failed as the medics dig their heels in.

Nurses are also striking, although some returned to work in mid-December after reaching a separate deal with authorities.

Union officials on Wednesday met with President Uhuru Kenyatta who offered to raise minimum salaries from 140,244 shillings (1270 euros, $1350) a month to 196,989 shillings.

"The union officials today presented that offer to the doctors for deliberations and they humbly rejected it," the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) wrote on its Twitter account.

The union said the offer failed to take into account other agreements mentioned in the CBA, from the need to better equip hospitals to funding research and addressing the security of doctors at work.

"The issue of discussion is not increase in salaries or allowances for that matter, it is implementation of the CBA," said cardiologist and union member Elijah Ogolla.

KMPDU secretary general Ouma Oluga said that while the strike was still on, doctors were open to further negotiations.

Another meeting between the government and the union officials was due to take place later Friday.

The strike has been devastating for sick Kenyans whose only other option is private healthcare, which is out of reach for most.

Poor salaries and working conditions have led to an exodus of Kenyan doctors to other African countries and abroad, that prompted the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) to warn of "catastrophe" in the health sector in 2014.

The strike has received wide support from the media and citizens on social networks.

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Editorials have called for government to pay doctors a decent wage and end the damaging strike, while Kenyans on Twitter point to endless corruption scandals while the doctors struggle for wage increases.

The latest move to outrage the union was a decision by lawmakers just before Christmas to award themselves each 10 million shillings as an exit package ahead of 2017 elections.

"When the government loots it has no limits but when doctors ask for fair pay the president says he has limits," the union tweeted earlier this week alongside an image of the newspaper headline announcing the bonus.
Key and Peele have been away from Comedy Central for more than a year, save for a few appearances on The Daily Show here and there. But with the exit of President Obama from The White House and a new year full of uncertainty, the duo is back on the network to give Obama a proper send off. Their delivery choice is the return of Luther, the presidents anger translator, and Jordan Peeles Obama impression in one last address.

This sketch likely reached its peak when Luther shared a stage with the real President Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2015, but a final hurrah isnt exactly something to be ignored.

The sketch hits all the right marks, especially for those fearing the worst about the country over the next four years. Theres plenty shade being thrown at Donald Trump and his transition, with Luther providing the aggressive-aggressive act that weve come to expect. It also doesnt shy away from hinting that the president might scorch the Earth on his way out the door  though the first family will still be living in DC, so not too much.

If anything, its nice to see the duo back on the network and back doing sketches. Their work since the end of the show has been great, but they really did leave the show on a high note that allows it to still feel fresh like this.

(Via The Daily Show)
Ill be honest: I really needed this. And, I suspect, so did a lot of you, especially after President Obamas in real life final press conference a couple of weeks ago. Keegan-Michael Key appeared tonight on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah and gave fans something theyve been tweeting about for the better part of two months: Luther, Obamas anger translator.

Luther was of course one of the most popular characters from their Comedy Central series Key & Peele. And since Trumps Electoral College victory making him President despite a historic popular vote loss, fans of the late lamented show have been begging for the duo to bring the character out of retirement. So it is that Key unveiled the video above at the end of his The Daily Show chat.

Unsurprisingly, its hilarious, appropriately angry, and essentially calls it like it is. Jordan Peele delivers his per-usual spot-on Obama impression, pledging a smooth transition and other cooperative gestures, while Luther straight up deals out the bad news  pretty much everything Obama accomplished is going to be gutted  and some rather pointed words for both Trump, and for the electorate that helped him become President. My favorite? After Peeles Obama says that if Trump succeeds, we all succeed, Luther added the truther: Unless he succeeds with all the sh*t he promised to succeed with  in that case, were fed!

Good times, good times. Well, except for reality of course. What do you think? Fitting end to one of recent comedys most beloved characters? Cathartic? Or are you a Trump supporter and have some unkind words for it? Sound off in comments.

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President Barack Obama is set to give his farewell address on Jan. 10, but first, Obamas Anger Translator has a few things to say.

On Thursday, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele brought back the popular sketch from their Comedy Central series Key & Peele during an appearance on The Daily Show.

Luthers farewell address began with Peeles Obama warning Keys Luther to keep things under control. At first, when Obama talked about the election, Luther only offered a guttural howl: Trump!

But he quickly abandoned that control and unleashed his full fury. How did this happen, man? Luther explained as he kicked a Trump pinata. Yall voted for the dude whos going to make America hate again! Dont you understand this is how the Hunger Games starts?

Peeles Obama, like the real-life version, pledged his support to help with Trumps transition, declaring, If he succeeds, we all succeed.

Luther had a slightly different take: Unless he succeeds with all the s he promised to succeed with, in which case were fed.

Then the duo gave their final statements. Farewell, America, Peeles Obama said. Its been real, and its been good. But it aint been real good.

Apparently, orange is the new black! Luther said. Good luck with the health care, aholes. Im out.

Watch the video below.

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The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
Photo: Getty Images

This week, Kim Kardashian finally made her grand return to social media posting a string of pictures and home videos of her family to Instagram and Snapchat after three long months of radio silence following her robbery in Paris.

That means the reality star has also made a comeback on Twitter, mostly just re-sharing the same personal photographs and thanking fans who are sending her well wishes and are overjoyed to have her back.

But amidst those warm wishes, Kim also surreptitiously shared her first personal detail since her return to the platform, tweeting about how her psoriasis has moved to her face.

On Twitter on Thursday night, the Selfish author wrote, Wait why am I now getting psoriasis on my face



. As many fans pointed out in her mentions, surely the trauma of the attack combined with the general anxiety that inevitably accompanies being one of the most famous women in the world has done nothing to lower her stress levels, and thus has only enflamed her psoriasis even further.

Wait why am I now getting psoriasis on my face  Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) January 6, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

RELATED PHOTOS: Kanye West: Inside His Christmas Celebrations with Kim and Her Family

This is hardly the first time the reality star has been vocal about her autoimmune disorder.

In a post on her app in August, Kim explained, I got it for the first time at the DASH store opening in New York. I wore this all-sequin dress and I started getting really itchy; I thought it was just a rash caused by the fabric, but then the rash was COVERING my legs and my mom was like, I think you have psoriasis!!! She has it too, and its hereditary, so she spotted the symptoms immediately After this many years, Ive really learned to live with it.

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She also tweeted in September about trying out various new creams, promising fans that when she finds one that works she would share the goods.

Lets hope she finds something that works for her soon so that we wont have to wait yet another three months until she makes her much anticipated red carpet debut.

Whats your worst skincare problem? How do you handle it? Sound off below!
Donald Trump

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.

It's a simple enough concept. A financial adviser should be legally required to put their clients' best interests ahead of their own. But it's actually not the law.

The Department of Labor  which concerns itself with such matters because of its oversight of workers' welfare and retirement  has decided to change that. Now, people are worried that president-elect Donald Trump will roll back the rule.

US wages in December rose at the fastest pace since mid-2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment report released Friday. Here are the headlines:

In other news, Canada's jobs report crushed expectations.

In markets news, a Citigroup debt strategist created a scary-looking clock, and it looks like time is running out. Wall Street's least bullish strategist says to buy 'CRAP' in 2017. And we talked to a $11.4 billion fund manager about Trump, Russia, and China.

There has also been a good bit of deal news over the past 24 hours. Here are the headlines:

In auto news, Mercedes-Benz just dethroned BMW as the king of luxury cars in America. And someone needs to explain to Trump how Toyota actually makes money, according to Matt DeBord.

Story continues

Lastly, here are 16 stunning photos that will make you want to travel to Canada.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines from the past 24 hours

A day-and-a-half in the life of a top Wall Street tech analyst - Mark Mahaney is one of the top tech research analysts on Wall Street.

A 29-year-old hedge fund manager reveals why he loves hiring liberal arts majors - Most people will tell you that you need to major in accounting, economics, or finance to land a job on Wall Street.

Bentley just unleashed the fastest and most powerful car it's ever built - In the world of super GT cars, the Bentley Continental is the elder statesman. It may be hard to believe, but the Bentley Continental has been around for nearly 15 years.

Volkswagen could pay over $3 billion to the government to resolve its emissions cheating scandal - Volkswagen and the US Justice Department are nearing an agreement to resolve the government's civil and criminal investigations that would require the German automaker to pay more than $3 billion.

JPMorgan's complete guide to everything happening in the markets - 2017 promises to be an exciting year for markets, with Donald Trump set to move into the White House in a couple of weeks.

We bought and sold bitcoin  here's how it works - A year and a half ago, the idea of buying the virtual currency bitcoin was laughable. After a rapid rise in value in 2013, the cryptocurrency's value more than halved by mid-2015.





More From Business Insider


Croatian teenager Ana Konjuh outlasted Julia Goerges in a two-hour battle Friday to set up a final against diminutive American Lauren Davis in the WTA Auckland Classic.

Konjuh, 19, a former Australian and US Open junior champion, surprised herself with the way she rallied to beat 28-year-old Goerges, last year's runner-up, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

"When I came here I wasn't playing that well, and my serve wasn't that good tonight," Konjuh said, after downing Goerges despite serving eight double faults and having only a 49 percent first-serve success rate.

In the other semi-final, the 1.57 metre (5ft 2in) Davis was leading Jelena Ostapenko 4-6, 6-4, 4-1 when the Latvian, who was suffering from a viral illness, pulled out.

The seventh seed had started strongly, breaking Davis twice to go 5-1 up before taking the set 6-4.

But as she began to wilt she dropped the second set 4-6 and looked drained as play progressed in the third.

"She was playing good, but I had good chances in the second set to win the match, but then I didn't and unfortunately I couldn't finish the tournament," Ostapenko said.

"During the match my throat was very painful. My concentration wasn't good. I wanted to play, but just couldn't, because I'm sick."

Davis has advanced a step further than her previous best in Auckland, when she lost to fellow American Venus Williams in the 2015 semi-finals.

For Konjuh it is only the second time she has made a WTA final after winning in Nottingham last year as an 18-year-old.

Despite an erratic serve, the tenacious Konjuh had too much variation in her ground strokes for Goerges who was unable to repeat the consistency with her serve and forehand which she showed when beating Caroline Wozniacki in the quarter-finals.

Konjuh and Davis have met once before, in Auckland in 2014, with Davis prevailing in three sets.
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP)  Kosovo prosecutors have accused a Serb citizen of war crimes during the 1998-99 war.

A statement on Friday identifies the defendant as B.S. He was extradited from Bosnia Herzegovina a month ago, and is accused of war crimes committed in March 1999 against civilians in Fushe Kosove, close to the capital, Pristina.

If convicted the defendant may be sentenced from five years to life imprisonment.

Some 10,000 people died and 1,700 remain missing from the war as Kosovo fought to break away from Serbia.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Serbia has not recognized.
In the spring of 1978, we had meetings with Kate Jackson [to play Joanna Kramer]. She was terrific, but the network began throwing up obstacles because of their scheduling for Charlie's Angels. We said, "Sooner or later, they are going to make it impossible." We looked at other people, and some were wonderful and some were adequate. Then Sam Cohn, my agent, said, "Would you do me a favor and see Meryl Streep?" I said, "I saw her [onstage] in The Cherry Orchard and she was wonderful, but we need somebody who has an enormous presence and skill." He said, "Just meet her." So I talked to Dustin [Hoffman] and Stanley [Jaffe, the producer], and as a courtesy we met with Meryl in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel [in New York].

Now she tells a different story: She says she gave us a lecture, that this was an anti-feminist work. But I don't remember that. I remember that it was the least [successful audition]. She only said six words. It was the worst interview I have ever had with an actor in my entire life, bar none! I don't mean she was rude, but you're used to meeting with people and they want the role. They try to impress you. It was like she didn't want to be there. But there was some quality in her. Whatever it was, it was exactly right. Dustin turned to me, and I turned to Dustin, and we said, "That's Joanna Kramer." Where our conviction came from, I don't know, but it was mutual.

Read more: Hugh Grant on Working With Meryl Streep in 'Florence Foster Jenkins': It Was "Terrifying" (Q&A)

On the first day of shooting, she was magnificent. I thought, "OK. Let's see what happens next." She held her own the whole time and had the rest of us chasing after her. She's the most disciplined actor I've ever seen. From day one, I loved her. She doesn't make a show out of everything, and she does her job. She's courteous, she's kind, she's smart, she's witty. She's immensely charming.

Toward the end of Kramer, in the courtroom scenes, we were all exhausted. We started with Meryl on the stand. I said, "Meryl, listen, we're covering this in a wide shot, a medium shot and then a close-up and other points of view, so you're going to be shooting for a long time. Please save [the emotion] for the close-up because that's where most of the scene is going to play." She said, "Fine." Then in the wide shot, she did [all the emotion] and in every take. She finished the fifth [take], and there was a beat of silence. I've never had that in my life, where an actor just stopped everybody. I went to her and said, "Meryl, that was wonderful, but please remember what I said." Then we did it in the medium shot, and it was the same thing. We did it in the close-up; she did not vary. And when we turned around and shot other people's points of view of her, she did the same performance.

When we finished that day of shooting, I was afraid of her. I really was afraid of her. I had never met anyone like that in my entire life. I thought I'd been invaded by an alien. She was that brilliant.

This story first appeared in the Jan. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
EXCLUSIVE: Kristine Froseth has joined the cast of Black Label Medias modern Cyrano de Bergerac take Sierra Burgess Is A Loser, co-starring as a Beverly Hills high school queen of mean opposite Stranger Things Shannon Purser, who was set in her role yesterday.

Purser plays Sierra, who is smart, intelligent, witty and creative but not exactly beautiful according to Beverly Hills high school standards. When she starts texting a cute guy who has no idea that shes on the other end, Sierra realizes shell need the help of the beautiful and popular cheerleader Veronica (Froseth) if she wants any chance of keeping his interest. The two form an unlikely friendship, though lies can only last so long. RJ Cyler is also in the cast.

Lindsey Beer (Barbie, The Kingkiller Chronicle) wrote the screenplay and Ian Samuels is directing. Black Label Medias Molly Smith, Rachel Smith, Trent Luckinbull and Thad Luckinbill are producing.

Froseth, who plays the female lead in TNTs vampire drama pilot Let the Right One In, is up next in Danny Strongs Rebel In The Rye, which premieres this month at Sundance. She also stars opposite Logan Miller in Blumhouses Prey.

She is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.

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donald trump american flag

Paul Krugman is at a loss about the future of the Trump presidency, but he's not hopeful.

The Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist is concerned about possible connections between the president-elect and Russia.

"We are, I'd argue, in much deeper and more treacherous waters than even the pessimists are saying," Krugman tweeted Friday.

The election of Trump is tainted, Krugman said, because of the FBI's announcement weeks before Election Day regarding its reopened investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server, and because of the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

"A clever, self-controlled Trump would be careful now to preserve appearances and wait for revenge; but instead he's confirming his status as Putin's poodle/stooge with every tweet," Krugman tweeted. "Pretty soon everyone will think of him as a Manchurian candidate, even those pretending not to."

In Krugman's assessment, once the idea takes hold that Trump's election was tainted, there are few options for how it could play out in a positive way.

From Krugman:

"Yet there is no normal political mechanism to deal with this reality. So what happens? The GOP decides to impeach to install Pence? Mass people-power demonstrations? He orders the military to do something illegal and we have disobedience by the national security state? Or, alternatively, overt intimidation of critics by Trump gangs? Don't call this silly  tell me how this ends."

Top intelligence officials have said that Russian government officials were behind the hacks, even as Trump has cast doubt on the legitimacy of those conclusions. Trump received a briefing on Friday from intelligence agencies regarding the Russian hacks.

Krugman has repeatedly tweeted concerns since the election about issues such as the Russian influence on the US election, Trump's conflicts of interest with his businesses, and the effect of a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Story continues

Here are Krugman's tweets:

Some musings on the next few years: We are, I'd argue, in much deeper and more treacherous waters than even the pessimists are saying 1/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

It would be one thing if voters had freely chosen a corrupt authoritarian; then we'd be following a terrible but familiar path 2/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

But as it is we had a deeply tainted election, and everyone knows it; in truth the FBI was the biggest villain, but Russian involvement 3/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

is just so startling, and so contrary to the usual GOP flag-waving, that 2001-type whitewashing of illegitimacy isn't taking hold 4/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

A clever, self-controlled Trump would be careful now to preserve appearances and wait for revenge; but instead he's confirming his status 5/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

as Putin's poodle/stooge with every tweet. Pretty soon everyone will think of him as a Manchurian candidate, even those pretending not to 6/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

Yet there is no normal political mechanism to deal with this reality. So what happens? The GOP decides to impeach to install Pence? 7/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

Mass people-power demonstrations? He orders the military to do something illegal and we have disobedience by the national security state? 8/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

Or, alternatively, overt intimidation of critics by Trump gangs? Don't call this silly -- tell me how this ends. 9/  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2017

NOW WATCH: Here's how much the presidency ages you





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Beirut (AFP) - A US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance seized Friday an ancient fortress overlooking the Islamic State group's biggest prison near the jihadists' Raqa bastion in northern Syria, a monitor and a commander said.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by American special forces and international coalition aircraft... took control of the ancient Qalaat Jaabar fortress," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

It said the Islamic-era fortress was captured after fierce fighting with the jihadists.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said control of the fortress gave the SDF a "line of fire on the biggest IS prison" in Syria.

A Kurdish field commander confirmed that SDF forces had seized Qalaat Jaabar, where the jihadist group "was stationed and was using to launch attacks on surrounding villages".

The Kurdish-led SDF has been battling since November 5 to oust the jihadists from their self-declared Syria capital of Raqa, 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of the citadel.

Qalaat Jaabar sits on the shores of Lake Assad, which was formed by the country's largest dam at Tabqa on the Euphrates River.

The Observatory said IS had moved dozens of prisoners to Raqa city and other parts of the province.

The fortress was "one of the most important historic Islamic castles in Syria", dating to the Seljuk and Mamluk periods, said Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of Syria's antiquities department.

It has 35 bridges, a mosque and used to have a museum with dozens of artefacts.

The Euphrates dam sits 500 metres (yards) from the town of Tabqa, a key IS stronghold where many of its most senior commanders are based.

The next target will be "to seize the city of Tabqa", the SDF commander said.

The SDF and IS also fought pitched battles Friday in Al-Suwaidiya village, near Tabqa, the last IS holdout before the dam, said Kurdish authorities and the Observatory.

It also reported that coalition aircraft carried out air strikes on targets in the village that killed at least eight people, including women and children.

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Control of Al-Suwaidiya would allow SDF forces to advance directly on the dam, said Abdel Rahman.

In a two-month offensive, the SDF has taken large areas of northern Raqa province.

On December 10 it announced the second phase of the operation to oust the jihadists from their Syrian stronghold.
Lamar Odom walked out of rehab Thursday and TMZs cameras (of course) were there to capture the moment. He checked himself in last month just days after his divorce from Khloe Kardashian was finalized. Odom has been battling substance abuse for a long time and was comatose after an overdose in 2015.

He walked out of the San Diego facility and said the experience was awesome and life-changing. He also said hed like to start a reality television show and he plans to speak with his ex-wife. The reason Odom went to rehab in the first place was because of his stint on the reality show The Doctors.

Odom was encouraged to get help because of the show and will probably detail his rehab experience there. An interview will air January 17, which is probably why he didnt say too much about the rehab experience with the TMZ cameras around.

Hopefully better times are ahead for Odom.

(TMZ, The Doctors)
THR: A lot of people may have heard of Art of Elysium through coverage of your star-studded fundraising "Heaven" galas held over Golden Globes weekend. But tell me about the organization you founded 20 years ago. What's in the name and what was the goal?

Jennifer Howell: The Art of Elysium literally translates into the art of heaven. Elysium comes from Greek mythology and is the blessed abode in the afterlife. A friend of mine had gone on a business trip to Boston and came back with a pack of matches from a restaurant that she went to, called Elysium. She said that she had no idea why she felt compelled to bring them to me but she did. It had the definition of Elysium on it and when it came time to come up with a name for the organization, I felt that nothing described what we were doing better than The Art of Elysium.

The beginning was inspired by my dear friend Stephen Lane Hatten who had a long battle with leukemia. The charity was created to honor him and it continues to do so in every workshop that we do. We started our community service with children's hospitals and medical facilities because Stephen had been diagnosed in high school and we wanted to bring joy to patients like he encountered during his treatment. We have since expanded our community service programs to include children's hospitals & medical facilities, special needs schools, hospice care facilities, elder care facilities and homeless shelters. We did our first workshop at Children's Hospital Los Angeles in August of 1997 and seeing the musicians bring their music and share with these amazing children just seemed divine in an inexplicable way. My deepest hope and prayer is that Stephen is looking down and proud of the legacy he created.

What are some of your proudest achievements over the years?

We began in 1997 with 33 volunteers and this very last year, we had 1624 volunteer artists participating in programs and donating 89,257 hours. In 2014, one of our highlights was producing a prom for a senior in High School that would not be able to attend his own. In 2015, we partnered with SAG-AFTRA in the White House's A Call to Arts initiative to mentor the next generation of storytellers.

Story continues

At the very first Heaven, Stephen's parents came out for the evening. I asked everyone who had ever volunteered to stand up in the room and they got to stand on stage and see what their son's life inspired. Having them there and witnessing the legacy Stephen created was one of the greatest moments in my entire life.

The 20th anniversary is a big milestone. What more would you like to do?

We are currently expanding into prisons and veteran hospitals and ultimately would like to build a community of artists and an endowment that would allow us to expand our programs across the nation and take artists and the arts back into public schools.

You recently launched a philanthropic video streaming platform, and at this year's gala you will show show 10 videos featuring John Legend, Zoe Saldana and others to celebrate. What was the genesis of that?

We announced Elysium Bandini Studios last year at Vivienne Westwood's Heaven gala and in many ways have been working on it for the past 20 years. We have done gallery exhibits, art salon dinners, fashion shows, concerts and films with the proceeds coming back in to run our community programs since 1997. While that has been my personal journey, James Franco and Vince Jolivette have been paving the way for EBS in their own way.

James and Vince met in acting class and went on to build Rabbit Bandini Productions. Kirsten Dunst introduced me to James over a decade ago and he brought Vince into my life. We have all been close friends ever since. I always kept up with what they were doing creatively and they continued to be involved with the charity.

The thing I always found so interesting about what they were doing with Rabbit Bandini is how they were supporting emerging directors, writers, and actors to create projects. They have fostered and started so many people's careers that it is baffling. Then they expanded into the academic arena and started teaching film students how to truly collaborate.

About 4 years ago, we were all in Cannes for the film festival and I told them about the first feature film we did, Forever, and how all of the profits from the films were going to come back into our community service programs. That is where the conversation began. We then did an Indiegogo campaign and funded three more films with the same idea that the profits would come back in to run our programs. The conversation continued to grow and before you know it we had about 24 projects between Elysium and Bandini that could be distributed with the profits coming back into the program. We started going through the traditional distribution channels and were discouraged by a lot of people not understanding what we were trying to do and the model we were trying to create.

We met with Vimeo and VHX about what it would take to back end our own streaming platform - a platform where we can feature the work of emerging artists, fashion designers, filmmakers and musicians and people can donate to support both emerging artists and giving art to communities of need. That was when we made our decision to pull our collective efforts together and merge to become Elysium Bandini Studios.

The other piece that has made the streaming platform a reality is Amanda and Shepard Fairey. Amanda, Shepard and Studio Number One are the creative directors for Elysium Bandini Studios and they have created something so special.

Courtesy of Travis Beck

Will it be an ongoing project throughout the year and is there a physical studio space that's being used?

It will be ongoing and we really see this as a truly philanthropic studio model where we foster and support emerging talent while giving them the opportunity to volunteer in the community and give back through their art. We are currently all operating out of one office in Koreatown but have it in the roll out plan to start a capital campaign for a building that will house all 4 artistic disciplines under the same roof.

The presidential election seems to have galvanized a lot of people, particularly in Hollywood. Do you think we're poised to see a flourishing of philanthropy and activism in the coming months?

I believe that this year is the year to pull together. I was extremely disheartened last year but on January 1st, I woke up and said that there is not time to sit around and complain about what is going on but time for everyone to come together in love, unity, creativity and faith to build this world and community into what we want it to be. I don't think that there has ever been a better time than now to launch Elysium Bandini Studios.

Now, let's talk Heaven. Why did you name the gala Heaven 10 years ago?

We created Heaven to give a Visionary the creative freedom to create a one-night art installation the way that they envision Heaven to be. The evening literally showcases art, fashion, film and music under the direction of the Visionary. People still refer to it as an event or a fundraiser and, while it does serve as our largest annual fundraiser, the true reason for creating Heaven is to show people our mission in action.

Courtesy of Travis Beck

Any favorite memories from the cocktail hour, the podium or the dance floor?

I am flipping through so many memories in my mind right now.. Jim Sheridan having Talib Kweli rap with the LA Opera, sound check with Billy Idol and orchestra for Shepard Fairey's Heaven, Cameron Silver's vintage couture fashion show, Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler's post-apocalyptic world and then walking into a world where nature has won. They have all been so unique and different and speak directly to why we select the Visionaries.

What's on tap for this year's event and why honor Stevie Wonder?

I am not sure how much Stevie wants me to disclose about his Heaven before we open the doors but it is beyond every expectation that I ever had. Why Stevie Wonder? I don't think I could answer that with a million words. He is Stevie Wonder and has inspired all of us and has transcended through music. I cannot imagine anyone else envisioning heaven on our 20th anniversary.

How can people learn more and get involved with Art of Elysium?

Please go to www.theartofelysium.org and volunteer. The other way that you can help is by going to www.ebstudios.org and donate to our streaming platform and share with your network and help us build a community.
MIAMI (AP)  The Latest on Haiti-Ex-Rebel Leader (all times local):

2:40 p.m.

A former Haitian coup leader who was recently elected to the Haitian Senate has been ordered jailed without bail on U.S. drug charges.

A Miami federal judge said at 48-year-old Guy Philippe's initial court appearance Friday that the issue of bail could be revisited later. Another hearing was set next week to ensure Philippe has an attorney to represent him.

Philippe was flown to the U.S. following his arrest Thursday in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince while he appeared on a live radio show.

Philippe faces several drug trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. He has long maintained his innocence and blamed the accusations on political enemies.

Philippe was recently elected to the Haitian Senate. A former police chief, Philippe was a key part of a 2004 uprising that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

_____

10:20 a.m.

A former Haitian coup leader who was recently elected senator in Haiti has been brought to the U.S. to face longstanding federal drug trafficking charges.

Court records show that Guy Philippe is to make his initial appearance Friday afternoon in Miami federal court. Philippe was flown to the U.S. following his arrest Thursday in the Haitian capital while he appeared on a live radio show.

Philippe faces several drug trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. He has long maintained his innocence and blamed the accusations on political enemies.

Philippe was recently elected to the Haitian Senate. A former police chief, Philippe was a key part of a 2004 uprising that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

It wasn't immediately clear if Philippe is represented by a U.S. lawyer.
Oscar nominee Laura Dern, last competing for her role as Reese Witherspoons mother in Jean-Marc Vallees Wild, had a productive and politically charged 2016, finding roles in Kelly Reichardts Certain Women and John Lee Hancocks Ray Kroc biopic, The Founder. In Reichardts film, Dern portrays a beat down, small town lawyer confronting masculine insanity, arrogance and neglect; in Hancocks, she faces off against Michael Keatons Kroc, one of the most famous and successful narcissists in modern American history, in whom the actress finds parallels to a certain other contemporary American figure. Below, Dern discusses Reichardts process, the small town American portrait, and the resonance of her 2016 releases in the current American political and social climate.

What led you to get involved with Certain Women?

First of all, just being an enormous fan of Kelly Reichardt, and Im very close with Todd Haynes, who has collaborated with, and then was the very closest of friends with Kelly for a long time. Todd and I have worked together, so Todd was the first person who brought it to my attention, and was going to be a producer on it, and asked if I would be involved, which was amazing because I have so much respect for him and so much respect for her. Phil Morrison, another filmmaker who Ive worked with and love, also is a collaborator with them. Any time that tribe invites you to a party, you want to be at that party.

That already began the conversation, and then [Maile] Meloys stories themselves, which are beautifully and so thoughtfully written, but this idea that Kelly had of telling these three different stories, without a manipulated intent to connect them, I thought was really brave and inventive and interesting, because it seems that how they connect really unfolded, for Kelly, in the editing room. And then for us, it was once we saw the film and did press togethermyself, Kristen [Stewart] and Michelle [Williams]that we started having a conversation of how we thought the themes resonated, and how we connected. It was fun to be part of a film that told its story even through press recently.

Story continues

Through filming what feels like a vignette with this character, or a short story, what did you discover?

I think for me as an actor, the greatest opportunity, and therefore challenge, was how quiet this persons struggle is, and in a way, how quiet her shame is about who she hasnt been. Heres a woman who hasnt been considered in her life in the way she deserves, hasnt been listened to in her life the way she deserves, and thats spoken to really beautifully. But at the same time, when given this position of authority, she isnt considering the pain of the client. She becomes fatigued by him and his issues, his pain, all of it. She tries to make it go away, basically.

Thats just a really interesting thing to consider, for those who have been victimized and put upon. We forget everything we fought for just because we think maybe, You know what, Im just going to hope this person is going to make all my problems go away. I know they dont represent anything I believe in And weve seen a lot of that from the disenfranchised. I think that character speaks a lot to that.

As an actor, we can have an instinct to want to show it, and I feel really lucky to be growing up, as a person, while Im growing up as an actor. Literally having started as an 11-year-old, as Im figuring out how to be a grown-up, Im learning how to trust the character more and trust the director more in showing less. That was a great challenge and opportunity for me.

It seems that theres something inherently American about this kind of small town portrait.

I think so. I think were all trying to understand small-town America, and I think we must. I feel like, as artists, its an exciting time for you to write about it, for me to act, for all of us to consider, what does it feel like to have a life that looks like this?

With all due respect to our feeling that we have a pulse on whats happening in the country in LA and New York, we dont. We have our own pulse on whats happening for us, but its just very different. I think its an exciting time for Kelly and filmmakers like her to be considering that reality of these women.

One of the most striking aspects of your scenes in the film, in relation to their quietness, is the extraordinary calm with which Laura confronts extreme and unsettling situations.

Yeah. I have to say, too, I find her hilarious, in such a different way, the whole scene and the way she directed it. Its so matter-of-fact, and the fact that these men are going, Yeah, put it on. You should be fine. Just go in there. If we dont hear from you, well know something happened. Shes like this lone figure, half asleep, half in pajamas, and this bulletproof vest, being sent into abject devastation with a loaded gun.

Kelly and I were laughing a lot when we shot that because it just seemed so perfectly absurd, and the more she directed it to be so understated and so like no one is commenting on it, it reminded me a lot of how were led, as Americans. Its like, Oh, no, no, no. This is going to be fine. I know that this seems like an emergency, but theres no emergency. Were all like, Oh, okay. Point us in the right direction. Whyd this happen?

Though the film is quite grounded, it does have its comedic moments. Were the comedic aspects of the film entirely premeditated?

Certainly in my story it was, just because we found the humor in it together, and [Kelly] is very funny, but in a very wry and subversive way, as a filmmaker and a person, which I love, and love to try to somehow bring that into the performance. That was great fun, and even the lover, even the brokenness of that, having to infer an entire relationship in a few moments is a really fun challenge. Theres humor in all of it. Bringing him this milkshake and these fries and his irreverence in that scene, I find a lot of humor in it. And his meltdown in the car

There are far more extreme takes, and she definitely chose the subtlest take of her listening, but you can sort of see my character going, Oh, fk, what am I going to do now? I dont want to be stuck with this guy, instead of, Oh, this is so heartbreaking. How can I help? I think shes very funny about selfishness, and with Michelles character, too, you see that.

Michelle Williams - Certain Women.jpeg

Certain Women is a film about women, made by women. What do you think it says, in its ideas about gender?

I feel thrilled and privileged that I have the line in the film that I think resonates so deeply through all the stories, which is the line about, If I were a man  If I were a man, and basically, they listened to me, it would be something. And then she says, It would be so restful. Thats interesting languageits not an archly feminist statement, but its the ultimate [statement] about gender inequality, because as a woman, youre exhausted of fighting for respect.

Thats the piece that I think the film holdsthat you see Kristen Stewart just exhausted, driving hours for the one job she could find in the area, and maybe ten guys have that same job right in town. And Michelle is deemed, I think, with judgment because shes a bargainer, or shes trying to get what she wants, where shes tough on her husband. Hes cheating. Men get what they want all the time, and theyre doing it around her. Its interesting. I think that character is sort of asking for what she wants, and you can come across as like, Oh, shes bitchy.

It would be nothing with a male character, so Jared Harriss part is interesting. Heres a man that we empathize with because hes had it hard, and the system broke him, but I told him 30 times. I sat with him and walked through the law, told him how he can do it and what he can do, and he still doesnt [listen]. The minute the man gives this to him, he stands there and goes, Okay. The man told me, so it must be true. Her job, her life, is exhausting. Again, that resonates that it would be so restful. Peace for women.

Ive been learning a little bit about Bonos new foundation, which I found really beautiful, called Poverty is Sexist, and when you look at the statisticsbeyond the gender pay gap, just at the base level of gender equalitythe statistics of women are five times more likely to be starving and hungry in the world than men. When you look at who is hungry, who is poor, who doesnt get health care

I love telling stories. I dont need to tell womens stories, but for women in the stories to be reflected in their struggle, whatever that is, that really interests me, especially right now.

Your other 2016 release, The Founder, also has a strong political resonance. What stood out most about working on that production?

Michael [Keaton] is extraordinary. Hes truly one of the most fearless actors alive and makes the choice that is truest for him and the character. Hes not looking for empathy, sympathy, connection. Hes behaving in the reality of the character, and hes made such incredibly brave, and funny, and mean, and wonderful choices, at moments with me. For a smaller role in the scheme of thingsbecause it is quite an ensemble, and each of us has our section in the history of Ray Krocit was amazing to get to work with him. John is just so amazing and kind and wonderful to work with, on top of being great at what he does.

We are, in fact, telling the story of a severe narcissist, who doesnt care about other people or the outcome of his need. In his life, hes had a chip on his shoulder, so hes going to do whatever it takes and, frankly, throw over whomever necessary to rise to the top of the highest title he can get in America. With that, the rest is history.

It is reminiscent of other characters in American history. Its an interesting time to draw parallels about what happens when youre not considering the country youre building an empire in.

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Boa Vista (Brazil) (AFP) - Brazil was hit Friday by its second grisly prison massacre in a week, as inmates beheaded and mutilated fellow prisoners at a northern jail, leaving 31 dead.

Pictures taken by a police officer at the scene showed bloodied, mangled bodies piled in a concrete hallway at the Monte Cristo Farm Penitentiary (PAMC) in Roraima state.

Many of the victims were beheaded, disemboweled or dismembered, officials said.

The state government said the situation was now "under control."

They lowered an earlier death toll of 33 to 31 late Friday.

"No shots were fired. The victims were killed with sharp objects and home-made weapons," said state justice secretary Uziel Castro.

- Gang infighting? -

The latest unrest came days after jailed gang members killed 56 rivals in a 17-hour bloodbath Sunday and Monday at a prison in Manaus, the capital of the neighboring state of Amazonas.

Unlike that incident, Friday's violence did not appear to be an all-out riot but rather a rapid, early morning attack by one group of inmates against another, lasting less than an hour, a local government spokeswoman told AFP.

Most of the killings were carried out with knives, she said.

Deadly prison riots have intensified in Brazil since a truce broke down in July between the country's two largest drug gangs, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command (CV).

PAMC, the largest prison in the state, was also hit by deadly violence in October, when fighting between rival gangs killed 10 inmates.

At the time, the prison held 1,400 inmates -- double its capacity.

- 'Dreadful conditions' -

Authorities said the Manaus riot was caused by a local ally of the Rio de Janeiro-based CV massacring rivals from the Sao Paulo-based PCC.

They said however that Friday's killings appeared not to have been retaliatory, said Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

"It is apparently not a revenge attack by the PCC" for Monday's massacre, after which members of rivals gangs were moved to separate blocks.

Story continues

Speaking in Brasilia before traveling to the scene, he said PCC members were thought to have attacked prisoners who were not members of any gang.

Castro said it was thought to be "an atrocity committed against regular prisoners."

"The dreadful conditions in the prison are no secret to anyone," he added.

- No quick fix -

The states of northern Brazil, which border top cocaine producers Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, are battle zones in the drug trade.

Prisons there -- and throughout Brazil -- are often under the de facto control of drug gangs, whose turf wars on the outside are also fought out among inmates.

Overcrowding exacerbates the problem, activists say.

Brazil's inmate population has been swollen by efforts to crack down on a violent and lucrative drug trade.

The country's jails hold 622,000 inmates, mostly young black men, according to a 2014 justice ministry report, which found that 50 percent more capacity was needed.

- President criticized -

After facing criticism for his slow reaction to the Manaus riot, President Michel Temer released a statement Friday saying he "deplores" the latest killings.

On Thursday, he announced the federal government would spend $250 million to build at least one new prison in each of Brazil's 26 states.

But that fails to address the root problem, said sociologist Camila Nunes of the Federal University of ABC in Sao Paulo.

Brazil needs "medium- and long-term policies to reduce the vulnerability of certain social groups, to prioritize prevention rather than repression," she told AFP.

"Supposedly instant solutions like the one that was announced... will not solve the problem. They will just placate public opinion until there's another tragedy."
By Pedro Fonseca and Brad Brooks RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Jailed members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang killed 31 inmates at a penitentiary on Friday, decapitating and cutting out the hearts of most of them, in revenge for a separate prison massacre that left 56 dead this week. The bloodletting in the Monte Cristo prison in the Amazonian state of Roraima, carried out by members of the First Capital Command (PCC) gang, sparked fears that months of violence between criminal groups controlling Brazil's prisons had spiraled out of control. The PCC itself was targeted on Sunday in neighboring Amazonas state in Brazil's worst prison slaughter in more than two decades. In a cellphone video that circulated widely on social media, self-described PCC members are seen hacking away at bodies littering an outdoor patio inside the prison. "You killed our brothers, didn't you? Look here, look what is going to happen you! This is revenge for what you did to our brothers," a PCC member is heard saying on the video as dozens of bodies lie in thick pools of blood. One victim, bare-chested and wearing sky-blue surfer shorts, began to move on the ground. The inmate taking the video calls out to fellow gang members "We've got a live one!" before another gang member rushes over and cuts off the victim's head with a white-handled barbecue knife. State officials said the riot in Roraima's largest prison was brought under control by elite police forces. Earlier, authorities put the death toll at 33 but by Friday evening lowered that figure to 31 dead. Violence between rival drug gangs at the same jail had already led to 10 deaths in October. Roraima's top security official Uziel de Castro blamed Friday's violence at the state-run prison on the PCC. He later added that it was believed most of the inmates killed Friday were not members of the group responsible for this week's attack on the PCC in Amazonas and indeed had no gang affiliations. Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes insisted that the government had control over Brazil's prison system - the fourth largest in world and home to more than 620,000 inmates. Security experts had predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled penitentiaries in the wake of Monday's massacre. "It's getting really ugly. This situation is clearly snowballing and there is nothing the government can do to stop the violence in the short term," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Sao Paulo. "We are paying the price for 50 years of total neglect of the penitentiary system." UNEASY ALLIANCE In Monday's uprising, PCC members were attacked by the North Family drug faction, which controls the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas, according to officials. North Family is believed to dominate cocaine traffic in Amazonas from Colombia and Peru, according to authorities. The group is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after PCC. For more than two decades, PCC and Red Command maintained an uneasy alliance, ensuring that a steady flow of drugs and guns flowed across Brazil's long jungle border. But about six months ago PCC and Red Command split, as PCC moved to take control of lucrative drug routes across the border with Paraguay and become Brazil's dominant gang. Experts say PCC also has been moving to infiltrate areas in Red Command's home base of Rio de Janeiro, further stoking a turf war that threatens to spill onto the streets of Brazil's biggest cities. Since the split, Red Command has allied itself with smaller regional gangs to confront PCC, primarily in the north and northeast of Brazil, where prison violence boiled over this week. Alcadipani, the public security expert, said Brazil's penitentiary system has been "self-regulated" by the gangs and that mass killings were rare until recent months because of a truce between the country's biggest criminal factions. "But we see that as soon as we have a gang war, these killings are inevitably going to happen because the state has no control over the prisons," said Alcadipani. (Reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Brad Brooks and Alexandre Caverni in Sao Paulo, and Alonso Soto in Brasilia; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown)
Lily Collins channels her inner Audrey Hepburn at a Golden Globes pre-party and were in awe

Talk about a blast from the past. Actress Lily Collins channels her inner Audrey Hepburn at a Golden Globes pre-party and shes flawless.

When it comes to fashion, Collins always looks like she just stepped off a runway and Thursday night was no exception. When the 27-year-old actress arrived at W Magazine Celebrates the Best Performances event in Los Angeles it was like looking at an old Hollywood starlet. Well, it was like looking at the My Fair Lady actress to be exact.

Collins wore a gorgeous striped sheer gown that screams retro glam. The sleek silhouette of the shimmer blue-silver gown paired with her beehive do and sassy makeup is SO Hepburn.

Breakfast at Tiffanys anyone?

Were in love with Collins look especially since it has a very Hepburn vibe to it.

Her hair for starters is a dead ringer for this iconic look, plus her dress is very high fashion and chic, just like the Hollywood icon always wore.

While Collins hairstyle is very vintage, her cat-eye makeup takes it from classic Hepburn to mod Twiggy in a flash, which is ah-mazing.

PS: Her dress has a multi-color shine to it when you see it from different angles which is spectacular and a perfect fit for any award show bash.

The Rules Dont Apply actress enjoyed her time in Los Angeles ahead of the Golden Globes with fellow actors, Cara Santana and Jesse Metcalfe.

Even though we like the other two stars looks, Collins just dazzles in her old Hollywood glam homage.

Seriously, whats not to love about her look? Its mod, chic and totally sexy!

Audrey Hepburn would definitely approve, dont you think?
Autreville (France) (AFP) - All over France this month millions of children will excitedly bite into a flaky pastry cake hoping to come upon a tiny toy or trinket.

Even in these play-safe times, when you might think parents would be reluctant to expose their child to a choking risk, the post-Christmas Twelfth Night tradition of sharing a "Galette des Rois" (Pancake of the Kings) shows no signs of flagging.

More than 30 million cakes will be devoured in France in January, and millions more in neighbouring Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg, usually washed down with a bottle of fizzy cider.

Whoever comes upon the "feve" -- a token or figurine hidden in the frangipane filling -- is proclaimed the king or queen of the feast, and crowned with a cardboard diadem that comes with each cake.

The lucky monarch is supposed to be blessed with good luck for the New Year, but a recent survey found most French people cheat to make sure a child gets the honour.

"Feve" (pronounced "fev") literally means a dried bean which was historically baked into the cake.

But by the late 19th-century the beans were replaced by porcelain figurines, some of which have become highly collectable.

To the horror of purists, more and more plastic charms are being used for the celebration, which traditionally marked the Christian feast of the Epiphany on January 6, when the three Magi were supposed to have visited the Christ child.

But in a small village in the Vosges region of Lorraine in eastern France two middle-aged sisters are doggedly holding out against the tsunami of plastic knick-knacks.

Christel and Muriel Nex are among the very last to make the "feves" by hand.

- Tiny treasures -

The pair turn out between 40,000 and 50,000 charms a year between them, with Christel telling AFP that "no two are ever exactly the same".

"We don't have any machines, and we want to keep up the quality, so we can't increase our production any more than that," the 51-year-old added.

Story continues

Each clay "feve" takes several days to make from the moulding and sculpting to the painting and final firing.

In the past these tiny treasures were often passed down through families to be baked into the cake each year.

These days, however, the galettes are rarely homemade.

The sisters took over from their parents in 2005 supplying bakeries across the country with a range of traditional and child-orientated figurines, many carrying company logos.

They range from little animals to the baby Jesus and a Kama Sutra collection for the more daring.

With collectors always on the lookout for rareties, they introduce new designs every year.

- Twelfth Night traditions -

The custom of hiding trinkets or coins in Twelfth Night cakes is not confined to France.

Similar traditions exist across Europe from the ringed Spanish "roscon de reyes", to the Portuguese "bolo rei" and the Provencal "gateau des Rois" eaten in the South of France.

These brioche-style cakes decorated with dried fruit were clearly the inspiration for the "king cakes" of the American Deep South and the Latin American "rosca de reyes".

Historian Nadine Cretin believes the practice dates back to the Roman mid-winter Saturnalian feasts when a "king was elected by the throwing of dice to preside over domestic banquets".

Parallel customs exist across Eastern Europe and the Balkans with the Greeks ushering in the New Year with the "vassilopita" (or king pie) which often contained a gold sovereign.

However, the tradition can leave a bitter taste in the mouth in Spain, where the feast of the three kings is still bigger than Christmas.

If you are unlucky enough to get the "feve" there you are supposed to pay for the cake, while the king or queen is the person who finds the accompanying trinket.

In Ireland the Epiphany was known as "Women's Christmas" and is remembered more for its gastronomic horrors rather its treats, with men left at home to cook while women went to the pub.
(Reuters) - Dejan Lovren has forged a formidable partnership with Joel Matip and the Liverpool defender believes the secret behind their success is they both speak German. Despite suggestions that Liverpool's defence could undermine their Premier League challenge, Croatian Lovren and Cameroonian Matip have formed a strong on-field bond for the Merseyside club. "In situations where you need to speak quickly we will use German. I might shout to tell him that somebody is coming behind to close him down," Lovren told British media. Lovren spent seven years in Germany as a child while Matip, who has missed the last five games through injury, was born and brought up in the country. "It seems to work, especially when we are up for corners and I can communicate with him about where to go. If it's in German, the opponents can't understand what we are saying," Lovren said. "We've definitely developed a nice relationship. I'm really enjoying playing with him. "He's a cool guy, really calm and we already know each other much better and how we both like to play. Hopefully that will continue for a couple of years." Liverpool are second in the league, five points behind Chelsea after 20 games. They host fourth tier side Plymouth Argyle in the fourth round of the FA Cup on Sunday. (Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)
Police were surprised to hear reports of a baby camel running loose in the Athens, Georgia area, but as police are trained to respond to any situation, they went to investigate. Turns out, it wasnt a camel at all,

Our deputies are not trained in South American camelid identification, but they quickly determined that the animal in question was actually a llama, Chief Deputy Lee Weems posted on the Oconee County Georgia Sheriffs Office Facebook page.

While a runaway llama sounds like a childrens book, the animal in question led the Athens, Georgia-area police on a real chase. The escapee was eventually corralled thanks to fine police work involving a bag of carrots, several llama experts, and one llama whisperer, but not DMX.

The police were able to return the llama to its owners, but the reasons for its romp are still under investigation. We do not know at this time whether it just wanted to go for a stroll or if it was concerned about the weather forecast this weekend and was attempting to buy bread and milk, Weems noted in his Facebook post. I asked, but it refused to answer questions. Perhaps this is because I dont speak Spanish nor any of the native Peruvian languages.

[H/T CBS News]
President-elect Donald Trump rang in the new year with a Twitter shout-out to his many enemies  and now on Friday hes seemingly come face to face with one of the big ones: Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.

Carter once infamously called Trump a short-fingered vulgarian in a 1988 article in Spy magazine, an insult that apparently still haunts Trump to this day.

In November 2015, Carter revealed that, for the last 25 years, Trump had been sending him pictures of his hands to prove his fingers are properly proportioned. In an editor letter titled Steel Traps and Short Fingers, Carter claimed that the most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination.

Like the other packages, Carter wrote, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: See, not so short! 

Carter, who admitted he still finds Trumps digits abnormally stubby, says he promptly returned the image back with a message that stated just that: Actually, quite short.

Trump fired back on Twitter after the article was published, writing: Rumor has it that the grubby head of failing @VanityFairMagazine, Sloppy Graydon Carter, is going to be fired or replaced very soon?

More recently, Trump took aim at Carter and Vanity Fair last month after the magazine published a scathing review of his Trump Grill restaurant in Trump Tower.

Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Now, just a few short weeks later, Trump was spotted entering Conde Nast headquarters Friday morning, where he was due to meet with Carter, Vogue editor artistic director for Conde Nast Anna Wintour and other top editors and executives.

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Carter told Politico on Thursday afternoon that he had volunteered to sit out the 10 a.m. meeting.

It wouldnt be my first choice to spend a Friday morning in a group like that, Carter said. I try to be a decent host. I went to Anna Wintour and I said, Listen, I dont want to make him feel uncomfortable. 

But Carter said Wintour wanted him there. Its unclear at this time whether Carter actually attended the meeting.

RELATED VIDEO: Watch: Natasha Stoynoff Breaks Silence, Accuses Donald Trump of Sexual Assault

Carter told Politico that the last time he and Trump spoke in person was years ago at a surf-and-turf dinner at Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where Carter said he and his wife shared a table with Donald and Melania Trump, Regis and Joy Philbin, and author James Patterson and his wife, Sue.

Carter said he and Trump were on fine terms then, despite their longstanding feud. Of course, that was before Vanity Fairs brutal restaurant review put their beef back on the menu.

According to Politico, Conde Nast had offered off-the-record meetings with their top editors to both Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 race. Clinton took that meeting  as well as some fashion advice from Wintour  while Trump did not. Until now.

Anna Wintour came to my office at Trump Tower to ask me to meet with the editors of Conde Nast & Steven Newhouse, a friend. Will go this AM.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The president-elect has long skewered the press and has repeatedly accused mainstream media of conspiring against him and his presidential campaign.

Carter told Politico ahead of Friday mornings meeting, I dont know what there is to learn from this. Obviously theres a novelty aspect to the whole thing. I dont think hes gonna say anything new here that he hasnt said before. If I was advising him, Id say to ignore me completely.




One of Frances rare movies examining homegrown populism and the countrys own brand of far-right politics in a non-comical way, Lucas Belvauxs This is Our Land has managed to rock the boat even before its theatrical release next month.

The movie, which portrays a charismatic 30-something single mother (Emilie Dequenne) who gets hired by the far-right party to become its representative in an underprivileged town in Northern France, has sparked uproar within the real-life National Front party.

Marine Le Pen, the party president who is also a leading contender in the French presidential election, and her right-hand man, Florian Philippot, contend that This is Our Land caricatures them and was financed by the Socialist party to damage the image of the National Front before the election in May. The National Fronts attorney went as far as to accuse the films producers of being disciples of Goebbels, the infamous propaganda minister for the Nazis.

That accusation brought a sharp rebuke from Belvaux. Thats the way the National Front party operates: Any dissident voice has to be discredited, he told Variety.

The surprising bit is not the reaction in France but the flurry of international headlines the controversy has triggered  not just in Europe but also in Brazil and Malaysia, among other countries.

In this post-Brexit and post-Trump election era, the trailer itself resonated strongly because everywhere in the world today there is some kind of populist party creeping up or already in place, Belvaux said. The film portrays how the ideology spread by the National Front party in Northern France emphasizes social issues and targets the unemployed and the underprivileged. People who are afraid of losing their jobs are an obvious target, he said.

David Frankel, who produced the film at Synecdoche, said that the film has the merit of showing the state of France today.

Its not Eyes Wide Shut but eyes wide open. We show the world we live in. In that sense the film is similar to Do the Right Thing, whose message was Be aware its going to explode,' added Frankel, whose credits include Claude Lanzmanns The Last of the Unjust.

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A crucial element of the film is the empathy that Belvaux employed to depict the films protagonist and even her lover (Guillaume Gouix), a former neo-Nazi, as well as the towns illustrious doctor (Andre Dussolier), who recruits her for the party.

Nowhere in the film do I judge the characters on either side. I rather give an objective perspective on what the far-right party in France is about, Belvaux insisted.

Although the far-right has become the third if not the second most powerful party in France, depicting it in mainstream culture remains somewhat of a taboo. Most directors shy away from turning the spotlight on the National Front because they either dont feel qualified to do so or they fear some kind of backlash.

For so many years, the National Front has vilified intellectuals and film folks in violent ways to discredit them in the public eye. Weve been nicknamed the gauche caviar [the caviar-left wing] as if we were a bunch of hypocritical elitists who knew nothing about hardship, Belvaux said. In reality, thats totally wrong. I know about hardship like many people who work in this industry do. Were not the elite, and I do feel completely qualified to make a film about this party.

What certainly displeased far-right figures is the way in which the movie shows how the party attempts to re-brand itself to widen its appeal. It becomes the Patriotic Bloc, which is officially a milder, socially engaged, nationalistic rather than xenophobic party. But while the rhetoric is more subtle, the film contends that the ideology remains unchanged.

Populism is all about marketing, said Belvaux.

The movies plot and characters are inspired by a wide range of material, from Paul Moreiras documentary Danse avec le FN [National Front] to the neo-Nazi collective Maison Flamande to personal testimonies that Belvaux collected along the way.

Even though the movie deals with a touchy subject, it was easily financed, said Belvaux. Pre-bought by French public broadcaster France 3 and pay-TV channel Canal Plus, the film was produced by Synecdoche and co-produced as well as repped in international markets by Paris-based company Le Pacte.

The movie has already sparked interest from foreign buyers, said Camille Neel, head of international sales at Le Pacte, who will be on hand to present the movie to distributors at the UniFrance Rendez-Vous in Paris.

Belvaux said he hopes viewers come out of This is Our Land with a better understanding of the mechanisms of a populist party and what lies behind its rhetorics.

Does he think the movie will convert National Front voters into socialists or republicans?

The FN activists wont likely show up, but those who dont vote or those who are on the margins, unsure of what party they belong to, might turn up, said Belvaux.

Related stories

Cannes: France's Le Pacte Acquires Rodrigo Sorogoyen's 'May God Save Us' (EXCLUSIVE)

La Pacte Boards Lucas Belvaux's Political Drama 'This Is Our Land' (EXCLUSIVE)

Cannes: ND Mantarraya Sources Wild Bunch, Films Distribution, Le Pacte (EXCLUSIVE)
Lyle Menendez has spent the last 26 years of his life in a California prison after he and his brother murdered their parents in 1989. But he has managed to achieve a sense of normalcy, even maintaining a 13-year marriage.

Menendez married Rebecca Sneed in 2003 while serving out his life sentence at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. The now-48-year-old opened up about the unconventional relationship during a recent phone interview with ABC News as part of a two-hour special called Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers.

One thing Ive learned is that your physical comfort is much less important than your connection with the people around you, Menendez said. Ive found I can have a healthy marriage that is complicated and built around conversation and finding creative ways to communicate, sharing, without all the props that are normally there in marriage in terms of going out to dinner and having as much intimate time together and so on.

Conjugal visits are prohibited for those sentenced to life without parole, ABC reports.

Menendez and his brother Erik, who were 21 and 18 respectively at the time, shot their sleeping parents, Jose and Mary Menendez, execution-style in the den of the familys Spanish-style, Beverly Hills mansion on the night of Aug. 20, 1989.

 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.

Watch ABC World News Tonight With David Muir on Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

The murder case gripped the nation. Investigators initially believed the killings to be a mafia hit, but after Lyle confessed to his ex-girlfriend and Erik confessed to a psychologist, the brothers were arrested.

At the time, prosecutors said that the privileged brothers killed their parents in an attempt to obtain the family fortune. However, the defense argued that the brothers acted in self-defense after suffering years of sexual abuse from their father.

Story continues

My own father, he was a person of means and stature, and my mother was sort of a socialite-type person, a country club type person, Menendez said. No ones going to intervene in how they raise their family.

The first trial in 1993 ended in a hung jury, but the second ended in first-degree murder convictions and two-term life sentences for the men  a fate Menendez said he has come to terms with.

My life is a struggle not be defined by what happened, he said. Im at peace with my life growing up. Im at peace with it, because Ive just sort of accepted its okay not to understand.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / M Pharmaceutical Inc. (CSE: MQ, OTCQB: MPHMF, FSE: T3F2), (the "Company" or "M Pharma"), is providing an update of the Company's strategy for the commercialization of its recently acquired C-103 project; which builds on its November 29th, 2016 press release covering its prescription strength C-103 strategy.

M Pharma, working with its contracted partners, will develop the foundation required to market OTC C-103 (orlistat 60mg) concurrently with the prescription version. This is possible in light of the FDA approval of OTC alli (60mg orlistat) in 2007.

OTC C-103 (orlistat 60mg) will be indicated for self-initiated weight loss; orlistat is the only OTC drug FDA-approved for weight loss. The current strategy is to have the OTC C-103 (orlistat 60mg) available at pharmacies nationwide in the over-the-counter format and be supported by mass marketing through multimedia channels including both cable television and digital advertising.

M Pharma's innovative strategy to develop both Rx C-103 and foundation for OTC C-103 will significantly reduce development costs for these drugs, while ultimately allowing multiple marketing avenues addressing very large and different market segments.

"This long term strategy will allow the company to address the larger weight loss market for those of the population that may not be technically obese but want a safe alternative to losing weight," said Gary Thompson, President and CEO of M Pharmaceutical USA. "Our strategy recognizes that we require a new branding approach for an initial national campaign, followed by the extended campaign into the global marketplace." said Thompson.

C-103 is a patented, proprietary combination of orlistat, simethicone and activated charcoal, which is designed to maintain the efficacy of orlistat while minimizing its bowel-related side effects. Orlistat is FDA-approved for weight management and sold by Roche as Xenical (prescription) and by GlaxoSmithKline as alli (over-the- counter, OTC). Orlistat is the best-selling weight loss medication of all time with peak sales over $900 million in 2007. C-103 is intended to maintain the efficacy of orlistat while minimizing its socially unacceptable side effects. Orlistat is not systemically absorbed, has a strong safety profile, and is approved by the FDA for OTC usage.

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About M Pharmaceutical Inc.

Formed in early 2015, M Pharmaceutical Inc. is a clinical-stage company developing innovative technologies for obesity and weight management. In addition to its recent acquisition of C-103, a reformulation of orlistat from Chelatexx, LLC, the Company will focus on the development of its Trimeo capsules, temporary controllable pseudobezoars for non-invasive gastric volume reduction for the treatment of obesity, for which it has exclusive rights. The Company has recently acquired an FDA cleared fertility product that represents its first offering in the women's health field.

M Pharma trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) under the ticker symbol "MQ" as well as on the OTCQB as "MPHMF" and FWB (Frankfurt Stock Exchange) as "T3F2."

For more information contact:

Investor Relations

Phone: +1 604 428 0511

info@m-pharma.ca

www.m-pharma.ca

Notice regarding Forward Looking Statements: This news release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. This news release includes forward-looking statements with respect to the commercialization of the rights to the company's biomedical & drug technologies. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com and the Company's filings to the CSE at www.cnsx.ca. Such risk factors may cause the inability of the Company to successfully commercialize any of its biomedical technologies.

Notice regarding investigational devices: C-103 and Trimeo are investigational drugs or devices and are not currently available outside of approved clinical trials. Claims regarding the safety and efficacy of these devices have not been evaluated by Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or any other international regulatory body.

SOURCE: M Pharmaceutical Inc.
The head of U.S. intelligence told a Senate committee Thursday that Russia poses "an existential threat to the United States."

James Clapper made the comment while testifying about Russian hacking during the presidential campaign.

"I don't think that we have ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process," the director of national intelligence told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But Clapper also said the Russian hacking efforts "did not change the vote tallies" in the election, which ended with Donald Trump 's victory. Clapper was referring specifically to the question of whether voting machines could have been manipulated to affect the outcome.



Clapper added that when it comes to the the question of whether Russian hacking affected "the choices that the electorate made ... there's no way for us to gauge that."

"Russia clearly has assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture," Clapper said.



He said later: "They do pose an existential threat to the United States."

Clapper told the committee that a forthcoming intelligence report "will ascribe a motivation" by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the hacking. But he said he did not want to "pre-empt" the report by revealing the suspected motivation.



President Barack Obama has been briefed on the report, a senior intelligence official told NBC News. Obama last week ordered a series of retaliatory steps against Russia for the hacking.



During the hearing, the price of VanEck Vectors Russia, an exchange-traded fund that seeks to replicate the price of the DAXglobal Russia+ Index of larger Russian companies, fell more than 1.5 percent. The decline put the ETF on pace for its first negative day since Dec 19, when RSX lost 2.23 percent.

Questions about Russian interference have swirled furiously since Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in November.

While the intelligence community believes top Russian officials were behind cyberattacks aimed at Clinton, Trump has been dismissive of those claims. Trump's backers also have seen the claims as an attack on the legitimacy of his election, but some Republicans have insisted that the matter must be thoroughly investigated.

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"Every American should be alarmed by Russia's attacks on our nation," committee Chairman Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., said at the start of the hearing.

"There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference."

Cyber Command Chief Adm. Mike Rogers said that the hacking of America's election system and process "is of great concern."

The committee's cyberthreats hearing comes a day before the president-elect receives a briefing by the CIA and FBI directors  along with the head of national intelligence  on the investigation into Russia's alleged hacking efforts.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said at the hearing that he believes "the best approach" is to create a special select committee of the Senate to probe such efforts.

Trump has criticized the intelligence community's findings and even seemed to back WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails. Responding to previous reports that U.S. intelligence had concluded that Russia was behind hacks of Democratic Party officials during the election, Trump scoffed at the agencies for incorrectly reporting before the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein had amassed weapons of mass destruction.



Trump spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday denied reports that Trump is planning to restructure the intelligence community infrastructure. And Trump himself tweeted that he was "a big fan" of intelligence.

McCain discussed Assange with Clapper early in the hearing, saying: "I believe he is the one who's responsible for publishing the names of individuals who work for us who put us in direct danger."



"Yes, he has," Clapper replied.

"Do you think there's any credibility we should attach to this individual?" McCain asked.

Clapper said, "Not in my view."

"I second those comments," Rogers said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., asked Clapper about how Trump has been dismissive of the intelligence community's findings of Russian interference in the election.

"I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement," Clapper said.




gran via

Madrid's mayor, Manuela Carmena, is serious about kicking personal cars off the road in the city center.

On a November 5 show on Spanish radio network Cadena Ser, she confirmed that Madrid's main avenue, the Gran Via, will only allow access to bikes, buses, and taxis before she leaves office in May 2019, as noted by CityLab.

Carmena said she has every intention to "pedestrianize the Gran Via in this legislature." The effort is part of a larger plan to ban all diesel cars in Madrid by 2025.

Established in 1910, the Gran Via is a busy, six-lane road that cuts through the city's center  making the upcoming car ban highly ambitious.

In December, around holiday shopping time, Madrid blocked personal cars from the Gran Via for nine days. Carmenas rival and leader of the right-wing Popular Party in Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, later threatened to sue the city for the temporary ban. Aguirre argued that it hurt businesses along road, since car-driving customers couldn't access it.

However, in the interview with Cadena Ser, Carmena said businesses along the avenue told her that their profits increased 15% during those nine days compared to last year.

The main goal of the ban is to fight Madrid's rising pollution, the city's government has said. Madrid is already enforcing temporary driving restrictions in the city center when smog levels reach harmful peaks.

Carmena's move is part of a growing global trend to make city streets more pedestrian-friendly. Copenhagen is building a bike superhighway radiating out from its city center, which will be ready by 2019. Oslo, Hamburg, Paris, and Mexico City are also working toward similar car bans, though not at Madrid's scale.

NOW WATCH: Here's the gorgeous trailer for 'Super Mario Odyssey'  the first Mario game for Nintendo Switch





More From Business Insider


KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has appointed Shahrir Abdul Samad as chairman of the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda), operator of some of the world's biggest palm oil plantations, state news agency Bernama reported on Friday.

Shahrir, a member of parliament and former chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, replaces Mohamad Isa Abdul Samad, who will stay on as chairman of main listed unit, Felda Global Ventures Bhd.

Felda Global Ventures is the world's third-largest palm plantation group.

State-owned Felda drew criticism with an announcement in December that it would buy a stake of 37 percent in Indonesian palm oil firm PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk for $505.4 million, which critics saw as overpriced. (Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia said on Friday the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will end in two weeks after the search is completed of a 120,000 square kilometer (9,650 sq mile) area where experts thought it went down. Investigators recommended last month that the search be extended by 25,000 sq km to an area further north in the Indian Ocean, after conceding for the first time they were probably looking in the wrong place. [nL4N1EF02J] But Malaysia's transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, told reporters the search of the 120,000 sq km area would be completed but the hunt would then end in the absence of any "credible clue" suggesting it be extended. The latest report by the search coordinator, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, was due to be completed in a week or two, he said. "The search mission will end soon and after that," Liow was quoted as saying by state news agency Bernama. The report would be made available online, he said, adding: "Any decision based on the report will be done later." Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, most of them Chinese, en route to Beijing from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. Its whereabouts have become one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. Families of many of those on board have called for the search to continue and to be extended to other areas. The three countries involved in the search - Malaysia, Australia and China - would meet before Jan. 28 to decide on the next course of action, Liow said. Australia last month also rejected recommendations to extend the search, citing a lack of "credible evidence". A total of 33 pieces of wreckage suspected to be from the plane have been found, including parts of wings and a tail, on the shores of Mauritius, the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa. (Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Robert Birsel)
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's exports increased significantly in November, led by rising shipments of manufactured and agricultural goods, government data showed on Friday.

Exports in November expanded 7.8 percent from a year earlier, faster than the 1.4 percent increased forecast by a Reuters poll. In October, exports fell 8.6 percent, the biggest drop in 18 months.

The rise in manufactured and agricultural goods exports were led by shipments of electrical and electronic products, and palm oil and palm-based goods, according to data from the International Trade and Industry Ministry.

Malaysia's imports in November also rose, by 11.2 percent from a year earlier, following October's 6.6 percent decline.

The trade surplus in November slightly narrowed to 9.03 billion ringgit ($2.02 billion), from 9.8 billion ringgit the previous month.

Exports to the United States rose 9.9 percent from a year earlier in November, while those to Europe gained 12.3 percent.

Exports to China rose 12 percent, due to higher demand for electrical and electronic products and palm-based goods.

Malaysia reports trade figures in ringgit.

(Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f32723%2fa397cd7b-a3bc-4a6a-8ffa-8384f1b1e05f

LONDON  A man's Facebook complaint about two women wearing pyjamas in Tesco has kicked off a huge backlash on social media.

Earlier in the week, Chris Cooke shared a photograph of two women wearing pyjamas while they shopped in a branch of Tesco in Salford, UK.

SEE ALSO: 5 customer complaints that escalated hilariously in 2016

He posted the photo on Tesco's Facebook wall with the following message, which now appears to have been deleted:

It wasn't long before the post started attracting negative attention.

By Friday, the original post had been picked up in several media outlets. And by midday on Friday, the hashtag #Pyjamas began trending.

Most people were angry that someone was complaining about pyjamas.

People offended by others wearing pyjamas need something else to focus on! #pyjamas  Jess Edwards (@EducatingJess) January 6, 2017

Twitter going mad over about 2 women going shopping in #Tesco wearing #pyjamas why? Not causing any harm and Least they were covered up   NattsJourney (@nattsjourney) January 6, 2017

If you're labelling someone disgusting for going to a shop in their #pyjamas you really want to revise what you constitute disgusting.  Rachel Hawkins (@ourrachblogs) January 6, 2017

Shopping in #pyjamas. Who literally cares if other people want to wear pjs out? And honestly how BORING must your life be if you do care   jess clayton (@Jessclaytonxo) January 6, 2017

Some, however, shared the original poster's viewpoint.

#pyjamas Standards of decency, etiquette, manners&self esteem have plummetted so far that we think shopping whilst wearing pyjamas is okay?!  WYSIWYG (@Wonderwoody1) January 6, 2017

In the end, though, many people clearly thought the whole debate was a bit ridiculous.

This whole #pyjamas in supermarkets debate is discriminatory towards bananas. How are these two meant to do their weekly shop?  pic.twitter.com/uXktSb0ZIc  David Wriglesworth (@Wriggy) January 6, 2017

We do not have a formal dress code in our stores and colleagues use their common sense and discretion when speaking to customers about this issue," a Tesco spokesperson told Mashable.
Maybelline now has a male makeup ambassador, and we totally approve

When we hear the title makeup ambassador its difficult not to immediately imagine a black and white Hollywood starlet consorting with a king abroad while discussing the finer points of liquid eyeliner. Conversely, the modern reality of the role is far better, as Maybelline just signed a male makeup ambassador, and he just so happens to be one of HelloGiggles favorite Youtube beauty bloggers.

The newest to join the team of dark-lashed ambassadors is none other than the internet famous Manny Gutierrez, who is known to his Instagram and Youtube followers as Manny MUA. Whether hes riffing on the 5-minute makeup challenge with beauty blogger Laura Lee or providing the world with a no mirror makeup challenge tutorial, one thing is for sure: his plate is overflowing.

Sexy Silver Daddy NEW YEARS EVE MAKEUP TUTORIAL is now up on my channel! Link in my bio check it out my loves! A photo posted by Manny Gutierrez (@mannymua733) on Dec 26, 2016 at 1:02pm PST

To add to his resume, Manny is now an ambassador for Maybellines #BigShotMascara campaign, making him the first male makeup ambassador for the brand!

Hes a natural at applying club mascara on-screen, which doesnt surprise us at all.

We also want to know where he scored the golden blazer for this promo video because its doing the most.

You know a commercial is doing its job when you want to RSVP to the party inside of it.

This seems like a good omen for 2017 as another strong year for Mannys career, well lift our champagne glasses to that.
Episode 5 of AMERICAN DOERS, a new 12-part video series featuring original thinkers, innovators, craftspeople, risk-takers and artisans across the United States.

Shamayim Harris wasnt sure shed survive after her 2-year-old son Jakobi was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2007. I remember waking up the next morning, thinking, Im living through this pain that I thought would kill me. Im not afraid of anything anymore,  says Harris, 51, of Highland Park, Michigan.

Six months after her sons death, the single mother of three channeled her grief into action, embarking on her dream of transforming a half-abandoned nearby block into a sustainable eco-village. I saw this blighted block every day on my way to work, and I wanted to do something with it.

The first step was a winning $3,000 bid on a vacant home on Avalon Street. With help from a friend, and money shed pieced together from her paycheck and a tax refund, the former school administrator bought the house and moved in. She then set up a nonprofit, The Moon Ministry, started receiving donations (via a successful Kickstarter that has since reached over $240,000) and the real work began. Harris and a group of volunteers removed mattresses, toilets, liquor bottles  even an abandoned boat  from the neighborhood. It took a while to get to green grass, she says.

Nine years later, Harris owns 10 properties within what is now called Avalon Village, including an after-school homework house and a vacant lot shes transformed into a park dedicated to her son. Jakobi Ra Park is home to community events, like an annual apple-picking party and reggae concerts. She also has plans for activity courts, a greenhouse and a cafe. I want to be an example, she says. I hope people are inspired to do work in their own neighborhoods.

For more American Doers, go to americandoers.people.com.

Harris, who is affectionately known as Mama Shu, has a supportive team behind her, including city officials, licensed contractors and local youths who are learning useful trades while contributing to Avalon Village. I am proud of our community family member taking blight and turning it into something positive, Highland Park Mayor Hubert Yopp tells PEOPLE.

Story continues

Jakobi

Harris hopes to have the project completed by 2018. And shes motivated by the memory of her son every step of the way. Building this village has been healing, she says. I think Jakobi would be very proud. I hear his voice telling me, Go, Mommy, go!




Vicente Fox

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox tore into President-elect Donald Trump after reports that his administration would seek funding from Congress to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

"Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument. Another promise he can't keep," the former president said on Twitter Thursday night.

Trump during his election campaign insisted Mexico would pay for the wall. He later asserted that the US would pay, and seek reimbursement from Mexico later.

Mexico's current president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has repeatedly declared Mexico would not entertain any requests to foot the bill.

Mr. Fox, who has been a regular critic of Trump, spoke in sharper terms about the border wall in February when he said Mexico was "not going to pay for that f-----g wall.

Related:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

NOW WATCH: Who is paying for the wall? Trump and Mexico's president contradict each other





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The hunt for missing flight MH370 will end in two weeks, Malaysia's transport minister said on Friday, as relatives of passengers demanded authorities push on with the search.

"We're at the final lap within these two weeks," the minister, Liow Tiong Lai told reporters. "We hope we can find the plane."

Liow did not specify a date but said that a tripartite meeting will be held after a final report is released when the 120,000 square kilometre (46,000 square mile) search ends.

Authorities had previously said the search will end early this year. The last search vessel embarked on its final sweep across the southern Indian Ocean last month.

The Malaysian Airlines jet disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew.

It is believed that the Malaysian Airlines plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, but an extensive deep-sea hunt off Australia's west coast has failed to find a single piece of debris.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which has been leading the search mission, said in a report last month that the Boeing jet is almost certainly not in the current search zone and may be further north.

The report was based on a review of evidence by Australian and international experts.

Australia has said that it did not view the report findings as credible.

The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China, where most of the passengers were from, previously agreed to pull the plug on the operation once the current search area was fully scoured unless "credible new information" emerged.

"We cannot just base [a search] on assumptions. We need credible clues to look for the plane," said Liow when asked about the possibility of a search further north.

Many families have been long sceptical about whether the ongoing search is in the right place.

In a statement late Thursday, the international group of MH370 next-of-kin, Voice 370, called on Malaysia, Australia and China to consider the next step before the current search ends.

"Extending the search to the new area defined by experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety," it added.
Michelle Obama got emotional as she delivered her final public remarks as first lady Friday.

Read: Obama Says He Would Have Beaten Trump If He'd Been Able To Run Again

Being first lady has been the greatest honor of my life," she said inside the White House. "I hope Ive made you proud."

As her voice cracked several times, the wife of the 44th U.S. president spoke to the younger generation as she was surrounded by teachers, students and counselors.

She said: I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So don't be afraid. You hear me, young people? Don't be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourself with a good education. Then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope; never fear."

As the woman around her began to shed tears, Mrs. Obama told the crowd she may be leaving the White House, but the students of America will always be close to her heart.

Read: A White House Upbringing: Sasha and Malia Obama Through the Years

"Ill be here," she assured.

The event inside the White House was aimed at honoring the 2017 School Counselor of the Year and comes exactly two weeks before Donald Trump will be sworn in as her husbands successor.

Watch: Woman Carries Life-Sized Cardboard Cutout of Barack Obama Everywhere She Goes

Related Articles:
Michelle Obama delivered her final remarks as first lady.

Dressed in a red dress and gold teardrop earrings, FLOTUS took the podium at the White House on Friday at an event honoring the 2017 School Counselor of the Year as part of her "Reach Higher" initiative that promotes higher education. As expected, Obama's last speech was emotional, powerful and inspiring.

WATCH: 16 Women Who Changed the Conversation in 2016

Obama began her presentation by thanking her staff and joking that she rolls "pretty deep." She also called out the handful of celebrity guests in the audience, which included Jay Pharaoh, Ted Allen, Connie Britton, Kelly Rowland, La La Anthony, Andy Cohen, Usher, Wale and Allison Williams.

"All of these folks are here because they're using their star power to inspire our young people, and I am so grateful to all of you for stepping up in so many ways, on so many occasions," FLOTUS gushed. "So thank you all so much. It really means the world to this initiative."

Obama then noted that over the course of her eight years as first lady, she had one goal in mind -- "to make higher education cool." She did that by "flipping the script" and "shining a bright light" on education, and making it easier for students to apply for financial aid.

RELATED: Barack and Michelle Obama Open Up About Life After the White House

"All together we made, in this administration, the largest investment in higher education since the GI Bill," she explained, calling school counselors the "heroes" of this story. "And today the high school graduation rate is at a record high and more young people than ever before are going to college."

Obama then went on to say that as she ends her time in the White House, she couldn't think of any better way to do so than by sending a message to the younger generation.

"For all the young people in this room and those who are watching, know that this country belongs to you," she said. "To all of you. From every background and walk of life. If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition. The infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas  that has made us the greatest country on Earth."

Story continues

RELATED: The Obama Family's Big 2016: The 12 Best Moments from the President's Last Year in Office

"If your family doesn't have much money," she continued, "I want you to remember that in this country, plenty of folks, including me and my husband -- we started out with very little -- but with a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible, even becoming president. That's what the American Dream is all about."

Obama also encouraged young people not to "let anyone make you feel like you don't matter, or like you don't have a place in our American story."

"And when you encounter obstacles -- because I guarantee you will, and many of you already have -- when you are struggling and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember something that my husband and I have talked about since we first started this journey nearly a decade ago," she exclaimed. "Something that has carried us through every moment in this White House, and every moment of our lives, and that is the power of hope. The belief that something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it."

RELATED: Barack and Michelle Obama's First and Last State Dinners: How Their Style (and Love!) Has Evolved

"It is our fundamental belief and the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country," she added. "Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us. The hope that when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe, they too will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves."

"So, that's my final message to young people as first lady," she continued, holding back tears. "It is simple."

Obama concluded her speech by telling the audience she wants our young people to know that they matter and that they "belong."

"Don't be afraid, do you hear me?" she advised. "Young people, don't be afraid. Be focused, be determined, be hopeful, be empowered. Empower yourselves with a good education. Then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope, never fear. And know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life."

"I want to close today by simply saying thank you," Obama said. "Being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life and I hope I've made you proud."

WATCH: Barack Obama Says He Always Knew Michelle Would Be an 'Incredible' First Lady

Related Articles
In her last official speech as first lady, Michelle Obama offered a message to Americas young people: Know that this country belongs to you.

Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you dont matter or like you dont have a place in our American story, because you do, Obama said Friday during a White House event honoring school counselors.

Obama kicked off the event by celebrating the achievements of those whove participated in her Reach Higher initiative, which aims to make the U.S. college graduation rate the highest in the world by 2020. But she closed the speech by sending some last words of encouragement to Americas youth.

First lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition, the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, she said. Generation after generation, that has made us the greatest country on earth.

Our glorious diversity, she continued, is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are.

Still, Obama insisted, you cannot take your freedoms for granted.

Right now, she said, kids around the country should be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation, preparing yourself to be informed and engaged as a citizen.

Her voice quivering, the first lady choked back tears as she urged young people, whenever they may be struggling and feel like giving up, to remember the power of hope.

The belief that something better is always possible if youre willing to work for it and fight for it is something that, she said, has carried President Obama and herself through every moment in this White House and every moment in our lives.

Dont be afraid, she said, bringing her final speech to a close. Lead by example with hope, never fear.  And know that I will be with you, rooting for you, and working to support you for the rest of my life.
Washington (AFP) - US lawmakers will be scrambling through a jam-packed series of hearings next week when at least nine of Donald Trump's high-profile nominees, including secretary of state pick Rex Tillerson, begin the confirmation process.

Six confirmation hearings in the Senate are slated for next Wednesday alone -- the same day Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference in New York, his first since winning the presidential election in November and in fact his first since July.

Trump's much-anticipated presser is almost certain to draw attention away from some of his more controversial nominees whose hearings occur on that day.

They include Tillerson, who is under fire for his apparently cozy ties with Russia and President Vladimir Putin; attorney general pick Senator Jeff Sessions, who is catching heat for apparent racial bias decades ago; and billionaire Betsy DeVos, a proponent of charter schools who has been named to head the Education Department.

Sessions' two-day hearing actually begins Tuesday. That day's grilling could be overshadowed by President Barack Obama, who delivers his farewell address in Chicago later that day.

Also preparing for Wednesday confirmation hearings are transportation secretary nominee Elaine Chao, who is married to the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell; retired general John Kelly, in line for secretary of homeland security; and congressman Mike Pompeo, who if confirmed will take the reins at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Billionaire private equity investor Wilbur Ross, tapped to be the next commerce secretary, will have a hearing Thursday, the same day as housing and urban development nominee Ben Carson.

All eyes will likely be on Tillerson's hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning 9:00 am January 11.

Tillerson, 64, is the outgoing head of oil giant ExxonMobil, and his ties with Moscow -- he was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship by Putin in 2013 -- have raised eyebrows.

Story continues

Senator John McCain, a national security hawk, has expressed concerns about Tillerson, as have senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

Asked by AFP Wednesday if he believed there was a realistic scenario in which he could support Tillerson's nomination, McCain said: "Sure. There's also a realistic scenario that pigs fly."

He later said he had yet to make a decision on whether he could support Tillerson.

Cabinet nominees require a simple majority of 51 senators for confirmation by the 100-member chamber.

Republicans hold 52 seats. Should two or more Republicans refuse to back a nominee, a Trump pick will need at least some Democratic support to get confirmed.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned this week that attempts by Republicans to hold "a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day" on January 20 will be strongly resisted.
Two days ago, Migos announced the release of their highly anticipated album Culture, due on January 27. Excitement for the album has recently hit an all-time high as the group's Lil Uzi Vert-assisted viral single "Bad and Boujee" continues to climb the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song currently sits at number two, and may attain the coveted number one spot in coming weeks. The song has taken on a new life as an internet meme, causing it to become popular worldwide. A recent video of a crowd going insane for the track at a concert in Nigeria shows the global appeal of the song.

Today, Migos revealed the official tracklist for their forthcoming album. Culture will feature guest appearances from 2 Chainz and DJ Khaled in addition to Uzi's contribution to the lead single. It will also include "Call Casting," the group's latest single.

Check out the tracklist below, and keep an eye out for the official release on January 27.

Migos - Culture tracklist:

1. Culture f. DJ Khaled

2. T-Shirt

3. Call Casting

4. Bad and Boujee f. Lil Uzi Vert

5. Get Right Witcha

6. Big on Big

7. What the Price

8. Brown Paper Bag

9. Deadz f. 2 Chainz

10. All Ass

11. Kelly Price

12. Out Yo Way

Continue Reading On PigeonsandPlanes

More from PigeonsandPlanes
EXCLUSIVE: Back on February 12 for its second installment on Starz, anthology series The Missing isnt letting up on any of the intrigue and heartbreak that characterized its first run. Thats clear in the first look at the new season featuring David Morrissey, Keeley Hawes as new characters with a new case in a new location and the return of and Tcheky Karyo from the first installment.

The eight-episode second season of the limited series follows Sam and Gemma, played by Morrissey and Hawes, whose daughter Alice went missing in 2003. In 2014, a young British woman is found walking the streets of a German town before collapsing. The women is Alice Webster (Abigail Hardingham), and her return after 11-years sends rips open her town and her family.

In dual storylines set in 2014 and in present day, Julien Baptiste (Karyo) returns as the French detective from the first run of The Missing. The retired cop has a hunch there is a connection between Alice Walker and an unresolved 12-year-old case that he cant let go.

Season 1 of the series, which premiered on Starz in 2014, received two Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nom. Season 2, written by Harry and Jack Williams and directed by Ben Chanan, has already aired in the UK on BBC One to critical response. New Pictures produces in association with Two Brothers Pictures and Playground for BBC One and Starz.

Check out the trailer above.

RelatedThe Missing Review: Dominic Patten On Amazing, Haunting Drama

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaNxY4AiIAY&w=605&h=340]

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'The Missing' Second Installment Gets Premiere On Starz
In 2011, at the peak of the housing crisis, regulators for the Treasury Department ordered Steve Mnuchin and directors at OneWest Bank in California to fix the banks questionable handling of home loans. In a consent order filed that year by the departments Office of Thrift Supervision, regulators accused the bank of using unsafe or unsound methods for dealing with mortgage loans and foreclosures in 2009 and 2010. They found that bank employees and third-party providers lied in foreclosure paperwork filed in state and federal courts about information related to the ownership of many home loans, money due on the loans, and the fees chargeable to the borrower. They also accused employees of filing court documents with signatures that were not notarized and initiating foreclosures and bankruptcies without all the necessary paperwork. The office additionally claimed that the bank failed to devote to its foreclosure processes adequate oversight, internal controls, policies, and procedures, compliance risk management, internal audit, third party management, and training.

Recommended: Two Major Credit Reporting Agencies Have Been Lying to Consumers

As a result of the examination, the Treasury Departments Office of Thrift Supervision (which later merged into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) ordered the bank to work with an independent monitor to address these issues. That involved requiring Mnuchin and other bank executives to write rules about how employees are supposed to work with borrowers to handle foreclosures, creating a process to ensure employees statements in court documents are accurate, plus a long list of other rules to make sure employees dont break the law. Regulators found the same problems at the nations largest mortgage lenders, including Bank of America and Citibank, and ordered them to do the same. OneWest complied with this legal order and in 2015, the Treasury Department released the bank from the monitoring agreement.

Story continues

Mnuchina former Goldman-Sachs partneris now preparing to lead the same department that once reprimanded him for his banking practices. The Treasury Departments findings mirror some of those found by state prosecutors in a 2013 memo leaked this week to the The Intercept, which alleges that Mnuchins bank broke foreclosure rules and engaged in widespread misconduct during the housing crisis. In the confidential memo, consumer-protection lawyers for the California attorney generals office claimed that employees at OneWest Bank were manipulating home auctions, failing to properly notify homeowners about foreclosure proceedings, and backdating signatures, possibly to speed up foreclosures. Of the 913 subpoenaed loan documents they reviewed, they found that 909 were likely backdated.

Recommended: Why Employers Are Rolling Back Raises

Barney Keller, a spokesperson for Mnuchin, told me in an email that the Treasury Departments findings are garbage and the leaked memo is meritless. Regarding the regulatory findings, he said that the exact same consent order was agreed to by all 14 of the major financial institutions that were heavily involved in the mortgage industry. This order required all of the institutions to complete the independent foreclosure review, which OneWest was the only bank to successfully complete. While this is true, its important to note that, as a result of the review, OneWest still had to pay roughly $8.5 million in remediation to more than 10,000 customers for errors that resulted in financial harm. Keller added that Mnuchin had "helped modify over 100,000 mortgages he did not even originate and in thousands of cases even reduced borrower principal." Of course, banks in many cases were already required to do that.

Mnuchins investment in OneWest Bank was a profitable one. He purchased the failed Pasadena-based bank, then known as IndyMac, in March of 2009 and renamed it OneWest. The purchase came with tens of thousands of troubled mortgage loans, most of which were adjustable-rate. These mortgages had monthly payments that ballooned during the housing crisis and led many homeowners to default. When prosecutors sent the confidential memo detailing their allegations to Californias then-Attorney General Kamala Harris in 2013, OneWest had foreclosed on 35,000 homes in the state and was in the process of foreclosing on another 45,000.

Recommended: Prosperity, Not Upward Mobility, Is What Matters

The results of the states investigation match many of those highlighted by the Treasury Departments regulators, though Californias prosecutors went a step further by alleging that the bank was breaking the law, specifically the states Unfair Competition Law. In their memo, prosecutors for the state urged Harris, the attorney general, to sue the bank for unfair business practices, but she declined to take on the case, according to The Intercept.

A review of federal court records shows that more than 800 lawsuits were filed against OneWest while Mnuchin owned the bank. About a third of those lawsuits came from homeowners who claimed that the bank improperly foreclosed on their properties. A recurring complaint was that the bank didnt give owners a chance to modify their loans to avoid losing their homes, something the federal government required the banks to do.

In a $5 million, class-action lawsuit filed in 2012, more than 100 homeowners sued OneWest Bank for refusing to modify their loans even though they met all the programs requirements under the law, they claimed. They also accused bank staff of encouraging them to default on their mortgage payments to qualify for the loan-modification program, and telling them that the bank was missing documents that homeowners said they had already sent. Because of OneWests breach, [plaintiffs] have been injured, including suffering negative credit consequences and some losing their homes through foreclosure sales that should have never occurred, the complaint states. The bank, now under new ownership, settled the case this past August for an undisclosed amount. Other cases against the bank were dismissed or settled, and several remain open.

In 2015, Mnuchin sold the bank, which Bloomberg estimates earned him $380 million in personal profit. It was a lucrative investment that now poses a huge hurdle for him during the confirmation process to become Treasury Secretary. Senator Ron Wyden, the lead Democrat on the committee that will hold his confirmation hearings, told The Wall Street Journal last month that Mnuchin has a history of profiting off the victims of predatory lending. But while the hearings might become heated, if Mnuchin has enough support from Republicans, in the end that heat wont really matter.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
A mom wants her friend to pay up because her daughters shoes came back scuffed up after a playdate. (Photo: Getty Images)

The levels of petty at the start of 2017 are high for one mom, who sent her friend a bill after her daughter came back from a playdate with her shoes scuffed up.

Sarah Bryan loves to dress her 3-year-old daughter, Isabella, in pricey duds, saying that her occupation as a fashion designer makes her determined to keep her little one looking fresh at all times. And making sure her 3-year-old is always stylin doesnt come cheap. Isabellas [clothes] are usually Spanish boutique stuff, Bryan told the Sun. Shes actually a model, so I keep her in nice clothes and shoes all the time. These boots are important for her modeling work because they match her outfits. According to the Sun, Bryan wants her friend Nicola, who was supervising the playdate, to pay 325 (about $400) to replace the boots, which allegedly came back with a small Sharpie mark on the toe.

According to Bryan, who sent a strongly worded email to Nicola, Isabella was not supposed to go outside in those particular shoes. For outings, she says, the 3-year-old usually has a bag of other shoes with her, shoes that her mother apparently didnt opt to change her into before arriving for the playdate.

Below is the bill for these replacing [sic] because they can not be fixed, Bryan wrote. These are fine Italian leather! At the end of the email, Bryan threatened to take the matter higher if she wasnt paid by Jan. 2.

Bryan often designs clothes using unconventional materials such as Skittles, and she amassed a bit of Internet fame in July for a look she designed out of pubic hair she crowdsourced from social media.

Not surprisingly, Bryan has faced some backlash on social media from people who feel that her actions were extreme. I just dont get why you would send a child in such expensive shoes, one person commented on a photo of Bryan and her daughter, which the mom posted to Instagram. Another wrote on Facebook: Who sends their kid to a play date in 300 pair of boots and not expect them to get dirty or ruined? What you want the child to do, stand without any movement? Might as well bubble wrap her.

Story continues

The negative comments prompted Bryan to take to Twitter to defend her actions and attempt to convince people that shes not averse to scribbling on shoes, though her email and her actions suggest otherwise. Bryan posted an image of tiny red Mary Janes covered in black marker scribbles, saying she liked the revamped look. I actually think scribbling on shoes is actually pretty cool, she tweeted. Made new shoes for Isabella out of her old Spanish shoes.

I actually think scribbling on shoes is actually pretty cool ???? made New shoes for Isabella out of her old old Spanish shoes ???? pic.twitter.com/3nbDmSF5DM  Official Sarah Bryan (@Itssarahbryan) January 6, 2017

While Bryan is keen on defending herself, Nicola remains unbothered. She must have more money than sense if shes going to pay that much for a pair of shoes for her daughter and then complain when they get ruined, Nicola told the Sun. Kids are kids. They get messy, they ruin things, thats life. She needs to get over it because no amount of bills she sends me will make me pay for the shoes.

If anything, this is a lesson that perhaps a 3-year-olds shoes may fare better on a playdate if they are shoes she can actually play in.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / Banking for Cannabis industry, 3D imaging, sustainable farming, event management, new laws for 2017; this week on MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon. MoneyTV is the internationally syndicated television program all about money and what makes it happen, (http://www.moneytv.net), featuring informative interviews with company CEOs, providing insights into their operations and outlooks for their futures.

Free information packages from the featured companies can be requested by sending an email to info@moneytv.net.

The television program can also be viewed online immediately at www.moneytv.net.

Featured companies on this week's program include:

Singlepoint, Inc. (OTC PINK: SING) CEO Greg Lambrecht reacted to Massachussetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's call to open the banks to the cannabis industry.

Imaging3, Inc. (IGNG) Special Consultant Scott Pancoast outlined the path the company is following to obtain FDA approval of its SmartScan medical imaging device.

Zerez Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: ZRZH) VP Don Smith announced delivery of another greenhouse.

Sack Lunch Productions, Inc. (OTC PINK: SAKL) CEO Richard Surber discussed new events being added to their roster in 2017.

Alternative Sentencing & Consolidation Initiative Founder Richard Altomare said they were in discussions with the incoming Administration.

A complete menu of TV listings is available at the MoneyTV web site, http://www.moneytv.net.

MoneyTV Executive Producer and Anchor Donald Baillargeon is also the host of MoneyRap Radio, http://www.moneyrap.com and the television program Crowdfund Television, http://www.crowdfundtelevision.com.

MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon television program, Copyright MMXVII, all rights reserved. MoneyTV does not provide an analysis of companies' financial positions and is not soliciting to purchase or sell securities of the companies, nor are we offering a recommendation of featured companies or their stocks. Information discussed herein has been provided by the companies and should be verified independently with the companies and a securities analyst. MoneyTV provides companies a 3 to 4 month corporate profile with multiple appearances for a cash fee of $11,995.00 to $17,250.00, does not accept company stock as payment for services, does not hold any positions, options or warrants in featured companies. The information herein is not an endorsement by Donald Baillargeon, the producer, publisher or parent company of MoneyTV.

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Contact:

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SOURCE: MoneyTV
- By Sydnee Gatewood





Monsanto Co. (MON) posted strong first-quarter results for fiscal 2017 on Thursday, returning to profitability after battling a multiyear decline in the prices of corn, soybeans and other major crops.

The price decline also affected farmers as the lower prices led to dwindling incomes and sparked a series of mergers between global seed and crop chemical businesses, one of which was Monsanto.





Monsanto agreed to merge with rival Bayer AG (BAYRY) in September. The deal was approved by shareholders in December and is expected to close by the end of the year. Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant expressed his gratitude to shareholders and others for their support of the merger.

"We expect the combination with Bayer to amplify the rate of innovation faster than either company could achieve alone, which will be critical in helping to increase grower productivity to meet projected demand in the decades ahead," Grant said.

The Missouri-based seed and pesticide provider attributed the higher-than-expected profits to the development of corn planting in South America and currency shifts.

For the quarter, seed revenue climbed by nearly one-third due to a 25% increase in the number of acres planted with corn in Argentina and a 10% increase in Brazil. The strengthening Brazilian real gave Monsanto an additional boost. The company witnessed a 50% increase in soybean gross profit during the quarter as well.

Monsanto reported higher earnings per share for the quarter as compared to last year. The EPS on an as-reported basis was 7 cents, which included 19 cents of pending Bayer transaction-related costs. EPS on an ongoing basis was 21 cents, a significant increase from the previous year's ongoing loss of 11 cents. According to the company, these improvements were driven by the growth in the South American business and currency effects.

Story continues

Net sales for the quarter were $2.7 billion, an increase from $2.2 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Gross profit increased to $1.3 billion compared to $900 million a year ago. Monsanto reported net income of $29 million, an increase from last year's net loss of $253 million.

The company guided full-year as-reported EPS of $3.97 to $4.95 and reiterated its ongoing business EPS forecast of $4.50 to $4.90 for full-year 2017.

Among the gurus invested in Monsanto, PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio) is the largest shareholder with 2.5% of outstanding shares. This represents 1.14% of its total assets managed. Frank Sands (Trades, Portfolio) holds the second-largest position. In all, 20 gurus hold a position in Monsanto.

Monsanto has a market cap of $46.4 billion; its shares traded around $105.89 Friday with a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 34.4, a price-book (P/B) ratio of 10.23 and a price-sales (P/S) ratio of 3.5.

Disclosure: I do not own stock in any companies mentioned in the article.

Start a free 7-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f32724%2ffdf48d37-87ab-427d-b3be-f7abfc54600d

Are you a masochist for loving movies that make you cry? Not so, according to Focus Features and SilverLogic Labs, who investigated how movies elicit emotional responses from viewers around the world.

Focus submitted its new film A Monster Calls to help with the research. Watching a movie in theaters with an audience, it turns out, leads to an increased emotional response.

SEE ALSO: Director Mike Mills on the real people who inspired '20th Century Women'

SilverLogic Labs analyzes emotions and audience responses related directly to scientific understandings.

Watching A Monster Calls with other people, you collectively have this catharsis, this insight into the human condition says Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, who described humans as a hypersocial species.

Hearing other people laugh, cry and respond to a film strengthens your connection. The more people you share a movie with, the higher the emotional impact.

BONUS: 'Lion' behind-the-scenes featurette
Paris (AFP) - La Rochelle snatched pole position in the French Top 14 on Saturday with a bruising 22-8 win over an indisciplined Castres who gave up 20 penalties and finished the night a man short.

Victory allowed La Rochelle to move four points clear of Clermont who face Toulon on Sunday.

"We knew that Castres would come to do something and that we'd have to respond with physical intensity," said La Rochelle lock Mathieu Tanguy.

"We trailed (8-6) at the end of the first half but that wasn't a reflection of the match. We weren't worried and for the first 20 minutes of the second period, Castres didn't get a lot of the ball."

After Brock James and Benjamin Urdapilleta had exchanged early penalties, it was Castres who scored the first try on a bitterly cold night.

South Africa hooker Jody Jenneker barrelled over from short range for an 8-3 lead but Urdapilleta missed the extras.

Zack Holmes cut the deficit for La Rochelle with a penalty as his team trailed 8-6 at the break.

Castres finished the opening period with Uruguayan skipper Rodrigo Capo Ortega in the sin bin for a dangerous tackle.

No sooner had he returned early in the second half than scrum-half Rory Kockott was also yellow-carded for a similar offence.

Holmes kicked La Rochelle ahead and they never looked back with All Blacks World Cup winning flanker Victor Vito scoring a try after being set-up by veteran Springboks scrum-half Ricky Januarie.

Holmes slotted over the conversion for 16-8 before adding two further penalties for a comfortable win.

Castres played the last 10 minutes a man short once again when replacement prop Yohan Montes was red-carded for appearing to aim a head butt at Mohammed Boughanmi who was yellow carded for his role in the affray.

Montes had only been on the field for five minutes before he was sent packing.

Earlier Saturday, Brive pushed Grenoble closer to relegation with a 23-22 win with the Top 14's top scorer Gaetan Germain kicking 18 of his side's points.

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The match between Pau and Lyon, meanwhile, was postponed due to an icy pitch.

On Friday, Montpellier scored three tries through Fijian winger Nemani Nadolo, centre Vincent Martin and former Australian rugby league star Joe Tomane in a 31-26 win against faltering Bordeaux.

The win allowed Jake White's third-placed team to bury the shock 32-27 loss at Pau last week while Bordeaux have now lost for games in succession.

The only consolation for Bordeaux was Simon Hickey's last-gasp penalty allowing them to claim a defensive bonus point.
While the public has long agreed with President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans that the Affordable Care Act is badly flawed and requires major surgery, far more Americans believe the program should be kept but improved than repealed and replaced.

Shortly after Trumps stunning November 8 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton  an ardent champion of Obamacare -- a Gallup poll found that while slightly more than half of Americans continued to express dissatisfaction with the program, 57 percent said they either wanted to keep the law as is or wanted to keep it and change the law significantly. Just 37 percent wanted to repeal and replace it as the Republicans have vowed to do.

Related: Could Rand Paul End Up Saving Obamacare?

Not surprisingly, views differ sharply between Republican and Democratic voters, reflecting the larger political divide throughout the country and in Washington. Seventy-one percent of Republicans told Gallup they disapprove of the law and want it repealed, while 59 percent of Democrats want to keep it with significant changes.

Taken together, the findings suggest a national unease among Americans over GOP leaders determination to pass a budget resolution in the coming weeks that would repeal President Obamas signature national health insurance program that  for all its flaws  has provided coverage to more than 20 million Americans in recent years.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have joined Trump in denouncing Obamacare as irredeemable. They have vowed rapid legislative action in the coming weeks and months to repeal the law, even while the party is far from a consensus on replacement legislation.

Obamacare is a disaster, Ryan said. Insurance markets are collapsing. Premiums are soaring. Patients choices are dwindling. The law has failed to deliver on its core promises, hurting far more than it is helping.

Related: Obamacare Repeal Could Push Rural Hospitals to the Brink

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GOP leaders, for now, intend to repeal the program by the spring while setting the effective date a year or two down the road while Republican lawmakers hammer out a comprehensive alternative program that depends on more on market forces than government intervention and subsidies.

Yet that strategy is being met with opposition from insurers, hospitals and doctors, drug companies, consumer advocates and even many Republican governors who fear chaos and a collapse of Obamacare while the Republicans struggle to map out a new approach.

Just this week, the American Medical Association (AMA), the premier physician organization, wrote a letter to Republican leaders warning against jeopardizing the health care coverage of millions of Americans by abruptly repealing Obamacare without a suitable replacement. And Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan hailed the success of his states expansion of Medicaid that was made possible by the Affordable Care Act.

A dozen moderate Democratic senators, including Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clintons vice presidential running mate, wrote to the GOP leadership yesterday urging them to slow down and work with them to draft changes to the existing law to address concerns such as soaring premium and onerous taxes and mandates.

Related: Obamacare Repeal Is a Fiscal Minefield for the GOP

There is so much we can immediately improve, but by pushing an immediate repeal through a partisan budget process, we wont have the opportunity to work together to build on that common ground, Kaine said, according to The New York Times.

G. William Hoagland, a vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Senate Republican budget expert, said that the Republicans are still caught up in their campaign slogans and enthusiasm and arent being pragmatic. However, reality will begin to set in when House and Senate committees begin stitching together the specific budget instructions to dismantle Obamacare, and many divisive issues rise to the surface, he said.

Related: Republicans Are Having Second Thoughts About Scrapping Obamacare Taxes

Campaign rhetoric is one thing and legislating is another thing, Hoagland said in an interview Friday. And I think the word repeal is maybe being overused here by the Republicans  even before President-elect Trump is sworn in. What people are really talking about is amending the Affordable Care Act.

Hoagland, a health care policy expert, suggested that there is plenty of room for bipartisan compromise on changes to Obamacare, including adding Trumps proposals for lowering barriers to interstate sales of health insurance and the establishment of health care savings accounts. The biggest sticking point between Republicans and Democrats will be over how to subsidize health care costs for low-income Americans through the federal tax code and whether to make coverage mandatory or voluntary.

The Affordable Care Act mandates uninsured Americans to acquire coverage or pay the penalty. Ryan and others say their goal is to replace Obamacare with a law that guarantees universal access to health care coverage, but not necessarily to force everyone to be covered. Ryan yesterday declined to speculate on whether the 20 million or more Americans currently receiving coverage under the Affordable Care Act would continue to receive coverage under the GOP approach.

There is another obstacle for the Republicans in completely reinventing a national health insurance program: the cost. Blowing up Obamacare and starting from scratch would be a very costly enterprise. A complete repeal would include getting rid of a dozen major tax provisions that help underwrite the programs operating costs.

Related: GOP and Dem Governors Are Closing Ranks Against Obamacare Repeal

Before the election, the Congressional Budget Office projected that Obamacare operating costs would total $1.24 trillion between 2019 and 2026. There is compelling evidence that if the Republicans scrap all of the Obamacare taxes, they could raise at most $850 billion of the total required cost through a number of budgetary and tax policy maneuvers, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis.

For these and other reasons, Hoagland says he could imagine a bipartisan deal next summer or fall that would retain the basic framework of Obamacare while layering in GOP provisions and innovations. He said that it would give Trump the opportunity to show off his legendary bargaining skills.

The more I look at it . . . the more I sense that were really talking about what you might call Trumpcare One or Trumpcare Two  Trumpcare modification of Obamacare, Hoagland said. It just seems to me were dealing with rhetoric right now and were still in the campaign mode.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Multiple people shot at Ft. Lauderdale airport A hazmat crew cleans up baggage claim Terminal Two on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2017 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport Terminal the day after multiple people were shot on Friday. (Al Diaz/Miami Herald via AP)

A military veteran opened fire in a baggage claim at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida Friday, killing five and wounding eight others, in a horrific scene that sent people running for their lives, officials and witnesses said.

The motive for the shooting, just before 1 p.m. in the baggage claim area at Terminal 2, remained unclear and the alleged gunman appears to have acted alone.

The airport was closed to departing and arriving flights following the shooting, but cargo and general aviation (private small planes, corporate jets) operations resumed at midnight. Commercial flights will resume Saturday, the airport tweeted Friday evening.

The man police say opened fire with a gun from his checked baggage at a Florida airport had a history of mental health issues  some of which followed his military service in Iraq  and was receiving psychological treatment at his home in Alaska, his relatives said Friday after the deadly shooting.

Esteban Santiago, 26, deployed in 2010 as part of the Puerto Rico National Guard, spending a year with an engineering battalion, according to Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. (AP)

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Colin Munro produced a masterclass of controlled aggression to smash 101 off 54 balls as New Zealand coasted to a 47-run win in the second Twenty20 against Bangladesh on Friday.

The comprehensive victory at Mount Maunganui gave New Zealand an unbeatable 2-0 lead in the three-match series, and follows their 3-0 sweep of the 50-over matches.

With Munro in sublime form, hitting seven sixes and as many fours in his whirlwind innings, New Zealand posted a daunting 195-7.

Bangladesh in reply were all out for 148 in the 19th over.

Sabbir Rahman and Soumya Sarkar made a bold attempt to run down the target after Bangladesh slumped to 36-3 in the fifth over.

The pair piled on 68 off 40 deliveries, including 21 off a Colin de Grandhomme over before a spectacular collapse in which seven wickets fell for 44 runs.

With Sabbir and Soumya scoring with ease, and the required run rate after 10 overs at 9.3, New Zealand were forced to bring back Trent Boult, their main strike bowler, earlier than expected for his third over.

Boult immediately removed Soumya for 39 and Sabbir fell to Ish Sodhi for 48 to start a slide that saw Bangladesh all out with 11 balls remaining.

Bangladesh, needing to win to keep the series alive, won the toss and opted to bowl first on a ground where the side batting second has traditionally won.

They made the best possible start with opener Luke Ronchi dismissed first ball, but the game was immediately taken away from them when Munro arrived at the crease.

Kane Williamson (12) and Corey Anderson (four) did not hang around long but Tom Bruce joined Munro to form the backbone of the innings with a 123-run stand for the fifth wicket in just 67 balls.

Bruce, in only his second international, was unbeaten on 59 at the close of the New Zealand innings.

The third and final match in the series is again at Bay Oval on Sunday, to be followed by Tests in Wellington and Christchurch.
New York (AFP) - Representatives of two indigenous groups have filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany seeking reparations for the genocide of their peoples by German colonial rulers over a century ago in what is now Namibia.

The suit filed by the Ovaherero and Nama people on Thursday also demands that their representatives be included in negotiations between Germany and Namibia on the issue.

The two countries have been in talks about a joint declaration on the 1904-05 massacres.

While Germany has acknowledged a genocide occurred, it has repeatedly refused to pay direct reparations, saying that its development aid worth hundreds of millions of euros since Namibia's independence from South Africa in 1990 was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

The plaintiffs said they were bringing the class action suit "on behalf of all Ovaherero and Nama worldwide, seeking reparations and compensation for the genocide" suffered at the hands of the German colonial authorities.

They said they were also seeking a declaration of their right "to be included in any negotiation between Germany and Namibia" and that no settlements can be reached unless they are among the signatories.

In Berlin, foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said his office had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on what it entailed.

But he pointed to the negotiations launched around two years ago with Windhoek over the joint declaration, which he said were aimed at plotting "a common path for the future" on the issue.

"The talks with the Namibian side are going well in our view. The talks are not easy because the topic is a difficult one but they are being held in a spirit of trust and mutual understanding," said the spokesman.

The dispute harkens back to a period in the late 19th and early 20th century when South West Africa, now known as Namibia, was a German colony.

The suit alleges that from 1885 to 1903 about a quarter of Ovaherero and Nama lands -- thousands of square miles -- was taken without compensation by German settlers with the explicit consent of German colonial authorities.

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It also claims that those authorities turned a blind eye to rapes by colonists of Ovaherero and Nama women and girls, and the use of forced labor.

Tensions boiled over in early 1904 when the Ovaherero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

The suit alleges that as many 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people died in a campaign of annihilation led by German General Lothar von Trotha.

The plaintiffs include Vekuii Rukoro, identified as the paramount chief of the Ovaherero people, David Frederick, chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association, and the non-profit Association of the Ovaherero Genocide in the USA, Inc.
Naomi Campbell has revealed that she was the victim of a violent robbery in Paris  and likened her traumatic experience to the attack on Kim Kardashian West last fall.

In an appearance on Thursdays Wendy Williams Show, where she opened up for the first time about the 2012 incident.

The topic came up when Williams was speaking with the 46-year-old supermodel about her friendship with Kardashian West  and photo the pair took in the City of Light just two days before West was tied up, gagged, held at at gunpoint, and robbed of nearly $11 million worth of jewelry on October 3.

I sympathize with her a lotbecause in 2012, I was attacked in Paris, Campbell said, to the shock of both Williams, 52, and the audience.

They followed me from the airport, she continued. They attacked me  the opened my car door and said Naomi Campbell, were going to kill you. 

Campbell was traveling by herself at the time, having just taken a plane from Switzerland to Paris where she was visiting friend and shoe designer Azzedine Alaia. It was like one hour, she said. I didnt call a security because I thought it was just a quick trip.

She knew something was up the moment she arrived at the airport and went to get in her car. I went to the car and it wasnt my normal driver, Campbell recounted. Which is weird because he had the window rolled down. It was November and it was right before Thanksgiving, and all the windows were down  it was freezing cold in November. And I was like, Wait a minute, this is weird. 

RELATED VIDEO: Kim Kardashian West Returns to Social Media with Family Photo 3 Months After Paris Attack

On the way to Alaias home, Campbell said she wanted to stop at a pharmacy outside Alaias shop.

It was then that robbers opened the car doors, trying to steal her purse. Campbell fought back.

Am I going to let this guy take my bag with all my passports, or am I going to fight for it? she asked herself. And my decision was, Im not letting my bag go.

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In the interim  you lose sight in a very split moment, she continued. I dont know if Id ever do again in hindsight.

Alaia rushed outside outside to help, Campbell said,  saved me, basically.

Looking back, Campbell believes the driver was in on the whole thing.

I was in the car with blacked out windows, she told Williams, explaining that he didnt lock the door to help the robbers. Its a whole ring thats been happening for a few years now. So I very much sympathize for , and I felt for her right away. And I hated hearing these stories that it wasnt true. It was absolutely true and it happened to me.

Campbell said she kept her story out of the press and on the down-low because she wanted privacy. I didnt make it so public. I didnt want it to be.

She added that she and Kardashian West are not the only ones who have been robbed in the past. Its happened to a few other people  but its not for me to say, that are well-known also.

As for that photo, Campbell looked back on it with happiness.

We didnt plan this actually, she said, remaking on an Instagram shot of the two flipping their hair side-by-side one another. We were in Paris I was in Hermes, then Kim showed up. And shes actually straightforward. She was like, Im inspired by your hair. And she tells you!

I like Kim a lot, Campbell added. Shes a very sweet person. And in fact, all of are very well mannered. Very sweet, very polite. And Ive gotten to know Kim in the last three years, and shes a very sweet girl.

The Wendy Williams Show airs weekdays in syndication. Check local listing.




2017 has made a promising start for astronomers. At the ongoing 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas, two exciting discoveries involving NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory were announced Thursday.

One discovery was presented as a breathtaking image of thousands of black holes, made using data collected over 7 million seconds, or about eleven and a half weeks, of Chandra observations. Representing an area called Chandra Deep Field-South, the deepest X-ray image ever shows the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen. Using the same density, from our perspective on Earth, an area the size of the full moon would have about 5,000 of them, and the entire sky would have about one billion supermassive black holes.

Many of the black holes seen in the image date back billions of years, their formation traced to soon after the Big Bang. Using data from the image, researchers found that these black holes grew in bursts, rather than by slowly accumulating matter, about one to two billion years after the Big Bang.

SupermassiveBlackholes

Photo: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B.Luo et al.

Astronomers studying the data also theorize that the seeds for these supermassive black holes had masses of about 10,000 to 100,000 times the sun, which could explain how these objects grew so quickly in the early universe to reach masses of up to a billion times the sun.

With this one amazing picture, we can explore the earliest days of black holes in the Universe and see how they change over billions of years, Niel Brandt of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, who led a team of astronomers studying the deep image, said in a statement.

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A survey paper on the Chandra Deep Field-South will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

The other interesting discovery announced Thursday was that of the first observed instance of a supermassive black hole eruption being swept up into the collision of two galaxy clusters. Using observations from Chandra and a number of other telescopes from around the world, it was found that the phenomenon led to the creation of a galactic particle accelerator, which could explain previously inexplicable swirling structures seen in radio data.

Individually, both supermassive black holes and colliding galaxy clusters are among the most powerful phenomena in the universe, but they had never been observed clearly linked together.

The galaxy clusters, called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412, are about two billion light-years from Earth, and are very massive, with about a quadrillion (a million billion) times the mass of the sun each. A supermassive black hole within one of the clusters produced a magnetic funnel that accelerated some of the inflowing gas particles away from the black holes vicinity in the form of a high-speed jet. When the particle in the jet encountered the gigantic shockwaves produced by the collision of the two clusters, they were accelerated again.

GalaxyClusterCollision

Photo: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. van Weeren et al; Optical: NAOJ/Subaru; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT

Its almost like launching a rocket into low-Earth orbit and then getting shot out of the Solar System by a second rocket blast. These particles are among the most energetic particles observed in the Universe, thanks to the double injection of energy, Felipe Andrade-Santos of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-author of a paper in Nature Astronomy, said in a statement.

Related Articles
The 20th Century Fox film "Hidden Figures" tells the untold story of the African-American women who worked for NASA as "human computers" in the early days of space race.

The movie, which opened wide in U.S. theaters on Friday (Jan. 6), recreates the settings and portrays some of the real-life people who made it possible for the United States to launch its first astronauts into space. "Hidden Figures" takes its audiences into the behind-the-scenes work of the Space Task Group at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and introduces them to mathematicians Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae).

The film as a whole is a nod to NASA's early years, but the filmmakers also included several "hidden" tributes to other history-making individuals, iconic photographs and even a few authentic artifacts. Here are five space history "Easter eggs" you might not catch in "Hidden Figures." ['Hidden Figures' Probes Little-Known Heros of 1960s NASA (Gallery)]

(Fair warning: Although none of the details below directly disclose the plot of "Hidden Figures," there are mentions of specific movie scenes that are minor spoilers.)

1. Hidden artist

Though "Hidden Figures" primarily focuses on the "colored computers," the African-American mathematicians are not the only trailblazing women celebrated in the movie.

In a brief scene that goes by quickly, astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) is shown posing with his Mercury spacecraft for a reporter's photo while a woman dressed in coveralls kneels beside the capsule holding a paintbrush and small can. The scene is based on a NASA photo showing Glenn with spacecraft logo artist Cece Bibby.

"That's one of my favorite easter eggs in the movie," said Bill Barry, NASA's Chief Historian.

Cecelia "Cece" Bibby, who died in 2012 at the age of 84, was recruited by Glenn to hand-paint the insignia on the outside of his Mercury spacecraft, Friendship 7. As such, she was the first and only woman to ascend the gantry and go inside the "white room" that surrounded the capsule on the launch pad.

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In the movie, the scene is moved to inside a hangar, but otherwise is fairly faithful to the historic image, down to the McDonnell company logo on the back of Bibby's coveralls.

The scene also includes a second Easter egg: the woman who portrays Bibby is Cyndy Powell, Glen Powell's mother.

ohn Glenn (Glen Powell) and Cece Bibby (Cyndy Powell) pose for a reporter's photo in "Hidden Figures." 20th Century Fox

2. 'Shoe-in' of a set

In its recreation of NASA, "Hidden Figures" includes sets that are based on real locations, like the Mercury Mission Control, but also features settings the filmmakers designed to make the movie more visually interesting.

"Langley was a series of red brick buildings, all with cinder block walls, and that is very good as a work environment but it is not necessarily the most interesting thing to look at when you are making a movie," stated production designer Wynn Thomas in an interview with collectSPACE.

One location used in the film however, perfectly combined authenticity with aesthetics: the wind tunnel where aspiring engineer Mary Jackson (Monae) gets the heel of her shoe stuck in a grate before a test of the Mercury spacecraft.

The wind tunnel looked real because it was real.

"Fortunately, there is a Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Georgia that has a wind tunnel that they had not changed since they first built it, so it was period correct," described Thomas. "And we were very lucky, the timing was perfect for us, because they were about to fix it up  gut it, tear it up and put in a new one."

A painting that hung at the real Langley Research Center is seen in the background in "Hidden Figures." NASA

3. Want not, waste not

Most of the scenes in "Hidden Figures" that are presented as being at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, were filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, at Morehouse College and at area locations. But that does not mean that a bit of the real NASA facility did not make it into the movie.

"In the movie, when Johnson (Henson), Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) and Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) are standing in the lobby discussing if Johnson can join them in a meeting, you can see in the background two paintings of airplanes," said Barry. "They originally hung in the main headquarters building at Langley."

Today, that building is occupied by the Air Force, which no longer wants them, so NASA was  and at last check, still is  planning to excess them.

"The paintings are of the history of aviation, starting with Icarus and going up to jet airplanes," said Barry. "It just so happened the filmmakers were looking for things to add an atmosphere of NASA to the set and I knew about the three paintings heading for disposal." (Only two paintings appear in the film as the third was damaged.)

"So they diverted them to the movie," he said, noting there was a lot of legal paperwork involved. "But actual paintings the were hanging at Langley do appear in the movie.

Continue reading at collectSPACE for the 4th and 5th Easter eggs in "Hidden Figures."

Follow collectSPACE.comon Facebookand on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2017 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

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Siauliai (Lithuania) (AFP) - French jets have been engaged in a game of cat and mouse with Russian fighters in the skies above the Baltic states, as NATO keeps a close eye on Russia's ambitions.

Four French Mirage jets this week completed a four-month tour of duty in Lithuania -- and their crews were busy, engaging with Russian planes on 23 occasions.

"We use the term 'intercept' but it is better to say 'identify' and 'observe'," Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Diakite told AFP at the base in the freezing surroundings of Siauliai in northern Lithuania.

"The Russians take care to remain in international airspace, flying along the Baltic area without going into it. They have a right to be there, but so do we," he said.

"So we take off to have a look, identify the plane and photograph it, to show we're there."

Russian planes have been flying close to NATO's northern border for several years now, and the number of flights increased after the Ukrainian crisis started in 2014.

"It's a little game, a demonstration of strength to show that they are back after their fleet underwent large-scale modernisation," said General Olivier Taprest, commander of France's aerial defence, who took part in a ceremony in Siauliai to mark the end of the deployment.

NATO radars regularly pick up Russian Sukhoi fighter-bombers, Antonov transport planes and strategic long-range Tupolev bombers crossing the so-called Omega Line, NATO's self-imposed line that runs from the north of Norway. Crossing it triggers alerts at NATO bases and planes are scrambled.

Tupolev bombers were spotted three times in the final months of 2016, flying over the Baltic states and to the west of the British Isles.

A year earlier, in November 2015, Tupolevs were even recorded flying around Ireland and across the Mediterranean to drop bombs in Syria before heading back to Russia through Iranian airspace.

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It was done, the French officers said, merely as a show of force to the Americans.

"It was completely useless from a tactical point of view, but it sent a message: if you calculate the distance flown, it shows you could reach New York," General Taprest said.

- Guard dogs -

NATO's jets are rather like guard dogs kept behind a fence, without ever actually biting or even barking -- their presence is to show Moscow that the transatlantic alliance will defend its members' skies and approaching the limits of that will provoke a reaction.

The procedure is strictly ordered.

The two "intercept" jets first fly to within a kilometre (half a mile) behind the "bogey", as an unidentified plane is called. Then one of them moves next to the wing of the target at a distance of between 300 metres (yards) and 50 metres.

The aim, clearly, is to let the pilot know he is being watched.

"If it's night-time, we shine a light into their cockpit," one of the French pilots, who wanted to be identified only by his nickname "Rom's", told AFP.

"Sometimes they respond with their decoy flare, sometimes they don't. Then we switch to autopilot to allow us to take photographs which are then sent to the military command."

If the Russian plane does not deviate from its course and remains in international airspace, no further action is taken.

However, if the plane intrudes into NATO airspace, the response ratchets up in several steps, starting with the firing of a decoy flare until actual warning shots are fired. The final response would be launching a missile to down the plane.

"We can try to contact the Russian pilot over the radio on the aeronautical emergency frequency. Sometimes they reply," Rom's said.

When pilots fly side-by-side at a distance of 50 metres, they can see each other up close and can even signal to one another.

"But most of the time they don't look at us. They have their path to follow and they don't deviate from it," he added.
Jerusalem (AFP) - A lawyer for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday there was "nothing of substance" in allegations he illegally accepted gifts from rich supporters.

Police on Thursday questioned Netanyahu for five hours at his Jerusalem residence as part of a corruption probe, the second such interrogation in four days.

"It is clear that there is nothing of substance in the suspicions," attorney Jacob Weinroth said in a statement.

Weinroth did not directly refer to the police suspicions against his client, but referred throughout to media allegations.

Among them is a report by privately owned Channel Two television saying police suspect that over the course of seven or eight years Israeli businessman, Hollywood producer and Netanyahu friend Arnon Milchan sent him boxes of expensive cigars with a total value of tens of thousands of dollars.

It said police also suspect that Milchan gave Netanyahu's wife Sara pink champagne priced at about $100 a bottle.

According to Haaretz Newspaper, Milchan owns a 9.8-percent stake in Israeli Channel 10 television, a competitor to Channel Two.

Forbes magazine lists his net worth as $5.8 billion.

Milchan has produced many films, including the Julia Roberts blockbuster "Pretty Woman".

Weinroth's statement said, without confirming the report, that there was no law against having generous friends.

"Any reasonable person understands that if a close friend brings his friend cigars as a gift there is not and cannot be any shred of prohibition, any trace of criminal offence."

Haaretz said that Milchan is "also a partner and acquaintance of Australian billionaire James Packer, whose name has also been linked to the case involving the perks."

It said that Milchan had given testimony to the Israeli police.

The probe has raised questions over whether Netanyahu, 67 and in his fourth term as prime minister, would eventually be forced to resign.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing, saying repeatedly that nothing will come of the investigation "because there is nothing".
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday welcomed the US House of Representatives' condemnation of a UN reprimand of Israel's settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

"After the outrageous anti-Israel resolution at the UN, the US House of Representatives voted (Thursday) resoundingly to support Israel and reject this one-sided resolution," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Last month's landmark resolution in the United Nations Security Council demanded that "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem."

The Council also stated that the settlements have "no legal validity" and are "dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution."

In a rare and telling gesture the United States did not use its veto and instead abstained, enabling the adoption of the first UN resolution since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy.

Thursday's congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

Ahead of Trump's January 20 inauguration, the Obama administration's UN abstention was a fresh bone of contention after years of friction between the outgoing president and Netanyahu, who hinted that Obama was out of step with his country.

"I want to thank the US House of Representatives which reflects the tremendous support Israel enjoys among the American people," he said.
EXCLUSIVE: Things between Netflix and 20th Century Fox got very personal today over personnel at the heart of Foxs claims that the streaming service illegally poached two of its executives. With allegations of immigration status threats, salary low-balling and Fox brass calling Netflix is public enemy number one, the home of House of Cards on Thursday filed paperwork in Los Angeles Superior Court opposing Foxs efforts to blunt its cross-complaint in what looks to become a legal Battle of the Somme.

Back on September 19, 20th Century Fox and Fox 21 TV Studios, run by Bert Salke, went after Netflix in a lawsuit alleging intentional interference with contractual relations after the streaming service hired Marco Waltenberg and Tara Flynn, even though both execs were still under contract at Fox. Needless to say, Netflix didnt take the shot across the employment-contract bow lightly and, several filings later, fired back today with even more brazen vigor.

I gave notice of my intention to leave Fox 21 in a conversation with Mr. Salke on about August 17, 2016, says Flynn of her intent to take up Netflixs on its offer of employment as a Director in the Originals department in a declaration submitted Thursday, part of a slew of filings from Netflix lawyers. Mr. Salke responded by telling me they are not going to let you out of your contract,  she added. When I told Mr. Salke I was not asking for his permission, but was leaving, he asked where I was going. When I told him I had accepted a job with Netflix, he told me Netflix is public enemy number one. 

Waltenberg, now a Director of Partner Marketing for Latin America at Netflix, lays out a similar tale of a harsh environment at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp in his declaration filed January 3  in his case financially and geographically.

In 2012, I asked my supervisor for a raise, said Waltenberg, who spent almost a decade at Fox Film starting in Brazil and in Los Angeles since 2008. At the time, I was in the U.S. under a visa, but was nearing the time when that visa could not be further renewed, he notes. I needed a green card to remain in the U.S. and continue working here. As I understood it, my employer needed to participate as a sponsor for the green card. In response, the head of Human Resources for the International division at the time, told me that not only would I not get a raise, the company had no obligation to sponsor my green card, and that it was not company policy to sponsor all green cards, or words to that effect, Waltenberg added. II was shocked by the statement, and understood that she was threatening to have me deported from the U.S. I withdrew the request for a raise, and I received my green card in August of 2013.

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The notion of threat also arose for Waltenberg in November 2015, when he told his Fox bosses of his aim to exit for Netflix  where he says my compensation would be more than twice what I had to accept at TCFFC.

I asked to speak to the chain of command on that decision, and started by speaking with the President of International Marketing, who was my supervisors immediate superior, says Waltenberg in his declaration. He told me that we are never going to let you out of your contract; Netflix is coming after everyone in this floor,  the declaration states. He also told me that he heard that Netflix is a tough place to work, and that I would be unhappy there.

A suspended Waltenberg was escorted out the TCFFC building on January 15, 2016 and told to think about his situation and return to work the following week. He started working at Netflix on January 25, 2016.

Seeking a better deal at Fox 21 with legal help is what seemed to be the tipping point for Flynn back in 2012.

When Mr. Salke learned that I had engaged counsel, and was proposing to negotiate different terms than were in the Fox 21 proposal, he called me into his office and screamed at me, and accused me of causing problems by hiring an attorney, and for attempting to negotiate the terms of the contract being proposed to me, Flynn says of her first round of talks with Fox 21 after she was offered a deal that essentially locked her into an executive gig at the joint for three years with a salary of $75,000. He instructed me to take what the company was offering, Flynn adds, noting that two male employees who previously held her position were paid considerably more.

Eventually, after several high-wire contract talks and extension options over the next three years, Flynn ended up with a salary offer of $190,000  far less than the $250,000 she thought she deserved and, though she accepted the deal in August 2015, it left her seeking to broaden her employment horizons outside of Fox.

Both Waltenberg and Flynns declarations outline a prolonged and unpleasant process of trying to extricate themselves from their respective Fox contracts with repeated assertions by bigwigs at the studio that they wouldnt be let go as they desired.

Netflixs action is not based on Foxs litigation activity, said Netflix in its 18-page opposition Thursday to Foxs December 7 demurrer and anti-SLAPP motion against the streaming services October 19 cross-complaint. Instead, the filing at Santa Monica courthouse today continues, it centers on Foxs widespread use of unlawful fixed-term employment agreements with business employees who do not provide services of a special, unique, unusual, extraordinary, or of intellectual character, as defined by California law. In language familiar to those familiar with the paperwork back and forth so far in this matter, Netflixs attorneys added, Foxs use of, and practices associated with, the fixed-term agreements violate Business and Professions Code  16600, which codifies Californias strong public policy favoring employee mobility.

Foxs widespread use of these unlawful contracts not only restrains employee mobility, it also depresses wages, chills competition, and unfairly harms competitors like Netflix, who do not engage in such unlawful conduct, the streaming service notes.

These contracts, which are based on a model developed for studio talent in the 1940s, and which Fox now has extended over time to unlawfully bind rank-and-file corporate employees, suppress employee mobility, to Netflixs detriment, the 17-page anti-SLAPP opposition filing also notes. Foxs misleading and unjustified characterization of the Cross-Complaint leaves all of this out, selecting instead a collection of stray phrases, stripped of their context in the pleading.

With obvious wider employment law implications for California, a hearing on the motions is scheduled for January 19. However, Im hearing that might now be delayed.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLPs Lynne Hermle and Karen Johnson-McKewan are representing Netflix in the matter. Having just come off working for President-elect Donald Trump in his now-settled messy Trump University case, Daniel Petrocelli of OMelveny & Myers LLP is representing the Fox parties, with OMelveny & Myers Molly Lens and J. Hardy Ehlers also working on the case.

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LINTHICUM, MD / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / NFM Lending is proud to announce that it was ranked one of the 50 Best Companies to Work For by Mortgage Executive Magazine. This is the fourth year in a row that NFM Lending has been honored with this accolade.

Mortgage Executive Magazine conducted an extensive online survey of more than 10,000 Mortgage Loan Originators (MLOs) from over 200 mortgage companies and banks. The survey was limited to licensed MLOs who were presently employed by the companies they were rating. The survey asked participants to rate the company's culture, loan processing, underwriting, compensation, management, marketing, and technology. The winning selections were based on total MLO votes and average rating score.

"The number one driver of our company is culture," said Jan Ozga, President of NFM Lending. "Many midsized and larger companies treat their employees as metrics to help achieve company goals. NFM prides itself on being a family with a common purpose, and we spend a significant amount of time and resources building a company culture that keeps the number one focus on the employee. Imagine this: our highest-ranking managers at NFM actually know all the employees by their names. As a result of making a concerted effort to know the people we work with, we have over 400 people watching our bottom line instead of just a few at the top.

If you want to build a successful company that will withstand the test of time and unpredictable market influences, then you need to start by building a great culture. All companies talk culture. Very few live it."

NFM Lending prides itself on its exceptional culture. The company has an open door policy which allows an open line of communication between management and staff. Employees are encouraged to voice their questions and concerns directly to management, so that they can be addressed promptly and correctly. In addition to a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package, NFM Lending loan originators receive ongoing support and assistance from qualified support and operations staff, and opportunities for trips and giveaways.

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In addition to this most recent award, NFM Lending has been recognized many times for its exceptional company culture. In 2016 alone, it was named one of The Baltimore Sun's Top Work Places in the Baltimore Area for the fifth year in a row; one of the Washington Post's Top Work Places in the Washington, D.C. area for the second year in a row; and a Top Mortgage Employer by National Mortgage Professional Magazine for the second year in a row. NFM Lending is proud of each member of its team, and the work they do to make NFM a Top Workplace.

About NFM Lending

NFM Lending is a mortgage lending company currently licensed in 29 states in the U.S. The company was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1998. They attribute their success in the mortgage industry to their steadfast commitment to customers and the community. NFM Lending has firmly planted itself in the home loan marketplace as "America's Common Sense Residential Mortgage Lender." For more information about NFM Lending, visit www.nfmlending.com, like our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE: NFM Lending via Submit Press Release 123
LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian militant group, which has claimed a wave of attacks on oil pipelines in the Niger Delta, said on Friday that it had asked its fighters to prepare to fight the "enemy" as authorities were not ready for dialogue. The Niger Delta Avengers had declared a ceasefire last year after staging major attacks on oil facilities crippling the OPEC member's oil output in a fight for more oil revenues to give dialogue with authorities a chance. The government has been holding talks for more than six months with Niger Delta leaders to address grievances of poverty and oil pollution in the southern region but former militants have complained that no progress has been made. "It has been evidently clear that the Nigerian state is not ready for any form of dialogue and negotiation," the Niger Delta Avengers said in a statement posted on their website. "All fighters and commands are hereby placed on high readiness in your webs of operations to hit and knock the enemy very hard," the group said. It declared the start of an "Operations Walls of Jericho and Hurricane Joshua ... to reclaim our motherland" but did not say whether this meant an end of the ceasefire or gave any details. The Avengers, like other militant groups, has split into different factions, which struggle to control their fighters, unemployed young men who work for anybody who pays them. Another former militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which had agreed to lay down arms in 2009, had said a week ago it had lost trust in the government to bring peace to the region. Those behind the pipeline attacks, which began in early 2016, say they want a greater share of Nigeria's energy wealth to go to the southern region. The frequency of attacks has diminished since President Muhammadu Buhari held talks with community leaders but there are sporadic attacks, most recently in late November. The attacks cut Nigeria's oil production, which stood at 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) at the start of 2016, by more than a third in the summer although the oil minister said in December pipeline repairs lifted output to nearly 1.8 million bpd. (Reporting by Vishal Sridhar and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Sandra Maler)
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian soldiers have found a schoolgirl who was one of more than 200 pupils kidnapped by Islamist militant group Boko Haram from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014, an army spokesman said on Thursday. The troops had found Rakiya Abubkar wandering around near Algarno, a former Boko Haram stronghold, the spokesman said. She had a six-month-old baby with her. A total of 276 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram from Chibok in 2014 in one of the most infamous actions of their insurgency. More than 20 were released in October in a deal brokered by the International Red Cross. Others have escaped or been rescued but about 200 are believed to be still in captivity. Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year-old insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The group controlled an area about the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has been pushed out of most of that territory over the last year by Nigeria's army and troops from neighbouring countries. Last month, the army said it had seized a key Boko Haram camp in its last enclave in Nigeria in the vast Sambisa forest. The jihadists still stage suicide bombings in northeastern areas and in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon. (Reporting by Lanre Ola, Alexis Akwagyiram and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Dominic Evans)
By Claire Milhench LONDON (Reuters) - Nigeria's sovereign wealth fund is setting up a company in partnership with London-based local currency guarantee firm GuarantCo to enable pension funds to invest in Nigerian infrastructure bonds, its chief executive said on Thursday. The new business will be launched in a few weeks' time and aims to overcome some of the challenges facing the financing of infrastructure projects in Africa's most populous nation. "The company will provide enhancements for infrastructure bonds, and we believe this will make an effective platform for Nigerian pension funds to invest in them," said Uche Orji, chief executive of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), which has some $1.25 billion under management. GuarantCo facilitates infrastructure development in low income countries by providing credit guarantees denominated in local currency to financial institutions and bond investors. It is funded by Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Australia, and specialises in frontier market infrastructure. Poor infrastructure and access to capital is a major bottleneck to growth in Nigeria, and the government has identified infrastructure investment as a major priority. Unlocking fresh sources of capital will help, with Nigeria's pension fund assets at $26.4 billion at December 2015, according to data from Nigeria's National Pension Commission. Orji said that currently, when municipalities want to issue bonds to fund infrastructure projects, most pension funds won't buy them because the credit rating of the issuer isn't strong enough. The new venture will provide a form of monoline insurance, giving a guarantee and allowing pension funds and insurance companies to invest. "The NSIA cannot give guarantees by itself, so we have created a company that can do this," he explained. The tie-up is the latest in a series of partnerships for the NSIA. In August it announced agreements with Old Mutual Investment Group and UFF Agri-Fund to establish two funds to invest in real estate and agriculture respectively. Orji said these could make their first investments in the first quarter of 2017. The Agri-Fund aims to improve Nigeria's food security and is seeking investments in farms, storage and irrigation infrastructure for everything from arable crops to dairy farming and fish farming. "That is more advanced in terms of being able to make an investment, and the first quarter is likely to be very busy," Orji said. The real estate fund is targeting commercial property such as offices, hospitality, logistics and industrial parks. The NSIA also signed a strategic partnership agreement with its Moroccan peer, Ithmar Capital, to co-operate on bilateral investments. These include a Trans-African gas pipeline which it is envisaged will support the creation of industrial hubs. Orji said this was an ambitious project but it would be cheaper and more effective than trying to build LNG facilities across Africa to export Nigeria's gas. With a recovery in the oil price in late 2016, and a better macro environment, Orji expects further injections into the NSIA in 2017 following 2016's $250 million additional funding. "There's been a strong commitment shown by the administration in continuing to support the fund, and even in 2016, as difficult as it was with the oil price, there was still an injection," he said. (Editing by Hugh Lawson)
North Koreans took to the streets of Pyongyang to show their support for their leader Kim Jong Un who claimed in his New Year speech that the hermit nation was in the final stages of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S.

Thousands of civilians gathered in Kim Il-Sung square, pumped their fists in the air chanting, Long live comrade Kim Jong Un and holding banners reading, Let us accelerate the victorious advance of socialism! Agence France-Presse reported Friday citing state media KCNA.

The people should regard Kim Jong-Uns New Year address as a motto of life and struggle, an official from Kims Workers Party of Korea said.

In his 30-minute televised speech ringing in the New Year, Kim said: Research and development of cutting edge arms equipment is actively progressing and ICBM rocket test launch preparation is in its last stage.

He also admitted to his shortcomings as a leader and vowed devoted efforts to improve North Korea.

The speech drew a swift response from President-elect Donald Trump who took to twitter to dismiss Kims statement on the ICBM test.

North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It wont happen! the incoming president tweeted.

The isolated country has been under United Nations sanctions since 2006 for its ballistic and nuclear missile tests. The country conducted its last test in Sept. 2016 after which the U.N. tightened restrictions against North Korea. Pyongyang had launched over 20 ballistic missiles in 2016 alone, including intermediate-range Musudan missiles.

In his Sunday speech, Kim added that North Korea will ramp up preparations for potential nuclear strikes against South Korea and the U.S., if the two nations fail to abandon their joint military exercises. The North had repeatedly accused the joint exercises as rehearsals by Seoul and Washington to invade Pyongyang.

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ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis has agreed with Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc and its affiliate Akcea Therapeutics Inc to license two experimental cardiovascular treatments in a deal which Ionis said could eventually be worth more than $1 billion. The treatments aim to reduce cardiovascular risk in patients with high levels of lipoprotein. The therapies called AKCEA-APO(a)-LRx and AKCEA-APOCIII-LRx have the potential to lower lipoprotein Lip(a) and ApoCIII by up to 90 percent, Novartis said in a statement on Friday. Ionis and Akcea are eligible to receive $225 million in near-term payments, including a $75 million up-front option payment and a $100 million equity investment in Ionis, Ionis said in a separate statement. The deal would be valued at "significantly over $1 billion" through license fees, milestone payments and royalties if both drugs are licensed and successfully commercialized, Ionis said. Basel-based Novartis said it can exercise its options to license and commercialize the two products after they hit specified development milestones and before phase 3 trials for each program begin. Novartis would then be responsible for worldwide development and commercialization of both assets. Shares in Novartis fell 14.6 percent in 2016, a steeper drop than the broader European healthcare index. (Reporting by Michael Shields and Joshua Franklin)
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Problem gamblers in New York can now receive in-patient care at six state-run addiction treatment centers.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday that the treatment centers have been granted waivers allowing them to admit people with problem gambling as their primary diagnosis. The centers traditionally accept people with chemical dependencies. The centers now have problem gambling clinicians on staff to provide inpatient services to people for up to 30 days.

"This expansion will help more New Yorkers across the state get the treatment and support they need to get their lives back on track," said Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Arlene Gonzalez-Sanchez.

The six OASAS addiction treatment centers are: Stutzman in Buffalo, Kingsboro in Brooklyn, Ward in Middletown, St. Lawrence in Ogdensburg, Creedmoor in Queens and Norris in Rochester.

The facilities accept all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.

The move to expand problem gambling treatment comes as four new casinos prepare to open in upstate New York. State lawmakers last year legalized daily fantasy sports.

"As part of New York's smart gaming policy, we are committed to making sure that individuals who need help with gambling addiction have access to services in their own communities," said state Gaming Commission Executive Director Robert Williams.
nypd

A New York City Police Department captain drew backlash Friday for saying a spike in reported rapes was "not a trend that we're too worried about" because many of the perpetrators were acquainted with the victims, and not strangers.

The 94th Precinct, in the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn, has seen a 62.5% increase in reported rapes over the last year, with 10 out of 13 reported cases in 2016 remaining unsolved, DNAinfo reported Friday.

Police attributed the lack of arrests to the fact that most rapes were committed by victims' acquaintances, adding that women who reported the attacks often stopped cooperating with investigators, according to DNAinfo.

"Some of them were Tinder, some of them were hookup sites, some of them were actually coworkers. It's not a trend that we're too worried about because out of 13 (cases), only two were true stranger rapes," Captain Peter Rose told the website.

"Every rape should be investigated. I wish we could do more," Rose said.

Rose reportedly made further comments at a community council meeting Wednesday suggesting that rapes committed by strangers to the victim were more worrying to police than acquaintance rapes.

"They're not total abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets," he said.

"If there's a true stranger rape, a random guy picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards," he added.

Rose's comments received fierce backlash from the public and city officials alike, after being circulated on social media on Friday. Sexual-violence prevention advocates frequently decry the myths that most sexual assaults are committed by strangers and that such cases are more severe than assaults committed by acquaintances.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis said Rose's comments "did not properly explain the complexity of issues involved with investigating rape complaints."

"Every report of rape is thoroughly investigated by specially trained detectives in the NYPD's Special Victims Unit. All complaints of rape and other types of sexual crimes are taken seriously whether they are committed by domestic partners, acquaintances, or strangers," Davis told Business Insider in a statement.

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A spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said "rape is rape," adding that the crime "merits no moral qualification and does not involve shades of criminality or degrees of danger."

And New York City's public advocate, Letitia James, said in a statement provided to Business Insider that she is "extremely disturbed and concerned" by Rose's comments, and called upon the police department to ensure its officers are properly trained to handle sex crimes and interact with victims.

"Too often, victims of rape and sexual crimes do not come forward because of fear that their claims wont be taken seriously, and these comments perpetuate those concerns," James said.

"I want victims to know that we believe them; we are here for them; and we will never tolerate rape or sexual assault in our society."

Statistics show that most sexual violence perpetrators are, in fact, known to the victim  just 28% of rapes are committed by strangers, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

On Friday afternoon, the women's rights group UltraViolet called upon the police department to immediately fire Rose "for his dangerous and unacceptable views."

"Captain Peter Rose and the NYPD are engaging in victim-blaming of the worst kind while judging which rapes they deem to be legitimate and which they do not," co-founder Nita Chaudhary said in a statement.

"With comments like these, it is not surprising that survivors of sexual assault dont feel comfortable reporting and cooperating with police authorities who dismiss the seriousness of violence against women."

View some of the social media responses to Rose's comments below:

It sure sounds like the NYPD is focused on rape committed by strangers: https://t.co/oHhZNt33qp https://t.co/ln5jip9sAk  Claire Landsbaum (@landsbaumshell) January 6, 2017

.@NYPD94Pct strangers raping strangers are troubling but TRUSTED individuals that rape aren't? pic.twitter.com/Npx0xfNl8e  Bae Witty (@RaeWitte) January 6, 2017

good god this is a disgusting statement from the NYPD https://t.co/qzSmD2w6j6 pic.twitter.com/vGODvSgeNX  Ben Walsh (@BenDWalsh) January 6, 2017

This is, like, an official public statement not an embarrassing secret recording. https://t.co/vHxq6t9Enf  Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 6, 2017

NOW WATCH: Here's how much the presidency ages you





More From Business Insider


By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that criticism from the left wing of his own Democratic Party helped feed into the unpopularity of Obamacare, his signature healthcare reform law.

Obama has been spending part of his last two weeks in office urging supporters to speak out against plans by Republicans - who will soon control both the White House and Congress - to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

At a town hall event with Vox Media, Obama acknowledged the politics have been stacked against his reforms, mainly blaming Republicans who he said refused to help make legislative fixes to Obamacare, which provides subsidies for private insurance to lower-income Americans who do not have healthcare plans at work.

But Obama also said Liberals like former Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders had contributed to the program's unpopularity.

During Sanders' campaign for the presidential nomination, he proposed replacing Obamacare with a government-run single-payer health insurance system based on Medicare, the government plan for elderly and disabled Americans.

"In the 'dissatisfied' column are a whole bunch of Bernie Sanders supporters who wanted a single-payer plan," Obama said in the interview.

"The problem is not that they think Obamacare is a failure. The problem is that they don't think it went far enough and that it left too many people still uncovered," Obama said.

Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Sanders, agreed that many people would rather the government "take on the private insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies" and play a bigger role in providing healthcare.

"There are many millions of Americans, including many of Bernie's supporters, who dont understand why we are the only major country on earth that does not provide healthcare as a right and they dont understand why we pay more but get less for what we spend on healthcare," Briggs said.

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Polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation last month showed 46 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare, while 43 percent have a favorable view. Americans are also split on whether the law should be repealed.

Trump and congressional Republicans have vowed to quickly repeal the law, but Obama and Democrats have argued they should reveal a replacement plan before dismantling the program.

More than 20 million previously uninsured Americans gained health coverage through Obamacare, according to the White House. Coverage was extended by expanding the Medicaid program for the poor and through online exchanges where consumers can receive income-based subsidies.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Tom Brown)
President Obama leaves office with a reputation for big-government activism. Yet the federal bureaucracy barely grew under Obama. It swelled by more under Obamas predecessor, George W. Bush, and by even more under conservative icon Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Heres how the federal payroll changed under each president going back to Eisenhower. The numbers dont include uniformed military personnel:

The big story under Obama has been the decline of the US Postal Service, which has been restructuring as email and other types of digital communication replace snail mail. The USPS has lost 107,000 workers since Obama took office, a 15% decline. Since the postal service is an independent agency that manages itself (with occasional meddling oversight by Congress), Obama probably deserves neither credit nor blame for what happens at the agency.

Excluding the postal service, the federal workforce grew by 6.1% under Obama, which is still less than the 9.9% increase under George W. Bush. But Reagans non-postal workforce grew by just 0.5% from 1981 to 1989, which was considerably below population growth at the time. So Reagan earns some conservative cred for keeping the size of government in check.

Bill Clinton presided over the biggest drop in the federal workforce of any modern president, whether the postal service is included or not. Clinton benefitted from the post-Cold War peace dividend, which allowed him to gradually shrink civilian departments that managed tense superpower relations with the former Soviet Union. Clinton also pushed a reinventing government program meant to rationalize the bureaucracy. At the same time, House Speaker Newt Gingrich spearheaded Republican pressure to trim government, even partnering with Clinton on some initiatives.

While Obama has been in office, the size of state and local payrolls has declined slightly, but not because of anything Obama did. The 2008 recession hammered state and local budgets, and municipal governments generally cant borrow to fund their operations the way Washington can. Hiring has bounced back during the recovery, but its still lower than it was when Obama took office.

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Still, Obama will also leave office with a pretty good record on job creation. Hell depart on the heels of 75 consecutive months of job gains and 11.6 million new private-sector jobs since taking office amid a deep recession. Wage growth is picking up and some economists think were getting close to full employment, or the point at which everybody who wants a job can get one.

The economy still needs more decent-paying middle-class jobs for workers without a college education, perhaps the single-biggest issue that swept Republican Donald Trump into office. Trump strongly favors deregulation, which could thin out the ranks within agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. But he has an activist agenda of his own on issues such as trade, infrastructure and energy, which might require more federal action. Maybe some of those middle-class jobs he promised to create will end up in government.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
When the United States launched John Glenn into space in 1962, it was thanks in large part to the vital work of three African-American female mathematicians: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. Their stories largely have remained untold - but that will change when Fox's drama Hidden Figures opens nationwide Jan. 6. Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer portray the notable trio in the film, with Spencer recently nabbing supporting actress Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for her performance as the resourceful and persistent Vaughan, who manages the Langley Research Center's "colored computers," as they were called.

Just before spending the holidays back home in Alabama, Spencer spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about portraying a real-life character, channeling the 1960s throughout production and speaking up about diversity in the film industry.

What were your first thoughts after you were approached for your role in Hidden Figures?

I met with [producer] Donna Gigliotti in January 2014. I'd never heard of the story before, so I first thought it was historical fiction - I just had done The Help [which is historical fiction], so it wasn't that farfetched. After doing a little research, I realized these women were real. I got a little angry that history had obscured their contributions to the space program and, with what's going on in this country today, part of me just felt sad. It was about time the world found out about them, and I wanted to be part of that telling.

Getty Images

What do you admire most about your character, Dorothy Vaughan?

She was a brilliant mathematician - she co-authored case study books and was at the forefront of coding - but there's so much about her that's not onscreen: her strength, her integrity, her sense of community. She was one of those people who found a problem that was wrong in one of her math books and wrote the company to get it changed. She was a schoolteacher and, like most teachers today, she paid for supplies out of her own pocket to ensure her students' education. And even though the family she married into was rather affluent, she wasn't a pretentious woman; she worked during the summer in a military base laundry unit so her children would have opportunities that she didn't. I had to read between the lines - just looking at pictures, I knew she was a practical woman and saw she didn't wear a lot of lipstick. I wanted to make sure I got all of that across.

Story continues

Read more: Octavia Spencer on 'Hidden Figures' Co-Star Kevin Costner: "Like Me, He's All Business"

Growing up, were you into STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects?

I'm a creative. I enjoyed math and science, but they weren't my passion. But playing a woman who influenced STEM was fun for me. I understood her work to an extent, but she's a rocket scientist and there are very few people in the world who get that type of physics and can work interchangeably in the math disciplines. It's a small group of people, and my hat is off to them. I am not a member of that club!

What kind of pressure did you feel in portraying these real-life figures and meeting their families?

We wanted to present these women in a truthful way, but in the best light possible. Only Taraji had the opportunity to meet her counterpart, so there's just no way to know if we got it right - except for their family members, so that's the first audience you want to impress. It's the biggest compliment to hear them be effusive in their praise for the film, and for my, Janelle's and Taraji's work. It's the best you could hope for. It's really humbling. To hear that we got it right makes me proud.

What were some of the challenges for you in making this film?

It's just difficult to shoot period movies when you're a contemporary woman. History hasn't been kind to black women, and at that time, we were just fighting to get our rights as citizens. Even though segregation was against federal law, [these women] didn't have the right to vote or to have a voice in the political process, and at the same time, they were doing all this work at NASA. Whenever you're a pioneer, you're not seen as just yourself, but as the whole race. These women understood that whatever they did would be an implication for all black people, so they had to hold themselves in high regard, do the work and not complain.

Playing in the '60s, as a woman of modern times, is very difficult, at least for me. I always watch [civil rights documentary] Eyes on the Prize from beginning to end to understand the mental and physical moment in history. And so there won't be any anachronisms, I don't come out of the time period; I stay in it. I listen to music of the time and I only deal with family and friends that are on the film; I don't go to the movies, and I don't do anything that's contemporary. I tend to isolate. I only come out of it when it's time for me to wrap. It's just a hard place to be, emotionally.

Read more: 'Hidden Figures': Film Review

What was it like to be part of such a big ensemble?

Even though we didn't all shoot together, we had one night where all of us had dinner together and hung out, and that was wonderful to have that moment - but then it was off to the races. It is a true ensemble piece: There were no weak links; everybody brought their A-game. And nobody signed on to this to become bazillionaires; people wanted to contribute to this story in the best way they could, by doing the best work they could. I'm thrilled to be part of this story about these women in history with this group of actors.

Assuming you take something home from each of your films, what did you take from Hidden Figures?

What I learned from playing Dorothy Vaughan is that I have a voice and that I have to use it for people who don't have a voice or whose voice is somehow subdued by whatever's happening in society. And what's happening in our industry is a lack of diversity - and when I say diversity, I mean Latino, Asian, African-American, all ages, all sizes. When I'm part of a team as a decision-maker, I have to use my voice and say, "I need women on the team, I need Latinos on the team, I need an Asian voice here because this is an Asian story."

I'm learning that as a producer and as an actress, I need to make sure that projects I'm involved in are inclusionary. Without the inclusion of Katherine Johnson, I don't know that we would've made it to space at that time. John Glenn put his life in her hands, an idea that was quite unpopular at that time. Acknowledging her at all was quite unpopular, but he did it. Everyone has something to contribute.

Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox

This story first appeared in a January standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
By Henning Gloystein

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices dipped on Friday over lingering doubts that some producers might not implement announced production cuts in an attempt to curb global oversupply.

Brent crude futures, the benchmark for international oil prices, were trading at $56.76 per barrel at 0756 GMT, down 13 cents from their close the previous day.

In the United States, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $53.65 a barrel, 11 cents below their last settlement.

Analysts said that current prices were around break-even levels for many producers, providing little reason for much bigger rises, barring unforeseen outages.

"Since the OPEC cut announcement, oil prices are above the $54 per barrel level which we believe is the... cash breakeven for the sector in 2017," U.S. investment bank Jefferies said.

Friday's dips came after prices increased the previous day following reports of supply cuts from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi coming into effect as part of efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers to curb a global supply glut.

Overall supply from OPEC in December fell only slightly to 34.18 million barrels per day (bpd) from a revised 34.38 million bpd in November, according to a Reuters survey this week based on shipping data and information from industry sources.

While traders said oil markets were well supported by the agreed cuts, they said doubts remained that all producers would fully implement planned reductions.

"The ball is in OPEC's park to deliver on the announced cuts and prove the naysayers wrong," said Virendra Chauhan, oil analyst at consultancy Energy Aspects in Singapore.

"There will be some countries who will cheat...We expect zero compliance from Baghdad... And we definitely do not expect the Kurds to join in, given that they are autonomous from the federal government," Energy Aspects said in its 2017 oil market outlook, published this week.

BMI Research said that Iraq may send some of its crude through Iran via shared oil fields, in order to nominally comply with OPEC's commitment to cut its production.

Story continues

With Iran potentially 100,000 bpd short of its OPEC production target, Iraq's 210,000 bpd planned cut could be lightened if the countries cooperated by enabling Iraqi oil to move through Iran, BMI said.

Both countries share five oil fields - North & South Azadegan (Majnoon in Iraq), North & South Yaran, and Yadavaran - which are estimated to produce around 400,000 bpd, BMI said.

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO; Editing by Joseph Radford, Kenneth Maxwell and Christian Schmollinger)
Investors in Sprint Corporation S need to pay close attention to the stock based on moves in the options market lately. That is because the January 27th, 2017 $6 Put had some of the highest implied volatility of all equity options today.

What is Implied Volatility?

Implied volatility shows how much movement the market is expecting in the future. Options with high levels of implied volatility suggest that investors in the underlying stocks are expecting a big move in one direction or the other. It could also mean there is an event coming up soon that may cause a big rally or a huge sell off. However, implied volatility is only one piece of the puzzle when putting together an options trading strategy.

What do the Analysts Think?

Clearly, options traders are pricing in a big move for Sprint Corporation shares, but what is the fundamental picture for the company? Currently, Sprint Corporation is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) in the Wireless National industry that ranks in the Bottom 41% of our Zacks Industry Rank. Over the last 60 days, no analysts have increased their earnings estimates for the current quarter, while one analyst has revised the estimate downward. The net effect has taken our Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current quarter from a loss of 7 cents per share to a loss of 8 cents in that period.

Given the way analysts feel about Sprint Corporation right now, this huge implied volatility could mean theres a trade developing. Often times, options traders look for options with high levels of implied volatility to sell premium. This is a strategy many seasoned traders use because it captures decay. At expiration, the hope for these traders is that the underlying stock does not move as much as originally expected.

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PRESS RELEASE

Istanbul Attack Points Once Again to the British-Trained Jihadis

Jan. 3, 2017 (EIRNS)The deadly News Years attack at an Istanbul night club points to the bloody hand of British intelligence. Unlike many of the previous attacks, this one was not carried out by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The Turkish media, including Hurriyet, claim that the attacker in the Istanbul night club shooting is from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, or even from among the Uyghur terrorists in China operating under the banner of the Islamic State, a.k.a. Daesh.

Yeni Safak reports that an analysis of the attack method used at the nightclub was similar in nature to the June 28, 2016 terrorist attack at Ataturk Airport. It has been predicted that the gunman responsible for the New Years Eve attack was from the same Daesh terrorist cell.

This is significant, because, at the time, the BBC reported that the June 28 attackers were from the Russian North Caucasus region, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and that they were possibly Chechen. CNN ran a similar report; Turkey itself had identified two of those attackers as Russian nationals Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov, while not identifying the third.

Lyndon LaRouche commented at the time of that June attack that the Chechen connection points to a hard-core British intelligence-controlled network. In fact, all of Central Asia, that is to say, former Soviet Union republics and the Russian Caucasus, as well as the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, are British-controlled.

Today, LaRouche again advised, to look to the hand of the British-Chechen networks for those who perpetrated the New Years atrocity.

Kyrgyzstans Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that it is investigating the possibility that the gunman was Kyrgyz.

"Our consulate in Istanbul has been instructed to investigate the news stories claiming the gunman was Kyrgyz," said the Ministrys spokesperson Aiymkan Kulukeyeva.
(WASHINGTON)  The Obama administration imposed sanctions Thursday on a son of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, saying the younger bin Laden poses a risk to U.S. national security.

The State Department said Hamza bin Laden has been added to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list after he was determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security.

Hamza bin Laden was officially named an al-Qaeda member in 2014 by his fathers successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The State Department says the younger Laden  in a 2015 audio message  called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals. In an audio message last year, he threatened revenge against the U.S. and warned Americans they would be targeted at home and abroad.

Hamza bin Laden also has called for lone wolf, or solo-operative, attacks against U.S., French, and Israeli interests in Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv.

Hamza bin Laden is actively engaged in terrorism, the State Department said, adding that terrorism designations deny individuals access to the U.S. financial system and can assist or complement the law enforcement actions of other U.S. agencies and other governments.

Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

The State Department also announced penalties against Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He served as that groups security chief and provided military and security guidance to its leadership.

Al-Banna wrote a 2010 article in AQAPs English-language magazine, Inspire, hailing the Sept. 11 attacks as virtuous, according to the State Department, and threatened to target Americans both domestically and abroad.
In the nearly 75 years since the Oscars began awarding a documentary feature, no non-fiction filmmaker has ever been nominated for director, despite being eligible for the prize.

The most obvious reason is that directing seems antithetical to the spirit of nonfiction, which is about revealing unsullied truths about the world in which we live. Documentary directors have been generally regarded as observers or journalists, rather than as creative artists, and the Oscar process has, until recently, rewarded more conservative approaches to the form.

Such prominent documentary figures as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog worked for decades before the Academy honored them. Morris The Fog of War won the 2004 Oscar and Herzogs Encounters at the End of the World was nominated in 2009. But even those films, as quirky and iconoclastic as they are, operated in the familiar spheres of journalistic interrogation and fact-filled nature docs. Its always been expected that doc filmmakers give themselves over to the subject matter, rather than make bold artistic choices.

Yet the shortlist for the 2016 documentary Oscar continues a trend toward embracing non-fiction directors as auteurs, opening up the possibility of consideration alongside their fictional counterparts.

Among the potential nominees is Kirsten Johnsons Cameraperson, a unique memoir composed of outtakes from Johnsons career as a cinematographer; Ezra Edelmans O.J.: Made in America, a kaleidoscopic 7-hour look at American culture through the prism of O.J. Simpsons rise and fall; Ava DuVernays 13th, which draws a direct line between the amendment that ended slavery and the mass incarceration of black men; Keith Maitlands Tower, an animated account of the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas; and Gianfranco Rosis Fire at Sea, the first documentary to ever win top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

If you look at the Oscar shortlist this year and compare it to the shortlist and nominations of 2002 or 2003, theyre just different, says David Wilson, the co-founder and co-director of True/False Film Fest, which has been a reliable annual showcase for innovative nonfiction since 2003. Were seeing films that are artful, pushing boundaries, and taking real risks, and [committee members] are taking them seriously. That feels like progress to me.

Story continues

One of the breakout films from last years True/False Fest, Johnsons Cameraperson, takes first-person documentary filmmaking to a startling new place. Over 15 years as a globetrotting nonfiction cinematographer, Johnson collected footage from locales as diverse as the war-torn regions of Bosnia and Darfur, a maternity ward in Nigeria, a secret prison in Yemen, and her childhood home in Wyoming, where her mother is suffering from Alzheimers disease. Without even the connective tissue of voiceover narration, Johnson creates a personal collage of her life and art that emphasizes the power of the camera to forge relationships and give a voice to the marginalized.

I feel like one of the things I was willing to do as a director, was not know what this film should be, but to pursue, with the greatest intensity and attention, the deep questions that are completely real to me and urgent in this moment in history, Johnson says.

She cites another film from this years shortlist, Weiner, about Anthony Weiners failed bid for New York City mayor, as an example of the dynamic qualities of nonfiction, which can change context and meaning both during and after filming.

When you look at Weiner, the meaning of Weiner allowing himself to be filmed in that moment changes over time. In my mind, the documentary relationship is always alive and changing. Weiner means different things now than it did, as a film, when they made it, because historical events have shifted.

The shifting of historical events also brings new meaning to Tower, an ingenious re-creation of the day Charles Whitman took the elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire for 96 minutes, killing 16 and wounding dozens more. In August 1966, the country had never experienced a mass shooting on campus, but theyve become all-too-common in recent history, and Maitlands powerful documentary celebrates the courage and humanity of those in the line of fire.

Working from a wealth of archival footage, as well as pictures he shot around campus, Maitland filmed much of the action in his backyard and composited it through the same rotoscoping animation technique that his fellow Austinite, Richard Linklater, used for Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Drawing on interviews with victims, witnesses, and other survivors, Maitland evokes the horror of that afternoon with a DIY resourcefulness that stands as one of the years shrewdest directorial achievements.

I have a 40-foot palm tree in my back yard, and that became the stand-in for the Tower, for eye-line purposes, recalls Maitland, who also synced the movements of his actors with the movement of background shots he picked up on his iPhone. All along, the guiding principle was that the more immersive we can make the experience of the film, the more empathetic our audience will be with these characters.

Maitland sees the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction filmmaking as fluid, citing the ensemble work of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson as influences along with doc directors like Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir) who conducted similar experiments. Theres been a blurring back and forth lately and I think thats a good thing, Maitland says. The grammar and language of film is only about 100 years old, so it makes sense that it continues to be written.

Compared to such singular documentary achievements as Cameraperson and Tower, O.J.: Made in America doesnt exactly reinvent the form, but Edelmans scrupulous assemblage of interviews and archival footage is radical in its own way. Edelman doesnt even get to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in the first third of film, choosing instead to set the context of Simpsons life and career within the larger scope of African-American history in Los Angeles. And the home stretch is a post-trial odyssey that few remember or witnessed, but says equally profound things about faded celebrity and black justice.

For me, in terms of this film, the main undertaking [as director] was to take this massive idea and ground it in real narrative thrust and structure, says Edelman. As a storyteller, my job was to elicit the most honest, thoughtful, colorful responses from this vast array of interview subjects. I had to figure out a way to tell a story in as engaging and thoughtful a way as possible.

Edelman credits the team responsible for the massive footage-gathering process, including producers Caroline Waterlow and Nina Krstic, but even with extensive archival images, he needed to fill in visual gaps, particularly in how he could suggest Los Angeles as a city of stark class and racial divisions.

I thought, We have to be able to capture this city from the air, and be able to show, literally, the two L.A.s., he says. [Viewers] had to understand the layout and the segregation that comes because of it.

Though the Academy may not look to documentaries for director nods any time soon, the diversity of visions in this years shortlist suggest a continued openness to where a nonfiction film can go creatively.

For Wilson, what stands out about Cameraperson, Tower, and O.J.: Made in America from a filmmaking standpoint is the range. You have three directors with three distinct visions, bringing a wholly different set of tools to the table, says Wilson. I think theyre three great films that illustrate the idea that nonfiction is not a genre. Nonfiction is a kind of storytelling, just like fiction is a kind of storytelling.

If people can get their head around it, that will be the next big advance in how people think and talk about nonfiction.

Related stories

Playback: Ava DuVernay on '13th,' Donald Trump and a Weakened Democratic Party

Oscars: Documentary 'O.J.: Made in America' Passes First Academy Test

Don Cheadle, Michael Ealy Talk Art and Activism at Cinefamily's Blackout Black Friday Event
7-Eleven Taiwan has teamed up with French cookware Le Creuset to roll out a set of cutlery and homeware collection for its latest redemption programme. Starting December 31st, the colourful sets will be available in limited quantity at 150 participating 7-Eleven stores across Taiwan.

Source

Premium French cookware manufacturer Le Creuset is famous for its cast iron and stainless cookware, bakeware, pots, pans and kitchen and bar tools. Its products have become increasingly popular with young women in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which also launched a similar redemption programme in April 2016.

To redeem, buyers will need to collect five stamps at the 7-Eleven outlets. A minimum spending of TWD 79 (about S$3.55) will earn you 1 stamp, with an additional 1 stamp for every TWD 39 (about S$1.55) thereafter.

Here are the items you can get your hands on at Taiwans 7-Eleven stores:

Microwavable Lunchboxes

le creuset x 7-11 Taiwan - order via travellers

Source

These Le Creuset lunchboxes are not only convenient to pack your clean-eating meal or your grandmothers home-cooked food, they are also highly durable. They have a capacity of 650ml and can withstand temperatures of up to 100C. The multi-layered box allows you to separate your proteins from your vegetables, and comes in four vibrant colours.

Available for redemption at TWD 99 (about S$4.50) with 5 stamps.

Utensils

le creuset x 7-11 Taiwan - order via travellers

le creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan - order via travellers

le creuset x 7-11 Taiwan - order via travellers

The Le Creuset range of cutlery features four utensils in eight designs. The fork, spoon, knife and chopsticks comes with their own unique matching cover which are mini versions of Le Creuset kitchenware. They can also be used as a rest! Youre not going to find this adorable collection anywhere else.

Available for redemption at TWD 79 (about S$3.50) with 5 stamps.

Placemats

le creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan - order via travellers

Source

le creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan

These are multi-functional as a placemat or as a holder for your cutlery. It rolls out into a 43cm by 29 cm placemat, but also has pockets at the corner to slot your utensils in. You can then wrap them for easy transport. They come in four colours!

Story continues

Available for redemption at TWD 99 (about S$4.50) with 5 stamps.

Coolers

le creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan

le creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan - buy via travellers

These large coolers are PEVA liner insulated, and are heavy duty. The 36cm by 21.5cm by 24cm tub can withstand 15kg worth of contents. Perfect for that large picnic party! The coolers are released in a limited quantity of 60,000 sets, and are selling out very quickly  so hurry!

Available for redemption at TWD 399 (about S$17.80) with 5 stamps.

For more information Le Creuset x 7-Eleven, read: https://www.7-11.com.tw/event1/2016lecreuset/spot.html

LE CREUSET LE CREUSET     https://goo.gl/gCwwsOLE CREUSET650ML////LE CREUSET5 > https://goo.gl/DfVmvj Posted by 7-ELEVEN on Friday, 30 December 2016

Airfrov travellers are offering to help you bring them back to Singapore from 7-11 Taiwan.

Click I want it too in the link below to copy requests, a traveller will offer help shortly!

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The post Packing lunch made easy with Le Creuset x 7-Eleven Taiwan appeared first on Airfrov Blog.
Around a hundred women have gathered in a community centre in Peshawar, the heart of Pakistan's fabled northwest -- but they are conversing in a dialect incomprehensible to the Pashtun ethnic group that dominates the region.

Instead they are exchanging anecdotes and ideas in their native Hindko (literally, "the language of India") at a conference organised to promote the increasingly marginalised language.

Pakistan's 200 million people speak 72 provincial and regional tongues, including official languages Urdu and English, according to a 2014 parliamentary paper on the subject that classed 10 as either "in trouble" or "near extinction".

According to scholars, Hindko's decline as the foremost language of Peshawar city began in 1947 when Hindu and Sikh traders left the city after the partition of British India.

Known for its curious aphorisms such as "Kehni aan dhiye nu, nuen kan dhar" ("I'm talking to my daughter, my daughter-in-law should listen") -- which is meant to convey a harsh message but indirectly), it only has some two million speakers across Pakistan as opposed to Pashto's 26 million.

It has also become a minority language in the city of its birth.

"Years and years of political unrest in Pakistan's northwestern region and Afghanistan have adversely impacted our language and it has lost grounds to Pashto," Salahudin, Chief Executive of the Gandhara Hindko Board which organised the event, explained.

Some three million mainly Pashto speakers fled war from neighbouring Afghanistan over the past 35 years, while others are more recent migrants from other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkwa province.

- Loss of culture -

The most endangered of Pakistan's dialects are now spoken by only a few hundred people, such as Domaaki, an Indo-Aryan languages confined to a handful of villages in remote northern Gilgit-Baltistan.

Even regional languages spoken by tens of millions like Sindhi and Punjabi are no longer as vigorous as they once were.

Story continues

"There is not a single newspaper or magazine published in Punjabi for the 60 million-plus Punjabi speakers," wrote journalist Abbas Zaidi in an essay, despite it being the language of the nationally revered Sufi poet Bulleh Shah and the native-tongue of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

English has been seen as the language of the elite in Pakistan since the country was founded.

It is used at the highest official levels, despite the fact this excludes the majority of Pakistanis -- many of whom, as a consequence of low literacy rates, do not speak English well or at all, according to leading linguist Tariq Rahman.

Urdu, the most common national tongue and spoken as a second language by the majority of Pakistanis, has been relegated to the middle- and lower-level halls of power, while the widely spoken regional languages -- usually native to their speakers -- are not even taught in schools.

"The result is an underclass that remains out of any public policy making, its upward mobility increasingly limited, and harbouring a deep sense of inferiority," wrote Urdu poet Harris Khalique in a research paper.

"A majority of Pakistanis is unable to recognise car registration plates, many road signs that are only in English, the signboards of shops and offices."

- Taking a stand -

Some language activists have taken a stand, such as Rozi Khan Baraki, a champion of the Urmari language of South Waziristan tribal zone that claims some 50,000 speakers.

At its peak in the early 16th century, the language flourished across much of Afghanistan and what is now northwest Pakistan.

"But then people in [the area] began speaking Pashto and Persian because many of the speakers of those languages migrated to the fertile lands of this region.

"Migrations have also threatened our next generation, who being Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Dera Ismail Khan, Peshawar, and Karachi have stopped communicating in their mother tongue."

Baraki said to avoid extinction, community elders have asked their people to "force their children to speak Urmari at homes, especially those who have married women who speak other languages".

"Our next generation is threatened, this language is going to die if we don't preserve it today," he said.

Rahman lauds such efforts but says the process of saving dying languages can only happen when it is taken up at a governmental level as was the case with Welsh, a regional language of Britain.

A loss of diversity can have lasting ill effects, he warns.

Those who shift from their mother tongue to assimilate "try to become clones of another group -- the one which they want to imitate, and lose respect for their former group," he said.

Children find it difficult to communicate to their elders, while folk stories and music can also fade from memory.

"There are names of herbs and local names for fruit and animals that are lost. In some cases when you lose the name of the herb the use is also forgotten," he said.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP)  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is urging Donald Trump not to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Abbas on Friday invited Trump to visit and said "We call on you not to implement your statement...because we consider it as an aggressive statement, when you say you want to move the embassy to Jerusalem."

Trump's spokeswoman has said the President-elect is determined to move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv when he takes office.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would signal U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a move that would break decades of American policy.

The fate of east Jerusalem with its holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians is at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians claim the territory as the capital of their future state.
Paris (AFP) - Sunday shopping at Paris's prestigious department stores is finally becoming a reality, giving them a much-needed shot in the arm following terror attacks that have scared away foreign visitors to the world's fashion capital.

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government has chipped away at France's laws preventing shops opening on Sunday.

Regional officials have received authority to allow stores to open more Sundays every year, but the major initiative was the creation of special international tourism zones where shops could operate on Sunday.

That was a particularly important move for Paris, a perennial favourite for tourists, but whose famous department stores and luxury boutiques lining Boulevard Haussmann and the Champs Elysees had to stay shut.

Implementation of the 2015 reform has been slowed down however as stores negotiated with unions on pay conditions. Working on Sundays remains controversial, although high unemployment and the higher wages on offer have helped to soften opposition.

Earlier this week, Printemps finally got enough union support for its wage package for Sunday openings, the last of Paris's major department stores to strike a deal.

It plans to begin opening its doors on Sundays in a few months.

Galeries Lafayette, the other major department store based on Boulevard Haussmann and a particularly popular destination for cash-rich Chinese visitors, makes its first regular opening this Sunday.

Another high-end store, Le Bon Marche, also plans to begin Sunday shopping after reaching a deal with unions last year.

The flagship BHV store near Paris city hall was the first to strike an agreement with unions in November 2015 and has been opening its doors since July last year.

Six months later, "the results are extremely positive, with sales increasing by 10 percent since the Sunday openings," BHV's management told AFP.

That beat the forecast of a 6-8 percent gain that the store made when it began Sunday shopping.

Story continues

"Since September, Sunday has become the second best sales day for BHV Marais, behind Saturday," said Galeries Lafayette group, which owns the store.

And it isn't only tourists who are availing themselves of Sunday shopping hours.

"There is undoubtedly a real appetite from the public, especially those who shop regularly in the adjacent streets in the Marais (neighbourhood where Sunday shopping has been allowed for several years under a separate exception) to drop by BHV now as well," said the company.

It also noted new clients visiting the store, both from the neighbourhood and the greater Paris region, who said they didn't have time to shop there other days of the week.

- Missing out -

In terms of jobs, Sunday openings resulted in the addition of 150 full-time posts at BHV Marais.

At Galeries Lafayette, they've already recruited 330 people to handle the Sunday openings and the total is expected to rise. And that doesn't account for the staff at the in-shop boutiques that are employed by the brands directly.

The store is targeting a 5 to 10 percent increase in sales.

The Sunday openings will help Galeries Lafayette, which like Printemps makes around half of their sales from foreign tourists, with this lucrative segment.

There are fears that many well-heeled tourists with cash to spend were preferring to spend Sundays in London or Madrid where they could shop.

According to calculations by one retail trade association, the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps shops on Boulevard Haussmann alone were missing between 168 million and 240 million euros in sales per year by keeping their doors closed on Sunday.

The two stores are hoping for a repeat of the experience of the Beaugrenelle shopping centre, located near their Eiffel Tower, which saw a 28-percent jump in visits by tourists after it began to open on Sundays.

The Sunday openings will also help the department stores make the best of a bad situation.

Paris has been struggling to lure back tourists after the November 2015 terror attacks that killed 130 people.

Tourist arrivals to France overall were down 8.1 percent in the 10 months from January to October, and in the Paris area alone, tourism revenue is expected to plunge by 1.5 billion euros this year.

The MKG Group consultancy estimated that French hotels and their restaurants lost out on 900 million euros in revenue last year due to foreign tourists staying away, with Parisian hotels bearing nearly all of the brunt of the shortfall.
Paul Rudd has a glorious mustache for his brand new Netflix movie, and were big, BIG fans

Hey friends! Maybe youre familiar with the never-aging, always-handsome, wonderfully-hilarious Paul Rudd! Hes a great guy, and thankfully, the world loves him so much we just keep putting him in more and more movies. He has a long and beautiful acting career, from Clueless all the way to Ant-Man, and now, hes going to flex his acing chops once again with an upcoming Netflix original movie!

Also, in this movie, Paul Rudd has a glorious mustache, as a perfect Paul Rudd should!

Netflix just debuted three brand new pictures for their upcoming original movie, Mute. Havent heard of Mute before? Thats okay, because here is the synopsis, and it is



:

Set in the near-future, Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) is a bartender living in the pulsing city of Berlin. Because of a childhood accident, Leo lost the ability to speak and the only good thing in his life is his beautiful girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh). When she vanishes without a trace, Leos search for her takes him deep into the citys seedy underbelly. A pair of wise-cracking American surgeons (Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux) are the only recurring clue and Leo is forced to take on this teeming underworld in order to find his love.

Oh hello, yes, we are here for this. But now its time to look at Paul Rudd during this movie, and it is







:

Mute

Ah yes, very good. Well take it. This is also not the first time Paul Rudd has sported a fabulous mustache  whether for real life, or a role. Would you like to see some pictures of Paul Rudd with a mustache? Of course you do!

Late Night with Seth Meyers - Season 2

Today - Season 62

ENTERTAINMENT-US-FILM-PREMIERE-SAUSAGE PARTY

Dior Dance for Life to Benefit the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a Program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation

Hope youve enjoyed this trip through the many mustaches of Paul Rudd!! What is your favorite Paul Rudd mustache? Be sure to watch Mute when it lands on Netflix sometime this year! Bye!
Vice President-elect Mike Pence says that the first priority of President-elect Donald Trump is to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. But Democrats say the incoming administration has nothing to replace it with, and that repealing the law will only lead to chaos.

Obamacare has failed, Pence said after a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday. Now is the time to keep our promises. Step one will be to repeal Obamacare.

Pence said Trump will sign executive orders related to repealing President Obamas signature health care law on his first day in office Jan. 20.

Today, our message is very simple, Pence said. Were going to be in the promise-keeping business.  Were going to keep our promise to the American people  were going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with solutions that lower the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government.

The Indiana governor, who was a congressman in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, said Obamas promises about the health care legislation turned out to be false.

We were told that if you like your doctor, you can keep it, Pence said. Not true.

Pences comments came as Obama was also on Capitol Hill meeting with Democrats to discuss how to block GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell similarly said repealing Obamacare was the first item on the GOP agenda.

Related: Trump trashes Obamacare as Democrats plan its defense

After meeting with Obama, freshly minted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats have a great deal of optimism that the good things that have happened in ACA are gonna stay and that Republicans dont quite know what to do with their newfound power.

Theyre like the dog that caught the bus, Schumer said. They can repeal, but they have nothing to put in its place.

The first big fight of this new Congress will be over health care, he continued. Republicans are plotting and soon will be executing a full-scale assault on the three pillars that support the American health care system: the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid. The Republican plan to cut health care wouldnt make America great again; it would make America sick again and lead to chaos.

Story continues

Trump has indicated that there are parts of the Affordable Care Act he intends to keep, and that repealing and replacing the law will be done simultaneously.

But any replace effort is likely to be complicated because the most controversial portions of Obamacare, including the requirement to buy insurance or pay a fine, help pay for the parts of the law that are supported by many Republicans, such as the requirement that insurance companies accept people with preexisting conditions.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump fired off a series of tweets saying that Republicans must make sure that expected increases in Obamacare premiums are blamed on the Democrats. He also referred to Schumer as a clown.

In response, Schumer said Republicans should stop clowning around with health care.



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By David DeKok

HARRISBURG, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Pennsylvania will close two state prisons by June 30 to help offset a projected $600 million revenue shortfall in this year's budget, state officials said on Friday.

Pennsylvania is also facing a $1.7 billion structural deficit next fiscal year. Governor Tom Wolf, whose efforts to raise taxes have failed since he took office in January 2015, has vowed to close the deficit through cuts and savings.

"We must make government more efficient to avoid broad cuts to education, job creation programs and social services for the most vulnerable," Wolf said in a statement on Friday, explaining why he "chose to invest in schools - not prisons."

Corrections officials said the affected employees, who will number between 800 and 1,100 depending on which prisons are picked, will be offered jobs at one of the 24 remaining prisons in the system.

The department will also cut in half the capacity of its halfway houses.

Despite cutting costs over the past several years, "We are again in the position where the Department of Corrections must make significant reductions because of the dire budget forecast," Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said in a statement.

He said the candidates for potential closure had been narrowed to five correctional institutions: SCI Frackville, SCI Mercer, SCI Retreat, SCI Allegheny and SCI Waymart. The two selections will be announced on Jan. 26.

Closing the two most expensive prisons, SCI Allegheny in Pittsburgh and SCI Waymart in the northeastern corner of the state, would save a total $162 million per year, according to a Corrections Department analysis document. Closing one of the other three would save $44 million to $46 million per year.

Waymart treats inmates with serious mental health problems, and Allegheny provides specialty medical care, including an oncology unit. Wetzel said closing them would present unique problems.

Pennsylvania's prisons are mainly located in rural areas and provide good-paying jobs.

Senator John Blake, a Democrat whose district includes Waymart, vowed to fight any potential closure of the facility there because of concerns over public safety and the potential loss of 700 jobs.

(Reporting by David DeKok in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Close quarters combat rehearsal

Newly-released data from the Department of Defense shows an alarming spike in the number of American personnel wounded in the fight against ISIS.

Since October, at least 14 US troops were wounded in combat operations under Operation Inherent Resolve  nearly double the number wounded since the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria began in August 2014. At least 8 Americans were killed in combat since the campaign began, while 23 have died in "non-hostile" events.

The Pentagon's quiet acknowledgement of a spike in casualties was first reported by Andrew deGrandpre at Military Times.

The increase in combat wounds  which can be caused by small-arms fire, rockets, mortars, and other weaponry, though the Pentagon does not release specifics of how troops are injured  lines up with ongoing offensives against ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul and its Syrian capital of Raqqa.

US military officials have often downplayed the role of American troops in the region, saying they are there mainly to "advise and assist" Iraqi and Kurdish personnel fighting on the front lines.

The military has more than 5,000 troops on the ground in Iraq currently, a number which has steadily crept up since roughly 300 troops were deployed to secure the Baghdad airport in June 2014.

With 15 combat injuries, the Marine Corps has the most wounded in the campaign so far. The Army, Navy, and Air Force had 11, 3, and 1 wounded, respectively.

NOW WATCH: This is how the legal marijuana industry is affecting Mexican drug cartels





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special forces

The US military spokesman for the coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria acknowledged on Wednesday that American military advisors have been knee deep in the offensive to retake the city of Mosul.

"They have been in the city at different times, yes," Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters, according to ABC News. Though, he said, "they've advised Iraqi Security Forces as they've moved forward. They remain behind the forward line of troops."

The battle to retake Mosul began in October, and Iraqi forces have encountered fierce resistance and significant casualties. For example, Iraq's elite "Golden Brigade" of special operations troops have suffered upwards of "50 percent casualties" in the fight, which could eventually make them combat ineffective, according to a Pentagon officer who spoke with Politico.

Casualties have also hit US forces as well. Since October, the number of Americans wounded in combat has nearly doubled since OIR kicked off in August 2014.

That's likely due to US forces working more closely with their Iraqi counterparts. Though US officials have often downplayed the role of American troops in the region as merely training, advising, and assisting Iraqi forces, the latest situation report from the Institute for the Study of War says that US and coalition forces have "embedded their advisors at lower-levels in the [Iraqi Security Forces]."

In other words, US special operations forces are often not remaining behind the front lines  especially considering a "front line" in the anti-ISIS fight is murky at best  but instead, are right in the thick of it with Iraqi troops.

The military has more than 5,000 troops on the ground in Iraq currently, a number which has steadily crept up since roughly 300 troops were deployed to secure the Baghdad airport in June 2014.

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Donald Trump

It's a simple enough concept. A financial adviser should be legally required to put their clients' best interests ahead of their own.

But it's actually not the law. The Department of Labor  which concerns itself with such matters because of its oversight of workers' welfare and retirement  has decided to change that.

In April, a change called the "fiduciary rule" is set to take effect. Its specific requirement is that financial advisers  who can be paid referral fees by asset managers for directing client money into their funds  must put their clients' interests ahead of theirs.

With President-elect Donald Trump's win and promises of government deregulation, the future of the rule  and Americans' retirement money  is at stake.

What is the fiduciary rule?

Currently, brokers, financial advisers, and other finance professionals don't legally have to act in a client's best interest, with few exceptions, such as those who are registered as investment advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission or in individual states. Those who are registered in this way often advertise it  it's seen as good business.

Those who aren't registered, like brokers, just have to prove that the investment is suitable, not necessarily the best option, for their client  no matter that that fund might be more expensive and provide a better commission for the adviser.

"It's kind of like if you let doctors be part of the drug companies directly and prescribe their own medicine," said Blaine Aikin, executive chairman of fi360, a fiduciary consultancy in Pittsburgh. "Unfortunately, we have a system where we've not established clarity between the sales side of financial services and the profession of financial advice."

Screen Shot 2016 12 20 at 2.58.15 PM

The conflicts of interest inherent in using advisers who aren't serving in clients' best interests may go unnoticed by those who use them, unaware that they are signing into a conflicted relationship.

Story continues

"One problem is that individuals may not be able to evaluate the quality of the advice they are given by advisers, making it difficult for them to differentiate a good adviser from a bad one," Julie Agnew, a professor at the Mason School of Business of the College of William and Mary, said in an email.

The Obama administration in a 2015 report found that conflicted advice cost savers about $17 billion a year. Despite objections, the administration pushed ahead with a rule change in April, giving fund managers a year to figure out how they would comply.

Advisers can still receive commissions under the new rule, but they have to provide a contract promising to put a client's interests first  the "best-interest contract exemption"  and receive no more than reasonable compensation. Firms will also have to clearly disclose all their compensation and incentive arrangements.

Wall Street firms are worried about this exemption because it opens them up to litigation if their clients believe their advisers have not acted in their best interest. "Retirement investors will have a way to hold them accountable," the Labor Department says.

To be clear, this rule applies only to retirement accounts like 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts, not to regular taxable accounts, with which advisers can rely on the weaker suitability standard.

When it was first raised, the rule prompted rebuttals from the financial industry. Some argued that they would face increased compliance costs and that those costs would price out smaller brokers who wouldn't be able to service smaller accounts.

Wall Street firms are also fearful of another secondary effect that would hit them where they are already hurting. The rule is expected to accelerate a shift toward passively managed funds, like exchange-traded funds, because it's easier to prove that such a product, which is cheaper, is in a retirement saver's best interest. That has already been a big issue for Wall Street, as index funds have eaten into the share of actively managed funds.

There's big money at stake here. Americans invest $7.8 trillion in IRAs and $7 trillion in 401(k)s, according to the industry's lobby group, ICI.

The Trump conundrum

Now with Trump, who has railed against government regulation of Wall Street, set to become president, expectations that the fiduciary rule won't survive have increased.

One of Trump's advisers, Anthony Scaramucci, is an outspoken critic of the rule, saying it would hurt investors because it would supposedly make it harder for people to get retirement advice; he argues, among other things, that advisers wouldn't be able to afford to service low-balance accounts. Some expect Trump will roll back the rule, and others have documented potential ways he could.

Anthony Scaramucci 3

The Wall Streeters opposing the rule have a lot at stake. Scaramucci, for example, is the founder of SkyBridge Capital, a fund of hedge funds  basically a firm that invests in other hedge funds. Last month, he told Bloomberg Television that he has hired advisors to explore the sale of the firm in case he takes up a position in the Trump administration.

He has likened the fiduciary rule to the Dred Scott case, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that denied US citizenship to black people, later explaining that he meant it was a sign of "bad governmental decisions." He has also said that Trump would repeal the rule.

SkyBridge's investors are often well-off dentists, doctors, and the like, who aren't rich enough to invest directly in hedge funds but can access them via SkyBridge with as little as $50,000  much lower than what private hedge funds normally require. Those investors often invest via private wealth platforms at the banks, and through retirement accounts.

SkyBridge pays banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup to sell its funds, according to filings. It's not alone. Blackstone, the alternatives giant with $361 billion in assets, also rewards banks that direct client money toward it, according to filings. Industry experts say that many other firms do the same.

Blackstone, for one, acknowledges the inherent conflicts that arise with this kind of setup. One of its regulatory filings says "these payments may create incentives on the part of a selling agent to view the fund favorably compared with investment funds that do not make these payments."

The fiduciary rule could put this very model of using a bank's army of financial advisers as a sales force for hedge funds at risk, especially at fund-of-funds that often end up in retirement accounts.

Morgan Stanley

"The vehicles that are set up to court high-net-worth individuals often have the IRA money," said Josh Lichtenstein, an attorney at Ropes & Gray, alluding to retirement accounts.

The fiduciary rule doesn't ban distribution fees outright, but it could make it harder for banks to accept them from hedge fund managers when they are dealing with clients' retirement money, according to Wall Street lawyers interviewed by Business Insider.

"While the [Labor Department] hasn't banned these kinds of payments, they've made it incredibly difficult to meet the conditions to allow them to proceed," said John Ryan, an attorney at Seward & Kissel.

The structure would be costly to change, not to mention it's a "lucrative" and "well-entrenched system," said Aikin, the fiduciary consultant.

It might be too late

For all the concerns about what Trump could do to the rule, it might actually be too late for him to do much to undercut the change. That's because Wall Street firms have already made the move to comply with the new standard, creating an industry shift unlikely to bend even in a worst-case scenario, experts say.

"Pragmatically, it's very difficult to step back from a rule that's so obviously needed," said Jack Bogle, founder of the index provider Vanguard Group, which is known for its low-cost offerings and is likely to benefit from the change.

Wall Street firms like Credit Suisse are predicting that the odds that the rule will be overturned under Trump have only slightly increased. The more likely scenario is that the rule's implementation will be delayed, experts say.

"President Trump cannot, by waving a magic wand or by sprinkling pixie dust, just revoke that particular regulation, even if he wanted to," Marcia Wagner, a retirement lawyer, told MarketWatch in a recent video interview.

labor department headquarters

And some DC lobbyists who backed the rule are also optimistic. One, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to expose their organization's positioning, said they had "no reason to believe this is a high legislative concern [for Trump], as opposed to tax, healthcare, and infrastructure."

The Labor Department has been pushing for the rule for several years, creating a battle between Wall Street and Main Street lobbyists. In 2011, the department withdrew a 2010 proposal after Wall Streeters made similar arguments against it. Meanwhile, groups like the AFL-CIO and AARP have called the rule a necessity to protect savers. AARP, which represents retirees, has said it plans to continue fighting for the rule.

Different kinds of financial advisors

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some financial firms that would benefit from the shift are backing the rule.

Betterment, an automated investing firm, recently took out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times imploring Trump to keep his hands off. That garnered the support of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, also a backer of the rule.

Other advocates say many retirement advisers already have chosen to act in their clients' best interests, opting to work under the fiduciary standard.

"Registered investment advisers and fiduciary retirement advisers [in the US] exist today and do very well in the marketplace," Aikin said. "We know it's possible."

'It's pretty clear who they are going to pick'

Other countries have been through this switch before. Countries like the United Kingdom and Australia in recent years implemented their own versions of the fiduciary rule.

Merrill Lynch DOL ad

At the same time, several financial firms, including Merrill Lynch, have said they would switch over, and are expected to continue to do so. Merrill Lynch even launched an ad campaign earlier this year extolling its commitment "to a higher standard for retirement accounts."

That's why many people think the industry is already heading toward a fiduciary standard.

"Despite what the new administration may do, a lot of the financial services industry is already in motion to operate under the rule," said Aikin. "I'm not sure they are going to turn back. ... There's competitive and reputational advantage, and ultimately, a business advantage" to being a fiduciary.

"If you describe to the average investor what 'fiduciary' means and you say to them, 'Would you rather have someone who is obligated to serve your best interests, or someone who is not obligated?' It's pretty clear who they are going to pick."

Or as Bogle said of Wall Streeters' aversion to change, "If it's better for Main Street, it's worse for Wall Street."

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(Adds interview with Pimco Group CIO Ivascyn, December fund performance)

By Sam Forgione

NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Investors pulled $3.2 billion from the Pimco Total Return Fund, once the world's largest bond fund, in December, bringing last year's total cash withdrawals to $16.1 billion, Morningstar data showed on Friday.

The Pimco Income Fund, which Pimco Group Chief Investment Officer Dan Ivascyn told Reuters on Friday has increased its exposure to safer securities in recent weeks, posted net inflows of $1.5 billion last month for a total cash inflow of $13.7 billion in 2016.

Pimco's U.S. open-end mutual funds collectively posted $1.7 billion in net outflows last month for 2016 total cash outflows of $16.6 billion.

Pimco Total Return, which hit a peak of $292.9 billion in assets under management in April 2013, now has $75.7 billion in assets. The Income Fund, overseen by Ivascyn and widely seen by investors and analysts as Pimco's new flagship fund, now has assets under management of $70.3 billion, according to Morningstar data.

Last year, the Pimco Total Return Fund returned 2.6 percent, lagging 63 percent of its intermediate-term peer category, according to Morningstar. For the same period, the Pimco Income Fund returned 8.3 percent, surpassing 63 percent of its multisector bond category.

In December alone, the Total Return Fund gained 0.7 percent to beat 94 percent of its peers, while the Income Fund gained 1 percent to beat 61 percent of its peers, Morningstar data showed.

The Pimco Income Fund's exposure to higher-quality securities such as U.S. Treasuries, U.S. agency mortgages, and Australian government bonds has risen significantly in the past several weeks while the fund's exposure to riskier U.S. corporate bonds has fallen, Ivascyn said.

Ivascyn said that move had been implemented given uncertainty surrounding U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's policies and because the market seemed to be factoring in an extremely low probability of recession and other sources of volatility.

Story continues

"We think U.S. Treasury bonds, high-quality bonds, are priced more fairly than at any point in the last year or so," he said. Ivascyn said that, despite Treasuries being fairly priced currently, the benchmark 10-year yield could still rise to the low 3 percent range over the next 12 months.

U.S. 10-year yields, which hit a more than two-year high of 2.641 percent in mid-December, were last at 2.419 percent.

Pacific Investment Management Co, a unit of German insurer Allianz SE, is based in Newport Beach, California. It had about $1.55 trillion in assets under management at Sept. 30.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Ilhan Omar made history this week when she began her term as the first Somali-American lawmaker in the United States.

Omar was sworn into the Minnesota House of Representatives on January 3, the opening day of its 90th legislative session.

Few people thought a campaign like Omars would be possible this election year. Muslim-Americans had been at the center of a strong political debate about immigration and terrorism.

A historic day for Muslim-Americans

Many supporters filled the Minnesota State Capitol for Omars first historic day. They were there to support Omar as she took her ceremonial oath of office.

Asad Zaman was one of the supporters present. He is the executive director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.

"The Muslim community needs a winthe ethos of America that can embrace a Somali-American, hijab-clad Muslim woman as their representative, I think that says something amazing about America."

An image of hope

Omar was born in 1982 in Somalia. But after a civil war began, she fled with her family to a refugee camp in Kenya. She immigrated to the United States in 1995.

As an adult, Omar worked on several legislative and city council campaigns. She later became the director of policy & initiatives for the Women Organizing Women Network in Minnesota.

Omar is now an image of hope for Muslims, and particularly Muslim women, around the world.

Nausheena Hussain is with an organization called Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood of Empowerment, or RISE. She spoke to the crowd of Omar supporters gathered at the state capitol building.

"We may not have shattered that glass ceiling in electing a president or head of state in our country, but for me, and the thousands of Muslim women, and women of color, Ilhan Omar is that ceiling thats been shattered for us, Hussain said.

A glass ceiling means a barrier, usually affecting women and minorities, to how far someone can grow in their profession.

Americas 2016 presidential election campaign included calls from some politicians to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the country.

However, Omar views her role in the national conversation about Muslim-Americans as a positive one.

"It sort of provides a counter narrative to say that all is not bad. That there is good, and if someone like Ilhan, who has all the odds against her, can succeed, then we are able to see that, as a country, we do have a balance of both good and bad and we just have to figure out a way to come together and make sure we are amplifying the voices of good."

Going outside the community for support

Ilhan Omar appealed to many different types of voters. She did not win a majority of the Somali-American votes in her district. More Somali-Americans voted for her opponent, Mohamud Noor. He is also from Somalia.

But Omar won more votes from people outside the Somali-American community. Asad Zaman explained that Omar practiced inclusive politics.

Shes been able to put forth a candidacy that is attractive to a largely white liberal group of voters and she has convinced them that she is the best candidate."

Omars election is giving others outside of Minnesota hope that anything is possible.

"Hearing about young people who are running for elected office in Kenya and in Somalia because they were inspired by my raceI think messages like that  truly put things into focus.

Omar says one of her biggest goals now is meeting the expectations and hopes people have for her, as she begins her work in Minnesotas House of Representatives.

Zaman says that many people outside of Minnesota will be following Omars journey and progress.

This is a big deal and I think the whole world is watching what we are doing here today."

Im Phil Dierking.

This story was originally written for VOAnews.com by Kane Farabaugh. Phil Dierking adapted this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

How do you think Ilhan Omars journey will inspire people? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

amplify  v. to increase the strength of

attractive  adj. having a pleasing appearance

counter narrative  n. an argument that disputes a commonly held belief or truth.

cycle  n. a repeating series of events or actions

focus  n. a subject that is being discussed or studied

glass ceiling  n. a barrier, usually affecting women and minorities, to how far someone can grow in their profession.

historic  adj. famous or important in history

hijab  n. a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women.

qualify  v. to have the necessary skill or knowledge to do a particular job or activity

shatter  v. to break suddenly into many small piece
NEW YORK (AP)  A police official on Thursday defended the city's intention to destroy personal records of holders of its immigrant-friendly municipal ID cards.

John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, testified in a courtroom that the ID is not a terrorist tool and that few people have tried to obtain it fraudulently or use it to commit crimes during the two years since it was first issued.

"Criminal implications over the trial period were de minimis," Miller said.

The identification cards are available to any New York City resident but were aimed particularly at people without other forms of ID, including the estimated 500,000 immigrants living illegally in the city, the nation's biggest.

In drafting the legislation for the ID, the city included a provision for destroying personal information partly out of concern about the possible election of a Republican president such as President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign promises included deporting millions of people living in the U.S. illegally.

For now, courts have ordered the city to retain the records. Two Republican state politicians sued, saying destroying the data would violate state public-records law. The city, however, announced recently it won't keep personal records from future applicants.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio has said city officials wouldn't "allow ourselves to be in a situation where those records would be turned over to the federal government."

In a hearing on Thursday in Staten Island, Miller said the ID has given identification to many people who live in the shadows and were afraid to report crimes. He also said retention of personal records by the city could lead to more cases of identity theft.

According to a recent city report, more than 1 million New Yorkers have the ID. So far, 102 fraudulent applications have been detected.

The commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Nisha Agarwal, testified that while the city was no longer keeping copies of documents like passports it maintained applications and photos.

Story continues

"We're not purging the entire database," she said.

The judge did not make a decision at Thursday's proceeding. Another hearing on the matter is planned for next week.

Municipal ID programs began in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, and have expanded to about 10 cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York's program is the most ambitious.
British police seeking to establish facts about the Christmas Day death of pop star George Michael are taking statements about the case. Thames Valley Police said Friday this is normal practice involving deaths that are "unexplained but non-suspicious."

The statement said the police investigation is "standard practice in cases such as this to allow the coroner to determine the circumstances of the death." The statement also said "contrary to media reports" on Friday, a major crime unit has not been put in charge of the investigation. "As part of Thames Valley Police's investigation on behalf of Oxfordshire Coroner into this unexplained but non-suspicious death officers are establishing facts which include taking statements," read the quote.

Michael was found dead in his country home shortly before a planned Christmas lunch.

British media reported that police were speaking to Michael's partner Fadi Fawaz, who had said he was the one who found Michael's body on Christmas Day. His manager said the 53-year-old died of heart failure. A post-mortem was inconclusive and further tests were ordered, with results expected in roughly two weeks.

Michael's death prompted much grief and recognition of his charitable contributions.

This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Pres. Obama says we appear to have seen a hate crime in the alleged attack on a Chicago man captured on Facebook. https://t.co/4ksnnwAClz pic.twitter.com/g6dcqICCHX  ABC News (@ABC) January 5, 2017

In an interview with ABC News, President Obama condemned the attack on a mentally disabled white man that was filmed in Chicago and broadcast on Facebook Live. The four black suspects  who shouted, F*ck Donald Trump! and F*ck white people!  have now been charged with felony kidnapping and hate crimes. The president singled out the suspects acts as horrible and despicable, but he doesnt think the video is a sign that race relations in the United States are growing worse. He believes that the most heinous instances of racism are simply more visible now:

I promise you, for the most part, race relations have gotten better. But I think what we have seen over the last several years, when it comes to tensions between police and communities, the internet, the horrific hate crimes that we appear to have seen on Facebook.

Obama elaborated to say that technology highlights instances of racism and makes people more aware of them, which he believes will actually help society overcome discrimination in the long run:

So part of what technology allows us to see now is the terrible toll that racism and discrimination and hate takes on families and communities. But thats part of how we learn and how we get better. We dont benefit from pretending that racism doesnt exist and hate doesnt exist.

The presidents response follows that of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who described the video as showing a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans. The four suspects are expected to appear in court on Friday for further proceedings on their hate crime charges

(Via ABC News)
Jan 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

Headlines

Top official at Brexit ministry opposed Tim Barrow as EU ambassador http://on.ft.com/2hY1fQo

Royal Mail moves to close defined-benefit pension fund http://on.ft.com/2hYoABt

Head of Barclays Japan questioned in Libor probe http://on.ft.com/2hY5U54

Overview

Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, wanted to take control of United Kingdom's negotiations with Brussels and "vigorously opposed" the appointment of Tim Barrow as Britain's envoy to the European Union, according to several officials close to the process.

The United Kingdom's Royal Mail Plc is moving forward with plans to close a 90,000-member pension fund, saying it had begun consulting workers on the future of the 7.4 billion pounds ($9.18 billion) defined-benefit scheme.

Barclays Plc's Japan boss Mark Dearlove was interviewed by the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office before Christmas as part of the agency's third criminal probe into whether the bank manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate.

($1 = 0.8063 pounds) (Compiled by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Jan 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- Donald Trump blasted Toyota Motor Corp for its plan to build a new Mexican plant, just hours after the head of the Japanese auto maker signaled a willingness to work with the new administration. http://on.wsj.com/2ihIF3G

- Apple Inc said its App Store generated record revenue of more than $20 billion for developers in 2016, as that business roughly maintained its growth rate even as iPhone sales volumes declined. http://on.wsj.com/2ihMaXF

- Struggling retailer Sears Holdings Corp has bought itself some breathing room through maneuvers that include the sale of its Craftsman brand for $900 million and the closure of 150 additional stores as it grapples with a prolonged sales slump and mounting losses. http://on.wsj.com/2ihIWTY

- Verizon Communications Inc is unsure whether it will proceed with its $4.83 billion purchase of Yahoo Inc's core business, a top Verizon executive said, weeks after the internet company disclosed a second massive data breach. http://on.wsj.com/2ihCjRK

- T-Mobile US Inc plans to eliminate additional fees and taxes on the bills for its new data plan, the latest move by the wireless carrier to differentiate itself from rivals. http://on.wsj.com/2ihxIPy

- Fox News tapped veteran journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson to replace Megyn Kelly in one of its most prominent time slots, underscoring that the cable news network has no intention of moving away from its conservative roots. http://on.wsj.com/2ihxuHZ

- A U.S. federal judge ruled that drugmakers Sanofi SA and partner Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc infringed the patent that rival Amgen Inc holds for its new cholesterol drug. http://on.wsj.com/2ihAHre

- Shake Shack Inc's chief financial officer, who successfully led the burger chain through its 2015 initial public offering, plans to leave company in March, according to a regulatory filing. http://on.wsj.com/2ihCA7g

Story continues

- Wal-Mart Stores Inc will resume accepting Visa Inc cards in its Canadian stores in the wake of a dispute over credit-card fee terms, the two companies said Thursday. http://on.wsj.com/2ihEXHg

- Samsung Electronics Co estimated that its fourth-quarter operating profit rose 49.8 percent from a year earlier, its biggest quarter of profits in more than three years, as the world's biggest smartphone maker leaned heavily on components to drive growth after billions of dollars were wiped out from a massive recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. http://on.wsj.com/2ihG9dD

- Online advertising network Taboola has acquired Israel-based website personalization technology firm Commerce Sciences, the companies said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. http://on.wsj.com/2ihD90F (Compiled by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru)
LOS ANGELES (AP)  He's charged with murder and is looking frail in a wheelchair, but multimillionaire Robert Durst found himself laughing in a Los Angeles courtroom Friday during the most dramatic moment of a lengthy hearing mired in technical legal arguments.

The 73-year-old real estate heir chuckled as a prosecutor bit back at defense attorneys and laid out his chief theory in the case.

"That man kills witnesses," prosecutor John Lewin said. "When pushed into a corner, he murders people."

Durst has pleaded not guilty to one count of first-degree murder in the 2000 fatal shooting of his best friend, Susan Berman. Prosecutors contend that Durst killed her because she was prepared to speak with police about his wife Kathleen Durst's 1982 disappearance in New York.

Lewin also pointed to the 2001 killing of Durst's elderly neighbor in Galveston, Texas. Durst was acquitted of murder after testifying that he shot Morris Black in self-defense and then chopped up the body and dumped it in the sea.

Friday's hearing centered on whether prosecutors should be allowed to obtain early testimony from two witnesses in the Berman case because Durst poses a danger to them.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Windham ruled that the witnesses can give testimony in a public hearing on Feb. 14, finding that one of them is in possible danger. He ruled that the other witness can testify because of his advanced age of 85.

The defense will be able to cross-examine both witnesses. Their testimony will not be used if they are available to testify during Durst's trial, which has not been scheduled.

Durst's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said secrecy surrounding the two unidentified witnesses forces him to shadowbox.

He said allowing the early testimony over fears of witness danger would be to presume that Durst killed his wife and Berman, saying there's no evidence involving either.

Durst's attorneys also have argued that their client is harmless because he's frail and behind bars. They've accused the prosecution of trying to litigate the case in the news media.

Story continues

"We're in a very complicated case with experienced lawyers who are not going to sit by and say it's OK to steamroll Mr. Durst," said David Chesnoff, another Durst attorney.

Prosecutors are taking an aggressive approach in publicly laying out their theory of the case before knowing if it will go to trial.

The defense has objected to some of the information prosecutors have revealed, including a transcript and recording of a nearly three-hour interrogation of Durst following his arrest in New Orleans in 2015.

One of the witnesses prosecutors will question on Feb. 14 is a doctor who may have been the last person to speak with Kathleen Durst. No charges have ever been brought in the suspected killing of Durst's first wife, whose body has not been found.

Lewin may also call witnesses to the killing of Durst's neighbor in Texas. Durst was acquitted of murder in the case but convicted of tampering with evidence and jumping bail.

Durst fled to Texas after learning the investigation into his wife's disappearance had been reopened in fall 2000, Lewin said.

Berman, who had served as an unofficial spokeswoman for Durst, was killed weeks later in her Los Angeles home before she was supposed to speak with police about that investigation.

Durst, an estranged member of a New York real estate empire, became a national name when HBO aired the documentary "The Jinx," which followed his life and cast suspicion on him involving several crimes.

FBI agents tracked Durst to a New Orleans hotel on the eve of the finale of "The Jinx." Durst was formally arrested early on the day of the broadcast, before viewers saw him in a washroom, still wearing a live microphone and muttering, "There it is. You're caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP)  A prosecutor says Bill Cosby's trial should remain at a suburban Philadelphia courthouse despite the comedian's argument there's been widespread negative press coverage of the sexual-assault case against him.

In a response to a motion filed by the 79-year-old comedian's lawyers last month, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele on Thursday said he wouldn't oppose Cosby's request to bring in a jury from elsewhere. Steele asks that once the jury is selected the judge brings it back to Montgomery County for the trial, set for June.

Last week, Cosby's attorneys filed a motion seeking to move the trial or bring in a jury from another county, saying news coverage made juror bias inevitable.

Cosby is accused of drugging and molesting a woman he knew through Temple University. He has denied wrongdoing.
New efforts are underway to make American college campuses and public housing off limits to cigarette smoking.

Twenty colleges in the United States recently received grants to help make their campuses tobacco free.

And in November, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro announced that smoking will become illegal at all public housing over the next 18 months. The federal housing department has over one million homes.

Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, healthy home free from harmful second-hand cigarette smoke, Castro said.

The move to ban smoking at public housing units and college campuses follows approval of state laws banning smoking at most workplaces.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids reports that 27 American states ban smoking in all indoor workplaces, including restaurants. California became the first state to ban smoking at most workplaces in 1995.

Thirty-two countries had banned smoking at most workplaces as of 2012, the Tobacco Atlas reports.

Those supporting smoke-free workplaces, public housing and college campuses give one major reason: the negative health effects of smoking.

The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] and the World Health Organization say the health effects of smoking are large. The CDC says cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States. Smoking accounts for 480,000 deaths every year, it says.

One Group Says New Rules Are Unfair

A New York City smokers rights group opposes the new ban on smoking at public housing units.

Audrey Silk is founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. She wrote President-elect Donald Trump, asking him to stop the ban after he becomes president on January 20.

Silk says officials are going too far in trying to stop people from using a legal product.

She told Trump the new federal housing rule would force old or sick people to walk outside their homes to smoke, even when the weather is bad.

At stake is the right of U.S. citizens to be left alone to engage in a legal activity in the privacy of ones own home, Silk said.

Its a Public Health Issue Say Supporters

But supporters of smoking bans and smoke-free areas say the bad effects of second-hand smoke make it a public health issue. Some also say that college campuses are a good place to limit or ban smoking.

Gary Reedy is chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, which recently announced anti-smoking grants to 20 U.S. colleges. He said it is important to stop college students from smoking, to be successful in creating a tobacco-free generation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 13 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 smoke cigarettes. Reedy said that reducing the number of college students who smoke can lead to reduced smoking rates among older adults.

His reasoning? Once a person starts smoking, it is hard to stop, Reedy says.

The CVS Health Foundation is providing $3.6 million for the anti-smoking grants. The foundation was started by the American drug store company CVS.

CVS stopped selling cigarettes in 2014.

The American Cancer Society says about one third of Americas 4,700 college campuses are already smoke-free.

Thomas Gibson is vice president for student affairs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. The school is one of the grant winners. He said Bowling Green wants to help urge students to not start smoking.

Gibson said, While approximately 90 percent of smokers start by age 18, 99 percent start by age 26."

For those students who already smoke, the school wants to help them stop, he said.

I'm Caty Weaver.

And I'm Pete Musto.

Bruce Alpert reported on this story for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson 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

cigarette  n. a small roll of paper that is filled with cut tobacco and smoked

campus  n. the area and buildings around a university, college, school

deserve  v. used to say that someone should get or have something

stake  n. an interest or degree of involvement in something

engage  v. to do something

grant  n. money provided for some activity or purpose

approximately  adv. almost exact
For many of you, the last time you saw R. Kelly he was most likely trapped in a closet. Or perhaps convincing a ragtag group of cartoons led by Michael Jordan to believe they can fly, if not educating you in the finer arts of jubilantly celebrating the freakin weekend. But now the infamous musician has taken on a brand new role, giving all of these Instagram It-Girls a run for their money as the newest star of Alexander Wangs Spring/Summer 2017 digital campaign alongside model and brand-favorite Anna Ewers.

The campaign for the designers latest collection was shot by famed photographers Inez and Vinoodh in the penthouse of the Old Police Building in downtown Manhattan. According to a press release for the campaign aptly titled, Beyond Reality, the images are meant to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, presenting a unique observation on the superficial with a though-provoking commentary on societys current obsessions with speculation: did that happen, did it not? What was real and what was fabricated?

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

RELATED: Meet R. Kellys Secret Soulmate: Stanley Kubrick?

The photos themselves feature R. Kelly wearing an all-black suit with no tie, a striped scarf, and his signature shades all while smoking a cigar and lounging side-by-side with Ewers who wears a big, white fur coat and crystal-covered bucket bag while smoking a cigarette.

Story continues

The photos were taken during a giant party Wang held in the building on December 7 in collaboration with Beats by Dr. Dre to celebrate the launch of his second headphone collaboration.

In the end, we cant decide what were more excited about, R. Kellys promising new career as a burgeoning supermodel, or the additional 4o chapters of his seminal hip-hopera Trapped in the Closet that he has assured the public are forthcoming. Only time will tell.

What do you think of R. Kelly joining the #WANGSQUAD? Who would you like to see become a member next? Sound off below!




A thin rainbow broke out through the clouds above the Florida airport where a gunman killed five people, prompting many on social media to say it was a symbol of hope amid tragedy.

Dozens of Twitter users posted the image of the sliver of colors in the sky over the Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport about three hours after the mass shooting.

One user who was in a car stuck in traffic near the airport said the rainbow was a sign that good will always win.

Hope from the tarmac, another person tweeted.

Hope from the tarmac :) pic.twitter.com/b6B0lVwNnk  Jackie Zimmerman (@JackieZimm) January 6, 2017

there's a small rainbow over ft lauderdale airport right now. #PrayForFtLauderde pic.twitter.com/H3eHO8bzpo  mary (@marysheloww) January 6, 2017

Stuck in traffic mess due to #ftlauderdaleairportshooting but seeing a #rainbow  sign that good will always win  pic.twitter.com/8zrX09gAX6  Anny G (@MrsAnnyG) January 6, 2017

@RobertCossar after all that has happened this afternoon there is now a rainbow over Ft. Lauderdale airport. pic.twitter.com/ewKqcOkioM  Robert Cossar (@RobertCossar) January 6, 2017

Amidst all this turnoil in South Florida I spotted a rainbow near not too far from the airport pic.twitter.com/jrIFATX8r5  Geek God (@AW_Hybrid) January 6, 2017

The suspected gunman, who is in custody and unharmed, shot at least 13 people near the baggage area of Terminal 2 about 1 p.m. Friday, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference.

The suspects motive is unclear. Israel said its too early to say whether terrorism played a role in the attack.
Jan 6 (Reuters) - Former winner and leading contender Carlos Sainz has withdrawn from the Dakar Rally after rolling his Peugeot into a ravine on Thursday's fourth stage in Bolivia, his team said. Spain's twice world rally champion, whose son and namesake races in Formula One, had feared after reaching the overnight bivouac in Tupiza that his car was too badly damaged to be repaired. Peugeot confirmed that mechanics would be unable to complete the job in the allotted time. "It is obviously devastating to have to retire. We had been running at a good pace since the start of the rally," said Sainz, who had been in second place overall at the start of the stage, in a statement. "I am so disappointed that I won't be able to reap the benefit of its potential," the 2010 winner said of his Peugeot 3008 car. This year's Dakar, one of the world's toughest endurance challenges which ends in Buenos Aires on Jan. 14 after stages in Paraguay and Bolivia, has seen a spate of high-profile retirements already. Twice winner Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar retired after ripping a wheel off his Toyota in the third stage while reigning motorcycle champion Toby Price of Australia was flown to hospital on Thursday with a broken leg. Five-times bike champion Cyril Despres of France is leading the car standings for Peugeot after winning Thursday's high-altitude stage. The Dakar Rally started out as a gruelling race from Paris across the Sahara to the Senegalese capital but switched to South America in 2009 for security reasons. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
By Ellen Wulfhorst NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Fashion giant Ralph Lauren Corp, whose designs are sashayed on Hollywood's red carpets, has unveiled plans to trace wood pulp used in its clothes to avoid buying from regions destroying forests or violating human rights. Rising cotton prices have boosted demand for wood-based fabrics such as viscose, rayon and modal, which increasingly involves clearing forests and taking land used by indigenous people, according to Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Ralph Lauren is the latest in a growing number of fashion companies to pledge to investigate its supply chain to determine if it is using products from the most destructive regions and stop using those sources by the end of 2017, said RAN. RAN's "Out of Fashion" campaign to publicize the impacts of forest-based fabrics has called on major U.S. brands to adopt stringent, sustainable sourcing systems. Ralph Lauren said it will publish its new sourcing guidelines as part of a broader initiative to ensure its raw materials are free of human and land rights abuses and are environmentally sustainable. "This initiative demonstrates Ralph Lauren's commitment to the environment with responsible and traceable sourcing, which we believe will create a positive impact on ecosystems and global communities," Halide Alagoz, Ralph Lauren's head of global sourcing, said in a statement on Friday. Actors Gwyneth Paltrow, Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp have made red carpet appearances in Ralph Lauren's luxury designs, and U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wore Ralph Lauren pant suits in all three debates last fall. It also makes the more casual Polo brand and has been designing the colorful opening ceremony uniforms worn by the U.S. Olympic teams. CONCERNS OVER LAND RIGHTS, RAINFORESTS H&M, Zara, ASOS, Levi Strauss & Co and British fashion designer Stella McCartney have adopted similar sourcing policies, RAN said. Last year Stella McCartney partnered with environmental non-profit Canopy to encourage clothing companies to stop sourcing fabric from ancient and endangered forests. RAN has targeted Abercrombie & Fitch, Michael Kors, Guess, Forever 21, Under Armour and Foot Locker to adopt similar policies. Abercrombie declined to comment, and the other companies did not respond to requests for comment. Brihannala Morgan, RAN senior forest campaigner, said Ralph Lauren had no way to trace its wood pulp sources before adopting this policy which the environmental group helped develop. "Ralph Lauren's new policy sends a signal to producers in countries like Indonesia, where the production of pulp for fabrics has been devastating to indigenous and forest-dependent communities," RAN said in a statement. Production of wood pulp can involve clearing forests to build eucalyptus plantations, taking land traditionally used by indigenous communities, campaigners say. Indonesia is a major producer of wood pulp and the world's largest producer of palm oil, both of which campaigners say endanger the Southeast Asian nation's rainforests. Global Forest Watch estimates Indonesia lost 18.5 million hectares (70,000 sq. miles) of tree cover from 2001 to 2014. Ralph Lauren did not give details on how much pulp it uses from Indonesia. Morgan said it was heartening to see fashion brands starting to take responsibility for their supply chains. "(This) can have a real positive impact for forests and the people that depend on them," she said. (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, editing by Alisa Tang and Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, land rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
By Brendan Pierson (Reuters) - Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Sanofi SA said on Thursday they would appeal the U.S. District Court ruling which banned the two companies from selling their cholesterol drug, Praluent, on grounds of patent infringement. A federal judge had earlier blocked Sanofi and Regeneron from selling the drug after Amgen Inc accused them of infringing its patents. U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson in Delaware had ordered that the ban not take effect for 30 days to give Sanofi and Regeneron time to appeal. "It is our longstanding position that Amgen's patent claims are invalid and that the best interests of patients will be greatly disserved by an injunction preventing access to Praluent," Sanofi's Executive Vice President Karen Linehan said in a statement. Amgen was up about 4 percent in after-hours trading, while Sanofi's U.S. shares were down 3.6 percent. Regeneron was down 1.1 percent before the company requested that trading be halted. Amgen had sought the ban in an October 2014 lawsuit against Paris-based Sanofi and Tarrytown, New York-based Regeneron. It said Praluent, a drug intended to lower "bad" LDL cholesterol by blocking a protein known as PCSK9, infringed its patents related to the protein. Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen makes a rival drug called Repatha. A jury found Amgen's patents valid in March. The defendants said after the verdict that they planned to appeal to the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviews patent disputes. The companies could still decide to reach a settlement that would give Amgen royalties on Praluent sales. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Praluent and Repatha to reduce bad cholesterol in 2015. The drugs are more costly than other cholesterol drugs, with a list price topping $14,000 annually. Sales of the expensive new drugs, seen as potential blockbusters, have been very slow to take off as health insurers and other payers have been reluctant to pay for them. Amgen reported just $40 million in Repatha sales in the third quarter. Both drugs are in the final stages of enormous trials designed to demonstrate that they can lower the risk of heart attacks and deaths, which is expected to help open the insurer purse strings if successful. So-called outcomes results for Repatha are expected this quarter. "If Praluent was gone from the market the long-term peak sales for Repatha could move from $2 billion to $3 billion to $4 billion worldwide, in theory," RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Yee said in a research note. He added that without the outcomes results, the potential size of the market remained uncertain. (Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York and Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Bill Rigby)
Photo credit: Bill Clarkundefined

From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as you know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where Jack the Ripper says to Louis the King, "I got 20 red, white and blue shoestrings."

We begin this week in the Commonwealth (God save it!), where our own personal wingnut showpony sheriff has a brilliant idea for the president-elect. From The Fall River Herald-News:

"I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall," Hodgson said Wednesday during his swearing-in ceremony to begin his fourth six-year term in office. Hodgson, a longtime critic of illegal immigration who frequently assailed President Barack Obama's immigration policies, offered the free inmate labor to the incoming Trump administration through a conceptual national program he calls Project NICE - National Inmates' Community Endeavors - that, like Trump's wall, is currently an idea and not a concrete reality.

"It's a concept but, with the right amount of funding, I think I can turn it into an idea."

Even after a press conference with Hodgson following Wednesday's ceremony at Bristol Community College, questions remained as to which government agency would pay to transport and house hundreds, or even thousands, of inmates from across the country. The sheriff said those logistics would need to be worked out with the federal government, which he claimed is already spending "millions" to fly undocumented immigrants across the country anyway.

Sheriff Hodgson is full of many ideas. He is also simply full of it.

Hodgson said his department will also be revisiting the $5 daily fee he used to charge inmates at the Bristol County House of Correction. In January 2010, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the fee, ruling that the sheriff did not have the authority to impose the care-of-custody fee. Hodgson said he will be pushing for the state Legislature to enact a law that would reinstate the fee.

Story continues

I will grant you that, even for all his efforts, Sheriff Hodgson still trails badly behind such notable High Lord Sheriffs as Arizona's Joe Arpaio or Milwaukee's own be-badged and splendid loon, David Clarke. But for the People's Republic up here, he ain't bad.

Moving on around the country, we discover the very little grass grows beneath the feet of newly elected state legislatures. This is especially true in Iowa, where lots of interesting things are happening in advance of the 2020 caucuses, which is the next time anyone will notice what's happening there. Nothing is happening that should surprise anyone, though.

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The strengthened Republican majorities are going long on voter suppression, defunding Planned Parenthood, sabotaging public education, and demolishing public-employee unions. They're also moving to keep individual municipalities from making decisions they don't like, because the government that's closest to the people is the best, as we know. The Des Moines Register has a good rundown on the onrushing calamities.

The GOP's anticipated agenda means the Legislature likely will take steps to require voters to provide photo identification at the polls, rewrite public employees' collective bargaining laws, defund Planned Parenthood and consider measures to restrict abortions, provide state funding for water quality projects and expand religious liberties. Other legislation will likely include enactment of a uniform, statewide minimum wage that would override county-level laws, consideration of proposals to expand school choice, and efforts to simplify state taxes and reduce the size of state government while curbing state spendingBranstad's proposal to remove health insurance as a subject of collective bargaining for public employees' unions is likely to get a warm reception from House and Senate Republicans. Dix said Iowans signaled in the last election that they wanted a departure from the way Iowa government was run in the past, including more protections for taxpayers. But no decisions have been made on changing collective bargaining laws for public workers, he emphasized.

So, welcome to Wisconsin, Iowa. If you're really, really lucky, you won't end up being Kansas.

A bit South, the Kentucky legislature is also doing what it can. Republicans have the state's House of Representatives for the first time in 95 years, and their priorities are controlling the ladyparts and holding wages down. Kentucky was one of the few states in the neighborhood that was not a right-to-work state. And, I mean, why stand out, right? From The Louisville Courier-Journal:

The bills approved by a House committee would ban mandatory union membership as a condition of employment, would not allow employers to deduct union dues from workers' paychecks without written permission, and would forbid public employees from going on strike. It also would repeal Kentucky's prevailing-wage law, which guarantees higher wages for workers on construction projects paid for with public money. The bills have been at the top of Republican wish lists for years, only to be thwarted by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. But this year, Republicans have super majorities in both chambers, clearing the way for them to act aggressively during the legislature's first week. Republican House Speaker Jeff Hoover said the legislature will likely hold a rare Saturday session so it can deliver the bills to Gov. Matt Bevin's desk before taking a three-week recess. "We're making a statement that we are doing things a different way," Hoover said.

At the same time, as we learn from The Lexington Herald-Leader, the Kentucky lawmakers have embarked on yet another one of those endless crusades that will end up in expensive lawsuits and virtual decades of billable hours. Or not.

Over strong opposition from the ACLU of Kentucky and Planned Parenthood, a state Senate committee approved a bill Wednesday to ban abortions for women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant and a House committee signed off on a bill requiring doctors to present the results of an ultrasound to women seeking abortions. Both the Senate and House - controlled by Republicans - are expected to vote Thursday on the bills that emerged from their committees in hopes of sending them to Gov. Matt Bevin for his signature by week's end. To do that, the legislature would have to hold a rare Saturday meeting. Saturday would mark the fifth day of this year's law-making session and it takes at least five days for a bill to get through both chambersSmith also revealed Wednesday that the bill contains a provision to allow private contributions to a trust fund overseen by the state Finance Cabinet that would pay for any possible legal defense of the measure.

This is nice. Pass an unconstitutional law guaranteed to make the lives of your constituents harder and then privatize the legal defense of it so you're not vulnerable to charges of wasting the taxpayers money on your personal obsessions. That's the way you do the people's work, by god.

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Sliding over the Smokies, we find ourselves in the newly insane state of North Carolina, where it seems some folks still haven't gotten over the fact that the voters slipped the ziggy to Governor Pat McCrory. Consider the head of the Department of Environmental Quality, whom they're going to have to pry from the government with the Jaws of Life. The Greensboro News and Record is on the scene.

State Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Donald Van Der Vaart is claiming a job as an environmental program manager effective Saturday - a day before Cooper becomes governor, according to employment records kept by the Office of State Controller. His pay will drop to about $97,000 after making $131,000 a year as agency secretary.

Well, that's one fewer family vacations in the forests and hills, I guess, assuming there are any left down there.

DEQ under Van Der Vaart became an unusually vocal defender of business-friendly environmental regulation, which Republican state Rep. Chuck McGrady of Henderson County, a former national Sierra Club president, described last year as a disappointing "politicization." Van der Vaart last year criticized then-Attorney General Roy Cooper for opting against joining a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's final rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Van der Vaart and McCrory's DEQ joined two dozen other states suing to block the EPA's Clean Power Plan as federal overreach. Last month, Van der Vaart co-signed a letter with environmental agency heads in four other states urging Republican President-elect Donald Trump to abandon Obama administration initiatives. Besides the regulations on coal-burning power plants, new EPA rules seek to extend federal jurisdiction over streams and wetlands that feed rivers, lakes, and coastal water. Van der Vaart and the others argued environmental regulations should be led by states.

One thing you have to give them: They hit the ground running, and they don't quit even when the earth cracks open under their feet. Ni shagu nazad, y'all.

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And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Seismology Analytics Director Friedman of the Plains brings us this week's installment of Where The Hell Was This When I Was In College? From Channel 8 in Tulsa.

Wes Alexander, director of sales for the craft brewery, is teaching a course this month at OSU-Tulsa on beer appreciation and brewing. "Introduction to Malted Beverages: An Overview of Beer" is scheduled for two consecutive Saturdays, looking at the history of beer and exploring trends and challenges in the industry. It's the first time OSU-Tulsa has offered the course, which is open to students for one credit hour as well as the public as a noncredit option for $199. Wes Alexander, director of sales for the craft brewery, is teaching a course this month at OSU-Tulsa on beer appreciation and brewing. "Introduction to Malted Beverages: An Overview of Beer" is scheduled for two consecutive Saturdays, looking at the history of beer and exploring trends and challenges in the industry. It's the first time OSU-Tulsa has offered the course, which is open to students for one credit hour as well as the public as a noncredit option for $199. It's also an approved elective within the Wayne Hirst Center for Beverage Education of the School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration.

Of course, where I went to school, beverage education largely was a matter of independent study.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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* New phase of operation launched last week after slow progress

* U.S. troops in more visible support role

* Around 2,000 civilians per day flee; most still in city

* Most of east Mosul recaptured but west still firmly in IS hands (Updates with advance into north Mosul)

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Iraqi troops entered Mosul from the north for the first time on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle for the city that also saw elite forces bridge a river under cover of darkness in an unprecedented night raid.

The operations were part of a major new push launched last week to seize ground in the city, after progress in the nearly three-month-old operation had stalled for weeks because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Troops would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said troops had taken territory in an overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul.

"We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Story continues

Iraqi army units later breached the city from the north for the first time since the offensive began on Oct. 17, entering the residential al-Hadba apartments complex, officers at a nearby command post told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much of the area they controlled amid resistance from Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the latest phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in battles to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

"The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.

'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'

"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

Iraqi forces meanwhile pushed IS militants back in an area northwest of Baghdad towards the Syrian border, military sources said, in a separate, smaller operation launched on Thursday and part of the wider fight against the group in Anbar province.

They encountered little resistance from the militants, who withdrew towards Aneh, around 50 km northwest of the town of Haditha, the sources said.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)
Giddy over controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time in a decade, Republicans have set themselves a lofty goal: to unravel the legacy of Barack Obama. Health care, trade pacts, environment regulation, financial oversightyou name the policy area, the GOP is set to roll it back.

Washington being Washington, even the grandest projects tend to rely on complex, mind-numbingly arcane mechanisms to get the job done. (This is how lawmakers do what they do: bore and/or confuse the public into ignoring what theyre up to until its too late.) Dismantling a presidential legacy is no different. Thus, for the past couple of months, conservatives both on and off Capitol Hill have been noodling over the most effective, efficient means of wiping out as much of the 44th presidents work as possible.

To this end, one obscure legislative tool is suddenly getting scads of attention: a rarely used oversight measure called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA. Passed in 1996 as part of Newt Gingrich and the Revolutions Contract with America, the CRA allows Congress to overturn rules freshly issued by federal agencies without going through all the rigamarole required to pass regular bills. Most notably, CRA resolutions cannot be filibustered, meaning Republicans need only a simple majority in both chambers to get the rollback party started. Those last-minute midnight regulations Obama has been so defiantly issuing on everything from fuel efficiency standards to the funding of Planned Parenthood? Anyor allcould easily be rendered Dead On Arrival under the CRA.

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More alluring still for lawmakers, once a rule has been axed via CRA, agencies are barred from issuing a similar rule without express authorization from Congress. So not only is the CRA route quicker and easier than the usual legislative slog, it provides insurance against a pesky replacement rule.

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You might assume a law with such potential impact would have been tough to pass, or at least have been the source of hot partisan squabbling. Quite the opposite: If theres one thing legislators from both teams agree on, its that they deserve greater authority vis-a-vis the uppity executive branch. And so the CRA passed quietly as a rider to the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act, aka SBREFA. (Remember: Keep it complicated, dull, and, ideally, heavy on impenetrable acronyms.)

At the time, it enjoyed solid bipartisan backing. Democratic Senator Harry Reid issued a joint statement, with Republican colleagues Don Nickles and Ted Stevens, praising the act for helping redress the balance between the branches. Democratic Senator Carl Levin cheered, If a rule goes too far afield from the intent of Congress in passing the statute in the first place, we can stop it. Thats a new day, and one a long time in coming.

No question CRA made rollback simpler: Under the CRA, every rule issued by an agency must be submitted to both chambers for review. Once notification occurs, any lawmaker can file a resolution of disapproval of the rule within 60 legislative days. (Not to be confused with calendar days!) With all Congresss comings and going, the exact deadline can be tough to calculate (the House and Senate parliamentarians are the official arbiters), but the Congressional Research Service estimates that the new congress can go after rules issued as far back as mid-June of last year.

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Using special CRA procedures (the eye-glazing details of which I will skip, but which can be found here for the masochists among you) a resolution can be fast-tracked through committee and onto the floor of the Senate, where it is limited to 10 hours of debate. (The act does not provide similar fast-tracking in the House because, why bother? No filibusters.) Once simple majorities in both chambers vote their support, the resolution is then whisked over to the presidents desk for consideration. Easy-peasy.

Now, it doesnt take a political genius to spot the sticking point here. Under normal circumstances, what self-respecting president is going to sign a resolution overturning a rule issued by his own administration? Answer: none. Which explains why, in 20 years on the books, the CRA has been successfully used exactly once. That was in early 2001, when a Republican congress sent its new Republican president (Bush 43) a resolution targeting a workplace-ergonomics rule issued in the closing days of the Clinton administration. (Bush signed it, and no similar rule has been attempted since.)

To be sure, Congress now and again has some fun with the CRA. During Obamas tenure, for instance, congressional Republicans passed a handful of symbolic resolutions targeting rules issued by the Obama administration. The president, of course, vetoed them all.

And therein lies the often fatal flaw of the CRA. The threat of presidential veto renders it a hollow threat. Except. It works like a charm under very specific political conditions: namely, during a presidential transition period in which Congress is held by the same party as the incoming president and so has a shared interest in undoing the work of the outgoing president of the opposing party.

Recommended: My President Was Black

Basically, the exact conditions that will exist come January 21.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans have been invoking the CRA with great fondness of late. In a November chat with home-state reporters, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn predicted a lot of action involving the act in the coming months. The Senate Republican Policy Committee has identified several of its top candidates for rollback, including rules on federal land use, school accountability measures, and Planned Parenthood funding. Shortly before Christmas, the conservative Heritage foundation issued a briefing, merrily titled Stars Align for the Congressional Review Act, urging Congress to make the CRA a frequently used weapon in the fight against red tape.

GOP lawmakers indeed look forward to exploiting this rare alignment. Folks on the Hill estimate that CRA will be used to nix somewhere between 8 and 12 rules. (Which ones should get the axe, and in what order, remains a subject of energetic internal debate. Those mentioned to me include the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, greenhouse-gas emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, and the Stream Protection Rule.) Not that there arent plenty of others they consider worthy of takedown. Its largely a question of floor time, they tell me. The incoming president has his own priorities, not to mention a raft of appointees to be confirmed. Even with fast-tracking, lawmakers can invest only so much time tackling individual rules.

There is, in fact, a push in the House to supercharge the CRA. Currently, only one rule can be tackled per resolution. The Midnight Rules Relief Act would change that, allowing Congress to bundle and dispatch multiple rules with a single resolution, making the process even easy-peasier. The House passed the bill (for the second time since Election Day) on Wednesday, its second day back from break. Obama has vowed to veto it, but that only matters for another couple of weeks.

Safe to say, Democrats will find themselves less than delighted by CRAs impact on the new day coming later this month. Fiddling with the legislative process invariably has unforeseen consequences. And now congressional Dems have little recourse but to try and gum up the works as much as possible, using whatever obscure, complex mind-numbingly arcane tools they can dig up. It wont be prettybut, then again, so little of what Congress does ever is.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
It started off as a joke.

When Miranda Arms saw that no one was running for mayor of Waterloo, she suggested her husband Jon Arms could lead the small town.

They told a few neighbors and had a laugh. And then they both wrote his name down on their November general election ballots.

But Jon Arms received six write-in votes to win the election. He has accepted the position of mayor of Waterloo and was sworn in at a Jan. 10 City Council meeting.

The jokes on me now, because now I have to step up to the plate, Jon Arms said.

The win came as a big surprise, he said, but hes grateful.

If no one else was running, why not take a shot? he said. I think its a great opportunity, and Im excited to see where it will lead. We can do some good things in the community.

His family also is excited. Children Shay Ryan, 12, Haily Arms, 8, and Gunner Arms, 5, acknowledged that theyve done a bit of bragging about their dads political victory to classmates at Hamilton Creek School.

Jon Arms, 35, drives for Walsh Trucking, hauling wood chips from a local mill, and he and his family have lived in Waterloo since 2012.

Its a quiet little neighborhood where were at. Its the first piece of property my wife and I bought. Its not too far off the beaten path, but just enough to give us some privacy, he said.

Weve been here the shortest amount of time of everybody here, added Shay.

Her mom disputed that claim, but said that it had some basis in fact.

Most people have been here for 20-something years, Miranda Arms said.

Last year was notable for the Arms family in other ways, as well. Miranda Arms graduated from Linn-Benton Community College in June and started working as a nurse at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital.

Well try and keep the momentum going, Miranda Arms said.

A lack of candidates isnt something especially new for small towns in Linn County and elsewhere.

Waterloo, with a population of 230 people, including children, had no one file for the position of mayor and three council seats in 2006, for example.

City officials have said that its hard to get candidates to run for public office because the volunteer positions require plenty of work and city councilors, in general, receive plenty of criticism and little praise.

The winning write-in candidates from three other small Linn County cities  Idanha, Sodaville and Tangent  also have agreed to fill positions where no one filed for office in the November general election.

In Tangent, Chris LaBelle will join the City Council, after receiving 19 write-in votes.

Hes very excited, from what I hear, said Georgia Edwards, Tangent city manager.

Jeff Hensley, who garnered three write-in votes, will join the Sodaville City Council in January, said Judy Smith, city administrator.

In Idanha, Zola Saner and Linda Stice each will join the City Council, which had two seats where no one filed for office. Both Saner and Stice had their names written down four times on ballots.
After making the boots-on-the-ground war documentary war series My Fighting Season and The Fighting Season for Audience Network, Ricky Schroder teamed up again with cameraman/producer River Rainbow Hagg to zoom in on the crisis in Syria.

I wanted to do a third (documentary) program, but there wasnt an opportunity to embed with the U.S. military, at least not officially, said Schroder about his upcoming untitled Syria doc.

In the series, Hagg witnesses the war being raged by ISIS in northern Syria in an area known as Rojava and documents his experiences with a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters and western medical support. Essentially, there are 300 foreign fighters assisting the Kurdish, 100 of them American and 30 of those wounded with zero medical supplies shipped into the area.

It was house by house fighting, block by block, much more intense than anything I experienced before, explained Hagg at this afternoons TCA session, The Kurds are trying to set up a democracy and set up state rights.

Schroders interest turned to the army following his time on NYPD Blue. He even tried to enlist, but failed the physical portion. This brought him to executive producing The Fighting Season in 2014 for Audience.

Says the former Silver Spoons child star, I wanted to have the experience of what it was like to be in a war zone. Afghanistan is Americas longest war. It changed the world, and many families lives. I find it rewarding to tell soldier and heroic stories.

Audience Networks Syria doc series will air in May.

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The Limited will be closing stores across the country starting on Jan. 7. (Photo: The Limited/Facebook)

The Limited, a staple in American shopping malls and a go-to for workingwomen on the hunt for an affordable power suit, is at deaths door.

On Thursday, Racked reported that the Limited stores across the country  which have been around for more than half a century  are closing. Beginning as soon as Jan. 7, locations in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, and elsewhere will close, according to reports from local media. Sun Capital Partners, the Limiteds parent company, did not respond to requests to comment on this article.

The news echoes the larger death knell heard around the country, as mall mainstays like Macys and Sears announced store closings of their own.

While the Limited is a victim of the shopping mall decline, Susan Scafidi, Fordham Law School professor and founder of the Fashion Law Institute, says stores that have a backbone in professional work wear for women have struggled in recent years (think: Ann Taylor.)

Our work lives and home lives are blended now; we work around the clock from a computer and we dont see professional wear as a separate category anymore.

Still, Scafidi says not to write off pantsuits completely. If youre stumped on where to find your professional Power Look, these seven retailers (some youll find at your local mall, others youll find online) are your best bet.

MM LaFleurs wrap dress was so popular, thousands of shoppers went on a wait list for the $240 LBD. (Photo: Courtesy of MM LaFleur)

MM LaFleur, an online personal shopping service, isnt for someone looking for a $50 blazer, but rather for those who want investment pieces.

Signing up for a Bento Box means one of the companys personal stylists selects a handful of items for you based on responses you give that detail your style, body type, and budget. Once you receive the box in the mail, you can try the pieces on and decide which you like and which youd like to send back, free of charge.

Most importantly, MM LaFleur isnt a subscription service, so you dont get sucked into the never-ending cycle of credit card charges you cant be bothered to cancel. But if you want to retain control of your clothing choices, you can also shop for individual items (like the $240 wrap dress that had a 1,400-person wait list.)

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If you live in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, or Dallas, you can order online or set up an in-person appointment.

Its a smart, nearly effortless system  if you can afford it.

Price: Items range from $155 for accessories to upwards of $400 for a silk skirt

This Modern Citizen wrap sweater is clean, crisp, and cozy. (Photo: Courtesy of Modern Citizen)

Modern Citizens aesthetic is minimalist chic, perfect for those who prefer neutrals to noise. According to founder Jess Lee, the companys idea of a modern citizen is probably a white-collar professional leading a really busy life, and her aesthetic tends to be more polished.

And polished professional doesnt cost a ton at MC  a relaxed blazer costs less than $100.

If you live in the San Francisco area, you can visit a showroom or make an appointment. Otherwise, this retailer sells mainly online.

Price: Starting around $50, wrap sweater

The Portofino shirt is to Express what the coffee machine is to your office: a necessity. (Photo: Courtesy of Express)

Dont give up on shopping malls just yet. For those looking for well-tailored, affordable office wear, Express remains a shopping mall staple thats yet to go under and is probably the closest youll get to the Limited if your local store closes.

The retailer frequently runs its Buy One Get One 50% promotion on classic work button-ups and their Portofino blouses, starting around $45 and easily paired with work slacks or jeans.

Whats more, the shirts come in dozens of different prints and cuts, perfect for when youre looking for a bold splash of color or eye-popping print to contrast with your neutral-hued coworkers.

Price: Suit pants start around $70

Be loud without saying a word in this J.Crew blazer. (Photo: Courtesy of J.Crew)

While adding J.Crew to a list of workplace-friendly retailers isnt novel, it is important to give the brand a look-see if you havent lately: The retailer is suffering and has slashed prices on its website and in stores to make up for a sales slump.

A $168 standout red corduroy blazer is listed for $99, with an additional 40 percent off offered, making it roughly $60 before tax or shipping if youre ordering online.

But tread with caution: Buying a J.Crew jacket puts you at risk of becoming accidental twins with your coworker. Instead, take a look at the retailers accessories to punch up your work look.

A DVF wrap dress is the only thing you need to make your office look work at happy hour. (Photo: Courtesy of Diane von Furstenberg.)

Not every workingwoman wants a pantsuit, we get it. But if you want luxury that never ages, consider a DVF wrap dress to add a bit of iconography to your closet.

The wrap dress can be styled for day or night and comes in myriad styles and prints. Before you balk at the price, remember that these never go out of style (theyve been around since 1974, after all).

FWIW, DVFs got great tailored pants and blazers too.

Price: Starting around $360 and ranging to nearly $600

Conservative can be cool in this Theory dress, available on Nordstroms website. (Photo: Courtesy of Nordstrom)

Shopping at a department store comes with a certain ease of being able to sift through dozens of retailers at one site. Nordstroms work-wear section offers just that, for both affordable and luxury brands.

In one click, you can add a discounted Olivia Moon Knit Blazer to your virtual shopping bag and in another, splurge on $895 Altuzarra pants.

Other great work-wear brands Nordstrom carries: Theory, Elie Tahari, 3.1 Phillip Lim

This double-breasted vest and matching plaid pant combo is the perfect cool-girl look. (Photo: Courtesy of Argent)

For a brand whose name means money in French, this online collectives right on it when it comes to fashionable work wear. The catch is youll have to spend a bit of it to buy in.

Items are for sale online only, but if youve been browsing for hours and still lack inspo, hop over to Argents curated Pinterest boards for everything from casual to ultra professional looks.

Argents pieces tend to be trendier  and not fast-fashion Zara cheap. A gray-plaid blazer is $378; paired with the matching trousers, the outfit will cost you just under $630. The twist? The trousers and blazer are both reversible, so youre really getting two suits for the price of one, albeit one thats pretty expensive.

Price: Tops start at $52-$148
Prosecutors in the murder case against Robert Durst can begin videotaping witness testimony next month, a California state judge ruled today, rejecting arguments from Dursts lawyers that the schedule wouldnt provide enough time to prepare.

In court papers filed earlier, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office said that the New York real estate scion, whose suspected murders and a possible confession were featured in the 2015 HBO documentary The Jinx, remains both a menace to society and to as-yet-unnamed prosecution witnesses.

At a hearing today, the DA asked Judge Mark Windham to allow the early testimony  and to keep at least one of the witnesses identity secret until closer to the videotape testimony, to begin February 14. The tapes will be used at a still-unscheduled trial if the witnesses are unable to appear then.

Defendant is a menace to society, wrote Deputy D.A. John Lewin in court papers filed before todays hearing. He has demonstrated a willingness to use deadly force to escape justice  killing two people and arming himself with deadly weapons to kill anyone who stood in his way of escape.

Durst has pleaded not guilty to the 2000 murder of Susan Berman, who prosecutors say was shot by Durst for knowing too much about his involvement in the 1982 disappearance of his wife Kathleen Durst.

One of the witnesses is expected to be Dr. Albert Kuperman, believed to have spoken to Kathleen Durst around the time of her disappearance. The identity of another, unnamed witness must be disclosed to Dursts attorney by January 31.

Dursts lawyer had argued that the suspect is too old and frail to harm anyone and that keeping witness identities concealed was unnecessary.

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Story continues

'The Jinx's Robert Durst Pleads Not Guilty To 2000 L.A. Murder

Robert Durst Movie In Works At Lifetime
No performance from 2016 was met with quite the fascination of Guy Henry's turn in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - and he wasn't even one of the few actors not involved in the film's worldwide media blitz.

The British actor was tasked with playing Grand Moff Tarkin, with his performance capture work and visual effects wizardry helping resurrect the character played by the late Peter Cushing in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Rather than recasting the role, Industrial Light & Magic recreated Cushing's actual likeness for a performance not quite like any in film history.

Reached by phone in Great Britain Friday, Henry spoke about the unprecedented responsibility he felt to honor Cushing ("It was genuinely frightening"), his offer to let director Gareth Edwards recast him ("I won't be offended") and speculation that the story of Carrie Fisher's Leia might continue through such technology. (He declined to comment on Fisher, but did offer this of the technology: "I think and hope it won't be a commonplace thing.")

During the 18 months you kept this a secret, did your family know what you were doing?

The very, very closest of my family and friends - I graciously allowed them into the secret, because I think I would have gone mad otherwise. My name began to be associated with it occasionally. People would ask. At work, [the team behind the BBC One series] Holby City had to know I was doing something in it, but even my agent, when I was asked to meet Gareth Edwards, she didn't really know why. They didn't tell her. It was quite a responsibility really, and I'm glad it was kept secret right up until the very last moment.

How did Gareth Edwards and Industrial Light & Magic's John Knoll convince you this would all work out?

I felt I couldn't feel too responsible in the sense of the way that it looked. I had to trust John Knoll and Gareth and the team, who were convinced they could make it work. Vocally, I'm not a mimic. I'm genuinely not an impressionist. I'd be doing my very best to do my Tarkin, the rolled "r" and the voice as best I could, and Gareth would say, "OK relax on that. Just be a bit more Guy now." I had to trust that they saw something in the reel of my work that convinced them it could be the tribute to Cushing everyone wanted it to be. It was very, very frightening, in all seriousness.

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Did the reshoots affect you much?

Because the story was changing all the time, I kept thinking I had finished. "The responsibility has lapsed. Thank God, I can lie down." Then they'd say, "Actually, can you come in next week and do half a line here and half a line there?" It was genuinely frightening, because I didn't want to let down a huge movie, and equally, I didn't want to let down Peter Cushing.

Do you remember much about what changed and when you finally ended your work?

It was quite difficult to remember what the last bit was. I would literally be called back to do half a line a bit differently. Half a line that had a bit more stress to it because something else had altered slightly what had happened to a different character. It was immensely detailed. It's something of a blur.

Did you have doubts this would work?

Normally as an actor, you are you pretending to be another person. Here, I was me pretending to be Peter Cushing pretending to be Tarkin. I said at one point, "I won't be offended if you feel the voice isn't good enough or isn't right or is too young." There is a famous impersonator here called Rory Bremner. I said, "I won't be offended if you want to get him. I just want it to be good. Don't worry if you have to ditch my voice." They stuck with me gamely.

When did you finally see what it would look like?

They snuck me in to show me [early]. I thought, "We might be all right here." It was only after the London premiere I knew for sure it worked. I'd had several glasses of white wine. I wasn't able to eat, I was so frightened. "If I haven't done good enough here, it's going to be so sad. That would be very bad." I don't mean bad career-wise. I had not done any interviews. "Don't bother about my name." I'd be referred to as a stand-in and a voice double who was a disaster, and I could go on. But I didn't want to let Peter Cushing down.

Have you heard from the Cushing estate? One of its executors has praised your performance.

I haven't first hand. If that is the case, which I gather it is, I'm so delighted. The reason for doing it was honorable. When people were talking about the ethics of bringing someone back who was long dead, I could see that if it was done for the wrong reason or something a bit seedy or just for the sake of it, that would have been wrong. When John Knoll pitched the film, obviously Tarkin is such a big part of the original. Not to have Tarkin in it would be just a shame, and I think they have done it very honorably.

Before Carrie Fisher's death, Lucasfilm said Tarkin was a special case and it likely wouldn't be done again. Do you think this will become more prevalent in other Hollywood films?

I can't really see why they would. Suddenly to make a new film and get James Dean in it? I can't see that's likely to happen. This was very specifically to recreate this character in a way that served the story of Rogue One. Apart from anything else, the work involved in it was enormous. I always felt so sorry for the poor people in Industrial Light & Magic. They had to spend all day and most of the night with me trying to make me look like him. Tony Gilroy, who was the second unit director, said, "God, I've spent a hell of a lot of time listening to your voice." I said, "You poor man. I'm sorry about that."

What would you think about Lucasfilm potentially using such a technique to help complete the story of Leia following Fisher's death?

I have no comment to make about Carrie Fisher, because Rogue One was my film and I have no connection to other films. To be honest, I don't know what she was or wasn't doing [in future films], I'm afraid.

I think and hope it won't be a commonplace thing. I can see when it can be used for a good piece of storytelling, and I'm sure they will consider it. I don't think it's going to be very common.

How did wearing the apparatus affect your performance?

There's something very claustrophobic, there's something very distancing about having the head cam gear. It's very unwieldy. It's hard enough on a film set to believe you are this other person. This other character. They had a lovely guy called Robert and a lady called Sonya from ILM, and they made it as comfortable and as easy to wear as they possibly could. It's very hard to find a performance with that thing sticking on your head, the lights and lenses shining on your eyes. It's a very particular way of working. I must say I found it terribly frightening.

Tarkin really shone opposite Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic. What was that working relationship like?

He's wonderful. He gets himself completely into the character. He's alive. He's sparking. At one point, I was being deliberately louche in order to wind him up. He thought I was looking at the monitor, which was at the back of the camera. I was being deliberately dismissive. I succeeded so much, I really pissed him off. He shouted, "Don't look at the monitor, Guy!" I wasn't looking at the monitor, and as a true professional, I never would. [Laughs]

Read more: 'Star Wars' Braintrust Sets Meeting to Plot Leia's Life After Carrie Fisher's Death
By Krishna Eluri

BENGALURU (Reuters) - The rupee is expected to fall further against the U.S. dollar this year to a record low, hit by rising global bond yields and an economic blow from New Delhi's dramatic currency crackdown launched two months ago, a Reuters poll found.

The rupee performed a bit better than most of its regional peers in 2016, weakening just over 2 percent as India's economy, the fastest-growing in Asia, roared ahead for most of the year.

But capital outflows intensified toward the end of 2016 after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the end of high-value bank notes.

The rupee is forecast to weaken to 68.50 a dollar in one month versus 67.73 at Thursday's close, the poll of nearly 30 foreign exchange strategists carried out this week showed.

It is expected to fall further to 69.50 by year-end. That 12-month consensus is the weakest for several years and would mark a record low. Just three months back the view in a Reuters poll was for the rupee to trade at 67.73 in a year.

"We see a less rosy scenario in the capital account and current account front in the coming two years, with global bond yields and money flowing back to the U.S.," said Bhupesh Bameta, head of FX research at Edelweiss Financial Services in Mumbai.

Since Trump's election victory, markets have realigned over expectations his administration will bring in sweeping tax cuts, infrastructure projects and deregulation.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has rallied more than 25 percent since the election, hitting a two-year high of 2.641 percent on Dec. 15.

The Fed also raised the federal funds rate last month for the first time in a year. The central bank signaled a faster pace of rate increases this year based on expectations for fiscal stimulus.

In India, Modi's demonetization drive has hampered both industrial and services output, with a private survey this week showing factory activity and services took a hit last month, lending credence to worries that it would dent growth.

Story continues

"Given the demonetization exercise, the attraction for gold may come back again," Bameta said. "(Given) the fact that there was no meaningful depreciation of the rupee over the last two years when everything else was depreciating, a correction...is due."

(For other stories from the FX poll)

(Polling By Shaloo Srivastava and Khushboo Mittal; Editing by Ross Finley and Randy Fabi)
BEIRUT (AP)  Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to cast himself as a peacemaker in Syria, after his military proved to be the difference in the battle for Aleppo. The Russian military announced Friday it was withdrawing its flagship vessels from the Syrian coast, and Putin has sent his envoys to organize the first talks between the Syrian government and opposition in nearly a year, set for later this month in Kazakhstan.

But the Syrian government's battlefield victories have depended crucially on Russian firepower, and Moscow is likely to remain closely involved in the protracted war. Syrian President Bashar Assad has indicated he still has battles to fight around the capital, Damascus, and in rebel-held Idlib province, in the country's northwest. These are matters that Russia still needs to resolve.

A look at Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war:

RUSSIA'S PIVOTAL ROLE

Without Russia, Assad would not be in the position he is now. He was losing ground when Moscow, a longtime ally, dispatched its air force in 2015 and changed the tide of the war.

A ferocious Russian air campaign around Aleppo cleared the way for pro-government forces to encircle opposition-held districts in the northern city and eventually take them over. It sparked at least two mass displacements  one north of the city, and one in Aleppo itself  and killed countless civilians and fighters.

That campaign was bolstered by the deployment to the Mediterranean Sea of the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier with some 30 warplanes in November. Russia was already running operations at full tilt from its air and naval bases on Syria's coast. Now, Russia is withdrawing the Kuznetsov and its largest frigate operating in support.

Russia also provided political cover for the government against accusations of obstructionism and war crimes in the U.N. and was a tough advocate for its ally in cease-fire negotiations brokered with the U.S. and Turkey.

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WHAT WILL BE RUSSIA'S FURTHER INVOLVEMENT IN SYRIA?

Russia's military presence in Syria will continue to be strong for the visible future. It has a naval base in Tartus and the military airfield in Hemeimeem, from which many of the airstrikes have been launched. It has not said how many of its troops are in Syria, but media estimates suggest 4,000 or more.

Putin is maneuvering to play the part of peacemaker, as well. After brokering a broad cease-fire with Turkey, the opposition's main sponsor, Moscow along with Ankara and Tehran are now brokering peace talks between the government and opposition in Astana, Kazakhstan, set to begin Jan. 23.

The cease-fire, which began a week ago, has reduced but not altogether halted the fighting. It remains to be seen whether the main opposition forces will agree to respect the talks in Astana so long as fighting presses on.

As a guarantor of the cease-fire agreement, Russia would be unlikely to make a sizable drawdown while the peace process remains uncertain.

Alexander Golts, an independent Russian military analyst, told The Associated Press that he believed withdrawing the Kuznetsov and its flotilla was not a crucial change.

"They did not play an essential role regarding the Syrian conflict. In my view, they were most likely sent to demonstrate our military power," he said. "Every time Syria declared a cease-fire, and I note this is the third cease-fire, the Kremlin makes an attempt to declare the withdrawal of forces, of drawing down forces."

Also, Russia will keep a group of about 10 military vessels elsewhere in the Mediterranean, said Andrei Krasov, the deputy head of parliament's defense committee, speaking to the Interfax news agency.

HOW WILL THIS AFFECT THE NEXT THEATERS OF BATTLE?

Assad has made clear his intention to retake all of Syria from opposition and Islamic State control. To that end, pro-government forces have kept up their campaigns on opposition pockets around Damascus, despite last week's cease-fire. Progress has been steady but slow; Russia's intervention has not proven decisive to these battles.

The greater challenge will be to retake Idlib, a province almost entirely in opposition control. It is bordered on one side by Turkey, which has behaved as a sort of rearguard for the rebels, allowing troops and weapons across its border. The government's bid for Idlib will depend on Turkey's cooperation and also could hinge on Russian air power. Russia was the deciding factor to the government's campaign for the neighboring countryside north of Aleppo in early 2016.

Russian airstrikes have killed about 4,700 civilians and 6,000 opposition fighters and Islamic State militants, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. They have decimated opposition supply lines and reinforced government sieges that have led to several opposition surrenders.

DOES RUSSIA HAVE OTHER DESIGNS IN THE REGION?

Syria is Russia's foothold in the Middle East, providing its only military bases outside the former Soviet Union. But although Russia is increasingly showing itself off as a military power, its long-term ambitions are unclear.

Russia has long tried to position itself as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In October, it conducted joint military exercises with Egypt, its first on the African continent.

Moscow-based analyst Vyacheslav Matuzov said he believes Russia ultimately will boost its presence in Syria.

"We're going to strengthen our air base in Hemeimeem, we're going to strengthen our naval base in Tartus. It's unavoidable" as Russia's global influence grows, he said.

Golts, however, said Russia's military ambitions are limited by its struggling economy, and in the region, "Russia does not have serious interests; Russia does not depend on Middle East oil."

WHAT IS THE U.S. ROLE IN SYRIA NOW?

The Obama administration has taken a hands-off approach to the conflict in the waning months of its tenure. The administration has not played the leading part in peace efforts since last fall, as the U.S. election approached. Contacts with Russia and others in Geneva  where officials had been meeting to discuss cease-fire efforts and resume peace talks  have essentially ended.

With no indication about how the incoming administration of Donald Trump intends to proceed on Syria, U.S. diplomats are wary of engaging in any new initiatives that would require a sustained American role. One indication of this is ambivalence about attending, even in an observer role, the proposed talks in Kazakhstan.

Trump and his national security advisers have said the fight against the Islamic State group is a priority. The Obama administration continues to have an undisclosed number of U.S. special operations troops, presumed to be about 250-500, in Syria in an advise-and-assist role with what the U.S. calls the Syrian Democratic Forces. Some of these are embedded with the SDF  both Syrian Kurds and Syrian Arabs  in northern Syria. The U.S. previously helped in recruiting the forces and providing equipment.

___

Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed.
MOSCOW, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Russia has begun a drawdown of its military forces in Syria, news agencies quoted the head of the Russian General Staff as saying on Friday.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, (President) Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Valery Gerasimov as saying.

Gerasimov said Russia's naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, which has been operating in the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, would be the first to return from Syria.

Putin said in December Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria under the terms of a ceasefire deal between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Gareth Jones)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it had begun reducing its military forces in Syria under the terms of a fragile ceasefire deal brokered between opposition groups and the Syrian government. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the ceasefire in late December and said Russia would pull back some of its forces in Syria, where its military intervention has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad. The head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said that had begun on Friday with the Russian naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier beginning its withdrawal from the east Mediterranean. "In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," Gerasimov said. "I want to congratulate the entire crew of the naval aircraft carrier group on the successful completion of their assigned tasks." The Kuznetsov led the Russian naval deployment operating off the Syrian coast, a rare sight since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in providing air support to the Syrian army. Large-scale strikes on rebel forces were launched from the fleet in November. Syrian army chief of staff Lieutenant General Ali Abdullah Ayoub visited the Kuznetsov to mark the end of its mission. In remarks shown on Russian state television, he stressed the importance of Russian military support given to Damascus in the war on terrorism and the need to develop military cooperation with Russia even after the victory over terrorism. However, Russia has previously failed to deliver on promises to pull back its forces from Syria. Moscow announced a reduction of its military deployment in the country in March last year, but continued supply runs by land and air before sending significant reinforcements in October. (Reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow and Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
(Adds background, quotes)

MOSCOW, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it had begun reducing its military forces in Syria under the terms of a fragile ceasefire deal brokered between opposition groups and the Syrian government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the ceasefire in late December and said Russia would pull back some of its forces in Syria, where its military intervention has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.

The head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said that had begun on Friday with the Russian naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier beginning its withdrawal from the east Mediterranean.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," Gerasimov said.

"I want to congratulate the entire crew of the naval aircraft carrier group on the successful completion of their assigned tasks."

The Kuznetsov led the Russian naval deployment operating off the Syrian coast, a rare sight since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in providing air support to the Syrian army. Large-scale strikes on rebel forces were launched from the fleet in November.

Syrian army chief of staff Lieutenant General Ali Abdullah Ayoub visited the Kuznetsov to mark the end of its mission.

In remarks shown on Russian state television, he stressed the importance of Russian military support given to Damascus in "the war on terrorism and the need to develop military cooperation" with Russia even after "the victory over terrorism".

However, Russia has previously failed to deliver on promises to pull back its forces from Syria.

Moscow announced a reduction of its military deployment in the country in March last year, but continued supply runs by land and air before sending significant reinforcements in October.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow and Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
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President-elect Donald Trump has rattled U.S. allies with his NATO skepticism and overt fondness of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Poland is nonetheless pinning its hopes on Trump shoring up the military alliance, according to a senior Polish defense official.

Thats in part because the Obama administrations military initiatives in Europe, if they remain in place, may not be enough to stave off Russian aggression. Polands Defense Ministry Undersecretary Tomasz Szatkowski hopes for more when Trump takes office.

Szatkowski would like to see more strategy behind those projects, under Trump, so they are not driven by political symbolism but rather by military necessity, he told Foreign Policy.

Poland has been the epicenter of a tense standoff between Russia and the West since Moscow invaded Ukraine and drove post-Cold War relations into the gutter. NATO scrambled to respond, dusting off its Cold War-era deterrence strategies and defense planning books in a new standoff with its former adversary.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a bid to reassure nervous allies under Russias shadow and shore up deterrence along NATOs frontlines, agreed to deploy some 4,000 troops on a rotational basis to Poland and ramp up military exercises in the region.

But a permanent presence that does not rotate troops out could carry more deterrent heft, said Szatkowski. And more troops couldnt hurt, either. Poland is welcoming U.S. troop rotations with open arms, he said, but under Trump, Warsaw would be glad to see an even more increased presence of U.S. troops in Poland.

Its something Poland and the Baltic States have pushed for within NATO for years, fearful of Russias military buildup near their borders. Under Obama, the United States pledged a new round of U.S. troops and exercises in Europe under the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI). At a summit in July, NATO also agreed to deploy Canadian-, British-, and German-led multinational battalions to the three Baltic states along with the U.S. troops to Poland.

Story continues

Conventional and nuclear capabilities are amassing on Polish borders, said Szatkowski, particularly in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, where Russia packed with high-end military equipment and nuclear-capable missiles in recent months.

But Trump, who said on the campaign trail he may not defend NATO allies if under attack, and promised fresh and friendly approach to Russia once in office, may roll back the ERI and other U.S. military commitments to Europe.

Theres a sense Trump will bring a more transactional approach to Europeas he prioritizes de-escalating tensions with Russia, said Mark Simakovsky, a former Pentagon official who worked on NATO and Russia issues. He told Foreign Policy that Trump could slash U.S. forces in Europe in a bid to repair tattered U.S.-Russia relations.

Some in Europe are sympathetic to Trumps more realist tack on NATO, particularly given Europes laggard defense spending. Only five of 28 NATO members  the United States, Poland, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and Greece  meet the alliances benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. That has fatigued the United States, says Szatkowski, adding that some NATO allies took U.S. defense guarantees for granted.

Poland, a big defense spender, isnt one of those free-riders. Szatkowski expected this message would resonate in Trumps White House.

Trump is aware of our contributions, Szatkowski said, citing a speech Trump gave to Polish-Americans in September in which he pledged to work with Poland to strengthen NATO. We expect to be treated as a solid ally.

Photo credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services held a hearing on foreign cyber threats to the United States with a focus on Russian interference in the American presidential election, which intelligence agencies keep confirming and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump keeps denying.

And, though Trump clarified (on Twitter, obviously) on Thursday that he is a big fan of Intelligence (quotes his), the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Trump is planning on scaling back intelligence agencies, which he has accused of political bias.

Meanwhile, over 4000 miles away the president of the Czech Republic has his own battle with his countrys intelligence services trying to defuse a Russian threat. President Milos Zeman is reportedly fuming over a new center established by the Interior Ministry to deal with hybrid threats, especially Russian disinformation. This, after Czech counter-intelligence warned that Russia is trying to sway Czech public opinion on NATO, the European Union, and populism and extremism, as it has long done in other European countries such as Germany and the Baltics.

Zeman was apparently fully onboard with the establishment of the new, 20-person center. But the famously pro-Russian president is now displeased. So, too, is his spokesperson, Jiri Ovcacek, who set up a separate Twitter account just to criticize his own countrys efforts to combat Russian disinformation. Its almost as jarring as a U.S. president-elect preferring WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange to his own intel services.

And so, without further ado, we present a game of Who Said It: Team Trump or Milos Zemans spokesperson?

Quote 1:

It is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth.

Quote 2:

A fundamental law applies in a democratic and free society: nobody can have monopoly for truth.

Quote 3:

A strong warning to the mainstream media: They will not be spared.

Quote 4:

Were also not in favor of our intelligence interfering with our elections after the fact.

Story continues

Quote 5:

I take seriously the statement of [Russian] foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that there are no Russian troops [in Ukraine].

Quote 6:

[Vladimir Putin]s not going into Ukraine, all right?

Quote 7:

Julian Assange said a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta  why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!

Answer 1:

Donald Trump

Answer 2:

Zemans spokesperson

Answer 3:

Zemans spokesperson, helpfully informing the mainstream media that the new hybrid threat center will watch them, too.

Answer 4:

Donald Trumps campaign advisor, Kellyanne Conway, speaking to CNN.

Answer 5:

Milos Zeman.

Answer 6:

Donald Trump.

Answer 7:

This was a trick question. It was tweeted out by Donald Trump, but retweeted by, yes, Zemans spokesperson.

Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Sarah Michelle Gellar, dream mom, officially wears a Star Wars costume in the kitchen

Weve known for ages now that the artist formerly known as Buffy Summers, Sarah Michelle Gellar, is a wiz in the kitchen  but until today, we had no clue that our favorite 90s queen cooked with such force.

Gellar, who runs a cooking and lifestyle brand called Foodstirs and whose husband, Freddie Prinze Jr., recently published a cookbook, spent her Friday cooking up a storm in her gorgeous California kitchen with Aubrey Krystek, the head baker at Foodstirs. But instead of outfitting themselves in the mundane, both ladies kicked it up a notch by donning some pretty rad Star Wars aprons  with Gellar herself even rocking a stormtrooper mask.

When @chefhomeskillet and I spend a day in the kitchen, you know that means costumes will be required A photo posted by Sarah Michelle (@sarahmgellar) on Jan 6, 2017 at 9:48am PST

Um, are you trying to tell us that Buffy Freaking Summers is on the side of the Empire/First Order? Buffy, who died for humanity not once but twice, even though said humanity included Xander Harris, is with the folks that killed Han Solo?

We just do not buy it.

All jokes aside, Prinze has voiced main character Kanan Jarrus on Star Wars Rebels for years, and Gellar once voiced an Inquisitor on the show herself, so its no surprise that the couple has some geeky swag lying around their (very busy) kitchen.

Still, this just reconfirms what we pretty much already knew from years of adorable interviews and social media posts from Gellar  shes not a regular mom, shes a cool mom.
UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP)  The Nassau County Police Department is investigating after two officers apparently posed for a selfie in front of a smoldering home on Long Island.

WNBC-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2hXgJ8V ) video surfaced Thursday afternoon that shows the unidentified officers appearing to pose for a picture in front of a house in Uniondale that just went up in flames.

No one was injured, but the home was destroyed. Some neighbors say the officers' stunt showed no concern for the people of the neighborhood.

A statement from the police department called the video "very concerning" and said the officers will be appropriately disciplined if they are found to have been in violation of any rules or regulations.

The people who lived in the home, a law enforcement family themselves, say the officers didn't do anything wrong.

___

Information from: WNBC-TV, http://www.nbcnewyork.com
As the new Republican-controlled Congress moves forward with its goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, the biggest question now is what will replace it.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), an advocate of fully repealing President Obamas signature healthcare law, joined the FOX Business Network to explain how he would replace it.

What I want is to put a replacement in place immediately so we can fix the problems, so as it unwinds we have a replacement for it, Paul said.

He added: We should let you buy as part of an association where you can join together with tens of thousands, if not millions of people, to have leverage to lower your price and also to be protected against pre-existing conditions.

The Kentucky Senator said there are probably four dozen bills already in existence to replace Obamacare, and he is in the process of consolidating them.

By next week I will have a composite bill that is a replacement, that has the five most important ideas in legislative language, in a bill ready to go as a replacement the same day we do a repeal, Paul explained.

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LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2017 / Lundin Law PC (http://lundinlawpc.com/) announces that it is investigating claims against New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. ("New Oriental" or the "Company") (EDU) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws.

To get more information about this investigation, please contact Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or via email at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

Reuters published an article December 2, 2016 revealing that New Oriental has been accused of engaging in college application fraud. The article states, "[e]ight former and current New Oriental employeestold Reuters the firms have engaged in college application fraud, including writing application essays and teacher recommendations, and falsifying high school transcripts." The same day, Reuters released an update claiming that, due to its earlier report detailing academic fraud allegations at New Oriental, the American International Recruitment Council ("AIRC") "will investigate the company in response to the report", and the AIRC's president-elect called the allegations "highly concerning." When this information was released to the public, the value of New Oriental fell sharply on December 2, 2016, causing investors serious harm.

Lundin Law PC was created by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
This weekend, the first of four off-site projects being held under the auspices of the Sharjah Biennial will open in Dakar, focusing on the keyword of water and inviting a range of artists, architects, philosophers, writers and scientists to take part.

Led by curator Christine Tohme, Sharjah Biennial is taking an unusual approach for its 13th edition, challenging the traditional centralized biennial format with a program that includes four off-site projects. Each of the four, taking place in Dakar, Istanbul, Ramallah and Beirut, has a different theme: water, crops, earth and a culinary theme, respectively.

Multimedia artist Kader Attia is behind the first off-site project at the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal on January 8 and 9. Attia was behind the choice of the Atlantic port town, whose coastal location echoes that of Sharjah.



His project, "Vive l'Independance de l'Eau" (Long Live the Independence of Water), comprises workshops, symposiums and performances focusing on ecological and environmental concerns, such as global warming and rising sea levels, that are particularly acute in the South.



On day one, taking a cultural approach to water, Moroccan poet Rachida Madani and Algerian poet Pierre Amrouche will explore the metaphysical power of poetry, Senegalese anthropologist Ibrahima Sow will discuss the power of sand, German hydrologist and artist Christoph Keller will present a film on the cosmology of the Yanomami tribe titled "Anarcheology," and architects will discuss coastal architecture and clay architecture.

On day two, the workshop will examine a socio-political and historical understanding of water with an equally diverse roster of participants, presenting German filmmaker and theorist Hito Steyerl's film "Liquidity" and reflections on post-colonialism and population migration. Day two will also feature poetry and music, including a live performance from Serer village women.

Sharjah Biennial 13 began in October. Its central program, called Act I, will kick off in Sharjah on March 10, exhibiting the work of more than 60 artists.

The off-site program continues in May, when Zeynep Oz will lead the Istanbul project related to crops; Lara Khalidi will address the theme of earth in Ramallah in August; and Ashkal Alwan will organize a project with a culinary theme in Beirut in October, just ahead of Act II.

sharjahart.org/biennial-13
Moonlight opens with its protagonist Chiron, nicknamed Little, as a child (played by Alex Hibbert) meeting protective drug dealer Juan (portrayed by Mahershala Ali), and that presented a challenge to the film's editors, Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders, friends with director Barry Jenkins since their student days at Florida State University. They had to find the "balance so that Juan doesn't overtake Little's story," explains Sanders. "It was a bit of a discovery process."

Notes McMillon, "Little doesn't talk for the first 10 minutes, so we needed to find his voice in the movie." In fact, they experimented with the movie's opening, at one point starting with Little dancing in a bathroom, imitating Michael Jackson, but they agreed that the added levity wasn't required.

For each of the film's three acts, the editors actually started by giving the viewer an opportunity to get acquainted with Chiron at each stage of his life.

David Bornfriend/Courtesy of A2

For that reason, the scene during which the adult Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) visits his mother (Naomie Harris) was moved back from where it originally was scripted. "We thought the visit to his mother came too early in Act 3," says McMillon. "We wanted to give the audience a chance to catch up with Chiron." And so the pair created a montage that was a sort of "day in his life" before moving on to Chiron's meeting with his mother.

The climactic Act 3 scenes in which Chiron reconnects with childhood friend Kevin (Andre Holland) proved the biggest challenge. "We're in the diner for four to five scenes," explains McMillon. "You don't want to overstay your welcome but do it at a pace that allows them to reconnect after a very long time. Barry likes to play up the silences and allow the viewer to process what the character is thinking. But we had to also keep the audience engaged."

Story continues

David Bornfriend/Courtesy of A2

Courtesy of LTLA Communications

This story first appeared in the Jan. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Read more: 'Moonlight' Wins Leading Four Awards From Online Film Critics Society
The memory of a beloved pet inspires one couple's fight against injustice.
silencefeature

Paramount

Is questioning ones faith really so profound? Judging by Silence, Martin Scorsese seems to think it is, but Im not so sure. After Gangs of New York I became convinced that I could sit through any Scorsese film, story arc or not, on the strength of production and costumes and acting alone (the vests, the top hats, the butchering  I could watch that all day). But Silence feels more performative than personal, more like public penance than honest introspection. And thus, maybe a bit of a lie?

Its only when I truly dont enjoy a movie Ive just watched that I leave the theater wondering what the point of it was, and I was trying to determine what I was supposed to be getting from Silence long before the credits had even rolled (two hours and 45 minutes, by the way, plus an unplanned 25 or so during my screening, when the sound lost sync two thirds of the way through and they had to restart the reel  Im sure that affected my experience somewhat). Mostly I came away with the knowledge that the 1600s sucked. A lot.

Directed by Scorsese, adapted by Jay Cocks from Shusaku Endos 1966 novel, and supposedly 28 years in the making, Silence tells the story of two Jesuit missionaries (played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who travel to Japan to find their mentor (Liam Neeson), who has supposedly apostatized, renouncing Christ and taking a Japanese name and wife. Renounced Christ under torture? Not our Tony, it cant be!

Were the Jesuits really such rubes? Didnt Jesus himself even call out to God while he was being tortured?

In any case, they undertake this journey at a time when feudal Japan is instituting fierce isolationism, trying to stamp out foreign influence through brutal repression of foreign things, with Christianity at the top of the list. Burn them, hang them, beat them, drown them, tie them upside down with heads buried underground  oh yeah, theyve got tortures. No shortage of those. The place is like an amusement park for morbid Catholics looking to test their faith and really get close to God through physical trials. What fun!

Story continues

It wouldve been nice if Scorsese and Cocks had set up the who, what, where, why of the story a little better in the beginning, which youd think they had ample opportunity to do in one of Silences numerous expository voiceovers from various characters (youll go nuts trying to figure out rhyme or reason behind them). Instead, its a little unclear exactly where the priests are or how they get to Japan. They hopscotch around from Portugal (or at least an unidentified place we dont find out is Portugal until much later) to Macau to Japan, as if those journeys were a breeze in 1640. Why not just use a dotted red line, Indiana Jones-style? This breezy fast forward allows the film much more time in Japan itself. And there? Well, there its just a brutal, repetitive dirge.

In the world of Rodrigues (Garfield) and Garrpe (Driver), faith is sacrifice, and so it is they beg to be allowed to undertake this suicide mission to Japan, where they nonetheless find a thriving (though brutally persecuted) community of English-speaking believers (English being a stand-in for Portuguese, apparently, which, again, we dont find out until later).

With the help of their drunken, rat-like fixer, Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), Rodrigues and Garrpe connect with this society of secretly-Christian Japanese, who take them in, beside themselves at finally having priests to confess to. That the Japanese Christians might not have been able to reach paradise without the priests helps them justify their presence, at least before the murders start.

These Japanese, unfortunately, converse in speech that, partly thanks to the movie magic of language substitution (English is Portuguese, Portuguese is English, Japanese is still Japanese), has the unfortunate distinction of being both obnoxiously broken and unrealistically proficient. These characters convey non-complex thoughts haltingly, and yet you still marvel at being expected to believe that this many people speak passable English (er, Portuguese) on a fiercely isolationist island where its prohibited. Would pure subtitles have been a better solution? Maybe. Or should the film have focused more on the language barrier itself? Sure. The way it is, its a blatant conceit, which is the kind of thing thats supposed to make a film more watchable, but in this case just makes it more tiresome.

Even aside from the language, though, theres a striking lack of depth to these characters. The Japanese are all either noble penitents, sneering villains, or mischievous scamps. Which feels uh yeah, Ill just say it, a little racist, even if I give Silence the benefit of the doubt on the Mickey Rooney accents (I suppose an accent cant be racist in and of itself if its reasonably accurate) and the buck-toothed inquisitor who looks and sounds more than a little like a WWII propaganda cartoon.

Oh thats right, Silence has an inquisitor. And get this: this time its the Catholics who are being inquisited upon! By Buddhists! Wild, right? Was this Scorseses purpose in all this, to show us that Catholics got as well as they gave? That they only undertook all that normally-negatively-depicted, converting-the-natives stuff because of an intense altruism? Thats certainly a take, but it doesnt seem like a novel enough one to support this predictable and generally un-fun a movie.

Silence feels very much like an #AllInquisitionsMatter take on 17th century religion, not that I really needed a film to remind me that no one race, creed, or nationality has a monopoly on monstrousness. And besides, if the Japanese were doing to the Christians in Japan more or less what the Catholics were doing to the Jews and Protestants in Spain, what are we learning? As Silences own language swap proves, if you just change the name on something its basically the same thing.



Im being harsh (and again, I wont pretend that having to sit through 20 minutes of an already long movie twice didnt play a factor). Its not that this story didnt need to be told, I just wish it had been told better. As it is, its very hard to identify with anyone in this story. You mostly just want to get away, and I have to think thats partly a failure of imagination. Rodrigues and Garrpe, cooped up in a one-room shack during daylight hours at first to hide from the inquisitors spies, carp at each other about the conditions, but they cant seem to be able to decide if they want their lives to be harder or easier. Later, theyre forced to question which is the most Godly thing to do: keep trying to serve the Christian Japanese, even as the inquisitors slaughter them, or just leave the poor bastards alone.

The inquisitors, for their part, actually seem somewhat reasonable in conversation, torture notwithstanding. All they claim to want is for the priests (or priest, really, poor Adam Driver looks like he starved himself half to death for this awful movie that hes only in for about 15 minutes) to realize that Christianity, which might be the truth in Europe, does not work in Japan. Its like a tree whose roots rot in the swamp of Japan, they say. Of course, these priests believe that any such admission that the truth is mutable, or even the smallest symbolic gesture, like putting their foot atop an idol of Jesus, is a threat to their very soul. And so they dont do it, even as the inquisitor does monstrous things to the Japanese Christians in front of them.

If you think this is so profound a spiritual conflict that you could watch it play out over and over again for almost three hours, then boy, Silence is the movie for you. Me, I tend to think repetition has a way of dulling profundity. Not to mention, these priests dont ever seem to ask themselves the obvious questions. Namely, if God is all around us at all times, what the f*ck would it matter if you stepped on a childs drawing of his son? Youre standing on Gods face every hour of every day, not to mention pissing and shitting on him every time you go to the bathroom. Youre letting people get disemboweled over this? How is this even a question? Im not trying to blaspheme, but I need this movie to at least address this. I thought the whole East-West church schism was about the West being against idol worship.

Silence feels like it wants to make a show of these people questioning their faith, but its always in this arms length, lionizing, wasnt-grandad-a-tough-ol-bird kind of way. I know real people died over this. I know they fought wars over the finer points of even more ridiculous religious esoterica, like whether the communion actually, physically turns wine into Jesuss blood and flesh or if its just a metaphor. But I refuse to believe that the 17th century didnt have a single relatable person or substantial female. The Silence characters I identified most closely with ended up being the torturing murderous Japanese who rightly wondered, Jeez, why dont these arrogant freaks just shove off home?

Thats somewhat novel, I suppose, making us identify with the inquisitors, intentional or not, but not quite novel enough to compel me to want to sit through more of this dull, dour, morbid slog. Its far too repetitive, and far too predictable.

Its a film about Catholicism in 17th century Japan and watching it feels like sitting through someone elses church service  long and arcane with everyone wallowing in deeply felt emotions that you dont quite understand. Is the dry, crowd-punishing Silence Martin Scorseses public penance for making fraud seem so fun in Wolf of Wall Street? The fact that he wanted to show it to the Pope suggest that maybe it is. If so, Ill take evil Scorsese over good Scorsese any day of the week and twice on the Sabbath. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.
Tough talk. Senators from both parties, along with the chiefs of the U.S. intelligence agencies, pushed back forcefully against President-elect Donald Trumps repeated denials that the Russian government directed hack attacks intended to influence the U.S. presidential election, during a dramatic hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Theres a difference between skepticism and disparagement, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Our assessment now is even more resolute that the Russians were behind the breaches and the handoff of information to Wikileaks. The hearing came just a day before Clapper, along with the other intel chiefs, travel to New York to present their findings on Russian involvement to Trump, who has repeatedly blasted them on Twitter, while praising Vladimir Putin and approvingly quoting Julian Assange.

Overheard in the Kremlin. Senior U.S. officials told the Washington Post that theyve intercepted communications between members of the Russian government celebrating Trumps victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for MoscowThe ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials  including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the countrys cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election  contributed to the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment that Moscows efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House. The U.S. spy agencies also say theyve identified specific actors involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, according to CNN.

New boss. On Thursday, multiple media outlets reported that Trump was likely to name former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to replace Clapper, installing a relative novice at the head of a body some Trump advisors want to gut, FPs Elias Groll reports. A former ambassador to Germany, Coats served on the Senate Intelligence Committee before his retirement this year.

Story continues

Trump advisors have floated a plan to strip the office Coats will lead of funding and perhaps to also make cuts at the CIA, reforms that Coats may lack the experience to effectively carry out. If youre going to do some surgery, you need to understand how it works, a former senior intelligence official told Groll, adding that Coatss predecessors have typically had experience serving as intelligence officers.

Bye bye! It looks like the eventful deployment of Moscows sole aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to support operations in Syria is coming to an end. While the ship managed to avoid catching fire like its last deployment, two of its planes did crash into the sea over the past two months. The announcement comes days after Russia and Turkey negotiated a ceasefire in Syria which is largely holding, according to the United Nations. Moscow still has dozens of aircraft on the ground in Syria.

Commander of Russian forces in Syria, Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, told the state-run TASS news agency that over the two months of their participation in combat operations, naval aviation pilots have carried out 420 sorties, including 117 in nighttime. A total of 1,252 terrorist facilities have been destroyed, he said. We should note that Russia chalks up anything it hits in Syria as a terrorist target, including civilian apartment blocks and hospitals in Aleppo and elsewhere.

Wounded in action. Of the 30 U.S. troops wounded in action in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, at least 14 American have taken place since October, the Military Times reports. Of the 14 wounded-in-action reports since October, eight stem from unspecified incidents recorded in December. Thats the highest monthly tally since March 2016.

Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

PEOTUS

President-elect Donald Trumps Twitter account is a security disaster waiting to happen, according to Buzzfeed. Trump penchant for policy pronouncement in all-hours tweetstorms have made his account a must-watch for those looking for clues about where the administration stands. Theyve also made his account a tempting target for crooks looking to profit off spikes and dips in the stock market or politically-motivated attackers aiming to spark a geopolitical conflict. Twitter, however, hasnt offered any extra security measure for high-profile political accounts, according social media managers for notable politicians.

South Korea

China is putting the screws to South Korea in retaliation for its decision to host a U.S. missile defense battery, Reuters reports. South Korean Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho cited indirect responses from Beijing without specifying and retaliatory measures in particular. Nonetheless, reports of China denying permission for South Korean companies to fly charter flights to China have circulated as a possible example of Chinas ire. The U.S. and South Korea greed to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to protect against North Koreas growing ballistic missile program, earning the displeasure of China which believes the system could be used against it.

South Korea is ramping up the rhetoric on its special operations assassination squad thats aimed squarely at Kim Jong Un. CNN reports that an anonymous South Korean defense officials says the ministry is speeding up preparations for the unit so that itll be ready in 2017 instead of 2019. In the event of war, the commandos would have the responsibility of killing Kim and other senior figures in the North Korean chain of command. The announcement follows similar rhetoric from the North, including a recent video showing a fictionalized attack on the Blue House, where South Koreas president resides.

Japan

The U.S. Navy is sending E-2 Hawkeye reconnaissance planes to Japan. Defense Tech reports that the move is one of the last steps in the departing Obama administration attempt at a Pivot to Asia, a bid to refocus American diplomatic attention and military resources to the Pacific. The planes headed to Japan will be updated E-2D Hawkeyes with a new radar system and data links.

UK

The Brits are getting a laser. The BBC reports that the British defense ministry is embarking on a project to build a laser, and so far, the project is focused on building a demonstrator rather than a production model designed to be used on a specific platform. The development, however, is a sign of advanced militaries growing interest in directed energy weapons.

Iraq

Amnesty International released a new report looking into Iraqi militias getting supplies of U.S., European, Russian, and Iranian weapons. The report looked at four prominent Iraqi Shia militias  the Badr Brigades, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Hezbollah, and Saraya al-Salam  and found that international arms shipments that have reached the groups have fuelled enforced disappearances, abductions, torture, summary killings, and deliberate destruction of civilian property. Iraqs haphazard and shoddy weapons tracking systems, the report says, makes it difficult to trace where arms sent to Iraq end up.

Munitions

The Obama administration is coming to a close and observers are trying to summarize the presidents legacy. Over at the Council on Foreign Relations, FP contributor Micah Zenko takes a different approach, viewing Obamas tenure through the lens of the 26,171 munitions American aircraft dropped in the last full year of Obamas presidency. Not surprisingly, the vast majority or around 24,000 of these were dropped in Iraq and Syria, where the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve has sought to defeat the Islamic State. Other strikes in declining order were carried out in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.

(Sub)Tweet of the day

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (ret.) Gen. Martin Dempsey gave a shout out to the intelligence world, saying Intelligence is hard, thankless work. Fortunately, we have dedicated, patriotic, and courageous men and women on the job. Thanks. The comment comes amid a brewing clash between President-elect Donald Trump, his administration and the intelligence community over their conclusion that Russian hackers intervened in the 2016 election on his behalf.

Photo Credit: SAVO PRELEVIC/AFP/Getty Images
Rovinka (Slovakia) (AFP) - Slovak financial analyst Rastislav Krul and his wife once waited out an hour-long traffic jam by picking up several bags worth of rubbish around a rest area off the motorway.

"No one joined in. People just watched us from their cars," recalls the 30-year-old, who has launched an anti-litter campaign from his western village of Rovinka.

"For us time flew by, for them it went slowly," he adds, picking up yet another plastic bottle on a weekend stroll around a lake.

Their idea is simple: anyone who picks up at least one item of trash a day qualifies as a Wastebuster. Since last year, they have been spreading their philosophy online.

Their Facebook page now has thousands of followers, who post stories and photos of cleaning up the streets and countryside. Most of the comments are positive.

Rastislav says setting an example is like a long-distance run. No instant results but he is optimistic about change down the line.

"When people see us picking up trash, they never join in. But I think it does make them start to reflect on what we're doing," he says.

"Maybe it'll stop them from tossing their next beer can or bubble gum wrapper."

In the same vein, the 1 Piece of Rubbish campaign, launched by British expatriate Eddie Platt in the southern French city of Marseille has won cyber fans around the world from Buenos Aires to New York.

Participants post selfies on a social network each time they pick up a piece of litter and put it in the rubbish bin.

- Boss on board -

Their crusade began two years ago, when Rastislav was living in the capital Bratislava and overheard his neighbours complain about litter on the block.

"I realised that if fewer people complained and instead each picked up one piece of garbage off the ground and binned it, our city would not be as polluted," he tells AFP.

He, himself, began doing so and has been picking up litter every day since. He also encouraged his wife, Veronika, 30, to join in.

Story continues

"Before I met Rasto, I thought garbage on the ground didn't concern me. He's shown me that it doesn't take any extraordinary effort to pick up trash," she says.

"Now it's become a part of me," she adds, pointing to the plastic bottles, beer cans, empty cigarette cartons and sweet wrappers poking out of the grass.

She says they do not stop at one piece of trash a day.

"When we go for a walk, bike ride or hike, we usually take some gloves and bags with us. Then if we see something we can just stop, pick it up and walk on."

Rastislav has even managed to win over his boss: "When he's out with his kids, they sometimes pick up trash."

- Anywhere, anytime -

Slovakians rank among the least worst offenders for piling up rubbish in the European Union, according to Eurostat figures, which showed each of the country's 5.4 million inhabitants produced about 321 kilos of household rubbish in 2014.

How much of it ends up thrown out on to the streets is hard to say, but the couple feel they still have plenty to do and say the Wastebusters project is a good option for those who hate organised cleaning.

"They don't have to plan anything or specifically go somewhere to pick up trash," he says.

"You can do it on your way home, on the way to the cinema or while waiting for the bus.

"One person's a litterer, another's a cleaner. You drop litter, I pick it up.

"Laws and fines don't solve anything. It's people's mentalities that should change."

Last month, the Slovak Wastebusters launched a website to further spread the word. They also plan to provide tips and tricks on how to reduce waste.

"I took the first step by no longer buying bottled water for work. Instead, I brought a glass water bottle that I fill up and use," says Rastislav.

Their main piece of advice, however, is one that may sound like a no-brainer but makes a world of difference: all it takes is one piece of garbage a day.
If youve seen an episode of Star Trek, any of them, you know that they have the ability to point their gadgets at something and collect a giant pile of scientific data. This is, of course, science fiction, or rather it was, because now thats happening ahead of schedule with a new Chinese smartphone.

The SCiO has been around for a while, and its a breakthrough in of itself; its the worlds first handheld molecular sensor. Its fairly simple; it fires an infrared pulse at the target and measures the molecular fingerprint that bounces back. It has to be taught how to read what it scans, but over time, it can, say, spot the ripest apple or sort drugs from each other instantly. That said, its a $300 accessory for your phone, so the market is limited to schools, nerds, and the produce-obsessed.

However, Chinese smartphone market Changhong paid the Consumer Physics team to shrink it down into a phone, and the result is a phone that can scan pretty much anything and offer you data about it. Its not yet very precise: The Verge, testing it out, found that it was better spotting extremes like the sweetest strawberry than it was at finding middle ranges.

But thats something that can be solved by getting this into more hands and getting people scanning stuff. Leaving aside the convenience aspect like spotting food ready to eat, this technology has all sorts of uses. Anybody in elder care knows that pills can look a little too similar to each other, for example, and this would let you figure out which is which with a simple zap. You could spot counterfeit money by pointing and clicking, see just what materials your clothes use, see what wood your furniture is really made out of, and a whole host of applications that boggle the mind. Or you could just point it at things and seriously intone the results like Spock, which is what we admit well probably be doing when this arrives in China and likely later this year in the US.

(via The Verge)
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  More than 15 months after Flint's water emergency broke open, Gov. Rick Snyder on Friday signed into law the first policy change stemming from the man-made crisis.

The new law requires utilities to more quickly warn customers if there is too much lead in their water. The deadline is now three business days instead of 30 days.

The Republican governor, who has apologized for his administration's role in contaminating Flint's water supply, signed the legislation at a Flint church. "This is an important step in our ongoing efforts to strengthen Michigan's water quality and infrastructure," said Snyder, who was joined by local lawmakers.

The state previously allocated nearly $300 million toward the crisis in which 12 people died from Legionnaires' disease that also has been blamed on improperly treated water from the Flint River. An ongoing investigation has led to charges against 13 current or former government officials, including two managers that Snyder appointed to run the city while it was under state management.

"It is my hope that this bill will protect the public from unknowingly using or consuming unclean water in the future and prevent another water crisis from occurring in a Michigan community again," said Democratic Rep. Sheldon Neeley of Flint, who sponsored the bill.

Flint's nearly 100,000 residents continue drinking either filtered tap water or bottled water. The state acknowledged the lead problem in October 2015. The water source had been switched in April 2014, when lead from old pipes began leaching into the water supply because corrosion-reducing phosphates were not added due to an incorrect reading of federal regulations.

The signing preceded a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "data summit" that will be held Tuesday in Chicago. City, state and federal officials will join other water experts to share and review testing data from Flint. The meeting will be closed to the media. Many of the scientists also will present their findings to the public at a town hall in Flint the next day.

Story continues

The last round of state testing showed the 90th percentile of lead concentrations in Flint was 8 parts per billion, below the federal "action level" of 15 parts per billion and a 10 ppb threshold that Snyder wants to enact as part of a proposal  outlined last April  to have the country's toughest lead rules. Despite the improved water quality, the state Department of Environmental Quality said Friday that a declaration that unfiltered water is safe is not imminent.

George Krisztian, the DEQ's Flint action plan coordinator, told The Associated Press that such a discussion is not on the summit agenda. He said the summit is an "opportunity for all of the various partners to come together and to share their data and basically take a look at the water from a bunch of different perspectives and see how the system is coming along."

Test results for the full six-month monitoring period that ended Dec. 31 are being compiled, but Krisztian said "we anticipate that that number will be in compliance with the action level." An EPA spokeswoman also said there will be no attempt to reach consensus opinions at the Chicago summit.

Officials have cautioned that even if a water system's overall lead levels are OK, individual houses can have problems. One significant issue in Flint, for instance, is that the ongoing replacement of thousands of lead service lines can actually spike lead levels for a few months.

"It's not a wise thing to try to anticipate a date or anything like that," Krisztian said of any announcement. "The conversations with all the partners need to take place. We're going to give it very thoughtful consideration."

___

Online:

Public Act 47 of 2016: http://bit.ly/2iQymqQ

___

Follow David Eggert at http://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/david-eggert .
Kyle Korver is shooting 40.9 percent from 3-point range this season. (AP)

The defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers have reached an agreement on a deal to acquire guard Kyle Korver from the Atlanta Hawks, league sources told The Vertical.

The Cavaliers and Hawks are still finalizing the terms of the trade, with a 2019 first-round pick and Mike Dunleavy Jr. going to Atlanta, league sources said.

The Cavaliers and Hawks are planning on a trade call with the league office in New York to finalize the deal on Friday, but will work until then to find a third team to take Dunleavy, league sources said. Atlanta is willing to keep Dunleavy to make the deal work, but he doesnt fit into its plans to make the roster younger and more financially flexible.

Dunleavy makes $4.8 million this season, and his contract is guaranteed for only $1.7 million of the $5.1 million hes owed in 2017-18.

Atlanta owns six second-round picks over the next three years  and has up to $3.5 million available  as assets to attach in a Dunleavy deal.

Atlanta (19-16) is engaged in discussions with several teams on forward Paul Millsap, who can become a free agent in July, and the organization is motivated to move him sooner rather than later, sources said. Toronto, Denver and Sacramento are among teams with an interest in Millsap, league sources said.

Clevelands Korver acquisition keeps pressure on Toronto to make a move to improve itself in the Eastern Conference. Toronto has the assets  including young players and draft picks  to make a deal for Millsap, but Raptors GM Masai Ujiri has to weigh the Raptors ability to re-sign Millsap in the summer  and his payroll. Millsap is expected to use his player option to become a free agent, and he could cost nearly $30 million annually. The Raptors also will need to re-sign All-Star guard Kyle Lowry, who will command a similar extension. Toronto wants to re-sign forward Patrick Patterson, too.

Korver bolsters the Cavaliers shooting and wing rotation with guard J.R. Smith out for 10 to 14 weeks because of thumb surgery. Korver, 35, has averaged 9.5 points and shot 40.9 percent from 3-point range in 32 games this season. For the Hawks, this signals a change in the franchises direction, with free agent-to-be Thabo Sefolosha also a valued asset on the trade market.

Story continues

The Cavaliers would add $1.3 million to their luxury tax bill with the acquisition of Korver.

More NBA coverage from The Vertical:
SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court on Friday sentenced an executive of Volkswagen's local unit to one year and six months in prison for fabricating documents on emissions and noise-level tests to achieve certification for vehicles for import.

This is the latest fallout from Volkswagen's emissions-test cheating scandal that last year resulted in a sales suspension in South Korea, a once fast-growing market for the German automaker.

"Volkswagen has by itself undermined its credibility as a global brand as a result of this crime which has caused grave social and economic damages ...," the Seoul Central District Court said in a statement, referring to the suspension.

The court statement only gave the surname of the executive, Yun, and said he was convicted of document fabrication, obstruction of work and the violation of an environment law.

In August, South Korea's environment ministry suspended the sales of 80 models of Volkswagen, Audi and Bentley vehicles, and fined the group's local unit 17.8 billion won ($14.91 million)for allegedly forging documents on emissions or noise-level tests.

South Korea has taken a particularly hard line against the automaker, filing criminal complaints against executives including Johannes Thammer, managing director of Audi Volkswagen Korea, raiding their offices and fining the company an additional 37.3 billion won ($31.87 million) for false advertising.

Audi Volkswagen Korea (AVK) has fully cooperated with the PO (Prosecutor's Office) and will participate in good faith in the upcoming court proceedings," the unit said in statement after Yun's conviction.

Seoul prosecutors are still investigating the case.

($1 = 1,194.0100 won)

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Nataly Park; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
LEXINGTON  A second person has been charged in connection with a Dawson County homicide.

Melissa Callahan, 34, of Elm Creek was arrested on suspicion of felony accessory to first-degree murder and with two felony counts of probation violations, according to the Dawson County Jail roster. She was in the jail this morning.

Sheriff Gary Reiber said the accessory to first-degree murder charge is in connection with the first-degree murder case in Dawson County.

Jose Regalado-Mendez, 40, was arrested and detained in Dawson County Jail Wednesday on suspicion of murder. He was charged with first-degree murder, a Class IA felony, and use of a weapon to commit a felony, a Class IC felony, according to court records.

The Dawson County Sheriffs Office said the homicide occurred at Regalado-Mendezs residence 2  miles north of Lexington on 434 Road. On Dec. 12, the body of Jose Hernandez, 37, also known as Juan Marco Ornelas and Chepe, was found by law enforcement personnel under pallets and fencing near a corn bin on the five-acre property, Dawson County Chief Deputy Mike Hudson said in a December interview.

According to an autopsy, Hernandez died of blunt force trauma and asphyxiation, Hudson said in December.

Continuing investigation into the matter revealed that on or about Oct. 4, Regalado-Mendez pointed a firearm at Hernandez and fired at him, which contributed to Hernandezs death, court records now say.

Where Hernandez was from hadnt yet been determined, Hudson said in the December interview, but Hernandez did have ties to Lexington and had been staying in the Lexington area. Hernandez had family in California, Hudson said.

During the investigation on Dec. 12, Hudson said, drugs were allegedly found in Regalado-Mendezs home. According to a Kearney Police Department report, it helped with the investigation and noted blood spatter, weapons, ammunition and drug paraphernalia were found during the investigation.

On Dec. 12, Regalado-Mendez was arrested and detained in the Dawson County Jail on charges of possession of a controlled substance, a Class IV felony; and misdemeanor narcotic equipment possession, an infraction; according to court records.

Regalado-Mendez was questioned about the human remains and denied any knowledge of its existence, identity or his involvement that led to the remains being discovered on the property, court records say.

Regalado-Mendez was also charged in Dawson County Court with theft by receiving stolen property, a Class IV felony. A stolen Chevrolet Trailblazer was allegedly found on his property on Oct. 24. On Nov. 3, the case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the case may be refiled later.

Regalado-Mendez is set to be arraigned on the drug charges on Jan. 23.

His preliminary hearing for the murder case is on Jan. 26 in Dawson County Court. Bond was not allowed, and he remains in jail.

If convicted of a Class IA felony, Regalado-Mendez faces up to life in prison, and if convicted of a Class IC felony, he faces up to 50 years in prison.
On Friday night, the Obamas will greet a star-studded list of celebrities for their final White House party.

Read: Obama Says He Would Have Beaten Trump If He'd Been Able to Run Again

Beyonce, who sang at the Inaugural Ball back in 2009 and performed the national anthem at the 2013 inauguration, will sing at the party. Her husband Jay Z, one of the presidents favorite rappers, is also expected to perform.

Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Bradley Cooper, George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Usher, and Oprah are also slated to attend the farewell bash.

CBS This Morning co-anchor Gayle King is on the guest list, as well as actor Samuel L. Jackson. Sir Paul McCartney, Pearl Jams Eddie Vedder and David Letterman will also be there.

Chicago musician and one of President Obamas favorite rising stars, Chance the Rapper, took to Twitter to confirm he will be attending.

Bout to fly 21 hours to DC to bid farewell to the greatest president in US history. God bless you @Potus  Lil Chano From 79th (@chancetherapper) January 5, 2017

The amount of A-listers attending the final Obama hosted party at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a stark contrast to those expected to attend Donald Trumps inauguration in exactly two weeks.

Read: New Year, Same Donald: Trump Launches Twitter Tirade Against Chicago Mayor, Obamacare, Media

The president-elect is said to have been struggled gathering high profile talent to perform at his swearing-in on January 20.

Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion and Garth Brooks have all reportedly turned down a chance to play for the soon-to-be 45th president.

Watch: Woman Carries Life-Sized Cardboard Cutout of Barack Obama Everywhere She Goes

Related Articles:
Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border could mark a major payday for some companies -- if it ever gets built.

The president revived one of his most infamous campaign lines at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday and threatened to shut down the government if Congress doesn't provide funding for his big immigration idea. "We are building a wall on the southern border which is absolutely necessary," he told the crowd. "Believe me, one way or another, we're going to get that wall."

"Build that wall! Build that wall!" supporters chanted back in a now-familiar refrain.

While Trump on the campaign trail insisted Mexico would somehow foot the bill for the wall, a transcript published by The Washington Post in August of a conversation between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto signaled he knows that is not the case and is using the wall as a political tool instead of a policy one.

Trump is now threatening shutting down the government if Congress, not Mexico, doesn't include the project in its budget. "If we have to close down our government, we're building that wall," he said on Tuesday.

This isn't the first time the Trump administration has suggested it might shut down the government over funding for the construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border -- Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in April made a similar threat.

To be sure, it is unclear whether Trump's border wall project will ever come to fruition. But if it does, there are a number of companies that could benefit.

Shares of Granite Construction and Tetra Tech have declined year-to-date but could turn around if they get wall contracts. Both were hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to work on construction of the fencing currently at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. Customs and Border protection. On its website, Granite makes note of its work in upgrading remote Monument 250 at the California border, including roadways and fencing. Tetra Tech helped build the border wall near San Diego.

Story continues

Other fence contractors are private: Cerrudo Services, Hal Hays, Kiewit, RMA Construction and Weston, among others. Arizona-based Sundt has worked on 10 border fence projects, according to its website.

Cerrudo Services, Fluor , KBR and ARSC Federal Primus have received contracts to provide maintenance and repair services under the Border Patrol's Comprehensive Tactical Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair program.

President Trump speaks at a rally on Tuesday evening.

Trump has said his wall would be made of hardened concrete, rebar and steel.

Materials companies that could be enlisted are Martin Marietta Materials and Eagle Marterials . Oldcastle Inc. or France's Lafarge could be involved as well. Construction equipment company Deere & Co. , which brought in $12.5 million in government contracts in 2015 and Caterpillar are in the mix, too. Both could see an uptick in business, as well as German cement-maker HeidelbergCement, which has said it stands to profit from Trump's wall.

Steel for the wall could be acquired from companies including U.S. Steel , Nucor and Steel Dynamics .

While the president-elect's plan has been to build a physical wall, there have been suggestions the structure will be digital instead. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who Trump has tapped as Energy Secretary, made such a suggestion in July (he has since backed off the claim).

If Trump's wall not physical but instead virtual, Elbit Systems would be a place investors want to look. The Israeli company was in 2014 awarded a $145.3 million contract by the Department of Homeland Security to erect a virtual detection system at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.

Boeing was awarded a multibillion-dollar contract in 2006 as part of a Bush-era law to build a high-tech surveillance system at the border (the same law that could give the Trump team authority to build its structure). The project was eventually abandoned in 2011 after over $1 billion were already spent, and the project was widely criticized as inefficient and costly.

Trump set his sights on Boeing's government contracts even before entering office, taking to Twitter to criticize the pricing of its Air Force One project.

Prior to his inauguration, the Trump team said it was working with Congress to address the cost and logistics of the wall through the appropriations process. The plan, they say, is for the U.S. to pay for it initially and for Mexico to reimburse America later. (Mexico does not agree.)

Trump has said building the wall will cost $5 billion to $10 billion, though some estimates put the cost much higher. According to a recent report from Politico, current estimates for construction alone range from a few billion dollars to $14 billion, and that doesn't include other expenses like maintenance, border patrol agents and purchasing private property from affected landowners. The Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates the project could cost $95 to $120 per American household, based on a $12 billion to $15 billion estimate put out by Congressional leaders.

The Government Accountability Office in 2009 estimated that building fencing at the border -- which some say Trump's "wall" will actually be -- costs somewhere between $2.8 million and $3.9 million per mile on average.

The American tax payer may wind up paying for the project, though details of funding remain unclear and a hot topic of debate. The Trump administration is proposing budget cuts of $18 billion to programs such as medical research, infrastructure and community grants to pay for the structure, according to the AP -- a move not being overwhelmingly welcomed in Congress.

"The administration is asking the American taxpayer to cover the cost of a wall -- unneeded, ineffective, absurdly expensive -- that Mexico was supposed to pay for, and he is cutting programs vital to the middle class to get that done," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the AP. "Build the wall or repair or build a bridge or tunnel or road in your community? What's the choice?"

"I'd like to hear the details. What is this wall?" asked Senator John McCain.

We don't yet know the what, how or when of Trump's Mexico wall plan, but the wheels appear to be in motion.

More of What's Trending on TheStreet:

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Kendall Jenner Lands First Cover of 2017 [V Magazine]

It was only a matter of time. Kendall Jenner has landed her first magazine cover of 2017. The 21-year-old was photographed alongside model Paul Lemaire (posing as a tattoo artist) while rocking a faux-tattoo of a snake by artist Jenai Chin. Amber Valleta, Lara Stone, Joan Smalls, Carolyn Murphy and Ellen Rosa also were photographed "getting inked" for the Mario Testino-lensed shoot.

DKNY Cancels New York Fashion Week Show [WWD]

Following the acquisition of Donna Karan International, parent company of DKNY, by G-III International at the end of last year, as well as the announcement that creative directors Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne are stepping down from their roles, DKNY has decided to bypass its position on the New York Fashion Week calendar. Instead of showing at its Feb. 15, 2 p.m. time slot, DKNY will host showroom appointments.

The Limited to Close Stores Across the Country [Racked]

After filing for bankruptcy at the end of December, The Limited has announced store closures effective across the country. According to local media outlets and Racked's tipster, the mall staple will officially shutter all its locations on Saturday. Until that time, shoppers can get 50 percent off deals on almost all goods, including Eva Longoria's most recent collaboration with the brand.

Turkish Designer Jailed [BBC News]

Turkish fashion designer Barbaros Sansal, a vocal critic of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development party, posted an angry video on Twitter on New Year's Eve criticizing those out celebrating while there is "so much filth, vileness and poverty" in the world. The video was posted shortly before the attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39. Sansal, who was vacationing in Cyprus, was made to return to Istanbul, where he was attacked by a mob on the tarmac. He was jailed (at a facility which is also holding several journalists) upon his return for "inciting hatred among the public." Sansal's lawyer says he says he fears for his life.

Tim Coppens to Show Fall 2017 on Instagram Live [Hype Beast]

Tim Coppens plans to stream his fall 2017 collection via Instagram's new live feature, which was released in November. The Belgian designer was selected by Pitti Uomo 91 as the menswear guest designer. He is scheduled to show his collection on Wednesday.
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Friday barred Aircel Ltd from transferring the ownership of its airwaves while a corruption case centred on a past deal involving the mobile phone carrier was ongoing, potentially delaying an agreed merger.

The court, led by Chief Justice J. S. Khehar, also said it would ask the government to cancel Aircel's airwave permits if two executives at Malaysian parent Maxis Bhd did not appear at a trial court within two weeks.

The action comes as Aircel and the wireless network division of Reliance Communications Ltd work towards merging, with the resulting company shared equally between Reliance, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, and Maxis, controlled by tycoon T. Ananda Krishnan.

But Ananda Krishnan and aide Augustus Ralph Marshall are among a number of people charged two years ago in relation to Aircel's 2006 sale to Maxis, which prosecutors allege was aided by a former telecommunications minister. All of the accused have denied wrongdoing. (http://reut.rs/2hZ3ljc)

The two executives have been summoned to appear before the court by have yet to appear, local media reported.

Ananda Krishnan's office did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Aircel and Reliance Communications declined to comment.

Shortly before the court order, Aircel completed the sale of its fourth-generation (4G) network airwaves to Bharti Airtel Ltd.

(Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Sankalp Phartiyal; Additional reporting by Liz Lee; Writing by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Euan Rocha and Christopher Cushing)
esteban santiago

The man authorities believe shot 13 people, five of them fatally, at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Friday was known to the FBI prior to carrying out the massacre, an FBI official said during a news conference Friday night.

FBI spokesman George Piro said the suspected assailant, 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, walked into an FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska, in November 2016 claiming voices in his head were telling him to join ISIS.

ISIS videos were apparently found on his computer, NBC's Pete Williams reported, citing federal officials.

Piro, the FBI spokesman, said Santiago was taken into custody by local police in Anchorage and sent to a medical facility for an evaluation. Bryan Santiago, the suspect's brother, confirmed to The Associated Press that Esteban had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska, where he had been living since 2014.

Santiago, who was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico with his family when he was 2 years old, served in Puerto Rico's National Guard and was deployed to Iraq in 2010, Puerto Rico's National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen told the AP.

Santiago received a "general discharge" from the National Guard in August for "unsatisfactory performance," a lieutenant with the Alaska National Guard told CBS.

BREAKING: Photos of alleged Fort Lauderdale Airport shooter Esteban Santiago, law enforcement sources tell CBS https://t.co/eE2vxuwNJG pic.twitter.com/oPYf34Y32L  CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 6, 2017

His aunt, who lives in New Jersey, told reporters that Santiago had started acting strangely when he returned from Iraq, and about a month ago "lost his mind."

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"He said he saw things," his aunt, Maria Luisa Ruiz, told reporters outside her home in Union City, New Jersey. She mentioned that he had just become a father in September.

Santiago was charged with fourth-degree assault about one year ago in Anchorage in an incident related to domestic violence, police told the Daily Beast.

Santiago flew Delta from Anchorage, Alaska to Fort Lauderdale via Minneapolis-St. Paul on Thursday night, NBC reported. He arrived in Fort Lauderdale late Friday morning, which is when he apparently he used a gun he had checked into his luggage to carry out the massacre in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2.

Santiago is now in federal custody. He is expected to make his first court appearance on Monday.

"At this point it looks like he acted alone," Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said of the suspect. He noted that "it's too early to say either way" whether this was an act of terrorism.

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible things you didnt know about Putin's life





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By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army and its allies pressed ahead on Friday with a two-week-long offensive to seize a strategic valley where a key spring provides supplies to four million people in the capital, Damascus, residents and rebels said. Aerial bombing and shelling from the army as well as Hezbollah fighters stationed in the mountains that overlook the valley on the northwestern edge of the capital had intensified in the last forty-eight hours, they said. Scores of jets pounded the area around the Ain al-Fija springs and the villages of Baseimah, Kafr Zayt and al Husseineh, which form part of a cluster of ten villages controlled by rebels in the valley that lies at the northwestern edge of the capital. The Syrian army, aided by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, has so far been unsuccessful in making any significant advance in the valley since they launched the drive to capture the strategic area and accused rebels of polluting the springs with diesel. The rebel fighters there rejected a government offer to leave the area for the rebel-held province of Idlib in northern Syria. Similar deals have led rebels to yield swathes of territory, including Aleppo. Area residents say the rugged nature of the terrain gives the rebels, drawn from both moderate and Islamist factions, a natural advantage to pin down any advancing troops. "They cannot advance easily; even if the rebels are outnumbered they can easily strike any advancing troops from the three main entrances into the encircled valley," said Abu Mohammad al Qalamoni, a rebel fighter in contact with comrades inside the valley. CEASEFIRE STRESSED The military offensive has strained a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey aimed at bringing about Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan. The opposition has warned that unless the Syrian army halts its attacks it would consider any truce "null and void". They have also suspended any discussion on participating in the forthcoming peace talks unless Russia puts pressure on the government and its Tehran-backed allies to abort the offensive. Wadi Barada lies on a road from Damascus to the Lebanese border that is a key supply line for Hezbollah, which is heavily involved in fighting alongside the Syrian army. The rupture of water supplies from the springs has caused severe shortages after the pumping station of Ain al Fija that supplied around 70 percent of the capital's water needs was damaged. Prices of bottled water and trucked water supplied by private traders to residential homes has tripled, residents of the sprawling capital say, with a black market now thriving. The government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad has also brought in supplies from other provinces by tanker to cover some of the shortfall in the capital and pumped extra water from underground wells. The army says it is fighting radical Islamists in the area, a claim denied by local fighters. A military media unit run by Hezbollah said on Thursday at least 11 al Qaeda-linked fighters were either killed or wounded when they were targeted by rockets, but those figures could not be independently confirmed. The civilian population in the valley is estimated by the United Nations to number around 45,000, but civic groups say the total is double that with their plight worsening daily under heavy shelling and shortages of food and medicine. Dozens of homes have been hit by the bombing campaign. Only 1,200 families have so far left to a government-run shelter in the nearby town of Rawda, the U.N. said. "We hope in a few days water will return back to the capital after the army takes back Ain al Fija. The army is advancing and ... we expect good news," Alaa Munir Ibrahim, a governor in the Damascus suburbs, told state media. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, editing by G Crosse)
AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - A senior Syrian rebel official denied a report on Friday that a ceasefire had been reached between rebels and government forces in the Wadi Barada area near Damascus, where bombardments have knocked out the capital's main water source. The government and allied fighters from the Lebanese group Hezbollah launched an attack two weeks ago to take back Wadi Barada where a spring provides supplies to four million people in the capital. A military news outlet run by Hezbollah reported that a ceasefire had been reached for "a number of hours" in the area. But Munir Sayal, head of the political wing of the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, told Reuters the report was "a lie". He said that the government had on Thursday rejected a ceasefire that would have allowed for repairs to the water pumping station and for people to return to two nearby villages from which they had been displaced. Rebels say the government bombed the water pumping station at the start of the campaign. The United Nations has said it was put of action by "deliberate targeting" but has declined to say which side was responsible. The fighting in Wadi Barada has overshadowed a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey to pave the way to peace talks they hope to convene in Kazakhstan this month. Syrian rebel groups said on Monday they had decided to freeze any talks about their possible participation in the negotiations unless the Syrian government and its Iran-backed allies end what they said were violations of the ceasefire. "Iran and the Assad regime are exploiting the fragile ceasefire to seize liberated areas around the capital before the start of the Astana negotiations," Sayal said. The United Nations said on Friday that children were at risk of waterborne diseases in Damascus where 5.5 million people have had little or no running water for two weeks. (Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Dominic Evans and Richard Lough)
Michelle Obama delivered her final speech as first lady on Friday, tearing up as she urged young Americans to always lead by example with hope, never fear.

Diversity makes us who we are, Obama said at the 2017 School Counselor of the Year event in the East Room of the White House, where she hosted 50 school counselors and a slew of stars. Dont ever let anyone make you feel like you dont matter, or like you dont have a place in our American story. You do.

So, thats my final message to young people as First Lady, she continued. Its simple. I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So dont be afraid. Do you hear me, young people? Dont be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourself with a good education.

RELATED VIDEO: People at the White House: The Final Interview with The Obamas

Obama held Fridays event as part of her Reach Higher and Better Make Room initiatives that promote the importance of pursuing higher education.

The first lady also acknowledged some big stars in the crowd, including Usher, La La Anthony, Connie Britton, Andy Cohen, Jay Pharoah, rapper Wale and Kelly Rowland.

After thanking those who worked with her to help make higher education cool and praising the educators gathered in the room, Obama continued: As I end my time in the White House, I can think of no better message to send our young people. For all the young people in this room and that are watching, know that this country belongs to you, to all of you. If you or your parents are immigrants, you are part of a proud American tradition.

If your family doesnt have much money, I want you to remember that in this country, plenty of folks, including me and my husband  we started out with very little. But with a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible  even becoming president. Thats what the American dream is all about, she said to applause.

The first lady concluded her speech by promising that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life.

Story continues

Being your First Lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope Ive made you proud, she said.

"Being your First Lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope I made your proud." -The First Lady  The First Lady (@FLOTUS) January 6, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Obamas speech, which comes exactly two weeks before President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration, wont be the last we see of her before she leaves office.

The first lady is set to appear on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon next Wednesday.




A student who was body-slammed by a North Carolina cop has suffered a concussion from the incident that was captured on video, her attorney said Thursday.

Jasmine Darwin now has headaches, vision problems and other issues associated with a concussion, her attorney Freddy Rabner told the Associated Press. A video of the Tuesday incident drew ire from those who say it showed excessive use of force.

Shes a little 100-pound girl who was whipped to the ground so hard, shes sore everywhere, Rabner said. Shes a mess. Shes in pain.

The police officer, who authorities have identified as Ruben De Los Santos, was responding to a fight that broke out between two female students in the cafeteria of Rolesville High School, the Town of Rolesville Police Department said in a statement.

In the widely-circulated video, the officer picks Darwin up by her torso and then throws her down hard onto the floor. Moments later, he lifts her up by her right arm and leads her away.

Officials said the police officer has been placed on paid administrative leave, and the incident is under investigation.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A temporary ceasefire has been agreed in a rebel-held area near Damascus which Syrian government forces and their allies are trying to recapture from insurgents, a military news service run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Friday. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report with rebel sources. The government and its allies have been trying to seize the Wadi Barada area where a spring provides supplies to four million people in Damascus. The report said the ceasefire was agreed for "a number of hours" and included all the factions in the area. Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group, is fighting alongside the Syrian government in the Syrian war. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Just as the new year began, Tesla was dealt a fresh setback in its campaign to make its electric cars directly available to customers throughout the U.S.

Tesla's license to sell cars through its Missouri showrooms expired Saturday, following a circuit-court judge's decision that prevented renewal.

In an August court case, Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green ruled that Tesla is not a franchise, and that consequently its dealer license should not be renewed by the Missouri Department of Revenue.

DON'T MISS: Michigan says Tesla sales ban not unconstitutional, responding to lawsuit (Dec 2016)



Last week, the judge denied Tesla's motion to temporarily halt implementation of that judgment while the case was repealed, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Jalopnik).

UPDATE: Two days ago, the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled that Tesla could reopen its three Missouri stores when it granted the company's motion to stay, or temporarily halt, that judgment, as noted by the Post-Dispatch.

Tesla Motors had been granted a license to sell cars through showrooms in University City and Kansas City, Missouri, in 2015.

Kansas City, Missouri, by Flickr user Paul Sableman (Used under CC License)

Shortly after that, the Missouri Auto Dealers Association (MADA)a lobbying group that represents the state's franchised dealerssued the state revenue department, alleging Tesla's direct sales violated state law.

In August, Judge Green ruled in favor of MADA, saying that state law prevented a vehicle manufacturer from holding a Missouri dealer license.

MADA was naturally pleased with the decision that closed Tesla's stores on January 1.

MORE: Are Missouri electric-car charging stations like pay phones? Why that's important (Nov 2016)



"I think it was correct under the law as we argued before the court," Lowell PearsonMADA's attorneysaid of the decision.

A Tesla statement at that time said the company would ask the Missouri Court of Appeals to issue a stay of the trial court's decision while the appeals process is ongoing, to prevent "an immediate and unnecessary loss of jobs, tax revenue, consumer convenience, and consumer choice for Missourians."

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Tesla noted that it "employs numerous people at its Missouri sales locations" and said it does not believe it should have to close those locations while the Court of Appeals considers the case.

Tesla Store Los Angeles [photo: Misha Bruk / MBH Architects]

That appeal is the one that was granted this week.

In its more recent battles with state auto-dealer associations, Tesla has grown more aggressive.

While the automaker was previously willing to cut deals and accept limits on the number of stores it could operate in a given state, it is now using legal action to push back against restrictions.

Tesla is now suing the state of Michigan over controversial 2014 changes to the state's franchise laws that prevent it from selling cars there.

Overturning the Michigan rules could set a precedent that would allow Tesla to challenge similar laws in other states in court.

[hat tip: Brian Henderson]

_______________________________________________

Follow GreenCarReports on Facebook and Twitter


Miley Cyrus in a marijuana shirt on December 5, 2014 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Sergi Alexander/FilmMagic)

At the inauguration in a few weeks, not only will President-elect Donald Trump supporters be high on life, they might literally be high. According to CNN, marijuana legalization advocate Adam Eidinger will be joined by his peers on Jan. 20 in doling out 4,200 free joints to attendees. Currently, Initiative 71 means that Mary Jane is legal in Washington, DC, for anyone to carry up to two ounces. The catch? The drug can only be gifted, it cant be sold.

Marijuana making its way to the capital is fitting. With recreational use of cannibas being legalized recently throughout many parts of the country, the trendiness of the psychoactive drug has become popular in the mainstream too, spreading to all parts of American culture  including fashion.

Designers such as Alexander Wang, Mara Hoffman, Jeremy Scott, and more have tackled the leaf motif in their collections.

A model walks the runway at the Mara Hoffman fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at The Salon at Lincoln Center on September 6, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Just look at Mara Hoffmans Spring 2015 campaign, where the whimsical femininity of dresses was paired with cannabis leaf symbols, an unexpected image for the brand geared on fashionable femininity.

Or peek both fashions enviable rugged outsiders-turned-icons Jeremy Scott and Alexander Wang (whose entire Fall/Winter 2016 collection was cannabis-inspired). Both designers have tackled the drug, whether through a renaissance of 80s retro and grunge or a steroid-induced disco tech version of Studio 54. And its not just clothing; Jacquie Aiche, known for providing many of Rihannas infamous jewelry pieces, has cannabis-inspired Sweet Leaf pieces selling upwards of $2,000 a piece.

Emily Blunt attends the premiere of The Five Year Engagement during the 12 Tribeca Film Festival at the Ziegfeld Theatre on April 18, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic)

Designers arent the only ones happily basking in the marijuana high right now: celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Wiz Khalifa, and more have stunned in weed-decorated threads to capture their advocacy.

So what exactly is the parallel between fashion and culture? Certainly, the two are interconnected. The dress of society almost always suggests an underlying political movement happening in culture, whether tackling gender norms, socioeconomic disparity, race relations, or even a presidential campaign (ahem, #pantsuitnation).

Marijuanas popularity and prevalence is only getting stronger and so it seems weed isnt going anywhere (off Capitol Hill or the runways). So 2017 may just be the year we really get our buzz on about it.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
Elizabeth Holmes AACC

Theranos is going through its second round of layoffs.

The blood-testing company confirmed it is laying off 41% of its staff, Bloomberg first reported.

In October, Theranos closed its clinical labs, letting go of about 340 people. This new round will cut another 155 people, with 220 remaining.

The company confirmed that Elizabeth Holmes will stay on as CEO.*

The remaining staff will focus on the company's miniLab technology. The technology debuted in August as part of Theranos' attempt to be what Holmes called a "decentralized" lab, meaning you could process the test without shipping it to a brick-and-mortar lab.

Here's the company's statement:

"Today, Theranos Inc. announced further re-engineering of the company's operations as it works towards commercialization of the miniLab testing platform and its related technologies. In the streamlined organization, teams have been aligned to meet product development, regulatory, and commercial milestones.

"As a result, the company has identified a core team of 220 professionals to execute on its business plans, and informed 155 employees that their positions have been eliminated. These are always the most difficult decisions; however, this move allows Theranos to marshal its resources most efficiently and effectively.

"The restructuring follows a period of significant change at the company that has included the building out of its executive team with substantial additional regulatory, compliance, and operational expertise."

The embattled company's saga came into the spotlight in October 2015 after The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that questioned the accuracy of Theranos' blood test. In 2016, Theranos' northern California location was shut down, and Holmes was barred for two years from running a clinical lab.

The company is now facing lawsuits from investors, patients, and its once partner Walgreens, which ended its relationship with Theranos in June 2016 and is accusing Theranos of breaching its contract.

Story continues

*An earlier version of this story misstated that Theranos had sold its headquarters. The building's landlord had changed, but Theranos is still leasing the building.

NOW WATCH: These are the only vitamins you should be taking  and the ones you should skip





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Jan 6 (Reuters) - Theranos Inc said on Friday it would cut 155 jobs, or about 41 percent of its workforce, as the once Silicon Valley darling shifts away from its troubled blood testing devices.

The company said it was working towards commercialization of its "minilab" product, which can run a broad range of tests on a single desktop machine, and had identified a core team of 220 professionals to execute on its business plans. (http://bit.ly/2jk5s2V)

Founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003, the company made waves with testing devices that promised quicker results using just one drop of blood.

However, concerns were raised after the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles, starting in October 2015, that suggested the devices were flawed and inaccurate.

The latest job cuts comes three months after the embattled company said it would lay off about 340 workers as it closes its clinical labs and Theranos Wellness Centers, which signaled a withdrawal from the consumer blood-testing business.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
Photo credit: Getty

From ELLE UK

Apparently Chris Cooke, of Salford, hasn't read our January edition of ELLE, or he would have known off-duty dressing is hotter than ever.

Alas, he is of the outdated opinion that pyjamas should only be worn in the bedroom.

Whilst on an evening trip to Tesco Salford Mr Cooke stumbled across two women 'swanning down an aisle' (Daily Mail's words, not ours) wearing pyjamas and dressing gowns.

Please avert your eyes if you are of a nervous disposition.

Photo credit: Tesco/Chris Cooke / Facebook

He was so offended by this abhorrent sight, he proceeded to take a photo of them (unauthorised, sure) and then post it to the Tesco Facebook wall with a delightful message underneath.

Photo credit: Tesco / Chris Cooke / Facebook

Who doesn't have time to get changed before they head to the shops?

Well, quite frankly, sometimes us.

And plenty of other people understood where the two jarmy-clad women were coming from too.

Photo credit: Others

Sure, we understand PJ shopping isn't ideal.

But 'bloody disgusting', it is not.

They look washed, they have shoes on.

Indeed their entire bodies are completely covered, in pink no less.

While we were pondering the subject of taking photographs of women without their consent, we also began to muse on all of the various silly, casual and downright ludicrous things we've also debuted at the supermarket.

For example; full Viking outfit (grabbing some ale for a banquet), Bikini (that's how beach towns operate, right?), sweaty gym clothes (the smell), we could go on.

Photo credit: Giphy

Is nipping to the shop for some bikkies really an event we need to be in black tie for?

Well, seemingly so.

The Tesco in Cardiff apparently actually followed through with a dress code policy in 2010.

Because enough people had complained, they put signs up stating that 'appropriate clothing' had to be worn which included 'footwear' and precluded 'nightwear'.

There was a backlash when the first victim of a ban was a mum in some leopard print PJs.

To those who find seeing someone in a shop in PJs uncomfortable, we urge you to try it out for yourself.

Story continues

What could be more comfortabl than leaving those sliding, glass doors, ice cream in hand, knowing your already ready for bed.

Photo credit: Giphy

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These five beautiful black ballerinas are taking the ballet world by storm. (Photo: Andrew J. Breig)

Its not every day that we see black ballerinas splashed across the mainstream media. With the exception of the ever-so-amazing Misty Copeland, only a handful of ballerinas, let alone ballerinas of color, are celebrated on a regular basis. In fact, many dance companies across the country include women of color of exceptional accomplishment.

The Memphis-based company Collage Dance Collective may have just set the record straight with this photo of five of its members. From left to right, they are Brandye Lee, Daphne Lee, Kimberley Ho-Tsai, Nikki Taylor, and Luisa Cardoso, all standing tall and en pointe.

This photo is one of nearly one hundred stunning images of authenticity and excellence captured during the full-day shoot, Shalishah Franklin, the companys marketing director, told Yahoo Beauty. The campaign includes solo shots, couples and doubles, groups, and the entire company. They are all breathtaking, unprecedented, and vital, to demonstrate the often unsung excellence of ballet dancers of color.

In a recent repost from tajimagazine, a black beauty and culture publication, the photo has already received almost 20,000 likes. The caption reads, Our favorite type of ballerinas. Spewing #SlayBells effortlessly #browngirlsdoballet.

Yahoo Beauty reached out to Franklin for more details about the inspiration for the campaign:

Who came up with the concept for the photo?

I was watching a rerun of author Cynthia Bonds interview with Oprah. During that Super Soul Sunday interview, they talked about one of the strongest lines in Bonds book Ruby: The audacious hope of rooted things. That line moved me. I developed a photoshoot concept for the company around those keywords, including audacity, authenticity, hope, strength, unapologetic excellence, and growing where planted. The concept called for nude apparel, which we ordered in white and custom-dyed to match each dancers unique skin tone. Each dancers hair was styled to celebrate its natural state, and makeup simply highlighted the natural beauty and glow of each company member, consisting of five women and four men. Photos were shot by Andrew J. Breig, and makeup was done by LaLa Shegog.

Story continues

How did the ladies feel after taking the photo?

Every aspect of this photo shoot, from the music to the team members, was curated to celebrate and empower our company members. The images as a result of this deliberately inspirational environment are simply stunning. Brandye Lee, Daphne Lee, Kimberly Ho-Tsai, Nikki Taylor, and Luisa Cardoso felt the responsibility to not only show their artistic excellence, but also honor the original swans of color and empower future swans. They rightfully felt proud and unstoppable.

How do you feel about the lack of black ballerinas featured in mainstream media?

We are deeply concerned by the underrepresentation of black ballerinas, not only in mainstream media, but in professional companies and ballet schools worldwide. This pervasive lack of representation within our industry and our media is a continued call to action for our company, to inspire the growth and diversity of ballet through a repertoire of relevant choreography and world-class dancers representative of our community. We are a professional contemporary ballet company and conservatory, training nearly 400 youth annually, based in Memphis. We have seen firsthand how truly beneficial exposure to performing arts professionals who resemble them is for our youth, and we intend to continue to do our part to change the narrative.

How have the reactions been to the photo posted on Instagram?

The inspiring dialogue that has been sparked as a result of this New Years Day image, featuring African-Americans, French Guianese, and Brazilian women, demonstrates the value of, and desire for, representation in media. Many of the comments are from aspiring ballet dancers, former dancers, and the parents of budding ballet dancers, who have expressed some form of hope and affirmation as a result of this image. This is the audacious hope of rooted things from all over the world, hopefully growing with us.

How do all those reactions make you feel?

The positive impact, feedback, and sharing of our first image from this campaign have been both humbling and inspiring for our entire company, particularly our co-founders Marcellus Harper, the executive director, and Kevin Thomas, the artistic director. Mr. Thomas, a former ballet dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem, pursued his passion for ballet despite being told several times along his journey that people of color did not possess the classical lines to be successful in this industry. The first black ballerina he ever saw perform was Yolanda Jordan, 10 years after he had done his first plie in a ballet studio.

So the adversity that our co-founders and company members know intimately underlines the importance of this photo. Were moved to continue realizing our vision: demonstrate that through exposure and training. Collages students always believe that the pursuit of a professional career in ballet, or any industry, is within their reach, regardless of their skin tone, gender, or economic background.

You can take a behind-the scenes-look below at the ballerinas before they created the standout shot. They also had some fun doing the #mannequinchallenge before getting into their final poses.

These ballerinas are truly making their mark, proving not only that black women do participate in ballet, but that they look pretty darn good doing it.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.




Paris (AFP) - British sailor Alex Thomson said Friday he was staying positive as he strives to chase down Vendee Globe race leader Armel Le ClAac'h.

"We're in the Doldrums (areas of the Atlantic and Pacific that have little or any wind) at the moment so it's quite difficult, certainly for me," Thomson, who placed third in the 2012-2013 edition, told AFP by telephone.

"The North Atlantic is quite complicated so there's an opportunity. There's certainly a possibility that I can beat him. I'm going to try hard."

Thomson, who failed to finish in 2004 and 2008, trailed Banque Populaire's Le Cleac'h in his Hugo Boss by 213.3 nautical miles mid-Friday afternoon.

But he has been slowly gaining on the race leader and had been outpacing his rival with the greatest distance covered over 24 hours to keep his morale afloat.

"At the moment I'm 200 miles away from him, obviously he's in control. I have to get close, maybe we can win, we have to see.

"I'm ready for the challenge and ready to work hard in the next few weeks.

"I always try to stay very positive. At the end of the day I'm living my dream. I get to do something that is amazing," said Thomson while conceding that being away from his family for months at a time was a stern test in itself.

Damage sustained to his vessel so far in the toughest endurance test in the sport has also taken a toll, hence "I find it incredible I'm so close to the leader when my boat is so damaged to one side. I have only one foil left.

Le Cleac'h had been 322 miles clear going into Friday and 340 Thursday evening -- but with some 3,300 miles to the finish he was seeing the dogged Thomson close the gap little by little.

The Frenchman was battling tough conditions around 100 miles from the Equator in the Doldrums low pressure zone where northeast and southeast trade winds converge.

Frenchman Jeremie Beyou (MaAtre Coq), was meanwhile hanging on in third some 1,000 miles off the pace.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver his farewell address in his home city of Chicago on Jan. 10, just days before he leaves office.

In a message emailed to reporters Monday, Obama wrote: On Tuesday, January 10, Ill go home to Chicago to say my grateful farewell to you, even if you cant be there in person.

Im just beginning to write my remarks. But Im thinking about them as a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways youve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here, the president wrote in his message.

obama bye

Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Obama will deliver the remarks at McCormick Place in Chicago, at an event where only individuals with tickets will be admitted. According to the White House website, tickets will be given out at McCormick Place on Saturday, Jan. 7. While the tickets are free, they are limited to one ticket per person and will be given out on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Those attending have been advised to reach the venue well in time  the doors will open at 5 p.m.  as people arriving late may not be permitted to enter. The White House also mentions: All attendees will go through airport-like security and should bring as few personal items as possible. No bags, sharp objects, umbrellas, liquids or signs will be allowed in the venue. Small cameras are permitted.

Those who are unable to attend the event can watch the presidents address at wh.gov/Farewell or on www.Facebook.com/WhiteHouse.

Since 2009, weve faced our fair share of challenges, and come through them stronger. Thats because we have never let go of a belief that has guided us ever since our founding  our conviction that, together, we can change this country for the better, Obama said in his message.

Story continues

So I hope youll join me one last time.

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The freezing cold wind whipped around us as we tried to keep our footing at the top, holding on to the summit marker for a little more stability. We had spent hours clambering up seemingly endless inclines and what lay all around us was our reward. A vast blue lake opened up below, so large that we couldnt quite make out where it ended. Above, the sky was divided up by the formidable row of mountains, the peaks of which still carried a layer of snow.

Ive been on many hikes before, but this was easily one of the most beautiful summits I have ever seen.

***

Chris and I knew that we wanted to do a number of hikes as part of our campervanning trip in New Zealand but we had been a bit unlucky in these pursuits. We tried to do the Tongariro Crossing on two separate occasions, only to be told, both times, that the track had to be closed due to bad weather. To make ourselves feel better, we vowed to do one of Wanakas most famous hikes instead. When we arrived in Wanaka, however, we found out that the Roys Peak track had just been closed due to the start of the lambing season.

By this point, we had plenty of reason to feel sorry for ourselves but, thankfully, someone at the Wanaka Tourism Office had a solution. She suggested that we try out Isthmus Peak, which is just a short drive away from central Wanaka. She gave us plenty of information about the track itself, and warned us that it was one of the areas more strenuous options. But, after the disappointment of Tongariro and then Roys Peak, there was no way that we were going to leave Wanaka without having done any hiking.

And I cant express how glad I am that we went with this decision!

Before I get to the actual experience of the hike itself, here are some tips and things to note for anyone whos planning on hiking Isthmus Peak.

 Before you go 

These will all seem fairly obvious, but theyre essential for hikers going up a trail that might feature adverse weather conditions. If Isthmus Peak is part of your New Zealand itinerary, remember to:

Choose the right gear. Bring along sturdy shoes with decent grip. Secondly, even in summer, its a good idea to take a few different layers. Our trip fell in the spring, and much of the track is completely exposed to the elements. I brought along a thermal upper baselayer, a breathable sports top, as well as my North Face Triclimate 3-in-1 jacket (read my full review of this jacket); on the bottom I had my long hiking tights and thick woollen walking socks. If youre after more packing tips, Ive already written a guide to packing for an adventurous holiday.

Bring enough water and food . This hike takes, on average, six hours to complete. Even if its cold, take plenty of water to keep yourself hydrated, as well as some lunch for a summit picnic. At the time of writing, there were no shops near the tracks parking lot and definitely none up on the mountain itself!

. This hike takes, on average, six hours to complete. Even if its cold, take plenty of water to keep yourself hydrated, as well as some lunch for a summit picnic. At the time of writing, there were no shops near the tracks parking lot and definitely none up on the mountain itself! Take along a small first aid kit , containing plasters, painkillers and a bandage (just in case). If you get into some serious issues, the number for New Zealands emergency services is 111.

, containing plasters, painkillers and a bandage (just in case). If you get into some serious issues, the number for New Zealands emergency services is 111. Always, always tell someone where youre planning to hike and when you expect to return. This is just good hiking practice generally  and I just know that my mum loves getting messages like these in the middle of her evenings!

and when you expect to return. This is just good hiking practice generally  and I just know that my mum loves getting messages like these in the middle of her evenings! Make sure you time your hike correctly. Check the weather the night before, and start your hike early so that youll have plenty of time to complete the trail safely.

 Climbing Isthmus Peak 

The parking lot for the track is about a 30-minute drive out of Wanaka. Driving with Lake Hawea on your right, youll come across a small space on the right-hand side of the road and a sign for Isthmus Peak. Note that there are no toilets located here, so its best to have your last toilet stop in Wanaka. There are also no toilet facilities on the trail. Once youre ready, though, park up the car, leave anything unnecessary behind, and then cross the road to get to the start of the Isthmus Peak track.

The start of the Isthmus Peak walk is nice and gradual, taking you alongside fences until you find yourself strolling in farmland. There will be sheep and these parts of the trail will be grassy but this is where we started to get our first glimpses of the magnificent views that this hike is known for. At the start of the trail, Lake Hawea is in the spotlight, with views over the massive blue lake as you ascend the narrow farm track.

Isthmus Peak is memorable thanks to these views, but, for me, I cant help but also instantly think of the variety of terrains this hike leads you on. Theres everything from grass to fine soil to rocks  hence my warning about bringing along good, sturdy shoes. Also, once you leave the sheep and paddocks behind, this is when Isthmus Peak becomes a lot more challenging. Expect steep gradients and long, long (LONG) uphills. I used to hike a lot with my Dad when I lived in South Africa, and I havent taken on a hike as challenging as Isthmus Peak since those regular hiking days.

Those uphills were tough and, honestly, at times it felt like they would never end. After we finished the hike, Chris even told me that he had wanted to tell me to go on without him, as he didnt think he could carry on going up those inclines. But, with a few strategic breathers, its still completely doable. We spotted fellow hikers using walking sticks (actual sticks or the more professional variety too) but I think that the only way to get up Isthmus Peak is to find a pace youre comfortable with and take breaks when you need to.

Plus, the views really start to get even more breathtaking the higher you go. We found ourselves walking past green paddocks, large fields of bushes and mountains that looked as though they were made of folds of fabric instead of solid ground. Up until this point, the lake took up most of the landscape, but once we had covered more ground, we turned a corner and the sky opened up. In the distance, we spotted mountain range upon mountain range of snow-capped peaks. Completely exposed to the elements, the way to the summit can be windy and cold, but, for most of that section, I felt like I couldnt really believe that I was seeing these kinds of landscapes with my own eyes.

More variety awaited us up here, where the vegetation now took on hues of red and orange, which, when contrasted with the snowy mountains in the background, looked like an almost-alien terrain. Within the space of the almost three hours it took us to get up Isthmus Peak, I felt like we had seen all of the scenery for which New Zealand has become famous. These were the sorts of terrains I had seen in the Lord of the Rings films, which I readily admit were the visual catalysts for me wanting to travel to New Zealand in the first place.

The hike has one significant moment of deception, where youll think youre approaching a summit, but this only leads on to a far-reaching path to the real track conclusion. If you stumble upon the sign below, though, Im happy to confirm that youre on the final stretch.

The rest of the track does have more steep uphills but, and I cannot emphasise this enough, all of that muscle pain we endured while on this hike was worth it, even if youre only considering the Isthmus Peak summit in isolation. Ascending the last hill, we were at the top of Isthmus Peak. We could see Lake Wanaka, the second lake you can experience on this hike, as well as icy mountains as far as our eyes could strain into the distance. The freezing wind at the top took my breath away, and I cant remember how long we stood at that summit marker, desperately trying to take it all in.

We settled down for our lunch of pies (a staple of our New Zealand road trip), fruit and chocolate bars. While we were sitting there, I thought back on the trail we had just experienced. Many of the hikes in the area allow walkers to see a lake, but Isthmus Peak is unique in that you can see both Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka on a single track. Not only this, but we had felt completely rewarded for the physical exertion required to take on this hike. Yes, there were plenty of uphill climbs, but the surrounding scenery was some of the most stunning Ive seen on any of the hikes Ive completed before.

With our muscles suitably rested, we took a few more photos from the summit before starting the way back down. This hike isnt a loop circuit, so youll be taking the exact same route as your return. But this means that we got to enjoy the reverse perspective on the views that we had so enjoyed on the way up.

Mercifully, I always find going downhill a lot easier than the ascent, but, after another two hours of stomping down steep paths, our legs were feeling a bit shaky. For those that are truly brave, the Isthmus Peak track is open for mountain biking but this is only advised for experienced cyclists. We spotted a couple zooming down one of the steeper gradients, and I knew that I would never be courageous enough to follow suit! I think Ill always prefer having my feet firmly on the ground.

Before we knew it, we were back in the farmlands and then on the path to the parking lot.

Isthmus Peak is, without a doubt, one of the best and most spectacular hikes Ive had the pleasure of taking on. If youre in Wanaka and are looking for a challenging hike, I hope that this post  and specifically the photos  convince you to choose Isthmus Peak.

In the end, it may not have been the hike we had initially planned to do, but Im so happy that fate intervened and we got to see the many wonders involved with a visit up Isthmus Peak.

***

It was as we were making our way back to the parking lot that I realised how much I had missed hiking. I used to hike every Sunday when I lived in Cape Town and, when I moved to London, this activity was no longer a part of my regular routine. After experiencing Isthmus Peak and other hikes in New Zealand, I have decided that, in the future, I will be making hiking a part of my life again, even if it means that I have to travel a bit to do so. So, you can expect to see more hiking posts from me in the future, including those surrounding a multi-day UK walking route that Im planning to do in the summer of 2017.

Do you have a favourite hiking route? Or do you have a favourite track in New Zealand? Let me know in the comments below!

* Pin it for later: *
Tilikum, the orca featured heavily in Gabriela Cowperthwaites documentary Blackfish, died Friday morning after 25 years of living at SeaWorld.

SeaWorld announced Friday that the whale, believed to be 36, passed away early in the morning after months of deteriorating health. SeaWorld veterinarians believe the cause of death was a persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection, though a necropsy will be performed to confirm. He had been fighting the illness since March.

In a statement, SeaWorlds president and CEO Joel Manby said, Tilikum had, and will continue to have, a special place in the hearts of the SeaWorld family, as well as the millions of people all over the world that he inspired. My heart goes out to our team who cared for him like family.

In 1982, a fishing net captured Tilikum in Iceland. He spent the next few years in a zoo in Reykjavik and at the Sealand of the Pacific public aquarium in British Columbia. In 1992, SeaWorld acquired Tilikum and began to use him to breed killer whales. Hes since sired 21 calves. Tilikums transfer to SeaWorld Orlando occurred following the death of a young marine biology student who was killed by Tilikum and his two female companions. Sealand of the Pacific closed shortly after the fatalities. After his transfer, Tilikum killed two others while at SeaWorld.

Tilikum and the Blackfish documentary caused a stir when the film premiered in 2013. The scandal, stemming from the alleged stress placed on orcas in captivity and Tilikums role in the human deaths, caused SeaWorld to roll back its orca program. In November, SeaWorld announced plans to end killer-whale shows. In March, three years after the films release, the theme park announced it would further cut down orca involvement at SeaWorld by ending its breeding program and phasing out all live performances using the animals.

In the wake of the film, which was nominated for a BAFTA Award, dozens of celebrities condemned SeaWorld for its treatment of killer whales, an apex predator in most of the worlds oceans. Some, including the Beach Boys, Willie Nelson and Heart, even went so far as to cancel performances at SeaWorld-sponsored events. The backlash also is thought to be responsible for financial loss to the park in the months following.

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Tilikum, the killer whale that was profiled in the 2013 documentary Blackfish, has died.

SeaWorld announced the news in an online statement, saying that a cause of death had yet to be determined, but Tilikum, who was believed to be about 36 years old, had been suffering from a persistent bacterial lung infection.

In 2010, Tilikum sparked a nationwide conversation about the ethics of keeping orcas in captivity after he killed SeaWorld Orlando trainer Dawn Brancheau, pulling her into the pool after an orca show. He was also involved in the 1991 death of a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in Canada and the 1999 death of a man who apparently sneaked into SeaWorld.

Tilikum was captured off the coast of Iceland in 1983, when he was 2 years old, and brought to Sealand of the Pacific. He came to SeaWorld in 1992, and in 2013, he was the subject of Gabriela Cowperthwaites documentary Blackfish, which examined the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity.

Tilikum had, and will continue to have, a special place in the hearts of the SeaWorld family, as well as the millions of people all over the world that he inspired, SeaWorld president and CEO Joel Manby said in a statement. My heart goes out to our team who cared for him like family.

In all, SeaWorld now has 22 orcas at its parks in Orlando, San Antonio, and San Diego. In 2015, the company announced that it would phase out its orca show in San Diego, and in March of last year, SeaWorld ended its captive breeding of orcas. As a result, SeaWorlds current killer whales will be the last generation to live in SeaWorld facilities.
Photo credit: undefined

From Town & Country

What does Tippi Hedren have to do with the history of nail salons in America? Apparently quite a bit.

Racked senior editor Meredith Haggerty was getting her toes painted over the holidays when she saw the old-Hollywood star's face featured in the salon's promotional slideshow alongside service prices and pictures of eyebrows being waxed.

"A woman's picture pops up. Blonde with big eyes and perfect nails, this salon would like to extend its thanks to her, Tippi Hedren," writes Haggerty.

But why?

As it happens, we have the Birds star (and grandmother of Dakota Johnson) to thank for the modern manicure. Nicknamed the "godmother of the Vietnamese nail industry," Hedren's contribution to the beauty industry started after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

At the time, she was working as an international relief coordinator at an organization called Food for the Hungry. Part of her role was assisting Vietnam refugees with job training.

"We were trying to find vocations for them. I brought in seamstresses and typists-any way for them to learn something," she told the BBC. "And they loved my fingernails."

Photo credit: undefined

One woman, Thuan Le, recalls being present for Hedren's "A-ha" moment. "A group of us were standing close to her and saw that her nails were so beautiful," she told TakePart. "We talked to each other and said they looked so pretty. I looked in [Hedren's] eyes and knew she was thinking something. She said, 'Ah, maybe you can learn nails.' And we looked at each other and she said, 'Yes, manicures!'"

Hedren flew in her personal manicurist and brought in additional support from a local beauty school to teach 20 women how to paint nails and perform silk nail wrapping. After the group received sufficient training and licensing, Hedren then helped the students to find jobs in salons across Southern California.

The ripple effect of this mini-jobs program continues to impact the industry. In 2015, 51 percent of nail technicians in the United States (and approximately 80 percent in California) were of Vietnamese descent, a ripple effect that got its start with the original 20 women Hedren helped.

Story continues

"I loved these women so much that I wanted something good to happen for them after losing literally everything," Hedren said. "Some of them lost their entire family and everything they had in Vietnam: their homes; their jobs; their friends-everything was gone. They lost even their own country."

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Tippi%20Hedren:%20Hitchcock%20Sexually%20Assaulted%20Me" customimages="" content="article.8438"]

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Two hearses arrived with a police escort as mother-daughter Hollywood legends Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were laid to rest in Los Angeles Friday.

Read: Bonds of Love: Trailer Gives First Look at Carrie Fisher-Debbie Reynolds Documentary 'Bright Lights'

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Reynolds will be buried near screen icon Bette Davis, who died in 1989. Reynolds and Davis starred together in the classic film The Catered Affair back in 1956.



On Thursday, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meg Ryan, Sean Lennon, and George Lucas were among the stars who gathered at Fisher's Beverly Hills compound for a private memorial.

Streep sang Fishers favorite song, Happy Days Are Here Again.

Read: Debbie Reynolds' Ex-Husband Calls Her 'Most Perfect Woman,' But Denies He Stole From Her

Lennon took to Instagram to share his thoughts on the late Star Wars actress who appeared in his 2006 film, Friendly Fire.

Thinking of Carrie today with herfriends and family. Was given this photo of her getting ready to shoot a scene for the Friendly Fire film. She was so gracious and generous giving me her time. That shoot was, because of her, one of the greatest times of my life. @mcivetta @alexiskelleyla A photo posted by Sean Ono Lennon (@sean_ono_lennon) on Jan 5, 2017 at 7:00pm PST

The mother and daughters unbreakable bond will be featured in the HBO documentary, Bright Lights, which premieres Saturday.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Top state lawmakers in New York are skipping Gov. Andrew Cuomo's state of the state addresses in an unusually public display of the tensions between legislators and the Democratic governor.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Republican Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, Republican Senate Leader John Flanagan and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will not attend any of the six addresses by the Democratic governor next week, their spokespeople said.

Many lawmakers are still seething at Cuomo, who they blame for killing a proposed legislative pay increase last month, the first in 18 years.

"Sen. Flanagan was invited to attend, but declined," said Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif. "He will be in Albany, in session, fulfilling his duties as Senate Majority Leader."

As for Heastie, "we have a lot of work to do here in Albany and that is what we will be focusing on," according to spokesman Mike Whyland.

Lawmakers had hoped that a state commission would authorize raising their $79,500 salary late last year, in time for it to take effect in 2017. But Cuomo's appointees on the commission blocked the raise. Then last month negotiations over convening a special session to consider another pay raise proposal sputtered when Cuomo demanded that they also consider ethics reforms and other proposals unrelated to legislative pay.

New York's governor typically delivers a single address to lawmakers in Albany at the start of the legislative session. Last year, Cuomo gave the speech in the convention center adjacent to the state Capitol, where he was heckled by a Democratic Assemblyman.

This year, as relations with lawmakers deteriorated further, Cuomo announced a new approach involving three days of six regional addresses, beginning in New York City and Buffalo on Monday.

If the snub bothers Cuomo, he isn't letting on.

"By definition, these regional addressees are designed to communicate directly with the citizens of New York, not legislators," said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi. "Our goal has always been to bring the issues to the people, to develop the public support, and then have it communicated to the elected representatives."

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The state constitution, however, clearly envisioned lawmakers as the target audience. It requires the governor to "communicate by message to the legislature at every session the condition of the state." Prior to 1923 governors traditionally delivered a written message to the Legislature.

Cuomo's road show continues Tuesday with speeches on Long Island and Westchester County and wraps up Wednesday with addresses in Syracuse and Albany. Specific times and locations have not been announced.

Lawmakers are in session Monday and Tuesday, meaning they will depart Albany before Cuomo's speech in the capital city.
London (AFP) - British clothing brand Topman Design revived the country's 1990s rave culture for its London Fashion Week show on Friday, dazzling the catwalk with fluorescent colours, psychedelic prints and underground attitude.

Celebrating the anarchic house music scene that spontaneously swept the country and shocked the authorities, the High Street giant transformed the stately Selfridges department store in the heart of London into a warehouse party.

The establishment bastion shook to the booming soundtrack of US artist Trevor Jackson, as models -- sporting greasy hair, oily skin and various piercings -- paraded between concrete columns and imposing metal sculptures.

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- 'Explosive' -

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At the nearby Royal Institute of British Architects, luxury brand Barbour offered a predictably more sombre show, echoing its refined setting.

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The brand also showcased a limited edition of the famous jacket with lines by Scottish poet Robert Montgomery poems emblazoned on the back.

Its garments were available for immediate sale under the "see now, buy now" policy, which has become increasingly common over recent seasons.

London Fashion Week Men's will feature more than 50 shows as the country's blossoming male fashion industry shows little sign of being dented by the Brexit shock.

Male fashion sales in Britain rose by 4.1 percent to A14.1 billion ($17.3 billion, 16.5 billion euros) in 2015, boasting faster growth than ready-to-wear female sales, but still only accounting for 25 percent of total clothing sales, market research group Mintel told AFP.

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By Taiga Uranaka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp plans to meet with creditor banks on Tuesday to explain how it is addressing a massive charge that the Japanese company says it must take on its U.S. nuclear business, three bankers briefed on the meeting said.

The bankers told Reuters on Friday they expect creditors will agree not to call in loans while they discuss steps to aid the laptops-to-engineering conglomerate.

Toshiba officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The bankers were not authorized to speak with media on the matter and so declined to be identified.

Syndicated loans could be endangered because credit-ratings downgrades put Toshiba in violation of loan covenants, the bankers said, adding that it was routine for them to grant a waiver in such a case to avoid a funding crisis.

Toshiba, still recovering from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal in 2015, shocked investors again last month by announcing cost overruns at a U.S. nuclear business bought in 2015 which could now mean a charge against profit that could top $4 billion.

Tuesday's "explanatory session" is also meant as a show of support for Toshiba, as major creditors present a united front for the borrower hit by a series of scandals and losses, one of the bankers said.

The three bankers said they did not expect Toshiba to present new, major information at the meeting, which they depicted as the start of the process of working out rescue plans.

Toshiba's top executives have said they will finalize the loss on the nuclear business by mid-February, whereas sources have told Reuters they expect Toshiba to give its bankers an idea of the scale of the problem late this month.

Toshiba chairman Shigenori Shiga said on Thursday the company expects banks "will continue to provide support."

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The Japanese firm said cost overruns at U.S. power projects handled by the CB&I Stone & Webster Inc business it acquired last December from Chicago Bridge & Iron Co NV (CB&I) would be much greater than initially expected, requiring the huge writedown.

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(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by William Mallard and Christopher Cushing)
London (AFP) - Tottenham Hotspur winger Erik Lamela has returned to former club Roma for treatment after becoming frustrated by the progress of a hip injury, manager Mauricio Pochettino revealed on Friday.

Lamela, 24, has not played since Spurs' 2-1 League Cup defeat at Liverpool on October 25 and spent a week in his native Argentina in December visiting his hospitalised brother.

Despite subsequently returning to London, he has missed Tottenham's run of five successive Premier League wins and Pochettino decided a change of scenery would be beneficial.

"He went to Italy now. They need to change a little about the atmosphere. He has strong links in Rome," Pochettino told a press conference at the Tottenham training centre in north London.

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"It's always difficult for players who spend a lot of time (out) and with the energy of the team, sometimes he is frustrated he cannot be involved today as it's only him out of the group."

Lamela, who has travelled to Rome with a Tottenham physio, joined Spurs from Roma in a reported 25.7 million ($31.7 million, 30 million euros) deal in 2013.

He spent two years at Roma after making his name with River Plate in his homeland.

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Fringe players Vincent Janssen, Kieran Trippier, Ben Davies and Harry Winks are among those in contention to start.

Last year Pochettino vowed to sing a duet with chairman Daniel Levy if Spurs won the FA Cup and he made a similar pledge ahead of this season's tournament.

"It cannot be the same because I think it is bad luck to say if we win we will sing on the pitch with Daniel," he said.

"Maybe we find another challenge, no? Maybe I try to dance. Why not? Anything you ask me, if we win it or the Premier League, I will do in the middle of the pitch, no problem."
The " Fast Money " traders debated Thursday what is the best play in the auto space, amid tweets from Donald Trump threatening to impose an import tariff to prevent jobs moving to Mexico and other low-cost countries.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump rebuked Toyota Motor on Twitter after the Japanese automaker said it had no plans to curb production in Mexico . Toyota shares ticked lower after the tweet, hitting a session low of $120.32. The stock ended the session slightly above that level at $120.44.

The president-elect has previously threatened General Motors with a border tax , something he argues will encourage companies to keep production in the United States, creating more jobs for Americans. Opponents argue that an import tariff could lead to skyrocketing costs for the American consumer.

Trader Tim Seymour said the relatively tempered move in Toyota Motor (7203.T-JP) was "rational" for the market.

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Trader Dan Nathan said that one potential headwind for California-based Tesla Motors (TSLA) is the pressure to meet demand for its low-cost Model 3. He said he's not sure if the company can produce the car, meet its delivery targets and keep the $35,000 price tag.





Disclosures:

KAREN FINERMAN

Karen Finerman is long AAL, BAC, BAC short calls, C, DAL, FB, FL, GLMP,, GOGO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS calls, KORS puts, M, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, TACO, UAL, URI, WIFI long call spreads. Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, C calls, FB, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, JPM calls, KORS, LYV, M, MOH, PLCE, SPY puts, URI, WIFI. Her firm is short IWM, MDY. Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International.

PETE NAJARIAN

Pete Najarian owns calls: AKS, BLL, BVN, BZH, CCL, CNX, DVN, ETP, GDX, GILD, HA, HRL, KORS, INTC, JBLU,KKMB, LVS, MT, NEM, P, RIO, TLT, TV, UUP, XLF, WFT, WLC. He is l ong stock: AAPL, BAC, BLL, DIS, DISCA, GE, GILD, HD, INTC, JWN, KMI, KMIA, KO,KORS, LVS, MRK, MSFT, PEP, PFE, WYNN, XLNX. Najarian has p uts: GGP, PJC, X.

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DAN NATHAN

Dan Nathan is long XHB Jan put spread, XLK Jan Put spread, XRT Jan put spread, MCD Feb puts, XLI Feb put spread, FXI Feb put spread.

TIM SEYMOUR

Tim Seymour is long ABX, APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, C, CLF, CVX, DO, DVYE, EDC, EWN, EWZ, F, FB, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GE, INTC, LQD,MCD, MUR, OIH, PG, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, SQ,T, TWTR, VALE, VZ, XOM, short: EEM, SPY, XRT. Her firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CBD, CLF, EEM, EWZ, F, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, TCEHY, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, X, YHOO, short EWG, HYG, IWM.
It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".
Jionni Conforti has sued St. Josephs Regional Medical Center after he said it cited religion in refusing to allow his surgeon to perform a hysterectomy procedure, which he said was medically necessary as part of his gender transition. (Photo: Associated Press)

A transgender man is suing a Catholic hospital for refusing him a medically necessary hysterectomy  the latest in an ongoing series of treatment refusals by Catholic hospitals, based on religious grounds, thats playing out nationwide.

No hospital should be allowed to decide who their patients are, particularly when they receive government funds, said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan of Lambda Legal, an attorney on the case for Jionni Conforti of New Jersey. Denying care to someone at their time of need because of their sex or gender identity is not only dangerous and humiliating, its against the law.

The lawsuit cites the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which clearly prohibits discrimination based on sex and gender identity  as well as Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex when federal funding is involved, as it is for the hospital in this case, St. Josephs Regional Medical Center in Paterson, N.J.

In the United States, one in six hospital beds are in Catholic hospitals, Gonzalez-Pagan continued. These health care providers must comply with federal and state anti-discrimination laws so that the health of LGBT people who walk through their doors is not endangered.

Speaking with Yahoo Beauty, the attorney stressed the significance of New Jerseys law against gender-identity-based discrimination. This is an important reason why we need these laws in all states, he said. There are now 18 states including gender identity in their nondiscrimination laws, and we need them in the rest of the states as well.

Regarding the federal part of the lawsuit, Gonzalez-Pagan says its impossible to know how a proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act would affect nonbudgetary measures, such as discrimination prevention, as no one knows exactly what such a repeal would look like at this point. In any event, the conduct of this hospital is unlawful and wrong, he said, explaining that the question here is not whether or not the hospital can deny service, but whether or not they can deny it on a discriminatory basis.

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The problem began for Conforti, 33, a resident of Totowa, N.J., in 2015. Thats when he had scheduled the hysterectomy  a surgery deemed medically necessary by his doctor for Confortis gender dysphoria and based on his possibly increased risk of cancer. Although a nurse had allegedly initially confirmed that scheduling the surgery would be fine, Conforti later received an email from the Rev. Martin D. Rooney, of the Paterson Diocese, stating, This is to follow up to your e-mail inquiring about scheduling a total hysterectomy here at St. Josephs to remove all female parts based on the medical necessity for Gender Reassignment. This is to inform you that as a Catholic Hospital we would not be able to allow your surgeon to schedule this surgery here at St. Josephs.

The hospital sent Yahoo Beauty the following statement about the lawsuit: St. Josephs Regional Medical Center is a leading Catholic healthcare institution serving one of the most diverse and underserved populations in New Jersey. The Medical Center follows the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services in making decisions about care and treatment.

Conforti, after a search of many months, eventually found another surgeon and hospital to perform his surgery, but he said the rejection by St. Josephs cost him emotionally.

This is my neighborhood hospital. My whole family has been treated here and this is the hospital where I would be taken by ambulance in an emergency and they discriminated against me, Conforti said in a statement. I am shocked and saddened by the treatment I received and I am afraid of how I would be treated if I need medical care again. St. Josephs Healthcare who says it prides itself on a patients first approach, completely disrespected who I am as a person and that is not how a hospital should treat people.

Similar complaints have come out of service refusals by Catholic hospitals around the country  including in Michigan and California, in both 2015 and 2016, when women were denied lifesaving tubal ligation procedures on religious grounds, prompting lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Religious directives have no place in hospitals, especially because they end up harming the very women they should be serving, a Michigan ACLU attorney said at the time of the 2015 lawsuit.

But well likely see more cases like this, as theres been much growth in Catholic-managed health care across the country, according to a report by MergerWatch, a watchdog agency keeping tabs on how religion influences health care. It found that between 2001 and 2016, the number of acute-care hospitals that are Catholic-owned or -affiliated grew by 22 percent, while the overall number of acute-care hospitals dropped by 6 percent. It also found that in 10 states, more than 30 percent of beds are in Catholic hospitals.

Confortis lawsuit comes less than a week after a judge in Texas ordered a halt to new U.S. Health and Human Services regulations that had been created to stop anti-transgender discrimination by doctors, hospitals, and insurers. And in North Dakota, a group of Catholic businesses and organizations filed yet another legal challenge to regulations that could prevent Catholic hospitals from refusing services such as abortions and gender transitions.

While initiating a lawsuit is not something we take lightly, this new mandate represents a grave threat to religious freedom, said Bishop John Folda, of the diocese of Fargo, N.D. No word on his stance when it comes to Catholic hospitals turning down federal funding.

Read more:

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Transgender Athletes on Embracing Their Inner and Outer Beauty

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How much will celebrities pay to make sure photographers capture them in their best light on one of Hollywoods biggest nights? Apparently, 2 Gs. Stylish heard that Golden Globe nominees including Michelle Williams, Claire Foy, Jessica Chastain and others are flocking to the Beverly Hills pop-up clinic of dermatologist Dr. David Colbert for his signature treatments, including the brand-new Runway Facial  which, at $2,000, is roughly the price of a coveted Chloe handbag!



Colberts patient roster reads like a whos who of Hollywood. He was once dispatched to the set of the 2010 thriller Salt to treat Angelina Jolie, and he advised his client  and friend  Caitriona Balfe through the surgical scenes in Outlander. A quick glance at his Instagram reveals pics of the top doc with Naomi Watts, Taylor Schilling and Emilia Clarke.

So when the good doctor told me hed cooked up a new mega facial, I had to try it. (Ive long been a fan of his Triad Facial, a 12- to 20-minute microdermabrasion/laser/chemical peel that leaves one with skin akin to a luminous babys.)



We've Picked the Best Red Carpet Moments of 2016

First, let me tell you, the Runway Facial is not an express treatment  it takes about an hour  and there are many, many steps.



To begin with, Dr. Colberts associate Dr. Tagupa cleansed my skin to remove makeup and whatever other grime might be lurking. Then, a very thick clear gel was spread over my entire face and neck to protect surface skin from the extreme heat emitted by the eTwo Sublime radio frequency tightening device. This device is basically a super gentle (read: no pre-medicating with Valium or any swelling or redness later) version of skin-tightening treatments such as Ultherapy or Thermage. RF energy heats tissue to stimulate collagen remodeling" in the lower levels of the skin. It felt like teeny-tiny sharp pinches that at moments were excruciating.



Just when I thought I couldnt take it anymore, the gel was removed and we moved on to microdermabrasion, which aimed to suck gunk out of pores and rid skin of the dead cells that prevent products from penetrating to do their job and even worse, make your complexion look dull.

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PHOTOS: Best Red Carpet Fashion of 2016 from Kim Kardashian, Blake Lively and More

Next up: laser toning. A machine emitting 5,000 light pulses a minute claims to stimulate collagen and cell growth to increase skin firmness and elasticity, smoothing the tone and texture of the complexion and resulting in instant rejuvenation of the face and neck. The laser felt hot on my skin, and it sounded like heavy raindrops  kind of like if you were next to a window during a monsoon. It lasted for only about five minutes. And then the real fun began.



A light chemical peel was applied with a giant cotton swab. The treatment usually entails a 20 percent glycolic peel, but since I used retinol the night before (#oops!), I got a customized 10 percent glycolic dose. To keep the stinging from feeling too intense, Dr. Tagupa held a fan over my face for two minutes until the solution was neutralized and removed. Then the calming began. And this part was cool!



One of the cellulose sheet masks from the Colbert MD line was draped over my face. In a move Ive never experienced (or heard of) before, a handheld LED red light device was massaged over the mask, driving ingredients deeper and heightening their anti-inflammatory properties.



Kendall Jenner's Four Rules of Skincare, Courtesy of the Kardashian Sisters

The finishing touches: a dab of firming cream and then a few drops of facial oil to amp up the glow.



And what a glow! Its three days later and I didnt need any concealer this morning. Plus, my trouble spots, my neck and jawline, look smoother and seriously more taut. Turns out firming and tightening is the real takeaway; it's no wonder Dr. Colbert did this treatment on the knees and, um, other body parts of Victorias Secret models before the VS Fashion Show in Paris in December, thus its "Runway" name!

The bottom line: If you have an hour to spare, a threshold for mild pain and 2,000 bucks in your beauty budget, run, dont walk to the New York Dermatology Group. Or  just invest in a good firming cream and do a sheet mask once a week to tighten up.





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CHICAGO (AP)  The Chicago White Sox could have quite a Triple-A battery next season: Giovanni Soto pitching to Geovany Soto.

Geovany Soto, the NL Rookie of the Year with the Chicago Cubs in 2008, has reached a minor league deal with the White Sox, according to several media reports Friday. The catcher could have a shot at the big league roster, with the team lacking experience behind the plate.

In November, the White Sox claimed left-handed reliever Giovanni Soto off waivers from Oakland. He pitched briefly for Cleveland in 2015.

Soto, the catcher, turns 34 on Jan. 20. He batted .269 with four homers in 26 games for the Los Angeles Angels last season. He played 78 games for the White Sox in 2015.

Omar Narvaez and Kevan Smith have limited time in the majors and Alfredo Gonzalez, the only other catcher on the 40-man roster, has none. The White Sox traded Dioner Navarro to Toronto late last season, and Alex Avila signed with Detroit last month.

The White Sox also designated outfielder Jason Coats for assignment and claimed minor league outfielder Willy Garcia off waivers from Pittsburgh on Friday.

Coats spent most of last season at Triple-A Charlotte. He played 28 games for the White Sox, batting .200 with one homer and four RBIs.
In this Dec. 28, 2016, file photo, President-elect Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Donald Trump apparently couldnt wait until his planned Friday meeting with top U.S. intelligence officials before questioning the evidence and procedures they used to conclude that Russian cyberattacks sought to influence the election.

Instead, the president-elect took to Twitter to question the reliability of the agencies upon which commanders in chief usually depend.

The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia, Trump tweeted Thursday night.

So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?

Trump told the New York Times on Friday that the commotion surrounding the Russian hacking is no more than a political witch hunt by people who are embarrassed that he won the election.

They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, its a witch hunt. They just focus on this, he said.

Trump said that many other hacks go underreported even though in his estimation the United States is like the hacking capital of the world.

CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to brief the celebrity businessman on their classified report, which is said to contain detailed evidence of the Kremlins interference with the American political process. Among other issues, the U.S. intelligence community blames Moscow for hacking the Democratic National Committee and high-profile Democrats, such as Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Trump has repeatedly questioned information that is not advantageous to him while trumpeting anything that is. On the eve of his briefing, he still appeared to distrust the findings of agencies that are authorized to safeguard U.S. security.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper prepares to leave after testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

A senior law enforcement official told the Associated Press that the FBI repeatedly emphasized to the DNC the importance of having direct access to its servers but was denied. The bureau ultimately retrieved the necessary information through a third party, the official said. The DNC told BuzzFeed that the FBI never requested the servers.

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Earlier this week, Trump attacked the countrys leading intelligence officials and speculated (without providing evidence) that their meeting had been canceled because they still needed time to build a case. He also put the word intelligence in quotation marks.

The Intelligence briefing on so-called Russian hacking was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange! he said. (Officials told various outlets that the meeting had always been set for Friday.)

Despite Trumps insults, Brennan said Thursday that he anticipated a robust if not sporty conversation with the president-elect, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Im going to give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt, he said.

On Thursday, President Obama was briefed on the report, and Clapper testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the findings. Clapper said the Russian state-sponsored cyberattacks were merely one aspect of a multifaceted campaign directed at the United States.

The intelligence community is expected to release a declassified version to the public at some point.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Donald Trump took a break Friday morning from tweeting about Making America Great Again (in all caps) to slam Arnold Schwarzenegger and The New Celebrity Apprentice  a show he hosted for fourteen seasons and on which he remains an exec producer.

According to Nielsens preliminary ratings  released Tuesday, the morning after Schwarzeneggers version of the show debuted  the programs ratings had dropped more than 43% since the most recent premiere that Trump hosted in 2015.

Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got swamped (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT, Trump tweeted. So much for being a movie star  and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1.

Trump continued to distance himself from Schwarzenegger by calling out his allegiances during the election. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary, Trump wrote.

Schwarzenegger, who served as Governor of California for the Republican Party for two terms, announced that he would endorse Kasich in March 2016. Later in October, he said that he would not vote for the Republican candidate shortly after Trumps now-famous vulgar Access Hollywood tape made its rounds.

Its no secret that Trump has an obsession with his own ratings as host of The Apprentice. In a photo of Trumps recent meeting with Kanye West in Trump tower, a framed chart of Nielsen ratings from Variety is visible over Ivanka Trumps shoulder.

The Friday morning tweets were sent the same day that Trump is expected to meet with all the top editors at Conde Nast publications including Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter.

Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got "swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Kanye aside, let's all note that Trump has a framed Nielsen ratings chart from Daily Variety on his wall. pic.twitter.com/N5W9FMuNmc  Michael Schneider (@franklinavenue) December 13, 2016

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Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he was asking Congress to investigate how NBC got its hands on the intelligence community's report on Russian election-related hacking before he saw it.

"I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it," he posted to Twitter.

On Thursday night, following NBC's on-air report of the intelligence findings, Trump posted that the news network received a copy of the document because of "politics."

"How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Trump wrote. "Who gave them this report and why? Politics!"

NBC's Hallie Jackson reported that the intelligence briefing, presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday, detailed Russian cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee, the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, and American companies. Some hacks were successful, while others were not.

Intelligence officials reportedly said in the briefing that the Russian motive was to disrupt the democratic process in the election and that the hacking also served as "payback" for the Obama administration questioning Russian President Vladimir Putin's legitimacy.

The report tracked Russian cyberactivity to the prior two presidential elections as well, according to NBC. It did not make an assessment on whether Russian hacking affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.

Trump is set to received a briefing from intelligence officials Friday on the report.

Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported that intelligence officials picked up senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's victory and that go-betweens worked to turn over emails belonging to Democratic operatives and organizations from hackers to the website WikiLeaks.

Following WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity earlier this week, Trump on Twitter repeated Assange's denial that Russia provided WikiLeaks with the hacked information.

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"Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta'  why was DNC so careless?" he wrote. "Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

WikiLeaks also chimed in Friday, posting that NBC was able to view the briefing because of "political reasons."

"The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET//COMINT information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it," the website, infamous for releasing hacked and leaked documents, posted on Twitter.

It later called the sharing of intelligence with NBC a "#PseudoLeak."

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned why Trump wanted to investigate the NBC report.

"Of all issues implicated by Russian active measures, this is what you want to investigate?" he tweeted. "This is your top priority for intel committees?"

Both Republicans and Democrats have called for action against Russia after the hacking. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona have been two of the loudest voices on that front. After the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Russia last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released statements that both criticized Russia and said President Barack Obama had not been hard enough on the Russian government in previous years.

Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in the election-related hacks, and Trump has refused to acknowledge that Russia had involvement in them.

Last week, he said it was time for the US to move on to "bigger and better" things but he would "nevertheless" meet with intelligence officials to discuss the hacking. This past weekend he said he knew things about the hacking that no one else did and would reveal it Tuesday or Wednesday. He has yet to provide any further information.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: "The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!"

Intelligence officials pushed back on his tweet, saying the briefing was always supposed to be held Friday.

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible things you didnt know about Putin's life





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President-elect Donald Trump issued a statement saying cyberattacks did not influence the presidential election shortly after he received a Friday afternoon briefing from leaders of the U.S. intelligence community.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines, Trump said.

There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful, he continued.

Shortly after Trump was briefed, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified version of its report on cyberattacks during the election. That report said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency all concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. According to the report, the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump during the election and tried to boost his chances of winning through propaganda and cyberattacks on the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The public version of the report specifically said the intelligence community did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. In light of this, Yahoo News reached out to Trumps presidential transition team to ask what was the basis for his claim the cyberattacks had no effect on the race. As of this writing, we have not received a response.

The briefing followed days of tension between Trump and intelligence officials as he publicly questioned their conclusion that the Russian government was behind hacking efforts during the presidential race. Those cyberattacks resulted in emails from the Democratic National Committee and top aides to Clinton being leaked online. The publication of those emails led to a steady drip of damaging stories about internal Democratic deliberations, disputes and tensions.

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Trump was briefed about U.S. intelligence agencies conclusions regarding the attacks in a meeting at his Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan. The meeting included Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey and the heads of the CIA and National Security Agency. The officials who met with Trump did not use the main entrance to the tower and were not seen by reporters camped out in the lobby.

Donald Trump outside his Mar-a-Lago club on Dec. 28. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Obama commissioned the report on election cyberattacks from the intelligence community, and he received a briefing on the findings on Thursday. According to NBC News, a senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the report confirmed that it contained information indicating that Russia coordinated the hacking efforts and used third parties to give the emails to the activist organization WikiLeaks, which published the messages in bulk. NBC News also said the report included intercepted communications between Russian officials who were celebrating Trumps victory over Clinton. On Twitter Friday morning, Trump called for a congressional investigation to determine how details of the report were shared with NBC News prior to his briefing.

I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it, Trump wrote.

In his statement on the briefing, Trump praised the members of the U.S. intelligence committee.

I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation, he said.

Trump also promised to put together a team dedicated to fighting cyberattacks after he takes office later this month.

Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office, Trump said. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and Americas safety and security will be my number one priority.

This article was updated at 5:17 p.m. with information from the public report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
trump

The intelligence community's focus on Russia as the source of cyberattacks on Democrats during the presidential campaign is "a political witch hunt," President-elect Donald Trump told The New York Times on Friday.

Trump's interview came hours before he was due to be briefed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the intelligence community's conclusions about Russia's role in the hacks, which targeted the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.

"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," Trump told The Times, referring to the breach of at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015. "How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt."

The interview marks the latest in a series of attempts by the president-elect to downplay the intelligence community's findings that Russia orchestrated the hacks with the intention of influencing the outcome of the presidential election.

Trump has promoted the idea that the hacks could have been carried out by a 14-year-old or by "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." He has also floated the idea that the CIA's conclusions could be wrong, based on past faulty intelligence assessments involving the Iraq War.

"These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," Trump said in a statement last month. He again made that point to The Times, saying that "weapons of mass destruction was one of the great mistakes of all time."

Donald Trump

Trump denied on Friday that he has a strained relationship with the intelligence community, saying he expects "to have a very, very good relationship" with intel officials.

But on Tuesday, Trump tweeted that it was "very strange" that "the 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday."

"Perhaps more time needed to build a case," Trump wrote, though intelligence officials said the meeting had always been scheduled for Friday.

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On Wednesday, Trump again cast doubt on the US intelligence community's conclusion that Russia was behind the hacks. He cited a Fox News interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who said Russia did not feed the stolen documents to the self-described transparency organization.

"Julian Assange said 'a 14-year-old could have hacked Podesta'  why was DNC so careless?" Trump tweeted. "Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

On Thursday, intelligence officials, citing a final CIA report on the hacks that will be released in a declassified version on Friday, told Reuters that the agencies had identified Russian officials who fed the documents to WikiLeaks through third parties at the instruction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In any case, Trump told The Times that he thinks the focus on the Russian hacks stems from his opponents' embarrassment at having lost the election.

"They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan," Trump said said. "They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it's a witch hunt. They just focus on this."

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President-elect Trumps choice of Robert Lighthizer as his special trade representative, announced Tuesday afternoon, completes the first string of the new administrations trade team. So its time to draw a couple of clear conclusions.

Conclusion No. 1: Trump is a dead-serious hawk on trade questionsall in for everything he promised on the campaign trail. Prominent among these promises is a remake of economic relations with China and a halt to the southward drain of American jobsthe giant sucking sound, as Ross Perot put it during his 1992 presidential runto Mexico.

Related: Trump Completes His Trade Triumvirate with Former Reagan Hand

Conclusion No. 2: Trumps trade hawks have three alternatives: They can learn on the job and backtrack on the campaign pledges, they can limit themselves to jawboning and gestures, or they can sustain bloody noses.

There is one other possibility: Trumps trade team can make an unholy mess of the U.S.China relationship altogether if they take their animus too far and disputes spill into already-fraught security questions.

What Trump will not be able to do, for better or worse, is fundamentally alter the structure of U.S.China trade or Mexicos role as a low-cost manufacturing platform. Encouraged by the U.S. in the first place, too many people here and there benefit from these arrangements to alter them now.

Lighthizer, a protectionist from way back, has a decades-long record as a China-basher. When he served as President Reagans deputy S.T.R. in the 1980s, Japan was Public Enemy No. 1 and Lighthizers office wielded threats of import quotas and punitive tariffsthe latter now prominent on Trumps menu.

Related: What a Trade War With China Could Do to the Economy

Lighthizer joins Wilbur Ross, commerce secretary-designate, and a practiced hand at Rust Belt salvage jobs, and Peter Navarro, head of the newly created National Trade Council and another hard-liner on trade. Navarro, a University of California economist, is noted for his 2012 documentary, Death by China.

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Some near-term successes are in store for this crew. Trumps on the record opposing the sweeping trade deals negotiated under Presidents Clinton and Obama, and theyre both vulnerable to one or another degree.

Obamas TransPacific Partnership, ambitious to a fault and structured in secret by the corporations that would have benefited from it, is all but a dead letter already. Clintons North American Free Trade Agreement Trump called it the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country during the debates last yearis plainly in Trumps sights.

On this score Trump is right. Even the Mexicans now acknowledge NAFTA simply hasnt delivered many of its promised benefits. As to the TTP, look at it carefullyto the extent one canand it is less a trade deal than a sweeping deregulation regime that will prove as much a letdown as its predecessor.

Related: Why GOP Leaders Are Balking at Trumps Call for Punitive Tariffs

Trumps pulling a Ross Perot act, in effectsaying the unsayable. These accords are structured to benefit corporations at the expense of jobs, wages, and workplace security on both sides of the border. It wont doas Trumps stunning victory last November 8 has just advised us.

Scrapping the TTP will actually do relations with Beijing some good, given the Obama administration wielded it as an economic weapon intended to isolate the Chinese. As to NAFTA, Team Trump will have to limit its ambitions to adjustments, and even those that are justified are likely to prove hard to make.

The big problem with Trumps aggressive position on China is very simple: Chinas not the problem. Americas traditional short-sightedness is the problem.

When Deng Xiaopings reforms unleashed pent-up energies in the early 1980s, U.S. companies piled in big time. Here was a low-wage production platform from which they could export to developed markets, including their own. Complex supply chains and multiple-site assembly operations now make a very dense weave.

Related: Trump Will Be Steadier on China Than His Taiwan Call May Suggest

Americans did the same thing in Japan after the 1945 victory, and by the 1980sLighthizers time in the Reagan administrationthe strategy was biting U.S. companies on their backsides. Imbalances in the economic relationship with China are nothing more than a not-quite-instant replay of earlier events across the Pacific.

The lessons then are the lessons now.

First, Washington can ask the Chinese to make ameliorating adjustments at the margins, but China will never abandon its fundamental growth strategy, which is to export into prosperity while the domestic market begins to mature.

Second, America has to make the serious adjustments. Chinas economic rise has cost the U.S. jobs while treating the American workforce with benign neglect. The government invested too little in education and compensatory retraining programs, to name two.

Now, its worth noting, were sending overseas a lot of the higher-tech jobs workers who lost their jobs to Dengs reforms. Theres no laying any of this off on China.

Let Team Trump shout loudly, save some jobs as the President-elect has with Carrier and now Ford, and tell the folks back home, Im tryin my best. A sophisticated ambassador in Beijing can smooth the ruffles at the other end.

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The incoming Trump administration may seek help from Congress to pay for a wall along the US-Mexico border, according to Republican lawmakers cited by Politico and CNN on Thursday.

Such a move could break President-elect Donald Trump's pledge that Mexico would pay for the wall, which was central to the president-elect's campaign.

The reports said Trump and House Republicans were developing plans to fund the border wall using taxpayer money through a 2006 law enacted by President George W. Bush that provided for over 700 miles of barriers along the southern US border.

CNN cited House Republican officials who said the plan could be taken up as early as April.

The proposed border wall  and Trump's assertion that Mexico would pay for it  was one of his principal campaign pledges. The matter generated some fallout between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto when the two publicly disagreed about the wall payment after Trump flew to Mexico to meet with him in August.

On his return to the US, Trump claimed he and Pena Nieto never discussed payment. Pena Nieto immediately fired back in Spanish: "I repeat what I told you personally, Mr. Trump: Mexico will never pay for a wall."

Trump modified his plans during a speech in late October when he outlined an idea for a proposed "End Illegal Immigration Act," in which the US would pay for the wall and seek reimbursement from Mexico.

Trump reiterated his reimbursement plan in a tweet Friday morning:

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

NOW WATCH: Who is paying for the wall? Trump and Mexico's president contradict each other





More From Business Insider


Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump released a statement Friday after his much-anticipated meeting with intelligence officials to discuss the intelligence community's report on Russian election-related hacking, calling the meeting constructive.

"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat [sic] National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," he said in the statement. "There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful."

Trump said he would appoint a team to provide him with a plan, within 90 days of his inauguration later this month, to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."

"Whether it is our government, organizations, associations, or businesses, we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks," he wrote. "I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America's safety and security will be my number one priority."

On Thursday night, NBC's Hallie Jackson reported that the intelligence briefing, also presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday, detailed Russian cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee, the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, and American companies. Some hacks were successful, while others were not.

Intelligence officials said in the briefing that the Russian motive was to disrupt the democratic process in the election and that the hacking also served as "payback" for the Obama administration questioning Russian President Vladimir Putin's legitimacy, according to NBC.

Story continues

The report traced Russian cyberactivity in the previous two presidential elections as well, according to NBC. It did not make an assessment on whether Russian hacking affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.

Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported that intelligence officials picked up senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's victory and that go-betweens worked to turn over emails belonging to Democratic operatives and organizations from hackers to the website WikiLeaks.

Earlier Friday, Trump said he wanted Congress to investigate how NBC got its hands on the intelligence community's report on Russian election-related hacking before he saw it.

"I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it," he posted.

Trump had posted on Thursday, after NBC's on-air report of the intelligence findings, that the news network received a copy of the document because of "politics."

"How did NBC get 'an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?'" Trump wrote. "Who gave them this report and why? Politics!"

After WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity earlier this week, Trump repeated Assange's denial that Russia provided WikiLeaks with the hacked information.

"Julian Assange said 'a 14-year-old could have hacked Podesta'  why was DNC so careless?" Trump tweeted. "Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

WikiLeaks also chimed in on Friday, saying NBC was able to view the briefing because of "political reasons."

"The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET//COMINT information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it," the website, infamous for releasing hacked and leaked documents, posted on Twitter.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned why Trump wanted to investigate the NBC report.

"Of all issues implicated by Russian active measures, this is what you want to investigate?" he tweeted. "This is your top priority for intel committees?"

Vladimir Putin

Both Republicans and Democrats have called for action against Russia after the hacking. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona have been two of the loudest voices on that front. After the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Russia last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released statements that both criticized Russia and said Obama had not been hard enough on the Russian government in previous years.

Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in the election-related hacks, and Trump has refused to acknowledge any Russian involvement.

Last week, he said that it was time for the US to move on to "bigger and better" things but that he would nevertheless meet with intelligence officials to discuss the hacking. This weekend, he said he knew things about the hacking that no one else did and would reveal them Tuesday or Wednesday, but he did not provide further information.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: "The 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!"

Intelligence officials pushed back on his tweet, saying the briefing was always supposed to be held Friday.

Read Trump's full statement:

"I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the intelligence community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

"Whether it is our government, organizations, associations, or businesses, we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools, and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America's safety and security will be my number one priority."

NOW WATCH: 11 facts that show how different Russia is from the rest of the world





More From Business Insider


By Naomi Tajitsu TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> over its Mexican-built cars, but the biggest risk from a punitive tariff would be for its compatriot Nissan Motor Co <7201.T>, the largest automaker operating in the country. Trump has criticized U.S. companies like General Motors and Ford Motor Co which manufacture abroad, accusing them of costing U.S. jobs. On Thursday he took on Toyota, warning the world's largest automaker that it would face a "big border tax" if it exported Mexico-built cars to the U.S. market. But it is Nissan, Japan's second-largest automaker, which would be the bigger victim of any tax punishment. Nissan built its first overseas plant in Mexico in 50 years ago and now produces more than 800,000 cars there, mainly its entry-level Versa and Sentra sedans. Nissan's production dwarfs that of Toyota, Honda Motor Co <7267.T> and Mazda Motor Corp <7261.T> in Mexico. It exports roughly half of its output to the United States, where it also has production plants. Vehicles made in Mexico comprise roughly one-quarter of Nissan's total U.S. vehicle sales, industry experts say, compared with around 30 percent for smaller rival Mazda, but less than 10 percent for Toyota and Honda. Japanese automakers together produced around 1.4 million vehicles in Mexico in the year ended March, nearly 40 percent of the country's total output. According to the Japan External Trade Organization, they plan to ramp up production to 1.9 million by 2019. Current production in Mexico is dwarfed by the number of cars they produce in the United States, their single largest market, where Japan's top three automakers alone produced around 4 million vehicles in 2015. Trump has said he plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, and has vowed to impose a 35 percent tariff on cars exported to the United States from Mexico. According to JP Morgan estimates, an increase in tariffs on cars exported from Mexico to the United States to even 10 percent would hit Nissan's consolidated operating earnings by 10.3 percent, more than 5.5 percent at Mazda. Toyota would see a hit of 0.7 percent, while Honda 2.2 percent. All four Japanese automakers building cars in Mexico said they have no immediate plans to change operations. But Nissan and Renault SA (RENA.PA) CEO Carlos Ghosn told Reuters he was watching the incoming Trump administration closely and would respond to whatever policies it adopts. "I dont want to preempt or try to guess whats going to happen," Ghosn said in an interview on Thursday, on the sidelines of the CES technology show in Las Vegas, Nevada. "Its not a question that we are afraid or not afraid, were dealing with 160 markets in the world, different powers, different policies, different approaches, so we are used to adapting our strategy to different policies," he said. One Asian auto executive told Reuters his company long ago made a strategic decision to make Mexico a production hub in North America, and that it is tough to alter its strategy overnight. "We can't turn back the clock on these decisions," said the executive, who did not have clearance to speak to media and so declined to be identified. "What we need to explain more clearly (to Trump) is that most automakers are not cutting production capacity or jobs in the United States to make Mexico an additional production hub." Still, analysts said automakers would likely think twice about expanding production in the country in the coming years. "As long as this administration is in place I suspect (Nissan is) not going consider any additional capacity there," CLSA analyst Chris Richter said. Trump's criticisms come just as Japanese automakers are shuffling their production portfolios to boost supply of popular, higher-margin sport utility vehicles (SUV) and trucks for the U.S. market. Honda last year announced it would expand its U.S. production capacity to build more of its CR-V SUV, while shifting production from Mexico. Toyota has said that its Guanajuato plant under construction in Mexico will produce the entry level Corolla sedan, a vehicle segment currently produced at its plants in Mississippi and Ontario, Canada. Demand for the cars has slumped in recent years as cheap gasoline prices has prompted drivers to buy more SUVs. "We're always considering ways to increase production in the United States, regardless of the political situation," Toyota President Akio Toyoda told reporters on Thursday. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu and Maki Shiraki; Additional reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in Tokyo, Leah Duncan in Las Vegas and Bernie Woodall in Detroit; Editing by Tom Brown)
President-elect Donald Trump is breaking with precedent by demanding that politically appointed ambassadors leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, a report by the New York Times stated.

In the past, new administrations have granted extensions to ambassadors on a case-by-case basis, especially those who have school-going children, for weeks or months. Trumps transition staff, however, has reportedly issued an all-encompassing order, according to a State Department cable sent out Dec. 23.

The president-elect has taken a stand to not allow any of President Barack Obamas political appointees to continue beyond inauguration day, possibly with the aim dismantling many of Obamas foreign and domestic policy measures. The move, however, could be problematic as it leaves the country without Senate-confirmed envoys for months to follow, the report said.

While the Times cited a senior Trump transition official as saying that there was no ill will in the order, many ambassadors are considering approaching Trumps nominee for secretary of state Rex Tillerson to appeal the decision.

Many diplomats have now been left in the lurch as they attempt to come up with living arrangements in their respective countries and acquire visas that allow them to remain there in order for their children to complete the school year, the publication reported.

When you have people out there whose only reason for being an ambassador is their political connection to the outgoing president of a different party, its pretty logical to say they should leave, said Ronald E. Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a Washington-based nonprofit association for former ambassadors and senior diplomats. But I dont recollect there was ever a guillotine in January where it was just, Everybody out of the pool immediately.

As of now, Trump has named ambassadors to two countries  bankruptcy lawyer and campaign adviser David Friedman will be the U.S. ambassador to Israel, while Iowa Governor Terry Branstad will be serving in China.

Related Articles
With two weeks until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, few issues loom as large as the real estate moguls ongoing battle with the U.S. intelligence community over its assertions that Russian hackers interfered with the U.S. election.

Caught in the middle of that increasingly acrimonious fight will be Tom Bossert, Trumps pick for homeland security and counterterrorism advisor, who will shoulder responsibility inside the White House for cybersecurity. This week, Trump again attacked U.S. intelligence officials who are preparing dossiers on Russian involvement in the hacks. On Thursday, James Clapper, Americas top intelligence official, fired back at Trump, telling a Senate panel that the evidence of Russian interference is stronger than ever. On Friday, top U.S. intelligence officials met with Trump and his advisers, including Bossert, to personally brief them on their report documenting Russias hacking and leaking campaign. Shortly before that briefing, Trump doubled down on his attacks, calling the investigation a political witch hunt.

Cyber-issues are more important today than they were the last time Bossert worked in the White House, as a well-regarded, analytically minded homeland security deputy under George W. Bush, also handling cybersecurity. Last week, the Obama administration announced long-delayed reprisals against Russia for its cyber-meddling in the election. Moscow, in contrast, said it would hold off taking any action until Trump assumes office, tendering an olive branch to the next administration.

But that olive branch may be rebuffed, at least by some. Bossert has advocated for tougher measures against countries that attack the United States in cyberspace. What we can do is what we can get away with, he said during a 2013 Atlantic Council panel. And hell be joined in the next administration by a host of other hawks, including future national security advisor Michael Flynn and his deputy as well as incoming Defense Secretary James Mattis, whove called for a much more muscular approach to deterring foes in cyberspace.

I believe Tom will push for more aggressive deterrence measures against nation-state threat actors that misbehave in cyber than what we have seen from the Obama administration, said Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike and who worked with Bossert while they served as fellows at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

For example, faced with hugely disruptive cyberattacks from Chinese hackers in recent years, Alperovitch recalls that Bossert consistently advocated pressing Beijing and threatening it with sanctions if hackers didnt back off. The Obama administration, after prolonged internal debate and hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses, only took action against Chinese commercial hackers in 2015.

And Bossert will have a greatly expanded toolkit since he last handled cyber in the White House. At the time, Bossert was one of the few aides in the White House clamoring for more staff and resources for cyber-issues, said Daniel Kaniewski, who worked with Bossert on the Homeland Security Council and is now at Georgetown University.

Bossert did not respond to requests for comment.

Today, cyber plays a much bigger role in U.S. offensive capabilities  but also in its vulnerabilities. The Obama administration launched major cyberattacks to slow down Irans nuclear program, for example. Obama further broadened the next administrations capabilities by expanding presidential power to sanction those involved in cyberattacks. Last week, he expanded that authority to retaliate against attacks on the U.S. election system. But a proliferation of commercial hacks and cyber-espionage in recent years have also underscored how much more vulnerable the United States is to malicious hackers than it was in years past.

Whats not clear is whether Bossert, despite his past clamor for a tougher stance on hostile countries, will essentially pass the buck for cyber-security to the private sector. Though Trump floated the idea of making U.S. cyber-defense a job for the military  defense of civilian networks rests with the Department of Homeland Security  Bossert touts free-market solutions.

We must work toward cyber doctrine that reflects the wisdom of free markets, private competition and the important but limited role of government in establishing and enforcing the rule of law, honoring the rights of personal property, the benefits of free and fair trade, and the fundamental principles of liberty, Bossert said in a statement accompanying his appointment.

According to a cybersecurity executive who did not wish to appear to be criticizing the incoming administration, Bosserts statement signals that companies are on their own for dealing with cyberattacks, no matter who it is from. That hands-off attitude would mean a likely larger role in the years to come for private-sector cyber-defense and incident response, he said.

Though an establishment Republican national security hand, Bossert never was a vocal Never Trump critic during the campaign, keeping a door open for him. But that doesnt guarantee a congenial fit in the Trump administration, either, staffed as it is with conspiracy-theory hawkers like Trump, Flynn, and White House strategist Steve Bannon.

Ken Wainstein, a former Homeland Security advisor to Bush, described Bossert as very rational and analytical, as someone who will get the facts from the intelligence community. When he gives his assessment to the president, Wainstein said, it will be based on the facts.

Such an approach contrasts with Trump, who claims to have better intelligence than the professionals charged with briefing him, and continues to dismiss consensus conclusions from the U.S. intelligence community about Moscows role in the election.

Professionals in this space are very used to laying out the facts as they see them and giving advice, and it not always coming to fruition, said a former National Security Council official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the interactions between a president and his staff.

The question, he said, is what happens next. A president dismissing the advice of a top cybersecurity official out of principled disagreement is one thing; doing so out of personal motives, thats another story.

And Trumps continued dalliance with Julian Assange, the exiled Australian founder of the internet leak site Wikileaks, to discredit the U.S. intelligence community raises plenty of questions in Congress about those motives.

With every conspiracy theory-laden tweet and erratic off-the-cuff comment, the president-elect does damage to our national security, while raising new concerns about his capacity to grow into the job, said Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

That he would accept the transparently self-serving denials of the Kremlin is alarming enough, but that he would now cite people like Assange who have demonstrated universal hostility to the United States and its interests takes him into new and even more treacherous territory.

Photo credit: DAVID BECKER/Getty Images
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's top aides said he would have an open mind on Friday when he is briefed on what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded were Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 election campaign, despite rising tensions between the president-elect and the nation's spy agencies.

Trump has been dismissive of findings that Russian hackers worked on his behalf and spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC News that Trump has "a healthy skepticism of everything."

Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, who will be a counselor to Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20, said Trump would question the heads of the top U.S. intelligence agencies about their methods and conclusions.

"He's prepared to listen and understand how they got to the conclusions they did," Spicer told ABC on Friday.

Conway said it was too soon for Trump make a judgment even as he has repeatedly tweeted this week about the hacking issue.

"We do not want any foreign government to interfere in this country ... At the same time, let's wait until the president-elect receives the briefing of this fresh, new material," she said on the CBS "This Morning" program.

Clapper and the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are expected to attend Trump's briefing, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) at an undisclosed location.

The meeting comes amid increasing tension between Trump and the intelligence communities as the New York businessman has openly disparaged their conclusions, creating an extraordinarily rocky relationship before he takes office on Jan. 20.

The U.S. agencies, which concluded months ago that Russian intelligence agencies had directed the hacking of the Democrats, said in their final intelligence report that they had identified the Russian officials who fed the hacked material to WikiLeaks through a third party, according to senior U.S. officials.

Democratic President Barack Obama received his briefing on the final report on Thursday, after last week moving to punish Moscow over the hack by expelling suspected Russian spies and imposing sanctions. An unclassified version of the agencies' report will be released publicly next week.

Story continues

Top intelligence chiefs told U.S. lawmakers on Thursday that they were resolute in their findings that Russia staged the attack and pushed back against Trump's criticism.

"There's a difference between healthy skepticism ... and disparagement," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at the first in a promised series of briefings and hearings on the allegations, which Moscow denies.

The Senate Intelligence Committee said it will hold a hearing on the issue on Tuesday with the intelligence chiefs.

Trump on Twitter has called himself a "big fan" of intelligence agencies while also doubting their assessments that Russia targeted his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the Nov. 8 election in his favor.

His comments have drawn the ire of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats who are wary of Moscow and Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary under Obama, said on NBC's "Today" program on Friday that Trump's criticisms should be done privately and that his tweeting on the issue was "unheard of and unprecedented."

(Additional reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, and Patricia Zengerle, Dustin Volz and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)
Istanbul (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday announced that some of the millions of Syrian and Iraqis who have fled to Turkey would be given Turkish nationality.

"Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks" have been carried out, Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television.

"There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Let's make use" of that talent, he argued.

"Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, let's give them the chance to work as citizens, like the children of this nation," he said.

Erdogan said the interior ministry "is ready to implement the measure at any time." But he gave no further details, notably about how many would gain Turkish nationality.

According to Turkish government figures, the country is hosting more than three million Syrians and Iraqis who have fled war.

Erdogan outlined a naturalisation plan last summer but the idea met with angry protests and xenophobic comments on social media.

The country's political opposition saw the plan as a scheme to widen Erdogan's electoral basis at a time when he is pushing for constitutional reform that will strengthen his powers.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish-backed Syrian rebels are fighting street battles with Islamic State militants in the city of al-Bab, and progress in taking it from the jihadists has been slowed by efforts to avoid civilian casualties, Turkey's defense minister said on Friday. The rebels, backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and war planes, have been besieging the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab for weeks as part of an operation to drive the jihadists out of a strip of Syrian territory along the Turkish border. Isik was speaking to broadcaster Haberturk. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Nick Tattersall)
ANKARA (Reuters) - The Turkish military and Syrian rebels killed 32 Islamic State militants in the latest clashes in northern Syria on Thursday, Turkey's armed forces said in a statement on Friday. In a round-up of its military operations over the last 24 hours in support of rebels in northern Syria, the army said Turkish warplanes destroyed 21 Islamic State targets in the areas of al-Bab and Bzagah, including buildings and vehicles. Turkey's military operation, dubbed 'Euphrates Shield', was launched more than four months ago to drive Islamic State from the border and prevent a Kurdish militia taking territory in their wake. In recent weeks, the forces have been besieging the town of al-Bab. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
At first, the problem with Taboo is just that it is slow. Lead Tom Hardy is on the scene immediately  scrambling over some mud to bury something in a ditch  but he never quite does anything that grabs attention. His character, James Delaney, has returned to London for his fathers funeral, but his time away  in unspecific, undifferentiated Africa  has taken some kind of toll on him. Hardy spends most of the first episode of Taboo brooding and lurking about in dark corners (every corner in 1814 London is shadowy), casting portentous glances and uttering every word as if it is the beginning of an incantation. As Hardy has demonstrated in several other projects, he is eminently watchable  a presence that can manipulate the audience through just looks and grunts, as he did in Mad Max: Fury Road. But Taboo seems to have no idea what to do with his presence, short of giving him a scar and wrapping him in black broadcloth.

While Taboo appears to be building to something, it makes the most of the shows stellar production values, which create a textured cross-section of Londons less-savory elements that is fascinating, if not exactly pleasant. For example, James has a tense run-in with a lawyer in a pub outhouse  itself just a few steps away from a butcher stewing offal in a back alley cauldron. The scene is a foul corrective to the period nostalgia of Downton Abbey and other similar fare, which is to be expected from showrunner Steven Knight, the mind behind World War I-era gangster drama Peaky Blinders (also starring Hardy, in a smaller role). But Taboo feels like it is trying a little too hard to establish grit, while failing to establish anything else; while the viewer is still wondering whats up with James Delaneys bountiful angst, he and the lawyer say the word piss several times in their quaint accents and then threaten each other with murder, presumably to drive home the impression that it is all very hard over there in old-timey Londontown.

Story continues

Then  in the pub, incongruously hosting the post-funeral wake for James father  James comes face-to-face with his half-sister Zilpha, played with wonderful histrionic nerves by Oona Chaplin. James leans over to her, as she is trying to leave with her husband: One thing that Africa did not cure is that I still love you, he declares, with what is supposed to be rough-edged passion. (Might it even be taboo passion?) The audience has just been adjusting to the idea that the two most handsome people in the show are not romantically linked but siblings; turns out, the show wants to offer us both. Taboos primary story driver is just Flowers in the Attic: Old-Timey London, or Game of Thrones: But Victorian-ish. The line, which Hardy tries to imbue with hoarse and fiery urgency, lands with all the sexual chemistry of a surgical strike. James seems enraptured merely out of onerous duty, and Chaplins Zilpha is less consumed by passion than calculating it.

It is a frankly laughable moment  ponderously serious, lit in overcompensating shades of gray and black, and veined with a bit of self-flagellating malice that is more overwrought than introspective. This is Taboo in a nutshell; trying way, way too hard to sell the audience on the performance of seriousness, while failing to offer anything of substance. At times it seems the show is shying away from substance in favor of delivering more superficial appeal. And to be sure, if Taboo were fun, perhaps that would be understandable. But Taboo is not fun  its grim, dour and self-important. Its odd  the show should have spades of atmosphere and talent to offer. But for all its mustache-twirling, it never reaches a cohesive, sharp point of significance. Instead it seems a little like Penny Dreadful and Game of Thrones were hacked apart, and in an unholy dissection, eviscerated for parts. Taboo is a reanimated corpse of prestige drama tropes  manufactured darkness, heavy-handed grit, and sexual titillation, assembled with little to no unifying vision.

And despite the actors talent and appeal, much of Taboos problems are encapsulated in Hardys James himself. Perhaps that is not totally surprising  along with Knight, Taboo was developed by Hardy and Hardys father. But the attempts to make James sympathetic or admirable flatten him into caricature. And, most uncomfortably, the efforts specifically fall apart when it comes to race. Its natural enough that Londoners in 1814 might dismiss Africa as an undifferentiated continent  or favor the observations of a free white man who witnessed slavery over a person who actually was enslaved. But it is no longer 1814. A still-developing plot point in the first three seasons is James realization that his father did not marry his mother so much as buy her; she was a slave bundled into a property deal. With its meditations on identity and belonging, its one of the most interesting developments in Taboo. But this story beat also means that Hardy, a white man, is supposed to be playing a character who is mixed-race.

Furthermore, James decade in Africa is given a kind of hand-waving occult power. James speaks a tribal language, seems familiar with a set of symbols from some kind of ritual or worship, and according to the rumors of others, engaged in some kind of cannibalism. But without the grounding specifics, these are lazily sketched signifiers about dark magic, which either capitalize on James mixed-race heritage or his time with savage tribes. Taboo is at its most interesting when it observes how random and relative our assumptions of moral purity is; a whole show alone could exist on the changing connotations and denotations of savage, as it is used to describe behavior, ritual, individuals, and locations. But given that Taboo excels at creating the texture and nuance of London at this time, the vagueness around Africa is even more pronounced.

On a purely story level, too, James is just too good at being the rakish lead. He doesnt do a single thing wrong, strategically, in the first few episodes  paying out debts with money that appears out of nowhere, showing up to speak publicly just as the occasion demands it, and intervening with violence at precisely the moment the other shoe is about to drop. Coupled with his tortured passion, apparent abolitionist beliefs, angst regarding his father, and threatening swagger, hes just too slick all around  a character that seems too perfect, modern, and badass to be a real man in 1814. He is also infinitely attractive, of course, a kind of pre-Victorian James Bond. In one scene, he is brutishly rude to a local prostitute (Helga, played by Franka Potente), who responds by outlining, in no uncertain terms, that she would like him inside her.

Indeed, yes, there are prostitutes. In Taboos defense, London has a long and storied history of prostitution. But so does prestige television. There is something a bit too convenient about Helgas desire for James, just as there is something a bit too flat in the numerous cracks made about how a soliciting English gentleman might prefer boys instead. Its a pulpy kind of progressivism, an interest in diverse experiences that only encompasses how titillating each viewpoint can be.

Which is a shame, because elements of Taboo do succeed. As with Peaky Blinders, Knight excels at creating the grit underneath our genteel assumptions of this era  1814 is just a couple of years after the majority of Jane Austens novels were written, after all. It is a far cry from her parlor teas to this labyrinth of corrupt dockworkers and raucous auction-houses, those locations where her heroines could not go, but only hear about later from the men they would eventually marry.

But for all of the taboos that Taboo so proudly portrays, it cannot locate a reason for all of this cursing and killing, either tonally or logically. James and Zilphas father is described by everyone as a failure and embarrassment. But despite the older Delaneys failings, James is committed to his fathers company and property, going so far as to refuse to sell a piece of land in British Columbia that is strategically key in the ongoing war of 1812. Jonathan Pryce plays the East India Company official whose job it is to make James sell the land for the good of the Crown; James, a rebel without a cause, refuses to capitulate to king and country. It is very difficult to understand why, except that perhaps James prefers brooding in dark corners to rolling around in cash. But this decision to not sell is what the entire story hinges on; everyone, from Zilphas extremely creepy husband to the Prince Regent, is trying to get James to sell, and theyll all happily see him dead.

Taboo has far too much going on for its relatively thin material; it insinuates more than it says, and the first episodes only make sense if you are willing to believe that there is something intriguing about the darkness that James and sometimes Zilpha have at their core. It is so outsize and over-the-top with elements of its storytelling that it might work better to think of Taboo as camp; but if so, it is very expensive, self-serious, and unfunny camp indeed.

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Tom Hardy Is Back for Revenge in Intense New 'Taboo' Trailer (Watch)

TV Peaks Again in 2016: Could It Hit 500 Shows in 2017?
Once Upon a Time is betting on princess power to overcome Emmas latest obstacle.

JoAnna Garcia Swisher will reprise her role as Ariel, aka the Little Mermaid, on the ABC series this spring, in an episode that finds her joining forces with Princess Jasmine, EW.com reports.

PHOTOSWinter TV Preview: Scoop on Once Upon a Time and 30+ Returning Favorites!

[Ariel and Jasmine] join Hook on an adventure as he and Emma face a daunting challenge that requires a big-time princess team-up, executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis tell the site.

Once Upon a Time resumes Season 6 in March.

Ready for more of todays newsy nuggets? Well

* Musician Billy Joel will make his first-ever appearance on CBS The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Monday, Jan. 9.

Billy will be making his first-ever appearance on the @colbertlateshow this Monday, Jan. 9th! The show airs at 11:35pm ET on @CBS. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/wgkYbKRmRC  Billy Joel (@billyjoel) January 6, 2017

* Jim Sturgess (Feed the Beast) will star in the Hulu drama Hard Sun, per The Hollywood Reporter. Created by Neil Cross (Luther), the series follows two detectives (Sturgess and British actress Agyness Deyn) who seek to enforce the law and protect their loved ones in a world that every day slips closer to certain destruction.

* Netflix has released a trailer for the six-episode drama Frontier, starring Jason Momoa. The series, premiering Jan. 20, centers around warring factions vying for control of the fur trade in 1700s Canada.

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Photo credit: Alex Wongundefined

From Esquire

In April of 1948, the newborn Central Intelligence Agency scored one of its first real coups, in every sense of that word. For the previous five months, the agency had been shuffling money and operatives into Italy in order to assure that the Christian Democratic Party would defeat the Communists in that country's elections. Overseeing the operation, which was plainly in violation of the law and the CIA charter, was noted spooko di tutti spooki James Jesus Angleton.

Angleton, according to author Tim Weiner, funneled more than $10 million into that project, much of it "repurposed" from donations meant to help Europe rebuild after World War II, and still more of it coming from American Catholics who were terrified that the Vatican would be surrounded by a sea of red. It worked, of course. And the CIA was on its way to a half-century of meddling, ratfcking, and outright bungling.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Even%20Trump%20Can't%20Afford%20to%20Roll%20Back%20the%20Sanctions" customimages="" content="article.51934"]

So, today, one of the more remarkable performances on the Senate Armed Services Committee came from Senator Thom Tillis, a second-term Republican from the newly insane state of North Carolina. Most of the Republicans on the committee, which was hearing testimony regarding the involvement of Russian hackers in the recent presidential elections, did their damnedest to divert the discussion away from that particular point. But nobody did so more entertainingly than did Tillis, a hardcore Tea Party Republican who, in the wake of the revelations concerning the relationship between Russian dirty tricks and the triumph of Donald Trump, suddenly and miraculously discovered his inner Howard Zinn.

TILLIS: The glass house comment is something that's very important. There is a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that's estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn't include coups or regime changes. So, tangible evidence that we've tried to affect an election to our purpose. Russia's done it some 36 times. When Russia was apparently trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their elections. So I'm not here to talk about that, but I'm here to say that we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw.

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The jaw, she drops, and the gob, she is smacked. Would anyone like to guess the general reaction from someone like Thom Tillis if a Democratic senator hinted that a Russian cyberattack on the democratic process was something the country maybe, sorta, perhaps had coming because of what it did in Italy in 1948?

Remember what happened to anyone who intimated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that maybe, sorta, perhaps the policies of this country might have had something to do with motivating fanatics to fly airplanes into buildings? And while an over-amped Lindsey Graham-cut down to four Red Bulls before committee hearings, Senator-tried to wrench things back on track, saying repeatedly that he's willing to "start throwing rocks," it was Tillis' little speech that best illustrated the kind of chaos that has been sown in our political system since Vladimir Putin and his government decided to drop a thumb on the scale.

Photo credit: Sasha Mordovetsundefined

I am of two minds on this deal, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't yelling at each other all the time. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a president who doesn't wholly trust what is too often and too gently referred to as "the intelligence community." And, over the years, when it has screwed the pooch, which is often, the CIA has in the past been too quick to duck and let the rest of the country take the blowback in the face. So, in theory, anyway, I agree with Tillis, who never would agree with me if I made the same case in a different context.

However, on the other hand, Donald J. Trump is the president-elect. We do not know whom he may owe for that distinction and, hell, we don't know to whom he owes any debt at all. On Wednesday, there was a leak from Camp Runamuck describing how El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago plans to "reorganize" the intelligence community. From The Chicago Tribune:

Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer denied Thursday that Trump was considering "restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure." Spicer did not specifically address possible changes to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was looking at changes to the intelligence agency. The person familiar with the plans said Trump was not intending to gut any intelligence agency, but was looking for ways to streamline operations and improve efficiency. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity Trump has questioned Russia's involvement and challenged the intelligence community's track record, particularly the information that led to the Iraq war. On Wednesday, he appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization publicly released the hacked Democratic emails. Trump noted in a tweet that Assange said he had not received the materials from Russia.

There is no reason in the world to be sanguine about this. Unless you see the current president-elect as sui generis in his sweet-tooth for authoritarian solutions based in his own perception of his own unconquerable genius, you can't understand how truly perilous this is-especially considering that his primary national security advisor is going to be Michael Flynn, whose trolley left the rails long before Trump's did.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="How%20Russian%20Spies%20Hacked%20This%20Election" customimages="" content="article.49791"]

The president-elect knows that, whatever's out there concerning his business dealings and his relationship with the Putin regime, there's only one network of institutions that's likely to be able to find it. And he's going to do the best he can not to reform those institutions, but to bring them and their capacities further under his personal control. So maybe the best outcome is that we have an "intelligence community" to keep an elected president honest.

It's at this point that my two minds start throwing stuff at each other, and I have to lay down for a spell.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Protesters will get public sites for demonstrations during Republican Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, a major federal land agency said on Thursday, after being threatened with a lawsuit from civil rights lawyers who accused it of quashing dissent. Up to 900,000 people are expected to pack into the U.S. capital for the New York businessman's Jan. 20 swearing-in to his first political office. Some plan to protest Trump's more controversial promises, including plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and deport illegal immigrants. Only three of the more than 30 groups seeking to stage rallies either protesting or celebrating Trump's election independently of the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee have received permits to use National Park Service land before, during or after Trump's inauguration. The agency said it expected to begin issuing permits for demonstration sites on park land in coming days, an announcement that came a few hours after the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund said it would sue if the permits were not issued by Friday. "We believe that this is a significant victory for free speech. They are doing this under threat of litigation," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the fund's executive director, said in a telephone interview. The Park Service had maintained it was following a procedure in place since 2008 by turning over control of sites, including along the parade route from the Capitol to the White House, to Trump's Presidential Inaugural Committee. Agency spokesman Mike Litterst said the Park Service would regain control of permits for the Ellipse, a grassy area south of the White House, from the inaugural committee on Jan. 21. Litterst said in an email that the agency was working with more than 30 permit applicants and was still receiving requests. The Park Service has been under a court order since 2008 mandating it to guarantee free speech during presidential inaugurations. Three liberal groups, the ANSWER Coalition, the American Constitution Society and the Black is Back Coalition, have been permitted to hold events near the parade route, but only ANSWER was granted one for Inauguration Day, according to the Park Service permits website. WOMEN'S MARCH GOES AHEAD Some 3,000 police officers and 7,000 National Guard troops from outside the District will be on hand to help provide security at Trump's swearing in, Chris Geldart, the District of Columbia's homeland security director said in a phone interview. The biggest inauguration protest, the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21, will go on regardless of the dispute over protest sites since it will be held on city streets. At least one protest could come with a cloud of marijuana smoke, as the DCMJ pro-pot lobbying group, which spearheaded the legalization of the drug in Washington D.C. in 2015, plans to distribute 4,200 joints near the inaugural site. Smoking marijuana along the parade route would violate the laws of both the District of Columbia - which allows it only in private spaces - and the federal government, which bans it outright. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Scott Malone, Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay)
By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Thursday announced that about $20 million found under a mattress in a Massachusetts apartment had been seized after a Brazilian man was arrested for laundering money linked to a multi-billion-dollar global fraud.

Federal prosecutors in Boston charged Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, with conspiring to commit money laundering in a case connected to the investigation of TelexFree Inc, which promoted itself as an internet telecom company but prosecutors say was actually a pyramid scheme.

Rocha was detained following a court hearing, prosecutors said. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The arrest stemmed from an investigation into TelexFree, a Marlborough, Massachusetts-based company that sold voice-over-internet telephone service and was founded by James Merrill, a U.S. citizen, and Carlos Wanzeler, a Brazilian.

Prosecutors said TelexFree was a massive pyramid scheme, making little to no money selling its service while taking in millions of dollars from thousands of people who paid to sign up to be "promoters" and post ads online for it.

TelexFree filed for bankruptcy in April 2014 owing $5 billion to its participants, prosecutors said. In total, 965,225 victims in the United States, Brazil and various other countries lost $1.76 billion when it collapsed, they said.

Merrill was arrested in May 2014 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud charges in October. Wanzeler in 2014 fled to Brazil and could not be extradited.

According to Thursday's criminal complaint, in 2015, an individual working on Wanzeler's nephew's behalf approached a cooperating witness about laundering money still in the United States through Hong Kong accounts and moving the funds to Brazil.

The intermediary told the witness that she wanted $40 million transferred out of the country because Wanzeler's wife, still in the United States, was filing for divorce and knew where it was located, the complaint said.

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On Dec. 31, Rocha, acting as a courier for Wanzeler's nephew, flew to the United States and subsequently met on Wednesday with the cooperating witness, whom he gave $2.2 million in a suitcase, according to authorities.

After the meeting, federal agents followed Rocha to an apartment complex in Westborough, Massachusetts.

They returned to it after arresting Rocha to find a "substantial amount of cash" hidden under a mattress, the complaint said. Rocha said the money totaled $20 million, the complaint said.

Wanzeler's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is U.S. v. Rocha, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 17-mj-05007.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Chinese-American nuclear engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to produce "special nuclear material" in China in violation of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. Allen Ho, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and a Chinese state-owned nuclear power firm, the China General Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC), were indicted in April last year on charges of conspiracy. The DOJ said Ho had pleaded guilty "to conspiracy to unlawfully engage or participate in the production or development of special nuclear material outside the U.S., without the required authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in violation of the Atomic Energy Act." A DOJ official said Ho and an associate, Ching Ning Guey -- who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2015 -- were the first to be charged for violation of the 1946 act, a Cold-War era statute aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation. The DOJ statement said Ho had been employed as a consultant by CGNPC and was also the owner of Energy Technology International (ETI), a Delaware corporation. It said Ho assisted CGNPC in procuring U.S.-based nuclear engineers to assist in the design and manufacture of components for nuclear reactors more quickly. It said Ho identified, recruited and executed contracts with U.S.-based experts from the civil nuclear industry who provided technical help for the development and production of special nuclear material for CGNPC. Ho and CGNPC also facilitated travel to China and payments to the U.S.-based experts in exchange for their services, the DOJ said. The United States defines special nuclear material as plutonium, uranium-233, or uranium enriched in the isotopes uranium-233 or uranium-235. It says special nuclear material is only mildly radioactive, but includes fissile isotopes  uranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium-239  that, in concentrated form, could be used as the primary ingredients of nuclear explosives. The Department of Justice did not say what sort of special nuclear material was involved and whether it included such "strategic special nuclear material." The Justice Department said Ho faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. It said sentencing had been set for May 17 in the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee. Guey has yet to be sentenced. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sandra Maler)
(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has issued a blanket mandate for politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand said on Friday. "I will be departing on January 20th," Ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters. The mandate was issued "without exceptions" through an order sent in a State Department cable on Dec. 23, Gilbert said. He was confirming a report in the New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous U.S. administrations, from both major political parties, have traditionally granted extensions to allow a few such ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months. State Department spokesman John Kirby said it was "common" procedure for all politically-appointed ambassadors to step down as a new U.S. administration comes in on Jan. 20. "All political appointees for the Obama administration were directed to submit their resignation and the due date was Dec. 7, and the resignations are to take effect on Jan. 20," Kirby told reporters. "That is common, typical practise ... that's the way it works." Kirby said, as expected, no career diplomats serving as ambassadors had been asked to resign by the transition team. He acknowledged, however, that in the past there had been exceptions made for a small number of political appointees to stay on for a short time for personal reasons. "But that is totally in the prerogative of the incoming administration," he added. The order could leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain, the New York Times reported. A senior Trump transition official told the newspaper there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring Obama's overseas envoys leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do. Trump has taken a strict stance against leaving any of Obama's political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20, aiming to break up many of his predecessor's signature foreign and domestic policy achievements, the newspaper said. Diplomats told the New York Times that the order has thrown their personal lives into a tailspin, leaving them scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to stay in their countries so their children can remain in school. (Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Additional reporting by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru.; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Andrew Hay)
(Adds comments from Bank of America spokesman)

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed charges on Friday against Bank of America and two of its employees, saying they wrongfully discriminated against prospective Hispanic mortgage borrowers in South Carolina.

HUD said it expects the case will be heard in federal court, where a judge could potentially order the bank to pay damages, attorneys fees or other relief. HUD filed the complaint in its Office of Administrative Law Judges.

A Bank of America spokesman strongly rejected HUD's claims.

"We are committed to fair lending principles and are proud to be one of the country's largest mortgage lenders to Hispanic borrowers," the spokesman, Terry Francisco, said.

The case against Bank of America was prompted by a complaint filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance.

The alliance raised concerns about possible discrimination, after it conducted a series of "tests" in February 2013 through January 2014 to compare how bank employees treated female Hispanic versus female non-Hispanic prospective borrowers in a Charleston-based branch of the bank.

This is not the first time that Bank of America has faced allegations of discrimination.

The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to let Miami pursue lawsuits accusing both Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co of engaging in predatory lending against black and Hispanic home buyers. The city accused the banks of steering those borrowers into higher-cost loans that they could not afford.

In the testing by the National Fair Housing Alliance in Charleston, South Carolina, the Hispanic borrowers were offered less favorable lending terms compared with the non-Hispanic borrowers and the bank was less prompt in helping connect the Hispanic borrowers with the loan officer, the testing found.

For instance, one non-Hispanic borrower received an estimate with lower closing costs and monthly payments, as well as an offer by the bank to pay $2,000 of her closing costs.

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The Hispanic borrower, in contrast, would have faced higher monthly payments and did not receive a similar offer for the bank to cover her closing costs.

The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to deny or discriminate against people based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or disability when it comes to issuing mortgages or mortgage modifications.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by David Gregorio and Leslie Adler)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Russian officials celebrated Donald Trump's election victory as a geopolitical win for Moscow, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing U.S. officials who said intercepted communications showed the Russians congratulating themselves on the outcome. The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials - including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country's cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election - contributed to the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow's efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House, the Post reported. (Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Jan 6 (Reuters) - U.S.-based activist short-seller Glaucus Research on Friday distanced itself from a company it said had used its name and branding to conduct short-sell campaigns against two Hong Kong-listed companies.

The comments by Soren Aandahl, Glaucus' director of research, followed the publication of a report this week by little-known Zhongkui Research alleging Sinosoft Technology Group had fabricated its financials.

Sinosoft denied the allegations in a Dec. 29 stock filing, but shares of the company, which were halted for a day when the report was published, fell 23.4 percent when it resumed trading.

Zhongkui Research, whose origin and founders are unknown, appeared to have used Glaucus' name for its online web searches, copied its website format, and borrowed from the U.S. firm's description, Aandahl said in an email.

"Investors should know that we have absolutely no ties to this copycat and have reached out to our lawyers to see what legal remedies we can pursue for this theft of intellectual property," he said.

The company's legal options currently include suing Zhongkui in the United States or Hong Kong, Aandahl added.

Glaucus has conducted shortselling campaigns against firms globally by making reports uncovering financial fraud, and then making a profit by shorting the stock. It has previously targeted Hong Kong-listed companies but has no formal operations in China, the company said.

Zhongkui Research did not respond to requests for comment. Little public information exists about the Hong Kong-focused short seller, such as whether it is a Chinese firm or a unit set up by a foreign company.

Hua Han Health Industry Holdings, the other firm targeted by Zhongkui Research, could not be reached for comment.

Glaucus Research's run-in with Zhongkui Research is not the first time a Western firm has experienced its brand being ripped off in China.

In 2015, Goldman Sachs faced trademark infringement issues when a Shenzhen-based leasing company used the same name, and many big foreign brands have faced similar issues in China in the past.

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Glaucus, named for a god in Greek mythology who is the saviour of sailors and fishermen in distress, said it was surprised to learn about the similarities of Zhongkui's methodology and style.

Zhongkui is named for a figure in Chinese mythology associated with good deeds. On their websites, both firms identically say they offer "a unique combination of experience in capital markets, accounting, law, and investigative journalism".

Besides Zhongkui, other China-based short campaign firms have arisen, such as Hongqiao Exposed and Trinity Research Group, said analyst Claire Stovall of short-sell campaign-tracking firm Activist Shorts.

In the past, short-seller imitations have waged successful campaigns against the companies concerned, she added.

(By Jess Macy Yu and Michelle Price; Editing by Lisa Jucca and Clarence Fernandez)
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign targeting the 2016 American election to undermine public faith in the US democratic process and to help President-elect Trumps election chances, according to a newly declassified report released Friday.

The report, assembled by the CIA, FBI, and NSA, contains the most detailed assessment yet of an unprecedented Russian effort that targeted the computer systems of American political organizations and then leaked the material obtained during those raids. It concludes that Russia carried out a multi-faceted campaign involving hacking, disinformation, and trolls to both sow doubt about the integrity of the U.S. election and to boost Trumps chances.

Trump has consistently cast doubt on Russias responsibility. Even after being personally briefed on that report Friday, he betrayed confusion over what had happened.

There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines, Trump said in a statement. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

Except they were, but didnt release any information. Russia collected on some Republican-affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign, the report notes.

U.S. spies intercepted communications from Russian officials celebrating Trumps victory as a geo political win for the Kremlin, according to several media reports. U.S. officials have also identified the third party Russian operatives used to pass passed stolen documents to WikiLeaks.

The report describes the campaign as motivated by Putins personal grievances. Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him, the report argues.

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Additionally, humiliation over other disclosures added more fuel to the fire. Putin publicly pointed to the Panama Papers disclosure and the Olympic doping scandal as US-directed efforts to defame Russia, suggesting he sought to use disclosures to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical, the report said.

During his years in power, Putin has cultivated a roster of Western leaders with whom he has developed close personal ties, with benefits for Russian state-controlled business interests. Fridays report implies Trump is the latest in a long line of what some intelligence officers describe as useful idiots for the Kremlin.

Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the report said.

It offers a detailed account of Russias ambitions and actions during the 2016 information operation, but offers nothing new in the way of underlying evidence. It is unclear whether the report will sway those, like Trump, who continue to question the accumulating evidence underlying the intelligence communitys assessment.

Fridays report is an unclassified version of a more thorough classified report that describes the sources and methods that girds the intelligence communitys assessment. Next week, intelligence officials will testify before Congress and brief lawmakers on their full findings.

Cybersecurity experts and intelligence officials argue that the public evidence documenting Russias involvement provides conclusive evidence that the Kremlin carried out the campaign. That case rests on the use of malware known to be deployed by hacking groups dubbed Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear; the use of computer infrastructure under the control of Russian intelligence; and an examination of the public impact  and likely motive  behind the breaches and the leaks.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has denied that Russia served as the source for the leaks, but Fridays report calls that claim a boldface lie. We assess with high confidence that the GRU [Russian military intelligence] relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks, the report notes.

Trump has described the intelligence communitys investigation of Russias role in the election as an attempt to discredit the legitimacy of his victory. The report notes, in precise language, that the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying, a finding that Trump highlighted Friday. The report does not attempt to analyze the effect of the Kremlin information operation on the election.

American intelligence officials believe the problems is only going to get worse  and not just in Washington. Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes, the report states.

In Germany, intelligence officials have warned that Russian operatives may try to tilt the election against Chancellor Angela Merkel in favor of the Euro-skeptic AfD, a right-wing group. In France, Russia has provided financial support for Marie Le Pens National Front, a populist party sympathetic to Kremlin policies. In both Germany and France, hackers linked to Russia have recently carried out cyberattacks against political institutions and the media.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images
By Patricia Zengerle and Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday he was "even more resolute" in his belief that Russia staged cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 election campaign, rebuking persistent skepticism from Republican President-elect Donald Trump about whether Moscow was involved. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said he had a very high level of confidence that Russia hacked Democratic Party and campaign staff email, and disseminated propaganda and fake news aimed at the Nov. 8 election. "Our assessment now is even more resolute than it was" on Oct. 7 when the government first publicly accused Russia, Clapper told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said motives for the attack would be made public next week. Trump on Thursday morning called himself a "big fan" of intelligence agencies. But he has cast doubt on their assessments that Russia targeted the campaign of his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, drawing ire from his fellow Republicans as well as Democrats who are wary of Moscow and distrust Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The intelligence officials at Thursday's hearing said they worried a lack of support from atop the government could prompt valued staff members to leave their agencies. "There's a difference between healthy skepticism ... and disparagement," Clapper said. Vice President-elect Mike Pence has used the expression "healthy skepticism" to defend Trump's criticism of intelligence findings. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, speaking at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics on Thursday, said that because Trump had never served in government, he was unfamiliar with the intelligence profession. "It doesnt bother me if someone is going to be skeptical and challenge our work and maybe disagree with our views, but I expect that the president of the United States will recognize that the CIA and intelligence community were established by statute for a very important reason," The congressional hearing was overseen by Republican Senator John McCain, a vociferous Russia critic. It was the first in a promised series of briefings and hearings on allegations that Russia tried to disrupt or influence the U.S. campaign, one of the most bitter in recent history. Moscow denies the allegations. McCain told reporters that Senator Lindsey Graham, also a vocal critic of Moscow, would chair a new Armed Services subcommittee dedicated to cyber issues. Trump will be briefed by intelligence agency chiefs on Friday on the hacks. President Barack Obama received a report on the matter on Thursday. An unclassified version will be made public early next week. "I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case," said Clapper, who leaves when Trump becomes president on Jan. 20. Clapper stopped short of declaring Russia's actions "an act of war," saying that determination was beyond the scope of his office. Clapper and the two other officials who testified, National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers, and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, did not say what made U.S. intelligence confident Russia was behind the cyber attacks, a conclusion also reached by several private firms. CRITICAL OF ASSANGE Obama last week ordered the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies he said were involved in hacking U.S. political groups such as the Democratic National Committee. The CIA has identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the DNC and Democratic Party leaders to WikiLeaks at Putin's direction through third parties, according to a new U.S. intelligence report, senior U.S. officials said. Documents stolen from the DNC and Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, were posted on the Internet before the election, embarrassing the campaign. In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump was skeptical about a Russian role in the affair, writing: "(WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said the Russians did not give him the info!" But on Thursday, Trump said in another Twitter post that he was not against intelligence agencies or in agreement with Assange. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump tweeted. Clapper said Assange had put American lives in danger and deserved no credibility. McCain and other lawmakers also blasted Assange. Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, said there would be "howls" from Republicans if a Democrat described intelligence officials as Trump had. U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian cyber attacks were specifically aimed at helping Trump beat Clinton. Several Republicans have acknowledged the Russian hacking but have not linked it to an effort to help Trump win. Trump and top advisers believe Democrats are trying to delegitimize his victory by accusing Russia of helping him. Senator Tim Kaine, an Armed Services member who was Clinton's vice presidential running mate, said: "It is my hope that this Congress is willing to stand in a bipartisan way for the integrity of the electoral process." Graham said Obama's actions against Moscow fell short. "I think what Obama did was throw a pebble. I'm ready to throw a rock," Graham said. "Putin is up to no good and he better be stopped." (Reporting by Dustin Volz and Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes there is "a historic opportunity" for a breakthrough in upcoming negotiations that would reunite the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus after more than four decades, the United Nations said Friday.

The new U.N. chief will be opening and chairing a conference that starts Jan. 12 with the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders and Cyprus' three guarantors  Britain, Greece and Turkey  that will be seeking agreement on post-settlement security arrangements, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The Geneva conference will follow three days of talks between the island's Greek Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, and breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci starting Jan. 9 to try to reach a settlement.

"We're at a very decisive phase in the Cyprus peace talks," Dujarric said. "At this point it's really about being supportive of the process and seeing how the parties can finally bridge the final gaps."

The island was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by Cypriot supporters of union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared an independent state in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it and keeps 35,000 troops there. While the island joined the European Union in 2004, only the internationally recognized Greek-speaking south enjoys full membership benefits.

Guterres met Thursday with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and late Friday afternoon with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias.

Kotzias called it a "very nice" meeting but refused to comment on the Cyprus talks.

Dujarric said Guterres "expressed his appreciation for Greece's continued support to the Cyprus talks and commitment to a comprehensive settlement of the issue."

"He recognized the historic moment for Cyprus" presented by the conference starting Jan. 12 and "lauded the unprecedented progress made by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities," Dujarric said.

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The secretary-general "appealed to all parties to use this opportunity to find creative and mutually acceptable solutions that address the concerns of both communities," Dujarric said.

Earlier, Dujarric said that Gutteres emphasized "the historic opportunity" in his meeting with and "underlined the need for mutually acceptable solutions that address the concerns of both communities."

He said the secretary-general also "expressed hope that all parties would demonstrate the necessary creativity in seeking innovative solutions."

The two sides have been trying to strike an accord for decades, with U.N. support.

Cavusoglu told reporters Thursday he is "more optimistic than ever" that an agreement can be reached, but stressed that there are still "serious issues" regarding territory, the map, security and guarantees.

The summit is seen as the apex of 19 months of talks between the two leaders that have produced significant progress on how an envisioned federation will function after an accord is approved in separate votes on both sides of the island.

___

Associated Press Writer Menelaos Hadjicostic contributed to this report from Nicosia, Cyprus.
The United Nations on Friday said its human rights envoy for Myanmar will probe escalating violence in the country, including a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, when she visits next week.

UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee's 12-day trip, starting on Monday, will also take her to Kachin state, where thousands have been displaced by fighting between ethnic rebels and the army.

Intensifying clashes between Myanmar's military and ethnic minorities has undercut Aung San Suu Kyi's vow to bring peace to the country following her party's elevation to government last March.

The Nobel prize winner has also faced strong international criticism for failing to rein-in a months-long military crackdown on Rohingya villagers in northern Rakhine State.

Areas of Rakhine have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands of the Rohingya minority fleeing to Bangladesh.

Lee has slammed the lockdown as "unacceptable" and called for an investigation into claims troops have raped, murdered and tortured civilians from the Muslim minority.

The army vehemently denies the allegations.

"The last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there," Lee said in a statement on Friday.

"Apart from what is happening in Rakhine, the escalation in fighting in Kachin and Shan (state)... is causing some disquiet regarding the direction that the new government is taking in its first year."

Lee's criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, who are loathed by many within Buddhist majority Myanmar, has seen her face threats and demonstrations on previous visits.

Hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu caused outrage when he called her a "whore in our country" for criticising controversial legislation considered discriminatory to women and minorities.

Myanmar's government says its troops in Rakhine are carrying out legitimate clearance operations to hunt down "terrorists" who attacked police border posts in October.

On Wednesday an official commission probing the violence dismissed claims security forces are trying to force the Rohingya out of the country and said there was no evidence troops had carried out rape.

But days earlier the government detained eight members of the police after a video emerged showing officers beating and kicking unarmed Rohingya villagers.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday set his sights on combating sexual abuse in peacekeeping, announcing plans to map out a new "game-changing" strategy to address the problem.

Guterres, who took over from Ban Ki-moon on January 1, named a nine-member task force to come up with a new approach, in a clear sign he intented to toughen up the response to the string of damaging allegations.

The task force will "report fairly quickly on how we can move forward in new ways, in ways that are more bold, that may break some china," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

UN peacekeeping missions have been hit by dozens of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation, but troop-contributing countries have been reluctant to prosecute those accused.

Under UN rules, it is up to those countries to take action against their nationals who face credible allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation while serving under the UN flag.

Human rights groups have complained about the lack of accountability for peacekeepers serving in UN missions. Many have avoided investigation altogether or received light punishment.

The task force will present a "clear, game-changing strategy to achieve visible and measurable further improvement in the organization's approach to preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse," said Dujarric.

The new strategy will form part of a report that Guterres is to present to the General Assembly in February on the measures taken to address the scandal.

Last year, the annual report presented by Ban detailed 69 claims of sexual abuse and exploitation against troops from 21 countries.

That number rose to 82 allegations by mid-December, according to UN peacekeeping department's website, the majority of which involved the MINUSCA force in the Central African Republic.

The United Nations has been badly shaken by the wave of allegations of sex abuse by the troops it deploys in missions with a clear mandate to protect civilians.

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The spokesman said the UN was under no illusion that it could "wipe out" such misconduct, but he stressed that Guterres wanted to strengthen the response.

"It's about how we react, how we put the victims at the center and it's about accountability," said Dujarric.

Some 100,000 troops and police from 123 countries serve in UN peacekeeping.
f35a

WASHINGTON  America's priciest weapons system  the F-35  is continuing its march to full combat capability, but the US isn't the only major power working toward a fifth-generation fighter.

"While there are countries that are building their version of a fifth-generation fighter, they are years and years behind the capabilities of the F-35," US Air Force Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, director of the F-35 integration office, told Business Insider.

Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus

Pleus, a former commander of the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base and a command pilot with just north of 2,200 flight hours, said the F-35 "is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else in the world today."

In August 2016, US Air Force Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, declared initial operational capability (IOC) for a squadron of F-35A's  a significant breakthrough for the weapons program, which has been beset by design flaws, cost overruns, and technical challenges.

Since IOC, the Air Force has trained more than 120 pilots in 100 F-35As, accruing a combined total of 75,000 hours of flight time.

"It's important to realize that the F-35 program is flying combat capable today and that our adversaries are trying to produce the same technology that we have but we are in front of them, for the time being," Pleus explained.

"So while, Russia and China have both rolled out a prototype of their fifth-generation fighter they have a long way to go until they've got 75,000 flying hours on that airframe and more than 100 airplanes in their inventory."

During the Air Force Association's annual conference in September, Pleus sat on a panel alongside Carlisle, F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Program executive officer Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, and 388th Fighter Wing commander Col. David Lyons.

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During his remarks, Pleus, who has flown both the F-16 and F-35, described the latter as "absolutely head and shoulders above our legacy fleet of fighters currently fielded."

"This is an absolutely formidable airplane, and one our adversaries should fear," he continued.

f35a

In order to maintain a "tactical advantage over our adversaries," Pleus said the US must continue to modernize the F-35, F-22, and fourth-generation fighters.

"You can't just build an F-35 or an F-22 or whatever the next generation of fighter is and say, 'we're good.' It constantly has to be updated because the threat, the folks that want to do us harm, will constantly upgrade their airplanes and their anti-airplane weapons on a day to day basis," Pleus explained.

NOW WATCH: This is how pilots train to fly the F-35  Americas most expensive fighter jet





More From Business Insider


Washington (AFP) - The US House of Representatives voted Thursday to condemn a UN resolution reprimanding Israel over its settlement activity, blasting last month's move by the international body as "an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace."

The congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote instead of vetoing the UN resolution, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

"I am stunned at what happened last month. This government -- our government -- abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the chamber shortly before the House vote.

"It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN," he added. "It's time to rebuild our partnership" with the Jewish state.

White House aides have said that while Obama is a firm supporter of Israel, he felt that after eight years he had simply run out of ways to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel building on Palestinian land is sabotaging hopes for peace.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

It also demands that the United States ensures that no action be taken at the Paris Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict scheduled for January 15, that would impose an agreement on the two sides.

The French-organized talks, to be attended by around 70 countries -- but not by Israeli or Palestinian representatives -- are being held to reiterate international support for a two-state solution to the conflict.

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A similar bipartisan resolution was introduced in the US Senate, where Republican Ted Cruz on Thursday slammed Obama and his administration, saying the failure to veto the UN measure marked their attempt "to lash out... at Israel with their last breath in office."

Cruz said he will propose legislation designed to cut US funding to the United Nations unless the anti-Israel resolution is repealed or made more balanced.

But some congressional Democrats insisted the Capitol Hill vote had more to do with taking a final jab at Obama than condemning his administration's lack of action.

"It's subterfuge. This is about kicking a president on the way out, one more time," fumed House Democrat Gerry Connolly, who voted no on the resolution.
assange

Russia's state-sponsored news agency Russia Today "has actively collaborated with" WikiLeaks, the organization that published documents and emails stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the presidential campaign, the US intelligence community said in a report released Friday.

The long-anticipated report, which was released in its declassified form to the public, concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered" the election-related hacking in an effort to undermine Americans' faith in the election and help elect Donald Trump  and was aided by WikiLeaks and Russia Today.

"RTs editor-in-chief visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2013, where they discussed renewing his broadcast contract with RT, according to Russian and Western media," the report states.

"Russian media subsequently announced that RT had become 'the only Russian media company' to partner with WikiLeaks and had received access to 'new leaks of secret information.' RT routinely gives Assange sympathetic coverage and provides him a platform to denounce the United States," the report said.

Russia Today also gave Assange his own show, "The Julian Assange Show"  also known as "World Tomorrow"  in 2012.

Over the summer, when WikiLeaks was releasing daily batches of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's inbox, many journalists noted that Russia Today and Sputnik  another state-run Russian news agency  frequently shared the leaked documents on Twitter before WikiLeaks did.

Earlier today, @RT_com tweeted & pubbed a story on fresh @wikileaks Podesta emails dump before WL posted them to the site & tweeted a link. pic.twitter.com/nHb0GIq4Am  Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) October 13, 2016

WikiLeaks denied that it had leaked the documents to any state-sponsored Russian news agencies prior to releasing them on the WikiLeaks website, noting that "the release was visible to anyone looking at" WikiLeaks' website "well before" the organization shared them on Twitter.

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'A platform for Kremlin messaging'

In any case, the intelligence community concluded that Russia Today, as part of Russia's "state-run propaganda machine," contributed to Putin's attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential election "by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences."

The declassified report devoted seven pages to Russia Today's "rapid expansion" in the US and around the world, claiming that the news agency "has positioned itself as a domestic US channel and has deliberately sought to obscure any legal ties to the Russian Government."

Report devotes 7 pages to RT https://t.co/GTHIpBzCXt pic.twitter.com/6eOgAOTuUM  RT America (@RT_America) January 6, 2017

The Kremlin spends approximately $190 million a year on distributing RT programming, the report noted, focusing on hotels and satellite, terrestrial, and cable broadcasting.

Officials said that RT's attempts to undermine faith in the US election process and democratic institutions began in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, when it "ran numerous reports on alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities, contending that US election results cannot be trusted and do not reflect the popular will."

RT's "anti-US messaging," the report continued, was likely informed by RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan, who has close ties to the Kremlin. Simonyan has characterized RT's journalism as a form of "information warfare" against US-led interests.

When "the Ministry of Defense was at war with Georgia," RT was "waging an information war against the entire Western world," Simonyan said in July, referring to the 2008 Georgia-Russia war.

"The word 'propaganda' has a very negative connotation, but indeed, there is not a single international foreign TV channel that is doing something other than promotion of the values of the country that it is broadcasting from," Simonyan said. "When Russia is at war, we are, of course, on Russia's side."

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible things you didnt know about Putin's life





More From Business Insider


Julian Assange

A US intelligence report on Russian hacking concluded that Russian military intelligence relayed material to WikiLeaks and other websites that published emails hacked from Democratic Party organizations.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insisted earlier this week that the hacked material his site published was not provided by the Russian government or a state party.

WikiLeaks published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails showed DNC officials seeming to favor Clinton over her Democratic primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders. They also contained excerpts of Clinton's controversial speeches to the financial firm Goldman Sachs and showed campaign officials speaking candidly about the election.

"We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence report stated.

The report said the GRU "relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks." The Kremlin is thought to have chosen WikiLeaks "because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity," according to the report.

Assange has often stated that all of the leaked material WikiLeaks published is authentic, and the report concluded that emails WikiLeaks posted from Podesta and the DNC don't appear to contain any forgeries.

The report also noted that the Russian state-sponsored news agency RT "has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks."

"RT's editor-in-chief visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2013, where they discussed renewing his broadcast contract with RT, according to Russian and Western media," the report noted.

Story continues

"Russian media subsequently announced that RT had become 'the only Russian media company' to partner with WikiLeaks and had received access to 'new leaks of secret information.' RT routinely gives Assange sympathetic coverage and provides him a platform to denounce the United States."

As for how Assange could insist the hacked material WikiLeaks published wasn't provided by the Russian government, a US official familiar with the full version of the US intelligence report told Reuters that the material followed a "circuitous route" from the GRU to WikiLeaks in order to obscure the origins of the material.

A declassified version of the US intelligence report was released Friday. It concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the US presidential election with the aim of hurting Clinton's chance of winning.

President-elect Donald Trump has refused to pin blame on Russia for the Democratic Party hacks, repeatedly casting doubt on the intelligence community's assessments.

The Obama administration, however, has strongly condemned the hacks and increased sanctions on Russia in response.

Assange, in turn, accused the Obama administration of trying to undermine the incoming Trump administration.

"They're trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House," Assange told Fox News earlier this week. "They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president."

The US intelligence report did not assess "the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election."

NOW WATCH: 11 facts that show how different Russia is from the rest of the world





More From Business Insider


In the last jobs report of President Obamas administration, the US economy added 156,000 jobs in December, missing economists estimates of 178,000, while the unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a percent to 4.7%. This marks the seventy-fifth consecutive month of jobs growth in the US and brings the total number of jobs added in 2016 to 2.2 million, down about a half a million from 2015.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told Yahoo Finances Seana Smith in the video above that he considers this the biggest achievement of the Obama Administration in terms of the labor market.

I think the greatest accomplishment has been getting more people back to work, helping more people punch their ticket to the middle class and helping to fortify those basic pillars of the middle class, which is a good job that pays a decent wage and has access to health care, said Perez.

Obama touted gains in the American economy during his time in office in his letter to the American people on Thursday, noting that, Businesses that were bleeding jobs unleashed the longest streak of job creation on record. Perez shares that same feeling of achievement with the Obama.

The president will go down as one of the most impactful presidents in American history because he inherited the worst mess of our lifetime. Our economy, in so many measures, is far better off than it was eight years ago, said Perez. Ive met people who were kicked to the side of the road in the depths of the Great Recession, and theyre back on their feet. Theyve gotten not only their jobs back, but also their dignity back.

But theres still more to be done. Perez said that theres much unfinished business and that he hopes the Trump administration adopts some of the current administrations policies to help continue growing the US economy.

We need to continue to invest in policies that grow wages, said Perez. Were going to keep fighting. I leave this job in a couple weeks, and I leave it with great pride, but I dont leave the issuesand the same thing is true with the president. Were going to continue to fight to make sure that everyone who works hard and plays by the rules can punch their ticket to the middle class.
Washington (AFP) - US spy chiefs were set to confront an openly dismissive President-elect Donald Trump Friday with their evidence that Russia mounted an unprecedented bid to disrupt the US elections by hacking his Democratic rivals.

The meeting comes amid high tension between the leaders of the US intelligence community and their future boss, who has bridled at any suggestion that Moscow tipped the election in his favor.

"My hope is that when the president-elect receives his own briefings and is able to examine the intelligence, as his team is put together and they see how professional and effective these agencies are, that some of those current tensions will be reduced," President Barack Obama told Chicago's NBC affiliate on Thursday.

After Trump first raised doubts early last month, Obama ordered the intelligence community to produce a comprehensive report on cyberattacks and Russian interference in the election.

Obama was briefed on the report Thursday, and the intelligence chiefs were scheduled to detail it to Trump on Friday.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan were expected to take part in the briefing.

- 'High confidence' -

Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday he had "very high" confidence in their findings.

"The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other people's," he said. "But we have never encountered such a direct campaign to interfere with the election process as we have seen in this case."

"This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news."

Clapper, Rogers and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said in a joint statement that "only Russia's senior-most officials" could have authorized the operation, in which hackers stole Democratic Party files and emails.

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Those files were then disseminated via WikiLeaks, embarrassing the party and harming losing candidate Hillary Clinton's White House effort.

"Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations, leaking data stolen from these operations and targeting critical infrastructure systems," Clapper said.

- Trump's doubts -

Trump, who has pledged a rapprochement with President Vladimir Putin's Russia after taking office on January 20, has repeatedly dismissed the findings.

The Republican has mocked via Twitter past intelligence errors of the CIA, FBI and other agencies, challenging them to prove that the hacking and leaks could be traced up to the top of Putin's government.

Late Thursday, he again asked "how and why are they so sure about hacking," claiming that the DNC prevented the FBI from accessing their servers. BuzzFeed News reported that the FBI had in fact never asked to examine them.

US officials familiar with the report told CNN that the liaisons who delivered the stolen emails from Russia to WikiLeaks had been identified.

And US intelligence agencies intercepted communications from senior Russian officials indicating they had celebrated Trump's victory as a win for Moscow, according to a report in The Washington Post.

An unclassified version of the report presented to the president -- stripped of sensitive details -- will be released to the public early next week.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper said.

Nevertheless, Thursday's much-anticipated hearing did not offer any new evidence to back the allegations.

When asked by senators to provide more proof, Clapper repeatedly said he could not do so in public, saying it risked damaging the intelligence community's sources and operations.

"We have invested billions, and we have put people's lives at a risk to glean such information," he said.

- Soured relations -

Friday's briefing for Trump will come amid worries he has already poisoned relations with key parts of the all-important national security establishment.

Trump raised more hackles on Wednesday by citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to suggest that anyone, even a 14-year-old child, could have been behind the hacking.

Under strong criticism from politicians of both parties for placing more credibility in Assange than the CIA and FBI, Trump defended himself Thursday.

"The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump said on Twitter.

"The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people...to make up their own minds as to the truth."

Without naming Trump, Clapper said there was "a difference between healthy skepticism and disparagement" of the intelligence community.

"And I've received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about, you know, the disparagement of the US intelligence community," he said.

"Public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial," he said.
CHICAGO, Jan 6 (Reuters) - U.S. soybean export sales hit a marketing-year low last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday in a report that revealed China and other importers will take crops previously listed as sold to undisclosed buyers.

The relabeling of destinations for shipments previously earmarked "unknown" surprised traders who had expected China, the world's top soybean buyer, to make bigger new purchases in the latest week. The switching also pressured futures prices.

Exporters in the week ended Dec. 29 struck deals to sell just 87,500 tonnes of U.S. soybeans for delivery in the 2016/2017 marketing year, which ends on Sept. 1, according to the USDA. That was down 91 percent from the previous week and 94 percent from the prior four-week average.

Traders had expected sales in the week at 800,000 to 1.2 million tonnes.

China bought 641,500 tonnes, according to the USDA. However, the total included 626,000 tonnes that had previously been labeled as sold to "unknown destinations," meaning the purchases were not new business.

Other buyers, including Indonesia, Vietnam and Spain, also each said they would take delivery of U.S. soybeans that had previously been earmarked for unknown destinations.

January soybean futures were down 17-1/4 cents at $9.86-1/4 a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen and Mark Weinraub; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Val Kilmer seems to be on the mend from his mysterious health condition.

The Top Gun actor, 57, made his first red carpet appearance in almost two years on Thursday night, attending W magazines pre-Golden Globes party at Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. Most notable about his arrival is that he wasnt wearing a scarf, which has been his staple accessory since late 2014  around the time he started suffering from an undisclosed illness.

At the magazines big bash, Kilmer didnt try to stand out with his attire, dressing in neutrals  black, gray, and white. The star of The Doors also looked on the thin side (though his weight has famously fluctuated through the years).

Rumors about Kilmers heath started swirling in late 2014. After he lost a tremendous amount of weight, he was hospitalized in January 2015 after he began bleeding from his throat. At the time, his rep said he was being tested for a possible tumor, but he later denied that, posting on Facebook, I have not had a tumor, or a tumor operations, or any operation.

However, Kilmer continued to wear scarves  and sometimes masks  during outings and public appearances. During a trip to a grocery store in December 2015, the scarf he was wearing around his neck slipped, revealing a tracheostomy tube. He routinely denied there was anything wrong, though. (In June 2015, he wrote on Facebook, I am perfectly well folks I do not have cancer or a tumor. Four months later, after he was reportedly in the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center, he posted on Facebook, Theres a rumor that Im unwell again and in hospital which is untrue. I was in to verify I have no tumor or infection of any kind.) It was rumored that he wasnt getting treatment for his illness due to his Christian Scientist beliefs, but he denied that as well.

Amid the drama, he stopped making red carpet appearances. One of the last we could find was in September 2015, when he attended the black tie inaugural dinner for the museum The Broad wearing a pink kerchief.

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Michael Douglas actually got rumors swirling again just months ago. During an interview in October, the Oscar winner said his co-star from The Ghost and the Darkness had tongue cancer, which Douglas himself beat in 2011. Things dont look too good for him, the Wall Street star said. Kilmer immediately denied Douglass claims, calling him misinformed. He later said Douglas reached out to apologize.

In November, Kilmers struggles were public when he attended a screening of the film version of his play Citizen Twain in Los Angeles. According to reports, he was slurring his words, dabbing at his mouth, and at times gasping for breath during a Q&A with the audience. Kilmer, who skipped a scarf for that appearance, also told the crowd that he was still recovering and that his tongue was still swollen from his illness.

Kilmers promotion of the Citizen Twain movie also stirred up rumors in December. A tabloid reported that he looked especially sickly while in San Diego, and, fed up, he took to Facebook again to set the record straight. Ive said many times  I have no cancer, insisted the star, who noted that he made three movies in 2016. And Ive written this and said this because its true, many many times. Lord.

He ended with, Theres no story here folks. I swear to God.

Perhaps Kilmers new MO is instead of telling the world hes doing all right, hes going to show the world. Well, thats what he did last night on the red carpet at the W magazine bash.
Veterans are in high demand by America's employers. Most enlightened companies know that the military is one of the best institutions for developing the skills and attributes that characterize high-quality employees. Yet veterans sometimes encounter objections from employers that are unique to their experience, and veterans need a set of tactics to respond to and overcome those hurdles.

Since only about 7 percent of American workers are veterans, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, it is not surprising that widespread misunderstanding exists regarding the nature and effect of military service. Several misconceptions abound in our popular culture and media, and these in turn reinforce stereotypes and biases. The astute veteran job seeker will be aware of these fallacies and have a strategy to refute each if they arise. All responses call for some combination of citing facts, displaying empathy, communicating clearly and leveraging humor.

There are four primary objections to their candidacy that veterans may face:

Culture Fit Fear

It is a common misunderstanding that military personnel do nothing but give and take orders. Incapable of independent thought, former soldiers or sailors can be expected to do little but bark commands or sit passively waiting for someone to tell them something to do. Actual veterans know that the demands of modern warfare could not be further from this stereotype. In fact, many veterans are shocked by the degree to which corporate life embodies these characteristics more than the military. For decades, all military branches have encouraged initiative-taking and decentralized decision-making in response to the needs of maneuver and asymmetrical warfare.

To adapt to an organization at which you wish to work, you must first diagnose the nature of that culture. Just as every battalion, ship, squadron or platoon has its own set of values and unspoken social rules, so it is with industries, companies and departments. For example, if you detect that a sales team is aggressive, macho and results-driven, it may be entirely appropriate to emphasize your "ninja" experience in the combat arms. If it is a more contemplative or intellectual environment, you may find success in talking about your war college, other professional training experience or your personal professional development reading curriculum.

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There is great diversity in the cultures of civilian organizations. The job seeker must astutely "read" the culture and adapt his or her personal positioning in a manner that highlights the value of the veteran's experience or, if necessary, diminishes a possible negative impact.

Mental Health Concerns

Most of what civilians know about the military comes from the media and Hollywood. Mental illness, including the effects of post-traumatic stress or other forms of psychological instability, is common in presentations of veterans. While most respect the service of the veterans they encounter, some harbor concerns that hiring veteran employees may put their company at risk by admitting potentially violent or raging individuals to their ranks. No matter that most veterans do not experience combat, most combat veterans do not suffer from PTSD and that most of those with the condition manage it without deleterious impact on their personal and professional lives.

Veterans must be prepared with facts and reason to expose the ignorance of civilian hiring managers with tact and compassion. Many civilians do not know, for example, that PTSD may afflict anyone who experiences trauma. Combat is one form of impactful experience, but so are car accidents, natural disasters and physical and sexual abuse.

Assumption of the Irrelevance of Experience

Many civilians know shockingly little about the military. A veteran job seeker must be prepared to educate a hiring manager or recruiter about even the most basic facts. One cannot assume that terms like sergeant, petty officer, squad leader or combat engineer mean anything to a civilian. Military occupational specialty designations can be a mystery even when their names make common sense (e.g. driver, administrative assistant, supply specialist). Likewise, civilians cannot be expected to know that a 20-year career in a specialty like surface warfare or infantry might include 12 or more years of school-based education and secondary billets in fields like sales (recruiting) or supply chain management (procurement or logistics).

By learning to tell your story in a way that is accessible and clear, the veteran job seeker can use the civilian's ignorance to their advantage by positioning their experience in a way that both makes sense and casts light in a favorable manner.

Fear of Being Too Demanding

The final objection that civilians may conjure to resist hiring a veteran often lurks on a subconscious level. The military at its best is a no-nonsense, mission-oriented culture that teaches and values leadership above all other virtues. From day one at boot camp, Officer Candidate School or an academy, military initiates are inculcated with the message that leadership means taking care of people and accomplishing one's mission. Such moral clarity can be absent in civilian organizations. Although desperately needed, many hiring managers instinctively fear that hiring a veteran may trigger calls for a higher ideal for leadership, accountability and results. In other words, some civilians will avoid hiring a veteran because she might make them look bad!

This political factor can be a tricky one to manage. The candidate will not want to undersell his strengths but will want to communicate empathetically to the hiring manager. "I can square this team away in a matter of days" might not be the best boast to make in an interview if the candidate suspects some level of insecurity on behalf of the interviewer. Instead, the astute veteran job seeker will find a way to communicate competence in a less threatening away.

Being prepared is wise. Being paranoid is unproductive and being hypersensitive is worse. A smart veteran job seeker will address the biases and concerns of civilian interviewers with empathy, facts, clarity and humor. Remember, organizations are desperate for high-quality talent and veterans, as a rule, are exactly that.
True to his style, Vice President Joe Biden delivered some shoot-from-the-hip advice to President-elect Donald Trump.

"Grow up, Donald. Grow up," he told PBS NewsHours Judy Woodruff in an interview Thursday. "Time to be an adult."

Read: Vice President Performs Same-Sex Marriage at His Home: 'Love is Love!'

Biden didnt pull any punches when asked about Trumps often-vitriolic tweets, especially Thursdays controversial Twitter post in which he called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer the head clown of the Democratic Party.

You gotta do something. Show us what you have, Biden said.

Then he told the incoming president what his new job duties would be.

"You're going to propose legislation. We're going to get to debate it. Let the public debate it, let them vote in Congress, let's see what happens," he advised.

"It's going to be much clearer what he's for and against, and what we're for and against, now that it's going to get down to actually discussing in detail these issues that affect people's lives," Biden said.

Read: New Year, Same Donald: Trump Launches Twitter Tirade Against Chicago Mayor, Obamacare, Media

He also dismissed Trumps refusal to accept U.S. intelligence reports that Russia engaged in cyber hacking in a bid to influence the 2016 election in Trumps favor.

I think it's dangerous  for a president not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to the myriad of intelligence agencies from defense intelligence, to the CIA, etc., is absolutely mindless. It's just mindless."

Trumps team wasted no time in firing back.

"That's a pathetic response," New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins, whos on Trumps transition committee, told CNN. "I think it's beneath the office of the vice president... Donald Trump is the adult in the room."

Story continues

Watch: Joe Biden Hugs Blind Man with Cerebral Palsy at DNC: 'I'm So Proud of Ya'

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Meryl Streep has presented her Doubt co-star Viola Davis with a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

Davis, who has been nominated for two Academy Awards and is best known for her roles in The Help and the ABC drama How to Get Away with Murder, looked thrilled to be receiving the honor from such a legend in the industry. I cannot believe my life right now that Meryl Streep spoke at my star ceremony w/ my handsome husband, beautiful daughter & my family, she later posted on Twitter.

"I cannot believe my life right now that Meryl Streep spoke at my star ceremony w/ my handsome husband, beautiful daughter & my family." pic.twitter.com/M5N3qhjXBI  Viola Davis (@violadavis) January 6, 2017

When an emotional Davis, who was included in TIMEs 2012 list of the worlds 100 most influential people, took to the mic, she said the only thing she could think about was her late father. I wish he were here. He died in 2006 and, um, he would think this is pretty fantastic, she said.

Taking over the podium from Davis, Streep described the actress as arguably the most immediate, responsive artist she had ever worked with. She is so alive, she glistens. She is a gift to writers. She plants herself in a scene where she has no words, and she writes paragraphs with her eyes, Streep added.

Davis is the first celebrity to have been presented with a star on the Walk of Fame in 2017. She attended the ceremony with family and colleagues including her husband, the actor Julius Tennon, and daughter Genesis.
By David Shepardson and Joel Schectman

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and the Justice Department are nearing a deal to resolve criminal and civil allegations over the German automaker's diesel cheating while it won long-awaited approval from the Environmental Protection Agency to fix about 70,000 diesel vehicles, crucial steps toward moving past a scandal that has cost it billions of dollars and its reputation.

A successful settlement is critical to the automaker's goal of rebuilding its business in the United States, a market key to its long-term growth plans and where VW brand sales were down 8 percent last year. Volkswagen will show off a new gas powered SUV Sunday ahead of the Detroit auto show and will start selling a new larger U.S. built gas powered SUV later this year.

The deal with the Justice Department could cost more than $4 billion and could be announced as early as next week, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The approval on fixes with the EPA could help defray the total price tag of the scandal that may top $20 billion in the United States alone.

VW will also face the oversight of an independent monitor to ensure it complies with the settlement, which could include either a deferred prosecution agreement or guilty plea, and significant conditions requiring reforms, the people briefed on the talks said on Friday.

The people said Volkswagen will agree to a penalty of at least $3 billion - and possibly more than $4 billion - to resolve the government's investigation, though the deal remains under negotiation and could still fall apart.

A VW spokesman in Germany declined to comment, saying the automaker was in discussions with authorities, as did the Justice Department.

The world's second largest automaker is in intensive talks to resolve the U.S. criminal investigation into its diesel cheating that first came to light in September 2015 after it admitted to using sophisticated software to rig diesel emissions tests for more than six years.

Story continues

The talks have advanced as prosecutors and VW seek to resolve the case before President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, according to people familiar with the probe. If a deal is not reached before then it could significantly delay an agreement, those people said.

The U.S. investigation into VW - and a successful resolution - has faced hurdles as authorities at times struggled to obtain documents from VW and interviews with its Germany-based executives, according to people familiar with the investigation. VW has said it is fully cooperating.

VW had previously agreed to pay up to $17.5 billion to resolve claims by U.S. owners, federal and state regulators and dealers and admitted it had misled regulators for years about illicit software.

VW faces ongoing lawsuits from at least 19 U.S. states and a judge ruled this week it must face investor lawsuits in a California court.

The automaker will spend years fixing or buying back vehicles and making investments to boost zero emission vehicle infrastructure and must deposit nearly $3 billion in a trust to offset excess diesel emissions. It has also agreed to boost the number of electric vehicles it offers in California.

SOFTWARE FIX

The EPA said Friday it had approved a fix for about 70,000 polluting Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) diesel vehicles.

It involves new software available now. A second phase of the fix will start about a year from now when VW will install more software updates and new hardware, including a diesel particulate filter, diesel oxidation catalyst and NOx catalyst.

VW admitted in September 2015 to installing secret software known as "defeat devices" in 475,000 U.S. 2.0-liter diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner in testing. In reality, the vehicles emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels.

The German automaker agreed to buy back those 475,000 polluting 2009-2015 vehicles last June at a cost of as much as $10.033 billion, or fix them if regulators approved. It still must win approval to fix about 400,000 of those vehicles.

The company later admitted to also using "defeat devices" in 3.0-liter vehicles. The 80,000 3.0-liter U.S. vehicles had an undeclared auxiliary emissions system that allowed them to emit up to nine times allowable limits. It reached a deal last month to offer to buy back 20,000 of the vehicles and fix the remainder, but still is awaiting approval for the fix.

The scandal hurt VW's global business and reputation, and led to the ouster of longtime chief executive Martin Winterkorn. VW has been barred from selling any new diesel cars in the United States since late 2015.

To date, only one VW employee has been criminally charged in the United States. James Liang, who worked for VW since 1983 and was part of a team of engineers who developed a diesel engine, pleaded guilty in September and is cooperating with prosecutors.

(Editing by Soyoung Kim and Bernard Orr)
(Adds details from sources, background)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG and the U.S. Justice Department are nearing an agreement to resolve the government's civil and criminal investigations that would require the German automaker to pay a penalty of more than $3 billion, sources briefed on the talks said on Friday.

The agreement is not final and could top $4 billion or fall apart but a deal could be announced as early as next week, said the sources on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.

Volkswagen is also expected to face oversight by an outside monitor and agree to other significant reforms in connection with its diesel cheating scandal as part of a potential deferred prosecution agreement or guilty plea to criminal charges, the sources said.

VW has previously agreed to pay up to $17.5 billion to resolve claims by U.S. owners, federal and state regulators and dealers and admitted it had misled regulators for years about illicit software.

A VW spokesman in Germany declined to comment, saying the automaker was in discussions with authorities.

Volkswagen and the Justice Department have held intensive talks this week aimed at resolving the case before President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. If a deal is not reached before then it could significantly delay an agreement, the sources said.

VW admitted in September 2015 to installing secret software known as "defeat devices" in 475,000 U.S. 2.0-liter diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner in testing. In reality, the vehicles emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels.

The company later admitted to also using "defeat devices" in 3.0-liter vehicles. The 80,000 3.0-liter U.S. vehicles had an undeclared auxiliary emissions system that allowed them to emit up to nine times allowable limits.

The scandal hurt VW's global business and reputation, and led to the ouster of longtime Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn. VW has been barred from selling any new diesel cars in the United States since late 2015.

Story continues

A settlement could help VW largely move past the scandal, though it still faces lawsuits from U.S. investors and some U.S. states.

The automaker will spend years fixing or buying back vehicles and making investments to boost zero emission vehicle infrastructure and must deposit nearly $3 billion in a trust to offset excess diesel emissions. It has also agreed to boost the number of electric vehicles it offers in California.

To date, only one VW employee has been criminally charged in the United States. He has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Joel Schectman in Washington; Additional reporting by Jan Schwartz in Hamburg; Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang)
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG and the U.S. Justice Department are nearing an agreement to resolve the government's civil and criminal investigations that would require the German automaker to pay a penalty of more than $3 billion, sources briefed on the talks said on Friday. The agreement is not final and could still change or fall apart but a deal could be announced as early as next week. Volkswagen is also expected to face oversight by an outside monitor and agree to other significant reforms in connection with its diesel cheating scandal as part of a likely deferred prosecution agreement. VW has previously agreed to pay up to $17.5 billion to resolve claims by U.S. owners, federal and state regulators and dealers. A VW spokesman in Germany declined to confirm the report, saying the automaker is in discussions with authorities. Volkswagen and the Justice Department have held intensive talks this week aimed at resolving the case before President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Sources briefed on the talks said if a deal was not reached before then it could significantly delay an agreement. VW admitted in September 2015 to installing secret software known as "defeat devices" in 475,000 U.S. 2.0-liter diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner in testing than they really were. In reality, the vehicles emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels. The company later admitted to also using "defeat devices" in 3.0-liter vehicles. The 80,000 3.0-liter U.S. vehicles had an undeclared auxiliary emissions system that allowed the vehicles to emit up to nine times allowable limits. The scandal hurt VW's global business and reputation, and led to the ouster of longtime Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn. VW has been barred from selling any new diesels in the United States since late 2015. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Jan Schwartz in Hamburg; Editing by Chris Reese)
New York (AFP) - Volkswagen is close to a deal to pay $2 billion to settle a US criminal investigation into the emissions-cheating scandal involving its diesel cars, the New York Times reported Friday.

A settlement between the US Department of Justice and the German auto giant could come as early as next week, the newspaper said, citing three people who were not identified.

VW told AFP it was continuing to cooperate with US authorities to resolve the case.

Volkswagen admitted last year it had installed software on as many as 11 million diesel vehicles sold worldwide to circumvent tests for emissions while enabling them to release up to 40 times the permitted amounts of nitrogen oxides during actual driving.

Volkswagen already has settled civil charges in the scandal, agreeing to pay $14.7 billion in an agreement that permits owners of nearly a half million 2.0-liter diesel vehicles to either sell them back or get them fixed.

Last month, the company announced it reached an additional $1 billion civil agreement with US authorities for a similar on deal covering 80,000 3.0-liter diesel vehicles. However, that agreement has yet to be approved by a judge.
Online retailer Jet.com, owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT, has acquired Boston-based footwear-shopping website ShoeBuy for about $70 million. The deal closed on Dec 30, 2016. The acquisition is a strategic one and is in line with the companys efforts to expand its eCommerce investments and compete with online giant Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN.

ShoeBuy, which offers more than 800 brands of shoes, clothing and accessories, will continue to operate as a stand-alone website, and will complement Jet.com, which sells a wide range of products, including electronics, furniture, specialty foods, household, beauty items and also a smaller assortment of clothes, shoes and accessories. Further, this acquisition will give Jet.com access to expand in the footwear industry. ShoeBuy will also bring access to a large assortment of products that will enhance both the variety and the customer experience.

It seems that the retail giant is leaving no stone unturned to acquire a stake in the online business. In this regard, it continues to make huge investments in e-commerce initiatives, including acquisitions. After the acquisition of the U.S. e-commerce company, Jet.com, Inc. last year in September, Wal-Mart is also aiming to acquire a stake in India's largest eCommerce firm, Flipkart Online Services Pvt., in order to expand in the fast-growing online retail market.

Bentonville, AR-based Wal-Mart is also aggressively foraying into eCommerce in China with an aim to deliver goods from its stores around the world to Chinese consumers within hours. In June, Wal-Mart inked a deal with JD.com to sell its Chinese eCommerce business, Yihaodian in exchange for a 5% equity stake in the company. On Oct 6, Wal-Mart increased its stake in Chinese eCommerce website, JD.com Inc., from 5.9% to 10.8%. The move was in line with the companys aim to grab greater market share in the worlds largest online market and expand its reach in China, where it has been struggling of late. JD.com is the second-largest online retailer in China after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA in terms of market cap.

Apart from acquisitions, Wal-Mart has also launched its own mobile payment system called Walmart Pay. This allows shoppers to pay through its existing smartphone app. After testing the new payment system at selected stores, Wal-Mart launched the facility in all of its 4,500-plus U.S. stores in Jul 2016. This marks another step toward accelerating its online business, and making shopping easier and faster.

Wal-Mart has also partnered with ride hailing services Uber and Lyft for speedy online grocery deliveries. Moreover, it intends to roll out drones in the near term for product deliveries to Wal-Mart facilities as well as to consumer homes.

We note that the company has been making efforts to understand the evolving needs of its customers to regain their confidence, and thus, boost sales in the face of increased competition from traditional and online competitors. Apart from investing in eCommerce activities, the company is also paying its workers more and training them to improve its stores performance. Wal-Mart being the largest private employer in the U.S. with 2.2 million staff, has decided to invest $2.7 billion toward raising their wages and providing them extra training in fiscal 2017. Under the initiative, Wal-Mart raised its minimum wage to $9 an hour in April, and to $10 per hour in Feb 2016.

In another news flow, Wal-Mart reached an agreement with Visa, Inc. V to continue accepting Visa credit cards in Canada which had been barred since June. The companys Canadian unit had threatened to expel Visa from all of its 409 stores nationwide following a very high charge for credit-card transactions.

Wal-Mart Stores has remained almost in-line with the index since past one year. We note that in the said period the stock has improved 8.9%, in comparison to the Zacks categorized Retail-Supermarkets industry, which showcased growth of 4.5%. We believe there is still much value left in the stock, which is quite evident from its Value score of A, Growth score of B and VGM Score of A.

What further makes us optimistic about its performance in the near term is its low beta of 0.10 and long-term earnings growth rate of 5.3%. Further, the retailer has delivered positive earnings surprises in the past five consecutive quarters.

WAL-MART STORES Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

WAL-MART STORES Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | WAL-MART STORES Quote

Wal-Mart currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The Best Place to Start Your Stock Search

Today, you are invited to download the full list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 ""Strong Buy"" stocks  absolutely free of charge. Since 1988, Zacks Rank #1 stocks have nearly tripled the market, with average gains of +26% per year. Plus, you can access the list of portfolio-killing Zacks Rank #5 ""Strong Sells"" and other private research. See these stocks free >>



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



Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report



Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT): Free Stock Analysis Report



Visa Inc. (V): Free Stock Analysis Report



Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Visa Inc reached an agreement to continue offering Visa as a payment option for customers in Canada, the two companies said on Thursday. Last summer, Walmart Canada said it would stop accepting Visa cards after a public dispute with the credit card provider over what the retail giant called "unacceptably high" merchant fees. Three stores in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and 16 stores in the province of Manitoba were impacted by the initial roll-out of the decision last year. These stores will resume accepting Visa on Friday. A Walmart Canada spokesman said details of the agreement were confidential. The original decision would have eventually impacted more than 370 outlets across Canada. No U.S. locations were affected. Retailers have long complained about merchant fees charged by credit card companies. But Walmart and Visa's negotiations were unusually public, with Visa taking up ads in Canadian newspapers, saying Walmart was using its customers as pawns in its bid to get lower fees. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Sandra Maler)
From Popular Mechanics

China's smog is notorious, and in Beijing it's especially bad. A study last year by scientists at Peking University recommended not moving to China's capital city if it could be helped, and this video of an ominous smog cloud rolling into Beijing shows why.

Stricter emissions standards and a somewhat-slowing economy have helped stabilize Chinese air. The aforementioned study looked at PM 2.5, a fine particulate matter in air that has become well-known in China as a measure of daily air quality, and its related Twitter feed has more than 100,000 followers.

While PM 2.5 levels in Beijing have lowered from 99 micrograms per cubic meter to 81 in recent years, that's still bad news as the World Health Organization's upper safety limit on PM 2.5 is 35 micrograms.

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We issued an updated research report on Weyerhaeuser Company WY on Jan 6, 2017. The company grows and harvests trees, builds homes and manufactures forest products worldwide, primarily to be used as lumber and other wood and building products.



Post release of third-quarter 2016 results, Weyerhaeusers shares yielded 3.2% return, underperforming the return of 7.2% recorded by the Zacks-categorized Building Products-Wood industry.

We believe that Weyerhaeusers international operations have exposed the company to risks related to unfavorable foreign currency movements and geopolitical issues. Also, any economic unrest in the foreign countries served by the company will negatively affect its businesses.



At the same time, Weyerhaeuser faces threats from higher expenses and huge debt levels. In the third quarter, the companys cost of sales increased 22.5% year over year. Its long-term debt was $6.3 billion at the end of the quarter. Also, it faces stiff competition from North American and global producers who have greater financial resources and lower production costs.



However, over the long term, we believe that Weyerhaeuser is well positioned to benefit from the recovery of the U.S. housing market and its cost-control measures. Also, the company has taken some strategic decisions to help it concentrate on its core timber, land, and forest products business.



In Aug 2016, Weyerhaeuser completed the divestment of its liquid packaging board business. while in October it communicated its intention of evaluating strategic alternatives for its timberlands and manufacturing operations in Uruguay. In November, the company completed divesting its printing papers company, North Pacific Paper Company to One Rock Capital Partners. In December it sold-off its Cellulose Fibers pulp mills to International Paper Company IP.



Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider



Weyerhaeuser currently has a market capitalization of $23.2 billion and carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The above-mentioned tailwinds and headwinds clearly justify the companys ranking.

Story continues

WEYERHAEUSER CO Price and Consensus

WEYERHAEUSER CO Price and Consensus | WEYERHAEUSER CO Quote

A couple of better-ranked stocks in the industry include Potlatch Corporation PCH and Louisiana-Pacific Corp. LPX. These two stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.



Potlatch Corporation has an average earnings surprise of 58.21%, while earnings estimates for 2017 have been revised upward, over the last 60 days.



Louisiana-Pacific Corp.s financial performance has been impressive, with an average positive earnings surprise of 98.51% for the last four quarters. Also, earnings estimates for 2017 have been revised upward, over the last 60 days.



The Best Place to Start Your Stock Search



Today, you are invited to download the full list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 ""Strong Buy"" stocks  absolutely free of charge. Since 1988, Zacks Rank #1 stocks have nearly tripled the market, with average gains of +26% per year. Plus, you can access the list of portfolio-killing Zacks Rank #5 ""Strong Sells"" and other private research. See these stocks free >>



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



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Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LPX): Free Stock Analysis Report



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



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Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but she beat him in their shared-hometown of New York rather handedly, where the former Democratic candidate received over 1.7 million more votes than the president-elect. Now, as Clinton has quietly been licking her wounds in upstate Chappaqua while her former opponent prepares to pack up and move from Trump Towers to the White House, the Big Apple is wondering whether their former senator and Democratic candidate would run for a smaller office: mayor of New York City.

Rumors swirled the former secretary of state could consider a run against her former campaign manager, New Yorks current Mayor Bill de Blasio, in the states 2017 mayoral election. New York local newspaper Times Ledger suggested the mayors unsteady approval ratings and a bevy of potential candidates for mayor put de Blasio in a "weakened position" that could prove to benefit Clinton if she did, in fact, decide to run for the position.

"Clinton would make a strong candidate if she decides to run since she has her main political organization for the most part in place in New York City," the papers William Lewis wrote Dec. 28. "She has options available and we will have to wait to see how it finally turns out."

RTSCVVK

Photo: Reuters

The conservative outlet Newsmax similarly reported Clinton was being "urged by major Democratic donors and leaders" to run for the mayoral position in her home state, noting the former candidate had been discussing the opportunity to run in New York with her inner circle.

"She is wildly popular among New Yorkers  so much so that were she to file, de Blasio would have to file his retirement papers on the same day," Hank Sheinkopf, New York Democratic consultant and a top-operative in former President Bill Clintons 1996 re-election campaign, told the site Wednesday.

Story continues

If Clinton decided to run against de Blasio, it could strain the pair's longtime relationship as New York Democrats and colleagues who have supported each other in multiple state and general elections. However, Clinton has seemed to distance herself from the mayor in recent years after de Blasios initially weak endorsement for the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential race.

If a Mayor Clinton is eventually in New Yorks political future, it wouldnt be unprecedented: Plenty of failed presidential candidates have gone on to have lasting political careers, including current Secretary of State John Kerry, who lost in 2004 to former President George W. Bush. Former Vice President Al Gore, who ran a failed campaign against President Bush in 2000, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change seven years later. John McCain remains a U.S. senator after losing to President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

RTR36FJ1

Photo: Reuters

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In late November, Indonesian social-media activist Ulin Yusron found himself depicted in a meme. The image, which went viral, falsely portrayed the long-haired male journalist as Amalia Ayuningtyas  a female election volunteer for the governor of Jakarta. The photo, the text claimed, was of Amalia immodestly casting off her usual hijab. It asked: Wheres the Veil??

Jakartas Christian and ethnically Chinese governor  Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok  is a target for hard-line Muslims, who have successfully pressured the authorities to put him on trial for blasphemy. It is not surprising that memes are being produced that seek to depict the Muslim volunteers in his camp as irreligious and profane.

When I first saw it, I was able to laugh, Ulin tells TIME about the photo collage. But later on, it became so troublesome because there were people who believed it  [The meme] was around for quite a while, and I became tired of explaining it.

Hoaxes like this, and fake news items in general, have become a massive problem in Indonesia in recent months, coinciding with the hotly contested Jakarta gubernatorial election campaign. To be sure, the sharing of fake news on social media has contributed to political tension in many countries  by one estimate, it generated more social-media engagement than real news during the U.S. presidential election in November  but in Indonesia, with its recent incidences of domestic terrorism, and its long and bloody history of anticommunist, anti-Christian and anti-Chinese pogroms, inflaming ethnic and political tensions is potentially deadly.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo, seen as a Muslim moderate, has vowed to crack down, telling a Cabinet meeting that fake news was nothing short of an attempt to destabilize his government. Slander, hatred and rude words on social media are increasingly troubling people, Jokowi tweeted on Dec. 29. We need determined and tough law enforcement.

Story continues

The problem first drew significant attention during Indonesias 2014 presidential election, in which Jokowi  Ahoks predecessor as Jakartas top official  was a candidate. During electioneering, Jokowi was the constant target of a smear campaign that falsely claimed he was, among other things, the child of Indonesian Communist Party members, of Chinese descent, and a Christian. (He was forced to make his marriage certificate public to quell the rumors.)

Now, the creators of fake news are targeting Ahok, who was deputy governor of Indonesias sprawling capital under Jokowi. Ahok succeeded his boss in the governorship and, backed by Jokowis party, is now seeking his own mandate in the gubernatorial election next year, competing with two other rivals, including former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonos son. Ahoks candidacy is opposed by hard-liners who, insisting that Indonesias top jobs be filled Muslims only, want to quash any chances Ahok may have of following Jokowi into the national arena.

An edited video and transcript of a campaign speech Ahok made in September, uploaded onto Facebook, went viral and led to ultra-conservative Muslims accusing him of denigrating the Quran. (Ahok suggested in the speech that hard-liners who cited a Quranic verse to support their position that non-Muslims shouldnt hold high office were misleading voters. His exact words were: Ladies and gentlemen, you dont have to vote for me  because youve been lied to by those using [the Qurans] Surah al-Maidah verse 51.)

Three massive demonstrations resulted, bringing tens of thousands of people to the streets of Jakarta, demanding that Ahok be jailed. He was subsequently put in the dock.

Ahoks Chinese ethnicity is the target of much of Indonesias false news  highly disturbing in a country where tens of thousands of Chinese have lost their lives in pogroms dating back to Dutch colonial rule. There are false rumors of 10 million mainland Chinese workers swamping Indonesia (which Jokowi has rebuffed, saying that 10 million is the number of Chinese tourists we hope will come). Others claim that the design of Indonesias new monetary notes resembles Chinese currency  or that Ahoks free HPV vaccine program could make girls infertile, and is, therefore, part of a Chinese conspiracy to diminish the Indonesian population. Hoaxers also claimed that the commander of the armed forces, General Gatot Nurmantyo, has warned that communist China has started to meddle in this country. Both the Indonesian military and the general have denied he ever made such a statement.

At the same time, Anti-Chinese sentiment isnt independent of its own. It is part of a larger network, says the social-media activist Ulin, who is a supporter of Ahok. He says that fake news is also whipping up anticommunist and anti-Shiite feelings. All of this is to heighten anti-Ahok sentiment while at the same time de-legitimizing Jokowi.

Hoax news has been a daily phenomenon in Indonesia, says Titi Anggraini, executive director of the Association for Elections and Democracy, a Jakarta-based elections watchdog that is also known as Perludem in Indonesian. But, the spread of hoax news intensified during the 2014 presidential election and is intensifying in [the run-up to] the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.

The government, watchdog groups and even religious organizations have taken steps to stem its spread. The Communications Ministry on Wednesday blocked 11 websites, mostly for spreading hatred and misinformation, following a similar step in November. Fact-check sites, apps and Facebook pages, run by activists and volunteers, have sprung up to set the record straight. Nahdlatul Ulama, the biggest Islamic mass organization in Indonesia, has kicked off an anti-fake-news campaign called #TurnBackHoax, while Muhammadiyah, the second biggest Islamic organization, has declared that spreading hoax news is tantamount to a sin. The Press Council has also said it will be verifying trusted media outlets.

Such actions are important to make things right and to teach a lesson to offenders, Titi tells TIME. But, she adds, The legal process, especially criminal punishment, is really ultimum remidium [the last resort]  and calls for digital literacy education. She also wants guarantees that law enforcement will respect freedom of expression. But that is no easy balance to strike in Indonesias tense political atmosphere.
A killer whale thought to be over 100 years old and known affectionately as "Granny" has not been sighted in several months and is thought to be deceased.

The orca was described as "officially missing" from the local population  and likely dead, as she had not been seen since Oct. 12, 2016  in a memorial post shared online Dec. 31, 2016, by marine biologist Ken Balcomb, a principal investigator at the Center for Whale Research (CWR) in Washington.

Granny was identified as "J2" decades ago by CWR scientists who studied her pod of so-called Southern Resident killer whales in Puget Sound, a Pacific Ocean inlet off the coast of Washington. Balcomb first observed J2 in 1976, and continued to observe her over the next 40 years, describing her in his memorial as "the energizer bunny" who just kept going and going, despite her remarkably advanced age. [Orca Gallery: See Gorgeous Photos of Killer Whales]

Female killer whales are much longer-lived than their male counterparts, with a life span that can exceed males' by decades. Male orcas have an average life span of about 30 years, but can live as long as 50 years. However, a female orca's typical life span is around 50 years, and they can live to be at least 100, according to a species description by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

But it is highly unusual for scientists to have the opportunity to observe a single orca in the wild over many decades as it ages. Granny had a distinctive nick in her dorsal fin that helped scientists to recognize her quickly and track her over time. In fact, she and her pod were instrumental in establishing that orcas had unique patterns and fin features that could be used by researchers to identify them, Balcomb explained.

"A closed-saddle female"

In 1976, she was described as "a closed-saddle female that has a small nick halfway down on the trailing edge with a finger-size tag of tissue protruding upward from the bottom of the nick," by marine biologist Michael Bigg, who pioneered individual whale identification through observation, Balcomb recalled.

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Her age was approximated to be at least 45 years old and possibly 76 years old in 1987. By those estimates, her age in 2016 would have been at least 74 years old and perhaps as much as 105 years old. Either way, she was the oldest known Southern Resident killer whale  the only known resident population of killer whales in the United States, inhabiting waters near British Columbia and Washington.

Granny was one of dozens of orcas divided among three pods  nicknamed "J," "K" and "L"  Dawn Noren, a research fishery biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, told Live Science in 2016. As of Dec. 31, 2016, an estimated 78 Southern Resident killer whales remain in total, with Granny's "J" pod holding 24, Balcomb wrote in the memorial.

And while it's possible that Granny may turn up again, after a months-long absence, it isn't very likely, Balcomb said.

"Perhaps other dedicated whale-watchers have seen her since then, but by year's end she is officially missing from the SRKW [Southern Resident killer whale] population, and with regret we now consider her deceased," he added.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A blue-ribbon presidential panel on science recommended on Friday that the United States take steps to defend its dominance of the high-end semiconductor market against a stiff Chinese challenge.

The report follows plans by China to use a massive, $150 billion government investment in its semiconductor industry to expand the share of Chinese-made integrated circuits in the domestic market from its current 9 percent. Semiconductor chips are used in everything from computers to automobiles.

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said the United States needed new tools to ensure China did not replace the United States as the leader in making high-end semiconductors that are key to national defence.

The report urged policy-makers to "respond forcefully" if Chinese economic policies, such as subsidies aimed at building Chinese expertise in semiconductors, limit the access of U.S. companies or thwart U.S. exports.

"The main goal here should be to deter dangerous Chinese actions," the report said.

Tools that could be used include the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency panel led by the Treasury Department that assesses Chinese investment to ensure it does not harm U.S. national security, the panel said.

Concern about China is one of the few areas where the administration of President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump's incoming team appear to agree.

In November, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said the United Stated would not accept China's "$150 billion industrial policy designed to appropriate this industry."

Under Obama, CFIUS stopped a series of Chinese acquisitions of high-end chip makers. Last month, he upheld a recommendation by CFIUS to block Aixtron's (AIXGn.DE) 670 million euro ($717 million) sale to Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund over national security concerns.

Last January, CFIUS prevented the sale by Philips (PHG.AS) of its U.S. lighting business to GO Scale Capital, made up of GSR Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, Asia Pacific Resource Development and Nanchang Industrial Group.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Bill Trott)
The U.S. presidential election system is a time-consuming one: Votes are cast on Election Day. The electors themselves meet in December. And, six days into the next year, the Congress in joint session officially counts the votes, and the Vice President (in his position as president of the Senate) announces the result. That process will take place on Friday, marking the last step in President-elect Donald Trumps road to Inauguration Day.

But why are so many steps necessary? Though it may be counter-intuitive, one main reason the electoral process is so drawn out is to avoid a situation in which it may take too long to finalize the decision. The need to avoid that problem, per the Congressional Research Service, was made clear in 1876when the counting of electoral votes didnt exactly go as planned.

That year was one of the few elections in American history that lacked a decisive result. After Election Day, it looked like Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, but several states werent ready to report results: Republican supporters of Rutherford B. Hayes claimed that Tildens supposed victories in the states in question were illegitimate. The upshot was that those states sent conflicting results to Congress, so that Tilden and Hayes were both said to have won, depending whom you asked. (The really problematic states were Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, and Oregon also had a single disputed electoral vote that year.) By leaving Congress in a position to answer that question, the situation meant that Congress was essentially going to choose who would be president.

As Steven A. Siegel explained in his The Conscientious Congressmans Guide to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, in the mid-19th century it was generally accepted that Congress had the power to count Electoral College votes andmore to the pointdecide which votes would be counted. In the post-Reconstruction era of great tension between Congress and the states, there was an interest in balancing the states right to appoint electors and have their electoral votes counted, as Siegel put it, and the federal interest in counting only legal votes.'

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But at the time, there was no law saying what Congress should do in this precise situation. The indecision continued for months, with the nation still waiting as Inauguration Day approached.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Eventually, mere days before the new president had to be sworn in, by a partisan vote in the newly established Federal Electoral Commission, Hayes was given all the disputed votes. He ended up becoming president, with far-reaching consequences.

In 1887, the Electoral Count Act was passed in order to avoid a situation like 1876 happening again. The act set up a series of deadlines throughout the electoral process, giving the states and the Congress time to figure out whether there are any irregularities in play. As the National Constitution Center has explained, the 1887 law created a deadline by which states must figure out their electoral college votes, and only after can Congress get involved. The effect is that its up to each state to decide which candidate gets its electoral votes.

By law, there is still a right for representatives to object to electoral votes sent by states, but it is now necessary for a majority of both houses to independently agree to sustain such an objection.

Though objections were made in 1969 and 2005, neither of those rejections were accepted. (In 1969, there had been a faithless elector whose vote was challenged; in 2005, there was concern that voting in Ohio had been subject to irregularities.) And even if an objection is accepted, it wouldnt necessarily make a difference: votes that are the subject of approved objections are simply not counted, but a candidate could usually lose a few votes without losing the whole thing. Its unlikely, given past precedent, that the counting by Congress on Friday will actually lead to any noteworthy changes to the election results.
Dismantling the Dodd-Frank Act, which tightened rules on the banking industry after the 2008 financial crisis but had the side effect of curbing growth, is a top priority for both Republicans on Capitol Hill and President-elect Donald Trump.

Cancelling thousands of pages of regulations based on the statute is easier said than done, however. And lawmakers are all too aware that aid to the large banks that were blamed for the crisis may not play well with voters, many of whom are still grappling with the after-effects.

Consequently, Congress is likely to narrow its focus this year to curbing regulations that hamper small- and mid-sized banks, which are more popular with consumers and have garnered bipartisan support for looser oversight since they don't pose the same level of risk to the broader economy.

Combined with the free-market appointees President Trump is likely to install in key regulatory posts, that approach suggests a hospitable environment for earnings and deal-making at regional companies such as Huntington Bancshares , Comerica , Regions Financial and BB&T .

Industry giants like Bank of America and Citigroup , meanwhile, will likely continue to face regulatory headaches and prune some of their operations. Just last month, Bank of America sold its U.K. credit card business to Lloyds Banking Group for $2.4 billion.

The disparity in outlooks stems partly from Dodd-Frank's designation of banks with more than $50 billion in assets as Systemically Important Financial Institutions, or SIFIs, a label that subjects them to tighter scrutiny since their collapse could threaten the U.S. economy.

Republicans are eager to raise that limit to $100 billion or higher, which would make it easier for regional banks to merge without crossing the barrier.

"If shareholders are looking at two banks that are considering merging, it is better for them to not be SIFIs when they complete their deal because investors will know they have lower costs," said Donald Lamson, a former assistant director in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an industry regulator. Once regional banks win regulatory relief, M&A will follow, he said.

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Even if the SIFI threshold were lifted as high as $250 billion, however, the largest U.S. commercial lenders wouldn't benefit. JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo each have well over $1 trillion in assets.

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Many of the restrictions on firms of that size are unlikely to be changed easily, including a rule adopted in December that requires the biggest banks to issue an estimated $49 billion of additional long-term debt that can be converted to equity capital in times of economic stress. The measure shifts the cost of shoring up the institution onto bondholders rather than taxpayers.

Big banks might get some relief, though, from the Volcker Rule, a provision named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker that prohibited so-called proprietary trading.

A Fed paper in December that said the measure has a "deleterious effect on corporate bond liquidity" would give President-elect Trump some political cover in de-emphasizing enforement, said Isaac Boltansky, an analyst at Compass Point LLC in Washington.

Still, "the optics of repealing the Volcker rule are sub-optimal," he said. "Dodd-Frank relief is going to take time to move its way through Congress, and once we get to the Senate, I don't think it will be at the top of the agenda."

In the House, while Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, has become a new power broker, his bill replacing Dodd-Frank has too much give-and-take to appeal to the mega-banks.

Hensarling has proposed repealing provisions including the Volcker Rule in exchange for tougher leverage and capital restrictions on the biggest banks as well as exempting more small and mid-sized institutions from a requirement that they are supervised by a consumer protection bureau.

Despite Republican control of both houses of Congress, the degree of deregulation that's possible is uncertain. There's a strong chance that Democrats in the Senate will threaten to filibuster Republican legislative priorities.

And while Republicans might expand on Democrats' previous curbs on filibustering -- a strategy that Trump could champion, according to Boltansky -- such moves carry consequences when the balance of power changes, as the Democrats have already discovered.

Even if the filibuster were eliminated, Republicans will have only a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate, and a few GOP opponents of deregulation could block efforts indefinitely.

That means the more immediate boon for banks may come from president-elect Trump and his choice for the little-known but powerful role of Federal Reserve Vice Chairman of Bank Supervision.

Potential candidates include two libertarians -- Paul Atkins, a former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission and John Allison, a member of the Cato Institute's board who was CEO of regional bank BB&T from 1989 through 2008, a period of significant acquisitions.

Atkins' appointment would be viewed as positive for both big and small banks because he would be less likely to enforce many of the Fed's tougher restrictions due to a "let markets rule" approach, noted Lamson.

"While regulatory staffers don't change, the government appointments change," Lamson said. "We'll see more bank mergers and government approval of bank mergers."

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NASA, and its stunning achievements, is much more than just the famous astronauts whose names you know  it was built on the behind-the-scenes work of its unsung heroes.

From the early days of the United States space agency up through today, NASA has been run by engineers, mathematicians and technicians at the tops of their fields.

But you rarely hear their stories or know their names.

SEE ALSO: These 'Hidden Figures' portraits profile brainy, badass women

Behind every John Glenn or Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin there are tens or even hundreds of people working behind the scenes to keep them alive and healthy in space. Thats NASAs true nature  a nexus of unseen teamwork and ingenuity that allows the exploration of new frontiers.

And there is perhaps no better representation of that paradigm than the story told in the new movie Hidden Figures, released Friday.

Katherine Johnson at work.

Image: Nasa

The film follows the lives and careers of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson  three real-life human computers that contributed significantly to helping fly famous astronauts to space in the early days of the program. (They're portrayed by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae, respectively.)

Unlike their famous colleagues, however, Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson's work hasn't been widely known until now.

Thanks to the movie Hidden Figures and the book by the same name on which it was based, these human computers are finally getting their much-deserved recognition.

"In the past, we've been blind-sighted about women in technology," Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of the book, said in a statement. "We have this image of what an astronaut or a scientist looks like, and since these women didn't fit the profile, historians often looked past them."

"These women were hidden in plain sight in a way," she added. "They felt they had a chance to do jobs they loved  and they loved this challenging math  so they didn't draw attention to themselves."

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NASA's hidden heroes

The movie tells the story of how the real-life Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson helped get John Glenn, one of the most well-loved and lauded of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, into orbit around Earth  the first American ever to do so.

Mary Jackson at work.

Image: nasa

Johnson, a mathematician, checked and helped invent some of the math that got Glenn into orbit. As the movie depicts, he asked that she specifically confirm the orbital math done by NASAs brand-new IBM computer before his launch.

While Glenn  who died at the age of 95 in December  has been immortalized in popular culture time and again as a symbol of American ingenuity and bravery, Johnsons story, and the stories of others like her, has remained largely unknown.

There was a specific culture of racism, segregation and sexism in 1960s America that contributed to losing that history. In some ways, however, this basic dynamic  between the astronauts and those who build their spaceships and keep them safe  points to an important truth about NASA.

Its very interesting because we have the same now for our International Space Station program with all the people that support in mission control, NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson told Mashable in an interview. So, I saw a consistency across NASA where there are ... many people behind the scenes who work hard to make the programs happen.

A woman working at NACA, NASA's predecessor, in 1943.

Image: nasa

The people working tirelessly in mission control to keep the astronauts on the Space Station safe may not risk their lives for the advancement of the country, but astronauts couldn't do their jobs without them. Doctors work to keep astronauts healthy before, during and after their flights to space, while engineers develop and test the spacecraft that will fly them safely to orbit and home again.

Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and the rest of the human computers working at NASA in the 1960s all fought through stereotypes and discrimination just to do that thankless, anonymous work.

"I think they saw they had a rare chance to open doors to other black women in a future that would be different," Shetterly said.

The fact that these womens contributions have been obscured in history  Im excited to be a part of the telling of their stories, Octavia Spencer, who plays Vaughan in Hidden Figures, told Mashable in an interview at a screening of the film.

In that time period they were focusing on who was going and not how they got there. And were talking about a time when African-Americans were fighting for their civil rights," she added, touching on the myriad reasons why the women's stories remained obscured for so long. "A lot of this information was classified so it would not have been released. But even since that time I think their stories should have surfaced.

As Spencer notes, the stories of these women, who were instrumental in getting NASA astronauts to the moon, have been eclipsed by the forces of history and, in some ways, by the celebrity of the very people they helped get to the lunar surface in the first place.

Modern, inspirational  but not hidden  figures

For its part, NASA is working to reveal the hidden figures in its ranks.

The agency has been telling the stories of its engineers  like Kimberly Ennix-Sandhu and Gilena Monroe, currently working at NASA  through short videos on its website.

The space agency is aiming to send people to Mars sometime in the 2030s, and to do that, it will need a new set of diverse minds helping to make that mission a reality. A mission to Mars will involve challenges never before faced by people working there now, so filling the agency with brilliant and flexible young people could help accomplish that goal.

Mission control in Houston in July 2011.

Image: NASA/Mark Sowa

Women, and especially women of color, have historically been underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, so telling their stories in the way that Glenn has been celebrated for years is powerful  it could help inspire girls to enter those disciplines.

Black women comprised only 6.6 percent of people working in science and engineering in the United States in 2013, according to a report released in 2016 by the National Science Board. While the overall number of women working in science and engineering has doubled in the past 20 years, the number of men in those fields still far outweighs the number of women, the report states.

"In 2013, women constituted only 29 percent of workers in these occupations, although they accounted for half of the college-educated workforce overall," the report reads.

That's why its more important than ever to tell the stories of Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson, three African-American women pushed to the margins of scientific history, despite significant contributions to it.

What Im hoping is that girls will see this movie and realize the opportunity thats available for pursuing a STEM field," Wilson said. "[They will] see that these women were skilled, they were prepared, they were competent, they worked as members of a team."

As First Lady Michelle Obama put it, according to director Theodore Melfi, when the film was screened at the White House before an audience of young women in December: "You can't be what you can't see."

"I am so grateful to all of you for bringing this film to life and bringing these women out of the shadows, because it's not just important for the girls in this room to see it, but people all over the world to be reminded of how we got here as a country," Obama said in her official remarks.

"We got here on the backs of those hidden figures and we can never forget."

Kate Sommers-Dawes contributed to this report.
Why Im terrified of a country without Planned Parenthood

Im 35 and Ive known forever that motherhood is not for me. Thankfully, Ive never had an abortion.

My first experience with public reproductive health services was in the (non-Planned Parenthood) womens health clinic in my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia. I was 18, barely sexually active, and was there to take my first morning-after pill. (I was being responsible, the condom broke. Shit happens!) The emergency contraceptive pill wasnt available over the counter yet, and it wasnt yet known as Plan B. That same visit, I had my first pelvic and breast exams, STI and HIV tests, and general exam by an OBGYN.

A product of a Catholic upbringing, I wasnt really given too much information about reproductive health. I hadnt ever seen a gynecologist until I hopped on a bus and took myself to that clinic.

As a teenager in Appalachia, I was given a cursory but not terribly thorough sex education course in high school health class. Many of my friends gave birth during high school, or shortly thereafter. Most of them werent ready. Some couldnt afford abortions, some didnt know how to get them.

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Apr 3, 2015 at 11:33am PDT

Most of my education came from the media. I came of age in the late 90s, a time when MTV and other pop culture outlets were encouraging everyone to wrap it up. People talked more about HIV and AIDS back then  there werent the same preventative resources and treatments that there are today. I considered myself pretty well informed. But when I went to the clinic, I learned quite a bit that I didnt know about preventing pregnancy and different STIs/STDs. I even got information about what abusive relationships look like.

In the nearly two-decades since my first exam, Ive visited Planned Parenthood countless times. When Ive been lucky enough to have fancy health insurance through my employers, Ive been a patient at private OBGYNs.

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I can honestly say that my visits to Planned Parenthood have been of equal, and often better quality and comfort to those doctors offices.

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Feb 14, 2015 at 12:55pm PST

When I was going through a period of unemployment while I was also in a long-term committed relationship, I was able to get the Paragard copper IUD, free of cost. The nurse practitioner who inserted my IUD was about my age, and we shared similar interests and world views.

She talked me through the entire process with respect and honesty, and I felt incredibly informed, empowered, and free afterwards.

It was painful, but Im guessing not as painful as childbirth! My IUD will take me nearly to the end of my childbearing years, and certainly through the next four years. My wish for people who want to avoid pregnancy is that they can have affordable and safe access to this tiny little weird bobby pin-sized doodad thats preserved my sanity and freedom.

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Oct 14, 2016 at 2:16pm PDT

Im so angry and scared for women and girls who will need reproductive care if Planned Parenthood is defunded. Planned Parenthood doesnt just serve women  men and gender nonconforming people also receive services.

Its NOT just abortions  Planned Parenthood provides STI testing, exams, birth control, condoms, and counseling.

claire beaudreault

Ironically, my last visit to Planned Parenthood was the afternoon of the election. That morning, with tears in my eyes and Beyonces Girls (Who Run The World) in my headphones, I voted for a female presidential candidate for the first time. I was wearing my I Voted sticker as I darkly joked with the nurse doing my exam that hopefully it wasnt my last visit to Planned Parenthood!

By the next morning, I was terrified that perhaps it could have been. I really, truly, hope it was not.

Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced the Republicans plan to completely defund Planned Parenthood. You can show that you #StandWithPP by donating to Planned Parenthood here.
Superheroes today are a lot more shredded than they used to be. The original Superman and Batman look almost willowy compared to our muscle-bursting modern-day versions.

Thats no coincidence. America is in the midst of a cultural shift in terms of the ideal male body image, and as the ideal man grows more muscular, men stuck in the real world with real bodies are growing less satisfied with theirswith potentially dangerous medical consequences.

If you think about the changes over the last 30 to 45 years in how men are depicted in Hollywood, cartoons, magazines and action toys, youll see that mens bodies appear much more muscular, says Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. These unrealistic media images have contributed to low body image satisfaction among menusually just considered a problem for women. A study last year found that American men are just as likely as women to feel unsatisfied with their physiques, while another studyfound adolescent boys who are dissatisfied with their body shape may be more likely than girls to self-criticize and feel distress. Studies have even shown that men feel worse about their bodies after playing video games with ripped characters.

Theres this drumbeat that muscularity equals masculinity, and so were seeing more and more young men with muscle dysmorphia, says Pope. The consequences of this kind of thinking can be dangerous. As more and more men hit the gym in the hopes of transforming themselves into the Rock, many are also turning to anabolic steroids to achieve the muscle mass they associate with masculinity. Up to 4 million Americansnearly all of them malehave tried steroids at some point, according to Popes recent research.

Theres a widespread misperception that anabolic steroid use is an issue of cheating in sports, but the vast majority of anabolic steroid users in this country are not athletes, says Shalender Bhasin, a mens health researcher at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Popes co-author on a new articlein the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most young men using these drugs are doing it to improve their appearance.

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The potential side effects of anabolic steroids include premature death and neurobehavioral disturbances, like problems with thinking and attention. But Pope says the links to heart problems are the most worrying. Theres a growing body of literature that suggests long-term steroid use can cause cardio myopathy, where the heart doesnt pump or fill with blood efficiently. That could lead to heart attack or stroke, he says.

WATCH: Khloe Kardashian Opens Up About Her Body Image Struggles

Its not yet clear just how significant these heart risks are, because steroid use is a relatively new phenomenon. Pope says few men used them before the 1980s, and those early adopters are just now hitting their 50s and 60sages when heart problems take their toll.

Another big risk of steroid use is hormone dysfunction. If youre taking steroids, your body sees all this testosterone coming in from the outside, and so it stops producing it, Pope explains. Bhasin says that can lead to psychiatric problems, from roid rage to suicidal thoughts.

Also, when men stop using steroids, their bodies testosterone production often struggles to ramp back up. The resulting lack of the sex hormone can lead to depression, irritability, erectile dysfunction, low sex drive and more, Pope explains.

Few doctors or psychologists realize how common steroid use and abuse has become, say Pope and Bhasin, and almost none are trained to treat steroid addiction or dependence. Men taking steroids who want to quit therefore have few professional resources, which may lead many to go back on steroids or try other substanceslike cocaine or opioidsin order to feel better, Bhasin says.

Until we see greater awareness of this problem and more attention paid to treating it, Pope says, most of these men are on their own.

This article originally appeared on TIME.com.




- By Mark Yu





Morningstar (MORN), the $3.17 billion investment research company, reported 0.14% sales loss to $586.4 million and 4.8% profit loss to $90.7 million in its third-quarter fiscal 2016.

Morningstar had a 2% increase in its operating expenses despite the relatively flat overall business growth. As a result, Morningstar shares fell 4.95% the following day while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index remained flat at -0.008% change.









"We saw a slight uptick in revenue growth in the third quarter this year, driven by modest improvements in revenue for license-based products such as Morningstar Data and Morningstar Direct. As a group, products with a subscription or license-based revenue model - which make up roughly three-fourths of our business - showed a revenue increase of 3.9% for the quarter. Products and services that mainly generate revenue from asset-based fees, meanwhile, showed a 5.0% revenue increase, driven by strong growth in Workplace Solutions and Morningstar Managed Portfolios.

"On the negative side, our transaction-based business lines continued to suffer. Because of lower industrywide issuance volume for commercial mortgage-backed securities, revenue for Morningstar Credit Ratings was down about $5 million, or 50%, year over year. Internet advertising sales also showed continued weakness as many advertisers have been shifting to programmatic buying platforms that target users on other sites.

"While we've continued to face headwinds this year, there have been bright spots. Many financial advisers and asset managers have reached out to us to find out more about the solutions we can provide to help them meet the Department of Labor's new fiduciary standard, which goes into effect in April 2017 and will require financial advisors to determine, demonstrate, and document that their advice is in the best interest of the investor. We also continue to invest in our core data and research capabilities. We added close to 400 employees year over year, mainly reflecting new positions for our offshore data centers in Shenzhen, China and Mumbai, India as well as seasonal hires for the Morningstar Development Program, an entry-level program for recent college graduates. Finally, we recently announced an agreement to acquire PitchBook Data, which provides the industry's most comprehensive information on venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions." - Joe Mansueto, chairman and CEO of Morningstar

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Market performance

According to Morningstar data, the company had -7.4% total return in 2016 and a five-year return of 5.25%. The broader S&P 500 index had 11.96% and 14.66%.

Valuations

According to GuruFocus data, Morningstar had a trailing price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 24.9 times (industry median 20), price-book (P/B) ratio of 4.8 times (industry median 2.2) and price-sales (P/S) ratio of 4 times (industry median 1.25). The company also had a dividend yield 1.2% and a 30% payout ratio and 2.3% share buyback ratio.

(10-Q)

Morningstar

Morningstar is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia (1).

It offers an extensive line of data, software, research and investment management offerings adapted to one's region and accordingly for financial advisers, asset managers, retirement plan providers and sponsors and individual investors located in the U.S., Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and South Africa. In 2015, Morningstar derived 74.2%, or $585.1 million, of its total sales from the U.S.

Morningstar has several data and proprietary analytical tools that help various individuals and professional investors achieve certain financial goals. For example, the company has been providing independent analyst research on mutual funds and other investment vehicles since the mid-1980s.

Morningstar focuses on four primary customer groups: investment advisers, asset management, workplace/retirement and individual investors (2). Morningstar reports one segment, but several key products contribute a good share of total Morningstar revenue.

Morningstar Data

Among its several key products, Morningstar Data contributed the most at 18.3%, or $144.4 million, to Morningstar's total sales in fiscal 2015. Morningstar Data gives institutions access to a full range of investment data spanning numerous investment databases including real-time pricing and market data. According to the company, Morningstar Data's equity database includes more than 43,000 companies globally covering 98% of the world's market capitalization.

Morningstar Advisor Workstation

Morningstar Advisor Workstation is a web-based investment planning system that provides financial advisers with a comprehensive set of tools for conducting their core businesses - including investment research, planning and presentations.

Morningstar Advisor Workstation has Morningstar Office for independent financial advisers and enterprise version for larger firms. As of Dec. 31, 2015, approximately 4,300 financial advisers in the U.S. were licensed to use Morningstar Office.

In 2015, the Workstation product grew by 4.6% and contributed 13.5%, or $106.5 million, to total Morningstar sales.

Morningstar Direct

Morningstar Direct is an institutional investment research platform that includes data and advanced analytical tools on the complete range of securities in Morningstar's global database, as well as privately held investments and data from third-party providers. As of Dec. 31, 2015, 11,400 licensed users worldwide.

In 2015, Morningstar Direct grew 10.6% and contributed 12.9%, or $101.8 million, to Morningstar sales.

Morningstar.com

Morningstar.com is the company's largest website for individual investors. In addition to its U.S.-based site, Morningstar offers more than 30 regional investing Web sites customized to the needs of investors worldwide.

In 2015, Morningstar had 136,000 paid Premium subscribers for Morningstar.com in the U.S. and in other global markets. The Web site generated 7.6%, or $59.9 million, of total Morningstar sales compared to $57.8 million in 2014.

(Morningstar logo, trademarks and service marks; 10-K)

Meanwhile, Morningstar had five-year sales, profit and operating margin averages of 7.27%, 8.95% and 21.5%.

Cash, debt and book value

As of Sept. 30, 2016, Morningstar had $265 million in cash and $60 million in debt with a 0.09 debt-equity ratio. Morningstar also had 41.2% of its $1 billion assets in goodwill and intangibles with a book value of $662 million compared to $680 million year on year.

Cash flow

(10-K)

Nine months into fiscal 2016, Morningstar had a 24% drop in its cash flow from operations to $143.2 million. Morningstar had more cash outflow in relation to its accounts payable and liabilities and accrued compensations year on year.

Capital expenditures were $47.5 million leaving Morningstar with $95.7 million in free cash flow compared to $148.7 million year on year.

(10-K and 10-Q)

Shareholder payouts, dividends and share repurchases combined as a percentage of its free cash flow was 70% in its recent nine months of operations. Morningstar had allocated 109.6% of its free cash flow in shareholder payouts in the past three fiscal years.

Conclusion

Morningstar exhibited a strong balance sheet and a steady flow of cash flow in recent years. In addition, the investment research company has several products that have consistently been growing in recent years. In contrast to its peer Value Line (VALU), Morningstar does not rely on one service or product to operate its business. Value Line has a more complex arrangement for earning business through fund management.

Read Value Line: Value Found in Value Line?

(Google Finance)

Good margins, steady business growth and minimal debt have rewarded premium to Morningstar's shares compared to its peers. Historical earnings multiple, profit growth and an 20% margin indicate a value of $83 a share for Morningstar (3).

Ignoring traditional valuations, Morningstar is a buy with about $80 per share target price.

Notes

(1) All information moving forward sourced from Morningstar's 10-K and 10-K unless specified.

(2) 10-K:

Adviser products are Morningstar Advisor Workstation (including Morningstar Office) and Morningstar Managed Portfolios.

Asset Management key products are Morningstar Direct, Morningstar Data, and Morningstar Indexes, Morningstar Research and Morningstar Credit Ratings.

Workplace/retirement products are Workplace Solutions (formerly Retirement Solutions), Investment Advisory services and Investment Profiles.

Individual investor key products are found in the Morningstar.com website.

(3) Me:

Five-year earnings multiple averages: 31.9 times

Five-year profit growth: 8.95%

Disclosure: I do not have shares in Morningstar or any of the companies mentioned.

Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






Why Planned Parenthood has been my top choice in healthcare for a decade

Planned Parenthood has changed my life. For almost a decade, and all of my adult life, Planned Parenthood and their various offices in Los Angeles have been my haven for womens health care. They were there for STI testing and birth control pills while I was in college  the stress of a pregnancy would have definitely halted my graduation from college. They were there for me with my IUD placement when I was between jobs and my body wasnt a fan of the Pill.

Most importantly, they were there for me with loving arms (literally) just a few months ago, when I anxiously got my first Well Womans Exam in over a decade.

Planned Parenthood is there when your parents might not be, when you dont have a supportive friend, when you have no possible way to pay for yourself, and when you have no other trusted family planning services. As the statue of liberty says, Give me your tired, your poor  Planned Parenthood is the modern American symbol of freedom and liberty. Their doors are open to anyone of any race, creed, religion, income, or sexuality. Their services are offered without judgement or discrimination.

It is a safe place for life planning  whether or not you want a family.

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Oct 15, 2016 at 6:31am PDT

College was a rough four years for me. I moved out of my parents house and into a room with friends. We survived on five dollar pizzas and I would take what little jobs I could. I would tutor, I worked in production, and I even tried my hand (terribly) at sign spinning at an intersection.

Money that Id scraped together went towards books and clothes. I would have never been able to afford healthcare  let alone birth control.

During my first couple years of college, like so many other young women (which is a terrible fact), I trusted the wrong people and ended up drugged and subsequently raped.

It was at a very hard time in my life; I had just lost my father and I was a mess. I wasnt even sure if I had taken my birth control pills that week.

Story continues

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Nov 9, 2016 at 11:27am PST

Planned Parenthood will provide you with Plan B and STI testing, no invasive questions asked.

Without Planned Parenthood and the services they gave me, I would have likely ended up pregnant and leaving school to work full time to support my child.

I have been on about six different birth control pill types in the last decade. Some hormones just affect bodies differently than others. In the beginning of 2016, I turned 26 and fell off my stepfathers health insurance. I was working multiple freelance jobs that didnt offer many options, so once again, I turned to Planned Parenthood. I mentioned how the Pill was negatively affecting my mood and making me incredibly nauseous daily. PP was able to work with me to get me a Mirena, a low-dose hormone IUD.

IUDs had always scared me  I had read all those terrifying articles about copper and uterine scarring. My fears were put to rest when the copper-free version came out! The IUD makes it so I dont have to remember a pill everyday, which is fantastic! It also cut down my nausea by about 90%. Thanks to Planned Parenthood, pretty much every day of my life is better.

A photo posted by Planned Parenthood (@plannedparenthood) on Apr 15, 2016 at 11:32am PDT

When I received my IUD; I had to come clean with the nurses at Planned Parenthood  I hadnt had a proper Pap smear check up since about 2008. In 2008, I was still seeing the gynecologist my mother went to, based on her recommendation. He was an older man who never made me feel comfortable. He had broken patient confidentiality years before by telling my mother I wasnt a virgin. I was diagnosed not only with HPV, but after an abnormal pap and a biopsy  it was confirmed that I was teeming with precancerous or stage one cells on my cervix. This meant I had to undergo painful cryotherapy  all while my original gynecologist lectured me on how I was being punished for pre-martial sex.

When I told this story to my doctor at my last Planned Parenthood visit (before my exam), she burst into tears. She hugged me and apologized that someone in her field made me feel that way. She explained that Pap exams arent even done until women are around 21 now  to prevent emotional trauma.

planned parenthood rally

Planned Parenthood is partially responsible for the woman I am today. By being in control of my body and my family plan, I have been able to enjoy life like any other 27 year old should be able to. That is definitely not saying that women my age shouldnt be mothers; just that all women of any age should be able to choose what they want to do with their bodies and lives. Planned Parenthood backs that belief.

No matter who you are, where you are from, or where you are going, Planned Parenthood is there seven days a week to help you along the way, regardless of what you can afford.

Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced the Republicans plan to completely defund Planned Parenthood. You can show that you #StandWithPP by donating to Planned Parenthood here.
From Capitol Hill to Donald Trumps Twitter feed, cyber-security is all the buzz this week, thanks to WikiLeaks, a self-described non-profit media organization that publishes leaked documents, news and classified information from anonymous sources. The man behind Wikileaks is Julian Assange and, although hes been under fierce fire from American political leaders in the recent past, a few are warming up to him  starting with President-elect Trump, who once went so far as to say Assange should face the death penalty or something for his crimes.

Who is Julian Assange?

Assange is the Australian leader (and alleged founder) of WikiLeaks. The organization first rose to international prominence in 2010, when they published classified documents pertaining to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaked by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was convicted in 2013 under the Espionage Act and is currently serving out a 35-year prison sentence.

Though Assange, 45, is Australian born, hes lived at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for four and a half years, avoiding extradition to Sweden, where hes been charged for allegedly raping a woman. Two additional charges of sexual assault and coercion were dropped when they passed the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations on the rape charge will run out in 2020. Assange also fears extradition to the United States, where he would likely be prosecuted for his role in leaking sensitive and confidential U.S. government documents.

Why are people talking about him?

WikiLeaks played an indisputable role in shaping the 2016 election when the group published emails from the Democratic National Committee and from the inbox of John Podesta, Hillary Clintons campaign chairman. With recent findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia did the hacking into DNC and Clinton campaign accounts, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing Thursday about Russian interference in Americas 2016 presidential election.

Story continues

Assange, in an interview with Fox Newss Sean Hannity that aired on Tuesday, denied that the Russian governmentor any state partywas Wikileaks source for the hacked DNC and Podesta emails.

What does Donald Trump think of him?

In a 2010 interview with CNN, the businessman called Wikileaks disgraceful and added: there should be like death penalty or something for Assange.

But on Twitter this week, Trump implied that he trusts Assanges word more than that of U.S. intelligence officials.

The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta"  why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

By the next morning, Trump was backpedaling on his stated vote of confidence in Assange and blaming the media.

The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange  wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

But the damage was already done with intelligence officials. Hours after Trumps shift in tone on Assange, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr., pointedly told the Senate Armed Services hearing that there was a difference between healthy skepticism and disparagement. Worth noting: healthy skepticism is the term Vice President-elect Mike Pence used this week to defend Trumps criticism of U.S. intelligence.

What does Assange think about American politics?

Though Assange doesnt speak often about American politics for someone who has played such a large role in shaping their future, has said that he believes Libertarians (or rather, the libertarian aspect of the Republican Party) are presently the only useful political voice in the U.S. Congress.

This statement shouldnt come as a huge surprise: One of the countrys most famous libertarians, Ron Paul, has previously come out in support of Assange. He once said: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers? Up until recently, thats more good press than any other U.S. politician had ever given him.

Assange also said that he believes Clintons loss wasnt a result of WikiLeaks, but rather, the work of the Democratic Party.

The genuine reason, to my mind, for the loss, is because of the rigging of the primary process, he said. They didnt pick the strongest candidate. Theres an internal market, the primary process, you battle it out with different contenders. And the idea is the strongest, you send off into the general election. That didnt happen.

What do other Republican leaders have to say about Assange?

Assange remains Public Enemy Number One with a number of other prominent Republicans:

I think Assange has done enormous damage to our nation security. I would not be praising him under any circumstances.  Ted Cruz to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Julian Assange is no hero. Someone who steals property is not bringing transparency  hes taking information thats not his to give.  Oklahoma Senator James Lankford The same people who condemned Secretary Clinton for making sensitive and classified information vulnerable by using an unsecure server should be equally outraged that Assange continues to carelessly leak sensitive documents. Its the Democrats today; it could be the Republican Party tomorrow.  Texas Representative Will Hurd

However, in the weeks and months since Wikileaks trained its sights on Hillary Clinton and released piles of internal campaign emails that proved damaging to her presidential bid, Trump wasnt the only one to change his tune about Assange.

There was also Hannity himself, who once accused Assange of waging war against the U.S., and Sarah Palin, who wasnt especially happy with Assange after Wikileaks published her own private emails.

To Julian Assange: I apologize. Exposing the truth re: the Left having been oh-so-guilty of atrocious actions and attitudes of which theyve falsely accused others. The media collusion that hid what many on the Left have been supporting is shocking. This important information that finally opened peoples eyes to democrat candidates and operatives would not have been exposed were it not for Julian Assange. I apologize for condemning Assange when he published my infamous (and proven noncontroversial, relatively boring) emails years ago.  Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in a post on Facebook.

Look, I was a very early critic of . Hes well aware that I thought he was waging war on the United States. My opinion on it has evolved in large part because of what I have seen that he has done in ten years. Nothing he has published has ever been proven false. Nobodys even questioned the veracity or truthfulness of what hes doing.  Fox News anchor Sean Hannity.




(Adds details on storm, quotes, moves dateline to Atlanta)

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A storm packing heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain hit the U.S. South on Friday, bringing winter weather to a region unaccustomed to it and leading to traffic snarls and widespread school closures.

As much as 8 inches (20 cm) of snow and 1 inch (3 cm) of sleet was expected to fall on a large swath of the United States from northeast Louisiana to southern Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service.

The service issued winter storm warnings stretching from New Mexico, across the South and into the East Coast. Police from Oklahoma and Arkansas reported scores of accidents on roads where a few inches of snow had fallen.

"If you don't have to travel, don't travel," said Matthew Grantham, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Alabama. Conditions will worsen after dusk on Friday, he added.

With snow on the way, Atlanta residents packed into stores to stock up on essentials.

"I shouldn't have waited to the last minute," said Showanda Torres, 29, of the East Atlanta Village neighborhood, as she pushed her 3-year-old son in a shopping cart at a grocery store.

"The shelves are getting picked clean," she said.

The storm also affected U.S. air travel. As of noon (1700 GMT), there were about 350 flight cancellations at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the nation's busiest, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

City officials called for staggered departures to avoid Friday evening traffic congestion. Schools were asked to release students at lunchtime.

The move followed a disastrous response to winter weather in January 2014, when thousands of commuters sat in gridlock for hours on frozen highways around Atlanta and many children were stuck at schools.

States of emergency were declared for 79 counties in Georgia and all of Alabama. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson shut state offices for non-essential personnel.

Story continues

The hazardous weather has also forced the postponement of inauguration events scheduled this weekend for North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who also declared a state of emergency. The storm is expected to bring significant snowfall to his state, particularly in the central region.

"The number one thing is making sure the people of North Carolina are safe," Cooper told a news conference on Friday morning. "You can do that by staying home."

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Laila Kearney in New York, Letitia Stein in Tampa and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by John Stonestreet and Lisa Von Ahn)
Will Hillary Clinton run for mayor of New York City?

Read: Vice President Joe Biden Tells President-Elect Trump: 'Time to Grow Up, Donald... Time to Be an Adult'

Speculation is running rampant following a report in The New York Times.

The Times wrote: A run for mayor of New York this year would pit Mrs. Clinton against Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat who managed her Senate campaign in 2000, and, should she win, would put her in charge of President-elect Donald J. Trumps hometown, ensuring years of potential clashes between bitter rivals.

Interestingly, both Clintons and de Blasios reps refused to comment on the story, which hit newsstands Thursday.

Clinton was a New York State Senator from 2001 to 2009 and then went on to become Secretary of State under President Obama.

The Clintons are no strangers to the city that never sleeps. The former first lady had her campaign offices in Brooklyn and her husband, President Bill Clinton, had his post-White House offices in Harlem.

Read: From the Pulse Nightclub Shooting to Pokemon Go, Here Are the Top Newsmakers of 2016

Since leaving the White House, they have settled in Chappaqua, New York, however, state law requires only a candidate for mayor to be a New York City resident by Election Day.

De Blasio has been mayor of the Big Apple since 2014.

The New York City mayoral election is in November.

Watch: Katy Perry Bursts Into Tears as Hillary Clinton Makes Surprise Appearance to Present Humanitarian Award

Related Articles:
FRESNO, Calif. (AP)  Photographer and rock climber Josh Hilling who lives in the foothills below Yosemite National Park spent recent days chopping wood and stocking up on groceries, ahead of what's expected to be the strongest storm to hit Central California in years.

Rangers at Yosemite on Friday closed all roads leading to the park's valley floor, a major attraction for visitors from around the world eager to view gushing waterfalls and gaze up at towering granite rock formations such as El Capitan and Half Dome.

"If you live long enough in this canyon, you experience lots of natural disasters  floods, fires, rock falls," said Hilling, from his family's home in El Portal.

An enormous storm in 1997 flooded Yosemite Valley, closing the park for two months and washing out roads, lodging and campgrounds. This weekend's storm is not expected to be as severe.

The closure is expected at least through Sunday. Other parts of the park remain open, but rangers caution visitors to be aware of ice and falling debris on the roads.

Early Friday, rangers stood watch for flooding along the Merced River, a major river flowing through the valley, park spokeswoman Jamie Richards said.

"We're prepared," she said, adding that they're accustomed to life in a giant canyon with frequent, rain, snow, ice and rock falls. "We have a lot of things we deal with on a frequent basis."

Rangers are keeping an especially close eye on Pohono Bridge, which crosses the Merced River. Flooding there starts when the water level reaches 10 feet, but the watermark hit just 4 feet Thursday, Richards said.

Rangers don't expect damage nearly as bad as in the 1997 flood, having moved buildings away from the river and increased drainage, Richards said.

Elsewhere, the onslaught of storms sent residents in California and Nevada scrambling to gear up for heavy rain and expecting swollen rivers and toppled trees this weekend.

Story continues

On the coast in Santa Cruz  where up to a foot of rain could fall in places  officials have set up sand bag stations for residents.

"We're giving them a shovel and the sand and showing them how to fill them up," said Jason Hoppin, a Santa Cruz County spokesman. "We haven't seen rain like this in a long time."

This stormy weather comes as California enters its sixth year of drought. Each storm is welcomed, but officials say several more like this are needed to replenish depleted groundwater supplies, forcing some residents to live on bottled water.

The strong wet season began in October with more rain falling than in three decades, mostly in Northern California. Los Angeles is experiencing the wettest winter in six years, forecasters say.

Forecasters anticipate the storm surge stretching from Hawaii in the Pacific  called an atmospheric river  could dump up to 8 inches of rain from Sonoma to Monterey counties. Forecasters warn of mudslides on the Central Coast hit hard this summer by scarring wildfires.

The storm's mild temperatures will drive up the snowline to above 9,000 feet throughout the Sierra Nevada, causing runoff in the lower elevations, said Zach Tolby, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.

The Truckee River, which flows from Lake Tahoe through Reno, is forecast to rise to its highest point in more than a decade, according to the weather service, which has issued a flood warning.

Residents and business owners throughout the Reno-Sparks area filled tens of thousands of sandbags.

Flooding could rival the winter of 2005-2006 that sent 5 feet of water into the Sparks industrial area made up of warehouses and manufacturing plants. Crews worked to secure storage drums filled with hazardous materials to stop them from floating away as they have in past floods.

"This is a classic set up for us for flooding," Tolby said. "We're definitely expecting a very wet weekend."

___

Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this story.
Amazon acquired two rounds of live Premier League matches for three years from the 2019/2020 season, the league announced (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL) (AFP/File)

Las Vegas (AFP) - Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa is emerging as one of the big winners at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, cropping up in TVs, cars, fridges -- you name it -- in what may signal a breakthrough moment for the smart technology.

Alexa's voice-activated artificial intelligence tool was everywhere at the annual tech gathering in Las Vegas -- a closely-watched testbed for the latest industry trends -- even though Amazon was not officially taking part.

Tech giants Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft are all vying to develop the most sophisticated connected assistant -- but the dominance of Alexa at CES 2017 suggests Amazon is winning the race.

It may also be the sign that smart home hubs -- heralded for years as a coming consumer tech revolution but slow to catch on in the marketplace -- have finally come of age.

To name just a few of her appearances at CES, Amazon's Alexa is integrated into the LG smart refrigerator, allowing consumers to "talk" to their fridge to find out what food is on its shelves and order fresh groceries.

She features on three different Chinese television brands made by Tongfang Global Ltd.

She will be present on Huawei's new flagship smartphone and integrated into Inrix's Open Car platform for connected vehicles. Ford also announced this week it would integrate Alexa in its on-board electronics.

Alexa made its debut as the heart of the Amazon Echo -- a family of internet-connected speakers that answer questions, run apps, and let people get weather reports or order goods on Amazon.

The technology was first seen as a curiosity.

But Amazon claims it has sold "millions" of the Echo devices -- with a big spike over the recent holiday period. And by opening the system to third-party developers, Amazon is making big strides toward boosting its presence in the consumer electronics space, say analysts.

Now Alexa can be used to play music, order food, summon an Uber ride, dim the lights or provide directions, among other things.

Story continues

Chinese electronics giant Lenovo meanwhile used the tech show to unveil its own smart assistant speaker, powered by Alexa.

While the company is working on its own artificial intelligence program, Lenovo chief technical officer Yong Rui said Alexa "is one of the best assistants in the US market and the rest of the world."

He expects the collaboration "can amplify each company's strengths."

- Connection point -

Bob O'Donnell of the consultancy Technalysis Research said Amazon appears to be making progress in integrating the vast array of connected home devices that use different operating systems.

"Alexa is becoming the de facto central point for all these devices," O'Donnell said.

"The devices can't talk to each other but they can talk to Alexa. That puts Amazon in a powerful position."

Even more remarkable is that Amazon has been able to raise its profile without its own operating system or smartphone -- having killed the weak-selling Fire phone.

O'Donnell said that Alexa, because it is based on voice, "is like a mega-OS (operating system), it sits atop the operating system," which allows it to integrate with a variety of devices.

Ben Thompson, a technology analyst who writes the blog Stratechery, said Alexa is a strong contender to be a dominant home hub operating system.

"There was an ecosystem to assemble: more and more 'smart' products, from lightbulbs to switches, were coming on the market, but nearly every company trying to be the centerpiece of the connected home was relying on the smartphone," Thompson wrote.

"Alexa... has all of the qualities of an operating system you might expect: All kinds of hardware manufacturers are lining up to build Alexa-enabled devices, and will inevitably compete with each other to improve quality and lower prices."

- Alexa's rivals -

Amazon and Alexa are still facing fierce competition and not winning all battles.

At CES, computer chipmaker Nvidia said it would use Google Assistant for its interactive streaming devices. Microsoft's Cortana will power a voice-assistant speaker for kids and families being introduced by Mattel, and will also be in Renault-Nissan's connected car hub.

Samsung's smart refrigerator, which acts as a connected hub -- with a voice activation system unveiled at CES -- uses the South Korean giant's Tizen operating system.

Many smart devices for the home also integrate with Apple Home Kit, which uses the iPhone maker's artificial intelligence and voice assistant Siri.

At CES, Chinese giant Baidu showcased its own virtual assistant "Little Fish" which will debut in China this year.

But many others are adopting Alexa, including the Chinese robotics group Ubtech, the home audio group iHome and Dish Network for its digital video recorder.

- 'Thrilled' -

Amazon has no exhibits or events at the Las Vegas extravaganza, but the company's head of Alexa, Steve Rabuchin, made a brief appearance at a CES keynote with Huawei.

Rabuchin said that by opening up the system in 2015, "this lets developers add new skills to Alexa" to make it more useful.

"We continue to be thrilled with the response we are getting from developers and the momentum of Alexa," he said.

Voice-activated home hubs are becoming a hot ticket, said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) that organizes CES.

"Ultimately, vocal computing is replacing the (screen)."
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, maintained the company's goal of becoming the world's biggest smartphone maker within five years (AFP Photo/Ethan Miller) (Getty/AFP)

Las Vegas (AFP) - The top executive of number three smartphone maker Huawei on Wednesday laid out an ambitious agenda for the US and global markets, brushing aside political issues that have hampered the Chinese group.

Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei's consumer business group, made a string of appearances at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, where he maintained the company's goal of becoming the world's biggest smartphone maker within five years.

"We want to be number two in the next two years," Yu told a small group of reporters after a keynote speech at the Las Vegas show. "In five years we want to be number one."

Yu said Huawei, which introduced two handsets at the tech gathering, has performed better on many technical tests and consumer surveys than its top two smartphone rivals, Samsung and Apple.

But he said it will be important for Huawei to make better inroads in the US market, especially in the premium smartphone segment. And to do that it needs to develop relations with carriers, through which most devices are sold, not only in direct sales of unlocked phones.

"In the next two to five years we should do more with carriers," he said.

He argued US consumers are looking for something new in smartphones, describing most of the others on the market as "boring."

"In the US market consumers need a better product," he said.

At CES, Huawei announced the US release of its flagship Mate 9 handset, which was launched in other markets last year, and the global launch of its mid-range Honor 6x.

Yu brushed off criticism regarding Huawei's ties to the Beijing government, which was heightened after a US congressional report.

He said such concerns are based on "misunderstanding" and possibly fueled by "our competitors" who "are using this to fight us."

"We have no relations with any government," Yu said, adding that Huawei is "a private company owned by its employees."

Story continues

He said he Huawei would not collaborate with governments to spy on consumers because "if we do that with one government we would have problems with other countries."

Asked about the impact Trump's administration would have on Huawei's business, Yu said, "My feeling is that Trump is a businessman."

Despite Trump's harsh rhetoric on China and trade, Yu said he hoped Trump would understand that bilateral trade is beneficial to both countries.

"You can't do everything yourself," he said. "The economy is globalized. The US also benefits a lot from China, from Chinese companies."
The IoT Home Inspector Challenge is aimed at heading off new types of home-based network vulnerabilities. (FTC Graphic)

The Internet of Things can be a rough neighborhood, as Octobers massive botnet attack illustrated  and so, in an attempt to head off future hacks, the Federal Trade Commission has organized a contest for IoT security tools.

Its offering prizes worth up to $25,000 for the top entries.

The FTCs IoT Home Inspector Challenge is open to developers who come up with tools to address security vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software in devices that range from webcams to, um, kitchen ranges:

An ideal tool might be a physical device that the consumer can add to his or her home network that would check and install updates for other IoT devices on that home network, or it might be an app or cloud-based service, or a dashboard or other user interface. Contestants also have the option of adding features such as those that would address hard-coded, factory default or easy-to-guess passwords.

Such vulnerabilities were what left the door open for cyber attackers to direct millions of Chinese-made webcams to overwhelm a key bottleneck in the global internet last October. That attack caused intermittent shutdowns of Twitter, Amazon, Reddit and other high-profile online services.

Network experts say the Internet of Things is likely to get even gnarlier as more internet-enabled devices such as fitness monitors, connected cars, household appliances, thermostats and smart bulbs come online.

Every day American consumers are offered innovative new products and services to make their homes smarter, said Jessica Rich, director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection. Consumers want these devices to be secure, so were asking for creativity from the public  the tinkerers, thinkers and entrepreneurs  to help them keep device software up-to-date.

Submissions will be accepted as early as March 1, and the deadline is noon ET on May 22. Five judges, including Tadayoshi Kohno, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, will select the winners by late July.

Story continues

The prize for the best technical solution is $25,000. Up to $3,000 will be awarded for up to three honorable mentions.

This is the FTCs fourth government contest under the America COMPETES Act, and the first one addressing IoT issues. Check the FTCs website for complete rules and requirements. Contest information has also been posted on Challenge.gov.

More from GeekWire:
Dell just announced the XPS 27 all-in-one (AIO) PC during CES 2017. The companys new AIO sets itself apart from its rivals by having a unique focus on audio quality thanks to its 10 speakers.

The Dell XPS 27 houses four full-range drivers, two tweeters for highs, two radiators for delivering deeper bass and two down-firing speakers, according to Engadget. Audio setups on PCs are usually neglected by most manufacturers, and it looks like this is Dells way of delivering better audio quality on PCs in order for users to not buy separate speakers.

Dell XPS 27

Photo: Dell

In a way, Dell appears to be delivering that all-in-one promise. The speaker setup on the XPS 27 was engineered in collaboration with Jack Joseph Puig, according to The Verge. Puig is known as a music engineer and producer who has worked with artists like John Mayer, Green Day, U2 and The Goo Goo Dolls. Dell claims that the speakers on the XPS 27 are two times louder than the ones found on the 27-inch Apple iMac and delivers 10 times the bass than the HP Envy 27.

The Dell XPS 27 isnt just all about speakers, too. The new AIO comes with a 27-inch 3,840 x 2,160 4K InfinityEdge display. Users can also configure the PC to have a touch or non-touch display. The touchscreen version also comes with an articulating stand, so users can sit the display almost flat on a table similar to the Microsoft Surface Studio.

Underneath the hood, the XPS 27 is powered by a 6th generation i5-6400 or i7-6700 processor with the option to add AMD R9 M470X or M485X graphics. RAM can be configured up to 32GB, while storage can be maxed out with 2TB HDD + 32GB SSD or a 1TB SSD. All of these are packed right inside the display section similar to Apples design on the iMac, according to CNET.

The Dell XPS 27 is now available to order and pricing starts at $1,499. Opting for the the highest specs possible sets the price to $2,699.

Story continues

Dell XPS 27

Photo: Dell

Related Articles
Drones were visible in abundance at CES. (FAA Photo)

Drone sightings by commercial pilots are on the rise, and so is the Federal Aviation Administrations research into systems that detect and defend against unmanned aerial vehicles.

In cooperation with other government agencies and industry partners, the FAA has been testing technologies designed to detect unauthorized drone operations near airports and other critical infrastructure, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told a packed audience today at the CES show in Las Vegas.

Weve evaluated some of these technologies in some pretty complicated places, airports like New York, and Denver, and smaller places like Atlantic City, he said.

Huerta said further tests will be conducted later this year around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Were using the data and findings from these evaluations to draft recommendations for standards. And these standards will help inform airport operators nationwide who are considering installing drone defense systems, he said.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta meets the press at CES. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Increases in drone sales, and drone sightings, are big factors behind the focus on anti-drone defenses.

Despite our education efforts, we are seeing an increasing number of drone sighting reports from pilots, Huerta said. We had about 1,800 in 2016, compared with 1,200 in 2015.

The FAA is counting on drone registration to help the authorities keep track of whos flying what: More than 670,000 operators have registered since the signup system was put into effect a little more than a year ago, including 37,000 in the last two weeks of December, Huerta said.

Since the FAAs rules for commercial operations took effect in August, more than 30,000 people have applied to become certified drone pilots. About 16,000 of them have taken the required exam, and almost 90 percent of them got a passing grade, Huerta said.

The next step is to draw up regulations for drone operations that take place over uninvolved members of the public. The FAAs Drone Advisory Council and other stakeholders have been considering that set of rules for months, but Huerta said more time will be needed to address issues raised during the deliberations.

Story continues

He said the FAA, NASA and other agencies conducted a test in October that involved flying multiple drones performing different tasks simultaneously in shared airspace near Reno-Stead Airport in Nevada.

The FAA is also looking into scenarios for letting drones fly beyond an operators visual line of sight  which is considered essential for the kinds of commercial delivery systems that Amazon and other companies are developing.

Although Huerta didnt announce a timetable for beyond-line-of-sight flight, he indicated that regulators didnt intend to dawdle. The market wont dawdle either: By 2020, the FAA expects to see as many as 7 million drones, registered and unregistered, sold in the U.S. annually.

Things are only going to get more complicated, not less. . The pace of change is breathtaking, Huerta said.

Watch Huertas entire talk here:

More from GeekWire:
Huawei is finally releasing its famous phablet, the Mate 9, in the U.S. this Friday.

Huawei has partnered with Amazon to bring its new phablet, the Mate 9, to the American market this week. The Chinese telecommunications company has also announced prior CES 2017 that its high-specced smartphone is arriving in the United States with the Alexa voice assistant as one of its key features.

On Wednesday, Huawei released an official statement online to announce that the Mate 9 is launching in the U.S. on Jan. 6, Friday. The smartphone maker proudly stated that its device flaunts a beautiful design and performs impressively with its Kirin 960 chipset. It also boasted how the handset features machine-learning algorithm and SuperCharge technology.

Huawei mentioned that it has worked hard to bring the industry-leading hardware to consumers. This is not an overstatement since the Kirin 960 chipset is considered the highest-performing processor for smartphones as of late. The machine learning technology of the device also makes it a smart companion for heavy users.

Ensuring its success in the American market, Huawei promised to consumers that its Mate 9 phablet will never lag and will remain fast in performance for 18 months. The SuperCharge technology is also a big plus, since it charges the device for a full day of use in just 20 minutes.

The Mate 9 is also built to be a remarkable smartphone for photographers with its second-generation Leica dual-lens camera module. The module comprises a 12-megapixel monochrome sensor and a 12-megapixel RGB sensor. Huawei stated that this dual-lens camera is capable of superior magnification and comes with Hybrid Zoom.

As per Android Authority, the Mate 9 comes with a 5.9-inch 1080p display. It has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a fingerprint scanner, 64GB of internal memory and a 4,000 mAh battery. It runs EMUI 5.0 on top of Android 7.0 Nougat.

The company emphasized its partnership with Amazon when it stated in the press release that the cloud-based voice service Alexa is going to be part of the Huawei Mate 9 user experience. Users will have the privilege of instructing the virtual assistant to set alarms, make to-do lists, get weather and traffic updates and even control a wide range of smart home devices.

Story continues

The Mate 9 is priced at $599.99, and it comes in Space Gray and Moonlight Silver color options. It is going to be available for purchase from Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg and B&H Photo.

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LAS VEGAS  It's pretty impossible for humanoid robots to not look creepy, even if it's a familiar face, like Albert Einstein.

Hanson Robots unleashed its miniature robot dubbed Professor Einstein at CES this week. It's a 14.5" Wi-Fi-connected robot geared toward educating and entertaining its users with the likeness of the late genius Albert Einstein.

The robot pairs and interacts with an accompanying iOS and Android app called the Stein-O-Matic, used to teach science and play games, but can also act sort of like a Amazon Alexa or Google Home by reciting facts, solving problems and giving current weather updates.

SEE ALSO: Vinci smart headphones have a friggin' screen on them

Hanson Robots teamed up with toy inventor Andy Rifkin as its CTO to create the gaming app that has an IQ level which increases the more you interact with Professor Einstein.

While ditching the screen has been a tech trend widely recognized at the largest consumer electronics show in the world this year, Hanson Robots is putting a familiar face to its technology, though we have to admit it's still a little creepy, and that's OK. The robots produced by Hanson Robots are eerily lifelike, and produce a wide range of facial expressions and gestures  Professor Einstein has over 50.

"Our end goal is to make AI very smart and to relate with people well, so by giving it a humanlike form it means that we can teach it more what it means to be human," CEO and founder David Hanson tells Mashable. "It can physically explore the world the way that a baby would, and it can socially explore; learn from people."

Hanson Robots breaks down its strategy into three areas: extremely humanlike robots, consumer robots (like Professor Einstein) and its cloud AI, called Mind Cloud, intended to learn from the interactions it has with humans.

For people who are a little creeped out by an AI that's learning in their home, Hanson ensured us that its AI is programmed to not learn about your personal life.

Story continues

"Privacy is totally respected. It's not learning about all the people around the world, but what it is doing is learning from those interaction to generalize, said Hanson. "Your individual robot becomes your personal companion, but the Mind Cloud just sort of generally gets smarter from all those interactions. So we think this is a way to make AI become more generally intelligence, or what we call artificial general intelligence."

For now Professor Einstein is geared toward tech enthusiasts, kids and their parents, and obviously Einstein fans, but adding a face to a personal assistant or a companion such as this has endless applications. Creepy or not, these will probably become more and more present in our homes.

In order to create a miniature Einstein, Hanson Robots worked with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to license his likeness.

"We're working very closely with them and their licensing partners to make sure that it really is well aligned and positively promoting the legacy of Einstein, who is more than just a brilliant scientist; just such a great thinker. He's a great emblem, I think, for what we would like for our artificial intelligence. We want it not just to be smart but to be human: warm and caring about making the world better place."

The battery life on Professor Einstein lasts about three to four hours, and comes with rechargeable batteries housed in his feet.

Hanson Robots plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in late January, though you can sign up for its waitlist today.

Hanson Robots also showed off a much larger and lifelike Einstein at CES, and well, have a look.
Of all the questionable decisions that Disney made with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, none were more controversial than the one to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing as the 1977 versions of their characters Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin. Some viewers were pleasantly surprised by their inclusion while others were confused and distracted, but theres no question that Disney got everyones attention.

Don't Miss: How to watch Sherlock season 4, episode 1 online for free

Weve written about Lucasfilms reaction to the reaction before, but on Thursday, ABC News was given inside access to the visual effects and animation studio Industrial Light & Magic to see how it was actually done.

While the timing is coincidental, we also learned on Thursday that Carrie Fisher was intended to play a major role in Episode IX of the Star Wars saga, which isnt expected to begin shooting until next year. While Leias role will almost certainly need to be reduced, Lucasfilm will certainly at the very least consider using some form of computer imagery to bring Fisher to the screen in spite of her absence.

Regardless of your feelings on Rogue Ones use of digital actors specifically, or the practice in general, its a fascinating piece that delves into some of the technical challenges that bringing these characters back to life presented for the studio. If you have any interest in the process, the video is definitely worth a watch.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
CES 2017 shouldnt cause too much TV buyers remorse if you just bought a new set. (image: Rob Pegoraro)

For many, many years, the message of CES for television owners boiled down to heres why your TV sucks. But as picture quality has increased upwards, the amount of set suckage inflicted by keeping last years model has diminished. So whats a TV vendor supposed to do to get you to retire a perfectly adequate high-definition TV for something newer and shinier, preferably with a healthy profit margin?

CES 2017 has revealed one respectable sales pitch for Ultra High Definition, the successor to HDTV that debuted at the 2012 CES. But there are also a few reasons to wait yet another year before indulging in a new TV.

UHD and HDR

UHD, also known as 4K for its almost 4,000 pixels of horizontal resolution, offers a much finer picture than mere HDTV. But unless you get a screen larger than 55 inches or so, the additional detail will vanish when viewed from across the room.

An upgrade to UHD called HDR, short for high dynamic range, provides a discernable difference even on smaller displays: a wider range of colors. The difference is obvious, especially with scenes like sunsets and sunrises that involve a large degree of contrast.

HDR stopped being a niche variation of UHD at last years CES but still came at a price premium. At this years show, the HDR tax looks set to shrivel. Most vendors arent talking prices yet, but the Chinese vendor TCL  a leading supplier of TVs with built-in Roku media-player software  said it will sell a 50-inch UHD HDR set for $500.

LGs new TV W, which stands for TV wallpaper, is barely more than a tenth of an inch thick. (image: Rob Pegoraro)

Alas, this being the electronics industry, there isnt just one flavor of HDR. One standard called HDR10 is the most common, but another, Dolby Vision, provides greater color fidelity. DirecTV is adopting a third, HLG, and Technicolor backs a fourth, Advanced HDR. LG plans to support all four, but many vendors will pick a subset of them.

An effort launched at last years CES to cut through this format clutter by certifying TVs that pass a set of tests with a UHD Premium logo doesnt seem to have advanced much, to judge from the absence of any such logos at Samsung, LG, TCL and Sonys exhibits.

Story continues

OLED vs. LCD

The other big change in TV technology over the past few years has been the rise of OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens, which are both exceedingly thin and capable of the same surpassing range of darks and lights that plasma sets provided.

LG, the dominant OLED vendor, unveiled a 77-inch TV W modelthats W as in wallpaper, as the screen is only 2.57 mm thick, just over a tenth of an inch. Its designed to be fastened directly to a wall, with a thin ribbon cable connecting it to a separate box that contains its circuitry and doubles as a soundbar speaker system.

This thinness will also leave your wallet looking thin: With a smaller 65 version set to sell for $8,000, $10,000 for this one doesnt seem out of sight.

Historically, OLED screens have cost significantly more than conventional LCDs that, because they use LED backlighting, are often called LED TVs. That price gap has shrunk, but LCD has kept progressing. Samsung is pitching an upgrade to the technology called QLED, the Q standing for the quantum dot technology Samsung uses to increase the brightness and color range of these sets.

Both OLED and QLED look fantastic here. A side-by-side comparison would be instructive, but were talking about increasingly marginal differences. And in the real world, you bring the TV home and you dont mount it next to a competing model, and most of the time youre happy with it as it is.

Samsung says its QLED TVs will offer improved colors and brightness. (image: Rob Pegoraro)

More options for cord cutters

The other upgrade UHD is waiting on is better availability of content. Cable operators have yet to make room for UHD fare on their networks, and a standard to allow over-the-air broadcasts awaits a few final decisions in the US.

The lions share of the standard is done, said LG public-policy vice president John Taylor in an interview Wednesday. There are continuing discussions about HDR and other aspects, but we continue to expect to be wrapped up in the spring or maybe even the first quarter.

This ATSC 3.0 standard (short for Advanced Television Systems Committee) has also yielded better reception of HDTV in advance tests. But existing TVs cant tune in ATSC 3.0, only the ATSC 1.0 standard used for HDTV today. I havent seen any shipping sets with ATSC 3.0 built in, although LG had one prototype model set up with a test signal.

Meanwhile, broadcasters will need to make their own decisions on how to switch from the old standard to the new one, assuming the Federal Communications Commission allows them to make their own calls about that. When that option arrives, cord cutters with sufficiently reliable reception will have an even more enticing option to paying for cable or satellite.

In the meantime, set vendors are building in additional ways for watching streaming video services. The budget-priced TV brands Westinghouse, Seiki and Element are showing off sets with Amazons (AMZN) Fire TV software built in, and additional viewing options continue to arrive: Hulu is readying a live-TV service that should cost under $40 a month and offer enough channels to replace many cable bundles.

And at TCLs press conference, Roku general manager Chas Smith revealed some good news for Comcast (CMCSA) subscribers: The cable giants promised Xfinity app will be arriving on the Roku platform very soon. That will allow Comcast subscribers to send back their cable boxes and stop paying their rental fees  and start watching their cable bundle in that app on sets with Roku built-in or Roku players connected.

More of Yahoo Finances CES coverage:

Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.
A picture of president-elect Nana Akufo-Addo as a student at Lancing College in UK has gone viral on the internet.

Get the latest political news here.

Nana 'Billy' Akufo-Addo (centre) in his Fifth Form Classics class at Lancing

READ ALSO: Shatta Wale begins 2018 with a flopped concert

The picture was shared by Lancing College in a report on its website on December 22, which congratulated Akufo-Addo for winning the presidency of the Republic of Ghana.

Akufo-Addo attended the college between 19571961 before proceeding to New College, Oxford, to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

He left in 1962 and returned to Ghana to teach at the Accra Academy.

PAY ATTENTION: Get all the latest news updates on the go with the YEN.com.gh app right here

READ ALSO: Photos of four Nigerian men who have now transformed into women

The Lancing College report noted that Akufo-Addo was called "Billy" when he was at the school.

It said Akufo-Addo was an "outstanding sportsman", "a talented all-rounder", and a "gifted debater" who stimulated many political discussions.

What do you make of this? Share your views with us in the comments section.

Have an intriguing story to share? Contact us on Facebook now.

Source: YEN.com.gh
GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here.
Southern Africa's premier awards for public relations excellence, the PRISM Awards, celebrates two decades in 2017. The call for entries has opened and this year sees a number of new categories, including more opportunities in the digital environment and students studying public relations. The deadline for entries is 27 March, with the prestigious awards ceremony scheduled for Sunday, 7 May 2017.

Marking the 20th year, will be the online entry and judging process. All entries will be submitted online ensuring a far more manageable and streamlined judging process. The judging panel will comprise more than 60 judges, all professionals and leaders in their industries from around the world.

A large number of entries in the past have come from the media relations and corporate relations practices and this put huge pressure on the cluster judges, explains says Bridget von Holdt, convenor of the PRISM Awards. With the new, more efficient online judging process, we expect it to lessen the load of judges. It is even more important that entries stick to the prescribed 1,300 words. Were expecting over 250 entries from different sectors and practices this year.

Important dates

Entrants have just over 94 days to submit their entries, advises Von Holdt. The deadline date is 26 March 2017.

Other important dates are:

Prepping for PRISMS  Cape Town, 26 January 2017



Prepping for PRISMS - Johannesburg, 27 January 2017

The PRISM Awards are presented to public relations and communication professionals who have successfully incorporated strategy, creativity, innovation and professionalism in the public relations and communication programmes and strategies.

Any public relations consultancy, business enterprise, association, private institution or government body is eligible to submit entries into the awards. Public relations consultancies may enter on behalf of clients and share the honours with them if they win an award.

While the PRISM Awards are open for all to enter, the entries must be submitted with pride. The judges will be looking for entries that are exceptional and that have a real return on investment, says Von Holdt.

The 34 categories in the 2017 PRISM Awards:

Sectors Practices Over-Arching Awards

Business-to-business



Financial services



Investor relations



Healthcare



Technology



Travel & tourism



Resources



Environmental



Public affairs



Public sector



Community relations



NGO campaign



Corporate responsibility



Sponsorship



PR on a shoestring

Best use of social media as a support tool in a communication programme



Best use of an event to build/change reputation (event management)



Best use of communication in a township revitalisation or education campaign*



Campaign best informed by analytics/big data



Corporate communication



Crisis management



Internal communication



Publications



Media relations



Social media as the primary method of communication (best use of social media to lead a programme)*



Social media as the primary method of communication (best use of social media to lead a programme with no social media spend)*



Social media to launch a new product*



Mobile media for public relations (best use of mobile to lead a programme)



Student campaign of the year

Best Up-and-coming Public Relations Professional



Best Public Relations Professional



Lifetime Achievement Award



Consultancy Awards Best Small Public Relations consultancy (fewer than 10 people)

Best Mid-sized Public Relations consultancy (1039 people)

Best Large Public Relations consultancy (More than 40 people)

African Network of the Year



Campaigns of the Year

Pan African Campaign of the Year



South African Campaign of the Year



*New categories

New categories

There are now four social media categories in the 2017 line-up  reflecting the explosive growth of this discipline.

PRISM Awards Convenor Bridget von Holdt

We have seen exponential growth in the Social Media category since it was introduced a few years ago, says Von Holdt. According to the Social Media Landscape SA - 2017 briefings hosted recently by World Wide Worx - about 14 million South Africans are now on Facebook, the countrys biggest social media platform, with 85% of them using mobile devices to engage (a big increase from 77% the year before).

In the digital landscape, public relations practitioners have a far more challenging and complex role to play, continues Von Holdt. In 2016, most entries contained a social media component  something almost unheard of just five years ago.

Sponsors of the 2017 PRISM Awards include:

AfroFlame  hostessing



Contempo  dressing of hostesses, team, MCs and possibly judges



GroundUp Media  videos



Integrated Marketing Solutions  social media, branding and design



Katlego Maboe  MC



Lebo Mabotjwa - MC



Lounge Around  decor and furniture



ROI Africa  media monitoring



Stageline  audiovisual equipment and staging



Zoom Photography  photos

To enter or for more information visit www.prisa.co.za.




As of now, the only glimpse of S S Rajamouli's war epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion we have is through the two posters that the makers unveiled during the JIOMAMI Mumbai Film Festival and on Rana Daggubati's birthday last year.

Now, koimoi.com reports that the theatrical trailer of the film will be released on around 23 and 24 January. Also, to up the ante, the trailer will be attached with Rahul Dholakia's crime drama Raees which is slated to release on 25 January.

The trailer is going to add even more value to Raees, which is a commercial potboiler starring Shah Rukh Khan, Pakistani actor Mahira Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and an Sunny Leone in an item number. The film has been in the news for a wide range of reasons, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion trailer now being one of them.

DNA reports that the major driving force behind this collaboration has been film distributor, and husband of actor Raveena Tondon, Anil Thadani. Thadani is distributing both the films so he devised a way to ensure that the two prospective blockbusters aid each other.

He ensured that only those cinema owners get the prints of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion who also agree to screen Raees. Then he also arranged for the trailer of the former to be attached to the latter in order to make sure that the trailer is received by a huge audience and probably as a measure to gauge live reaction of the trailer.

This move could also be a tool to bring more people to the theatres since Raees is heading for a momentous clash with Sanjay Gupta's revenge drama Kaabil which stars Hrithik Roshan, Yami Gautam, Rohit and Ronit Roy.

Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is the sequel to Rajamouli's immensely successful 2015 film Baahubali: The Beginning. The sequel will see Prabhas, Daggubati and Tamannah Bhatia reprise their roles from the prequel. It is slated to release on 28 April.
Mumbai: A 29-year-old woman was stabbed by an unidentified person near Mahalakshmi Race Course in Central Mumbai, police said on Friday.

The incident occurred at around 7.30 pm on Thursday near the race course and the victim is reported to be out of danger.

Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room about the victim. Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder in connection with the incident.

The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked in a private company in Mumbai. Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man.

On Thursday evening, at around 7.30 pm, the man went to meet her at the race course and found her sitting under a tree with stab marks on her chest, following which she was taken to hospital.

Further investigation into the incident was on, police added.
Can the BJP be defeated in Uttar Pradesh in 2017?

To know the answer, let us look at results of the bypolls that were held in September 2014, just a few months after the BJP's demolition of its UP rivals in Lok Sabha elections. In the bypolls to 11 assembly seats vacated by BJP legislators who were elected to Parliament, the Samajwadi Party made huge gains, winning 8 seats. The BJP could retain just three.

Among the seats the BJP lost was Rohaniya, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi. The SP also managed to retain Mainpuri, the Lok Sabha seat vacated by Mulayam Singh Yadav. This year too, bypolls were held in two assembly constituencies in UP. Both, Bilari and Jangipur, were won by the SP that defeated the BJP by a comfortable margin.

These two results are an apt reminder of the fact that in politics, past performance is not a guarantee of future success. Every election has its own dynamics, issues and arithmetic. And the outcome could indeed be different if key factors change.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP decimated its rivals by winning 73 seats (with ally Apna Dal) and getting nearly 43 percent of total votes polled. As this analysis shows, the BJP led in 328 ((81 percent) of 403 assembly segments. This was unprecedented in the recent history of UP elections. To put that in context, the last time a political party won more than 80 percent of all constituencies in UP was in 1977, when the Janata party won 80 percent of the seats in a post-emergency landslide.

But the subsequent elections proved that it can be defeated. So, what changed in the 2014 and 2016 by elections? How did the statistical absurdity of the BJP losing so soon after a massive 2014 verdict became a reality? How did the SP win 10 out of the 13 seats?

The biggest change in the 2016 bypolls, compared to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, was the absence of the Bahujan Samaj Party from the fray. In the absence of Mayawati's party, the elections turned into a direct fight between the BJP and the SP. And the voting pattern changed from the 2014 elections.

In September 2014, the SP vote share went up to 44.7, almost 20 percent more than what it had got just a few months ago. The BJP vote share came down to 38.4, from the historic high of nearly 48 percent (with allies in these constituencies) in the general elections. In 2016, the SP polled 50 percent votes (1,72,780) in bypolls to two seats. The BJP polled 41.5 percent (1,43,595).

These figures tell us two things. One, vote shares indeed swing wildly in UP. (Over the past five elections, voters in UP have always thrown up surprises). Two, in a direct fight, most of the anti-BJP vote has the tendency to consolidate, leading to its loss in places where it had won previously.

Clearly, the biggest factor that can lead to the BJP's loss is a united opposition, a two-way fight, or the absence of the BSP from the electoral fray. But, this year, Mayawati is also a top contender, turning the 2017 fight into a triangular contest.

It would be incorrect to assume that Mayawati's presence harms just the non-BJP parties. A large section of BSP voters has been traditionally opposed to the SP. In a direct fight, a significant portion of BSP vote gets transferred to the BJP, taking its captive vote base higher. Naturally, BSP's presence in 2017 will impact the vote share of both the BJP and the SP.

This leads to two scenarios. In both, the Congress holds the key.

First, the BJP retains most of its 2014 vote bank. In such a scenario, the BJP can lose only if Mayawati snares all the anti-BJP votes or her supporters tactically support the party that has the best chance of defeating the saffron outfit. In short, the BJP can lose only if either of the BSP or the SP become politically insignificant, like in the by-polls.

There is, however, another key factor that can help the BJP even if one of the two regional parties is pushed to the margins--the presence of the Congress. Though the Congress has been in steady decline in UP, it still polls between 8-12 percent votes in Assembly elections. If it remains in the fray on its own, even the SP or BSP's complete electoral annihilation would not be able to stop the BJP.

The second scenario is of the BJP vote share coming down. Before the advent of the Modi era, the BJP was continuously sliding in UP. From 32.51 percent in 1996 assembly polls, it slid to 20.12 percent in 2002 assembly polls, to 16.97 percent in 2007 assembly polls and to just 15 percent in 2012. Though such a precipitous decline is unimaginable, elections held in other states since 2014 have shown that the BJP loses a significant number of votes in Assembly polls.

So, if the BJP comes down from its historic high of around 43 percent in 2014, in a multi-corner fight, the outcome would depend on how much the BJP loses and who gains at its cost. In 2012, Akhilesh Yadav had led the SP to a sweep with just around 29.5 percent votes. So, theoretically, the BJP could win even if it loses 10-12 per cent votes. But, what could tilt the balance then is an alliance in which the partners have the ability to transfer votes to each other.

At the moment, the only party that is keen to become a junior partner in the UP elections is the Congress. Its alliance with the BSP is ruled out at this stage because Mayawati has already announced candidates for most of the constituencies. That leaves only the option of a SP-Congress alliance alive.

In a close contest, where the BJP slides from its 2014 high and comes down to around 30 percent, the Congress, if it allies with the SP, could indeed play the decisive role, assuming most of its voters support its alliance partner instead of the BJP, by taking Akhilesh above the 30 percent mark it had touched in 2012. This is the reason the SP is keen on alliance with the Congress, which reports suggest has been sealed and may be announced soon.

Getting back to the original question: Can the BJP lose in 2017? Yes, but this would depend on lots of factors. But then, don't forget, this: The last time before 2014 a political party performed so well in UP was the Janata Party, which led in nearly 80 percent Assembly seats in 1977, won all the 85 Lok Sabha seats (before Uttarakhand was separated) and got a mind-boggling 68 percent share of votes. What happened three years later is well documented.
Dhaka, Bangladesh: An Islamist extremist accused of being one of the masterminds of last year's deadly siege at a Bangladeshi cafe was killed during a pre-dawn raid Friday in the capital Dhaka, police said.

The bodies of Nurul Islam Marzan and another suspected extremist were found after officers raided a property in Dhaka's Rayer Bazar neighbourhood, a spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police told AFP.

"We found two bodies. One of them was Marzan and another was a suspected extremist," additional deputy commissioner Yusuf Ali told AFP, adding that it was not yet clear whether Marzan died in a gunfight or committed suicide.

Ali said that Marzan, who was aged around 30, was "one of the masterminds" of the siege at the upmarket Holey Artisan Bakery on 1 July last year in which 18 foreign hostages were shot or hacked to death.

The Islamic State organisation claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, posting images of the carnage as it happened and photos of the gunmen who had posed with the IS's black flag.

But Bangladesh police rejected the claim, instead blaming a new offshoot of the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown militant outfit founded in 1998, for the attack.

Bangladesh authorities have accused the same group of being behind a wave of killings of religious minorities, foreigners and rights activists.
US President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has issued a blanket mandate requiring politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, the US ambassador to New Zealand said on Friday.

"I will be departing on 20 January," Ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters.

The mandate was issued "without exceptions" through an order sent in a State Department cable on 23 December, Gilbert said.

He was confirming a report in The New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous US administrations from both major political parties have traditionally granted extensions to allow a few ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Officials from the State Department and Trump's transition team were was not immediately available for comment.

The order threatens to leave the US without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain, the newspaper reported.

A senior Trump transition official said there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring Obama's overseas envoys leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do.

Trump has taken a strict stance against leaving any of Obama's political appointees in place, as he prepares to take office on 20 January, aiming to break up many of his predecessor's signature foreign and domestic policy achievements, the newspaper said.

Diplomats told The New York Times that the order has thrown their personal lives into a tailspin, leaving them scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to stay in their countries so their children can remain in school.
PORT-AU-PRINCE A Haitian politician and former coup leader wanted for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States was arrested on Thursday, a police source said, days before he was slated to take up a Senate seat. Guy Philippe, who was elected senator from the southwestern Grand Anse region in a second-round election on Nov. 20, was arrested after a radio interview in Petionville, near the capital, Port-au-Prince. It was not immediately clear why he was arrested.

Philippe, who led a coup that drove Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidency in 2004, was suspected in 2015 of involvement in an attack on a police headquarters in the southern city of Les Cayes in which at least six people were killed.Haitian officials issued a warrant for Philippe's arrest over the incident, but his lawyers said it was invalid because he was a candidate.

Philippe would enjoy immunity in some criminal proceedings once in office. He was not scheduled to take his Senate seat until Monday.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva and Makini Brice; Writing by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Kathmandu: Nepal's main opposition alliance led by the Communist Party of Nepal  Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN UML) launched a massive protest in the capital on Friday to force the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill aimed at addressing the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

The nine party alliance hopes to gather more than one lakh activists and supporters in the capital as a major show of strength against the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka 'Prachanda'-led coalition government's move.

The rally is aimed at forcing the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill.

The ruling alliance mainly comprising CPN Maoist Center and Nepali Congress has been making efforts to amend the Constitution aiming to address the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

Eight smaller left parties including CPN- ML, and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) will also join the rally against the government.

CPN UML chairman K P Oli, CPN ML general secretary C P Mainali and NWPP Chairman Narayan Man Bijukchhe are the prominent opposition leaders who will join the protest.

The bill, which was registered at the Parliament Secretariat in November, aims to accommodate the demands of the agitating Madhesi and ethnic groups that include citizenship and boundary demarcation issues among others.

Re-demarcation of the provincial boundary and citizenship issue are the two major demands put forth by the Madhesis.

Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a six-month-long agitation from September 2015 to February last year in which more than 50 people were killed.

The agitation had also crippled the landlocked country's economy as supplies from India were blocked.
NEW YORK Donald Trump's top aides said he would have an open mind on Friday when he is briefed on what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded were Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 election campaign, despite rising tensions between the president-elect and the nation's spy agencies.Trump has been dismissive of findings that Russian hackers worked on his behalf and spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC News that Trump has "a healthy skepticism of everything."Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, who will be a counselor to Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20, said Trump would question the heads of the top U.S. intelligence agencies about their methods and conclusions."He's prepared to listen and understand how they got to the conclusions they did," Spicer told ABC on Friday.Conway said it was too soon for Trump make a judgment even as he has repeatedly tweeted this week about the hacking issue. "We do not want any foreign government to interfere in this country ... At the same time, let's wait until the president-elect receives the briefing of this fresh, new material," she said on the CBS "This Morning" program.Clapper and the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are expected to attend Trump's briefing, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) at an undisclosed location.

The meeting comes amid increasing tension between Trump and the intelligence communities as the New York businessman has openly disparaged their conclusions, creating an extraordinarily rocky relationship before he takes office on Jan. 20. The U.S. agencies, which concluded months ago that Russian intelligence agencies had directed the hacking of the Democrats, said in their final intelligence report that they had identified the Russian officials who fed the hacked material to WikiLeaks through a third party, according to senior U.S. officials.Democratic President Barack Obama received his briefing on the final report on Thursday, after last week moving to punish Moscow over the hack by expelling suspected Russian spies and imposing sanctions. An unclassified version of the agencies' report will be released publicly next week.

Top intelligence chiefs told U.S. lawmakers on Thursday that they were resolute in their findings that Russia staged the attack and pushed back against Trump's criticism."There's a difference between healthy skepticism ... and disparagement," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at the first in a promised series of briefings and hearings on the allegations, which Moscow denies.The Senate Intelligence Committee said it will hold a hearing on the issue on Tuesday with the intelligence chiefs.

Trump on Twitter has called himself a "big fan" of intelligence agencies while also doubting their assessments that Russia targeted his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the Nov. 8 election in his favor.His comments have drawn the ire of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats who are wary of Moscow and Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary under Obama, said on NBC's "Today" program on Friday that Trump's criticisms should be done privately and that his tweeting on the issue was "unheard of and unprecedented. (Additional reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, and Patricia Zengerle, Dustin Volz and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)

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MADISON (AP)  A timber company subsidiary looking to build sand processing facilities in western Wisconsin is promising to preserve and restore about 375 acres of wetlands on one of the sites.

Meteor Timber wants to build a sand mine in Jackson County and a sand processing plant and railroad spur in Monroe County. The project would eliminate 16.6 acres of wetlands, including 13 acres of pristine hardwood swamp.

That would be the largest single loss of wetlands since at least 2008, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The state Department of Natural Resources has issued 60 wetland permits to sand operators since 2008, allowing the destruction of 26 acres. Meteors wetland use would amount to 60 percent of that total.

The company said Friday it has amended its Department of Natural Resources permit application to include a wetlands mitigation plan that calls for preserving about 320 acres of wetland and restore another 58 acres of wetland on the project site.
Bahrain announced yesterday that it has restored the power of its domestic spy service to make some arrests, reversing a key reform recommended in the wake of the crackdown that followed the countrys 2011 Arab Spring protests.

The decree affecting its National Security Agency comes as Bahrain is in the midst of a renewed clampdown on dissent. It also follows an armed assault on a prison that killed a police officer and freed 10 inmates.

The decision came in decree, announced by the state-run Bahrain News Agency. It described the decision as making the arrest powers limited to terrorism cases, though it was in fact restoring them.

The royal decree was made in view of the high risk of terror crimes, which necessitates prompt action to thwart plots, halt their impact, gather evidence and arrest the culprits, the report said.

However, terrorism allegations have been levied against activists and protesters in the past. Bahrains government did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about the decision.

Activists immediately warned the move would create an environment that allows security service abuses to flourish.

Todays decision makes it clear that Bahrain has turned its back unapologetically against human rights, said Husain Abdulla, the executive director of Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain

The National Security Agency was created in 2002, replacing the countrys feared General Directorate for State Security. It gained arrest powers by royal decree in 2008.

Limiting the agencys powers was a main recommendation made by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, which investigated the 2011 protests and subsequent crackdown. Another royal decree after the protests stripped the agency of its arrest powers.

The commission linked the agency to the systematic torture and raids conducted after the protests, which saw the islands Shiite majority and others demand more political freedom from the countrys Sunni rulers. Troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ultimately helped put down the protests.

Bahrain, a small island off the Arabian Peninsula thats home to the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet and an under-construction British naval base, launched a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent in April. Its seen authorities imprison some prominent political figures and force others into exile.

On Sunday, gunmen armed with automatic rifles and pistols stormed Bahrains Jaw prison, killing a police officer and freeing 10 inmates convicted on terrorism charges. In the time since, police have stepped up checkpoints and patrols, but have yet to announce the recapture any of those who escaped. Jon Gambrell, AP
Watch out for the unexpected in commodities in 2017. Barclays Plc said raw materials markets from energy to metals face the high likelihood of disruptions, giving a laundry list of possible threats including a default by Venezuela, riots in Chile and a trade war with China.

The new politics of populism and protectionist trade policies have the potential to disrupt global supply and demand assumptions for various commodities, analysts including Michael Cohen and Dane Davis wrote in a Jan. 5 report. We see risks skewed to the upside in 2017, based on a high likelihood of disruption risk.

Commodities advanced in 2016 to post the first annual gain since 2010 as energy markets rebounded and investors reacted to unexpected political events including Donald Trumps election win in the U.S. and Britains vote to quit the European Union. Barclays said that the markets will surprise in some fashion this year, and the banks analysis illustrated the key point that politics are likely to matter just as much as economics.

Commodity market black swan events come in many forms, and the market may take years or an instant to price them in, the analysts wrote, defining them as extreme events or dynamics that market participants arent currently pricing in. China, Russia, the Middle East and Turkey are likely to surprise the commodity complex in 2017.

The bank listed more than dozen potential black swan events, dividing them into threats to supply, such as a loss of oil output in Venezuela after a default, and threats to demand, such as an unexpected slowdown in Chinas economy. There were also what it termed threats to transit, with risks to the supply routes that are vital to the flow of raw materials, such as the South China Sea.

China also offered other scopes for concern, with potential for both a slump in the pace of expansion in Asias top economy, hurting raw materials demand, and for a trade war, according to the note. The U.S. may implement a tariff schedule designed to halt the flow of Chinese imports, the bank said.

Heading into 2017, the major black swan risk for commodity demand is an unexpected economic downturn in any of the major commodity consuming nations. Namely, investors will continue to focus on the Chinese economy, it said. While the banks sees solid growth for the country in 2017, shocks do happen, and China is not immune from the unforeseen.

Among the other threats listed, theres potential for riots in Chile after the 2017 general election results, with high and real risks of disruptions to copper production, it said. In Europe, an aggressive Russia could push further into Ukraine, hurting the countrys iron ore output, it said. MDT/Bloomberg
At two separate lunches with local media representatives, Chief Executive Chui Sai On said that the government respects the freedom of the press. Chui said the government would continue to support local media outlets and make an effort to improve relationships between the government, media and residents. He also praised Macaus media industry, saying that it has long maintained a patriotic stance of loving the MSAR, serving the people and maintaining social harmony, thus contributing to the implementation of the One Country, Two Systems policy. Chui and the five government secretaries hosted members of the local Chinese press at a lunch on Wednesday, while the English and Portuguese press attended one yesterday.

Customs arrests 16 smugglers

The Macau Customs Service (SA) arrested 16 smugglers and seized one boat in the Outer Harbor area earlier this week. The SA said in a notice that one of the smugglers, suspected of having transported the other 15 criminals into Macau, jumped into the sea in an attempt to escape. At the same time, the mainland customs authorities also informed the SA about three men swimming in the direction of Macau at said location. The SA arrested one of the men in question, while the other two were seized by the Public Police Security Force (PSP) together with mainland customs authorities.
Turkish police are closing in on the gunman who killed 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub, a senior official said yesterday, insisting his possible whereabouts and contacts had been established. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told A Haber news channel in an interview that gunman who attacked Istanbuls upscale Reina nightclub during New Years celebrations, is most probably from Chinas Muslim Uighur minority and was a specially trained member of a [terror] cell.

Germany: Tunisian who dined with market attacker arrested

An acquaintance of suspected Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri who dined with him the night before the rampage is under investigation for possible participation in planning the attack, German prosecutors said. He was arrested, but in a separate case. The 26-year-old Tunisian had known Amri since the end of 2015 and the pair ate together at a Berlin restaurant the night before the Dec. 19 attack, said Frauke Koehler, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors. His quarters at a refugee home were searched on Tuesday.
Gray is a dying town, its residents lament. Big businesses have moved away, taking jobs with them. Though it still lives up to its nickname Gray la jolie, or Gray the pretty, many stores now lie vacant, with fading to rent signs in their windows.

But for one Syrian family, the picturesque streets, red-tiled rooftops and quiet river walks offer hope of rebuilding their shattered lives, away from the fear of death lurking around every corner in their homeland.

I will start to love life another time, said Abd Alwahab Alahamad, a 43-year-old Damascus oncologist. Because sometimes [in the] last two years, I thought it will be very difficult to stay alive.

Like hundreds of thousands before them, the Alahamads risked everything to escape war and the dark brutality of the Islamic State group, embarking on a perilous and uncertain journey through checkpoints, bombs and a nightmarish sea crossing to Greece.

But after months of uncertainty and doubt, their luck began to change. Alahamad, his wife Iman Mshanati and their three children  5-year-old Nora, 2-year-old Ahmed and baby Layan, born in Greece six months ago  were among the fortunate few accepted so far into an ambitious European relocation program.

Launched in late 2015, the program was designed to relieve pressure on Greece and Italy, the main entry points for more than a million people fleeing into the European Union. But it has come under fire for moving too slowly. Of the 66,400 people who should be relocated from Greece by this September, just 7,286 had been resettled by the end of December, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration, which organizes the transfers. France has taken in the most refugees from Greece, 2,420. The next highest-receiver is the Netherlands, which has taken 836.

Applicants cannot choose their destination. The Alahamads were assigned to France, a country neither the Russian-trained doctor nor his wife, a 33-year-old nutritionist and beautician, had ever visited.

We are going into the unknown; We do not know the city, the people, nothing, said Mshanti in a small apartment in Athens the day before the familys flight to Paris, three small suitcases sitting neatly packed on the floor. But we hear from people who had left before us that they are happy, and we felt relieved.

The family had never intended to leave Syria. They didnt expect the 2011 street protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad to turn into a full-blown civil war.

At first everybody thought  not only me  that it will finish tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, Alahamad said of the early days of the rebellion.

The trials of their months-long journey are etched on their faces.

In 2014, warned government forces were looking for him after he treated a man for gunshot wounds, Alahamad fled Damascus. He moved the family to an eastern town near the city of Deir-e-Zor, where his parents are from, and quickly found a job in a private clinic.

But the war followed.

The area was overrun by IS extremists who imposed strict Islamic rule. Mshanti had to wear the all-enveloping black abaya; Alahamad was questioned for treating female patients, and forced to watch a public killing. A family friend was beheaded, his body left on the street for three days. Relentless bombings claimed the lives of relatives and friends.

After a particularly close call, when rockets landed near their home, wounding relatives, Alahamad decided the time had come.

I left. I left everything behind, he said.

With two young children and a pregnant wife, the journey was harrowing. The nighttime treks and border crossing, the smugglers, the ride jammed into the back of a truck with nearly 100 others. But nothing compared to the boat crossing from Turkey to Greece. Nora cried, clutching her fathers hand. She was convinced they would die.

Their first try failed. The couple paid USD800 each, for four spots in an overcrowded dinghy that nobody on board knew how to drive. They went round in circles on the Aegean Sea until the Turkish coast guard intercepted the boat and took all its passengers to a detention center.

On their second attempt, a fellow passenger motored for hours through rough seas to the Greek island of Chios. The family reached mainland Greece 10 days later.

Alahamad spent months working as a volunteer doctor in refugee camps housing some of the more than 62,000 asylum seekers stranded in Greece by border closures and a deal between the EU and Turkey intended to stem the flow of migrants into Europe. He and Mshanti thought of staying, but Greeces asylum system was overwhelmed.

So they applied for relocation. Months of waiting ensued, punctuated by interviews with authorities for the relocation procedure and Layans birth. Then in September, the news they had been waiting for: Their application was successful.

The Alahamads were assigned to Gray, a pretty, sleepy medieval town in eastern France of about 6,000 people on the River Saone just before it flows into Burgundy. They would be part of the second group of families sent there from Greece. The first arrived in March, with a maximum 29 people arriving each time.

Gray Mayor Christophe Laurencot stipulated the town would accept only families, and each would be assigned a social worker. The families are given housing while they apply for asylum, a process that normally takes about four months in the fast-track relocation procedure, said Guillaume Germain, regional director of the French Immigration and Integration Office. Once granted refugee status, they can stay in state housing for another six months while searching for jobs and living arrangements of their own, but are free to move elsewhere in France if they prefer. Of the first five families to arrive in Gray, four have moved elsewhere.

But small, close-knit towns do not always embrace outsiders. To facilitate integration, Laurencot decided the best tactic was full transparency and informed residents about the program before the first arrivals in March.

We had reactions straight away, he said. Good, less good or bad, I had them all. Some residents offered overwhelming generosity, while others questioned why the state should help foreigners.

But, Laurencot said, France is after all a country of hosts, a country of reception, a welcoming country. And its not enough to say it; we had to do it.

So far, the mayors tactic appears to be working.

Its very, very good, we see them pass by, there are no worries on that account, everything is going well, said Stephanie Vanhee, who runs an optical shop in Gray. Toddler Ahmed squealed with joy at being allowed to pet her puppy, Morito, during the familys first tour around town. It must be done, you know. We must receive them.

Clothing store owner Roberte Fouillot said reactions were more or less positive, although there was some initial reticence to the idea, what with the recent terror attacks by Islamic extremists and demands on social services by needy French people. But images of the war in Syria in the media shocked her.

These poor kids, these poor families who are suffering  its unacceptable in our day and age, Fouillot said.

As for the issue of integration, Fouillot does not foresee problems.

They are people like everyone else. We all have our religion, she said. Today, if everyone reached out to each other, well, there might be less wars, less misery in the world.

The Alahamads arrived in Gray on a foggy mid-December night. Allocated a bare but warm apartment, Alahamad and Mshanti breathed a sigh of relief. They look forward to learning French, finding work and sending the children to school. Alahamad hopes France will recognize his Russian medical degree.

An exploratory walk, with Nora and Ahmed playing excitedly in a small playground near the river, cemented their impression: The town was perfect. The worst, they hoped, was finally behind them.

Its difficult. We lost many things, Alahamad said. I want to start a new life. Now, I think we have a chance. Elena Becatoros, Gray, AP
The government has responded to public criticism of the recent fee increase for some services under the Traffic Affairs Bureau (DSAT), especially those concerning the removal of vehicles and deposits when caught in violation of parking law.

The Spokespersons Office held a joint press conference at the government headquarters this week, together with representatives from DSAT and the Public Security Police Force (PSP).

At the conference, DSAT director Lam Hin San and PSP commander Leong Man Cheong tried to clarify the motives behind the new regulation.

Lam said fines had been raised because most of the stipulated amounts havent changed since 1998, which has led to an increase in the spending of the administrative services.

The government intends to recoup some of the costs incurred through this adjustment. The goal of the measure is only to cover some of the expenditure and not to make a profit, he said.

Lam argued that the policy would alleviate the lack of available public parking spaces and create fairer parking conditions in the long term.

Lam revealed that more than 900,000 fines were issued throughout 2016 and that 255,000 were related to parking meters.

He also highlighted the governments efforts to increase the number of available parking spots, which resulted in the creation of about 2,000 new parking spots in 2016. Lam expects the number of new spots to double in 2017.

Leong said the PSP has always been concerned about the illegal occupation of public car parks. He said between January 1 and 3, only 44 vehicles were blocked for illegal parking, of which only three were towed.

Leong added that the PSPs main priority is targeting vehicles that show signs of prolonged occupation of parking spaces, damage or abandonment.

The authorities will continue to combat illegal parking [] in order to free public space and prevent abuse, he reaffirmed.

A group of unhappy citizens, supported by lawmakers Pereira Coutinho and Leong Veng Chai, have booked a demonstration for Sunday afternoon to urge the government to withdraw the new policy. RM
For Chinese immigrants and their offspring in Japan, while they learn the Japanese language and try to fit in there, many of them are still making great efforts to sharpen their mother tongue.

This was evidenced on Friday in the city of Kobe as dozens of children with a Chinese lineage attended a Chinese speech contest to proudly display the achievements theyve made in mastering the language of their home country.

It was the third time for 18-year-old Ren Xiaoning to take part in the contest. She came to Japan with her parents when she was only 10 years old, and while shes made a great effort to learn Japanese, she has never forgotten her mother tongue.

I talk with my parents in Chinese, I read books in Chinese, and I watch Chinese soap operas on the Internet, she said, citing the means she used to improve her language skills, as she no longer has Chinese lessons in school.

The distance between the second-generation immigrants and China has narrowed greatly compared to years ago, as later generations have much easier access to Chinese culture and language thanks to the Internet and other technology.

Im watching Stay With Me recently, Ren said, referring to a popular TV opera in China. I dont want to forget my mother tongue. Besides, China is developing fast and I would like to know more about China in the future, she said.

This years contest has the theme Starting Point and Ren talked about the college life that she looks forward to ahead of a career as a businesswoman traveling between China and Japan.

Wu You, a primary school student, came to Japan when she was little. Her parents entered her into a school that teaches lessons in Chinese.

In schools such as the Kobe Chinese School, lessons are taught in Chinese, and teaching materials compiled by the school itself are used. The school has even attracted many Japanese students who are interested in Chinese culture or want to learn the Chinese language.

For Hu Shiyun, a professor at Kobe Gakuin University, immigrant children face two difficulties when studying Chinese: firstly, they lack the opportunity to speak or write the language, when using it is the fastest way to pick up a language; secondly, they dont have conditions, as in China, that are conducive to learning the language.

The China Cup Chinese Speech Contest, launched in 2007, has been held annually since then, aiming to provide a platform for young Chinese in Japan to showcase their Chinese-speaking skills and encourage them to study it further.

The speech contest gives children a platform to exhibit their achievements and encourages them to learn more. Many of the students even spend several months making preparations, said Hu Shiyun, one of the founders of the contest.

The children are enthusiastic about their mother tongue. For one thing, they have their roots in China, and their families encourage them to remember that. In addition, the Chinese economy is developing rapidly. Hence, mastering Chinese also means grasping the key to open the door to Chinas vast market, he said. MDT/Xinhuat
With the Taipa Line of the Macau Light Rapid Transit (LRT) project planned for a 2019 launch, local transport authorities have admitted that they have no estimates for ticket fares, nor do they have projections for the number of passengers expected to use the service on a daily basis.

The Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT) announced that it is conducting studies on ticket pricing, the results of which will be announced closer to the launch date.

The government is conducting relevant studies and preliminary works on the LRT ticket pricing. To formulate future policies, the government will carefully consider various factors including social and economic benefits, public affordability [and] system operating costs, said the GIT in a statement emailed to the Times. Relevant progress will be announced in due course.

Early government projections claimed that the system could accommodate a maximum of 7,800 passengers per hour per direction across both lines.

However, as the Taipa Line took priority over the Macau Peninsula Line, the GIT said the government will further study and assess the passenger flow for the project.

The GIT refused to comment on whether project developers had forecasted an average number of commuters per hour. A GIT representative said the only passenger assessment conducted to date was of the systems expected maximum capacity.

At the very beginning of the LRT project development, the project consultant carried out relevant research on capacity of the LRT system. According to the assessment at that time, the LRT will operate 19 hours a day with the maximum capacity of 7,800 passengers per hour, per direction. Based on the assessment result, the government then carried out the procurement of rolling stock and systems and the construction works, explained the GIT.

If the LRT operates as expected  for 19 hours a day, with a total capacity of up to 15,600 passengers per hour  the light rail infrastructure would be able to accommodate almost 300,000 passengers daily.

However, Macaus small land mass and abundance of alternative transportation options means that the willingness of residents and non-resident workers to use the LRT will depend on ticket pricing, relative convenience and journey length, among other factors.

Peter Zabielskis, a scholar and urban development expert at the University of Macau, told the Times that convenience will be the major factor for residents, provided that tickets are not too expensive.

He rationalized that LRT stations near Cotais integrated resorts might attract customers among the territorys many casino workers.

I cant speculate about the prices, cautioned Zabielskis, but MOP10-20 might be a bit too high and would act as a disincentive. People are very content with the low bus prices. They are also aware of the high government [budget] surplus and assume that it will be used for socio-economic improvement. I expect there will be resistance to high prices.

Some residents told the Times that motorbikes and scooters will remain the preferred option for many locals, because of the flexibility they offer in terms of parking.

For the citys low-wage workers, the MOP2 fare for a bus ride in town is likely to remain the most attractive option. Most journeys clock in at under 30 minutes, while the bus network offers multiple nodes that give travelers greater flexibility in choosing where to start and end their journeys.

On the other hand, tourists are typically less price-sensitive and, according to some academic studies, are more influenced by convenience when choosing their mode of transport.

This is fortunate for those responsible for the LRT project, as the Taipa Line will connect the Taipa Ferry Terminal and the Macau International Airport to the Cotai area.

Seemingly built for tourists, the Taipa Line will encourage cross-boundary transportation for visitors from Guangdong Province, according to the GIT website. In its capacity as a motivation [for] the regions development potential and promoting the increase of people flow inside the city and among regions, it remains to be seen whether the LRT system will attract more tourists through boasting improved connectivity.

Nevertheless, locals may be satisfied with the investment even if few of them plan to use the system. Zabielskis told the Times that transportation issues now top the list of residents most pressing concerns.

As far as I know, the number one problem mentioned by people in Macau is transportation  even more than public housing. Its a very important issue.

From the start, [the LRT] was geared toward moving casino customers around and was supported [by locals] because it would keep non-locals off the roads and reduce the number of shuttle buses causing congestion, he said.

The LRT project has been in the works, at least in a conceptual sense, since 2002 when former chief executive Edmund Ho announced that the MSAR government would begin developing a brand new mass transit system.

The Macau segment of the line was more recently put on hold as construction authorities refocused their efforts on completing the Taipa Line, which is estimated to cost at least MOP11 billion.

Today, construction works can be seen across much of Taipa, with the skeleton infrastructure blending seamlessly with other large-scale projects in the area. The works have caused traffic diversions, road closures and congestion  much to the annoyance of some residents, who were gridlocked in a two-way, hours- long standstill at both ends of Amizade Bridge last year.

Local perspectives

Gabriela Lam, a 25-year-old retail worker residing in Taipa, told the Times that she would be interested in using the LRT to travel to and from the Macau peninsula if the service was competitively priced. She said she would be a regular user of the LRT if ticket fares were set at around MOP2-3, similar to buses in the MSAR. However, she would use it only occasionally if they were priced at MOP10 or above. Given the relative distances covered by Hong Kongs MTR and Macaus planned LRT, Lam said she would be surprised if the latter is more expensive for commuters.

Cheok Chin Seng, an 18-year-old student at the University of Macau, told the Times that he will use the LRT service once it is up and running. Of course I will choose the LRT, the Macau resident said, adding that he would be prepared to pay up to MOP10 for a single journey  but at that price, he will only take the LRT when he needs to arrive at his destination urgently. Otherwise, he expects to pay MOP5. Macau is so small, I dont think it will be very expensive, he said.

Joana Leong, a 24-year-old professional in Macau, says she will not use the LRT for commuting given the short distance between her home and workplace. She told the Times that for general use, she would be prepared to pay around MOP5-10 for a single journey. MOP15 is too much In fact, MOP13 is too much! said Leong. I cannot foresee when I would need to pay MOP13 for a one-way trip [] it feels like too much.

Simon Lam, 33, the co-owner of iAOHiN Gallery in Macau, said that the LRT project is a step in the right direction for Macau transportation and that he would happily fork out MOP10-20 for a ride, provided that the service is frequent, runs at night and most importantly, runs where most people live [and] need to go. Emphasizing the need for the LRT service to facilitate better transportation for people living and working in the city, Lam criticized the projects current trajectory as more [of] a shuttle for casino-goers than any real solution to [the] polluting transport chaos in Macau. DB/JZ/LV

LRT fares likely to exceed bus prices

Ticket pricing will be a major factor in determining the light rails usage, sustainability and even profitability  especially as it will likely influence locals willingness to use the service.

However, the Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT) admitted that little consideration has been given to ticket fares.

Local residents told the Times this week that LRT fares will be a major consideration in how frequently they use the service, but many were under the impression that tickets would cost less than MOP10. Others said that ticket prices should be similar to local bus fares.

At around MOP2-3 for a one-way ticket, a trip to town on the LRT would only cost as much as a bus fare. If ticket prices are similar to the cost of short journeys on Hong Kongs MTR, commuters may be expected to pay around MOP10-15. Any more would place the fare closer to that of a brief journey by taxi or ride-hailing service.

The number of years needed to recover the MOP11 billion investment in financial terms (excluding socio-economic benefits) will depend not only on the price of tickets, but also the average volume of passengers daily. The GIT could not provide an estimate, reiterating in an email to the Times that the only available statistic is the maximum capacity of around 300,000 passengers per day.

Data is difficult to compile for occupancy rates of metro systems. According to the 2012 National Transit Database in the U.S., most major cities (excluding New York City, Boston and Phoenix) record an average occupancy rate of between 25 and 45 percent for light rail systems. This includes both peak and off-peak hours.

Meanwhile, a 2014 discussion in Hong Kongs LegCo revealed that some of the citys MTR lines recorded an average occupancy rate at almost 70 percent for both morning and afternoon peak hours.

The MTR network operates in a city that serves a resident population roughly 11 times larger than Macaus, and a tourist population about twice as numerous. Ticket fares vary depending on journey distance, but are typically priced between HKD10 and HKD30.

For example, a short one-way ride from Central to Mong Kok  a route frequented by tourists, at a distance comparable to that of a typical journey on Macaus LRT  would cost HKD13.5, or about HKD12 with an Octopus card.

The size of the customer base in Hong Kong allows for economies of scale, which reduce the revenue required for each individual trip in order to break even. Contrarily, a concessionaire operating the Macau LRT might have to charge more per individual ticket in order to offset the significant fixed costs of regular maintenance, repairs and staffing.
Last week we looked at why people might want to review their investment strategy, and how to start forming investment goals.

This weeks article looks at two more steps that are important considerations for achieving those goals.

4. Be clear on the timescale  Is this a long-term or short term investment?

When exactly do you need the money?

You may need to factor in contractual investment periods e.g. fixed term bonds for 3 or 5 years or possibly how long an investment property sale takes to complete.

When will you need the money to be available?

5. Income or capital investment?

Do you want a regular income or a lump sum as the end of the investment?

Further considerations are  How long do you want to tie this money up for? Will you put it in to high or low risk investments?

If you are looking to grow a lump sum over a longer period of time say two years or more, then considering the capital growth of a well-invested property would be worthwhile.

If you are considering needing a regular income, looking at rentable properties might be the way forward for you.

If you choose rental income then how much on a monthly basis do you need to make? When does the property need to start earning for you?

Property prices in Macau have dropped significantly over the past two years, and whilst there is no guarantee for the future, you should find that a good rental investment will out-perform money sitting in the bank or under the mattress so to speak.

There is certainly no magic answer when it comes to making money, if there was we would all be doing it, so taking time to consider our goals and options to make the most of what we have is always a good idea.

* Figures expressed in MOP unless otherwise stated

www.JMLProperty.com

info@JMLProperty.com
South Koreas Constitutional Court yesterday began to hear oral arguments in the impeachment trial of President Park Geun-hye, who lawmakers voted to remove over a corruption scandal that saw millions of people protest over the last several months.

Parks lawyers and lawmakers, who serve as prosecutors in the trial, traded pointed arguments yesterday on the validity of accusations that she colluded with a confidante to extort money and favors from companies and allowed the friend to unlawfully interfere with government affairs.

Lawmaker Kweon Seong Dong, the chief prosecutor in the trial, said Park betrayed the trust people put in her by broadly and gravely violating the constitution and criminal laws. Parks lawyer, Lee Joong-hwan, said the accusations stated in the impeachment bill lack evidence and fail to make legal sense because they were based on allegations and media reports, not criminal convictions.

The hearing proceeded without Park, who refused to testify for the second time following her no-show on Tuesday. The nine-justice court cannot force Park to appear.

Parks lawyers may prefer her not to testify because their chief argument is that the accusations against Park havent been fully proven, said Han Sang-hie, a law professor at Seouls Konkuk University. Park rejected requests by state prosecutors to question her and has yet to be questioned by the special prosecution team that has taken over the inquiry.

The court has six months to decide if Park should permanently step down or should be reinstated. AP
As Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in as U.S. president, state-run think tanks in South Korea are raising the possibility of the country being labeled a currency manipulator along with China.

Korea was listed in the U.S. Treasury Departments currency watch list in October, along with China, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland, for meeting two of the three criteria used to monitor currency practices. Theres concern in Seoul that the U.S. may adjust the criteria so Trump can make good on his pledge to brand China a currency manipulator within 100 days of taking office, and that changes could also apply to South Korea.

While Trumps focus with Korea has been more on the free trade agreement with the U.S. and how it has affected his countrys trade deficit, the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy warned in a Jan. 4 report that changes to the criteria would bring a high possibility of Korea being tagged a manipulator. The think tank also noted that the U.S. may target smaller economies like Taiwan and Korea before China.

Korean authorities have repeatedly said that they only perform smoothing operations when volatility in the currency markets is high, and that they dont target a specific direction or level. Koreas trade surplus with the U.S. was more than USD23 billion in 2016, and its current-account surplus is expected to amount to $97 billion in 2016, close to seven percent of gross domestic product. MDT/Bloomberg
Taiwan has protested to Vietnam after the country deported four Taiwanese accused of fraud to its rival, China, alleging that this was done under pressure from Beijing.

Scores of Taiwanese have been arrested around the world in the past year in connection with vast telecoms fraud scams targeting Chinese. Countries including Malaysia, Cambodia and Kenya have recently deported Taiwanese suspects to China, in deference to Beijings claim to sovereignty over the self-governing island.

Taiwan has vigorously protested the deportations, saying it should be allowed to prosecute its own citizens. But it lacks diplomatic relations with many of the countries, which have close diplomatic and economic ties to Beijing.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that it regretted that the Vietnamese government violated the principle of governments exercising their jurisdiction over their overseas nationals. The ministry said mainland officials obstructed Taiwanese attempts to look into the case and visit its citizens, and despite several meetings, Vietnam forcibly sent the suspects to the Chinese mainland under intense pressure.

Beijing contends that Taiwan gives light treatment to the suspects, who are accused of extorting hundreds of Chinese by posing as bank or government officials. Chinese authorities say they should try the cases because their citizens are the primary victims and have been swindled out of millions of dollars.

China has upped pressure on Taiwanese President Tsai Ing- wen in recent months, suspending contacts with her administration and waging a diplomatic campaign to further isolate Taiwan after she refused to endorse Beijings claim that Taiwan and the mainland are part of a single Chinese nation. AP
Protests over a sharp gasoline price hike erupted into looting of gas stations and stores in various parts of Mexico on Wednesday, with dozens of businesses reportedly sacked.

Protesters also continued to block highways, burn tires and seize gas stations, snarling traffic and jeopardizing fuel supplies across the country.

The National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores of Mexico said in a statement that 79 stores had been looted and 170 were closed or blockaded in central Mexico, including the capital.

The unrest resulting in the theft of merchandise put at risk the lives of clients and workers in the stores, primarily in Mexico State, Michoacan, Hidalgo and Mexico City, the statement said.

In the Gulf coast city of Veracruz, 50 establishments including convenience stores, supermarkets and big-box outlets suffered looting, according to a preliminary count by the local chamber of commerce.

Store guards were overrun by crowds who carried off clothing, food, washing machines, televisions, DVD players and refrigerators.

Extra police patrols were deployed, and at least 14 people were detained, the state government reported. At one supermarket officers fired into the air to disperse the multitudes.

Earlier in the day, President Enrique Pena Nieto took to the airwaves to defend his unpopular gasoline deregulation measure that resulted in price hikes of up to 20 percent over the weekend.

The increases took effect as the government ends regulated prices for gasoline and diesel, which it says represented subsidies that unduly benefited wealthier Mexicans.

The change boosted the average price for a liter of premium gasoline to 17.79 pesos (about 90 cents). That makes 4 liters, or about a gallon, equal to nearly as much asMexicos just raised minimum wage for a days work  80 pesos (about $4).

Pena Nieto said he would try to help groups hit hard by the increases, in an apparent reference to bus, truck and taxi drivers.

I understand the anger and irritation felt by the general public, Pena Nieto said, saying that this is an action that nobody would want to take.

If this decision had not been taken, the effects and consequences would have been far more painful, he added.

The farm activist group El Barzon said that even with tax breaks or government support for truck drivers, the wave of anger and discontent among Mexicans cannot be held back.

The state-owned oil company Pemex said Tuesday that blockades of fuel terminals in the states of Chihuahua, Morelos and Durango had caused a critical situation in distributing fuel to gas stations there.

It said that if the blockades continued, it could interrupt operations at airports in Chihuahua and Baja California.

The countrys industrial chamber, known as Concamin, said that impeding production and commerce is not the best way to handle the increase in fuel prices. Lev Garcia, Mark Stevenson, AP
When University of Cincinnati researchers uncovered the 3,500-year-old tomb of a Bronze Age Warrior in southwest Greece in 2015, they unearthed far more than an incredible trove of priceless gold and silver cups, precious jewelry, bronze weapons and armor and other riches.

The discovery, hailed by experts as the find of a lifetime, represents a time capsule preserving not only the details of the life of what is believed to have been a powerful Mycenaean warrior or priest, but of an era of ancient Greek civilization still steeped in mystery.

Dead men do tell tales. And what the tomb of the so-called Griffin Warrior tells scholars may unlock the mysteries of the roots of Western civilization.

Sharon Stocker, a senior research associate in UC's Department of Classics, and Jack Davis, the university's Carl W. Blegen chair in Greek archaeology, continue to reveal new revelations from artifacts discovered in the tomb, including important insights gleaned from four Minoan-style gold signet rings that are on their own a hugely significant find for scholars.
TWIN FALLS  Police on Friday arrested a felon suspected of being illegally armed and stealing a luxury car and a large wad of cash from a woman with whom hed been staying.

Eric Courtney Hunter, 37, was arrested about 8:20 a.m. when a sheriffs deputy spotted him driving the stolen 2007 BMW 530i on Addison Avenue East near Elm Street, Twin Falls Police Lt. Terry Thueson said.

Officers swarmed the area Friday morning to surround and arrest Hunter and later found a shotgun hidden inside the stolen car, Thueson said. They also found a large sum of cash that matched the description a woman gave of money Hunter stole from her.

Hunter was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in California, Thueson said. Court records showed he also served a year in prison in Idaho for intimidating a witness and finished that prison term in August. Those convictions precluded Hunter from legally possessing a firearm.

Initial police reports suggested Hunter was wanted in connection to a robbery, but Thueson clarified Friday afternoon that he was wanted for stealing the car and the cash, which he allegedly took while the victim was sleeping and not by force or violence.

Police began searching for Hunter about 6:30 a.m. Friday when a woman who lives on Monroe Street called to report that Hunter, who had been living with her for about a month, stole her car and her savings sometime during the night, Thueson said.

About 8:15 a.m., a Twin Falls County Sheriffs deputy spotted the stolen car and stopped Hunter, and police swarmed the car on Addison Avenue East near Albertsons Market. Officers detained Hunter without incident and found the cash and shotgun inside the stolen car.

Police are seeking to charge Hunter with two counts of grand theft for stealing the car and cash, and one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Hes expected to be arraigned on the charges Monday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court.
TWIN FALLS  With a new president in Washington and state lawmakers reconvening in Boise in this week, there will be plenty for government and public policy aficionados to watch for in 2017.

Meanwhile, downtown Twin Falls is expected to see a flurry of activity as two projects  the Main Avenue redesign and the construction of a new City Hall  are expected to be finished, putting a new face on downtown Twin Falls and, boosters of the projects hope, draw more people and businesses to the area.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. The legislative session

The next session of the Idaho Legislature starts Monday. Overall, the already-very Republican body will be a bit more Republican than it was in 2016  the GOP gained three House seats and one in the Senate in the 2016 election. The leadership is the same on the Republican side  including Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, who will still be speaker of the House  while the Democrats changed things up due to former House Minority Leader John Rusches electoral loss. Rep. Matt Erpelding, D-Boise, will now be leading his caucus, Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, is stepping in to Erpeldings former role as assistant minority leader, and the new minority caucus chair is Rep. Elaine Smith, D-Pocatello, replacing Rep. Donna Pence, D-Gooding, who didnt run for re-election.

There changes in committee leadership, too  notably Sen. Dan Johnson is replacing Sen. Jeff Siddoway, who has opposed tax cuts for the past two session, as chairman of Senate Local Government and Taxation  but those Magic Valley Republicans who had chairmanships before kept them. Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, will continue to lead House Appropriations, while Sen. Lee Heider, R-Twin Falls and Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, will continue to lead the Senate and House Health and Welfare committees, respectively. Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, will head Senate Transportation, Sen. Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, will head Senate Commerce and Human Resources, and Rep. Stephen Hartgen, R-Twin Falls, will head House Commerce.

So how does that affect the new political landscape?

Expect plenty of talk about tax cuts, education and transportation funding, health care policy, whether to allow certain cannabis-containing oils and lotions for medical purposes, civil asset forfeiture laws, and reforms to the states campaign finance disclosure laws. Numerous Republican lawmakers have said they want to cut taxes this year  Assistant Majority Leader Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told reporters in December he expects cutting income tax rates and the personal property tax, a tax businesses pay on their equipment, to be the focuses.

2. The governors race

Nobody is going to vote for governor until 2018, but with two declared candidates and one congressman weighing whether to get in, you can expect people to keep talking about it.

Lt. Gov. Brad Little has already declared his intent to run for the job, as has former state Sen. Russ Fulcher, who challenged incumbent Gov. C.L. Butch Otter in the primary in 2014. U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador could still get into the race as well  he said in late December he is still actively weighing whether to run but is focusing on his job in Congress for the time being. And with more than a year before any of the filing deadlines, there is still plenty of time for others to get in.

No Democrats have publicly declared their intent to run for the job yet.

Another possible wrinkle is whether Otter, who has said he is not going to seek another term, will get appointed to a job in the Trump administration. Otter is being vetted for secretary of Agriculture, his second choice for a job in the administration. (President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Montana U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke as secretary of the Interior, the job that was first on Otters list.) If Otter were to leave the governorship to go to D.C., Little would become governor, giving him some time doing the job before facing Fulcher and whoever else in the primary in May 2018.

3. Federal policy

With Donald Trumps presidential victory, the GOP now has control of the presidency as well as Congress, and many of the new policies that will be coming out of Washington, D.C., are going to affect people in Idaho. Already Trumps victory has changed the conversation on how or whether to extend health care coverage to the uninsured. With congressional Republicans vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, many Idaho lawmakers have been saying it is extremely unlikely the Legislature will consider Medicaid expansion, the preferred solution of the Democrats and of advocates for people in the Medicaid gap.

Any changes in agricultural or trade policy could certainly have an outsized impact on Idaho, and theres still the possibility Otter could influence the countrys direction on these questions, should he be appointed to Trumps administration. The Interior Departments policies will also have a big impact on Idaho and other Western states with large amounts of federally owned land within their borders. Zinke has publicly opposed transferring these lands into state or private hands, but he also has a record of supporting policies to allow for more logging and oil and gas drilling.

Trump has also promised more restrictive policies on refugee admissions and on immigration. While the details on how this will look arent completely clear  Will he deport more undocumented immigrants? How many refugees from the Middle East will continue to come to the United States?  many people in the Magic Valley, a region that is home to a refugee resettlement center and which is home to many undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico, will be watching with interest to see how the new administration approaches these issues.

4. The Main Avenue redesign and new City Hall

Major portions of Twin Falls Main Avenue will be closed for parts of next spring, summer and into the fall, part of a multi-million dollar project spearheaded by the Urban Renewal Agency to rebuild the sections of Main in the downtown core and, it is hoped, assist in revitalizing Twin Falls downtown.

The current schedule calls for removal of the trees that are lining Main now to begin in February and for construction, which will proceed one block at a time, to start in March and be done by the end of October.

At the same time Main Avenue is getting a new face, work will continue on the new City Hall going into the former Banner furniture building at Main and Hansen; on the new plaza being built at the site of the former Rogerson hotel across the street from the new City Hall; and on the Public Safety Complex going into the current police station and former City Hall building, which will be renovated for their new use. The city hopes to be done with these projects before the end of 2017.
TWIN FALLS  Mina Kratchunova looks to her family for inspiration. Now she hopes her debut exhibit will inspire others.

Kratchunova is unveiling 16 paintings at 6 p.m. Saturday at Artforum Gallery in downtown Twin Falls. This event is free and open to the public.

Kratchunova has been an artist her entire life. Shes dabbled in drawing and painting, and has done custom finishing and cabinet making. She currently works as a full-time massage therapist and jewelry maker.

But she didnt start painting with oils until her father, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013. Krachunov died Oct. 5, 2014.

Krachunov was a prolific artist during the months before his death. Kratchunova often accompanied her father during these painting sessions at his studio, Artforum Gallery.

I drove him to chemo a lot and when he felt sick, he wanted to paint, she said. I would hang out with him when hed paint.

Krachunov was from Bulgaria and known in Idaho for his murals and paintings found in private collections, churches and in parks in Sun Valley, Boise, Twin Falls and Coeur dAlene. Before moving to Twin Falls, he and his wife, Marianna, owned a gallery in Bulgaria and a pottery store in London. They met while students at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. They were married 36 years and have two daughters, Mina Kratchunova and Roumena Kratchunova.

I think shes really serious about her work right now, Marianna said. Thats why she wants to start with this debut. I think that she finally realized how artistic she is. I think the passing of her dad made a lot changes and she realizes what potential she has now.

Kratchunova said she was always intimidated by oils, but found solace in the medium after her fathers death. She now enjoys using the palette knife to paint.

Oil is very intimidating because it dries slowly and is messy and very textured, she said. It is also very forgiving once it dries. I think I refocused my grief and energy in a positive way. I found a way to channel that into painting.

Today, Kratchunova and her mother paint together once a week at the family studio.

You feel a different energy when you are painting with someone else, she said. I have been inspired by both my parents.

She is also influenced by her 6-year-old daughter, Liliyanna, who has taken an early interest in painting and already won awards.

Kratchunovas paintings at her exhibit are for sale and feature land and seascapes. Kratchunova said you can see her fathers abstract influence in some of her art pieces. After his cancer diagnosis, Krachunovs painting style changed from realism and surrealism to more abstract. Some of her fathers later work depicted a man holding a fish that contains the world inside it and glowing nuclei.

I just want to inspire people on an artistic and creative level, she said.
TWIN FALLS  The sun was shining on mountains of snow and ice downtown when the City Council met Friday to declare a flood disaster emergency.

Better safe than sorry, said City Manager Travis Rothweiler.

Despite the beautiful blue sky overhead, we need to keep (the situation) in perspective, Rothweiler said.

Parts of the Magic Valley received 14 inches of snow on Wednesday, and another 4 inches of snow are expected on the valleys floor over the weekend  followed by an inch of rain.

The emergency declaration, unanimously approved Friday and signed by Mayor Shawn Barigar, will allow the city to spend public funds to protect lives and property in case of flooding over the next week or so.

Jerome also declared an emergency, City Manager Mike Williams said. Mayor Dave Davis signed an emergency declaration Thursday afternoon in anticipation of severe weather conditions and flooding in Jerome County.

In Twin Falls, city workers have worked for days to clear streets of Wednesdays snow, which Rothweiler said was the second heaviest snowfall the city has ever experienced.

An unprecedented accumulation of snow is piled in and along streets and in parking lots, he said. The potential for flooding is significant.

We are taking these steps hoping this isnt needed, he said.

The city is setting up an emergency operation center to handle flooding of the Perrine Coulee, Rock Creek and city streets. The American Red Cross and The Salvation Army have been notified of the potential disaster.

This is the third flood emergency Ive seen while on the City Council, Councilman Chris Talkington said. The intersections are a major problem.

Rothweiler made an appeal to townsfolk.

What makes Twin Falls special is its commitment to community, but we cant do it alone, Rothweiler said. We need citizens to be our eyes and ears.

Twin Falls residents can call 311 on landlines  or 208-735-4357  to alert emergency personnel to dangers to lives or property.

City officials are asking homeowners to clear their gutters of debris and snow, to remove snow from rooftops and to help a neighbor out if needed.

This is where we really shine, Councilwoman Nikki Boyd said.

Rothweiler also suggested everyone sign up for the 2-year-old Citizen Alert Notification through the Southern Idaho Regional Communications Center.

The National Weather Service in Boise reports that warming temperatures and potential for rain could lead to flooding in the western Magic Valley.

Melting of the snowpack could result in street flooding in urban areas, flooding of small streams, fields, and low lying areas. Frozen soils will prevent runoff from soaking into the ground, and snow and ice-clogged gutters and storm drains will contribute to the flood potential. Uncertainty exists in forecast temperatures, precipitation type and amount for next week in these lower valleys, the weather service reported.
As Republicans consider repealing President Barack Obamas health-care law, what bits should they be looking to keep? A lot of people will have different answers to this, of course, but to my mind the most important and unobjectionable bits of Obamacare are payment reform, comparative-effectiveness research and the tax on gold-plated health-care plans.

These are not, you will notice, the most popular bits of Obamacare, the one that President-elect Donald Trump seems to favor. Nor are they the most famous. But all three attempt to tackle the biggest problem with our health-care system: its exorbitant cost. Americans pay a lot more for health-care services than people in other countries, in part because we are richer than other countries (health-care spending tends to rise along with affluence). But we also spend more because of the unique structure of our system, which has allowed provider costs to grow much higher than anywhere else.

Economist Milton Friedman famously divided spending into four types:

Im spending my own money on myself, in which case, I want to get the best combination of price and quality. This is the sort of spending that middle-aged women do on expensive handbags.

Im spending my own money on someone else, in which case I mostly care about price. This is why you get so many books you never read as gifts.

Im spending someone elses money on myself, in which case  WEEEEE! This is the kind of spending that employees do on expense accounts. (Though not, of course, myself. I mean a generic employee with less moral fiber than I have).

Im spending someone elses money on someone else, in which case  ah, who cares?

In our health-care system, almost no spending falls into category one. Medicaid and some employer insurance looks a lot like category two; the rest falls into category three or four. These are very expensive categories of spending, because the incentives for restraint are small, and when someone tries to make them bigger, usually another someone (typically a politician goaded by angry voters) intervenes to make them stop. As our system gets more expensive, pressure rises for third-party payers to pick up even more of the tab for our health care-which of course, just makes the problem worse.

Astute readers may be asking why the problem is so much more serious here than in countries that have an even bigger government presence in the health-care market. There are two reasons. First of all, health-care spending in those countries tends to look more like Medicaid, with heavy price controls on what providers can charge. America has immense difficulty doing this, because the decentralized structure of our government makes it easier to lobby against unpopular payment controls until they are destroyed. And second of all, the fact that our market is kind-of-free-but-not-really makes it extremely difficult for anyone, public or private, to crack down on prices. Providers have a great deal of negotiating power, both because they can lobby the government, and because they can find other payers to give them better prices if one insurer or government program tries to play hardball on reimbursements. So we end up with the worst of both worlds.

Our high costs make everything else harder. Want to do a single payer system, as Trump has suggested in the past? Theres not enough money in the budget, and voters will revolt if you try to raise enough taxes to pay for it. Want a more consumer, market-driven system? Services are simply too expensive for most people to buy out of cash flow. In theory, they could assiduously save up and pay for them out of those savings; in practice, getting people to save is hard, and some people will fall through the cracks.

Obamacare tried to tackle this problem in three ways. First of all, it levied a tax-the Cadillac tax on extremely generous health-insurance plans. The fact that employer-sponsored health-insurance benefits arent taxed like regular compensation, even if the cost of those benefits starts to approach the cost of an entry-level salary, is one of the major drivers behind our third-party-payer problem.

The second portion of Obamacare that Republicans should at least consider keeping is some of the payment reforms. These attempts to tackle the problem from a different angle. Right now, Medicare will pretty much pay for any fool thing your doctor wants to do to you, as long as youll sit still for it. This system, known as Fee for Service, encourages doctors to perform lots of services. The idea behind various payment reforms is that theyll pay the doctor for health (or at least, for having patients), rather than for doing a bunch of stuff to those patients. If the doctors save money, they get a bonus; if hospitals readmit too many patients after theyve been discharged, they get hit with a penalty.

I dont want to oversell the benefits of these reforms, as most journalists writing about them tend to: they are at best modest, and so far, the performance has been undeniably underwhelming. These programs are moving spending out of Category Four, which is good. But theyre moving it into Category Two, which has problems of its own; doctors now have less incentive to overtreat, but more incentive to undertreat. And patient-centered payment models make small practices riskier, because a handful of patients unexpected setbacks can make the business lose money.

The third thing that Republicans should consider keeping is the Independent Payment Advisor Board, otherwise known as the death panel. Its lethal reputation is considerably exaggerated; IPAB will not be considering the fates of individual patients, and it doesnt even have the legal authority to deny treatments. What it can do is look at the evidence and recommend payments based on cost-effectiveness.

I have real concerns over whether the IPAB will end up stifling innovation in the name of keeping costs down. But a government agency that evaluates the current state of medical knowledge, and disseminates that knowledge to doctors, is a good idea. Republicans shouldnt necessarily keep the agency in its current form. But it could be reformed to be a central clearinghouse to make recommendations to insurers, doctors, and patients about what sorts of treatments are apt to work best.

So thats what Republicans should think about keeping. Thats a very different question from what they will consider keeping. Unions hate the Cadillac tax; providers and health-care firms will be lobbying very fiercely to junk the payment reforms. And in the context of a repeal, Republicans will not be able to balance the costs of these programs against a wide array of new goodies for voters. Indeed, theyll be undercutting one of their biggest assets in getting a repeal done: the fact that so many motivated lobbies will benefit from junking the law.
President Rodrigo Duterte is holding a joint command conference with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Friday afternoon.

The PNP will give him a briefing on its campaign against illegal drugs dubbed Oplan Double Barrel.

The AFP will discuss with the President security threats from local terrorist groups, particularly the Abu Sayyaf, the Maute Group and the Al-Khalifa group.

The conference comes three days before the Black Nazarene procession.

Interior and Local Government Secretary Ismael Sueno had said, local terrorist groups may target the religious event.

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His statement is based on some intelligence reports.

He says, law enforcement will be on full alert during the traslacion on Monday, January 9.

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DEPUTY Director Rolando E. Asuncion of the Bureau of Corrections has resigned after he was asked to go on leave pending investigation on his alleged involvement on illegal drug transactions inside the New Bilibid Prison.

Asuncion, a retired police chief superintendent, revealed that he decided to quit instead of taking a leave of absence because he wanted to leave BuCor with a clear conscience.

I decided to resign rather than they destroy me, Asunion told reporters.

Bureau of Corrections Deputy Director Rolando E. Asuncion. Photo of www.bucor.gov.ph

He said BuCor Director Benjamin delos Santos told him to take a leave of absence upon orders of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, following information that he allegedly received money from drug lords inside the prison and that he accepted a car from a high-profile inmate.

These allegations are not true, said Asuncion.

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I just would like you to know, sir that I will leave BuCor with a clear conscience and it is my wish for you to have the same pride and posture when your time as secretary of Justice ends, Asuncion said in a resignation letter to Aguirre.

Despite his decision, the BuCor official welcomed any investigation that will be conducted against him.

When sought for comment, Aguirre denied that he ordered an investigation against Asuncion.

As of this moment, there is no pending investigation against Deputy Director Asuncion. We have just received a copy of his resignation but it is the Office of the President who will act on it, Aguirre said, in a text message to reporters.

Asuncion assumed office as BuCor officer-in-charge last July 19. He continued with the series of raids in the NBP, which resulted in the seizure of cash, drugs and firearms.

Also on Friday, Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno told the Philippine National Police to hew closely to the rule of law, after allegations that police were using the drug war as an excuse to pursue personal veendettas.

I also prod PNP to ensure that [Oplan] Tokhang is not used or abused by policemen for their personal interests or some sort of vendetta against their enemies. Let us make sure that Tokhang is implemented for the sole purpose that it was conceived, and that is to round up drug personalities and other criminals, Sueno said.

Critics of the Duterte administrations knock and plead strategy stressed that although a suspect may quite possibly be guilty, they should not be condemned outright and get killed by the police on the excuse that they were evading law enforcement.

Communist rebels in December also accused government forces of going after activists under the guise of the Presidents door-to-door campaign to flush out drug addicts.

An international human rights watchdog on Friday scored the Duterte administration for making the act of extrajudicial killings normal in the face of its declared war on illegal drugs.

In the Philippineswhich already ranks as the most dangerous country in Asia for [human rights defenders]President Rodrigo Duterte normalized the act of extrajudicial killing in his war on drugs, lowering the political cost of murder and thus raising the risk to defenders whose work threatens powerful interests, the international group Front Line Defenders said in its Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders at Risk in 2016.

The groups executive director, Andrew Anderson, demanded an urgent and systematic response from six countries, including the Philippines, for the killings of human rights defenders.

This report honors the hundreds of defenders killed in 2016. We mourn their loss and celebrate their lives and achievements. Each and every peaceful HRD killed is an outrage. The scale of the killings in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines is a bloody indictment of the governments concerned; it demands an urgent and systematic response, Anderson said.

The report released this week said that at least 31 human rights defenders (HRDs) in the Philippines were murdered in 2016. The group also reported 31 deaths in 2015.

By calling for the extrajudicial killing of those involved in the drug trade, President Duterte has helped create an environment where murder is being promoted as an acceptable method of dealing with certain problems, the report read.

The group also raised the alarm over the Presidents threats to kill human rights advocates in the Philippines for criticizing his war on the illegal drug menace.

The group pointed out that the Presidents threat is liable to have a profound impact on the security of HRDs who are already at grave risk.

According to the group, many attacks in 2016 targeted indigenous or environmental rights HRDs in the Philippines who are opposed to extractive or polluting industries.

The report singled out indigenous peoples rights defender Teresita Navacilla, who was shot dead by two unidentified armed men in Southern Mindanao.

The attack was alleged to have been perpetrated by soldiers assigned to secure a mining project that the [woman human rights defender] campaigned against on environmental grounds. There was no progress in the investigation into her murder, the report said.

John Paolo Bencito

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The Danish parliament on Monday passed a bill that will bar students from taking a second university degree.

The bill restricts individuals who already have a higher education degree from pursuing a degree in another field at the same or a lower level.

The bill was supported by the three government parties as well as the Danish Peoples Party and the Social Democrats. Its backers say the move is a matter or priorities.
Mauritania and Saudi Arabia have sealed a military agreement providing for intelligence and experience sharing and logistical support.

The accord, signed Wednesday by Mauritanian Defense Minister Mamadou Bathia Diallo and Saudi deputy Defense Minister Mohammed ben Abdallah al-Ayech, marks the beginning of a greater and deeper cooperation between the two countries, al-Ayech told Mauritanian state-run news agency, AMI.

The agreement provides for intelligence and experience sharing between the two allies, AMI reported, adding that besides logistical support, Mauritanian soldiers will receive training in the Saudi kingdom.

Mauritania is member of the Saudi-led international coalition in Yemen battling the Houthi rebels reportedly supported by Iran.

However, Nouakchott has not sent any boots yet but Diallo underlined Mauritanias readiness to take up the challenges and protect the sacred shrines of Islam in the Middle East country.

The people of Mauritania greatly hail Saudi Arabias efforts to protect sacred places of Islam that all Muslims are proud of, Diallo added.
As the search for the attacker of the Reina nightclub continues, Turkey has been marred with another attack by terrorists in a car bomb explosion that killed at least two people and left seven injured.

The car was detonated in front of a police outpost in front of a court house in Izmir when it was being searched. Two of the assailants are reported to have been killed while a third one is on the run.

The Governor of the city, Erol Ayyildiz, said information so far obtained suggests that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) carried it out following the review of the attack and the identification of the people involved. He also revealed that another bomb-laden car was safely defused near the scene.

Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak said the ammunition left behind by the assailants shows that they were seemingly planning a massive massacre. Two Kalashnikovs, seven rockets and eight grenades were seized.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet but this weeks nightclub attack was claimed by ISIS. No major terror attack has taken place in Izmir over the years although security personnel have claimed to have repeatedly foiled plots by the PKK and captured several militants in possession of explosives and automatic rifles last year.

President Erdogan said the strings of attacks on the country are meant to bring Turkey to its knees before stressing that they wont be able to set people against each other. They couldnt destroy our unity. He vowed that the country would resist the mutual attack by terrorist groups.

Turkey was on the verge of becoming a top tourist destination in the world but significant number of attacks that took place last year have forced many to abandon the destination. With only six days into 2017, the country has already witnessed two deadly attacks with victims of the nightclub rampage being mostly foreigners.
Jordans Information Minister Mohammed Momani has warned US President-elect Donald Trump against going ahead with his campaign promises of moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Momani stressed that implementing the campaign promise will definitely affect bilateral relationship with countries in the region, including Jordan, and the parties that will be related to such a decision.

Trump will be sworn in as president on January 20 and it is not yet known how soon he intends to make the move in Israel even though one of his advisers, Kelly Anne Conway, said last month that it remains a very big priority for the incoming president.

The Jordanian official vowed that Jordan is determined to use politics and diplomacy to stop the plan that it considers as a red line that would subsequently inflame the Islamic and Arab streets because of the catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation.

Amman is one of Washingtons allies in the Middle East. Israels authority over Jerusalem is not internationally recognized and it is considered as an occupation. East Jerusalem was captured from Jordan in 1967.

Momani highlighted that stopping the Trump administration from moving the embassy must be seriously undertaken by other regional countries because the tension that it might trigger in the region will be considered as a gift to extremists.

The Islamic State group, al-Qaeda and other Islamic cells are active in several countries in the Middle East, besides their bastions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. He therefore urged the countries to think about different things and steps they should take in order to stop this from happening.

The Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, has already vowed that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would be seen as an attack and a violation of UN Security Council resolutions while promising to make life miserable for Washington by fast tracking Palestines admission as a member state. The Palestinian diplomat promised that they would use all of the weapons in the UN to defend their cause.

Earlier this week, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority also warned Trump against upholding his campaign promises because it would be detrimental to peace efforts for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Moroccan authorities Thursday demanded the closure of all Turkish schools sponsored by the US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen accused by Ankara to be the mastermind of the July failed military coup against President Erdogan.

Turkish authorities deem Gulen movement a terrorist group. Ankara believes that the movement utilizes schools to spread the ideology of the 75-year old man, settled in Pennsylvania.

The Moroccan interior ministry issued a statement calling Gulen-sponsored schools in the kingdom to shut down.

Investigations on schools of Mohamed al-Fatih, linked to Turkish Fethullah Gulen, have shown they utilize the education sector to spread the groups ideology and these ideas are against Moroccos education and religious principles, the statement said.

As they failed to abide by warnings from the ministry of national education () in order to resolve the malfunctions noted, all schools connected of this group are called to shut down within one month.

The ministry did not say how many schools are linked to Gulen. The students enrolled in these schools will be transferred to other public or private institutions to pursue their education, the ministry said.

Ankara reportedly informed Rabat of the support and financial endorsement enjoyed by the Gulen movement in the kingdom.

The decision to close the schools comes four months after a team of Turkish lawmakers visited Rabat to prove to Moroccan authorities the evil nature of the Gulen movement and its associated schools, Jeune Afrique reports.

In August, seven schools connected to the movement in Morocco, including three in Casablanca, were accused of disseminating the ideology of the US-based cleric.

The movement made of schools, companies, NGOs has been accused by President Erdogan of supporting the July 15 failed military coup in Ankara. President Erdogan called on the US to extradite the Turkish cleric for investigation.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
In a 2015 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Chan found that ER doctors are far more likely to order tests, which can be done quickly but often at a high price, at the end of their shifts. They do this because, like most workers, they want to clock out on time.

Beyond the ER, Chan recently completed a study that suggests obstetricians are more likely to perform C-sections when caring for patients they know, particularly when their own patients have had complications. In another study, hes analyzing whether physicians or machines make better treatment decisions.

Hes also midway through a five-year, $1.25 million National Institutes of Health study that looks at whether doctors eventually tune out electronic reminders that alert them, say, to write a prescription refill or schedule a test for a patient.

Labor and organizational economics factor heavily in Chans research. There are parallels across cement or airline-catering companies, Chan said. Health care is just an example of a broader phenomenon of big differences in productivity in our economy.

Changing direction

When Chan entered UCLAs School of Medicine  in 1999, shortly after earning a bachelors degree in mathematics and economics from the University of California-Riverside  he expected to follow in his fathers footsteps and practice medicine full time. But a course he took on health policy in his second year changed everything.

I realized I was much more interested in the big economic and policy questions surrounding health care than I was in studying psychology or anatomy, said Chan, who is also a core faculty member at Stanford Health Policy.

As a doctor, you realize that a lot of what drives what you do is not related to the patient in front of you.

It wasnt such a surprising shift. He had planned to practice internal medicine, which is a specialty that attracts an economist-like mindset. Internists want to understand processes and what ties everything together, he said.

Chan took a hiatus from medical school and went to England, where he earned a masters degree in health policy, with distinction, from the London School of Economics. A year later, in 2003, Chan graduated with a masters degree in economics for development from the University of Oxford.

By then, Chan was sold on a career in academia as a health policy expert. He returned to UCLA to finish his medical degree in 2005 and then completed his residency at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, where he had a front-row seat in Massachusetts rollout of universal health care. Chan went on to earn a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013.

While at Brigham and Womens, Chan received a three-year Harvard Medical School Faculty Development Fellowship and taught at Harvard Medical School. He also received fellowships with the Food and Drug Administration and, in 2011, spent a year as the entrepreneur in residence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Chan joined Stanfords faculty shortly after graduating from MIT. That same year he signed on as an investigator with the Veteran Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, where he now treats military veterans for four weeks every year.

Drawing a distinction

Chans firsthand experiences as a practicing physician inform his views of the challenges facing U.S. health care. As a doctor, you realize that a lot of what drives what you do is not related to the patient in front of you, he said. At Brigham and Womens, for instance, he learned that surgeons and internists could have conflicting motives  similar to how different teams of workers in other businesses sometimes clash.

But the analogy, Chan said, between behavior and productivity in health care versus other workplaces isnt perfect. The problems facing health care are compounded by the acute lack of information sharing. His visit to his primary care doctor for allergy treatment was a stark reminder of that.

There are all of these barriers to information sharing in health care, he said, and that explains a lot in terms of the lack of productivity, efficiency and standards.

By peering into health cares granular workings, Chan aims to help open the black box of rising costs and inconsistent care.
The United Nations mission in Central African Republic on Wednesday said two Moroccan U.N. peacekeepers were killed and two others wounded by unknown attackers in the southeast of the country.

The mission said in a statement the peacekeepers were escorting fuel trucks on Tuesday afternoon when they were attacked, adding that the assailants fled into the bush.

Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, the head of MINUSCA, denounced the attack, saying, No claim can justify individuals directing their grievances against peacekeepers whose presence on CAR soil is only aimed at helping the country emerge from the cycle of violence.

Speaking to UN News from Bangui, MINUSCAs spokesperson, Vladimir Monteiro, said the two injured peacekeepers are receiving treatment, one of them for severe injuries.

Landlocked and chronically poor, The Central African Republic has been mired in chaos since 2013 when primarily Muslim rebels took control of the majority Christian nation and ousted then-President Francois Bozize.

Some 13,000 peacekeepers have been deployed to the country by the UN as part of MINUSCA. Civilians, however, say it does not do enough to protect them against scores of armed groups.

The Lords Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, has been active for several years in the area around Obo, in the south-eastern part of the country where the Tuesday attack took place.
Two local government officials suspected of having links with terrorist group Boko Haram have been arrested in northern Nigeria, the army announced on Wednesday.

One of the officials is the chairman of Mafa Local Government Area in Borno. He was arrested by the army for accommodating Boko Haram members.

We heard that he harbored Boko Haram members along with his father. That he kept the Boko Haram members because the father begged him to do so. All I can say is that the Chairman is a big supporter of Boko Haram, Major General Lucky Irabor, Commander of the anti-Boko Haram operation told the media in Maiduguri.

At some point he was valuable to us being with the Civilian JTF (vigilante force) to fight Boko Haram. But that does not mean we cannot investigate him for a crime especially one like this, the commander added.

He also announced the arrest of the Vice Chairman of the Kaga Local Government Area.

Nigerias president declared Boko Haram had been crushed last month, but there is unlikely to be a swift end to the suicide bombings and attacks on remote villages and army outposts.

Boko Harams devastating seven-year-old Islamic uprising has killed more than 20,000 people, driven 2.6 million from their homes and created a massive humanitarian crisis, which has left 5.1 million people facing starvation.
The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium has urged people in the countrys Anglophone North West and South West regions to embark on a peaceful protest until the demands of lawyers and teachers in the regions are met.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Rights group called for a sit-in strike to be held on January 9, 2017 to continue the fight against marginalization.

Ever since lawyers and teachers of West Cameroon raised critical issues relating to their existence, Government has not taken any concrete steps to resolve them. Rather, they have been moving around trying to undermine the people, the statement read.

We must stand together and continue our peaceful resistance until the demands of the lawyers and teachers tabled, relating to our existence have been satisfactorily addressed, the statement added.

Lawyers, students and teachers have been on strike for weeks, in opposition to what they view as the marginalization of the Anglophone minority.

Many of the protesters demanded a return to federalism in Cameroon, as was the case between 1961 and 1972.

Areas controlled by Britain and France joined to form Cameroon after the colonial powers withdrew in the 1960s.

Cameroon was initially a German colony, before it was split into two by the League of Nations after the First World War (1914-18). One part was put under French tutelage and another part, close to Nigeria, under the British mandate.
Some Members of the Ugandan parliament have sent a petition to the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) to request an investigation into possible atrocities perpetrated by the East African nations security forces late last year.

According to the government, about 62 people were killed in November last year in a violent clash between the security forces and tribal leaders guards in the Rwenzori region near Ugandas western border.

Amnesty International then said there were shocking unlawful killings and a complete disregard for human rights during the arrests, and that many victims seem to have been summarily shot dead and their bodies dumped.

William Nzoghu, a legislator from the area and one of six members of parliament who sent the petition, told Reuters that the number of people killed exceeded 200 and that police and the army jointly committed genocide and crimes against humanity.

We are saying let the ICC come and investigate, he told Reuters late on Wednesday.

In an emailed response, the ICCs Office of the Prosecutor told Reuters it had received the petition and that it would announce a decision in due course.

The November attack on the palace shocked many in this East African country that Museveni has ruled since 1986. Although tribal leaders only have ceremonial powers, they are revered among their subjects and are influential in their regions.

Museveni has struggled to win over the support of the Bakonzo people in presidential elections. There are frequent land disputes in the area, with many accusing the government of sponsoring land grabs.
Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh, has recalled his ambassador to Senegal, Momodou Pa Njie, Jeune Afrique Magazine reports.

The move comes weeks after the Gambian ambassador to Senegal and 10 other ambassadors issued a joint statement calling on President Jammeh to respect the outcome of the December 1 presidential polls and to duly handover power peacefully to Adama Barrow, the president-elect.

In conclusion Your Excellency, we once again implore you to consider our plea, which is aimed at achieving the greater good for our beloved country, the Gambia, the ambassadors said in the letter to Jammeh.

Jammeh had initially conceded loss in the polls to the opposition coalition candidate, Adama Barrow, before reversing his decision citing irregularities as admitted by the electoral body. He said a rerun of the polls is the only peaceful route to ending the impasse.

Presidents Buhari of Nigeria and John Dramani Mahama of Ghana were tasked to engage stakeholders in the Gambia to resolve the political crisis, triggered after the December 1 presidential polls.

According to Nigerias Foreign Affairs minister, Geoffery Onyeama, Nigeria still believed that outgoing Jammeh would heed the call to step down.

We would like to believe that he would listen to the voice of his peers in the sub-region and that he would also listen to the voice of his people, but above all that he would follow the democratic path. So we are doing everything possible to bring that about, the Nigerian official said.
Chad has closed its border with Libya and pledged to deploy troops to the area in order to prevent militant fighters fleeing conflict in its northern neighbor from crossing the border.

While announcing the new measure on Thursday, Chads Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke has indicated that some isolated groups have converged towards the south of Libya, that is to say on the northern border of our country, which is potentially, exposed to a serious threat of  infiltration.

The vast desert border is sparsely populated but it is used for dealing in contraband by those living on both sides of the border, mainly the ethnic Tubu people.

Libya has been mired in chaos since the 2011 downfall of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Chads economy has been hurt by a deterioration of regional security, with an increasingly chaotic Libya to the north and the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in Nigeria to the southwest.

President Deby has played a key role in mobilizing regional armies to fight the militants.
An Aedes aegypti mosquito during a blood feed. Credit: University of Melbourne

A promising strain of bacteria that stops dengue transmission in mosquitoes struggles to survive hot conditions, new research from the University of Melbourne has revealed.

But there is a silver lining, because researchers now know which particular strains will survive the steamy tropics, where disease-bearing mosquitoes thrive.

Researchers say the discovery is vital, given it's only a matter of time before disease-spreading mosquitoes appear in southern-Australia. Dengue kills up to 20,000 people  many of them children  each year.

Scientists have recently discovered that a strain of bacteria, Wolbachia, can greatly reduce the ability of mosquitoes to transmit dengue. And it's also effective against Zika and chikungunya. Wolbachia spreads through mosquito populations quickly, making it an excellent alternative to pesticides.

Mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia have now replaced natural populations of mosquitoes in parts of Cairns. The Wolbachia technique is now being extended to other tropical regions around the world, but sometimes, Wolbachia mosquitoes fail to establish or the infection invades very slowly.

Perran Ross, a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, subjected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to temperatures from 26 degrees to 37 degrees under controlled laboratory conditions to see how well the bacterium survives.

In research published today in PLOS Pathogens, the wMel Wolbachia strain, currently being used in many field trials around the world, survived in significantly lower numbers as the temperature rose. But other strains of Wolbachia were tested and some proved resistant to these higher temperatures.

"Although it was alarming to see that Wolbachia is vulnerable to high temperature, it is promising that other strains are more robust. These strains are also effective at blocking viruses" Mr Ross said.

"There is a great diversity of Wolbachia strains out there that we should be taking advantage of. We urgently need to consider alternative strains because wMel may not be as effective in hotter climates as we'd hoped."

Since 2011, researchers from the University of Melbourne have been collaborating with groups from Monash University, Glasgow University, Singapore and elsewhere to develop successful Wolbachia release strategies in Cairns, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Professor Ary Hoffmann has been leading the group behind the research. He says the clock is ticking on the spread of vector-borne diseases in Australia.

"With climate change projections of increasing temperatures, we may see mosquitoes with dengue migrating from Queensland further down to southern Australia, particularly if another invasive species that transmits diseases, Aedes albopictus, enters mainland Australia. Also, we expect that higher temperatures will become more common," Professor Hoffmann said.

Mr Ross's findings may lead to the deployment of temperature-resistant strains of Wolbachia in Aedes aegypti and other mosquito species in the field.

More information: "Wolbachia Infections in Aedes aegypti Differ Markedly in Their Response to Cyclical Heat Stress," PLOS Pathogens. DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006006 Journal information: PLoS Pathogens "Wolbachia Infections in Aedes aegypti Differ Markedly in Their Response to Cyclical Heat Stress,"
X-ray crystal structure of the catalytic domain of the MCR-1 protein. Credit: Dr. Phil Hinchliffe

An international research team, led by the University of Bristol, has provided the first clues to understand how the mcr-1 gene protects bacteria from colistin - a 'last resort' antibiotic used to treat life-threatening bacterial infections that do not respond to other treatment options.

Last year, members of the team, led by Dr Jim Spencer from the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, in collaboration with colleagues from Oxford, Cardiff, Diamond Light Source, Thailand and China, identified mcr-1 as the first colistin-resistance gene that could be passed between bacteria, enabling resistance to spread rapidly within a bacterial population.

Since then, the mcr-1 gene has been detected in common bacteria, such as E. coli, in China, the United States and across Europe first in farm animals and recently - worryingly - in human patients. The spread of mcr-1 has been linked to agricultural use of colistin, indicating that transmission between animals and humans may take place. In response to these findings the Chinese government has now banned use of colistin in animal feed.

Colistin acts by binding to, and disrupting, the outer surface of bacteria. Bacteria carrying the mcr-1 gene make a protein that modifies the bacterial surface to reduce colistin binding, making the organism resistant.

In their work the team used X-rays produced at Diamond's crystallography beamlines to generate detailed pictures of the portion of this protein responsible for this modification, and with this information identified key features that are necessary for it to function.

They also constructed computer models of the chemical reaction that leads to resistance.

This provides the first clues as to how mcr-1 acts within the bacterial cell, as well as information essential to efforts to identify ways of blocking MCR-1 function that could restore the activity of colistin against bacteria carrying mcr-1.

This work was funded by the UK Medical Research (MRC), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences (BBSRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPSRC) Research Councils, the Royal Society of Chemistry and government agencies from China and Thailand. Essential to the study was the involvement of researchers from multiple disciplines, including medical and veterinary microbiologists and organic, inorganic and computational chemists.

In particular BristolBridge, an EPSRC-funded research initiative at the University of Bristol that aims to engage researchers in the physical sciences and engineering with the problem of antimicrobial resistance, helped bring to the project expertise in inorganic and computational chemistry which proved invaluable in understanding the experimental results.

Professor Adrian Mulholland, co-author of the study and Principal Investigator for the BristolBridge initiative, based in the School of Chemistry, said: "The importance of understanding colistin resistance can hardly be overstated: it is rapidly emerging threat to public health.

"Our results illuminate the structural and (for the first time) mechanistic basis of transferable colistin resistance conferred by mcr-1, thanks to the combination of biological, chemical and computational expertise brought to bear on this project.

"We are confident that our findings will drive efforts to understand mcr-1-mediated resistance and ultimately help identify routes towards overcoming MCR-1 activity in harmful bacteria."

More information: 'Insights into the Mechanistic Basis of Plasmid-Mediated Colistin Resistance from the Crystal Structure of the Catalytic Domain of MCR-1' by P.Hinchliffe et al, A. Mulholland and J. Spencer, Scientific Reports, 2017. Journal information: Scientific Reports 'Insights into the Mechanistic Basis of Plasmid-Mediated Colistin Resistance from the Crystal Structure of the Catalytic Domain of MCR-1' by P.Hinchliffe et al, A. Mulholland and J. Spencer,, 2017.
A team of neuroscientists has found that people are biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratios  for example, a series of four beats separated by equal time intervals. Credit: MIT News

When it comes to perceiving music, the human brain is much more tuned in to certain types of rhythms than others, according to a new study from MIT.

A team of neuroscientists has found that people are biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratiosfor example, a series of four beats separated by equal time intervals (forming a 1:1:1 ratio).

This holds true for musicians and nonmusicians living in the United States, as well as members of a Bolivian tribe who have little exposure to Western music. However, the researchers found that the Bolivians tended to prefer different ratios than Westerners, and that these ratios corresponded to simple integer ratios found in their music but not in Western music.

"Both of these cultures seem to prioritize rhythms that are formed by simple integer ratios. It's just that they don't prioritize all of them," says Josh McDermott, the Frederick A. and Carole J. Middleton Assistant Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and the senior author of the study, which appears in the Jan. 5 issue of Current Biology.

The paper's lead author is Nori Jacoby, a former MIT postdoc who is now a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University.

Mental representations of rhythm

For this study, the MIT team devised a new way to reveal biases in the brain's interpretation of sensory input. These biases, called "priors," are thought to be based on our past experience of the world and to help resolve sensory stimuli that could be interpreted in multiple ways. For example, in a noisy room, priors on speech help you to extract a conversation of interest by biasing perception toward familiar speech sounds, words, and linguistic forms.

"You often rely on your prior knowledge of the states of the world that are more or less likely, to help relieve some of that ambiguity," McDermott says. "When you get some piece of data and you have to make your best guess as to what's actually out there in the world, you use the priorthe prior probability of different things in the worldto constrain your guess."

To try to reveal priors for musical rhythm, the researchers first asked American college students to listen to a randomly generated series of four beats and then tap back the rhythm that they heard. The researchers recorded the taps and then played the tapped sequence back to the student, who tapped it out again. With each iteration, the new rhythm changed slightly, just as words morph as they are spoken from person to person in a game of "telephone." Eventually, the tapped sequences became dominated by the listener's internal biases. By running the procedure many times, Jacoby and McDermott were able to measure these biases for simple rhythms.

"It's a way to probe the mental representation of what people unconsciously expect," Jacoby says. "We wanted to find a way to 'read their minds,' but without requiring people to introspect or verbalize anything."

A chart shows the differences in the distribution of responses between the Tsimane and U.S. participants. Researchers found that the Tsimane tended to prefer different ratios than Westerners, and that these ratios corresponded to simple integer ratios found in their music but not in Western music. Credit: Nori Jacoby

After five iterations of the task, the rhythms that people produced were all approximated by ratios of simple integersbut not all such ratios were present. The rhythms corresponded to those most often heard in Western music, such as 1:1:2 and 2:3:3. However, the subjects did not produce ratios uncommon in Western music, such as 2:2:3, 3:2:2, and 2:3:2.

"The rhythms that have high probability in people's heads seem to coincide with these simple integer rhythms that we know to be common in Western music," McDermott says.

The researchers found the same results in musicians and nonmusicians, suggesting that the priors are formed by listening to music rather than making it.

Cultural comparisons

Next, the researchers performed the same study with members of the Tsimane tribe, who live in a remote part of Bolivia and have little exposure to Western music. In a study published earlier this year, McDermott and his colleagues found differences between Tsimane and Western preferences for chords. While Westerners dislike dissonant chords, such as the combination of C and F#, the Tsimane rated them just as likeable as "consonant" chords, which feature simple integer ratios between the acoustic frequencies of the two notes.

When musical rhythm was tested, the researchers found that, like Westerners, the Tsimane tended to produce rhythms consisting of simple integer ratios, but the ratios they generated were different than those preferred by Western subjects.

The rhythms favored by the Tsimane appear to be consistent with those that have been documented in the few records that exist of Tsimane music, McDermott says, a finding that offers evidence that priors are based on musical exposure.

"Using an iterated learning task, Western listeners could be compared to the Tsimane, as such giving insight into the process of cultural transmission and a possibly innate predisposition for small-integer-ratio rhythms," says Henkjan Honing, a professor of music cognition at the University of Amsterdam, who was not part of the research team.

In future work, the researchers hope to use this technique to study other groups of people.

"What we plan on doing over the next year or two is to look at this in a number of different cultures and see how closely these priors mirror what we know about various cultures' music," Jacoby says.

More information: Nori Jacoby et al. Integer Ratio Priors on Musical Rhythm Revealed Cross-culturally by Iterated Reproduction, Current Biology (2017). Journal information: Current Biology Nori Jacoby et al. Integer Ratio Priors on Musical Rhythm Revealed Cross-culturally by Iterated Reproduction,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.031

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
A British man with a terminal disease is attempting to overturn the country's laws on assisted suicide.

The charity Dignity in Dying said in a statement Friday that 67-year-old Noel Conway has motor neurone disease, a degenerative muscle-wasting disease. He is not expected to survive another year.

Conway says he fears being "entombed" in his body and has instructed his lawyers to begin a judicial review to challenge the existing laws that prohibit people from actively helping others to die.

Conway's lawyers will argue that the laws infringe upon his right to die with dignity. The case could be heard by the High Court in early 2017.

In 2015, the British Parliament rejected an attempt to have Britain join the countries that permit assisted dying.

Dignity in Dying is supporting Conway's case.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Patient Pattern, a Buffalo-based company, allows clinicians to tap into records to determine how best to treat hospitalized elderly and post-acute care patients. Credit: University at Buffalo

The likelihood of an elderly patient falling in a nursing home, developing a wound or receiving inappropriate treatments are things that can be predicted, based on thousands and thousands of other cases. But how could a doctor, nurse or other clinician caring for that person access such information?

A new company in the START-UP NY program, founded by an adjunct professor in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, has a cloud-based solution. Patient Pattern uses data taken when a patient is admitted to a nursing home or a hospital and compares it with thousands of previous cases to assess that patient's risks.

"We use a clinical business intelligence platform that uses mathematical models of vulnerability to assess patients' risks for poor outcomes," said Steven Buslovich, MD, a geriatrician and founder of the company.

Patient Pattern is not a tool for day-to-day care, he said, but rather a broader assessment of the risks a patient faces and how to handle them. For instance, some patients receive too much medicine or receive unnecessary tests. For a frail person, that raises risks of poor outcomes.

"What we're identifying is not something used on a day-to-day level," Buslovich said. "It supersedes that. It gives us the big picture of clinical decision making."

Saving money, improving results

Such decisions can have immediate effects on a health care facility. Reducing hospital readmissions and reducing the use of expensive low-yield therapies rapidly improves patient outcomes, as well as the finances and overall facility operations, he said.

The company was recently recognized as a "Top Innovative Startup of 2016" by the magazine PM360, a monthly aimed at marketing professionals in the pharmacology, biotech and medical device industries.

The company's product, called LivePAC, calculates in real time the level of a patient's frailty and informs the clinician what therapies might deliver the best outcomes. A 300-bed nursing home using LivePAC saw its 30-day hospital readmission rate drop from 24% to 11% in less than six months.

"We are also working with hospitals to help them handle complex patient populations, which tend to be high users of resources," Buslovich said. "We are able to make dramatic savings."

Pressure to improve

The government is penalizing hospitals for too many readmissions, but is not providing help to resolve the problem, he said.

"There is no data in this market. There is no clinical intelligence in post-acute care. Right now, it's all eyeball care," he said, referring to the gut-level decisions being made about care. "We're working to integrate this into electronic health records, because they do not provide this level of information."

Three area hospitals and multiple nursing homes are using LivePAC, Buslovich said. It is also being adopted in Canada, Great Britain and, soon, Australia.
The Kroll lab has figured out not only how to create neurons, but also to create neuron types that perform specific functions. These types  cortical excitatory neurons and inhibitory neurons  often are abnormal in patients with autism. This process includes a specific chemical treatment to generate these types of neurons in a Petri dish. In this case, populations of neurons are derived from the cells of the Sebenoler family. From left, Kristen Kroll, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology, and postdoctoral fellow Kesavan Meganathan, PhD. Credit: Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Like many patients visiting a doctor's office, Kim Sebenoler started out her appointment by heading to the nearest restroom to give a urine sample. But her visit to the lab of John Constantino, MD, director of the William Greenleaf Eliot Division of Child Psychiatry, was not a typical exam. The goal was not to measure proteins in her urine or check her overall wellness.

Instead, researchers took her urine cells to replicate human brain cell function in a Petri dish. The study is one of three major approaches School of Medicine researchers are using to unravel the physical and psychological underpinnings of autism. The unique, multifaceted effortstudying genes, brain activity patterns and behavioris giving researchers and practitioners a better understanding of the disorder, which today affects one in every 100 Americans.

The cells are helping co-investigators Constantino and neuroscientist Azad Bonni, MD, PhD, explore how brain function changes in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both researchers are international leadersConstantino in clinical autism studies and Bonni in advancing understanding of the underlying mechanisms of brain development.

Autism is most commonly characterized by repetitive behaviors and difficulty with communication and social interaction. It has a multitude of forms, and psychologists recognize a wide spectrum of skills, symptoms and disability.

"We are engaging people across disciplinesgeneticists, molecular biologists, child psychologists, neuropsychologists and human brain imaging researchers," said Bonni, the Edison Professor of Neuroscience and chair of the Department of Neuroscience. "There is no single pathway toward treatment or discovery. It's absolutely the case that we need multifaceted approaches. Washington University is uniquely positioned to address these challenges."

Researchers collected urine samples from several members of the Sebenoler family, including daughter Sarah, 18, and 16-year-old identical twin boys, Mark and Jack. Kim Sebenoler is not on the autism spectrum, and Sarah has not been formally diagnosed, but the twins were diagnosed at age 3.

The researchers took the samples and separated solid material from liquid material. They isolated epithelial cells, a type of cell found in the lining of the kidneys that the body sheds all the time. From these, they produced induced pluripotent stem cells, which can become any type of cell in the body. Then, they reprogrammed the stem cells into neurons. This yielded a population of brain cells that could be studied, enabling side-by-side comparisions. Researchers are continuing to watch for variations in neuron viability and activity.

How are neurons created? Credit: Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Later, the Sebenolers returned to the lab for brain imaging studies, so researchers can study activity in their entire brains, not just cells in a Petri dish.

The family has participated in studies on autism prevalence in twins, and Kim's son Nicholas, 9, is part of a study examining the younger siblings of children with autism. Nicholas has participated since he was a baby, and is helping researchers study the earliest possible evidence for autism-related symptoms, which may be visible as soon as 2 months of age.

Ultimately, the researchers are trying to diagnose and treat autism as early as possible, aiming to develop treatments and possibly drugs that can halt or even reverse autism-related symptoms.

"Identifying genetic susceptibilitiesand how they relate to the development of a human brain, and how genetic liabilities early in development could take a child off trackthose are all of very high interest to us," said Constantino, the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and psychiatrist-in-chief at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

He and Bonni say with early diagnosis and a suite of treatment options, doctors may be able to re-route children toward a developmentally typical trackrewiring their neurological trajectories, and eliminating or preventing autism-like behaviors.

Rates of autism diagnosis have skyrocketed in recent years, but scientists say this is due to improved diagnostic techniques, not necessarily an increase in people with the disorder.

Autism is highly heritable; a person with an autistic sibling is 20 times more likely than a person in the general population to also develop autism. Among identical twins, like Mark and Jack Sebenoler, if one twin has autism there is a 95 percent likelihood that the other twin will develop autismevidence that suggests a strong genetic link. Most commonly, autism results from an accumulation of subtle genetic changes.

Female protective effect

Over the past decade, Azad Bonni, MD, PhD, has contributed insights on how the brain is hardwired, and how neurons take shape and connect to each other. He also is determining how mutations in proteins implicated in autism cause problems. Here, Bonni (standing) confers with staff scientist Yue Yang, PhD. Credit: Robert Boston

With help from the Sebenolers and funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Constantino and Bonni are trying to tease out genetic markers that might offer a protective effect against autism. Earlier, the researchers showed that autism is four times more likely to develop in boys than girls not because autism favors the male sex, but because most girls seem to be relatively protected. Capturing this protective effectthe effect of the extra X chromosomecould be a way to treat or reverse autism symptoms.

"Females carry the same genetic factors, but they don't express them, which is a huge clue. We think that's going on all the time in autism transmission," Constantino said. "If we understood the biology of that, we could harness biology to treat the children who succumb to the genetic liability."

In the Sebenolers, the research team has located a rare genetic mutation that is likely to have a significant role in causing the boys' autism, and is carried (but not expressed) by their mother.

"We wanted to know, is there a way that we could identify, at the level of an individual cell, whether the neuron of a female carrying a mutation is behaving differently than a neuron of a male carrying this mutation?" he said. "If the difference is traceable to a cell, there is a better chance that pharmaceutical targets might be identified."

In one study published last year, Constantino and colleagues at the University of California-San Francisco were unable to isolate a single gene that conferred protection to females. He is still looking, but noted that whatever biological defense is protecting females might not be obvious at the behavioral level. It might be more obvious at a cell- or tissue-based level, which is why the researchers have elected to differentiate populations of neurons derived from the cells of the family members themselves.

Alternatively, that protective effect might play out in a particular pattern of brain activity, which researchers can study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The Sebenolers, and many other patients, are taking part in studies that will look at all these factors.

Credit: Emory University

Bonni said researchers are still trying to understand whether people on the spectrum share common traits. "It will be easier to develop therapies if we identify common mechanisms. On the other hand, assuming there are multiple different mechanisms, we will have to address those, and the approach that we're taking with this family is the way to do it. That's an example of laying the foundations for precision or personalized medicine. We have to consider both approaches as we move forward."

Scientists have spent decades studying gene mutations that can lead to problems or disorders. Now they are increasingly focusing on genetic and environmental factors that might provide resilience to disorders, said Bradley Schlaggar, MD, PhD, the A. Ernest and Jane G. Stein Professor of Developmental Neurology, head of the Division of Pediatric Neurology, and neurologist-in-chief at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Schlaggar and Constantino co-direct Washington University's 6-year-old Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC). This signature research effort seeks to find better prevention and treatment strategies for childhood developmental disabilities, including autism and the neurodevelopmental consequences of preterm birth.

The so-called "resistome" is more difficult to study, Schlaggar said, especially in formal clinical research, because there are so many competing and confounding factors; it's difficult to control for every possible thing that could make someone more or less susceptible to autism.

"The pathway to treat the disease may not come from turning off or on the gene that is a problem, but recapitulating what the organism is doing to provide protection," he said. "It's not gratifying, though. It's a strategy that doesn't really lend itself to the usual scientific methods. It requires a big data approach. All the fundamental parameters of investigation are challenged by this strategy."

Predicting outcomes

Just as genomics-based medicine is enabling personalized treatments, brain imaging is increasingly used not only to observe behavior and diagnose disorders, but to make predictions about a person's possible outcomes.

Eye tracking: The way young children explore the world with their eyes is under strict genetic control. When comparing the viewing habits of kids, patterns emerge. As illustrated by the crosshairs, normally developing children typically focus on peoples faces, particularly eyes and mouths. In atypical development, children fixate on inanimate objects. Identifying this lack of social engagement is a useful tool in early diagnosis. Credit: Emory University

Constantino, Schlaggar and their colleagues are using functional MRI and functional connectivity MRI to study brain architecture and understand how the brain's physical attributes can affect a person's psychological attributes. Schlaggar said studies on the brain's organizational principles may help scientists understand what happens in atypical development.

He said most imaging studies look at the central tendencies of either patients and controls, or adults and children, and focus on the differences between them.

"That's interesting, but it doesn't get at the characteristics of individual patients. What you want to be able to do is use the data to make predictions about people," he said. "We want to use data pre-symptomatically. Can we identify information from imaging that would allow us to predict which child is going on to that diagnosis?"

The research is still in early stages, but preliminary results suggest there are some types of brain activity scientists may be able to use to make predictions, Schlaggar said.

This level of analysis requires sophisticated software to crunch each person's data. Network approaches are becoming increasingly useful tools for brain imaging research, and Schlaggar said he relies on Washington University's multidisciplinary collaborations, such as those enabled by the IDDRC.

"It used to be that you needed supercomputers to do this, but not now. The computational power we have just by linking our desktops here is amazing," he said. "It's been a really cool experience to see how these methods merge, and how they provide the kinds of insights we didn't anticipate we would have access to when we started."

Along with MRI imaging, Constantino is using eye tracking to catch autism-related behavior abnormalities in early development. Lack of eye contact is a distinguishing feature of autism. Several years ago, Constantino's collaborators at Emory University in Atlanta published research demonstrating that infants with autism spend less time focusing on people's eyes and faces, and more time focusing on objects. The eye-tracking differences were traceable to just 2 months of age.

Constantino wanted to look deeper to determine whether this difference was driven by the kind of genetic influences that characterize autism. He launched a study examining identical and non-identical infant twins and found that the way babies explore the world with their eyes is under stringent genetic control. He and his team also observed that some normal infants had as low a level of eye- and mouth-looking as the children with autism in the prior study.

"There has to be some other factor that combines with visual disengagement, to produce the autistic syndrome," he said. "This gives us another opportunity to learn how susceptibilities to autism (like low levels of eye-looking) might be weathered and overcome. These are windows of observation on how various components of early human development collide, interact with or compensate for one another."

Currently, the earliest possible diagnosis for autism is around 1 year old. Intervention programs, including behavior analysis, speech and language instruction, and occupational therapy, typically don't start until age 2. Scientists suspect that very early interventions might improve the chances of redirecting a child's development.

"These three frontiersgene discovery, brain imaging, and developmentall feed each other," Constantino said. "We need to get our arms around as many factors as we can. We are thinking about all possible places where disparate genetic pathways to autism converge."

Kim Sebenoler said she hopes her family can help researchers find those convergences. Along with participating in several studies, her children are in behavioral therapy programs and visit Constantino for psychiatric appointments on a regular basis.

"I like the spin that Dr. Constantino puts on it, which is, 'Let's see how far you can get.' He sees the potential that's in every childthat there's not limitations," she said. "These studies hopefully will end up in good results. So I'm very hopeful."


@PatriciaMazzei

If Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi takes a job, as expected, in President-elect Donald Trump's White House, Gov. Rick Scott will get to appoint her successor. Could he be a Miami state legislator?

State Rep. Jose Felix Diaz's name has been making the rounds in Tallahassee as a potential Scott pick. Diaz, who will turn 37 later this month, would bring youth and diversity to Scott's Cabinet -- and perhaps give Republicans a leg up to keep the seat. Diaz said he'd be eager to run for the powerful attorney general's post in 2018, at the end of Bondi's term.

"I'm definitely honored to be on those lists," Diaz told the Miami Herald on Friday, adding that "it would be hard not to" seriously consider the job.

Even if Bondi weren't to leave the AG's office, Diaz said he's thinking about seeking the position in two years, when he will be term-limited from the House. He was easily reelected to his western Miami-Dade County seat in November.

"It's something that I've looked at pretty aggressively the past few years," he said. "I knew that, no matter what, whether there was a Trump appointment or not, the General was term-limited in 2018 -- so I've been looking at it as an option regardless of whether she goes to D.C. or not."

Bloomberg reported Thursday that Bondi will get a White House position, though Bondi refused to confirm that Friday.

An attorney with the Akerman law firm, Diaz, who is known as Pepi, is a litigator in zoning and land-use matters, though he said he's had exposure to a "pretty varied" slew of cases, ranging from criminal defense to family law.

"I'm a real lawyer. I've been practicing now for the better part of my adult life," he said. "I went to law school to, you know, study comparative constitutions and the way the government interacted with laws, so that's a dream job for a kid like me."

Diaz is close friends with state Rep. Carlos Trujillo, a fellow Miami Republican who was a top South Florida Trump surrogate. Trump's transition team is considering Trujillo for an ambassadorship to Latin America.

While Diaz was not quite as involved in the campaign as Trujillo, he did also lend his name to a Trump Hispanic advisory board (Diaz is a past competitor on "The Apprentice" who has known Trump since.) Both lawmakers plan to attend the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Photo credit: Steve Cannon, Associated Press. Diaz appears on the left.
@MichaelAuslen

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is on his way to Broward County, where the sheriff's office says multiple people were killed this afternoon at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after shots were fired there.

In a statement released at 1:45 p.m. Friday, Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said:

"We have initial reports of a shooting at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. At this time, state law enforcement do not have confirmed information on fatalities, injuries or motive. Governor Scott is currently traveling to Fort Lauderdale to be briefed by law enforcement. We will continue to provide details as we receive them."

Scott is likely traveling from Fort Myers, where he was scheduled for a "terrorism prevention event" at noon, or his home in Naples.

In a tweet, President-elect Donald Trump said he spoke with Scott about the shooting Friday afternoon.
@stevebousquet and @MichaelAuslen



Three decades ago, lobbyist Ron Book persuaded a public hospital to pay him to protect its interests in a faraway Capitol, just as private businesses do.

Book still represents the South Broward Hospital District, and he earns more than $1 million a year lobbying for nearly three dozen local governments, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Pinellas counties  all paid by local taxpayers in Florida.

"It's just a necessity to make sure that taxpayers are properly represented," Book says. "We're smart enough to understand the system."

Cities, counties, colleges, school districts, sheriffs, airports and seaports all pay lobbyists to help them fight for state money, protect home rule powers and fend off political interference in Tallahassee.

But what local officials call a necessity, the new House speaker, Rep. Richard Corcoran, R-Land O'Lakes, calls wasteful. He says taxpayers should not have to pay so that one group of politicians can talk to another, using well-connected lobbyists as intermediaries.

"It's a disgrace that taxpayer dollars are used to hire lobbyists when we elect people to represent them," Corcoran says. "The state doesn't do it, and neither should the locals."

He says private companies can hire all the lobbyists they want with private money but government, paid for with taxes, is different.

Government spending on lobbying is far exceeded by what private industries spend.

In addition to his public clients, Book last year earned another $4.5 million, or nearly three times as much, from a long roster of clients that includes AT&T, AutoNation, Florida Power & Light and the NBA's Miami Heat.

That total is a low estimate, and is based on lobbyists' fee disclosure reports filed with the state in which income is listed in wide ranges.

But lobbying paid for by taxpayers is an easy target for Corcoran, a conservative firebrand who two years ago launched a populist crusade against "Gucci-loafing, shoe-wearing special interests" in a pitched debate over health care expansion.

Corcoran tried in November to outlaw taxpayer-funded lobbying as part of his broader strategy against business as usual in the Capitol.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Lobbyist Ron Book checks his phone in the state Capitol as Joe Negron, R-Stuart, now the Senate president, discusses a bill. (Scott Keeler, Tampa Bay Times)


via @KyraGurney

Ed Calle may not be a household name, but he is well-known in the music industry as a gifted saxophonist who has played alongside everyone from Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan to pop stars Rihanna and Shakira. The Latin Grammy winner and five-time Grammy nominee is also a professor at Miami Dade College, where he teaches music business and production.

But on Sunday, a tweet from Calle struck a sour note, unleashing a Twitter storm and calls for MDC to fire the tenured professor.

In response to a tweet from a political activist about impeaching President-elect Donald Trump, Calle tweeted: Yeah, right. Lets work on impeaching the Kenyan first.

Dozens of people expressed outrage at Calles suggestion that President Barack Obama was not from the United States, tweeting to Calle and MDC that he should be sacked. The thoroughly debunked allegation has been espoused by so-called birthers, including Trump himself until he finally dropped it during the presidential campaign in September.

Calle subsequently deleted his Twitter account, but he posted a letter on his website under the heading Response to Twitter Mob in which he defended his right to free speech and argued that Obamas birth certificate was fake.

More here.

Photo credit: Patrick Farrell, Miami Herald staff
The Missoula Art Museum's 45th annual Benefit Art Auction will boast fresh names and new works by veteran artists from around the state and country this year.

The exhibition opens at the Missoula Art Museum this First Friday, with 82 artists selected from more than 180 who submitted work.

"People were giving us their best work and were being very generous," said senior curator Brandon Reintjes. Twenty-seven artists donated 100 percent of the proceeds, six donated 75 percent, and the remaining artists donated 50 percent.

The auction is the MAM's largest fundraiser of the year. The proceeds help the museum, the largest venue for contemporary art in Missoula, keep its admission free and pay for programs like the Fifth-Grade Art Experience, which serves children from Missoula and surrounding rural areas.

This year features a notable number of artists who have recently exhibited at the MAM.

Holly Andres, a Missoula native who just had a solo show in the museum's largest gallery, donated one of her photographs. Andres, who's now based in Portland, has had her freelance photography featured in national and international magazines. Like much of her fine art work, "Summer of Hornets #4 (Drowning Hornets,)" revisits a scene from childhood with cinematic control of actors, sets, costumes and lighting.

Longtime Missoula artist Leslie Van Stavern Millar's "viewing boxes" have been on display throughout the museum since fall under the title "Montana Peepshow Stories."

For the auction, she contributed a gouache portrait of Queen Elizabeth I set in the Montana landscape, which pairs with theme of the exhibition: imagining the royal figure traveling through time to various points in the state's past.

Stephen Glueckert, the former MAM curator who's the subject of a career survey that's now on view, donated a drawing from his show. Ceramic sculptor Trey Hill, who's also currently exhibiting, contributed a a tree-like porcelain form in the style of his work in "Binary Form: Ceramic Abstraction."

Sheila Miles, a former Missoula resident who now works out of New Mexico, submitted a painting of a house viewed through heavy snow, rendered in large white circles.

Miles will have a solo exhibition opening in mid-February that associate curator John Calsbeek curated based on her auction submissions. He noted her formalist technique, and the "the illusion it creates of looking out your window at giant snowflakes," Calsbeek said.

***

The MAM typically dedicates its exhibition spaces to contemporary work. During the auction exhibition, it tends to open its doors to genres, too, such as nonfiction photography and landscape painting.

Montana State University photography professor Alexis Pike captured a car in mid-flight for his photo, "Grand Finale Stunt by Bryan 'Spanky Jr.' Spangler, Evel Knievel Days, Butte, Montana." An exploding firework illuminates the underside of the vehicle and a trail of debris and smoke as the crowd looks on.

"This looks like studio lighting under that car," Calsbeek said. "For an action photo, you don't see that much detail."

Lido Vizzutti, a Missoula photographer who freelances for national and international publications, contributed a scene of a storm cloud framed by a row of cowboy hatted onlookers on horses.

Ellen Kuntz of Billings submitted a ghostly 40-by-60-inch landscape shot at Grand Prismatic Hot Springs in Yellowstone. In silvery tones, the steam appears as though it were coming off a coastline rather than the alien hypercolor we're used to.

Meanwhile, there are numerous painters with skilled depictions of the big sky and its landscape: Marvie Redmond, Elizabeth Hughes Bass, R. David Wilson, and Aaron Johnson, to name a few.

Longtime observers of Missoula art will note a new painting by Dennis Sloan. In "Megan's World," he renders three different landscapes in triangular slices of the canvas, all in a heightened palette.

***

One special series of lithographs by Portland artist Sara Siestreem was donated for the auction.

Siestreem, a member of the Coos Tribe, had a solo exhibition of her abstract expressionist paintings in 2013, and returned for a residency last year in conjunction with the Matrix Press and the University of Montana. While here, she produced a limited edition suite of prints. The residency is the first of many, courtesy of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts grant, that will bring Native contemporary artists to the MAM to work with Matrix.

Siestreem's prints pair rows of red circles on top with imagery of hands emerging from darkness in dramatic postures.

Two pieces reference the presidential election. Gregory Wilhelmi's oil painting, "Make America Great Again," renders a downtown storefront with a very small "Trump-Pence" sign in the vacant window.

George Gogas revisited his popular and long-running, "Judith Basin Encounter" series, in which he riffs on classic Western canvases by Charlie Russell by including humorous scenarios and the abstract influence of his other hero, Pablo Picasso. "Judith Basin Encounter: When Charlie and Pablo Watched Donald Take a Tumble" shows a rider with distinctive blonde hair falling off his horse.

Jason Bohman, a UM BFA grad who's known for murals and live painting, donated a meticulous ink drawing, "Fruity Pebbles," that builds complex grids from sets of tiny, colorful marks.

"I love the areas of density and overlap. Organic abstraction at its best," Reintjes said.

One of the most unusual abstract paintings in the show comes courtesy of Paul Guillemette. He studied at the University of Montana and now lives in Los Angeles, where he makes sculpture, jewelry and unconventional paintings.

"District One" comprises a plywood panel painting that "tips" inward toward the wall like a shallow pyramid.

Reintjes said he exhausts full cans of spray paint simultaneously, and the final surface has layers of clouded color

The effect, which often mimics a metal finish, changes as you move around the room. It's different for an auction, but they couldn't resist including it.

"He's always doing experimental and very interesting things," Calsbeek said. "So we thought we'd try it."
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HELENA  Montana Gov. Steve Bullock filled several key cabinet and adviser positions on Friday, including appointments to the state's departments of agriculture and fish and wildlife.

Six cabinet members and key staffers resigned before the Democratic governor started his second term this month. With Friday's announcement, vacancies remain in two departments: commerce and corrections.

University of Montana law professor Martha Williams was named as the director of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Bullock spokesman Tim Crowe said she will begin Feb. 1.

Williams teaches law classes on the environment, wildlife, public land and natural resources, according to her University of Montana biography. She previously was the U.S. Department of the Interior's deputy solicitor and before that, an attorney for FWP.

Williams will replace Jeff Hagener, who served under three governors in 12 years in the position.

Members of the Montana Wildlife Federation said they are looking forward to working with Williams.

Martha Williams has a distinguished career in wildlife management law and policy, including having worked for Fish, Wildlife and Parks in the past, as well as experience with other federal land and wildlife agencies, Executive Director Dave Chadwick said.

Chadwick said Williams will be the first woman to be named FWP director in Montana, and said shes one of few in the country.

Its pretty rare unfortunately, he said. There are not many wildlife agencies that have women as directors.

Ben Thomas, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture worker, will become the new director of the state Department of Agriculture. Most recently, Thomas was the federal agency's deputy undersecretary for its marketing and regulatory programs.

Thomas replaces former director Ron de Yong, who also was agriculture director under former Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Kim Mangold, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture, will be interim director until Thomas arrives. Mangold, who has served as deputy director for a year and a half, said she didnt know exactly when Thomas would take over, but expected it would be several weeks. Mangold worked with Thomas when he was an aide for former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus.

We have a very good working relationship, she said. Were very happy hes going to be taking the position.

Replacements for Mike Batista at the Department of Corrections and Meg O'Leary at the Department of Commerce still have not been hired, Crowe said. Two deputy directors, Doug Mitchell in commerce and Loraine Wodnick in corrections, are heading those agencies temporarily.

Bullock announced other key staffing changes:

Ken Fichtler will become chief business development officer, heading the governor's Office of Economic Development.

Fichtler has spent his career in high-tech business management and marketing. He is also an entrepreneur and business investor, having started Montana companies like Gecko8 Studios and Fermion Technologies, as well as co-founding the first and largest TEDx event in the state, TEDxBozeman. Most recently he has served as the senior marketing specialist for Lattice Materials. Fichtler is a graduate of the Montana State University School of Business.

Patrick Holmes replaces Tim Baker as Bullock's natural resource policy adviser.

Holmes most recently served as the chief of staff to the undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment. During his tenure at the Department of Agriculture, he provided counsel to the secretary of agriculture on issues related to forest restoration, innovative wood products, working lands conservation, wildland fire, and others affecting the U.S. Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service. He holds a master's degree in environmental management from Yale University and a bachelor of arts in natural resources management and policy.

Baker has been appointed to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and Jennifer Anders has been reappointed to the council.

For the last four years, Baker has served as Bullocks natural resource policy adviser. In that capacity he has worked on issues ranging from energy development and water use, to wildlife, state lands, and mining. He will continue to advise the governor on energy policy. Baker was born in Detroit, Michigan and after graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved west to attend law school at the University of Montana. He worked for the Montana Public Service Commission as a staff attorney and chief counsel, and then with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, where he focused on air quality. After leaving state government he was executive director of the Montana Wilderness Association, and was working for Montana Trout Unlimited when Bullock asked him to return to public service.

Anders was first appointed to the council in 2013 by Bullock. Prior to her appointment, she represented the state of Montana with the Attorney Generals Office in civil and criminal cases on land use, water law and resource development issues. Anders holds an undergraduate degree from the University of California and a law degree from the University of Montana.

Jessica Rhoades leaves the state Department of Public Health and Human Services to become the governor's health policy adviser.

Rhoades has 16 years of experience in health care and public policy. Prior to her appointment, she was the policy director for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, where she oversaw the work of the Governors Council on Health Care Innovation, which resulted in Montana being selected to pioneer a public-private partnership for the largest primary care reform initiative of its kind in the United States. She previously served as health policy adviser for former Gov. Brian Schweitzer and before that worked for the Office of the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance. She was northwest region public affairs director for a national health care provider, covering 14 states including Montana.

Bullock's deputy communications director, Ronja Abel, will become communications director with Tim Crowe departing to take a position with the Montana National Guard.

Abel has served as Bullock's deputy communications director for the past year and previously, she served as communications director for the Montana Department of Commerce and as program specialist for the Montana Small Business Development Center Network.

Independent Record reporters Holly Michels and Erin Loranger contributed to this report.
HELENA  Students awarded a Montana STEM scholarship will not be receiving the spring 2017 portion of their scholarship.

The STEM scholarship program was created during the Legislature in 2015 and was supposed to be funded with revenue from the Montana Lottery. The account didnt generate enough revenue to give students the scholarships they were promised this spring.

In the first week of the legislative session, members of the Montana Lottery and Office of Commission of Higher Education (OCHE) testified before the appropriations committee over an accounting error that diverted funds into the general fund instead of the scholarship fund.

During his testimony, Tyler Trevor, OCHE deputy commissioner for planning and analysis, said his office had to notify students they didnt have the funds for spring, even if the supplemental funding is approved.

For fiscal year 2016, the bill required the STEM scholarship program to receive a one-time payment of $400,000 to fund student scholarships in 2015-2016 from the lottery before any money was sent to the general fund. After that, Montana law directs lottery revenue to the general fund. Once the revenue transferred to the general fund meets its specified cap, the remaining money goes to the Montana STEM scholarship programs special revenue account.

Angela Wong, director of the Montana Lottery, said there was an accounting error that directed money to the general fund instead of the scholarship fund. The supplemental $358,000 asked for by OCHE will return money from the general fund to the correct account.

While the accounting error can easily be fixed if HB3 is approved, the entire scholarship program still faces funding shortages.

The cap for what the lottery must contribute to the general fund was set at their entire revenue for fiscal year 2015. The lottery didnt experience enough growth in the following year to fund the scholarship program.

Because of a difference in fiscal years, OCHE didnt know they werent receiving sufficient funds until after they had awarded a certain number of scholarships to students.

Wong said because revenue into the scholarship fund depends on how many people purchase lottery tickets and payouts, its impossible to properly estimate how much revenue they will contribute.

After two years of trying to fund scholarships, both OCHE and the Montana Lottery felt like the program was out of their hands. "Were really just the funding source," said Wong, while Trevor said that all we do is administer the scholarship.

The law says OCHE is responsible for administering the program, but its unclear if they were responsible for monitoring the funds coming from Montana Lottery.

Trevor said OCHE thought they would receive $481,000 from the lottery, but they only received $120,000. Because they had to pay out scholarships to students before they received funds from the lottery, the extra 358,000 came out of the OCHE operational budget used to pay staff salaries.

If we would have known there was $120,000 to fund a million-dollar scholarship, we would not have moved forward at all, Trevor said.

Trevor said his office wasnt sure if additional funding from the lottery would come in, so they waited until December to notify students they wouldnt receive spring funding.

To be eligible for a STEM scholarship, a student must graduate from a Montana high school with at least a 3.25 GPA, meet the rigorous core college preparation program which includes four years of math and three years of science. Once in college, they must enroll in at least 15 credits and have declared a STEM or health care major.

Students who meet the criteria are awarded $1,000 for the academic year, with half applied to each semester. If they stay in a STEM major and complete 30 credits in the first academic year while maintaining a 3.0 GPA, they are eligible to receive $2,000 in their sophomore year.

The 750 students expecting $500 or $1,000 for spring were notified by email that they wouldnt receive their scholarship. Students who are eligible for fall 2017 scholarships shouldnt expect funding either.

It doesnt look good for next year, Trevor said. What were learning is what the revenue that comes in from the lottery is coming in a timing manner that is far too late for us to responsibly fund students.

Trevor suggested putting the scholarship program on hiatus for a few years to build up funds. That way, they will be able to award the scholarships with money already in their account.

Montana law does not specify what happens when there isnt enough money in the revenue account to fund all of the awarded scholarships. Rep. Steve Lavin, R-Kalispell, who sponsored the legislation in 2015, said he needs to research the issues before introducing amendments to the program.
If Tuesday was cold, Thursday was downright frigid, so the start of deck replacement on the Madison Street Bridge has been moved to Monday.

The forecast three days out is for snow or a possible mix of freezing rain and sleet that day, but the thermometer could reach into the low 30s. Thats better than the high of 10 degrees on Tuesday, the original starting date, and the 3-below where temperatures peaked on Thursday.

When work does start, itll be on the northbound lanes. Project managers say traffic will be reduced to two lanes for the next 3 months on the southbound side, and then on the northbound side until sometime in August.

Frontier West, the general contractor, recommends using alternate routes and encourages drivers to plan additional travel time, especially from 7-9:30 a.m. and 4-6 p.m., as there will be traffic delays on the bridge.

During the winter months, temperatures can, at times, be dangerously low and unsafe, project managers noted in a press release. Please be aware that if temperatures drop to single digits, work on the Madison (Street) Bridge may not take place.

Once closed, the northbound lanes wont be reopened until the work is done.

The pedestrian/bike under-bridge, which connects the river trail system, will be open until mid-spring. The trail system will remain open throughout the project with the exception of trail access directly southeast of the bridge from the University of Montana side.

Monday will also mark the first weekly public update, to be held at the Holiday Inn Downtown on South Pattee Street. It starts at 11 a.m. Subsequent Monday meetings, also at 11 a.m., will be held at the Double Tree Inn, 100 Madison St.

Additional information can be found at mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/madisonbridge.
Missoula County Public Schools' graduation rate dipped by less than a percentage point last year, and while its dropout rate rose to the highest in years, school officials say it could be an anomaly or an error.

Statewide, high school graduation rates also fell last year after increasing each year since 2011, according to the Office of Public Instruction. The rate fell from 86.04 percent in 2015 to 85.6 percent last year  which is still the second highest since OPI began measuring the statistic in 2000.

MCPS' graduation rate dipped slightly from 89.22 percent in 2015 to 88.36 percent last year, though its three class AA schools  Big Sky, Hellgate and Sentinel  still held the highest of all AA school district graduation rates in the state.

Billings: 83.57 percent

Bozeman: 84.33 percent

Butte: 81.88 percent

Flathead: 86.7 percent

Great Falls: 83.42 percent

Helena: 85.71 percent

Missoula: 88.36 percent

Superintendent Mark Thane said that 0.86 percent decline measures out to about seven students.

MCPS high schools' 2016 graduation rates were:

Big Sky: 86.94 percent (from 86.06 percent in 2015)

Hellgate: 87.46 percent (from 88.5 percent in 2015)

Seeley-Swan: 90.63 percent (from 100 percent in 2015)

Sentinel: 90.73 percent (from 91.96 percent in 2015)

Sentinel had the highest graduation rate of all class AA schools in the state.

While Seeley-Swan's graduation rate dropped nearly 10 percent, smaller high schools' graduation rates fluctuate more than larger schools as a shift in one or two students can dramatically impact the outcome. Twenty-eight graduated from Seeley last year.

***

Frenchtown is celebrating the highest graduation rate of all class A schools  not only that, but the highest of all AA schools  at 100 percent. It comes from, in essence, a "wraparound" feel at the high school, said superintendent Randy Cline.

"It's the whole idea of a school within a school," Cline said, particularly of the advisory periods that connect smaller groups of students with a teacher. "You have your high school, but then you create small communities, small pockets where students fit in to help them succeed."

Students meet with their assigned teacher during advisory periods to talk about concerns, their grades and anything going on in their lives. The idea is to build that relationship with an adult who wants to see them succeed, "to keep students from slipping through the cracks."

Frenchtown's dropout rate is also on the decline. It dropped from 4.09 percent in 2012 to 3.39 percent last year.

The school district is in the second year of its strategic plan implementation, one of the goals being student success. To that end, Frenchtown has several programs to guide students toward graduation and beyond. There's an alternative school; Jobs for Montana's Graduates, a state-funded program to develop students' life and job skills; credit recovery through the Montana Digital Academy; efforts to give eighth-graders a smooth transition to high school; and counselors working closely with students.

"Whenever you talk about the graduation rate, if you're going to point students toward graduation, that starts in kindergarten," Cline said. "It's not just something that the high school or junior high are doing. It's K-12. It's just a philosophy we have of every student is important, and we want every student to succeed."

***

The state's dropout rate also dropped slightly, from 3.4 percent in 2015 to 3.39 percent last year.

But the rate rose in MCPS. After a low dropout rate in 2015 (1.89 percent), MCPS saw its highest dropout rate in years in 2016 (3.18 percent).

Thane wonders if it's due to a number that jumped out at him when they were counting kids in August 2015. That month, there were 26 kids who didn't return after the summer. That's compared to six in 2014 and eight in 2016.

Kids don't return to school for a variety of reasons. They could have moved, dropped out, or switched districts but haven't requested a records transfer yet. When they're not at school in August, though, they're counted as dropouts.

"Either it was an anomaly and we had a huge number of kids who dropped out or moved and we have no idea where they are, or some of those were likely dropouts in May or June in 14-15 who were not captured then and showed up in the August 2015 report," Thane said.

And while dropouts are important to MCPS, Thane said they focus more on the graduation rate "because a lot of kids that do drop out at one point or another, we continue to reach out to them and try to draw them back in to Willard or credit recovery."

So while a student may have counted as a dropout one year, if they returned for a fifth year and finished, for example, they would count as a "completer."

MCPS' high schools had an 88.36 percent graduation rate last year, compared to an 89.02 completion rate.

"Since they're not on-time graduates, they're not counted as graduates ... but they are counted in the completion rates," Thane said. "This year we have a couple of kids for whom we extended their enrollment this first semester of the year. We don't get funding from the state for 19-year-olds, unfortunately, but we felt it was important to extend that opportunity for those students to complete the requirements."

Billings Gazette reporter Matt Hoffman contributed to this report.
Willard Alternative High School Program is undergoing some self-reflection as its community poses the question: "What should alternative education look like?"

Willard began in 2001 as a "school of choice" for students who were behind in credits or who had become disconnected from school. Students are not assigned to Willard; they have to apply.

Enrollment is capped at 150 to ensure a lower teacher-student ratio. They work on a trimester schedule, though graduation requirements are the same as Missoula County Public Schools' other high schools. Students and staff are on a first-name basis.

Because Willard is a program, not a school, its graduates reflect on each student's home high school. In the past 15 years, Willard has graduated more than 1,000 students.

"We want to make sure we understand what Willard's role will be," said superintendent Mark Thane.

***

It's a discussion that began when Kevin Ritchlin took over as principal this school year.

He's new to the school, though not to MCPS. Before his most recent stint at a school in China, Ritchlin was a social studies teacher at Big Sky and Hellgate, and an International Baccalaureate coordinator at Hellgate.

Montana's Office of Public Instruction defines an alternative education program as "a 'restructured' academic program to serve at-risk students and operated within an accredited public school."

That's about as concrete as it gets. Each alt ed program is different from the next, in Montana and nationwide, as they take on countless forms and serve students from a variety of backgrounds.

Willard students have some similarities. Most are either credit-deficient or they have attendance issues.

"More often than not, they have not had academic success," Ritchlin said. "That emanates from a few things. I would say a large learning environment is difficult for the majority. They feel disenfranchised from the education system."

Whereas students sometimes "disappear" in larger, traditional high schools, at Willard class sizes are small and teachers have a better opportunity to individualize instruction.

Because of this environment, Ritchlin is cautious as the alt ed discussion continues.

"The thing we have to be really careful of is it's very common in education to chase the latest trend," he said. "We need to be cognizant of what we have, and what has lasting power and sustainability in this school."

Willard junior Brandon Anderson agreed: "I don't think we should change too much.

"I feel like students really have a voice in alternative education," he said. "Teachers are more willing to listen."

The discussion means partnering research-based educational models with cognitive research about how people learn. Willard staff have analyzed project-based learning, big-picture learning, competency-based education and other models. Each has pros and cons, and they're gaining steam nationwide.

"It sounds great, but does it improve learning?" Ritchlin said of considering any move to a different educational model.

***

Two major issues have come out of these discussions. One, that Willard usually gets students late in their academic careers  as juniors or seniors. Out of its 150 students now, 80 are seniors.

"If we get them younger, say their sophomore year, we have them for three years and we can develop student relationships," Ritchlin said. "Why are we waiting until credits are so bad or they dislike education so much?"

Two-thirds of Willard students are classified as low socioeconomic, and a third are homeless.

"It takes a lot of grit for some of these kids to even get here," he said.

"A lot of these kids feel like the roadrunner falling off the cliff."

The second issue is what happens next for Willard graduates. About 70 percent stay in the Missoula area post-high school, he said.

"We want to explore how to connect them with the community, through internships, job shadowing, dual credits," Ritchlin said.

Thane said Willard could possibly move away from trimesters to align with MCPS' other high schools.

"That constant turnover makes it hard to build a school culture," he said, noting that staying through the school year would give Willard students more opportunities for work, apprenticeships and dual enrollment.

Anderson came to Willard as a freshman, and after that first year fell in love with the school. He raved about the 15 teachers' style, and the school's "familial" environment.

"The way I see alternative education is it's a different learning experience for people whose minds work different than the majority," Anderson said. "There's time to focus on individual learning."

But over the years, Willard has had trouble shaking its stereotype as a school for "problem kids."

"Some students have come here thinking it's the easy way out," Anderson said. "It's not. Willard is for people who really care about graduating.

"We need to find a way to upgrade Willard's reputation."

***

The broader look at alt ed comes at the same time the 97-year-old school is planning its new building as part of the Smart Schools 2020 projects.

It was decided last fall before voters considered the $88 million elementary and $70 million high school bonds that Willard would get an entirely new building.

"It's old, drafty, but charming," Ritchlin said.

Willard was originally an elementary school, which makes it an awkward fit today for high-schoolers. And an aging building means a physical overhaul and technology upgrades are next to impossible.

"I definitely don't want Willard, with a new building, to become a traditional public school," Anderson said. "I want it to be a lot similar to this one."

MCPS has budgeted $6 million to construct a new two-story Willard. Ritchlin said the new building will go up on the current property, though it's still undecided whether the current building will be demolished and a new school built in its place, or if the new school will be built alongside the current building.

Either way, Ritchlin said what's most important is the quality of education happening inside the building, not a "fancy exterior."

"You can have a pretty building, but it's the soul of the school that matters," he said.
Recently, hate literature by the American Nazi Party has besieged our beautiful river town of Missoula. The literature's sole purpose is to harass and intimidate people in our community. The anti-Semitic nature of the pieces left in neighborhoods around town has rightly concerned those of the Jewish faith and many others.

As the chief law enforcement officer of the county, I feel it is the duty of both myself and fellow law enforcement officers to condemn this targeting of our friends and neighbors, in addition to saying, in no uncertain terms, that the American Nazi Party and its ilk have no place in our community. Freedom of speech does not protect specific and direct calls for violence against an individual, vandalism, stalking, harassment or other criminal activity.

Missoula is not the only community in our state or nation currently targeted by white supremacists. A national neo-Nazi website issued a call for racists to harass individuals and businesses that had publicly taken a stand against a white supremacist leader in Whitefish. These acts are unacceptable. Members of that neo-Nazi party have now organized an armed protest set for Jan. 15 in Whitefish. In times like these, its important for civic leaders to publicly support justice and equality.

There are many actions law enforcement officers can take to address these activities that violate our communities' values. First, we need to understand that these white supremacist tactics are used to intimidate and isolate members of our communities and normalize abnormal racist beliefs. We need to publicly stand and rally behind the targets of hate groups and demonstrate that they are not alone.

We also need to take the time to write and file reports that document these manifestations of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Not only does this demonstrate to the public that we take the threat seriously, it is also the only way law enforcement can determine if there are patterns to the activity.

We cannot afford to take the literature drops in Missoula or the harassing communications in Montana or elsewhere around the country lightly. Hate groups like to operate anonymously under the cover of darkness. As peace officers, we have to be part of the effort to shine the light of public scrutiny on these actions, because, after all, it is our job to protect and serve. We must be front and center in leading the response to hate groups' efforts to demean, isolate, and scare members of the communities we serve.

I call on all my fellow law enforcement officers to rise to the challenge and make it clear that hate has no place in our republic.
A popular political narrative these days is to disparage the state of broadband infrastructure in Montana. Never mind evidence to the contrary.

On Dec. 25, James Grunke of the Missoula Economic Partnership wrote in the Missoulian that Current broadband infrastructure is sorely lacking, particularly in rural areas that would benefit the most from reliable broadband access. Grunke appropriately recognizes the importance of broadband connectivity. He recognizes, too, that Montana is a vast state. But then he leaps into the unknownfor himby asserting that broadband infrastructure, particularly in rural Montana, is sorely lacking.

Grunke is mistaken.

In October, the Montana Telecommunications Association released a report on the state of broadband in rural Montana. Learn more at www.BroadbandMT.com.

The Rural Broadband Report notes that Montanas rural telecom providers have invested nearly $250 million in fiber backbone infrastructure in Montana since 2011. That doesnt include the nearly $80 million each year these companies invest in continuing capital and operating expenses. Seventy-eight percent of Montanas schools have access to bandwidth meeting current federal standards. The equivalent percentage in Marylandnot known for its vastness, is 38 percent. And nearly 100 percent of schools served by MTA member companies will have access to fiber optic facilities by the end of 2017far exceeding future federal standards.

Twenty-seven percent of rural Montanas homes and businesses already are served by fiber-to-the-premise connections. Those who dont have access to fiber still have access to broadband. This, despite the overwhelming challenge of reaching a market density of fewer than three customers per square mile, at a cost of $30,000 per mile of fiber construction and $10,000 per customer to reach with fiber facilities. By comparison, it costs about $18 per customer to reach with fiber in Seattle.

Montana ranks No. 1 in the nation for telecommuting. This doesnt happen if broadband connectivity is sorely lacking. In fact, there are numerous examples of entrepreneurs moving to, not from, rural Montana because of the broadband services they can access. Ranchers sell cattle in on-line auctions. The first IP 911 emergency services network in the nation was launched in Montana nearly 10 years ago. Health care providers reach rural patients remotely via broadband applications. Telemedicine, telecommuting, distance learning and other applications are available to the citizens of rural Montana, thanks to the investment made by Montanas rural telecom providers.

Grunke notes that Montanas infrastructure (roads, bridges, sewers, water systems) is in need of repair and that taxpayers should be ready and willing to come up with the resources to fund infrastructure improvements. OK. But to throw Montanas rural broadband infrastructure in the same boat as crumbling bridges fails to recognize the commitment and investment that Montanas private sector rural telecom providers are dedicating to the deployment of state-of-the-art broadband communications for Montanas business and residential consumers.

Grunkes comments do more harm than good by perpetuating a myth that a [l]ack of reliable broadband access is one of the biggest deterrents for companies looking to relocate or expand in rural Montananot to mention implying that Montana citizen-taxpayers should be called upon to fix a problem that doesnt exist.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen his picks for the two agencies with the most influence over our nations rivers and clean water. He tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke for secretary of the Interior. Every Montanan who cares about clean drinking water, fish and wildlife, and our nations 2.9 million miles of rivers and streams should be concerned.

Rivers provide the drinking water for two-thirds of Americans. They are critical habitat for fish and wildlife and are where we make cherished outdoor memories with family and friends. They are economic engines for communities: powering our industries, irrigating our crops and supporting local businesses. River-related recreation alone contributes over $97 billion annually to the U.S. economy and a good chunk of Montanas $5.8 billion a year outdoor recreation economy.

Poor water management has serious consequences. Look no further than the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, the toxic algae blooms devastating Floridas coastal fisheries, and the two recent oil pipeline spills in the Yellowstone River here in Montana. Nobody wants to see more kids getting sick, more massive fish kills, and more communities compromised. That is why American Rivers urges U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, and their fellow senators, to carefully scrutinize the records of Pruitt and Zinke during their confirmation hearings.

Over the course of his career, Scott Pruitt consistently has fought to block environmental protections. As Oklahomas attorney general, he sued to block the Clean Water Rule issued by the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore federal protection to headwater streams and wetlands. Pruitt has also sued to block the EPAs Clean Power Plan, which would reduce pollution that causes climate change and harms rivers.

Pruitt received more than $300,000 from fossil fuel industries as a candidate for state office in Oklahoma. He has made a career of defending polluters over people, fighting to undermine protections for land, water and wildlife.

If confirmed for secretary of the Interior, Zinke will oversee management of 500 million acres of public lands including national parks, wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, and Wild and Scenic rivers. While he has been one of the few House Republicans to oppose the transfer of federal public lands to the states  at least until his perplexing vote earlier this week to facilitate such a transfer  and he supports the permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, his record on other conservation issues is mixed.

For starters, Zinke opposed restoring clean water protections for headwater streams and intermittent wetlands, upon which Montanas wild trout fisheries and waterfowl populations rely. He also has questioned the extent to which humans have played a role in climate change, despite acknowledging that the glaciers in Glacier National Park are melting before our eyes.

When it comes to protecting our most valuable wild rivers from harmful activities like mining and oil and gas drilling, Zinke has been disturbingly inconsistent. For example, hes championed legislation to designate East Rosebud Creek as Montanas first new Wild and Scenic river in 40 years, which we applaud. But when he had the chance, he never fully embraced a bill to permanently protect the North Fork Flathead River watershed from mining and energy development. Likewise, while Zinke spoke out against mining in the Paradise Valley just north of Yellowstone, he seems unconcerned about copper mining in the headwaters of the Smith River.

With drought gripping western states, many fish and wildlife species threatened with extinction, and climate change threatening communities nationwide, we need a secretary of the Interior who will prioritize protection, restoration and stewardship of our nations natural resources.

In confirmation hearings, the Senate must be ready to ask the nominees some hard questions and seek credible assurances that Attorney General Pruitt and Rep. Zinke will uphold the conservation legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt, who Presidentelect Trump purports to admire. Unfortunately, if their past actions are any guide, these appointments could achieve a strikingly different outcome.
A 25-year-old Bozeman man will spend the next four years in federal prison after an iPad he reported stolen was recovered and found to contain hundreds of images of child pornography.

In July 2015, Zachary Thomas Armstrong told Bozeman police his iPad was stolen from his apartment. The next day, a man brought the tablet into the police department, saying it contained child porn, according to court records.

Armstrong was charged in March with possession of child pornography and pleaded guilty in August as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Detective Scott McCormick of the Bozeman Police Department, the investigator in Armstrongs case, testified during Armstrong's sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Thursday. McCormick, who is the agencys Internet Crimes Against Children task force member, said he sent copies of all of the child porn images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which uses algorithms to determine if the photos have been seen in other cases.

The vast majority of images depicted girls between the ages of 2 and 7 being sexually assaulted by men, the detective said.

Of the more than 1,000 unique images he submitted, McCormick said the center had previously been made aware of all but one, that of a young girl being sexually assaulted by a man. The majority of Armstrong's four-hour sentencing hearing Thursday was a disagreement about a paragraph from his pre-sentence investigation report, which referenced the new photo and implied that Armstrong was the unidentified man in it.

McCormick said his investigation led him to believe the girl in the picture was an acquaintance of Armstrongs who lived in New Zealand. Detective Constable Lucy Catchpole appeared in court by video conference and said she interviewed the girls parents and showed them the photo. They immediately recognized their daughter, she said, although Armstrong's public defense attorney Andrew Nelson later said that could be false identification.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen said that according to a report, a potential criminal case about the image was not able to proceed because it was unclear where the photo was taken and who had jurisdiction over it.

The judge said from the evidence provided, he believed the girl in the photo was the girl from New Zealand, and that while he would not go so far as to say the man was Armstrong, he believed Armstrong had taken the photo.

During his statement to the court, Armstrong said he had downloaded the child porn during a period in his life when he was abusing alcohol and drugs, and that he came across the images by accident.

I had a cache of pornography on my iPad and Im guilty of that, he said, adding prosecutors had made up the story about the girl in New Zealand. Im not a pedophile, Im not a deviant, Im not a danger to society."

What he didnt say, and what Christensen said he was disappointed not to hear, was any sort of apology or understanding of the trauma the girls depicted in the photos have endured through their lives.

Christensen sentenced Armstrong to four years in federal prison, and said he will be on supervision for 15 years after release. During that time, he will not be able to live with children, use the internet, own a camera or a phone capable of taking pictures, without permission from the probation officer. He will also be tested for drug and alcohol use, both of which were prohibited during his supervision. Armstrong also was ordered to pay $9,000 in restitution, split among three of the girls identified from the photos, as well as an additional $5,000 court fee.

Armstrong was removed from court in handcuffs to begin his prison sentence.
HELENA  Montana government agencies volunteered Thursday to return a combined $5.5 million that had been budgeted to them this year, which is about $15 million short of what Republican legislative finance leaders had been seeking to help the state's bottom line.

One after another, department heads appeared Thursday before the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Claims committees, which had called on agencies to voluntarily relinquish what money they could spare. Most said their operations are as lean as can be, and any further cuts would be harmful to their operations and services they provide.

"We don't have anything to give for 2017," said Department of Public Health and Human Services director Sheila Hogan.

The call for voluntary agency cuts is the first step in what is anticipated to be intense budget negotiations. The governor's office and Republican financial legislative leaders are already in disagreement in the session's first week about how to balance the budget and build up the state's savings after revenues fell short of expectations last year.

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock's budget director, Dan Villa, said the governor's proposed budget already includes $38 million in savings for this year, and another $100 million in 2018 and 2019. The cuts that Republican legislative leaders are seeking beyond Bullock's plan simply go too deep, Villa said.

"That's not only to the bone, you're losing limbs," he said. "You're going to have fewer snowplow drivers, you're going to have fewer child protective workers, you're going to have all of those things then go away, even more than they are now."

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nancy Ballance and Senate Finance and Claims Chairman Llew Jones set a goal of $20 million to be relinquished state agencies. Those agencies' budgets would be reduced by that amount, and the cash turned over would go toward the 2017 ending fund balance.

Agencies that voluntarily comply would have 30 percent of that money returned in 2019, when revenues are expected to improve.

Jones said giving the agencies a chance to explain and defend their budgets is a necessary exercise that will be useful as budget committees start to dig into state spending in the coming weeks.

"We saw there is potential here," Jones said. "Some agencies presented reasons today, some agencies didn't present reasons today."

Among those agencies that did offer to return some of this year's budget funds included the state Department of Justice, which is run by Republican Attorney General Tim Fox. The department agreed to return $1.7 million in general fund money, though Deputy Attorney General Jon Bennion said it is risky to do so because of the agency's possible litigation expenses.

The state's court system, which is a separate branch of government, agreed to return $1.2 million, which is the amount that the Legislative Branch agreed to return. Six other agencies agreed to return smaller amounts of between $50,000 and $500,000.

That $5.5 million total will be included in a supplemental appropriations bill, a measure for agencies to request additional money for this year because of unexpected expenses.

Four agencies are seeking $22 million in that measure, which means that even with the money being voluntarily relinquished, the requests for additional funding for this year will still be $16.5 million.

Later Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee voted to trim $179,861 from an $11 million bill that funds the Legislature's expenses, with Ballance saying the Republican majority wants to make clear "that we're committed to responsible budgeting."

Villa noted that even with those reductions, the so-called "feed bill" still calls for a double-digit increase in funding for the Legislature compared to last session, whereas they are seeking actual spending reductions from state agencies.

"We'd hope they'd realize what's good for the goose is good for the gander, but we'll wait and see," Villa said.
HELENA  How data could be collected and used if hunting tags go electronic brought concerns from several lawmakers Thursday.

Sen. J.P. Pomnichowski, D-Bozeman, introduced Senate Bill 50 before the Senate Fish and Game Committee at the Capitol. The bill, brought at the request of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, gives the department authority to pursue electronic validation for hunting carcass tags.

Current law requires that hunters validate paper tags for animals such as elk and turkeys by cutting out the date.

We have adapted technology to many similar functions in our lives, Pomnichowski said, pointing to electronic airplane boarding passes and reading books on mobile devices as examples.

A law passed last session allows electronic licenses for fishing or hunting not requiring a carcass tag. FWP has seen success and a lot of use with those electronic licenses, said Hank Worsech, the licensing bureau chief for FWP.

This will allow the department to adapt to changing technology and customer expectations, he told the committee, adding that other states are pursuing similar technology. The bill does not put electronic tags into practice, but simply allows FWP to pursue the authority to put the technology in place, he said.

Before implementing electronic tags, the department would convene a working group to study the technology and any concerns surrounding it, he said.

Implementation and the scope of any data collection drew the most questions from senators.

Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, thanked FWP for bringing the bill and said that he hoped data could be used in wildlife management.

But collecting data such as kill locations troubled some senators.

A lot of people are very secretive of where they hunt, said Sen. Jedediah Hinkle, R-Belgrade.

Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls agreed.

I do not want the department to have carte blanche on the hunters location, she said. I dont know any hunter that likes to give up their location except to a dear, close hunting partner or a husband.

Hinkle floated an amendment idea to put parameters in the law about what data could be collected. Pomnichowski noted that she would be open to the idea depending on the language of the amendment.

Data collection would likely be at the hunting district scale, FWP staff said, but what information is collected was more a matter of philosophical limits than technological capability.

The tech work in a project like this is really the easy part, said FWP Chief of Administration Dustin Temple. Its really making sure that the user experience is good, making sure people are comfortable with it and making sure their data is secure.

The bill drew support from the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association.

No immediate action was taken by the committee Thursday.
Amid statewide spending cuts, legislators agreed Thursday to modestly trim their own funding bill.

With declined revenues from agriculture and natural resources, the governor has proposed 5 percent budget cuts for the two-year budget. Republican legislators say those should go deeper rather than raise taxes. So, Rep. Nancy Ballance, R-Hamilton, said it seemed natural to look for extra cash in the first measure passed each session.

House Bill 1, known as feed bill, approves spending for the current legislative session and costs to set up the next one. The original version of the bill introduced Wednesday put the total tally at about $11 million divided between the House, Senate and Legislative Services Division, a 16 percent increase from the 2015-16 budget period. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee met again to cut almost $180,000 from the bill, which reduces that session-to-session comparison to a 14 percent increase.

I thought it was important to have this discussion because this session, as you know, is going to be one well continually talk about reductions and money were trying to find, Ballance said Wednesday.

Some Republicans said the cuts made Thursday do not go far enough, suggesting legislators hourly pay and a new stipend approved last session also could be reduced. Because those amounts are written into state law, they cannot be changed with HB 1 and would require a separate measure.

Rep. Tom Burnett, R-Bozeman, was the sole vote against the feed bill on Thursday. He said in a GOP caucus before the meeting that it was a vote in protest of legislative pay and stipends he described as out of line with the compensation of working Montanans. After consulting with other Republicans, he said he might propose a bill to reduce those benefits codified in state law.

The feed bill approves spending for legislator and staff salaries, travel reimbursements, technology such as laptops, and health insurance for those who elect to accept it, among other expenses.

The cuts approved Thursday, reduced spending on mileage reimbursements, a secondary stipend amount available to legislators in large districts designed to offset travel and eliminated one of two pre-session trainings for legislators. Another amendment pushed back the timeline for when legislators in the 2019 session would receive their first check; rather than those costs being covered by this bill legislators would have to include them in the next sessions feed bill.

During the last six sessions, legislators have left an average of $400,000 unspent. Committee members hope that the cuts approved Thursday will cut that ending balance in half going forward.

If we continue to have these large ending fund balances, why would we not cut that out of the budget to begin with? Ballance said.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate President have authority to decide whether to redirect some or all of that money into the legislative IT fund or to put it back into the general fund. This years leaders will decide what to do with about $500,000.

One amendment passed Thursday suggested that up to $93,000 be made available to new legislators for laptops and other technology reimbursements because they do not receive their stipend until July. The committee hoped the rest will revert to the general fund to be spent on other state programs.

Based on a formula set in state law, legislators are paid about $90 a day during the 90-day session and the top leader in each chamber is paid an extra $5 a day. Legislators can choose to decline their salary Legislators who live more than 50 miles from the Capitol also receive about $100 per day to cover meals, lodging and other expenses during the session.

Legislative Services Director Susan Fox said the double-digit increase from the previous two-year budget was caused by a number of factors: rising insurance costs, offering insurance to more members as required by federal law and increasing pay for legislators and some staff by up to $1 per hour.

The last Legislature also created a new constituent services reimbursement fund to pay for members to travel their district for events and meetings. Each of the 150 legislators receive a $3,000 stipend they can spend on technology, travel or any other costs. They also can receive up to $4,000 more depending on the size of their district, but on a reimbursement basis.

The bill now moves to the House chamber for a vote.
HELENA  Amid statewide spending cuts, legislators agreed Thursday to modestly trim their own funding bill.

With lower revenues from agriculture and natural resources, the governor has proposed 5 percent budget cuts for the two-year budget. Republican legislators say those should go deeper rather than raise taxes. So, Rep. Nancy Ballance, R-Hamilton, said it seemed natural to look for extra cash in the first measure passed each session.

House Bill 1, known as feed bill, approves spending for the current legislative session and the costs to set up the next one. The original version of the bill introduced Wednesday put the total tally at about $11 million divided among the House, Senate and Legislative Services Division, a 16 percent increase from the 2015-16 budget period.

On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee met again to cut almost $180,000 from the bill, which reduces that session-to-session comparison to a 14 percent increase.

I thought it was important to have this discussion because this session, as you know, is going to be one well continually talk about reductions and money were trying to find, Ballance said Wednesday.

Some Republicans said the cuts made Thursday do not go far enough, suggesting legislators hourly pay and a new stipend approved last session also could be reduced. Because those amounts are written into state law, they cannot be changed with HB 1 and would require a separate measure.

Rep. Tom Burnett, R-Bozeman, was the sole vote against the feed bill on Thursday. He said in a GOP caucus before the meeting that it was a vote in protest of legislative pay and stipends he described as out of line with the compensation of working Montanans. After consulting with other Republicans, he said he might propose a bill to reduce those benefits codified in state law.

The feed bill approves spending for legislator and staff salaries, travel reimbursements, technology such as laptops, and health insurance for those who elect to accept it, among other expenses.

The cuts approved Thursday reduced spending on mileage reimbursements, a secondary stipend amount available to legislators in large districts designed to offset travel, and eliminated one of two pre-session trainings for legislators. Another amendment pushed back the timeline for when legislators in the 2019 session would receive their first check; rather than those costs being covered by this bill, legislators would have to include them in the next sessions feed bill.

During the last six sessions, legislators have left an average of $400,000 unspent. Committee members hope that the cuts approved Thursday will cut that ending balance in half going forward.

If we continue to have these large ending fund balances, why would we not cut that out of the budget to begin with? Ballance said.

The speaker of the house and the senate president have authority to decide whether to redirect some or all of that money into the legislative IT fund or to put it back into the general fund. This years leaders will decide what to do with about $500,000.

One amendment passed Thursday suggested that up to $93,000 be made available to new legislators for laptops and other technology reimbursements because they do not receive their stipend until July. The committee hoped the rest will revert to the general fund to be spent on other state programs.

Based on a formula set in state law, legislators are paid about $90 a day during the 90-day session, and the top leader in each chamber is paid an extra $5 a day. Legislators can choose to decline their salary. Legislators who live more than 50 miles from the Capitol also receive about $100 per day to cover meals, lodging and other expenses during the session.

Legislative Services Director Susan Fox said the double-digit increase from the previous two-year budget was caused by a number of factors: rising insurance costs, offering insurance to more members as required by federal law, and increasing pay for legislators and some staff by up to $1 per hour.

The last Legislature also created a new constituent services reimbursement fund to pay for members to travel their district for events and meetings. Each of the 150 legislators receives a $3,000 stipend they can spend on technology, travel or any other costs. They also can receive up to $4,000 more depending on the size of their district, but on a reimbursement basis.

The bill now moves to the House chamber for a vote.
Monte Cox is one of if not the most prolific Fighter manager in all of MMA. He even has a team name for the fighters he manages, "Team Extreme"! Monte Cox manages 26 fighters from around America and among them are some of the toughest MMA fighters on the planet at all weight divisions.

Monte Cox is one of if not the most prolific Fighter manager in all of MMA. He even has a team name for the fighters he manages, "Team Extreme"! Monte Cox manages 26 fighters from around America and among them are some of the toughest MMA fighters on the planet at all weight divisions. We had a chance to talk to the leader of "Team Extreme", after the controversial fight that took place at the Universal Above Ground Fighting on July 30th where one of his fighters former UFC Champ, Dave "The Warrior" Menne took on Rob Ferguson. Monte Cox took some time out to clear the air and talk about what happened at the controversial UFC scuffle after party in London at UFC 38, his thoughts on Matt Hughes Controversial victory over Carlos Newton 1, the Controversy for Dave Menne and Rob Ferguson at the UAGF 2, and the controversy surrounding why he dropped Bobby Hoffman as a client?

Like it or leave it controversy seems to like to follow him around

Here is what he had to say.

MMARR: Has there ever been anyone you have managed, that you felt was a bad addition and have had to cut?

MC: ( Chuckles) I have only cut one person ever

MMARR: Who was that?

MC: Bobby Hoffman.

MMARR: What happened with Bobby Hoffman why was he cut?

MC: At one point when he was fighting in Japan, he threatened to kill my wife and kids.

That was the end, I had put up with enough Crap.

MMARR: Why did he threaten your wife and Kids?

MC: He is a psychopath,

MMARR: hmmm

MC: Why does he do anything he does? Why did he beat up his wife? Why was he in Prison before he started Mixed martial Arts? He is a freaken Loon!

MMARR: What was he in Prison for before that?

MC: I dont know. He came right out of Prison and fought his first fight. It is not like MMA made him what he is. It is what he was before hand.

MMARR: I want to talk about the little scuffle in London in the night Club, Anthony Fryklunds name has been connected to that, there have been a lot of rumors, a lot of speculation about what went on there. Can you tell us what you take is on that?

MC: I mean it is almost impossible for me, I was not there, I was in Las Vegas. What I am told is, from the people that I have talked to, is that this friend of Tito (Ortiz) Bo jumped on Pats (Miletich) back when they were all exiting the bar. They were all drunk and he was acting like he was fighting with Pat ( Miletich). Tony (Fryklund) came out Drunk, they were all drinking, and thought someone was attacking Pat (Miletich). So he ripped him off his back in a rear naked (Choke). Pat Miletich turned around and told him "No, No, No" we are just goofing around, and Tony Relaxed, and one of the guys from England blasted Bo and knocked him out.

MMARR: Tito (Ortiz) seems to have a problem with some of the situations that have been going on. What is the Problem? ( Tito has been on the Internet forums and vocal about the subject.)

MC: I dont know. I tried to ask him on the internet. I dont know what his thing is. I know for sure, these are the things that I have been told. Tony is the one that picked Tito off the ground, He has got blood all over his shirt from where he picked Tito up. To make sure that he didnt get kicked or hit anymore. Pat is the one that pushed Lee Murray away and told him to stop and get out of there and to quit. I dont understand why Tito is not thanking him, I was not there. When Everybody is drunk I dont have any idea what is going on. They dont know.

MMARR: So has the situation been squashed with Tito and Team Punishment?

MC: We never saw a situation. I mean the only thing that I know Pat was upset as everyone was painting Tony as being some big Villain. I mean that is ridiculous. I mean there was a bunch of people that were drunk. Who is more at fault, a guy for jumping on Pats back and acting like he is fighting him, or a teammate coming out and seeing that and thinking he is fighting him? I mean that was the thing. Tony did not hit the guy. I asked Tony and I told the UFC, Tony will take a Lie detector test. I told the UFC find your guy. He will take a lie detector test and say he did not hit Bo. If he didnt hit Bo, then I dont want to hear anymore, go after the people that were throwing punches, no one on team Miletich threw a punch.

MMARR: Is it true that Tony Got suspended?

MC: Not True.

MMARR: Not True?

MC: Not True, He has never been suspended.

MMARR: So there is no Merit to that Rumor whatsoever.

MC: Not at all, I mean they have not even interviewed Tony yet, or me, so if they suspend him without even interviewing the person that is involved, then we got to make a call to some attorneys.

MMARR: Speaking of suspensions, Josh Barnett just got suspended, lost his title, and got his fight declared a no contest what do you think about that?

MC: I like Josh a lot. I dont want to rip on him or anything. I do know there is a precedent when Bobby Hoffman tested positive for .Marijuana after beating (Mark) Robinson. They ruled that fight a no contest. That is the only time when that I can. oh when Laverne Clark tested Positive years and Years ago against Fabiano Iha. They ruled that a no contest, so that is the precedent for doing it. You know, so I dont know I am not surprised that they did it, lets just put it that way.

MMARR: What is your take on the fact that he was suspended on top of being a no contest.

MC: Well that is up to the athletic commission, Bobby Hoffman was suspended also.

MMARR: How about the stripping of the Title?

MC: Well if the fight is a no Contest, then how can you have a title? You know what I am saying? When this has happened before, and this does not happen very often, but in every situation the fighter has been suspended and the fight has been declared a no contest. That is what has always happened. So here again it just so happens that this is a little more higher profile person, and he had won the title on it. They really did the same thing. They suspended him, which is the athletic commission, I mean they could do what they want to do, If he is fight is ruled a no contest he cant keep the title.

MMARR: What are your thoughts on steroid use in MMA.

MC: It is difficult to say anything about steroids without everybody jumping on someones back. Jeremy Horn got on the Internet, and Basically said what every big name fighter out there knows, which is yeah there is steroid use in MMA There is no doubt about it. But it has never been illegal to do it, like in Pride they dont even test, they dont care, so it has never been a big deal before. It is something that some people do some people dont. Now that it is illegal I think that everyone should quit using. That is the whole point. Why do you want to risk going out and getting a big win, and get it taken away? Up until that point if it is not specifically illegal. If you are fighting for a living, and this is your job, and the guys you are fighting are juicing, and that is giving them an advantage, I dont blame guys for wanting to juice also. Make it an even playing field. You know what I am saying? That being said, there are guys out there like Matt Hughes and Jens Pulver from our camp, guys who are at the very top of their weight class, who have never juiced a day in their life. So you dont have to juice to be on top. Now every now and again on the Internet someone will say Hughes is a juicer, that is freaking ridiculous. He has never done it and he has no reason to do it. His twin brother hasnt been in a gym in three years and looks almost like him. I mean he is a genetic freak! That is just the truth. He is a freak! Everyone here is always "strong as a farm-boy" or "oh those wrestlers are strong", well this is a wrestling farm-boy. He has always been strong, he has always had endurance, I mean look at the endurance the guy has. He can go five rounds, and that is not typical of a "roider".

He told me, "why would anyone say that?" and I go "You know people are always jealous of the people who are on top". They are going to look for ways to. They cant stand the fact that Matt is so good at what he does. People cant deal with it. You are going to have people that dont like it. No matter who you beat.

MMARR: Speaking of Matt Hughes, he just beat a pretty good fighter in Carlos Newton.

But he beat him in a controversial style the first time out at UFC 34. What did you think of the decision there? Did you think it was a good decision?

MC: What other decision could there be? John McCarthy has to make the call. Gotta be made inside the ring. McCarthy, he comes in, Newton is on his back and is unconscious, No one is disputing that he is taking a nap. He was there for a minute taking a nap. Matt is on one knee, and obviously you cant see his face. You cant tell whether he is out, he is dazed, he is spinning, who knows I dont know.

MMARR: But he said on Pay Per view that he was out!

MC: That is what he thought. He said it was like going through, spinning, spinning, spinning, He didnt know where he was. I mean he was completely out of it, but how many unconscious guys do you see that are sitting on one knee? You know what I am saying? If you are unconscious, you are a noodle, you would be lying face down. It does not make any sense. It is typical of, if Carlos has the choke on and he slams him, and right at impact that Choke nails him and puts him almost out, that is consistent of how it would be. You would be on one knee, you could still have your faculties but barely, you are so close to being just out you know, that you are there, but he doesnt. When McCarthy pushed him, If he is unconscious, he is going to fall over on his face, when you are unconscious everyone lays flat, that is how it goes, it is not like the Mr. Bean stuff where you fall asleep standing.

That is the thing, whether he was out, whether he wasnt out, It does not matter because McCarthy has to make a call. He comes in, he sees Newton unconscious, he sees Matt on one knee. He has got to make a call. He made a call to stop the fight. Maybe had Matt been, facing Big John and he could have seen his face, maybe he would have been able to say "oh these guys are both in trouble" I dont know but he didnt, he had his back to him call it fortunate for us, but John had to make a call.

MMARR: So you admit there was a little bit of luck involved there.

MC: I think that when you have fight like that, that is the closest fight in MMA history. How can it be any closer? Someone has got to get lucky and someone has got to get unlucky. But the thing was, ten seconds later, Matt is jumping up on the cage, Newton is still taking a nap. I dont know, it is one of those things, John had to make a call. John tells me that Matt was not out. He was the only person that was within a foot of him. Jeremy Horn and Pat Miletich told me he wasnt out. I said "was he out?" They said no his eyes were totally open. He wasnt unconscious. His eyes were open but he was out of it, he didnt know where he was or what had happened, but they told me he was not unconscious. I was sitting in the stands so I cant, everyone who gets on the Internet and says that he was out, some of them were watching from television, ten thousand miles away, I dont want to hear what they had to say.

MMARR: I was there live as press ringside, but it was hard for me to tell even.

MC: Right, That is what I am saying, who was the closest person to it? Thats McCarthy, he made a call! I mean if it was the other way around and he ruled Newton the winner would I be upset and stuff. Probably, but what are you going to do? Someone has got to make the call. Hes paid to do it. He has made hundreds of them. In Kuwait (Warriors War), Pele (Jose Landi) hit Matt with a knee and when McCarthy stepped in and stopped it, we went crazy! When he hit him with the knee and he stopped it, I thought he was fine, and I was right on the cage. I was right in his corner! But, he wasnt facing me. He was looking the other way. And when he stopped it "I went Oh my God!!!" when Matt turned around and looked at us, we shut up, because he was completely out of it. He wasnt unconscious.

MMARR: But he would have been done anyway

MC: AHH yeah I mean Pele would have had a free blow on him so it was a great call. I learned a long time ago, that I cant pretend to see better then the guy standing right there. I hear people say Oh "He (Matt Hughes) was unconscious from the Choke, and then he fell." Come on that makes no sense. He put him up on the cage to try to work himself free, but if he couldnt work himself free and he got in trouble, obviously the slam is there. He is not going to wait until he is unconscious to slam him. He knows when he is going unconscious. He told me he took a step back and slammed him. I mean he consciously did that. You cant tell me, If I am holding a guy, a 180 lb guy on my shoulders, and standing there and I go unconscious, I am not going to slam him, my legs are going to collapse. He is going to fall on top of me! That is how people go unconscious. You dont go unconscious by taking a step back and slamming someone so hard you knock him out.

MMARR: You said that John McCarthy had to make a call, and you said it could have gone the other way, if it had gone the other way.

MC: I dont know, from where he was I dont know what other call he could have made, other then the one he made. One guy is clearly unconscious. That guy cant be the winner, I mean he cant be. You cant win when you are sleeping. Matt was still up, he wasnt laying down on his face, he wasnt. He didnt appear to be out. I was at that angle too. I was from behind. So you know at that point, he made a call because he saw one guy out, same as when he made the call with Pele and Matt, he saw a fighter that couldnt defend himself. You got to stop the fight. One guy on the Internet was saying, "He should have stepped back and waited ten seconds to see what happened." Well Come on one guys is unconscious! If Matt would have been OK but he couldnt see, he would have been totally fine.

MMARR: That guy is absolutely ridiculous, I mean when someone gets KOd we dont step back and wait ten seconds, wont even talk about that, but.

MC: I know I am just saying, every single time that someone in boxing, when a guy is out laying on his back the way Newton was the Referee stops it, and stops the fight. That is the way it is done. He did it just like he has done it every other time. The only reason that people complain is because Matt is brutally Honest. He says what he thinks. He got criticized for Newton II, with the last fight be cause he said, "I expected to win a decision." That wasnt saying, "No I was fighting for a decision." Thats saying this Newton is freaking good! "I dont think I can stop him." He gets criticized for that. He is just Honest. He tells you what he thinks. He told me from day one he is going to beat him. He only trained three weeks. I kept saying, "What are you doing? You gotta get back here and train." "Oh I am doing a roofing Job." He trained three weeks for Newton.

MMARR: The second fight?

MC: Yeah.

MMARR: Tim Sylvia will be in the UFC soon he will be taking on Wesley Cabbage, with the size and reach advantage that Sylvia has do you see anyone posing a threat to Sylvia?

MC: Oh Sure, like everyone else, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. We built him up. I have managed him from the beginning. He is 15 - 0 and he has knocked out what, 12 of his 15? If you come and you try to stand up with him, you are going to lose. I mean Maybe Pedro Rizzo could stand up with him. Probably, but anyone else, they dont have the reach and they dont have the power. He has got incredible knees, incredible knees, and they are already head level, so if you stand up with him you are going to get hurt. His Jiu Jitsu is improving. He does it every day of course, like everyone else at the gym. He triangles people, he gets people, but that is not as far along as his stand up.

MMARR: So he can be grounded and pounded?

MC: I dont know about grounded and pounded, because his arms are so stinking long that if you are in his guard, he will hit you. You may not be able to hit him, but he will hit you. I mean he is a FREAK! He is hard to deal with because he is also very coordinated. He is hard to take down. You are going to have to be a good wrestler to take him down. He has a really good sprawl, and when he sprawls his feet are already eight feet behind him! You cant reach him and get him you know

MMARR: That is two of your fighters in a row that you called freaks!!! Matt Hughes and.

MC: I am Loaded with Freaks!!!!!

MMARR: Anthony "The Freak" Fryklund?!?!

MC: Yup! I am loaded with them! I have all kinds of them! That is what happens when you live in Iowa, we must be close to some kind of a Nuclear power plant! We are loaded with guys, Look at Robbie Lawler!!! Robbie Lawler can bench Press Three Hundred and sixty Pounds ten times!!! Who else can do that at a hundred and seventy pounds?

MMARR: Speaking of Robbie he is in the UFC division at 170, Matt Hughes is the king of the Division right now. I dont know if I see anyone beating matt Hughes right away, where does Matt Hughes take it? Does he take it to 185? Or where does Robbie Lawler take it?

MC: Matt does not go anywhere, he stays there as the champion until someone can beat him. Robbie just keeps fighting. Robbie is 20 years old. He has got time to improve. Ask Robbie Lawler if he thinks he can beat Matt Hughes? He just laughs and says, "Not in a million years." But someday you know, it is like a passing of the guard. Miletich was there forever, he left, now Matt took over. Matt could be there, in my opinion, as long as he wants to be there. He has already beaten the two best guys out there. Newton is the second best guy out there at one seventy. No doubt in my mind.

I DONT CARE HOW BAD HE GOT BEAT THIS LAST TIME. He is the second best guy. I think Sakurai is top five, I think Miletich is Top Five, and I think that Trigg is top five. I think those are your top five guys in the world.

MMARR: How about Silva?

MC: Anderson Silva could not make 170.

MMARR: he fought Sakurai at 170

MC: but now look at him. He was 190 the last time, I mean he will have to really, really work to make 170 again. Hes big. That is what people think of Pele "Landi Jons", I went to Pride and watched "Pele" and that dude is 205! That guys is going to have to get an amputation to make 180! Let alone 170. They cant even bring those guys up. They cant make the weight. Anderson Silva maybe. But, you know what? I dont think he is top five.

MMARR: He has got long legs to I think he could get taken down.

MC: He has got things that could cause people problems, there is no doubt about it. But he is built for a wrestler. A Guy like Matt is going to be ten times as strong. You cant have nine-foot long arms, and still have the muscle mass that a Matt Hughes has, with those arms

MMARR: at 170.

MC: right at 170and so I see that fight trying to get to the clinch, slamming him and pushing him into the cage or whatever, and beating the hell out of him. I think Matt beats him worse then Newton.

MMARR: What do you think of the chances of a Matt Hughes type fighter succeeding in a ring, as opposed to a UFC cage?

MC: He is 6 and 0 in Rings.

MMARR: He hasnt faced the same type of competition in the rings.

MC: He has fought good people.

MMARR: Has he fought anyone like Carlos Newton or Hayato Sakurai?

MC: No, I mean, those are the two best guys in the world, next to him. So, no. But he fought Chris Haseman who was 200 pounds (a Unanimous decision Win for Hughes), and he fought Kanehara (Majority Decision Win for Hughes) who has beaten Menne and Horn, and he beat both of them in a ring. I mean the whole cage thing is overrated. I watched the Newton fight, he didnt even use the cage half the time. I mean the only reason a ring would help someone fighting Matt would be because someone could slide out under the ropes and get a stand up. Matt put it on Newton in the middle of the ring. Just like in the cage, I mean he crucified him with the knee on one arm and holding the other, that was not the cage. If he can do that to Newton in the middle then he can do that to anyone. It is a funny story, about a year ago I called the UFC begging for them to put Matt Hughes back in. They said, "I dont know he just lost to Hallman." I said, "you know, what you guys dont understand is, Matt has the potential to be the best fighter out of Miletich Martial arts ever." His Potential is unlimited. No-one is going to wrestle like him, his submissions are really coming along, he passes the guard, he gets to the side, strikes well from the ground, and he is working his butt off on his stand up. This guy is going to become a machine. Joe Silva and Dana White said "Ok, Ok" they gave me some credit, at least I know talent when I see it. Matt was going to quit, because we couldnt get him anything, no one would take him. So finally they go, "would he fight Sakurai?" So I go, "He would fight Sakurai in a minute." Well then Sakurai ended up pulling out of that fight, Then Anderson Silva Pulled out of the (Carlos) Newton fight, so he went from not being able to get anywhere right into a title shot, and took advantage of it. The thing with Matt is he keeps getting better. Look at every fight. He is getting better and better and better and the next fight he is going to get better then that, and it is not a matter of who is out there that can beat him now, it is who can beat him next time?

The guy is phenomenal.

MMARR: Who is out there for him? What are you going to do? You have to find fights for him too.

MC: I dont have to do anything, thank goodness. Zuffa has to do it. I am in a nice position. I sit at home and play on the Internet and they call me and tell me who they want him to fight. I am like, "Whatever." We dont care. Anybody at 170 lbs! I am thinking Sherk is going to beat Radach in the next show. Then he fights Sherk.

MMARR: Do you manage Sherk?

MC: Used to I managed him for his first 20 fights.

MMARR: Do you think Sherk is going to beat Radach?

MC: I think so.

MMARR: What is your take on the Jens Pulver saga? He has had some problems with the UFC, is UFO. Does he have a contract with the UFO longer than one fight?

MC: The UFO only gave out one fight deals. All the reports on Bustamante being offered a three fight deal it is all bullcrap. No one was offered more then a one fight deal through UFO. And the numbers are insane. I know what he was offered because my partner in Japan is one of the matchmakers, so I know the numbers and those are ridiculous. But getting back to Jens, obviously I manage Jens, The UFC had to make a business decision. I know that it sounds like we are skirting the issue but it is not. I mean they have to decide. Our Contract is up, they have got to decide what do you want to pay Jens? They came up with a figure, we didnt like that figure, I mean we thought, seven fights, never losing, beating B.J PennIt was time that he got paid. We didnt care that he was a 155 pounds. We wanted him to be paid like the 170 pounders and the 185 pounders. We never expected for him to be paid like heavyweights, we never asked for that kind of money, never expected it. But, we wanted to be paid like the 170 pounders and like the 185 pounders, we didnt want to be on top, we just wanted to be in there.

MMARR: So what do you think are your chances of getting back into the UFC?

MC: I think we can get him back into the UFC tomorrow. The money has got to change. He is going to go fight, we are going to leave on Saturday (Aug 3rd) he is going to go fight in the UFO, I think he is going to win Impressively, and I think it is going to open up a whole new world for him. K-1 wants him, K-1 is offering really good money. UFO would like to do more then one show, I think they are going to do one more show. I think after he beats Murahama, I think Pride is going to be interested in signing him.

MMARR: How is Pride going to sign a 155 pounder? Are they going to have a new 155 division?

MC: They can do anything! I mean Pride can do anything they want to do. If they want to go out and get Royler (Gracie) for him, or they want to get Uno (Caol) for him or they want to get Sato (Rumina) for him there is all kinds of fights. Pride isnt like the UFC, they dont have all these titles, they just want to make good fights. If they think Jens Pulver is the most exciting fighter or the fighter they want at 155, there is no shortage of good Japanese fighters at one fifty five. So why wouldnt they sign him? It dosnt make any sense that they wouldnt.

MMARR: Were you impressed with Jens Pulvers performance against Robert Emerson?( Emerson was his last first fight since leaving the UFC, he won via three round decision)

MC: Well..

Long Pause

Here is the thing, This just happened last night with Menne. You got Jens Pulver whos just trying to get a warm up fight because he hasnt been in the ring a while. You take Robert Emerson, we didnt know anything about Robert Emerson, other then we were told he was good. We wanted someone good! I mean we didnt want for Jens to get a warm up, we didnt want him to walk in and knock someone out in 30 seconds. If he does that he doesnt do anyone any good. We wanted him to go rounds, so we didnt know anything about Robert Emerson. We dont have video tapes on him, we dont think about him, we just know that he is going to want to stand up. That is what we wanted, so he can get some work. Jens trains right though the fight, I mean Emerson has a chance of a lifetime. He watches tapes on Jens, he grooms himself for this fight, I mean he is ready to go. It is the fight of his life. For Jens, it is just a warm up, just a tune up that is what it is. All the people who saw it say it was exciting, I mean this Emerson kid is tough! He took punches! Jens dropped him with the knee, Jens dropped him with the left hook, I mean scoring wise for the fight, it is not very close, I mean with the knockdowns and stuff he probably had two ten eight rounds. But, the fight is better then the score, the fight is that this guy gets dropped and kept coming, it was amazing, it was great. Jens got tired in the third round, Jens also got kneed in the "nuts" in the second round Pretty bad. (He) Had to take five minutes, and he got really tired. But that is because he didnt train for the fight. If he would have trained like he gets ready for a fight three weeks out, I think he rolls through him, but he cant do that, his fight is ahead of him in the UFO. When you are number one in the world you have to be able to not be at your best and still win. That is what he did. He went out and showed some really nice takedowns. He worked a little bit on his ground and pound in case he needs it. He dropped the kid twice standing. So I was happy.

MMARR: You manage both Dave Menne and Matt Hughes. Both fought in Kuwait (Warriors War 1 Feb, 8 ,2001. ) What would have happened if Hughes would have beat Pele and they would have met in the finals?

MC: Someone would have won sixty Grand.

Laughs

That is one of the rare instances where I asked both of them, "What do you want to do?" Now they have already fought each other once. ( Extreme Challenge 21 Oct, 17, 98. Hughes won a Decision)

MMARR: Did you manage them both at that time? Time (of their fight at Extreme Challenge 21, Oct,17, 98)

MC: No did not manage Hughes, But Laverne Clark fought Menne on my show and I managed both of them.

MMARR: What do you think would have happened if Dave Menne would have fought Matt Hughes at Kuwait.

MC: I dont know. I mean the first time Matt Hughes won pretty handily. Dave was on in Kuwait. I mean he was absolutely on. He beat Carlos Newton, Dropped him, actually had him knocked out with the kick to the head, and he came to when he landed.

MMARR: Yeah it kind of looked like a flash knockdown.

MC: yeah but he was out when he fell, because McCarthy came over right after and said "He was Out" and I go yeah "I know, when he landed he came to". Dave is capable of showing, amazing things I mean you just never know with that guy.

MMARR: That is the knock against him though, he has never been known as being a finisher. I mean even as his manager you must agree to some extent that ..

MC: Yeah but who cares? Do you think his fights are boring? I mean every good fight in my shows all involve Dave Menne. Menne Vs Laverne Clark was amazing. An amazing fight, he finished Laverne. Dave Menne Vs Shonie Carter, both of them had to go to the hospital when it was done, it was probably the best fight I have ever had in my show, and it went to a decision, and I couldnt care less. These people who are caught up in finishes, it is all Jiu Jitsu based. This isnt Jiu Jitsu anymore. Wrestling matches never, I mean you try for pins, If Sanderson (Cael Sanderson) wins eighty percent of his matches by decision does that make him less of a wrestler? It does not matter. I just want exciting fights. That is what I care about. If people argue, "Oh that guy is not exciting", well thats ok, that I can deal with. I mean if they feel that they dont like his style, or whatever then fine! Dont watch him! But when you start arguing that someone is not a finisher, "Oh who cares". Everyone tells me that "Oh that the Aaron Riley Vs Robbie Lawler fight, wasnt that an incredible fight!" No one finished they must both suck!!!

MMARR: No I dont mean that, No one thinks that Dave Menne Sucks.

MC: No, I am saying that if no one finished it must be a terrible fight! So all those fights, like Lawler (Robbie) Vs Riley (Aaron) , (Dave) Menne Vs Shonie (Carter), well how about Shonie and Serra, Well Shonie Finished with a Knockout, well a few seconds more would that have been a crappy fight? Because he didnt finish?

MMARR: But dont you think because he actually finished that fight that it was just that extra bit more exciting?

MC: Oh I think it is great! Certainly! But you know what, that is the stuff that makes Pro-wrestling so appealing to people, wouldnt it be great if every single time you could write the script and finish in dramatic fashion? I think it would be great! But this is the real world it does not happen that way. Dave Menne is not real strong, he doesnt have great punching, he is not an incredible submission guy, he is just a really good fighter. He lets you hit him and he hits you back. He kicks at you, he will take you down, I mean he has got "Pele" (Jose-Landi) in a Knee bar, he goes for everything, I cant remember a fight with Menne , maybe Iha, that was boring, I find him incredibly fun to watch, I never know what the guy is going to do.

MMARR: He got K.Od pretty good against Bustamante.

MC: Yeah he is not going to say anything about it, but ask Zuffa. Everyone at that Connecticut show, everybody got sick. Badly sick. I got sick I lost 12 pounds in 12 hours.

MMARR: Monte Cox lost twelve pound eh?

MC: TWELVE POUNDS! Jeremy Horn and I were the first two in our group to get sick and they all laughed at me. I couldnt sit on the couch for more then five minutes I had to run to the bathroom and vomit. I had to be buried under blankets, and I never get sick. Thats just not something that ever happens. So everyone is laughing at me, Pulver and all those guys, and I am like "Oh my God" I have never had this before, this is awful.

Then Randleman gets it.
For years, mergers and acquisitions in technology were fairly straightforward: Every investment bank kept a list of a dozen or so companies like Google and IBM that had a track record of acquisitions and cash to deploy. When the time and price were right, bankers would seek to match the tech giants with a start-up, and a deal would be hatched.

Now the technology deal-making club has had its doors blown wide open.

All kinds of companies, including century-old industrial stalwarts like General Motors and General Electric, are among the corporate giants acquiring tech start-ups of late.

This trend, of course, reflects how new technology is radically changing many traditional businesses. Developments like connected homes and driverless cars are upending old models. Many companies have come to the realization that building technology in-house was a painstaking process that often meant getting leapfrogged by start-ups.

So companies not usually thought of as being in the tech sector have become more aggressive, making more than $125 billion worth of acquisitions in 2016, the most ever. Five years ago, that figure was $20 billion.
HELENA  Montana government agencies volunteered Thursday to return a combined $5.5 million that had been budgeted to them this year, which is about $15 million short of what Republican legislative finance leaders had been seeking to help the state's bottom line.

One after another, department heads appeared Thursday before the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Claims committees, which had called on agencies to voluntarily relinquish what money they could spare. Most said their operations are as lean as can be, and any further cuts would be harmful to their operations and services they provide.

"We don't have anything to give for 2017," said Department of Public Health and Human Services director Sheila Hogan.

The call for voluntary agency cuts is the first step in what is anticipated to be intense budget negotiations. The governor's office and Republican financial legislative leaders are already in disagreement in the session's first week about how to balance the budget and build up the state's savings after revenues fell short of expectations last year.

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock's budget director, Dan Villa, said the governor's proposed budget already includes $38 million in savings for this year, and another $100 million in 2018 and 2019. The cuts that Republican legislative leaders are seeking beyond Bullock's plan simply go too deep, Villa said.

"That's not only to the bone, you're losing limbs," he said. "You're going to have fewer snowplow drivers, you're going to have fewer child protective workers, you're going to have all of those things then go away, even more than they are now."

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nancy Ballance and Senate Finance and Claims Chairman Llew Jones set a goal of $20 million to be relinquished state agencies. Those agencies' budgets would be reduced by that amount, and the cash turned over would go toward the 2017 ending fund balance.

Agencies that voluntarily comply would have 30 percent of that money returned in 2019, when revenues are expected to improve.

Jones said giving the agencies a chance to explain and defend their budgets is a necessary exercise that will be useful as budget committees start to dig into state spending in the coming weeks.

"We saw there is potential here," Jones said. "Some agencies presented reasons today, some agencies didn't present reasons today."

Among those agencies that did offer to return some of this year's budget funds included the state Department of Justice, which is run by Republican Attorney General Tim Fox. The department agreed to return $1.7 million in general fund money, though Deputy Attorney General Jon Bennion said it is risky to do so because of the agency's possible litigation expenses.

The state's court system, which is a separate branch of government, agreed to return $1.2 million, which is the amount that the Legislative Branch agreed to return. Six other agencies agreed to return smaller amounts of between $50,000 and $500,000.

That $5.5 million total will be included in a supplemental appropriations bill, a measure for agencies to request additional money for this year because of unexpected expenses.

Four agencies are seeking $22 million in that measure, which means that even with the money being voluntarily relinquished, the requests for additional funding for this year will still be $16.5 million.

Later Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee voted to trim $179,861 from an $11 million bill that funds the Legislature's expenses, with Ballance saying the Republican majority wants to make clear "that we're committed to responsible budgeting."

Villa noted that even with those reductions, the so-called "feed bill" still calls for a double-digit increase in funding for the Legislature compared to last session, whereas they are seeking actual spending reductions from state agencies.

"We'd hope they'd realize what's good for the goose is good for the gander, but we'll wait and see," Villa said.
HELENA  Insurance companies can cancel policies or raise rates on customers based on questions asked about an incident or a claim filed even if the company never paid a dime.

Senate Bill 58 would ban companies from using information about zero-dollar claims in making underwriting decisions that ultimately affect cancellations, renewals, and rates of insurance policies. The measure carried by Sen. Mary McNally, a Billings Democrat, also is supported by Republican State Auditor and Insurance Commissioner Matt Rosendale. The bill would affect a broad range of insurance policies from homeowners and auto to commercial property and professional liability.

Some homeowners have had their insurance canceled or not renewed for making inquiries about coverage for incidents that they, not the insurance company, ultimately pay for, McNally said while introducing the bill to the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee on Friday. Its particularly ironic because most of these policies require you to make that notice. Then that information can be used against you.

She noted that thousands of policies were canceled in the Billings area after repeated hailstorms. Although some of those cancellations were likely based on risk calculated using claims that the company actually paid out, some were instead the result of risk assessments based on claims that the customer paid themselves and cost the insurance company nothing.

This bill does not interfere with an insurance companys ability to cancel or not renew based on a history of excessive claims, McNally said. It simply requires that those claims resulted in real costs to the insurer, not zero.

Bob Biskupiak, the states deputy insurance commissioner and longtime agent, said the bill would provide common sense protections for consumers.

This will provide Montana consumers with an assurance that if they comply with their insurance policies (and report incidents that might lead to a claim), they will not be penalized by their insurance companies for claims where no dollars were paid out, he said.

The tweak to state insurance regulation was first proposed in 2015 as part of a larger reform package that failed, in large part, because it also would have limited the age of claims companies could consider. That is not part of this years bill.

Nonetheless, lobbyists for the insurance industry testified against the bill Friday. They said that information about claims and inquiries, even if they did not result in the company spending any money, are an important part of actuarial formulas used to calculate risk.

Companies dont pick that standard out of thin air and arbitrarily use it to decline insurance or to determine rates, said Bruce Spencer, a lobbyist for All State Insurance Company. Its part of the secret sauce of rate making. Not every company uses the same formula. Thats how they compete in terms of rates, because theyre doing different things slightly differently.

Along with other insurance company representatives, he said being able to accurately measure risk makes it easier for companies to set fair rates for their customers. He noted that it makes more sense for certain types of policies to weigh zero-dollar claims, such as if an attorney repeatedly calls in to say he might have committed malpractice even if no claim is ultimately paid out.

The committee requested more information about the bill and has not yet taken a vote.
I recently had the opportunity to visit the proposed Black Butte underground copper mine site approximately 15 miles north of White Sulphur Springs, Montana. I found the Tintina Resources company personnel very friendly and open to all my questions.

The mine, if permitted, will be located on privately leased land. The footprint will be approximately 300 acres, which includes all support facilities and administration offices. Copper concentrate will be produced on site and trucked in sealed containers to the most economical rail head, Townsend or Livingston, Montana, from which it will be shipped for refinement. The mines two deposits have copper content of approximately 3 percent and 6 percent, one of the richest ever discovered. This make underground mining economical whereas open pit mining is not.

During my visit to the proposed mine site I learned the following:

1. The Montana Operating Permit has been applied for and is being reviewed. A Montana Environmental Impact Statement will be completed by a qualified independent third party as selected by Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

2. Water monitoring will be implemented and a water treatment plant will be installed to ensure no untreated mine water migrates to the water table. Mine entry points to the mineral deposit are above the water table so no water will run out of the mine into surface waters.

3. Tintina will provide a reclamation bond that covers the complete cost of reclamation before the mine can begin operation. The bonding level is reviewed by DEQ every 5 years. Upon mine closure, all buildings will be removed except those needed by the landowner.

4. Upon successful permitting and operation this mine will provide approximately 200 jobs in the White Sulphur area, including mine operators, truck drivers, mechanics, electricians, accounting, engineers, geologists, hydrologists, surveyors and managers. Average wages are reported to be $65K, with total payroll approaching exceeding $12M per year.

I believe the 21st century modern mining industry has learned much from the past on how to perform environmentally safe mining. Lets learn from past mistakes and encourage the mining industry to prove itself through the Montana permitting and EIS process.

-- Dan Battleson, of Butte, is a Montana registered professional engineering (PE) consultant and has served in various technical and management projects for the last 46 years, including 31 years at MSE-TA in Butte.
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Monday, Jan. 2:



When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their legendary journey across the newly acquired lands of the Louisiana Purchase, they didnt know what discoveries lay ahead. One was the grizzly bear, bigger and more fearsome than any bears they had seen before. In his journal, Clark told of an encounter with a terrible looking animal, which we found very hard to kill. He added, I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had rather fight two Indians than one bear.

At that time, some 50,000 of these formidable creatures roamed North America. Against a few men armed with primitive guns, they were hard to kill. But they proved no match for the onslaught of humanity that came with the white settlement of the West.

By 1975, with only about 800 left in the continental United States, they were classified as endangered by the federal government. They had been killed off in many places where once they were numerous, including the Dakotas, California and Arizona. The threat of extinction loomed.

Preservation efforts made all the difference. Since then, grizzlies have rebounded, increasing their number to about 1,800. People have come to value their existence. Tourists from all over the world travel to national parks in hopes of seeing them in the wild.

But the comeback, welcome as it is, carries risks to both bear and human. Most people want grizzlies in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. But no one wants a 600-pound apex predator on the patio. As the animals multiply, they show up more often in populated places, sometimes with regrettable results.

Grizzlies make for troublesome neighbors and lousy houseguests, writes Aaron Teasdale in Sierra Magazine. The giant animals are routinely spotted chowing on orchard fruits and scavenging pet food and garbage. Theyre omnivores that like to eat many of the same things people do  chickens and sheep, for example.

The surprise is that even when they do migrate to places abundant in people, grizzlies are far less dangerous than might be assumed. Attacks on humans are rare. Montana wildlife biologist Stacy Courville told Teasdale that in developed areas theyve become nocturnal, to avoid people.

Problem bears sometimes have to be killed or trapped for removal. But as grizzlies grow more numerous, people can also take measures to avoid attracting them.

Visitors used to throng garbage dumps in Yellowstone to watch bears feed, until the National Park Service closed the dumps. Backpackers have learned how to minimize risk in bear country: Travel in groups, make noise, secure food, carry bear spray. Town dwellers can keep garbage and pets where grizzlies cant get them. Farmers and ranchers can install electrified fences to keep bears away from crops and livestock.

But older habits sometimes die hard. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed removing the Yellowstone grizzlies from the threatened and endangered species list, which would open the way to trophy hunting outside the park  an idea that has drawn objections from the park superintendent, who fears it could damage the bears long-term prospects.

President-elect Donald Trumps sons are both avid big-game hunters. His choice to run the Interior Department, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., has voted to remove wolves, lynx and sage grouse from the endangered species list. So the grizzly may face new threats in the next four years.

We hope Trump and Zinke appreciate that many Americans welcome the comebacks that a few species  wolves, mountain lions, eagles and these ursine marvels  have made, and dont want that progress squandered. This is a key environmental issue on which the new administration will prove itself a good steward of nature or a handmaiden of big agriculture and other industries that often are at odds with conservation.

We urge more robust federal (and state) protection for Americas threatened wildlife while realizing that not everyone is keen on making modest sacrifices to allow more wild grizzlies to roam the land. What Stacy Courville said of local conflicts may also be true at a national level: I dont have a bear problem. I have a people problem.



2017 Chicago Tribune; Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
BILLINGS - A woman who died Saturday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a traffic stop conducted by a Columbus Police Department officer was a Belfry resident.

Park County Coroner Al Jenkins on Thursday identified the woman as Jamie D. Porter, 48, of Belfry.

The traffic stop occurred at about 11:30 p.m. in an alley between East First Avenue North and East Second Avenue North in Columbus, according to Stillwater County Sheriff's Office dispatch logs.

The police officer, whose identity has not been released, was not injured and, under department policy, was placed on administrative leave.

A Columbus officer pulled over a woman driving a 2007 Chevrolet Colorado with Yellowstone County license plates. The woman refused to exit the vehicle before shots were fired. She was reported dead on scene.

Police Chief Jacob Ward said that because the woman was pulled over and not allowed to leave the scene at the time, she is considered to have been in custody. In-custody deaths require investigation by outside law enforcement agencies.

The Montana Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation has been asked to investigate.
A "James Earl Ray" march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day by skinheads and white supremacists in Whitefish isn't likely to take place despite claims on an Ohio-based website, Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial said Thursday.

"From what we're gleaning from the intelligence network  we're not saying for sure  but there's a pretty good chance it's just rhetoric," Dial said of the permit application for the march posted on The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site.

If a march does take place, Dial said community members should go about their day and pay no mind to the demonstration.

"Ignore them, and carry on with your lives, and don't be afraid," Dial said.

Last month, The Daily Stormer website posted a call to "TAKE ACTION" against Jewish people in Whitefish, and it urged a "troll storm" against them. Based in Ohio, the site claimed the "vicious, evil race" had harmed the business owned by the mother of Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader based partly in Whitefish.

Andrew Anglin runs the site, and he later said he was planning for 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, said one post.

In fact, the police chief said the city can place a condition that no loaded weapons be part of the event.

Thursday, The Daily Stormer posted a copy on its website of an "application for special event" permit signed and dated Jan. 2, 2017. The event was proposed for Jan. 16, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and titled with the name of King's assassin, the "James Earl Ray Day Extravaganza.

"You gotta give the guy credit for having a little bit of creativity, as vile as it might be," Chief Dial said.

But Dial and city manager Chuck Stearns both said the city of Whitefish had not received an application from The Daily Stormer as of Thursday afternoon. Dial also said the FBI, Homeland Security, and other intelligence agencies do not believe the event is legitimate.

"They're like domestic terrorists. They just want to stir the pot and make people afraid," Dial said.

At the same time, he and Stearns said the city of Whitefish is planning as if the event will take place. Another event, called "Love Not Hate," is planned in Whitefish on Jan. 7 to counter white supremacist views.

If The Daily Stormer files a permit application, the city may place conditions on approval, Dial said. He said convicted felons cannot possess firearms, so Whitefish would vet participants carrying firearms; the city also could set a requirement that no loaded weapons be part of the march.

People have a right to demonstrate, and they have protection under the First Amendment.

"We'll protect that right," Dial said. "But if it becomes socially disturbing or if it becomes a danger to the community, then we're going to intervene."

On the post with the special event application, Anglin claims he has representatives from the United Kingdom, Sweden, and France heading to the march, and that a person from the Palestinian militant group Hamas "will give a speech about the international threat of the Jews."

Anglin had said he would call off the march if the people he alleged were harassing Richard Spencer's mother would apologize, but instead, they raised copyright claims of photographs he'd used.

"And they will rue the day, as they see two hundred skinhead Alt-Right Nazis marching with a guy from Hamas carrying machine guns through the center of their town!" he wrote.

Anglin did not return an email request for comment Thursday.

Spencer has said he does not want a march to take place in Whitefish, but he also said he has no control over Anglin.

The Montana Human Rights Network has a plan if the march goes through and theyre calling it Project Lemonade (as in, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade).

The project was detailed in a Jan. 2 press release from the Justin & Karin Rosenberg Foundations director Kenneth Stern, who encouraged people to donate money tied to how many minutes the protesters march.

If the white supremacists march, theyll be raising money for things they detest, he wrote. Our hope is that no money will have to be collected; that the announcement of the pledges  and the realization that if the white supremacists march theyll be raising funds for purposes they abhor  will be enough to stop them.

The donated money would go to a Human Rights Network-managed fund, who would distribute it to Jewish institutions, security for threatened locals, educational events on the danger of white supremacy and community training on how to handle hate incidents.

The foundation promised to donate $10 for every minute the white supremacists march, up to $2,500 total.

Anti-Semitic bullies can be stopped, but it is up to us all to stop them, Stern wrote.

Whitefish can approve a permit in as little as a day, and it can also set restrictions, such as a requirement the group has insurance and abides by certain rules, the police chief said.

"If they do show up, be assured that we at the Whitefish Police Department and all of our state, federal, and local and county partners have a very aggressive plan," Dial said.

As for community members, he urged no counter protests.

"Don't show up. Don't demonstrate. Ignore them. That's the best thing that we could do as a community," Dial said.

Missoulian reporter Peter Friesen contributed to this story.
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ORIGINAL NOTICE FOR PUBLICATION

JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association

Plaintiff,

vs.

Michele L. Cavazos; Parties in Possession; Unknown Spouse (if any) of Michele L. Cavazos; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; Candelario Cavazos, Jr., et al.

Defendants.

You are notified that a petition has been filed in the office of this court naming you as a defendant in this action. The petition was filed on November 28, 2016, and prays for foreclosure of Plaintiffs mortgage in favor of the Plaintiff on the property described in this notice and judgment for the unpaid principal amount of $67,502.07, with 3.5% per annum interest thereon from May 1, 2016, together with late charges, advances and the costs of the action including (but not limited to) title costs and reasonable attorney's fees, as well as a request that said sums be declared a lien upon the following described premises from June 23, 2010, located in Muscatine county, Iowa:

Lot 6, in Block 67, of the City of Muscatine, in Muscatine County, Iowa, commonly known as 410 Brook Street, Muscatine, IA 52761 (the "Property")

The petition further prays that the mortgage on the above described real estate be foreclosed, that a special execution issue for the sale of as much of the mortgaged premises as is necessary to satisfy the judgment and for other relief as the Court deems just and equitable. For further details, please review the petition on file in the clerk's office. The Plaintiffs attorney is Emily Bartekoske, of SouthLaw, P.C.; whose address is 1401 50th Street, Suite 100, West Des Moines, IA 50266.

NOTICE

THE PLAINTIFF HAS ELECTED FORECLOSURE WITHOUT REDEMPTION. THIS MEANS THAT THE SALE OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY WILL OCCUR PROMPTLY AFTER ENTRY OF JUDGMENT UNLESS YOU FILE WITH THE COURT A WRITTEN DEMAND TO DELAY THE SALE. IF YOU FILE A WRITTEN DEMAND, THE SALE WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL TWELVE MONTHS (OR SIX MONTHS IF THE PETITION INCLUDES A WAIVER OF DEFICIENCY JUDGMENT) FROM THE ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS YOUR RESIDENCE AND IS A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING OR UNTIL TWO MONTHS FROM ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS NOT YOUR RESIDENCE OR IS YOUR RESIDENCE BUT NOT A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING. YOU WILL HAVE NO RIGHT OF REDEMPTION AFTER THE SALE. THE PURCHASER AT THE SALE WILL BE ENTITLED TO IMMEDIATE POSSESSION OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY. YOU MAY PURCHASE AT THE SALE.

You must serve a motion or answer on or before 10th day of February, 2017, and within a reasonable time thereafter file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine County, at the county courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition.

If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in a court action because of a disability, immediately call your District ADA Coordinator at 563-326-8783. If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942.

This case has been filed in a county that utilizes electronic filing. You may find more information and general rules governing electronic filing in Iowa Court Rules Chapter 16. You may find information concerning protection of personal information in court filings in Iowa Court Rules Chapter 16, Division VI.

By: Jeff Tollemaer

CLERK OF THE ABOVE COURT

Muscatine County Courthouse

401 East 3rd Street,

Muscatine, IA 52761

IMPORTANT:

YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS.
WAPELLO, Iowa - Tango is almost home.

The Wapello City Council approved the first reading Thursday of an ordinance amendment that could open the door for a local resident to keep a skunk in her home.

The proposed change in the citys dangerous and vicious animal ordinance would keep the prohibition against allowing dangerous or vicious animals, which the ordinance states includes skunks, from being kept in the city, except by written consent of the council.

At the councils Dec. 15 meeting city officials assured Jane Fuller that she would be able to keep her pet skunk Tango whenever she decided to move from Grandview to Wapello.

However, before that could be official, the city needed to amend its ordinance, a process that could take a couple of months, depending on the number of readings the council conducted.

Three readings of an ordinance amendment are required, but the council can waive any of those readings after the first one is approved. The council did not waive any of the reading Thursday.

Fuller, who brought Tango to the December meeting to show how the skunk behaved, had assured the council at that time that the skunk was current with its rabies vaccinations and had been de-scented.

Fuller also provided the city with her Iowa Department of Natural Resources license that allowed her to keep Tango as a pet. According to Fuller, that required her to provide the skunks pedigree showing it had been born in captivity.

The council also approved a first reading of an ordinance amendment that would extend the citys urban revitalization tax exemptions to new residential properties.

Under the current ordinance, the graduated, five-year exemptions are only offered to existing structures that are substantially rehabilitated. If the amendment is eventually approved, new properties would be added to the list and be eligible for 75 percent of any new tax generated by the increased value of the rehabilitation in the first year following the rehabilitation, provided the rehabilitation increased the structures value at least 15 percent. The exemption would then drop 15 percent during each of the following four years.

Two additional readings of the ordinance will also be needed before it goes into effect.

In other action, the council approved a contract with the Louisa County Conservation Board (LCCB) to offer a summer recreation program again this year. LCCB Executive Director Katie Hammond and Naturalist Bobbi Provost provided an update on last years program and said they hoped this years would be even better.

According to the contract, the LCCB would hold two weeks of programming from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Monday through Friday, from Jun. 26-30 and Jul. 31-Aug. 4. Hammond said she anticipated Columbus Junction, Morning Sun and Grandview would also again participate in the program this year.

The contract fee was $2,186, which Hammond said was about the same as last year and assumed all four communities participated.

In final action, the council:

 Approved an amendment to the citys FY 17 budget adding $196,552 in revenue and $382,882 in expenses, bringing the revised spending plan to $3,0215,803 and dropping the citys anticipated ending balance to $691,857;

 Appointed Hart-Frederick Consultants, Tiffin, as city engineers;

 Approved Adam Parsons as city attorney;

 Approved the purchase of a new public works computer from J&S Electronic Business Systems, Burlington, for $1,468.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine City Council approved the purchase of two new police radars and two light bars on Thursday night.

The Stalker Radars will cost $5,732 and will replace two older units. The older units, said Police Chief Phil Sargent, will be phased out and used for parts. The city previously budgeted $5,000 for that purchase, and Allen Harvey, Fifth Ward Representative, asked where the extra money will come from.

City Administrator Greg Mandsager said the remainder will come from the departments budget.

The city also approved a motion to purchase two light bars, which go on top of police cars, from Keltek Inc. The new light bars will cost $5381.14 and city previously budgeted for these light bars.

Both motions passed unanimously.

In other business:

-The council approved an archaeological investigation at the Mississippi Drive Corridor Project site before construction begins. In response to questions from the council, City Engineer Jim Edgmond said the city is concerned about archaeological relics in four small areas within the project zone. The investigation will ensure that buried relics wont be harmed during the project. As to what the city might find in digging, Edgmond said, Its not going to be dinosaur bones, adding the archaeologist may find smaller relics.

-Participants of the Leadership Muscatine program updated the council and the mayor on their projects. Adam Thompson, the citys community development coordinator thanked the Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce, which oversees the program.

-The council voted on a motion to exclude Mayor Diane Borden from a closed session that took place immediately after the meeting. The motion carried unanimously.
URBANA, Ill.  The future of the red-capped manakin and other tropical birds in Panama looks bleak. A University of Illinois research project spanning more than three decades and simulating another five decades analyzes how changes in rainfall will affect bird populations. The results show that for 19 of the 20 species included in the study, there may be significantly fewer birds if conditions become dryer.

The study took place in Panamas Soberania National Park. It is approximately 100 square miles of protected rainforest in central Panama and home to well over 500 bird species. In the region, about 90 percent of the annual rainfall occurs in the wet season, typically from late April to early January. The key result of the study is that with longer dry seasons and more intense seasonal drought, there is an overall negative effect on bird populations. With climate change, there may be longer dry seasons. This is not good news for the birds.

We caught over 250 different species in mist nets, but only had enough data to model 20 of the most common, says Jeff Brawn, U of I ecologist and department head of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Capture-mark-recapture is the key. We let them go and then capture them again. How many we recapture is how we estimate survival rate and the changes in the size of the population."

Only one of the 20 species in the study tended to increase with dryer conditionsthe scaly-throated leaftosser. That one seemed to have a favorable reaction to changes in seasonal drought. We dont know why. It just consistently seemed to do better, Brawn says.

What makes this study unique is the duration. You cant study the effect of changing environmental conditions and its relationship to bird populations without a long-term study and long-term data, Brawn says. It is also one of the longest and first studies to examine tropical bird populations and climate change.

Data from1977 to 2011 became the basis of the simulation for the study. Brawns team looked at the relationship between population growth rates and the length of the dry season during those 33 years, then simulated another 50 years with an average of a 10 percent change in the rainfall pattern in Panamas dry season. The full 10 percent change is only about 12 days longer, which isnt a big time difference. The simulation suggests that, in time, the bird community will be very different under dryer conditions.

Seasonality in Panama is rain/no rain, says Brawn. Because the tropics are relatively stable weather wise, tropical birds arent able to handle environmental disturbances as easily, physiologically or behaviorally, as temperate-zone birds. Birds in the Midwest have below-zero winters and 100-degree summersenvironmental stress that tropical birds never experience. Consequently, tropical ecosystems and animal populations may be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

In 1993 and 1998, there were distinct El Nino events, which in that area of Panama means a longer dry season with less rain. Climatologists expect these events to become more common with climate change. Under these conditions, reduced populations of tropical birds may result in fewer birds to provide vital ecological services. Birds eat insects and prevent damage to the trees. They disperse seeds. They pollinate. Because of this, the ecological effect from bird species loss is potentially far reaching.

And keep in mind that this study looked at just a small slice of the bird community in this forest. There are hundreds of bird species who live in the upper canopy, high above the reach of our mist nets. Theyre harder to capture so we dont have data on those species or those that are rarer.

The fact that this kind of negative affect on a large population of avian populations can happen in a national park draws even more concern, Brawn says. We worked in a good forestthat is, relatively intact. The study shows that even in a protected park, the large, global effect of climate change could make a lot of habitat unsuitable for a lot of species.

Modeling out results into the future, the logical outcome of that is that there will be winners and losers, Brawn says. Some species will do very poorly and some will do well but the bottom line is, the tropics will be very different than what we experience now. Were not saying it will be a silent forest but it will sound dramatically different 100 years from now with songs from only those species who persist.

Interestingly, this research didnt begin as a study in climate change. James Karr began charting the demography of tropical birds as a U of I graduate student. Later, he became Deputy Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Brawn had a post-doctorate position with Karr at STRI. In about 1991, Karr handed over the reins and Brawn continued the work in Panama. Decades later, tropical forest ecologists began reporting that some tree species are sensitive to more intense seasonal drought. Atmospheric modelers predicted the length of the dry season may dramatically change in the tropics, making it shorter in some places and longer in others. Brawn connected the dots, applying the annual changes in rainfall to bird populations.

The study, Impacts of Changing Rainfall Regime on the Demography of Tropical Birds, appears in Nature Climate Change and is available online. It was authored by Jeffrey D. Brawn and Thomas J. Benson from U of I, Maria Stager and Nicholas D. Sly from the University of Montana, and Corey E. Tarwater from the University of Wyoming.

Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (IBN-0212587), the U.S Department of Defense Legacy Resource Program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Accession #875-370), the University of Illinois, and the Environmental Science Program from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
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 []
By

by Mike 

Autonomous cars are coming on really fast, says long time writer and My Car Quest contributor Wallace Wyss. Not only are the big name brands engineering them but names the public hasnt heard of are jumping in.

Wyss has released this mock-up cover of a book which he says will take stock of the autonomous field to show the public where we are now, at least what has been revealed so far.

Though known for his 16 books on collector cars, Wyss actually started his writing career doing part-time publicity for the Biomechanics Research Institute in Detroit, Michigan, in the early days of air bags and laminated glass research.

The book has no bias toward one make or another, Wyss says. For the first 80% of the book, it is purely a recounting, month by month, of events involving autonomous cars such as the Tesla crash that killed a show-off driver and the subsequent successful Tesla saving of its passenger by anticipating an accident ahead before it happened.

It was that last incident that pushed me toward writing a book, says Wyss. Ironically I had been submitting an Op-Ed to various national newspapers urging going slow on autonomous cars when I saw the footage of the Tesla in Holland predicting an accident that hadnt even happened yet. I was bowled over because in effect Iand the worldwere seeing the future.

Autonomous Cars

In a sharp change from his nostalgia car-oriented books, he says he will be going philosophical in tone in the last few chapters, quoting experts on robotics and psychology. And then asking open-ended questions about whether the public is ready for the sweeping changes autonomous cars will make once they reach the road in sizable numbers.

I see the biggest obstacle to across-the-board implementation as not the mechanics or software, but the outcome of still-to-come legal fights. To sample what type of battles he sees coming, Wyss has volunteered to, on My Car Quest, publish five different scenarios, one every few days, to see what readers think about what will inevitably happen once the robots take the wheel.

When those accidents occur, he says some of them will lead to huge court decisions that will determine just how fast autonomous cars will be able to come on stream in mass quantities.

That looming legal war accounts for Wyss choice of the word battle in the subtitle. Right now, the consumer benefits all look wonderful, he says, and his mock-up cover indeed shows a rose-tinted view. But in the last part of the book Ill be talking about the ripple effects which will be a lot larger than anyone thinks, affecting employment, the GNP, life-styleseverything.

Wyss has talked to one publisher about the book but has secured no commitment yet. Due to the fast changing pace of autonomous cars, he is willing to talk to anyone who wants to be in the publishing field who has sufficient funds to get the ball rolling, and who wants to see this title hit the stores within 11 months.

Click here to read Autonomous Cars  Question No. 1.

Click here to read Autonomous Cars  Question No. 2.

Wallace Wyss can be reached by email  click here.

I have published a short series on the subject of self-driven cars, click here to read it.

One of my Sunday Funny Pages is also on this subject.

Let us know what you think in the Comments.
University of Nairobi student leader Paul Ongili Owino alias Babu Owino was yesterday arrested for causing a disturbance at the Kilimani Police Station.

The controversial student leader was at the station to demand the release of equally controversial city businessman Chris Obure.

Kilimani OCPD, Mr Peter Kattam said Owino matched to the police station on Thursday morning in the company of a male colleague and started hurling insults at police officers.

He came to Kilimani Police Station at 8am seeking the release of Mr Chris Obure. But he got abusive in his demands and that is when we arrested him for disorderly conduct, Mr Kattam said.

Chris Obure was arrested on Wednesday for threatening to shoot a reveller outside B Club in Kilimani on New Years Eve. He is accused of beating and injuring Ben Alila and his cousin.

The businessman who claims to be a gold dealer was arraigned in court on Thursday and released on Sh20,000 cash bail.

His case will be heard on March 9, 2017.

Meanwhile, Babu was released on a KSh10, 000 police bond.

Speaking after his release, Babu denied he was at the police station to demand the release of Chris Obure.

No, I did not go to demand the release of Chris Obure. Police in Kilimani had arrested a comrade last evening on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly. I mobilized several youth, who accompanied me to the station, where we demanded that the right procedure be followed in apprehending our fellow student.

However, officers on duty harassed us, which made me lose my cool and slap one of them. That is when I was arrested, Babu Owino told eDaily.

Babu also accused Kilimani DCIO Phyllis Kanini of unfair treatment. He claimed that the DCIO has a personal vendetta against him and pushes for his arrest even when he has not broken the law.

The Kilimani DCIO seems to have something personal against me because of the way she has been handling my cases, said Owino as quoted by Citizen Digital.

She was solely behind my arraignment in court today even after officers at the Kilimani police station agreed to release me after my arrest Thursday morning.
Business Insider  Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are officially packing their bags for Washington, DC.

The couple will reportedly live in a $5.5 million home in the Kalorama section of the capital city, The Washingtonian reported, citing real estate sources. It is unclear whether the Trump-Kushner family has leased or purchased the nearly 7,000-square-foot home, which has six bedrooms and last sold on December 22.

Kalorama is the same neighborhood the Obama family will reportedly inhabit once the president leaves office. The relatively small area is popular with politicians and DC insiders for its seclusion and privacy.

The home was designed by architect Waddy Wood and built in 1923.

It was recently given a full renovation.

Its close to the street, but the front door sits high with double steps leading up.

The dining room

There are five wood-burning fireplaces in the home.

The sunroom

The windows are large and let in plenty of light.

Modern touches in the kitchen

Modernly styled staircases

Large bedrooms

Bathrooms have all of the luxury fixtures youd expect.

The closet

The other five bedrooms are also large.

Some have en-suite bathrooms.

The lower level contains its own kitchen, designed as a caterers hall for servers during parties.

Theres another bathroom, which rounds out the seven throughout the house.

Laundry room

Play area

And library

The family room

The house sits on a unique lot surrounded by streets on three sides.

The patio

Source  Business Insider
Majority leader Aden Duale is in trouble after a secret recording leaked online.

In the tape which was recording at an unknown time, Duale is believed to be addressing select members of the Somali community.

The man thought to be Duale is heard urging the rest to evict members of the Kamba community from Garissa, going as far as promising to sponsor the entire exercise and bail out anyone who will be arrested in the process.

He is heard telling the group to station 5 men at all polling stations to ensure anyone they dont recognize is not allowed to register as a voter.

Kambas, start with them today. You are residents. Tell them to build their houses but they should not dare bring their Wiper politics here,

Warn them that they will not cross the Tana bridge into Garissa on voting day. We will be waiting for them. 15 to 16 voter registration starts. I want you to mobilize youth to every polling station. I will not allow any matatu ferrying people you dont know to register as voters, the man rumoured to be Duale says.

We own this town, not outsiders. Mobilize five to six youth to every polling station day and night. I will pay for their needs and protect them,

I have warned the area chief against allowing those matatus ferrying them. You will be assisted by law enforcement authority to chase them away as I have instructed.

We will have a sit down with the county commander na watu wa CID wajuane (they can know each other). You should stand strong and fearless at all wards and if you are arrested for violence, you will be released. I will pay your bills and other costs, he continues.

The source of the clip that has been making rounds on social media is unknown.

Listen below.

Update

Duale has come out on Twitter to claim that the clip is fake. This was his tweet on Thursday night.
If you have not yet heard, former Camp Mulla member Mykie Tonie is now a cab driver with taxi hailing company Uber.

News of Mykies new hustle has elicited quite the reactions across social media platforms. On twitter, the hashtag #CampMulla was trending as people of the internet expressed their disappointment with the rapper for quitting stardom for taxi driving. Others applauded his venture and offered messages of encouragement.

However, it is DNGs rant about the whole saga that is taking centre stage. The self-proclaimed Kenyas number 1 hypeman took to Facebook to lay bare his displeasure with Kenyan blogs after a local blog published Mykies story.

The blog headline read; Maisha Ni Ngumu! Camp Mullas Member Now An Uber Driver

In his vile attack, DNG singled out Mpasho and Ghafla! as gutter press blogs that employ regurgitated vomit.

Read his rant below:

I personally never respond to these stupid articles, but hey, this is a new year! Allow me to respond on Mykies behalf:

1. These bloggers are uneducated chaps who think they are journalists. Journalism in this country lacks direction. All these wannabes understand is smear campaigns.

2. mpasho is a gutter press blog that employs regurgitated vomit (like this guy Chim) from ghafla- a directionless blog without foresight, hence why you see mpasho using poorly crafted headings such as these to attract desperate pop up ads. Its a pathetic story.
It appears reality TV star Risper Faith is joining the likes of more opulent Kenyan socialites, Huddah Monroe and Vera Sidika, with regards to the cars the damsels drive.

While we complain of Januarys tough financial struggles, the endowed lass whose huge derriere shot her to fame, has splashed the cash on a new ride.

On social media, she shared photos of the new Mercedes-Benz that will arrive in the country before the end of this month.

Though not as opulent as Huddahs or Veras Range Rovers, the Mercedes-Benz Metris is worth an estimated Sh 2.8 Million.

Vera claims the van will come in handy in her booty poppers & waist cinchers business.

NOW MY BOOTY POPPERS CAN FIT IN MY VAN. 2017 BLESSINGS POSITIVE VIBES ONLY. COMING SOON just before the month ends. Thank you Lord, wrote Risper.
Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch (JARR), an animal rescue organization, has hired animal advocate Julia Orr to lead its communications programs. Orr will be responsible for 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. Before starting her own business, she worked for more than 10 years in global publicity for the Walt Disney Studios and at the DDA Public Relations Agency.

I am joining the most remarkable team of accomplished people who are dedicated to changing the way animals are viewed and treated," said Orr.
A 65-year-old Napa County resident died on Thursday from an influenza virus infection, Napa County Public Health reported Friday.

This unfortunate case demonstrates that flu can be deadly, Dr. Karen Relucio, health officer for the county, said in a news release. Fortunately, people can protect themselves and their family members from getting the flu by getting vaccinated.

Relucio said the county would not release additional details about the flu casualty in order to protect the familys right to privacy and maintain confidentiality.

Bay Area public health officials urge vaccination against influenza (flu) because flu activity has reached widespread levels in California, including the Bay Area. In addition to this first death, Napa County is seeing a rapid increase in the percentage of patients seen in local emergency departments with influenza-like illness, she said.

The flu specimens that have been tested match very closely to the current vaccine strains, which means the vaccine provides good protection against the flu. The California Department of Public Health recommends the annual flu vaccine for everyone 6 months of age and older, including pregnant women.

For many people, the flu can mean feeling miserable for a few days, said Relucio. But for others, including very young children, the elderly, and those with chronic health problems or weakened immune systems, the flu can lead to severe illness or death. Flu causes thousands of deaths per year and is preventable with vaccination.

In addition to getting the vaccine, public health officials advise people to take the following steps to protect themselves and others from the flu:

 Stay home when you are sick, and stay home until you have been symptom free for 24 hours.

 Cover your cough and sneezes with a tissue; if you do not have a tissue, cough into your elbow.

 Wash your hands often and thoroughly with soap and warm water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

 Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.

Flu vaccine is available:

 From doctors or healthcare providers.

 At pharmacies: visit https://vaccinefinder.org/ to find flu vaccine locations.

 Residents without access to flu vaccine can call 707-253-4270 for a free shot at the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency, Public Health Clinic, 2751 Napa Valley Corporate Drive (Building B, first floor) in Napa.

 Appointments available Mondays and Wednesdays.

 Drop in (no appointment needed): Tuesdays, 15 p.m., and Thursdays, 14 p.m.

People who develop flu-like symptoms, especially those groups at higher risk for complications, should contact their healthcare provider immediately. Rapid treatment with antiviral medication may be able to prevent severe illness.

For more information on the flu, visit www.cdc.gov/flu.
A St. Helena man was arrested on suspicion of DUI on Jan. 4 after hitting three parked cars on Main Street near Pratt Avenue, police said.

The driver was intoxicated when he hit his brakes for an unknown reason and crashed into the parked cars, said Lt. Chris Hartley of the St. Helena Police Department. Brian Aaron Kennedy-Alvarez was arrested on suspicion of DUI and driving with a suspended license due to a previous DUI.

There was one other person in the car with him. Nobody was injured.
Thursday, January 05, 2017 by: JD Heyes Tags: brainwashing , media , propaganda This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) You may not know this, but intelligence agencies around the world have, for decades, infiltrated target countries by having their agents and operatives pose as journalists (no, Im not an intelligence operative). That served two purposes: 1) it provided the operative with legitimate cover; and 2) it allowed the operatives government to use the operatives media position to shape public opinion in the host country.

Brainwash them, in other words, with propaganda.

But in truth, that kind of propagandizing and brainwashing is also done by institutional media pushing a specific political agenda. Think back to our recently concluded presidential election cycle and what the mainstream media did in a failed effort to get its anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton, elected. They lied, made up narratives out of whole cloth, and tried to smear her opponent, now-President-elect Donald J. Trump, in an effort to defeat him.

As reported by The Waking Times, experts denote a number of techniques that are used by the establishment media to brainwash the public and create/control the daily narrative.

The mainstream media are the real purveyors of fake news

Edward Bernays is known as the father of modern propaganda. He was the first to use social engineering techniques spread via the mass media of the day. In the early 20th century, he laid the groundwork for what became cultural programming at the societal level by assisting in the transformation of a mostly rural, agrarian-based American society into a homogenized culture of devout statists and consumers.

The principles he developed and implemented have greatly influenced the growth of American culture, how it grew and the direction it took. Having picked up Bernays torch in the 21st century, several experts on modern brainwashing, mind control and propaganda have recently given insight into their craft.

Think about what is ailing our country today, in terms of societal problems. There is corruption of so-called grassroots movements that are actually funded by Left-wing billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates, and yet the movements are portrayed by the establishment media very often as spontaneous and locally brewed, but all are attempting to achieve a specific social and political result.

The efforts of these allegedly organic groups are amplified many times their size by the media, which gives them both credence and a megaphone with which to shout their views. And what do they shout? America is racist, bigoted, homophobic, unfair, politically broken, etc. Never are the calls for unity or praise for our country given any attention at all.

Much of this is done via a technique known as astroturfing. Seasoned veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains, Astroturf is a perversion of grassroots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interests disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and twitter accounts, publish ads, letters to the editor, or simply post comments online, to try to fool you into thinking an independent or grassroots movement is speaking.

Controlling our thoughts by creating false narratives

Another technique used is subliminal messaging. This is a cornerstone of mind control, and when a person is unwittingly bombarded with cleverly concealed information, an emotion can be trigged leaving a persons intellect and better judgment subjugated in favor of a mental process like fear or sexual desire. You may never consciously understand or realize why you begin to adopt certain behaviors, products of lifestyles, but the attraction is nonetheless real and that manifests itself through actual personal choices.

In a 2011 documentary called Programming the Nation, filmmaker, graphic artist and digital media producer Jeff Warrick, a former advertising sales rep, provided examples of how subliminal messaging and other subconscious methods are employed by ad executives and other media to create cultural norms and social programs like consumerism, materialization of womens bodies, health choices and the glorification of violence.

Could such techniques really be contributing to a variety of social, political and economic problems currently present in our culture? Such as obesity, anorexia, and other eating disorders? The ongoing war on terror? And what about the ever-increasing amounts of debt, that has tightened its grip on a growing percentage of the population? the documentary says.

Other techniques include fake newsyes, by the mainstream mediaomission (not covering an issue as though it wasnt real or important); slanting coverage through the use of biased expert sources; and publishing falsified data and science as though it were legitimate.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

WakingTimes.com

YouTube.com

Freedom.news
In particular, the talk is about the submarines Krasnodar and Stary Oskol.



"The fleet is receiving advanced ships. This year, we have received about 30 ships and vessels, including 10 warships and boats," the commander said. According to him, the Black Sea Fleet has formed a new coastal defense large unit.



In 2016, Black Sea Fleet ships have passed at sea twice as much time as planned. "This year was very intensive for the Black Sea Fleet. We accomplished tasks in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black and the Azov Seas. The ships passed at sea twice as much time as planned," Vitko said.



According to him, the frigate Admiral Grigorovich and the small missile ships Zelyony Dol and Serpukhov delivered strikes against militants in Syria.



"Kalibr [NATO reporting name: SS-N-27 Sizzler] missiles have shown their effectiveness," he added. "In 2017, we will continue operating as part of the Russian Navys grouping in the Mediterranean Sea," the commander said.



 Copyright 2017 TASS. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The requested page is currently unavailable on this server.

Back to [RTHK News Homepage]
New facility offers skills, supplies for outdoor fun

From paddling down serene rivers to backpacking through state and national parks, UF students can explore the outdoors through RecSports outdoor TRiP Programs. The opening of the Center for Outdoor Recreation & Education building this fall has tripled the amount of outdoor rental equipment available to the UF community  meaning more adventures for everyone.

Located on Bledsoe Drive north of the Southwest Recreation Center, the 6,000-square-foot facility features a warehouse full of gear that UF students, faculty and staff can rent, from sleeping bags and backpacks to kayaks and stand up paddleboards.

Students can visit CORE to sign up for a RecSports-led outdoor TRiP. The CORE building will also host workshops to teach skills such as knot-tying and campfire cooking.

The project was made possible through collaboration between UF Student Government and RecSports. During a grand opening celebration on Sept. 16, students toured the CORE building, where they could try on a stuffed backpack, sit in a kayak, view tents and see all CORE has to offer.

We rent a lot of equipment, said RecSports marketing program assistant Kisa Mugwanya. They can actually see it and how it works.

For some UF students, the wilderness is the perfect place to escape the stress of classes, quizzes and other obligations.

What this program brings is peace and quiet, said CORE program assistant Austin Schmitz in a speech at the grand opening. Instead of a bleep or an email, you hear the sound of the wind in trees. You smell the spruce in the air.

Annika Goldman, a fourth year behavioral and cognitive neuroscience student, checked out the new building during the grand opening. Goldman, 21, is currently planning on attending a backpacking trip  her third excursion with RecSports. In the past, she canoed at South Carolinas Lake Jocassee and went rock climbing in Sand Rock, Alabama.

That was the first time Ive ever been outdoor rock climbing or canoeing and they were really accommodating to beginners, Goldman said. I was really scared the first time I went, but everyone was really inclusive.

During her travels, Goldman enjoyed meeting other students and dining on warm cinnamon rolls cooked by the campfire.

I would definitely recommend going on a TRiP before you graduate, she said.

For more information, visit http://recsports.ufl.edu/outdoors-adventure/core.

Wondering what kind of adventures you can have with equipment from CORE? UF News intern Gabrielle Calise tried out an inflatable stand-up paddleboard at Ichetucknee Springs State Park near Gainesville. Watch her Instagram Story to see what happened:
The project will have an investment of Rs 4,000 crore, a state government spokesman said here.

A delegation of CFLD, comprising its president Jerry Zhao and other representatives of the company met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in New Delhi to discuss the project.

Khattar said that the proposed project would prove to be a milestone in the development of the state and it would generate employment opportunities for youth.

Gurugram district, adjoining national capital New Delhi, has emerged as a big hub for industrial, commercial, software and information technology sectors.

--IANS js/vd

( 131 Words)

2017-01-06-21:10:07 (IANS)
Gutierrez, who has drawn more than two million followers to his YouTube channel since he started posting makeup tutorials in 2014, stars in the brand's new That Boss Life campaign, reports theguardian.com.

Gutierrez announced the news via an Instagram post, saying he was honoured and thrilled.

He posted: "2017 you are off to an amazing start OMG! So excited to finally announce that I am part of the Maybelline Big Shot Mascara campaign! Honestly I couldn't be more honoured thrilled! Thank you to Maybelline for taking a chance on me! I look forward to working together so much more."

Gutierrez, who has a Makeup Geek eye shadow palette and an Ofra lip set named after him, is part of a new wave of "beauty boys" -- male-identifying make-up artists who post bold, colourful and elaborate looks on social media.

--IANS sug/nv/vt

( 170 Words)

2017-01-06-13:56:06 (IANS)
The Trinamool Congress unit of Tripura has started agitation in Agartala against Chief Minister Manik Sarkar-led government and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for downplaying the role of Rose Valley in the state. Sudip Roy Barman, a TMC leader in the state assembly alleged that Sarkar and his other cabinet colleagues had virtually acted as the brand ambassador of Rose Valley and promoted it in the state. "We have been demanding since long that 142 non-banking financial institutes that has been executing in Tripura they have looted money of approximately more than 14 lakh investors a ransom of in and around more than 10,000 crores has been looted from the state of Tripura. But unfortunately this is the only state where neither CBI not the ED has taken entry as yet," he added. He also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being biased towards Sarkar and added that the former is trying to make friendship with the Tripura Chief Minister and the Left Parties and that is why CBI and ED is not making entry, despite the Supreme Court's order to investigate the chit fund companies. "We have seen CBI taking entry in Assam, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand but unfortunately I don't know and best known to the Prime Minister of India why he is soft towards Manik Sarkar and his cabinet of Ministers. We find something fishy," he added. He described Tripura as 'epicenter' of Rose Valley as its founder Gautam Kundu started his business and later spread it in other states. The TMC MLA sharply criticized the CBI for not taking up any investigation into the allegations against Sarkar, while adopted a method of brow beating by arresting the party leaders and parliamentarians in West Bengal. "We are agitating on behalf of the 14 lakh investors out of a small state of 36 lakh population that CBI should immediately intervene and Manik Sarkar and his cabinet have been the brand ambassadors of these chit fund companies," Barman added. He further alleged that Sarkar and his cabinet ministers have promoted the chit fund companies and Prime Minister Modi is trying to save him. Meantime, Inspector General of Tripura police K. Srijesh who is in-charge of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by High Court of Tripura last year informed that till date there have been arrest of all total 112 persons of various Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) involved in looting out depositors money. He informed that the SIT has taken up 78 cases against 48 NBFCs and chargesheet in 20 cases have already been given. Besides, bank accounts of all the NBFCs have been freezed and process of attaching properties of the companies were started. According to Srijesh, it will be tough for giving a definite time span within which the investigation can be concluded but the SIT is trying hard to conclude the investigation at the earliest and help the government to pay back the victims. However, the companies are spread outside the state that becomes time taking to carry out the investigation. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today expressed grief over the demise of veteran actor Om Puri. The 66-year-old actor passed away in Mumbai early this morning following a massive heart attack. ''The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films,'' the PMO said in a tweet here.UNI NAZ SHS SV 1014 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1096136.Xml
"Due to heavy snowfall at Jawahar Tunnel, Banihal, Patnitop, Kud and other locations along the highway, the road got blocked," he said.

The spokesperson said that many vehicles, including trucks, commercial taxies and private vehicles, were stuck up on the highway.

"No fresh vehicle is being allowed to move towards Jammu while trucks are stranded at Sidhra, Nagrota, Toll Ban, Udhampur, Ramban, Batote areas," he said.

Snowfall is continuing due to which road clearance work has not yet started.

Meanwhile, heavy rains also resulted in dip in temperature further by few degrees in the plains of Jammu.

Fresh snowfall was also reported in Bhaderwah, Doda and Kishtwar belts of the region.UNI VBH SHS SV 1026

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Air Force Station, Hasimara, a premiere Indian Air Force (IAF) airbase under Eastern Air Command (EAC), established in the sub-Himalayan region of West Bengal after the Sino-India War of 1962, is likely to host the second squadron of Rafale fighter jets. As reported by UNI earlier, the first squadron of the most modern combat aircraft is tipped to be set up at the Sarsawa airbase in UP. The location of the second squadron has been identified keeping in view the possible threat from the eastern neighbour China, sources in the IAF indicated. A team of Dassault Aviation, manufacturer of the Rafale recently visited the airbase to carry out feasibility study and improvements needed for making it a second home for the Combat jet. The second squadron is also likely to have 12 fighters, said the sources. India sealed a government-to-government deal with France last September for purchasing 36 aircraft. The Euro 7.89 billion (about Rs 59000 crore) also included a component of Euro 1.8 billion for support and infrastructure supplies, which the Original Equipment Manufacturer is to create. "French experts visited Hasimara and conducted a preliminary survey of the base to make it suitable for Rafale operations," sources in the IAF said. Hasimara airbase was activated on April 7, 1963, in the aftermath of 1962 war with China. The airbase was initially home to IAF Toofani squadrons. Over the years, various IAF fighter units operated from here flying the Gnats, Ajeets, Hunters, MiG-21Bis and the Mig-27 ML fighter jets. The IAF's first aerobatics team, famously called "The Thunderbolts" was formed here at this base. The airbase will be improved according to the special needs of the French fighters, said the sources. Under the contract, a nine-member team, including three pilots would be trained in France to take possession of the aircraft. They, in turn, will train rest of the crew after their return. The IAF managed to get an additional guarantee for an additional 60 hours for the trainer Rafale jets with a concession to keep the weapons storage in France for an additional period six months. The French firm will supply spares for a period of seven years at initial cost, instead of five years, with an option that a new deal will be negotiated for the next five years. Of the total amount of contract, Euro 3.42 billion is for the cost of the platform; another Euro1.7 billion for India-specific 14 changes on the aircraft; Euro 710 million for weapons package; and Euro 353 million is the cost of logistics support. The first of the jets from France is to be delivered in 36 months, by September 2019, and the entire lot in the following 30 months. UNI MK PY SV 1323 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-1096385.Xml
The SSB jawans seized 6 kgs of ganja near Bairgania after giving a good chase to an auto rickshaw driver who was trying to make good his escape on the vehicle with the consignment.

The auto rickshaw driver was identified as Jitendra Kumar.

An intensive interrogation of the auto rickshaw driver is on to nab other members of his gang.

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Addressing a huge gathering at head post office at Mananchira here as part of the country-wide agitation against curbing high valued currencies in the country, he said the government has a responsibility to inform the people by when their sufferings would come to an end.

He said the people, who believed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assurance that normalcy would return after 50 days, were hoodwinked as the currency crisis has not yet been resolved.

Mr Chandy said he has not yet received a reply to his allegation that a firm, which was blacklisted, got prominence in the make in India programme launched by the Central government.

Reiterating his allegation against such firms, Mr Chandy said he would be compelled to take legal measures if the Centre continued such steps.UNI PCH CS 1452

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The biennial Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, a majorprogramme of the Indian government to attract Non-Resident Indiansto contribute more for the homeland, will begin here tomorrow. The three-day mega event will see over 6500 delegates, includingsome top leaders in the world, besides a number of NRIs. Thedignitaries from abroad include Portugal Prime Minister Dr AntonioCosta, Suriname Vice President Mr Michael Ashwin Adhin and a host ofother dignitaries, sources here said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who would attend the function on thesecond day on January 8, will be explaining the progress achieved byIndia in the last few years, the economic reforms and condusiveatmosphere created by the government for businessmen, especiallythose having Indian roots and made it success by being industry leaders. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Portuguese PrimeMinister Antonio Costa will share the dais with Modi during theinaugural ceremony of the event on January 8, while President PranabMukherjee will deliver the valedictory address on January 9. The event is being held for the first time in tech-hub ofBengaluru and it commemorates the return of Father of the NationMahatma Gandhi who returned from South Africa on January 9, 1915.The delegates include over 1500 successful NRIs and many of themfrom Karnataka. Pravasi Divas, this year will also help the government toshowcase its policies that promote investment in different sectorsin India that offers best demographic dividend with 99 per centliteracy by 2025 and having maximum number of youths under 29 yearsby that year. The government, would also utilise the event to callupon the NRIs to be partners of development, which had a win-winprospect for both as India was poised to emerge as the thirdbiggest economy in the next decade, sources said. Meanwhile, Mr Siddaramaiah said PravasiDivas will bring huge benefits for the state as it had one of thehighest diaspora working abroad and excelling in different fieldsincluding technology. ''We have showcased our potential in IT, BT, Aerospace, FoodProcessing and Infrastructure Technology. So we will have lot togain from Pravasi Divas as Kannada speaking NRIs are alreadycontributing immensely to the State's economy and we are only togain from this event,'' he said. The entire city has been spruced up for the event with the localgovernment ensuring that the Green Bengaluru will look even betterby the time the event starts tomorrow. Elaborate security arrangements have been made for smoothtransit of the delegates from the city or from Airport to the venue,BIEC on the outskirts of the city, Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said. The event is being held by Ministry of External Affairspartnered with Karnataka government and the event, is themed after'Redefining Engagement with Indian Diaspora'. Sources said the event will give a platform for the NRI communitysettled abroad, permanently or on temporary basis, like IT industryexperts, to come under one umbrella and discuss their issues. It would also discuss the problems faced by highly talentedIndians who often travel abroad but face visa problems due todifferent issues. The event will also be used by the government toappeal to NRIs to come to the aid of the Nation to be partners infighting social problems like health, child welfare and educationand others.UNI RS MSP CS 1516 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-1096562.Xml
In a condolence message, Mr Lal said Om Puri was born in Ambala and was known for his versatility. He worked in several Indian films, as well as many films produced abroad. The acclaimed actor had delivered some stellar performances. In his death, the cinema world has lost one of its most loved characters.

The Chief Minister expressed heartfelt condolences to the members of the bereaved family and prayed that the departed soul might rest in peace.UNI VJ SW SHK 1512

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Nigerian oil labour union Nupeng has suspended a strike at Total's fuel depots after an agreement was reached to end a row over sackings, a union official said on Friday.On Thursday, the union said it had ordered a nationwide stop of work at Total's fuel depots."The warning strike has been suspended for now," said Cogent Ojobor, a Nupeng official in southern Nigeria. REUTERS PS RK1605 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1096691.Xml
Dayaram Gupta (65) and his wife Girjadevi (60) were held captive and thrashed by armed miscreants on the night of December 25. Later, they perpetrated dacoity at their house. The couple has been hospoitalised in Gwalior since the dacoity.

Gohad-residents Shakeel Khan, his mother and his friend Aman Pandey were arrested. Shakeel's wife Shabnam and inamorata Preeti Baghel are absconding along with some items robbed during the dacoity.UNI XC-PS SW

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"Party under leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is the real Samajwadi party, and should be seen so. Cycle symbol must be allotted to us," he said.

Yadav added that they have received a letter from the Election Commission in connection with the representation they had made.

"Out of 229 MLAs, 212 signed affidavit. 56 out of 68 MLCs, 15 out of 24 MPs have signed the affidavit, which we will submit to the EC today," Yadav told ANI.

Yadav further said that affidavits of around 5000 delegates will be submitted tomorrow.

The Election Commission had demanded that for either Mulayam Singh Yadav or Akhilesh Yadav to claim the party along with its iconic symbol the 'cycle', each side would have to prove the number of MLAs, MPs and MLCs supporting them through signed affidavits by January 9.

Meanwhile, Shivpal Yadav today, met with Akhilesh Yadav at his residence on 5, Kalidas Marg today in a bid to forge some kind of truce between the two sides.

The months-long feud within Samajwadi party's Yadav family hit a high note when last week Mulayam Singh Yadav expelled his son, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and cousin Ram Gopal Yadav from the party for six years.

However, the young Yadav was soon re-inducted by party workers as the Samajwadi Party president. (ANI)
The All India Trinamool Congress will stage an agitation against the Central government's demonetisation policy in Assam on January 11 next. The demonstration is part of the Trinamool Congress's nationwide agitation, TMC vice-president and MP Mukul Roy said here today. He added that central leadership will participate in the demonstration.State general secretary Deba Barman said all state units will be organising demonstrations against demonetisation from January 9-11, as a part of which the agitation has been scheduled in Assam.UNI SG SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1096962.Xml
Jharkhand chief secretary Rajbala Verma today reviewed preparations for the Global Investor Summit scheduled on February 16 and 17. During the review meet, she instructed the officials not leave any efforts behind in preparations for this mega event. She said despite the industries department being the nodal agency for the event, the function belongs to the entire state and there was a need to establish coordination among the various departments for this. Ms Verma asked the officials of the various departments to make sure that the participation of the public sector undertakings was at the maximum. She said all the departments of the state government should make a dedicated effort to ensure success of this event and instructed the department to erect stalls and pavilions highlighting the investment potentials. The chief secretary said, renowned names from India and abroad would be participating in the two day event in which during the various sessions and conferences the investment potentials, government policies and other positive aspects would be taken up. Various important agreements would also be inked on these two days, she added. She said that the Chief Minister himself had invited the investors from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata and from USA and Singapore. A team had also visited China in this regard, she said. During the meeting officials of various departments including power, tourism, IT and road construction were present.UNI AK AKM 1734 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-1096877.Xml
President of Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee(BPCC) and stateEducation Minister Ashok Chaudhary, while addressing workers here saidthat people were facing great hardship due to scrapping of high valuecurrency notes as the so called mega exercise against blackmoney was launched by Narendra Modi government without any preparation.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to take all steps tomitigate the hardships of the common man in 50 days but troublecontinues even after lapse of the deadline", Mr Chaudhary said addingthat his party would continue to expose Narendra Modi government onfailures of demonetisation.

Congress leader pointed out that the erstwhile Manmohan Singhgovernment had worked hard to strengthen the national economy and itwas evident from the fact that India remained unaffected from globalrecession. Narendra Modi government would have to pay heavy price forthe troubles being faced by common man following demonetisation, headded.UNI KKS SJC

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A bench beaded by Justice Mahadevan while confirming the fine, dismissed the plea filed by Mr Dinakaran in the more thantwo-decade long case.

A nephew of Sasikala, Dinakaran came under the ED scanner after huge amounts of cash deposits were made into his bank accounts during the 1991-96 AIADMK regime.

The ED had then booked him under FERA and rejected his claim that he would not come under the ED ambit as he was aSingapore national.

It may be recalled that the ED had registered a case against Dinakaran for his failure to pay a fine of Rs 28 crore slapped on him by the FERA Board.

Cases were registered under Sec 57 read with Sec 49 (3) and (4) of FEMA, 1999.

The charge was that he had failed to repatriate foreign exchange amounting to USD 62,61,313 held by him outside India together with the interest and any other income that might have been accrued there on.

Originally, the ED had imposed a Rs.31 crore fine on Dinakaran.

On appeal, the FERA Board reduced the fine to Rs.28 crore. UNI GV CS 1823

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The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed an appeal filed by Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, against the order asking her to vacate government accommodation allotted to him in Lutyens' Zone here. A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice V.K. Rao denied relief to Payal and said that if her husband can shift to a private accommodation, there is no reason to treat her differently. Payal has challenged the single judge's August 19 order, through which she was asked to "gracefully" vacate bungalow No.7 on Akbar Road here. Seeking government accommodation for her and her sons on the ground that they have 'Z' and 'Z Plus' category security, she had said she along with her sons are living in a rented flat after vacating the bungalow, but it is not appropriate on security grounds. The bungalow was allotted to Omar Abdullah, the National Conference leader, in 1999 when he was elected to parliament from Jammu and Kashmir and became a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre. --IANS gt/vd ( 195 Words) 2017-01-06-20:26:06 (IANS)
According to railway police, thirty bottles of foreign liquor were seized from an abandoned bag inside a bogie of 18624 Hatia-Patna Express at the railway station here. Liquor peddlers made good their escape when they noticed police patrolling. In another seizure, railway police seized 6 kgs of ganja from a bogie of 12366 Ranchi-Patna Janshatabdi Express and arrested two women smugglers.

The nabbed smugglers had been identified as Sunita Devi and Mamata Devi, natives of the state capital. Police were interrogating women smugglers to nab other members of their gang.

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Even as the former state president of the Samajwadi party Shivpal Singh Yadav met his nephew and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav here today, the stalemate in the ruling continued on the sixth day of the New Year. This was the first one-on-one meeting between the uncle and the nephew after Akhilesh Yadav was elected as the national president of the party and on the same day, Shivpal Yadav was dismissed from the post of the state president of the party. Mr Shivpal held talks with the defiant nephew at his official residence on 'compromise formula' for a possible patch up. Party insiders were tight lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with the chief minister. Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh as well. However, sources privy to the fast paced developments, said Akhilesh camp is adamant that no compromise was possible without the dismissal of Amar Singh from the party and exit of Shivpal Yadav from the state affairs of the party. ``What sort of compromise you are talking of. Some people are deliberately spreading the canard of `compromise' as all the issues have already been decided so where is the need for any compromise. Akhilesh Yadav is the national president of the party and Mulayam Singh is the patron and guardian of the party and the national president will decide on the distribution of the tickets for the assembly elections'', said Sunil Yadav MLC and a key member of team Akhilesh. ``We are not asking for the resignation of Amar Singh from the party as he has already been expelled from the party. If he wants to resign then he could resign from the membership of the Rajya Sabha. There is no dispute over the state president also as national president has already appointed Naresh Uttam as the state president and he has also taken over his new responsibility'', said Sunil Yadav. An indication of the patch up came on Thursday night when Akhilesh Yadav planned to go to the Amausi airport to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he learnt that Amar Singh was also accompanying him in the chartered flight. Soon after his return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers who came here on Thursday from Etawah met Mulayam Singh to end the strife in the family. The meeting lasted well beyond midnight where Akhilesh had also participated. Badaun MP Dharmendra Yadav, son of Abhayram Yadav was also present in the meeting. Akhilesh after meeting with the party MLAs, MLCs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission to the Election commission had asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for the three months. Akhilesh camp claimed that they have collected the signature of 212 of 229 party MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and majority of the 5,000 delegates and senior leaders of the party making it crystal clear as to which was the real Samajwadi party. A senior SP leader said `` the stalemate in the party could have ended yesterdayitself, but arrival of Amar Singh with Mulayam singh spoiled the matters''. He also charged that `Amar Singh deliberately came to Lucknow on Thursday as he had got the wind that Mulayam Singh will endorse his expulsion from the party''. SP sources said that Amar Singh has offered to step down from the SP general secretary post while Shivpal Yadav has also agreed to move to Delhi, but there seems to be no solution in sight on the issue of party's national president, which Akhilesh Yadav had wrested from his father on January 1. Sources said Akhilesh could be given authority to select the candidates for the Assembly polls as per the truce but Mulayam is not ready to part with his authority over the party as national president and he is also opposed to the close ties of his son with Ram Gopal Yadav. Meanwhile, Akhilesh Yadav has strengthened his grip over the Samajwadi Party as on the request from his camp all the bank accounts of the party in Lucknow, Delhi and Etawah were freezed by the banks, thus effectively preventing the faction led by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav from withdrawing the money from the party accounts. Samajwadi Party has nearly Rs 500 crore in its bank accounts in different banks. The party has bank accounts in Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, State Bank of India, Vijaya Bank and UP Cooperative Bank Limited in Lucknow and also in State Bank of India in Delhi and Bank of Baroda in Etawah. While the party has over Rs 350 crore in fixed deposits, its accounts in SBI and BoB in Lucknow have Rs 23 crore and Rs 19 crore, respectively. Both the factions-each led by Akhilesh and Mulayam, will need funds to contest the upcoming Assembly elections.UNI MB RJ 2042 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097310.Xml
Even after completing the formality of selecting panel of 2-3 or even 5 candidates for the constituencies, which will go to polls in the first three phases, the Uttar Pradesh Congress is still eyeing the development in Samajwadi Party, hoping for an alliance, as Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav seems to have gained an upper hand in the power game within the ruling party. Both the Parties are keen to keep Muslim vote bank intact at any cost to defeat the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).It may be mentioned that Akhilesh Yadav is seriously advocating an alliance with Congress, saying the parties together could net more than 300 of the state's 403 seats, though Mulayam is opposed to such partnership and had ruled out a tie-up with any party. Congress has, however, not ruled out the possibility of a pre-poll alliance with like-minded parties like Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and its chief ministerial face Sheila Dikshit has gone to the extent of offering to step aside in favour of young Akhilesh. Sources in the Congress maintained that Akhilesh would chalk-out final strategy during his meeting with Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, which is likely to take place sometime in the beginning of next week in New Delhi.Only on last Wednesday, AICC General Secretary Gulam Nabi Azad, who is also incharge of Party affairs here in UP had said that the Party is open to any alliance, though judging the mood of the Party workers, who were against any kind of pact, Azad said that the Party is ready to take on fight on all the 403 seats of the State. "As of now, we are working on the recommendations of the screening committee for all the 403 seats in the state... What can happen in future will be known in time... But there is a lot of pressure on secular parties (for alliance)," he had said here on Wednesday.Besides, Congress chief ministerial candidate, Sheila Dikshit said, "Akhilesh Yadav is a good young leader and if there is any alliance with Samajwadi Party in the coming elections, she will happily withdraw her name in favour of Akhilesh Yadav."It may be mentioned that talks for an alliance with Congress had hit a roadblock with Mulayam ruling out such a possibility and favouring only merger of parties with SP. With the Akhilesh faction breaking away from the parent Samajwadi Party, the possibility of an alliance with Congress has suddenly brightened. As Muslims, the traditional vote bank of Samajwadi Party, appeared to be a confused lot, BSP supremo Mayawati is eyeing the minority community, giving a lion's share of tickets to Muslims, to bolster her party's electoral prospects. Realising this, SP might join hands with Congress to bring about a greater consolidation of Muslim voters that should boost the allies in terms of countering BSP. Mayawati has been cautioning Muslims that if they voted for SP, which is already in doldrums, they will be indirectly helping BJP. BSP has decided to field as many as 97 Muslim candidates of the 403 seats, the highest number fielded by any party in UP so far, perhaps to present itself as a true well-wisher of the community and as a party that can stall BJP in its tracks. Congress and SP leaders believe that an alliance between them will reassure voters that the regional party's core Yadav-Muslim combination is intact. UNI MB RJ 2100 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097324.Xml
The Jammu Court today awarded two-year imprisonment to an octogenarian Pakistani national, who was booked under the Foreigners Act here. Additional Sessions Judge Jammu Mohammad Akram Chowdhary awarded two years imprisonment and fine of Rs 10,000 to Mohammad Nazir (80), resident of village Sanday, District Lahore, Pakistan, who crossed the Suchetgarh Border and was apprehended on October 10, 2014 by the BSF men, deployed at BOP Suchetgarh. BSF also recovered Pakistan currency worth Rs 5094 from him, but he was not carrying valid documents of travel and later was handed over to police, following which a case under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act and Sections 3/6 of the India Passport Act was registered. Additional Sessions Judge Jammu Mohammad Akram Chowdhary convicted the accused for the commission of offences.UNI VBH AKC RJ 2104 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097354.Xml
Under attack from the Akhilesh Yadav camp, Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, in a bid to assuage the frayed nerves, today said he was not against the new Samajwadi Party chief's progress. He also took a jibe at the Chief Minister, saying ''several Ministers and MLAs like Ansari brothers, who were tainted till they were with Shivpal Yadav, have now become angels after affirming their support on affidavit to Akhilesh Yadav. Rebutting the charge that he was behind the feud in the first family of Samajwadi Party, Mr Singh said, ''I have come to Lucknow for the reconciliation in family, not for breaking the family. If my sacrifice helps the cause of unity in the family, then I am willing for any sacrifice. ''I want respect for Mulayam Singh and progress for Akhilesh. I continue to give my blessings to Akhilesh Yadav and I want to assure him that I am not against his progress''. Alleging that Akhilesh camp has humiliated the Netaji (Mulayam Singh), the Rajya Sabha MP said ''A concerted campaign underway to humiliate Mulayam Singh, should be ceased forthwith. ''Today, Akhilesh is not only against his 'Dharm Pita' Shivpal Yadav, but also against his biological father Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is lonely and powerless at the top. ''I want reconciliation between the father and the son and I will never be hindrance in the progress of Akhilesh Yadav. Defending Shivpal, uncle of the Chief Minister, the Rajya Sabha MP said ''Politics is very cruel and ruthless, to support somebody in politics is a big crime and Shivpal has done this crime. Shivpal has taken care of Akhilesh since he was four-year-old and took important decisions about his education and life. ''Yet, Shivpal has become the arch enemy of Akhilesh and all the tainted leaders of SP are now with him,'' he added. Asserting his contribution in the progress of Akhilesh's carrier, Mr Singh said ''My contribution to chief minister Akhilesh Yadav's growing up life is well known and is in the public domain''. In an obvious dig at the show of strength in marshalling the support of party Legislators and MPs by the Chief Minister, Mr Singh said ''status in public life is not gauged just by numbers and power. ''I am being unfairly targeted by the Samajwadi Party leaders who are making baseless allegations against. There is one confirmed turncoat Naresh Agarwal, who is accusing me of being a BJP agent. ''This person was Cabinet Minister in the Rajnath Singh's BJP government and later, he was in BSP and also in Congress, he alleged. Naresh Agarwal is the Rajya Sabha MP. ''I want to say with great pain that one vice president of the SP, who cannot even speak two lines in Hindi, accused me of using the Samajwadi party for advancing my business interests. I have never sought any favour for any contract or any other business deal. ''Akhilesh should either order a probe against me or restrain such leaders from making baseless allegations against me,'' he demanded.UNI MB RJ -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097384.Xml
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notice to the Gujarat government on alleged atrocities on Dalits inside the district jail of Amreli by some upper caste prisoners. The notice asks the state Inspector General of Police (Prisons) to reply within six weeks, regarding the charges of harassment to some Dalit inmates, lodged in the district jail. According to an official spokesman, the NHRC issued the notice suo motu on the basis of reports published in the media that some Dalit inmates were subjected to a lot of harassment inside the Amreli district jail by some upper caste prisoners. The Dalit inmates were not allowed to drink water or eat food properly by the upper caste fellow prisoners and the prison authorities either remained mute spectators or were with the upper caste inmates in harassing and torturing the Dalit inmates, sources said. Dalits in the state are already on the path of agitation against the BJP government in the state, following the last year flogging of four Dalit youths in Una in the neighbouring Junagadh district by some self-styled cow vigilantes. As a protest, the Dalits have refused to remove animal carcasses at many places. UNI ND RJ 2112 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097388.Xml
The duo Gunasekaran (26) and Thamizharasan (26) both hailing from Virudhunagar district came to the Judicial Magistrate (JM) Court in Karur along with their counsel D Ravichandran to surrender in connection with Sivakumar's murder.

However, the Judge refused to accept their plea by stating that the murder was committed in the Union Territory of Puducherry, and hence they cannot surrender in a court at Tamil Nadu. The court issued a non-acceptance letter to the youths.

Sivakumar was murdered in broad day light by an armed gang at Niravi near Karaikal on Tuesday owing to previous enmity. The deceased also held agriculture, animal husbandry, consumer affairs and fisheries departments during his 47-year political career. UNI GSM AKC RJ 2318

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP National President Amit Shah, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) National Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal would be star campaigners in the campaign for the Assembly elections in Goa, which is scheduled to be held on February 4. According to senior BJP leader and MP from South Goa Narendra Sawaikar, Mr Modi would be visiting the state for campaigning and address two major public meetings. ''Our party President Amit Shah would be arriving in Goa on January 22-23 during which time we will plan two major public meetings which would be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,'' Mr Sawaikar said, addressing a press conference yesterday. The campaign would also have senior party leaders like Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, M Venkaiah Naidu, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yedyurappa and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadanavis, among others. According to All India Congress Committee (AICC) Secretary Girish Chodankar, Mr Gandhi would be visiting the state again and address a public meeting in North Goa. Last month, Mr Gandhi had addressed a public meeting at Margao in South Goa. He had also taken part in 'Jan Jagriti Padyatra' organised by the party. However, Mr Chodankar was non-committal about visit of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Mr Kejriwal is scheduled to address four rallies, two each in North and South Goa, starting from tomorrow. According to AAP Goa Spokesman Rupesh Shinkre, Mr Kejriwal will be addressing public meetings at Vasco and Benaulim on January 7 and at Sankhalim and Mapusa on January 8. This would be the second visit of Mr Kejriwal in the poll-bound state during a period of one month. His last visit was on December 19, when he addressed a public rally at Cuncolim in South Goa, wherein he announced that former bureaucrat Elvis Gomes would be the party's chief ministerial candidate in the Assembly elections. With the announcement of date for the polls, the political parties in the state have intensified their election campaign.UNI AKM RJ 2316 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097460.Xml
The 20-year-old woman, who was injured in the incident, was shifted to a hospital in Hyderabad, police here said.

Based on a complaint lodged by the victim, a case under section 307 (attempt to murder) of IPC was registered the accused D Naresh, who works in the same office.

After the attack, the accused ran away. However, police had launched a manhunt to nab the accused, police added.UNI KNR AKC RJ 2311

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Theme of the event is: "Diabetes" The Giant killer and Innovations in Medicine!" to be attended by renowned national and international experts from India, US, UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore and UAE, Apollo Hospital Founder President and Chairman, Dr Prathap C Reddy said in a press conference here today.

It is estimated that there are 1.2 million physicians of Indian origin working in India and other parts of the world, Dr Reddy, said.

The aim of this platform is to explore how the Indian doctors practising abroad can help their motherland, share knowledge and best practices. Especially, many of them are involved in high-end research, the outcomes and knowledge from that can be tapped for the benefit of our countrymen," he added.

Speaking on the occasion, GAPIO President Dr Sanku Surender Rao, said the two-day conference expected to attract 400 to 500 medical experts. Key opinion leaders from across the world will deliberate on cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, brain trauma, kidney, oncology, rheumatology, gastrointestinal disorders, paediatrics, robotic surgery, mental health, global healthcare, emerging healthcare challenges.UNI KNR AKC RJ 2317

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Thousands of activists, including MLAs D P Sawant, AmitaChavan, Vasant Chavan and MLC Aramr Rajurkar along with others,participated in it.

Later, a memorandum was handed over to additional collectorSantosh Patil narrating the plight of the people caused by the demontisation.

Speaking on the occasion, the leaders criticised the NarendraModi-led government and stated the policy of demonetisation was wrong.UNI XR SS RJ 2330

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-1097305.Xml
The Pakistan Supreme Court on Friday said that if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family is unable to establish ownership of Minerva Financial Services Limited, the court would have to assume that charges leveled against the Premier's family by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are true. Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who was heading the larger bench hearing the case, cautioned the Sharif lawyers that if they were unable to establish ownership of Minerva Financial Services Limited, the court would have to 'imagine' that what Pakistan PTI lawyers claim is true, reports the Dawn. PTI has been trying to establish that Maryam Nawaz, and not her brother Hussain Nawaz as claimed by the party earlier, was the beneficial owner of Minerva which held Nescoll Limited and Nielson Enterprises Limited - the owners of the four London flats. Justice Khosa warned those involved in the case that the court has the power to summon past records and should not be deemed powerless. Bokhari claimed the flats had been bought between 1993-1996, under the name of the premier's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, who he said was underage at the time. He added that the Prime Minister had gifted his daughter Rs 37 million in 2011, and that gifts of over Rs30m were given in 2013. The next hearing has been adjourned until Monday, Jan 9. (ANI)
US-backed militias in Syria have captured an ancient citadel from Islamic State in a strategically significant advance against the jihadist group in its stronghold of Raqqa province, a spokesman said today.The Jabar citadel on the banks of Lake Assad was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance on yesterday, militia spokesman Talal Silo told Reuters. It is located near a dam on the Euphrates River that the US-backed alliance also aims to capture in the current phase of its campaign."The direction of our forces is towards the area of the dam at present," Silo said. SDF advances had been slowed by thick fog that had allowed Islamic State fighters to use infiltration tactics to attack SDF positions, he said. The weather had now improved, he said in an interview over the internet.The SDF, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, are just a few kilometres (miles) from the dam. The SDF is the main partner for the United States in the campaign it is leading against Islamic State in Syria.Islamic State is also being fought in separate campaigns by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels in areas further west and by the Russian-backed Syrian army in Deir al-Zor province and near the city of Palmyra, which IS seized for a second time in December.The SDF launched a multi-stage operation in Raqqa province in November aimed ultimately at capturing the city from Islamic State. The first phase captured territory to the north of the city and the current phase is targeting areas to the west of it. REUTERS PS AN1608 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1096687.Xml
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has asserted that Qatar's former prime minister Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al Thani would be jailed if he appeared before the Supreme Court (SC) to authenticate the letter he had sent to rescue Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panamagate case. "If the Qatari prince doesn't want to go to prison, he should not come to Pakistan," the Dawn quoted Khan as saying on Thursday at a press conference at his residence in Banigala. Khan also asked Prime Minister Sharif to submit evidence if he was not involved in money laundering and had sent money abroad through legal channels to purchase properties in London. He said that the letter of the Qatari prince had proved to be false as the Prime Minister's daughter Maryam Nawaz was the owner of the London property. "The Qatari Prince's letter is false, I don't know which prince will come to their defence next," the PTI chief said. He alleged that Nawaz Sharif was involved in money laundering since he had transferred money abroad through illegal channels and established overseas companies in the name of his children. "Finance Minister Ishaq Dar's affidavit is a documentary evidence of Nawaz Sharif's money laundering." In November last year, Prime Minister Sharif submitted to Supreme Court a letter by Qatari prince Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al Thani, stating that he gave money to the premier's family for the purchase of controversial properties in London. (ANI)
President-elect Donald Trump, who insulted rivals during his 2016 campaign with nicknames such as "Crooked Hillary" and "Little Marco," has a new nemesis: US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, a man he derides as a "clown."The rhetorical banter that erupted between the two New Yorkers this week centered on a fight over Republican plans to dismantle Obamacare, an effort that Trump has put at the top of his domestic agenda.Just two weeks before he is to be sworn in as the 45th US president, Trump has taken to Twitter to denigrate the hard-charging senator, someone he feted at a fundraiser in 2008 for Democratic senators at the real estate magnate's posh Florida oceanside estate.Schumer, whose Democrats are in the minority in the Senate but still have enough muscle to potentially block some of Trump's legislative initiatives, clashed with the president-elect as Republicans this week took the first steps to try to gut President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law known as Obamacare.Schumer used Trump's "Make America Great" campaign slogan to mock the Republican repeal effort, saying it would "make America sick again."On Twitter, Trump shot back that Democrats were to blame for what he called the "failed Obamacare disaster." He added: "Don't let the Schumer clowns out of this web."Yesterday, Trump wrote on Twitter that Democrats were being led by "head clown Chuck Schumer."That prompted the Senate Democratic leader to say that Trump should stop wasting his time calling people names and instead "roll up his sleeves" and come up with a workable substitute for Obamacare.At campaign rallies last year, Trump attacks on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" stirred enthusiasm among his supporters who chanted "lock her up."During the heated primary campaign season, Trump swatted at rival Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio with cries of "Lyin' Ted," "low-energy" Bush and "Little Marco."The mocking may have been unorthodox, but it proved part of a winning formula, sweeping Trump's opponents off the stage.Matthew Green, a Catholic University political science professor, said Trump is tangling with a different kind of opponent in Schumer."He can name-call Democratic leaders in Congress, but he can't get rid of them. They still occupy the legislative branch," Green said.On the other hand, engaging with Trump carries risks for Schumer, who undoubtedly will feel pressure from the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party if he cuts deals, especially given the ire Trump stirs among millions of Democratic voters.Trump has outlined an ambitious legislative agenda including overhauling the tax code, a $1 trillion infrastructure investment program and renegotiating major trade deals, while also pumping up U.S. defense spending.Thomas Quinn, a Democratic activist and long-time Washington lobbyist, said Trump was fortunate to have Schumer as the top Democrat in the Senate, because, like Trump, the senator likes to cut deals and is a somewhat moderate Democrat.In some ways, Schumer is tailor-made for Trump. Both are bold New Yorkers expert at capturing media attention. However, their paths have rarely crossed until now.Tony Sayegh, a New York-based Republican campaign strategist whose Jamestown Associates firm did work for Trump, warned that unless Democrats cooperate with Trump, he will use his bully pulpit to win public support."Can you picture Air Force One landing in Indiana, in Montana, in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, central Michigan, and northern Wisconsin, and Donald Trump walks out and gets crowds these politicians could never dream of getting?" REUTERS PS AS1731 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1096776.Xml
Elite Iraqi troops bridged a river under the cover of darkness to seize a district of Mosul in an unprecedented night raid early today, part of a new phase in the battle to capture the city from Islamic State after weeks of slowed momentum.Since last week, Iraqi forces have launched a renewed push to seize ground in the nearly three month-old offensive to capture the city, after progress stalled last month because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.Iraqi forces would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said in a speech today.The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong US-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul today, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said the overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul had allowed troops to enter the Muthana district."We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.In the new phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday. Iraqi army units were positioned for an advance on the area from the north, a Reuters correspondent at a military position near the front line said.The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in the battle to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment."The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people. REUTERS PS AN1910 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1097148.Xml
According to BRP Media Cell, Pakistani forces conducted a heavy military operation in different areas of Sui and Naseerabad including Matt, Darenjan, Uch, Shari Darbad, Chattar and Sheerani, earlier in the morning.

Many people have been abducted and houses were burned during the operations.

Furthermore, 17 people including women and children of Mitta Khan Bugti and Saeed Khan Bugti were taken by Pakistani army in Chattar.

Some of abductees belonged to the family of activist Chakar Bugti.

Bugti's wife Naaz Khatoon, daughter Roz Bibi three-year-old son Hameed and nine-month old son Ramzan were abducted.

In-charge of BRP Media Cell, Shah Nawaz Bugti said that the women were brutally tortured before being abducted.

He said "After Baloch political activists, now women are abducted, beaten up and detained by Pakistan army. Human rights group should take immediate notice of the situation." (ANI)
West African leaders will take a "major decision" on the political impasse in Gambia at a meeting in Ghana tomorrow, a spokesman for the Nigerian presidency said today.Last month the West African ECOWAS bloc said it would take all necessary actions to uphold the result of a December 1 election in Gambia, where veteran President Yahya Jammeh says he will not step down after losing to Adama Barrow."A major decision on the impasse is expected to be taken at that all-important meeting," said Garba Shehu, spokesman for Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari."President Buhari is the chief mediator of the crisis and he is committed to ensuring that the logjam is resolved." REUTERS AKC NS2203 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1097434.Xml
BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- With the arrival of a new year, China is embarking on a new diplomatic journey with the rest of the world. Here are 5 key words that could shape the country's foreign relations in 2017.

"Host"

Two conferences stand out among the numerous international gatherings to be held in China in 2017: a high-level forum on the Belt and Road Initiative and the 9th BRICS summit.

China will be in the spotlight again, following the APEC meeting in 2014, the military parade in 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, and the G20 summit in 2016.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road trade routes. It has won support from over 100 countries and international organizations.

"Launching a forum serves to make the initiative more understandable to the international community, helping it to be implemented widely," said Ruan Zongze, executive deputy president of the China Institute of International Studies.

Leaders from BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will meet in September in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China, to focus on economic cooperation and joint response to global challenges.

The BRICS countries have contributed 50 percent of world GDP growth in the past decade. Observers say China aims to lift the confidence of the bloc to continue to lead developing economies.

"Trump"

As Donald Trump, the business tycoon turned politician, prepares to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, it remains to be seen whether China-U.S. relations will be smooth under the new administration.

As president-elect, Trump appears imprudent and unpredictable, from accepting a phone call from Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen that broke decades of protocol, to accusing China of "stealing" U.S. jobs and threatening to quit the historic Paris agreement on climate change.

"President Trump's policies toward China will be the biggest variable in China-U.S. relations," Ruan said. Dismissing possibilities of overall confrontation, he said there will be temporary disturbances in the relationship in 2017.

China has said cooperation is the only correct choice for both countries. Trump needs to adapt to his new role and digest this message in order to transform from a green hand in politics to an incoming president.

"Governance"

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China will remain deeply involved in global governance through participation in the World Economic Forum, G20, APEC, Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2017.

Analysts said innovation, structural reform and global economic growth -- the major agenda set by China at the 2016 G20 summit -- will continue to figure into the 2017 summit in Germany, showcasing China's influence in global economic governance.

With Brexit, Trump's victory and upcoming general elections in Germany, France and the Netherlands, anti-globalization, protectionism and populism are on the rise, casting uncertainty on the future of globalization.

As a firm supporter of globalization, China will continue to be a champion. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road Fund, China hopes to get more countries on board and share opportunities for growth.

China has vowed to continue to promote its relations with the United Nations under the new Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and consolidate the central role of the UN in world peace and security. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China will also play its part in hot international issues.

"Neighbor"

Regarding China's relations with neighboring countries, the South China Sea and the situation on the Korean Peninsula are two issues crucial to China's national sovereignty, security and development.

China and the Philippines have repaired relations after the so-called South China Sea arbitration, and more countries have realized dialogue is the only solution to disputes.

"Though there may be minor frictions, big conflicts are less likely," said Gao Fei, professor at China Foreign Affairs University.

The uncertainties over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue and the continuing political turmoil in the Republic of Korea caused by scandal-hit President Park Geun-hye have made the regional situation more complicated.

Staying committed to denuclearizing the Peninsula and maintaining peace and stability there, China said it will continue its efforts to bring the issue back to the negotiating table.

"China's opposition to the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in the ROK remains unchanged and China will safeguard peace and tranquility on its doorstep," according to the Chinese foreign minister.

"CPC"

China's most significant political event in 2017, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), is scheduled to convene in the second half of the year to map out the country's future development.

It remains unknown what the Congress will be likely to produce in terms of foreign policy, but anything said in the meeting will be of utter importance to Chinese diplomacy over the next five years.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, China has unveiled its signature diplomacy of fostering a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at the center and building a community of shared destiny for mankind.

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Chinese FM calls for jointly maintaining Sino-U.S. cooperation results

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- China and the United States should work together to carefully maintain the outcomes of their cooperation and hold the correct direction of the development of their relations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday. Full story

Spotlight: China's Belt and Road Initiative promotes connectivity, development along ancient route

BEIJING, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- More than three years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Full story

Commentary: China plays constructive role in global economic governance

BEIJING, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- China played a constructive role in improving global economic governance to realize win-win cooperation and a more reasonable governance structure in 2016. Full story

China urges proper settlement with ROK on THAAD issue

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday urged communication with the Republic of Korea (ROK) to find a proper solution to the ROK's deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). Full story

Commentary: Incoming Trump administration should realize weight of China-U.S. relations
ISTANBUL, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A car bomb exploded outside a courthouse on Thursday in Turkey's western city of Izmir, killing four including two attackers and one police, the governor said.

Izmir Governor Erol Ayyildiz told the state-run Anadolu Agency that a court employee, a female usher, lost her life as well in the bombing attack.

He put the number of the wounded at seven, three police plus four civilians.

The attack occurred near a police checkpoint of the courthouse, and an exchange of fire erupted between three militants and the police, with two militants killed later and the other on the run.

The governor said that two kalashnikovs, eight handmade bombs and eight rocket launchers were seized from the terrorists.

Preliminary reports indicate the Kurdistan Workers' Party outlawed by Ankara is behind the attack, said the governor.

The bombing attack came in the wake of a shooting attack early Sunday on an Istanbul nightclub that left 39 dead, 25 of them foreigners.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the nightclub carnage, but the gunman remains at large.
DAMASCUS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The second stage of a recent Turkish-Russian understanding about imminent Syrian peace talks in Astana is obscure, as the first step of a cease-fire has been disturbed by military gears and mutual distrust, analysts say.

When the recent cease-fire was agreed upon by Turkey and Russia last week, it presented a glimpse of hope to this war-ravaged country that another attempt following several previous cease-fires and talks meant renewed hope with respect to reaching a solution to the close to six-year-old crisis in Syria.

Ever since the cease-fire went into effect last Friday, the violence rate dropped significantly across the country, baring areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

Noteworthy, the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front changed its name to the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or the Front for Conquering the Levant, in a desperate bid to divert attention away from its ties to the global terrorist network, which it claimed it had severed its ties with.

The Nusra name change attempt didn't absolve it from the "terrorist organization" label, and it remains a significant terrorist group which was excluded, along with the other ultra-radical IS, from the cease-fire.

The cease-fire is considered a first step in the Russian-Turkish deal, with planned peace talks expected in Astana, Kazakhstan, later this month.

Analysts in Syria expressed conflicting opinions regarding the prospects of the cease-fire deal, some admiring the upcoming Astana meeting, while others maintained their skepticism and are merely observing the shaky first step, whose collapse means no second option.

Both optimists and skeptics have their reasons and they are equally logical.

REASONS WHY ASTANA COULD WORK OUT

Ala'a Arafat, a member from the Change and Liberation Front opposition party, expected commitment from the parties involved in the current cease-fire, despite breaches each side accuses the other for.

He pointed out that the recent deal was concluded between Russia and Turkey only, excluding the U.S. and other regional players, such as Gulf States, at least for now, which means two of the most influential powers from each party of the conflict are directly involved.

It's also worth noting that Russia and Turkey named themselves as "guarantors" of the cease-fire, and stated that the next step will be holding talks in Astana.

Both pledged to monitor the deal and prevent any potential breach, which translated into a strong guarantee for both the government and the opposition forces.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said last week that the cease-fire is a potential starting point for a political process, speaking highly of the chances of success, due to what he called the "strong guarantees" from Moscow.

The opposition rebels hold the same view, as they have unwavering trust in Ankara due to Turkey's support of the rebels in Syria which was crucial for their survival when facing the Russian-backed administration of President Bashar al-Assad.

"The absence of the U.S. involvement in the deal will have a positive impact because Americans and Europeans were behind the failure of previous deals, either directly or indirectly. I am optimistic that the absence of the U.S. will increase chances of success to the cease-fire and the following talks," Arafat said.

The current Turkish-Russian agreement seems better than the one struck between Russia and the United States late last year, Arafat said, noting that the U.S.-Russian deal was criticized by the U.S.-led strike on Syria's army posts in Deir al-Zour last September, killing over 90 Syrian soldiers, enabling IS to benefit from the Syrian army's losses.

"Back then Washington smothered the agreement before it saw the light of day, and you can be sure of that when you hear the recent remarks by U.S. officials stating that the reason behind the failure of the Russian-U.S. agreement is the divided U.S. administration itself," Arafat said.

"The Astana talks will be a historic chance to end the crisis and should succeed" he said, noting that during previous talks in Geneva, the main obstacle was the representation of the opposition groups, particularly the Saudi-backed Higher Negotiations Committee, which played an "obstructionist role," seen by many as an adamant stance, demanding the departure of Assad as a prerequisite to any negotiations, which of course was the stance of the supporters.

"Such a role should be overcome now, and if the same group wants to ardently stick to its previous stance, I say they shouldn't attend, but if they will, I say they should not obstruct the talks," he said.

Arafat also pointed out another reason why the recent talks could be different, mainly the new precedent of having the armed rebels represented in the talks.

"In the new talks, armed factions are going to be present and they agree on the political negotiations. Astana will be different, as the UN is also not supervising the talks, which means that the real players on the ground are the ones negotiating. In this phase of the crisis, Americans are being bypassed," he said.

REASONS WHY ASTANA COULD BE ANOTHER FAILURE

Some of the previously-mentioned reasons for the success of the talks are a double-edged sword, with the rebels being represented in the talks, in addition to their participation in the cease-fire.

When the current cease-fire started a week ago, the situation was calm, a good sign for the upcoming talks, except an escalation occurred in the last few days.

Government forces escalated an attack against the rebel-held Wadi Barada, or Barada Valley, northwest of Damascus, citing that the rebels severed the drinking water source from the capital, as Wadi Barada contains the main spring providing Damascus's over five million inhabitants with water.

The government considers the attack legitimate, stating that the rebels in Wadi Barada are actually the Nusra Front, already excluded from the deal.

However, the rebels cited the attack as a pretext to announcing freezing of the talks and planned negotiations in Astana, further worrying the government of parties on the ground and regionally who do not consider Nusra as a terrorist group, another barrier toward reaching an understanding.

Turkey also criticized the government forces' offensive against Wadi Barada, further cracking the recent deal.

The current situation means that Turkey and the rebels it supports are in a position where they can call off the entire deal with Moscow, analysts said.

Ankara spewed a barrage of criticism against the Shiite Hezbollah group, supported by Iran, believed to be a third party in the Turkish-Russian deal.

Turkey accused Hezbollah of jeopardizing the cease-fire, as the later is also fighting alongside the Syrian army for Wadi Barada.

A day earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Iran must pressure allied Shiite militias to respect the truce.

"When we look at who commits these violations, it is Hezbollah, in particular Shiite groups and the regime," Cavusoglu said.

The remarks irked Tehran, whose officials considered Turkey's allegations that its allies on the ground were threatening the cease-fire as "unconstructive."

Iran additionally accused Ankara and its subordinates on the ground.

"The current cease-fire in Syria has been repeatedly violated by anti-government armed opposition groups," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on Wednesday.

The tit-for-tat accusations didn't stop there.

An unnamed security official connected to the joint operation room of Syria's allies was quoted by local media on Thursday as "revealing what's going on behind the curtains."

The source said the Nusra Front is preparing to carry out several attacks in Syria so as to undermine the cease-fire, "amid information that a similar threat would be carried out upon orders from Turkey."

The source added that "Turkey ordered the rebels to carry out various attacks in different areas to pressure Russia in order to gain concessions from Russia during the Astana talks."

He added that Turkey wants to pressure Russia to include Nusra in the deal, adding that Syria is committed to the cease-fire, despite the worrisome security developments behind the scenes.

Maher Ihsan, a Syrian journalist and political analyst, said the climate for the Jan. 23 Astana talks are not yet ripe enough.

"Despite the fact that the Astana meeting sounds more serious than its predecessors, I think both the political and field atmospheres are not yet ripe enough. I think that the talks in Astana will only be a step before another final step which may take place next year," he said.

He added that so far, "there is no single country that can control all of its armed factions, and the fact that the Turks are negotiating on behalf of the opposition and the Russians are negotiating on behalf of the government is a sign that the deal or the situation is not ripe enough to hammer out a solution in the Astana meeting," referring to the fact that other countries still have vested interests in Syria, such as the United States and Gulf States.

As for Anas Joudeh, head of the Nation Building Movement opposition group, he told Xinhua that the concept of the Astana meeting is still "vague," pointing to what he called the problem of the rebel representation and participation in the talks.

"The first problem is that the meeting will be held between the government and the rebels, thus we cannot see any serious political track," he said, noting that such a meeting could establish a more comprehensive cease-fire, but not a political solution.

Joudeh also believes that Ankara and Moscow are not on the same page, noting that "the Turkish side could be stalling untill the new U.S. administration comes into power."

The opposition figure also said that the absence of the UN from the meeting means it will not be a long-lasting one, adding that it may be a preparatory meeting for another round of Geneva talks, where previous rounds ended with abject failure.

Another reason why the talks could reach an impasse is the presidency of Bashar al-Assad, whose removal was a main demand from the opposition and their supporters during previous talks, a point that remains a redline by the government.

Al-Moallem, the foreign minster of Syria, said last Thursday that Assad's presidency is non-negotiable.

Related:

UN to attend, contribute to Syria talks in Kazakhstan: UN official

GENEVA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The UN Special Envoy for Syria said Thursday that preparations were being made to attend Russian and Turkish-backed peace talks scheduled to take place in the Kazakh capital of Astana later this month. Full story

Arab, EU FMs urge intra-Syria talks, condemn Aleppo attacks
ATHENS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Greek police announced on Thursday the arrest of Panagiota (Paula) Roupa, a fugitive convicted member of terrorist group the Revolutionary Struggle, after she was four years at large.

"In the morning hours today, January 5, 2017, was arrested during a counter-terrorism unit the 48-year-old Panagiota Roupa, wanted for terrorism," Greek police spokesperson Theodore Chronopoulos said during a press briefing at the Public Order ministry.

Roupa, one of Greece's most wanted terrorists, was arrested in an apartment in the Athens southern suburb Aghios Dimitrios where she was living with her six-year-old son.

A 25-year-old woman was also detained during Thursday's operation, according to the police. She is believed to have helped Roupa hide out.

The Revolutionary Struggle has been linked since 2003 to a series of bomb attacks against political, police and financial targets, including a rocket attack at the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2007 and a strong bomb blast at the Athens Stock Exchange in 2009.

Roupa was first arrested with her partner and leading member of the guerilla group, Nikos Maziotis, in 2010. She gave birth to their son under police custody.

They were released on conditions until they face justice.

But the couple went missing in July, 2012. The Greek state offered a million-euro reward for any information which could lead to their arrest.

Maziotis was arrested in the summer of 2014 after a failed robbery in central Athens.

Roupa continued carrying out attacks, including armed robberies and an attempt to free Maziotis by helicopter from the maximum security prison of Korydallos at Piraeus on February 2016. The plan failed when the pilot of the hijacked helicopter resisted at Roupa's gunpoint, according to the police.

After the arrest, Roupa's sister told media outside the police headquarters that Roupa had asked authorities to immediately hand over her son to his grandmother and aunt to take care of him.

She said Roupa will go on hunger strike until her request is approved.
John McCain (L), chairman of U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, attends a hearing on cyber threats to the U.S., on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, Jan. 5, 2017. McCain on Thursday vowed to take actions in response to Russia's alleged cyber attacks during last year's presidential election. (Xinhua/Bao Dandan)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- John McCain, chairman of U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, on Thursday vowed to take actions in response to Russia's alleged cyber attacks during last year's presidential election. "Every American should be alarmed by Russia's attacks on our nation," McCain said in a Senate hearing on cyber threats to the U.S., calling Moscow's action "unprecedented attack on our democracy".

U.S. intelligence had concluded that the hack and release of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton staff emails was ordered by the Kremlin and was designed to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Moscow also denied the accusations.

"There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference," McCain said.

The senior senator called on Congress to set partisanship aside and work together to "deter, defend against and when necessary, respond to foreign cyber attacks" .

The hearing on Thursday brought together top U.S. intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre and NSA and U.S. Cyber Command chief Mike Rogers.

Clapper reiterated the U.S. accusation that Moscow orchestrated the cyber attacks, saying Russia poses "an existential threat to the United States."

"I don't think that we have ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to accept the findings that Russia has intervened in the 2016 presidential election. He has quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to voice new doubt about the hacking claim made by U.S. intelligence agencies.

At the hearing, asked if Assange has credibility on the issue, Clapped said, "Not in my view" .

Thursday's hearing comes a day before Trump is scheduled to receive a briefing by the top intelligence officials on the investigation into Russia's alleged hacking efforts.
People wait on the platform for trains at the newly-launched 76th street Station in New York, the United States, Jan. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

by Xinhua writer Yang Shilong

NEW YORK, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- For Candy Tong, Miss Dance of California, there would be no other stage as luxurious as the platform of New York's 4.45-billion-U.S.dollar brand new subway that has been dreamed of since 1920s.

Candy Tong is standing on the platform for trains at the newly-launched 76th street Station in New York, the United States, Jan. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Tong, who won the top award from the Dance Masters of California in 2013, was showcasing her pleasantly stunning ballet actions Wednesday morning at the 72nd St. subway station, one of the three new stations of the Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway, opened for service on the New Year's Day.

"It's new and modern, a good place to do photograph." Melika Dez, a renowned dance photographer from Montreal, Canada, told Xinhua after catching satisfactory shots of Tong's moments of beauty.

Dez is the winner of "Best Short Movie" at the 2005 Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal and awarded with the "People's Choice" on Silence On Court in 2005 for her graduation short-movie project.

"Here is so clean and bright, totally different from the city's dark old subway lines, where rats thrive on garbage along the train track." added Tong's mother, who is originally from Hong Kong.

People wait to get into subway train at the newly-launched 76th street Station in New York, the United States, Jan. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

New York's biggest expansion of the subway system in 50 years, the nearly 2-mile (about 3.2 kms) segment under the Upper East Side of the Manhattan is an extension of the Q line and seen as crucial to alleviating congestion in the nation's biggest subway system.

The new line, when complete, extends 8.5 miles (13.6 kms) along Manhattan's East Side to Lower Manhattan. It is to be built in three phases and expected to carry about 200,000 riders a day, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a public benefit corporation responsible for public transportation in New York.

Workers walk past a wall paint at the newly-launched 86th street Station in New York, the United States, Jan. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

The city first envisioned a Second Avenue subway in 1929, but the plan was derailed by the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Ground was broken in 1972, but the project was put on hold again by the city's fiscal crisis.

After that, the Second Avenue subway remained mostly just on paper until tunneling began in earnest in 2007. The newly opened section was initially supposed to be completed in 2013.

"It's a nice project though long overdue," said Stephen Trychon with JF White Construction.

The spacious new stations, installed with escalators and elevators, are a lot more friendly to visitors, especially seniors, than those smelly, crowded ones along the old lines.

More appealingly, the 72 st., 86 st.,and 96 st. stations are turned into underground museum with large-scale installations of vibrant artworks, commissioned by MTA at a cost of 4.5 million U.S. dollars.

The artworks, mostly concentrated on the second mezzanine of each two-tiered station, includes 12 nearly-9-feet (2.7 meters) high densely intricate mosaic portraits created by the famous American painter and photographer Chuck Close. Among the portraits is one of the Chinese artist Zhang Huan, born in 1965 in Anyang, Henan Province.

However, the staggering cost of the new line already sparked many concerns. The next phase of the Second Avenue subway is reportedly to cost 6 billion dollars.

Photo taken on Jan. 4, 2016 shows a specially designed metro card for the new line at the newly-launched 96th street Station in New York, the United States. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

"NYC's brand new subway is the most expensive in the world - that's a problem," Matthew Yglesias, said in his article carried by the VOX.COM.

Yglesias wrote that according to transit blogger Alon Levy's compendium of international subway projects, Berlin's U55 line cost 250 million dollars per kilometer, Paris's Metro Line 14 cost 230 million dollars per kilometer, and Copenhagen's Circle Line cost 260 million dollars per kilometer.

In China, the subway construction costs are even lower. It costs more than 1 billion yuan (about 161 million dollars) to build one kilometer of subway in Beijing, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in June 2015.

"But as lovely as the new stations might be, and advanced as the construction methods may have been, the Second Avenue line fails to address the subway's biggest problem," Matthew DeBord, a Business Insider senior correspondent covering transportation, said in an opinion column "Why New York's new Second Avenue subway changes nothing."

"When you enter the underground realm, you're returning to a less airbrushed and sanitized New York. The New York of the subway is emphatically real."

"The No. 1 thing that New York could do to make everyone's life better is make the subway a more pleasant environment," DeBord said.
File photo taken on March 26, 2015 shows U.S. Republican Senator John McCain speaks at a think tank event in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- John McCain, chairman of U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, on Thursday vowed to take actions in response to Russia's alleged cyber attacks during last year's presidential election. "Every American should be alarmed by Russia's attacks on our nation," McCain said in a Senate hearing on cyber threats to the U.S., calling Moscow's action "unprecedented attack on our democracy".

U.S. intelligence had concluded that the hack and release of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton staff emails was ordered by the Kremlin and was designed to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Moscow also denied the accusations.

"There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference," McCain said.

The senior senator called on Congress to set partisanship aside and work together to "deter, defend against and when necessary, respond to foreign cyber attacks" .

The hearing on Thursday brought together top U.S. intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre and NSA and U.S. Cyber Command chief Mike Rogers.

Clapper reiterated the U.S. accusation that Moscow orchestrated the cyber attacks, saying Russia poses "an existential threat to the United States."

"I don't think that we have ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to accept the findings that Russia has intervened in the 2016 presidential election. He has quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to voice new doubt about the hacking claim made by U.S. intelligence agencies.

At the hearing, asked if Assange has credibility on the issue, Clapped said, "Not in my view" .

Thursday's hearing comes a day before Trump is scheduled to receive a briefing by the top intelligence officials on the investigation into Russia's alleged hacking efforts.
CHICAGO, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- General Motors announced on its website Thursday that the Detroit-based automaker and its joint ventures sold record 3.87 million vehicles in China in 2016, up 7.1 percent from 2015 and accounting for one-third of GM's total global sales.

Cadillac, Buick and Baojun brands under GM all set record sales in China in 2016.

To be specific, Cadillac sales totaled 116,406 units, up 46 percent year on year; Buick sales set a new record of 1.18 million units, up 19 percent; and Baojun came to 688,390 units, up 49 percent.

Chevrolet, however, dropped in sales for the second year in running, with total sales standing at 525,273 units in 2016, down 14.2 percent year on year. GM attributed Chevrolet sales drop to model changeover.

Sales of Wuling brand also dropped for the second year to 1.36 million unit, as against 1.47 million units in 2015.

GM's SUV sales jumped 45 percent to 673,409 units in China in 2016.

The U.S. automaker launched 13 new or refreshed vehicles in China in 2016, part of its efforts to launching a total of 60 by 2020.

"In 2017, we will continue to listen to our customers' needs and meet their demands with a strong product lineup," GM China President Matt Tsien said in a statement.

China is GM's largest sales market in the world.
CANBERRA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Australian winemakers and exporters are hoping for a boost in profits from this week, as tariffs to China are further reduced as a result of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA).

China is the nation's largest export market for wine, with the export side of the industry now worth almost 375 million U.S. dollars annually, however, with the further tariff reductions, China's middle class will be able to access more wines at a cheaper price, something exporters hope will contribute to a bigger bottom line.

Since Chinese wine connoisseurs first developed a taste for premium Australian wine, growth in the wine export business has steadied, but with the tariffs falling to just 5.6 percent from this week, exporter Kandy Xu expects the growth rate to jump yet again.

"In the beginning we exported about two containers per year, but now from last year we export 15 containers," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday.

Before ChAFTA, Australian wine was subject to a 14 percent tariff before it hit Chinese shelves, however the Winemakers' Federation's Tony Battaglene said as the tariff rate continues to reduce before hitting zero by 2019, Australian winemakers and exporters can get a real leg up over the competition.

"China's now our biggest market, so this is a great chance to increase our profits," Battaglene told the ABC.

"We've got around 24 percent, 25 percent of their market ahead of France. We're now beating the old world at their game so that's a really good outcome for us."
HANOI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's central Khanh Hoa province will in March release mosquitos with Wolbachia bacteria into the wild environment to prevent dengue fever outbreaks, the provincial authorities said on Friday.

The release will be made in mid-March in four wards of the province's Nha Trang city, and local residents have already agreed with the project.

The release of mosquitos with Wolbachia has been implemented on a trial basis in the city's Tri Nguyen island, and has proved effective; no dengue fever outbreaks have been reported in the island.

Similar projects in foreign countries, including Australia, Indonesia, Brazil and Colombia have proved they are effective and safe for the environment and human health, said representatives of the Vietnamese project.

In 2016, Vietnam reported 106,300 dengue fever patients, including 36 fatalities, said the country's Preventive Medicine Department.

Wolbachia is a natural bacterium present in up to 60 percent of all the different species of insects, including some mosquito species, but it is not usually found in the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary species responsible for transmitting human viruses such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika.

Researches in the world have shown that when introduced into the Aedes aegypti mosquito, Wolbachia can stop these viruses from growing inside the mosquito and being transmitted to people.

When mosquitoes with Wolbachia mate with wild female mosquitoes without Wolbachia, they are unable to reproduce. Releasing a limited number of mosquitoes with Wolbachia to breed with wild mosquitoes, over a small number of generations, will result in all the mosquitoes having Wolbachia.
TOKYO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Japan has decided to recall its ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine over the erection of a new "comfort women" statue in South Korea, local media quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as saying on Friday.

Japan will also halt currency swap talks and postpone high-level economic dialogue with South Korea as a statue representing women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two was put up near the Japanese consulate in Busan last month, according to the Japanese government top spokesman.

"We have repeatedly asked South Korea to handle the resolution of this issue appropriately, but the situation has not improved, so we have taken this action," Suga was quoted as saying.

The Korean Peninsula was colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

On Dec. 28 last year, the Park Geun-hye administration reached a "final and irreversible" agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe-led cabinet on the "comfort women" victims.

A handful of aged, surviving South Korean victims oppose the agreement, saying Abe has yet to sincerely apologize for past atrocities and admit legal responsibility of the Japanese government for forcible recruitment of the teenage victims during the colonization.

Related:

S.Korea says Japan's recalling of envoys over comfort women statue "very regrettable"

SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's foreign ministry said Friday that it was very regrettable for Japan to recall its senior envoys over the placing near its consulate of a statue symbolizing Japan's wartime sex slavery victims. Full story

S.Korean politicians, people clamor to nullify comfort women agreement with Japan

SEOUL, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Ordinary South Koreans and politicians of the opposition bloc clamored in unison to nullify the agreement with Japan on "comfort women" victims on Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of the "humiliating" agreement. Full story

S. Korean main opposition party vows to annul comfort women agreement with Japan
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon on Thursday had four inmates transferred from the Guantanamo Bay prison to Saudi Arabia in a continuous bid to empty the facility as much as possible before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20.

His successor Donald Trump has publicly opposed the move.

Out of 55 people remaining in the prison, up to 19 are also eligible for transfer after receiving lengthy security reviews. Local media reported that they will be sent to at least four countries including Italy, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

"The United States is grateful to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The latest transfer came just two days after Trump tweeted his opposition and called for stopping the action.

"There should be no further releases from Gitmo (the Guantanamo Bay prison). These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield," he wrote.

"He (Trump) 'll have an opportunity to implement the policy that he believes is most effective when he takes office on Jan. 20," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in response.

Obama promised in his first presidential campaign eight years ago to close the facility. In his campaign toward White House, Trump pledged to keep it open.

The Republican-dominated Congress last year prohibited Obama from transferring any Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the mainland of the United States.

All the four inmates transferred Thursday are Yemenis. They had been held at the controversial detention facility for more than 14 years following the 9/11 terror attacks and the U.S.-launched Afghanistan War. Though suspected as terrorists related to al-Qaida, they had never been charged.
PARIS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Donald Trump, international terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are among key issues of 2017, French geopolitical expert Lionel Vairon told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The first and most important issue is Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20 "with all the consequences this may have on the international order," Vairon said, who was a French diplomat in Southeast Asia and the Middle East for more than 10 years.

"Mr. Trump has expressed his willingness to change the lines of the international order in a brutal, radical way, though he is not yet president," the expert said.

The United States is still the world's foremost power, and its foreign and economic policies have an influence on all major issues of the planet.

The second topic for 2017 is the future of the Islamic State (IS). "The retreat of this terrorist organization will not only have influence on Europe, but also on Russia, with the return of Chechen jihadists," he said.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Vairon said: "Although the importance of this issue has diminished in recent years, there is a renewed interest in recent years with Mr. Trump's violent statement made against Mr. Obama and in favor of Mr. Netanyahu."

"Trump is radically changing the U.S. official position of neutrality, although I believe that the United States has never been neutral... Of course, the impact will not only affect Palestine, but the entire Arab world and its reaction to the United States," he said.

"This violent shift in favor of Israel and Israeli settlement will be a major issue of 2017," he said.

With regard to trade relations between the United States and China, solutions can always be found, but in strategic relations the situation is much more complicated and dangerous, Vairon said.

Asked about the phenomenon of "deglobalization," Vairon believes globalization is currently going through "the bottom of the wave." "I do not think that globalization, which is not a recent phenomenon, can disappear all the more because it is globalization that generates deglobalization."

According to him, "what is truly new is not deglobalization, it is that we are in the era of post-truth, which means that in today's Western democracies, we can elect populist leaders according to their speeches, and the day after the election, we can hear them acknowledge that they lied, but this is not important."

"We have it in the UK with the Brexit triumph, we saw the Brexit leader admitted a few days after the Brexit vote that he had lied, for example on the issue of UK contribution to the EU," Vairon said, adding that for Trump, this is also the case. "He said some things, and then he changed, and now he comes back."

"Citizens vote today for a leader because he is friendly, and because his populist discourse meets the primary expectations of voters, but this trend will produce a systemic crisis of democracy."

"We should not forget that the dictators have come to power in Europe through a democratic mechanism. People are already increasingly suspicious of the democratic system," he warned.
SHENZHEN, China, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The eighth seed Alison Riske of the United States set a meeting with Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Repubic in the final of the WTA Shenzhen Open here on Friday, after dispatching Camila Giorgi of Italy 6-3, 6-3.

Thus, Riske set her as the second player to reach the final at the tournament for two consecutive years. The first to achieve that was former Chinese No. 1 Li Na, who was crowned here in 2013 and 2014.

Asked whether the final experience last year will help her this year, Riske said: "I really hope so, I'm really happy to go into another final here. I feel so comfortable here, everyone is so nice and welcome me. I'm just happy to be here for the final."

"Obviously, I would love to win (the final), but I have to focus on myself, focus on my own game plan. Obviously I'm going to play a really strong competitor. She is playing really well so I'm just gonna do the best I can," said the 26-year-old.

The semifinal against Giorgi turned out to be an one-side match as Riske didn't encounter much resistance to claim the victory in one hour and 14 minutes.

The 39th-ranked American survived a rematch of last year final in the quarterfinal yesterday where she took a sweet revenge on top seed Agnieszka Radwanska 6-2, 3-6, 6-0.

The Shenzhen Open, inaugurated in 2013, offers the highest prize money of any International tier events on the calendar, totaling 750,000 US dollars.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the seventh plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Jan. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The anti-corruption battle must go deeper, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at an anti-graft meeting Friday, urging for efforts to govern the Communist Party of China (CPC) systematically, creatively and efficiently.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at the seventh plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
ABIDJAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A military mutiny erupted early Friday in Bouake city in central Cote d'Ivoire, with first shots heard at around 1:30 local time, state-owned news agency AIP reported.

The city's southern corridor was closed to traffic by mutineers, some of whom fired in the air with weapons.

There are no reports of human losses in the incident. Reasons for the revolt are not immediately available.

Bouake is located about 350km from Abidjan, the West African country's economic capital.
CHICAGO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Racial issues in the United States have once again been thrust into the international media spotlight this week, with a live Facebook video circulated online showing a group of young African-Americans brutally tortured a mentally disabled white man while shouting anti-white messages and insulting U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

The four people who the Chicago police said had participated in the assault were charged with hate crimes on Thursday.

The video of the beating lasts about 30 minutes and shows the victim, who the police said had "mental health challenges," cowered in a corner with his hands bound with orange cords and his mouth covered with tape.

In the live stream, the assailants cut the 18-year-old victim's scalp with a knife and yelled obscenities about Donald Trump and "white people" while kicking and hitting him. At one point, they made the victim drink from a toilet.

The beating that revealed bare racial tensions in the country has sparkled massive outrage and deep concerns on the country's painful racial split.

U.S. President Barack Obama described the Facebook Live attack as a "despicable sort" of hate crime while interviewed by a Chicago-area television station on Thursday.

The president said that while he did not believe U.S. race relations had worsened, public exposure to race crimes had grown in the digital age.

"What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time," he said.

In Chicago, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called the assault "sickening," adding that "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that."

Police said all four suspects have given statements admitting to their roles in the alleged attack. They are scheduled to appear in bond court Friday.

The victim, whom the police did not name, was hospitalized for undisclosed injuries.
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to offer rich opportunities and remarkable returns for foreign investors, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said Friday.

The world's second largest economy expects 10 trillion U.S. dollars worth of domestic demand in the next five years, as it maintains a 6.5 percent growth rate, Wang said at a news briefing.

More sectors, including those previously deemed sensitive, will be open to foreign investment, he said, saying a slew of soon-to-be-released pro-investment measures will be the latest boost to foreign investors' fortunes.

The measures, approved by the State Council on Dec. 28, 2016, aim to ensure equal treatment for foreign investors and ease restrictions, while opening accounting and auditing, architecture design and rating services to foreign investment for the first time.

Foreign investors are now even more well-positioned to cash in on China's steady economic growth and robust retail sales, the vice minister said.

Major overseas businesses have generated 1.5 trillion yuan (216.7 billion U.S. dollars) in profits in the first 11 months of 2016 on the Chinese mainland, he said, citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

That was a 10.8 percent year-on-year increase, he added, as he dismissed concerns of waning investment returns in China.

Data from the the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China showed more than two-thirds of EU companies' operations in China were profitable in 2016, and about half plan to expand investment in the country, Wang said.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China said 68 percent of its members plan to expand investment in China.

Fortune 500 companies including Volkswagen, BMW, Air Liquide and IKEA have increased investment in China, further testimony to the country's friendly investment environment, the vice minister said.

Foreign investment into China was estimated at 785 billion yuan in 2016, ranking the first among developing countries for 25 consecutive years.

The country remains one of the world's most attractive investment destinations despite the world economic slowdown, growing protectionism and strong investment headwinds globally.
NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A study supported previous doubts about a slowdown in global warming since 1998.

Resulting from the change of instrumentation and measurement practices, new data "represents the most accurate composite estimate of global sea surface temperature trends during the past two decades and thus supports the finding that previously reported rates of surface warming in recent years have been underestimated," said the study, published Wednesday on the Science Advances journal and done by a group of the U.S. university professors.

In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the global surface temperature "has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years (1998-2012) than over the past 30 to 60 years."

However, a research led by the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2015 showed that "the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century."

Echoing NOAA's research, the new study showed that "ship-based measurements tend to generate temperature readings around 0.12 degrees centigrade higher than those of buoys."

The professors involved pointed out that the mixing of buoy records with ship records led to the different estimates of sea surface temperature.
TOKYO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Japanese officials on Friday defended Japanese automakers' contribution in the United States in response to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's threat against Japanese top automaker's plan to build a new plant in Mexico.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," Trump said in a post on Twitter on Thursday.

Trump's threat came following President of Toyota Motor Corporation Akio Toyoda said here earlier Thursday that his company has no immediate plans to reconsider its envisaged production in Mexico.

In April 2015, the carmaker announced that it would spend 1 billion U.S. dollars to build a plant in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. With an annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles, the new plant is expected to start operating in 2019 and employ around 2,000 workers.

"Japanese automakers are making significant contributions in terms of jobs in the United States. It is important that their efforts and results are accepted widely," said Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko here on Friday.

Though it is an issue of a private company, the Japanese government is set to support it, said the minister.

Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Japanese government top spokesman, also defended Japanese automakers' contribution in the United States by saying that "Toyota has been aiming to be a good corporate citizen for the United States."

Toyota, in response to Trump's tweet, said it looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry with more than 21.9 billion dollars direct investment in the world's largest economy, 10 manufacturing facilities, 1,500 dealerships and 136,000 employees.
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A fund launched by China's state-owned enterprises (SOE) aims to invest 5 billion yuan (722 million U.S. dollars) this year in impoverished areas, according to a board meeting on Friday.

The poverty-relief fund, launched in October 2016, enlisted 51 SOEs to raise initial funding of about 12 billion yuan, which will increase to 100 billion by 2020.

The fund is run by the State Development and Investment Corporation (SDIC) as part of the country's plan to deploy market forces in the fight against poverty.

Since its debut, the fund has earmarked over 1.4 billion yuan for six projects, covering farm product sales, husbandry and forestry, Zhang Hua, chief accountant of SDIC said.

The second round of fundraising will be completed by April of this year, Zhang said, adding that all the money will be put into use to fund projects by 2018.

Developing local industry is a major priority in the battle against poverty, and China has supported the efforts of poor regions to develop local specialty industries based on their resources, such as the photovoltaic industry, tourism and e-commerce.

China plans to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020.
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Great uncertainties remain on whether the U.S.-Russia ties can sustain long-term stable development, even after Russia-friendly U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Analysts say it is possible the U.S.-Russia relationship will fall again under the spell of bell-shaped development since the end of the Cold War, as structural contradictions exist between the two countries due to total difference in their global strategies, national security and geopolitical interests.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States, with a strategy of contacting while containing Russia, has not fundamentally changed its policies of weakening and suppressing Russia.

In international affairs, Washington usually neglects Moscow's interests on issues concerning Russia's security and strategic interests; while Moscow opposes U.S. hegemonism and unilateralism, and hopes to set up a new global political order to safeguard Russia's national security and geopolitical interests.

SPELL OF BELL-SHAPED DEVELOPMENT

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S.-Russia relations have experienced bell-shaped development -- improving first and deteriorating later -- during the U.S. administrations of George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

During Obama's first tenure, ties between Moscow and Washington were relieved after the two countries signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in April 2010, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the United States in June 2010 and Russia joined the World Trade Organization in 2011.

However, bilateral ties were not able to break the spell and even plunged into the so-called "new Cold War."

Washington criticized Russia's parliamentary and presidential elections. It urges other Western countries to jointly isolate Russia, impose economic sanctions on Russia and suspend Russia from the Group of Eight following the Ukraine crisis and Crimea's incorporation into Russia.

NATO, RUSSIA'S IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

The relations between U.S.-led NATO and Russia have experienced ups and downs due to the irreconcilable structural differences between the two sides.

Russia hopes to prosper again, which is hardly accepted by many NATO members especially the United States and Central and Eastern European countries. Therefore, NATO, holding a strategy of containing Russia, has considered Russia as a strategic rival and has been suppressing it.

Besides, NATO wants to foster the basis for common strategic interests among its members through establishing and even consolidating the so-called "Russia threat."

NATO and Russia have differences on issues such as the U.S. and NATO's plan to increase military deployment in Central and Eastern Europe, the Ukraine crisis, NATO's eastward expansion and the bloc's European missile defense system.

The NATO-Russia ties, affected by the U.S.-Russia ties to a large extent, however, are more complicated. The United States has to consider its European allies' stances while Central and Eastern European and Baltic states have firmly called for the U.S. fulfillment of its commitment to its allies on security.

Observers say that after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, the U.S.-Russia ties will improve and the NATO-Russia ties will ameliorate as well.

However, as long as deep differences between NATO and Russia exist, NATO will not abandon its strategy of weakening Russia and encroaching on Russia's geopolitical strategic space, which will determine to what extent the United States and Russia can improve their ties.

DIFFICULTIES IN COOPERATING ON SYRIA ISSUE

Trump's policies on Syria he advocated in the presidential campaign, such as abandoning U.S. policy of overthrowing other countries' governments and fighting terrorists, have offered possibilities of U.S.-Russia cooperation on the issue.

However, there are uncertainties about whether the two countries can cooperate in the end and to what extent they can cooperate.

First, with the development of the Syria war, the influences of the United States and Russia on the Middle East have been in a waxing-and-waning state. Will Trump, who pledged to "make America great again," abandon the Middle East and concede it to Russia?

Second, even if Trump agrees to cooperate with Russia on the Syria issue, who will lead the cooperation is a question. It is not possible that Russian President Vladimir Putin will concede Moscow's leading role on the issue to Washington. But will Washington still cooperate with Moscow under Russia's leadership?

Besides, Trump will face issues such as whether he can change the negative impression Russia and the Syrian government have left on the U.S. public opinion, whether Gulf Arab countries that have deep contradictions with Russia on the Syria issue give up their appeal for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's resignation and stop supporting the Syrian opposition, and whether Gulf countries will pay for building a "safe zone" in Syria.

Furthermore, it is not easy for Trump to improve the U.S.-Russia ties as the U.S. policy on Russia has been decided by bipartisan political elites since the end of the Cold War and the pro-establishment camp including mainstream Republicans will contain Trump's pro-Russia tendency.
Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao (R) meets with Maldives Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao met with the Maldives Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim in Beijing Friday.

Li said that China regarded the Maldives as an important partner in building the 21st century maritime Silk Road.

Li called for boosting bilateral talks on a free trade agreement, and facilitating the joint project of China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, which connects Maldives' airport island to Male, the capital.

Li also called for closer tourism cooperation and cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Asim said the Maldives sticks to the one-China policy and hopes to cement cooperation with China within the Belt and Road Initiative.
MOSCOW, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Russia began a phaseout of its military presence in Syria on Friday, with the withdrawal of its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov from the Mediterranean, said Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

The military reduction came after Russia and Turkey brokered a nationwide truce in Syria last week between the Syrian government and major opposition groups in the latest attempt to end nearly six years of civil war in the Middle East country.

In accordance with a decision made by President Vladimir Putin, the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, along with other vessels, is set to leave the conflict zone later Friday for its home base in Russia, said Gerasimov.

The aircraft carrier group has completed assigned tasks in Syria in its first-ever combat mission, said Col. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, the group's task force commander.

The Russian Naval Aviation has destroyed more than 1,200 terrorist targets in 420 sorties over two months of operations in Syria, said Kartapolov.

Russian military support played a pivotal role in the latest Syrian government victories on the battleground, said Lt. Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, chief of the Syrian Army General Staff.

Russia and other potential mediators are expected to meet warring parties in Syria in Astana, Kazakhstan, later this month to seek settlement of the chronic crisis, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives and displaced nearly 11 million others.
A still image taken from a video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry on November 15, 2016, shows jets on a deck of Russian Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier near the coast of Syria. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

DAMASCUS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Chief of Staff Abdullah Ayoub visited the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov on Friday, state news agency SANA reported.

The visit was ordered by President Bashar al-Assad as the Russian carrier as part of a new Russian decision to scale down military presence in the country.

"The relations tying the Russian and Syrian armies are robust and based on friendship, cooperation, and the defense of humanitarian and ethical values," SANA quoted Ayoub as saying during his visit.

He also highlighted the support the Russian air force has rendered to the Syrian army in the war on terror, and stressed the need to continue military cooperation, even after "the victory on terrorism."

For his part, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, said "the major challenges in the war on terror rested with the Syrian people and the Syrian armed forces," noting that the recently established ceasefire in Syria constitutes "a pillar of a political solution to the crisis."

Earlier in the day, Gerasimov announced that Russia started to scale down its military deployment to Syria.

"In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces Vladimir Putin, the Russian defense ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria," Gerasimov said.

The recent reduction of military presence wasn't the first announced by Russia since its military intervention in the Syrian war in Sept. 2015.

In March 2016, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian troops were withdrawing from Syria, after achieving military goals.

Still, the latest reduction is believed to be part of a recent deal between Russia and Turkey, which has achieved a ceasefire across Syria and planned peace talks in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana in late January.
A still image taken from a video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry on November 15, 2016, shows jets on a deck of RussianAdmiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier near the coast of Syria. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

DAMASCUS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Chief of Staff Abdullah Ayoub visited the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov on Friday, state news agency SANA reported.

The visit was ordered by President Bashar al-Assad as the Russian carrier as part of a new Russian decision to scale down military presence in the country.

"The relations tying the Russian and Syrian armies are robust and based on friendship, cooperation, and the defense of humanitarian and ethical values," SANA quoted Ayoub as saying during his visit.

He also highlighted the support the Russian air force has rendered to the Syrian army in the war on terror, and stressed the need to continue military cooperation, even after "the victory on terrorism."

For his part, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, said "the major challenges in the war on terror rested with the Syrian people and the Syrian armed forces," noting that the recently established ceasefire in Syria constitutes "a pillar of a political solution to the crisis."

Earlier in the day, Gerasimov announced that Russia started to scale down its military deployment to Syria.

"In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces Vladimir Putin, the Russian defense ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria," Gerasimov said.

The recent reduction of military presence wasn't the first announced by Russia since its military intervention in the Syrian war in Sept. 2015.

In March 2016, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian troops were withdrawing from Syria, after achieving military goals.

Still, the latest reduction is believed to be part of a recent deal between Russia and Turkey, which has achieved a ceasefire across Syria and planned peace talks in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana in late January.
Palestinians take part in a protest against the Gaza blockade, near Israeli Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip January 5, 2017. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

GAZA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Everyday, the residents of Zeitoon neighborhood in the old city of Gaza can smell the hot bread and tasty traditional meals that come out from a primitive mud-made oven of the baker Na'eem Shurab.

"Here at my bakery, I have a primitive oven and I bake for my customers local traditional breads, all kinds of pastries, cooked meals with grilled chicken and rice cooked in pottery vessels mixed with vegetable, chicken and meat," the 38-year-old man told Xinhua.

Shurab started an apprenticeship as a baker when he was a boy. He said he not only bakes bread and food, but also roasts nuts such as peanuts and coffee beans.

The time-honored bakery, where the ceiling is made of tin and the walls built from mud, stones and wood, is considered as one of the most traditional and rare structures in Gaza.

"My father and grandfather had the same job and worked at this bakery that is more than 100 years," Shurab said.

Ramzi Abu Amrah, one of Shurab's old customers, just called to order a huge meal including rice and spicy beef meat from the bakery.

"It was a great idea to order the meal from Shurab bakery, because the food is healthy, well-done and tasty," Abu Amrah told Xinhua. "I'm so proud that I ordered the meal from him because I felt like I'm reviving history and remembering how our ancestors were cooking their food."

Other customers who visit Shurab's bakery agreed that food cooked at his stove "is really healthy and has a special taste that is completely different from the taste of food from electric stoves or stoves operated by gas or fuel."

Shurab says he receives dozens of phone calls from families who wanted to try his food, adding that "many of my customers are from the neighborhood and many others who come from all over Gaza."

He also said that his bakery once saw a downturn in the last few years, which forced him to bake only large family meals. However, "due to the hard living daily situation with the severe shortage of electricity and gas, my bakery has flourished and now I decided to provide services to individuals too."

Israel has been imposing a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip of nearly 2 million people for 10 years since Islamic Hamas movement violently seized control of the coastal enclave in the summer of 2007.

Due to the blockade, the enclave has been sinking into a series of crises such as the severe shortage of electricity and fuels.

"The popular bakery is an important choice for every family in Gaza amid the severe shortage of power because we only receive electricity at most six hours a day," said Om Hazem, a 38-year-old mother of five children.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- China and Kyrgyzstan on Friday vowed to deepen security cooperation and jointly fight terrorist forces such as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement.

The pledge came out of a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev in Beijing.

During the meeting, the two leaders agreed to jointly combat the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Kyrgyzstan, said Xi, saying bilateral ties have reached an unprecedented height.

Xi attributed the achievements in bilateral ties to the adherence to the principle of good-neighborliness, mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation by the two sides.

The two countries have demonstrated mutual support on issues regarding each other's core interests and concerns and maintained close communication and coordination on major international and regional affairs, said Xi.

He said China and Kyrgyzstan have become true good friends, neighbors and partners.

China is willing to work with Kyrgyzstan for new highlights in cooperation and to push forward the bilateral strategic partnership, he said.

Xi spoke highly of the achievements by the two nations in the Belt and Road Initiative, calling on the two sides to speed up construction of major infrastructure projects, enhance cooperation in production capacity, promote cooperation among small and medium-sized enterprises and dovetail the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union.

China is ready to deepen coordination with Kyrgyzstan within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), he said.

Atambayev said China is an important strategic partner of Kyrgyzstan and has provided huge support for the country's prosperity and stability.

Kyrgyzstan is willing to enhance cooperation with China in the areas of infrastructure, agriculture and the Belt and Road construction, he said.

He said Kyrgyzstan firmly supports China's efforts in safeguarding its core interests and will continue to stick to the one-China policy.
SHANGHAI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai Disney Resort announced Friday it will launch a talent training program in Chinese universities and colleges in 2017.

The Shanghai Disney Resort Talent Training Program aims to help develop talent and attract passionate young people to work at Shanghai Disney Resort after graduation. It also aims to elevate tourism education and service standards by teaching Disney's best practices and setting up internships with partner schools.

"We are committed to partnering with local authorities and educational institutions to support the further development of Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta's service industry through talent education and cultivation, leveraging the best Disney practices and resources from around the world," said Philippe Gas, general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort.

The first group of schools to sign the cooperation agreement with Shanghai Disney Resort include Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai Sanda University, Shanghai Jianqiao University, Zhengzhou Tourism College, Tourism College of Zhejiang and Rizhao Polytechnic.

"Shanghai Polytechnic University has collaborated with Shanghai Disney Resort since 2014. I believe by working with Disney, we can help enhance our vocational education and benefit the entire local tourism industry," said Yu Tao, president of Shanghai Polytechnic University.

Gas said the resort has hired over 10,000 performers from Shanghai and across China.

"The resort has already generated thousands of direct and indirect jobs for tourism and cultural industry professionals, and this trend will continue as the resort continues to grow and expand," Gas said.
A person holds a poster to protest against the rise in fuel prices in a gas station in Mexico City, Mexico, Jan. 2, 2017. (Xinhua)

by Xinhua writer Xia Lin

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Mexico faces daunting challenges at home and abroad in the new year, as the government's effort to trim gasoline policy encounters widespread protests, and the relationship with the upcoming new U.S. administration is full of uncertainties.

Protests have occurred in 11 states of Mexico, with 34 major roads or highways blocked, since the government-initiated gasoline deregulation measure took effect on New Year's day and has triggered a 20-percent price hike ever since, an official source said Thursday.

Media reports said at least 250 stores across seven states have been sacked, as gas prices continue rising.

The National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores of Mexico also confirmed Wednesday that 79 stores were looted and 170 closed or blockaded merely in central Mexico.

"It is not the right way to express themselves. There are other ways aside from looting and road blocking. I think we need political actions," Sergio Ampudia, a lawyer in Mexico City, told Xinhua.

The New Year started in Mexico with uneasiness, although President Enrique Pena Nieto defended his policy on Wednesday, saying: "(Gasoline deregulation) is a responsible and consistent measure, as I have defined it as a priority of my government to preserve the economic stability of our country."

The hike is part of a gradual, year-long price liberalization the Nieto administration has promised to implement this year, in reaction to the decrease of domestic supply and an expected rise of imports.

Meanwhile, Mexico is mulling how to deal with unexpected policy changes of a new U.S. government.

Former Mexican Economy Minister Luis Videgaray Caso (R) is sworn in as foreign minister by President Enrique Pena Nieto at the presidential residence of Los Pinos in Mexico City, capital of Mexico, on Jan. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Str)

According to reports, the second largest U.S. auto maker Ford on Tuesday scuttled its 1.6-billion-U.S.-dollar investment in Mexico and kept it at homeland instead, under consistent browbeat of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

This means a loss of 3,600 jobs for Mexico and a further devaluation of its currency peso.

"It is serious. It is difficult, very difficult... The gas price increase and the cancellation of investment affect all our pockets and the whole economy. It has multiple effects," Mario Ramirez, a retiree in Mexico City, told Xinhua.

Besides taming Ford, Trump also aims for the General Motors and even threatened Toyota on Thursday to "build plants in the U.S. or pay big border tax," over a concern that the companies' vehicles manufactured in Mexico were exported to the U.S. market.

Throes began to set in, even two weeks before Trump is sworn in as the president of Mexico's immediate neighbor and traditional foremost benefactor. His prepared plan to build a wall along the border to stem immigrants and renegotiate or even withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which used to absorb 80 percent of Mexico's annual exports, will make matters worse.

"It will be very difficult. Finally, Trump is already giving the signals of what is going to happen. More people will go unemployed. Mexico will see more unemployment, as many more are returning (from the United States)," Fred Fernandez, a financier in Mexico City, told Xinhua.

At its historical low of popularity, Nieto's government has wasted no time to react, calling back former Finance Minister Luis Videgaray to serve as foreign minister.

Videgaray resigned in September for masterminding Trump's pre-election visit to Mexico in August, but now returns in triumph with the responsibility to negotiate with the United States on immigration, security and trade issues.

"Before the change of government in the U.S. on Jan. 20, the installation of Videgaray is to accelerate the dialogue and contacts, so that from the first day of the new (U.S.) administration, the bases can be established for a working constructive relationship," Nieto told reporters while swearing in Videgaray on Wednesday.

Over the string of hard nuts the government has to crack at the beginning of 2017, Mexico's daily newspaper El Universal said in its editorial: "Mexico loses thousands of jobs with no word on a clear strategy for confronting the next U.S. government which has presented itself as protectionist and, especially, anti-Mexican."

Now, with Videgaray back in the saddle, such a clear strategy can be shaped, but it remains to be unknown whether and when that can happen.

According to media reports, Videgaray, an economist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), enjoys friendship with family members of Trump, who once praised the close confidant of Nieto as "a brilliant finance minister."

"Videgaray would be the closest man or could open certain channels of communication (with the United States). Then, it seems to me it is a bad choice, but nevertheless necessary," said lawyer Sergio Ampudia.
Refugees land at Lesbos island, close to Eftalou, Greece, after crossing the Aegean Sea, Nov. 8, 2015. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

GENEVA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A record of over 5,079 migrants and refugees have died while crossing the Mediterranean Sea last year, up from 3,771 fatalities in 2015, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Friday.

By far the deadliest route for migrants last year, the central Mediterranean passage linking North Africa with Italy claimed the lives of 4,576 people.

A further 503 individuals drowned on the eastern and western Mediterranean routes.

The organization warned however that it believes that many deaths at sea have gone unreported, especially between North Africa and Spain where data collection has been sporadic.

Smaller boats, which pass undetected by authorities, are thought to have been lost on this passage.

While 2016 has been a particularly deadly year for migrants seeking to reach Europe, it was also a year which saw far fewer people reach European shores.

According to preliminary totals for 2016, some 363,348 migrants and refugees reached Europe, down from over one million of two years ago.

Most of last year's arrivals landed in Italy (181,436 arrivals) and Greece (173,561). A further 8,162 and 189 arrived in Spain and Cyprus respectively.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the seventh plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Jan. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The anti-corruption battle must go deeper, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday, calling for strict governance of the Communist Party of China (CPC) systematically, creatively and effectively.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at the seventh plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), which opened Friday.

The guidelines established at the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee should be implemented in a comprehensive manner, Xi said, adding that new practices must be guided with renewed understanding.

The values of Communists must be upheld, and ideals and belief should be firmed with cultural confidence, Xi said, stressing the need to maintain the seriousness of political life in the Party and strengthen intra-Party supervision.

The president said efforts should be made to address both symptoms and root causes of corruption, comprehensively strengthen discipline and to constantly improve work styles.

The meeting was chaired by top graft buster Wang Qishan and attended by leaders including Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli.

ANTI-GRAFT ACHIEVEMENTS IN 2016

"Managing and running the Party is not only linked to the fate of the Party itself, but is also related to the future and fate of the nation," Xi stressed, adding that the Party should address this issue with greater resolution, efforts and courage.

"Only by managing the Party soundly can we successfully lead the people in handling major challenges, hedge against major risks, overcome major obstacles and solve major contradictions, achieving one victory after another," Xi said.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, "comprehensively and strictly governing the Party" has been included in the strategic blueprint, and efforts have been made to manage the Party stringently and carefully, according to Xi.

Nothing is off-limits in the anti-corruption efforts, and zero tolerance has been shown toward corruption, Xi said, underscoring that the spread of corruption has been curbed and corruption cases that directly impact people's direct interests have been dealt with.

Thanks to the concerted efforts of the entire Party, the Party's discipline has been strengthened, Xi said, adding that "the spread of corruption has been effectively contained and the battle against corruption has gained crushing momentum."

"The objective of ensuring officials do not dare to be corrupt has been basically achieved," Xi said, concluding that a new atmosphere is emerging in the political life within the Party.

ARDUOUS TASKS AHEAD

Strict and comprehensive governance of the Party, despite achieving remarkable progress since the 18th CPC National Congress, remains an arduous task, Xi stressed.

Implementing frugality rules is a "tenacious" and "protracted" battle, Xi said, calling for unwavering resolution.

The battle against corruption will not relax one bit, and the "zero tolerance" principle will not change, Xi said, calling for "resolutely winning the battle of justice against corruption".

Xi called for advancing reforms to the state supervisory system, and urged discipline inspection commissions at all levels to strengthen self-supervision and accept intra-Party and social supervision to build a reliable team of cadres.

Xi also called for treating both root causes and symptoms in advancing strict and comprehensive Party governance.

Xi stressed adhering to the values of Communists and improving one's political conscientiousness.

Party members are confronted with "choices between public and private interests, righteousness and self-interest, virtue and vice, hardship and indulgence," Xi said, adding that it is political conscientiousness that determines their choices.

Unshakable ideals and beliefs stem from cultural confidence, Xi noted, adding they must be grown and nourished in traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture, and socialist advanced culture.

Xi also ordered Party members and cadres to stay away from vulgarity. Rather than catering to vulgar taste, they should elevate themselves spiritually to be people of integrity, prudence, and rectitude.

Xi said senior officials of the CPC should take the lead in practicing strict intra-Party political life, always act with a correct political direction and stick to the Party's political stance and principles.

Xi urged Party officials to conform with the CPC Central Committee both in thoughts and actions, as well as to implement the CPC Central Committee's major policies without reservations.

Xi also underscored the importance of persistence in strengthening intra-Party supervision, urging Party organizations at various levels to be bold and serious in Party supervision and "cracking hard nuts."

Xi asked officials to be candid, frank and sincere.

Wang said studying Xi's remarks is "an important political task for the entire Party," asking authorities to maintain a sound intra-Party political environment and prepare for the 19th CPC National Congress to be held this year.

Related:

Commentary: Strict discipline provides cohesion for CPC governance

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- "China actively advanced strict governance of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and resolutely cracked down on high-ranking and low-level corruption," President Xi Jinping said in his New Year greetings, setting the tone for perfecting CPC governance in the new era.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, strict discipline and regulation has been a characteristic of Party management. Full story

Xi calls retired officials an important resource for CPC's governance

BEIJING, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has noted that retired officials are an important resource for the Communist Party of China (CPC) to govern the country and lead China's development.
Choi Soon-Sil (front), the jailed confidante of impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye, arrives for her first court hearing in Seoul, South Korea, on Dec. 19, 2016. (Xinhua/POOL)

COPENHAGEN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Prosecutor General Office of Denmark has received the official request from South Korean authorities for extradition of imprisoned Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of Choi Soon-sil, a longtime confidante of South Korea's impeached president Park Geun-hye, local authorities said on Friday.

The processing of the extradition case of Chung, who was arrested on Sunday in northern Denmark, can start now, according to a statement released by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director from the office, said the extradition of Chung, 20, depends on whether all conditions required by the Danish law are met.

Ahsan said the request contains quite a lot of pages, which need to be studied thoroughly before a decision is made.

He added that the whole processing might take a few weeks. "But exactly how long the procedure takes depends, among other things, the legal complexity of the request for extradition traveling."

The Court of Aalborg on Monday decided to remand Chung in custody for four weeks up to Jan. 30. Ahsan said if the prosecutor general does not make a decision before then, it will ask the court to extend the remand further.

Chung's mother Choi is charged with using her friendship with President Park Geun-hye to extort funds from large businesses and meddling in state affairs though she has no government position and security clearance. Chung is alleged to have received illegal favors when entering a prestigious university.
DAMASCUS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A cease-fire has been reached in the water-rich town of Wadi Barada northwest of the capital Damascus on Friday, a military source said.

The cease-fire in Wadi Barada, or Barada Vally, the main water source for the capital, is temporary as it will last only for hours, but it includes all of the armed factions in that area, said the source on condition of anonymity.

Wadi Barada contains the Ain al-Fijah springs, the main water source for Damascus' over five million inhabitants.

The area wasn't part of the a Turkish-Russian sponsored cease-fire that went into force last Friday, as the area is largely controlled by the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, which is designated as a terrorist group, and thus excluded from any settlement in Syria.

However, the Nusra fighters there have cut off the water from Damascus since Dec. 22, causing a massive water outage in Damascus, amid recent reports that water poisoning cases started to surface as people have resorted to unclean water.

The government forces unleashed a major offensive for the recapture of Wadi Barada in order to strip the rebels from the "water weapon" and fix the equipment of Ain al-Fijah, which has sustained considerable damage during the recent showdown.

Meanwhile, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said that a Russian delegation entered Wadi Barada to arrange for a settlement to the crisis there.

The report also said that the Syrian army controlled a high hilltop overlooking several villages in the Wadi Barada ahead of the cease-fire declaration.
BRUSSELS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A total of 15,478 asylum seekers were granted protection status in Belgium in 2016, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS)'s 2016 annual report revealed Friday.

The CGRS granted protection to 57.7 of all applicants. A total of 12,197, or 45.8 percent, were granted refugee status, and 3,281, or 11.9 percent, were granted subsidiary protection status.

Over 22,000 decisions were taken by the CGRS in 2016, a 30-percent increase compared to 2015, and the first time in the history of the independent federal administration that so many decisions were made.

The main asylum seekers who were granted refugee status came from Syria (5,436), Iraq (2,742) and Somalia (769). Those benefiting from subsidiary protection status mainly came from Syria (1,615), Afghanistan (830) and Iraq (556).

The Foreign Office registered 44,760 applications in 2015, more than twice the number of applications registered in 2016 (18,170). Because of the caseload backlog, the high protection rate registered in 2016 was a direct consequence of the migration crisis in 2015. Furthermore, it was decided in 2016 that applicants coming from war-torn Syria would have priority, ensuring a higher protection rate.

However, it is unlikely there will be such a high protection rate in 2017. The number of asylum applications in Belgium dropped dramatically in 2016, mostly due to political choices made at the highest levels, such as the lockdown of the migration route connecting Turkey and Greece.

The report stated the CGRS had been much more efficient than last year in processing of refugee application cases. In the beginning of 2016, the number of asylum cases the CGRS had not made a decision on amounted to 11,000. By April, it had grown to 18,000, but fell to 14,000 by the end of the year.

The report attributed the improvement in efficiency to "an increase in staff, the implementation of internal measures targeting a better efficiency and a strong commitment of all CGRS' staff."

According to the independent federal administration, a normal caseload should be around 5,000 unprocessed cases. The CGRS now aims to effectively reduce its backlog by 10,000 cases by the end of 2017.
The European Union flags flutter in front of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 12, 2012. (Xinhua/Wu Wei)

VALLETTA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- On Jan. 1, Malta took over the six-month rotating European Union (EU) presidency for the first time, with analysts warning the country would face enormous challenges during its tenure.

Leading up to the presidency, the Maltese government identified six priorities for the presidency: migration, the single market, security, social inclusion, Europe's neighbourhood, and maritime. However, analysts pointed out that the issues affecting the EU were not restricted to these concerns.

In June 2016, Brexit sparked a global outcry and there is still much uncertainty surrounding how Britain will leave the EU. Meanwhile, in December, the Italian constitutional referendum led to the resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Furthermore, Donald Trump, a staunch critic of European defense spending, climate change, and free trade, has won the presidency of the United States, which could be problematic for EU officials when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Mark Harwood, director of the Institute for European Studies at the University of Malta, said Brexit negotiations had not yet been resolved domestically, adding to the EU's uncertainty. At the same time, due to right-wing political parties gaining ground in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, elections in 2017 could become a major concern.

As a former British colony, Malta, and Britain have long enjoyed close relations. The biggest challenge for Malta in the coming months will be to ensure good communication between EU member states and Britain after the start of the Brexit negotiations, Maltese European Parliament member Alfred Sant said.

Roderick Pace, who also works at the University of Malta institute, agreed that Brexit, as well as elections in key EU member states which may change their political direction, were both uncertainties facing the EU. "It will be important for Malta to strive to facilitate agreement towards resolving these challenges, which are of a longer duration than a single presidency."

Issues involving refugees and illegal migration will also be an important focus of Malta's presidency. According to United Nations statistics, in 2016, a record number of around 5,000 illegal immigrants died in the Mediterranean Sea. Referring to Malta in early December last year, European Parliament President Martin Schulz stated that, because of its location on the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta had experience in dealing with refugees and could help the EU reach solutions to the migration crisis.

Malta has proposed to strengthen and simplify the Common European Asylum System and to distribute the immigration load between its member states more fairly, in an attempt to revise the Dublin Regulations, which states that the country asylum seekers first set foot in is responsible for them. The Council of the EU has set a deadline for June to revise the Dublin Regulations, but Malta's home affairs minister Carmelo Abela has said this would be difficult. Malta wants to push for a holistic approach to migration, and is therefore working to complete work in relation to the European External Investment Plan to promote sustainable investment in Africa to tackle the root causes of migration.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told the media that the central Mediterranean would be the focus of security and refugee crisis discussions at a Malta summit to be held in February. At the same time, Malta hopes the EU can play a role in the stabilization of Libya and ensure a democratic transition in Tunisia. The Maltese presidency will also support EU and international efforts to resume the Middle East Peace Process between Israel and Palestine.

In addition, the specter of terrorism has lingered on the continent over the past year and Malta is hoping for significant progress on initiatives to combat terrorism and strengthen the outer borders of Europe. These measures include interoperability solutions for databases used by national law and border management authorities; continuing the fight to end terrorist financing; establishing a system for registering third countries' citizens at EU borders, as well as the creation of an EU travel information and authorisation system to determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third country nationals traveling to the Schengen Area.

At the same time, Malta will also work to promote maritime security, with top priority given to reviewing maritime security strategies and migration flows. It is understood that Malta will make a proposal on an international framework for ocean governance.

Despite the currently good economic situation in Malta, the economic slump is affecting the EU as a whole and impinges on public confidence. In response, growth and employment remains an overarching priority for the EU as a whole and the proposal is to develop a digital single market and cancel mobile phone roaming fees throughout Europe, and to strive to achieve free coverage agreements for wifi networks in public places. Other projects involve the improvement of the internal energy market and strengthening the security of energy supply for all EU citizens. Furthermore, Malta also identified the importance of the elimination of trade barriers and the protection of consumers.

As a small EU country, Malta took over the rotating presidency while up against "inherent deficiencies" in resources and experience, Pace said. "But its smallness gives it a certain strength, in the sense of trustworthiness rooted in the fact that it has no wider agenda based on self-interest which could seriously affect the interests -- whatever they may be -- of the other member states," he added.

In this regard, Muscat said in his 2017 New Year speech that Malta must "rise to the occasion" to ensure that it does its utmost to help the EU overcome the severe challenges it is confronted with.

Despite these challenges and its size, Malta seems to be eager to leave its mark during this presidency, Pace said, believing Malta would fulfil the duties of the presidency, if for no other reason than because of its determination to succeed.

Harwood said, "Malta is facing a unique set of circumstances and any results over the next six months would be a good outcome at such a complicated time."
Image provided by Roraima em Tempo newspaper shows the relatives of prisoners reacting outside the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil, on Jan. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Fabio Calilo/Roraima em Tempo)

BRASILIA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A Brazilian prison riot, the second riot within a week, has left at least 33 prisoners dead, a justice said on Friday.

The riot broke out Friday morning at the Monte Cristo penitentiary in the northern state of Roraima, when inmates from one drugs gang broke the locks on their cells and invaded a wing housing prisoners from a rival gang, Roraima's Secretary of Justice Uziel Castro said.

This happened five days after another riot in Manaus, the capital of the neighboring state of Amazonas, left 56 dead as members from the local group, Familia do Norte, executed many prisoners from the rival Primer Comando da Capital (PCC)

Riot police had entered the prison and taken control of the situation, Castro said.

"There are many decapitated bodies, many limbs," he said, adding that at least 30 of the 33 dead had their heads hacked off, with some even having their hearts exposed.

The daily newspaper O Globo reported that the prison was designed to house 700 inmates but contained 1,475. Furthermore, early reports said the attack was led by the PCC against the Familia do Norte, although any links to Sunday's riot were unconfirmed.

Castro was quoted by O Globo as saying that such a link could be ruled out, since the Monte Cristo penitentiary allegedly only contained members of PCC and other prisoners unrelated to criminal gangs.

"There is no reason to think it was revenge or retaliation for what happened in Manaus. There is a rivality between them, but there is no revenge to be taken as long as there were no members of other criminal groups in this prison," said Castro.
Travelers and airport workers are evacuated out of the terminal after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A shooting has killed five people and injured eight inside the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport in the U.S. state of Florida Friday, local police said.

"5 ppl dead; 8 injured were taken to an area hospital," Broward County Sheriff's office said on its twitter account.

It has tweeted earlier that one suspect had been taken into custody.

Multiple news outlets have reported that the suspect had been identified as Esteban Santiago, a New Jersey man with a military ID.

CNN cited Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief as saying that there's no evidence that the suspect had accomplices and local authorities are looking into the motive of the attack.

"Communications received a call around 12:55 pm about shots fired at 100 Terminal Drive at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport," Broward County Police said.

Photos and videos taken at the site suggested that the incident took place at the baggage claim section of a terminal.
File photo taken on September 5, 2016 shows Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, China. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. intelligence released a report on Friday, making public its assessment of alleged Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election last year.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," the report said, adding that Moscow's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.

"We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," it said. "We have high confidence in these judgments."

The report said Moscow's action was part of its "longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order" , and demonstrated a "significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort."

The report is the declassified version of a comprehensive intelligence report that U.S. President Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to conduct on Dec. 9, 2016.

Trump has repeatedly refused to accept the findings that Russia has intervened in the 2016 presidential election. He quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week to voice new doubt about the hacking claim made by U.S. intelligence agencies. The Russian government has also denied the accusations.

On Friday, Trump met with chiefs of intelligence agencies in New York to be briefed on alleged Russia cyber attacks against the United States.

Following the meeting, Trump said the alleged hacking activities had no impact on the election results and he didn't directly acknowledge Moscow's responsibility.

However, Trump added that he had a "constructive meeting" with the top intelligence officials, and he had "tremendous respect" for the work of the intelligence community.

The President-elect also said he will appoint a team within 90 days to figure out ways to stop foreign hacking.

"Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks," he said.

Related:

U.S. intelligence leaders agree on Russian intervention in election to help Trump

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Major U.S. intelligence leaders have expressed support for an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election partly to help Donald Trump win the White House, local media reported Friday. Full story

Obama says Clinton not treated fairly by media during election

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was not treated fairly by the media surrounding the Russian hacking incident. Full story

Obama vows to take action on alleged Russian hacking

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to take actions against Russia for its alleged cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election. Full story

White House, Trump team clash over alleged Russian hacking
File photo taken on September 5, 2016 shows Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, China. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. intelligence released a report on Friday, making public its assessment of alleged Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election last year.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," the report said, adding that Moscow's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.

"We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," it said. "We have high confidence in these judgments."

The report said Moscow's action was part of its "longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order" , and demonstrated a "significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort."

The report is the declassified version of a comprehensive intelligence report that U.S. President Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to conduct on Dec. 9, 2016.

Trump has repeatedly refused to accept the findings that Russia has intervened in the 2016 presidential election. He quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week to voice new doubt about the hacking claim made by U.S. intelligence agencies. The Russian government has also denied the accusations.

On Friday, Trump met with chiefs of intelligence agencies in New York to be briefed on alleged Russia cyber attacks against the United States.

Following the meeting, Trump said the alleged hacking activities had no impact on the election results and he didn't directly acknowledge Moscow's responsibility.

However, Trump added that he had a "constructive meeting" with the top intelligence officials, and he had "tremendous respect" for the work of the intelligence community.

The President-elect also said he will appoint a team within 90 days to figure out ways to stop foreign hacking.

"Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks," he said.
Ambulances arrive at the scene of a car bomb explosion in Izmir, Turkey, on Jan. 5, 2017. An explosion in Turkey's western city of Izmir wounded 11 people on Thursday, and two "terrorists" were killed by security forces after the blast, according to media reports. (Xinhua)
Ex-journalist interviewed by police

DCP Philip is probing an allegation that the former AG contacted Head of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) David West and allegedly asked him to withdraw as a witness, in a matter involving then Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley.

Ramlogan has strenuously denied the allegation. Newsday understands that the probe is nearing completion. Yesterday, Gumbs-Sandiford went to the Police Administration Building in Port-of-Spain at around 10 am and was taken to an office where she was interviewed by DCP Philip and others.

Gumbs-Sandiford who broke the story, in another newspaper, about an alleged phone call made to PCA Director West is reported to have provided to DCP Phillip, recordings of a telephone conversation she had with persons involved in the allegations as well as a top PNM official, before she broke the story.

The recorded telephone conversations were played yesterday for DCP Phillip who took note of statements in the recordings.

According to well placed sources, a file will be soon be submitted to Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC for his consideration on how police should proceed in the matter.

On January 29, 2015 Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams announced that he had ordered a police probe into an allegation of an attempt to pervert the course of justice made against then Attorney General Anand Ramlogan by Director of the Police Complaints Authority David West.
Giving alcohol to children not an offence

She submitted that the evidence of the two young sisters, one of whom is still a primary school student, was manifestly unreliable in respect of indecent assault charges also laid on her client. Surajbally was arrested and charged with kidnapping the sisters, indecently assaulting them and giving them alcohol. The alcohol charges were laid under the Childrens Act. The victims, aged 14 and nine at the time, were allegedly found in a van in Barrackpore.

The children and their mother were called by State prosecutor Sarah de Silva to testify against Surujbally.

The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is pursuing the Preliminary Inquiry via paper committal in a hybrid form, in which some witnesses statements were sworn and filed for the defence, and other witnesses were called to give direct evidence, from the witness box.

Elder submitted to the court that Section 36 of the Childrens Act states it is an offence if a person gives or causes to be given to a child, a dangerous drug or a substance having an effect similar to that of a dangerous drug, except upon the order of a medical practitioner.

However, she added, there is no offence known to law that anyone could commit punishable as a crime, as giving alcohol to a child.

She asked the magistrate to uphold her no-case submission in respect of the giving alcohol charge preferred against her client. Elder further submitted that the evidence of the children were manifestly unreliable and on this basis, even if properly directed by a judge in the High Court, it would be dangerous for Surujbally to stand trial before a jury. Elder also tendered written legal submissions to Magistrate Rambachan. On January 16, State Attorney de Silva would reply to Elders submissions.
Woman shot by police

The 22-year-old woman is listed in stable condition at the San Fernando General Hospital. Investigators said that the officer and the woman are friends and, at the time of the incident, she had paid a visit to him.

According to a police report, at about 7 am the woman arrived at the the Usine Ste Madeleine Sugar Factory which is located opposite the Police Station.

Sources say the two were seen conversing shortly before an explosion was heard.

Reports said that the woman attempted to reach for the police officers holster and the officer grabbed his pistol.

Police said the firearm may have accidentally discharged and the woman was shot in her right leg. She was rushed to the hospital where she remains in stable condition.

Investigations are continuing.
Sole breadwinner murdered, blind mother left behind

The family of Winston Edwards, 29, was previously tight-lipped and unwilling to give any information about Edwards to the media.

Yesterday, however, one distraught family member shared with Newsday her concern for Edwards mother who lost her sight after undergoing surgery to remove a tumour in her brain about five years ago.

Edwards was one of three killed including Michael Brown, 26, and Elton Amorer, 35.

Police reported that at about 12.30am, an unknown number of gunmen ambushed the 30-person strong birthday party for Daniel Spencer.

He was her only son, said the relative who was adamant about not giving her name or the names of any family members to the Newsday. His father has children outside but he was his mothers only son and he used to really take care of her. He would take her to the grocery, to church, anywhere.

He was the one used to carry her to the hospital any time she needed a check-up. The relative said that Edwards worked construction. He has also left behind two children. That whole thing was a big mistake, said the relative.

He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now that Edwards has died, his grandmother will, once again, have to care for her daughter, but she doesnt know how she would manage. I am 79 years old, said the grandmother who also chose to not give her name. I am an old woman. Winston used to take care of me and my daughter.

Now I have to become a mother again and care for her since he is gone. The families of Brown and Amorer, who were also thrown into chaos by their deaths, were rushing about yesterday to prepare funeral services.

Spencer, who was also shot in the arm and abdomen, remains in serious but stable condition at the San Fernando General Hospital along with Ronald Earl, 31, who is said to be resting comfortably on the ward.

Melikah Davis, 20, who suffered minor flesh wounds in the attack was discharged yesterday.

Yesterday, the field that stood as a background to the early morning shooting adopted an eerie quality as residents, still shaken by the memory of the sounds of gunfire, remained inside their houses. Some residents called upon the government to fix the street lights on Commonwealth Drive as only two, they said, were working. The lack of light only adds to the fear they have of walking the streets at night.
Sangre Grande Council gets down to work

The councillors walked out on December 15 after objecting to the procedure adopted which led to the re-election of Martin Terry Rondon as chairman of the Corporation.

Following the election, the Peoples National Movement (PNM) and UNC each won four electoral districts in the Council.

And although the PNM claimed victory in the Corporation on the basis of Rondons incumbency and the party winning the popular vote in Sangre Grande, the UNC councillors objected the proposal to have him return as chairman.

The UNC subsequently threatened legal action.

But yesterday, the members of both parties appeared to have made amends, even though a closed-door audience between Rondon and two UNC councillors - Nirmal Singh and Anil Juteram - delayed the start of yesterdays meeting.

Rondon, in an allusion to the recent controversy, later pledged to work with all of the Corporations councillors and aldermen.

I wish to assure you that under my stewardship, there will be fairness, he declared in opening remarks. Good for one. Good for all. I dont want anyone to feel that because you are in Opposition, you will not get treated fairly. Rondon, who has represented the Toco/Fishing Pond electoral district for the past 23 years, said the Corporations first priority during this term, will be to conduct a clean-up exercise throughout the region.

The exercise will be carried out from January 14 to April 29. We all have to come on board, Rondon said, urging councillors to mobilise the schools and other institutions in their electoral district.

Rondon said the problem of littering, particularly along the north-east coast beaches, needed to be addressed.

We need litter wardens to come on board to change peoples attitudes.

We have to get serious.

During the meeting, Rondon also addressed a range of procedural matters in the Corporation, including dress code, attendance, punctuality and cross-talk during meetings.

He said councillors and aldermen should strive to make the corporation a model one.
Govt: All Opposition concerns addressed

The Finance Ministry began its statement by reminding the public that the bill complies with the Model One reciprocal agreement which was approved by the former Kamla Persad- Bissessar administration in May and October 2013. Cabinet minutes from that time period showed the former regime agreed that TT adopt this agreement option of the inter-governmental agreement (IGA) with the US which enables compliance with the requirements of FATCA.

Those Cabinet minutes also showed the former regime agreed that the Finance Minister enter into the Model One agreement with the US. The ministry then outlined all of the amendments made by Government to the bill, in the absence of the Opposition on December 12, 2016, and the reasons for them. The Oppositions amendment that the competent authority which the US Treasury interacts with be the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) has been dealt with in the amendment to Clause Four of the bill.

The Government removed the provision for the declaration of tax information exchange agreements by Order under the Act, with the deletion of Clause Five. The Opposition proposed an amendment be made to this clause for the order to be made the Finance Minister, to be subject to the affirmative resolution of Parliament.

The ministry explained this was unnecessary because the deletion of the clause means, agreements will not be declared by Order under the Act. The ministry said the amendment to Clause Eight of the bill provides for the disclosure of information for the purpose of the 1989 tax information exchange agreement, despite the secrecy provision of the Income Tax Act and some provisions of the Data Protection Act.

A similar provision is made in Part Three for the purpose of the 2016 IGA, which Finance Minister Colm Imbert signed on August 19, 2016.

The amendment to Clause 18 of the bill allows the BIR to enter into an agreement with the competent authority in the US with respect to procedural matters.

The Opposition suggested the memorandum of understanding (MOU) be subject to the affirmative resolution of Parliament prior to execution.
Kamla: No hope for TT with Rowley

The Government went into retreat and, in effect, the Government has retreated from governance of Trinidad and Tobago.

We see very little hope for 2017 to be the bright year that it should be as long as the Rowley Government is in power, Persad-Bissessar said during a news conference on Wednesday at the Office of the Opposition, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain.

She said the Government has collapsed and Rowley has shown he has no confidence in his Cabinet and thereby no confidence in his ministers.

He has done this effectively by placing in the hands of persons to set up committees with work that could have been done by ministers and the Cabinet. This is the committeerisation of Government and bureaucratisation of Government who has achieved more delay in delivery of goods and services needed by the people of Trinidad and Tobago, Persad-Bissessar said.

After having served almost one quarter of the term in office, the prime minister has admitted he was engaged in a learning curve and this year would be one of delivery. However, from statements I have heard so far, I can see no delivery taking place where everything is being placed in the hands of committees.

The PM has indicated that a committee would be set up to do a manpower audit of the Police Service.

This is not new as it had been promised many years before and in their manifesto. Given the crime situation, 463 murders last year, more murders than days and the highest in six years and we have started the year with a very gruesome number of murders, seven and counting. The escalation in crime continues unabated and I am discouraged by the statements given by the Prime Minister that there would be abatement.
New management for NAPA

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley made these announcements at a news conference on Wednesday at the same venue, following the end of the retreat. Rowley said the proposed model will follow the successful management model used by Queens Hall in Port-of-Spain.

He also disclosed that proposals will be made to the private sector regarding the operation of a 50 room hotel at NAPA in Port-of- Spain. On the future of the Couva Hospital built under the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government, Rowley said a committee has been appointed to evaluate proposals for that facility.

Similarly, another committee has been appointed to evaluate proposals for the construction of a hotel on the site of the Agriculture Ministry in St Clair to help boost convention tourism in TT. Regarding the Solomon Hochoy Highway Extension Project, Rowley said contracts for different phases of the project should be awarded soon and construction should start in March. He also indicated that the PP did not put in proper financing arrangements for the Point Fortin and Arima Hospitals and these will be reviewed. Rowley said Government will address this matter and has decided that Sangre Grande will get a new hospital.

The Prime Minister said the route for the proposed Toco to Valencia Highway has been agreed upon and tenders will be issued for the proposed Toco port on a design- build basis. He also indicated that CEPEP will be split into three components to be overseen by the Local Government, Works and Agriculture Ministries respectively.

After talking about the National Gas Company (NGC) having to ration the supply of natural gas to companies at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate, Rowley said a new platform constructed at the Union Industrial Estate in La Brea will soon be deployed in this countrys marine acreage to explore for additional oil and natural gas reserves.

On lingering concerns regarding a housing allowance for President Anthony Carmona, Rowley suggested this was a matter which the Auditor-General should look at to allay those concerns.
China accused of stealing US underwater drone in South China Sea, Trump tweets keep it

Recently, headlines were made when a Chinese Navy ship captured an American underwater research drone. A US crew watched idly, as they witnessed their equipment being stolen out of the South China Sea, an area which is contested by the Chinese and the Philippines.

The incident took place Thursday December 15, approximately 40 miles west of the Philippines. A Chinese ship had been shadowing the American USNS Bowditch vessel for days prior to confiscating the underwater drone, which was deployed by the US vessel. The drone itself is known as a Slocum Glider.

Since US military property was stolen, Chinas move is considered an act of war. When the Chinese Navy ship took possession of the drone, US crews were only a quarter mile away on the US navy research ship, which is operated by Military Sealift Command.

In the South China Sea, the Chinese have been regularly shadowing US Navy vessels for months. China apparently set up anti-aircraft guns and close-in weaponry designed to guard their seven area man-made islands from missile attacks.

Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook, called upon China to return the Slocum Glider immediately, and to comply with their obligations under international law. The underwater drone, which was used to map the sea floor and gain oceanographic data, did not contain any classified material. There was no response from the USNS Bowditch because it only contained small arms, which were likely stored away on board. The ship is used to support worldwide oceanographic programs. It performs acoustical, biological, physical and geophysical surveys.

When the American research ships crew saw their $150,000 drone plucked out of the water, they tried to call the Chinese ship over bridge-to-bridge radio, but got no response. Officials from the Chinese Embassy had no immediate comment, but relations between the US and China got a little frayed recently when Donald Trump spoke with Taiwans President. Chinas Communist party-owned newspaper, Global Times, recently wrote that Beijing should be ready to seize Taiwan by force before the incoming Trump administration activates the Taiwan card.

Donald Trump addressed China via Twitter regarding the matter in the South China Sea. After China said they would return the confiscated drone, Trump took to twitter again saying, We should tell China that we dont want the drone they stole back  let them keep it!

China has since returned the drone to the US and the issue has been resolved.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

FoxNews.com

Submit a correction >>
Now a male face to endorse cosmetic brand Maybelline

United States,Cinema/Showbiz,Lifestyle/Fashion, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New York, Jan 6 (IANS) Cosmetics brand Maybelline New York has appointed American YouTube star Manny Gutierrez as its first male ambassador.

Gutierrez, who has drawn more than two million followers to his YouTube channel since he started posting makeup tutorials in 2014, stars in the brand's new That Boss Life campaign, reports theguardian.com.

Gutierrez announced the news via an Instagram post, saying he was honoured and thrilled.

He posted: "2017 you are off to an amazing start OMG! So excited to finally announce that I am part of the Maybelline Big Shot Mascara campaign! Honestly I couldn't be more honoured thrilled! Thank you to Maybelline for taking a chance on me! I look forward to working together so much more."

Gutierrez, who has a Makeup Geek eye shadow palette and an Ofra lip set named after him, is part of a new wave of "beauty boys" -- male-identifying make-up artists who post bold, colourful and elaborate looks on social media.

--IANS

sug/nv/vt
China frees human rights lawyer on bail

China,Immigration/Law/Rights, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Beijing, Jan 6 (IANS) Chinese authorities have released a prominent human rights lawyer on bail after detaining him for a year and a half without trial.

The news was confirmed to Efe by Xie Yanyi's wife Yuan Shanshan, who was informed on Thursday that he had been released from prison.

Yuan, who lives in Beijing, has faced a lot of pressure from the authorities in recent months and has been forced to change houses several times.

The lawyer is still under police surveillance but he told his wife he hopes to be reunited with her as soon as possible in the first conversation between the two in the last year and a half.

Yuan, who gave birth to the couple's third child during this period, said police asked her for photos and videos of the baby to use them to exert pressure on her husband.

Xie is one among hundreds of human rights lawyers arrested in July 2015 from several cities of China as part of the 709 campaign against all critical and dissident movements by the Communist authorities.

In January 2016, Xie was accused of state subversion, a charge frequently levelled against political prisoners, including Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.

--IANS

ksk/mr
Ex-CIA chief Woolsey quits Trump transition team

United States,Politics,Defence/Security, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Washington, Jan 6 (IANS) Former CIA Director James Woolsey has left the Donald Trump presidential transition team, days after he publicly disputed the President-elect's views on Russia's role in the 2016 election, the media reported.

"Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a senior adviser to President-elect Trump or the Transition. He wishes the President-elect and his administration great success in their time in office," NBC News quoted Woolsey spokesman Jonathan Franks as saying on Thursday.

Woolsey, who was Central Intelligence Agency Director under President Bill Clinton, had served as a senior adviser to Trump on national security and intelligence.

Woolsey said that he put out the statement to clear up a possible misconception that he was more heavily involved in the transition process, or that he was still giving advice to the President-elect, says the report.

"I didn't want to fly under false colours," Woolsey said. "I'm not really functioning as an adviser anymore, and so when I'm on the screen, everybody announces that I'm former CIA director and that I'm a Trump adviser. And I'm really not anymore."

"..So I just thought I should strike that from the (TV banner) ... so nobody was under false impressions," he said.

The resignation comes as Trump has been in a war of words with US intelligence agencies over assessments that the Russian government was likely involved in a covert campaign to attempt to interfere in the US election. However, Woolsey said that the move had nothing to do with his comments on Russia.

Woolsey, in an interview, had also criticised WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whom Trump had invoked on Twitter to defend his scepticism of US intelligence assessments of Russian meddling in the election.

A source close to Woolsey told NBC News that the former CIA chief felt increasingly uncomfortable with the Trump transition's decision-making on matters of intelligence, particularly amid a report that the incoming administration is considering restructuring certain intelligence agencies.

But that report has been batted down as "100 percent false" by a transition spokesman.

--IANS

soni/vt
Trump won't give grace period to Obama's ambassadors

United States,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Washington, Jan 6 (IANS) US President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has decided not to let American ambassadors who are political appointees of President Barack Obama stay on for a grace period beyond Inauguration Day, a source has confirmed.

The decision has left some of the diplomats, who represent the US in countries such as Britain, Saudi Arabia and Japan, scrambling to figure out new living arrangements, visa rules and what options they have for their children's schooling.

It also could mean some top US embassies are left without an ambassador for months as Trump finds his footing, the source said on Thursday.

In typical presidential transitions, politically appointed ambassadors have at times been allowed to stay on the job for weeks or months after the new President has taken office, Politico reported.

Following tradition, President Obama has directed all political appointees in his Democratic administration to submit their resignations effective on Inauguration Day, January 20, making room for Trump's appointees.

When asked about ambassadors requesting extensions, the Trump transition team informed the State Department that it was not making any exceptions, an official told Politico.

The department began sending cables at least as early as December 21, 2016, to individual ambassadors telling them that they would have to quit their posts on time.

During his two terms, Obama named hundreds of people to the posts, roughly 30 per cent of whom are political appointees, which generally require Senate confirmation. That figure is roughly in line with other Presidents in recent decades.

In the absence of the ambassadors who now must leave by January 20, the affected US embassies will likely be run by the highest-ranking career employee until Trump nominates someone new and that person is confirmed by the Senate.

The process could take months.

--IANS

ksk/vt
EC seeks short film to educate Service men on e-ballot

Delhi,National,Defence/Security, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The Election Commission is pushing for the use of electronic ballot, and has directed the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) to make a short film to educate Service voters on the procedures and methods.

A letter sent to the Defence Ministry by the Election Commission (EC) said the NFDC will make a short 10-15 minutes' film, in order to educate the Service men on how to use Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot Paper System (ETPBS).

The EC has been holding meetings with various wings of Armed Forces on the facility of ETPBS.

"Election Commission has directed for an educational film on the same for the benefit of Service voters. The film would be for use by the Armed Forces through their various channels to reach out to the last soldier, airman and sailor," an official said.

This comes ahead of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.

The five states will elect new governments in staggered polls from February 4 to March 8 in the biggest popularity test since the Lok Sabha polls of 2014.

Pilot run for the electronic ballot for Service voters took place in November 2016 in the Nellithope Assembly by-elections.

As per the EC, the Service voters receive a downloadable postal ballot through two-layer secure electronic medium, with a secured One Time Password (OTP) for downloading the encrypted files sent through mobile or e-mail and the system generated unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) for decrypting and printing each and every single postal ballot to the individual service voter or authorised person.

The ballots by Service voters would be received by returning officer through post.

--IANS

ao/ksk/vt
Access to skilled EU workforce 'vital' for London

United Kingdom,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

London, Jan 6 (IANS) Maintaining London's access to skilled European Union (EU) workers after Brexit is "vital" for the British capital's future prosperity, a report revealed on Friday.

The report by non-profit organisation London First said business leaders were worried that any restriction on skilled migration would "impede London's ability to attract talent", the BBC reported.

It found that leaving the EU will present "challenges" and "opportunities" to the capital to keep it competitive on the world stage.

In the report, which is based upon talks with business leaders, London First said the city had "one of the greatest concentrations of talent and skills in the world" and future policies should try to maintain this.

The authors said challenges created by economic growth would have to be addressed to keep the city open for business, the BBC said.

These included better transport infrastructure, improved skills training in the capital and the faster delivery of new housing.

The report added that improving cooperation with other UK cities will also help London drive growth across the country.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has not confirmed her plans for freedom of movement after Brexit.

But she has promised to secure a settlement that "addresses the concerns of the British people about free movement".

--IANS

ksk/mr
Goa CM features in BJP's first shortlist of poll candidates

Goa,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Panaji, Jan 6 (IANS) Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar figures among the key potential candidates for the assembly polls cleared by the Bharatiya Janata Party's state election management committee on Friday.

The party on Thursday announced its first short list of 21 candidates for the state assembly elections. BJP spokesperson Narendra Savaikar said the names has been sent to the parliamentary board for final vetting.

Deputy Chief Minister Francis D'Souza and current cabinet ministers Dayanand Mandrekar (Siolim), Dilip Parulekar (Saligao), Mahadev Naik (Shiroda), Milind Naik (Mormugao) and Alina Saldanha (Cortalim) have also been included in the list.

Former Congress legislator Mauvin Godinho, who joined the BJP last month, has been shortlisted from the Dabolim assembly constituency, Savaikar told the media here.

"The names have been shortlisted by the state election management committee of the party and forwarded to the BJP parliamentary board, which is the highest decision-making body of our party."

The rest of the names will be cleared within a week, he said.

According to the BJP, the party will contest 37 out of the 40 assembly seats in Goa, and will lend support to other suitable candidates in the remaining three constituencies.

The shortlist cleared by the state election committee headed by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, also includes seven sitting legislators.

The assembly elections in Goa will be held on February 4.

--IANS

maya/py/vt
India, Kazakhstan to amend treaty to avoid double taxation

Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) India and Kazakhstan on Friday agreed to amend an existing treaty between the two countries and effectively exchange tax information to deal with avoidance of double taxation.

"India and Kazakhstan signed here a Protocol to amend the existing Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) for the avoidance of double taxation and for the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The DTAC was earlier signed on December 9, 1996.

The Protocol provides internationally accepted standards for effective exchange of information on tax matters.

The information received from Kazakhstan for tax purposes could now be shared with other law enforcement agencies with authorisation of the competent authority of Kazakhstan and vice versa, the statement added.

"The Protocol inserts a limitation of benefits Article, to provide a main purpose test to prevent misuse of the DTAC and to allow application of domestic law and measures against tax avoidance or evasion," it said.

It also has specific provisions to facilitate relieving of economic double taxation in transfer pricing cases.

This was a taxpayer-friendly measure and was in line with India's commitment under Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan to meet the minimum standard of providing Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) access in transfer pricing cases, it added.

The Protocol replaces existing Article on assistance in collection of taxes with a new Article to align it with international standards.

--IANS

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US Army to let Sikhs wear turbans, karas, keep beards

United States,Defence/Security,Diaspora, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New York, Jan 6 (IANS) In another milestone for Sikhs, US Army commanders have been ordered to allow those of the faith to wear turbans, karas and keep their beards.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning on Wednesday signed the order that said: "The soldier's brigade-level commander will approve a request for a religious accommodation" by Sikhs.

Till now Sikhs had to get permission from the Army Secretary, a cumbersome process prone to delays and not automatically given.

Now they need to apply only to their brigade-level commanders, who will have to give them permission except in certain cases involving their safety like exposure to poison gases.

Once it is granted they can keep the exemption for most positions in the military.

Sikh Coalition Legal Director Harsimran Kaur welcomed the new rules. "We are pleased with the progress that the new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity by our nation's largest employer," she said.

The order also allows Muslims to wear hijabs. Muslim men can also keep beards.

The New York Police Department, the biggest in the US, changed its rules last month to allow Sikhs to wear turbans and keep their beards.

Last year Captain Simratpal Singh, an Afghan war veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star, and two others filed a case against the army saying the ban on beards and turbans curbs their religious freedom.

The Army Secretary then gave the three of them permission to wear turbans.

According to the civil rights organisation, Sikh Coalition members of the faith had been serving in the US military from at least World War I. But in 1981, the army changed the rules to ban beards and turbans.

"My turban and beard represent my commitment to pluralism and equality," said Major Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, an army doctor who served in Afghanistan and won a Bronze Star.

"This policy change underscores the military's commitment to these values and is a sign of meaningful progress that will ensure the strength of our democracy."

While the restrictions on having beards still hold if there are risks like exposure to toxic material, Fanning ordered the army to test existing products to see if they can be made safe for those wearing beards and to look for alternative equipment.

--IANS

al/py/
Al Qaeda chief blasts rival jihadist group IS as 'liars'

United States,Defence/Security,Terrorism, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New York, Jan 6 (IANS) Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group the Islamic State against his organisation.

In an audio message released on Thursday, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the IS chief, had alleged that Al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.

"The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites," Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, was locked in a battle with the Islamic State, which sprang from its Iraqi faction, for the leadership of a global jihad.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian, denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.

"What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia," he said.

He insisted he had not called for Shiite Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shiite-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.

"I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats (places if worship) and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shiite militiamen," he said.

The IS and Al Qaeda have both carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some Al Qaeda members have called for less indiscriminate tactics.

Zawahiri also denied Al-Baghdadi's charge that Al Qaeda supported ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who attempted to rule through the ballot box.

The Al Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistan's unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.

He communicates with the group's remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating the need to target the US.

The audio message restated the urgency to "tell America, to other than Allah we do not kneel" but also argued for a dialogue on tactics with other jihadists.

It was translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group.

--IANS

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India may again take 'out of box' action against Pakistan: Amit Shah

Delhi,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The Narendra Modi government may again take "out of the box" action against Pakistan if it continues to indulge in a proxy war against India, BJP President Amit Shah told the party's office-bearers at a meeting on Friday.

Ahead of the party's national executive meeting, Shah addressed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s national office-bearers here.

The Indian Army's "surgical strikes" against terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-held Kashmir and the Centre's move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes dominated his address.

"During the meet, Shah hailed the September 29 military action against terrorists and said India could again take 'out of the box' action if Pakistan persists with its policy of exporting terrorists to India," a party source told IANS.

Among the other issues discussed at the meeting were the attacks on party activists and offices in West Bengal after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in a chit fund scam.

The national executive meeting, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah later in the day, assumes significance against the backdrop of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

Among the host of party leaders present at the meeting were General Secretaries Ram Lal and Kailash Vijayvargiya and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari.

At the executive meeting, the party is expected to make demonetisation its focal point for chalking out its strategy for the polls to the five state assemblies.

While Shah will deliver the inaugural address at the national executive, Modi is slated to give the valedictory speech at the two-day meeting. Senior party leaders, union ministers and Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states are to participate.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya exuded confidence that the party would bag over 300 seats to come to power in the state.

"We are confident of getting over 300 seats in UP. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress are no way in the fight, while the ruling Samajwadi Party is engrossed in a fight within itself. Also, they have not done any development work during their tenure," said Maurya.

He said the Centre's fight against corruption through demonetisation will help the BJP in the UP polls, and derided the Akhilesh Yadav regime for corruption.

"Chief Minister Akhilesh might be projecting his image to be clean, but the fact remains that he has to own up the responsibility of all the corruption that has taken place during his regime," Maurya said.

--IANS

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Seoul speeds up creation of 'decapitation unit'

South Korea,Defence/Security,Diplomacy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Seoul, Jan 6 (IANS) South Korea has sped up plans to set up a "decapitation unit", a brigade specifically tasked with targeting North Korea's "wartime command", including leader Kim Jong Un, the country's Defence Ministry said.

The unit will be activated in the "event of war", CNN on Thursday quoted a ministry official as saying.

Technically, South Korea and North Korea are still at war. They signed an armistice in 1953 but not a treaty.

The brigade was initially supposed to be ready in 2019, but the Defence Ministry said it will be established "by this year".

The move comes after a series of provocations by Pyongyang, including broadcasting images of Kim leading a combat drill targeting the South Korea's presidential residence, the Blue House.

The ministry believes North Korea will stage more nuclear and missile tests in 2017, despite sanctions and pressure from the international community.

Kim in his New Year's speech said Pyongyang was close to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile.

--IANS

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Petition to make Princess Leia official Disney princess

United States,Cinema/Showbiz,Hollywood, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Los Angeles, Jan 6 (IANS) A petition has been filed to make late actress Carrie Fisher's character Princess Leia in "Star Wars" an official Disney Princess.

"After the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher, we feel that it is only fitting for Disney to do away with the rule that an official Disney princess must be animated and make Leia a full-fledged princess. This would be a wonderful way to remember Carrie and a welcoming to one of Disney's new properties that is beloved by millions," read the petition filed via website The Change.org, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

The petition also calls for a "full ceremony" to be held that would induct Princess Leia into the ranks of Disney Princesses, which include the likes of Cinderella, Snow White and Belle, as well as a "service in memory" of the late icon who brought the character to life.

"What we are asking is that the Walt Disney Corporation hold a full ceremony inducting Leia as the newest Disney princess as well as a special service in memory of Carrie Fisher," the petition further read.

Addressed to Disney CEO, Bob Iger, the petition was set up last week and has already gained over 50,000 of its 75,000 required signatures.

"I started the petition because it was something that bugged me since Disney bought the property. Disney had princesses and Leia was a princess," Christensen told Geek Magazine.

"Then I found out that Disney had set rules for who could and couldn't be a princess. With Carrie's death, I think that it's time to change the rules. I actually have five daughters and there are constantly princess movies playing in the background. We are big fans of the current Princess line-up, but I think that Leia is a really strong, positive, awesome role model for my girls, and she would make a great addition," he added.

--IANS

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Rajnath to lay foundation stone for new NDRF campus in Andhra

Andhra Pradesh,National,Politics,Defence/Security, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Vijayawada, Jan 6 (IANS) Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will lay the foundation stone of the new campus of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh on January 9, an official statement said on Friday.

The campus coming up on 50 acres of land will house the NDRF's 10th battalion, which is responsible for providing response during disasters in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

The battalion, stationed in Acharya Nagarjuna University since November 15, 2011, has responded to various disasters such as cyclone Phailin, HudHud, Vardah and floods.

Recognizing the services of the unit, the state government has allotted 50 acres of land in Krishna district for construction of campus for this unit.

The new campus will house the living accommodation and world class training area besides administration buildings, said an official release.

Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu will be present at the inauguration ceremony.

--IANS

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Duterte confirms rapprochement with Russia after warship's visit

Philippines,Politics,Defence/Security, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Manila, Jan 6 (IANS) Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte visited the Russian warship docked in Manila port on Friday in a new gesture of rapprochement with Russia.

Accompanied by Russian military and diplomatic authorities, Duterte saw the anti-submarine missiles, a Ka-27 helicopter and other facilities of Admiral Tributs, a 7,480-tonne Udaloy-class destroyer that docked in Manila port on Tuesday for a five-day goodwill visit, Efe news reported.

Duterte, who took office in June 2016, had promised to do away with the traditional military alliance with the US and has taken measures in recent months to develop closer diplomatic and economic ties with Russia and China.

He has threatened to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement, a bilateral accord with Washington in force since 1999. It permits, among other things, the use of Philippine bases by US troops and regular joint military drills.

Duterte, who strongly criticised the US and the West during his first bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2016, is set to visit Moscow in April or May on the Kremlin's invitation.

The warship's visit will develop a stronger friendship between Manila and Moscow, said the Filipino presidential office in a statement Friday.

The visiting Russian warship -- the third ever in history and the first in four years to visit the Philippines -- took part in several ceremonies and participated in joint military drills between the naval forces of the two countries.

--IANS

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Punjab, Haryana Chief Ministers condole Om Puri's death

Punjab,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Chandigarh, Jan 6 (IANS) The Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana on Friday condoled the death of veteran actor Om Puri.

Puri, 66, was born in Ambala (now in Haryana) in 1950 when it was still part of Punjab.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal described Om Puri as a "son of the soil".

"He was a multi-faceted personality being a film star and a theatre artist. The veteran Bollywood actor was admired by his fans and was a versatile actor who proved his mettle while working in Bollywood and Hollywood," Badal said in a statement here.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar also expressed grief.

"He worked in several Indian films as well as many films produced abroad. The acclaimed actor had delivered some stellar performances. In his death, the cinema world has lost one of its most loved characters," he added.

--IANS

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Indian economy's growth estimated at 7.1% in 2016-17: Government

Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The Indian economy is expected to grow at 7.1 per cent this fiscal -- without the impact of demonetisation being taken into consideration, according to an official advance estimate for the year released on Friday. The actual expansion in the first six months of 2016-17 stood at 7.1 per cent.

The country's gross domestic product will grow at 7.1 per cent in 2016-17 compared with 7.6 per cent in 2015-16, according to the estimate of national income for 2016-17 released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

"The growth in deposits is an outlier, hence November data was not used for the financials," India's Chief Statistician T.C.A. Anant said, implying that demonetisation is not a normal factor in the calculation of annual national income.

The CSO has primarily used seven-month data to extrapolate for the full fiscal.

The anticipated growth of real GVA (gross value added, which excludes taxes and subsidies) in 2016-17 is 7 per cent against 7.2 per cent in 2015-16, said an official statement.

The GVA at basic prices for 2016-17 for manufacturing sector is estimated to grow by 7.4 per cent as compared to growth of 9.3 per cent in 2015-16.

The agriculture, forestry and fishing sector is likely to show a growth of 4.1 per cent in its GVA during 2016-17, as against the previous year's growth rate of 1.2 per cent.

The estimated growth in GVA for financial, insurance, real estate and professional services sector during 2016-17 is placed at 9.0 per cent as compared to growth of 10.3 per cent in 2015-16.

The GDP advance estimates, which are normally released in February have been released earlier this year since the government plans to prepone the presentation of the Union Budget to February 1.

While announcing its monetary policy review last month, the Reserve Bank of India acknowledged the demonetisation factor and lowered their GVA growth estimates for the current fiscal to 7.1 per cent from the 7.6 per cent forecast earlier.

The International Monetary Fund had in October projected India's GDP growth at 7.6 per cent in 2016-17. The Finance Ministry's Economic Survey forecast a GDP growth in the range of between 7 per cent and 7.5 per cent.

On November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes were no longer legal tender, saying the move was aimed to eliminate black money, counterfeit currency and terror financing.

The Nikkei Purchase Managers' Index (PMI) survey released earlier this month showed that demonetisation provoked a downturn both in Indian manufacturing and services growth in December.

Besides, the output of India's eight infrastructure industries in November 2016 increased by 4.9 per cent, but fell sequentially as compared to the 6.6 per cent growth logged in October.

The GDP advance estimates have taken into account the data on industrial production till October, corporate results till end September and the data on bank deposits and credits only till end-October.

"Because it is not an ordinary event, nobody's assessment is fact-based," the Chief Statistician said with reference to other estimates allowing for the depressive impact of demonetisation.

He also said the CSO does not use indicators based on money supply in their computation of national income.

--IANS

ap-mm-bc/vd/vt
Mamata opposes dissolving of BIFR

West Bengal,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Kolkata, Jan 6 (IANS) Opposing the Narendra Modi government's decision to dissolve the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said the central government is "breaking the spine" of the country's economy.

"BIFR was constituted for reconstruction of industries and protection of workers. Sick industries registered in the Board could reconstruct their assets and run the company accordingly. Suddenly, the centre dissolved it," she said.

"They are breaking the spine of the country," said Banerjee adding that centre sent a letter to her government.

The letter sent to West Bengal Chief Secretary said that BIFR and its appellate body, the Appellate Authority for Industrial Finance and Reconstruction (AAIFR), which were entrusted with the revival and rehabilitation of sick industrial companies under the Sick Industrial Companies (Special Provisions) Act 1985, has been dissolved.

Banerjee said, "We have a lot of companies registered in the Board. We have asked what would happen to old cases. They said fresh application are needed."

"All pending cases before BIFR and AAIFR stand abated. These companies can file fresh cases for insolvency resolution under the Code (the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016) before NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal)," the letter said.

Trade unions also alleged the decision was taken without consulting them.

"It was a blow to the workers. The board was dissolved without taking consultation from trade unions. We will put up a fight against the move," said Ramen Pandey, state president of Congress backed Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC).

"The decision proved that central government has been run by a dictator," said Trinamool Congress' union leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay.

--IANS

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People overwhelmingly supported note ban decision: Shah

Delhi,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) Despite facing hardships owing to demonetisation and the opposition's misinformation campaign, people have overwhelmingly supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's note ban decision, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday.

Shah also asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s fight against corruption through the demonetisation decision will bring the party to power in all the five poll-bound states.

Addressing the media about the two-day BJP national executive meeting that began here on Friday, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Parliamentary Board members felicitated Modi for the historic decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

Summarising Shah's address at the meet, Javadekar said that demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but also taken away the plank of 'poor' from them.

"Shah hailed as historic the decision to conduct surgical strikes on terrorists across the border and demonetisation. He said that decisions should be taken in the interest of the country with a long-term view and not a populist view," Javadekar told the media.

"Despite facing hardships, having had to stand in queues, people have overwhelmingly supported demonetisation. In fact, during the 50 days of pain, people have voted for the BJP.

"People have given us massive victories. We have done very well at various polls in West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra, Assam, Chandigarh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Of the 10,000 seats where elections were held, we have won a massive 8,000," said Javadekar.

"The overwhelming support for demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but has snatched the plank of 'poor' from them," he said.

The minister asserted that the party will come to power in all the five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa -- where polls are scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

At the meeting, Shah also talked about electoral reforms and advocated for simultaneous conduct of general and assembly polls.

--IANS

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Reality major Supertech gets two more months to deposit Rs 10 cr

Delhi,National,Immigration/Law/Rights,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) Real estate major Supertech Ltd on Friday got two more months time to deposit Rs 10 crore with the Supreme Court's registry to refund the money of the flat buyers who want to opt out of its two disputed towers at its Emerald Court project in Greater Noida.

The bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice R. Banumathi gave the real estate major time till March 20 as Supertech cited difficulties it was facing in raising the funds because November 8 demonetisation decision by which Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination notes were junked.

The top court by its November 8 order had asked the real estate major to deposit, by January 3, Rs 10 crore which would be used for refunding the money given to it by flat buyers at its two disputed towers at its Emerald Court project in Greater NOIDA.

The two towers were found to be non-compliant of building regulations by public sector undertaking NBCC which had inspected them on the directions of the court.

The Allahabad High Court had on April 11, 2014 ordered the demolition of two building towers coupled with direction that flat buyers' money should be returned with 14 per cent interest in three months' time.

The top court had on May 5, 2014, ordered status quo thereby putting on hold the demolition.

It had on July 27, 2016, asked the NBCC to examine whether the distance between two disputed buildings towers was in accordance with building regulations.

--IANS

pk/vd
Chinese firm offers to develop IT Park in Gurugram

Punjab,National,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Chandigarh, Jan 6 (IANS) Chinese firm, China Fortune Land Development (CFLD), has proposed to develop an IT Park at Sohna in Gurugram district, a Haryana official said on Friday.

The project will have an investment of Rs 4,000 crore, a state government spokesman said here.

A delegation of CFLD, comprising its president Jerry Zhao and other representatives of the company met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in New Delhi to discuss the project.

Khattar said that the proposed project would prove to be a milestone in the development of the state and it would generate employment opportunities for youth.

Gurugram district, adjoining national capital New Delhi, has emerged as a big hub for industrial, commercial, software and information technology sectors.

--IANS

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Delhi increases old age, widow, disability pension by Rs 1,000 each

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The Delhi government on Friday decided to increase the pensions to senior citizens, widows and people with disability by Rs 1,000 per month.

The decision was taken in a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"The cabinet today (Friday) approved a Rs 1,000 increment in disability pension, old age pension and widow pension each," Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

He said that though it was a small amount but would certainly help the beneficiaries upto some extent.

After this revision in the pension scheme, senior citizens in the age group of 60-69 years will get Rs 2,000 as pension now as against Rs 1,000 old age pension, while those above 70 years will now get Rs 2,500 as pension compared to Rs 1,500 earlier.

Disability pension has been raised from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 while pension for widows and destitute women has been raised from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 per month.

Sisodia said that as of November 30, 2016, the number of beneficiaries for old age pension scheme between the age group of 60 and 69 years was 1,78,318 while there as many as 2,04,347 beneficiaries who are senior citizens above 70 years. As many as 69,403 people are taking benefit of disability pension scheme.

The cabinet also decided to enhance the income limit to Rs one lakh per annum, at present, the family income limit for availing the pensions from the existing Rs 60,000 and Rs 75,000 for old age pension and disability pension respectively.

Sisodia said that this was last revised in 2008 for old age pension, whereas the incomes and the cost of living index have been significantly risen since then. This leads to many needy people being left out of availing the scheme on one hand and dealing with rising prices on the other, he noted.

It is expected that approximately one lakh new applications will be received under old age pension scheme within one month, ie. January 2017, for whom pension will be due from February 2017.

Sisodia said that an additional expenditure of Rs 154 crore is expected to be incurred on five lakh old age pension beneficiaries for the remaining four months of 2016-17.

Hence, the revised budget estimate under old age pension would be Rs 765 crore. For the same rate of assistance, budget requirement for 2017-18 will be Rs 1,431 crore for 5.30 lakh beneficiaries, which is the upper limit in number of beneficiaries allowed in the scheme.

Similarly, in Disability Pension Scheme, in accordance to the present rate of new applications received in the department, it is expected that about 1,000 applications per month will be received in the next four months.

Accordingly, an additional expenditure of Rs 48 crore will be incurred in 2016-17. Hence, the revised budget estimate under disability pension would be Rs 153 crore against the present allocation of Rs 105 crore.

--IANS

am/vd
Bengaluru re-run in Bhubaneswar: Girls misbehaved with, thrashed

Orissa,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Bhubaneswar, Jan 6 (IANS) Less than a week after the mass molestation incident in Bengaluru, three girls were abused and thrashed for opposing eve-teasing in the state capital on Friday.

The Commissionerate Police registered a case after receiving a complaint from the victims and began an investigation to trace the culprits.

According to police, around four to five youths passed lewd comments and abused three girls near Magnet Square on the Patia-Nandankanan Road in Bhubaneswar.

When a girl objected, another group of boys believed to be the friends of the eve-teasers, allegedly thrashed one of the girls and their male friend, said police.

"Some boys passed lewd comments and when we resisted another group of boys came and started attacking us and my friend. While one of my friends was recording the incident on the mobile phone, they tried to damage it," said one of the girls.

Bhubaneswar Deputy Commissioner of Police Satyabrat Bhoi said they are trying to identify the culprits involved in the crime.

--IANS

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People overwhelmingly supported note ban decision: Amit Shah

Delhi,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) Despite facing hardships owing to demonetisation and the opposition's misinformation campaign, people have overwhelmingly supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's note ban decision, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday.

Shah also asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s fight against corruption through the demonetisation decision will bring the party to power in all the five poll-bound states.

Addressing the media about the two-day BJP national executive meeting that began here on Friday, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Parliamentary Board members felicitated Modi for the historic decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

Summarising Shah's address at the meet, Javadekar said that demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but also taken away the plank of 'poor' from them.

"When the government came to power, the opposition asked it about the steps taken to bring back black money and remove corruption," Javdekar said, adding that "with the announcement of demonetisation, the government not only curbed black money but also curbed corruption".

Javdekar also asserted that due to the demonetisation move of the government, fake currency rackets, terror funding, drugs trade and Naxal movement got paralysed.

"It's a direct attack on corruption," the Minister for Human Resource Development said.

Hailing the government's action of conducting surgical strikes across the Line of Control, Javdekar said, "Shah defined the surgical strikes as a historic and bold move under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

"Shah said that after the surgical strikes carried out by the country, the world looked upon India with a different angle and as a nation capable of safeguarding its land, which has always opposed terrorism," he said.

"The party President hailed both decisions -- conducting surgical strikes on terrorists across the border and implementing the demonetisation decision -- as historic," the BJP leader said.

Taking a dig at the opposition party leaders over the surgical strikes, Javdekar said, "After the surgical strikes, some leaders termed it as 'khoon ki dalali', while some demanded evidence."

Javdekar was attacking Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"Shah also said that decisions should be taken in the interest of the country with a long-term view and not a populist one," Javadekar told the media.

Mentioning about the hardships of the people during demonetisation, Javdekar said, "Despite facing hardships, having had to stand in queues, people have overwhelmingly supported demonetisation. In fact, during the 50 days of pain, people even voted for the BJP."

"People have given us massive victories. We have done very well at various polls in West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chandigarh. Of the 10,000 seats where elections were held, we have won a massive 8,000," said Javadekar.

"The overwhelming support for demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but has snatched the plank of 'poor' from them," he said.

The HRD Minister asserted that the party will come to power in all the five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, where polls are scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

"In most of the surveys, the BJP is ahead of other parties despite the issue of demonetisation raised in every survey. This shows that the government has the support of the people," he said.

"Shah also thanked the Prime Minister for his New Year Eve's address to the nation, in which he announced several measures for senior citizens and housing subsidy scheme, among others," Javdekar said.

He also said that the 'Bhim' mobile application launched by the Prime Minister has been downloaded by more than 70 lakh people across the country and it is a sign that the country is moving towards a less-cash economy.

At the meeting Shah also talked about electoral reforms and advocated simultaneous general and assembly polls.

"Shah also appealed to all the political parties to come forward for the electoral reforms for simultaneous conduct of general and assembly elections," Javdekar added.

--IANS

aks/nir/bg
China's n-powered submarine spotted at Pakistani port

Delhi,National,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Defence/Security,Diplomacy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine was reportedly docked at a port in Pakistan, sources privy to the development said here on Friday. They added that it could be there as Beijing was selling eight submarines to Islamabad, four of which were to be built in the port city of Karachi.

The image, dating back to May 2016, was found on Google Earth. It appears to be a nuclear submarine, one of the latest with China, according to experts.

The submarine was later seen crossing the Malacca Straits in June 2016. Submarines have to surface while crossing straits as per protocol.

Chinese submarines have been spotted in the Indian Ocean, which has been usually attributed to providing protection against piracy.

Speaking on the presence of the Chinese Navy's ships and submarines in Pakistan in December last year, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had said that India was keeping a close eye on them.

"We have capability and assets to take on any force which is deployed, and if and when this happens, we have plans in place to tackle it," the Navy Chief had said

Sources from the Navy said Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean was being noticed and constantly monitored.

The boats were usually sent with other ships for providing security to Chinese merchant vessels from pirates, which according to sources may not be the real reason.

China's growing territorial claims in the South China sea have caused tension in the region, with the US vocally pitching for freedom of navigation in international waters.

Both India and China were part of Shared Awareness and Deconfliction which was established to coordinate the efforts of the military forces conducting counter piracy in the western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.

Pakistan is buying eight submarines from China. The first four submarines were expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the remaining four will be assembled in Karachi by 2028.

State-run media in Pakistan including Radio Pakistan had reported that the $5 billion deal has been detailed by senior naval officers to the parliamentary committee that handles defence.

--IANS

ao/ahm/bg
Surgical strike, demonetisation dominates BJP national executive's first day

Delhi,National,Politics, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The BJP national executive on Friday felicitated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for surgical strike against Pakistan and demonetisation decision, dubbing it "historical" and slammed the opposition parties for criticising it.

Both the issues dominanted the inaugural day of the two day meet which began here at NDMC convention centre here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also asserted that it has snatched the pro-poor plank of Congress and other parties and claimed that the poor are now backing Prime Minister Modi.

In his inaugural address at the two day party meet, organised three months after the last meeting in Kozhikode, party president Amit Shah targeted the opposition parties for criticising the demonetisation saying they used to earlier question what the government has done against black money and now they are questioning the government.

The opposition parties have now been exposed, he said.

Giving details of Shah's address, Union Minister and BJP leader Prakash Javadekar said: "Shah said the outcomes of the demonetisation are now visible as it has badly hit the black money, fake currency, terror funding, Maoist activities and drug dealers."

"Shah asserted that the people of the country have hailed this historic decision saying that the note ban decision would result in more revenues that will be spent on pro-poor welfare measures," he said.

"The party President also mentioned in his speech that the surgical strikes carried out by the Army across the Line of Control (LoC) were recognised across the world and it reflects government's intention towards zero tolerance against terrorism."

Shah also expressed concern for doing politics by some opposition parties on surgical strikes, Javadekar said.

"During his speech the BJP President also appealed to all the political parties to think of holding general and assembly polls simultaneously. He said, the party has also constituted a committee to submit a report in this regard," Javdekar said.

To strengthen the party, Shah also asked the party workers to do 'shram daan' in those area where the party base is not strong.

Senior party leaders, Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states are took part in the meeting. Earlier in the day, Shah chaired a meeting of party national office bearers and discussed various issues.

Modi will address the valedictory session on Saturday.

The BJP national executive also passed a political resolution.

--IANS

aks/vd
Cash deposit deadline extended for those outside country

Delhi,National,Diaspora,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) All Indian citizens, who were outside India from November 9 to December 30, will be able to exchange or deposit the old currency note of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 till March this year, an official statement said on Friday.

This facility will be available for those who are not residents of India till June 30 "in order to allow them adequate time to plan a visit as per their convenience", it said.

However as per regulations, bringing back such currency into the country is restricted to Rs 25,000 per person.

The above facility would be subject to the regulations of the notification, Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Currency) Regulations, 2015.

Separate FEMA provisions are applicable to persons in Nepal and Bhutan, which would continue to be in force.

--IANS

spk/vd
Nepal to get Rs 1 bn in 100 rupee notes from India

Nepal,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Diplomacy,Business/Economy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Kathmandu, Jan 6 (IANS) Nepal's central bank will get Rs 1 billion in Rs 100 denomination Indian notes from its Indian counterpart by the end of this month to avert shortages of the currency widely used in the Himalayan country, an official said on Friday.

The Reserve Bank of India has agreed to provide 1 billion Indian currency of IRs 100 denomination by the end of January, said Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) spokesperson Narayan Poudel.

Nepal's central bank is sending a team to India to bring the notes, said Poudel, adding that by the end of Janurary, the NRB will have additional Indian Rs 1 billion in its coffer.

The NRB's plan to import Rs 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, reports said, adding the RBI had earlier told the Nepali counterpart to wait till the situation normalises.

After demonetisation in India, the NRB had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal, hitting Nepalis going for treatment in India, students pursuing higher studies in various Indian colleges and universities, traders doing business in India and people living in bordering areas.

Outlets of government and private banks are witnessing long queues of people standing for exchanging the currency after central bank has provided limited exchange facilities up to Indian Rs 2,000 on the basis of valid identification for general purpose.

Similarly, it is providing up to Indian Rs 10,000 for travelling India through train or air after submitting the respective tickets and exchanging up to Indian Rs 25,000 upon the doctor's referral for medical treatment in India.

Apart from this limited facilities, the RBI has not sorted out crisis of exchanging banned Indian currencies of 5,00 and 1,000 within and outside the Nepali banking channels. Authorities in both sides held several rounds of talks to find a way out for the exchange facilities of banned Indian notes but no decision has been taken yet.

The RBI and NRB have stable agreement that NRB will import a total IRs 6 billion per annum of various denominations of Indian currencies for exchange facilities. As the amount of Indian Rs 100 notes is dwindled to IRs 3.5 billion in its coffer, once it will add another one billion Indian currency, the NRB can provide exchange facilities at present ratio by another seven months, said Poudel.

India has been tightening the supplies of Indian notes following the wake of demonetisation.A In normal situation, Nepali banks used to provide exchange facilities up to IRs 5,000 for general purposes to any Nepali and Indian citizen, IRs 25,000 for travelling purposes and 50,000 for medical facilities.

The demands of Indian currency in winter season rises as lot of Nepalis opt to go for pilgrimages in various Indian sites. The demand of Indian currency through the banking channel is IRs 10 million per day.

--IANS

giri/vd
Republicans, Democrats unite behind Trump to attack UN

United States,Politics,Diplomacy, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

United Nations, Jan 6 (IANS) The deeply divided Democrats and Republicans have rallied behind US President-elect Donald Trump in the House of Representatives to denounce the UN for a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for building settlements on the occupied territories.

The House resolution passed on Thursday was also a rebuke to President Barack Obama who refused to have the UN resolution vetoed. The resolution was adopted 342 to 80, with 109 Democrats rebelling against their president to back it.

The Senate was also expected to pass a similar resolution, serving another warning to the world body from its biggest contributor.

The resolution also demanded that the UN rescind the resolution adopted by the Security council on December 23 with US abstaining and the other 14 members voting for it.

Behind the House measure is a threat from the UN's largest funder that it could start cutting its payments to the world body. The US contributes 22 percent of the general UN budget and 28.6 per cent of the funds for peacekeeping operations.

Before the vote, Trump had asked the Obama administration to veto the resolution. The US has traditionally blocked resolutions critical of its closes ally Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the refusal to veto saying that settlement building in the territories captured by Israel during the 1967 war was an obstruction to the Middle East peace process as it hinged on a two-state solution that requires the creation of a Palestinian nation.

After the UN vote, Trump vowed in a tweet: "As to the UN, things will be different after January 20," the day he takes over as president.

In a sentiment shared widely in the US regardless of party affiliations, House Speaker Paul Ryan lamented on Thursday: "This government, our government, abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most."

In a jab at Obama, Ryan said the resolution would pave the way to "repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN".

Trump articulates the general scepticism in the US about the UN by mocking it as a "just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time".

Trump and the new Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had a phone conversation, which a UN spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said was an "introductory call" that "went quite well".

But Trump's spokesperson Sean Spicer speaking to reporters after the meeting said that as the biggest contributor to the UN budget the Washington can demand some "reforms and changes" to make it more efficient.

Efforts had already begun in the Senate to cut UN finances. Senator Lindsey Graham, who heads the subcommittee that controls allocations for the UN had said that he would have the funds suspended or cut if the Security Council resolution passed.

Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain suggested this week that the US could start by reducing contributions meant for the UN Human rights Commission because many human rights violators are on it.

After the UNESCO admitted Palestine as a full member in 2011 over US objections, Congress cut off all funds for it, crippling many of its operations because it got more than a fifth of budget from the US. The Obama administration has not succeeded in getting the legislature to restore the funds

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

abl/ksk/vm
Seoul to deploy laser weapons to target N.Korean drones

South Korea,Defence/Security, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Seoul, Jan 6 (IANS) South Korea is set to deploy new laser weapons with the aim of shooting down North Korean drones, defence officials said on Friday.

The South Korean government wants to strengthen its defence system on suspicions that North Korea has sent several unmanned aerial vehicles near the border areas in recent years, in what Seoul considers to be reconnaissance missions, Efe news reported.

Pyongyang has denied being the owner of the devices, but Seoul insists that its neighbouring country is building larger drones capable of being operated by remote control, the officials said.

The South Korean government estimates that North Korea has about 300 drones and a dozen flying machines capable of carrying out attacks with weapons which could be used as remote-controlled missiles, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Drones are a source of concern for South Korea, as their relatively small size and ability to fly low make them difficult to pick up by radars, and even when they are detected, it is difficult to shoot them down with conventional anti-aircraft weapons.

Since 2014, South Korea has found the remains of several of these devices in the vicinity of the border, one of such devices came to fly and photograph the South Korean presidential residence undetected.

In January 2016, a week after Pyongyang held its fourth nuclear test, the South Korean Army responded with warning shots at a North Korean drone that infiltrated briefly in its territory.

--IANS

ksk
Aircels 2G licence proposed to cancel by SC

New Delhi, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 NI Wire

A Malaysian company which is working in Indian Networking since decade, Aircels 2 G spectrum licence has been in danger. The Supreme Court proposed to cancel the licence of Aircel 2 G spectrum in the running case of Aircel-Maxis in which Anant Krishnan is charged and a warrant was declared against him. The Supreme Court issued a warrant against him in which he is bounded to present in the court and if he will not come then court will cancel the Aircels 2 G spectrum.

A bench headed by the Chief Justice of India J. S. Khehar said Krishnan and Marshal would not allowed to frustrate the due course of law by avoiding to appear before the court and also restrained the transfer of 2 G spectrum originally granted to Aircel to any other entity.

Significantly Anant Krishnan is a partner of a company named as Aircel which provide network in India whereas Ralph Marshal and a Malaysian company are another partner. The Supreme Court proposed to cancel the licence of Aircel 2 G after Anant Krishnan and his one-time key aide Augustus Ralph Marshal avoided to appear in the court.

The court said, the Ministry of Information and Technology would devise and means by which the 2 G licence originally granted to Aircel could be provisionally transferred to any other service provider, so that subscribers might not suffer any adverse consequences.

The Supreme Court made it clear to Krishnan and Marshal that they would not be permitted to raise any issue of financial loss, that they might suffer on account of the proposed cancellation of the 2 G licence and spectrum granted to Aircel in November 2006. The court adjusted the next hearing on the matter on February 3.

--with agency inputs
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Ooredoo Algeria has partnered with Nokia (News - Alert) Corp. to do a field trial of 1.2Tbps optical transmission between Ain Defla and Algiers. That involved the use of Nokias 1830 PSS Portfolio on a link longer than 200 kilometers.





More specifically, the trial employed the Nokia 1830 PSS 500G dense wavelength division multiplexing muxponder. It supports five 100Gbps per line card.

The service provider plans to deploy the technology commercially.

It is critical for Ooredoo to increase the capacity, reach, and flexibility of optical transmissions to offer high-capacity solutions and a superior customer experience, commented Ooredoo Algeria CEO Hendrik Kasteel. Nokia is our long-term partner, and we are confident that [its] proven optical network technology will help us maintain our leadership position in offering the latest and best-in-class technology solutions to our customers.

Indeed. As reported just last month Ooredoo Qatar and Nokia recently worked together to achieve speeds of up to 1gbps using 4.5G Pro technology. According to Nokia, this paves the way toward the commercial launch of 1gbps-capable Category 16 devices in 2017.

The Nokia gear involved was the AirScale radio platform. AirScale, which Nokia introduced in February at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert), is a radio access solution that can run all radio technologies simultaneously on a single base station. It is extremely scalable and requires 60 percent less energy than competing solutions, according to Nokia.

And last fall Ooredoo Myanmar launched 4G services in the major cities of Bagan, Mandalay, Nay Phi Daw, and Yangon. Nokia provided products and services for the deployment in the Yangon region, which is the largest and most populous area in Myanmar.

The Nokia technology involved in that build includes the suppliers Single RAN and Packet Core platforms. That includes Nokia Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Stations. It also consists of the Nokia Packet Core, including the Mobility Manager, Mobile Gateway (News - Alert), and Home Subscriber Server. Nokia completed the network upgrade in what it and Ooredoo indicated was record time.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
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It's a fact that a growing amount of technology in play today requires Internet bandwidth to get the most out of it. Being in an area of low connectivity opens up comparatively fewer opportunities, so to improve access to technologyparticularly next generation communications technologyimproving bandwidth is often a first step. Nigeria has recently illustrated as much, bolstering its 4G LTE (News - Alert) access capability.





Interestingly, Nigeria's push into next generation communications development started as far back as 2012, when Nigeria's government decided it wanted to move into being a cashless society. That's particularly difficult to do without widespread, mainstream use of alternatives like mobile payment systems, and so, Nigeria's first job was to drive development in infrastructure to support such measures.

With a better connectivity infrastructure in place, the country could not only push toward its cashless society ambitions, but also develop new alternatives. Users were often spotted turning to social media as a replacement for voice callingdirect messages through Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert), and other such media helped on that frontand businesses enjoyed having the opportunity to use these interactions as a means to gather data, spot patterns, and make changes accordingly.

Throw in the growing number of potential use cases for such systemsbooking flights, paying bills, or just shopping onlineand it became clear that, if Nigeria wanted to be a cashless society with a lot of new opportunities for citizens to work, save money and invest, it needed better communications infrastructure, which meant a lot of next generation communications development.

Thus, Nigeriavia MTN (News - Alert) Nigeriaput plenty of extra focus in rolling out a complete 4G LTE system to cover several major Nigerian cities and get the most bang for its collective development dollar. The country hopes to have 30 percent of the country covered with broadband access by 2018, which in turn will step up a variety of systems and give Nigeria more to work with.

It's true that Nigeria needs more bandwidth in order to open up new opportunities, and it's likewise clear that it needs to focus development on where it can get the most return for that investment. That generally means city development first. This may only have so much impact, though, as 30 percent development as a goal isn't exactly a broad reach. It's leaving 70 percent of the country uncovered, a clear majority, though if enough of the population is urbanized that may be enough to get the job going.

In the end, it's all about bandwidth. Smart cities require it, Internet of Things (IoT) developments require it, and a host of others do too. Nigeria is stepping up its systems in response, but will this be enough to push Nigeria forward into the next generation of communications?

Edited by Alicia Young
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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Prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) who also doubles as the President of the Presidency Council has called on the Council members to continue pushing ahead and not to abandon their mission. I invite my colleagues in the Presidency Council to unite our efforts in the New Year, we have to move ahead together, there is no retreat. The statement came days after Vice-Prime minister-designate Moussa Kouni resigned from his post citing the inefficiency of the Libyan-based UN-backed bodies as well as the limited authority they have on the ground.

GNAs actions have been stalled by the failure to receive the vote of confidence of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) which has led to its consideration as an illegitimate body in some quarters of the country. The Libyan Political Agreement states that the GNA must be approved by the HoR.

However, there are hopes that the political impasse in the country could soon come to an end after Speaker Aqila Saleh of the HoR said they came to ask for support for the legitimate power in Libya and for the path of dialogue and consensus to be pursued after meeting with his Tunisian counterpart Mohammed Ennaceur. He is expected to meet with the Tunisian president on Friday.

Saleh said the Tobruk-based parliament is prepared to negotiate with all sides (engaged in the Libyan crisis) on the condition that its dignity and territorial integrity are preserved while applauding the holding of the proposed summit of foreign ministers of neighboring states in Libya.

That process could be blocked by the increasing hostilities between the Libya National Army (LNA) loyal to the HoR and forces in Misrata. The Misrata Municipal Council in what could be considered as a war declaration labeled the commander of the LNA, Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, as a war criminal and accused him of undermining the security and stability of the homeland, and the cultivation of sedition and terror among its citizens. They have called for the mobilization of Misrata forces and fighters against his troops, which bombarded a military transport aircraft, containing several high-ranking Misrata council members, at the Jufra air base on Tuesday.

The fate of Haftar has been a stumbling block to approval of the LPA by the Tobruk-based parliament.
As soon as Morocco expressed and submitted its reintegration request to the African Union, panic spread among the kingmakers in the Algerian regime amid prospects of an upcoming eviction of the Polisario from the pan-African organisation, France-based Algerian journalist Farid Alilat wrote on Jeune Afrique magazine.

The journalist, who is well versed on Algerian domestic politics, gave an analysis showing Algerias desperate schemes to foil Moroccos bid to regain its legitimate place within Africas institutional family. Citing several editorials of Algerian regime mouthpieces such as EL Moujahid newspaper, Farid Alilat writes that the military junta in Algiers is set on hindering Moroccos African endeavor.

Alilat notes that Algerian officials have been so far orchestrating a propaganda campaign through the media claiming that Moroccos return to the African union will create divisions within the organization.

Moreover, Algerian media and diplomacy has indulged in a vicious circle of terminology manipulation by saying that Morocco is rather seeking an adhesion or integration of the African union instead of a reintegration or return.

In this respect, the journalist quotes Ramtane Lamamra, Algerias foreign minister saying that Morocco is welcome as a 55th member of the African union on an equal footing in rights and obligations with the other current 54 members.

The journalist notes, however, that the Algerian political class is not unanimous in showing hostility to Morocco. Lakhdar Brahimi, Algerian United Nations diplomat and former foreign minister, recently called for normalizing ties with Morocco and opening the closed land borders.

The Polisario Front has been warned by one of its continental backers that there are odds that its seat as member of the African Union is at risk as several countries aligned with Morocco are set to vote for the eviction of the separatist front and its self-proclaimed pseudo Sahrawi Republic (SADR) from the Union.

A team led by Legal Affairs Adviser of the outgoing chairperson of the African Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has travelled to Tindouf camp in Algeria to inform members of the separatist movement of the future loss of their seat within the pan-African organization, Moroccan daily Assabah reported recently.

At the latest African Union summit, 28 states expressed full support for Moroccos reintegration of the African institutional family and called for suspending the membership of the Algerian-backed polisario separatist entity. The number of backers of Moroccos return to the AU has since then increased to about 40.
Moroccan authorities ordered the closure of schools affiliated to the group led by the US-based Turkish controversial preacher, Fethullah Gulen.

Investigations on the establishments of the Mohamed Al-Fatih group, linked to Turkish national Fethullah Gulen, showed that they use education to spread the groups ideology and ideas contrary to the principles of the Moroccan educational and religious system, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Moroccan authorities took the decision to close these schools after their administrations failed to abide by a series of warnings from the education ministry.

It was decided all the groups educational establishments will be closed within a month, the statement said.

The education ministry said that the students currently pursuing their studies in Gulens schools will be integrated in Moroccan schools.

Gulen heads a group called Hizmet. Turkey labels the group as the Fetfullah Terror Organization (FETO) and blamed its leader for staging a failed coup last summer.

Last August, several media reports said that the Turkish Embassy in Rabat provided information and urged Morocco to close the Gulen-affiliated schools.
These protestors now know their cause is right up there with repealing Obamacare in the 115th Congress. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

House Speaker Paul Ryan resolved a significant if obscure mystery today by disclosing that congressional Republicans did indeed plan to prohibit federal funds for the non-abortion services of Planned Parenthood in the same budget reconciliation bill that will repeal the Affordable Care Act.

That news was not a big surprise since the reconciliation bill last year that served as a trial run for this effort included the Planned Parenthood defunding alongside an Obamacare repeal. These two pet causes for conservatives were, after all, big enough that many of them were willing to shut down the federal government or risk a debt default to achieve both of them in recent years.

But until Ryan spoke, it was not entirely a sure thing that the attack of Planned Parenthood had made the first cut as a congressional GOP target in the Trump Era. And you did have to wonder if Donald Trumps own famous flip-flopping over Planned Parenthood was causing problems behind the scenes, leading to pressure on Ryan to show his cards.

Now that he has, the door could be wide open for Democrats to offer amendments to the budget resolution during the vote-a-rama in the Senate (a period of frantic back-to-back votes without debate on unlimited amendments that can happen on any budget resolution). Even if none of them pass, they will place Republican senators on the record with votes for or against protecting Obamas most popular provisions, and if the effort gets some attention, could convince congressional Republican leaders to leave some of said items alone.

That wont happen with respect to Planned Parenthood, given the many votes Republicans have already cast to kill federal funding for the organization. But if Democrats are smart they will force their Republican colleagues to vote against womens health programs anyway.
POTUS. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Its been less than five months since Donald Trump became commander-in-chief. But for the presidents detractors, its felt like centuries  long medieval centuries chock-full of plague, illiteracy, and barbarians running roughshod through the ruins of the old republic. But we arent actually living in the dark ages (yet). So we might as well shed some light on what the barbarians have been up to.

Trump has given progressives so many causes for fear and outrage, it can be difficult  both practically and psychologically  to keep on top of them all as they happen.

To help you stay informed despite this challenge, Daily Intelligencer will provide regular inventories of Trumps assaults on civic norms, common decency, and/or liberal democracy. Here is a rundown of everything the president has done on that front in the period between April 28 (the date of our last edition of Terrifying Things) and June 9, arranged in rough order of each affronts apparent significance and severity. Prior editions can be found below.



Fired the director of the FBI for failing to demonstrate personal loyalty to him.

The president has the authority to fire the director of the FBI. But before last month, that authority had only been exercised once  and in that case, Bill Clinton only fired William S. Sessions after a Justice Department investigation found him guilty of flagrant ethical violations.

Historically, presidents have avoided firing the head of the FBI out of respect for federal law enforcements independence. After all, FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely to ensure a measure of distance from the Oval Offices occupant.

Respect for the rule of law has also, typically, prevented presidents from demanding the FBI directors personal loyalty; suggesting that he demonstrate that loyalty by dropping investigations into White House allies; and then firing the head of federal law enforcement for failing to honor such requests.

But Donald Trump is not a typical president. And so, he did precisely that.

The president did not give James Comey the opportunity to resign. Instead, the FBI director learned of his unemployment when his gaze drifted to a television monitor, in the middle of speech to bureau employees in Los Angeles. Comey laughed, and complimented the officers on a fairly funny prank. Then someone asked him to step into a nearby office.

Meanwhile, the White House had the chutzpah to claim it had fired Comey because he had been unfair to (Crooked) Hillary Clinton during the investigation of her email server. Last October, Jeff Sessions had applauded Comeys handling of that investigation. But then, the attorney general had also recused himself from the Russia investiation  and this did not stop him from advising the president to fire the man leading that inquiry.

But the bizarre nature of Comeys ouster was far less significant than the reasons behind it. By all accounts  including, to some extent, his own  Trump seemed to view the FBI director as his private detective and/or PR representative. When the president accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phone  an allegation made on the basis of news articles that he had misread  Trump was reportedly furious that Comey wouldnt publicly vouch for his baseless felony accusation.

According to accounts from Comey and his associates, Trump asked the FBI director to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn; redirect the bureaus resources toward combating leaks to the press; and consider imprisoning journalists who report on classified information.

According to the president himself, Comeys firing was the direct result of the FBI directors handling of the investigation into his campaign.

When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, Trump told NBC Newss Lester Holt, contradicting the White Houses narrative  and, arguably, confessing to obstruction of justice.

Tried to intimidate his former FBI director into silence by threatening to release secret recordings of their conversations.

After Comeys associates told the New York Times that Trump had demanded a loyalty pledge, the president sought to prove that he wasnt an amateur authoritarian, by tweeting this:

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Encouraged Americas intelligence chiefs to undermine the FBIs Russia probe.

Trump also, reportedly, asked Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to kill the FBIs investigation into Comey for him. As the Washington Post reported:

On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.



The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comeys handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.

At a Senate Intelligence Hearing this week, Coats was asked whether the president had ever requested that he encourage Comey to back off the FBIs investigation of Flynn.

I dont believe its appropriate for me to address that in a public session, Coats said.

Undermined international cooperation on climate change  and Americas credibility on the world stage  out of mindless spite.

The Trump administration was always going to sabotage the Paris climate accord. You cant put a climate-change denier in charge of the EPA without jeopardizing the international communitys collective commitment to curbing emissions.

Still, there were more and less destructive ways for the president to go about expediting the onset of ecological catastrophe. Since the Paris agreement is non-binding, and allows its signatories to set their own emissions targets, Trump could have rolled back Obamas Clean Power Plan, slashed funding for renewable energy, and, heck, established a tax credit to incentive rolling coal  all without forcing the United States to join Syria and Nicaragua at the climate-pariahs table.

In fact, by remaining in the agreement, Trump may have been better able to advance the interests of the American energy industry, which must compete in foreign markets, and, thus, comply with international regulations. Big Oil implored Trump to remain in the agreement for precisely this reason.

But keeping the U.S. in the agreement would have made it harder for Trump to damage our nations credibility as a diplomatic player; cede moral authority to Beijing; make Steve Bannon smile; and, most critically, perform his independence from globalists in a jingoistic Rose Garden speech, full of demagogic lies about how our European allies had used climate change as an excuse to steal our nations wealth.

In the end, giving a middle finger to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel  and validation to his partys most reactionary billionaires and troglodytic info-warriors  proved more important to the president than anything else.

Mendaciously accused Londons first Muslim mayor of being indifferent to terrorism, hours after a terrorist attack in London.

When news first broke of the attack at London Bridge last Saturday, the president of the United States retweeted an unsubstantiated report from Matt Drudge; reiterated his call for banning immigration from several Muslim countries; and suggested that a low-casualty attack committed by men with knives somehow validated his opposition to gun control.

He also, briefly, expressed solidarity with the people of London.

Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there - WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2017

The morning after the attack, London mayor Sadiq Khan told his constituents that they shouldnt be alarmed if they see an increased police presence in the city, as the mobilization of law enforcement was strictly precautionary.

Shortly thereafter, Trump ostensibly decided that the best way for him to help out would be to take Khans words out of context, and suggest that Londons first Muslim mayor views terrorist attacks with blithe indifference.

At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017

When reporters and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic dared to note the context of Khans remarks, Trump doubled down on his attack.

Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

Trump has said things so patently dishonest, they undermine the very concept of objective reality. He has made dog-whistle appeals to anti-Muslim animus that validate the worldviews of white supremacists and ISIS militants alike. And he has crassly exploited public tragedies to stoke fears of vulnerable minority groups.

In his tweet about Khan, Trump managed to do all three.

Shared highly classified Israeli intelligence with a core ally of Israels top geopolitical foe.

The president does not like homework. In deference to this fact, national security officials have tried to condense Trumps briefings to single-page lists of bullet points. But even these test his patience.

And so, Trump tends to wing his high-level diplomatic meetings, deciding what is or is not wise to say to his counterparts on a whim. On the morning after firing James Comey, Trump deemed it prudent to tell Russias ambassador and foreign minister that his former FBI director was a nut job whose departure would take great pressure off of him.

Then, he decided to let the Kremlin in on the hot new ISIS gossip. Specifically, Trump shared highly classified intelligence that Israel had provided to the United States, on the condition that it not be shared without Israeli permission. Trumps disclosure was so detailed, Putins regime could plausibly deduce the sources and methods that Israel had used to produce it.

This was alarming to Israel, since Russia is a top ally of its enemies in Tehran. And it was also alarming to U.S. intelligence officials, since Trumps violation of Israels trust threatens to jeopardize intelligence-sharing agreements on which the American spy state depends.

Then, accidentally, publicly confirmed that he had done so.

Still, when Trump arrived in Jerusalem, no one in the U.S. or Israeli government had publicly confirmed that he had spilled Israels beans. Best to retain official ambiguity, the two governments ostensibly reasoned, even if extensive reporting made Trumps unauthorized disclosure difficult to deny.

But then some Israeli journalists shouted questions about the matter at the end of a Trump-Netanyahu photo op  and the president decided to defend himself by accidentally, implicitly confirming that hed let Russia in on the Jewish states secrets.

Just so you understand, Trump said,just so you understand  I never mentioned the word or the name Israel in conversation. Never mentioned it.

His comments just confirmed it was Israel something no U.S official had admitted!! https://t.co/duwH9S6sEI  Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) May 22, 2017

Abandoned an alliance with a longtime Middle East ally over Twitter.

Donald Trump went to Saudi Arabia last month with the goals of securing a lucrative arms sale for Americas weapons manufacturers, and winning a commitment from the leaders of the Arab World to cease abetting Islamic extremism.

Or, more precisely: Trump went to Riyadh with the goal of appearing to do those things. The presidents disinterest in actually cracking down state sponsors of terrorism was reflected in his silence about the Saudis role in financing the spread of Wahhabism. And his contentment to project the appearance of a diplomatic breakthrough over an actual one was confirmed by the ersatz nature of his $110 billion arms deal.

Shortly after Trump left, the Saudis decided to exploit the presidents indifference to reality. Riyadh organized a blockade against Qatar, on the grounds that Doha was uniquely guilty of aiding terrorist groups in the Middle East. In truth, the Saudis actions are rooted in a long-standing regional rivalry with Qatar, and resentment of Dohas occasional openness to engaging with Iran.

But Trump proved powerless to resist an opportunity to declare his own success.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

These were problematic tweets.

Qatar is an ally of the United States  one that is allowing the U.S. to run its air operations over Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan from a giant military base outside Doha.

Trump, who has claimed to know more about ISIS than the generals, seems to have been ignorant of this fact when he disavowed Qatar over Twitter.

MSNBC reporting White House sources says Trump "may not have known" the US has troops based in Qatar.  Simon Marks (@SimonMarksFSN) June 8, 2017

Praised a foreign leader for his policy of sanctioning the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers and users.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is a self-avowed murderer, whose regime has encouraged police and vigilante gangs to exterminate whomever they deem to be drug dealers.

Trump had already displayed a malign indifference to this policy, praising Dutertes leadership and inviting him to visit the White House (over the outraged objections of human rights groups and U.S. senators). But last month, we learned that in a late-April phone call with Duterte, Trump praised his counterpart specifically for treating a public-health problem with mass murder.

I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem, Trump told Duterte, according to a transcript obtained by the Intercept. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.

Released a budget with a $2 trillion math error.

The White Houses official budget dramatically increases military spending; maintains Medicare and Social Security retirement benefits at their current levels; radically reduces taxes on the rich; and, according to the Trump administration, balances the federal budget within ten years.

If that last point strikes you as mathematically incompatible with the previous ones, then you may be too numerate to work in the Trump administration.

The White House budget director Mick Mulvaney did his best to resolve Trumpisms fiscal contradictions. The Trump budget proposes cuts to to federal agencies and anti-poverty programs so draconian, multiple Republicans declared them dead on arrival.

Unfortunately for Mulvaney (and Americas poor), the United States spends very little money on feeding, clothing, and housing its least fortunate. And so, the White House was forced to repeal the laws of arithmetic.

The Trump budget (baselessly) assumes that his enormous supply-side tax cut will pay for itself, by generating $2 trillion in growth-induced revenue gains. It also assumes that the estate tax will generate $328 billion in revenue over the next decade, even though the White Houses official tax plan abolishes that revenue stream. But even with the supply-side voodoo and Schrodingers death tax, the Trump budget still comes $2 trillion shy of balancing.

And so, it just counts the $2 trillion thats supposed to pay for its tax cuts a second time.

Mulvaney later justified this apparent error by saying, I wouldnt take whats in the budget as indicative of what our proposals are.

Shoved the prime minister of Montenegro out of his way, so that he could stand at the front of a group of NATO leaders.

Disputed the Office of Government Ethicss legal authority to oversee government ethics.

In one of his first official acts as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting all lobbyists and industry lawyers hired as political appointees from working on issues that involve their former clients.

Trump proceeded to appoint dozens of lobbyists and industry lawyers to positions throughout the government, granting many of them special waivers allowing them to work on issues that involve their former clients.

By itself, this sequence of moves was not wholly unusual. The Obama administration did allow some ex-lobbyists to flout its own, very similar ethics rule. But any time the Democratic administration provided such a waiver, it automatically published a detailed explanation as to why an exception was being made. These justifications typically cited the unique skill set of the individual in question, and/or the fact that the individuals new responsibilities would only bring her into peripheral contact with her former employers interests.

Trump, by contrast, has not only failed to offer a public justification for his waivers, but also neglected to disclose which members of his staff have received waivers, and which have not.

Without such information, its impossible for the Office of Government Ethics to know who is and is not flouting the administrations own ethics rule.

So, the OGE asked all federal agencies (including the White House) to provide a copy of every ethics waiver theyve issued by June 1. The office has clear legal authority to request such information. In fact, data requests are OGEs primary tool for providing ethical oversight.

However, the office does not have the power to take enforcement actions against agencies that refuse to honor its requests. Which is to say: The OGEs capacity to police federal ethics has always depended on norms of cooperation, not legal powers.

And the Trump administration has little use for norms.

This data call appears to raise legal questions regarding the scope of O.G.E.s authorities, Trumps director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney wrote in a letter to the ethics office. I therefore request that you stay the data call until these questions are resolved.

Allowed the Justice Department to prosecute a woman for laughing at Jeff Sessions.

At the attorney generals confirmation hearing in January, Alabama senator Richard Shelby claimed that Jeff Sessionss history of treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.

Shelbys claim made Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz laugh. This was a wholly appropriate response: Jeff Sessionss history of treating African-Americans unequally is clear and well-documented.

Federal prosecutors decided that Fairoozs laugh amounted to willful disorderly and disruptive conduct intended to impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct of congressional proceedings.

She was prosecuted and convicted, and may soon find herself in jail.

Knowingly hired a paid agent of the Turkish government as his national security adviser.

Last month, we learned that Michael Flynn informed the Trump administration that he was under investigation for secretly lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests  and the president decided to appoint him to one of the most powerful national security posts in the government, anyway.

Flynn then used his short time in office to veto a plan for retaking the Islamic States de facto capital, despite the plans strong support from the Pentagon and Obama administration. The operation would have involved partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces  a prospect vehemently opposed by Turkeys government, for domestic political reasons.

Signed Yad Vashems Book of Remembrance as though it were a middle-school yearbook.

The Trump administration is awkward about the Holocaust. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House released a statement that didnt mention Jews. Its press secretary once argued that Adolf Hitlers use of chemical weapons was less outrageous than Bashar al-Assads, because at least the former never used poison gas on his own people (Hitler only used that stuff at his Holocaust centers, Sean Spicer explained).

So, it wasnt terribly surprising that Trump refused to allot more than 15 minutes for his trip to Yad Vashem, Israels Holocaust museum. Nor was it unexpected that his inscription in the museums book of remembrance would be less than moving. But it was still a bit odd that he signed said document as though it were the guest book at a bar mitzvah.

This is @realDonaldTrump's message in Yad Vashem's Book of Remembrance. "So amazing + will NEVER FORGET!"

(He forgot: "See you next summer") pic.twitter.com/XcGbR88PXV  Raoul Wootliff (@RaoulWootliff) May 23, 2017

As Times of Israel reporter Raoul Wootliff notes, Barack Obama struck a slightly different note during his trip to Yad Vashem.

For context - this is Obama's message during his presidential visit in 2013 pic.twitter.com/cpYOXgX5w8  Raoul Wootliff (@RaoulWootliff) May 23, 2017



























PREVIOUS ENTRIES:



(March 28 through April 28)





Baselessly accused President Obamas national security adviser of committing a crime  after his White House conspired with the head of the House Intelligence Committee to foment a false scandal.

On Monday, March 20, James Comey revealed that the FBI was investigating ties between Donald Trumps campaign and the Russian government. A little over 24 hours later, the Republican tasked with leading the Houses investigation into Russian hacking, Devin Nunes, was invited onto the White House grounds. There, administration officials provided him with access to classified intelligence reports. And what Nunes saw shook him to the core.

The contents of those reports were so alarming, the House Intelligence Committee chair brought them to publics attention the next day, even before sharing them with his fellow committee members. Nunes proceeded to personally brief the president  an ostensible subject of his own investigation into Russian interference  on what he had learned. These actions jeopardized the integrity of the Houses investigation. And they may also have constituted an unlawful disclosure of classified information. That latter issue, eventually, forced Nunes to step aside from his committees Russia inquiry.

But all this was a small price to pay for bringing the terrible truth to the American public: Some members of the Trump transition team were incidentally surveilled when they contacted foreign agents who had already caught the eye of the American spy state. Granted, thats perfectly legal. But when private citizens have their communications incidentally collected, their identities are supposed to be masked in intelligence reports, unless there is intelligence value in unmasking them. And these reports revealed the names of Trump team members  and did so unnecessarily, at least in Nuness opinion.

Later, Bloomberg revealed that former national security adviser Susan Rice  an official who has the legal authority to unmask names in intelligence reports  ordered the unmasking of the names of Trump officials in some intelligence reports.

Conservative media outlets heralded this news as a vindication of Trumps claim that Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones during the 2016 election, even though Nuness darkest insinuations did not vindicate a single detail of that claim. The White House declared itself shocked and awed: Nunes hadnt merely uncovered a scandal far greater than alleged collusion between a presidential campaign and a hostile foreign government  but one bigger than that which took down Nixon.

Watergate was a little spat in the sandbox in the kindergarten compared to what Susan Rice had done, White House aide Sebastian Gorka told Fox News. The president suggested that Rice had committed a crime, insisting that he would share supporting evidence for that allegation at the right time.

And then, House members not named Devin Nunes were finally given access to the incriminating documents:

After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN  One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as normal and appropriate for officials who serve in that role to the president.

Anonymous intelligence sources told the New Yorkers Ryan Lizza a more detailed version of the same story:

What the intercepts all had in common is that the people being spied on made references to Donald Trump or to Trump officials. That wasnt even clear, though, from reading the transcriptsThe Trump names remain masked in the documents, and Rice would not have been able to know in all cases that she was asking the N.S.A. to unmask the names of Trump officials.



The intelligence source told me that he knows, from talking to people in the intelligence community, that the White House said, We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the Presidents tweet that he was being surveilled. They put out an all-points bulletina call to sift through intelligence reportsand said, We need to find something that justifies the Presidents crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower. And Im telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.

If Lizzas reporting is true  and, as of this writing, no outlet has published anything to contradict it  then the White House leaked and misrepresented classified intelligence material so as to validate a presidential tweet, and disrupt the Houses investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Then, on the basis of those misrepresentations, the president publicly suggested that the previous administrations national security adviser was a criminal.

But the most shocking aspect of the whole faux surveillance-scandal saga may be this: The Trump White House produces novel outrages at such a frenetic clip, an apparent conspiracy between the Executive branch and a high-ranking member Congress to mislead the public and defame the previous administration dropped out of news cycle days after it was reported.

On the 96th day of his presidency, unveiled a tax-reform plan that was less detailed than the blueprint he had campaigned on.

After three months in office, most presidents have at least introduced  if not passed  multiple pieces of major legislation. Trump failed to secure so much as a House vote for Paul Ryans health-care plan. And the administration has yet to even translate its second priority  the one that the White House planned to take the lead on and that nobody knows more than Donald Trump about  into a proposal more substantial than the presidents detail-less campaign plan.

This week, the administration tried to pretend otherwise. Anxious to demonstrate progress ahead of his 100th day, Trump blindsided his advisers by promising that his tax package would be unveiled on Wednesday of this week. The presidents budget director, Mick Mulvaney, had said that it might be June before the administration released a detailed plan, and that even broad principles would likely be weeks away.

But in a reality stars White House, optics trump policy. And so the administration scrambled to put together a broad outline of its vision to radically reform the worlds largest national economy.

The result was as audaciously regressive as expected. Trumps proposal amounted to a blueprint for a raid on the federal treasury  one that would deliver the lions share of its spoils to the wealthiest individuals and businesses in the United States, while tossing a few bucks in hush money to the witnesses in the middle class. And almost no one would stand to benefit more from this heist than the president himself: By abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax, repealing the Estate Tax, and slashing the top rate on pass-through businesses to 15 percent, Trump stands to gain tens of millions of dollars from his reform  while his children are poised to gain multiple billion.

Less ethically dubious, but decidedly more surprising, was how bereft of substance the plan was. At the proposals unveiling, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn and Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said, over and over, how much time and effort the administration had put into tax reform. And then, they handed out a less substantive version of the plan Trump campaigned on last fall.

The administrations proposal included virtually no ideas for how to offset the multitrillion dollar hole its regressive tax cuts would generate. It did not explain how the administration plans to prevent high-income individuals from abusing the new pass-through rate by reframing their salaries as business income. Instead, the plan merely stipulates that a subsequent version will definitely solve that problem. Most stunningly, the plan calls for consolidating Americas seven income-tax brackets into three, but doesnt propose any specific income bands for those brackets.

In one sense, this incompetence may be comforting. Trumps ambitions for tax reform are repugnant to all but the small minority of Americans who believe that income and wealth are distributed too equally in this country. If the White House is incapable of actually developing their plan into a coherent, politically tenable piece of legislation, perhaps thats all for the best.

But at some point in the next four years, Americans of all ideological stripes are going to be invested in the competence of their countrys Executive branch. In the wake of a natural disaster or economic crisis, blue America will not benefit from the White Houses ineptitude. And this weeks tax-reform presentation suggests that this administration is more inept than many of its harshest critics ever realized.

Threatened to sabotage Americas insurance markets as a means of coercing Democrats into voting for his plan to finance a large tax cut for the rich by throwing millions off of Medicaid.

Earlier this month, Trump announced that he planned to use the powers of his office to jeopardize health-care access for millions of low-income people, while destabilizing Americas insurance markets  because he believed that voters would blame the ensuing chaos on the Democratic Party, leaving Chuck Schumer desperate to negotiate with the White House over Obamacare repeal. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

In an interview in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the White House may lack authority to make the payments established under his predecessor to reduce copayments and deductibles for some of the poorest customers who buy insurance under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Cutting off the payments could trigger turmoil in insurance markets.



I dont want people to get hurt, Mr. Trump said. What I think should happenand will happenis the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.

There were a couple obvious problems with Trumps gambit:

(1) The presidents hostage and his ransom were the same thing: He threatened to cut off health-insurance subsidies for poor people if Democrats didnt vote for his health-care plan, which significantly reduces health-insurance subsidies for poor people.

(2) It would be hard to convince the public to blame Democrats for Obamacares destruction, after you publicly declared your intention to destroy Obamacare so that people would blame the Democrats for what you did. And, in fact, polls suggest that large majorities of Americans would blame Trump for anything bad that happens to the American health-care system under his watch.

As of this writing, the president appears to have discerned these facts, and promised to continue the Obamacare payments, at least for now. But the fact that the president mulled deliberately hurting his constituents for (wholly imaginary) partisan gain is unnerving.

Said he was absolutely considering breaking up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Wednesday, a federal district court judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing its (essentially toothless) executive order denying federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities.

Weeks earlier, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down Trumps travel ban. And so, when the president heard that another one of his executive orders had been repudiated by the Judicial branch, he didnt waste time reading an actual news report on the details of the ruling  he already knew which court was responsible.

First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017

Out of our very big country, with many choices, does everyone notice that both the "ban" case and now the "sanctuary" case is brought in ...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017

...the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%). They used to call this "judge shopping!" Messy system.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017

Of course, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did not, in fact, rule on the sanctuary cities order (courts of appeals tend to prefer to rule on, well, appeals).

But that didnt stop Trump from telling the Washington Examiner that he had absolutely looked into breaking up the 9th Circuit Court, noting, There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. Its outrageous.

Typically, respect for the separation of powers prevents presidents from threatening to disband courts that rule against them (while respect for objective reality prevents presidents from criticizing courts for rulings that they never actually made).

But Donald Trump is not a typical president.

Decided to upend the North American economy to win a desired headline  then changed his mind when he was informed that people who voted for him would be among those most adversely impacted by such a measure.

Earlier this week, Trump was readying plans to announce Americas withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement. This decision was inspired by the presidents desire to be able to announce he was making good on a major campaign promise during a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night, his 100th day in office, White House advisers told the New York Times.

You know I was really ready and psyched to terminate NAFTA, Trump told Reuters. I was all set to terminate  I looked forward to terminating. I was going to do it.

But just before the president ripped up the foundation governing $1.3 trillion in annual trade flows, his advisers suggested that he first consider the economic consequences of such an action.

[Agriculture Secretary Sonny] Perdue even brought along a prop to the Oval Office: A map of the United States that illustrated the areas that would be hardest hit, particularly from agriculture and manufacturing losses, and highlighting that many of those states and counties were Trump country communities that had voted for the president in November.



It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good, Trump recalled. They like Trump, but I like them, and Im going to help them.

And, thus, NAFTA was saved.

That Trump considered radically disrupting economic and diplomatic relations on the North American continent without giving much thought to either is discomfiting. But his rationale for scrapping that idea is, too.

On the night of his election, Trump promised every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans. Now, he has publicly suggested that he makes policy decisions not on the basis of what would be best for the United States, but rather, what would benefit that portion of the country that likes him.

Refused to turn over documents on his first national security advisers financial relationships with foreign governments, despite requests from the House Oversight Committee.

Michael Flynns tenure as national security adviser was cut short by revelations that he had misled Vice-President Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Weeks after his departure, Flynn acknowledged that he had been on the payroll of the Turkish government while serving as a top surrogate and adviser to Trumps campaign  even as the GOP standard-bearer accused his rival of making pay-to-play arrangements with foreign governments.

Weeks after that, news broke that Flynn had neglected to list three Russia-linked sources of income  including $45,000 in speaking fees from the Kremlin-backed RT news network  in his legally required White House ethics forms.

Both of those actions appear to have contravened federal law, House Oversight Committee chair Jason Chaffetz told reporters this week. As a former general, Flynn was required to seek the governments permission before accepting payments from a foreign government. Then, after accepting the foreign payments, Flynn had a legal obligation to disclose them fully before taking a job with the Trump administration.

To further its investigation into Flynns apparent misconduct, the Oversight Committee asked the White House for access to Flynns security clearance paperwork, receipts from payments he received from foreign governments, and other documents related to the hiring and firing of the former national security adviser.

The Trump administration has refused to honor a single one of those requests, informing the committee that it was unable to provide the desired documents, as some of the papers were not in its custody or control while others were likely to contain classified information.

The White House has refused to provide this committee with a single piece of paper, the committees ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings said Tuesday. And that is simply unacceptable.

Allowed the State Departments website to advertise his Florida resort.

Donald Trumps Florida resort has amply monetized its owners newfound public power. The clubs annual membership fee has doubled since Election Day, while the president has used virtually every major meeting with a foreign dignitary as an occasion to showcase his for-profit business. And for a brief period this month, the State Department even advertised Trumps resort on one of its official, government webpages.

The page offered a triumphalist version of the propertys history  one in which the resorts former owner, cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, had always dreamed that her home would be used as a vacation spot for American presidents. Posts dream of a winter White House came true with Trumps election in 2016, the government website explained.

The page was quickly removed following public complaints.

When measured against Trumps other outrages, this incident may appear unremarkable. But if one measures it against precedent instead  and imagines how the public would have reacted to Barack Obama plugging Dreams From My Father as recommended summer reading on the Education Departments official website  the absurd impropriety of the thing becomes stark.

Had his daughter meet with the Chinese president the same day that her company won trademarks from the Chinese government.

On April 6, White House adviser Ivanka Trumps company won three trademarks from the Chinese government. That night, she dined with the Chinese president at her fathers resort. Shortly thereafter, president Trump announced that China was not actually a currency manipulator, and was really, probably, doing all it could to pressure North Korea over the latters nuclear program  dizzying reversals from the administrations previous positions.

There was a time when the mere appearance of corruption was considered an intolerable affront to our democracy.

Referred to several different North Korean leaders as this gentleman.

In the early 1990s, Bill Clinton negotiated a deal to curb North Koreas nuclear program with the nations dictator Kim Il-Sung. That deal was signed in October 1994, after Il-Sungs death had brought his son, Kim Jong-il to power. In 2011, Jong-il died, and his son, Kim Jong-un became North Koreas leader.

Our president is, apparently, unaware of this basic history: Recently, Trump gave an interview to Fox News in which he suggested that North Korea has had the same leader for more than two decades:

I hope things work out well. I hope theres going to be peace, but you know, theyve been talking with this gentleman for a long time. You read Clintons book, he said, Oh we made such a great peace deal, and it was a joke. You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybodys been outplayed, theyve all been outplayed by this gentleman and well see what happens. But I just dont telegraph my moves.

To be fair to Trump, its possible that he believes the soul of the Supreme Leader is indivisible and eternal  passing from father-to-son at the moment of the formers death, such that the gentleman in power remains forever the same.

But whether Trump lapsed into momentary ignorance of basic North Korean history  or believes that Kim Jong-un is a kind of deity  the mogul probably isnt the ideal commander-in-chief for America to have, as Pyongyang creeps closer to possessing a nuclear missile capable of reaching the coast of California.

Praised a cable-news anchor who was fired for serial sexual harassment, days after declaring April National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

One day after Trump made his declaration, the New York Times reported that Bill OReilly and Fox News had, together, paid out $13 million settling sexual-harassment claims against the host. Four days after that, the president expressed his disappointment in OReilly  for giving those lying, gold-diggers a single cent.

I think hes a person I know well  he is a good person, Trump told the New York Times. I think he shouldnt have settled; personally I think he shouldnt have settled  Because you should have taken it all the way. I dont think Bill did anything wrong.

Granted, Trumps remarks probably did raise awareness of how and why certain perpetrators of sexual crimes can escape comeuppance for so long.







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(February 28 through March 28)







Baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping his phones.

















(February 28 through March 28)

Baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping his phones.

















(February 28 through March 28)

Baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping his phones.

On the first Saturday of this month, President Trump announced that Barack Obama had personally wiretapped his phones during the final month of the 2016 campaign.

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

The president later revealed that this extraordinary allegation was based entirely on publicly available news reports  none of which actually supported the substance of his claim. Asked by Tucker Carlson how he came to discover that his predecessor had spied on him, Trump cited a New York Times article that did have the words wiretapped data in its headline. But the story was about intelligence agencies monitoring Russian officials  and how, through that regular surveillance, they may have discovered contacts between those officials and Trump associates.

The article says nothing about Trump Tower being surveilled, let alone about Obama wiretapping Donald Trump himself.

Despite Trumps tacit admission that his claim was baseless, he continued to insist on its accuracy  even after his allegation was rebuked by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Bill OReilly, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the FBI.



It is unprecedented in modern times for a president to publicly accuse his predecessor of seeking to illegally undermine the democratic process  let alone to do so on the basis of nothing but a paranoid hunch.



Allowed his White House to defame the intelligence agency of a core U.S. ally for the sake of defending the infallibility of his tweets.

Eventually, the presidents inability to admit he was wrong on the internet sparked a diplomatic spat with the United Kingdom. The crisis seems to have been generated by a glaring contradiction facing Trumps defenders: On the one hand, the president claimed that his wiretap allegation shouldnt be taken literally, and that news reports about the Obama administration legally investigating his campaigns Russia ties should be taken as proof that he was right. On the other hand, the White House had previously denied the existence of such an investigation  and suggested that reports to the contrary were fake news.



In other words: The Trump administration didnt want to admit that the president made a bad tweet. But it also didnt want to admit that American intelligence agencies had found cause to investigate ties between the president and Russia.

And then, a Fox News hosts conspiracy theory provided Sean Spicer with a way to square the circle.

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command, the White House press secretary told reporters, quoting, verbatim, from the commentary of Judge Andrew Napolitano, a conservative pundit who has claimed that the government concealed what really happened on 9/11. He didnt use the NSA, he didnt use the CIA, he didnt use the FBI, and he didnt use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? Its the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency.

Obama deputized the redcoats!

Apparently, Spicer was so taken by how elegantly this reconciled the presidents contradictory claims, it didnt occur to him that accusing a core allys intelligence service of participating in the illegal surveillance of an American presidential candidate might not sit well with said ally.

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wiretapping against the then president-elect are nonsense, GCHQ said in a rare public statement. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

The White House then promised the British government that it would not accuse GCHQ of wiretapping Donald Trump ever again, according to U.K. prime minister Theresa Mays official spokesman.

Later, Trump defended the propriety of his press secretarys slander of our ally.

We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television, the president told reporters. That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, so you shouldnt be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox.

To be clear: The president of the United States argued that its perfectly appropriate for the White House to spread conspiracy theories that implicate close allies  so long as a 9/11 truther on Fox News spread them first.

Suggested that being wiretapped by Barack Obama was the one thing he and the prime minister of Germany had in common.

At a press conference with Angela Merkel, a German reporter asked Trump whether it was a mistake to blame British intelligence for wiretapping him. Instead of conceding this point, the president decided to remind the world of a recent diplomatic crisis between the United States and Germany.

As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump said, gesturing to Merkel.

Wow. Trump to Merkel about alleged wiretapping by Obama: At least we have something in common, perhaps. She appears to be very confused. pic.twitter.com/la4p9ZJGvo  Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 17, 2017

Documents released by WikiLeaks in 2015 suggested that Americas National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped phone calls by the German chancellor and her closest advisers for years.

Gave his daughter an office in the White House and a security clearance  while keeping her immune from conflict-of-interest laws.

Last month, the president used his bully pulpit to upbraid a private company for dropping his daughters fashion line. Now, hes giving that daughter an office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue  and access to classified national-security information.



Ivanka Trump will, effectively, be a full-time White House staffer. However, she will not receive a salary or formal title, and, thus, wont be bound by federal conflict-of-interest laws.

Ivanka claims that she will honor those rules anyway. But as Obamas former ethics czar Norm Eisen told Politico, If she can voluntarily subject herself to the rules, she can voluntarily un-subject herself to the rules.

Allowed his budget director to argue that cutting funding to Meals on Wheels is probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.

President Trumps proposed budget would increase defense spending by $54 billion  while slashing funding for medical research, climate science, public housing, education, aid to the indigent, development grants for poor and rural areas, infrastructure, and many, many other things.

Shortly after the proposal went public, the White Houses budget director, Mick Mulvaney, explained that these changes were inspired by one simple question: Can we ask the taxpayer to pay for this? Mulvaney then explained that, while he could ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mother in Detroit to pay for an increase in defense spending, he couldnt justify taking their money to finance public broadcasting.



At a White House press briefing hours later, CNNs Jim Acosta asked Mulvaney to address some of the tensions in this rationale.

Just to follow up on that, you were talking about the steelworker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start, Acosta said. Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget. Is it also a hardhearted budget?

No, I dont think so, Mulvaney replied. I think its probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.

To cut programs that help the elderly and kids? Acosta asked, incredulously.

Youre only focusing on half of the equation, right? Youre focusing on the recipients of the money. Were trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place, Mulvaney explained. And I think its fairly compassionate to go to them and say, Look, were not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore, single mother of two in Detroit  unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function.

Mulvaney went on to explain that the key distinction between the Defense Department and the anti-poverty programs that Trump wishes to cut is that the latter have failed to show results.

But for many a single mother in Detroit, funding for rental assistance, home energy aid, and food assistance deliver such results as keeping her family out of homelessness, her home warm in the winter, and her child well nourished. For many a resident of coal country, the Appalachian Regional Commission has provided desperately needed job training.



Here is how Trump described the return on investment that the Pentagon has provided the American people, back when he was running for president.

Weve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems  our airports and all the other problems we have  we would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.



 I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!

Demanded the passage of a health-care bill that he, himself, admitted would hurt his own supporters.

While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump promised to pass a new health-care law that would cover everyone; leave Medicaids funding untouched; and provide relief to the forgotten men and women of middle America.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump threw his support behind a bill that would have thrown 24 million Americans off their health insurance; cut funding for Medicaid by $880 billion; and drastically increased the cost of health care for older, low-income people in deep-red rural counties.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson confronted Trump with that last finding.

A Bloomberg analysis showed that counties that voted for you  middle-class and working-class counties  would do far less well under this bill than the counties that voted for Hillary, the more affluent counties, Carlson said.

Oh, I know, Trump replied. But this is going to be negotiated.

But in negotiations with House Republicans, Trump did not push for any changes that would have significantly ameliorated the negative effects he acknowledged. Instead, the president offered to make the bill even more draconian, so as to appease the tea-party hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus.

Whats more, Trump expressed utter indifference about the substance of the bill in those negotiations, arguing that what really mattered was that passing something would improve his chances for reelection, according to Politico:

Forget about the little shit, Trump said, according to multiple sources in the room. Lets focus on the big picture here.



The group of roughly 30 House conservatives, gathered around a mammoth, oval-shaped conference table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, exchanged disapproving looks. Trump wanted to emphasize the political ramifications of the bills defeat; specifically, he said, it would derail his first-term agenda and imperil his prospects for reelection in 2020. The lawmakers nodded and said they understood. And yet they were disturbed by his dismissiveness. For many of the members, the little shit meant the policy details that could make or break their support for the billand have far-reaching implications for their constituents and the country.

Surely, Trump isnt the first president to ever champion a substantively flawed proposal for purely political reasons. But the scale of his nihilism is breathtaking. By all accounts, the president knew virtually nothing about the substance of his health-care law  beyond the fact that it would violate some of his core campaign promises, while hurting millions of people  and he demanded that lawmakers pass it, as an act of personal loyalty to him, anyway.

Failed to staff nearly 2,000 vacant Executive branch positions.

Trump is governing the worlds most powerful country with a skeleton crew. The presidents dysfunctional transition left him without a pool of nominees-in-waiting when he took the oath of office. Since then, Trumps incompetence  combined with his aversion to hiring any Establishment Republican who opposed his campaign  has allowed nearly 2,000 Executive branch positions to collect dust.

As of mid-March, Trump had not nominated anyone for more than 500 top-tier administrative posts, making his transition the slowest in decades, according to the New York Times.

Back in February, Trump tried to sell this dereliction of duty as an innovative act of cost cutting.

A lot of those jobs, I dont want to appoint, because theyre unnecessary to have, Trump told Fox News. I say, What do all these people do? You dont need all those jobs.

But the president has drafted no formal plan for cutting the vacant senior positions, and White House spokesperson Lindsay E. Walters told the Times earlier this month that Trump intended to fill them, eventually.

For now, the executive offices at the State Department remain virtually empty. And the high-ranking civil servants who are in place have been largely ignored. As Julia Ioffe reported for The Atlantic:

[M]any State staffers are surprised to find themselves on the outside. They really want to blow this place up, said the mid-level State Department officer. I dont think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist. They think Jared [Kushner, Trumps son-in-law] can do everything. Its reminiscent of the developing countries where Ive served. The family rules everything, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows nothing.

The White House lent credence to this claim on Monday, when it announced that  in addition to being the administrations point man on trade deals, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and broader Middle East policy  the presidents son-in-law will lead a new government office with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises  such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction.

Signed an Energy Independence Executive Order that will not make America more energy independent  but will likely prevent America from honoring its international commitments to reduce carbon emissions.



On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that began the process of reversing the Obama administrations Clean Power Plan, which would have required states to reduce their carbon emissions by decreasing their reliance on dirty energy sources, like coal. Trumps order also rescinds a temporary ban on new coal leases on federal land.

The official goal of the law is to decrease Americas dependence on foreign energy, while reviving the long-suffering coal industry.

But there is no rational basis for believing the measure will do either of those things. The United States does not import coal. Reducing regulations on carbon emissions will not allow America to replace foreign energy sources with domestic ones, but rather to prioritize dirty domestic energy sources over clean ones.

This shift would do nothing to bolster Americans employment prospects. At present, solar companies employ twice as many Americans as the coal industry does. Whats more, Trumps executive order wont even have a significant impact on the economic fortunes of coal miners themselves.

While the new order will keep older coal plants open for a few years longer, the mines that are staying open are using more mechanization  theyre not hiring people, energy economist Robert W. Godby told the New York Times.

So even if we saw an increase in coal production, we could see a decrease in coal jobs, Godby told the paper.

Thus, the cost-benefit analysis on Trumps executive order is effectively this: On the plus side, coal magnates will enjoy a few more years of profits before natural gas, wind, and solar make their industry obsolescent. On the downside, it may very well accelerate the onset of an ecological catastrophe that threatens to drown major American cities in the next century.

























(February 11 through February 28)

Declared the mainstream media the enemy of the American people.

Trump and his administration have been waging a war on objective reality  and those tasked with describing it  from the moment he was sworn in. In his first appearance as White House press secretary, Sean Spicer demanded that reporters believe the presidents estimate of the size of his inaugural crowd over their own lying eyes.

Trumps tumultuous (and not terribly productive) first month only widened the chasm between the presidents grandiose self-conception and what he sees reflected back at him in the mirror of the mainstream press. And this gap has produced evermore extreme attempts to nullify the Fourth Estate.

In late January, chief White House strategist Steve Bannon branded the mainstream media the opposition party, and suggested that it keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.

Bannons remarks were widely described seen as outrageous; at a subsequent White House press briefing, Spicer distanced the administration from Bannons sentiments, saying, The press plays a very healthy role in democracy, no question about it.

But last week, the president decried the media in terms far more inflammatory than even the former Breitbart mastermind had mustered.

Trump did not have second thoughts about describing several of Americas leading journalistic institutions as enemies of its people. Nor did he subsequently evince concern for whether his rhetoric would inspire some Second Amendment people to defend the American people against its enemies through extralegal means.

Instead, he reiterated his charge one week later, at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people, Trump said. Because they have no sources, they just make em up when there are none  Im against the people that make up stories and make up sources.

Previously, the president had criticized the press for printing illegal leaks from anonymous government officials and suggested that those officials have often shared false information. But hed never before claimed that major newspapers were fabricating sources out of whole cloth and presenting works of fictions as reportage.

Still, Trump insisted that he had no problem with the real media.

Im not against the media. Im not against the press, Trump said. I am only against the fake-news media or press.

He then lambasted the fake news media for failing to appreciate this nuance. Fake, the president said. Fake. They have to leave that word.

On Friday afternoon, the White House appeared to put the presidents distinction into practice: When reporters from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, CNN, and other major mainstream outlets showed up for a scheduled, off-camera briefing from Sean Spicer, they were denied entry to the White House press secretarys office.

Breitbart News, the Washington Times, and One America News Network were waved in. Spicer also welcomed some mainstream outlets, including erstwhile enemies of the people ABC and CBS. Reporters from Time magazine and the Associated Press were allowed in, but chose to boycott the briefing in protest of the other outlets exclusion.

Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, said in a statement. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.

Held a nuclear strategy session in the public dining room of his Florida resort.

Instead of hosting the Japanese prime minister at the White House, Trump opted to fly Shinzo Abe down to the private resort he owns in Palm Beach, Florida. This choice of venue cost American taxpayers millions in additional travel-and-security expenses. But it also allowed the president to directly profit off the diplomatic meeting, while increasing the perks of being a member of his club. Now, Mar-a-Lago members dont merely have access to golf, a private beach, and a network of fellow plutocrats  they also get seats in the presidents open-air Situation Room. Per CNN:



The iceberg wedge salads, dripping with blue cheese dressing, had just been served on the terrace of Mar-a-Lago Saturday when the call to President Donald Trump came in: North Korea had launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, its first challenge to international rules since Trump was sworn in three weeks agoAs Mar-a-Lagos wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background, Trump and Abes evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.

The White House later claimed that Trump and Abe did not engage in detailed security discussions in Mar-a-Lagos dining room. But Trump indisputably took a break from discussing the nuclear crisis to reward one of his longtime members with a wedding-night visit from himself and the leader of Japan.

Trump also allowed one of his guests to post a picture to Facebook of the man tasked with carrying Americas nuclear football.

Mar-a-Lago member who pays Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars posts pics of - and identifies - US official carrying nuclear football. pic.twitter.com/oyAfY0E9Fj  Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) February 13, 2017

Trumps weekend visits to Mar-a-Lago cost American taxpayers more than $10 million in his first month in office, according to the Washington Post.

Allowed one of his senior advisers to complain about CNNs political coverage to the networks parent company  which has a proposed merger pending before the government.

The fact that the American president has displayed a fondness for authoritarianism  and an indifference to ethical norms  is concerning for a whole host of reasons. One is that these qualities raise the possibility that Trump might use the powers of his office to coerce private industry into doing his administrations bidding. Shortly after the moguls victory, Voxs Matt Yglesias treated this subject at length in an essay titled, We have 100 days to stop Donald Trump from systemically corrupting our institutions.

In that piece, Yglesias argues that America has long been prey to venal corruption, which consists of rich people buying favors through campaign contributions. The U.S. is not, however, a systematically corrupt nation  one in which political favor becomes the primary driver of economic success.

To explain how Trump might begin systemically corrupting American institutions, Yglesias writes the following:

Trump is not going to crush the free media in one fell swoop. But big corporate media does face enough regulatory matters that even a single exemplary case would suffice to induce large-scale self-censorship. AT&T, for example, is currently seeking permission from antitrust authorities to buy Time Warner  permission that Time Warner executives might plausible fear is contingent on Trump believing that CNN has covered him fairly.

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that senior White House adviser (and Trump son-in-law) Jared Kushner complained to Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications at CNNs parent Time Warner, about what Mr. Kushner feels is unfair coverage slanted against the president.

Allowed his administration to ask the FBI to leak favorable information, in violation of rules protecting the Justice Departments independence.

Earlier this month, anonymous U.S. officials told the New York Times that Trump campaign aides contacted Russian intelligence operatives, multiple times, during the 2016 race.

The day after the Times reported on the Trump campaigns Russia contacts, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had a conversation. Which one of these men brought up the Times story is unclear  according to the White House, McCabe told Priebus that the papers report was overblown. However the subject came up, Priebus eventually asked McCabe to tell the press that the Times story was baloney  or, at least, have that information leaked, anonymously.

Even if the White Houses story is true  and the Times story is false  this request was problematic for at least two reasons. For one, Justice Department rules forbid the White House from discussing the details of ongoing investigations with the FBI  let alone investigations into the president himself  unless those details are vital to the presidents duties. For another, the FBI is not supposed to publicly comment on ongoing investigations.

Hours after his administration admitted that it had asked the FBI to leak classified information, the president condemned the FBI for leaking information.

The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security "leakers" that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even......  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2017

Declined to publicly condemn the shooting of two India-born engineers by a man who (allegedly) said get out of my country, as he fired.

Declared himself the least racist person  then asked a black reporter to set up a meeting for him with her friends in the Congressional Black Caucus.

Minutes after declaring himself the least racist person in existence, Trump took a question from American Urban Radio Networks D.C. bureau chief, April Ryan.

Ryan asked if Trump planned to seek the advice of the CBC when crafting his urban agenda. The president was confused. Ryan explained that she was referring to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours? Trump asked the African-American journalist.

No, Im just a reporter, Ryan said.

Set up a meeting, the president interrupted. I would love to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Reporter: Will you meet with the Congressional Black Caucus?

Trump: "I would. You want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?" pic.twitter.com/8Pp18KBUJd  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 16, 2017

Trump also informed a Jewish reporter that he was the least anti-Semitic person youve ever seen in your entire life, before explaining that a lot of supposed acts of anti-Jewish intimidation are really just false-flag attacks designed to make Donald Trump look bad.





*An earlier version of this list included the presidents failure to condemn the shooting of two India-born engineers in Kansas by a man who (reportedly) shouted, get out of my country, as he fired. But, after more than a week of silence, the White House did release a formal statement condemning the shooting on Tuesday.





Week 8 (February 4 through February 10)



Declared the court system a threat to national security.

Donald Trump spent much of his presidential campaign promising to use executive power to discriminate against Muslims. Upon election, he promptly banned immigration from several Muslim-majority nations, via an executive order that was Breitbart-tested but not cabinet-agency-approved.

This led to chaos at airports, on-the-fly revisions to the governments interpretation of its own order, and a bevy of legal rebukes.

Last week, judges in New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and California stayed the order  or aspects of it  on a variety of legal grounds. Then, on Friday night, U.S. District Judge James Robart delivered the body blow.

Unlike other plaintiffs, the state of Washington did not challenge discrete provisions of the executive order, or merely the process by which it was implemented. Rather, the state argued that the order was in fundamental tensions with both federal law and the Constitution. Robart ruled that Washingtons argument was likely to succeed on the merits  and ordered a halt to nationwide enforcement of the travel ban.

The president responded by suggesting that Robart might not actually be a judge.

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017

Then, he framed the existence of judicial review as a sign of national decline.

What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017

Still, superficially, Trumps complaint was with an individual judge, not the Judicial branch, itself. But then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the White Houses request for an emergency stay of Robarts decision  and the president made his contempt for the rule of law explicit.

Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2017

This was not merely an intemperate tweet. It was the president instructing the American people to view the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil as an indictment of the judiciary. And it isnt just Trump himself whos pushing this line. In its legal challenge to Robarts ruling, the White House argued that the federal judge was in no position to rule on the propriety of the executive order, because he lacks access to classified intelligence.

This is an argument for allowing our fear of terrorism to overwhelm our commitment to the rule of law  a line of reasoning that poses a far greater threat to the American form of government and way of life than any closeted-jihadist refugee ever could.

Insisted that his Supreme Court pick had no problem with attacks on the judiciary, in the face of blatant evidence to the contrary.

Trumps Supreme Court nominee had little choice but to condemn the presidents attacks on his branch of government. In private meetings with senators ahead of his confirmation hearings, Neil Gorsuch described Trumps remarks demoralizing and disheartening.

But the president found it hard to believe that his Supreme Court pick would object to attacks on the court system. And so  even though White House adviser Ron Bonjean had confirmed that Gorsuch had criticized Trumps comments in his meeting with Richard Blumenthal  the president accused the Democratic senator of lying.

Sen.Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie),now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

The presidents case here was airtight: Richard Blumenthal once apologized for saying that he had served in Vietnam, when, in fact, the senator had merely served as a Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War, but was never sent overseas. (By contrast, the president spent his Vietnam fearlessly weathering round after round of unprotected sex.) Therefore, both Blumenthal and Bonjean are lying.

Trump proceeded to chastise CNNs Chris Cuomo for refusing to ask Blumenthal about his Vietnam record during a Thursday-morning interview  even though Cuomo asked Blumenthal about his (utterly irrelevant) Vietnam record during that Thursday-morning interview.

Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave "service" in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

There seems to be no lie too obvious  nor attack too hypocritical  for the president to deploy as a means of evading responsibility for his mistakes.

Trashed New START during a call with Putin  after putting the phone aside to ask his advisers what that (nuclear-arms treaty) was.

I was a good student. I understand things, President Trump assured America on Wednesday. I comprehend very well, okay? Better than, I think, almost anybody.

But many within the White House beg to differ. In leak after leak, anonymous administration officials paint the president as less teachers pet than class clown  one who refuses to do his homework, demands the Cliffs Notes for every reading assignment, and struggles to comprehend the most basic aspects of the curriculum.

The latest SOS from the West Wing was intercepted by Reuters:

In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.



When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.



Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.

New START is pretty fundamental to U.S.-Russian relations. At his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed his support for the agreement. Trump, himself, was aware of the treatys significance  if not of its proper name  last year, when he complained that Russia outsmarted Obama on START Up.

To avoid such lapses in memory, presidents typically request an in-depth briefing from the National Security Council before dialing up world leaders. But, according to Reuters sources, Trump received no such briefing before hopping on the horn with Putin. (Considering that Trump has often bragged about being too smart to read long things, it seems safe to take Reuters word on this one.)

The source of Trumps antipathy for New START is unclear. On the one hand, the president has expressed enthusiasm for a new arms race. On the other, he has called nuclear weapons the single greatest threat we face  and has a habit of disparaging any deal that he did not, himself, negotiate.

Which is to say: The best-case scenario here is that our president would like there to be fewer nuclear arms in the world  but is willing to jeopardize that objective if it means honoring an agreement Obama negotiated.

Publicly condemned a private company for dropping his daughters (increasingly unpopular) fashion line.

Trump long ago concluded that it would be unreasonable for the American people to expect him to divest from his business interests, just because they elected him president. To forfeit the empire he spent his whole life building was simply too great a sacrifice. While he would cease managing the Trump Organization, he would, nonetheless, retain majority ownership of its assets.

Most Americans sympathized with this position.

Then, Trump decided that having someone outside his family run the organization in his stead  so as to put meaningful distance between himself and its management  was also too great a burden for him to bear.

Trump proceeded to reason that he couldnt fairly be expected to not invite the children running his business to policy meetings with tech entrepreneurs; or to not meet with his business partners while president-elect; or to ensure that his D.C. hotel did not court the patronage of foreign diplomats (in arguable defiance of the Constitution).

And, then, on Thursday, the president decided that we also cant expect him not to attack private companies that refuse to maintain a relationship with his daughters poorly performing brand.

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Suggested that publicly criticizing his military decisions is tantamount to aiding the enemy.

Last week, President Trump sent a team of Navy SEALs to raid a compound in Yemen  with the aim of capturing or killing the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Qassim al-Rimi.

When the raid was over, al-Rimi was still alive, and on the lam  while one SEAL, 14 (alleged) Al Qaeda fighters, an 8-year-old American citizen, and an unconfirmed number of other civilians lay dead.

The SEALs did manage to collect some phones and computers, though the value of the information contained therein is not publicly known. Meanwhile, in light of the raids many civilian casualties, the Yemeni government is starting to rethink its support for U.S. ground operations on its soil.

Surveying these results, Arizona senator and prominent war enthusiast John McCain dubbed the mission a failure.

On Thursday, Trump suggested that McCains comment was harmful to national security  and also the kind of thing that a loser would say.

Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He's been losing so....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

...long he doesn't know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero..  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

..Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a "failure." Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

Got angry at his press secretary for being impersonated by a woman.

Per Politico:

[T]he devastating Saturday Night Live caricature of Spicer that aired over the weekend  in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag  did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter. More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicers portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the presidents eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicers longevity in the grueling, high-profile job[.]

















Week 7 (January 27 through February 3)

Used the Executive branchs immense authority over border control to inflict arbitrary cruelty on thousands of Muslim immigrants, create chaos at airports all across America, and sour diplomatic relations with the rest of the world.

Many of the actions catalogued in this post serve as testaments to our new presidents incompetence; others, to his mindless bigotry. Late last Friday, Trump signed his name to a document that affirmed both of his signature qualities  and upended the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people.

That executive order  as of Friday evening temporarily blocked by a Seattle judge  suspended the admission of all refugees to the United States for 120 days; suspended the admission of Syrian refugees indefinitely; prioritized the refugee claims of non-Muslims in the Middle East; and banned citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

These measures were advertised as means of protecting national security. But there is little evidence that they will do any such thing. America already has one of the worlds most rigorous systems for vetting refugees, and the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil in recent years were executed by our own disaffected citizens.

Even if one believes that protecting homeland security requires barring travelers from the Muslim world, there is no coherent argument for why visitors from Saudi Arabia should be allowed, while those from Iran should not. In fact, no foreign national from any of the seven blacklisted countries has committed a fatal terrorist attack in the United States since 1975.

As an effort to prevent terrorism, Trumps executive order is incoherent, and likely counterproductive. The orders broad, overt denigration of the Muslim world aids every jihadist who wishes to tie his heinous cause to a broader war between Islam and the West. But jihadists arent the only ones who long for such a clash of civilizations  some of the most powerful people in the Trump White House believe Judeo-Christian civilization really is at war with Islam.

Many of those same people see Muslim immigrants as threats to national security, whether theyre terrorists or not. The two main authors of last weeks order  Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller  have explicitly argued that such immigrants are a threat simply because their religion will prevent them from assimilating into our society. Once you stipulate this view, the order becomes more coherent: The goal is not to stop terrorism but to halt the dilution of the white Christian population in the United States. Its about protecting ethno-national security.

Nearly 60,000 immigrants had their visas revoked to satisfy Bannons Islamophobic paranoia. Countless refugees were stranded. But the costs of Trumps order dont merely fall on nonU.S. citizens. America relies on many of the countries Trump blacklisted to provide doctors for our understaffed hospitals. Now, some medical groups are preparing for a shortage of physicians in our nations underserved rural areas. The order has also disrupted the smooth functioning of American universities and tech companies that rely on immigrant labor.

Finally, even if one shares Bannons worldview  and believes all this is a small price to pay for saving America from the Muslim hordes  the implementation of the order revealed the new administrations profound incompetence. The White House sought little input from legal counsel, Congress, and relevant cabinet agencies. It provided Customs and Border Protection with little notice of its plans. This led to chaos in airports all around the United States as visa-holders arrived to find their legal status had been terminated while they were midair. And the vagueness of the orders wording produced confusion about who was and was not impacted by the rules. At the beginning of the weekend, the order applied to legal permanent residents and dual citizens of the blacklisted countries; by Monday it did not.

Violated court orders against his travel ban.

The sloppiness of the order did have its own silver lining: It exposed many of the Trump administrations directives to effective legal challenge. Days after the order went into effect, judges in Massachusetts and California had issued injunctions, restraining the orders enforcement.

But the rule of law does not seem to matter very much to the law and order president. As Slates Jeremy Stahl wrote Thursday:

Its been more than four full days since the Boston order and more than one full day since the Los Angeles order. Nothing has changed. Travelers cleared by the two court orders to come to America have instead been blocked. They remain in legal limbo, often trapped in places that are not their homes  Trump has violated the spirit of the court rulingsand, in the opinion of experts, the letterthrough a mix of legal chicanery and subterfuge, enabled by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy doing the presidents will rather than the will of the courts.

Heres what Stahl means by Kafkaesque and legal chicanery: The judges in Boston ordered the government to cease detaining or removing individuals with valid immigrant and non-immigrant visas. But the Trump administration claims that it had already revoked the visas of all nationals from the blacklisted countries, prior to the order  a fact that was not publicly confirmed until Friday.

And so, Customs and Border Protection agents have carried on following their orders.

Created a diplomatic crisis with Australia  and threatened to invade Mexico.

Australia is the kind of friend that takes your side even when youre wrong. In geopolitical terms, this means that when the United States asked for some help with our quagmire in Afghanistan, Australia sacrificed 42 of its young people to our cause.

So, when Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull reminded President Trump of Americas commitment to take in 1,250 refugees currently residing in an Australian detention center, he had little reason to believe that hed be met with a torrent of verbal abuse.

But he was.

This is the worst deal ever, the president said during the Saturday call, according to the Washington Post. Trump proceeded to inform our dear ally that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day  including Russian President Vladimir Putin  and that this was the worst call by far.

When Turnbull tried to direct the conversation to less contentious subjects, Trump abruptly ended the call  35 minutes before it was scheduled to expire.

Later in the week, Trump tried to patch things up with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto  and kind of, sort of, threatened to invade our southern neighbor.

You have a bunch of bad hombres down there, Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt obtained by the Associated Press. You arent doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isnt, so I just might send them down to take care of it.

Mexican officials later characterized this as a friendly offer, rather than a military threat.

Nonetheless, neither of these phone calls increases ones confidence in the diplomatic chops of our commander-in-chief.

Allowed his press secretary to falsely claim that Iran had committed an act of war against the United States.

The Trump administration spent much of the past week rattling sabers at Iran. Not all of this belligerence was unprovoked  Iran did test an intercontinental ballistic missile Sunday, in (arguably) a violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

But one thing Iran definitely did not do was take action against an American Navy vessel. But that didnt stop White House press secretary Sean Spicer from saying that it had.

I think General Flynn was really clear yesterday that Iran has violated the Joint Resolution, that Irans additional hostile actions that it took against our Navy vessel are ones that we are very clear [we] are not going to sit by and take, Spicer said Thursday, intimating that Iran had committed an act of war against the United States.

In truth, a Saudi Arabian warship was attacked by fighters that the Pentagon suspects were Houthi rebels  a Shia militant group in Yemen that the Saudis have been slaughtering for over a year. Iran does back the Houthis, but the latter isnt really the puppet of the former  the Houthis are less concerned with expanding Tehrans sphere of influence than winning their nations civil war.

And yet, the White House eagerly painted a (suspected) Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia as a (confirmed) Iranian attack on America. Which makes you wonder whether or not the Trump administration will do everything in its power to avoid launching another Middle Eastern war.

Retained the author of a reactionary screed that likened the 2016 election to Flight 93 as a national-security staffer.

Michael Anton is a former Bush administration speechwriter and current national-security official in the Trump administration. This week, we learned that he is also the author of an essay titled The Flight 93 Election. In it, Anton argued that the 2016 election put conservatives in a position akin to passengers of Flight 93 on 9/11: They could either charge the cockpit or die.

If you dont try, death is certain, Anton wrote. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto.

Antons reasoning was simple: The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.

Thus, absent an immediate restriction of Third World immigration, America, as conservatives knew it, would end.

This is not merely an argument against Hillary Clinton, but an argument for authoritarianism. If a Democratic victory in 2016 could have brought national ruination, surely the same would be true in 2020. Which is to say: One of the presidents senior national-security staffers is an opponent of American democracy.

Suggested that Frederick Douglass is still alive in speech on Black History Month.

At his speech honoring African-Americans historical contributions to our republic, the president said this about Martin Luther King Jr.

Last month, we celebrated the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whose incredible example is unique in American history. You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago when somebody said I took the statue out of my office. It turned out that that was fake news. Fake news. The statue is cherished, its one of the favorite things in the  and we have some good ones. We have Lincoln, and we have Jefferson, and we have Dr. Martin Luther King. But they said the statue, the bust of Martin Luther King, was taken out of the office. And it was never even touched. So I think it was a disgrace, but thats the way the press is. Very unfortunate.

And this about Frederick Douglass:

Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody whos done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed.

Sean Spicer was later asked what Trump had meant by this.

I think he wants to highlight the contributions that he has made, Spicer said. And I think through a lot of the actions and statements that hes going to make, I think the contributions of Frederick Douglass will become more and more.



*clears throat*



"osama bin laden is dead and frederick douglass is alive!"  Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) February 1, 2017













Week 6 (January 7 through 27)

Told a demonstrable lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration  and predicted that the media would pay a big price for refusing to repeat it.

Donald Trumps inauguration attracted a much smaller crowd to the National Mall than Barack Obamas did in 2008. This was not a surprise: Washington, D.C., is a majority African-American city, and the first black president won its vote overwhelmingly. Trump, by contrast, received a mere 4 percent of the districts ballots. Further, Obama entered office with an approval rating of 80 percent; Trump was sworn in with one around 40.

But while Trumps (comparatively) sparse inaugural crowd comported with demographic and polling realities, it was wildly inconsistent with the presidents expectations. And so, as he often does when reality disappoints his fondest wishes, Trump discovered a set of alternative facts.

I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field, Trump said. I said wait a minute, I made a speech, I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, a million and a half people  it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.

"Even the media said the crowd was massive," President Trump said tonight, claiming crowd stretched "to the Washington Monument." Fact check pic.twitter.com/dbmkBujjMJ  Mark Berman (@markberman) January 21, 2017

So, we caught the media, Trump said, and we caught them in beauty. And I think theyre going to pay a big price.

That big price turned out to be a scolding from the new White House press secretary. Armed with visual aids, an ill-fitting suit, and secondhand indignation, Spicer condemned the presss shameful attempts to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, Spicer baselessly declared, before vowing, Were going to hold the press accountable.

Spicer then informed the White House press corps that the CIA had given Trump a five-minute standing ovation at the end of his speech (the audience stood throughout the speech, having never received permission to sit. Trump would later claim that this had been the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl).



Thats what you guys should be writing and covering, Spicer said, then left without taking a single question.

Told congressional leaders at a private meeting that he only lost the popular vote because undocumented immigrants cast millions of ballots against him.

In November, Trump tweeted that he had actually won the popular vote, if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. That was disturbing for several reasons, all detailed in an earlier installment of this list.

But Trumps repetition of the claim  in a private meeting with congressional leaders, whom he has no hope of conning on this subject  raises the alarming possibility that the president genuinely believes in his own conspiracy theory. Which is to say, the president believes that 3 to 5 million undocumented immigrants risked deportation to illegally vote against him.

Even though there is literally no evidence for that claim. And no losing down-ballot Republican candidate has demanded an investigation into the matter. And he, himself, loudly opposed all attempts to audit the elections results  until reporters alerted him to this apparent contradiction. Then, the president announced an investigation into such acts of voter fraud as being registered to vote in two states (which is a crime committed by several of his advisers and family members, if it were actually illegal).

I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

On Tuesday, Sean Spicer affirmed that this is, in fact, the presidents genuine understanding of how Hillary Clinton won more votes than he did.

The president does believe that, he has stated that before, Spicer told reporters at a White House press briefing. I think hes stated his concerns of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and he continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have presented to him.



If true, then Trumps claim about illegal votes is not just a dangerous challenge to popular perceptions of democratic legitimacy and a pretext for voter suppression  though it is both these things.

It is also a sign that the president may have developed his talent for conning the insecure by practicing on himself.

Suggested America might once again have the opportunity to confiscate Iraqs oil.

Trump has long maintained that one of the biggest mistakes the United States made in Iraq was that it did not expropriate the nations most valuable natural resource. The president is fairly certain that, had the U.S. stolen Iraqs oil, the region would be far more stable than it is today.

Trump reiterated this view in his speech at the CIA on his first weekend in office  and then suggested that his administration might have a chance to rectify Americas great error.

Now I said it for economic reasons, Trump said while introducing Representative Mike Pompeo, his pick to lead the intelligence agency. But if you think about it, Mike, if we kept the oil, you probably wouldnt have ISIS because thats where they made their money in the first place, so we should have kept the oil
Wait, I can explain! Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

Congressional Republicans have devised a way to help Donald Trump build a big, beautiful wall between the United States and Mexico, but it wont go down as described in one of Trumps favorite campaign chants. Initially, at least, the correct response to Whos gonna pay for the wall? wont be Mexico! but U.S. taxpayers!



Several lawmakers and Trump transition officials said they are exploring a plan to begin funding the wall as soon as April, without passing any new legislation. According to the Washington Post, Republican lawmakers believe that the Secure Fence Act of 2006 already gives the president the authority to construct a border wall. The law signed by former President George W. Bush called for construction of at least 700 miles of physical barrier along the southern border.

As Politico explains, the fence was never completed, and the secretary of Homeland Security can decide what kind of physical barrier should be constructed:



Ultimately, only 36 miles of double-layer fencing was erected. U.S. Customs and Border Protection built roughly 350 miles of single-layer pedestrian fences, most which stand about 18 feet, and 300 miles of low-level vehicle barriers that any person could easily walk through, according to sources following the matter.

Constructing an impenetrable physical wall, as it says on Trumps website, would cost billions of dollars. Congressional Republicans are considering tucking the initial funding for the project into a spending bill that must pass by April 28 to keep the government funded. That would set the stage for a government shutdown battle, but Republicans believe they could win the public-relations fight because the 2006 bill passed with support from Democrats  including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and then senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.



Though most voters probably missed it, at one point Trump did explain that his plan for funding the wall was more nuanced than his catchphrase suggested. I said Mexico is paying for the wall, with the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall, okay? he said during an October 22 speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Were going to have the wall. Mexico is going to pay for the wall.

Trump himself is seeming to have a hard time figuring out how this whole paying for the wall thing is going to work. Early Friday, he tweeted that the dishonest media does not report that any money spent building the Great Wall, will be paid back by Mexico. About an hour later, he amended that Tweet to clarify that the wall will be paid back by Mexico later.

Here's the version of the tweet Trump sent out and then quickly deleted pic.twitter.com/cdVU1iS8dB  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 6, 2017

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

The plan being floated by Republicans in Congress would not preclude Trump from making Mexico pay for the wall eventually. Last spring, Trump said he would accomplish this by freezing money transfers from the United States to Mexico until our neighbors to the south agreed to fork over billions for the wall. Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto said after meeting Trump in August that his country will not pay for the wall.

After Trump surrogates suggested that he might construct a virtual wall, the candidate reiterated that he would build a concrete wall (the height kept shifting between 30 and 65 feet). Days after the election, the president-elect said, There could be some fencing, and it doesnt appear that GOP lawmakers are tied to constructing an actual wall all along the border.



Theres already in existing law the authorization for hundreds of miles of build out on the southern border  so, one important step in the right direction will be funding the existing law and beginning the building out of hundreds of miles of wall, or fence, on the southern border, said House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Luke Messer.

So Trumps campaign promise may need to be revised a little further: Were going to build big, ugly patchwork of concrete and fence along the border, and someday Mexico might pay for it.



This post has been updated.
Trumps Benjamin Bar.

In the nearly four months that Donald Trumps Washington, D.C. hotel has been open for business, its swanky bar has hiked drink prices at least three times. And now, with the cheapest cocktail going for $24, the Benjamin Bar & Lounge is the most expensive overall bar in all of Washington, according to the Washingtonian.

When the bar opened on September 12, its cheapest mixed drink was $16, Washingtonian food editor Jessica Sidman notes. By October, the drink was up to $20. And now the Romanesque Revival, which includes bourbon, honey, mint, and ginger, costs more than three times the federal minimum wage.

The menu has a handful of other cocktails between $24 and $29, along with $9 Bud Lights and $8 Coronas. The most expensive drink comes in at a whopping $100. The ghastly Benjamin, which sounds like a 10-year-olds idea of what rich people like, is a martini with three types of vodka, raw oysters, and caviar.

Somehow, that monstrosity isnt even the most froufrou nonsense on this menu. That honor belongs to the flight of wines served by the crystal spoon, which cost as much as $140 an ounce. The scary thing is that the prices for all these absurdly expensive drinks may very well go up. Thats what theyve done since the place opened and Trump hasnt even paid all his bills yet. Just imagine how much theyll be charging once Trump stops stiffing the contractors hes allegedly been cheating for months.
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

No one knows exactly what the future holds for us this year, but this we do know: There will be books. Heres a look at some of the most exciting science and psychology titles to watch for in the first half of the year (though this is by no means an exhaustive list). Take some time to nurture your nerdier side in 2017.

The Telomere Effect, by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel (January 3)

Elizabeth Blackburn is a biology researcher who in 2009 won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her work on telomeres. What, uh, are telomeres, exactly? Good question. They are the protective caps at the ends of our DNA strands  often likened to those plastic caps at the ends of shoelaces  and they are involved in cellular aging. The fact that more of us dont know more about telomeres was frustrating to Blackburn, who teamed up with psychologist Elissa Epel to write a book intended for a general audience. As Blackburn told Stat this week, you have more control over this process than you likely realize. Telomeres listen to you, she said. [T]hey listen to your behaviors, they listen to your state of mind.

The Power of Meaning, by Emily Esfahani Smith (January 10)

Heres the thing about happiness: The more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. A far better idea, argues writer Emily Esfahani Smith, is to shape your life around the pursuit of meaning, not happiness. Okay, but what does it mean, exactly, to lead a meaningful life? To Smith, who holds a masters in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, its feeling like your life has purpose, coherence, and worth. All in all, not a bad goal to aim for this year.

Why Time Flies, by Alan Burdick (January 24)

Serious question: What even is time, really? In his second book, New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick attempts to answer, examining and explaining how humans perceive the passage of time: Why does time seem to speed up as we get older? And why does it slow down when were bored?

Hit Makers, by Derek Thompson (February 7)

You know, of course, what it means when people say something went viral. But do you have the faintest idea of why some ideas  or videos, or tweets, or movies, or whatever  take off, while others fall flat? In his upcoming book, Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, investigates the science of popularity. Among his most intriguing insights is that people respond to things that are a little different from the norm, but not too different, something Thompson calls familiar surprises.

Cant Just Stop, by Sharon Begley (February 7)

Sharon Begley is a top-notch medical journalist, currently stationed at the equally top-notch Stat. Here, she interprets all manner of compulsions  OCD, hoarding, exercise  as maladaptive ways people use to try to handle their anxiety. Its an important and fascinating subject, and I cant wait to see how a veteran reporter like Begley handles it.

Inkblots, by Damion Searls (February 21)

One of my favorite science books from 2016 was Patient H.M., a work of narrative nonfiction that explored the untold story of a classic case study in Psych 101 textbooks. This, the story of psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach and the invention of his famed Rorschach test, could be the 2017 version of that.

The Gene Machine, by Bonnie Rochman (February 28)

How much do you really want to know about your medical future? What about your childrens? Veteran medical journalist Bonnie Rochman takes a look at the often confusing and rapidly expanding world of genetic testing, along with the ethical landmines that have cropped up as the science has progressed.

How Emotions Are Made, by Lisa Feldman Barrett (March 7)

Last year, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett  who heads the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern University  introduced us to the concept of emotional granularity, the idea that the way you describe what youre feeling influences the way you feel what youre feeling. For example: Is it anger youre feeling, or is it maybe more like righteous indignation? Sadness, or despair? Happiness, or exhilaration? You get the idea. Her upcoming book explores this concept and more, promising to introduce a new theory of how the brain constructs emotions. I would say I am excited, but perhaps what I really mean is that I am enthused and also a little impatient.

Irresistible, by Adam Alter (March 7)

Last year for this magazine, Andrew Sullivan wrote a long, moving essay about what he characterized as an information addiction, in a piece somewhat terrifyingly titled, I Used to Be a Human Being. In March, psychologist Adam Alter takes on the subject of behavioral addiction  why were so attached to our phones, and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Wild Nights, by Benjamin Reiss (March 7)

A good nights sleep, as most of us would define it, is getting seven or (preferably) eight hours of blissfully uninterrupted slumber. But this isnt always how humans have slept. Benjamin Reiss is an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and in his book on the mysteries of human sleep, he looks for guidance to the latest scientific studies, yes, but he also ventures beyond the realm of the scientific, including insights from history and literature.

The Knowledge Illusion, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach (March 14)

A question: Do you know how a zipper works? Of course you know how a zipper works. So, tell me: How, exactly, does a zipper work? This is a question researchers have used to illustrate the illusion of explanatory depth, the idea that people believe they understand the world more deeply than they actually do and only realize that this belief is an illusion when they attempt to explain elements of the world. In their upcoming book, cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach explain this concept and others; their argument will challenge the way you think about the things you know.

Your Brain Is a Time Machine, by Dean Buonomano (April 4)

It seems 2017 is the year for books asking the Big Questions about time, and how and why it passes the way we perceive it. This one is an exploration of mental time travel by neuroscientist Dean Buonomano, who teaches neurobiology and psychology at UCLA; as such, it is grounded in the latest brain science on the subject.

Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant (April 24)

This is a book about resilience, and merely reading the story behind the title was enough to make me teary. In 2015, Sheryl Sandberg  Facebook COO and author of the mega best seller Lean In  became a widow, suddenly and unexpectedly; her husband was only 48. Shortly after his death, Sandberg was facing a tragic first: an event specifically for children and their fathers. But I want Dave, she said to a friend. The friend replied, Option A is not available. So lets just kick the shit out of Option B. Sandberg weaves her personal story in with dispatches from the scientific research on resilience with the help of the always-insightful psychologist Adam Grant.

Behave, by Robert M. Sapolsky (May 2)

This landed on my desk a few weeks back: Its an 800-page tome on the way biology, neurobiology, and environment interact to shape human behavior, written by Stanford neurologist and MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient Robert M. Sapolsky. You know, just some light fare to kick off summer beach-reading season.

Peak Performance, by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness (June 6)

Brad Stulberg is a regular contributor to Science of Us, and his first book covers topics that will be familiar to readers of his work here. How is it, for example, that elite athletes are able to push themselves to accomplish extraordinary things? Perhaps, suggest Stulberg and co-author exercise physiologist Steve Magness, its because theyre not thinking of themselves at all. Self-transcendence is just one of the intriguing themes Stulberg and Magness cover in their book, a cross-disciplinary look at performance science.
Photo: Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images

As anyone who studies addiction policy can tell you, getting people to listen to rigorous, evidence-based approaches to prevent or treat addiction is a major challenge. As a result, the treatment and prevention landscapes are littered with both snake-oil salesman and true believers peddling interventions that have no scientific backing behind them. Unfortunately, the Church of Scientology has been able to take advantage of this chaos and lack of regulation by aggressively pushing Narconon, an anti-drug and anti-addiction program with little scientific backing, littered with Scientological principles, and seen by some as the first step in an indoctrination process, into schools all over the place.

The United Kingdom just found this out the hard way, according to an investigative article in the London Evening Standard. In the past year alone 35,000 children have taken part in the Narconon anti-drugs programme, including more than 16,000 in London, reported Benedict Moore-Bridger. He goes on to explain that Narconons theories about drug dependency and treatment have been described as potentially dangerous and dismissed by some scientists as lacking medical evidence. Critics say the lectures provide a soft introduction to Scientology.

As Moore-Bridger notes, Narconon openly acknowledges that it is based on the research and writings of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Scientology religion. But many teachers and school authorities are unaware of the connection, and may be unaware that the program doesnt employ actual addiction experts. That might be because those experts have long viewed the program as a pseudoscientific and potentially dangerous enterprise. We have known for years that Scientologists have been targeting schools through drugs education packages, Professor David Nutt, former head of the U.K. governments Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, told Moore-Bridger. They are the main provider of teaching aids to schools, as neither government nor local authorities put any money into this topic. Its an outrage.

Unfortunately, this isnt some strange aberration. Scientology has been remarkably, distressingly successful at embedding Narconon into both schools and, in the U.S. at least, court-supported addiction-treatment programs. California is a pretty remarkable example. Back in 2004, in a story that reads very similarly to the one in the Evening Standard, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that [a] popular anti-drug program provided free to schools in San Francisco and elsewhere teaches concepts straight out of the Church of Scientology, including medical theories that some addiction experts described as irresponsible and pseudoscience. That reporting sparked an investigation on the part of state authorities, and the following year State Superintendent Jack OConnell came out hard against the program, urging all California schools to drop it. Well get a letter out to every school district today, saying this program is filled with inaccuracies and does not reflect widespread medical and factual evidence, he explained. School systems around the state cut ties to the program as a result.

But Narconon never really went away. In 2014, the Chronicle reported that Narconon programming was still going on in schools all over the state. It wasnt even much of a secret  that story noted that Clark Carr, president of Narconon International, had recently boasted in promotional materials that [d]rug education specialists from Narconon Vista Bay travel from Monterey to South Lake Tahoe, and from Santa Rosa to Sacramento, visiting middle schools and high schools.

When it comes to another aspect of Narconon, its treatment centers, the program appears to not only be lacking in evidence but also potentially dangerous. There have also been a series of deaths associated with Narconon facilities in the United States, Maia Szalavitz reported back in 2012, and numerous deaths and many lawsuits have been linked to the international Narconon program as well. As Szalavitz noted in that article, the Narconon program is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbards Purification Rundown, which was originally devised as part of the process required for conversion into Scientology. It involves taking high doses of vitamins and spending four to five hours a day in 150-degree saunas. This is believed to detoxify the body and remove drug residue that Hubbard claimed was responsible for craving.

Unfortunately, Narconon isnt the only way Scientology ideas have wormed their way into addiction prevention and treatment. As Science of Us noted last year, courts regularly mandate that those struggling with addiction participate in moral reconation therapy, an idea which, like Narconon, is littered with Scientological ideas and lacking in evidence. Of course, part of the reason we know about Narconon and MRT is that both are tied to Scientology, which makes for a sexy hook. Its depressing to think about all the other, similar programs we dont know about. Theyre definitely out there.
Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

At 10 a.m. on Friday morning, president-elect Donald Trump is slated to meet with top editors from Conde Nast at the media companys headquarters; Anna Wintour will be there, as will Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. Carter, of course, famously earned Trumps ire when he referred to him as a short-fingered vulgarian in Spy magazine back in 1988, and the two have been feuding ever since.

Aware of the bad blood between them, Carter told Politico that he tried to get out of the meeting. It wouldnt be my first choice to spend a Friday morning in a group like that, he said. I try to be a decent host. I went to Anna Wintour and I said, Listen, I dont want to make him feel uncomfortable.

But, alas, hes still stuck in the meeting. I dont know what there is to learn from this. Obviously theres a novelty aspect to the whole thing, Carter added. I dont think hes gonna say anything new here that he hasnt said before. If I was advising him, Id say to ignore me completely.



Ah yes, completely ignoring even the most minor of criticisms: one of Trumps proven strong suits.
Photo: nullplus/Getty Images

My friend called my neti pot gross and dangerous. Is she right?

Nasal irrigation can be a godsend for people with nagging allergies or chronic sinus infections, since the fluid washes out mucus and other particles, reducing congestion and sinus pain. But stare into the depths of a neti pot or sinus-rinse bottle and its easy to wonder if some rogue microbe is just waiting to take up residence in your nasal passages and eventually, your brain.

Its not a completely paranoid thought. In 2011, two Louisiana people died following brain infection with the amoeba Naegleria fowleri. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigation determined that the victims likely infected themselves by using non-sterile water in their neti pots. While the parasite is found in lakes, streams, and other untreated water, the deceased hadnt had any recent exposure outside of their homes, and their tap water tested positive for N. fowleri.

If you want to do a nasal cleanse because its January (New Year, new sinuses) or because you have a cold, sinus infection, or allergies, the water you pour into the little genie lamp or squeeze bottle absolutely needs to be sterile, says Benjamin Tweel, M.D., an otolaryngologist  ear, nose, and throat doctor  at the Mount Sinai Hospital.

Why? Because your nasal passages are extremely close to your brain and shooting tap water up there is not wise. As the Food and Drug Administration reminded people in a consumer alert prompted by the 2011 deaths, tap water can contain organisms like bacteria and amoebas. If you drink the water, stomach acid usually kills the critters therein, but your nose and sinuses cant wipe them out.

Still, Dr. Tweel is proneti pot. They work really well for a variety of complaints and I recommend them [to patients] pretty much every day for one purpose or another, he says. Though he describes nasal irrigations as a shower for the inside of the nose  would you want to take a shower with dirty water?

The recommendation is to use water that is filtered, distilled, or has been boiled then cooled. Filters need to have an absolute pore size of one micron or smaller or the label must say NSF 53 or NSF 58, according to the CDC. And, no, your Brita does not pass the test. Once filtered, youll need to add salt, which makes the sterile water like your tears and is easier on your nasal membranes than plain water; follow the instructions that came with your device. (You can also buy sterile saline solution and not worry about any of this.)

About those instructions: Theyll also tell you to clean and fully dry your teapot or bottle after each use. There have been some studies on bottle contamination, Dr. Tweel says, but they were fairly small and you cant draw conclusions from them, though he theorizes that there probably are some people giving themselves sinus infections from dirty bottles. Bacteria love dark, moist places, so dont let any of them hang around in your nose-flusher: Wash it by hand with soap and water, put it in the dishwasher if its dishwasher-safe, or zap it in the microwave after washing it if thats advised (kind of like the sponge trick). Keep and follow the instructions. If you dont have them anymore, look them up or just buy a new bottle.

And by the way, you should not keep using the same vessel for the entirety of your existence. One manufacturer suggests replacing its bottles and neti pots every three months. There are some bacteria that are going to stick around in there despite good cleaning, Dr. Tweel says, adding, I think three months seems like a reasonable time frame if somebodys going to be using it every day. (If youre irrigating every day and it doesnt relieve your nasal symptoms, he suggests seeing your primary doctor or an ENT.)

If youre going the air-dry route, you should also wash it with sterile water or rubbing alcohol  and maybe dont let it dry on the soap shelf of your bathroom, especially if you or the people you live with dont close the toilet lid before flushing. All of this advice is especially important for somebody whos had recent nasal surgery or has a medical condition that compromises their immune system, Dr. Tweel says.

For those just getting started with a neti pot, know that there can be a gross side effect that has nothing to do with brain-eating microbes: retained fluid that can come out at inopportune moments. You might use it and think everythings cleared out and then half an hour later you lean over to pick something up and you get this gush of fluid out of your nose, he says. Pro tip: Blow your nose after youre done. (Then wash your hands, then clean the damn thing.)
A student at Stanford University. Photo: Ramin Talaie/Getty Images

Shortly after a Republican lawmaker recommended that President-elect Donald Trump roll back federal campus-sexual-assault guidelines, two Democratic senators sent a letter to Trump on Thursday urging him to keep the rules in place, BuzzFeed News reports.

In a letter obtained by BuzzFeed, Democratic senators Patty Murray and Bob Casey asked Trump not to rescind a 2011 Dear Colleague letter that was issued by the Department of Education, which clarified how schools must respond to sexual violence under the Title IX gender-equality law. Yet, in December, Republican representative Mark Meadows included the letter in a report on regulations he wants to see repealed or changed during Trumps first 100 days. According to USA Today, Meadows believes the campus-sexual-assault guidelines are one-size fits all and deny the often-innocent accused basic due process rights.

Casey and Murray pointed out in their letter that the Education Department laid out preponderance of evidence standards for campus-sexual-assault investigations. Under the standard, school officials have to decide if theyre more than 50 percent certain of someones guilt. That standard is lower than the beyond a reasonable doubt standard used in criminal court, but still well established for civil-rights violations and civil-court proceedings.

Campus sexual assault is a widespread problem affecting millions of college students across the nation, and institutions of higher education have struggled to respond even with the best of intentions, they wrote.

Both Murray and Casey are on the Senate HELP committee, which is holding a confirmation hearing on January 11 for Trumps nominee for Education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
The OECD Observer online archive takes you on a journey through half a century of public policy and world progress.

Since November 1962, the OECDs experts and leading guests offer insights on the questions facing our member countries with concise and authoritative analysis, and provide our audiences with an excellent opportunity to understand policy debates and consider solutions.

Each edition of the OECD Observer reports on a core theme of the OECDs on-going work, from economics and society through governance, finance, and the environment, and articles are bolstered by tables and graphs.
I want to make a joke about ~male representation but in all honesty I wish make-up wasn't seen as a ~girl thing. I like seeing dudes wearing makeup

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Seriously, I hate it. I love a dude confident enough to rock some make-up.

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the 80's were a great time with hair metal. the cover of poison's debut album...

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Same, and seeing how even basic grooming is seen as ~feminine smh. Moisturise your gross ass face, Chad.

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word

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Men have been wearing make up for thousands of years as the times change the style changes too. It's nothing new and not going away. If it's not what society deems "feminine" and therefore somehow wrong or bad for people with penises it's cover up and concealer to make them look better on camera, so like???



Why you gotta judge tho?





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Yaaaaaas! QPOC representation! 

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Enjoy it while it lasts. They'll probably go bankrupt soon.

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I only had Birchbox for a month before they sent me a laundry detergent pod and I got sf mad and cancelled. I'm still upset when I think about it

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I much prefer Ipsy to Birchbox. I keep my product wish list really simple and always make sure to mention in my reviews when a color is flattering and they listen. They constantly send me stuff that I love.

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My prom date is best friends with him and jefree and is in their holiday campaign. It's so insane to me.

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Just saw the video he did with Kyle Kreiger. That's the only reason I know who he is.



Also, LEVI JACKSON FOSTER'S JO VIDEO LEAKED!

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I can't sit through anything involving Kyle. I find him and his USWNT stans so ott.

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I just think he's cute and funny. And most of his videos aren't about the USWNT. I respect that he's so open about his struggles with addiction...also, his friend Omar is fine af.

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No idea who Levi is



Googled him and couldn't find it

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The video on Kyle's channel was so bad. Manny is actually terrible at makeup in general, what he can do is create some fun eye looks, and his talent ends there.



He made Kyle look awful and all he did was put concealer on him and set it and that's it.



Having said that, both videos were fun cuz both of them were energetic and flirty and it was just a fun watch.

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http://nut-connoisseur.tumblr.com/post/152121938679/itsalekzmx-model-levi-jackman-foster-enjoying



Wish the lighting was better,but ya, let him get down with him badself Wish the lighting was better,but ya, let him get down with him badself

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Shayla did a giveaway on Ground Zero on 9/11, when people called her out about it she told them to "get over it." Manny is a known bully in the makeup community and the fact that he associates with Jeffree is all you need to know.



They're both trash.

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+1 expose them!

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yes expose them

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TY

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Manny is SO SMUG for one plain Jane who can only do one fucking look (which ain't that cute)

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the bar feels lower for these male brand ambassadors



plus i hate him

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Thats what ive been thinking. Theyre basically picking out of a hat in order to look progressive.

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It's a joke

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Right... his makeup application/looks are awful

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no lies

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At least this one's eyebrows don't look like they're gonna leap off the photo and bitchslap grandma.

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I am here for any impending drama due to the ~players in this game.



I upped my beauty routine hardcore since Christmas and have been employing CosRX + Curology for everything and my skin is just about perfect? It takes 8 steps in the morning and like 10 at night because I enjoy the hobby factor but someone asked me about it the other day and it basically took a short book to explain the products and why I use them.

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Yeah I do the multi-step routine and whenever people ask me about my skin, I tell them all that I do and they're always like "wow I would never have time for all of that." W/e at least I don't look like Freddy Kruger.



COSRX is amazing though.

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lol right



Like I'm fully aware that most people don't want to do eight million steps, but I have definitely been ~empowered via the products I have purchased/received to treat a whole slew of shit, and I am gonna pull anyone else down with me. idk what I was doing prior to CosRX honestly.

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What products would you recommend by them?

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Is it okay to ask what your routine is? I've heard great things about CosRX + I love hearing about people's routines lol

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oooo what's your routine? :v

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COSRX AHA and BHA serums and their Snail 96 essence changed my skin in a matter of weeks. To think of the life I could have led looking this hot if I had switched a long time ago

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I'd love to know all the steps

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I tried doing the asian skin routine but it messed up my skin even more. I think it was just way too many ingredients and products for my skin to handle.



I honestly think less is more when comes to skin. Well at least mine anyway.

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I do a billion steps too and I just do it when I'm relaxing and watching tv so I don't feel like it's a lot. I'm in love with The Ordinary brand. I used to use CosRx and really liked it but I suspect that something in their products clogs me bad.

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i live by cosrx and innisfree

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ugh i used to have a similarly intense multi-step routine and my skin was sooo nice but i've gotten so lazy lately and it shows :V my skin really is getting worse lol. i need to get my ass back in gear



and yes cosrx are godly, i trust anything from them

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Isn't he petty and catty as well or am I getting him mixed up with someone else that got caught bullying people and calling them ugly for some probably childish reason?

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You got him right on the money he is extremely petty.

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i think he's bffs with joffree star so that tells us all we need to know

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2 0 1 7 is woke AF

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This racist turd can choke tbh. Him and his bff Jefree Starr. There are dozens who deserve this more than him. And his makeup techniques make me firmly believe he should work at Claires.

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i rarely wear makeup, just mascara every so often, but lately i've been interested in trying. my biggest problem is, there's so much fucking stuff out there and as a woc with a light-medium skin tone, i have no clue where to start. i watched some tutorial videos and even the beginner videos have people using like 9 different products. it's overwhelming. one girl was like "just buy a bunch of foundations and see which one looks best on you!" bitch i'm a teacher, i don't have that kind of money.

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what's the best place to go to get samples? especially free ones lol

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try to find an ulta or sephora or makeup counters in dept stores bc you can test try products. i would go to ulta bc they have more budget brands that are still pretty good to higher end products.

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I guess in cases like that it'd be better to go to a makeup counter like at sephora or MAC. I heard about people having nasty experiences but every situation is different.

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I don't know much about make up but I've heard good things about Iman's make up brand that focuses on WoC and I think it isn't that expensive??

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Black Radiance, Iman, and Black Opal are all WOC-friendly brands that cater to darker skintones and they're drugstore-priced. :) You can find their products on drugstore.com if you can't find them in stores.

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what's your skin like? do you need a lot of coverage? if you're not used to wearing a lot of makeup and don't need a lot of coverage, look into the bobbi brown skin foundation (liquid). urban decay's naked foundation is supposed to have a similar feel and finish but they have a better shade range. foundation is just to even out your skin tone (blotchiness, differences in pigmentation) and concealer for covering up actual spots/scars/marks (it's a thicker texture). if you start wearing foundation though, i would also recommend getting a blush. nyx is a great drugstore option and mac is a great mid-range option (mac has lots of different colours/finishes etc). i'm also a woc with a light-medium skin tone (indian background) and my favourite blushes are nyx stick blush in tea rose (cream blush in a nice pretty warm pink colour), mac blush in harmony (looks v. browny but shows up as a natural rosy brown on my face), mac blush in breath of plum (a plummy shade that's in a sheertone formula, so you can build up the colour), and nars blush in deep throat (a peachy pink with a golden sheen). those are just some shades to check out in store (b/c everything looks different on anyone depending on your skin tone/undertone etc, etc) but it's a place to start.



oh and watch lisa eldridge videos!!! i feel like she does a p good job at explaining the purpose of each product so you can decide if you need it/want to include it in your own looks. i honestly don't think you need a bajillion products to do a simple, polished look.

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Don't trust them Sephora hoes. They gave me the wrong foundation TWICE. know what your undertone is and test a bunch of foundations and splurge on foundation tbh.

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Also, check out r/makeupaddiction, I believe they have links for the best products of all price points, including drugstore - it's a nice way of finding which products are most universally loved. There are also a ton of threads for beginners. This was me last year, I never wore makeup except for eyeliner and maybe bb cream and lip balm. Check out Kaushal Beauty - she taught me my entire makeup technique that I use to this day, it's fast and can look very put together and natural or very glamorous, and I find her routine very easy to follow. This was the first tutorial of hers I watched, she uses all drugstore/affordable products and creates a daytime friendly look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV9uHD1oWxw Also, check out r/makeupaddiction, I believe they have links for the best products of all price points, including drugstore - it's a nice way of finding which products are most universally loved. There are also a ton of threads for beginners.

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I hate Manny. Ugh.

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YouTuber makeup gurus need to step up their game this year. There are so many nowadays and even the popular ones are doing repetitive stuff. I know they're going to do sponsored videos but they need to shake it up a bit. I'm tired of seeing them suck at intros "So if you're interested please keep watching!" or they'll put a quote before the start of their video or do these weird poses with their mouths open (Melly Sanchez comes to mind). Too many renaissance palette tutorials last year.



Also the Naked palettes are so basic I'll be glad when that trend is over.

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i'll be working during trumps day, but im sure my work ( a nursing home) well the resdients will have it on.



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I hear ya. I work at a nursing home too. And a lot of the residents can't hear for shit so they are gonna have their tv's on full volume.

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i know what you mean, i did bingo today and i used a microphone and they still couldt hear me. i m thinking i'm literally shouting

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I didn't even realize I'll be working. Luckily our work is incredibly confidential, so we don't have TVs anywhere in the office and we aren't allowed to have phones or anything electronic out in certain parts of the office.

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again i want the rumor of there being a all star concert the same time as this shitshow rumor to be true damnit

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Is that tweet for real? Wtf

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For real. I see his tweets sometimes and I just... can't believe that people elected him for president. I'm still waiting for him to pop up a la Dave Chappelle like, "Surprise, motherfuckers! It was all a joke!"

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Same. I have gone to his twitter feed multiple times to verify that tweets I see posted elsewhere are actually for real. It's still a daily shock that this is really happening.

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Country music should take notes from Garth Brooks.

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Garth is King

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SHOCKING



You just know this little fuckface is livid that he can't get anyone with any sort of name recognition.

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I want to claw the skin off Donald Trump's face with my bare hands

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Same

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sell tickets you'll make a fortune

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About a half-hour after I posted the comment I was like, "FUCK I can't be saying shit like that since Trumpkin's actually gonna be President." I don't want the Far Reich secret service after me lol

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people magazine is now fact checking trump https://t.co/Wt3wBhhrj1  Oliver Willis (@owillis) January 5, 2017





And today in "So Fucking Corrupt" news:



1) Trump illegally uses charity money to donate to Bondi 2) Bondi declines to go after Trump U 3) Trump hires Bondi https://t.co/sId7DYyJaL  Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 5, 2017





Edited at 2017-01-05 11:32 pm (UTC) And today in "So Fucking Corrupt" news:

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I think we as a nation need to come together and hold a funeral service for journalism

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lmao i need to add this info

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he takes credit for things that have nothing to do with him so that his cult can keep saying "drumpf has done more than obama in the past 8 years and he's not even in office yet!!!!"

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HE SAVED 4 JOBS!!!! WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE!??!?! NOTHING. WE HAVE A TRUE LEADER NOW. TRUMP/PUTIN FOR THE WIN!



That's Trump stans on Twitter 24/7 basically.

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It's been funny how Trump is getting more credit for jobs than Obama did his entire 8 fucking years. And Republicans who praised Trump for auto jobs when they cheered on Romney when he said Detroit should go bankrupt. Oh, and at the time saying Obama should not bail out the auto industry.



I cannot fucking imagine how Trumpsters and media would react if Clinton praised Russia, applauded Putin, hired Goldman Sachs execs, did what Trump did with Bondi, etc. Trumpster mental gymnastics is astounding. They will justify anything Dear Leader Trump does now. Meanwhile they were shitting themselves over an email server. God I fucking hate all of them.

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Pam Bondi is a fucking piece of shit. As a Floridian I want her out of my state (and Rick Scott), but I would very much like them completely removed from the government, so no to all of this.

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We are so super fucked

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This cannot be real life. All of his picks are so astonishingly unethical.

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I have a feeling I'm going to be using the phrase "I can't even" very much over the next four years.

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Pam Bondi is also a Florida elector :(

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omg that tweet I AM SCREAMING

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I'm in denial about him being President. Every time I remember my pulse starts to race & the damn breathing app I have for my fitness tracker tells me to take a deep breath.

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It hits me hardest when I'm trying to go to sleep. :P I just have to repeatedly tell myself that he'll be impeached and/or quit in a huff and/or we'll just keep speaking out and opposing every goddamn thing he does every goddamn day until he's gone. And/or he'll die. Bitch is old. But I know what you mean.

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hopefully those trump tower taco bowls will be the death of him

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i dont know what stage im in. when i wake up in the am, i used to turn on the news ( nbc, i love willie, but theyre in fights with direct tv now) and its so depressing to hear them discuss whatever dumb shit drumpf has said the night before.

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I feel the same way.

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1398 days until the 2020 election, if we don't get nuked before then.

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I'll admit I'm still in some state of numb knowing that he's the forthcoming president, in addition to thinking about all the stuff he did and what was revealed about him in the past election. I'm just continuing to ask myself "How the heck did we get to this?"

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Same here, i keep having anxiety attacks. I have had to just stop reading about the stuff that is going on

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God, I hate that no one fact checks anything or thinks anymore. Jackie Evancho's "skyrocketing" sales was literally a bump from 6K to 11K basically the week before Christmas and, since it is a Christmas album, that is a week that most Christmas albums get bumps anyway. But if you try to say that you are a libtard denying the power of Trump.

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lmaoooo at the "Movement"





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Your icon!

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I wonder... does Talladega College have a Night School?

And would it be called Talladega Nights..... College?

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Do you think they have classes on what to do with your hands when on camera?

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THE MOVEMENT HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH he is such a fucking joke. I still cant believe he will be president.



you had one job america. damn.

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Each day we get closer and closer to his inauguration and it's just the worst

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each day we also get closer to a new election, if that's any consolation.

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he's soooo ugly

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lmao sis please. the one thing you cannot drag him for is his looks

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ummm... he's fucking ugly af.

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Sorry but he looks like a lizard



Edited at 2017-01-06 01:16 pm (UTC)

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yes we can...

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lmao, what a flop taste

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but he is ugly?!

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Ew that gif. jfc his face is so punchable and obnoxious.

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This white boy would!

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People need to stop being so offended and outraged over trivial shit.

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It's almost as bad as people who say offensive things to get a trivial reaction out of people. Almost.

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bless you

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I just think Black Forest cake is the best kind of cake out there, cherries and chocolate is a great combo. Tuxedo cake takes 2nd place, but the cream cheese is too much.



Edited at 2017-01-06 01:00 am (UTC)

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my cat's breath smells like cat food

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This isn't a new thing, this little shit said the n-word multiple times during his older playthroughs



And anyone who dares to call this mortar and pestle-looking bitch handsome needs Lens Crafters





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Oh yeah, but he did his big apology and talked about how he was ashamed of how offensive he was in old videos so a lot of (white) people forgave him. smh. I knew that was just BS because he was being called out.

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there is literally nothing at all redeeming about this trash man.

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this is absolutely insane to me.

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those numbers are usually very inflated, but still it is crazy that people can make millions from youtube

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this...makes no sense to me

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oh yeah, he's earning Kardashian money

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i think he came from money & then ended up making more with youtube

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He's the most followed and viewed Youtuber in the world right now

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It's alarming that that many people find him worth watching. I'm a gamer and a nerd and gay. Nothing about his videos makes me want to watch him. He's shrill, dumb as fuck, and not-aesthetically-pleasing.gif. Internet celebrity boggles my mind.

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You should look up the lady who unboxes toys and stuff, she makes MILLIONS of dollars just opening toys and describing them, kids watch her stuff on an endless loop and she makes an insane amount from the ad revenue.

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Tbh I doubt it's that much. He's def made millions, but def not that high I don't think.

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Does anyone know why or what his "thing" is or what helped him become so huge? I watch a few Youtubers pretty religiously and I'd never even heard of him until recently.

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There's no way he has more money than DanRad. Radcliffe's face is on everything. That alone probably earns him a million a week.

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it's not just youtube, it's also the endorsements he does and i think he sells merch etc.

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wtf who is this guy I don't even know who he is!! And he makes that much money? Doing what!?

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I've never heard of him or come across a video of his so am a lil shocked! But I mostly watch TV show clips on YouTube so also not surprised that I haven't heard of him.

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that's obscene wtf

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how sway

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What the fuck? For playing video games and bleating over it?

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jesus that makes me sick

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honestly, his parents should be on trial for reproducing this fecal matter.

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i feel like he is losing his mind, like all his videos are these weird youtube rants



actually annoying youtube rants is like a new genre, with those ugly flops at h3h3 and all those white boys bullying kids whilst playing video games, youtube is so garbage these days





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the change in h3h3 shocked me. i loved their videos in 2014 when they were calling out pick up artists and the racism in hood pranks but they took a total nosedive and are straight up pandering to reddit low hanging fruit eg. "LOOK AT THIS CRAAAAAAZY FEMINIST"

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h3h3 is being worshipped as a god on Reddit smh. I still frequent it but the majority of the site makes me sick with their nazism and racism. My subreddit blacklist is massive.



Edited at 2017-01-06 02:16 am (UTC)

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late comment but i used to love h3h3 and they're edgy 14 year white boy trash now, its really sad because they basically sold out to that demographic



ethan is clearly a smart person but he's willing to just make dumb ass shit for money now, i wonder if hila is into it or just following along

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Ia, he gives me weird vibes. I hate youtubers though

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i don't follow any youtubers but i feel like everyone who vlogs just basically makes long rant videos?

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yes, i totally see this too. i think he's kinda lost atm.



its probably a combination of him spending most of his 20s alone in a room recording content and the amount of negative attention he gets.

he seems really at ease in front of his own camera but super awkward in televised interviews or even on other channels sometimes.

he dropped out of college to pursue his dreams- almost all his professional life he has just made YT videos. but the social isolation and general nerd culture probably contributed to his current level of "unhinged"-ness. and his living is based on the whim of internet trends- it's hard to stay consistently relevant for so long.



plus anyone would feel attacked and vulnerable with all the hate directed at him. not saying his statements are always justified (he really needs media training or someone to give him a reality check), but a lot of what he says is taken out of context. and most of the articles written about him focus on old or negative soundbites. for instance, he recently helped raise over a million dollars for AIDS research and I haven't seen much of any coverage of that compared to these types of posts.



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I tried watching his alien isolation let's play and omg he's so obnoxious

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I couldn't watch Pewdiepie because his own commentary made it hard to watch, but I did end up finding out that Markiplier also played that game, so I watched his instead.

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I watch ChristopherOdd when Mark gets obnoxious :|

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i like mark, he can be obnoxious sometimes but he's a fellow ohioan and he does do some really sweet stuff for charities.

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Is anyone surprised?





& honestly who on god's green earth is putting him on a most handsome list??????

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ya mte, i came to see how many "water is wet" responses there were in the comments.

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Black twitter celebrates a white disabled man being kidnapped and tortured while being outraged over this.



Time to get some priorities straight.

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noone reply to this troll lol

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I was gonna say lol

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I wonder what it feels like to be so lonely and desperate for attention that you have to take somebody else's userpic in the hopes that you get a reply



It's so sad

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Lol I love this ontd collective resistance YAS 

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Yeah I'm on black twitter andddd that is def not happening

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You changed icons to make another comment.



Sneaky sis.

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Receipts of all of black twitter celebrating or my meal is free.

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He used to excuse his previous use of the word by saying he is Swedish and the "culture" is different there. I wonder what his excuse is now?

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What a load of BS if he said that!! It is (and should be) common knowledge not to use the N word in Sweden and the rest of white Scandinavia



Edited at 2017-01-05 11:56 pm (UTC)

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most of the swedish students we'd get here would say it  i mean there were scared to come to Texas because they thought TX was racist as fuck and they'd get shot or some shit, but they thought we long as it was n---a and not n---er it was okay. A few of them were pretty xenophobic too 

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a lot of white kids, especially white boys, think that saying "N***a" is fine because it's in rap songs and they imitate them. they pull that old "well THEY said it why can't i!??!?!" thing. and because they're from all white lands there's never been anyone to check them for it.

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Scandinavian ppl aint shit. Pasty racist fucks

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I'm Swedish and that excuse is absolute bullshit. Though we do have racist people who insist we should be able to say the word too, it is still widely known that saying it is offensive and that it is an offensive word. I mean I grew up learning it was a word not to be used, and now I'm 25 so yeah.

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umm no. my bestie is swedish and would never. smh @ him trying to tarnish an entire country

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trash flavoured trash

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leave the blood brothers out of this imo!

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lmaoooo sorry i love them too



this pos is just regular fetid trash then

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is that taika waititi :O

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He directed it!!!

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ooo might have to actually go see this now

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hes cute!

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That synopsis actually sounds really good, and I'm super hf Taika directing, so bring on Ragnarok! Btw Doctor Strange extras were released today and they mention an extra "Team Thor: Part 2", so there may be another part to the one we saw last year.

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Lol no, it's for the blu-ray release at the end of February. I imagine it'll have a digital release a couple of weeks prior since they usually do, so mid-Feb for it leaking, I guess.

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i hope it's good

what was the after credit scene in dr strange because i'm not watching that

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[ After credits BS ]

Thor and Strange having a beer at Strange's house and Strange offering his help to Thor with whatever Thor's problem seems to be.

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besides the last two captain america movies, I find these movies to be so boring.

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Is Loki not in this movie?

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LOL I forgot all about that. Lawd hammercy

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Yeah he is.



He was filming in Australia and he was supposed to have a cameo in AoU during Thor's vision scene but it was cut.

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I just wanna know about Valkyrie!

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Ooh yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what she looks like. We've had a few bts shots, but I wanna know what she looks like in post.

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Same. I want him to Hitchcock this shit and make cameos, that would make me care about these movies.

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i love this movie

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I was gonna say the best movie to come out of 2016 but wtf it came out in 2014? I feel like it was only a year ago at most jfc

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Vampire style!

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when the fuck is We're Wolves coming

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I forgot I own this movie. God! Why doesn't amazon CONFIRM purchases?!

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MY BBS

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former ally? what have i missed

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I think they mean Hulk's not an ally right then because they're thunderdome opponents. But the last time they were together was avengers 2, where they both decided to fuck off at the end, so you probably haven't missed anything.

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Ok this sounds intriguing but I fail to see how the hulk plotline could justify its existence other than to sell toys

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He will. He's such a great director and is perfect. I'm sad though cause I'm staying away from giving Marvel my dinero.

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How about thor vs my bussy

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literally the only movie I'm interested in.

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This is the one Marvel movie I'm hyped for this year just because of Taika and the cast looks great. This video still cracks me up.





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The more I think about it the more I crave a "The Office but in Asgard" short with Thor naiively thinking a Midgardian film crew will help mortals better understand his people only to have shit like Sif say "Thor has told me the maidens of your realm find tranquility with crystals and chants. I carry this as a reminder of strength" (pulls vial necklace out. Camera zooms in.) 'Tis the tears of my enemies." (smiles proudly) "I have one for each day of the week!"

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lmao 

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send a raven



he should do more comedy

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Taika <3

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yay, i get to see hulk smash shit

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are they going full planet hulk with some avengers banishing bruce too? idk if that would make any sense within the mcu post-civl war but how else does he get out there?? I'm def intrigued.

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Why does it feel like y'all have been promoting this company song for 3.5 years?

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She released it back in September as just a buzz single and did no promo... I guess I just make a lot of posts lol

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she should pay you for all this hard work tbh, you're a qt <3

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she's still working on joyride I think

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this fucking queen. nightride slayed me! If she doesn't blow up this year I'm going to be heartbroken.

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Updated the post because she dropped another snippet.

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Is she famous in the UK or something?

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I'm keep saying I need to discover new music and this girl has been right under my damn nose and I keep turning away. Let me get on the Tinashe Train.

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this song is amazing, its sad she isn't happening like she should be

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will 2017 be her year? she still hasn't gotten huge yet

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Nope.



It will never be her year. She is a flop lol

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This is the fastest I've seen a Tinashe post gain comments THAT'S IT SHE'S HAPPENING THIS YEAR

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Britney's impact tbh

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Eh, company is decent(ish), but sacrifices>>>>>>>

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IA

Sacrifices is fucking fire. I wish they would remix it with any popular rapper who's hot rn. So many potential for Urban radio...

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thank you for this suggestion!!

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yasss u betta stan lucid dreaming!

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if you mean as a single then i think thats fair



otherwise NUH UH

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lucid dreaming is perfection

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I need MVs for Touch Pass and Ghetto Boy (or one long one for both together t b h)

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that would slay tbh

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Omggg yes pls

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YAS, nightride fucking slayed me. it might've been my favorite release of 2016. i won't rest until she releases a video for ride of your life and ghetto boy tho!!!!

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Lmao her posts could barely crack 5 comments. Now she's getting 30ish.



The power of Britney is working. 

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Meanwhile the ones seemingly most demanding of "safe spaces" these days are Drumpf supporters and their ilk. So, yeah, the REAL villains.

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for fucking real

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Fascists: "Safe spaces are for the weak"

Also fascists: "We need an entire country just for white people"  Tovarisch (@nwbtcw) November 20, 2016

ikr

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Well, the same writer had the Red Skull parroting Trump's rhetoric.

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My boyfriend and his step dad were talking about colleges and their "safe space" bullshit and then not even like two hours later his stepdad told us that we should love Jesus and when we explained what our beliefs were he got so pissed. So my boyfriend called his mom like two days later saying "uhm so he was out of line" and his mom told him that his stepdad was pissed because we were disrespecting Jesus and his faith in his own house. My boyfriend said "wait, this is the same man who was just talking about how safe spaces are stupid like not even two hours before!!!"





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safe spaces are reserved for a certain type of person

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Lol wow

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The way I see it, they think it doesn't effect them, or to make a ~statement~



or emails. probably that too.

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honestly, i think a lot of it is lack of access. some don't drive and some states won't let you use your dorm address. nevermind that in places like nc they took away voting polls off campus and made it harder to register people. Also, I think that generally not being informed thing like most people. A lot of people don't realize they need to vote absentee or change their address.



but yeah, i've def heard a lot of people also just disillusioned with our voting process and not thinking it makes much of a difference.

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I definitely think that's a problem. I went to school in same state I was registered, but it was 2 hours away. I had to pay my roommate an extra $20 (so $40) that week to bring me back home, even though she was returning anyway. It was the only way I could reasonably vote at the time. A lot of college kids (this was for 2000) couldn't get back home when out-of-state.

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In my area(a red state) I know it's because most of them have been so beaten down by the red state redortic that they feel like there's just no point



I know I get that feeling a lot myself(but I power through it and still vote)

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They think it doesn't matter, and/or it's too hard if they don't have time, or they don't know where they're supposed to be registered. Some places don't let students register to vote.

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I think a lot of it is people going to school out-of-state or far enough away from home where you can't just drive back to vote (or if you don't have a car in the first place). It's easy enough to get an absentee ballot, but it seems like a lot of people either don't know that or can't be bothered.



In short, it's a hassle for probably the vast majority of college students to vote, so unfortunately many wind up not voting. =/

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Maybe if your generation hadn't fucked up the world with all your self-obsessed Fountainhead-esque Reagan-era horseshit, we wouldn't be so insistent on, like, actually treating other people with respect.



(some straw activists do take things too far and just use buzzwords meaninglessly to act superior. that's true. but that's not everyone, for fuck's sake.) Maybe ifgeneration hadn't fucked up the world with all your self-obsessed Fountainhead-esque Reagan-era horseshit, we wouldn't be so insistent on, like, actually treating other people with respect.

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I don't think it gets says enough in this country, but I have made it my life's duty to say 'fuck Reagan' everytime he is mentioned.







Fuck Reagan. I'll shit on his grave.

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In my post-1945 history class, I made the case that Bush Jr was the end legacy of Reagan.

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YES

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i'm not generally a fan of comics but it seemed like they originally really spoke out about oppression. what is going on with the new crop of writers. last drama i heard was about captain america being a nazi/hyrda

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omg really....lol

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Of fucking course it is.

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oh lol well we can just ignore him forever then. hahaha trash.

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yikes, i guess he's just consistently trash :/

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lol of course it is. what an asshole.

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Superheroes were literal social justice warriors so, yeah, I don't get it either.

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Ya, the message of comics has changed and definitely not for the better.

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a Z-list supervillain team of college students demanding a 'safe space' on campus."



Was it a DumpTruck voter? They get triggered over everything.

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Stop turning superheros into social justice warriors.

They were created to be social justice warriors pic.twitter.com/T1V7YgA5je  Bleep The Police (@BleepThePolice) January 2, 2017



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It amazes me how many "true comic book fans" (i.e the ones who say girls are fake geek girls) think that superheros weren't for social justice. What comics were they reading? Garfield & Friends?

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Lol lbr they don't actually read comics. These are the people who watched the 90s movies and don't understand why Bane was incomprehensible. That later translates to staying up reading wiki summaries so they can pretend to know what they're talking about

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hdu sis! I love Garfield & friends and I hate mondays

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making fun of sjws was funny back in 2014 when it was about otherkin greyhound busses and transethnic weebs, but it's just sad now. grow the fuck up.

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Right? And so much of it is mocking legitimate issues and concerns

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exactly. the safe spaces argument is so weird to me since it's kind of not a bad idea? especially on predominantly white campuses where black students or whoever just wants some fucking peace.

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yeah and now it's gained traction/legitimacy and calls itself the alt right now save us

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This was such a weird, shallow and embarrassing detour for the comic, which up to this point was pretty enjoyable overall. It felt like a total old man yells at cloud moment, and it's hard not to see it as him being bitter over the backlash to the HydraCap thing (which it's been like a year and it still hasn't paid off in a meaningful way. Tbh this could apply to a lot of the marvel long running storylines at this point).



Also I'm super irritated that they trotted out that tired MLK v Malcom X rhetoric that Marvel insists on using all the time with Sam Wilson holding back his (Latino) sidekick from yelling at an Ann Coulter/Tomi Lauren stand in and giving a speech to him about the "right" way to protest. Tbh this issue is a really great argument for why Marvel needs more diversity in their writers bc they have their white writers constantly using POC characters as mouthpieces for their irritating politics.



Edited at 2017-01-06 05:23 pm (UTC)

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I can guess the people who find this funny will be here in a page or two.





It's just very very tired now. Just say "I'm a white man and I want to stay on top, fuck you all." and be done with it/life.

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I feel like ONTD doesn't have a lot of people like that anymore. They all flocked to Reddit.

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Me either. Maybe I've been here too long and I'm brainwashed because for the most part I think we're a decent balance now. We're not full tumblr but we're definitely not Reddit.

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It's funny in a "man has a midlife crisis, lashes out at millenials and their safe spaces" way





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this is fucking cringy and awful in every worst sense of the world of time and space

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#freethebombshells What a mess, been enjoying Sam as Captain America too

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Oil prices rose on Friday as a result of a strong draw to U.S. oil inventories and early signals that OPEC is following up on their pledge to cut output

(Click to enlarge)

Friday, January 6, 2017

Oil prices are set to end the week slightly up from where it started, following a few rocky days of trading. After a sharp correction earlier in the week, oil regained ground on a steep fall in crude oil inventories. Still, the gains would have been much larger if not for the fact that U.S. gasoline stocks rose sharply. Nevertheless, oil is starting off the year on a positive note, and early signs of OPEC compliance (more below) are buoying the market.

Tesla gigafactory starts up. Tesla (NYSE:TSLA) announced that its gigafactory has started commercial production of batteries at its much-hyped gigafactory in Nevada. The inauguration of mass battery production marks a new era for the energy industry. The gigafactory could lower the cost of batteries for electric vehicles as well as home energy storage systems. Tesla says that at peak production, slated for 2018, the factory will add as much battery capacity to the global market as the rest of the world currently produces.

U.S. to become net-energy exporter. The EIA released its Annual Energy Outlook 2017, with projections out through 2050. The report estimates that the U.S. will become a net-energy exporter in the years ahead under most of its possible scenarios. That is largely due to falling oil imports and rising natural gas exports. The higher energy prices go, the quicker the U.S. becomes a net-exporter.

Saudi Arabia says that it is already is complying with OPEC deal. Saudi Arabia offered encouragement to oil traders this week when it announced that it is lowering its output to 10.058 million barrels per day (mb/d) in January, complying with its promised cuts laid out in the November OPEC deal. OPEC members are required to bring their six-month average production levels to the targeted range, but Saudi Arabia said it will meet that level immediately. The announcement adds credibility to the deal and raises the likelihood that other members will comply with their targets.

Second quarter to see tightest supply conditions. The second quarter of 2017 appears to be the period of time in which the global oil market will experience its tightest conditions: Other OPEC members will ratchet down their production levels to comply with the deal; non-OPEC countries including Russia will lower output; U.S. refineries will begin to ramp up operations to meet summer driving demand; Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq burn more oil in warmer months; inventories will decline as supply drops; plus underlying growth in oil demand continues to soak up excess supply. Many oil analysts expect oil prices to rise the most in the first two quarters of 2017, with the market easing in the second half of the year, potentially leading to lower prices in late 2017.

Speculative bets on rising oil prices continue to increase. Oil speculators continued to add bullish bets on oil prices at the end of 2016. For the week ending on December 27, bullish positions rose by 7 percent to 358,573, with the current makeup the most net-long since 2014. Long bets outnumbered short positions by a factor of 35 to 1, the WSJ reports. That sets up the market for downside risk if bearish news emerges in the coming weeks. If speculators get spooked, they could begin to unwind their positions rapidly, leading to a sharp correction in oil prices.

Oil deals hit $69 billion in 2016. Oil M&A activity reached $69 billion in 2016, more than double the total from the year before, according to research firm PLS. Much of that activity was focused in the Permian Basin in West Texas, as companies rushed to scoop up acreage in the countrys most prolific shale basin. "In 2017, we do believe that acquisition activity will expand beyond the Permian into other known, proven plays that become significantly more economic at pricing above $50," Brian Lidsky, managing director of research and content at PLS, told CNBC.

Goldman Sachs sees EOG Resources as favorite pick. Goldman Sachs says that EOG Resources (NYSE:EOG) is their favorite pick in the E&P space, noting that the company could grow production 20 percent annually through 2020. EOG will have free cash flow in 2018 and beyond; the company will also see expensive rig contracts signed back in 2014 start to expire this year, reducing costs; and EOG is working through already drilled but uncompleted wells this year, which should boost cash flow.

OPEC production falls in December. Output from the cartel dipped in December on falling Nigerian output. Nigeria was exempted from the OPEC deal, but saw its production fall by 200,000 bpd in December. Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) shut down the Trans Niger Pipeline this week after a fire struck the line. The pipeline is one of the countrys largest, able to transport 180,000 barrels per day to the Bonny Export Terminal. The outage raises the possibility that Nigerias oil production could fall even further. Output was down to 1.45 million barrels per day in December, not far above the 1.39 mb/d low reached in August.

China to invest $360 billion in clean energy. China announced plans to invest $360 billion in renewable energy over the next four years. The move comes as Beijing has been choked in smog this winter, adding urgency to the countrys campaign to cut pollution. Separately, a report from the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis finds that China is surpassing the U.S. in clean energy investment and leadership. At a time when U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is poised to roll back clean energy investment, China could widen its lead over the U.S. in an industry that could dominate the 21st century energy landscape.

New gasoline taxes. The U.S. has seen gasoline consumption rise to record highs, but consumption could flatten out as oil prices rise. Gasoline prices are now 35 cents per gallon higher than they were a year ago. On top of that, several U.S. states have imposed steeper gasoline taxes that came into effect in the New Year. New Jersey tops the list, adding a 23-cent per gallon tax at the pump.

By Evan Kelly of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A major question for 2017 is: will the coal rally continue?

Two events this week should lend strength to that market. With one consuming nation seeing a massive and unexpected leap in demand  while another coal-producing country saw major restrictions placed on its exports.

The importer is Vietnam. Which had an unprecedented surge in imports during the past year, according to data released this week.

Stats from Vietnams General Customs Department showed that coal shipments into the country jumped to 13 million tonnes, as of December 15. A mark that was more than four times greater than projections  which had pegged likely 2016 imports at just 3 million tonnes for the year.

So why did imports take such an unexpected leap? Apparently because of rising costs in Vietnams domestic coal mining sector.

Sources noted that Vietnamese buyers have been favoring imports of coal over the past year. With incoming shipments being cheaper than local supply  due to high mining costs at Vietnamese operations, and a 12 to 14 percent tax imposed on domestic coal.

Prices for local coal were therefore said to be up to 50 percent higher than for similar coal produced in other big mining nations like China.

Thats good news for international producers  potentially meaning that Vietnam could become a significant buyer of Australian and South African coal this year.

And sellers in those countries got another boost this week. From the United Nations. Related: Why Russia Expects $40 Oil This Year

The UN Security Council took aim at the coal mining sector in North Korea this past week. Imposing new sanctions on the sector after a North Korean nuclear test.

Those new measures limit the amount of coal North Korea can export to China  to just 7.5 million tonnes annually.

Thats significantly below Chinese current buying from North Korean miners  with China having imported 18.5 million tonnes of North Korea coal in the first 10 months of 2016. And will leave Chinese buyers scrambling to fill the gap, most likely using imports from go-to Asia supplying nations like Australia.

Add 10-ish millions of tonnes new demand in Vietnam to 10-ish million tonnes in North Korea-less China and it could be enough to move prices.

Watch for continuing numbers on imports into both countries.

Heres to the unexpected,

By Dave Forest

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A newly released survey by Reuters indicates that OPEC oil output in December fell from its record high - for the first time since May - falling to 34.18 million barrels per day, down from 34.38 million in November. This is supported by a tweet from a Wall Street Journal reporter that the Saudis have already cut output to honor the OPEC pledge.

WSJ reporter Georgi Kantchev tweeted on Thursday that Saudi Arabia has already cut oil output by at least 486,000 barrels per day to 10.058 million barrels per day. Kantchev cited an unnamed and undescribed source in his tweet.

The Reuters survey, based on shipping data and industry sources, noted that OPECas of Decemberwas pumping 1.68 million barrels per day above the 32.5 million production ceiling agreed to at the 30 November meeting, effective 1 January 2017.

The biggest output drop came from Nigeria, where the government is facing down Niger Delta militants targeting oil installations.

Saudi Arabia also pumped less, according to the survey, after seeing record output in November. The reason for lower Saudi oil exports in December was lower demand, rather than an effort to make cuts.

On the flip side, Libya, which along with Nigeria is exempt from the November deal cuts, saw an increase in output, as did Iraq. Iran also put out 300,000 barrels per day more, according to the survey.

Related: Why Russia Expects $40 Oil This Year

Earlier today, news agencies reported that Saudis state-owned Saudi Aramco had launched talks about cutting between 3 percent and 7 percent of its February crude shipments in line with the Kingdoms commitment to cut output by 486,000 barrels per day.

Iraq oil officials also said today that they had implemented output cuts as of 1 January, but offered no further details.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
South Sudan will restart crude oil production from oilfields in the Unity state within two months, which could potentially derail OPEC and non-cartel producers deal to curtail global supply in a bid to reduce inventories and lift oil prices.

According to officials in South Sudan and Sudan quoted by local media, the situation at the Unity state oil sites is completely secured, with only minor damage incurred from rebel clashes, which would allow for production resumption within a month or two.

The Governor of the Unity state, Joseph Nguen Manytuil, has said the state was now free of rebels and pledged to mobilize more troops and local communities to protect the oil infrastructure so that our oil resume production peacefully and as soon as possible without delay, Sudan Tribune reports.

Earlier this week, South Sudanese embassy officials in the UAE said that South Sudan was determined to increase production despite ongoing civil war and the struggle for control of the countrys government through oil.

We are planning to increase oil production as oil prices go up to increase our revenue and expand the ways of oil industry. We suffered the most due to low oil prices. Rise in oil prices is good news for us, Mayom Alier, Deputy Head of South Sudan mission in the United Arab Emirates, said.

Related: Platts Sees OPEC Cuts Eliminating Oversupply By Q3

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, but it has been a bloody road to establishing a stable government whose budget is dependent almost fully on oil. In December 2013, civil war broke out when President Salva Kiir Mayardit sacked the cabinet and accused Vice President Riek Machar of instigating a failed coup. The civil war ended in 2015officially--but clashes have been frequent since.

As regards ramping up production, South Sudan vowed as early as in May of this year to resume pumping from fields that have not been operational since the start of the 2013 civil war. Almost all the oilfields in Unity state were forced to shut down then as well as some others in Upper Nile state.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
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From Baltimore Sun

Co-written by *William Binney

It has been several weeks since the New York Times reported that "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" led the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin "deployed computer hackers" to help Donald Trump win the election. But the evidence released so far has been far from overwhelming.

The long anticipated Joint Analysis Report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI on Dec. 29 met widespread criticism in the technical community. Worse still, some of the advice it offered led to a very alarmist false alarm about supposed Russian hacking into a Vermont electric power station.

Advertised in advance as providing proof of Russian hacking, the report fell embarrassingly short of that goal. The thin gruel that it did contain was watered down further by the following unusual warning atop page 1: "DISCLAIMER: This report is provided 'as is' for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within."

Also, curiously absent was any clear input from the CIA, NSA or Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Reportedly, Mr. Clapper will get a chance tomorrow to brief an understandably skeptical Donald Trump, who has called the briefing delay "very strange," even suggesting that top intelligence officials "need more time to build a case."

Mr. Trump's skepticism is warranted not only by technical realities, but also by human ones, including the dramatis personae involved. Mr. Clapper has admitted giving Congress on March 12, 2013, false testimony regarding the extent of NSA collection of data on Americans. Four months later, after the Edward Snowden revelations, Mr. Clapper apologized to the Senate for testimony he admitted was "clearly erroneous." That he is a survivor was already apparent by the way he landed on his feet after the intelligence debacle on Iraq.

Mr. Clapper was a key player in facilitating the fraudulent intelligence. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put Mr. Clapper in charge of the analysis of satellite imagery, the best source for pinpointing the location of weapons of mass destruction -- if any.

When Pentagon favorites like Iraqi e'migre' Ahmed Chalabi plied U.S. intelligence with spurious "evidence" on WMD in Iraq, Mr. Clapper was in position to suppress the findings of any imagery analyst who might have the temerity to report, for example, that the Iraqi "chemical weapons facility" for which Mr. Chalabi provided the geographic coordinates was nothing of the kind. Mr. Clapper preferred to go by the Rumsfeldian dictum: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." (It will be interesting to see if he tries that out on the president-elect Friday.)

A year after the war began, Mr. Chalabi told the media, "We are heroes in error. As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful." By that time it was clear there were no WMD in Iraq. When Mr. Clapper was asked to explain, he opined, without adducing any evidence, that they probably were moved into Syria.

With respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on "circumstantial evidence," when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking.

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From Down With Tyranny

We're getting off the Trump Train for a minute for something remarkable. I was bowled over by the results of this study and wanted to pass them on. From the Harvard School of Public Health:

"Hospitalized patients treated by female physicians show lower mortality, readmission rates



"Boston, MA -- Elderly hospitalized patients treated by female physicians are less likely to die within 30 days of admission, or to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge, than those cared for by male physicians, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first research to document differences in how male and female physicians treat patients result in different outcomes for hospitalized patients in the U.S.







"The study was published online December 19, 2016 in JAMA Internal Medicine."

"The difference in mortality rates surprised us," said lead author Yusuke Tsugawa, research associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management. "The gender of the physician appears to be particularly significant for the sickest patients. These findings indicate that potential differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians may have important clinical implications."
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From Black Agenda Report



From gma.yahoo.com/obama-trump-meet-white-house-113147980--abc-news-topstories.html: President Obama and Donald Trump

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"Some members of the ruling classes believe that their survival depends on America controlling or crushing the rest of the world."

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign the corporate media, Democratic Party operatives and the pundit class all proclaimed that Donald Trump is a fascist. The fascistic nature of our political, law enforcement and economic systems were conveniently omitted from these warnings, but assertions of Trump's untrustworthiness were repeated endlessly. If that characterization has any validity at all then Barack Obama's establishment of a de facto Propaganda Department is a terrible blow to democracy.

On December 23, 2016 Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a federal law that is passed every year. NDAA authorizes defense appropriations but it is also used as a Trojan horse to hide attacks on civil liberties. In 2011 the NDAA authorized indefinite detention of anyone deemed a terrorism suspect. Tucked inside this year's NDAA was the passage of the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act which establishes the little known or discussed Global Engagement Center.

The title seems benign enough until one reads its mission. "The purpose of the Center shall be to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests."

"Obama's establishment of a de facto Propaganda Department is a terrible blow to democracy."

In plain English, this act establishes an official propaganda arm of the United States government. Of course there has always been governmental coordination used to spread lies about American foreign policy. The government doesn't even have to work very hard because the corporate media usually march in lock step and repeat their every claim uncritically. But these are dangerous times for the American hegemon. Its ability to continue exercising imperial control has been damaged by foreign governments successfully resisting its efforts and by the election of Donald Trump.

Trump has questioned the need for NATO, pledged to end regime change, and to improve relations with Russia. These are reasonable policy decisions or rather they would be if the worldwide neo-liberal regime didn't feel so threatened. What should be simple disagreements are treated as omens of the end of the world. Perhaps they do signal the end for some members of the ruling classes who believe that their survival depends on America controlling or crushing the rest of the world.

The Global Engagement Center makes real the Democratic Party plan to silence dissent and create a network of propaganda partners. The act provides for grant making appropriations to "civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies or academic institutions..."

"This act establishes an official propaganda arm of the United States government."

The recent Washington Post/Jeff Bezos/Democratic Party effort to name websites such as Black Agenda Report as agents of Moscow will now be official government policy. The anonymous minders of the Is it Propaganda or Not site will no longer have to be invisible. They can come out of the closet and apply for grant money just like a university or an NGO with all the right connections. They can then work hand-in-hand with the bipartisan war party as it demonizes and silences anyone who refuses to make common cause with their schemes.

The head of this Global Engagement Center will be appointed by the president and that means Donald Trump. On the one hand we are told that Trump's presence in the White House is a fundamental danger to democracy. But in true presidential fashion Obama has handed off to Trump what he thinks is most important to continue.

That is a consistent pattern from one administration to the next. Despite any differences they may highlight before an election, they all act like made men in the gangster clique after the votes are cast. Presidents pardon one another and their associates, and in so doing let criminals go free. Trump won't "lock up" Hillary Clinton because he will want his successor to let him off the hook for any crimes he should commit during his term in office. The man whom Obama labeled unfit for the presidency will now be the propaganda commander-in-chief.

"They all act like made men in the gangster clique after the votes are cast."

While Democrats wait for inauguration day in nervous anticipation of Trump policy changes the rulers continue to ignore them. Obama hasn't spoken to the concerns of the rank and file since Election Day. He has, however, repeated warnings about "fake news" and Russian influence. His legacy is dead, a sham. His signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, will be repealed. All of his foreign policy machinations have come to nothing. His interference in Ukraine and regime change attempt in Syria succeeded in bringing Russia and China closer together to counter American influence. Russia, Syria, Turkey and Iran meet to discuss the future and fortunately do so without an American presence. Vladimir Putin no longer bothers with trying to engage the people he used to call "our American partners." When Obama expelled Russian diplomats in a fit of impotent pique, Putin declined to do the same. Why bother when he knows he has won.

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There is an old saying in the Caribbean: "look at the pot telling the kettle its bottom is black." What this means is that you're guilty of the same thing that you're accusing me of. And as I watched the spectacle of a bunch of pompous, gaseous-sounding United States senators sounding off in self-righteous anger against Russia for supposedly meddling in the United States elections on behalf of Donald Trump I had a real LoL moment. The smug, holier-than-thou Senator Ted Cruz and a cabal of elected officials with trust and honesty ratings in the sewer, sought to imperiously lecture Russia on its hacking of the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) emails, passing them to Wikileaks, who dutifully made them public just to give Trump the edge.

And if all of that was not pure exercise in comic relief content - not that I'm downplaying the possibility of Russian mischief in any way - President Trump was having quite a few "Twitter moments" and associated meltdowns for "disparaging the intelligence community" for its historical shenanigans and "false flag" [see below for explanation] operations. Infact, Trump's distrust of the American Intelligence Community does carry some valid currency given the checkered past of these organizations to meddle and mislead. As recently as the presidency of George W. Bush the CIA fed this quisling president a hill of baked beans about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's weapons and nuclear potential and capabilities that turned out to be a stinking tissue of lies, half-truths, speculations and conjecture.

So looking at this phalange of stern-faced white men grilling generals and intelligence hacks over Russia's and President Vladimir Putin's alleged role on the recent US elections, I got the distinct urge to start giggling uncontrollably, morphing into a certifiable celebrity candidate for Bellevue. I also had immediate visions of black-bottomed kettles and pots all banging together in a cacophony of hypocritical caterwauling.

For Trump winning the Electoral College vote and getting creamed by the popular vote does that to a bombastic egotist and his little hands that just loves early morning tweets over the mundane intelligence briefing. His knee-jerk, zany remarks in the wake of this admittedly manufactured excuse for American international embarrassment abroad, was vintage Trump -- just be a Troll and do something, heck anything, that deflects from the issue at hand that calls for some cohesive and coherent thinking -- things that Trump has a seriously bad relationship with. Does the phrase "winning it" come to mind?

But try as they may the Senate Hearing into Putin's naughtiness did not expose a smoking gun and fell far short of what was expected, even by US Senate standards, since the process was whittled down to a grandstanding venting session, with guys trying to out do each other for the assembled media. So the billion-dollar question is: did ole Vald (not to be confused with The Impaler) really hijack the US elections? It is plausible I grant you that it's entirely possible. And if he and his trolls in possible that Russian meddling was designed for both domestic consumption in Russia and to provoke the kind of response by the United States that we're seeing now.

The oft characterization of Putin in the United States media -- that he's some mindless, incompetent fool of a spent power and therefore easily intimidated by a tough-talking United States -- is just so much hogwash. The fact that the United States senate has taken him seriously enough and President Barack Obama is so enraged with him as to slap new, ineffective sanctions, on Russia is testimony to Putin's political skills. At EVERY turn he's outwitted and outmaneuvered the United States. From his invasion of Georgia 24-hours after sitting with and chatting President George W. Bush, his lightning occupation of the Crimea, his deliberate break up of the Ukraine and intimidation of the smaller states, his threats to cut of the gas spigot to Eastern Europe, his insertion of Russian military in Syria, his closeness to Iran and his teaching Turkey a bitter economic lesson and now his exclusion of the United States (and Great Britain) in a peace deal with Turkey over Syria (resetting Turkish/Russian relations), makes Vladimir Putin a political genius of sorts.

If indeed, as the US claims, Moscow did the dirty deed to the DNC and used Julian Assange as a pawn to front it and take the blame, then the US Republicans must be miffed that they did not think about that themselves. Moreover, the Democrats attempts to pin their humiliating loss to a bloviating nincompoop on Russia is just plain lunacy. Fact is the United States has long lost any moral credibility around the world that it's a fair player and honest non-meddler in political processes all over the planet. Yeah, yeah I get it. Vladimir Putin is a tough, old former KGB thug, charismatic though he is, who sits atop a regime populated with kleptomaniacs, corrupt and self-serving sycophants that run the country as their own personal fiefdom. He's a bully and ruthless political leader who answers to no one and could care less what the United States does. His record is one of invading and visiting untold misery on any and all countries that dare to go against the Putin Doctrine.

And he's confounded, thwarted and angered the United States by his adventures forcing President Obama to helplessly look on with only sanctions and political rhetoric left to amuse Putin and company. Thing is Russia is not Iraq, Libya or Syria there the United States could intervene on a presidential whim or fancy. Russia is stocked up to the gill slits on nuclear weapons, thousands of tanks, modern missile technology, very sophisticated air defenses and other war materials that make war against them is not a feasible proposition and borderline lunacy. The United States knows that quite well despite its saber-rattling rhetoric. And so does Europe that has remained silent, uncharaterrically so, in the face of Russia's aggressive behavior.

But after all this is said and done if some Americans are all jacked up over Putin's latest political mischief they should not be calling the Russian kettle's bottom black. Because their own pot's bottom is just as black or even blacker. The United States is the world leader in meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign independent nations. If the truth was told Russian meddling is minuscule when compared to US overthrowing of governments, assassination plots against leaders it does not like (ask Cuba), and all kinds of other direct and indirect meddling. Here are the facts: between 1946 and 2000 the United States and Russia together intervened in one way or the other over 117 times in foreign elections. That's one out of every nine "free and fair" elections conducted by independent, sovereign nations around the world.

That's why this new-fangled "Russian bogeyman" that's messing with our "Democratic system" is so hilarious. The much-touted American Democracy is as mythical as the Dodo Bird, and as deeply flawed as the sacredness of the American vote. Heck, this last presidential contest exposed these long-held myths. Two unpopular, elitist and very rich candidates duked it out so that "we the common, ordinary people" could choose either a millionaire that gives six figure speeches to Wall Street fat cats, or an egotistical, race-baiting, bigoted billionaire. Both campaigns were short on real "bread and butter" issues and long on personal attacks, insults and banal, divisive rhetoric. In the end Americans get to choose the face of a new oppressor every five years in a system where 538 unelected, faceless, and unknown people -- mostly white men -- get to choose or "select" the President of the United States regardless of the overwhelming majority of votes cast for another candidate.

Democracy you say? No wonder Putin was right at home in an increasingly corrupt and undemocratic system. The point is that in order to comprehend the "New Cold War" between Russia and the United States, we have to go back to the CIA's toppling of Salvador Allende in Chile, Jacobo Abenz in Guatemala, coddling Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and the underhand role of countless "advisors" to favored governments. In fact, as recent as 2009 the United States intervened in the political life of Honduras. When President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup, then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton refused to condemn it because Zelaya was seen as "too populist" for US tastes.

Had she done so that would have automatically triggered a suspension of US aid and military assistance to the armed forces in Honduras. So Clinton simply ignored the coup, looked the other way, and with a nod and a wink, called for new elections - as if elections were the problem -and not an illegal and illegitimate military overthrow of a democratically elected president. This green light by the US Secretary of State created the conditions for a brutal military crackdown, revitalization of the death squads, and national repression not seen since the 1970s and 80s.

So spare me the self-righteous, hypocritical whining and finger pointing. If Vladimir Putin's minions could simply sit in a dingy apartment in Moscow with a laptop, and waltz into the DNC's database, then we're in really doo-doo. And if after everything, American Democracy, with all of its flaws, is so fragile as to be jittery as soon as Russia poops, then we're in just as bad shape. Still, there is a glaring double standard here because it now seems that meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations is only outrageous and reprehensible when the United States is getting kicked in its butt for dong the same thing. Russia is simply giving the United States a taste of its own medicine. And its sure tastes nasty as hell.

[FALSE FLAG - The contemporary term false flag describes covert operations that are designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by entities, groups, or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.]
From Reader Supported News

Donald Trump takes office in two short weeks. As I've written previously, I don't expect much in the way of prison reform or sentencing reform. Indeed, I've urged readers to take to the courts for redress because we obviously won't get it from Trump or the Republican Congress. As it turns out, the courts may be the only place where civil liberties may still be protected.

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a case about a Minnesota law that allows local police departments to charge a "processing fee" for any person arrested for any reason, even if they are found not guilty of committing a crime.

Corey Statham was arrested in Ramsey County, Minnesota, and charged with disorderly conduct. Two days later, the charges were thrown out and Statham was released from the local lock-up. He had $46 in his pocket when he was arrested. But upon his release, the local police gave him back only $21. He had been charged a $25 "booking fee." And to add insult to injury, Statham got his $25 back on a debit card, which levied a fee of $7.25 for him to get his money back. In the end, Statham, who was innocent of any crime, lost $32.25 for no reason.

Many Americans drop $38.75 on dinner and don't give it a second thought. But for many others, it's a lot of money. And it is poorer people who are more likely to find themselves in this predicament.

I found the same thing to be true when I was released from prison, where I spent 23 months after blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program. I had $55 left in my commissary account. When I was released, I was given the money on a debit card that charged me $6 every time I tried to use it -- even for a balance inquiry. I got about $30 out of it before I threw it away, empty. The rest of the money had gone to fees. I was fortunate, though. I had friends and a family to help me. But what about the prisoner who needs that money to survive when he's released? It seems to be little more than official theft.

Fees are at least as high outside the federal program and in states other than Minnesota. Kentucky, for example, bills people held in its jails for the cost of incarceration -- even when those people are exonerated or if charges are dismissed. Five towns in Colorado levy the same kinds of fines, and Colorado law demands that individuals file a lawsuit if they want their money back.

In Statham's case, he filed a suit against Ramsey County, saying that he had a presumption of innocence and that the county had no right to keep his money. The County's defense was that it "provided the debit cards for the convenience of the inmates." It admitted that it was difficult to argue that the non-refundable $25 fee was constitutional. Still, the county's attorney said that people innocent of crimes "can do it [try to get their money back] as soon as they have the evidence that they haven't been found guilty." He admitted, though, "There's some legwork involved."

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul ruled in Statham's favor last year and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case later this year. Ramsey County announced that it would neither submit a brief in the case nor defend its actions. The Court ordered the county to file a brief, however, leading observers to believe that it will force an end to the practices of charging processing fees to innocent people and gouging those who are not.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
From Paul Craig Roberts Website

Jon Rappoport's mocking of the US presstitutes is superb:

"Vladimir Putin is the secret president of the United States.

"Yep. That's it. The US is now the USSR. It's all over. Trump is a Communist who took orders from Putin. Trump is a Red. That was his game all along. He's a billionaire Commie."

Ridicule is effective, and nothing deserves ridicule more than the Washington Post, New York, Times, CNN, and the rest of the presstitutes who pretend to be real journalists. But as I have emphasized, and other real journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald (see, for example, here and here) imply, the fake news recklessly promoted by the presstitutes brings with it the threat of thermo-nuclear war.

For several years Russia and her president have experienced endless demonization. The Russians know that Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia (done while Putin was at the Beijing Olympics) was a Washington provocation. The Russians know that Washington's coup in Ukraine (done while Putin was at the Sochi Olympics) was a provocation aimed at seizing Russia's Black Sea naval base in Crimea and cutting Russia off from the Mediterranean. The Russians know that Washington knows that the charges that Russia hacked Hillary's emails and the US presidential election are lies. The Russians know that the "Russian threat" created by Washington is a lie along with all of its permutations, such as an impending Russian invasion of Poland and the Baltics. The Russians understand that US ABM bases on Russia's borders are provocations, as are NATO military exercises on Russia's borders and in the Black Sea. You can add to this list on your own.

The lies are ubiquitous, have grown more absurd, and are now institutionalized in the US government in the CIA, executive branch agencies, and among many US senators and representatives. That these lies are validated by endless media repetitions throughout the Western world are viewed by Russia as indications that Western populations are being prepared for a military attack on Russia. Putin has warned publicly on many occasions that the Western propaganda is dangerously destabilizing. Yet, as he also notes, no one hears his warnings.

Washington is so intent on its anti-Russian propaganda that Congress has passed, and Obama has signed, an intelligence bill that contains a section, Title V, that authorizes active measures to counter purveyors of false news. These purveyors are alternative media websites, such as this one, that challenge the official lies. The truthful alternative media is accused of being under Russian influence. Last summer a website shrouded in secrecy was created that recently posted a list of 200 websites alleged to be under Russian influence, either directly or indirectly. The Washington Post irresponsibly published a long article endorsing the fake news of 200 websites working for the Russian government.

In other words, the suppression of the truth is the last defense of the corrupt American ruling establishment. During the last 24 years three Washington regimes have murdered millions of peoples in nine or more countries along with US civil liberty. To cover up these vast crimes, unparalleled in history, the presstitutes have lied, slandered, and libeled.

And the Washington criminal regime holds itself up to the world as the indispensable protector of democracy, human rights, truth, and justice. As the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said recently, what makes America exceptional is the use of might in the service of evil.

Washington brands not only its opponents but all who speak the truth "Russian agents," hoping that the demonization of Russia has sufficiently frightened the population that Americans will turn their backs to those who speak the truth.

It would seem obvious even to the insouciant that an establishment that has gone so far out on a limb that the CIA director publicly attributes the election of Donald Trump to Russian interference but is unable to produce a shred of evidence -- indeed in the face of totally conclusive evidence to the contrary -- is determined to hold onto power at all costs.

The CIA's open, blatant, and unprecedented propaganda attack against a president-elect has caused Trump to throw down the gauntlet to CIA director John Brennan. There are reports that Trump intends to revamp and reorganize the intelligence agency. The last president who said this, John F. Kennedy, was murdered by the CIA before he could strike against them. Kennedy believed that he could not take on the CIA until he was re-elected. The delay gave the CIA time to arrange his assassination.

Trump appears to understand his danger. He has announced that he intends to supplement his Secret Service protection (which was turned against JFK) with private security.

Isn't it striking? The president of Russia states publicly that Washington is driving the world to thermo-nuclear war and that his warnings are ignored. The president-elect of the United States is under full-scale attack from the CIA and knows that he cannot trust his official security force. One might think that these extraordinary topics would be the only ones under discussion. But you can find such discussion only on a few alternative media websites, such as this one, branded by PropOrNot and the Washington Post as "under Russian influence."


Two face vase

(Image by Edward L) Details DMCA



All the people that have the hashtag "Not my president", are deluding themselves because guess what: he will your president because on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as be the president of the United States. I know this pains many progresses but this is the deal we got. Now that we have a Republican house and Senate, and a Republican president, it's up to us and everyone with any common sense to watch these people and make sure they don't destroy what we have left of a Republic.

I just want to illustrate that this election showed many people in the United States that they really don't have a choice of who runs for president. We have two parties in the United States that are totally off the rails. The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. Most people that read this article will probably agree with me.

I'd like to talk about the nomination of Sen. Jeff sessions as Atty. Gen. of the United States. If this is an example of Donald Trump "draining the swamp" in Washington, it is also something that I can't get my head around. This is in the right wing or left wing debate, this isn't about conservatism or liberalism,this is about right and wrong. This is man couldn't even get a federal judgeship back in the 1980's. This is a man who has stood against almost everything in the American Constitution. He is repeatedly called the NAACP a communist organization. He said he was for the Ku Klux Klan until he found out they smoke pot. This is a man who will do more to harm to American democracy than anyone could possibly imagine.

The head of the NAACP said this was never about left or right this is about authoritarianism versus freedom and I completely agree with them. We must stand up as a people and tell our elected representatives that we will not accept or condone a nominee like Sen. Jeff sessions as Atty. Gen.

If you think that writing your Congressman or your Sen. will not do any good look what happened when the Republicans tried to gut the Senate Ethics Committee last week, and the American people sent a flood of letters to the Congressman telling them to back off. You know what? They backed off. These are people who face election every two years and they can be manipulated by the American people which is the way our democracy is supposed to work. The same thing can be done against hare-brained and irresponsible nominations of people against the very agencies that are called on to head. I'm talking about the EPA and HUD and the Department of Education. If you look at the nominees closely you will see that they are against the very agencies there called on to represent. If this is draining the swamp the maybe we a should just let the water stand. You don't fix your democracy by destroying it.

Democrats and Republicans are both at fault and they have been for years. The appointment of Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee almost destroyed the Democratic Party. This is because of people who support the corporations run the Democratic Party and people noticed and will not put up with it anymore. Donald Trump didn't get elected because people like him. Donald Trump got elected because people hated Hillary Clinton more than him.

This is a time of great change, and we need to understand that it is the people of the United States that called for great change. This doesn't mean that everybody who voted for Donald Trump is a right-wing fanatic and Donald Trump need to realize this too. Donald Trump need to understand that people in United States don't want authoritarian government they want a government that works for the people. This is not a left or right question or conservative or liberal question this is a question of whether or not the people of the United States are represented by the government.

Now the Republicans love Wikileaks and Julianne Assange because he released all of the emails from the DNC to the public, ruining Hillary Clinton's chance of the presidency. In 2010 they hated Wikileaks, they hated Edward Snowden, and they called for imprisonment or execution. Now, there are the heroes of the Republicans and the Democrats who used to support whistle-blowers are now trying to put them in jail. Is this not something that is just incredible?

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From Reader Supported News

No matter how terrible we expect the coming years to be, let me predict against all conventional wisdom that Trump will make them worse by pulling back from his bromance with Putin and joining whole hog in an intensified nuclear arms race, more proxy wars, and even direct confrontation with Russia.

I offer this in the face of Putin's refusal to retaliate tit-for-tat to Obama's booting out 35 of Russia's accredited diplomats and imposing other sanctions over Putin's alleged hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chief. In a gesture of goodwill that Trump called "very smart," Putin brilliantly laughed off Obama's attempt to create problems for the incoming president.

Please join me in the heresy. Remind everyone you know of the obvious. Neither Obama nor the joint report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nor the 17 US intelligence agencies offer even a sliver of evidence that Putin made Trump our president.

What they provide are details on hacking and on why Washington believes that Russia did it. Some details are convincing. Few are conclusive. But none of them get to what Obama claims he is giving us. However much hacking Russia did or did not do, hacking alone could not have had any impact on how Americans voted.

In effect and perhaps with intent, Obama is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. He promises a tale of Russian interference in our electoral choice. But he only delivers allegations of Russia's electronic snooping, much like the American spying all over the world that Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, and others have documented in far greater detail.

To give us what he promises, Obama and his people would have to prove Russian links to the emails WikiLeaks published from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chief. In voting as tight as the electoral college race, almost anything could have made the difference, from Hillary's failure to spend enough time and money in the rust belt to her failing to convince left-leaning voters that she would deliver on her promises to the embarrassment that the content of the WikiLeaks emails caused her.

But Obama's bait-and-switch offers no evidence at all about any Russia link to those emails. He and his spooks and secret police say nothing at all about it. Nada. Niente. WikiLeaks denies that what they published came from Russian sources, most recently in an interview with Fox News. Their denials should not be the last word on the subject, but they gain considerable weight from Obama's failure even to address the issue.

So, Mr. Obama: either provide some evidence -- not on hacking but on any Russian link to the WikiLeaks emails. Or, if you can't do that, quit hawking Cold War hysteria over an unsubstantiated spy story.

Which brings us back to Trump. Whatever his undoubted ignorance and self-interest, he somehow grasps an element of geopolitical reality that writers at RSN have been documenting for years. Washington and its allies have systematically provoked Russia by expanding NATO and the European Union (EU) and staging "color revolutions" right up to the country's current borders. Carl Gershman, the head of the US government's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has even called for Washington to oust Putin from power, much as NED helped remove the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in the American-made coup in Kiev.

Despite himself, the bumptious Trump pushes us to ask tough questions. Why continue these provocations against Russia? Why create unnecessary conflict by dragging Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs and their neo-Nazi storm troopers ever deeper into NATO and the EU? Why not acknowledge that Crimea is far more historically, culturally, and militarily important to Russia than to the West. No matter how much Putin's supporters deny it, taking Crimea violated international law and treaty obligations. But wouldn't the US, Europe, and Russia all be better off treating his annexation as a fait accompli?

Obama, the Clintons, and America's foreign policy elite like to avoid such debates. They prefer to bear-bait Trump as some kind of Russian agent.

Unfazed by the name-calling, on December 22 Trump offered a revealing tweet. "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," he wrote.

"Let it be an arms race," he told Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski the following day. "We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." What a Russian agent!

Responding, Putin vowed to stay "neck-and-neck" with the United States in any nuclear arms race. He also called for strengthening "the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems." Putin was, in fact, responding less to Trump than to decisions by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to place anti-ballistic missiles and radar systems in Eastern Europe that could give the US the capability to launch a nuclear first-strike against Russia.

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By Eric Shierman

My how things have changed since I last wrote a piece for the Oregon Catalyst in 2013. Ive been busy with graduate school for the past couple of years, and as I attended the Executive Club last Wednesday, I felt like Moses walking down from Mt. Sinai seeing his people worshipping a golden calf. In all its euphoria over our presidential transition, many on the right did not seem too worried about threats by the incoming administration to significantly jack up one of the most pernicious of taxes: tariffs. Im deeply disturbed by the way Donald Trump seems to be turning Republicans against free market economics.

This is a nontrivial issue for Oregon. Our states prosperity stands deeply tied to global commerce.

Listening to any of Trumps stump speeches during the campaign, its clear that he starts from the same factually mistaken premise that many uninformed Americans tend to hold, that we dont make anything here anymore. The actual data shows the opposite is the case. Thanks to Ronald Reagans vision that allowed our economy to integrate itself with the rest of the world, a vision that our president-elect has long opposed, we are living in the golden age of American manufacturing.

There is a data set going all the way back to 1920 that measures this; its called the Industrial Production Index. Look at those shaded areas which mark recessions. They definitely knock our industrial output downward, but our free trade agreements do not.

The urban legend of American industrial decline probably persists because productivity increases in manufacturing mean firms require fewer workers to produce these goods. It would seem silly to protest against the use of barcodes and robotic automation; so human nature being what it is, folks naturally gravitate to foreigners for scapegoats to explain a changing economy.

When Trump browbeats American manufacturers to deviate from their profit-maximizing strategies, hes threatening American jobs in the long-run, not bringing them back. America is already great, but we cannot make it greater by making America 1953 again.

Many lucrative things are cheaper to make in the US than in Mexico or China. When Carrier or General Motors are allowed utilize less expensive workers abroad for labor-intensive components, these companies are ultimately able to hire more Americans at a higher rate of pay than they would otherwise if forced by Washington D.C.s central planning to employ Americans for the mundane work.

Oregon has been a big beneficiary of NAFTA and the WTO. Have you ever heard of Lam Research? One of the most innovative manufacturing firms in the world makes a tremendous amount of money making high-end capital goods right here in Oregon, but our cognitive biases only allow the average voter to focus on an obsolete plant that closes in Indiana. This distorted worldview threatens to inspire bad trade policies that will threaten Americas already strong competitive advantage.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of A Brief History of Political Cultural Change.
By NW Spotlight

PORTLAND, OR.  At his first public appearance since his Oath of Office, Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson will officially welcome newly naturalized citizens and congratulate them on becoming Americans. The ceremony takes place on Friday, Jan. 6 at 2 p.m. at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office at 1455 NW Overton St., Portland.

We are a nation of immigrants, and we must continue to celebrate the diversity that strengthens the fabric of our communities, Richardson said. Naturalized citizens honor and value their rights and responsibilities as American citizens. We ought to recognize the importance of all voices in our society.

Other elected officials and community leaders will attend the event. This ceremony is open to the media. All press is requested to arrive at 1:45pm and all inquiries should be directed to Michael Calcagno, Communications Director for Secretary Richardson at 5038667124.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes about Minnesota weather daily, trying to go beyond the "highs" and "lows" of the weather story to discuss current trends and some of the how's and why's of meteorology. Rarely is our weather dull - every day is a new forecast challenge. Why is the weather doing what it's doing? Is climate change a real concern, and if so, how will my family be affected? Climate is flavoring all weather now, and I'll include links to timely stories that resonate with me.
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
Member of Parliament for Kpandai, Matthew Nyindam has implored President John Dramani Mahama not to "kill" himself over his defeat in the past December elections.



According to him, the President has done his best and Ghanaians have also given their verdict by voting massively for the President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).



Hon. Nyindam, speaking on ATV's "Asem Yi Di Ka" programme which airs between 3pm to 5pm every week day, told the host that though the sound victory of the NPP is very disheartening for the President to imbibe; "he has done his best. When Ghanaians marked him, they gave him 44% and gave Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo 53%. That is the verdict but he has done his best. That is what he can do."



He further commended President John Mahama for executing his Presidential duties over the last four years, stressing that "he can't kill himself. What he can do is what he has done."











Source: ATV









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
This artist's concept shows a pulsar, which is like a lighthouse, as its light appears in regular pulses as it rotates. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Like anthropologists piecing together the human family tree, astronomers have found that a misfit "skeleton" of a star may link two different kinds of stellar remains. The mysterious object, called PSR J1119-6127, has been caught behaving like two distinct objectsa radio pulsar and a magnetarand could be important to understanding their evolution.

A radio pulsar is type of a neutron starthe extremely dense remnant of an exploded starthat emits radio waves in predictable pulses due to its fast rotation. Magnetars, by contrast, are rabble rousers: They have violent, high-energy outbursts of X-ray and gamma ray light, and their magnetic fields are the strongest known in the universe.

"This neutron star wears two different hats," said Walid Majid, astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Sometimes it's a pulsar. Sometimes it's a magnetar. This object may tell us something about the underlying mechanism of pulsars in general."

Since the 1970s, scientists have treated pulsars and magnetars as two distinct populations of objects. But in the last decade, evidence has emerged that these could be stages in the evolution of a single object. Majid's new study, combined with other observations of the object, suggests that J1119 could be in a never-before-seen transition state between radio pulsar and magnetar. The study was published in the Jan. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, and was presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas.

"This is the final missing link in the chain that connects pulsars and magnetars," said Victoria Kaspi, astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "It seems like there's a smooth transition between these two kinds of neutron star behaviors."

When this mysterious object was discovered in 2000, it appeared to be a radio pulsar. It was mostly quiet and predictable until July 2016, when NASA's Fermi and Swift space observatories observed two X-ray bursts and 10 additional bursts of light at lower energies coming from the object, as reported in a study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters led by Ersin Gogus. An additional 2016 study in the same journal, led by Robert Archibald, also looked at the two X-ray bursts, incorporating observations from NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) telescope. This study also suggested that the pulsar was behaving rebelliouslylike a magnetar.

When the outbursts happened, Kaspi excitedly emailed astrophysicist Tom Prince at JPL/Caltech in Pasadena, telling him this would be a good object to study from the southern hemisphere. Prince, Majid and colleagues used the NASA Deep Space Network 70-meter radio telescope in Canberra, Australiathe largest dish in the southern hemisphereto see what was going on.

"We think these X-ray bursts happened because the object's enormous magnetic field got twisted as the object was spinning," Majid said.

The stress of a twisting magnetic field is so great that it causes the outer crust of the neutron star to breakanalogous to tectonic plates on Earth causing earthquakes. This causes an abrupt change in rotation, called a "glitch," which has been measured by NuSTAR.

Neutron stars are so dense that one teaspoon weighs as much as a mountain. The star's crust, roughly 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) thick, with higher pressure and density at greater depths, is a neutron-rich lattice. This particular neutron star is thought to have one of the strongest magnetic fields among the population of known pulsars: a few trillion times stronger than the magnetic field of the sun.

Two weeks after the X-ray outburst, Majid and colleagues tracked the object's emissions at radio frequencies, which are much lower in energy than X-rays. The radio emissions had sharp increases and decreases in intensity, allowing scientists to quantify how the emission evolved. Researchers used an instrument, which they informally call a "pulsar machine," that was recently installed at the same DSN dish in Australia.

"Within 10 days, something completely changed in the pulsar," Majid said. "It had started behaving like a normal radio pulsar again."

The question remains: Which came first, the pulsar or the magnetar? Some scientists argue that objects like J1119 begin as magnetars and gradually stop outbursting X-rays and gamma rays over time. But others propose the opposite theory: that the radio pulsar comes first and, over time, its magnetic field emerges from the supernova's rubble, and then the magnetar-like outbursts begin. But, just as babies grow to be adults and not vice versa, there is likely a single path for these objects to take.

To help solve this mystery, much as anthropologists study the remains of human ancestors at different stages of evolutionary history, astronomers want to find more "missing link" objects like J1119. This particular object was likely formed following a supernova 1,600 years ago. Monitoring similar objects may shed light on whether this phenomenon is specific to J1119, or whether this behavior is common in this class of objects.

Astronomers continue to monitor J1119 as well. Majid and colleagues observed in December a marked brightening of emissions at radio wavelengths, in a pattern consistent with other magnetars.

"Our recent observations show that this object contains a bit of the 'astrophysical DNA' of two different families of neutron stars," Prince said. "We are looking forward to finding other examples of this type of transitional object."

Provided by NASA
Credit: University of Manchester

A researcher from The University of Manchester has found that British schoolchildren think their teachers should keep their regional accents, rather than modifying them in ways they consider 'more appropriate' for the classroom.

It was historically the case that Received Pronunciation was the unofficial 'standard' accent in Britain, but society has changed dramatically over the last fifty or sixty years, with people from all over the world settling in the country. Therefore, to consider any accent in today's Britain 'standard' may fly in the face of the drive for equality.

Dr. Alex Baratta from the Manchester Institute of Education at the University wanted to investigate accents in British schools as they are places where a person's speech is important, yet equality is also championed.

For this purpose, he obtained the views of 9 teachers and 55 students of a range of ages, class levels and ethnic groups at three Manchester schools - a state primary, a state secondary and a private primary.

All of them agreed on the need to respect the diversity of accents, and by extension, society. This is seen in comments such as 'I don't think there should be a standard accent because it's wrong to discriminate', 'you should just talk how you want to' and 'people shouldn't have to change themselves'.

However, earlier notions as to what constitutes a 'teacher voice' are still alive and well for some teachers, as there is still a perceived need to modify their accent. As one teacher from Bristol explained, "The Bristolian accent has lots of connotations, like village idiot, yokel, farmer  this wasn't doing me any favours because all you'd hear is the accent and it was like 'he's thick'."

Another teacher from Salford who admitted to modifying her accent closer to Received Pronunciation said she did so due to a desire to be "a model to the girls".

The only aspect of pronunciation which teachers mentioned focusing on, and students explained they were criticised for, was the glottal stop - this is perhaps an indicator of a modern 'non-standard accent'.

"For the current generation of British children, one's accent is clearly representative of who a person is. Therefore, a desire to 'keep it real' is felt amidst the students' clear respect for diversity - in this case, linguistic diversity," says Dr Alex Baratta.
Big eared townsend bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) Credit: Public Domain

(Phys.org)A clever, exhaustive experiment created and carried out by a combined team of researchers from Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. has explained why some nectar-producing plants produce dilute nectar in spite of a highly sugared preference by bats. In their paper published in the journal Science, the researchers describe their experiment and what they found. Hamilton Farris with the Louisiana State University School of Medicine offers a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

Prior research has shown that despite an apparent love of sugar, bats do not necessarily always choose a plant with the sweetest nectar, which results in plants that produce diluted nectar in areas frequented by bats. Why this occurs has baffled scientistslogic suggests the opposite would occur. To find the answer, the researchers devised a novel experiment they believed would finally solve the puzzle.

The experiment consisted of outfitting 23 artificial flowers (in a part of a Costa Rican rainforest) with sensors and pumps that were able to mix sugar into an artificial nectar and then pump it to the flower. All of the flowers were connected to a computer, which counted the number of bat visits and controlled the concentration of the nectar for each flower. The researchers then routinely captured a number of bats and tagged them with tiny radio transmitters. This setup allowed the researchers to monitor and even influence bat feeding in the wild over a period of six years (and multiple generations of bats) and to see the impact it had on plant evolution.

As part of their analysis of the data, the researchers assumed that a bat visit to an artificial flower resulted in the transfer of virtual pollen to another virtual flower, resulting in virtual offspringthis approach allowed the researchers to cause the artificial flowers to evolve at a much higher rate than natural flowers. The team also found that they could manipulate the numbers of bats present in the study by manipulating the nectar, and they found that as a bat population grows, each bat is able to consume less nectar, which made them less discerning concerning sugar concentration and more concerned about finding more to eatthat in turn led the plants to produce less sugar and a diluted nectar. The team also found that the Weber effect may have come into play at certain pointswhere increases in sweetness led to diminished returns for the plants.

More information: Vladislav Nachev et al. Cognition-mediated evolution of low-quality floral nectars, Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4219 Abstract

Plants pollinated by hummingbirds or bats produce dilute nectars even though these animals prefer more concentrated sugar solutions. This mismatch is an unsolved evolutionary paradox. Here we show that lower quality, or more dilute, nectars evolve when the strength of preferring larger quantities or higher qualities of nectar diminishes as magnitudes of the physical stimuli increase. In a virtual evolution experiment conducted in the tropical rainforest, bats visited computer-automated flowers with simulated genomes that evolved relatively dilute nectars. Simulations replicated this evolution only when value functions, which relate the physical stimuli to subjective sensations, were nonlinear. Selection also depended on the supply/demand ratio; bats selected for more dilute nectar when competition for food was higher. We predict such a pattern to generally occur when decision-makers consider multiple value dimensions simultaneously, and increases of psychological value are not fully proportional to increases in physical magnitude. Journal information: Science

 2017 Phys.org
Credit: Lowell Observatory

Artificial light at night is a threat to astronomical research, personal safety, and the health of both humans and wildlife. The problem is worsening with the proliferation of LED billboards and blue-rich white light LEDs as an option for street lighting. Within five years, LED technology will take over as the dominant type of outdoor lighting technology. With this in mind, scientists and lighting engineers say now is the time to implement strategies for reducing light pollution. By working together, they are identifying the best type of LED to use while suggesting actions that minimize intrusive lighting.

Meeting in Grapevine, Texas at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), representatives from several western United States observatories led a workshop with other dark sky advocates, including a lighting engineer. The workshop showcased successful outcomes with real "before" and "after" examples and an expectation that going forward, cities can achieve good lighting outcomes.

Addressing the inevitable increase in the use of LED lighting, participants identified three factors that are important to minimizing sky glow: shielding, brightness, and color of the light. Ideal fixtures direct light downwardto sidewalks, for instancebut block light from pointing toward the sky. Dimmer lightswhose brightness is appropriate for the taskare preferred, while the color of the light is also important; scientists have shown that blue-rich white light increases glare (thus impairing vision), has a greater geographical spread than light with less blue content, and adversely affects wildlife behavior.

Kitt Peak National Observatory Director Lori Allen said that even in areas where the value of dark skies has been appreciated for years, the conversion from low or high pressure sodium streetlights to white LEDs could be a giant step backward, unless those LEDs are properly shielded and have a color temperature of 3000K (K = Kelvins) or less. She said the 4000K white LED fixtures should not be used for outdoor lighting, as the strong blue light emitted by these is harsh in appearance and detrimental to astronomy and wildlife.

Allen said, "According to a recent report by the American Medical Association (AMA), there is growing evidence that this light may be harmful to human health as well." (See below for Report 2-A-16, "Human and Environmental Effects of Light Emitting Diode Community Lighting" of the Council on Science and Public Health).

At the Grapevine meeting, the AAS Council announced a three-part resolution on light pollution. It endorsed the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) "Resolution B5 in Defence of the Night Sky and the Right to Starlight", supported statements in the AMA report, and called on all AAS members to protect dark skies in their communities.

Chris Monrad, a consulting electrical engineer, is playing a critical role in helping cities mitigate the artificial light problem. Working with Lowell Observatory and the City of Flagstaff, he is helping Flagstaff create a world-leading, LED-based, dark-sky-preserving street lighting solution. This effort is intended to serve as a model for other communities to use to work with, rather than against, dark sky advocates and the lighting industry to find nighttime lighting solutions that meet their particular needs.

Allen said, "I encourage anyone who is interested in this issue to contact their city and county planners, find out what lighting changes are planned for their community, and let their officials know what kind of lighting they want. It's essential for citizens to be involved. If you are looking for a good place to start, contact the International Dark Sky Association (www.darksky.org), who can put you in touch with your local IDA chapter."
An artists impression of the VAMP UAV flying through Venus clouds. Credit: Northrop Grumman

The question of life on Venus, of all places, is intriguing enough that a team of U.S. and Russian scientists working on a proposal for a new mission to the second planetnamed Venera-Dare considering including the search for life in its mission goals.

If all goes as planned, an unmanned aerial vehicle could one day be cruising the thick, sulfuric acid clouds of Venus to help determine whether dark streaks that appear to absorb ultraviolet radiation could be evidence of microbial life.

Venus has long been a focus of Russian planetary science, which has the proud legacy of the record-breaking Venera space probes that landed on the Venusian surface in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With many questions remaining unanswered, the joint mission of Roscosmos and NASA, if approved, would see an orbiter launch towards Venus in 2025 with the aim to make remote-sensing observations of the planet and its atmosphere; deploy a lander on the surface; and search for future landing sites.

Among several possible additions to the mission are a small sub-orbiter to study Venus' magnetosphere, and either a balloon or an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) taking measurements of the atmosphere over a long duration.

Should the UAV be approved, its main goal would be to take meteorological measurements to determine why the atmosphere rotates so fast relative to the surface, a phenomenon known as super-rotation. This fast rotation was discovered in the 1960s by astronomers tracking the motion of the dark streaks in the atmosphere. Puzzlingly, astronomers do not know the origin and composition of these dark streaks, nor do they understand why the streaks haven't mixed with the rest of the atmosphere and why they are absorbing ultraviolet light.

"These are questions that haven't been fully explored yet and I'm shouting as loud as I can saying that we need to explore them," says Sanjay Limaye, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a former chair of NASA's Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG).

According to Limaye, the nature of the UV absorber is completely unknown. It could be particulate matter mixed into the clouds, or a substance that has been dissolved by the droplets of sulfuric acid, or perhaps crystalline in nature, like ice. Iron chloride has been proposed, but there is no confirmed mechanism that could loft particles of iron chloride 50 to 60 kilometers above the surface, particularly as winds near the surface only blow weakly through the dense lower atmosphere.

Life in the Clouds

A more exciting explanation for the dark streaks is that they are evidence of microbial life. "It's a possibility we can't overlook," says Limaye, who is a member of the Venera-D science definition team.

Finding life at high altitude in the atmosphere of a planet would make sense. After all, microbes have been found at similar heights in Earth's atmosphere. The challenge for life on Venus is the planet's extreme temperature. The surface, at 462 C (864 F), is hot enough to melt lead, and the surface pressure of 92 bar is the equivalent of being almost a kilometer under water.

Venus seen in ultraviolet light by the European Space Agenys Venus Express mission. The dark streaks in the clouds are where an unknown material is absorbing ultraviolet light. Could it be life? Credit: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA

However, in a region beginning around 50 kilometers in altitude and extending a dozen kilometers outward is a sweet spot where the temperature ranges between 30C and 70C (86F to 158F) and the pressure is similar to Earth's surface. Life could potentially survive in this zone where the dark-streaking UV absorber is found.

Intriguingly, the sulfuric acid droplets within the clouds aren't necessarily a show-stopper to life. Earlier Venera missions detected elongated particles in the lower cloud layer that are about a micron long, about the width of a small bacterium. These particles could be coated in ring-shaped polymers of eight sulphur atoms, called S8 molecules, which are known to exist in Venus' clouds and which are impervious to the corrosive effects of sulfuric acid. Furthermore, S8 absorbs ultraviolet light, re-radiating it in visible wavelengths. If the particles are microbes, they could have coated themselves in S8, making them resistant to the corrosive effects of sulfuric acid. It has even been postulated that the S8 exists as a result of microbial activity. Is this then the key to life on Venus?

"I cannot say that there is microbial life in Venus' clouds," says Limaye. "But that doesn't mean it's not there either. The only way to learn is to go there and sample the atmosphere."

Powered Flight

The original Russian plan for Venera-D featured balloons patrolling the atmosphere, but balloons are not very maneuverable and would not necessarily be able to reach the regions with the dark streaks. A solar-powered UAV would stand a far better chance.

"The idea is that with a large enough wing span you can generate enough power and actually fly through the atmosphere of Venus, with electric propellors, for a very long time," says Limaye.

Descending hypersonically into the atmosphere after detaching from the orbiter, the UAV would be filled with hydrogen or helium gas, keeping it buoyant at a nominal floating altitude of 50 kilometers, allowing it to glide through the clouds while moving through the night-time hemisphere. Upon daylight, the solar-powered propellors would kick in and raise the craft's altitude to around 60 kilometers.

Over the course of three to four days, the craft could move around the planet along the upper atmosphere's 'super-rotation,' the strange phenomenon where the atmosphere seems to be uncoupled from the solid planet and rotates much faster. The UAV would therefore be able to explore the clouds at different altitudes, moving from air mass to air mass, from regions with UV absorbers to regions devoid of them, sampling and measuring the composition of the atmosphere.

The aerospace company Northrop Grumman has already independently developed a concept for a Venusian UAV, called VAMP (Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform), which would have a giant 55-meter wing-span and be designed to operate in the atmosphere for at least a year.

The 'D' in Venera-D's name stands for "dolgozhivushaya," which in Russian means "long-lived." This originally referred to the hopes of keeping a lander operational on the surface for days or weeks, although the oppressive conditions on the surface mean that realistically the most that any lander could survive is mere hours. Instead, the UAV, continually circling around Venus, would take the mantle of being long-lived.

The final report describing the science goals of the Venera-D mission will be submitted to Roscosmos and NASA by the end of January 2017, at which point the two space agencies will have to decide whether they will collaborate on the mission. An answer not expected until late 2017 at the earliest.

This story is republished courtesy of NASA's Astrobiology Magazine. Explore the Earth and beyond at www.astrobio.net .
Asian longhorned beetles in Europe normally have white markings. The Marly infestation was unusual in that most of the beetles had yellow markings, which had not been seen before in Europe. Credit: Doris Holling (WSL)

Asian longhorned beetles (ALBs), which are harmful to many broadleaf trees, have been spotted in eight European countries to date. The city of Winterthur (Switzerland) is the first place in Europe to eradicate a large beetle infestation in just four years; elsewhere, this has so far only been achieved in over ten years. According to an ALB specialist from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) writing in the Wald und Holz journal, the recipe for success requires systematic action against the beetles, well-coordinated control measures and active information of the public.

The Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) is one of the ten most dangerous quarantine pests in the world. Over 30 ALB infestations have been reported in eight European countries to date; six of these infestations have now been eradicated. In most cases, it took more than 10 years to wipe out the beetle population in large outdoor infestations.

Winterthur (Switzerland) has recently shown that it is possible, however, to eradicate even large outdoor infestations within the statutory minimum period of four years. This requires decisive action right at the start of an outbreak, because only the best and most experienced people on the ground can isolate the infested area in the first year.

The outdoor infestation in Winterthur could only be eradicated quickly because measures to combat and control the beetles were introduced and meticulously and properly coordinated shortly after the infestation was detected in 2012. The federal government, the Canton of Zurich, the WSL and the city of Winterthur worked closely together for over four years. The federal government relieved the city and canton of their monitoring duties in December 2016.

Success factors

Determining the boundaries of an infestation in the year of its discovery is key to quickly eradicating an outdoor infestation as large as that in Winterthur. This requires as many well-trained ALB-certified tree surgeons and sniffer-dog teams as possible. Inexperienced teams cannot effectively combat the beetles on their own. Of course, qualified personnel are more expensive but saving money here would only lead to far higher subsequent costs overall due to monitoring. Additional experts serve as a further source of support.

Map showing the outdoor infestations in Europe reported to date. Red: Infested areas that are still being monitored. Green: Areas where the infestation has already been successfully eradicated. Credit: Doris Holling

Another factor for success is ensuring that all parties involved work competently and transparently, and communicate openly, efficiently and promptly with each other, local residents and the media. Any attempts to combat this beetle will fail without the understanding and cooperation of the affected residents over a number of years. This dangerous quarantine pest can only be eradicated if we work with, not against each other!

Experts from WSL supported the other partners from beginning to end, from identifying beetles, larvae, pupae, eggs and signs of infestation (incl. genetic analyses) to documenting the entire infestation (outdoor report sheet, database, collecting photos). WSL also trained experts on site, produced visuals and provided sample material for the sniffer dogs.

WSL is providing the same support for the other outdoor infestations in Switzerland that are still being monitored. Most of these infested areas were also isolated in the year they were discovered  most recently 2013 in Brunisried (Canton of Freibourg). At that point, the boundaries of the infestation no longer needed to be corrected during annual monitoring as no more longhorned beetles were found. Through WSL specialists' close-knit network with colleagues abroad, all parties involved in Switzerland could always benefit from the most up-to-date advice.

Focus on information

Together with the federal government, WSL published an ALB leaflet and an identification guide (available in Switzerland's three official languages), which were successfully used in operations, training and the provision of information to the public. Furthermore, in 2016 training was provided to stakeholders in the green industry to teach them how to identify further outbreaks as early as possible. WSL also educated inspectors from the Swiss Federal Plant Protection Service, who deal with cross-border goods transportation and package-wood controls.

As a result of the Winterthur infestation, the Canton of Zurich is imposing restrictions on the use of granite from Asia in public tenders with a view to preventing future ALB outbreaks. Stone importers are now taking preventive action, too. All these efforts have led to the eradication of individual infestations and greatly restricted ALB entry routes into Europe.

However, the danger is not yet averted. Like other countries, Switzerland is potentially still home to undiscovered infestations, so stay vigilant! The sooner an outdoor infestation is spotted, the smaller it is, which makes it much easier to control.

Provided by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL
iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Senators are set to begin holding hearings next week to confirm several of President-elect Donald Trumps top cabinet picks.



And those men and women he has chosen to lead the countrys agencies can expect a grilling.



Democrats have expressed frustration that several of the candidates have yet to disclose their financial documents, which they say are necessary for a full vetting. But can Democrats stop any of the picks from being confirmed?



Here's a closer-look at how the process works:



Who Needs Senate Confirmation?



All cabinet-level officials, except the White House chief of staff, require Senate confirmation, including: the secretaries of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, energy, health and human services, homeland security, housing and urban development, interior, labor, state, transportation, treasury, and veterans affairs, as well as the attorney general, director of the Office of Management and Budget, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. trade representative, ambassador to the United Nations, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and administrator of the Small Business Administration.



Hundreds of other senior posts and agency heads (1,212, to be exact) require Senate confirmation too after background checks. Essentially, heads of agencies and a lot of deputies need to be confirmed, whereas adviser positions for the president do not. For example: CIA director, yes; national security adviser, no.



The level of Senate confirmations has created a backlog in committees on Capitol Hill and left agencies understaffed. The Washington Post reported in 2013 that when Janet Napolitano resigned as secretary of homeland security, there were 15 vacant leadership positions in that department.



When Does the President Send Appointments to the Hill?



Before a nomination may move to the Hill, the candidate must submit several forms and undergo a fair amount of vetting by the White House and FBI. What is gathered in this process (by looking at, for example, financial disclosure reports, criminal checks and questionnaires about ties to foreign governments) could be used by the president or presidentelect to withdraw a nomination or present it to the Senate as evidence in hearings.



In 2004, Congress passed legislation to "encourage a president-elect to submit, for security clearance, potential nominees to high-level national security positions as soon as possible after the election," according to the Congressional Research Service. The goal was to "reduce the elapsed time between a new president's inauguration and the appointment of his or her national security team."



What Does the Confirmation Process Look Like?



1) A nomination is given to the relevant Senate committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, handles the attorney general nomination.



2) That committee can then hold hearings, vote to move the nomination straight to the Senate floor for a vote or not move on it at all (in which case, the committee effectually kills the nomination).



3) After hearings, the committee votes to report a nomination to the full Senate, requiring a simple majority. It may vote to report the nomination favorably, unfavorably or without recommendation. If a committee sits on an appointment, the full Senate may vote to invoke cloture and move the nomination along.



4) If a nomination clears committee, it moves to the Senate floor for a simple majority vote. Filibusters are not an issue here because Democrats changed Senate rules three years ago to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for most nominations. Supreme Court picks are still subject to filibuster.



Will Trump Have the Votes?



The GOP barely kept its majority in the Senate after this year's elections, and rejections of major appointments are rare. Republicans have 51 seats right now and will likely have 52 by January. (Louisiana's race is in a runoff, and ABC News' race rating is solid Republican.) But that number includes Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who was just announced as Trump's pick for attorney general.



That raises some questions. Will Sessions vote for himself? When John Kerry was in the Senate and required confirmation as secretary of state, he voted "present."



Could some Republicans defect? Yes. Could there be a tie? Maybe. Would Republicans need to use soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence's vote as a tie breaker? Possibly.



Fun Fact



The first time the Senate rejected a nomination was on Aug. 5, 1789: Benjamin Fishbourn as the naval officer for the Port of Savannah.



When Do Hearings Start?



Hearings are set to start next week. A nominee may not be confirmed, however, until after the president is sworn in on Jan. 20. The full list of scheduled hearings is posted below.



Schedule

Attorney General: Jeff Sessions - Jan. 10-11, 9:30 a.m.

CIA Director: Mike Pompeo - Jan. 11, 10 a.m.

DHS: John Kelly - Jan. 11, 2 p.m.

Education: Betsy DeVos - Jan. 11, 10 a.m.

Labor: Andy Puzder - Jan. 17 (tentative)

Secretary of State: Rex Tillerson - Jan. 11-12 (tentative)

Transportation Elaine Chao - Jan. 11, 10:15 a.m.

U.N. Ambassador: Nikki Haley - Jan. 18 (tentative)

Housing: Ben Carson - Jan. 12, 10 a.m.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
All people deserve equitable access to quality and comprehensive mental health care. But unfortunately, some of the populations most in need of such care have historically been, and continue to be, the most underserved. According to the Health and Human... read more
The United States intelligence report, ordered by President Obama, on the Russian government's hacking of American political emails, allegedly intended to influence the 2016 presidential election, has been released by federal officials

Read the full document titled "Background to "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections": The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution."
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.
Timothy Guy is the only mayoral candidate that had submitted a resume seeking the Glens Falls Republican Committee endorsement, as of mid-afternoon Friday, said city Republican Chairman Michael Borgos.

The city Republican Committee meets Wednesday to interview candidates.

Guy, a retired Warren County sheriff's deputy, is one of three announced candidates in the race.

The others are Councilman at-Large Dan Hall, a Democrat, and former 1st Ward Supervisor William Brown, a Conservative.

Water and Sewer Commissioner Nancy Underwood, an Independence Party member, has said she is considering the race.

Click here to read about Guy's campaign announcement.

Click here to read about the status of the city Democratic Committee's announcement.
The Warren County coroners office has changed its policies related to autopsy requests amid rising costs that stem from the fact that no doctor will do them in Glens Falls anymore.

The move came to light after decisions not to have autopsies done last weekend on two men  one believed to have been killed in a snowmobile crash and the other an apparent drug overdose victim  were questioned by police.

Warren County Coroner Tim Murphy said the coroners office was trying something new in ordering fewer autopsies. The new approach comes in part because of an increasing caseload during the opioid epidemic and also because of the additional time involved now that there is no longer a doctor in Glens Falls willing to do them, he said.

We used to do them with every unattended death. Now its a case-by-case situation, Murphy said.

An unattended death is one that occurs outside the presence of a physician.

Murphy, who is one of four county coroners, said money wasnt the cause of the policy change. But the change took place just weeks after the Warren County Board of Supervisors learned the coroners office had significantly exceeded its 2016 autopsy budget as of October, with three months of bills left to come in.

Some in the criminal justice system believe the rising costs of autopsies has prompted a game of one-upsmanship between counties. Warren County leaders have said some officials in neighboring counties are transporting people who are clinically dead to Glens Falls Hospital, without pronouncing them dead, so that any autopsy costs will have to be borne by Warren County, not the county where the death occurred.

Where a person is pronounced dead forces that countys coroner to declare whether an autopsy should be done and to pay for the medical bills and pathology tests involved. Those costs include transportation from funeral homes that take remains to and from the hospital, which now means drives to and from Albany Med instead of Glens Falls Hospital.

One local pathology practice was doing autopsies at Glens Falls Hospital, but its primary physician decided late last year, because of his workload, he could no longer do them.

Two cases last weekend in which autopsies were not ordered  a fatal snowmobile crash and a suspected drug overdose  raised questions with police about the policy change. Both deaths involved Washington County residents who werent pronounced dead in Washington County but were brought to Glens Falls Hospital to be pronounced dead.

The apparent overdose victim did not respond to the overdose antidote Narcan at his home, but was taken to the hospital before he was declared dead, authorities said.

Warren County Treasurer Michael Swan said Warren County had budgeted $100,000 for autopsy costs in 2016, but had spent $121,874 through the end of September, with three more months of bills to come in.

Its a shame, he said of the lack of local autopsy procedures. Its costing taxpayers a lot of money.

Murphy acknowledged costs have risen, but said that wasnt the reason for the policy change. He said coroners consult with Dr. Paul Bachman, the coroners physician for Warren County, in determining whether an autopsy should be ordered. Bachman did not return a phone call for comment Friday.

The cost doesnt come into the factor, he said. We had autopsies done on all 20 people in the Ethan Allen (tour boat tragedy) and that took our whole budget for the year.

He said the increase in people being pronounced dead at Glens Falls Hospital appears to stem in part from policies followed by emergency medical service agencies on when to contact coroners.

I think some of it is EMS trying to do everything they can, Murphy said.

The snowmobiler, Joshua Bemis of Argyle, was believed to be dead on the lake after being found unconscious and severely injured by his brother moments after the accident. His brother told NewsChannel 13 he died in my arms on the ice. Bemis had suffered a severe head injury, as the helmet he was wearing was not fastened and was thrown from his head during the crash.

But he was taken to Glens Falls Hospital and pronounced dead nearly 90 minutes later.

Murphy said he consulted with State Police and Bemis family, and under the circumstances, it was decided that an autopsy was not necessary. Without an autopsy, no toxicology tests will be done.
The Adirondack Thunder have landed a local star to sing the national anthem at the upcoming ECHL All-Star Classic.

Sawyer Fredericks, the 2015 winner of the television talent show The Voice who hails from Montgomery County, will sing the U.S. anthem at the Jan. 18 game at the Glens Falls Civic Center.

Fredericks has drawn a big following since his win on the show.

A quartet from the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra will play the Canadian national anthem.

 Don Lehman

Cuomo tweets about local teacher

Michael Whitney, a practical art teacher at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, is going to be a fixture in one of the mosaics on the walls of the 72nd street subway stop for New York Citys new 2nd Avenue subway line.

Whitney, who is also an artist, worked for the mosaic artist Vik Muniz as his cabinet maker for 10 years and ended up there on photo shoot day.

Whitney visited the subway station on Jan. 1, wearing the same shirt he wore in the mosaic.

I saved the shirt after Vik told me I might be part of the N.Y.C. subway station installation, Whitney said in a statement released by the Waldorf School. I thought it would be amazing to wear the shirt and get a photo  real guy and mosaic.

While in the city, Whitney met Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who featured a picture of Whitney with his daughters on his Twitter feed.

 Gretta Hochsprung

Snow safety lessons

Members of the Hartford Department of Public Works will talk to Hartford elementary students about winter and safety awareness on Monday, in response to the tragedy last month in Greenwich, where a boy was killed while playing in a snowbank.

Joshua Demarest died Dec. 13 after Greenwich village public works crews dumped more snow onto a pile and pushed it without realizing that he and a friend, 12-year-old Tyler Day, were playing on the far side of the bank. Day was able to find an air pocket and survived.

Hartford Central School announced Friday that the public works crews will be coming to the school Monday at 9 a.m.

Hartford Supervisor Dana Haff said last month he wanted to bring public works crews to the school and teach them about plow safety, in the way firefighters bring a firetruck to the school and teach about fire safety.

 Michael Goot

Special invitation

The co-chairs of the Glens Falls Memory Walk have been invited to attend the Alzheimers Association Leadership Summit in Orlando, Florida later this month

John Marcantonio of Glens Falls National Bank said earlier this week that he and Lindsey Stanislowski, the memory-care director at Emeritus at The Landing in Queensbury, had been invited to the event because of the success of our walk.

The Oct. 15 walk had 650 participants and raised almost $103,000, double the goal. Five teams raised $5,000 or more, including Crandall for a Cure, Team Maynard, The Glen, Shirleys Team and The Landing.

Marcantonio said he and Stanislowski will be learning about treatment and research trends, skill development of volunteers and fundraising techniques.

 Bill Toscano

100 new books

There are new books coming to the Fort Edward Free Library  100 new books, in fact.

The library will receive the books from the Brownstone Book Fund, a private, nonprofit foundation in New York City interested in fostering early reading, a love of books and encouraging parents and children to read together.

The books will range from pre-kindergarten through early readers.

 Bill Toscano
From the billion or so cop shows we have watched over the years, we know our rights by heart.

You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning, and if you cannot afford one, an attorney will be provided to you at no cost.

The Miranda rights have been one of the foundations of our criminal justice system for the past 50 years and we see them as necessary and fundamental.

In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union sued five New York counties  including Washington County  for providing inadequate representation to the accused. The state settled the case by agreeing to what it called groundbreaking standards that ensured all criminal defendants have counsel at arraignments while establishing new caseload standards that allowed public defenders to do a better job for their indigent clients.

So far so good, at least on paper.

The problem for rural upstate counties like Warren and Washington is that providing defense counsel at arraignments in small rural courts all across the county is a logistical nightmare, and one that is going to cost each county a lot of money.

It was another example of an unfunded state mandate.

Warren County hired two additional assistant public defenders and a secretary to handle the new workload as well as another person in the district attorneys office.

The counties, most of which have been restrained from additional spending because of the tax cap, cried bloody murder, and demanded relief.

They were assured they would get it.

And they thought they had.

Six months ago, the Legislature passed bipartisan legislation that gave counties some $800 million in relief.

But then on New Years Eve, just hours before an up or down vote was required, Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed the bill.

There were last-minute negotiations with the Legislature, but no agreement could be reached.

County governments all around the state were left to foot the bill again.

At first glance, Gov. Cuomo appeared to be the bad guy.

But he contended the $800 million in funding was vastly overstated and unrelated to the original settlement with the ACLU.

Apparently, the Legislature included provisions to not only fund the new standards for criminal cases, but extended them to cover family court as well.

Gov. Cuomo contended in his veto that this bill would require the state to ultimately expend more than $800 million every year  of which nearly $650 million is entirely unrelated to the Hurell-Harring agreement  to fully reimburse counties for all expenses associated with non-criminal legal defense work, including legal services in family court and surrogate court.

That puts the veto in a vastly different light.

The governor also pointed out the Legislature did not provide any way to fund the $800 million in new spending.

So whether you blame the Legislature or the governor, the sad reality is that county governments and county taxpayers will again be shouldering most of the burden for this state mandate.

The Legislature and the governor say they will take another crack at it this year while our counties struggle to provide the basic services.

Once again, the state of New York has failed us.
















The year 2017 looks set to be a particularly stormy year for the ever-raging clash of narratives between Israelis and Palestinians, as several anniversaries of seminal events in the conflicts history coincide.





Back in September, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged the United Nations General Assembly to declare 2017 as the international year to end the Israeli occupation of our land and our people, as we approach in June 2017 a half century of this abhorrent Israeli occupation. In his Christmas message , issued last month, he repeated that the world is about to mark 50 years of Israeli occupation, the longest military occupation in modern history.





Pro-Palestinian activists worldwide can be expected to use this years big anniversary to draw international attention to what they will doubtlessly describe as an illegal, brutal occupation of an indigenous people by foreign invaders with no legitimate claim to the territory.





In Israel, many will pay tribute to what theyll call the liberation of Judea and Samaria  the biblical terms for the West Bank  and the reunification of Jerusalem. Others will bemoan the fact that 50 years after the Six Day War, Israel is still perpetuating what they deem an unfair occupation of Palestinians lands.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely is clearly in the former camp. Israel should mark 2017 as a year of celebrations, using the coinciding anniversaries to highlight the Jewish peoples legal and moral rights to the Land of Israel and combat the notion it is illegally occupying the West Bank, she said in a recent interview. I want this year to be, first and foremost, a year of celebration. I want us to celebrate. I want the State of Israel to be proud of the fact that 50 years after the Six Day War, we achieved such amazing milestones in so many areas, she told The Times of Israel. This should be a year not only of showcasing the beauty of our history and our past, but also a year of looking toward the future. In 2017, Israel is in fact marking several milestones. It was exactly a century ago that the Balfour Declaration enshrined the United Kingdoms support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, known as the partition plan, which for the first time called for the creation of two states in British Mandate Palestine: one for Jews, one for Arabs.

Twenty years later, in 1967, Israel won the Six Day War and in the process captured the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel has since withdrawn from the Sinai and Gaza and annexed the Golan and East Jerusalem. Celebrations of these events will be followed next year by festivities to celebrate the State of Israels 70th birthday in May 2018.

Hotovely said she has been working for months on a plan to mark this years anniversaries, including by creating a gigantic exhibition about the Jewish peoples historic ties to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. In her vision, virtual reality technologies would be used to portray the past, present and future of Israels presence in these areas. Located in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the exhibition would be open to foreign diplomats as well as the general public.





In her discussions with professional ministry staff, Hotovely, a member of Netanyahus Likud party, envisioned a large permanent exhibition that would stress Israels connection to the West Bank, under the headline of Coming home, or Returning to the Jewish homeland. Countering Israels detractors who consider the settlements an illegal land grab  and can thus be expected to mark 50 years since the beginning of the occupation  Hotovely wants to celebrate the settlements as the Jewish peoples legitimate return to its indigenous land. Were often seen as a country without roots, a new country that represents an ancient people but whose roots in this land are very short. The idea is to bring us back to the bigger picture, Hotovely said. There is a terribly beautiful story of a nation that all these years remained connected to this land and we want to tell it with innovative visual means and open it for the greater public.

As for whether diplomats in the Foreign Ministry, many of whom are more dovish than the deputy minister, will be happy with the plan, Hotovely doesnt really care  shes their boss. The question is not whether the officials agree with me. Their job is to carry out the policies that I determine, she said. I dont need to convince them. I was elected to represent a policy that views the settlement enterprise a moral, just and legitimate project, and I was elected to protect it.

An ardent opponent of Palestinian statehood who favors an Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Hotovely said that in the new year, the Foreign Ministry should combat the internationally accepted notion that Israel is occupying Palestinian territories. The term occupation is legally incorrect, she argued. What is occupation? Who did we occupy [the West Bank] from? It was not under Palestinian sovereignty. It is in no way possible to say it is a occupation in the regular sense of one country occupying another country. Last months UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared Israeli settlement outside the pre-1967 lines as having no legal validity and constituting a flagrant violation under international law, did nothing to change her mind.

The more the world says the settlements arent legal, the more we say them to that, yes, theyre indeed legal, she said Wednesday.





Since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Israeli diplomats have made no efforts to talk about Israels historic, legal and moral rights to the West Bank, she lamented. For many years, instead of arguing that the term is erroneous, we said that the two sides will resolve the issue in negotiations. This is not something that helps you declare that this [land] is mine, I belong here, that this is a place that I have rights to, she said.

But in the current climate, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are not likely to be renewed, let alone produce a lasting peace agreement, Hotovely added. The Palestinians are not interested in bilateral talks because they can reach their objectives by appealing to the international community to force Israel into concessions, she posited.





Therefore, she said, the only response to this Palestinian tactic is to create a new paradigm  innovative ideas that, according to her, no longer include a Palestinian state in the West Bank.





Given the regional turmoil, more and more people in the world understand that no Palestinian state will come into being anytime soon, she said. This includes people who were involved in the Oslo Accords. What happened in the Middle East over the last five years challenges their basic understanding of the peace process.





Foreign dignitaries she meets in her capacity as deputy foreign minister are embarrassed when she asks them what would replace Israeli settlements  Islamic State or Hamas?  Hotovely said. They dont have a good answer to give me. But in order to change their position, prevalent in the international community, that the settlements are illegal, Israeli diplomats have to be ready to defend their legitimacy and not merely say they are an issue to be dealt with in future negotiations, she said. Just because its a difficult mission doesnt mean we shouldnt tackle it. Sooner or later, the world will start believing in the settlements legitimacy, Hotovely vowed. Europe saw decades of bloody conflicts before peace was achieved, and so Europeans should not seek a Band-aid solution for the Middle East, where Jews are indigenous, she argued. European colonial powers went abroad to expand their territory and to rule over other nations. We didnt come here as colonialists; this is the Jews only country. I dont think they have the moral right to come and complain to us. All we do is settle our land. Apologizing for the comparison, she said that during World War II the free world also needed time to understand what the Nazis were up to and to starting fighting them. Europes enlightened countries were conquered one after the other by the Nazis. They raised a white flag and didnt even try to fight for their rights, she said. With all due respect, the fact that the world collectively thinks a certain way doesnt make it right, or smart. History shows us time and again that its OK to have independent views.





















[Another great piece from Terry James - well worth reading]













Never in my own memory has a new year appeared at its beginning to be more prophetically interesting. Neverin my thinking, at leasthas one portended more perilous times, as the apostle Paul would have it. Yet I wouldnt trade my time on this darkening planet with anyone of any other generation. The fact that the Lord of Heaven has put me here at this strange, ominous, yet immensely fascinating time in history makes it all the more intriguingeven riveting, in terms of wanting to know what happens next. He has put you here, too, at this time when the final curtain is about to fall. He has trusted you to be an actor in at least part of the final scenes of this great, cosmic play called human history. No illustrious personages of the pastnot Julius Caesar, not Napoleon Bonaparte, not Alexander the Great, not even Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan were so privileged. We are about to serve as active members of a most especially commissioned cast who populates the end-times stage. There is about to occur a schisma separationof cataclysmic proportion. It will rend one part of humanity from the other. It will not be a natural catastrophe that will inflict the humanity-dividing rift. It wont be great political upheaval in America and around the world that will cause the tearing apart of life upon the troubled planet. Those things will certainly happen. But it wont be acts of nature or of man that will bring about the very last scene of the age. That last act will be orchestrated by the Master Director of all Creationby the Lord God of Heaven who is the final judge of good and evil. The excitement presaging that grand climax of the age is building. Momentous events, written on the pages of Holy Scripture, are about to come alive. The final curtain will rise when Jesus steps out on the clouds of glory and calls all believersHis Bride, the Church, to Himself. If you are a believer in Christ alone for salvation, you will catch the grand finale as you watch from the luxuriant balconies of Heaven. We see the drama building all around us for the tumultuous scenes set to play out during the times just ahead. The year 2016 is cloaked in the fog of malevolence this world continues to wrap itself inan increasingly anti-God, anti-Christ vesture that embraces humanism forewarned about by the psalmist. Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. (Psalms 2: 1-3) A quick scan of the news just the past week exposes, I believe, the arrogance of those the Scriptures call earth-dwellers who incessantly strive to break asunder the governance God rightfully placed upon His creation called man. The reports are laden with prophetic indicators. One such report is seen in the prideful claims by a U.S. State Department spokesman, as the boast involves the increasing call for peace and safety, While the situation in Syria grows intensely worse by the hour, with the Syrian people torn violently between the forces of Syrian dictator Basher Al-Assad and the hordes of ISIS murderers, Secretary of State John Kerry is lauded as bringing about a peace that just isnt happening and will never come to pass. State Department spokesman John Kirby wrote under the headline, Bringing peace and security to Syria: Under Secretary of State John Kerrys stewardship the United Nations passed a U.S. sponsored resolution to create a road map for Syria. Again, the problem is that like in all of the humanistic efforts at bringing true peace, the only peacemaker is kept out of the peacemaking. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is denied at every turn by the president of the very country that speciously purports to be making the peace. (President Obama, remember, upon his very first week in office, proclaimed that the United States is not a Christian nation.) The president of the United States of America, in effect, proclaimed regarding the governance of the God of Heaven: Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. We can believe what that omniscient, omnipotent, governing authority has to say about such arrogance and willfulness. The message is chilling for the planets inhabitants who will be left behind when the great schism aforementioned takes place. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalms 2: 4-6) Details of what is about to take place in 2016, of course, lurks in the murkiness of an ever-increasing pall of trepidation. But, for those who are secure within the unshakable, impenetrable shelter of their Lord and Savior, there is no reason to fear. Piercing that black uncertainty is an effulgence that lights the path to the brightest of all possible futures. It is that Blessed Hope of Titus 2: 13!








































The US House of Representatives passed a scathing rebuke Thursday night to a United Nations Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed through last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal.









House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a one-sided effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict and encouraging Palestinians from engaging in direct, bilateral negotiations.









Passed by a vote of 342-80, the measure puts the lower chamber of Congress firmly against President Barack Obamas decision to withhold the US veto power from shielding Israel against the censure.





UN Resolution 2334 says the settlement enterprise has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and calls for a complete end to all construction in areas Israel captured after the 1967 Six Day War, including East Jerusalem.

It also calls on all states to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967  language that Israel fears will lead to a surge in boycott and sanctions efforts, and that an Israeli official warned would provide a tailwind for terror. The House resolution condemned that provision, saying it effectively lends legitimacy to efforts by the Palestinian Authority to impose its own solution through international organizations and through unjustified boycotts or divestment campaigns against Israel.

The measure is likely to be followed by a similar resolution in the Senate, as well as other legislation designed to defund the United Nations over the vote.





































While it may seem too much to say at this point of time that NATO, given the gravity of the situation triggered by the out-going US presidents nebulous foreign policy, is disintegrating, what is happening is that the Western military alliance is facing an unprecedented crisis. This crisis is certainly as unusual and dramatic as any Shakespearean tragedy. More than a strong military alliance, NATO is at its worst and looks like a house divided against itself. It looked like this when Turkey, second biggest military power in the western alliance, point-blank accused the Obama administration of covertly supporting ISIS and other terror outfits, which are bent upon destroying Iraq and Syria and are now likely to target Turkey too.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan alleged, giving the Obama administration a new-year-surprise, on last Wednesday, December 28 that Turkey is in possession of confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos of the US support to ISIS.





While Erdogan had previously lambasted the US for supporting Gulen , Erdogans enemy number one and a potential terrorist according to Turkish officials, this time he took it to the next level and blamed the US, for the first time ever, for continuously supporting Daesh and Kurds.





We already know that the US has been officially supporting certain moderate groups in Syria and that this support has directly contributed to the intensification of the conflict in Syria. What we know now is the support US has been providing to the most devastating terror groups the world has ever seen.





































A new report by a government watchdog agency says jihadists are partnering with Mexican drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexican border, preparing to carry out precision attacks in American cities.





Judicial Watch cites confidential U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sources for the disturbing report, which builds on earlier JW reports shining light on the jihadists exploitation of the porous border policies of President Barack Obama.





As part of the plan, Islamists have arrived recently at the Monterrey International Airport situated in Apodaca, a city in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, about 130 miles south of the Texas border, JW reports

An internal Mexican law enforcement report obtained by Judicial Watch confirms that Islamic terrorists have people along the border, principally in Tijuana, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.'





U.S. intelligence sources have also warned that the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria will lead to many of those jihadists escaping and relocating into Western Europe and the United States.





But JW reported as early as April 2015 that ISIS had established a training camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, in an area known as Anapra just west of Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

































Obama is concerned about his legacy. The calculus and equation in Obama's legacy certainly includes "amazing stuff": the faulty nuclear deal with Iran, the nonexistent red line concerning the use of chemical weapons by Syria's President Assad in 2013 and Obama's policy toward the Syrian war and the horrors of Aleppo, and Obama's refusal to admit the responsibility of Islamists for international terrorism. Moreover, that legacy will not be enhanced by Obama's recent actions. The legacy will have to explain, if not to defend, the surprising moves by Obama in one week in December 2016 in two fields: attitude to Russia and policy toward Israel when he allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction to pass by not vetoing it.





U.S. sanctions on Russia remain. Essentially, they blocked Russian access to international credit, prevented cooperation on oil field technology, and ended arms deals. However, many of the restrictions on Russia were imposed by executive order and therefore can be reversed by President Trump.





It appears that Putin is not taking Obama seriously and is waiting to build ties with Trump in a framework of bilateral cooperation and collaboration. Both countries naturally have their different versions of national interest, and difficult problems and misunderstandings will remain. But what is overwhelmingly important is that both Putin and Trump have similar interests in maintaining peace and international stability and ending the menace of Islamic terrorism.

































He describes Hillary Clinton as a domestic threat and details the deep connections between the former Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state with some of the most dangerous Islamic movements in the world. They even go beyond her close relationship with longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin.





Hillary Clintons ties are a lot deeper, broader and wider than Huma Abedin, Haney says. The best example of her ties is her affiliation with the Istanbul Process and, in particular, with U.N. Resolution 1618. That resolution, it essentially criminalizes defamation of Islam, has been backed for 10 years by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 57-nation organization. It is essentially run in its leadership positions by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. By endorsing U.N. Resolution 16/18, by default Hillary Clinton is aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood on a macro, global level.

























It's safe to say Americans on the right are sickened by the same old tired playbook of the left. Let's face it: using the race card, the gender card, the "stupid" card, the insensitive card, the tax cuts for the rich card, and the "green" card has worked for them. They have had more than a compliant media; they have had a collusive media that has agreed with the Democrat elites every day for decades, helping them form these nasty narratives about half of the country's population. It's one of the reasons we ended up with a shell-shocked Republican Party that became ashamed of its own beliefs and its own supporters.





They became Stockholm syndrome Republicans, incapable of putting up a good fight against these lying, conniving, greedy leftists who stopped long ago caring about whether what they did legislatively, with the courts, or with regulation from the control of Washington bureaucracies actually had a good effect on America. They weren't helping to make a better country. The Democratic Party became power-hungry, caring only if they stayed in power, not whether they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately, too many in the GOP succumbed to this siren song and joined them. The Trump revolution broke this chain, with its head brilliantly winning against all odds, staging a massive upset. The left, rather than learn something about themselves, devolved into full petulant toddlers, moaning, whining, shrieking, needing therapy  all the things we've watched since they lost. They have been pitiful, doubling down on their now failing Alinsky playbook. Watching their meltdown has been revealing. Not only are they melting down on college campuses, but their adult voters have failed to step forward to stop their leaders from making total fools of themselves. Heck, their leaders, including their failed president, are running around making silly excuses for their loss, each of which has shown to be preposterous. The latest: the Russians "hacked" the election. That carefully crafted way of phrasing this peculiar (and preposterous) talking point should say it all.




















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Following the fresh offer, she said, the Busy 4G MiFi is sold at GH 99 and customers who buy it within the two-week gestation would enjoy the package for more thrilling internet and social media experience.

The offer runs till January 15, and remains valid while stocks last, Mrs. Linda Narh said.

The award winning 4G LTE internet service provider introduced a Christmas offer in December 2016 after its previous bid was oversubscribed

Company officials said the offer was so popular amongst internet users that it was sold out within few days.

READ ALSO: GITTA Awards

Busy internet, has provided reliable internet access from its famed cyber cafe on the ring road since 2001.

It has evolved into Ghanas most reliable 4G LTE network after breaking major ground in 2005 to become one of the top internet services provider in the country.

The evolution has seen Busy Internet leap and launch cutting edge 4G data service in Accra and Tema.
READ ALSO: Fan Appeal

In another provocative post on social media platform Instagram, Afia dropped all her clothes apart from her pants, and teamed it up with high heels. Though she used her hair to cover her breasts, she still ended up showing a huge amount of it.

READ ALSO: Presidential lifestyle

Afia revealed that her husband supports her post, which many have been quick to condemn.

READ ALSO: Celebrity Couple

Her caption read: "I can't afford to sit and watch the entire nation discuss Rawlings whiles I am the only person that is supposed to be discussed Today!!!! Well it's Friday and This is It!!!!. For the concern married people association my open minded hubby says Hi..."

READ ALSO:Pulse List
The first runner-up in the first edition of Stars of the Future competition was incarcerated in August 2010. He was handed a 10-year imprisonment with hard labour by the Tema High court presided over by Justice Peter Offei for his role in robbing a complainant of her 44 Toyota Highlander, with registration number GT 6409X and an amount of GH300 at gun point.

The court found him and 7 of his accomplices guilty of charges of conspiracy, armed robbery and dishonesty under Article 29, Clause 146 of the criminal code, Starr FM reports.

He has been at the Prison over the last five years and led a choir to thrill President Mahama when he visited the prison last year.

He performed a song he had specially composed thanking the President for remembering those in the prisons.

After the performance of the song by Ramzy and the rest of the choir, President Mahama applauded and remarked: I am really touched by your song. That was good.

Ramzy placed second in the maiden edition of Stars of the Future music reality show organised by Charterhouse in 2006. Irene Logan won that contest and Efya, then known as Jane Awindor, placed third.
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Pop music with the lyrics Shake it for me can also be heard blaring from speakers.

The funeral was for local politician Tung Hsiang, who died last month.

The family of the deceased said they wanted to honour Mr Tung, who loved "having a lively fun time."

His brother Tung Mao-hsiung told Taiwanese broadcaster CTS that "He [the late politician] told us he wanted this through a dream two days before the funeral."

The politicians funeral procession took two hours and brought traffic to a standstill in the city centre.

The procession had a drumming troupe and a marching band, with some of the performers dressed as deities and giant puppets.

Locals were also seen lining the route to pay their last respect and enjoying the spectacle.

Other residents praised Mr Tung and his family for providing an entertaining afternoon for them.

However, experts say hiring dancers and even strippers for funerals is not that strange in parts of Taiwanese society, where some practise a folk religion that believes in "entertaining" spirits.

Mr Tung, a local councillor, was a well-known figure in the city who has been active in politics for decades.
Rawlings was attending Thursday's State of the Nation address delivered by President John Mahama in Parliament with his entourage when the incident took place.

In the video, a very stern-faced Rawlings is seen taking a swipe at the mayor as the latter tries to spark a conversation with him as they climb the stairs of parliament.

Rawlings stops and gestures him to move aside whiles he continues to parliament house. Vanderpuije then moves back and greets some colleagues.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of an event, especially a prestigious one, is the red carpet. A lot of people would indeed agree it is the most anticipated part. The glitz that goes into making a five minute long, head turning and unforgettable impression on the red carpet could be the most expensive yet profitable thing a person could do. It is traditionally used to mark the route taken by heads of States on ceremonial and official occasions, and also extended to heads of missions on some official occasions.So it begs the question; how is one supposed to behave at state functions.

1. When one is on the red carpet, the person is expected to be in motion. Stopping is only appropriate when in a media mixed zone or when alone and press photographers ask for poses.

2. Limit loud conversations: Although red carpets are noisy in general, avoid talking when other reporters are conducting interviews. Print journalists use recording devices that can pick up a lot of background noise. The last thing they need is to have to filter out your conversation when transcribing their interview.

3. Get there early; Arrive at the event with enough time to allow for traffic, parking and credential verification. If you arrive late, its likely that most of the good spots will already be taken and squeezing yourself in between veteran reporters is disruptive.

4. The most important personality or the guest of the event is the last to go inside the auditorium. And as soon as he or she does, the doors are supposed to be closed and no one follows.

5. Give the appropriate salutations when addressing the sections eg, His Excellency, His Majesty, Nananom etc. some of these little but important accolades matter to the individual at that particular moment.

6. Greetings are expected to start from the left side to the right side, when in Ghana - per tradition.

READ ALSO: Election Defeat

7. Guest should keep to the left of the hostThe accompanying members walk about two meters behind the designated person, keeping to his left-hand side. Taking a critical look at the trending video of H.E. Jerry Rawlings and Mayor Oko Vanderpuije, one will notice that, the accompanying members of Jerry Rawlings understood the protocol governing the official red carpet. The three accompanying members were at about few meters behind the former President, taking to his left-hand side of due to the open environment.

Indeed, during a recent visit by president-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo to the flagstaff, the incoming President is clearly seen keeping to the left side of the host, John Dramani Mahama.

8. Always follow what the security personnel tells you. Obey instructions of security personnel. They have all the right to make your life miserable when you try to disobey them. At that particular moment, they dictate to you because the success of the event depends on them.
President Mahama had during his last State of the Nation address indicated that the countrys education sector had improved significantly under his tenure.

He said Teachers are more available and are more evenly distributed than in the past. Teacher absenteeism is down from 27% to below 9%. This has led to more engagement hours between teachers and students.

But the former CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Mines believes it was unfortunate for the president to have indicated that teachers have been trained when some teachers had always complained about not being posted.

For me, it was almost like a slap in the face because teachers have been complaining that they have not been posted.

So to say that youve trained so many when they have not been posted to do their work, it is almost like doing a campaign, she said on Accra-based Joy FM.

She added that the country at this crucial moment needs to focus on how to raise our children, qualitatively and quantitatively. How we need to raise them in terms of critical thinking. So even the quality of teachers is so important.

He did say that people have textbooks, which is fine, but again one would need to go through the textbooks and see whether they are relevant for our time, she added.
Pe3check/iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- A group of activists plans to cause a literal stink at the presidential inauguration  in support of marijuana reform.



The group, called DCMJ, has announced its plans to hand out upward of 4,200 marijuana cigarettes near Dupont Circle the morning of Donald Trump's inauguration and then march toward the National Mall.



It is legal to possess a small amount of marijuana in the District of Columbia but illegal to smoke it in public.



DCMJ's leader, Adam Eidinger, told ABC News its members will be giving away the joints, which is legal. They will not tell people to break the law by smoking in public. But, he added, he thought the idea of smoking them publicly would be "a great act of civil disobedience in light of the silence [on marijuana reform] coming from the Trump administration."



"We would love not to do this," Eidinger said. "We feel compelled to do it, and if we heard any sign from Donald Trump that he was serious about reform and Jeff Sessions was serious about reform ... we would call it off."



The group is strongly opposed to Trump's selection of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general, since Sessions has been an outspoken opponent of marijuana. At a Senate hearing in April 2016, Sessions said that "good people don't smoke marijuana" and it is "not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized."



The Metropolitan Police Department is "aware of the situation and monitoring it," said its public relations spokeswoman Karimah Bilal.



She said that anyone caught smoking marijuana in public could receive a citation, which could include a fine, typically $25, or be summoned to court.



Eidinger told ABC News that he has offered to pay the fine for anyone who is arrested as a result of the group's plans, but he said he expects police are "going to take a tolerance policy."



The group is calling on supporters and marijuana enthusiasts to meet outside Dupont Circle  as opposed to in the park at the center of the circle, since that is federally owned land  as early as 7:00 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, for coffee and tea and to distribute the joints.



"We're not judging people who come and get weed and go home and watch the inauguration," Eidinger said.



The group plans to work within the confines of D.C. law, it said. It is asking supporters to arrive with up to two ounces each of prepared joints to distribute  but no more.



Group members plan to hold rolling parties in preparation for the big day and, Eidinger said, participants will take home what they roll and distribute it on Inauguration Day. When they give out joints that morning, they will be checking IDs to make sure that all recipients are at least 21 years old, as mandated by the district's law.



"We're going to show the public how it can be done safely without giving it away to kids," he said.



So far, Eidinger said, he has 25 people committed to distributing the joints on Inauguration Day and, based on his group's previous rallies and events, he is prepared for a much larger turnout  as many as 5,000 people.



"We'll run out," he said.



Even if the recipients go back to their homes to smoke and then return for the inauguration, rather than smoke in public, he said, it will still be a presence.



"You will smell it, and it should be really interesting to see how it goes down," Eidinger said.



The inauguration is not the only upcoming political event that DCMJ plans to attend. Eidinger said members will be "sitting in line for three days" to make sure that they get seats in the audience for Session's confirmation hearing, which is scheduled for Jan. 10 and 11.



"It's going to smell like marijuana in that hearing because we smell like marijuana because we're going to smoke legally before it," he said.





Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Granted, Michael had undergone a medical procedure by the 1990s to alter his skin colour, but what critics did not know was that Jackson had a condition that was slowly but surely already altering his skin.

Vitiligo is a skin condition that destructs the melanocytes; which are pigment cells. The condition causes depigmentation of the skin resulting in noticeable white spots on a persons skin. Although vitiligo affects all races, its presence is pronounce among people with dark or brown complexion. About two percent of the worlds population has vitiligo.

Every time we went to the hospital, the doctors said there was nothing wrong with me. But this thing kept spreading, says Enam Heikeens Honya, a vitiligo ambassador in Ghana.

Her first patches emerged when she was seven years old. The family roamed hospitals in Ghana and abroad in search of answers on what was a strange condition to them at the time. This thing turned out to be vitiligo, which in Enams case had been passed on genetically.

Honya, 24, says living with vitiligo can be a very isolating and traumatising experience.

"Growing up wasnt easyPeople really stigmatised. You have to go to school and people will not even like to talk to you." she articulated, " You go to an occasion and people wouldnt like to shake hands with you. Even your course mates wouldnt like to sit beside you or go to lunch break with you."

One day a woman shouted witch! witch! upon seeing Enam on a bus.

Ending it all

The rejection got to Enam and on three occasions, she attempted suicide.

A Nightingale

Honyas day job is in the health service as a nurse in Ho, Volta Region, which she describes as an awesome feeling.

After senior high school (at Keta Business Senior High School), I decided that since vitiligo is health related, why dont I go and learn about health, details about my skin and have a fair idea of the anatomy of the human body?

You get to meet your patients asking questions [about vitiligo] and you have the opportunity to explain it to them. Its one awesome feeling. Though some patients really get weird with the questions, I believe it is just one way of telling them that no matter your skin colour, you can be who you want to be.

[Also] kids get scared when I am attending to them at first At the end of the day, some of the children even like to play with my skin.

However, there have been times that her service has been rejected by patients because of her skin.

[In one of the cases] I had to explain to the other nurse on duty that it is Patients Right and [that the patient] said I shouldnt attend to her so can you kindly go and attend to her? I went back later on and I tried to educate her about vitiligo and she said she was sorry and that she didnt know. Though you feel bad, you just have to get along with it because they dont know.

Some of the nuggets of information Enam dispenses to her patients include the fact that vitiligo is not contagious, not the same as albinism, nor the result of an acid attack or sorcery.

Social media, especially the photo sharing platform Instagram, is also helping Enam broaden the education about vitiligo.

Challenging beauty stereotypes

Before donning the green and white, she had and still has dreams of working in television. She reckoned it would be an uphill task getting a job in the media because of her skin condition.

She has ventured into the glossy and superficial world of the fashion and modelling industry which she hopes would be a stepping stone to the mainstream media. Her aim is to challenge the concept of beauty in Ghanaian society.

She has worked with designers such as Quame Owusu, Afiyo Creations and Vogo Designs, a Nigeria-based fashion label founded by Ogo Maduewesi, a leading global advocate for vitiligo awareness.

Enam the advocate

A chance meeting with the campaigner Love Violent (also living with vitiligo), introduced Enam to the world of advocacy through the Vitiligo Support and Awareness Foundation (VITSAF Ghana).

"What I really hope to achieve with my advocacy is that I want each and every person with vitiligo to stand proud, be unique in their own way and standing to achieve what they want to be in life despite what people might say or the discrimination [they face] and have the kind of fulfilment that an individual with vitiligo can really stand proud and achieve something unique."

Despite the unbridled and sometimes unnerving stares from ordinary Ghanaians, Enam Honya is steadfast in her decision to reject treatment.
To God be the glory, Im very humbled because it's going to be a very large majority on our side. We have new MPs coming in and MPs that I have worked with in the past.

For the august House, and the party leadership to have considered my name, I feel humbled for a woman to take that position for the first time, she said on Accra-based Joy FM.

READ ALSO:

Many have since expressed joy at the choice of a female for the deputy minority leader position.

When asked what she would bring to the table, Ms Safo said she believes she would do her best because she took her lessons very seriously and she now has adequate knowledge of the rules of the House.

I believe that as a young woman for starters, and being the person to take that big seat, I believe that my team is going to be very supportive. Im going to bring on board team playing, humility, honesty and make sure that what government business it is that is coming from my government, that needs to be prosecuted on the Floor of Parliament would be done so effectively and to the satisfaction of many even across the other side.

Ms Safo is the 35-year-old daughter of industrialist and pastor, Apostle Kwadwo Safo.

She is a lawyer by profession and holds an LLM from George Washington University.
Dr Philip Lamptey, said in an interview on Accra-based Class FM said it is unfortunate. What happened was unfortunate. I am not sure anybody in the party will be happy unless somebody who is not prepared to support the party to come back to power.

Rawlings was attending Thursday's State of the Nation address delivered by President John Mahama in Parliament with his entourage when the incident took place.

In the video, a very stern-faced Rawlings is seen taking a swipe at the mayor as the latter tries to spark a conversation with him as they climb the stairs of parliament.

Rawlings stops and gestures him to move aside whiles he continues to parliament house. Mr. Vanderpuije then moves back and greets some colleagues.

Former president Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, a founding father of the NDC at the 35th anniversary of 31st December Revolution blasted the top hierarchy in the National Democratic Congress for its abysmal performance in the 2016 election.
Until his appointment Agyepong was a media relations officer at the New Patriotic Party headquarters.He replaces the late Kwabena Boadu who died on November 24, 2016 in a hotel room at Wa in the Upper West Region where the NPP had addressed a campaign rally the previous day.

He had his second-cycle institution at the Kumasi High School in the Ashanti Region and continued to the Africa University College of Communications.

Agyepong was once the editor on the Publisher newspaper and also a former aide to a Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, Perry Okudzeto.
He said, "As for the NPP, we will put pressure on them to fulfil all their promises and I am sure along the line, they will limp to give the NDC a chance to come back to power. So come what may, 2020 the NDC will come back to power."

Read more: Mike Oquaye is next Speaker of Parliament

In a radio interview, he added that, "I am telling you on authority that we (NDC) will force them (NPP) to play nonsense and that will give us the chance to return to power."

"They say they have a comfortable majority but they will have their way and we will have our say. Be on the lookout, the NDC will put government on its toes," Ibrahim said.

However, Majority and Minority leaders in Parliament for the Seventh Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana have been nominated and endorsed by MPs.

The Seventh Parliament would be constituted today [Friday] January 6, 2017, ahead of the official swearing-in of President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo, on Saturday, January 7, 2017.

Read more:Know your leadership of the 7th parliament

President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo in consultation with the Council of Elders of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has nominated former Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya, Prof. Mike Aaron Oquaye as the next Speaker of Parliament.
It will be confirmed by Parliament House if Prof. Oquaye would take over from Rt. Hon. Edward K. Doe Adjaho as the next Speaker of Parliament.

Read more: Isaac Osei to be named TOR boss

For a candidate to emerge as Speaker, he or she must have been elected by members of the House or persons who are qualified to be elected as a member of Parliament.

The Sixth Parliament under the Fourth Republic is expected to be dissolved by midnight on Friday.

Background of Mike Oquaye

Mike Oquaye served as the Second Deputy Speaker of Ghanas Parliament between 2009 and 2013. He also was Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya constituency, a strong hold of the NPP, from 2005 to 2013.

From 2001 to 2004, Oquaye served as Ghanas High Commissioner to India. In February 2005 he became Minister of Energy, and later he was moved to the post of Minister of Communications.

Mike Oquaye is a professor of Political science at the University of Ghana, (Legon), and was previously the Head of the Department of Political Science and member of the Universitys Academic Board, the highest authority at the level of the faculties.

He received his Ph.D from School of Oriental and African Studies in London, as well as winning the Rockefeller Senior Scholar Award in 1993 and the Senior Fulbright Scholar Award in 1997.

First and second Deputies

Meanwhile, Member of Parliament for Bekwai in the Ashanti region, Mr Joe Osei-Owusu has also been proposed as the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament.

Mr Osei-Owusu in a radio interview said, "I must say that the discussion has gone on for some time now, its been back and forth. Very senior members actually talked me into coming into that position."

On the side of the Minority, Mr Alban Sumana Bagbin, MP for Nadowli/Kaleo has been proposed as the Second Deputy Speaker.

Read more: Adwoa Safo named Deputy Majority Leader

Majority and Minority Leaders

The Majority side has also selected Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Member of Parliament for Suame as the Majority Leader whiles Sarah Adwoa Sarfo, Member of Parliament for Dome Kwabenya in Greater Accra is the Deputy Minority Leader.

Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu has also been nominated as the Minority Leader in parliament.
"For loving and accepting me with my plenty wahala, for being my best friend and being there every single time, for giving me the best gift ever - the most adorable son in the world, for just being so amazing... THANK YOU and Happy Anniversary #MyHeart #MyLove."
Di'ja who tied the knot in a secret ceremony can be seen in an adorable shot with her dad.

The duo look to be enjoying a father and daughter moment before she takes the final step into her matrimonial home.

Today the Mavin artiste also released a photo of her husband and her son.

Di'ja who is a Sierra Leonean-Nigerian can be seen wearing an aso-oke to honour her husbands Yoruba heritage.

In an exclusive interview with Linda Ikeji's blog, Hadiza Salma Blell shared the reasons why she had a secret wedding to her husband Rotimi.

ALSO READ: Singer teases fans with son in new selfie

"It was very intimate and it was also in my home town, Kaduna, so its kind of hard to get people to come over there and then Kaduna is not as Noisy as Lagos.

"So anything like that could be probably called low key. I just dont translate them into being posted on my page. And I guess in the Post it Tweet it world; you almost kind of look abnormal if you dont

"But its not like am going out of my way not to, i guess its just not in my character to do it all the time, but I'm also getting better at my Instagram. "

Di'ja explained that she keeps most of her family life, especially when it comes to her husband, to herself, not to be secretive but because that's the kind of person she is.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The suspect, Patrick Mbak, appeared before the court on Friday, January 6, 2017, for allegedly collecting N220,000 under false pretence, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

ALSO READ: 4 men bag 2 years in prison for fraud

Mbak, who resides at Iyana Ilogbo, Ota, is facing a two-count charge of stealing and collecting money under false pretence.

The court heard that the accused committed the offences in November at about 2:30 pm at Araromi Street, Ota, Ogun.

The Prosecutor, Cpl. Chudu Gbesi, said the accused collected N220,000 from one Nwadebia Samuel, under the pretext of monthly contribution but refused to return the money as of the time he was meant to do so.

Gbesi said the offences contravened sections 390(9) and 419 of the Criminal Code, Laws of Ogun, 2006.

Mbak, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Senior Magistrate, Mr S. O. Banwo, presiding over the case, granted bail to the accused in the sum of N100,000 with two sureties in like sum.

Banwo ordered that the sureties must reside within the jurisdiction of the court, be gainfully employed, swear to an affidavit of means and produce evidence of tax payment from Ogun government.

ALSO READ: Man who impersonated the EFCC arrested for N10m fraud

He added that the sureties are to submit four recent passport photograph to the court with their addresses verified by the police.
The suspects, Timothy Adegbaji Ademiju, 36, a staff of a new generation bank and Taiye Shittu Habibulahi, a student of Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife, Osun State, are currently being held by the commission, Punch reports.

The pair are alleged to have struck a deal with a student of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba, Ondo State, one David Olaoluwa Adesubokan, also known as Opinion (still at large), to defraud one Giacomo Rossi, an Italian, of a huge sum of money while posing as a lady named, Grace Thomas.

Punch reports that Ademiju used his position as the officer in charge of Western Money Transfer to process the fraudulent transactions between the Italian to Ms Thomas.

The arrest comes after the EFCC received a petition from the victim, alleging that he was contacted on a dating site by one Ms Thomas posing as an American Nursing student from OAU, and in dire need of financial assistance in form of a loan to complete her studies.

According to the reports, the loan which Ms Thomas promised to pay back was a trap formulated to trick Rossi into the fraudulent game.

The petitioner disclosed that he had offered monetary assistance, paid in portions, to the tune of 2,400 which is equivalent of N1,221,600.00 before he realised that it was a scam.
According to the Punch, the parents of the babies identified as Adeyemi and Sarah Ademola, had disappeared from the Felken Maternity Centre on Awofodu Street, Somolu, when they could not pay the balance of N150,000 of the N300,000 medical bill.

Adeyemi had lamented the financial difficulty of the family and said that he was frustrated by the development since people who owed him were not paying up and he had no money to offset the bills.

But when the story became viral on the social media, many Nigerians who were moved by the plight of the family, indicated interest in settling the bills as well as helping the family.

A Non-Governmental Organization that visited the family had reportedly paid the N150,000 while the member representing the Lagos East Senatorial district in the Upper Chamber, Senator Gbenga Asafa, made a personal donation of N100,000 to the babies.
The defendant, who resides at Durumi 2, Abuja, is standing trial on a three count-charge of trespass, assault and mischief.

The prosecutor, Adama Musa, told the court that one Sharon Clement of Durumi 2, Abuja, reported the matter at Durumi Police Station on Dec. 23.

On the same date at about 4:00 p.m., the defendant entered the complainant house located at Durumi 2 and slapped her without any provocation.

The defendant beat up the complainant, destroyed property in her living room.

She also broke the centre table valued at N4,000 and Tecno phone valued at N16,000, belonging to the complainant, he said.

Musa said that the defendant also accused the complainant of insulting her.

The prosecutor said that the offences contravened sections 348, 265 and 327 of the Penal Code.

He, however, prayed the court to grant him a date to reopen the case.

The accused pleaded not guilty.

The Magistrate, Munirat Tanko, admitted the defendant to a bail in the sum of N50,000 and a reasonable surety in like sum.
During the interview she thanked Azuka Ogujuiba of ThisDay Newspaper for taking her in as her little sister. Azuka Ogujuiba was instrumental in Olajumoke's success story.

She put her on the cover of This Day Style which further catapulted her into fame after her chance meeting with TY Bello.

Olajumoke Orisaguna also thanked the CEO of Sujimoto Construction, Sijibomi Ogundele for getting her a three bedroom flat in Surulere and paying her tuition at Poise Graduate Finishing Academy.

Olajumoke Orisaguna made it to the 2016 Pulse List of 'Top 10 people social media blew up'.

"Talk about a rag to riches story. Olajumoke Orisaguna was virtually a nobody until that fateful Sunday when she stumbled onto the set of 's photoshoot for the British-Nigerian rapper .

Her life changed overnight from covering This Day Style, earning a modelling contract, moving into a serviced apartment, and going to a finishing school. Her story was picked up by several international news websites and she got interviewed on ."
Girish Pote, 38, was sentenced on Thursday, January 5, 2017, after he was found guilty of killing his 33-year-old French wife, Madhuwanti Pathak on December 3, 2013, for wanting to leave India to return to her home country, France.

According to the police, Pote brutally murdered his wife in the flat they shared in Bhayandar, a northern suburb of Indias commercial capital, Mumbai, The police officer who led the investigation, Dinkar Murlidhar Pingle, told AFP, The accused has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife.

The court heard that Pote chopped up her body with knives he bought from a nearby mall and hid her remains in a refrigerator in their flat so the CCTV cameras installed in the building's lobby and lift would not pick up his activities.

The grisly crime was uncovered after Pote confessed his actions to a cousin who in turn informed the police.

Prosecutor Bhuleshwar Hinge told the court during the trial,

Madhuwanti wanted to go back to France after selling the property in Mumbai."

During the investigation, Pote reportedly revealed that his wife had disliked India and wanted to take the money and return to France.

Hinge continues, But he had opposed the idea, leading to frequent fights between them.

The Press Trust of India news agency reports that the couple had gotten married in June 2011 and had a child who was two-years-old at the time of the murder.

ALSO READ: Ghana man on the run after hacking wife to death

The flat the couple had lived in reportedly belong to Pathaks mother, who is a French musician.
The country now allows women who are on their period to take a day off from work. The practice is known as Mothers Day and it is a part of the country's labour laws. Mother's Day also applies to single women.

Women who are not on their periods are allowed to use the Mother's Day card as long as they are genuinely ill.

Minister of Labour, Joyce Nonde-Simukoko told the BBC, "If you're absent yourself yet you are found in a disco house, then it will not be taken as Mother's Day."

"You shouldn't even leave town, be found doing your hair or shopping. You can be fired. For example, somebody was found farming after taking Mother's Day and she was fired" she further said.

While this move by Zambia has been applauded both locally and internationally, some others think it is counter productive.

"I don't believe in it and I don't take it. Menses are a normal thing in a woman's body; it's like being pregnant or childbirth. I think women take advantage of that, especially that there's no way of proving that you are on your menses or not" Mutinta Musokotwane-Chikopela, a mother of three children told BBC.

Some employers in the country also do not support the law because they believe it will be counter-productive for three or four women to all in sick in one day.
Its Country Representative, Mrs Hildegard Behrendt-Kigozi, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Thursday.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, defines family planning as the practice of controlling the number of children in a family and the intervals between their births.

Contemporary notions of family planning, however, tend to place a woman and her childbearing decisions at the centre of the discussion, as notions of womens empowerment and reproductive autonomy have gained traction in many parts of the world.

It also defines quality of life as the general well-being of individuals and societies, outlining negative and positive features of life.

It observes life satisfaction, including everything from physical health, family, education, employment, wealth, religious beliefs, finance and the environment.

The country representative further urged parents to give birth to a number of children they would be able to cater for in terms of providing them with quality education and other basic needs.

Families should have only the number of children that they can take care of, but if you are well off and can send them to school you can have as many as you want.

Otherwise, only have the number you can adequately afford to take care of, so that your children can go to school.

Dont have children without a means of feeding or educating them, particularly, for those in the rural areas.

It is necessary that every child that is born, the parents should provide for it, if they cannot they should not have children because these children have the right to be brought up well, she said.

According to her, because the population of the country is rising very fast, it will be difficult for government to provide adequate schools or jobs for the people.

Behrendt-Kigozi observed that the number of available basic schools and qualified teachers was not enough to cater for the educational needs of Nigerians.

She said that teachers should be trained on how to build self-confidence in their students to enable them to develop ideas that could make them self- sufficient.

The country representative called on the government to build many more technical schools , saying training many craftsmen and women would further create wealth for the country.

Technical aspects are not taught well enough in schools.

There is need for the government to provide more technical schools so that you get very good and well-trained plumbers, electricians and so on, because their work is very good for the development of the nation, not only a professor.

It is worthwhile to have professors, but craftsmen are also worthwhile, because we need them.

These should be put into the minds of all Nigerians such that they will feel happy knowing that a job that is not academic-oriented can still earn them a decent living, she stated.
Dr Florence Oni, UNICEFs Nutrition Specialist in the state, made the disclosure on telephone to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Kaduna.

Oni said the step was to treat more than 750,000 severely malnourished children in the state in a bid to address the alarming rate of malnutrition among children under five years.

She said that six sites were established in Zaria, six in Makarfi and one in Ikara Local Government Areas.

Others are one each in Kaduna State University Teaching Hospital; General Hospital Kachia; General Hospital Kafanchan and General Hospital Birnin Gwari.

Oni commended the government for the efforts made to address the problem of malnutrition.

She, however, said there was the need to do more, given the number of children suffering from malnutrition in the state.

Equally, Oni said that the prevailing increase in the prices of food items was hampering the ongoing fight against malnutrition in the country.

Jane Gwani, the Nutrition Officer of the states Ministry of Health and Human Resources, said that no fewer than 750, 000, representing 42 per cent of children less than five years in Kaduna State were suffering from severe malnutrition.

According to her, such children are ten times more likely to die if nothing is done.

She also said that more than 900, 000 children representing 57 per cent of children under five in the state were equally stunted (short for their age), meaning six out of every 10 children were stunted due to malnutrition.

She explained that the figure was based on the 2013 National Demographic Health Survey, adding that it could be more currently.

The 2013 data is enough to give us sleepless nights. If we must use this data as our baseline, then the time to act is now.

She, nonetheless, said that several intervention had been roll out to reverse the situation in collaboration with relevant stakeholders across communities, public and private sectors, Civil Society Organisations, government ministries, department and agencies.

Gwani said that the government had so far released N37 million and UNICEF supported the state with additional N45 million to treat children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

NAN also reports that the state government had equally earmarked N130 million in the 2017 budget for the procurement of therapeutic food and drugs for management of acute malnutrition.

So far, about 2,525 malnourished children are admitted in the CMAM sites in Zaria alone out of which 800 have fully recovered, while 52 died between March and August 2016.

This is in addition to many ongoing interventions, some of which include promotion of exclusive breast feeding and proper infant and young child feeding.
With the dust settling on a 'Camp Zero' laden with landmines and booby traps, the soldiers were able to arrest over 40 foreigners and a host of other Boko Haram captives.

Some fleeing insurgents were gunned down.

There were also reports that a Frenchman whose job description included helping the insurgents fix their trucks and tanks, was among those arrested.

ALSO READ:

The Nation newspaper quotes one military source as saying: "In the last one week since we launched massive operations in Sambisa Forest, we have arrested over 40 foreigners.

We will come up with the details later after the profiling of these suspects. They are all being debriefed. But we discovered that there were so many foreigners in the midst of Boko Haram. We have also rescued a lot of people who are being screened too".

If confirmed as true, this development will lend credence to conspiracy theories in certain quarters that Boko Haram enjoyed some form of international support and that the insurgency was fuelled by certain Western superpowers to help destabilise and balkanise Nigeria.

Hold on a minute, nothing is cast in stone just yet.

ALSO READ: This is where Boko Haram leader is hiding

But we can draw all kinds of conclusions from why that number of foreigners were found in a terrorist camp at the same time.

Twice in the space of two years, the United States (U.S) refused to sell much needed weaponry to Nigeria, citing poor human rights record and endemic corruption; even though Nigeria explicitly stated that it badly needed the weapons to decimate the terrorists.

If the U.S couldn't sell weapons to Goodluck Jonathan led Nigeria because of the famed corruption during that era, why did Uncle Sam refuse to sell weapons to Muhammadu Buhari led Nigeria which had been hailed in the West as accountable and transparent in its dealings?

At some point during the war, foreign allies who were supposed to help Nigeria locate and rescue the abducted schoolgirls from Chibok, pulled out of the arrangement and stopped training Nigerian troops on counterinsurgency operations.

In the next couple of days, we'll certainly find out more about the faceless powers who have been backing Boko Haram all these years.

One thing seems obvious, though--there's more to this whole Boko Haram insurgency than we already know.
She made the denial via a statement released by her media aide, Adebisi Olumide-Ajayi on Friday, January 6.

The statement reads in part:

It is not in the interest of Mrs Buhari to join issues with anyone, but necessary to put the record in proper perspective. This is necessary as it concerns her trip to UK and the Nigerian High Commission in London. Mrs Buhari had never traveled with a large entourage to London as reported by the Saharareporters."

The Nigerian High Commission in London had never offered any favour either in cash or material to Mrs Buhari. Mrs Buhari would have ignored the publication like all such baseless accusations, but for the angle with which the report was presented has a corruption and abuse of privileges connotation.

This, however, negate the fundamental principles upon which Buharis administration thrives. It is on record that the Nigerian High Commission in London did not receive Aisha Buhari at the Airport with any official distinction or privilege as it was accorded other first ladies before her.

She never complained or raised dust about any of these act by the High Commission because of the understanding as clearly spelt out and practiced by her husband that public office must be separated from the private lives of the occupants.

ALSO READ: Aisha Buhari decries extortion of money from rural women
She also revealed that she takes personal responsibility for her childrens meals.

The First Lady made the revelation while dismissing claims that the Nigerian High Commission in London spent a total of 49,000 in entertaining her during her visits to London.

A statement released by Mrs Buharis media aide, Adebisi Olumide Ajayi read in part:

The State House in Abuja caters for her meal when necessary, and other healthy food or variety needed by her children are her personal responsibility.

It is on record that the Nigerian Commission in London does not receive Aisha Buhari at the airport with any official distinction or privileges as was accorded other first ladies before her.

Her drivers are privately arranged without any recourse to the embassy for staff. She has never complained or raised dust about any of these acts by the High Commission because of the understanding, as clearly spelt out and practiced by her husband that public office must be separated from the private lives of the occupants.

"She has always been an advocate of good governance where officials of government are responsive and appealing to their constituents. It therefore baffles the imagination that one could believe she would corroborate with any government official however highly placed either at home or abroad to short-change the Nigerian people.

"These records are not hidden for a non-mischievous reporter who really intends to inform the people and not to disparage the family of the President just to add weight to a report.

ALSO READ: Aisha Buhari decries extortion of money from rural women
Brig.-Gen. Rabe Abubakar, the Acting Director of Information, Office of the Chief of Defence Staff, disclosed this to newsmen on Friday in Warri, Delta.

Abubakar, who was on a tour of media locations across the military operational areas in the country, said that Operation Accord would be a mitigating instrument against the incessant clashes between herdsmen and farmers.

Anytime from now it will become operationalised and the issues of herdsmen going against innocent citizens will be a thing of the past, he said.

He said that the military was committed to rescuing all individuals held hostage by the Boko Haram sect.

He also solicited for media cooperation to enable them succeed in the mandate.

 I am assuring Nigerians that the Armed Forces and security agents will never live any stone unturned to rescue all those that have been taken hostage by the Boko Haram insurgents.

The Nigerian military and security agencies are extending the hand of fellowship by way of collaboration, synergising and seeking your cooperation and understanding.

Media is one of the key stakeholders and partner in most of the military operations in the Nigeria spectrum and has been an agent in fostering peaceful and harmonious relationship, he said.

The director said that the military had gone through reformation, adding that its operations were being given wider coverage.

He said that the military was operating in a unique situation that had to do with crisis and needed sensitisation with high level of professionalism in reportage.

Abubakar said that the Nigerian Armed Forces had conducted over 13 operations in the country.

We are mopping up through Operation Rescue Finale and other operations put in place by other services, he said.
According to multiple reports, the girl was rescued by troops in the Alargano forest, Borno State, by troops of the Operation Lafiya Dole.

Confirming the rescue, the Director, Army Public Relations, Brig.Gen. Sani Usman, said that the army could come up with further details shortly.

Troops found another Chibok schoolgirl. Details shortly, he wrote.

Usman further wrote: "Troops of Operation LAFIYA DOLE during investigation of arrested suspected Boko Haram terrorists discovered one of the abducted Chibok School girls, , with her six months old baby.

"According to preliminary investigation, it was discovered she is the daughter of Abubakar Gali Mulima and Habiba Abubakar of Chibok.

"She further stated that she was a student of Senior Secondary School Class 3B (SS 3B), before her abduction along with her colleagues on 14th April 2014 by the Boko Haram terrorists.

Rakiya Abubakar is presently undergoing further medical investigation and would soon be released to the Borno State Government," he said.

ALSO READ: Troops rescue 38 women, children in Borno
In a statement issued by the group's leaders, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and Aisha Yesufu, it said the government had promised that another 83 of the girls would be released "soon," but there has been no further communication on the status of their release.

"Our Movement is justifiably worried that the Nigerian government has once again relapsed to the same complacency, lethargy, and inertia that has been recurrent on this tragedy. What else explains the fact that despite all assurances that another 83 of our Chibok girls were under negotiation for release "soonest" there has been no further communication on the status of their release?" the statement said.

The group criticised the federal government for pronouncing the end of the anti-Boko Haram war following the capture of Sambisa Forest.

It said President Muhammadu Buhari had pledged not to declare victory without the rescue of the Chibok girls and all other abducted victims of terrorist.

It said: "We are doubly disappointed that the Federal Government contradicted itself by the recent declaration and celebration of capture of Sambisa Forest as the end of the war. This action by is contrary to the pledge that the President and the Military made repeatedly on several occasions that they would not declare victory without the rescue of our Chibok girls and all other abducted victims of terrorist abduction.

"With no additional rescue of any of our Chibok girls since 13 October 2016, what conclusion should parents, the Chibok community, our Movement, the Nigerian public, and the world at large draw from the fact that our President and Military are celebrating "the capture of Sambisa Camp Zero", the same stronghold in which it stated the girls were held and the 21 released were released from in October?"

ALSO READ: Oby Ezekwesili of BBOG wins Pulse Person of 2016

Therefore, the group vows to begin a 24-hourly march to the entrance of the Aso Villa from January 8, 2017, to commemorate the Day 1000 of the Chibok Schoolgirls' abduction.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army on Thursday, January 5, announced that troops of the Operation Lafiya Dole have rescued another Chibok schoolgirl.
Abubakar stated this on Thursday, January 5, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State - the same day the army announced the rescue of one of the girls with her 6-month-old baby.

"Neither the military nor any security agency will give information on the Chibok girls in order not to jeopardise their safety," adding that "information on strategy to rescue them will never be disclosed."

Abubakar, however, did not specify if the military already knows the precise location of the girls.

In April 2014, over 200 pupils of Chibok Secondary School, Borno state were abducted from their school by the dreaded Boko Haram sect.

ALSO READ: 7 Reasons why Boko Haram released 21 schoolgirls
The money was said to have been stashed into three bank accounts, Punch reports.

In an affidavit filed in support of the ex parte application, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) investigator, Moses Awolusi, claimed that the anti-graft agency discovered through its investigations how sometime in December 2014 Diezani invited a former Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they hatched the plan of how a cash sum of $153,310,000 would be moved from NNPC to Okonkwo to be saved for Diezani.

According to Awolusi, Diezani instructed Okonkwo to ensure that the money was neither credited into any known account nor captured in any transaction platforms of Fidelity Bank.

Delivering judgement on the matter, Justice Muslim Hassan gave Sterling Bank and any other interested party 14 days to appear before him to prove the legitimacy of the monies.
The workers, including judges and magistrates, said the action became necessary to press home their demands among others, illegal deductions from their salaries.

Mr Jemo Musa, the JUSUN State Chairman, told newsmen on Friday in Nasarawa after a joint congress of the unions that all the courts in the state would be shut on Monday if the government failed to reverse the deductions.

If the illegal deductions from our salaries are not discontinued and the previous months deductions refunded before Monday, we will embark on an indefinite strike.

From today till Monday, Jan. 9, if these demands are not met all courts in Nasarawa State would be shut indefinitely, he said.

He said apart from the deductions, the government should also pay their outstanding increment arrears from 2013 to date.

Musa urged the judiciary staff to remain calm and await further directives from the leadership of the various unions.
Clark gave the warning on Thursday, January 5, at a meeting of Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) held at his Delta residence.

He said things may get out of hands if the Muhammadu Buhari administration does not take fast and progressive actions on the crisis.

The Ijaw leader, however, commended the President for acknowledging that dialogue is the solution to the incessant attacks on oil facilities in the region.

Clark said: "When Mr. President gave his New Year message, he paid particular attention to peace in the Niger Delta.

"He said he was prepared to dialogue with Niger Delta people. And he used the word, I am persuading, the second time he was using that word. So we congratulate him for the first time of agreeing that dialogue is the answer.

"So we are ready, but no impression should be given that they are still looking for people to negotiate with, because on the 1st November, last year, we met with him, we were about a hundred; traditional leaders, opinion leaders, youths, women, we all met at Aso Rock.

"We were therefore very happy when he decided that no armed conflict. November to January is a long time. We have been waiting and we were surprised that one of his media aides came to the television to say they are still looking for credible people to negotiate with. Thats a grave insult to us."

He also called on the Federal Government to urgently "arrest the situation" in Southern Kaduna, where over 800 people were reportedly killed by Fulani herdsmen on Christmas day.

"We are interested in everything happening in this country. We are particularly concerned about the killings in Southern Kaduna," he said.

"We condemn what is going on in the area. The federal government should show interest. Nigeria should have peace. Our economy is going down and its only in atmosphere of peace our economy can grow.

"We are all Nigerians and we are all equal in this country. Nobody should pick religion or ethnicity in the affairs of this country. The federal government should as a matter of urgency arrest the situation before it turns out a full blown war."

Other elders present at the meeting were said to have risen to the defense of one of their own, former president Goodluck Jonathan, pointing that it appears the Federal Government deliberately plots to humiliate the Jonathan family

They expressed worry over the "seeming silence of President Buhari in the frequent harassment" of members of the ex-president's family by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC).
The governor called on Nigerians to make direct investments in the lives of legionnaires and servicemen who lost their lives defending the country.

He said that the families of such servicemen and legionnaires deserved all the support they could get from the people.

There is the need for us to give them the required support. We must take legionnaires and families of slain servicemen as important as we take ourselves.

This is because they fought for this nation. They laid down their lives to ensure that we enjoy a peaceful nation.

Wike said that Nigeria was still united because the military personnel fought for the country.

The governor announced a donation of N10million on behalf of the State Government, while the 23 Local Government Areas donated N11.5m.

Commissioners donated N1.5m and Special Advisers to the Governor donated N1m.

Secretary to the State Government, Mr Kenneth Kobani, said that the Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebration was necessary to provide the needed support for those who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the country.
A statement released on Thursday, January 5, by the President's spokesman, Garba Shehu, said Buhari has ordered the Inspector-General of police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, to take "strong actions" in ending the senseless violence in the state.

Since the attack, the President has been criticised for keeping mute on the crisis that claimed the lives of many Nigerians.

According to Shehu, the President also directed the IGP to personally visit the area to assess the situation firsthand.

The statement said: "President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered strong actions to deal with violence in Southern Kaduna.

"This is aimed at bringing an end to the recurring acts of violence and destruction in the Southern part of Kaduna State.

"On the directive of President Buhari, the IG of Police was in the region on Saturday and Sunday to assess the situation at first hand. In addition to the conventional policemen deployed in the area, a squadron of mobile policemen has now been stationed there."

The Nigerian army is also in the process of setting up two battalions in southern Kaduna while the military continues to carry out air surveillance across flash points of the area, Shehu said.

He added: "President Buhari has equally directed the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to carry out a joint assessment of the situation with the sister agency in Kaduna, SEMA, to determine the level of response required for urgent aid to the victims of the violence.

"These measures should soon ensure the return of normalcy to the region, while the Kaduna State government continues its peace building efforts. The President commended efforts of the State government and the security agencies in the steps taken so far to curtail the violence.

"President Buhari has, once again, sent condolences to the people of southern Kaduna, who have lost loved ones in the recent violence."
The synopsis for the upcoming American fantasy film, and the fifth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series teases lots of adventure and a movie worth anticipating.

Synopsis

Johnny Depp returns to the big screen as the iconic, swashbuckling anti-hero Jack Sparrow in the all-new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

The rip-roaring adventure finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way when deadly ghost sailors, led by the terrifying Captain Salazer (Javier Bardem), escape from the Devils Triangle bent on killing every pirate at sea  notably Jack.

Jacks only hope of survival lies in the legendary Trident of Poseidon, but to find it he must forge an uneasy alliance with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), a brilliant and beautiful astronomer, and Henry (Benton Thwaites), a headstrong young sailor in the Royal Navy.

At the helm of the Dying Gull, his pitifull small and shabby ship, Captain Jack seeks not only to reverse his recent spate of ill fortune, but to save his very life from the most formidable and malicious foe he has never faced.

ALSO READ: undefined

The fifth installment stars Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Kevin McNall. The film also stars Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario.

About film

Captain Jack Sparrow is pursued by an old rival, Captain Salazar, who along with his crew of ghost pirates has escaped from the Devil's Triangle, and is determined to kill every pirate at sea. Jack seeks the Trident of Poseidon, a powerful artifact that grants its possessor total control over the seas, in order to defeat Salazar.
On January 3, 2017, his sons made a video appealing to the public for financial support to aid the actor's treatement.

The actor who has been in the hospital for a year and nine months, is in need of over 15 million naira for kidney transplant and eye surgery in India.

In 2016, Nollywood actor Desmond Elliot took to his Instagram page to share a photo of the actor in the hospital, soliciting for fund from the public.

ALSO READ: undefined

ALSO READ: undefined

In 2015, following the death of Nollywood actor, Muna Obiekwe, reports of Prince James Uche's state of health surfaced online.

While the reports had stated that the actor was facing possible eviction, Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN) claimed to have paid off his hospital bills and house rent.

Pulse Nigeria had reached out to the actor, who undefined, and pleaded with Nigerians to help him.

Prince James Uche is popular for movies including "Lost Kingdom," "True Vindication," "Igodo" among others.
What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie.

With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos and Abuja.

1.

Starring: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport

Synopsis: The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York's secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school.

Friday - Thursday: 10:35am

Starring: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport

Synopsis: Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s.

Showing:

Daily: 2:30 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:20 PM

Daily: 12:00PM, 2:10PM, 4:20PM, 6:30PM, 8:40PM

Daily: 10:30AM, 3:05PM, 4:40PM

Sunday: 3:05PM, 4:40PM

Fri-Thur: 1:45pm, 3:50pm, 6:05pm

Starring: Tope Tedela, Gabriel Afolayan, Omawumi Dada

Synopsis: "King Invincible" tells the story of a handsome warlord, who is fast transitioning into a wolf due to the curse of the dogs that has been placed on him.

Showing:

Daily: 12:40PM, 5:00PM

Fri-Thur: 11:50am

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons

Synopsis: When Callum Lynch explores the memories of his ancestor Aguilar and gains the skills of a Master Assassin, he discovers he is a descendant of the secret Assassins society.

Showing:

Daily: 2:00 PM, 9:10 PM

Daily: 12:30PM, 2:40PM, 4:50PM, 7:00PM, 9:10PM

Friday - Sunday: 1:00PM, 8:55PM

Monday - Thursday: 1:00PM, 2:45PM, 8:55PM

Fri-Thur: 11:45am, 1:55pm, 3:10pm, 4:10pm, 6:25pm, 8:40pm

5.

Starring: Ramsey Nouah, Rita Dominic, Ibinabo Fiberesima, Chidi Mokeme, Memry Savanhu, Adonijah Owuruwa, Daniel K. Daniel, Nelly Ekwereogu

Synopsis: The story is told from two points of view: that of a young pregnant woman, and that of her husband, a soldier accused of being involved in the 1976 military coup and assassination of General Murtala Mohammed, the Head-of-State of Nigeria.

Friday -Thursday: 1:00pm

Friday -Thursday: 5:00PM, 6:10PM, 9:10PM

Friday - 6:40PM, 9:00PM

Saturday - Thursday: 2:20PM, 6:40PM, 9:00PM

Starring: Ayo Makun, Funke Akindele, Eric Roberts

Synopsis: A Trip to Jamaica which bridges the gap between Nollywood, Gollywood, Hollywood and the Jamaican movie industry will be showcasing AY again as the no-holds- barred Akpos, alongside the award-winning Funke Akindele, who plays Bola in the high voltage potpourri of love, adventure, crime and lots of comedy.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 1:50pm

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen

Synopsis: A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.

Showing:

Friday - 2:50PM

Saturday - Thursday: 6:20PM, 8:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 2:55PM

Fri - Sun: 8:20 PM

Mon - Thu: 3:40 PM, 8:20 PM

Daily: 10:00am, 3:55pm, 6:15pm, 8:30pm

Starring:Richard Mofe-Damijo, Sola Sobowale, Alibaba, Iretiola Doyle, Banky W, and Adesua Etom

Synopsis: Our love birds just want to tie the knot in peace, but will true love stand even the most chaotic of wedding celebrations?

Showing:

Fri - Sun: 2:30 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:10 PM, 11:30 PM

Mon - Thu: 2:30 PM, 8:10 PM

(--VIP SHOWS--)

Daily: 3:50 PM, 8:10 PM, 10:20 PM

Friday -Thursday: 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 4:00pm, 5:00pm, 6:00pm, 7:00pm, 8:00pm, 9:00pm

Friday -Thursday: 10:50AM, 2:05PM, 4:10PM, 8:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:50PM, 2:50PM, 4:50PM, 6:50PM, 8:50PM

9.

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Timberlake

Synopsis: From the creators of Shrek comes the most smart, funny, irreverent animated comedy of the year, DreamWorks' Trolls. This holiday season, enter a colorful, wondrous world populated by hilariously unforgettable characters and discover the story of the overly optimistic Trolls.

Daily: 10:30AM

Daily: 10:00am, 10:15am, 12:00pm

10.

Starring: ZACK ORJI, RMD and VICTOR OLAOTAN

Synopsis: The Three Wise Men is a Dramatic comedy that humorously presents the follies of three aged men. The comedy satirizes the actions and intents of three elderly men in their mid/late 60's who struggle to re-live their lost youth.

Friday -Thursday: 12:40PM, 6:50PM

Friday -Thursday: 12:20PM, 4:40PM

Friday -Thursday: 7:10pm, 9:10pm

Daily: 6:00 PM

11.

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Lara Pulver

Synopsis: Vampire death dealer, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) fights to end the eternal war between the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her.

Daily: 11:00AM

Friday -Thursday: 12:10pm, 5:15pm

Friday: 12:30PM, 4:20PM

Saturday - Thursday: 2:10PM, 6:00PM, 8:00PM

12.

Starring: Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk

Synopsis: The Rebellion makes a risky move to steal the plans to the Death Star, setting up the epic saga to follow.

Daily: 9:05PM

Daily: 3:20PM, 8:10PM

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey

Synopsis: WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people, and becomes the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor without firing a shot.

Showing:

Daily: 11:10 AM, 4:20 PM, 7:00 PM

(--VIP SHOWS--)

Daily: 1:00 PM

Starring: Wale Ojo, Majid Michel, Adesua Etomi, Theresa Edem, Ime Bishop Umoh, Moses Armstrong and Ekere Ekanga.

Synopsis: Set in a fictitious village somewhere in Ibibio land in beautiful Akwa Ibom state, Ayamma is the story of Ihuoma, the poor but beautiful village maiden with the voice of an angel.

Daily: 2:10 PM

Starring: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet

Synopsis: Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death. Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

Friday - Thursday: 10:40AM, 7:15PM, 9:10PM

Sunday: 7:15PM, 9:10PM

Friday - 2:20PM, 6:20PM, 8:20PM

Saturday -Thursday: 12:20PM, 2:20PM, 4:20PM, 6:20PM, 8:20PM
Speaking at the ceremony, Streep said, "Viola Davis is possessed of a blazing, incandescent talent. And she is the most generous, present person I know."

"The thing Viola can't do is be invisible. She just can't do it," Streep continued. "She can't fade away; she can't recede; she can't be forgettable. Viola Davis is inevitable. She is like a sure thing and her star has been waiting here patiently for 50 years for her. So let's fix her in the firmament of Hollywood. Let's immortalize her in cement, and thank you for the amazing gift that you have given me and everybody here. And I just look forward to more and more from you."

Speaking at the event, Viola Davis who has been nominated for a 2017 Golden Globe for her performance in "Fences," said, "I cannot believe my life right now that Meryl Streep spoke at my Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony with my handsome husband and a beautiful daughter."

"In the moment, it hit me. So many moments since I turned 50, it's doing the work and as a result of the work, my life is coming to fruition," added Davis.

Davis has won an Emmy for her role in "HTGAWM," two Tony Awards for her Broadway performances in "Fences" and "King Hedley II," and several Critics Choice, SAG and People's Choice Awards.
What do I do? I love her so much._______________

Hi Reader,

Two years is a long time to still be uncertain of where you stand in someones life.

If after two years of being with you shes still acting single, and does not even deny it, then Im sorry to inform you that you might be the only one in that relationship.

I mean, you might be in a relationship with her, but she might not in a relationship with you.

Being in a relationship means you are exclusive to someone and you actively project that image, you let everyone know that this is who you are in love with.

Many times, when people have trouble doing this, it reveals what the state of their mind is. It is quite uncommon to be in a relationship for two years and still act single.

Acting single after all that time is probably an indication that she was never in the relationship at all.

However, this might just be one big misinterpretation of actions. So, I suggest you give her extra time.

As I am often predisposed to advising; have a conversation with her. Communication is very key in any kind of relationship.

So, sit that woman down, and bare your soul to her. Ask her to sincerely tell you where you stand in her life, where she stands as regards your relationship.

You might get an answer thatll break your heart, bit I think thats a blessing.

Id rather not spend another day living in a bubble of lies and uncertainty if I were you.

The truth might hurt, and it might take a while, but itll surely has the ability to set you free._______________

Do you want to talk about your love life, marriage or family issues?

Do you have burning questions that you would love to get answers to?

Just send a mail to relationships@pulse.ng and I'll provide the most honest answers to them anonymously.

So, why not send that mail today and let's talk about it?
Asor, his younger brother, was the one who found his body around 7am that morning. He said:

I was sleeping when my phone rang and when I checked, I saw that it was my mum calling. She said I should come and open the door for her. As I was coming down, I saw my brother dangling like a pendulum from where he hanged himself. That was around 7am."

A night to the incident, he is reported to have texted his friend, a farewell text of some sorts. A close family friend said:

A night to the day of this incident, the boy picked his phone and sent a text message to his best friend, wishing him a happy new year. At the end of that message, he wrote, see you in heaven. It was the following morning that his remains were found dangling from his tie.

He is survived by his Mother and brother.
The government has announced that FM stations in the country will begin to go silent from next week and the shutdown process will be complete by the end of 2017.

The country is switching from FM to digital radio (also known as DAB) because the digital options offers more channels, savings for broadcasters and better audio quality.

"The main reason that Norway is the first is because of the Norwegian landscape, which has deep fjords, high mountains and scattered communities," the government said in a statement. "This makes it particularly expensive to operate the Norwegian FM networks compared with other countries."

The Norwegian government estimates that radio stations will save more than $23.5 million a year by switching to the DAB format, allowing them to invest further in better radio content.

ALSO READ: Facebook apologises for taking down cancer awareness video

This move comes after more than a decade of government planning and the government says it does not expect that any jobs will be affected directly by the switch.

However, stakeholders and critics say the switch could leave 2 million cars without radio access - a potential safety hazard.

Other countries, such as the UK, are planning to make the switch so the success, or otherwise of this transition will be closely monitored.
Turkish Murat Engin, 30, and his wife, Zelda, 28, welcomed a very their baby Cinar who was born with a special distinction, a red heart-shaped mark on his forehead.

So far, Cinar has been a star from the delivery room till date and that would not be changing anytime soon.

He was so much of a hit, even the delivery nurses could not resist a selfie with the special newborn.

Murat and Zelda say Cinar who is now 14-months-old, has garnered lots of fans who want to stop and snap photos with the 'love child'.

Murat said:

"We love him and his birthmark. After a nurse cleaned the blood on his head I was the first who see the birthmark on his head. I was really surprised. When I came to close his head I realised that it was an amazing heart.

"It was difficult for me to keep my tears. The nurse screamed like "Oh my good unbelievable, he is a love baby".

"Then 3 others came and got some selfies. When his mother saw him and his birthmark, she started to cry.

"It was really like a gift from God. None of us had negative feelings. We believe that he was born with his chance.'

"When we walk around, all people smile us and love him. All of our friends are curious about his birthmark because of its heart-shape.

"They say that he is a love baby. When we go to the hospital for custom control, nurses and doctors know him and called him as 'Hearted boy'. He already has many fans."
The marriage is now seven years strong and the couple are [of course] totally excited at coming this far.

The Pastor shares his joy and gratitude through a post on his Instagram post, saying "It's been seven incredible years with my lovely wife Pastor Nomthi and just like this picture, she has brought much joy and laughter to our home."

The post was published on January 5th, 2017, and shows Pastor Mrs Nomthi, mother of two boys, laughing cheerfully.

ALSO READ:Deyemi Okanlawon and wife celebrate 4th wedding anniversary

The caption reads further, "I'm grateful to God for having you in my life Pastor Nomthi, and I know that this is just the beginning.

God has so much planned for us and so much he will still do through you in Jesus name. Happy Anniversary."

Pastor Taiwo Odukoya was formerly married to Bimbo Odukoya, who tragically passed away in the Sosoliso air disaster of 2005.

As he reaches the seventh year of his new marriage, we wish him and his bride more years of peace and blessings.
Narumi Kurosaki went missing in the city of Besancon, where she had been studying French, on the night of December 4.

French authorities believe the 21-year-old was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who is believed to have fled to Chile, and have issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Chile's justice ministry said Wednesday it was assisting the French "in the identification of certain suspects as of their latest movements", without giving further details.

In a video published by French and Japanese media, the suspect, identified as Nicolas Zepeda Contreras, threatens Kurosaki with unnamed consequences if she did not fulfil unspecified conditions.

Speaking in English in a video dating from September, he says he loves Kurosaki, whom he identifies by first name, but accuses her of doing "bad things".

Holding up two fingers he gave her a two-week deadline until September 21 to meet his conditions, which he said applied "some for her whole stay in France and some, actually, forever."

"She needs to build trust and she needs to pay a little cost of what she did and assume (sic) that she cannot go around making those kinds of mistakes with a person who loves her," he added.

The case has caused shock in Japan as well as in France.

Kurosaki's fellow students in Besancon described Kurosaki as a "lovely person" who was "always smiling".

On Thursday, police with sniffer dogs searched a vast forest on the outskirts of Besancon for the body of the petite student.

Le Parisien newspaper reported that signals from the suspect's phone had been traced to Chaux forest.

The prosecutor's office and police refused to confirm the report.

On Tuesday, Besancon prosecutor Edwige Roux-Morizot said the investigation had shown the student's Chilean ex "was in France, in Besancon, at the time of her disappearance".

"The evidence tells us it is extremely likely that the young woman is dead," she said.

The prosecutor ruled out suicide, describing Kurosaki as a "young girl full of life" who was happy in a new relationship.

"There is sufficient evidence to launch a murder investigation," she said, describing the suspect as having an "intrusive, disturbing personality".

'Horror film'

Kurosaki, who had been studying in Besancon since September, met the Chilean teaching assistant in Japan but the pair later split.

Several students living on the same floor of her university residence said they heard a loud cry on the night of December 4.

Anne-Laure Saillet, 20, told AFP she heard "bangs on the doors and furniture and afterwards I heard a very shrill cry, very sharp and loud. It was a woman's cry.

"At first I thought it was a horror film but when it continued I became worried."
"This is the first group of the CMA that has entered Gao to start mixed patrols," said Malick Ag Cherif, coordinator of the former rebel organisation, known as the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA).

In 2015, the rebel alliance signed a peace deal with government and loyalist militias.

Since then, rival armed groups have repeatedly violated the ceasefire, threatening attempts to give the north a measure of autonomy to prevent separatist uprisings.

A key component of the deal -- joint patrols between regular troops, pro-government militia and former rebels -- remained unfulfilled until now.

On December 30, the CMA complained a "group of armed men hostile to the CMA" had prevented some 200 of its men from entering government-held Gao for the patrols.

Malian Colonel Rhissa Ag Sidi Mohamed said there had been a problem between CMA dissidents and pro-government groups, but insisted: "The state has taken a major step and resolved the problem."

He said fighters from the other groups in the alliance were expected "to join us in the coming weeks and take part in the mixed patrols."
According to an official toll, 62 people were killed in November when a combined force of soldiers and police officers clashed with a tribal leaders guards at Rwenzori region near Ugandas Western border.

William Nzoghu, a legislator from the area and one of six members of parliament who sent the petition, said the number of people killed exceeded 200.

The police and the army jointly committed genocide and crimes against humanity.

We are saying let the ICC come and investigate, he said.

The area, which has been beset by unrest in recent years, often votes for the opposition in general elections.

Critics of the 72-year-old long-standing president, Yoweri Museveni, accuse his government of deliberately stoking violence in the region as retribution for its residents rejection of his ruling party candidates.

In an e-mailed response, the ICCs Office of the Prosecutor told Reuters it had received the petition and that it would announce a decision in due course.

Rights group Amnesty International said that during the clashes several people appeared to have been summarily shot dead and their bodies dumped.
The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike -- the same one that discovered the Kremlin's alleged interference in the US election -- said in December it had evidence Russispying on Ukraine's forces inan hackers might have bolstered Moscow's the eastern war zone.

CrowdStrike said the malware was installed on software used to aim Ukraine's D-30 howitzer guns that were the backbone of the government's forces fighting Russian-backed insurgents for 31 months.

The conflict has claimed the lives of nearly 10,000 people and was one of the main factors why Moscow's relations with the West are at a post-Cold War low.

'High-loss nature'

Ukraine's defence ministry blasted the report's claims and rejected any allegations that a hack led to a majority of its howitzers being destroyed during the conflict.

Ukraine's rebuttal came a day after high-profile US Senate hearings in which the heads of three intelligence agencies all pointed the blame at Russia's most senior officials for hacking into the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign.

Democrat Hillary Clinton said the leaked information was one of the reasons why she lost to Donald Trump -- the president-elect who has publically praised Russian leader President Vladimir Putin.

Fears of Russia also trying to influence upcoming European elections have put a new focus on cybersecurity firms. But Ukraine was adamant that CrowdStrike was wrong on this occasion.

"The spread of false information leads to a heightening of social tensions and undermines people's trust in Ukraine's armed forces," the defence ministry said.

The December CrowdStrike report said that "from late 2014 and through 2016, FANCY BEAR X-Agent implant was covertly distributed on Ukrainian military forums within a legitimate Android application."

Fancy Bear is a code name for a group of Russian hackers that CrowdStrike has linked to the country's secretive military intelligence.

"Successful deployment of the FANCY BEAR malware within this application may have facilitated reconnaissance against Ukrainian troops," the report said.

It added some 80 percent of Ukraine's howitzers were destroyed during the war -- a vast figure that had never been reported before and would mean nearly the entire arsenal of Ukraine's biggest guns being erased.

jpegMpeg4-1280x720London's International Institute of Strategic Studies also said that Ukrainian artillery bearing the alleged Russian malware "may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this" type of big gun in Ukraine.
Dozens of police cars and ambulances are said to have rushed to the scene.

A former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who was at the scene tweeted: "I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running."

A witness, John Schlicher, told MSNBC that the gunman was a "slender man", who may be in his 20s, was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.

The gunman identified as Esteban Santiago was shot by police as he attempted to reload, Schlicher said.
Start 2017 off right ... take charge of your INVESTMENTS! Were helping hundreds of individuals and families in the greater Muscatine area with their investments. We can help you, too, with portfolio transfers, pension distributions, 401(k) rollovers, proceeds from inheritance and estates, life insurance, and more! Call (563) 262-3144 from 8-5 Monday thru Friday or get started even faster ... send an e-mail to Matthew.Strajack@LPL.com or Jordan.Miller@LPL.com. CBI Investment Services, Located at CBI Bank & Trust  2nd Floor, 301 Iowa Avenue, Muscatine, IA 52761 Matt Strajack and Jordan Miller, Financial Consultants  Pesey Davis, Administrative Assistant  Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. Insurance products offered through LPL Financial or its licensed affiliates. CBI Bank & Trust and CBI Investment Services are not registered broker/dealers or affiliates of LPL Financial. Not FDIC Insured  No Bank Guarantee  May Lose Value  Not a Deposit  Not Insured by any Federal Government Agency
The Dillard's department store at Moline's SouthPark Mall will be transformed into one of the company's clearance centers, a Dillard's spokeswoman said Thursday.

The store's nearly 70 employees are being offered jobs at the new store or at the Dillard's department store at Davenport's NorthPark Mall, said Julie Johnson Bull, Dillard's investor relations director. She said associates were notified of the change Tuesday.

"Importantly, our commitment to the area remains strong, and our commitment to the associates remains strong," she said.

The Little Rock, Arkansas-based Dillard's operates 300 stores in 29 states as well as 25 of the clearance centers. According to Bull, Dillard's also announced a clearance center Wednesday for its Wichita, Kansas, market.

The Moline store opened in October 2004.

Bull said the clearance centers carry merchandise from multiple stores that is "deeply discounted" for shoppers.

"The store will immediately receive clearance merchandise from all the Dillard's in the region and operate under a clearance format," she said.

According to Bull, the store's footprint will remain the same, but shoppers "will see more consolidation of merchandise into large areas of fixtures." The clearance stores do not carry a full line of cosmetics. The conversion should be complete by early February.

Dennis Gilliam, senior property manager for Macerich-owned SouthPark and NorthPark malls, said the mall is excited by the change.

"We think it's a good move for them and the mall," he said, adding that "this gives people a choice and gives all the market somewhere to go to Dillard's."

Gilliam added that it follows a retailing trend among department stores to offer outlet, or clearance, store options.

"All the major department stores have gone to it to clear their merchandise and give a great product that was over-purchased," he said.

He said Dillard's and Macerich real estate representatives have discussed the change "for sometime."

"But it was strictly Dillard's decision," Gilliam said.

With the conversion, Bull said "Quad-City shoppers will have two different formats to shop."

"We look at all of our properties, and we're always evaluating the operating format of each," she said. "We believe operating Moline as a clearance center is the best fit."
Our Lady of the River Catholic Church in LeClaire will host a "Night to Shine" prom for people with special needs, ages 14 or older.

The event is 6-9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 10, at the Quad-Cities Waterfront Convention Center, Bettendorf.

It is free, but guests need to register as soon as possible. People from all faith backgrounds who live in Iowa or Illinois are welcome.

Approximately 200 volunteers, ages 14 or older, also are needed to ensure a memorable night for attendees.

The prom event, sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation, includes a red carpet welcome, disc jockey and dancing, dinner, karaoke, limo rides, photo opportunities, shoe shines and hair/make-up stations.

All guests will be crowned king or queen of the prom and take home a souvenir bag of prom goodies.

"Night to Shine" is centered on Gods love, according to organizers, and celebrated around the world.

Our Lady of the River and Risen Christ Lutheran Church, Davenport, which is planning a separate event, are among 350 churches representing 27 denominations and 100,000 volunteers in 50 states and 10 countries hosting prom events.

Altogether, 50,000 guests with special needs will be celebrated.

Guests and volunteers of the Our Lady of River's prom may register at: ourladyoftheriver.com or download a registration form and send it to the appropriate person.

For more information, contact Jennifer Hildebrand, Our Lady of the River parish nurse, at 563-370-4412 or by email at kjhildebrand@windstream.net.

For information about Risen Christ Churchs prom at Trinity Lutheran Church and School in Davenport, go to: rclcqc.org.
Clinton Police Chief Kevin Gyrion said that at 9:03 p.m. Jan. 4, Clinton Police officers went to Hillbilly Jacks restaurant at 1516 Camanche Ave., to investigate a report of a burglary in progress.

Officers determined there were people in the restaurant.

When officers tried to have the people come out of the building, they refused. Members of the Gateway Area Hazardous Entry and Approach Team, or HEAT, were called to go into the building.

Inside they found two men whom they arrested.

Sandell R. Anderson, 27, and Charlie Johnson, 33, both of Clinton, are charged with third-degree burglary, a Class D felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

Anderson and Johnson were being held Thursday night in the Clinton County Jail on cash-only bonds of $7,500 each.

Assisting at the scene were the Clinton County Sheriffs Department, Jackson County Sheriffs Department, Iowa State Patrol, Iowa Department of Transportation-Motor Vehicle Enforcement, Camanche Police Department, Fulton, Illinois, Police Department and the Clinton Fire Department.

The case remains under investigation by the Clinton Police Department. Anyone with information regarding the investigation is asked to call the Clinton Police Department at 563-243-1458.

-- Thomas Geyer
A West Liberty, Iowa, man turned himself in to authorities Thursday to begin serving a seven-year prison sentence for assaulting an officer and leading police on a chase from Scott County to Muscatine County in March.

Barry P. Bennett Jr., 39, was booked into the Scott County Jail just before 9 a.m., where he will remain until he is transported to prison.

He pleaded guilty in June to operating while intoxicated-first offense, assault on persons engaged in certain occupations and eluding while operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.

According to court documents:

At 7:15 p.m. March 18, Bennett was being transported to Country Oaks, a drug and alcohol treatment facility in Davenport, by a Muscatine County sheriffs deputy.

While in the 11800 block of Utah Avenue in Buffalo, Bennett broke out the rear window of the vehicle, got into the front passenger seat and assaulted the officer by striking him with a closed fist in the chest.

He took control of the vehicle keys and then went to the drivers side of the vehicle. The officer tried to stop Bennett but was pushed to the ground, causing minor injury.

He then took control of the vehicle and led marked police vehicles on a pursuit, which ended in Muscatine County, according to court documents.

He was sentenced on Aug. 8 to a year in the Scott County Jail on the OWI charge; up to two years in prison on the assault charge; and up to five years in prison on the eluding charge. District Court Judge Henry Latham ruled that the first two sentences would run at the same time; both charges would then run consecutive to the eluding charge.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dismissed additional charges of first-degree theft and second-degree robbery.

Bennett posted an $8,000 appeal bond the next day and remained free while the case was on appeal. In December, he voluntarily dismissed his appeal and was ordered to turn himself in on Thursday.

At the time of his arrest in March, Bennett was out on bond on a charge of disarming or attempting to a peace officer, a felony, in Poweshiek County.

On June 2, 2015, a state trooper received a call regarding a vehicle that was driving backward heading west on Interstate 80 in the eastbound lanes on the shoulder of the road in Poweshiek County, according to court documents.

The trooper made contact with the driver, identified as Bennett, who handed him "possible drug (meth) and a drug pipe," according to court documents.

Bennett began to resist and grabbed the trooper's gun and tried to pull it from his holster, according to court documents. The trooper fired his stun gun at Bennett and took him into custody, according to court documents.

On Aug. 22, he was sentenced to up to five years in prison, which will run at the same time as his sentences in the Scott County case. He posted a $5,000 appeal bond in the case. The case is still on appeal.
Strategically located just inside the front door of Mid-City High School in Davenport, Taylor Lance greeted visitors on a snowy Thursday afternoon.

Lance, a member of the Iowa Youth Congress, was one of several Mid-City students who hosted local legislators before the Iowa Legislature begins its session next week.

The teens lined up in front of a slide show to face state senators and representatives from Scott and Muscatine counties. They explained two pieces of priority legislation: One concerns school district funding and Davenport's "worth-less" campaign, and the other is deals with distracted driving.

Area legislators present were state Sens. Rita Hart, D-Wheatland, Mark Lofgren, R-Muscatine, Jim Lykam, D-Davenport, Roby Smith, R-Davenport, and state Rep. Phyllis Thede, D-Bettendorf.

The politicians had the most to say on the distracted driving bill, with Lofgren noting there is bipartisan support for legislation like the students favor.

The topic also is a priority of those who represent the state's bicyclists, he said, noting the record number of cyclists who died on Iowa roads in 2016.

As a distance runner from Muscatine County, Lofgren said he's very concerned about safety for pedestrians, runners and cyclists. But his focus is on what teens learn about cellphones and driving when they take driver education classes.

Mid-City's Jaylen Crawford recently completed that class and said the topic was part of a lecture, not a demonstration.

Iowa's state troopers want a bill that can be enforced, Lykam said. Hart pointed out that some see hypocrisy in such legislation; distracted driving can also come from drinking soda pop.

The students had researched distracted driving legislation in other states, Morgan Kurtz said, and noted laws can save lives, although not as many as one might expect.

"It's progress, though," Lance said.

On the topic of the "worth-less" campaign, Smith sees both short- and long-term solutions and noted the problem stems from 1971 and will not be quickly fixed.

Smith will offer a short-term solution: It would either reduce the amount of cash reserves a district is required to maintain from 20 percent to 15 percent, or it would allow districts to use interest earned on their cash reserves.

Most of those present at the Mid-City session agreed it makes no sense for districts to have tax money sitting and not be able to use it legally.

Iowa's School Budget Review Committee defines how that money can be used, Thede said, and the legislators will need help if those parameters are to be changed.

Dave Thede, a coordinator of the Youth Congress at Mid-City, said the students will visit the state Capitol multiple times this session. They also plan to attend legislative forums held each month in Davenport or Bettendorf.

The Iowa Legislature begins the 2017 session Monday in Des Moines.
DES MOINES  While conceding some anxiety over his pending deployment to China as Americas next ambassador, Gov. Terry Branstad said he thinks he is soon to embark on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Branstad, 70, the longest-serving governor in U.S. history, said in an interview Thursday he is leaving a job he loves as Iowas chief executive, but he thought he couldnt turn down a request from President-elect Donald Trump to serve his country in a key foreign-policy role after getting the blessing of his wife and family members.

When the person who is going to be the president of the highest office in this whole country says I think your knowledge and experience with the Chinese people and with the leaders of China could be helpful to our country in an issue that is extremely important and contentious, well, boy, I think thats a really hard thing to turn down, Branstad said.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime, and I think if I turned this down, I would always regret it, he added.

Branstad was in New York last month on a sell-Iowa trip to meet with economic development prospects when he and his wife, Chris, stopped by Trump Tower to visit with the president-elect, whom the governor strongly supported during the 2016 general election campaign. His son, Eric, guided Trumps Iowa election effort.

A short time later, Trump announced his intent to nominate Branstad to serve as the U.S. ambassador to China, citing the governors friendly relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping dating back to the mid-1980s when Xi was a young county official seeking a closer relationship with Iowa's agriculture sector. Trump said Branstads decades of public service along with his knowledge, experience and close ties to top Chinese leaders made him the ideal choice to serve as Americas ambassador to one of the worlds most powerful nations.

Branstad said he was humbled and honored to accept Trumps nomination, which is still subject to confirmation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

First of all, I didnt think my wife would ever have any willingness or interest to do this, Branstad said in the interview, but when Chris and the rest of the family said they were intrigued by the idea, and they thought even the grandchildren spending some time in China would be a great experience for them, that pretty much sealed the deal.

We had several family discussions about it, he added, but I tell you theres still some anxiety in my family. Every one of us has some anxiety about this. This is a big change. Its moving half way around the world. Its a very different culture.

Its obviously a very contentious relationship we have, and I still have a lot to learn. I have a lot to learn about foreign policy and some of the issues that the ambassador has to deal with. But I guess Im intrigued and excited about the opportunity. I want to make the best of it. I know its a huge  using a Donald Trump term  its a huge challenge, its also a huge opportunity. I want to make the most of it.

Branstad has divided his time over the past month preparing to deliver his final Condition of the State address and two-year state budget to the Legislature on Tuesday and filling out a detailed questionnaire as part of the process of being nominated to be ambassador.

Branstad said he plans to submit the information to several federal agencies as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider whether to confirm his nomination. He said he plans to attend Trumps inauguration in Washington, D.C., later this month and use the opportunity to meet personally with some of the committee members.

Branstad served as Iowas governor from 1983 to 1999 before returning to the office in 2011. Since leading his first delegation to Hebei Province in 1984, the governor has led six trade missions to China, including one last fall, meeting with numerous provincial governors, ministerial leaders and local officials.
The special election to fill the Iowa House seat left vacant by Sen.-elect Jim Lykam will be Jan. 31, Gov. Terry Branstad announced Friday.

The election will come a little less than three weeks after Republicans are scheduled to select their nominee for the District 89 post. Democrats on Thursday nominated Monica Kurth, an educator from Davenport, to run for the job.

This special election will be the second in the span of about a month. On Dec. 27, Lykam won a three-person contest to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Joe Seng in September. Lykam resigned his House seat on Monday.

House District 89 includes parts of Davenport's 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th and 8th wards. Democrats in the district outnumber Republicans by a margin of 7,500 to 4,800.

Lykam has represented the area since 2003.

The Republican convention to fill the House seat has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at county party headquarters at Paul Revere Square, 2322 E. Kimberly Road, Suite 235, Davenport.

Iowa law requires the governor to set a special election as early as practical when a vacancy occurs in the midst of a legislative session or when one is within 45 days of one convening. Iowa lawmakers will gavel into session on Monday.

The law also requires that at least 18 days notice be given and that the election be held on a Tuesday.
This week on the podcast, reporters discuss the start of the Iowa Legislature, who might be throwing their hat in the ring for the 2018 gubernatorial primaries and congressional Republicans stumbling at the start of their session.

On Iowa Politics is a weekly news and analysis podcast that re-creates the conversations that happen when Iowa's political reporters get together after the day's deadlines have been met. This week's show features James Q. Lynch, Christinia Crippes, Ed Tibbetts, Todd Dorman and Erin Murphy.

The show was produced by Max Freund, and the music is courtesy of Johnny on Point. Find us at qctimes.com, 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.
1. A cold but sunny weekend

A good Friday to all. The good news? No snow in the forecast. The bad? It's still cold out there.

Here are the weather details from the National Weather Service.

Today will be mostly sunny and cold with a high near 10 degrees. Wind-chill values will be as low as -15. Winds will be from the northwest.

Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 3 degrees and wind-chill values as low as -5 degrees.

Saturday will be mostly sunny with a high near 21 degrees and an overnight low of around 1 degree. Wind-chill values will be as low as -5 degrees.

Sunday will be sunny with a high near 24 degrees and a low around 18 degrees.

2. Davenport man sentenced to 15 years in crash that killed worker

Aliik Holley told a packed courtroom Thursday that a piece of him was taken away the day his father, Willie Nathaniel Holley, was struck and killed by a car as he worked in a construction zone in September.

During an emotional 20-minute hearing in Scott County District Court, Judge Mark Smith sentenced Sebon C. Reese to up to 15 years in prison on charges of homicide by vehicle-reckless driving and eluding or attempting to elude while participating in a felony in the death of Holley. Read more.

3. Woman gets 25 years in Davenport sex abuse case

An Indianola, Iowa, woman was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for sexually abusing two girls in Davenport. April Mae Lincoln, 29, must serve 70 percent  or 17.5 years  of the sentence before she is eligible for parole.

Lincoln and co-defendant Christopher James Myers, 31, repeatedly sexually abused the girls, ages 6 and 7, while they were staying in the 100 block of South Howell Street in Davenport, according to the arrest affidavits. Read more.

4. After thoughts from Iowa's game against Nebraska

Don Doxsie shares some thoughts from the Hawkeyes 93-90 double-overtime loss to Nebraska. Read more.

5. 10 tips for watching eagles in the Q-C

Today kicks off the beginning of Bald Eagle Days in the Quad-Cities. Frequent sub-zero temperatures in December already have drawn a sizable convocation of bald eagles to Quad-City area locks and dams along the Mississippi River corridor.

The predators have launched their annual return in search of open, warmer water and fish. Dams create turbulence below the surface of the river, which in turn, keeps pockets of water from freezing over.

Weather permitting, bald eagles could remain in the area through February. In the meantime, here are some tips to watch the birds while they're here. Read more.

Pro wrestling aficionado turns basement into 'fan cave'

You'll want to check out Jack Cullen's story about a Quad-City woman's passion  a massive collection of professional wrestling memorabilia. This lifelong Davenport has been collecting for her basement 'fan cave' since her early teenage years in the early 1970s. Read Notes @ Noon online later today at qctimes.com for the details.
In special nominating convention Thursday, Scott County Democrats from former Rep. Jim Lykams 89th District unanimously nominated Monica Kurth to run for the open seat.

Lykam, 67, resigned his House seat after winning a special election in December to take over the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Joe Seng.

Kurth, 66, said that one of her biggest challenges will be to get an equal piece of the financial pie for the Davenport Community School District.

A quality public school education means social and professional mobility for graduates, Kurth told a crowd of about 80 gathered at United Food and Commercial Workers Hall 2411 in Davenport. A good education means a reduction in crime, as well as a strong workforce that will attract employers, and provides those who graduate the tools to reach their full potential, she added.

Speaking after the convention, Kurth, who said she has taught developmental math and has served as a student counselor at Scott Community College for about 25 years, said that the Davenport School District is at a distinct disadvantage by losing $3 million in funding per year under the formula the state of Iowa uses to fund public schools.

Whenever funding for schools is cut, Kurth said, the result is larger class sizes, and larger class sizes means students do not learn as much or as well.

But its not just Davenport schools, Kurth said. There are 40 school districts in the state that are in the same situation as Davenport.

Kurth added that she is concerned about Iowa pushing more privatization of Medicaid. I think were working ourselves into a very serious situation, she said. We cant have thousands of people in the state living without healthcare coverage.

Lykam said he is very pleased with Kurths nomination. He added that the education funding issue will be a real tough fight, but that he and Kurth believe they can get a compromise that will improve school funding for the poorer school districts, such as Davenport.

Scott County Republicans will nominate their candidate for the seat Jan. 12.

The date for the special election had not been set by the Gov. Terry Branstad's office as of late Thursday.
House Republicans just can't remember what leadership looks like. They had better ditch the petty partisan posturing and morph into a caucus of ideas, quickly.

Calling the first days of GOP dominance in Washington inauspicious would be an understatement. The party of no just won't shake the bitter disdain that fueled it throughout President Barack Obama's tenure.

Crushing dissent was the first order of business, essentially walking on the ability of minority Democrats to protest with punitive fines and sanctions. The vindictive assault on opposition survived this week's rule-making process.

But another pitch -- crafted in secret by Republican backbenchers -- went too far for even president-elect Donald Trump. The House GOP, over the objections of Speaker Paul Ryan, looked Monday to behead the Office of Congressional Ethics and return to self-policing.

So much for draining the swamp. Settling scores for perceived slights -- in this case, public investigations into alleged corruption -- have, so far, taken a front seat to any semblance of policy.

Speaker Ryan attempted Wednesday to regain momentum after his caucus took a pistol, aimed at its own feet and squeezed the trigger. Along with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Ryan outlined the GOP's plan to gut Obamacare. Even here, though, the GOP's new-found unilateral power railroaded the made-for-television event.

Dozens of times, the GOP has voted for Obamacare's repeal. But each instance was little more than base pandering. The president's veto was a sure bet.

Come Jan. 20, the promised votes to kill Obamacare will have real weight. And, after six years of griping and dozens of votes, Republicans aren't capable of offering a real alternative. Instead, they're bickering among themselves about what comes next.

Years of griping. Years of complaining. Not a single cogent idea that would take the controversial program's place, even as the health of 20 million now-insured Americans hang in the balance.

The rush is on to kill Obamacare. But, obviously, that whole "replace" bit -- the actual measure of a ruling party -- is only disparate ideas and nonsensical talking points.

This is not the face of leadership.

For years, Republicans successfully weaponized Obamacare and took down dozens of purple-district House Democrats. They tapped hyperbolic rhetoric knowing that, with Obama in the White House, it amounted to little but theater.

That reality ends on Jan. 20.

Republicans will probably realize their fever dream and end Obamacare under President Trump. They can take a harder line against radical Islam. They can slash taxes for those "job creators" that comprise the top 1 percent. They can weaken public education with vouchers and waivers. They can effectively render public unions a relic of history.

Making all this happen, in a real way, extends far beyond the fantasies spewed from a podium, though.

After endless complaints, the House GOP caucus is listless. It's void of ideas. It's struggling to come to terms with its own power.

So far, Americans have seen only a caucus structured for opposition. That won't work for long when there's no one else to blame.
SIOUX FALLS | Firearms enthusiasts are facing delays getting a new type of state concealed carry permit meant to speed up gun shopping, South Dakota authorities said Thursday.

The "gold card" law went into effect Sunday, but state and local authorities said that permits currently can't be issued because required federal fingerprint background checks can't be completed.

The new permit would allow customers to bypass a background check for each firearm purchase from a licensed dealer. Instead, shoppers would simply be able to present the permit, which requires completing the FBI fingerprint background check on top of the standard obligations necessary to get a concealed carry permit.

But those checks are stalled because South Dakota lacks a necessary FBI number for submitting fingerprints, Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead said. The state needs the identifier before the permits can get issued, Attorney General Marty Jackley said.

An FBI spokesman said in an email that South Dakota's request is under review and that the state Division of Criminal Investigation will be informed through an official letter once a determination has been made.

In order for permit holders to avoid background checks at the store, the permit also needs approval from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. An ATF spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

South Dakota would join more than two dozen states with such an option if it is approved. The bill creating the gold card permit sailed through the Legislature during the 2016 session with only one vote against it.

Republican Rep. Mark Mickelson, the measure's main sponsor, said he's optimistic the issues will be resolved.

Milstead said his office received a significant number of phone calls earlier in the week about the new permit. For the most part, people have asked for a call back when the kinks are worked out.

"We're all kind of holding our breath waiting for that number," he said.
Paul Goble, arguably South Dakotas most celebrated childrens author and illustrator, died Thursday morning at his home on Ninth Street. He was 83.

Goble, who won the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1979 for his book The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, was a multi-faceted artist, writer and naturalist who first visited the American West in 1959. Infatuated with the Black Hills' landscape, birds, free-roaming wildlife and Native American lore, Goble moved permanently to the Black Hills in 1977.

Goble was descended from a British family whose love of art spanned generations. His great-great-grandfather, Sir Charles Robinson, was curator of the Royal Collection of Art for Queen Victoria and, from 1853 to 1869, served as a founding member and curator of art collections for the Marlborough House, later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

According to Goble's biographer, Gregory Bryan, a professor of childrens literature at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Goble was an industrial designer, author, illustrator and educator who taught art design at Londons Central School as well as the Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication before coming to South Dakota. He also was a sharpshooter in the British Army following World War II.

After nearly four years of intensive research and writing, including several trips to South Dakota, Bryans 204-page, large-format book, Paul Goble, Storyteller, will be unveiled later this month at book signings scheduled for the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings on Jan. 19 and Prairie Edge Trading Co. in Rapid City on Jan. 21.

Im deeply saddened by Pauls death, Bryan said between classes Thursday. The world of childrens literature is poorer for his loss, and the world in general, because he was such a kind person who dedicated his life to his passions  Native American people and art. His life was a marriage of those two passions.

Knowing Goble was near death, Bryan said he had the South Dakota Historical Society Press, publishers of the biography, rush the first available copy to Goble in Rapid City. Bryan said he still hadnt seen a copy of the new book himself, but Gobles son, Robert, said Thursday that the books arrival one week ago was one of his fathers greatest rewards for a lifetime of work.

The last smile that ever passed Papas face was seeing the first copy of his biography, a tearful Robert said Thursday morning, just hours after his father died. He considered it the jewel in his crown; the thing that made his career complete.

The ambitious artist studied Native American culture and art for 18 summers before the release of his first book, Red Hawks Account of Custers Last Battle, published in 1969. On one of his forays to the region, Goble met his future wife, Janet, who was working behind the counter in her fathers store in Custer.

I sold him a fishing license, Janet told the Journal in August 1981.

Goble laughed at the memory. And I used it to fish in seven different states. I didnt know there was any difference.

He moved to the Black Hills in 1977 when he was offered the artist-in-residence position at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

When Papa arrived in the U.S. in 1977, he had 500 British pounds, or about $800 or $900, to his name and his talent, and that was all ..., Robert Goble said.

So when he earned the Caldecott Medal two years later, Gobles fortunes changed.

Before the Caldecott, my father was painting 500 works a year and struggling, Robert said. His time at Mount Rushmore was a period of great effort. What the Caldecott meant to my dad was some sense of financial freedom. It paved the way for all of his future successes. Without the Caldecott, we probably wouldnt be talking right now.

Goble's illustrations and writing were at least part of 40 books.

I think we have lost a kind, gentle and very wonderful person, Robert said. Parkinsons took what he loved to do. As his abilities waned, it has been his kind and gentle spirit which really has been in evidence. Dad aged gracefully and remained a kind gentle and loving person to the end.

Bill Donovan, who taught school on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation at Eagle Butte for 33 years and was Gobles best friend for the last decade, said Wednesday that the pair met because of their mutual admiration of Japanese woodblock prints.

We would often laugh when we discussed what would happen to our art collections, such as the woodblocks, after we were gone, Donovan said. We had the same problem. We finally decided we would build two pyramids on the banks of the Missouri River in which we would be buried with all our treasures about us.

In fact, Goble donated much of his artwork, valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings. Museum Director Lynn Vershoor said Thursday that her galleries and archives include 500 of Gobles original illustrations for his books.

Paul was a gentleman scholar, and I will miss him very much, Vershoor said. He was reserved, thoughtful, considerate and respectful. He cared deeply about his work; it truly was his life. He was precise in word, action and in his paintings. His sense of commitment to his work is evident in the amount of research he conducted to accurately depict the colors, designs and symbols he used in his pictures. He had a profound respect for Native Americans, which is evident in his work.

Retired North Middle School librarian Ruth Ann Karlen said this week she still remembered Paul and Janets frequent visits to the school, where they did presentations to students about Native American culture, art and publishing.

They were such a unique and interesting couple, but middle school kids are funny and dont often pay attention, Karlen said. But when he started talking, theyd move forward in their chairs, hanging on every word he said. It was amazing.

Robert Goble thanked his fathers primary care physician, Dr. Tracy Davies, an unusual doctor who has done house calls and helped us fulfill Papas wishes to die at home. ...

I feel joy in my heart knowing Dad is once more walking hand-in-hand with dear Mom, and that they are both young and free of any of the ailments of this world. Moving forward, I know I will have Dad on my right shoulder and Mom on my left.

And less than two hours after his fathers death, Robert made good on Gobles final request.

Categorically, Dad only wanted my longtime companion, Lacinda Kellogg, and me to be married, he said. She is a special, compassionate woman whom he loved like a daughter. So this, too, is a day of celebration, because one of Dads fondest wishes was that we get married. Today we are officially engaged, one of the last things Papa ever told us to do.

Janet Goble died in July 2014. Besides Robert and his daughter, Arial, both of Rapid City, Goble is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Richard and Julia, and several grandchildren, all of England.
WHITECLAY, Neb. | Whiteclay is an unincorporated town with four stores that sell beer. Lots of beer. Like, 3.5 million cans last year.

And residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a few hundred yards north in South Dakota, are the stores' best customers, because liquor is banned on the reservation and yet alcoholism is rampant.

Now the stores are being forced to reapply for their Nebraska liquor licenses after the issue of inadequate law enforcement in Whiteclay was raised. But residents of Sheridan County are defending the stores, telling local leaders that shutting them down would "scatter" alcohol-related issues and lead to more drunken driving on surrounding highways.

Activists who want the stores shut down cite violence and vagrancy in Whiteclay, which has about a dozen permanent residents, and a variety of social ills on the reservation.

On Thursday, about 60 people attended hearings with members of the Sheridan County Board at the local American Legion post, and tempers flared as the day dragged on.

Some activists accused county residents and officials of ignoring Whiteclay's problems because they mostly affect Oglala Lakota people, not their white neighbors.

Others took direct aim at the beer store owners, repeatedly calling them "predatory."

I can understand why you guys are fighting," said Kim Greager of Rapid City, S.D. "You found pay dirt. Congratulations. But its evil.

The three commissioners mostly listened, but they joined beer store owners in actively disputing a key point raised by activists: that demand for law enforcement and emergency services represented a material change in circumstances at Whiteclay.

In an October hearing at the state Capitol, Commissioner Jack Andersen said the county "absolutely" lacks adequate resources for law enforcement.

The statement was among the items cited by the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission when it ordered the beer stores to reapply for their licenses instead of having them automatically renewed this year.

Andersen said Thursday that he misspoke and meant to say Sheridan County taxpayers were footing an unfair share of the costs to police Whiteclay.

County Attorney Jamian Simmons said she and Sheriff Terry Robbins are still trying to determine exactly how much county time and resources are spent in Whiteclay.

She disputed figures cited by some activists, which were based on statements by Commissioner James Krotz, that Whiteclay consumes 35 percent of the county's law enforcement budget. Simmons said the percentage was oversimplified and based on a 2008 review of Pine Ridge residents in the county's jail population.

More recent reviews have shown that Whiteclay accounts for about 20 percent of arrests in the county, and 14 percent to 16 percent of the county's 911 dispatches, she said.

Beer store owner Steve Sanford said it's no different than when his family first purchased D&S Pioneer about nine years ago.

Abram Neumann, who works at Whiteclay's Lakota Hope ministry, has feared for his safety but assumed law enforcement was so far away they "would only be there to scrape my body up off the pavement."

Other local residents worried about the impact closing Whiteclay beer stores would have on nearby towns, including Chadron, Rushville, Gordon and Hay Springs.

"Closing Whiteclay does not fix the problem," said Jeff Erquiaga, a business owner in Rushville. "All it does is scatter it out.

County commissioners will meet again Tuesday to decide what, if any, recommendation they will make to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, which has ultimate authority to grant liquor licenses.

The state liquor board is expected to hold its own public hearing in Lincoln in the coming months.
HOT SPRINGS  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) made public its final decision regarding reconfiguring the Black Hills Health Care System (BHHCS) and the Hot Springs VA facility on Friday morning, Jan. 6.

In the rotunda of Hot Springs Battle Mountain Sanitarium, a National Historic Landmark where, for more than a century, veterans have been received to get health care, VA/BHHCS Director Sandra Horsman announced that VA Secretary Robert McDonald had decided to follow the VAs preferred alternative, essentially shuttering the Hot Springs facility.

According to Horsman, McDonald decided to follow through with VA plans outlined in the VAs final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This will involve:

 Renovating Hot Springs Building No. 12, the current VA Hospital, for outpatient services, including dialysis, to create a community based outpatient clinic (CBOC), then discontinuing other services at Hot Springs. The EIS states that the VA intends to identify and approve appropriate re-use of the remainder of the Hot Springs campus.

 Constructing a multi-specialty outpatient clinic (MSOC) and a 100-bed Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program (RRTP) center in Rapid City. While the EIS suggested the VA would lease a location for this new facility, Horsman said the VA has not decided whether it would lease or buy land for this on Jan. 6.

 Also, three call centers will remain at the Hot Springs campus: Two of these centers  a regional VA/BHHCS Call Center and a Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN) center  are currently operating. The third, a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) call center, plans to bring more than 120 new jobs to Hot Springs. According to Executive Director Matt Eitutis, it will begin operating, training new hires, at the end of January.

Following this path, according to Horsman and the VA, will increase access for veterans to use community health care providers and reduce long-distance travel for veterans to receive their healthcare.

Those against the reconfiguration  including South Dakotas Congressional delegation, who have all voiced strong statements opposing the VAs plans; as well as members of the Save the VA committee, a group of veterans from Hot Springs and surrounding communities  have said all along the multi-year reconfiguration process that this is hooey. Numerous veterans and community members spoke out against reconfiguration, which will have a $50 million negative financial impact on the region, according to a 2015 state study. The epicenter of that hit will be Hot Springs.

At the numerous meetings held since 2009, when the process to shutter Hot Springs VA began, region veterans, community members and former VA employees have all disputed the VAs claims of saving money and better serving veterans with reconfiguration. They see the shutting down services at Hot Springs resulting in the loss of some 300 jobs, the communitys largest employer.

Those against the reconfiguration have also pointed to a concerted VA effort since the mid-1990s to close Hot Springs VA  by a death of 1,000 cuts, an attempt to create an environment within the facility of failure. Yet the Hot Springs VA received a top notch, five-star rating on its ability to serve veterans in a recently VA-verified secret ratings system, uncovered by USA Today.

Horsman said the VA will not be able to move forward on its reconfiguration plans immediately, because it must seek Congress-approved funding to complete the process. She also said that the incoming President Trump administration would not alter the course of reconfiguration.

Horsman said the VA expects the reconfiguration process to take three to five years to complete. Meanwhile, the VA is planning to move forward with these efforts, she said.

Horsman said the Hot Springs employees were briefed on this decision prior to her announcement and offered tools to help them through the reconfiguration process.

McDonald will hold an Employee Town Hall, via video conference, to speak directly to those employees impacted by this decision on Monday, Jan. 9 at 8:30 a.m.

Horsman also said VA/BHHCS would be meeting with and communicating to Veteran Services Officers (VSO) who must communicate with veterans impacted by this decision.

Horsman lauded Hot Springs VA employees who have stuck with the effort despite massive changes. She said that throughout the multi-year to reconfigure Hot Springs, its employees remained true to their call to serve veterans.

Hot Springs has prided itself on being The Veterans Town since its founding in 1890.

Horsman said she was honored to be the leader of a group of fine employees and veterans.

We will come though this together, she said, calling McDonalds decision a major milestone in the reconfiguration effort. Well make it work for the community and for veterans.

In a news release issued following the announcement, Horsman noted, Veteran and community feedback was so important throughout this lengthy process and as a result our preferred alternative was changed to reflect a desire to maintain a presence on the historic Hot Springs campus.

With todays decision in hand, I am honored to lead this health care system from the uncertainty of the past into the future, Horsman said.

To review the EIS, visit http://www.blackhills.va.gov/vablackhillsfuture/
EDGEMONT | An area where miners once dug for uranium to supply nuclear bombs may become a sanctuary in case nuclear bombs fall or some other disaster threatens humanity.

California businessman Robert Vicinos company, Vivos, is offering 575 former military bunkers in southwestern South Dakota for lease as doomsday shelters. The price is $25,000 upfront and then $1,000 per year. The costs to outfit the empty bunkers will be borne by the tenants.

Vicino, speaking Thursday to the Journal by phone from San Diego, said interest has been high since he began accepting inquiries in October.

We have an abundance of reservations, but we dont put out specific numbers, Vicino said. Today alone, I think weve had 50 requests.

The bunkers are remnants of the former Black Hills Ordnance Depot, which was operated as a munitions storage and maintenance facility by the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1967. Its operation overlapped with a uranium-mining boom in the Edgemont area from the 1950s to the '70s, when most of the uranium was used in Cold War nuclear weapons.

The bunkers sprawl across an 18-square-mile plain about 10 miles southwest of Edgemont and are covered with earth, making them look a bit like igloos and inspiring the name Igloo for the short-lived community that was built to house the depots employees and their families.

The bunker complex is now privately owned, and much of it is controlled by a South Dakota-based corporation, S&S Land and Cattle Co., which has a partner corporation called Fort Igloo Bunkers LLC. Officers of those corporations referred the Journals interview requests to Vicino, who said his company has obtained a lease agreement allowing it to sublet the bunkers.

Besides the 575 bunkers being offered up by Vivos, roughly 225 more are controlled by other private owners and are not part of the project.

The bunkers have been empty for decades while serving mostly as windbreaks for cattle that graze around them, but Vicino sees them as perfect places to endure the end times. His company already offers doomsday shelter communities in Indiana and Germany, according to the company website, and sells turnkey shelters for installation anywhere.

At the Igloo site, each bunker is 13 feet tall at its highest interior point, and nearly 27 feet wide at the floor and either 60 or 80 feet long, which means the floor space ranges from about 1,600 to 2,100 square feet.

Vicino calls the Igloo site Vivos xPoint and describes it as the largest survival community on Earth, with room for 5,000 inhabitants. The typical customer, he said, is likely to be concerned about electromagnetic pulse weapons that could wipe out the electrical grid, the outbreak of a third world war, catastrophic natural phenomena such as asteroid strikes, and other potential disasters. Customers are also likely to have modest financial resources, according to Vicino.

Everybody thinks were catering to the elite, but were not, Vicino said. The elite have their own shelters that cost tens of millions of dollars each.

Vicino said he was inspired to create doomsday shelters about 35 years ago.

I had an inspiration, from God as far as Im concerned, that I needed to build underground shelters for thousands of people to survive something that was coming our way.

Vicino said he was running a manufacturing company back then and did not act on the idea until decades later, when he was selling high-end villas to co-owners under arrangements described as fractional ownership.

In 2007, he finally got serious about the idea. Now, at "about 60" years of age, he is devoted full time to providing what he calls life assurance against doomsday scenarios.

For those who might accuse him of preying on and profiting from the apocalyptic fears of paranoid people, Vicino has a response.

Were just providing a solution to people who are looking for it, he said. They can have better peace of mind knowing they have a solution if any of this happens.
In keeping with Goble family tradition, there will be no public funeral, memorial service or burial for award-winning author and illustrator Paul Goble. Those wishing to pay their respects may do so at the following public events.

Book launch and signing, scheduled for 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 19 at the South Dakota Art Museum, Medary Avenue at Harvey Dunn Street in Brookings.

An opening reception for the exhibit "A Lifes Work: Paul Goble Illustrations of American Indian Stories," is set for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 20 at the Journey Museum, 222 New York St., Rapid City. Organized by the South Dakota Art Museum, participants will include Goble biographer Gregory Bryan and the the art museums Lisa Scholten.

Bryan will conduct a book signing from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 21 at Prairie Edge Trading Co. & Galleries, 606 Main St., Rapid City. Goble family members will be on hand from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and a tribute to the artist will be at noon.

Bryan will also make a learning forum presentation on the life and career of Goble at 2 p.m. Jan. 22 at the Journey Museum in Rapid City.
HOT SPRINGS | The people of this small Southern Hills community tried, but the bad news was made official Friday.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said it has finalized its decision to reconfigure the VA Black Hills Health Care System and close a major part of the historic VA hospital in Hot Springs. The closure could cause severe damage to the economy of Hot Springs, which could see as many as 290 local health care and related jobs eliminated.

About 100 health care jobs would then be created at a VA inpatient residential treatment facility to be built in Rapid City.

The VA said in a statement Friday that the decision had been made by VA Secretary Robert McDonald and came after years of study and public input.

"With today's decision in hand, I am honored to lead this health care system from the uncertainty of the past into the future," said VA Black Hills health care director Sandra Horsman. "Veteran and community feedback was so important throughout this lengthy process."

She said public feedback caused the VA to change its initial plan. The biggest change is to repurpose part of the Battle Mountain Sanitarium into a VA call center, which is now underway and is expected to include the hiring of 120 people.

Building 12 will house the outpatient and dialysis clinics.

As promised, McDonald visited the complex in November and heard veterans and community leaders make impassioned pleas to keep the center open before making the decision. And the three members of the South Dakota congressional delegation wasted no time deriding it.

In a joint statement released by U.S. Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune and U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, the trio said:

We are deeply concerned by the Obama VAs decision, which is the direct result of a flawed process and continued data discrepancies. The Hot Springs campus, supported by a dedicated medical staff and compassionate community, is critical to the veterans it serves. We are committed, as we have always been, to finding a solution that puts our veterans in the best possible position to receive the high-quality health care and support they deserve. The delegation will continue to work together and with veterans and community stakeholders to determine the next steps.

Reducing the Hot Springs VA workforce will leave about 67 full-time equivalent jobs, separate from the 120 new jobs that could be created when the call center is opened.

Despite multiple public comment opportunities, the final recommendation is much the same as those the VA has been pushing since the reconfiguration process began. The preferred alternative for VA officials has long been known as Alternative A (now A1), which included constructing a multi-specialty outpatient clinic and 100-bed rehabilitation facility in Rapid City, building or leasing property for a community-based outpatient clinic in Hot Springs and discontinuing the use of the current VA campus in Hot Springs.

The new alternative  A2  calls for all of the components of A1 except building or leasing property for a community-based clinic in Hot Springs. Instead, Building 12 on the current campus would be renovated for use as the community-based clinic.

A1 is still the least expensive, according to the environmental impact statement, with a price tag of $149 million, but A2 has become the new preferred alternative for the Black Hills VA System at an estimated cost of $217 million. The rest of the proposed alternatives, which range from taking no action to a complete overhaul and expanded use of the Hot Springs campus, were estimated to cost anywhere from $168 million to $230 million. However, the final EIS determined that most of the remaining options did not meet the needs of the VA system.

The Black Hills VA system believes the proposed restructuring will allow the VA to provide safe locations and facilities for care that comply with accessibility requirements, support current standards of care and can be well-maintained within available budgets and resources. With already unacceptable travel times for veterans to access care, the Black Hills VA also hopes to reduce travel and out-of-pocket expenses for veterans by allowing them to receive care closer to home from other providers.

The Black Hills VA contended that the Hot Springs campus cannot recruit and retain qualified staff, that the facilities require expensive upgrades and that the care provided there is limited by those challenges. The EIS also says that most of the veterans served by the system reside in Pennington County, making Hot Springs an inconvenient drive.
Businessman Ray Hillenbrand said Rapid City already has a great heart. Now, he said, it needs a great soul.

Hillenbrand, the driving force behind Prairie Edge Trading Co. and The Shops at Main Street Square, was the keynote speaker at Thursday's annual meeting of the Rapid City Economic Development Partnership. He said the city can find its soul by making better use of the many caregiving organizations so that those in need can have better access to quality food, housing, addiction eradication and mental health counseling.

He cited the creed of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that all people have equal value.

Why cant we become a community that adopts that principle and we take care of our own? he asked.

He also praised Mayor Steve Allenders proposal to build affordable small homes for those in need and also touted the citys central core  including Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, Memorial Park, Legacy Park, downtown Rapid City and Main Street Square, Dahl Arts Center and the Rapid City Library. He also said he supports the push to link and revitalize the area east of Fifth Street toward South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

Last year, Hillenbrand bought the old Imperial Motel on St. Joseph Street, tore down the old motel and donated the property to the School of Mines for a proposed materials research center for the science and engineering school.

Rapid City has a focal point that we can be proud of, Hillenbrand said. Were on a roll. This is a great community.

Appointed District 34 State Rep. David Lust, who is also the economic development partnership's board chairman, said at the meeting that much of the business growth in Rapid City last year came from the expansion of existing business firms.

Lust said the economic development partnership made a concerted effort to shift from enticing new businesses to come to the state and focus instead on helping existing firms expand their operations.

I firmly believe our permanent, sustained growth is going to come from existing companies, Lust said.

Scott Stern, commissioner of the Governors Office of Economic Development in Pierre, said the partnerships focus on encouraging growth from within coincides with state economic goals of expanding the tax base and increasing the quality of life for all South Dakotans.

Stern said the states annual gross domestic product of $47 billion is indeed an impressive figure but needs to be kept in perspective.

Harley-Davidson sales were $50 billion last year. Harley sells more motorcycles, parts and T-shirts than the whole state of South Dakota collectively does, Stern said.

We need to really think big with all the resources we have as a state that encompasses 75,000 square miles. We can do more.
Bitterroot Baroque is presenting San Franciscos Musica Pacifica as they perform rarely heard music from Naples, Italy, on Friday, Jan. 13.

Dolci di Napoli is the music of Mancini, Fiorenza, Matteis, Barbella and both Scarlattis and will be performed by Judith Linsenberg (recorder), Elizabeth Blumenstock and Katherine Kyme (baroque violins), Tekla Cunningham (baroque viola), William Skeen (baroque cello) and Charles Sherman (harpsichord).

Musica Pacifica describes themselves as sizzling on their website, and its true, said Alex Shaffer, president of Bitterroot Baroque. This group has a great reputation and a long history of inspired music making. They just celebrated their silver anniversary, and Bitterroot Baroque is very excited to have them in Montana for the first time.

Bitterroot Baroque, Inc. formed as a nonprofit organization, in 2015, in Hamilton to bring beautiful historical music to the community. Bitterroot Baroque fosters cultural enrichment by having baroque music, written 1600 to 1760, played on the unique instruments of the same period. The group brings professional musicians and ensembles to the community for performance, workshops, master classes and private lessons. The nonprofit also presents programs to school students and facilitates early music collaborations throughout Montana.

Bitterroot Baroques newest board member Sarah Stone lives in New York City, plays baroque cello and viola da gamba professionally, and is the organizations East Coast liaison and webmaster.

Stone is a graduate of Julliards Historical Performance program.

She loves Montana and has played here on numerous occasions, Shaffer said. Sarah and I recently co-wrote a grant to bring her string quartet to Hamilton next fall to be in residence here for a week and play in many different venues. Wish us luck; grant recipients to be announced next March.

Baroque violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, in a YouTube video, said her violin was built in 1620 and survived nearly 350 years in beautiful condition. She said older instruments sound different and that richness is mostly experienced under the ear of the person playing.

This instrument is incredibly clear, Blumenstock said. You have the sense that the wood has been thoroughly aged, dare I say, like a good wine. The wood is like it has been clarified and sound just flows through it.

Shaffer said Musica Pacificas presence in the Bitterroot Valley is a real tribute to our success as a presenter organization and to the enthusiasm of our audiences that some of the top early music ensembles from around the country now want to perform in Hamilton.

The Musica Pacifica concert hosted by Bitterroot Baroque will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13 at St. Pauls Episcopal Church, 600 S. 3rd St. in Hamilton. Tickets cost $25 general mission, $10 students, and pay-as-you-are-able, are on sale at Chapter One Book Store and at the door. For more information call 314-852-5099 or email bitterrootbaroque@gmail.com.
Now is the time for a significant act of righteousness  the time to put the admonition thou shalt not kill into action.

We must act soon to permanently abolish the death penalty in Montana.

Relevant bills to do so will be introduced when the Montana Legislature convenes in January 2017. Our great state would be further distinguished by abolition of this archaic practice. The death penalty is not a large numerical issue in Montana, since, thank God, we have few on death row.

It is, however, big to the few and to our moral/ethical conscience. The death penalty is on legal hold in Montana, as uncertainty about drugs for lethal injection has become and continues to be an issue.

The moral/ethical position against capital punishment: Abolish the death penalty because it is the right thing to do.

 Thou shalt not kill. We need to put this into action related to violence worldwide. In few instances do we have the power to control killing, but abolition of capital punishment is one such instance.

 Mistakes are made in some cases. Infrequently, persons, who are later shown to be innocent, have been on death row awaiting execution. Some have, no doubt, been executed and later been proven innocent.

 Family and loved ones of victims often favor life imprisonment over death and find solace in mercy.

 The death penalty has not been a deterrent to crime, nor is there evidence that its abolition promotes or facilitates crime.

 Is the person convicted and sentenced the same person who awaits execution, often many years after sentencing? Or has that person changed? Its a privilege given humankind to be able to change.

 Spare the executioner the experience of executing. Imagine such a job.

Another position: Abolish the death penalty because its the responsible thing to do.

It costs society more to carry out a death penalty sentence than to maintain a life sentence, in terms of monetary costs of appeals, etc. Anti-death penalty legislation proposes life in prison without possibility of parole. It would cost less.

Lethal injection is not the merciful means of killing envisioned. About 7 percent of such executions are botched. The availability of drugs used to kill has been an issue for some time, and recently the pharmaceutical company Pfizer refused to provide its drugs for lethal injection. This makes a statement.

Not unexpectedly, there are pros and cons about these points, but we have chosen the position that suits our individual moral consciences. See deathpenalty.procon.org for a ten-point argument.

Whatever your personal reasons, please support efforts to abolish capital punishment in Montana by writing to representatives of your district, simply stating your support for bills abolishing capital punishment.

If you want more information, please contact us. Well try to help.

 Mary Darby and Blaise Favara
DEWITT, N.Y. -- For Alan Moon, there is no beating the view from his big, comfortable living room chair, where on a clear day he can see Onondaga Lake and the city of Syracuse.

Moon and his wife, Janet, had been living in the Regency Tower apartments in Syracuse for several years, but in search of a space great for entertaining, they purchased the home just over three years ago.

Alan Moon said he was sold on the home after taking one step into the front foyer and seeing the panoramic views the home offers. Moon said he can sit in his chair and watch as snow and weather fronts from miles away inch closer.

"It's just great," he said.

The Moons extensively updated and landscaped the grounds, including intricate stonework and a round fountain in the courtyard in front of the home. In the spring, the property gleams brightly with more than 1,000 yellow daffodils.

"The grounds were such a jungle when we moved in," Alan Moon said.

While the property has changed in recent years, the home's original Greek style, including an arched entryway and columns in the living room, are touches left in place from the home's original owner, Samuel Eddy, a longtime Greek and Roman history professor at Syracuse University.

The main living room and both master suites also feature intricate dentil molding, a feature characteristic of Greek and Roman architecture.

Alan, a board game designer whose creations include Ticket to Ride, Elfenland and San Marco, and Janet, an immigration attorney at Moon Law Office, are moving to the Icon Tower.

The move will put them closer to the University Building, 120 E. Washington St., where they both work, as well as Armory Square and downtown Syracuse restaurants.

While they're excited to make the move, Alan Moon said they'll miss their home.

"We love the home, love the neighbors." he said. "We will miss that."

THE DETAILS

Address: 6105 Wolfeboro Road, DeWitt

Price: $589,000

Size: 3,399 square feet

Acreage: 1.56 acres

Monthly Mortgage: $2,332 (based on this week's national average rate of 4.30 percent, according to Freddie Mac, for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 20 percent down payment. Fees and points not included.)

Taxes: $24,089 (Based on assessed value of $600,000)

Built: 1991

School District: Jamesville-DeWitt

Kitchen: The kitchen features a six-burner Viking stainless steel range, two Viking ovens, a stainless steel refrigerator/freezer and granite counters. The center island seats at least three.

Living room: The home's open floor plan combines the living and dining rooms into one space, great for entertaining. The floor-to-ceiling windows keep the room filled with natural light.

Master suite: Both the first floor and basement have large bedroom suites, two of the four total bedrooms. The home's original master suite is now a home office.

Master bathroom: One of three bathrooms in the home, the master bathroom features double vanities and an oversized walk-in shower.

Basement: In addition to the second bedroom suite, the basement includes a den with one of the home's four fireplaces.

Other: The home has a 250-bottle wine cellar, two-car garage, stone patio and a large back deck that overlooks the valley.

Agent: Nicole Foresti

A&F Real Estate

5 Collamer Circle, East Syracuse

Cell: (315) 569-9317

Office: (315) 422-2777

Email: nicoleforesti@afrealestateinc.com

To nominate a listing for House of the Week, send an email to home@syracuse.com. Contact Jacob Pucci at jpucci@syracuse.com or on Twitter at @jacobpucci.
BEWARE: Incidents, Pretexts and Traps

January 6, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us



Residents run from their South Vietnam village after napalm was dropped on it. The U.S. dropped 373,000 tons of napalmjellied gasoline that burns at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheiton the Vietnamese people, burning their flesh to the bone and causing agonizing pain and almost certain death.



Highway of Death: On the night of February 2627, 1991, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were retreating to Baghdad, after a ceasefire was announced, when President George Bush ordered his forces to slaughter the retreating Iraqi (Photo: Tech Sgt. Joe Coleman)



March 20, 2003, U.S. bombing of Bagdad, Iraq. (AP photo)

Many of the civilian deaths in Iraq were women and children. These children were killed in 2006 by U.S. airstrikes. (AP photo)

Kristallnachta night of massive violence, destruction, terror and death aimed at Jews in Germany. Hundreds of Jewish people were killed, tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps.

Fascistsas well as ordinary imperialistsuse, and when they see it as necessary, create incidents to justify monstrous acts. If people are not going to be used, played, manipulated into compliance or even active complicity with great crimes and fascism, this needs to be understood, and acted on.

Here, we look at several such examples, in order to identify a pattern of incidents, pretexts, and traps, and to learn from those patterns in the context of the rise of an American fascist poised to enter the White House.

Americas Record of Pretexts and Crimes

First of all, it is an established fact that U.S. administrations have repeatedly used incidents, invented or real, to carry out terrible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Normal U.S. administrations, of both parties, have done this. A few examples:

Remember the Maine. The U.S. battleship Maine blew up on February 15, 1898 in Havana harborwhen Cuba was still one of Spains colonies. There was never any evidence that Spanish forces were involved in this explosion, but this did not stop the pro-war forces in the U.S. ruling class from publishing front-page drawings showing how the Spanish forces had attached mines to the bottom of the ship. Shouting Remember the Maine! the U.S. government rushed into a war to snatch an empire from Spain, seizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

The U.S. battleship Maine blew up on February 15, 1898 in Havana harborwhen Cuba was still one of Spains colonies. There was never any evidence that Spanish forces were involved in this explosion, but this did not stop the pro-war forces in the U.S. ruling class from publishing front-page drawings showing how the Spanish forces had attached mines to the bottom of the ship. Shouting Remember the Maine! the U.S. government rushed into a war to snatch an empire from Spain, seizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident . On August 4, 1964, the U.S. claimedfalsely and without any real evidencethat North Vietnam had launched two unprovoked attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. In fact, the CIA was attacking North Vietnamese coastal installations, so any confrontation that happened would have been provoked by the U.S., and the second incident never took place. In fact no attack of any kind took place. Nobody in the mainstream media seriously challenged the story at the time, much less asked what a fleet of U.S. warships was doing half-way around the world. But in response to these invented incidents, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized the massive deployment of U.S. troops into southern Vietnam. It was the start of extreme escalation of warfare that led to the deaths of millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

. On August 4, 1964, the U.S. claimedfalsely and without any real evidencethat North Vietnam had launched two unprovoked attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. In fact, the CIA was attacking North Vietnamese coastal installations, so any confrontation that happened would have been provoked by the U.S., and the second incident never took place. In fact no attack of any kind took place. Nobody in the mainstream media seriously challenged the story at the time, much less asked what a fleet of U.S. warships was doing half-way around the world. But in response to these invented incidents, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized the massive deployment of U.S. troops into southern Vietnam. It was the start of extreme escalation of warfare that led to the deaths of millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The Kuwait Incubators. In 1990, as the U.S. was gearing up for the first Gulf War, George Bush (I)s invasion of Iraq, the news was inundated with false testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti, claiming she witnessed Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of incubators at a hospital in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. This came at a time when there were large demonstrations around the country against the U.S. war moves, and strong opposition to war against Iraq. President George Bush (I) retold the story in a speech in January 1991, shortly before he launched the bombings on Iraq. This lie served to justify a war that killed 200,000 Iraqis.

In 1990, as the U.S. was gearing up for the first Gulf War, George Bush (I)s invasion of Iraq, the news was inundated with false testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti, claiming she witnessed Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of incubators at a hospital in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. This came at a time when there were large demonstrations around the country against the U.S. war moves, and strong opposition to war against Iraq. President George Bush (I) retold the story in a speech in January 1991, shortly before he launched the bombings on Iraq. This lie served to justify a war that killed 200,000 Iraqis. September 11, 2001. On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and other places killed over 3,000 innocent civilians. Al Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamic jihadist group, took credit for the attack. There is no doubt this was a real crime, and fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists were responsible. The attack was used to rush through the PATRIOT Act that seriously curtailed civil liberties in the U.S. Government spying took on whole new levels, including the systematic surveillance of nearly all phone calls and internet activity of nearly every person in the U.S. Thousands of people were detained on the basis of their national origin or religion, without criminal charges or civil liberties. Muslim children were harassed and bullied in schools. People appearing to be Muslim, or taken to be Muslims or immigrants from parts of the world with no connection to the 9/11 attackers were beaten and terrorized. The U.S. also invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 2001. The result: hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. And the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan exponentially ratcheted up the global clash between reactionary fundamentalist Islamic jihadist forces and Western imperialism.

On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and other places killed over 3,000 innocent civilians. Al Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamic jihadist group, took credit for the attack. There is no doubt this was a real crime, and fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists were responsible. The attack was used to rush through the PATRIOT Act that seriously curtailed civil liberties in the U.S. Government spying took on whole new levels, including the systematic surveillance of nearly all phone calls and internet activity of nearly every person in the U.S. Thousands of people were detained on the basis of their national origin or religion, without criminal charges or civil liberties. Muslim children were harassed and bullied in schools. People appearing to be Muslim, or taken to be Muslims or immigrants from parts of the world with no connection to the 9/11 attackers were beaten and terrorized. The U.S. also invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 2001. The result: hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. And the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan exponentially ratcheted up the global clash between reactionary fundamentalist Islamic jihadist forces and Western imperialism. Non-Existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. In 2001 the U.S. government launched a massive propaganda campaign to justify war against Iraq. Vice President Cheney pushed the CIA to produce false reports that Iraq had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to Al Qaeda. And that this posed a grave and growing danger to the Middle East and to the United States itself. The WMD lie was sustained and promoted by all mainstream U.S. media, with the New York Times playing a particularly central role. Justified by the WMD lie, the U.S. launched a blitzkrieg-like invasion of Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and wounded in the invasion, and the U.S. occupation that followed has been even worse. Iraq Body Count has documented between 168,239 and 187,378 civilian deaths from violence, and total violent deaths including combatants at 251,000 from 2003 through September 2016.

Incidents and Pretexts... in the Hands of Fascists

The incidents just listed, horrible as they were, took place under the normal operating procedures of this system. This is the history of the United States. But at a moment when we face an attempt to install a fascist regime in the United States, it is critical to confront how fascism takes systematic lying and seizing on incidentsreal or notto carry out crimes against humanity on a whole other level. Lets look at how incidents were invoked to carry out and justify the historic crime of the Nazi Holocaust, that murdered six million Jews along with communists, Roma people, LGBT people, people with disabilities, and dissidents.

One of the most infamous of such incidents leading up to the Holocaust was the 1933 Reichstag fire. In February 1933, Adolph Hitler was convinced there was a need to move much faster, much more violently, and much more ruthlessly to push civil liberties and rule of law aside in order to terrorize and crush forces in society he saw as an obstacle to his agenda.

Find out more about the revolution

Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

Hitler seized on the burning down of the Reichstagthe building housing Germanys legislatureto do that. In the aftermath of this fire, several communists were arrested and put on trial. One was convicted, the others acquitted. But just one day after the fire, before the trial began, Hitler prevailed on Germanys President Hindenburg to sign a decree that essentially wiped out constitutional protection of individual and civil liberties. And in the immediate aftermath of the fire, Hitler was given what was, up to that point, a whole new level of access to the German mass media to instigate mob terror. He declared, Fellow Germans, my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking dont have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!... Certainly, I shall use the power of the State and the police to the utmost, my dear Communists, so dont draw any false conclusions; but the struggle to the death, in which my fist will grasp your necks, I shall lead with those down therethe Brownshirts. (The Brownshirts were Nazi thugs comparable to the KKK in the U.S.). All the communists elected to Germanys legislature were rounded up immediately, and thousands became some of the first ones interned in Nazi concentration campscrushing Hitlers most defiant opposition and paving the way to the death camps.

On November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old German Jewish refugee in France, Herschel Grynszpan, shot and mortally wounded a German diplomat in Paris. Grynszpans father had been among ten thousand Jews deported to Poland in boxcars shortly before this. Hitler seized on this as the pretext for Kristallnachta night of massive violence, destruction, terror and death aimed at Jews in Germany. Hundreds of Jewish people were killed, tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned. Some 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed or damaged. In response to worldwide outrage, Hitler blamed the Jewish world conspiracy for making Germany look bad.

Critical Patterns to Learn From

The use of pretextsreal or inventedto justify war and repression is part and parcel of the normal workings of capitalism-imperialism. But, again, this takes on a whole other, and critically ominous dimension with the ascendance of fascism, and fascist rulers. Remember: Hitler invoked the Reichstag fire to impose fascism.

These are lessons we all must learn from, and then struggle with other people to learn from. The stakes right now are very high, and the dangers very great. There will be incidents, real and created; these will be turned into pretexts to silence all protest and to give the government huge repressive powers. Do not let them spring the trap; keep your eyes on the real issues, and fight with others do to the same.

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here
Guwahati : Assam government will construct 12,000 concrete roads in the state in next three years.

Addressing a press conference Assam Public Works Department (PWD) minister Parimal Suklabadya said that, the department has decided to construction 12,000 concrete roads in the localities with a population more than 250 in next three years.

For maintenance of roads Rs 2000 crore being assured in the financial year 2016-17 to 2018-19 under Mukhyamantir Path Nirman aru Punor Nirman Achoni, the Assam minister said.

Suklabaidya said that, another new bridge to be constructed over Brahmaputra river from Kuruwa to Narengi with an estimate of Rs 2255 crore.

'The DPR for the new bridge has been finalized and the overall works to be done under NHAI,'A the Assam minister said.

The Assam PWD minister further said that, Central Road Fund has been increased from Rs 400 crore to Rs 800 crore and under RIDF XXII, NABARD tendering process for Rs 472 crore has been already initiated.

The minister said that, the department had already completed the construction of 502 kms new roads and 106 numbers RCC bridge.

'Around 600 kms roads are being repaired and 40 numbers wooden bridge repaired under PWD roads during the present state government tenure,'A Suklabaidy said.*

The Assam minister said that, an online e-portal has been developed for computerized business process which included contractors registration process, schemes estimate submission, project monitoring, billing system for hassle free payment and employee information.

'To support the online system the state government had already provided 1500 laptops alongwith 3G data card to the department officials to support the e-portal system,'A Suklabaidya said.

The Assam PWD minister said that, three new innovative bridges have been taken up in Sonitpur, Lakhimpur and Dibrugarh district.

'A South Korean company ISAN Corporation had completed the overall design of the new innovative bridges,'A Suklabaidya said.

The Assam PWD minister further said that, road research laboratory has been upgraded to Assam road research training institute for capacity building for engineers and contractors of the North Eastern region.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati : The Assam government will provide free text books among the students of class XI and XII from next year.

Assam Education minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that, the state government has took several ambitious schemes for the education sector.

On Thursday, the state government launched an ambitious scheme to distribute free text books among the students of Class IX and X of government run schools.

Under the scheme, free text books will be provided to Class IX and X students.

The Assam Education Minister said that the scheme will be expanded and the government will provide free text books among the students of Class XI and XII from next year.

The Assam minister futrther said that digitally evaluate answer scripts using by computerised software to be introduced from the upcoming HSLC examination.

"In this year, answer scripts of Mathematics will be evaluated digitally," Dr Sarma said.

The minister also said that, the state government will waive university admission fee of BPL students from next year.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati : All Assam Students Union (AASU) on Thursday said that, Assam will not take any more burden of Bangladeshi nationals, while the Union government exercised to grant citizenship of hindu bangladeshi nationals by the amendment of citizenship act.

During a meeting with Assam Chief Minster, a delegation team of AASU led by its advisor Dr. Samujjal Bhattacharya, President Dipanka Kumar Nath and Secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi sought for protection of the indigenous people in the state.

'We had already taken huge burden of Bangladeshi nationals up to 1971. So there is no question for taking more burden by the state,'A AASU advisor Dr Samujjal Bhattacharya said.

The students union delegation team had submitted a 14 numbers demand charter to the Assam CM.

The AASU team also urged the state government to take appropriate measures to protect the house of Music maestro Dr Bhupen Hazarika in Taliganj and the house of Lakshminath Bezbaruah in Chambalpur.

The students union also urged the state government to protect Madhupur Satra.

The AASU delegation besides thanking the Chief Minister for tagging along with the AASU members for visiting Indo-Bangla border, paying tributes to the martyrs of Asom Agitation and paying financial grants to the next of the kin of the martyrs, steps that he has taken in updating the NRC, providing constitutional safeguard to the indigenous people of Assam following Clause 6 of Assam Accord, said that the AASU delegation hoped that the Government of Assam under his leadership will bring about all round development of the State.

The Assam CM requested the AASU delegation to create an awareness among the people living in the fringe areas to help them to nurture the avowed objective of protecting the rhinos.

He also informed the AASU delegation that he would instruct the district administration of all the five districts to extend all possible help to the AASU delegation.

Sonowal also informed that the Government will hold a bilateral dialogue at the State level and a trilateral discussion at the Central level for implementation of the clauses of Assam Accord.

He also requested the AASU delegation to maintain a close vigil on the activities of the State Government so that the people of the State can take the benefits of a good and responsible government.

Media advisor to the Chief Minister Hrishikesh Goswami, Commissioner and Secretary to the Chief Minister Sanjay Lohia were also present at the meeting.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal with his Cabinet colleagues receives the report of Local Bodies Restructuring Commission, in Kathmandu, on Friday, January 6, 2017. Photo: PMas Secretariat

KATHMANDU: The Local Bodies Restructuring Commission has recommended the government to establish total 719 local level structures across Nepal while implementing federalism in line with the Constitution promulgated in 2015 September.

In the report that the constitutional body submitted to the government today, the government has been urged to establish four metropolitan cities, 12 sub-metropolitan cities, 241 municipalities and 462 village institutions (gaunpalikas).

There would be total 6,553 wards.

The report was prepared in consultation with over 50,000 persons and on the basis of geographic information system.RSS
Kathmandu, Nepal: CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli has said that his party will never allow the endorsement of the constitution amendment bill that is going to be tabled on Sunday.

Addressing a protest assembly organized by nine opposition parties at Bhrkutimandap on Friday, Oli, who is also the former Prime Minister, termed the bill as antinational. The antinational bill registered by the government will be protested to endorse, Oli said.

There are only about 11 months left to hold the all three levels of elections, but the government has been deaf ear to hold elections, Oli said adding that the opposition parties will stop such activity that contradicts to the national interest and the priority.

During the function he also criticized the Madhes-based parties and the government allies particularly to the CPN Maoist Center for working to destroy the native identity even though they claimed to promote the same.

Speaking at the same function various leaders of the opposition parties including CPN-ML General Secretary CP Mainali, Rastriya Janamorcha Chairman Chitra Bahadur KC, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party lawmaker Prem Suwal, Nepal Pariwar Dal Chairman Eknath Dhakal, Nepa Rastriya Party lawmaker Laxman Rajbanshi among others also criticized the government and its allies for registering the Constitution amendment bill.
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Roundup: US-Saudi non-stop airstrikes destroy Yemen's governorates, drop cluster bombs











SANA'A, Jan. 02 (Saba)  The US-Saudi aggression warplanes continued targeting citizens and infrastructure across the republic's provinces in the past 24 hours.



Residents and officials told Saba on Monday that the air strikes killed six civilians and wounded dozens when the aggression warplanes struck citizens' houses in Sa'adah governorate three times.



The strikes targeted residents' houses in al-Hibal valley in Sakeen district. The brutal strikes reduced the houses to rubble.



Residents said the warplanes also hit the rescuers who hurried to the scene to try to rescue possible survivors from underneath the rubble.



It was the latest in a series of brutal air attacks against Yemeni civilians carried out by the Saudi regime.



Residents and officials appealed to the world to stop Saudi barbaric crimes against the Yemen civilians.



Meanwhile, two civilians were killed in Saudi air strikes at al-Salif intersection in al-Hodeida province.



The air strikes also targeted the coastal area in al-Jabanah area in al-Hodeida province.



Also, five more air raids hit al-Hajelah district and other air raid on Dawar al-Duraihemi area in al-Hawak district in al-Hodeida too.



Furthermore air attack struck al-Khukha district, also in al-Hodeida.



In Sa'ada province, the aggression warplanes waged nine raids on al-Majda'a area in Baqem district and three more raids on Shatha district.



In Marib province, the US-Saudi aggression warplanes waged an air raid on al-Makhdra area in Serwah district.



In Dhalee province, the aggression warplanes launched five air raids on telecommunications network in Murais.



In Amran governorate, four air raids destroyed the telecommunications network in al-Zafen Mount in Thula district.



N Hajja governorate, the warplanes waged three raids on al-Mazraq and al-Naar Mount areas in Harad district.Faj Harad area was also hit by the aggression warplanes in Hajjah province too.



In Shabwa governorate, the US-Saudi warplanes aggression launched three raids on al-Hama and al-Hesn Junction in Osailan district, dropping internationally- banned cluster bombs on the targeted areas.



In Sana'a governorate, the US-backed Saudi aggression warplanes waged two raids on Ramada area in Haraz district and other air raid on Tabat al-Tawelah area in Sa'afan district.



Another hostile air raid hit a residential area in west of Bani Amer district.



In the capital Sana'a, the US-Saudi aggression warplanes hit the National Security building five times in Saref area northwest of the capital.



In Taiz governorate, the US-Saudi aggression warplanes carried out two raids on Maqbanah area and dropped flash bombs on Kahbab Mount.



In Jizan governorate, a Saudi hostile air raid hit Hadenah village in al-Khubah area.







HA-ZaK





SABA

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[02/January/2017]
scroll.in - 6 January 2017

A reading of the essay shows that almost the entire piece is filled with wild conjectures to show that the Indus and Vedic civilisations were linked.

by Kavita Singh

A paper published in the latest issue of Itihaas, the Hindi journal of the Indian Council for Historical Research, created a minor controversy last week. In the paper, according to media reports, retired Banaras Hindu University Professor Thakur Prasad Verma had claimed that the famous aDancing Girla bronze figurine found at Mohenjo-daro is actually an image of Hindu Goddess Parvati.

Verma offers this interpretation in a piece titled aVaidik Sabhyata ka Puratattva, or Archaeology of the Vedic Civilisation. Upon reading the 36-page essay, Iam surprised that only his comments on the aDancing Girla were considered newsworthy a four pages devoted to this figurine are far from being the most outlandish ones in the paper.

Practically every page of the paper is filled with wild conjectures, feeble evidence, faulty argumentation, circular reasoning, disdain for chronology or scientific method, literal acceptance of mythical texts, scurrilous but unsubstantiated attacks on other historians and convictions based on prior beliefs. The essay is worth reading in its entirety because it demonstrates why most scholars hold Hindutva-style history in such poor regard.

Hasty derivations

The main arguments the author makes are as follows:

The Harappan civilisation is old. The Puranas should be used to understand the Harappan civilisation and they speak of a history that is crores of years old. Thus, the Harrapan civilisation is crores of years old and is the civilisation spoken of in the Puranas.

Western archaeologists and scientists who studied the Harappan civilisation hid the truth about its great antiquity as that would have shown western history as being shallow and brief, demonstrating the Westas inferiority to India.

Scholars who say that deciphering the Harappan script is key to understanding the civilisation are part of a conspiracy to prevent anyone from conclusively saying it was a Vedic civilisation.

Western scholars say the Harappan civilisation lasted only 700 years, from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. To imagine such a great civilisation rose, flourished and fell in such a short span shows their intellectual bankruptcy.

The civilisation was confined to the western part of the subcontinent and did not spread eastward to the banks of the Ganga because the area that is now eastern India was at that time a sea. We know this because the Nadi Sukta hymn of the Rigveda describes the Ganga as a small river that leaves the mountains and immediately enters the sea. The sea must have been close to the mountain where the Ganga originated at the time. This proves that the areas that are now Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (states through which the river today flows) were then under water.

Since the Rigvedaas description of the Ganga explains why the Harappan civilisation did not spread very far eastward, it proves that the Harappan civilisation was the Vedic civilisation.

The Rigveda also tells us that the Satluj and the Beas flowed into the sea. Today, they are tributaries of the Indus. They must have run a different course in the Vedic-Harappan times.

The area that is now the Thar Desert was also a sea and the rivers ran straight into it. We should call this sea the Saraswat Sea.

Geological changes that caused the seas to recede and reoriented the rivers, including the drying up of the Saraswati river, would have taken lakhs or crores of years to occur. Ergo, the civilisation that was on their banks also lasted lakhs or crores of years. Geological changes gradually led to its demise.

The material remains from this civilisation are evidence of our eternal and undying (nirantar) civilisation. For example, toy terracotta tablets have been found at Harappa that have the same shape as the wooden writing-tablets on which the author learned to write Sanskrit.

Shiva was widely worshipped in the Indus Valley. Some seals depicting Shiva have been misinterpreted as showing an animal being brought to Shivaas shrine for sacrifice. This is wrong a the animal was also a god. The Rigveda describes some gods taking animal form.

Shiva worship also spread to Europe. A silver cauldron from Gundestrop in Denmark, and dated to 300-200 BCE (dated elsewhere as 100 BCE) shows a cross-legged man seated, surrounded by animals, just like the aPashupatia seal from Mohenjo-daro.

A broken figure of a Nataraja has been found in Harappa. It is nude. All deity figures in the Harappan civilisation were nude. All nude figures in the Harappan civilisation were deities.

Shiva lingas have been found in the Harappan sites. The Rigveda speaks disparagingly of some phallus worshippers. These were not the Vedic people. The linga worshipped at Harappa had nothing to do with the phallus.

Today, Shiva is offered the bilva leaf in worship; this is trifoliate. We do not see bilva leaves in Harappan art but we see three-leaf clover motifs. In those days, Shiva was offered clover leaves. We see these decorating the base of lingas, and on sculptures found in Uruk in Mesopotamia and on furniture in Tutankhamenas tomb.

Pashupati seal discovered in Mohenjo-daro. [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

aParvatia in Mohenjo-daro

With regard to the aDancing Girla idol and the worship of Shiva, Verma makes the following observations.

Nobody has identified Parvati in the Harappan civilisation yet. But if Shiva is there, can Parvati be far behind? The author identifies the famous bronze dancing girl sculpture as the dancing form of Parvati. She is nude, and the author has proved that all Harappan nude figures are divine, so she is a divinity and not a mortal dancing girl. Everyone comments on the many bangles she wears on her left hand, but nobody comments on the small bowl she holds in her right hand. This bowl is the akshaya patra of Annapurna.

via Wikimedia Commons

There is a seal in which Shiva and Parvati are both shown. Shiva is seated and Parvati is depicted as Mahishasurmardini. She is killing the demon Mahisha, just as described by Adi Shankara in his Mahishasurmardini Stotra. Some people identify the figure killing the bull as male, but it is clearly female but Parvatias torso has been turned so that the viewer cannot see her breasts.

The priest king statue is that of a Shiva-worshiping Kuru king. His garment is decorated with the clover leaf motif, which proves he worshiped Shiva. His shawl is draped over his left shoulder, leaving his right arm free to pour offerings into the sacrificial fire. The image was found in a large house that must have been a palace and the sculpture must have been made for ancestor-worship by his descendants. Since in the Vedic times, the area was ruled by the lineage of the Kurus, this is a Kuru king, and we have seen that he was a Shiva-worshiper.

By Mamoon Mengal (world66.com) via Wikimedia Commons

There is a description of the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro in Rigvedaas verse 10.107.20, which says bhojasyedaa puakariaAva veAma pariakatandevamA neva citram (translated as ahis home is like a water body with lotus blossoms, like the godsa palaces adorned and splendid.a ) The tank at Mohenjo-daro is surrounded by buildings, just as in the Vedic verse, and it must be the tank described there. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were important administrative centres of the civilisation but Rakhigarhi in Haryana was the capital of the Kuru dynasty. In the time of the Mahabharata, the Kurus ruled over the entire world.

Historical dilemma

What accounts for this peculiar essay, and what motivates its author? One of the enduring frustrations of ancient Indian history is that there are few impressive archaeological finds from the period after the decline of the Indus Valley civilisation and before the rise of the Mauryan empire a from about 1700 BCE to 325 BCE.

In this period, it is generally held, the Indo-Aryans entered and spread across northern India and settled there, the Vedas were compiled and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana composed. The two Hindu epics, particularly, describe bustling cities, multi-storeyed palaces, complex weapons, elaborate vehicles, glittering jewels and well-wrought furniture a in short, a rich material culture.

A major thrust of Indian archaeology in the decades after Independence was aepic archaeologya a excavation carried at sites believed to be connected with events described in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to prove the historicity of these texts. Unfortunately, archaeological strata associated with this period yielded evidence of only modest settlements; the artefacts found were fragments of utilitarian wares a pottery, iron blades, arrow-tips and the like.

The contradiction between the textual account of a materially rich society and the archaeological evidence of a materially poor one is hard to understand. It only makes sense if one is willing to accept that the texts gained accretions and became increasingly embellished over time. But if one wishes to think of the texts as primordial and fully-formed from the very beginning then the discrepancy between the texts and the archaeological record become vexing.

All these troubles would be sorted out in a single stroke if the Indus Valley civilisation a with its expanse, impressive cities and evidence of long-distance trade a was identified as the Vedic civilisation rather than its predecessor. This is why Hindutva history strains long and hard to prove that the Harappans were the Vedic Aryans.

Unsubstantiated assertions

Unlike other Hindutva writers, however, Verma does not waste time arguing with mainstream scholars who insist that these were two distinct periods. His essay is essentially a Hindutva wish-list for the Indus Valley that is stated as a proven fact.

Vermaas method is to make an unsubstantiated assertion and then, a few paragraphs later, claiming he has already proved the assertion, use it as the basis on which he can make another declaration.

One is tempted to dismiss this essay as one not worth reading, but the fact that it has been published in a journal brought out by the Indian Council for Historical Research gives it, the writer, and the ideas it propagates a cloak of respectability.

Unsurprisingly, this issue of the journal was prepared when the Indian Council for Historical Research is under the leadership of the controversial and eminently unqualified YS Rao, who had earlier indicated that no facts or evidence of history are required when peopleas beliefs and feelings about a particular event are strong.

An essay like this should give us an idea why the Hindu Right is so eager to gain control over academic and research institutions now that political circumstances are propitious to them. They would never have been able to publish in respectable journals or head prestigious institutions had they been judged on the merit of their work.

Kavita Singh is a professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Disputing the feasibility of one of President-elect Donald Trump's best-known campaign promises, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he doesn't think Mexico will pay for a border wall.



"Theyre not going to voluntarily pony up and pay for something they disagree with," Kerry told ABC News' Martha Raddatz in an interview at the Department of State.



Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that he wanted to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and that Mexico would pay for it. Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto has said the country will not pay.



Trump's incoming press secretary Sean Spicer said on ABC News' Good Morning America Friday that the Trump is working with Republicans in Congress to appropriate funding to build the wall and that the administration will find a way, "whether it's through higher tariffs or a direct check," to get Mexico to reimburse the U.S. for the costs.



Trump tweeted Friday morning that the media is dishonest for failing to report that Mexico will pay for wall at a later date.



Kerry also commented on Trump's discussion of policy on Twitter, telling Raddatz Friday that he doesn't think the social media platform is an appropriate forum to conduct U.S. foreign policy.



"I dont make announcements of foreign policy by tweet, Twitter. I dont think that, you know, 140 characters allows you to adequately deal with the complexity of many of the choices that we make," Kerry said.



Kerry said he didn't want to engage in a back-and-forth with Trump's team on the issue, but hopes that they decide to "move to a different way of communicating."



Trump tweets almost daily on topics from reality television to tensions between China and Taiwan.



After Trump won the election, he rattled diplomats and broke with U.S. policy by accepting a phone call from the president of Taiwan, which led to a formal protest by the Chinese government. China claims that Taiwan is part of its country, and the U.S. has tread carefully by recognizing China's policy while also maintaining separate relations with Taiwan.



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Duncan Jones' long gestating sci-fi noir, Mute, is finally in production thanks to support from Netflix. Featuring Alexander Skarsgard as a mute bartender looking for his missing partner, the film co-stars Paul Rudd and The Leftovers' Justin Theroux.

The first official images for Mute have popped over at EW and they showcase a neon soaked dystpoia not unlike the one depicted in Ridley Scott's overpopulated Blade Runner. Jones, though, has been quick to point out that Mute is as inspired by Casablanca as it is Scott's classic.

Synopsis: Berlin. Forty years from today. A roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a science-fiction Casablanca. Leo Beiler, a mute bartender has one reason and one reason only for living here, and she's disappeared. But when Leo's search takes him deeper into the city's underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons (led by Rudd) seem to be the only recurring clue, and Leo can't tell if they can help, or who he should fear most.

Jones has said in the past that Mute shares connections to his 2009 debut film Moon, which stars Sam Rockwell as a man working as a solitary miner on the Earth's moon. It is also rumored that Rockwell may appear in the film, so one wonders if he will be playing the same character from that film?

While there is no specific release date for Mute, it will premiere worldwide on Netflix later in 2017.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High near 85F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early. Skies will become mostly clear late. Low 51F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
 "Facing the Firing Squad" | Main | Seventh Circuit panel affirms above-guideline drug sentence ... with Judge Posner suggesting USSC involvement would be better than a sentencing "hunch" 

January 6, 2017

An optimistic accounting of many areas for bipartisan federal criminal justice reform ... and good lines of inquiry for AG nominee Jeff Sessions

The week brought this extended commentary by Mark Holden at The Hill under the headline "Criminal justice reform is ripe for bipartisan achievement." I recommend the piece in full, and here are highlights of the reforms urged (with Holden's accounting of "reason it could pass" left out so readers will be encouraged to click through):

Criminal justice reform has been one of the few policy areas where Republicans and Democrats have forged bipartisan consensus. They have come close to passing reform the past two years, and now its up to GOP lawmakers to pick up where they left off. Leaders as diverse as Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) agree that the current system is broken.... Thats why its critical that leaders in Congress take up criminal justice reform. If they focus on six key areas of reform, theres a real possibility that legislation could pass in both the House and Senate, even with the Senates 60-vote threshold, a bar not easily achieved on other issues. Here are the six areas of reform  and the reasons they have a viable path to becoming law. First, we need to reform the grand jury process and rein in prosecutorial overreach. As Judge Kozinski has advocated, lawmakers should require open file discovery, so prosecutors hand over all evidence favorable to an accused person, and also establish truly independent prosecutorial review units to investigate abuses.... Second, we must protect every citizens Sixth Amendment rights. When it comes to federal cases, Congress should ensure that all individuals  regardless of income level  have an adequate chance to retain counsel before they appear in court. It should also explore the model that some states have moved to, which allows defendants to choose a private lawyer from a list of options, rather than being appointed a lawyer who may not offer a competent defense.... Third, the punishment must fit the crime. Congress should reform mandatory minimums that dont make sense and increase the use of safety valves, which allow judges to use their discretion for non-violent offenses if the offender meets certain requirements. These reforms are particularly important for low-level and non-violent offenders (mostly involving drug crimes), who too often languish in prison for years or even decades at a time at great cost to their families and our society at large..... Fourth, prisons should leave individuals better off than when they came in. Prison rehabilitation programs have proven to reduce the chance of re-offense and save taxpayer dollars.... Fifth, Congress should give worthy individuals a chance to rejoin society and find fulfillment in their lives. Lawmakers could start by banning the box from federal employment applications so that individuals with a record can be considered for government jobs. Congress, however, should not mandate that companies ban the box, but should allow them to voluntarily do so. Congress should also clear the record of qualifying youth and non-violent federal offenders; limit solitary confinement for juveniles; and establish effective rehab, educational, and vocational programs so that every individual leaves prison a better person than when they came.... Finally, Congress needs to dramatically scale back the federal criminal code and ensure that all criminal laws have adequate criminal intent, also known as mens rea. The criminal code is a stunning 27,000 pages and comprises an estimated 4,500-6,000 criminal laws  and that doesnt even include the thousands of additional federal regulations that impose criminal punishments. Many penalize people who had no idea they were committing a crime  missing a basic historical requirement that once existed in the criminal law to protect people from being unfairly prosecuted.... Any one of these reforms would improve our federal justice system  and have a profound effect on our society. Taken together, they will make communities safer, support our brave law enforcement officers, save taxpayer dollars, and empower individuals in need of a second chance. Thats precisely why Republicans and Democrats alike will have a difficult time answering to their constituents if they resist such reforms. Doing so would be a clear political move that overlooks the millions of Americans who would be better off as a result of this bipartisan achievement. If President-elect Trump and the GOP Congress take up criminal justice reform, it will be a sure sign that they are willing to look beyond party lines in order to improve peoples lives. That would be good start to putting individuals safety and wellbeing ahead of partisan politics.

As the title of this post suggests, I think this piece's accounting of six areas in need of reform would provide a fantastic guide for questions for Senator Jeff Sessions during his hearings to serve as Attorney General. These questions can be softball (e.g., do you believe prison rehabilitation programs can be valuable?) or tough (e.g., do you think there should be more means for federal inmates to earn sentence reduction for participating in prison rehabilitation programs). And I welcome readers to use the comment to make more suggestions for additional soft or tough questions on these or other fronts.

Critically, and as I hope to outline more fully in a post over the weekend, I feel very strongly that those Senators who support federal criminal justice reforms ought to use the Sessions' confirmation hearing to do much more that just simply attack the Senator for long-ago acts or statements claimed to be evidence of racism or insensitivity. Instead, by crafting astute questions concerning specific area of the federal criminal justice system in need of reform, members of the Judiciary Committee could and should be able to get Sessions to express support for  or at least a lack of opposition to  many of the bipartisan reforms discussed above and widely embraced inside the Beltway in recent years.

January 6, 2017 at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Comments

How is a system broken if it produces continual drops in crime rates? Reform of the criminal justice system is the same as stopping the insulin in a diabetic who has done well on it for two decades. Diabetes is chronic. Crime is chronic.

Posted by: David Behar | Jan 6, 2017 2:35:12 PM

I strongly question suggestion #2. Most everyone familiar with federal criminal practice will tell you that Federal Public Defender Organizations offer superior representation than appointed attorneys.

Posted by: Anon | Jan 7, 2017 7:46:58 AM

Post a comment
 An optimistic accounting of many areas for bipartisan federal criminal justice reform ... and good lines of inquiry for AG nominee Jeff Sessions | Main | "Mending the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Approach to Consideration of Juvenile Status" 

January 6, 2017

Seventh Circuit panel affirms above-guideline drug sentence ... with Judge Posner suggesting USSC involvement would be better than a sentencing "hunch"

An otherwise little and unremarkable sentencing appeal became blog-worthy because of Judge Posner's provocative opinion for the court in US v. Gibbs, No. 16-1747 (7th Cir. Jan. 6, 2017) (available here). Here is some background and the blog-notable aspect of Judge Posner's opinion:

The defendant pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute it, in violation of 21 U.S.C.  841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C). Because of the quantity of the cocaine that he possessed and his history of drug and other criminal offenses, his guideline sentencing range was 151 to 188 months and his statutory maximum 240 months. The government recommended a 216month sentence ... and that was the sentence that the district judge imposed.... The judge explained that he was imposing a sentence significantly higher than the top of the defendants guideline range on the basis of the [18 U.S.C. ] 3553(a) [sentencing] factors. He called the defendant a poster child for being a career offender, and told him unfortunately you may be one of those people that will never be able to conform to be a lawabiding person..... Neither the government, in recommending a 216month sentence, nor the district judge, in imposing it, attempted a sophisticated analysis of the likely consequences for the defendant, his family, and society (primarily the persons to whom he sold illegal drugs) of adding roughly two years to the sentence he would have been given had the judge stopped at the top of the guideline range. Judging from the governments brief and the judges sentencing statement, both the prosecution and the judge based the 216month sentence (proposed by the government, imposed by the judge) on a hunch. As the prosecutors as well as the judge are highly experienced, their hunches are likely often to be reliable. And because federal prosecutors are free to suggest any sentence within the statutory range, and a federal district judge has broad latitude in picking the sentence to impose within that range, and because the briefs and argument of defense counsel in this case bordered on the perfunctory ... the sentence must be affirmed. Some consideration, however, should be given to the possibility of basing a prison sentence  at least a very long one (and an 18year sentence is very long)  on something other than a hunch. The work of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in formulating sentencing guidelines provides a clue to a possible alternative. The sentencing judge, instead of ranging at large, with little guidance, over the wide space between the statutory minimum sentence for the defendants crime or crimes and the statutory maximum, might consider asking the Sentencing Commission to evaluate the appropriateness in particular cases of all the possible sentencing points in the statutory sentencing range, including points that fall outside the guideline sentencing range. In a case like the present one the Sentencing Commission might advise the prosecutors, defense counsel, and the judge why it had fixed the guideline range where it did and how disapproving it would be of sentences below or above that range. The Commission might for example take a close look at the governments suggested 216month sentence in this case and the arguments the government gives for it, and conclude that maybe its a proper sentence given the particular facts of the case even though it lies outside the guideline range. The defense proposed a sentence of only 10 years, which would be about two and a half years below the sentencing guideline; and again, the Commission might agree in the special circumstances of this case that that was a plausible alternative to a sentence in the guideline range  or might explain why it was not. Judges wouldnt have to ask the Commission for its input, or follow its recommendations, but they might find it a valuable resource.

The Judge Posner's opinion nominally represents the opinion of the Seventh Circuit, the other two judges on the panel (Judges Kanne and Sykes) wrote separate concurring opinions (and Judge Sykes opinion is only concurring in the judgment). Judge Kanne does join Judge Posner's opinion, but his separate opinion captures some aspects of my reactions to what Judge Posner suggests:

I write further to add that although Judge Posner has envisioned an interesting method to arrive at an appropriate sentence in individual cases, it is my view that such a unique system would be fundamentally unworkable in practice and contrary to the statutory provisions enacted by Congress and approved by the Supreme Court.

January 6, 2017 at 04:12 PM | Permalink

Comments

I am more than somewhat surprised that the cited language is actually part of the decision of the court (that is, I am surprised that another judge signed onto that part of the opinion while at the same time voicing reservations with it). And I don't see the Supreme Court accepting any system that binds Article 3 judges without particular findings by a jury - or at least particularized admission by the convict.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jan 6, 2017 4:31:25 PM

The sentence is way too long. When a judge gives the bottom of a range it is long, top of the range is a very long, long, long sentence indeed. To exceed the range serves no purpose at all.

Oh well, leave it to the Feds to go over board on most everything.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Jan 6, 2017 6:23:52 PM

It is self evident that machines are 100 times better than living beings at their task. Compare a fast car with a horse. Not only are you getting the power of 200 horses, but you are riding indoors, and not in the open on the back of a creature with a mind and an agenda of its own, not necessarily yours. The mileage cost is also 100 times better. The same applies to an excavator vs 100 men with shovels, to a computer vs 100 clerks with pencil and paper.

The Equal Protection Clause applies to due process in the criminal law, in that discrimination must have a rational basis of benefit to a governmental purpose.

Isn't it time that the government invested in research into artificial intelligence and robotics to replace judges? Wouldn't a machine carrying out an algorithm enumerated by the legislature and by appellate courts work 100 times better than judges, in applying the law to individual cases?

Posted by: David Behar | Jan 6, 2017 8:55:52 PM

Say what you want about Trump but one positive aspect is that we have yet another President that refuses to even think about Posner for a SCOTUS vacancy.

Posted by: Daniel | Jan 7, 2017 1:09:45 PM

The Posner quotes are not all that coherent.

Posted by: Liberty1st | Jan 7, 2017 3:59:18 PM

The sentencing judge's sentence is obviously based upon a theory of incapacitation. Is a sentencing commission evaluation, evidence-based or empirical? Why should one rely on evidence when a district judge is appointed for life by ideologue? Empirical evidence may or may not be trustworthy. But again a district judge is appointed for life, so why don't we defer since the judge is appointed to exercise his judgment which may, or may not in practice, be consonant with the appointing authority?

Posted by: ? | Jan 8, 2017 9:39:36 PM

?, while the professor may disagree, most of what I have seen about sentencing guidelines in various places is that they are more normative than empirical. Of course, whether they are normative or empirical is, in itself, a complicated question. There is some data on what factors make a criminal defendant more likely to re-offend, and many of the guideline systems do include those factors as one component of the chart. However, what sentencing commissions ultimately do is decide what "facts" seem to be significant to how judges sentence and try to get a sentencing range that seems right to judges on the theory that -- since it's the same law being violated and the government's interest in enforcing the law is the same regardless of the location of the offense -- sentences imposed should not depend upon which judge or which federal district is hearing the case. There certainly isn't the type of empirical evidence that demonstrates that 120 months is the right mix of deterrence and incapacitation for a defendant with a certain criminal history who violated statue Y with a certain set of aggravating facts.

Posted by: tmm | Jan 9, 2017 5:25:18 PM

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Chinese Apple customers looking to download the New York Times app through the tech giant's App Store are out of luck, as the company has pulled the news app at the request of the Chinese government. The New York Times reports that the removal came just as the Times was gearing up to publish a detailed investigative report into the Chinese government's massive subsidies to Foxconn  the company that manufactures iPhones in China.

The removal went into effect on December 23, and prevented anyone in mainland China from downloading the app from that point on. Both the English language and Chinese language versions were removed. Those who already had the app on their phone will still be able to access the content, but will be unable to get updates.

Apple officials are remaining mostly mum on the decision, only saying that they were told the app violated unspecified regulations. For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations, Apple spokesman Fred Sainz told the Times. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China."

Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times apps still remain available for download in China.

The New York Times website itself is blocked by Chinese censors, and the app had remained as one of the few ways to read the paper without using VPNs or Tor. The request by the Chinese authorities to remove our apps is part of their wider attempt to prevent readers in China from accessing independent news coverage by The New York Times of that country, coverage which is no different from the journalism we do about every other country in the world, Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said in a statement.

Although unconfirmed, it is believed the order to pull the app came under the authority of the recently passed Provisions on the Administration of Mobile Internet Application Information Services. According to the 2016 Chinese regulations, apps cannot "engage in activities prohibited by laws and regulations such as endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others."

How the New York Times app might have specifically violated this rule is unclear, and Apple is not saying  a worrying sign for media outlets trying to do business in China.

This is not the first time that a Bay Area-based tech company has dabbled in censorship. In November, the Times reported that Facebook had developed a censorship tool  as a potential way to improve relations with the Chinese government  that would allow officials to prevent specific posts from showing up in users' feeds based on location data.

Related: The Chinese Are Totally Building Knock-Off Apple Stores Now
Yes, he may be the Anti-Trump, and we'd have to wait for a few years to see the two men potentially go toe-to-toe in an election ring, but Wired is floating the rumor that Mark Zuckerberg has made a few moves in recent weeks and months that suggests he's at least contemplating a run for political office someday. The evidence, also cited by Business Insider, includes Zuck's recent public announcement that he's no longer an atheist and thinks "religion is very important," and his pledge to visit the remaining 30 states he's never visited in 2017, and therefore to have "met people in every state in the US by the end of the year." As Wired puts it, "could this be #positioning?"

Zuck will be old enough, per the Constitution, to be President by 2020 (he'll be 35 in 2019), and the pre-emptive 50-state strategy he's embarking on certainly sounds like something a prospective politician would do.

But with zero experience in politics, would he stand a shot? Oh... right. Of course he would.

Wired also points to a clause in Zuckerberg's majority ownership deal at Facebook, approved by shareholders last June, that quietly allows him to take a leave of absence from the country in order to serve in government without ceding his majority stake in Facebook stock, or without permanently losing control of the company. Intriguing, no?

Wired goes on to consider that Zuckerberg has been practicing politics, in a way, already. "As the CEO of a very large and powerful technology company, Zuckerberg is well-practiced in the art of PR  a necessary skill for any politician. And Zuckerberg already promotes many of Facebooks projects, as well as his own, as taking on issues of public interest  everything from the immigration reform lobbying group he backs to Facebooks ambitious plan to connect the whole world using new wireless antennas, lasers, and satellites."

And really, once you've become one of the youngest billionaires ever and in charge of one of the biggest companies in the world  one which was credited/blamed for having an enormous, unprecedented influence in our most recent election  where do you go from there?

In related news, Recode has a new piece about Zuckerberg's extraordinarily transparent relationship with his 16,000 employees, and how during weekly meetings broadcast to Facebook's global offices, he reveals lots of confidential details about new products in the works, very little of which ever gets leaked outside the company. It's a culture of openness, and one that feels familial according to one former employee, who says shame is a huge motivator for why there are so few leaks. "People would be pissed if someone else leaked something. You dont betray the family," the employee said to Recode.

So, if Zuck is starting to plan for a 2020 campaign, some of those employees may be the first to know.

Previously: Mark Zuckerberg's New Year's Resolution: Go To Every State, Attempt Human Engagement


After retiring from her role as a dairy goat at another farm, Nibblets came to Sweet Farm near Half Moon Bay to rest out her golden years. Now Nibblets, or Mama Goat as the folks at Sweet Farm sometimes call her, is put out to pasture, grazing her days away and "keeping the other goats from getting into too much trouble."

It's not every farm that makes room for animals like Nibblets, or others non-working creatures like Gizmo and Sturgis, an elderly horse and a young steer who, not boxed in or forced to work, have taken up an unlikely friendship. But that's sweet Sweet Farm, which is not, exactly, a farm at all. Instead, as CBS 5 learned in their video tour of Sweet Farm, the site is a sanctuary for farm and domestic animals who have been, in the past, forced to work or abused. In a twist that calls Orwell to mind, it's just humans who do the work at Sweet Farm of feeding and caring for animals who exist to educate visitors, according to literature from the farm, of "the importance of humane, ethical, and healthy eating in their day to day lives."

That, for Sweet Farm's founders at least, means strict veganism, although, as proprietor Nate Salpeter tells the station, he hopes to also educate "someone who eats meat and doesnt have much of an idea about where it comes from.

Sweet Farm is named for Anna Sweet, who runs the operation along with her husband, Salpeter. She works for Facebook while he's a nuclear engineer, and they purchased the 12-acre property along Highway 1 in 2015. Aside from their backgrounds in technology, Sweet grew up on a farm in upstate New York, and while living in Seattle, the couple volunteered at a pet rescue center.

In the end, Sweet and Salpeter would like to farm out what they learn from their work. "Coming from long career in the tech industry, co-founders Anna & Nate both recognize the impact technology can have on achieving the goals & vision of an organization," they write to their website. "In addition to directly helping animals by giving them homes on the farm in Half Moon Bay, the team intends to build software solutions that reduce overhead for other rescue organizations and maximize the amount of good they can do for animals worldwide."

Sweet Farm was incorporated as a nonprofit in March 2016, with its 501(c)3 tax-exempt status was confirmed by the IRS in August. To "change people's view on animals  how they're treated and consumed," Sweet Farm will begin hosting open houses this spring. But for those hoping to find out where their food really comes from, Sweet Farm isn't the answer: These animals are not for eating.

Related: Long-Awaiting Healdsburg Destination Restaurant Single Thread Opens Its Doors Tonight
Maybe you've seen him. Michael Dunn, 27, of San Lorenzo, just finished riding 1,000 miles on his Boosted Board, the popular Mountain View-created electric longboard that stops and starts via a handheld control and has the horsepower to rev up hills  not to mention the brakes to ease down them. On the streets of Oakland and San Francisco, Dunn is recognizable on his board: He dons a baby-carrier backpack that really just holds speakers, blasting music and drawing stares as his face remains serious and impassive. Usually he's got a cup of Philz Coffee in hand.

Dunn has been taking folks along for many of those 1,000 miles via video: On Reddit and with a public Facebook group, Boosted Board riders and enthusiasts like Dunn share clips, tips, stories, and community. To the Facebook Group, Dunn posts lengthy videos of his rides almost daily, his camera on a selfie-stick pointed at his face while the world flies by around him. When Dunn spoke to SFist by phone, he was in the process of uploading the 1,000th-mile celebration ride he'd just taken on the Embarcadero.

"I like everything about it man," Dunn says of the Boosted Board. "I feel like a spokesman for this, they should really pay me for this shit." But not everyone is a fan of his habit, which started a year ago after years on non-electric longboards. "My wife hated [the Boosted Board], but it came out of my tax refund," Dunn says, "but she's gotten over it since."

There's one more person who sometimes rides along with Dunn, and who explains the origin of his backpack. That's Dunn's young son, whom he occasionally pushes with a stroller in front of him while he rides his Boosted Board. Before you gasp, take a breath and consider the parents in Noe Valley who ride their electric bikes at 40 miles per hour with three children on the back. Dunn is a full-time student at Chabot College, "but for the most part, bro, I'm a stay at home dad," he tells SFist. "I work weekends, so for the most part, it's me and my son." A lot of that father-son time? It's Boosted time, too.

Many of Dunn's tips to riders on the Facebook group concern good places to charge up. "Charging it is super easy, I always find a place to charge," he says. "I'm plugged up right now in Fisherman's Wharf." Dunn also likes that the board isn't complicted. "It's easy to maintain, you don't have to get rocket science." And with his child-carrying sized backpack, he's able to stash some extra battery, too: "I'm like a Boy Scout, always prepared."

When I spoke with Boosted Board Founder Matthew Tran in 2015, he said he'd hoped to foster just the kind of community Dunn is such a vocal part of. There's plenty of daredevil braggery in the group, but as Boosted riding becomes more common, there's also an emphasis on community safety tips and enforcement. To end on that note, not long ago, one rider posted a picture of himself, smiling from a hospital bed with his leg in a brace, to the Facebook group. "A few days ago I got hit by a car making a very fast, illegal U-turn in the Mission and tore my ACL," he reveals. "Won't be boarding for a year or so, depending on how the surgery goes. I'm lucky not to have hit my head, but I wanted to share with everyone here as a reminder to be extra cautious. I know it sounds simple, but cars can make illegal turns, run red lights, or make other mistakes that won't give you enough time to react."

Or, as one commenter responds to Dunn's video: "You might wanna pay attention to the road mane. You've been pretty fortun[ate] those people sharing the road with you aka vehicles haven't rammed your ass into the ground. They will one day just you wait and see."

Related: Photo Du Jour: Boosted Life
That one time #BART was completely insane due to plateform 1 shutting down. pic.twitter.com/jwg6tQLhzk  Keith Ellwood Baker (@KeithEllwood) January 6, 2017

A disabled train in West Oakland halted BART service for about an hour, the transit agency announced Friday morning at the height of the commute.

"There is a major delay system wide in all directions due to a disabled train at West Oakland. Please seek alternate means of transportation until further notice," read the alert sent by the transit agency at 8:03 a.m. Friday.

According to BART, the train conked out at 7:45 a.m. Friday, when, per the Chron, "BART workers said it was locked up for some unknown reason." (Not "locked up" as with a lock and key, one should assume, but in the colloquial sense meaning "unable to move.")

BART workers initially "thought the train could be returned to the station and taken out of service, but they could not move the train," CBS 5 reports.

KRON 4 reported that 'while trains are going into the East Bay, the system is at a standstill with no trains going from the East Bay to San Francisco."

According to the SF Business Times, BART managed to move the train by 8:40. But through service has resumed, "numerous delays and packed trains have slowed the commute into San Francisco."

Here we go! #bart back up after a system wide shut down A video posted by Michael Brandon (@michabrandon) on Jan 6, 2017 at 8:18am PST


As was expected, Mayor Lee has filled outgoing Supervisor Scott Wiener's seat on the Board of Supervisors  unofficially the "gay seat" on the board since it was originally held by Harvey Milk  with another gay person, but he's making a bit of history today by appointing the first openly HIV-positive person to the Board, Jeff Sheehy. Sheehy has been a longtime advocate for HIV/AIDS causes and has most recently been working as director for communications for the UCSF AIDS Research Institute. He's a resident of Glen Park  also a part of District 8 along with the Castro, Noe Valley, Twin Peaks, Diamond Heights, Duboce Triangle, and a piece of the Mission District  where he lives with his husband, Bill Berry, and their daughter Michelle, as the Bay Area Reporter notes.

And though Sheehy is expected to side with the Board's new six-person moderate majority  otherwise Lee wouldn't have picked him  it's notable that he was at one time the president of the progressive Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, back in the mid-1990's. He's well known for having pushed for and created San Franciscos historic Equal Benefits Ordinance, the pioneering law that made SF the first city in the country to require employers with city contracts to offer equal benefits to their employees domestic partners. The ordinance spawned many similar ones throughout the state of California and across the country.

In a press release Friday morning, Mayor Lee praised Sheehy as a "tested, mature, passionate, and pragmatic" community member and neighborhood activist who has "spent his entire life fighting for his community and for what he believes is right." Lee continued, "As an activist, an advocate, a dad with a daughter in public school and as a Glen Park neighbor, Jeff brings a unique background and practical experience to the job to meet the challenges of the districts diverse neighborhoods and communities."

Wiener said he was "delighted" by the mayor's pick, and said that Sheehy is "an extraordinary leader and exactly what we need right now  a strong, decisive, and passionate voice for our shared progressive values, and someone who deeply understands the needs of our neighborhoods."

Sheehy says in a statement:

Its an honor to have this opportunity to serve the people of my community and the diverse neighborhoods of District 8. It is a privilege to follow Senator Wiener, and I hope to build on his legacy and his outstanding leadership on housing, transportation, and public safety. With our immigrant communities and expanded healthcare access under direct assault, I also will fight to ensure that the Citys efforts to address disparities are not undermined and I will defend our San Francisco values so that our great City remains a beacon of hope across the nation.

The Examiner spoke to several Sheehy fans including UCSF colleague Dr. Paul Volberding, who says, "Jeff is an outstanding leader in science and health and has been extremely effective in bringing the entire community together." And, he adds, "He is thoughtful and takes time to listen from those addressing community challenges."

Sheehy could potentially have a long tenure on the Board  ten years  assuming he is officially elected to the seat when it next comes up for election in 2018. He will serve on the Board until then, and if he wins election, he remains eligible to run for another four-year term in 2022.

The coveted seat was also being sought by gay City College of San Francisco Trustee Alex Randolph, as the Bay Area Reporter notes, as well as former San Francisco AIDS Foundation senior vice president James Loduca. Also potentially in contention were Rebecca Prozan, Googles chief of public policy and government affairs who previously ran against Wiener, and may end up running for the seat again; and Conor Johnston, London Breed's openly gay chief of staff.

Sheehy will be sworn in on Sunday, January 8, at a ceremony at City Hall alongside his new elected colleagues Sandra Fewer and Hillary Ronen, and they will then attend their first meeting as supervisors on Monday. As the Chronicle points out, this is the first time since 1996 that Board has been composed of a majority of a women, with Ronen and Fewer joining Katy Tang, London Breed, Jane Kim, and Malia Cohen.

Previously: District 8 Will Likely Be Without A Supervisor Until January


Two men were rushed to the hospital from Dolores Park Thursday, after two different crimes led to their injury.

According to the San Francsico Police Department, officers were called to the park at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, after a 22-year-old man was struck over the head with a bottle.

Police say that the victim had been told that a third party had been robbed, so the victim approached the robbery suspect on the robbery victim's behalf.

Over the course of the confrontation, the alleged robber smashed a bottle over the head of the man calling him out regarding the alleged crime.

The bashed man was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries sustained in the attack. The suspect, regarding whom the police did not provide any details, remains at large.

Police were back at the park at 9 p.m., when a shooting was reported on the park's northeastern tip at 18th and Dolores Streets.

In that case, police say that a 29-year-old man was approached by two male suspects in their 20s, one of whom asked him for a cigarette. The victim said he didn't smoke, at which point the same man asked him for a lighter.

When the victim pulled out his lighter to lend to the man, the suspect "pulled out a handgun" police say. The victim "grabbed onto the handgun, when a struggle ensued."

Over the course of the struggle, the second suspect pulled the victim's wallet from his pants pocket. "At this time the handgun discharged," police say, striking the victim. The suspects fled the scene on foot, according to the SFPD, stolen wallet in hand,

The victim was transported to San Francisco General Hospital to be treated for the gunshot wound, which police say is not life-threatening.

As with the earlier attack, the suspects remain on the loose. According to the SFPD, no arrests have been made in either case.

Related: Man Stabs Two People In The Face Near Dolores Park
The victim of a brazen mid-afternoon assault in the Tenderloin has died, and police say that they are investigating the attack as a homicide.

According to the San Francisco Police department, a 61-year-old man was the victim of what police initially described as an "aggravated assault" at 3:37 p.m. Thursday near OFarrell and Larkin Streets.

The man, who Hoodline says "goes by the name Milkshake," was transported to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, police said Friday morning. The San Francisco Medical Examiner had not publicly identified the victim as of publication time.

No information on his cause of death has been provided, but police confirm that they are seeking five "unknown" suspects in the attack. As of Friday morning, no arrests have been made in the case, which is San Francisco's third homicide for 2017.

Related: San Francisco Begins 2017 With Two Homicides
The biggest food-world story of the week has turned out to be New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells's unexpected  and unexpectedly terrible  review of Locol in Oakland, the ostensibly revolutionary new model for healthier, sustainable fast-food launched in 2016 by Bay Area chef Daniel Patterson, and LA chef Roy Choi. As celebrity chefs and prominent figures in the national food conversation over the last decade, Patterson and Choi's project earned the attention of Wells, who as of September has officially expanded his role to be the nation's restaurant critic, and not just New York's. He explained, following the publication of the review and a trip to visit multiple restaurants in Oakland, that he'd chosen to review it because "it was the most talked-about restaurant of the year," and because it seemed like too few people were actually talking about the quality of the food itself. But this choice, and the brutal honesty with which he attacked Locol's burger, chicken "nugs" and "no-chicken no-noodle" soup," has led to many on the internet decrying his elitism and dickishness  after all, since when has a New York Times restaurant critic ever cared about small-scale fast-food businesses hoping to cater to the poor?

This isn't the first time that Wells has been accused of being elitist. The nation's foodinistas took great pleasure in Wells's brilliant and funny takedown of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant in 2012, which led to a subsequent cry of elitism among Fieri fans and haters of critics in general. But is this an analogous situation, or something totally different?

The argument goes like this: It's unfair to write a review of Locol as if it were just any other restaurant, without contextualizing Locol's take on fast food as compared to other inexpensive food in the area, and without taking into account that part of its mission is to deliver an approximation of fast food items (minus the fries) with less fat, salt, and calories, at a low price point for residents of impoverished neighborhoods. And while the first Locol location to open, in LA's Watts neighborhood, is in one such neighborhood, Locol's Oakland location is a bit different in that its surrounded by a bunch of other gentrified businesses next to the heart of the city's downtown  in what was formerly Patterson's upscale restaurant Plum  and this is something Wells addressed in his review. Taking it as just another lunch/dinner option in the neighborhood, he points to both similarly priced and slightly more expensive options right nearby, "a taqueria, a sandwich shop, a home-style Taiwanese place, a West African and Caribbean grill, a Mexican restaurant, a beer-conscious brasserie, and a branch of Umami Burger," all of which he noted were busy during lunchtime a week before Christmas.

Wells's intention was to highlight a very prominent new restaurant project by two famous chefs, and to review its food on its own merits, much the way he did at Fieri's restaurant, or when he was somewhat critical of David Chang's new spot in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, Momofuku Nishi.

As Eater National points out, Wells has positioned himself as a kind of "people's critic" in the last several years, most dramatically with his takedown of Thomas Keller's Per Se last January, proving that he's not afraid to speak truth to power and dilute some of the celebrity-chef cachet that keeps customers paying big bucks for food that isn't always terrific, just because of the brand name. But that role comes with some peril, as Wells may be finding this week, when it grows beyond the insular world of New York's elite restaurants (and tourist traps) and into a national food scene that's in dire need of a reality check, as this new three-part series on Thrillist rightly suggests.

A recent and widely read profile of Wells by The New Yorker described Wells's ethos thusly: "a disastrous restaurant is newsworthy only if it has a pedigree or commercial might; the mom-and-pop catastrophe can be overlooked... it means that his pans focus disproportionately on restaurants that have corporate siblings."

Locol sort of falls in that category, in that Paterson and Choi both have mini-empires in their respective towns, but Locol stands apart as less of a commercial and more of an idealistic enterprise.

"I think he was expecting the food to be at least reminiscent of the food at Coi... which has $265 tasting menus, or at Roy Choi's Kogi trucks... which are screaming with salt and fat, etc.," said LA Times critic Jonathan Gold, speaking about Wells's review and the backlash on KPCC's Air Talk this week. Also, in Locol's defense, Gold suggests that the fact that their hamburger is a "little dry" is "probably the 117th most interesting thing about the place."

But Wells's argument still stands, and shouldn't be written off: "The most nutritious burger on earth wont help you if you dont want to eat it." In other words, how do you start a fast-food revolution and put McDonald's out of business in inner-city neighborhoods if your core product simply isn't that good  though Wells doesn't actually make any direct comparisons to McDonald's, where he might also find the burgers a bit dry.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Michael Bauer was pretty gloves-off in his review of Locol last summer, and no one that I noticed attacked him for it  and he did give the place two stars, which was more than Wells's zero. "Similarities to other fast-food franchises end at the counter service and the low prices," wrote Bauer. "One of the tenants [sic] of fast food is consistency. When you go to Jack-in-the-Box, the product tastes pretty much the same whether in Oakland or Orlando. At Locol, scaling and reproducing recipes are still issues." He praised the "Cheeseburg" on one visit, saying it had "an intensely meaty flavor when properly seared," but he said "it wasnt as enticing on another visit, when the meat was timidly cooked."

It could be that Wells's visits to Locol exhibited some of that lack of consistency, three months after Bauer's last visit, and thus he had nothing but bad things to say about the fried chicken patty that Bauer claimed was good enough to be featured at Patterson's SF restaurant Alta CA.

Is it inherently wrong to critique such an ambitious, albeit idealistic, restaurant project on these details, when improving on them might lead to greater success for the enterprise down the line? Is it part of a Bay Area provincial sort of attitude to suggest that such projects should be outside the purview of criticism?

Choi himself responded somewhat graciously to Wells's review saying, "It tells me a lot more about the path. I don't know Pete but he is now inextricably linked to LocoL forever... We all know the food is not as bad as he states. Is it perfect? NO. But it's not as bad as he writes. And all minorities aren't criminals either. And all hoods aren't filled with dangerous people either. But the pen has created a lot of destruction over the course of history and continues to. He didn't need to go there but he did."

As Eater concludes, "maybe... some restaurants arent meant to be assessed by some critics, even ones considered populist heroes."

But if no one ever takes the gloves off and tells it how they see it about the food  except Yelpers, that is  how does a place stand a chance of succeeding in the long run. In other words, should every critic just have let Locol expand across the state and the country without ever saying that the burger still needs a little work?

Previously: After Terrible Review From New York Times Critic, Locol Founder Roy Choi Takes The High Road

New York Times Critic Pete Wells Savages Locol In Oakland


Highlights:

Wauwatosa Cafe Hollander closed for renovations

The Lowlands Group is currently renovating the Cafe Hollander location in the Tosa Village. It's been planned to coincide with the Wauwatosa streetscaping project, which is nearing completion and will create a more pedestrian-friendly design in the busy area.

Renovations inside Cafe Hollander will include refinished floors, a redesigned bar area, new seating options and an increased number of draft lines from 23 to 31. Mechanical, kitchen and bar equipment upgrades will also be completed.

The Cafe will be reopened on January 13. In the meantime, guests can still dine at next door Cafe Bavaria which is also owned by the Lowlands Group.

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Outdoor winter beer festival announced

The Micro Craft Beer Pavilion in State Fair Park has announced a new outdoor winter beer fest. The Keg Killer Winter Beer Festival will be held February 11 in their outdoor pavilion. This is the first winter brew fest held outdoors in the area.

The breweries in attendance have yet to be finalized, however State Fair Park has given permission to include self-distributed breweries. That means that many of MKE's newest breweries, like Great Harvest, Third Space, etc., may be available. The lineup will focus on Milwaukee brews along with The Micro favorites and some Wisconsin breweries.

General admission tickets are $45 in advance and include unlimited samples from 30+ breweries, souvenir tasting glass and live music. VIP tickets are $65 and include early entry and one food item. This event will not be canceled for weather reasons, especially snow. Dress accordingly; you don't want to be colder than the beer.

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The Cheel recognized by Travel Wisconsin

The Cheel has been named as one of seven Wisconsin restaurants worth the drive by TravelWisconsin.com. The article on the Wisconsin Department of Tourism site lists notable restaurants within a short driving distance of Milwaukee, Madison and the Twin Cities.

The Cheel is the closest restaurant to MKE listed. It's the only Nepalese restaurant in the area, and is well known for its momo dumplings, homemade aachar dipping sauces and craft cocktails that utilize local bitters and spirits.

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Wisconsin ranked tenth best state for butchers

Zippia, a website for job seekers, has ranked Wisconsin the tenth best state for butchers. They based their conclusion on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational employment statistics from 2015. They then compared that salary data to each state's cost of living from MIT's living wage index.

It was determined that Wisconsin has 2,020 total butcher jobs with an average salary of $36,240, which was good enough for tenth best. The top three states were North Dakota, Idaho and Ohio. So if you're looking to get into the restaurant or grocery business, butchering is a good option in Wisconsin. You can also support your local butchers, including Kettle Range Meats, Bunzel's, Ray's, Bavette or your neighborhood grocery store.

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Read more Brew City Booze articles from Lacey Muszynski here.
San Diego, California, January 6, 2017 - Kicking off the New Year by shipping beer from breweries on both coasts, Green Flash Brewing Co. announces plans for their 2017 product lineup.

Hop heavyweight and cult-favorite, Palate Wrecker Imperial IPA will be returning, available in 6-packs and on draft beginning in February for a limited time.

Green Flash will introduce GFB Blonde Ale - a crowd-pleasing and drinkable new option which will be available on draft in January, followed by cans in the Spring, with plans to release bottles in 2018.

Green Flash is now producing and shipping beers from both the San Diego and Virginia Beach breweries. They will continue production of all front-line beers released in 2016, as well as rotate several new limited-release offerings into the mix from Green Flash Cellar 3 throughout 2017.

About GFB Blonde Ale:

GFB will round out our portfolio, offering our customers a high-quality, easy-drinking option explains Green Flash Co-Founder and CEO, Mike Hinkley. It is full of Green Flash character, and perfect for when beer is part of the occasion but not the center of it - like in a pitcher at a bowling alley, in cans at the beach, or filling the cooler on game day.

Available in January on draft and in cans this Spring, GFB is 4.8% ABV and features packaging that offers a distinctly different look for the brand. The Green Flash front-line labels spell out the details about each beer - from the hops and malts used to in-depth tasting notes. Clean and simple, the GFB tap-handles and labels convey the inspiration behind the beer and the quality of the brand, without the cues to analyze and document each drinking experience.

GFB is definitely a departure for us, explains Green Flash Brewmaster, Erik Jensen. We tried several malt bills and experimented with different hops to come up with what I think is an interesting and drinkable Blonde Ale with fruity hop-character and a nice malty flavor. Its become a go-to for when I want a few tasty, crushable beers.

About Palate Wreckers return:

Palate Wrecker is a hop-forward Imperial IPA which was first introduced to celebrate the anniversary of popular San Diego watering hole, Hamiltons Tavern. Due to its complex brewing process, Palate Wrecker production was put on hold to make room to introduce several new beers in 2016. The beer has a huge cult-following, and diehards have been clamoring to find out when the beer will be back in rotation.

Palate Wrecker will always be part of Green Flash, but we can only produce it every so often because the crazy process used to make the beer chokes down our brewerys capacity, explains Mike Hinkley. Bringing on Virginia Beach production capacity provided our brewers the opportunity for Palate Wrecker to get back to the business of wrecking palates.

Palate Wrecker will be brewed at both breweries, to ensure the freshest batches of this IPA are available to consumers on each coast. It will be released for a limited-time-only in February, and will be sold in 6-packs (a first time configuration for this 9.5% brew) and on draft.

The 2017 lineup:

The following beers will be returning to the Green Flash national lineup in 2017: West Coast IPA, Soul Style IPA (available in cans and bottles), Tangerine Soul Style IPA, Passion Fruit Kicker Wheat Ale, Cosmic Ristretto Baltic Porter with Espresso, Dia de los Serranos Double Stout with Serrano Chiles, Imperial IPA, and Le Freak Belgian Style Imperial IPA, as well as year round can releases - Jibe Session IPA, Sea to Sea Zwickel Lager.

The 2017 Green Flash Cellar 3 lineup of rare and barrel-aged beers includes a dozen new and returning products, which are available nationally on a limited-release basis.

Green Flash brewed more than 90,000 BBLS in 2016. Operating two facilities in 2017 presents new opportunities and new challenges, which they are prepared to meet by being relentless in their pursuit of quality and character.

Now that we have brewery operations on both coasts, our ability to provide fresh, great tasting beers to customers both east and west of the Mississippi has vastly increased. says Chris Ross, Green Flash COO. We are armed with a very strong 2017 lineup, and will be focused on continuing our double digit sales growth across all national retail outlets.

About Green Flash Brewing Co.

Green Flash Brewing Co. is headquartered in San Diego, California, and was established in 2002 by co-founders Mike and Lisa Hinkley. Brewmaster, Erik Jensen, leads brewing operations. Green Flash is an award-winning brewer of fine, craft ales, and specializes in brewing assertive and distinctive beers, such as nationally acclaimed West Coast IPA: an award-winning beer whose wide acceptance has helped define a category. In 2016, Green Flash opened a full-scale brewing facility in Virginia Beach, VA and all Green Flash beers are available nationwide. Green Flash is available in bottles and on draft nationally  offerings include a growing lineup of seasonal and limited release ales, including several barrel-aged beers from their Cellar 3 series.
Prayer seminar at Rejoice church

LE MARS, Iowa -- Rejoice Community Church, 1320 Third Ave. SE, will host "Learning to Love to Pray," a one-day prayer seminar led by Dr. Alvin Vander Griend designed to help pastors, church leaders, prayer ministries and individuals.

The seminar will start at 9 a.m. and finish at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 21. The price is $25 per person, which includes the seminar, Vander Griend's book "Love to Pray," and a cold lunch.

To purchase tickets, call the Rejoice office at 712-248-4430 or visit rejoicecommunitychurch.org.

Sunday service at First Unitarian

SIOUX CITY -- The congregation of First Unitarian Church will hear the topic, "Resist: The Musical" presented by Karen Mackey at 11 a.m. Sunday at First Unitarian Church, 2508 Jackson St.

Open house for the Rev. Rook

SIOUX CITY -- An open house will be held for the Rev. Robert Rook from 10:30-11:15 a.m. Sunday at Peace Reformed Church, 4100 Outer Drive North.

Rook has accepted a call to be the senior pastor at First Reformed Church of Oostburg, Wisconsin.

Longtime choir director to retire

SOUTH SIOUX CITY  A retirement party for longtime choir director Eleanor Tasker will be held at 9:15 a.m. Jan. 15 at First Lutheran Church, 3601 Dakota Ave.

Tasker began her service at Whitfield United Methodist Church in Sioux City in 1944 as a senior in high school. She married Allen Tasker in 1951. They moved to Mason City, Iowa, where she worked as an organist and soloist at First Methodist Church. The couple transferred to First Methodist in Storm Lake, Iowa, in 1958. They moved back to Sioux City after a year and Tasker served at Saint James United Methodist until 1964. She served at First Presbyterian Church in Morningside for the next 26 years; she started working at First Lutheran in 1989 as a choir and youth choir director. She founded the Twelfth Night Handbell Festival.

Cards may be mailed to First Lutheran Church, 3601 Dakota Ave., South Sioux City, NE 68776.
Screenings

Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30-11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary.

Programs/Self-Help Groups

Al-Anon Information Center, call 712-255-6724.

Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 712-255-6724.

Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 712-252-1333.

Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons.

Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180.

Co-Dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.

Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512.

Eating disorder coalition awareness event, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 29 at Boy's and Girl's home and family services, 2101 Court St. Contact Lisa 712-251-0570 or Michele 712-898-2351.

Clinics

Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005.

Information

Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300.

Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa.

Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991.

Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733.

Overeaters Anonymous, 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees.

St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906.

Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715.

The Link-Recovery and Freedom, 1603 Glen Ellen Road; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432.

Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623.

Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10-minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410.

Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public.

Support Groups

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935.

Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6 p.m. at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Childcare provided. 712-490-3343. All welcome.

PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116.

Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675.

GriefShare, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965.

Hospice of Siouxland, seeking volunteers. For more information, call 712-233-4144 and ask for a volunteer coordinator.

La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998.

Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441.

Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260.

Tri-State Sober Project, 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City.

Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Fridays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050.

Divorce Care, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

NAMI Siouxland, (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Support Group meets 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month at Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209.

New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624.

Orphan Sunday, 3:30-5 p.m. Sunday at Sunnybrook Community Church loft, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive.

Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213.

Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129.

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential.

Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information.

Single and Parenting, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December.

Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939.

Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927.

Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766.

Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151.

Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315.

Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453.

Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call Sally Reinert at 402-987-3516.

Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637.

South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133.

Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call 712-255-1065.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS.

Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686.

Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential.

Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders.

Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page.

A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319.

Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursdays at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church; 7 p.m. Sundays, Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.. 712-277-2901.

Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387.

After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370.

After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426.

Alzheimer's Association, Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802.

Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319.

Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260.

Connections Area Agency on Aging, and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce St. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900.
Joans funeral was last week. We said good-bye to my wonderful mother-in-law and friend. It was a simple and lovely service packed full of good memories of a life well lived. Joan fiercely loved her family, her friends, her church, and especially her Lord.

She was a traveler, with strong roots. She was always up for a new adventure, and she always loved being home. Its a curious combination. Most people are one or the other.

Some are homebodies like one of my grandfathers who got nervous if he traveled too far from his small town. Like more than 30 miles. In looking back, I might even say that he valued his routine above everything else. He was not a person made for change. He could change a tire but I hardly remember him changing into anything other than his overalls. His favorite chair never moved from its spot in the living room. And no one else ever sat in it.

Some people are adventurers who interrupt their travels only by necessities like going to work. Their feet seem always ready to go to a new place, a new land, around new people and new situations.

Joan loved her small town. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. She wrote a weekly column for the newspaper. Over the years she wrote about her fellow townspeople. Their lives. Their families, as well as her own. My son, Ethan, grew up in that column. One time when we were visiting Joan, we stopped at the local bank to get some cash. We werent sure if theyd cash a check. Not only did they oblige without a second thought, they knew who we were and all about us.

People loved reading about Joans trips. She went to Scotland twice with her sister. She traveled to Alaska every year to see her daughter, Kathie, and her family. She rode a dog sled. She tipped her toes in the ocean with her son, Don. She traveled to many, many places. Even very recently she rode a helicopter over the Grand Canyon with her sister and her brother.

Of course, her final adventure, her last journey, was her trip home to Heaven.

Ethan and I stayed at her house before and after the funeral. Kathie told us that we could look through her things to see if there was anything we wanted to keep. I found a CD with handwriting I recognized. It was my husband, Daves. His name was written with a black Sharpie along with the year 2008. The year he got sick.

Dave was a wonderful guitarist. On the CD are 11 songs hes playing. Some I remember him playing around the house. Four are ones that he composed.

I hadnt thought about it before, but I remembered that the year he got sick he was composing his own songs. He was recording them on the computer. The same computer that crashed after he passed away. We lost everything on that computer. Including, these four songs he wrote. I didnt realize that hed made a copy for his mom, but hadnt made one for us yet.

One of his original songs is titled Blues Walk. Dave loved the blues. There are some wonderful blues riffs. Another is Off the Cuff. Its a fun song that travels everywhere. The third is the one that surprised me. Its titled, Sunbrella. The name of the clown I created when I was working in childrens ministries. The song is perky and joyful and fun just like Sunbrella.

Its funny. When we were first married, Dave thought I was a little too perky and joyful, especially in the mornings. Unlike me, he was not a morning person. Im touched that he wrote an entire song for that part of me.

The final song on the CD is his final original song titled, The Last Time. How fitting. Its a beautiful song that has a wistfulness in it. Theres a depth of emotion and meaning that is not in the other songs. Its as if this is his final good-bye. How fitting to find this song as we say good-bye to Daves mom.

In our lives on this earth, we have to say good-bye to many people we love. Even when those we love are sick, its still hard to let them go.

Over the years Ive thought that for each person I let go, a little sliver takes up residence in my heart. Just like real slivers, it hurts for a while, but eventually the pain goes away. Yet, the sliver remains. It changes who we are. It becomes a permanent part of us. If we allow it to happen, it can change us for the better. We can become more compassionate, less judgmental, kinder.

We never know when The Last Time will be with the ones we love, so we need to cherish them now. Before we take that Blues Walk without them, we need to have special times that are Off the Cuff and enjoy the Sunbrella or the uniqueness of each other.

Kathy Yoder is a devotional writer. She may be reached at kathyyoder4@gmail.com.
Bathroom mats. Toilet seats. Shoes. Dog tags.

All of these items have, in recent years, gone on sale adorned with images of Hindu deities, particularly that of Ganesha, known most commonly in the West for his elephant face.

It is inappropriate, and it is offensive to devotees, said Rajan Zed, a Reno-based Hindu activist who protests against such commercial products.

I havent seen Christ on toilet seat covers. Or any symbol of Islam, said Vasudha Narayanan, a professor of religion at the University of Florida. If you wouldnt do it with one, why do you want to do it with something else? Or at least wouldnt it behoove you to check?

Every few months, Zed said, he receives a message about some insensitive commercial use of a Hindu image.

Most recently, Zed called on Amazon to pull deity-decorated skateboards and bedding from its online shelves. (This was not the first time the retailer got itself into hot water over such practices. In June, the hashtag #boycottAmazon trended on Twitter in India after users discovered doormats with images of Hindu deities available for sale. Amazon removed the items within days.)

Earlier this month, Zed asked online retailers Wayfair and Kess In House to stop selling bathmats, doormats, dog beds, leggings and rugs with images of Ganesha, who often is invoked in prayers for prosperity and success at the beginning of new ventures.

Another time, there was the Burger King commercial in Spain that featured Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, sitting atop a hamburger with the caption, The snack is sacred in Spanish. (Many Hindus are vegetarian, with beef considered especially off-limits because cows are considered sacred.)

The use of these images in a secular context, and particularly in a context that is in direct opposition to the basic tenets of the Hindu religion, displays a lack of respect, Narayanan said.

In Hinduism, myriad deities and their representation through images, sounds (like the chanting of om) and expressive forms like dance or music are an attempt to capture the many facets of a supreme being whose existence is difficult to grasp, Narayanan said. As such, depictions of the sacred are themselves considered to be sacred, she said.

Consider that time in 2013 when Urban Outfitters drew criticism for selling socks with depictions of Ganesha around the ankles.

Feet are considered the lowest form of a being, Narayanan said. Pointing ones feet at another person is considered to be extremely disrespectful, while bowing at someones feet is a mark of veneration.

When you have your foot not just pointing to but touching a god on footwear, its a double-whammy, Narayanan said. Even the most liberal Hindus that I know  would find [this] particularly jarring.

Its not that Hindus categorically reject the use of religious images on artistic or commercial products.

In India, for example, images of Lakshmi are commonly used to sell lottery tickets. In another well-known advertisement, Hanuman, a monkey-faced deity known in Hindu mythology as an efficient, swift emissary, promises fast delivery for ABT Parcel Service, a transportation and post service in south India.

Context shapes whether something is a misappropriation or appropriation or appreciation, said Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group for Hindu Americans.

Someone whos doing it out of appreciation or reverence would never put it on a toilet. That automatically becomes the filter, she said.

Most of the time, when Zed reaches out to companies to ask them to stop selling an item or displaying an advertisement, he said, they apologize and comply. Its ignorance, basically, Zed said. People dont know our traditions and our deities.

Indians are a relatively new immigrant group in the U.S., with many having arrived after immigration laws changed in 1965 to abolish national-origins quotas and establish a preference for skilled workers and families.

Indians make up only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and Hindus are a fraction of that, as Indians practice a variety of faiths. There also are Hindu immigrants from other countries, albeit in even smaller numbers.

Knowing someone from a religious group is linked with having more positive views of that group, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey. Only 22 percent of respondents in the survey said they knew someone who was Hindu, and when asked to rate their attitudes toward various religious groups on a feelings thermometer (where 0 degrees meant viewing a group as coldly and negatively as possible), they rated Hindus somewhat neutrally, at 50 degrees.

By contrast, a majority of Americans said they knew someone who was Catholic or Jewish; those groups received ratings of 63 and 62 degrees, respectively.

Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University in New York and author of Who Owns Culture?, a book about cultural appropriation and American law, said people commonly borrow religious symbols from other cultures because they are the clearest expression of those cultures.

People reach for things that are accessible  and dont stop to think necessarily what those pieces of culture might mean, Scafidi said. Instead, they infuse the symbol with their own, usually inchoate, meaning, she said.

It doesnt typically come from a place of racism or hatred. Its more thoughtlessness, Scafidi added.
SIOUX CITY -- Judy Stanwick began to cry when she heard a kidney was available.

Her tears welled up not from joy, but from fear.

On that April evening in 1998, Stanwick was performing peritoneal dialysis at her home when the phone rang. This treatment for kidney failure uses the lining of a patient's belly to filter their blood inside their body. Stanwick, who was diagnosed with kidney failure two years earlier, was comfortable with the process.

"I didn't want to go. I wasn't going to do it," Stanwick said of the kidney transplant. She immediately called her brother, Doug.

Polycystic kidney disease runs in Stanwick's family. Her mother, her brother and her daughter have all been diagnosed with the disease, which causes clusters of cysts to develop in the kidneys. Stanwick's brother received a kidney transplant, while her 37-year-old daughter's kidney function is normal.

"(Doug) basically told me if I didn't get in the car and go he was going to kick my butt," recalled Stanwick, who began the five-hour drive to the University of Iowa Transplant Center in Iowa City knowing there were two patients ahead of her on the transplant list. "As we pulled into the parking lot, they called and said, 'You are a go. Where are you?'"

A few hours later, Stanwick was lying on the operating room table watching medical personnel unpack her new kidney from a small cooler. The organ came from a 39-year-old man who was killed in a motorcycle crash. Stanwick spent five days in the hospital.

"It was weird for me because they brought a cart for the flowers and I walked all the way through and out," she said.

More than 18 years later, the 57-year-old's transplanted kidney is functioning normally in spite of a battle with breast cancer and the rapid onset of Guillain-Barre syndrome two years ago. Guillain-Barre is a potentially life-threatening condition that causes the immune system to attack the nerves resulting in paralysis.

Ashar Luqman, a nephrologist with Renal Associates who monitors Stanwick's kidney function, said being in a wheelchair and on dialysis would've been extremely hard on Stanwick's body.

"It was a huge blessing that she had a kidney transplant at that point in time," he said. "Thankfully, her kidney function has stayed as normal as possible."

Silent killer

The kidneys -- bean-shaped organs that regulate fluid balance in the body and filter waste from the blood -- are as vital as the brain, heart, liver and lungs.

When Stanwick's kidneys began to fail, she couldn't walk from the parking lot into the store. Her husband had to drop her off at the door.

"You don't realize that your kidneys are failing. You get weaker and you start compensating," she said.

Eighty percent of the cases of kidney disease in the United States are related to diabetes and high blood pressure, according to Luqman, who said the consumption of fast food -- a major contributor in the obesity epidemic -- has led to an increase in kidney failure over the years.

He said it's important to visit a primary care physician for routine blood and urine testing because kidney disease doesn't cause symptoms early on. If blood or protein is detected in a patient's urine, signaling a decline in kidney function, he said the patient should see a nephrologist as soon as possible to explore treatment options.

When the kidneys stop working, patients might experience fatigue, loss of appetite, itching and fluid retention in their legs.

"Their association is, 'We can pee. Our kidneys are fine,'" Luqman said. "Kidneys do not quit peeing. Some people who are on dialysis are still making urine."

Stanwick said her high blood pressure went untreated for years, unlike her daughter's, which is being managed with medication. She thinks that could be the reason why her condition progressed and her daughter's hasn't.

Luqman said patients with intermediate stage kidney disease have a 40 to 50 percent chance of requiring dialysis if their blood sugar and blood pressure levels remain out of control. If they can regulate those levels and be monitored by a nephrologist, he said the chance of the disease progressing drops to 5 to 10 percent.

"Going into kidney failure is not the end of the world. They can still get home dialysis. They can still get a kidney transplant if they're patient with their dialysis and they're compliant with their dialysis," he said.

Options exist

According to estimates from the National Kidney Foundation, more than 615,000 people in the United States have end-stage renal disease. About 430,000 are on dialysis and more than 185,000 have had a kidney transplant.

Luqman said education can help ease fears surrounding dialysis and kidney transplantation. He said it's helpful for patients to meet people who've received a donor kidney or had dialysis.

"I cannot tell you how many times I've had patients when they initially see me say, 'Absolutely no dialysis,'" he said. "When they start getting sick and the kidneys shut down, at that time it's too little, too late because they've already gotten to a point where even if we start doing dialysis they're not going to feel a lot better."

Dialysis is a process of removing waste and excess water from the blood.

Peritoneal dialysis can be done at home through a catheter placed in the abdomen. Stanwick said she did dialysis at home with the help of a cycler machine and manually with bags of fluid while working in a law office.

Hemodialysis, another form of dialysis, can be done in a hospital or dialysis center. A physician makes an entrance into a patient's blood vessels to access the blood, which is cleaned with a dialysis machine and an artificial kidney or special filter.

"Kidney failure is not a perfect situation. Once your kidney fails there is no medication we can give to regenerate the kidney cells," Luqman said. "No matter whether it's dialysis or transplant, it's not as good as your own kidney, but we have options."

According to the Iowa Donor Network, 599 people in the state are in need of a kidney transplant.

Donors under the age of 55 are preferred, but since there is a great need for organs, Luqman said the age limit can exceed 55.

"Based on the research between 55 to 80 you can still donate the kidney, but those kidneys are not lasting as long as somebody who's less than 55," he said.

A study published last month in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology found that kidneys from donors between the ages of 50 and 79 can function for years after transplantation.

Italian researchers examined 650 kidney transplants from 2003-2013 involving deceased donors ages 50 to over 80. They discovered that the five-year survival rates of the kidney recipients ranged from 88 to 90 percent.

Luqman said a kidney from a cadaver can last anywhere from one to two years on the short end of the spectrum and 10 to 12 years on the long end. A kidney transplanted from a recipient's living relative is likely to have a longer lifespan, but that option wasn't available to Stanwick due to her family history of polycystic kidney disease.

Stanwick has three kidneys in her body. Luqman said a diseased kidney usually isn't removed unless the organ bleeds, becomes infected or outgrows the belly. He said 90 percent of transplant patients are able to keep a diseased kidney in their bodies.

The doses of anti-rejection medication that Stanwick takes today are minimal. Luqman said the chances of her body rejecting the donor organ at this point are "pretty low."

"She is probably one of the longest living persons with normal kidney function," Luqman said. "So far we haven't seen any decline in her kidney function, which is excellent."
SIOUX CITY | City staff will seek public input Tuesday on a project that would green up the plaza in front of the downtown complex housing the Promenade Cinema 14 while also decreasing storm water runoff.

The proposed improvement project would turn half of the existing concrete in front of the building to green space while adding decorative concrete elements, informal seating areas, tree trenches and bio-retention areas with ponding areas and shrubs.

"It will make it look much nicer," said Melissa Campbell, Sioux City's environmental services analyst. "I think it's a great improvement because we will be adding 50 percent green space."

The project is funded in part from an $80,000 Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship grant received in February 2016 to be used for projects that demonstrate a reduction in urban storm water runoff and promote awareness of the effect runoff has on water quality.

Sioux City's project was one of 13 in Iowa that received grants, Campbell said, and the city has budgeted a total of $535,000 for the project.

A public meeting, scheduled from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Sioux City Public Museum, 607 Fourth St., will allow residents to weigh in on two preliminary designs.

City staff and consultants from Des Moines-based architecture, planning and engineering firm ISG Inc. will discuss the project at the meeting.

Campbell said the Promenade building at 924 Fourth St. is a prime spot for the project because of its downtown location. She said storm water runoff from around the theater currently goes directly into the city's storm sewer system.

Proposed designs will reduce runoff and filter pollutants through the bioretention cells, tree trenches and green space, with signs showing how each of the components helps water quality.

The city has two designs, Campbell said, both of which incorporate the same elements but have slight differences in the placement of the elements.

Campbell said both designs would keep the existing fountain in front of the theater and would not affect traffic flow in the area.

If the project moves forward, construction is scheduled to begin in the spring, with a tentative completion date of June 30.
SIOUX CITY  Developing more skilled laborers in Iowa is a top goal of local and state lawmakers and employers.

However, officials with the post-secondary institutions that train the next generation of workers are worried about rising tuition, mounting student loan debt and a potential cut in state funding, which they warn pose a problem not only for their schools, but the state's business sector as well.

Steve Warnstadt, government relations coordinator at Western Iowa Tech Community College, reiterated that potential pitfall during a legislative forum hosted Thursday morning by the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. The audience included State Sens. Bill Anderson and Rick Bertrand, Reps. Chris Hall and Chuck Holz, and Reps.-elect Jim Carlin and Tim Kacena.

The percentage of Iowa community college students who have to take out student loans is the second-highest in the country, Warnstadt told the more than 40 attendees. These are the students that are filling the jobs that we hear businesses have the greatest need for and forcing community college students to take out large loans kind of deters people from being able to go to a community college and being able to fill the jobs going unfilled.

Warnstadt, a former state lawmaker, wanted to know if the local legislators planned on taking up or supporting any action during the upcoming session that would reduce community college tuition.

Bertrand, a two-term Republican incumbent from Sioux City, said there were no immediate plans to discuss better ways to fund community colleges.

Right out of the chute, probably not, Steve  you know that, Bertrand said. But its always on the back of our mind to get slipped in there during a negotiation point to finally set up a revenue stream thats more probably fair and equitable to community colleges.

Carlin, R-Sioux City, who takes the oath of office for the first time Monday when the Legislature convenes in Des Moines, said he knows there is great support for community colleges in the state and doesnt expect that to change.

We recognize the economic benefit that community colleges bring to Sioux City and Northwest Iowa and the training and the skilled labor that they bring to the table, he said. Obviously it generates tax revenues for the state and its a just win-win for the state.

Carlins comments were backed by Holz, a two-term Republican from Le Mars.

My feeling on community colleges is they fill that niche thats so important, Holz said. Not all kids are college bound students and we need to make sure that those kids that want to have a physical trade are trained and stuff to do that.

Holz pointed out that nursing, robotics and welding courses at WIT help fill a need in the area and continued support for those programs is vital to the region.

If we want economic development to happen here, we need to make sure that we have the people to do those jobs, he said.

Officials with Sioux Citys two four-year colleges also had questions about the legislatures support for higher education.

Terri Curry, Morningside College vice president of enrollment/student life, championed the panel of elected officials on behalf of her school and Briar Cliff University to continue supporting Iowa Tuition Grants, which are awarded to qualified Iowans who enroll at one of the state's private colleges and universities.

Hall, a seven-year Democratic representative from Sioux City, agreed with his colleagues that there is broad support for community colleges and the tuition grant program on both sides of the aisle, but is concerned about the ramifications if those initiatives lost state funding. He pointed out that the states business community recently has asked for the legislatures assistance in developing workers more so than providing tax cuts or major deregulation acts.

These business entities are telling us time and time again that the one thing they need to make the states economy grow is more skilled workers, Hall said. If we want to help Iowas economy grow and if we want young people to stay here and be converted into new residents and workers, we need to actually invest in skilled workforce and not cut our tax base.
LE MARS, Iowa | One person was injured in a single vehicle crash in the Le Mars, Iowa city limits Friday.

Iowa State Patrol Trooper John Farley said adult male suffered serious injuries in an all-terrain vehicle-related crash shortly after 2 p.m. on Key Avenue, north of County Road C 38.

Farley said it was not immediately known what caused the crash, and it is still under investigation of the Le Mars Police Department.

He said the man was transported via ambulance to Floyd Valley Regional Hospital in Le Mars.
WHITING, Iowa | Driving on Monona County Road K-45 between Whiting and Sloan, you see a sign gracing an old barn, just off the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. The yellow banner says, "Thank You Union Pacific!!!"

It comes from the family of the late Vernon and Lenora Gloyer, thanking railroad crew members for the care they took to wave at Vernon and Lenora through the years.

The track runs along the old Gloyer farm, not far from their home immediately west of K-45. The couple didn't see the train as a nuisance. They welcomed these roaring "iron horses" at all hours of day and night.

Vernon Gloyer died of cancer 12 years ago. Late in his life, according to his daughter, Vernice Gloyer Ankerstjerne, of nearby Onawa, Iowa, Vernon sat outside in a lawn chair and counted the number of cars on each train. He loved waving at the engineer and at anyone who might occupy the caboose.

Lenora kept Vernon's waving tradition alive after his death. Ankerstjerne said her mother would wave a handkerchief from the kitchen window as the train passed. In summer months, the wail of the engine's whistle would prompt Lenora to dash outside for a friendly salute as the UP zoomed by.

A Union Pacific train stopped at the farm a few years ago, reportedly to allow another train on the Sloan line to advance. The engineer walked to the Gloyer house and left Lenora a hat. Another train crew stopped to salute her on her 84th birthday.

Then, there was a time when a train experienced mechanical issues in front of their home. Lenora offered her assistance by driving the engineer one mile, so he could address connection issues at the back of the train. According to her daughter, Lenora was honored to "pay it forward" in this manner.

Lenora was 85 when she died on Nov. 28, 2015.

Months after her mother's death, Ankerstjerne learned of a Union Pacific effort to make and erect a sign for "Granny Gloyer's Crossing" at the farm. On a Saturday in early November, crew members and Gloyer family members and friends numbering more than 70 turned out for a sign dedication. The sign features a decades-old photo of Vernon and Lenora holding hands.

"The conductors said my mom made their trips a little more interesting and fun as they looked forward to seeing her," Ankerstjerne said. "It might be 3 a.m., but they'd notice how she'd turn on the lights and wave from the kitchen window. I didn't realize how much these guys loved her until she died and I received the cards and letters. The crews then put their money together to get this sign built."

While an impediment to the speed and immediacy our "microwave culture" seeks, train traffic is also a sign of a healthy economy, moving commodities and products, goods sold and purchased across the continent. Each train, you might say, has its own multiplier effect, doing what it can to put bread on the table.

Vernon and Lenora Gloyer understood this much. They also came to know there were conductors, engineers, and other railroad workers doing what they could to keep the trains running safely and on-time. The decency of two friendly faces in the countryside did not go unnoticed.

The fact her parents had a positive impact on the Union Pacific prompted Vernice Gloyer Ankerstjerne to return the gesture, thanking the Union Pacific pros for what they did over the course of a half-century at "Granny Gloyer's Crossing."
This week on the podcast, reporters discuss the start of the Iowa State Legislature, who might be throwing their hat in the ring for the 2018 gubernatorial primaries, and Congressional Republicans stumbling at the start of their session.

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, Christinia Crippes, Ed Tibbetts, Todd Dorman and Erin Murphy.

This week's show was produced by Max Freund and the music heard in the podcast is courtesy of Johnny on Point. 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
IDA GROVE, Iowa | The mayor of Ida Grove has resigned, citing the city council's decision to terminate the long-time city clerk.

Mayor Morris Hurd announced his resignation Wednesday, a day after the council declined to retain Edie Ball as clerk for another year, Councilman Doug Clough said Friday. The move came during the council's annual organizational session.

While he couldn't speak to Hurd's reasons for resigning, Clough said he knows Hurd had a good working relationship with Ball, who had served as city clerk for nearly nine years.

Hurd could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.

Hurd was elected in November 2013 and was in the final year of a four-year term that runs through Dec. 31, 2017. Paul Cates, the city's mayor pro tem, was elevated to interim mayor. Clough said Cates would prefer to return to his council duties as soon as possible.

Iowa cities have the option of filling a mayoral vacancy by a council appointment or a special election.

Clough said the council would prefer to appoint a mayor to serve the rest of this year to avoid the cost of a special election.

Ida Grove residents could petition for a special election if the council opts for an appointment.

The Ida County seat of 2,142 has just gone through a multi-year period where a lot of infrastructure pieces, such as bridges, have been added and the downtown King Theatre has been remodeled. Clough said Ball had performed well as those projects came to fruition.

With that work finished, the council wanted to head forward with a new city clerk well versed in promoting Ida Grove, Clough said. A marketing push is a goal of council members, he said.

"We want people to come to Ida Grove and stay," Clough said.

Clough said the three-member city office is now down to only one worker. Another city employee left in late 2016 to become city clerk 50 miles away in Lawton, Iowa.

"We've got some backups coming in," Clough said.

The goal, he said, is to hire a city clerk within two months, in order to keep the city functioning well for citizens. The position will be advertised.

In addition to Clough and Cates, council members are Scott Tomlinson, Jeff Buehler and Ryan Goodman.
SIOUX CITY | A public meeting to talk about a potential roundabout at a busy Riverside intersection drew mixed reviews Thursday.

The meeting was at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, near where the proposed roundabout would combine traffic for Pacquette Avenue, Military Road and Riverside Boulevard.

Jon Marburger, an engineer with JEO Consulting Group Inc., is heading the project for the city. He said the dozens of citizens at the open-forum meeting gave him an array of responses.

"I just spoke with a bicyclist that said he hates roundabouts, but right after, another bicyclist said they liked them," Marburger, with the South Sioux City company, said. "In general, some people love them and some people don't. It really is a mixed bag."

Roundabouts direct traffic in a counterclockwise direction around a center island by using yield or directional signs. The proposed roundabout would be the first in Sioux City.

"It is a new solution -- especially for this community," he said. "In the last 10 years, they have gotten a lot more prevalent in the country."

Marburger said the key selling point for the circular intersection is safety.

"A traditional four-way intersection -- which there is now -- has 32 conflict points, and a lot of those conflict points are going to be T-bone type accidents. So anytime you enter, leave, or cross traffic thats a conflict point," he said. "A modern roundabout has eight conflict points, so you cut the number down by 75 percent in that intersection so there is huge safety benefit... All of your potential accidents (in a roundabout) would be a sideswipe or rear-end."

Marburger also said that pedestrians crossing the streets are safer since they would be only crossing one way of traffic at a time.

"And cars tend to move slower when entering the roundabout," he said. "Compared to when there is a green light and drivers just gun it..."

He added there is also a possibility for the city to add landscaping or flora in the center of the roundabout to enhance the aesthetic.

"I think it will improve traffic flow, but it will also make it tough on some of the businesses that are right there on the corner as far as getting their products in and out of there with semis," Riverside resident Pete Peters said at the meeting. "I don't like the darn things, but I think it will improve traffic flow."

Marburger agreed a con of the roundabout would be the size, since the city would have to acquire rights-of-way around the area in order to make it large enough for semis to be able to make the turns.

Another disadvantage to the project would be its proximity to the railroad.

"When a train goes by, it could cause a backup of cars onto the roundabout," he said.

The consulting firm and city gathered the written comments they received from the meeting and will conduct a traffic survey throughout the next month. Marburger said they will then create a computer simulation for the roundabout that would test all of the potential problems. The results will then be presented at another public meeting for further input. That meeting is scheduled for early March.

Sioux City civil engineer Brittany Anderson said the Thursday meeting is a kickoff to a larger Military Road reconstruction project that would include resurfacing the road and bridge going into North Sioux City. The total project will be multi-funded between the Iowa Department of Transportation, Sioux City, North Sioux City and the state of South Dakota, she said.

Marburger said a cost estimate for the project has not been calculated. If everything is approved, start-up could happen in the spring of 2018.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | South Sioux City superintendent Vernon Fisher is no longer involved with day-to-day management of the northeast Nebraska district.

The district's school board last month named assistant superintendent Todd Strom as interim superintendent. Fisher submitted his resignation at the Dec. 12 meeting. He had previously disclosed he would remain with the district through the remainder of the school year.

After accepting his resignation and appointing Strom, the board agreed to have Fisher stay on as a consultant and collect his salary until his current contract expires on June 30.

Fisher said Thursday the timing of his resignation was to give the school district ample time to find a replacement.

In that transition, they want to try to make that as seamless as possible, he said. At the same time, they wanted my expertise and leadership and asked me to serve a consulting role.

Fisher denied unconfirmed reports from at least one local media outlet that he had been escorted out of his office Wednesday.

Thats not true at all, he said. Im still an employee at the district. Im still on contract.

When he announced his resignation, Fisher said he wanted to pursue a "new career opportunity."

Neither a Journal call nor email to school board president Marcia Mahon were immediately returned Thursday.

Strom has served as assistant superintendent at South Sioux City since July 2015. He previously was the secondary principal at Crofton (Nebraska) Community Schools from July 2001 to July 2015.
STORM LAKE, Iowa | Police say a Storm Lake man sexually assaulted a woman and then fled the residence Wednesday evening.

Jose Rodriguez, 27, was said to have entered the home of a woman in the 1100 block of East Third Street without her permission before 6:20 p.m., according to a press release issued by the Storm Lake Police Department.

The woman asked Rodriguez to leave and he refused. The release said he then sexually assaulted her before fleeing from the residence in a red vehicle.

Police eventually found Rodriguez at 712 Cayuga St. and took him into custody.

He was charged with first-degree burglary and third-degree sexual assault, both felonies.

The woman was treated at Buena Vista Regional Medical Center.
SIOUX CITY | Coming out of a frigid midweek period, Siouxland winter temperatures are warming but the arrival of 30 degrees has been pushed back to Sunday.

Temperatures reached below zero Friday morning, following cold days from Tuesday through Thursday, where highs struggled to reach the teens-degrees range.

The temperature is expected to plummet to 2 degrees above zero on Saturday morning, reach a high of 18 on Saturday, then drop to 4 degrees Sunday morning. A more substantial warming trend will follow, with highs of 30 degrees forecast for Sunday and Monday.

The forecast holds a 40 percent chance of snow Tuesday from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. for the Sioux City area.

Historically, 28 degrees is the average high temperature in Sioux City over the days from Jan. 2-17.

People are advised to take precautions in cold temperatures. They should avoid prolonged exposure to cold.

Additionally, dress in layers with a wicking fabric to keep skin dry, wear mittens, since they provide more warmth than gloves, and wear a hat since most heat is lost through the top of the head.
WASHINGTON -- Will Donald Trump deprive President Obama of what we have come to think of as a normal post-presidency, the relatively serene life of reflection, writing, philanthropy and high-minded speeches to friendly audiences?

In recent decades, we have become accustomed to the idea of ex-presidents who leave political combat behind. They might occasionally speak out on behalf of their party: Bill Clinton was an effective "explainer in chief" for Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. But with some exceptions (Jimmy Carter on the Middle East comes to mind), they usually avoided trying to influence policy. In their above-the-fray roles, former commanders in chief sometimes improved their standing in the polls. George W. Bush is a prominent example of the less controversy/more affection dynamic.

But former presidents have not always pulled back from politics. John Quincy Adams had the most unusual post-White House career. Two years after leaving the presidency, he embarked on a nearly 17-year stint in the House of Representatives where he was one of the country's most eloquent agitators against slavery and for Indian rights.

Martin Van Buren and Theodore Roosevelt both left the White House only to seek the presidency again on third-party tickets -- Van Buren in 1848, TR in 1912.

It's already clear that Obama, leaving office at a young 55, intends to pursue something more than the quiet life. He will lay down some preliminary markers on policy next week in a Farewell Address. He has signaled that he wants to energize a new generation of Democrats and help rebuild a party that he will leave in less than optimal shape. Democrats control neither the House nor the Senate and have seen their share of governorships and state legislative seats decimated.

He is already lined up to work with Eric Holder, his former attorney general, to help Democrats in gubernatorial and legislative races. Their goal is to fight Republican gerrymanders by influencing the drawing of congressional district boundaries after the 2020 census.

And it would be good to see Obama visit Appalachia and the old factory towns and cities where Trump did well to connect with white working-class voters who have soured on progressive politics.

But Obama could be pushed toward a larger role if Trump proves to be as profound a threat as his opponents fear. It may fall to the president of hope and change to become the national spokesman for opposition and even resistance on civil liberties, civil rights, press freedom, the rights of immigrants and religious minorities, and the United States' standing in the world.

A largely offstage but lively debate is already unfolding over Obama's coming role. In one view, Obama should recede and allow new voices in his party to take the lead. The Democrats' path back to power, this argument goes, will best be blazed by a younger generation that can declare its independence from the politics of the past -- exactly what Obama himself did in 2008.

A related argument sees Obama as inciting a negative reaction if he becomes too vocal, too quickly. Even if the apolitical post-presidency has rather shallow historical roots, it has become something of a norm that Obama ought to be careful about challenging.

But these qualms might be most useful as a guide to how and when Obama should engage. In the unlikely event that Trump governs in a more moderate way, Obama's activism might not be necessary. And even if Obama's voice is needed to rally dissent, it would be a mistake for him to jump into the debate too quickly. His witness should be seen as an emergency measure, the actions of a leader who could not sit by while his country was in peril.

Obama can take risks in confronting Trump that more conventional politicians, with their futures ahead of them, might not. He has the capacity to seize the country's attention on the issues that matter. Here, the accustomed behavior of ex-presidents could work in Obama's favor. His fellow citizens would see him as speaking out reluctantly and despite his desire to move on to a new phase in his life.

He would have to calibrate his interventions. He doesn't want to become a daily commentator on all things political. But his popularity as he departs and the record he leaves behind on job creation and growth give him added credibility with a broad swath of Americans.

My hunch is that Obama would prefer to hang back from politics. My expectation is that Trump will not give him that option.
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City saw record residential housing growth in 2016, easily surpassing the previous record set just last year.

The city's Planning and Zoning Department issued building permits for 241 housing units in 2016, up nearly 20 percent from 205 in 2015, according to a news release Friday.

"We've had a housing shortage for quite a while, and we're finally starting to see that alleviated," said senior planner Chris Madsen. "I think a lot of it is the commercial and industrial development that's growing the region and the town that's required a lot more housing."

The last five years have seen a dramatic uptick in the rate of building permits issued following a decade of slow growth. According to city data, an average of 63 building permits for residential housing were issued between 2002 and 2011. Over the past five years, that average has increased 159, driven by two consecutive years where the total has eclipsed 200.

Fifty percent of the new 2016 housing, or 150 units, were apartment units. Ninety-four of the units were single-family residences and 27 were condos.

Madsen said 120 of the new apartment units belong to the Summit Apartments at Sunnybrook, an eight-building development currently under construction along the northeast corner of Sunnybrook Drive and Christy Road.

In 2015, 105 units were permitted for the development, bringing the total project to 225 units. Residents moved into the first completed building in September 2016.

Ho-Chunk Inc.'s Virginia Square development in the 100 block of Virginia Street downtown was permitted for 27 units in 2016. The project will renovate three former industrial buildings in Sioux City's downtown into modern apartments and a commercial area.

City manager Bob Padmore said Friday that the increase in both single-family and rental housing has been exciting to watch. He said he is also pleased to see Sioux City gradually building more housing downtown, an area that it has lagged behind in.

"Maybe we were a little slow in getting to it, but now that we're getting it, it's proving beneficial to everybody," he said.

Madsen pointed to a proposal to renovate the former Bekins building at the corner of Wesley Parkway and West Fourth Street into a 70- to 75-unit apartment complex, as another project to look forward to.

A proposal to rezone that property will go before the Sioux City Council during Monday's meeting with the full recommendation of the city's Planning and Zoning Commission.

Madsen said planning staff expect residential construction in the Whispering Creek and Eagle Ridge developments to help keep the trend going.

Padmore pointed to the new Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant in 2017, scheduled to open in July with more than 1,000 workers, as another driver for continued growth.
DES MOINES | The process by which Iowas state troopers, correctional facility staff and teachers  among others  negotiate their wages and benefits with the state appears destined for changes in 2017.

One of the options being discussed in the Iowa Capitol  which is now under complete Republican control  that would have a significant impact would be to require unions and other organizations that represent public employees to hold annual certification votes among its members.

A similar measure was included in the package of collective bargaining laws passed in Wisconsin in 2011. Since passage of that law, there are 132,000 fewer union members in Wisconsin, and the share of union members as a share of the workforce has fallen by almost half, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

What youve got now is you have unions that got certified in the 1970s and its never been looked at since. So I think what Wisconsin said is, wait a minute, lets let the employees make that decision every couple of years. I think thats something the (Iowa) Legislature is seriously looking at, yeah, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said Thursday in an interview with the Des Moines Bureau.

Tammy Wawro, president of the Iowa State Education Association, which represents more than 34,000 Iowa teachers, said such a law would not have a dramatic impact on the organization because its members enroll each year.

But that doesnt mean Wawro is supportive of such a law, and she said she suspects it could be an act of political retribution against an organization that for the past six years has pressed Republican state legislators to provide more state funding to public K-through-12 schools.

Im curious as to how many constituents of the governor have asked him, when they door-knocked (during the campaign) or talked to people in main street, that having unions recertify every year is something that the public wants, Wawro said. I think we have fought hard for public school funding and maybe thats coming back as a backlash. But if we cant be the voice for our public schools, there isnt another voice.

In the past, any such legislation would have been stopped by Democrats in control of the Iowa Senate.

But as a result of the Nov. 8 election, Republicans have complete lawmaking control at the Iowa Capitol for the first time in 20 years, and they plan to use that newfound authority to make changes to the states collective bargaining laws during the upcoming legislative session.

Any debate over collective bargaining issues is likely to create some legislative fireworks.

Democrats, now in the minority in both the Iowa House and Senate and thus incapable of stopping the GOPs agenda, have pledged to be vocal opponents of any proposed changes to collective bargaining.

They have in the past.

In 2015, when majority Republicans in the Iowa House pursued a bill that would have tweaked one portion of the states collective bargaining laws, minority Democrats used legislative maneuvers  some of them rarely invoked  to drag out the debate over nine hours and two calendar days.

Were preparing for an all-out fight to ensure that Iowas workers are at the table and have a voice in the decision-making here in the state of Iowa, said Mark Smith, leader of the minority House Democrats. We believe that there are important issues that affect the well-being of workers and that theirs are voices that need to be heard as well.

Republican leaders say collective bargaining changes are needed to protect Iowa taxpayers.

The goal here is to make sure we have the taxpayer at the table and people are mindful that resources do come from somewhere and those folks have a voice in this as well, said Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake. And then I think just trying to find some common-sense approaches that make sense to people would be a good start.

The state already has delivered a clear signal of at least one planned change to collective bargaining laws. When making initial contract proposals to the various unions that represent the states employees, the state did not offer specifics on health insurance because of expected changes to the law that may come during the legislative session.

Branstad has said since the election results swept Republicans into power that he would like to explore a master contract for all state employees health insurance.

Were looking at, is there a better, more efficient way that we can deliver health care, Branstad said. We want to make sure that we provide quality health care for all our employees. But right now, its being done on a very ad hoc basis, not just the state but also school districts, counties, cities. Id like us to look at, could it be much more efficient if we had one master contract as opposed to all of these individual ones?

The bill that sparked Democrats outrage in 2015 would have altered the way collective bargaining disputes are mediated.

When the state and a public employee union cannot agree to contract terms, an arbitrator picks one sides final offer. The 2015 bill approved by House Republicans would have given arbitrators flexibility to pick a midpoint between the offers. That proposal could resurface this year.

Upmeyer said Republicans may again consider that proposal, Branstads master contract for health insurance and possibly others.

Were certainly hopeful that we can have good conversations and work hard to allay what I think is sort of unnecessary fear (over potential changes), Upmeyer said. We appreciate what (public employees) do, so our goal is to create sustainable kinds of environments where we dont find ourselves in a position to not be able to continue to do health care or salaries because we just dont have the resources.

Dan Homan, president of the states largest public employee union, said he is disappointed by the states initial contract offers and thinks attempts to change collective bargaining laws are simply an attempt to make wages and benefits cheaper for the state at the expense of its employees.

Its clear to me that this governor has a different vision than what I believe everyday Iowans have for the hard-working state employees that provide needed services to them, Homan said. I guess time will tell on just exactly how bad a particular (political) party wants to wreck the Iowa that most Iowans love.

Rod Boshart of the Journal Des Moines Bureau contributed to this story.
Didi Chuxing, China's biggest car-hailing company, indicated on Thursday that it was stepping on the accelerator of global expansion, with an investment in its Brazilian counterpart.

The move signals the Beijing-based group is refocusing its attention on expanding in overseas markets after it struck a truce with Uber Technologies Inc in China, analysts said.

Didi said in a statement it has invested an undisclosed amount in 99, a major ride-sharing firm in Brazil and will assume a seat on its board of directors.

Peter Fernandez, CEO of 99, said Didi's financing, technology and operating experience "will play a key supporting role as 99 expands its presence in Brazil and Latin America".

The Brazilian startup, founded in 2012, said it offers ride-hailing services across 550 cities in Brazil.

Didi Chuxing CEO and founder Cheng Wei said the move makes strategic sense.

"China and Brazil are the world's foremost emerging markets, with enormous opportunities for the ride-sharing industry," he said.

The investment came after Did acquired its arch rival Uber's China business last August, giving it 90 percent share of the world's biggest ride-hailing arena. Didi covers about 400 million users in more than 400 Chinese cities.

"The global battle is reignited," said Zhang Xu, an analyst at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys.

"Whether Didi can take on Uber in overseas markets will depend on how quickly it can integrate its resources with its foreign partners."

Forrester Research Inc tech analyst Wang Xiaofeng said that Didi could rapidly march into overseas markets via partnerships.

"But so far, Didi's ties with them have been capital-oriented, with limited cooperation on products and services," she added.
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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. 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The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
If you're familiar with San Francisco's Castro District, you're likely familiar with Cleve Jones, an activist and HIV survivor who's been part of the community since the 1970s.

A close friend of slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, whom he says was like a father to him, Jones was present for many of the most historic events in the Castro's history: the night Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered at City Hall, the White Night Riots--the result of Milk and Moscone's killer getting a light sentence--and the peak years of the AIDS pandemic.

Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was one of the first openly gay elected officials in U.S. history. He was the first to get protections for LGBT people signed into law. When Milk and Moscone were killed, Milk had been in office for less than a year.

In 1987, Jones co-created the AIDS Memorial Quilt to honor his fallen friends. And on the night the U.S. Supreme Court legalized marriage equality nationwide, it was Jones who took to the podium to address the Castro community.

Now, he's written a new memoir, When We Rise, which looks back on his life as an activist, and on the decades-long fight for LGBT equality and upon the rights of those with HIV/AIDS.

"My generation is dying out," Jones, 62, told SFGN. "I want the younger generation to know what we fought forI want them to know what we lost and what we won."

While LGBT rights have made enormous strides since he first came to the Castro in the 1970s, Jones wants people to remind people that the battle isn't over, especially as Donald Trump's presidency looms on the horizon.

Many of the President-elect's cabinet picks have long histories of fighting against LGBT equality. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented hundreds of hate crimes since Election Day, many of them against gay or trans people. "Trump has unleashed and emboldened some of the darkest elements in American politics," Jones said. "He's surrounding himself with extreme bigots, deniers of climate change, racists, homophobes and anti-Semites. Once that genie is out of the bottle, it's very hard to put it back."

"People should be frightened," he said. "How are we going to protect the most vulnerable among us? Our immigrants, Muslims and transgender people?"

But his decades of activism have also taught him not to give up hope. "There were many times in my life when I thought that my life was over, or that our movement had been defeatedbut we endured. We're still here, and we're still fighting."

Jones acknowledges that the battle against the incoming President is going to be a long and difficult one. Though he's still leading the charges from the front lines, Jones, is not sure how much longer he'll be able to continue. He addressed this when he spoke at a November 27 memorial gathering for Milk and Moscone which commemorated the 38th anniversary of their deaths.

"I'm still disgusted by the election," he said. "I don't think I'm going to live long enough to see the damage this administration will do be undone. It's quite possible that everything we fought so hard for will be lost. We cannot be divided. We must stand together--if we can stick together we can prevail. How many times did we think it was over? But we kept fighting. It isn't over."

Jones warns that it may get rough after Donald Trump assumes office on January 20, 2017. "We all need to prepare to fight like hell to protect what we've won, not just for our community but for our nation," he said. "I believe our democracy hangs in the balance."

Jones' book When We Rise is now available. When We Rise will air as an eight-hour miniseries on ABC in 2017.
In my last column I wrote about my first cruise with an LGBT tour group, the Pied Piper Post-Thanksgiving cruise. To my delight, it was not all about pretty boys in skimpy swimsuits (but there were plenty of those available). After a day at sea we reached our first port of call, and from then on, the pattern was; explore a port, board the ship and party while we sailed to the next island. Now lets focus on the all the fun shipboard and at the Caribbean ports of call.

Puerto Rico, My Hearts Devotion

We arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sunday afternoon and had a few hours to explore the city. The ship docks right on the edge of the Old Town neighborhood, so we left the ship to explore the beautiful blue-cobblestoned streets (the stones were the ballast for ships sailing from Europe). The architecture is a delightful mix of European and Caribbean influences, but the shops tend to be the usual tourist traps (along with a Walgreens and Starbucks).

My friends Dan and Eric had been there before and served as my tour guides. We climbed the hilly streets to the ancient stone walls of the fortress which protected the city 500 years ago. They rise majestically above the blue waters of the Atlantic. After catching our breath and wiping the sweat from our brows, we explored the tunnels and staircases that wind through the interior. After that we headed back to town, where Pied Piper had arranged a party at the Parrot Club. While the concept sounds fun, one look at the skeevy strippers and unsanitary bar and I turned around and headed back to the ship, just in time to shower and catch one of the ships stage productions, a confusing melange of songs that didnt seem to surround much of a story, other than boy meets girl, boy loses girl, etc. After the show there was just enough time to head to the ships martini bar for a cocktail before dinner. After dinner I spent a little time losing a few bucks in the casino, then headed up to the Sky Lounge, the ships dance bar-which turned into a gay dance club after 11!

Lifes a Beach

The next day we awoke to find ourselves docked on the island of St. Maarten. Its the only island country in the world ruled by two governments; one side of the island is Dutch and the other is French. We docked on the Dutch side and hopped a bus to take us to the French side for a beach party, one of the excursions offered by Pied Piper. After a little bit of confusion when we arrived (really, you couldnt put out enough beach chairs?) we had a little lunch and, mothers warnings about waiting to swim after eating be damned, went right into the beautiful blue waters. The French side of the island faces the Atlantic, so the waters were a little cool and choppy (no more so than Sebastian Beach), but that didnt stop many of us from diving right in. Theres a nude section of the beach and many headed there, but believe me, no one wants to see this chubby boy naked, so I passed.

As the sun began to set we boarded our bus back to the ship and, along the way, our tour leader Hysteria provided a history lesson. Back at the ship, just enough time for a shower and another of the ships shows; another medley of pop songs woven through a story about a boy trapped in a video game. It all looked very 80s and the dancers costumes looked like giant vaginas, which had our group rolling in the aisles. After dinner, we were treated to a late night concert by the handsome men from Well Strung. They specialize in doing pop tunes in a classical string quartet style with a bit of campiness thrown in for this show. I loved when they channeled their inner Disney Princesses in Part of Your World and Let It Go. Following the show, the guys joined the passengers in the Sky Lounge and partied untillets just say we went right through to breakfast.

You Snooze, You Lose

For weeks before the cruise I debated which shore excursion to take at St. Kitts. I really wanted to do the snorkeling trip, but all my friends were taking the scenic train tour of the island. I decided to wait until I was on the cruise, maybe Id meet someone doing the snorkeling trip and sign up for that, if not, Id take the train. Of course, I waited too long and both events were booked. It killed me even more when I heard that the snorkeling group got to swim with dolphins, a dream of mine. Instead I got to explore the numerous t-shirt shops and jewelers that made up what passes for downtown St. Kitts. After an hour I headed back to the ship for a few cocktails by the fairly empty pool, and the best sun of the trip.

I didnt have long to pout because I had to get ready for that nights costume contest, Music on the High Cs. Grammatical error aside, I was excited - give me any reason to dress up like Liza Minnelli and I will. In fact I brought an entire suitcase of costumes and props. The competition was stiff with the Black-Eyed Peas, Abba, Michael Jackson and multiple versions of Sia all making appearances. Let me tell you, you havent perspired until youve perspired on the Caribbean, under a wig! All that sweat was worth it, I won first prize in the costume contest and the prize money paid for one-third of my trip.

Dancing Machines

On the first of our two nights at sea as we headed back to Miami, the last Pied Piper event was held. The late night version of Dancing With the Stars featured five passengers paired up with Charlie and Adam, the Broadway dancers who performed at the Pied Piper events and a few of the dancers from the ships troupe of performers. It was a little disorganized, but that only added to the fun, as the amateurs competed with their professional partners in a series of dances (disco, tango andpolka!) before being eliminated to three final contestants  one of whom went to, shall we say, an extreme costume change that caused the judges jaws to drop. Hey, who am I to judge, it kept him in the contest. It was a grand bit of silliness and the three celebrity judges (Daniel the cellist from Well Strung, the ships cruise director Maarten and Chuck, one of the folks from Pied Piper, who donned his Laurie Partridge costume from the night before) were hysterically funny.

Homeward Bound

Our last full day at sea was one in which to decompress from all the exciting activities and to socialize with new friends. Although I went with a group of people I knew, I also made many new friends. Next years trip will cost a bit more because theres another day at sea. Tickets will be priced $529-$2,235. Of course excursions, taxes and gratuities are additional, but you may be able to get some of the bonuses for signing up early or waiting until the last minute. You can bet Ill be going again.
Host and producer Tom Hantzarides announced that effective in January 2017 he will begin broadcasting his radio show, GET OUT! South Florida at 7 p.m. Saturdays on Alpha Medias 850AM WFTL. With 50,000 watts of power, the show will be heard from Port St. Lucie to Key West.

This is an important move for the show, said Hantzarides, a radiophile since he was 17. Having less power has been a drawback because listeners arent always able to get the station in their homes or cars. With 850AM theyll be able to receive a clear signal all over South Florida, indoors or out.

It also increases the number of locations from which we can broadcast live shows like the Kravis Center or South Florida college campuses, he added. With the increased coverage, we will expand our live remote broadcast abilities to cities that were not possible previously.

According to Hantzarides, GET OUT! South Florida, which originally launched in 2014 as Get Out Palm Beach, will continue to be live, with current news, discussion, interviews, and more that matter to the LGBT community in South Florida and beyond.

We are the only terrestrial-radio LGBT radio show in the country and will always show the positive impact the LGBT community has made in the state, said Hantzarides. GET OUT! South Florida LGBT radio is the LGBT communitys radio show. I hope it can be of service to everyone.
Today a shooting at Fort Lauderdale  Hollywood International Airport has left five people dead and eight with injuries, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office on Twitter.

The TSA claimed there was an additional active shooter on the airport premises. However, Broward Deputy Sheriff Scott Israel dismissed reports of another shooting, reports the Sun Sentinel.

Initial shots were reported at 12:55 p.m. in Terminal 2 baggage claim area, writes the airport on Twitter. The eight injured have been transported to a hospital, the sheriffs office said.

One subject is in custody.



Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was at the airport at the time of the shooting. At the time, he tweeted:

NBC News spoke to a witness who claimed the first gunman was immediately shot by police after the incident occurred.

"He was gunned down by police," the witness said. "It was absolutely surreal. People were scared and frantically running to avoid being shot. People were tripping over each other. They were trying to make a fast exit out of the door."

The airport is closed and will be for an extended period of time.

Story developing.
Galaxies NASA

A team of researchers has compiled a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

The catalog, called NED-D, is a critical resource, not only for studying these galaxies, but also for determining the distances to billions of other galaxies strewn throughout the universe. As the catalog continues to grow, astronomers can increasingly rely on it for ever-greater precision in calculating both how big the universe is and how fast it is expanding. NED-D is part of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on more than 100 million galaxies.

Were thrilled to present this catalog of distances to galaxies as a valuable resource to the astronomical community, said Ian Steer, NED team member, curator of NED-D, and lead author of a new report about the database appearing in The Astronomical Journal. Learning a cosmic objects distance is key to understanding its properties.

Steer and colleagues presented the paper this week at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

Since other galaxies are extremely far away, theres no tape measure long enough to measure their distances from us. Instead, astronomers rely on extremely bright objects, such as Type 1a supernovae and pulsating stars called Cepheids variables, as indicators of distance. To calculate how far away a distant galaxy is, scientists use known mathematical relationships between distance and other properties of objects, such as their total emitted energy. More objects useful for these calculations have emerged in recent years. NED-D has revealed that there are now more than six dozen different indicators used to estimate such distances.

NED-D began as a small database pulled together in 2005 by Steer. He began serving at NED the following year to build out the database, poring over the scores of astronomical studies posted online daily, identifying newly calculated distance estimates as well as fresh analyses of older data.

From its humble origins a little over a decade ago, NED-D now hosts upwards of 166,000 distance estimates for more than 77,000 galaxies, along with estimates for some ultra-distant supernovae and energetic gamma ray bursts. To date, NED-D has been cited by researchers in hundreds of studies.

Besides providing a one-stop tabulation of the ever-increasing distance estimates published in the astronomical literature, NED-D  as well as the broader NED  can serve as discovery engines. By pooling tremendous amounts of searchable data, the information repositories can allow scientists to identify novel, exotic phenomena that otherwise would get lost in a deluge of observations. An example is the discovery of super luminous spiral galaxies by NED team members, reported last year, which were identified among nearly a million individual galaxies in the NED database.

NED and its associated databases, including NED-D, are in the process of transforming from data look-up services to legitimate discovery engines for science, said Steer. Using NED today, astronomers can sift through mountains of big data and discover additional new and amazing perspectives on our universe.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, Astrophysics Division, Washington. NED operations are conducted at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The NED archive is at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu

The NED-D archive is found at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/
Coffee Design is proudly sponsored by Savor Brands , your boost in coffeedence through maximizing designs in packaging, sustainability and tech.

Can you compost your coffee bag?

As someone with a coffee-drinking habit, leftover bags regularly pile up in my kitchen. I was thinking about this when a bag of beans from Ashland, Oregons Noble Coffee Roasting showed up, thanks to my MistoBox subscription. I noticed a small label at the bottom: This bag is biodegradable and compostable. Please remove tin tie and valve before composting.

Could I really compost this bag? What would happen if I put it in the garbage instead? I soon found myself navigating a topic that is not always as simple as it may seem.

Shifting to more sustainable packaging

For coffee companies committed to sustainability, packaging is a crucial component to their business, and many have started to move away from traditional foil-lined bags. The impact can be significant. Every week, micro-roaster Noble goes through an average of about 500 12-ounce packages and 250 five-pound packages. When you extrapolate that out over a year or more, thats a lot of material. And were just one small company, says Jared Rennie, founder and CEO of Noble Coffee. If more of us little companiesand some big companieswere to make this sort of move, it would really have an effect.

There are a variety of options for compostable bags. Some of you may have already seen Omnidegradable packaging from TekPak Solutions (used by companies like Wrecking Ball Coffee) and Biotre from Pacific Bag, Inc. The latter is the bag I first came across from Noble Coffee Roasting, and its used by many other notable roasters like Counter Culture, Spyhouse Coffee, Water Avenue Coffee, and Huckleberry. What sets these two particular bags apart from other compostable and biodegradable options (like a pure paper bag, for example) is that they come with the barrier needed to protect the coffee. The outer part of this bag is paper-based and the inner liner is a plastic with an additive which allows it to break down over time.

But does that make a 100-percent compostable bag? Not really. First, the tin tie and valve need to be removed, destined for the trash. Second, its important to note that biodegradable and compostable should not be used interchangeably. Biodegradable refers to any material that breaks down (or has an additive that will help it break down) and decomposes in the environment; compostable means that the material is organic matter that will break down and produce soil.

The Biotre bag in particular is 60 percent (by weight) biodegradable, made from wood pulp. This part is compostable. The remaining 40 percent of the bag is a polyethylene liner with an additive allowing the liner to break down over five to 10 yearsmuch faster than a conventional fossil-fuel-based liner but still hanging around in your compost or garbage pile for quite some time.

Navigating all of this as a consumer can be tricky. According to the Federal Trade Commission it is deceptive to make an unqualified degradable claim for items entering the solid waste stream if the items do not completely decompose within one year after customary disposal.

If a product is certified as compostable, the whole thing is compostable, says Brenda Platt, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Theres no such thing as 80-percent compostable and 20-percent not. Either youre compostable or not. Platt recommends that people refer to products certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute, a third-party organization that certifies entire products that meet the US Standard ASTM D6400 or D6868, sets of guidelines that lay out the requirements for products to be able to be composted in municipal and industrial facilities.

The paper part of the Biotre bag has been tested against these standards and will break down into compost in around 84 days. But the other 40 percent still needs to be disposed of, as detailed in this video. If you compost the bag at home, as you are raking, you take it out and dispose of it separately, says Bill Walters, Vice-President of Technical at Pacific Bag. If you are not composting at home and the bag heads to a landfill instead, you will get the same breakdown as a newspaper, says Walters.

A fine balance

Choosing packaging is a constant balance between quality and sustainability, says Rennie. Selling specialty coffee means ensuring the quality of the product; the bags need to do things like let the coffee off-gas without letting oxygen into the bag (the valves job), and keep the coffee fresh (the liners job). When I compare in my mind the two options, says Rennieweighing a traditional bag versus one that is partly biodegradable/compostableits not ideal but its pushing in the right direction.

Other roasters agree. We value both coffee quality and sustainability, which means we looked for bags that would preserve the freshness of our coffee, but have a more sustainable disposal option than traditional foil-lined bags, says Meredith Taylor, Counter Cultures sustainability manager. Counter Culture is launching a packaging audit to assess whats on the market and what changes can be made to ensure the most sustainable packaging. If theres a company out there that creates a relatively high barrier, a completely compostable bag, says Rennie, I would love it.

Whats next?

What happens after we are finished with a coffee bag is not the only important part. We know that most of the environmental impact for packaging occurs in the production part of the lifecycle. This is where material types, whether the source materials are recycled or virgin, and how much and what type of energy is used to produce the packaging can make bigger environmental differences, says Bruce Walker of the City of Portlands Bureau of Planning & Sustainability.

Pacific Bags Walters understands this importance. Ideally you want 100-percent renewable materials and 100-percent compostable, says Walters. With that in mind, the company is currently working on a new version of the Biotre bag, made with 100-percent renewable materials, including the valve.

The industry has really stepped up to meet the demand for these products, says Platt. Even if these products dont exist yet, they will if the demand is there. Consumers and roasters alike can continue to show that demand. Were trying to push the industry forwardwere trying to show that theres a demand for this, and say, Hey, please keep doing the research to make it better,  says Rennie. Our hope is that there will be more R&D going into it and that there will be a solution we can all be proud of.

Anna Brones (@annabrones) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in the American Pacific Northwest. Read more Anna Brones on Sprudge.
Uppers and Downersan annual celebration of coffee, beer, and most importantly, the pairing of the twois back for its third year. A collaboration between Good Beer Hunting and 2008 World Barista Champion Stephen Morrissey, Uppers and Downers returns to Chicagos Thalia Hall on Saturday, February 25th for another exploration of the weird and wonderful intersection of two of Amercas favorite beverages.

More than just your typical coffee stouts and porters (though they are there too), Uppers and Downers showcases more experimental coffee beer combinations, many that can only be quaffed at the festival. Last years roster included: Vaya con Dios, a cascara Berliner Weisse from 5 Rabbit Cerveceria using Gaslight Coffee Roasters; Melo Angst, a Belgian-style strong ale from Brewery Vivant using Madcaps El Cairo Colombia; and Wild X w/ Coffee, Penrose Brewings bourbon barrel ages sour red with an Ethiopia Harrar from Freshground Coffee.

Read more of our Uppers and Downers coverage on Sprudge

The festival is split into two sessions, 11:00-2:00pm and 3:00-6:00pm. Both sessions include 20+ experimental coffee beers, a Stumptown cold brew and bee collaborations bar, Teeling Whiskey coffee cocktails, a few noshes from local eateries, and of course La Marzocco Homes multi-roaster espresso bar. Last years espresso bar included the likes of Intelligentsia Coffee, Madcap Coffee, Goshen Coffee, Sump Coffee, Blueprint Coffee, Ipsento, Counter Culture Coffee, Ruby Coffee Roasters, Gaslight Coffee Roasters, Kickapoo Coffee, and Metropolis Coffee.

The only difference between the two sessions comes via the Case Studies, multi-beer deep dives into a brewery and roasters collaborative efforts. This years two Case Studies feature Whiner Beer Co. with Four Letter Word Coffee and Solemn Oath Brewery with Intelligentsia Coffee, respectively.

And if youre still thirsty for me, Good Beer Hunting is partnering with your favorite coffee website Sprudge to bring back the Hangover Party on Sunday, February 26th from 10:00-12:00pm. This informal nerdery will feature a live podcast taping with Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman, an audience Q and A, coffee (of course), and a bottle share from the brewers stashes.

Both Uppers and Downers and the Hangover Party are ticketed events. For more information on the festival and the after party, visit here and here. To purchases tickets, go here and here.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
Buzz helped charge up the Flamboro Downs tote board on Thursday night (January 5). He spurned Post 9 and long odds and got up for a one and a half-length win in 1:59.4 during the evenings feature race, the $7,500 Preferred 3 Trot.

Competing in his what was his fifth race since joining the stable of Amy MacDonald, Buzz, with Anthony MacDonald in the race bike, lined up in Post 9 and took a stalking approach early.

MacDonald and the five-year-old son of Kadabra raced in fifth as the opening quarter flashed to life in 29 seconds flat. The duo were charted in fifth once again at the :59.1 half-mile pole, but this time they were second-over following cover for a potential back-half assault on the front end.

It was Allies Gift (driven by Robert Shepherd) who was doing all the work on the engine. The pair had cut the front half and led the field to the three-quarters pole, which they clicked off in 1:29.1.

It wasnt the warmest of nights on Thursday. The outdoor temperature had dipped to 10 Celsius by the time the race went off and the track was rated fast, even though the judges rated the course one second slow.

Maybe it was the conditions, or maybe it was the front-end trip, but Allies Gift would soon succumb to the backfield pressure, as the brown mare was third by the time the head of the stretch was reached. Alacrity and driver Paul MacKenzie, who had raced third through the opening half, was first into the lane, but his lead was short lived.

Buzz, who had been racing three-wide at the three-quarters call, had excelled off his move. MacDonald had the gelding in gear and they snatched the lead from Alacrity in the final quarter. Buzz continued to trot away from his rivals and went on to post the one and a half-length victory in 1:59.4. Alacrity hung on for second and Winkys Pride (Scott Coulter) rounded out the top three.

Sent away at odds of 13-1, Buzz returned $28.50 on a $2 Win wager and topped both a $262.30 (9-2) exactor and a $1,284.40 (9-2-5) triactor.

The win marked Buzzs first victory since July 11, 2016 and was the first for his new connections. Owners Anthony Macdonald (of Guelph, Ont.), Bruce Gaum (Toronto, Ont.), Shawn Brisebois (Grimsby, Ont.) and Terry Cameron (Lindsay, Ont.) acquired the gelding last November after he posted a victorious qualifying mile over Mohegan Sun Pocono.

In addition to Buzz, there were other impressive win payoffs during the card, as Ancastor Seelster ($42.40), Regal Attitude ($31.40), Dapple Apple ($30.30) and Moonbeam Hall ($19.80) each brought a smile to the faces of their backers.

To view the harness racing results for Thursday at Flamboro, click the following link: Thursday Results  Flamboro Downs.
On Thursday, January 4, for the fifth time during the current Dover Downs meet, Little Ben scored a victory in a top class event at the Delaware track. On Thursday it came in the $30,000 Preferred pace.

All season long, Vic Kirby has been in the sulky for what have mostly been come-from-behind triumphs for Little Ben. The Jim King trainee outlasted Seventh Secret and George Dennis after a tenacious, late stretch, side-by-side engagement to stop the timer in 1:50. Just a head separated the contestants. Janet Hudson and JoAnn Looney-King own the six-year-old Jeremes Jet-Honeys Bud Lite gelding who won for the 25th time in his career. H has now banked $294,767 in lifetime purses. Argue Hanover, piloted by Corey Callahan, was third. Early leader Bettors Edge (Yannick Gingras) finished fourth in his quest for $2 million in purses.

Art Stafford Jr. put Soto into the early lead and led the rest of a 1:51.2 mile to take the $20,000 Open Pace. Eric Ell conditions the five-year-old Rock N Roll Heaven-Incredible Beauty winner of Ken Wood, Bill Dittmar, Steve Iaquinta who won for the third time in his last five outings. Soto has now won over a quarter-million dollars in his career. It was his 17th career victory.

Dancin Yankee returned to top form, as he delivered a 1:50.3 victory in a $15,500 Male pace, thus giving driver Tony Morgan his fifth win on the Thursday card and second for trainer Josh Green. The nine-year-old son of Yankee Cruiser-Dancewithebest collected his 55th lifetime score and raised his bankroll to $1,535,100. Rich Lombardo and L&J Racing own the Ohio bred. Screaman Seaman A (Yannick Gingras) edged Blazing Bobby Sox (Art Stafford Jr.) for place.

Morgan later came back for his fifth winning drive, as he escorted Rockinonby to the winners circle in one of three $15,500 events. Rockinonby bested Cloud Speed (Stafford Jr.) by three-quarters of a length and Suchaseneofhumor (Morand), third, to the finish line in 1:51. Niss Allen Inc. owns the Rockin Image-Stans Ann gelding who has won two of his last three and now has won in three-digits, $103,948 lifetime.

Yannick Gingras hit paydirt steering Rock N Roll World home in 1:51.4 in the other $15,500 division. The five-year-old exquisitely bred Rocknroll Hanover-Worldly Beauty horse held off fast closing Toatsmygoats (Sean Bier), second, and Feel Like A Fool (Callahan) in a tight finish.

After four winners Wednesday, Tony Morgan recorded five wins. Meet leader Vic Kirby had four wins. Trainers Eric Ell and Jim King plus owners, Wood, Dittmar, Iaquinta and Looney-King, had two wins.

(Dover Downs)
Christine Czernyson, who has helped lead an ovarian cancer awareness effort with assistance from horses Aldebaran Eagle and Side Bet Hanover, has been named the 2016 recipient of the January Davies Humanitarian Award, presented by the U.S. Harness Writers Association.

The award was created in 2008 by U.S. Harness Writers Association member Callie Davies-Gooch in memory of her daughter to recognize contributions beyond harness racing.

Czernyson and her husband, trainer Jonas Czernyson, have contributed more than $4,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Alliance by donating a percentage of their earnings from Aldebaran Eagles and Side Bet Hanovers purses. In addition, the horses wear ribbons in their manes with the names of nearly 80 women who are either ovarian cancer survivors or in tribute to women who have been taken from loved ones by the disease.

Christine has done so much to bring attention to this cause, Davies-Gooch said. She is one of the great ladies of harness racing and a great example of humanitarianism, providing not only financial assistance to ovarian cancer research and awareness but touching the lives of those affected by the disease through the personal connections incorporated into her efforts. When her name came before our board we felt she was the perfect choice for this award.

The cause hits close to home for Czernyson, who lost her aunt, Kathy Terrazas, to ovarian cancer. Furthermore, Duncan McPherson, who owns Aldebaran Eagle, lost his wife, Lyn, to the disease and is active in promoting ovarian cancer awareness programs in his homeland of Australia.

This is totally humbling because its not about me, its about the women and families that fight with this disease on a daily basis and their struggles, Czernyson said. If I can take up a fight for them, Im willing to do so. For me personally, my aunt passed away from ovarian cancer. Watching her struggle with that disease was not an easy thing. The impact has lasted for years.

When Duncan McPherson came into our stable, he had lost his wife Lyn to ovarian cancer. He is very active in Australia with ovarian cancer awareness. We just wanted to give something back to Duncan. But we wanted to honour not only his wife and my aunt, but the many other women who are fighting this disease. I dont think a lot of people realize, but one in 75 women will have ovarian cancer. Thats a pretty staggering statistic.

The Czernysons started their awareness effort in 2015 with Aldebaran Eagle and extended it to Side Bet Hanover last year when the female trotter raced in the Hambletonian Oaks on Hambletonian Day at the Meadowlands. Sherry Pollex, the longtime girlfriend of last years Hambletonian trophy presenter, NASCAR driver Martin Truex, is an ovarian cancer survivor and advocate for others fighting the disease. Pollex signed a teal ribbon, with teal being the colour for ovarian cancer awareness, worn by Side Bet Hanover in the Oaks.

Side Bet Hanover and Aldebaran Eagle will continue to race for ovarian cancer awareness this year, although it will soon be on two different continents.

Eagle will be leaving to go to Australia in March, Czernyson said. We have no doubt he will continue to soar for ovarian cancer down there as well. Hes going to race and then stand stud. Side Bet Hanover will carry on here after Eagle has made the trip to Australia.

While raising money for ovarian cancer research and awareness has been an important aspect of Czernysons effort, the connections made with people affected by the disease has been even more priceless.

We get a lot of messages whenever those two horses race, Czernyson said. I have quite a few women that we stay in contact with that have really fallen in love with this idea and the concept of it and giving them something to cheer for. Theyre so appreciative for that. They can say That horse is racing for me.

Thats probably given us the biggest joy, just having that knowledge that it goes beyond the money and the horserace. It gives some personal meaning to it. It makes you realize what youre doing is making a difference. But this isnt about me or Jonas or the horses, its about the women and families affected by this disease. Its really all about them.

Czernyson will be honoured at the Night of Champions, the Dan Patch Awards Banquet presented by Hoosier Park, which will take place on Sunday, Feb. 26, at the Planet Hollywood hotel/casino in Las Vegas.

Information about the banquet and the entire weekend, which will also contain the annual meetings of USHWA, can be found at ushwa.org  including links for making hotel reservations at special rates at Planet Hollywood; banquet tickets; and congratulatory or acknowledgment ads in the keepsake souvenir banquet journal, annually one of the best chronicles of a year in North American harness racing.

(USHWA)
When asked if he would care to indulge in a celebratory cocktail at the races one evening, Jeff Hochstetler politely declined the offer, explaining he did not imbibe alcohol. His companion was incredulous, for he believed the very nature of Hochstetlers profession guaranteed he would be hitting the bottle on a daily basis.

You train trotters, said the gentleman. How could you not need lots of drinks?

Although Hochstetler genially concurred with the mans assessment, his approach to work has yielded dividends, as is demonstrated by the 2016 success of Fashion Chocolate. The five-year-old gelded son of Chocolatier-Fun And Strokes amassed $124,386 from his debut season of competition and joins Kirty Dream (Cantab Hall, $421,113), Gale Force Hanover (Muscles Yankee, $69,808) and Rose Run Logan (Armbro Laser, $98,523) as horses whom Hochstetler has either revived their careers, or in the case of Fashion Chocolate, established them.

When we first saw him (Fashion Chocolate) for sale I didnt really pay attention to him, Hochstetler said. He was small and he never raced as a two-year-old, so I passed him over and was not interested. When I took the time to look him up I told the owner (Philip Hochstetler, who also owns Rose Run Logan) that we needed to buy this horse.

What so radically altered Hochstetlers perception of the gelding, whose record now stands at 32-15-2-2, was his pedigree. His sire is a world champion and Dan Patch winner, but the accomplishments of the Donerail mare Fun And Strokes, both on and off the track, is what did the trick.

In her two years of performing, Fun And Strokes earned $735,556. As a two-year-old she captured the Champlain and Oakville Stakes and as a three-year-old she was third in the Hambletonian Oaks, won the Buckette and was second in the American-National, the Kentucky Filly Futurity and the Breeders Crown.

She had a bit of a slow start as a broodmare, but Fun And Strokes has now produced three winners of more than $100,000 in Fashion Blizzard (Credit Winner, $309,255), Fashion Smile (Broadway Hall, $102,725) and Fashion Chocolate.

Im not sure why they were not able to get this horse to go, Hochstetler said. He was absolutely sound when I got him and he still is. I did not have to really do anything special with him and he was always good-gaited.

There are a lot of people that watch me train and think Im a little crazy. I usually just put aluminum shoes on horses and train them with lots of miles. People might think Im too hard on them, but with a horse like Kirty Dream it is what works. That is probably why other people had such a hard time with him because he wants to do whatever he wants to do and fights tooth and nail for his way. He still has not given up on fighting with me and I dont think he likes me one bit because I wont let him get what he wants. His owner (Mario Caponi) comes to visit him all the time and he just puts his head outside the stall door to be rubbed on, but when I come around he wont even look at me. He knows he cant get away with anything when Im around and holds it against me.

Fashion Chocolate appeared at the Meadows and Northfield Park at the beginning and end of his season, but during the summer and fall he trotted at Yonkers Raceway on 12 occasions while under the care of Virgil Morgan Jr.

I thought he did well at Yonkers, Hochstetler said. I sent him out there with Virgil because I have 12 horses in my stable and it is only my daughter and I that take care of them. That is why I stay right here in Ohio, because I cant leave all that work for her to do even if I think I have a horse that could make some money somewhere else. I might do the same thing with Fashion Chocolate this year, but as of now we will just keep racing him here at home.

After re-entering the business in 2010 from a nine-year hiatus, Hochstetlers efforts to build his barn with horses that proved difficult to get to the races have been quite successful. Since 2014, his horses have collected just under one million dollars and his UTR has never dipped below .300.

Hochstetler has another addition to his barn that may bear watching in the upcoming year.

I have the older half-brother (Elmo Blatch) to (2016 Dan Patch Award winner) Walner, he said. His owner (Mario Caponi) is the same guy that owns Kirty Dream and he decided to name him Elmo Blatch (he was originally named Randover, as he is by Andover Hall and was originally a $50,000 yearling purchase at the 2014 Lexington Selected Sale). Hes only started four times and hes won two.

Hes very sound, but he gets really hot at the starting gate and has trouble keeping it together. Once he settles down, I think he is going to be a very nice horse for us. Its just a matter of working with him and being patient.

(USTA)
Diamond Creek Farm is delighted to announce that champion trotter Southwind Frank is now booked full and closed for 2017.

Southwind Frank was immensely successful as a two-year-old, leading up to a victory in the 2015 Breeders Crown. He continued to shine in his three-year-old season, with wins in prestigious races such as the Beal, Colonial Trot and the Stanley Dancer.

After an impressive career, in which he placed in the top three in 24 out of 26 starts, Southwind Frank now joins the stallion roster at Diamond Creek Farm in Pennsylvania. With a waiver in hand, Southwind Frank's progeny will be eligible to race at all tracks, including the Meadowlands, Tioga Downs, and Vernon Downs.

The roster of impressive mares already booked to the champion trotter include Strawberry Wine (Kadabra sister to Creatine), Gala Dream (dam of Father Patrick and Pastor Stephen), Cressida Hanover (dam of Glidemaster), Margie Seelster (dam of Pinkman), and Borrow And Spend (sister to Dejarmbro).

(Diamond Creek Farm)
SCOTUS Petitioned to Preserve Religious Counseling Rights

Contact: Brad Dacus, 949-422-0395



WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Pacific Justice Institute filed a petition earlier this week with the United States Supreme Court to continue the fight to protect free speech for licensed counselors.



The Writ of Certiorari filed with the Supreme Court is the next step to furthering the battle to protect freedom of religion and freedom of speech for individuals both giving and receiving counseling.



"If the Supreme Court grants our petition for Certiorari, this will be the most important freedom of religion case for this year and will impact the rights of counseling ministries across the country, potentially for generations to come," said Brad Dacus, President and Founder of PJI.



Since the passing of SB 1172, which bars licensed counselors from assisting youth who want to change or reduce same-sex attractions, PJI has worked to defend counseling that takes place within church walls. The law also prohibits counseling that would steer youth away from gender confusion.



Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disregarded PJI's concerns over freedom of religion and individual privacy by their rejection to review legal authorities brought to the court's attention.



PJI originally filed suit against SB 1172 in 2012 and is committed to continue the fight for an individual's right to seek counseling in agreement with their faith without state interference.
Instruction No. 01/2017

F.No. 500/5/2016-APA-II

Government of India

Ministry of Finance

Department of Revenue

Central Board of Direct Taxes

Foreign Tax and Tax Research-1 Division

APA-II Section

New Delhi, dated 4th January, 2017

To

All Principal CCsIT and CCsIT All Principal DsGIT and DsGIT

Madam/Sir

Subject: India-Sweden Convention for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion (DTAC or the Convention)  Suspension of Collection of Taxes during Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP)  Regarding

Attention is invited to Article 26 of the India  Sweden DTAC, which provides for Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) between the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden for avoiding taxation which is not in accordance with the Convention. During the pendency of MAP, recovery of tax demand could lead to potential hardships for the taxpayers as tax demand is yet to attain finality. Considering the hardship faced by the taxpayers during the pendency of MAP, as well as for efficient management of collection of revenue, the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) regarding suspension of collection of taxes during the pendency of MAP. In terms of the MOU, the collection of outstanding taxes in case of a taxpayer whose case is pending in MAP before the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden, would be kept in abeyance for a period of two years (extendable to a maximum period of five years through mutual agreement between the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden) subject to furnishing of a bank guarantee of an amount equal to the amount of tax under dispute and interest accruing thereon, as per the provisions of the Income-tax Act.

2. On receipt of a formal request for suspension of collection of outstanding tax from a taxpayer who is a resident of Sweden and where MAP has been invoked through the Competent Authority of Sweden, the Assessing Officers are required to keep the enforcement of collection of outstanding taxes in abeyance for a period of two years in respect of such taxpayers subject to fulfillment of the following conditions:

(i) the Foreign Tax and Tax Research I (FT&TR I) Division of the Central Board of Direct Taxes confirms the pendency of MAP; and

(ii) the taxpayer furnishes a bank guarantee to the Assessing Officer in the model draft format annexed to the MoU for an amount calculated in accordance with the manner indicated therein.

3. Further, the provisions of the MoU shall also apply to an Indian resident taxpayer in cases involving transfer pricing adjustments, where MAP has been invoked by the resident of Sweden through the Competent Authority of

4. The effect of the MoU is that the furnishing of the bank guarantee should be treated as sufficient arrangement for exercising discretion by the Assessing Officer for extension of time limit for payment of taxes in terms of sub-section (3) of Section 220 of the Income-tax Act. The extension, however, shall subsist only for two years from the date on which communication from FT&TR I Division about the invocation/pendency of MAP is received by the Assessing Officer. This period of two years may be extended through mutual agreement between the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden and any such extension will be communicated to the Assessing Officer by FT&TR I Division of the CBDT. However, in no case shall the aggregate periods for which collection is suspended exceed five years.

5. In case the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden agree that there is no resolution possible, an intimation to this effect shall be given to the Assessing Officer who shall, thereafter, be entitled to enforce recovery of the taxes (including interest and penalty, if any). If the taxpayer fails to pay the taxes (including interest and penalty, if any), the Assessing Officer shall be entitled to invoke the bank guarantee. In case the time limit of two years has expired and no communication has been received from FT&TR I Division about MAP resolution, the Assessing Officer, before proceeding to making recoveries or invoking the bank guarantee, shall seek inputs from FT&TR I Division about the status of MAP in such cases. Recovery of taxes (including interest and penalty, if any) may only be proceeded with after getting confirmation from FT&TR I Division that no extension beyond two years has been granted through mutual agreement between the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden.

6. In cases where a resolution of dispute is arrived at by the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden after mutual consultation, the taxes (including interest and penalty, if any)payable by the Indian taxpayer shall be determined by the Assessing Officer in terms of such resolution, as per the procedure laid down in Rule 44H of the Income Tax Rules, 1962. After the revised notice of demand is sent to the taxpayer, the amount shall be recoverable from the taxpayer. In case the taxpayer fails to pay the demand, the bank guarantee so furnished shall be invoked after seeking the consent of the Indian Competent Authority, which shall grant the same after intimating its counterpart in Sweden.

7. The Assessing Officers as well as their controlling officers are advised to keep a close watch on the limitation of the bank guarantee furnished under the MAP. For this purpose, a control register should be maintained in the office of the Assessing Officers and the same may be periodically inspected by the jurisdictional Additional or Joint CIT and/or the jurisdictional Principal CIT or CIT.

8. A copy of the MoU, along with its Annexure containing the model draft format of the bank guarantee, is enclosed.

9. These instructions are issued under section 119 of the Income-tax Act and the same may be brought to the notice of all the officers in your charge.

[Dinesh Anfil]

Under Secretary {FT&TR-I(2)}

Copy to:

1. Chairman and Members of CBDT

2. All Officers in CBDT

3. ITCC Division (3 Copies)

4. ADG(Systems) for uploading on the Departmental Website

5. CIT (Data Base Cell) for uploading on the IRS Officers Website

6. Guard File

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE COMPETENT AUTHORITY OF INDIA AND THE COMPETENT AUTHORITY OF SWEDEN REGARDING SUSPENSION OF COLLECTION OF TAXES DURING MUTUAL AGREEMENT PROCEDURE

The Competent Authority of India

and

The Competent Authority of Sweden

Having regard to the hardship faced by the taxpayers during the pendency of a Mutual Agreement Procedure, under Article 26 of the Convention between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and on capital, which was signed on 24th June 1997 (the Convention);

Having determined and agreed that efficient processing of Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) cases will be facilitated by suspending collection of any amounts of tax, including also any related interest or penalties, for any taxable years which are the subject of MAP proceedings;

WHEREAS:

(A) The Competent Authorities have arranged and desired to agree that with regard to amounts of taxes covered under Article 2 of the Convention and potentially payable to the Government of India, the Assessing Officer will suspend collection in accordance with this Memorandum;

and

(B) The Competent Authorities have arranged and desired to agree that with regard to amounts of taxes covered under Article 2 of the Convention and potentially payable to the Government of Sweden, the Swedish Tax Authority will suspend collection in accordance with this Memorandum;

NOW THEREFORE, in consideration of the premises, covenants and conditions herein contained and in implementing this arrangement:

HAVE AGREED as follows:

(1) The tax authorities of India and Sweden shall retain the right to demand security in appropriate cases, as deemed fit and necessary to avoid prejudicing the interests of their respective governments.

(2) In India, as security, a taxpayer shall provide an irrevocable Bank Guarantee issued by any scheduled bank, or by an Indian branch of a foreign bank approved by the Reserve Bank of India to carry out banking business in India, as per Annexure A to this Memorandum.

(3) In Sweden, as security, a taxpayer shall, upon demand, provide an irrevocable Bank Guarantee issued by a bank that is authorized by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority or any other form of security deemed adequate by the Swedish Tax Authority.

(4) The amount, if any, for which security is demanded under paragraph (2) or (3) above, as the case may be, shall not exceed the amount of additional tax demanded by the tax authority requiring the security (aggregated for all the periods pending before the Competent Authorities), and, if applicable, as adjusted by the Assessing Officer in accordance with domestic laws, and subject to further adjustment for interest on these amounts calculated at the statutory rate on non-

(5) Collection of any interest or penalty levied from the concerned taxpayer, in relation to amounts suspended from collection under this Memorandum, shall also be suspended subject to paragraph (4). For the avoidance of doubt, interest, if appropriate, will continue to run while the collection is suspended.

(6) The Competent Authorities shall endeavour to either resolve or close the case within a period of two years from the date on which one Competent Authority notifies the other That the application from the Taxpayer(s) for assistance under the MAP has been received.

(7) The maximum period for which collection can be suspended under this Memorandum shall be two years unless extended by mutual consent by both the Competent Authorities. However, in no case shall the aggregate periods for which collection is suspended exceed five years.

(8) Any draw-down upon a Bank Guarantee referred to in paragraph (2) or (3) above will be done after notification by one Competent Authority to the other about the completion of the Mutual Agreement Procedure, or of the time limit under paragraph (7), whichever earlier.

(9) In the event of a lapse of security under paragraph (2) or (3), the taxpayer shall be permitted to substitute another form of security under such paragraph, provided such substitution takes effect not less than 30 days prior to the lapse of the prior security. Such substitution will relieve the bank which provided the first Bank Guarantee from its obligations to the concerned Government of India or Sweden under that first security.

(10) The terms of this Memorandum may be reviewed by the Competent Authorities at anytime in the future upon the request of either party.

(11) This Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the notification in writing by the Competent Authority of Sweden to the Competent Authority of India of the completion of the procedures required by its law for the entry into force of this Agreement.

Dated at Stockholm, 7 February 2013

For the Competent Authority of Sweden

For the Competent Authority of India

Annexure A

To

The President of India acting through and represented by

[Designation],

Income Tax Department,

Ministry of Finance,

Government of India, New Delhi.

Bank Guarantee

Bank guarantee as security for keeping the recovery of Tax Demand in abeyance during the pendency of a Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP)

[Applicable in case of non-resident assesses, and Indian companies and other entities affiliated with Swedish companies, who have invoked the Mutual Agreement Procedure]

This Deed of Bank guarantee made this day of. 20, by [INSERT: Name and Address of Guaranteeing Bank] (hereinafter called the Bank, which expression shall, unless excluded by or repugnant to the context, include its successors and assignees) to the President of India acting through and represented by [Designation], Income Tax Department, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, New Delhi (hereinafter called the Government).

WHEREAS the Government has agreed that [INSERT: Name, Address, and permanent account number of the Assessee] (hereinafter called the Assessee, which expression shall, unless excluded by or repugnant to the context, include its successors and assignees) shall furnish a Bank Guarantee in respect of a demand of Rs. [INSERT: Amount of Tax in dispute] for the

assessment year(s). , in lieu of which the recovery of any part of such demand shall not be enforced until 30 days after the Assessing Officer receives written notice of the MAP Agreement between the Competent Authorities of the Governments of India and Sweden, and the Assessee will not be treated as in default for the above assessment year (s);

AND WHEREAS THE Bank has at the request of the Assessee agreed to execute these presents:

NOW THEREFORE THIS DEED WITNESSES AS FOLLOWS

In consideration of the Government agreeing to treat the Assessee as not in default for Rs. [INSERT: Amount of Tax in dispute, plus interest specified in paragraph (1) below] for the assessment year(s).. ,

1. The Bank irrevocably guarantees and undertakes, for the term provided in paragraph (2) below, that the Bank shall indemnify and keep indemnified the Government to the extent of the said sum of Rs [INSERT: Amount of Tax in dispute] (Rupees [written text]) and interest accruing at the rate specified in the Income Tax Act of 1961 as amended from time to time, for non-payment of taxes on this amount after [INSERT date from which recovery could otherwise be made] or any amount as adjusted by the order of the Assessing Officer which may be passed after the furnishing of the guarantee. On advice from the Government that the Assesse has failed and neglected to observe any of its obligations to the Government with regard to the terms and conditions of the agreements between the Assessee and the Government that may underlie this Bank Guarantee, the decision of the Government as to whether any amount should be paid out by the Bank to the Government hereunder shall be final and binding.

2. The Bank further agrees that the guarantee herein contained shall remain in full force and effect for a period of 3 years from the date hereof, i.e., till [INSERT; date]; and further agrees to renew this guarantee for another 3 years on the following terms: the Bank will provide the Government with written notice no later than 60 days prior to the expiration date of this Bank Guarantee if the taxpayer has not renewed the agreements between the Assessee and the Bank that underlie this Bank Guarantee for an additional period of 3 if the Government does not receive a renewal of this Bank Guarantee or a substitute Bank Guarantee for the amounts of tax and interest in dispute prior to 30 days before the expiration date of this Bank Guarantee, the Government may instruct the Bank to pay the guaranteed amounts prior to expiration of the Bank Guarantee.

Provided further that, notwithstanding any other things contained herein, the liabilities of the Bank shall be limited to the maximum of the guaranteed amount of Rs. [INSERT: Amount of tax in dispute] (Rupees [INSERT: written text]), as increased by interest pursuant to paragraph (1) during the term of this Bank Guarantee; and unless a claim in writing is lodged with the Bank, or action to enforce the claim under the guarantee is filed or initiated against the Bank, within six months from the date of expiry of the guarantee period fixed hereunder or where such period is extended under the terms of this guarantee from the date of such extended period as the case may be, all the rights of the Government under this guarantee shall be forfeited and the Bank shall be relieved and discharged from liabilities hereunder.

3. The obligations of the Bank to the Government under this Bank guarantee will terminate upon the occurrence of any of the following for the taxable years in question:

(i) the payment by the Bank or the Assessee to the Government of the guaranteed amounts;

(ii) the payment by the Assessee to the Government of all amounts owed, as agreed to by the Competent Authorities in a MAP Agreement;

(iii) a MAP Agreement by the Competent Authorities that the Government will not seek to recover any part of the previously demanded amounts; or

(iv) the Assessee furnishes to the Government similar security from another Bank.

4. The guarantee herein contained shall not be discharged or affected by any change in the constitution either of the Assessee or of the Bank.

5. The Government shall have the fullest liberty without affecting the guarantee to postpone for any time, or from time to time, any of the powers exercisable by it against the Assessee, or to either enforce or forbear any of the terms and conditions under this guarantee or under the Income Tax Act and Income Tax Rules, and the Bank shall not be released from its liabilities under this guarantee by any exercise by the Government of the liberty with reference to the matter aforesaid or by reasons of time being given to the Assessee, or by any other act of forbearance or enforcement on the part of the Government, or by any indulgence by the Government to the Assessee, or by any other matter or thing whatsoever which under the law relating to sureties would but for these provisions have the effect of so releasing the Bank from its such liability. The Bank hereby agrees and undertakes that any claim which the Bank may have against the Assessee shall be subject and subordinate to the prior payment and performance in full of all the obligations of the Bank hereunder and the Bank will not without prior written consent of the Government exercise any legal rights or remedies of any kind in respect of any such payment or performance so long as the obligations of the Bank hereunder remain owing and outstanding, regardless of the insolvency, liquidation or bankruptcy of the Assessee or otherwise howsoever. The Bank will not counter claim or set off against its liabilities to the Government hereunder any sum outstanding to the credit of the Government with it.

6. This Bank Guarantee shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of India (without regard to its principles of conflict of laws).

7. The Bank undertakes not to revoke this guarantee during its currency except with the previous consent of the Government in

8. Notwithstanding anything stated above, liability of the Bank under this guarantee is restricted to Rs. [INSERT: Amount of Tax in dispute, plus interest specified in paragraph (1) above] (Rupees [written text]) and is valid for the period(s) described in paragraph 2 above. Unless a demand or claim under this guarantee is lodged with the Bank on or before [INSERT: date, as established in paragraph (2) above], all rights of the Government under the said guarantee shall be forfeited and the Bank shall be relieved and discharged from all liabilities thereunder whether or not this document shall have been returned to the Bank.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Bank, through its duly authorized representative, has set its hand.. stamp. on this day of at..

Witness

(Signature) Name

For and on behalf of the Bank

(Designation with Bank Stamp)

(Attorney as per power of Attorney No.. )

Date
It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here.
By OLIVIA ROSE

RT.REVD. Laish Boyd, Bishop of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, has strongly urged elected leaders to put aside partisan politics and work together for the greater good of the country.





Bishop Boyd was at the time delivering a special benediction at the opening ecumenical service at the St. Mary`s pro-Cathedral in Grand Turk on Thursday, December 29.





The ecumenical service, which preceded the official swearing-in ceremony of the House of Assembly, saw a full, gleeful congregation.





Bishop Boyd admonished leaders to put aside petty differences in the House of Assembly as they endeavor to serve the people.





He called on the newly elected premier to take up her mantle and work diligently to create a new wave of development in the islands.





"Madam Premier I wish you well, as you enter into what is a new dimension of service; God has called you through a transparent electoral process with a clear majority. Take up your calling proudly and sacrificially.





He reminded elected leaders of their sworn duty to serve the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands.





"Remember that the Government of any country is not a partisan entity, PDM, PNP, PDA, At large; the Government of a country is the construct of all who come together to sit in parliament and direct the national machinery.





"Parliament is made up of elected and appointed persons; it is a political unit which exercises national authority and performs functions.





"That is who you parliamentarians are, the Government of the land. You must find ways to work together to build the Turks and Caicos Islands.





"This is not about you, this is not about your egos; this is about building a land which God has blessed you with, a land that many people would like to own but God in his wisdom has planted you here and so you must come together for the good of TCI.





Rev.Boyd noted that while his call sounds simple, there is an underlying profoundness that they must embrace if the country is to go forward.





"Therefore, I beg you to put aside old grudges, political favors and political favorites, as well as under the table deals; this country has suffered from these things for too long. We all know the story: it has been limited and engrossed by these things and you have an opportunity now to continue the upward progress that has been established thus far.





"I call upon you, Honorable Premier, and upon you, Honorable opposition leader, to come together to make a difference, to put the advancement of TCI first. This country is too small for some of the nonsense thats gone on, and that will go on unless you, madam, and you, sir, put your foot down.





"In the house of God I charge you in the name of God.
IN A Christmas message to his officers and the nation at large, police commissioner James Smith seemed satisfied with the effort his officers put into fighting crime over the past year.





Observing that members of the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force have been working tirelessly throughout the year in an effort to reduce crime, the commissioner also touched on some of the achievements of the force in 2016.





"Many initiatives and strategies that have been put in place to deal with serious crimes, burglaries, and more minor incidents are producing very positive results, Smith said.





"In the last three months alone, officers have conducted over 10 targeted operations, carried out 200 stop searches, arrested over 20 offenders and issued 250 traffic violation tickets.





He added that in joint operations officers have detained 96 illegal immigrants in some challenging and demanding circumstances.





"As we ready ourselves to celebrate Christmas and usher in a new year, it is imperative to be very vigilant as criminals also want to celebrate in style by stealing what you have accumulated throughout the year.





He urged residents to be on the lookout for scammers who will try to employ tricks to obtain money under false pretenses.





He also cautioned against people withdrawing large amounts of cash from the banks.





And promised that the force will continue with its operational activities in the New Year with a focus on the serious and dangerous criminals that undermine the safety of citizens, visitors and the country itself.












AS OF January 3, 2017, the Ministry of Health has informed that there are eight new cases of the Zika virus, with seven of these new cases reported on Grand Turk.





These persons were seen during the period of October 14 to December 7, bringing the total number of cases of Zika reported in the TCI to 24 which includes 19 males and 5 females.





This is according to information coming out of the health ministry on Tuesday.





The Ministry also advised that an increase in Zika diagnosis is common during the rainy season, as was recently experienced on the island of Grand Turk.





The Ministry also reminds the general public that its public information campaign is still ongoing to educate residents on how to prevent Zika, via pamphlets, posters, and public service announcements on the radio, TV and social media.





Zika prevention information has also been shared at booths set up at the major supermarkets and clean-up campaigns on the islands of Grand Turk and Providenciales help to keep the environment free from breeding sites while also empowering residents to clean-up their own communities.





The Environmental Health Department has also continued its premises inspections, fogging exercises and larviciding.





The public is also reminded that Zika is a viral disease with symptoms that are similar to other mosquito borne illnesses such as dengue and chikungunya.





Symptoms include rash, mild fever, pink eye, muscle or joint pain, and general malaise.





However, many persons will not experience symptoms but will still be able spread the disease if they are bitten.





While symptoms can be mild, or even non-existent, one concern is that the disease can be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy and cause complications to the infant such as microcephaly, a birth defect where a baby's head is smaller than expected for its age and sex.





Unfortunately, there is no specific medication to treat Zika and there are currently no vaccines to prevent it. If you suspect you have Zika, please seek medical attention at your nearest clinic.





Symptoms of Zika can be managed by getting plenty of rest, drinking fluids to prevent dehydration, taking medicines, such as acetaminophen, or paracetamol, to relieve fever and pain.





Persons are further advised not to take aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Aleve or Ibroprofen until Dengue has been ruled out.





Since Zika is primarily transmitted by the bite of the Aedes species, the best way to prevent Zika is to protect yourself from mosquito bites.





Interventions to eliminate mosquito breeding sites and to prevent mosquito bites are most effective.




OVER the Christmas holidays Governor John Freeman and his wife Corinna Freeman visited a number of places across Providenciales and Salt Cay.





On December 28, the Governor was received by the Salt Cay District Commissioner, Mrs Almaida Wilson, and took part in a meeting with the local community.





He heard concerns regarding the state of the airport runway, the degradation of the sea walls as well as the wishes of the locals for a tarmac road.





He also heard arguments for Salt Cay being made a UNESCO World Heritage Site and undertook to make inquiries as to this possibility.





The Governor subsequently toured the Island and visited the airfield and the sea protections and hosted a lunch for the District Commissioner, the Police Officer and the local nurse.





He offered seasonal greetings to those whose home is in Salt Cay as well as to holiday visitors.





Prior to his Salt Cay visit Dr Freeman met with officials from the Cheshire Hall Medical centre on Providenciales on Christmas Eve.





Accompanied by his wife, the Governor was received at the hospital by Chief Executive Officer, Daniel Carriere, and the Chief of Medical Services, Dr Denise Braithwaite-Tennant, where they taken on a tour of the Centre's facilities.





The Governor took the opportunity to extend thanks for the work of the Centre's staff in 2016 and to wish them and their patients all the very best for 2017.





During the course of his tour on December 24, the Governor visited the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force stations at Chalk Sound and Five Cays and used the visit to extend thanks for the work of the police in 2016 and to offer best wishes for 2017.








ANCHORAGE, Alaska  A federal plan for the recovery of an endangered Alaska beluga whale calls for a reduction in threats of high concern while scientists try to pinpoint what has kept the population from growing.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week announced its recovery plan for Cook Inlet beluga whales, a population listed as endangered since 2008.

NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service acknowledges it does not know why the population hasn't bounced back. In the absence of an answer, the agency will focus on research and potential threats, such as noise and the cumulative effects of "multiple stressors."

"Until we know which threats are limiting this species' recovery, the strategy of this recovery plan is to focus recovery efforts on threats identified as of medium or high relative concern," the agency said.

The state of Alaska fought the endangered species listing of Cook Inlet belugas eight years ago and took issue with the recovery plan. Division of Wildlife Conservation director Bruce Dale in a statement said it contains untenable recovery criteria that will limit acceptance by interested parties and extend hurdles to development.

"The most critical action for recovering the Cook Inlet belugas will be to determine why the population isn't growing," Dale said. "The threats limiting recovery are unknown."

A 1979 survey counted nearly 1,300 beluga whales. A 2014 survey estimated just 340 and a population continuing to trend downward.

The recovery plan calls for an upgrade to "threatened" status when the population reaches 520 animals and delisting when there are 780. Dale took issue with those targets.

"These demographic criteria are problematic because the number of animals in a population is not necessarily an indication of the risk of extinction," Dale said. The plan includes threats-based recovery criteria that cannot be measured and are impossible to meet, he said.

Cook Inlet belugas are one of five beluga populations in U.S. waters. Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska and the fisheries service considers 1,300 animals to be its carrying capacity.

The whales turn white as adults and can reach 15 feet long. They feed on salmon, smaller fish, crab, shrimp, squid and clams and in late summer can be spotted from highways leading from Anchorage, chasing salmon schooled at stream mouths.

The Cook Inlet beluga population dwindled steadily through the 1980s and early '90s. The decline accelerated between 1994 and 1998 when Alaska Natives harvested nearly half the remaining 650 whales in only four years. Subsistence hunting ended in 1999.

Federal officials initially figured that controlling subsistence hunting would allow the population to recover. When it did not, they declared belugas endangered in 2008.

The agency identified 10 potential threats to belugas. Of highest concern are catastrophic events, such as natural disasters or oil spills; cumulative effects of multiple stressors; and noise.

Threats of medium concern include disease agents, such as blooms of harmful algae, loss of habitat, a reduction in prey and unauthorized killing.

Threats of relatively low concern include pollution, predation and subsistence hunting.

The agency estimated recovery could take at least 50 years, which translates into two generations of whales.

Karla Dutton, Alaska program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said the recovery plan was overdue but welcome.

"We call on National Marine Fisheries Service to properly fund in a timely manner the science needed to further understand and address these threats so we can work together to recover this iconic Cook Inlet species," she said by email.
In uncanny timing, the boiler at Community House on Broadway has broken down, leaving the shelters officials scrambling to provide heat for the residents as freezing temperatures continue into the weekend.

The Community House, a 43-room homeless shelter in downtown Longview, is housing 112 residents, including 52 children. It was 54 degrees in the common area on the ground floor of the shelter on Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday morning, shelter officials discovered a large leak in the downstairs furnace room. A large crack in the six-year old boiler had rendered it unusable.

Were scrambling to get what we can. Were going to have to consolidate people, too  maybe put some more singles in the overflow, a large room where residents can be grouped, said Frank Morrison, executive director of Community House.

To cope with the broken boiler, officials have bought about 50 low-amp space heaters from stores around town. As of Thursday afternoon, staff had identified 15 rooms with babies and toddlers that would need to be kept warm first.

Staff also bought surge protector cords for each of the heaters, because theyre worried the heaters could blow a electrical breakers. Officials said if breakers keep blowing, it could cause electrical damage. The shelter planned to hold a meeting Thursday evening to discuss how to proceed.

Morrison said hes hoping to have the boiler fixed by Tuesday. A new part for the boiler is coming from Chicago. In total, the part, shipping, installation and price of the space heaters will cost the shelter about $10,000, Morrison said.

The boiler, which is a high efficiency furnace, was donated new to Community House by Weyerhaeuser Co. in 2011. It cost around $35,000 then, Morrison said. Hes hoping that it wont get too cold in the next coming days and is planning to do everything he can, he said.

I pray that its Tuesday. ...This is like new, Morrison said in reference to the boiler. I cant imagine what it would cost now, even though that was six years ago. I just, we cant afford that.

For now, no one  not even the mechanic who installed it  knows what caused the failure, Morrison said. He was uncertain whether the furnace is still under warranty.

Morrison is asking for donations from the public to absorb the cost. Hes requesting people dont bring heaters, as they might not be the right kind and therefore unusable. Donations can be sent to P.O. Box 403, Longview, WA 98632 or dropped off at Community House at 1105 Broadway.

Morrison said hes hoping the shelter can keep everyone warm until Tuesday.

Well no doubt its stressful. Because we have newborns here, and weve got 52 kids, Morrison said. So theyre going to find the heat and stay with the heat.
The cosmological system is extremely mysterious and strange and we all know that. Over the year, scientists have kept on discovering new celestial objects in the astral system but this time is quite exceptional. A group of scientists has gotten the glimpse of a first-of-its-kind galaxy having two rings in the space. This is for the first time, that the researchers have detected such an extremely rare type galaxy that is encircled by two spherical rings orbiting its elliptical-like core.

According to the researchers, the extremely rare galaxy is spotted locating approximately 359 million light-years away from the Earth. The researchers expect the galaxy to belong to a class of hardly ever observed celestial category, called Hoag-type galaxies. While the majority of noticed galaxies are disc-shaped in the vein of our own Milky Way, Hoag-type galaxies are exceptional because of having encircling cores enclosed by a rounded ring, with zero visibility.

As said by the lead author of the study, Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil from the University of Minnesota at Duluth in the US, Of all the noticeable galaxies in the cosmological realm, less than 0.1% are Hoag-type galaxies.

For now, the rare galaxy is named as PGC 1000714. The Scientists found it to be residing some 359 million light-years away from Earth, having an exceptional round configuration that has never-ever been before. The scientists have called it a truly rare ring galaxy having two clearly visible rings. While in the initial stage of PGC 1000714 discovery presented it to have a single ring, the close inspection detected its core to actually have two rings, and its the very first time that scientists have come across such a phenomenon.

While, the most common types of galaxies that we know so far are typically disc-shaped, with stars sprawling either in a twisting configuration like the Milky Way or in an egg-shaped figure, the new galaxy is exceptional in terms of both configuration and ring.

A famous astrophysicist Patrick Treuthardt from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and his fellow researchers analyzed the new galaxy PGC 1000714 by employing the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, and concluded that the external circle of blue stars is only around 0.13 billion years old, while the internal red center is quite antique, and is around 5.5 billion years old.
On January 6, 2017, China successfully launched in telecommunication Technology test satellite. The satellite was launched from the Xichang satellite launch Centre, situated in the Southwest China province.

This telecommunication test satellite was launched at midnight with the help of a long March 3B carrier rocket. China has named to form a voice record of launching 30 new satellites this year. The new telecommunication test satellite is the first of its kind. Chinas new aim is the ambitious space program.

This record-breaking number of space launch will be initiated with the launch of long March 5 and long March 7 rockets. According to Chinas Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, long March 5 is the Chinas largest carrier rocket.

A successful test run of the satellite was initiated in November 2016. Recently China released an official white people taking the final launch date of the communication test satellite. China will launch a lunar probe in 2018. This launched will be the worlds first soft landing launch on the furthest side of the Moon.

The next satellite that will be launched by China aims to test the multi-frequency high speed data transmission. China has already conducted an impressive amount of launch last year. The number stands to 21 successful launches. This year China has plans to launch 30 new satellites. China has already left behind the United States, in terms of the number of flights that it has conducted so far.

The long March3B rocket launch will be used to send telecommunication data to Earth. This satellite is a three-stage rocket with a strap of liquid rocket boosters. It is in fact the heaviest rocket line.

These liquid strap-on boosters formed thundering lights to begin a short vertical climb during its launch. A few seconds later the vehicle took off the ground and turned southeast to fly over the Pacific Ocean. Later it began to climb the geostationary transfer Orbit (GTO).
Aditya Madanapalle

Google CEO Sundar Pichai interacted with current students of his alma mater. The session lasted almost an hour long, and it was the first time that Pichai was revisiting the campus after passing out 23 years ago. The discussion covered the efforts by Google, Pichai's time at the institution, and how things are changing in India. Here are the ten most important pointers for transforming India into a major player in the digital economy.

Indian startups need to aim higher

Pichai noted that startups in India need to think of expanding beyond just India and compete with the entire world. In his interaction with enterpreneurs over many visits to India, Pichai said he noticed world class approaches to building businesses. Pichai said that there is nothing really missing about startups in India, and the Indian startups are among the best in the world. Instead of dominating the Indian market, startups should be thinking of going international. Sachin Bansal of Flipkart and Bhavish Aggrawal of Ola have started a lobby group to give Indian startups an edge within India.

Indian startups should target similar markets to scale and grow

A problem with startups in India is that in a country of 1.3 billion people, only 300 million people are on smartphones, and that too, not all of the 300 million have great connectivity. It is still a sizable market, but the scope for scaling and growing in India is less. Pichai suggests that Indian startups should explore introducing the same products in other similar markets that are at the same state of development. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam were some of the suggested startup markets. Google has introduced many products starting in India, and later on rolled them out worldwide. YouTube Go, an app that allows users to play and share videos offline without an internet connection, is one such expected product. YouTube Go was built from the group up specifically for India, but is expected to land in other similar markets as well.

Education needs to focus on real world experiences

Pichai appreciated the strong foundation for education in India. However, Pichai noted that the education should evolve with the times. There is a lot of focus on academics, but not as much focus on itnerships, real world projects, and actual experiences. In US colleges, students pick their majors only in their final years. Instead of deciding a stream, and perhaps even a job and a company at the point of completing education, Pichai stressed on the importance of taking time to do things, and explore various avenues to figure out what it is that a person likes doing, and what that person is good at.

Love what you are doing

A point made repeatedly, Pichai noted that enjoying his work was a big part of his success. When a student asked how to make the most out of his four years at IIT, Pichai advised him not to overthink it, and to take the time to figure out what kind of activities excited him. It is important to explore different things to find out what a person is passionate about. Pichai advised taking the time and effort in getting deeply involved with projects, and understanding them at a deeper level. Finding the right pace is one of the key ingredients of success. Pichai noted how there was a set path for Indian students, from school to IIT to IIM. Pichai found it outrageous that students start preparing for IIT from the 8th standard itself.

Make technology for rural India in local languages

An important part of bridging the digital divide in India is to make more technology available in local and regional languages. Google itself is increasingly adding support for more local languages, and has created the ambitions Noto font that is an effort to create a uniform typeface for all the 800 languages in the Unicode standard. Google search hopes to be available in as many Indian languages as possible, and Android is also increasing the number of languages it supports. Pichai went on to say that Google was even looking at introducing technology for regional dialects. India celebrates linguistic diversity, but there are very few technology offerings in regional languages. Indus OS, an Android based operating system with in built translation and transliteration support is one of the good efforts in this direction. DataMail has launched email addresses in eight Indian languages.

It is important to bridge the gender divide

Only one in 10 internet users in rural India is a woman. It is important to boost adoption and use of the latest technologies by women, especially in rural India. Google, along with Tata Trusts has started the Internet Saathi program, to provide digital literacy to rural Indian women. The program empowers the local community by training women on the use of technologies, who then pass on the learnings to other women in their area. Since its launch in 2015, nine states in India have been covered by the program. The program shows directly to rural Indian women, how they stand to benefit by using the internet and other technologies.

India needs cheaper smartphones

The entry level smartphones are still too expensive according to Pichai. The need of the hour is to provide more people with smart devices, and Pichai wants to see a basic smartphone in the range of $30 (roughly Rs 2000). In India, most of the smartphones sold are in the low end segment, and priced around Rs 5,000. The Android One program launched by Google aims to make affordable smartphones that still provide a uniform user experience. The program is meant especially for developing economies such as India, and has resulted in a few phones from Micromax, Karbonn and Spice, priced at around Rs 6000.

Compete with the world, not just China

A student asked Pichai if India would ever catch up to China in terms of technology. Pichai replied that he thought the aim for India should be a little different than just competing with China. Pichai went on to say that he was fully confident that India would be one of the major players in the digital economy worldwide, and be competitive with any country in the world. The foundations necessary for such a transformation are there in the country, and it is just a matter of time according to Pichai. Pichai encouraged startups and entrepreneurs in India to continue to do what they were doing, and that India would be "there" in a few years.

Bring more small and medium businesses online

Pichai noted that it was important to bring small and medium sized businesses into the digital world. There are about 51 million SMBs in India out of which 68 percent are still not online. Towards this end, a few days before interacting with the IIT-KGP students, Pichai had unveiled the Digital Unlocked mission. The initiative will allow small businesses to increase their reach, even to a global level beyond India. The program will train SMBs with essential digital skills. The "My Business" platform, which Google recently introduced to Rajasthan, allows SMB owners to directly update information about their businesses, including phone numbers and addresses into Google products such as search and maps.

Public-Private partnerships need to be encouraged

Pichai noted how the regulations in India allowed for easy public-private partnerships, something that was not possible in a lot of other countries. Such kind of partnerships could go a long way for the Make in India program. Google's partnership with Railtel has allowed it to deploy free high speed wi-fi connectivity in railway stations across the country. The free wi-fi services are being used by over 2 million people in India.

The interaction showed that Pichai had a very encouraging outlook for India, especially going forward. "India is a great place to be looking ahead in the next 20 years," he said.
tech2 News Staff

The NPCI is getting impatient with eCommerce platforms and major merchants because of slow adoption of UPI. As a result, those who have downloaded the Bhim application are unable to find avenues to make transactions, according to a report in the Economic Times.

Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm and IRCTC are taking time to integrate with Bhim. Flipkart owned mobile wallet PhonePe and Snapdeal owned mobile wallet FreeCharge only use UPI transactions to top up the money within the wallet. Flipkart has introduced UPI transactions on PhonePe for five percent of its users, and is in the process of a wider rollout. Money added to the PayTm wallet through UPI is negligible. Online sales from eCommerce platforms are expected to form the bulk of payments from Bhim. AP Hota, managing director of NPCI, told ET that he was not happy with the 70,000 transactions a day the UPI platform was seeing, before the launch of the Bhim app.

After the demonetisation of high value currency notes, the value of UPI transactions surged to Rs 700 crore in December, compared to Rs 90 crore in November. However, by both volume and value, only a fraction of cashless transactions are conducted through UPI. 400 merchants have signed up for UPI over the course of the previous week, and some ticketing and travel sites have also adopted the platform. However, none of the top 15 merchants using UPI are the top merchants in the country. NPCI says the eCommerce sites claim they are in the process of negotiating with banks to implement UPI, every time the NPCI asks them about integration.

The UPI platform for cashless transactions was introduced back in April 2016. Narendra Modi launched the Bhim app on 30 December. The Bhim app is a common app to make transactions directly through the accounts of all the banks that have signed up on the platform. New banks are constantly being added. Some of the banks have released their own apps that support UPI transactions. Bhim is the app for cashless transactions developed by the NPCI itself.

Although the UPI platform has been around for some time, the app has only just launched, and is the most popular free app on the Play Store right now, with over 3 million installs. The wide user base can encourage eCommerce platforms and major merchants to speed up adoption of UPI.

There were some problems at launch, with users having trouble binding the app to the phone and verifying the number. These problems have been taken care of in a bug squashing update, the first of many lined up improvements and updates. Industry stakeholders have called the Bhim app a game changer for cashless transactions in India. The app allows direct fund transfer from bank accounts, and is simpler to use than a mobile wallet. UPI needs to succeed for India to transform into a less cash economy. The Bhim app has only be launched on Android as of now, users of other platforms including iOS, Windows Mobile and feature phones can use NUUP for making cashless transactions by dialling *99#.
tech2 News Staff

At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas, Nissan Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn announced a couple of new technologies and partnerships detailing the Nissan Intelligent Mobility blueprint that hints at how the cars are driven, powered and better integrated into the wider society.

At Nissan, from the beginning, we work to bring the right technologies for the full spectrum of our vehicles and the most amount of people, Ghosn said in his keynote. This takes more than innovation. It takes ingenuity. And its exactly what we deliver through Nissan Intelligent Mobility.

Ghosn first announced a technology called Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM). It was developed using technology from NASA with the objective of helping autonomous vehicles make better decisions in unpredictable scenarios. SAM uses in-vehicle AI along with human support to help make these decisions.

Nissan and Japanese internet company DeNA will begin tests aimed at developing driverless vehicles for commercial services for which the first phase of testing begins this year, with wider testing expected to begin by 2020.

On stage, Ghosn also announced the company's plans to launch a new Nissan LEAF. The new version of the electric vehicle is expected to pack-in ProPILOT technology that should allow for autonomous drive functionality, but for single lane highway driving.

Since the announcements were related to autonomous cars, connected cars were certainly a part of the mix. Nissan announced that the Renault-Nissan Alliance will continue to partner with Microsoft to further its next generation of connected car tech. What this means is that Cortana is coming to your car and she is expected to make your driving experience seamless and efficient.

The automaker also announced a new partnership with 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC) which is a non-profit working to help cities build resilience to physical, social, and economic challenges.

We invite others to join us, as well, from tech partners to e-commerce companies, ride-hailing and car-sharing platforms, and social entrepreneurs who can help us to test and develop new vehicles and services, and make sure everyone has access to the latest technologies and services that bring value to their lives, said Ghosn.
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The government is examining extra concessions being demanded by the US-based iPhone maker Apple for setting up a manufacturing unit in India. "We are discussing that ... no other mobile manufacturer have sought any extra concessions ... we have not taken any decision," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here when asked about the government's view on the Apple issue.

She added, "I am not saying that we have said yes, I am not saying that we have said no". 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 many as 42 companies are making mobile phones in India, including Chinese firm Huawei and Xiaomi. A group of senior officials from ministries, including commerce and finance, would later this month deliberate on the incentives sought by Apple to set up a manufacturing unit.

The government already provides benefits under the 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 a subsidy for investments in Special Economic Zones, among other benefits.

Currently, Apple's products are manufactured in six countries, including South Korea, Japan and the US. Elaborating, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said that government keeps getting request from various companies for concessions and this is one of them. "The government examines (all the requests) with appropriate departments. All such requests are examined in consultation with concerned departments and that process is on," he added.

PTI
Sheldon Pinto

The grass always appears greener on the other side. In fact, it does not have to be the other side, it just has to be the person standing next to you. We all have this unchangeable habit that has grown into common mentality, which taunts us about what your friend or colleague has that's often better. Whether it's the smartphone you're holding, or the degree you've earned, the job and designation that's on your resume, we simply love to compare and then keep pondering over, what ifs?

At the Google Back on Campus event held at IIT-Kharagpur, it was Google CEO, Sundar Pichai who stole the show at his alma mater. He reminisced, got nostalgic, and even gave students a good idea about what Google is focussing on next  machine learning. But there was a particular theme, one which Pichai became a part of and at times even opened up about. But Google's Vice President, South East Asia and India, Rajan Anandan said it like nobody else, "... I hope that none of you have to leave India".

It was an inspiring talk like nothing else, bold statements made that will surely inspire the thousands of IITians at Kharagpur sitting in the hot sun, questioning their existence, fearing whether the person sitting next to them is better than him or her. And this one statement by Rajan Anandan surely had a bigger impact and acted as a good reminder that you don't need to leave home anymore, because India is moving ahead and everything from Apple to Google and in between, is already vying to be out here!

And there's plenty of evidence that there's no need to go abroad to study, seek guidance and ponder over the next best idea, the next big thing. Anandan began with simple examples before he made his big statement. He (later Pichai) hinted how the top performing engineers at Google come from IITs. Later on at the event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai became a shining example of just that. In fact, he went on to say that IIT KGPs and PHDs are working on a number of world class research projects, some which also include the next big thing, machine learning.

He shouted out stating that "... I hope that none of you have to leave India, that all of you stay in India and all of you innovate for India." The challenges already exist and it's time everyone took advantage of them seeking opportunities to innovate. The recent demonetisation move turned out to be good example where multiple startups made leeways around the cash crunch to help India sail its way through the doldrums of what was and still is a cash-friendly economy.

Soon enough Sundar Pichai took to the stage and answered similar queries coming directly from the students of IIT KGP. He was also surprised to know how students who have just joined IITs are already looking at IIMs without any exploration, without any real world experience. Pichai then hinted at the Indian startups space, another area loaded with opportunity, to look broader and think bigger than just limiting their ideas and innovation to the country.

There was also a small hint at the unchanged Indian mentality towards education with involved spending time with books and following set structures without exploration. It points to the cracks in the Indian education system, one that has yet to evolve into a more practical approach that has surprisingly got plenty of people places this far. So what if this changes, what if we have that broader thinking? What if students don't ever have to leave India? Just may be, that grass on the other side will not matter anymore (forget being better or worse).

Heck if the world's largest internet company believes that there's a ton of potential in India, who are we to argue?
tech2 News Staff

Indias space agency Isro will launch a record 103 satellites  all but three of them foreign  at one go on a single rocket in the first week of February in what will be a major feat not attempted by any country. As India looks to grab a larger slice of the lucrative commercial space market, 100 of the 103 satellites set for launch by Isro's workhorse rocket PSLV-C37 in February from from its Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh belong to foreign nations, including the US and Germany.

We are making a century by launching over 100 satellites at one go, S. Somnath, Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), told a plenary session on the second day of the ongoing Indian Science Congress here today. The space agency had earlier planned a launch of 83 satellites in the last week of January, of which 80 were foreign ones. But with the addition of 20 more foreign satellites, the launch was delayed by a week and will now take place in first week of February, Somnath said.

The PSLV-C36 mission to launch the ResourceSat-2A on December 7 was the last Isro mission. The launch had no other co-passenger satellites as the orbit of the ResourceSat-2A was at a higher altitude than the orbits used by cubesats and microsatellites. There will be no other PSLV launches till the PSLV-37 launch in February 2017.

He, however, did not specify the number of countries that would launch its satellites in this mission, but said it includes nations like the US and Germany. These will be 100 micro-small satellites, which will be launched using a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle)-C37. The weight of the payload will be 1350 kgs, of which 500-600 kgs will be the satellites weight, Mr. Somnath added. The updated payload weight is a little odd, because the payload was said to be 1,600 kg in the initial plan of launching 83 satellites.

The PSLV-C37 mission will likely see the PSLV rocket in the XL configuration, with six additional strap on boosters. The PSLV-C36 mission was the first ISRO mission to beam back footage of the launch and satellite deployment from on board cameras. If on board cameras are on the PSLV-C37 mission as well, space enthusiasts can expect exciting footage of the take off and deployment of satellites in space.

The launch will be a major feat in countrys space history as no exercise on this scale has been attempted before. Isro launched a total of 33 satellites on PSLV rockets over the course of 2016. Out of these, 20 were launched in the PSLV-C34 mission. That should put into perspective how ambitious a single launch of over a hundred satellites is. The details of the satellites are not likely to be revealed because of non disclosure agreements that Isro has signed with foreign companies.

The highest number of satellites launched in a single mission is 37, a record that Russia set in 2014. The US space agency NASA launched 29. Prime Minister Narendra Modis pet South Asian satellite project, meanwhile, will take off in March.

The South Asian satellite will be a part of GSAT-9, which will be launched in March this year, M. Nageshwara Rao, Associate Director of ISRO said. The communication satellite was to be launched in December 2016, but was slightly delayed as some other satellites are to be launched before that. Sources said talks with Afghanistan to have the country on-board for the project is in its final stages.

Envisaged as a gift to its neighbours, the project, earlier known as SAARC satellite, faced stiff resistance from Pakistan. The neighbouring country wanted it to be launched under the aegis of the South Asian regional forum. It later backed out of the project. Apart from India, the satellite will benefit Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.

With inputs from PTI

This story is a part of a series on the world record launch of 104 satellites on a single mission by Isro. The stories in the series are:
Rehan Hooda

Personal security has always been a major concern for women in India, and various potential solutions have been discussed on how technology can be incorporated to solve the problem. Technology only covers a part of the larger picture and a larger social transformation is required. Regardless the conversation, we will cover how technology can help on that front, the best apps that can help you do it and the potential pitfalls that we have observed in the implementation.

A number of smartphone apps have been introduced in this space, as the smartphone adoption grew in India. Most of the apps were launched as part of a social campaign or were part of an advertising campaign. But the main issue with most of the apps is the fact that they are not updated frequently.

During my research on the apps that can help women tackle the important issue of personal safety, I found a lot of outdated apps. Apps that were last updated in 2015 or late 2014, apps that no longer function or are unstable, and user feedback has pointed out unpredictable nature of the apps. I have excluded the apps that no longer work and are not maintained by they developers so that users don't encounter any issues while using the apps. Though, the stability of the apps depends on their compatibility with your smartphone setup.

1. Trusted Contacts

Trusted Contacts is the latest app launched by Google. The app is straightforward, as it lets you choose trusted contacts and these contacts are notified about the same. One important thing to note is that the other user needs to install the same app if they want to request your location. The app lets trusted contacts request your location and the location notification comes in the UI design of a phone call. If the user does not respond in 5 minutes, then the app automatically shares the location to that trusted contact and also allows the trusted users to check phone's activity.

Even though the idea, compatibility and design of the app are the best in the list, still the implementation can be improved. The company needs to do away with the request timeout feature because the user is aware of the fact that trusted contacts can request your location.

2. My Safetipin: Personal Safety and SafetiPin Track: GPS Tracker

My Safetipin is one of the smartest apps on Google Play Store which serves as a database of information for locations around you. It lets you enter details like Lighting available in the area, your Visibility to other people so that people can check on you, the diversity of crowd in terms of number of women and children around, the density of crowd in the area, distance from nearby public transport, presence of proper place to walk, availability of police or private security nearby and openness of the place. However, the most important thing is the 'feeling' field where you can enter how you feel about your safety in the particular location.

The app comes with another companion app which gives options like 'Stay with me' which allows family and friends to track you, 'Call back' option that will make the phone ring in few minutes to help you get out of a situation, 'Call me' asks friends and family to call you, 'Scream' where the smartphone plays a loud noise to scare off people following you or trying to harass you. Other options include 'Where are you' where you can see locations of your friends and family members, 'SOS' that triggers a loud alarm on the smartphones belonging to your friends and family.

3. Himmat

Himmat is the official app developed by Delhi Police where the user is required to register in the app using an OTP. This registration registers you with the Himmat backend which is monitored by the Police control room. The audio and video from the mobile device are sent to Police control room as soon as a user activates SOS alert from the app which allows police to send assistance request to nearest Police station or PCR van in the area. Keep in mind that there are two identical app listings in the Google Play Store. The first listing is 'Himmat' which is outdated and the latest updated listing is 'Himmat.'

4. Smart24x7-Personal Safety App

The smart24x7 app is currently supported by Gurgaon Police, Jalandhar Police, Chandigarh Police, Jammu Police, Mohali Police, UP Fire Services (Lucknow and Noida). It allows users to send alerts to friends or family using the 'PANIC' button in case of any emergency. In case the GPRS or mobile data of the device is not working then the app will switch to SMS to send alerts. The app has 24x7 call centre assistant feature, voice and video recording during an emergency that will be sent to the police, fake call, tracking, sharing travel alerts and maid/servant registration with the police. They recently added a new feature that keeps your friends and family informed when you are on your way to the office or home.

5. Eyewatch Women, Eyewatch Aman, and Eyewatch BlackBox

Eyewatch is a suite of apps developed by a developer group 'Eyewatch', and different apps have different features. The apps like Eyewatch Women, Eyewatch Aman and Eyewatch BlackBox have important functionalities like tracking, fake calling, emergency contact to your family and friends. The developer or the group developing should club all the apps to make once a consolidated app that can be maintained while offering all the features that are spread over multiple apps.

Conclusion

One important issue is that most apps are not well developed with system level integration. It requires low-level access app that can map hardware keys for instant actions and the apps can't be installed directly. Even though, developing such apps will require significant coding skills, such apps should be mandatory for issues of personal safety.

Developers should note that these apps don't generate any revenue but if any developer comes with a consolidated, well maintained and modern app that includes a monthly subscription then people will pay to use that app. People will choose personal safety over not paying for a smartphone app.

One thing to note is that the Government of India has ordered smart manufacturers to integrate emergency button or panic button in the smartphone software. Most smartphones have already rolled out updates to add that functionality. This move by the government is a huge step in the right direction.
Aditya Madanapalle

Google has seen a number of its high profile projects fail spectacularly. Google Glass augmented reality spectacles are no longer available to the general public, but continue to be used for industrial and medical purposes. Google wiped out Glass data and started a new project known as Aura. Project Wing was Google's alternative to Amazon's delivery drones. There is the modular smartphone initiative known as Project Ara that got shelved. Hardware by google keeps tanking. Google print ads, Google Wave, Google Nexus Q, Google Lively have all failed.

Yet Google as a company continues to grow, and is the most profitable wing of its parent company, Alphabet. The technology offerings by Google are ubiquitous. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, and YouTube are all essential parts of the internet. What is it that makes Google repeatedly fail, and yet keep growing as a company? Sundar Pichai's interaction with students at his alma mater, IIT-KGP, might shed some light on the issue.

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google was asked at the interaction with students from IIT-KGP, the institution he passed out from before heading to US, "What is it that drives innovation at Google?" Pichai replied "I think we have always had an ambitious approach to it. We call it internally as 10x or moonshots. We try to work on things which people will use every day, it will apply to billions of people, and it solves a real problem for them. So that is the bar, anything we try to do, we think of it that way. We aim high, we try to use deep computer science to anything we approach, so that we can have a differentiated approach to solving it. And you want to aim high enough that you fail a few times. That is the natural part of the process."

Google's parent company, Alphabet has a history of starting expensive projects, known as "moonshots" or the "other bets." These include the secretive Project X for self driving cars, Google Fiber, and internet service provider, and Google Glass. Successful moonshots include YouTube, Google Play, Google Wallet and Google Earth. The moonshot projects are expensive efforts, and the risk Alphabet takes with them is high.

Pichai went on to elaborate "In fact Larry used to say if you work on really difficult things, you are better off because you have no competition. Others are not working on that difficult a problem. And even if you fail, you end up doing something great in the process. I think that is the philosophy which has guided us all through these years."

The company's philosophy is to aim so high that failure is virtually guaranteed. It is a part of the process of what makes Google works, and the reason why Google has so many successful projects. There are few other tech company owners that keep their companies teetering on the line between wild success and disaster. The only other individual with companies constantly on the brink of disaster due to investments in seemingly impossible undertakings is Elon Musk.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against D-Link Corp on Thursday, accusing the Taiwan-based manufacturer of failing to take reasonable steps to protect its routers and internet-linked security cameras from hackers.

The FTC brought the charges as part of a broader effort to improve security of internet-connected devices, including routers, webcams, digital video recorders and other widely used consumer electronics devices. The company said the claim is without merit.

"D-Link denies the allegations outlined in the complaint and is taking steps to defend the action," it said in a statement. "The security of our products and protection of our customers private data is always our top priority."

Concerns about security of internet-connected devices, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the internet of things, or IoT, have surged since last year when hackers used armies of compromised routers, webcams and other electronic devices to launch a series of increasingly powerful attacks that severed access to some of the world's biggest websites.

Security experts blamed those attacks on lax security in large numbers of IoT devices from dozens of manufacturers. They have called on the industry to better secure their equipment, removing easy-to-exploit vulnerabilities such as the use of default passwords that give hackers the keys to remotely access machines over the web.

Allison Nixon, director of security research with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said the FTC's action could encourage IoT manufacturers to beef up security. "I think vendors are going to take it seriously," she said. "The IoT world needs to shape up quickly because this is a big problem."

The FTC's complaint alleged that D-Link neglected to protect the devices from "widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorised access," even as it highlighted security features in communications with consumers.

The FTC asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order D-Link to improve its security practices and to pay the agency's legal costs. The agency filed the case after issuing guidelines on securing IoT devices in 2015. FTC commissioners voted 2-1 to approve the filing of the lawsuit. The Democratic chairwoman Edith Ramirez and commissioner Terrell McSweeny voted yes, but the lone Republican commissioner, Maureen Ohlhausen, opposed the filing of the lawsuit.

Reuters
In CES 2017, Lenovo launched the next generation of ThinkPad X1 products, the 2017 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 Yoga, and ThinkPad X1 Tablet.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a familiar sight, but closer inspection reveals that it is smaller. In fact, in addition to being the lightest notebook in its class at under 2.5 pounds (1.14kg), it is also the smallest, fitting a high quality 14-inch IPS display into a typical 13-inch form factor. Despite the smaller size, there are no compromises here. The X1 Carbon continues to innovate as one of the thinnest, lightest and most durable notebooks around. A full complement of ports, infrared camera, connectivity and security ensure the X1 Carbon delivers maximum performance on all fronts. The six-row ThinkPad keyboard with an improved Microsoft Precision Touchpad (with physical buttons!) and iconic TrackPoint complete the picture.

Available in classic ThinkPad black and a new silver color, it is under the hood that the X1 Carbon comes into its own. Customers tell us that battery life is the single most important feature in a highly mobile business ultrabook, but not at the expense of security and connectivity. The improvements weve made are a direct result of constant analysis of customer feedback and user testing.

New enhancements include:

Enough battery life to board one of the worlds ultra-long-haul flights and have enough juice on arrival to message home. Users can now enjoy up to 15.5 hours, per MobileMark 2014.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A Wireless WAN offering up to three times faster LTE speeds and WIFI CERTIFIED WiGig options remain, but can now co-exist thanks to redesigned antenna placements.

Thunderbolt 3 ports also make their appearance with up to eight times faster transfer speeds than USB 3.0 and 4k display connectivity. Weve still managed to squeeze on a couple of type-A USB 3.0 ports and HDMI too.

Expanded docking solutions with new Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C docks.

In the last year, 689 million people have been victims of cybercrime and with 431 million new malware strains detected, device security has never been more critical. ThinkPad X1 Carbon is more secure than ever with multi-factor authentication improvements such as:

ThinkPad has enhanced biometric authentication with the addition of an IR camera with face recognition support for Windows Hello logon.

The Match-on-Chip touch fingerprint sensor adds another security layer. Enrolled data is processed in the sensor itself and all fingerprint images are handled inside the fingerprint processing unit preventing malicious logon access.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon is also the first business-class notebook to support FIDO-enabled biometric authentication for PayPal. Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) secures users FIDO credentials and the Synaptics Natural ID fingerprint sensor features enterprise-level security with TLS 1.2 encryption. This hardware-level protection will enable users to authenticate to online FIDO-enabled services like PayPal by using a fingerprint instead of a password.

ThinkPad X1 Yoga also gets updated treatment and the same silver option. Customers looking for a convertible notebook want the best Windows 10 experience possible with multi-mode flexibility, high performance functionality and pen use that feels more natural. The X1 Yoga excels, adapting to users various needs, with a redesigned rechargeable pen, a great visual experience and an improved unique keyboard. It also shares many of the improvements from the X1 Carbon, with improved security and a complete set of ports including Thunderbolt 3. Flying from New York to Tokyo or Dubai to Sydney is not a problem with up to 15 hours of battery life for the true mobile warrior.

Key features include:

Users will revel in the only 14-inch OLED notebook display option reproducing stunning colors, absolute blacks and 100 percent Adobe RGB color space.

Intel Iris Graphics with dedicated high bandwidth, high speed memory delivering superior performance over Intel HD Graphics.

We developed an improved ThinkPad Pen Pro for 2017 using a new soft elastomer tip. With bigger friction on glass, the pen recreates a more natural writing experience for users.

Lenovo engineers further improved the unique rise and fall keyboard. The new keyboard retracts fully flat in tablet mode offering greater stability and user comfort and anchoring the keycaps delivers better long term key durability and reliability.

The ThinkPad X1 Tablet combines 2-in-1 uncompromised design with enterprise-class features. For 2017, the MIL-SPEC tested X1 Tablet continues to impress customers with its light weight modularity and serviceability.

The X1 Tablet modules offer port expansion and up to 5 hours extra battery life, or a properly integrated projection option for a seamless desk-to-projection experience.

Simplified serviceability and a wide range of docking options make the X1 Tablet virtually unique in the detachable segment.

@Technuter.com News Service
Russia starts withdrawing aircraft carrier from Syria

The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier during its mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

AP, Moscow :

Russia announced on Friday that it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and some other Russian warships from the waters off Syria as the first step in a drawdown of its forces in the war-torn Mideast country.

According to Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier and accompanying ships are to be the first to leave.

Gerasimov was quoted as saying by the state news agency Tass that "in accordance with the decision by the supreme commander-in-chief (President) Vladimir Putin, the Defense Ministry is starting to downsize the grouping of armed forces in Syria."

Moscow has been a key supporter of President Bashar Assad's government and forces in Syria's devastating civil war.

Gerasimov did not give further details on the force reduction, which follows an order by Putin on Dec. 29.

Syrian forces' retaking of the city of Aleppo last month and a subsequent Russia- and Turkey-brokered cease-fire, in place for nearly a week now, make Russian forces less critical to Assad, but it is unclear how extensive the drawdown might be.

Airstrikes from the Admiral Kuzetsov began in mid-November, the first time the carrier has been used in combat. It has lost two aircraft - an Su-33 fighter jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria. In November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the carrier.

Russia and Turkey, a strong supporter of Syria's moderate opposition, brokered the current cease-fire, which came into effect on Dec. 30. The truce has mostly held but not altogether halted fighting in the country, and the government and opposition have blamed each other for violations of the truce.

The cease-fire is meant to pave the way for peace negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, later this month. The gathering could give new impetus for U.N.-mediated talks between Syria's warring sides.

Another reports adds: The United Nations warned Thursday that sabotaging water supplies was a war crime after the main source for Syria's capital was cut, leaving more than five million people facing shortages.

Water supplies from the rebel-held area of Wadi Barada near Damascus have been severed since December 22, with the regime and rebels trading blame.

The head of a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria said Thursday the shutdown had already had "dramatic" consequences. Jan Egeland said water supplies to 5.5 million people had been hit "because of fighting, or because of sabotage or because of both".
MURADNAGAR(Comilla): A view exchange meeting on traffic jam was held at Kabi Nazrul Auditorium in Muradnagar Upazila on Tuesday. Md Raselul Kader, UNO, Muradnagar Upazila presided over the meeting.
Delay in lodging FIR under certain situation is sustainable

(From previous issue) :

47. It is not at all wise in all cases to find an accused guilty if he remains absconding. Absconding by itself is the conclusive proof of guilt of the accused but it lends weight to the circumstantial evidence against him.

48. In the present case we find three other persons as accused who are close relatives to the convict-accused. One is his wife, then his full brother and third one is his father. All of them appeared in the case and got acquitted at the trial but he did not bother to attend the trial court in the case while they all were put on trial. He obviously knew that his three close relations became involved in the legal battle on a charge of murder. If he was not involved with the crime as alleged by the prosecution, he ought to have faced the trial without any hesitation but he did not do so. Although record shows that all due process of law was exhausted by the court below to bring him in the book but he evaded trial going into hiding. Under such circumstances he cannot say now that he had no knowledge about the case filed by the informant, PW 1. It finds support from the decision in the case of Zakir Hossain vs State, reported in 55 DLR 137 where court opined that,

"Accused remained absconding with clear guilty knowledge about his overt act in the occurrence resulting in the murder and, as such, his absconsion will create adverse opinion against him."

49. The contention of learned defence lawyer is that PWs 1, 7, 8 and 9 are the interested witnesses as they are brother, sisters and father of the victim. In reply to that effect it can be said that when a person comes under an attack by assailant, his nearest relatives will come forward to save and look after him, is quite natural.

50. In the instant case we find PWs -7, 8 and 9 on hearing hue and cry rushed to the place of occurrence soon after and saw the incident on their own eyes partially. Interested witness by itself cannot be a good ground to discard the evidence if one is found to be a truthful witness and telling the truth. It finds support from the decision in the case of State vs Ful Mia, reported in 5 BLC (AD) 41, in which our Apex Court opined that,

"The evidence of eye-witnesses cannot be discarded on the ground that they are interested witnesses and such evidence is admissible in evidence if they are found to be truthful witnesses and telling the truth."

51. The evidence of all prosecution live witnesses is found consistent, uniform and corroborative with each other in all material particulars. They consistently prove the time, place [exhibits-4 and 5] and manner of the occurrence. No discrepancy is found in respect of time, place and manner of the occurrence.

There is nothing to disbelieve in evidence of the competent witnesses of the prosecution case. More so, it has been corroborated by material exhibits-I, l(a), l(b) and also post-mortem examination report. And as such, it can be safely said that prosecution has been able to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt by the impartial and unbiased witnesses.

52. Learned State Defence Lawyer appearing for the accused has contended lastly that court has ample power to .give lesser sentence instead of death penalty if the prosecution case is proved beyond all reasonable doubt. In the present case, the alleged hasuya" used by the accused in the attack of the victim was not recovered and that is why the same was not produced before the court. The investigating officer of the case did not make any attempt to recover the alleged weapon from any places. He ought to have carried out such vision for the interest of proper investigation. More. s6, the victim of the case died four days after the occurrence.

53. However, it is very difficult task on the part of a judge to decide what would be the quantum of sentence to be awarded upon an accused for committing an offence. We find some support from the decision in the case of Nawshar Ali Sarder vs State, reported in 39 DLR (AD) 194 [para 11] their Lordships opined that, "Section 302 which punishes 'murder' does not specify in which case death sentence should be given and in which case transportation for life to be awarded, but leaves the matter to the discretion of the court, Every case should be considered m the facts and circumstances of that case only".

54. Considering the decisions cited above, the testimonies on record and the facts and circumstances of the case we are of the view that justice will be met if the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence of death to accused Md Nazrul Islam is altered and reduced to imprisonment for life instead of death.

55. In the result, the Death Reference is rejected and the order of sentence of death passed by the learned Sessions Judge, Kushtia against the condemned-accused Md Nazrul Islam finding him guilty under Section 302 of the Penal Code is commuted to imprisonment for life with a fine of Taka 5,000 (five thousand) in default, to suffer rigorous imprisonment for 6 (six) months more.

Let a copy of this judgment and order along with lower court records be sent to the learned sessions Judge, Kushtia for information and necessary action at once.

(Concluded)
Recent Islamaphobic hate crime in UK and Law

Barrister M. A. Muid Khan :

"We want communities to have the confidence to come forward and report hate crime when it happens. Hate Crime is not ignored - we will take positive action, we will investigate, we will support victims and we will work hard to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice."

(Cressida Dick, The Metropolitan Police, Head of Counter Terrorism)

Despite the fact that the Muslims in Britain express a stronger sense of belonging in Britain than their compatriots, nevertheless the latest figures from Scotland Yard show reports of Islamaphobic hate crime have risen by almost two-thirds in the past 12 months, up from 844 to 1,335.

Recent Religious Hate crimes : In the first sickening attack that took place on 16th December 2016 in Hall Lane in Chingford Mount, north London, a young 27-year-old Muslim woman was knocked down by two white men. The attackers dragged her along the pavement by her hijab in a "sickening" attack. The attackers approached her from behind and tried to remove her headscarf. The victim was left lying on the floor for almost 20 minutes; before managing to dial 9999.This sickening attack shocked the whole nation in the UK.

On 13th December 2016, in the second incident, a knifeman stabbed a 40-year-old Muslim male passenger on a Train at Forest Gate Hill station at around 1.15 PM. The attacker then marched through the carriages shouting 'kill all Muslims'. The witnesses of the attack said that he was shouting stuff like 'Death to Muslims' and 'Go back to Syria'. Police arrested a 38-year-old on suspicion of GBH following the incident. This is a crude example of another hate crime

On 18th October 2016, in the third sickening attack, a Hate-crime attacker rip off a British-born Muslim woman's hijab as she walks along Oxford Street in Central London. The attacker told her repeatedly to remove the headscarf before trying to drag it off her. The attack was being treated as an Islamophobic crime.

If we compare the above three hate fuelled attacks, we would be able to find out the fact that these innocent victims were targeted by the attackers purely based on what they were wearing as Muslim man and women.

They were unprovoked and hate-filled attack in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street in the UK. Academic research is entirely certain that Islam and Muslims are often perceived in negative terms and this should not be dismissed as irrelevant if we want to be a society based on fairness and equality. In the light of three recent brutal attacks, in this article an attempt would be made to establish the meaning of Islamophobia and the existing UK law to punish the criminals.

Islamophobia : The term "Islamophobia" refers to fear, prejudice, hatred or dislike directed against Islam or Muslims or towards Islamic politics or culture. The Oxford Dictionary defines the term Islomophobia as, "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". Any criminal offence can be a religious hate crime, if the offender targeted the victim because of their prejudice or hostility based on religion. In the light of the above definition, all the incidents mentioned above are religious hate crime as the innocent victims were targeted by the attackers purely based on what they were wearing as Muslim man and women.

UK law against Religious hate crime: Under the existing UK law, racially and religiously motivated crimes are not tolerated. However, the recent attacks on British Muslim men and women show how they have become victims of Islamophobia and are suffering an "explosion" in faith-based hatred crime.

There are several examples provided in the legislations as racial or religious hate incidents including: (a) verbal and physical abuse, (b) bullying, (c) threatening behaviour, (d) online abuse & (e) damage to property.

There are two main types of racist and religious hate crime: (1) racially or religiously aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 & (2) any other offences for which the sentence can be increased under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 if they are classed as a hate crime

In both cases, when a criminal offence is classed as a racist or religious hate crime, the judge can impose a tougher sentence on the offender.

What should the victims do?: The victim of a religious hate crime must report it to the police about the incident of hate crime immediately. Victims can contact the police directly, or use an online reporting facility such as True Vision. When describing the offender it's useful to give general information such as (1) age, (2) height, (3) build, (4) gender, (5) ethnicity and (6) clothing. It is also useful to describe any other particular features of the offender such as: (1) hair colour (2) glasses (3) jewellery or piercing, (4) tattoos, (5) facial hair (6) a particular accent, (7) teeth, (8) scars & (9) birth marks. If a vehicle was involved, give general information such as: the make, model and colour, the victim may have noticed if it had stickers, sun shades, or car seats. If the incident involved damage to property, the victim should describe the damage or loss, as well as the costs involved if possible. The victim can also take photos of the damage to show the police.

Epilogue : Despite having strict legislations to punish the criminals of religious hate crime, Muslim communities living in the UK do not feel safe on the street any more. British Muslim males and females are not feeling secured and safe on the streets of the UK.

The government and Police should create a safer environment in which British Muslims can practise their own religion or wear religious attire freely and independently; and it will without doubt be a pro-Britain, pro-human rights song that they will sing.

If the attackers of the above religious hatred crimes are not brought before justice with exemplary punishment, it will only lead to the continuation of a harmful cycle. The result of this can be devastating. Muslim communities in the UK need to feel safe, confident and reassured that these injustices will be responded to.

Therefore, people from all walks of life should raise their voice against all sorts of religious hate crime. They must stand together with the Muslims to defendant their rights to practice their religion freely and independently. To tackle Islamophobia/Muslimophobia/anti-Muslim prejudice seriously; we should not confuse the religion of Islam with the political ideology of Islamist extremism. Education must be the cornerstone of any preventative policy if we are to make a better future for our children free from the mistakes their parents once made.

(The writer is a Barrister of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn. Legal Executive Lawyer of CILEX. )
Myanmar must admit violence for meaningful discussion

MEDIA reports on Friday said an envoy of the Myanmar government is due in the city on January 11 to discuss the Rohingya issue with Bangladesh government leaders airing a sense of willingness of the Myanmar government to resolve the terrible humanitarian crisis, Bangladesh has sheltered over 50,000 Rohingyas since October last to add to a huge Rohingya community in Teknaf region. It is causing immense pressure on Bangladesh and we want a quick resolution of the crisis to stop new arrival.

No doubt the arrival of an envoy signals talks may open soon. But the rebuttal by the country's foreign ministry, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi of allegations of killing, torture and eviction of Rohingya Muslims in a report only days before his arrival has left serious doubt of any positive outcome. Two government reports at a time last week on Rohingya situation seem to be highly misleading and full of lies. We however welcome the move and hope it will lead to constructive dialogue for effective safety of Rohingya Muslims and return of the displaced people to their homes.

It is not acceptable that Rohingyas must be treated as Bangladesh nationals since they speak in Bengali and it can't be the cause of losing their Myanmar nationality since 1980 stripping their right to vote. They are living there for generations. The International Community had great trust in Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as defender of human rights but her silence all through this period of brutality on Rohingyas and now the denial of allegations by her own Ministry that Rohingyas were killed and tortured left the global public opinion further shattered.

A leaked video, filmed by a police officer which went viral showing police are brutally abusing villagers by kicking, sexually harassing women, and taking away men at gun-point has left no secret what is really happening in the besieged land where human rights monitors and aid workers have no access. Suu Kyi's Ministry's claim for the video film as an isolated case seems to be an attempt to cover up genocide of the helpless minorities. Human Rights Groups have rightly raised the question what indeed are taking all over where video films have no access. The government "claim rings hollow," said Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of HRW [Asia Division] in comments on the Myanmar government's reports.

Surprisingly, the Myanmar government commission set up to investigate recent violence on the Rohingyas also claimed they have found no cases of genocide or religious persecution of Rohingyas. But HRW's dismissal of both the reports has exposed all the lies when it said they have proof of massive and systematic violence in Rohingya villages and towns obtained through satellite imageries.

What we believe like other international organizations is that the Myanmar government must admit committing of carnage in the first place for any meaningful discussion. Otherwise, there is no need to send any representative by Myanmar government. There is no bilateral way of solving the problem of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Myanmar government must show its authority over the armed police which have become a brutal force against the Muslims.




Get united for restoration of democracy: Dr Kamal

UNB, Dhaka :

Gano Forum President Dr Kamal Hossain on Friday urged all to get united for what he said restoring democracy, the rule of law and the election system, and establishing people's rights.

"There's no proper democratic atmosphere in the country. The rule of law is now largely absent in the country hampering people's security," he said while addressing a party meeting, said a press release.

Dr Kamal said people's trust on the election system reached almost zero following the January-5 general election and Union Parisahd polls. He also claimed that the government has totally failed to ensure people's security as crossfire, murder and forced disappearance continue in the country.




Over 500 `jail appeals` yet to hear in HC

Gulam Rabbani :

Hearing on more than five hundred 'jail appeals' cannot be started as the judgment copies of those cases were not sent to the Supreme Court (SC).

In some cases decades have been past. Even some prisoners have already completed their sentence period, but their jail appeals are yet to hear in the High Court (HC).

Recently, a list of 529 jail appeals has been prepared after the Chief Justice's direction. This jail appeals are still pending in the HC.

The sentence period of many of the Appellants has been expired. In this circumstances, the Supreme Court (SC) Administration has sent letters to 35 jails across the country seeking information about the Appellant prisoners.

The poor and the helpless prisoners, who don't have the ability to conduct cases in the Supreme Court, may appeal through jail authorities against lower court verdict.

But many prisoners don't get the copy of the verdict as they stay in jail. Sometimes they appeal through jail authorities without any copy of the judgment. This is why hearing on those appeals has been stopped.

Syed Aminul Islam, Registrar General of the Supreme Court, said that many jail appeals come to the SC without judgment copy. These appeals cannot be prepared for hearing as those were sent incomplete.

A list of unsettled jail appeals has been prepared and sent to the jails so that the jail authorities could send judgment copies of the cases, he said.

According to the Supreme Court's letter, some jail authorities sent jail appeals without any judgment copy. Even they did not take any step to send the judgment later. But the judges felt embarrass hearing on an appeal without any judgment copy.

The letter also said, it is not possible for judges to take any decision about any jail appeal without any judgment. But in the mean time, sentence period of many prisoners has been expired. In this circumstance, the letter has been issued to the jail authorities to send the judgments of the listed prisoners.

The Supreme Court letter to the Senior Jail Superintendent of the Dhaka Central Jail contains the information of 129 prisoners. But hearing did not held on those jail appeals as the jail authorities failed to send judgment copy with them. Many prisoners of the list have already completed their sentence period in the jail.

Special Tribunal-2 of Dhaka sentenced Sagor Hossain Dollar for 7 years in a case on July 24 in 2005. Sagor appealed to the High Court through jail authority. The jail authority sent the appeal petition to the HC on September 25 of that year. But no copy of the judgment was with that petition. Even they did not send it later. This is why Sagor's jail appeal is pending in the HC for more than 11 years.

Like this, jail appeal of Abdul Hye, who was sentenced for only two years in the lower court, is pending with the HC for more than 10 years. A Dhaka court sentenced him in a case on May 9, 2006. He also appealed through jail authority on June 27 of the same year. But his appeal petition is also pending for years as the jail authority did not sent his judgment copy.
Shop owners will be liable if further accident occurs: Mayor

Staff Reporter :

Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor Annisul Huq on Friday warned the shop owners of Gulshan's DCC market that they will be held responsible if any accident occurs again after reopening of the market, which was ravaged by fire on January 2.

He issued the warning while talking to newsmen after visiting the market in the afternoon.

"The building of the market seems to be in a good shape. But nobody could confirm if there is no more risk. So, if any accident takes place after its reopening, the shop owners will be held responsible," said Annisul Huq.

He said, it would be better to wait a few more days for reopening of the market.

Replying to a question, the mayor told the newsmen there is no conflict between

the shop owners and the city corporation.

In the fire, the makeshift part of the market collapsed. On the other hand, the 20 per cent shops of the concrete made market were also damaged.

The shop owners reopened the market on Friday without complying with the directives of the DNCC mayor.

Annisul earlier said the DNCC would take the decision of reopening the market after experts' opinion in this regard.


US 'identifies agents behind Russian hack'

BBC Online :

The US has identified the Russian agents behind alleged hacking ahead of the presidential election won by Donald Trump in November, reports say.

The agents, whose names have not been released, are alleged to have sent stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks to try to swing the vote for Mr Trump.

Russia denies any involvement and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Moscow was not the source.

Intelligence officials are due to brief Mr Trump, who doubts the claims, later.

Vice-President Joe Biden lambasted the president-elect on Thursday for attacking the intelligence

community over the claims, saying it was "absolutely mindless" not to have faith in the agencies.

At about the same time, President-elect Trump appeared to question the intelligence agencies' findings in a tweet, asking why they decided not to request to examine computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Mr Biden said he had read a US intelligence report outlining Russian involvement, the details of which are emerging in US media.

According to CNN, the Washington Post and NBC News citing intelligence sources, agencies had intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election showing senior Russian government officials celebrating Donald Trump's win over rival Hillary Clinton.

They had also identified go-betweens who delivered stolen Democratic emails to the Wikileaks website, sources said, without providing further details. NBC News says the alleged Russian hacking targeted not just the DNC but also the White House, joint chiefs of staff, the department of state and large US corporations.

National Intelligence Director Gen James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey are due to brief President-elect Trump on the report in New York on Friday.

An unclassified version will be made public next week.

Vice-President Joe Biden told the PBS network that the report clearly confirmed Russia had tried to "discredit the US electoral process" as part of a systematic campaign to undermine Mrs Clinton.

Her campaign manager, John Podesta, was among those whose emails on the DNC server were hacked.

Mr Biden also criticised Mr Trump for ignoring intelligence on the hack.

"The idea that you may know more than the intelligence community knows - it's like saying I know more about physics than my professor. I didn't read the book, I just know I know more."

Gen Clapper told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the hack, and said the motive would be revealed next week.

Republican Senator John McCain, a leading Russia critic in Congress who chaired the hearing, said it was in the interests of all Americans to confront the problem of foreign hacking.

"There is no national security interest more vital to the US than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference."

Last week President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US over the alleged hacking. Russia has said it will not reciprocate.

What's Mr Trump's view?

Mr Trump has repeatedly rejected allegations that the Russian government was behind the hacks.

On Wednesday, he repeated a suggestion that "a 14-year-old" may have been responsible for the breach.

On Thursday, he said he was a "big fan" of intelligence agencies, but later went on to raise questions about they responded to the security breach.

Mr Trump promised last week to reveal information about the hacking, but no announcement came.

His inauguration will take place on 20 January. The pro-Kremlin media line is that the US authorities have failed to present any evidence to substantiate their presidential campaign hacking accusations.

The official Rossiya 24 TV channel says the "US secret services have still not supplied a single piece of evidence", while the popular Gazeta.ru web site says Washington has "still not provided any convincing technical data". Opposition websites largely cover what the major US networks are reporting, and all note the Kremlin's denial of involvement.

US media have been voicing concern over the growing divide between their president-elect and the US intelligence community, with the New York Times editorial board singling out Mr Trump's refusal to accept regular intelligence briefings.

"He is effectively working to delegitimise institutions whose jobs involve reporting on risks, threats and facts that a president needs to keep the nation safe."

The Washington Post's David Ignatius views the coming days as a test to see just how supportive of the intelligence system "Trump really is", comparing his response to hacking claims to the "sort of information fog... Moscow seeks to spawn in its own propaganda campaigns".

Fox News' Chris Stirewalt says that after James Clapper's testimony, it is "clear the nation's spies are not going to let Trump & Co off the hook here. Their competency, integrity and patriotism have been called into question, and they are not going to let the matter be tabled."
33 prisoners killed in new Brazil prison uprising

Reuters, Rio De Janeiro :

At last 33 inmates have been killed in a new prison riot in the Amazon region of Brazil, officials said on Friday, just five days after 56 inmates were slaughtered in the country's worst prison massacre in more than two decades.

Few details were available about the latest uprising early on Friday in Roraima state's

largest penitentiary, where a fight between rival drug gangs ended with 10 dead last October.

Security experts have predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled prison system in the wake of the massacre earlier this week in which members of one drug gang butchered inmates from a rival group.

The top security official in the state of Roraima, Uziel de Castro, blamed Friday's violence on the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command (PCC) drug gang, according to a report on the website of the Estado de S.Paulo newspaper.

Earlier this week, it was primarily members of the PCC who were among the 56 dead at a prison in nearby Amazonas state, killed by the North Family drug faction, believed to dominate the traffic of cocaine from Colombia and Peru in that region.

The North Family is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after the PCC.
LC Amend Act challenges govt control on CHT

Bangalees fear evacuations: Tribal men rapidly grabbing lands: Mutual understanding between Bangalees and tribes disappears

Reza Mahmud :

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Amendment Act challenges the government's control on CHT, experts said. They said the most dangerous points that the decisions of the Commission cannot be challenged in the courts, and that the disputes will be solved as per the rituals and customs of the tribes.

"It was unnecessary to bring the Amendment because the laws of the country were enough to solve the disputes. In truth, the Amendment has created serious misunderstanding between the tribal people and the Bengalese," Justice Khadimul Islam, the former Chairman of CHT Land Commission told the New Nation yesterday.

Major General (rtd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim, an expert on CHT issues, said, "Some sections and articles of the Land Commission Amendment Act diminishes the government's authority on the sovereignty of Bangladesh. If the government implements the Act,

then the country might lose one tenth of land."

Syed Ibrahim who worked for a long time in the area during his service in Bangladesh Army, now Chairman of Bangladesh Kalyan Party, has apprehended about the fate of Bangalees living in CHT.

He said, "Very worrisome matter is that, if anyone becomes harmed by the decision of the Commission he can not seek redress in the court. It violated the court's jurisdiction. But the persons of the Commission are not taking oath to protect our Constitution."

Sources said, the government in 1997 signed an accord with Jana Sanghati Samity to cease from insurgency.

The government formed CHT Land Commission and the Parliament passed CHT Land Commission Act in 2001 to solve the land disputes in Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarbans. But the tribal leaders obstructed the commission to work.

Justice Khademul Islam said, "The tribal leaders have not cooperated with the Commission. If they cooperated, all the disputes in the hill side would have been solved easily by the laws of the land."

The tribal leaders boycotted the Commission meetings and raised at first 23 point and finally 13 point proposals. As per those proposals, the government brought new Amendment to the Land Commission Act. The Parliament passed the Act on last October 6.

When this correspondent visited Rangamati and Khagrachhari recently, he saw the tribal people rapidly grabbing the government lands since the amendment.

They are building houses and temples in the lands of reserve forests, hills and other government lands. Apart from these, the mutual understanding between the local Bangalees and the tribal people were damaged.

The tribe men are now giving threat to Bangalees to relocate from CHT areas by damaging their houses and crops and attacking on them.

According to the Article 3(2) of the law, there will be no Bangalee representative in the commission. All the members of the commission are from the tribal people. As the government's representative, the only Chairman may be from the Bengalese. According the Article 13 of the Law, the member-secretary and other government staffs for the Commission must be appointed from the tribal people. On the other hand, the Amendment added 'all lands of CHT, instead of 'disputed lands' for the tribal people returning from India.

Deputy Commissioner of Khagrachhari, Muhammad Wahiduzzaman said, "if all demands of the tribal leaders are implemented in the name of the amended law, the country must lose its sovereignty in the area. Because, then the civil and police administrations, forests would be under the tribal groups. The security forces to be evacuated.

"The Land Commission was formed only for the rehabilitations of the 12 thousand tribal people returning from India's Tripura. So, the Commission worked for those people. But now in the Amendment of the Act has been inserted 'all lands' instead of 'lands'. It creates huge unlimited crises," Wadud Bhuiya, the founder of equality movement and former Chairman of CHT Development Board told The New Nation.

He said, "The Article 6 (ka, kha and ga) of the amendment added that the disputes would be solved under the 'tribal rituals and methods'. It is most dangerous for the State and the government's authority. According to this point, all the allotments of the lands in CHT must be permitted by the tribal circle chief or head man. If any tribal man now claims that the lands where now Deputy Commissioner's office situated are his grandfather's Jhum Cultivations land, the DC office must be evacuated if the circle chief or the head man say 'yes' to him."

The experts said, according to the tribal rituals and customs, if any ancestors like grandfather and his ancestors used some lands or hills as their cattle field, they can now claim those lands. Moreover, each piece of land must be allotted by the head man in the CHT. If any land like government offices is proved that it was not allotted by the head man, it will be evacuated according to the Amended Act.

Bangalee Parbatya Nagorik Odhikar Parishad Chairman Engineer Alkas Al Mamun said, "The High Court on April 13 in 2010 announced in a verdict that the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council is illegal. But the government amended the law influenced by the council. The government should take another amendment of the law to cancel all the anti-Constitutional articles to remove all threats for sovereignty of our country."

Firoza Begum Chinu, MP, said, "We hope the law will protect rights of every citizen. If any Bengalee faces evacuation from CHT we would not sit idle." She said it while talking with this correspondent in her Rangamati residence.

Former State Minister and AL Rangamati District unit President Dipangkar Talukdar said, "The law will protect every citizen's interests." He said it while talking with this correspondent in his Rangamati residence.


Major shake-up at Islami Bank

Arastoo Khan new Chairman

Kamruzzaman Bablu :

Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), the largest Shariah-based bank in Bangladesh, has brought massive changes in its three top management posts on Thursday.

The reshuffling was made in the meeting of the bank's Board of Directors held at its head office in the capital.

The bank's board elected Arastoo Khan, an ex-bureaucrat who was chairman of Commerce Bank, as new Chairman of IBBL replacing incumbent Mustafa Anowar.

Khan earlier resigned from the Commerce Bank to join the Bank. He became bank's one of the directors on behalf of Armada Spinning Mills.

As a representative of Ibn Sina run by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, Mustafa Anowar was serving as the Chairman of the bank.

He also resigned from the post of director as well as from the post in the bank's foundation.

Prof Syed Ahsanul Alam has been elected as a new Vice-Chairman of the bank following the resignation of incumbent vice-chairman Azizul Haque in the board meeting.

The bank's board also replaced the bank's Managing Director (MD) Mohammad Abdul Mannan by Union Bank's MD Abdul Hamid Mia.

When contacted, Mustafa Anowar told The New Nation on Friday that the new chairman has been elected in the meeting of the Board of Directors. Vice Chairman Azizul Haque and MD Abdul Mannan have resigned. Everything has been done smoothly."

Arastoo Khan said, "I joined the meeting of the Board of Directors for the first time on Thursday and that meeting has elected me chairman of Islami Bank. Earlier I have resigned from the Commerce Bank."

IBBL is the pioneer of Islamic banking in Bangladesh.

It became incorporated on 13 March 1983 as a public limited company under the Companies Act 1913 with a 36.91 per cent local and 63.09 per cent foreign shareholders, particularly from the Middle East.

The IBBL has 307 branches including 57 AD branches and three offshore banking units as well as 13,229 staffs, as of December 2015.

The bank has also been considered as the largest private bank in Bangladesh.
Mastermind Marzan among 2 killed in gunfight

Staff Reporter :

Neo-JMB leader Nurul Islam Marzan and his aide Saddam Hossain were killed in a shootout with law enforcers in Dhaka in the small hours of Friday, police said.

Marzan was the operational commander of last year's (July 1) Holey Artisan Bakery attack, and Saddam, an accused murderer of Japanese national Kunio Hoshi, were shot dead in a gun-battle with a unit of counter-terrorism police near Mohammadpur Beribandh area in Dhaka.

Saddam alias Rahul was also one of the organisers of Chhatra Shibir, Jamaat-e-Islami's student wing, in northern Bangladesh, according to police.

The gun-battle took place in the small hours of Friday, said Monirul Islam, Chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).

Marzan was the operational commander and a mastermind of the Holey Artisan Bakery attack, while Saddam was accused in 10 murder cases, said Monirul Islam, Chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

Among the cases, charge-sheets were submitted in five cases mentioning his name, Monirul said.

The charge sheeted cases are sensational murders of Kunio Hoshi in Rangpur, Rahamat Ali Khadem in Rangpur, Bahai Ruhur

Amin in Rangpur, head of Debiganj Math in Panchgarh and Hosen Ali in Kurigram.

And the other cases are killings of doctor Dipti in Gaibandha, Rabbi of Shaghata in Gaibandha and Tarun Datta of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha, and attempt to murder of Karbala's Khadem in Nilphamari and Doctor Birnodro of Chirirbandar in Dinajpur. Saddam is hailing from Gaibandha, Monirul added. Acting on secret information, Mohammadpur police set up a temporary check post in front of the graveyard on Babubazar-Gubtali road, said Mohibul Islam, Deputy Commissioner of CTTC.

When the police challenged a motorbike carrying two persons, the criminals hurled several bombs on the law-enforcers prompting a retaliation that triggered a "gunfight" between them. At one stage, the two was caught in the line of fire. Police recovered the bodies and sent to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) morgue for autopsy, Mohibul said.

Mohammadpur Police sent two bodies to DMCH for autopsy, said Bachchu Mia, Sub-Inspector of the hospital police outpost. Police also recovered a pistol, three rounds of bullet, a knife and a motorbike from the spot.
7-day remand for Ankhi sought

Dewan Atikur Rahman Ankhi the mastermind behind Nasirnagar mayhem being taken to the court and sought bail on Friday.

bdnews24.com :

Police in Brahmanbarhia have sought a seven-day remand of Dewan Atiqur Rahman Akhi for allegedly organising the Nasirnagar hate attacks on Hindu homes and temples.

The request was made after the accused was produced before the Senior Judicial Magistrate's Court around 11:45am on Friday, said Nasirnagar Police Station SI Ishtiaque Ahmed.

Ishtiaque, who is investigating the attacks, said police have requested 'intensive interrogation' of Akhi.

Senior Judicial Magistrate Saraf Uddin ordered him to jail, Ishtiaque said and added that the court did not set a date for the next hearing.

Police brought Akhi to Brahmanbarhia after his arrest in Dhaka on Thursday.

Ankhi is the chairman of Nasirnagar Upazila's Haripur Union Parishad and is a former member of the Juba League's district committee. He also runs a liquor cartel.

At least 15 temples and hundreds of homes were vandalised and looted at Nasirnagar over a Facebook post reportedly 'insulting Islam'.

Ankhi's involvement in the violence was revealed by a bdnews24.com investigation into the Oct 30 attacks.
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.
Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials

2 years ago
The Beijing-Kunming high-speed train departs from Beijing West Railway Station on Jan 5, 2017. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

China Railway Corporation (CRC), China's national railway operator, says that a large number of railway lines have started operation on Thursday.

135 pairs (two trains that go in opposite directions for the same line between two destinations) of passenger trains would go down the new lines.

A highlight of the update is that the operation of the high-speed rail from Beijing to southwest China's Kunming, the country's longest high-speed railway line, will cut down travel time between the two cities from 33 hours to about 13 hours.

The Beijing-Kunming high-speed line is 2,760 km in length, which is about the distance from Manchester, England to Athens, Greece (2,637 km).

The route passes through 6 provinces in China, making it the longest rail in the country, and takes a travel time of 12 hours and 53 minutes.

Other high-speed trains that connect big cities such as Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Wuahan to Kunming southwest China would also be opened, shortening travel time significantly.

Meanwhile, Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway, which opened in last December, has also reduced the traveling time between the two cities to about 11 hours from about 34 hours.

Apart from building new railway lines, the CRC is also going to extend some old lines. For example, a pair of trains that connect southeast China's Fuzhou and northeast China's Harbin would be extended to Jiamusi (located in the north of Harbin).

A few measures, such as changing railways lines that some trains have been operating on, are taken to cut passengers' traveling time as well.

As the Spring Festival is approaching, a time when concerns a vast number of Chinese people traveling back home, the CRC says that the railway passenger capacity is forecasted to greatly increase this year.

It anticipates that 356 million trips will be made on the railway network during the Chinese New Year, which would increase 9.7 percent compared with 2016.
Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Variable clouds and becoming windy with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 74F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms, some strong, early, becoming clear after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low 43F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
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.
CARBONDALE  The Illinois Community College Board announced on Friday the distribution of $3 million in emergency funds for community colleges across seven districts.

A news release from the ICCB lists Rend Lake College, John A. Logan College, Shawnee Community College, Southeastern Illinois College, Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Kaskaskia College and Lake Land College as community colleges who qualify for the allocation.

From the $3 million of emergency funds, each district will receive $428,571.42 in financial support for essential operations.

Lazaro Lopez, chair of the ICCB, said the funds will ensure that community colleges in need can operate while waiting for legislators to pass a budget.

"The emergency funds announced today ensure those community colleges with the fewest financial resources can continue to operate while we wait for the General Assembly to pass a full, comprehensive, balanced budget," he said.

"Despite today's action, community colleges across the state will continue to struggle without the adequate resources and predictability that comes with a full-year state budget and the structural changes to fix the overall system."

Districts were selected based on criteria established by the board during a special meeting in December.

The criteria was formulated on the assumption that districts with the least amount of local property tax funding will have the hardest time operating without state funding. Colleges meeting the criterion were also required to demonstrate evidence of measures taken to reduce expenditures that required a reduction in staff and programs.
Decades ago, before pork-barrel spending became a pejorative term in American politics, earmarks helped build Southern Illinois. Today, this region's congressional representatives are advocating for their controversial return to the budgeting process in Washington.

Southern Illinois Reps. Mike Bost and John Shimkus are among the GOP members of Congress asking to lift the moratorium on earmarks, which are funding authorizations for localized projects attached to spending bills that benefit a specific members district.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said he would consider a public vote on the return of earmarks early this year, according to Bost and other media reports.

The elimination of earmarks violates the Constitution as far as Im concerned, said Bost, R-Murphysboro. Members were sent there to represent their district.

Congressional earmarks were scrapped about five years ago in the face of corruption, boondoggles, bloat and accusations of pay-to-play politics.

Alaskas bridge to nowhere became the poster child for runaway federal spending via earmarks, and the plug was pulled on them after the tea party wave helped Republicans claim control of the House in the 2010 election.

Controversial as they may be, the fact is that Southern Illinois would not be what it is today without earmarks, said John Jackson, a visiting professor at the SIU Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.

While the bridge to nowhere in Alaska was a boondoggle, most people around here wouldnt think Rend Lake or the Marion prison were boondoggles, Jackson said.

Earmarks built Southern Illinois

For decades until the late 1980s, Southern Illinois earned a generous share of federal earmarks thanks in large part to the power and prestige of the late U.S. Rep. Ken Gray, the magnetic World War II veteran who represented this region for years and was a masterful wheeler-dealer.

The Prince of Pork," as the West Frankfort Democrat became known, brought home projects in the form of the U.S. Penitentiary-Marion, the interstate highway system that runs through Southern Illinois, Rend Lake, post offices and hospitals.

When he died in July 2014 at the age of 89, he was credited with bringing $7 billion in projects to his depressed district during the time he served in Congress, from 1955 to 1974, when he retired for health reasons, and again a decade later for two more terms, from 1985 to 1989.

While Gray takes the cake  or the pork, rather  when it comes to measuring Southern Illinois lawmakers past abilities to bring home the bacon, others who also served Southern Illinois have played a part in landing federal projects in the region through the earmarks process.

A constitutional question

Shimkus, R-Collinsville, said he believes, as does Bost, that earmarks are constitutional right of elected representatives to earmark funds for local projects through the legislative process.

All appropriations begin in the House per the constitution, Shimkus said. So, weve turned over our power of the purse to the executive branch, who can then make their own decisions based upon their political whims.

Though administrative funding decisions are intended to remove politics from the equation through need-based formulas, Shimkus argued that does not always happen and that House and Senate members should have a say in the prioritization of some projects in their districts.

Still, he acknowledged, congressional earmarks did get abused.

We have a couple of members in jail because of it, he said. So not only was it abused, we had members who broke the law and did time  Now, we are trying to find a way to reclaim our constitutional authority and ensure the public trust through transparency.

Bost said that if earmarks are returned, certain sensible guidelines would be implemented to protect the process from corruption. Shimkus said that he would support a limitation on earmarks where the process only could be used to direct federal dollars to other government agencies and public infrastructure projects, not to businesses or individuals.

That earmarks encourage pay-to-play politics  whereby money was earmarked for a campaign donors business, for instance  was one of the accusations that dogged federal lawmakers as the controversy over earmarks peaked and eventually led to their demise.

Critics claim fiscal irresponsibility

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C., said the argument that congressional earmarks are constitutionally protected is without merit. He said lawmakers direct all funding and have the ability to create and rewrite competitive merit-based formula systems to fairly allocate federal dollars through administrative agencies, and to exercise oversight authority if government workers break those rules.

To allocate projects based on who has political muscle versus which project is most important is fiscally irresponsible, he said.

As earmarks reached their heyday years, in 2005 and 2006, there were 15,000 or more earmarks tucked into spending bills annually, accounting for billions of dollars in federal allocations. Tracking them was a nightmare, Ellis said. To show how they had ballooned over the years, Ellis noted that in the defense spending bill, which traditionally accounted for the largest dollar amount earmarks, there were about a dozen earmarks in 1970, compared to more than 2,500 by 2005.

Greasing the legislative process

Yet Jackson said its his opinion that if proper reforms are put in place to curtail corruption, it could be good for the region and country. Thats not to say that Southern Illinois would see the windfall it did under Grays reign  times have changed  but it could compete for its share.

Another important benefit of earmarks, Jackson noted, is they greased the legislative process. In other words, they allowed for horse trading among lawmakers and could lift longstanding logjams through the art of compromise. Jackson said that as President Barack Obama prepares to leave office, there has been talk about why he wasnt more like President Lyndon B. Johnson, who, despite a divided America, helped usher through Congress and then signed into law the sweeping anti-discrimination 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Why wasnt Obama like Johnson? One good reason was he didnt have earmarks, Jackson said. Theres no more wheeling and dealing. Johnson would say to a Southern senator or House member, Id like your vote on the Civil Rights Act. Theyd say, No way. Not going to happen. And hed say, You know that lake or highway or dam or federal building youve wanted, I can make that happen, but I need your vote.

Its called horse trading and people think its unseemly, but it was part of the legislative process."

Ellis disagreed with this analysis, saying it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison of the debate that exists today about congressional earmarks. And he said that with earmarks accounting for only half of a percent of the overall federal budget, that's not enough to make a huge difference in negotiations  nor should voters want their lawmakers' votes to hinge on promises of landing a federal project back home.

A bridge to somewhere

But Bost said earmarks can make a difference, and he argued that navigating the bureaucratic process can present challenges, and doesnt always allow for an elected member to exert the influence they should be able to have, as a person knowledgeable about his or her district, in prioritizing needs.

I want to be able to argue for a bridge to somewhere in my district if it needs to be, he said.

According to The Associated Press, some GOP lawmakers asked the House Republican leadership in a mid-November closed-door meeting to restore earmarks, but Speaker Ryan halted the plan, saying that if the rules were going to be changed, the issue should be debated in public.

Bost said he was in that meeting and that one of the most vocal proponents of the return of earmarks was Don Young, the longtime Republican congressman from Alaska who authored the infamous earmark for a $223 million bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to Gravina Island. Critics dubbed it the bridge to nowhere, arguing that not enough people would use it to justify the price tag when there were other more pressing infrastructure needs across the country.

Bost said Young stood up and said earmarks should be returned  and now. The speaker said, Don, first off, I dont think you should be the mouthpiece on this, Bost said, of his recollection of Ryans words during the meeting.

Bost, paraphrasing Ryan, said the speaker continued by saying, Ladies and gentleman, I see this has support and I know that when you argued with (former House Speaker John) Boehner for this he always said, Ill get back to you  and he never did.

But Ryan promised his members he would readdress the issue in the months ahead, but that a vote would have to be taken in the light of day, according to Bost.

And Bost said he thinks thats wise to first educate the public on how any new process will include taxpayer protections, and then have a public vote on the matter so the general public says, Youre doggone right I want my congressman to stand up" for projects in the district, Bost said.
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What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

Cathy Areus Long Road to Becoming a Freelance Journalist and What to Know About Her Kids An American freelance journalist, news analyst, and author, Cathy Areu has built a lasting reputation for herself on cable television. Popular for her skillful and sassy presentation of professional views on varying topics including cultural and feminist issues, Cathy is an inspiration to many women across the globe. In addition to being a journalist, she ...

Tucker Carlsons Love Story With Wife Susan Andrews, their Children and Net Worth Today On the TV screens, Tucker Carlson is that fiery fellow who passionately dishes out his conservative and often controversial views on issues of national importance. Such brazenness has fetched him many enemies, especially on the left-wing, but it has also helped him cement a reputation as one of the foremost broadcast journalists in America. His ...

Paige Wyatts Net Worth, Boyfriend and Where She Is Now Paige Wyatt became popular after the Wyatt family began running the reality television show, American Guns. The Wyatt family comprises Rich Wyatt (father), Renee Wyatt (mother), Paige and Kurt Wyatt (children). Rich Wyatt originally ran a gun shop, the Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado which is outside of Denver. The business which he ran together ...

The Progression of Howard Sterns Career As A Media Personality And Why He Divorced His First Wife Howard Stern is a legendary American radio host, who has also done some notable work as an actor, producer, author, as well as photographer. The radio personality achieved worldwide fame as a result of his self-titled radio program, The Howard Stern Show. As a professional radio personality, he has worked in different radio stations. Since 2006, ...

Lisa Joyners Biography  Ethnicity, Net Worth and Other Key Facts Lisa Joyner is an American Journalist, TV talk show host, and actress. Some of her well-known works are her correspondences for the Los Angeles based TV KCBS, inFANity show, Find My Family Show including her film and television appearances in Brimstone, American Sweetheart, The Bold and The Beautiful among others. Lisas passion for reconnecting people with their biological families ...

Amanda Balionis Rise Through the Ranks of Sportscasting and the Identity of Her Boyfriend Amanda Balionis is an American sportscaster currently working as a golf broadcaster for CBS Sports. Among so many of her works in the field of sports reporting, Amandas PGA Tour coverage seems to be the most popular so far. She covered the Super Bowl working with CBS Sports social media team in Atlanta, where she ...

Dissecting Charles Paynes Sexual Allegations, Its After Effects and More About His Wife Charles Payne had a respectable career as an analyst on Wall Street before he made the transition to television and became a contributor and later a host on Fox. In that time, his expertise has come under scrutiny, and he has been at the center of at least one major controversy. The major controversy in question ...

Erik Asla And Tryra Banks Split: Everything You Need To Know Tyra Banks and Erik Asla have called it quits! The couple, who began dating in 2013 and have a son named York Banks Asla, has decided to end what everybody taught was the perfect relationship. Neither person has come out to give a reason for the breakup, but what is obvious right now is that ...

What to Note About Dr Terry Dubrows Qualifications, TV Works and Marriage to Heather Kent In the realm of people that we expect to see regularly on our screens, medical doctors are closer to the bottom of the list. Aside from the fact that their work has little correlation with TV, they are presumably too busy to pursue life as TV personalities. Yet, a few of them have usurped this ...

Jessica Goch  Bio: 5 Things You Didnt Know About Ninjas Wife Jessica Goch is the Schofield-born American Social Media Influencer who has worked as a model but is now better known as a host and interviewer of prominent Electronic sports celebrities at popular gaming events/tournaments. The screen queen also serves as the manager of her famous husband Ninja aka Tyler Blevins whose exploits on Twitch and Fortnite has ...

CNNs Chris Cuomo Biography  Wife, Family & Net worth Chris Cuomo needs no elaborate introduction as he has starred graced many prominent Television cable networks and his voice has been heard through acknowledged radio shows. He is a television journalist and Lawyer who has previously worked for ABC News as Chief law and justice correspondent as well as a co-anchor on 20/20. If you still ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson  Family, Religion & Net Worth Neil deGrasse Tyson is a distinguished American astrophysicist and author who has been able to achieve so much after falling in love with astronomy at the age of 9. He has since attended and become an alumnus of prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and also recorded numerous achievements in his field of ...

Is Simon Cowell Gay? Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend and Why is He Famous? Simon Cowell is a well-known talent show judge, TV producer, entrepreneur and one of the most popular TV personalities that Britain has ever produced. In conjunction with his company, Syco, Cowell is the brain behind hugely successful talent hunt shows such as The X-Factor UK, The X-Factor US, Britains Got Talent, Americas Got Talent and ...

Everything To Know About Joanna Gaines Life With Chip Gaines, Their Business Pursuits and Kids Joanna Gaines and her husband Chip Gaines became celebrities after their television show Fixer Upper began airing back in 2013. The show which was about home renovation and decoration ran for about 6 seasons with a total of 79 episodes before the couple bade farewell to it in April 2018. Apart from their appearances on ...

Who Is Larry The Cable Guy? What To Know About His Wife And Net Worth Larry the Cable Guy is a self-professed country kid renowned for his trademark Southern accent and sensational catchphrase Git-R-Done! The famous comedian who talks about anything under the sun has gone on to become one of the most memorable characters in comedy history. Join us in unearthing lesser-known facts about the former on-air-personality, standup comedy superstar, movie ...

Who Is Patrick Starr, What Is His Net Worth and Gender? The make-up industry over the years has grown to become a billion dollar industry not just because there are probably more women wearing make-up but because a whole lot of men, especially the young ones, have become bold enough to wear it unlike before. A few of these men, like Patrick Starr, have even gone ...

How Did Chris Jansing Become a Senior Correspondent at MSNBC and Who Is Her Husband? An award-winning American television news reporter and journalist, Chris Jansing has succeeded in carving a spectacular niche for herself in the field of TV journalism. Outstanding for not just her excellence in journalism, Chris is also cherished for her incredibly gorgeous looks post 60! For close to four decades, Jansing has continued to soar in her ...

Jaclyn Glenn Biography  Age, Height & Ex-Boyfriend American Youtuber, Jaclyn Glenn, rose to prominence through her self-titled YouTube channel Jaclyn Glenn. She has remained an acclaimed atheist and continues to air her views on hot issues from politics, religion, animal rights, to atheism. During the heated 2016 US Presidential elections, Glenn featured in Hump Trump: Official Donald Trump Song. Her parallel acting career ...

Is Pat Sajak Married to a Wife or is He Gay With a Partner? Pat Sajak is one of the most popular TV game show hosts in America. He commenced his career as a radio disk jockey as well as a TV weatherman before being tapped to host Wheel of Fortune, the longest-running syndicated game show in the United States. Sajak has hosted the popular game show from 1983 ...

Nayyera Haqs Bio  What To Know About Her Husband, Parents And Family Nayyera Haq can take anyone on political debates as well as discussions on social issues affecting many. Her ability to masterfully deliver her stance on every issue or political debate has made her a regular face in morning and evening news media platforms. This is not a common feat especially for someone from her kind ...

Inside Guy Fieris Family With Wife, Kids and Sister Who Died of Cancer Over the years we have seen men dominate the kitchen and churn out amazing delicacies from it. Some do it way better than their female counterparts and one of such men is Guy Ramsay Fieri  an American TV host, celebrity chef, restaurant owner, bestselling author of four culinary books, and game show host. His ...

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Jim Hoffer: Biography, Wife  Mika Brzezinski, Children and Net Worth Jim Hoffer is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who works as an investigative reporter for Eyewitness News, New York City. In his over two decades of investigative journalism, Hoffer has been at the front lines of several crucial stories from the 9/11 attack to the crash of American Flight 587 to the 2003 Blackout. On top of ...

The Ups and Downs of Erin Mcpikes Journalism Career and Other Facts About Her Personal Life Erin McPike is a journalist working for the Independent Journal Review (IJR) as a White House Correspondent but she gained widespread recognition for her coverage of general news. Whether its breaking news or some mainstream story, McPike has a reputation of baring the facts. As a journalist, her work as a White House Correspondent for Independent ...

Bert Kreischer Is Married To LeeAnn Kreischer With 2 Kids  Meet His Family Those familiar with Bert Kreischer mainly have the image of a large-bellied party man whose college life inspired the National Lampoon film, Van Wilder. It is an image that one would not naturally associate with a wholesome family. The standup comedian still maintains his wild party animal image on stage. But, back at home, he is ...

How Brendan Greene Became a Game Designer to Look Out For and Facts About His Failed Marriage The name Brendan Greene may not easily ring a bell in the larger society but for gaming enthusiasts, he is considered a god and this is because of his invention of the video game, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, also called PUBG. Based on the popular last-man-standing/battle royale concept, Greenes creation has taken the gaming world by ...

WFAAs Sonia Azad Bio  Does The Reporter Have A Husband Or Boyfriend? Emmy Award-winning journalist and Health & Wellness reporter Sonia Azad is on the news segment News 8 Daybreak for the television station WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas, a channel which she joined in October of 2015. Besides her time on the news, Azad is also a marathon runner and a certified yoga instructor. She has covered major news ...

This Is Everything You Should Know About Caroline Heldman, Her Career Portfolio and Other Facts Love it or hate it, there is no escaping the fact that feminism has come to stay in our world. The movement has continued to garner momentum over the years and this is due to the sustained push by several women, and even men, including the likes of Caroline Heldman. A Professor of Politics at ...

Understanding The Enigma That Is Gavin McInnes, The Controversies He Has Stirred and All About His Wife Gavin McInnes is a polemical English-born writer and TV personality, who is best known for his racist and fascist ideologies, as well as his co-ownership of Vice Media and Vice Magazine. He is also an actor a
Numerous residents told HUD they didnt want to move. Dont do this. Its wrong, man, one resident told them. You dont know what were going through because you're not from here, said another, noting he has lived in Cairo since the 1950s and doesnt intend to live elsewhere. Stop moving our people out of town. Build something new here.
CARBONDALE  Southern Illinois University President Randy Dunn said on Friday that the school has decided not to adopt the "sanctuary campus" label, while reaffirming its commitment to all students.

Dunn said in a statement that the decision applies to all three of SIU's locations  Carbondale, Edwardsville and the School of Medicine in Springfield.

School leaders studied a proposal to designate SIU a sanctuary campus at the request of two student organizations on the Carbondale campus.

Dunn said that review concluded that the concept of a sanctuary campus is not clearly defined in any legal sense, adding that the designation suggests that the university would be willing to violate the law. Doing so would put SIU and all of its students at risk, including the potential loss of federal financial aid, Dunn said.

At the same time, there are key principles that we believe are important during this uncertain period, Dunn said. We will continue to do everything we can within the scope of established law to support our students. And we take our responsibility to protect student privacy under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) very seriously. SIU is committed to an inclusive, welcoming environment in which all of our students can continue progress toward their degrees and graduate on time.

Leaders of the Graduate and Professional Student Council and the Undergraduate Student Government, in a mid-November letter to campus administrators, asked them to designate the campus a "formal sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, their families and related community members."

Their letter cited concerns about what might happen to undocumented students and their families given statements President-elect Donald Trump made during the campaign regarding illegal immigration and his intention to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

In response to the student leaders' letter, SIU Chancellor Brad Colwell said in an early December letter that administrators were studying their options and the potential implications of such a decision. Dunn's Friday statement is a follow-up to that discussion.

In the December letter, Colwell said the campus is committed to helping its 20 students enrolled under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that provides temporary relief from deportation, and as well removes some barriers to work and higher education, for people who arrived in the country prior to their 16th birthday.

Colwell said there are about 20 DACA students enrolled at SIU Carbondale. He also mentioned in his earlier letter that he and Dunn had joined other university presidents across the country in signing a letter in support of continuation of the DACA program.

Dunn reiterated the school's commitment to its DACA students on Friday.

SIU enrolls fewer than 60 DACA students among its system-wide enrollment of more than 30,000.

Dunn, Colwell and SIU Edwardswville Chancellor Randy Pembrook are among the nearly 600 university leaders nationally who have signed a letter calling for the continuation of DACA.

"The SIU campuses have been trusted destinations for all of our students and we maintain an enduring commitment to providing access to students traditionally underrepresented in higher education," Dunn said.

The DACA program was created by the administration of President Barack Obama via executive action, and Trump has said he intends to overturn many of Obama's executive actions and orders. There are roughly 740,000 immigrants who benefit from the DACA program, people who are often referred to as Dreamers. Concerns have been expressed about their status in the U.S. under a Trump presidency.

In an interview with Time magazine, Trump said of the Dreamers: "We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud." He acknowledged to Time that these are people who were brought here "at a very young age" and "they're in never-land because they dont know whats going to happen.

But he was not specific as to what that plan would look like, according to Time's article announcing Trump as its person of the year.
A former Orangeburg County deputy was tried in his absence on Thursday and found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol, according to the Richland County 5th Judicial Circuit Public Index.

Devrinn Washington, 30, of Columbia was scheduled to appear in a Richland County traffic court on Thursday afternoon, but he didnt show up.

Richland County Judge Harold A. Cuff sentenced Washington to 30 days in jail or a fine of $992.

Washington was operating an Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office patrol car at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 17 when he ran off the right shoulder of the road into a ditch and struck a tree, S.C. Highway Patrol Lance Cpl. David Jones has said.

The accident occurred near the intersection of Garners Ferry Road and Trotter Road in Richland County.

Washington was not injured during the crash, Jones said.

Jones noted that the trooper who responded to the scene could smell an odor of alcohol coming from (Washingtons) person.

Law enforcement officers asked Washington to submit a breath sample, but he refused, Jones said.

Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell has said Washington was immediately terminated after the sheriff learned of the charge.

Washington could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The construction of the terminal building at the Argyle Airport was provided for by the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

February 14, 2017, Valentines Day, is set aside for the opening of the Argyle International Airport .





The construction of the Airport, the largest capital project ever undertaken in this country, was launched on August 8, 2005 by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves.





Construction ensued thereafter and during the course of time (since 2008) there have been changes in a date for commencement of operations, this until the disclosure which came late December 2016.

The airport project has not been without its fair share of detractors, from the get go.





However, a Coalition of the Willing dubbed so by Prime Minister Gonsalves and including countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Austria, Malaysia and Turkey, have provided support to ensure the continuation of the dream.





The Argyle International Airport is predicted to enhance the nations economic position, and intended to bring the country in line with the demands of the 21st century.





The runway at the Argyle Airport is 9000 feet long, with a width of 150 feet. It is built to facilitate 1.5 million passengers per year, and capable of handling 800 persons at peak hour. It caters for International and Domestic flights, and is equipped with the most modern facilities.





An official programme is being finalised for the February 14 opening.

Director of the Tourism Authority Glen Beache announced plans for a Charter from Canada to form part of the opening proceedings.





Operations at Argyle will clear the way for expansion at Arnos Vale , the location of the E.T. Joshua Airport which serves as tis multi-island nations main airport.

In addition to Arnos Vale, there are airports on the Grenadine islands of Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, and Union Island. (WKA)
Jean Larsen (2nd from right)  the 100,000th visitor to Antigua/Barbuda for 2016, at V.C, Bird Intl Airport with (from left) ABTA CEO, Colin James; Tourism Cadet, Alicia Paul; Tourism Consultant Shirlene Nibbs, Greg Murphy and US Director of Tourism, Kim Jack Riley (Credit: Caribbean news Now)

Antigua and Barbuda, for the first time in recorded arrivals history, welcomed its 100,000th visitor before the end of a calendar year. They did so on New Years Eve, December 31, 2016.





The 100,000th visitor was American Jean Larsen, an artist and philanthropist, working with Pink Rock, a breast cancer survivor charity. She was traveling with her partner, Greg Murphy, on American Airlines from New York-JFK to VC Bird International Airport.





The surprised visitor was welcomed at VC Bird International Airport by a high level Tourism Ministry party, which included Minister of Tourism Asot Michael; CEO of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority, Colin C. James; tourism consultant Shirlene Nibbs; US Director of Tourism, Kim Jack Riley; and tourism cadet, Alicia Paul.





Larsen was showered with flowers and prizes.





The Antigua media reported that all of the passengers on the flight were treated to special music and dancers upon arrival, and received gift bags filled with local delicacies and a discount codes for island tours to complement their stays.





Michael shared his pleasure at reaching this landmark, "Today is a great day for Antigua and Barbuda as we mark a significant milestone and celebrate the end of a momentous year for our country. Despite trends across the region showing a decrease in visitor arrivals and spend, our twin-isle nation is defying the odds and showing significant growth in both, including double-digit growth from the US market. Antigua and Barbuda is asserting itself as the new leader in the Caribbean.. .





This milestone comes amidst rapid development in the tourism industry in Antigua and Barbdua, including on stream multiple new properties, breaking ground on new projects, the extension of Heritage Quay Pier that welcomed a Quantum class vessel, Anthem of the Seas, for the first time, and a variety of awards and achievements.




CLICO (Bahamas) was ordered liquidated on February 23, 2009. (Internet Photo). Inset: Minister of State for Finance Michael Halkitis emphasised that payout would be dispersed by Government Bonds. (Credit: Caribbean 360 News)

Caribbean 360 News is reporting that, After being delayed for more than six months, about 300 anxious CLICO policyholders in the Bahamas will finally receive their payback in the New Year.





Payments totalling totaling $38 million would be made next month and would be dispersed by Government bonds . . . and not cash, Caribbean 360 quotes Minister of State for Finance Michael Halkitis as saying.





Halkitis explained that the pay back was delayed because of the impact of Hurricane Matthew which struck The Bahamas on October 6.





Back in March, the Perry Christie administration had signed off on 3,389 cheques in the first payout, totaling just over $11 million.





Halkitis explained that the 300 policyholders, who will get their money in January, were left out of the initial payment because they had not provided the necessary information.





In addition to the payouts, the finance official is hoping that ongoing work to establish a new company to manage CLICO policies will also be completed in January.





The company, called Coral Insurance Company Limited, will only handle active policies.





"Coral Insurance Company will not take on any new business, but they will be responsible for holding those policies that remain active, and administering those, Halkitis said.





The minister added that preparations were being made to ensure a sound structure.




Renold Hadaway, Commissioner of Police (Ag), pointed to the need for the police to be more proactive in their fight against crime.

The Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force (RSVGPF) intends to intensify activities in 2017 and beyond, as the organization continues its efforts to crack down on the holders of illegal firearms.





Acting Commissioner of Police - Renold Hadaway made this clear during an interview with THE VINCENTIAN on Wednesday.





Hadaway said that similar operations to that of Tifos (taking illegal firearms off the streets), and the general warrant executed in Kingstown to search for illegal guns, both conducted in 2016, will continue in 2017, along with other activities.





The top cop noted that in 2016 police removed 43 illegal guns off the streets, compared to 21 in 2015 and 34 in 2014.





"The figures show that the police are serious about reducing the number of illegal firearms on the streets, he stressed.





Hadaway added that the police also intend to strengthen their community-based policing and to hold consultations with key stakeholders.





The Commissioner admitted that, "It is no comfort knowing that the 2016 figure of 40 homicides has surpassed the 2014 count of 38, which was recorded as the record year for homicides in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





"Each homicide, especially in a peaceful country like ours, harbours a degree of fear and apprehension among law abiding citizens. It also impacts negatively on economic development, and questions the competency and abilities of the hard-working men and women of the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police to properly police the nation.





He pointed out that, from all reports and investigations, the main contributing factor for the upsurge in the homicide count, is activities associated with the illegal drug trade, which contributes to the prevalence of illegal firearms, leading at times to gun related offences.





According to Hadaway, the three years in which the homicide count spiked, 2017, 2014 and 2007, investigations have shown that most of those homicides were drug-related. Thirty-six were recorded in 2007.





The overall crime statistics were not at hand up to press time Wednesday, but the Commissioner said that from all reports, there has been a decline in crime generally in 2016, compared to 2015.





Asked whether he thinks the criminals are ahead of the police, the Commissioner said, "I dont think they are ahead of the police, but added, "The criminals always try to be ahead of us, and we are aware of this, hence every effort is being made by the police to curtail their operations, despite the many challenges we face.





"We are aware of the communities that pose the greatest challenges for law enforcement, and we continue to place special emphasis on these communities.





"We also continue to strategise and put into operation those strategies that can best address the situation; but the support and cooperation of the public are critical in the fight against crime.





Hadaway thanked the public for their support and cooperation over the years, and made the appeal for them to continue in this vein in 2017 and beyond.





Twenty-nine (29) of the 40 homicides recorded in 2016 were gun-related, and up to press time, 28 were still under investigation.





Twenty-eight (28) of the thirty-eight (38) homicides recorded in 2014 were gun-related.





Twenty-five (25) homicides were recorded in 2015 with eleven being gun-related.
Colin David (left) and Jormano Tash were taken up for question and subsequently released.

Police are breathing a sigh of relief that the number of homicides recorded for 2016 did not rise above 40, this after a drive-by shooting that occurred in the Murrays Village area last Friday.





Speaking to THE VINCENTIAN on Wednesday, Commissioner of Police (Ag) Renold Hadaway said that three persons luckily escaped being seriously or even fatally wounded when they sustained gunshot wounds in the attack.





"We are investigating the matter vigorously to see if we can identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice, the COP said.





Over the weekend, police issued a wanted bulletin for two men - Jormano Small Man Tash and Collin Cocoa Tea David - believed to have been the perpetrators of the drive-by shooting.





Hadaway said that the men were apprehended, but were however released pending further investigations.
The Bronx, New York-based Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc., a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, is urging nationals and the New York Community to help commemorate the 220thAnniversary of the "forcible deportation of the Garfuna People by the British from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The group noted on Jan. 1 that the deportation of the Garifuna people took place on Mar.11, 1797, with settlement in Central America on Apr. 12, 1797.





The 9th Annual Garifuna-American Heritage Month 2017 takes place from March to April this year.





"Two hundred and twenty years ago, everybody wondered if the Garifunas were going to survive as a people and live a long healthy life, said the group in a statement. "Two years after the paramount Garifuna Chief Joseph Chatoyer was killed on Mar. 14, 1795, the Garifuna people were forcibly deported from their native land of St Vincent [and the Grenadines] to the island of Roatn, off the Caribbean Coast of Honduras, from where they dispersed along the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Nicaragua.





"However, 220 years later, not only have they survived but have thrived, and many have migrated to the United States, becoming a vital part of New York Citys social and economic way of life for the past eight decades, while preserving their customs, cultural values and beliefs, the statement added.





It said New York City is currently home to the largest Garifuna population outside of Central America, with an estimated 200,000 living in the South Bronx, Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn, and Harlem in Manhattan.





The group said Garifuna-American Heritage Month "celebrates the great contributions of Garifuna-Americans to the fabric of the New York State and New York City.





In recognition of their "great history and contributions, Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. said last April New York State Senator Ruben Diaz and New York State Assemblyman Luis R. Seplveda introduced an amendment to New York State Education Law to include the history of the Garifuna People.





"Garifuna-American Heritage Month provides an opportunity to recognize the significance of Garifunas contributions to the quality and character of life of New York, and, through many events and activities throughout the month, for all people to gain a greater appreciation of Garifuna history and traditions, and of the role Garifuna-Americans have played, and will continue to play, in New Yorks society, the statement said.

"The Garifunas have thrived by taking the best from their past glory to future success, it added. "We invite you to join us in the celebration of the 9th Annual GarifunaAmerican Heritage Month!





The Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. says it serves as "a resource, a forum, and advocate and a united voice for the Garifuna community.
A popular Radio station here, Hot FM, is reporting that Fitz Huggins, this countrys Consul General in Toronto, Canada, is considering bringing charges against the radio station, for comments made during one of its Mayhem morning programme broadcasts.





The comment in question is said to have been made during a Mayhem segment in November 2016.

The radio station is also reporting that it understands that Huggins is readying himself to have his lawyers write the management of the station, in relation to what he deems to be defamatory statements made baxy one of the hosts of the Mayhem programme.





The radio station also reported that they had had indication that Huggins said he would donate any monies awarded him in a suit against the station, towards building a house for a stricken family in Sandy Bay.





This publication has been unable to confirm whether Huggins has any intention to sue the station, and has also been unable to ascertain the exact contents of the broadcast to which Huggins is reported to have taken umbrage.
ON DECEMBER 31, 2016, Metrocint General Insurance Company Limited turned 48.

And to celebrate the milestone, the company awarded six of their loyal customers for their years of support to the company.

The six included taxi operators Phyllis Peters and Percy Walker, Hutchinson and Hutchinson Construction Company, businessmen Leroy Fly Edwards and Dennis Murray, and the St Vincent and the Grenadines Taxi Drivers Association.

Chief Executive Officer Desiree Richards explained that the company was started by her father, Edgerton Uncle Metro Richards, a patriot entrepreneur: "whose motivation flowed from the veins of his beloved country.

"This deep-rooted patriotism gave rise to one of the most outstanding, daring, imaginative entrepreneurs of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Metrocint stands as a symbol of his impassioned boldness, daring and Vincentian can-do spirit, Richards continued.

"This deep rooted love of country was the love of the Vincentian people, which created a unique personal relationship between the company and its customers, she said.

Over the years, the company has evolved to become the local leading motor insurer, and manages to maintain that lead in a highly competitive market.

"Our portfolio of business has grown consistently with the loyal support of our customers, Richards admitted.

And the goal remains that of serving these loyal customers better in the future, Richards told the many gathered at the Annual Customer Appreciation Day celebrations, which took place last week Friday, December 30.

"It is with this consistent support that has said that you are not afraid to support this enterprising and novel local initiative. That you are proud to be associated with Vincentian enterprise. That you believe that a local company was just as capable of performing in an area that was totally dominated by international companies, she told the gathering, dominated by Metrocint clients.

Comments from those present were encouraging, and bestowed accolades and commendations for the service provided by Metrocint Insurance Company.

Dennis Murray, one of the six recognized for years of patronage, indicated why he has stayed with the company for so long. " and I want to say to everyone, never give up on Metrocint, they are here for you  stick with them.

Another satisfied customer, Gershum Lewis, related the story of trying to find a company that had enough confidence in him, as a 21-year-old mini-bus operator.

"I have to remember that Ian (Da Silva) was the only one who gave me a chance at 21 to drive a mini-busand I am still here today, accident free, Lewis said.

And Angus Martin, former President of the SVG Taxi Drivers Association, said that for a while, members were scattered, as far as their insurance coverage was concerned, but the drive soon arose to find a company that would provide a service to suit the needs of the Associations membership.

"And we tried and we tried, and Metrocint was the only one who was able to do that, he said, adding that many other companies are considering following the lead of the taxi drivers.

According to Martin, the members are all pleased, and have no intention of leaving Metrocint.
Vincentians will have to learn how to swim among the turtles rather than killing them for meat for their dinner tables.

Vincentians will no longer savour the taste of turtle meat, nor would local artisans be allowed to use the turtle shells (backs) for making jewellery.





As of Sunday 1st January, 2017, this country joined a long list of countries across the globe in implementing a ban on the killing of sea turtles and the collection and consumption of their eggs.





Sea turtles have been under threat of extinction for some time now, and the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines had given indication in November last year, that it intended to introduce a ban on killing sea turtles, as this country contribution to the effort to safeguard the turtle population.





As part of a national awareness campaign, Vincentians have been urged to adopt the slogan and practice dubbed, No extinction in my generation, going forward from January 2017.





And, the country can expect to see heightened vigilance of the law banning the killing of turtles by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.





But there will be a complementary effort to encourage turtle watching, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries working with the National Parks Rivers and Beaches Authority, to effect a National Sea Turtle Conservation Programme.





Already the rural communities of Colonaire/Byrea and and Sandy Bay have been earmarked as designated areas for the implementation of Sea Turtle Conservation programmes.





Turtle watching has increased in popularity in many Small Island Developing States. There is already much of this in the National Marine Park in the Tobago Cays and officials and enthusiasts here are hopeful that this pastime could be reproduced on mainland St. Vincent.
Ambassador Baushuan Ger hands over computers to librarian Patricia Baptiste, in the company of Deborah Dalrymple - Head of the UWI Open Campus, St Vincent (back right) and Ronnie Daniel  Marketing Assistant  UWI Open Campus.

Students who utilize the library at the University of the West Indies Open Campus will be able to benefit from the use of two additional computers, compliments the Embassy of the Republic of China on Taiwan.





This follows on the donation of two laptop computers which were also sourced by the Taiwanese a few years ago.





Deborah Dalrymple, Head of the UWI Open Campus, St Vincent, explained that when Ambassador Baushuan Ger visited the campus for the first time, a formal request was not made. However, he picked up on a comment which was made that the institutions library was in need of a laptop.





"So the ambassador was successful in getting two laptops donated to the school back in 2015, Dalrymple said.





She added that the university was constantly trying to upgrade itself so as "to ensure that the resources of other UWI campuses regionally can be accessed locally.





The schools librarian, Patricia Baptiste, further explained that libraries were now utilizing technology that allows for students to remotely search for the availability of books, and having the computers will further facilitate this process.





She expressed her gratitude, saying that the library was in need of the computers, seeing that those in use were very old.





According to Baptiste, the new computers will benefit the students tremendously.





H.E Baushuan Ger, recalled the conversation with Ms. Dalrymple, and that he had indicated then that he would have tried his best to outfit the library with some modern equipment.





The Ambassador, while making brief remarks, highlighted his countrys assistance to Vincentian students at all levels, and disclosed despite all that was being done, that they were constantly exploring ways to do more for students in St Vincent and the Grenadines.





"Because education is very important, and we hope that with the addition of these two computers, people will have better access to the resources offered by the campus, he said.





The computers are said to value EC$2,000.00 each.
The theft of livestock and agricultural produce praedial larceny- continues to be a criminal activity that is of grave concern to law enforcement here.





Commissioner of Police (Ag) Renold Hadaway said that the police were working with the Ministry of Agriculture, and he wanted to re-assure farmers that they (police) were aware of the situation as it currently exists.





The issue becomes even more vexing because although reports of theft are being made to the authorities, investigations into the matters are often stalled due to lack of evidence, or lack of witnesses.





Hadaway explained that the police have resorted to implementing stop and search operations to check on individuals bringing agricultural produce for sale, in Kingstown.





Hadaway expressed a deep sentiment about the issue saying, .People spend a lot to invest on their farms and at the end they look for something reasonable coming out of it, and they are often deprived of this.





He went on to disclose that there are people purchasing livestock and other agricultural produce, but who are not in possession of the requisite documentation to do so. The police will be checking such individuals from time to time, in order to ensure that justice is sought for some of the nations farmers, the Commissioner (Ag) promised.
Le-Roy Augustas Edwards, a Vincentian national of Bellevue, Colonarie, now a British national residing in the United Kingdom, has been appointed a Member of The Most Excellent and Distinguished Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Years 2017 honours list.





The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, has recommended to Her Majesty the Queen, that Mr Le-Roy Augustas Edwards be appointed a Member of The Most Excellent and Distinguished Order.





Mr Edwards is no stranger to recognitions and awards. In 2001 he was nominated for and accepted the Community Champion Award - Department of Education and Skills UK. In 1998 he was nominated for the Citizen of Honour Award  Nottingham City Council.





Mr Edwards is currently employed as Executive Director for Afro-Caribbean Education & Training Services, ACETS UK, (www.acets.info), a non-governmental educational and training institution operating in Nottingham, and Nottinghamshire England, since June 1990.





He worked in education in St.Vincent and the Grenadines as a school teacher. He also worked for the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, attached to the British Development Division in the Caribbean.

He has a wide knowledge, understanding and experience of education, community education, diplomacy and international relations as it relates to government and its functions, as well as political history and political employment and training, economic development, entrepreneurship, health and social care.





He worked as a visiting lecturer, with over 20 years experience, lecturing in social policy, youth and community development, health and social care at various institutions in UK, including the Nottingham University, the Nottingham Trent university and other educational institutions in the United Kingdom.





Mr Edwards has a long track record working in education and training on a variety of issues including equal opportunities, race and cultural diversity. He has a keen interest in Water and Environmental Issues; He is a member of the World Water Council in Marseilles, France, and is the Afro-Caribbean Education and Training Services permanent representative to the council.





Mr Edwards travelled widely in his capacity, speaking at many high profile conferences including the World Conference against Racism held in South Africa in 2001, the theme Unite to combat racism . Equality, Justice and Dignity for all. He gave a presentation recently at Australia Health Professional conference; entitled "Health Inequalities a Way Forward. www.thegazette.co.uk





We at THE VINCENTIAN would like to congratulate Mr Le-Roy Edwards MBE, on his appointment, and to wish him all the best for the future years.
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By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Legends never die, but live in hearts.

Legendary composer Tofig Guliyev could hunt the hearts of millions of music lovers with his amazingly majestic melodies full of love and romance. His ability to combine notes into a beautiful piece of music is exciting music lovers around the world.

Heydar Aliyev Palace will bring together all those in fall with gear maestro's music on January 31 to commemorate the outstanding Azerbaijani composer.

Songs of one of Azerbaijan's most beloved composer will fill your soul and deep boundless joy.

Entitled "Heart's songs", the memorable concert will sound his eternal music patterns in the performance of People's artists of Azerbaijan Yalchyn Rzazadeh, Azer Zeynalov, Samir Jafarov, Heydar Anatollu, honored artists Anar Shushali, Lala Mammadova, Abbas Bagirov, Inara Babayeva, Farid Aliyev, Almaz Orujova, and Qaya band, Trend Life reported.

An absolute incredible concert promises to melt even the coldest of hearts.

Hearing this songs live will be a mesmerizing experience. We can't wait to embrace it in all its glory.

Tofig Guliyev was a composer with great talent, who entered the national music history as a classical composer of the twentieth century.

He is one of the first composers who transferred Azerbaijani mugham, a unique musical and poetic phenomenon, into musical notes.

Love can inspire us to accomplish some of the most amazing feats became the main theme in his creativity. Legendary musician considered women the most beautiful and mysterious creatures that inspired him.

Azerbaijani music treasury has been greatly enriched by his wonderful music pieces. He has had invaluable contribution to Azerbaijani national culture, and from 1930 the outstanding composer began to collect, record, and publish national folklore in his music.

The composer masterly synthesized national folk music with European, not losing the peculiarity of the former, creating exceptional pieces.

Guliyev was the first among Azerbaijani composers to establish the first Jazz Orchestra in Baku. He went down into the history as the founder of Azerbaijani pop and jazz music.

Tickets are available at l ticket offices of the city and centres of ASAN Service.

Ticket price: 20-80 AZN ($11-44)

For more information, please contact:

(012) 441-21-31

(050) 332-36-30




By Trend





Turkish Airlines (THY) has cancelled 32 domestic flights scheduled for Jan. 7 at Istanbul airports, THY said in a message on January 6.

The flights have been cancelled due to bad weather, according to the message.

Earlier, Turkeys meteorological service warned of weather worsening and heavy snow in western part of the country.
Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) has appointed Bertrand Grabowski, an aviation finance professional, as the new senior strategic advisor for the UAE-based organisation.



Grabowski was most recently member of the board of directors of Germany-based DVB Bank in charge of Aviation and Rail.



Under his leadership, DVB solidified its pre-eminence as a leading aviation asset-based lending platform and expanded its franchise to include aviation asset management, investment management and advisory businesses, said a statement from the Dubai group.



Prior to joining DVB, Grabowski had a well-known career in transportation finance in London, New York and Tokyo. He worked at Citibank and Bank Indosuez providing highly structured asset financing solutions to clients in the transportation sector.



Welcoming the appointment, CEO Firoz Tarapore said: "Grabowski is a world-class aviation finance professional and is extremely well-respected in the aviation industry. We are proud to add him to our management team as we make steady progress to double the size of our aircraft leasing portfolio."



"We grew our portfolio by 25 per cent last year and are on track to record similar growth in 2017," stated Tarapore.



"While retaining some other responsibilities in the industry, Grabowski will play an instrumental role in shaping the development of our franchise, and our entire team is excited by this stellar addition," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Etihad Airways, the national airline of the UAE, and Montenegro Airlines, flag carrier of country, have signed a codeshare agreement that provides enhanced connectivity when flying between Southeast Europe and the Middle East.



The agreement will see Etihad Airways placing its EY code on Montenegro Airlines flights between Belgrade and two destinations in Montenegro  its capital Podgorica and the attractive town of Tivat on the Adriatic coast.



Montenegro Airlines will, in return, enhance access to Etihad Airways' network by placing its YM code on the airline's daily flights between Belgrade and Abu Dhabi. The agreement will offer Montenegro Airlines passengers greater convenience and flexibility of travel to the UAE and beyond via the Serbian capital, and contribute to an increased inflow of business and leisure travellers to Montenegro.



Gregory Kaldahl, Etihad airways senior vice president Network, said: We are pleased to sign a codeshare agreement with Montenegro Airlines, which is advantageous for both our airlines and guests. Travellers in Montenegro can now reach our Abu Dhabi hub with a convenient one-stop connection in Belgrade, from where they can access key destinations in our global network with greater ease. In turn, Etihad Airways will expand its travel offer to Montenegro, an increasingly popular business and tourism destination.



Daliborka Pejovic, president of the Board of Directors of Montenegro Airlines, said: "For us at Montenegro Airlines it is clear that such forms of collaboration with Etihad Airways, a global leader in the aviation industry, are very important for our airline and our country.



The codeshare agreement will strengthen our connections to Etihad's network and consequently enhance the global profile of Montenegro Airlines. As a result, travellers from across the world will now be able to access Montenegro with greater ease and convenience, which will contribute to our inbound tourism figures, a vital component of our national economy."



Flights under the codeshare agreement are bookable via travel agents, online via etihad.com or montenegroairlines.com, or by phoning the airlines contact centres. Guests can travel on the codeshare services from January 9.  TradeArabia News Service




A federal rule limiting flaring, venting and leakage of methane on public lands is headed to court Friday, after Wyoming filed a lawsuit in opposition to the rule.

The Equality state, joined by Montana and industry groups, is seeking a preliminary injunction against the Bureau of Land Managements Methane and Waste Reduction rule, finalized in November.

A federal judge will determine whether there is enough evidence to allow for more review and put off the Jan. 17 implementation of the rule. Ultimately, Wyomings plea to the judicial system may be superfluous, as congressional leadership in Washington, D.C., recently named the methane rule as one of a bundle they would like to throw out.

At the heart of the case is which federal agency has the right to regulate emissions. Wyoming, Montana and industry groups argue that the Environmental Protection Agency and the states are in control of air quality issues.

We see this as a gross case of federal overreach, said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance. When youve got a federal land management agency, theyre not experts in air quality. They are not regulators of air quality, yet they are someone (who is) going to regulate air quality?

The EPA does have congressional authority over air quality issues via the Clean Air Act. Many states, including Wyoming, also have their own air quality divisions.

However, the BLM has attracted a number of supporters to their side. Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the state of New Mexico argue that the federal agencys job is to manage public lands and its resources like natural gas.

The BLM rule at its core is about making sure that tax payer-owned resources are managed and developed properly, said Jon Goldstein, a senior policy adviser at the Environmental Defense Fund and a longtime ally of Wyomings efforts to clean up the smog-like conditions in the Green River Basin.

Much of the BLMs rule mirrors similar regulations in Wyoming, where regulators gained experience cleaning up the air in the Pinedale area after years of production and industry led to dangerous ozone levels. Wyoming set the standard for using technology like infrared cameras to capture methane leaks, paired with increased on-the-ground inspections to reduce overall emissions. It worked.

Companies that took part in the effort began using better technology and have reported that their efforts were cost-effective.

The work in Wyoming should establish a new normal, requiring companies to use best practices to keep methane from leaking into the air, Goldstein said. Instead the state, and other states, have approached problems where they arise.

It goes to why we need a federal rule, he said. If these rules get blocked, or Congress acts to try and roll them back, its really tax payers that are going to be hurt.

***

At the heart of the debate on Friday is going to be the argument over jurisdiction. Goldstein is in the BLMs corner.

(About) $330 million dollars worth of taxpayer-owned, federal and tribal natural gas resources are wasted every year, and this rule helps fix that, he said.

Industry disagrees.

Opponents say the BLM rule is redundant, expensive and unlawful.

BLM has the authority to determine when gas is royalty-bearing or not, said Sgamma of the Energy Alliance. Had they stayed within that authority we probably would not be in court on Friday, but they went far beyond that authority.

Sgammas organization estimated increased costs per well in the thousands.

Redundant regulation that conflicts with what the EPA and the states are doing sounds like needless red tape to us, she said. Its a high cost for something BLM is not supposed to even be regulating.

However, as the war of words plays out in the West, a similar polemic against regulation was going on in Washington, D.C., where leaders promised that Obama-era regulations passed in the last few months will not hold.

Many of the rules have been in the works for years, however, a spate of regulations have gone through since the November elections that brought a conservative majority to federal leadership.

On Wednesday, House leaders made specific mention of their intention to undo the flaring rule. They would be within their rights to do so. Rules and regulations have a 60-day life after passage, within which Congress can act.

Current leadership will not only use that power, but are trying to expand it, allowing them to deny regulations in-bloc.

The support from federal lawmakers is good news for many in industry, said Sgamma.

I think that definitely is positive for us, she said. We would hope to convince the new administration that yes indeed this was an overreach of fed authority and there might be opportunities to settling the case or sending the rule back to the drawing board.

For those who have been working on reducing leaked, flared and vented gases in Wyoming for years, they hope the current leadership will consider the economic angle.

Our sincere hope is that when people look at this issue they will see the tremendous benefit to the taxpayer, Goldstein said. And decide that rather than trying to roll something back, they will leave this in place.
Wyoming could lose thousands of jobs if Congress repeals Obamacare, according to a study released as Republicans begin work to kill the Affordable Care Act.

The Commonwealth Fund and George Washington Universitys Milken School of Public Health estimated that the ACAs repeal would lead to 2.6 million jobs lost across the United States, including 4,000 in Wyoming in 2019.

The job losses would be spread across a range of sectors, including health care, construction, government and finance and insurance.

The study assumes Congress will not replace Obamacare with another health care law. Thus far, Republicans have not settled on an alternative plan.

Between 2019 and 2023, an estimated $109 million in revenue to Wyoming state and local government coffers would be lost, the study found. Nationally, the reduction in local and state tax collections would be $48 billion.

During that same period, $2.9 billion in gross state product would not materialize with the repeal of Obamacare in Wyoming. Nationally, the reduction in gross state product would be $1.5 trillion.

While the ACA is credited by its proponents as helping the lower and middle classes, the effects of repealing the law would reverberate across the whole economy, said the studys lead author, Leighton Ku of George Washington University.

Repealing key parts of the ACA could trigger massive job losses and a slump in consumer and business spending that would affect all sectors of state economies, Ku said in a statement.

Wyoming delegation

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate, under the leadership of Rep. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, took the first step to repeal the health care law through a budget resolution that would eliminate some but not all of the law. A similar measure is beginning in the House. Republicans, who have control of both chambers of Congress and soon the presidency, do not have a replacement plan ready.

On Thursday, Enzis spokesman dismissed the Commonwealth Fund, which worked on the study, as being liberal.

Was Obamacare supposed to be a federal job stimulus program or was it supposed to help people get the health care they need?, said Enzis spokesman, Max DOnofrio, in an email. The sad fact is that Obamacare is not sustainable and we are watching our private insurance market struggle to survive under current law. After more than six years, 28 million people remain uninsured.

Wyomings all-Republican delegation in Washington remains adamant that Obamacare is harmful to the state.

Sen. John Barrasso, the states junior U.S. senator, voted for the budget measure that will begin to undo the ACA, said his spokeswoman, Laura Mengelkamp, in an email.

Sen. Barrasso promised the people of Wyoming that he would work to repeal and replace this broken health law, Mengelkamp said. The best way to help Wyoming families is to give them better access to care at lower costs. Thats exactly what Republicans in Congress are working to do.

Rep. Liz Cheney, the states newest member of Congress, will also support repealing Obamacare in the House, she said in an email sent through her spokeswoman.

The people of Wyoming know Obamacare has been a job killer, she said. It has also raised costs while reducing the quality, choice and availability of care. I look forward to voting to repeal this disastrous policy and putting in place patient-centered reform that puts individuals, their families and their doctors back in charge of health care decisions.

Study

Researchers obtained the estimates by projecting tax credits from 2019 to 2023 that people receive when they purchase insurance on the market places established through Obamacare. They used economic models to estimate business output, tax revenues and new economic activity.

The study projected that in Wyoming, 800 jobs will be lost in health care in 2019, if the repeal is successful. An estimated 600 jobs in construction and real estate will be wiped out, as will 200 jobs in finance and insurance, 300 retail jobs and 100 government jobs.

The laws insurance mandate spurred activity in hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, insurance and other businesses, the study found.

Kim Deti of the Wyoming Department of Health said officials could not verify the government job losses projected in the study. She noted that Congress may unveil another health care program that could provide jobs. All numbers are a moving target at this point, she said.

Wyoming business

In recent years, the greatest growth in hospital and clinic construction has been private facilities, said Josh Carnahan of the Wyoming Construction Coalition.

Theres been projects all over the state: Cheyennes done some, Caspers done some. Laramies done some  But really in Wyoming, the driver for construction has been schools, he said.

Six years ago, when the ACA was enacted, the American Hospital Association agreed to reimbursement cuts from government programs in exchange for more business that would come from other provisions of the legislation  namely the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion, said Neil Hilton, vice president of the Wyoming Hospital Association.

In Wyoming, state lawmakers never grew the Medicaid program. But if Congress nixes the individual mandate, thousands of Wyomingites could drop their insurance, Hilton said.

Its big that hospitals absorbed some cuts without the advantage of putting more paying customers in the mix, he said.

Hilton said the repeal of Obamacare is expected to take several years, and he couldnt say if that would lead to layoffs across Wyomings medical centers.

Hospital officials across the country are in Washington, asking Congress to restore some of the cuts enacted with the ACA, Hilton said.

Or, tap the breaks on this whole repeal thing until some of that has been sorted out, he said.
A federal judge has set a March trial date for a 19-year-old Wyoming man charged with killing a couple on the Crow Indian Reservation in July 2015.

Jesus Deniz Mendoza's trial had been set for Jan. 9, but the defense asked for a delay because their expert witnesses could not be available then.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters held a scheduling conference on Thursday and scheduled the trial to start on March 27.

Mendoza, of Worland, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Jason and Tana Shane and with attempted murder for wounds suffered by their daughter. The Shanes had stopped to help Mendoza on a road near Pryor.

Mendoza's attorneys have said they will rely on an insanity defense.
RIVERTON  A lawsuit over potentially tainted groundwater outside Pavillion is set to go to trial after a judge denied an oil and gas company's request for summary judgment.

Jeff and Rhonda Locker have sued Encana Oil and Gas USA. They allege gas development near their property contaminated their groundwater. Encana denies the allegations.

Encana's attorneys had asked for summary judgment in the ongoing lawsuit in December, but district court judge Alan Johnson ruled that such a judgment was not appropriate in the case.

Dates for the trial will be set later this month.
Editor:

To the 2017 Wyoming Legislature: I attended the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Sub-Committee meeting on Dec. 14, 2016, in Cheyenne. I appreciated being able to offer my thoughts on the proposed constitutional amendment.

This proposed amendment would allow the state to receive federal lands if a transfer was authorized by the U.S. Congress. Even so, I noticed a strong resistance by the sub-committee (Sen. Hicks and Rep. Stubson), to slow this proposal down and continue discussions into future sessions. That makes me question the amount of thought, or lack thereof, that has been put into something as important as a constitutional amendment. Changing a document that has served our state and our lifestyles, for over 120 years, requires more than a few months of discussion. Especially since the proposed amendment is addressing an issue that does not currently exist. The United States has not offered to transfer federal lands to any state.

I am asking that you consider stopping any further movement of this proposed bill. The fact that we now have a new president-elect, and a new secretary of the Department of the Interior, leads me to believe that this constitutional amendment is chasing the train."

The problems we have faced in this state regarding public land management are about to change whether we like it or not. Not knowing how the new administration is going to manage public lands is a good reason to slow this effort down. I know that we as Wyomingites care dearly about our land and our economy, but a bill of this magnitude, written just one month before going in front of a voting body, is something I cannot support. It won't matter what changes in the bill's language are put in place; it is moving much too fast to allow for thoughtful solutions. Especially cost-related issues when managing public lands for multiple use.

I am asking that you vote no on the approval of any form of a constitutional amendment allowing the transfer of public lands from federal to state management. Thank you for serving Wyoming!
The Arizona Corporation Commission is being urged to amend its recent decision to end retail net metering for customers with rooftop solar, to correct the timing of when customers will be grandfathered under the old rules.

The commission voted in late December to scrap the current system of net metering, by which customers with rooftop solar systems are reimbursed for their excess generation at each utilitys retail energy rate.

To replace net metering, the utility panel approved a policy in which solar customers will be paid a new export rate, based on a proxy rate for power from utility-scale solar farms or on cost studies for each utility.

The solar export rates  expected to be a fraction of retail rates  will eventually be set as part of proceedings in pending rate cases filed by utilities including Tucson Electric Power Co. and Arizona Public Service Co.

But a few days after the commissions vote, Arizona Public Service Co. filed documents urging the commission to amend its decision.

APS noted that under an omnibus amendment passed after two full days of debate, the final order grandfathers under the current net-metering rules only customers whose systems are interconnected with their utility when the new rates go into effect. Grandfathered customers will keep their net metering rates for 20 years from the time their systems were turned on.

But APS said it believes the grandfathering period was intended to extend to customers who submit an interconnection application by the effective date of the decision issued in their utilitys rate case, not when they are actually interconnected, which could occur weeks later.

Otherwise, whether a customer is grandfathered could be determined not by when a customer makes a decision to submit an application to interconnect, but instead by the volume of (rooftop solar) applications received, among other factors outside a customers control, APS said.

Since APS filed its request to correct the decision, parties including TEP, the state Residential Utility Consumer Office, the Vote Solar Coalition, the Alliance for Solar Choice and the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association have filed documents in support of the change.

In a letter supporting APSs position, the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association said if the grandfathering issue is not fixed, the sales and installations of solar in Arizona will immediately and abruptly stop in some areas of the state.

The error in language is minor but the implications are potentially devastating, AriSEIA President Tom Harris wrote in a letter to Commissioner Andy Tobin, who sponsored an amendment that became a catch-all for modifications negotiated during the open meeting. We do not believe this was your intent.

In a filing on Wednesday, the administrative law judge in the solar case agreed with change urged by APS and the other parties and asked the Corporation Commission to take up the issue at its next open meeting Jan. 10-11.
Defense businesses in Arizona that have been hit hard in recent years by a downturn in contract spending are looking to a Trump administration for possible relief  but experts said that could take years to arrive.

Even if President-elect Donald Trump can work with Congress to fulfill campaign pledges, he likely will not be able to build a budget from the beginning until 2019, one expert said.

Hopes for help from Trump come as defense contracts have fallen by billions in the state, and by tens of billions nationally.

Arizona businesses saw their contracts with the Pentagon fall from just under $13 billion in fiscal 2012 to $9 billion in fiscal 2016, according to USAspending.gov.

Nationally, spending on defense contracts fell from $362.9 billion to $290.5 billion during the same period, according to the data.

Experts blame much of the drop on budget sequestration, a 2012 agreement that automatically cuts defense and domestic spending if lawmakers are not able to approve a balanced budget for the year.

Sequestration is not a positive for industry nationally and for the state, said Garrick Taylor, the senior vice president of government relations and communications for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Taylor said Arizona is a strong player in the defense industry and has definitely felt the drop in contract spending. But, he said, state businesses have also found ways to adapt.

He pointed to drone research and manufacturing as areas where state defense contractors have seen changes.

Trump, who will be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, said during his campaign that he wants to work with Congress to fully repeal the defense sequester and submit a budget to rebuild our depleted military.

Taylor said any increase in defense spending would benefit business in the state.

The industry is a major economic driver that means greater job creation in a sector of the economy that is known for attractive, high-paying jobs, Taylor said.

But getting agreement between the Pentagon, the White House and Congress on increased military spending could run into hurdles, particularly when it comes to the sequester, analysts said.

The 2018 budget request, I expect it to be little higher than what the Obama administration was planning, but I dont think it will be a great departure, said Roger Zakheim, a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington-Burling.

The overall defense budget  of which contracts are a part  rose from $496.1 billion in fiscal 2015 to $534.3 billion in fiscal 2016 and $582.7 billion for the current fiscal year, according to the Defense Department.

The budget caps are already in law, they remain in place through FY 2021, the entirety of Trumps first term in office, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Harrison, speaking at a Washington panel with Zakheim and others, said Trump will first have to strike a deal with Congress on the defense budget. Trump wont have a real opportunity for a large change any time soon, he said, and likely will not be able to build a budget from the beginning until 2019.
RallyUp.com, a Tucson-based online fundraising platform launched by a University of Arizona alumnus, says it will handle online fundraising for "Nothing But Nets," a partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Golden State Warriors that helps families fight malaria by providing bed netting in areas of need.
Get packing.

Thats what volunteers from a few United Methodist churches, a Jewish temple and a Muslim community center will be doing Sunday, Jan. 8.

St. Pauls United Methodist Church, 8051 E. Broadway, and the Muslim Community Center of Tucson, 5100 N. Kevy Place, will each host volunteers to pack 100,000 meals for Southern Arizona agencies that serve the hungry.

Each location will pack 50,000 meals, and the two teams are fronting $12,500 each to cover the cost of the meals through the national organization The Outreach Program, said Nancy Scott, one of three coordinators for the St. Pauls pack-a-thon. Donations are welcome.

This is the fifth year of meal packing for St. Pauls United Methodist Church, and Catalina United Methodist Church joined last year, inviting other faith communities, such as Temple Emanu-El and the Muslim Community Center, to join .

We see every day the need in Tucson to feed these hungry people, so we knew if we expanded our outreach to invite other churches, we could have a bigger effect, Scott said.

St. Pauls United Methodist hopes for 400 volunteers, and the Muslim Community Center expects at least 200.
Tucson's newest bridge was dedicated on Jan. 5, 2016 in honor of 18 Airmen of the U.S. Army Air Corps who died in a midair collision between two B-24 bombers east of Tucson in 1944. The bridge connects Kolb Road with the Sabino Canyon Road extension to Tanque Verde Road.

1 of 10 1 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Walkers and cars cross and bikers ride under the new Airmen Memorial Bridge which connects North Kolb Road Sabino Canyon Road over the Pantano Wash. 2 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Ron Bloom, left, and local resident Richard Darland discuss Bloom's 1965 Chevy Corvair prior to the dedication of the new Airmen Memorial Bridge. Bloom was the driver for Tucson Ward 2 Council member Paul Cunningham for the short opening parade. 3 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Members of the crowd read about the naming of the Airmen Memorial Bridge dedicated to a crew of airmen from Davis Monthan who were lost in a crash just south of this location in 1944. 4 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Bill Davidson, Ray Villalobos and Fred Gateman, l-r, found a cartridge just south of the new bridge construction that may have come from a 1944 midair collision of two B-24 bombers that killed the members of both crews. 5 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Bill Davidson, Ray Villalobos and Fred Gateman participate in the unveiling of the plaque dedicating the bridge as the Airmen Memorial Bridge. 6 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and Ward 2 councilman Paul Cunningham and dignitaries cut the ribbon opening the bridge to traffic. 7 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Drivers head south down the Sabino Canyon Rd. extension onto the new Airmen Memorial Bridge. 8 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Slotted windows allow views from the bridge sidewalk. 9 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge A dog takes a look through the slotted windows at the wash below. 10 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge The view to the south looks over the loop trail and in the direction of the 1944 crash site which the bridge honors. More like this... Close 1 of 10 Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Walkers and cars cross and bikers ride under the new Airmen Memorial Bridge which connects North Kolb Road Sabino Canyon Road over the Pantano Wash. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Ron Bloom, left, and local resident Richard Darland discuss Bloom's 1965 Chevy Corvair prior to the dedication of the new Airmen Memorial Bridge. Bloom was the driver for Tucson Ward 2 Council member Paul Cunningham for the short opening parade. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Members of the crowd read about the naming of the Airmen Memorial Bridge dedicated to a crew of airmen from Davis Monthan who were lost in a crash just south of this location in 1944. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Bill Davidson, Ray Villalobos and Fred Gateman, l-r, found a cartridge just south of the new bridge construction that may have come from a 1944 midair collision of two B-24 bombers that killed the members of both crews. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Bill Davidson, Ray Villalobos and Fred Gateman participate in the unveiling of the plaque dedicating the bridge as the Airmen Memorial Bridge. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and Ward 2 councilman Paul Cunningham and dignitaries cut the ribbon opening the bridge to traffic. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Drivers head south down the Sabino Canyon Rd. extension onto the new Airmen Memorial Bridge. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge Slotted windows allow views from the bridge sidewalk. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge A dog takes a look through the slotted windows at the wash below. Dedication of Airmen Memorial Bridge The view to the south looks over the loop trail and in the direction of the 1944 crash site which the bridge honors. More like this...
Former Department of Economic Security director Tim Jeffries is not disappearing quietly after his pre-Christmas firing by Gov. Doug Ducey.

In interviews and emails, Jeffries is defending his performance and arguing he was just carrying out Duceys wishes by firing 475 employees over less than two years.

In an email Jeffries originally sent to Ben Giles of the Arizona Capitol Times, he noted he had fired only 6 percent of the agencys employees. That, he noted, was less than the goal presented to him and other agency heads by the governor  weeding out 10 percent of any category.

Heres what Jeffries quoted as his instructions from the governor, which Jeffries placed in a PowerPoint presentation:

Be wedded to a promote the best; weed out the worst philosophy.

Specifically look for positive role models/examples that can be exported elsewhere in the agency as well as the broader administration.

The Bell Curve is a near-universal phenomenon. Figure out a way to eliminate the worst 10% of any category.

Use the personnel/civil service reforms passed by the Brewer administration to manage your agency. It is a tool Arizona has that few other states do. If there are employees who are clearly under-performing and ill-serving the taxpayers, then take steps to replace them with someone who will do better.

The notion of firing the worst 10 percent of a companys employers was popularized by former GE CEO Jack Welch. It was referred to informally as rank and yank. And GE, the company that popularized the practice, abandoned it a decade ago.

While incorrigible underperformers should be fired, the practice of such forced rankings  firing the lowest-ranked 10 percent  has been debunked by researchers, such as Stanford Universitys Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. The randomness of 10 percent is one problem, but so are the negative effects on the workforces productivity, they found.

In Jeffries case he negated any reductions he might have made in the workforce by replacing most everyone he fired and asking for budget increases on top of that.

None of this changes my perception that Jeffries behaved like a cult leader in his management of the DES and deserved to be fired. To reiterate: He frequently recorded video messages that employees had to watch when they turned on their computers each day, he quickly fired employees perceived to be deviating from the GOP line, he wrote agency-wide emails addressed to his haters, he used a smiley face as a creepy logo that even adorned security guards uniforms, and the agency stockpiled weapons in the basement under his watch.

Even considering Jeffries protests, the firing was the right thing to do.

But its worth noting that Jeffries wasnt freelancing when he fired all those people and worked to reduce the DES payroll. He was following orders.

McSally on Ethics Office

A fast-hitting controversy briefly engulfed the U.S. House this week when Republican members convened for their first meeting after the new year and, strangely, adopted as their first order of business weakening the Office of Congressional Ethics.

This independent office, formed in 2008 after a series of ethics scandals, would have been put under the purview of the House Ethics Committee, effectively losing its independence.

The initial vote was strictly among Republican lawmakers and taken behind closed doors, so its impossible to verify how individual members voted. But the spokesman for Rep. Martha McSally, Patrick Ptak, told me she voted no on the amendment (Monday) night and believes that any approach to reform the OCE should be bipartisan.

After a public outcry, Republican leaders removed the change before it came to the House floor on Tuesday.

Chamber contributions

A week ago I reported that the Arizona Chamber of Commerce had donated far more money to the anti-marijuana-legalization campaign than it had to the anti-minimum-wage-increase campaign.

That was true, but, it turns out, even more true than I reported. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry donated $1,493,000 to the anti-Prop. 205 campaign. It donated just $25,037 to the anti-Prop. 206 campaign.

Instead of fighting the minimum-wage increase during the political campaign, the chamber and its allies are fighting the increase in court.

Beard for treasurer?

You may have heard the word that former Pima County GOP chairman Bill Beard is running for a statewide treasurer post.

He is. But its probably not the treasurer job youre thinking of. Beard is running for treasurer of the Arizona GOP, not for state treasurer, the job held by Republican Jeff DeWit.
PHOENIX  A state lawmaker wants to expand laws that allow enhanced penalties for those who attack someone based on things like race and religion to also include political beliefs.

Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said he got the idea while watching a video on TV of these two guys beating the crap out of some Trump supporter.

I dont know the background, Kavanagh acknowledged, with the video from some other state. But he said it was clear the reason for the attack was the victim was supporting Trump.

Thats worse than beating somebody up for some other reason, he said. And we should send a message to judges that we think this should be punished more seriously.

The idea drew derision from Dan Pochoda, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

He said its one thing to imposed an enhanced penalty on those who attack someone because of something that is immutable to them, like their race, gender or sexual orientation. But Pochoda called it very dangerous to expand that to transient issues like who someone is supporting for public office.

Unlike some states, Arizona does not have specific laws that create a special category of hate crimes.

What it does have, though, is language in statutes that requires judges, when deciding the appropriate sentence for any offense, to consider both mitigating and aggravating factors.

A mitigating factor that might suggest a lenient sentence could be the persons youth or even their intoxication. Aggravating factors weighing in favor of more time behind bars include things like the use of a gun.

And the law also says judges may consider whether the crime was based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability. To that list, SB 1022 proposes to add political affiliation, beliefs or opinions.

I believe in the just desserts school of sentencing, said Kavanagh.

Punishment is deserved for the harm thats done, he explained. But punishment must be proportional to the badness of the act.

He called SB 1022 a message from the Legislature to give the judges some legislative basis, if they choose to, to stick with the existing sentencing structure but go to the harsher end.

For example, someone who causes serious physical injury to another is guilty of the crime of aggravated assault. In general, that is classified as a Class 3 felony.

Under Arizona law, the presumptive prison term is 3.5 years.

But with mitigating factors it can be as little as 2 years; a sentencing with aggravating factors can be as much as 8.75 years.

Pochoda said what Kavanagh wants runs contrary to the reasoning behind hate crimes sentencing laws.

Thats because people are members of identifiable groups, he said. Pochoda said while some are impossible to change, like race or gender, that also rightly includes religion.

People dont change religions that quickly  certainly not as quickly as changing your opinion or even party affiliation, he said. More to the point, Pochoda said such offenses are often not aimed strictly at the person being assaulted.

The concept is that a crime against one person because of that persons race will put fear, understandably, into all members of that race, he said.

It really does require something much more than the transitory nature of supporting one candidate in a particular presidential race, Pochoda said, saying there really is an identifiable group that transcends any one four-year election cycle.
For east-side commuters, the newly opened bridge linking Kolb and Sabino Canyon roads means a quicker drive home.

Its much more to Ray Villalobos, Bill Davidson and Fred Gateman.

The Tucson retirees  all metal-detecting hobbyists and military veterans  spearheaded efforts to name the overpass Airmen Memorial Bridge. For them, the new thoroughfare is a way to honor the 18 men who lost their lives in a 72-year-old midair crash, a piece of Tucsons history they feared would be lost. And it all came about because of a summer hunt that turned up an old .50-caliber cartridge buried in the dirt.

In July, the three members of local club Detectors Unlimited, Inc., struck out in the late morning to scour a vacant lot at Tanque Verde and Tanque Verde Loop roads, across from Emily Gray Junior High School.

It looked too good to leave it alone, Villalobos recalled of the spot beneath two salt cedar trees.

They ran their metal detectors over the dirt, and Davidsons Bounty Hunter sounded a high-pitched beep, the kind of noise that typically signals a penny. Davidson dragged a small pick axe through the soil.

What he found was most definitely not a coin.

Villalobos, a weapons tech during his stint in the Air Force, recognized the crusty piece of metal found just four inches from the grounds surface: It was an intact .50-caliber round.

They huddled together, wondering where it could have come from. Villalobos remembered a story that his neighbor, also a member of the metal-detecting club, and his buddy had told years ago about a horrific crash involving two bombers from what was then known as Davis-Monthan Army Air Field.

I started thinking about it, Villlalobos, 69, said. Could this be?

The neighbor, whos since moved, talked about being 14 years old at the time, sleeping outside in a tent when two early morning explosions jolted him awake.

The club members also had heard stories about kids collecting spent rounds to sell for scrap metal long after the plane wreckage had been cleared.

While the actual digging to discover long-buried treasures is fun, its the metaphorical digging  the research  that really makes the hobby come to life.

Its what ties things together into a story, Villalobos said.

About a week after the find, the friends set out to substantiate the old timers tales, hitting the downtown library to scroll through newspapers on microfiche machines. Sure enough, two articles confirmed that at 7:40 a.m. on Nov. 30, 1944, two B-24 Liberator bombers crashed into each other about 1,000 feet in the air above the Pantano Wash, between East Broadway and East Speedway. They also tracked down a copy of the militarys accident report, which indicated the crash was caused when one pilot was blinded flying into the sun.

When Villalobos scratched at the bottom of the cartridge, he uncovered a manufacture date of 1943.

That went from possible to probable, he said.

They figure its not unlikely that some youngster could have pocketed the unexploded ammo as a souvenir, carting it miles away until a concerned mom tossed it out of the house.

Because all three served in the military  Davidson, 64, was in the Air Force like Villalobos and Gateman, 74, served in the Marine Corps  they appreciate how dangerous training can be.

You dont put on a uniform and all of a sudden know how to drive a huge bomber, Villalobos said. Accidents happen, lives are lost. They should get some recognition.

Theyve pegged the actual crash site as a landfill, not such a great memorial. But the men thought perhaps the new bridge across Pantano Wash might be a more fitting tribute. Villalobos remembers calling politicians offices, looking to see what could be done on the very ride home from the library.

At every turn, I thought it was going to be dropped, Villalobos said. I am amazed. I really am. Sometimes governmental things do get done.

It was Councilman Paul Cunninghams office that helped in their quest to name the bridge for the fallen airmen.

They did such an amazing civic duty coming to us, Cunningham said. We were happy to be a part of it.  Were just lucky to have guys like this veteran trio who are involved in Tucson and Tucson history.

In an interesting twist, the niece of an airman, a gunner on one of the planes who died in the 1944 collision, stumbled across a news story about the bridge while in Phoenix recently for the Fiesta Bowl. A South Carolina resident, the woman was able to track down Villalobos.

That was pretty touching, he said, adding that he, Davidson and Gateman ended up escorting her on Dec. 30 to the crash site where she was able to scoop up some dirt to take home with her.

An orange Nike shoebox holds all of Villalobos metal-detecting finds from 2016, which include an old doorbell casing, a womans compact from the turn of the century and a lot of pull tabs from cans.

This is what we mostly find, he said, smiling as he jiggled the plastic baggie of tabs in his hands.

His 12-year-old grandson in New Mexico  whos following in Villalobos footsteps, directly behind a metal detector  complained that he was tired of always finding those darn pop tops.

I just told him, Dont get discouraged, Villalobos said. Just keep going. You never know what it might lead to.
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
Algeria looks to cement self-sufficiency with new production plant

With a growing construction industry and governments increased investment in capital projects, Algeria is looking to increase cement production to meet this growing demand. It is against this backdrop that a second production unit of cement plant of Ain El Kebira (SCAEK) has been commissioned coming under the Algerian public industrial cement group (GICA).

According to the Ministry of Industry and Mining, this unit, which has a production capacity of 2 million tonnes per year, will allow Algeria to reach the stage of self-sufficiency in cement.

The Industry minister Abdesslam Bouchouareb announced that Adrar cement plant (1.5 million tonnes per year) is due to be commissioned by April 2017, and that of Chlef (2 million tonnes/year) by October.

"Thus, the national cement production will increase by 5.5 million tonnes/year," he said, adding that Algeria would be able to export the surplus by early 2018.

www.energy.gov.dz
A signing ceremony will be held Tuesday in Washington to formally establish the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn.

According to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer's office, the event will be held at 8:30 a.m. at the Department of the Interior. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell are scheduled to attend. Jewell will sign off on the formal establishment of the park in Auburn.

The ceremony follows the approval of a land transfer agreement that paved the way for the establishment of the park. Earlier this week, Schumer announced that land deal between the Department of the Interior and the Harriet Tubman Home had been finalized.

The land transfer was needed in order for the National Park Service, an agency within the Department of the Interior, to have a stake in the park. The National Park Service acquired the Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church on Parker Street and will jointly manage the South Street property where Tubman's former residence and the Home for the Aged are located.

The church, Home for the Aged and Tubman's former home will be part of the park.

Tuesday's ceremony will cap off nearly two decades of work to establish the park in Auburn. The legislative effort faced roadblocks until 2014, when the Tubman parks legislation was included in the National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Barack Obama.

Since the legislation was adopted, federal representatives and the Harriet Tubman Home have been working on finalizing the land deal. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed off on the agreement last spring. It was then sent to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for his review. He approved the deal in December.

The park in Auburn will be one of two established in honor of the abolitionist and civil rights icon. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park on Maryland's Eastern Shore will highlight Tubman's early life in the state.

Tubman spent the latter part of her life in Auburn, where she died in 1913. She's buried in Fort Hill Cemetery.
U.S. Rep. John Katko said the shooting Friday at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is a reminder of the need to address security gaps at airports throughout the country.

Five people died and eight others were injured in the shooting. CNN reported that the gunman flew from Alaska to Florida and the gun used in the shooting was in his checked baggage.

Katko, R-Camillus, is a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation Security. He authored several bills in his first term that sought to strengthen aviation security.

"While the investigation into this incident is ongoing, today's events are a tragic reminder of the dire need to address gaps in security at airports nationwide," Katko said in a statement. "As chair of the (Subcommittee on Transportation Security), I have sought to address many of the threats posed in unsecure areas of airports."

One of the bills Katko sponsored was the Gerardo Hernandez Airport Security Act, which required airports to develop plans for responding to emergencies, including active shooter situations.

The bill was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

"Still, it is clear there is much more we can do," Katko said Friday. "I will continue to closely monitor the details of today's shooting, and going forward, we will continue our efforts to address these gaps in airport security nationwide and to keep the traveling public safe."

For now, though, Katko said his focus is on the victims.

"My thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by the horrific and senseless shooting at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida today," he said. "I am incredibly thankful for the actions of the law enforcement officers and other first responders who put their own lives on the line to assist those in harm's way."
Help India!

By IANS

Dhanbad: A group of Muslims is organising Durga Puja in this coal city in Jharkhand in a bid to promote inter-religious harmony.

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The Bhuli colony in Dhanbad, about 240 km from state capital Ranchi, celebrates the Durga Puja festival with traditional fervour and the credit for this goes to the Muslim community.

According to local residents, the puja pandal is majestically decorated.

Our aim is make it one of the best and grandly decorated pandals in the city. Durga Puja is a festival of victory of honesty and good over evil. This festival cannot be restricted to one particular community, said Mohammad Nausad, joint secretary of Sarvajanik Durga Puja Samiti (SDPS).

People of our community actively participate in the festival. We help in the decoration of the pandal and organize other work for the puja, he added.

This year the pandal replicates New Delhis Lotus Temple of the Bahai community.

The Durga Puja festival in Bhuli is the best example of secularism in India. We come out with secular slogans during festivals to strengthen communal harmony and the Muslims contribute in a big way, said SDPS president Prem Kumar.

Bhuli is a Muslim dominated neighbourhood and Hindus are in a minority there. Muslims celebrate the festival despite their religion frowning on idol worship. A Muslim headed the puja samiti here for seven years 1988-1995.


Help India!

By Xinhua

Amman : Iraqis residing in Jordan had cost the country 1.6 billion Jordanian dinars (about 2.3 billion U.S. dollars) over the past three years, the English-daily Jordan Times reported on Wednesday.

Support TwoCircles



Jordan has been coping with a considerable burden while hosting hundreds of thousands of Iraqi nationals and deserves more help, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres was quoted as saying.

Antonio Guterres paid a one-day visit to Jordan Tuesday and held talks with Jordanian King Abdullah and Prime Minister Nader Dahab.

He committed to continuing to urge the international community for direct assistance to Jordan so it can sustain the substantial services being offered to Iraqi refugees.

Guterres assured the Jordanian government that his agency will maintain, if not increase, its support for Jordan this year.

The agency is considering extending new support for water and sanitation services in the areas that have dense Iraqi populations, said the report.

In January, the UNHCR appealed for 261 million dollars for programs to support the most vulnerable of the uprooted inside and outside Iraq.

The agency estimated that more than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland for safety abroad to wait out the war, with more than 700,000 and 1.2 million spilling into neighboring Jordan and Syria respectively.
Help India!

New York, Sep 26 (IANS) The United States has reassured India that it would move forward with their landmark civil nuclear deal notwithstanding New Delhis position that it would not sign the discriminatory Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conveyed this to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna as they met here Friday to discuss the shape of their emerging strategic partnership, said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake briefing reporters on the meeting between the two leaders.

Support TwoCircles



The UN Security Council resolution this week urging all states to join the NPT did not come up at the Clinton-Krishna meeting, Blake said.

But weve said before that the resolution that was passed on Thursday unanimously by the Security Council does not have any bearing on our bilateral civil nuclear cooperation, and that really shouldnt have any effect whatsoever.

So weve provided reassurances to that effect to our friends in the Indian government, he said.

Clinton told Krishna that the US hoped to move forward on civil nuclear cooperation with India, but there are still some steps that have to be taken there, particularly with respect to signing liability legislation.

The Indian parliament has also to approve liability legislation for US companies and announce formally the two reactor parks that will be set aside for US companies, Blake said.

At his post G20 Summit press conference in Pittsburgh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too said that the US has assured India of its full commitment to their civil nuclear deal and that the UN Security Council resolution on NPT is not targeted at New Delhi.

We have been assured that this is not a resolution directed at India and that the US commitment to carry out its obligations under the civil nuclear agreements that we have signed with the United States remains undiluted, that we have been assured officially by the United States government, he said.

On Iran, Blake said Clinton made no request to Krishna about cutting trade or relationship.

But we have had very good dialogue in the past with India on nuclear issues and specifically with reference to Irans nuclear ambitions, where I think Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly made clear that they dont believe it is in Indias interest to have another nuclear weapons state in the region, he said.
Another member of Cayuga County's state legislative delegation is calling for a further look at a tunnel option to replace the Interstate 81 viaduct in Syracuse.

State Sen. Jim Seward released a statement Friday urging the state Department of Transportation to include the tunnel option in the draft environmental impact statement, which is scheduled to be released later this month.

Seward, R-Milford, doesn't have any portion of Syracuse or Onondaga County in his district, but he does represent six towns in Cayuga County and all of Cortland County.

I-81 passes through Cortland County.

The I-81 viaduct in Syracuse reaches the end of its useful life this year. State transportation officials are considering two options to replace the elevated highway: Tear it down and transform Almond Street into a boulevard or rebuild the viaduct.

The state DOT removed any tunnel options from consideration because they deemed it would be too costly. Building a tunnel could cost at least $3 billion. The estimated cost of the proposals under consideration  the boulevard and rebuilding the viaduct  would be $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively.

But Seward thinks the tunnel option should be "reinstated for further study."

"Reconfiguring a major highway like Route 81 is a complicated task and it is important that we get it right," he said. "I have discussed this issue with a number of constituents  local elected officials, small business owners and transportation experts  and it is clear that both the viaduct and tunnel options are worth exploring further while the boulevard approach is extremely problematic."

Opponents of the boulevard option say that it could increase truck traffic on local roads, such as Route 38A in Owasco. That issue has been raised by several local officials in Cayuga and Onondaga counties, including Owasco Supervisor Ed Wagner.

Seward isn't the only central New York state legislator calling for a further look at a tunnel option.

Last month, a group of Democratic and Republican state representatives from the region joined together to hold a public meeting in Syracuse. State Sen. John DeFrancisco, whose district includes parts of Cayuga and Onondaga counties, organized the meeting.

DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, suggested that a "hybrid" option should be considered. He said it would be a compromise  a boulevard would be installed, but a tunnel would be built to serve through traffic heading north or south on I-81.

Seward's office said letters have been sent to Gov. Andrew Cuomo state Transportation Commissioner Matthew Driscoll requesting that a tunnel option be included in the environmental impact statement.

If the report can't be modified before its release date, Seward and other state legislators said it should be postponed until the tunnel option can be reviewed.

"The footprint of this project may be downtown Syracuse, but the impact will be regional," Seward said. "Portions of my Senate district in Cayuga and Cortland counties are rightly concerned about traffic flow and highway safety issues that must be considered and, for that reason, I want to see all practical options explored."
In the face of staunch calls for Theresa May to appoint a wholehearted Brexiter to negotiate Britain's departure from the European Union, the prime minster appointed former Russian envoy and civil servant Sir Tim Barrow, a career diplomat, to replace Sir Ivan Rogers as the UK's ambassador to the European Union.

No clear strategy

Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned on Tuesday morning, made it clear upon his departure that Theresa May and her government lacked not only a clear Brexit strategy, but a coherent negotiating team also. May is scheduled to trigger article 50 to formally begin Britain's EU exit in March.

Subsequently, it was incumbent on May to act fast and appoint someone with the requisite experience to help guide Britain out of the European Union.

Barrow, who held the position as Britain's ambassador to Moscow between 2015 and 2016, has extensive European experience. Barrow's CV includes experience in security and foreign policy in Brussels but is bereft of the nuanced subjects that will come into play during Brexit negotiations. Upon news breaking of this appointment, Sir Tim Barrow said: "I'm truly honoured to be appointed as the United Kingdom's permanent representative to the European Union at this crucial juncture in British history. I look forward to joining the strong leadership team at the Department for Exiting the EU and ensuring that Britain gets the best Brexit possible".

A diplomatic veteran

A Whitehall spokesperson described Barrow as a "seasoned and tough negotiator with experience of securing Britain's objectives in the European parliament". The spokesperson continued, suggesting Barrow will bring exuberance and creativity to the role". However, an anonymous EU source told the Guardian that such a fast appointment indicated that Britain was "extremely anxious", arguing that Theresa May has acted "rather hastily in appointing a new ambassador to the European Union".

Theresa May's appointment of Barrow is a vote of confidence in the impartiality of the civil service. Yesterday, Nigel Farage, a prominent member of the Leave campaign, demanded a pro-Brexit ambassador to the European Union, citing that the Foreign office was compiled of Europhiles.
Every Friday, The Citizen features a pet available for adoption from the Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York.

This week, we spotlight Bea.

Q: Who is your best friend?

A: That would be Gracie! I know you have heard of her. She is known as the "warden" around here and she really does keep things in order. We all try really hard to behave ourselves, but if Gracie sees a rumble going on she jumps in and cools things off. She has saved my fur a couple of times, and she is my BFF!

Q: What has been your worst experience?

A: Well, let's put it this way, my previous life was so horrible that I  and many other of my feline friends in here  were in jeopardy of not making it. I was in a hoarding situation, and while hoarders think they are doing the best thing, they really are not. I was rescued just in time and I am grateful to my rescuers. Thank you.

Q: If you could have a job, what would that be?

A: I have been told I am beautiful enough to be a model. Just check out the picture. Beauty is in the eye of the photographer  and he did a great job for me. If you know of any modeling gigs, please let my shelter people know. I would like to earn some extra catnip!

Q: If you could visit any place in the world, where would that be?

A: Not much into traveling these days, but I can tell you that I do not want to travel to Washington, D.C. anytime soon. Too much "stuff" going on there. I will stay here, thank you very much!

Q: If you could meet someone famous, who would that be?

A: I am sure you have never heard of him, but I would have loved to have met the cat named Col. Meow! I am a long-haired girl, but nothing like Col. Meow. He holds a Guinness world record for having the longest hair ever on a cat. His hair was 9 inches long! He was an internet sensation! Google him  you'll find him!

Q: Do you have an interesting fact to share?

A: Not really. Well, maybe. Speaking of politics, did you know that a cat has been mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, for 15 years? His name is Stubbs. And a cat ran for mayor of Mexico City in 2013. I'm not sure what their parties or platforms were, but these are facts and I will do more research on them!

Q: Do you have any advice for our good Citizen readers?

A: I do! My shelter family and I want to wish you a happy new year! I also hope that your new year resolutions include being kind  to animals, to humans, to the environment, to everything! We also hope that if your life needs a new fur-friend in 2017, that you will come to our shelter to find one. We are waiting for you. Thank you and love, Bea and friends.
Mark Zuckerberg, once wore the title of one of the youngest and richest men in the world. But today, the crown belongs to Evan Spiegel. Now, who exactly is this newly crowned billionaire? Well, Spiegel rose to prominence after he created his social platform; Snap Inc, which everyone knows as SnapChat.

The popular social network is a common place where teens hang out and socialized with others around the globe. Currently, basking in its new found glory, the company has now released its Spectacle glasses that can be seen on the faces of almost every teen who is familiar with the brand.

It's all about SnapChat's young billionaire

According to Forbes Magazine, Spiegel a self-made billionaire is valued at $2.1 billion dollars and holds the title of the world's youngest billionaire at the tender age of 26.

At a business conference held at Stanford University, he stated the fact that he rose from almost nothing to achieve his American dream. Recently, he boasted that he was young, successful, and white and just got really lucky in his endeavors. He also made reference that life isn't fair because it took many people a lifetime to create wealth, let alone succeed, but here he is at the very young age of 26, wearing the title of the world's youngest billionaire.

SnapChat offers the hottest IPO of 2017

The astute business magnate is about to take his company public; it is touted as one of the hottest IPO that will hit the stock markets in 2017. The public offering is hotly anticipated by shareholders who will be lining up to own a piece of the popular tech company. Notably, with the purchase of the company's shares, Snap Inc., value will rise significantly to $25 billion dollars.

However, other sources are declaring that it could rise a lot higher than the suggested multi-billion dollar amount.

Snap Inc., refused Mark Zuckerberg's offer

According to an article on Forbes.com, the once richest twenty-plus man in the world, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg tried to woo the company away from the young billionaire.

The article documented that Zuckerberg personally flew to the home of Spiegel, in Los Angeles, California. The private meeting also included his co-founder and SnapChat's chief technology officer; Bobby Murphy.

However, both tech gurus had already realized the future value of their company, which at that time had only 6 employees - They declined the offer made by the Facebook owner.

Today Snap Inc. is on its way to burgeon into one of the richest and most popular social media entity.
Ever since Donald Trump pulled of the upset and defeated Hillary Clinton to become the next president-elect, all eyes have been on who would be surrounding him once he makes it to the White House. Over the last month, Trump has worked with his transition team, but it hasn't always run so smooth.

Trump transition

After Election Day, Donald Trump tapped New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to lead the transition team. Within days, Christie clashed with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and he was replaced by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Several members of the transition team have since been fired, or quit, for a variety of different reasons.

The latest exit from the team comes on the direct order of Trump himself, who fired Michael Flynn Jr., the son of incoming National Security Advisor retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn Jr. has recently come under fire for promoting the debunked conspiracy known as "Pizzagate." These issues were discussed during a December 6 interview segment on CNN.

(Pence's comments start around 1:00 in the above video.)

Joining CNN host Jake Tapper was Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Tapper grilled Pence on what Flynn Jr's role was with the transition team, but the future vice president didn't want to give out too much information. As Tapper continued to question Pence about the younger Flynn's role, the CNN host got Pence to fess up about an earlier comment.

'Sorry, You're Not Answering the Question!': Tapper Grills Pence on Michael Flynn's Son https://t.co/eiMifgOY2d (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/DJgK6SXmnQ  Mediaite (@Mediaite) December 6, 2016

On Tuesday morning, Pence appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and said that Flynn Jr. has "no involvement in the transition whatsoever." Pence attempted to walk back those claims during the conversation with Tapper.

"I said this morning that his son had no involvement in the transition," Pence acknowledged, but then admitted, "His son was helping him a bit with scheduling and administrative items. But that's no longer the case."

Not backing down

Jake Tapper didn't back down, and told the vice president-elect that he was simply "downplaying" what role Flynn Jr.

had in the campaign, possibly to cover for the "Pizzagate" promotion. Mike Pence deflected from giving a straight answer, which led to the CNN host to fire back. "Sorry, you're not answering the question," Jake Tapper said, before asking, "Were you aware that the transition team had put in for a security clearance?" Pence never gave a clear answer, and only said that Michael Flynn Jr. was given "what was needed" in order to make it on the transition team.
Yesterday, a video went viral of a young, mentally disabled man getting tortured and beat while on camera. Four suspects are currently in custody and awaiting charges due to their involvement in the kidnapping and beating. In the video, you can hear anti-white and anti-Trump sentiments from the abductors.

Response

The online reaction has been incredibly dividing. People from all sides of the political spectrum are reacting to the crime in different ways. Black Lives Matter supporters and Liberals are rallying together to denounce the crime and assure everyone that this crime wasn't something they wanted.

A group of mainly white spectators are calling the crime a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. Conservative commentator, Tomi Lahren released a new Facebook video where she claimed that she was waiting for leaders of Black Lives Matter to denounce this hate crime.

#BLMKidnapping trended on Twitter earlier today, with many users venting their apparent frustrations.

Where is the media outrage? Wait, they only care about fake hate crimes against minorities #BLMkidnapping  Ben Leemaster (@bennyTheemaster) January 5, 2017

Police: #BLMKidnapping is not a hate crime because it wasn't race motivated. "F**k white people" not race motivated? https://t.co/hn4LT61k3G  Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 5, 2017

The #BLMKidnapping is a direct result of Obamas hatred for white America. The 4 terrorists involved only answered his call for violence.  Steve Hirsch (@Stevenwhirsch99) January 5, 2017

BLM Responds

Many popular activists also took to Twitter to express their feelings about the recent crime.

Franchesca Ramsey, a 31-year-old writer, comedian, and MTV "Decoded" host used her account to set the record straight.

it's always terrible to hear a life has been threatened/harmed. unless it's self defense, violence against someone deserves punishment  Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) January 5, 2017

but it's weird/predictable that ppl are in my mentions demanding I answer for some random assault I had nothing to do with  Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) January 5, 2017

Some of her other tweets read:

"I've never encouraged or condoned violence of any kind against anyone.

but if something I've said makes YOU feel otherwise...not my [problem]. I'm only responsible for my own words/actions. Full stop. Feel free to screenshot if you're confused."

DeRay Mckesson also responded to the video and BLM taking the blame:

It goes without saying that the actions being branded by the far-right as the "BLM Kidnapping" have nothing to do w/ the movement.  deray mckesson (@deray) January 5, 2017

Shaun King released his statement through the New York Times.

My Latest.



The simple reason why I won't be fighting for justice for the young man who was assaulted in Chicago. https://t.co/2PWmJ0WHXn  Shaun King (@ShaunKing) January 5, 2017

In his article, Shaun King explains the reasons why he won't be fighting for justice for the Chicago victim.

"This country does not need me to speak out on crimes committed by black folk because nobody in this country is held more responsible for the crimes they commit, and even the crimes they dont commit, than black folk in America...

I speak out on injustice. What happened to this man in Chicago was terrible. It was criminal. I hate it, but guess what  justice was swift. It was miraculously swift."

Activist and YouTuber, Kat Blaque condemned the beating as well.

This is fucking disgusting.



Don't think you're doing this for me. You're wrapping your hate in activism and slapping a label on your abuse https://t.co/6Njdkkvi2g  Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) January 5, 2017

BLM correlation?

So far, there has been no concrete proof that the kidnappers did this in the name of Black Lives Matter. Public officials are also claiming that the young man could've possibly been targeted due to his disability, rather than his race. Further details have yet to be released.
Even before Election Day, Donald Trump had been accused of having a business relationship with Russia, always making sure to avoid criticism of President Vladimir Putin during his campaign. Following the election, the CIA, FBI and the White House all confirmed that Russia was behind the election hacking that was revealed by Wikileaks, though Trump is still pushing back.

Trump Twitter denial

It was just weeks after Donald Trump pulled off the upset over Hillary Clinton that the CIA came forward with the results of their secret investigation. The conclusion found that Russia was responsible for hacking into the Democratic National Committee, with the goal helping to elect the former host of "The Apprentice." Despite the evidence, Vladimir Putin has denied any wrongdoing, while Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claims that Russia was not being the hack.

After making favorable remarks about Wikileaks on Wednesday, Trump received instant backlash, which he addressed on his offical Twitter account on January 5.

The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

"The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong," Donald Trump wrote with a Friday morning post on Twitter. "I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth," Trump went on to say. The billionaire real estate mogul then when on to continue his attack on the press, tweeting, "The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!"

to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

Partisan split

While nearly all aspects of American politics have been split down the party line, the issue of the Russian hacking has taken a different turn.

Despite Donald Trump dismissing the idea that Russia hacked the election, a bipartisan effort is growing in Congress to investigate the matter further. On Friday morning, Arizona Sen. John McCain announced the creation of a Senate cybersecurity subcommittee that will work to prevent future cyber-attacks, while pushing back against the idea that Wikileaks is a credible source for information.

John McCain: Should we attach any credibility to Julian Assange?



Clapper: Not in my view https://t.co/ROAJwNLZOu https://t.co/CkYSie91tc  CNN (@CNN) January 5, 2017

Next up

Even with the divide in the Republican party, Donald Trump is less than three weeks away from being sworn in as the new commander in chief, giving the GOP control of Congress and the White House in the process. While Trump and his supporters are preparing to celebrate, over 100,000 protesters are expected to be in attendance on Inauguration Day.
The biggest political news story since the election has been what impact Russia had on the presidential race. After the CIA and FBI confirmed that Russia hacked the election in favor of Donald Trump, the president-elect has continued to push back.

Trump on Obama

It came just weeks after Election Day, but the CIA revealed the findings of their secret investigation that concluded Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In addition, the CIA has found that Russia hacked the election with the goal of electing Donald Trump, something the FBI and the White House have also confirmed.

In response, President Obama issued crippling sanctions against the Kremlin, much to the chagrin of the future president. After Obama received an intelligence briefing on the situation at hand on Friday, NBC News reported on some of the details, which didn't go over well with the billionaire real estate mogul. Trump decided to vent over the issue on his Twitter account with a multi-part tweet on January 5.

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

"How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday night, before asking "Who gave them this report and why?" Trump ended his tweet, stating, "Politics!" In a follow-up message, Trump decided to target the DNC.

The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia......  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

"The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia," Donald Trump wrote, offering more doubt about the aforementioned reports on the hacking.

In his final tweet on the matter, Trump continued to dismiss the reports that Russia interfered with the election. "So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers?," Trump asked, before also wondering, "What is going on?"

So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Moving forward

While Donald Trump and Russia appear to be on the same page, the president-elect is conflicting with many members of his own party.

There is a growing bipartisan movement in Congress that is calling for a further investigation into the Russian hacking, with prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham leading the way. Before the end of the month, Trump will be sworn in as the next president, and only then will the American people know where the country moves forward on the issue of Russia and their alleged hacking of the presidential election.
AUBURN  When we entered the room, all we could see was a man lying on his back behind a bed. The frame obscured his upper body, which was a problem  especially when he yelled that he had a gun.

To that point, the man had ignored commands to show his hands from me and my partner, Jimmy. When we were dispatched to the hotel room, the only information we had was that the man in question has a history of mental health issues.

So when he emerged from behind the bed with something in his hand, we responded with raised voices and drawn pistols.

The object turned out to be just a cellphone, but it was enough. Our guns trained, Jimmy ordered the man against a wall. I kept my eyes on his hands and pockets, his earlier claim still in my mind. The man ultimately complied and faced the wall  ending the simulation.

It was only a training scenario drawn up by the Auburn Police Department. Held Wednesday evening at the New York State Armory, the class was part of a four-week state-certified SWAT school hosted by APD for seven Auburn Emergency Response Team members and two Seneca County officers.

The response team will soon mark its return to service from a nearly two-year layoff caused by equipment and training needs. The squad was disbanded in May 2015, but the department moved earlier this year to spend around $38,000 in funds from drug seizure assets for new equipment.

Now sufficiently equipped, and with the latest members set to graduate from SWAT school Friday after a final exam, the 16-member response team will likely be back in service by spring, said Auburn Police Chief Shawn Butler.

The squad is used to respond to high-leverage incidents, such as active shooter events or hostage situations. With the team inactive, Butler said the APD has had to rely on aid from other emergency response squads from area agencies, such as the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office.

The chief said teams from other agencies were called for aid around four or five times in the past year.

"In a city of our size, we should have an operational team to handle those situations within our jurisdiction," Butler said.

The reality-based training used with the SWAT school was designed to re-enact real-life scenarios to give students a hands-on vehicle to practice policy and teach them how to control their emotions and senses  a skill that can only be learned with experience, according to the chief.

Wednesday's class saw city officials and I observe students run through drills  and participate in a few ourselves. Butler said the opportunity allowed us a firsthand perspective of police methods as officer-involved shootings across the country have agencies under higher levels of public scrutiny, particularly on social media.

Scenarios were run with simulation handguns designed to feel legitimate, but only able to fire plastic pellets filled with a soapy substance. Jimmy Giannettino, my partner for two emergency dispatch simulations, was joined by fellow city councilors Dia Carabajal, Terry Cuddy and Debby McCormick as well as Jeff Dygert, Auburn's city manager.

"I think it went well," Giannettino said. "There was a lot going through my mind because there was such a lack of information when we were dispatched. I think that's the first thing you realize is that oftentimes, when police officers go to a situation, there is a lack of information. They don't know what they're getting into."

Prior to our encounter in the "hotel room" (a simulated space with tarp walls), an earlier scenario saw me and Giannettino respond to a domestic disturbance that was initially reported as a noise complaint.

The only information we had was that a woman was yelling at a man. No information on whether drugs or alcohol were involved. The woman proved pleasant enough when she answered her door, while the man was belligerent, wanted us to mind our own business with a few choice words.

Things grew tense when he disappeared into back room.

Auburn Police Department reestablishes Emergency Response Team, plans SWAT training Once a source of controversy over the past year, the Auburn Police Department's Emergency Re

Giannettino and I moved in  carefully. We rounded the corner, finding the man wielding a stick  something like a broom handle. A few more choice words. We had guns drawn by that point, ordering the man to drop the stick and get against the wall. He complied.

I thought back to how we handled the scenarios when they were all said and done.

We were not given much advice regarding methods. Auburn response team members adhere to the following code outlining priorities of life: Hostages, innocents, officers, suspects. After the training, Butler said that because there are so many dynamics to a conflict, there is no textbook resolution.

Should I have gone with a stun gun? I had one  Giannettino did not  but I struggled enough with it in earlier practices that I had already decided it would be unreliable in the time I might have had.

The time officers sometimes have to react is "almost none," Butler said. An earlier drill gave us a bit more  three seconds  to identify the more threatening of two targets, and shoot it. One target was a man holding a soda. The other was a man pointing a gun.

Butler said APD officers are trained in methods to de-escalate a situation, with the use of force  deadly, especially  viewed as a last resort. At the same time, the chief noted, officers need to repeatedly train for potentially fatal encounters to ingrain response through muscle memory.

"As soon as you see a threat, you're going to react," he said. "You're not going to think about it. You're going to react and revert to your training."
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith not only reported the breaking news of the Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting on Friday, he also did a terrific job at being a therapist at a moment's notice. A man at the airport was coming back from vacation when he saw the airport shooting with his own eyes. Terrified, he and his wife ran into a safer location, and he called Fox News. Just as he started to talk to Shepard on the phone, police yelled for everyone to get down on the floor as shots were fired.

Shepard Smith calms victims

This already terrified man and his wife were even more frightened as they were told by law enforcement to lay down on the floor and stay perfectly still.

The man, who identified himself as John Schlicher, told Shepard Smith that after getting away from from the shooter, his wife helped a man who had been shot. The unidentified wounded man said he was on the blood thinner coumadin, as he was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to his head.

Person handcuffed at FLL amid possible second incident at airport pic.twitter.com/ck3bT1ZBlQ  WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) January 6, 2017

Shooter shot people in head

Schlicher told Smith that as his wife attended to the injured man, he saw another victim who was dead. The shooter's behavior was described by Schlicher as just walking through the airport shooting people in the head. He never said a word. People screamed as they ran away from the shooter.

Then, they were told there was a second wave of shooting and Schlicher and his wife were ordered to get down on the floor along with all the other people near the baggage area.

Told to lay on the floor

You could hear the fear in John Schilcher's voice and Shepard Smith didn't ignore this just to get his story. He stopped and tried to talk John into staying calm.

At this point the man and his wife had just been told by police to get down as more shots were fired. They thought they were in the clear up until then. Smith talked in a calming voice, trying to ease some of the emotional pain of the man on the phone.

Smith offers therapy-like talk

He told Schilcher that panic often sets in after an incident like this and the second wave of reported shots that they were in fear of, might just be a noise someone mistook for shots being fired.

Smith told Schilcher several times to keep calm and do what police ask. As it turned out, Smith was right. There was no second wave of shooting, just someone thinking they heard shots fired.

Shooter ID'd

The shooter, who was identified after this phone call with Schilcher, was carrying a military ID. He was taken into custody by police. Witnesses said he ran out of bullets and sat down on the floor, waiting for police to take him into custody. The 26-year-old man had put a gun in his suitcase and when he got off a plane in Florida, he got his suitcase from baggage claim and went into the bathroom. While in the restroom, he loaded that gun and came out of the bathroom shooting.

During the shooting, the suspect ran out of bullets.

He stood in the airport baggage area and loaded his gun, then continued shooting at more people. He left five dead and eight wounded in his wake. The condition of the victims taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds is not known. During this event the TSA sent out a tweet, which you can see below:

Update: Active shooter at #FLL. Shelter in place. Airport closed.  TSA (@TSA) January 6, 2017

The suspect has been identified as Esteban Santiago, which is what Florida Senator Bill Nelson said during an impromptu press conference as reporters gathered around him. The shooter was taken into custody "without incident," reports Fox News. Santiago is said to live in Anchorage, Alaska. It is not known what branch of the military he was in.

'Star Wars' T-shirt on shooter

Schlicher reported to Shepard that the shooter was wearing a "Star Wars" T-shirt. Schilcher told Shepard Smith that the shooter was not only shooting at people walking in the airport, but he was also shooting at the people who got down on the ground. Donald Trump tweeted that he was monitoring the situation as it unfolded, he also said he had talked with the governor of Florida, which is seen in the tweet below:
According to Jihad Watch, Austrian police have been busy over the holidays. Reports claim that as of New Year's eve, they had a reported 16 sexual assaults in Austria in total. That is 11 in Innsbruck in Tyrol alone. Vienna's emergency response had the phones ringing off the hook. There is one aspect in common with all the cases.

The victims reported that the men had dark hair and beards. A positive identification could be not established, reports say. That is despite 2 of the women getting images on their mobile phones. The police could not use them because the images were too blurry.

Now, investigations are underway to try to recover as much evidence as possible.

Sexual assaults reported all over the world

Austrian Police Investigate More Than a Dozen Reported Sexual Assaults on New Years Eve https://t.co/OjCLB9NtyW  N.T.A.NEWS-LIVE (@NoThiefs) January 5, 2017

According to reports by News dot com, Rape cases are increasing by the day. Just in Germany, 160 rape reports are through the roof. Statistics claim that the rapes happen to women of all ages. Some reports even claim victims as young as 7 years of age.

The world reports are astronomical, police claim. These reports come from many public places, like swimming pools and recreational parks. German authorities are being accused of suppressing vital details.

Reports claim that most of the rapes go unreported for fear of backlash from the media. All these have allegedly been Muslim immigrants.

Police fear that released reports will cause an uprising

More info revealed on New Years #cologneattacks. Nearly 400 rapes, including dozens of gang rapes by refugees. https://t.co/QravyjavN2  KGB Agent /K/atya (@kitty_Kaiti) January 22, 2016

Police keep many of the reports quiet for fear of civil unrest.

They fear that if word gets out, that violence will erupt on the immigrants. The attacks happened around 11.30pm and 1.30am amid police handing out rape alarms. According to reports, the alarms were going off all night.

31 suspects, including 18 asylum seekers, are under investigation. This is on New Year's alone. The numbers of rapes in places like Sweden run in the hundreds since the middle of last year.

Police are uncertain on how to deal with this crisis. If the police are not ready to deal with the problem, then how will the civilians? According to this Fox news report below, The authorities blame the women for being assaulted.
The "Alaskan Bush People" are starting this new season off with a bang after Ami Brown's mother and brother recently opened up with claims about Billy Brown being extremely controlling over Ami. The news hit the headlines the day after the much anticipated "Alaskan Bush People" season premiere aired. Ami was a child bride, as she was just a kid of 15 and still in hight school when she married a much older Billy Brown.

The mom and brother of Ami Brown recently talked with a media outlet and spilled the beans on how their relationship with Ami changed drastically after Ami hooked up with Billy Brown.

When Ami married Billy, who is now known as the patriarch of the "Alaskan Bush People" brood, he immediately took control over his new and very young wife, claims her family.

'Deception and lies'

Billy Brown promised to take care of his new wife and encouraged her to finish high school. Instead he scurried off to Alaska with Ami in tow without telling her family. They landed in the Alaskan Bush, where they started a new life off the grid. This new life would become the basis for the "Alaskan Bush People" show decades into the future. According to Radar Online, Earlene Branson and her son Les claim that Ami's long-time marriage to Billy Brown was built on a foundation of "deception and lies."

Billy very controlling of Ami

Just months after they were married Ami's family learned that Ami was not continuing with school.

Billy, who was 26 at the time, basically told her family to mind their own business when they questioned him about this. This was decades before there was even a whisper about an "Alaskan Bush People" television show.

Ami's mother and brother devastated

Les recalls reminding Billy not long after he married Ami that he had promised their mother she would stay in school.

Billy told Les "That's none of your mother's business now." Earlene, who is now 84, recalls what Billy said about Ami at the time, "she belongs to me." While viewers of the "Alaskan Bush People" show see Ami and Billy as a couple very much in love, Ami's mother and brother see their daughter and sister being controlled by Billy Brown.

Ami was whisked away from Texas by Billy as the two set out for Alaska, where all this living off the grid-type life started. Ami's family never knew where she went and they didn't hear from her for over 10 years. The family made "desperate attempts" to get in touch with Ami, but it was to no avail.

Ami was told to keep quiet?

Ami's brother and mother said looking back they remember Billy doing all the talking and Ami didn't say anything unless she was prompted by Billy to do so. A decade ago, Ami did contact her mom to say that Billy was going on a book signing tour that was bringing them to Texas, so they'd stop by.

There was much excitement among Ami's family in anticipation of this promised visit, but it never happened.

Ami's mom and brother found out later that they actually drove right by, but Billy wouldn't let them stop. Have the viewers ever seen a controlling side of the "Alaskan Bush People" patriarch? Yes, for sure they have, especially if you watched Wednesday night's first episode of the new season.

Matt gets daddy's permission?

Matt, who is the eldest of Billy and Ami Brown's brood, decided he wanted to go hunting on his own. This entailed a trip away from his family and home in Browntown. Matt explained to the camera while they were filming this "Alaskan Bush People" episode, how he wanted to go alone and get back to nature. He felt it would help in the healing process. Most would assume he was referring to his recent problem with alcohol, which landed him in rehab.

Matt Brown is in his 30s, so he is not a kid. Still, Billy looked straight into the camera and said he was going to "let" Matt go on this hunting trip. He started rambling on about how you know when one of your kids need something and as a parent you need to let them do that thing that means so much to them. It was odd to hear this said about a grown man.
The late actress Carrie Fisher's body was cremated, and her 84-year-old mother Debbie Reynolds will be laid to rest in a few days. The actress (who was accompanied by a close friend on a flight from London to the United States) went into cardiac arrest after complaining of severe chest pains. She was attended to by medical personnel on board the airline carrier. An emergency response team who was notified of the actress' situation before the flight landed at LAX rushed Fisher to a nearby hospital.

The famous actress remained in a coma at the UCLA hospital and died four days after being admitted to the facility.

But, while the world mourns the passing, her mother, who had tweeted that she was in stable condition the day before her passing, shocked the world a day after her death. Reynolds was rushed to a nearby hospital where she died after suffering from a stroke.

Funeral service for Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher

A source close to the family reported that the late 'Star Wars' actress' body had been cremated. The anonymous person also disclosed that the funeral of her late mom is scheduled for Friday, and she will be laid to rest with an urn containing some of the ashes of her late daughter.

Celebrating the lives of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

The source also disclosed that a private ceremony celebrating the life of the "Star Wars" actress will be held on Thursday.

According to ET Online, a public ceremony will be held sometime in the future to celebrate the life of Fisher and her famous mom; Debbie Reynolds. The private ceremony will be attended by some renowned Celebrities, including ex-husband Paul Simon, actress Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks.

Billie Lourd left with Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher's legacy

Both mother and daughter; Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher are survived by Fisher's only child; Billie Lourd, and Reynolds' son Todd Fisher. Lourd recently penned a heartfelt message to thank everyone for their prayers and support in the family's time of grief.
North Korea and its dictator Kim Jong-un are boxed in with their ambition to have a nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting the USA. The ICBM is still some time away but the sanctions imposed on North Korea are having an effect and has led to a dramatic change in the North Korean outlook. The dictator seemingly wants to attract more tourists to the North to partly offset the effect of the sanctions. The North Korean leader (who is the last word in North Korea) has ordered an image makeover of the airline Koryu. The 2017 calendar is out now, and it is a revolutionary step.

The calendar features North Korean girls working as flight attendants in short chic dresses with high heels. 9 of the 12 months of the calendar showcase the flight attendants inviting prospective guests. Earlier calendars showed only the scenic spots of the landscape.

New dresses for the flight attendants

North Korea is considered a forbidden territory, and perhaps Kim Jong-un is having some second thoughts about the image of the country. Some time back, the attire was given a facelift and the women were given short, tight-fitting skirts with high heels. Scores of women are displayed in the calendar. In one of the photos, a hostess is even shown pouring a glass of draught beer. The calendar is something new, and many are surprised.

It is difficult to associate Kim Jong-un with anything artistic as he has reportedly executed scores of political opponents.

Stress on tourism

North Korea is now putting greater emphasis on tourism as a way to make up some of the difference on account of the sanctions placed upon the country. One of their oldest hotels in Pyongyang has been opened after 3 decades.

With a new airline calendar, the country will be thinking that it will be able to shore up the economy with tourist traffic. This may not work out, as the connection of North Korea through their airline Koryu is limited. Nevertheless, this is a significant step and in the long run, more tourist traffic may take the country out of its isolationist mentality.
A woman chooses toys from Australia in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo by Long Wei/For China Daily]

Up to 98.5 percent of Chinese products exported to Australia will enjoy zero tariffs, after the two countries implemented the third round of tariff cuts on Jan 1 under a bilateral free trade agreement, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.

Ministry spokesman Sun Jiwen said China's automobile parts, home appliances, steel and garment products and Australia's agricultural and dairy products such as mutton, beef, fruit, wine and cheese would be major beneficiaries of the deal.

"Even though the free trade deal only came into force in December 2015, it has had positive effect on bilateral trade," Sun said.

Sun added that the use of preferential tariffs would be an effective example to show to other trading partners, especially in the current global business environment.

The volume of bilateral trade amounted to 637.34 billion yuan ($93 billion) between January and November in 2016, down 1 percent on a year-on-year basis, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.

Hu Yingzhi, deputy negotiation commissioner at the ministry, said the FTA would help speed up negotiations on other FTAs, including China-Israel FTA and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership this year.

Under the FTA, Australia will eventually reduce tariffs to zero on all goods from China, and China will remove tariffs on the vast majority of Australian goods.

The Australian government has also established a new mechanism to encourage Chinese companies to invest in the country. Investments from China below A$1.07 billion ($781 million) do not need to be examined by Australia's Foreign Investment Board.

"The China-Australia FTA came at a critical time when many economies took measures such as trade investigations on specific Chinese products or moving factories to Vietnam to compete with China," said He Jingtong, a professor of trade policy at Nankai University in Tianjin.

Contact the writers through zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn
China is fully prepared to export a full supply chain of high-speed railway technology, according to industry experts.

China Railway Corp, the national rail operator, said exports of railway equipment and railway construction projects are proceeding well, and breakthroughs are being made in a number of projects overseas.

Among the projects, the first full-chain commission, the Jakarta to Bandung high-speed railway in Indonesia - which includes technology, design, construction, equipment manufacture, supply of resources, operations management and staff training - has been granted a construction permit and work is proceeding smoothly.

"China's railways have established a comprehensive and advanced technology system, which is able to provide overseas customers with solutions from many different perspectives, including financing, construction, operations, and research and development," said Yang Zhongmin, the CRC's deputy chief engineer, who added that China's railway system is competitive in terms of technology and economy of use.

According to Yang, the nation's railway equipment and infrastructure service businesses have entered markets in Asia, Europe, North America and Africa.

Last year, Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, rode Chinese-made bullet trains.

Yang Hao, a professor of rail transportation management at Beijing Jiaotong University, said China has a major advantage in that it is able to export a full range of railway technology: "For example, it is inconvenient to import the technology for the signaling system from one country and civil engineering technology from another."

Last year, China's high-speed rail project made progress in its "going-out" policy.

In November, when he met with the prime ministers of Hungary and Serbia, Premier Li Keqiang said China is willing to continue helping with the construction of the flagship Budapest to Belgrade railway.

The line will have a total length of 350 km, and trains will reach a maximum speed of 200 km per hour.

"China learned about high-speed railway technology from foreign countries, but now it has mastered and developed 'home-made' core technology. The country's high-speed rail technology is advanced, and the diverse environment covered and massive operational experience have proved that," said Yu Zhanfu, principal of the Beijing office of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.

Yang, from Beijing Jiaotong University, said the going-out plan for China's high-speed railways will follow the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a think tank in Beijing, said: "Like the US-made Boeing 77 and France's Airbus, China's high-speed railway could be an important project to help the country export its technology in the future."
BEIJING - China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Thursday published the names and office telephone numbers of spokesmen of procuratorates at all levels.

The SPP said the 3,662 procuratorates have a total of 4,473 spokesmen, including two for the SPP.

China has a four-level procuratorate system, including the SPP, the provincial level, the municipal level and the grassroots level.

The move came after the SPP strengthened public relations for the procuratorate system, aiming to make it more transparent for the public.

In 2016 over 2,000 press conferences were held by procuratorates at all levels in China, the SPP said.
The end-of-semester assignment for senior student Han Xu and freshman Greta Solomon from New York University Shanghai was a rather unconventional one that did not involve lengthy essays - they had to sell T-shirts.

About 20 students from the cohort were presented with the challenge of designing business models, following which they were given just two hours to implement them. Han and Solomon stood out from the competition by selling 200 T-shirts.

"In just two weeks, we had to design and review the images that were to be printed on the T-shirts, find business partners and negotiate deals with them, create posters and promote our event on Chinese and English social media," said Han, who joked that he almost suffered from a mental breakdown during the assignment.

"Through this project I've learned what it takes to start a new business. I've also learned how to deploy every possible resource around me and what is required to manage emergencies."

A growing number of educational institutions in major Chinese cities like Shanghai have in recent years been advocating entrepreneurship, either through challenges like this or via special courses and guest lecturer appearances.

Eight renowned universities in Shanghai, including Fudan, Tongji and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, had in 2010 established a network to help college students start their own businesses. According to the authorities of Yangpu district where most of these universities are located, the initiative has since its inception benefitted about 6,000 students who got the chance to learn about the real life experiences of successful entrepreneurs and intern at startup companies.

At Shanghai Jiao Tong University, students can choose from 34 courses related to innovation and startup businesses. The university also allows students to take a hiatus from school for as long as two years to pursue their startup ambitions.

At the Shanghai American School, entrepreneurship courses are available in both the International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement programs. Students can also start their own entrepreneurship clubs - William Kim, 18, was the first to do so in 2015.

Kim said that the courses the school offers, such as IB Business and IB Economics, provided him with vital knowledge about being an entrepreneur, while his club's activities, conducted under the guidance of a teacher, exposed him to invaluable real-world experiences.

"It's the school that helped me realize it was business that I really wanted to do. I'll always be grateful for these opportunities. Without them, I don't think I'll be prepared to even enter a firm," said Kim.

Junior Achievement International China, the world's largest non-profit organization dedicated to educating students about work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, found out that about 71 percent of Chinese high school students are interested to learn how to start their own businesses. However, only 18 percent of Chinese students - in contrast to 45 percent of students in the US - said they have opportunities to attend such courses.

While local public high schools have yet to actively champion entrepreneurship, one incident in 2015 suggests that even such educational institutions are supportive of the cause.

When it was discovered that a grade-one student had frequently skipped class in order to operate an online cosmetics store, administrators from the high school in Shanghai's Jiading district actually encouraged him to find a balance between his studies and business instead of meting out punishment.

Angela Ma contributed to this story.

xuxiaomin@chinadaily.com.cn
WASHINGTON (AP)  Putting pressure on Republicans, President Barack Obama pledged Friday to publicly support repealing "Obamacare" if Republicans come up with something better, but cast doubt on the GOP's ability to develop a viable alternative.

As Republicans prepare to gut his biggest legislative achievement, Obama implored his opponents not to pursue a two-step approach where the Affordable Care Act is repealed first and replaced after  perhaps years later. He sought to lay the groundwork for Democrats to pile on Republicans for taking health care away from millions of people if the replacement never materializes.

"I am saying to every Republican right now: If you, in fact, can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan," Obama said in a live-streamed interview with online news site Vox. "But I want to see it first."

Obama appeared to be betting on the possibility that Republicans won't be able to unify behind an Obamacare replacement  or that if they do, it won't be one that will pass muster for Democrats. Though Republicans are in agreement that the law should be repealed and replaced, they're at odds over what the replacement should look like, and particularly over how to pay for popular elements they hope to preserve, including coverage for pre-existing conditions and the ability for parents to keep children on their plans until age 26.

Most alarming to Obama and Democrats is the possibility of no replacement at all, given the fact that Republicans have been unable to settle on their own health care vision in the nearly seven years since the Affordable Care Act became law. Hoping to give themselves more time while also fulfilling campaign pledges to quickly abolish the law, Republicans are discussing a repeal that wouldn't take effect for 18 months or longer, during which they'd ostensibly agree on a replacement.

"What you don't want is a situation where they make a promise they can't keep," Obama said. "I've worked on this a long time. If we had had a better way to do this, we would have done it. It would have been in my interest to do it, because I knew I was going to be judged on whether or not it worked."

The president argued he had no "pride of authorship" over the law that colloquially bears his name, adding that it wasn't he who had dubbed it "Obamacare." He tried to dispel the notion he was trying to prevent a repeal in hopes of preserving his own legacy.

"They can call it whatever they want," Obama said. "They can call it Trumpcare or McConnellcare or Ryancare," Obama said, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. "If it actually works, I will be the first one to say, 'Great.'"

Signed into law in 2010, Obama's overhaul has extended insurance coverage to 20 million more people and brought the uninsured rate to a historic low of about 9 percent, reshaping the $3 trillion-per-year health system in the process. Still, the law has failed to win broad public approval, amid persistent concerns about rising premium rates through the insurance marketplaces the law created.

Republicans have set a goal to offer "universal access," but their replacement may cover fewer people than Obama's overhaul. A key GOP focus is to do away with the individual mandate requirement that all Americans have insurance or pay a fine. Absent that requirement, insurers have warned it's not financially viable to force them to accept people regardless of pre-existing health issues.

In his final days in office, Obama has been ramping up a public push to pressure Republicans over their repeal plans and unite Democrats behind a strategy to try to protect the law. He traveled Wednesday to Capitol Hill to strategize with Democratic lawmakers, and penned an opinion piece published Friday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

In the article, Obama said the uncertainty of a repeal with no replacement could lead insurance companies to bail on the health care marketplaces during the phase-out years, leaving millions without insurance. He said it would set up a "cliff" with harmful consequences if lawmakers fail to approve a replacement in time.

Yet Trump's team has said repeal is the first order of business, and leaders in Congress hope to deliver a bill voiding much of the law by late February. Although Ryan said this week that lawmakers will vote on a replacement this year as well, it's unclear how Republicans could move that quickly to replace a law that took more than a year to craft.
A crowdfunding project aims to bring Peking Opera closer to today's audiences. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A Peking Opera gala featuring most of today's popular Peking Opera artists, including Li Hongtu, Zhao Baoxiu, Meng Guanglu and Tan Xiaozeng, will be staged at the Beijing Exhibition Center Theater on Tuesday.

The special performance is a crowdfunding project. Nearly 800 people donated more than 619,000 yuan ($88,400) in 34 days.

"The purpose is to attract people who are not Peking Opera fans," explains Pan Zhipeng, the leader of the project.

Most donors are young people, who paid through a social-media platform, Pan says.

Pu Jiaying, a lecturer from Dalian University of Foreign Languages, booked two tickets when she heard about this project.

"I know how crowdfunding works. The ticket is cheaper than that of the daily performance. And you don't always have the opportunity to see so many stars on the same stage," Pu says.

It was Li, the actor and deputy director of Mei Lanfang Peking Opera Company, who first suggested doing a crowdfunded performance.

This is not the first crowdfunding of Peking Opera in China. Earlier this year, Ling Ke and Wang Peiyutwo young Peking Opera performerseach launched crowdfunding projects. The older generation of artists like Meng and Zhao were unaware of how crowdfunding works.

"It is the first time that I have heard the idea of crowdfunding," says Zhao. "But it sounds interesting."

Li says: "It is really meaningful. This event attracted so many young people via social media to notice that people involved in Peking Opera are doing something.

In China, Peking Opera is often regarded as "the art form of old people".
Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Nov 8, when he was the Republican Party's presidential candidate. [EVAN VUCCI/AP]

Donald Trump could prompt a sea change in the relationship between China and the United States. By Chen Weihua in New York, Li Xiaokun in Beijing and Fu Jing in Brussels.

In light of US President-Elect Donald Trump's hawkish remarks about China, allied to a number of unexpected moves in the wake of his election victory, experts in Sino-US studies around the world have expressed deep concerns about the key relationship.

Many of the experts have warned that the Sino-US relationship may revert to the deep, mutual distrust that characterized relations between the countries during the 1960s.

Ted Carpenter, senior fellow of defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute in Washington, said he is "increasingly worried" about Trump's policies regarding China.

"At first, I thought that Trump was engaging in the 'China-bashing' that is fairly typical of US presidential campaigns. Yet once in office, new presidents have pursued policies very similar to those of their predecessors since the early 1970s," he said, adding that Trump's post-election actions suggest that something else may be going on.

"The telephone conversation with Tsai Ing-wen was startling enough, but the Trump transition team's insistence on referring to her as the 'President of Taiwan' indicated sympathy with hard-line Taiwanese separatists," he said, referring to a phone call between Trump and the Taiwan leader on Dec 2, which broke with decades of diplomatic precedent.

Later, Trump said he didn't feel "bound by the one-China policy" unless the US could gain benefits from China in trade and other areas.

Rear Admiral Huang Xinjian (second from left), of the People's Liberation Army Navy, is welcomed at the US port of San Diego where three PLA Navy ships arrived on Dec 6. [YANG LEI/XINHUA]

Emotional stake

"It was clear that he saw Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade issues, currency valuations and North Korea as roughly equal bargaining chips for bilateral negotiations," Carpenter said. "I believe that his attitude greatly underestimates China's emotional stake in those issuesespecially the South China Sea and Taiwan.

"If Trump is serious about discarding the one-China policy, we are in for a very tense and dangerous period. Hasty action could trigger a ruinous economic crisis or much worse, a military conflagration."

Jon R. Taylor, professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, said: "Trump is about to create a very difficult period in China-US relations, one that may rival that of the 1950s and 60s. I am deeply concerned that Trump is rapidly moving US foreign policy toward a deep Cold War mindset regarding China.

"My profound fear is that Trump has surrounded himself with anti-China hardliners who have little experience with or expertise on China, have rarely, if ever, visited the country, and have little understanding beyond textbooks and oped pieces of the nuances and subtleties of China's history, culture, and political system."

Yongwook Ryu, a visiting professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, believes that Trump's foreign policy will be more focused and selective, with the overarching purpose of maximizing US economic interests.

"If China and the US attempt to test each other's resolve, then we are highly likely to see tensions rise in the regionin the East China Sea and the South China Sea," he said.

As for the impact of a US power shift on China's relations with its neighbors, Ryu said US policy toward Asia will see more continuity, "although it will be less multilateralist because Trump is likely to strengthen its (the US') alliance with Japan, South Korea, and Australia".

Professor David Fouquet, vice-president of the executive board of the European Center for International Research and Strategy in Brussels, said some people in the US might accept a tougher policy on China.

"But would America's Asian allies, who have repeatedly asked to not have to make a choice in a US-China showdown and are dependent economically on China, and could suffer morein addition to already having been abandoned by the American reversal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement?" he said.

"There is a lengthy list of tradeoffs, compromises or concessions to make in such complex relationships, and I am not convinced that the new American leadership understands this."

Soldiers participate in joint humanitarian relief drills held by Chinese and US armed forces in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, on Nov 18. [NATALIE THOMAS/REUTERS]

Russian influence

Artyom Lukin, deputy director of research at the School of Regional and International Studies at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostock, Russia, said the exchange of goodwill between Trump and Moscow signals subtle changes in Russia's ties with China.

According to public opinion surveys, Russia was the only country to prefer Trump over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. "Since 2012, ties between Moscow and Beijing have been expanding and deepening, especially in the political-military domain," Lukin said.

If Moscow normalizes relations with Washington, "the Sino-Russian partnership will continue, with the emphasis shifting to economics and trade", he added.

Shada Islam, director of Europe and geopolitics at Friends of Europe, a think tank in Brussels, advised Beijing to "stay cool and calm" about any changes made by Trump, "and firm on its core interests, but without falling into the trap of becoming belligerent".

"Trump's presidency will be a chance for China to show its own maturity and its role as a responsible global actor," she said.

Testing the water?

Cui Hongjian, director of the department of European studies at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, was relatively optimistic about the incoming US administration.

"Even though Trump is not a professional politician, even though he has some ideas which are different from mainstream elites in the past, as long as he is smart, he will understand that disordered China policies will not only affect China, but also himself," he said.

Cui suggested that Trump "might be just testing the water and changing the sequence in which he plays his cards".

Instead of guessing which cards the US will play, China should think deeply about the cards it has and sometimes take the initiative, he said.

"Some people say Trump follows the thinking of businessmen about trade benefits. If so, we need to think about two questions: first, whether China accepts the model; and second, what our model will be if we do not accept his (model) and what we can trade with if we do accept," he added.

Li Guofu, head of the Middle East department at CIIS, said certain basic facts will still apply, no matter who occupies the White House.

"To develop its economy, the US has to cooperate with China. If Trump is rational, given his business background there will be more, not fewer, fields of potential cooperation between the two powers," he said.

Ren Qi and Chu Yi in Beijing contributed to this story.
The one-China policy, which has been challenged by US president-elect Donald Trump, is supported by the Democratic and Republican parties, US Secretary of State John Kerry assured Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday.

Analysts said that through the phone call, Kerry aimed to warn Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan 20, not to undermine the cornerstone of Sino-US relations as the president-elect has done in the past month  from speaking with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen on the phone to questioning the necessity of supporting the one-China policy.

Support for the one-China policy is based on the three joint communiques between the United States and China, Kerry said in his call to Wang. The communiques, issued in the 1970s and 1980s, laid the foundation for the restoration of China-US diplomatic ties.

Wang, noting that the Sino-US relationship is in a transition period, replied that the two sides should make joint efforts to keep bilateral ties going in the right direction.

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that as a veteran diplomat, Kerry is "quite clear about how serious the consequences would be" if the one-China policy is challenged by a US president, and that's why he made the phone call.

He said the phone call also could be seen as a warning to Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, who made a congratulatory phone call to Trump on Dec 2. The call broke four decades of Sino-US diplomatic precedent.

Tsai will transfer in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America in a trip that will begin on Saturday. It was not clear whether she planned to meet with anyone in the US.

Wang Hailiang, a researcher of Taiwan studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said that challenging the one-China policy would not benefit the US, since China would take countermeasures to safeguard national sovereignty.

"The Sino-US relationship has always experienced turbulence at US power transitional periods in past decades, but it finally goes onto the right track," he said.
David Phoenix, vice-chancellor of London South Bank University, is devoted to cultural exchanges between China and the United Kingdom. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A China Friendship Award winner reimagines approaches to relations, Wang Mingjie reports in London.

When London South Bank University's vice-chancellor David Phoenix brought an unconventional two-page-long partnership agreement back from his trip to China, his legal team was concerned.

He says the importance of doing business with Chinese is to build trust and relationships.

"I do not think 20 pages of agreement would make a difference if the trust is not there," he says.

Against the backdrop of the Brexit, Phoenix says that in order for two countries to strengthen higher-education collaborations, both China and the United Kingdom should consider how to build mutual trust and understanding holistically.

"We should identify key development programs, such as the nuclear program that has been launched, and identify key areas of global challenges that we could work together through science and innovation," he says.

"For example, China is growing very fast in nanoscience and nanotechnology and we could potentially look into the areas in water purification to link the technology," he explains.

Culture is also an important element, he says, noting that if a business from the UK is going to work in China, business leaders must understand how to access the Chinese market and how operations work in China.
A man wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody. [Photo/Xinhua]

A gunman opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing five people and wounding eightbefore being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

The gunman was identified by authorities as Esteban Santiago, 26. They said hehad arrived on a flight from Canada with a checked gun in his bag.He claimed his bag and went to a bathroom where he loaded the gun and came out firing, Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca said on Twitter.

The shooter was unharmed as law enforcement officers never fired a shot, Israel said, adding that it was too early to assign a motive.

Santiago was born in New Jersey, law enforcementsources said, and had military ID on him when he was taken into custody. He was carrying a Florida driving license and had a concealed carry permit for his gun, Fox News reported

The shooter, who was wearing a "Star Wars" T-shirt, said nothing as he fired, witnesses told MSNBC.

Cellphone video posted on social media showed victims on the floor next to a carousel, with people on their knees attempting to provide aid. At least two had pools of blood from apparent head wounds.

About 90 minutes after the attack, panic broke out anew with passengers and police running frantically about at a separate terminal, but Israel said there were no other reports of shots being fired.

One person was injured trying to evacuate, which may have triggered the later panic, Israel said. Dozens of police sprinted back and forth withautomatic weapons drawn, and one officer screamed "Get down, get down!" from a nearby parking garage, a Reuters reporter witnessed.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, said the shooter was "directly firing at us" while passengers waited for their bags.

"I put my head down and prayed," Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head. His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that person was already dead, he said.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.

Some 20 miles (30 km) north of Miami, the Fort Lauderdale airport is near cruise line terminals at Port Everglades.
The Obama administration on Friday officially blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for directing a massive cyber assault against the US election in an attempt to "undermine" the democratic process and "harm" Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," said the report, which is a declassified version of a longer, classified document the CIA, FBI and NSA prepared at President Barack Obama's request.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," it continued.

The report also said Russia developed "a clear preference" for President-elect Donald Trump as the campaign went on, and eventually "aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."

The findings are part of a much-anticipated executive branch review of Russia's efforts to undermine the 2016 election that was released Friday. Trump has repeatedly dismissed and disparaged the government's investigation of the election-season hacking.

After meeting with top intelligence leaders on Friday to discuss the report, Trump said the hacks had "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election" and he declined to say whether he agreed with the intelligence community's findings.

The report lays out the government's most extensive argument to date that the senior Moscow officials directed a series of disruptive election-season hacks that hit the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign operatives.

The Obama administration first accused Russia of orchestrating the cyberattacks in October. The digital thefts led to a WikiLeaks dump of embarrassing internal emails that ousted top Democratic National Committee leaders and destabilized Clinton's campaign in the final months.

In making its accusation the administration merely said it believed Russia wanted to "interfere" with the American election. Since October, intelligence officials have reportedly come to believe that Moscow was actively trying to install Trump in the White House, instead of merely attempting to sow discontent and doubt in the electoral process.

The report published Friday shed some light on the evidence that led to these conclusions.

"Moscow's approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia's understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates," the report states. "When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency."

Trump has snapped back at these allegations, accusing intelligence officials of peddling politically-motivated narratives to undermine his incoming administration.
In what Internet news giant Matt Drudge says is a direct assault on the First Amendment, the Senate is poised to pass a law defining who they believe is a journalist for purposes of obtaining federal protection in whistleblower cases.

Earlier this year it was revealed that Eric Holders Justice Department was quietly investigating an AP reporter over a government leak that resulted in the publishing of how US intelligence learned that al-Qaedas Yemen branch was hoping to launch a spectacular attack using a new, nearly undetectable bomb aboard a US airliner from the anniversary of bin Ladens death.

Following news of the investigation, the AP strongly protested, arguing that journalists have a First Amendment right to protect their sources. President Obama blamed Congress for the investigation saying it was because they had not passed a strong shield law that would prevent such abuses.

While the Senate was debating a bill lawmakers sparred over who should actually be protected under the bill in the digital age. For example, should a blogger who operates his own news site out of his house be protected?

The Senate panel in a 13  5 vote approved a compromise that defined a covered journalist as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. An individual would need to have been employed for one year within the last 20 years or three months within the last five years to qualify as being a journalist.

The definition would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. However, a federal judge would have the discretion to declare a person a covered journalist covered under the provisions of law.

While it might appear as if the definition is very broad, news media pioneer Matt Drudge eviscerated the Senate for the definition and singled out Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, following comments she made suggesting that only real reporters deserved protection under the shield law.

Comments from Sen. Feinstein yesterday on whos a reporter were disgusting, Drudge tweeted, adding that a 17-year old blogger is as important as Wolf Blitzer. Fascist

Drudge went on to note in the subsequent tweet that at one time a federal judge ruled that he was not a reporter, a journalist, or news gather. However, new sites all across America visit his site to obtain information on the news of the day. Talk show giant Rush Limbaugh can frequently be seen with a copy of the Drudge Report pulled up on his computer screen.

Ironically, under the new definition a student working for a small college newspaper would get protection, however Drudge and others like him in a new media might not.

The fundamental issue behind this amendment is, should this privilege apply to anyone, to a 17-year-old who drops out of high school, buys a website for five dollars and starts a blog? Or should it apply to journalists, to reporters, who have bona fide credentials? Feinstein asked.
In an irony of fate, an Indian fisherman died of heart attack in a Karachi jail hours before he was to be released, along with 218 others, by Pakistan as a "goodwill gesture", according to Gujarat Fishermen Association.

Jeeva Bhagwan, 37, whose name was on the list of 219 fishermen released on Thursday, hailed from Khan village in Una tehsil of Gir Somnath district of Gujarat, Veljibhai Masani, senior vice president of Gujarat Fishermen Association, said.

He died of heart attack yesterday, Masani told PTI.

The fishermen were freed from Malir jail on instructions from the Interior Ministry as a goodwill gesture, jail superintendent Hasan Sehto said.

With the release of the fishermen on Thursday, the total number of Indian fishermen freed from Pakistani jails as "goodwill gesture" in the last 10 days reached 439, despite the chill in bilateral ties.

This is the second batch of Indian fishermen released from Pakistan jails since relations between the two countries became tense after the terror attack on an Indian army base in Uri in September for which India has blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit.

On December 25, the Pakistan government had freed 220 Indian fishermen who were in jail for more than a year as goodwill gesture after Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday.

Sehto said the Indian fishermen who were released today would be handed over to Indian officials at the Wagah border.

He said that around 110 more Indian fishermen remain in Landhi jail in Karachi.

Last March, the Pakistan government had released 87 Indian fishermen who had been languishing in jail in Karachi for the last two and half years.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest each others' fishermen for violating the territorial boundary.

Poor fishermen from both countries routinely find themselves arrested for illegal fishing as there is no clear demarcation of the boundaries between the two countries in the Arabian sea near Sir Creek and lack of technology has made life difficult for the fishermen of both the countries.

Last Friday, Pakistan Maritime Security Agency arrested 66 Indian fishermen for illegally fishing in Pakistan's territorial waters.

Fishermen from both countries end up languishing in jails for years even after serving their sentences and their only hope of getting released is when the governments decide to take goodwill steps.
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I have some suggestions for The Citizen for the forthcoming year.

Stop being so uptight about what you consider "newsworthy" when letters to the editor are sent in. I, for one, have had my letters rejected way too many times, supposedly because they're not "newsworthy." Why do these newsworthy letters always have to be of a serious nature?

I remember a number of years ago The Citizen published all different kinds of letters, not necessarily of a serious nature. I mean, come on, do all The Citizen readers just want to read totally depressing news all the time?

I've tried my hand at humor numerous times only to have it not published. Look, 90 percent of the present comedy shows are about as funny as coming down with pneumonia. Ditto for those Hollywood movies where repeated four-letter words, gross language and pathetic plots go on for an agonizing two hours. Hey, how long does it take to read a 400-word article? That's right, about three minutes. Give credit for trying.

And I always loved reading other's letters. Perhaps if The Citizen replaced its nonsensical "only one letter a week per writer will be published." Come on, I send a letter in every week and am lucky to get it published within two weeks. When I first started writing there were two pages full of letters to the editor and I had three letters published one week including one with 650 words.

I just don't get it. I don't see how you improve your paper by having this uptight attitude.

Yes, I write some very serious letters and I don't pull any punches. Yet I have been told by your paper to try to mix it up (not the same stuff all the time) and when I've done that, my letters get rejected. You would think that The Citizen would be more than happy that I'm still out there telling it like it is and not being married full time to my cell phone like almost everyone else.

Computers, cell phones, taking selfies, that's not me. Nose to the grindstone plugging away still writing even though I've already set an unbreakable record of letters to the editor totaling well over 1,000 letters. Stop and think about it, covering hundreds of different subjects. Not easy.

All you people out there, start sending in something and let's get The Citizen back to a full page of letters, just like long, long ago.

Murray Lynch

Auburn
HCM City  Overseas Vietnamese play an important role in developing HCM Citys economy, but the city lacks the legal framework required to fully utilise their capabilities.

The role of overseas Vietnamese is not just sending foreign currency back to their families, but also having good relations with international politicians, multinational companies, investment funds and banks, Dr inh Thanh Huong, an ethnic Vietnamese living in France and lecturer at University Paris 12 was quoted as saying on the Governments website chinhphu.vn.

Therefore, the city should have a dedicated channel for overseas Vietnamese, and from that the city could source capital, technology and senior experts who would come back and contribute to its development, she said.

For those who would like to return with their families, besides providing a favourable, transparent and supportive business environment, the city should also assist their family members with accommodation, schools and jobs.

Dr Nguyen Tri Hieu, who has spent many years living in Viet Nam and working in the financial sector, was apprehensive about the gap between the Vietnamese and international legal frameworks.

Viet Nam does not have a personal bankruptcy law while its closed foreign currency management system does not allow overseas Vietnamese to easily repatriate their profits or transfer money.

Nguyen Hong Hue, Vietnamese-Australian chairman of BankPay, said if Viet Nam had stringent policies to protect the environment, it would attract many green, stable, long-term investors.

If managers loosen environmental protection norms for more FDI, I am afraid that current earnings will not be able to compensate future losses.

At the macro level, Viet Nam should have a national environmental impact report for every five to 10 years of development with the participation of both domestic and foreign experts, he said.

At the micro level, relevant authorities must make use of independent, third-party assessors to assess environmental impact reports.

According to the city Department of Planning and Investment, of 1,110 enterprises funded by overseas Vietnamese, 80 per cent are based in HCM City.

According to The Economist and Intelligence Unit, if HCM City cannot achieve a breakthrough in its rate of economic growth, by 2025 it will rank a lowly 96th in Asia in terms of competitiveness. - VNS
HA NOI  The Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) said it invested around VN134.85 trillion (US$5.93 billion) to boost the capacity of the national power grid in 2016.

This is 1.8 per cent higher than the amount the group planned to invest in 2016 and equals 9 per cent of the total social investment of the nation.

The EVN put into operation five turbines at Lai Chau and Huoi Quang hydropower plants and Duyen Hai thermo-power plant, which have a combined capacity of 2,305MW.

Work on the other key power generation projects is on schedule.

In 2016, the EVN completed 297 projects related to the upgradation and expansion of the national grid, including transformer stations and transmission lines that are key to improving power security in the south; electricity transmission capacity between the north and the south; and electricity supply for the capital and key northern economic zones.

The EVN also joined Cai Chien island in the northern province of Quang Ninh, Cu Lao Cham island in the central province of Quang Nam and Lai Son and Hon Nghe islands in the southern province of Kien Giang to the national grid last year.

Projects to expand the electricity network in Lao Cais Muong Khuong district and to 2,800 households in Son La have been underway since last year and are expected to be complete before the Lunar New Year, which falls on January 27.

EVN Director ang Hoang An said the group mobilised $2.96 billion official development assistance and preferential loans from international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Japan International Co-operation Agency.

Strong investment ensured that the projects went on smoothly, and none were cancelled because of fund shortage in 2016.  VNS
HA NOI  Airlines will operate 1,300 additional flights on the domestic route network to meet the high passenger demand during Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays.

Special flights will be introduced from January 16 to February 12, the Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam (CAAV) said.

Vietjet has been allowed to increase its number of flights by 8.9 per cent, so it will operate 560 flights, or 100,800 seats. National carrier Vietnam Airlines will offer 330 more flights, or 76,785 seats. Jetstar Pacific will have an additional 330 flights, or 59,400 seats.

HCM Citys Tan Son Nhat International Airport, which is the busiest airport among the 21 airports nationwide, is estimated to receive 1,065 extra flights during the holiday season, 7.7 per cent more than its normal schedule. The flights will be operated in the slots or the duration during which the aircraft usually remain grounded at airports. It is estimated to have 38 flights per day.  VNS
ONG NAI  Police in the southern province of ong Nais Bien Hoa City on Thursday stopped three trucks carrying some five tonnes of foul-smelling animal organs towards the Cai River.

According to initial information, the organs were being transported to fish farmers who breed fish in cages in the Cai River, a tributary of ong Nai River.

These drivers were unable to show any quarantine papers for the goods, police said.

The police confiscated the entire haul to destroy it.

Authorities said the environment surrounding the river would get extremely polluted if these organs were thrown into the river.  VNS
HCM CITY Phu Quoc Island hopes to attract more than 1.8 million visitors this year, an increase of 25.5 per cent over last year, according to local authorities.

It targets 42.7 per cent rise in the number of foreign arrivals to more than 300,000.

Revenues from tourism are expected to jump to more than VN11.15 trillion (US$493.4 million) this year, a 25 per cent increase.

To achieve the targets, the island district would step up commercial and tourism promotions and diversify tourism products on the island, Huynh Quang Hung, Vice Chairman of the district Peoples Committee, said.

He said local authorities would improve the management and conservation of historical and cultural relics and natural attractions and the environment.

Traditional local festivals would be celebrated throughout the year to attract tourists.

The district also plans to begin air services to a Lat and several international destinations.

Local and international tourism co-operation would be strengthened to develop the islands tourism.

Oversight of prices, transport, accommodation and food services would also be strengthened to improve the quality of tourism and hospitality services, the vice chairman added.

Around 220 tourism projects that will cost a cumulative VN222 trillion ($9.82 billion) are proposed.

Of these, 167 costing VN126.64 trillion have been licensed, with 30 worth a total of VN31 trillion already in operation.

Mai Van Huynh, Peoples Committee Vice Chairman of Kien Giang Province, of which the island is a part, said Phu Quoc has huge potential for tourism because of its landscapes and attractions.

Investment in tourism infrastructure, services and products, training of human resources and building a brand for the island destinations are some of the measures proposed to attract tourists and investors, he said.

Last year, the island welcomed more than 1.45 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 63 per cent, who spent more than VN8.92 trillion.

The number of foreign visitors rose 38.5 per cent to 201,130. VNS
By Bach Lien

In a routine unchanged for decades if not centuries, a working day is well under way in a fishing village as the sun rises over the Quy Nhon Beach in Binh inh Province.

The fishermen of Hai Minh Village are at sea spreading their nets to catch fish and other creatures. In a corner of the village, elderly women carry stuff to sell in the market. Children prepare to go to school.

The peaceful life in the village is a far cry from the bustle of central Quy Nhon City, although it takes just 10 minutes of travelling by sea to get there.

Settled on the Phuong Mai peninsula, Hai Minh is still unknown to many people who visit Quy Nhon, but it is an ideal destination for those who enjoy the simplicity and beauty of rural life.

A boat from the Ham Tu Wharf in Quy Nhon City will take about 10 minutes to reach the Hai Minh fishing village. Their little houses are so close to the sea that you can walk directly into one of them from the boat.

The small alleys in the village are lined by lush greenery and lots of fishing nets, coracles, and fishing boats.

As they see us in the distance, the villagers wave and smile at us. Striking up a conversation with them is very easy. They are eager to talk.

Just a few days ago, we met another group of tourists coming here from Ha Noi. Just imagine, they even came here by airplane, paying VN1.5 million (US$66) just for the ticket! exclaimed Nguyen Van Hong, excited about these facts, as he sat on a chair in front of his house, breathing in fresh air from the sea.

An air trip is too luxurious for someone who earns a living catching and selling fish in the local market.

His hard, frugal life has not robbed him of the innocence and sincerity that are writ large in the smiles that light up his face.

I met them by chance on my way back home after Id caught a lot of fish. They were happy to see my catch. They wanted me to cook some for them, and I did. We had a lot of fun, he said, laughing.

Hong doesnt go to the city very often. Like other villagers, he finds everything he and his family needs in the village itself: market, pagoda, and schools.

But children can only attend primary school in the village. For any higher education  secondary school and high school, they would take the boat everyday to the city and back.

Net worth: A family repairs fishing nets in Hai Minh Village.  VNS Photo Bach Lien

The views

Apart from the sincere and welcoming residents, another big attraction of Hai Minh is its beautiful scenery that every nature lover will thoroughly enjoy.

After walking on a sinuous pathway on a mountainside for about 20 minutes, we reached an oversized statue of 13th century national hero Tran Hung ao, which can be seen in the distance from the city centre.

This 17m high statue has been erected on a promontory, 40m above sea level, which overlooks the village.

The statue, built in 1972, has been recognised as a historical heritage. It honours the exploits of Tran Hung ao, who successfully defeated Mongol invaders in Viet Nam. He is frequently mentioned as one of the top ten generals in the worlds military history.

Standing at the foot of the imposing statue, we enjoyed the magnificient, panoramic view of the coast, along with the Thi Nai Bridge, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the country, a source of pride for local residents.

Watching the sea dotted with ships close to Hai Minh Village, listening to the melodious songs of wind, sea waves, and seagulls landing and flying in apparent abandon, one can easily lose track of time.

Behind the statue, a pathway leads to a beach hidden at the foot of a mountain. The Ran Beach is still unspoilt now, and we can only hope it remains that way.

The Phuoc Mai Lighthouse, built by the French 100 years ago, and the Hang Doi Cave that hosted thousands of bats before 1975 are places worth visiting in the village.

Whenever you visit Quy Nhon, do not hesitate to spend a few hours to visit Hai Minh Village. Experience the friendliness and warmth with which the locals welcome you, and admire Quy Nhon City from another angle.

The best time to visit is from February to August. No risks of storms, just sunshine.  VNS
BEIRUT (AP)  A large explosion rocked a Syrian government-held coastal town on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens  an attack that was a stark remainder of the prevailing insecurity in the war-torn country despite a nearly week-old cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

The explosion shook a main street in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad and the heartland of Syria's Alawites, a Shiite offshoot to which Assad's family also belongs.

It was the first such large-scale bombing since the cease-fire was agreed on last week, to prepare the way for peace talks between Assad's government and opposition in Kazakhstan later this month.

Videos from the scene of the blast, which state media said was a car bomb, show extensive damage to shops lining a commercial street near the town's municipal stadium. Blood pooled on the pavement and several cars lay charred or overturned as fire fighters scrambled to put out fires.

Qusay al-Khalil, the head of the local hospital, said the blast also severely wounded at least 30 people. "The explosion shook the town," he told state TV, adding that it prompted a state alert at his hospital.
NEW DELHI  An exhibition featuring contemporary paintings and photos of Vietnamese painters and photographers opened on Thursday at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNC) in New Delhi, India.

This is the first among a series of events co-organised by Viet Nam and India in 2017 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship establishment between the two countries (January 7, 1972 - January 7, 2017) and the 10th anniversary of the strategic partnership relationship establishment (2007-2017).

Vietnamese Ambassador to India Ton Sinh Thanh, President of India Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Dr Lokesh Chandra, Member Secretary of IGNC Dr Sachchi Danand Joshi and staff of the Vietnamese Embassy in India, as well as Vietnamese painters, photographers and Indian friends participated in the event.

Speaking at the event, Ambassador Ton Sinh Thanh welcomed visitors to the art exhibition and said the works exhibited at the event showcased different aspects of Vietnamese life and its beauty, through which, international friends could have better understanding about Viet Nams culture and its people.

The ambassador also hoped this exhibition and other cultural events held in India in the future would be a great chance to promote cultural co-operation, identified as one of five pillars of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Relationship between Viet Nam and India.

Also on the occasion, Thanh congratulated Vietnamese painters and photographers for bringing their works to be exhibited in India, especially at the well-known IGNC.

Joshi said Viet Nam and India have a close relationship in culture and share many things in common. He also expressed pleasure at being part of the event.

Also on this occasion, Chandra emphasised the long traditional relationship of Viet Nam and India. He expressed his admiration with the rapid changes in Viet Nam, especially in the economic field.

The exhibition featured 45 paintings and 45 art photos of 20 contemporary painters and photographers from all over Viet Nam, representing 45 years of the diplomatic relationship between the two countries, painter Nguyen Quy Kien told Vietnam News Agency reporter.

Kien said this is the second time he has come to India for an exhibition and was very impressed by Indian painters.

I hope the two countries will have more opportunities to share and exchange experiences to understand more about their respective art and painting techniques, he said.

The exhibition is on until next Tuesday.  VNS
QUANG NINH  Vietnamese and Chinese tourists can now explore new routes to four destinations across both countries. The routes were inaugurated on Thursday in the northern province of Quang Ninhs Mong Cai City.

The four destinations include the cities of Ha Long and Mong Cai in Viet Nam, and Dongxing and Guilin in China. The new routes have been set up by authorities of Mong Cai and Dongxing cities and are expected to contribute in a big way towards increasing tourism in Quang Ninh and Guangxi provinces.

The launch of the routes also kicked off the Mong Cai tourism year 2017.

Representatives of Mong Cai Citys administration, Quang Ninhs tourism department, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regions tourism development committee and Dongxing and Guilin cities authorities all attended the opening ceremony.

Nguyen Tien Dung, Vice Chairman of Mong Cai Citys People Committee, said tourists of both countries can look forward to a variety of unique tourism products.

Local authorities will continue to make great efforts to create favourable conditions for tourists, such as quick customs procedures, development of new routes and tours and better services.

The new routes are expected to become popular among tourists and a trademark for the two nations.

Chinese tourists account for 40 per cent of the international tourists visiting Quang Ninh Province every year. Combined with last years tourism achievements - attracting 1,6 million tourists to Mong Cai City and the introduction of many attractive tourism products like self-driven cars - the exploitation of the border gates in Mong Cai and Dongxing will continue to stimulate the development of border tourism and contribute to the socio-economic development of the regions.

Immediately after the opening ceremony, two groups of 60 Chinese and Vietnamese tourists signed up for the new routes.  VNS
HA NOI  The Chinese Red Cross Society has donated US$100,000 through the Viet Nam Red Cross Society (VNRC) to help flood victims in the central region of Viet Nam.

Chinese Ambassador to Viet Nam Hong Xiao Yong handed over the donation to VNRC President Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu at a ceremony on Friday in Ha Noi.

Thu praised the support of the Chinese government and its people, adding that she believed co-operation between the two societies would further develop to a higher level, especially in emergency aid, disaster prevention and rehabilitation programmes.

The donation from Chinese government and people will help flood victims and poor and needy families overcome difficulties and challenges of this unprecedented flood and heavy rainfall in the central area, Thu said.

Previously, the Chinese Red Cross Society also released emergency aid of $100,000 to help people affected by the flood in the central region of Viet Nam in November 2016. Also in 2016, the society donated $50,000 to assist people living in the drought and salt water intrusion area in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) and Mekong Delta region.

On October 18, the Viet Nam Red Cross made an emergency call for donation to help people affected by the heavy rains and floods in the central region.

Till date, the society has received donations of nearly VN20 billion ($890,000) from local and international organisations and individuals.  VNS
The HCM City Centre for Human Resource Forecast and Labour Information foresees a mere 3 per cent shortage in worker numbers after Tet (the Lunar New Year).  Photo baodautu.vn

HCM CITY  The HCM City Centre for Human Resource Forecast and Labour Information foresees a mere 3 per cent shortage in worker numbers after Tet (the Lunar New Year).

The rate was the same last year after many companies had begun to offer workers attractive terms to retain them, like providing free bus tickets to return home for the Lunar New Year, according to the centre.

Besides, for the last two or three years workers have been getting good salaries and bonuses and so do not want to change jobs, with only 15 per cent expected to switch, it said.

For many years workers returning home for Tet would stay back and find jobs locally or return to HCM City and switch companies.

The centre also forecast that enterprises would need nearly 69,000 new workers in this quarter, 28 per cent of them for manual work.

In January and February the need for people doing domestic work, caring for bonsai, delivering goods, and doing security work will increase as preparations get under way for Tet.

Figures from the city Department of Planning and Investment showed there were 289,891 operational enterprises last year.

Programmes for administrative reform and urban development as well as other measures to improve the investment environment have been undertaken to encourage enterprises to expand production and trading, leading to a positive affect on the labour market, according to the centre.

Seasonal jobs

The centres recent survey of 1,300 enterprises in the city found that 30,000 workers are needed for seasonal jobs before and during Tet, a 15-20 per cent increase from other times in the year.

Tran Anh Tuan, the centres deputy head, said this offers students a chance to earn an income.

For instance, mywork.com.vn lists 40 vacancies for students at Cuisine Service Company during Tet.

Enterprises elsewhere in the southern region too need workers for expanding production at the end of year.

Binh Duong Province, for instance, needs more than 20,000 workers, more than 50 per cent of them for seasonal jobs.  VNS
HA NOI  A discussion on Wednesday in Ha Noi on global youth citizenship discussed ways for young Vietnamese to actively equip themselves with knowledge and skills to engage in global issues in an increasingly integrated world.

The discussion, titled Building youth models in an era of virtuous global citizens, was organised by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (HCYU), youth unions of central agencies, Viet Nam News Agency (VNA) youth union. It drew participation from researchers, experts and youth union members.

Participants expressed their opinions about how to be global citizens and the roles of youth unions and associations in facilitating global citizenship.

HCYU Secretary Nguyen Ngoc Luong said Building youth models plays an important role in the new era, especially during global integration.

In addition, the HCYU Secretary Committee called on Vietnamese youth to have a kind heart, intelligence and big ambitions.

Soon, HCYU will establish and promote an environment for youth to practise and improve their ethical insight, legal knowledge and skills, he said.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan said that market economics and global integration bring both positivity and negativity, affecting the economy, politics, society and culture of each nations citizens, including young people.

Vietnamese youth heading out to the world must hold virtues, knowledge and civilised behaviours with friends around the world. In particular, they must learn about the progressive achievements of the world to contribute to the nations construction while preserving national traditions.

There are two elements that Vietnamese youth must focus on to become global citizens. The first is the countrys patriotism and its efforts to overcome difficulties. This spirit has encouraged generations of Vietnamese youth to sacrifice for the nation during the countrys history.

The second is being kind, through a compassion that can be shown through working and communication styles

The former Deputy Prime Minister said that the youth can contribute to the country through domestic activity. For example, protecting the Vietnamese environment and natural resources is also protecting the global environment and climate.

In the S-shaped country (Viet Nam), we are still global citizens, he said.

Nguyen Thi Kim Thanh, a member of the Ho Chi Minh Museum youth union said that global citizens live and work in various countries. They hold one or more than one nationalities. They are able to overcome barriers of space and culture.

Global citizens can bring many societal benefits thanks to their knowledge and experience from living and working in many different countries and cultures.

They also must have global vision to identify opportunities and risks with an open mind, and they must accept and respect differences in the world, she said.

Reporter Thuy Ngan, from the VNA youth union, said, The VNA has more than 30 overseas news bureaus. The first quality to be qualified for working there is foreign languages.

When I started working for VNA, I only knew French. Then I realised I must know English, and I have made efforts to learn it. Without learning, we will be left behind this global era, she said.

Concluding the discussion, HCYU Secretary Nguyen Ngoc Luong listed out global citizens qualities, including knowledge about local and international culture and laws, good health, language proficiency, soft skills, deep professional knowledge, and community responsibility.  VNS
HCM CITY  Helmets for Families is taking its road safety programme to four more schools in HCM Citys outlying Hoc Mon District.

Students, and also their parents and teachers, will be trained in the right way to wear helmets and apprised about the importance of wearing standard helmets through workshops and outdoor activities.

Moreover, more than 4,700 students and teachers at the four schools and two more in Ha Noi will get quality helmets while the students parents will have their helmets exchanged at subsidised prices.

The launch of Helmets for Families in the 2016-17 school year was held on Thursday at Nhi Xuan Primary School in Hoc Mon.

The programme is being carried out by the Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation in co-operation with the city Department of Health and Traffic Safety Committee and sponsored by global healthcare company Abbott.

A pre-project survey found that more than 76 per cent of students in the programmes schools come to school on their parents motorcycles. The average student helmet-wearing rate is around 30 per cent, well below the citys average of 48 per cent.

Only 1.3 per cent of parents surveyed knew what makes for a high-quality helmet.

AIP Foundation identified the four new schools based on parent survey data, the schools proximity to industrial zones and a strong commitment from school administrators, among other criteria.

In its fourth year now, Helmets for Families serves 15 schools in HCM City, Tra Vinh Province, and Ha Noi and has donated helmets to 17,600 students and teachers, and exchanged over 12,600 subsidised helmets with parents.  VNS
The 2017 national press award on the fight and prevention of corruption and wastefulness has been launched by the Viet Nam Journalists Association (VJA) and the Viet Nam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee.  Photo chinhphu.vn

HA NOI  The 2017 national press award on the fight and prevention of corruption and wastefulness has been launched by the Viet Nam Journalists Association (VJA) and the Viet Nam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee.

Both professional and amateur Vietnamese journalists in Viet Nam and abroad can participate, with each author/group of authors submitting a maximum of five press works.

The works should be published on Vietnamese media between January 1 and November 30, 2017. They must be submitted during the year until November 30, with the award ceremony scheduled for December 30.

More details on the contest can be found on the VJAs website at https://www.vja.org.vn or the VFFs website at https://www.mattran.org.vn.

The award will be held annually.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministries of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Information and Communications and the Viet Nam Journalists Association launched a writing contest on poverty reduction on Thursday.

The contest aims to offer journalists the opportunity to work with ministries by writing about poverty alleviation plans from 2016 to 2020, promoting information on State policies and laws that could help in reducing poverty.

It also provides a chance for journalists to praise outstanding locals, teams, individuals, households and organisations involved in sustainable poverty reduction.

Outstanding examples and experiences, initiatives and models that help effectively end poverty will be praised and developed.

The contest also aims to raise public awareness and heighten the responsibility of people and authorities at all levels in implementing poverty alleviation policies and programmes.

Speaking at the launch in Ha Noi, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue said, The State is continuing to promote works on sustainable poverty reduction as well as building the new rural model.

Hunger eradication and poverty reduction after 30 years of oi moi (renewal) is the bright spot in the countrys millennium goals programme, he said.

The contest is also a measure to achieve targets in reducing poverty and to raise the will of residents, especially the poor, to emerge from poverty, he noted.

Minister of Information and Communication Truong Minh Tuan also called on people to join hands and work for the poor so that no one is neglected.

Poverty reduction is an important point in the overall programme of social development, he noted.

The contest will be held annually from now to 2020.  VNS
Using budget revenues from big cities to support disadvantaged localities is a policy imperative for Viet Nam, former National Assembly Deputy Bui Thi An tells the Kinh te & o thi (Economy and Urban) Newspaper.

The Finance Ministry has proposed that the Government submits to the National Assembly a proposal that will drastically cut the percentage of annual budget revenues retained by big cities like Ha Noi, HCM City and a Nang. Ha Noi, for instance, will only be allowed to keep 28 per cent of its annual budget revenues, down 14 per cent from the current rate. What do you think?

I think that we must follow it if the proposal is approved. As the Finance Ministry says, there is a need to cut portions of budget revenues of developed localities that have a good source of income in order to gather more resources to support disadvantaged localities. This would help balance the central budget with that of localities. It is reasonable that cities like Ha Noi, HCM City and a Nang shoulder problems with other localities, helping them overcome many difficulties.

But will this not affect Ha Nois expenditures, particularly its spending on infrastructure development and services?

Yes, it will certainly affect the spending of the bigger cities, particularly on public investment projects. A capital city like Ha Noi, in particular, which needs to investment in developing infrastructure, education and healthcare, will face more difficulties.

But, as I said earlier, we must follow this policy. Sharing is necessary. So Ha Noi must find solutions to ensure that it can share difficulties with other localities while meeting its own development demands.

What are some of the solutions that Ha Noi can apply?

First, the expenditure must be narrowed down to what is indispensable. For this, the city should review its spending agenda to reduce regular expenditure and balance capital expenditure. Relevant State agencies should also supervise the public spending process to prevent wastefulness.

Another important measure is to call for private investment to attract funding from all economic sectors. We have to create favourable conditions and mechanisms to encourage private sector participation in social investment. Ha Noi has effectively applied this measure for several years now.

For example, the city has applied the public-private-partnership (PPP) model in infrastructure and urban transport construction. It has also led other localities in equitising State-owned enterprises. The participation of private investors has contributed to creating a dynamic, developing Ha Noi. In the context of budget reduction, this model needs to be promoted further.

However, it should be noted such socialisation should have appropriate targets, and its application should be supervised by the State and citizens. If socialisation of public investment is ineffective, it will end up benefiting just investors, not residents. So when we source investment from the private sector, we have to ensure that all sides benefit, the State, the businesses and local people.

Apart from calling for diversified sources of investment, localities like Ha Noi and HCM City have issued bonds to attract more investment. This is happening on a small scale and related regulations are not complete. What should be done to develop the capital market in such localities?

I think localities need to review their investment mobilising mechanisms. They should report obstacles to the Government and propose solutions. If their proposals are reasonable, the Government will certainly support them.

The National Assembly Standing Committee has discussed a draft Government decree on special financial and budget management mechanisms for Ha Noi. What do you think about this move?

Ha Noi is not only for Hanoians. It is home to central agencies and is the national hub of politics, economy, science and education. Within this special context, Ha Noi does need a special financial management mechanism for its development. According to the Governments assessment, the implementation of special financial and budget mechanisms and policies for Ha Noi has recorded important results over the last decade. The special mechanisms and policies include priority in allocating Official Development Assistance and financial aid, in assigning budget spending rate and capital mobilisation rate for capital expenditures.

However, there have been several shortcomings in implementing these special financial management mechanisms and policies. A draft decree seeking to address these shortcomings should regulate that Ha Nois debt not exceed 60 per cent of the budget revenue that it is allowed to keep.

Many experts have proposed big cities enjoy greater autonomy in their budget collection and spending. What do you think?

This is a long story. This is being studied by experts and State management agencies. Ha Noi itself has the Capital Law, and it is good to develop the city based on this law.  VNS
HA NOI  The General Department of Customs has asked all local customs departments to take bold measures to prevent the smuggling of goods by air, which is expected to rise around Tet.

It has asked the customs departments in 10 cities and provinces including Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Nghe An, Thua Thien-Hue, a Nang, ak Lak, Khanh Hoa, HCM City, Can Tho and Kien Giang, to pay special attention.

The department said it saw positive results in 2016 because of the efforts made to prevent and combat smuggling and illegal transportation of goods by air. However, smuggling by air has continued to rise, which is affecting not only aviation security but also political security and social order, it said.

Operations will now focus on banned, high-value and easy-to-hide goods items such as drugs, weapons, gold, wild animal-based products, telephones, cigarettes, alcohol, cosmetics and supplementary food.

In recent years, smugglers have been using many tactics to illegally transport goods by air, the department said. They often act in groups or form trans-national smuggling rings, many of which are led by Africans. Sometimes Vietnamese citizens living abroad pretend to return to Viet Nam for business or travel, but actually work with local smugglers to transport contraband products.

Of late, smugglers have also been trying to gain the co-operation of airport and airline staff, which makes the fight against smuggling more difficult. For instance, last July, Ha Noi police arrested an air hostess for smuggling 3kg of gold by air.

To prevent smuggling, local customs departments have to increase surveillance, supervision and inspections. The customs branches at the border gates must observe customs procedures strictly for both passengers and luggage during exit, entry and transit, and strengthen inspections and supervision when warnings are issued by risk management units.

Provincial and city customs departments need direction and guidelines to collect and analyse information regarding peoples exits and entries, import and export businesses and suspicious shipments, and determine those who are high risk.

The department has asked the anti-smuggling and investigation department to promote customs inspection operations and focus on sensitive areas such as temporary imports, re-exports, bond warehouses, dependent transportation and businesses for duty-free goods and gift goods.

In the third quarter of 2016, the General Department of Customs detected 3,800 cases of smuggling and seized goods worth around VN47.7 trillion (US$2.13 billion).

In the latest case, on December 25, customs officers at Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCM City arrested a foreign woman for allegedly smuggling in around 1.6kg of cocaine.  VNS
The Flagstaff Police Department Citizens Liaison Committee will be hosting an open house meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 11, at the Flagstaff Aquaplex, 1702 N. Fourth St.

The public is invited to hear a presentation by Marianne Sullivan, Senior Assistant City Attorney with the Flagstaff City Attorneys Office, on Know Your Rights, Know an Officers Authority. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask and submit questions to the committee on public safety, community relations and other issues affecting our community.
MEXICO CITY  More looting and protests against a gasoline price increase erupted in Mexico on Thursday, a day after an officer was killed and hundreds of people were arrested.

Demonstrators blocked highways and service stations again as protests continued for a fifth day since the government hiked gasoline prices by 20.1 per cent on January 1.

On Wednesday, looting took place in several parts of the country, as people left stores with televisions, toys and clothes, and more thefts were seen on Thursday.

Business leaders said some 1,000 shops and companies had been looted or vandalized while several stores closed out of fear of being next.

Police have arrested more than 430 people in Mexico state, 106 in the capital Mexico City, and 135 in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Riot police dispersed a small protest with tear gas in the northern state of Coahuila on Thursday while 100 people marched in Mexico City.

"I have grandchildren and I would be ashamed to know that I did nothing" against the price increase, said Emma Cabrera Albarran, a 58-year-old shopkeeper at the Mexico City protest.

A police officer died in Mexico City on Wednesday after he was hit by a car while preventing a theft at a service station, the city police department said.

Five other officers were injured elsewhere in Mexico City.

President understands anger

Pena Nieto defended the price increase, saying it was necessary due to a rise in global oil prices.

"I understand the irritation and anger among the population in general," he said Wednesday, arguing that keeping the prices at the same level would have been more painful for the economy.

Pena Nieto enacted a sweeping energy reform in 2014 that ended the monopoly held by state firm Pemex, inviting private firms to drill for oil and natural gas as well as own service stations for the first time in decades.

The hike was imposed as the government prepares to stop fuel subsidies and let the market dictate gasoline prices from March.

But the steep increase shocked Mexicans in a country where nearly half the population lives in poverty.

Out of control

The national confederation of chambers of commerce, CONCANACO, estimated that between 700 and 800 small and medium-sized companies had been vandalized nationwide.

Separately, the National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores reported looting at nearly 250 shops in the capital and six other states.

"Its out of control," association executive Manuel Cardona told Radio Formula. He called on federal forces to intervene, including the army if necessary.

Rafael Mondragon, president of the Mexican Pawnbroker Service Companies, said 32 pawnshops were ransacked, with people using tools to break windows.

"Its an unimaginable situation, unpredictable, like the apocalypse," he told Milenio television.

Dozens of people stormed a supermarket in the central city of Puebla, leaving with televisions, toys and king cake, which is eaten during the Catholic feast of Epiphany, which falls this year on Friday.

In the suburb of Ecatepec, AFP reporters saw looters flee an Oxxo convenience store as police arrived. Five other stores had signs of break-ins, with their windows broken.

In the mega-capital of 21 million people, some 20,000 small stores had closed on Wednesday and some streets were unusually empty over fears that looting could spread.

The store closures cost the businesses $2.4 million, said Humberto Lazcano, president of the local chamber of commerce.

City officials said the situation had calmed down on Thursday.  AFP
PARIS  French prosecutors are probing the far-right National Front (FN) for suspected fraud linked to payments for aides at the European Parliament, judicial sources said on Thursday.

FN leader Marine Le Pen - a leading candidate in upcoming presidential elections - ran into problems last October when the EU parliament called on her to reimburse 339,900 euros (US$360,000).

She is suspected of violating the institutions rules by having two assistants carry out non-parliamentary work while their wages were paid by the EU assembly over the 2010-2016 period.

A similar case concerns her estranged 88-year-old father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who like her is a member of the European Parliament.

The EU is claiming the elder Le Pen should repay 320,000 euros paid to his parliamentary assistant for the 2009-2014 period.

Judicial sources said French prosecutors opened an investigation on December 15 after carrying out a preliminary inquiry launched in March 2015 at the request of the European Parliament, which had raised suspicions over payments to a total of 20 assistants working for National Front MEPs.

The investigation has been entrusted to examining magistrates specialising in financial crime for suspected breach of trust and concealment, organised fraud, use of fraudulent documents and undeclared labour, they said.

The probe will take place in the run-up to the French presidential elections, with the first round of the vote due on April 23.

If no candidate wins an absolute majority, a run-off between the top two will be held on May 7. Opinion polls suggest Francois Fillon of the conservative Republicans party would face Le Pen in the run-off.

Le Pen reacted angrily to the fraud probe on Thursday, portraying herself as a victim of political manipulation.

"Occurring in the middle of the election campaign... it is a clear sign of a purely political agenda. The age-old methods of politicking, of persecuting opponents, do not die away," Le Pen said.

The FN is hoping that last years Brexit vote and Donald Trumps shock election victory will give it a historic boost for the presidential vote and parliamentary elections which follow in June.

The party was founded by the elder Le Pen but, in the eyes of many voters, he also tarred it with anti-semitism and racism.

His daughter, 48, has sought to pare away the negative image and broaden the partys appeal with a manifesto promoting nationalism, euro-skepticism and law and order.

Political commentators say Le Pen has little chance of winning the presidency, as electors are less likely to cast protest votes in a run-off.

A new opinion poll published by survey group Elabe on Thursday gives Fillon a lead of between one and four points over Le Pen in first-round voting intentions.

The lead depends on who the now-governing Socialist Party puts forward as its own candidate.  AFP




Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2017. Read them in this 9th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.



Contributed by Eric Chiu, Co-founder and President of Cloud and virtual workload security company, HyTrust

2017 Predictions: Cloudy Security to Securely to Cloud?

There are several topics that have been deemed at the top of the priority list for organizations in the New Year, one being security. This past year brought a slew of new security challenges, from the rise of IoT, to state sponsored hacks on Yahoo-bringing the total to 1.5 billion users' accounts being breached--and now the debate on whether our own U.S. Elections were compromised. In my role, I see the challenges that companies and government organizations face with regards to cloud security.

Here are 5 key areas that I predict we will see in the coming year and enterprises will want to consider as they build out their security strategies.



1. Increased use of on-premises hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as an alternative to public clouds. With the increased uncertainty in the global geo-political arena and shifting need for data privacy and sovereignty, more and more enterprises are demanding their workloads be fenced into a specific logical or geo-political boundary, with the ability to change that boundary in a few clicks. HCI, rather than public clouds, can help achieve this. Also, certainly many organizations have leapt unprepared into the cloud, only to be surprised by sticker shock when the AWS bill comes. Sure, the agility and time to market advantages of public cloud are now obvious, but nothing comes for free. The result is a trend where organizations are moving back to on-premises solutions delivering cloud agility on HCI platforms such as Cisco HyperFlex, Nutanix, Pivot3, SimpliVity, VMware HCI, and ZeroStack is likely to continue.



2. There will be wider use of public cloud encryption. According to recent HyTrust surveys, a full 28 percent of organizations surveyed were not running any sort of encryption in their public cloud deployments, and 20 percent in government agencies lacked encryption. In 2017, a variety of options will be available, from cloud-provider-managed services, to bring-your-own-key services, to bring-your own-encryption. At the same time, with increased encryption adoption will come a need for flexible key management that can meet each organization's policy needs.



3. Increased awareness of the vulnerability of encryption keys and need to rotate them regularly. One of the fundamental axioms in security is that you are going to have to periodically change things like passwords and encryption keys in order to maximize security. While some would argue that many IT organizations may have gone overboard with their zeal for password changes, the opposite is true for cloud-based efforts, where most orgs don't swap encryption keys often enough - and understandable reasons. Many traditional encryption approaches require downtime - and sometimes it is substantial downtime - to update keys. Fortunately, there already exist commercially available solutions where workloads can be rekeyed transparently with zero downtime, and these new technologies will increasingly become the new normal in the coming year and beyond.



4. A growing risk from insider threats, both through negligence and intentional malice. The NSA has publicly stated that system administrators are primary targets of its offensive cyberwar efforts, and it is for good reason. When attempting to compromise user accounts, you can chase after individual users one by one, but the rewards are much greater if you can capture high-value accounts with additional privileges, like sysadmin accounts. That's why we will likely see greater emphasis on spear phishing and other attacks against high-value administrators in future. Steps to take to lessen this risk include deploying multifactor authentication, strictly restricting account privileges based on roles, and requiring secondary authorization for potentially disruptive activities. In addition, in an increasingly politically polarized world (given Brexit, global elections, and so on), insiders will become increasingly likely to take action against their own organizations for reasons motivated by activism, rather than monetary gain.



5. Greater risk, if not an all-out war, in the cyber warfare arena. With U.S. policy leaning progressively more toward offensive tactics in the cyber warfare arena - to say nothing of the increasing sophistication and abilities of North Korea, China, Russia and other adversaries - the risk of damage to private industry and federal agencies increases dramatically. State-sponsored hacking incidents in the last year alone suggest that the possibility of an actual cyber "shooting war" is not that far-fetched.

##

About the Author

Eric Chiu is Co-Founder and President of HyTrust, leading the company's Business Development. He has over 15 years of experience building startups, and leading Sales, Business Development and Finance functions. Under his leadership, HyTrust has become a leader in virtualization and cloud security automation and control, winning blue chip customers; principal investors; strategic partners spanning virtualization, network and endpoint security, log management and reporting; and building a world-class team.

Prior to starting HyTrust, Eric served as Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Cemaphore Systems, a leader in disaster recovery for Microsoft Exchange. There, he built the sales effort from the ground up and consistently delivered significant quarter-over-quarter sales growth, also putting in place the key OEM partnership with EMC. Previous to that, he led Business Development for MailFrontier (acquired by SonicWALL) and mySimon (acquired by CNET Networks). In these roles, Eric spearheaded OEM partnerships, technology alliances and new product initiatives.

Eric is a recognized expert in cloud security and serves as subject matter expert for industry and financial reports, print and broadcast media. He holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley.
Trump may pursue wall without bill

WASHINGTON (AP)  Congressional Republicans and Donald Trumps transition team are exploring whether they can make good on Trumps promise of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border without passing a bill on the topic, officials said Thursday.

Under the plan, the Trump administration would rely on existing legislation authorizing fencing and other technology along the southern border. Congress would be asked to ensure enough money is appropriated to take additional new steps.

The approach could avoid a legislative fight Trump might lose if he tried to get Congress to pass a stand-alone bill authorizing the kind of border wall he promised during the campaign.

Its not clear how much could be done along the 2,000-mile border without additional actions by Congress.

Skiers out West loving deep snow

DENVER (AP)  Skiers throughout the West gleefully flocked to resorts Thursday to take advantage of deep, fresh snow dumped by a series of winter storms that were moving east and threatening turbulent weather across much of the Southeast.

The storms pounded parts of California, Utah, Colorado and other states. More than 6 feet of snow had fallen in the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada since Sunday. In Idaho, snow accumulating for several weeks reached 15 inches in Boise.

Rare lynx spotted

at Colorado resort

DENVER (AP)  Some elusive lynx have been parading past awe-struck Colorado residents and visitors this winter, electrifying social media and giving biologists reason to smile.

One of the rare, fluffy-looking cats strolled nonchalantly across the Purgatory resort in southwestern Colorado last week, threading through a crowd of skiers and snowboarders who swerved around the animal and stopped to take videos.

Two weeks earlier, a pair of lynx loped along a mountain highway near the resort.

Between 50 and 250 lynx live in the wild in Colorado, mostly in the southwestern corner of the state, biologists say.

Man buys papers

to hide arrest

PALMYRA, N.Y. (AP)  The owner of a weekly upstate New York newspaper said a man bought hundreds of copies in an unsuccessful effort to keep people from reading about his drunken-driving arrest.

State police arrested Joseph Talbot on Dec. 29 in Wayne County and charged him with driving while intoxicated.

Police also charged him with refusing to be fingerprinted or photographed. They say he told troopers he didnt want his mugshot in the newspaper.

The 12,000-circulation Times of Wayne County obtained a mugshot and printed it with a story on New Years Eve and online.

Newspaper owner and editor Ron Holdraker said Talbot bought nearly 1,000 newsstand copies at $1.25 each.

Mountain lion kitten dies on freeway

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A mountain lion kitten was struck and killed on a Southern California freeway  the same road where his mother died last month.

The death of the 7-month-old male known as P-52 was announced by the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on Thursday. P-52 was recently struck on a freeway in the northwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley. The kitten died only a few miles from where his mother was struck on Dec. 3.
CHARLES CITY  A man accused of raping a woman in Charles City eight years ago pleaded guilty Wednesday to a reduced charge and received probation.

Eric M. Hill, 31, received a deferred judgment for misdemeanor assault causing bodily injury. He was put on probation for one year and ordered to pay a $315 civil penalty.

He also was ordered to undergo a psychiatric sexual evaluation and follow any recommendations for sex offender treatment or counseling.

Hill was arrested in February 2016 and charged with felony second-degree sexual abuse, punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

In July 2013 his DNA information was entered into a database after an unrelated incident in Illinois.

The database indicated a possible match with DNA evidence from a rape kit done after a Charles City woman reported being raped in her home Aug. 15, 2008.

A swab was collected from Hill in 2015 under a court order. Authorities determined his DNA matched the DNA from the rape kit.

Hills first trial in June 2016 ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury.

During the trial the state claimed Hill entered the womans home, held a metal object against her neck and sexually assaulted her.

When he took the stand Hill claimed he and the woman, who knew each other, had consensual sex in her home on the day she said he raped her. He denied having a weapon and threatening her with it.

Hill also testified he was wearing a condom when he and the woman had sex, but during closing arguments Floyd County Attorney Rachel Ginbey questioned how his sperm could have ended up on a vaginal swab from his accuser if he was telling the truth about the condom.

Ginbey reduced the charge against Hill to third-degree sexual abuse, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, in advance of his second trial, which was scheduled to begin this week. She was not available to talk about the reduced charge.

Hampton man

avoids prison

MASON CITY  A Hampton man accused of driving the vehicle another man was sitting in when he allegedly showed a BB gun and threatened someone has received a suspended two-year prison sentence.

Brady Hunt, 36, was put on probation for two years after pleading guilty this week to misdemeanor charges of being an accessory to a felony and third-degree harassment.

He received a 30-day jail sentence for the harassment conviction. A $625 fine was suspended.

Hunts passenger, Jack Hovenga, 18, Mason City, allegedly displayed a BB gun to someone at around 8:30 a.m. Nov. 28 in Mason City.

He entered a written plea of guilty in December to misdemeanor assault with a dangerous weapon. He originally was charged by Mason City police with intimidation with a dangerous weapon, a forcible felony.
Hy-Vee in online food stamp plan

WEST DES MOINES (AP)  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has chosen West Des Moines-based Hy-Vee to participate in a program that will let food stamp recipients shop for groceries online.

Hy-Vee is one of seven retailers in the two-year pilot program, which will begin this summer.

The USDA hopes to expand access to healthy food for people who receive food stamps. People wont be able to use food stamps to pay service or delivery charges.

Selfie with gun lands felon in jail

DES MOINES (AP)  A Des Moines man who grew up in a Chicago area that struggles with gangs will continue serving five years in prison after posting a selfie on Facebook with a gun and ammunition, bragging about gang ties.

Christopher Payne-Owens, who is 25, appealed his July 2015 conviction on possession of a firearm by a felon to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the conviction Wednesday.

Payne-Owens in November 2012 posed in photos with a handgun in his waistband and a band of ammunition encircling his head like a crown.

Prior convictions, including assault on a peace officer, prohibit him from possessing guns.

Payne-Owens appealed his conviction claiming the gun, which was never found, was a fake.

The appeals court concluded jurors had sufficient evidence for a conviction.

Fatal crash brings prison term





IOWA CITY (AP)  A Kalona man has been given 15 years in prison for killing a teenage girl and injuring two of her cousins in a collision.

Court records say 30-year-old Jeffrey Bulechek was sentenced Wednesday in an Iowa City courtroom. Hed pleaded guilty to charges of vehicular homicide and to causing serious injury. Bulechek originally was charged with homicide by vehicle-operating under the influence, but that count was dismissed as part of a plea deal and was replaced with the lesser charge.

Bulechek admitted driving while intoxicated on Dec. 1, 2013, when his pickup collided with a sedan occupied by the three cousins, fatally injuring one: 15-year-old Brittany Hochstetler, of Grabill, Indiana. The two other cousins were hospitalized.

Hospital flushes hot water line





WEST BURLINGTON (AP)  Hundreds of faucets ran open for at least 30 minutes at a West Burlington hospital to flush floor cleaner out of a hot water line.

Great River Medical Center said no patients were harmed by the contamination Wednesday. Edward Bottei with the Iowa Centers for Poison Control said the cleaners only active ingredient is nonhazardous.

Hospital officials said a valve in a housekeeping area was mistakenly opened, allowing about a pint of the cleaner to enter a mixing valve with hot water.

About 500 faucets were left open for 30 to 45 minutes to flush the line.
Few subjects have the ability to elicit immediate, angry reactions decades after their initial introduction. One such topic is Vatican II.

In October 1962, the so-called Second Vatican Council began three years of gatherings intended to adapt Roman Catholicism to themodern world.

Prior to Vatican II, Catholics were forbidden to attend Protestant worship services or use Protestant Bibles. Women couldnt have visible roles during Mass. Vatican II changed such things and much more.

Perhaps it was felt most in the mass. Previously, the priest said the Mass in Latin while facing away from the congregation. Worshippers went to hear the Mass. Vatican II instituted Mass in the language of the people in the pews and other changes meant to make it more participatory.

Many were aggrieved by the alterations. Although more than 50 years has passed, Vatican II can still be a sore subject.

Why? The changes messed with tradition, familiarity and routine. Previous practices, rituals and beliefs were practically unrecognizable.

When considered in that way, most of us can empathize. Disruptions tweak our sense of stability and can elicit deeply emotional responses.

Thats why I decided to be more empathetic in my response to the general freak out over the new McDonalds near the Vatican. (It has a view of St. Peters Basilica.)

Owners of nearby restaurants that serve regional cuisine say theyre filing a lawsuit.

McDonalds is producing a lot of problems, Manuel Tosti told CBS news. Four generations of his family have operated a restaurant across the street from the new McDonalds location.

Its a multinational that has the same food everywhere, whereas we do pasta thats famous around the world and typical Roman dishes, he added.

Some Catholic clergy are irate. Cardinal Elio Sgreccia told La Repubblica the Vatican McDonalds is a disgrace.

Despite this, CBS News reports the Vatican earns more than $31,000 per month from leasing the space to McDonalds.

Initially, I reacted to all this with a so what? Its a business decision.

People make choices. Business owners must entice customers, including Catholic clergy.

I also took it somewhat personally, because Ive seen this debate from the other side of the standard-issue McDonalds seating area.

It was July 1997. Id been traveling in southeast Asia with young adults from around the world. The regular cuisine didnt agree with some of us.

Once in Hong Kong, those with gastronomic challenges quickly noticed a McDonalds.

I was part of that group, but it wasnt a strictly U.S. contingent. We represented England, Canada, North Africa, South America and more. We ate in almost reverential silence until a woman from India noted McDonalds was like finding a bit of home.

Why? In a grueling trip filled with constant change, McDonalds was familiar and reliable. I had understood it was a U.S. export; there, I learned how readily the world had embraced it. The chains mass-produced reliability has made McDonalds fare a sort of global soul food.

And this experience helped me empathize with those who challenge the Vatican McDonalds.

Vatican neighbors may view McDonalds, the nearby Hard Rock Cafe and impending Starbucks as the encroachment of American consumerism. That is  unfounded or not  perhaps theyre afraid our cultural footprint will stomp down on the sacred city, rendering its traditions unrecognizable.

Sgreccia told La Repubblica leasing to McDonalds is a perverse decision, adding, Instead of a Golden Arches near the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the space should be used to house entities which help the needy, in line with the popes call for a poor church for the poor.

Golden writes The Couriers weekly faith and values column. Email her at onfaith@karrisgolden.com.
WATERLOO  The University of Northern Iowa Center for Urban Education is again offering an ACT prep program during the spring semester, Jan. 16 through April 27.

Its offered at no cost to high school juniors and seniors from Black Hawk County who are preparing to take the ACT exam.

All sessions will take place at the UNI-CUE building, 800 Sycamore St.

Prep sessions will be held each day focusing on a specific topic: Mondays, science, from 4 to 5:20 p.m. or 5:30 to 6:50 p.m.; Tuesdays, English/writing, from 4 to 5:20 p.m. or 5:30 to 6:50 p.m.; Wednesdays, math, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.; and Thursdays, reading, from 3:15 to 5 p.m.

Students can repeat courses as often as they feel is necessary. For more information, call 273-4772.
Church to serve

Southern cuisine

WATERLOO -- Jubilee UMC Resource Center, East Fourth and Newell streets, will host a LeChristopher's Southern cuisine dinner at noon Sunday.

The Southern cuisine dishes are prepared by the food specialists at Jubilee. This month's menu will feature barbecued pork steak, crispy fried chicken, baked chicken, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, salmon patties, collard greens, okra, pies and cakes. Salads and beverages are served with the meal.

Cost of the meal is $12 for adults or $6 for children. For more information or take-out dinners, call 234-5307.

Wartburg gallery

to host reception

WAVERLY -- An exhibition featuring the works of Ben Moore and Byron Anway will open Monday at Wartburg Colleges Waldemar A. Schmidt Gallery.

Featuring pieces that combine online imaged-based culture and 18th-century French portraiture will be on display through Feb. 12. A reception is set for 5 to 7 p.m. Feb. 10.

The exhibition  inspired by online police databases, dating profile pictures and tabloid photography  will include intimately scaled paintings, drawings and prints.

The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

Kiwanis Club

to meet Tuesday

WATERLOO -- The Waterloo Noon Kiwanis Club will meet at noon Tuesday at the Waterloo Elks Club.

Lunch starts at 12:10 p.m., and the speaker will be Nora Tobin of Self Help International.

Guests are welcome. For more information, call President Bruce Jacobs, 287-5733.
WATERLOO  An Illinois man who was shot and injured by police outside the New World Lounge in 2015 has refiled his lawsuit against the city and police officers.

Jovan Darnell Webb initially filed an excessive force lawsuit in July 2015, but his attorneys dismissed the suit in January 2016 after he was arrested for assault on an officer with a weapon, interference while armed and carrying weapons in connection with the shooting.

On Tuesday, Webbs attorney, Robert Montgomery of Des Moines, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Webb also is represented by attorneys Jon Loevy, Arthur Loevy and Mark Loevy-Reyes of Chicago.

City Attorney David Zellhoefer on Thursday said he wasnt aware the suit had been re-filed and declined to comment.

The new suit mirrors the 2015 action alleging excessive force, equal protection violations, failure to intervene and battery. It also adds references to recently settled lawsuits stemming from a 17-year-old who was shoved face-first into concrete by an officer and another where a Taser was pointed at a group and allegedly used on a bystander.

Jovans attorneys allege police who responded to a disturbance at the nightclub singled out Webb because he was black, shot him as he we was pulling out of the parking lot and then claimed Webb had threatened the life of a police officer with his car to cover up the shooting.

In addition to the city of Waterloo, Officers Thomas Frein and Mark Nissen are named as defendants.

An Iowa Attorney General review of the incident concluded Frein and Nissen acted reasonably when they shot Webb after his car lurched at Officer Steve Bose, who was in uniform and standing in front of the vehicle trying to stop it.

Webb drove himself to the hospital, and police found a .22-caliber handgun in his vehicle, according to court records.

Webbs criminal case is scheduled for a March trial, and Montgomery has filed a notice Webb was acting in self-defense or with justification, and he was leaving to protect his own safety.

This week, a district court judge denied Montgomerys request the court compel the officers to answer questions prosecutors had objected to during deposition interviews. Montgomery had asked about prior disciplinary actions or mental health counseling for the officers, and Assistant County Attorney Brad Walz objected on relevance grounds. The judge also turned down a request from Webbs attorney to conduct another deposition of the officers.

Davenport police also arrested Webb on drug charges in October 2015 after they detained him on a Waterloo warrant and found 4.7 grams of crack cocaine hidden in the headliner of a Honda Accord. Officers had seen Webb near the parked Accord, and his medical card was found on the visor, and his wallet and mail were found in the vehicles trunk, court records state. In February, a Scott County District Court judge ruled the state failed to prove Webb possessed the crack and dismissed the drug charges following a bench trial.
WATERLOO  A second person has been sentenced to probation in the 2014 burglary of a Waterloo church.

Taylor James Gray, 23, was sentenced to up to five years of probation during a Dec. 28 hearing in Black Hawk County District Court.

Gray pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal mischief, third-degree burglary and second-degree theft in connection with more than $1,000 worth of damage done to Burton Avenue Baptist Church in May 2014.

The sentence consisted of 10 years in prison for criminal mischief added to two concurrent five-year sentences for theft and burglary. The prison time was suspended to two to five years probation. He was also ordered to pay restitution, which will be determined later.

Authorities said Gray and others broke into the church, sprayed fire extinguisher in the building and took an overhead projector. He was arrested in 2016 in Colorado and returned to Iowa.

Another person charged in the crime, Jalan Culpepper, was arrested in Kansas in 2015 and was also sentenced to probation.
REINBECK  Gladbrook-Reinbeck Community Schools dissolution process has re-emerged due to the efforts of persistent petitioners.

After the Board of Education invalidated the original petition in August, supporters of dissolving the district gathered 642 signatures for a new one within a month. Since then, a commission has formed and held its first meeting on the issue.

During the initial process, which lasted nearly a year, a proposal to carve up Gladbrook-Reinbeck between five neighboring school districts was created. The boards action meant the proposal would not go to the voters in a referendum.

A public vote up or down, said attorney Darrell G. Meyer, was the will of the folks in the southern part of the district and, Im assuming, some of the folks in the northern part of the district. The Marshalltown attorney represents those who signed the second dissolution petition.

That was why it was refiled, he said. The will of the people still needs to be addressed. To proceed, they needed at least 604 signatures, or 20 percent of the districts registered voters.

Revelations people had contributed their signatures before the first petition was formulated and, thus, may not have known what they were signing derailed the process as the original commission was wrapping up its work last summer.

Supporters of the proposal responded quickly. If they want a clean petition, lets give them a clean petition, said Meyer, of their approach to the problem. Lets cure this flaw while the commissions work is still fresh.

His hope is the reformed group, containing six of the seven original commission members, will be able to wrap up its work more quickly than the year its allowed under Iowa code. That would potentially expedite a vote. Lets do it as efficiently as we can, said Meyer.

Superintendent David Hill said a legal determination has not yet been made on the petitions validity  the issue that tripped up the process last time. The board was advised, though, it should still move forward with forming the commission.

Myself and the board, we arent legal experts, he noted. We are having our attorney review the petition. We really havent received a final recommendation from our attorney.

Hill said the proposal laid out in the petition pretty closely resembles what the original commission formulated. Geographic distribution of the district and the assets is identical to what was presented by the first dissolution commission, he noted. Five school districts  Dike-New Hartford, Hudson, Grundy Center, North Tama and Green Mountain-Garwin  would split Gladbrook-Reinbecks territory and assets under that proposal.

As it did before, the new petition argues breaking up Gladbrook-Reinbeck would be beneficial because of the districts geographic size and the distance between its two main cities. The issue first emerged after the board voted to close the school in Gladbrook, relocating all grades to the Reinbeck campus.

In the end, the proposal that (commission members) come up with will be very much centered on what is best for Gladbrook-Reinbeck if it were to be dissolved, said Hill. My prediction is that (the process) would go faster and be more efficient than last time.

Commission chairwoman Anne Boyer said the group in its first meeting talked about sending out letters to neighboring school districts, as required, to once again gauge interest in absorbing any parts of Gladbrook-Reinbeck if it is dissolved. Officials are in the process of getting those sent.

We dont really have a timeline, she said. Were just going through the process. We just need to see the response from the surrounding school districts.

The commission will meet again in March. We think its reasonable that we would hear back (from districts) by early March so we can continue to move forward, said Hill.

Another wrinkle in the dissolution process is an appeal of the Gladbrook-Reinbeck boards invalidation of the original petition. Gladbrook parent Matt Koester filed the appeal with the State Board of Education in September, arguing rejecting the petition when the board did was not allowed.

Meyer, who also represents Koester, said briefs on the issue were submitted a month ago. While the sides wait on a ruling from an administrative law judge as to whether the appeal can legally proceed, a hearing date was set for Feb. 8.

According to Iowa code, once the commission files the proposal the boards options are limited, said Meyer, explaining the rationale for the appeal. At that point, one option the board does not have is to take no action. The board can adopt or modify, but either way they submit something to the public.

In a related matter, the boards facilities committee has begun looking at the future of the unused Gladbrook campus. It met this fall with Gladbrooks mayor and members of the City Council.

We definitely wanted the city of Gladbrook to know, while (the building) wont be used as a school, if there is a positive use for it we are willing to cooperate with the city, said Hill. If a use cant be found, the district would discuss tearing it down.

A dilapidated building that sits there for years and years is at least an eyesore, he said. We prefer to see it used as part of the community, so thats where were focusing now.

A public vote up or down. ... The will of the people still needs to be addressed. Darrell G. Meyer, attorney who represents petitioners
CEDAR FALLS  The Knights of Columbus, Council 4516 of Cedar Falls will host the 37th annual spelling bee Feb. 4 at St. Patrick School at Seventh and Washington streets.

Any student in grades four through seven may participate, whether public, private, parochial or home-schooled, as long as they attend or reside in one of the following school districts: Allison-Bristow, Aplington-Parkersburg, Cedar Falls Community, Clarksville, Denver, Dike-New Hartford, Gladbrook-Reinbeck, Grundy Center, Hudson, Janesville Consolidated, Nashua-Plainfield, St. Patrick School, Cedar Falls, St. Pauls Lutheran School, Waverly and Waverly-Shell Rock.

Spelling bee kits that include the instructions, entry form, rules and spelling words are being provided to the area schools. Each school will have a spelling bee competition at their facility to determine the five contestants to advance to this district competition. For students who study at home, the reference desk at the Cedar Falls Public Library will have the spelling bee kit available. Entry forms are to be submitted by Jan. 24 to the designated person in the information kit.

Registration will begin at 8 a.m. in the multi-purpose room at the school building. The spelling bee contest will then begin at 9:10 a.m.

Awards will be presented at the end of the day to the first five places from each grade, and all students will receive a certificate of participation. The top two finalists from each grade will advance on to regional competition to be held Feb. 19 in Oelwein, and Ames will host the state competition March 4.
WATERLOO  Local health officials say if you havent gotten your flu vaccine, now is the time.

Iowa officials are reporting outbreaks of two wintertime viruses, influenza and the norovirus.

CDC influenza surveillance has shown Iowa to be in the sporadic spread category, said Quentin Stenger, a physician assistant at UnityPoint Clinic Family Medicine in Evansdale. The coastal regions are currently seeing widespread activity. I would expect over the next few weeks for Iowas infection rates to steadily increase.

Patricia Quinlisk, medical director at the Iowa Public Health Department in Des Moines, said shes particularly concerned because of a rare occurrence this flu season: All four main flu strains are circulating in the state.

Stenger said there has been a slight increase in the number of influenza cases at the Evansdale clinic, and most of the cases involve the influenza A strain.

The IDPH said a second confirmed flu death has been reported  an elderly man with underlying health conditions in central Iowa. The states first confirmed flu death this season was recorded Dec. 19.

According to information from the Black Hawk County Health Department, the flu season typically peaks in February and can last as late as May. Based upon CDC estimates, an average of 300,000 Iowans get the flu every year and together, flu and its complication of pneumonia cause an average of 1,000 deaths yearly in Iowa.

Stenger of UnityPoint said his clinic has subjectively noticed an increase in the amount of diarrhea/vomiting symptoms in patients as well, though he cant say for certain whether norovirus is the cause.

For norovirus, usually confirmatory testing is not necessary or medically necessary; usually we just treat symptoms to keep the patient comfortable and try to isolate suspected cases, he said.

Experts say flu and norovirus are often mistaken for each other even though their symptoms differ. Flu viruses tend to cause coughing, sneezing, body aches and fevers. Noroviruses tend to cause vomiting and diarrhea.

The most vulnerable to infection are people older than 65, young children, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems, such as people undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

We strongly recommend family members to be vaccinated to help provide immunity around those high-risk patients, Stenger said. Children under age 5 have a much higher rate of influenza hospitalization than ages 6-17.

Also, people should avoid close contact with those who have confirmed influenza or flu-like symptoms, Stenger said. This condition is spread through the air, so it is sometimes difficult to prevent. Even having a conversation with someone within six feet can transmit the virus.

Prevention also includes washing hands and avoiding touching the mouth, nose and eyes during the winter. Influenza and norovirus can live on surfaces, so cleaning door handles, toilets, kitchen surfaces, etc. also is helpful.

Unfortunately, influenza is most contagious 24-48 hours before the person gets symptoms, therefore it is difficult to prevent outside of a flu shot, Stenger said.

Its not too late to get a flu shot, but Stenger said the sooner, the better.

It does typically take about two weeks after vaccination for the immune system to develop a protective response against influenza. I would strongly recommend getting it quickly as the cases in surrounding states are rising and Iowa will likely see a spike in the next few weeks.

Stenger noted, however, the influenza vaccine doesnt prevent the norovirus and other viruses that affect the gastrointestinal system, causing diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Influenza is an upper respiratory virus that typically presents with all over body aches, fever, fatigue, cough, runny nose or a combination of those symptoms, he said.
WATERLOO  The Rev. Frantz Whitfield was looking for something to bring the community together in a positive way. He thought continuing a relatively new tradition was the best way to do it.

A communitywide service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be at 7 p.m. Sunday at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, 805 Adams St., where Whitfield is pastor.

The event will celebrate the life and legacy of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning civil rights leader of the 1960s. But theres also a local purpose, Whitfield said.

Another reason why were doing this is to really bring our people together, Whitfield said. In the past year or two the community has really been coming together. Weve crossed racial lines, denominational backgrounds. Weve been coming together as a community to address our young people being murdered, the violence that has taken place in the community. We have improved.

Monthly peace marches of various black and white community groups were held in the summer of 2015 in response to gun violence in the community, and Whitfields church has hosted a law enforcement appreciation day the past couple of years.

My thinking is in really doing this is not just coming together when something negative is going on, Whitfield said. We ought to come together to do something positive. I think this is a positive event. Its important for us to get together. Not just as an African-American community or a white community, but that we come together as brothers and sisters to say that were committed to keep the dream alive.

The Eastside Ministerial Alliance took on the event the past couple of years. Whitfield is hosting the event as part of the Northeast Iowa chapter of the National Action Network. Whitfield is chapter president of the network, founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York.

Last year we had about 300 people and were looking for an even larger crowd this year, Whitfield said. Every year weve been doing this the crowd has gotten bigger and bigger.

The service is being held earlier in January so as to not conflict with other events closer to Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16.

A choir of various churches will perform. Several individuals will be honored, including Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart, longtime local labor leader Miriam Tyson, as well as educator awards for the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence and Waterloo educator Charletta Sudduth. Ambassadors for Christ Church, 1701 Mulberry St., will be honored as church of the year. Several local pastors also will be recognized, including a senior statesmen award to the Rev. Ted Keyes and pastor of the year awards to the Revs. Helen Seenster, Marshall Stevenson and Belinda Creighton-Smith.

A scholarship fund also has been established in honor of former longtime Waterloo City Council member Willie Mae Wright, and individuals will be invited to contribute to that fund at Sundays service.
With rainy-day fund balances under stress, state officials must ensure their spending meshes with needs and priorities.

For nearly all of us, government finance and budgeting are complicated. The larger the government entity, the more complicated it all is. Between the various funds and the statutory limitations placed on them, its hard to understand.

But whether it involves a multi-trillion-dollar federal government or a household budget, its not hard to understand this: Spend more than you take in and set nothing aside for emergencies, and you run into difficulties.

While the federal government has exercised means to delay the day of reckoning  being the ones printing money helps  red ink and deficits are not options for most other government entities. Many, including the state of Iowa, are legally required to approve budgets that are balanced.

Compared to most states  for one, Illinois, which is in fiscal cardiac arrest  Iowa state government is on sound financial footing. Iowas budget was balanced, and just a couple of years ago its reserve accounts  commonly called rainy-day funds  were filled to the brim.

That is not to say every state program has all the money it needs or wants. Water quality is suffering. Despite the increase in the gas tax, lots of catching up is necessary for transportation initiatives. Local schools and institutions of higher education argue funding is not keeping pace with needs.

But, all in all, state finances in Iowa are in pretty good shape. A half-year ago, State Auditor Mary Mosiman, who has a reputation for being a tough grader, gave the current budget a B-plus.

Her marks likely would have been lower had Democrats in the Legislature (particularly in the Senate, where they held the majority) gotten their way a year ago and dipped into rainy-day funds. They argued the state should spend some of that money for operational needs. Those calls didnt go anywhere with Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, and the Republican majority in the House.

Thats a good thing. There are warning flags on Iowas fiscal horizon.

Mosiman has pointed out major, multi-year actions have chopped away at the budget surplus. In 2013, for example, the Legislature and governor approved education reform and enacted long-overdue cuts to commercial property taxes. That has resulted in hits of hundreds of millions of dollars to the state budget. Education reform is costing about $150 million in the 2017 budget alone, and the reimbursements to local governments due to the commercial property tax reductions will be about $280 million.

Iowa would be in a better position to handle those decisions if it had a healthy stream of money coming into state coffers. But thats not necessarily happening.

Last month, the state Revenue Estimating Conference again cut its forecast for how much money state government will take in. Less revenue means less to spend on state programs.

With Republicans now holding the Capitol trifecta  the governorship plus majorities in the House and Senate  its unlikely reserve funds will be targeted in the upcoming session.

Good thing the Legislature didnt go along with spending initiatives that would have raided rainy-day funds. The balances are taking enough of a hit as it is.

The challenge facing elected officials in Des Moines will be to ensure their spending appropriately coincides with needs and priorities.
The late Dick and Jean Wilson spent a lifetime giving back. For more than four decades, the couple either started or supported organizations that benefited children, animals, the arts and open spaces. After their deaths (Jean Wilson passed away in 2009; her husband followed less than two years later), organizations they established continued their work.

Last year the Wilson family completed its commitment to Second Chance Center for Animals with the donation of the 20,000-square-foot building and surrounding 10 acres that house the animal care facility to the organization. The Wilson family founded Second Chance and were its largest financial benefactors since it opened in 2004. This completion gift -- valued at $2.1 million -- marks the last funding from the Wilsons.

The organization, which has cared for more than 10,000 homeless dogs and cats in the past 13 years, will now rely on community support to raise the estimated $825,000 needed annually to rescue animals, provide veterinary care, facilitate responsible adoptions and educate the public.

Dick Wilsons uncle, Harold Colton, founded the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1928. Called the gateway to the Colorado Plateau, MNA was originally established to protect and preserve the natural and cultural heritage of Northern Arizona through research, collections, conservation and education. It has evolved into a regional center of learning with collections, exhibits, and research projects that serve thousands each year.

Dick Wilson, the son of a Texas oilman, was passionate about geology -- one of MNAs main areas of focus -- and ultimately earned a doctorate in the subject. He and his wife not only financially supported MNA, they later acquired and renovated the Colton House, donating it to the museum.

The couple came to Arizona in 1962, when Dick Wilson began teaching geology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and much of the Wilsons early philanthropy was centered in that city including dedicating their land as Tohono Chul Park in 1985.

Tucson also provided the inspiration for one the Wilsons first big projects in Flagstaff, where the family spent their summers. Eager to have Tucson inner-city boys experience the natural beauty of the area, the Wilsons and their children established Camp Colton in 1970 and operated it as a summer camp until 1975. The following year, the family donated the 38-acre property and its buildings to the Flagstaff Unified School District. Today every sixth grade student in the Flagstaff school system benefits from a one-week program at Camp Colton thanks to the generosity of the Wilsons.

By 1990, Dick and Jean Wilson had moved full-time to Flagstaff and quickly started several projects that forever changed the city.

After years of being concerned that pristine areas of Flagstaff, particularly their beloved Hart Prairie might be developed, the Wilsons acquired the land that comprises Hart Prairie Preserve and donated the 245-acres to the Nature Conservancy in 1994. Surrounded by thousands of acres of forest and meadows, the Hart Prairie Preserve is home to a historic lodge, uncommon wildflowers, old-growth ponderosa pine, a rare grove of Bebb willows, and diverse wildlife, including more than 40 species of birds.

Teaming up with Jim Babbitt, Steve Vanlandingham and Francis McAllister, they formed Heritage Square Trust, which established a plaza that not only serves as the centerpiece of historic downtown, but is the home of an open-air amphitheater with free movies, concerts and other cultural events.

The couple also expanded into what was then the new trend of brewpubs, restaurants that brewed their own beer after reading an article in a magazine in 1993. Together with their daughter Winnie Hanseth and her husband, Evan, they opened Beaver Street Brewery in 1994.

Concerned about the problem of dog and cat overpopulation on the Native American lands of the Navajo Nation, the Wilsons started the Plateauland Mobile Veterinary Clinic in 1995. The mobile clinic traveled thousands of miles providing free spaying, neutering and veterinary services in a region that included the vast Navajo Nation, home to almost half a million community animals known as rez dogs and cats.

The Wilsons soon discovered that the needs of homeless animals in Northern Arizona vastly exceeded the capability of a single mobile clinic program and founded Second Chance Center for Animals in 2004. Since that time, Second Chance Center for Animals has greatly expanded to care for more than 10,000 homeless dogs and cats in its state-of-the-art animal shelter facility.

Second Chance is unique as it is the only organization that rescues from the rescues, partnering with more than 30 organizations across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah who transfer homeless dogs and cats to Second Chance for adoption.

The completion gift from the Wilson family comes at a time when Second Chance is continuing to expand their mission to save animal lives. Last year, Second Chance Center for Animals partnered with the Coconino Humane Association, Coconino Countys open admission animal shelter, to accept animals at risk of euthanasia due to time or space limitations for adoption. Since March 2016, no healthy, adoptable animal has lost his or her life due to the lack of resources in the region.

And while more than 200 volunteers help in the effort to care for the animals in the shelter, it will take continued (and increased) financial support from the community to allow Second Chance to continue its work.

But Second Chance Executive Director Sean Hawkins has faith in the place Dick and Jean Wilson called home for so many years. They gave so much to Flagstaff to create the community we all love, he said. We have great hope that our community, in turn, will continue their legacy by supporting the causes they loved.
PHOENIX  The Ducey administration goes to court next month to defend expansion of a health care program for the working poor the governor never wanted in the first place.

The lead attorney for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System wants the Court of Appeals to rule that the current $265 million a year levy on hospitals that finances the expansion was legally enacted.

Douglas Northup concedes the plan did not get a two-thirds vote from the House and Senate in 2013, something the Arizona Constitution requires for any new or expanded tax. More to the point, there were enough Republican lawmakers who opposed the levy  the ones who are now trying to have it declared illegal  to deny it that margin.

But Northup contends that the levy is not a tax but instead simply a variable "assessment'' to pay for a specific program.

Part of what makes the litigation  and the governor's defense  so unusual is that Ducey openly opposed the AHCCCS expansion when he was running for governor.

Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Ruiz said Thursday that, for the moment, his boss is "monitoring the issue'' as it makes its way through the courts.

"We continue to follow the law and will change course if necessary based on the court's ruling,'' Ruiz said.

But the possibility that the current governor might provide a less-than-vigorous defense of the law pushed through by predecessor Jan Brewer got the attention of Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper. She agreed to allow attorney Tim Hogan, representing those who could lose coverage, a seat at the defense table.

Hogan said it's not just that Ducey, as a candidate, "actively opposed Medicaid expansion.'' He also pointed out that Ducey, as governor, chose a health care adviser from the Goldwater Institute which also opposed what Brewer engineered.

But whatever Arizona courts decide ultimately could be academic.

The expansion is financed on the federal side by the Affordable Care Act. And if Congress follows through with its threat to repeal the law without replacing it with something else, the program self-destructs.

Prior to 2013 AHCCCS, the state's Medicaid program, provided care for those below the federal poverty level.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Congress agreed to pick up most of the costs for expanding health-care coverage to those making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. That is currently about $27,820 a year for a family of three.

To get those funds, however, the state had to restore coverage for childless adults, which had been dropped years earlier in a budget-saving maneuver. And to cover that cost and other state expenses, Brewer proposed  and lawmakers approved  giving AHCCCS Director Tom Betlach authority to impose a charge on hospitals.

The plan was adopted by a simple majority of the House and Senate, with the Republican governor cobbling together a coalition of Democrats and some members of her own party to vote for it.

Hospitals did not object because Betlach set it up so every hospital chain actually would make money from the deal: More patients with government-provided insurance coverage means fewer bills written off as bad debt because of a person's inability to pay. Betlach even structured it so some hospitals that do not benefit from Medicaid expansion pay nothing.

Despite that, the lawmakers who voted against expansion sued.

They point out that a 1992 state constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote of each chamber any time a new tax is imposed. The levy on hospitals did not get that margin.

If the courts ultimately decide it really is a tax, that means it was enacted illegally and goes away  as does the expansion and the care for the 400,000.

The case is now before the Court of Appeals after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach sided with AHCCCS.

In legal papers already filed in the case, Northup told the appellate judges the state's participation in Medicaid has been good for the state, and not just because more people have coverage. He said the total federal contribution for the expanded program over a two-year period was about $2 billion.

And, if nothing else, Northup contends that a strict reading of the Arizona Constitution backs his contention that the levy is not the kind of tax that requires a two-thirds vote.
The Flagstaff City Council has a draft list of goals for the new year that may point the city in a different direction.

The council, which includes a new mayor and three new councilmembers, met Tuesday and Thursday and came up with a list of possible goals that focus on climate change, economic development, public infrastructure, affordable housing, transportation, making the city more inclusive to minority residents, changes to the regional plan or zoning code, water conservation and natural resources. Council is hoping to finalize the list of goals on Jan. 10 and plans to tackle budget and administrative goals at another time.

At the top of the list for all of the councilmembers and Mayor Coral Evans was the possibility of tweaking the citys Regional Plan and Zoning Code to better reflect the values of the citys residents.

There have been several large housing projects in the last three years that have challenged how Council, city staff and city residents interpret the Regional Plan and the Zoning Code. The most recent project, The Hub, pointed out conflicts in the way staff and residents interpreted the citys transect zoning code and the Regional Plans requirement that new development blend in with the surrounding neighborhood.

With The Hub, staff said the transect zoning code allowed Core Campus to build a five story, 591-bed apartment complex geared toward college students with small shops on Mikes Pike. Residents of the neighborhood pointed to language in the Regional Plan and said that the building was too large and didnt fit in with the area.

Councilmember Eva Putzova said the citys Zoning Code needed to reflect the citys Regional Plan. She also said she wouldnt mind a discussion about creating a student housing overlay area that would direct developers on where they could locate large apartment complexes geared toward students.

We need to rectify the disconnect between the communitys values and the Regional Plan and the Zoning Code, Putzova said.

Evans wanted more of the citys neighborhood specific plans to be completed and approved. Neighborhood plans are created by city staff and neighborhood residents. The idea behind the plans is to create a blueprint for how residents want that neighborhood to grow.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

The next item on the list was finding a way to increase affordable housing in the city.

I would like to build or assure that more affordable housing is built, Councilmember Celia Barotz said.

Past Councils have discussed at length the need for more affordable housing and possible solutions, but very little has actually been done, she said.

Barotz suggested looking at the Pima County bond project as one possible approach. Pima voters approved a $10 million bond that allows contractors, nonprofits and local governments to apply for funding to build affordable housing units. The contracts are approved by the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

Putzova said she wants the city to find a way to not only build more affordable housing but to make it permanently affordable and scatter the units throughout the city -- something that doesnt disappear after the first renter or owner, she said. She suggested that financing the construction of new housing units might be done by increasing local property taxes.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Putzova and Barotz also suggested the city create a climate change plan and start implementing parts of it. Putzovas suggestions included having the city running on 100 percent renewable energy sources, updating the citys energy code and divesting the city from fossil fuel investments.

Putzova and Barotz also emphasized that they would like to look at ways to increase the citys conservation of water and natural resources. The two councilmembers proposed unsuccessfully a plan last year to create a tiered water rate structure for commercial utility users. They said it would encourage water conservation. The city already has a tiered rate structure for residential users.

Vice Mayor Jamie Whelan said she wanted to see more action on repairing and strengthening the citys connection with its Native American neighbors. Evans said she would like the city to be more inclusive of all of its minority residents. The city has had a running disagreement with the Hopi and Navajo tribes over the use of municipal reclaimed wastewater at Snowbowl for several years that has soured the citys relationship with the tribes.

TRAFFIC PROBLEMS

Also high on the list of goals for the new Council was tackling the citys traffic problems, possibly by expanding the existing bus and trail systems, widening some streets, looking for solutions to gridlock on Highway 180 and working with the Arizona Department of Transportation to widen the Fourth Street bridge over Interstate 40.

Evans said shed like to see Fourth Street connected with J.W. Powell Boulevard. The connection would open a lot of private land for development and provide another entrance into the city for traffic from Interstate 17.

Council also talked about building more infrastructure -- water and sewer lines and streets -- to help private landowners develop their properties. Councilmember Scott Overton said hed like to see the city finish the new public works yard in the next two years.

Economic development was also on the list of goals. Several Councilmembers wanted to look at ways to support local small businesses. Overton said hed like to see the city finish the auto mall. Evans wanted to look at ways of increasing eco-tourism in the area and creating an arts district.
PRESCOTT  Their three-bedroom house in Prescott is nearly empty: a blank slate for three young men looking to start over. At night, they work restaurant jobs. During the day, they sit on the front porch, smoke cigarettes and try to resist a relapse.

Nikolas DeLucia, Joe Wallischeck and Brian Ladyman met at the Promise Recovery Center in Prescott where a boom in sober-living homes transformed the bucolic hamlet into a destination for young, recovering addicts. DeLucia is from Arizona, while the other two are Hoosiers from Indiana, like hundreds of others from out of state who flock to the town in search of recovery.

They have remarkably similar stories. DeLucia and Wallischeck started taking pills in middle school. Ladyman was 14. All three started with prescription opioids and over time, their addiction evolved into an addiction to heroin.

Theres so many just endless opportunities I see for myself out here, Wallischeck said. Im never bored. I can always go find something to do thats productive and not getting high.

They, like others, live in sober living homes, houses that look like any single-family home. Except for the white vans parked outside that shuttle dozens of addicts to non-residential rehabilitation centers.

Fifteen years ago, there were only a few rehabilitation centers in Prescott. But the towns climate and its rustic landscape was a draw for addicts across the country. Suddenly, treatment facilities were everywhere. And they did things differently, housing clients in rented homes in residential neighborhoods, rather than keeping the recovering addicts under one roof in treatment centers.

Today, city officials estimate more than 2,000 recovering addicts are living in 200 homes.

They just show up, said state State Rep. Noel Campbell, R-Prescott. Its one thing to have one home on one block. When you have two or three on a block, it really affected the neighbors and how they felt about their neighborhood.

Without a limit on the number of homes, addicts poured into Prescott. Soon, residents were complaining to Campbell and the city council. They came with a laundry list of complaints: There was no oversight, no regulation and no supervision in the homes.

The feud between the retired and the recovering populations reached critical mass three years ago, when nearly 300 residents packed into City Hall to complain.

It was like pitchforks. I felt they were going to leave city hall and start burning things, said Mary Beth Hrin, a former Philadelphia prosecutor who helped Campbell determine how many sober living homes were operating in Prescott, and the standard of care they were providing.

The city wasnt doing anything to protect their property values, to protect their quality of life and they wanted drastic action taken, Campbell added.

Opening a sober-living home was easy: Proprietors only need the rented property and enough beds for the occupants. Houses arent inspected, house managers dont need to be trained and sober-living homes dont need to be registered with the city of Prescott.

Campbell and Hrin set out to fix the problem through legislation. In the first bill, Campbell tried to bring sober-living homes under the same licensing rules of rehabilitation centers. It passed through the House, but failed in the Senate. His second attempt, House Bill 2107 in the 2016 legislative session, aimed to raise the standard of care. This time, it was a clean sweep through the Legislature.

I tried to come at this from a different area, which was to give cities and counties permissive authority to deal with this through reasonable regulation, Campbell said.

The law tries to accomplish three things to change sober-living homes into structured-living homes: register the homes with the city, establish training requirements for house managers who are often recovering addicts themselves, and implement an operational plan for discharging patients from rehab.

Chris Garcey is like many who chose to recover in Prescott. He started taking prescription opioids in Sedona when he was 20.

Hes now 36 years old and working through his third rehabilitation program to end what he described as an amorous addiction to drugs.

It was a romance I had with the lifestyle and drug use. I hated it at the same time, but it was hard to stop, he said.

Drug abuse, Garcey said, was part of his identity.

It started out really as something to use to work harder and get through work, Garcey said. Later, he was injured on the job and thought, This is perfect because now I can go to the doctor and get pills.

Pills were easy to find. His first prescriptions to painkillers were followed by others. Doctors, hospitals and urgent care facilities provided his weak pills, his stronger pills came from a network of injured, sick or elderly people.

Garcey started a contracting business at 21, and opiates were the fuel he used to burn the midnight oil. By 28, he was deep into his addiction.

The pill bottle was right by my bed, Garcey said. It got to the point where I couldnt function without them, I wouldnt go to work without them. He also reached the point of no return  without pills, hed suffer withdrawals, known getting dope sick.

He didnt hesitate to shoot up his pills. It was a relief to find another way. I got to the point where shooting up was a good idea, Garcey said.

Because addicts so often relapse, the requirement for sober-living homes to have discharge plans is critical, said Hrin and others.

Whether the client started using again, or problems with insurance, a lot of times the white vans would pull up to town square and youd see the kids with all their belongings on a park bench, Hrin said.

Yet it is the house managers, said Campbell and Hrin, that are the weakest link at sober-living homes. The managers are usually recovering addicts themselves, many only several months sober, who attended the same rehab program and lived in the same sober-living home they now manage.

For Albert Black, CEO of Recovery in the Pines, a treatment center in Prescott, HB 2107s house manager requirements arent enough. We need to raise the bar, Black said, You dont have qualified people youre teaching the material to.

On Christmas Eve 2014, Garcey checked into his first rehab in Prescott but relapsed. Rock bottom came on Thanksgiving Day 2015, when he overdosed in the bathroom at his sisters house. He already was on probation for forging a prescription for oxycodone.

He stayed clean six months before relapsing. As of December, he was entering his fourth month as a client of Recovery in the Pines, a Christian-based treatment program.

Garcey doesnt ruminate on his past, rather he uses it as inspiration for his future.

I have more to my identity than drugs, he said. I owned a business using drugs the entire time. They arent my only choice. Ive gone over my life and accomplishments so I can have an identity other than drugs.

He feels his drive to succeed is coming back, and he is learning to take his recovery one day at a time. When I wake up in the morning, Im optimistic that something good might happen.

Prescott means a lot to Ladyman too, interviewed just a few weeks after graduating from rehab.

Im sympathetic to the fact that there are people not involved in the treatment world that live in this town, and they need to be represented just as much as somebody like me does, said Ladyman, the recovering addict from Indiana. I think it helps a lot of people, which is the most important thing.
It was announced Thursday that Wiccan priestess Velvet Rieth had died in her home Jan. 4 at 12:30 am. For years, Rieth was an outspoken member of the Louisiana Pagan community. However, in 2008, she developed a rare condition called Picks disease. She was forced to retire from the spotlight, but not before she made a significant mark on the world and people around her.

Velvet was born on Nov.15,1954 in New Orleans to parents John and Dorothy West. Like many in Louisiana, she had a Catholic upbringing but, growing up in New Orleans, she was also exposed to magic and various forms of Witchcraft. Her father was also reportedly a very spiritual man, who did not turn away non-conventional or non-Catholic ideas.

She began practicing Wicca in high school. In 1968, she enrolled in the newly-established public Grace King all girls high school in Metairie, where she met a group of friends who were all interested in Witchcraft and Wicca. In a 2008 interview for The Times-Picayune, Rieth spoke candidly about her first Pagan group, explaining that the girls all shared the common experience of being victims of child abuse and pedophilia. As a result of their traumas, as she told the reporter, they formed the Crescent City Swamp Witches. This group of women stayed lifelong friends and practicing Pagan colleagues.

Although her introduction to Witchcraft came at an early age, it would be another 20 years before she took her place as a leader in the Louisiana Pagan community.

After leaving high school, Velvet attended the Charity School of Nursing at Delgado Community College. She owned a bar for some time with her mother, Dorothy. After several marriages and the birth of her four children, she eventually moved into a successful career as the director of counseling at Causeway Medical Suite, an abortion clinic in Metairie. In that work Rieth became an outspoken local activist in support of a womans right to choose. She was even interviewed for and quoted in a 1997 Simon and Schusters publication: The Abortion Resource Handbook.

It is also around this time that she met and married Gilbert Rieth, which would begin marriage that would last 25 years.

As her work in community service was taking off, Rieth also began to step out as a leader in the Pagan community. She was fondly known as the Swamp Witch. In 1994, she co-founded the Covenant of the Pentacle Wiccan Church (CPWC), which became affiliated with the Aquarian Tabernacle Church based in Washington state. CPWC performed both public and private rituals, legal weddings, hospital chaplaincy, and interfaith services. The group eventually operated teaching circles in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Shreveport, and hosted a a food bank. CPWC members followed Velvets lead in being very active and public in community support.

In 1996, through CPWC, Rieth began a successful Pagan prison ministry service, through which ordained members of her group could enter the state prison system to help Pagan inmates. In the 2008 Times-Picayune interview, she explained One day, the Goddess thumped me on the head and told me to start a prison ministry.

CPWCs program was reportedly the only Wiccan-based prison ministry service in the state. Velvet first spent over a year working with only the Allen Correctional Center in Kinder. Then, she added five more prisons to her program, including the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. By 2003, CPWCs Pagan ministry had to grown in size to support federal facilities as well, and she began teaching other Pagan chaplains about the work.

My mom was happiest when she was working on something that benefited someone else, said one of her sons, who requested not to be named. She had a passion for humanity and believed that people could be their own salvation if they worked together.

As the years went by, Rieth continued her service work in both the Pagan community and greater New Orleans area. She was regularly found volunteering at soup kitchens, in homeless shelters, and with other similar services. Her son said, [My mom] wasnt just the person to give a homeless person five dollars. She would take them home, shower them, feed them, and help them find a job. [] People I didnt know would come up to my mom and say Hey Vel. You helped me 20 years ago when I had nothing and now Im getting out of college, or have a family. She wanted every path she crossed to be successful. In 2000, Velvet received a commendation by the mayor of New Orleans for her work in the community.

Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit. New Orleans and the region were devastated. As someone devoted to community service, Velvet got immediately to work. After evacuating herself, she pledged to help rebuild. Christopher Penczak first met Velvet during this time. He said, Velvet was a force of nature in her community work, going above and beyond and not letting anything get in her way.

Along with Penczak, authors Dorothy Morrison and M.R. Sellars, Rieth helped to organize relief efforts toward the rebuilding of the area, including the Pagan community. In her interview with The Times-Picayune she speculated that, prior to the hurricane, there were approximately 3,000 Pagans in the New Orleans area. After the hurricane, she said that the number dropped to around 1,000. That number has since grown over the years.

Through those efforts, Morrison said that they ended up raising $10,000, all of which was sent to Rieth who bought chain saws, heaters, cases of water, food and other supplies, and doled them out to those in need. Morrison added, It was quite a job, but she managed it.

Rieths devotion to community service and family did not end when the clean-up efforts were over. In 2007, Velvet published My First Little Workbook of Wicca. Originally creating the book for her own grandchildren, Velvet decided to self-publish it so others could benefit.Then in 2009, she was appointed the curator of the Buckland Museum. Raymond Buckland is a family friend and looked to her to help him reestablish his museum. For several years, Rieth carried his memorabilia to Pagan events, showcasing the various pieces and sharing Wiccan history.

However, her dream of a New Orleans-based Buckland museum was not to be. It was at this time that Rieth began to show the signs of the debilitating disease that would eventually take her life. She had to retire from all public works and, over the next few years, her condition only worsened. Her son said, My father and I did our best to keep my moms dignity intact despite her illness.

In 2014, Rieth was given the official diagnosis that she had Picks disease, which, as defined by WebMD, is a kind of dementia similar to Alzheimers but far less common. It affects parts of the brain that control emotions, behavior, personality, and language.

Eventually, the illness affected her physically, and she had to be placed in a nursing home to receive proper care. In October 2016, Rieth was given two weeks to live. Her family brought her home on hospice.

On Jan. 4, Rieth died surrounded by her immediate family. At the exact moment of her death, the group performed a special ritual. It was led by her spiritual adviser Charlotte Pipes. Her children, husband, and sisters all participated. Her son said, It was intimate and beautiful. We felt it was enough.

Since announcement came of her passing, friends and colleague have been sharing memories:

Author Christopher Penczak, a colleague and friend, recalls, My last visit with her and some friends was at the New Orleans airport. She couldnt meet any other time during our visit, so she got up at an ungodly hour to have breakfast with us at the airport before we left. Even at dawn she was funny, smart and inspiring. I will miss her.

Local witch Cairelle Perilloux, fondly remembers Velvet as an inspiration for her own work, calling her a tough lady but very generous. Perilloux recalls, She took me to brunch and I told her about my plan for the Witches Ball and she was very supportive and handed me a $100 bill and said, I believe in you and your vision. Get it going. She was a great motivator.

Dorothy Morrison, a long-time family friend, said, The Velvet I knew, though, was not only my friend, but the sister I wasnt granted at birth. We shared secrets and laughter and tears. We shared praline cheesecake, frozen Irish coffee, long walks through the French Quarter while singing, I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, and never hugged goodbye without saying, I love you more than biscuits and gravy. She was, without a doubt, one of my most cherished blessings, and I will miss her sorely.

Her son said, I once told my mom, if I had to use an object to describe her it would be a piece of slate. Initially, she didnt understand or like that answer. Then I explained. Slate is sedimentary. It is the culmination of many things that creates something stronger. Slate can be marked up and covered in anything and will always wipe clean. Mom was loved by many. I will miss her every day.

A public memorial service will be held 5:00  8:00 pm Friday, Jan. 6, 2017 at L.A. Muhleisen & Son Funeral Home in Kenner. The family says that all are welcome.

Although her life was cut short, Velvet Rieth lived it to the fullest. As Morrison best said, she was many things to many people. Velvet was a high priestess, a magical practitioner, a teacher and lecturer, an activist, a prison chaplain, a dear friend, mother and wife. Her legacy is held steady by the many people she touched over the years, and it is entrenched in the vibrancy and growth of the New Orleans Pagan community.

That legacy will live on in the very spirit of community service and the devotion to family, both which were at the heart of her Velvet Rieths life.

Now I lay me down to rest.

I know today I did my best.

Into the God and Goddesss care Ill be.

With the guardians watching over me.

 Rev. Velvet Reith, My First Little Workbook of Wicca

What is remembered, lives.
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PHOENIX  A state lawmaker wants to expand laws that allow enhanced penalties for those who attack someone based on things like race and religion to also include political beliefs.

Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said he got the idea while watching a video on TV "of these two guys beating the crap out of some Trump supporter.''

"I don't know the background,'' Kavanagh acknowledged, with the video from some other state apparently shot on someone's cell phone. But he said it was clear that the reason for the attack was that the victim was supporting Trump.

"That's worse than beating somebody up for some other reason,'' he said. "And we should send a message to judges that we think this should be punished more seriously.''

The idea drew derision from Dan Pochoda, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

He said it's one thing to impose an enhanced penalty on those who attack someone because of something that is "immutable'' to them, like their race, gender or sexual orientation. But Pochoda called it "very dangerous'' to expand that to transient issues like who someone is supporting for public office.

Unlike some states, Arizona does not have specific laws which create a special category of "hate crimes.''

What it does have, though, is language in statutes that requires judges, when deciding the appropriate sentence for any offense, to consider both mitigating and aggravating factors.

A mitigating factor that might suggest a lenient sentence could be the person's youth or even their intoxication. Aggravating factors weighing in favor of more time behind bars include things like the use of a gun.

And the law also says judges may consider whether the crime was based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability. To that list, SB 1022 proposes to add "political affiliation, beliefs or opinions.''

"I believe in the 'just desserts' school of sentencing,'' said Kavanagh.

"Punishment is deserved for the harm that's done,'' he explained, "but punishment must be proportional to the badness of the act.''

He called SB 1022 "a message from the legislature to give the judges some legislative basis, if they choose to, to stick with the existing sentencing structure but go to the harsher end.''

For example, someone who causes serious physical injury to another is guilty of the crime of aggravated assault. In general, that is classified as a Class 3 felony.

Under Arizona law, the presumptive prison term is 3.5 years.

But with mitigating factors it can be as little as 2 years; a sentencing with aggravating factors can be as much as 8.75 years.

Pochoda said what Kavanagh wants runs contrary to the reasoning behind hate crimes sentencing laws.

"That's because people are members of identifiable groups,'' he said. Pochoda said while some are impossible to change, like race or gender, that also rightly includes religion.

"People don't change religions that quickly  certainly not as quickly as changing your opinion or even party affiliation,'' he said. More to the point, Pochoda said such offenses are often not aimed strictly at the person being assaulted.

"The concept is that a crime against one person because of that person's race will put fear, understandably, into all members of that race,'' he said.

"It really does require something much more than the transitory nature of supporting one candidate in a particular presidential race,'' Pochoda said, saying there really is "an identifiable group that transcends any one four-year election cycle.''
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Ann Gray Consulting LLC: How This Faith-Based Consulting Firm Is Revolutionizing the Marketing Industry

2022-11-03 | Ann Gray and her dedicated team at Ann Gray Consulting LLC are here to guide you through the process of elevating your social media presence. They are a faith-based organization with deeply held beliefs of integrity, honesty and ethics.
Jan 5, 2017 | By Julia

Colorado-based hardware company Aleph Objects, Inc. is making headlines this week with three major announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The open source hardware company, recently recognized as the #1 fast-growing privately held U.S. computer hardware company by Inc. Magazine, is well known for its LulzBot line of 3D printers, parts, and plastics. As of this week though, we can expect Aleph Objects to become an even more prominent name in the world of 3D printing. Official press releases confirm a new hardware release, exciting software developments, and fresh partnerships for the fast-growing American company.

Lets start with the hardware for all you gear-heads out there. Meet the new LulzBot TAZ MOARstruder Tool Head, a high output tool head aimed at manufacturing fast, resilient 3D prints. Equipped with an extra-long heater block, dual print cooling fans, and a 1.2 mm diameter nozzle, the LulzBot TAZ MOARstruder Tool Head is serious business. Thanks to mounted features on the modular tool head carriage, users are only a single screw and a plug away from upgrading to higher speed Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing. After upgrading, users can 3D print 0.3mm to 1.2mm thick layers, and up to 100 grams per hour.

the LulzBot TAZ MOARstruder Tool Head

The LulzBot TAZ MOARstruder Tool Head enables high speed and high strength 3D prints, with the robustness and reliability that users expect from the LulzBot platform, explains Aleph Objects, Inc. President Harris Kenny. This tool head is ideal for prototyping in labs, offices, classrooms, libraries, and workshops.

What the MOARstruder lacks in resolution, it makes up for in speed and strength. According to R&D Manager Julie Pettit, the Aleph Objects engineers were already using the mega tool head internally for some time to make prototypes. Not every print needs ultrafine resolution, she says. Sometimes, speed and strength matter more.

As is the case with all LulzBot tool heads, the new MOARstruder comes with Free Software and Open Source hardware. An open filament format means the tool head is compatible with currently available materials as well as those not yet on the market.

On the software side of things, Alepha Objects has announced the alpha release of Cura 2 (LulzBot Edition), and revealed some exciting software developments in 3D modeling and resin-based 3D printing.

a screenshot from Cura 2 (LulzBot Edition)

After several years of adding features and fixing bugs in the companys Cura platform, Alepha Objects has now published the alpha release of Cura 2 (LulzBot Edition), an update to the popular Free Software for 3D printers. Ultimaker, David Braam, and the Free Software 3D printing community all played major roles in this new version. The current Cura LulBot Edition software was also updated to version 21.03, and is now available for download.

In other software news, Aleph Objects has announced it will be partnering with the Free Software community, specifically the Blender Institute. Expect a streamlined version of the Blender 3D creation suite soon, which will feature increased accessibilitiy in its 3D modeling and design capabilities.

Aleph Objects will also be partnering with the monkeyprint community with an eye to advancing Free Software in resin-based 3D printing, including adding new features and bug fixes. Monkeyprint Developer Paul Bomke is overjoyed with the new Aleph Objects collaboration, stating, thats how open source can work: people working together from all around the world to make better software! Ive learned that shared development can simply lead to better software faster.

a monkeyprint software sample print shown to scale

And speaking of partnerships, Aleph Objects rounded out its news extravaganza with announcements of a new retail expansion with Frys Electronics, as well as two new partnerships with filament companies Polymaker and twoBEars.

For those outside the U.S., Frys Electronics is a Silicon Valley-oriented electronics retail outfit with several dozen locations across the States. The retail chain will now be joining Aleph Objects channel partners, with plans to sell LulzBot 3D printers, parts, and plastics. Frys company spokesman Manuel Valerio weighed in, commenting that "Fry's is thrilled to add another such product line by carrying the LulzBot family of products in all our stores and at Frys.com. We're confident our customers will also be excited by this new offering."

Lastly, Aleph Objects has announced the launch of four new filaments in collaboration with new partners Polymaker and twoBEars. Those include: the PolyLite PLA by Polymaker, an affordable filament for everyday 3D printing; the PC-Max, a polycarbonate-based filament also by Polymaker; and the bioFila Silk and bioFila Linen, two shiny and matte filaments respectively by twoBEars. All four products are available on LulzBot.com.

For CES visitors wanting to check out the new gear, catch some in-person demos, and speak to the LulzBot team, head to the CES 2017 LulzBot booth: Tech West, Sands Expo, Level 2, Halls A-D, Booth #42524.

3D prints in PolyLite PLA by Polymaker

3D prints in PC-Max by Polymaker

a 3D print in bioFila Silk by twoBEars

3D prints in bioFila Linen by twoBEars

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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Jan 6, 2017 | By Tess

Chinese 3D printing company Intamsys has officially unveiled its latest product, the FUNMAT HT 3D printer, capable of 3D printing in PEEK materials. The high-definition 3D printer was first shown as a demo at formnext 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany, but now, as of its unveiling at CES 2017, the new PEEK 3D printer is officially available for purchase.

The FUNMAT HT, described as an enhanced version of Intamsys earlier FUNMAT 3D printer, features a full metal nozzle that heats up to 430C, a high temperature build plate of over 160C, and a controlled temperature chamber. As the company explains, these features help to make the FUNMAT HT 3D printer an ideal machine for printing with PEEK materials, as well as ABS and PC plastic materials.

With a melting point up to 343C and high glass transition point over 143C, PEEK has become an increasingly popular material to 3D print with, as it displays high mechanical strength, toughness, flexibility, chemical and radiation resistance, as well as self-extinguishing properties. Understandably, all of these characteristics make PEEK a very appealing material for a wide range of applications, including to make electronic, aerospace, automotive mechanical, and even medical parts.

Intamsys hopes its new FUNMAT HT 3D printer, well equipped to 3D print with high quality PEEK materials, will provide professional designers and engineers with a machine that can meet their manufacturing and prototyping needs and that can help to expand and advance applications for FDM 3D printing technology. In addition to being suitable for PEEK materials, the FUNMAT HT is also reportedly good for stopping warping and cracking that can occur with ABS or PC materials.

Intamsys, a Chinese company that has been working in the 3D printing industry in recent years, also has a range of other 3D printers, including the aforementioned FUNMAT, the FUNMAT Pro, and the FUNMAT Pro HT. The latter features a slightly larger print volume than the others, with a build volume of roughly 17.7 x 17.7 x 23.6. Intamsys has been invested in by Professor Li Zexiang, the primary investor and Chairman of DJI via Hong Kong Clear Water Bay Startup Fund. Professor Ping K. Ko, world famous micro-electronics scientist, former Dean of Engineering at HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology), is also an investor and a member of the Board of Directors at Intamsys. And as the company writes in a press release: The vision of Intamsys is to provide outstanding intelligent additive manufacturing system to accelerate the arrival of mass customization.

Currently, the 3D printer developer is seeking resellers and clients from around the globe for its products. Pricing information for the new FUNMAT HT 3D printer can be found by inquiry through Intamsys website.

Posted in 3D Printer

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Masamichi Suzuki wrote at 5/16/2017 4:59:37 AM:My name is Masamichi Suzuki of Fujine Sangyo Co. LTD,Numatsu-shi Japan httpwww.fujine.com  I am interested in your 3D printer: FUNMAT HT 3D . It would be most appreciated if you could provide us with the detailed specs and the name of any sales agent in Japan and related information . My e-mail address is as follows: ma_suzuki@fujine.com . Yours,sincerely M.Suzuki:Fujine




Ken Roth in Foreign Policy:

As Donald Trump prepares to take office, many fear a new hostility to human rights on the part of the United States. From his divisive rhetoric about minorities to his embrace of autocrats abroad, there is plenty to worry about.

Trump presents a stark contrast with President Barack Obama, whose tone was strikingly different. In a 2011 speech at the State Department, for example, Obama said U.S. support for universal rights is not a secondary interest but a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions, and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at [the U.S. governments] disposal. During his eight years in office, his administration did sometimes live up to that rhetoric, and it never stooped to the kind of open disdain of human rights concerns that is feared from Trump.

But the truth is, a careful review of Obamas major human rights decisions shows a mixed record. In fact, he has often treated human rights as a secondary interest  nice to support when the cost was not too high, but nothing like a top priority he championed.

More here.
"I shop, therefore I am."Heather Chandler







Fillmore Street Welcomes 45R Boutique

How about a side of Japanese denim to go with your spicy tuna roll from Ten-Ichi? Coming right up with the recent opening of the 45R store on Fillmore Street (in the former Zinc Details space). The well-loved Japanese brand is known for men's and women's denim, and casual-slash-elegant clothing. Everything, made with high-quality original fabrics, is meticulously constructed. As for the overall vibe, think Tokyo cool with a shot of Zenbeautifully epitomized by our current obsession. The San Francisco store is the third US location for the Asian retailer; NYC and Honolulu are the others. // 1905 Fillmore St. (Pacific Heights), rby45rpm.com





Shuffle over to The Archery on Saturday, January 7 to snap up pairs of gently worn Everlane shoesand save 30 percent. (Courtesy of Everlane)

Everlane Footwear Event on Saturday

Celebrate the new year in new Italian-made shoes, we always say. Thanks to Everlane's Worn-Once Shoe Event on Saturday, January 7 (at The Archery), this resolution is easy to keep. For the first time, the local brand will be selling gently worn women's shoes at 30 percent off. In fact, 70 percent of its returned loafers, oxfords and booties come back because of sizing, as in oops I ordered the wrong size. The upshot? The kicks have only the lightest signs of wear. (Fingers crossed these beauties will be available in size 6.) Shop more than 800 pairs from 11am to 6pm. RSVP here. // 470 Alabama St. (Mission), everlane.com









Let your nails do the talking in Christian Louboutin's new Loubichrome nail collection, available at the Maiden Lane boutique. (Courtesy of Christian Louboutin)

Christian Louboutin Launches Limited-Edition Nail Collection

Time to paint the town nails red, a fiery candy red to be precise. Crimson averse? Go with a lively lime green or glistening magenta. The highly pigmented trio is the star of Christian Louboutin's brand-new limited-edition mini collectionaka Loubichrome Nail Colour ($30 each). Each polish is infused with light-reflecting pigment pearls that give an edgy chrome-like finish. And the bottle design is over-the-top fabulous, too. Available at CL boutiques and online. // 29 Maiden Lane (Union Square), christianlouboutin.com





San Jose Gets Another H&M

A grand new H&M store will open the doors to its 24,000-square-foot space in San Jose's Eastridge Mall on Thursday, January 12. Translation: There are lots of Swedish fast-fashions to be had for the entire family: women, men and kids. And, hallelujah, there's also a mega accessories department. (Go ahead, bling out.) In other good news, the first 100 shoppers who queue up on opening day will receive H&M fashion passes valued between $10 and $300. The store opens at noon // 2200 East Ridge Loop (San Jose), hm.com
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About 53 million Americans are serving as caregiver for a loved one, and about 6 in 10 of them are doing so while also trying to earn a living, according to the "Caregiving in the U.S. 2020" report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving.

Many working caregivers report health problems, depression, and lost time and lower productivity at work. If you're taking care of an aging or ailing family member, you may also find that you have cut back on community involvement and are spending less time with other loved ones and friends.

If you are frequently distracted at work, emotionally drained and physically exhausted, consider the following steps to find workplace solutions and build a caregiving support network.

Workplace benefits for caregivers

"We need people to know what their rights are under the law, and we need companies to change their culture, because companies can always be more generous than the law, says Ellen Bravo, the codirector of Family Values @ Work, an organization that advocates for family-friendly workplace policies.

Meet with your manager or human resources representative to discuss the policies and resources available to you. These might include:

Flexible work options. This could mean a compressed workweek or a modified daily schedule based on need. Job-sharing and remote work are also caregiver-friendly options to explore. Many employers offer flex-time options on a case-by-case basis, even if there is no formal policy.





This could mean a compressed workweek or a modified daily schedule based on need. Job-sharing and remote work are also caregiver-friendly options to explore. Many employers offer flex-time options on a case-by-case basis, even if there is no formal policy. Counseling and support services. Your human resources department may offer an Employee Assistance Program or other resources specifically for caregivers, like counseling on reducing stress and managing your time.





Your human resources department may offer an Employee Assistance Program or other resources specifically for caregivers, like counseling on reducing stress and managing your time. Eldercare referrals. Your company may also offer eldercare referrals through an online database or live consultants. This reduces the burden of having to do distracting and time-consuming research to find services such as medical support and meal delivery for your loved one.





Your company may also offer eldercare referrals through an online database or live consultants. This reduces the burden of having to do distracting and time-consuming research to find services such as medical support and meal delivery for your loved one. Share ideas. Employers that have not implemented policies or practices for employees who are also caregivers may be open to doing so. AARP and Northeast Business Group on Health have developed a tool kit to help employers support their working caregivers. Share it with your employer to help them learn more.





Employers that have not implemented policies or practices for employees who are also caregivers may be open to doing so. AARP and Northeast Business Group on Health have developed a tool kit to help employers support their working caregivers. Share it with your employer to help them learn more. Using paid time off for caregiving. Depending on your employer's policies and applicable state laws, you may be permitted or required to use accrued paid sick days or vacation leave toward time taken off for caregiving. Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico and Puerto Rico have adopted variations on the Eligible Leave for Employee Caregiving Time (ELECT) Act, a model state bill developed by AARP that allows workers to use paid sick leave to care for family members. You may also be eligible for unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

Understanding the Family and Medical Leave Act

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) entitles certain workers to take unpaid leave for up to 12 weeks per year, without losing job security or health benefits, to care for a spouse, child or parent who has a serious health condition. FMLA does not cover leave taken to care for in-laws.

Am I eligible for FMLA leave? You are covered by FMLA if you work in the public sector, or for a company or organization that employs at least 50 people who work within 75 miles of your work site. You must have worked for that employer for at least 1,250 hours in the last 12 months  about 24 hours a week. The U.S. Department of Labor's Family and Medical Leave Act Employee Guide can help you determine your eligibility.

How do I request FMLA leave? Notify your employer as soon as possible. If the need for leave is foreseeable  for instance, taking time off to care for a loved one after a scheduled surgery  30 days notice is required.

What can I expect? Your employer is required by law to tell you your rights under FMLA and, if you qualify, to offer you leave. You may be asked to submit certification paperwork that includes confirmation from a health care provider of your loved one's condition and need for care. Employers may not threaten you or make your work life difficult because you requested leave.

Do I have to use all 12 weeks consecutively? You may take the 12 weeks of leave all at once or intermittently  for example, three days twice a month when a parent is receiving chemotherapy. Generally speaking, paid time off used for caregiving leave that is also FMLA-eligible counts toward your annual 12-week entitlement.

What about state caregiving laws? Seven states (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) and the District of Columbia have laws on the books providing paid time off for caregivers through tax-funded family-leave insurance programs. Oregon and Colorado are set to launch similar programs in 2023 and 2024, respectively. It is your employer's responsibility to comply with all applicable laws, whether your leave qualifies for both state and FMLA leave or just one or the other.

Building a caregiving community

Connecting with other caregivers can help you share resources and talk to those facing the same issues.
A Coptic alcohol vendor was brazenly murdered as he innocently sat smoking his shisha. The killer came up from behind him, in itself a cowardice act, and slashed his throat. Arrested soon afterwards, the killer said he had warned the victim against selling alcohol, which, to him, was reason enough to perform this act of pure savagery. The victims family spoke in sorrow of their loss, but no vindictive act followed.

Weeks earlier a suicide bomber killed 27 Copts as they prayed in church. The assailant walked between the womens aisles and detonated himself amidst innocent children and mothers. Egyptians, all Egyptians, mourned the dead and the injured. Still, the massacre as many others before it passed with no further reverberations.

In 2014, Mary Sameh George, driving close to a Muslim Brotherhood protest, was dragged out of her car, beaten and stabbed to death. She met this harrowing death because of a cross that was hanging from her rear-view mirror. The family and community mourned the brutality, but did not oppose Gods will, believing that Mary had gone to a better place.

As far as Libya, Copts are victimized. In February 2015, 21 Coptic Egyptian workers were beheaded in a gruesome but detailed propaganda stunt by DAESH. The men, wearing bright orange and leaning down, had their killers behead them from behind, their bodies dumped into the Mediterranean. In other circumstances this couldve led to a fury of bitterness, but again peace and acceptance strengthened the victims families.

In this case, as in no other, the army vindicated the dead by carrying out an air strike early the morning after. It targeted DAESH camps and training sites. Even if Egypt had not pursued revenge, it is unlikely that Copts wouldve protested.

When radical Islamists wanted to retaliate after Rabaa Square was evacuated by force, they chose to retaliate against, first, Copts, and, later, the security apparatus. Dozens of churches, Coptic-owned businesses and homes got stormed and torched, and many Copts were attacked.

The village of Delga was a scene of total mayhem whereby the government simply lost the fight. Morsi supporters drove the police out and occupied the police station. For a period, while many Copts fled, others had to pay to be protected. A Copt was killed in his home, chained to a tractor, and dragged across the village. Priest Iskander Taous half-naked body was chained to a scooter and dragged around town, too.

The reaction of Copts was humbling. In a service in one of the burned churches in Upper Egypt, the reverend asked church members to forgive the rioters. He quoted what Jesus said of his attackers on the cross They know not what they do. And a church member said, We pray today for everyone who wronged us, with all love; for each one who extended his hand with an axe, for each one who extended his hand with fire, or stole from the church.

Enough already: the incidents are in the thousands; we are all aware of them.

Copts throughout hardships grieve silently, smile amidst sorrow, and listen to the beckoning of their leaders who call for peace and non-violence while enduring the pain and intolerance. Retaliation as a concept does not exist amongst them, but acceptance does. Copts never once demanded much; they merely continue to live their lives accepting whatever God sends them even if it is brutal and violent.

Watch Maggie Moemens mother grieve, and you will understand the meaning of faith and belief. Maggie is the ten-year-old who became the 27th fatality in the church explosion. Having remained in a coma for several days, she finally succumbed to her death. Maggies mother, Nermine Samir, is the epitome of acceptance. She has no hatred or fury. Believing her daughter is in heaven with God, she doesnt even ask for retribution.

Tyranny in general triggers revenge but not with Copts. When a Black young man is killed by the police force in the US, five NYC police officers are shot dead. When over 600 Muslim Brotherhood members die in Rabaa Square, Egypt suffers until today. Israelis react instantly if one of their own is harmed. Revengeful acts take place between one group and the other in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the whole world. The world is up in arms, and yet Copts accept their fate and whatever god sends them in a stunningly peaceful fashion.

And this is why Egyptians should count their blessings and their lucky stars that Copts are who they are. Despite the horror Copts endure day in and day out, they live on deeming such horrors as something God wants for them. They are told to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matt 5:44) And they follow the advice with no ifs ands or buts.

As Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King had both once said, An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.

Merry Xmas, Egyptians.
Central, Herreid-Selby, Warner just 1 win away from state title games

Aberdeen Central, Warner, Herreid-Selby and Hitchcock-Tulare are all just one win away from high school football championship games.
Portland, OR  The Portland area is due for a severe earthquake at any time, as it sits on top of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The area has been given a high risk status by seismologists, who predict that the coming seismic event could cause considerable damage. This is a particular concern for homes built before 1975, which often lack the foundation anchoring that would protect them from sustaining extensive damage, or even collapsing.

Oregon Seismic specializes in Portland seismic retrofitting and foundation bolting, offering its services to homeowners who value the peace of mind of knowing they live in a safer home, which would be better protected in the event of a Portland earthquake.

Molly Dumars, the companys project coordinator, highlighted the importance of Oregon Seismics services, stating that You cant prevent earthquakes  but by getting your home anchored, you can prevent a lot of damage.

A seismic retrofit of a Portland home built before 1975 also renders it eligible for earthquake insurance, for an additional level of protection.

Oregon Seismic takes pride in its exceptional professional service. Oregon Seismic retrofits are completed to the highest technical standards and comply with FEMA, 2012 International Existing Building code (IEBC) and City of Portland prescriptive guidelines for residential structures.

To help Portland homeowners get a fair evaluation and accurate estimate of the cost for their homes seismic retrofit and foundation bolting, Oregon Seismic is offering free evaluations of your homes structural readiness to withstand a major earthquake.

Homeowners interested in scheduling a free evaluation can do so by either calling the company directly, or visiting its website.

To learn more about Oregon Seismic, please visit: http://www.oregonseismic.com/

Media Contact

Company Name: Oregon Seismic

Contact Person: Mark Dawson

Email: mark@oregonseismic.com

Address:2425 NE 50th #13165

City: Portland

State: OR

Country: United States

Website: http://www.oregonseismic.com/
Project-Wide Collaboration Ensures Efficient Transition from Construction to Operation

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait, January 5, 2017 Aconex Ltd ( ASX:ACX ), provider of the #1 global platform connecting teams on construction and engineering projects, has announced that Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. of South Korea and Combined Group Contracting Co. (CGC) of Kuwait are designing and building the US$2.6-billion Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway using Aconex solutions. Aconex was proposed by the two contractors and approved by the project owner, the Kuwait Ministry of Public Works.

One of the largest and most prestigious transportation infrastructure projects in the Gulf region, the causeway will connect Kuwait City with an area across Kuwait Bay known as the Subiyah New Town or the City of Silk. The new settlement, which is expected to be completed in 2035, is planned as a major stop on Chinas proposed One Belt One Road initiative, which is intended to revive the ancient Silk Road trade route. By shortening the distance between Kuwait City and Subiyah from 104 kilometers (65 miles) to just 36 kilometers (22 miles), the new throughway will trim travel times from 90 minutes to less than 30 minutes.

Controlling Project Information across Geographies

In November 2012, the Kuwait Ministry of Public Works signed a contract with a consortium of Hyundai and CGC to design and build the causeway. A combination of low-level bridges and embankments, the project also includes 26 separate buildings and two artificial islands of 30 hectares each designed to enhance the scenic value of the drive. Other members of the project team include Systra, based in France; AECOM in Hong Kong; Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners), headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon; TYLN International; and SSH International.

Work began in November 2013. As the project team ramped up, members in Kuwait, France, Egypt, Lebanon, and San Francisco all required immediate access to project information. According to Eng. Mai Al Messad, the project engineer, the number of daily transmittals of inspection requests, checklists, approvals, and progress reports had already risen into the hundreds.

We needed to manage the transmittals and to securely share documents with different organizations across multiple geographies, Eng. Al Messad said. It was critical for us to locate and retrieve project information quickly, and we needed to improve project control by automating manual processes.

Eng. Al Messad said that the team settled on Aconex because the collaboration platform is project-wide, neutral and easy to use. With Aconex, no single organization owns the project information. Instead, each organization retains control and ownership of its proprietary data, and determines which documents and communications are shared with other members of the team.

Replacing Manual Processes with Automated Workflows

Aconex also enables the project team to leverage workflow automation and create standard processes for everything from project communications to handover. This has provided the team with greater visibility and control.

For example, instead of sending requests over commercial email programs, participants manage correspondence as part of standard workflows on the Aconex platform. Rather than create, upload and register Requests for Inspection (RFIs) in one location and then download, edit, upload, supersede, and transmit them back again in another, the project team manages RFIs using workflows. This not only reduces the amount of record-keeping associated with RFIs, but also provides full visibility and control of all RFI reviews and approvals. In this way, Aconex makes it easy to track which RFIs are unanswered or overdue and which have been transmitted and received responses.

Streamlining Handover

The use of Aconex Smart Manuals frees the team from labor-intensive tasks related to gathering handover materials. These materials play a critical role in efficient operation and maintenance (O&M), and incomplete or inaccurate documentation can delay commissioning and significantly increase the assets lifetime cost. With Aconex Smart Manuals, the team can assemble all of the projects drawings, blueprints, photos, change orders, reports, manuals, warranties, permit approvals, and operating procedures during design and construction, automating what had been an inefficient, last-minute process.

The ability to generate digital O&M manuals was one of the reasons we selected Aconex, Eng. Al Messad said. Complete, up-to-date manuals will ensure the efficient transition from construction to operation and maintenance of the causeway.

The Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway is one of the worlds longest and most complex bridge projects, said Henry Jones, senior vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and global accounts at Aconex. We are pleased with the opportunity to support the development through all phases of its lifecycle. The causeway is one of many examples of how Aconex is contributing to the successful delivery of transportation infrastructure projects throughout the Middle East.

About Aconex Ltd

Aconex Limited (ASX:ACX) project collaboration solution digitally connects owners, builders and other teams, providing complete visibility and management of data, documents and costs across all stages of a construction project lifecycle. The Aconex cloud-based solution has been used to manage over $1 trillion in projects across 70,000 user organisations in over 70 countries. The companys ordinary shares are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker code ACX and are included in the S&P/ASX 200 Index.

Supporting Resources

For more information on Aconex, please visit:
Walloon Government to fund further research into the applicability and the further optimization of the production of Bone Therapeutics bone-forming cell products

Regulatory News:

BONE THERAPEUTICS (Brussels:BOTHE) (Paris:BOTHE) (Euronext Brussels and Paris: BOTHE), the bone cell therapy company addressing high unmet medical needs in the field of bone fracture repair and bone fracture prevention, today announces it has been granted EUR 2.3 million in non-dilutive funding1 to support its research programs. This funding has been granted by the Walloon Region by decision of the Minister for Economy, Industry, Innovation and New Technologies, Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt.

Thomas Lienard, CEO of Bone Therapeutics commented: "We are grateful to the Walloon Region, and in particular to the Minister for Economy Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt, for its continued support of the Company. This support allows the Company to leverage its available equity funding in order to support ongoing research initiatives designed to maximize the potential of its product candidates and further improve the quality of our cell therapy products."

The funding will cover up to 52% of expenses related to three new research projects. The first two projects have been designed to further investigate the application of the allogeneic product ALLOB for potential additional indications and patient populations. A third project aims to further optimize the production and logistics of our cellular products. The funding covers a two-year research period.

1. The non-dilutive funding is granted under the form of avances recuperables to support specific research and development programs. Under the applicable conditions, the funding is reimbursable over the economic life of the project (25 years). Thirty per cent is refundable based on a fixed reimbursement schedule, while the balance is refunded under the form of royalties over the same period.

About Bone Therapeutics

Bone Therapeutics is a leading biotechnology company specializing in the development of cell therapy products intended for bone fracture repair and fracture prevention. The current standard of care in this field involves major surgeries and long recovery periods. To overcome these problems, Bone Therapeutics is developing a range of innovative regenerative products containing osteoblastic/bone-forming cells, administrable via a minimally invasive percutaneous technique; a unique proposition in the market.

PREOB, Bone Therapeutics autologous bone cell product, is currently in pivotal Phase IIB/III clinical studies for two indications: osteonecrosis and non-union fractures, and in Phase II for severe osteoporosis. ALLOB, its allogeneic off-the-shelf bone cell product, is in Phase II for the treatment of delayed-union fractures and lumbar fusion for degenerative disease of the spine, including a minimally invasive therapy for failed spinal fusions. The Company also runs preclinical research programs and develops novel product candidates.

Founded in 2006, Bone Therapeutics is headquartered in Gosselies (South of Brussels, Belgium). Bone Therapeutics regenerative products are manufactured to the highest GMP standards and are protected by a rich IP estate covering 11 patent families. Further information is available at: www.bonetherapeutics.com.

Certain statements, beliefs and opinions in this press release are forward-looking, which reflect the Company or, as appropriate, the Company directors current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial effects of the plans and events described herein. A multitude of factors including, but not limited to, changes in demand, competition and technology, can cause actual events, performance or results to differ significantly from any anticipated development. Forward looking statements contained in this press release regarding past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will continue in the future. As a result, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release any update or revisions to any forward-looking statements in this press release as a result of any change in expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which these forward-looking statements are based. Neither the Company nor its advisers or representatives nor any of its subsidiary undertakings or any such persons officers or employees guarantees that the assumptions underlying such forward-looking statements are free from errors nor does either accept any responsibility for the future accuracy of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release or the actual occurrence of the forecasted developments. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170105006510/en/

Bone Therapeutics SA

Thomas Lienard, Chief Executive Officer

Wim Goemaere, Chief Financial Officer

Tel: +32 (0)2 529 59 90

investorrelations@bonetherapeutics.com

or

For Belgium and International Media Enquiries:

Consilium Strategic Communications

Jonathan Birt, Jessica Hodgson, Lindsey Neville and Hendrik Thys

Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701

bonetherapeutics@consilium-comms.com

or

For French Media and Investor Enquiries:

NewCap Investor Relations & Financial Communications

Pierre Laurent, Louis-Victor Delouvrier and Nicolas Merigeau

Tel: + 33 (0)1 44 71 94 94

bone@newcap.eu
NASHUA, N.H., Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Injury Law Center recently welcomed Attorney Jonathan Lang as the firm's newest associate attorney. With nearly a dozen years of legal experience, Jonathan has handled a variety of personal injury cases during his career, including medical malpractice, car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, defective product cases, premises liability cases, wrongful death, and more. Since 2005, he has won numerous high-value settlements for his clients.

Jonathan is a graduate of George Mason University School of Law, where he served as managing editor of the Civil Rights Law Journal and was a highly awarded member of the moot court team. He also possesses an undergraduate degree from Creighton University, where he was a nationally-ranked debator and was captain of the debate team.

Jonathan is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The team at Injury Law Center is thrilled to welcome Jonathan to the firm. If you have been injured and have questions about your rights, we invite you to contact Injury Law Center to schedule a complimentary personal injury consultation.

Injury Law Center is an experienced personal injury law firm committed to protecting the rights of those who have been injured by medical malpractice, defective products, unsafe premises, auto accidents, and other types of accidents throughout New Hampshire and Massachusetts. To learn more about our qualifications and the types of cases we handle, please visit www.injury-law-center.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/injury-law-center-welcomes-new-associate-attorney-jonathan-lang-300386847.html

SOURCE Injury Law Center
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James addressed the Air Force Associations Air Force Breakfast Series Jan. 6, at the Key Bridge Marriot in Arlington, Virginia.

James began her presentation by reflecting on her appointment as the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force.

It was the honor of my professional life time  hands down  and I want to reiterate that, she said. These past three years have been such a privilege.

For more than three years, her focus remained steadfast with three priorities: taking care of people; striking the best balance between the readiness needs of today and the need to modernize; and making every dollar count.

When she took on her new role in December 2013, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were winding down, the thought was that there would be fewer overseas deployments, less threats and more emphasis on having Airmen at home, and more opportunity for home station training. According to James, it looked like an opportunity to rebuild full spectrum readiness and reset the forces. At the time, she was briefed the plan for a smaller Air Force and the budget she inherited reflected that plan. The plan included reductions in personnel and equipment that needed to be modernized.

It made sense in late 2013, the secretary said.

Then 2014 came. She discussed Russias invasion of Crimea; the emergence of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, China stepping up its efforts to create artificial islands in the South China Sea, and North Korea redoubling its efforts on advanced ballistic missiles.

At the same time, she started traveling around the Air Force to meet Airmen and was surprised by what she discovered.

It seemed like we were already short everywhereoverseas as well as domestically, James said. Thats because we had actually been cutting our forces for the better part of 20 years, even though we were maintaining very heavy and very demanding combat missions and deployments on a worldwide basis during that same period. So our people, to me, even back then, were showing some real strains and that goes for our family members as well.

She realized the briefings and assumptions that had been made in Washington were not adding up and concluded the Air Force needed more people, not less. By the summer of 2014, the Air Force halted its next planned phase of involuntary downsizing, and instead, began reversing the trend seeking additional funding for personnel and modernization.

People issues have continued to be her top focus throughout her tenure.

We need to continue to grow in a balanced way over the next several years, she said. And when I say balanced we need to do it in a Total Force way: active duty, National Guard and Reserve.

Operational requirements have continued to grow, especially for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

The [Remotely Piloted Aircraft] mission didnt even exist 15 years ago, and now  now  it is central to everything we do in the fight, James said.

She elaborated by sharing that roughly 20,000 people were assigned to the RPA mission in a time when the Air Force was reducing in strength by approximately 40,000 people.

The appetite for the capability was insatiable. It was difficult to keep up with, she explained.

As that demand continued, retention became a problem.

That is why the RPA get-well plan was launched, James said. It included doubling the training pipeline, more use of Air Guard and Reserve forces, a temporary decrease in the number of combat air patrols, increasing the RPA pilot retention bonuses, putting into place an expanded basing structure for quality of life concerns and reintroducing enlisted pilots for the first time in 60 years.

She elaborated on the Air Forces aging inventory and about the new aircraft that will be added, which in-turn, will drive requirements for an increase in maintenance and skilled maintainers.

She went on to talk about quality of life issues, which include keeping compensation for military competitive with the civilian sector and safeguarding retention bonuses and other benefits.

Quality of life issues also include safeguarding Airmens time, James said. There have been reductions in computer-based trainings and additional duties with the intent of giving Airmen more time to perform their primary mission.

Promoting diversity and inclusion have also been major efforts. During her tenure the Air Force launched a total of 22 initiatives aimed at the goal. She shared that research demonstrates teams with members from diverse backgrounds  from different demographics groups, geographies and experiences  produce better, more innovative outcomes. And, that is exactly what the Air Force needs.

As part of this ongoing effort to recruit and retain talented Airmen, requirements regarding accessions are being updated. Updates including changes to tattoo and medical policies that had previously barred people from serving is expected to be released next week.

The secretary went on to talk about balancing readiness with needed modernization. That includes funding and upgraded training, such as for exercises, base ranges and simulations.

The top acquisition priorities continue to include the F-35 Lightning II, the KC-46 Pegasus, the B-21 Raider and the new combat rescue helicopters.

James then articulated the expansion of the space mission. Recent progress includes the Space Enterprise Vision, updated training and doctrine and the creation of the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center.

The priority of making every dollar count has also made progress, James said.

This is all about recognition of the fact that we are entrusted with the taxpayers money, and that money is precious, and we need to be as efficient as possible, she said.

James concluded driving home the point that, We absolutely need to stay on the path of growth to a larger Air Force.
US-led coalition airstrikes eliminate key ISIL leaders in Syria, Iraq

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have recently killed several prominent leaders of that organization, Air Force Col. John Dorrian, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, said during a news briefing Jan. 4, 2017.



Speaking to Pentagon reporters via teleconference from Baghdad, Dorrian said precision coalition airstrikes in Mosul and other areas around Iraq have continued attacking ISIL leaders who facilitate and command and control the terrorist network.



Killing leaders degrades ISIL



The latest examples are three ISIL facilitators and terrorist leaders from occupied cities, he said, confirming the deaths of Ahmad Abdullah Hamad al-Mahalawi, Abu Turq, and Falah al-Rashidi.



Al-Rishidi, struck on Dec. 4, (2016) in Mosul, (Iraq), was an ISIL leader who was involved in ISIL's use of (vehicle bombs) in Mosul, Dorrian said. His removal further degrades ISIL's (vehicle bomb) threat, which has been the enemy's weapon of choice for attacking Iraqi security forces and civilians.



Al-Mahalawi, Dorrian said, was struck Dec. 21, 2016, in Qaim, Iraq, and was a legacy al-Qaida in Iraq member serving as an ISIL leader in Qaim.

His removal will disrupt ISIL's ability to conduct operations along the Euphrates River Valley, the colonel said. This is significant because as ISIL continues to lose population centers, they want to transition toward spoiler attacks in the outlying areas of Iraq and Syria. The loss of Mahalawi degrades ISIL's ability to make that transition.



Abu Turq was killed Dec. 4, 2016, in Sharqat, Iraq. Dorrian described him as an ISIL financial facilitator in Qanfusah, Iraq -- about 50 miles southwest of Irbil -- who had connections to ISIL leaders and ensured money reached the terrorist group.



He was killed by an airstrike while fighting from a rooftop position in Sharqat, where he and several other fighters were moving a heavy weapon to fire upon partner forces. His removal increases pressure on the ISIL financial network, which is already severely disrupted by several hundred strikes on oil infrastructure and bulk cache sites, he said.



In Syria, more than 100 airstrikes have occurred in the Tabqa Dam area, about 25 miles west of Raqqa, killing many ISIL fighters, including Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, Dorrian said.

He added, Kuwaiti, a prominent foreign fighter and leader, had been sent to improve ISIL's control in the region in the face of (the Syrian Democratic Forces) advance.



ISIL unable to replace fighters, supplies



Overall, Dorrian said, the coalition-backed battles to regain Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq from ISIL control have weakened the enemys ability to bring in replacement fighters and supplies.



In Syria, (the SDF), led by their Syrian Arab Coalition, are continuing their advance to isolate Raqqa along two axes, supported by coalition forces, providing advice and assistance, and coalition air power delivering counter-ISIL strikes to Raqqa's north and west, the colonel said.



Since this phase began Dec. 9, 2016, the SDF have liberated more than 500 square miles of Syrian land, home to tens of thousands of people who have been brutalized by ISIL's rule, Dorrian said.



Coalition airstrikes removed a significant number of ISIL fighters, more than 70 vehicles, and 200 fortifications from the battlefield. This degrades ISIL's ability to maneuver and defend the occupied cities, he added.



Dorrian noted, recovering the Tabqa Dam from ISIL will return Syria's largest dam to its people, helping them reclaim their homes and liberty.



We're working with our SDF partners to ensure the dam is effectively and safely recovered, he said. ISIL has used the dam as a headquarters, a prison for high-profile hostages, and a training and indoctrination area for leaders since they seized control of it in 2013. Loss of this key terrain will damage the enemy's prospects and legitimacy as they continue to lose territory.



Fight in Mosul stepped up



Iraqi forces have made significant progress since beginning phase two of their operation to liberate Mosul on Dec. 29, 2016, Dorrian noted.



In this phase, Iraqi forces synchronize simultaneous attacks from three axes into the city, with elements of the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service, the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Federal Police conducting the operation, he explained.



What we're finding is that the synchronized attacks present the enemy with more problems than they can solve, and the Iraqi security forces are making progress with the continued benefit of coalition strikes and advisers, Dorrian said. The axes are beginning to converge as the Iraqis make progress toward the Tigris (River).
Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav appears isolated with son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav coming on top in the ugly battle for political supremacy.

Having anointed himself the partys National President, in a dramatic coup against his wrestler-turned-politician father, the 43-year-old Akhilesh Yadav is in full control of the party, party insiders say.

Notably, the accounts were till now operational with the signature of Shivpal Yadav, the estranged uncle of the 43-year-old Akhilesh Yadav.

Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav appears isolated in this battle, which has exposed rifts within the first family of Uttar Pradesh ahead of Assembly Elections.

Earlier this month, Akhilesh anointed himself the partys National President, in a dramatic coup against his wrestler-turned-politician father.

Barring a few family members from his village Saifai in Etawah and not more than two dozen legislators, Mulayam Singh, the family patriarch, seems to be isolated, party leaders admit.

Cornered through an Akhilesh-backed resolution that left him with the mere tag of marg darshak (mentor), Mulayam Singh is now left with very little leg room to manoeuvre his way back as the partys unquestioned boss.

Egged on by uncle and Rajya Sabha member Ramgopal Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav has been making the right moves since raising the banner of revolt against his ageing father.

And Yadav junior has since gone on an offensive.

The Chief Minister enjoys the backing of 209 legislators and 51 MLCs, all of whom signed affidavits on Thursday swearing their support to his leadership.

On Friday, Shivpal Yadav, Mulayam Singhs brother, met Akhilesh Yadav at the latters residence, apparently to discuss possible rapprochement.

The Chief Minister is clear. There is no going back now. He is not averse to his father but cannot stake his political career on the palace intrigues in the family, a close aide said.

Girl writes to EC in blood

A 15-year-old girl in Ghaziabad wrote a letter in blood to the election commission, requesting the poll panel to award the Samajwadi Party election symbol to her idol and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The girl  a student of Class 10  and her younger brother used a syringe at home and drew blood to write the letter, their father said. They tried to post the letter on Friday but were stopped by the father.

I talked to my children to not be swayed by political incidents and concentrate on their studies, said the father.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith chocked throat and moist eyes, Mulayam Singh Yadav appeared on TV worried about his sons future in unwanted peoples hand. He appears isolated and his son Akhilesh Yadav gains upper hand in the ugly battle for political supremacy. Having anointed himself the partys National President, in a dramatic coup against his wrestler-turned-politician father, the 43-year-old Akhilesh Yadav is in full control of the party. It is high time; Mulayam Singh Yadav should resign from politics and enjoy his retired life. He might have worked for the party but not with sufficient base and space. Junior Yadav who consolidated his position since last two years, even Shivpal Yadav should not have gone aggressive.

Akhilesh and Mulayam camps of the Samajwadi Party are trying to find out ways to stay united. Mulayam Singh Yadavs brother Shivpal Yadav held a brief meeting with Akhilesh Yadav at Chief Ministers residence. The meeting between Shivpal and Akhilesh lasted for just few minutes. Shivpal reached Mulayam Singh Yadavs residence after the meeting. Mulayam-Shivpal loyalist Samajwadi Party MLA Gayatri Prajapati also reached his residence.

Amar Singh also made it to senior Yadavs residence in Lucknow as the two factions held talks to find any scope of a cease-fire.

Recently, Election Commission asked fatherson duo to reply by January 9 in support of their respective claims for the Samajwadi Partys poll symbol. After sometime, senior minister in Akhilesh Yadav government, Azam Khan- who has emerged as one of the key mediators between father and son in the party  held talks. What transpired during the talks was not made public by either side, but the tamasha went on and finally the bank accounts of Samajwadi party were sealed by Akhilesh camp.

Mulayam Singh Yadav served as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh from 1989 to 1991, from 1993 to 1995, and from 2003 to 2007. He also served as the Defence Minister of India from 1996 to 1998 in the United Front government. Currently, he serves in the Lok Sabha representing Azamgarh. Mulayam has gained several degrees  a B.A., B.T. and an M.A. in political science, he is very well educated politician. Yadav married twice. His first wife Malti Devi died in May 2003. Yadavs second wife is Sadhna Gupta Yadav. Sadhna was not well-known until February 2007, when the relationship was admitted in Indias Supreme Court. Sadhna and Mulayam have a son named Prateek Yadav (born 1988). Prateek manages land holdings of the Yadav family.

Mulayam is groomed by mass leaders like Ram Manohar Lohia and Raj Narain. Yadav was first elected as a MLA in Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh in 1967. Interestingly, it was the Indian socialist icon Raj Narain who also inaugurated the first election campaign of Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1967 assembly elections. Yadav served eight terms there. He first became a state minister in 1977. Later, in 1980, he became the president of the Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh which became a part of the Janata Dal afterwards. In 1982, he was elected leader of the opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council and held that post until 1985. After the collapse of the V P Singh government at the centre in November 1990, Yadav joined Chandra Shekhars Janata Dal (Socialist) party and continued in office as chief minister with the support of the Congress Party. His government fell, when the Congress withdrew support to his government in April 1991 in reaction to the aftermath of developments at the centre, wherein the Congress party withdrew support to Chandra Shekhars government. Mid-term elections to Uttar Pradesh assembly were held in mid-1991, in which Mulayam Singhs party lost power to the BJP.

In 1992, Yadav founded his own Samajwadi Party. In 1993, he allied with the Bahujan Samaj Party for the elections to Uttar Pradesh assembly due to be held in November 1993. The alliance between Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party prevented the return of BJP to power in the state. His stand on movement for demanding separate statehood for Uttarakhand was as much controversial as his stand on Ayodhya movement in 1990 was. There was a firing on Uttarakhand activists at Muzaffarnagar on 2 October 1994, something for which they held him responsible. He continued holding that post until his ally opted into another alliance in June 1998.

Yadav and other members of the SP were criticised for conducting a festival during a crisis following riots in Muzzafarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. He and his party formed a pre-poll alliance for the 2014 General Election that involved ten other parties. He was elected as a member of the 16th Lok Sabha in those elections from two constituencies  Azamgarh and Mainpuri  and subsequently resigned the latter seat. The only other successful SP candidates in the election were relatives of Yadav: his daughter-in-law, Dimple Yadav, and his nephews Dharmendra Yadav, Akshay Yadav and Tej Pratap Singh Yadav.

Since Akhilesh Yadav became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the Yadav family has been divided into two feuding groups. One of the groups is led by Akhilesh Yadav with the support of his fathers cousin, Ram Gopal Yadav. The rival group is led by Mulayam Singh and supported by his brother Shivpal Yadav and a friend, Amar Singh. Akhilesh Yadav has fired his uncle twice from his cabinet as it was seen by many as a direct challenge to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has steadily supported his younger brother Shivpal over him. On 30 December 2016, Mulayam Yadav expelled his son Akhilesh and his cousin Ram Gopal from the party for six years on the grounds of indiscipline, only to revoke 24 hours later. He was named the chief patron of the party following the national convention of the party on 1 January 2017. He termed the national convention as illegal and expelled his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav, who had convened the national executive convention.

Now, SP finds itself in a dramatic situation. The party seems divided and is ironically headed by two presidents. Akhilesh Yadav and his father both are representing themselves as party presidents. However, the constitution of the party categorically states that any convention can only be called by its president and if another member wants a convention to be called, he has to collect the signatures of 40 per cent members and submit it to the national president. If the president then fails to call the convention that individual member may call for the convention. In this case however, Akhileshs faction has acted against party constitution and technically Mulayam Singh Yadav is still the party president. Lets see what happens next.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ctually, I never watch TV reality shows like Bigg Boss much, because I get suffocated in wasting my time on such shows. This time, I was furious to know that saffron clad called Swami Omji Maharaj too is participating in the reality show. Previously, he was known for appearing in TV debates and in one of the news channel he lost his temper and hit Deepa Sharma, an astrologer on live show. The discussion was on Radhe Maa, and it got heated up and Om Ji lost his cool and attacked Sharma. He is being one of the most controversial contestants in Bigg Boss season 10, till date. A number of cases have been registered in various places against him, including some non-bailable offences. A few weeks ago, Swami made an emergency exit as he was summoned by the court. He was back on the show, since his contribution is par excellence towards the show to increase TRP.

He had contested Delhi Assembly elections on Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha ticket but lost it to AAP candidate. Omji has been a part of Hindu Mahasabha and calls BJP his own party. The video features his interview showing Swamiji boasting of his political duties and opportunities. And he says that he is there to remove Congress and AAP from the scenario. Om Ji targets Kejriwal and alleges him to be a national traitor. He announces, with date, that he entered Kejriwals home and thrashed him.

The man did not even spare the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and said that Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhiji, was from his Hindu Mahasabha and they did it on purpose. The Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha was formed to protect the rights of the Hindu community in British India, after the formation of the All India Muslim League in 1906 and the British India governments creation of separate Muslim electorate under the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. Although, it is an old Hindu nationalist political party, the Hindu Mahasabha has remained marginal in its influence on Indian politics, both pre and post independence. In the 1940s, the Muslim League stepped up its demand for a separate Muslim state called as Pakistan. Although, the Congress strongly opposed religious separatism, the Leagues great popularity amongst Muslims forced the Congress leaders to hold talks with the League president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Even though, Savarkar agreed with Jinnah and recognised Hindus and Muslims to be separate nations, he condemned the secular Gandhis overtures to hold talks with Jinnah and regain Muslim support for the Congress as appeasement. After communal violence claimed the lives of thousands in 1946, Savarkar claimed that Gandhis adherence to non-violence had left Hindus vulnerable to armed attacks by militant Muslims. When the partition of India was agreed upon in June 1947 after months of failed efforts at power-sharing between the Congress and the League, the Mahasabha condemned the Congress and Gandhi for agreeing to the partition plan. On January 30, 1948 Nathuram Godse shot Mahatma Gandhi three times and killed him in Delhi. Godse and his fellow conspirators Digambar Badge, Gopal Godse, Narayan Apte, Vishnu Karkare and Madanlal Pahwa were identified as prominent members of the Hindu Mahasabha. Along with them, police arrested Savarkar, who was suspected of being the mastermind behind the plot. While the trial resulted in convictions and judgements against the others, Savarkar was released on a technicality, even though there was evidence that the plotters met Savarkar only days before carrying out the murder and had received his blessings.

Hindu Mahasabha members are worshipping Godses bust. They are fanatics. Earlier, they claimed to be with BJP but now they are randomly attacking Modi.

There are many senseless, violent members like Om Ji in Hindu Mahasabha, who are spread across in different professions and most of them are claiming to be spiritual leaders. Unreasonable, crazy and fanatic saffron man Omji was on Bigg Boss in the race of gaining TRP but that did not happen. No right winger ever liked the idea of him being in reality show. Swami Omji is also popular by the name of S Sadachari Saibaba Omji. He is the alleged bicycle thief and could soon land up in jail for not appearing in the court. Away, from his spiritual avatar, this baba is also alleged an arms hoarder who has been slapped with charges under the Arms act, TADA and other laws. While he is doing his bit to create an impression on the reality show, Omji is now facing non- bailable warrants as he did not appear before a Delhi court in a theft case. The warrants were issued two days before the premiere of Bigg Boss 10 where commoners and celebrities are contesting. The court had fixed October 14 for hearing the arguments on the charge. The case dates back to November 2008. Pramodh Jha, the younger brother of Omji Maharaj, had accused him of breaking the lock of his bicycle shop in Lodhi Colony along with three men before stealing 11 bicycles, expensive spare parts, sale deed of the house and important documents. He has six brothers and four sisters.

When he was in Bigg Boss house, Swami asked the team to bring him some flower garlands as he wanted to do a pooja in the house. The team agreed to his demands and arranged the garlands for him. And just before entering the house, he put the garlands on. He told the contestants that his fans gathered at the airport and welcomed him with flowers and garlands. Swami Omji is a fake baba and will go a long way in curing the people of the blind faith they put in such Dhongi.

Interestingly, Swami Omji has warned Bigg Boss team that he should only be declared as the winner of the show or else his followers wont spare them, claims report in leading daily portal Business of Cinema. He didnt stop here. The troublemaker contestant has also said that he will bring his union on the grand finale to take strict action against them if they do not follow him. This was the second time Swami had left the house because of his theft case. The court, however, cancelled the non-bailable warrant against him, asking him to pay Rs. 30,000 for not complying with its order. The court has fixed February 4 as next date of hearing. This self-declared Swamiji says that he wants to devote his life to serving others both spiritually and politically. He has a PhD in astrology. He also claims of devoting his life to serving the country and its people. Whatever he is but he is a disgusting character. Colors and Big Boss should have some moral responsibilities and ethics inviting such people on show.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine was reportedly docked at a port in Pakistan, raising concerns across the border in India that it could have been monitoring the movement of its warships more closely than ever.

The Type 093 Shang submarine, docked at the Karachi harbor, is likely being used to scrutinize the movements of Indian warships far more closely than ever before at a time when China is competing with India for domination of the Indian Ocean.

The image can be accessed by clicking on the historical imagery icon on Google Earth and scrolling back to May, 2016, said the report.

However, Indian nuclear experts say that the docked submarine could be the even more powerful Chinese Type 093 Shang class, far quieter and tougher to detect and equipped with newer weapons and advanced technology, including a nuclear reactor.

A nuclear powered submarine has an unlimited range of operations because their nuclear reactors rarely require refuelling. These submarines can be deployed underwater for extended durations and they are also difficult to track. Nuclear submarines are faster than the conventional diesel powered submarines. Diesel submarines operate for a shorter duration of a few weeks.

Unlike the conventional diesel-electric submarines, nuclear-powered submarines can remain under the water for weeks. They are are normally loaded with heavy weapons, including torpedoes and anti-ship missiles. Nuclear submarines are also faster than their conventional counterparts.

India is wary of the Chinese presence in Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as the former considers it to be its own backyard and detests any external interference.

However, India sees the presence of the submarine as Chinas way of showing its military aggressiveness to dominate in the region that is strategically vital to Indias sovereignty and security.

As far as Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships and submarines are concerned, the Indian Navy keeps a close eye and monitor their movements. We launch surveillance missions in the form of aircraft and ships to keep a track of them, Lanba had said last month.

China had earlier asserted that its deployment was purely aimed at an anti-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia. However, senior Indian naval officers have denied the claims.
Have you ever read an interesting novel with some pages or chapters missing or torn away? How does it feel? Especially, with abruptly edited scenes and a strange slackness to the cuts?

That is exactly what you experience while watching Allied.

Not sure if it is the making of the Indian Central Board of Film Certification or the makers  the result is obviously a killjoy.

Nevertheless, Allied is a curiously entertaining, old fashioned, romantic thriller in the backdrop of World War II. Max Vatan is a Canadian airman working for British intelligence who is parachuted into Morocco in 1942. Marianne Beausejour is a French resistance fighter.

Posing as a faux husband and wife they meet in Casablanca to form a formidable assassination team.

Along the way, the imitation of love leads to love itself and binds them. They then share an idyllic domestic life in an air-blitz London, until questions arise concerning Mariannes true identity and allegiance, which leads to Max engaging in some incredible, cross channel flights to prove his wifes innocence.

The plot moves at a rapid pace in a one dimensional path that discourages any reflection. It builds on the romance in their relationship but does not offer anything exceptional, as most of the romantic scenes consist of cold routine, spy talk which only show how little emotion they can reveal. Also, given their dynamics, it is the absurd aspect of the characterisation, that takes away the credibility of the resolution.

Brad Pitt as Max and Marion Cotillard as Marianne, make a stylish, gallant and passionate couple. Together, they make an ideal pair whether they are confined in a nouveau desert eroticism, by being cocooned together in a vintage car enveloped in a sandstorm, or in marital bliss in London. Pitt is debonair in the early scenes and is convincingly anguished later, when tormented by the idea of betrayal.

Similarly, Marian Cotillard is marvellous. She is convincing, as she keeps her emotions right. She brings depth to her characterisation that we become as enraptured with her as Max is, even though we are just as confused as he is, in regard to her character and intentions.

On the production front, production designer Gary Freeman along with costume designer Joanna Johnston, replicate the era to perfection and this is precisely captured by cinematographer Don Burgesss lens. The live action shots seamlessly mesh with the computer generated images. Prominent among such visuals, in the third act when a Nazi plane which is shot mid-air and seen through the window crashes in the back yard, creates a jaw-dropping suspense. This experience is elevated by composer Alan Silvestris meaningful scores.

Overall, Allied is a well made, jazzed up film that wont be remembered as a classic.
Pakistans Chief Justice on Friday ordered police probe into the alleged torture of a 10-year-old girl working as a maid for an influential district judge.

Mian Saqib Nisar on Wednesday took suo motu notice of the alleged torture of the maid by a judge and his wife in Islamabad after disturbing photos of her appeared on social media last week, showing her badly beaten and bruised.

He ordered Deputy Inspector General police today to probe the case and present the victim during the hearing next week, according to a court official.

He also ordered the court would act as parents of the girl in the case and rejected the pardon given by the victims father to Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife.

During todays hearing, two women appeared claiming to be mothers of the victim, following which the Supreme Court ordered DNA test to ascertain the parentage.

The case took another twist on Tuesday after father of the girl told a local court that there was no truth of torture and that he reached at a private settlement with the judge.

In the First Information Report registered with Islamabad police, the girl said she had been working at the Khans house for nearly two years.

Initially, the girl told police that she was often beaten up in the house. Most recently, she alleged that Mano Baji, judges wife, shoved her hands onto a burning stove and then beat her after a broom went missing.

She also claimed the owners of the house would usually lock her up in a storeroom at night besides starving and beating her up.
Telecom tribunal TDSAT asked sector regulator Trai to decide on Reliance Jios free 4G service within reasonable time.

A TDSAT bench, comprising members B B Srivastava and A K Bhargava, heard arguments of both sides  Airtel and Trai  and posted the matter on February 1 for the next hearing.

The tribunal has directed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to take a stand on Reliance Jios free 4G offer in reasonable time.

The TDSAT direction came while hearing a petition filed by Bharti Airtel, which has moved the tribunal against Trais decision allowing Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio to continue with its free promotional offer beyond the stipulated 90 days, alleging that the regulator acted as a mute spectator to violations.

In its 25-page petition before the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), Airtel had asked the quasi-judicial body to direct Trai to ensure Jio does not provide its free voice and data plan beyond December 3.

In the petition, Airtel had alleged that Trai in its decision dated October 20 erroneously concluded that since Jios promotional offer of free services was only valid till December 3, it is consistent with the direction for 90 days.
As a booklover what most of the time I enjoyed reading is John Bergers most memorable quotes. I am mentioning one of my favourite quotes below

A mans death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.

John Berger, the British critic, novelist and screenwriter whose cutting-edge 1972 television series and book, Ways of Seeing , declared war on traditional ways of thinking about art and influenced a generation of artists and teachers, died on Monday at his home in the Paris suburb of Antony. He was 90.

The great weakness of Bergers writing comes from the same source as its success. Berger loves synopsis, and he generalizes in ways that are at times outright misleading. His statements on gender, for example, reduce reality to a set of false axioms: Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.

As the host of Ways of Seeing, with his shaggy hair and tieless, loud-patterned shirt, Berger was a public intellectual who became a countercultural celebrity in 1970s Britain, where the BBC kept the four-part series in frequent rotation. The book became an art-school standard on both sides of the Atlantic. The author of criticism, novels, poetry, screenplays and many less classifiable books, Berger had considerable influence as a late 20th-century thinker. He consistently, provocatively challenged traditional interpretations of art and society and the connections between the two.

He examined the role consumerism played in the rise of Picasso in 1965s The Success and Failure of Picasso. He claimed that cubism anticipated the Russian revolution in The Moment of Cubism, and Other Essays. When he won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel G, Berger spoke against the prizes roots in Caribbean slave labour and pledged to give half his reward to the Black Panthers, a group he said more accurately reflected his own politics.

That same year, Berger with a head of wavy brown hair, a beige 70s shirt and a magnetic authority captivated the British public with Ways of Seeing, a series of four 30-minute films. In it, he mined imagery for larger cultural discoveries. How women were depicted in art, for example, revealed much about a time periods attitude towards gender.

Born to a middle-class London family on Nov. 5, 1926, Berger never attended university. He was drafted into the British Army in 1944 and was dispatched to Northern Ireland.

After the army, he joined the Chelsea School of Art. He began as a painter, later taught drawing and eventually began writing criticism for the New Statesman. But his studies later expanded significantly into other realms. He examined the lives of migrant workers in 1975s A Seventh Man: Migrant Workers in Europe.

In 1980s About Looking, he considered, among other subjects, how animals exist alongside human lives. Berger also wrote several screenplays, among them 1976s John Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, a drama set amid the 1968 protests in Paris. Bergers considerable output ran right up until last year, when he published a collection of essays, Confabulations. A documentary on Berger, produced by Tilda Swinton, was also released in 2016.Bergers intention was to upend what he saw as centuries of elitist critical tradition that evaluated artworks mostly formally, while ignoring their social and political context. Among many other subjects, Berger burrowed into the sexism underpinning the tradition of the nude; the place of high art in an image-saturated modern world; the relationship between art and advertising; and, of particular importance to him as a voice of the British New Left, the way traditional oil painting celebrated wealth and materialism.

I am concluding here with one of his quote Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion, this critic too had many critics, but he rocked always. Listener, poet, painter, seer and Philosopher John Berger left us but now he is everywhere, in his writings, in our memories and in our hearts.
Veteran Indian actor Om Puri died on Friday morning of a heart attack at his residence here, a family friend said. He was 66.

Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, who was going to direct the actor in his new movie, told IANS over phone: It is a very sad news. Om Puri ji passed away after a heart attack today (Friday) morning. He was at his home.

His body of work in the Indian film industry has been tremendous across the commercial and parallel genres. Weve lost a great talent.

Actor Anupam Kher, a close friend of Om Puri, said he had spoken to him just two days ago, and the disheartening news of his demise was broken to him by filmmaker Ashoke Pandit.

Anupam described Om Puri as a kind and generous person, who spent four decades in showbiz with an undying passion towards his craft.

A Padma Shri awardee and National Award-winning talent, Om Puri was also conferred upon the title of the Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the British film industry.

His work extended from theatre, television, Indian films to those in Britain and the US too. He was president of the Cine & TV Artistes Association (CINTAA) and a former chairman of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

A tweet on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi read: The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri and recalls his long career in theatre and films.

Known for his deep baritone and distinctive acting style, Om Puri had an affinity towards socially relevant cinema. This drove him into doing movies like Aakrosh, Ardh Satya and Dharavi.

A National School of Drama alumnus, Om Puri also featured in movies like Mirch Masala and explored his ability to dabble in the comedy genre with Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Chachi 420, Hera Pheri, Malamaal Weekly and more.

His stint on the small screen saw him feature in shows like Kakkaji Kaheen and Mr. Yogi, but his most notable work was in TV film Tamas, which was helmed by Govind Nihalani  a filmmaker with whom Om Puri worked very closely all through.

Om Puri also nurtured an international career, which started with a cameo in Richard Attenboroughs Gandhi.

Among some of his British films were My Son the Fanatic, East Is East and The Parole Officer. He also appeared in Hollywood films including City of Joy, Wolf and The Ghost and the Darkness.

He even featured in Pakistani film Actor In Law, and sank his teeth into film projects in multiple languages like Malayalam and Kannada too.

For his superlative work, he was honoured with the National Film Award for Best Actor twice  for Arohan in 1982 and for Ardh Satya in 1984.

In 1990, he was bestowed the Padma Shri, Indias fourth highest civilian award.

He was married to Nandita Puri, from whom he separated in 2013. Together, they have a son named Ishaan.

The film industry mourned his death, with heartfelt tributes on social media platforms.

ALSO SEE:
A 28-year-old Mumbai woman, who on Thursday evening claimed that she was attacked by an unidentified man near Mahalaxmi Race Course, has on Friday confessed that the injury on her body was self inflicted.

The woman, identified as Priyanka Hetpure, told the police that after getting into a fight with her boyfriend, she took out a butter knife and slashed her chest on the left side. To hide the incident, she initially told the police that someone had attacked her.

She further claimed that she wanted to get married to her boyfriend against the wishes of her parents.

Meanwhile, doctors suspected the injury on Hepture to be self inflicted as the assault didnt cause pierce injury and was not vertical in shape.

When senior inspector Sanjay Surve, of Tardeo Police Station, questioned her boyfriend, the truth came out.

The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked at a private company in the city. Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man.

The incident occurred at around 7.30 PM on Thursday near the race course and the victim is reported to be out of danger.

Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room about the victim. Senior police officials late Thursday night went to the hospital.
About 2 million children are being homeschooled in the United States. The number of those unvaccinated is unclear, but judging by the school opt-out rates in some parts of the country where there is more concern about vaccinations, it could be 3 percent or more. For example, in Oregon's Lane County roughly 2,000 students out of a total of 51,000 have exemptions, about 4 percent.

"That's not yet science," he said. "It doesn't rise to the level of a powerful observation. It's a place to say, OK, well that's interesting, what does that tell us?"

Bradstreet said his views do not constitute a persuasive argument that low vaccination rates are associated with low rates of autism, but it is worth studying.

In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."

"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into homeschooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons."

Bradstreet treats autistic children at his medical practice in Palm Bay, Fla. He has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been homeschooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the homeschool movement.

WASHINGTON, June 28 (UPI) -- Where are the unvaccinated homeschooled children with autism? Nowhere to be found, says a doctor who treats autistic children and is knowledgeable about the homeschooled world.

Like you, we read of Dr. Jeff Bradstreet's death and were struck silent. A stalwart leader in treating autism, really helping families, his loss is huge in our community. Dan Olmsted interviewed Dr. Bradstreet 10 years ago for his The Age of Autism series with UPI . Here is the interview; the study he was calling for has finally been done and the results are awaited, a testament to his foresight and persistence. Our condolences to the Bradstreet family and the autism community who relied on his compassion and care.

Applying that ratio to the U.S. homeschooled population would equal 80,000 children. At the current autism rate of one in 166 children, several hundred would be expected to have autism.

Bradstreet said he has tried to persuade epidemiologists to study that subset of the homeschooled population, but they expressed doubts the results would apply to broader groups.

"I said I know I can tap into this community and find you large numbers of unvaccinated homeschooled, and we can do simple prevalence and incidence studies in them, and my gut reaction is that you're going to see no autism in this group."

He said every researcher he contacted refused to investigate, "because it would not have any power to change people's opinion -- you could never apply it to the next population." He said critics could assert that homeschoolers are a unique group and that parents might choose to homeschool a child "because they knew he was different," although neither would explain the lower autism prevalence.

He also said he thinks homeschoolers would be a better population to examine than a genetically and culturally isolated community such as the Amish.

"The purists would say that's too odd of a group," Bradstreet said, and added that he agrees. "You can't draw conclusions from that kind of population."

His comments referred to the series of reports in The Age of Autism on an apparent low prevalence of the condition among the Amish, most of whom are unvaccinated.

Monday, this column reported that a top official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told parents he will consider whether to launch a study of autism rates among the Amish or other unvaccinated populations. Such a study apparently has never been done.

Bradstreet said he thinks that no matter what unvaccinated population researchers study, "it would be a rare event" to find autism. His views fall into the distinct minority among scientists and medical experts, who say a link between vaccines and autism has been discredited. A panel of the prestigious Institute of Medicine -- part of the National Academy of Sciences -- said last year that research should now go to "promising" areas.

The vaccine theory centers on the hypothesis that a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal, used in an increasing number of childhood vaccinations in the 1990s, triggered a huge spike in diagnoses.

Bradstreet's linking of autism to mercury in fish and maternal dental fillings is also rejected by mainstream medical experts. The comments do, however, echo one aspect of UPI's reporting on the Amish.

A doctor in Virginia said he was treating six unvaccinated Amish children, four of whom had high levels of mercury in their bodies that he thinks triggered their autism. He suspects the exposure came from coal-fired power plants, which emit mercury as a byproduct.

Bradstreet said he realizes his views on vaccines, and his own son's autism, expose him to charges he is seeing what he wishes to see, but he argues that government researchers harbor a bigger conflict of interest because the government mandates vaccinations and vouches for their safety.

"The problem for them is even more than the problem for us," he said. "Many of us who are concerned about vaccines and the role they're playing in the immune system and autism are traditionally trained physicians who vaccinated our kids and are only reluctantly being forced, when it was thrown in our face, to say there's got to be something wrong with vaccines if it did this to my kid.

"So in that situation, even though we would be accused of being more biased, we are probably more objective because we were believers."

--

This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism aims to interact with readers and welcomes comment, criticism and suggestions. E-mail: XXX








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Written Letters of Reference Process Prejudicial and Promotes Constructive Discrimination





The hope and enthusiasm that met the Trudeau governments proposal to overhaul the Senate Appointment Process has come to a disappointing conclusion. The nomination rules include clauses put on the procedure that serve to cleave the overwhelming majority of Canadians out of the process itself.





Chief among these is the unnecessary and pointless requirement that a Written Letter of Reference accompanies each nomination. This clause of the revised process has now become the subject of a petition against elitism that is rapidly gaining pace.





The requirement for a Written Letter of Reference is a cutting reminder that the elites of society have no intention of letting an ordinary, everyday Canadian sit in their midst on a platform of equality. It is a disqualifying criterion used as an acid test by which many Canadians may never be able to enter the hallowed chambers of the Senate, regardless of their personal accomplishments and love for the Canadian nation.





Even the nomination for the Order of Canada does not require such a document; why then should the nomination of a Senator? Its sole purpose is to act as a further barrier to filter out 'undesirables' from participation in both the nomination and refereeing process.





Does the capacity for evocative writing and an excellent command of grammar qualify one for seeking to create a better Canada? No, the rule serves only to exclude large swathes of Canadian society who have never had the fortune of birth, wealth and connections to learn specific skills.





It is organised discrimination against the very people whom the new rules were supposed to uplift.





It seems that the very notion that we could change an entrenched system was hobbled from the very start. Elitist hoops have been put in place under the guise of a revamped nomination process that seeks to bridge the gaping chasm between the haves and have-nots. In reality, they are no more than a symbol of a panicking ruling class that senses that Canadians are waking to reality and demanding fair representation.





Prime Minister Trudeau confirmed the first seven new appointments in April 2016. But, now, Trudeau's supposed overhaul has been exposed as just another whitewash over more of the same old-same old meant to appease the masses through inspiring headlines while not making any meaningful change.





Is our democracy really democratic? Do you feel that you truly have a voice in the way Canada is run, and in the way that the taxes you pay are utilised? Many Canadians feel that the answer to those questions is a resounding 'No'. We were told that this sentiment was the reason that the Trudeau government launched their initiative to revamp the system. Now, we know better.





If we acquiesce to these demands placed upon ordinary Canadians today, there will be no further reason for the Trudeau government to even attempt to carry on this charade of equal representation.





If we do not speak up against deception perpetrated upon us in the name of equality today, perhaps one day we, too, might find ourselves asked to 'eat cake'.




WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 - Idahos challenge to a federal land-use plan designed to protect greater sage-grouse has been rejected by a federal judge, who said the state could not demonstrate legal standing.

The state and the Idaho Legislature sued the Interior and Agriculture departments over the federal land-use plan for Idaho and southwestern Montana  as well as the environmental analysis behind it.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) worked with 11 Western states to develop land-use plans including a variety of measures to protect the bird while avoiding having to list it under the Endangered Species Act. That decision was announced Sept. 22.

But that effort, which was repeatedly hailed as unprecedented by supporters, including some Western governors and environmental groups, riled others. Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that was found wanting Thursday, said Sept. 25, 2015, when Idaho filed its lawsuit, We didnt want an ESA listing, but in many ways these administrative rules are worse.

Governor Otter and other Idaho stakeholders contend the process behind amendments to federal land-use plans aimed at protecting the birds imposed unprecedented and unnecessary restrictions on Idaho farmers and ranchers, sportsmen, recreationists, employers and others, the state said.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, however, said in his opinion that the state could not demonstrate injury-in-fact, one of the requirements to establish standing.

The three declarations plaintiffs cite to demonstrate injury-in-fact to Governor Otters ability to carry out his constitutional responsibilities merely speculate about various injuries that may result from the implementation of the (Idaho and southwestern Montana, or IDMT) plan, Sullivan said in his opinion. None provide factual support demonstrating any concrete and particularized, and actual or imminent injury. Sullivan is a district court judge in the District of Columbia.

In one of those affidavits, Celia Gould, director of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, took aim at the establishment of Sagebrush Focal Areas (SFAs) in the IDMT plan.

BLMs decision to designate over 3.6 million acres as SFAs with their associated management actions has the potential to dramatically impact Idahos livestock industries and local economies, Gould said, adding that the plan strongly suggests that grazing allotments within the SFAs will be prioritized for heavy restrictions or cancelation upon their review. Yet BLM provides no real analysis of this last-minute change.

The BLM plan and its accompanying environmental analysis has elevated livestock grazing to a primary threat despite the thorough analysis and scientific support in Idahos own alternative, which was proposed to the bureau, Gould said. She said a 1.2-mile buffer around sage-grouse leks  where the birds gather to breed  appears to arbitrarily double the 0.6 mile buffer proposed by Idaho.

But in Sullivans view, the plaintiffs did not set forth any specific facts to demonstrate an injury-in-fact as a result of the binding standards and self-implementing aspects of the IDMT plan.

Not an Agri-Pulse subscriber? Get our Daily Harvest email and Daybreak audio Monday through Friday mornings, a 16-page newsletter on Wednesdays, and access to premium content on our ag and rural policy website. Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





The state also had argued that the sage-grouse plan would result in spillover effects onto state and private lands such as an increase in the risk of wildfires and a loss in revenue to the state from restricted oil and gas leasing on federal lands.

Otter said in a statement he was extremely disappointed" with the judge's decision.

"The state of Idaho was a partner in the development of a collaborative, state-based plan to conserve sage-grouse on federal lands," he said. "At the last minute, federal bureaucrats in D.C. pulled the rug out from under us and decided to implement their unilateral 'top-down' plan that ignored local input and science. Now, the courts are telling Idaho and other Western states that we have no recourse to this top-down approach  either administratively or through the judicial system.

 We are still weighing our options moving forward, one of which is an appeal of the district courts decision. Im also looking forward to working with the new administration that will hopefully recognize the value of state sovereignty and our ability to effectively manage wildlife within our borders.

#30

For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com.
How was your first week of 2017?

The year got underway at PPD with news of grant application deadlines and new scholarships at the International Center of Photography. We noted that the Alexia Foundation began accepting applications for its Professional and Student grants on January 2, 2017. The grant 
South Carolina Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, right, comments on who could be the next state's lieutenant governor after current Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster takes the governor's role. Sitting next to Setzler is Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield.
January 5, 2017

A group of Iranian members of parliament has asked for the younger brother of moderate President Hassan Rouhani to be put on trial, a move interpreted by Reformists as politically motivated.

On Jan. 4, 46 lawmakers demanded "punishment" and an investigation into charges of economic corruption against Hossein Fereydoun. (The surname of the president at birth was Fereydoun, but as an adult he changed it to Rouhani, which literally means "cleric" or "spiritual" in Persian.)

Also on Jan. 4, hard-line member of parliament Javad Karimi Ghoddousi, a staunch enemy of Rouhani, asked the judiciary to summon Fereydoun in an interview with the conservative Basij News.

Ghoddousi said, Lately, we have witnessed that Mr. Rouhani has left the Pasteur complex [presidential office] and has given [control over] Pasteur to his brother and children.  There is a series of corruption and heavy and complicated seditions that are closely connected to each other. A part of this [plot] is in the hands of the [2009 post-election] sedition activists and the other part is in the hands of [the foreign] spy agencies. The center for the mobilization of these [plans] is in the hands of Mr. [Ali Akbar] Hashemi Rafsanjanis current.

Ghoddousi added, Thus, I demand that the judiciary prevent the occurrence of a new sedition, and [in this vein] there is the question of why it doesnt summon and detain Hossein Fereydoun. How long should the Iranian nation be slapped by the class that has power and wealth?

On the same day, Alireza Zakani, a former conservative member of parliament, tweeted, Putting [Hossein] Fereydoun on trial is at present a public demand, and justice requires the dear president to pave the way for a judicial investigation of the accusations against his brother.

Under the headline The duty of the judiciary is to combat corruption and not reacting to political controversies, the hard-line Kayhan daily slammed the judiciary Jan. 5 for not arresting Rouhanis brother.

Despite the successful record of the judiciary in some cases, in recent years no sign of seriousness has been shown [by the judiciary] about some people connected to the government. It seems that the judiciary has turned into an observer  in the face of the treason of some individuals.  The corruption of Hossein Fereydoun is crystal clear and even the president himself has a few times attempted to remove his brothers case file from the judiciary officials and give it the Ministry of Intelligence, Kayhan said.

The Jan. 5 edition of the hard-line Vatan-e Emrooz daily said, Following the talk of [Babak] Zanjanis confession [about having financially aided Rouhanis presidential campaign in 2013], there is a public demand for transparency about some economic cases and the rumors around some favored [individuals]. In this vein, 46 parliamentarians  asked the judiciary to investigate the economic [corruption] accusations against the brother of Hassan Rouhani. If this request of parliamentarians becomes fulfilled, it can lead to transparency about the main issue, namely the confession of Babak Zanjani.

The new pressure aimed at Rouhanis inner circle follows new clashes between the president and the judiciary chief. On Jan. 2, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of the Iranian judiciary, said, Babak Zanjani has said that he aided the presidents campaign [in the 2013 presidential election] with millions of dollars [in contributions].  We will summon all those who were named by him [Zanjani], and if necessary, we will detain them to find out what the issue was.

In reaction to the conservatives ballyhoo, Reformist Aftab newspaper described Hossein Fereydoun as the code word for attacking Rouhani ahead of the May presidential election.

According to Aftab's Jan. 5 edition, the statement by the 46 members of parliament that the president's brother is in the crosshairs and the hints that Fereydoun took money from Zanjani ahead of the 2013 presidential election are both a new plot by the hard-liners to damage Rouhanis reputation ahead of the upcoming vote.

This is not the first time that hard-liners have accused Fereydoun of corruption as part of efforts to attack Rouhani. On July 12, Ghoddousi accused Fereydoun of imitating the voice of his brother and ordering economic centers not to stop imports of some unauthorized goods.
January 5, 2017

The Israeli media have been covering a recent conflict in the southern town of Arad over a local synagogue. On one side are ultra-Orthodox Arad residents affiliated with the Gur Hasidic sect, and on the other side are longtime Arad residents, mostly secular, who claim that Gur Hasidim forcibly took over the synagogue. More specifically, the residents claim that the Gur people took over the main Ashkenazi synagogue that was open to all Arad residents for them to celebrate bar mitzvahs, circumcisions and other Jewish events. The Gur people blame locals for forcefully entering the synagogue and disturbing a prayer service. The struggle brought out the ultra-Orthodox sect, encouraged by the Gur Hasidim, to protest all over the country claiming that the synagogue was violated.

In fact, the conflict runs deeper. For several years, tension has escalated between Arad's ultra-Orthodox and secular residents.

The city of Arad was established in 1962, and is located on the border of the Judean Desert and the Negev, east of Beersheba. In the course of the years, many immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union were housed in the city. In the early 1980s, an organized group of Gur Hasidim came to live there because of inexpensive housing. Today, the ultra-Orthodox account for 20% of the local population, out of 25,000 residents.

"In the beginning their presence here was very positive," attorney Uri Arviv, a 32-year-old Arad resident, tells Al-Monitor. "But in recent years we've seen attempts to take over the city. We have no problem with the ultra-Orthodox. We have excellent relations with the Chabad [ultra-Orthodox] community and with the national religious public. The problem is that the Gur Hasidim have been trying to change the character of the city, where in addition they've created a kind of internal autonomy here."

In a conversation with Al-Monitor, the mayor of Arad, Nissan Ben Hamo, described what the "ultra-Orthodox takeover" looks like. "There's an explicit attempt here to change the character of the city," he said. "There's gross violation of the status quo in municipal space. For instance, the destruction of billboards in the claim that they're not modest enough. They [Gur Hasidim] have asked shopping centers not to put up ads with photos of women, and have put up signs with religious content around the city. All this is done to strengthen their presence in the public sphere and signal to secular Arad residents: Leave the city, it's turning ultra-Orthodox."

Menachem Gesheid, a senior figure in the Gur Hasidic community, told Al-Monitor that the mayor, a member of the Yesh Atid Party, is lying for political motives. In his words, Ben Hamo has failed to develop the city, and to cover for his failure he is instigating feelings against the ultra-Orthodox minority. "Gur Hasidim live in mixed cities all over the country and there have never been complaints," he said. "We have no interest in taking over the city and don't want the secular residents of Arad to feel threatened. We want good neighborly relations. A majority of residents opposes the mayor and his tactics of incitement."

Yet Arviv says the city's Gur Hasidim are cut off from the municipality and they do not try to integrate with the city. "They hardly consume anything in the city's businesses  they have private sales of almost anything at their homes," he said. "They don't even use taxis, they have a private ride service. They don't try to be a part of Arad, they use the city as a platform," he accused. "In addition, by means of all sorts of tricks, they don't allow the housing prices here to rise and thus maintain the city as an immigration city intended only for [relatively poor] Gur Hasidim and not for [financially] stronger elements of the general population."

According to city residents, Gur Hasidim advertise fictive ads for apartments for sale for especially low prices in order to reduce home values in Arad. At the same time, members of a special committee of the Gur Hasidim turn to real sellers and match properties for sale to buyers solely from the community. "Gur Hasidim are almost the only people interested in Arad [real-estate wise]," said Gesheid in response. "This isn't a particularly popular place and we're the target sector that expresses interest in buying apartments in the city. We've revived the city. Our activity to keep the prices realistic is a healthy means of social cooperation for legitimate consumer purposes."

Arviv admits that there has been an inappropriate attempt on the part of the city's extremist secular elements to turn the struggle political, but he claims that most residents of the city, including religious and traditional residents, are united in their concern regarding the change of the character of the city. Gesheid, for his part, claims that in the decades of the presence of the Gur Hasidim in the city they never protested the secular lifestyle and never tried to force their opinion on anyone. "We've never protested outside of shops selling pork in the city or blocked cars driving on the Sabbath. We seek to live our lifestyle quietly, and expect others to respect it. We've never resorted to violence and we play only by the democratic tools available to every citizen of the country."

Ben Hamo said, "Arad won't have a right to exist if 40% of its residents would be Gur Hasidim. I have no problem with the ultra-Orthodox, I only have a problem with this group." Ben Hamo declared war, saying, "I'll block the Gur Hasidim from coming here. They don't have nursery schools here and I don't have an infrastructure for them. I told the minister of housing not to build apartments here for them. They should only build apartments without balconies for the sukkot huts, and multistory apartment buildings that are not suited for the ultra-Orthodox [who do not use regular elevators on the Sabbath]. Arad has a secular character, and as long as I'm here I'll do everything to make sure it doesn't change."

Ben Hamo calls on the state to ensure appropriate housing for the ultra-Orthodox and to expand the existing ultra-Orthodox cities. He said, "I think that the ultra-Orthodox also deserve affordable housing, but you can't put this crisis on the periphery [cities such as Arad], which is weak as it is. To prevent a blowup, the government has to roll up its sleeves and ensure housing for the ultra-Orthodox, who are pushed by the housing crisis to secular cities. It doesn't work, it won't work and if we don't act immediately there will be a social catastrophe here."
January 5, 2017

Not even two weeks after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 demanding an end to all Israeli settlement activity, Israel is already giving the world the finger. Two years ago, Israel's Supreme Court had ordered the evacuation of the West Bank settlement of Amona. But the latest developments in this ongoing saga recall Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refrain regarding the criminal investigation against him: Nothing will come" of this because there was nothing there. Now, everyone around him appears to be saying exactly the same thing about Resolution 2334.

According to Resolution 2334, the demographic makeup, character and status of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967 and including the ensuing land confiscation constitute a violation of international law. The Security Council expressed grave concern that the settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the prospects of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. It reminded Israel of its commitment, in accordance with the Middle East Quartets 2003 Road Map to Peace in the Middle East, to freeze settlement activity and dismantle all settlements established since March 2001.

The evacuation of Amona and the resettlement of its residents will be a first test of Resolution 2334. If the Security Council ignores the dubious deal worked out between the government and the Amona settlers (relocating Amona to a nearby hill), it will affirm that what was going on so far in the West Bank will continue. The state argues that it is the legal custodian of the designated land, which was abandoned by its Palestinian absentee landowners. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit recently overturned a long-standing policy that had banned the use of absentee landowner property for civilian purposes.

Al-Monitor learned this week that Yesh Din, the human rights organization at the forefront of the campaign to vacate Amona from the private Palestinian lands on which it was built, had located one of these absentees in Jordan and had sent a notary public to obtain the power of attorney to transfer his land to a relative living in the West Bank.

Pushing the Palestinians out of their lands in Area C, which is under total Israeli control, is a central element in the Israeli governments policies. Several of its members make no bones about their desire to Judaize Judea and Samaria or at least to annex Area C, which makes up 60% of the West Bank. Knesset members of all the right-wing parties, including the center-right Kulanu and ultrareligious Shas, are already busy these days promoting legislation to annex the settlement town of Maale Adumim, which lies to the east of the 1967 Green Line. But the head of the militarys Central Command, Maj. Gen. Roni Numa, is responsible for the security and well-being of all the residents of Area C, regardless of religion, race and nationality. Yes, he is also responsible for the lands of tens of thousands of Palestinians who are his unwilling subjects.

Numa is not the first commander of the area  nor is he likely to be the last  to align with the settlers and serve their interests at the expense of his Palestinian subjects. Senior defense officials have known for years that the career path taking Central Command heads to the coveted position of military chief-of-staff is smoother with a recommendation from the settlement leadership. The attorneys in the state attorneys office are also being pushed in that direction by the clear leanings of their bosses  Mandelblit, who authorized the confiscation of the lands of absentee landlords, and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi.

Those among them  and there are still quite a few  who wish to preserve the rule of law learned this week what happens to a senior state attorney who tries to stand in the way of the settlers and their political patrons. On Jan. 3, Mandelblit and Shaked decided to clip the wings of Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber, who dared suggest curtailing the authority of the settlement division of the World Zionist Federation, the long arm of successive Israeli governments in the settlement enterprise.

The settler news site Arutz Sheva reports that Zilber is very unpopular with the Israeli right and religious citizens over her activism. Justice Ministry officials explained to the press that the move was part of the changes being spearheaded by Shaked in the ministry with the intention of normalizing affairs relating to Judea and Samaria. Two years ago, Zilber expressed her professional opinion that the norms of clean government are incompatible with transferring authority to an unsupervised nongovernmental body to determine policies and priorities regarding the settlements. She therefore recommended that the state stop its direct funding of the settlement division through the budget and other channels of direct money transfer.

Last October, the government showed legal and law enforcement authorities what happens to those who seek to bring a bit of order to the settlement project. The government voted unanimously to hand over responsibility for the settlement division to Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, a resident of the settlement of Kfar Adumim and a former leader of the Amana settlement movement in the West Bank. In other words, the ministers threw Zilbers report into the trash with dozens of past opinions warning the government about funding illegal outposts and turning a blind eye to the invasion of private Palestinian properties.

And finally, some good news. Attorney Shlomy Zachary, who represents Yesh Din and Palestinian residents, told Al-Monitor Jan. 3 about a pleasant surprise in the Supreme Court. At a hearing for a petition against the invasion of private Palestinian lands near the settlement of Beit El, Chief Justice Miriam Naor made an unusual remark, telling the representatives of the state attorneys office, You cannot ignore international law.
January 5, 2017

Last year was not altogether kind to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Financial hardships amid an era of cheap oil, Islamic State (IS) attacks on Saudi Arabian soil, a costly quagmire in Yemen and setbacks in Syria have all weakened the kingdoms position in the region. Despite these challenges, Saudi Arabia has managed to establish a network of Sunni states within the framework of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT). Although the US-backed anti-terror coalitions purpose is to crush IS, al-Qaeda and other extremists, the notable absence of Iran and Iraq from IMAFT illustrates the members geosectarian alignment with Riyadhs anti-Iran posturing.

Last month, the kingdom scored another victory by bringing in a new member: Oman. For the sultanate, which has traditionally distanced itself from Riyadhs efforts to isolate Tehran, joining IMAFT raises important questions about Muscats foreign policy agenda as Arab Gulf-Iranian tensions escalate. Saudi voices were quick to hail Omans decision to become the Saudi-led alliances 41st member as a sign of strong Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) strength and "a new chapter in regional and Muslim unity."

As neighbors and fellow GCC states, Oman and Saudi Arabia have long maintained a close alliance, yet Muscats close ties with Iran have created friction in Omani-Saudi relations. By hosting secret talks between American and Iranian officials in Muscat, which led to the historic 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, Omani officials unnerved their Saudi counterparts. More recently, members of the Saudi government have accused Oman, which has thus far maintained neutrality in the Yemen civil war, of permitting weapons smuggling across the Oman-Yemen border into the hands of Houthi fighters  a claim denied by officials in Muscat.

During his tour of GCC states last month, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud's notable exclusion of Oman signaled Riyadhs disapproval of Muscats close ties to Tehran, even if Saudi officials never publicly aired their frustrations with the sultanate. According to a former high-ranking GCC official, some in the council view Omans neutrality as "negative neutrality" given that the Saudis and others seek to establish a unified Arab Gulf front against Iran and its regional allies from Lebanon to Yemen.

Oman did not surprise observers of the countrys foreign policy when it avoided joining IMAFT at the alliances inception in December 2015. Muscat has never perceived the Islamic Republic as an existential threat and has often refused to toe Riyadhs line on matters regarding Iran. Furthermore, in recent years, a wide range of factors has prompted Oman to invest in its relationship with Iran, most notably underscored by Muscat and Tehrans plans to complete a subsea natural gas pipeline project, making Oman the first GCC member to develop energy infrastructure directly linking the Arabian Peninsula to Iran. Moreover, a major reason why Oman has turned closely to Iran is Muscats strategic thinking that deeper ties with Tehran affords the sultanate greater independence from the GCCs powerhouse  Saudi Arabia  which the Omanis often see as an overbearing neighbor. Not lost in the equation is the fact that numerous Saudi clerics have promoted intolerant views of Ibadi Muslims, labeling them heretics. Naturally this does not sit well with the Omanis, the majority of whom practice Ibadism, a characteristically peaceful and tolerant sect of Islam. Maintaining autonomy from the kingdoms geopolitical and religious authority has always been a pillar of Omani foreign policy.

It is premature to conclude that by joining IMAFT the Omanis have abandoned their longstanding regional neutrality in favor of a closer alignment with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. More likely, Oman is signaling its commitment to working with fellow Arab Gulf states in the quest to fend off new transnational threats from ultraviolent and extremist Salafist-jihadist forces such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and IS in Yemen, which is not in itself an indicator that Muscat plans to drastically redirect its foreign policy or backtrack in its relationship with Tehran.

In fact, last February and March  two months after Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman announced the launch of IMAFT  19 of the alliances members held a joint drill in Saudi Arabia called Operation North Thunder. Oman, although not an IMAFT member at the time, participated in the historic exercise of 20 Arab/Muslim nations. Muscat partaking in Operation North Thunder underscored the sultanates interest in working with the coalition to share intelligence and strengthen counterterrorism initiatives within the Arabian Peninsula even if the Omanis were cautious about officially joining IMAFT right off the bat. Put simply, Muscat wanted to learn more about the Riyadh-led alliances purpose and tactics before entering it.

It is not clear that Omani-Iranian cooperation will suffer as a result of the sultanate joining the Saudi-led coalition. Iran has vested interests in maintaining its multifaceted and maturing ties with Muscat, and it is unlikely that the Iranians will walk away from the Omanis because of the sultanates recent decision. Oman likely made this move based on the premise that becoming the alliances 41st member would not come at the expense of Muscat and Tehrans relationship. Assuming that Oman and Iran continue their own joint military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the sultanate will likely remain the only Arab state that conducts military drills with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, highlighting Muscats unique role in the Middle Easts geopolitical order.

The long-term strategic implications of Muscat entering IMAFT are unclear. Omans foreign policy has largely rested on the key pillars of neutrality and nonintervention. By staying out of the Yemen civil war, having not joined the US-led military campaign against IS in the Levant and refraining from any intervention in the 2011 uprising against Libyas former regime, the Omanis have avoided deploying their military forces for combat outside of GCC territory despite other Arab Gulf states doing so in recent years. Given that IMAFT is based on the idea of a pan-Sunni Muslim military alliance working together to defeat terrorists in hotspots across the Islamic world, active Omani participation in such deployments  if they ever take place  would mark a major change in Muscats foreign policy. Thus far, however, there is no evidence that the Omanis have any plans to embark on such a strategic shift.

As tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran escalates, Muscats ability to strike a balance between both countries will become increasingly difficult. For the sultanate, however, positioning itself as a neutral platform for talks aimed at solving regional and global security crises by promoting a Gulf detente has always been a high priority ever since the GCCs establishment in 1981. Although officials in Riyadh and Tehran may see their rivalry as a zero-sum game, Oman does not. Muscat views its interests as best advanced by strengthening its alliances with the other five GCC states as well as Iran. That being said, this year the sultanate will likely come under greater pressure from Saudi Arabia to align more closely with Riyadh at Tehrans expense, challenging Muscats efforts to maintain its unique role in the region as both a Saudi Arabian and Iranian ally. Indeed, no one ever suggested that it is easy to conduct a Swiss foreign policy in the Middle East, yet thus far Oman has done an excellent job of doing so.
January 5, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  A media production company has decided to host the first comedy festival in the Gaza Strip.

At a launching ceremony held Dec. 29 at Rotus restaurant, Maimas for Media Production formally announced the planning of Gaza's first comedy festival to be held March 2017.

The ceremony, which the organizers offered as a positive end to a difficult year for Palestinians in Gaza, included theatrical performances and comedy shows by five Palestinian comedians and live bands.

The ceremony featured a short performance by famous Korean stand-up comedian Wonho Chung, who speaks fluent Arabic. In a previously recorded video, Chung expressed his admiration for the residents of the Gaza Strip, praising their steadfastness in the face of the siege and harsh living conditions and saying that comedy and laughter are powerful ways to ease the pain and grief of everyday reality.

Chung said he will participate in the comedy festival and expressed hope that the shows will bring smiles to the sad faces of the people of Gaza.

The five Palestinian stand-up comics interacted with the audience and provoked laughter. One of them, Hesham Adnan, told Al-Monitor, It is a nice opportunity to conclude 2016 with [the announcement of] a comedy festival, the first of its kind in Palestine.

He said that the Gaza festival will be similar to comedy festivals organized across the capitals of the Arab world, such as Marrakech in Morocco, and it will specifically attract young participants. The comedy festival is an opportunity for the youth to discover their talents and practice their hobbies. The Gaza Strip is full of young talent, he said.

He added, I felt how much people in Gaza needed to laugh to escape their bleak reality.

Adnan said that the ceremony was a good start for the project and expressed hope that in the coming years, increasing numbers of Arab artists will be able to participate in the Palestinian festival, and through it more Palestinian artists will get the opportunity to be heard.

Palestinian Culture Minister Ihab Bseiso said in a video interview during the event that the Palestinian people have the right to make their voices heard across the world. He said he considers laughter a form of resistance and a way to face reality armed not only with irony but also a sense of hope and determination.

We are very proud in besieged Gaza to be able to make a breakthrough in the cultural scene under the blockade, with which Israel is trying to separate us from the rest of Palestine, Bseiso said. He added, The launch of the comedy festival, which came to end 2016 on a high note in spite of all the suffering and pain, carries an important message that our people are able to create hope for the future.

Israel's blockade on Gaza has been ongoing since 2006. According to World Bank data, Gaza suffers from one of the world's highest unemployment rates, spiking in the third quarter of 2016 to 43.2%.

Israel has waged three recent wars on Gaza. The first was in 2008, the second at the end of 2012 and the third in July 2014, killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians and resulting in the destruction of thousands of houses. UNICEF reported that among the 900,000 children living in Gaza, more than 373,000 are in need of psychological and social aid.

The director of Maimas for Media Production, Mahmoud Madi, said the festival will be a stand-up comedy show. Madi told Al-Monitor that its main goal is to call attention to the Gaza Strip and relay a message: This geographical piece of land is full of life, culture and art. Its people deserve to have festivals, to laugh and to entertain themselves.

Madi added that the festival will be modeled on others in Marrakech, Algeria and Dubai. He said the festival, scheduled for the beginning of March, will attract participants from across the Gaza Strip and applications to participate can be submitted via a website that will be launched soon. Madi stressed that entry fees will be minimal and the festival will be widely accessible to the Palestinian public.

The organizers are planning to make the festival an annual event in the Gaza Strip, with the participation of Arab and international stand-up comedians.
January 5, 2017

On the last day of 2016, the final night of Hanukkah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Russian President Vladimir Putin. In their second phone conversation of the week, the two leaders discussed developments in the Middle East with a special focus on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and continued security coordination in Syria.

The conversation was critical in light of Netanyahus previous statement that Israel would review its relations with the nations that supported United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, passed on Dec. 23. Russia was one of those 14 nations. The resolution says, among other things, that Israel should immediately and completely cease all settlement activities. It calls upon states to differentiate between their dealings with Israel and with these territories. Although the resolution is rather harsh on Israel, it was a recommendation, not a sanction.

The document was, rather predictably, heavily criticized by both the Israeli government and many analysts. Their major concern was that the resolution was unbalanced and did not distinguish between the Western Wall and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

As retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, the head of leading Israeli think tank the Institute for National Security Studies, put it, the resolution praises Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas efforts to produce international pressure on Israel and thus makes him less willing to participate in direct talks with the state.

This reaction was not surprising. What was interesting was the broad discussion within Israeli society that the resolution triggered, as well as the level of dismay expressed by the leader of the state. Amid criticism of the resolution by Israeli analysts and politicians from across the political spectrum, much was also directed at the government and Netanyahu personally. The government was blamed for not solving the settlements problem, while Netanyahu came under fire for his personal conflict with the outgoing US president and his administration, which supposedly led to a change in American attitudes toward anti-Israel UN resolutions.

Netanyahus own reaction was unexpectedly fierce: He ordered a halt to financing for five UN bodies. Israels Foreign Ministry summoned ambassadors from those countries with which Israel has diplomatic ties to notify them that Israel will be limiting their bilateral relations. Netanyahu canceled a scheduled visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to Israel as well as his own visit to Angola, and he called off a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May that would have taken place at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

From Russia's perspective, there are four major reasons why the Israeli prime minister reacted so strongly. The first is the emotional nature of the personal relations between Netanyahu and Obama. When one is already emotional about someone, it can be hard to keep those emotions in check when necessary. Netanyahu was expecting some extraordinary moves by the outgoing US president, and he saw what he expected to see when the United States abstained from the vote.

Second, within Israels ruling right-wing coalition, Netanyahu is often seen by some of his partners as overly prone to compromise. To preserve his leadership, Netanyahu has to occasionally show strength, and the resolution provided him with such an opportunity.

The bribery and fraud accusations against Netanyahu could be a third reason. As was recently reported, the Israeli attorney general has opened a full-scale criminal investigation against the prime minister. One of the most-used tactics in a situation like this is to shift public attention to something else. The UN, which Israelis have long deemed a source of problems, provided the perfect opportunity for such a trick.

Finally, Netanyahu may have been at the top of the Israeli leadership for far too long. He might be really bright, but history shows that power held for too long can deceive its bearers. Netanyahu responded to the resolution as if he represented not a small country that came into being due to a UN decision, but as the prime minister of a superpower. It looked ridiculous, even arrogant.

The US administration will change in two weeks and incoming leader Donald Trump is building his politics based on controversy with his predecessor, which means Trumps attitude toward the current Israeli leadership will be more positive. We can clearly see the signs of this trajectory in Trumps Dec. 28 tweet reacting to the resolution.

As for Russia, not much will change in its bilateral relations with Israel. The Dec. 31 phone conversation between the two leaders was a clear sign. Israel is fully aware of Russias position toward Jewish settlements in the West Bank and, given the history of Russias previous UN votes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there was no surprise at Russias vote this time. In recent years, Netanyahu has managed to establish rather warm personal ties with Putin. Its been 25 years since the two countries re-established official diplomatic relations and they enjoy the highest level of interaction, especially on the most sensitive issue: security.

Also, there are at least three Russian-speaking ministers (defense, immigration and environmental protection) in Israels government that see a strengthening of Russian-Israeli relations as a means to strengthen their own political power.

In Russia, there has been almost no reaction to Israels response to the Russian vote, meaning that today, common interests are more important than problematic issues. Moscow greatly praised Israels abstention when the UN voted on sanctions against Russia. Russia looks at Israel as a true partner, not only in politics, but also in economics, especially in high-tech cooperation.

Israelis themselves understand that Russia has effectively returned to the Middle East and plays a key role in some parts of the region. For Russians willing to hear and favorably consider Israeli concerns, Israels establishment seems ready to make some concessions.
January 5, 2017

In his two years on the throne, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has been an innovative leader who has addressed some of Saudi Arabia's most pressing concerns. His foreign policy is more confrontational toward Iran than any of his predecessors. His signature policy is the war in Yemen, which has not been a success.

Salman just celebrated his ascension as measured by the Islamic calendar. The Saudi leader has been touted as a "paradigm shift" in the management of the country. Perhaps his most significant decision was to advance change in the succession process and turn to a younger generation of royals to lead it. At the age of 81, the king has focused on the choice of his successor from his first day in office.

Salman appointed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to be deputy crown prince shortly after gaining the crown and then deposed his half-brother Prince Muqrin two months later, elevating Nayef, 57, to be crown prince. If Nayef does ascend to the throne he will be the first Saudi monarch who is not a son of the modern kingdom's founder King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, who died in 1953. It will be a generational change in leadership.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is unquestionably the most qualified prince of his generation. He has been at the front of the kingdom's war against terrorism for over a decade. He has survived four assassination attempts by al-Qaeda. He has developed extensive contacts with security chiefs and services around the world. As crown prince, he has the opportunity to broaden his experience and competence.

The king's son, Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, has developed a creative plan to transform the kingdom by 2030. Salman has placed unprecedented powers in his son's hands, including command of the economy. The son's Saudi Vision 2030 recognizes that the Saudi welfare state is unsustainable with low oil prices. Much of the program remains to be implemented, but it is crucial that the kingdom recognize the imperative of change. This year, 2017, is the one where the vision needs to be fleshed out and implemented in its initial stages.

The king followed through on the promise of his predecessor King Abdullah to allow Saudi women to vote and run for office in the country's municipal councils. It is an important symbolic step for the monarchy. Harder decisions about women's rights will be crucial if Saudi Vision 2030 is to work.

Abdullah's foreign policy was risk averse and cautious. During the Arab Spring, the kingdom became the leader of counter-revolution in Bahrain and Egypt. In Yemen it sought to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh with a compliant regime that would accept Saudi dominance. In Syria the kingdom saw an opportunity to unseat Iran's oldest ally in the Arab world.

Salman has been much more aggressive and confrontational than his brother. Relations with Iran have been severed, preventing Iranians from attending the hajj. A 40-member Islamic military alliance (led by the Saudi defense minister) has been created, excluding Iran and Iraq. Last month Oman, which has long sought to cool tensions in the Gulf, officially joined the Saudi military alliance. An aggressive intelligence campaign has been launched against Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah. Money has been sent to the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi relations with Washington deteriorated on Abdullah's watch. Riyadh was appalled that US President Barack Obama urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to give up office. American pressure on Bahrain's Sunni monarchy to accommodate the Shiite majority's demands for change prompted Abdullah to send troops across the King Fahd causeway to support the Sunnis and repress the Shiites. Almost six years later they are still there.

Salman shared his predecessor's skepticism about Obama. He snubbed an invitation to Washington. The kingdom has been quietly critical of the Iran nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions on Tehran. Nonetheless the Obama administration has sold over $110 billion in arms to the Saudis in eight years.

Only two months after ascending to the throne, Salman intervened in Yemen in response to the takeover of the capital by loyalists of Saleh and the Zaydi Shiite Houthi rebels. Riyadh feared that the Iranians were on the verge of creating a satellite state on their southern border. A Saudi-led coalition has blockaded Yemen and installed a friendly government in Aden.

Two years later, a Yemeni child starves to death every 10 minutes, according to UNICEF. Millions of Yemenis are malnourished and without medical care. All the warring parties bear blame for this humanitarian catastrophe. But the reality is that the richest countries in the Arab world have attacked the poorest country in the Arab world. The international community has done virtually nothing to stop the carnage. The United States and United Kingdom have provided the aircraft, munitions, logistics and intelligence that facilitate the war. The Saudis have been given the assistance essential to waging war with only occasional constraints, which are mostly due to congressional pressure and outrage.

Salman needs to find an honorable end to the war. Saudi Vision 2030 is likely to be a mirage if the kingdom remains bogged down in a quagmire in Yemen. The king is planning a visit to Oman this year. Omani Sultan Qabos can be a credible intermediary between the warring Yemeni parties. It's time to end the bloodshed.
January 5, 2017

ALEPPO, Syria  Residents of eastern Aleppo who fled Syrian regime forces for western Aleppo and the Idlib area are suffering under tragic conditions. They are having a hard time finding places to live, given the thousands of displaced people and refugees flooding the areas. In addition, they can't find jobs under the harsh economic conditions prevailing in Syria as a result of the civil war that has plagued the country for six years now.

The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that during just one week in mid-December, 34,000 people were evacuated from the eastern Aleppo area, many of them headed for Idlib. Thousands more were waiting to leave.

Idlib is about 35 miles southwest of Aleppo, far away from the clashes, and it is rarely targeted by warplanes and helicopters, unlike Aleppos northern countryside, which is witnessing fierce battles between the rebels and the Islamic State (IS) around al-Bab. The opposition-held western countryside of Aleppo also has been targeted by warplanes and artillery shells by regime forces.

Although Idlib was the safest choice, moving there did not solve the problems facing Aleppo residents who left their homes in hopes of starting a new life. Job opportunities in the small province of 6 square kilometers (2.3 square miles) are almost nonexistent for newcomers, especially since hundreds of thousands of Syrians have moved to the area during the past two years.

To make matters worse, the families who made it to the Idlib area cannot find places to live. There are nowhere near enough apartments for the wave of Syrians, and what few places might be available go for about $200 per month  far too expensive for those who fled their homes after being under siege for months.

We are happy we were able to survive escaping Aleppo and the siege. However, at the same time, we ran away from one suffering and stumbled onto another," a refugee told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "I have been looking for a place to live for 13 days and I have yet to find a place to shelter my family of five. If I ever find anything, the rent will be too high to be covered by a monthly salary  if I could find a job in the first place.

He added, I have spent a lot of time looking for a job, but to no avail. If anyone wants to work, they should have some sort of capital to start a small project to support themselves and their families. We newcomers find it even more difficult. We currently live on aid given to us by local relief associations, as well as some residents here. I really hope I can find a place for my family, and I wish to get a job so I would not remain dependent on anyone.

Relief groups in Idlib province have been doing their best to secure housing, clothes and food for those coming from Aleppo, but find it hard to help so many displaced people.

"All relief associations have put all their efforts into finding shelter for all the displaced people, but we failed. We sometimes had to put two or three families in one house," Ammar al-Abdullah, who is in charge of relief campaigns for the nongovernmental organization Molham Volunteering Team, told Al-Monitor.

Many displaced people wish to cross into Turkey, but the borders have been closed since March 2015, and the dirt roads they used to take into Turkey are now completely shut down in light of the tight security on the Turkish borders. Many fear warplanes and helicopters might eventually bomb Idlib, as they did Aleppo.

Abdul-Qader al-Halabi, who fled Aleppos eastern neighborhoods and found refuge in Idlib, told Al-Monitor, I did not expect to leave Aleppo alive. I have a daughter and wife who I want to protect now. Being in Idlib does not mean we are absolutely safe. The regime could launch a military campaign against Idlib at any given moment, and we do not want to go through hell again. I do not have the needed documents to cross into Turkey, and even if I did, the borders are closed and so are the smuggling roads."

He added, "God forbid Idlib encounters the same fate as Aleppo; people would not have anywhere else to go. This is the last city controlled by the rebels, and we hope the situation will remain calm because hundreds of thousands of Syrians from different provinces have settled here, despite how small the province is. I wish I could find a way to enter Turkey so I could finally look after my family, away from death and destruction.
January 5, 2017

In late 2016, Egyptian-owned company Taxi Plus launched its first ride-hailing service for Egyptian capital taxis with the aim of modernizing them to meet international quality and safety standards.

The app is downloaded on cellphones and connects customers with traditional taxi drivers.

"Taxi Plus is a shareholding company, and all its employees are Egyptians," Hesham El-Sayed, the CEO of Taxi Plus, told Al-Monitor. "The taxi drivers join the service with the fare decided by the Egyptian government. Currently, 500 taxi drivers are enrolled in the app and have offered service to 2,000 customers since Dec. 25, 2016  the date of its launch. He said that the service covers Cairo and Giza governorates. Access to the service will be expanded across Egypt.

The company reaches taxi drivers by distributing flyers in gas stations to encourage them to apply.

The taxi drivers who enroll in Taxi Plus are chosen carefully, according to Sayed, who said that before accepting them to work, they are subjected to a drug test and their cars are inspected to ensure the best quality of transportation.

"Also the company reviews the drivers' criminal record before hiring them," he said.

After the drivers are approved, he added, they attend training workshops on how to use the app and how to communicate with customers. Speaking loudly, smoking and using cellphones are prohibited in their eight-hour workday.

He pointed out that disabled people and elderly customers who cannot use a smartphone can call the company's hotline to book a taxi. The hotline also receives clients' complaints and comments about the drivers 24/7.

The app allows customers to select between two ways of paying  with cash or a credit card.

This new service has come after nearly three years of foreign-owned cab-hailing services, like Uber, dominating the Egyptian market.

In November 2014, Uber, the US worldwide online transportation network company based in San Francisco, launched its operation in Egypt. Its app spread quickly among Egyptians in the capital and in other governorates. According to the latest data issued by Uber in late 2016, there are 40,000 drivers working with Uber in Cairo, Alexandria, the Egyptian tourist resort El Gouna and the northern coast of Egypt.

Uber's rapid growth among customers in the Egyptian street irked local taxi drivers, who held many demonstrations to condemn its presence in the country. The drivers grumbled about Uber drivers who used their private-licensed cars, claiming that they dont pay the same kind of taxes annually to the state and they don't have the same licensing procedures.

Samir Mouris, one of the drivers who enrolled with Taxi Plus, is one of the sufferers. He believes that the appearance of the foreign cab-hailing service in the country had a bad effect on his livelihood.

"I swear that my daily income is badly affected. I lost most of my clients, who went to use Uber instead," Mouris said.

Mouris, a father of four, explained that before the appearance of Uber in Egypt, he earned 400 Egyptian pounds ($22) per day; now he earns approximately 150 Egyptian pounds ($8) a day.

He said he was in contact with his past clients and told them he was available when they needed him for a ride. They havent called him for nearly two years. So he had to roam the streets searching for clients.

"I find only the elderly people who want to take a ride to their former workplaces to get their pensions," he said with a bitter voice, adding that the other clients are poor workers and craftsmen who feel that the normal taxi fare is expensive.

Mouris, however, doesn't blame the customers for using the cab-hailing services. He admitted that some taxi drivers who refuse to drive to remote places or refuse to turn on the meters or who talk rudely are to blame for tarnishing the image of all taxi drivers.

Thus, he puts great hope in this new app that will provide better service to the clients.

"Above all, it's an Egyptian company whose money pumps into the Egyptian market. I will encourage my colleagues to enroll in it. We will work hard to regain and increase our clients and correct the bad image of taxi drivers."

Ahmed Hassan, an employee at one of the private banks in Egypt, told Al-Monitor that he usually uses Uber and he will not return to use traditional taxis anymore.

"The cars are clean and most of the drivers are well-educated and respectable. This comfortable atmosphere encourages me to use them more and more rather than try a new service that I cannot guarantee its success," Hassan said.

However, Reham Arafa, a medical student, joined Taxi Plus and left Careem, an app-based car-booking service company based in Dubai.

She used the new app twice and said she didn't feel any differences between the two apps. "I will support the Egyptian service with love. Egyptians should stand together and encourage such a local service. We should give those drivers a chance," she said.
January 5, 2017

Spurred by anger at the West, Turkey appears to be moving increasingly into Russias political orbit, especially in Syria. The Dec. 31 adoption by the UN Security Council of a resolution welcoming the cease-fire Turkey and Russia brokered in Syria was a diplomatic coup for Ankara and their efforts to end the crisis. The widespread coverage of the Turkish-Russian initiative also put Turkey back in the international spotlight as a regional power whose contributions could help end the bloody conflict. Having been sidelined for some time in attempts to end the Syrian war, Turkey now has the opportunity to return to center stage as a key regional player. This is not guaranteed, however, as there are hurdles that still must be overcome. Ankara seems nevertheless ready to exert more effort in doing so.

Despite the anti-Iranian mood in Turkey that peaked after the fall of Aleppo, Ankara is maintaining a close dialogue with Tehran on regional issues. Turkey has also decided to normalize its tense ties with Iraq. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone conversation Dec. 30 with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, although the two were hurling abuses at each other not so long ago over differences involving Turkeys military presence in Iraq. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is planning to visit Baghdad in the coming days.

The success of Turkeys new foreign policy orientation will depend in the first instance on the shape its current cooperation takes with Russia in Syria. If their cooperation produces results endorsed by the United Nations, then Ankara can look forward to a more decisive role in the region. The crucial question is whether Turkey is trying to move toward a balanced, multidimensional approach on foreign policy that requires cooperating with Russia, Iran and Iraq, in addition to having ties with the West or whether it is changing sides as a reaction to the West.

It is no secret that Erdogan sees ties with Russia as a way to counterbalance deteriorating ties with the United States and Europe and has even expressed a desire to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, led by Russia and China. The quandary for Turkey, however, is that Russian and Western positions on certain issues of great importance to Ankara in Syria are not that far apart, as for instance in regard to the People's Protection Units (YPG) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Turkey says the YPG and the PYD are terrorist groups linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party, but it has failed to convince the United States  which is cooperating militarily with the YPG against the Islamic State (IS)  and Russia. Notably, however, while Turkey openly expresses its anger at the United States and Europe for their refusal to see these Kurdish groups as terrorist organizations, it is silent about Russias ties with them.

Ankara remains determined to fight the YPG and prevent the PYD from establishing an autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria. There are indications, however, that in Syria it will focus its energy in the coming period on fighting IS. There seems to be a tacit understanding in Ankara that Russian and US support in Syria depends on the Turkish military only fighting IS and other terrorist groups.

Another quandary for Ankara is that relying on Russia in Syria may not in the end bring about the political results it desires, especially if the United States and Russia create room for cooperation during the Donald Trump administration. This could be why Ankara is not prepared to drift completely into the Russian fold, to the detriment of its ties with the West, regardless of the anger it feels toward the United States and Europe and its claims that they are aiding and abetting terrorism against Turkey.

Yildirim provided an example of this ambivalent position during an address to parliament Jan. 3. [The United States] is openly giving arms to the YPG and PYD so that there can be more anarchy and terrorism in Turkey, he angrily proclaimed, going on to reason that Washington was combating IS only with words, while Turkey was doing the hard work.

We expect the new administration to end this disgraceful behavior, Yildirim said, underlining that Ankara was being accusatory only toward the Barack Obama administration, which he called out, and not the incoming one.

Yalcin Akdogan, a Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy and a former deputy prime minister, who also writes a column for the pro-government daily Star, acknowledged that the political and military ties between Turkey and the United States have always been important, despite current differences.

We hope that President Trump will end this oddity and pursue policies that respect our longstanding alliance, Akdogan wrote in his column. What Turkey wants from the United States is not much, it just wants to see friendship from its friend.

It was also telling that only two days before Yildirim blasted the Obama administration, Erdogan talked with Obama by phone. According to the readout of their conversation, Obama offered his condolences for the attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, in which 39 people died. Obama also welcomed Turkeys ongoing efforts to work with regional actors to facilitate a nationwide cease-fire in Syria and a return to political negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition. The readout noted that the sides agreed on the need to continue and deepen coordination between the United States and Turkey.

In the meantime, not everyone who supports Erdogan and the ruling AKP is happy with the move toward Russia. Akif Beki, a columnist for the daily Hurriyet who served as government press secretary while Erdogan was prime minister, has cautioned against veering toward Russia to the detriment of Turkeys ties with the West.

Beki said Russias record on double standards is no better than the United States or the European Unions and underlined Russias role in the destruction of Aleppo. He argued that no one could convince him that Russia would be a better ally than the EU. Beki also cautioned that after Trump takes power, his relationship with Putin could undermine Turkeys efforts to counterbalance its tense ties with the United States should he develop closer ties with Moscow.

Ahmet Tasgetiren, an Islamist columnist for the Star, also cautioned about relying on Russia as a counterbalance to the West. If it starts endangering Turkeys interests in the future, will we feel the need to counterbalance Russia? If so, who will we do this with? Tasgetiren recently wrote in his column. In diplomacy, it is risky to place all of ones eggs in a single basket.

Turkeys current cooperation with Russia may have put it back in the limelight, especially with regard to efforts aimed at resolving the Syrian crisis, but it appears that ties with Russia alone will not ensure that Turkey becomes the regional pace-setter it dreams of being. For that to happen, Ankara has to put more effort into increasing the number of friends it has and reducing its enemies, as Yildirim promised to do after he became prime minister in 2016. There are indications that Turkey may already have begun to do this.

It is nevertheless clear that unless Turkey improves ties with its natural allies in the West and maintains a delicate balance between the United States and Russia on regional issues, it will always end up hanging on the coattails of one superpower or the other.
January 5, 2017

The country is at a critical juncture  or perhaps beyond it. Because of the sad loss of democracy within its borders and the repeated mistakes of [Turkey's] AKP [Justice and Development Party] government in Syria, because of the turbulence of the Middle East and the changing world scene, our big cities have become a new front for terrorists. Once we thought Turkey would be a shining role model for the Muslim world; now we are worried that our country may in fact be following some of its worst examples.

These are the concluding remarks of renowned Turkish novelist Elif Shafak in a Jan. 3 piece in the British daily The Guardian. Within the first hour of the first day of 2017, terror had struck once again in Istanbul, taking 39 lives, heralding another gloomy year ahead for the Turks and leading to Shafaks anguished lines.

Her piece is just one of many linking the latest escalation of terror in Turkey to the Syrian situation; indeed, this has been a recurring theme in this Al-Monitor column. In the space of a month, Turkey (Istanbul twice) has been rocked by three big terror attacks that have led many people to see a correlation between President Recep Tayyip Erdogans policies in Syria and their blowback in bloody terror attacks at home.

Veteran Middle East expert Patrick Cockburn writes in The Independent that what makes terrorism in Turkey different from that in Europe and the Middle East is not the number of dead, but the diversity of those carrying out terror attacks.

He wrote, "The killing by an Islamic State [IS] gunman of 39 civilians in a nightclub in Istanbul is the latest massacre in Turkey, where such slaughter is now happening every few weeks. The perpetrators may differ, but the cumulative effect of these atrocities is to persuade Turks that they live in an increasingly frightening and unstable country. It is also clear that the Turkish government does not know what to do to stop the attacks."

He sees, as I do: The government in Ankara is making the usual noises about tracking these different groups 'to their lairs.' But this will be easier said than done. Both [IS] and the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers Party] have established powerful de facto states in Syria and Iraq, something that could only have happened because of Erdogans ill-conceived involvement in the Syrian civil war after 2011.

It is almost an established fact that IS once used Turkey as a passage route, transfer point and sanctuary. Thanks to the benevolent attitude of Erdogans rule, the Salafi creed spread in Turkey; over Turkeys fertile soil, scores  if not hundreds  of IS cells flourished. Now, IS denounces Turkey as an enemy and the Erdogan government as apostate. Because of purges in Turkeys security apparatus in the wake of the failed July coup, a huge intelligence vacuum was created, one that is almost impossible to fill within a decade. This, in turn, has encouraged actors from the multiple fronts Erdogan engaged in an unwinnable war in Syria to retaliate with terror and impunity on Turkish soil.

There is unfortunately every indicator that terror will be hitting Turkey in force during 2017, and there does not seem to be much that the current government can do to prevent it.

In times of crisis when violence stalks the land, people cry out for a strongman to get a grip on the problem. But what if terrorism spawns chaos in a country already under the thumb of a strong man? Mark Almond asked in the Daily Telegraph. For him, Turkey is in a uniquely awful position. It now has the strongest president since the military coup in 1980, possibly since Ataturk himself ninety years ago.

He continued, But President Erdogans extraordinary skill in consolidating his power has not been matched by an ability to solve the countrys problems. Bizarrely, Erdogan is a control freak who is not really on top of the threats facing his society. If anything his capricious style of government has bred them. By arming and encouraging radical jihadis to fight Assads regime in Syria, Erdogan ignored the risks of blowback.

The picture of Turkey displayed in the first days of 2017 betrays the myopic evaluations of those who inadvertently presented Turkey next to Russia as among the winners in Syria. On the contrary, because of the developments related to Syria or its wrongheaded policies there, Turkey is destabilized. What is more alarming is that its instability could become permanent.

Turkey is the co-initiator, with Russia, of the fragile cease-fire in Syria; Russia is the main protagonist for the upcoming Syria peace conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 23.

However, Turkey's posture has been achieved only by forfeiting all the tenets of its Syrian policy since 2011.

Syria expert Emile Hokayem, in a Dec. 30 New York Times op-ed piece titled How Syria defeated the Sunni Powers, wrote, Of the three Sunni powers, Turkey has the deepest involvement.  Since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost favor with Washington and Europe over his domestic crackdown and foreign adventures, his fortunes are now tied to Russian good will. Moscow is exploiting Turkeys weakness.

The Russian goodwill only materialized in return for Turkeys acceptance  and even its assistance  in the fall of Aleppo. Turkey, in order to ride the Russian bandwagon, distanced itself from the armed opposition groups that had depended on Turkish support since 2011, the year the Syrian uprising started. The draft copy of the Russian-Turkish agreement says that the Turkish government guarantees the commitment of the opposition in all the areas that the opposition controls to the cease-fire, including any type of shelling.

Those elements of the Syrian opposition that relied on Erdogans Turkey are now at its mercy, as Erdogans Syria policy, which has narrowed down to one of preventing Kurds from having any gains, is at Russias mercy.

Remembering how and from where Turkeys Syria policy began and seeing the point it is at now, it would not be imprudent to say that Turkey is among the biggest losers in Syria.

The most perilous outcome might be that because of Syria, Turkey could also become the loser in its own country.
January 4, 2017

When asked about the state of relations between the United States and Turkey, a veteran Turkish diplomat who did not want to be identified told Al-Monitor, Relations on the ground are not warm. Diplomatic developments occur nonstop. Unpredictability, ambiguity and a serious crisis of confidence dominate. It is certainly the worst crisis between the United States and Turkey since 2003.

After hearing the same views from several sources in Ankara, it is clear that the rift between Ankara and Washington over the Syrian crisis is becoming a crisis in itself, one that could have serious ramifications on the ground and in the diplomatic arena.

Moscow is adeptly using the semi-paralyzed state of US decision-making, pending the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Russian-Turkish cooperation, which was evident on the ground in Syria with the evacuation of opposition groups from Aleppo, has sidelined the United States and Europe. Following that move, Moscow and Ankara guaranteed a Syria-wide cease-fire starting Dec. 30.

Although it is not clear exactly what the cease-fire agreement stipulates and who will be supervising it, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to abide by it and will be participating in the proposed talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. These are clear signs of Assads acquiescence to the Russia-Turkey initiative.

Cooperation between Ankara and Moscow is also indicated by the Turkish military command's statement that the Russian air force bombed Islamic State (IS) targets south of al-Bab, Syria, on Dec. 28-29, in support of Turkeys Operation Euphrates Shield.

This was the first time Russia had provided air support for Euphrates Shield, which has been going on for some 130 days, claiming the lives of 40 Turkish soldiers.

Ankara, assisted by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), has been trying to expel IS from al-Bab for 40 days and is now at a critical threshold. The operation that was launched Aug. 24 with 600 soldiers (two reinforced mechanized battalions and 10-12 special forces teams) today has reached a strength of 4,000 Turkish soldiers. With its current order of battle around al-Bab, the Turkish army has exceeded the strength of the FSA, which was supposed to be primary ground force. That is critically important, because some FSA elements have withdrawn from combat and because of their lack of discipline in the field, Turkish commandos are now engaged in front-line fighting against IS.

Turkish troops are trying to enter al-Bab from six points in the towns north and west. The siege is not air-tight, as al-Babs east and southeast are still wide open. If IS wants, it can easily withdraw from al-Bab but  as it is doing at Mosul  it seems determined to stay and fight. IS has evacuated its dependents from al-Bab while moving in reinforcements from Raqqa  a sure sign that it will be digging its heels in al-Bab. In addition, the Syrian national army, which recently took over control of Aleppo, is close to al-Bab. Both Turkish and Syrian forces are avoiding contacts so as not to trigger a new clash. But that risk is still there.

The siege of al-Bab makes the Turkish army the world's third conventional force engaged in actual warfare against IS. Adverse weather conditions at al-Bab have been allowing only occasional air support. Moreover, there are reports the Turkish army is having logistical, supply and evacuation problems. Nevertheless, Ankara is determined to capture al-Bab. It appears Moscow has been persuaded, as seen from its recent air support. The coalition purportedly set up to fight IS is not contributing anything to Turkeys al-Bab operations, which have inflicted the heaviest casualties on IS and broken its back.

As the siege of al-Bab is prolonged, the crisis between Ankara and Washington amplifies. On Dec. 27, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed Turkey has not been getting adequate support from the US-led coalition forces. He accused coalition forces of supporting IS, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD) and so, "We will cut our own umbilical cord and sever ties with the coalition, he said.

The US reaction came Dec. 28 in an unusually strong statement from the US Embassy in Ankara that said the US government is not supporting IS and has not supplied weapons and explosives to YPG or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

This was the first statement of its nature from the embassy that triggered an equally stern reaction from Erdogan. On Dec. 29, he said, In our al- Bab operation, we do not get the slightest support from NATO, from so-called allied countries that have forces in the region.

With widely divergent goals on the ground and the growing crisis of confidence between them, it is not possible for Turkey and the United States to coordinate an operation in Raqqa. That is why the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have suspended their attacks against Raqqa. It now appears that the outcome west of the Euphrates River and the future of al-Bab will also decide the future of Raqqa.

Moreover, the "Moscow Declaration" signed Dec. 20 by Iran, Russia and Turkey recognizes the territorial integrity of Syria and does not allow for the PYD's demand for autonomy in northern Syria. But by that same declaration, Ankara appears to recognize the sovereignty of Damascus, including in the north of the country. In other words, even if Turkey captures al-Bab from IS, it may have to hand it over to the Syrian government. Next is likely to be an imminent crisis over Manbij, which is still controlled by the US-supported Kurdish YPG, despite Turkeys persistent demands for the Kurds to leave.

Why is Ankara so tough on Washington?

There are four reasons. First is President Barack Obama's consideration of the PKK-linked YPG force as a local ally in the fight against IS. In Ankara that is perceived as "Obama prefers the PKK to us."

The second reason is domestic politics. Despite all these foreign policy issues and Syrian affairs, Ankaras main political agenda in the first months of 2017 will be the highly contentious matter of Erdogan's leadership transition to the executive presidency. Any success or failure in foreign policy issues will be used for domestic consumption  Erdogan will now have two ideal scapegoats in case things do not go well at al-Bab: the United States and NATO. Erdogan will easily market a narrative of, "The United States has spoiled our goals at al-Bab," in case of a failure. That will allow him a gracious escape from domestic pressures.

The third reason is Ankaras wish to pressure the incoming Trump administration regarding PYD and PKK matters before Jan. 20. The goal is to force Trump's people to choose between supporting Turkey or the PYD and thus compel Washington to end its support of the PYD.

The final reason is Russia. With this harsh rhetoric toward the Obama administration, Ankara seeks to institutionalize its "pop-up alliance" with Russia. Ankara is likely to suggest that Russia has taken great initiative during this transition period while the United States waits in the wings for Jan. 20. Moscow needs Turkey to get the European Union and NATO into a crisis marked by an uncertain outcome. Here, as a regional actor in the West's camp for both the economy and security, if Turkey changes its geopolitical (NATO) and geo-economic (EU) orientation, it will further accelerate the tectonic changes proposed by Russia in the region. Simply put, Russia is delighted that its honeymoon with Turkey has created trouble in the Wests security system.

It is therefore not surprising that the eyes of Moscow, Washington, Tehran, Damascus and definitely Ankara are trained on al-Bab. How will the Turkish army perform there? How will Turkish diplomacy handle military success or failure there? We will learn soon enough.

Editor's note: This article has been updated since its initial publication.
Alabama's auto workers are continuing a brisk production pace.

For the second year in a row, the state's three automakers combined to produce more than 1 million vehicles last year, according to preliminary figures from Honda, Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz. And 2016 saw a 1.4 percent increase over the previous year.

The factories produced at least 1,048,597 cars, trucks and SUVs in 2016.

That's following a record production year for the Lincoln Honda plant, a robust year for Montgomery's Hyundai factory, which included the production of the Santa Fe SUV, and another year of at least 300,000 vehicles at Tuscaloosa's Mercedes-Benz as the plant continues an expansion.

Mercedes typically releases its final production figures later in the year.

Hyundai also assembled an estimated 682,700 engines in 2016.

Greg Canfield, secretary of the Alabama Department of Commerce, said the numbers indicate production will "remain strong in the years to come."

"Alabama's auto industry continues to be a powerful force for the companies that have planted deep roots here, as well as for the skilled, dedicated workers of our state," Canfield said.

In addition, it was a record year for Toyota's Huntsville engine factory, which produced 702,014 engines, an 11 percent increase from 2015 and a new high watermark there.

The plant, which is the only Toyota operation producing four-cylinder, V6 and V8 engines, is scheduled to produce its 5 millionth engine this year.

Steve Sewell, executive vice president of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, said the state's automakers "continue to bring positive recognition to Alabama, our workforce and climate for business."
Ronda Robinson.JPG

Ronda Robinson started at WBRC/Fox 6 in Birmingham, Ala., in 2000 and hosted the station's "On Your Side" consumer investigative series. (Photo courtesy of WBRC/Fox 6)

Television journalist Ronda Robinson is leaving Birmingham's WBRC/Fox 6 after 17 years at the station.

Robinson is best known to Fox 6 viewers as the station's "On Your Side" reporter, who worked with the Call for Action team of volunteers to help consumers resolve disputes with businesses and companies. She also was a news anchor at the station.

"This new year starts with a new chapter in my life," Robinson wrote in a post on her Facebook page today. "I am leaving WBRC after 17 years of service.

"I really appreciate the guidance, support and cheers during my career. WBRC employees and viewers have become my extended family. You have celebrated the birth of my child, my work as a consumer advocate, my transition to the anchor desk, my marriage and so much more.

"I am honored say that I had the chance to work with THE BEST team of Call for Action volunteers. Together we have recovered more than $6 million for viewers who contacted us for help. Thank you for trusting me to solve your problems, answer your questions and address those who needed to be held accountable."

In 2001 and 2002, Robinson received Associated Press awards for her coverage of the Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry murder trials, according to her bio on the Fox 6 website. Blanton and Cherry were convicted for their parts in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls in 1963. Her consumer news also earned her an Associated Press award in 2003 and a regional Emmy nomination in 2004.

Before coming to Birmingham, Robinson worked as both a reporter and anchor for television stations in North Carolina, Florida and South Carolina, according to her bio.

Robinson said in her Facebook post that has not decided what she will do next.

"Doors are opening for me in ways that I never imagined," she wrote. "I have the opportunity to leave Alabama to pursue my dream of being a full-time anchor or explore another desire, which is to take a break from television and accept a communications position here in town. I have not yet decided which door to walk through.

"I am presently focusing on my family as we deal with some serious health issues. Thanks for your prayers. I know with your support the best is yet to come."

Efforts to reach Robinson for additional comment are ongoing.
A man and a woman are facing heroin trafficking charges in Etowah County.

Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit Commander Randall Johnson said David Camp, 42, of Gadsden, and Winter Lauderdale, 23, of Albertville, have been charged with trafficking in heroin, two counts of drug possession, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Deputy Commander Phil Sims said Attalla police officers noticed a suspicious vehicle parked behind a gas station after hours at approximately 2 a.m. Jan. 2.

Winter Lauderdale

Officers learned Lauderdale had a warrant for her arrest from Albertville police. A search turned up more than 4.5 grams of heroin, two small bags of methamphetamine, suboxone strips, marijuana, a small caliber pistol and drug paraphernalia.

Camp and Lauderdale were arrested and transported to the Etowah County Detention Center where they remain under $50,000 bond each. The two may face additional charges related to the weapon, Sims said.

FBI North Alabama Safe Streets Task Force participated in the case.
Friday forecast.jpg

Forecasters are fairly confident that it's going to snow somewhere in Alabama on Friday. But where and how much? (NWS)

Snow is going to fall somewhere in Alabama.

That's all that is absolutely certain about the upcoming winter weather event that is set to kick off on Friday.

Why so many uncertainties? Here's a look at a few things making Friday's weather forecast particularly challenging.

1. Forecasting snow is hard.

And it's not only rough here in the South. It's a headache felt in a lot of places farther north that deal with winter precipitation more than Alabama does.

See?

Snow forecasting is tough. Expect several forecast updates thru afternoon/evening. Don't focus on exact numbers and areas.  NWS Norman (@NWSNorman) January 5, 2017

The same thinking is true here in Alabama. As of Thursday evening east-central Alabama looked to be the sweet spot for snow, but that could change before the first flake falls tomorrow.

There are a lot of variables at play, and computer models are not foolproof when it comes to handling winter precipitation in the South.

In fact, models have been disagreeing for days on where and how much snow was possible over Alabama. The weather service noted on Thursday evening that they were starting to come into more agreement.

The weather service in Birmingham earlier Thursday noted that Friday's winter weather event presented a particularly "complex meteorology setup" and said it would be next to impossible to nail down who gets more snow and who gets less.



Which leads to point No. 2:

2. Not everyone is going to get snow.

Sorry, but it's true. Some parts of the state could get up to 3 inches -- and some areas could get nada.

Forecasters have a good idea of where they think the heaviest snow will fall, but the rubber really won't hit the road until the storm system gets closer.

Friday's precipitation could come in two doses.

The first will be primarily across north and north-central Alabama when a front comes through. The front was expected to produce light snow, with a dusting to 2 inches possible across northern parts of the state.

A second dose of winter precipitation was expected later on Friday and could primarily affect central and south Alabama.

A lot will depend on an area of low pressure that was expected to track across the Gulf on Friday.

Coastal lows "are always a nightmare" when it comes to winter weather, according to one weather service forecaster.

How far north that low moves toward the coast will ultimately determine who gets snow and who gets left out in the cold.

The weather service will also be watching to see how strong the low is and how much moisture it can pull northward over Alabama.

3. There's the potential for a dose of sleet and ice.

(National Weather Service)

The weather service in Birmingham on Thursday was growing more concerned about the potential for sleet and freezing rain across portions of south-central Alabama.

Some areas may start off as sleet and transition to snow. But other spots could be stuck with sleet, and the weather service noted on Thursday afternoon that the "impacts could be significant."

4. A winter weather advisory is actually an upgrade from a winter storm watch.

This is something the weather service took pains to stress on Thursday.

An advisory is a step up from a watch, but a step down from a warning.

So to go from a winter storm watch to an advisory is NOT a downgrade.

Weather service offices often have different criteria for a winter weather advisory, but in general is issued for a weather event that is expected to cause "significant inconveniences" according to the weather service.

In case you were wondering, here's our winter weather product criteria. However, we also factor in potential impacts. #alwx pic.twitter.com/moe4r2IVVd  NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) January 5, 2017

For north Alabama an advisory is issued when there is the potential for 1-2 inches of sleet or snow and/or a quarter-inch of freezing rain.

For south Alabama an advisory means that less than 2 inches of snow or sleet or between 0.1 and 0.9 inches of freezing rain is possible.

5. Alabama snow events don't follow the script too often.

Birmingham roadways after "Snowmaggedon 2014." (AL.com photo)

Take the forecast into account, but be ready for anything on Friday. Forecasters know this all too well.

Prime Example No. 1 for this theory is the so-called "Snowmaggedon" of 2014, which stranded thousands of people on icy roadways for hours in sub-freezing temperatures and caused all kinds of general havoc in north and central Alabama.

And just last year Alabama saw one of its biggest snowstorms on record when more than a foot of snow fell in parts of north-central Alabama.

According to the weather service the highest unofficial measurement was 12.7 inches from Guin. Meanwhile, the weather service noted, much of the rest of central Alabama was disappointed to be stuck with a cold rain instead.
Johannesburg, South Africa  Its still early, but scores of women are already steadily filing into the Pimville Community Hall in Soweto, Johannesburg. The women fill out their details with the welcoming volunteers at the front desk, take a seat facing the stage and wait patiently.

When most of the seats are filled, Samantha Ngcolomba, a lean and energetic 33-year-old lawyer dressed in a buttoned-up white shirt and dark jeans, greets the women warmly, flitting between Sesotho, Xhosa and English. She skims over the order of proceedings for the morning and then leads a short prayer and gospel hymn. The women harmonise effortlessly. Some of them bounce small children or grandchildren gently on their laps as they sing.

Ngcolomba is the founder of Lady Liberty, a mobile legal office that she takes across various communities still relegated to the peripheries of South African society, bringing free legal information and services to some of South Africas most marginalised women.

These women, old and young, routinely bear the brunt of South Africas vast socioeconomic disparity, and a deeply ingrained culture of gender-based violence that is clearly evident in the countrys sobering rape statistics. Roughly 150 women report being raped to the South African Police Services each day. The numbers were most recently reiterated by the brutal murder of Noluvo Swelindawo at the beginning of December.

I think that so many women in townships and rural areas are really broken and they dont have access to the resources that they need to fix themselves, Ngcolomba tells Al Jazeera. Law is one of those resources and, without it, these women are being denied a basic human right.

READ MORE: DRC  Mobile courts deliver justice to remote areas

Legal roadshows

Originally from Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe, Ngcolomba moved to South Africa in 2003 to study law at the University of Cape Town, graduating in 2007. She did her articles at a Cape Town law firm, then went on to work on a human trafficking project under the International Organization for Migration, funded by various United Nations departments.

Afterwards, she spent a year with another Cape Town law firm before moving to Johannesburg in 2012 and started a firm of her own, which never got off the ground.

Undeterred, Ngcolomba subsequently set up and registered CSI Boutique, a corporate social responsibility advisory firm. Lady Liberty started out as a flagship project under the umbrella of CSI Boutique, and now functions as a registered nonprofit organisation.

I hate injustice. And while I cant solve homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, HIV and Aids and so on, I can make some difference in the human rights space, which is both my passion and qualification, she tells Al Jazeera.

Lady Liberty also looks to tackle what Ngcolomba believes is a dysfunctional South African pro bono system  while legislation states that it is mandatory for all lawyers in South Africa to do 20 to 24 hours of pro bono work a year, Ngcolomba says that this is not happening in practice:

The compulsory pro bono hours are not properly policed. People get away with not helping anyone. There are no repercussions. The legal resource does not meet the immense need, she claims. Ngcolomba says she created Lady Liberty to both literally and figuratively cover this gap.

Until recently, Ngcolomba was driving all over Johannesburgs townships assisting women on her own. It was physically and emotionally exhausting work, and Ngcolomba admits that she was sometimes ill-equipped to deal with the levels of demand.





But Ngcolomba is now steadily establishing a growing network of lawyers from which she looks to leverage the mandatory pro bono hours for assistance with her legal roadshows. She then places attendees with a specific professional lawyer to take their cases forward beyond the roadshows whenever necessary, also on a pro bono basis.

Since its inception in 2014, Lady Liberty has already reached about 1,500 women across seven different communities. Ngcolomba aims to increase the number of women reached by Lady Liberty to 5,000 within the next five years. A new interactive Lady Liberty app is due to launch in January 2017, and Ngcolomba hopes that this will dramatically expand Lady Libertys reach across South Africa, and eventually across Africa.

A necessary shift

After the hymn, the women in Pimville Community Hall in Soweto are split into smaller groups, depending on their needs.

There are six circles of plastic chairs around the edge of the large hall, each labelled with a hand-scrawled paper sign: domestic violence, marriage, maintenance, housing, wills, divorce.

At each station, professional Johannesburg lawyers who have volunteered their pro bono hours to Lady Liberty assist the women with their various queries and concerns, listening intently and then giving informed legal advice.

Occasionally, a lawyer would have to leave the hall for a moment, just to cry.

Palesa Lepule, 25, is a lawyer working for Norton Rose Attorneys in Sandton, a particularly affluent area of downtown Johannesburg. Lepule says she has a passionate interest in legal issues concerning women and children and volunteers with the organisation.

The South African legal system is not accessible to those who need it most, Lepule says. A lot of people dont have the transport or means to get legal services, so the mobility of Lady Liberty is critical  now were going to them. It is beginning to break down barriers of access. Its a very necessary shift.

Among the women who have come to seek assistance from the lawyers is Dlamini*, 55, who has for years been battling for custody of her 12-year-old granddaughter. Dlamini says that her daughter, a single mother, died in 2007 and that she subsequently took care of her child with learning disabilities.

Dlamini claims that after a family feud in 2012, her granddaughter was taken away from her by social workers without prior consultation or notification and placed in the custody of an abusive male relative. She says she has been unable to establish any contact with the child since and does not even know where she is.

Among other legal documents, Dlamini has brought with her to the roadshow the court order granting her custody of her granddaughter. Before I found Lady Liberty, wherever I went, no one would help me get her back, she tells Al Jazeera.

At the other side of the hall, Rachel Dipuwo, 56, waits to speak to the lawyer allocated to divorce cases.

Dipuwo is a divorced grandmother who has come to Pimville to seek help with obtaining child maintenance payments from her recently deceased ex-husbands provident fund. She says she had paid about $220 to a local lawyer to help her, but that he had done nothing to date and is no longer answering her calls.

Dipuwo heard about Lady Liberty in an interview with Ngcolomba on local radio and decided to travel across Soweto to attend the roadshow.

Before, we women didnt have this power, she says. But today, because of Lady Liberty, we are learning how to raise our voices.

Other women at the Pimville roadshow come with more aspirational aims. Cristina Seyabelo, 58, is seeking legal insight into how to start her own business as a motivational speaker, with a particular focus on overcoming the challenges of living with albinism.

What Ive seen today is the way that people can come together and support each other. We are not charity cases. We dont want to be given something. We want to learn how to do things for ourselves, Seyabelo says.

Motivated by a similar desire, Tholakele Dube, 23, has come to Pimville with a view to furthering her work with Lifeline, where she provides counselling and support to a number of women suffering from the trauma of domestic violence and rape.

We have a lot of problems with gender violence in our communities. But many of our clients dont have a lot of access to information that they need to do anything about it. They are scared of going to court or to the police station. We are here to learn from Lady Liberty, because if we have knowledge and information about the legal rights of women we work with it can help us to empower them so that they can speak up, Dube says.

MAGAZINE: Mother Justice  waging a war on rape

More women who need these services

At around 1pm, the roadshow slowly winds down, and the women are served sandwiches and drinks before they make their way back to their homes across the substantial sprawl of Soweto.

A tired Ngcolomba expresses mixed feelings about the event.

Women leave here empowered. And just mere information can help them say, Actually, I can do this because this is what the law affords me. So, then, there is a lot of fighting that they can do on their own with that information. But Id always love to see more women because I know there are a lot more women who need these services.

Ngcolomba says that access remains an issue for many; one woman who had attended the Pimville roadshow had taken three different minibus taxis to get there.

But fear is also a major obstacle to Lady Libertys work. Husbands will forbid their wives from attending, Ngcolomba says. Even those that do attend are often seriously fearful of the repercussions from their husbands.

She recounts an incident at a previous roadshow in Yeoville where local men went so far as to tear up Lady Liberty flyers in the faces of volunteers and loitered outside the premises to disrupt proceedings and try to prevent women from entering.

But Ngcolomba says this merely steeled her resolve to continue trying to help the women in that area.

Im not trying to be a hero, she says matter-of-factly, Im just trying to solve problems.

*Name changed for privacy.
The story of Mohammad Bakhtar, who lost a leg while rescuing a stray dog trapped in a minefield, has gone viral in Iran.

Tehran  A young Sunni soldier has become a national hero in Shia-majority Iran after being mutilated while trying to save a stray dog trapped in a minefield.

The story of Mohammad Bakhtar, 19, has gone viral in the country, with supportive tweets and photos pouring in since the incident at an Iranian military base last month.

On the freezing afternoon of December 17, Bakhtar noticed the dog caught in barbed wire around a minefield near an ammunition depot. Hearing the dogs plaintive cries, Bakhtar rushed over to free the injured animal  and seconds later, a mine exploded, shattering his right leg.

I was standing at my post that day  I heard the poor dog moaning non-stop, Bakhtar told Al Jazeera. I knew that it was a minefield, but I couldnt reach the poor dog. Finally, I finally put my right foot to the other side of the barbed fence to release the dog. As soon as he ran, [the mine exploded].

Doctors in the northwestern city of Tabriz attempted for hours to reattach Bakhtars leg, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

Although Tabriz has a history of ethnoreligious conflict dating back to the Ottoman Empire and, today, maintains a significant Shia majority, thousands of people from all walks of life, including local officials, queued up outside the hospital to pay tribute to the young Sunni soldier. Photos of Bakhtar inside the hospital, and later arriving to a heros welcome in his hometown of Marivan, were shared widely on the Telegram messenger app throughout the country.

I salute this young soldier as the symbol of honour and bravery, and wish the Middle East had many like him as a panacea for long-existing problems, one girl from Tehran tweeted.

Cyclist Kamal Rastkhani said that he had travelled more than 300 kilometres in snow and freezing weather to pay homage to Bakhtar as the symbol of love for Gods creatures.

Others have called for Bakhtar to receive insurance and a new job, while Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, who heads the Environmental Protection Organisation (EPO), called Bakhtar personally and publicly praised him as a source of honour and pride for every Iranian.

Ebtekar has reportedly offered Bakhtar a job in the EPO, which he has responded to with enthusiasm, saying this would allow him to fulfil a childhood dream by working close to nature.

In a telephone interview after his arrival back in Marivan last week, Bakhtar told Al Jazeera that he did not regret his actions on that December afternoon.

I was in pain, but it gave me a very good feeling that thousands of people came to the hospital to visit me, he said, noting that if he saw the dog in that condition again, he would do exactly the same thing.

I love animals. I love nature, Bakhtar added, noting that he grew up in a small village on the outskirts of Marivan, where his family raised cattle and had a dog. When they moved to the city, he missed the pastoral life, he said.

I didnt have any chance to keep my dog in the city anymore, he said. I went to high school and worked in the wood-working and carpentry workshop  very different from the way we lived in that beautiful village.

Upon returning to Marivan last week, Bakhtar was welcomed with much fanfare, including wreaths, flowers and banners printed with messages such as: You are the hero! and Welcome back, brave soldier.

Bakhtars older brother, Atta, 29, said that he was sorry for the pain his brother had experienced, but also proud.

I can recall dozens of times that he had battled for our cattle and his own dog. Hes so special, Atta told Al Jazeera.

Mohammad was halfway through with his 24-months military service, Atta added. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise for Mohammad to get back to nature and the way he loved to live all his life.
One of suspects behind last year attack that killed 20 foreigners and another alleged assailant killed in police raid.

Bangladeshi police have shot dead one of the masterminds of last years deadly siege at a cafe that killed 20 people, authorities have said.

The bodies of Nurul Islam Marzan and another man suspected of involvement in other deadly attacks and murders were found after a clash with police carrying out a raid in the capital, Dhaka, on Friday.

Marzan and his associate Saddam [Hossain] died in an encounter with police, Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Haque told the AFP news agency.



Bangladesh attack raises security questions

He [Marzan] was the operational commander of the July cafe attack. He was one of the masterminds of it.

In the siege at the upmarket Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1 last year 20 foreign hostages were shot or hacked to death.

Police said the second man, Hossain, was wanted in connection with at least 10 attacks on religious minorities, including the murder of Japanese farmer Kunio Hoshi outside the northern city of Rangpur in late 2015.

He was on the run after being charged with the murders of Hoshi, a Christian convert from Islam, a Hindu priest and a sufi leader, all carried out in northern Bangladesh over the past two years.

READ MORE: Dozens arrested for attacks on hindus in Bangladesh

The countrys security forces launched a deadly crackdown against fighters following the attack. Since the siege, security forces have killed about 50 fighters, including most of the alleged leaders of an armed group known as Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, posting images of the carnage as it happened and photos of the gunmen who had posed with the groups black flag.



Bangladesh cafe attack suspect killed in police raid

But Mohibul Islam Khan, the deputy chief of Dhaka polices counter-terrorism and transnational crime unit, said Marzan was known to be a member of JMB, joining the group after dropping out of Bangladeshs Chittagong University.

Along with Tamim [Ahmed Chowdhury], Marzan planned the Gulshan attack, Khan said, referring to the Canadian citizen of Bangladeshi descent who police described as the main mastermind of the siege.

Chowdhury was killed in another raid outside the capital in August last year. Later police also arrested Marzans wife in a raid in the capital and last month she gave birth to a daughter in custody.

Police intelligence had found that Marzan organised the cafe siege and was its operational commander, said Khan.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of attacks on foreigners, rights activists and members of religious minorities.
African-American suspects beat and taunted a mentally disabled white man and shared a video of the attack on Facebook.

Four people have been charged with hate crimes in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet.

The assault went on for hours, until the victim managed to escape.

The African-American suspects, who were jailed, can be heard in the video using profanities against their white victim, white people in general and President-elect Donald Trump.

CPD Arrested and Charged all four offenders with Hate Crime, as well as other charges. https://t.co/tqNH9eBISY  Chicago Police (@Chicago_Police) January 5, 2017

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators initially concluded that the 18-year-old man was singled out because he has special needs, not because he was white.

But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects use of racial slurs and their references to the victims disability.

It was also possible that the suspects were trying to extort something from the victims family, police said.

The mans parents reported their son missing on Monday and told authorities they later received text messages from people who claimed to be holding him captive.

WHAT HAPPENED, ACCORDING TO CHICAGO POLICE: The incident began on December 31, when the victim and one of the suspects, 18-year-old Jordan Hill, met at a suburban McDonalds to begin what both the victim and his parents believed would be a sleepover. Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived. The victim told police what began as playful fighting escalated, and he was bound, beaten and taunted with racial slurs and disparaging comments about his mental capacity. A downstairs neighbour who heard noises threatened to call police. When two of the suspects left and kicked down the neighbours door, the victim escaped. A police officer later spotted the obviously disoriented man wandering down a street. The man was bloodied and wearing a tank top that was inside-out and backward. He had on jean shorts and sandals, despite freezing weather. Later, police discovered that a live video of the attack was broadcast on Facebook by the attackers. Video show the victim with his mouth taped shut and slumped in a corner of a room. At least two assailants are seen cutting off his sweatshirt, and others taunt him off camera. The video shows a wound on the top of the mans head. One person pushes the mans head with his or her foot. A red band also appears to be around the victims hands. Authorities believe he was tied up for four to five hours.

The victim was a classmate of one of the attackers and initially went with that person voluntarily, police said.

Hes traumatised by the incident, and its very tough to communicate with him at this point, police commander Kevin Duffin said.

The victim is a suburban Chicago resident described by Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson as having mental health challenges.

Hate crime

There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified as being investigated as a hate crime, Johnson said. But we need to base the investigation on facts and not emotion.

The case heightened political tensions on social media, with some, including far-right activists, suggesting that it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.

Most hate crimes are connected to the victims race, but hate-crime charges can be sought in Illinois if a victims mental disability sparked an attack, though it is rare.

In addition to hate crimes, the four were charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint. Three were also charged with burglary.

They were to appear in court on Friday.

Illinois law makes hate crimes class 4 felonies, which generally call for a sentence of one to three years.

Kidnapping generally calls for three to seven years in prison. But attackers may be sentenced for aggravated kidnapping, which calls for a sentence of six to 30 years.

Chicago Cook County prosecutors identified the suspects as Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covingtons 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago.

In Washington, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the beating demonstrated a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans.

The video of the attack emerged at a time when police dealings with Chicagos black community are being closely watched. Less than a year ago, the nations third-largest police force was sharply criticised by a task force for using excessive force and honouring a code of silence.

The department has also been the subject of a long civil-rights investigation by the justice department, which is expected to report its findings soon.
President Erdogan says some refugees who pass screenings will be granted nationality to make use of their skills.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that some Syrian and Iraqi refugees who pass a screening process will be granted Turkish citizenship.

In a speech broadcast on television on Friday, Erdogan said that security checks would be carried out to determine who among the millions who fled war in their home countries were eligible for citizenship.

Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks have been carried out, he said.

There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Lets make use of that talent  Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, lets give them the chance to work as citizens like the children of this nation.

READ MORE: Reports of Turkey border guards killing Syrians denied

Erdogan added that the interior ministry is ready to implement the measure at any time. But he gave no further details, notably about how many would gain Turkish nationality.

According to Turkish government figures, the country is hosting more than three million Syrians and Iraqis who have fled conflict.

The Turkish leader outlined a naturalisation plan last summer but the idea was met with angry protests and xenophobic comments on social media.

The countrys political opposition saw the plan as a scheme to widen Erdogans electoral basis at a time when he is pushing for constitutional reform to strengthen his powers.
Republicans accuse President Obama of turning his back on Israel by not using veto in UN Security Council vote.

The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan measure that rebukes the United Nations for criticising Israeli settlements.

The congressional non-binding resolution was passed by 342 to 80 on Thursday. It declares unwavering support for Israel and insists that the United States reject any future UN actions that are similarly one-sided and anti-Israel.

Republicans used the debate to accuse President Barack Obama of turning his back on Israel over his administrations decision to abstain and allow the UN Security Council to approve in December a resolution calling settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a flagrant violation under international law.

Our government abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most, said House Speaker Paul Ryan.

It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN.

OPINION: The UN settlement resolution is too little and too late

The House measure divided Democrats with many saying they opposed it because it contained inaccuracies and distorted the complexities of the Middle East peace process.

They also accused Republicans of attacking Obama unfairly in the waning days of his presidency.

The point of the measure seems to be to bash Obama on the way out, said Democrat Gerry Connolly, who along with many others of his party still voiced strong support for Israel.

They said Obama deserved credit for engineering last years new, long-term security agreement that gives Israel $38bn in US military aid, including $5bn for missile defence.

A similar bipartisan measure to reprimand the UN has been introduced in the Senate.

Israel is always the bad guy in the eyes of the United Nations, said Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the measures co-sponsors.

Shameful ambush

Although the US is opposed to the settlements, it has traditionally used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to scuttle resolutions that condemn Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister, accused Obama of a shameful ambush and said he was looking forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump, whom he described as his friend.

But Secretary of State John Kerry said in a late December speech that the US was standing up for a two-state solution when it abstained on the resolution.

He criticised Israel for settlement building and blamed Netanyahu for dragging Israel away from democracy.

About 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements, which are illegal under international law and seen as a major stumbling block to peace efforts.

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war.
Announcement comes in reaction to recent UN vote condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

Correction: This story has been amended to remove a paragraph that said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, would be affected.

Israel says it is cutting a substantial amount in its annual dues to the United Nations this year in protest of last months Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity on occupied Palestinian territories.

The announcement made by Israels UN Mission on Friday stipulated that $6 million out of more than a regular $40 million allocated to anti-Israel bodies will be halted.

Israels UN Ambassador Danny Danon said: It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us at the UN. The UN must end the absurd reality in which it supports bodies whose sole intent is to spread incitement and anti-Israel propaganda.

Commenting on the announcement, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: We have not been informed.

Israels UN Mission said the cut in funding is the first in a series of steps under consideration by the foreign ministry in reaction to the recently passed resolution that termed the settlements a flagrant violation under international law.

The UN vote was abstained by the administration of President Barack Obama, which faced criticism from Israel, its closest ally, as well as president-elect Donald Trump.

READ MORE: UN Security Council urges end to Israeli settlements

The Obama administrations decision to allow the UN vote was a sharp rebuke to a long-standing ally and a striking rupture with past US vetoes. Secretary of state John Kerry defended the abstention decision, saying settlements were an obstacle to a two-state solution.

The Republican-dominated US House of Representatives on Thursday condemned the UN for criticising Israeli settlements.

READ MORE: US House condemns UN resolution on Israeli settlements

Israels UN Mission said it would move forward on additional initiatives aimed at encouraging structural change within the UN with the ultimate goal of ending anti-Israel activities after Trump takes office on January 20.

The UN maintains that settlements are illegal, but UN officials have reported an influx in construction over the past months. The resolution formally preserved the international communitys disapproval of Israeli settlement building.
West African nations defence minister says the mutineers are demanding salary increases and payment of bonuses.

Demobilised soldiers in the Ivory Coast have launched mutinies in three cities, bringing the threat of unrest back to Africas fastest-growing economy.

While the ex-soldiers have not yet stated their specific demands, the West African nations defence minister, Alain-Richard Donwahi, said on Friday they were demanding salary increases and the payment of bonuses.

The unrest began in Bouake, the countrys second-largest city and onetime rebel stronghold, where heavy weapons fire was heard in the streets before spreading to two other major urban centres of Daloa and Korhogo.

Gunfire also reportedly erupted at a military camp in the western town of Daloa on Friday.

Al Jazeeras Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dakar in Senegal, said regular soldiers have now joined the ranks of rebel soldiers to take control of Bouake, after they seized weapons from police stations on Thursday night and took up positions at entry points into the city.

These are former soldiers that were part of an ECOWAS force trying to maintain peace in Liberia  Then they returned back to Ivory Coast where there was also a civil war and played a role to maintain peace and order in the country, he said.

Now they are saying they werent paid for their services.

The city was the seat of a rebellion that controlled the northern half of the country from 2002 until Ivory Coast was reunited following a civil war in 2011.

In Bouake during the civil war we saw heavy bombardment from government authorities. We saw mass graves, said Haque.

There are a lot of young men with arms there, he continued, adding people in the city were unhappy with their current living situation.

Heavy shooting was heard at about 2am before later easing, residents said, and sporadic gunfire continued into the late morning.

The city is under the control of former [soldiers], an army officer told Reuters news agency.

There are many of them at the north and south entrances to the city. We are on alert and await instructions from the hierarchy.

READ MORE: An attack on Ivory Coast was inevitable

An officer at the West African nations military headquarters in the commercial capital Abidjan said reinforcements had been sent to Bouake.

The situation remains unstable and serious, he said.

Both Laurent Gbagbo, then the incumbent, and his rival Alassane Ouattara claimed victory in the 2010 election and the country quickly descended into turmoil.

Gbagbo was captured in April 2011 by forces loyal to Ouattara and delivered to the International Criminal Court charged with crimes against humanity. Ouattara was sworn in as president a month later.

Residents stayed indoors and businesses in Bouake remained closed on Friday morning.

The city is deserted. Men in balaclavas are patrolling the city on motorcycles or in cars. They arent attacking residents  They told us to stay at home, said Ami Soro, a teacher living in Bouake.

Meanwhile a Daloa resident  speaking by telephone from a cocoa processing factory near the army camp  said the sound of weapons firing was continuing on Friday.

There is gunfire at the second battalion [base] in Daloa. Its young demobilised soldiers, the resident said.

There was no clear sign of a link between the Bouake events and outbreak of shooting in Daloa, but the fact that the rebels were also demobilised soldiers could indicate the uprising was spreading.

In November 2014, a strike by former rebels who had joined the army ground the country to a standstill after spreading to Abidjan from Bouake.

The nearly 9,000 strikers, who joined the army between 2009 and 2011, were demanding full payment of back pay and promotions. The government agreed to a financial settlement with the soldiers, who returned to barracks.
Tokyo has recalled its ambassador to South Korea to protest against the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside Japans consulate in the city of Busan.

Talks between the two countries over a new currency swap agreement have also been suspended due to the statue, according to Japans chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga.

The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned, to quickly remove the statue of the girl, Suga said on Friday.

The move may reignite the decades-old feud over victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery, usually referred to as comfort women.

The statue  a copy of one that sits across the road from the Japanese embassy in Seoul  was initially removed after being set up by South Korean activists in the southern port city on Wednesday last week.

But local authorities did not stop the activists from putting it back after Japans Defence Minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo last week.

READ MORE: China, S Korea decry Tomomi Inadas Yasukuni visit

The term comfort women is a euphemism for girls and women, from South Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere, forced to work in wartime Japanese military brothels. South Korean activists estimate that there may have been as many as 200,000 Korean victims.

Activists placed the new statue outside the consulate to mark their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the comfort women issue.

Both nations agreed to put the issue behind them after Japan formally apologised and paid out one billion yen ($8.6 million) to surviving Korean comfort women.

However, critics of the deal say it does not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for its wartime abuses.

READ MORE: Former South Korean sex slaves sue government over payout

South Korea criticised Japan, saying Fridays decision was highly regrettable.

Even if there are difficult issues, the governments of both countries must continually develop South Korea-Japan relations based on a relationship of trust, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statue in Seoul  a bronze of a young, seated woman with a small bird on her shoulder  has proved an extremely potent and popular symbol.

Japan says it should have been removed after the comfort women accord was signed, but Seoul argued that it had only agreed to look into the possibility of moving it.

For the past year, activists have maintained a 24-hour vigil to prevent the statue being taken away.

More than two dozen similar monuments have been erected around South Korea, and another dozen or so abroad in the United States, Canada and elsewhere.
Ovaherero and Nama tribes launch lawsuit against Germany for alleged killing of 100,000 people more than 100 years ago.

Two indigenous groups in Namibia have filed a lawsuit against Germany accusing it of genocide committed by colonial rulers more than a century ago.

The suit was filed in New York on Thursday by the Ovaherero and Nama people who seek compensation for what their ancestors suffered. They also want to be included in talks between Germany and Namibia on the issue.

The two countries have been in discussions about a joint declaration on massacres carried out by German settlers during the 1900s, although Berlin has repeatedly refused to acknowledge that genocide occurred or to pay compensation.

READ MORE: Genocide negotiations reopen colonial wounds in Namibia

The dispute goes back to the late 19th and early 20th century when then South West Africa, now known as Namibia, was a German colony.

The suit alleges from 1885 to 1903 about one-quarter of Ovaherero and Nama lands were taken without compensation by German settlers, with the explicit consent of German colonial authorities.

It also claims German authorities turned a blind eye to rapes by colonists of Ovaherero and Nama women and girls, and the use of forced labour.

Tensions boiled over in early 1904 when the Ovaherero rose up, followed by the Nama  a rebellion crushed by German imperial troops.

The lawsuit alleges that as many 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people died in a campaign of annihilation led by German General Lothar von Trotha.

Activists have presented correspondence from the German general to prove the genocide.

Published documents also show victims were placed in forced labour camps and possibly experimented on.

The lawsuit was filed under Alien Tort Statute, which does not usually cover foreign conduct unless it somehow touched the United States.

A US-based non-profit group, Association of the Ovaherero Genocide, is one of the plaintiffs, along with Vekuii Rukoro, identified as the chief of the Ovaherero people, and David Frederick, chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association.
Tens of thousands of Nepals opposition supporters have marched in the capital Kathmandu against a move to amend the countrys controversial constitution.

Waving party flags and banners, supporters of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) participated in Fridays rally, which began at dozens of locations in the capital and converged at an exhibition complex in the centre of the city.

Opposition leader Khadga Prasad Oli warned of a wave of protests in a show of strength by the main opposition party and its eight partners, a month after the countrys government proposed to amend the 2015 constitution to address the demands of ethnic Madhesis, an indigenous group who say that it is discriminatory.

Madhesi protesters rose up against the constitution in 2015, leading to months of unrest and clashes between police and demonstrators in December, that killed more than 50 people.

READ MORE: Nepal  A costly constitution

A two-thirds majority is required to pass the proposed amendment, but the opposition has obstructed the parliamentary sessions in a bid to prevent the move.

Oli, a former prime minister and chairman of the opposition party, vowed not to allow the passing of the amendment bill in parliament.

We will spread this wave of protest across the country. We will not allow the government to approve the amendment, which is against our countrys interest, he said.

Born in eastern Nepal on February 22, 1952, Oli became a member of the Nepal Communist Party in 1970 after being influenced by local communist leaders as a teenager.

Nepali parties negotiated for years over a new constitution. Hopes that the charter would usher in an era of political stability after it entered into force on September 2015 have, however, been dashed.
Refugee numbers plunged by two-thirds, while deaths during Mediterranean journey rose sharply, migration agencies say.

The number of refugees who arrived on Europes shores plunged by nearly two-thirds last year, but the number of those who died on the often perilous journey in the Mediterranean Sea rose sharply, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the EU border agency Frontex has said.

About 364,000 people seeking work or refugee protection crossed the sea between January and December, compared to more than one million in 2015, Frontex said in a statement on Friday.

A sharp drop in arrivals to Greece outweighed record migration to Italy, it said.

The decrease was largely owing to a Turkey-EU deal whereby Ankara took back migrants who crossed by sea to the Greek islands and the EU resettled Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

The drop was also influenced by tighter border controls in the western Balkans, Frontex added.



Desperate Journeys: 4,027 refugees have drowned so far this year

At the same time, the number of people who died as they tried to reach Europe rose by 34 percent last year from 2015, the UN-affiliated IOM said in Geneva.

Many shipwrecks occurred on the route between Libya and the Italian island of Sicily.

The trend shows that the central Mediterranean route linking the Sahara region to Southern Europe still operates at full capacity despite European efforts to stem the flow, IOM analysts said.

The deaths in the Mediterranean pushed the 2016 global death tally for migrants to 7,495.

The latest reports of 300 more deaths in the Mediterranean are currently being vetted by the IOM.

Last year, IOM also recorded about 1,100 fatalities in North Africa, 200 around the Horn of Africa, as well as 400 dead migrants on the route from Mexico to the United States.

READ MORE: 2016  The year the world stopped caring about refugees

Austrias defence minister has said in a new set of proposals that the European Union should curb immigration and foil people smugglers by banning refugee applications on its territory and setting up asylum application centres outside the bloc.



Desperate Journeys: One year after Alan Kurdi

This would enable EU countries to decide themselves who may enter Europe, rather than smuggling organisations, Hans Peter Doskozil said in a document obtained by by the DPA news agency on Friday.

The document indirectly advocates an EU-wide cap for asylum seekers, by stating that every country has capacity limits, beyond which integration is impossible.

People who are not accepted as refugees should be sent home, Doskozil said. If their home countries do not take them back, they should be be transferred to protection zones, he proposed, without specifying where or how they should be set up.

IN PICTURES: Refugee crisis 2016: 12, countries, 12 months

A coordinated EU refugee policy has so far failed to materialise as some of the blocs members, especially in the east, have refused to take in significant numbers of refugees. In addition, EU countries have not found a way to quickly send back economic migrants.

Despite the drop in arrivals last year, an estimated 123,000 migrants still managed to travel the so-called Balkan route from Greece to western Europe, according to Frontex, despite steps by Austria and Balkan countries to stop the flow of people.

Doskozil also warned that a breakdown of the EU-Turkey deal could result in up to one million migrants launching journeys from Turkey to Europe.
Moscow says it has begun the reduction of its Syria deployment with the only Russian aircraft carrier to leave first.

Russias military says it has begun scaling down its deployment to Syria with its sole aircraft carrier the first to quit the conflict zone.





President Vladimir Putin ordered the reduction of forces in Syria on December 29 as he announced a ceasefire between government and rebel forces, which has since dampened down the fighting.

In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces, Vladimir Putin, the Russian defence ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria, Russian news agencies quoted military chief Valery Gerasimov as saying on Friday.

Gerasimov said the naval group headed by Moscows sole aircraft carrier  Admiral Kuznetsov  would be the first to leave the area.

The tasks set for the aircraft carrier group during its military mission have been fulfilled, said Andrei Kartapolov, Russias main commander in Syria.

Kartapolov said Russia still had sufficient air defence capabilities in Syria thanks to its S-300 and S-400 systems deployed in the war-torn country.

Putin announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces in March 2016, but Moscow later had to ramp up its military presence again as fighting intensified.

Russia boosted its firepower on land in Syria and off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea in September 2015 in support of government forces targeting the countrys second city of Aleppo and other locations.

The military deployment helped turn the tide in favour of the Syrian governments ailing forces.

READ MORE: Turkey accuses Syria government of truce violations

Russian bombardment, however, has been blamed for thousands of civilian deaths.

Troops loyal to Russias ally Bashar al-Assad ousted rebels from Aleppo last month in their biggest victory in nearly six years of fighting, paving the way for the Kremlin to launch a new push for a political solution to the conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Russia  along with Turkey and Iran  are pushing for peace talks to be held later this month in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.
Syrian forces battle rebels for Wadi Barada valley where damaged infrastructure has cut off water to millions of people.

The United Nations has warned that sabotaging water supplies is a war crime after the main source for Syrias capital was cut, leaving millions of people facing shortages.

Water supplies from the rebel-held Wadi Barada valley near Damascus have been severed since December 22 with the government and rebels trading blame.

Jan Egeland, head of a UN-backed humanitarian task force for Syria, said on Thursday that the shutdown already had dramatic consequences.

Water supply from Wadi Barada to 5,5 million in Damascus has been cut since Dec 22 with dramatic consequences. UN need access to do repairs.  Jan Egeland (@NRC_Egeland) January 5, 2017

He said water supplies to 5.5 million people had been hit because of fighting, or because of sabotage or because of both.

To sabotage and deny water is of course a war crime, because it is civilians who drink it and civilians who will be affected by waterborne diseases if supplies are not restored, he told reporters in Geneva.

The UN Office for the Coordination Humanitarian Affairs has said that water supplies were cut off because infrastructure was deliberately targeted and damaged  without saying who was responsible.

The government has accused rebels of polluting the springs with diesel, while the opposition says government bombing destroyed the villages water plant.

The Syrian army and its allies pressed ahead on Friday with a two-week-long offensive to seize the strategic valley, in spite a ceasefire in place since last week.

Aerial bombing and shelling from the army as well as Hezbollah fighters stationed in the mountains that overlook the valley on the northwestern edge of the capital have intensified in the past 48 hours.

The Reuters news agency cited residents and rebels saying scores of fighter jets pounded the area around the Ain al-Fija springs and the villages of Baseimah, Kafr Zayt, and al-Husseineh, which form part of a cluster of 10 villages controlled by rebels in the Wadi Barada region.

OPINION: The Assad conundrum

Fighters there rejected a government offer to leave the area for the rebel-held province of Idlib in northern Syria. Similar deals have led rebels to yield swaths of territory, including in the city of Aleppo





The military offensive has strained a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey aimed at bringing about Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan later this month.

The opposition has warned that unless the Syrian army halts its attacks it would consider any truce null and void. They have also suspended any discussion on participating in the forthcoming peace talks unless Russia puts pressure on the government and its Tehran-backed allies to abort the offensive.

The government says forces in Wadi Barada include Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, which Moscow and Damascus say is excluded from the ceasefire.

Rebels deny the group is in the area.

READ MORE: Damascus accuses rebels of polluting water supplies

The rupture of water supplies from the springs has caused severe shortages after the pumping station of Ain al-Fija  that supplied about 70 percent of the capitals water needs  was damaged.

Prices of bottled water and trucked water supplied by private traders to residential homes has tripled, residents of the capital say, with a black market now thriving.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has also brought in supplies from other provinces by tanker to cover some of the shortfall in the capital and pumped extra water from underground wells.

The civilian population in the valley is estimated by the United Nations to number about 45,000, but civic groups say the total is double that, with their plight worsening daily under heavy shelling and shortages of food and medicine.

Dozens of homes have been hit by the bombing campaign.

Only 1,200 families have so far left to a government-run shelter in the nearby town of Rawda, the UN said.

We hope in a few days water will return back to the capital after the army takes back Ain al-Fija. The army is advancing and  we expect good news, Alaa Munir Ibrahim, a governor in the Damascus suburbs, told state media.
Abdoulaye Wade, Senegals exiled former president has made a controversial homecoming with security forces on high alert, two years after he lost office in an election marred by violent protests.

Wade, 87, who held power from 2000 to 2012, landed in Dakar late on Friday, his first time in the West African nation since he moved to France, Senegals former colonial master, after a bitter defeat to arch rival and current leader Macky Sall.

His return  a show of support for his son Karim, who is in custody on multi-million-dollar corruption charges  had been delayed by more than 48 hours after his flight was grounded in Casablanca on Wednesday.

Wade has accused Salls government of manoeuvring against him by deliberately withholding permission for him to land in Dakar in an attempt to disperse the supporters who had planned to welcome him on his arrival.

I understood a long time ago that Macky Sall did not want this day to happen, he told AFP news agency in Casablanca on Thursday.

Wade finally left Moroccos largest city in the early evening on a private jet which landed in Dakar around three hours later.

Senegal has denied that it was behind the delay, with government spokesman Abdou Latif Coulibaly pointing to last-minute modifications to the flight plan which meant new permits were required.

Wade had been expected earlier in the day, and his Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) was planning a march from the airport to its headquarters on his arrival.

But the area around the airport was sealed off by police and only a few senior PDS officials were allowed to welcome Wade.

The former head of state was due to deliver a speech at a rally to be staged in defiance of a ban by the authorities at the party headquarters, where a large crowd of supporters had been gathering for several hours, surrounded by riot police.

The announcement of Wades return has dominated headlines since the start of the week, with daily newspaper Le Populaire splashing on A Friday heavy with menace.

State of high-alert

The media meanwhile described security forces as being in a state of high-alert over the visit.

Anti-riot police with shields, helmets and batons, have been deployed across Dakar since Wednesday, with protests banned over fears of public disorder.

Wade has said that he will respect Senegalese security measures and does not intend to destabilise the Sall government, but he has also vowed to press on with his outlawed party meeting.

Im not a man to start a coup detat, not at my age I have the fortune of being able to control my activists and supporters, he told Paris-based television news channel France 24 on Thursday.

They do what I tell them to. If I said go to the palace they would. But if I wanted that, I could make it happen without even coming to Dakar.

Wades son Karim, 45, whose wealth includes land in Dakar, a fleet of luxury cars and media and finance companies operating across Africa, has been on remand in Dakar for a year and is due to be tried in June.

Senegalese authorities accuse him of using corrupt means to acquire a fortune of $246m when he was a so-called super minister in his fathers cabinet.

The younger Wade denies corruption and says his wealth comes legitimately from the companies he owns as well as real estate.

The PDS accuses the Sall regime of conducting a witch hunt against its hierarchy since he came to power.
Editor arrested after publishing story saying President Khama was involved in an accident while driving alone at night.

Gaborone, Botswana  The arrest and brief detention of a top newspaper editor in Botswana is raising concern among journalists used to plying their trade without interference from the government.

Outsa Mokone, who edits the Sunday Standard, was arrested on September 8 as part of what he calls a government campaign to intimidate the media into submission in the run-up to general elections scheduled for October 24.

The warrant for Mokones arrest, issued by the Chief Magistrate for Gaborone Administrative District on September 2, relates to a possible charge of seditious intention, which contravenes the Penal Code in the southern African nation, which has hitherto enjoyed a reputation for being a functioning democracy with unfettered press freedom.

After Mokones arrest and subsequent detention at Broadhurst police station, Sunday Standard lawyers issued an urgent petition to the Gaborone High Court, prompting Judge Modiri Letsididi to order the editors release.

Letsididi further ordered the Commissioner of Police, represented in the case by the deputy Attorney General of Botswana, Nchunga Nchunga, to not execute and implement the warrant of arrest and not apply for any further warrants of arrest against the editor.

Mokone told Al Jazeera that while the Sunday Standard had run a number of stories on corruption in the countrys intelligence agency, he believes the story the paper published about a car crash involving Botswanas president, Ian Khama, led to his arrest.

The story, which said Khama was driving alone at night, was written by a senior journalist, Edgar Tsimane, who has since fled Botswana and is seeking temporary asylum in neighbouring South Africa, following a tip-off that his life was in danger.

Sunday Standards lawyer Dick Bayford confirmed that Tsimane was in South Africa and had been accredited to continue his journalistic work and was on duty by Thursday covering the trial of Oscar Pistorius, the South African double amputee athlete who was convicted on September 12 of culpable homicide after fatally shooting his girlfriend in February 2013.

Seizure of computer

A day after Mokones arrest, work at the complex where the Sunday Standard is housed in the capital Gaborone came to a standstill. Mokone arrived in the company of plainclothes police, who seized documents and equipment.

Al Jazeera found Mokone seated in his office while the four police officers browsed through printed materials, including his personal computer and desk. For almost two hours, the officers continued searching and eventually emerged carrying Mokones computer, three white envelopes and computer disks.

I cannot do anything to them. I cannot stop them from seizing the material and computers as they are protected by the law and I am not, Mokone told Al Jazeera before he was pulled towards the car by the state security agents as they drove away with him.

The media, especially the Sunday Standard, has been very instrumental in exposing the government corrupt practices. by - Thobo Mothoka of the Telegraph newspaper

Mokone says he is convinced that the Botswana government thinks the crackdown will have a chilling effect on free press in the country ahead of the elections in six weeks.

About two months ago, the government issued a warrant for my arrest together with my deputy, Spencer Mogapi, and our lawyer Dick Bayford. The warrant, however, was not put into force, he said.

Sunday Standard is committed to its role as a watchdog. I told reporters and well-wishers outside court that I would happily spend another hundred years in their prison than spend one day as a prisoner of [this] chilling effect.

Botswana journalists fear that the editors arrest may be the beginning of a wider clampdown on the independent media.

Tefo Pheage, a journalist with the Weekendpost, a weekly newspaper, said the Botswana government is going against its promise of a clean government which respects civil liberties, including freedom of the press.

The government has previously boasted of being among few countries which abhors harassment of journalists in an effort to gag them, he told Al Jazeera.

Another local journalist, Thobo Mothoka of the Telegraph newspaper, said that the arrest of Mokone was just one of the many attempts by the government to silence dissenting views and intimidate those seen as obstacles to the ruling partys attempts to hold on to power.

The media, especially the Sunday Standard, has been very instrumental in exposing governments corrupt practices, Mothoka said, adding that the new coalition of opposition parties, the Umbrella for Democratic Change, and the recent mysterious death of their vice presidential candidate has swayed public support away from the ruling party. This, he said, has set the leadership onto panic mode.

Condemnation

The arrest has also led to condemnation of the state security agents raid of the newsroom as well as continued rebuttals by the government of stories done by private media outlets.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa said it was gravely concerned about the attempt by the Botswana government to intimidate and impede the work of the press, particularly as another journalist working for the Sunday Standard, Tsimane, has also been threatened by the state in connection with an article he wrote.

It is important to note [that] this is probably the first time Botswanas sedition laws have been used against a journalist. MISA Botswana has stated in the past that we classify sedition and other laws criminalising journalists work as an impediment to the operation of a free media in a democracy. the regional media advocacy group said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the United States also said it was deeply concerned by the arrest of Mokone.

Marie Harf, deputy spokesperson at the State Department in Washington DC, said that the US strongly values freedom of the press, which is a key component of democratic governance.

Freedom of expression and media freedom, which foster the exchange of ideas and facilitate transparency and accountability, are essential components for democracy. Outsa Mokones arrest is inconsistent with these fundamental freedoms and at odds with Botswanas strong tradition of democratic governance, Harf said.

However, Botswana has responded angrily, telling the US that it might wish to put its own house in order before rushing to hastily comment on the judicial affairs of others.

Mokone is expected to appear at the Gaborone High Court in late November, where his lawyers will also challenge the law under which he is being charged.
Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria split from al-Qaedas North African branch, allying with the Islamic State group.

A new armed group calling itself the Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria has split from al-Qaedas North African branch and sworn loyalty to the group calling itself the Islamic State (IS), fighting in Syria and Iraq.

In a communique released on Sunday, a regional commander of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said he broke away from the group, accusing it of deviating from the true path.

Gouri Abdelmalek, nom de guerre Khaled Abu Suleimane, claimed leadership of the splinter group, and was joined by a AQIM commander of an eastern region in Algeria.

You have in the Islamic Maghreb men if you order them they will obey you, Suleimane said in reference to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-professed caliph of the IS group.

Algerian officials did not immediately comment on the statement.

The Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria is the latest group to break with AQIM and side with Baghdadi, after veteran Algerian jihadist, Mokhtar Belmokhtars group, Those who sign in Blood pledged allegiance to the IS group.

But experts say the announcement will not have a major operational impact on the ground as AQIM has been focused on the Sahel region rather than OPEC member Algeria.

The new group will try hard to make some noise, but it will be very difficult to execute big terrorist actions as Algerian security forces have knocked out most of the armed groups in Algeria, security analyst Anis Rahmani told the Reuters news agency.

AQIM is a mostly Algerian and Mauritanian group that has been present in northern Mali since 2003, and a source of thousands of young fighters travelling to Syria and Iraq.

Tuaregs and Arabs joined AQIM in Mali, and youths from Senegal, Niger, and other countries have also reportedly joined the groups fight.

Baghdadi, who has declared himself the leader of Muslims everywhere, fell out with al-Qaeda in 2013 over his decision to expand into Syria, where his followers carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions.
Leon Haley is bringing more than 26 years of medical experience to UFs College of Medicine-Jacksonville. Haley, who began working as the new dean of the college Jan. 1, said he wants to help provide care for people who may not have access to highquality medical services, while also training the next generation

of doctors and nurses. Im very excited to be here, Haley said. I think UFs College of Medicine-Jacksonville was a unique opportunity to continue to develop this organizations growth in clinical care. Before coming to UF, Haley served as an executive associate dean at Emory University and as chief of emergency medicine for Grady Health System, a safetynet hospital. Safety-net hospitals take care of populations unable

to afford much of their health care, Haley said. After deciding to go into emergency medicine 26 years ago, Haley said hes dedicated his career to providing highquality clinical care for all. One of the unique things about emergency medicine is that we see people in all walks of life, Haley said. They may be black, white, rich, poor and we learn to take care of everyone as excellent as we can, re

gardless of who they are. As dean, Haley wants to continue practicing that level of care. This institution has a unique position of providing cutting-edge clinical care, critical clinical care, but also serving a vulnerable population, Haley said. He plans to work with Russ Armistead, the CEO of UF Health Jacksonville, to continue the hospitals work in the com

munity. Armistead said the hospital deals with a large number of uninsured patients. He has that experience, and it should be just a breath of fresh air for us, and a new set of eyes looking at what we do, and hopefully help us do things better, Armistead said.

@romyellenbogen

rellenbogen@alligator.org

Leon Haley
While one of Floridas most marketed crops declines, UF researchers hope tea can ll in the gap left by the depleted citrus industry.

Since 2005, Floridas citrus crop output has been steadily decreasing due to citrus greening, a disease which rots the trees, said Brantlee Spakes Richter, a senior lecturer in the UF plant pathology department. Richter, and UF doctoral student James Orrock are now tasked with studying teas plausibility as an alternative.

The good thing about tea is that its a commodity crop, said Orrock. So you have a bunch of different prices and markets to hope for.

In May 2016, the two researchers helped plant eight strains of camellias, which is the plant tea comes from, to see how they would fare in Floridas climate, Richter said.

Some of the eight strains of tea that they are studying have thrived, but a few have come close to dying off, Richter said.

A few strains were expected to not survive due to their genetic makeup, she said.

Although introducing tea into Floridas ecosystem has the potential to bridge the gap left by the dying citrus crops, U.S.grown tea will likely never be cheaper than existing tea prices, Orrock said.

As of now, researchers are still unsure of teas future as a crop in Florida, but some tea strains give them hope, Ritcher said.

Were not really sure yet where Florida will come in yet in this playing  eld, she said.

Researchers are growing potted camellias to determine if tea could be used as an alternative to Florida's citrus crop.

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UF researchers have linked the effects of racism to high blood pressure in African-Americans  and determined that addressing inequity may reverse the trend.

The findings were made by Clarence Gravlee, a UF professor in the Department of Anthropology, along with Connie Mulligan, a UF professor in the Department of Anthropology, specializing in genetics.

Gravlee, who has worked on compiling the research for the past 10 years, published the findings in December.

Previous research showed high blood pressure is 50-percent more common among African-Americans than white Americans, Gravlee said. Gravlee and Mulligans study shows that facing discrimination and watching others face oppression can cause high blood pressure, rather than genetic predispositions within the black community.

We now have evidence that peoples health is harmed not just by what happens to them directly, but also by the existence of racism in the broader society, he said.

Some African-Americans seem to have genes that make them more susceptible to the harmful effects of racism, which can be triggered by systemic racism, he added.

Some of those differences are due to different genes that people have, but those genes are not patterned by racial groups, he said.

More research should be done on the health effects of African-Americans who watch strangers face discrimination, such as videos of police brutality, he said. He believes addressing systemic racism would reduce health issues in African-Americans, as well as raise their life expectancy.

I think its a moral problem as well that that kind of inequality exists in our society, he said.

Bahasi Chapman, a UF Black Affairs ambassador, said shes always known discrimination plays a role in the health of African-Americans.

Its not really a surprise, the 19-year-old UF criminology and law and African-American studies sophomore said.

As a black woman, she said even if she became a successful CEO, she would face discrimination in her everyday life.

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It doesnt matter how far you rise up, its still going to affect your health, she said.
A Tampa man and woman were found with fraudulent credit cards and copies of drivers licenses not belonging to them in their car Wednesday, Florida Highway Patrol said.

Tony Devon Wingfield

At about 4:15 p.m., Raskima Akeema Cortez, 28, was driving a white Ford Edge on Interstate 75 at the intersection of U.S. Route 441, with Tony Devon Wingfield, 36, when they were pulled over for speeding, according to an FHP arrest report.

Raskima Akeema Cortez

Troopers smelled marijuana and searched the car, finding three bags of weed weighing a total of 16 grams, according to the report. Elsewhere in the car, troopers found 15 fraudulent credit cards.

FHP also found a laptop, credit card encoder and three copies of Florida drivers licenses and social security numbers not belonging to Cortez or Wingfield, according to the report.

Troopers arrested Cortez on several charges, including fraud and forgery. They arrested Wingfield on charges of fraud, forgery and marijuana possession, among others.

Authorities took them to the Alachua County Jail, where they remain as of press time. Cortez is being held on $200,000 bond. Wingfield is being held on $500,000 bond.

@merylkornfield

mkornfield@alligator.org

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English News Beijing's DPRK efforts 'widely recognized'

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 6 Janvier 2017



"The DPRK nuclear issue cannot be resolved quickly," he said, adding that Trump should not bypass China to address the DPRK nuclear issue.

Source : People's Daily Beijing's efforts and contributions to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula are widely acknowledged by the international community, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday after US president-elect Donald Trump said China was not helping with the issue.

Analysts said China, which plays a key role in stabilizing the Korean Peninsula, should not be bypassed in resolving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea nuclear issue.



"China's efforts are widely recognized, and we hope all sides will avoid remarks and actions to escalate the situation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news conference.

His comment was in response to a tweet in which Trump criticized China on Monday, saying it was not being helpful in addressing the DPRK nuclear issue.

Trump tweeted, "China has been taking out massive amounts of money &wealth from the US in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!"

DPRK top leader Kim Jong-un said in a televised New Year's Day speech that his country was about to test its first intercontinental ballistic missile.

On Monday, John Schindler, a former analyst for the US National Security Agency, said Trump's tweet was a big mistake, since China has sided with the United Nations to oppose the DPRK's nuclear programs.

In May, Trump said he would enter direct talks with Kim as a way to try to deter the country's development of nuclear weapons.

Shi Yinhong, director of the Center of US Studies of Renmin University of China, said it's unlikely that Trump would have direct talks with the DPRK after he takes office on Jan 20.

"What if the United States got nothing after Trump talks with Kim? It would be hard (for Trump) to explain away," he said, adding that Trump's remark on direct talks with Kim was merely an irresponsible political show during the election.

Zhang Jingquan, a professor of Northeast Asian studies at Jilin University, said that China's role is irreplaceable in stabilizing the Korean Peninsula, where there has been no serious conflict or confrontation for years.

"The DPRK nuclear issue cannot be resolved quickly," he said, adding that Trump should not bypass China to address the DPRK nuclear issue.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > China enhances efforts to promote biodiversity conservation China stress its commitment to push ahead peace and development for humanity at 20th CPC National Congress CPC's governance experience is worth learning from Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Belt and Road initiative boosts common prosperity to China and Central Asia: Peoples Daily

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 6 Janvier 2017



The "Belt and Road" initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, has been echoed by the Central Asian countries, the article stressed, adding that the Central Asian countries, in the past three years, have decided to adopt their own development strategies into the framework of the initiative.

Source : People's Daily Belt and Road initiative boosts common prosperity to China and Central Asia: Peoples Daily



After 25 years of development, the relationship between China and the five Central Asian nations has become a role model for new type of state-to-state relations and regional cooperation, Peoples Daily said in a commentary published on Wednesday.



The article, under the byline of Zhong Sheng, came as China and Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan celebrated their 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations in January, 2017.



China and Central Asian countries have undergone three phases in their relations since establishing diplomatic ties 25 years ago.



In the first phase, which lasted from 1992 to 2001, China, together with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, resolved the history-left border issues through friendly negotiations. This success not only turned shared boundary of the Central Asian countries which spans more than 3,300 kilometers into a region of friendship and cooperation, but also laid a solid foundation for upgrade of bilateral ties.



The second phase ranged from 2001, when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established, to 2012. The SCO has served as an important platform for China and the Central Asian countries to launch all-round cooperation and pursue regional integration.



During the third phase, starting from 2013 when the "Belt and Road" initiative was put forward until now, China and the Central Asian countries have brought their ties into a new era of building a community of shared interests and seeking common development.



The article pointed out that the strategic partnerships between China and Central Asian countries have stretched to all political areas.



China staunchly opposes any attempts to intervene in the domestic affairs of the Central Asian countries, and supports them to develop in accordance with their own conditions as well as to maintain independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Central Asian countries, in return, are strong supporters of China over the issues of Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea.



China's total trade volume with its Central Asian counterparts stands at $30 billion each year, a hard-won target amid the weak recovery of world economy and low prices of global commodities, the paper praised the cooperation fruits in economic and trade front.



China and Central Asian countries have joined efforts to combat terrorism, separatism and extremism, to crack down on drug trafficking and transnational organized crimes, to deal with regional threats and challenges, in a bid to maintain regional security and stability.



The two sides enjoy increasingly active cultural exchanges, the article wrote, citing the frequent art troupe exchanges, cultural exhibitions and performances as well as deepened people-to-people understanding as examples.



The "Belt and Road" initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, has been echoed by the Central Asian countries, the article stressed, adding that the Central Asian countries, in the past three years, have decided to adopt their own development strategies into the framework of the initiative.

Besides, these five countries are beefing up their highway, railroad, port, tunnel, telecommunication line and other flight network constructions with the aim of better connectivity and creating a "modern three-dimensional silk road".



China and Kazakhstan took the initiative to explore a new cooperation model for production capacity, the article said.



In terms of financial collaboration, Central Asian countries have taken an active part in the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, tried new financing modes for "Belt and Road" initiative and expanded cooperation with China in using local currencies as payment and settlement, the paper noted.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > China enhances efforts to promote biodiversity conservation China stress its commitment to push ahead peace and development for humanity at 20th CPC National Congress CPC's governance experience is worth learning from Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Gambia: Arrests, media closures as deadline nears

Alwihda Info | Par Amnesty International - 6 Janvier 2017





The government of President Yahya Jammeh, defeated in Gambias December presidential election, has arbitrarily arrested opposition sympathizers and closed three independent radio stations in the past week, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. Jammeh is required under Gambias constitution to cede power to president-elect Adama Barrow by January 19, 2017.



Since December 31, intelligence agents have arrested and briefly detained at least six people for wearing or selling t-shirts bearing the logo of the #Gambiahasdecided movement, which has called for Jammeh to respect the election results and step down. Several senior members of the movement have fled Gambia after receiving credible threats from alleged National Intelligence Agency (NIA) officers. On January 1, intelligence agents forcibly closed three private radio stations, depriving Gambians of independent sources of information during this critical period.



The targeting of the #Gambiahasdecided movement and the closure of private radio stations threaten the rights of Gambians to express their opposition to Jammehs attempt to stay in power, said Jim Wormington, West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. Its at times like this that free expression is most crucial.



Jammeh publicly conceded defeat the day after the December 1 election, but then rejected the results on December 9, criticizing what he called the treacherous Independent Election Commission (IEC) for its lack of independence. Gambian security forces on December 13 evicted Alieu Momarr Njai, the commission chairman, and his staff from their headquarters.



Njai subsequently told Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that he feared for his safety, and on December 30 he left Gambia to seek refuge abroad.



Jammehs party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), on December 13 filed a challenge to the election results in the Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court has no permanent associate judges, and so hearing the case would require Jammeh to appoint new justices, the Gambian Bar Association has said this appeal is fundamentally tainted.



Jammehs refusal to accept the election results has been widely condemned internationally, including by the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). On December 17, ECOWAS said that when Jammehs term ends on January 19, Barrow must be sworn in and promised to take all necessary actions to enforce the election results.



Sources in Gambia described to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International how intelligence agents detained two men, Alpha Sey and Muhammed Kuyateh, wearing #Gambiahasdecided t-shirts on the evening of December 31. One witness said five men in civilian clothes forced Sey into a white pickup truck.



They asked to have a word with him and, after a brief conversation, they just pushed him into the car, the witness said. Sey was the only one wearing a #Gambiahasdecided t-shirt, and I heard him say, Theres no need for me to get in the car, I can just take it off. But they forced him in anyway.



Another witness described how on December 31 men in civilian clothes forced Kuyateh into a vehicle in Bakoteh, a suburb of Banjul, apparently for wearing a #Gambiahasdecided t-shirt. Kuyateh and Sey were held incommunicado at NIA headquarters, then released on bail on January 3.



Intelligence officers detained three store managers selling #Gambiahasdecided merchandise in the Westfield area of Serrekunda on the evening of December 31. Ebrima Sambou, Mamie Serreh, and Isatou Jallow told Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that the intelligence officers came to their shops and confiscated t-shirts and other materials featuring the text #Gambiahasdecided or graphics supportive of president-elect Barrow or the opposition coalition. They were then taken to the intelligence agency headquarters in Banjul, where they were questioned about the suppliers of this merchandise, and released a few hours later.



The store merchandise has not been returned. Serreh said that before she was released, an intelligence officer told her, Anything you say about this, it will come back to you. The wife of another of the store managers left Gambia soon after his release, fearing for her safety. Intelligence officers also reportedly detained a coalition supporter, Wandifa Kanyi, for selling t-shirts in Serrekunda on January 2. Kanyi was released on January 3.



Two founding members of the #Gambiahasdecided movement, Salieu Taal and Raffi Diab, fled Gambia on December 31 after receiving what they believe was credible information of their imminent detention by the intelligence agency. The agency has a long track record of arbitrarily arresting opposition activists, many of whom were tortured and sometimes killed while in agency custody.



Taal, the movements chair, said that NIA officers nearly intercepted him outside his house on December 31. I believe Jammeh is trying to send a message, to stop us from resisting his attempt to stay in power, he told Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. But we wont be intimidated.



On January 1, intelligence agents forced three private radio stations, Teranga FM, Hilltop Radio and Afri Radio, to go off air. Although Afri Radio was reopened again on January 3, it is not currently airing news-related material. Given the governments control of state television and radio, private radio stations provide an important outlet for Gambians to access dissenting views and opinions, although the security forces history of arresting and intimidating journalists have caused many to self-censor. Teranga FM and Hilltop Radio were two stations that discussed diverse political news in local languages.



Emil Touray, president of the Gambia Press Union, told Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that the radio closures, denied Gambians several essential media outlets during a crucial phase in the countrys history. Teranga FM has been closed three times in recent years and the station's managing director, Alhagie Ceesay, was arrested in July 2015, beaten and tortured at the NIA headquarters and then charged with sedition. He escaped from custody and fled abroad in April 2016.



As the deadline for Jammeh to leave office and transfer power nears, the Gambian authorities and security forces should respect and protect the rights of all Gambians to freely and peacefully express their political views and opinions, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said. Private radio stations should be free to operate without government interference or fear of reprisals.



The risk of a crackdown against independent and critical voices will only increase as calls for Jammeh to step down intensify prior to the January 19 deadline, said Sabrina Mahtani, West Africa researcher at Amnesty International. The Gambian authorities must send a clear message that human rights abuses, including by members of the security forces, will not be tolerated and that those responsible for abuses during the transition will be adequately investigated and prosecuted.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > China enhances efforts to promote biodiversity conservation China stress its commitment to push ahead peace and development for humanity at 20th CPC National Congress CPC's governance experience is worth learning from Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Corzine settles: Former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine agreed to pay $5 million to settle Commodity Futures Trading Commission charges related to his role in the 2011 collapse of commodities brokerage MF Global Holdings, which Corzine headed. Under the terms of the deal, Corzine must pay the penalty out of his own pocket, not from insurance proceeds, "an unusual step that highlighted that the case was a high priority for the CFTC," the Wall Street Journal said. MF Global collapsed following a large bet on European bonds engineered by Corzine that went sour. Money was then allegedly improperly moved out of the firm. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times

Wall Street Journal

That was quick: One day after Peter Hazlewood left as the head of its financial crime-fighting unit, Deutsche Bank named his replacement: Philippe Vollot, currently its global chief operating officer for compliance, anti-financial crime, and government and regulatory affairs. Vollot, a 13-year DB veteran, will report to Sylvie Matherat, the bank's chief regulatory officer, who said in an announcement that the German bank will continue to improve its compliance "in order to ensure that the profits of today are sustainable and do not contribute to the provisions of tomorrow." She said the unit's staff increased 30% last year to 770 and the bank plans to raise it to 1,150 this year.

Senior blues: The number of people 60 and older with student loans jumped four-fold to 2.8 million in 2015 from 700,000 in 2005, according to a study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the average amount owed nearly doubled, to $23,500 from $12,100. Moreover, nearly 40% of student-loan borrowers 65 and over are in default. Nearly three-quarters of older borrowers said the loans were for a child's or grandchild's education, while 27% reported the loan was for themselves or their spouses. Those 60-plus accounted for 6.4% of all student-loan borrowers in 2015, up from 2.7% 10 years earlier. "It is alarming that older Americans are the fastest growing segment of student loan borrowers," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said.

Why buy?: Property developers are taking the next logical step to meeting demand for single-family home rentals: they're building entire neighborhoods of them. "The new rental communities look identical to for-sale projects, with pools, fitness centers and walking trails," the Journal reports. "But they are operated like apartment complexes, with management handling maintenance, lawn care and leasing."

New York Times

Not to worry: The Your Money column looks at the recent rash of credit card sign-up bonuses that have become "so eye-poppingly large" that some bank analysts wonder "if the industry was afflicted with temporary insanity." But if you're a bank, or an investor in one, not to worry. Referring to JPMorgan's Chase Sapphire Reserve card  which this week announced it is halving its $1,500 bonus  Kevin J. St. Pierre, a managing director at Bernstein Research, said he wasn't too concerned about the bank's finances. "They are so large that they can afford to experiment," he said. "A few hundred million in any quarter is a cost of doing business, and they'll use it, learn from it and improve the product from their perspective and move on."

Quotable ...

"It used to be that if you were an adult and didn't own your own home, you were kind of a bum."  George Casey, CEO of Stockbridge Associates, a homebuilding industry consulting firm, commenting on new rental communities
Roughly a year ago, I wrote an op-ed that raised concerns about the state of payments innovation here in the U.S.  especially when compared to the United Kingdom.

What a difference a year makes.

As a lawyer who spent the last year working in London, I've seen firsthand what a rollercoaster ride it has been for the fintech industry in the U.K. With the prospect of Brexit in the U.K., some are already questioning the longevity of the London fintech boom. Personally, I am aware of a number of U.K.-based fintechs that are making contingency plans to move to jurisdictions that will allow them to continue to passport their licenses to other countries in the European Union.

At the same time, it has also been a rollercoaster ride in the U.S. Indeed, regulators have surprised many by taking active steps to encourage payment innovation developments. The best innovation champion has been the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which announced its plans to establish an office of innovation in October, and more recently, a limited-purpose bank charter for fintechs. The OCC is still finalizing the details of the charter, but such a charter would apparently preempt the need for state money-transmitter and lending licenses, although many other state laws would still apply.

Moreover, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has also been taking steps to enlarge and promote its Project Catalyst program, which is "dedicated to promoting consumer-friendly innovation in the marketplace," according to the agency's website. The CFPB has also announced a possible move toward open banking by issuing a request for information regarding consumer access to banking information. The CFPB apparently wants to understand the extent to which consumers can authorize third parties to access and share their digital financial records. Furthermore, CFPB Director Richard Cordray has said that it is "unacceptable" for financial institutions to block third-party access to financial data, especially for purposes of maintaining a competitive advantage. If successful, the CFPB's initiative could result in easier access by nonbanks to customers' bank account records (with the consent of the customers of course), leading to a suite of innovative new financial services.

These recent developments indicate a ray of hope that U.S. regulators will get serious about encouraging payments innovation in the U.S. Additionally, many expect that a new Republican administration may trigger a further reduction in regulatory restrictions, leading to a fintech and payments renaissance in the U.S.

Should the U.K. be worried? Maybe, but it is much too early to write off the U.K. in these payments innovation wars. For one thing, the U.K. still has a huge lead on us when it comes to ease of licensing. Yes, the OCC's fintech national bank charter will be helpful, but only for a small handful of well-heeled companies that can meet the OCC's governance, compliance, capital and liquidity requirements. The vast majority of fintechs will still need to face the burdens of 50-state licensing  a burden that their competitors across the pond won't have to face, even with Brexit. (With a "hard Brexit," a U.K. fintech will need two licenses, in order to passport, rather than just one  a significantly lighter burden than what U.S. fintechs face.)

In the U.S., it really is time to take a look at our state money-transmitter licensing laws. Common-sense provisions include section 203 of the Uniform Money Services Act, which was put forward by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. But only five states have passed the legislation, which is not nearly enough. (Section 203 permits companies that have obtained a money transmission license under UMSA in one state to operate in other states that have enacted UMSA or similar laws.)

In addition, licensed money transmitters should be given more latitude to appoint third-party authorized delegates  provided they have done full due diligence on each third-party business partner and are fully responsible and liable for all customer funds and for the third party's compliance. Forcing licensed money transmitters to drop their authorized delegates because their business is not tied closely enough to the authorized delegate's business has made American consumers less safe, not more. It has forced the closure of otherwise healthy and beneficial companies and pushed back U.S. payments innovation by years.

Similarly, to the extent it may enhance innovation, the CFPB inquiry the CFPB inquiry into open banking and access to consumer account data is just beginning and is years behind the E.U., which has already passed such a provision under the Second Payment Services Directive to be implemented in 2018. The U.K. has made it clear that it intends to move forward with PSD2 despite Brexit.

Recent trends augur for much stronger growth of payment innovation in the U.S. compared to a year ago. But the payment innovation wars are not over. As global enthusiasm for blockchain and shared ledger technology continues to grow, we need to make sure our payments, banking and fintech laws and regulations provide a welcoming and nurturing environment for fintechs and emerging payments companies  not an obstacle course that only the largest and most entrenched companies can survive.

Judith Rinearson is a partner at K&L Gates. She works out of the firm's London and New York offices.
The size of the U.S. payment card market prompted many issuers to keep things simple when they finally moved to support EMV.

They tended to stick with chip cards that have to be inserted, however a few companies are now looking to gain an edge by enabling Near Field Communication on the cards.

TCF Financial in Wayzata, Minn., is adding NFC to all newly issued EMV cards with the promise of quicker checkouts. The goal is to attack the widespread consumer perception that contact-only EMV debit cards take extra seconds to process at the point of sale.

One of the biggest questions about EMV cards in the U.S. has been the issue of speed for the convenience of customers and merchants also looking to make transactions go faster," said Kevin Miller, senior vice president and director of products, marketing and customer service at TCF. Our thought was that by issuing contactless debit cards, we could help customers speed up checkouts and it would be one more reason for them to use this card.

Citigroup so far has made the broadest push into contactless EMV by equipping all of the credit cards its rolling out for its new cobranded Costco Visa credit with NFC, giving cardholders a quicker way to check out during this years crowded holiday shopping lines. Other large issuers, including American Express Co., are issuing NFC-enabled EMV credit cards, to customers upon request.

Relatively few issuers have adopted NFC for EMV debit cards, in part because debit EMV card distribution trailed credit cards, due largely to uncertainty over the technology needed to support merchant choices in U.S. debit network routing, which federal rules require.

Though only a small proportion of merchants support NFCand Costco isnt one of themmany large national retailers do, including Best Buy Co., Crate & Barrel, Bloomingdales and Macys. Citi recently said customer account sign-ups are brisk, recently passing the 1 million mark.

To accomplish its rollout of NFC-enabled EMV debit cards, TCF has installed card-issuing technology at the 341 branches it operates in seven mostly Midwestern states, Miller said.

TCF began issuing contactless EMV cards in September with new customers and its replacing older EMV debit cards with NFC-enabled cards in batches, Miller said. Customers also may walk into a branch and request a contactless EMV card to be issued immediately.

Immediacy is a big selling point for bank customers, Miller said.

TCF doesnt issue its own credit cards directly. First National Bank of Omaha issues TCF-branded credit cards through an agent relationship, and so far those cards arent equipped with NFC, Miller said.

Debit cards are a critical mechanism for our customers to be able to manage their money every day, and making that product more important and valuable is a high priority for us, he said.

Outside the U.S., contactless EMV debit and credit cards are increasingly becoming the norm, especially in markets with dense urban populations, said Jack Jania, senior vice president of global alliances at Gemalto, which produces and provisions payment cards. NFC-enabled cards are expected to gain ground in cities like London with mass-transit systems that accept open-loop contactless cards, he added.

Dual-interface EMV cards are gaining popularity in a lot of global markets, and as mobile payments expand and more terminals support NFC, the availability of contactless EMV cards is also helping to drive more incremental card volume, which is a top issuer goal, Jania said.

But many U.S. issuers that just finished the mammoth job of converting all of their credit and debit card portfolios to EMV arent eager to do a costly mass-reissuance just yet merely to add the contactless capability, Jania suggested.

Its expensive to do a mass EMV rollout, and how issuers decide to set up their cards is a business decision they may revisit as chip cards become the more established routine for U.S. merchants and shoppers, Jania said.

About a third of U.S. merchants have enabled EMV at payment terminals, and more than 80% of card issuers have completed their migration to chip cards, according to the latest industry figures.


A little more than two years after Community National Bank in Great Neck, N.Y., agreed to sell itself, Stuart H. Lubow, its former chairman and CEO, has jumped back into banking.

Dime Community Bancshares in Brooklyn, N.Y., announced late Thursday that it has named Lubow senior executive vice president and head of business banking. The $5.82 billion-asset Dime has historically focused on multifamily lending, but it recently announced plans to diversify its balance sheet. Its shift comes as banking regulators are expressing growing concerns about high concentrations of commercial real estate loans.

The addition of Lubow to its management team will drive Dime's evolution into a full-service commercial bank, President and CEO Kenneth J. Mahon said in a press release. Lubow "shares our values and focus on the customer and brings a unique skill set of starting and growing the commercial bank services necessary to producing an improved commercial-bank-like loan and deposit mix," said Mahon, who was recently named a Community Banker to Watch by American Banker.

Mr. Lubow will be joined by another Community National alumnus, Conrad Gunther, who was named executive vice president of business banking.

Lubow's roots in New York's banking market extend back to 1979, when he was hired as an assistant treasurer at Chase Manhattan Bank. He was tapped to lead Community National Bank in 2005. The $945 million-asset Community National agreed to sell itself to Bridge Bancorp of Bridgehampton, N.Y., for $141 million in stock in December 2014. The deal closed the following June. Prior to joining Community National, Lubow served as president and CEO at Community State Bank in Teaneck, N.J.
President Obama came as a stranger, and is leaving as a stranger.

The Obama presidency has been different from any other administration in the last two centuries. From the start, he has gone out of his way to defy the very essence of the American Republic, our constitutional limits on the power of any single dictatorial individual. Under Obama, the US Congress and even the Supreme Court have failed to assert their constitutional independence, presumably out of fear of this president and the accusations of racism that followed opposition to him or his policies.

According to the Supreme Court, Obamacare was a tax bill when Obamacares fines for not buying insurance was an issue before it, but suddenly became not a tax bill when passed by Congress, because it originated in the Senate, while tax bills must originate in the House, according to our Constitution. Congressional Republicans curled up in fetal positions, and even the Permanent Government in DC, including the CIA, FBI, IRS and DOJ, all failed in keep their reputations for integrity. Even many states bowed down to the dictates of DC. Large corporations either outsourced to other countries or treated Washington, DC like a Third World Dictatorship. Silicon Valley kissed the grungy ground in abject worship of Dear Leader.

Nobody has explained those failures of normal American governance to the people of this country. Nobody can guarantee to us that Obama, or his clone, is not going to be back in some way. We cant even get him out of DC. He will clearly try to cling to power, maybe by running Michelle as his cats paw, as Bill Clinton did. Hillary was duly worshiped by the Establishments of left and right, people who have totally lost the essence of the US Constitution. Running a married political couple for president is simply asking for a 16-year presidential coup detat, and the Hill-Billy couple came within a hairs breadth of two double terms in office.

Obama has been frequently described as a professor of constitutional law, but he has never shown a single sign of appreciation, care or even understanding of the US Constitution. For Obama, the US Constitution is just an obstacle to be circumvented or simply ignored. A few weeks ago he told us that the Electoral College is outdated apparently because the American States are now largely under the thumb of the Feds. The Electoral College was originally designed to give States a voice in the election of the Chief Executive of the nation.

My interpretation of his casual put-down was this: The States used to be the major unit of governance in America, subordinate only to the US Constitution. But today the power-hungry left has succeeded in slicing our people by race, by gender, by class, by favorite sexual objects, and now by religion -- if one considers Islam as mainly a religion rather than as a theology of conquest. (It is both). In Obamas mind, maybe the Electoral College should represent his favorite demographics: blacks, liberal whites, gays and lesbians, and so on. Those artificial identity blocks are what he really cares about. He has no conception of human beings as an ethnos, a people with its own enduring character, who make up what used to be called the melting pot of American democracy.

Today the left-establishment is happily scapegoating white guys because of their race, gender, and sexual preferences. Such is the domestic peace Obama has left us. Racial politics inevitably turns to anti-Semitism at some point, since Jews make natural mob targets. Our universities are becoming unsafe for Jewish students and faculty. I have seen it coming for decades.

And waddayaknow, Obama has capped his slew of anti-American outrages by moving to delegitimize the State of Israel in the jihadophiliac United Nations.

Its pretty clear that Obama is doing all that with an eye to the future. When (not if) he is nominated to be Sec General of the UN, he will have 57 votes from Muslim nations, plus the votes of European countries that are already submitting to Jihad.

No other president in US history, not even FDR with his four elections, nor Wilson in WWI, nor Lincoln in the Civil War, has shown such utter contempt for the most successful long-term electoral government in human history. Obama has never bothered to hide his contempt for the Constitution.

In all those ways he came as a stranger to our most revered political values, and he is leaving exactly the same way.

He has learned nothing.

You and I might heave a sigh of relief that in a two weeks Obama is going to be out of power, and that Hillary lost. But constitutional government will be in danger as long as cultural Jihado-Marxism controls so many centers of American life. Obamas plain failure to learn anything about constitutional government reflects the alienation of the academic left and its friends in Saudi Arabia and Europe.

The leftstream is watching the rise of Trump, and Trump-like politicians in Britain and Europe; they call it populism, with a wink to Hitler in the 1930s; but electoral legitimacy under the Constitution is precisely the secret of our popular stability and prosperity since 1789, when our foundational law was adopted.

Obama still wants to be King, and he wants it by hook or by crook. He therefore continues to pose an ongoing danger to the American Republic, and will for the remainder of his life. He is not our friend, and never was.
In the wake of Donald Trump's election victory, progressives have doubled down with charges that he is "dangerous" and "extreme." Just this week, Rosie O'Donnell charged that Trump is "mentally unstable"  that following her earlier vow to emigrate if Trump won. (No sign of emigration yet.) Sally Field finds "no evidence" that Trump "can do one single thing he said he could." (He's already done several, saving thousands of jobs.) An article on commondreams.org, a progressive website, finds Trump "vindictive" for responding to a union official who questioned his Carrier jobs numbers. And Sen. Schumer now threatens to block any Supreme Court nominee Trump might pick, thus keeping the Scalia seat and any future vacancies permanently open.

In truth, it's Trump's critics who are the extremists. Their real problem isn't that Trump is dangerous or not mainstream. It's just that he's not one of them. So they're going to block anything that's not exactly what they want. That's not a political approach worthy of a democracy. It's what you would expect in Venezuela or Cuba.

Of course, Trump has stepped on their toes. He's had the audacity to nominate businessmen and women for cabinet posts, and he speaks of America as if he really loves the place. Why should that bother progressives? Because they detest capitalism, and they disagree with America First.

Nor is "rebuilding our military" a goal that endears a president-elect to the left. Like Obama, most progressives want to cut military budgets even more, cede control to a U.N. controlled by dictators, and permanently "lead from behind." That amounts to quietism on a grand scale, and its effect is to embolden our enemies.

For a great nation to withdraw from global politics is, by definition, extreme. It was tried before, with Bill Clinton's wrist-slap response to terrorist attacks of the 1990s and with Jimmy Carter's ineffectual response to the Iran hostage crisis. In both cases, our enemies gained strength from our weakness.

Not using the term "Islamic terrorism" for eight years is also pretty extreme. Obama called the Orlando nightclub killing the result of "extremist ideology" but refused to call it either "Islamic" or "terrorism." Was it ideology, or was it hatred of the West motivated by Islamic extremism?

Likewise, the president has carefully danced around the term "ISIS," the label commonly associated with beheadings and other particularly brutal acts. He thought that by avoiding the emotion-laden term "ISIS," he could evade having to respond with force. He preferred "ISIL," a more neutral term designed to bury the subject. But the bombings and executions kept coming. An Islamic terrorist by any other name is just as deadly.

That degree of avoidance of reality  accompanied by Obama's plan to bring 110,000 Islamic "refugees" to America in just the current fiscal year  is nothing if not extreme. Actually, most progressives are even more radical  they've criticized Obama for not letting in unlimited numbers. A piece in the Huffington Post argues that the case for open borders is "not as radical as it may seem." One of the author's 16 reasons for open borders is that "Europe opened many of its borders and the sky didn't fall." That was written in September 2014, just ahead of the December attacks in Tours, Dijon, and Nantes, France, and with over 200 terrorist attacks occurring or plotted in 2015. Worse followed with massacres in Paris, Nice, Brussels, and Berlin. Yet progressives want to open our borders to everyone, and with their "sanctuary cities" to defend those here illegally.

When Rahm Emanuel proclaims that "Chicago will always be a sanctuary city," I have to respond, "You cannot be serious." But the left is serious. Emanuel has urged illegals to dial 311 to get legal representation and other forms of taxpayer-funded support. Is that not extreme?

There are over 200 sanctuary cities in the U.S., each of them threatening to ignore federal deportation orders for illegals. Nullification on this scale has not been attempted since before the Civil War, and it is unlikely to succeed, but it is important to recognize how radical the sanctuary city position actually is. According to the Supremacy Clause within Article VI of the Constitution, neither individual cities nor states can pre-empt federal law with regard to immigration and other matters clearly within federal jurisdiction.

But progressives want to open our borders to tens of millions of illegal immigrants from every land. Given the evidence of what is happening in Europe, that proposition is extreme.

Then there are the charges of racism and sexism. The mindset of progressives today is that anyone who does not embrace the whole radical program should expect to be charged with everything from fascism to sexism to classism, even if his only "crime" is philosophical disagreement. Ad hominem attack is the lowest form of rhetoric, but it is now the left's principal mode of argument.

That shift in progressive tactics is a departure from every recognizable form of civilized debate, but then the left is no longer interested in debate. While familiar in totalitarian systems, the left's slash-and-burn tactics are a departure from everything we've known in the past. Hillary Clinton's strategy of demonizing her opponent with no regard for the issues was of this sort, and it almost worked.

While progressives are extreme, it's Trump who comes across as grounded, even-tempered, and mainstream. Since the election, Trump has gained the trust of the people with his efforts to save jobs and his calm decision-making. His cabinet nominees are men and women of great experience and character. All of them have one thing in common: getting things done. Nothing extreme about that.

As hard as it is to comprehend, progressives really do believe that Trump  a man who wants to save jobs for ordinary Americans, protect us against terrorism and other threats, and restore prosperity  is extreme and dangerous. He is dangerous because he might just make America great again. Above all else, progressives do not want to see America mighty again. They seem to want a country that has the same influence on global affairs as the Principality of Monaco.

Whatever the reason, progressives are really upset this time around. They hated Reagan, and they despised George W. Bush, but their response to Trump is beyond hateful. It is deranged. Do we need to add that derangement is, by definition, extreme?

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
According to our leftist betters, a sickening graphic video showing a white man being brutally tortured in Chicago by four black attackers as they shout, "F--- Donald Trump! F--- white people!" isn't evidence of racism or a hate crime.

In the left's alternate universe, Pepe the Donald Trump-loving cartoon frog is racist. Kidnapping, torturing, and scalping an innocent white man because he is white is not racist. Black-hating mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof speaks for all white people, but the newly arrested black perpetrators in Chicago, Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, Tanishia Covington, and Brittany Covington, are all rogue actors.

No minorities are responsible for their actions. It's society's fault. It's capitalism's fault. It's the fault of white privilege.

To be clear, I am referring to the #BlackLivesMatter kidnapping broadcast live on Facebook (since censored by the fake news commissars at Facebook and at YouTube) that shows a captive, reportedly mentally disabled young white male being physically abused by four young black assailants. Fortunately, Live Leak posted the full video, which runs 27 minutes and 39 seconds.

Black Lives Matter movement hero DeRay Mckesson rushed to Twitter Thursday morning to make excuses for his comrades-in-arms. "It goes without saying that the actions being branded by the far-right as the 'BLM Kidnapping' have nothing to do [with] the movement."

He's lying.

This is exactly what Black Lives Matter stands for. Its supporters lionize those who murder cops and white people. At their marches, they carry signs reading, "End White Supremacy." America, they claim, is systemically racist. In other words, white people are racist and evil.

In my previous American Thinker profile of Black Lives Matter, I wrote:

The Black Lives Matter cult is animated by a hatred of normal American values. Its members idolize convicted, unrepentant black militants and cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal and have declared "war" on law enforcement. While its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated, its leaders, wishing to seem more respectable before the TV cameras, downplay the insurrectionary rhetoric whenever a member kills a cop.

These are sick people who need to be dealt with. The Black Lives Matter movement should be disbanded by force, if necessary, and its leaders arrested. Sedition and gangsterism aren't free speech.

Returning to the video, in it one person says, "This nigga right here represents Trump" and says he will put the victim in the trunk of a car and "put a brick on the gas."

The victim is forced to drink water from a toilet. The victim's clothes are sliced. An attacker cuts off a part of the man's scalp while his mouth is bound with what appears to be duct tape. A woman mocks the victim, saying, "Oooo, that bit's gone" as the man is menaced with a knife. "This s--- is hilarious," the woman says while laughing. Another says, "Smack his ass."

The attackers allow their faces to be shown as if they don't expect to be held accountable for their actions. They even call each other by first names.

In Barack Hussein Obama's America, these criminals have every reason to believe they will not be held to account for their actions. And in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's blood-spattered Chicago in the era of the Democratic Party-endorsed Black Lives Matter movement, these people can reasonably expect a slap on the wrist  if that.

Predictably, the assembly line at the leftist excuse factory sprang to life as soon as the video received attention. The talking points quickly went viral.

Commander Kevin Duffin of the Chicago police shrugged. "Kids make stupid decisions  I shouldn't call them kids. They're legally adults. But they're young adults, and they make stupid decisions."

He added, "That will certainly be part of whether or not we determine this a hate crime or whether or not this is stupid ranting and raving." (Why it can't be both is unclear.)

On CNN, Daily Caller columnist Matt K. Lewis correctly described the incident as an example of "evil." "That's what this is  it's evil, it's brutality, it's man's inhumanity to man."

Award-winning anchor Don Lemon, who famously pondered whether Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was swallowed by a black hole, calmly demurred.

"I don't think it's evil," he said. "I think these are young people and they have bad home training." He added, "I have no idea who's raising these young people, because no one I know on Earth, 17 years old or 70 years old, would ever think of treating another person like this."

At Gizmodo, Bryan Menegus wrote a piece titled "Alt-Right Trolls Use Chicago Kidnapping to Spread Lies About Black Lives Matter[.]"

He asks, "But how exactly are these teens tied to the Black Lives Matter movement? The short answer is: they're not."

Menegus calls the kidnapping an "isolated criminal event" and pedantically observes:

Not one legitimate news source linked the attack to BLM for the simple reason that no evidence of such a connection exists. Nor did I hear the movement being invoked at any point during the 30-minute video, which I watched in its entirety. An administrator of Centipede Central  a popular Trump supporter chatroom  was able to find the Facebook page of Brittany Herring, the young woman who filmed the act. Her public posts, which stretch back to September 2015, have no references to BLM either.

At Bustle, Jessicah Lahitou whines that some have twisted "this isolated and highly disturbing crime into a false narrative about the Black Lives Matter movement."

Reading from the same script as Menegus, she laments:

But it is sadly telling of the political moment we're in that so many on the far right jumped at this chance to demonize BLM, rather than seek facts and advocate for serious and severe repercussions for the four individuals responsible for this crime.

Lilly Workneh, "Black Voices Senior Editor" at the Huffington Post, dutifully follows the party line, writing that the perpetrators "have no official affiliation to the Black Lives Matter movement and Chicago police said on Thursday that they have not made any connection to the racial justice group."

But journalists are not the final arbiters of truth.

Americans agree, which is why only "6 percent of people say they have a great deal of confidence in the press," according to the American Press Institute.

It is demonstrably true that Black Lives Matter supporters embrace anti-white violence. They're thrilled when blacks assault whites while playing the "knockout game."

They have been given aid and encouragement by President Obama, who has long tried to provoke civil unrest and racial antagonism. He has steadfastly refused to condemn Black Lives Matter. In fact, Obama has lavished attention on the movement's leaders and invited them to the White House over and over again. He even blamed five Dallas cops for their own murder at the hands of a Black Lives Matter-inspired sniper.

As Colin Flaherty proves every single day, violent black-on-white crime is dramatically underreported. The mainstream media goes out of its way not to characterize obvious racially motivated crimes committed by blacks against whites as race-related.

The Black Lives Matter movement never hesitates to go to bat for vicious thugs when they are black.

They turned Trayvon Martin into a martyr even though he attempted to murder so-called white Hispanic Robert Zimmerman because he mistakenly believed that Zimmerman was gay. They beatified "gentle giant" Michael Brown after he attempted to murder decorated white cop Darren Wilson. They portrayed heroin dealer Freddie Gray as a victim of systemic, anti-black violence by police and cheered as Baltimore cops were subjected to political show trials.

Whether the attackers in Chicago specifically said at any point in their lives, "I endorse Black Lives Matter" is irrelevant. They are doing the bidding of this antisocial movement. They are its vanguard.

Matthew Vadum is senior vice president at Capital Research Center, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., and editor-in-chief of its new Bombthrowers blog. He is also an investigative reporter and author of the ACORN/Obama expose Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Follow him on Twitter. Email him at matthewvadum [at] gmail.com.
The left always ignores national defense, and so it should be no surprise to learn that in many ways, Obama has left America's armed forces in worse shape than at any time since the Great Depression. The situation today is similar in some ways to America when Ronald Reagan became president.

Our nation faces myriad threats abroad and is not respected by many of the bad actors who may harm us. The men and women who protect us feel forgotten and neglected. Our economy is in the doldrums, with millions of Americans now feeling hopeless about their economic future.

President Trump can solve several problems with one policy: dramatically increase defense expenditures. Make sure our weapon systems are by far the best in the world, and give us the power to clearly control the sea and air when we need to. Deploy the most advanced missile defense systems we can for America and our allies. Provide adequate compensation to keep men in the service and the training to make sure they are the best in the world.

This would ensure that we win any war we need to wage and allow us to intervene against North Korea and Iran, if those nations acquire nuclear weapons with delivery systems to harm us. We would be able to dictate militarily the outcome of conflicts in regions we consider vital to our national security. An overpowering American military prevents wars by letting any nation that thinks about going to war with us know that it will lose.

This would help incoming President Trump also to do what another brash New Yorker who occupied the White House one century ago was able to do effectively: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Teddy Roosevelt built up the American Navy so that it would be clear to every power that we had the military muscle to defend our interests around the world and also, just as important, the political will to spend what is necessary for that guarantee on national defense.

It worked, and Teddy Roosevelt was able to win the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. America was at peace under Teddy Roosevelt and had good relations with rest of the world, and he was respected as well. He did not pursue the dreamy world government nonsense of Woodrow Wilson, but rather rested his foreign policy on respect for America, friendly relations with every nation that would have friendly relations with us, his own indomitable will, and a first-class fleet that could, and did, sail around the world to show without threatening just how powerful we were.

This would give President Trump just what he needs to have friendly meetings with the leaders of Russia and China. He could negotiate tough but fair deals with them on trade and other issues without descending into the sort of childish scolding that is the preferred response of limp-wristed leftism. Let the military leaders of other nations tell their political bosses that their nations would decisively lose a hot war with America, and let President Trump be a congenial, reasonable, serious, tough negotiator on trade and related issues.

A big defense buildup would jump-start the economy and particularly help those areas that are key to long-term prosperity: high-tech industrial production jobs, advanced science and technology work, and the disciplined environment of the military, where young men will have the chance to gain sophisticated job skills.

FDR's Great Depression, which lasted about as long as the Obama Depression has lasted, did not end with FDR's New Deal programs. Rather, it ended when America began a massive military buildup during the early days of the Second World War. This spending led directly to the Eisenhower Boom, during which America still spent an incredible ten percent of our GDP on national defense, vastly higher than what we spend today.

A big defense buildup would also shift the allocation of federal money away from those dreary cadres administering failed social welfare programs and mismanaging goofy green energy projects, whose operators are all committed leftists, and shift that money toward Americans who are much more likely to be hardworking patriots in uniform, in defense factories, and in technology companies.

President Trump has every reason to push a big defense buildup. Both his rhetoric and his appointments suggest that he may do just that.
In the wake of Donald Trump's election as our next President, much has been made of the GOP's need to unite. I agree with this sentiment. However, I humbly suggest to those Republicans, including Trump who led the successful campaign to retake our country, that while we must unite and even forgive our wayward rank-and-file GOP brethren who chose not to support our efforts, we must never forget those who engaged in outright acts of treachery that jeopardized our cause and our nation's future.

First, I must make clear I am not referring to every Republican who made a personal decision not to support Trump. I am sure that there are registered voters in every election cycle who quietly choose, for personal reasons, not to support their party's nominee. As American voters, we must all act according to the dictates of our consciences.

Rather, I am referring to those Republicans who had such a vested interest (emotional, financial, or otherwise) in maintaining the status quo, maintaining the same stale policies that had long served their personal and business interests at the expense of the Republican electorate and their country, that they poured significant time and energy into derailing the GOP nominee and thwarting the will of the Republican voters who supported him.

We must not forget Jamie Weinstein, a "conservative" editor at Dailycaller.com who advocated a "negotiated Republican surrender" to Hillary Clinton. Weinstein went so far as to publicly urge his fellow Republicans to vote Democrat.

We must not forget Jonah Goldberg, Kevin D. Williamson, and the majority of contributors and editors at the National Review, which posted multiple anti-Trump articles on a daily basis, even dedicating one entire issue to attacking Trump. Williamson became so unhinged at one point that he characterized white-working class communities that supported Trump as "morally indefensible" and wrong to blame their troubles on our nation's illegal immigration problem and policies that have proven harmful to the working class. In Williams's judgment, these white working-class communities had "failed themselves" and "deserve to die."

Following Trump's victory, and a catastrophic loss of subscribers, the National Review has since tempered its message. The staff continue to attack Trump, but now they take the occasional break to give our president-elect "sound conservative advice." Namely, they have advised Trump to abandon the positions that got him elected, to appoint the same stale establishment GOP figures who have repeatedly failed to stand up to Obama for eight years, and to adopt the same stale establishment policies that cost us the White House in 2008.

But National Review has nothing on Bill Kristol and his Weekly Standard. Kristol didn't just criticize Trump or write scathing articles attacking the campaign; Kristol orchestrated a massive search for a third-party candidate to run in the general election. He met with prospective candidates and even tried to line up financial backing for a third-party run. Kristol acknowledged that this third-party candidate had no realistic chance to win but expressed the hope that the candidate would take enough votes away from Trump to keep him from getting elected.

Ultimately, the only candidate to answer Kristol's call was Evan McMullin, a heretofore unknown former CIA operative who had also spent time working in an administrative position within the House of Representatives (i.e., he was a government bureaucrat). It was while working in Congress that he admittedly first came to one of the most important revelations of his life: that the GOP is racist! McMullin later explained that "there is a serious problem of racism in the Republican Party," when asked why Donald Trump had managed to win the GOP's nomination.

McMullin, a Mormon, concentrated his efforts in Utah, hoping to prevent Trump from winning delegates from the traditionally dependable red state. Fortunately, Republican voters rejected Kristol's and McMullin's efforts to sabotage the GOP. McMullin now spends most of his time slinging insults at GOP voters on Twitter and weaving bizarre theories about Trump being a Manchurian candidate for Russia.

We must not forget George Will, the "conservative" writer who threw a public tantrum and left the GOP when Trump won the nomination. Thereafter, he spent his time contributing anti-Trump pieces to the National Review and Washington Post, as well as periodically appearing on Fox News to trumpet the death of the Trump campaign and offer a snide eulogy. On the morning after Trump's election, Will characterized it as "a ruinous triumph for the GOP." Nevertheless, the election results have not prevented "Often Wrong" Will from subsequently offering a steady stream of unsolicited advice to President-Elect Trump.

We must not forget Mitt Romney. Romney did not simply decline to publicly support Trump. Romney did not simply decline to vote for Trump. Romney did not simply critique some of Trump's positions. Romney met privately with moneyed interests to trash Trump, while publicly declaring that Trump's election would be the worst result imaginable to the media and conservative groups. Romney predicted that our economy would "sink into a prolonged recession" if Trump were elected. Romney fretted over Trump's "dangerous" talk about enforcing our borders and putting a stop to the importation of refugees without an effective vetting process. Romney also frequently repeated false narratives pushed by the progressive media in a clumsy effort to embarrass or undermine the Trump campaign, all the while referring to Trump as a "phony" and a "fraud." Post-election, Romney has executed an awkward 180-degree turn, obsequiously praising Trump as part of an all too transparent effort to reap a political handout.

All of the aforementioned "conservatives" (as well as scores more I do not have enough space to properly discuss  e.g., John Kasich, who threw a tantrum and refused to attend the GOP Convention being held in his own state) were all vociferous in their criticism of Trump. Yet they never seemed to find their voices when the topic came around to the Supreme Court and the reality that the next president would very likely choose two, and perhaps as many as four, of the next justices. They never seemed to acknowledge the potential long-term consequences of their actions to the Republican electorate and the country at large should the Supreme Court swing violently to the left. Nor did they seem to be all that interested in discussing the multiple allegations of corruption and illegal conduct that encircled Hillary Clinton and her tight-knit group of devotees like buzzards throughout the campaign. Is it perhaps because a careless, corrupt, and inept Clinton presidency would not have threatened their sensibilities, nor their professional security, nearly as much as a Trump presidency might?

Unite the GOP? Good idea. We should unite to most effectively move forward and capitalize on our recent gains. Forgive? I am willing to welcome rank-and-file Republicans back into the fold. Forget? No. We should never forget the transgressions perpetrated by the leadership of the "NeverTrump" movement. To forget these transgressions is to forget why this revolt of the electorate was necessary. It means forgetting who really will have our back when we face fire from the left and who will have our back only as long as it is professionally and personally expedient to do so. It means forgetting that there are entrenched interests in Washington who do not have our best interests at heart, and are happy to accept our support and vote as long as they know they won't actually be held accountable when they disregard our concerns and wishes.

Elephants do not forget.
Thankfully, America is not a land of nobility, but not all noble ideas are un-American. The sense of aristocratic obligation, recognized in the French noblesse oblige or German Adel verpflichtet, is a decent, honorable idea for those in this country born into privilege and a good indication of character. We'll find out about this with Donald Trump. With respect to Barack Obama, we already know what he makes of his privileged status, and it is a sad commentary both on the man and on the left-wing-dominated public space that encouraged and facilitated his rise.

Obama was not born into substantial wealth, but his family on both sides was well connected, providing a traditional advantage that allowed him entry into elite society. This old-style leg up then combined with modern leftist ethnic-racial privileges, overwhelmingly present in academia and the media, to advance Obama at every turn. This created a powerful cocktail of built-in benefits that gave Obama almost every conceivable benefit of the doubt while at the same time allowing him to claim victim status. More than anything else, it is this dynamic that explains his rise and his selfishness. It also clarifies Obama's heavy narcissism, bullying behavior, and utter lack of graciousness.

Without these privileges, Obama gets nowhere. If you are inclined to learn more about how Obama got this way, read David Maraniss's much heralded, largely hagiographic biography of Obama's early years, if you can bear it. Before I bought it, I noted a two-star review on Amazon: "Boring." Often such smart-aleck one-word reviews are off the mark, but not this time.

It is not Maraniss's fault; he's a decent writer. It's the subject matter. Most of the book's tales of young Obama and those around him literally made my eyes water with the incredible dullness of it all. The book is filled with tedious, superficial minutiae to fill up pages  e.g., excruciating detail of Obama's digs, restaurants he might have frequented, graffiti on bathroom stalls he didn't write. Obama was an unremarkable young man, whose major documented accomplishment before law school was coming up with new ways to smoke pot with his Choom Gang pals.

It is law school that I want to examine, an experience I share with Obama. I am his rough contemporary and went to a relatively high-end law school during the same period he was at Harvard.

After attending Hawaii's prestigious private Punahou high school, Obama got into the equally tony if not exceedingly prestigious Occidental College in California. From there, he managed to transfer to Columbia. At no point do we know his grades or test scores, which he's not released. Maraniss briefly addresses the likelihood that Obama got into Columbia via affirmative action and dismisses it with a complete non sequitur, noting that a minority classmate of Obama's had very good SAT scores. After a couple of unremarkable years at Columbia, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. Then, rather easily, obviously though traditional connections and modern racial privileges, he got into Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law is the inflection point in Obama's career. It was there he became the first black president of the prestigious Law Review, attracting press attention, which enticed literary agents, leading to the idea of his producing a memoir, which eventually Bill Ayers wrote for him, making Obama rich and giving him an undeserved reputation as a gifted writer and social observer. The rest is obvious.

Obama's election to president of the Harvard Law Review is no mystery. He was black and glib, and the very liberal members of the Law Review obviously saw his election as a progressive necessity. This despite the fact it is not clear that as a second-year editor, he actually wrote anything other than possibly contributing anonymously to a short case note, meager (to be generous) production that would usually be disqualifying for leading the august journal. What is mysterious is how he got on the Law Review in the first place as a second-year student, to get elected president in his third year.

I know a little about this, so bear with a personal anecdote. Unlike Obama, I did not go to an exclusive prep school or well heeled private college, but I did get good grades at the state college I attended and scored well enough on the LSAT to get into a relatively high-end law school. As a white male, my grades and scores were not Harvard material, though they were good enough for some lower-end Ivy League schools. Ultimately, I decided to attend Washington and Lee University, which offered relatively low tuition at the time.

At W&L, as at Harvard, there were two ways to get on Law Review in the 1980s. One was based on grades  the top students made it automatically. The second way, introduced in law schools in part to encourage minority participation, was "writing on." Lower-ranked students could submit articles at the end of their first year, and theoretically, the best authors would be placed on Law Review. Stuck in the middle of my class as a first-year student, I signed up to do just that, but I got lazy over the summer and never wrote or submitted anything.

Imagine my surprise at the end of the summer when the editor-in-chief called to congratulate me for making the Law Review. I was almost certain I could not have made it based on grades, and unless I wrote and submitted a paper in a drunken stupor  possible, but then the paper could not have been very good  there was no way I could have been properly selected, and I told him as much. He was nonplussed. I don't think he'd ever known anyone to turn an appointment down. But after making sure I was serious, he thanked me and said he'd look into it. I never heard from him again.

I believe that almost exactly the same thing happened with Obama, except that he said, "Yes!" At least there is no record or account of Obama writing anything to get on the Law Review, and we can assume that his grades were mediocre, or he would have released them.

Now and again, I've wondered if my life and career would have been different had I said, "Yes!," too. But it just wasn't in me, and had I done it, I would always have worried that whatever leg up Law Review gave me came at someone else's expense. Obama had no such qualms, having come from privilege and with the extra attitude that he was still nonetheless a victim and owed.

This worldview is reflected in the remainder of Obama's career, his presidency, and perhaps most notably his relations with foreign leaders. These people, as his status equals, recognize Obama's fundamental fragility and weakness. So it is no surprise that the two leaders with whom he has the worst relations, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, are both hard men of real accomplishment, with some sense of noble obligation to their people. Thus, it is at least partly salutatory that Obama leaves office having come a cropper against both of them, neither his history of privilege nor victimized self-image having moved either man.
As President-Elect Donald Trump (R) demonstrates daily, the new electronic media is changing the news, adding diversity to ways the public consumes news, and even allowing newsmakers to deliver news directly to the public without intermediaries interpreting or deciding what is news.

Thursday, four black youths, two males and two females (and isn't gender equality wonderful?) allegedly (innocent until proven guilty, of course) committed a truly evil deed. Although the broadcast and even the dead tree media minimized its disgusting nature, bloggers and tweeters discovered the event and publicized it on their sites. Well, it wasn't too difficult to find it, as the alleged perps gleefully streamed the event in real time for about a half an hour on Facebook. Apparently, this did not violate Facebook's sensibilities, although the victim was gagged, punched, knifed, and forced to drink from a toilet by the four "youths" shouting repeated racial slurs  against whites and Trump  in the background.

After finding the victim, dressed only in shorts and a thin shirt, wandering the streets of a black neighborhood on the sub-freezing 10-degree night, the police took him to a hospital but couldn't decide at the time if a hate crime had occurred. And so, following along, the mainstream media trivialized the incident. In the past, that would have been sufficient  nothing to see here, move along. But no more. The many conservative websites exploded; tweeters engulfed Twitter. And so, finally, late Thursday afternoon, hours after the events, the Chicago police finally decided, well, yeah, this was a hate crime after all. As they were forced to admit on their Twitter feed:

CPD Arrested and Charged all four offenders with Hate Crime, as well as other charges.

They didn't specify if it was a hate crime based on race or one based on disabilities. Or both. But they did admit that the Facebook video was disturbing.

Regarding the disturbing video that surfaced on social media of a battery: Incident is under investigation/suspects are being questioned

As the Chicago Tribune reported:

Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago, Brittany Covington, 18, of Chicago and her sister, Tanishia Covington, 24, of Chicago were all charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Hill was also charged with robbery, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and residential burglary, and both Cooper and Brittany Covington were charged with residential burglary. Police said Hill was with the victim when police found him on the street. All four suspects have given statements admitting to their roles in the attack, police said. They are due in bond court Friday. Asked about the video that helped in the arrests, Duffin (of the Chicago Police Department) said, "I can't understand why anybody puts anything on Facebook."

Even the Tribune didn't understand that this evil deed was important enough to put anything newsworthy on their front page, going with this for their evening edition.

Don't try to express your opinion of the crime to the Tribune's comments section; even if you subscribe, the comments section has been blocked. They might be racist, apparently.

Others have commented, however. Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel (D), a former aide to fellow Chicagoan President Barack Hussein Obama (D):

... called the acts on the video "sickening," adding that anyone who views it is "sickened by it." He declined further comment, citing the criminal charges, but also said "there is more to our city than that."

That's true. There are many murders. And beautiful, accessible beaches. And taxes. And gorgeous architecture. And crime.

Emanuel's friend, the president, agreed, stating that despite the incident, race relations are fine, and the next generation "have smarter, better, more thoughtful attitudes about race."

The torture of a teenager streamed live on Facebook is "despicable" but not a sign of worsening racial tensions, President Obama said Thursday in an interview with CBS 2 Special Contributor Jay Levine. (snip) Obama said he doesn't believe racial tensions have gotten worse, but that the public exposure is more prevalent in the digital age. "In part because we see visuals of racial tensions, violence and so forth because of smart phones and the Internet," the president said. "What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time. "Whether it's tensions between police and communities, hate crimes of the despicable sort that has just now recently surfaced on Facebook. (snip) However, the president remains hopeful about the future. "I take these things very seriously." "The good news is that the next generation that's coming behind us  have smarter, better, more thoughtful attitudes about race. "I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive. It doesn't mean that all racial problems have gone away. It means that we have the capacity to get better."

Sir, Dylann Roof, the white teenager who killed nine black churchgoers, and these four are of the "next generation" and certainly don't have "smarter ... more thoughtful attitudes about race."

Maybe things will get better. Can they get any worse?
Over the last eight years, in addition to fighting Obama's numerous wars, the U.S. Army has served as a gigantic social sciences lab under this president.

Gays can serve openly, as can transgender people. The government will even pay for some gender reassignment surgeries for trans soldiers. Women are now eligible for some combat roles, including special forces.

It seems that President Obama has cared more about imposing his cultural agenda on the military rather than winning wars.

Now, in the waning days of the administration, the army has decided to take the idea of a uniform and turn it on its head. If approved at the brigade level, Muslim and Sikh soldiers can now wear the hijab, as well as grow beards for religious reasons.

Army Times:

Since 2009, religious accommodation requests received by the Army have largely been from soldiers wanting to wear a hijab or a Sikh turban or patka with uncut beard and hair, according to the directive. "Based on the successful examples of soldiers currently serving with these accommodations," Army Secretary Eric Fanning wrote in the directive, he decided to move forward with those accommodations as long as the colors match the uniform of the day. "The Army has reviewed its policies to ensure we allow every opportunity for qualified soldiers to serve, regardless of their faith background," Lt. Col. Randy Taylor, an Army spokesman, said in a statement. "We believe in preserving the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion for those who want to serve in the U.S. Army." But when training or deployment calls for it, soldiers will still be required to wear combat helmets or other protective gear. While we still seek a permanent policy change that enables all religious minorities to freely serve without exception, we are pleased with the progress that this new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity by our nation's largest employer, said Harsimran Kaur, legal director for the Sikh Coalition, in a press release from Becket Law, a firm that represents several Sikh soldiers. Kaur is co-counsel for Capt. Simratpal Singh, whose 2016 lawsuit against the Defense Department lit on fire the discussion of religious accommodations to uniform policy. Previously, Sikhs had been able to wear beards and turbans in the Army, up until a 1980s ban. "Sikhs have a history of heroic service in militaries around the world  including in the U.S. until about thirty years ago," Eric Baxter, senior counsel at Becket Law, said in the release. "Now their strength will be added back to the Army without the threat of forced shaves and haircuts. Though Fanning's decision opens up the option for hijabs, turbans and beards, soldiers will have to submit requests with an explanation of their sincerely held religious beliefs to their brigade commanders for approval. If the commander, or a designated O-6, denies the request, they must send it to the G-1, who will send it on to the Army secretary for final approval.

Constitutional guarantees in the military of freedom of religion  like other constitutional rights  is not absolute. There are numerous examples where freedom of speech has been abridged and freedom of the press curtailed in the name of maintaining morale or operational security.

So why should freedom of religious expression be at all different? The whole point of the uniform is to build esprit, subsume individuality, and promote pride in serving. By making exceptions, the entire concept of uniform is lost.

If obsevant Muslims and Sikhs really want to serve, they should understand that uniformity is more important than any claim they may have to freedom of religious expression. Because there is no draft, if they don't want to serve with those restrictions, no one is holding a gun to their head.

This is just more social engineering by the Obama administration. Secretary-Designate General Mattis is just the sort of no-nonsense military man who would reverse this rule. The liberals will squeal if he does, but it would be the right thing to do.
In the waning days of the Obama administration, an issue has arisen that calls into question the integrity of the FBI and security clearance of one of Obama's top national security advisers.

It appears that the FBI refused to grant Ben Rhodes interim security clearance before the president took office in 2009. Since Rhodes is now privy to all government secrets, it raises the question of what the FBI had on Rhodes that forced them to initially deny the clearance, and why he was eventually granted access to top secret information.

Washington Free Beacon:

Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser who led the administrations efforts to mislead Congress about the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, is under scrutiny in the wake of disclosures he was declined interim clearance status by the FBI in 2008, when the administration was moving into the White House. Since that time, Rhodes has emerged as a key adviser to President Obama and a major player in the administrations efforts to create a self-described pro-Iran deal echo chamber to mislead Congress and Americans about the terms of the Iranian nuclear agreement. Lawmakers are now concerned that Rhodes access to the top levels of governmentincluding its diplomacy with Iranis inappropriate due to the FBIs concerns about his past. Recent reports indicate the FBI denied, or was going to deny, Ben Rhodes an interim security clearance during President Obamas transition, Reps. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) and Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.) wrote in a recent letter to FBI Director James Comey, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon. This previously unknown fact is extremely troubling and calls into question the integrity of the FBIs protocols and the wisdom of Mr. Rhodes continued government employment, the lawmakers wrote. Individuals can be denied security clearance for a number of reasons, including a criminal record, history of drug use, or questionable foreign ties or relationships. The latter possibility is raising concerns among lawmakers and veteran foreign policy insiders who say that Rhodes history of promoting diplomacy with Iran may have been the reason for his disqualification. Emails released as part of a hack on Obama administration confidante John Podesta confirm that Rhodes was not able to pass preliminary background checks by the FBI in 2008. We agree that it would not be worth pushing for Benjamin Rhodes to receive interim status, Obama transition team members wrote to Podesta in October 2008. For your information, out of the approximately 187 people who we have moved through the process Benjamin was the only person declined interim status, the email said. The FBI was to complete a full review into Rhodes after the transition. It remains unclear what they concluded.

Several possible explanations for why Rhodes was eventually cleared come to mind, including the idea that the Bureau caved into political pressure from the White House and agreed to a demand from President Obama that he be given the necessary clearances. It's also possible that new information came to light that eased the concerns of FBI vetters.

Should Rhodes's advocacy for Iran-U.S. detente be an automatic disqualifier for a security clearance? Some pro-Tehran groups are almost certainly in the pocket of the mullahs. Others, like Rhodes, are just naive fools. Perhaps the FBI was concerned with some of Rhodes's contacts who may have been considered Iranian agents.

Whatever the reason, Congress has a perfect right  even at this late date  to investigate. The integrity of the bureau and the vetting process for senior national security officials is more important than one man or one administration, and getting to the bottom of the issue is imperative.
Poking fun at a media bubble still in shock over Hillary Clinton's loss is bound to elicit "hysterical" responses.

Writing at The Federalist, and linked at Real Clear Politics, Sean Davis sets the stage:

Even after a presidential election in which scores of media personalities were shown to be entirely disconnected from the country and people they report on, the liberal media bubble is alive and well. All it took to reveal the durability of that bubble was a simple question about pickup trucks.

Davis quotes market research showing that the five most popular vehicle models among Republicans, for example, are all trucks, and Davis also notes that President-Elect Trump "won every single state in which the Ford F-150 is the most popular vehicle (even Pennsylvania)."

This leads to John Ekdahl's Twitter question:

The top 3 best[-]selling vehicles in America are pick-ups. Question to reporters: do you personally know someone that owns one?

Davis characterizes the response types as:

1) shut up, 2) you're stupid and/or sexist and/or racist, and 3) whatever, liar, trucks aren't popular[.]

Among the many replies to the Ekdahl tweet, Mr. Davis highlights a few:

This person runs a think tank and writes for Vox: "How many journalists know someone who owns a ferret?" This person is paid to write about cars: "plenty of heartlanders are opioid addicts. Does that mean to report on real Amerikkka you need an oxy habit?" This person works for David Brock: "i [sic] think journalists are in a bubble but your question was a lot like 'when did you stop beating your wife[.]'"

The Washington Examiner quotes a "guest columnist" responding at the liberal New York Daily News:

Can we please move off the idea that truck-owning, country music-listening, gun enthusiasts are the 'real' Americans[?]

The Examiner's T. Becket Adams observes that the tempest in Ekdahl's Twitter feed "created something of a Rorschach test for media, and many didn't like what they saw."

Mr. Adams continues:

His question appears to be about the insular nature of media, and whether those who cover the electorate have a broad and significant understanding of American culture.  The question seems like a worthwhile exercise in self-reflection for the press, especially after it was so violently broadsided in November by Trump's victory.

Self-reflection for the press?

Adams further suggests that "it would be fun to follow-up [sic] with similar inquiries," such as asking "[h]ow many reporters know someone who goes to church regularly" or "[h]ow many reporters can say they own or know a person who owns an AR-15[.]"

To this one might add, for reporters in the national media:

Do you know anyone who displayed a Trump-Pence yard sign?

Do you know anyone who thinks climate change is a redistribution scheme?

Do you know anyone who wants to repeal Obamacare, lock, stock, and barrel?

And the stumper:

Do you know anyone who predicted President-Elect Donald Trump?
The uniparty political establishment is pushing a demonstrably false narrative that Russia somehow hacked the election. Hacking has a specific meaning: entering a computer via the internet and changing things.

Yesterday, DNI James Clapper testified under oath (where he sometimes tells the truth), They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort.

But thanks to blanket media coverage using the terms together Russia + election + hacked, half of uncritical consumers of media narratives (aka Democrats) believe that Russia did indeed change vote totals and install Trump.

They are, in a word, deniers, the lefts favorite term for people who disagree with its fraudulent claims. Except that Hillarys supporters are actually believing a fantasy.

In fact, if Russia was the party that sent a phishing email to John Podesta and revealed the actual thoughts and intentions and prejudices of Team Hillary by gaining access to his emails, how was it different in any significant way from the release of the tape of Donald Trumps and Billy Bushs locker room banter from NBCs archives?

In both cases, private conversations were revealed by someone who gained access to databases that were private and made them public. The media has exhibited zero curiosity over the identity of the party or parties who examined the archives for dirt and covertly supplied the tape to an outside party.

For all anyone knows, it was Russian hackers who accessed the archives and released the tape that supposedly doomed the candidacy of Trump, as was agreed by almost everyone who commented at the time.

There is as much reason to believe that Russia would have favored Hillary as much as it favored Trump. She is the one who called for a reset. And it was her boss at the time that told Russias president that he would have more flexibility after the election in 2012. Trump, meanwhile, has promised to rebuild Americas military  a plan presumably anathema to Vlad P.

We do not know a single thing about the identity of the person who obtained and released the Billy Bush tapes, even though that leak of confidential conversations was assessed at the time to be of greater impact than the Podesta emails were upon their release.

If the left wants to claim that releasing private information from confidential databases about candidates amounts to hacking the election, such hacking has been the source of countless scoops in the New York Times and the rest of the MSM.
Stairway Press in Las Vegas has just published a book about a problem called the F-35.

The F-35 is so bad that there is no point in proceeding with it. Even if it worked as per the original specifications of the development contract in 2001, that would not be good enough. It is very expensive to build and operate, and there is no role for it on the battlefield. Anything the F-35 can do, something else can do better and more cheaply. It must be kept away from enemy aircraft, which will harry it to death.

It is good practice, when bringing attention to a problem, also to detail the solution to that problem. That is what the book does. It is a discussion of air superiority achieved by aircraft dedicated to that purpose. Without air superiority, the existence of the rest of the military enterprise is fraught, and the human cost of having undefended skies will be considerable.

America's air superiority is currently provided by a handful of F-22s, which are likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of late-model Chinese fighter aircraft. Once the F-22s are shot down, the rest of the Air Force will be defenseless, even if the F-35 were in service and worked as designed.

The book begins with the background to the way Lockheed Martin engineered the F-35 selection process so that its design would be chosen for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines with the aim of being the sole source of fighter aircraft for decades. The compromises needed to achieve that win in the selection process fatally compromised the product.

Those flaws can be determined from analysis of the design, and in fact they were predicted 15 years ago, soon after the award of the F-35 contract to Lockheed Martin.

Persistence with the bad choice of the F-35 has made the consequences progressively worse as the years have passed. A rational purchaser would write off the $107 billion that has been spent on the F-35 program as of the time of this writing and consider the alternatives.

What makes an effective fighter aircraft in the second decade of the 21st century? That is described, along with how to win in air-to-air combat.

Armed with the knowledge of what is required to achieve air superiority, the alternatives to the F-35 are examined in detail. Options include the F-15, the F-16, the F-18 Super Hornet, and the restarting of F-22 production, as well as the fighters collectively known as the Euro-canards  the Gripen E, Rafale, and Typhoon.

The solution to the F-35 nightmare is the Gripen E from Saab in Sweden. It is approximately the size of the F-16 but with a design that has benefited from another 40 years of evolution in fighter aircraft engineering and electronics. As an air-superiority fighter, it is almost as good as the F-22  good to the extent that the work of 10 F-22s could be done by 15 Gripen Es. Those 10 F-22s would be equivalent to 40 F-35s. Importantly, the Gripen-E is half the capital cost of the F-35, with an operating cost per hour that is one sixth that of the F-35. The Gripen E has a high proportion of U.S.-made parts, including the engine, which is the one used by the F-18 Super Hornet.

Adopting the Gripen E will be an interim solution until a replacement is found for the F-22, which is simply too expensive to fly due to the way it achieves stealth  by the application of a lot of radar-absorbent material. The better alternative to the F-22 is outlined. That is the plane that lost out to the F-22 back in 1991. That aircraft, the YF-23 from Northrop Grumman, achieved most of its stealth through shaping and shouldn't cost more to operate than the F-15.

Let's get back to the purpose of the book. The sooner the F-35 program is terminated, the sooner the colossal waste of money will stop, and the safer we will all be. There has been a perception that the F-35 program couldn't be killed because there was nothing with which to replace it. The F-35-killer we have been waiting for is the Gripen E. The Gripen E will save a lot of lives and the military budget and make it a lot easier to defend Western civilization.

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare. His fields of expertise include oil explortion, steelmaking, cancer research, climate science, and fighter aircraft. He has also published on geostrategic issues.
Napoleon's Grand Army was defeated in the Battle of the Nations in 1813. The emperor abdicated and was banished to Elba. But his army was not disarmed and destroyed by the victors.

Just two years later, Napoleon escaped and quickly re-mobilized his army. Only Wellington blocked his path to Brussels, at Waterloo.

After a fierce day of battle, a weary line of redcoats still held the ridge at Waterloo. But Napoleon's Old Guard had been held in reserve for this decisive moment. Advancing like a spear, three columns wide, "The Invincibles" aimed to pierce the middle of the thin red line.

But a miracle occurred. Withering fire on both sides of the spear from the thin red line sapped their strength  and Napoleon's Old Guard broke and ran.

This was the critical point of that battle (and for the Climate War now). It is at the moment of defeat, with the enemy disorganized and demoralized, that the greatest gains can be made. Too often, however, the weary victors waste this opportunity to pursue and destroy the enemy.

Wellington's exhausted army was incapable of pursuit, but a miracle occurred  General Blucher arrived at sundown with fresh Prussian troops. The avenging German lancers pursued, captured, disarmed, and slaughtered the fleeing French all the way back to Paris. Never again did the Grand Army threaten Europe.

In the global Climate Wars, Trump and Brexit have given us a victory of Waterloo dimensions. But this will be only a temporary setback for the Green Globalists unless they are now ruthlessly disarmed and defunded. If we rest and relax, we will soon be ground under their green sandals again.

We must immediately deny them funds, tax shelters, manpower, and legal support.

Not a cent more for climate conferences  send just one representative, whose only power is to "vote no on everything."

Rescind or ignore past climate "agreements," defund all U.N./IPCC activities, divert all climate research funding to weatherproofing infrastructure, remove all green energy subsidies and mandates, subtract all "climate aid" from foreign aid budgets, replace green propaganda with hard science in education agendas, and halve government funding of ABC, the BBC, and all other GreenBCs.

Starved of public funding and with constant fire at their flanks with bullets of truth, the "invincible" green army will soon falter and run.

Give them no rest until their infamous Grab for Global Power called the Paris Climate Treaty is rejected, never to rise again.

Further Reading:

2016's biggest loser: Big Green:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/1/big-green-biggest-loser-of-2016/

James Delingpole: "Unleash Hell"

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/01/2016-just-start-going-win-2017/

Viv Forbes has studied science, economics, politics, and climatology. He is currently a should-be-retired grass farmer with no other external income. He holds shares in an Australian company exporting coking coal to steel makers in Asia.
It was a difficult time to be alive in 1848 London, and worse still to be dead. A cholera epidemic had just swept through the city killing nearly 15,000 of its inhabitants, and bodies were literally pilling up besides churches waiting to be buried. But there was one problem: there was no space to bury.

The population of London was soaring. In 1801, the city had less than a million people living. In 1851, that figure had more than doubled to almost two and a half million. But the 300 acres allotted for burial space remain unchanged, requiring old graves, and some relatively fresh ones, to be regularly exhumed to make room for new burials. The old corpses were crumpled and scattered contaminating the soil and water supply resulting in fresh bouts of epidemics. Cholera, smallpox, measles, typhoid were pervasive in Victorian London.

A third class coffin ticket issued to passengers of the London Necropolis Railway. Photo credit: qi.com

Eventually, a decision was taken there were to be no more burials in Londons graveyards. Instead, a series of new cemeteries were to be established far outside the city. One such cemetery, in Brookwood, 37 km away from London, became the largest in the United Kingdom. Covering 1,500 acres, the site was designed to last, by a conservative estimate, over 350 years to fill just a single layer. In order to ferry the dead and their family of mourners the long distance, a dedicated railroad was built, named the London Necropolis Railway.

Everyday, starting November 1854, a single train carrying coffins and the family of the dead left London for Brookwood from a dedicated station in Waterloo. The 37-km journey had no stops and took 40 minutes to cover. Mourners would reach Brookwood shortly after mid-day, bury their dead, have a funeral party at one of the cemeterys two train stations, and then take the same train back, returning to London by 3:30 PM.

Like regular passenger trains, the Necropolis train had classes. A first class ticket allowed the family to choose where they wanted to inter the dead within the cemetery. They could also erect a permanent memorial over the grave. A second class ticket gave some control over the choice of the grave site, but erecting permanent memorials cost extra. The third class was for pauper funerals. Compartments, both for living and for dead passengers, were also partitioned by religion as was the custom at the time to prevent people from different social backgrounds from mixing.

A map showing the location of various cemeteries planned outside London to tackle the burial crises. The red line indicates the route of the London Necropolis Railway from London to the Brookwood Cemetery. Image credit: iridescent/Wikimedia

Proposed solutions to the burial crisis, 1852. A ring of new cemeteries had opened or were under development outside the built-up area of London, but were only a temporary solution. Edwin Chadwick planned two large new cemeteries just outside the boundaries of the Metropolitan Burial District, while the promoters of the Necropolis scheme planned a single large cemetery far enough from the metropolis so as never to be affected by urban growth, to be reached by railway.

The necropolis railway never took off in the way the London Necropolis Company had hoped. At its peak, from 1894 to 1903, the train carried only about 2,300 bodies a year, far less than the 50,000 the promoters hoped it would carry. In 1902, the daily train service was ended because of lack of passengers, running only on demand. By the 1930s it was unusual for the trains to operate more than twice a week.

The railways death knell came on the night of April 16-17, 1941, in one of the worst air raids on London, when bombs ripped through the London Necropolis Railway Station and made much of the tracks unusable. After the war, the company decided that reopening the Necropolis Railway was not financially worthwhile, and closed the line. By then, the trains had run for 87 years transporting slightly over 200,000 dead bodies.

Only a few reminders of this morbid railway service remain today. The two stations in the cemetery were demolished during the 1960s and the ruins later caught fire. The tracks were long since lifted away to be melted or reused elsewhere. In London, the entrance building to the private station at 121 Westminster Bridge Road remains largely intact, but the name LONDON NECROPOLIS RAILWAY that was once inscribed in the awnings stone is no longer there.

Although unusual, the London Necropolis Railway wasnt the only railway in the world dedicated to dead passengers. From 1867 until 1948, the Rookwood Cemetery near Sydney was serviced by a similar railway line called the Rookwood Cemetery Line. Likewise, in Melbourne, transfer to the Springvale Necropolis was carried out through the dedicated Spring Vale Cemetery railway. In Berlin, the Friedhofsbahn (Cemetery Line) operated from 1913 until 1952. There was a similar railway in Finland.

North Station was one of the two cemetery stations where passengers could relax and refresh themselves after the ceremony (Credit: Private collection of John Clarke)

The Westminster Bridge Road entrance to the first London Necropolis Railway station, built in 1854. It was demolished after the new station was built in 1902.

The necropolis railway train, shown here in 1907, approaches North Station at Brookwood Cemetery. Photo credit: John Clarke

Aftermath of the bombing of the London Necropolis Railway's buildings in London, night of April 1617, 1941. Photo credit: John Clarke

The entrance to the new station shown in 1902, left, and today, right

The section of track outside the present Brookwood Station that commemorates the Brookwood Cemetery Railway run by the London Necropolis Company. Photo credit: Nedueb/Wikimedia

The overgrown ruins of Brookwood North station. Photo credit: iridescent/Wikimedia

Brookwood Station, opened in 1864, still serves train passengers today. Photo credit: Paul Smith/Wikimedia

South (cemetery-side) entrance to Brookwood railway station, Surrey. The raised embankment which formerly carried the Necropolis Railway rises behind the tall fence to join the main LondonSalisbury line. Photo credit: iridescent/Wikimedia

Sources: Wikipedia / BBC / www.transporttrust.com
Amazons personal assistant, Alexa, is getting very sophisticated since her debut in 2014 and it has many skills that may not be too apparent. The problem with Alexa is that she will listen to anybody  whether it be answering questions or taking orders. That is what a Dallas, Texas couple found out when a 4-pound can of sugar cookies and a $160 KidKraft Sparkle Mansion dollhouse arrived at their front door. After some investigation, they discovered that their 6-year-old daughter had inadvertently order the items with a conversation she had with their Amazon Echo Dot.

When her mother questioned the young girl, she said, I was talking to Alexa about a dollhouse and cookies. The mother uses the Neitzel Amazon App to monitor what is said through their Echo Dot, and she explained that her daughter said, Can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse? After Alexa had confirmed the order, the daughter politely said, I love you so much! They are keeping the cookies as someone started eating them, but the dollhouse is going to be donated to an underprivileged child or a charity.

The parents have now activated the parental controls, and if anybody wants to make a purchase, they have to type in a four-digit code. The kids have been lectured about Alexas future use and are back to asking its some knock-knock jokes. They were allowed to ask it about Santa Claus as Alexa will now track where the big man in the red suit is located on his quest to deliver toys around the world.

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Alexa is so much more than an assistant to tell you where a black bear lives  it can actually help guide you on your way to work with traffic information by asking it, Alexa, hows the traffic. Hungry when you are out and about but dont know where to go? Just ask Alexa, Find me an Italian restaurant nearby, and she will start running through the names. How many times does a song come on and you have no idea who sings it  just ask Alexa, Who sings this song? She will give the title of the song and the name of the artist. Alexa will even play music for you, but you have to specify from where or she will default to Prime Music. You can have Alexa create shopping lists, find recipes to make with your ingredients. You can also control your lights and thermostat or just about any Internet of Things (IoT) in your home.
A State College, Pennsylvania-based company AccuWeather announced new AccuWeather MinuteCast features and expanded availability on Thursday. The firms minute-by-minute weather forecasting technology now boasts support for numerous connected cars systems and more personalized weather information, as well as user interface improvements. The latest version of the service also provides hail forecasts which are available in all AccuWeather apps, as well as the companys web solution. Additionally, AccuWeather MinuteCasts hail forecasts can be delivered as advanced notices to users. The company also updated its solution with a new feature dubbed Along A Route. Along A Route was designed to integrate AccuWeather MinuteCasts forecasts with real-time navigation services featured in various car systems.

The American company said how its technology is a perfect solution for drivers looking to avoid harsh weather conditions. As of today, the latest version of MinuteCast is available to users in the Continental United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Japan, South Korea, and some parts of the Czech Republic. The service is free to all users and can be accessed through the AccuWeather mobile app, as well as the companys official website. The firm confirmed that its planning more expansions in 2017, promising that more details on that front will be revealed soon.

The AccuWeather MinuteCast technology utilizes users GPS location or a manually inputted street address to deliver localized forecasts on a minute-by-minute basis. Apart from the recently introduced hail, the service also predicts rain, snow, and other types of precipitation. AccuWeathers proprietary technology is available to third-party developers looking to integrate it into their own products. The Pennsylvania company claims that more than 1.5 billion people worldwide are currently using its service in some shape or form. The AccuWeather Android app is available for download from the Google Play Store free of charge. The latest version of the app works on devices running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and newer, so you should be able to use it on virtually any contemporary smartphone. As for the MinuteCast Along A Route integration, this feature currently only works on car systems developed by Bosch and Ford, while expanded support is expected to be announced at some point this year.
Yesterday at CES 2017, Sony held their press event and introduced a number of new products including four new EXTRA BASS speaker models, in the form of the Sony SRS-XB10, Sony SRS-XB20, Sony SRS-XB30 and Sony SRS-XB40. Along with those new speakers, Sony also announced two new Bluetooth headphones. These are the Sony MDR-XB950N1 and the MDR-XB950B1. Generally speaking, there is a fairly large amount of overlap between the two headphones, although the MDR-XB950N1 does come with one specific feature that the MDR-XB950B1 does not. Noise cancellation. Which does mean that with these headphones you do have the option of filtering out ambient noise and just tuning in to what you want to listen to, the music.

The Sony MDR-XB950N1 are headphones which are designed to be portable and as a result you can expect them to fold and the they do come with a carry case for added protection when in transit. These are headphones that are powered by 40 mm drivers and provide a frequency response of 20Hz-20,000Hz. In terms of battery life, the Sony MDR-XB950N1 are listed to offer up to 22 hours of playback. Although the level of battery usage on offer does depend on whether you are using the noise cancellation feature or not. Either way though, these headphones to come with a jack port. So regardless of whether they have a charged battery or not, they can be used in a traditional wired manner by attaching the included cable. Of course, as these are EXTRA BASS headphones, they are also designed to offer the listener a deeper and more punchy sound.

In terms of availability, Sony has yet to provide firm details on when the MDR-XB950N1 headphones will become available to buy in the US. However, Sony has confirmed the MDR-XB950N1 will be available to buy in the UK and in Europe from April of this year. In terms of price, the MDR-XB950N1 will cost 230 in the UK and 280 in Europe and will be available in more than one color. Until then, you can take a closer look at this latest pair of noise canceling headphones from Sony in our hands-on gallery below.
Yesterday at CES 2017, ZTE announced the Blade V8 Pro is coming to the US. Today at CES 2017, ZTE announced the launch of the Blade V8. Both of these smartphones are designed to be affordable and both do clearly make a push for those looking for a decent camera experience. This is largely due to both the V8 Pro and V8 coming equipped with a dual-rear camera setup. Although, they are not quite the same camera setup.

In terms of the newly-arriving in the US, Blade V8 Pro, this smartphone comes equipped with two 13-megapixel rear cameras, along with an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. In contrast, the newly-announced Blade V8 comes packing a 13-megapixel rear camera, along with a secondary 2-megapixel camera. While the front facing camera is boosted up to a 13-megapixel level. So depending on where your photo-capturing emphasis lie, might determine which of the two V8 models is best-suited to your needs. It is also worth noting though, the cameras are not the only common, yet different, features on offer with the two smartphones.

In terms of the ZTE Blade V8, This is a smartphone which comes with a 5.2-inch Full HD display. The insides depends on which model you opt for  as one variant offers 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, while the other comes packing 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. Although, both models seem to come powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor. Additional features on offer include a fingerprint sensor, a 2,730 mAh battery, and the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 7.0 (Nougat). In contrast, the the ZTE Blade V8 Pro comes with a larger 5.5-inch Full HD display. While inside you will find 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. Additional features on offer with the Blade V8 Pro include a fingerprint sensor, dual SIM support and microSD support (up to 128GB). The battery is also greater on the Pro model as this smartphones comes powered by a 3,140 mAh battery, although this smartphone currently comes running on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).

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In terms of availability, the Blade V8 Pro is already available to pre-order in the US and does only cost $229.98 to buy. The Blade V8 on the other hand is only currently confirmed for select regions. For instance, from February it will be available in Japan and Russia, while by March, it is expected to become available in Germany, Spain and China. At the moment, there are no details on the US available of the Blade V8 or on how much it is going to cost. Either way, you can check out both the ZTE Blade V8 and the ZTE Blade V8 Pro in closer detail, below.

ZTE Blade V8

ZTE Blade V8 Pro
A neurotechnology company Reliefband debuted Reliefband Neurowave, the second generation of its wearable designed to combat the effects of VR-induced motion sickness. The Reliefband Neurowave will be hitting the market during the second quarter of the year, sporting an improved design and a $149.99 price tag. Additionally, the company has opened numerous Relief Stations in the VR Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center where CES 2017 started earlier today. The stations were designed to provide people with a quick and drug-free solution to combat nausea and motion sickness often caused by a prolonged usage of VR products. Reliefbands solution has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a year ago. Anyone interested in treating symptoms of virtual motion sickness can request a free relief at any Relief Station or Reliefbands CES 2017 booth.

Reliefband is also launching a new website for educating consumers about causes of virtual motion sickness, related treatments, and preventive measures. The website explains how motion sickness is caused by sensory conflicts which occur when the eyes and ears are sending conflicting information to the brain. Seeing how a human brain naturally associates these conflicts of information with poisoning, it initiates preventive mechanisms, i.e. tries to get the body to vomit because its been tricked into believing that a poisonous substance has been ingested. The Reliefband Neurowave combats this natural mechanism by sending various pulses that stimulate the brains median nerve and consequently get it to block any nausea signals. The company claims this solution works within minutes and is more effective than any other method of combating symptoms associated with using VR products. Apart from working as a quick and drug-free cure for virtual motion sickness, the Reliefband Neurowave also acts as a preventive tool capable of stopping any symptoms of nausea before they appear.

In short, the second generation of Reliefbands wearable is based on the same FDA-approved technology but ships in a slimmer case equipped with ten intensity settings instead of five. The Reliefband Neurowave is also equipped with hypoallergenic 316 surgical steel contacts which transmit pulses more efficiently than the contacts featured in the original Reliefband did. The company debuted its original product at CES 2016 last year and is now hoping that its Relief Stations will once again prove to be an effective marketing method seeing how theyll allow consumers to witness the wearables capabilities first-hand.
A former employee of Snapchat is suing the company over claims of blackmail and smearing his reputation for uncovering the firms efforts to mislead investors, presumably in a bid to increase the value of its upcoming IPO, according to a document filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court of the State of California on Wednesday. Anthony Pompliano worked at Snap Inc for only three weeks after he was laid off because he refused to breach a confidentiality agreement with his former employer Facebook, the plaintiff claims. Pompliano worked at Facebook for a year and now believes he was only poached by Snap as the Californian firm was hoping hell be willing to disclose confidential information about Facebooks operations. Finally, former head of Snaps user growth and engagement unit is claiming the companys senior management is falsely representing the circumstances leading to his termination to discredit him due to fears he will damage the companys upcoming IPO, according to a heavily redacted court document obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Pompliano alleges Snaps senior management made a conscious effort to smear his name and destroy his professional reputation as he urged them to stop falsely representing the companys performance to investors during his time with the Venice-based firm. He claims he filed the lawsuit because hes adamant to keep his professional reputation. Mary Ritti, the Vice President of Communications at Snap said the company reviewed Pomplianos lawsuit and concluded it has no basis in reality, adding that its totally made up by a disgruntled former employee.

Snap has filed for an IPO in November and is expected to go public in March. Seeing how its debut on the US stock market is drawing near, the company is unlikely to be willing to go to court with Pompliano, even if its certain that his lawsuit has no merit. Due to that state of affairs, most signs point to this case ending with an out-of-court settlement. Its currently unknown who replaced Pompliano as the head of Snapchats user growth and engagement team. A redacted version of the lawsuit filed on Wednesday can be read at the source link below.
The Google Daydream VR platform is extending its support to four new Android smartphones. Following a series of announcements at CES and one from Google itself, its confirmed that the Daydream platform is expanding support to the Huawei Mate 9 Pro and the Porsche Design Mate 9, as well as the ZTE Axon 7. Additionally, the upcoming ZenFone AR will also boast support for Googles mobile virtual reality solution once it hits the market this spring. In practice, this means that all four devices in question will work with the Daydream View VR headset and will also be compatible with other headsets powered by Googles platform. One such piece of hardware was recently announced by Huawei and will work exclusively with Android smartphones manufactured by the Chinese consumer electronics company. The Huawei-made Daydream headset is expected to be released later in the year and can be seen in the above image, while its pricing details are yet to be revealed.

The Porsche Design Mate 9 and the ZTE Axon 7 have already been available for purchase in many territories worldwide. The Mate 9 Pro never officially launched in the United States but can be ordered online. The ZenFone AR manufactured by ASUS is scheduled for a release during the second quarter of the year. In addition to Daydream, the phone will also support Tango, Googles mobile augmented reality (AR) platform which is still in its infancy and has only made a commercial debut back in November with the release of the Lenovo-made Phab 2 Pro.

Overall, Googles Daydream platform is slowly but steadily gaining more ground. With these new additions, the companys mobile VR solution will be compatible with over half a dozen smartphones, including the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL, as well as the Moto Z. Among other things, Daydream requires a high-resolution display between 4.7 and 6 inches in size with a 60Hz refresh rate, support for OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan, and a GPU capable of consistently rendering two 60fps videos simultaneously. As time goes on and new, more powerful Android phones are released, more devices will be able to meet Googles requirements and receive their Daydream-ready certification. Its believed that the Mountain View-based tech giant will soon announce new plans related to its virtual reality ambitions.
The rules are simple  if you do work with the US Government as a contractor, then they have a right to view your compensation data and other personnel information if so requested by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Google has refused to give them the information voluntarily despite numerous requests, so on Wednesday the government filed an administrative lawsuit to have the courts compel Google to provide them with the information. The original request was made in a letter to Google on or about September 30, 2015. They are now asking the administrative law judge to either make Google comply or cancel all of Googles current contracts and to bar them from future contracts.

Google claims to have given them hundreds of thousands of record during 2016, including compensation records. Google argues that the OFCCP is asking for information outside the scope of what they need and it wants to protect the privacy of its employees. When presented with their concerns, Google gets no response back from the government, but Google hopes they can work it out. An employment attorney said that employee privacy is a weak argument not to comply with the governments request.

The lawsuit really stems from reports of unequal pay and discriminating against women and minorities. As a federal contractor, Google is barred from discrimination of any form, be it race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or against military veterans. The Labor Department has been putting pressure on the Silicon Valley tech firms, which tend to hire more White and Asian men. The companies are making an effort to hire more minorities, but evolvement has been slow. Google claims that they are fully committed to diversity in their workforce and have always tried to hire as many minorities as they can.

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The government is certainly within its right to request the information on employees, when they were hired, their starting and current salary, their starting job level, and any promotions, and more. This is all in an effort to secure the fact that Google is following the guidelines in their hiring practices. It will be interesting to see if Google finally complies or if the government will cancel all of Googles contracts.
If there ever were a battle of tech companies, it would have to be the two South Korean giants  Samsung and LG. Whether it concerns smartphones, appliances, or large HDTVs, these two companies it seems may never agree on which makes the best products. At CES there is a battle going on concerning the new quantum dot light-emitting diode (QLED) technology for TVs that Samsung is touting as better than the older organic light-emitting diode (OLED) that LG is still using. LG Display Vice Chairman Han Sang-beom said, The only change in Samsung Electronics new product and previous one is luminance. In quantum dot, luminance can vary according to backlight. It is true that Samsung improved the efficiency of quantum dot, but it is a very small part of it. It is still a LCD panel.

Han went on to explain that no comparison is necessary since QLED is not a self-light-emitting device whereas OLED is self-emissive. He also gave credit to the QLED color reproduction range but said that LGs IPS Nano technology could also expand the color range. LG will expand and double their production of large OLED, as well as their medium and small OLED (P-OLED) business in 2017 versus 2016. They also expect to expand the premium LCD market for business and auto applications. LG unveiled a new technology called Crystal Sound OLED (CSO) for the first time. LG actually built a sound system inside an OLED panel. They claim the sound will be remarkable when compared to using external speakers that only produce reflective sound. They had a 55-inch and 65-inch CSO UHD TVs as an example of what they can do and the sound they can produce.

The battle will continue between Samsung and LG as each tries to develop new technology to outdo one another. LG is reporting to post its first quarterly operating loss in six years for Q4 2016. They had weaker appliance sales  one of their strongest profit areas  and slow smartphone sales with their LG G5s lack of popularity. The intense competition this holiday season forced them to spend more in advertising. Even with Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 issues, it looks like they will still show a profit for 2016. Samsung has they hands in more businesses than LG, such as foundries for making chips, construction, insurance, and so on. A large screen TV, a smartphone, and appliances are products that are now commonplace in most US homes, so these two companies will battle in those areas the most.
LG Electronics will post the first quarterly operating loss in six years for Q4 2016, according to the companys earnings guidance released on Friday. The South Korean tech giant is expecting a $29.36 million loss for the final quarter of 2016 after posting positive financial results for 23 consecutive quarters, starting in Q1 2011. The companys representatives said LGs global revenue likely amounted to approximately $12.4 billion during the final quarter of last year, which is a 1.5% increase in comparison to the previous period. The guidance came as a surprise to many industry analysts, most of whom were expecting LG to post a minor operating profit instead of a minor loss for Q4 2016. The Seoul-based tech giant didnt reveal any further details in its latest guidance but confirmed that its official Q4 2016 financials will be released in late January.

Back in October, LG said its expecting diminished fourth-quarter profits due to a variety of reasons. Among other things, the company predicted weaker appliance sales which have been its strongest profit generator over the course of 2016 and was also expecting higher marketing expenses due to an increased level of competition during the holiday season. While LGs recent financial statements were mostly ignoring the firms phone business, industry experts are now claiming that its struggling handset division is the main reason why the South Korean tech giant is expected to post an operating loss for the final quarter of 2016, Reuters reports.

LGs phone business lost $389.4 million in Q3 2016 alone, a figure which would have likely been different had the company not downsized its struggling unit in August. Over the course of last year, LG released two flagship smartphones  the LG G5 and the LG V20  but neither of them managed to achieve significant commercial success. The Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer is now hoping it can revive its phone division with the LG G6, a premium device that will likely ditch the modular design of its predecessor and reportedly be significantly cheaper to make than the LG G5. The companys next flagship is expected to debut in late February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In the meantime, the tech giant will go public with its disappointing Q4 2016 financials.
Chinese tech giant ZTE is planning to lay off 5% of its global workforce, or approximately 3000 positions, sources close to the company told Reuters. The cuts are scheduled to be completed by the end of March, but some managers were already briefed on them and were urged to do their part in the layoffs by February 1st. This move is expected to reduce ZTEs total number of employees to around 57,000. The Shenzhen-based telecommunications equipment manufacturer is reportedly terminating 20% of employees in its home country, and 10% of its global handset business, which amounts to about 600 positions. The companys mobile business layoffs will be concentrated in China where ZTE has been losing market share for several consecutive quarters. ZTEs representatives declined to comment on this report.

While these layoffs were likely prompted by the sanctions ZTE is facing from the US Commerce Department, the company used this opportunity to lay off some particular employees who previously applied for jobs at Huawei and other rival companies, according to an unnamed manager of one of the firms overseas units. The Shenzhen-based tech giant is currently in the process of streamlining its operations and corporate structure following a rough financial year. ZTEs Chairman Zhao Xianming recently described 2016 events as the biggest crisis in the history of the Chinese company which was founded in 1985.

Back in early 2016, the US Commerce Department concluded ZTE violated Washingtons export regulations pertaining to its economic sanctions on Iran. The Chinese firm allegedly delivered products to certain Iranian companies, which is why the Cabinet department prevented it from importing US-made goods to China. Seeing how approximately one-third of ZTEs supply chain relies on the US, the decision stifled the companys operations despite the fact that the actual sanctions are yet to come into effect. Two months ago, the US Commerce Department agreed to a fourth reprieve of its trade restrictions which are now on hold until February 27th. ZTE earned some goodwill from Washington after being fully cooperative with a federal probe into its alleged violations of the US trade sanctions on Iran, but it remains to be seen whether the company will manage to avoid further damage to its business in 2017.
According to a new rumor, the Xiaomi Mi 6 will be somewhat more expensive than you might think. The companys Mi flagships usually cost 1,999 Yuan ($300) in China, well, at least the most affordable iterations of companys flagships do, but it seems like that will no longer be the case. A new rumor claims that the Xiaomi Mi 6 will be more expensive than that due to the fact Xiaomi plans to incorporate new materials into the devices build, read on.

If this info is to be believed, the base model of the Xiaomi Mi 6 will cost 2,499 Yuan ($370), which is quite a considerable bump actually. Do keep in mind this is just a rumor at this point, so do take it with a grain of salt, but do keep in mind that the company increased the price of the two Mi TV models quite recently, so if thats any indication of whats to come, then this rumor might even be true. A recent rumor claimed that the Xiaomi Mi 6 will be fueled by the Snapdragon 835, in fact, the rumor reported that the Xiaomi Mi 6 will be the first Chinese smartphone to come with the Snapdragon 835. This processor was introduced by Qualcomm during CES 2017, and is the companys all-new flagship mobile chip. Were looking at a 64-bit octa-core processor which was manufactured using the 10nm process, and is considerably more powerful than its predecessors, the Snapdragon 820 and Snapdragon 821.

We dont really have all that much info when it comes to the Xiaomi Mi 6 at the moment, but the device is rumored to arrive during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona which kicks off at the end of February. The Xiaomi Mi 5 actually landed during MWC 2016, so this rumor kind of makes sense. Aside for the Snapdragon 835, the Xiaomi Mi 6 will probably ship with Android Nougat, and you can expect the base model to sport at least 4GB of RAM, but the 6GB RAM model will almost certainly be available as well. The device is also rumored to look like a smaller variant of the Xiaomi Mi Note 2, and if that info is accurate, the device will sport a curved display, and quite possibly a home button below the display.

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An LTE variant of the upcoming Galaxy Tab S3 received a Wi-Fi Interoperability Certificate in the United States on Friday. The device sporting a model number SM-T825 has yet to be officially unveiled by Samsung, though its release has long been rumored on. As expected, the Wi-Fi Alliance certification of the LTE variant of the new Galaxy Tab S3 says the device is running Android but doesnt go into any more details regarding which version of the operating system is installed on the tablet. The Galaxy Tab S3 is rumored to hit the market during the first quarter of the year.

Samsung was expected to announce its next Android tablet way back in September, but for one reason or another, the company has yet to unveil the successor to the Galaxy Tab S2. In possibly related news, the firm also pushed back the reveal of the third generation of the Galaxy A lineup which was only officially announced earlier this week. Seeing how Samsung already showcased all of the products it brought to this years CES, the Galaxy Tab S3 probably wont be revealed until Mobile World Congress, the next big industry trade expo thats scheduled to start on February 27th in Barcelona. In the meantime, weve heard that the device is equipped with a 9.7-inch QHD display and that Samsung is planning to launch it in two variants. While the LTE-enabled version mentioned above is sporting a model number SM-T825, the one without cellular connectivity is labeled as SM-T820.

The US Federal Communications Commission already approved of the Galaxy Tab S3 design back in early 2016, which is when weve first heard that the companys next tablet will be fueled by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 system-on-chip and 3GB of RAM. Other industry rumors pointed at an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front one, as well as Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Of course, none of that info has yet been confirmed. In addition to the Galaxy Tab S3, Samsung fans can also look forward to the reveal of the Galaxy S8 this spring, as the companys next flagship smartphone is slated to be announced in April.
John Legere, T-Mobile US outspoken Chief Executive Officer, was asked today at the Consumer Electronics Show about a merger or acquisition of Sprint and he replied that this could be a potential future outcome under the new administration. The question was asked during T-Mobile US questions and answer session, which followed the main session during which Americas third largest carrier announced it was going All In on monthly plans. Legere was asked about the rumors of a deal between Sprint and T-Mobile US and after first applauding SoftBanks planned $50 billion investment into the U.S., Legere went on to explain that Sprint needs to do something. During Legeres main presentation he was scathing of Sprints current position in the market: T-Mobile US overtook Sprint in late 2015 by subscriber numbers, and Sprint is seen to be struggling with the need to upgrade its network and utilize its considerable 2.5 GHz spectrum. Over the last year we have seen Sprint arrange a number of deals in order to improve its financial situation, such as sale and leasebacks of network assets, as well as push ahead with a different way of upgrading its network by utilizing many, many small, short ranged cell sites rather than longer ranged masts.

Legere highlighted that Sprint have made progress but are still on the long road to recovery. He believes that from a scale perspective, there is a certain logic to combining Sprint and T-Mobile US as the new larger business might be better positioned to tackle AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the two largest US carriers. However, he also explained that T-Mobile US is currently a strong company with a very strong brand and high levels of customer growth  although unsaid, Legere implied that T-Mobile US did not need the help in tackling the two bigger carriers. The company has been stealing customers from both AT&T and Verizon Wireless for some considerable time and is determined to change how the mobile industry works. Whilst Legere explained that the company would consider various forms of consolidation he finished his answer with, but who knows. Well wait and see. As such, it would seem that T-Mobile US might be considering their options, especially if the Trump administration might be more open to Americas four national carriers becoming three, but do not appear to have made any firm plans.

As for Sprint, its true that the business has been making progress. Legere said that he could see how Sprint might be bought by an existing cable operator to be used as a relatively quick and simple way into the cellular market. However, SoftBank have promised considerable investment into Sprint and last year, bought British semiconductor, ARM Holdings, rather than using this cash to prop up Sprint  which demonstrated a certain confidence in Americas smallest national carrier. Nevertheless, Legeres prediction that 2017 will be a year of craziness in the mobile industry could spell trouble for the smallest and financially weakest American carrier. T-Mobile US may be reluctant to join with a weaker competitor to tackle the two bigger carriers.
Verizon is having doubts about its potential acquisition of Yahoo, the companys executive Marni Walden revealed on Thursday. During the Citi 2017 Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference in Las Vegas, the President of Verizons Product Innovation and New Businesses unit said the company still isnt certain whether to go through with acquiring Yahoos core business. Walden said the deal still makes sense on paper, alluding to Verizons previously revealed plans to merge Yahoo and AOL. However, the company is apparently having doubts about the deal due to two massive data breaches and an unrelated spying scandal Yahoo was involved in recently. Walden said that no final decisions will be made on Verizons part before federal authorities wrap up their investigation of a 2013 hacking attack which compromised a billion Yahoo accounts.

The companys executive also revealed how she doesnt believe the deal will be completed in the coming weeks due to the federal investigation in question. Walden said that while no one at Verizon is looking to drag out their already prolonged negotiations with Yahoo, they also arent keen on making any hasty decisions while the US authorities are still trying to make sense of the massive data breach Yahoo suffered three years ago. Yahoo hasnt issued any comments on this statement.

Reports of Verizon being reluctant about acquiring Yahoo following the companys set of scandals in the second half of 2016 have been emerging for months. The largest wireless carrier in the United States initially planned to pay approximately $4.8 billion for Yahoos Internet business, but the very same business received a lot of bad press after the company had admitted to two massive data breaches and Reuters reported Yahoo was involved in a US spying program. Up until now, Verizon was relatively quiet about how this latest set of events could affect its planned acquisition, with the companys representatives only stating how theyre trying to assess potential damage to Yahoos brand before making any decisions, much like Walden did on Thursday. If the deal goes through at some point this year, then Verizon may end up consolidating Yahoos operations with that of AOL in an effort to grow its advertising business and diversify its revenue stream in the long term.
ZTE has just announced the ZTE Blade V8 smartphone at CES 2017. In the companys announcement, ZTE puts great focus on Blade V8s photo-taking capabilities, while emphasizing phones stunning photos and 3D shooting abilities. The company claims that the Blade V8 is capable of taking images similar to those taken with DSLR cameras in macro mode, but well have to test it out in order to see how true that statement is, of course. Speaking of cameras, this phone comes with a dual camera setup on its back, and this camera setup actually combines regular photos in order to create 3D photos. The phone is also equipped with a refocus mode, using which youll be able to change the area of focus after youve already captured an image, which is a feature weve seen before. The ZTE Blade V8 is equipped with 13-megapixel and 2-megapixel rear-facing cameras, while the phone also comes with a 13-megapixel selfie-shooter.

The ZTE Blade V8 is made out of metal, and comes with a physical home button which is placed below the display. This phones home button actually doubles as a fingerprint scanner, which was to be expected. The phones power / lock and volume rocker keys are located on its right side, and the SIM card tray is placed on the left. The devices rear-facing camera setup protrudes a bit, and the 3.5mm headphone jack is also a part of this package, and is placed on the top of the device. The ZTE Blade V8 follows the lead of the Blade V8 Pro which was announced recently, even though the two devices are quite different., The Blade V8 features a 5.2-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display, and comes in 2GB and 3GB RAM flavors. The 2GB RAM variant of the Blade V8 ships with 16GB of internal storage, while the 3GB RAM model comes with 32GB of storage. Qualcomms Snapdragon 435 64-bit octa-core processor fuels this smartphone, along with the Adreno 505 GPU. The 2730mAh battery is also included here, and it is not removable. Android 7.0 Nougat comes pre-installed on the ZTE Blade V8, and on top of it, youll be able to find ZTEs Mifavor 4.2 UI. The device measures 148.4 x 71.5 x 7.7mm, while we still dont know how much it weighs, as the company did not release that particular piece of info.

The Blade V8 will be available in Rose Gold, Dark Gray, Silver and Champagne Gold color variants. The device will go on sale in Russia and Japan by February 2017, while it will roll out to Germany, Spain and China by March 2017. ZTE did not mention anything about the price of the Blade V8, so well have to wait in order to find out how much will the phone cost.
An area in east Beatrice is eligible for additional financing options after the Beatrice City Council declared it blight and substandard at Tuesdays meeting.

According to state law, an area may be deemed substandard and blighted if there is a predominance of deteriorated buildings and enough deficiencies that private investment is not occurring, along with a list of other related factors.

In this case, the City Council declared an area of east Beatrice from the area of Hannibal Park to Highway 136 blight and substandard.

In doing so, the area becomes elegable for tax increment financing (TIF).

TIF funds provide infrastructure upgrades to existing properties such as sidewalks, utilities or parking lots, increasing the value of the property and later the taxes collected on that property.

Companies interested in receiving TIF funds are evaluated by the Community Redevelopment Authority.

Redevelopment areas are what you need in order to have TIF financing be available for projects in those areas, said City Administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer. This study has been done and well move forward and have TIF financing available on projects in these areas from this point forward.

While the council approved the designation, councilman Rich Kerr pointed out that there are no projects currently planned for the area, and asked how long the designation will stand.

We dont have any projects going on there right now, if we go ahead and put this under TIF funding how long can that go out before we have to review it? he asked.

Tempelmeyer said the council would have to look at redoing the designation in around 10 years, and added the first area considered in Beatrice was in the late 1990s.

The designation was previously approved by the citys Planning and Zoning Commission, which recommended it be approved by the City Council.
The community is invited to the free family movie matinee at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, 304 South Tenth Street, Wymore.

Synopsis: Jungle Book is a live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kiplings beloved novel follows young Mowgli as he navigates a jungle full of wonder and peril with his animal allies Bagheera, the panther, and Baloo, the bear.
The word of the day was "unprecedented," even though most people knew anything could happen and there were bound to be surprises.

The 105th Legislature got off to a beginning like no other Wednesday, the start of a 90-day session. It elected three freshmen senators to committee chairmanships, senators who have never introduced a bill or voted on one.

And one senator then tried to have the presiding officer of the Legislature, Lt. Gov. Mike Foley, who is a member of the executive branch, allow a legislative rule to be defined as unconstitutional.

It is a definite separation of powers problem, declared Omaha Sen. Burke Harr, and a threat to the nonpartisan nature of the Legislature, said Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz.

Conservative senators also came close to sweeping the leadership of the speaker position, Executive Board and committees, from Agriculture to Business and Labor, Education, Health and Human Services and Revenue.

Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, who became chairman of the Revenue Committee, saw that conservative tone move through the elections.

"If you look at it as anti-establishment, pro-conservative, well what you saw here today was pretty much anti-establishment," he said.

It reflected the mood of the state, said Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte, who was elected chairman of the Education Committee. It all trickled down from the national political movement, with non-politician citizens stepping up to run for office, as Trump did.

Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk defeated Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg for speaker of the Legislature on a 27-22 vote.

Scheer said he sees great challenges and great opportunities in the coming session, and he will guard the independence of the Legislature as a separate but equal branch of government.

State Sen. Mike Hilgers bows his head as his 2-year-old daughter, Elsie, looks around the chamber during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol.

State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha and his daughter, Mya, take in the sights of the chamber during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol.

Spectators fill the galleries and balconies during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol.

State Sen. Jim Scheer and his fellow senators are sworn in during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol. Scheer was selected as speaker of the Legislature.

Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Heavican swears in senators on the first day of the legislative session.

All are present and accounted for on the first day of the Nebraska Legislature's new session.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers greets children on the floor of the Nebraska Legislature on opening day.

State Sen. Lynne Walz listens to floor discussion Wednesday in the Legislature.

State Sen. John Kuehn talks on the floor of the Legislature Wednesday during opening day.

State Sen. John Kuehn listens to discussion Wednesday on the legislative floor.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers waits as other senators greet one another and chat on the floor during a break on the opening day of the 105th Legislature on Wednesday.

State Sen. Mike McDonnell listens during discussion on the opening day of the 105th Legislature on Wednesday.

State Sen. Bill Kintner talks with his wife, Lauren, during the opening day of the 105th Legislature Wednesday at the Capitol.

State Sen. Jim Scheer talks with his grandson Miller, 3, during the opening day Wednesday in the Legislature.

State Sen. Tyson Larson listens to discussion on the floor during the opening day Wednesday of the Legislature.

State Sen. Carol Blood listens to the discussion on the floor during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol.

State Sen. Jim Scheer is sworn in as the speaker of the Legislature on Wednesday.

State Sen. Tony Vargas listens to the discussion on the floor during the opening day of the Legislature on Wednesday.

State Sen. Joni Albrecht listens to the discussion during the opening day of the Legislature on Wednesday.

New Sens. Lou Ann Linehan and Tom Brewer talk during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday.

State Sen. Joni Craighead (right) speaks Sen. Joni Albrecht during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday.

State Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg asks his fellow senators to vote for him to be speaker. He lost his bid to Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk.

State Sens. John Stinner (left) and Matt Williams talk on the floor of the Legislature on Wednesday. Stinner was elected chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. Williams lost a bid to be the speaker to Norfolk Sen. Jim Scheer.

Lincoln Sens. Suzanne Geist (left) and Kate Bolz talk during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday at the Capitol.

State Sen. Anna Wishart, the youngest member of this year's Legislature, waves to friends and family in the balcony during the opening day of the 105th legislative session on Wednesday.

"Rest assured that I cannot nor will not be intimidated by anyone or any group," he said. "Having said that, the citizens of the state expect all three branches to work together for the betterment of this state."

Sen. Dan Watermeier of Syracuse took the Executive Board chairmanship from Sen. Bob Krist, who had led the board for two years, on a 28-21 vote.

People who have been around the Legislature for more than 40 years say they have never known freshmen senators, who haven't previously served in the Legislature, to take committee chairmanships. Now, three committees have chairs who have never sat on a legislative committee.

New Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha will lead the Urban Affairs Committee, defeating Sen. Sue Crawford of Bellevue. Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston will chair the Business and Labor Committee after taking it from former Chairman Burke Harr of Omaha. And Sen. Mike Hilgers of Lincoln will chair the Rules Committee.

Those senators may be new but are not complete novices, Smith said. They have served in elective office or are knowledgeable of government, and walk in the door with some level of experience, he said.

With term limits, and the four to eight years they can serve, more is expected of new senators, Scheer said.

Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell said at the beginning of the day Wednesday he would not attempt to change the Legislature's temporary rules to allow for an open vote of speaker and committee leaders, as some feared would happen.

But as the day drew to a close, he asked for roll call of the last chairmanship vote, essentially calling for a decision from the Legislature on whether the rules as adopted -- in particular the secret ballot on leadership -- were in compliance with the state Constitution.

When Foley ruled that Kuehn's motion was in order, the ruling was challenged and overruled.

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"I've been in this place over four decades," Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers said. "I've watched all kinds of schemes. I've watched groups clump together. I've watched individuals ... allow themselves to be used as pawns."

The senators who just arrived have been misled, he said. "What you do today can poison the rest of the session," he told the senators.

He cautioned that undercutting and undermining the Legislature was being done for the sake of a political party, in particular the Republican Party.

Lincoln Sen. Adam Morfeld argued that constitutional questions should be resolved by the courts, and the Legislature should not act as a court of law, ruling on constitutional challenges.

Bolz defended the nonpartisan nature of the unicameral Legislature.

"I see this effort as a threat to history and tradition. It is a threat to the way we do business in Nebraska, which is rooted in the ideas of populism, in the ideas that we are here to represent the people of this state. The people and their best interests," she said.

Senators voted 29-19 to overrule Foley's decision, and the vote for Rules Committee chairman proceeded on a secret ballot.

"Today, I think, only further polarizes the Legislature," said longtime lobbyist Walt Radcliffe. "The level of contentiousness has risen considerably."

Radcliffe said it will be far more difficult for senators to reach a consensus than in previous years.

In the next few months, people will mend fences, he said.

"But there needs to be incentive to mend fences, and people are going to have to mutually find that incentive," he said.
Gov. Pete Ricketts, in order to deal with a large projected hole in state revenue, will tackle reductions to this year's remaining spending.

Ricketts will propose $276 million in budget adjustments for the 2016-17 fiscal year to offset a previously announced projected shortfall of nearly $900 million.

He was expected to announce details of those reductions Thursday morning, including use of $92 million from the state's rainy day fund, or cash reserve.

The 2016-17 budget has six months remaining.

His recommendations to the Legislature will set up the next two-year budget, he said.

Expedited work on the current budget adjustments will provide a solid foundation for the next one, Ricketts said at a Wednesday briefing, and ensure agencies operate within those adjustments.

In the 2015-16 fiscal year, the state ended up with $95 million in tax receipts below the amount forecasted by the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board. That board then lowered the forecast in October by $172 million, ending with more than $267 million that has to be addressed this year, he said.

Tax receipts continue to lag. In November revenue was down $19 million below the revised forecast, Ricketts said.

Softness in commodity prices are showing up in lower sales and income tax revenue, he said.

Starting in July, Ricketts communicated with state agencies to constrain their budgets, and has allocated money to agencies more slowly.

Part of his recommendation going forward will be to transfer $21.5 million from various cash funds with excess balances or with spending that can be delayed to state general funds.

The state has predicted it will get about $11.2 million from Amazon, after the company announced it will begin charging state taxes to Nebraskans beginning Jan. 1.

The proposal leaves K-12 funding untouched for the remainder of the fiscal year, the governor said.

Funding for public schools granted through the state's school funding formula totals $1.2 billion this year.

Ricketts plans to unveil his budget proposal for the 2017-19 fiscal years at his Jan. 12 State of the State address.
Archived newspapers are portals to the past that give glimpses into history. Perhaps most interesting are early publications, before the days of printed photographs, when artists were heavily relied upon as storytellers.

A new exhibit at the Homestead National Monument of America, installed Friday, features art and articles from 1880s eastern United States publications that illustrate westward expansion.

Several of the fixtures that line the walls of the Education Center boast intricate pictorial wood engravings that were transferred onto the newspaper pages of the era.

The illustrations show scenes of Native Americans' and homesteaders' lives of the time, including hunting excursions and onslaughts of prairie fires, wind storms, floods and blizzards.

"The pieces show how westward expansion was interpreted by easterners," said Homestead museum technician Robin Matty. "They're so detailed. Some are just the images. I almost like those better because it leaves it up to interpretation."

Several of the framed pages are from Harper's Weekly, which first published in 1857 in New York City.

"The exhibit, on loan from the South Dakota State Historical Society, uses illustrated newspapers to present how the Dakotas and the events in the west were depicted to the American public," the press release of the exhibit reads.

The exhibit, called "The Way They Saw Us," will be on display through July.

"The 25 framed images will give visitors an idea of what methods of advertising were used to encourage people to head westward," the release reads. "They also depict the struggles settlers faced in the Dakotas. It was through these works that the idea of the 'American Wild West' was born."

Homestead staff said they believe this to be the first time the collection has traveled outside of its home in South Dakota.

"Historic newspapers are an invaluable resource for historians," said Superintendent Mark Engler. "This collection does a great job of highlighting not only the historical but also the artistic value of newspapers."
(ANSA) - Rome, January 5 - Famed linguist Tullio De Mauro died in Rome on Thursday aged 84. A university professor and education minister in the government of Giuliano Amato from 2000 to 2001, De Mauro was one of Italy's best-known public intellectuals and a regular presence on TV.

His death was announced by the Bellonci Foundation, which organises the Strega book prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award, and of which De Mauro was also president.

One of De Mauro's best-known sayings was "the destruction of language is the premise for all future destruction".

He was also fond of saying, after the transformation of Italy from a largely dialect-speaking country into a linguistically united nation after WWII, that "the dream of Carlo Cattaneo and Alessandro Manzoni, that Italian should become a national language spoken by most of the people has become a reality today".

"I remember Tullio De Mauro as a passionate master for all those who love Italian schools, research and language," Premier Paolo Gentiloni tweeted.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said De Mauro's death "deprives the country of a distinguished linguist, a man of profound culture, capable of transmitting learning and knowledge with passion, a keen intelligence whom I was able to appreciate in the years of joint work with the Strega Prize of the Bellonci Foundation".

Born in Torre Annunziata near Naples on March 31, 1932, De Mauro graduated in classical literature before going on to teach at the universities of Naples, Chieti, Palermo and Salerno.

He was appointed lecturer in the philosophy of language and then professor of general linguistics at Rome's Sapienza university and in 1966 he became a founding member of the Italian Linguistics Society, of which he was also president from 1969-1973. De Mauro served as a Lazio regional councillor from 1975 to 1980, a member of the board of governors of Rome university from 1981 to 1985, the dean's delegate for teaching from 1986 to 1988 and president of the Rome Institute of libraries and cultural centres from 1996 to 1997. In 2006 he received the president of the republic's prize from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the world's oldest scientific academy, for his academic research, and in 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Waseda university in Tokyo.

De Mauro's most important works include A Linguistic History of United Italy, published in 1963, and a comprehensive dictionary of Italian usage. He also curated numerous dictionaries, including the Dictionary of Foreign Words in the Italian language (with M.

Mancini, 2001), and contributed to weekly current affairs magazines Il Mondo and L'Espresso, among others. "His dictionary is in Italians' homes, his teaching in the memory of many researchers. 'Non omnis moriar', thank you #TullioDeMauro" said former education minister Stefania Giannini in a tweet.


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Not at all. It just seems like a lot of back-and-forth talk.

Yes. I'm growing very worried over what might happen.

If it keeps up, I might be a little more concerned.

I think there are much larger things to concern us as a country.

It's hard to tell; I can't take the leader of either country seriously.

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Belhaven Mayor Adam O'Neal gives an honest assessment of governmental behavior unbecoming to it's citizens' bureaucrats, who received their share of the blame this night: photo by Stan Deatherage

Conservative County Commissioner Hood Richardson, who worked tirelessly on behalf of his Belhaven and Pantego constituents, vociferously presented his understanding of how government should operate here in the county of Beaufort: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage

Beaufort County Manager Bryan Alligood energetically expressed what he understood of the situation, and one could sense that this issue may not be finished: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage

Commissioner Buzzeo offered his allegorical reference of the Oakland tragedy that fell flatter than a fritter, but did successfully remind everyone where his political heart was in this matter or the razed public hospital: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage

After so many spoken words following the Mayor's adamantly presented expose on governmental overreach, the sly grin of incredulity crept across his lips more than once: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage

Belhaven Mayor Adam O'Neal drove nearly 30 miles west from his Town of Belhaven to present the news from his hamlet on Pantego Creek, and, right now, the news is not good. The news from the eastern end of Beaufort County is a visceral loss for many, and yet it is a political /legal victory for others; the final destructive razing of the former Pungo District Hospital, and later Vidant Pungo hospital.At the nexus of this calamity of community effort, unrealized after so much effort, is the historic center of Belhaven's health care - Pungo District Hospital, and the mayor who sought to stem the inevitable tide against all large corporate and crony odds - Mayor Adam O'Neal. In the end, the hospital, both the old structure and new, would be razed in the dead of night and would- as per Adam O'Neal at the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners meeting, January 3, 2016 And what a meeting it was once the Mayor took the podium, and little did Mayor O'Neal hold back. At this point: What did he have to lose?The Mayor of Belhaven, with his Belhaven Town Council firmly behind him, began in 2013 to save the community's hospital. So committed was the Mayor to save the former Pungo District Hospital that he walked to Washington, DC from Belhaven to talk to lawmakers and reprised that mission of committment by walking to Raleigh from Belhaven to speak with lawmakers there.Along that long path to keep the most complete health care available for his constituents, Adam O'Neal, as a Conservative Republican, enlisted the unique alliance of the NCACP , and far closer to home the help of the Beaufort County Commissioners, by the slimmest of magins of support, and when Commissioner Stan Deatherage left the board in December of 2014, that Beaufort County Commissioner support evaporated as well.Once the Beaufort County Commissioners folded, all that remained was Conservative icon, Commissioner Hood Richardson , who remained an ardent, and vdneraable hands-on supporter, worker until thebitter end. At this Beaufort County Commissioners' meeting that pointed, precise support was unwavering, and The Hood did not hold back.It began with Mayor O'Neal laying full blame on the County of Beaufort's inspection department's impropriety of interjecting themselves into a legal matter that was within the sole domain, and purview of the Town of Belhaven. To rub salt into the Town's wound, - the county's rendering of an unfavorable opinion of the former hospital's suitability of viability to an interested party, Pantego Creek LLC , who were enjoined in that lawsuit against the Town of Belhaven on the hospital's Stay of Demolition, - that judge employed the county's improper opinion as the predominate basis to rule that the demolition could go immediately forward.These were hard, hurt feelings bandied about at this public meeting; the kind that always happen when the Little Guy, with the better motive, is beat up by The Big Guy, just because they are better connected with the crony class. And, undeniably, the crony class in Beaufort County usually wins, as if this big dumb drunk abusive uncle, who only has the raw intelligence to punish others, will get away with it every time because 'he knows a guy who knows a guy'. That is the end result of abject, unbridled cronyism, and those on the receiving end know well the look of it.What we saw and heard at this meeting were two lions of government accountability - Mayor O'Neal and Commissioner Richardson express:No other commissioners offered any commentary of real substance; however, the specious comment of the night award goes to Beaufort County Commissioner Ron Buzzeo in defense of any, or all actions by the county. Without belaboring the point, one could sum up Commissioner Buzzeo's argument by his statement,To be perfectly clear, this once existing community hospital did exist on a large waterfront lot - waterfront on two sides of it - was never an apartment building, with no history of vagrants living on the premises. The vacant building was not a nuisance to the community; however, curiously, did give great cause to its strawman owners, the Pantego Creek LLC, to beg the county to use its public offices to offer an official opinion to use as evidence with an intellectually distant judge to achieve their desired end result - the final destruction of this community's hospital.From the better perspective delivered this night in the annals of Beaufort County's government, the cards were stacked against the Town of Belhaven by Beaufort County's Crony Class doing Vidant Health's bidding to expand their monopoly of the region's health care, and for what? What do these Cronies have to gain from pledging their fealty and allegiance to the largest industry in eastern North Carolina?Beaufort County's government has nothing gain and much to lose in regards to the representative respect from its non crony class citizens, the regular folk; however, for the Pantego Creek LLC, their fealty to Vidant may take on another financial form, and, hopefully, maybe not. Time will tell when we discover who actually winds up with the ownership of downtown waterfront property, where the public's hospital once stood. The final ownership of this property will speak volumes, and, as an optimist, the Town of Belhaven should wind up with that property, or at least a controlling interest of such, if there is to be ny sense of fairness here.It truly will be a matter of propriety, and that knowledge to the community at large will eventually be made known.But, remember this, improper behavior can and will happen anywhere, especially when Big Government learns that they can advantage one over the other, and to the extent that certain parties reap the benefits that the rest of us pay for in so many ways. Beware of Big Government, and those that become its staunch advocates.
BCN Contributor Austin Gross

North Carolina General Assembly in May, 2013: Above. photo by Stan Deatherage Click image to expand.

House Bill Two, more commonly referred to as the "Bathroom Bill," was upheld during a special session of the North Carolina Senate last week. The bill, which requires that individuals use public restrooms that are consistent with the sex on their birth certificate, also allows private businesses to deal with their bathroom policy as they please.HB2 stems from a city ordinance passed by the leftist city council of Charlotte, requiring that any individual can use any public restroom, and also that private businesses would be required to let people use the bathroom of their choice, a gross overreach of basic civil liberties afforded to the individual and thus the small business.To anyone not living under a rock, the obvious and blatant virtue signaling that ensued following the initial passage of HB2 this past March was just as apprehensible. Various different musicians and groups, up to and including Ringo Starr, Nick Jonas, and others canceled gigs in North Carolina. The NCAA, NBA, and other sporting organizations also moved different events out of the state in lieu of the passage of this law.Of course, as is a recurring theme in the year 2016, the absolute disconnect between liberal media, Hollywood, and the average American is appalling. To most average Americans, HB2 is common sense. Even as the media, from every angle for months upon months has continued an all out assault on this law upholding basic decency, support for the legislation itself has remained fairly consistent.As a conservative, there are two reasons to support and continue to support this legislation as it comes under further fire. The obvious one being the fact that it prevents men (yes, real men) with a sad and scary mental disorder the chance to walk into any elementary school and pee next to our daughters. Of course, there are few incidents in which this actually occurs, but opening the floodgate for anyone claiming to be a woman to just walk in is disgusting, seeing that the standard to enter the restroom of the opposite sex would to just simply claim to be that sex.Secondly, and less discussed, is the obvious infringement of the government, the government of the city of Charlotte in this case, to tell businesses how they can and cannot operate. The not so radical idea that the government should not have the ability to completely infringe upon private businesses, but rather private businesses should be allowed to set the tone for who uses what restrooms, and however they decide they will go about sorting that out. If the government were simply to allow private businesses to determine this policy on their own, then the consumer, what keeps a business's doors open, would be much more likely to generate the rules and policies for that business, which would likewise drive up revenue and earnings. Take for example Target. Target, one of the most well known stores in the country, decided that transgender individuals could use whichever restrooms they so chose. In response, Target's stock value dropped 400% in an extremely short amount of time. Not only was this a testament to Americans outright and full rejection of the transgender bathroom policy, but also this would give credence to the idea that it would probably be smart for Target to change this policy, or to not take such a hardline stance, in order to avoid losing more business.As the progressive left continues to move farther and farther left, it is the American common sense conservatives hope that the officials they elect will continue to reject legislation like HB2 wholesale. Not just for reasons relating to common morality, but for reasons that relate to the rights of entities not tied into the government, like private businesses, and their ability to determine what policies will best cater to their buyers and consumers.
Since the accession of Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said in 1970, Oman has undergone a remarkable transformation.

Having overcome the early and potentially deadly threat of a communist-inspired insurgency from over the border in Yemen, the country has slowly but steadily prospered.

Previously almost medieval in its backwardness, its emergence into the modern world has been a remarkable success story.

The national carrier, Oman Air, is expanding rapidly and has carved out a niche for itself in a market dominated by the big three airlines in Qatar and the UAE.

But, for all its success, said Sam Owen, CEO of start-up Salalah Air, it has not provided the countrys second city with the level of air services desired by its population.

Basically, theres no service in the south of the country, said Owen, a British expatriate who has lived in Oman for decades and is a former wing commander (Lt-Col) in the Royal Air Force of Oman.

Oman Air has expanded very nicely around the world, but not in Oman. The people of Salalah want more flights to Muscat, they want to connect with the rest of the world.

Many of the factors that would support a new airline in Salalah are in place: there has been considerable investment in tourism, with hotels and an improved road infrastructure. The citys airport has benefited from a new terminal and runway. And the port has been greatly expanded and is increasingly on the itineraries of visiting cruise liners.

Additionally, the area around Salalah has one attraction that is almost irresistible to many residents of the Gulf. As temperatures start to reach a peak of 45C or more throughout the peninsula in June, the northerly edge of the Indian Ocean monsoon hits the southwest coast of Oman. Its effect is to bring clouds, temperatures of around 25C, mist and drizzle from June to the start of September. This is the khareef and visitors flock to the region for the novelty.

The jebel turns green, youve got cows and camels in the same field and if its a good season there are even a few waterfalls in the wadis, said Owen. The same conditions also prevail in southeast Yemen and parts of Sudan, but neither country is in any condition to take advantage of the phenomenon.

Oman Air lays on additional flights to Salalah to cater for the influx of tourists and more than 90,000 visitors passed through the airport during the latest khareef season, but Owen believes that much more can be done.

Until recently, Oman did not allow the establishment of airlines apart from the national carrier. That changed in January 2016 with the request for proposals to set up a new low-cost carrier (LCC). Owen and his team applied, but the successful bid came from another state-run enterprise  the Muscat National Development and Investment Company  and Salam Air is due to take to the air in the third week of December. Ironically, its initial destination will be Salalah.

Having lost out on the LCC contract, Owen turned his attention to a new venture. Starting small, with a handful of light aircraft, Salalah Air intends to step up initially to 19-seater regional aircraft, then to jets by 2018. At the time of writing, it was closing in on its air operators certificate (AOC), with the aim of having it in place by the end of the year. Postholders were being recruited over the autumn and manuals submitted for approval by the Public Authority for Civil Aviation (PACA), the countrys aviation regulator.

Funded mainly by a locally based family, with additional money coming from Omans banks, Salalah Air plans to start operations with four GippsAero GA8 Airvans. The Australian-built light aircraft operates with a single pilot and up to seven passengers.

We looked at the Cessna Caravan, but its an expensive aircraft, said Owen. An Airvan is $900,000, its rugged and very cheap to operate.

Initially, two aircraft will be based in Muscat and two in Salalah, with the target market being the tourism industry, both foreign and domestic. We have five airports in Oman, but we also have around 40 unpaved ex-air force strips that were used for public support-type services by Short Skyvans. A lot of them are in very good tourist destinations and what would be a four- or five-hour drive by car takes 20 minutes by air.

Owen hopes to start services with the Airvans in January 2017, at around the same time as introducing a Dornier 228 regional turboprop. Swiss manufacturer RUAG is being extremely helpful. We have one lined up, which would be a wet lease from RUAG itself, to get us going. We need the support of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) at the moment for maintenance, etc.

We will explore second-hand aircraft initially, to keep our costs down, although were in negotiations with RUAG to buy new aircraft.

One of the attractions of an aircraft such as the Dornier 228 is that it is rugged and has the potential to be converted to carry cargo or parachutists. Owen sees both the 228 and the Airvans being used for roles such as parachuting at weekends, when they are not required for passenger services.

The Airvans will also be used by a new flying club when not required by the airline: Any aircraft we have, we have to use for as many things as possible, he said.

Among other avenues being explored to add revenue streams is the erection of a semi-permanent hangar at Salalah. This would be larger than needed for Salalah Air itself, to give the company the opportunity to offer hangarage to business jet operators who fly into the airport

The next stage in Salalah Airs development will be the introduction of jet equipment  initially leased 37-seat Embraer 135s  before moving on to a larger type, such as the Embraer 190, which typically seats 94-114 passengers, depending on internal configuration. Owen hopes to introduce the 135 in January 2018.

Well probably start off with the 135, as the population of Salalah is small, just 400,000. Its a tried and tested aircraft and is economical. The 135 would allow Salalah Air to extend its routes to longer sectors within Oman, such as Salalah-Khasab and Salalah-Masirah, as well as to other Gulf destinations, while the 190 has the range to fly as far as Zanzibar, off the East African coast. The island was once an Omani possession and many residents there still have Omani heritage.

Weve done the route analysis [for Zanzibar]. We can be fairly competitive compared to Oman Airs fare structure, said Owen, who believes that adding the island to the companys route structure will give it the option of offering tourists two-centre holidays.

Like RUAG, Embraer has been extremely helpful in providing advice on subjects such as route analysis, he added.

Although Oman Air has been slow to provide services from Salalah, the new airline hopes to team with the national carrier, meeting disembarking tourists and either flying them on to another destination or arranging car hire and hotel bookings: We want it to be a one-stop travel shop. Ultimately, we would look at having a codeshare with Oman Air.

Salalah Air has taken as its emblem the Arabian leopard. Owen will hope that his companys progress is as sure-footed as that of the big cat.


Contact: Attila Nemecz

Attila Nemecz Attila.Nemecz@beaufortccc.edu

WASHINGTON, NC The closing and demolition of the Belhaven Hospital and heated negotiations over emergency medical service coverage in Beaufort County dominated headlines in 2016, and while the image of rubble evokes a sense of decline, healthcare careers are relatively secure and expected to increase as Beaufort County and other counties in the area see their populations age. Beaufort County Community College offers a wide variety of programs to help area residents enter the healthcare field or advance their career. Options for healthcare careers at the college vary from paramedic certification to a degree as a medical lab technician.Paramedics are the only healthcare professionals to enter the private lives of patients during a moment of crisis. They deal with patients taking too much or too little of their medication, victims of collisions or violence, and heart and respiratory emergencies. Paramedics can offer emergency medical care for patients who have no way of reaching a hospital by themselves or situations that require immediate critical care.Paramedic training is ideal for people who enjoy fast-paced work, dealing with a diverse cross section of the public and being on the frontlines of today's public health issues, including heart disease and stroke, the opioid epidemic, gun violence and traffic injuries. Often rescue workers are cross-trained, meaning that firefighters are also certified as paramedics.Paramedics function as part of a comprehensive EMS response, under medical oversight. They perform interventions with the basic and advanced equipment typically found on an ambulance. BCCC purchased and retrofitted a training ambulance in 2016 with an $18,500 grant from PotashCorp. Successful graduates receive a curriculum certificate and are qualified to seek state certification through the NC Office of Emergency Medical Services.For those who enjoy working behind the scenes, BCCC offers a program for medical laboratory technicians. MLTs do not always engage with patients, instead working with biological specimens such as blood, urine or bacteria. This work is crucial to monitoring patients' chronic illnesses as well as diagnosing diseases.Graduates of the program are eligible to take the Board of Certification of the American Society for Clinical Pathology exam. Employment opportunities include laboratories in hospitals, medical offices, and industry and research facilities. Ranked by the College Fund of North Carolina as one of the fastest growing careers in the state, MLT positions are expected to increase by 2.88 percent by 2022. Medical laboratory technicians can play crucial roles in determining the severity of a patient's cancer or controlling a disease outbreak like Zika virus.Across eastern North Carolina there are still a multitude of poor health outcomes, often exacerbated by poverty, a lack of access to medical care and an abundance of cheap, nutritionally lacking food. Regardless of the form that a healthcare career takes, these jobs are essential to the continued health and prosperity of a region. The future of eastern North Carolina depends on healthcare professionals working on the front lines and behind the scenes.The next paramedic program starts on January 11. Students interested in more information about the paramedic program should contact Bill Respass at 252-940-6468 or billy.respass@beaufortccc.edu. The next medical lab technology program starts in the fall, but students need to register by April 30. Students interested in medical laboratory technology should contact Erica Caracoglia at 252-940-6425 or Erica.caracoglia@beaufortccc.edu.
"Under President Obama, EPA has given more than $27 million in taxpayer-funded grants to major environmental groups. Notably, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund - two key activist groups with significant ties to senior EPA officials - have collected more than $1 million in funding each. (Pg. 34)"

Governor Roy Cooper's decision to wait to announce his cabinet appointments until after his swearing in is highly unusual as reported in this recent Civitas article . In the article, Francis De Luca pointed out that just days before Cooper was sworn into office, he hadYesterday, three days after being sworn-in to office, Cooper was quoted as saying then he announced only two of his ten cabinet nominees. Up until January 3rd he even refused to name the interim heads of the agencies after firing the previous agency heads midnight New Year's eve.As he makes these announcements, you can start to see why he delayed. His choices are sure to be controversial and to bring criticism and anger from many of those who voted for him.The first of his cabinet appointments, Michael Regan, was named as nominee for Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality. With this appointment Cooper signals his allegiance to the most radical elements of the environmental movement.Until recently, Regan was a Senior Official of the radical Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). He served with the EDF since 2008 and his most recent position was as Associate Vice President, U.S. Climate and Energy & Southeast Regional Director. EDF is a mega non-profit with reported assets over $204 million in 2015 with an agenda that rivals the most radical of environmental groups. Fully supporting President Obama's climate agenda that included his War on Coal (an effort to shut down all coal-fired power plants) EDF ran political ads against Republican senators in 2013. More important is the role Regan and the EDF had with Blueprint NC , the liberal umbrella organization that is known for producing and releasing a 2013 strategy memo that described a game plan for progressive groups to use to attack (by "crippling") the newly elected Republican governor and leaders in the Republican-majority House and Senate. The memo directed its members to "eviscerate, mitigate, litigate, cogitate and agitate" the state's Republican leadership.The members of Blueprint waged a four-year war on McCrory and the Republican legislature. Their ultimate aim was to capture political control of North Carolina and advance their radical progressive agenda.Before EDF, Regan worked for the EPA for ten years. The EPA and EDF work together to advance the radical environmentalist agenda. They cooperated with groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council in what is known as "Sue and Settle" agreements. Radical environmentalist like the NRDC would sue the EPA and progressive government employees would settle out of court and pay the legal costs and do what the NRDC wanted. No new laws needed!The combination of these two powerful entities is not lost on political operatives. According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Minority Staff Report (July 30, 2014):If Cooper was looking for a very well-connected player in the worldwide radical environmental movement - he found him in Michael Regan.Governor Cooper's second controversial appointment was Jim Trogdon as North Carolina Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary. While much of Trogdon's experience is within DOT (he retired as the department's COO in 2013), the appointment might be viewed as a "finger in the eye" to the I-77 toll road opponents The I-77 toll road was a major factor in the 2016 Gubernatorial campaign. While former Governor McCrory attempted to ignore the controversy, Roy Cooper indicated that he sided with the opponents. WSOC TV reports that after Trogdon left NC DOT in 2013 he went to work for Atkins. WSOC TV reports:WSOC also reported that while serving with Atkins, Trogdon penned an article calledTrogdon argues.In light of the Trogdon appointment, Cooper has said that his opinion of the I-77 toll road hasn't changed. Many political observers attribute Cooper's victory to the damage done to McCrory in the I-77 toll road corridor. McCrory finished over 30k votes behind other GOP candidates in the precincts most impacted.The North Carolina Cabinet is made up of unelected heads of the executive departments of the North Carolina government appointed by the governor. The departments include Administration, Commerce, Environmental Quality, Health and Human Services, Information Technology, Military and Veterans Affairs, Natural and Cultural Resources, Public Safety, Revenue and Transportation.During the recent special legislative session, the North Carolina General Assembly added a provision to state law that Cabinet appointments require the advice and consent of the North Carolina State Senate.
Philippines: Policy on labor contractualization approved

The Philippines government approved a new Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) regulation, Order No. 168 on contractualization, after it was submitted on December 29, 2016. The new law amends the provisions of the labor code and legalizes subcontracting or outsourcing labor through third party agencies. This will allow principal employers to hire contractual labor, but only through service providers. These providers will be responsible for regularizing workers rather than the employer. Higher financial requirements will be imposed on service providers to eliminate unreliable subcontractors and ensure payments for laborers. The government believes that the change will address issues of labor abuse.

Several labor groups have opposed the directives, believing the change will only further legitimize contractualization in a different form and not eliminate it. The groups are lobbying for direct hiring and to prohibit third party hiring by banning fixed-term employment. They have asked President Rodrigo Duterte not to implement the directive and to issue an order banning all forms of fixed employment contracts, thereby fulfilling his campaign promise of eliminating contractualization. In the first five months of Dutertes term, the government regularized 25,000 contractual workers, which is less than 10 percent of the total workforce.

RELATED: Payroll and Human Resources Services from Dezan Shira & Associates

Cambodia: New customs seal to curb trade in illicit goods

On December 26, 2016, Cambodias General Department of Customs and Excise (GDCE) announced that a new customs seal will be required for all alcohol, watches, and smartphones imported into the country worth at least US$50. The new seal contains invisible text, an invisible logo, microtext, and a secret mark that can only be seen when exposed by a laser. The measure, which came into effect on January 1, is designed to combat trade in illicit and counterfeit goods and generate revenue, as the new seal will be considerably more difficult to counterfeit than the previous one. Offenders who are caught not using the seal will need to pay relevant taxes and are subject to additional fines. Markets in Cambodia are rife with illicit and counterfeit goods, and are often subject to raids by police. The move towards a more technologically sophisticated seal has been welcomed by the business community, as legitimate sellers often struggle to compete with the low prices of counterfeit goods.

Malaysia: Employers required to pay foreign worker levy

Employers hiring foreign workers are now required to pay for levies rather than deducting the employees wages, effective January 1. The new regulation was announced by Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. According to Hamidi, the new law will make employers fully responsible for their foreign hires. Officials have stated that this has been done to prevent abuse of foreign workers, who are often subject to human trafficking. Many employers confiscate passports and restrict the movement of migrant workers without paying the basic minimum wages.

However, the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) has requested the Prime Minister to intervene in the issue, stating that almost all of Malaysias industries were against the new law. Further, they stated that the industries that hire foreigners were ones that locals were not interested in. Similar comments were made by the SME Association of Malaysia and the Malaysian Iron and Steel Industry Federation. The move is likely to hurt potential foreign workers, as Malaysian companies will be more hesitant to hire them. Manufacturing companies have stated that they will likely automate certain processes, while other companies have stated that they will pass the additional costs onto consumers.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email asean@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 

Human Resources in ASEAN

In this issue of ASEAN Briefing, we discuss the prevailing structure of ASEANs labor markets and outline key considerations regarding wages and compliance at all levels of the value chain. We highlight comparative sentiment on labor markets within the region, showcase differences in cost and compliance between markets, and provide insight on the state of statutory social insurance obligations throughout the bloc.

The 2016/17 ASEAN Tax Comparator

In this issue of ASEAN Briefing, we examine regional taxation in ASEAN through a comparison of corporate, indirect, and withholdings taxation. We further present an overview of the compliance environments found across the region and analyze ASEANs tax environment in the context of the time and documentation required in each country.

Annual Audit and Compliance in ASEAN

For the first issue of our ASEAN Briefing Magazine, we look at the different audit and compliance regulations of five of the main economies in ASEAN. We firstly focus on the accounting standards, filing processes, and requirements for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. We then provide similar information on Singapore, and offer a closer examination of the city-states generous audit exemptions for small-and-medium sized enterprises.
Boeing declined to comment while SpiceJet was not immediately available outside regular business hours.

The deal, which would more than double SpiceJet's 40-plane fleet, may be closed within weeks.

Budget airline SpiceJet Ltd is expected to order at least 92 Boeing Co 737 jetliners, as it looks to bolster its presence in the world's fastest growing aerospace market, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

The deal, which would more than double SpiceJet's 40-plane fleet, may be closed within weeks Bloomberg reported, citing people with direct knowledge of the decision.

The order could be worth about $10.1 billion, the publication reported.

Boeing declined to comment while SpiceJet was not immediately available outside regular business hours.
February 6 meeting would be a final blow to Mistry as Tata Sons is holding company of Tata group firms.

New Delhi: After ousting him as Chairman, Tata Sons has called a shareholders' meeting on February 6 to remove Cyrus Mistry as director of the holding company of the USD 103-billion Tata Group.

Tata Sons had abruptly removed Mistry as its Chairman on October 24 and sought his ouster from operating companies like Tata Motors and TCS.

Mistry subsequently resigned from the board of six companies, but dragged Tata Sons and his interim successor Ratan Tata to the National Company Law Tribunal.

After the board meeting of October 24, 2016, Tata Sons had resolved that Mistry shall, notwithstanding his ceasing to be the Chairman, continue as a director of the company.

"Subsequent to his replacement, Mistry has made certain unsubstantiated allegations, which cast aspersions not only on Tata Sons Limited and its board of directors, but also on the Tata group as a whole. Internal communications, including confidential, were made public.

Mistry's conduct has caused enormous harm to the Tata group and its stakeholders, including employees and shareholders," Tata Sons said in a note for extraordinary general meeting (EGM).

The ousted chairman's conduct, it said, "resulted in significant erosion of the market value of the Tata group companies, which has consequently resulted in harm to Tata Sons Limited and indirectly losses to its shareholders".

The notice said continuation of Mistry as a Director of Tata Sons is "untenable" and therefore, he should be removed.

The resolution, which has been moved for his removal, said: "The board of Tata Sons Ltd is of the view that the integrity of the board proceedings is being jeopardised by Mistry's continuation as a Director and the confidentiality of the board decisions and proceedings cannot be ensured as the documents presented to the board have been leaked and made public in a distorted and untruthful manner."
Ducati dropped the Scrambler's prices by a massive Rs 90,000.

The Scrambler is the most affordable motorcycle from Ducati. Since its launch in 2015, it has been the highest selling bike for the Italian bike maker. Also, on its 90th anniversary last month, Ducati dropped the Scrambler's prices by a massive Rs 90,000. However, the Scramble is being recalled in the US market.

The reason for the Scrambler recall has been stated a faulty kickstand pivot nut, which can potentially detach from the motorcycle. The bikes that have been recalled were manufactured between February 17, 2015 and November 11, 2016. According to Ducati, if the pivot nut loosens or falls off, the kickstand position sensor wouldnt work aptly and this can result in the motor stalling as it is a safety feature. When we contacted Ducati India about the same, they informed us that the Scramblers sold in India havent been affected by the above recall. However, if they get any information regarding the recall they will inform Scrambler owners in India.

The classic retro looks harking back to simple, fun-to-ride, air-cooled motorcycles of the 1970s and makes the Scrambler stand apart from its competition. The new Scramblers engine, is the same 803cc V-Twin engine of the Monster 795, and makes about 76PS power and offers 68Nm of torque at 5750rpm. The Scrambler range sold in India is manufactured in Thailand owing to which they have been priced so aggressively in India.
Puri has left behind an impressive body of work in Indian, Hollywood, European movies as well as television.

Om Puri will be seen in 'Viceroy's House' which will be releasing this year.

Mumbai: Om Puri's sudden demise has sent shockwaves in the industry and among his fans. An actor of immense talent, Puri has left behind an impressive body of work in Indian cinema, Hollywood, European movies as well as television.

Here's revisiting some of those performances by the veteran actor which will remain etched in the minds of cinema lovers forever.

Aakrosh (1980): In this memorable debut by Govind Nihalani, Puri played a poor peasant, who is falsely accused of killing his own wife. In the entire film, Puri speaks only in flashbacks, but breaks his silence towards the end with a scream after killing his sister to save her from the fate that his wife suffered.

Bhavni Bhavai (1980): This Ketan Mehta film saw Puri play a poor narrator. The film also starred Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah in lead roles.

Arohan (1982): Directed by Shyam Benegal, the movie, set against the backdrop of Naxalbadi movement, saw Puri play the role of a poor farmer who ends up in jail while fighting against the system. He received the National Award for Best Actor for this role.

Ardh Satya (1983): Again directed by Nihalani, the film saw Puri play the role of Anant Welankar, an idealistic sub-inspector with Bombay Police, who struggles to come to terms with the corruption around him. In one of the most memorable scenes, Puri's character casually recites a poem to Smita Patil but as the reality of the lines sink in, his voice changes.

It is considered as one of the best cop films made in Indian cinema and Puri received a National Award and Filmfare Award for best actor.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983): To break his image as a serious actor, Puri took a shot at comedy with Kundan Shah's cult classic. He played the role of a corrupt property builder called Ahuja.

Puri in an interview to PTI recalled how he came to be a part of the film. The actor said people knew him only as someone with no sense of humour prior to the film.

"I did not have a sense of humour because I was struggling. I wanted to break that image...," he had said, adding that they came up with a comedy play, which became a huge hit and eventually landed him a role in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

Mirch Masala (1987): This Ketan Mehta film saw a gathering of almost all the leading names in parallel cinema - be it Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Dina Pathak, Om Puri or Ratna Pathak Shah.

Puri played the role of an old guard who gives up his life to protect the women working in a masala factory.

City of Joy (1992): It is an English film directed by Roland Joffe, based on the novel of the same name. Puri played a rural farmer called Hazari Pal, who moves to the fictitious Anand Nagar slum of Kolkata with his family in search of a better livelihood.

Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze and Shabana Azmi were his co-stars in the movie.

In Custody (1993): His role in this movie, opposite Shashi Kapoor, is one of his most under-rated performances. Based on the novel written by Anita Desai, Puri played the role of professor at a local college.

He teaches Hindi but is in love with Urdu language. He is keen to interview the great Urdu poet, Nur, but his various attempts get thwarted thanks to Nur's personal issues and his extended brood. Also called 'Muhafiz' in Hindi, Puri received widespread appreciation for his role in the Ismail Merchant-directed movie.

East is East (1999): He played patriarch Zaheed Khan, a first generation Pakistani, living in London and married to a British woman. Khan struggles to strike a balance between his traditional values and his children's modern outlook.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014): Puri starred as the head of Kadam family, who have relocated to France from India. They open a restaurant directly across the road from Madame Mallory's (Helen Mirren) Michelin-starred eatery, leading to a clash.


Claudia Ferrufino-Sosa, a community breast health educator with an ECU program funded by the Susan G. Komen North Carolina Triangle to the Coast Affiliate, with her son, Daniel. (Photos by Cliff Hollis)

Ferrufino-Sosa, a breast cancer survivor, and her eight-year-old son Daniel.

"A lot of times something is free and when people don't show up we say, 'Why aren't women here?' We're getting them education and service and following up. We're really helping them, not just blaming women for not being screened."

Claudia Ferrufino-Sosa was just 28 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, at age 33 and cancer-free, she's sharing what she's learned about the importance of early detection with other younger women.she said.Ferrufino is one of 19 women trained at East Carolina University over the past two years to serve as community breast health educators through a grant from the Susan G. Komen North Carolina Triangle to the Coast Affiliate. Supported by this grant and two additional Komen awards, ECU faculty members and their partners have educated, assessed, screened and treated more than 1,000 eastern North Carolina women for breast cancer.Each of the projects emphasizes reaching uninsured or underinsured Latina and African-American women. This targeted group has a higher mortality rate when diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the Komen regional affiliate. Although breast cancer incidence among minority women is lower when compared to white women in Pitt County, the mortality rate is twice as high for minority women.In other words, minority women have less breast cancer but are dying at higher rates.said Dr. Alice Richman, who leads the health education grant with fellow College of Health and Human Performance professor Dr. Essie Torres.The ECU programs are designed to cut through those factors.The educators - breast cancer survivors, ECU students and local residents - conduct breast health educational sessions at clinics, churches and community events. A breast cancer screening initiative provides clinical breast exams and mammograms completed by College of Nursing and Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center faculty and staff. A third grant helps provide lower-cost treatments at Jenkins Cancer Center.The initiatives are aimed at providing more than the average breast health services. For the screening grant, a patient navigator - a faculty member or student intern - initially speaks with the women on the phone, schedules their screening and meets them at their appointment. Extra assistance also comes in the form of interpretation services, child care and transportation assistance.said Dr. Kathryn Verbanac, professor of surgery at the Brody School of Medicine and co-director of the screening grant, which was originally funded in 2013.The team at the screening clinics also routinely connects women with the health department and resources to seek care for other health needs. While they found that women are on average five years overdue for a mammogram, organizers also noted that their patients lack access to other routine services such as pap smears.said Dr. Ann Schreier, associate professor in the College of Nursing and co-director of the screening grant.The projects are about "giving that whole picture of help to a woman," Richman said.Two local radiology providers, Eastern Radiology and Carolina Breast Imaging, provide low-cost services to make the screening clinics possible.Education, screening and treatment assistance are available through the end of March. For more information, contact Torres at 252-328-1818 or torrese@ecu.edu or Richman at 252-328-6431 or richmana@ecu.edu.
In a candid chat, actress Pallavi Sharda talks about the unpredictability of Indian audiences, highlights of 2017.

Australian-Indian actor, Pallavi Sharda, has much to look forward to this year. Apart from Begum Jaan, also featuring Vidya Balan, she has an international project, Lion, directed by Garth Davis, featuring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. Here, she talks about the promising start to the year and how shes embracing it with nothing but positivity.

Youve been away from scene, where were you?

I just got back from Goas New Year celebrations. Before that, I was in Australia and Bali. I have been travelling a lot. I also shot Begum Jaan and an independent film in Manali.

Would you say youre choosy when it comes to commercial films?

I never had a backup for my career. Ive made it on my own, so I have to be careful. I always go with the films that resonate with the people and me. I never go running after every single role that comes my way. I think I am choosy in a good way, and am very happy with the choices I have made. Last two years have been exceptional for me and this year too will be good.

Was it difficult for you to get used to the rat race of Bollywood?

I think anyone who comes from outside faces a bit of difficulty in making a mark. I came from Australia and I thought I understood India, but I didnt. I grew up with morals in Australia and came to the hustle bustle of Mumbai. It was quite confusing. I used to wonder whether to be conservative or non-conservative. I was like a good Indian girl, who was asked to push boundaries. I had a really interesting personal journey out here. My journey is more than a film. Its all about circumstances.

Tell us about your role in Lion

It is just so fantastic to be in a film like Lion. For an actor like me, who is an outsider, and to be around actors like Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman is an overwhelming and a learning experience. They are all such humble people. My director Garth Davis is such a fine man that he knows how to extract a performance. The whole set was so funny and fussy, but high on drama and emotions.

Do you regret the fact that some films you were banking on didnt pan out the way youd hoped they would?

Who knows Indian sensibilities? Films and audiences are changing. I feel that even filmmakers are confused about Indian sensibilities. Im not solely responsible for the failure of those films? My job as an actor is to perform. If my director gives me a script, I need to step into the character. I dont understand anything beyond that. If I wouldnt have done the films I did, I wouldnt have been here. I consider myself very lucky. If someone offers you a big film, opposite a superstar, would you say no to that? I am happy the way my career has shaped so far because I am self made. I am still working on some really amazing films. What do I have to be unhappy about?

What are your projects in 2017?

Begum Jaan releases in March. I am going to shoot a journey story with Discovery India. I love travel and dance and the show is all about that, so I am very excited.

How is your dancing treating you?

It is going on very well all around the globe. Dance makes me happy. When I was kid, I saw Sridevi in Chandni in a pink lehenga dancing on Mere Haathon Mein... and I decided to become a Bollywood actress.

Coming to Begum Jaan

It is a very different film. It is a remake of Rajkahini but it is not right to compare the two. It is a story of human triumph. The film uplifts and celebrates the human spirit. It is a provoking story of wonderful women. Vidya is so amazing that I am in awe of her. She radiates warmth and generosity. I love her.
Deepika is so talented, stunning and regal. Blessed to know you and call you a real friend: Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel took to the social media to wish leggy lass Deepika Padukone on her birthday

Los Angeles, Jan 6 (PTI) Hollywood star Vin Diesel says he is blessed to know his 'xXx: Return of the Xander Cage' co-star Deepika Padukone.

The 49-year-old-actor, who was in Mexico along with the film's entire cast and crew for its promotions, posted special message on Instagram for the actress as she turned 31. "Happy birthday to a truly amazing soul. So talented, stunning and regal. Blessed to know you and call you a real friend," Diesel wrote alongside Deepika's poster from 'xXx: Return of the Xander Cage'.

The action-thriller, which is set to hit the Indian theatres on January 14, will mark Deepika's Hollywood debut. In fact, Diesel will visit India two days before the film's release to promote it along with 'Bajirao Mastaani' star.

DJ Caruso, who has helmed the movie, also took to the social media to wish Deepika. "Happy Birthday @deepikapadukone. You embody Lana Turner w/the grace of Audrey Hepburn and u can kick some ass too," he wrote on Twitter.

Thanking all her fans and friends for their wishes, Deepika, who was also in Mexico for the film's promotion, said, "Mexico City+ One of xXx promotions+ Its My Birthday= What A Truly Amazing Day. Thank you all so much for all the love and wishes." Deepika donned white-and-green striped maxi dress for the event, while her co-star Diesel opted for white sando and beige colour jacket with denim.
One of the better shows making its premiere today is Show Me a Hero.

With multiple mini series having stepped into India last year, the format is only going on to gain popularity in the upcoming year. This is, in part, thanks to international TV channels realising the worth of smaller series, as far as gripping content is concerned.

One of the better shows making its premiere today is Show Me a Hero, directed by Oscar winning screenwriter, Paul Higgins and directed by David Simons of The Wire fame.

The Oscar Issac starrer is a real-life account of Nick Wasickos life and death. The six-part series, based on the book of the same name by former New York Times writer, Lisa Belkin, looks to expose and explore notions of home, race and community. Under the microscope are lives of elected officials, bureaucrats, activists and ordinary citizens in Yonkers, New York.

The efforts to desegregate public housing between 1987 and 1994 in Northern New York and the resultant civil rights struggle is, by most accounts, one of the greatest till date. During that time, when the youngest mayor of Yonkers, a mid-sized city is elected and faced with a federal court order to build low-income housing units in the white neighbourhoods of his town, he faces a daunting challenge. His attempt to abide by the court tears the entire city apart, paralyses the municipal government, and ultimately destroys him and his political future.

The mini series boasts of an IMDB rating of 8.2 and has 97 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not to mention a Golden Globe award for best actor in a mini series for Oscar. The heartbreaking show looks like a great way to kick off the mini series following in India for this year.

Show Me a Hero will premiere on Star World Premiere HD, today and tomorrow, January 8, at 7 pm.
New Delhi: Amid continuing outrage over mass molestation of women by wayward revellers in Bengaluru, a video of a mob running amok and attacking policemen with stones after they prevented two men from assaulting a woman on New Year's Eve in New Delhi surfaced on Thursday.

Police said almost 1,200-1,500 students have been questioned till now in connection with the incident that took place at Mukherjee Nagar in northwest Delhi on the night of December 31.

Two men in yellow and blue jackets tried to pull down a woman riding pillion on a motorbike near Batra Cinemas, investigators said.

Noticing the incident, police cautioned the two men, who appeared drunk, against indulging in hooliganism, the police said, adding CCTV footage shows the incident occurred between 11-11.15 pm.

The two men fled after the police intervention. Police tried to explain to a few youths standing there that they should celebrate New Year but not at others peril. They should not misbehave with women who are passing through the area, said a policeman present on the spot.

After the two men fled, a large group of students came and allegedly started pelting the policemen with stones, forcing them to take shelter in a police booth.

Mukherjee Nagar is a hub for students who prepare for competitive examinations like UPSC, banking and others, and it is suspected the two accused and those in the mob they later brought with them were students living in the area.
Indian nuclear experts say that the submarine could be the powerful Chinese Type 093 'Shang' class, very tough to detect.

The image can be accessed by clicking on the historical imagery icon on Google Earth and scrolling back to May, 2016, said the report. (Photo: Twitter)

New Delhi: A Google Earth image has shown Chinese nuclear submarine docked in Karachi harbour in May 2016, in an indication that Beijing might be scrutinizing Indian warships' movements far more closely than earlier.

According to a report in NDTV, the image, spotted first by a satellite imagery expert (Twitter handle @rajfortyseven) appears to show a Chinese Navy Type 091 'Han' class fast-attack submarine, the first class of nuclear powered submarines deployed by China.

The image can be accessed by clicking on the historical imagery icon on Google Earth and scrolling back to May, 2016, said the report.

However, Indian nuclear experts say that the docked submarine could be the even more powerful Chinese Type 093 'Shang' class, far quieter and tougher to detect and equipped with newer weapons and advanced technology, including a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear-powered submarines, unlike conventional submarines, have an unlimited range of operations since their nuclear reactors rarely require to be refueled. The submarines, armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles, can be deployed underwater for extended durations where they are difficult to track.

Indian Navy officials have been convinced for many years that the presence of Chinese nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean is part of a choreographed exercise to expand Beijing's military presence in the region.

Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said in December, "As far as People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships and submarines are concerned, the Indian Navy keeps a close eye and monitor their movements. We launch surveillance missions in the form of aircraft and ships to keep a track of them."
China has repeatedly blocked Indias bid to list JeM leader Masood Azhar as global terrorist by the UN.

New Delhi: Undeterred by China blocking its move to list Pakistan-based JeM Chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India has initiated discussions with several member countries of the UN Security Council and is exploring various options on the issue.

"We are examining all options and also consulting with the other co-sponsors," government sources said. India had reacted sharply to China's resistance to its proposal at the UN on December 30, saying Beijing's decision reflected prevalence of double standards in the fight against terrorism.

India was hopeful that China would support the proposal at the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as it came days after NIA filed charge sheet against Azhar in the Pathankot terror attack case.

The sources said India has not set any time frame for making a fresh start in getting the JeM chief designated as global terrorist by the UN.

China's "technical hold" on New Delhi's move on Azhar had expired on December 31 and India or any other UNSC member country has to now make a fresh listing request for the terrorist to be banned by the global body.

UN Sanctions Committee's listing would have forced imposition of asset freeze and travel ban on Azhar by countries including Pakistan.

China was the only member on the 15-nation UNSC Sanctions Committee to have opposed India's application.

China had dismissed India's criticism, saying it had adopted a "just, objective and professional" attitude in deciding the issue.

Earlier this week, India had asked Beijing to hear the "voice of the world" in dealing with terror and hoped it would be able to persuade the country to understand the "depth and evil" of the menace.
NIA, in its charge sheet, alleged that along with his associates, Ali planned terror attacks to destabilise the security of India.

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency has filed a charge sheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, who was arrested in Kashmir in July last year, alleging that he was working for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and was planning to carry out attacks at several places including Delhi.

The agency has filed the charge sheet under various provisions of IPC, UAPA, sections of Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act against Ali, who has been in judicial custody since August.

According to court sources, the charge sheet, filed before District Judge Amar Nath, claimed that the recent unrest in Kashmir Valley had been orchestrated by Pakistan-based LeT.

The agency claimed that since summer last year, the banned outfit, with the "help of Pakistani forces deployed on the border", pushed heavily armed terrorists into India with a direction to mix with local people, create disturbance and attack police and security forces.

NIA, in its charge sheet, has also alleged that along with his associates, Ali had planned terror attacks to destabilise the security and sovereignty of India.

The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir besides Delhi, the charge sheet claims.

It alleged that given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18.

A fourth-class dropout, Ali, who hails from Jahama village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from village Yahama in Mawar area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on July 25. The army had claimed to have recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs 23,000 in Indian currency from his possession.

According to NIA, Ali was trained at a Lashkar camp in PoK to carry out various activities, including map reading and operating GPS devices.

NIA alleged that Ali was part of the conspiracy hatched by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a proscribed terrorist organisation, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India.

It said that a thorough probe found that LeT has set up a well-organised machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by committing terrorist acts in various parts of the country.

"Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their world view and providing them with 'military' skills.

"Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian Territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of a network of their supporters and facilitators," the charge sheet said.

NIA said that as part of LeT's plan, Ali alias Saifullah Mansoor, along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists, infiltrated into Indian territory equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists entered Indian Territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of LeT based in Pakistan and PoK.

"After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists walked for about seven days following GRs with the aid of GPS devices, that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli 'launching pad'," NIA said.

Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, 'Walid Bhai' by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by LeT to avoid interception, it said.

On June 22, the two left for getting some food from a village leaving Ali on a hill top. However, both were killed in an encounter and Ali shifted his base to another hillock "as a precautionary measure".

Next day Ali contacted 'Alfa-3', the LeT control station based in PoK, who directed him to continue his journey and reach the final destination where he met his local contact who provided him food and shelter, it said.

Ali, who had established a network around the area, was informed by his control room in PoK that the cadres of Lashker had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir, NIA said.

He instructed Ali to mix with the protesters and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir Valley, the charge sheet said.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Friday refused to give an urgent hearing to a plea seeking postponement of the Union Budget to March, after the Assembly polls in 5 states were completed.

A bench of the SC headed by new Chief Justice of India (CJI) Jagdish Singh Khehar said, "will hear the matter in due course of time, but not now".

The Budget is scheduled to be held on February 1, and the NDA government is in no mood to postpone it.

The Opposition parties had earlier on Thursday approached the Election Commission demanding that the Budget be postponed to a date beyond March 8, the last date on which voting for Assembly elections will be held.

The Opposition contends that holding the Budget before the Assembly polls will allow the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to woo voters through various schemes.
The petitioners said they were constrained to bring to the kind attention of the apex Court regarding mysterious death of Jayalalithaa.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to entertain PILs filed by expelled AIADMK MP Sasikala Pushpa and an NGO for a CBI investigation into the death of the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016.

A bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Rohinton Nariman questioned the locus standi of the petitioners seeking relief directly from the apex court and warned that it would fine them if they pressed the plea further.

Counsel for Tamil Nadu Telugu Yuva Sakthi submitted that Jayalalithaa died under mysterious circumstances and it was up to the apex court to address allegations raised in several quarters that there was some foul play. He said the Court should order a CBI probe and then monitor it.

Justice Ghose observed What monitoring? What will we do? There is some petition pending in the Madras High Court, go there if you want with your grievances. How can you come here under Article 32 of the Constitution. The Bench, however, permitted the counsel to withdraw the petitions and dismissed them as withdrawn.

The petitioners said they were constrained to bring to the kind attention of the apex Court regarding mysterious death of Jayalalithaa. That the method of secrecy maintained is very suspicious and are raising serious questions among all sections of people, viz conspiracy; Corruption and misuse of power. They said that right from the day of admitting Ms. J. Jayalalithaa in Apollo Hospital on September 22, 2016 till her death on December 5, everything was kept as very secret. Many speculations were floated during the hospitalization and finally declared her dead after prolonged stay in the hospital. It was surprising that except one or two persons, including Governor, national Parties representatives such as Rahul Gandhi, Amit shah, Union ministers and even the family members/close relatives of Ms. Jayalalithaa were not allowed to see her. In view of the mystery shrouding her death, it is just and appropriate and in the interest of justice that this Court may order a judicial probe, the petition said.
Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital to see the victim, who is reported to be out of danger.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder, in connection with the incident. (Photo: Representational Image)

Mumbai: A 29-year-old woman was stabbed by an unidentified person near Mahalakshmi Race Course in Central Mumbai, police said on Thursday.

The incident occurred at around 7.30 pm on Thursday near the race course. Police got information about it after Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room.

Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital to see the victim, who is reported to be out of danger.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder, in connection with the incident.

The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked at a private company in Mumbai. Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man.

Last evening, at around 7.30 pm, the man went to meet her at the race course and found her sitting under a tree with stab marks on her chest, following which she was taken to hospital.

Further investigation into the incident was on, police added.
Contact: Noelle Talley

Noelle Talley govpress@nc.gov

Governor Roy Cooper today named Erik Hooks to lead the state's public safety department to direct law statewide law enforcement, emergency management, juvenile justice, and corrections divisions.Cooper said.Hooks rose through the ranks of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, starting as a special agent in northeastern counties in 1989 and rising to Assistant Director over the Professional Standards division by 2014. Most recently he oversaw the Threat Assessment and State Asset Investigations Unit and in the Inspections and Compliance Unit.Cooper said.The Department of Public Safety includes critical resources like the state Highway Patrol, the SBI and Alcohol Law Enforcement. It also supplies public safety support for local police and sheriffs as well as emergency response in case of natural disasters such as hurricanes or snowstorms. It also maintains the state's prisons and its juvenile justice systems.Hooks holds a bachelor's degree in political science with a concentration in criminal justice as well as a master's degree in organizational management and research from North Carolina State University.He is a native of Spring Lake, North Carolina.
Bedi had recently created a WhatsApp group for exchange of information and details of implementation of various government schemes.

New Delhi: A new confrontation has erupted between the chief minister of Puducherry V. Narayansamy, and the lieutenant-governor, Kiran Bedi. Ms Bedi on Thursday declared as null and void the circular issued by chief minister V. Narayanasamy banning the use of social media for official communication. She tweeted, If Puducherry has to be a progressive Union Territory it cannot be retrograde in communications. Hence @CM_Puducherrys order stands cancelled.

Mr Narayanasamy had issued the circular even as Ms Bedi was pushing with her plan to promote WhatsApp communication by officials. The government circular, dated January 2, had said the chief minister had directed all the officers, heads of departments and employees of government-owned undertakings to immediately desist from using the social media such as Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook. It had added that the servers of these multi-national companies were based outside the country.

Ms Bedi had recently created a WhatsApp group for exchange of information and details of implementation of various government schemes. An officer on special duty at Raj Nivas is the administrator of the group. An officer had accidentally posted an obscene video clip on the WhatsApp group. He was later suspended by Ms Bedi. The governments circular was seen as a counter to this act. A case under the Information Technology Act had been registered against the official, A.S. Sivakumar, following a complaint from the officer on special duty at Raj Nivas.

PWD minister and Puducherry Congress chief A. Namassivayam had questioned Ms Bedis decision to suspend the officer, adding that the L-G had failed to follow proper procedure. On the other hand, the chief minister has been maintaining that there was a clear demarcation of powers and subjects between the lieutenant-governor and his council of ministers. He had said, Such demarcation is seen in the Constitution of India, the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963 and the Conduct of Business Rules.

Hitting back Bedi said her responsibility as Administrator of Puducherry is to keep the administration in a fine shape as the Union Territory has a high percentage of literacy and offers a vibrant scope for development. The row has the all the makings of an ugly spat between the Congress government and the LG.
The party also claimed that the grand alliance in the state was not functional, with the JD(U) dominating everywhere.

Patna: The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Friday slammed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for seating its party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav in the audience during the event held yesterday to celebrate Prakash Utsav.

Expressing his ire, RJD's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the 'mahagathbandhan' between both parties is not visible adding the Janata Dal (United) has been dominating everywhere.

"The people didn't like this. They were amazed to see that how Lalu Yadav was seated in the audience. There is ' mahagathbandhan' in Bihar. So, every leader of the alliance should have been there on the stage. But it seems now that only the JD (U) is ruling the state," he said

Rubbishing Nitish's explanation on the same, he said, "What kind of a protocol is this? If Nitish Kumar thinks that the event was organized in an appropriate manner then what can be said, but the people of Bihar did not like it."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who yesterday attended the 350th birth anniversary of tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh being observed as Prakash Utsav in Patna, congratulated Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his 'nasha-mukti abhiyan' and said that it would inspire others as well.

"I congratulate Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his 'nasha-mukti abhiyan'. It can save the coming generations and act as an inspiration for other states," Prime Minister Modi said while speaking at Patna's Gandhi Maidan on the occasion of Prakash Utsav.

Prime Minister Modi asserted that the state would play a major role in development of the nation.
She also appreciated Mukherjee's yesterday's statement that demonetisation could lead to a temporary slowdown of the economy.

Kolkata: Locked in a bitter feud with the Centre over demonetisation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday sought resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and mooted a "national government" headed by BJP veteran L K Advani, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley or Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The TMC supremo, who has declared an all out war against the Modi dispensation over demonetisation and arrest of her party MPs in chit fund scam, sought President Pranab Mukherjee's intervention to "save the country from Narendra Modi".

"All opposition parties should forget their differences and come together to save the nation.

"It's high time the President intervened and saved the country. That person (Modi) can't lead the nation. He should step down. There should be a national government," she said, suggesting the names of Advani, Jaitley and Singh to replace Modi.

She appreciated Mukherjee's yesterday's statement that demonetisation could lead to a temporary slowdown of the economy.

"I have never seen such a vindictive government at the Centre. They are breaking age-old institutions like the Planning Commission and others. They are breaking the backbone of the government," she told reporters.

The Chief Minister claimed West Bengal had lost Rs 5,500 crore following demonetisation and accused the Centre of "letting loose a reign of terror" on Opposition parties.

A combative Banerjee also dared the BJP leaders to "touch her" when she visits the party-ruled Jharkhand.

"Two of my ministers and party leaders will visit Jharkhand and meet the tribal whose land has been forcibly taken away by the state government. After they come back

and give me a report, I will visit Jharkhand. They (BJP) have said they will beat me up, If I visit a BJP-ruled state. I want to see if they can even touch me," Banerjee said.

Her comments followed BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya's recent warning to the TMC to "mend its ways or face consequences" after a string of attacks on party offices and leaders following the arrest of Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Trinamool Congress' leader in the Lok Sabha, in a chit fund scam case.

Vijayvargiya had wondered whether TMC MPs and even Mamata Banerjee would be able to go around the country and enter New Delhi if his party started protesting against them.

Mamata alleged that the Centre wanted to close down companies whose possible revival was being looked at by Board for Indistrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

"Yesterday I received a letter in which it has been indicated that it wants to close down BIFR companies. In Bengal we are trying to retrieve BIFR companies and the Centre wants to close them down," she said.

BIFR was an agency of the Government of India under Ministry of Finance whose objective was to determine sickness of industrial units and to assist in reviving those that may be viable and shutting down the others.

On 1 June, 2016, the Government of India closed it and established National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).
Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with Chief Minister Akhilesh.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with Chief Minister Akhilesh. Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav as well. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: In their first one-to-one meeting since the vertical split in Samajwadi Party, Shivpal Yadav on Friday held talks with defiant nephew Akhilesh at his residence here on a "compromise formula" for a possible patch-up.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with Chief Minister Akhilesh. Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav as well.

However, sources privy to the fast-paced developments did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the "outsider" whose return to SP triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a "compromise formula".

Another possibility could be resignation of Shivpal from the post of state SP chief, a charge held by the chief minister before the current family feud broke out.

It was the first meeting between Akhilesh and Shivpal since the chief minister donned the mantle of SP chief replacing his father Mulayam.

An inkling of a patch-up came late last night when Akhilesh planned to go to the airport here to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayam's return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had yesterday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for three months.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam this morning reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the EC to claim that it was the "real" SP.

Leader of the Akhilesh camp Ramgopal Yadav claimed they have collected signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates, "making it crystal clear as to which was the real SP".
The Diana letters, split into six lots, were expected to fetch around 3,600 pounds, but went for a total of 14,900 pounds

London: Hand-written letters from Princess Diana describing her young children, William and Harry, to a former royal aide have broken pre-sale estimates to fetch

nearly 15,000 pounds at an auction in the UK.

The former Princess of Wales had sent the letters to late Cyril Dickman, who served as a head steward at Buckingham Palace for more than 50 years. In them she wrote about how William "swamped" his new baby brother with "an endless supply of hugs and kisses" and how "naughty" Harry was constantly getting into trouble at school.

Cheffins, a Cambridge-based auction house, said the letters formed part of "a unique collection of Royal memorabilia". "It was extraordinary. I don't think I have ever sold such few lots over such a long period of time because the bidding just never seemed to stop. People were bidding from all over the world on the internet," Luke Macdonald, director of fine art at Cheffins, said.

The entire Dickman collection, which also included letters from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, contained around 40 lots which were estimated to fetch around 13,000 pounds. But they went under the hammer for around 55,000 pounds. The Diana letters, split into six lots, were expected to fetch around 3,600 pounds, but went for a total of 14,900 pounds.

In one personal letter dated 20 September 1984, Diana writes: "William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near! "The reaction to one tiny person's birth has totally overwhelmed us and I can hardly breathe for the mass of flowers that are arriving here!"

In another, dated 17 October, 1992, she says how both young princes "are well and enjoying boarding school a lot, although Harry is constantly in trouble!".

Some of the other items in the collection, sold by the Dickman family, included letters, cards and photographs from various members of the royal family as well as an unopened boxed wedding cake from the Queen's marriage to Prince Philip

in 1947.

Described by Cheffins as "a favourite of every member of the Royal Family", Cyril Dickman had received handwritten notes from royals dating back more than 30 years.
As allegations are against public figures in the state, inquiry should be done by independent agency and not local police, the bench said.

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday asked the West Bengal government whether it was amenable to an inquiry by CBI into the Narada sting tapes to establish if any offence was committed, to which the state objected.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborty said if any offence was found to have been committed in the preliminary inquiry, then a formal criminal investigation could be initiated.

The bench said as the allegations are against public figures in the state, it was of the opinion that the inquiry be done by an independent agency and not by local police.

Objecting to the suggestion by the bench, state Advocate General Jayanta Mitra submitted that mere allegations cannot lead to criminal process against someone, whether he or she is an MP, an MLA or an ordinary person.

Claiming that the court has no jurisdiction to pass such an order, Mitra submitted that the recordings had been made public in 2016, two years after the video tapes were made in 2014 showing TMC leaders purportedly accepting money.

He claimed that the delay had to be taken into account by the court and the motive behind making the tapes public just before the Assembly elections in 2016 had to be ascertained.

Arguing that Mathew Samuel, editor of Narada News, which had conducted the sting operation on Trinamool Congress ministers, MPs and MLAs, had pernicious designs in conducting the sting, the AG said that a person who is trying to honeytrap someone is equally guilty.

Mitra submitted that Samuel has to justify his act by providing every detail of his operation from the beginning.

Appearing for some of the TMC leaders purportedly seen in the video tapes, counsel Kalyan Bandopadhyay submitted that the petitions seeking CBI investigation into the Narada tapes were politically motivated.

He claimed that one of the petitioners, Amitabha Charaborti, was a Congress candidate for the 2016 Assembly polls in West Bengal.

Citing an affidavit by MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, the counsel, who himself is a Lok Sabha MP, submitted that she was not present in office on the day Samuel claimed that Rs 5 lakh was given to her as it was Bengali New Year day.

The matter would be taken up for hearing again on January 12.
The court, however, refused to modify or ease conditions which had been imposed on Ghosh while granting interim bail to him on October 5.

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday granted regular bail to suspended Trinamool Congress MP and Saradha chit fund scam accused Kunal Ghosh, three months after he was given interim bail.

A division bench of justices Ashim Kumar Roy and M M Banerjee granted the bail to Ghosh on a prayer by the Rajya Sabha MP.

The court, however, refused to modify or ease the conditions which had been imposed on Ghosh while granting interim bail to him on October 5.

The bench had granted interim bail to Ghosh, who headed the Saradha Group's media business till November 11, on a bail bond of Rs 2 lakh.

Ghosh should not leave the jurisdiction of Narkeldanga police station in the metropolis except for attending court proceedings or meeting the investigating officers, the court

had directed.

It further directed Ghosh to meet the investigating officer once a week and if necessary, CBI shall have liberty to call him to its office for the purpose of investigation.

Ghosh, who headed the media arm of Saradha Group, had been in judicial remand for over two years in connection with the chitfund scam, before being granted bail by the high court.
Government allows builders to redevelop 56 dilapidated buildings in lieu of 40 per cent premium.

Mumbai: Ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls, the state government has allowed builders to redevelop dilapidated Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) buildings in the city in lieu of 40 per cent premium. The decision was long pending, as the government wanted housing stock from the builders for affordable houses. The decision will pave the way for redevelopment of 56 dilapidated buildings in the city, but without creating housing stock.

The Congress-led government had opposed the idea of charging premium from the builders instead of housing stock. However, the BJP-led government has approved the proposal on Thursday just before the BMC polls to be announced. Housing minister Prakash Mehta expressed confidence that the decision would create more housing stock. The additional FSI given to the dilapidated buildings would create more houses. They would buy the extra houses from developers and make it available as an affordable houses, Mr Mehta said. He also said one lakh such houses can be made available this way.

As per the decision, for the development of a building on area of 2,000 sq mt would get 3 Floor Space Index (FSI). The condition of housing stock has been removed. If the area is 4,000 sq mt or more, the FSI 4 would be given. The 300 sq ft flat would get 76 sq ft extra after redevelopment. There are over 10,000 Mhada buildings located in Vikhroli, Goregaon, Jogeshwari, Kurla and other places. Some of these structures are now in a dilapidated condition and need repair. Earlier, the government used to give an FSI of 1.2, plus transfer of development rights, in return for a premium or housing stock.

The premium on houses for Economically Weaker Section and Lower Income Group varies from 40 per cent to 55 per cent. The premium on houses for Middle Income Group varies from 60 per cent to 75 per cent while for Higher Income Group it will be from 80 to 95 per cent. Former chief minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan called the move anti-poor. I was against premium-based development. We need housing stock for poor. When I was the chief minister, there was tremendous pressure from the builders to get away with a condition of housing stock. But the state governments decision is anti-poor and they should reconsider it, he said.

Congress Mumbai president Sanjay Nirupam said, We have always supported redevelopment of old Mhada buildings. But this decision seems to have been taken in favour of the builders. The development has to be pro-public and not for the builders.
The petition claims that this ordinance is contrary to the assurance of the PM as well as the notification issued by RBI to banks.

Mumbai: Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson Sachin Sawant has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court on Thursday against the Reserve Bank of Indias refusal to accept old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes since the start of the year, citing the December 30, 2016 central government ordinance that says that only those people who were travelling abroad will be allowed to exchange old notes.

The petition has alleged that the Union government is guilty of breach of trust and cheating the citizens of the nation, as it was inconsistent with the initial announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley when the demonetisation decision had been issued on November 8.

According to the petition, citizens had been protesting outside the RBI headquarters in New Delhi and its offices in Mumbai against its refusal to accept demonetised notes since January 4. The situation has arisen as the RBI is refusing to accept the old notes based on the December 30 ordinance that states. ..the opportunity to exchange the specified bank notes was made available only to Indian citizens who could not previously exchange the currency as they were not present in the country during November 9, 2016 to December 30, 2016. The petition claims that this ordinance is contrary to the assurance of the prime minister as well as the notification issued by the RBI to banks.

The petition has alleged that This amounts to a breach of the trust vested in the Prime Minister and the Government authorities by the citizens of India, who are now left without any remedy on account of unsuspectingly placing their faith in the word of honour given by the Prime Minister. Alleging bad governance, cheating and violation of the citizens rights espoused by article 21 of the Constitution of India, Sawant said, We have made the Union of India, Ministry of Law and Justice and the Governor of RBI as respondents as their action has inconvenienced the masses.
Women commuting on Western Railway can feel a lot safer with plans afoot to beef up security.

In 2015, WR had been in the eye of a storm when a nurse and an American woman were molested within a week of one another. (Representational Image)

Mumbai: Women commuting on Western Railway (WR) can feel a lot safer with plans afoot to beef up security. A total 1,700 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras will be installed on platforms, subways and foot over-bridges at a cost of Rs 24 crore. A proposal to this effect has been sent to WR headquarters in Churchgate and their nod is expected by March end. In 2015, WR had been in the eye of a storm when a nurse and an American woman were molested within a week of one another.

Special attention will be given to cameras installed in subways as many women commuters have said that they feel unsafe when using these at odd hours. Incidentally, WR has comparatively more subways as compared to Central Railway (CR). Speaking about the decision, WR divisional railway manager Mukul Jain said, The proposal is a part of our Integrated Security System through which, the cameras will be high end and the metal detector doors will have new software that raises a red flag whenever anything that can be considered a weapon passes through.

Dhara Kanani (25), an independent filmmaker who travels from Andheri to Khar every day, said that due to the nature of her work, she often travels in trains at odd hours and ends up taking a taxi just to avoid the subway. At night, a foot over-bridge is a little better because it is open and if you call out for help, someone will help you. But a subway is enclosed and its hard for anyone on the train like even the police or station staff to know that something has happened, Ms Kanani said.
With the Democrats losing the presidency, after winning the popular vote by over 2 million votes more than the victor, Donald J. Trump: Should the constitutional provision of the Electoral College be scrapped? Yes, the votes for president should be concentrated in the population centers. No, the Electoral College provides for better representation from the less populated states. I rarely vote because I have little knowledge of the issues. 103 total vote(s) What's your Opinion?



On the morning of November 8th, most pundits, pollsters and academics were certain that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president of the United States, and that the Democrats would control the Senate once again in January. It is January now, however, and neither of these predictions have to come to fruition. Against all odds, President-Elect Trump was able to crack what had been Democratic strongholds in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and claim victory with a sturdy 306 electoral votes. Despite having to defend a considerable number of seats in contentious swing states, the Republicans only lost two seats and were able to hold a majority in the Senate. This has left the GOP with an unprecedented opportunity to enact their agenda not only on the federal level, but also on the state level, where Republicans enjoyed just as much success on election day. On the other side of the aisle, however, a much different narrative is unfolding. It is becoming more and more evident that the Democratic party is a ship sinking itself, with no captain to save it in sight.With the exceptions of the party's enormous bases in the country's major cities, which is where Clinton's popular vote victory came from, the party almost ceases to exist on a national level and, more specifically, throughout middle America. While there are still liberal talking heads out there pushing the notion that this all happened as a result of the inherent racism of white Americans or a deliberate propaganda campaign of the Russians, they are missing out on an important lesson in their hysteria. While there were many contributing factors to the death of the Democratic party this past year, including the failures of Obamacare, slow growth under liberal economic policy and the rise of the terror threat, the dagger in the party's heart was the their abuse of a tactic that the late Andrew Breitbart called "Cultural Marxism."As Mr. Breitbart explained it, the concept is quite simple. In the traditional economic Marxism that we are all familiar with, the battle is between the bourgeois and the proletariat, or the capitalists and the laborers. In other words, class warfare. While some progressive Democrats, namely Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, espouse this form of Marxism, almost all Democrats engage in cultural Marxism, where the battle is between "the oppressed" and the "oppressors." When Democrats accuse Trump voters and cops of being racist, Christian bakers and florists of being homophobes, those who oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants of being xenophobes or label people who are pro-life as misogynists, they are putting this radical tactic to work. While often employed under the guise of pursuing 'social justice', this is nothing more than an extension of the Democrat's reckless electoral strategy of divide and conquer. Particularly in recent years, this has led to an increase in misinformed civil unrest. Some examples can be seen in the anti-police riots that have spread through American cities. From Ferguson to Charlotte, protesters and rioters have taken to the streets to loot businesses, attack police officers and wreak utter havoc on the cities they claim to be fighting to improve. However, these lawless actions are often slow to receive any condemnation from Democratic politicians because the narrative that the party wishes to spin, that cops are the oppressors and black Americans are the oppressed, is too politically potent to give up.The unapologetic abuse of this tactic is where the party went wrong, and was at the forefront of the party's loss of touch with the everyday American. Cultural Marxism is at the heart of the speech silencing political correctness that we have all come to abhor, and it's prominence in the Democratic party became most obvious this past summer, when then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shamelessly labeled half of Trump's supporters a "basket of deplorables." She called them, "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic," and finally, "irredeemable." It is important to understand that, in this statement, Clinton labeled close to 25 percent of the American electorate "irredeemable." These are people that she has never met and never talked to, however, since they didn't subscribe to her narrative, they became a face for the group of "oppressors" that showed up so often in the transcripts of her campaign speeches.As we found out in the early hours of November 9th, the American people are tired of this. They are tired of watching their cities get destroyed by anarchists, they are tired of a tainted form of 'social justice' being used as an excuse to chill their freedom of speech and eliminate their right to voluntary exchange, and most of all, they are tired of being tossed into a "basket of deplorables" for having a dissenting opinion. The Democratic party would be wise to learn this lesson, but after looking at their moves in recent weeks I'd be willing to bet that they won't. Congressional Democrats doubled down on far left delusionalism with their re-election of Nancy Pelosi to the post of Minority Leader in the House, and the top contender for DNC Chair, Keith Ellison, is somehow even worse than her when it comes to pushing cultural Marxism. For example, in 2007, he went so far as to make the assertion that 9/11 is an excuse for Americans to punish "religious minorities." This would be irresponsible for a far-left activist to say, much less an elected official. Moreover, the party is still trying to rally around a healthcare law that has been an utter failure and unfair burden on working people instead of making an effort to work with Republicans to fix what is clearly broken. Outside of the formal Democrat party and into liberal circles, celebrities continue to put out silly call-to-arms videos about things they don't really understand, and snowflakes continue to report fake hate crimes in order to push their culturally Marxist narrative. While the Democrats would be smart to move back towards the center-left and move away from Marxism in all its ugly forms, the party simply doesn't seem to be headed in that direction.
The bench cautioned BMC that the city would run out of space for pedestrians in the next five years if steps were not taken.

Mumbai: In the light of growing parking problems in the city, Bombay high court has asked BMC if it has any comprehensive policy to address parking woes of Mumbaikars.

A division bench of Chief Justice Dr Majula Chellur and Justice G.S. Kulkarni was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Bhagwanji Rayani of Janhit Manch which pointed out that increasing number of vehicles and haphazard parking on roads was inconveniencing the public at large.

The bench cautioned BMC that the city would run out of space for pedestrians in the next five years if steps were not taken to address the congestion problem. Every open space is being used for parking. Is there any categorisation of roads in terms of where parking is allowed and where it is not allowed? Does the civic body have a comprehensive policy for parking? the court asked. There is no policy. Anyone can park anywhere. There is no coordination between any agency, the bench observed.

Pointing out instances in south Mumbai and the western suburbs where vehicles were being parked illegally, Chief Justice Dr Chellur, giving the example of Malabar Hill, said, In the night, on both sides of the road, cars are parked like a necklace making the roads narrower. In Bombay after five years, you wont have space to go anywhere. This is a very serious issue. Even the footpaths have been taken over by hawkers.
Police suspects that she was depressed since her father passed away around six months ago.

Mumbai: A standard XII student, Sharvari Nerkar, 17, committed suicide by setting herself afire with kerosene on the terrace of her building in Kalyan on Thursday night. Police suspects that she was depressed since her father passed away around six months ago.

However, Nerkar did not leave behind any suicide note and police is gathering evidence to establish the motive behind her suicide, according to a source. Police is also examining whether she was suffering from any study-related stress. Police is quizzing the familys neighbours and relatives and is yet to find out the version of the deceaseds mother, elder sister, and younger brother who are in a state of shock, the source said.

Nerkar was staying with her mother and two siblings in a residential complex at Kolshewadi, Kalyan. She was studying at Kamladevi Junior College, Kalyan. The family owned a medical shop which was being handled by Nerkars mother, hence, the children would stay alone in the house the whole day.

A Kolshewadi police officer said, On Thursday night, we got a call that a girl was found burnt in Kolshewadi area. We immediately went to the spot where on the terrace of the four-storeyed building, we found Nerkar fully burnt and immediately took her to the government hospital in Kalyan where she was declared dead on arrival.

Her mother and siblings were in shock. After speaking to close relatives and neighbours, we found that she was a very bright student but after her father took ill and passed away last year, she could not focus on her studies. Also, of late, she used to get very stressed over issues related to her studies, he said.
The board members will be traveling to the White House today to attend Michelle's School Counselor of the Year Ceremony.

Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for 'Better Make Room' campaign's Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences. (Photo: Twitter)

Washington: US First Lady Michelle Obama has selected 16-year-old Indian-American Swetha Prabakaran to serve in the inaugural Student Advisory Board of an education campaign which seeks to provide educational opportunities for teenagers in America.

Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for 'Better Make Room' campaign's Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences.

The board members will be traveling to the White House today to attend Michelle's School Counselor of the Year Ceremony.

Born in Indianapolis, she is among seventeen students selected by the White House to serve on 'Better Make Room' Student Advisory Board. The inaugural Board has 12 high school students and five college students.

Swetha, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, is the founder and CEO of Everybody Code Now!, a non-profit body working to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.

She is the only Indian-American in the list. Two-thirds of the Board members are, or will be, the first in their families to attain a postsecondary degree.

"As proven leaders, organisers, changemakers, and innovators, these students will help the country achieve President (Barack) Obama's North Star goal, that our nation will once again lead the world in college completion rates," Better Make Room said in a statement.

Founded by Michelle, the board will work to create a college-going, college-persisting and college-graduating culture at their schools while connecting fellow students for any information and resources they need.

"I am deeply honoured to be able to serve on this board. Creating a college-going and college-graduating culture among youth is something we have worked to encourage through Everybody Code Now! And I am extremely excited to share this passion with even more students.

"I look forward to working with The First Lady's Reach Higher Initiative and my fellow Better Make Room Student Advisory members to encourage more students to pursue higher education," Swetha said.

Also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, Swetha was honoured as a 2015 White House Champion of Change. She was also named to the International Literacy Association's 2016 '30 Under 30'.
Slovak financial analyst Rastislav Krul launched the campaign from his hometown Rovinka

The Slovakian couple get up and about any time they see people littering the the area they move through. (Photo: AFP)

Rovinka (Slovakia): Slovak financial analyst Rastislav Krul and his wife once waited out an hour-long traffic jam by picking up several bags worth of rubbish around a rest area off the motorway.

"No one joined in. People just watched us from their cars," recalls the 30-year-old, who has launched an anti-litter campaign from his western village of Rovinka."For us time flew by, for them it went slowly," he adds, picking up yet another plastic bottle on a weekend stroll around a lake.

Their idea is simple: anyone who picks up at least one item of trash a day qualifies as a Wastebuster. Since last year, they have been spreading their philosophy online.Their Facebook page now has thousands of followers, who post stories and photos of cleaning up the streets and countryside. Most of the comments are positive.

Rastislav says setting an example is like a long-distance run. No instant results but he is optimistic about change down the line."When people see us picking up trash, they never join in. But I think it does make them start to reflect on what we're doing," he says."Maybe it'll stop them from tossing their next beer can or bubble gum wrapper."

In the same vein, the 1 Piece of Rubbish campaign, launched by British expatriate Eddie Platt in the southern French city of Marseille has won cyber fans around the world from Buenos Aires to New York.Participants post selfies on a social network each time they pick up a piece of litter and put it in the rubbish bin.

Boss on board

Their crusade began two years ago, when Rastislav was living in the capital Bratislava and overheard his neighbours complain about litter on the block."I realised that if fewer people complained and instead each picked up one piece of garbage off the ground and binned it, our city would not be as polluted," he tells AFP.

He, himself, began doing so and has been picking up litter every day since. He also encouraged his wife, Veronika, 30, to join in."Before I met Rasto, I thought garbage on the ground didn't concern me. He's shown me that it doesn't take any extraordinary effort to pick up trash," she says.

"Now it's become a part of me," she adds, pointing to the plastic bottles, beer cans, empty cigarette cartons and sweet wrappers poking out of the grass.She says they do not stop at one piece of trash a day."When we go for a walk, bike ride or hike, we usually take some gloves and bags with us. Then if we see something we can just stop, pick it up and walk on."Rastislav has even managed to win over his boss: "When he's out with his kids, they sometimes pick up trash."

Anywhere, anytime

Slovakians rank among the least worst offenders for piling up rubbish in the European Union, according to Eurostat figures, which showed each of the country's 5.4 million inhabitants produced about 321 kilos of household rubbish in 2014.

How much of it ends up thrown out on to the streets is hard to say, but the couple feel they still have plenty to do and say the Wastebusters project is a good option for those who hate organised cleaning.

"They don't have to plan anything or specifically go somewhere to pick up trash," he says."You can do it on your way home, on the way to the cinema or while waiting for the bus."One person's a litterer, another's a cleaner. You drop litter, I pick it up."Laws and fines don't solve anything. It's people's mentalities that should change."

Last month, the Slovak Wastebusters launched a website to further spread the word. They also plan to provide tips and tricks on how to reduce waste."I took the first step by no longer buying bottled water for work. Instead, I brought a glass water bottle that I fill up and use," says Rastislav.Their main piece of advice, however, is one that may sound like a no-brainer but makes a world of difference: all it takes is one piece of garbage a day.
2016 was just a baby step in trying to anchor the discourse 90 degrees to the right.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, thus spake George Santayana philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist. As we gaze into the crystal ball, read the tea leaves, shuffle the tarot cards, dust the ancient astrological charts trying to find the polestar of 2017, perhaps the best template would be to look back at 2016  given that Indias two fundamental challenges remain Pakistani terror and the perilous state of the Indian economy. Both are symbiotically intertwined.

The previous year started badly with an attack on an Air Force base in Pathankot, coming as it did one week after the Prime Minister of India made an unscheduled stopover in Lahore to wish Nawaz Sharif on his birthday. The deep state in Pakistan did not want to be on the same page as the civilian government.

As someone who was extremely critical of the Prime Ministers Kabul-Lahore-New Delhi itinerary for a variety of reasons it must be said in retrospect that Narendra Modi made an audacious and a bold move, perhaps with the right intent but one that was destined to fail.

Unlike President Ashraf Ghani who tried to stoop to conquer by going to the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi to call on Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif in November 2014, no Indian PM can ever dream of calling on an Army Chief of any nation, much less Pakistan, even if the Pakistani civilian government would facilitate and encourage such an interaction. It could just be another matter if the Pakistani Army Chief came calling on the Indian PM either in Islamabad or New Delhi.

That anyway seems to be a surreal fantasy given that Gen. Pervez Musharraf refused to receive Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when he travelled to Lahore in March 1998 and, if reports are to be believed, the Pakistan military even refused to accord a guard of honour to Mr Modi when he landed in Lahore on Christmas day in 2015.

Therein lies the conundrum till the GHQ is not on board there can never be peace in the region. The relationship with Pakistan, therefore, would continue to be in a free-fall for the foreseeable future, at least through the next year.

Nine months later another attack by uniform-less state actors from Pakistan at an Army camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir invited retaliation from the Indian side in the form of surgical strikes. Stripped of diplomatic gibberish, what it meant was that the Narendra Modi government had effected a paradigm shift in response to cross-border terror.

This was not the first time border action teams had gone across and annihilated Pakistani border posts or ostensible terrorist launchpads but what was a first was the public ownership of such actions. This cross-border publicly owned-up action by the BJP-NDA government left a number of questions unanswered. If this was intended to bring about a behavioural change in the Pakistani establishment, clearly that does not seem to have happened. Though there have not been other attacks as lethal as the one in Uri in the past four months, there has been no let-up in the efforts by the proxies of Pakistan.

From a strategic perspective, has the government now taken a decision that a conventional tactical response would be the sine qua non to any major terrorist outrage emanating from Pakistan? If that is the case then we may be looking at an escalatory spiral in 2017 for the Pakistani deep state is sure to test out this new threshold. An armed conflict with Pakistan, the nature and intensity of which may be hard to predict, in 2017 should not be treated as strictly off the table. It is thus clear that Indias albatross around the neck and its Achilles heal are both hyper-engaged.

Lets turn to the domestic front, and Mr Modis demonetisation move on November 8, 2016. How the three objectives put forth  unearthing black money, exorcising counterfeit currency and circumscribing terrorist financing  can be achieved by a currency swap defies imagination.

The fact that Mr Modi was able to carry off the greatest pain that has been caused to every single individual since the Partition of India should be a cause for reflection for the Opposition. Why did the people of India not rise up like the populace of Venezuela, specially when the trench between the illusion that the Prime Minister has been trying to create and the reality is so wide?

There are two apposite storylines that have run through human civilisation since times immemorial  the inclusive chronicle, which anchors the liberal, democratic construct, and the stentorian patriarch, who believes in the dictum spare the rod and spoil the child. Mr Modi has been pushing the latter narrative for the past 30-odd months  the strict father who administers bitter medicine to his children and coerces them to believe it is for their own good.

After 10 years of a soft-touch UPA rule, where the government had a very benign presence and everybody had a virtual free run in terms of experimenting with innovative forms of creativity, grotesque varieties of criticism and unsubstantiated forms of calumny, it almost seems as if the nation is thrusting for the whiplashes that Mr Modi is administering.

Extrapolated over the year ahead it means that Mr Modi would be emboldened to take more rash and whimsical decisions, to say the least. As the pressure on the economy grows as a consequence of the implications of demonetisation playing out, one can surely expect more strikes of the Tughlaqi variety on bank lockers and even legitimately acquired property.

The failure of the political Opposition to organise any street protests of any significance, let alone the television spectacles that were witnessed in 2011, would ensure that the totalitarian, despotic and populist attempt to morph from a corporate clone to a babbling socialist tilting at the windmills a rib-tickling version of Che Guvera would only exacerbate. 2016 was just a baby step in trying to anchor the discourse 90 degrees to the right. This year will see this come to fruition with the flower of divisiveness in full bloom. If 2016 was depressing, 2017 could be schizophrenic.
Regardless of which of the two statements represents Trumps actual intentions, the prognosis in general is not a good one.

Karachi: A few weeks before 2016 took its leave, David Hale, the US ambassador to Pakistan, announced that the United States government, via the United States Agency for International Development, would be investing $7.3 billion toward increasing the number of female teachers in Pakistan. The announcement came as part of the 16 days of activism initiative by USAIDs Gender Equity Programme, which the Aurat Foundation is implementing. Around the same time, USAID also signed an agreement with Wapda to provide $81 million for the construction of the Kurram-Tangi Dam that will help generate 18MW of activity for the Waziristan region.

As the numbers show (and these are not cumulative figures; USAIDs total investment in Pakistan is much larger) USAID invests many millions of dollars in Pakistan, funding a variety of projects and fuelling a good portion of Pakistans NGO sector. In about few days, when President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the future and continuity of these expenditures is in peril. According to an article published in Foreign Policy, officials at USAID had not (until the end of November) been contacted by the new administration. The situation is unexpected; the same official noted that incoming US Presidents generally have detailed plans and policy briefs regarding how they want US aid commitments to be disbursed. This means there is little clarity regarding the $34 billion that the US Congress has approved as expenditures for USAID in the upcoming fiscal year.

The uncertainty regarding USAIDs future (and consequently the future of its activities in Pakistan) is not limited to delays in communication between the President-elect and the agency. According to foreign policy experts, Trumps America First doctrine may spell far more drastic changes in US investments in development programmes in the rest of the world. In June 2015, Trump proclaimed that the US should cut off aid to all the countries that hate us and use the money to build its own infrastructure. In true Trump style, he backtracked on the statement in April 2016, when he said that the US should continue giving aid to countries like Pakistan because we dont want to see total instability.

Regardless of which of the two statements represents Trumps actual intentions, the prognosis in general is not a good one. Alex Thier, a development expert writing for DevEx, a development focused website, noted that scrapping USAID and having it absorbed into the state department has been a recurrent proposal of conservatives in the US. One of the champions of this position was Newt Gingrich, who until a few weeks ago was a frontrunner as Trumps pick for secretary of state. Even as that points to a less stringent view on foreign aid expenditures, it is unlikely that the large budgets for programmes such as gender equity, capacity building for democracy, etc. will keep the same form that they have over the past eight years. Experts note that the positions of vice-president-elect Mike Pence on womens reproductive rights also mean that funding for family planning programmes around the world is likely to dry up.

The conservatives who are likely to have important roles in the Trump administration will probably recognise that development aid is a means to court and insure the support of other nations and maintain US influence. At the same time, it is possible that they will focus less on ideals and more on whether the countries whose coffers are being filled are delivering what the US demands of them. Focus is likely to be on getting the best deal for the US, with little interest in the constraints facing the recipient countries.

As a recipient of USAID funds, Pakistan would be wise to stay warned and ready for the coming future. As money for women focused and gender equity programmes dries up, there is a grave risk for Pakistans NGO sector. Womens organisations that rely significantly on USAID funds to implement programmes should immediately look through their budgets and focus on diversifying their funding base via local donors. Even more importantly, they should make an effort to use the money they have received to build up their cash reserves in the event there is no more money coming in the future.

By arrangement with Dawn
US says North Koreas nuclear, missile tests show qualitative improvement.

Washington: The United States said on Thursday North Korea had demonstrated a qualitative improvement in nuclear and missile capabilities after an unprecedented level of tests last year, showing the need to sustain pressure on Pyongyang to bring it back to disarmament negotiations.

US deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken said after a meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts that North Korea had conducted 24 missile tests in the past year, as well as two nuclear tests, and learned from each one.

Even a so-called failure is progress because ... they apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test. And in our assessment, we have a qualitative improvement in their capabilities in the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity, he said.

With every passing day, the threat does get more acute, Mr Blinken said, and referred to comments by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday that his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of a kind that could someday hit the US.

Mr Blinken said it was vital for the US, Japan, South Korea and other countries to boost cooperation to defend against the threat.

At the same time, its absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained, comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programmes, to come back to the negotiating table, and to engage in good faith on denuclearisation, Mr Blinken said, referring to international sanctions.
Mr Duterte has thrown the future of Philippines-US relations into question with outbursts against the US.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (fourth left) gestures with Russian ambassador to Philippines Igor Khovaev (third left) and Russias Rear Admiral Eduard Mikhailov (fifth left) on Admiral Tributs in Manila. (Photo: AFP)

Manila: President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday that he hoped Moscow, a rival of the Philippines traditional ally the United States, would become his countrys ally and protector as he toured one of the two Russian warships on a four-day visit to Manila.

Mr Dutertes remarks came a day after Russias ambassador said his country was ready to supply the Philippines with sophisticated weapons and aimed to become its close friend.

We welcome our Russian friends. Anytime you want to dock here for anything, for play, for replenish supplies or maybe our ally to protect us, said Mr Duterte, shaking the hands of Rear Admiral Eduard Mikhailov, head of the Flotilla of the Russian Navy Pacific Fleet.

Mr Duterte has thrown the future of Philippines-US relations into question with outbursts against the US and some scaling back of military ties, while taking steps to improve relations with China and Russia.

He is due to go to Moscow in April. The visit by the Russian warships was the first official navy-to-navy contact between the two countries.

Last month, Duterte sent his foreign and defense ministers to Moscow to discuss arms deals.
Ahmed says another five children aged 5 to 8 years and one rickshaw driver were critically injured.

Police officer Javed Ahmed says the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks. (Representational Image)

Multan, Pakistan: Police say a train has crushed two motorized rickshaws on an ungated crossing, killing seven schoolchildren in central Pakistan.

Police officer Javed Ahmed says the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks early Friday morning near the town of Lodhran. The train was heading to Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.

Ahmed says another five children aged 5 to 8 years and one rickshaw driver were critically injured.
BISMARCK, N.D.  The likelihood of spring flooding in the area of the Dakota Access protest camps is creating a new urgency to get pipeline protesters to go home.

State officials would like protesters to leave the camps by the end of January so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can assess damage and perform cleanup ahead of potential flooding of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann of the North Dakota National Guard, said Thursday, Jan. 5.

The protest camps are in a low-lying area that has seen major flooding in recent years, most often occurring in mid-March, said Allen Schlag, hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Bismarck.

With the significant amount of snowfall the area has received so far this winter, the potential for flooding along the lower Cannonball River would be high if the snow melts quickly, Schlag said.

Gov. Doug Burgum highlighted concerns about abandoned cars, illegal structures and the human waste from months of occupation at the camps during his state of the state address Tuesday.

Anything less than a complete restoration of the area prior to the early March flood will endanger the lives of the protesters and first responders, Burgum said during his speech. It will also create an environmental threat to waters of the Missouri.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council met with camp leaders Thursday to emphasize the risk of flooding in the area and the need to clean up the camp before the area is inundated with floodwaters.

This whole thing is about protecting the water, Chairman Dave Archambault said during the informal meeting with camp leaders, which was streamed online.

State, tribal and federal officials are working together to come up with a plan to get people to leave the area and do any necessary cleanup, Dohrmann said.

Right now its got nothing to do with the pipeline, Dohrmann said. Its people in harms way and if we dont get this cleaned up and there is a flood, were going to have a lot of environmental waste potentially going into the river.

The main camp, known as Oceti Sakowin, is on land managed by the Corps, but the agency closed it to the public on Dec. 5. Archambault has called on people to leave the camp out of concern for the severe winter weather.

State officials would like to see federal law enforcement assist with closing the camp and the Corps take the lead on cleaning up the land, Dohrmann said.

The Corps did not respond to a media inquiry Thursday.

LaDonna Allard, founder of the Sacred Stone Camp, which is on private property, said she and other camp leaders are already working on a plan to clean up the area, including the main camp.

Were doing our best. We will leave the ground the way it was, Allard said.

Allard said comments by state officials about abandoned vehicles and other waste at the camps are way exaggerated.

Allard estimated the population of the camps to be about 1,000 people. Dohrmann said his rough estimate is 500 to 600 people are still there based on the number of vehicles, though he added some may stay elsewhere and travel to camp during the day.
Supporters of those who want to see fewer overseas workers granted visas in Australia often argue that they are taking jobs away from Australians but new research suggests this is not a major issue.Australians are more concerned about declining demand for their skills than any effect of immigration on job vacancies, a new survey has found. Of those looking for work some 31% said they are worried that their skill and experience are out of date and only 12% were concerned about the impact of immigration.The research from jobs site Indeed also found that those aged 16 to 54 are most concerned about their skill base while those aged 45 to 54 are more worried about the impact of immigration.However, it is likely that some change to the 457 visa programme is likely as it continues to be a major point of discussion in 2017.The Productivity Commission, for example, has recommended a number of changes to the skilled migration programme, including that the skilled occupation list should be used as the sole basis for determining skill requirement from overseas.It also recommends undertaking a small pilot scheme that tests the merit of supplementing the skilled occupations list with a more granular treatment of some occupations that cannot be easily allocated between the different skill levels and the inclusion of particular, well defined skill sets that are not occupationally specific.In its report the commission also looked at permanent migration and recommended that the current age limit of 50 years for permanent migration under the skill stream should be reduced and there should be greater weight in the points based system for younger immigrants.But having said that, the commission wants the Australian Government to maintain the existing capacity to provide exemptions to the age rule for particularly skilled applicants.It suggests that there should be a common points system for the entire permanent skill visa stream, but in doing so should add points to a visa application by a primary applicant who has been nominated by an employer. Currently, the selection criteria is different for skilled migrant intake and employer sponsored applicants.According to the commission, almost half of visas issued under the skilled migration stream are for secondary applicants. It says there's significant scope to use those applicants to raise the overall calibre of the intake.The Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) has acknowledged that it is looking at changes, but said this is part of an ongoing appraisal that takes place every year. However, it is looking at the potential for change to temporary and provisional visas.
Hi there gang



When getting married on a Prospective Marriage visa, is it necessary to have a ceremony with friends + family or is it possible just to do it down at the Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages? Or will this be looked down upon by the migration agent?



Thank you!
I am a pharmacist and applied for Skilled(VB885) Visa on 31 Oct 2012 together I added in my ex-boyfriend in the application as my dependent spouse. As we were in a relationship for 4 years, we were both granted with Permanent resident on 18 Jan 2013. However things dint work out we broke up in August 2013. On October 2013 I started a new relationship with Mr L. Mr L is from Hong Kong. May 2014 I went to HK to pursue my master degree and I started living with Mr L in Hong Kong. After being together for 3 years plus, we got married on 11 Nov 2016. We shared a very genuine and happy relationship, now we are hoping to come back to Australia for good together. My husband is planning to enter Australia with ETA tourist visa in April 2017 and apply partner visa onshore. Here are my questions.



1. I understand that there is a 5 years restriction for sponsoring second partner. Now that it is close to 5 years and we share a more than 3 years relationship, living together for 2 years and am married. Do you think we can proceed to apply partner visa?



2. I was being told that because I broke up with my Ex boyfriend after our PR was granted, hence I do not need to inform immigration regarding the break up. Is that true?



Please help me as I am very worried at the moment.
AMG

#AMG #Hypercar #Preview @GTspirit A photo posted by Mr Des (@mrdes) on Jan 5, 2017 at 9:46am PST

Exclusive new render of the 2 million euro #AMG hypercar live from CES!! Photo by @MrDes #GTspirit #MercedesAMG #Instacars #CES A photo posted by GTspirit.com Cars & Luxury (@gtspirit) on Jan 5, 2017 at 9:04am PST

Mercedes-Benz has teased its upcoming hypercar with this image at #CES2017 pic.twitter.com/S5pTw6rQiI  Greg Kable (@GregKable) January 5, 2017

Confirmed by Mercedes-a couple of times already, what we currently refer to as R50 was teased for the first time ever by a sketch at the 2016 Paris Motor Show. At CES 2017, the German company released a second teaser. Coming courtesy of Mr. Des of GTspirit, the image features the rear end of the vehicle and a message: creating benchmark driving pleasure.Tobias Moers, who is the big kahuna over at Mercedes-AMG, said the same thing a little while back. Thomas Weber, a man who fills the role of member of the board of management of Daimler AG for group research and Mercedes-Benz cars development, reiterated the idea at the 2016 Paris Motor Show Its rather clear, then, that Mercedes-AMG means business with the R50 or whatever it will be called when the real deal will debut in September 2017 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Created as a nod to 50 years of AMG , production will be limited to 250 units, maybe even 300 if demand calls for more. GTspirit reports that Mercedes-AMG will price the all-new model from just under 2 million euro excluding taxes or approximately 2.4 million euro after taxes. Im told thats a helluva lot of cash, but then again, the R50 is expected to deliver mind-boggling performance. The focus point of the hypercar is its engine: 1.6 liters, V6, turbo, based on the F1 racecar's Hybrid Power Unit.Aerodynamics will also play a huge role in how the R50 will drive. Just like in Formula 1, the more downforce the vehicle can generate at high speed, the more aggressive the driver can carve corners. Speaking of which, Aston Martin and Red Bull Racings AM-RB 001 also plays ball in terms of aero.
PHEV

Our friends over at Motor1 sat down and had a chat with Don Swearingen, Mitsubishi Motors North Americas executive vice president and chief operating officer. Don confirmed Mitsubishis plan to put the Lancer out of its misery, along with the nameplate that the Japanese brand introduced in 1973. When asked about a replacement for the Lancer, Swearingen suggested that no direct successor is in sight for the compact sedan.The decision to kill off the Lancer forever is said to have been made long before Nissan acquired Mitsubishi Motors in the wake of the fuel economy scandal that brought the company to its knees. Mitsubishi higher-ups let it slip, time and time again, that the companys exclusive focus nowadays is on sport and compact utility vehicles, which is why the rumor mill suggests that the Mitsubishi Lancer will be replaced by an all-new compact crossover.Little is known and little can be speculated about this potential turn of events, but chances are the future model could borrow styling cues from the XR-and XR-PHEV II concept vehicles. Theres also talk regarding the future of the Evolution name. A very likely outcome is that Mitsubishi will use the moniker for go-faster utility vehicles fitted with plug-in hybrid technology.Whatever the future holds for the void left by the Lancer, one thing is certain. The Mirage G4 sedan wont die too soon. In fact, Swearingen told Motor1 that Mitsubishis customers love the product, which is a bit meh frankly. I once drove the EU-spec hatchback, known as the Space Star in certain markets, and it was rubbish. Not as bad as the Suzuki Alto, but bad nevertheless.
Off the top of my head, the most recent example is SEAT. In October 2016, the Spanish outfit and Amazon decided to sell the Mii by Mango Limited Edition through Amazons French website. First deliveries were made in December. The British arm of smart, meanwhile, will sell you the fortwo or forfour via a dedicated website, not through an e-commerce behemoth.The process of ordering a smart on the Internet is simple: look for the car that interests you the most, review finance options, select the delivery option, complete the credit application for finance, pay a 250 reservation fee , and thats about it.Next up, smart will assess the application, then you have to review, sign, return, and pay the deposit online, after which a retailer will contact you to make arrangements. Oh, and another thing: the customer can choose to have his smart delivered at home. That's real neat, if I may add.Almost anything can be bought online now and were delighted to offer this option to our customers when purchasing their smart, said Krishan Bodhani, the head of the smart brand in the UK . Its really easy to do and is extremely time-efficient, enabling a customer to make a reservation, fill in a credit application and sign a contract at a time and place that works for them.Of the three finance plans available for the 2017 smart fortwo coupe prime on smartcarsonline , the one with the least total amount payable will set you back 13,927.18. On that note, a similarly configured fortwo with the steering wheel on the wrong side costs 12,065 if bought IRL, money down.
In the days following the November election, some folks buried their heads, argued with others, or swore off social media and avoided communicating with the wider world.

But two Montana women dialed into their creativity to make sense of the sweeping political and social changes coming in 2017.

Visual artist and former Billings teacher Rachel Long organized the Community Art Project to express the hopes and fears of Montanans in 2017.

Freelance theater director and educator Sarah Butts chose to interview people from all viewpoints. Butts conducted 50 interviews that she is turning into a nontraditional play.

There will be some monologues mixed in with some vignettes. Its an abstract, movement-based piece. The trap that I wanted to avoid was with a piece that is just words, Butts said.

I have confidence that these two women will find common threads that we share as human beings, and will work to bridge the mighty divides that are splitting our country and world.

Healing through art

As Butts told me, "In times of uncertainty and change, we lean on artists to help us think things through."

For generations, artists, playwrights, and authors have used their craft to change viewpoints.

Long, a registered art therapist, believes that healing comes through expressing our innermost feelings. Butts, who recently earned her MFA in directing, is using her theater chops to encourage people to listen to one another.

In the busy weeks before Christmas, Long recruited others, both artists and non-artists, to use recycled cardboard to express their fears and hopes, in pictures, collages and words.

Dozens of images emerged, as varied as the people who made them.

The pieces will hang in a mobile in the shape of a house that you can walk underneath. The fears will be turned inward inside the house and the hopes can be viewed from the outside. Long plans to display in during the Feb. 3 ArtWalk in Billings.

Two more sessions to make art for the project will be held upstairs at Good Earth Market from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 6, and Thursday, Jan. 12. All are welcome to "make art for social change," Long said.

One participant, Linda Lemire, said social issues she cares about are losing ground right now. She hopes the artwork strikes a nerve in viewers, encouraging them to learn about the issues.

Long added, Its a way to get unstuck. It gives us a chance for brainstorming, being creative, to solve problems.

Butts hopes to produce her untitled play in Billings later this year. In the meantime, a college friend now living in Reno, N.M., and working with the Potentialist Workshop group has offered to produce it in March.

Yelling the same thing

Butts discovered a common thread when she spoke with supporters of President-elect Donald Trump and people who voted for Hillary Clinton.

Were all yelling the same thing. Its sort of a difference in what you believe. We all want to achieve a comfortable life, find a good job, access to healthcare, and be able to afford to go to school. Its quality of life.

Butts said she became more interested in the similarities between people than their differences. She envisions her play helping others to seek common ground.

The morning after the election, there was this voice inside me saying, You have to talk to people and you have to use what you do. You have to use theater to find meaning and understanding of the world. Thats the way I chose to do it, Butts said.

Butts used her training in theater to examine the interviews without judgement. The interviews were conducted mostly with Billings folks, but included people from around the country.

If youre playing a villain, you cant view him as a villain. You have to empathize, listen, and do that from a genuine place.

That seems like a good first step: Stop judging and start finding that common ground.
Mat Watson is so funny and lighthearted that a man just asked to have his baby in the comments. In the six months he and the team spent with the car, they've drag raced it against everything and also done a bit of damage in the parking lot.Some of the nigglings flaws are obvious, as the Type R was never known for its ride comfort. But did you know that apparently, the car doesn't come as standard with a parcel shelf and that the mechanism which holds the rear seat rests up has been removed for weight saving? And like all hot hatchbacks with this much power, the tires wear out quickly, and the wheels get curbed.The horn is girly, and the infotainment system is unfathomable, but that's a problem with all Hondas. And when it's damp, the Type R "squirms around like a big slippery eel covered in love lube." We've heard that in the Auto Trader bath review... but not in those exact words.On the plus side, the Civic has nicer bucket seats than the Ford Focus RS, plus they come standard, unlike in some German rivals. It's also cheap, reliable and super-fast on the track.Mat Watson loves it so much that he put a condom on the gear shifter. No, really! We don't even want to know what happened after that. On second thought, that could be why the guy asked to have Mat's baby... because he and the Civic now have one. Wives have a tendency to infuriate, and some say gearheads are married to their car.
Pitcher

LeasePlan USA President and CEO Mike Pitcher has announced that he is retiring from the fleet management company (FMC).

In a short statement Pitcher made on his LinkedIn account about his retirement, he said: This has been an amazing ride, and one that I will never forget. To the clients, business partners, and members of the fleet industry, thank you for the most amazing 14 years of my professional care.

Pitcher had led LeasePlan USA since 2008. He joined the Atlanta-headquartered FMC in 2003 as senior vice president of corporate fleet sales. In that role he was responsible for fleet sales, sales administration, client relations, and services. He was promoted to executive vice president in 2005 responsible for the corporate fleet sales and operations departments. He was named president and CEO in 2008, taking the reins of the company from David Dahm who segued into the COO position.

Prior to joining LeasePlan USA, Pitcher was with Dell Financial Services (DFS) and Pitney Bowes. At DFS, Pitcher served as vice president of U.S. Commercial Sales, where he was responsible for more than $1 billion of annual lease originations. Prior to DFS, he spent 18 years with Pitney Bowes, holding various management positions, including two years as president and managing director of Pitney Bowes Australia, and vice president of the Asia-Pacific region.

Among Pitchers many accomplishments leading LeasePlan USA, was successfully navigating the Great Recessions credit crunch, the successful implementation of a company-wide cell-phone ban, which he spoke about extensively to industry organizations, and the recognition by the Atlanta Journal Constitution of LeasePlan USA as a top workplace for its Atlanta and Chicago locations every year since 2010.

In 2016, Pitcher distilled his successful leadership principles into a book, Seven eLements of Leadership, which he identified as Laugh, Learn, Listen, Language, Lagniappe, Legacy, and Love. He wrote that these seven elements are essential for success.

After announcing his retirement, Pitcher wrote Automotive Fleet Editor Mike Antich in an e-mail that I have grown to love an industry that I did not even know existed.

LeasePlan USA expects to announce Pitchers successor in the coming days.
For those who packs a lot of files in different USB for work or for personal use, there is good news! Kingston unveiled a 2-TB USB Flash drive in 2017 International CES.

Kingston Digital Inc, the largest manufacturer of USB and other memory storage products, announced that they have created a 2TB USB flash drive. The Ultimate Generation Terabyte (GT) line from Kingston will now have the 2-TB USB as part of their product. The 2TB flash drive can store up to 2TB size of files, videos, and music. It can also store 4K videos with the span of 70 hours in it.

The 2TB GT USB will sport USB 3.1 and 3.0 performance, making it capable of transferring files at the speed of 5gbps. The flash drive is made out of zinc alloy metal casing, making it resistant to shock. Because it is in a form of flash drive, it gives portability to its user, making it easier for people to carry it around on the go.

According to Jean Wong, Flash business manager, "we push the limits of what's possible." Kingston aims to provide their users to have more data storage in a more compact form. Which is true because it's a lot easier to carry around a flash drive rather than an external hard drive for file storage. There's also the option of cloud storage but there are some who still prefers to use USB for storage or to backup their data.

Back in 2013, Kingston released a 1TB USB flash drive. Coined with the name DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0, it is the first USB flash drive in the world to sport such memory storage that is on par with most hard drives. It helped users have an increase in memory storage in a portable form. It runs on a 160Mbps transferring speed. However, its price makes it hard for average users to get their hands on it. Its price is around $2,500, enough for a user to buy a bunch of USB drives that could equate to a 1TB storage. Since the 1TB USB has that kind of price range, there's a chance that the 2TB will have a double of it.

The DataTraveler Ultimate GT will be available with 1TB and 2TB flash drives. Kingston will be releasing the 2TB flash drive in February and will sport a five-year warranty from Kingston. A comparison chart of memory storage can be found here.
Faith in Christianity remains vital for the survival and prosperity of the Armenian people, Catholicos Garegin (Karekin) II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, insisted on Friday as he celebrated a Christmas mass at the Echmiadzin cathedral.

In his homily read out during the service, Garegin said Armenians must stick to what has been their dominant religion since the beginning of the 4th century. He also deplored violent conflicts, terrorism, injustice and other sinful ways of evil persisting around the world.

The message of renewal in the Gospel and the apostolic exhortation have perpetually resonated with and sustained our people, Garegin told hundreds of worshipers -- among them Prime Minister Karen Karapetian and other senior government officials -- attending at the liturgy.

Life renewed by the Gospel for centuries has granted our people the fortitude of faith, strength of soul, and courage to be able to withstand tribulations, to endure hardships, and to create accomplishments worthy of written remembrance.

With this same spirit, we confront the illegal blockade of our homeland and military provocations that cost lives, he said in a clear reference to Armenias unresolved conflicts with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Let us be strengthened by the Lord, so that our hopes become a reality and our national goals are accomplished, added Garegin. May we  keep the faith in our souls bright and, like the wise men, make fidelity and devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ our lifes path and destination.

The Apostolic Church, to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong, has traditionally marked Christmas on January 6. Celebrations of the holiday start late on January 5 with Christmas Eve candlelight services held in churches in and outside Armenia. Christmas has been a public holiday in the South Caucasus country ever since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Through Christ, the world, roiling in a tempest of sin, was renewed and humanity was graced with the chance to become new again by heeding the message of establishing peace, love and goodwill in the world, Garegin declared during the mass broadcast live by Armenian television.

Sadly, however, the sinful ways of evil persist in opposition to God, he said. Wars, conflicts, and terrorism are unceasing; human rights are being violated, and genocides and cultural destruction have yet to receive their just condemnation. Greed and the craving to for riches lead to fraud and abuse causing human tragedies, polarization of society and social injustice.

Alongside kindness and honesty we witness hatred and treachery, and beside humility and dedication, we witness blind ambition and obsession for power.

Adherence to Christianity represents the hope of renewal for the world, Garegin went on. Christs redemptive work in the world is the model for envisioning ones own mission in the establishment of national and universal good and working together to create the paths of happiness, progress, and achievements, he said.

Garegin decried attempts to build a world without God in June 2016 during a mass held in Echmiadzin in the presence of the visiting Pope Francis. He said they are at the root of political, socioeconomic and even environmental problems facing humanity.

In a joint declaration issued at the time, Francis and Garegin similarly voiced concern at the declining role of religion and the crisis of the family in many Christian nations. In that regard, they reaffirmed their opposition to same-sex marriage.

The statement also praised the continuing and growing closeness between the Roman Catholic and Armenian churches which was underscored by Franciss three-day visit to Armenia.

Francis repeatedly paid tribute to Armenias Christian heritage during the landmark trip. For Armenia, faith in Christ has not been like a garment to be donned or doffed as circumstances or convenience dictate, but an essential part of its identity, the pontiff said at the Echmiadzin cathedral on June 24.
6 January 2017 14:21 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) has announced the results of its mine-detecting and neutralization operations for December 2016.

The Agency checked and cleansed an area of 2,352,225 square meters, discovered and defused 1,068 unexploded ordnance (UXOs), one anti-tank and 13 anti-personnel mines in the country in the past month.

ANAMAs operations involved 489 sappers, 130 people from administrative staff, six cars on mechanical demining and 34 service dogs.

During all years of activity, ANAMA cleared 393,832,826 square meters of the Azerbaijani territory discovering and defusing 754,010 pieces of unexploded ammunition.

In December, the clearance work was carried out in Absheron, Agdam, Agjabadi, Agstafa, Jabrayil, Fizuli, Gakh, Goygol, Tartar regions, in Baku and in Guzdek village of Azerbaijan.

ANAMA was established in 1998 for planning and coordination, management and monitoring of mine action related activities all over the country.

The UXO problem in the country can be divided into the areas of Azerbaijan that are still under the occupation of Armenian forces and those areas that have been liberated. The project is designed to create indigenous capacity to undertake survey, mapping and clearance in currently liberated areas and to prepare for dealing with the UXO problem in occupied areas after their liberation.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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6 January 2017 18:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Kent Harrington

With every new US president arriving in Washington, DC, come a handful of counselors and aides whose personal ties, built over years and forged in election campaigns, give them pride of place in the administration. From the Irish Brotherhood that brought John F. Kennedy to office to the Berlin Wall that guarded Richard Nixons door, close friends and confidantes have often outdone the administrations biggest names. But no American president has ever brought to the White House an inner circle dominated by his family  until Donald Trump.

Judging by Trumps business history and presidential campaign  which featured few, if any, intimates outside his family  his adult children will have a major hand in his administrations decisions, despite their lack of experience in international and domestic affairs. After hiring and firing personnel and shaping strategy during the election campaign, Trumps children have remained front and center in his transition team. His daughter, Ivanka, joined the president-elects tete-a-tete with Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His son, Donald, Jr., played a role in picking Congressman Ryan Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior in the new administration.

Now, Trump is taking his dynasty to the White House. Ivanka is set to take over the First Ladys office there. Her husband, the real-estate investor Jared Kushner, just might be suited, if only in the eyes of his father-in-law, to serve as a special envoy to broker peace in the Middle East. Yes, Donald, Jr. and his brother, Eric, will remain in New York to run the Trump Organization, which oversees their fathers diverse businesses; but Trumps claim that his sons will remain at arms length strains credulity.

All of this has spurred questions about the Trump childrens capacity to leverage their fathers presidency to benefit the family business, with many fixating on whether Trump is violating conflict-of-interest or anti-nepotism rules. But Trump regards such questions as essentially moot.

That is not surprising. Trumps management model has long been underpinned by a hereditary inner circle. His adult children have spent their lives being groomed and promoted, and have operated at the pinnacle of the Trump Organization for years. They now occupy three of the companys board seats, with Trump occupying a fourth. Given their standing in the company, and their relationship with their father, their influence in his administration should not be in doubt.

The remaining top-level positions are filled by long-time family retainers who, on average, have 17 years on the job. Several have spent three decades at Trumps elbow. Compared to public companies of comparable size, the Trump Organizations dynastic C-Suite and the longevity of its consiglieri are striking. The lesson for any administration appointee should be clear: only loyalty comes close to heredity in winning and holding an executive role.

The record of the modern US presidency sheds little light on whether Trumps family-driven leadership style will work. Yet Trump is unlikely to weigh the pros and cons of stacking his inner circle with family members, not least because of his own experience: ever since his father brought him into the family business, he has never worked anywhere else.

Moreover, Trump is far from the only corporate boss who prefers to keep leadership all in the family. A 2016 study by the Boston Consulting Group found that one-third of American companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more are family-owned. Of those, 40% are family-run.

There is also plenty of precedent for family-based leadership in government, though not in developed democracies. From Kazakhstan to Congo, blood binds together ruling elites who share the spoils, guard against usurpers, and ensure that their children succeed them in power.

While it may seem far-fetched to compare the Trumps to, say, the Kims of North Korea  the worlds longest-running family dictatorship  plenty of similarities are likely to emerge. Some already have.

The first rule of family dictatorships is that loyalty matters above all else. Like the histrionic pledges of support required from North Korean commissars and generals for their leader Kim Jong-un, the Trump White House is likely to demand unswerving fealty to the clan.

That message has already been received loud and clear by incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Both have repeatedly affirmed their admiration for Kushner and vowed that he will be deeply involved in decisions, despite his utter lack of experience.

Second, tasks beat titles. Like Kim, who has ignored the pecking order of the ruling Workers Party of Korea to give his sister and brother high-ranking positions, Trump is likely to entrust his offspring with key assignments. While nepotism laws will probably rule out official presidential appointments for Trumps children and their spouses, that wont matter much in practice; their de facto clout, as well as Trumps own priorities, will quickly become apparent. Indeed, their influence in advancing Trumps major goals could easily overwhelm that of cabinet-level appointees, who would be wise to accommodate them.

Third, there will be unexpected promotions and abrupt purges. In North Korea, all of this dictated from the top. In his reality television persona, Trumps enthusiastic firings and occasional Cinderella-like promotions of low-level employees provide an obvious parallel. Under Trump, as under Kim, sputtering or failed policies are likely to have personnel consequences, though only those outside the family will face them.

Two weeks before the election, one of the Trump campaigns top employees, Brad Parscale, suggested how a Trump White House would function. My loyalty is to the family, Parscale said. No one in Kims family could put it more succinctly.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Donald Trumps North Korean Family Values

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6 January 2017 15:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Turkmenistan plans to transport some 300,000 tons of carbamide (urea), which is in high demand in the global market, through Azerbaijan in 2017.

The decision came after the successful implementation of test transportation via the country in late 2016.

Azerbaijan Railways (ADY) reported that the first test transit of cargo (urea) from Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan to the Black Sea was implemented in December 2016. Within the transportation process, the cargo was delivered by vessels to Baku terminal and further to Georgia via railway.

Due to adverse weather conditions and traffic congestion, the freight was delivered not to the new port located in Alat settlement, but to the old Baku port

ADY actively participates in the implementation of strategically important international transport corridor projects, while the main objective is to attract transit cargo from Middle and East Asia to Europe and backward. Cooperation of the company with the Baku International Sea Trade Port is one of the constituent elements in the attraction of freight traffic to the country.

Azerbaijan's advantageous geographical position at the crossroads between East and West and developed transport infrastructure attracts various countries, which wish to transport their cargoes through the territory of the country. Growing interest in the transport infrastructures passing through Azerbaijan's territory is expected to make Azerbaijan a major transport hub in the region.

Azerbaijan plans to increase the volume of cargo transit through its territory bringing huge profits to the economy. In September 2016 Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan signed the Ashgabat Declaration to create a transport corridor from Beijing to London.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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6 January 2017 16:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan is in talks with Turkish and Ukrainian companies to set up joint pharmaceutical plants.



Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said that currently these companies prepare business plans and documents on the technical justification of their projects.

"Moreover, work is underway to attract European companies to Azerbaijan. Thus, the delegation of the ministry visited Germany and Switzerland, where it held talks with potential partners. These companies have expressed interest in cooperation with Azerbaijan for the production of medicines. Some companies have expressed interest in the creation of packaging enterprises for patented drugs, which will be produced in our country," he said in an interview to Azertac.

In addition to the construction of pharmaceutical factories, Mustafayev said that investors are interested in other medical areas such as production of disposable syringes.

The minister reminded that in November 2016 construction of the first joint plant has already been launched. The Russian private hi-tech pharmaceutical company R-Pharm, Azerbaijan Investment Company and Vita-A LLC (Azerbaijan) signed a deal on the creation of Hayat Pharm Joint Venture on November 2 in Baku.

"Engineering work is conducted by leading German and Italian companies, and the cost of the project is $74 million. The plant will manufacture drugs for the treatment of HIV infection, for treatment of nervous system diseases, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and respiratory systems, antibiotics, drugs for diabetes, as well as X-ray contrast agents, and apparatus for magnetic resonance examinations," he said.

In total, the company will release 89 kinds of medicines. The plant's capacity will be 22.5 million packages, or 500 million tablets and capsules.

The minister further added that in January, Azerbaijan also plans to lay the foundation of a joint pharmaceutical factory with Iran.

"Creation of an enterprise will take place in stages: the first stage stipulates manufacture of drugs in the form of tablets and capsules, the second - in the form of ampoules and vials, and the third - a more extended range of antibiotics. The cost of the first stage is $20.5 million. In its framework it is projected to manufacture 84 different types of painkillers, antibiotics, anti-allergic, gastrointestinal, anti-fungal and other medicines," Mustafayev noted.

Mustafayev went on saying that due to the regulation of drug prices in Azerbaijan, the state budget and population annually save more than $ 650 million.

He said if in 2014 the import of a medicine box was worth $3, then now the figure is $ 1.4.

"Regulation of the market of medicines began in mid-2015. In the preparation of price control methodology, Azerbaijan has studied the experience of nearly 20 countries. The applied mechanism allows determine the optimal price for medicines. Currently, prices for 10,166 different kinds of medicines have been approved, and starting September 1, 2016, the government allows sell drugs only at the approved prices," he explained.

Mustafayev noted that after the regulation of drug prices, the medicine costs decreased by 5-10 times in some cases.

"The import of drugs in 2016 increased by 20 percent compared to 2015. In 2016, some 80 percent of drugs were imported from Europe and other developed countries. The remainder of the imports came in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus," he said.

In late 2015, the government announced that Azerbaijan will create own enterprises that will manufacture medicines to cease dependence on imports.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 January 2017 17:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

In 2016 insurance companies of Azerbaijan, within the Green Card system issued 10,514 international insurance policies for vehicles.

Some 7,497 of these agreements were signed with owners of vehicles driving to Turkey and Iran, 2,569 to Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, and 448 to other countries included in the system of Green Card.

The Green Card is an international system of motor vehicle liability insurance which functions since 1951. The system was introduced in Azerbaijan in 2016.



The main objective of the Green Card System is settlement of claims of persons injured as a result of road accidents involving foreign registered vehicles, ensuring that victims of accidents involving foreign registered vehicles are not disadvantaged as well as facilitation of the movement of vehicles across international borders by the use of an internationally acceptable insurance document. The Green Card system currently comprises 48 countries including the whole of Europe, Russia, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia and Iran.

Azerbaijans Compulsory Insurance Bureau (ISB), established to protect interests of insured persons and third parties, who suffer damages and losses. As much as 16 companies are the members of the Bureau with 13 being eligible for the sale of compulsory insurance policy.

In 2016 insurance companies issued 140,848 policies on compulsory property insurance. Fees on insurance contracts amounted to 25.2 million manat ($13.8 million).

Compared to 2015, the number of contracts on the specified type of insurance increased by 30 percent, while the volume of fees by 1.5 percent.

Insurance of houses and apartments for the period had 80.78 percent of policies, administrative buildings - 0.3 percent, other real estate - 18.92 percent.



Compulsory insurance of immovable property applies to all types of buildings, houses and apartments belonging to individuals and legal entities. In this case the insured situation is considered the facts related to damage to this property as a result of fire, explosion, short circuit in the electric system, an accident in the sewer or water system, natural disasters, etc.

Tariff on this type of insurance is 0.2 percent of the insured sum. The maximum amount of insurance coverage for real estate in Baku is 25,000 manats ($13,000), in Ganja, Sumgayit and Nakhchivan - 20,000 ($11,000), in other regions - 15,000 manats ($8,000). The cost of insurance is respectively 50, 40 and 30 manat ($27, $22, and $16).

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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LEWISTOWN  Thomas Tom L. Killham, 67, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, at the Central Montana Medical Center due to lung cancer.

Tom was born in Lewistown on Feb. 26, 1949, to Taft and Leone (Kirkendahl) Killham. He graduated from Hobson High School in 1968. He married Elaine Nyback on Feb. 11, 1973, at St. James Episcopal Church in Lewistown.

At midnight on Dec. 31, 2014, Sheriff Killham retired from a 41-year, 4-month, and 17-day military and civilian law enforcement career.

Visitation will be from 4 to 6 p.m., Jan. 12, at Creel Funeral Home Chapel p.m. and one hour prior to the service at the high school. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m., Jan. 13, at Fergus High School Center for the Performing Arts. Interment will follow at Lewistown City Cemetery with military honors presented by the Montana Army Honor Guard and the Fergus American Legion Post #16. A reception will be held at the Trade Center after the graveside service.

Memorial donations can be made to the Veterans Memorial Park, c/o Fergus American Legion Post #16, 402 W. Main St., Lewistown, MT 59457, or Tough Enough To Wear Pink (TETWP), PO Box 488, Lewistown, MT 59457.

Arrangements are under the care of Creel Funeral Home. Toms family and friends can share memories and condolences at creelfuneralhome.com.
6 January 2017 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

An exhibition entitled "Seven Beauties" will mark the 820th anniversary of romantic poem by great Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi.

This personal exhibition of applied arts master Sona Maharramova will open at Baku Khatai Art Center on January 16, Azertac reported.

This unique exhibition that examines the famous romantic epic through the lens of applied art will delight all viewers. This exiting art event will feature works of art, reflecting clothes of the poem's main characters.

The romantic epic "Seven Beauties" tells the story of Bahram Gur, a young prince destined to become the ruler of the world, who draws inspiration and wisdom from his seven princesses.

The young warrior Bahram Gur enters a mysterious, locked room to discover the portraits of seven beautiful princesses, each from a different land. When he achieves great wealth and power, he remembers the maidens and summons each of them, commissioning the architect Shideh to build seven domed structures - one for each bride.



Shideh designs each of the domed structures, to be astrologically linked with a specific planet, color and day of the week. After the buildings were ready, the king sent for the princesses.



Bahram Gur then visits each bride on her day of the week, dressing with care in her signature colors. Each maiden tells the king a tale, an engaging story containing a moral lesson. Thus Bahram Gur progresses from Saturday to Friday, from black to white, from darkness to illumination.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 January 2017 13:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijani MP, member of the Management Board of the Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno-Karabakh Rovshan Rzayev called on Armenians, seeking and fighting for peace, to join the Baku Platform.

"If influential persons of both countries support the Platform, if the politicians and heads of other states also support it, the steps taken for restoring the lost relations between the two nations could bear fruit," he told azvision.az, while commenting on the importance of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace.

The Peace Platform was initiated by Baku to bring together representatives of civil society of the two countries for creating dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the sides to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

However, this initiative was negatively perceived by the Armenian government which started persecution of those Armenians who joined the Platform.

Rzayev is sure that this can contribute to peace talks aimed to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

I believe that if the opposite side can positively and properly evaluate these steps, we will begin our meetings. Moreover, the meetings can be held intensively and maybe held not only in Karabakh, but also in all countries of the world, the MP said.

He added that it will be possible to prevent the big problem in the South Caucasus by attracting people, who want to support the peace process. This is our only intention, Rzayev said.

The MP noted that many states and individuals have supported the Baku Peace Platform. "They say that we are on the right track, and note that they share our position, he said, mentioning that British expert Thomas de Waal also supported the initiative.

Rzayev believes that the rising support to the Platform may contribute to change in position of the opposite side [Armenia].

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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6 January 2017 17:58 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan has urged international organizations to stop Armenias inhumane activity, take the necessary measures for it to comply with the requirements of the Geneva Convention and return the body of the killed Azerbaijani serviceman, reads a statement issued by the State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing People on January 6.

The necessary work together with the relevant government agencies continues for returning the body of Azerbaijani Armed Forces soldier Chingiz Gurbanov, who was killed during the prevention of the Armenian sabotage on December 29, 2016.

A reconnaissance group of the Armenian Armed Forces tried to violate the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border on December 29 morning. The Armenian group found itself in the ambush of the Azerbaijani army while violating the borders. During the fighting, serviceman Chingiz Gurbanov went missing

The enemy was forced to retreat, suffering losses, according to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

Although a week has passed after these events, the corresponding Armenian structures prefer to remain silent on this matter, showing no reaction towards this humanitarian problem, Azerbaijans state commission noted.

This proves once again that Armenia, by acting based on public opinion inside the country, is trying to gain time in order to obtain political dividends, the statement reads.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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6 January 2017 10:09 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has congratulated the country`s Orthodox Christian community on Christmas.

The message of greetings reads:

Dear fellow countrymen!

I would like to heartily congratulate you, the Christian community of Azerbaijan, and extend my best wishes to all of you as you celebrate the sacred holiday of Christmas, commemoration of the blessed birth of Jesus Christ.

Christianity has a very ancient history in Azerbaijan. It is no coincidence that the first Christian temples in the Caucasus emerged in our country. Having co-existed here for centuries, monotheistic religions played a priceless historical role in forming peaceful, friendly, and brotherly relations between people. There has never been national or racial discrimination, ethnic or religious intolerance between nations and ethnic groups living in Azerbaijan.

The independent Republic of Azerbaijan today remains committed to the traditions of tolerance and multiculturalism. Regardless of their language, religion and ethnic background, all citizens of Azerbaijan enjoy human rights and freedoms, including freedom of conscience and religion, based on international principles. All ethnic minorities living in the country are provided with equal democratic conditions for preserving their religious and spiritual values, and national traditions, and for improving their language and culture.

It is with great satisfaction that I emphasize that as an inseparable part of the multi-confessional and multi-ethnic Azerbaijani society, the Christian community as always fulfills and will fulfill with dignity their civic duty for our country's prosperity and development.

Dear friends!

Once more I congratulate all of you on the occasion of Christmas, which symbolizes mercy and compassion, and pure and noble ideals. I wish each of you robust health and happiness, and your families abundance.

Happy holiday!

---

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6 January 2017 10:23 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order on January 5 providing funding for the construction of Qarasu-Abdulabad-Talish-Meyniman-Mugan road in Hajigabul region, Azertac reported.

Under the presidential order, 14 million manats were allocated from the 2017 state budget to Azeravtoyol for the completion of the construction of the highway.

The highway will connect 10 residential settlements and villages with the total population of 19,000 people.

---

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6 January 2017 12:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Last year, the annual major meteor showers were washed out by moonlight, but 2017 is looking to be a spectacular year for meteor showers.

Of the big three, the Quadrantids in January and Geminids in December are both visible in dark, moonless skies. Sadly, the Perseids in August will again be badly obscured by a waning gibbous Moon, but they are always worth watching.

The Quadrantids, which started on December 28, 2016, will continue until January 12, and it is possible to observe it from Azerbaijan.

Quadrantid meteors can be seen throughout the hours of darkness. The best viewing is after midnight, local time, as the radiant climbs high into the morning sky, said Khidir Mikayilov, the deputy director on Scientific Research at the Shamakhi Astrophysical Observatory of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS).

This process can be observed with the naked eye in the morning  at 3-5 a.m. The meteor shower is so fast that it is impossible to watch it through a telescope. The best way is to look up lying on back, Mikayilov told Trend.

He told Trend that the period of the maximum activity of this meteor shower was observed in the sky on the night of January 4.

The deputy director added that meteor showers pose no threat neither for the Earth, nor for the human health. Because meteors fully burn in the atmosphere and turn into dust. As for meteorites, they can present danger, and damage something when they reach Earth.

So far, about 3000 meteorites were found on Earth, the deputy director said.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 January 2017 15:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijani Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Alizde has met with Chairman of the country's Senate Mian Raza Rabbani to discuss the expansion of interparliamentary ties between the two countries, Azertac reported.

Alizade conveyed the greetings of Azerbaijans Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov to the Senate Chairman.

Highlighting the close relations between the two countries' parliaments, the ambassador stressed the significant role of parliaments in establishing friendly and brotherly ties between Azerbaijan and Pakistan.

Describing Pakistan as a friendly and fraternal country for Azerbaijan, Alizade praised the highly developing relations between the two countries. He underlined both countries' support to each other in all international issues.

Alizade thanked Raza Rabbani for the country's joining the OIC Contact Group on the Aggression of Armenia Against Azerbaijan.

The ambassador noted that the government and people of Azerbaijan lauded the adoption of resolutions supporting Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and demanding withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan by the Pakistani Parliament, which also recognized the Khojaly genocide.

Raza Rabbani asked the ambassador to extend his invitation to Ogtay Asadov to visit Pakistan.

He thanked the Azerbaijani government for being a member of the OIC Contact Group on Kashmir and for its stance towards the solution of the issue on the basis of the UN Security Council's resolutions.

He said that Pakistan will continue to support Azerbaijan on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, adding the Khojaly genocide will never be forgotten.

Underlining the establishment of Pakistan-Azerbaijan interparliamentary friendship group, Rabbani stressed that the ties between the two countries' parliaments will be further strengthened.

The speaker also recalled Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's successful visits to Azerbaijan, as well as other reciprocal official visits.

They also discussed the strengthening of ties between the friendship groups, and organization of reciprocal visits.

Pakistan became the second country after Turkey which recognized the independence of Azerbaijan in 1991. The diplomatic relations between two countries were established on June 9, 1992.

Islamabad backed Azerbaijan during and after the Nagorno-Karabakh War and it is the only country that does not recognize Armenia. Pakistan also adopted a resolution strongly condemning the genocide against the civilian population of Khojaly, which was committed by Armenian armed forces.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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6 January 2017 15:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The ad hoc working group, tasked to develop a convention on a legal status of the Caspian Sea, plans to hold its next meeting in late January, a diplomatic source told Trend on January 6.

The working group plans to continue discussions on the still uncoordinated issues regarding the draft convention, the source said.

The meeting is planned to be held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Preparation for the next session of foreign ministers of the Caspian littoral states will also be discussed during the meeting.

Issues regarding the draft convention on the Caspian Seas legal status have been mostly agreed upon, Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov earlier told reporters in Baku.

We plan to summarize all the work in order to finally agree on a draft convention on the Caspian Seas legal status for the heads of state to sign it, Khalafov said.

The Caspian littoral states  Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran  signed a Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.

Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.

Moreover, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it in November 2001, and February 2003, respectively.

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.

Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan hold to the principle of dividing into national sectors based on the median line principles since it is an international boundary lake, and leaving the sea surface for general use, i.e. they are for demarcation of mineral resources and the Caspian Sea shelf, but against dividing up its waters.

Iran seeks an equal division of the Caspian into 5 even sectors, mainly because most of offshore energy resources are located away from the Iranian coastline. Turkmenistan also demands division of the Sea into equal parts between the pre-Caspian countries so that each country must have 20 percent of the sea.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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6 January 2017 14:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Spanish businessmen ranked the first in the list of main foreign investors to the Islamic Republic of Iran in December 2015  December 2016 period.

The volume of Spanish investments amounted to $3.2 billion in the reported period. The runner-up is Germany with the volume of investments standing at $2.9 billion.

However, Spanish investments were directed to the implementation of one project, while German investors allocated funds for the implementation of 17 different projects.

The total volume of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the economy of the Iran, the second largest economy in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia, stood at $11.8 billion within the implementation of 113 projects.

Petroleum Minister of Iran Bijan Zanganeh earlier said that the largest amount of investment, which amounts to some $200 billion is required for the oil industry, including $130 billion in the upstream segment.

Iranian authorities have adopted a comprehensive strategy encompassing market-based reforms as reflected in the governments 20-year vision document and the sixth five-year development plan for the 2016-2021 period.

Real GDP growth is projected to reach 4.8 percent in 2017 due to the lifting of the sanctions and a more business-oriented environment, according to the World Bank.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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6 January 2017 17:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Russias planned reduction of its military presence in Syria has begun with a Northern Fleet carrier group led by the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy carrier, Sputnik quoted Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, as saying on January 6.

In accordance with the decision of Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces Vladimir Putin, the Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce the Armed Forces grouping in Syria, General Gerasimov told reporters.

Gerasimov said the reduction begins with the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov carrier, the Pyotr Veliky battle cruiser and auxiliary ships.

---

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A proposal to extend and modify the issuance of bison hunting licenses to people on Montana's Indian reservations and the Little Shell Tribe was strongly supported by tribal legislators during the first hearing of House Bill 108 on Thursday.

The bill would extend a law on the books since 2005, which was originally supposed to sunset in 2015, and ensure the tags are over and above the 80 issued to state applicants annually. Under the bill that was heard by the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee, two tags would be provided to each of Montanas seven reservations, as well as to the Little Shell Tribe, each year.

We would like to see it increased to five, said Rep. Rae Peppers, D-Lame Deer. We feel like the buffalo are part of our tradition and what we do with them is important.

That was echoed by two other American Indian legislators who testified in support of the bill. No one spoke in opposition to the measure.

Sen. Lea Whitford, D-Cut Bank, also said the number should be increased. Bison are an important cultural component of who we are, she said.

The state already allows four tribes with treaty rights to hunt bison that migrate out of Yellowstone National Park, only one of which is a Montana tribe  the Confederated Salish and Kootenai. Those treaty tribes regulate their own hunters. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks also issues 80 tags annually through a drawing to other hunters who apply.

Increasing the number of tags given to the eight tribes beyond two could make the small region where bison are hunted outside of Yellowstone in Montana even more crowded, warned Mike Volesky, FWPs chief of staff.

The treaty hunt is really getting to capacity, he said, which at times has resulted in the harvest of up to 400 bison.

Adding more hunters to the area could be a safety concern as well as exceed local residents tolerance of bison hunters, Volesky noted.

We are a little bit loath to add more, he said.

Rep. Kerry White, R-Bozeman, asked Volesky if FWP had pursued a motion by the Environmental Quality Council to allow tribal bison hunting inside Yellowstone National Park. Volesky said FWP has no jurisdiction inside the park.

Roe

Another bill before the committee, HB 69, would extend the paddlefish caviar agreement with the city of Glendive to June of 2020. Under the agreement, a contractor removes the eggs from paddlefish caught on the Yellowstone River and sells them for up to $300 a pound. Seventy percent of the money made from the sale goes to a Glendive grant program, the rest to FWP for research of the fish.

Glendive resident Bob Gilbert said renewing the agreement for only two years isnt fair to the contractor. FWP wants the term short because of concern about dwindling numbers of paddlefish and the possibility that a fish bypass channel may be constructed at Intake Dam, allowing the fish to move beyond the structure. Right now the dam acts as a blockade to paddlefish, which migrate upstream in the spring to spawn, allowing anglers to snag the fish.

Eileen Ryce, Fisheries Division administrator for FWP, told the committee there has been limited recruitment of young paddlefish into the population since 1999. If this trend continues we will have to consider less harvest, she said. Last year the harvest was 1,000 fish.

Skunk

The third bill before the committee would get rid of the archaic name civet cat used to refer to skunks, and remove spotted skunks from designation as predators. HB 98, sponsored by Rep. Janet Ellis, D-Helena, is meant to ensure that if the spotted skunk is ever considered for endangered species listing Montana wouldnt get caught in any fray.

Were really just trying to take away an argument for federal listing, said Ken McDonald, FWPs Wildlife Division administrator. The Eastern spotted skunk is being considered for listing.

Striped skunks are the more common critter most Montanans are familiar with. There have been only 22 documented sightings of spotted skunks in the state, mostly in southwestern Montana.
5 January 2017 11:24 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Today tourism is developing with high speed in Azerbaijan, with a contribution of 4.5% to the national GDP. The country witnesses more than 2.5 million annual foreign tourist arrivals and thousands of domestic tourism visits.

The hotel and tourism-related industry has been declared among high priority industries for foreign investment in the country, while demand in strong travel agents, tour operators and tourist transport operators rises.

Tour operators engaged in arranging itineraries and market tours to customers is a main component of the tourism industry as they control where many tourists go and which facilities they consume.

Henceforth, tour operators operating in Azerbaijan will be able to advertise or sell tourist products, as well as entrust its advertising and sale to a travel agent, in accordance with the draft law "On Tourism".

Under the draft law, the sale of tourism products or individual services to a consumer is performed under a travel services agreement.

Tour operators and travel agents should prepare a catalogue of their services, where every kind of tourism products should be reflected, as well as indicate distribution of the services. The catalogue should also indicate the prices for these services, and the total value of tourism products with discount.

If travel products involve traveling to a country where compulsory insurance of tourists is applicable, then the catalogue must also include security conditions as well.

Another issue reflected in the amendments proposed to the draft law is establishment of institutions for carrying out scientific research in tourism sphere.

Under the draft law the government will appoint persons for conducting scientific research. Moreover, the government will provide financial and technical assistance to NGOs engaged in such activities.

Azerbaijan, a unique land in the Caucasus, has appeared not so long ago on the tourism map of world. The country with its favorable geographical location, rich natural landscape and numerous objects of historical and cultural heritage is a good place for the development of tourism.

The state makes everything possible to use its natural advantages to develop the tourism sector of the country, implementing various projects and programs for attracting tourists to the Land of Fire.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 January 2017 15:21 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The Land of Fire is targeting to expand the geography of visiting tourists by attracting citizens of such Asian countries as Japan, Korea and Indonesia.

After attracting thousands of tourists from Persian Gulf countries this year, the country is keen to "beckon" tourists from Eastern Asia to help drive tourism.

Azerbaijani people are well known for their hospitality while the countrys nature with its climate, beauty and uniqueness mesmerizes even the most claimant tourists.

The country with rich ancient history has thousands of places to visit, ranging from the capital to the unique villages lost in the clouds. Baku, where past and modernity, East and West have intertwined cannot leave indifferent any traveler. Warm Caspian Sea, sandy beaches and delicious Caucasian cuisine attract tourists to Azerbaijani resorts day by day.

Muzaffar Agakarimov, the adviser of the Chairman of Azerbaijani Tourism Association, said that tourists and travel agencies from Japan, Korea and Indonesia are showing growing interest in Azerbaijan.

A representative delegation of tourism companies from Indonesia has already visited Azerbaijan, he added. Indonesia is a big Muslim country with 240 million people, that's why a tourist flow from this country will affect Azerbaijans tourism development.



Although there are many beautiful places around the world to visit, only some of these tourism destinations can cater to Muslims more than others, since many Muslims feel more comfortable in Muslim countries due to food, prayer or even security issues. In Azerbaijan, where modernity and intellect meet Islam and modern cultures, Muslim visitors can have an unforgettable experience.

Agakarimov recalled that last year there was a growth in the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan from Arab countries, Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan, adding that the country expects increase in the number of tourists from these countries, as well.

During the New Year holidays, Shamakhi, Sheki, Gakh, Gabala, Gusar and Guba regions of Azerbaijan become the most visited places of local and foreign tourists.

In 2015, Azerbaijan has turned into the hot spot destination for GCC tourists with 30 times increase of visitors from the UAE and GCC.

The number of tourists coming from Muslim countries hit a record in 2016. Overall, in the first half of 2016, Azerbaijan was visited by 25,000 tourists from Arab countries, while the figure approximately 22,000 people or eight times more than in the same period of 2015.

The expert said that overall it is expected that in 2017 Azerbaijan will host much more tourists than last year.

"Azerbaijan also welcomes tourists from Europe, but their number is relatively few. We believe that their number will also increase this year," he added.

A number of world-famous hotel brands are operating in the country, particularly in Baku, while development of hostels in regions still leaves much to be desired.

Therefore, Agakarimov claimed that one of the most important conditions conducive to the growth of tourists in Azerbaijan is the construction of hostels, one- and two-star hotels.

He believes that after the construction of budget hotels, tourists coming from the Arab countries, Iran, Russia, including the North Caucasus, will give preference to this type of accommodations.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Utrecht, the Netherlands, January 06, 2017 / B3C newswire / -- Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB), and the health insurance companies CZ, Zilveren Kruis, and Menzis announced today that they will start a 3 million validation trial for use of HUB Organoid Technology to test if it can be used to determine the response of Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients to new drug therapies.

Organoids are mini-organs grown in cell culture from biopsies taken from patients and faithfully recapitulate the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of diseased tissues. HUB Organoids have demonstrated to be valuable disease models for screening and validation of innovative medicines.

Cystic Fibrosis is a life threatening disease for which only recently new treatments have been developed. The new drug treatments have proven to be a breakthrough in the treatment of CF patients. However, the costs of these therapies and the limited benefit in certain patients, have been a hurdle to general inclusion in reimbursement programs. To keep expensive medication available for the general population it is important to be able to identify responding patients. The new project will demonstrate if the HUB Organoid Technology can be used as a predictive test for treatment, which would greatly help to treat CF patients effectively.

Hans Clevers, CSO of HUB, said: The new project is a major next step for the implementation of the HUB Organoid technology. We are very happy that this very recently developed technology might already benefit patients.

It is important that also expensive medication is available for patients and therefore treatment needs to be carefully considered so that we treat only patients who respond. Because we do not want to exclude anyone who requires new medication, this validation trial is very important to develop a test that will show who does and who does not benefit from a specific therapy, said Joep de Groot, Board of Directors of CbusineZ, innovation company of CZ.

The support of the Dutch health insurance companies to implement new breakthrough treatments and technologies demonstrates the ambition of medical scientists and health care professionals to improve health care together, said Robert Vries, COO of HUB.



About HUB

Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) is an organization founded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and the University Medical Center Utrecht. HUB exploits the pioneering work of Prof. Hans Clevers, who discovered methods to grow stem cell-derived human mini-organs (HUB Organoids) from tissues of patients with various diseases. The organoids, that are part of the HUB biobanks, are characterized by genome sequencing, expression profiling and sensitivity to known and experimental drugs to establish a database linking genetic and transcriptional information to drug responsiveness. HUB offers licenses to its patented HUB Organoid Technology for drug-screening and access to organoids in the HUB biobanks for preclinical drug discovery and validation. In addition, HUB is performing clinical studies to validate the technologies use as a companion diagnostic.

Contact

HUB

Robert Vries (COO)

+31 (0)88 123 6301

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Via press release from Family Research Council hate group leader Tony Per-KKK-ins:

If Texas thought it had seen the end of the transgender bathroom agenda, they were mistaken! After the overwhelming defeat voters delivered to the Houston mayor and city council for its gender-free, anti-religious liberty ordinance, conservatives are ready for the next chapter: more permanent protections against this dangerous and unpopular crusade of the Left. Like most sane people, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R) doesnt think grown men should be sharing fitting rooms, locker rooms, showers, and restrooms with little girls.

To put the brakes on the Lefts campaign, Lt. Gov. Patrick has teamed up with State Senator Lois Kolkhorst, in unveiling a statewide bill, the Texas Privacy Act of 2017 (S.B. 6), which would bar public schools, state government agencies, and political subdivisions from throwing open bathroom doors to people of the opposite sex. Sounds reasonable, right? Not to the Left, which is already fueling up its propaganda machine to pump out false information about the measure would and wouldnt do.

I dont know what problem hes proposing to solve, said Chuck Smith of Equality Texas. Why not ask the women and children at Target stores, who have been victims of voyeurs or sexual predators under genderless policies like these? Or the high school girls in Illinois, who are so afraid to undress in the locker room that they wear their gym clothes under their regular ones? The concern is not that transgendered individuals are more likely to be sexual predators, but rather that sexual predators could exploit such laws by posing as transgendered in order to gain access to women and girls.

Although the bill is similar to North Carolinas H.B. 2, this version is exclusively focused on bathroom and shower privacy. It doesnt preempt local entities from taking a position on gender identity in the context of hiring, housing, health care, or public accommodations like the Tar Heels did. This is a public safety issue, not a discrimination issue, Patrick said. Its about common courtesy and privacy, particularly for women. And thats a goal both sides can get behind!
Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines is positioned to play a key role in the confirmation of Ryan Zinke to Donald Trumps presidential cabinet. The two Montanans met Thursday.

Zinke, Montanas lone congressman, met with Daines to discuss the representatives nomination to be Interior secretary. Daines is a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will begin Zinkes confirmation process.

Ryan has a good balance of protecting public land and conservation, and energy development, Daines told The Gazette. I think its that balance thats needed in the secretary of Interior.

Daines said he expects the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will take up Zinkes confirmation in the next few weeks, while also considering former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for energy secretary.

Daines met with Perry on Thursday and came away with a positive impression of the Texan who twice visited Montana in 2016 while campaigning for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Greg Gianforte.

Perry was an all-of-the-above energy governor who saw the development of the fossil fuel and renewable energy projects in his state. Daines said he expects President-elect Trump to ratchet up research in ways to produce energy from coal more cleanly, which should benefit Montana coal mining and coal-fired power generation at Colstrip, he said.

Texas has all of the above. The contrast that you will see with Secretary Perry versus Secretary Ernest Moniz is you see all of the above from Secretary Perry and you just saw few of the above from the Obama administration. This is good for Montana, Daines said.

Zinke framed his meeting with Daines as a get-together of two Montanans. His comments, included in a press release issued by Daines, were his first since being nominated by Trump.

I appreciate Sen. Daines taking the time to sit down and talk about how together we can Make America Great Again, Zinke said. As two Montana kids who were at Boys State together in 1979 and who grew up with a personal understanding of our natural resources and public lands, I look forward to working with him in the future in any capacity that allows me to serve Montana.

During their meeting, Daines said he had several Montana-specific asks, which is how lawmakers refer to the requests made to cabinet hopefuls during pre-confirmation meetings.

Daines requested that the Department of Interior complete the backlog of road repairs and deferred infrastructure projects in U.S. national parks, which are managed by the Department of Interior.

What sets America apart from the rest of the world is our public lands and national parks, Daines said. Why do you come to America? To enjoy our national parks and public lands.

Last fall, Daines called national park infrastructure, with crumbling roads and inadequate parking, one of the nations biggest challenges, while focusing on the disrepair in Glacier National Park. Zinke grew up in Whitefish, less than a half-hour drive from Glacier.

The senator also asked Zinke to use the cabinet post to strengthen the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses offshore oil and gas royalties to support the conservation of land and water. LWCF raises about $900 million a year, but Congress repeatedly votes to spend the money on other things.

Montanas delegation has for years argued that the conservation funding should be permanent.

The senator also asked Zinke to lift DOIs moratorium on federal coal leases.

One year ago this month, outgoing Interior Secretary Sally Jewell suspended federal coal leasing to give the Department of Interior time to determine whether mining companies are paying the public a fair amount for coal taken from federal lands. The suspension was to also give the DOI time to determine whether the bidding process for public coal is truly competitive, and whether coal policy contradicts federal climate change policy, among other things.

Mining companies in the Powder River Basin region of Montana and Wyoming denounced the moratorium as a way to stop coal mining, not study it. Western lawmakers said the same, as did Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.

Other asks included reconsideration of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, a proposed Puget Sound shipping port considered crucial for exporting coal owned by the Crow Indian Tribe. Last May, the Army Corps of Engineers chose to deny a permit for the terminal after Lummi Nation, a Puget Sound American Indian tribe, argued that its treaty fishing rights were in danger.

Montanas Crow Tribe argued that blocking port development violated their rights to sell their coal.

Daines also asked for the Department of Interiors support in finding funding for a $420 million water rights settlement with the Blackfeet Tribe. The settlement includes dam redevelopment and irrigation projects. Zinke sponsored the settlements passage in the House last month.

As the director of the Department of Interior, Zinke will oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
They werent all in tune, but the words a medical team sang to 17-year-old cancer survivor Will Goodridge Thursday were golden: Pack up your things, get out the door, you dont need chemo anymore.

The celebration in the pediatric unit of Billings Clinic came exactly 1,205 days after Goodridges leukemia diagnosis in 2013. His father, Tim Goodridge, counted every one of them.

Will missed most of his freshman year of high school, and when he returned to Senior High he spent many lunch breaks undergoing chemotherapy.

Usually I would come in here for lunch, grab a couple of boxes of Froot Loops and sit down, Will said.

But those days are over.

During his final chemo injection on Thursday, the room was decorated with banners and filled with media members, and his family, including siblings, Jane and Henry, and his parents, Tim and Pam. Instead of Froot Loops, Will enjoyed chicken and French fries and chocolate cake.

"It's crazy being here at the end," Will said.

Facing his mortality

Will graduates this spring from Senior High with his class after a challenging 3-1/2 years facing what no teenager should have to face  his mortality.

And he did it all with grace and good humor, members of his medical team said. Sarah Blackburn, pediatric oncology social worker at Billings Clinic, said Will has been an absolute joy to work with.

Even when he was at his worst, those really down times, he kept his sense of humor. Hes so self-assured and comfortable in his own skin, Blackburn said.

Dr. Paul Kelker said he had already retired when Will became his patient in September 2013. Kelker explained Thursday that Will was diagnosed with T-cell leukemia after his mother Pam took him into a same-day care center for what she thought was the flu. An elevated white blood cell count revealed something much more serious.

For every obstacle Will faced, he found another route to stay upbeat and active. When he lost so much muscle mass he couldnt run cross country or track anymore, Will turned to playing his piano, and when his fingers became too weak to play, he wrote music.

As time went on, I forgot I had cancer and just tried to live my daily life, Will said.

Will became an Eagle Scout and volunteered at the Friendship House and NOVA Center for the Performing Arts. Every summer during the Magic City Blues Festival, which his father founded, he sold T-shirts.

In 2015, Will was filmed for the upcoming documentary created by Teen Cancer America.

Will's Big Dumb Party

Will's band Jems will perform during a public celebration of his final chemo session Saturday night at the Pub Station. Will's Big Dumb Party runs from 7 to 11 p.m. and is open to all ages.

Will has been cancer free for 2-1/2 years, but underwent chemotherapy to ensure that the cancer did not return. If there is one positive aspect of Wills illness, he said it was meeting all these amazing people at Billings Clinic.

Despite flying to Denver twice, once for radiation treatment, Will was primarily treated at Billings Clinic. He said he was grateful to be able to stay at home with his family.

My family has been my biggest support," Will said. The first couple months, I dont think I would have made it without my dad keeping me on line with all the pills.

Thursdays were usually the worst days because some weeks he had to take 31 pills in one day. But Will was determined not to dwell on the negatives, and keeps his eyes on the future. He plans to study wildlife biology in college next year.

"For anybody out there still fighting cancer, keep fighting hard," Will said. "There is an end."
With a confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos slated for next week, her advocacy for school choice initiatives in Detroit has taken center stage.

But DeVos, a Michigan billionaire and longtime education activist, indicated her support for an education proposal that split Republicans during the passage of a new federal education law, according to U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who championed the plan.

The proposal, known as the A-PLUS Act, would have allowed states to opt out of federal accountability programs and receive their federal funding in the form of block grants, which would allow schools to spend the money with greater discretion. Federal funds are often tied to specific programs.

Daines and his Montana counterpart, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, met with DeVos in separate meetings Thursday. Her hearing is slated for Jan. 11.

The act was proposed as an amendment to the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind last year. The new law was hailed for expanding local control, but Daines argued that it didnt go far enough and voted against it.

We want the parents and teachers and students to lead in education instead of a bunch of D.C. bureaucrats, he said Thursday. The focus now is to get Betsy DeVos confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who shepherded the bills passage, opposed Daines plan.

This is unnecessary, misintentioned, won't pass, and undermines the bipartisan agreement that we've reached, he said shortly before it was voted down.

School choice

Most debate surrounding DeVos' nomination has zeroed in on her record in Michigan, where she helped establish one of the largest charter-school programs in the nation. She consistently advocated for using public money to pay for private education, arguing that it gave students options to escape low-achieving schools, similar to a $20 billion school choice proposal President-elect Donald Trump floated on the campaign trail.

Its unclear how much of an impact a federal school choice program would have on rural states like Montana, where it would be a major departure from current policy.

Montana dipped a toe into the school choice pool in 2015 when it passed a law allowing a $150 tax credit for donations that support nonprofit scholarship organizations that help pay for students to attend private schools, but even that law is under legal challenge.

Most public school advocates in Montana frame school choice as a policy that would shift public money into private schools  public schools would be harmed as students and funding were siphoned off, with a disproportionate effect on rural schools with small enrollments, assuming they had other nearby education options.

You start pulling kids out of these schools, and it might be for the best intentions, but it impacts more people negatively than it impacts people positively, Tester said. I think that the rural perspective versus the Detroit perspective are light years apart.

Tester said he didnt discuss any specific school choice proposals with DeVos. When asked about a potential federal choice program, Daines reiterated that he opposed federal mandates without specifically addressing charter or voucher programs.

In states that have embraced school choice initiatives, like Arizona, participation in rural areas has been small. Education leaders in North and South Dakota have been skeptical of the feasibility of setting up charter schools in states with a small population spread across a vast area.

Whether theres demand for it or not, I think there will be certain people who set it up, said Tester, who previously taught in Big Sandy and was later a school trustee. When that happens, that will take (per-student funding) away from these small schools.

Other issues

Both senators said DeVos indicated that shed review rules created by the Obama Administration for ESSA implementation; Democrats and Republicans have criticized some rules, and congressional Republicans have targeted certain provisions they can strike during review of the rules.

Tester said he received a mixed answer from DeVos about teacher certification, saying she supported both the idea of strong requirements for teachers and options with minimal requirements. Teacher certification reform is often considered as a tool for combating teacher shortages, like the one in rural Montana, though critics say teacher quality can suffer.

Montana, which sets its own teacher standards, recently eased some certification requirements, but other states have made more sweeping changes.

It is a state-level decision, but if you have an education secretary saying, You know what, teacher accreditation is not that important, that goes back to the state, Tester said. Their views tend to percolate down to the local level.

Tester also had concerns about a lack of emphasis on funding for students with disabilities, but said he was encouraged that DeVos voiced support for Pell Grants and that she said she was concerned about the affordability of college.

Daines reiterated his opposition to Common Core standards, framing them as a federal mandate. Montana adopted standards that largely reflect Common Core at a state level in 2011, authorized by the Montana Board of Public Education. Devos has said she wants to end Common Core, but ESSA doesn't allow the federal government to prescribe  or revoke  state-level education standards.
Selling a home isnt hard if youve got the right guidance and approach. Here we break down the process to sell your housefrom deciding if you really should sell, to finding a real estate agent wholl be your partner through it all, to pricing your home and negotiating offers.
Melissa Brennan is trading her work policing truck scales to help police the streets of Billings.

The 27-year-old is one of six new Billings Police officers sworn in Thursday by Municipal Court Judge Sheila Kolar.

Brennan spent a year at the Montana Department of Transportations Billings truck scales, taking tired truck drivers off the road and inspecting 18-wheelers. She also worked two years at the Yellowstone County Detention Facility and, like two other recently hired officers, is a graduate of the Montana Law Enforcement Academy.

Some friends suggested I give (working at the truck scales) a try, but it wasnt as community involved as I would like to be, she said after a ceremony that included an oath-taking and the presentation of badges by Police Chief Rich St. John.

Brennans hire brings the number of women officers to about a dozen of the 148 sworn officers, St. John said. With the six new officers, the department is now fully staffed at 148 sworn officers.

The three officers who are already Public Safety Officer Standards and Training (POST) certified  Brennan, Travis Fjetland and John Pearson  begin their field training Jan. 23. The other three officers  Dakota Singh, Matthew Woodard and Nicholas Crowe  will begin their academy training Monday.

All six new officers have spent the last few days practicing at the police shooting range, St. John said, and are scheduled to qualify at the range Friday.

Youve been enjoying our balmy weather, the chief joked before launching into advice for the new officers that included learn to deal with rejection, all you can control is your attitude and your effort, grow a thick skin, and, above all, guard your integrity as though it was your most important possession, because it is.

Pearson, who is 30 and comes to Billings after five years as a Musselshell County sheriffs deputy, called his first foray in law enforcement a great place to start, but after a certain amount of time the room for advancement and (more) pay levels out.

His advice for his fellow officers qualifying at the shooting range Friday: Bundle up as well as you can.

Singh, 26, spent time in the military and worked at the jail before the department hired him.

All I want to do is make my hometown better, he said.

Fjetand, 29, was an officer in Bozeman for five years. The two departments are similar in that they both employ beats, where an officer patrols a particular neighborhood. But Billings is bigger, and the workload will probably be busier, he said.

Woodard, 30, studied criminal justice and sociology before his 2015 graduation from Montana State University Billings.

Its the first time I applied for the Billings force, he said. I was prepared for failure, so success is a welcome surprise.

His long-term goal is to become a detective.

I tend to like the intellectual part of law enforcement, he said.

Council members Chris Friedel and Dick Clark joined Mayor Tom Hanel for the ceremony, held in Kolars courtroom.

Hanel, a former police lieutenant, said he recalls the day when new officers were not entitled to a police cruiser right away. Instead, they walked a beat.

He called the departments efforts to ramp up to full staffing a welcome and continuous process.

It helps tremendously, and it provides the service that citizens expect, Hanel said.
The St. Petersburg Police Department has identified one of the victims from Wednesday's shooting.

St. Pete shooting victim identified

Police searching for person of interest

Two others injured, remain hospitalized

Antonio Adams, 39, was shot and killed on the 3800 block of 1st Avenue South, January 4.

Two other victims remain hospitalized. Officials said they are in serious/stable and good/stable condition.

Police are looking for a person of interest in the shooting. He is described as a black man with a light complexion, between 18-20 years old, 5'11" tall, slender build, and short black hair.

Police are also looking for a black Nissan Pathfinder.

If you have any information on this crime, you are asked to call the St. Petersburg Police Department at 893-7780.
Keeping federal public lands public is a big issue in Montana and the West. Its an issue that Rep. Ryan Zinke campaigned on in his successful bid for re-election. In his first term, Zinke frequently described himself as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, strongly committed to protecting and preserving public lands owned by the people of the United States.

He stated unequivocally that he is against the transfer of federal public lands to states. States such as Montana are rich in public land but lack the staff to manage our priceless American heritage. One concern about the land transfer movement is that cash-strapped states would turn around and sell the land.

So after Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, tucked a provision in the House Rules bill that could make land transfer legislation easier to pass, we expected that Zinke would have something to say about it. The House approved the rules package 233-190 with the Bishop provision that exempts any future land transfers from the budget scrutiny that otherwise must be given to bills that would reduce U.S. revenue or increase U.S. spending. Zinke was among the GOP majority voting for the rules package on Tuesday, the first Congressional work day of 2017.

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., issued a statement saying: This vote by the House is an underhanded assault on Montana's outdoor economy, our hunting heritage, and our way of life. Public lands belong to all Americans and Congress should be safeguarding them, not clearing the way to auction them off to the highest bidder. I ask all those who care about our public lands to join me in demanding more public access, not more attacks on our public lands, from their representatives in the House."

On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., issued this comment on the recent U.S. House of Representatives budgetary rule change related to federal lands.

I continue to strongly oppose the transfer of federal lands to the states while fighting to improve the management of those lands, Daines said.

The Gazette hadnt yet heard from Zinke, so the opinion editor phoned and emailed his spokeswoman, Heather Swift, and asked why Zinke voted for the new rules. She emailed this brief response: Congressman Zinkes position against the sale or transfer of public lands has not changed.

We appreciate that affirmation supporting public lands, but it doesnt answer the question about his vote.

The Washington Post explained how Bishops rule change would work: Under current Congressional Budget Office accounting rules, any transfer of federal land that generates revenue for the U.S. Treasury  whether through energy extraction, logging, grazing or other activities  has a cost. If lawmakers wanted to give such land to a state, local government or tribe, they would have to account for that loss in expected cash flow. The new rule exempts land transfers from that requirement, basically declaring them revenue neutral.

Conservation groups immediately pushed back. As the 115th Congress enters its first week, some of our elected officials are wasting no time in paving the way to steal our outdoor heritage, said Backcountry Hunters and Anglers President Land Tawney of Missoula.

Zinkes office has issued fewer news releases since Montanas lone U.S. representative was nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Interior. Maybe, Zinke wants to keep a lower public profile until his confirmation hearing.

As secretary, Zinke will have to take a stand on large-scale public land transfers that may be proposed by lawmakers, such as Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. Zinke has served on that committee. Montanans will be watching to see how his actions back up his words of support for U.S. public lands.
For once there is some great news in behavioral health care, and it is the 21st Century Cures Act lead through the Congress by the cosponsorship of assisting bills by Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sen. Jon Tester, with the support of Sen. Steve Daines. Yes, the Montana delegation was all in, and the act passed the Senate Dec. 7 with bipartisan support.

While news coverage has been somewhat mottled in delivering a clear message about the act, it rivals important advances that have been made over the past decade. For example, the Wellstone and Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, and then in 2014 the Affordable Care Acts expansion of mental health and addiction treatment commensurate with benefits for medical/surgical care. Some have argued that this act is the most important piece of legislation since Kennedys Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963.

The seeds for this Act were sown by Reps. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., and Stephanie Johnson, D-Fla., in their Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 (H.R. 2646), and Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., in their Mental Health Reform Act of 2016 (S. 2680). These bills were fashioned into what became the 21st Century Cures Act.

The American Psychological Association, the APA Practice Organization and Montana Psychological Association have worked with legislators for four years to pass legislation that would provide essential prevention services, treatment for populations in need and support for research, education, and training. Although the Cures Act is not a perfect solution, we believe that it takes important and necessary steps to improve behavioral healthcare. Signed by President Obama on Dec. 13, this new law will:

Eliminate the Medicaid same day exclusion, which prohibits separate payment for mental health and primary care services provided to Medicaid enrollees on the same day. This change will especially benefit rural citizens.

Strengthen the enforcement of mental health parity requirements by directing the Department of Health and Human Services to produce, in coordination with stakeholders, action plans for improved federal and state coordination, and to issue new guidance to health plans.

Enhance mental health and substance use treatment for children and families, including reauthorizing the National Child Traumatic Stress Network to support children recovering from trauma, and support screening and treatment of maternal depression.

Include provisions that address mental health issues in the criminal justice system, such as increased funding and new authority for the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program, law enforcement training, and alternatives to incarceration.

Authorize the Minority Fellowship Program at $12.7 million to train culturally competent minority mental health professionals, reauthorize the Graduate Psychology Education Program at $15 million and include health service psychology programs and internships in a new $10 million demonstration grant.

Provide $4.8 billion outside of the budget caps for initiatives at the National Institutes of Health for fiscal years 2017-2026, including $1.8 billion for cancer research, $1.56 billion for the BRAIN initiative and $1.4 billion for the Precision Medicine Initiative.
A Multitude of Finds, Unusual Features at N. Oregon Coast's Hug Point

Published 01/06/2017 at 1:23 AM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Cannon Beach, Oregon)  You could easily spend a few hours exploring Hug Point State Recreational Site on the north Oregon coast, but you would literally have to spend a year or more to see it all. That's because this enormously engaging spot near Cannon Beach doesn't let on all its secrets at all points during the year. It changes drastically during some seasons and switches its hidden treasures from one thing to another.





There's not only more than meets the eye here, there's quite literally more beneath the surface than you'd imagine.





The most obvious features are, of course, the engaging waterfall and that old road going around the point. But this site can change appearance depending on tide and season.

A little over 100 years ago, back when the beaches were the only official highways along the Oregon coast, this section presented particular problems. It was passable only at really low tides, making mail delivery and daily travel stuck in its tracks for a few days or more. So a road was carved out along this point by blasting the rock in 1910, finally allowing Model T's and horse-drawn carriages around the corner a little more often.





You can still see the ruts dug into the old rock by those ancient vehicles.





It is an awesome feature, unlike anything on the entire Oregon coast. But right next to it is the enormous, shudder-inducing sea cave that is also unforgettable. Inside, the colors get wild and strange, and you see giant chunks of driftwood crammed into spaces in odd ways, displaying the power of the ocean that put them there.





Two curiosities lurk on that road: one is the occasional chunk of wood bolted into the face, closer to the northern side; and the other is a tiny brass knob embedded in the edge of the road. The board of wood appears then disappears every few years. While no one is sure exactly why it's there, it's believed either park rangers or locals put it there and attach a rope to it, in case anyone gets into distress because of the tides.

Exactly what the knob is or why it's there is also a bit of a puzzle. It has an elevation marking, but also the inscription of Pacific Power and Light. The company could not find any documentation on it, but they theorized it was originally used by the power company in the '20s as a survey marker.

When sand levels get super high, as in most summers, Hug Point becomes much larger. The tide is kept at bay, and you can even walk beneath that road in complete safety. But in winters, if the tide gets low enough, you can see wildly colored rock slabs just beneath the waves next to the road, often covered in tide pool life.





Winters are when Hug Point can really come alive. In the 2000's, the Oregon coast had a run of winters where ten feet or more of sand was taken off many beaches. At these extraordinary times, incredible objects came to light. Beneath these sands lie the remnants of a forest more than 4,000 years old  commonly called ghost forests. These, plus other stunning geologic wonders called red towers (surreal chunks of reddish clay-like material) showed up as well.





Not to mention, agates are prime at this spot when sand levels drop. This whole section of Oregon coast is a gold mine of dreamlike exploration.

Some details at Hug Point are staring you in the face but you don't notice them. And they're almost shocking.





One is the ancient carvings in the face of the rock surrounding the road. If you look closely at the slab that covers part of the old roadway, you'll notice a series of indentations. Some of this is just tidal melee, but some are the remnants of ancient handholds carved into it by native tribes. Pictures from the 1930's shows these as still more pronounced, but now they're whittled down a ways. Before this rock was blasted out, a whole series of these went up the rockface to the top, basically a crude ladder. They could be hundreds of years old or older.

The real shocker is the ancient petrified forests embedded in parts of Hug Point, millions of years old. Local geologist Tom Horning explains the sandstone here was formed about that time when this area was an estuary of the Columbia River. The petrified wood was  long story short  made by creatures making tiny holes, and then those holes were slowly filled up with sand, becoming sandstone. Oregon Coast Lodgings for this - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours



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Boys' Haven recently announced the appointment of new Executive Director George Hartsfield.

Hartsfield is a Southeast Texas native with bachelor's degree in sociology from Stephen F. Austin University and a master's degree of education in counseling and development from Lamar University.

Before joining Boys' Haven, Hartsfield worked for 27 years in various roles at Buckner Children and Family Services in Beaumont. He was most recently executive director for Buckner in Conroe.

Have an item for In the Boardroom? Email LocalNews@BeaumontEnterprise.com
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Beaumont police confiscated 71 pint bottles of Promethazine during a traffic stop near Walden Road Thursday afternoon, according to a release from Beaumont Police Department.

The common street name of Promethazine is"syrup" or "lean," officials said. Promethazine is commonly used to treat nausea or allergy symptoms, according to WebMD.
Take steps to protect people, pets, plants and pipes because extended overnight freezing temperatures are about to descend on Southeast Texas tonight and Saturday night into Sunday morning, the National Weather Service is forecasting.

By Monday, the mass of cold air will have moved off, replaced by warmer temperature from the Gulf and the high temperature Tuesday could return to the low- to mid-70s, said Tim Humphrey, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Justin Rowling machines one rifle at a time in his Butte garage. Every time he ships one of his custom guns to a client in a new state he marks it on a map above the work space in his home.

There are marks in 14 states.

Rowling is the owner and sole employee of Montana Precision Rifles. He works seasonally for the city of Butte's parks department, but this year the gun business became his primary source of income.

More than 150 federally licensed firearms manufacturers called Montana home in 2016. The industrys expansion has created a growing web of support for like-minded startups and skilled positions to service the industry across Montana.

Firearms producers in Montana accounted for just 8,104 of the more than 9 million guns manufactured in the United States in 2014, the most recent year the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has reported statistics.

But Montanas 153 licensed manufacturers represent the most per capita in any state. Despite facing challenges like high shipping costs from raw materials suppliers, skilled labor shortages and few tax advantages, gun producers continue to choose Montana to host their operations.

Rowling found the path to the gun business a natural one. Like many Montanans he grew up shooting and hunting. His great uncle is a national champion marksman and taught him to build the traditional rifles he favored.

Under the Montana Precision Rifles name Rowling produces modern, bolt-action rifles intended for extreme accuracy at long distances. He guarantees his package rifles to fire three shots into a half-inch circle at 100 yards, but a lot of them produce even tighter groups.

He draws satisfaction from receiving customer photos or videos of tight groups shot at long distances or animals harvested with his rifle. The same images end up on social media.

It helps out too because people are seeing them make these amazing shots. It works through word of mouth, Rowling said.

As of January he has 10 orders waiting to be filled. Each rifle is different and built with premium parts and takes about two months to produce.

Little Sharps

Like Montana Precision Rifles, Little Sharps Rifle Manufacturing of Big Sandy has orders backed up. Theres a three-year waiting list for one of their scaled-down models of the Sharps rifle and the two man operation has 25 on back order.

Even with the high demand and $5,000 price tag, the duo arent making money on the single-shot rifles. Gunmaker Ron Otto said his work is a passion and that he would starve if he was relying on the gun business to support himself.

Little Sharps builds about eight rifles a year, and engraver Aaron Pursley puts in 60 to 70 hours of work on each one. All the fitting is done by hand and the machining is performed in a shop behind Ottos home. These custom guns are made to work, and many  including Ottos personal rifle  have taken big game animals in Africa.

People say '$5,000! You sure wouldnt take that hunting. But I say, well, you bought a $50,000 Powerstroke pickup and drive it down a gravel road at 70 miles per hour, Otto said.

Little Sharps relies heavily on word of mouth to find new customers and Otto markets the weapons at gun shows. He travels from state to state with a sampling of his products, including the companys most over-the-top creation, a .22 with an octagon-shaped barrel inlaid with 50 golden stars and encrusted with diamonds, sapphires and rubies. The rifles receiver is engraved with a depiction of an infant Jesus, a golden cross and a cowboy lassoing a wolf. Spread angel wings work as a rear sight while the front blade consists of a ready to launch space shuttle.

It was basically for the military who protect our farmers. We need both of them more than anything else, Otto said.

The rifle has 400 hours of engraving work and has never been fired. Otto said hes never been too serious about selling the gun, but it draws attention to the Little Sharps booth at gun shows.

Falkor Defense

Montana lacks industry giants like Sturm Ruger, Smith and Wesson or Remington Arms. Many of its licensed manufacturers, like Little Sharps and Montana Precision Rifles, produce a handful of guns a year. But there are a number of Montana companies building world-class firearms on a commercial scale.

Just because were here in Montana doesnt mean were a little boutique company. Our footprint is very big in the industry, said Clint Walker, executive vice president of Falkor Defense in the Flathead Valley.

Walker was one of the co-founders of Nemo Arms, another Kalispell tactical rifle company. Nemo moved its operation to Idaho and Walker joined Falkor, then known as SI Defense, where he championed a rebranding effort.

The companys name changed in 2014, and its line of AR-platform rifles were completely redesigned. Falkor offers weapons in calibers ranging from 5.56 NATO  the traditional cartridge used in the AR-15  to much larger rounds like .300 Winchester Magnum. Falkor also developed the first semiautomatic rifle chambered in .300 Norma, a cartridge gaining popularity among military snipers.

Falkor doesnt advertise but utilizes social media heavily. Walker and the owners of Falkor, Melinda and Jason Sonju, have an extensive following on Instagram. The Montana outdoors feature prominently on their feeds, and Melinda is on her way to being only the third woman ever to complete a North American Super Slam  harvesting all 29 big game species on the continent.

Our test facility is the mountains of Montana, Jason Sonju said. "We dont have a fancy bench and test chamber. We go out to the woods."

Falkor frequently collaborates with nearby rifle and barrel maker PROOF Research. Walker said the Flathead Valleys companies tend to work together. Montanas gunmakers operate in a global market so they arent directly competing against each other.

We service a multibillion-dollar industry, and to get into a pissing match with someone because theyre right down the road is fruitless, he said.

Montana Rifle Co.

Montana Rifle Co., another Flathead Valley-based company, produces thousands of bolt-action hunting and tactical rifles every year. Ryan Zinke and Donald Trump Jr. have examples in their gun collections, and the Rifle Company, as many call it, is one of the largest gun manufacturers in the state by volume.

Montana Rifle Co. started operation in 1990. It was one of the first gun manufacturers in the Flathead Valley and until a few years ago operated a sister business machining AR-15 barrels. With peak production of about 600,000 barrels a year, the plant north of Kalispell was one of the largest suppliers of barrels in the world. In 2011 the barrel business was sold to Remington Arms and moved to Alabama.

Jeff Sipe, owner of Montana Rifle Co., said theres a growing trend of firearm businesses relocating to states perceived to represent the companys values.

If you live in New York City or Los Angeles, obviously theres a whole other feeling with firearms. Theyre scary and taboo. Obviously, in Montana theyre not, Sipe said.

As the company expands, Sipe said he is often solicited by public officials from other states offering incentives to uproot his business and move to places with more manufacturing infrastructure, like Texas.

My first response is you want Montana Rifle Company to move to another state? Im not changing my name. To me, our name represents what it means to be Montanan. I think thats more important to me, Sipe said.

Basing a gun company in Big Sky Country isnt without benefits. Sipe said people in the firearms business are drawn here by the outdoor opportunities and quality of life. Elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum also tend to support gun rights.

Its a big benefit having that type of political clout in Montana, which is probably why you see a lot of manufacturers popping up in the state, Sipe said. They know politicians are going to support them.

But he admits there arent many advantages from a business perspective to stay in Montana. The states geographic isolation adds to shipping costs and time for raw materials. Theres also a shortage of machinists, and Montana Rifle Co. has advertised job openings for the last year that remain unfilled. Sipe actively recruits both in Montana and out of state at technical colleges and job fairs.

Every component of the Montana Rifle Co. product is manufactured in-house in Kalispell, except wooden stocks. The plant employs just under 100 employees who machine barrel blanks for a variety of calibers, hand-fit actions and mold synthetic stocks.

Sipe said about 95 percent of the company's employees start at the factory with little to no experience and are trained in-house. Many people want to build guns for a living but quit when they realize the job is less romantic than expected. About 500 employees cycled through to get the current lineup on the production floor.

Noreen Firearms

Demand for machinists prompted multiple Montana technical colleges to offer vocational training in the field. Gallatin College Montana State University began offering a certificate of applied sciences in CNC machining in 2014, and Belgrade-based Noreen Firearms has tapped into its graduating classes to staff its growing operation.

Firearms machinists are next to impossible to come by," said Philip Noreen, president and general manager of Noreen Firearms. "We can go four to six months waiting for the right person.

Philips father, Pete Noreen, started the company in 2007 building long-range tactical guns including single-shot .50 caliber rifles and AR-platform weapons. In 2015 the business expanded production capacity five-fold and two years later is eyeing further expansion with three shifts currently running Monday through Saturday.

Pete Noreen said only about 2 percent of the companys sales are in Montana. The company works with national distributors, has contracts with the United States Department of Defense and has sold arms to foreign militaries.

According to Pete, his family business is one of about 20 firearm manufacturers in Montana that combine to produce more than 90 percent of all guns built in the state. Most of the federally licensed manufacturers are hobbyists.

Its not hard to get the license. Its very hard to have an idea or a plan to do something with that license, he said.
The following hospitals announced plans in the last week to expand, upgrade or renovate their facilities.

1. New Washington state psychiatric hospital to open next year amid surging demand for care: 4 things to know

Providence Health Care in Spokane, Wash., is teaming up with Kirkland, Wash.-based Fairfax Behavioral Health to build a 100-bed psychiatric hospital in Spokane by early next year, reports The Spokesman-Review.

2. Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital plans $46M wellness center

DeKalb, Ill.-based Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital is seeking state approval to build a $46 million health and fitness center in the next two years, WNIJ reports.

3. Kaiser opens 3 medical offices in Northern California

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente on Jan. 3 opened three new medical offices in Santa Cruz County, marking its first market expansion in Northern California in more than two decades, The Mercury News reports.

4. Silver Cross Hospital begins construction on new outpatient center

New Lenox, Ill.-based Silver Cross Hospital plans to build an outpatient surgical center on former farmland previously owned by a New Lenox school district, the Chicago Tribune reports.

5. Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo begins phased move to new medical campus

Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo (N.Y.) will embark on a phased approach for its move to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, beginning this month with the relocation of seven of its outpatient clinics to the newly completed Oishei Children's Outpatient Center.

6. Novant Health UVA Health System Prince William Medical Center to break ground on $38M renovation

Novant Health UVA Health System Prince William Medical Center in Manassas, Va., is hosting a groundbreaking ceremony Jan. 5 to mark its final phase of renovation, according to the Potomac Local.
Hospitals across the nation face a myriad of challenges, including reimbursement cuts and dwindling inpatient volumes. These issues have caused many hospitals to close in recent years.

Below are 21 hospital closures reported in 2016, beginning with the most recent. As of Jan. 1, all of the facilities listed below no longer provided inpatient care. However, some of them still offered outpatient care, imaging, emergency care or primary care.

1. Weimar (Texas) Medical Center abruptly closed Nov. 25. In December, the 38-bed hospital's administrator told The Colorado County Citizenthe hospital would reopen once it regained its financial footing.

2. Wharton, Texas-based Gulf Coast Medical Center closed in November. The financially troubled hospital had significantly scaled back services prior to its closure and was operating as a walk-in emergency center.

3. Nix Community General Hospital in Dilley, Texas, closed Oct. 11. Discharges at the 18-bed hospital were down 47.8 percent in 2015 compared to the year prior, according to American Hospital Directory.

4. Marks, Miss.-based Quitman County Hospital closed in late September. The critical access hospital previously discontinued emergency care services due to financial constraints.

5. Regency Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, closed Aug. 11. The closure affected roughly 152 employees.

6. Ascension Wisconsin, part of St. Louis-based Ascension, closed 30-bed Wheaton Franciscan-Midwest Spine and Orthopedic Hospital and Wisconsin Heart Hospital in Wauwatosa on July 8. Ascension said all services provided at the hospital will be moved to Wheaton Franciscan-Elmbrook Memorial Campus in Brookfield, Wis.

7. Magee, Miss.-based Pioneer Health Services closed Pioneer Community Hospital of Scott in Oneida, Tenn., on July 1. PHS acquired the Oneida hospital in 2013 after the facility's first closure.

8. North Georgia Medical Center in Ellijay closed June 6. The hospital faced financial troubles due to a significant decrease in patient volume and a large increase in charity and indigent care over the past few years.

9. Saddleback Memorial-San Clemente (Calif.) hospital closed May 30. The primary reason for the closure was dwindling patient volumes. On many days, there were less than 10 inpatients at the 73-bed hospital.

10. Epic Medial Center in Eufaula, Okla., ceased inpatient services May 24. The facility now operates as an urgent care center.

11. Dallas-based Forest Park Medical Center's campus in Fort Worth, Texas, closed May 24. Arlington-based Texas Health Resources purchased the hospital and reopened it in September under a new name: Texas Health Hospital Clearfork.

12. McNairy Regional Hospital in Selmer, Tenn., part of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Tennova Healthcare, closed May 18. The hospital's admissions had dropped nearly 70 percent between 2010 and 2015, and ER visits had also plummeted.

13. Colusa (Calif.) Regional Medical Center closed April 22. Hospital officials said they expected the 48-bed hospital's closure to affect about 200 workers.

14. St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia closed March 11. North Philadelphia Health System closed the 146-bed hospital as it consolidated operations to help improve its finances. North Philadelphia Health System filed for bankruptcy Dec. 30.

15. SoutheastHEALTH in Cape Girardeau, Mo., closed Southeast Health Center of Reynolds County and its related clinics March 11. Before it closed, fewer than two beds on average were filled at the hospital each day.

16. Williamsburg Regional Hospital, a critical access hospital in Kingstree, S.C., shut down in February after severe flooding in October 2015 rendered the majority of the hospital unusable. The facility later resumed some services, including outpatient and primary care. Williamsburg Regional is currently in partnership discussions with Columbia, S.C.-based Palmetto Health.

17. Sayre (Okla.) Memorial Hospital abruptly closed Feb. 1. Officials said the closure was due to a number of factors, including Oklahoma's decision not to expand Medicaid.

18. Cleveland Clinic's Lakewood (Ohio) Hospital closed Feb. 5. Cleveland Clinic will replace the facility with a new family health center and emergency department, which are slated to be completed in mid-2018.

19. Southern Palmetto Hospital, a 53-bed hospital in Barnwell, S.C., closed Jan. 21. Hospital officials said the hospital was closing due to a decline in patient volume and an increase in uncompensated care costs.

20. St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare closed 126-bed Parkland Health Center-Weber Road in Farmington, Mo., Jan. 19. Most clinical services were relocated to another Parkland Health hospital in Farmington.

21. St. Mary's Hospital in Streator, Ill., closed Jan. 4. The facility is now an urgent care center owned and operated by Peoria, Ill.-based OSF Healthcare System.

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On Dec. 3, Ireland's Maternal & Newborn Clinical Management System went live in Cork (Ireland) University Maternity Hospital.

Ireland's Health Service Executive has a contract with Cerner to deploy the MN-CMS in 19 maternity units throughout the country over three years.

"Cerner is proud to be partnered with the HSE in the creation of this new system, which has been designed and built with extensive Irish clinical input and [is] specific to the needs of Ireland's population and clinical community," said Cerner Ireland General Manager Matthew Pickett. "This first implementation in Cork is an exciting step toward a national digitized healthcare system."

With the implementation, numerous "digital" babies  newborns who have their own health record from birth  have been born all over the country. One of Ireland's first digital babies is Emily, who arrived at Cork University Maternity Hospital Dec. 3 and weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces.
During an economics conference in Houston in December, Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, MD, argued advances in technology are a major contributor to escalating U.S. healthcare spending, reports Houston Chronicle.

"In most industries, technology is the answer to cheaper and cheaper," Dr. Boom said. "Oil and gas, obviously, is a perfect example of that. In healthcare, because of the way things are priced, oftentimes technology actually drives costs."

Some advances in technology have produced superior health outcomes but at a great cost. Dr. Boom referenced how aortic valve replacement, which once required open-heart surgery, today is completed via a catheter inserted through a patient's groin.

"Shouldn't that decrease costs?" Dr. Boom said. "For a variety of reasons, the cost of the valve that goes in is actually higher-cost than what we were using before."

Technology has also increased long-term healthcare spending by extending human life expectancy.

"What's happened is that people don't die early of their heart attack, they don't die early of their cancer," Dr. Boom said. "And then they live into their 80s and their 90s, and they get chronic neurological diseases," which require significant resources to treat.

The article can be accessed in full here.
The following hospital and health system executive moves were reported by Becker's Hospital Review in the last week. They are listed below, beginning with the most recent.

1. San Antonio-based Christus Santa Rosa Health System announced the resignation of President and CEO Ken Haynes.

2. Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, Calif., named Michael Wall president and CEO.

3. Port Huron, Mich.-based Lake Huron Medical Center CEO Rebekah Smith, RN, will retire in spring 2017.

4. Allen Ericson, president of St. Joseph's Hospital in West Bend, Wis., will expand his responsibilities to include president of Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network's community hospital division management team.

5. Teri Lux, vice president of patient care services and CNO of Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin's community hospital division, will be promoted to president of Community Memorial Hospital and COO of the community hospital division.

6. Minneapolis and St. Paul-based Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota named Marc Gorelick, MD, president and COO, effective March 20, 2017.

7. Anna Monnett, RN, Dayton (Ohio) VA Medical Center's chief nurse executive, retired.

8. Mercy Health-Cincinnati appointed Kenneth James president of Clermont Hospital in Batavia, Ohio.

9. New London, Conn.-based Lawrence + Memorial Healthcare CEO Bruce Cummings announced plans to retire.

10. Boston-based Steward Health Care System selected Joseph Weinstein, MD, to serve as CMO.

11. Incoming Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System CEO Wright Lassiter, III, started his tenure at the helm of the organization.

12. Fayette Regional Health System in Connersville, Ind., named Alison Gates COO.

13. Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif., a Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare facility, appointed Tim Menton interim CEO.

14. Larry Dupper, CFO of Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, Colo., is leaving for Montrose (Colo.) Memorial Hospital.

15. Fond du Lac, Wis.-based Agnesian HealthCare appointed Katherine Vergos, BSN, RN, vice president and CNO at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac.

16. St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare named Richard Liekweg president.

17. Terre Haute, Ind.-based Union Health appointed Steven Holman president and CEO.

18. San Angelo, Texas-based Shannon Medical Center tapped Shane Plymell to serve as president and CEO.

19. Omaha, Neb.-based Methodist Health System announced President and CEO John Fraser will retire, effective Dec. 31, 2017.

20. Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital in Thermopolis, Wyo., named Margie Molitor, RN, permanent CEO.
The Trump-Pence transition team appointed Katy Talento, an infectious disease epidemiologist, to the White House policy team to advise on healthcare.

Ms. Talento served on President-elect Donald Trump's campaign since July 2016. She has 12 years of Senate experience, most recently working as the legislative director for Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. She also has significant public health experience. Before joining Sen. Tillis' office, Ms. Talento was the vice president of corporate affairs at MosquitoZone International, which protects workers from vector-borne diseases for companies that operate in tropical areas.

She earned a master's in infectious disease epidemiology from Boston-based Harvard School of Public Health, and served as a research instructor at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Talento has also penned articles for The Federalist on women's health issues, particularly birth control and abortion.

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In a meeting Thursday evening, more than 250 physicians from Summa Health System called for President and CEO Thomas Malone, MD, and other leaders to due to a controversial decision to change emergency room staff, the Akron Beacon Journal reports.

The Akron, Ohio-based health system brought in a new physician group to staff the ER on New Year's Day after the contract with Summa Emergency Associates expired. Physicians from US Acute Care Solutions, a national emergency medicine group, took over Jan. 1. Summa Health gave less than a week's notice about the change.

At the Thursday medical staff meeting, physicians voted to reinstate Summa Emergency Associates and voted "no confidence" in Dr. Malone and the health system leadership, according to the report. Some of the physicians present at the meeting signed a letter backing their vote to be delivered to the board of directors. The group also plans to send an online survey to all 1,100 physicians on Summa's medical staff, so those who were not present can vote, Dale Murphy, MD, former president of Summa's medical staff, told the Akron Beacon Journal.

However, not all physicians agreed with the vote, the report notes. Some physicians present supported Dr. Malone and felt the group of physicians against the staffing change was not acting in the best interest of patient care, according to the report.

Summa provided the Akron Beacon Journal with the following statement: "The board supported the need to bring in the new emergency medicine provider. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure quality patient care and solidification of a strong environment during this important transition."

During the meeting, an additional issue with the ER physician switch came up  a potential conflict of interest. The CEO of US Acute Care Solutions, Dominic Bagnoli, MD, is married to Vivian von Gruenigen, MD, Summa Health's CMO, according to the report.

The system said Dr. von Gruenigen was not involved in the decision to bring in USACS.

Read more about the story here.

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GREAT FALLS  A federal judge has scheduled a Feb. 6 trial for a man charged with kidnapping a 4-year-old girl from a park in Wolf Point and sexually assaulting her.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris held a brief competency hearing for John William Lieba II on Thursday, during which Lieba said he was fit to stand trial.

Morris had previously ordered a mental health exam for Lieba after his attorney said Lieba had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication and did not remember the events described in the indictment charging him with kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.

The girl was abducted on Feb. 26, 2016. Lieba was arrested before the girl was located on Feb. 28.
One hundred-year-old Walter Guralnick, MD, DMD, lives in an assisted living center and can no longer drive on his own. However, he still travels to Massachusetts General Hospital most days to continue his 65-year career at the Boston-based institution, reports The Boston Globe.

While Dr. Guralnick no longer treats patients, he spends his time working with residents in the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery.

Dr. Guralnick grew up in Boston and earned a doctorate in dental medicine from Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University in 1941. He married his wife, Betty, shortly before traveling to Europe to work in hospital units during World War II.

He is a prominent figure in the field of dental surgery, pioneering the concept of having oral surgeons achieve dual degrees in dentistry and medicine. Dr. Guralnick served as chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery at MGH from 1966 to 1983. He's also dedicated much of his career to bringing affordable dental care to the public through dental insurance and helped found what is now Delta Dental.

Dr. Guralnick says people always ask him why he hasn't retired and his answer is always the same:

"I haven't retired because my interests are the same now as they were 50 years ago," Dr. Guralnick told The Boston Globe. "I've always said that if you're gonna work, you should seek to find something that you enjoy doing, and hopefully at the same time you can do some good for people. Money is not the most important thing. I decry it."

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From a judge refusing to rescind an order requiring HHS to clear its backlog of Medicare appeals to 12 physicians and pharmacists being indicted in a $102 million kickback scheme, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. Cedars-Sinai sues HealthCare Partners over unpaid bills

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit Jan. 3 against HealthCare Partners, alleging the El Segundo, Calif.-based medical group owes the hospital more than $6 million.

2. Judge refuses to rescind order requiring HHS to clear Medicare appeals backlog

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg refused to set aside an order requiring HHS to clear its backlog of Medicare reimbursement appeals by the end of 2020.

3. City sues Palomar Health for 7 years of underpaid water bills

The city of Poway, Calif., is suing Escondido, Calif.-based Palomar Health for up to $800,000 it says the healthcare district owes for city water used by Pomerado Hospital between 2008 and 2015.

4. Aetna wins $41.4M suit against Texas hospital over billing scheme

A federal judge ruled Aetna may collect up to $41.4 million in restitution from Humble (Texas) Surgical Hospital, concluding the five-bed hospital violated federal anti-kickback laws.

5. Judge refuses Sanofi, Regeneron's request to overturn Amgen win in patent dispute

A federal judge on Jan. 3 refused to overturn a court verdict regarding a patent dispute between Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen, Paris-based Sanofi and Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

6. West Virginia reaches $3.5M settlement with drug wholesaler

Springfield, Ill.-based H.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Co. agreed to pay West Virginia $3.5 million to resolve allegations it failed to detect, report and prevent suspicious prescription drug orders.

7. 12 physicians, pharmacists indicted in $102M kickback scheme

Federal prosecutors indicted dozen physicians, pharmacy owners and marketers for allegedly defrauding Tricare, the federal health program for military families, in a $102 million kickback scheme.

8. Federal judge halts ACA's abortion-related, transgender protections

A federal judge in Texas issued a temporary injunction to stall the implementation of an Obama administration policy designed to extend anti-discrimination protections under the ACA to transgender health and abortion-related services.

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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit Jan. 3 against HealthCare Partners, alleging the El Segundo, Calif.-based medical group owes the hospital more than $6 million, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

In the complaint, Cedars-Sinai claims HealthCare Partners has relied on the hospital to provide lifesaving care to patients and then either paid nothing or only a small percentage of the amounts due.

"HealthCare Partners failed and refused to fully honor its obligation to pay," the complaint reads, according to the report.

A HealthCare Partners spokesman told the Los Angeles Business Journal the medical group denies the merits of the lawsuit.

HealthCare Partners is a subsidiary of Denver-based DaVita.

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Tim Lahey, MD, an associate professor at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine in Hanover, N.H., recently advocated for hospitals to provide addicted patients with areas to safely inject opioids in an op-ed for The New York Times.

Dr. Lahey opens his piece by describing an interaction with a patient who was placed on 24-hour watch  without access to visitors  after she was found injecting heroin in the bathroom. The patient was hospitalized for a heart-valve infection resulting from her drug abuse.

As the rates of opioid abuse across the nation continue to soar, hospitals are faced with the difficult task of treating patients addicted to opioids. This dynamic, Dr. Lahey argues, places an undue burden on the provider-patient relationship.

"Addicted patients usually bond with their providers over the shared goal of healing. Yet these interactions, which often bridge divides of class, culture and personal psychology, can break down," writes Dr. Lahey. "When addicted patients inject drugs in the hospital, doctors and nurses can find themselves cast in the role of disciplinarians, even jailers ... The worst effect of confining addicted patients in the hospital may be the damage to the patient-provider bond."

Dr. Lahey argues that while safe injection sites are typically designed to keep patients out of the hospital, the same principal of safe injection could benefit patients in the hospital as well. Rooms where addicts have access to clean needles have been instituted in hospitals in Vancouver, Canada, Paris and Berlin. Similar initiatives are being considered for places like Ithaca and Manhattan in New York State, according to Dr. Lahey.

"The creation of these rooms for hospitalized addicts won't be easy. There will be legal liability concerns, and hospitals must safeguard against the risk of overdose or unseemly behavior. It will be worthwhile to tackle these issues if it enables the provision of compassionate care for at-risk patients whose treatment would otherwise be endangered by conflict with providers," he writes.

To read Dr. Lahey's op-ed in the Times, click here.

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Tampa-based University of South Florida established a new medical engineering department, according to Tampa Bay Times.

Here are five key notes:

1. The partnership is between the College of Engineering and the Morsani College of Medicine.

2. Engineering graduate students in the department will work with physicians and medical residents in clinical settings.

3. Students will have the opportunity to visit Tampa General Hospital operating rooms with surgeons.

4. The school's physicians and engineers will head the department, with specializations in engineering, biomedicine and nanotechnology.

5. Industry professionals in drug delivery, orthopedics, cardiology, neurology and cancer will also teach the students.

6. At the conclusion of the course, students will write a thesis, with the prospect of publishing and pursuing a patent.
Three spine surgeons share their resolutions for the new year.

Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses.





Next week's question: What is the best professional decision you made in 2016?





Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, Jan. 11, at 5 p.m. CST.

Question: What is your new year's resolution with regard to your career?

William Taylor, MD. Director of Spine Surgery, Vice Chairman of the Division of Neurological Surgery at University of California, San Diego: My goal is to tackle endoscopic spine surgery and to identify procedures that work for me, as well as to incorporate them in my practice.

Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of The Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: I am resolving to seriously looking at my payer contracts. With regards to Medicare, a 2 percent ding this year for supposedly not meeting PQRS and possibly an 8 percent cut from MACRA, the extra income from the non-participating status might help. My second resolution is to do more outpatient spine, as I see my son growing up incredibly fast and being around for him as he starts kindergarten is more important than waiting three hours between cases at the hospitals.

Richard Kube, MD. Founder and CEO, Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): I plan to continue managing my practice and to look for new and innovative ways to care for my patients. Likewise, I will also continue building my non-medical businesses so that I am diversified beyond the field of medicine.
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Belfast International Airport says it is very close to securing a replacement direct flight to the US

Belfast International Airport says it is "very close" to securing a replacement direct flight to the US as passenger numbers reached record levels of 5.15 million for 2016.

According to the airport, the amount of people passing through the arrivals and departures halls increased by more than 17% last year.

However, the hub is losing Northern Ireland's only transatlantic service, to Newark, after United Airlines announced it was pulling the plug. Its last flight will be on Monday.

But airport boss Graham Keddie says it is "pursuing a number of positive leads" for a new service to America.

He said growth was driven by inbound visitors, as well as those from the Republic, and he was confident Aldergrove could increase passengers to 5.4 million this year.

A number of airlines operate from the International, including easyJet and Ryanair.

The Irish budget carrier returned to Belfast after a six-year hiatus.

"Our passenger numbers in 2016 were excellent. This year, we expect to set a new record of somewhere in the region of 5.4 million, which will surpass the last best performance in 2007 by about 100,000," Mr Keddie said.

"Even though we will shortly lose the United flight to the States, we will not be deflected from our growth curve. Of course, our airlines are instrumental in delivering the welcome boost with increased capacity and frequency and exciting new routes to Germany, Italy and Poland."

He said December's figures were "way beyond expectations", and the airport had enjoyed record months since September last year.

"United leaves a gap that we are working hard with the Government to fill and we are pursuing a number of positive leads.

"As a region, Northern Ireland has to have direct access to the US, which will underpin the inward investment drive. We have the prospect of reduced corporation tax to look forward to next year, but its impact could be blunted if we don't have direct, point-to-point access for potential inward investors to Northern Ireland.

"Canada, too, is an important business and tourism market and we have no doubt that Northern Ireland could sustain a Canadian service.

"We did so in the past and there are even stronger grounds for believing we could do the same again."

Meanwhile, George Best Belfast City Airport suffered a small drop in passengers in 2016.

Numbers fell by around 1.2% for the year, attributed to the loss of its link to London Gatwick in March. It had a total of 2.67m passengers during the course of 2016.

Katy Best, commercial and marketing director at George Best, said: "2016 was another very strong year for Belfast City Airport, in which we almost matched our record passenger numbers of 2015 despite losing more than 250,000 passengers through the cessation of our Gatwick route in March.

"This consistency has been secured through the introduction of new routes, such as Alicante, and through working with Flybe to ensure more passengers than ever before flew on its Belfast City Airport flights."

The announcement of the end of Northern Ireland's only transatlantic air route due to an EU block on bailout cash was blasted as an "international embarrassment".

United Airlines was due to receive a 9m subsidy, two-thirds of which was coming from the Executive, to retain the link.

Some, however, including the Green Party's NI leader Steven Agnew, criticised the decision to give cash to a multi-national airline as a "vanity project".
Property developer Padraig Drayne is planning to build an exclusive apartment development in the Dublin suburb of Malahide

Northern Ireland property developer Padraig Drayne is planning to build an exclusive multi-million euro apartment development in the well-heeled Dublin suburb of Malahide, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.

Mr Drayne's firm, Apamore Services, has applied to Fingal County Council for permission for a five-storey building that will include 23 apartments.

It's a relatively small-scale project for the developer, who joined forces with Belfast-born Paddy McKillen to build the Jervis Street shopping centre in Dublin over 20 years ago.

They bought a three-acre site in the city centre for just 6m in 1994 and then spent 76m (96m) developing the site.

In 2014, Mr McKillen and Mr Drayne refinanced 110m of their debts from Ulster Bank, with backing from Bank of Ireland.

The loans were owed by a company called Belfast Office Properties. Its assets included the Forge Shopping Centre in Glasgow, as well as the Ards Shopping Centre in Newtownards.

Mr Drayne has also been involved in other residential projects in Northern Ireland.

He also became embroiled in Paddy McKillen's lengthy legal battle against the billionaire Barclay brothers, in the fight to control the Maybourne hotel group.

The Maybourne group includes luxury properties, such as Claridge's, the Connaught and the Berkeley. It was bought for almost 900m in 2004 by a consortium led by financier Derek Quinlan.

Mr Drayne was one of the original investors in the deal, but he later sold his shares in the venture to Mr McKillen.

The Barclays later secured a share in the Maybourne holding company Coroin and tried to wrest control of the group from Mr McKillen.

Last year, the Qatari royal family acquired both Mr McKillen's and the Barclay brothers' stakes in Coroin and retained Mr McKillen as adviser.
Sometime in 2017 Gov. Doug Burgum will enjoy the comfort and convenience of living in the residence presently under construction in sight of the state Capitol. With an approximate $5 million pricetag and 17,700 square feet of space, it should have all the qualities necessary to serve many governors. State government is a big business, so the states legislators didnt begrudge the building of a stately home for the governor to host people and events that help grease the wheels. It wasnt always so.

With the stroke of his pen, just two days before leaving office on March 2, 1861, President James Buchanan created Dakota Territory as permitted by terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The ordinance gave Congress the right to appoint a governor, select a capital site, elect a representative to Congress, and establish a law-making assembly made up of an upper and lower house.

Yankton, an upstart town of about 300 residents in the extreme southeastern part of the territory, was designated capital, but no one had given any forethought to providing a mansion for the appointed governor, Dr. William Jayne. As he rode into the village the first time, he would have have seen cabins, shacks and sod houses built in disarray alongside muddy, rutted streets.

Jayne had no option but to locate his territitorial office in one of these humble buildings, use it as his living quarters, plus share it with his attorney general. Mundane chores such as emptying the slop bucket needed to be done, a chore that fell on the attorney general because, of course, the governor outranked him. Imagine Gov. Burgum sharing his living quarters with Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, whose duties include emptying their slop pail.

Times changed. Bismarck became the territorial capital and remained so as North Dakota achieved statehood in 1889. The first house set aside for a governors residence was purchased in 1893 and served 20 governors through John E. Davis, who also had the privilege of being the first to move into the current governors residence in 1960. Considered to be very splendid when built as a private residence in 1884, the first house cost the state treasury just $5,000 plus an additional $1,000 to furnish it.

After the mansion was vacated by Gov. Davis in 1960, it was used by the North Dakota Psychiatric Clinic until 1968, then housed the administrative offices of the state Health Department until 1975, at which time it was given to the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Today, a variety of programs take place there and, according to some, it is haunted by the ghost of Gov. Frank Briggs, who suffered from tuberculosis and died in the house in 1898. People who know about such things say areas of the house exhibit active paranormal activity because the door to the master bedroom opens and closes by itself, a closet door slams shut, curtains move without a breeze, and footsteps have been heard on the stairway. Ive attended two or three functions in the house and admit to having heard nothing out of the ordinary, although the butler for Gov. Burke refused to sleep there when alone.

In 1955, the North Dakota Legislature provided $200,000 for construction of a new governors residence. Construction was started in 1959, completed in 1960, and has served as a residence for nine governors: Davis, William Guy, Art Link, Allen Olson, George Sinner, Ed Schafer, John Hoeven, Jack Dalyrymple and Burgum. Now, after a relatively brief lifespan, it was been determined too costly to fix issues with security, handicapped access, a leak-prone flat roof and asbestos.

Its too bad those politicians during the territorial years in Yankton couldnt see this new residence. However, that rowdy bunch of frontiersmen who were usually in danger of running out of whiskey wouldnt appreciate such things as indoor plumbing and curtains draped on windows. Speaking of windows, one incident that took place clearly illustrates the lack of respect for a glass window.

A heated issue arose of whether or not the capital should remain in Yankton. The speaker of the House, George Pinney, reneged on a deal hed made with one faction where hed affirmed support of Yankton, then he sided with those wanting Vermillion. Anger grew to such a degree that the Yankton supporters tried to oust Pinney from office, and when failing to do so plotted to throw him from a window. Gov. Jayne saw the situation getting out of hand and brought in territorial militia. He realized Pinney was the problem and forced him to resign. Pinney should have stayed away from the saloon that day because shortly after he entered he was seen flying through a closed window. The disgruntled sergeant-at-arms didnt want Pinney drinking with him that day. A book, The Making of the Two Dakotas by Helen Graham Rezatto, gives a good picture of those early days.
Om Puri pictured at the gala screening of The Hundred Foot Journey in London in 2104, as his death was announced aged 66

Stars have paid tribute to Bollywood actor Om Puri, star of cult British film East Is East, who has died aged 66.

The prolific actor, whose career spanned four decades, suffered a heart attack after returning to his home in Mumbai from a film set on Thursday.

Leading the tributes were his former co-stars and others in the film industry.

Archie Panjabi, who played Puri's daughter in Bafta-winning East Is East, wrote on Twitter: "Devastated to hear of the sad loss of @OmRajeshPuri. He was a true gem. Rest in Peace."

Emmerdale actor Chris Bisson, who also starred in the film as one of his children, wrote: "Really sad that #OmPuri has passed away. A great man, a great talent, he taught me a lot.

"He was a guiding light whilst making #EastisEast."

East Is East and Downton Abbey star Lesley Nicol wrote: "So very sad to hear that the talented and beautiful actor Om Puri has passed away - much love to you dear soul - East is East family."

Kunal Nayyar, best known for starring in US sitcom The Big Bang Theory, wrote a message to Puri.

He said: "Dear Om Puri, the truth you brought to everything you did, will never be matched ... your body may be gone, but your spirit will remain forever."

Priyanka Chopra, who appeared with Puri in 2006 Hindi film Don, shared a picture of the two of them together on her Instagram page.

She wrote that his death marks "the end of an era" and that his "legacy lives on".

Sri Lankan actress Jacqueline Fernandez praised Puri in a tweet that read: "We lost a legend today. Your contribution to Indian cinema won't be forgotten #OmPuri."

Bollywood star Sidharth Malhotra said: "Really sad to hear #Ompuri sir is no more, a genius performer! My thoughts and prayers are with his family."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of the first to share a tribute to Puri.

A message from Modi's office tweeted: "The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films."

Puri's death was announced by Bollywood director Ashoke Pandit on Friday, who tweeted that he was "sad and shocked".

Puri had won a slew of national awards and international fame for his work in several critically acclaimed films during his prestigious career.

His breakthrough film was the 1983 gritty drama Ardh Satya or Half Truth, about a young policeman's crisis of conscience as he deals with the nexus of crime and politics in India.

Puri had a small role in Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, based on the life of the Indian freedom leader Mohandas Gandhi.

He also acted in several Hollywood films, including City Of Joy, Wolf and Charlie Wilson's War.

Puri won plaudits for his portrayal of a tough but loving Pakistani patriarch in the 1999 comedy drama East Is East, for which he was nominated for a best actor Bafta.

He later reprised his role as George Khan in the 2010 sequel West Is West.

He went on to appear in the critically acclaimed television adaptation of White Teeth in 2002.

Puri was made an honorary officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to British cinema in 2004.

More recently he starred alongside Dame Helen Mirren in the 2014 comedy The Hundred-Foot Journey.

He will be cremated later on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

Actor Jimi Mistry, who worked with Puri in East Is East, called the late star an "inspiration".

"Very sad news about Om Puri, the first great actor I ever worked with and a true inspiration and great man..thoughts go out to his family x," he wrote on Twitter.

Dame Helen Mirren paid tribute to the "unforgettable" Puri.

She said: "I worked with Om only once on the film A Hundred-Foot Journey, however, once met, he was unforgettable.

"Om Puri was such a great, expansive, life force of a man, he instantly became a great friend. He was a generous, life loving man. He loved to act, he loved to feed people, and above all he loved his country and its culture.

"My profession will miss an original, and India will miss a great representative."
Actress Viola Davis appears at a ceremony honouring her with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (AP)

Fences actress Viola Davis remembered her late father as she was honoured with the first star of 2017 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Davis, 51, received the 2,596th star at the ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard which also saw her close friend and Hollywood A-lister Meryl Streep honour her.

Accepting her star, a tearful Davis said: "The truth is I was going to treat like this any other day. I wasn't going to cry or anything.

"The only thing I can think about is my dad, I wish he were here. He died in 2006 and he would think this was pretty fantastic."

The How To Get Away With Murder actress was joined at the ceremony by her husband, actor and producer Julius Tennon, as well as their young daughter Genesis and a host of her How To Get Away With Murder and Fences co-stars.

Davis, who grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is currently starring alongside Denzel Washington in Fences, a role which has earned her a Golden Globe nomination in Sunday's upcoming ceremony.

She reminisced about her childhood and referenced a photograph of herself as a young child, saying: "Every time I look at that little girl, I thought, 'That's a cute outfit but she was always hungry, always shy'.

"'She was always in the background but inside she had big dreams bursting and the only thing I can think about is that saying: 'What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly'."

Fighting back tears, she said she could not "believe my life right now", adding: "It's like my life flashing before my eyes and all I can say is God has blessed my life with abundance."

She ended her speech by thanking her fans and colleagues and joked that ahead of awards season which is all about "being the best and putting on tight spanx", it was "great to take time out to just really be with people you love and to embrace your work... my life is good."

Streep, 67, jokingly described Davis as "possessed", saying: "She's possessed with a blazing, incandescent talent. She is arguably the most immediate, responsive artist I have ever worked with. She is so alive, she glistens."

The pair starred together in 2008's Doubt and Davis's role as Mrs Miller earned her a number of nominations, among them a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

Hailing Davis as a "force of nature", she said: "She'd be completely terrifying if her laugh and heart were not as big and deep as her power."

An emotional Streep ended by saying that there was one thing Davis could not do.

"The thing Viola can't do is be invisible - she just can't do it. She can't fade away... she can't be forgettable. Viola is a sure thing and her star has been waiting patiently (here) for 50 years," she said.

Davis will soon start work on her next film project, the thriller Widows, which is based on the UK TV series of the same name and will be directed by Briton Steve McQueen.
Arlene Foster appears to have hit back at her critics in a light-hearted Facebook post.

The First Minister has faced a barrage of criticism and calls to step aside over her handling of the Renewable Heating Incentive. On Thursday Finance Minister Mairtin O'Muilleoir said there could be no Executive as long as Arlene Foster remained in place for any investigation into the scandal.

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Sammy Wilson, however, dismissed it as grandstanding saying the two main parties were close to a deal.

However, on Friday morning the DUP leader appeared to be taking it in her stride.

On her Facebook page a picture was posted of a cuddly little guinea pig wearing heart-shaped pink glasses with the oft repeated phrase: "Can't see all the haters when I got my love glasses on."

The meme is often used on social media by high-profile users to dismiss criticism.

Within moments it was 'liked' by more than 100 people including South Belfast MLA Christopher Stalford and former Mid Ulster MLA Ian McCrea.

"Stay strong Arlene," another friend posted in response.

More:
More than 30 pups were intercepted travelling illegally from Northern Ireland to Britain in a major pre-Christmas operation against the trade.

The joint exercise was mounted at Larne and Belfast ports following concerns about illegal movements of commercial consignments of dogs.

It focused on the welfare of animals during transport, the identification of animals and the licensing and registration of dog breeding establishments.

In the case of dogs moving from the Republic of Ireland, checks were also made on compliance with the Pet Travel Scheme and relevant trade requirements.

The initiative between the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Mid and East Antrim Borough Council and Belfast City Council resulted in more than 30 young dogs being intercepted.

Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen warned the illegal movement of dogs through Northern Ireland's ports will not be tolerated.

Ms McIlveen said: "The very productive joint working initiative between council animal welfare officers and my department's portal inspectors at Belfast and Larne ports over the past two weeks resulted in several hundred vehicles being checked and over 30 pups being either prevented from travelling or surrendered at the ports.

"This sends out a clear message that enforcement bodies will take whatever action necessary to ensure that the welfare of animals is protected, that illegal movement will not be tolerated and that legislative requirements are met."

The operation involved joint working between council animal welfare officers and inspectors from DAERA.

Checks were enhanced from early December in Belfast Port, where approximately 460 cars and 106 commercial vehicles were inspected.

In Larne Harbour 145 cars and 49 vans were inspected for animals.
A bitter impasse over Arlene Foster's refusal to stand down as Stormont First Minister has prevented agreement on proposals for an independent investigation into her role in a botched green energy scheme.

While Democratic Unionist leader Mrs Foster has voiced support for a judge-led probe outlined by her Sinn Fein partners in government, she again emphatically rejected the republican party's prerequisite that she temporarily step aside to facilitate it.

Mrs Foster, who continues to face down a barrage of calls to leave the stage, presided over the development of the error-ridden scheme during her time as economy minister.

Flaws in the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) have left the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition administration facing a 490 million bill.

While her statement on Friday evening adopted a somewhat more conciliatory tone in comparison to recent vexed exchanges with Sinn Fein over the scandal, the First Minister made clear she will not give ground on what is one of their key demands.

Mrs Foster accused political opponents of wanting to be her "judge, jury and executioner".

In response, Sinn Fein reiterated their stance that consensus on a probe would not be reached unless she stood aside.

"It is clear there are many in the political class who do not believe in due process or natural justice," said the DUP leader.

"They just want me to go regardless of the fact that there is not a scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing against me. I don't roll over to my political opponents.

"I believe in getting to the truth. I believe in due process for everyone and that everyone is equal before the law and equally subject to the law. That has always been the cornerstone of who I am and will be so despite the hysteria."

Sinn Fein Assembly member Caral Ni Chuilin said the DUP had not officially notified the party of its stance on the proposals.

She added: "Sinn Fein has also made it clear that Arlene Foster needs to stand aside pending a preliminary report from the independent investigation which must have the powers to compel witnesses and evidence."

Earlier, the DUP leader posted a meme on Facebook of a guinea pig wearing a pair of pink love heart-shaped glasses below the phrase: "Can't see all the haters when I've got my love glasses on."

She has claimed many of the calls for her to quit are motivated by misogyny.

The state-funded RHI was supposed to offer a proportion of the cost businesses had to pay to run eco-friendly boilers, but the subsidy tariffs were set too high, and without a cap, it ended up paying out significantly more than the price of fuel.

This enabled applicants to "burn to earn" - getting free heat and making a profit as they did it.

Claims of widespread abuse include a farmer allegedly set to pocket around 1 million in the next two decades for heating an empty shed.

On Friday morning, Sinn Fein Health Minister, Michelle O'Neill, said the key element of their proposals is the need to be able to compel witnesses and subpoena documents.

"If Arlene Foster wants to do the right thing, the right thing to do is to stand aside," she said.

The scandal has erupted at a time when Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has been experiencing health problems.

Mrs O'Neill said her party colleague remained at the core of the party's response to the RHI affair.

The lack of consensus over the form of an investigation comes amid similar disagreement on DUP proposals to reduce the overspend. The DUP has claimed its proposals could wipe out the bill, but Sinn Fein have rubbished them.

Senior members of Sinn Fein have warned they will exercise their power to collapse the Executive if Mrs Foster does not temporarily stand down to facilitate an RHI probe.

If the republican party follows through with that threat, Northern Ireland will be facing a snap Assembly election, less than a year after the last one.

Earlier, Stormont's independent justice minister accused Northern Ireland's political leaders of letting her down over their handling of the furore.

Claire Sugden said she favoured an independent probe, but did not support calls for Mrs Foster to step down.

Ms Sugden also ruled out quitting her pivotal job - a move that would likely force the collapse of the DUP/Sinn Fein-led coalition.

The power-sharing executive cannot function without a justice minister and Ms Sugden was the only Assembly member both DUP leader Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness could agree on in the wake of last year's election.

"Martin and Arlene have both let me down," she said.

The East Londonderry MLA said: "Arlene and Martin might have reneged on their responsibilities to actually do a job for the people of Northern Ireland, but I am not going to do that because I do have integrity and I will keep doing it until I can't."

The justice minister had not commented publicly on the RHI scandal for more than two weeks - prompting criticism from political rivals.

Breaking her recent silence, Ms Sugden said her job had become increasingly difficult.

But she said she would not resign because she still felt she could help change people's lives for the better in her role. She also stressed that her quitting would send the Executive down a "path of no return".

In an interview with BBC Radio Ulster, the minister said: "I think with this particular issue there is a lot of political posturing going on.

"Regrettably, the two main parties are reverting to party politics and they are feathering their own nests in that respect - they are keeping their own constituents right."

Ms Sugden said she did not believe calls for Mrs Foster to stand aside were fair.

"Anyone forcing her to step aside is actually punishing her for something that hasn't been substantiated," she said.

It was originally envisaged that the Treasury would foot the bill for the RHI, but the costs spiralled well beyond London's financial commitment.

The total RHI spend in Northern Ireland is estimated at 1,150 million over the next 20 years.

The Treasury is set to cover 660 million of that, with Stormont landed with the remaining 490 million.

In another development set to further challenge the fraying relations between Stormont's two main parties, Sinn Fein announced it was lodging a motion of no confidence in the Assembly's DUP speaker.

Robin Newton has been under political pressure over his handling of a recalled Assembly session to debate RHI before Christmas.

He has also been forced to defend himself against conflict of interest accusations in regard to his handling of Assembly exchanges on a controversial charity in his east Belfast constituency.

Sinn Fein's Declan Kearney said: "He is now part of the problem and an integral part of the unfolding crisis and he should resign immediately."
Arlene Foster has said Sinn Fein's proposals for how an investigation into the botched Renewable Heating Incentive should be conducted provide a basis to move forward but reiterated that she will not be stepping aside as First Minister.

Earlier when the DUP leader was asked if she would accept the SF proposals, she responded "no," to the BBC during a school visit.

However later on Friday the First Minister said in a statement: "We support the establishment of an independent investigation. However, with the exception of the issue of stepping aside, we believe that the proposals provided to us by Sinn Fein on Thursday and published by them today provide a basis for taking an investigation forward.

"Officials have raised a number of technical issues in relation to the proposals, however there do not appear to us to be any insuperable obstacles to agreement being reached.

"Other parties have suggested that rather than the Attorney General appointing a judicial figure that this appointment function be undertaken by the Lord Chief Justice. We would be equally comfortable with this proposal."

It was originally envisaged that the Treasury would foot the bill for the RHI scheme, but the costs spiralled well beyond London's financial commitment. The total RHI spend in Northern Ireland is estimated to be more than 1 billion over the next 20 years.

The Treasury is set to cover 660 million of that, with Stormont landed with the remaining 490 million.

Mrs Foster said there is "not scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing against me".

"It is clear there are many in the political class who do not believe in due process or natural justice. They just want me to go regardless of the fact that there is not a scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing against me. I don't roll over to my political opponents.

"I believe in getting to the truth. I believe in due process for everyone and that everyone is equal before the law and equally subject to the law. That has always been the cornerstone of who I am and will be so despite the hysteria.

"Sadly and very regrettably the current political situation has diverted attention from the many significant issues before us. I remain focused on the stability of Northern Ireland despite the present situation. I am focused on finding solutions and as I always have been I am focused on building the future of this country."

Sinn Fein published its plan for an investigation which would have required the First Minister to step aside for four weeks to allow for a preliminary report into the scandal.

Michelle O'Neill, chief whip Caral Ni Chuilin and MLA Gerry Kelly presented the Sinn Fein plan to the media on Friday morning. They said the inquiry should be fronted by a judicial figure and witnesses should be compelled to attend.

There can be no ministerial influence in the investigation, they said.

And a full-blown public inquiry was not the route to go down as any investigation had to be "time-bound" and "cost effective," they said.

Martin McGuinness, they added, was working at the heart of the issue to break the deadlock, despite his recent health issues.

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Some of the sessions of the inquiry, the politicians said, could be held in public but Arlene Foster would have to step aside as First Minister for four weeks until a preliminary report was published with the full report coming in three months.

Under the proposals, the attorney general would appoint a judge who would then go on to appoint an expert panel.

"The public must be satisfied any investigation would be transparent and robust," Michelle O'Neill added.

She stressed that it was vital witnesses were made to attend hearings.
Citywide Tribunal Services existing funding expired on 31 December but will now get an additional 54,000

Belfast City Council has agreed to provide urgent funding of 54,000 for an advice service that is believed to have helped thousands of people keep their benefits.

The Citywide Tribunal Services existing funding expired on 31 December.

However, on Friday morning the councils Strategic Policy and Resources Committee unanimously agreed to make 54,000 available to the organisation to fund it until 31 March 2017.

Councillor John Hussey, Chair of the Committee, said: "There was a unanimous desire by all members to extend the current funding arrangement, in light of the invaluable work which the service carries out across the city."

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.
The grieving father of a murder victim who was brutally beaten with iron bars before being blasted in the legs with a shotgun has appealed for the killers to give themselves up, saying: "I just hope they have a conscience."

Retired tobacco factory worker Ronnie McIlhagga was speaking at his home near Ballymena, just minutes after making an emotional visit to his son Brian's grave at the town's Cushendall Road cemetery.

Brian McIlhagga (42), a father-of-five, was murdered on Monday, January 5, 2015. His father was speaking after police made a renewed public appeal on the second anniversary of the killing.

Brian McIlhagga, who was separated, lived with Ronnie and mum Jennifer and in early 2015 had made the 25-mile trip to Ballymoney to visit a friend, mum-of-four Ashley Craig, as he had done over previous months.

At least three masked men broke into Ms Craig's house at Riverview Park around 10.30pm and after assaulting her in the kitchen they dragged Mr McIlhagga through the house and beat him with iron bars before shooting him in the legs.

Tragically, he died at the scene.

Young children were in the house at the time, and the brutality of the attack shocked detectives probing the case.

Ronnie McIlhagga (67) said: "The people who did it, personally there is no point in standing here calling them names, because it is not going to change anything. I just hope they have a conscience. What they did to Brian you couldn't do to a dog."

He told of his disappointment that despite 12 people being arrested there have been no convictions. He said: "As far as I am concerned there are people who know about it. Maybe there is a fear factor involved, but I would have thought if something was going to happen people would have spoken up by now.

"There are people who know, this wasn't just three or four men that did the deed. There are people in the background, got rid of clothes, footwear, or whatever.

"There must have been a personal reason or something behind it all, I don't know. I can't give you a reason. It is an emotional day for us especially. It would be nice to get closure. I was telling a neighbour I would love to sit in a courtroom and look at those who did this, into their faces."

Mr McIlhagga said family and friends had gathered at his son's grave on the second anniversary of the murder.

"I am just back from his grave. His mates have left tributes to him regarding Liverpool and Ballymena United and there are floral tributes. I met a girl there today I didn't even know. She was there deliberately to visit his grave and said they were pals since they were 16 and they were always very close.

"He was well-known. He was a character in his own right. He was a plasterer and worked in Dublin for a long time and then he came back home again."

Mr McIlhagga revealed he had not been able to say goodbye to his son the day he died because Brian was in such a rush. He revealed: "I would regret it, but that was the way it was and nothing is going to change it now."

Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives at Maydown on 101 or, if you do not wish to provide your details, use the anonymous Crimestoppers line on 0800 555 111.
Fore service group commander Victor Spence said people were not fully aware of the dangers of the odourless and invisible gas

The fire service is receiving more calls about potentially deadly carbon monoxide in Northern Ireland, a senior officer warned.

Group commander Victor Spence said people were not fully aware of the dangers of the odourless and invisible gas.

An inquest into the death of William Stockdale, 60, from carbon monoxide poisoning in Newcastle in April last year heard he had no alarms fitted and an engineer had advised him not to use the oil boiler in his house in the days before his death. He recently suffered a heart attack and coronary disease contributed to his death, a pathologist said.

Mr Stockdale had earlier that month been admitted to Daisy Hill Hospital and inflammatory markers were picked up in his blood, his family said, but he was eager to go home and was discharged.

He was taken ill in the living room of his Castlewellan Road home and was unable to speak properly. While a paramedic was treating him he collapsed and could not be revived.

The medical technician, Paul Kennedy, was later also taken ill and Mr Stockdale's family told the inquest in Downpatrick there was a "sooty" smell in the house.

Coroner Paddy McGurgan quizzed the fire service about the dangers posed by the toxic gas, which depletes the oxygen available to the organs.

Mr Spence said: "We are attending more on a regular basis now. We would recommend people fit carbon monoxide detectors."

At present alarms are obligatory in new houses but not existing ones.

Mr Spence added: "I would like to see that change, yes, to make it compulsory... people are not fully aware of the dangers."

John Vaughan, who investigated for the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland (HSENI), said there had been an increase in the reporting of carbon monoxide incidents because carbon monoxide detectors were being used more.

He said homeowners were seeking air-tight homes but "a s they become more air tight, the chance of carbon monoxide build-up is greater".

He said unless they requested a building control check for a replacement boiler, there was nothing retrospective to force homeowners to install alarms.

Mr Vaughan said there was not enough awareness of maintenance of the alarms and questioned the value of cheaper versions.

"There probably needs to be tighter control on the sale of items as well," he said.

The inquest was told a bird had probably nested in the flue and blocked it, causing the gas to leak from joins in the pipe into the house.

Martin McCourt, an engineer who checked the boiler just before Mr Stockdale died, said he smelled smoke and advised him to have his chimney swept.

He disconnected the boiler and said he told Mr Stockdale not to use it while he arranged to come the following week to replace it.

But he did not put labels on the old unit warning it was dangerous or issue paperwork formally telling Mr Stockdale of the danger. He had been his friend for many years and trusted him to follow his advice.

After examining the unit and removing baffle plates, they hammered one straight and put it back into the boiler.

A fireman said he felt heat from part of the installation after the death, suggesting it had been used. But Mr McCourt insisted Mr Stockdale had not turned the heating on.

The victim was checked at the emergency department at Daisy Hill in the days before he died. Doctor Cailin O'Reilly said a test for the presence of carbon monoxide in his blood showed elevated levels.

But he was not displaying any symptoms and she suspected another heart attack or a complication from his recent cardiac surgery rather than carbon monoxide poisoning. New systems have been put in place since the death to flag up high levels to medics.

Dr O'Reilly said: "Looking back now of course, knowing that the cause of death of carbon monoxide poisoning, the only change that I would have done is to question the family would there be a possible source of carbon monoxide, but in accident and emergency Mr Stockdale remained stable and was discharged."
From what I can tell, not only was our recent presidential election hacked but, more importantly, the 65th North Dakota Legislature convened this week, thus we the people need to pay attention because nothing in government seems to be safe anymore. And, by the way, I am not the first citizen to warn my fellow citizens about the fact that nothing is safe while the Legislature is in town especially when theres more money going out than coming in.

Both my loyal readers may recall that the last session was one of the more financially flush legislative sessions in memory. In a way it was like watching kids in a candy shop because there was more money than stuff to spend it on so very few programs were left unfunded. And for the record, I do have to give the Republican majoritys members kudos here because they did kind of hide enough money in shallow unmarked graves around the state to only be dug up if needed, and wouldnt you know, they need it now.

First off, the last session did a good job of one-time infrastructure funding in order to keep up with the oil boom. Secondly, they did a nice job of holding our taxes down for now, and third they left town and we all survived. However, one area they studied, behavioral health, was found to be in crisis and not much was done about that and it shows.

For instance, we have now spent more of our tax dollars on prisons and its gotten to the point that corrections officials have asked judges to slow up sending people to prison because there isnt room for more prisoners. As well, many counties, like Morton and Burleigh, have raised sales tax to build huge new county jails that are overflowing. Williams County recently finished a 200-plus bed jail and from there Ive lost track but am willing to bet that in the past few years our leaders have built more jails than roads  and the problem is that those folks who have put themselves in jail dont do very well once they get out because there arent enough community services to help them fit back into society.

The same is true for folks suffering from behavioral health issues (behavioral health is the new term for mental health), as suicides have increased, opioid addictions surface, human trafficking is exposed, domestic violence increases and kids are left in the trail of debris that goes along with dysfunctional families, and the system for caring for all these issues is either overtaxed or nonexistent.

The Legislature has been studying these issues for quite a while and theres no question that the results indicate that North Dakota has some real problems here. They knew this stuff was going on last session and instead of addressing it they decided to spend another interim studying the problems. The result of these studies is quite similar to the discoveries and solutions that were offered last time  now the question is, will anything of substance be done about this system in crisis?

Either of my loyal readers might recall that I volunteer for a few nonprofits that serve troubled kids and families. Ill spare the details and cut to the chase here by saying that all the stories of underserved kids and families and such are true. Something needs to be done and its my hope that this time our legislative leaders will actually do something besides study the issues because there really are people out there who need some help with their lives and we the people need to take better care of those who are struggling to take care of themselves.

So Im going to spend some time wandering the lobby of our Capitol during this legislative session in hopes that something will be done  full report to follow.
Relatives of Kingsmills victims lay wreaths at the memorial service to mark the 41st anniversary of the massacre

Families of the Kingsmills Massacre victims are considering legal action against the Irish Government for failing to hand over files on the IRA atrocity.

Yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the attack, and relatives held a service at the south Armagh scene where 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny had promised to disclose information about the 1976 attack.

But Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth died in the attack, said: "Nearly two years later, they haven't. To make things worse, the police investigation doesn't seem to have the vigour it did, either. We have no confidence with the police at all."
A former DUP MLA who broke ranks and criticised Arlene Foster has said he is "unlikely" to remain in the party.

David McIlveen accused his party's leadership of not knowing the difference between humility and humiliation and of avoiding issues he raised over the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal. He said his criticism of Mrs Foster was nothing personal.

In yesterday's News Letter, the ex-Assemblyman said party members consider Mrs Foster "deeply damaged" and an "electoral liability" in the wake of the RHI fiasco. He said to centre an election campaign around the First Minister - as the party did at the last campaign - would now be impossible and she would be "unlikely" to lead the party into the next election.

In reply, East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson said Mr McIlveen was "sore" over his downfall at the ballot box and there was no evidence of disquiet in party ranks.

Mr McIlveen accused the DUP MP of not tackling the issues raised by him in the article.

He told the Belfast Telegraph: "I have a lot of respect for Sammy and can assure him that none of my opinions were designed to cause any offence.

"That said, how he responded is unfortunately symptomatic of the very issue I was trying to raise - by attacking me personally rather than facing up to the issues of public anger that are clearly out there at present shows a detachment from reality.

"Unfortunately the DUP leadership seem to be confused around the difference between humility and humiliation. The public have no desire to see our politicians reduced to the latter, but the former would go a long way to restoring faith in the way our politicians are viewed."

Mr McIlveen, who was MLA for North Antrim from 2011 to 2016, said it was "unlikely" he would remain in the party, when asked about his future. His father is Rev David McIlveen, a former Free Presbyterian minister and friend of the late Ian Paisley. He declined to comment yesterday.

In a statement he DUP said: "Former MLA David McIlveen is entitled to his personal opinions. However, this is the first time that he has articulated any view since losing his seat. The overwhelming support Arlene Foster has received from within the party and beyond, including messages from others right across Northern Ireland has been hugely heartening."
A home help has been jailed for the despicable theft of 3,000 from a vulnerable 81-year-old woman.

District Judge Peter King told Ballymena Magistrates Court he wanted to send out a strong message that the courts will protect the elderly from carers who breach trust.

Robyn Barr, who had a previously clear record, was jailed for four months yesterday.

The 21-year-old, of Arran Avenue, Ballymena, was sacked from her job and had previously admitted a charge of fraud by false representation.

The charge stated that on July 8, last year, Barr dishonestly claimed she had permission from the woman to present a cheque withdrawing 3,000 with the intention of making a gain for herself and cause a loss to the woman.

The judge said if Barr had not pleaded guilty or paid the money back she could have been jailed for up to eight months despite her having no previous convictions.

Barr was released on her own bail of 750 ahead of appealing her sentence.

A prosecutor said the victim lived on her own and Barr was her home help.

When the theft came to light she told police it wasnt planned but was a spur of the moment offence, the court was told.

Defence barrister Aaron Thompson said it was a breach of trust and a guileless but sneaky and nasty offence and he said she was always going to be detected.

He said Barr had only been a carer for two months and visited over 20 homes a day to help dress and bathe the elderly.

Mr Thompson said Barr had lived with her grandparents and was a carer for her granny who died and was buried on the defendants 20th birthday.

The barrister said that had got Barr interested in caring for the elderly and she later began her home help job. He said Barr was given her grandmothers house in a will and when it was redecorated and re-furnished the defendant was left with a 20,000 debt and was in rates arrears.

He said Barr had behaved in an abhorrent way but had got a loan from an aunt to pay back the money she had stolen from the victim.

Judge King said that as far as such fraud cases go it was hard to imagine a more despicable set of facts coming before the courts.

He said Barr noticed where her victim kept her chequebook and then made a cheque out; forged the signature and removed the stub.

Judge King said he had to mark his displeasure and send out a clear message that vulnerable elderly people deserve protection from the courts.

He said such fraud cases are extremely rare but added home helps had to resist the temptation of crime as the alternative was prison.
The DUP has said it is confident that Sinn Fein will support its proposals to claw back the 490m overspend in the 'cash for ash' scandal - and that the collapse of the Executive and a snap election will be avoided.

After another day of political drama, Sammy Wilson accused Mairtin O Muilleoir of "grandstanding" after the Sinn Fein Finance Minister dismissed the DUP's plan, insisting that if Arlene Foster didn't temporarily step aside the Executive would fall.

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The DUP MP told the Belfast Telegraph: "Mairtin O Muilleoir's ego is hurt because he wasn't personally involved in drawing up the emergency proposals.

"But I've every confidence that he will settle down and that Sinn Fein will support our plan when the Executive meets next week.

"I don't for a second believe that Sinn Fein wants to collapse the political institutions. They are looking for an exit, and the way out for them is to endorse our proposals."

Mr Wilson stated that an Assembly election "isn't the answer".

He said: "An election will solve nothing. The DUP is bringing a credible plan to the table to resolve the RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive) issue.

"The recent shouting match between ourselves and Sinn Fein is just a blip. We will both get over it. We have a great record of working together since our administration was formed last May.

"We both want that to continue. We can't be handing over power to that other bunch who call themselves the Opposition.

"The Conservative and Liberal Democrats said a lot worse to each other in Westminster than we have - and they continued as coalition partners for five years."

Mr Wilson said that under the proposals drawn up by Economy Minister Simon Hamilton, the rate of pay to RHI beneficiaries would be reduced.

"The plan is to change payments for those who applied to the scheme between 2011 and November 2015 from the high rate they have been receiving to the current reduced rate.

"That will stop all excessive payments and prevent abuse of the system, while also offering a reasonable rate of return to the many genuine investors," he said.

The SDLP, Alliance and TUV are deeply sceptical of the viability of the proposals that the DUP claims will reduce the nearly 500m overspend to zero.

Those parties believe that implementing the plan would involve a breach of contract, which RHI beneficiaries could overturn in the courts.

However, Mr Wilson insisted that the proposals were "as litigation proof as possible".

"The courts will uphold a Government changing the law if it's in the public interest and if the change isn't disproportionate," he added. Earlier Mr O Muilleoir dismissed the DUP's plan as "nothing but a sticking plaster" to save Mrs Foster's political career after what were meant to be "clear the air" talks.

The Finance Minister told the BBC: "I left the meeting without a plan and I'm told that when this plan arrives, despite all the hype in the media, it (won't) be a comprehensive plan to close down RHI, it's going to be an interim solution. This isn't the time for sticking plasters."

He repeated his party's demand that Mrs Foster temporarily step aside to facilitate an investigation.

"Be clear on this - if Arlene Foster doesn't step aside, there will not be an Executive," he warned. However, Mr Wilson dismissed Mr O Muilleoir's apparently uncompromising stance as political posturing.

"Mairtin is point-scoring," he said. "His ego is hurt because the plan was devised by officials from the Department of the Economy and his own department, but he wasn't personally involved.

"He shouldn't have expected to be involved in the nitty-gritty, he can make his decision at the end of the process.

"Mairtin's over-inflated ego may be damaged but, in the cold light of day, I believe he will accept our simple and effective plan to address the RHI issue."

Mr Wilson added: "The Finance Minister must decide if he is more interested in his ego, in being the big man in the big picture, or saving public money.

"I believe that the Executive will look at our plan maturely, and that all the jumping up and down from Sinn Fein will end next week. Accepting a proposal to help the public purse should override any desire to keep Arlene on the spit." Meanwhile, Alliance has asked whether the DUP "are being utterly foolish or merely treating the public as such" after yesterday's DUP-Sinn Fein meeting failed to reveal a substantive RHI plan.

Party leader Naomi Long said the DUP had originally pledged to present its plan a fortnight ago but that Mr O Muilleoir was now saying he would see only interim proposals next week.

"This whole episode has descended from a fiasco into utter farce," she said.

"We have two parties in Government disputing whether any substantive plan exists and in doing so admitting the necessary robust legal checks, which would be required on any such plan, have not been done. The Executive must now publish the plan at whatever stage it is at and set up the independent judge-led inquiry into the scheme."

It is believed that Sinn Fein will publish its preferred terms of reference for an inquiry led by an independent panel this morning.
Nosayba (left) and Somaia Halawa, sisters of Ibrahim Halawa, in Dublin campaigning for his release

A cross party delegation of Irish politicians will travel to Egypt on Monday to visit jailed Irishman Ibrahim Halawa.

The man's family in Dublin said they are worried about his health and claimed that he has gone on hunger strike for at least the third time since he was imprisoned over political protests more than three years.

He has not eaten for 15 days and is drinking only two cups of water a day, they said.

The Irish delegation expects to meet Mr Halawa on Tuesday.

His family claimed he has told them in recent days that he would continue refusing food until he is released.

"Ibrahim has recommenced his hunger strike because he has reached the stage where he is giving up and is going to continue this hunger strike until he is freed," his sister Somaia said.

"We know that Ibrahim is losing the ability to be able to cope with this."

Mr Halawa refused food for prolonged periods at least twice before during his incarceration.

From Firhouse in Dublin and the son of prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, Ibrahim Halawa was detained in a mosque near Ramses Square in Cairo as the Muslim Brotherhood held a "day of rage" over the removal of their elected president Mohamed Morsi in August 2013.

The student marked his 21st birthday in a Cairo jail in the weeks before Christmas. He is awaiting the start of a mass trial, three years on from his detention during a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.

The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for January 17.

Eamon Ryan, Green Party TD and member of the delegation, said the ultimate goal of the visit was to help secure Mr Halawa's freedom.

"T he hope is for Ibrahim's return and that an all-party delegation provides a clear diplomatic message that supports his case for return and helps to make that happen," he said.

Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail accepted an invitation to lead the delegation.

The Halawas said: "We welcome the upcoming visit by Oireachtas members to Cairo to visit Ibrahim in prison and to advocate for his immediate release.

"We are of course hopeful that this visit will help secure Ibrahim's release but we remain extremely worried, as does he, that this ordeal will just continue and continue."
Belfast has been revealed as the JAM capital of the UK - with 68% of people claiming to be 'just about managing'. (stock photo)

Belfast has been revealed as the JAM capital of the UK - with 68% of people claiming to be 'just about managing'.

Theresa May coined the phrase in her first speech as Prime Minister as she addressed those who are "just about managing" financially - and this was quickly abbreviated to JAMs.

The Northern Ireland figure is 8% higher than the UK average. The findings by Money.co.uk also reveal that 5% of households in Belfast are not managing at all.

Manchester has the highest number of people not managing - 11%, which is more than double the UK average. Cardiff has the highest number of households running out of money part way through the month (49%), with 42% of Belfast households experiencing the same struggle.

The term has generally been used to refer to the working poor, but the new findings have complicated matters further. The study shows a shocking number of people barely getting by, might actually be 'home-made JAMs' - one in three households earning more than 70k, claims their money doesn't stretch for a month.

It is estimated that there are around 6m JAM households in the UK, with 44% of households running out of money on a regular basis.

Just over a quarter of that number rely on credit cards, and almost 10% of householders with depleted funds are opting instead to borrow from payday loan companies or dip their children's piggy banks.

Money.co.uk editor in chief Hannah Maundrell said: "It's fair to say no one ever feels they have 'enough' money but living life in the red is both distressing and soul destroying."
A house committee is considering a bill to allow the governor to call in the National Guard in the case of a cyber attack.

Proponents say the authority would allow the state to respond if critical infrastructure were hacked, but some committee members worried it gives broad new powers to the governor.

Greg Wilz, director of the Homeland Security Division of the Department of Emergency Services, presented the idea to the House Government and Veterans Affairs Committee on Thursday.

"In today's world, (cyber attack) is becoming a real threat. We see it each and every day in various sectors of business, industry and government," Wilz said.

Wilz said the recommendation came out of the cyber security task force report released in October. He noted that the National Guard is launching a cyber network defense team for North Dakota, South Dakota and Colorado, which the governor could call upon.

"We're gonna have a unique capability within our National Guard that should something happen that could be at some level instantly catastrophic," Wilz said. "We would have some additional resources at our call."

Currently, the law says the governor can call in the guard if "insurrection, invasion, tumult, riot, breach of the peace or imminent danger thereof" occurs.

Rep. Christopher Olson, R-West Fargo, noted in the meeting that the legislation does not define cyber attack, leaving it to the governor's discretion.

"We would be putting our trust in the executive to determine at what level of a cyber attack he's going to call up the National Guard and what purpose," he said.

Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, said he was in favor of the bill and allowing the governor and his or her cabinet to decide if it's a true threat.

"I think it's pretty hard to be specific, because we haven't had one of these yet. But who knows what form it's going to take?" Kasper asked.
Dried seahorses are displayed in a plastic jar for sale in a Chinese medicine shop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (AP/Heng Sinith)

Paul Ferber looks out to sea on Koh Ach Seh Island near the Cambodia-Vietnam border as he fights to save the seahorse from extinction (AP/Heng Sinith)

British conservationist Paul Ferber is leading the fight to save seahorses from extinction in Cambodia.

The 39-year-old, who underwent police training in Britain, has lived on Ach Seh Island for three years, and said: "The seahorse faces an enormous variety of threats."

He is trying to protect its ravaged environment against an armada of illegal trawlers, crab traps and divers in sleek longboats specifically targeting seahorses and related species.

The seahorse is a master of camouflage, unrivalled as a hunter and a much-loved figure of ancient myths and legends, but may be spiralling toward annihilation after surviving beneath the waves for some 40 million years.

The tropical seas around Ach Seh Island reveal both the seahorse's threatened state - tens of millions are harvested globally each year - and possible ways to save the species from extinction.

Mr Ferber dives in the waters t aking photographs and detailed notes, and watching for his main enemy, trawlers from neighbouring Vietnam dragging miles-long nets with mesh so fine that even creatures smaller than seahorses cannot escape.

"Big, nasty Vietnamese (boats). It's either a seine trawler or a pair of them," he says of vessels that leave behind a lifeless ocean. If equipped with electrified nets, they can even stun and suck in living things burrowed in sea beds.

A powerfully built man with a pair of seahorses tattooed on his chest, Mr Ferber can call his contact in the Cambodian fisheries department, hoping its speedboat can rush from the mainland to arrest any intruders.

He said before such co-operation began, he and his team confronted illegal fishermen alone, armed only with "a slingshot and a bunch of rocks".

He said they were shot at with AK-47 rifles and even a spear gun, and one of their boats was rammed and sunk. Death threats continue.

While Mr Ferber praises supportive officials in Phnom Penh and within the local fisheries department, he alleges corruption among police and some local government officials tasked with protecting the marine environment.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game," he says of the almost daily battle against encroachers.

"Seahorses are increasing in our area but declining everywhere else," said Mr Ferber, who discovered the devastation of South-east Asia's seas as a dive instructor in Thailand and Cambodia.

On Ach Seh Island, he has built a rudimentary station and quarters for his Thai wife, five children, staff, young volunteers and visiting marine biologists, all living together communal-style. His group, Marine Conservation Cambodia, is supported chiefly by the International Conservation Fund of Canada.

Illegal fishing within the roughly 31 square miles that the group patrols has dropped dramatically, he says. Most of the area will become a marine conservation zone in mid-2017.

Seahorses, caught in waters around the world, are sold mainly for Asian traditional medicine, especially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and China.

Amanda Vincent, a Canadian marine biologist and founder of Project Seahorse, estimates that more than 20 million are sold for Asian traditional medicine each year.

Lesser numbers end up as key rings, encased in jewellery or other curios, or in aquariums, with the United States the world's top buyer for the pet trade.

Data from CITES, the international monitor of the wildlife trade, shows that more than 630,000 were imported in the US from 2004 to 2014.

In Chinese traditional medicine, seahorses ground into powder or dried and eaten whole are believed to cure everything from kidney disease to baldness, despite a lack of scientific evidence. Rice wine with seahorses stuffed inside the bottles is advertised as a powerful sex tonic to "turn a man into an all-night Romeo".

"It's a race between the conservation ethos and the rape-and-pillage ethos," said Ms Vincent, who chairs the seahorse expert group of the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The legal export trade, she says, has been greatly reduced globally, but illegal fishing continues to threaten many of the 41 seahorse species.

Experts are reluctant to make predictions about possible extinctions but agree many populations are in retreat.

Although Mr Ferber lacks academic training - among other occupations, he worked as a florist in London - and Ms Vincent says he is still formalising his scientific research, she believes his efforts will result in excellent long-term studies.

She praises his role as a frontline conservationist, calling him "not one of life's bystanders".

She said: "Paul has enormous courage in tackling real problems with minimal resources. I hope he can find a way to stay effective while staying safe. If I had a Paul in every country where we work, my life would be much easier."

AP
Dan Coats is to be appointed director of national intelligence (Susan Walsh/AP)

Donald Trump is set to name former Indiana senator Dan Coats as director of national intelligence.

Insiders said the appointment is likely to be officially announced later this week.

Mr Coats is a conservative who spent 16 years in the Senate. He announced his retirement last year and did not seek re-election.

Mr Trump has been sharply critical of the nation's intelligence agencies and has cast doubt on their conclusion that Russia was behind hacking to influence last year's election.

On Friday, Mr Trump will meet with directors of the FBI and CIA, as well as current national intelligence director James Clapper, to be briefed on their findings.
Dawn at Guantanamo Bay, as the US announced that four Yemeni prisoners had been sent to Saudi Arabia (AP/Charles Dharapak)

Four Guantanamo prisoners have been released and sent to Saudi Arabia as part of a final push by President Barack Obama to reduce the population at the detention centre in the final weeks of his administration.

The four are from Yemen and each had been held at Guantanamo for more than 14 years. They were suspected of being low-level militants with ties to al-Qaida but never charged.

They were cleared for release following an extensive security review, the US defence department said. T heir departure brings the Guantanamo population to 55, including 19 cleared for release.

The administration has previously said that it will try to get as many of the cleared prisoners out as possible before Mr Obama leaves office. President-elect Donald Trump this week called for a halt of releases.

The four are being sent to Saudi Arabia for resettlement and are expected to take part in a rehabilitation programme.

They include Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bwazir, who refused to leave Guantanamo in January 2016 as two other prisoners were being resettled in the Balkans because he wanted to be sent to a country where he had family.

His lawyer, John Chandler, said the prisoner, who has also been identified by the name Bawazir in the past, has a brother and uncle in Saudi Arabia and his mother lives there part of the year.

Mr C handler said: "Mohammed was never accused of any crime or wrongdoing and never committed any crime. He nonetheless was held by the United States in Guantanamo for almost 15 years of his young life."

The Pentagon identified the other prisoners as Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim and Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli.

The US must find other countries to accept Yemeni prisoners because it will not send them back to their homeland, fearing that the civil war there will make it impossible to monitor them and ensure they do not return to militancy.

Over 130 detainees from Guantanamo have been sent to Saudi Arabia, making it second only to Afghanistan.

AP
The view from a helicopter as it flies above the dam in Mosul, Iraq

Engineers and other experts have warned that the collapse of an eight mile (13 kilometre) long dam on the Tigris River in northern Iraq is just a matter of time, triggering an environmental disaster which could leave 1.5 million people dead and millions more as far away as Baghdad without food or electricity.

The Mosul Dam, 40 miles (60 kilometres) away from the Isis-controlled city of the same name, holds 11.1 billion cubic metres of water, and has been plagued by problems since its construction in the 1980s thanks to the fact it was built on soluble ground.

It has required constant maintenance to fill the cavities that form underneath the concrete to stop it collapsing ever since.

A 2006 US Army Corps engineering report found the Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world - but the situation has become more precarious since Isis took control of the area in 2014, including, briefly, the dam itself. Many of the 1,500 workers stationed there fled, and the extremists damaged much of their equipment.

It is just a matter of time. It will be worse than throwing a nuclear bomb on Iraq, Professor Nadhir al-Ansari of the Environmental Engineering Department at Lulea University in Sweden, who inspected the initial construction, told Al-Jazeera.

A 2015 study from the European Commission's Science Centre found that even a partial breach of 26 per cent would unleash a flood of catastrophic proportions.

A wave of water up to 100 feet (30 metres) high would engulf Mosul in two hours, taking with it people, unexploded bombs, buildings and cars, as well as toxic substances from oil refineries and human waste.

Expand Close A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter stands guard near the Mosul Dam (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) / Facebook

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Whatsapp A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter stands guard near the Mosul Dam (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

The surrounding flood plains are already home to more than one million people living in tents after being displaced by fighting who would struggle to find protection from the water.

Within four days, both the EU and US experts predict, a wave between six - 36 feet (two - eight metres) high would reach Baghdad, 250 miles (400 kilometres) away.

The UN predicted last year that in any flooding scenario, up to four million people will be left homeless, and aid will take up to two weeks to reach those in need if airports, electricity grids and roads are knocked out. Iraqs oil refineries and up to two thirds of its wheat fields would also be affected.

New 234 million ($300 million) World Bank funded repairs are being carried out by an Italian engineering company, but the fragile security situation in the area is making completion of the work difficult.

Kurdish and Italian soldiers remain on constant guard for extremist attacks. In October, an Isis convoy armed with explosives tried to approach the dam but were killed by Kurdish missiles before they reached it.

A better and more permanent solution would be to build a second dam - but the political and military instability and lack of funds mean this option is highly unlikely.

Iraqi officials have tried to downplay scientists and the international community's fears of an imminent disaster, but Professor Ansari remains sceptical the problem will be solved in time.

I am convinced the dam could fail tomorrow, he said.
Former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, right, is rushed by police into Colmar courthouse (AP)

Kosovo has called on French authorities to release its former prime minister who has been detained for possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges.

A French court ruled on Thursday that Ramush Haradinaj, detained a day earlier, should stay in custody during extradition proceedings as the court decides whether to turn him over to Serbian officials.

Kosovo's current prime minister Isa Mustafa said officials expect "the French government to take into consideration that such warrants are fully political and have no legal or juridical base".

Haradinaj, 48, a former guerrilla fighter in Kosovo's 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia, and now an opposition political leader, is accused by Belgrade of committing war crimes including kidnappings, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.

In a message on Facebook, Haradinaj complained that France would "still respect decisions of (Slobodan) Milosevic's former regime".

Haradinaj was cleared of war crimes charges in two lengthy trials by a UN tribunal, but Serbia accuses him of committing war crimes including kidnapping, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.

Two years ago he was detained in Slovenia at Belgrade's request, but later released.

Mr Mustafa said at his cabinet meeting that Kosovo considers Serbia's warrants "totally illegal, unfair and openly provoking tensions, conflicts".

"I have a message for Serbia's friends within Kosovo and abroad: Kosovo's road to statehood cannot be stopped by anyone," he said.

Mr Mustafa also said the government is planning to take measures if "Serbia, misusing the international law and order mechanism, continues the application of such politically unacceptable and immoral acts to Kosovo's activists and fighters for freedom".

France and most European countries recognised Kosovo's independence after it seceded from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade has not.

AP
Polish media reported this week that 91,000 zlotys (180,000) collected from protesters went to Mateusz Kijowski's company account

The leader of Poland's popular anti-government movement is under pressure to explain why funds from public collections for the movement have gone to his information technology company.

Mateusz Kijowski has insisted he does not take any money for spearheading the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, a movement he initiated via Facebook shortly after the conservative Law and Justice party took power in November 2015.

The movement has led massive marches to protest against government policies critics say threaten democracy.

Polish media reported this week that 91,000 zlotys (180,000) collected from protesters went to Kijowski's company account. He says it was for the firm's work for the movement, but acknowledges the situation is awkward.

Other movement leaders say their trust has been undermined and are demanding an audit.

AP
The recent cowardly terrorist attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, targeted civilians for no reason other than the fact they were celebrating the new year.

The vast majority of Arabs and Muslims stand united in condemning this scourge of international terrorism. It is a regional and global responsibility to combat this twisted ideology.

As his majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan puts it: "We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and our human principles. Our war will be ferocious and reckless for their sake and will hit terrorists in their own ground."

DR MUNJED FARID AL QUTOB

By email
Let us trust that Sinn Fein wants to avert a collapse of the institutions at Stormont. Let us take it as read that it is eager for viable partnership Government with the DUP, since its has worked within that partnership for nearly a decade now. Let us acknowledge that it is not hounding Arlene Foster from office, demanding her resignation as emphatically as the Ulster Unionist Party is.

Then let us allow for the possibility that it is the tactical wizard many think it to be and ask a simple question: how can it get what it wants?

It wants Arlene Foster, as First Minister, to step aside from her role in the way that Peter Robinson did under similar pressure. And it wants an investigation into the debacle of the Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI), which ran out of control. It may even hope that the investigation will clear Foster, and allow her to resume her position.

These things may be true - very likely are true.

It also wants the DUP to agree with it on the establishment of an Irish Language Act, a Bill of Rights and a host of legacy issues, including a peace centre at the Maze and the funding of inquests into dubious killings by the security forces.

As much as it wants these things, it has never previously threatened to pull down the institutions if it doesn't get them. However, now, in a spirit of acrimonious deadlock, it is drawing these issues into the mix, citing them as evidence of bad faith on the part of the DUP.

Something similar is happening in the DUP.

Foster never previously claimed that her political opponents were misogynistic, trying to hound her from office because she is a woman. Sinn Fein has a long-prepared defence against that one anyway.

There is no party leader who more enjoys being surrounded by women than Gerry Adams. No other party has appointed as many women to senior positions, including Executive seats.

But things are getting nasty.

Foster hisses one jibe and Adams, in his latest missive, hisses back the old familiar: "You bigot!"

And neither is getting what they would sensibly want, which is a resolution of this stand-off, avoiding an election, which won't solve the problem.

Foster ignores the fact that other unionists, Alliance and the SDLP have lost confidence in her, and lights on Sinn Fein as the problem.

Sinn Fein, with a record of long support for murder and indulgence of bank robbery, is kind of ill-equipped to claim the moral high ground here.

That is what DUP supporters are saying.

Here are some of the messages of support on Foster's Facebook page: "Anything Sinn Fein is for, I'm against." "She's way too clever for the likes of them!" "Hang on in there, Arlene. They don't like it up them! lol." "RHI scheme is scandalous, but if we have to accept the IRA heinous murderers/liars, how can we condemn any other politician that is elected and has a mandate?"

This isn't the single, coherent message from her support base. It's clear from social media that the base is divided. But it is an argument that reinforces the party's resistance to pressure.

And for Sinn Fein that is a problem.

Adams has been writing floridly about his "historic" efforts to find peace and reconciliation with the DUP. He has been damning it on his blog as "a party founded on religious intolerance, sectarianism, a belief in the domination of unionism and a dogged opposition to ending discrimination and inequality".

As if similar - and stronger - charges of a murky past couldn't be levelled at Sinn Fein.

This moralistic tone, coming from a man who has been accused of directing the IRA for years, when it bombed civilians in bars and hotels, murdered mothers and dumped their bodies, is not going to sway the DUP.

No DUP member is going to read that article and say, "Right enough. Gerry has a point. I never quite saw it that way before."

That isn't going to happen.

But Adams isn't going to change his mind either. He is not a man who harbours guilt and self-doubt. He lives with the deep and easy conviction that he did what he had to do, and that he warrants the admiration and gratitude of us all.

If the DUP is to get the message that it is in deep trouble and that it must concede something to the fact that all other parties have lost faith in Foster as leader, then Adams is not the man to tell it that.

We were supposed, by now, to have moved into a political climate beyond the Troubles, with a democratic Assembly that could function to proper constitutional standards; one in which the shadow of the past would not contaminate or disrupt the debates.

Well, Adams is a shadow of the past more than he is anything. He cannot speak about anything without his past being thrown up against him.

He has no credibility when he is moralising and telling others how everything would work out if we were all just as noble and self-sacrificing as himself.

I have no doubt he believes that, and probably thinks he is hounded by bigoted and small-minded journalists and commentators, who haven't moved on as gracefully as himself.

But he needs a friend at close quarters to tell him to stop making things worse - which is what he does when he presumes to be our Mandela.

This crisis would have been easier to manage if we had superseded the Troubles generation and if Sinn Fein, in particular, had not pledged itself to honouring the good name of the IRA at every turn.

Then again, Adams has much to garner from this crisis.

He is in trouble in the Dail, where he is hounded by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael for his presumption and his semi-detached commitment to due process.

He is still refusing to name an IRA intermediary who met Austin Stack with him to give him information about the 1980s IRA murder of Mr Stack's father Brian, a prison officer at Portlaoise.

So, it suits very nicely for him to be presenting himself as the defender of probity and good government.

But we have a problem here.

It is a real dispute over issues of substance, the quality of government and the management of resources. And it is getting deflected into the old channels, by which it can be presented and read as merely sectarian. That should not be allowed to happen.

And it would help if Adams butted out.

He should have stood down years ago, anyway.

Malachi O'Doherty's new book, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life, will be published by Faber and Faber in September
Members of both appropriations committees passed a revenue forecast for the 2017-19 biennium thats less optimistic than that put forward by the former governor last month.

The new forecast projects about $170 million less in ongoing general fund revenues than what former Gov. Jack Dalrymple proposed in his executive budget last month prior to leaving office. That amount if far less than what was incorrectly reported in Thursday's A1 story on the subject.

House Appropriations Committee members voted 20-0 Thursday afternoon on a plan crafted this week by Republican majority leadership, shortly after their counterparts in the Senate gave the initial legislative forecast of the session a thumbs-up.

The plan adjusts projected oil prices as well as sales and income tax projections downward for the 2017-19 biennium, but keeps oil production levels flat from the last forecast.

It just gives us a starting point to work on, Chairman Jeff Delzer, R-Underwood, said, adding that lawmakers will update the forecast in March.

The proposed changes stem from reductions in the projected collections of sales and income taxes as well as insurance premium taxes.

Leadership projects more than $146 million less coming into the states coffers in sales taxes and a reduction of more than $19.6 million in income tax collections. The remaining $5 million comes from insurance premium taxes.

For oil and gas production in 2017-19, leadership calls for a $48 per barrel oil price for North Dakota crude, down from the $51- to $53-per-barrel range used in Dalrymples proposal. If the legislative plan passes, the projection of bottoming out and holding at 900,000 barrels per day for the next two years would be maintained.

The prices used are what officials commonly refer to as North Dakota prices; crude from the state typically sells at a discount of several dollars from the price of West Texas Intermediate, a U.S. benchmark for oil prices.

The downward adjustment comes after multiple reductions in forecasts over the past year. Two rounds of budget cuts were ordered by former Gov. Dalrymple to address a nearly $1.4 billion budget shortfall.

Were sure hoping that weve got to the point that by now weve probably bottomed out on sales taxes, Delzer said.

With a slowdown in oil and gas activity, as well as agricultural, commodity prices heavily impacted sales tax collections.
It all seemed so lovely a few months ago. The DUP and Sinn Fein had won handsome victories at the Assembly election, taken joint control of the Fresh Start Agreement, cut a deal with Claire Sugden, shuffled the UUP, SDLP and Alliance onto the Opposition benches and presented themselves as a united, consensual government for Northern Ireland.

The optics were good and the body language was very relaxed - with lots of footage of their ministers chatting and laughing with each other.

They even hired David Gordon (the editor of the Nolan Show) to help them co-ordinate and orchestrate this "new approach" to politics.

Why, just a few weeks ago Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness agreed their first joint platform piece for this newspaper. It was upbeat and relentlessly positive: accusing Mike Nesbitt and Colum Eastwood of "gimmicks and grandstanding" while they were getting on with "good government".

Today the DUP and Sinn Fein are barely talking to each other. Foster is reminding it of its IRA roots, while it is warning of tipping points and grave consequences if she doesn't stand aside to facilitate an inquiry into the RHI fiasco.

The non-aggression pact - which they had led us to believe was the centrepiece of their new relationship - has been shredded and scattered to the four winds.

Senior Sinn Fein figures are briefing that the "integrity" of the institutions is under threat, that Foster is arrogant, and that the "very essence" of the Good Friday Agreement is being undermined.

The DUP, with the sort of subtlety that would have warmed the heart of a young Dr Paisley, is telling Sinn Fein to get stuffed - albeit not in those exact words.

So, it's beginning to look as if an early election is now unavoidable.

Both parties have boxed themselves into opposite corners, making it increasingly difficult to boil up the sort of fudge mountain that usually allows them to climb to and cross the latest hurdle.

But if there is an election (and I still have doubts) it's a pretty sure bet that it will be one of the most brutal, unpleasant showdowns we've seen here for 20 years - because at stake will be the existence of devolution itself.

I've argued for years that there is unlikely to come a time when the DUP and Sinn Fein will like, let alone respect, each other. And the response from senior figures in both parties has been that it's not necessary for them to like or respect each other: "It's a mandatory coalition, after all, and we will always disagree on key issues."

But the problem with not liking or respecting each other, particularly at an individual level, is that it then becomes impossible to create anything resembling trust.

So they don't even trust each other to run what, for want of a better term, can be described as the 'non-constitutional' departments like Health and Education, or Infrastructure and Agriculture.

And that's why we have ended up with dysfunctional government; when, quite literally, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Sinn Fein and the DUP do not want to govern together.

In fairness, the UUP and Sinn Fein don't want to govern together, either.

But the rules of the political/institutional process have forced them into this very bizarre form of cohabitation.

They tried to make it work between 2007 and 2016, but that decade was punctuated with serial crises; emergency summits; American interlocutors; bailouts from the UK Chancellor; agreements that came and went; periods when the Executive didn't meet for months on end; Peter Robinson standing aside on more than one occasion, and the farcical spectacle of DUP ministers resigning on what seemed to be a daily basis.

Both Robinson and McGuinness were forced to concede that the political institutions weren't fit for purpose.

And that's why the post-election period from last May to November now looks like a Camelot era: because we dared to believe that the bad old days really were behind us and that Foster and McGuinness would, finally, get to grips with the liking and respecting parts of working together.

But, if anything, where we are today is a much worse place than we have ever been before - because today we have reached the point at which we cannot avoid the conclusion that stable government is not possible here.

Even if we have an election, what will it be about?

Don't even begin to kid yourselves that it will be about repairing the dysfunction at the heart of government, or holding anyone to account for RHI, let alone holding them to account for the mess that is our health service, or education system, or infrastructure, or lack of progress on social integration, paramilitary influence, unresolved legacy matters, or language and cultural stuff. It will be about none of that. It will - and we all know it will - be about unionism vs republicanism; SF vs DUP; SF vs SDLP; DUP vs other bits of unionism, and so on and so on.

How can it be about anything else when that's the choice still offered by our conflict-rooted party political options (OK, Alliance, Greens and People Before Profit have their own roots, but they won't be growing in an early election)?

We know what the result of the election will be - even if the DUP takes a bit of a hit.

It will still be a dysfunctional Executive filled with people who don't want to govern together.

It will, almost certainly, see the DUP and SF returned to the same Fisrt Minister and Deputy First Minister roles, with the possibility of the UUP and SDLP opting for the Executive if they get the numbers.

So, either a dysfunctional DUP/SF/Sugden Executive, or a dysfunctional DUP/SF/SDLP/UUP/Alliance Executive. The parties know this, so they will bitch and bite with each other all the way to the ballot box.

An election will resolve nothing. In my opinion it would actually make matters very much worse (and yes, such a thing is conceivable).

It is no longer possible for the parties to even put up the pretence that things can get better.

The DUP and SF cannot rebuild from the wreckage of their imploded relationship, and that will be the case even without an election.

If the UUP eclipsed the DUP - which seems highly unlikely - I see no evidence that Nesbitt could build a better relationship with SF. And if SF made it to the First Minister's post, I'm not even sure that either a UUP or DUP leader would take the role of deputy.

Yes, this is a grim analysis and conclusion; but I don't see anything to be cheerful about.

To be really blunt. If there is an argument for keeping the present structures in place, I would like to hear it.
On what promises to be a hot-button issue throughout the legislative session, the state Senate Political Subdivisions Committee heard testimony Thursday on what warranted a show of support for extending Renaissance Zones after their expiration date.

"I believe Renaissance Zones will be one of the hottest topics in the Legislature," said Sen. Dwight Cook, sponsor of SB 2055, which he described as one of the more mild tax incentive measures that would be debated during the legislative session.

Cook's proposal asks the Legislature to clarify what constitutes support from other political subdivisions affected by a city's Renaissance Zones' tax breaks.

The debate arises from Bismarck's request for a five-year extension to its Renaissance Zone that did not receive a letter of support from the Burleigh County Commission. The Bismarck School Board's support was lukewarm, with a vote of 3-2 in favor of the extension.

As a result, the Commerce Department wanted a clearer interpretation of what the Legislature considers as support for continuing Renaissance Zones. In 2016, Bismarck was granted a 15-month extension that expires July 31.

A Renaissance Zone allows a city, as authorized by the state Commerce Department, to keep local property taxes and state income tax breaks to improve aging properties within designated boundaries. As a result, counties or schools will not benefit from property value increases for up to five years.

Justin Dever, co-deputy commissioner of the state Commerce Department, said a 1999 statute requires evidence of community support for a city's Renaissance Zone.

"The Legislature did not indicate what constitutes community support. The Commerce Department has interpreted that be, at a minimum, letters of support from the school district and county," he said.

"This was the first instance where a county declined support of a Renaissance Zone since the requirement was put in effect," he said. "We thought it appropriate to have the Legislature address this policy question. The Department of Commerce is asking the Legislature what is evidence of community support."

Dustin Gawrylow, of the North Dakota WatchDog Network, argued that "one political subdivision should not control the revenue of the other political subdivisions."

Sen. Randall Burckhard, R-Minot, chairman of the committee, said the statute was vague and agreed the problem was unique to Bismarck.

Terry Fleck, an audience member at the hearing, said he always thought the property taxes he spent were going to the school, to the county and the park board, but said that is not the case.

"The people asked us to take a time out. Let's make sure we have clarity," Fleck said. "Make sure the people who are elected to spend our dollars are spending them where they are expected to be spent."

Don Clement, of Bismarck, urged that the bill be passed and move forward to the floor.

"The city should not control the (property tax) mills of the school or the county. The school and the county should control their own mills," he said.

"It's only fair if you have a Renaissance Zone project that the money comes back to the taxpayers. That has not happened ... while the rest of us pay for the fire, police and everything else," Clement said.
Bangladeshi students and secular organizations protest in Dhaka against attacks on Hindu temples and houses in the eastern part of the country, Nov. 15, 2016.

A politician from Bangladeshs ruling party was arrested Thursday on suspicion of orchestrating the ransacking of Hindu temples and homes by Muslim mobs in the eastern part of the country in October and November, police said.

Police suspect the Awami Leagues Dewan Atiqur Rahman (alias Ankhi), an elected chairman of the Haripur Union Council  the lowest tier of local government in Nasirnagar, a sub-district of Brahmanbaria district  of leading mob-perpetrated vandalism that targeted worship sites and hundreds of homes in the area belonging to members of Bangladeshs Hindu minority.

The angry crowds that carried out the violence were incensed by an online post that allegedly defamed Islam.

Ankhi was the mastermind; he planned the attacks, mobilized people, provided funds to carry out the attacks, Brahmanbaria district Police Chief Mizanur Rahman told BenarNews.

The Awami official was arrested in Dhaka and is among 105 people taken into custody after the anti-Hindu attacks in Nasiranagar and in Madhabpur, a sub-district in nearby Habiganj district.

The arrestees included leaders from all political parties, including the Awami League, Rahman said. The authorities did not release any details on the status of those arrested.

300 homes vandalized

On Oct. 30, mobs attacked Hindu villages in Nasirnagar and Madhabpur, and vandalized at least 24 temples and 300 Hindu homes in apparent retaliation for an image posted on Facebook by a Hindu youth, Rasraj Basu Das, identified as an illiterate fisherman.

An image had appeared on his Facebook page depicting the Hindu Lord Shiva near the Kabba  the building at the heart of the al-Masjid al-Haram, Islams most sacred mosque in the holy city of Mecca.

Das, who claimed he did not post the picture, was charged with violating Bangladeshs Information and Technology Act, which prohibits online defamation of any religion. He remains in jail.

On Nov. 4, five Hindu homes were torched in Nasirnagar.

This is very frustrating to see [that] an Awami League leader plans the attack on the minority Hindus in Nasirnagar; we have trust on the Awami League; they protect us politically, Nirmal Rozario, joint secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Oikya Partishad, a local inter-faith association, told BenarNews on Thursday.

Still, he hailed Ankhis arrest.

You see, in most of the cases, the attackers on the minorities are not arrested. But this time the government has arrested a ruling party leader for attacking the minority Hindus, Rozario said.

He urged the government to pursue an impartial investigation and take stringent measures against any Awami League leader found guilty of attacking the minorities.

Hindus leaving country

On Dec. 29, Jatiyo Hindu Mohajote, an association of Hindu groups that aims to protect social, economic, cultural and religious rights for Bangladeshs Hindu population, reported that 98 Hindus were killed and 357 more were injured in 2016 in attacks in the nation, which has seen Islamic extremism rise in recent years.

Ananda Kumar Biswas, the associations secretary general, told reporters at a press conference that attacks on Hindus were forcing many to leave Bangladesh. As many as 900,000 Hindus had left Bangladesh during the past decade, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

The way the Hindus were attacked in Nasirnagar was a shame, Biswas said.

Where will we go?

Sunil Kumar, a Hindu who trades vegetables in Dhakas Farmgate area, said Awami League should expel any of its leaders who are involved in attacks on minorities.

This is an open secret that the Hindus and the other minorities vote for the Awami League. But where will we go if the Awami League leaders attack us? he told BenarNews.

Commenting on the arrest of a politician from his party, Awami League whip Atiur Rahman Atik told BenarNews,

The Awami League strictly maintains secular politics; there is no room for communalism.

Awami League is a big party; there may be some bad people in it, Atik added.

Dewan Atiqur Rahman is due to appear in a Brahmanbaria district court on Friday.
A Bangladeshi man stands near the bodies of slain suspected militants Nurul Islam Marzan and Saddam Hossain at the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital morgue, Jan. 6, 2017.

A senior militant leader who gave orders to and communicated with gunmen as they carried out Bangladeshs deadliest international terrorist attack last year was killed along with another suspected militant by police in Dhaka on Friday, authorities said.

Nurul Islam Marzan, 28, was the operation commander of the July 1 overnight siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in Dhaka carried out by the militant faction Neo-JMB, and he served as a deputy to Bangladeshi-born Canadian citizen, Tamim Chowdhury, the groups coordinator and organizer who was the main mastermind of the attack, officials said.

Chowdhury and two other suspected Neo-JMB members were shot dead by police and security forces during a raid near Dhaka on Aug. 27.

Fridays killings of Marzan and a man identified as Saddam Hossain, bring to 34 the number of suspected Neo-JMB militants who have been killed by police in raids and other shootings since the cafe siege left 29 dead, including 20 hostages from different countries, two policemen and the five gunmen who allegedly carried out the attack.

The extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the massacre, but Bangladeshi officials have insisted that IS has no presence in the country and that Neo-JMB, a faction of the outlawed militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB), was behind it.

Marzan communicated with and guided the five gunmen while they were carrying out the siege, during which they hacked their victims to death. The hostage takers transmitted photos of gory remains from inside the restaurant, which Marzan then disseminated on social media, authorities said.

They said Saddam Hossain was wanted in connection with 10 militancy-related cases, including the slaying of Japanese citizen Kunio Hoshi in northern Bangladesh in October 2015.

Marzan was the operational commander of the Gulshan (Holey Artisan cafe) attack, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews, adding that Tamim Chowdhury had tasked Marzan, his deputy, with the mission of executing the attack.

Marzan and Saddam were killed in a gunfight with the police today in the Beribandh area, he added, referring to a neighborhood in Dhaka. Marzan had been a high-ranking leader of the Neo JMB and Saddam a listed militant in northern districts in Bangladesh.

Marzans wife, Priyoti, was arrested on Oct. 9 during a raid on a suspected militant hideout in the Bangladeshi capital.

Hossain, 32, was a fugitive and had been charged in five cases of murder and attempted murder in the northern part of the country, including the killing of Hoshi, according to a text message sent out by the Bangladeshi national polices counter-terrorism division. Seven citizens of Japan, a major aid-donor to Bangladesh, were among the hostages killed inside the cafe.

Incident at checkpoint

The killings took place early Friday morning in Beribandh, where police had mounted security checkpoints after receiving a tip that Marzan had been staying in the nearby Mohammadpur area, Monirul Islam, the chief of counter-terrorist police, told reporters.

At around 3 a.m., he said, on-duty police officers at a checkpoint on the Beribandh road asked a motorcycle to stop, but the riders threw grenades at them.

The police counter fired; they fell from the motorcycle. They were taken to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital where the on-duty doctors declared them dead. They were Marzan and Saddam, Islam said.

Kamal said four officers were injured in incident. The police recovered a pistol, a knife and the motorcycle.

I was at my shop. Suddenly, I heard the sound of firing. But I did not go there, fearing something ominous, Md Nuruzzaman, a tea seller working near the blood-stained site of the shooting, told BenarNews.

He has got punishment

Hailing from northern Pabna district, Marzan was the son of a hosiery worker, Nizam Uddin.

Marzan finished his schooling at Pabna Alia Madrassa, an Islamic boarding school, in his home district. Marzan was admitted to Chittagong University, a state-run school, where he took Arabic studies, but he dropped out in 2015.

Marzan had been involved in the politics of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Bangladeshs largest faith-based party, Jamaat-e-Islami, according to investigators.

His father told BenarNews that his son had been out of touch with the family for the past eight months.

He has got punishment for his misdeeds; I have nothing to say about his death, Uddin told BenarNews by phone.
Indian police try to manage crowds during New Years celebrations in Bengaluru, Jan. 1, 2017.

Updated at 7:06 a.m. ET on 2017-01-06

Womens rights activists on Thursday accused Indian politicians of making misogynistic and insensitive comments following an alleged mass molestation in the southern city of Bengaluru on New Years Eve.

As many as 45 recordings from closed-circuit television cameras, which were circulated on social media over the past few days, showed dozens of women crying and screaming for help as they were being groped in Bengalarus busy M.G. Road and Brigade Road, where around 60,000 revellers had gathered to ring in the New Year.

Reacting to the incident, Karnataka state Home Minister G. Parameswara said such things happen during New Year celebrations, while Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi blamed the victims for being under dressed.

In these modern times, the more skin women show, the more they are considered fashionable  if theres gasoline, there will be fire. If theres spilt sugar, ants will gravitate toward it for sure, Azmi told reporters earlier this week.

Two years ago, Azmi caused an uproar by saying that women should be punished for getting raped.

It is shameful and appalling that people in power are not condemning this incident and are instead making such derogatory, misogynistic and insensitive remarks, Ranjana Kumari, chief of the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research, told BenarNews.

Countless incidents of molestation happen in India every day, but authorities fail to act on them out of sheer negligence and indifference. The Indian society has developed a psychological perception of not thinking of women as equals and only as disposable items of pleasure, Kumari said.

Deplorable

About 93 women are sexually assaulted each day in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

Such incidents [of molestation] have no space in a civilized society. It is symptomatic of the attitude that exists toward women in India, womens rights activist Ruchira Gupta told BenarNews, adding, What is even more shameful is the way in which politicians and authorities have reacted. It is deplorable.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) on Tuesday demanded the Karnataka home ministers resignation over his comment that such things happen and were the fault of Indian women trying to dress like Westerners.

Such remarks from the home minister are unacceptable and regrettable. I want to ask this minister  are Indian men so pathetic and weak that when they see a woman in western clothes on a day of revelry, they get out of control? NCW chief Lalitha Kumaramangalam said.

Police sources said six people have been detained even though none of the victims had come forward to lodge a complaint.

As promised we have found credible evidence, repeat credible evidence, in a case of wrongful confinement, molestation and attempt to rob, city police chief Praveen Sood said in a Twitter post on Thursday, but did not confirm the detentions.

Sood, however, retracted his statement while speaking to NDTV later in the day, saying, there was no evidence of the incident, while objecting to the usage of the term mass molestation.

I am saying it did not happen. If something has happened, I said three days back, please come to us, we are ready to take action, Sood said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sandeep Patil said that investigations were ongoing and the police had identified possible suspects.

We have not made arrests so far [in the mass molestation incident]. We will first do a cross analysis and then move forward. We should be able to deliver something substantial in a week or so, Patil told BenarNews.

Four arrested in separate incident

Police said they had arrested four men in connection with a separate incident of sexual assault on a woman when she was returning home from New Years celebrations on Sunday.

Sood told reporters that the accused were arrested after police analyzed footage from security cameras installed on streets.

When we saw the video, it was clear it was a case of molestation. The accused had been stalking the girl for a few days. The night the incident took place, they were partying by the road. When the girl got down from the auto rickshaw, one of them identified her. They then followed her near her house and molested her, Sood said.

We have got in touch with her [the victim] following the arrest of these men. We had to take some time to build confidence and she will [be] cooperating with the investigation, he added.

An earlier version wrongly attributed comments suggesting that women should be punished for getting raped to G. Parameswera.
Bangladeshi activists protest against the alleged abuse of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after police stopped a march toward the Myamar-Bangladesh border in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 18, 2016.

The Myanmar government said it hopes to send a special diplomatic team led by the deputy foreign minister to Bangladesh later this month amid increasing tension with the neighboring country over the tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar following violence that began in northern Rakhine state in early October.

It is possible that a Myanmar special diplomatic team will travel to Bangladesh this month when the Bangladesh prime minister and foreign affairs minister are available to meet them, said Kyaw Zayya, director general of Myanmars foreign affairs ministry, on Thursday.

We will arrange it through discussions with their government, he said, according to Radio Free Asia, a sister entity of BenarNews. The deputy foreign affairs minister will possibly lead the team. The team will have only three or four members, but it is difficult to say the exact date of the travel.

A previous trip arranged in December failed to materialize after it was postponed for security reasons.

Bangladeshs foreign affairs ministry has complained several times to Myanmar about the influx of 50,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled violence in Rakhine after deadly attacks on Myanmar border guard stations in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships on Oct. 9, and sought refuge in Bangladesh.

Members of the stateless minority group have left northern Rakhine in droves since soldiers and police locked down the area after the attacks, which the Myanmar government has blamed on Muslim insurgents.

On Dec. 30, the Myanmar government said it would take back 2,415 of its citizens living in Bangladesh  a small number of the 300,000 people who Bangladesh says are Myanmar citizens who have taken refuge there and should return home, Reuters reported.

Bangladesh has refused to grant the Rohingya refugee status because it considers them citizens of Myanmar, while Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and has denied then citizenship and access to basic services for decades.

Proper channels for aid

In a related development, Myanmars foreign affairs ministry has informed the embassies of some member states of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that their countries should submit proposals to provide for cash and in-kind support for Rakhine through proper diplomatic channels.

A statement issued on Thursday by Myanmars State Counselors Office said the ministry will work with the Rakhine state government and its ministry of social welfare, relief and resettlement to distribute supplies that should be meant without any distinction for both Rohingya Muslim and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists living in the western state.

The Rakhine state government will distribute the assistance to both communities, the statement said.

Indonesia and Malaysia  both predominantly Muslim countries and ASEAN members  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 ASEAN states met with her on Dec. 19 to discuss the crisis in northern Rakhine.

The governments statement appears to be directed, however, at a Malaysian Muslim organization that plans to send boats laden with 200 metric tons of rice, medical aid, and essential supplies for Rohingya Muslim communities.

The Myanmar government opposes the flotilla because the organization has not obtained permission to enter its territory to deliver supplies, and has said that such plans should be made between the governments of each country.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said last Wednesday that the Muslim group from Malaysia had to obtain permission to enter Myanmar when its boats arrived or risk being stopped or attacked by Myanmar security forces, and its crew deported.

Myanmars home affairs minister Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe on Dec. 30 called the plans for the food flotilla an insult.

The Indonesian government has already sent 10 shipping containers of food, baby food and clothes for Rohingya affected by the violence.

The statement issued by the State Counselors office said the Indonesian government had officially proposed the delivery of humanitarian aid according to the policies of the Myanmar government, and that the two nations are undertaking necessary distributions.

Security forces make arrests

In Rakhine, authorities arrested one militant trainer and three trainees and seized 14 homemade guns on Wednesday in Maunggyitaung village in northern Rakhines Buthidaung township, the State Counsellors office said.

The men, who had completed an insurgent military training course, were carrying weapons near the village when security forces blocked entry routes to intercept them, said a statement issued by the office.

Security forces detained Mamad Karat, the trainer, and the three trainees  Kumuru, De Mamud, and Mardular  it said.

After an interrogation that resulted in confessions, security forces searched for weapons and captured 14 handmade guns in a field of betel palms which belonged to De Mamud at about 2 p.m., the statement said, adding that legal action would be taken against the men.

Authorities have detained roughly 600 people in connection with the raids during which nine officers were killed and subsequent violence between security forces and armed men in northern Rakhine. Nearly 90 others have been killed in the crackdown.

Meanwhile, rights groups, including New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), have accused Myanmar of attempting to cover up abuses against Rohingya villagers allegedly perpetrated by security forces in northern Rakhine, a day after an investigation commission said it found no evidence to support accusations of genocide or repression.

Rohingya from the areas affected by violence have accused security forces of executions, arbitrary arrests, rape, and arson during their security operations in search of attackers. The government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has denied the allegations, but formed the commission to investigate them in response to pressure from the international community.

Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy Asia director, said on Wednesday that the government remains curiously intransigent concerning allegations of serious abuses in northern Rakhine state, which has been largely closed to outside observers since the October attacks.

[N]umerous other rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, rape, and the destruction of villages await proper investigation and appropriate prosecution, he said in a statement. Ultimately, this case may be yet another attempt to keep the lid on crimes being committed by security forces in locked-down northern Rakhine state.

There was no immediate response from the Myanmar government to the latest criticisms.
Indonesian officials insisted Thursday that relations with neighboring Australia were in good shape and a suspension of military cooperation would be limited to language training only.

Addressing the issue for the first time, President Joko Jokowi Widodo stressed that Indonesias relations with Australia  a strategic partner and ally in counter-terrorism efforts  were fine despite the spat between their militaries.

I think our relationship with Australia is still in a good condition. Only maybe at the operational level there are things that needed to be sorted out to avoid further tensions, Jokowi told journalists in Jakarta.

The president spoke a day after officials with the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) announced that Indonesia had suspended military ties with Australia because of training material found at an Australian army base that was deemed offensive to Pancasila, Indonesias founding philosophy.

The problem needs to be solved first, because even though it is at the operational level, it is a matter of principle, Jokowi said.

The two countries have agreed to respect each other and to not interfere in domestic affairs, he added.

Jokowi said he had ordered Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu and TNI chief Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo to deal with the issue so that it does not damage relations between the two countries.

Indonesias honor

On Thursday, Indonesian officials appeared to scale back earlier comments about the extent of the suspension.

The countrys coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, Wiranto, said the suspension was limited only to the cooperation program of language training for Australia special forces because of a case that offended the honor of Indonesia in November 2016.

TNI officials had said Wednesday that the Indonesian military would suspend all forms of cooperation with its Australian counterpart, including education, exchange programs, joint exercises and reciprocal visits by military officials.

A member of the Indonesian Special Forces Command serving as an instructor at an army base in Perth, Western Australia, had complained about training materials deemed as insulting the Pancasila.

The Armed Forces chief took temporary steps to suspend the language training, not suspending the whole defense cooperation, Wiranto told a news conference.

He said cooperation would resume after Australia took the necessary steps to solve the problem.

[An] Investigation has been taken and the commander of the language-training [program] has been suspended, Wiranto said.

On Thursday, TNI chief Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo shed more light on what had caused the rift.

The insults included a document referring to Pancasila (the five founding principles) as Pancagila (the five crazies) and it also touched on two issues that are highly sensitive to the Indonesian people.

The offensive document contained offensive comments about Indonesias past military role in East Timor and suggested that the eastern region of Papua has to be independent, Gatot told reporters.

In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that eventually won its freedom from Indonesia in a 1999 U.N.-monitored referendum on independence. It is now the nation of Timor-Leste.

Papua, a former Dutch colony, officially became part of Indonesia in 1969 after a U.N.-mandated Act of Free Choice, but locals have since agitated from independence from Jakarta.

Gatot said objections were raised with Australian regarding such sensitive topics.

I am good friends with the Australian Defense Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, and he has sent a letter of apology, Gatot said.

Right decision

Indonesian analysts applauded the militarys action.

The suspension of the cooperation is a right decision for the ADF commander promised to do an investigation on this issue, Hikmahanto Juwana, an international law analyst from the University of Indonesia, told BenarNews.

International relations analyst Melda Kamil Ariadno agreed that bilateral relations need to be based on respect and trust.

If it is true there is an insult to the symbol of the country, I think the move (taken by Indonesia) was appropriate, she told BenarNews.

It is the time for Indonesia to uphold its national dignity in front of any country.

In 2013, Jakarta suspended military ties after discovering that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization had tapped the phones of then-Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The rift was eased after the Indonesian and Australian foreign ministers signed a code of conduct on espionage in Bali in 2014.
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"What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about conflict?

Ken Sande asked this question at a conference I attended. He could have asked what is the first thing or what are the first fifty things. For me, the answers would all be variations on the same theme. I hate conflict; I want to run from it. The things that come to my mind about conflict are: hate, loathe and avoid.

Then he asked, How many people thought opportunity?

Not me. Not in a million years, even if I could cheat by consulting a dictionary or Wikipedia. To me, conflict is miserynot an opportunity. But the word opportunity is gradually sinking in because it is crammed with prominent themes from Scripture.

Think about this:

Start with how our Godour Fathersovereignly reigns.

No detail is random and haphazard.

Add that he will accomplish his good purposes.

He will make us more and more like Jesus.

Now add hardships.

Our sufferings have new meaning since the cross.

What you get is opportunity.

Since God is sovereign and has good purposes, hardships are opportunities. They must be.

Many people have already learned this. Here is what some of them have said.

That C on the examis an opportunity to live by faith in Jesus rather than in my perceived successes.

That hard marriage is an opportunity to love as I have been loved.

That miscarriageis an opportunity to know that my Father has unlimited compassion for his children and I can trust him.

That cancer(and this is really a hard one) is an opportunity to die well and show my children what it means to live and die by faith.

And we could go on. That traffic ticket, that car accident, that lost job, that plumbing problem, that neighbor . . . . how different life would be if we snuck in an opportunity or two each day.

Joseph understood. You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good ( Genesis 50:20 ). His time in an Egyptian prison was an opportunity.

Paul understood too. We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead ( 2 Corinthians 2:9 ). His near death experiences were the perfect opportunity. You can almost hear him say, These are just what I needed.

There is no stiff upper lip in these opportunities. Hardships can be so painful, and our Father certainly encourages us to speak of those hardships to him. But opportunity says that hardships, for Gods children, never come without hope. And, with practice, we can discover that hope carries the most weight.

__________________________________________________________________________



Edward T. Welch (M.Div., Ph.D.) counsels and teaches at CCEF. He is the author of when people are big and god is small.




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

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For Immediate Release, January 5, 2017 Contact: Jared Margolis, (802) 310-4054, jmargolis@biologicaldiversity.org Army Corps Issues Blanket Approval to Destroy Tens of Thousands of Acres of U.S. Wetlands Program Allows Mass Environmental Degradation With Limited Oversight PORTLAND, Ore. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released the latest version of its nationwide permit program, which results in the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of wetlands every year. With little consideration for the impact of such widespread habitat devastation, the program's permits have greenlighted major projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Gulf segment of the Keystone XL pipeline without concern for the consequences of losing wetlands and harming aquatic resources. This program rubber-stamps major projects like oil pipelines that leak and spill, degrading clean water and cultural sites, said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. Under the program, those projects proceed without regard for the people, places or wildlife in their paths. It took a major protest by the Standing Rock Sioux over the Dakota Access Pipeline to finally force the Army Corps to give that enterprise any meaningful consideration at all. Approved approximately every five years since 1982, the 52 new permits will allow hundreds of thousands of discharges of dredged or fill material to the nation's waters and wetlands from oil and gas development, pipeline and transmission-line construction and coal mining. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service have previously found that these activities  which are approved with little or no environmental review  threaten iconic imperiled species including whooping cranes, Florida manatees and the hundreds of migratory birds that need wetlands to survive. The Corps' complete failure to properly account for the cumulative harm to essential habitats is unacceptable and puts species at serious risk, Margolis said. The deeply flawed program is simply a major loophole that benefits corporations as it irreversibly harms communities and the nation's migratory birds and fish. The impacts of the activities allowed by the program have resulted in significant environmental harm. Thousands of projects each year rely on the permits to conduct activities that cause sedimentation and contamination of essential habitats, directly harming species through construction activities and powerline collisions. However, the extent of the impacts remains unknown, since the Army Corps does not collect sufficient information to consider those effects. Thousands of public comments were submitted highlighting the risk of harm from this program, yet the Army Corps failed to take the steps necessary to comply with the law and prevent the continued devastation of our wetland resources.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council asked Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp organizers to share their plans for camp cleanup and other issues in an effort to address unsubstantiated rumors.

I think thats what should be afforded to my community in Cannon Ball; they need to know whats going on on a month-to-month basis, said Councilman Cody Two Bears during a meeting between the council and camp leaders that was live-streamed on Thursday.

With record snowfall, the council is looking ahead to possible spring flooding. The council expressed worry over safety, as well as trash and waste contaminating the Missouri River.

Because of this risk of flood, were worried about whats going to be left at the camp, said Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II. What we want to do is make sure none of that waste gets into the Missouri River . Were water protectors, but were the ones that are going to start contaminating the water.

Were not saying go away, said Councilman Frank Whitebull, though he did ask protest organizers to move to land set aside by the tribe for the camps relocation.

Archambault asked the camp leaders to address the councils concerns in an effort open lines of communication and find solutions.

Camp leaders said they are trying to address sanitation though they did not go into detail on specific plans beyond committees formed to pick up trash.

We dont want the water contaminated, either, said Chase Iron Eyes, who has recently taken on a leadership role with the camps.

We recognize we are in a floodplain, and were making plans to move, said camp leader Paula Antoine.

The informal meeting was the result of a motion from the Cannon Ball District to close Sacred Stone Camp. The council convened the meeting to discuss the issues that led to that motion.

Sacred Stone Camp founder LaDonna Allard expressed her disappointment at the effort to close the camp, which is located on her familys privately owned ranch on the reservation.

I live here; I know that it will flood, Allard said. I believe what happened is a breakdown in communication.

Allard said Sacred Stone has formed a 501c3 and has plans to build a permanent green energy camp. She said there are plans to put a tower in place for cell and Internet service. There are buildings for a dormitory, dining and to store equipment. The camp has a tractor and plow for moving snow. It also has purchased 40 yurts, 40 teepees and three greenhouses for organic farming. She said these are all services to be shared with the community.

Two Bears pointed to this as an example of communication issues as this was the first time he had heard about it. The tribe also has made its own plans for a permanent camp with similar infrastructure on the land set aside for the camp relocation.

Other issues brought up by council members included strains on the tribes resources.

While donations have helped cover costs for legal battles and some services provided to the camps, Archambault said they havent covered it all.

Theres a cost to it, and its costing our membership, Archambault said.

Other issues included concerns over intoxication when Cannon Ball opened its gym as a winter shelter and evidence of poaching.

Antoine said she and others recognize there are issues associated with the camps and they are making plans to address them, adding that the dialogue started at Thursdays meeting is a good beginning.
It can be tough to be a vegetarian. You have to work harder than everyone else to make sure youre getting all the nutrients your body needs. So, when its time to take a
A debate on taxation without representation came before the state Senate Political Subdivisions Committee Thursday as it considered whether extraterritorial citizens living just outside the city limits should have a right to vote in city elections.

SB2086, introduced by Sen. Nicole Poolman, R-Bismarck, proposes that residents living within the extraterritorial zoning areas where city zoning applies in borders outside town be allowed to vote in the city election and to designate an ETA resident to serve as a non-voting member of the city's governing body.

"Some of my constituents living near Lincoln approached me with their concerns," Poolman said. "If they could vote in the local election, city leaders would be more likely to consider their opinions or concerns. They are really looking for a voice.

Sen. Judy Lee, R-West Fargo, argued against the proposal.

"I'm not sure they should have full voting privileges if they aren't annexed into the city . If they want to vote, why don't they just get annexed?" she said.

The borders for an ETA zone are based upon the population of the city.

Burleigh County Commissioner Brian Bitner said the measure was at least a start to the discussion, though he didn't agree with all of its wording.

Kay LaCoe, a resident of the ETA outside Lincoln, urged the bill be passed because it would rectify a situation of "taxation without representation."

The bill fell short because it excluded ETA residents from being elected to their local governing board, according to LaCoe, who said her rural family home was ideal until Lincoln exercised its authority to extend the ETA area.

"We found ourselves entangled in a web of injustices and ordinances from a municipal government that we could not vote for, did not represent our interest and one we had no option to become a public service for, she said.

LaCoe said she and 24 of her neighbors were ignored when they testified against a rezoning of agriculture zoned land within the Lincoln ETA borders.

"They told ETA residents if we wanted a voice, we could run for office or if we wanted our opinions to matter to request annexation to the city. As ETA residents, we can't run for office. As ETA residents, we can't vote. ... We don't want to be annexed after how we have been treated, she said.

This allows the city to impose on rural residents in the ETA, giving them no recourse, according to LaCoe.

Committee members noted the ETA residents don't pay taxes to support city services and questioned if they should have the right to vote for representatives who decide how to spend tax money.

Bill Wocken, lobbying for the North Dakota League of Cities, said Bismarck changed its policy to allow county commissioners and township representation on the Bismarck City Planning Commission, which is not required by state law.

The League of Cities has several concerns with this bill, Wocken said.

"Having county residents vote in city elections will only confuse the issue further .... Extraterritorial residents would actually have more input in city affairs than the city residents with this bill since they have their own representative with their governing body."
A former Grand Forks high school teacher accused of having sexual relations with a student will plead guilty and waive his right to a jury trial, court records show.

James Patrick Whalen, 42, faces four felony charges in North Dakota: three counts of corruption of a minor and one count of sexual assault, all Class C felonies.

A jury trial for Whalen had been scheduled to begin in Grand Forks on Jan. 24, but court filings Thursday show the former Grand Forks Central High School teacher will have a change of plea hearing Jan. 23. His jury trial has been canceled.

The agreement between Whalen and prosecutors was not immediately available. It is unknown which charges Whalen will plead guilty to, or if any charges will be dropped or reduced, as is common with plea agreements.

As of Thursday morning, Whalen is still scheduled to go to trial in Minnesota on Jan. 17. Whalen is charged in a related case in Polk County, where he faces one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony.

Whalens attorney, Robert Hoy, declined to comment on the details of the plea agreement when reached by the Herald on Thursday.

Hoy said he believes the case against Whalen in Minnesota will ultimately be dismissed.

Accusations

On March 2, 2016, Whalen was charged with one Class B felony count that accuses him of engaging in a sexual act with a minor student in rooms at Central High School, while a Class C felony accuses him of having sex with her at his Grand Forks home. Interviews with Whalen and the victim also indicate there were other encounters in Whalen's green Ford Expedition -- in which Whalen kept pillows and blankets -- on rural roads in Grand Forks and Polk counties, including near Kellys Slough and the English Coulee, according to court records.

Police searched Whalen's vehicle and iPhone, court records showed. Whalen sent the student a series of text messages "that were inappropriate and sexual in nature," investigators said in court documents.

Whalen resigned March 1, 2016 as a teacher from the Grand Forks Public Schools. On March 22, 2016, Whalen was charged with sexual assault and an additional corruption of a minor count, both Class C felonies, in a separate but related case. A Grand Forks Police detective advised a Grand Forks Sheriff's Department investigator "there may have been criminal behaviors that occurred in Grand Forks County outside (police) jurisdiction," leading to these additional charges, according to a court document. Authorities in Minnesota also have charged Whalen with one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Court documents stated the victim was between 16 and 17 years old at the time of the alleged incidents and the accused is in a position of authority, a felony. Polk County charges were filed against Whalen in July after Grand Forks investigators told the Polk County Sheriff's Office some of the alleged sexual acts took place there. The Herald typically doesn't identify victims of sexual assault cases unless they wish to make their names public.
The Digital Signage Expo (DSE), the international trade show and educational conference dedicated to digital displays, interactive technology and digital communications networks, will take place 28-31 March 2017 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas.

Janna Rider, director of digital merchandising for Dairy Queen, will present a session at DSE 2017 entitled, How to Create Excellent RFIs and RFPs. This general conference session is part of the Digital Signage Fundamentals Seminar programme at DSE 2017, designed specifically for end users, AV professionals, systems integrators or anyone considering creating a digital communications network.

Presented on 30 March at 9am, this session will explore the RFI/RFP process, including steps in the process and steps that should be taken before entering into an RFP. It is important to find a vendor that fits well with company culture and not one that requires changing the company. The session will also cover the end of the RFP, company selection and contract.

DSE Advisory Board members considered return on investment (ROI) versus return on objective (ROO). In the corporate world, it can be rather difficult to quantify ROI so ROO is the more important. ROO can be used at multiple levels of your digital signage strategy, from screen placement to content strategy and all the way to message strategy, says Jennifer Arani, digital signage coordinator, Farmers Insurance Group.

It depends on what your objective is regarding the digital signage installation. We use our digital signage network to inform customers and guests. Additionally, we use the same signage to sell advertising and sponsorship, adds Mark Geiger, associate director of marketing & business development, Georgia World Congress.

For more information, go to www.dse2017.com.
BEIJING: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has filed a lawsuit against two vendors for allegedly selling counterfeit goods, it said, weeks after the US put its main platform on its "notorious markets" blacklist.

Late last month the office of the US Trade Representative put Alibaba's massive online sales portal Taobao on its annual blacklist, saying it was not doing enough to curb sales of fake and pirated goods.

Although inclusion on the blacklist carries no penalties, it dealt a blow to Alibaba's reputation after the company has struggled to improve its image and boost international sales.

The company, which has made founder Jack Ma China's richest man, said Wednesday it had sued two Taobao venders for 1.4 million yuan ($200,000), accusing them of selling fake Swarovski watches on their portal in violation of the company's services agreement.

"Selling counterfeits not only violates our service agreement, it also infringes on the intellectual property rights of the brand owner, puts inferior products in the hands of consumers and ruins the hard-earned trust and reputation Alibaba has with our customers," said Jessie Zheng, Alibaba Group's chief platform governance officer.

The shopping site said this was the first time an e-commerce giant had taken a counterfeiter to court in the world's second-largest economy.

Alibaba and its Taobao site have long been accused of providing a platform for the sale of knockoff brand-name goods.

Items for sale included what appear to be pirated PDFs of the book "Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built", available for purchase for less than one dollar on Thursday.

The e-commerce giant said the US decision was motivated by politics during an election year and said it had used data analytics and covert purchases of suspected fakes to uncover the two sellers.

Alibaba provided that information to police, who in August raided a location in the southern city of Shenzhen and seized 125 fake Swarovski watches, it said.

Alibaba was suspended from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition watchdog in May.

Source: AFP
It was a busy end to 2016 for Edcon as the retailer cleared what CEO Bernie Brookes called "the last hurdle" in a deal that will see the group come under its creditors' ownership.

In mid-December, SA's largest clothing retailer launched a compromise sanction process for the proposed restructuring of the group.

The process involved going to senior lenders and asking them to accept a shareholding in the company that will be formed following the restructure in exchange for a reduction in the debt owed to them.

Days before New Year, 95.45% of Edcon's senior secured creditors and 84.18% of super senior third-ranking creditors voted to adopt compromise proposals.

Once the restructuring process is complete, Edcon's debt will fall from R29bn to R7bn.

Brookes said he was pleased that the group would soon be able to move forward, having substantially reduced its debt. "In tandem with the restructuring, we continue to advance all of our other change initiatives at a rapid rate."

Brookes said the group had made tremendous progress in enhancing the customer experience with better service and products; improving employee motivation and authority levels; and simplifying many processes and structures.

"We believe these initiatives will return Edcon and its various stores to be leading retailers in their respective sectors."

Following the acceptance by note holders, Edcon said it was on track to implement the restructuring agreement during the course of January.

The debt-to-equity deal was announced in September and entailed a comprehensive capital restructuring of the group. Brookes said at the time a fouryear plan was in place that would end with a JSE listing.

The Competition Tribunal approved of the transaction in November. Some of the private equity investment firms and banks that will own Edcon are Franklin Templeton, Harvard Pension Fund, Barclays Africa and FirstRand.

For the eight months to November 30 2016, Edcon group sales were slightly ahead of forecast and the gross profit margin was slightly behind, in each case declining 7% compared with the year-earlier period. The figures were based on preliminary internal information, Edcon said. Credit sales were in line with estimates.

"Edcon's fiscal year-to-date performance has been affected by a large-scale stock clearance initiative and adverse macroeconomic conditions in SA," the company said.

Source: Business Day
JAKARTA: Indonesia is setting up an agency that will tackle fake news after a flood of untrue stories on social media, an official said on Thursday, including claims China was waging biological warfare against the country using contaminated chilli seeds.

The new cyber agency will also seek to protect state institutions from hackers, said presidential spokesman Johan Budi.

Chief Security Minister Wiranto said that the move was necessary to combat a flood of news on social media that was "slanderous, fake, misleading and spread hate".

"Freedom (of speech) is a right in a democracy but there is also an obligation to obey the law," he said.

Officials said among the agency's tasks would be to monitor news circulating online to check for false stories. It will be overseen by the security ministry and will work alongside other government agencies, they said, without giving further details.

It came after President Joko Widodo declared his intention at a cabinet meeting in December to combat fake news in a country where people are rapidly getting online for the first time, with over 130 million out of 255 million inhabitants now estimated to be internet users.

One of the most high-profile cases in recent times was a false claim circulating on social media in December that Beijing was seeking to wage biological warfare against Indonesia, after a true story that four Chinese citizens were arrested for using imported chilli seeds infected with bacteria on a farm south of Jakarta.

The Chinese embassy in Jakarta was forced to issue a statement saying that the reports were "misleading and have caused great concerns".

Another fake story that spread online said that millions of Chinese workers had entered Indonesia to replace local workers. It comes as anti-Chinese sentiment is running high with Jakarta's ethnic Chinese governor standing trial for alleged blasphemy.

Indonesian internet expert Nukman Luthfie said he hoped the new agency would not breach people's privacy, but added it was too early to tell.

"It would be really unfortunate if it was going to be used to monitor public discussions because that's people's right," he said.

There has been growing global concern about the spread of fake news, with some critics claiming a flood of false stories circulating online may have helped brash billionaire Donald Trump win the US election.

Source: AFP
Previous epochs have included the Cretaceous period, which was following by the Cenozoic era. The extinction of the dinosaurs marked the transition that ended the Cretaceous period and marking the beginning of the Cenozoic era.

The earth is 4.5-billion years old. But modern humans have only been around for approximately 200,000 years. Human civilisations have really only thrived during the epoch known as the Holocene that started 12,000 years ago and continues to the present. During this comparatively short time, agriculture was invented, large cities were built, and humans started using energy from fossil fuels.

There is an ongoing debate among scientists about when the transition from the Holocene into the Anthropocene occurred. Some scientists argue the transition happened in the 1950s.

Whatever the actual date of the transition, the Anthropocene brings with it new and diverse challenges related to biodiversity loss, increased inequality as resources become more scarce, and climate change. Considering these negative trends, scary views of the future dominate. This makes it difficult to conceptualise a more sustainable and just future society.

We have been involved in a project to develop possible scenarios for southern Africa that start with existing positive things happening in the region. The idea was to start thinking about possibilities that broke with a business-as-usual approach and employed more creativity in thinking about how to overcome the challenges facing the region and the world.

Seeds of good Anthropocenes

Many equate the concept of the Anthropocene with a group of people called eco-modernists who advocate that technology should be improved to help manage the planet meet human needs.

But this view is countered in a new global project called Seeds of Good Anthropocenes. The aim of the project is to explore positive futures that are socially and ecologically desirable, just and sustainable. It is done by exploring and developing a suite of alternative visions for good Anthropocenes.

The project starts with the idea of seeds. These are initiatives that represent alternative ways of thinking, doing, technologies or institutions that exist in experimental form, but are not dominant features of todays world.

We have collected these seeds  500 so far  from all over the world through a questionnaire available on our website. The next step is to see whether more positive future visions can be built from them.

A radically different southern Africa

To explore this idea in practice we convened a diverse set of people from across southern Africa. They included artists, social entrepreneurs, researchers and policymakers who were taken through a three day visioning process that was more science fiction than science.

To build a scenario we adapted the Manoa approach, which is designed to maximise difference. Each group started with three seeds to build their future world.

Initiatives were chosen based actual representatives being present. They either had strong knowledge of the seed, or were directly involved in its development. To be as diverse as possible, we brought together seeds that were more technological alongside those that emphasised the environment through social entrepreneurship of civil society.

Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Author provided

Each group had three seed initiatives to begin with and were asked to describe what the world would look like if these ideas were the dominant way of doing things. The next step was to find creative similarities between the ideas. For example, if artificial intelligence (AI) was a widespread technology, how would it interact with a seed that emphasised the importance of reconnecting people to their food?

One of the groups decided that it would be possible to download knowledge of food from the AI for a day and use it to create a Michelin-quality meal from local ingredients.

From these connections, the groups went on to create stories describing what their world looked like. These were extremely interesting.

In the scenario entitled Post Exodus, for instance, the foundation was laid by initiatives representing three very different seeds: , and gene editing. This scenario described a world where humans live long, healthy lives in millions of small village ecosystems, connected through a global virtual knowledge collective.

The scenario that we called Rhiz(h)ome was developed from seeds of cryptocurrency, Tyisa Nabanye an urban agriculture organisation, and Massive Small. This led to a decentralised world characterised by empathy where work, leisure and community service are much less distinguishable.

The stories that emerged exceeded the research teams expectations and were as diverse as the people who were gathered for the process. But there were some underlying commonalities that may be useful for decision-makers in the region to start thinking about southern African futures.

Southern African futures

All the visions contained aspects of a decentralised governance structure that emphasised the need to reconnect societies to their local environment and to embrace diversity. But this emphasis on local connections with humans and the environment was balanced by technological advances that made it possible for everyone to communicate and interact globally.

Focusing on southern Africa allowed for the potential to inspire new interventions in planning for the future of the region. What emerged was less emphasis on the individual and more of a focus on the common good, collaboration and empathy. This resonates with spirit of the collective or Ubuntu that is imbued within the indigenous cultures of the region.

These elements force a re-evaluation of how current policies in the region are helping to create a more desirable future or whether they are stifling it. The South African National Development Plan is a good example of an agenda setting policy that could be evaluated against these visions to see whether it is guiding us toward a more positive future or whether it is more business-as-usual.

As the project progresses, we aim to analyse longer-term planning documents based on the content of these scenarios. Participants will also be using the scenarios in their own work in the region and to run similar scenario processes with other groups. We will track the uptake of these scenarios to see how influential they will be in helping southern Africa to move towards a more positive future.


Sustainable building is a mindful approach to energy and ecological conservation in the creation of the built environment. It demands architectural design that aims to minimise negative environmental impacts through efficiency and balance in the use of materials, energy and development space.

Mario van Wyk from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University is the regional winner for Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year. His entry is entitled Horror in Architecture.

In the 30th Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year Awards, South Africas best architectural students from eight major universities are identified based on their final theses and presented with awards at regional events. The winners of each of the regional competitions then go on to compete for the national title and a prize of R50,000 at the Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year Awards which this year will be held in Johannesburg in May 2017.

Mike Willard, Corobrik sales manager Eastern Cape presented the awards to the winning students at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. Mario van Wyk was named the regional winner and won R8,500, Alana Changfoot won second prize of R6,500, while Scott Lenton received the third prize of R4,500. A R4,500 prize for the best use of clay masonry was also presented to Reginald Grobler.

Open undefined spaces

Mario van Wyks thesis is entitled Horror in Architecture, a romantic exploration of the exquisite corpse analogy.

Van Wyk says, As a by-product of the urban environment we are left with open undefined spaces between developed areas where the accumulation of infrastructural layers exists such as storm water channels, railway lines, natural invasiveness and even ruins of old industrial remains. These kinds of spaces, create urban barriers and breeding grounds for criminal activities.

His thesis harnesses the romantic and functional qualities of such an area, converting it into a progressive system of human habitation with an innovative housing model.

In second place, Alana Changfoots thesis regenerated the Swartkops Power Station in Port Elizabeth. Scott Lentons thesis is entitled Estuary Allotment and Seaweed Revitalisation Farm. It is a wetland intervention and rehabilitation at Seekoeirivier.

Reginald Grobler designed a mixed-use development in Windhoeks central business district in Namibia. He proposes a development on a site famous for becoming the first commercial brewery in Windhoek. The building is dilapidated and Groblers thesis proposes retaining some of the old sections with significant heritage value while extending the facility to provide a venue for arts and community work. He has incorporated clay masonry inspired by the use of brick in existing structures which will become a continuation of the structure in a contemporary sense.

Long-term implications for environmental impact

Willard said, It was clear during the judging that the student architects recognise that the choice of building materials has significant long-term implications for environmental impact. Building materials that are generally considered to be 'green' are those that are durable, non-toxic, reusable, energy efficient and low maintenance. As brick manufacturers in South Africa for more than a century, we can say with confidence that our clay face brick has all of these attributes as well as being aesthetically pleasing and providing a healthy and comfortable living environment.

In addition, most processes in the manufacture of Corobrik clay bricks are in line with stringent local and international standards which place a high premium on sustainability.

These are factors which aspiring architects need to take into account when creating new additions to the built environment in South Africa ensuring that their projects are socially responsible as well as functional, engaging and in harmony with the surrounding landscape. The designs we are seeing demonstrate this awareness which augurs well for the future of South African architecture.
A North Dakota Senate committee got its first look Thursday at a proposal to remove the State Hospital in Jamestown from a section of the state constitution, an idea one hospital official called troubling.

The resolution would strike language from a section of the North Dakota Constitution that lists the hospital as one of the public institutions permanently located across the state, such as a state university in Grand Forks. While officials from the Department of Human Services said the change wouldnt automatically result in the hospitals closure, North Dakota Hospital Association President Jerry Jurena questioned why lawmakers were considering taking the step and raised concerns that it could eventually lead to shuttering the facility.

There is such a tremendous need for this service, Jurena said. I have more questions about the whys of this than anything else.

The hospital provides psychiatric and substance abuse treatment, residential addiction treatment for those referred to the Tompkins Rehabilitation and Corrections Center, inpatient evaluation and treatment services for sexually dangerous individuals and other services, according to its website. Senate Concurrent Resolution 4002 would put the constitutional amendment to voters in 2018.

The Senate Government and Veterans Affairs Committee didnt take action on the resolution Thursday.

The interim Human Services Committee narrowly passed a draft of the resolution in September. Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, a member of that committee, said the proposed change is rooted in changing understandings of behavioral health. Research indicates the best way for people to receive treatment is to be in the context of your community and family, he said after the hearing.

When you have one treatment center for the state of North Dakota, you basically are going against the tenets of evidence-based care, Mathern said. To me, the intention is to create the freedom that we create other places for people to get that care and not maintain the (constriction) of it only being in Jamestown.

Mathern said the State Hospital should focus on treating incarcerated people with mental health or addiction issues.

But Jurena said most of the hospitals in North Dakota refer to the State Hospital for services they cant provide. Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, R-Williston, pointed to a lack of available psychiatrists in the western part of the state.

If theres no State Hospital  whos going to pick those services up, whats going to happen to those patients who are in that facility? Jurena told the committee.

Rosalie Etherington, superintendent of the North Dakota State Hospital, told the committee Thursday the private psychiatric facilities could not absorb the clients served by the State Hospital.
Wildfires raging across Somerset West in the Western Cape have damaged one of the country's oldest wine farms. Vergelegen chief executive Don Tooth said 40% of the wine farm was burnt within 12 hours due to winds of more than 100km/h fanning the flames.

He said some vineyards had been badly burnt. But most damage was caused to a fynbos conservation area.

Cape Town fire and rescue services spokesman Theo Lane said 120 firefighters were being assisted by crews from Working on Fire and Cape Nature. He said 22 vehicles, three helicopters, and two fixed-wing aircraft had been dispatched.

They were largely concentrating on residential areas. Seven residential properties had been damaged and the main building of the Bezweni Lodge on Sir Lowry's Pass had been destroyed, Lane said.

Other areas near Cape Town were also affected.

Strand resident Lieze Nel said the area was engulfed by a thick cloud of smoke as she drove in from Stellenbosch at about 8.30pm on Tuesday. "It looked like the end of the world," Nel said. "It was pitch black as we drove through the smoke.

"You couldn't see anything, but once we made it closer to the beachfront, you could see there was in fact still light."

Providing further details of the Vergelegen fire, Tooth said that much of the fynbos which had been burnt was still very young. "It has taken us about 12 years to get where we are in weeding out alien vegetation. "When a fire runs through, it germinates alien seeds as well as fynbos seeds and we have to go back in there and weed by hand to get rid of any alien vegetation that comes up again. That is hugely labour intensive."

Tooth said the fire had not damaged any of the tourism infrastructure or houses on the estate and there had been no need to evacuate Vergelegen, which was founded on 1 February 1700.

The farm is owned by Anglo American.

Source: Herald
PARIS, FRANCE: Beatrice, a busy 50-year-old manager at an airline in Paris, sounds like she would benefit from France's new "right to disconnect" law that guarantees all employees freedom from their work smartphone and email.

 Andrea De Martin  123RF.com

"It often happens that I'm interrupted by urgent problems in my free time, or need to reply to emails out of hours," she told AFP, asking for her real name and her company's not to be used.

"No one forces me to do it, but I get work email on my telephone and other managers have the same thing," she added.

Right to switch off

Since 1 January 2017, French companies with more than 50 employees must work up a charter defining employees' right to switch off. No sanctions are foreseen for non-compliance but an employee could sue for having their rights infringed.

The new labour law in a country famous for its tightly regulated workplace was prompted by the blurring of the boundary between work and private life by new technology and ways of working.

Requests from Beatrice's team of six intruded frequently into a recent holiday, meaning she couldn't switch off as she would have liked.

"I could have said 'I don't care', but then it puts other people in difficulty," she confided.

While generally aware of potential health problems for employees, the company is trying hard to cut costs, she says. The result is senior managers want the same outcome with fewer people.

Yet others believe that it is not simply over-demanding bosses that are to blame for them checking mail during dinner or before going to bed, illustrating the difficulty of regulating how people work in their own time.

Some confess that their own work ethic and ambition spurs them on, or simply a lack of willpower to ignore unopened mail.

Mathilde, a 26-year-old employee of a cultural agency in the Opera area of central Paris, says she over-checks her messages due to curiosity rather than pressure.

"If there was an expectation (that I'd reply), then it would make me anxious," she told AFP.

Choice

A hard-charging young banker who works on mergers and acquisitions says his employer cuts access to work email for his team from 10pm to 6am every night to prevent over-work.

"It's a choice whether you check your phone or not. Telling me I have to switch off pisses me off," the 24-year-old admitted before striding off in his suit.

Peter Fleming, an expert on the workplace at the University of London, says many employees suffer from the "hard-work culture" of their companies, but also an "obsessive attachment to their work identity."

"For many people, a job has moved from something we do and become something that we are," he told AFP. "24/7 email really amplifies that trend."

Company-wide policies on disconnecting - whether prompted by the law in France or by companies themselves elsewhere - are therefore welcome and in some cases necessary.

Opposition

Fleming says the ambitious MBA business students at his university would be instinctively opposed to disconnecting out-of-hours because they would be worried about being judged harshly.

"It has to be collective, not individual. If I know that all my co-workers aren't connected, then I might not be too," he said.

People working in the finance, technology, law or health professions are seen as particularly vulnerable to the risks of overload and burnout, but an increasing number of top companies are waking up to the risks.

Draft legislation

It is no coincidence that telecom group Orange was asked to help draft France's "right to disconnect" legislation after a scandal over 35 suicides among its workforce in 2008-09.

The company, working with trade unions, drew up new guidance on disconnecting in September, three months before the law came into force, group human resources director Jerome Barre told AFP.

Orange's 150,000 employees now benefit from a promise they will not be penalised for failing to check email out of the office. Everyone is discouraged from sending messages outside working hours.

Managers are being trained to understand that "if a boss sends an email in the middle of the weekend his employees will feel obliged to reply", Barre said.

At the same time, no one is prevented from catching up on work at home and the rules contain flexibility for people who work remotely or unusual hours.

"If in my personal way of working it's more comfortable for me to finish something at the weekend, we can't ban it," Barre explained.

"But I don't necessarily have to send the result of my work on Sunday night. It can wait until Monday morning."

Source: AFP
Purchasing a property is a large financial commitment, and as such, there are several vital aspects that buyers need to consider before taking the final step towards homeownership. While price and the type of home are a few of the factors that require buyers' attention, the most crucial aspect to consider is location.

Most buyers in todays market will know that location is important, but not everyone knows what elements make an area a good location or not, or how this influences buying decisions. A major influential factor is the amenities within proximity to the area, such as the shopping mall and medical facilities. The one amenity that has the largest impact on property-buying decisions are schools. This is because they have an influence on both the housing prices in the area and childrens education.

Homes in school districts sell for more

Regardless of whether prospective buyers have children or not, the fact that schools have such a large impact on the potential appreciation in value of the homes in the area, they require buyers consideration. Irrespective of the persons life stage, whether they are parents or not planning on having children, schools should have a bearing on the decision-making process due to the influence they have on the investment potential of the property. According to statistics, homes that are situated in areas which are the best school districts will, on average, sell for more than similar homes outside of these schooling zones. Essentially, it all comes down to a matter of demand. Areas within proximity to good schools attract a higher number of potential buyers. The increased demand for property in these regions pushes property values up. The appreciation potential of a home intrinsically links to the demand for property in the area. Even in a slow market, the resale value of homes in a sought-after area will often fare better and be more resilient.

School zoning system

The reason that schools have such an impact on home values and buying decisions is largely due to the school zoning system. Subject to there being space, a parent will be able to register their child at any public school. However, the Department of Education states that the school must prioritise children that live within the feeder zone. Children whose home address is within the feeder zone are given preference over those who live outside the zoning area.

Preference is also given to children whose parents live at their place of employment, such as in the case of a domestic worker who resides on the property. Children whose parents work in the feeder area are placed higher on the list than those that dont. Once all these children are given a place in the school, the remainder of the applicants will be considered subject to availability. If all spaces are filled, the remainder of the children on the waiting list will have to go to their second-choice school. The provincial department of education is obliged to find every child a place in a school.

Research

It is advisable for buyers to do their research on the schools in an area and how they are ranked before they purchase a property. Additionally, as purchasing property is viewed as a long-term investment, where possible, buyers should assess what plans they have for the future. While they may not currently have children, if they are a part of their plans, then considering the schools in a particular area could become a priority that influences their buying decision.

To get information about schools in a certain area, buyers can contact their provincial department of education or browse the website. The Department of Education has a countrywide database of all public schools that can be of assistance to property buyers. This database has information such as the school address and contact details.

Buying a property is a huge decision that should be carefully considered. Having the necessary information at hand will ensure that buyers make the best decision when choosing a home.
Eastern Cape universities will be forced to turn away thousands of prospective first-year students, even if they received good matric results.

At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) alone, spokeswoman Zandile Mbabela said they had received more than 112,000 first-year applicants even though they would be able to accommodate only 6,500. The situation is just as bad at Walter Sisulu University of Technology as it will have to reject 22,500 of the 30,000 applications.

Mbabela said that every year the university received more pupils who showed interest in the university and every year there were more than they could take in.

"We just hope that those who applied at NMMU have also applied to other universities," Mbabela said.

"This year, we may have received a bit more applications than the previous year because others applied both manually and online, therefore we are dealing with applications from about 50,000."

WSU spokeswoman Yonela Tukwayo said although the university would like to take all qualifying students, because of the enrolment targets of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), it could only accept 7,500 students for this academic year.

"WSU received more than 30,000 applications, and 12,000 just for the Buffalo City campus," she said.

WSU warned matriculants who had not applied yet that the university would not take walk-ins.

"DHET set up the Central Application Clearing House for late applicants to avoid an influx to tertiary institutions and we encourage those matriculants who did not apply to use this service to find spaces," Tukwayo said.

However, NMMU said if spaces on other courses became available, it would receive walk-ins.

"Depending on available spaces in the respective courses, a small window for walk-in applications may open, provided the applicant meets the direct entry requirements," Mbabela said.

The University of Fort Hare was unavailable for comment, and Rhodes University had not responded to inquiries by the time of going to print yesterday.

Source: Herald
Ethiopian Airlines has concluded preparations for new flight links to Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, three times weekly starting 3 June 2017.

Chengdu is the seventh largest city in China and is the country's western centre of logistics, commerce, science, and technology, as well as a hub of transportation, manufacturing, and communication.

The capital is also a major centre for Air China, Ethiopian Airlines Star Alliance partner. With this new flight, passengers from Ethiopia, a vast and growing network in Africa, will be able to quickly connect to dozens of cities in China, with the Air China partnership, including Shenzhen, Kunming, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Wuhan, Changsha, and Urumqi.

Group CEO Ethiopian Airlines, Tewolde GebreMariam, said: We are glad to launch services to Chengdu, our fifth gateway to The Republic of China. Since our first flight 43 years ago, China has been a key market and it is now the largest per country market in our system. Using the geocentric location advantage of our hub in Addis Ababa we are connecting China, the world's second largest economy and Africas biggest trade and investment partner, with 52 cities in the continent of Africa.

With the addition of Chengdu, we shall offer the best and fastest connectivity options with a total of 34 weekly flights to China, operated with the latest and most comfortable B787 and B777 aircraft. Our Chinese customers will also enjoy seamless connection on Ethiopian Airlines' intra-African network and farther to Sao Paulo in Brazil.

A Chinese friendly hub airport

Ethiopian Airlines is investing to make Addis Ababa a Chinese friendly hub airport for the continent. The airline now has Mandarin translators and signage available at the airport transit area and in the Cloud Nine Business Class Lounge. Chinese New Year is also marked every year at Addis Abba Airport.

Ethiopian Airlines was the first African carrier and the fourth in the world to fly to China back in 1973.

In addition to the three weekly flights to Chengdu to be launched in June, Ethiopian Airlines currently operates daily nonstop flights to Beijing, ten weekly nonstop flights to Guangzhou, and six weekly nonstop flights to Hong Kong.

Flight details
What makes a film memorable is not critique from the critics, money raked in at the box-office, or communal affirmation, but its enduring emotional impact and transformative power. Here are the films that changed the way I see the world.

1. Knight of Cups



Writer-director Terrence Malick is very much a storymaker in search of meaning, and through his journey of finding an answer to the essence of life, love and art, he allows us to reconnect with our own personal journey into ourselves and our place in this world. Malick explores the excess of nothingness and the extreme of everything, where complete silence and feverish chaos form an incongruous symphony of emotions in this story of a lonely comedy writer Rick (Christian Bale) living in present-day Santa Monica who longs for something other, something beyond the life he knows, without knowing quite what it is, or how to go about finding it. Film is ultimately an art that communicates thoughts and ideas through created imagery and sound. Malick is indeed a Knight of Cups and Prince of Dreams, constantly creating new ways of communicating, celebrating the gift of creation, and cherishing the talent for expressing the kingdoms of make-believe and the imagination.

2. Genius

A masterful journey into the mindscape of an impassioned writer and how the creative process impacts on the reality of the world and people surrounding the writer. This stirring drama deals with the complex friendship and transformative professional relationship between the world-renowned book editor Maxwell Perkins (who discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway) and the larger-than-life literary giant Thomas Wolfe. Jude Law is superb as the crazed Wolfe, with Colin Firth in top form as Perkins. Genius is the culmination of screenwriter John Logans 20-year journey to bring the story of Maxwell Perkins to the screen.

3. The Danish Girl

The extreme truth of his hidden identity and acceptance of his true self sets an impassioned artist free in the exceptionally soulful The Danish Girl. It boldly celebrates the valour of those who embrace their true identity and are not ashamed of who they are, and salutes those whose kind-heartedness makes the world a place everyone wants to share equally. Eddie Redmayne delivers a tour de force in his dual roles as man and woman; it is astonishing how he never imitates or impersonates, but becomes by immersing himself wholeheartedly into the character of Lili, allowing his transformation to be truthful. Redmaynes passionate performance is layered with immense sadness, but equally presents us with the blissful joy of true fulfillment and absolute enlightenment.

4. The Revenant

A heart-wrenching story of survival, transformation and ultimate redemption. Last year Alejandro G. Inarritu blew our minds with Birdman. Your heart will bleed watching his latest masterwork, The Revenant, a spiritual odyssey into humanity and a mans soul, and a brutal story of survival that will drain everything out of you emotionally. The Revenant is poetry in motion and an epic story in which visual imagery are selected for their beauty, sound and power to express feelings.

5. The Dressmaker

If there is one film that is divinely unique in every possible way, its this quirky Australian charmer, a film that transforms you in many ways. Its an enchanting creation from husband-and-wife team Jocelyn Moorhouse and P.J. Hogan who understand the world and people they write about with loving care, compassion and a great sense of twisted humour. Its a universal story anyone can easily identify with and sink their teeth in. Its through their vibrant and dynamic characters that we immediately fall hopelessly in love with their respective journey and will to survive living in a small town reminiscent of classic Western films. At its heart, The Dressmaker is a spicy mother-and-daughter story, with Kate Winslet and Judy Davis perfectly cast as a devilish duo that explodes with fervour and zest.

6. Room

Both highly suspenseful and deeply emotional, Room is an unique and touching exploration of the boundless love between a mother and her child. At once a taut narrative of captivity and freedom, an imaginative trip into the wonders of childhood, and a profound portrait of a familys bonds and fortitude, Room is a beautifully transcendent experience. Director Lenny Abrahamson remains faithful to the novel while bringing Jack, Ma and their entirely singular world to heart-pounding and intensely cinematic life. Jacob Tremblay is superb as 5-year-old Jack, with an equally emotionally charged performance by Brie Larson as Ma.

7. The Jungle Book

A universal coming-of-age story that everyone can relate to. The Jungle Book returns to the big screen in magical, larger-than-life, live-action epic adventure that showcases the art of animation, storytelling and filmmaking, blending live-action performances with stunning CG environments and extraordinary photo-real animal characters. Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Chef) directed The Jungle Book from a screenplay by Justin Marks (Top Gun 2, TVs Rewind) that was based on Rudyard Kiplings timeless stories and was inspired by Disneys classic animated film. Absolute magic.

8. The Adderall Diaries

Adapted from Stephen Elliotts true crime memoir of the same name, The Adderall Diaries is an incredible journey into the twisted mind of a once-successful novelist paralyzed by writers block and in the thrall of an Adderall addiction  who becomes fascinated by a high-profile murder case as a way to escape his personal struggles. If theres one reason to see this film, besides a first rate and highly imaginative adaptation from writer-director Pamela Romanowsky, its for the explosive and dynamic confrontation between James Franco and Ed Harris, who plays his father who mysteriously resurfaces and claims that his sons nightmarish memories were fabricated.

9. Captain Fantastic

Heres one film you cannot miss! From the wacky mindscape of writer-director Matt Ross springs a story that will touch you emotionally, and challenge your perceptions about the state of the human condition. Viggo Mortensen is outstanding as the fiercely independent patriarch living in the woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, raising his family as far as he can from the influence of modern consumerist culture. For writer-director Matt Ross, the story is an exploration of the choices that parents make for their children. Ultimately, its an extremely emotional and transformative journey for a very close-knit family that has chosen to live in an unusual way.

10. Dont Breathe

A brainy twisted horror-thriller that will shock you to the core. Writer-director Fede Alvarez goes for the jugular with a visceral and unapologetically brutal onslaught that pits a trio of thieves against an unexpectedly dangerous adversary. Shocking and enthralling, Alvarezs masterful, visually stunning thriller maintains a frenzied pace to the last chilling minute. In this second feature film from Alvarez (Evil Dead) and legendary filmmaker Sam Raimi, a trio of friends breaks into the house of a blind recluse confident of an easy score only to find themselves in a terrifying life-or-death struggle.

11. Hell or High Water

Ben Foster and Chris Pine deliver gut-wrenching performances as bank-robbing brothers, holding-up the very banks that are threatening to take away their land. On their trail, two Texas Marshalls (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) investigate the robberies, seeking to bring the culprits to justice. This modern western has far more on its mind than a simple outlaws-versus-cops morality tale. The antagonists in Hell or High Water arent even the cops or outlaws, but the corrupt faceless institutions (capitalist and governmental) that control them. The film examines the hopelessness Pine & Bridges face when up against cold bureaucracy, one forced into breaking the law, the other resigned to uphold it. Hell or High Water is the result of that increasingly rare invention: an original screenplay by actor Taylor Sheridan.

12. The Free State of Jones

Based on Oscar-nominated writer/director Gary Ross original screenplay, the epic action-drama tells the extraordinary story of a little known episode in American history during which Newt Knight, a fearless Mississippi farmer, led an unlikely band of poor white farmers and runaway slaves in an historic armed rebellion against the Confederacy during the height of the Civil War. Matthew McConaughey delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as a man torn between what he believes and who he loves, with other superb performances from Keri Russell, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the two women who shape his life.

13. A Perfect Day

Everyone seeks a day that is perfect, and as this delightful film reveals, you will only know what a true perfect day is once it has happened, and then its reward turns out to be a gratifying surprise. Spanish filmmaker Fernando Leon De Aranoa has a wicked sense of the absurd that is grounded in a reality we all know; setting A Perfect Day in a world that is foreign to most people, that of an armed conflict zone, an improbable tourist destination that no one will visit without trepidation. De Aranoa succeeds in emphasising the absurd, the irrationality of the human being. For him the rst victim of any armed conict is reason, and thats why irrationality might be the most fearsome enemy in the lm.

14. Hello, My Name is Doris

A witty and compassionate late-life coming-of-age-story with a heart-breaking performance from Sally Field as an older woman in search of love. After a lifetime of being overlooked and ignored, a woman of a certain age finds her world turned upside down by a handsome new co-worker and a self-help seminar that inspires her to take a chance on love in Hello, My Name is Doris, a witty and compassionate late-life coming-of-age-story. Based on a short film by Laura Terruso, Hello, My Name is Doris was written by Terruso and Michael Showalter and directed by Showalter. For Showalter, the film is an inspiring combination of humour and heart, with a truly memorable performance at its center.

15. The Secret Life of Pets

This depicts an absolute delightful and utterly charming journey into the world of pets and what happens in their lives when we leave them alone at home. It was directed by Chris Renaud, co-directed by Yarrow Cheney and written by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio and Brian Lynch. Lynch loved extrapolating upon these pets secret lives, revealing: This film is a salute to how much all of us love our pets. No matter what they do in the movie, the new friends they meet or the death they defy, they still have to be back at the end of the day to see their owners come home. Even if they go on crazy adventures during the day, the highlight of every day is when their owner comes home."

This was an emotional and transformative year on the big screen.



For other noteworthy films of 2016, visit www.writingstudio.co.za
Shareholder activist Theo Botha is urging shareholders of Coronation Fund Managers to vote against the group's remuneration policy at the annual general meeting (AGM) in February.

The upcoming AGM will be the first time that shareholders will be given an opportunity to vote on the remuneration policy.

Shareholders were previously provided with very little information about remuneration policy and this is set to change too.

AGM votes on remuneration are nonbinding.

Coronation's decision to provide shareholders with some information and allow them to vote on the policy follows two years of dogged engagement by Botha. The decision may also have been influenced by evidence that the Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission has become more active in overseeing the application of the Companies Act.

The act requires companies to disclose details of remuneration paid to directors and prescribed officers.

In its 2015-16 annual report, the commission referred to "high-level conversations" it had held with 20 of the top 40 listed companies on the JSE. It noted a general compliance with the act but said: "There is still room for improvement and [the commission] will take [this] up with the relevant entities that might be in a position to assist in influencing improved disclosure on companies' remuneration policies." Botha says Coronation had still failed to provide shareholders with any information that would allow them to make an informed decision on remuneration policy.

"They've included a 10-page report on the remuneration policy in the latest annual report, but there's little useful information in it. Shareholders should vote against it."

There were no details on key performance indicators or the basis for awarding bonuses.

The 2016 annual report, which was released only on December 20, includes 10 pages devoted to discussion of the remuneration policy. The 2015 report devoted only one page to the policy. However, the latest report is largely descriptive and contains few of the details Botha says are necessary to make an informed decision.

Jock McKenzie, chairman of the remuneration committee, describes Coronation's performance assessment process as "holistic". This, says McKenzie, "enables us to make an assessment of an individual without excessive reliance on mechanistic, quantitative metrics or key performance indicators".

A key aspect of the policy is that employees receive a low fixed salary and, to date, a generous variable portion. This portion is determined by the level of pretax operating profit. The annual variable remuneration is set at a fixed 30% of audited annual consolidated net operating profit before taxation and has been a "cornerstone of the company's success over the past 23 years", McKenzie says.

Coronation CEO Anton Pillay has said the group is involved in a "uniquely people-driven business" that needs to attract world-class talent. Revealing its remuneration policy would compromise its ability to do so.

Botha has spent hours at the past two AGMs trying to convince the board that the lack of disclosure fell foul of regulatory requirements and shareholder needs. Following 2016's AGM, Botha presented Pillay with a Promotion of Access to Information Act request, which was denied by Coronation.
Chinese electronics company TCL Corporation was at CES on Wednesday with a plan to revive BlackBerry handsets knocked from the mobile phone throne by Apple and Google.

TCL is putting its market clout behind the design, manufacture and marketing of a new portfolio of BlackBerry smartphones, trusting that its solid position in the market will renew faith in the brand.

"What sells a product is confidence in your underlying capabilities and that there is a future," said Steve Cistulli, general manager for TCL Communication Technology Holdings Limited of North America.

He noted the success TCL has had building its Alcatel brand and expressed optimism the company could put the brakes on BlackBerry's downward slide this year.

BlackBerry in Canada will remain in control of software and security on smartphones, while TCL will handle creating handsets powered by Google Android software, according to company executives who provided a glimpse at the coming model.

"The final compilation of software is controlled by BlackBerry," said TCL research and development head Alain Lejeune, who was credited as the architect of the deal with BlackBerry.

"We want to keep it that way on the security side. The fact that the last mile is coming from Canada, which is outside of China, is a strong value for us."

Behind closed doors at a suite in a Las Vegas hotel, TCL provided a glimpse at a new BlackBerry smartphone that will be the first brought to market under the alliance.

Pricing and other details about the new BlackBerry will be revealed the coming Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, and it would be the first in a portfolio of smartphones, according to Cistulli.

TCL planned to focus on businesses, rekindling BlackBerry's strong reputation for productivity and security.

TCL saw the BlackBerry deal as a way to take on smartphone heavyweights Apple and Samsung with a brand already known in the market, Cistulli said.

"We could see there was still a very strong core of people passionate about BlackBerry," TCL chief executive Nicolas Zibell told AFP.

Market research also showed a pent-up demand by businesses for an option to smartphones from Apple or Samsung, which have been striving to gain ground in workplaces, according to TCL executives.

"Arresting the drop of a brand is incredibly challenging; like trying to catch a knife," Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart told AFP at a briefing by TCL in a suite on the Las Vegas strip.

"But, they are focusing on the best possible market by going after enterprises who may be interested in the BlackBerry reputation for security."

Source: AFP
LAS VEGAS: Taiwan-based electronics group Asus announced on Wednesday it was launching a new smartphone which uses Google Tango 3D technology and allows users to experience augmented and virtual reality.

The Zenfone AR is just the second handset to incorporate the Tango computing platform which allows for indoor mapping, augmented reality and more.

The new device, unveiled by Asus at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is also one of a small number of smartphones that is compatible with Google Daydream, the US tech giant's virtual reality system.

"We are excited to be the first to enable Tango and Daydream," Asus chairman Jonney Shih as he unveiled the new 5.7-inch (15-centimeter) handset, which will be available in the second quarter of the year.

Shih said the new phone "enables interaction with virtual objects" and offers the ability to watch a movie or play a game in virtual or augmented reality.

"This is really the next wave that is going to get consumers excited about smartphones," said Asus marketing chief Erik Hermanson.

Project Tango uses depth sensing and motion tracking to create onscreen 3D experiences, allowing users to get a better picture of a physical environment for functions such as home decoration.

Google Project Tango leader Johnny Lee, who joined the Asus media event, said he expected "dozens of Tango-enabled apps" to be available soon on the Google Play store.

The only other handset using Project Tango is Lenovo's Phab2 phone, which was released last year.

Asus announced it would be releasing another new smartphone, the Zenfone 3 Zoom, with upgraded camera technology which aims at delivering professional-quality images.

Source: AFP
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A new departure: Czech Breitbart-like website whips up hatred against a courageous journalist

6. 1. 2017

cas cteni 3 minuty

Parlamentni listy, a Breitbart-like, widely read Czech-language website which is systematically publishing alarmist "news" and racist attacks against muslims and refugees, has provoked a wave of hate speech in emails and on Facebook against a Czech journalist who has publicly expressed revulsion over the emotional nonsense featured on the Parlamentni listy pages.

Daniel Vesely, a journalist working for Czech public service radio and Britske listy, expressed his horror on Facebook over statements made by Jan Petranek, an octogenerian Czech journalist, who is uncritically pro-Putin and makes frequent anti-muslim and anti-immigration statements. In an interview, published by Parlamentni listy on 3rd January, 2017, among other things, Petranek expresses his satisfaction that Donald Trump has been elected the new US President. In the interview, Petranek also argues that Barack Obama had "close links with the muslim world, his second name was Hussein and his US birth certificate was probably faked and this will come out". In the interview, Petranek is strongly critical of the fact that the Czech government has set up an institution which is to warn the Czech public against websites which disseminate fake news. Petranek then argues that the armies of NATO should have been used to stop the refugees coming to Europe:

"When the migration crisis appeared in Europe, which is basically a muslim invasion directed against Europe, and it is the greatest possible security threat, lunatics in the European Union started shouting that one must be wary of Russia, instead of concentrating on the interventionist immigration invasion to Europe, which has been organised by the terrorist centres of the muslim hard core. At that point, NATO had a chance to show itself as a brilliant defence organisation. It should not have allowed the arrival of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands people from Africa and the Middle East, which has ended up as a wave of a million people."

Source in Czech HERE

On 5th January, Parlamentni listy published a summary of Vesely's expression of horror over Petranek's statements, quoting a number of vulgar comments directed against Vesely. The article was was thus formulated as an implicit call on readers to further attack Daniel Vesely, who "has foulmouthed a legendary Czech journalist". As a result, Vesely's Facebook profile has been swamped by vulgar and hateful comments.

This is a disturbing new development in the Czech Republic where the authorities do not investigate and punish hate speech published on social networks and on racist servers, in spite of the fact that according to the Czech Criminal Code, dissemination of alarmist news and hate speech against minorities is punishable by three years' imprisonment. The inaction of the Czech authorities contributes greatly towards the normalisation of an atmosphere of intolerance in the Czech Republic, which was evidenced this week when hundreds of Czech citizens violently protested against the use of a black model in an advertising leaflet published by a German supermarket.

If the Czech authorities take no action, there is a serious danger that incitement to hatred will sooner or later lead to physical violence against individuals brave enough to speak out against racism, hate speech and intolerance.

Read more: A Czech website which is in the forefront of spreading anti-refugee hatred

0
The image is cell-phone photo taken by CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile, who had submitted a question to a webinar organized by the Global Immersion Project, a Christian organization that supports activists dealing with a number of issues throughout the world.

The webinar, which took place on Jan. 2, 2017, was offered as an opportunity to hear activists and experts about the issues surrounding UN 2334, the Security Council resolution which condemned the construction of homes for Israelis in the West Bank. The passage of this resolution on Dec. 23, 2016 sparked an enormous amount of debate, so the Immersion Projects to host a webinar on the subject was very timely.

As you can see from the photo, Dexter asked a very specific question in the chat? window displayed alongside the vide of the webinar. The question read as follows:

Khaled Abu Toameh has reported that 62 percent of Palestinians support abandoning Oslo accords and 53 percent support armed intifada. Will this resolution intensify hostility?

As it turns out, the source for Toamehs information was the poll cited above, which had just been released a few days prior to the webinar.

For one reason or another, the question never got answered either in the discussion during the webinar itself, nor was it responded to in the chat? window. It was simply ignored by both the organizers and the activists who were participating in the discussion. On one hand, thats no big deal, not every question gets answered.

But in this case, it was the only chat? question submitted that was treated this way. All seven of the other questions were acknowledged and answered one way or another, but not this one.

Now why is that? It was a perfectly reasonable question in light of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. UN resolutions are regularly invoked to justify violence against Israelis by Palestinian terrorists. In light of this history, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask if UN Resolution 2334 will be used to justify another round of Palestinian violence.

Was the question ignored because Khaled Abu Toameh is the wrong? type of Arab journalist, one who is willing to hold Palestinian elites accountable?

Is it because the person asking the question works for CAMERA?

Or is it because the question itself contradicts the narrative that the folks at the Global Immersion Project want to broadcast?

The last guess seems like the best explanation. When it comes to dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict there are some things that the pro-Palestinian crowd simply does not want to talk about so they ignore questions (and public opinion polls) they dont want to hear. If data cant be used to justify the Its Israels fault? narrative, many so-called journalists and peacemakers simply ignore it.

But if the events of the past two decades have taught us anything, it is that we ignore reality at our own peril.




In determining who can vote at the KNUs 16th Congress, members of the Karen National Union Executive Committee made a decision that only representatives from its administration areas can vote or run for office.

The decision was made at the KNU EC meeting on 22 December 2016, despite a previous KNU EC 2015 agreement to allow Karen overseas groups to have a vote at its Congress elections

According to sources from KNU, during the 15th Congress held on November 26, 2012, several rounds of discussion were held on allowing the overseas Karen a vote and finally there was agreement to allow them to vote.

Regional observers criticized the last KNU EC decision in downgrading the Karen overseas involvement and said that this had overruled the agreement made at its 15th Congress.

Padoh Saw Thaw Thi Bwe, joint secretary of the KNU who is serving as chairperson for the 16th Congress Organizing Committee Spoke to Karen News about the decision.

It was decided that way as the representatives of KNU Congress are based on the administrative structure and its controlled areas which are all the way up from villages, village tracts, townships and districts. Only these representatives will be entitled to vote or run for offices.

Regional observers told Karen News that this weakens opposition to the current regime. The observers explained that the struggle within KNUs current EC boils down to how the Karen negotiates the peace process. Currently the KNU is divided by 1) a faction that supports pro engagement with Burmas military and 2) a group who wants the peace negotiations to be between the National League for Democracy, a democratically elected government rather than a party such as former President, U Sein Theins military supported Union Solidarity and Development Party government.

The observers said it is imperative that the NLD government start to drive and control the countrys military. At the moment it is the military controlling the politicians and the political situation in Burma.

A KNU source told Karen News that it is a concern that the military has started using a tactic to classify ethnic armed groups as terrorist organizations. This will allow the militarys propaganda to set the armed groups up as needing to be destroyed.

The KNU source pointed out that the Karen have rarely gone on the offensive outside their own territory  we use weapons to defend our people.

The KNU source told Karen News that the Burma Armys offensive against the Northern Alliance and will make the proposed 21 Century Panglong Conference unworkable.

The 21 Century Conference has to all inclusive if not fighting will continue. Without these groups [Nth Alliance] attending the Conference, the fighting will intensify and possibly involve ceasefire group against non-ceasefire group.

The senior KNU source pointed out that as the international community is funding the conference they need to be concerned, very concerned about how the peace process is conducted.

The KNU source warned that if they [international funders] allow the military to control and manipulate the peace process they are part of the problem and need to urgently address what their role is.

The latest KNU EC meeting also discussed the attendance of representatives from Karen political parties and civil society organizations to its 16th Congress. It was agreed that 15 people from Karen political parties and civil society organizations will be allowed to attend as observers and seven out of 15 overseas KNUs representatives will be allowed to attend as observers.
The Chaungzone Township Election Sub-commissions statistic, compiled from November 1 until December 30, discerns that 126,900 voters are eligible to vote in the Chaungzone Township during the by-election on April 1, 2017. However, the sub-commission hasnt concluded gathering the data.

In the 2015 Election, although there were 127,249 eligible voters in the township, only 56,573 voters turned out to cast their ballots.

Up to December 30, we have gathered over 125,000 eligible voters. We cannot tell the exact number of voters yet because the number will increase as the people with Form 3 and Form 4 (C ) will be also included, said U Htun Yi, chairman of Chaungzone Township Election Sub-commission.

According to the Union Election Commissions announcement, the Name List Form (10) containing the Hluttaw candidates can be advertised beginning January 2, while respective parties can conduct their campaigns from January 30 to May 30.

After the district-level inspected the 5 Hluttaw candidates submitted by the respective parties, ensuring there are no objections, the submitted list of 5 candidates are sent to the Union-level [election commission], said U Htin Kyaw, official of the Mawlamyine District Election Commission.

The National League for Democracy (NLD), the Mon National Party (MNP), the All Mon Regions Democracy Party (AMDP), the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the National Unity Party (NUP) will compete for Chaungzone Townships Pyithu Hluttaw Constituency in the by-election.

The five candidates, who will compete for Pyithu Hluttaw Constituency in Chaungzone Township, are Nai Sein Mya Maung of MNP, Nai Win Htut of AMDP, U Aung Kyi Thein of USDP, U Aye Win of NLD, and U Tin Wai of NUP, according to Mondays announcement by Union Election Commission.

There are 18 constituencies vacant for the by-election across Burma, comprised of 8 Pyithu Hluttaw constituencies, 3 Amyotha Hluttaw, and 7 Regional/State Constituencies. Of the 18 vacant constituencies, there is one vacant constituency, Pyithu Hluttaw constituency, in Chaungzone Township, Mon State.
PR Newswire

LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017

LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ovarian Cancer - Pipeline Review, H2 2016

SummaryGlobal Markets Direct's latest Pharmaceutical and Healthcare disease pipeline guide Ovarian Cancer  Pipeline Review, H2 2016, provides an overview of the Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) pipeline landscape.Ovarian cancer is any cancerous growth that may occur in different parts of the ovary. The majority of ovarian cancers arise from the epithelium (outer lining) of the ovary. Signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer include pelvic discomfort or pain, indigestion, gas or nausea, changes in bowel habits, such as constipation, loss of appetite and low back pain. The predisposing factors include age and family history. Treatment includes surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Report HighlightsGlobal Markets Direct's Pharmaceutical and Healthcare latest pipeline guide Ovarian Cancer  Pipeline Review, H2 2016, provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development for Ovarian Cancer (Oncology), complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The guide covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and latest news and press releases.The Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) pipeline guide also reviews of key players involved in therapeutic development for Ovarian Cancer and features dormant and discontinued projects. The guide covers therapeutics under Development by Companies /Universities /Institutes, the molecules developed by Companies in Pre-Registration, Filing rejected/Withdrawn, Phase III, Phase II, Phase I, IND/CTA Filed, Preclinical, Discovery and Unknown stages are 3, 2, 15, 115, 119, 7, 195, 31 and 2 respectively. Similarly, the Universities portfolio in Phase II, Phase I, Preclinical and Discovery stages comprises 11, 11, 34 and 8 molecules, respectively.Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) pipeline guide helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage. The guide is built using data and information sourced from Global Markets Direct's proprietary databases, company/university websites, clinical trial registries, conferences, SEC filings, investor presentations and featured press releases from company/university sites and industry-specific third party sources. Additionally, various dynamic tracking processes ensure that the most recent developments are captured on a real time basis.Note:Certain content / sections in the pipeline guide may be removed or altered based on the availability and relevance of data.Scope- The pipeline guide provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Ovarian Cancer (Oncology).- The pipeline guide reviews pipeline therapeutics for Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) by companies and universities/research institutes based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources. - The pipeline guide covers pipeline products based on several stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages.- The pipeline guide features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which comprise, product description, descriptive licensing and collaboration details, R&D brief, MoA & other developmental activities.- The pipeline guide reviews key companies involved in Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects.- The pipeline guide evaluates Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) therapeutics based on mechanism of action (MoA), drug target, route of administration (RoA) and molecule type.- The pipeline guide encapsulates all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects. - The pipeline guide reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Ovarian Cancer (Oncology)Reasons to buy- Procure strategically important competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies.- Recognize emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage.- Find and recognize significant and varied types of therapeutics under development for Ovarian Cancer (Oncology).- Classify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic.- Develop tactical initiatives by understanding the focus areas of leading companies.- Plan mergers and acquisitions meritoriously by identifying key players and it's most promising pipeline therapeutics.- Formulate corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding Ovarian Cancer (Oncology) pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics.- Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scope.- Adjust the therapeutic portfolio by recognizing discontinued projects and understand from the know-how what drove them from pipeline.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/2458434/About ReportbuyerReportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishershttp://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ovarian-cancer---pipeline-review-h2-2016-300386827.html

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There are people in the United States more concerned with the resale of ivory antiques  and getting a few hundred or a few thousand dollars here and there -- than with the very survival of the largest land mammals on the planet. Photo by Vanessa Mignon

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China announced last week a timetable to shutter the ivory market in the worlds most populous country and the biggest trading post for elephant tusks, which are carved into decorative trinkets, necklaces, bracelets, and other household items and jewelry. The year-long phase-out, expected to be completed by the end of 2017, was a follow-up on an announcement made by Chinese President Xi Jinping last summer when he pledged to match the U.S. rulemaking action to dramatically tamp down the ivory trade here at home, made by President Obama on a trip to Kenya, which has seen its elephant population decimated by armed thugs.

Ironically, its the U.S. ivory rule that may be at risk, not Chinas, as our nation ushers in a Republican-controlled Congress. Before the rule was finalized, Republican lawmakers included language in an annual spending bill to prevent the administration from finalizing it  at the urging of the National Rifle Association and a handful of antique dealers. Curbing the trade was viewed as an attack on business, specifically the selling of old guns with ivory and other older items made with ivory.

Take a minute to process this weighting of two social concerns. There are people in the United States more concerned with the resale of ivory antiques  and getting a few hundred or a few thousand dollars here and there  than with the very survival of the largest land mammals on the planet. These animals are being massacred by the tens of thousands every year by poachers in order to feed the demand in global ivory markets, including the United States and China. The poachers are destroying the greatest natural resource and one of the biggest economic activities throughout Africa  wildlife-based tourism, which generates billions of dollars annually and provides hundreds of thousands of jobs. Those jobs enable health care, womens education, and the well-being and sustenance of millions of people. There are virtually no losses in the United States associated with the end of the ivory trade, but thousands of American and African jobs connected to African tourism would be lost if elephants are exterminated.

Despite attempts made by some Republican lawmakers to block the Obama Administration efforts to curb this traffic, the ivory rider was not included in the final spending package, allowing the administration to finalize the rule in June. The final rule was carefully crafted to include a de minimus exemption for items with a total weight of ivory of less than 200 grams, including musical instruments, household and decorative items, and knives and guns with ivory grips. Nevertheless, the ivory rule may become a target of Republican lawmakers who seem hell-bent on nixing anything attached to the name of the outgoing president of the United States, instead of looking at the merits of rulemaking measures. Many of these rules save the lives of animals and help people with the most basic necessities, and are supported by Republicans as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., led a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cosigned by 108 of his colleagues voicing support for the ivory rule.

Among the very first legislative acts of the newly convened U.S. House were the passage of two sweeping bills to allow for a quick and mass dissolution of Obamas rulemaking actions in 2016, including the ivory rule. It could also apply to an anti-horse-soring rule  designed to stop the torture of Tennessee Walking horses by trainers who want to exaggerate their gait  expected to be issued by the Obama Administration any day now.

The Midnight Rules Relief Act of 2017, H.R. 21, passed Wednesday on almost a straight party-line vote, would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow en bloc disapproval of multiple regulations finalized during the last year of a presidents term. Such action would prevent due consideration of the merits of individual regulations. Most animal protection rules adopted during the Obama Administration, including those announced in the final year of his term, have been many years in the making. These rules have elicited overwhelming numbers of favorable public comments, and have enjoyed strong, bipartisan congressional support.

For example, a bipartisan group of 182 Representatives and 42 Senators wrote to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in support of the anti-horse soring rule, which corrects deficiencies in the USDAs current regulations in ways that mirror provisions in the PAST Act  legislation that had 273 House cosponsors and 50 Senate cosponsors in the 114th Congress. The PAST Act was introduced largely to force the USDA to fix these very problems, many of which were identified by a damning 2010 USDA Office of Inspector General report urging regulatory changes to overhaul the existing enforcement regimen. And the agency itself warned horse sorers that it was considering some of these changes in public notices going back to 1979. So this rule, although it has been a long time coming and is likely to be finalized within the next few days, could be characterized as a midnight rule and eliminated, despite the enormous number of lawmakers from both parties who have urged its adoption.

Another example is a rule made final in July that closes a loophole for the processing of downer calvesanimals too sick, injured, or weak to walkto prohibit sending them into the food supply, just as was done for downer cattle by USDA regulations in 2009. A series of undercover investigations documented that downer calves are subjected to the same heinous abuse as adult downer cows to get them on their feet for inspection, and showed the serious food safety concerns from eating calves unable to stand, as there were for downer cattle. This rule was anything but precipitously adoptedthe agency had said back in 2013 that it would update its regulations to close the loopholeand a bipartisan group of 92 Representatives and 14 Senators urged the USDA and the OMB to finish this rulemaking in letters sent in 2014 and 2015.

One report found that rules issued during the midnight or presidential transition period spent even more time in the rulemaking process and received even more extensive vetting than other rules. Thats certainly been our experience with the measures concerning which weve encouraged final action. Analysis of all economically significant rulemakings finalized since 1999 showed that such rules issued during the transition period took on average 3.6 years to complete compared to 2.8 years for rules issued at other times during a term.

It would be a terrible mistake for Congress to sweep these several rules away and undercut reasonable effortsin the works for years, after getting substantial input from Congressto ensure that animal protection laws are carried out effectively. There was nothing nefarious or undercutting about this rulemaking, and if anything, the Obama Administration has dragged its feet on the issue, rather than rushing it through at the last minute.

The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act of 2017, H.R. 26, passed late yesterday, also on a virtually party-line vote. It would require that both houses of Congress approve a major rule (including those issued during the 60 legislative/session days prior to adjournment of the previous session), with no alteration, within a 70-day window. If both chambers are unable to swiftly approve a major rule, it would not take effect and reconsideration during that Congress would be precluded. By doing nothing, Congress would prevent existing laws from being implemented, including common sense, non-controversial rules affecting animal welfare. The bill forces expedited floor consideration by both chambers of resolutions to approve major rules and to disapprove non-major rules, and it bars judicial review of any actions taken under the REINS Act.

Congress sets the boundaries for agency rulemaking, making the REINS Act needless and redundant. It is already the case that agencies can only exercise authority that has been delegated by Congress in authorizing legislation, and if agencies overstep their authority, judicial scrutiny can be invoked and agency actions can be reversed.

We urge the Senate to reject these unwarranted, overreaching, and radical bills, and anything like them, which take a sledgehammer approach to regulations and could negate well-considered and broadly supported rules to implement and enforce animal protection laws.




NEW DELHI (PTI): Indian Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat has supported the creation of a post of 'Chief of Defence Staff' saying integration among the three services and with the Defence Ministry is important.



He also spoke about Lt Gen Parveen Bakshi, who was superseded by him and is currently on a month-long leave, saying the support extended by him was positive.



Gen Rawat refused to get into the issue of ranks when told that the post of CDS is likely to be a five-star rank, which will be above the three service chiefs.



"I would not like to comment on the rank structure of CDS but I would say that integration among three services and of the services with Ministry of Defence is important," he told PTI in an interview here on Wednesday.



If one is able to integrate, he said, the forces will be able to improve procurement procedure.



"We would be able to also ensure that we have common logistics, and of course jointmanship will lead to better conduct of operations," he said.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is expected to meet Prime Ministry Narendra Modi shortly to take forward the plans on the creation of the post of CDS.



The CDS will be a single-point military advisor to the defence minister on military matters. If it is a five-star post, he will have authority over the three chiefs but the chiefs will be overall responsible for the functioning of their individual forces.



The post of CDS was recommended in 2001 following a review of the the national security system in the aftermath of the Kargil War.



The recommendation, if implemented, would be the first major military reform by the Narendra Modi government, which has already announced significant changes in the procurement process.



Speaking about Lt Gen Bakshi, the army chief said both have been "brothers in arms" and have served together.



"Of course he was my senior and we have broken bread together. And I find that there has been no change, whatsoever, in the nature of support he has been extending to me after my announcement as Chief of Army Staff," Gen Rawat said.



He added that the Eastern Army Commander is on leave for personal reasons.



"As far as the kind of support he has extended, it has been very positive," he said.


PORTLAND -- Kristen Grainger, former director of communications for Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, has been selected to lead the

effective January 17, 2017.

"We are excited to welcome Kristen Grainger to lead The Alliance," said Alliance Board of Trustees Chair Merrit Quarum, CEO of Qmedtrix Systems, Inc. "Her wealth of knowledge and experience in both the public and higher education sectors makes her an invaluable resource for all Alliance member institutions."

Grainger looks forward to advancing The Alliance's mission.

"Approximately one in four bachelor's degrees awarded in Oregon comes from a private, independent college, contributing to the strong and skilled workforce businesses need," Grainger said. "Every Alliance member school is unique, yet they share a strong commitment to student access, affordability, and success -- including graduating on time. I am pleased and excited to represent and champion the Alliance."

A skilled communications strategist with extensive higher education leadership experience, Grainger succeeds outgoing Alliance president Ron Saxton, who recently joined PeaceHealth as its general counsel.

As Gov. Brown's communications director, Grainger oversaw a nine-member team's efforts to advance the Governor's strategic initiatives and goals for Oregon. As one of five members of her executive team, Grainger was one of Gov. Brown's top advisors, stepping in as acting chief of staff on three occasions at Gov. Brown's request. Gov. Brown tapped Grainger for her administration in the aftermath of Governor Kitzhaber's unexpected resignation in February 2015, interrupting Grainger's 13-year career at Willamette University (2002-15) where she was serving as vice president and assistant to presidents Lee Pelton and Stephen Thorsett, and acting president Larry Large.

As the President's Office chief of staff and budget manager, Grainger oversaw the university's Office of Institutional Research & Planning Support. Additionally, she was a key leader in university governance, strategic communications, marketing and media relations efforts, and also served as an elected corporate officer and administrator for the university's 36-member Board of Trustees.

Grainger joined Willamette after directing communications for the Ted Kulongoski for Governor campaign (2002), where she served as the primary spokesperson and communications strategist for Kulongoski's first successful gubernatorial bid.

Prior to that, Grainger directed public affairs for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers (1996-2002), an appointment she accepted after co-founding and operating Grainger & Tresidder Inc. Government Relations for five years.

The Alliance works to strengthen Oregon's intellectual, creative and economic resources by representing and serving Oregon's regionally accredited not-for-profit colleges and universities. The Alliance provides public advocacy, facilitates inter-institutional cooperation, and forges strategic collaborations with the public sector, including business, philanthropy and government.

Member institutions are Concordia University, Corban University, George Fox University, Lewis & Clark College, Linfield College, Marylhurst University, Northwest Christian University, Pacific University, Reed College, University of Portland, Warner Pacific College and Willamette University.

Affiliate members include Multnomah University, National College of Natural Medicine, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Pacific Northwest College of Art, University of Western States and Western Seminary.




TIRUPATI (PTI): India's space agency ISRO will launch a record 103 satellites -- all but three of them foreign -- at one go on a single rocket in the first week of February in what will be a major feat not attempted by any country.



As India looks to grab a larger slice of the lucrative commercial space market, 100 of the 103 satellites set for launch by ISRO's workhorse rocket PSLV-C37 in February from from its Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh belong to foreign nations, including the US and Germany.



"We are making a century by launching over 100 satellites at one go," S Somnath, Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told a plenary session on the second day of the ongoing Indian Science Congress here on Wednesday.



The space agency had earlier planned a launch of 83 satellites in the last week of January, of which 80 were foreign ones. But with the addition of 20 more foreign satellites, the launch was delayed by a week and will now take place in first week of February, Somnath said.



He, however, did not specify the number of countries that would launch its satellites in this mission, but said it includes nations like the US and Germany.



"These will be 100 micro-small satellites, which will be launched using a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle)- C37.



The weight of the payload will be 1350 kgs, of which 500-600 kgs will be the satellite's weight," Somnath added.



The launch will be a major feat in country's space history as no exercise on this scale has been attempted before.



Last year, ISRO launched record 20 satellites at one go.



The highest number of satellites launched in a single mission is 37, a record that Russia set in 2014. The US space agency NASA launched 29.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet South Asian satellite project, meanwhile, will take off in March.



The South Asian satellite will be a part of GSAT-9, which will be launched in March this year, M Nageshwara Rao, Associate Director of ISRO said.



The communication satellite was to be launched in December 2016, but was slightly delayed as some other satellites are to be launched before that.



Sources said talks with Afghanistan to have the country on-board for the project is in its final stages.



Envisaged as a gift to its neighbours, the project, earlier known as SAARC satellite, faced stiff resistance from Pakistan. The neighbouring country wanted it to be launched under the aegis of the South Asian regional forum. It later backed out of the project.



Apart from India, the satellite will benefit Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.


Paul Ryan

In this photo taken Dec. 8, 2106, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. The new Congress has vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. (AP photo)

((AP Photo/Cliff Owen))

Good Friday Morning, Fellow Seekers.

Congress has been back in session for scarcely a week and the Trump administration hasn't even taken office yet, but at least one prominent activist group is getting ready for a serious fight over one of the top, hot-button social issues.

Officials at Planned Parenthood said Thursday that they've planned nearly 300 events across 47 states and 150 cities to fight efforts to 'defund' the activist group as majority House Republicans try to repeal Obamacare.

But that's something of a misnomer -- Planned Parenthood doesn't receive direct federal funding and there's no line item for it in the federal budget. The Hyde Amendment already makes it illegal to use Medicaid to pay for an abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or health of the mother.

"If Mike Pence and Tom Price had their way, millions of people across the country would be stripped of their access to basic health care," Kelley Robinson, the group's deputy national organizing director said, referring to incoming Veep Mike Pence and Health and Human Services-designee Tom Price.

"People of color, people living in rural communities, and people with low incomes, who already face systemic barriers in accessing health care, would be most impacted by these attacks. We won't back down, we won't be silenced, and we will not let these politicians attack our health and rights without a fight," she said.

By stripping the Medicaid expansion out of Obamacare, the activist group argues that the Republican-controlled health will actually deny women access to cancer screenings, birth control STD treatments and other women's health services.

About 55 million women would be affected by such a change, the organization said in a statement.

About two-thirds of Planned Parenthood's clients rely on Medicaid to pay for their care, according to Business Insider.

Citing the organization's most recent annual report, Business Insider reports that only "3 percent of the organization's services are abortions. Most people are getting birth control or STD tests at Planned Parenthood clinics."

Planned Parenthood's lobbying blitz comes as Congressional Republicans ramp up their efforts to repeal and replace (maybe) the Affordable Care Act and the Obama administration fights to save it.

Cheering conservatives, the incoming Trump administration has said it intends to appoint conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who would roll back Roe v. Wade, the decision the legalized abortion nationwide, throwing it back to the states.

We #StandWithPP and our friends at Planned Parenthood Keystone, Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates, Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, Planned Parenthood Action, Planned Parenthood! Posted by ACLU of Pennsylvania on Thursday, January 5, 2017

Tensions ratcheted up Thursday as President-elect Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leaders traded jabs.

In a Tweet, Trump referred to new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as "head clown" in the repeal opposition.

The Democrats, lead by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in. Instead of working to fix it, they..  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

Speaking to Politico, Schumer told Trump to quit the name-calling.

Activists, meanwhile, are ready no matter what.

"We're energized and we're determined to fight for our rights," Tiara Mack, a Planned Parenthood volunteer from Rhode Island said in a statement.

"All around the country, people from all walks of life are coming together and organizing to make sure that every single politician in Congress knows that we will not stand for attacks on reproductive health care, or attacks on Planned Parenthood. We're not going to silently stand around while politicians in Washington try to take away our health care," she said.

The lobbying effort has already gotten underway in some states, including Maine and Washington State.

In West Virginia, activists gathered outside the offices of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to urge him to vote against the repeal.
Farm Show

There are only a few wine-related events scheduled for this weekend. The biggest will take place at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, which will open Saturday in Harrisburg. Eight wineries will pour samples for visitors from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. A new group of eight Pa. wineries will move into the same spot in the Main Hall on Monday.

(eastcoastwineries.blogspot.com)

Texas wines are seeing their profile rise in Pennsylvania, as more wineries outside the state apply for licenses to ship here and work out deal with the state store system. York's Marketplace shop poured a few at its free tasting a couple weeks ago, and the Lemoyne shop in the West Shore Plaza will do the same Friday and Saturday, offering samples of four wines from McPherson Cellars.

According to the website, the McPherson family has been a part of Texas grape growing and winemaking for over 40 years and has won more than 450 medals in state, national and international wine competitions. It operates out of an historic 1930s era Coca Cola bottling plant in downtown Lubbock, which it opened in fall 2008.

Kirt Heintzelman, the retail wine specialist at the Lemoyne store, offered these facts on the Texas wine industry.

Texas Wine and Winegrape Industry Profile

America's No. 5 wine producer and No. 7 wine grape producer

Contributes more than $1.88 Billion of Economic Value to the State of Texas

Over 11,000 full time jobs paying $417M in wages

Over 1.6M visitors to Texas wineries spending $466.1M

350 Wineries (G permit issued by TABC as of January 1, 2015)

Texas Wine Features

Table Wine - Still (not bubbling) wine under 14% alcohol

Fortified Wine - a wine to which alcohol has been added, most typically brandy

Dessert Wine - Wines that are 14% alcohol or higher, typically sweet, served with dessert and considered a sipping drink

Sparkling Wine - Wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide making it bubbly. The carbon dioxide results from a second fermentation either in the traditional French method (methode champenoise) in the bottle, or in large tanks.

Texas provided the venue for the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference in November, giving writers and those in the industry an opportunity to see first-hand what's being made there. One of those visitors was Mike Wilson, one of the partners at The Vineyard and Brewery at Hershey, who spoke at the conference. They're doing "some great Tempranillos, some pretty cool red blends. We even had a Montepulciano," he said of his stay down there. "There's some interesting stuff going on down here that I would never have thought of."

Steve Pollack, who heads up the Chairman's programs for the Pa. Liquor Control Board, said he thought Texas wines showed excellent potential to grow a customer base in the state.

"I can't give you a lot of information, but from just being down there a lot of times, just meeting some people in the industry from

, which is their big conglomerate down there, I think there's some potential," he said. "I'm kind of excited to see it because I think the current market here in the United States is very loyal to the United States again. California is my biggest player right now. Everybody wants California, Washington, so I don't know if that's just a matter of the climate here, but I've never seen domestic wines being in so much demand. . . . I've been making some phone calls, specifically North Carolina, Virginia, Texas; of course, New York state has always been going. My personal opinion, I think Texas could be a player. Not on the grand stage, but you might see Texas get into Pennsylvania probably first."

Lemoyne, West Shore Shopping Center

4 to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 2 p.m. Saturday



Texas wines, per retail wine specialists Kirt Heintzelman and Rob Eckard

McPherson Cellars 2015 'Timmons Ranch' Piquepoul Blanc from High Plains, Texas ($14.99). This won a DOUBLE GOLD at the 2016 San Francisco International Wine Competition. The 36th annual San Francisco International Wine Competition took place at the Nikko Hotel in downtown San Francisco from June 9-12, 2016. There were 4,618 wines that were submitted from around the world.

"Winning a gold medal at the San Francisco International Wine Competition immediately puts a wine in approximately the top 10%," says Director of Judging Tim McDonald, CSW. "Wines are tasted blind by a high quality panel of judges who come from all over the world to participate. If a wine is really good, we acknowledge it with an award."



This has a rating of 2 1/2 stars from WashingtonPost.com (5 Summer Wines to Make You Say 'Ahh') with this review... "Rather than the crisp, simple wine this grape typically makes in southern France, this Texas version is ripe and full, with melon, peach and roasted apricot flavors. Delicious by itself or with simple summer salads. Great Value."



But what you want to see is the rating of 88 points from Wine Enthusiast (Oct 2016) with the bragging rights of being a BEST BUY, with this review... "It's not often you find a varietal Piquepoul Blanc outside of the south of France, but this seems to suit well to the hot Texan climate. Striking notes of ripe peach, apricot and white lily carry the nose and palate. There's good tension and texture in this light- to medium-bodied wine, which would lend well to pairing alongside grilled seafood."

McPherson Cellars 2015 'Les Copains' White from Texas High Plains AVA, Texas ($14.99). The winemaker says... "This bright and exuberant Les Copains fills the glass with subtle guava and mango aromas, highlighting the individual character of each variety coming together for a perfect balance. Our 2015 vintage blends Roussanne, Viognier, Marsanne, and Piquepoul Blanc. The wine is bright with flavors of lemony citrus, honeysuckle, and marjoram with a clean, refreshing finish."

But what you want to see is the rating of 88 points from Wine Enthusiast (Oct 2016) with the bragging rights of being a BEST BUY, with this review... "A punch of fruit jumps from the glass: ripe peach, apricot and canned tropical fruit. There's nice verve to the palate that vacillates between rich and zesty in this blend of Roussanne, Viognier, Marsanne and Picpoul."

McPherson Cellars 2014 'La Herencia' Red from Texas High Plains AVA, Texas ($14.99). The winemaker says... "La Herencia or 'the heritage,' is our Spanish-style red wine made to give a tip of the hat to both the Spanish explorers who first crossed the Texas High Plains and to those who first envisioned a Texas wine industry. This delicious blend is 78% Tempranillo, 8% Grenache, 7% Mourvedre, 4% Carignan and 3% Syrah."



But what you want to see is the rating of 88 points from Wine Enthusiast (Oct 2016) with the bragging rights of being a BEST BUY, with this review... "Tempranillo-dominant, there's also Grenache, Mourvedre, Carignan and Syrah in the mix. Strawberry and red cherry pervade on the nose and palate, with sweet baking spice and pepper adding depth. Medium in weight, there's a decent tannic grip to offer support on the midpalate, transitioning to a soft, sandy exit."



McPherson Cellars 2014 'Les Copains' Red from Texas High Plains AVA, Texas ($14.99). The winemaker says... "Our Les Copains red is our Cotes-du-Rhone-inspired blend of Cinsault, Syrah, Carignane, Mourvedre, and Grenache. Les Copains is French for "the buddies," the term gives a nod to the playful and perfect combination of these southern Rhone varieties."



But what you want to see is the rating of 88 points from Wine Enthusiast (Oct 2016) with the bragging rights of being a BEST BUY, with this review... "This Rhone-style red blend is light bodied and fruit forward, with slight spice nuances to add interest. Cranberry, pink peppercorns and anise show good balance and concentration on the nose and palate."

York, 2547 York Marketplace

4 to 6 p.m. Friday

Wine from Bordeaux, per retail wine specialist Patti Meckley

2012 Clarendelle Blanc, Bordeaux, France, $18.99. Very rich and round on the palate with mineral overtones. After fairly quick fermentation, the Sauvignon Blanc expressed intense tropical fruit and citrus (grapefruit) aromas, whereas the Semillon and Muscadelle were more floral, with rose nuances. The balance is perfect! 71% Semillon, 24% Sauvignon Blanc and 5% Muscadelle.



2014 Chateau Charmes Godard Blanc, Bordeaux, France $24.99. *90 pts Vinous/ Antonia Galloni - Vibrant and beautifully layered in the glass. Pear, brioche, peach and smoke meld together in a higly expressive, textured sauvignon/Semillon blend that captures the combination of richness and lively acidity that makes this vintage so attractive for whites. Blend of 50% Semillon, 35% Sauvignon Gris and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. This review from Wine Spectator *90 pts - Fresh, with lemon curd, white asparagus and white peach flavors. Has some zip, but the more caressing side will win!



2013 Chateau Martin Cuvee Coutelin Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux, Franc. Quoted at $45.00, Chairmans selection price was $29.99 - now priced at $23.99! Aromas of cedar, cherry currants and earth. The palate is fresh and pure with mineral and black berry fruit. Well balanced and smooth finish. Excellent!

2011 Marquis de Fongraviere Saint Julien, Bordeaux, France. Quoted at $58.00, chairmans price was $39.99 marked down to $31.99! A Left Bank village which produces some of the greatest red wines in the world. This 2011 is powerful with cassis, cherry, tobacco and cedar notes. The palate is structured yet balanced, ending with a long persistent finish. Outstanding!



Lancaster, 558 Centerville Road

4 to 6 p.m. Friday

German wines, per wine specialist David Speakman

Clemens Busch Riesling Trocken 2013 $21.99

Dr Loosen Riesling Kabinett Blue Slate 2015 $19.99

Gunther Steinmetz Riesling Piesporter Treppchen 2014 $31.99

Rebholz Pinot Noir Spatlese Dry Tradition Pfaltz 2009 $38.99
Six Senate Democrats have a message for Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for education secretary: You owe us a lot of information.

In a Thursday letter to DeVos , the Democrats asked her to provide them information about her role in founding advocacy groups supporting school choice, those groups expenditures and donor lists, and other connections she has to various oganizations.

Understanding your leadership roles in this complicated web of political and not-for-profit organizations is necessary for us to be able to evaluate any conflicts of interest you may bring to the position, and whether you should recuse yourself from any particular matters that may come before you as secretary, reads a portion of the letter, which was signed by Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

The infomation Democrats are requesting from DeVos includes:



Her roles in establishing and operating the American Federation for Children and the Great Lakes Education Project, which have supported vouchers and other forms of choice around the country.

A list of all donors who have contributed to AFC and GLEP, including their donation amounts and affiliations.

A list of all expenditures exceeding $1,000 by both AFC and GLEP.

A list of all federal and state legislation and regulations that have been the subject of AFC and GLEP lobbying, and DeVos role in that lobbying.

Donations she and her family have made to 501(c)4 organizations. (These are classified as social welfare organizations .)

Ed Patru, a spokesman for Friends of Betsy DeVos, which has been supporting DeVos nomination and responding to her critics, said in an emailed statement: The letter helps shed some light on why the country voted for change. None of these signatories were losing sleep over the influence of money in politics prior to Election Day, but today its keeping them up at night. I think the American people recognize hypocrisy when they see it.

The letter is another clear signal that Democrats dont intend to give DeVos an easy path to confirmation. On Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and the top Democrat on the Senate committee that will first consider her nomination, expressed ongoing worries about what Murray called DeVos long record of working to privatize and defund public education and opposition to accountability for charter schools.

And since Trump nominated her, Democratic senators have also demanded that DeVos act to ensure that a pro-school-choice advocacy group (now defunct) that she led repay an election-related fine in Ohio.

Last month, we reported on DeVos extensive history of political donations , including to five GOP members of the Senate education committee. (Remember, as we noted in that post, the Obama administration cant claim to be totally clean on the issue of big campaign donors becoming cabinet nominees.)

Read the full letter from the six Democrats below:
Aer Lingus Regional, operated by Stobart Air, is to launch a new service to Newquay in Cornwall.

Aer Lingus Regional will commence the route on May 6 to September 2, flying twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays for the summer.
The Lord Mayor of Dublin has said the time has come to compel companies to publicly detail the gender pay gap within their organisations.

Councillor Rebecca Moynihan also said the Government needed to do more to tackle the issue this year.
If youre reading this, youre probably anxiously awaiting what President-elect Donald Trump will do with education policy once he takes office later this month. But exactly how much will Trump shift course from President Barack Obama when it comes to schools?

To help you answer that question, the Alyson Klein half of Politics K-12 discussed Obamas education legacy on PBS NewsHour on Tuesday. Alyson talked about Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, testing, and new teacher evaluation systems. These issues were big priorities during Obamas tenure and his administrations approach produced significant changes, but they also became very controversial. Alyson was joined by Scott Jaschik, an editor at Inside Higher Ed. You can watch the video belowthe education segment starts at about the 42-minute mark.

And Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. also published an exit memo detailing the Obama administrations track record on education . He touched on early education, graduation rates, and standards, among other issues.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
A post mortem is due to take place today on the body of a boy stabbed to death in Dublin yesterday.

17-year-old Reece Cullen was attacked in broad daylight at a house at Jobstown in Tallaght at around 3pm yesterday.

Gardai are believed to be investigating the possibility that he may have known his attacker.

The scene is still sealed off this morning for forensic tests.

Local Councillor Charlie O'Connor said it was important for anyone with information to come forward.

"People's reaction is one of great shock," he said.

"The first thing we have to do is think about the family and extend our sympathy (to them), and to the wider community. This has upaset them enormously.

"The other point I want to make is that it's important everyone would cooperate with the gardai."

Any CCTV in the area will be harvested to see if they captured either the stabbing or the movements of either the deceased or possible suspects before or after the incident.

A search was also commenced for the weapon and house-to-house inquiries initiated. A spokesperson said no arrests had been made at this stage and that investigations were ongoing.

Gardai appealed to witnesses who may have been in the Kilclare area between 2.45pm and 3.30pm to contact Tallaght Garda Station on 01-666 6000, the Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111, or any garda station.
The Emergency Department Taskforce is due to meet this morning to discuss the overcrowding crisis in hospitals.

The meeting was brought forward by a week, after the number of patients waiting on trolleys reached an all-time high of 612 on Tuesday.

Last night the HSE announced a number of enhanced measures as part of the Winter Plan, following a meeting with the Minister for Health Simon Harris.

Among the steps are an additional 63 acute hospital beds, along with 60 step-down beds across 10 hospitals.

General Secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation Liam Doran (pictured above) said there were not enough nurses to staff the additional beds that the HSE is planning to introduce.

"Yes those beds are needed, but delivery of that particular policy would be wholly contingent on nurses being available," he said.

"Currently we've 150 beds closed because of staff shortages, so it's highly questionable and unlikely the system will be able to recruit the additional nursing staff required.

"That in turn means those beds cannot come on stream no matter how much they are required and warranted."

The HSE last night announced that private hospitals in Cork, Kilkenny, and Mullingar have been asked to support public hospitals as part of the efforts to tackle overcrowding in emergency departments.

And in another unprecedented response to the crisis, private X-ray and ultrasound providers in Wexford, Portlaoise, Waterford, Limerick, and Letterkenny are to be asked to offer services to GPs so they can divert patients from public services.

Another 63 acute beds are also to be opened nationwide: 28 beds at University Hospital Galway, 15 at the Mater, eight at Kilkenny, and 12 at Tullamore. A discharge lounge will be opened in Waterford.

In the next four weeks, a further 60 step down beds will be made available in Galway, Clonmel, Wexford, St Vincents, St Jamess, Tallaght, Drogheda, Beaumont, Mater, and Connolly hospitals for patients, who would otherwise remain in an acute bed, while their nursing home application is being processed.

Enhanced discharge processes are also to be put in place across the country.
The Tanaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality, Frances Fitzgerald, has today provided figures relating to unaccompanied learner drivers.

Between 2012 and 2016, 42 unaccompanied learner drivers were involved in fatal road traffic conditions.
Between pronouncing Irish names and continuously repeating diddly-dee potatoes when attempting to do an Irish accent, the world hasn't really caught on when it comes to being Irish.

So when we heard Sienna Miller plays an Irish woman in the new American crime drama film, Live by Night, we had to have a peek at her attempt.
A former rebel leader who is wanted on US drug charges, and was recently elected to the Haitian Senate, has been arrested as he appeared on a live radio talk show.

Guy Philippe was being interviewed on the show with another recently elected politician on Thursday when the host abruptly announced that police were outside the studio in the Petionville district of the capital Port-Au-Prince to arrest him. The host came back on air and said he had been taken away.

Radio host Gary-Pierre Paul Charles later told The Associated Press the police were members of the Haitian anti-drug unit and fired shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.

"It was shocking. People were running everywhere," he told the AP.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration, which just missed capturing him in a 2007 raid, had no immediate comment on the arrest.

Mr Philippe's lawyer, Reynold Georges, said the former rebel leader been taken to the airport and he urged senators to go there to prevent his extradition.

"We can't let this happen," he said.

A photo being circulated on social media in Haiti appeared to show Mr Philippe in a white dress shirt being led out of the studio by police. Another image showed him apparently handcuffed in a room while police in camouflage uniforms stood guard with assault rifles.

Miami lawyer Richard Dansoh, who said he had worked for Mr Philippe in the past and had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate his surrender several years ago, said he expects the former rebel leader will soon be transported to Florida out of concern about how Haitians might react to the arrest of a senator.

"They don't want to keep him in Haiti because there might be riots," Mr Dansoh said.

At the heavily guarded police station near the airport where Mr Philippe was taken after his arrest, about 30 demonstrators gathered in the evening saying he should be released.

"Our country has no respect for people who are elected," said Jean-Marc Denis, who is from the same southern province as the former rebel leader.

In the southern Haitian city of Jeremie, about 200 protesters, many carrying photos of Mr Philippe, also called for his release, threatening to start fires if he remained in custody.

Mr Philippe, who has a wife and two children in the US, recently won election to the Senate representing a district in southern Haiti but had not yet been sworn into office.

He is wanted on drug-trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the US. In Haiti, he is a divisive figure who was one of the leaders of a violent 2004 rebellion that led to the ousting of the president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Mr Philippe has spent most of his time in recent years in a remote, mountainous part of southern Haiti, where he had extensive family and business connections and it would have been difficult for authorities to locate and arrest him. Still, he would frequently appear in public and gave an extensive interview to the AP for an August 2016 profile.

In that interview, he insisted he is innocent of any crimes, blaming the accusations on enemies trying to silence him: "The path I chose, the way I chose, is not easy. But I chose it and I'm willing to die for it."

In 2000, he was police chief of the northern city of Cap-Haitien when he fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic after accusations he was plotting a coup. While in exile, he was accused of masterminding attacks on Haitian police stations and other targets.

He returned in 2004 to join the uprising against Mr Aristide, taking over a band of rebels that captured Cap-Haitien. Mr Aristide left the country aboard a US-supplied jet before Mr Philippe's rebels reached the capital.

After rolling triumphantly into Port-au-Prince, Mr Philippe proclaimed himself "military chief" - but he gave up his arms as a UN stabilisation force geared up.

He ran for president in 2006, finishing a distant ninth. A year later, heavily armed US and Haitian anti-drug agents raided his home in Les Cayes but found only his family and a maid.

- AP
A fifth teenage boy has been arrested by police investigating the rape of a 15-year-old girl.

Three 13-year-old boys and a 14-year-old boy were arrested on suspicion of rape on Wednesday, but Cumbria Police said one of the 13-year-olds was later released without charge.
Police are "extremely concerned" about a four-year-old boy who has gone missing with his mother.

Andrew Shorrock and his mother Amy, 34, were last seen in Tameside at around 12.30pm today Greater Manchester Police said.

Chief Inspector Chris Downey said: "We are extremely concerned about Amy and Andrew, and I would like to appeal directly to Amy to please get in touch with us to let us know you are both safe and well.

"Yours and Andrew's welfare is our priority, so please make contact with us.

"Amy's mother Deborah Shorrock wants to appeal directly to Amy to come home safely with Andrew as she is extremely worried about them.

"I would also ask the public for their help - if you have seen Amy and Andrew then please call us."

Amy is described as white, 5ft 6in tall and of medium build with long dark hair. She was last seen wearing a black hooded top and carrying a blue rucksack.

Andrew is described as white and of slim build but tall for his age. He has short brown hair and was last seen wearing a grey and burgundy fleece top and blue jeans.

Anyone with any information about their whereabouts is asked to contact police on 101 quoting the incident number 829 06/01/17 or to call the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
The state of Wyoming has approved new science standards .

The move comes following controversy regarding how those standards would address climate change. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Wyoming leads the nation in coal production and is one of the top 10 states for natural gas production.

In the end, the state didnt adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) but enacted standards that were largely modeled after the NGSS.

And, despite the earlier questions about how the state would address climate change, for the most part Wyomings standards are identical when it comes to the subject.

However, there is one big difference. In the standard for high school students related to earth and human activity under the global climate change tab, the NGSS reads: Though the magnitudes of human impacts are greater than they have ever been, so too are human abilities to model, predict, and manage current and future impacts.

In Wyomings standards, the same section reads a little differently. There is no mention of human abilities to counter climate change. And, Wyomings standards call for consideration to be given to both the positives and negatives as students use the results of a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.

The Wyoming standards also include some examples that are unique to the state as well as language on how the science benchmarks relate to content and performance standards in other subjects such as math and English/language arts.

Wyoming education leaders developed the states science standards after receiving a significant amount of input from the public. The state also allowed Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom, an advocacy group for students developing an understanding of agriculture and natural resources through education, and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, an industry trade association, to conduct preliminary reviews of the standards.

Schools will be required to implement these standards by the 2020-2021 school year.

Related stories:
Police have used a novel approach to fighting crime - writing a letter to a suspect via Twitter.

Kingston Police wrote to Tracey Dyke, suspected of multiple burglaries, accusing her of "blanking" them.

In an appeal to contact the suspect, the force wrote: "We have come round to see you a number of times recently but it looks like you'd rather not speak to us, which is very disappointing.

"We have a slight suspicion that you might be blanking us #Awkward. You don't text, you don't call back and haven't accepted our friend request."

They added: "Please stop ignoring us Tracey."

The letter said Dyke was a suspect for burglaries in Kingston, south west London, where vulnerable victims had been targeted, leaving them "traumatised and very upset".

It continued: "We won't stand for this and want to have a discussion with you at our custody suite."

As well as attaching a photograph of the suspect, police asked Dyke to hand herself in or call 101, and asked members of the public to call 999 if they see her.
NEW YORK: Taylor Swift on Tuesday announced she was returning to touring, getting back on the road for the first...
SINGAPORE: China has expanded long-term thermal coal supply contracts for 2023 to all coal mines and asked power...
NEW YORK: Oil slid about 1% on Thursday as an increase in US interest rates pushed up the dollar and heightened ...
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has proposed that all K-12 schools in the state offer students the option of a full-time virtual education.

If the plan is approved, Virginia would join Florida as the only states in the country with such a mandate, said John Watson, the CEO of the Evergreen Education Group , a consultancy that supports online education. Students in more than two-dozen other states have access to a full-time virtual program, but their districts are not required by law to offer such an option.

One approach is not clearly better than another, although there is a fear that when you mandate that all districts offer an online school, there will be a race to the bottom as some seek the lowest-cost alternative, Watson said.

Virginia education officials say Gov. McAuliffes proposal is designed to expand online options for students in the state, particularly those in rural areas. The plan calls for the creation of regional boards, comprised of local school board members, with the authority to offer their own virtual education programs or contract with private providers, other school districts, or other public entities who already offer such programs.

Building on existing options

Since 2002, the state department of education has run its own online program, called Virtual Virginia . It currently serves 200 students in a full-time pilot program and enrolls 12,551 students from across the state in individual online courses.

In addition, K12 Inc., the countrys largest private operator of full-time online schools, which is headquartered in Herndon, Va., has a contract with three Virginia school districts to run the Virginia Virtual Academy , a statewide K-8 online school. And the state education department has approved an additional 20 public districts and private companies to operate as multidivision online providers , eligible to offer online courses to students statewide.

But a continued push for more online options in Virginia has run into some resistance.

Last April, Gov. McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have created a new statewide full-time virtual school overseen by a newly created state board. Teacher unions and public-education advocates opposed the bill because it would have directed funding away from traditional public schools, and McAuliffe cited concerns about moving the responsibility for oversight away from local school systems.

In the wake of the veto, a working group on virtual education was convened. The new proposal is the result of that groups efforts. Districts would have the option of contracting with existing entities, including the state-run Virtual Virginia program, to fulfill the new mandate.

Control remains local, but there would be expanded access, said Holly Coy, a state deputy education secretary, in an interview.

Questions about performance and accountability

Over the past 18 months, full-time online charter schools have come under increased scrutiny from researchers, advocates, and journalists.

An Education Week investigation of the cyber charter industry , for example, documented widespread evidence of poor performance and questionable management practices throughout the sector.

Despite such troubles, states and districts have increasingly moved to create their own full-time online options . Not much systematic research of these schools effectivenessor even enrollmentis currently available.

According to Watson of Evergreen Education, about 350,000 students in more than 25 states are currently enrolled in full-time statewide online schools (including both charters and district- and state-run programs.) An unknown number of additional students are enrolled in full-time online programs offered locally by their district or other education agency.

Theres enough evidence that the schools work when theyre well-managed that it makes sense for opportunities to be expanded, Watson said. But it also makes sense for that to be done thoughtfully, so as to ensure that there are good accountability measures in place.

That could prove tricky when adding a new mandate and a new layer of regional oversight onto Virginias already-messy virtual schooling landscape.

The details of McAuliffes proposal still need to be fleshed outand to survive the states legislative process.

But Coy, the state deputy education secretary, said the new proposal would address such concerns in part by ensuring that students enrolled in full-time virtual programs would still have to take state tests, and their scores would count towards their home school systems.

The idea is that even though they would be a full-time virtual student, they would enroll in their local public school and maintain a connection to those schools, she said. We think thats part of accountability.

The devil, said Watson, is invariably in the details. If only a handful of students in a given district enroll in a full-time online program, will their home districts have enough incentive to feel responsible for their performance? Will those districts be required to report separately on the performance of their online students? With a multitude of providers, presumably using a multitude of technology platforms, will it be possible for state regulators and researchers to take a meaningful statewide look at how full-time online students are doing?

Generally speaking, the idea that Virginia is joining other states in creating more opportunities for students around digital learning is a good thing, he said.

Whether this particular approach is good or bad probably remains to be seen.

Photo: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe addresses the media during a news conference last month in Richmond. -- Steve Helber/AP

See also:
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Thursday it had not committed to staying in the Black Sea grain deal, which has freed...
But it is hard to escape the feeling that if only the public service was given half a chance it too would be messing up with gay abandon, not least for focusing on many of the wrong things while ignoring major long term public policy problems. The only problem is that most of the disasters in waiting won't be able to be called problems in risk management, blamed on the worker bees or blamed on mere poor implementation. The fault will lie with leadership  or the absence of it  at the highest level. Have a foreboding that the acquisition of new jet aircraft from the United States has been shaping for procurement disaster, even before Donald Trump's intervention the other day? Sensing that government is more preoccupied with getting the politics right on South Australia than getting the best possible submarine purchase or defence outcome for Australia? Appreciate that the bureaucracy is almost entirely out of the loop on long-term climate change policy? Suspect that it won't be long before the immigration private army is enforcing pass laws? Can't wait for the next computer procurement disaster to bring Australia to a halt? Considering how expectations can be managed for further downgrades of the national broadband scheme? Or about whether it really is a good idea to reverse the onus of proof with possible welfare overpayments? Wondering about containing the human and social costs of our concentration camps, and of the brutalisation of the people in the agencies called upon to implement the government's policies? Most of the real scandals of poor public administration and waste of taxpayer money over the past few decades do not come, as per the narratives issuing from the senior public service, from the actions or omissions of well-meaning but bumbling and over-cautious middle level public servants, hopelessly out of their depth. Instead it comes from impositions and assumptions by well-paid and self-confident public servants in the central departments. These are, increasingly, the folk who are devising the magical solutions to all of the government's problems, then imposing them on line departments, though neatly sidestepping any accountability or responsibility when their glib confections fail. These, not line agency bureaucrats, are the folk who have designed and demanded rortfests such as the VET fee-help scheme, the latest government on-line fiascos or which give aid and comfort to the pork-barreling and logrolling of Barnaby Joyce. Just the same officers in central agencies have liaised most closely with the ministers and the minders, and have been the ones most eager to promote quick and dirty fixes, to adopt and enforce government by slogan, and to reject (as hidebound and overcautious) any practical or experienced advice from people who actually work at the coalface and know something of the issues.

The germs of both the home insulation and the school building program, for example, began in the Treasury, and without any real regard for the need for insulation or new facilities in schools. They were among a number of fixes  probably good ones  gamed in worst case scenario planning for the possibility of a global financial crisis, when there was a risk that the engine room of the economy might seize for want of liquidity. Both Treasury and the Reserve Bank knew from bitter experience that some previous institutional responses to a slowing or paralysed economy had delivered medicine (cash and jobs) into the right places too slowly and with too little flexibility. Indeed the major effect (as now) of some previous stimulus programs, such as the One Nation program, had been more than a year behind time in greasing the wheels of the economy. The supreme urgency of flooding every nook and cranny of the nation with cash was made manifest at the time. Treasury had no great faith that any of the building programs would achieve much, so far as improving education outcomes of reducing energy demand. For Treasury, any such outcomes would be at best serendipitous compared with the primary intended outcome of maintaining employment levels and consumer confidence. Writing about it in this newspaper before a dollar had been spent, I doubted that school libraries, cafeterias or halls (or an equally silly computer giveaway going on at the same time) were serious priorities, in educational terms anyway. From Treasury's point of view, the money might as well go to digging and filling in holes, provided the money went out quickly. The programs, imagined for another purpose, were handed over as faits-accompli to line-agencies ill-equipped and ill-organised (in major part because of administrative retrenchment imposed by Finance) to manage new programs. They were tasks for the agencies, not owned by them, and it was quickly made clear that anything in the way of agency efforts to provide any structure, process or cautious but deliberate control, would be regarded as timewasting, sabotage or failure to be on board. No delay was brooked, no objection considered by the officers in the central agencies. As if to reinforce the point, Mark Arbib a now-burst political skyrocket (the Sam Dastyari of his time) was put in to harry officials and to demand action, action and action.

Reports from umpteen inquiries, some very tendentious, into what is said to have gone wrong had public servants in line agencies hung out to dry. There has been a roving innuendo that ministers and line officials were personally responsible for the failures of supervision of some young Queensland workers who didn't know that one should not hammer nails into electrical wiring. But what is singularly missing from the discussion is the culpability of PM&C, Finance and Treasury. Or what, if anything, they learnt from their mistakes. No doubt lessons were learnt. There's a whole new industry engaged in generating meaningless tosh about risk assessment, to go alongside other faddish tosh on regulatory impact, health and safety impact, and so on. There's talk of rewarding public servants who accept measured risks, and of not publishing them if things do not work out. But it's out the window in a thrice when a prime minister demands that heads must roll, and any public servant leery of going out on a limb can find ample precedent for extreme caution. When the shit hits the fan the actual architects of disaster will be far away, no doubt devising fresh fixes and solutions for fresh problems. Bureaucratic leaders must accept responsibility for the fact that the administration is no longer the major engine room of ideas in government. Agencies have run down their policy expertise, and, as often as not, their corporate memory. Advice-giving, particularly about new programs and initiatives, and a good deal of the critical review of existing policies and programs has been outsourced to consultants, many of whom are a good deal less independent, disinterested and focused on the public interest than even a deficient public service. And even when it is not, more and more is being devised by task forces led by central agencies trying to "fix" a public relations problem of government. A good deal of even good bureaucratic advice coming to ministers, is being given a deep political tinge by the ministerial advisory system, as often as not without the administration having the opportunity to contest the information and opinions finally reaching the minister's ear. Many policy and program ideas come from the political engine rooms, dealing with perceptions of a need to be seen to be doing something. As often as not, the ideas are half-baked short-term ones that have not been thought through, or connected. A number of other schemes are essentially confected by public relations people, and announced before they have any real substance. This is one of the reasons why Turnbull government has come to resemble the Gillard government  with major announcements made on one day, then retracted within hours once it has become clear that there has been some counter reaction. It is not, of course, the fault of bureaucrats that politicians are susceptible to silly ideas, or that they reject good and well thought out advice from whatever source, including the bureaucracy. One never knows  or won't for 20 years  exactly what was being said to ministers about the merits and pitfalls of particular ideas. One can imagine that a good many senior central agency advisers have counselled frankly against particular projects of government, even as, their advice having been rejected, they have loyally attempted to make the decision work.
"All the government says is trust us," Merri Southwood, the group's president, said. "We've been pleading for years to know whether the site is safe." The site includes the oldest working oil tank - among 20 tanks in total - in the southern hemisphere, dating its opening in 1901. It now stores marine fuel and diesel but also takes petrol and jet fuel from vessels that it pumps to Clyde about 20 kilometres away. Gore Bay clean-up operations on Thursday. Credit:Nick Moir These efforts include years of trying to obtain a study commissioned by Shell in 2007 and finished a year later by Sydney University's Tim Driscoll into a series of cancer deaths from nearby residents and five employees. Professor Driscoll found it was unlikely the site had "meaningfully increased" the cancer risks, but he also noted that "between 1992 and 2005 there appears to have been little monitoring undertaken". (A copy of the report is available the gatehouse of the Gore Bay Terminal but is not otherwise publicly available.)

Shell also purchased an adjacent house in 2014 where two of its occupants had died of cancer, one of them a couple of years after the Driscoll report's completion. The seller said he had opted to move because of noise and airborne pollution complaints to both the company and the EPA. Perimeter monitoring sought With the licence's renewal last August for another five years, the EPA asked Viva to conduct a feasibility study into setting up monitoring of pollution around the site. In December, though, the agency appeared to back way from its call for monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), as had been recommended by NSW Health. Instead, the EPA is now only seeking monitoring of VOCs, saying detectors may pick up PAH readings from other sources such as nearby lawnmowing. Dr Adams said the company was engaged in "quite a mobile discussion", including about what to study and where.

"It could be very expensive," he said. "We'll do what we're told to do...We want to be sure it's right  that what we are measuring is the right thing." The EPA spokesman said: "A study into VOC emissions coming from the site will better identify any potential environmental impacts and is currently being negotiated with Viva." Ms Southwood, though, said the recommendation for the VOC and PAH assessment were contained in a Human Health Risk Assessment report compiled for Shell. That formed part of an earlier development application for the site that was later dropped by the company. (See the report here.) 'Working harbour'

Environment minister Mark Speakman said the majority of last week's spill had been contained on land and the equivalent of about one barrel had made it into the harbour. "Sydney Harbour is a working harbour," Mr Speakman said. "The NSW government will continue to work with industries on and around Sydney Harbour to ensure they operate to appropriate standards and safety." However, Opposition leader Luke Foley called on the government to "come clean" about the scale of the spill and its impact. "The Baird Government has tried to hide this under the cover of New Year's Eve festivities, when many locals gather down by the water to watch the fireworks in this area," Mr Foley said. "The Liberal government hasn't learnt anything from the Orica chemical spill five years ago, which was covered up by the then minister and the EPA."
The good news for Sussan Ley is that the story of her impulse buy of an apartment with ocean views during a taxpayer-funded trip to the Gold Coast broke in the silly season.

That means there won't be a grilling in the Federal Parliament or an earnest media conference by Bill Shorten, demanding she step aside in the absence of satisfactory explanation. He's at the beach.

The bad news is that her conduct invites the "pub test" at the precise time of year when many Australians, drink in hand, are extremely well-placed to apply it.

And, let's be frank, the minister's explanation struggles to pass.
The Director of Public Prosecutions will appeal to the High Court of Australia the reduced jail sentence given to the man for the 2012 murder of NSW police officer Bryson Anderson.

Mitchell Barbieri, 21, had 11 years cut off his non-parole period by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in December and was given a maximum term of 21 years and three months with a minimum of 15 years' jail.

He was originally sentenced to a maximum 35 years behind bars, with a non-parole period of 26 years for murdering the decorated officer in Sydney's north-west.

The Court of Criminal Appeal's decision was described by Inspector Anderson's family as "beyond belief" and outraged the NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione
District administrators in Alabama and Texas are protesting the A-F report cards mandated by their state legislatures in their prior sessions which force the states education departments to evaluate their schools and school districts with letter grades.

Released data by both states shows perceivably high performing suburban school districts receiving Ds and Fs on this years report cards that are heavily based on last years standardized tests.

Proponents say A-F report cards are an easy way for parents to grasp the quality of schools. But opponents say its oversimplistic and vulnerable to data mishaps.

In Texas, the education department on Friday released a provisional ratings report card that district officials already are calling flawed.

The states association of school administrators has sent around a petition calling for its repeal and by Wednesday more than 142 local school boards had adopted resolutions opposing the report card.

Officials with Alabamas department of education, meanwhile, are in a spat with the local press over this years report card, which the state is legally required to have published, but which education officials dont philosophically agree with. The department released a report card shortly before the holidays. Similar to Texas officials, Alabamas district administrators say the grades arent reflective of their districts performance.

Recently appointed Alabama state chief Michael Sentance told al.com that he doesnt agree with letter grades for school districts because hes seen what sort of impact its had on districts reputations in other states.

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires that states redesign and more frequently publish their state report cards. It doesnt specify a certain type of report card and many states are opting to switch to dashboard report cards which parse out how schools and districts perform in seperate areas.

Dont miss another State EdWatch post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox. And make sure to follow @StateEdWatch on Twitter for the latest news from state K-12 policy and politics.
An Italian tourist has been charged with dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm after a female motorcyclist was critically injured in a collision on the NSW's north coast.

The accident between a van and motorcycle happened around 1.45pm on Friday at Shelly Beach, East Ballina.

The 47-year-old motorcycle rider was taken to Gold Coast Hospital in a critical condition with numerous serious injuries.

The driver of the van, a 29-year-old woman from Italy, was not injured. She has been charged with dangerous driving and negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm.

She was granted conditional bail to appear at Ballina Local Court on February 9.
A teenager has been airlifted to hospital with serious injuries after falling from a cliff at Windang Island on the NSW south coast.

Emergency crews were called to the island, located at the mouth of Lake Illawarra, about 9.10pm on Friday.

The teenager fell 12m off a cliff at Windang Island. Credit:Illawarra Mercury

Police said the 15-year-old was attempting to retrieve a dropped mobile phone when he fell about 12 metres down the cliff.

Paramedics and police found the patient on a rock platform below.
A retrial has been ordered for a Gold Coast man convicted of murdering his best friend during an argument over the treatment of a dog.

Paul Gathercole was charged with the murder of his friend Robbie Joseph Charles in March 2016 after he allegedly stabbed him to death on February 1, 2014.

The Court of Appeal have overturned a Gold Coast man's murder conviction. Credit:AFR

A jury had been unable to reach a verdict in Mr Gathercole's first trial in August 2015.

The two men had been living together with Mr Charles's dog Holden for about a year prior to Mr Charles's death.
One of Queensland's most prestigious schools has refused to reconsider refunding tuition fees to students who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a notorious paedophile at the school, despite an online petition managing to accrue more than 1100 signatures.

The child abuse royal commission hearings from November 2015 laid out the crimes of child abuser Kevin Lynch during his time at both Brisbane Grammar School during the 1970s and 1980s before moving on to St Paul's Anglican School.

Brisbane Grammar School will not reconsider refunding tuition fees to sexual abuse victims.

In the wake of the hearings, The Anglican Dioceses of Brisbane announced a fee refund policy to the victims of sexual abuse however The Board of Trustees at Grammar declined to comment until February 2016, when they announced they would not follow suit.

"Brisbane Grammar School will continue with its approach to redress and compensation since 2000, which includes a personal apology from the current leadership of the school, agreed compensation payments and counselling," a statement released by the school on February 2016 read.
Victorian lifesavers are bracing for a record shark season, with more sharks already spotted off beaches than in the last three or four seasons combined.

An "uncanny" perfect storm of water and weather conditions is bringing the sharks closer to the sand than usual, and in greater numbers.

With the holiday season still fresh, already more than 40 sharks have been seen near swimmers.
Washington: President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday that the outcome of the 2016 US election was not affected by cyber attacks after intelligence agencies briefed him on their conclusion that Russia had staged cyber attacks during the campaign.

Having hours earlier dismissed the controversy as a "political witch hunt," Republican Trump later issued a statement whose main aim appeared to be to deflect questions about the legitimacy of his November 8 victory over Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump said that "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people" seek to attack US institutions including the Democratic National Committee. "There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines."

The New York businessman, who is to be inaugurated as president on January 20, said he would appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days of taking office on how to prevent cyber attacks but suggested that he would keep their recommendations secret.
Madrid: The three biblical wise men paraded through Madrid's streets amid tight security on Thursday, the eve of Epiphany, which celebrates the day they are said to have visited the infant Christ with gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, accompanied by hundreds of eclectic floats, handed out sweets to the thousands of children lining the Spanish capital's main boulevard.

Madrid's authorities deployed 800 police officers, some heavily armed, erected concrete barriers to block access to streets and curbed the movement of trucks after the December attack in Berlin on a Christmas market.

A Tunisian man killed 12 people in the December 19 attack when he ploughed a truck into a row of market stalls, leading other European capitals to ramp up security.
Washington: President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview on Friday that the storm surrounding Russian hacking during the presidential campaign is a political witch hunt being carried out by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss to him in the election last year.

Trump spoke to The New York Times by telephone three hours before he was set to be briefed by the nation's top intelligence and law enforcement officials about Russian hacking of US political institutions. In the conversation, he repeatedly criticised the intense focus on the alleged cyber intrusions by Russia.

"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," he said, referring to the breach of computers at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015.

"How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt."
Teachers in the St. Louis area are showing up at their students doorstep twice a year.

Typically, in the first visit, teachers build a relationship with the parents and learn more about the students home environment. In the second visit, teachers speak to the parents about the students academic performance and offer suggestions about how the family can enhance learning at home.

Those scheduled visits, a recent study found, are paying off. Students who received teacher home visits through the St. Louis program Home Works! did better on state tests and had better attendance records than students whose homes had not been visited by teachers.

In 2014-15, 340 teachers (who have undergone training) made 3,645 home visits. To gauge the visits effectiveness, independent researchers examined that years school records for about 3,000 students attending four school districts in and around the St. Louis regiona diverse pool of students in urban, suburban, and rural areas. The researchers compared students in the Home Works! programwho are performing below grade levelto similar, matched samples of students who are not in the program.

Students who received one home visit scored 5 percent higher on state standardized tests, and were 13 percent less likely to miss two weeks or more of school compared to students receiving no visits. Students who received two home visits scored 7 percent higher on state tests, and were 25 percent less likely to be chronically absent.

Children in Missouri are in their school buildings less than 14 percent of the time each year. Schools cant do 100 percent of the work of educating children in 14 percent of the time, said Karen Kalish, the founder of Home Works!, in a statement. Parents and families have an important role to play.

In schools that participate in the Home Works! program, half of the classroom teachers visit the homes of their students performing below grade level twice a year. Two teachers go on each visit, and they undergo two mandatory trainings. At both visits, the families are invited to a family dinner at the school, and teachers do whatever it takes to get the parents to attendincluding providing child care or transportation. The teachers are paid for each home visit.

In 2011, Education Week reported that more districts, philanthropists, and teachers unions are funding these teacher home-visit programs. The benefits are two-fold: Parents will likely be more engaged in their childs academic progress if they feel connected to their childs teacher. And visiting a students home can give teachers valuable insightfor example, a teacher visiting the home of a student who never does his homework might learn that the child doesnt have a quiet space to do work.

Home Works! also collected comments from principals and teachers about how the home visits have affected learning in their schools:

An elementary school principal said suspensions were down from 50 last year to 20 this year, which he attributes to stronger relationships with parents.

One teacher said after home visits began, 96 percent of her students were completing their homeworkan increase of about 50 percent from the previous year.

A middle school principal said two science teachersone who has visited every one of her students homes, and one who has visited nonegave the same assignment. Eighty-seven percent of the students in the home-visiting class turned in the assignment on time, compared to 30 percent of the students in the other class.

A teacher said the home visits have enhanced her relationships with her students and their parents"My parents will call me instead of waiting for me to get in touch. My students are open and share things with me. I have a better understanding of behaviors and bad days.

In the 2015-16 school year, there were 2,062 teacher home visits in the St. Louis area. A future phase of the study will use random selection and scientific survey methods to shed more light on whether teacher home visits actually cause student improvement.

File photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Education Week

Related Reading:
US intelligence agencies believe Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered "an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election", according to an unclassified report released on Friday.

The goals were "to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concludes.

"We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."

The report combines conclusions from investigations of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA.
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Brooklyn is well on its way to overtaking Chicago as the third-most populous city in the United States, but Kings County will have to get creative in order to push past the Windy City by this time in 2018. Here are 10 things we can do to populate the borough next year  no matter what the cost.

10. Annex Ridgewood: The Queens neighborhood is already full of hipsters who cant afford Williamsburg, and even once had a Brooklyn zip code. It is also on the eastern edge of Newtown Creek, so you dont even have to cross the only natural barrier separating the two boroughs.

9. Dont legalize it, man: Officials have been laying off enforcement of pot possession while medical marijuana is becoming increasingly available in New York  a big problem for fertility, because weed can lower mens sperm count and just generally makes people lazy. Lets save the reefer madness until we can afford to kick back and chillax.

8. Reopen Rikers here: The city wants to close the scandal-plagued jail anyway, and seeing as incarcerated people count towards the census, we say open a new facility in Kings County to pad out the numbers. Better yet, lets volunteer to take some of Chicagos prisoners too, reducing its population at the same time.

7. House the homeless: The Census Bureau includes the homeless in its count, and will even add indigent drifters to the population tally. By embracing shelters and soup kitchens, we can help solve the citys homeless crisis while increasing the boroughs population.

6. Abstinence-only education: Love it or hate it, stressing abstinence in schools is a surefire way to increase the likelihood of pregnancy. So when you have the talk with you teen, dont tell them to be safe  tell them to wait.

5. Tolls going out, none coming in: Tourists and commuters can be persuaded to settle in the borough by making the cost of leaving Brooklyn prohibitively expensive, while leaving all routes into Brooklyn free of any toll.

4. Do resuscitate: Is your loved one clinging to life? Keep them that way  its just for another year.

3. Flood the reservoirs with fertility drugs: Even if you start trying today, chances are youll only be able to pop out one kid before 2018. By pumping Brooklyns water supply with experimental fertility drugs  known to increase the likelihood of twins and triplets  locals could be popping out whole litters with frightening regularity.

2. Take all the Syrian refugees: Other states around America are refusing to take refugees from the war-torn country, but Brooklyn is home to enough bleeding-hearts to welcome all of them with open arms.

1. Lure Chicagoans to Brooklyn: By enticing Chi-Town citizens to relocate to the Borough of Kings, we can kill two birds with one stone. A marketing campaign could advertise the many appeals of Brooklyn living, including our low murder rates, comparatively gentle winds, and objectively superior pizza. Plus, given how bad the Nets are right now, immigrants are guaranteed to see a Bulls victory every time the team comes to town.
No Disrupting Drunk Driving? New Study Says Uber Has Had No Effect.

It sounds pretty logical, right? With so many people using ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, fewer folks would be driving drunk. Only that doesn't seem to be the case. A new study shows that Uber's arrival has had no impact on drunk driving fatalities, undercutting the app's claims to the contrary.

So why has the uber-popular ride-sharing app failed to make a dent in drunk driving?

The Numbers

Uber has championed its role as an alternative to drunk driving and its impact on DUIs. From its website: "There's a strong correlation between Uber's presence in cities and a reduction in drunk driving." And a prior study claimed "ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft lower the rate of fatal accidents, DUI arrests, disorderly conduct and assaults."

The more recent analysis, conducted by researchers at Oxford University and the University of Southern California, expanded the time frame of the study, looking at county by county traffic fatalities from 2005 to 2014. The study also focused on the 100 most populated metropolitan areas, and distinguished between cities where Uber operates where it does not. The study determined there was no association between Uber's presence and a reduction in drunk driving-related, weekend- and holiday-specific crashes.

The Theory

So why so little impact? The study's authors point out that even though ride-sharing is a popular option among commuters, its reach remains limited. Uber has around 450,000 drivers, compared to 210 million total licensed drivers in the United States, 4.2 million of whom drive impaired. And those who've been drinking might not be altering their behavior that much.

Riders hailing Uber might have been the same people hailing cabs before the ride-sharing apps appearance. And those that were willing to drive drunk instead of getting a cab might be just as willing to risk a DUI as they were before. So while Uber may have disrupted the traditional taxi industry, it hasn't made a dent in drunk driving.

Related Resources:
Legal Obstacles to Marijuana Small Business Growth

Despite the fact that more and more states are passing laws to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use, there are numerous legal obstacles that marijuana businesses face. At the outset, all marijuana businesses operate with the fear of federal prosecution. While individual states may have legal marijuana, the federal government still regards it as a Schedule I narcotic drug, and considers the sale, use, and possession to be illegal.

In addition to the concern over federal prosecution, local and state laws tend to require marijuana business operators to cut through quite a bit of bureaucratic red tape before opening up shop. While the red tape may seem like a hurdle that can be easily overcome, local permitting often requires the payment of hefty, cost-prohibitive application fees, as well as lengthy processing times, that make setting up a marijuana business even more cost prohibitive.

Financing Issues

In addition to paying for permitting and licensing fees, marijuana businesses also need to secure financing for their operations. Again, because of the federal drug laws, marijuana businesses do not qualify for many government programs aimed at assisting small businesses, and big banks are extremely wary about working with pot businesses. This means that operators generally have to secure private financing, or be able to self-fund the operation.

One major issue occurs in states that require a dispensary to be fully set up before a license can be approved. In California, it can take up to 10 months for a license application to be approved. This means that a potential operator may have to pay rent, utilities and other costs on their business before it even opens for business while waiting for a license to be approved.

Security for Cash, Crops, and Crew

Because marijuana businesses often have large amounts of cash on-hand, security is an extremely important aspect to the business. Marijuana dispensaries, grow operations, and storefronts are popular targets for criminals.

Storefronts, in particular, due to the likelihood of having large amounts of cash, as well as the highly valued marijuana products, are frequently targeted for robberies. In addition to the financial losses from stolen cash and products, businesses need to be aware of the need to protect their employees from robberies, which can become violent.

Related Resources:
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...
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October 31, 2022

Buddy TV

In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options...
SCA Merchant Services is kick-starting 2017 with two new appointments.

With effect from 1 February, Russ Ellis has been appointed into the newly created role of production development manager for SCA Timber Supply UK.

Working closely with SCAs production teams at its sites in Stoke, Melton and Welshpool, Mr Ellis will be coordinating SCAs production activities in order to assess capabilities, improve productivity performance and to determine future investment requirements.

Meanwhile, Pete Hall has been promoted to the position of general manager for SCA Merchant Services based in Welshpool, Powys. Having been with SCA for 15 years, Mr Hall moves from his present position of supply chain manager.
Here's where Andy Kim stands on abortion, inflation and more

The USA TODAY Network New Jersey asked Andy Kim and Bob Healey where they stand on key issues in the midterms. Only one answered.
Whenever a new presidential administration takes office, there's a surge of gossip in the space exploration community about what the new president's ambitions will mean for NASA. More funding to study climate change? Additional robotic exploration of the solar system? Renewed interest in manned spaceflight? A manned trip to Mars? A return trip to the Moon?

Many people speculate that there's even a "red/blue" dynamic to space exploration  that Republicans tend to like the idea of returning mankind to the Moon, while Democrats prefer pushing on to an asteroid, or perhaps even Mars. Much of this is really a false dichotomy, based almost entirely on very recent history. In 2004 President George W. Bush announced that the United States would retire the space shuttle program in favor of building Apollo-style capsules and launch vehicles that would return human beings to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, with the idea of setting up a permanent manned colony. President Barack Obama, shortly after taking office, scrapped Bush's plan to return the Moon in favor of going first to an asteroid and eventually Mars in the 2030s, using the same Apollo-inspired spacecraft.

Space exploration, particularly of the manned variety, has never really been a red/blue thing. It has always been more a mingling of genuine scientific inquiry, national pride and a desire to maintain American dominance in advanced technology and scientific research.

NASA was founded in 1958 under a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the goal of overtaking the Soviets in space technology and establishing a human presence on the Moon. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, declared that the United States would put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's Democratic successor, insured NASA had all the necessary funding to make sure that would happen. And all of the Apollo lunar landings occurred between 1969 and 1972, which Republican Richard Nixon was president.

Since that time, however, manned spaceflight has been confined to low-earth orbit (LEO). The space shuttle  one of the most complex machines ever designed  never left this relatively close area of space. And the International Space Station  the largest manmade object ever built in space  also maintains its presence in orbit around the Earth. The exploration of our solar system by human beings, therefore, has not been a priority of presidents, Republican or Democrat, in almost 45 years.

In writing our sci-fi thriller Ocean of Storms, my coauthor, Jeremy K. Brown, and I gave an impetus for humanity to return to the Moon: something cataclysmic happens on the lunar surface that compels us to send astronauts back, to understand what had occurred. Naturally, neither Jeremy nor I want a global threat to occur just so manned space exploration becomes a priority once again. But it's important to bear in mind that we human beings tend to need an existential threat to get us to come together and do something extraordinary: think of the Allied response to the aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II or of all of the Soviet successes in spaceflight that marshaled American efforts to put Neil Armstrong's boot print on the lunar surface. Space enthusiasts like ourselves, scientists, engineers and researchers may clamor all we want for the human exploration of our solar system, but the only thing that will likely move the needle in the direction of making manned space exploration a U.S. priority again is a perceived threat to American dominance.

That threat may well come from China. Since 2003, when China put Yang Liwei, its first taikonaut into orbit, the Chinese government has funded a vigorous space exploration program. In 2013 the Chinese Space Agency landed Chang'e 3, a robotic lander and rover, on the surface of the Moon, the first such object to soft land on the lunar surface since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 did in 1976. The Chinese have planned a robotic lunar sample return mission for 2017. A Chinese manned lunar mission is expected to occur as early as 2025  just eight years from now, or about as long as it took from JFK's declaration to the first Apollo lunar landing in July 1969.

Any incoming presidential administration should sit up and take notice of China's successful manned space program, especially in light of the current state of ours. While there have been American astronauts on the International Space Station since its inception, they have not flown there on a U.S. space vehicle since 2011  when the last space shuttle was decommissioned. Since that time, the United States has paid for seats to fly our astronauts to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecrafts. The U.S.'s next-generation spacecraft, Orion, is not expected to fly with a crew aboard until 2021  ten years after the shuttle fleet was decommissioned. (Private companies, like SpaceX, are also developing manned space vehicles but are also years from test flights.)

As Americans, Jeremy and I believe one of the best ways to ensure our country's competitive edge in technological innovation is through a robust space program. As human beings, we want to ensure the long-term survival of our race, and the only way to do that is to grow the human presence in space, in colonies across the solar system. And as fathers both, we want our kids to understand that anything is possible  and there's no better way to show them that than to point to the Moon or Mars and say: "Once upon a time, no one lived there. And now we do."

Christopher Mari was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and was educated at Fordham University. He has edited books on a wide variety of topics, including three on space exploration. His writing has appeared in such magazines as America, Current Biography, Issues and Controversies, and US Catholic. His next novel, The Beachhead, will be published by 47North in 2017. He lives with his family in Queens, New York.
It was on a balmy evening in 1988 that I first came across this tall, lanky man with wide, red-rimmed eyes staring back at me from the television screen. He wasnt saying a word and yet the fury emanating from his being, almost animalistic in nature, was palpable. I was five at that time, a tad young to understand the conflict that underlay his character, but that haunting image of from Tamas seared itself in my conscience. In the ensuing years, powerful images from films such as Ardh Satya, Aakrosh, City of Joy and, of course, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro kept piling up as layers on top of one another, forming a powerful bank of impressions and memories.
The government will sell 26 per cent stake in defence equipment manufacturer Bharat Earth Movers (BEML), making it the first major public sector undertaking (PSU) to be sold through strategic disinvestment, which may fetch the exchequer over Rs 1,000 crore.

In a notification to the stock exchanges, said the Cabinet has given an in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment of 26 per cent equity shares in out of the governments shareholding of 54.03 per cent.

At the current market pricing of Rs 999.50 a share, 26 per cent stake of could fetch the exchequer over Rs 1,000 crore.



After the strategic sale, the government stake in the PSU would come down to 28.03 per cent.

The said shareholding would be sold to the strategic buyer(s) to be identified by the government of India following due procedure, BEML said.

The strategic sale approval is just the third in over 12 years. In September, the Cabinet had cleared strategic sale of Bharat Pumps & Compressors, while, in December, it had approved sale of Indias first pharma company Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals as well as Hindustan Antibiotics.

These PSUs will be the first privatisation since sale of Jessop & Company in 2003-04 under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

These are among the PSUs that NITI Aayog has identified for sale of the governments majority stake to private in order to bring in greater efficiency and professionalism in their functioning.

Established in May 1964, BEML operates on three major business verticals for associated equipment manufacturing - mining and construction, rail and Metro, and defence and aerospace. Its turnover has risen to more than Rs 3,500 crore.

The PSU, under the administrative control of the defence ministry, provides equipment support to the Indian Army and other defence forces by manufacturing variants of Tatra vehicle for all terrain operation.

It also supports aerospace operations by supplying ground support equipment such as aircraft tow tractors, multipurpose weapon loaders and crash fire tenders.



The government is targeting Rs 56,500 crore in disinvestment proceeds this financial year. Of this, Rs 36,000 crore is to come from minority stake sale in PSUs and another Rs 20,500 crore from strategic stake sale.

The fiscal target continues to remain far off, with total collections of around Rs 24,000 crore in the nine months of the financial year so far.



Incidentally, the first strategic sale in a PSU also happened under the NDA rule in 1999. In 2000, the government sold 74 per cent equity in Modern Food Industries to Hindustan Lever for Rs 105.45 crore.
In absolving the group of any wrongdoing under the Income Tax Act in the alleged bribery scandal which has implicated several prominent politicians and unleashed a political storm in the country, the Income Tax Settlement Commission (ITSC) glossed over crucial evidence furnished by tax inspectors, documents related to the case show.
In its draft National Electricity Plan, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) makes an interesting observation on peak power demand to be half of the installed generation capacity by 2022. Low demand now marks every part of the power supply chain  generation, equipment, transmission, accessibility. Since this government came to power in mid-2014, there has been no call for investment in conventional generation.
Pune-based UB Engineering Ltd (UBEL), part of the Vijay Mallya-led UB group, has filed for insolvency at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). "The company has dues of around Rs 450 crore to five banks. It has moved the NCLT in Mumbai today," an official familiar with the development told Business Standard.
In the past one year, has sold assets worth Rs 11,000 crore, to reduce its debt. This week, speculation has spread that the conglomerate is selling a majority stake in Kenstar, its home and kitchen appliances business.
WS Retail, the largest seller on e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, posted a 33 per cent growth in revenues at Rs 13,921 crore for the year that ended March 2016, or nearly three times that of rival Amazon's largest Cloudtail which reported a revenue of Rs 4,591 crore during the same period.
Amid a rising debate over women safety triggered by the incident, Madhya Pradesh police have launched 'MP e-Cop', a mobile app and portal to facilitate girls to get immediate back-up merely with a push of a button.

"There is SOS (an international code signal of extreme distress) facility in 'MP e-Cop', which would trigger the SMS to phone numbers fed in the app used by girls and women," Director General of Police (DGP) Rishi Kumar Shukla told PTI.

Shukla said that special action plan is being prepared to tackle crimes against women.

The DGP informed that women can feed up to five numbers in SOS facility available on this app.

"As soon as the girl in distress would push the button, the app would send alert SMS on the five numbers fed by her in the app," he added.

Shukla also said that the plan was being made to create awareness among public on the cyber crimes.

"The action is being taken to curb objectionable messages spread through social media," he added.

After launching the app on Thursday, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had directed police officials to prepare a draft for the laws related to crime against women.

Talking about the app, another police officer informed that the citizens will also be able to report about missing documents, and mobiles apart from alerting the police about missing persons as well. People can also get information about stolen and recovered vehicles.

"People can avail several other facilities through this app. They can inform about missing the documents and mobile phones from home. Secret information can be shared with police that too without disclosing the name," he added.

The app also offers a series of important telephone numbers that can be used as per the requirement of the users.
There are many options for touring Alta Guajira, the northernmost part of Colombia (and of South America), but overlanding in your own vehicle is definitely choice. The only rub is that many of the roads aren't really roads so much as they are just the tracks of the last vehicle that passed through, and not necessarily in the direction you're headed. So, navigation is tricky for a local, and nigh impossible for a visitor.

The various paths that lead to Punta Gallina are unpaved, rocky, and cut through a desert with infamously muddy patches that cars can be stuck in for up to a week. And driving through it during rainy season, as we did, can be especially treacherous.

We had a bit of "luck" on our side, if you can call it that. Unfortunately, the Guajira region has been subject to a five year long drought, making the difficult life of the Wayuu people who live there even more difficult. The UN and the Red Cross have both stepped in to try and alleviate the starvation and the lack of water, but providing aid has not been easy. So when we say "lucky," we mean only for the road quality, since we encountered little of the mud we'd been warned so vehemently about, and made it out with very little trauma to our 4Runner.

The other bit of luck we had was accidentally stumbling on a tourism agency that specializes in trips to Punta Gallina, while actually searching for different agency all together. That connection ended up being essential to the success of our trip, even though we did not ultimately utilize their services as guides.

Most tourists who visit this remote and sparsely populated region go either in a car driven by a local and guided by an English speaker. Or, they are driven to one of the only cities (here, the term is used generously, by city we mean perhaps more than 10 families live in a single area, with a few stores, and likely a kite surfing school or two) and are taken in a boat to other areas with more difficult overlanding logistics. This is a fine option. But you are shuttled from place to place, with little agency for things like choices in food and where to sleep. Likewise, you are sheltered from any kind of responsibility in the area, which was a fascinating, if often upsetting experience.

So when we told the first tour agency about our desire to drive ourselves out there, they were a little doubtful.

"You could," Paola said. But her confirmation of the possibility came with many caveats. About the lack of gas. About navigating the Wayuu rules of the road namely stopping at many self-appointed toll spots, where children swarm the car, and do not let you pass until you have given them cookies, or water, or sweets. About the roads, or lack there of, and about the difficulty of navigation.

But we were set on going, and so Paola gave us the perfect recommendation: Drive up to El Cabo De La Vela on our own, find the largest hotel in town (a ten room joint, with bucket showers and an adjoining outdoor restaurant) and ask around to see if there were any tours headed to Punta Gallina that we could follow. And so we did.

The road to Cabo De La Vela is 50% super easy paved, or when not paved, at least well trodden. And 50% difficult navigation through roads that make little to no sense, with a seemingly innumerable number of Wayuu toll stops. Our rations for the tolls treats, mostly, purchased from a grocery store in Riohacha dwindled much more quickly that we'd anticipated. And in a couple cases, we were very uncertain that we had headed in the correct direction. But we found the city, which is peaceful, and set against a still and tranquil coastline ideal for kite surfing.

Paola had called ahead to let her contact in Cabo De La Vela know we were coming. We were easily identifiable, as the only visitors to arrive in a car with California plates. And when Sergei, her contact, found us, he helped us find another tour guide with a group of five that were planning on leaving for Punta Gallina the next day.

That night, we camped on the beach, alongside many other visitors, who opted for the hammocks hung in palapas, the favored cheap lodging choice of the area. We purchased more toll fare from a local tienda. And, the next morning, we struck out for Punta Gallina.

We trailed a Land Cruiser VX from the Alta Guajira tour company, driven by a congenial man named Tobias. If you've prepped for overlanding, you're likely prepared for this journey. He lead us first to Punta Gallina's famous beach, which rests on the opposite side of a towering sand dune. The water is cool, and the sand is soft. It seems cast in unreality. We'd heard a dubious claim that the sand blew in from sandstorms in the Sahara, which just seems impossible. But it does have a completely different color and texture to the sand at all the other beaches in the region, and makes for a lovely sunning surface between bouts in the cool, blue water.

Then, he lead us to a tiny town, which is more a collection of houses surrounding one hotel-restaurant. It sits atop of a cliff overlooking a turquoise lagoon, replete with small collections of mangrove trees, a small dock, and an area in which they rear baby sea turtles for release into the wild. The town itself has more goats than people, no pavement, or even well trodden paths, and a preponderance of chickens. A few parrots live on the property of the hotel, and make the sounds of crying children, laughing adults, and a few wolf-whistles.

Tobias then lead us to a few choice scenic outlooks, two of which provided views of an enormous flock of flamingoes not too far away. And then, he lead us to El Faro Punta Gallina, the lighthouse that marks the northernmost point of South America. There, people have created an array of stone stacks on the beach to mark the spot, and we watched the sun set over them, casting weird and beautiful shadows across the sand.

As we headed back to the town, Tobias pulled to a halt, and pointed out a detonation crater. It was fifteen years old, he told us, and a relic of the government's war with Pablo Escobar. Escobar's illegal air strip had been just next to El Faro Punta Gallina, and the crater was created when the government bombed the area. It looked about three feet deep, and maybe ten feet across.

While the group that arrived officially with the Alta Guajira tours stayed in the hotel (which, they reported, was hot and stuffy, and not super comfortable) we camped below the cliffs just by the docks. It was serene, and silent save for the quiet sound of water lapping against the shore. A cool breeze blew gently all night. We slept like dead people.

The next morning, Alta Guajira tours had arranged for their guests to go on a quick boat tour to go look at flamingoes. The boat would drop them off at a farther location, that marked our point of exit from the area. So Adam followed Tobias in the cars, and I joined the boat tour, which led to a flock of about a thousand flamingoes. While I stared at the strange and improbable birds, Adam discussed logistics for getting to Valledupar with Tobias.

Of all the driving we've done so far, this has been the most satisfying. The route through the area cuts through salt flats, craggy desert, tiny Wayuu settlements, deep sand patches, cacti and shallow water. However experienced you are as a driver, we absolutely recommend tailing a tour group. The price for this service is tiny compared to the potential for the huge inconvenience of being stranded, lost, or stuck in the mud. Deep mud can often appear to be dry sand, and tricks even those familiar with the landscape. And driving in Wayuu country without a familiar face past 5pm is apparently not a great idea, for reasons no one made clear to us.

If you are planning a trip to the area, we also recommend the Alta Guajira tour company. Their services were excellent, Tobias's knowledge of the area was expansive, and also, he was just a nice dude. Bring along gas cans, filled in Riohacha, the last stop with true gas stations. Bring more cookies than you think you'll need, or better yet, bring bags of water. In retrospect, we wished we had brought water, which we hadn't realized was an option until too late. It is a more useful thing to give out in an area beset with difficult survival, drought and poverty,

If you are not planning a trip to the area, we highly recommend that you do.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author of Also an Octopus, and the cohost of the Let's Not Panic podcast, which chronicles her trip in a Toyota 4Runner from San Francisco to Patagonia.
In a candid chat with students at his alma mater IIT-Kharagpur on Thursday, Google CEO recalled his days at the institute, his love life and also his interview with the internet giant even as he urged them to take risks and experiment with different things in life.

Pichai doled out unconventional advice to the students on Thursday when he visited the campus after 23 years.

In his addressing at the packed open air theatre, he told them to pursue their passions, take risks, and be creative.

"Academics is important but it is not as important as it's made out to be. There is a lot of pressure to follow a set of rules throughout your career (in India). When you are in high school you think of college. I get very surprised that people get into the IITs and immediately they are thinking about IIMs and so on. It is so important to get real world experience and be well-rounded," he said, adding that entry to elite institutions is "important but that doesnt guarantee success. What matters most is loving what you do".

Egged on by the students, Pichai revealed his other side: like any other student he too bunked classes.

"Of course, (I used to bunk morning classes). I think it is the rites of passage when in college. I have to say I worked hard but we did have our share of fun as well," he said to loud cheers.

Pichai, who met his wife Anjali at the IIT campus, also highlighted how difficult it was to communicate with girls at their separate hostel.

"You had to walk in the front and request someone to call them. And they'd go in and loudly say - Anjali, Sundar is here. It wasn't exactly a pleasant experience," he said.

Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, said he was interviewed on April Fool's day.

Quizzed on Gmail at the interview, which had just been introduced by the company, Pichai initially thought it was a prank.

"So, I remember doing my interviews during the day and people kept asking me what do you think of Gmail, but I didn't have a chance to use it and I thought it was a April Fool's joke.My first three interviews, I couldn't answer well because I hadn't used the product. In my fourth interview when someone asked me have you seen Gmail and I said no, he actually showed me the product. And then the fifth interviewer asked what do you think of Gmail and I was able to answer then," he said.

"I still joke sometimes that I got a job because Larry Page didn't interview me," he said.

Did Pichai get ragged in college?

"It was pretty mellow. I definitely remember when I started (hopefully it has got better by now) we had something called a CG chain which stands for 'centre of gravity chain'. As a freshman, you lock your room and go out, then you come back and the room doors aren't open but everything inside your room has been rearranged. They do it by putting sticks...and all your clothes and rearrange even the furniture. So its quite a shock when you open your room door and walk back in to see your entire room has been rearranged," he said.

His anecdote on how he thought "Abbey saale" was the usual way to address people, elicited the loudest response from the students.

"I came from Chennai. I learnt Hindi in school but never spoke it much. Just listening to how people were speaking, I just thought you address people this way. One day there was someone in the mess and I had to call him. I called him 'Abey saale!' In my first couple of weeks, I thought you call people that way," he said.

Pichai connected with the students on the issue of mess food.

"We were made to guess whether what was served was dal or sambhar," he said.

Asked about his GPA, the Google CEO admitted he was too embarrassed to admit his first year's results, but that he did much better in the last three years.

Pichai also revealed that Infosys founder Narayana Murthy was his ideal during his college days. "I admire people like that who put India on the map," he said.

Asked by a student as to what she'd have to do to replace him, Pichai said: "I would say be careful what you wish for, but would be happy to discuss over a cup of chai."

On whether the Google doodle could be dedicated to IIT-Kharagpur, Pichai said he will send a mail to the team but "chances are less".

Pichai also batted for reducing the cost of entry-level smartphones to $30 and expressed confidence that big, global software companies will start emerging from India in the next five to ten years. He said his organisation is "betting big" on advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning in the coming years.
Former Prime Minister feared a coup by a section of his BJP that wanted to have him replaced by his deputy Lal Krishna Advani, a new biography has claimed.

The "coup of sorts" was in the works a few months after Advani took over as the Deputy Prime Minister in June 2002, says the book, "The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox" (Penguin/304 pp/Rs 599), by journalist Ullekh N.P.

Citing an unnamed minister whom Vajpayee summoned to his residence, the author says: "The Union minister asked Vajpayee not to worry too much about it.

"The PM replied that he was merely stating that he knew of a plan to unseat him and replace him with Advani. He didn't know who was behind it, but he was convinced of the plan. He had earlier been asked by an RSS honcho to become India's President, and leave the PM's role to Advani," the book contends.

The author also claims that Vajpayee offered a "compromise formula" during the 1975-77 emergency by asking activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) -- the RSS student wing -- to own up to destruction of public property so that the opposition could cut a deal with the government.

"Vajpayee spoke about the arson and destruction of public property in many parts of the country by miscreants and told Rai (Ram Bahadur Rai, then ABVP General Secretary) that it was time for the ABVP to own up to its mistakes and tender an apology before the government could start thinking of repealing the Emergency laws," Ullekh, who is the Executive Editor of Open magazine, mentions in the book.

Dubbed by Penguin as the "the biggest political biography of the year", the book takes a fresh look at the former Prime Minister and shows that he had often taken "brief excursions into the hard-line camp".

The book, according to the publisher, is thoroughly researched, supported by hard facts and accompanied by inside stories and anecdotes, insightful interviews and archival photographs, and opens a window to the life and times of the poet-politician.

"Vajpayee's early speeches and comments show him to be a dyed-in-the-wool Sanghi, who, over the decades, turned out to be liberal and Nehruvian in his approach and pronouncements," Ullekh, whose first book was "War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 Win", told IANS.

"However, he made frequent excursions into the hardline camp, as evident from his provocative speeches in Assam in 1984 and to karsevaks in Ayodhya in 1992. His public persona of being a moderate was different from his deafening silence over contentious issues within the party. He could afford to do things on his own terms thanks to his unbeatable popularity," Ullekh added.

The book also says that Advani, as Home Minister, tried to "use Shias of Iran to nullify the claims of Sunni Muslims in India on Babri Masjid" in a bid to make way for a Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

"But Advani's plans were foiled by Vajpayee loyalists who feared that the former would take all the credit for resolving the burning issue."

The book also provides some additional details on a significant moment in the party's and the nation's history -- the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of 2002.

According to the book, Vajpayee, after the Godhra train burning and the riots that followed, was resolute that (then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra) "Modi has to go" but Advani said that Gujarat would descend into chaos if that happened.

Referring to a conversation that took place onboard a flight in which Vajpayee, who was reading a newspaper, and some other leaders were headed to a executive meet in Goa, Ullekh writes: "Then (Arun) Shourie surprised himself. He pulled the newspaper out of Vajpayee's hands and interjected, 'Vajpayeeji, newspapers can be read later also. Why don't you tell Advaniji what you wanted to tell him?'"

"Vajpayee kept the newspaper away, and muttered in his usual style about what had to be done. First, Venkaiah Naidu would replace Jana Krishnamurthi as the BJP president. Then he said, 'Modi has to go'. By the time they landed in Goa, the decision was taken: Modi would go," the book claims.

The author mentions that Jaswant Singh shared another version of the episode. "He narrated that though Advani didn't protest when Vajpayee insisted that Modi had to go, the Home Minister added, 'There will be chaos in the state'," says the book.

Eventually, Modi stayed on as the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Vajpayee was India's 10th Prime Minister, first for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. He is ailing now and resides in a heavily-guarded bungalow in Lutyens Delhi and has not been seen in public for more than a decade.
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President has issued a note of caution that the Narendra Modi government's demonetisation decision could likely lead to a temporary slowdown in the economy and hurt the poor.



My dear Governors and Lt. Governors:
It may not have made it in the first two rounds of shortlist by the ministry of urban development (MoUD) but has now become the first city in the country to go smart.
A group of cow vigilantes on Thursday blocked the traffic at Battakh Chowk in Haryana's Jind district, alleging that the city council and local administration did not take timely action to remove the carcass of a calf that was mowed down by a vehicle.

The 'gau rakshaks' said the calf was hit by an unidentified vehicle on Wednesday night after which they informed the police control room, administration and the city council.

They alleged the authorities didn't turn up to remove the carcass and therefore they had to take the step in order to keep the stray dogs away.

The protesters blocked the Chowk in the morning which lead to a heavy traffic jam on both sides of the road and inconvenience to commuters for over half an hour.

After getting information, police officials rushed to the spot and pacified the agitators. The carcass was removed later, said police spokesperson.

According to the vigilantes, if they remove such carcass from road, the police books them for cow smuggling.

They said it is city council's duty to remove dead animals but there is no place in the city to bury such bodies.
The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking a direction to Union Law Ministry and other authorities to include an option of taking oath on the Constitution of India in the Oaths Act for .

As per the provisions of the Oaths Act-1969, a person can either swear in the name of God or solemnly affirm to state the truth while either deposing in a court or filing an affidavit or any other application before a court.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice G S Kulkarni on Friday heard the PIL filed by local resident Sunil Mane, seeking for a third option in the Act, by which a person can take oath on the Constitution of India.

The bench noted that it is for the lawmakers to decide if oath can be permitted to be taken on the Constitution of India, and such a direction cannot be given by the court.

Mane, in his petition, claimed that he came across two separate incidents in lower courts where the witnesses refused to take oath in the name of God or by placing their hand on Bhagavad Gita as they were non-believers. The courts refused to let them depose and asked the witnesses to leave.

Hence, Mane sought for a provision to be introduced in the Act by which oath can be taken on the Constitution.

The high court on Friday, however, noted that the Act provides two options for oath - one in the name of God and the other is to solemnly affirm.

"The two options clearly indicate that if a person is a believer in God or Almighty then he or she can take oath in the name of God and if they are not believers then they can solemnly affirm to state the truth. By saying God or Almighty, the Act has ensured that there is no reference or attachment to any religion, caste or creed," Chief Justice Chellur said.
The Union HRD ministry has decided to constitute a three member committee to search for a new chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as the tenure of the present incumbent Ved Prakash is about to end.

According to officials the ministry has decided to constitute the panel which would be headed by Dr H R Nagendra, who is Chancellor of S-VYASA and is also likely to include former VC of Saurashtra University D P Singh and former VC of Lucknow University.

It is also learnt that as the present UGC chairperson is on leave, the HRD ministry has asked JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar to officiate as the Commission head in his absence.
What does one need to win an election in India? Money power, say some. Others believe it is muscle power that counts. Yet others, the more idealistic ones, insist that it is hard work at the grassroots level, honesty and accountability that win the trust of people and, thereby, elections.
It was a shocker for a middle-class family in the city when they received over Rs 1.89 lakh.

Bhanwarlal Jangid, a small wood trader, and his family were left bamboozled Thursday when they received the inflated power bill.

They have to pay the bill before the deadline- January 16.

Prior to this, the family never received dues in excess of Rs 4,000 for their 60 sq yard residence in Ganga Vihar colony of the city.

"We received the bill on Thursday and all of us in the family had a sleepless night seeing the dues of Rs 1.89 lakh. We have never got a bill more than Rs 4,000 and have not even replaced the electricity meter," Jangid told PTI.

Officials at the Jaipur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd said they have not received any complaint from the consumer.

"Now, I will have to run from pillar to post to get the bill rectified," Jangid said.
Kamala Harris was just sworn in as a senator from California, but her last gig was as California's Attorney General, and in that role, she decided not to prosecute Trump Treasury Secretary pick Steve Mnuchin, whom her office had identified as presiding over "widespread misconduct" in foreclosing on Californians  that is, stealing their houses.

Harris's campaign received large donations from Mnuchin and from shareholders in Onewest, the crooked bank that Mnuchin ran.

After a leaked memo from Harris's office showed that her staff believed there was "widespread misconduct," The Hill asked Harris why she didn't take action. She had no explanation, apart from, "It's a decision my office made" and "We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us."

Mnuchin's bank ordered its contractors not to comply with California subpoenas about its foreclosure mills.

Note that Harris is a Democrat.



Three groups  the Rootstrikers project at Demand Progress, the Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up Campaign, and the California Reinvestment Coalition  have called for a delay of Mnuchin's confirmation hearing until he publicly discloses all settlements and lawsuits OneWest has faced from its foreclosure-related activities, responds fully to all questions submitted by members of the Senate Finance Committee, and publicly discloses his role in obstructing the California attorney general investigation, or any others. The California Reinvestment Coalition followed that up on Thursday by asking OneWest to release the obstructed evidence, which involved loan files held by a third party then known as Lender Processing Services (it's now called Black Knight Financial Services). "That's something the Senate Finance Committee should ask him for, prior to scheduling their hearing with him," said Paulina Gonzalez, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Kamala Harris Fails to Explain Why She Didn't Prosecute Steven Mnuchin's Bank [David Dayen/The Intercept]

(Image: Kamala Harris, Zennie Abraham, CC-BY-ND)
The Calcutta High Court on Friday granted regular bail to suspended Trinamool Congress MP and Saradha chit fund scam accused Kunal Ghosh, three months after he was given interim bail.

A division bench of justices Ashim Kumar Roy and M M Banerjee granted the bail to Ghosh on a prayer by the Rajya Sabha MP.

The court, however, refused to modify or ease the conditions which had been imposed on Ghosh while granting interim bail to him on October 5.

The bench had granted interim bail to Ghosh, who headed the Saradha Group's media business till November 11, on a bail bond of Rs 2 lakh.

Ghosh should not leave the jurisdiction of Narkeldanga police station in the metropolis except for attending court proceedings or meeting the investigating officers, the court had directed.

It further directed Ghosh to meet the investigating officer once a week and if necessary, CBI shall have liberty to call him to its office for the purpose of investigation.

Ghosh, who headed the media arm of Saradha Group, had been in judicial remand for over two years in connection with the chit fund scam, before being granted bail by the high court.
Foreign Minister on Friday said that India will help out sailors stuck in merchant ships at Ajman in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Reacting to media reports, Swaraj in a tweet said, "I have seen the news report. We will resolve this."

I have seen the news report. We will resolve this. pic.twitter.com/QfuzZkiaXo

That matter was brought to light by one of the sailors, Anoop Pathak, who sent an SOS message to the Foreign Minister from his handle. The SOS message said: "Sushma Swaraj, our ship has holes and too much water coming in! Please help us. We want to go back home!"

According to media reports, 41 Indian sailors are stranded in four abandoned merchant ships at Ajman anchorage in UAE. The owner of the vessels had seized the passports of the sailors and is reportedly untraceable.

As per reports, the sailors have not been paid for more than a year.
The (RBI) on Thursday clarified it was still counting how many old notes have been returned to the banking system, to eliminate double counting. Therefore, it said the numbers being quoted should not be construed as verified. RBI is reconciling the numbers provided by banks against the actual cash stashed in currency chests.
The department of commerce and industries has introduced a NRI policy with the view to attract investments from non-resident Kannadigas (NRKs) and other NRIs ahead of the three-day Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas that starts on Saturday.
In lieu of claims by US President-elect Donald Trump that the H1-B visa program is being used to undercut American workers, two US Congressmen have reintroduced a bill backing key changes that allows skilled workers from other countries to fill jobs in the US.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday issued a note of caution that the Narendra Modi government's decision could likely lead to a temporary slowdown in the economy and hurt the poor.
Out shopping with some money he managed to withdraw from his bank in this Madhya Pradesh district, a farmer was shocked when shopkeepers returned the Rs 2,000 note saying it was a fake since it had no picture of Mahatma Gandhi on it.

However, the State Bank of India branch, from where Lakshman Meena had withdrawn the money, on Thursday said they had changed the notes and attributed the faulty notes to a "printing mistake".

Meena and some other farmers from Bicchugavandi village had withdrawn money from a State Bank of India branch in Baroda town on Tuesday. He had chosen to take out Rs 6,000 and received three notes of Rs 2,000 each.

On Wednesday, when Meena went out to buy groceries, he was told that the notes do not have the picture of Gandhi and can be fake.

A worried Meena went back to the bank with all haste.

"The notes with missing Gandhi were taken back and exchanged for new ones. They were not fake but printing mistake," bank official Aakash Srivastav told IANS on Thursday.

According to sources, the amount was received from SBI's Sheopur branch chest in bundles of Rs 2,000 in which there were other notes as well with printing issues, because of which the bundle is being sent back to the branch. It is not yet known how many others have received such notes.

Since the demonetisation in November 8 last year, many such cases involving Rs 2,000 notes have come forward, such as notes with two pictures of Gandhi or having no water mark. But this was the first case where the Mahatma was entirely absent.
All India Conference of Chairpersons and Chief Executive Officers of State/UT Waqf Boards is being held tomorrow at New Delhi. The conference convened by the Ministry of Minority Affairs will be inaugurated by Shri Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the Minister of State (I/C), Minority Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs.

Presentations will be made by the Haryana, Karnatak , Kerala State Waqf Boards and National Waqf Development Corporation Ltd on various relevant issues, which will also be discussed during the sessions. All the above issues including review of progress under the schemes relating to grant of financial assistance to the State Waqf Boards for computerization of waqf properties; and strengthening of waqf boards; and development of waqf properties by National Waqf Development Corporation Ltd. will be discussed .
Dr. Jitendra Singh release 2017 Calendar of North Eastern Council Dr. Jitendra Singh announces exclusive 'North Eastern Tourism Development Council'

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh released the 2017 Calendar of the North Eastern Council here today. The North-East Council Calendar for 2017 carries the theme of seasonal fruits in different parts of the year.

During the occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh announced the formation of exclusive North-Eastern Tourism Development Council (NETDC) on a public-private partnership (PPP) mode under the auspices of Union Ministry of DoNER. He said that this is for the first time that the Government has decided to set up a separate tourism development agency, devoted to a particular region of the country. The Minister said that the setting up of an exclusive North-Eastern Tourism Council is also a reflection of the high priority that the Union Government accords to the development of the peripheral States of Northeast.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that North-Eastern Tourism Council is yet another addition to several new initiatives undertaken with regard to North East. For instance, setting up of Venture Fund as initial capital assistance for any young entrepreneur or start-up who wishes to launch an establishment or venture in the North-Eastern region and setting up of Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Centre for Policy Research & Analysis at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Shillong, he added.

The Minister said that the North-East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS) is also region-based road development programme in India which has proved to be a great blessing for maintenance, construction and upgradation of such roads, which remain neglected either because of being low in the priority or being interconnecting roads between two States as a result of which they remain un-owned and had thus gained the dubious distinction of being described as orphan roads.

Senior officers from the Ministry of DoNER were also present on the occasion.
Regional Labour Conference of North-Eastern Region held in Guwahati 18 Model Career Centres to be established in North East Region: Shri Bandaru Dattatreya Shram Suvida Portal to bring more transparency & accountability in enforcement of labour laws: Shri Bandaru Dattatreya

The Regional conference of state Labour Ministers and Principal Secretaries of Labour of North Eastern States was held yesterday in the presence of Shri Bandaru Dattatreya, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Labour & Employment, It was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Assam, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal in Guwahati. The Secretary, Labour and Employment, Govt. of India, Smt. Sathiavathi and officers from all the 7 states of North East were also present.

Inaugurating the conference the Chief Minister of Assam urged to upgrade the ESIC Model Hospital at Beltola from 50 bedded to 150 bedded. Shri Sonowal also highlighted the steps taken by the State Government of Assam to reduce the hardships of people during demonetisation.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Bandaru Dattatreya highlighted various labour reforms taken by the Government measures taken to ensure job security and social security of workers and implementation of National Career Service Project. of 100 model career centres to be established in India, 18 are to be set up in North East States.

Shri Dattatreya also stated that the various initiatives taken by the Ministry of Labour and Employment like launching of

He said that Shram Suvida Portal, an initiative of this Government has brought more transparency and accountability leading to better enforcement of labour laws, Simplification of 43 labour laws in to 4 major labour codes like code on wages; code on Industrial relations; code as Social Security & Welfare and Code on safety & working conditions is under process.

Shri Dattatreya highlighted the initiatives taken by Government to improve health infrastructure in the North East states. The Minister said that the existing 50 bedded hospital in Assam (Beltola) will be upgraded to 150 bedded Hospital in phases as per the request of Chief Minister of Assam.The Minister said that the legislative reforms undertaken by the Government like enhancing the eligibility limit under Bonus Act from Rs. 10000 to 21000 per month and enhancement of calculation ceiling from Rs. 3500 to Rs. 7000, amendments through child labour (Prohibitions & Regulation) Amendment Bill 2016, that stipulates complete prohibition of child labour below 14 years and stringent punishment for its violation. The Amendment also prohibits the adolescents of age group of 14-18 years to be employed in hazardous occupations.

Shri Dattatreya also stated in order to ensure cashless transaction of wages to workers, particularly those in the informal sector, Ministry of Labour and Employment has taken huge efforts for opening bank accounts. Already 25.68 crore Jandhan Accounts are existing and the workers left out are being covered under this effort.

Labour and Employment Minister concluded that Co-operative Federalism is a key vehicle to achieve rapid development in India.

Strong states are the foundation of a strong India. The progress of a country depends on the progress of the states as state governments along with the central governments are co-partners in moving forward the agenda of economic development. Shri Dattatreya also reiterated his commitment for welfare and social security to all workers.
The meaning and enforcement of the Illinois hate-crimes statute seems destined for intense scrutiny with the arrest this week of four young black adults in Chicago in connection with the assault of a mentally disabled white man. The arrests by the Chicago Police Department resulted in part from what appeared to a livestreamed video of the disabled man being abused while bound and gagged. The recording captures one or more of the attackers making references to Donald Trump and white people.
President-elect insisted today he supports the US intelligence agencies despite having cast doubts on their conclusion that Russia interfered with the US presidential election.

"The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump said in a two-tweet statement.

"The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people...To make up their own minds as to the truth."



Trump has cited WikiLeaks founder Assange to express doubts that Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic Party computers and accounts that led to the release of embarrassing documents and emails via the anti-secrecy group.

The White House, FBI and CIA have all said the top levels of the Russian government were behind the hacking and leaks, which hurt Trump rival Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

But Trump appeared to reject the intelligence agencies' conclusions in tweets Tuesday and yesterday, preferring Assange's view.

"Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless?" he said, referring to the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.

Leaders of both political parties blasted Trump for his comments.

Assange is "a sycophant for Russia," said Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday. "He leaks, he steals data, and compromises national security."



Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Trump showed "frankly flabbergasting" disrespect for the intelligence officials.

"I think the most important thing the intelligence community can always do is speak truth to power," he told MSNBC.

"And it seems like perhaps the president-elect doesn't want to hear those truths."



Trump's backpedaling came ahead of a Senate hearing today in which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency director Michael Rogers are testifying on Russian election interference.

And tomorrow, the chiefs of four top intelligence agencies are scheduled to brief Trump in detail on the alleged Russian hacking.
US President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has decided not to let American ambassadors who are political appointees of President Barack Obama stay on for a grace period beyond Inauguration Day, a source has confirmed.

The decision has left some of the diplomats, who represent the US in countries such as Britain, Saudi Arabia and Japan, scrambling to figure out new living arrangements, visa rules and what options they have for their children's schooling.

It also could mean some top US embassies are left without an ambassador for months as Trump finds his footing, the source said on Thursday.

In typical presidential transitions, politically appointed ambassadors have at times been allowed to stay on the job for weeks or months after the new President has taken office, Politico reported.

Following tradition, President Obama has directed all political appointees in his Democratic administration to submit their resignations effective on Inauguration Day, January 20, making room for Trump's appointees.

When asked about ambassadors requesting extensions, the Trump transition team informed the State Department that it was not making any exceptions, an official told Politico.

The department began sending cables at least as early as December 21, 2016, to individual ambassadors telling them that they would have to quit their posts on time.

During his two terms, Obama named hundreds of people to the posts, roughly 30 per cent of whom are political appointees, which generally require Senate confirmation. That figure is roughly in line with other Presidents in recent decades.

In the absence of the ambassadors who now must leave by January 20, the affected US embassies will likely be run by the highest-ranking career employee until Trump nominates someone new and that person is confirmed by the Senate.

The process could take months.
Near the start of his second term, President Obama had granted clemency at a lower rate than any president in recent history. He had pardoned 39 people and denied 1,333 requests. He had used his power to commute a prisoner's sentence just once.
on Friday handed over a dossier on India's alleged "interference" in the country to new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and asked the world body to play a role in "restraining" India from such activities, according to the Foreign Office here.

Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi delivered the dossier on "India's interference and terrorism" in to the UN chief along with a letter from Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.

"The dossier contains additional information and proof of Indian/RAW interference in Pakistan and involvement in terrorism particularly in Balochistan, FATA and Karachi. This is a follow up to the three dossiers, which were shared with the United Nations in October 2015," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

In the covering letter sent with the dossier, Aziz claimed that the arrest of "Indian RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav from Balochistan and his confessional statement admitting involvement in activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan, and support to terrorist elements vindicated Pakistan's long-standing position about India's involvement in such activities."

He also claimed that India was carrying out these activities in clear contravention of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council on counter-terrorism and conventions on terrorism.

Jadhav has been accused by Pakistan of planning "subversive activities" in the country. India has acknowledged that Jadhav had served with the navy but denied that he has any connection with the government.

India's "hostile intentions" towards Pakistan were also borne out by recent statements of its political and military leadership, Aziz was quoted as saying in the letter.

He claimed Pakistan had made a major contribution to global counter-terrorism efforts and secured significant gains in its domestic fight against terrorism.

Aziz urged the Secretary-General and relevant United Nations bodies to seriously consider the matter in the light of information shared by Pakistan and play a role in "restraining India from these activities, which were in clear violation of law and posed a threat to regional and peace and security."

"Pakistan continues to desire peace with all its neighbours including India. It is convinced that the common objectives of economic development and prosperity for our people can best be promoted through regional cooperation, conflict resolution and peaceful settlement of disputes," the Foreign Office statement said.

"At the same time, however, Pakistan will resolutely defend its territorial integrity and take all necessary measures to counter any threat to its security," it said.
For many in India, Donald Trumps election victory in the United States wasnt surreal as much as an uncanny replay of familiar stories, especially for those accustomed to the saga and careers of south Indias film-star politicians.
The European Union endured a series of political shocks and strains in 2016 that threatened to tear the bloc apart: an ongoing migration crisis; the United Kingdoms vote in June to exit the union; lacklustre growth and stubbornly high unemployment in the eurozone; terrorist attacks that killed and injured scores; and surging support for populist and anti-EU political parties.
shares slumped on Friday as Donald Trump threatened punitive tariffs over its new vehicle plant in Mexico, triggering a staunch defence from Japan's government which said its auto sector had made huge contributions to the US economy.
US President-elect on Thursday targeted Toyota Motor Corp, threatening to impose a hefty fee on the Japanese automaker it if builds its Corolla cars for the US market at a plant in Mexico.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for US, NO WAY! Build plant in US or pay big border tax," Trump said in a post on Twitter.

This was Trump's latest broadside against automakers building cars in Mexico and first against a foreign automaker. The president-elect's attacks on investments by in Mexico have cast a shadow over cross-border production networks central to more than $583 billion a year in trade between the two countries.

The value of the Mexican peso has skidded amid fears that Trump's policies would harm Latin America's second-biggest economy.

Toyota, which announced its plan to build a new Mexican facility in April 2015, said the plant in Guanajuato city would not take away from US employment.

"Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry," Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said.

Trump's tweet confuses Toyota's existing Baja plant with the planned $1 billion plant in Guanajuato city. Baja produces around 100,000 pick-up trucks and truck beds annually. The plant in Guanajuato will build Corollas and have an annual capacity of 200,000 when it comes online in 2019, shifting production of the small car from Canada.

Following Trump's tweet, the automaker's American Depositary Receipts traded on the US market, fell 0.5 percent to $120.45 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in Japan on Thursday that the automaker has no immediate plans to curb production in Mexico, preferring to wait until after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration before deciding whether to make any changes.

"We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts," Toyoda said at an industry gathering in Tokyo on Thursday before Trump's tweet, when asked whether his company was considering any changes to a production plant the automaker was building in Mexico.

Automakers in the United States have been slammed by Trump for building cars in lower-cost factories south of the border, which he said costs American jobs. Pressure to curb that production intensified this week after Ford Motor Co scrapped plans to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico after Trump harshly criticized the investment.

Ford, however, still plans to shift production of small cars to Mexico from Michigan, even as it uses $700 million from the planned Mexico investment to expand its operations in Flat Rock, Michigan, and add 700 jobs.

During the campaign, Trump criticized barriers to US auto exports to Japan and said the US government did not do enough to open the market to more American-made vehicles.

"Until you open your markets, you're not selling any more cars over here," Trump said of Japan in an August 2015 interview with the Detroit News. "That's going to force people to build in the United States."

Toyota has extensive US investments, operates 10 US plants in eight states and builds more than 2 million vehicles in the United States annually.

Trump has also said General Motors Co could become subject to tariffs on Mexico-made cars for the US market, and that he would like to renegotiate terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed with Canada and Mexico, or scrap it altogether.
That loves India has been obvious over and over in the past few years. If love is too strong a word, the company certainly sees the worlds fastest growing economy as a huge investment opportunity.
The UKs former communities secretary, Eric Pickles, ended 2016 by claiming the mantle of defender of British democracy. To combat electoral fraud in local government he called for new controls to guarantee the probity of voting in municipal elections. Most notably, this would mean the requirement of voters to produce photographic ID before they are allowed into a polling booth.
Unable to cure his son suffering from Aplastic Anaemia, a rare blood disorder, a distraught father from Uttar Pradesh's Agra city has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to ethunaise his ailing son.

Raju, a daily wage labourer, has also written separate letters to President Pranab Mukherjee and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav seeking similar permission to end the life of his son Vipin.

"My only request to the Prime Minister is that my son should be treated and if they cannot get him treated then he should be granted mercy killing," said Raju on Thursday.

Raju has already spent a fortune on his son's treatment. He needs a bone marrow transplant. His family is under huge debt and feels that mercy killing may just be the last resort.

Aplastic (referring to the inability of stem cells to generate mature blood cells) Anaemia is a rare disease, caused by the failure of the development of bone marrow which results in the deficiency of all types of blood cells.

Most prevalent in teenagers and people in their twenties, it can be caused by heredity, immune disease, or exposure to chemicals, drugs, or radiation. However, the cause of the disease is unknown in half of the cases.

Vipin has been on the treatment table ever since he was diagnosed with it, moving from one hospital to another with no success so far as the bone marrow transplant needs a lot of finance.

"I have been troubled for the past one and a half years and I have had 70 bottles of blood transfusions. I have blood transfusions every 15 days and twice a month," said Vipin.

Indian laws do no permit euthanasia or mercy killing.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland have passed various laws allowing assisted euthanasia and though it is not legal in other countries, research shows it is not uncommon.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A two-day executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will begin today in New Delhi.

The meeting assumes significance in view of the ensuing Assembly polls in five states.

During the meeting, the party's executive is likely to discuss strategy for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.

The government's demonetisation move is likely to be hailed as an important step in its war against black money and corruption during the meet.

The party will use the occasion to burnish its pro-poor and pro-weak credentials by citing several government schemes, including the recent initiatives announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The meet will begin with a meeting of party office bearers.

BJP president Amit Shah will deliver the inaugural address while the Prime Minister will give the valedictory speech on the second day.

Senior party leaders, Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states will take part in the two-day meet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Backing President Pranab Mukherjee's statement on demonetisation, the Congress and the Communist Party of India on Friday echoed similar sentiments while stating that if the the former makes such a statement then the government should analyse seriousness of the situation.

"All in all it was a disaster step taken by the government and if the President has to come out and make a statement like this you can understand the seriousness of the situation," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.

The Congress leader also said that the whole 'game' that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has played for isolating black money holders has failed.

Resonating similar sentiments, CPI leader D. Raja also hailed President Mukherjee's assertion and said that the latter has made serious observation on the government's demonetisation drive.

"Pranab Mukherjee himself is the former finance minister of the country and he knows how economic policies are decided and implemented. He knows what would be the implication of the major economic policies," Raja told ANI.

He also took a dig at the Prime Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders for arguing that demonetisation drive has boosted the economy in every sphere.

President Mukherjee yesterday said that the demonetisation move may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy.

"Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy," the President said while addressing the Governors and Lieutenant Governors through video-conferencing from Rashtrapati Bhavan here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed Omar Abdullah's estranged wife Payal Abdullah's plea seeking to retain the official residence or an alternate government accommodation on security grounds.

Quashing the appeal, a Bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice V. K. Rao said, "When Omar Abdullah has shifted to a private accommodation, then there is no reason as to why the appellants (Payal and her sons) can be treated differently. We do not see any merit in the appeal. The same is dismissed."

On June 30, Payal had sought quashing of the eviction notice issued by the Estate Officer of the Jammu and Kashmir government for vacating Bungalow no. 7 on Akbar Road.

However, Payal failed to get any relief from a Delhi court which directed her to vacate the bungalow in Lutyen's Zone where she has been living since 1999.

On the last date of hearing on August 12, the High Court had extended till August 16th the interim protection from eviction granted on July 12.

However, on August 16 when the matter came before Justice Indermeet Kaur, Payal's counsel sought an adjournment and it was re-notified for hearing on August 19.

She had also approached the trial court seeking stay of the June 30 eviction order issued by the estate officer of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, contending that the order was passed without allowing her to lead evidence and without granting her any personal hearing.

While Payal enjoys a 'Z' category security cover, each of her sons has 'Z' plus security, comprising of a total 94 personnel.

She has claimed that so many personnel, their weapons and other security arrangements cannot be accommodated at her private flat in the city.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Defending her decision to cancel the Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy's order to ban the use of social media for official communication, Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi on Friday said that she had no option but to declare the order null and void as it is against the Government of India's social media policy.

"I had no choice but to declare the order null and void as it was in contravention of Government of India's social media policy," he said.

Bedi said that after becoming the Lt. Governor of Puducherry, her first task was to bring people and officers together.

She added that forming of social network groups are in alignment of Government of India's policy as it is used for sharing concerns and keeping each other updated. There is no secret in it.

Bedi on Thursday declared a circular issued by V. Narayanasamy banning the use of social media applications such as Facebook and WhatsApp for official communication as 'null and void', stating that such an order falls in contravention of guidelines and rules and policies.

Bedi announced the decision through Twitter.

"If Puducherry has to be a progressive UT, it cannot be retrograde in communications. Hence @CM_ Puducherry's order stands cancelled:@PMOIndia (sic)," she said.

The December 2 notification had directed all the government employees to desist from using social media for official works, stating that the server of these multinational companies is based outside of the country.

The circular noted that any foreign country can get the official communication and upload the documents therein.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In an encounter with the army and police, an Al-Badr terrorist named Muzzafar Ahmed was killed in Machu area of Jammu and Kashmir's district Budgam.

The encounter took place in early morning hours.

The slain Al-Badr terrorist was earlier associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Al-Badr is an Islamic militant group operating in the Jammu Kashmir region, run by Jasniel Rihal.

The group was allegedly formed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in June 1998.

It is believed the group was encouraged by the ISI to operate independently from their previous umbrella group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Japan has postponed high-level economic discussions with South Korea to express its displeasure at the placement of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate.

Tokyo also recalled its ambassador to South Korea in protest, reports the Guardian.

Chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga announced the temporary move at a media conference along with additional measures that include postponing high-level economic discussions.

"The Japanese government finds this situation extremely regrettable," he said.

Besides the recall of ambassador Nagamine, Suga also said Japan was ordering home its consul-general in Busan - the city featuring the offending statue - and suspending discussions on a Japan-South Korea currency swap.

"The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned to quickly remove the statue of the girl," Suga said.

The statue was initially removed after being set up by South Korean activists in the southern port city.

However, local authorities allowed it after Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo last week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a charge sheet at the NIA Special Court against (LeT) terrorist Bahadur Ali in a case related to a conspiracy hatched by the LeT to commit terror attacks in India.

"NIA has filed a charge sheet against Bahadur Ali, under sections of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Explosives Act, Foreigners Act and Arms Act. Strong and clinching evidence has been found in the investigations regarding his involvement with LeT, his training in Pakistan and that in a very much organised manner he has been sent to India to carry out the terrorist attack," Inspector General of NIA, Alok Mittal said.

He added that Ali was given weapons, GPS devices and wireless sets through which he was communicating with his handlers in Pakistan and that the evidence under the charge sheet in also includes information/evidence regarding Pakistan occupied Kashmir's (PoK) training camps or handlers.

An investigation conducted by the NIA revealed that the LeT has set up well-organised machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan to wage war against the Government of India by the commission of terrorist acts in various parts of India.

"Once recruited, the men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their worldview and providing them with "military" skills", a statement by the agency read.

As a part of the conspiracy of LeT, the accused Bahadur Ali along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists of the Pakistan-based LeT, illegally infiltrated into Jammu and Kashmir by crossing the LoC.

At the time of crossing into Indian Territory, on or around the intervening night of June 12 and 13, 2016, these terrorists were equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists crossed the border with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions were given to them by their handlers of the LeT based in Pakistan and PoK.

The investigation has also established that Bahadur Ali was also provided with a map sheet depicting parts of PoK and Jammu and Kashmir. He was provided with the Grid References that had been recovered from his possession.

Bahadur Ali plotted these Grid References on the map sheet. Further, it has been affirmed by the Surveyor General of India, Dehradun that Bahadur Ali had indeed plotted the Grid References correctly. This clearly establishes that Bahadur Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training on the subject.

A GPS device was recovered from the possession of Bahadur Ali at the time of his arrest. The data retrieved from GPS device contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli 'launching pad' of the LeT.

The pocket diary recovered from Bahadur Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir, viz. Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, Udhampur etc., besides Delhi.

Given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns, cities in the diary indicates that Bahadur Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

Evidence in the form of recovery of arms and ammunition and other articles on the disclosure of Bahadur Ali under section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, decryption of the Grid References, plotting of these on the Google map and on the topographic sheets, expert opinion of the GEQD and the statements of witnesses clearly establish the offences of waging war against the State, membership of a terrorist group (LeT), conspiracy to commit terrorist act, possession of prohibited firearms and explosives and possession of fake Indian currency against the accused Bahadur Ali.
As soon as the news of veteran actor Om Puri's sudden demise did the rounds, Bollywood went under grief.

Reportedly, the veteran actor passed away at the age of 66, after a severe cardiac arrest, at his residence, this morning.

When renowned filmmaker Prakash Jha was asked on the same, he said that the actor's demise is a huge loss to the film industry.

"We will miss him a lot. He was a very good and pure soul. May his soul rest in peace and his family get the strength to fight the situation. It is a huge loss to the film industry," he said.

'Tanu weds Manu' fame Deepak Dobriyal too, expressing his grief, said that Om Puri was a man of empathy.

"Even animals do have sympathy. What this man had, is empathy that an artist should have. It is a huge loss," he said.

Actor Ravi Jhankal, who has been associated closely with the late actor, while speaking to the media, said that the latter was under immense pressure, both professionally and personally and wanted to get back to theatres.

"He was a great man and a great human being. It was due to a heart attack. It was unexpected news. But I can tell you that he was under a severe pressure, both personal and professional. Whenever we had any discussion, he used to say that he has is done with movie industry and wants to get back to theatres," he said, adding, "He was fine till night, but he was living alone. No one was there to look after him."

Reportedly, Puri's friends and colleagues from the industry have gathered at his Andheri residence to pay their last respects to the actor, following which the funeral will take place.

Om Puri, born on October 18, 1950, to a Punjabi family, was an actor, who appeared in mainstream commercial, Pakistani, Hollywood, independent and art films.

The actor, who had more than 100 films to his credits, was also honoured with Padma Shri and two National Film Awards, during his acting career that stretched for more than four decades.

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A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Friday sent Parasmal Lodha to three-day custody in regard to a money laundering case.

Meanwhile, Delhi's Saket Court today adjourned the hearing of the bail plea of Lodha for Saturday.

The matter was adjourned due to the absence of Lodha's lawyer.

Lodha was arrested on December 21 in connection with the recovery of large amount in new currency notes from a company belonging to Shekhar Reddy and Advocate Rohit Tandon of T and T law firm (in Delhi).

He was later sent to seven-day Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody on December 22.

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 lawyer had recently declared unaccounted income worth over Rs. 125 crore after searches were carried out against him.

A Kolkata-based real estate developer, Parasmal Lodha, having stakes in mining, finance, consultancy and restaurant firms, is also known for his takeover of Peerless General Finance and Investment Company Limited, India's then largest non-banking financial institution, in 1991.

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The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Friday slammed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for seating its party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav in the audience during the event held yesterday to celebrate Prakash Utsav.

Expressing his ire, RJD's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the 'mahagathbandhan' between both parties is not visible, adding the Janata Dal (United) has been dominating everywhere.

"The people didn't like this. They were amazed to see that how Lalu Yadav was seated in the audience. There is 'mahagathbandhan' in Bihar. So, every leader of the alliance should have been there on the stage. But it seems now that only the JD (U) is ruling the state," he said

Rubbishing Nitish's explanation on the same, he said, "What kind of a protocol is this? If Nitish Kumar thinks that the event was organized in an appropriate manner then what can be said, but the people of Bihar did not like it."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who yesterday attended the 350th birth anniversary of tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh being observed as Prakash Utsav in Patna, congratulated Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his 'nasha-mukti abhiyan' and said that it would inspire others as well.

"I congratulate Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his 'nasha-mukti abhiyan'. It can save the coming generations and act as an inspiration for other states," Prime Minister Modi said while speaking at Patna's Gandhi Maidan on the occasion of Prakash Utsav.

Prime Minister Modi asserted that the state would play a major role in development of the nation.

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The Supreme Court on Friday refused to give an urgent hearing to a plea filed by lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma in which he demanded the budget be presented in March.

An apex court bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar said they would hear the matter in due course of time.

"I have mentioned the matter before the bench of the apex court seeking postponing of the annual budget to be presented by the government in view of impending assembly polls," Sharma told ANI.

"The apex court, however, said they would hear the matter on due course of time," said Sharma.

On Thursday the opposition demanded the date for budget presentation be shifted till after the elections get over.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and others said they were not in favour of February 1 as the start of the budget session.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said the negation has been put forward as it would lead to biased elections, which are against the constitution and democracy, adding further that they have no problem with any date post elections.

"If the government wants, it can call session from 31. But, only the budget should be presented post March 8, as it is the last date of elections. It can choose any date after March 8 as it can announce it any day before March 31," he said.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien resonated the same saying the Centre can present the budget after March 8, once the elections get over.

"It is about 15-16 opposition parties together. There is a simple solution - the government has enough time to present the budget after March 8. It can get it passed before March 31. That is the fair way of doing," he said.

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A suo motu case has been registered against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Anant Kumar Hegde on charges of assaulting a doctor.

Hegde, who is the MP from Kanara constituency, had on January 2 thrashed two doctors and a private hospital worker in Sirsi as they were making delay in admitting his mother who sustained a leg injury.

The BJP MP's mother Lalita Hegde suffered a leg fracture after a fall in her house and was rushed to TSS Hospital in Sirsi.

Since the doctor on duty was busy in the operation theatre, he didn't attend to Hegde's mother on priority which irked the latter. The MP then dragged the doctor out of the ward and manhandled him.

When another doctor and an employee tried to intervene, Hegde assaulted them as well.

Hegde had also threatened the hospital authority of consequences if they lodge a police complaint against him.

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The Trinamool Congress unit of Tripura has started agitation in Agartala against Chief Minister Manik Sarkar-led government and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for downplaying the role of Rose Valley in the state.

Sudip Roy Barman, a TMC leader in the state assembly alleged that Sarkar and his other cabinet colleagues had virtually acted as the brand ambassador of Rose Valley and promoted it in the state.

"We have been demanding since long that 142 non-banking financial institutes that has been executing in Tripura they have looted money of approximately more than 14 lakh investors a ransom of in and around more than 10,000 crores has been looted from the state of Tripura. But unfortunately this is the only state where neither CBI not the ED has taken entry as yet," he added.

He also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being biased towards Sarkar and added that the former is trying to make friendship with the Tripura Chief Minister and the Left Parties and that is why CBI and ED is not making entry, despite the Supreme Court's order to investigate the chit fund companies.

"We have seen CBI taking entry in Assam, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand but unfortunately I don't know and best known to the Prime Minister of India why he is soft towards Manik Sarkar and his cabinet of Ministers. We find something fishy," he added.

He described Tripura as 'epicenter' of Rose Valley as its founder Gautam Kundu started his business and later spread it in other states.

The TMC MLA sharply criticized the CBI for not taking up any investigation into the allegations against Sarkar, while adopted a method of brow beating by arresting the party leaders and parliamentarians in West Bengal.

"We are agitating on behalf of the 14 lakh investors out of a small state of 36 lakh population that CBI should immediately intervene and Manik Sarkar and his cabinet have been the brand ambassadors of these chit fund companies," Barman added.

He further alleged that Sarkar and his cabinet ministers have promoted the chit fund companies and Prime Minister Modi is trying to save him.

Meantime, Inspector General of Tripura police K. Srijesh who is in-charge of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by High Court of Tripura last year informed that till date there have been arrest of all total 112 persons of various Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) involved in looting out depositors money.

He informed that the SIT has taken up 78 cases against 48 NBFCs and chargesheet in 20 cases have already been given.

Besides, bank accounts of all the NBFCs have been freezed and process of attaching properties of the companies were started.

According to Srijesh, it will be tough for giving a definite time span within which the investigation can be concluded but the SIT is trying hard to conclude the investigation at the earliest and help the government to pay back the victims.

However, the companies are spread outside the state that becomes time taking to carry out the investigation.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday mocked Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger for failing to match the ratings he received when he was the host of "The Celebrity Apprentice."

In a series of tweets, Trump said that Schwarzenegger "got 'swamped' (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine DJT."

"Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got "swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for....," he tweeted followed by "being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary."

Schwarzenegger debuted as the host of Trump's former hit series on Monday. The new series premiere averaged 4.9 million viewers, reports the CNN.

When the show debuted in 2004, Trump's "The Apprentice" was a ratings smash-hit and 18.5 million viewers tuned into its premiere episode.

However by the time his run as host ended, ratings had fallen precipitously.

6.5 million viewers tuned in two years ago to Trump's final season premiere as host -- 1.6 million more than for Schwarzenegger's premiere, true, but 12 million less than the first season.

Schwarzenegger, the Republican former governor of California, backed Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the Republican primary and said in October that he could not support Trump in the general election.

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Continuing her outburst against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday stood firm in her resolve and said that she will continue to speak against the decision even if her neck was on the line.

"A loss of Rs. 5.500 crore was reported after demonetisation and around six lakh farmers including tea and jute labourers lost their work. There is no cash in many districts, whether people will get food or not, is still in question. This decision by the Central Government will result in a huge crisis in all states," she said.

Mamata also appealed to President Pranab Mukherjee to "save" the nation by "setting up" another government as the ruling dispensation is incapable of running the Centre.

"Hallabazi is going on by this government. I appeal to the President to save us as no government can bulldoze on people like this. I want a new government to be set up to save the country from this situation for two and half years," she said.

"I will still say this. I am not afraid of the Prime Minister even if he cuts my neck," she added.

Banerjee will protest against the demonetisation move outside the office of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in Kolkata on January 9th and then in the capital on January 10th and 11th.

She said that she would launch a 72- hour protest in 10 states, including Delhi, across the country.

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With effect from 05 January 2017

Arihant Foundations & Housing announced that Meenakshi Jayaraman, has resigned from the post of Company Secretary of the Company.

The Company has accepted her resignation and relieved her from services of the Company from 05 January 2017. Consequent to her resignation as Company Secretary Meenakshi Jayaraman also ceases to be the Compliance officer of the Company.

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UK for Government to Government cooperation for smart city development

Japan has decided to be associated with the development of Chennai, Ahmedabad and Varanasi as smart cities. This was today conveyed by Japan's Ambassador to India Mr.Kenji Hiramatsu during his meeting with Minister of Urban Development Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu.

Mr.Hiramatsu further said that Japan is quite interested in urban development initiatives of the Government of India and decided to be a partner.

Responding to Shri Naidu' observation about the need for speedy action, Japan's Envoy said We would like to match the action oriented approach of the Government under Prime Minister Shri Modi. Both of them discussed growing cooperation between the two countries further to the last meeting between the Prime Ministers of the two countries.

High Commissioner of United Kingdom Mr.Dominic Asquith also met Shri Venkaiah Naidu and discussed converting into action the MoU signed between the two countries during the recent visit of British Prime Minister to India Ms.Teresa May, on cooperation in urban development sector. He said institutionalizing Government to Government cooperation for smart city development has huge potential.

So far, leading countries have come forward to be associated with development of 15 smart cities. These include: United States Trade Development Agency (USTDA) -Visakhapatnam, Ajmer and Allahabad, UK-Pune, Amaravati(Andhra Pradesh) and Indore, France-Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur and Germany -Bhubaneswar, Coimbattore and Kochi.

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Held on 05 January 2017

Hindustan Construction Company announced that the Extra Ordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the Company was held on 05 January 2017 and the following resolutions were approved by shareholders -

Increase in Authorised Share Capital and Amendments to Memorandum of Association.

Conversion of Loan by Lenders into Equity shares / Optionally Convertible Debentures of the Company pursuant to implementation of RBI S4A Scheme.

Offer and issue upto 25,19,92,670 equity shares of the face value of Re 1 each representing 24.44% of the expanded share capital of the company and upto such number of optionally convertible debentures of face value of Rs 1000 each not exceeding Rs 2000 crore on preferential basis, pursuant to implementation of RBI s4A scheme.

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Wockhardt said that competent authority, Berlin, Germany has since issued EU GMP Certificate confirming that company's manufacturing facility at 138, GIDC Estate, Ankaleshwar, Gujarat, complies with the principles and guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practices.

The certificate issued in this regard is valid for 3 years. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Piramal Enterprises said that the company's wholly owned subsidiary, Piramal Finance (PFL) is in the business of providing financial services. In line with the company's growth plans, PFL will now be making an application to the National Housing Bank (NHB) for incorporating a housing finance company (HFC) as its subsidiary.

This has been approved by the company's board of directors at its meeting yesterday, 5 January 2017. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Credit Analysis and Research (CARE) announced that the company has been operating in Maldives based on licence issued by Capital Market Development Authority (CMDA), Maldives. The current licence issued by CMDA expired on 5 January 2017.

After a review of the past operations and future prospects in Maldives, CARE has decided not to renew its licence. This has been already notified to CMDA. Hence, operations of CARE in Maldives stands closed from 6 January 2017. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Indian Bank announced different benchmark marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) rates with effect from 7 January 2017. The overnight MCLR stands at 8.4%. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Majesco, USA, the insurance arm and subsidiary company of Majesco announced that Majesco Rating in cloud to be implemented by New York Life to offer real-time rate display across group online application portals. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

New York Life implemented Majesco Rating, for their Group Membership Association Division (GMAD). New York Life Insurance Company is a mutually owned Fortune 100 company and one of the largest life insurers in the world. The Group Membership Association Division is a unit dedicated to serving the insurance needs of over 600 membership groups across North America.

TCI Industries announced that pursuant to the members approval accorded in their meeting held on 2 August 2016, the share allotment committee of the board of directors of the company at a meeting held on 5 January 2017 has issued and allotted 13,444, 0% non-convertible redeemable preference shares (NCRPS) of face value of Rs 100 each at a premium of Rs 300 each. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Parag Milk Foods announced that Sales Tax Authorities had pursuant to Section 64 of Maharashtra Value Added Tax Act, 2002, conducted an inspection at the offices of the company at the registered office at Pune, at company's plant at Manchar and the corporate office at Nariman Point Mumbai, which is concluded on 5 January 2017.

The Sales Tax Authorities have conducted inspection starting financial year 2012-2013 and identified some transactions in relation to the consignment agents which were made by the company for interstate transfer of goods and the company has agreed to reclassify the transactions of goods as local sales.

The company have provided the fullest co-operation to the authorities to complete the enquiry and provided the information sought by them. The company has filed revised VAT returns and agreed to pay the additional tax liability on account of reclassification. There is no implication on the continued operations of the Company as a result of this visit. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

Jubilant Life Sciences announced about the issuance of commercial papers of Rs 50 crore having coupon rate of 6.79% per annum. The tenure of the instrument is 61 days. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 January 2017.

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Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav appears isolated with son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister coming on top in the ugly battle for political supremacy.

Having anointed himself the party's National President, in a dramatic coup against his wrestler-turned-politician father, the 43-year-old is in full control of the party, party insiders say.

Barring a few family members from his village Saifai in Etawah and not more than two dozen legislators, Mulayam the family patriarch, seems to be isolated, party leaders admit.

Cornered through a Akhilesh-backed resolution that left him with the mere tag of 'marg darshak' (mentor), Mulayam is now left with very little leg room to manoeuvre his way back as the party's unquestioned boss.

Egged on by uncle and Rajya Sabha member Ram Gopal Yadav, Akhilesh has been making the right moves since raising the banner of revolt against his ageing father.

And Yadav junior has since gone on an offensive.

The Chief Minister enjoys the backing of 209 legislators and 51 MLCs, all of whom signed affidavits on Thursday swearing their support to his leadership.

On Friday, Shivpal Yadav, Mulayam's brother, met Akhilesh at the latter's residence, apparently to discuss possible rapprochement.

"The Chief Minister is clear. There is no going back now. He is not averse to his father but cannot stake his political career on the palace intrigues in the family," a close aide said.

Sunil Singh Sajan, an Akhilesh protege, says their faction was unfazed by reports that the party symbol 'cycle' may be frozen by the Election Commission.

"A lot of development has taken place under . People see him as a harbinger of good and prosperity, we will work on it," said Udayveer Singh, another MLC close to the Chief Minister.

In another move, aided by legal eagles, the Akhilesh camp has told banks to freeze the Samajwadi Party accounts.

As a result, more than Rs 500 crore belonging to the party, which till now was operational with the signature of Shivpal, the estranged uncle of the Chief Minister, have been put on hold.

Most of the old guard and Mulayam loyalists like Rewati Raman Singh, Balram Yadav, Rajendra Chowdhary and Ahmad Hasan have turned their back on the party supremo who once dreamt of becoming the Prime Minister.

Even the new generation with its roots in the Yadav clan - Tej Pratap Yadav (Mainpuri MP), Budayun MP Dharmendra Yadav, Kannauj MP Dimple Yadav and many second-rung politicians - have accepted Akhilesh Yadav as their leader.

Family elders too feel that Mulayam Singh should reconcile to the rise of the son.

The other two brothers of Mulayam Singh - Abhay Ram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav - have come to Lucknow, in a rare appearance, to douse the family fire and thrash a respectable way out for the father and son.

Mulayam Singh is left with only a handful of diehard loyalists like brother Shivpal Yadav, Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh and actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada.

All eyes are on the Election Commission to see to who it will allot the 'cycle' symbol -- the Mulayam or Akhilesh faction.

With staggered Uttar Pradesh assembly polls set to start on February 11, the decision will have a major bearing on the electoral battle.
Film: 'Allied'; Director: Robert Zemeckis; Starring: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard; Rating:**

It's hard to believe this story of a Canadian intelligence officer who falls in love with a German spy who he thinks is a Resistance fighter.

Even if we accept that love is indeed blind, what level of 'Intelligence' does Max(Brad Pitt) demonstrate in his choice of life partner?

There is no dearth of atmospheric pleasure in Allied. We can almost feel the heat passion anxiety and seductive intrigue of 1942 when alliances fidelity and loyalty were constantly questioned. Given the aura of distrust this could have been, the ultimate seduction movie about a hard-nosed soldier who succumbs to the charms of a very alluring German spy, played with languorous lucidity by Marion Cotillard who's a neo-Streep without Meryl's layered luminosity.

While we are on performing ability, Brad Pitt is much more compelling in that other marital drama as a writer desperately trying to save his marriage By The Sea where he was directed by his then-wife Angelia Jolie. Their marriage was soon over , apparently because of Pitt's attachment to Ms Cotillard during the shooting of this film where their chemistry is just not visible.

But that's okay. Real-life couples seldom ignite a flame when asked to be passionate on sceeen.Allied requires Pitt and Cotillard to be agitated and tense as the flames of war leap up and ultimately destroy their love. All of this must have appeared deeply cinematic on paper. But is rendered with such stern-faced severity in the film that we are hardly given a chance to feel the frantic love that the couple proclaims for each other.

During the first quarter of the narrative Pitt and Cotillard are required to act as a married couple. Repeated sequences of the two actors "acting" married on a rooftop terrace begins to wear our patience. By the time they stop acting married and actually settle down to marriage they look more like a couple posing for a collector's issue of Good Housekeeping than a couple who must stop acting married and get down to the actual business of being Man and Wife.

In one sequence Ms Cotillard seductively unbuttons her blouse at the breakfast table, while Mr Pitt looks more interested in the breakfast.This is a blowdried sanitized version of Casablanca with the war sequences ringing distinctly false like a museum demonstration of a historical contingency .

This is not a film. It is a show put up for fans of World War 2 romances. A Casablanca for the hopelessly romantic . Early on there is a torrid lovemaking scene in the desert where Pitt and Cotillard make out in a car while a sandstorm lashes against the window panes. This is studio-designed passion at its most accomplished.

By the time Allied reaches its tragic premeditated finale we are much too removed from the goings-on to feel any genuine grief .Passing forth of love is fine. What about passing forth of tenable emotions?

--IANS

skj/nv/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British Prime Minister Theresa May will visit Donald Trump in the spring following preparatory meetings between key staff from 10 Downing Street and the US President-elect's team, the media reported.

According to a report in the Independent on Friday, May's joint chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill travelled to the US in December to build links with Trump's team ahead of his inauguration on January 20.

"The Prime Minister suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful," Downing Street said.

"We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the Prime Minister looks forward to visiting the new President in the spring."

Earlier, May praised Trump as "very easy to talk to", despite having criticised him during the US elections.

The British Prime Minister's compliment formed part of her drive to strengthen ties with the new administration, after a rocky start in which she and other senior Tories tried to move on from previous derogatory comments.

Speaking during a visit to Bahrain, May had said: "He is somebody who very much values the relationship he has with Britain."

During his campaign, when Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the US and claimed parts of London were no-go areas for the police, May as Home Secretary had said that she thinks "he does not understand Britain".

--IANS

soni/vt

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Actress-comedienne Chelsea Handler will lead a "womens march" on January 21 in Park City, Utah, during the Sundance Film Festival as part of hundreds of similar events planned on the same day as a protest against President-elect Donald Trumps policies.

Handler will also host a post-march rally, reports variety.com.

"Sundance has always been a platform for change: not only for filmmakers and filmmaking, but also for big ideas for the future," Handler said in a statement.

The "Women's March on Main" in Park City, which will start at 9 a.m., is one of more than 200 sister marches being planned in all 50 states of the US and in 20 countries on the day after the inauguration of Trump.

"If there's anything I learned in the last year, it's that we need to be louder and stronger than ever about what we believe in, so I joined some incredible women from around the country to bring our voices together in the streets of Park City," Handler said.

Sundance Film Festival opens on January 19 in Park City and will end on January 29.

--IANS

sas/nv/vt

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Chinese authorities have released a prominent human rights lawyer on bail after detaining him for a year and a half without trial.

The news was confirmed to Efe by Xie Yanyi's wife Yuan Shanshan, who was informed on Thursday that he had been released from prison.

Yuan, who lives in Beijing, has faced a lot of pressure from the authorities in recent months and has been forced to change houses several times.

The lawyer is still under police surveillance but he told his wife he hopes to be reunited with her as soon as possible in the first conversation between the two in the last year and a half.

Yuan, who gave birth to the couple's third child during this period, said police asked her for photos and videos of the baby to use them to exert pressure on her husband.

Xie is one among hundreds of human rights lawyers arrested in July 2015 from several cities of China as part of the 709 campaign against all critical and dissident movements by the Communist authorities.

In January 2016, Xie was accused of state subversion, a charge frequently levelled against political prisoners, including Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.

--IANS

ksk/mr

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A couple committed suicide by consuming poison in a hotel here, police said on Friday.

According to the police, Manisha Lovanshi, 24, and Shubham Patel (20) killed themselves at Hotel Amardeep, located in Hanumanganj area, on Thursday.

When the hotel staff knocked on their door, they did not get any response which prompted them to break it open.

Shubham was already dead while Manisha was in a critical condition. She later died in a hospital.

"Preliminary investigation points at aluminium phosphide poisoning to be the cause of death. We are continuing with our probe," Hanumanganj police station in-charge Jitendra Pathak told the media.

The couple had frequented the hotel earlier also.

--IANS

hindi/ksk/bg

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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte visited the Russian warship docked in Manila port on Friday in a new gesture of rapprochement with Russia.

Accompanied by Russian military and diplomatic authorities, Duterte saw the anti-submarine missiles, a Ka-27 helicopter and other facilities of Admiral Tributs, a 7,480-tonne Udaloy-class destroyer that docked in Manila port on Tuesday for a five-day goodwill visit, Efe news reported.

Duterte, who took office in June 2016, had promised to do away with the traditional military alliance with the US and has taken measures in recent months to develop closer diplomatic and economic ties with Russia and China.

He has threatened to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement, a bilateral accord with Washington in force since 1999. It permits, among other things, the use of Philippine bases by US troops and regular joint military drills.

Duterte, who strongly criticised the US and the West during his first bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2016, is set to visit Moscow in April or May on the Kremlin's invitation.

The warship's visit will develop a stronger friendship between Manila and Moscow, said the Filipino presidential office in a statement Friday.

The visiting Russian warship -- the third ever in history and the first in four years to visit the Philippines -- took part in several ceremonies and participated in joint military drills between the naval forces of the two countries.

--IANS

ksk/vt

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Former CIA Director James Woolsey has left the Donald Trump presidential transition team, days after he publicly disputed the President-elect's views on Russia's role in the 2016 election, the media reported.

"Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a senior adviser to President-elect Trump or the Transition. He wishes the President-elect and his administration great success in their time in office," NBC News quoted Woolsey spokesman Jonathan Franks as saying on Thursday.

Woolsey, who was Central Intelligence Agency Director under President Bill Clinton, had served as a senior adviser to Trump on national security and intelligence.

Woolsey said that he put out the statement to clear up a possible misconception that he was more heavily involved in the transition process, or that he was still giving advice to the President-elect, says the report.

"I didn't want to fly under false colours," Woolsey said. "I'm not really functioning as an adviser anymore, and so when I'm on the screen, everybody announces that I'm former CIA director and that I'm a Trump adviser. And I'm really not anymore."

"..So I just thought I should strike that from the (TV banner) ... so nobody was under false impressions," he said.

The resignation comes as Trump has been in a war of words with US intelligence agencies over assessments that the Russian government was likely involved in a covert campaign to attempt to interfere in the US election. However, Woolsey said that the move had nothing to do with his comments on Russia.

Woolsey, in an interview, had also criticised WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whom Trump had invoked on Twitter to defend his scepticism of US intelligence assessments of Russian meddling in the election.

A source close to Woolsey told NBC News that the former CIA chief felt increasingly uncomfortable with the Trump transition's decision-making on matters of intelligence, particularly amid a report that the incoming administration is considering restructuring certain intelligence agencies.

But that report has been batted down as "100 percent false" by a transition spokesman.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Popular Malayalam actor Prithviraj says he is part of Gautham Vasudev Menon's multi-lingual multi-starrer project and has clarified that it has not been shelved.

"I have been paid advance and I'm already on board. The project requires lead actors from four southern industries, and hence, it's taking time to materialise. I don't think it has been shelved," Prithviraj told IANS.

According to the source, the film revolves around the lives of four friends who meet at a wedding after many years and decide to take a fun trip.

The other actors Gautham is already in talks with are Simbu, Puneeth Rajkumar and Sai Dharam Tej.

Gautham plans to produce the Tamil and Malayalam versions, while Puneeth may bankroll the film in Kannada. Another leading producer may come on board for the Telugu version.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It's lonely life for the elderly in Britain. Half a million people in the isles over the age of 60 usually spend each day alone, with no interaction with others, a poll said.

It also said that nearly half a million more commonly do not see or speak to anyone for five or six days a week, the Guardian reported on Friday.

Age UK, which commissioned the research, said the results highlighted a growing number of chronically lonely older people. This was placing increasing demand on Britain's health services.

The charity has been running a pilot programme in eight areas where Age UK groups were actively trying to identify lonely older people and offer them companionship.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK's charity director, said: "This new analysis shows that about a million older people in our country (Britain) are profoundly alone, many of whom are likely to be enduring the pain and suffering of loneliness."

"That's why the early results of our pilot programme into tackling loneliness in later life are so important: nine in 10 older people who were often lonely when they started the programme were less lonely six to 12 weeks later," she said.

Many even said that they felt generally happier, more confident and more independent as a result, the poll showed.

"Unfortunately, there is no simple solution for loneliness, but our pilot programme shows we really can make a difference and provide crucial insights into how the problem can be successfully overcome," Abrahams said.

The Age UK groups worked with local people such as hairdressers, shopkeepers and faith groups to help identify older people experiencing or at risk of loneliness.

They developed networks with professionals in voluntary and statutory services, such as community nurses, social workers and police community support officers, and others.

Age UK has also developed a loneliness heat-mapping tool, which assesses risk factors such as age, marital status and number of household members.

People identified as lonely by Age UK groups were provided with telephone support and short-term, face-to-face companionship.

The results of the poll would feed into Age UK's submissions to the 'commission on loneliness', devised by late Labour MP Jo Cox, before she was murdered in 2016.

The research agency TNS polled British residents aged over 60, asking them how many days a week they usually spent alone with no visits or telephone calls.

Out of 2,241 people, 498 said they spent seven days on their own and 464 said five or six days.

The results were then extrapolated to reach the national figures.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Narendra Modi government may again take "out of the box" action against Pakistan if it continues to indulge in a proxy war against India, Bharatiya Janata Party President told the party's office-bearers at a meeting on Friday.

Ahead of the party's executive meeting, Shah addressed the BJP's office-bearers in the capital.

The Indian Army's "surgical strikes" against terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-held Kashmir and the Centre's move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes dominated his address.

"During the meet, Shah hailed the September 29 military action against terrorists and said India could again take 'out of the box' action if Pakistan persists with its policy of exporting terrorists to India," a party source said.

Among the other issues discussed at the meeting were the attacks on party activists and offices in West Bengal after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in a chit fund scam.

The executive meeting, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah later in the day, assumes significance against the backdrop of the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

Among the host of party leaders present at the meeting were General Secretaries Ram Lal and Kailash Vijayvargiya and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari.

At the executive meeting, the party is expected to make demonetisation its focal point for chalking out its strategy for the polls to the five state assemblies.

While Shah will deliver the inaugural address at the national executive, Modi is slated to give the valedictory speech at the two-day meeting. Senior party leaders, Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states are to participate.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh BJP Chief Keshav Prasad Maurya exuded confidence that the party would bag over 300 seats to come to power in the state.

"We are confident of getting over 300 seats in UP. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress are no way in the fight, while the ruling Samajwadi Party is engrossed in a fight within itself. Also, they have not done any development work during their tenure," said Maurya.

He said the Centre's fight against corruption through demonetisation will help the BJP in the UP polls, and derided the Akhilesh Yadav regime for corruption.

"Chief Minister Akhilesh might be projecting his image to be clean, but the fact remains that he has to own up the responsibility of all the corruption that has taken place during his regime," Maurya said.
The Narendra Modi government might again take "out of the box" against Pakistan if it continues to indulge in proxy war against India, BJP President Amit Shah told the party office bearers at a meeting on Friday.

Ahead of the party's national executive meeting, Shah addressed Bharatiya Janata Party national office-bearers at the national capital here. The Indian Army's "surgical strikes" against terrorist launching pads in Pakistan-held Kashmir and the Centre's move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes dominated his address.

"Shah during the meet hailed the September 29 military action against terrorists and said India might again take 'out of box' action if Pakistan persists with its policy of exporting terrorists to India," a party source told IANS.

Among the other issues discussed at the meeting was the attacks on party activists and offices in West Bengal after the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in a chit fund scam.

The national executive meeting, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah later in the day, assumes significance against the backdrop of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa scheduled for between the February 4 and March 8.

Among the host of party leaders present at the meeting were General secretaries Ram Lal and Kailash Vijayvargiya and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari.

At the executive meeting, the party is expected to make demonetisation as the major plank for chalking out its strategy for the polls to the five state assemblies.

While Shah will deliver the inaugural address at the national executive, Modi is slated to give the valedictory speech at the two-day meeting. Senior party leaders, union ministers and Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states are to participate.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After a Chinese snub, India is likely to go back to the UN to have Pakistan-based terrorist Masood Azhar -- the alleged mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack -- declared as an international terrorist.

"We are examining all options and also consulting with the other co-sponsors," a source in the Ministry of External Affairs told IANS.

However, the government has not decided when to apply to the UN Security Council again after China again blocked the move to have sanctions imposed against the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief -- one of the three terrorists freed in exchange of passengers of an hijacked Indian Airline plane in 1999.

China last week blocked the Indian proposal at the Council, sparking sharp reaction from New Delhi. India said the Chinese move reflected "double standards" because Beijing was itself a victim of terrorism,

China on Thursday refuted the Indian allegations and said it took a "just" stand by blocking New Delhi's bid.

"Allegation that China adopts double standards on the UN Security Council 1267 committee listing matter does not stand. China takes action based on solid evidence that is the one standard we use," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said in Beijing.

Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar earlier hoped that China "as a responsible and mature nation will understand the double standards are simply self defeating.

"We hope and we are sure that China can be persuaded to see the depth and evil of this menace.

"And we on our side are resolved that we shall never stop saying this that we will continue to point out the absurdity in the UNSC 1267 committee, in which 14 out 15 members voters agree on taking action against Masood Azhar," Akbar said on Wednesday.

India moved the UN against Azhar last year after seven security personnel were killed when terrorists from Pakistan attacked the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in Punjab on January 2.

The attack was allegedly masterminded by the Jaish and India has said it has clinching evidence against Azhar and his close associates.

JeM was banned by the Security Council in 2001 for its alliance with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Islamic State (IS) terror group has moved more than 150 prisoners as an Arab-Kurdish coalition advances on its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, a war monitoring group said on Friday.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the captives were transferred from the al-Tabqa prison in Raqqa, located 450 km to the northeast of Damascus, Efe news reported.

A majority of the prisoners are Kurds captured in combat during clashes in the region.

The SOHR added that their new location was unknown, although a large number are believed to have been moved to the Maaden area.

The prisoner transfer comes as the IS is losing ground in the al-Tabqa area, where the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed coalition made up of Kurds and Arabs, have taken the old citadel of Qalaat Jabaar.

Raqqa became the capital of the IS' self-proclaimed "caliphate" in June 2014.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday urged President Pranab Mukherjee to "save the country from the mess" and sought a "national government" minus Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Terming the current situation in the country as "unacceptable", Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress chief, said the "national government" at the Centre could have another Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader at its helm.

"Yesterday the President also voiced his concern about demonetisation. We welcome his statement. We appeal to the President to save the country from the mess.

"To save this country, let a national government be formed: Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji can head it," she said, referring to BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley.

She targeted Modi in particular for the adverse situation in the nation.

"All the institutions are under attack. This is a dangerous game. The PM is behaving like Kalidas, trying to cut the branch he is sitting on," she said.

"'He' has to go," Banerjee said, in an obvious reference to Modi. "President and Supreme Court have (a) role (to play)."

Taking a swipe at the BJP leadership for proposing President's rule at the West Bengal after their party headquarters here was attacked, she said there should be president's rule at the centre instead.

"It is time for President's rule at the Centre," she said.

Banerjee claimed a huge loss in terms of revenue due to the November 8 demonetisation and said a huge number of people in the state had been affected across various sectors because of the note ban.

"We have lost Rs 5,500 crore revenue due to demonetisation. 1.7 crore people in the state have been affected," she said after an administrative review meeting at the Town Hall here, adding 81.5 lakh workers had lost their jobs in sectors like tea, jute, jewellery and beedi industry.

Comparing the centre's governance with "terrorism", Banerjee also criticised central government's decision to dismantle the Planning Commission and dissolve the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

She said central government is "breaking the spine" of the country's economy with these decisions.

"There is terrorism and hallabazi in the name of governance at the Centre. They even dismantled the Planning Commission and set up Niti Ayog with their own men who do not understand the country."

"BIFR was constituted for reconstruction of industries and protection of workers. Sick industries registered in the Board could reconstruct their assets and run the company accordingly. Suddenly, the centre dissolved it," she added.

--IANS

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Going hammer and tongs at the Centre, West Bengal Chief Minister on Friday urged President Pranab Mukherjee to "save the country from the mess".



"All the institutions are under attack. This is a dangerous game. We appeal to the President to save the country from the mess," Banerjee said.

"There is terrorism and hallabaziin the name of governance at the Centre. They even dismantled the Planning Commission and set up Niti Ayog with their own men who do not understand the country."

The Trinamool Congress supremo attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The PM is behaving like Kalidas, trying to cut the branch he is sitting on," she said.

"To save this country, let a national government be formed: Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji can head it," she said, referring to BJP leaders LK Advani, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley.

"This current situation is just unacceptable. 'He' has to go," she said, in an obvious reference to Modi. "President and Supreme Court have a role to play."
Delhi Police arrested a person wanted in connection with the murder of his room partner here, police said on Friday.

The accused, identified as Vinod, 25, was arrested on Wednesday night from Khajuri Chowk area. He was visiting one of his friends when a police team raided him.

According to Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav, Vinod, a native of Jharkhand, worked as a catering helper in marriage functions. He had killed his room partner Mahender Tomar on July 15, 2016.

"Vinod had fled to Jharkhand after committing the crime and had been hiding in some forest area of the state. A cash reward of Rs 25,000 was also announced on his head," Yadav said.

"During interrogation, Vinod told police that he used to live with Mahender Tomar, the deceased, in Karawal Nagar. Tomar used to abuse him and use filthy language for his wife. This infuriated him and he planned to eliminate Tomar," Yadav said.

On July 15, 2016, Vinod took liquor with Tomar. Later they had a fight, following which he attacked Tomar with a sharp-edged stone, which caused his death, the officer added.

Vinod also told police that he belonged to a poor family in Jharkhand and started working as a domestic help in West Bengal.

"When he came to know that his elder brother's wife was having an extra-marital affair with a local person, he got very disturbed and moved to Delhi after burning his ancestral house," police said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepal's central bank will get Rs 1 billion in Rs 100 denomination Indian notes from its Indian counterpart by the end of this month to avert shortages of the currency widely used in the Himalayan country, an official said on Friday.

The Reserve Bank of India has agreed to provide 1 billion Indian currency of IRs 100 denomination by the end of January, said Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) spokesperson Narayan Poudel.

Nepal's central bank is sending a team to India to bring the notes, said Poudel, adding that by the end of Janurary, the NRB will have additional Indian Rs 1 billion in its coffer.

The NRB's plan to import Rs 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, reports said, adding the RBI had earlier told the Nepali counterpart to wait till the situation normalises.

After demonetisation in India, the NRB had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal, hitting Nepalis going for treatment in India, students pursuing higher studies in various Indian colleges and universities, traders doing business in India and people living in bordering areas.

Outlets of government and private banks are witnessing long queues of people standing for exchanging the currency after central bank has provided limited exchange facilities up to Indian Rs 2,000 on the basis of valid identification for general purpose.

Similarly, it is providing up to Indian Rs 10,000 for travelling India through train or air after submitting the respective tickets and exchanging up to Indian Rs 25,000 upon the doctor's referral for medical treatment in India.

Apart from this limited facilities, the RBI has not sorted out crisis of exchanging banned Indian currencies of 5,00 and 1,000 within and outside the Nepali banking channels. Authorities in both sides held several rounds of talks to find a way out for the exchange facilities of banned Indian notes but no decision has been taken yet.

The RBI and NRB have stable agreement that NRB will import a total IRs 6 billion per annum of various denominations of Indian currencies for exchange facilities. As the amount of Indian Rs 100 notes is dwindled to IRs 3.5 billion in its coffer, once it will add another one billion Indian currency, the NRB can provide exchange facilities at present ratio by another seven months, said Poudel.

India has been tightening the supplies of Indian notes following the wake of demonetisation.A In normal situation, Nepali banks used to provide exchange facilities up to IRs 5,000 for general purposes to any Nepali and Indian citizen, IRs 25,000 for travelling purposes and 50,000 for medical facilities.

The demands of Indian currency in winter season rises as lot of Nepalis opt to go for pilgrimages in various Indian sites. The demand of Indian currency through the banking channel is IRs 10 million per day.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national and suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) member Bahadur Ali alias Saifullah, who is accused of attempting to attack security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet was filed in a Patiala House court here under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosives Act, Arms Act and Foreigners Act, among other laws.

Ali, currently in judicial custody, was arrested on July 25, 2016, from a hideout in Yaham village in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir.

After his arrest, he led the police to a cache of arms and ammunitions buried in a nearby forest, the NIA said.

The chargesheet claimed that "Ali is a trained terrorist, practiced in the craft of reading maps using grid references and deft in communicating through wireless set by pairing mobile phone with it to avoid interception".

Along with two accomplices Abu Saad and Abu Darda, Ali infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control but subsequently on June 20 lost contact with the duowhen they went out looking for food. Abu Saad and Abu Darda were never caught.

"While crossing into India on the intervening night of June 12 and 13 last year, these terrorists were equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles," the NIA said in its chargesheet.

"These terrorists entered into Indian territory to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places in the country, as per the instructions given to them by their LeT handlers based in Pakistan or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)," it said.

A pocket diary allegedly seized from Ali revealed the names of places where he was instructed to carry out terror attacks -- Delhi, Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur.

At the time of his arrest, Ali was carrying "one compass, one ICOM wireless set, one matrix sheet bearing codes, two unicode sheets (handwritten pocket diary pages), bearing text written in coded form, Indian currency of Rs 23,000 (of which three notes were found to be fake), one GPS set and one map sheet".

Ali's instructors, meanwhile, informed him that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of militant Burhan Wani on July 8, 2016.

Kashmir plunged into disorder as hundreds of young men protested by hurling stones at the police and army personnel, the chargesheet said.

Ali was later instructed by the LeT to mix with the stone-pelting agitators and throw grenades at the Indian forces.

After his arrest, Ali allegedly revealed the location of another group of freshly infiltrated terrorists whom he was to receive.

"The information led to a search operation in Bandi Monabal area in Kashmir by state police and the army. Four unidentified terrorists were killed in retaliatory firing when they attacked a search team."

The NIA chargesheet said Ali was constantly in touch with Alfa-3 -- the LeT control station based in PoK.

Reacting to the development, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh said: "The perpetrators of terrorism cannot for long escape from the adverse outcomes of terrorism."

As for Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's threat of action against India, Singh said: "That kind of rhetoric is ultimately going to harm Pakistan more than India."

"As far as the evidence is concerned, the entire world now knows the epicentre of terrorism, at least in this part of Asia and in the Indian subcontinent, is none other than Pakistan," he added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Despite facing hardships owing to demonetisation and the opposition's misinformation campaign, people have overwhelmingly supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's note ban decision, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday.

Shah also asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s fight against corruption through the demonetisation decision will bring the party to power in all the five poll-bound states.

Addressing the media about the two-day BJP national executive meeting that began here on Friday, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Parliamentary Board members felicitated Modi for the historic decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

Summarising Shah's address at the meet, Javadekar said that demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but also taken away the plank of 'poor' from them.

"When the government came to power, the opposition asked it about the steps taken to bring back black money and remove corruption," Javdekar said, adding that "with the announcement of demonetisation, the government not only curbed black money but also curbed corruption".

Javdekar also asserted that due to the demonetisation move of the government, fake currency rackets, terror funding, drugs trade and Naxal movement got paralysed.

"It's a direct attack on corruption," the Minister for Human Resource Development said.

Hailing the government's action of conducting surgical strikes across the Line of Control, Javdekar said, "Shah defined the surgical strikes as a historic and bold move under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

"Shah said that after the surgical strikes carried out by the country, the world looked upon India with a different angle and as a nation capable of safeguarding its land, which has always opposed terrorism," he said.

"The party President hailed both decisions -- conducting surgical strikes on terrorists across the border and implementing the demonetisation decision -- as historic," the BJP leader said.

Taking a dig at the opposition party leaders over the surgical strikes, Javdekar said, "After the surgical strikes, some leaders termed it as 'khoon ki dalali', while some demanded evidence."

Javdekar was attacking Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"Shah also said that decisions should be taken in the interest of the country with a long-term view and not a populist one," Javadekar told the media.

Mentioning about the hardships of the people during demonetisation, Javdekar said, "Despite facing hardships, having had to stand in queues, people have overwhelmingly supported demonetisation. In fact, during the 50 days of pain, people even voted for the BJP."

"People have given us massive victories. We have done very well at various polls in West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chandigarh. Of the 10,000 seats where elections were held, we have won a massive 8,000," said Javadekar.

"The overwhelming support for demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but has snatched the plank of 'poor' from them," he said.

The HRD Minister asserted that the party will come to power in all the five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, where polls are scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

"In most of the surveys, the BJP is ahead of other parties despite the issue of demonetisation raised in every survey. This shows that the government has the support of the people," he said.

"Shah also thanked the Prime Minister for his New Year Eve's address to the nation, in which he announced several measures for senior citizens and housing subsidy scheme, among others," Javdekar said.

He also said that the 'Bhim' mobile application launched by the Prime Minister has been downloaded by more than 70 lakh people across the country and it is a sign that the country is moving towards a less-cash economy.

At the meeting Shah also talked about electoral reforms and advocated simultaneous general and assembly polls.

"Shah also appealed to all the political parties to come forward for the electoral reforms for simultaneous conduct of general and assembly elections," Javdekar added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Despite facing hardships owing to demonetisation and the opposition's misinformation campaign, people have overwhelmingly supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's note ban decision, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday.

Shah also asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s fight against corruption through the demonetisation decision will bring the party to power in all the five poll-bound states.

Addressing the media about the two-day BJP national executive meeting that began here on Friday, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Parliamentary Board members felicitated Modi for the historic decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

Summarising Shah's address at the meet, Javadekar said that demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but also taken away the plank of 'poor' from them.

"Shah hailed as historic the decision to conduct surgical strikes on terrorists across the border and demonetisation. He said that decisions should be taken in the interest of the country with a long-term view and not a populist view," Javadekar told the media.

"Despite facing hardships, having had to stand in queues, people have overwhelmingly supported demonetisation. In fact, during the 50 days of pain, people have voted for the BJP.

"People have given us massive victories. We have done very well at various polls in West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra, Assam, Chandigarh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Of the 10,000 seats where elections were held, we have won a massive 8,000," said Javadekar.

"The overwhelming support for demonetisation has not only exposed the opposition but has snatched the plank of 'poor' from them," he said.

The minister asserted that the party will come to power in all the five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa -- where polls are scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

At the meeting, Shah also talked about electoral reforms and advocated for simultaneous conduct of general and assembly polls.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Friday confirmed that former army chief General Raheel Sharif (retd) was made the chief of the 39-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism.

Speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back. However, the defence minister said he did not have much information at the moment about the agreement.

The defence minister said that any such assignment or posting requires proper clearance from both the government and General Headquarters and confirmed that due process was followed before finalising the agreement.

"This thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the prime minister was also part of the deliberations," Asif said.

He was of the opinion that the formation of such an alliance was a good step as the "Muslim Ummah is in a spot of bother right now and needs unity among its ranks".

Pakistan had initially found itself in the crosshairs of Middle Eastern as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent.

However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has agreed to provide Rs 1 billion to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) after its request that the country was facing a shortage of INR 100 denomination banknotes.

The NRB's plan to import Rs 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, according to a report in the Himalayan Times on Friday,.

The RBI had earlier told the Nepali central bank to wait till the situation normalises post demontisation.

NRB officials have now said that the central bank is preparing to bring the amount from India within January.

After in India, the Nepal Rastra Bank had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal.

Currently, it is providing an exchange facility of up to Rs 2,000 on basis of citizenship identification.

Similarly, it is providing Rs 10,000 to those who submit a copy of air or train ticket to travel to India and Rs 25,000 for those travelling to India for medical check-up.

Janak Bahadur Adhikari, an NRB official, said that the limit of Indian rupee exchange will not be reviewed until the RBI is able to provide regular exchange facility.

The RBI has been extending Rs 6 billion exchange facility to Nepal every year (based on Indian fiscal year calendar) but this year Nepal is unlikely to get this facility due to the move, said Adhikari.

"NRB has brought only Rs 1.20 billion this year."

Currently, the NRB has around Rs 3.5 billion in its coffers and after bringing another Rs 1 billion, NRB will be able to provide exchange facility to Nepali and Indian nationals in Nepal for the next eight to nine months.
Russia on Friday began planned reduction of its military presence in Syria, led by aircraft carrier group "Admiral Kuznetsov", the chief of the Russian armed forces said.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, (President) Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," TASS news agency quoted Army General Valery Gerasimov as saying.

Gerasimov said Russia's naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, which has been operating in the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, would be the first to leave.

The Russian President last month ordered a partial pullout of military forces from Syria after negotiating a ceasefire deal with Iran and Turkey. He said it offered an opportunity to end the six-year armed conflict in the Middle Eastern nation.

As the Russian military pulls out of Syria, Damascus reiterated its gratitude for Russia's help in the conflict.

"The support that the Russian Air Force offered was crucial for our victories, which paved the way for a ceasefire and created the conditions for launching a political settlement of the Syrian crisis," the chair of the general staff of the Syrian armed forces, Lt. General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, said, as reported by Russian news agencies.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A former South Korean executive of a Britain-based company was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for the deaths of around 100 people, a media report said.

Shin Hyun-woo was found guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising a humidifier disinfectant linked to the deaths, the BBC reported on Friday.

Reckitt Benckiser, a British multinational consumer goods company that produces health, hygiene and home products, is one of several firms linked to the deaths.

Lotte Mart, Homeplus and other retailers were also found guilty of selling the toxic product.

Reckitt Benckiser withdrew its product from the market after the South Korean authorities suggested a link between chemicals to sterilise humidifiers and lung conditions in 2011.

Shin was head of Reckitt Benckiser's Oxy subsidiary from 1991 to 2005.

The seven years were the maximum prison sentence the court could give.

It is thought that about 100 people have died from the products that elevated related health problems.

The firm has offered compensation to the families of those who died, as well as the hundreds more who were suffering.

The company also said it was setting up a multi-million-dollar humanitarian fund for the victims and their families.

--IANS

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The Delhi Commission for Women on Friday issued notice to the Delhi Police and the Safdarjung Hospital here over a missing twin soon after birth, and sought their response within 48 hours.

According to the complaint received by the commission, a woman delivered twins at the government-run Safdarjung hospital on December 22, but she was handed only one newborn.

The woman said that her ultrasound reports clearly showed "two live foetuses". A medical slip from the doctor also clearly mentioned the "twin" pregnancy.

When the young mother enquired about the second baby from the doctor and the nurse, they brushed her off saying that the second child might have been "dumped with the garbage".

"The contents of the complaint are extremely serious," said the commission.

The DCW has started an immediate inquiry into the incident and issued notice to the Safdarjung Hospital seeking names of all staff members, including doctors, nurses, helpers who were present at the time of the delivery.

It also sought a report on the action taken by the Delhi Police and hospital authorities against the persons involved.

"Both Safdarjung Hospital and Delhi Police have been asked to respond within 48 hours," said the statement from the commission.

--IANS

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The BJP national executive on Friday felicitated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for surgical strike against Pakistan and demonetisation decision, dubbing it "historical" and slammed the opposition parties for criticising it.

Both the issues dominanted the inaugural day of the two day meet which began here at NDMC convention centre here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also asserted that it has snatched the pro-poor plank of Congress and other parties and claimed that the poor are now backing Prime Minister Modi.

In his inaugural address at the two day party meet, organised three months after the last meeting in Kozhikode, party president Amit Shah targeted the opposition parties for criticising the demonetisation saying they used to earlier question what the government has done against black money and now they are questioning the government.

The opposition parties have now been exposed, he said.

Giving details of Shah's address, Union Minister and BJP leader Prakash Javadekar said: "Shah said the outcomes of the demonetisation are now visible as it has badly hit the black money, fake currency, terror funding, Maoist activities and drug dealers."

"Shah asserted that the people of the country have hailed this historic decision saying that the note ban decision would result in more revenues that will be spent on pro-poor welfare measures," he said.

"The party President also mentioned in his speech that the surgical strikes carried out by the Army across the Line of Control (LoC) were recognised across the world and it reflects government's intention towards zero tolerance against terrorism."

Shah also expressed concern for doing by some opposition parties on surgical strikes, Javadekar said.

"During his speech the BJP President also appealed to all the political parties to think of holding general and assembly polls simultaneously. He said, the party has also constituted a committee to submit a report in this regard," Javdekar said.

To strengthen the party, Shah also asked the party workers to do 'shram daan' in those area where the party base is not strong.

Senior party leaders, Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states are took part in the meeting. Earlier in the day, Shah chaired a meeting of party national office bearers and discussed various issues.

Modi will address the valedictory session on Saturday.

The BJP national executive also passed a political resolution.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actors Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy are in talks to star in upcoming action thriller "Triple Frontier", but there seem to scheduling conflicts.

The film will be directed by J.C. Chandor.

"Triple Frontier" is set in the notorious border zone between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil where the Iguazu and Parana rivers converge -- making "la triple frontera" difficult to monitor and a haven for organised crime, reports variety.com.

The pic was originally supposed to be a follow up to "The Hurt Locker", with every actor from Tom Hanks to Will Smith to Leonardo DiCaprio at one point showing interest in joining the ensemble.

--IANS

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The Ghaziabad police has arrested three persons in connection with the fraudulent transfer of Rs 10 lakh from an automobile firm's account to a jeweller's account, a senior police officer said on Friday.

The State Bank of India branch in Ghaziabad had allegedly transferred the money to the said account through the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems without even obtaining a signed cheque and duly filled form from the applicant.

Accused Virendra Sahu of Rudrapur (Uttarakhand) and Arun Jadon and Ajab Nagar of Loni were arrested near Hindon Air Force station on January 5 night.

Sahu said he was a Master in Business Administration and was formerly employed in a private bank in Lucknow. He left the job and began cheating people. He was booked in two cases of financial fraud in Uttarakhand and Bareilly.

Police have seized a gold chain, four bangles, earrings, four diamond and three gold rings, worth over Rs 8 lakh, Rs 50,000 and an SUV from the accused.

Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police Deepak Kumar told the media here on Friday that Kotwali Police registered a case after Hindon Automobiles staff complained on January 2 that Rs 9,85,000 from its account had been transferred to the account of RJ Jewellers, Jagat Farm, Greater Noida.

Police investigation revealed that a person masquerading as the account holder called the bank official to order for the transfer of cash. Since the customer was involved in heavy transactions, bank staff allegedly transferred the cash on a mere phone call without following the due procedure.

The SSP said the role of bank officials in the case was under probe.

"Accepting its fault, the bank has since credited the cash back into our account after we lodged a police complaint," Hindon Automobiles owner Y.P. Vasvani said.

Efforts to seek comments from SBI Chief Manager Pawan Jha did not succeed.

--IANS

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The UN has warned that the water crisis afflicting the Syrian capital may constitute a war crime. Millions of people have been deprived of running water after a reserve located in rebel-held Wadi Barada was cut off.

"In Damascus itself, 5.5 million people have had their water supplies cut or minimised," the UN's humanitarian adviser to Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva the RT online reported.

In December, the running water supply for Damascus was shut off, having reportedly been contaminated with diesel fuel. This deprived millions of people of drinking water, and came amid fighting in the rebel-held area where the reservoir is located.

Rebels have blamed the government forces, saying that the crisis hit when the reserve was allegedly shelled. Syrian officials, however, say the rebels deliberately poisoned the water and then damaged the infrastructure.

Egeland stressed that "to sabotage and deny water is of course a war crime," as such actions mainly impact civilians.

He went on to say there was no sign of disease in the city, but did warn that poisoning was a real danger.

Rebels have repeatedly threatened to target the water reservoir in Wadi Barada. They have recently threatened to cut the supply again - this time in a video that showed the tunnel running underneath Damascus, where they said they would lay explosive charges and physically deprive the population of water.

A ceasefire deal between government and rebel forces came into force just before New Year's celebrations. The Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front militants did not participate. The deal was brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey, with Moscow and Ankara as guarantors of the truce.

However, the rebels broke the truce shortly after its approval by UN Security Council members on January 2. They blamed the Bashar al-Assad government for alleged violations in the Wadi Barada valley.

The truce aims to bring about peace talks later this month in Kazakhstan, with the rebels warning that any agreement would be immediately scrapped if the government does not pull out of the area north of the capital.

--IANS

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US Navy-trained dolphins are being tapped to save worlds smallest porpoise, vaquita, that is on the verge of extinction in the Gulf of California, experts said.

Experts are hoping dolphins' natural sonar would be able to do what technology has not: locate them, so they can be captured and put in a protective area, the New York Times reported.

"Their specific task is to locate (vaquita -- an extremely elusive creature)," said Jim Fallin of the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific.

"They would signal that by surfacing and returning to the boat from which they were launched," Fallin said.

Fallin said the dolphins were trained by the Navy Marine Mammal Program for tasks like locating sea mines. The program was expected to start sometime in 2017 spring.

Experts believe fewer than 60 vaquitas were left in the Gulf waters -- they have been decimated by illegal fishing for the swim bladder of a fish, the totoaba, which is a prized delicacy in China.

Although the vaquita has never been held successfully in captivity, experts hope to put the remaining porpoises in floating pens in a safe bay in the Gulf of California.

This bay is called the Sea of Cortez where they can be protected and hopefully breed.

Mexico has banned gill nets that often trap vaquitas in the area, but has had trouble enforcing it because the totoaba draws very high prices on the illegal market.

"At the current rate of loss, the vaquita will likely decline to extinction by 2022 unless the current gillnet ban is maintained and effectively enforced," said Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, chairman of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita.

Some experts, like Omar Vidal, Mexico director of the World Wildlife Fund, however, oppose the capture plan, which could risk killing the few remaining vaquitas.

It could also open up a free-for-all illegal fishing once they are removed from their natural habitat.

--IANS

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The US Navy is sending to Japan the aircraft equipped with advanced radar that can detect stealth fighters, a media report said on Friday.

The E-2D Advance Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft will be deployed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in February, according to a statement on Thursday from the US Navy Japan.

Deployment of the Advanced Hawkeyes is part of "a plan to put the most advanced and capable units forward in order to support the US's commitment to the defence of Japan and the security and stability of the region," the statement said.

The E-2D is equipped with the A/N-APY radar system, which according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin has the power to "see smaller targets and more of them at a greater range, particularly in coastal regions and over land," CNN reported.

The Advanced Hawkeyes coming to Japan were previously operating from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in support strikes on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the statement added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Veteran Indian actor Om Puri died on Friday morning of a heart attack at his residence here, a family friend said. He was 66.

Veteran actress Shabana Azmi tweeted his funeral details.

"Om Puri undergoing post-mortem at Cooper Hospital. Will be taken to Trishul around 3 p.m. Funeral at Oshiwara electric crematorium around 6 p.m.," Shabana tweeted.

Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, who was going to direct the actor in his new movie, told IANS over phone: "It is a very sad news. Om Puri ji passed away after a heart attack today (Friday) morning. He was at his home."

"His body of work in the Indian film industry has been tremendous across the commercial and parallel genres. We've lost a great talent," Agnihotri added.

Known for his deep baritone and distinctive acting style, Om Puri had an affinity towards socially relevant cinema. This drove him into doing movies like "Aakrosh", "Ardh Satya" and "Dharavi".

A National School of Drama alumnus, Om Puri also featured in movies like "Mirch Masala" and explored his ability to dabble in the comedy genre with "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro", "Chachi 420", "Hera Pheri", "Malamaal Weekly" and more.

His stint on the small screen saw him feature in shows like "Kakkaji Kaheen" and "Mr. Yogi", but his most notable work was in TV film "Tamas", which was helmed by Govind Nihalani -- a filmmaker with whom Om Puri worked very closely all through.

Om Puri also nurtured an international career, which started with a cameo in Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi".

Among some of his British films were "My Son the Fanatic", "East Is East" and "The Parole Officer". He also appeared in Hollywood films including "City of Joy", "Wolf" and "The Ghost and the Darkness".

He even featured in Pakistani film "Actor In Law", and also sank his teeth into film projects in multiple languages like Malayalam and Kannada.

A Padma Shri awardee and National Award-winner, Om Puri was also conferred the title of the Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the British film industry.

His work extended from theatre, television, Indian films to those in Britain and the US too. He was president of the Cine & TV Artistes' Association (CINTAA) and a former chairman of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

For his superlative work, he was honoured with the National Film Award for Best Actor twice -- for "Arohan" in 1982 and for "Ardh Satya" in 1984.

He was married to Nandita Puri, from whom he separated in 2013. Together, they have a son named Ishaan.

A tweet on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri and recalls his long career in theatre and films."

Actor Anupam Kher, a close friend of Om Puri, said he had spoken to him just two days ago, and the disheartening news of his demise was broken to him by filmmaker Ashoke Pandit.

Khalid Kidwai, producer of Om Puri's upcoming film "Ram Bhajan Zindabad", said he met him on Thursday night on the promotional activities of the movie.

"He was in a happy mood and we conversed till late evening, before he went to his friend and actor Manoj Pahwa's party," Kidwai told IANS.

"In the morning when I learnt about his demise, I was in shock! Still cannot believe it," Kidwai added.

Actor and General Secretary of CINTAA, Sushant Singh, said: "Spoke to him last evening (Thursday), and was supposed to meet him tonight (Friday) as he wanted to be updated about CINTAA. This morning I got the news... devastated."

Another member of CINTAA and actor Amit Behl said Om Puri was one of the finest human beings. "I used to call him my Guru Bhai as we were trained by the same Guru. He was down-to-earth, very fine and a realistic actor."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Supporters of the government who expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to show the minorities their place (many hoped he would take steps that would have them scurrying to the Bay of Bengal) must feel disappointed. Modi has said not one word on the rebuilding of the Ram Temple (admittedly the matter is sub judice but that has never stopped governments and Prime Ministers in the past from commenting on the desirability of an outcome). The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has suggested to him that as in the Shah Bano case where Parliament bypassed the judiciary and formed its own view on what constitutes rights of divorced women, in the matter of the Ram Temple too, Parliament should be encouraged to turn the disputed area into a temple. Modi has ignored VHPs advice.
Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara deplored the westernisation of young women that somehow makes them irresistible to loutish men. For some years, the Shiv Sena made violently gallant attempts to save Maharashtras youth from succumbing to the licentiousness of western culture and celebrating Valentines Day. More recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to obliterate Christmas Day with Good Governance Day. He had a pretty good shot at wrecking the deplorably western Bacchanalian rites of New Years Eve in 2016 with a rambling speech in two languages to his fellow countrymen.
A two-day meeting of the Executive will begin here on Friday, nearly a month ahead of the start of assembly elections in five states.

The meet will begin at around 10 a.m. at the NDMC Convention Centre here, in which office-bearers and state unit presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will discuss the assembly elections.

Party sources said the Uttar Pradesh elections are likely to take centrestage at the meeting, apart from demonetisation and surgical strikes on terror launchpads across the Line of Control in September 2016.

The meeting -- which will see the participation of former Presidents, party Chief Ministers and around 350 party members -- will adopt economic and political resolutions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address party leaders around 4 p.m. on Friday. Both resolutions will be adopted before Modi's speech.

Modi, along with President Amit Shah, will then officially inaugurate the meet.

Shah is likely to address the meeting after 5 p.m., the sources said.

They said the economic resolution is likely to focus on demonetisation and black money and condemn the role of opposition parties, especially the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress in opposing the November 8 demonetisation.

It is also likely to endorse the Modi government's endeavours for the betterment of farmers and agriculture.

The political resolution is expected to focus on surgical strikes in the aftermath of the Uri terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

The cross-border operation will be hailed as a big achievement of the government, being dubbed one of the historical events in Independent India.

The strikes will be projected as an instrument through which the world started viewing the country differently.

On the second day, the meeting will begin at 9 a.m. Modi will deliver his concluding speech at around 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Punjab BJP chief Vijay Sampla on Friday said the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have no right to seek votes for the state's assembly elections.

The Union minister said that the opposition parties are playing cheap by defaming Punjab on "drug menace" issue which will not be tolerated by the people here.

Sharpening his attack on AAP and Congress ahead of next month Assembly polls, Sampla alleged, "On the one hand where Congress is flawed and not serious about its working, AAP wants to loot the state by indulging in false promises".

"Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh, who is contesting his last elections is not even present in the state," he said.

Sampla claimed that BJP-SAD government has the right to ask for votes from people in Punjab as the alliance has worked towards progress in the state.

He termed as invalid AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal's claim of 40 lakh youth in Punjab being drug addicts. "Separate liquor shops are being opened for women in the Delhi", he alleged, while holding the AAP government responsible for the proliferation of liquor vends in every Mohalla in Delhi.

In a scathing attack on Delhi Chief Minister, Sampla said he is "mother of corruption" and alleged that Kejriwal has not allowed Punjabi leaders to emerge in his party and has fielded "outsiders" to contest in Punjab, as he wants to spread corruption in the state.

On announcement of BJP candidates, he said, "The party has its own system. The panel is being prepared which depends on acceptability and ability to win. The names will be announced shortly after discussion on these factors".
A day after Rahul Gandhi dared PM Modi to probe the Sahara-Birla papers, which show the premier had received money from the two corporates, the Congress questioned the clean chit given to the Sahara group by the income tax settlement commission recently.



"The whole case was decided in just 16 days which included four holidays. The PM should explain," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.



According to him, Sahara had revised its income tax return after a raid on its offices on November 22, 2014 where they acknowledged that they had concealed income worth Rs 2017 crore. When the matter went to the ITSC the amount turned out to be Rs 1910 crore.



He further alleged that Sahara's filings at the Registrar of Companies from 2009-2010 to 2014-15 showed expenditure to be Rs 9 crore but when the matter reached the ITSC the figure inflated to Rs 1956.5 cr.



"This mean income Rs 1910 cr and expenditure Rs 1956 cr?so no tax liability?why is the government being so kind to this group in the case," said Surjewala wondering what quid pro quo took place between the tax authorities and the industrial house.



While Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal too levelled similar charges on Modi, Rahul used the documents to attack the PM last month saying Modi received around Rs 40 cr in cash on nine occasions.



The BJP has cited the Supreme Court observation which said more than the PM's name, solid proof was needed in the case. Activist Prashant Bhushan had gone to the apex court.



Surjewala said in 2012, the ITSC had said that the documents recovered from the industrial house were genuine and needed further probe.



"This means the person who took money and person who gave money?if the government orders a fair probe it will clear the PM name in these papers," he said.



According to the Congress, none less than Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance on April 28, 2013 collected details of 4,574 bank accounts of Sahara.



On May 3, 2013 Enforcement Directorate collected those details from Financial Intelligence Unit, put them all on a CD and had referred this issue for investigation.



"If nearly 5,000 bank accounts have to be investigated it can take 6 to 9 months but now 2-1/2 or 3 years have passed," said Surjewala, "Why has Modi Government not investigated."
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah said on Friday that the governments demonetisation decision and push towards a less cash economy would lead to increased tax revenue, enabling more spending on development projects and poor-friendly schemes.
In their first one-to-one meeting since the vertical split in Samajwadi Party, Shivpal Yadav on Friday held talks with defiant nephew Akhilesh at his residence in Lucknow on a "compromise formula" for a possible patch-up.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with Chief Minister Akhilesh. Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav as well.

However, sources privy to the fast-paced developments did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the "outsider" whose return to triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a "compromise formula".

Another possibility could be resignation of Shivpal from the post of state chief, a charge held by the Chief Minister before the current family feud broke out.

It was the first meeting between Akhilesh and Shivpal since the Chief Minister donned the mantle of chief replacing his father Mulayam.

An inkling of a patch-up came late Thursday night when Akhilesh planned to go to the airport in Lucknow to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayam's return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had on Thursday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for three months.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam this morning reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the Election Commission to claim that it was the "real" SP.

Leader of the Akhilesh camp Ram Gopal Yadav claimed they have collected signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates, "making it crystal clear as to which was the real SP".
Kerala Congress MP and other party leaders were arrested by the police for protesting against demonetisation outside the Reserve Bank of India office in Thiruvananthapuram, ANI reported on Friday.
Over a hundred sheep of a exclusive breed, found in coastal Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara districts of Odisha, died in the past one week at a remote village, triggering worry among veterinary experts.

Reports of large scale of sheep locally called 'kuji mendha' have poured in from Subala village under Mahakalpada police station jurisdiction in Kendrapara.

The animal husbandry department has received official reports of nearly 60 cases of death from the said village, Chief District Veterinary Officer (CDVO) Chaitnya Kumar Sethy said.

However no sheep death has been reported so far from other parts of the district, he said.

As the death is localised in nature with occurrence confined to one village, it could mean that things have not assumed epidemic shape, he said adding the department is keen to curb sheep mortality in the village as the breed was conferred 'rare and singular species' tag by Union Government last year.

The National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) had accorded genetic recognition to 'kuji' breed of sheep, he said.

Veterinary surgeons have rushed to the village to take stock of the situation and collected blood and stool samples of the animals for laboratory test.

The stool samples would be tested at Kendrapara laboratory while blood samples are being sent to College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar, Sethy said.

As a precautionary measure, the animals are being vaccinated to enhance their disease immunity. In winter, the sheep are mostly afflicted with worm infection, foot and mouth and septicaemia diseases.

The 'kuji mendha' is typical breed of sheep. These breed of sheep are fast breeders and give birth multiple times while sheep in other parts of the state give single birth at a time.

As the NBAGR has recognised it as genetically rare status, the veterinary department is giving emphasis on conserving these domesticated species.

(Reopens CES3)



"We have initiated measures to stop spread of sheep



death to other parts," Sethy said.

Because of multiple-birth characteristics, rearing of 'kuji' sheep is a profitable livelihood source.

The district animal husbandry department has begun awareness drive to sensitise sheep farmers on commercial viability of sheep-rearing, the official said.

A sheep farmer from Subala village said "I have lost a dozen of sheep. I earn my livelihood from rearing kuji mendha. If mortality continues, I will be on streets".
As many as 23 people, including 11 Revenue department employees, have been booked for allegedly facilitating multiple purchase deal of government lands in the district by means of fraudulence, causing a loss of nearly Rs 3.85 crore to the exchequer during 2015-16, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials said.

Th 11 persons, then posted at the revenue office in Nandgaon here, and 13 private persons were booked yesterday on basis of a complaint lodged by ACB, Nashik unit with Nandgaon police, an official release issued by the ACB here said.

The ACB had carried out an investigation into the allegations based on an application, highlighting the irregularities, filed by a one Jairam Dalvi of village Vinchur Dalvi against the 23 accused.

According to the ACB, sub-divisional officer Vasanti Mali, now posted at Yeola, then Nandgaon tehsildar Sudam Mahajan, then sub-registrar D D Pandit, and eight others of the department had illegally made changes in the purchase/sell deed, while the private persons got fake affidavit made to purchase the government lands in Nandgaon.

The incident came to light in July, 2015 after the ACB started investigation, following which tehsildar Mahajan was suspended.

A case has been lodged under relevant sections of Prevention of Corruption Act-1988 and IPC sections 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment), 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).

No arrests have been made so far.

Apart from Mahajan, Mali and Pandit, the other accused are - Praniti Dandile, Ashok Shilavat, S K Aher, D A Kasture, V P Sonawane, V B Bodke, Jayesh Maldude, V P Gaikwad of the revenue department.

The others were identified as - Shivaji Sanap, Prashant Sanap, Jayantibhai Patel, Bhavin Patel, Maniben Patel, Praveen Patel, Arjun Makani, Shivlal Makani, Ranjan Makani, Vinod Makani, Bharati Shah, Popat patel, the release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Five members of the minority Hazara community in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province were injured, two of them seriously, when unidentified assailants opened fire on their taxi today in a targeted attack, police said.

The assailants shot and injured the individuals on Spini Road in the Qila Mubarak area in Quetta, Deputy Inspector General Police Quetta Razzak Cheema said, terming the incident a targeted attack.

Two of the wounded are in critical condition, and all those injured in the shooting have been shifted to Bolan Medical Complex, Dawn newspaper reported.

The five individuals were targeted while they were travelling in a taxi, the DIG said.

Police have launched an investigation into the attack.

In October last year, in a similar attack, four women belonging to the same community were killed by unidentified assailants in Quetta's Kirani Road.

Sectarian violence has claimed thousands of lives in Pakistan over the past decade. Hundreds of ethnic Hazaras, who are Shias by sect, have been killed in targeted bombings and drive-by shootings over the past few years in Balochistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Around 6 per cent of the Indian urban population access over-the-top (OTT) content on a daily basis and 24 per cent on weekly basis, said a survey.

OTT is the delivery of media content through the Internet on mobile devices, which does not require the traditional method as cable or satellite.

Rising number of smartphones is playing a vital role in driving penetration of OTT content, said a report issued by Chrome Data Analytics and Media.

"In urban India, 6 per cent and 24 per cent of the population access OTT on a daily and weekly basis, respectively," said the report titled 'Now Streaming: OTT.'



However, the report also added that more than 50 per cent of the viewers still prefer TV as the first screen for viewing media contents.

"User experience on smartphones plays a vital role in driving penetration. Currently, smartphones hold only 29 per cent penetration," it added.

Moreover, exclusivity of content is also helping to increase the "awareness and eyeballs" of the platform.

It further added: "The potential of 'offline' mode in India is quite high because of infrastructural issues and high cost of unlimited internet."



According to the report, over 75 per cent of the audience prefer free services with ads as they are already paying for Internet services.

"Rest of the population is ready to pay for the services with subscription amount varying on the basis of gender, age group and geography," it added.

Meanwhile, it also added that the potential of offline content varies with "gender, age group and geography of the consumer."



Commenting on growth potential of OTT, Chrome DM Founder and CEO Pankaj Krishna said: "The entire internet base which is 464 million today, qualifies for OTT's growth potential. However, infrastructure enhancement and low cost unlimited internet plans are the key drivers that will exponentially help in reaching and further increasing the potential base itself.

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As many as 134 films from across the globe will be screened at the ninth edition of Jaipur International Film Festival (JIFF), which is scheduled to begin here tomorrow.

Touted to be world's fastest growing film festival, the five-day event that will witness participation by 250 filmmakers and artistes from the fraternity, aims to promote emerging directors, as well as encourage exchange of knowledge, information, ideas and culture between India and the participating nations.

"The festival will have variety of add-on features this time when as many as 134 films from across the globe will be screened at two screens at Golcha. Films would also be screened at the Rajasthan Adult Education Association (RAEA) and the Manipal University Jaipur," organisers said in a statement.

There will also be special screenings for children at the same venue during the morning hours.

JIFF will be opened by celebrities from the South Indian Film Industry including Hariharan, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao and Rachana, who will be attending the event as Guests of Honour.

Internationally acclaimed cine-visionary Ramesh Prasad, who is said to have created specialised post production facilities and established the Prasad Film Laboratory with advanced equipments, will be awarded the Life Time Achievement Award.

"The chairman of the committee that selected Mr Prasad for Life Time Achievement Award was headed by noted Indian film director Shaji N Karun, recipient of several national and international awards including the civil honour of Padma Shree," orgabisers said.

Workshops and seminars on different aspects of cinema, where filmmakers will be interacting with the audience, will also be held, to bring about a greater understanding of the art of film making.

"The festival will have 17 workshops and seminars on various aspects of cinema this year. Filmmakers would also be interacting with the audiences under a new theme 'Master Strokes'," organisers said.

The festival's 'co-production meets' will serve as a platform for leading producers and directors from across the globe to interact and create new ventures.

"Film producers and directors meet and interact with each other to discuss their next ventures and explore the possibilities of co-production sharing costs.

"JIFF co-production meets have been emerging as a successful forum for them. More than 250 delegates are arriving at Jaipur to participate in the co-production meet this time," organisers said.

The festival is set to continue till January 11.

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The British capital, which has one of the greatest concentrations of talent and skills in the world, will continue to need skilled EU workers to ensure its prosperity following the UK's exit from the European Union, a new report has said.

Maintaining London's access to skilled EU workers after Brexit is "vital" for the capital's future prosperity, the report by 'London First' said.

It said business leaders were worried any restriction on skilled migration would "impede London's ability to attract talent".

London First describes itself as a non-profit organisation with a mission "to make London the best city in the world to do business".

The organisation said leaving the EU also presented new opportunities to the city but other investment was required, the BBC reported.

Prime Minister Theresa May has not confirmed her plans for freedom of movement after Brexit.

But she has previously promised to secure a settlement that "addresses the concerns of the British people about free movement".

The report, which is based upon talks with business leaders, found that leaving the EU will present "challenges" and "opportunities" to the capital to keep it competitive on the world stage.

In the report, London First said the city had "one of the greatest concentrations of talent and skills in the world" and future policies should attempt to maintain this.

Suggestions made by the organisation to achieve this include - maintaining the legal status of EU workers currently in the UK, creating a visa regime which accounts for London's employment needs, and investigating the possibility of developing regional migration policies, such as a "London visa".

The report did find that leaving the EU could provide access to new markets and sources of investment for businesses in the city.

But it said "challenges" created by economic growth would have to be addressed to keep the city "open for business".

These included better transport infrastructure, improved skills training in the capital and the faster delivery of new housing.

The report added that improving cooperation with other UK cities will also help London "drive growth across the country".

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today rebuked some of her ministers in the administrative meeting here and asked them to improve the performances of their department in future.

Banerjee today held an administrative review meeting of all the departments of the state government.

"In the meeting the Chief minister asked minister of technical education Asima Patra, minister of women and child development Sashi Panja to improve their performances. She also told asked minister of consumer affairs Sadhan Pande, whether the advertisements throughout the city is serving any purpose at all," a senior TMC leader said.

"Pande was asked by Banerjee to state what are concrete steps that his department has taken,"he said.

Banerjee had also asked some of the departments that if they are not able to spend the allotted money then they should return the money.

The TMC leader also said that Banerjee had asked Kolkata Mayor and housing minister Sovan Chatterjee to look into the construction of "Kolkata Eye" on the lines of London eye.

Banerjee also asked state finance and excise minister Amit Mitra to check the sale of spurious liquor in the state.

Banerjee lauded the performance the state Panchayat department and irrigation department.

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Afghanistan continues to face challenges today even as the unity government in the war-torn country has kept alive the chances of future progress, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.

"We played a pivotal role in forging a national unity government in Afghanistan that, while still facing challenges, has kept alive the chance for future progress," he said at his final press conference as the Secretary of State yesterday.

Kerry had played an instrumental role in the formation of the unity government led by President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

"We all know how difficult that could have been when an election had serious problems, and the country was poised to perhaps see the government fall apart and maybe even enter into civil war and yet we helped broker and pull together the parties into a unity government that still today is managing to move forward in Afghanistan," Kerry said.

When Obama came to power in 2009, there were more than 100,000 troops in this war-torn country, which has now reduced to less than 10,000. Afghanistan now has a well-trained armed force which has been successfully meeting the challenge posed by the Taliban and other terrorist groups, he said.

Despite best efforts, the Obama administration has not been able solve all the global problems, Kerry acknowledged.

"Obviously we have not solved every problem. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict continues, but we are absolutely right to support a two-state solution and to warn about the danger of actions on any side that could obstruct that possibility.

"We are also right to insist that a diplomatic path is the only way out of the disastrous situation in Syria, one of the most intractable and complex conflicts in modern history and the worst humanitarian catastrophe since World War II," the top American diplomat said.

Kerry said that despite the US' best efforts to mobilise a unified response from the international community, and to ease tensions and reduce violence and save lives, obviously war has continued at considerable human cost.

"It is only through a political solution that ultimately the country can be unified, the country can be rebuilt, and the violence can actually be stopped. It is only through a political solution that actual peace can finally come to Syria," he said.

The military strategies that are pursued by the regime and its backers in Moscow and Tehran, if that's all there is, will only lengthen the war and generate more extremists and further inflame sectarian fighting, Kerry warned.

"That is why the US continues to support diplomatic efforts to achieve and effective cessation of hostilities and to transition to a government capable of uniting the Syrian people," he added.

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A day after it withdrew support to the BJP-led Goa Government, Maharashtravadi Gomantak Party (MGP) today decided to forge a pre-poll alliance with Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) floated by RSS rebel Subhash Velingkar for next month's Assembly elections.

"Technically, we have decided to have a pre-poll tie-up with GSM. But the formal alliance with a seat-sharing formula would be announced on coming Sunday," MGP president Dipak Dhavalikar told PTI.

MGP and GSM have held a series of meetings to formalise allocation of seats for the February 4 polls.

Goa has total 40 seats spread across South Goa and North Goa districts.

"MGP, which is oldest regional party in state, will also be heading the alliance. We will fight on 22 seats while GSM on eight and SS (Shiv Sena) on five, making our presence in 35 constituencies," a senior MGP functionary said on condition of anonymity.

MGP was Goa's first ruling party after the end of Portuguese colonial rule in 1961. It had contested 2012 polls in alliance with the BJP.

Of late, chasm between MGP and BJP grew as the former was unhappy with the leadership of incumbent chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar and had openly criticised him.

The simmering differences culminated into Parsekar sacking MGP stalwarts Dipak Dhavlikar and Sudin Dhavlikar from his cabinet last month.

MGP formally withdrew its support to the Parsekar government yesterday, recalling all its three MLAs. As a result, the number of MLAs supporting the BJP-led dispensation has come down to 23 which comprises 21 legislators from BJP and two independents.

Velingkar had floated Goa Suraksha Manch after he was removed from the post of Goa RSS chief last year, following his public criticism of the BJP's policies like Medium of Instruction (MoI) and continuation of grants to English medium schools. He had announced to contest against BJP, earning him the sack from RSS.

GSM has already announced its alliance with Shiv Sena, the alliance partner of the BJP in Maharashtra and central governments.

Meanwhile, sources said the MGP-GSM-SS alliance will project Sudin Dhavalikar as their chief ministerial face in the elections, which have become multi-pronged with the entry of Aam Aadmi Party besides traditional players BJP and Congress.

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The Agartala Book Fair will be inaugurated on February 11 by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.

Prominent writer of neighbouring Bangladesh, Abul Memon would grace the fair as honoured guest, state Culture and Information Minister Bhanulal Saha told reporters.

Publishers from Bangladesh, Kolkata, Delhi and Guwahati and all publishers of the state would participate in the fair.

He said, like previous years, seminars, cultural programmes and assembly of poets would be organized by the steering committee of the fair.

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INLD leader Ajay Chautala, who is serving a 10-year jail term in a teachers' recruitment scam case, today told a Delhi court he apprehends that he would not get a fair trial in the disproportionate assets case against him and sought transfer of the matter to another court.

Arguing before District Judge Ravinder Kaur, who is hearing the transfer petition, Ajay's counsel alleged that the evidence was being recorded in "most illegal manner" by permitting the prosecution to put leading questions and the manner in which, the evidence was being recorded reflected the "biasness of the presiding officer qua the applicant".

District Judge posted the matter for January 18 for hearing further arguments.

Advocate Harsh Sharma, appearing for Ajay, also claimed that the politician apprehended he would not get a fair trial if his case is continued to be tried in the court presided by a special CBI judge, alleging that the presiding officer's conduct was "utmost unfair".

A similar transfer plea of co-accused Abhimanyu Singh is also pending before the district judge.

The court is currently recording evidence in the DA case in which Ajay, son of former Haryana Chief Minister and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala, is facing trial.

Two other similar cases are pending before it against his brother Abhay and their father. The cases were filed on a complaint by Haryana Congress leader Shamsher Singh Surjewala.

Ajay is serving 10-year imprisonment awarded in January 2013 by another CBI court in the 1999-2000 junior basic trained (JBT) teachers' recruitment scam.

Chautala was also sent to 10 years in jail in the JBT case. The Supreme Court had dismissed the appeals of Chautala and Ajay and had upheld their jail term.

CBI had chargesheeted Ajay in 2010 indicting him for possessing assets exceeding his legal income by 339.27 per cent. His legal income between May 1993 and May 2006 was Rs 8.17 crore, but had acquired assets worth Rs 27.7 crore, it had alleged.

All the charges have been denied by Chautala and his sons.

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Filmmaker Anand L Rai will be producing eight different kind of films this year.

Rai will also be producing director Rahul Sankalya's "Nimmo" and a quirky romantic-comedy titled "Shubh Mangal Saavdhan" to be directed by R S Prasanna, a press release issued here said.

The filmmaker will also team up with director Mudassar Aziz after "Happy Bhag Jayegi" on another film and critically acclaimed director Navdeep Singh of "NH10" fame for a project that is currently in the scripting stage, it said.

The 45-year-old filmmaker will also be co-producing a film with Ajay Rai and Alan McAlex, to be directed by Geetu Mohandas, who's last film "Liar's Dice" was India's official entry at the 87th Academy Awards, it added.

Script writer Himanshu Sharma, who shot to fame for his work in the "Tanu Weds Manu" franchise and "Raanjhanaa" fame, may soon be launched as director under Rai's home production banner.

The "Tanu Weds Manu" director recently joined hands with Anurag Kashyap, who will work on two films for the former. One of them is an intense love story-musical, set in a small town, it said.

Rai is currently working on one of the most anticipated films--his next directorial venture with Shah Rukh Khan, which goes on floors this year.

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Online travel firm MakeMyTrip's alternate accommodation platform 'Rightstay' today signed a pact with the Assam Tourism Development Corporation to promote the concept of homestays in the state.

In order to promote local tourism in the state, Assam Tourism Development Corporation (ATDC) intends to encourage organised, community based, environmentally and socially responsible homestays across the region, MakeMyTrip said in a statement.

As per the MoU, Rightstay will lend its expertise to the state's tourism body to jointly promote homestays and enhance tourism in the state through packages for Assam, it added.

Commenting on the development, MakeMyTrip Growth Business Senior Vice President Deepak Tuli said: "We look to grow aggressively in Assam and become the first OTA to heavily promote upcoming regions and homestays in the state."



The state is a travel-friendly destination around the year and MakeMyTrip looks forward to making it one of the top markets for Rightstay, he added.

"The focus area is to encourage rural and semi-urban people to participate in tourism and self-generate income by managing a homestay," ATDC MD Anurag Singh said.

The focus area is to encourage rural and semi-urban people to participate in tourism and self-generate income by managing a homestay, he added.

All homestays registered with the ATDC will receive technical support in the form of inventory management and software applications to ensure seamless booking procedures, from Rightstay, the statement said.

Both the ATDC and Rightstay will also jointly conduct educational and training sessions for registered Homestays on best practices such as hospitality, skill training online usage, content management, operations and expense management, it added.

Rightstay is an independent platform from MakeMyTrip and the application is currently available on Android and web. It provides alternative stay options like villa, residential apartments, home stays and guest houses.

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At least 33 inmates were killed by their rivals at a prison in northern Brazil today, officials said, days after a riot by warring gangs left dozens more dead at another prison.

The government of Roraima state said the situation at the Agricola de Monte Cristo Penitentiary was now "under control."



The latest violence did not appear to be an all-out riot but rather a rapid early morning attack by one group of inmates against another, lasting less than an hour, a local government spokeswoman told AFP.

Most of the killings were carried out with knives, she said. No firearms have been found inside the prison so far.

It is the latest eruption of violence inside Brazil's overcrowded and underfunded jails.

Rights activists have long condemned prison conditions in Brazil, where the justice ministry says 50 per cent more capacity is needed to handle an inmate population swollen by efforts to crack down on a violent and lucrative drug trade.

The latest unrest comes a day after President Michel Temer said the federal government would spend USD 250 million to build at least one new prison in each of Brazil's 26 states.

The announcement came in response to a grisly riot in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, where jailed gang members beheaded and mutilated 56 of their rivals in a 17-hour bloodbath Sunday and Monday.

That was the deadliest prison riot in Brazil since police killed 111 inmates in a crackdown on an uprising at the Carandiru prison in Sao Paulo in 1992.

But Brazil's prisons are often scenes of deadly unrest.

In October, riots at several prisons triggered by fighting between rival gangs killed 18 people, including 10 at Agricola de Monte Cristo.

At the time, the prison held 1,400 inmates -- double its capacity.

The prison holds inmates from the Red Command, a powerful drug gang based in Rio de Janeiro.

It is allied with a local gang called the Family of the North, which authorities say was responsible for the riot in Manaus.

Most of those killed in Manaus were members of a rival gang, the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command.

The riot also enabled 184 inmates to escape.

The states of northern Brazil, which border top cocaine producers Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, are battle zones in the drug trade.

Prisons are often controlled in Brazil by drug gangs, whose turf wars on the outside are also fought out among inmates. Overcrowding exacerbates the problem, activists say.

Brazil's jails hold 622,000 inmates, mostly young black men, according to a 2014 justice ministry report.

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Bad weather conditions today forced new Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat to end his 3-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir on the second day.

Gen Rawat visited forward areas in Akhnoor sector in Jammu district this morning, army sources said.

Due to extreme weather conditions in Kashmir and Ladakh region, he skipped his visit to those areas and flew back to New Delhi, the sources said.

On his maiden visit to Jammu and Kashmir after taking charge, Gen Rawat yesterday reviewed the security situation and favoured a dynamic strategy to handle the "proxy war".

Rawat commended the soldiers for "strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan".

The army chief had begun his day tour by visiting the Udhampur-based Northern Command where he was briefed by Lt Gen Devraj Anbu.

"The army chief chief reviewed the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir and also operational preparedness of Northern Command at a high-level meeting," officials said.

General Rawat lauded the role of the Northern Command in restoring peace and normalcy during the recent unrest, they said.

"We need to evolve a dynamic strategy to handle the proxy war and defeat enemy's nefarious designs in Jammu and Kashmir," the army chief said.

Gen Rawat also flew yesterday to 16 Corps headquarters based in Nagrota and visited some forward areas in Akhnoor and Rajouri sectors where he interacted with troops. Praising the soldiers for responding effectively to ceasefire violations,the army chief has said, "Every soldier of our army plays an important role towards security of the nation because it is the contribution of every soldier that makes the army efficient and strong."



Northern command looks after the operational command of Jammu and Kashmir and Line of Control (LoC), Actual Ground Position Level (AGPL) with Pakistan and Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in Ladakh.

General Rawat was slated to visit Srinagar-based 15 Corps headquarters and forward areas in Kupwara, counter insurgency formation in Anantnag besides 14 Corps in Leh and Siachen Glacier sector during his tour.

He was also scheduled to be visit formations at Kupwara and Anantnag.

Gen Rawat took charge on December 31, succeeding Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag, who retired after 42 years of service.

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India's IT capital is all set to host what is touted as the largest convergence of Indian diaspora, with more than 6,000 delegates from across the worldconfirming their registration to Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD)convention beginning tomorrow.

The 14th edition of the three-day PBD event will be held at the Bangalore International Exhibition Center on the city outskirts with an aim to provide a platform to overseas Indians to engage with the Government on issues of concern to the diaspora and to explore opportunities for investment in India and contribution to the country of their origin.

The event also provides an opportunity to the overseas Indians to network with other overseas Indians residing in various parts of the world.

The convention, being held biennially for the firsttime instead of earlier annual versions, will aim atredefining India's engagement with its 3.12 crore strongdiaspora in diverse spheres, including innovation, start-ups,tourism and education.

According to organisers, a total of 6,346 registrations have been confirmed for PBD 2017 and more than 1500 NRIs and 400 floating NRIs will be a part of the event.

Youth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas with the key focus on innovations and start-ups will be held on January 7.

PrimeMinister Narendra Modi will deliver the keynote address onJanuary 8 and the same day there is a session where ChiefMinisters from eight states are expected to participate.

The convention,which will also host cultural programmes with more than 240 artists performing, will see President Pranab Mukherjee conferring Pravasi Bharatiya Samman awards onJanuary 9.

The Indian origin Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Costa will be the Chief Guest at the PBD, and 36-year-old Vice-President of Suriname Michael Ashwin Satyandre Adhin will be the Special Guest at the Youth PBD.

PBD 2017 has listed as its objectives defining the engagement with the Indian diaspora, to strengthen diaspora engagement and provide a platform for networking with the diaspora, to recognise their contribution to India and know their expectations and concerns and to deepen engagement with young Diasporas to help them know more about their roots.

Massive security and traffic arrangements have beenmade by the state administration for the smooth conduct ofPBD.

The latest wave of economic reforms, including overhaul ofindirect taxes through proposed GST will be projected significantly by the government at the event, that will be attended by a battery of Union Ministers, officials said.

The PBD was launched by the Vajpayee government in 2003



to step up India's engagement with its diaspora and the congregation of NRIs and Persons of India origins had continued as an annual event till 2015.

Last year, the government had decided to make it a biennial event.

January 9 is the main day of PBD as it was on this dayin 1915 that Mahatma Gandhi, the "greatest Pravasi", returned to India from South Africa and led India's freedom struggle.

Topics for discussions at the plenary sessions include - realising India's development vision, partnering with diaspora to accelerate tourism in the country and India as a global health and wellness hub.

The conclave also has provisions for business-to-business meetings.

Karnataka, as a partner state, will have a session on startup eco-system and on investment opportunities in the state.

Industrial Tours are being freely provided for PBD delegates by the state government, which is also offering sightseeing tours at special rates for the delegates.
Hollywood star Vin Diesel says he is blessed to know his "xXx: Return of the Xander Cage" co-star Deepika Padukone.

The 49-year-old-actor, who was in Mexico along with the film's entire cast and crew for its promotions, posted special message on Instagram for the actress as she turned 31.

"Happy birthday to a truly amazing soul. So talented, stunning and regal. Blessed to know you and call you a real friend," Diesel wrote alongside Deepika's poster from "xXx: Return of the Xander Cage".

The action-thriller, which is set to hit the Indian theatres on January 14, will mark Deepika's Hollywood debut.

In fact, Diesel will visit India two days before the film's release to promote it along with "Bajirao Mastaani" star.

D J Caruso, who has helmed the movie, also took to the social media to wish Deepika.

"Happy Birthday @deepikapadukone. You embody Lana Turner w/the grace of Audrey Hepburn and u can kick some ass too," he wrote on Twitter.

Thanking all her fans and friends for their wishes, Deepika, who was also in Mexico for the film's promotion, said, "Mexico City+ One of xXx promotions+ Its My Birthday= What A Truly Amazing Day. Thank you all so much for all the love and wishes."



Deepika donned white-and-green striped maxi dress for the event, while her co-star Diesel opted for white sando and beige colour jacket with denim.

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Bollywood celebrities including Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Karan Johar and Javed Akhtar expressed their shock over veteran actor Om Puri's sudden demise, calling it a huge loss to Indian cinema.

The actor, who gave countless memorable performances in movies of diverse genres, died at his residence here this morning after a massive heart attack. He was 66.

Taking to social media, Puri's former co-stars and friends mourned his death.

Akshay Kumar, who worked with Puri in films like "Aan: Men at Work", "Hera Pheri", "Awara Paagal Deewana" and "OMG - Oh My God!", tweeted, "Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films...Heartfelt condolences to the family. #RIP



Director Karan Johar said in Puri's death cinema had lost a brilliant artist.

"Solid actor....Solid filmography....Immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....Cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist," Johar tweeted.

Actor Anupam Kher, who also worked with Puri in many films, said the actor's death came as a shock to him.

"Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm can't believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened and shocked."



Priyanka Chopra, posted, "The end of an era... The legacy lives on.. RIP #OmPuri."



Veteran scriptwriter-lyricist Javed Akhtar said Puri was not only a great actor but also a brilliant human being.

"It's really a great loss. Wonderful person, great actor and with such impressive body of work right from Satyajit Ray to any commercial Hindi film to films in US and Pakistan. He played all kind of roles.

"Om puri will be missed as a friend. It's a bit shocking at the moment and I'm feeling a bit numb. In the moment all of us are taken aback."



Mahesh Bhatt said, "Goodbye Om! A part of me goes with you today. How can I ever forget those passionate nights we spent together talking about cinema and life."



Shoojit Sircar, tweeted, "RIP Om puri... Interactions with you were always full of life.. You were one of the finest artists we are proud of..

Madhur Bhandarkar, wrote, "Shocked to know that the immensely talented actor #OmPuri passed away. Big loss to our film industry. RIP



While, Riteish Deshmukh, posted, "Shocked beyond words to learn that #OmPuri ji is no more. Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. RIP #HugeLoss.

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Anti-narcotics sleuths have detained a Brazilian woman and an Afghani national for allegedly "swallowing" contraband capsules and acting as couriers for some high quality party drugs during the new year in the national capital.

The two, apprehended few days back, have been admitted to a government hospital here and till now they have ejected 65 and 90 capsules each.

"Both the swallowers do not look inter-connected as of now. We have detained both of them and investigations under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act are ongoing," NCB Deputy Director General R P Singh said here.

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) identified the woman as J Da Silva (38) while the Afghanistan national has been recognised as M Qasem (50).

While Da Silva has ejected 65 capsules of cocaine till now and few more are expected to be extracted further, Qasem has ejected 90 capsules containing heroin after medical procedures, they said.

Officials said the duo will be arrested under NDPS laws once they are discharged from the hospital.

Both were apprehended from the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here when they were arriving from Sao Paulo (Da Silva) and Herat (Qasem) respectively.

The NCB suspects that the duo were allegedly on contract to supply the costly party drugs to various new year parties being held in and around the national capital and is now on the hunt for their associates and contacts here, they said.

They said that the swallow method of drugs smuggling is not easy to detect as it is hard to identify any concealment inside the body.

The duo were apprehended based on some inputs and profiling techniques deployed by the sleuths of the agency in view of the ongoing party season to mark the new year, they said.

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Bye-election to the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat vacated by Congress Punjab president Amarinder Singh will be held on February 4 along with assembly polls in the state, the Election Commission announced today.

The counting will be held on March 11 along with five other states -- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur which are going for assembly polls beginning February 4, the Commission said.

The by-poll was necessitated following the resignation of Amarinder from the Lok Sabha on November 23.

He had earlier announced his resignation to protest the "injustice" meted out to the people of Punjab following the November 10 Supreme Court verdict on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal water sharing agreement which, he and other state Congress leaders have been opposing.

A Commission statement said the notification for the by-poll will be issued on January 11 and January 18 will be the last date of filing nominations. While January 19 is the date set for scrutiny, the last date of withdrawal from the race is January 21.

The by-poll is being held along wit the single-phased assembly polls in the state.

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Over 20 socio-economic organisations, most of them learnt to be affiliated to RSS, are expected to get back their land taken away by erstwhile UPA government with the Union Cabinet recently approving a proposal in this regard.

The proposal of the Urban Development Ministry, cleared by the Cabinet, pertained to restoring land mostly to RSS- affiliated outfits, which based on the recommendations of a two-member committee set up by Modi government to review their cancellations.

The UPA government in 2004 had cancelled the previous NDA government's allotment on the recommendations of a one-member inquiry committee.

"The previous (UPA) government had shown discrimination as it cancelled some allotments while approving others which were favourable to them. The aggrieved parties had made a representation to the Urban Development Ministry which had formed a committee of two members to review the cancellation.

"The Cabinet has approved the committee's suggestion that except few, all the allotments were in order," highly placed sources said.

With the approval of Cabinet, the Urban Development Ministry is expected to present the panel report in the Delhi High Court, where a case is pending on the issue and would seek revocation of cancellations.

Last year, the panel set up to review the UPA government's move to cancel 29 allotments of land had recommended restoring the land to nearly two dozen of them.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government had between 1998-99 and 2004 made 32 allotments to socio-cultural and religious organisations, 22 of them to RSS-affiliated or backed outfits.

However, the UPA government in 2004 cancelled 29 allotments on the grounds that norms were violated in these allotments.
In an apparent bid to pacify senior Congress leader Oommen Chandy, said to be upset with the choice of DCC Presidents in Kerala, AICC Secretary Deepak Babaria today said the former state Chief Minister was a "very tall leader" whose views are considered at national level. "Oommen Chandy is a very tall leader, very respectable leader in the party. His views are considered at the national level also. It is given weightage at the national level," he told reporters here.

He was responding to questions related to issues that have cropped up between Chandy and state Congress President V M Sudheeran following the recent nomination of DCC Presidents in Kerala.

Chandy has kept everyone guessing on whether he would attend the Congress Political Affairs Committee (PAC) meeting scheduled on January 14.

When pointed out that alliance partners of the party in the state including Muslim League and Kerala Congress (Jacob) have expressed unhappiness over the developments in the Congress, Babaria downplayed it saying such issues were part of the political parties.

"Is there no issues in the IUML? Is there no issues in the Kerala Congress?," asked Babaria, who was here today for leading party's protest agitation against demonetisation of high value currency notes.

Earlier this week, in Thiruvananthapuram, AICC observer K V Thangkabalu had also backed Chandy describing him as a senior leader whose presence in state politics cannot be ignored. He had said all decisions regarding the state Congress were being taken after discussions between Chandy, Sudheeran and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China is expected to build a third aircraft carrier, official media said today even as the country constructs its second one at a rapid pace and its first carrier conducted live firing exercises in the disputed South China Sea.

"China may have third aircraft carrier battle groups," state-run People's Daily Online reported quoting military expert Liang Fang.

"At present, China's second aircraft carrier is under construction. In the near future, the Chinese navy is expected to own a third aircraft carrier battle group, capable of safeguarding territorial sovereignty and maritime rights," said Liang.

Liang noted that China is developing its aircraft carrier technology to defend national interests rather than to seek hegemony.

Liang said that Chinese military's combat capability has "grown by leaps and bounds" in the past decade.

The Chinese military recently said that second aircraft carrier is being built at steady pace and according to reports it is expected to be ready this year.

Meanwhile, the first carrier Liaoning, which is a Soviet era refurbished ship, is making waves by holding live firing exercises in the South China Sea as Beijing flexed its muscles ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump taking over the office later this month.

As it gets its carrier fleet ready, China is trying to work out carriers battle groups.

Liang said that although the Chinese aircraft carrier battle group is not comparable with its US counterpart in tonnage or number of aircraft, it nevertheless boasts "stamina and a bright future".

Liang said that, from the perspective of future development, the US military clearly lacks stamina, and the country's insufficient military spending is proof of that.

"In addition, frequent problems with US Navy Super Hornet, F-35C and other carrier-borne fighters have seriously hampered the aircraft carriers' combat capability.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
SAIC HK, a subsidiary of China's SAIC Motor Corporation that has been planning to enter India, has proposed to acquire certain assets of General Motor India's Halol plant in Gujarat.

SAIC HK, through a subsidiary in India which is yet to be incorporated, proposes to acquire certain selected assets of a plant owned by General Motors India in Halol, Gujarat, a filing with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said.

Confirming the development, a GM India spokesperson told PTI: "Discussions with SAIC on the sale of Halol are progressing well. The two parties will continue to work with Governments to secure the necessary approvals. We will share any progress at the appropriate time."



Mergers and acquisitions beyond a certain threshold requires approval from Competition Commission of India (CCI).

SAIC HK has presence in the international trade of automobile and critical parts. It also deals in investment, technical and service trade, training and consulting.

General Motors India manufactures models like Chevrolet Beat, Cruze and Tavera locally and imports models like Captiva and Chevrolet Trailblazer for the Indian market.

It has two manufacturing plants at Halol and Talegaon in Maharashtra.

Last year, General Motors had announced to put on hold its planned USD 1 billion investment in India. It had also announced to review its future product plan for the country due to "unprecedented regulatory uncertainty" and change in customer preferences.

In 2015, the company had announced a turnaround plan for India entailing fresh investment of USD 1 billion and ceasing production at its Halol plant in Gujarat to consolidate manufacturing operations in Maharashtra.

However, later the company said that it would continue production from its Halol plant in Gujarat until March 2016, even as it continues to review future options, including sale of the facility.

The move to cease operations at the plant would have affected 1,100 employees at the plant that has a total annual manufacturing capacity of 1.1 lakh units.

The company's move was reported to have been rejected by the Gujarat government which demanded a concrete settlement plan for the workers.

Giving details about the crash test, Global NCAP said



that the protection offered in Chevrolet Enjoy to the driver's head and chest was poor.

"Passenger's head protection was weak while chest protection was adequate ... The bodyshell was rated as unstable and it was not capable of withstanding any further loadings," it added.

Besides, the child seat in the MPV for the three-year old child was unable to prevent excessive forward movement during the impact, Global NCAP noted.

"The installation instructions on both child seats were insufficient and not permanently attached to the seat. The vehicle was not equipped with a passenger airbag," it added.

On Ford Aspire, the Global NCAP said the protection offered to the driver and passenger's head and neck was good due to the airbag.

"Driver's chest had weak protection and passenger's marginal protection. The car does not have seatbelt pretensioners," it noted.

The bodyshell of the vehicle was rated as unstable and it was not capable of withstanding any further loadings, Global NCAP said.

Queries sent to Ford India seeking comments over the carsh tests remained unanswered.

(REOPEN DCM64)



Later, a Ford India spokesperson said: "With safety being one of the highest priorities in the design of our vehicles, we stay committed to designing and building vehicles that meet or exceed safety requirements for customers in India and across the globe.
The nation's top intelligence officials are making their most detailed and persuasive case yet to President-elect that Russia interfered in this year's US political process.

The officials, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey, are preparing to point to multiple motives for Moscow's alleged meddling as they brief Trump on their classified report today in New York.

President Barack Obama received a briefing on Thursday, and a declassified version of the report is expected to be released at some point.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly questioned intelligence officials' assessments that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats like Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Trump remained dubious about the assertion even on the eve of his intelligence briefing, asking how officials could be "so sure" about the hacking if they had not examined DNC servers. "What is going on?" he wrote on Twitter.

A senior law enforcement official said the FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the importance of obtaining direct access to the servers "only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated." The official said the FBI had to rely on a "third party" for information, but did get access to the material it needed.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous US officials, reported yesterday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.

The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the US intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details were included in the classified report.

Ahead of the briefing, Trump moved to fill out his own intelligence leadership team, tapping former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.

Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after the 9/11 attacks to improve coordination of US spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trump's decision, as well as others who spoke to The Associated Press about intelligence matters involving Trump, were not authorised to discuss the matters publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Coats, a 73-year-old Capitol Hill veteran, served eight years in the House before moving to the Senate in 1989 to take Dan Quayle's place when he became vice president. He stayed in the Senate until 1998, then left to become a lobbyist.
Global warming is replicating conditions that triggered an abrupt sea level rise of several meters in the ocean around Antarctica about 15,000 years ago, a new study has warned.

"The changes that are currently taking place in a disturbing manner resemble those 14,700 years ago," said climate researcher Michael E Weber from University of Bonn in Germany.

At that time, changes in atmospheric-oceanic circulation led to a stratification in the ocean with a cold layer at the surface and a warm layer below.

Under such conditions, ice sheets melt more strongly than when the surrounding ocean is thoroughly mixed.

This is exactly what is presently happening around the Antarctic, researchers said.

"The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface," said Chris Fogwill from the Climate Change Research Centre in Australia.

"At the same time as the surface is cooling, the deeper ocean is warming, which has already accelerated the decline of glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment," said Fogwill.

It appears global warming is replicating conditions that, in the past, triggered significant shifts in the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet.

To investigate the climate changes of the past, the scientists are studying drill cores from the eternal ice. Layer by layer, this frozen "climate archive" reveals its secrets to the experts.

In previous studies, the scientists had found evidence of eight massive melting events in deep sea sediments around the Antarctic, which occurred at the transition from the last ice age to the present warm period.

"The largest melt occurred 14,700 years ago. During this time the Antarctic contributed to a sea level rise of at least three meters within a few centuries," said Weber.

The present discovery is the first direct evidence from the Antarctic continent which confirms the assumed models.

The research team used isotopic analyses of ice cores from the Weddell Sea region, which now flows into the ocean about a quarter of the Antarctic melt.

Through a combination with ice sheet and climate modelling, the isotopic data show that the waters around the Antarctic were heavily layered at the time of the melting events, so that the ice sheets melted at a faster rate.

"The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,700 years ago," said co-author Nick Golledge from the Antarctic Research Centre in New Zealand.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress today asked government to pay 20 per cent interest to farmers on their bank accounts as "compensation" for hardships faced by them in the wake of demonetisation of high value tenders.

"Government should give 20 per cent interest on bank accounts of farmers as compensation for demonetisation distress. We will give voice to the hardships faced by people due to scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes overnight on November 8 last year," state unit Congress president Ashok Chavan said while addressing a gathering in Wardha in east Maharashtra.

He said the farmers and farm labourers are among the "worst sufferers" of demonetisation while citizens too could not withdraw their own money from banks.

Chavan recalled that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had launched her campaign to strengthen the Congress' ideology from Wardha.

Wardha is a sister city for Sevagram, and both were used as major centres for the Independence Movement and have importance place in Gandhian era.

Chavan paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave.

The Congress MP also participated in a morcha to district collectorate.

A memorandum containing demands like complete waiver of crop loan to farmers; to women SHGs; scrapping of commission levied on all online transactions; grant of 20 per cent bonus on the basis of MSP of agricultural produce, release of financial assistance to drought-hit farmers as per the High Court's order, was handed over to the district Collector.

Meanwhile, a 'Jan Akhrosh Morcha' was taken out on the collector's office in neighbouring Yavatmal district against demonetisation and a memorandum was submitted to Collector.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Opposition Congress in Kerala today hit the streets as part of its protest against demonetisation with many senior leaders, including Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, state party chief V M Sudheeran and MP Shashi Tharoor, courting arrest across the state.

The agitation targeting central government establishments was part of the country-wide stir called by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) against the Narendra Modi government's "failure" to resolve the problems faced by the common man following cash crunch due to demonetisation.

MLAs, MPs and AICC representatives led the picketing in front of various central government offices, including head post offices, across the state with thousands of workers taking part in the agitation.

Chennithala and Tharoor were detained when they picketed outside the Reserve Bank of India's Regional Office here, while Sudheeran was arrested in Thrissur.

AICC Secretary Deepak Babria led the protest in front of the BSNL office in Kochi.

Leading the agitation in front the head post office in Kozhikode, former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said he stood firm on his allegation that there was a move to hand over the contract for the printing of plastic notes to a UK-based company which has "reportedly been black-listed".

He also said he would take the legal course if the Centre refused to respond to his charges.

There were reports of a scuffle during the protest when party workers tried to break the police barricade and enter the RBI office premises in the state capital.

"We were on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office, but we were arrested by the police and later released," Tharoor said.

The protests were organised under the aegis of respective District Congress Committees.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two firms have signed a deal for the first commercial exports in half a century from Cuba to the US, a new step in the countries' historic rapprochement.

Cuban company CubaExport signed an agreement to sell charcoal to US firm Coabana Trading for USD 420 a tonne, the communist island's state newspaper Granma said yesterday.

Although a nearly 55-year US trade embargo on Cuba remains in place, the exports are authorized under exceptional measures approved by outgoing US President Barack Obama.

It is a key step in the gradual normalizing of ties that he and Cuban President Raul Castro launched in late 2014.

A first shipment of 40 tonnes of "marabu" vegetable charcoal for burning, made from a local hardwood tree originating in Africa, is due for delivery on January 18, Granma said online.

The Republican-controlled US Congress is reluctant to lift the full embargo on the communist island, whose government is branded a dictatorship by critics. But Obama, who hands over office to Donald Trump on January 20, managed to ease the trade restrictions to allow certain products from private cooperative Cuban farms to be exported.

"This is a wide-reaching agreement for relations between the two countries," the president of Coabana Trading, Scott Gilbert, told reporters after signing the deal in Havana.

"It represents another plank in the bridge between the United States and Cuba."



CubaExport exports between 40,000 and 80,000 tonnes of vegetable charcoal a year, mostly to Europe, Granma said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government today convened the winter session of the Assembly which will sit for a two-day period on January 17 and 18.

It will be the first sitting since Anil Baijal assumed charge as the city's Lt Governor following the surprise resignation of Najeeb Jung.

"As of now the agenda has not been fixed," Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said, making the announcement after the meeting of the Cabinet presided over by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The AAP legislators are expected to raise contentious issues, local matters and those pertaining to the party's rift with BJP, a senior government official said.

The MLAs are generally seen on a collision course against the Centre during every sitting of the House over matters of jurisdiction and also the functionings of the BJP-ruled civic bodies.

The fifth part of the Assembly's fourth session was held on November 15 last year where Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had levelled serious allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The "emergency" session, convened to discuss demonetisation, had witnessed acrimonious scenes where Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta was marshalled out.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi unit of BJP today accused city Health minister Satyendar Jain of "financial irregularities" in land deals and demanded Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal sack him and respond to the charges.

The party accused Jain of indulging in "dubious land deals" by resorting to "irregular means", the charges the Minister refuted and suggested they are part of a political conspiracy.

"People today want a firm statement from CM Arvind Kejriwal on the allegations on Minister Satendra Jain, including of dubious land deals," Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said.

Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said, "CM Kejriwal must remove Health minister Stayendar Jain as he is alleged to be involved in purchase of land through irregular means," he said.

Responding to the allegations, Jain accused the I-T department of "selectively leaking" information on him.

"I am working on Punjab elections where I am a star campaigner. Things like this will give boost to my face value since people in Punjab will see my pictures. It's an exercise for Punjab elections. We are not scared," Jain said when asked about an I-T notice to him last year.

The I-T department had in September issued summons to Jain asking him to appear before it in connection with a tax evasion probe against certain Kolkata-based firms.

Officials had said the department had recovered documents relating to some transactions made by at least three firms and that they had links to Jain.

Jain, however, said he had gone to the I-T department as witness in October, reiterating he is no longer associated with the three companies.

The Minister said he had declared his income in 2013 and 2015 to the Election Commission.

"I was a director in three companies in 2013 but I resigned before contesting elections. The investment of Rs 52 lakh I and my family made from 2007 to 2012 have also been declared," he said.

Gupta claimed the income tax investigations have revealed that Jain was allegedly involved in purchase of land through "irregular means" and demanded Kejriwal sack him.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Joining the nation-wide agitation against demonetisation of high value currency notes, thousands of Congress workers in Kerala today staged protest outside central government offices across the state.

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala courted arrest in front of the Reserve Bank of India regional office here.

The mass agitation was part of the country-wide stir called by All India Congress Committee from booth to national level against the Narendra Modi government's anti-people policies and its failure to resolve the problems faced by common man, hit by demonetisation.

Prominent leaders, MLAs, MPs and AICC representatives led the picketing in front of various central government offices, including head-post offices in the districts.

A large number of workers, led by Chennithala, staged demonstration at the RBI office here in the state capital.

Senior district leaders, including MP Shashi Tharoor and MLA V S Sivakumar also took part in the protests.

Hundreds of party workers from various parts of the district took out a march to the apex bank office in the city.

There were reports of scuffle during the protest when party workers tried to break the police barricade and enter the office premises.

Veteran Congress leader and former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy launched the agitation in front of the head-post office in Kozhikode, while KPCC president V M Sudheeran led the protest in Thrissur district.

AICC secretary Deepak Babria too held the protest before the BSNL office in Kochi.

The protests were organised under the aegis of respective District Congress Committees.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Defence Research and Development Organisation is planning to develop a major facility in Madhya Pradesh's Morena district on a vast area of over 900 hectares, for which land acquisition process is on, officials said.

"We have earmarked 930 hectares (about 2,300 acres) of land to DRDO for setting up its centre at Kailaras tehsil. The total area includes 34 hectares of private land and some forest land," Morena District Collector Vinod Kumar Sharma told PTI over phone.

When asked about the project, Regional PRO of Hyderabad-based DRDO's Directorate of Public Interface, Siddharth Thakur said, "I can't disclose much because of the sensitive nature of the information. But, we are procuring the land in Morena for research activities".

Thakur said the process of procuring land is underway.

"I will be able to say once everything comes on papers," he said.

Morena Collector said part of the land, being procured by the DRDO, belongs to the forest department and it has been handed over to the revenue department.

Besides, state Principal Secretary (Revenue) Arun Kumar Pandey said a proposal (for land allotment to DRDO) would soon be put before the Cabinet for discussion and approval.

"We don't know much about their activities. We are only providing land to DRDO. They would determine the use of this land according to their needs," Pandey said.

State Revenue Minister Umashankar Gupta also told PTI that the government is providing land to DRDO.

"We are providing land according to the requirement of DRDO. The process would soon be over," he said.

Another revenue department official said teams of senior DRDO officials have already conducted several inspections of the site.

"The hilly and forest terrain being given to DRDO is situated at Badhareta village in Kailaras tehsil," he said.

Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) under DRDO is located in Gwalior, which had developed the bio-digesters, used in train toilets, to solve human waste disposal problem.

In addition, the technology was used to decompose biological waste generated by soldiers deployed in high-altitude regions, such as Siachen and Ladakh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) today evinced keen interest in exploring business opportunities in India and further strengthen trade between the two countries.

A high-powered delegation of the ICCC, led by Bonnie Crombie, Mayor of city of Mississauga, was welcomed here by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCC&I).

The ICCC delegation intends to visit seven cities -- Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad and New Delhi -- to explore the areas of cooperation.

Speaking on the occasion, Crombie sought enhanced FDI, while exploring business opportunities in West Bengal.

BCC&I President Sutanu Ghosh emphasised the potential for business collaboration between Canada and West Bengal.

During the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada in April 2015, both sides agreed to elevate bilateral relations to a strategic partnership, Ghosh said.

Over the years, an array of institutional mechanisms has been put in place to promote bilateral cooperation. Both nations are also members of multilateral forums such as G-20, ARF and CHOGM, he said.

Canada is home to over 1.2 million persons of Indian origin (PIOs), who comprise more than 3 per cent of its population. The highly educated, affluent and industrious PIOs, one of the largest immigrant groups in Canada, are well integrated with the mainstream and serve as a strong bridge between the two nations, Ghosh said.

Over the past decade, Canada and India have witnessed remarkable growth in two-way trade and investment, people-to-people ties and bilateral cooperation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kerala-based social enterprise Eram Scientific Solutions, a part of the over USD 2-billion Eram Group that has pioneered the concept of e-toilets in the country, is planning to install 1,500 more such facilities by the end of this year in collaboration with a host of corporates, including the software major TCS.

The Saudi Arabia-based Eram Group, which has over 40 operating companies in a host of sectors, has already installed over 2,000 of e-toilets in 20 states since its inception five years ago and the drive got a major push with the Swachh Bharat campaign.

"We have joined hands with corporates to install e- toilets in various states as part of their CSR initiatives. The latest such collaboration that we have entered into is with Tata Consultancy Services under which we will install over 600 e-toilets in schools across Andhra and Tamil Nadu.

"Our target is to have over 1,500 additional e-toilets installed across the country by the end of 2017 taking the total to over 3,500 units," Eram Group chairman and managing director Siddeek Ahamed told PTI over phone.

The company is also working with several smart city projects to provide the plug and play unmanned and fully- automated smart public sanitation solutions, he added.

The Saudi Arabia-based Eram Group has 40 operating companies spanning 16 countries and is credited for introducing the concept of e-toilets in the country way back in 2011 through its social venture Eram Scientific Solutions, which is a leader in sanitation technology research, said Ahamed.

The company has already installed over 2,000 e-toilets in Assam, Andhra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal, Jharkhand, J&K, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, MP, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telengana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and UP.

Following the Swachh Bharat campaign launched two years ago, the company has won 'toilet titan award' from Prime Minister Modi last year.

"One of the key targets for this year is to develop full-fledged commercial e-toilet model integrated with waste treatment facilities which can recycle and regenerate the water and energy to make the e-toilets completely off-grid," Ahamed said.

Eram Scientific has collaborations with the Bill and



Melinda Gates Foundation, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), University of South Florida, Duke University, Cranfield University, Defence R&D Organization, among others, to continuously innovate on the sanitation challenges, he said.

The company has also developed she-toilets with special focus on hygiene for women and girls, he said, adding the company has also developed the world's cheapest e-toilets for girl students.

"There is a heightened awareness about sanitation because of the Swachh Bharat campaign, prompting several municipalities to stem the scourge of open defecation," said the NRI businessman who has diversified into different areas from oil and gas to education, from healthcare to IT, from construction to travel.

Ahamed said Eram's e-toilets has features suh as GPRS connectivity for online tracking, sensor-based electricity and water conservations, coin-validated entry, voice guidance etc.

These e-toilets are also completely automated with features like automatic pre-and after flush, exhaust fans, and automatic platform cleaning and lights. They also have a mobile app that helps the user to locate the nearest e-toilet and helps authorities to monitor the units.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh today alleged the arrest of 25 people for trespassing into Fazilka prison to allegedly meet inmate Shiv Lal Doda, considered to be close to Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, exposed the "nexus" between the Badal family and criminals.

"The state is in the grip of total lawlessness and as per the DGP's own admission as many as 52 armed gangs are on the loose," Amarinder said and declared that he would "expose and punish" the Badal family in the Nabha jailbreak case and the Fazilka prison episode.

Punjab Congress vice president Sunil Kumar Jakhar, who led a delegation of state Congress leaders to submit a memorandum over the issue to state Chief Electoral Officer V K Singh, alleged the Badal government is influencing the probe into the incident and soft-pedaling the case.

"Police are trying to save the culprits by distorting facts. They are lying that the meeting was held in the superintendent's office in Fazilka sub-jail," he added.

In its memorandum, Congress demanded immediate dismissal of the Badal government in the light of the Fazilka sub-jail incident and conduct of the Assembly polls under President's Rule to prevent any interference or disturbance in the poll process.

The party also demanded handing over of the investigation into the case to a central agency.

"The incident has exposed the nefarious link of the ruling SAD with criminals in Punjab. It once again showed that free and fair election in the state is not possible under the Badal-led government," Jakhar said.

He alleged the people who entered the jail, had either forced their entry, which amounts to criminal trespass, or they had bribed their way into the compound, in which case, proper charges under Prevention of Corruption Act should be framed against them.

The entry showed complicity of higher-ups in the incident, Jakhar alleged and asked why Doda's name was not mentioned in the FIR.

He also demanded that call records of the DC and the DSP concerned be made public to find out how many times Sukhbir had called and intervened since the raid.

Congress in the memorandum urged the EC, which had on Wednesday ordered the Fazilka prison raid, to take the matter to its logical conclusion and place the state under President's Rule so that elections can be held without disturbance.

Asking why the SSP had not been involved in the raid,



Jakhar said if the poll panel had no faith in the SSP then the situation on the ground is really bad.

In its memorandum to the state Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab Congress expressed apprehension that the meeting in the jail premises was held to plan large-scale disruption during the upcoming elections and the issue assumes more significance in the light of the Nabha jail-break incident.

The party also alleged that photographs showed Doda was being provided all modern facilities, including AC, radiator, bed, carpet in the prison, from where he appeared to be conducting his illegal business.
Ferry Craft Manohar was inducted into assets of the Commodore of the Yard division by Vice Admiral Ravneet Singh, NM, Chief of Staff, Western Naval Command here.

The induction ceremony was conducted at Naval Dockyard Mumbai yesterday, an official release issued this evening said.

Ferry Craft Manohar, which can carry 250 personnel, has been built by M/s Shalimar Works Ltd and overseen by Warship Overseeing Team (Kolkata).

It is equipped with modern state of equipment and machinery as well as modern seating system. The ferry has also been provided with a latest navigation equipment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seeking support from states to boost shipments, exporters body FIEO today asked them to consider extending market assistance benefits on the lines of central government schemes.

Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President S C Ralhan said that states have a fundamental role to play in promoting India's exports as all factors of production are within the jurisdiction of the states.

"We would urge the states that besides, the marketing assistance available under various central government schemes, states may consider introducing similar schemes particularly for sectors having export potential," he said in a statement.

He also said that exporters need support of the states so that they do not face the liquidity problem under the Goods and Services Tax.

"The merchant exporters, who at present avail exemptions through various forms, may be given the same facility under GST. We have many meetings with the central government but they feel it will be possible only if the states agree to the same as exports are subject to IGST which has both central GST and state GST component," he added.

Further, Ralhan said that as Indian roads carry nearly 65 per cent cargo against the global trend where railway is the major contributor, states should focus on improving the last mile connectivity of major exporting hubs to ICDs and ports.

"Quality of road including their load bearing capacity may be upgraded for smooth transit of export goods," he said.

The top five states that performed well in 2015-16 in exports are - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

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US First Lady has selected 16-year-old Indian-American Swetha Prabakaran to serve in the inaugural Student Advisory Board of an education campaign which seeks to provide educational opportunities for teenagers in America.

Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for 'Better Make Room' campaign's Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences.

The board members will be traveling to the White House on Friday to attend Michelle's School Counselor of the Year Ceremony.

Born in Indianapolis, she is among 17 students selected by the White House to serve on 'Better Make Room' Student Advisory Board. The inaugural Board has 12 high school students and five college students.

Swetha, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, is the founder and CEO of Everybody Code Now!, a non-profit body working to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.

She is the only Indian-American in the list.

Two-thirds of the Board members are, or will be, the first in their families to attain a postsecondary degree.

"As proven leaders, organisers, changemakers, and innovators, these students will help the country achieve President (Barack) Obama's North Star goal, that our nation will once again lead the world in college completion rates," Better Make Room said in a statement.

Founded by Michelle, the board will work to create a college-going, college-persisting and college-graduating culture at their schools while connecting fellow students for any information and resources they need.

"I am deeply honoured to be able to serve on this board. Creating a college-going and college-graduating culture among youth is something we have worked to encourage through Everybody Code Now!, and I am extremely excited to share this passion with even more students.

"I look forward to working with The First Lady's Reach Higher Initiative and my fellow Better Make Room Student Advisory members to encourage more students to pursue higher education," Swetha said.

Also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, Swetha was honoured as a 2015 White House Champion of Change. She was also named to the Literacy Association's 2016 '30 Under 30'.
Republican Representative Paul Ryan was among those piling on when President Barack Obama came under fire several years ago for reading some of his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receiving them in-person.

"I have a hard time comprehending that, because the primary job of the commander in chief is to keep the country safe," Ryan said in an October 2014 interview on Fox Channel.

"And you need to get from your intelligence community, your defence community, especially when we have troops in harm's way, what's going on."



Yet now, as President-elect Donald Trump refuses daily intelligence briefings, questions US spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trump's back.

Far from strongly defending the US intelligence community, they're siding with the new leader of their party, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, unfailingly supports the military and joined with European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Asked at a press briefing yesterday whether he had full confidence in US intelligence agencies, now-Speaker Ryan offered a tepid endorsement that began and ended on a note of criticism.

"Well, they don't always get everything right. We've seen that clearly," Ryan said. "But I do have faith that our men and women in our intelligence community are doing an incredible job, sacrificing for our country. But there's always room for improvement."



Earlier yesterday, in an interview with WTAQ radio in Wisconsin, Ryan passed up the chance to distance himself from Trump's elevation of Assange in a tweet earlier this week, when Trump cited Assange's claim that Russia had not been the source of Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks revealed.

Instead, even while criticising Assange, Ryan defended Trump, saying that what the president-elect is "rightfully concerned about is partisans are trying to use the Russian hacking incident to...Call into question the legitimacy of his victory.

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To attract more companies to set shop in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), a relaxed regulatory framework that exempts such entities from CSR norms for five years and various other requirements.

A first of its kind, IFSC is being set up in Gujarat as part of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Among others, any financial institution in the centre would treated as a non- resident Indian entity located outside India.

The Corporate Affairs Ministry has now come with notifications on exemptions to specified IFSC public and private companies. Separate notifications have been issued for private and public firms set up in the IFSC.

Under the Companies Act, 2013, public companies are those having a paid-up share capital of at least Rs 5 lakh while private ones are those with a minimum paid-up share capital of Rs 1 lakh.

According to officials, IFSC is considered as a foreign territory and the relaxations have been extended to attract more companies into the centre.

As per the Act, certain class of profitable companies are required to shell out at least two per cent of their three- year annual average net profit towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.

The Ministry said Section 135, which pertains to CSR, would not be applicable to specified IFSC public company for five years.

The entities should have the suffix of 'IFSC' or 'International Financial Service Company' as part of their name.

Certain class of companies established in the IFSC would not required to seek approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for following a different financial year than the April-March period.

"In case of a specified IFSC public company, which is a subsidiary of a foreign company, the financial year of the subsidiary may be same as the financial year of its holding company and approval of the tribunal shall not be required," the Ministry said.

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Amid persisting demand for bullet proof vests and helmets, the government is looking at the possibility of encouraging home-made light weight body armour to provide comfort to army and para-military personnel while fighting terrorists and extremists.

In this direction, the Prime Minster's Office (PMO) has asked the NITI Aayog to prepare a roadmap for "incentivising" manufacturing of light weight body armours within India, according to a senior government official.

NITI Aayog has consulted stakeholders like industries which are engaged in research as well as para military forces and armed forces, the official added.

The idea has been mooted apparently because the bullet proof vests and helmets in use currently by the Indian forces are very heavy, causing a lot of discomfort and leaving the personnel at a disadvantage during an encounter with heavily- armed terrorists.

Though India is a major producer and exporter of body armour, its own security forces are many a time deprived of such equipment, particularly the light weight ones.

As per an estimate, there is a requirement of over 50,000 bullet proof kits in India's police forces.

According to some reports, Indian firms export bulletproof vests and helmets that protect troops to over 230 forces in over 100 countries.

Indian companies like Kanpur-based MKU and Tata Advanced Materials export body armour to armed forces around the world.

If the light weight bullet proof vests and helmets are produced in bulk within the country, it will ensure low cost supplies and end to the endless wait for foreign vendors to supply the equipment.

According to reports, India exports bullet proof vests and helmets to British, German, Spanish and French armies, and police forces from Japan to the US.

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Drug firm Granules India today said it has received 11 observations from Portugal's health authority INFARMED for its manufacturing facility located at Gagillapur in Telangana.

INFARMED had conducted a renewal inspection of the facility.

"In this respect, the company has received the inspection report with 11 observations," Granules India said in a regulatory filing.

The plant manufactures pharmaceutical formulation intermediates (PFIs) and finished dosages.

The company said it has initiated necessary steps to address the observations of the inspection agency and will submit its response with a corrective and preventive action plan within the stipulated time.

Besides, the drug firm said, it will also be requesting the INFARMED for re-inspection of the Gagillapur facility at the earliest.

"The company is committed to comply with all the required regulatory requirements and follow the best practices of the industry," it said.

Shares of Granules India today ended at Rs 112.25 apiece on the BSE, up 0.31 per cent from previous close.

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Greatship (India) Ltd (GIL), a wholly-owned-arm of Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd, will acquire complete ownership of its Singapore subsidiary, Greatship Global Energy Services Pte.

"Board of Directors of Greatship (India) Limited (GIL), a wholly owned-subsidiary of the company (Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd), at its meeting held on January 6, 2017 approved acquiring full ownership of its Singapore subsidiary, Greatship Global Energy Services Pte Ltd (GGES)," Great Eastern Shipping said in a filing to BSE.

GIL currently owns a partial stake in GGES, with the rest being held by Greatship Global Holdings Ltd, Mauritius (GGHL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of GIL, the filing said.

The proposed acquisition, which would be subject to requisite statutory approvals, is expected to have only a very marginal (if any) impact on cash flow, the filing said.

The proposed acquisition does not offer any benefit to the promoters, promoter group companies in any way.

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Gunmen killed nine Shiite Hazara miners in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan today, officials said, in the latest attack against ethnic minorities.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the killings in the remote district of Tala Wa Barfak, but the government blamed Islamic State jihadists who are making steady inroads into Afghanistan.

"Nine coalminers were killed by unknown gunmen in Tala wa Barfak. They were heading home when their vehicle were stopped by gunmen," district governor Faiz Mohammad Amiri told AFP.

The governor of central Bamiyan province, apparently where the coalminers were from, confirmed the incident.

The rise of the Islamic State group has raised the spectre of sectarian discord in Afghanistan, something that the Sunni-majority country has largely been spared despite decades of war.

Until a few months ago IS was largely confined to the eastern province of Nangarhar bordering Pakistan, where it is notorious for brutality including beheadings despite a US-backed offensive against the group.

But the government this week said the group was steadily expanding into other provinces.

Around 2,000 Shiite Muslims in western Afghanistan staged a protest on Tuesday against growing sectarian attacks by the group and demanded protection from the government.

Last year Afghanistan witnessed a wave of attacks on Shiites claimed by IS, which considers Shiite Muslims apostates.

At least 14 Shiites were killed in October in a powerful blast at a mosque in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, hours after gunmen targeted Shiite worshippers in a shrine in Kabul and killed 18 people.

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British Indian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha today expressed regret that Om Puri will not get to see her latest film 'Viceroy's House' which he had finished shooting before his demise today.

The film, which is set for release this year, is a historical drama set in 1947 - the year of India's Independence - capturing the true story of the last days of British rule.

"A terrible, terrible loss. It is just so sad. For him to watch the film was going to be a great pleasure for me. To sit down with him and have a drink after and chat about it. I was looking forward to going to India and showing him the film," said Chaddha, director of the film which also stars British actor High Bonneville and Hollywood actress Gillian Anderson.

"He was so excited when he got the script; he was very excited to be in a film about Independence 35 years after having been in Richard Attenborough's 'Gandhi'. On set, he was very exuberant and very mischievous but also very mindful of the significance of these events," said the UK-based filmmaker behind box-office hits like 'Bhaji on the Beach' and 'Bend it Like Beckham'.

She also recalled how Puri always "relished the idea" of being on set.

"He made shooting with him such a pleasurable experience than just the hard grind. He had such an amazing talent and career...Such commitment to his craft and a consummate professional," she said.

'Viceroy's House' will be among Om Puri's last film releases after he passed away from a sudden heart attack at his home in Mumbai on Friday.

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Former "Lost" actor Harold Perrineau has landed a major recurring role in "Criminal Minds."



He will play Calvin Shaw, a former FBI agent incarcerated for killing one of his informants, reported Variety.

Perrineau's casting comes after Thomas Gibson was fired from the show following an on-set altercation with a producer.

Prior to Gibson's highly-publicized exit, longtime star Shemar Moore also left the show.

However, the show also brought on many new series regulars for the new season, including "Criminal Minds" alum actors Paget Brewster, Adam Rodriguez and Aisha Tyler, who was upped to a regular role.

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Disapproving of the "fight" between the Delhi Assembly Speaker and the Centre over the posting of a bureaucrat, the on Friday said such matters should be resolved amicably without coming to court.

The Speaker, Ram Niwas Goel, has challenged the then Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung's order repatriating Delhi Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara, an officer belonging to Newsreader-cum-Translator (Telugu) cadre, to the All India Radio (AIR), his parent organisation. However, the Speaker had refused to relieve him.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, before whom the matter was listed, said, "A Speaker coming to court is an extraordinary circumstance. This should not be thrashed out in court. He is not such an officer that two governments (Delhi and Centre) should fight over him. Why cannot it be resolved amicably without either party coming to court."



The court issued the notice to the Centre, the bureaucrat and Delhi government, which was made a party in the matter today, and sought their reply by the next date of hearing on January 17.

The Centre, meanwhile, agreed with the court's suggestion not to insist on repatriation of the bureaucrat till the next date.

The Speaker had contended that as he also holds a constitutional office, the LG cannot repatriate the Assembly Secretary without his concurrence.

Goel, in his plea, has also challenged the memorandums issued by AIR to Suryadevara directing him to join his parent organisation immediately failing which he will be treated to be on "unauthorised absence".

The bureaucrat, who has served in the office of the Lok Sabha Speaker for five years and that of the Rajya Sabha Chairman for over six years, was appointed to the post of Delhi Assembly Secretary in July 2015 for a year, on expiry of which AIR had directed him to return.

When the Speaker refused to relieve him and sought his extension for another two more years, AIR turned it down and thereafter, the LG ordered his repatriation.

Despite the LG's order, the Speaker refused to relieve the bureaucrat.

AIR had also issued a show cause notice to the bureaucrat on why action for "misconduct" should not be initiated against him over a newspaper article written by him in June  'Neither Office, Nor Profit'  finding it "critical" of the Centre, which is in "violation of the Conduct Rules".

This too has been challenged by Goel in his plea, but the court said this issue has to be taken up by the bureaucrat himself and not the Speaker.
Disapproving of the tussle over posting of a central government official in the Delhi Assembly, the Delhi High court today said such matters should be resolved amicably without coming to the court.

"A Speaker coming to court is an extraordinary circumstance. This should not be thrashed out in court. He is not such an officer that two governments (Delhi and the Centre) should fight over him. Why cannot it be resolved amicably without either party coming to court," Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said.

He made the observations during hearing of a plea by Delhi Legislative Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel who has challenged the then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung's order repatriating Delhi Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara, an officer belonging to Newsreader-cum-Translator (Telugu) cadre, to the All India Radio (AIR), his parent organisation.

However, the Speaker had refused to relieve him.

The court issued notice to the Centre, the bureaucrat and the Delhi government, which was made a party in the matter today, and sought their reply by the next date of hearing on January 17.

The lawyer representing the Centre agreed with the court's suggestion not to insist on repatriation of the bureaucrat till the next date of hearing.

The Speaker had contended that as he also holds a constitutional office, the LG cannot repatriate the Assembly secretary without his concurrence.

Goel, in his plea, has also challenged the memorandums issued by AIR to Suryadevara directing him to join his parent organisation immediately failing which he will be treated to be on "unauthorised absence".

The bureaucrat, who has served in the office of the Lok Sabha Speaker for five years and that of the Rajya Sabha Chairman for over six years, was appointed to the post of Delhi Assembly secretary in July 2015 for a year, on expiry of which AIR had directed him to return.

When the Speaker refused to relieve him and sought his extension for another two more years, AIR turned it down and thereafter, the LG ordered his repatriation.

Despite the LG's order, the Speaker refused to relieve the bureaucrat.

AIR had also issued a show cause notice to the bureaucrat on why action for "misconduct" should not be initiated against him over a newspaper article written by him in June -- 'Neither Office, Nor Profit' -- finding it "critical" of the Centre, which is in "violation of the Conduct Rules".

This too has been challenged by Goel in his plea, but the court said this issue has to be taken up by the bureaucrat himself and not the Speaker.

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Vedanta Group firm Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) has got environment clearance for its Rs 1,200 crore Zawar Mines expansion project in Rajasthan.

The world's second largest zinc producer wants to expand the production capacity of Lead-Zinc and ore beneficiation at its Zawar Group of underground mines located in Sarada district.

"The Environment Ministry has examined the HZL's proposal. Based on the recommendations of the expert advisory committee, the ministry has given the environment clearance (EC) for expansion of production capacity of its Zawar group of underground mines," a senior government official said.

The cost of the expansion project is estimated to be at Rs 1,200 crore. The EC to the project is subject to certain conditions, the official said.

The green nod to HZL for the project was given on January 5, the official added.

As per the proposal, the production capacity of both Lead-Zinc and Ore beneficiation will be increased from 1.5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 4 MTPA.

The Zawar group of mines in Rajasthan, the oldest Lead-Zinc mines in the country, is spread over an area of 3,620 hectare and had reserves of 13.71 million tonnes and resource of 73.67 million tonnes as on April 1, 2015.

Although the present production capacities of zinc are sufficient to meet the domestic requirement, the company wants to exploit Lead-Zinc deposits to meet long-term demand.

Udaipur-based HZL has its operations in exploration, mining, ore processing, smelting and refining of zinc, lead and silver. It is also a major producer of sulphuric acid, as a by-product of lead-zinc metal processing. HZL also has interest in wind and thermal power generation.

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An illicit liquor manufacturing unit was busted and two persons were arrested at Badagaon here today, police said.

Mannu and Keshav were arrested and nearly 300 litre of hooch was seized from the spot. Also 20 quintal of raw material used for preparing hooch was destroyed, they said.

In another incident, two alleged cattle smugglers were arrested during vehicle checking on National Highway 2 under Rohaniya police station area yesterday.

Acting on a tip-off, police stopped a truck and seized 15 cattle which were being smuggled to West Bengal from Fathepur, Station Officer Ajay Kumar Singh said.

Two persons have been arrested in this connection and the truck was also seized, the police officer said.

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India-based auto parts manufacturers have done very well in the past decade but a comparatively low productivity is holding India back, according to a World Bank report.

"India has done very well in the past decade but has a distance to travel before it can fully contend with other major global exporters in the auto sector.

"...Holding India - and South Asia - back is its comparatively low productivity in the automotive sector," the multilateral lending agency said in a report titled 'South Asia's Turn Policies to Boost Competitiveness and Create the Next Export Powerhouse'.

With more than 19 million jobs connected directly and indirectly to the automotive sector, India is the South Asian leader in that industry, the World Bank noted.

India-based auto parts manufacturers have acquired the technical and managerial skills from leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) established in India and a growing ability to meet the needs of disparate and discerning customers in competitive export markets, it pointed out.

The report said a few leading global automotive parts manufacturers have already moved their research and development (R&D) centres to India - such as Bosch -- which conducts most of its global R&D with 15,000 workers in Bangalore. Others - including BMW, Mercedes, Renault-Nissan, Volvo, GM, Ford and Honda - are gaining the confidence to do the same soon.

"As they do, there is likely to be further growth and sophistication in the country's related electronics, machining and tooling sectors, as well," the multilateral lending agency said.

As per the report, India is the world's sixth largest auto producer by volume, but it owns less than 1 per cent of global export markets compared with more than 3 per cent for China, 4.5 per cent for Korea and 7 per cent for Mexico.

"The average auto firm in India exported only 5 per cent of its total sales, compared to 16 per cent in China," it said.

The average labour productivity of 500 automotive firms surveyed in India by the World Bank was less than one-third the level in China, with Pakistan trailing further behind.

Also, relatively few of India's OEMs operate at the industry standard for efficiency of 100,000 units per model, which significantly trails levels in competitor countries, the World Bank said.

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Science and faith went hand-in-hand for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, student delegates and scientists attending the Indian Science Congress (ISC) here when many of them took a break from the event to seek the blessings of Lord Balaji.

Apart from students, senior scientists and bureaucrats, Andhra Pradesh chief N Chandrababu Naidu, Union minister Harsh Vardhan and his deputy Y S Chowdary also visited the hill shrine to seek the blessings of Sri Venkateswara.

The Indian Science Congress Association had made special provisions so that delegates could visit Tirumala hill, the temple of Lord Balaji, also known as Sri Venkateswara.

Over 4000 delegates are expected to visit the temple by the time the ISC ends.

According to Suresh Reddy, convenor of the special desk formed to arrange a trip to Tirumala in association with the Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanams (TTD), there were 1,026 VIP bookings have been made for special darshan of the Lord Balaji between January 3 and 7.

Around 12,000 delegates are attending the yearly science carnival.

"A VIP booking costs Rs 500 while a normal booking costs Rs 300. By tomorrow, some 3,300 people are expected to visit the temple under normal bookings category. However, the number could be much more as several delegates have made their own arrangements to visit the shrine," Reddy, a chemistry professor at the Sri Venkatestwara University where the ISC is being held.

Reddy, who was barely able to keep his cool due to large number of queries and making arrangements for darshan for VIP guests, said "I have forgotten my chemistry over the last four days".

The TTD also made special provisions for darshan for the ISC delegates.

Unlike other pilgrims, who get only three ladoos if they buy a Rs 300 ticket, norm was relaxed for ISC delegates who are getting an additional ladoo.

Apart from it, Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Service (APRTC) is offering free bus ride to delegates from the university to bus station that takes pilgrims further up to the temple.

"The TTD also made provisions of opening a counter that offers Balaji calendars and dairies. Getting Balaji diaries and calendars is so difficult that by February Rs 75 calender costs Rs 500 in black," Reddy added.

However, there were delegates who preferred to take an arduous route to the temple by climbing up the hill.

22-year-old Mayur Darade, a student of Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra and his classmates have decided to climb up the hill.

"The respect and feeling you get when one climbs up the hill is different," said Darade.

"Pilgrims climbing up the hill get one ladoo free. Plus, they can buy more ladoos, something one can not do if they buy a ticket and take darshan. The ladoo is pricessless," said Mangesh Garad, Darade's classmate.

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The Delhi High Court on Friday "left it open" for the industrial tribunal, which is hearing former TERI chief R K Pachauri's plea against internal complaints committee's findings on him in a sexual harassment case, to proceed further and decide the appeal as per the law.

"We are, therefore, of the view that it would be appropriate to leave it open to the Industrial Tribunal-I to proceed further and decide the appeal following due process of law subject to further orders in this petition. It is open to both the parties to raise all the grounds as permissible under law before the tribunal and the same be considered and determined in accordance with the law," a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said.

"We make it clear that the pendency of this writ petition shall not preclude the tribunal to proceed with the appeal pending on its file and to pass an appropriate order in accordance with the law on its own merit," it said.

The bench further said, "We also make it clear that the interim order dated May 17, 2016, shall continue and the final order if any passed by the Industrial Tribunal in the appeal filed by the respondent No.5 (Pachauri) shall not be given effect to except with the permission of this court."

In its 2016 interim order, the bench had said that order, if any, passed by the tribunal in the appeal shall not be given any effect.

The court's order came on a petition by a woman, a former TERI employee, who has alleged that The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) had not acted against Pachauri as per recommendations of an internal complaints committee (ICC) in connection with her sexual harassment complaint.

The high court said it is keeping the writ petition pending as vires of Rule 11 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Rules 2013, is under challenge.

It said that the main petition would come up for hearing in April this year.
New industrial units will begin production in Madhya Pradesh in next six months, said Industries Minister Rajendra Shukla here today even as he denied that note ban has derailed investments in the state.

"Post-demonetisation is a temporary phase and thus conclusion shouldn't be drawn over its effects. Industrial units with huge investment are going to start production in next four to six months in Madhya Pradesh," Shukla, who also happens to be Commerce Minister told reporters after inaugurating Industrial Engineering Expo 2017 here.

Besides, he said that construction of food processing unit of Patanjali Ayurved promoted by Yoga guru Ramdev at Pithampur in Dhar district, is going to be taken up shortly.

He said that the construction work of Hindustan Coca Cola beverage unit in Hoshangabad district and Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited's factory in Jhabua district is expected to begin soon as well.

The Industries Minister said that MP exports were Rs 40,000 crore annually adding that to enhance it the state has demanded from the Centre an air cargo facility at Indore.

He said the state has also demanded a reserved cargo point at Jawaharlal Nehru port in Navi Mumbai for shipping goods manufactured in MP, abroad.

"Demonetisation has put a check on black money, which is going to rev up government revenue collection. And this will enable government to give a fillip to development," Shukla said.

Dismissing Congress' charge that junking of old high denomination currency notes has curtailed employment generation avenues by 28 per cent, Shukla said the allegations made by the Opposition were baseless.

They were opposing demonetisation due to political compulsion, he contended.

He said that under the previous Congress regime (before 2003), the state was considered as BIMARU (laggard).

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Italy has expelled a Tunisian man accused of religious extremism and befriending a jailed would-be foreign fighter.

The Interior Ministry said the 26-year old, identified by Italian newspapers as Marouan Mathlouthi, was sent back to Tunisia yesterday.

The ministry said he had befriended another Tunisian from the same city, Ravenna, who was arrested in 2015 on terrorism- related charges because of alleged plans to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria.

A ministry statement said Mathlouthi had jihadist propaganda on him and had written on his Facebook page: "I don't know if I should be good or stage a massacre, I have to think about it."



The expulsion, the second of the year, brings to 134 the number of suspected extremists expelled by Italy since January 2015.

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Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea in response to the placing of a comfort-woman statue in front of its consulate in the Korean city of Busan.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (yoh-shee-hee-deh soo-gah) said Friday that both the ambassador in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan would be temporarily recalled.

Many Korean and other women in Asia were forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the "comfort-woman" system.

Japan and South Korea reached an agreement to resolve their differences over the issue in late 2015, but some South Koreans have continued to protest. A comfort-woman statue has remained standing in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, and a similar one was put up in Busan recently.

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Kerala government today asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to supply Rs 1,500 crore cash to the cooperative sector as first tranche to ensure their smooth functioning in the aftermath of demonetisation of high valued currency notes.

Responding to the request made by State Minister for Cooperation and Tourism Kadakampally Surenderan, the RBI assured to provide an amount of Rs 200 crore immediately.

The request was made to RBI Regional Director (Kerala) S M Narasimha Swamy during a meeting held at the Minister's office here.

The RBI Director assured the state that an amount of Rs.200 crore would be released as first instalment and more currency would be supplied as and when the availability of notes increased.

The apex bank was fully aware of the role played by the cooperatives of Kerala banking sector in rural areas, a release said here.

The state government wanted the RBI to take steps to provide more funds to carry out the transactions of customers of primary agriculture cooperative societies and relax the limit fixed for withdrawal of cash by primary societies.

It also wanted relaxation in the nine per cent capital adequacy ratio required to be maintained by cooperative banks in the wake of crisis faced by the sector due to demonetisation.

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Tributes poured in for Om Puri with a galaxy of political leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi condoling the demise of the veteran actor, saying the film industry has lost a pillar.

The actor died at his residence in Mumbai this morning after a massive heart attack. He was 66.

The Prime Minister recalled Puri's long career in theatre and films, while Sonia Gandhi remembered him as a versatile actor.

"Om Puri was a gifted actor and socially conscious human being... Indian film industry has lost a pillar," Gandhi said and prayed for peace and strength to his family and admirers.

Describing him as one of the finest talents of Indian cinema and theatre, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said, "Mr Om Puri will live on through the many unforgettable characters he brought to life."



West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted: "His acting skills were appreciated around the world. Condolences to family, friends fraternity."



Punjab Congress President and former chief minister Amarinder Singh said he was "deeply saddened to hear about sudden demise of veteran actor Om Puri. Condolences to the family".

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said Puri's demise is a



"big loss to the film industry. As an individual also, he was one of the finest human beings".

"Puri played many unconventional roles in movies like 'Aakrosh' and 'Ardhsatya'. He was known in the world of cinema for his roles in international films such as 'Gandhi', 'East is East' etc.

"He also held the post of the chairman of National Film Development Corporation of India. He was a Padma Shri awardee and had many accolades, including at the National Film Awards, to his name," Naidu said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said the actor's death had caused an "irreparable" loss to the film industry.

"Puri was a wonderful actor... He won the national film award twice for the best actor and was awarded the Padma Shri in 1990 for his contribution to the film industry," he said in a message.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said the "cinema world has lost a brilliant artist" in Puri.

Congress leader Ashok Gehlot tweeted: "Heartfelt condolences on the demise of veteran actor OmPuri ji. May his soul rest in peace.

(REOPENS DEL19)



Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar expressed grief over the demise of Om Puri, noting that the veteran actor was born in Ambala.

"The acclaimed actor had delivered some stellar performances. In his death the cinema world has lost one of its most loved characters," he added.

Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar said, "Om Puri was one of the most brilliant artists produced by the Indian film industry. He had the rare ability to infuse life in the characters portrayed by him."



"Gifted with a deep baritone voice, Om Puri played some of the most memorable roles, many of which are remembered even after the passage of several years," he said, adding that the actor was a socially committed person.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted, "Saddened to know about demise of veteran actor Om Puri ji. He will be remembered forever for his unique style & roles. My deepest condolences."



Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted, "The death of great actor, Om Puri is an irreparable loss to the entertainment world. His role in films like Aarohan and Ardhasatya will remain unforgettable."



"Puri has enriched Bollywood cinema with his distinctive acting and has acted distinctly in Hollywood, British and Pakistani films," he said.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal described Puri as "son of the soil" and a multifaceted personality.

He said the veteran Bollywood actor was admired by his fans and his death has been created a void in the Indian film industry which was difficult to fill in the near future.

West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi said the acclaimed actor delivered some stellar performances in mainstream Pakistani, Indian and British Cinema apart from making a dent in Hollywood with his role in 'East is East', 'City of Joy' and 'Gandhi'.

Indian cultural world has truly lost a brilliant actor, he said.
Lt Governor Anil Baijal today reviewed the law and order situation in the national capital and asked the Delhi Police to use digital technology and innovations for effective policing in the city.

Baijal, who took over as 20th Lt Governor of Delhi on December 31, met the city Police Commissioner Alok Verma and other top police officials.

"Held meeting with CP Delhi and officers of Delhi Police at Raj Niwas. Advised to use digital technology & innovations for effective policing (sic)," he tweeted.

Baijal had on January 1 joined microblogging site Twitter in an effort to seek a more productive engagement with the people of Delhi and media.

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Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said his government was working for digital connectivity for getting people quality education and healthcare.

"We are working for digital connectivity through which people are getting quality education and better healthcare facilities," Fadnavis said.

He was addressing a election meeting at Khapa in Nagpur district for the fourth phase of the municipal council polls scheduled for January 8.

In a veiled attack on Congress, which has opposing note recall and organising protest rallies, the CM said, "the common man is cooperating with demonetisation decision. Common people want the nation to prosper, but those who suffered losses are taking out 'Jan Akrosh' rallies.

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: Malayalam film industry mourned the death of Om Puri and remembered him as a 'perfectionist actor' and 'down-to-earth human being' who mingled with local people and film crew without the burden of his celebrity status.

Though he acted only in three films in Malayalam in his career spanning over four-decades, the 'Ardh Satya' star had kept warm relations with many in the mollywood. Eminent filmmaker Lenin Rajendran, who introduced Puri in Malayalam through his critically-acclaimed movie 'Puravrutham' in 1988, said the actor was very particular in keeping warm contacts.

"Puri was one among the very few close friends I have in the film industry. He was the first person I used to call, whenever I went to Mumbai.We would send me a car and take me to his flat there," Rajendran told PTI. "He called me even two months back when he came to Kulathupuzha in connection with some work. He asked me whether we could meet before he go to the airport. But, unfortunately, I could not make it due to some inconvenience," he said. Om Puri had enacted the role of a local communist leader Vannathan Raman of north Kerala in 'Puravrutham'. Rajendran, who is also the chairman of Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC), said his search for an actor, who has befitting features of a brave revolutionary, had ended in Puri.

"The pratagonist in Puravrutham had to have an angry face and intense eyes. Puri was a perfect choice for my character," he said adding that that friendship continued thoughout these decades without losing the intensity.

The 'Mazha' director said Puri was a perfectionist in his work and did not mind spending time to achieve maximum perfection to his character.

"The dialogues in Malayalam was a bit difficult for him in the initial days of shooting. Eventhough, I said ok to a scene, Puri would not be satisfied and try to achieve maximum perfection. He used to repeat difficult words and try to use in the film set to make its pronunciation easy," he said. Remembering Puri's down-to-earth nature, Rajendran said not only with the director and fellow actors, he had behaved nicely and built friendship with everyone in the set. "The shooting was in a deep forest in Tirunelly in high range Wayanad. It was a usual scene those days that Puri interacting with tribals there. He could easily develop a bond with local children also," the Director said.

Puri acted in another Malayalam film 'Samvalsarangal' in 1988, but it did not hit screens due to some reasons.

After a gap of nearly three decades, he came back to Malayalam through Kannan Thamarakkulam-directed 'Aadupuliattam', a horror thriller, last year.

Kannan said no actor other than Puri could play the role of the mystic scientist in the film, which demands a lot of depth and emotional intensity.

Actor Jayaram, who was the hero in the movie 'Aadupuliyattam' said Puri's death was a big loss to the country and would never forget the moments he worked with the versatile actor.

Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala condoled the death of Puri and said he was a versatile actor who enriched the film world through his divergent characters.

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Goa police have arrested a person for putting up a hoarding of AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal without taking permissions and thus violating the model code of conduct.

Quepem police in South Goa yesterday arrested Kedar Sinai Singbal who was displaying a moving flex-board mounted on a hydraulic jack, featuring Kejriwal and the party's state convener Elvis Gomes.

A flying squad of Election Commission had filed a complaint in this regard, police said.

"The accused was displaying the hoarding without taking permissions from the competent authority which amounts to violation of code of conduct," a police release said today.

Model code of conduct has come into force in the state as Assembly elections would be held on February 4.

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A 48-year-old man, caretaker of a religious place, was murdered following an altercation over a trivial matter in Vikarabad district of Telangana, police said today.

The incident took place on the outskirts of Ainapur village last night.

One of the sons of the victim got into an argument with a group of persons when they accused him of blocking the road to their fields by parking his two-wheeler in the way, district superintendent of police B Navin Kumar said.

The men in the group were allegedly drunk.

"The caretaker intervened and the matter was settled. After some time, the people from this group and some others attacked the caretaker and his two sons with sharp weapons and sticks," the DSP said.

The three were rushed to a hospital here where the caretaker succumbed to injuries at around 3 am today while his sons were out of danger," the senior police officer said.

"Ten persons have been taken into custody and hunt is on to nab others. Additional force has been deployed in the village and the situation is under control," the SP said.

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Actor Mark Ruffalo is set to return to Broadway for the first time in more than a decade with "The Price".

The 49-year-old star will step into the role that was initially set to be played by John Turturro, reported Variety.

Turturro had to bow out of the show due to the filming schedule of his screen commitments.

Ruffalo will portray a man called Victor, who returns home to sell the remains of his parents' estate.

Directed by Terry Kinney, "The Price" begins previews February 16 ahead of a March 16 opening at the American Airlines Theaters.

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Two Islamist militants, including one of the masterminds of last year's terror attack at a popular cafe here, were killed in a gunfight with police in Bangladesh during a pre-dawn raid today.

Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marjan and another unidentified extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital.

"One is identified as Marjan and another still unknown," Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, confirmed the incident to The Daily Star.

Police say Marjan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshan's Holey Artisan Bakery that killed 22 people, including an Indian.

"Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a raid around 3am...Sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us. In retaliation, we fired back that left the two injured," Monirul said.

Later, they were declared dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

According to an investigator, former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the Neo-JMB, a new faction of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) affiliated with Islamic State, Dhaka Tribune reported.

He also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Marjan had expertise in operating heavy arms.

Marjan had stayed in the militant den of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha for a long period where he reportedly gave motivational training to seven militants. Of the seven, five took part in the Gulshan terror attack.

On July 1, militants stormed Holey Artisan Bakery. The attackers took diners and restaurant staff hostage and had confrontations with police, killing two police officials.

Next morning, a joint commando force stormed the bakery, killing all the attackers and rescuing the captives, ending the terror siege of nearly 11 hours.

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British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the "exceptional" contribution of British Sikhs in the UK's economy, charity and armed forces as the community marked the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.

Describing the occasion of Prakash Parv as a "very special anniversary", the British Prime Minister said the occasion highlighted values of equality, respect and fairness, and helping those less fortunate.

She said in her message: "Time and again I have seen these values put into practice, from visiting gurdwaras to attending the Sikh war memorial in Derby. Indeed, when we celebrate Vaisakhi soon, we will be reminded once again how the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh Ji enrich our wider society.

"This anniversary is also a chance to remember that British Sikhs have made - and continue to make - an exceptional contribution to business, professions, charity and our armed forces.

"So may I take this opportunity to wish all those celebrating a very blessed and happy Gurpurab."



The new Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Y K Sinha, Deputy high commissioner Dinesh K Patnaik and other senior officers of the Indian High Commission in the UK also joined Sikh devotees in the UK yesterday in prayers at the historic Shepherd's Bush Gurdwara Sahib, the oldest gurudwara in Europe.

The high commissioner was presented with a 'Siropa' by the Gurudwara Committee on the occasion.

While paying homage to Shri Guru Gobind Singh ji, Sinha referred to the Sikh Guru's "noble qualities and his sterling contribution to humanity".

He also recalled how his parents, from his early childhood, instilled in him great reverence for the teachings of the Guru and how he took great pride in the fact that he hailed from Patna, the city that was the birth place of the 10th Sikh Guru.

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Militants opened fire at the residence of an opposition Conference lawmaker in Shopian district of south Kashmir today, police said.

The house of MLC Showkat Ahmad Ganai at Chitrigam in Zainapora area of Shopian was attacked at 5:30 AM, a police official said.

"Ahmad is in Jammu for the ongoing Budget session of the State Legislature. No one has been hurt in the incident," the official said.

He said the ultras fled from the spot after the security personnel deployed at the residence of the MLC returned fire.
Two Myanmar media executives were granted bail today in a high-profile defamation case that has become a lightning rod for fears over teetering press freedoms under the new democratic government.

The CEO of Eleven Media Group, Than Htut Aung, was freed after suffering a heart attack in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, where he had been detained for almost two months.

He and the chief editor of one the group's papers, Wai Phyo, were jailed in November over a column that accused a government minister of receiving a USD 100,000 watch from a businessman who later won plum contracts.

The minister, Phyo Min Thein, is a high-profile member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which came to power in March after winning elections that ended decades of military rule.

Than Htut Aung looked faint as he waded through a scrum of journalists at the court on Friday, supported by his son.

"The two defendants got bail today because the doctor who checked the CEO's health problems... Reported to the court," their lawyer, Kyee Myint, told AFP.

The pair, whose bail requests were rejected three times before today, will next appear in court on January 13.

Media freedom has increased since Myanmar ended censorship in 2012, the year after a reformist quasi-civilian government took power from the former junta.

But activists say defamation prosecutions have risen sharply since Suu Kyi's NLD party took office.

Former political prisoner Maung Saugkha said seven people were sued with defamation under the telecommunications law between 2013-16. Since the NLD took over, 38 cases have been brought.

"I do not see any progress on media freedoms under the new government," Ma Thida, dissident author and founder of the Myanmar chapter of writers advocacy group PEN, told AFP.

"Stopping people from sharing what they think and saying what they see is not the democratic way."



In another defamation case being tried in Yangon today, an NLD official was denied bail after being charged with insulting the head of the army.

Myo Yan Naung Thein, secretary of the NLD's central research committee, has been held since November for posts on Facebook criticising General Min Aung Hlaing's handling of a crisis in Rakhine state.

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Extremism can only be countered with ideology of 'sufism' and there is a need to revamp the Theology curriculum taught in varsities across the country, Sufi scholar Baba Ashraf said here today.

"Sufism is the method to achieve peace and harmony. It is the only way to counter extremism alongside love and brotherhood. However, the curriculum of Theology taught in universities across the country doesn't refer to Sufi ideology but (is does to) Wahabism," he said while addressing students at Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) here.

Ashraf was here to deliver a lecture on "Sufism-Essence of Islam".

"Similarly, Waqf board in the county which is managing the religious centers is converting sufi centres into extreme centres whereas sufi ideology can be used for promoting peace and harmony," he added.

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Nepal's main opposition alliance led by CPN-UML today held a massive protest in the capital to force the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill aimed at addressing the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

Over one lakh activists and supporters of the nine-party alliance participated in the protest in the capital as a major strength show against Prime Minister Prachanda-led coalition government's move.

The protesting parties have been claiming that the bill was anti-constitutional and against national interests as it was brought out to serve interests of external forces.

The ruling alliance, mainly comprising CPN Maoist Centre and Nepali Congress, has been making efforts to amend the Constitution aiming to address the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

The bill, which was registered at the Parliament Secretariat in November, aims to accommodate the demands of the agitating Madhesi and ethnic groups that include citizenship and boundary demarcation issues among others.

Re-demarcation of the provincial boundary and citizenship issue are the two major demands put forth by the Madhesis.

The Supreme Court in a recent verdict gave green signal to the government to amend the Constitution, rejecting a plea by the Opposition groups to stay the amendment Bill.

Besides CPN-UML, eight smaller left parties including CPN- ML and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) also joined the rally against the government.

CPN UML chairman and main opposition leader K P Oli and other senior leaders addressed the mass rally held on a street at the Brikutimandap in the heart of the capital city.

Addressing the public meeting, Oli said the government should not push the Constitution amendment bill even after the Supreme Court's verdict and hoped that it would withdraw the bill before Sunday's House meeting.

"Anything which is against the Constitution will be invalid as per the Supreme Court ruling and the amendment bill registered by the government in the Parliament violated the constitutional provision," he said.

He said his party will not compromise on issues such as nationality, democracy, social justice, national unity and prosperity and cannot tolerate "humiliation of dignity".

Oli strongly criticised the rulingCPN Maoist Centre and Madhes-based parties for bringing out the Constitution amendment proposal.

Arguing that the proposal would not serve interests of Nepali people, he said people of the proposed Province No 5 has strongly protested the proposedmove to split the province.

He alleged that the Madhes-based parties are "working to destroy the native identity and languages of the region though they claim to promote the same."



Oli said the parties were trying to establish Hindi as an official language so as to belittle Maithili, Bhojpuri and Abadhi languages being spoken in the plains for centuries.

He said the Madhes-centric parties were not legitimate forces to represent issues of the Madhes as they did not have sufficient votes from the region.

(REOPENS FGN 18)



Speaking in the rally, CPN-ML General Secretary CP Mainali, Rastriya Janamorcha Chairman Chitra Bahadur KC, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party lawmaker Prem Suwal, criticised the government and ruling parties for registering the Constitution amendment bill, which they said is against the national interest.

Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a six-month- long agitation from September 2015 to February last year in which more than 50 people were killed.

The agitation had also crippled the landlocked country's economy as supplies from India were blocked.
As the mystery over the disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is yet to be resolved, a new book claimed that he did not die in a plane crash, but during interrogation and torture by the British at a prison in the former Soviet Union.

"Netaji didn't die in the plane crash. It was a theory floated to facilitate his escape to Soviet Union. Japanese intelligence agencies had floated the theory so that Bose can safely escape to Soviet Union," claimed Maj Gen G D Bakshi (retd), author of the book "Bose: The Indian Samurai - Netaji and the INA Military Assessment".

He claimed with the help of the then Soviet Ambassador to Tokyo, Jacob Malik, Bose had been able to set up an embassy of the Azad Hind Government in Siberia.

Bakshi asserted that he has "irrefutable evidence" to prove that Netaji did not die in the plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945.

"To escape German bombers During the World War II, the then Soviet government had shifted its base to Siberia. Bose, with the help of Jacob Malik, was able to set up an embassy in Russia.

"Bose had gone there after escaping from Japan. He had made three radio broadcasts from Siberia. This was when the British came to know that Bose had escaped to the Soviet Union," he claimed.

"The British then approached the Soviet authorities and demanded that they be allowed to interrogate Bose. It was during interrogation that he was tortured to death," Bakshi claimed.

In October, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

Last year, on Netaji's 119th birth anniversary on January 23, as many as 100 secret files were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today welcomed the US House of Representatives' condemnation of a UN reprimand of Israel's settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

"After the outrageous anti-Israel resolution at the UN, the US House of Representatives voted (Thursday) resoundingly to support Israel and reject this one-sided resolution," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Last month's landmark resolution in the United Nations Security Council demanded that "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem."



The Council also stated that the settlements have "no legal validity" and are "dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution."



In a rare and telling gesture the United States did not use its veto and instead abstained, enabling the adoption of the first UN resolution since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy.

Thursday's congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

Ahead of Trump's January 20 inauguration, the Obama administration's UN abstention was a fresh bone of contention after years of friction between the outgoing president and Netanyahu, who hinted that Obama was out of step with his country.

"I want to thank the US House of Representatives which reflects the tremendous support Israel enjoys among the American people," he said.

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National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to Gujarat's Inspector General of Police in charge of Prisons over alleged victimisation of Dalit prisoners by upper caste inmates in Amreli Jail, and sought a report within six weeks.

NHRC in a statement today said it has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports that prisoners belonging to lower caste are being subjected to "grave injustice and discrimination inside the jail".

According to the reports, carried on January 5, an advocate, who remained in the jail for about 110 days in the Amreli District Jail as an undertrial prisoner, has "revealed the entire story based on his personal experiences."



Even, they (lower caste inmates) cannot drink water from the reverse osmosis (RO) plant installed in the jail. The prisoners are victimised by the upper castes prisoners and complaints regarding this "go unheard" by the Jail Superintendent, the Commission said, quoting the reports.

The Commission has also observed that the Constitution states that there should be no discrimination with anyone on the basis of caste, creed, gender and religion. "Therefore, the jails cannot be allowed to remain an exception in this regard," the statement said.

"Reportedly, one of the Dalit inmates, when objected to the harassment, was beaten up so severely that he could not get up for days but the jail staff refused to shift him to the hospital as it would become a medico-legal case.

"The complaints made to the Jail Superintendent are never heard by the authorities. The so-called upper caste prisoners enjoy all facilities including mobile phones and operate their network from inside the jail ...," the Commission said.

The contents of the report, if true, amount to violation of right to life, equality and dignity of the prisoners. It has issued the notice to the IG (Prisons), Gujarat and called for a report within six weeks, the NHRC said.

It is stated in the report that the victim, Navchetan Parmar has approached many organisations including NHRC for redressal of the grievances of the Dalit prisoners but nothing is being done, the Commission added.

"When fellow prisoners came to know that he was involved in agitation by Dalits, the upper caste prisoners known as 'Durbars' started harassing him verbally, with comments about his caste.

"He was not allowed to drink water from the earthen pitcher which was kept nearby. The Durbars stopped him and asked him to quench his thirst from the tap in the toilet.

"The Dalit inmates are made to wash clothes of their fellow prisoners and their utensils too. Sometimes, the upper caste 'Durbars' would wake up the Dalit undertrials at 2 o'clock in the night and ask them to massage their legs," the report alleges.

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Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a charge sheet against Pakistani Bahadur Ali, who was arrested in Kashmir in July last year, alleging that he was working for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and was planning to carry out attacks at several places including Delhi.

The agency has filed the charge sheet under various provisions of IPC, UAPA, sections of Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act against Ali, who has been in judicial custody since August.

According to court sources, the charge sheet, filed before District Judge Amar Nath, claimed that the recent unrest in Kashmir Valley had been orchestrated by Pakistan-based LeT.

The agency claimed that since summer last year, the banned outfit, with the "help of Pakistani forces deployed on the border", pushed heavily armed terrorists into India with a direction to mix with local people, create disturbance and attack police and security forces.

NIA, in its charge sheet, has also alleged that along with his associates, Ali had planned terror attacks to destabilise the security and sovereignty of India.

The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir besides Delhi, the charge sheet claims.

It alleged that given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18.

A fourth-class dropout, Ali, who hails from Jahama village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from village Yahama in Mawar area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on July 25. The army had claimed to have recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs 23,000 in Indian currency from his possession.

According to NIA, Ali was trained at a Lashkar camp in PoK to carry out various activities, including map reading and operating GPS devices.
NIA today filed a charge sheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, suspected to be a member of Lashker-e-Taiba terror group, for allegedly planning to carry out subversive activities in India, including Delhi, at the behest of the banned outfit.

The charge sheet was filed before District Judge Amar Nath here as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had registered a case against Ali, who was arrested on July 24 last year from North Kashmir's border village Yahama.

The charge sheet has also highlighted the gaps along the Line of Control (LoC) as Ali, along with two other terrorists, had been walking for seven days undetected before they reached to their destination. The trio had entered India between the intervening night to June 12 and 13 last year and reached their destination only around June 20.

The area is expected to be dotted by security personnel as part of counter-infiltration grid, official sources said.

According to the NIA charge sheet, investigation has established that Ali, who is a school dropout and originally a resident of Jia Bagga Village of Raiwind in Lahore, Pakistan, was also provided a map sheet depicting parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

He was provided with the grid references (GRs) that had been recovered from his possession. Ali plotted these GRs on the map sheet which was sent for examination to the Surveyor General of India at Dehradun which affirmed that the terrorist had plotted them correctly.

"This clearly establishes that Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject. A GPS device was recovered from the possession of Ali at the time of his arrest.

"The data retrieved from the GPS device contained coordinates of the Mandakuli 'launching pad' of LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in J&K, like Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur, besides Delhi.

"Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns or cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including in Delhi," the charge sheet said.

NIA also sought an opinion of General Examiner of Questioned Document (GEQD) who had said that his ability to plot GRs on the Google maps and on the topographic sheets after which the agency slapped the charge of waging war against the country on Ali, it said.

NIA has slapped charges under Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Explosives Act, the Explosives Substances Act, Arms Act, the Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act.

Ali has been been in judicial custody since August. A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18.

NIA alleged that Ali was part of the conspiracy hatched by



Lashkar-e-Taiba, a proscribed terrorist organisation, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India.

It said that a thorough probe found that LeT has set up a well-organised machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by committing terrorist acts in various parts of the country.

"Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their world view and providing them with 'military' skills.

"Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian Territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of a network of their supporters and facilitators," the charge sheet said.

NIA said that as part of LeT's plan, Ali alias Saifullah Mansoor, along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists, infiltrated into Indian territory equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists entered Indian Territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of LeT based in Pakistan and PoK.

"After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists walked for about seven days following GRs with the aid of GPS devices, that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli 'launching pad'," NIA said.

Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, 'Walid Bhai' by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by LeT to avoid interception, it said.

On June 22, the two left for getting some food from a village leaving Ali on a hill top. However, both were killed in an encounter and Ali shifted his base to another hillock "as a precautionary measure".

Next day Ali contacted 'Alfa-3', the LeT control station based in PoK, who directed him to continue his journey and reach the final destination where he met his local contact who provided him food and shelter, it said.

Ali, who had established a network around the area, was informed by his control room in PoK that the cadres of Lashker had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir, NIA said.

He instructed Ali to mix with the protesters and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir Valley, the charge sheet said.

(Reopens LGD16)



However, on July 24 last year, Ali was given a direction to receive a group of freshly infiltrated terrorists of LeT at a particular GR but he was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir police before he could receive them.

At the time of his apprehension, one compass, one ICOM wireless set, one matrix sheet bearing codes, two unicode sheets (handwritten pocket diary pages) bearing text written in coded form, Indian currency of value Rs 23,000 (of which 3 notes were found to be fake), one GPS set and one map sheet were recovered from his possession.

During his custodial interrogation, Ali said that he had to receive a group on the instructions of Alfa-3. Based on this information, the police and the army launched a search operation in the area of Bandi Monabal on July 26 and killed four unidentified terrorists after a prolonged gunbattle, NIA said.

Ali also led the police team at a place in Yahama village where he had concealed arms, ammunition and other articles which included one AK-47 rifle, magazine, several rounds of ammunition, hand grenades, ICOM wireless set, it said.

During the investigation, it was found that prior to their infiltration, Ali and his associates, Abu Saad and Abu Darda. were provided codes in the form of nine alphabets, which they were to use to record numerals such as grid references, phone numbers, it said.

Further, an analysis, based on the disclosure of Ali regarding the codes, has established the route taken by him and his associates after they had crossed the LoC, while infiltrating into Indian territory, NIA said.

When plotted on a map, the deciphered grid references clearly trace the infiltration route from the direction of the LoC towards Handwara, a border town in North Kashmir, it said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today attended the 350th Prakash Parva to celebrate the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh where he witnessed performances of Sikh martial art 'Gatka' and 'Ghursawari' (horseriding).

Kumar, who has been deeply involved with the event's organisation, watched the performances with rapt attention and applauded the performers.

Various Sikh 'jathas' presented the CM with a 'Saropa' (robe) and Angawastra as thanks for the arrangements for the mega event.

Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, Urban Development minister Maheshwar Hazari, Tourism minister Anita Devi and Director General of Police P K Thakur accompanied the CM at the event in Gandhi Maidan.

The Chief Minister has won accolades from Sikh devotees coming for the event from across the country as also foreign countries like US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany for his efforts in hosting it.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal had showered fulsome praise on Kumar for taking personal interest in hosting Prakash Parva in a grand manner.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today mourned the passing away of veteran actor Om Puri and said that his death had caused an irreparable loss to the film industry.

"Puri was a wonderful actor...He won the national film award twice for being the best actor and also feted with Padma Shri award in 1990 by the Government of India for his contributions to the film industry," he said in a message.

The veteral actor was also very popular with fans, Kumar said, adding that he prayed for the departed actor's soul to rest in peace.

Puri (66) passed away at his residence in Mumbai earlier today following a massive heart attack.

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Breaking from the past tradition, President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has decided not to give any grace period beyond Inauguration Day to US envoys who are political appointees of President Barack Obama, leaving dozens of US ambassadors scrambling for new positions.

The unusual decision by the transition team could also mean that some of the top US embassies around the world will be left without an ambassador for months, as Trump replaces them with new appointments.

The Trump transition team has informed the US State Department that it was not making any exceptions for any of the US ambassadors who are political appointees of outgoing President Obama, the Politico reported.

The state department has begun sending cables at least as early as December 21, to individual ambassadors telling them that they would have to quit their posts on time, that is ahead of the Inauguration Day on January 20, it said.

A highly-placed source in the team confirmed the decision but did not specify as to how many envoys might be affected by the decision.

During his two terms, Obama named hundreds of people to the posts, roughly 30 per cent of whom are political appointees, which generally require Senate confirmation.

Following precedent set by both parties, Obama also handed out many of the ambassadorships to his campaign donors and other supporters.

The decision by the transition team has left dozens of US diplomats in countries like Britain, Saudi Arabia and Japan, scrambling to figure out new living arrangements, visa rules and what options they have for their kids and their schooling.

Politically appointed ambassadors have at times been allowed to stay on the job for weeks or even months after the new president has taken office, to show personal courtesy for their family situations, and allow for some continuity as new administration finds its footing.

Following tradition, President Obama has directed all political appointees in his administration to submit their resignations effective on Inauguration Day, it said.

Commenting on the development, a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "Some of the ambassadors really thought they could stay, so there's a little bit of a scramble now."



"They are mostly resigned to it now," he added.

Trump has already named Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as his ambassador to China and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman for the post in Israel, though it's highly unlikely that the Republican president-elect will have thought through all of his foreign envoys by now.

In the absence of the new appointments, the affected US embassies will likely be run by the highest-ranking career employee until Trump nominates someone new and that person is confirmed by the Senate.

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Describing Congress and other rival parties as "anti-people and anti-democracy", BJP today hailed the Modi government, saying 2016 was the "dawn of a new era" with a number of transformative decisions in the spheres of national security, self-pride, probity and the poor's welfare.

The political resolution passed at the party's national executive claimed that the Modi government has created a new "history" in the direction of the poor's welfare with its bold initiatives.

Proposed by Union Home Minister and former party chief Rajnath Singh, the resolution also hit out at the opposiiton, saying "obstruction and obfuscation" have become their hallmark while BJP has notched up one electoral victory after another which shows popular support for demonetisation.

Calling Modi's policies "transformative", it promised that the new year would bring more prosperity and progress.

The resolution also dwelt at length in attacking West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who has emerged as a trenchant critics of the Centre.

Attacking her government for its "failure" in safeguarding the "law-abiding majority community", the resolution cited the Dhulagarh riots as its "most glaring example" as rioters went about torching houses and shouting slogans like 'Pakistan zindabad'.

"The behaviour of the parties led by Congress in stalling the entire session of Parliament betrays their scant respect for democratic institutions. Obstruction and obfuscation has become the hallmark of the opposition politics in the country," it said.

The national executive also backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "path-breaking" electoral reform initiatives, including proposal for holding simultaneous polls to central and state legislatures, and asserted that together with other important reforms it would pave the way for cleaner and healthier electoral practises.

The resolution alleged attacks on BJP's workers have increased in Bengal and the Left-ruled Kerala.

The recent attacks on BJP headquarters in Kolkata and scores of other places in Bengal point to the extreme and violent form of political intolerance practised by the ruling TMC, it alleged.

"The red terror in Kerala continues to rob the lives of dedicated Karyakartas, the latest victim being Radhakrishnan. It is a sad commentary on the bureaucracy and law and order machinery that they too seem to have become mute spectators while lawlessness and crime perpetrates.

"Extreme appeasement politics of the governments in the states have led to sever communal tension and strife in these states," it said.

Referring to the coming five state polls, the resolution said BJP views them as an opportunity to retain or regain power in all the states including Manipur. "People of the country are yearning to follow PM Modiji's development politics."



"We are here not merely for reform. Reform is good, but it is largely about tinkering the existing system. PM Modi's vision is transformative," it claimed.

The resolution said the government took a number of



transformative decisions in the spheres of national security, self-pride, prosperity, probity and the poor's welfare.

"The Modi government has created a new history in the direction of the poor's welfare with its bold initiatives."



Referring to surgical strikes, it said the move marked the end of an era in which India was seen as a soft state. Maximum number of terrorists were killed in 2015-16 and the Maoism was also under control.

The surgical strikes were executed with utmost precision and showed to the world that India is led by a government today that is committed to securing its borders and interests with determination and will power.

"We salute our brave soldiers for valiantly fighting and laying down their lives to secure our borders and honour. That the strikes have had the required effect on our neighbour can be gauged from the fact that there is near normal silence on the Indo-Pak border in the last few weeks and also the initiative taken by Pakistan to call for DGMO level talks between the two countries," it claimed.

India has always demonstrated its urge and desire for peaceful and friendly relations with all its neighbours including Pakistan, it said and cited Modi's 'Together We Grow' plank for the neighbours.

"The surgical strikes and the total rejection of the separatist agenda by the people and governments of Jammu and Kashmir, and the Centre are a categorical assertion to Pakistan that its ulterior designs shall never succeed and the government led by Modi will continue to demonstrate zero tolerance for terrorism.

"It reserves every right to respond to such threats in an appropriate and out-of-the-box manner in future also," the BJP said.

Noting that the party is celebrating the birth centenary of its ideologue Deendayal Upadhyay, the resolution said the Modi government has taken up countless initiatives for the welfare of the poor in line with his 'antyodaya' (welfare of the last man).

Icing on the cake, it said, was Modi's new year eve address in which he offered several incentives for urban and rural poor, farmers, pregnant women, small and medium industries and senior citizens among others.

"These new incentives are going to not only benefit the poor and marginalised but also various other segments of the society by kick-starting the economy in a big way," it said.

Referring to the party's maiden win in Assam and decent show in other state elections, the resolution also highlighted BJP's victory in local polls held after demonetisation and said, "It is not an overstatement to claim that the results are a vindication of the unqualified popular support to the demonetisation programme.

(Reopens DEL 77)



The national executive bemoans the silence of the larger public institutions like media and intelligentsia over the Fascist oppression of fundamental political rights in West Bengal and Kerala, as per the political resolution passed in the meeting.

"Their silence is baffling even when their own colleagues are being subjected to violation of their fundamental rights like free speech etc. The national executive wishes (to) remind the so-called torchbearers of human rights and civil liberties that in such matters their silence tantamount to complicity only.

"The national executive expresses sympathy for the people affected by communal and political violence in these states.In its history of several decades the BJP has faced such political vandalism several times before and knows how to tackle it in a democratic manner. The national executive warns that it would intensify democratic protest programs to awaken people to the misrule of the governments in Bengal and Kerala," it said.
Demonetised currency worth Rs 9.80 lakh was found today by a rag-picker from bushes along the banks of river Ganga here, police said.

Uttam Tharu, a Nepali rag picker, saw the old Rs 500 notes scattered behind the bushes along the banks of Ganga under Muni-ki-Reti police station area, station in-charge Ravi Kumar Saini told PTI.

"The rag-picker brought the amount in a packet and handed it over to us. The notes are worth Rs 9.80 lakh," he said, adding investigation is underway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 50 persons were today booked for allegedly creating ruckus while staging protest against overpriced electricity bill, at government's offices in Jameetpura village here, police said.

All the protesters were booked at Talera police station here following there protest at Assistant Executive Engineer's office and Jaipur Vidutt Vitran Nigam (JVVNL), Talera police station SHO Pawan Kumar Meena said.

All the accused booked hail from Jameetpura village, he said.

According to the officer, the villagers alleged that they were handed over overpriced electric bills without prior reading of their electric metres after which they gathered at AEN office in Jameetoura and staged protest, leading to ruckus.

A case was lodged against them for creating ruckus at the offices, the officer said adding no arrests have been made so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nine foreign nationals, including five Pakistanis, are on a hunger strike in Alwar jail's detention centre since the last two days demanding they be immediately released as they have completed their prison term.

"Nine persons, including five Pakistanis, have launched hunger strike 2 days ago demanding their release. The process to seek approval for their release from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs is under way and they have been informed accordingly," SP (Alwar) Rahul Prakash told PTI.

The other four are Bangladesh nationals, he said, adding that their medical tests were conducted today.

There are 17 foreign nationals in the detention centre who are to be deported to their respective countries after necessary clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs.

One of the Pakistani nationals was sentenced to jail for espionage while the others for violating visa norms under the Foreigners' Act, Prakash said.

"There is no illegal detention in any case and they would be deported after completing formalities and necessary approval from the government of India," Additional Director General of Jails, Sudhakar Jauhari said.

According to Superintendent of Alwar Jail Surendra Singh, apart from the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, nationals of Cameroon, Sri Lanka and Iran at the detention centre are waiting to be deported after their prison term is over.

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Pakistan's Chief Justice today ordered police probe into the alleged torture of a 10-year-old girl working as a maid for an influential district judge.

Mian Saqib Nisar on Wednesday took suo motu notice of the alleged torture of the maid by a judge and his wife in Islamabad after disturbing photos of her appeared on social media last week, showing her badly beaten and bruised.

He ordered Deputy Inspector General police today to probe the case and present the victim during the hearing next week, according to a court official.

He also ordered the court would act as parents of the girl in the case and rejected the pardon given by the victim's father to Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife.

During today's hearing, two women appeared claiming to be mothers of the victim, following which the Supreme Court ordered DNA test to ascertain the parentage.

The case took another twist on Tuesday after father of the girl told a local court that there was no truth of torture and that he reached at a private settlement with the judge.

In the First Information Report registered with Islamabad police, the girl said she had been working at the Khan's house for nearly two years.

Initially, the girl told police that she was often beaten up in the house. Most recently, she alleged that 'Mano Baji', judge's wife, shoved her hands onto a burning stove and then beat her after a broom went missing.

She also claimed the owners of the house would usually lock her up in a storeroom at night besides starving and beating her up.

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Madras High Court today dismissed a PIL seeking a direction to the Union government to confer the Bharat Ratna on late AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa, saying it does not want to interfere in such matters.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar rejected the PIL filed by K K Ramesh, Managing Trustee of Tamil Nadu Centre for Public Interest Litigation came up.

The petitioner after narrating Jayalalithaa's life history, said she had bagged Tamil Nadu state film awards for best actress apart from many other awards and was a five-time Chief Minister.

The petitioner went on list the many welfare schemes launched by her including Amma canteens to provide food at lowest price and free laptops and cycles for students.

As she cared for the people of Tamil Nadu as a mother, she was called 'Amma', he said.

Ramesh said he was constrained to file this petition as his December 15 2016 representation to the Union government on the matter had not evoked any response.

But the the court stated that it does not want to interfere in such matters.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Pannerselvam had on December 19 last year urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to confer Bharat Ratna on Jayalalithaa, who passed away on December 5.

At its first meeting on December 10 after Jayalalithaa's death, the Tamil Nadu Cabinet had decided to recommend her name for Bharat Ratna and to propose to the Centre to install her life-size bronze statue in the Parliament complex.

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Israeli police have questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in four days on suspicion of graft as a "possible criminal suspect" who received "improper benefits" from businessmen including a prominent Hollywood movie producer.

A police statement said that Netanyahu was questioned for over five hours under caution at his Jerusalem residence over allegations he illegally accepted gifts from wealthy foreign businessmen as well as over another corruption affair, which some Hebrew media reports have said is more "serious".

Investigators have kept a tight lid on the other case.

Police confirmed they have interrogated a second suspect, whose identity was not revealed.

The 67-year-old Netanyahu tried to play down the development telling his critics, "don't celebrate yet", hours before he was to be questioned earlier on Monday.

"Nothing will come (of the probe) and you will continue to spew out hot air," the prime minister said mockingly.

In a three-hour interrogation session with police on Monday, the Israeli premier admitted that he had received gifts from businessmen, but insisted they were entirely legal, his lawyer said.

Hebrew media reported that police are investigating suspicions that Netanyahu and his wife Sara illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands of shekels and champagne from American-Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan.

Milchan, famous for his films 'Fight Club' and 'Pretty Woman', is close to the Netanyahu family.

Channel 2 reported last evening that Netanyahu received the cigars from Milchan over the last 7-8 years.

Sara reportedly received bottles of pink champagne worth hundreds of shekels apiece during that period.

Netanyahu is known as a connoisseur of fine cigars and the channel pointed out rumours that he smokes tens of thousands of shekels worth of them each month.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is overseeing the investigation against Netanyahu, has said the premier is suspected of "receiving improper benefits from businessmen".

A statement issued by Mandelblit earlier this week said that police found enough evidence to support the questioning of the prime minister as a "possible criminal suspect".

The statement chronicled the inquiry but did not provide details of the nature of suspicions in the graft case.

The police has been examining "a long list of claims" against the premier since July, Mandelblit said.

Israeli police is said to have interrogated witnesses abroad as well as in Israel about the graft case against Netanyahu and his family.

REOPENS FGN 12



Ron Lauder, a Jewish American businessman and an old friend of Netanyahu, was one such witness.

Lauder confirmed to police that he had given Netanyahu various gifts, including a suit, and that he had also financed a trip abroad for the prime minister's son, Yair.

Police believe that the value of the gifts Lauder gave Netanyahu is greater than what he admitted and that they were not given in friendship but in hopes of gaining some benefit.

Netanyahu has strongly denied all allegations against him.

"All previous so-called affairs have proved baseless and so it will be with the allegations now published in the media. They won't come to anything, because there isn't anything," Netanyahu earlier said.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is serving a jail term on charges of graft. Netanyahu had succeeded Olmert in 2009 after he resigned when a series of graft charges were brought against him.
Police today arrested three persons with Rs 54 lakhs in new Rs 2,000 notes when they were entering Gujarat through Amirgadh checkpost, a senior official said.

"Police intercepted a car which came from Rajasthan and upon checking found out 2700 bundles of new Rs 2000 denomination notes. The total value comes to Rs 54 lakh," Banaskantha SP Neeraj Badgujar said.

"We have arrested three persons and also informed the Income Tax department about them. In the primary investigation those arrested told us that they belong to Hathras in UP. They were travelling from UP to Ahmedabad," he said.

Those arrested have been identified as Nitin Agarwal, Sachin Agarwal and their driver Manish Kumar, said the official.

A probe is on to find out from where they procured such a high number of new currency notes, he said.

"They told us that they were on their way to visit a food processing expo being held in Ahmedabad," he said.

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Presidency University, the erstwhile Presidency College, which completes its 200 years of existence this year, is looking at an "enabling and non-interfering" role of the West Bengal government for the educational institute to flourish.

"We want an enabling and non-interfering role of the West Bengal government for the university to flourish in the coming years," head of Presidency Mentor Group Sugata Bose said at the inauguration of the bicentennial celebrations here today.

Bose, an alumnus of the college and an MP of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state, said the university has been recruiting faculty members purely on the basis of merit.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who was supposed to inaugurate the celebrations, was conspicuous by her absence.

On the occasion, state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said the government has been supporting the university by sanctioning huge funds for the renovation of the heritage building on College Street.

The state government has also provided 10 acres of land at Rajarhat for the university's new campus with all modern facilities, he added.

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Nepal's main opposition alliance led by CPN UML today launched a massive protest n the capital to force the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill aimed at addressing the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

The nine party alliance hopes to gather more than one lakh activists and supporters in the capital as a major strength show against the Prime Minister Prachanda-led coalition government's move.

The rally is aimed at forcing the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill.

The ruling alliance mainly comprising CPN Maoist Center and Nepali Congress has been making efforts to amend the Constitution aiming to address the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

Eight smaller left parties including CPN- ML, and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) will also join the rally against the government.

CPN UML chairman K P Oli, CPN ML general secretary C P Mainali and NWPP Chairman Narayan Man Bijukchhe are the prominent opposition leaders who will join the protest.

The bill, which was was registered at the Parliament Secretariat in November, aims to accommodate the demands of the agitating Madhesi and ethnic groups that include citizenship and boundary demarcation issues among others.

Re-demarcation of the provincial boundary and citizenship issue are the two major demands put forth by the Madhesis.

Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a six-month- long agitation from September 2015 to February last year in which more than 50 people were killed.

The agitation had also crippled the landlocked country's economy as supplies from India were blocked.

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Punjab on Friday upped its ante against demonetisation in line with the all-India campaign launched by the party's central leadership, demanding immediate steps by the Modi government to rectify the situation triggered by the note ban.

leader and former MoS J D Seelam said the party was submitting a memorandum to all deputy commissioners in the state, seeking the truth on the Nov 8 demonetisation move and its impact on people.

The memorandum against "corruption and demonetisation", which has already been submitted to Prime Minister, demands the conduct of an independent inquiry into the corruption and bribery allegations in the Birla and Sahara papers cases, he said.

The party also demanded compensation for recouping the losses suffered due to demonetisation, he added.

Accusing Modi of "misleading" the people by projecting demonetisation as a battle against black money, terror financing and corruption, Seelam said wanted to know from him how much black money had come into the banks as a result of the move.

Pointing out that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's description of demonetisation as "organised loot and plunder" had come true, the Congress leader said it had plunged the country into an economic crisis, pushing it back by 10-15 years.

"The Modi government should admit its mistake and rectify the situation," he added.

State Congress chief Amarinder Singh said the people had been badly hurt by "note-bandi", with the poor affected the most.

The party's state vice-president Sunil Jakhar said they were not against demonetisation but its shoddy implementation.

Referring to the seizure of around Rs 3.5 lakh from Fazilka sub-jail, Jakhar pointed out that all the new currency notes were being found with leaders and workers of BJP and their allies, such as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
[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...
Pakistan's recently retired army chief Gen Raheel Sharif will head a Saudi Arabia-led 39-nation Islamic military coalition formed to combat terrorism, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said today.

Asif, while speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back.

He, however, said he did not have much information about the details of the said agreement.

Asif said the decision was taken after taking the incumbent government into confidence and "it was finalised here first". The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.

The Defence Minister said any such assignment or posting requires proper clearance from the government and General Headquarters (GHQ) both and confirmed that the due process was followed before finalising the agreement.

"As you are aware that this thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the Prime Minister was also part of the deliberations," Asif was quoted as saying by Dawn .

He was of the opinion that formation of such an alliance is a good step, as the "Muslim Ummah (community) is in a spot of bother right now and needs unity among its ranks".

Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Pakistan had initially found itself in the cross-hairs of Middle Eastern politics as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly-formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent.

However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

The coalition was envisaged to serve as a platform for security cooperation, including provision of training, equipment and troops, and involvement of religious scholars for dealing with extremism.

The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Iran, Saudi Arabia's arch-rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional powers rage from Syria to Yemen, the report said.

The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others.

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Om Puri's sudden demise has sent shockwaves in the industry and among his fans. An actor of immense talent, Puri has left behind an impressive body of work in Indian cinema, Hollywood, European movies as well as television.

Here's revisiting some of those performances by the veteran actor which will remain etched in the minds of cinema lovers forever.

"Aakrosh" (1980): In this memorable debut by Govind Nihalani, Puri played a poor peasant, who is falsely accused of killing his own wife. In the entire film, Puri speaks only in flashbacks, but breaks his silence towards the end with a scream after killing his sister to save her from the fate that his wife suffered.

"Bhavni Bhavai" (1980): This Ketan Mehta film saw Puri play a poor narrator. The film also starred Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah in lead roles.

"Arohan" (1982): Directed by Shyam Benegal, the movie, set against the backdrop of Naxalbadi movement, saw Puri play the role of a poor farmer who ends up in jail while fighting against the system. He received the National Award for Best Actor for this role.

"Ardh Satya" (1983): Again directed by Nihalani, the film saw Puri play the role of Anant Welankar, an idealistic sub-inspector with Bombay Police, who struggles to come to terms with the corruption around him. In one of the most memorable scenes, Puri's character casually recites a poem to Smita Patil but as the reality of the lines sink in, his voice changes.

It is considered as one of the best cop films made in Indian cinema and Puri received a National Award and Filmfare Award for best actor.

"Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron" (1983): To break his image as a serious actor, Puri took a shot at comedy with Kundan Shah's cult classic. He played the role of a corrupt property builder called Ahuja.

Puri in an interview to PTI recalled how he came to be a part of the film. The actor said people knew him only as someone with no sense of humour prior to the film.

"I did not have a sense of humour because I was struggling. I wanted to break that image...," he had said, adding that they came up with comedy play, which became a huge hit and eventually landed him a role in "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro".

"Mirch Masala" (1987): This Ketan Mehta film saw a gathering of almost all the leading names in parallel cinema - be it Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Dina Pathak, Om Puri or Ratna Pathak Shah.

Puri played the role of an old guard who gives up his life to protect the women working in a masala factory.

"City of Joy" (1992): It is an English film directed by Roland Joffe, based on the novel of the same name. Puri played a rural farmer called Hazari Pal, who moves to the fictitious Anand Nagar slum of Kolkata with his family in search of a better livelihood.

"Dirty Dancing" star Patrick Swayze and Shabana Azmi were his co-stars in the movie.

"In Custody" (1993): His role in this movie, opposite Shashi Kapoor, is one of his most under-rated performances. Based on the novel written by Anita Desai, Puri played the role of professor at a local college.

He teaches Hindi but is in love with Urdu language. He is keen to interview the great Urdu poet, Nur, but his various attempts get thwarted thanks to Nur's personal issues and his extended brood. Also called "Muhafiz" in Hindi, Puri received widespread appreciation for his role in the Ismail Merchant-directed movie.

"East is East" (1999): He played patriarch Zaheed Khan, a first generation Pakistani, living in London and married to a British woman. Khan struggles to strike a balance between his traditional values and his children's modern outlook.

"The Hundred-Foot Journey" (2014): Puri starred as the head of Kadam family, who have relocated to France from India. They open a restaurant directly across the road from Madame Mallory's (Helen Mirren) Michelin-starred eatery, leading to a clash.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Exclusion of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad from the dignitaries, who shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the Prakash Parv here, today drew flak from the RJD and Congress.

RJD vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh voiced the party's grievance.

The mega arrangements were made by the state government, of which RJD is an ally, to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, yesterday.

"It did not look like the arrangements to mark Guru Gobind Singhji Maharaj's 350th Prakash Parv were made by the alliance government. Rather, it looked more like they were made by one party in power," Singh told PTI.

"This (Lalu not being accommodated on the dais) has not gone down well with the people. Lalu Prasad was made to sit below (the dais). Everybody praised Nitish Kumar for making the grand arrangements. Was RJD not part of the management for the preparations and arrangements for the Prakash Parv celebrations?", he asked.

Firing yet another salvo at Kumar, Singh, whose frequent digs at the chief minister have drawn sharp reactions from the JD(U) in the past, said, "It was one man who got his photo clicked to take credit for the arrangements."



Lalu and his two minister sons, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, sat in the VIP enclosure with others during the function.

Kumar, along with two Union ministers -- Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan -- and Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind, shared the dais with the prime minister at the concluding function of the 350th Prakash Parv.

Congress also expressed its displeasure over the denial of seat to Lalu on the dais and blamed the Prime Minister's Office and the BJP for it.

"Lalu Prasad was not given a seat on the dais on instructions from the PMO and the BJP," Bihar Congress chief and state minister Ashok Choudhary alleged.

"Everyone knows that the PMO guides the SPG as regards who will share the dais with the prime minister at a function. The question should be raised before the PMO as to why was Lalu Prasad not given a seat at the podium," he told PTI.

Nobody from the Congress, which too is an ally in the grand alliance government in Bihar with the JD(U) and the RJD, was present at the mega event at the Darbar Hall, a replica of the Golden Temple in Amritsar erected at Gandhi Maidan for the Prakash Parv celebrations.

"We had invitations but we chose not to go," Choudhary, who sat on a dharna today as part of the Congress' agitation against demonetisation, said.

The JD(U) said there was no ground for kicking up a



"political controversy" over an issue which was a "matter of protocol".

"Lalu Prasad is a respected leader of the grand alliance in Bihar...It is a matter of protocol and there is no ground to kick up a political controversy over it," JD(U) state chief spokesman Sanjay Singh said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's praise for Nitish Kumar for launching a movement against liquor and appeal to all to make prohibition a grand success, weeks after he lauded the JD(U) chief for supporting the Centre's demonetisation move, have given rise to speculations in Bihar's political circles.

Though Lalu or his minister sons did not say anything on the matter, a section of RJD leaders did not take the party chief's exclusion from the dais too kindly and protested their leader "not getting due respect".

RJD, with 80 MLAs in the 234-member Bihar Assembly, is the biggest partner in the grand alliance government headed by Kumar.

The prime minister, while delivering his speech, did not mention Lalu's name, but Kumar acknowledged the RJD supremo's presence during his address.

RJD MLA Bhai Virendra said whatever happened yesterday during the Prakash Parv celebrations should not have occurred.

"It is sad that Lalu Prasad was not accommodated on the dais. We, the leaders and workers, are feeling humiliated that our leader did not get a space on the dais," the MLA from Maner in Patna district said.

Stating that even Congress workers were feeling humiliated, he said, "It is a coalition government of three parties, but someone is trying to project himself."



When pointed out that protocol did not warrant Lalu a seat on the dais, the legislator said, "What about Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav? He should have been accommodated...Laluji is the national president of the party and hence, he should have also been given space on the dais."



The apparent bonhomie between the prime minister and the chief minister has triggered speculations of Kumar joining hands with the BJP once again.

Led by Kumar, the JD(U) had snapped ties with the BJP in June, 2013 over the NDA's projection of Modi as its prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The severing of ties between the two parties came after being together for 17 years in the NDA and during the eight-year rule of the JD(U)-BJP government in Bihar, headed by Kumar.

Speculations triggered by yesterday's exchange of pleasantries between Modi and Kumar were fanned when senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said nothing was impossible in politics.

(REOPENS CES 10)



With the issue of denial of seat on the dais to RJD chief Lalu Prasad kicking up a controversy, his son and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav sought to play down the matter.

"Sitting on the ground at such a function is part of 'parampara' (tradition)," he told reporters when asked for his reaction on his father sitting on the ground at the concluding function of the Prakash Parv yesterday.

"Laluji zameeni neta hain aur woh zameen par nahi baithenge to kahan baithenge (Laluji is a leader who is rooted to the ground and where else would he sit other than the ground)," he added.

Tejashwi, who today accompanied Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to a function at Gandhi Maidan as part of the 350th Prakash Parv, also did not take offence to the prime minister showering praise on the chief minister for prohibition and good arrangements for the Prakash Parv, but not mentioning his father's name during his address.

"Is it possible to take everybody's name in the government for such things? The praise is for the entire government," he maintained.

Asked about RJD vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh expressing displeasure over the incident, Tejashwi, who is also the RJD Legislature Party leader in the state Assembly, sought to play it down saying, "I do not know who is saying what.
A stretch of road in the national capital's Rohini area has been named after Guru Gobind Singh to commemorate his 350th birth anniversary.

North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) christened the road between Block A and Block B at Sector 15 in Rohini yesterday to mark the grand occasion, officials said.

From small to big, gurudwaras in the city were all lit up as part of the festivities, with Gurudwara Sisganj in Chandani Chowk and Bangla Sahib Gurudwara in central Delhi richly illuminated.

On the occasion, North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar said, "Guru Gobind Singh Ji was the 10th Sikh Guru, a spiritual master and warrior. We have much to learn from his life and sacrifice."



Leader of House in NDMC Vijay Prakash Pandey said, "Guru Gobind Singh Ji founded the Sikh warrior community called, Khalsa and wrote important religious texts and enshrined the scripture the Guru Granth Sahib as Sikhism's eternal Guru."



Weeks of celebrations culminated yesterday on the Guru Parv, across the country, with special festivities at Patna, where he was born in 1666.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Patna yesterday to pay obeisance to the 10th Sikh Guru, even as a sea of humanity had gathered at Patna Sahib gurudwara and the famous Gandhi Maidan, the other focal point of the grand celebrations.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday announced that a 'Guru Circuit' would be created in the state to bring visitors and tourists to places associated with Guru Gobind Singh, Guru Nanak, Guru Teg Bahadur and other famed Sikh Gurus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia's military on Friday said it has begun scaling down its deployment to Syria, with Moscow's sole aircraft carrier set to be the first to quit the conflict zone.

"In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces Vladimir Putin, the Russian defence ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria," Russian news agencies quoted military chief Valery Gerasimov as saying.

Gerasimov said that a naval group headed by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would be the first to leave the area.

"The tasks set for the aircraft carrier group during its military mission have been fulfilled," added Russia's main commander in Syria Andrei Kartapolov, agencies reported.

Kartapolov said that still had sufficient air defence capabilities in Syria owing to its S-300 and S-400 systems deployed in the war-torn country.

Since September 2015, had boosted its firepower on land in Syria and off the coast in the Mediterranean in support of regime forces targeting the second city of Aleppo.

Troops loyal to Russia's ally Bashar al-Assad finally ousted rebels from the city last month in their biggest victory in more than five years of fighting, paving the way for the Kremlin to launch a fresh push for a political solution to the conflict.

Russian President Putin ordered a reduction in his forces in Syria on December 29, as he announced a ceasefire between government and rebel forces that has since dampened down the fighting.

Russia, along with Turkey and Iran, are currently pushing for peace talks to be held later this month in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.

Moscow launched its bombing campaign in Syria in September 2015, helping to turn the tide in favour of Assad's ailing forces.

Putin already announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces in March 2016, but Moscow later had to ramp up its presence again as fighting increased.
The Nadigar Sangam (South Indian Artistes' Association) mourned the death of the veteran actor Om Puri, saying the Indian film industry has lost a pillar.

The actor's body also hailed him as "one of the finest performers in the country."



"Be it Ardh Satya, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Aakrosh or Mirch Masala, he was right there delivering a wonderful performance," a statement from Nadigar Sangam said.

It recalled that he had acted in around 300 movies and won the National Film Award for best actor for his role as a police inspector in 'Ardh Satya.'



"He was a fine actor and the Indian film industry has lost a pillar. His power-packed performance will stay in our hearts forever.Nadigar Sangam expresses its heartfelt condolences to the sudden demise of versatile actor Om Puri. His death is a great loss to Indian film industry."



"At this juncture, South Indian Artistes' Association mourns the death of one of the finest performers in the country.RIP!," the statement said.

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Denmark said today that Seoul has sought the extradition of the daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the heart of a scandal that led to the impeachment of the South Korean president.

Chung Yoo-Ra, the 20-year-old daughter of the woman dubbed South Korea's "Rasputin", is one of the figures in the influence-peddling scandal that sparked massive street protests demanding the removal of President Park Geun-Hye.

Chung was held on Sunday for overstaying her visa, after South Korean authorities issued a warrant for her arrest.

"The processing of the extradition case against the 20-year-old woman, Chung Yoo-Ra, can now begin," Danish prosecutors said in a statement, adding South Korea had emailed an extradition warrant.

The equestrian, who has reportedly bought horses and trained in Denmark in the past, has told police that she was in the country due to her involvement in the sport.

Chung denied any wrongdoing at a hearing on Monday, where the court ordered that she be detained until January 30.

"It may be that we will be able to reach a decision in the case before 30 January, but of course it would be natural to request an extension of the remand if this is not the case," said Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director of the public prosecutor's office.

Choi, a secret confidante of Park, is accused of using her ties with the president to force top firms including Samsung to "donate" nearly $70 million (67 million euros) to non-profit foundations which Choi then used as her personal ATMs.

She is also accused of using her influence to secure her daughter's admission to an elite Seoul university, with a state probe revealing the school had admitted Chung at the expense of other candidates with better qualifications.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
AAP leader Sanjay Singh today alleged that Akali leaders may rope in criminals to terrorise voters during the upcoming Assembly elections and urged the election commission to keep an tab on them.

"The Election Commission of India must keep a tab on Akali leaders meeting criminals in jails whom they can use to terrorise voters during elections," senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh said here today.

Referring to the arrest of 25 persons, including the jail Superintendent, for trespassing into Fazilka prison allegedly to meet inmate Shiv Lal Doda, he said it is an eye opener for the authorities.

Doda, considered to be close to Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, was openly holding sangat darshan programme inside the jail. But the officers under pressure from the Badals were not taking any action, Singh alleged.

On Sukhbir Badal announcing to contest from Jalalabad, he said the Deputy Chief Minister has "shown some courage" to fight against Bhagwant Mann.

About AAP's Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh's candidature in Punjab Assembly polls, Singh said he (Jarnail Singh) has sent his resignation to Delhi Vidhan Sabha Speaker.

"Jarnail will definitely contest from Lambi and defeat Parkash Singh Badal," he said.

Hitting out at Congress, Singh said, "Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh boasts of his popularity among the masses and it is high time that he should contest from Jalalabad to test it."



"Congress leaders are more concerned about their poll ticket than meeting people. All leaders are camping in Delhi for the last few months and have lost connection with voters," he claimed.

Asserting that huge crowds at its rallies show that AAP will sweep the elections, he said, "Surveys predicted less than 10 seats for AAP in Delhi elections, but it won 67 seats out of 70. We will repeat the history and Punjab will break the record of Delhi this time.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Demanding payment of pending salaries, sanitation workers of East Delhi Municipal Corporation today went on an indefinite strike, which is likely to trigger a serious garbage disposal and health crisis in the trans-Yamuna region of the capital city.

The workers also demonstrated in front of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's camp offices in east Delhi and "dumped garbage" at his Khichripur office.

The protesting 'safai karmacharis' also locked the refuse removal (RR) depot of the civic body in Jhilmil area, preventing trucks from dumping garbage at Ghazipur landfill site.

"The sanitation workers were paid salaries till September. They have not been given salaries for the past three months despite assurances by municipal corporation officials, forcing us to go on strike," claimed Sanjay Gehlot, president of Delhi unit of MCD Swachhata Karmchari Union.

The workers also raised slogans against EDMC and Delhi government.

"EDMC is suffering from financial problems due to its higher expenditure as compared to its income. The blame for this condition goes to Sheila Dikshit for trifurcation of the erstwhile unified MCD. The situation has worsened as the Delhi government is not paying dues, running into several hundred crores, to the corporation," Gehlot alleged.

He claimed 17,000 sanitation workers are participating in the strike.

"It is a matter of shame that due to non-payment of their salaries and other dues, the sanitation workers are on the verge of a financial crisis and are finding it hard to meet their basic needs, including food," Gehlot said.

The workers have also raised their other demands including regularisation of daily wagers and health cards.

EDMC 'safai karmacharis' had struck work in January and October last year, posing serious health and hygiene challenge to the authorities. The strike in 2015 was called off after the intervention of the Delhi High Court.

East Delhi generates a large quantity of garbage with Ghazipur landfill site receiving on an average 2,500 tonnes of waste daily. The strike may leave the area, which also has a number of unauthorised colonies, in a mess.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan and other foreginers accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal case who have been evading court summons and warrants today faced the heat of the Supreme Court which restrained his Maxis Group from "selling or trading" the licences of 2G spectrum.

The court said it "cannot tolerate that a person uses India's national res0urces and evades the law".

Krishnan and former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanidhi Maran and five others were chargesheeted by CBI in probe related to the money trail of around Rs 600 crore allegedly used as bribe in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

Maran brothers have been accused of pressuring and coercing Chennai-based telecom promoter C Sivasankaran, who got 2G licences in 2006, to sell his stakes in Aircel and two subsidiary firms to Malaysian firm Maxis Group.

"We cannot tolerate a person using the national resources such as spectrum of India and not honouring the court notice. You (Krishnan) cannot evade the prosess of law. You must come here from Malaysia and face the law if you want to use the spectrum," a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The apex court also stayed the "selling and trading in the 2G Spectrum" under its consideration which was originally granted to Aircel in 2006 and said that failure of Krishnan and other foreign accused to submit before the court of law here would entail passing of the proposed order of restraining the earning of any revenue by using the 2G spectrum licenses.

The bench also comprising Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud asked Krishnan, Malaysian national Augustus Ralph Marshall and two accused companies -- Malaysia's Maxis Communication Berhad and Astro All Asia Networl PLC -- to put in their appearance before the apex court within two weeks.

Irked over the non-execution of summons and warrants against Malaysian businessman and his firms, the apex court said that it proposes to restrain the earning of any revenue by the company from 2G spectrum licences.

"It is imperative to ensure, in our considered view, that the process of law should not be permitted to be frustrated by non-service of summons on the accused.

"In order to enforce the presence of accused Augustus Ralph Marshall, Ananda Krishna, M/s Astro All Asia Networks Limited and M/s Maxis Communications Berhad, Malaysia, we propose to restrain, earning of any revenue, by using the 2G spectrum licences, which were originally granted to M/s. Aircel Telecommunications," the bench said.

The apex court further said that the instant order is to



bring to the notice of the accused the proposed action that is likely to be taken.

The bench asked the Telecom Ministry to devise ways and means to avoid any adverse consequenses following the court's order to millions of Aircel subscribers by provisionally transferring them to some other service providers, in case the necessity to pass the proposed order arises.

It directed the Centre to publish its instant order in two leading newspapers in Malaysia and said that after the proposed order is passed, it would not be open to any of the accused to raise the objection of monetary losses.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on February 3 and said other averments made by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy will be dealt with at a later stage.

Swamy in his petition has alleged that Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearances to Aircel-Maxis deal were granted illegally.

Special 2G prosecutor Anand Grover said that hearing on framing of charges in the trial court in Aircel-Maxis deal case is scheduled on January 9.

During the hearing, advocate Prashant Bhushan alleged that Maxis Group owner Ananda Krishnan was attempting to exit India after being chargesheeted by CBI for fraudulently 'force buying' Aircel for using the spectrum.

"We cannot say today that it was a fraud as there are all allegations at present but the process of law should be honoured," the apex court said and asked amicus curiae and senior advocate K K Venugopal to suggest ways as what could be done if parties refused to appear before the court.

On October 29, 2014, the special 2G court for the first time had summoned former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi and six others, including Malaysian business Krishnan after taking cognisance of the CBI charge sheet.

After two summons were not executed, the special 2G court had on September 24 last year issued open ended non-bailable warrants against Krishnan and Marshall.

Besides the Maran brothers, Krishnan and Marshall, CBI has named four firms -- Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd, Maxis Communication Berhad, Astro All Asia Network PLC and South Asia Entertainment Holding Ltd -- as accused.

(Reopens LGD34)



CBI had alleged in the court that Dayanidhi Maran had "pressured" and "forced" Chennai-based telecom promoter C Sivasankaran to sell his stakes in Aircel and two subsidiary firms to Maxis Group in 2006.

It had alleged that Dayanidhi, during his tenure as the telecom minister from February 2004 to May 2007, had allegedly abused his official position and showed undue favour to Krishnan-owned company in lieu of which the business tycoon bought equity subscription shares of Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd and accused firm South Asia Entertainment Holding Ltd which were managed by the Marans.

The accused have been chargesheeted for the offences punishable under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and under relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

CBI had alleged that during his tenure, Maran had not granted telecom licences to Sivasankaran's Aircel, Aircel Cellular Ltd and Dishnet Wireless Ltd citing lack of some regulatory approvals.

Denial of licenses led to constricting business environment for Aircel but when Krishnan's Maxis Group, in connivance with Maran brothers acquired the three firms, telecom licences were granted to it by the Telecom Ministry, CBI had said.
Markets regulator has given approval to BSE for setting up a global clearing corporation in international financial services centre (IFSC) at Gujarat's GIFT city.

has granted recognition to India International Clearing Corporation for one year, commencing on December 29, 2016, and ending on the December 28, 2017, the regulator said in a notification.

BSE, in November, had received in-principle approval from to set up international exchange and clearing corporations at Gujarat International Finance-Tech City (Gift City).

Trading members are expected to trade through India International Exchange (India INX), an arm of leading domestic bourse BSE, which is expected to go 'live' next week.

The BSE board at its meeting held on May 5, 2016, had approved creation of two wholly-owned subsidiary for the purpose of setting up the first international exchange and clearing corporations.

Rival National Stock Exchange (NSE), is also going to open its international exchange at GIFT IFSC in the near future.
A senior North Korean delegation left Pyongyang today to attend the inauguration of Nicaragua's newly elected President Daniel Ortega.

Choe Ryong Hae, a close aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, is heading the delegation as a special envoy.

Choe has become something of the foreign face of the North Korean government with his relatively frequent trips lately.

He is vice chairman of the State Affairs Commission, one of North Korea's most powerful institutions, and is vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Worker's Party of Korea, along with being a member of its politburo.

Kim Jong Un has yet to make an official trip abroad although he has been in power for more than five years.

In the meantime, Choe has served as Kim's special envoy on missions to Moscow and Beijing in past years and more recently headed Pyongyang's delegation to Cuba for Fidel Castro's funeral. Before that, he led the North's participation at the Rio Olympics.

Choe's trip to Nicaragua comes as North Korea is facing increased international pressure after two nuclear tests and a satellite test launch in 2016.

The United Nations imposed a new round of sanctions at the end of November last year that included measures to limit North Korea's diplomatic activities around the world.

Choe, sent off by an honor guard, departed Pyongyang on Friday morning's scheduled Air Koryo flight to Vladivostok. He was expected to travel via Moscow and Cuba before arriving in Nicaragua.

North Korea and Nicaragua opened diplomatic relations in 1979.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP President Amit Shah today addressed party office-bearers here ahead of two-day National Executive meet, where its top brass is expected to give final shape to BJP's poll strategy in assembly elections in five states.

The party is seeking to make demonetisation, which it has terms as a "war against black money and corruption", a major poll issue, besides encashing on the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the "pro-poor" schemes.

Shah finalised the party's resolutions to be passed in the two-day national executive meeting that will be inaugurated with his address later in the day.

The BJP chief will seek to motivate the party leaders to steer the party to victory in five states that go to polls in February-March, especially in high-stakes Uttar Pradesh.

The party leaders will discuss and review the ground situation in the poll-bound states, BJP leaders said.

The party will use the occasion to burnish its pro-poor and pro-weaker sections credentials by citing several government schemes, including the recent sops announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The top BJP brass is also expected to target the opposition over its attack on the government for advancing the Budget Session of Parliament and may project it as yet another attempt by the Congress and the other rival parties to derail Modi's "pro-poor" agenda.

With the mood in the saffron camp optimistic following the prime minister's huge rally in Lucknow recently and what it believes to be a positive public response to the currency ban, the party is expected to project the opposition's criticism of the exercise as an attempt to protect the corrupt.

Two resolutions, one political and the other economic, are likely to be passed at the meet.

The army's surgical strikes last year to target terror launchpads across the border could also find a mention at the meeting.

The Election Commission has announced the dates for Assembly polls in five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand.

BJP's central election committee is likely to announce the names of party candidates after the auspicious 'Makar Sankranti' which falls on January 14.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An association of teachers today said it will field candidates from two seats in the next month's biennial elections to Maharashtra Legislative Council from teachers' constituencies.

Biennial elections to five constituencies of the Upper House - two graduates and three teachers' seats - will be held on February 3.

The association, Shikshak Bharti, would field its candidates Ashok Belsare and Rajendra Zade from Konkan and Nagpur seats, respectively, Kapil Patil, a sitting MLC from teachers' constituency, said at a press conference.

Besides Konkan and Nagpur, the other teachers' constituency going to polls is Aurangabad.

Patil said the two candidates will fight the polls by highlighting "faulty" education policies of the BJP-led Government in the State.

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Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has rejected as "dream" the claim by his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa that he would make a political comeback by toppling down the current government this year.

"Certain people can dream but the government would not be toppled before 2020," Sirisena said, addressing a gathering last night at the state radio.

"The government could only be changed by the public at the next election. There will be no action to violate the law and violate the constitution," Sirisena stressed, referring to Rajapaksa's recent comments that the Joint Opposition of his supporters could change the government through a roll in the head count in parliament.

Rajapaksa's supporters expect Sirisena to break the unity government with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe by sacking him and setting up a Sri Lanka Freedom Party government.

"People who tasted power by abusing all privileges are keen to see the government toppled. I clearly tell them that there will be no room for that without public approval," he underlined.

Sirisena said 2017 would be important to Sri Lanka in its economic revival and development.

"We have planned for development projects with international cooperation," he said.

Earlier this week, Wickremesinghe challenged Rajapaksa to topple the current government, saying: "I will be going next week to Switzerland for one week giving Mahinda time to bring the government down.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Normal life was badly hit in Jammu and Kashmir due to heavy snowfall, which cut off the Valley from rest of the country even as the weatherman issued a "medium danger" avalanche warning for parts of the state and neighbouring Himachal Pradesh.

The national capital, which witnessed a clear sky today, might receive light rains early morning. Though the visibility this morning was better than what was being recorded over the past few days, 70 trains were running late by several hours due to fog.

"Light rains or thundershowers might occur in some areas (of Delhi) tonight or early tomorrow morning," a MeT official said.

Normal life was thrown out of gear as Jammu and Kashmir summer capital received heaviest snowfall this season. Operations at Srinagar International Airport were suspended and all flights for the day cancelled.

Srinagar-Jammu national highway has been closed for traffic due to bad weather, virtually cutting off the Valley from rest of the country. Kashmir University postponed all examinations scheduled for tomorrow and the day after due to the snowfall in the Valley.

The MET Office has forecast widespread snowfall or rains over the next two days also.

During the last 24 hours, there has been heavy snowfall in Gulmarg, the star attraction for tourists visiting the Valley during winter, and peripheral areas including Khilanmarg, Kongdoori and Afferwath.

Bad weather conditions forced Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat to end his 3-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir on the second day.

Meanwhile, a "medium danger" avalanche warning has been issued for some districts of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh for the next 24 hours, advising people not to venture into avalanche-prone areas.

The warning is valid for avalanche-prone areas of Baramulla, Kupwara, Bandipora, Kishtwar, Rajauri, Doda, Poonch and Riyasi districts of Jammu and Kashmir for the next 24 hours, Snow and Avalanche Study Center said.

Also, a "medium danger" warning was issued for some areas of Chamba and Lahaul and Spiti districts of Himachal Pradesh.

In Rajasthan, several trains were cancelled, rescheduled or are delayed due to foggy conditions.

While seven trains are running late, North-Western Railway cancelled Howrah-Jodhpur/Bikaner, Merta-Road Bikaner, Jodhpur-Howrah and Bikaner-Howrah trains. Ajmer-Jammutawi, Ajmer-Sealdah and Jaipur-Allahabad have been rescheduled.

Night temperatures increased marginally in parts of the state with Dabok being the coldest at of 8.2 degrees Celsius.

Foggy weather condition in Punjab and Haryana affected air, rail and road traffic in the two states though minimum temperatures in the region were recorded several notches above normal.

Major cities in Bihar, parts of which have been witnessing dense to very dense fog, are expected to see a further decline in temperature due to westerly winds. The Met office has predicted isolated dense to very dense fog across the state over the next two-three days.

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Sopore, the bastion of hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has recorded nearly 500 incidents of stone pelting, the highest during the 2016 Kashmir unrest which was triggered by the killing of terrorist Burhan Wani.

Seventy-six persons besides two police personnel were killed during the five month-long unrest in which 463 persons were arrested under Public Safety Act (PSA) for their alleged involvement in incidents of violence and stone pelting.

Of the total 2,690 incidents of stone pelting, North Kashmir accounts for the highest 1,248 incidents, followed by 875 in South Kashmir and 567 in Central Kashmir, according to official data of the state Home Ministry.

Sopore, which is part of Baramulla district, has recorded the highest number of 492 incidents. In Baramulla district, 810 incidents were reported during the unrest, it said.

Baramulla is followed by Srinagar and Kupwara districts with 339 incidents in each of these districts, it said, adding 271 such incidents took place in Anantnag district, followed by 264 in Pulwama district, 173 in Shopian district, 167 in Kulgam district, 163 in Budgam district, 109 in Bandipora district and 65 in Ganderbal district.

Among the total incidents of weapon snatching and looting by militants and mobs during the unrest, Kulgam tops the list with six incidents, followed by Pulwama with three, and two incidents each from the three districts of Anantnag, Shopian and Budgam. One such incident was reported from Srinagar district, the data said.

Thirteen such incidents took place in South Kashmir besides three in Central Kashmir districts and no incident was reported from North Kashmir districts.

As per the figures of the Home Ministry, as many as 66 weapons, including 17 AK rifles, and over 7,000 rounds of ammunition were looted by militants and mobs that attacked police stations and cops after Wani's killing.

He was killed in a gunbattle with security forces in Kokernag belt of South Kashmir on July 8.

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Confusion in Samajwadi Party in Mathura continues as "district presidents" of the two warring groups claim themselves to be the legally-appointed heads of the party's local unit.

"Since state president of Samajwadi Party Naresh Uttam has revived the position of district presidents appointed by the then state president Akhilesh Yadav, I automatically become head of the district unit of the party," Tulsiram Sharma, erstwhile president of SP claimed.

Sharma was appointed district president by Akhilesh Yadav (who, then, was holding office of Chief Minister as well as state president of the party) on May 2, 2014.

However, Thakur Ajit Singh, who was appointed district president of the party by Shivpal Singh Yadav on December 23, 2016, rejects Sharma's claim.

"Since the efforts to patch up differences are still on in Lucknow and contest Vidhan Sabha election as a united party, I still hold the office of district president," Singh said.

SP workers have started strengthening the party by apprising the people of the development work done in the state during Akhilesh Yadav's tenure, he added.

"Thakur lobby has taken a pledge to work for SP since a member of the community has been given coveted post," Singh claimed.

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The Bombay High Court today sought to know from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) if it has taken any step on the supply of defective tablets by a company to students of civic-run schools in two years as alleged in a PIL.

The court said it would implead these schools as party respondent in the petition to hear them, which "would be the right diagnosis and right treatment".

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice G S Kulkarni was hearing a PIL filed by city resident Prithviraj Mhaske who alleged a scam in the procurement of tablets and their distribution under a scheme by the civic body.

Mhaske claimed the BMC had awarded the three-year contract of Rs 50 crore to a tablet phone manufacturer.

"In 2015-16, 22,000 tablet phones were given to students in civic-run schools, out of which over 10,000 turned out to be defective. Till date (from 2016) 15,000 phones have been supplied and I have personally learnt from several schools that the phones are not working," Mhaske told the high court.

To this, the bench said it would like to hear what the municipal commissioner has to say about this issue and if any step has been taken by BMC on the issue.

The court directed the petitioner to submit a list of schools where such tablet phones were supplied and have been found to be faulty.

"We will implead these schools as party respondent in the petition so that we can hear them too. That will be the right diagnosis and right treatment," the bench said.

The court will hear the petition after two weeks.

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News / Local

by Staff Reporter

Security details attached to First Lady Grace Mugabe reportedly threatened to shoot the Sheriff of the High Court, Macauff Madega, when he delivered an eviction order to her house in Borrowdale suburb.This comes as reports further indicate that she has grabbed two more properties belonging to Lebanese businessman Jamal Ahmed.The fight is over $1,3 million diamond ring deal.According to The Zimbabwe Independent, the incident happened on December 22 a day after High Court judge Justice Clement Phiri issued a 24 hour order on 21 December for Grace to leave the premises"Upon his arrival at the gate, armed soldiers stopped him as he tried to gain access into the premises to serve the notice."The armed soldiers said the premises were a security area and the sheriff was not allowed to be anywhere near. The soldiers refused to identify themselves and even refused to take the High Court order" an unnamed source is quoted saying."When the sheriff tried to affix the High Court order on the wall so that the second respondent (Grace) could have access to it upon her arrival, the soldiers dragged him away from the gate to the tarred road with another soldier threatening that he was going to shoot the sheriff if he persisted".According to reports this week, Ahmed's lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa said they had approached the Deputy Sheriff of the High Court.Grace was taken to court by Ahmed after she took over three of his properties, demanding that he repay the $1.35m she had paid for a diamond ring that she then decided she did not want.Ahmed said Grace had made an order for the $1.35m diamond ring in Dubai.The ring was for her 20th wedding anniversary but she then refused to take delivery of the diamond and instead demanded a full refund.To avoid trouble the businessman offered to repay the money in installments and has paid back $150 000 already, he said in court documents.Grace, 51, married President Robert Mugabe in 1996.
Vice President of Surinam Ashwin Adhin arrived here today on a nine-day visit during which he will attend the Pravasi Bhartiya Divas in Bengaluru and meet a number of Union ministers here.

Adhin will attend the inaugural session of the Pravasi Bhartiya Divas (PBD) tomorrow which will focus on encouraging diaspora youths to reconnect with their Indian roots.

The PBD will be formally be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.

Adhin will also attend various events at the PBD on Sunday and Monday.

On January 12, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Ayush Minister Shripad Yesso Naik will call on the Surinam Vice President.

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Syrian government aircraft bombed a rebel-held district that is the capital's main water source today as the rival sides traded blame over a cut to mains supplies, a monitor said.

Damascus has been without water from Wadi Barada, a once popular hill station northwest of the capital, since December 22, leaving some 5.5 million people thirsty.

The United Nations warned yesterday that sabotaging water supplies is a war crime.

Government aircraft dropped at least 10 barrel bombs, crude munitions notorious for the indiscriminate casualties they cause, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A child was killed as clashes resumed in the area between pro-government forces and rebel fighters led by the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front.

East of the capital, clashes broke out in the Marj district despite a ceasefire in force since December 30. Three people were killed, one of them a child.

In Damascus, there were a number of casualties from rebel rocket fire.

Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as Al-Nusra Front, was Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and remains blacklisted as a terror group by the United Nations and Western governments.

Along with its jihadist rival, the Islamic State group, it is not party to the week-old ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

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Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal, arrested in the Rose Valley chit fund scam, was today sent to jail, after CBI interrogated him jointly with the party MP Sudip Bandopadhyay.

Pal, arrested in Kolkata on December 30 and brought to Odisha the next day, was produced in the Special Chief Judicial Magistrate (SCJM) court, designated as the CBI court, after the expiry of his six-day remand in two phase.

The MP's lawyer Sabyasachi Banerjee had earlier moved a bail plea but SCJM P K Mishra reserved judgement on it and sent Pal to Jharpada jail here till January 19.

"My client is clinically ill and he requires bail on health ground," Banerjee told reporters outside the court.

Officials of the investigating agency said the actor turned politician was interrogated jointly with the party's leader in the Lok Sabha, Sudip Bandopadhyay, who was arrested in Kolkata in the same case on January 3.

Pal was arrested on December 30 by CBI for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore Rose Valley chit fund scam. He was taken on remand in two phases by the CBI from December 31.

During the first phase of his remand period, Pal had complained about his health and spent most of the time at the Capital Hospital.

CBI in its petition to the court said that Pal was one of the directors of the chit fund group in 2010.

Pal is also accused of promoting the company through his speeches and misleading people to make deposits with it. The group allegedly duped investors in at least four states, including Odisha and West Bengal.

In its charge sheet submitted at the court here on January 7, 2016, CBI had charged the chit fund of defrauding investors of Rs 17,000 crore, out of which Rs 450 crore from Odisha alone.

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CBDT has suspended recovery of tax from Swedish companies whose disputes are being resolved through the MAP route, a move that will help in mitigating the hardship faced by such firms operating in India.

As per the CBDT guidance note, the tax demand will be kept in abeyance for two years if the Swedish companies furnish a bank guarantee of the disputed amount to the income tax authorities in India.

Over a dozen large Swedish companies including H&M, Volvo, ABB, Oriflame Holding, are operating in India and several of them are locked in disputes with I-T authorities.

"Considering the hardship faced by the taxpayers during the pendency of MAP, as well as for efficient management of collection of revenue, the competent authorities of India and Sweden have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) regarding suspension of collection of taxes during the pendency of MAP," the CBDT instruction said.

Under the MoU, the collection of outstanding taxes, in case of a taxpayer whose case is pending in MAP, would be kept in abeyance for a period of two years (extendable to a maximum period of five years through mutual agreement between the Competent Authorities of India and Sweden) subject to furnishing of a bank guarantee of an amount equal to the amount of tax under dispute and interest accruing thereon, it added.

Nangia & Co Managing Partner Rakesh Nangia said the instruction is a welcome move and will provide relief to Swedish companies doing business in India facing tax litigation with I-T authorities.

"This instruction is intended to promote alternate dispute resolution measures. The interest of revenue has been duly safeguarded by providing that the Swedish company shall furnish a bank guarantee for the disputed tax demand," Nangia said.

CBDT also said an Indian resident taxpayer, the provisions of the MoU shall apply to MAP cases involving transfer pricing adjustments.

Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) is a process under which, tax dispute of a non-resident is resolved by mutual discussion between competent authorities of two countries.

MAP is generally a lengthy process and during pendency of such proceedings, Indian tax authorities generally ask such non-residents/ foreign companies to pay entire amount or a substantial portion of disputed tax demand.

This creates a financial burden on such foreign companies, if ultimately their income is decided to be not taxable in India by the Competent Authorities, experts said.

Bilateral trade between Sweden and India was USD 2.5 billion in 2015 and both countries have set an ambitious target of touching USD 5 billion by 2017.

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Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today announced Rs 1,000 monthly living wages for "distressed lonely women" in the state.

Making an announcement in the Legislative Assembly, Rao said as per the preliminary estimates, there may be about 2-3 lakh lonely women in the state.

"As women are more prone to poverty, we took a decision to provide living security by supporting them by extending Rs 1000 every month to distressed lonely women. Immediately, orders are issued. We will allocate funds for this purpose in the budget, that will be introduced in March 2017," Rao told the Assembly.

The statement however did not elaborate on the eligibility guidelines of the scheme.

The scheme will be implemented for the next financial year and necessary directions are issued to all District Collectors to organise programme to enroll the details of lonely women, he further said.

Meanwhile, replying to a query during the Question Hour, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries, K T Rama Rao said the state government is examining the possibility of setting up industrial clusters along the Hyderabad-Warangal route.

"A request is being made to Government of India under the recently approved National Investment Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) to include Hyderabad-Warangal corridor," he informed the House.

According to him, initial study reports indicate three possible clusters on the anvil- Yadadri Cluster, Janagaon Cluster and Warangal Cluster.

He said the government is in the process of setting up a Mega Textile Park in Warangal and Detailed Project Report is being prepared for Phase-I in 1,000 acres.

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British Prime Minister is set for her first meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump in the spring, Downing Street said on Friday.

The meeting comes in the wake of the British prime minister's joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, travelling to the US to meet members of Trump's team in mid-December and is expected to take place as early as next month.

"The prime minister suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful. We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the Prime Minister looks forward to visiting the new President in the spring," Downing Street said.

The meeting is expected to take place at the White House after the January 20 inauguration of the new American President and before May's deadline to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to trigger Britain's official exit negotiations from the European Union (EU).

May, like her predecessor David Cameron, has previously expressed concern about Trump's stance on immigration, saying in December 2015 that his suggestion that Muslims should not be allowed to enter the US was, "divisive, unhelpful and wrong".

But she went on to welcome his election unreservedly.

Her aides were also equally outspoken in the lead up to the election.

In May last year, before becoming joint chief of staff at Number 10, Timothy said on Twitter that he did not want "any 'reaching out' to Trump", while Hill tweeted: "Donald Trump is a chump."

The President-elect had first invited May to visit in a phone call shortly after his election victory in November.

It was known that she would visit Washington in the early months of 2017.

Downing Street is yet to confirm a date for this visit but it is widely believed the visit will take place within weeks of the January 20 inauguration ceremony for the new President in Washington.
The Tamil Nadu government and ruling AIADMK have urged the Centre to honour late Chief Minister M G Ramachandran on his birth centenary with a commemorative coin and special postage stamp, saying the iconic leader deserves such an honour.

Both Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and the newly- appointed AIADMK General Secretary V K Sasikala have written to Prime Minister Narenda Modi in this regard.

While Panneerselvam said the issuance of a commemorative coin and special postal stamp will be a "fitting tribute" to the charismatic actor-politician, Sasikala said the iconic leader deserves such an honour.

They paid rich tributes to Ramachandran, detailing his various efforts in implementing pro-people policies and at the same time upholding law and order.

Panneerselvam hailed Ramachandran as an "inspirational figure" who is remembered for his "magnanimity, generosity, commanding leadership and determination to fight for the legitimate rights of the states".

"On the occasion of Puratchi Thalaivar (Revolutionary Leader) MGR's birth centenary, it would be a fitting tribute to a great leader, an inspiring icon, who is eternally embedded in the hearts of the people of Tamil Nadu, to issue a commemorative coin and a special postal stamp," he said.

He recalled that Ramachandran had been awarded Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, for his "unparallelled public service".

He said Ramachandran was one of the most illustrious, charismatic and popular chief ministers of the state, remembered for having launched several innovative welfare programmes which, Panneerselvam said, "have become model schemes implemented throughout the country".

Sasikala, who succeeded the late J Jayalalithaa as AIADMK General Secretary last week, told the Prime Minister that she was writing to him "strongly proposing" a commemorative coin and special postage stamp for her party founder "in view of his exemplary service to the people."



She recalled his various pro-people policies, especially the popular noon meal scheme, saying it was a "spectacular success" although it was "touted" to be unimplementable in view of its "vast scope".

"This scheme is still running successfully in Tamil Nadu and has been replicated in almost all states of India," she said, adding, it had received accolades not only from across the country, but from the UN as well.

Sasikala said MGR had implemented a number of schemes in



different sectors, including women's welfare, power sector and PDS among others.

He was strict in enforcing law and order and "played a key role in removing Naxals from Tamil Nadu" in the 1980s with strong measures, she said, adding, "till date there is no Naxalism" in the state.

She also recalled MGR's "charitable and philanthropic activities", saying he was the first donor during the Indo- China war when he donated Rs 75,000 towards the war fund.

"Puratchi Thalaivar M G Ramachandran was a charismatic leader who formulated and implemented welfare oriented schemes with administrative acumen, touching the right nerve with the masses. He was a dynamic leader who was in touch with the ground realities, unfettered by his immense popularity," she added.

He transcended caste, creed and religion and worked to protect the interests of the weaker and vulnerable sections of the society, she said.

His vision, commanding leadership, discipline and the determination to fight against all odds for the underdog made him an iconic figure, inspiring millions even today, she said.

"Such an iconic leader, who has touched the hearts of millions of people, deserves a special postage stamp and a commemorative coin with his image, on the occasion of his birth centenary, which falls on January 17, 2017."



"I request you to kindly take immediate necessary action to issue a commemorative coin and a special postage stamp with the image" of Ramachandran, she said.
Toyota shares slumped today as Donald Trump threatened punitive tariffs over its new vehicle plant in Mexico, triggering a staunch defence from Japan's government which said its auto sector had made huge contributions to the US economy.

The world's largest automaker became the latest company to face Trump's wrath when he tweeted "NO WAY" to the company's plans for a new manufacturing plant in Mexico.

US President-elect Trump - who takes office on January 20 - has embraced the unorthodox tactic of using Twitter to intervene publicly in the affairs of major companies.

The 70-year-old Republican property mogul campaigned in part on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America's heartland and vowing to crack down on allegedly unfair trade practices.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for US NO WAY! Build plant in US or pay big border tax," Trump tweeted yesterday.

Shares in Toyota took a hit in early trading just hours after the tweet, declining as much as 3.11 per cent before paring losses to close 1.68 per cent lower at 6,930 yen.

In November, Toyota celebrated the groundbreaking for the USD 1 billion plant in Guanajuato, in central Mexico - not, as Trump said, in Baja California state that borders the US.

The company already has a factory making Tacoma pickups in Baja.

Earlier this week, Ford scuttled a plan to build a new factory in Mexico following criticism from Trump and shortly after he attacked General Motors for importing Mexican-made cars into the US.

GM says only a small number of such cars actually sold in the US are built in Mexico.

Shares of other Japanese automakers also sagged, with Nissan declining 2.20 per cent to 1,173 yen and Honda down 1.90 per cent to 3,501 yen.

Following the tweet, Japan's government rose to the industry's defence, with trade minister Hiroshige Seko saying that Japanese automakers have "contributed to (creating) 1.5 million jobs in the United States."



Seko also stressed in comments to reporters that Trump's administration needed to understand that the Japanese auto industry "has greatly contributed to the US economy".

Toyota meanwhile responded with a conciliatory statement, saying it looked forward to "collaborating" with Trump's government and stressed that the new plant would have no negative effect on its US factories.

"Production volume or employment in the US will not decrease as a result of our new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico announced in April 2015," the company said.

Toyota employs 136,000 Americans and maintains 10 manufacturing facilities in the US.

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Tunisian authorities have arrested a state employee accused of passing information about security operations to extremist groups, a police spokesman said today.

Since its 2011 uprising, Tunisia has faced repeated jihadist attacks that have killed more than 100 soldiers and policemen, as well dozens of civilians and foreign tourists, according to official figures.

Khlifa Chibani, a spokesman for the National Guard, told a conference that 11 "terrorist cells" were broken up by security services last month alone and 62 suspects arrested.

Among the suspects was "an employee of the state who provided these cells with a programme of security raids," said Chibani.

He declined however to identify the suspect or say in which government department he worked, adding only that "he could access" security information through his job.

"His relation to security (services) allowed him to know" of planned anti-extremist operations, he said.

Chibani said the state employee was arrested in Tunisia's Enfidha region, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the capital Tunis, and added that the suspected had confessed to the alleged crime.

In September 2015, the interior ministry said 110 members of the security services had been dismissed from their posts, some allegedly for harbouring "terrorist sympathies".

Tunisia says around 3,000 of its nationals have joined the ranks of jihadists groups fighting in neighbouring Libya, as well as in Syria and Iraq.

The United Nations puts this figure at 5,500.

A government spokesman last month said around 800 jihadists who returned to Tunisia have so far been jailed or placed under surveillance.

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President today announced that some of the millions of Syrian and Iraqis who have fled to Turkey would be given Turkish nationality.

"Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks" have been carried out, Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television.

"There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Let's make use" of that talent, he argued.

"Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, let's give them the chance to work as citizens, like the children of this nation," he said.

Erdogan said the interior ministry "is ready to implement the measure at any time." But he gave no further details, notably about how many would gain Turkish nationality.

According to Turkish government figures, the country is hosting more than three million Syrians and Iraqis who have fled war.

Erdogan outlined a naturalisation plan last summer but the idea met with angry protests and xenophobic comments on social media.

The country's political opposition saw the plan as a scheme to widen Erdogan's electoral basis at a time when he is pushing for constitutional reform that will strengthen his powers.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

Veteran ruler, President Robert Mugabe spent a whooping $36 million on foreign and domestic trips last year.The Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) used $34,4 million for Mugabe to travel the world over with her wife.About $1,2 million was used to fund local trips.Basing on the National budget, Mugabe's trips surpass allocations to key ministries such as the Macro-economic Planning and Investment Promotion, Energy and Power Development, Transport and Infrastructure Development and Industry and Commerce.Mugabe is currently shuttling between Singapore and China with his family and countless bodyguards.
Two American astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station today to upgrade the orbiting outpost's electrical system.

Americans Shane Kimbrough, the 49-year-old commander of the six-person crew aboard the ISS, and flight engineer Peggy Whitson, 56, officially ended their expedition at 1855 GMT.

During their approximately six-and-a-half hour spacewalk, the pair installed new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of six new lithium-ion batteries installed on the station's truss, according to the US space agency NASA.

Japan's uninhabited H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV, delivered the batteries last month. The Canadian-built Dextre robotic arm began the installation to pave the way for the astronauts' work.

The new batteries are expected to last as long as the ISS is expected to remain in use -- until at least 2024.

Kimbrough and Whitson were assisted by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, 38, and Oleg Novitskiy of Russia from inside the station. The entire orbital ballet was conducted by the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Kimbrough and Pesquet are scheduled on January 13 to conduct another expedition to connect the other three lithium-ion batteries.

The vessel that brought the new batteries will be unplugged in February after being loaded with waste and old equipment, including nine of the old nickel-hydrogen batteries. It will then plunge back into the atmosphere and disintegrate over the Pacific Ocean.

Friday's spacewalk marks Whitson's seventh, matching the record previously set by fellow American Suni Williams for the most spacewalks by a woman.

It is also the 196th overall spacewalk for space station assembly and maintenance.

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A 28-year-old man hurled anti- Indian remarks and punched two women in subway stations here in Queens, during separate attacks that authorities are investigating as hate crimes, police said today.

Arana Sherlock is being sought by authorities for the racially-charged attacks that began on December 8 morning inside the 88th St. Station in Ozone Park, police said.

Sherlock approached an 18-year-old woman, hurled anti- Indian remarks at her and punched her in the face. He then fled the station, New York Daily quoted officials as saying.

Yesterday around 12:30 pm, Sherlock offered to swipe a 30-year-old woman into the Jamaica-179th St. Station in exchange for money, police said.

When the woman declined his offer, Sherlock made an anti- Indian comment and punched her in the back of the head, according to police. The woman was knocked off her feet and struck her head on the ground.

Sherlock again fled the station, and paramedics treated the woman at the scene, the report said.

Police have released a photo of Sherlock, and are asking the public's help finding him. He is described as 6-feet-tall and 91 kg with a skin condition on his face. He was last seen wearing a blue jacket, blue jeans and boots.

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UK's former chief of the far-right Independence Party Nigel Farage today confirmed he will attend Donald Trump's presidential inauguration in Washington DC on January 20.

Farage, an anti-immigration campaigner who led the UK Independence Party (UKIP) through the Brexit vote last June, will attend the event as the guest of Mississippi governor Phil Bryant.

Asked if he would be attending the event, Farage, one of strongest Trump supporters, told 'Sky News', "I certainly am, I can't wait."



Both Trump and Farage have suggested that the latter should be employed as a go-between or ambassador between the new US administration and the British government.

"Many people would like to see Nigel Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job," Trump had tweeted in November.

It caused great consternation in Downing Street, which was forced to comment on how Farage had no role to play in UK diplomacy with the US.

The UKIP MP sees the US President-elect as an anti-establishment ally, and visited him soon after the November 8 vote in America and has often spoken out in his favour.

Farage's host Bryant will also raise eyebrows in the UK.

The Republican governor said last year that he would rather be crucified than give up his anti-gay beliefs.

During his time as governor he has signed laws that exclude gay people from hate crime protections.

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Facing the challenge of keeping its flock together ahead of forthcoming assembly polls, opposition BJP has got busy putting in place an internal mechanism to deal sternly with indiscipline at the time of ticket distribution.

"A mechanism is being put in place to ensure there is no rebellion in case some of the ticket aspirants are disappointed," Pradesh BJP spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan told PTI.

He said state BJP president Ajay Bhatt has already made it clear that whoever enters the fray against official party nominees will never be taken back into the party.

The party which has received about 600 applications for tickets to contest the February 15 elections has to be careful about distribution of tickets as this time around it has also got to accommodate 10 rebel Congress MLAs who defected to BJP and lost their membership of the state assembly.

A majority of these rebels are known to wield considerable clout in their respective constituencies and BJP in all likelihood cannot afford to disappoint them.

On the other hand the party also has to fulfill the aspirations of its own loyal cadres which have toiled all these years to build the party.

Maintaining a balance in these circumstances may not be easy.

The Congress rebels who are now with BJP includes former CM Vijay Bahuguna, Harak Singh Rawat, Subodh Uniyal, Satpal Maharaj's wife Amrita Rawat, Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion and Shaila Rani Rawat.

"We are trying to make sure that the entire party rank and file works in unison to ensure the victory of the official candidates. No indiscipline in this regard will be tolerated," Chauhan said.

Pradesh BJP chief Bhatt is in Delhi to attend the party's national executive to fine-tune it's strategy for assembly polls in five states including Uttarakhand.

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The US has forged a "strategic partnership" with India in the eight years of Obama administration which also considerably improved America's standing in the world, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, two weeks ahead of demitting the office.

"In Asia, we have been standing side by side with our friends, strengthening sanctions on North Korea, improving regional missile defence capabilities, supporting the rule of law in the South China Sea and forging a strategic partnership with India, enhancing our ties with Vietnam and spurring democratic progress in Myanmar where a freely elected parliament has been seated for the first time," Kerry said.

In what was described as Kerry's last press conference in his capacity as Secretary of State, the top American diplomat, while addressing reporters at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, said because of the policies undertaken by the Obama administration in the last eight years, the US' standing in the world has improved from what it was in 2009.

"We will turn over to our successors a country whose international standing is much improved from 2009 when President (Barack) Obama took office eight years ago. No one should forget the incredible fertility of the global economic crisis as a consequence of the late 2008 early 2009 economic disaster that we faced on a global basis," he said.

Economically, the country has moved from the depths of crisis to robust levels of exports, the longest sustained period of private sector job growth in US history, Kerry said.

"Our overseas alliances in Europe and Asia are vigorous and strong. We have strengthened what we do in Asia, strengthened the relationship between Korea and Japan, strengthened our relationship trilaterally with Korea and Japan, worked effectively with China to try to define a new model of how important powers need to work in the world.

"We have strengthened our alliance with NATO, strengthened our alliance with the frontline states. Our level of security support to a democratic Israel is unprecedented. Across the globe, we have helped ensure that a child entering the world today is more likely to be born healthy, more likely to receive the necessary vaccinations, more likely to be educated, more likely to live a long life than any previous generation and that is just as true for women and girls as it is for men and boys," Kerry said.

The US has been more deeply engaged in more places to



greater effect than at any time in the American history, adding that the strategy of the Obama administration against ISIS is paying dividend as the terrorist outfit is fast losing out its territories, the US Secretary of State said.

"Before long, Daesh's phony caliphate is going to have been turned to dust. Now, that does not mean that the whole threat of Daesh is gone all of a sudden. No, it is not. Daesh obviously continues to adapt in certain ways to these changing circumstances and so the threat adapts with it and they will most likely try to establish new footholds or to instigate and to inspire isolated attacks," Kerry said.

America and its coalition partners are on the right path, both diplomatically and militarily, he said.

"We need to stay on that course. I guarantee you that over the period of this next year and into the future, Daesh is going to be thoroughly defeated. We also need to remember that we will not defeat these terrorists anywhere at any place without the help from the one group that has been most victimised by terrorism, and that is our friends and our partners in the Islamic world itself," Kerry said.

Kerry also highlighted Iran nuclear agreement, saying it is a demonstration of the power of diplomacy to be able to address major international problems short of war.

Climate Change was another major focus of the Obama administration which resulted in the Paris accord, he said.

"Our initiative to reach out to China, change the trajectory of possibilities after the disappointment of Copenhagen where China had been on the other side, but because we reached out and we engaged proactively in diplomacy, and were able to reach agreement with China.

"President Obama and President Xi were able to stand up together in Beijing, and together announce the unity of the two largest emitters in the world, emitters of gases, to come together to try to forge an agreement in Paris," Kerry added.
The CID in Assam probing the Louis Berger bribery case today informed the Gauhati High Court that the US Department of Justice has agreed to cooperate with investigations here and engage in video conferencing.

In an affidavit, CID Special Superintendent of Police said it was in touch with CBI's International Police Cooperation Cell to facilitate a video conference with the US Department of Justice.

The investigating agency informed the court that the US department had earlier agreed to share information in connection with the case with the CID.

A bench of justices Hrishikesh Roy and Nelson Sailo directed the CID to submit the status and feasibility of the video conference in four weeks' time.

Enforcement Directorate on August 6, 2015, registered a money laundering FIR in Louis Berger bribery case to probe charges of bribing Indian officials with crores of rupees to win a major water developmental project in Guwahati.

The then Tarun Gogoi government ordered a CID probe into the case also in the same month.

Two of the New Jersey-based company's former executives - Richard Hirsch of the Philippines, and James McClung of the UAE - had in July 2015 pleaded guilty before a New Jersey court of paying bribes in Assam and Goa to obtain contracts as consultants of water supply projects.

In India since 1998, Louis Berger has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress today rubbished the claims made by the state government about the success of Vibrant Gujarat Summits in attracting investment and creation of jobs, and said the reality was different and that the event was used for "self-marketing" by Narendra Modi when he started it as the chief minister of the state.

BJP hit back, saying Congress leaders were showing narrow-mindedness by opposing Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit.

Senior Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela today said the states which do not organise such grand events were actually ahead of Gujarat in attracting investment.

Modi as the Gujarat Chief Minister started this initiative in 2003 for "self-marketing", Vaghela said.

"All the Vibrant Summits held till now were meant for his self-marketing, not for attracting any investment. Even today, Gujarat is very poor. We are not at all developed. We are behind even states like Bihar in some sectors. Each child in Gujarat is born with a debt of Rs 35,000," he said.

"States such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra which do not organise such events are way ahead of us in attracting investment. After the tall claims of creation of millions of jobs due to Summits, over 60 lakh youths in Gujarat are still unemployed," said the Leader of Opposition in Assembly.

Vaghela said as a protest he would not attend the inaugural session on January 10 when the Prime Minister would launch the 8th edition of the Summit in Gandhinagar.

State Congress president Bharatinh Solanki said these Summits never helped Gujarat in attracting investment or creating jobs as claimed by the BJP government.

"Of all MoUs signed in all summits, valued at Rs 14 lakh



crore by the government, only 4 per cent materialised. In a recent report, RBI stated that Gujarat is not in the top 16 states in terms of attracting investment. States like Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are way ahead of us," said Solanki.

Gujarat BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya hit back at the opposition party, saying Congress was trying to obstruct the opportunities coming to Gujarat.

"Congress leaders have shown their narrow mindset by opposing the Vibrant Summit which is very crucial for providing jobs to youths... Job creation is possible only if new investment comes. Despite that, Congress is trying to block such opportunities coming to our state," said Pandya.

Yesterday, state chief secretary J N Singh had claimed that Gujarat was at the top position in employment generation as over 13.45 lakh persons had got jobs in the state in the last three years, and Vibrant Gujarat Summits played a big role in this.
Vice-President Hamid Ansari today inspected the Annual NCC Republic Day Camp here and hailed the contribution of the cadets in "shaping the character and moral fibre of the youth and dynamism of the nation".

2,068 cadets, including 696 girl cadets, drawn from the 17 directorates covering all the states and union territories are participating in the camp.

Every year, selected NCC cadets congregate in the capital for a month in the run up to Republic Day.

Addressing the camp, he said, "Through programmes like NCC, the government is investing in today's youth and in the country's future. The youth of a nation determine how it shapes up a few years into the future.

"They are the future of the country and their actions and inactions both contribute to the state of the nation. If the youth are educated and willing to go the extra mile to effect positive change, nothing can prevent the country from greatness."



During the course of this month the camp will be visited by the Defence Minister and the chiefs of the three services of the Indian Armed Forces. The Prime Minister's Rally will be held on January 28 where the PM's Banner is awarded to the winning Directorate.

Like in the past there will be two marching contingents and two band contingents taking part during the Republic Day parade this year.

112 representatives from 11 foreign countries will too be a part of the camp.

According to the Director General of the NCC, Lt Gen Vinod Vashisht, the NCC will also be conducting a countrywide campaign to raise awareness about cashless transactions on the occasion of National Youth Day on January 12.

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"Suicide Squad" star Viola Davis is the first celebrity to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2017, but all she could think about while accepting the honour was her late father.

The 51-year-old star's husband, actor Julius Tennon, 63, and her daughter Genesis were in attendance, along with Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep, who presented the honour to Davis, reported People magazine.

"I wish he were here. He died in 2006 and, um, he would think this is pretty fantastic," Davis said.

Davis also reflected on her difficult upbringing, saying, "The only picture I have of myself as a kid in kindergarten is with a little... Expression that's not really a smile, not really a frown, just something.

"But every time I look at the little girl, I always thought, 'Oh, that's a cute outfit.' But she was always hungry, she was always shy, she was always kind of in the background, but inside she had big dreams bursting."



After thanking her family and Streep for their support, Davis said, "I cannot believe my life right now. All I can say is, 'God has blessed my life in abundance'.

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Domestic carrier Vistara is likely to enter into a codesharing agreement with Singapore Airlines soon in a move that would allow seamless connectivity to its customers to Singapore and vice versa.

The city-based airline has already filed its codeshare flight schedule with aviation regulator DGCA and its approval is soon expected.

"We are working with the government on making it (codeshare) effective," Vistara Chief Executive Officer Phee Teik Yeoh told PTI.

The full-service carrier Vistara is a joint venture, in which Tata Sons owns 51-per cent stake and the rest is with Singapore Airlines.

Codesharing allows an airline to book on its passenger on its partner carriers and provide seamless transport to destination where it has no presence.

Vistara had informed the government about its plans to operate codeshare flights with Singapore Airlines about four months ago, following which it filed codeshare flight schedule to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for its approval, the official said.

As part of aviation sector reforms, government has done away with the prior approval for entering into international codeshare pacts with foreign carriers and they have to intimate the Civil Aviation Ministry as well as the DGCA 30 days before starting codeshare flights.

The two airlines were now in the process of finalising a pact in this regard, which is expected to be signed by the end of this month, the official said.

Vistara currently operates from 18 domestic airports with a fleet of 13 Airbus A320s, whereas Singapore Airlines flies to six Indian destinations - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

Inmates at Chikurubi Farm Prison composed a song titled 'Bhora Warriors Bhora on Warriors' encouraging them to raise the country's flag high at the Africa Cup of Nations finals to be held in Gabon next week.The nation has high expectations for the Warriors to perform at the AFCON finals with inmates at Chikurubi Farm Prison composing a song dedicated to the Warriors.The motivational song reflects the mood of the inmates and their expectations reflecting that although they may be in limited boundaries their support for the national team is unwavering and every Zimbabwean should rally behind the team.The inmates say the song is a reflection that the prison walls will not affect their support for the national team.The Chikurubi inmates also composed songs for the Mighty Warriors and Dynamos as they celebrate the achievement of the two most successful teams in the country.
Vice President Joe Biden has told President-elect Donald Trump to "grow up."



Biden dismissed Trump's complaint on Twitter about how the Obama administration has handled the transition. The vice president told "PBS NewsHour" in an interview that it's time for Trump "to be an adult."



Biden said to Trump yesterday: "You're president. You've got to do something. Show us what you have."



The vice president also said that Trump as president will have to propose legislation that Congress and the public can then assess. He said that it'll be "much clearer what he's for and against" once he's in the position of governing.

Vice President Joe Biden says it's "dangerous" for President-elect Donald Trump to publicly criticise the US intelligence community.

Biden also said it's "absolutely mindless" for a president not to have confidence in or listen to the intelligence agencies. The vice president said it would be legitimate to question intelligence and ask for more detail or disagree. But he said that's different than Trump claiming he knows more than the intelligence agencies.

Biden said that's like saying, "I know more about physics than my professor." He says that's worrisome, but he assumes Trump's behaviour will change.

He said that Trump is surrounding himself with "very smart people" like retired Marine Corps Gen James Mattis, the billionaire businessman's pick for defence secretary.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Real estate major Supertech today expressed its inability in the Supreme Court due to demonetisation to deposit Rs 10 crore for refunding those home buyers who want to wriggle out of its disputed Emerald Court project in Noida.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and R Banumathi was urged by the developer to grant two months' time for depositing the amount.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, appearing for the firm, said that due to the demonitisation drive it was not able to raise Rs 10 crore to be deposited in the apex court registry.

He sought two months' time to deposit the amount with the registry as directed by the apex court.

The bench then asked the developer to deposit the amount by March 20 but it made it clear that it will be the final opportunity give to it for depositing the amount.

The apex court had on November 8 directed Supertech to deposit Rs 10 crore by January 3 for refunding those home buyers who want to wriggle out of its disputed project, which have been found to be non-compliant of building laws by NBCC.

It had noted that some of the home buyers wanted to remain in the building but some wanted their refunds of the investment made.

The National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) in its report had said, "The open space available between the two towers Tower 1 (Aster 2) and Tower 17 is less than 20.45 metres as prescribed in the NBC rules.

"Thus from the above observations and inferences, NBCC concludes the opinion that the two towers, Tower 1 (Aster 2) and Tower 17 are not compliant with the REG 24.2.1(6)of Noida Building Regulations 2010."



The apex court had earlier said that if the project is violative of the building laws, then it will be demolished.

The court had on September 6 given a stern message to the firm asking it to return money to investors who wanted refund.

The company had earlier told the court that a total of 628 people had approached the company, of whom 274 have sought other arrangements, 74 have asked for re-investment and 108 have sought refund.

Earlier, the apex court had directed the company to



deposit Rs five crore in its registry as part of refund to homebuyers for the project in which the Allahabad High Court had ordered demolition of the twin towers.

The high court had on April 11, 2014 ordered demolition of the two 40-storey residential twin towers -- Apex and Ceyane -- in Noida and directed Supertech to refund money to homebuyers with 14 per cent interest in three months.

The two towers have 857 apartments of which about 600 flats have already been sold.

The apex court had on February 16, 2015 directed Supertech to refund money to the flat owners, saying, "Developers can't take investors for a ride.
West Central Railway (WCR) has started installing point-of-sale (PoS) machines for ticket and parcel bookings in order to encourage cashless transactions.

Headquartered at Jabalpur, over 300km from here, the railway zone has already set up two dozen PoS machines and 156 such devices will be introduced at 80 locations under its jurisdiction in the next two months as part of its move to encourage cashless transactions.

"WCR would introduce 156 PoS machines in the next two months at 80 locations. So far, 24 PoS machines have been installed at 24 locations," Public Relations Officer of WCR I A Siddiqui said in a statement today.

WCR General Manager Girish Pillai shared this information at a high-level meeting with Members of Parliament (MPs) held at a local hotel today. The meeting was attended by MPs from Bhopal, Rajgarh and Dewas.

Siddiqui said the Parliamentarians were briefed about various initiatives taken by the WCR and their suggestions were sought on improving passenger amenities.

The MPs were informed that food outlets at railway stations are also being provided PoS machines in addition to mobile-based app for transactions. They were told WCR would install 76 automatic vending machines at four stations.

"These automatic vending machines would provide packaged food items to passengers. In addition, 71 water vending machines are also being installed at eight stations under WCR," he added.

Moreover, ten stations - Bina, Habibganj, Hoshangabad, Itarsi, Vidisha, Sanchi, Shivpuri, Harda, Guna and Ganjbasoda - would soon be equipped with free wi-fi facilities.

During the meeting, Bhopal MP Alok Sanjar suggested starting a daily train between Bhopal and Pune. He also advocated starting trains from the State capital to Bengaluru and Chhapra (Bihar).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 38-year old woman professor was today found charred to death with throat slit in her house at Irugur on the city outskirts, police said.

Latha, a government arts college professor, was found dead with smoke emanating from her bedroom by a neighbour who peeped into the house as it remained locked this morning unsually, they said.

The woman's husband had deserted her some time ago.

Police said they suspect miscreants, who might have entered the house in the early hours, murdered her and then burnt the body. Further investigation was on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the backdrop of woman activist Trupti Desai's plan to enter the famous hill shrine of Lord Ayappa at Sabariamala, Travancore Devaswom Board today said it would not break with tradition and customs in allowing entry of women in the age group of 10-50 into the shrine.

"Nobody will be allowed to break the custom and tradition of the temple," Prayar Gopalakrishnan, chairman of Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the hill shrine, told reporters.

He was replying to a question on woman activist Trupti Desai's plans to enter Sabarimala with a group of about 100 women as part of their campaign to enable women of all age groups have darshan at the shrine.

There are restrictions in the entry of women between 10-50 years of age in the temple.

Gopalakrishnan also said he fully agreed with Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran's statement that Trupti Desai would not be allowed to enter the temple.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The work on Dindigul-Chennai double line, which will improve rail connectivity to the southern districts, was nearing completion, a senior Railway official said here today.

Southern Railway had undertaken the project for setting up double line between Chennai and Dindigul. The work was nearing completion, Madurai Divisional Railway Manager Sunil Kumar Garg said.

"Once it is completed, additional trains will be operated to Southern districts from Chennai", he told reporters.

On the gauge conversion between Shenkottai and Punalur, Garg said the tunnel work was going on and the line would be opened for traffic by May.

Garg and senior officials were here to inspect the passenger amenities such as setting up of new escalators and maintenance works at the railway junction.

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Rejecting charges of 'anti-worker activities' levelled by a workers' union, Bajaj Auto today said the union has been raising issues which are "non-existent" and its demands are "unwarranted".

A workers' union, Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana, at Bajaj Auto has called for a two-day hunger strike on January 7 and 8, alleging 'anti-workers activities' by the management.

Terming the demands as "unreasonable and unrelated", Bajaj Auto said that the union has been raising "unwarranted demands" during wage review and "has always been delaying the process".

"The union should not raise the issues which are in fact non-existent and extend full support in growth and development of the company rather than creating unnecessary hindrances in smooth functioning of the company," said Bajaj Auto Sr Vice President Kailash J Zanzari in a press note.

Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana is demanding reinstatement of the workmen from its Chakan plant, who were dismissed in FY 2013-14 from the services, it added.

In a letter addressed to Bajaj Auto Managing Director Rajiv Bajaj, Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana had said, "It will undertake a hunger strike at the Shahid Datta Padale statue, opposite Bajaj Auto gate, Akurdi, on January 7-8 against anti workers and anti-union activities of the Bajaj management."



The company's management deliberately transferred the active members of the union and has given false chargesheets and showcause letters to the workers, the letter said.

"Bajaj management adopted a strategy of terrorising and harassing workers. To condemn such anti-union act of management, we have decided to go on hunger strike," the letter issued on January 4 said.

The union claimed that wage review process, which was due with effect from April 1 2016, is yet to be finalised.

The Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana has around 1,000 members at the Chakan and Akurdi plants in Pune of the two-wheeler major.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tokyo Electric Power Co will select underwriters this month for its first bond sale since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, people close to the deal told Thomson Reuters DealWatch.

The issue is expected to be worth at least $1 billion according to one of the people.

The deal is being closely watched by Japan's corporate bond market, which dominated before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, bringing the company to its knees.

has been gauging demand for the landmark bond offering, as once-sceptical investors become more comfortable with the utility's outlook after the government provided more details on decommissioning and compensation costs, sources said last week.

Tepco, which is looking to sell the bond by the end of March, will hold meetings next week with several brokerages, who will make pitches to the company for a mandate to sell the bonds, said the people close to the deal, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

A spokesman on Friday said there was no change to the utility company's previously announced plans to sell the bond by the end of March but that he was unaware of any plans to meet brokers next week.

The utility, once Asia's largest, was essentially nationalised after Fukushima. It has struggled to contain radiation at the site and compensate victims of the accident while preparing to decommission the crippled power station.

The meeting will discuss investor demand, the likely size of the issue, the premium over government-bond yields Tepco will need to pay and the feasibility of selling the bond by Tepco's target date, they said.

Tepco is considering a multi-tranche issue with maturities of three-, five- and 10-years, they said.

"At the very least, it will be worth 100 billion yen," said one source. In the year leading up to the Fukushima disaster, Tepco sold 235 billion yen of bonds.

Sources have said Tepco will likely need to pay investors about 1 percentage point above the corresponding Japanese government bonds yields. This would be a rich premium considering other electric utilities pay about a third of that spread for their debt funding.

The government also owns 50.1 per cent of the company following its bailout, seen by some investors as an implicit state guarantee on the company.

There are, however, some potential snags to Tepco's plans to issue by the end of March. According to one person familiar with the government's thinking, the government wants Tepco to delay the bond sale until after April, when legal changes allowing more financial support to the utility are enacted.
Without comment, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand its Sept. 26 reversal of a lower court ruling that had struck down AmEx's "anti-steering" rules.

That reversal by a three-judge panel allowed New York-based AmEx to block merchants that accept its cards from steering customers to rivals Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc , even if the move saved them money.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment. The government can still ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. Seventeen U.S. states also opposed AmEx's anti-steering rules.

At issue were the more than $50 billion of fees that merchants pay annually to process transactions, and which can be passed along to customers through higher prices.

The Justice Department said the appeals court wrongly focussed on how the company's policy affected customers and merchants, rather than merchants alone.

It also said it should have been AmEx's burden to show that its policy promoted competition, not the government's burden to show otherwise.

Several dozen merchants including Kroger Co , Target Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc supported a rehearing by the original panel, or by all of the appeals court's active judges.

Visa and MasterCard settled similar lawsuits in 2011 by agreeing to change their rules.

AmEx accounted for 26.4 percent of U.S. credit and charge card purchase volume in 2013.

It was able to resume enforcing its anti-steering rules after the 2nd Circuit in December 2015 lifted an injunction imposed by the lower court judge.

AmEx spokesman Andrew Johnson said the government's claims still lack merit. "With today's decision, consumers can continue to choose how they pay and our card members will not be discriminated against at the point of sale," he said.

The case is U.S. et al v. American Express Co et al, 2ndU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-1672.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Leslie Adler, Grant McCool and Bernard Orr)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hari Bhartia, co-chairman and founder of the Jubilant Bhartia Group, and Swati Apte, co-founder of The Arts Quotient and a core team member of Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre (SMART), discuss how the arts unleash creativity in business. Pronoti Datta moderates the conversation.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

The current good rains have inspired hope among Zimbabweans that a strong performance by the agriculture sector will see the country achieving the projected 1.7% economic growth rate this year.Harare Polytechnic Dean of Business Studies, Dr Wilfred Mazani said the agriculture sector remains critical in the recovery of the local economy and is optimistic of a good agricultural season which will guarantee food security and set the tone for sustainable economic growth.ARDA board chairman, Mr Basil Nyabadza said Zimbabwe remains an agro-based economy and the revival of the agriculture sector will benefit downstream industries and ensure the growth of the manufacturing sector.As part of recommendations from industry, there is need to intensify the ongoing initiatives by the government aimed at revolutionalising the agriculture sector including the command agriculture programme, ARDA graduation programme and the mechanisation project.Meanwhile, beneficiaries of the Command Agriculture Programme across the country say they are on course of recording one of the best seasons in recent years if the rains persist.Farmers in Manicaland Province are optimistic of surpassing the five tonnes per hactare target and are confident that the programme will reposition the country as the bread basket of Southern Africa.Acting Manicaland Provincial Agriculture Extension Officer, Philipa Rwambiwa said the state of the crop under command agriculture is good and the province is anticipating to register huge success.68 hactares of maize is now at harvesting stage in Chipinge and in all other districts the maize crop is at vegetative stage.Manicaland has a target of 65 000 hectares of maize and that was spread under irrigation and dry land but has so far managed to plant 6 786 hectares.In the Midlands Province, farmers are happy that their crop is thriving and flourishing under the programme.The Command Agriculture Programme has also generated a lot interest amongst farmers in the province as some of them are still enquiring for more details in order for them to register under the programme.Midlands Provincial Agritex Officer, Mr Peter Chamisa said the year promises to be a good one compared to the previous years where the province experienced serious grain deficit.The province has so far planted more than 6000 hectares of maize crop as it continues to target about 17 000 hectares under the government programme.Mashonaland West Province also expects a great yield, with one Hurungwe farmer, Mr Phineas Siziba saying the 2016/2017 season will likely be a life changing one.10 hectares of a flourishing maize crop is an achievement for an communal farmer, who also is hopeful of producing in excess of 5 tonnes of maize per hectare this season should the rains maintain current patterns.
The Supreme Court on Thursday set a June deadline for the CBI to complete its probe into allegations of serious irregularities in the acquisition of 111 aircraft for Air India that had cost around Rs 70,000 crore during Praful Patel's tenure as civil aviation minister of the UPA government in 2005-06.

A bench headed by new Chief Justice J S Khehar also asked the investigative agency to look into the fresh allegations made by an NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), that Patel made Air India buy a biometric system for a hefty sum of Rs 1,000 crore.

"CBI shall take into consideration all the allegations made in the pleadings of the instant petition, and take a call thereon, based on the evidence collected. We hope and expect, that CBI will adhere to the time frame indicated to us, namely, June, 2017", the bench said.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, said that Canada's superior court has convicted a person for paying a bribe to the then minister for the purchase of a biometric system for a whopping Rs 1000 crore for the airline.

``CBI is already investigating the case and is likely to conclude the probe. PAC has also looked into it and report is filed in Parliament. What more do you want. We cannot hold their (CBI) arms. We must trust our agencies,'' the bench told Bhushan.

During the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi informed the bench that most of the allegations referred to in the petition are a result of adverse comments made by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC).



Some of the observations or remarks were made by Murli Manohar Joshi, as the Chairman of PAC, in February 2014 and a detailed response has been filed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on January 19, 2015, he said.

Rohatgi said some further queries were also made by PAC and another detailed reply was filed by the ministry on May 3, 2016 and the subsequent report was tabled in Parliament. Rohatgi said that CBI has also been investigating the case since February 27, 2013, following the allegations and the probe is likely to be completed by June this year.

The AG said that 55 witnesses have been investigated and nothing survives in the petition as all the allegations are being looked into. Advocate Prashant Bhushan urged the court to not to dispose of the petition and the matter should be listed again in June for consideration of the status of the probe.

The CAG had criticised the decision to acquire 111 planes byAir India, saying it was "a recipe for disaster" and should have raised alarm in the government.

In a report, which was tabled in Parliament in September, 2011, the national auditor said the aircraft acquisition through debt had "contributed predominantly" to the airline's massive debt liability, which stood at Rs 38,423 crore at the time. The CAG also questioned the "speed" at which the acquisition process for 68 aircraft proceeded. Observing that many assumptions for the revised plan were "flawed", the CAG said.

SNAPSHOT


After ousting him as Chairman, Tata Sons has called a shareholders' meeting on February 6 to remove Cyrus Mistry as director of the holding company of the USD 103-billion Tata Group.

Tata Sons had abruptly removed Mistry as its Chairman on October 24 and sought his ouster from operating companies like Tata Motors and TCS. Mistry subsequently resigned from the board of six companies, but dragged Tata Sons and his interim successor Ratan Tata to the National Company Law Tribunal.

After the board meeting of October 24, 2016, Tata Sons had resolved that Mistry shall, notwithstanding his ceasing to be the Chairman, continue as a director of the company.

"Subsequent to his replacement, Mistry has made certain unsubstantiated allegations, which cast aspersions not only on Tata Sons Limited and its board of directors, but also on the Tata group as a whole. Internal communications, including confidential, were made public. Mistry's conduct has caused enormous harm to the Tata group and its stakeholders, including employees and shareholders," Tata Sons said in a note for extraordinary general meeting (EGM).

The ousted chairman's conduct, it said, "resulted in significant erosion of the market value of the Tata group companies, which has consequently resulted in harm to Tata Sons Limited and indirectly losses to its shareholders".

The notice said continuation of Mistry as a Director of Tata Sons is "untenable" and therefore, he should be removed.

The resolution, which has been moved for his removal, said: "The board of Tata Sons Ltd is of the view that the integrity of the board proceedings is being jeopardised by Mistry's continuation as a Director and the confidentiality of the board decisions and proceedings cannot be ensured as the documents presented to the board have been leaked and made public in a distorted and untruthful manner."


Within a few weeks of issuing its blacklisting policy, the Defence Ministry has made amendments in it by announcing that the ban on blacklisted firms cannot be more than 10 years.

The change in the policy has been made only six weeks after the Ministry issued it on November 22 coming out with a set of rules to deal with arms manufacturers such as AgustaWestland indulging in alleged corrupt practices.

"Earlier, the policy stated that the punishment would not be less than five years but now it has been added that the period of banning of business dealings with such entities shall not be more than 10 years," a Defence Ministry official said.

ALSO READ: 10 countries with highest defence budgets



The Defence Ministry move is likely to bring in more clarity about the punishment for erring firms as it earlier felt that the maximum punishment for such firms would be at the discretion of government officials. The previous UPA regime had also blacklisted firms for ten years only.

The 'guidelines for penalties in business dealings with entities' of the Ministry were prepared after more than a year by the minister's office and the acquisition wing.

The new policy is also silent on the fate of already blacklisted firms like Singapore Technologies, Israeli Military Industry, Germany's Rheinmetall Air Defence and Corporation Defence of Russia for their alleged involvement in a multi-crore ordnance factory scam.
The Supreme Court on Friday halted mobile phone carrier Aircel from selling its airwaves over an ongoing case of alleged corruption, potentially delaying a proposed deal with rival Reliance Communications.

The court asked top executives of Aircel's parent Malaysia's Maxis including its boss T. Ananda Krishnan to appear before another court hearing the corruption case.
India asked the World Bank on Thursday not to rush in to broker a deal on its dispute with Pakistan over Kishenganga and Ratle project, asserting that the differences can be resolved bilaterally or through a neutral expert.

India's position was conveyed during a meeting World Bank representative Ian H Solomon held with senior officials of External Affairs and Water Resources ministries.

Solomon is here as part of World Bank's efforts to break the deadlock between the two neighbours on the Kishenganga and Ratle project which are coming up in Jammu and Kashmir.

In the meeting, the Indian side, led by Joint Secretary in the MEA, Gopal Baglay, gave a presentation on the two projects and insisted that be a neutral expert should look into the issues as objections raised by Pakistan on technical issues, government sources said.

They said India also maintained that the design of the projects do not violate the Indo-Pak Indus Water Treaty (IWT).

Under the IWT, signed by India and Pakistan in 1960, the World Bank has a specific role of dispute resolution between the two countries.

Soloman, on his part, tried to explore ways on how to move forward, the sources said, adding he did not raise query regarding designs of the two projects.

"We made presentation. We stick to our position that there be a neutral expert to look into the issue as objections raised by Pakistan relating to the projects concerned are technical in nature. We also maintained that the project designs do not violate the IWT. Nothing was decided in the meeting," said a source.

The World Bank had decided to set up a Court of Arbitration (CoA) to settle the disputes following Pakistan's demand and also agreed to appoint a neutral expert sought by India.

India had reacted strongly to the decision to appoint the CoA and last month the World Bank announced it would temporarily halt the two simultaneous processes to resolve the differences.

India has been maintaining that it is fully conscious of its international obligations and is ready to engage in further consultations to resolve the differences regarding the two projects.
Extending gains from yesterday, the Indian markets opened on a green note on Friday's trade.

At 9.30 AM, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading 26,973, up 95 points while the broader Nifty touched its crucial 8,300-level, up 25 points.

"We reiterate that the Nifty is likely to move higher towards 8376-8400 in near term. Hence, traders are advised to continue to trade with a positive bias and trail stoploss higher on the existing longs to 8195. The intraday supports for the Nifty index are placed around 8250 and 8227; whereas intraday resistance is seen in the range of 8300 - 8325," according to an Angel Broking report.

The market seemed to be sustaining its gains indicating positive market breadth.

ONGC was the top performer gaining 1.83 per cent followed by GAIL recording 1.43 per cent on the BSE.

However, TCS extended losses for the second day losing over 1 per cent.



Asian Market

The Asian market recored a four-week high on Friday on account of a surge in the US dollar and its borrowing costs.

China's Shanghai Composite was trading flat, down 3 points and the Hang Seng Index gained over 90 points while Japan's Nikkei lost 65 points.

US Market

The US dollar stayed near three-week lows against a basket of currencies

The 10-year US Treasuries yield hit a one-month low of 2.344 per cent, falling 30 basis points from its two-year high of 2.641 per cent.
Terming the demand of opposition parties to defer the Budget Session as "anti-people", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the Union Budget is for the country and would not be state specific.

"No budget means no development, no welfare. Is this what you want? And no support to poor people, no support to farmers, is that what your wish is? Why are you opposing? Budget is budget," Naidu said.

He was responding to a question regarding opposition parties' demand that the presentation of the Union Budget on February 1, ahead of the Assembly elections in five states, be deferred till March 8, the last day of voting.

Speaking to reporters here, Naidu said the budget would not be state specific.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

MDC-T Vice President Nelson Chamisa is in Ghana today attending the inauguration of the new president of that country.Chamisa revealed that he was in Ghana through a tweet."I'm in Accra, Ghana.. for the Inauguration of the New President Nana Addo tomorrow. Its good to see Africa rising-I luv the democracy, good roads," he tweeted.Also MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai left today for the inauguration of Ghana president.
The President of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA), Joe Healy has called for a major national diplomatic initiative to be led by the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed to maximise every single market opportunity on live exports in 2017.



Against a background of increased cattle supplies of 100,000 head forecast for 2017 and a continuing increase in calf supplies, Joe Healy said Ireland needs to get the capacity of the live trade back up to 300,000 to 400,000 head to drive competition and get a balance back into the beef trade capable of delivering viable prices from the market.



Joe Healy said IFA has been working hard on calf exports for the spring and has met a number of the exporters and the Department of Agriculture in recent weeks.

He said a strong live export trade for calves is essential, adding that the current difficulties in exporting to Holland are very unsatisfactory and need to be resolved immediately with the EU Commission. Irish farmers must have access to the EU single market he said.



The IFA President said, "It is clear that there are real opportunities for Ireland in the live export markets such as Turkey, North Africa and continental Europe and all of these must be actively pursued in 2017."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Alphabet Inc's Google quickened the pace of its push into virtual and augmented reality this week as its hardware partners announced new devices featuring the company's technology at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas.

Google has been trying to position the vast network of smartphones running its Android operating system for virtual and augmented reality, known as VR and AR, fields that many in the technology industry say are poised to go mainstream after years of niche appeal.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co announced on Thursday that two of its phones will soon work with Daydream View, a VR headset released last year by Google. Meanwhile, Taiwanese manufacturer AsusTek Computer Inc announced that its ZenFone AR will support both Daydream and Google's Tango software for AR, in which computer-generated content is overlaid on the real world.

While the announcements expand the line-up of participating phones, Google still has much to do to take its technology to the masses, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research, noting that Samsung Electronics Co, the largest Android manufacturer, has yet to sign on.

"Google's ecosystem for both AR and VR is in the very early days," he said.

As growth in the global smartphone market shows signs of slowing, some manufacturers are voicing optimism that AR and VR will revive consumer enthusiasm.

"This is the next wave of technology that is really going to get consumers excited about smartphones," Erik Hermanson, Asus's head of marketing for mobile products, said at the show.

But mainstream consumer interest in the technology remains largely unproven. Apps might be expected to stimulate demand, but until Google's technology is available on a wider range of phones, it will be tough to persuade developers to build for the platform, analysts said.

"We are waiting for app developers to really use the platform for what it's for," Amit Singh, a vice president for VR at Google, told reporters.

In addition to supporting Daydream, Huawei said that it is exploring opportunities for Tango with Google. The Asus phone became the first to support both technologies.

Google has stressed that the programs do not overlap for now, but by pursuing both, the company can position itself for success regardless of whether AR or VR becomes a mainstream hit.

"By having options for both, they can cover the full potential market," said analyst Bob O'Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Forty Utah Highway Patrol troopers will help provide security in Washington for President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration on Jan. 20.

Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Todd Royce says the troopers will be deputized by Washington metro police and have full police power in the city.

He says theyll be stationed along the parade route.

Washington police will pay for the troopers travel and time.

Utah troopers have helped with security in past inaugurations and at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

The late nationalist, Peter Chanetsa, who died in the early hours of Monday this week has been declared a national hero.The former governor for Mashonaland West Province was declared a national hero after round-robin consultations with politburo members.The national hero's status was announced by Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the Chanetsa homestead in Harare this evening.Meanwhile, family members are meeting to make final arrangements for Chanesta's body to be taken to his rural home before burial possibly on Saturday at the National Heroes Acre.Chanetsa became the first Chief Protocol Officer in the Office of the then Prime Minister in 1980 and rose to become Mashonaland West governor.Chanetsa, who was a member of the Zanu PF Central Committee at the time of his death, leaves behind his wife, Beatrice and three sons.
Is Finland's basic income a good idea?

Published on January 6, 2017

Story by euro topics

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On New Year's Day, Finland implemented a trial run of an unconditonal basic income - selecting 2,000 citizens at random and paying them 560 euros per month. It's a scheme that's been discussed in many countries across Europe in the past, but can it actually work?

Experiment could finally bring clarity - Kaleva, Finland

The idea of a basic income will hopefully be further developed, Kaleva writes:

"The experiment should provide an answer to the burning question of whether a basic income will boost employment or not. The goal of a basic income is to simplify the social security system, to remove obstacles to motivation and to reduce the stifling bureaucracy that tends to lead to passivity. The relationship between incomes and social benefits is currently a complex one, where everything affects everything else and there is no incentive for personal initiative... Hopefully the experiment being conducted by the social security agency Kela will finally produce some information about whether the assumption that a basic income will have a stimulating effect is correct or whether the scenario will result in a moral catastrophe... The model is still at the teething stage, and further experiments will be necessary. But at least now a start has been made." (06/01/2017)

An attractive idea that's impossible to test - NRC Handelsblad, Netherlands

The experiment is well intended but impracticable, NRC Handelsblad believes:

"The basic income is too low to be able to draw comprehensive conclusions from the test. The basic amount is probably too small to really change the behaviour of those receiving it. And even if it did, these changes would not be far-reaching enough, because those participating know that the experiment will be over in two years' time. That is a pity... The idea is attractive, but the main problem is its practical implementation. One can think up wonderful ways to change the system, but they remain what they are: an attempt to transform an entire, complex, integrated system into a different one. A smooth transition is difficult to achieve." (05/01/2017)

Don't underestimate the consequences of consumption - La Tribune, France

La Tribune is likewise sceptical about the experiment and believes that the introduction of a basic income nationwide would have considerable repercussions:

"If a large part of the population were to decide to live on limited means, a labour shortage would ensue. This would have negative effects on the economy, and a dynamic economy is precisely what is required in order to be able to introduce a basic income in the first place... Were such a programme to be introduced nationwide, one would have to radically raise taxes in order to finance it, which would hit the middle classes in particular. Finding their purchasing power reduced, they in turn might decide to reduce their working hours and hence their salaries, yet the new wealth gained from the basic income would at least in part be cancelled out by taxes. At any rate the consequences for the entire economy would be considerable, since consumption is a factor that furthers growth." (05/01/2017)

---

30 Countries, 300 Media Outlets, one press review. euro|topics presents the issues affecting Europe and reflects the continent's diverse opinions, ideas and moods.

Story by euro topics
News / Regional

by Divine Dube

Image above: The hut(s) where granny Mvundla lives

THE world's oldest granny Emma Morano from Italy is 117 years old this year yet, in Bulilima, a rural district in South-western Zimbabwe there is an unknown woman who has also lived the same number of years - if her birthdate as given by her close family members is anything to go by.Despite her age, Mapobo Mvundla who was born in a farm in the then Bulilima (gwa) Men'we, probably during the era of transition from the Iron Age tradition lives in abject poverty - and has apparently not received any miniature support from the Zimbabwean government.Her grass-thatched home, an indicator of rural poverty in this part of the country and the absence of proper ablution facilities speak volumes of the desolation and pain which Mvundla, one of the oldest centenarians in Zimbabwe is going through.President Mugabe, a nonagenarian whom most Zimbabweans often mock for being one of the oldest living being in the the country - and sometimes Africa is only 92 years, 25 years younger than Mvundla who says "I am now tired of living"."She has never gone out of her hut for 22 years now," Desire Dube, the woman's nephew who irks a living in neighbouring South Africa says, showing deep sorrow and resentment for the Zimbabwean government which he is convinced should do something to accord her old-age granny proper care under the Social Services scheme for the old age.But the Zimbabwean government which is obliged by the country's Constitution to take care of elderly people has long abandoned this scheme - without notice - because it has nothing in its coffers - which have now been dried up by years of economic recession.What makes the situation worse for granny Mvundla is that her only surviving child Ntombiyezizwe Nyoni, is 85 years old now - and is also battling with dotage, a condition which physicians say is caused by old age."There is no single borehole closer to their home," Dube says in disappointment. "So they have to get water from a river about 2 kilometres away."Dube also blames local leaders for "not doing anything" to help an elderly person - who is in dire need of social support.Typical of persons who have reached old age, Mapobo can no longer wear any clothes as this terribly affects her skin. As a result of this, she now prefers staying in her birthday suit, a situation which scares away would-be visitors including her neighbours.Mapobo does not have any national documents such as a birth certificate and an I.D, a circumstance which in worst scenarios, makes it difficult for her to access public food aid, adding to her grinding poverty."I am tired of living," Mvundla said in a low, sinking voice over the phone when this reporter made an attempt to talk to her through a neighbour's mobile line."I am now waiting for the final whistle - and die peacefully," she said before she went dead silent over the phone.
Governor LELE Lafrique And Collaborators After Kumbo Meeting Wilson MUSA

As the school bells are ringing for back to school second term next Monday January 9, 2017, the future is still uncertain to Pupils and Students in North West and South West regions of Cameroon. Teachers Trade Unionists have maintained that the strike action must continue unless governments grant their request.

Wilfred Tassang of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union says it is a good thing that the eight members requested to be added to the ad hoc committee for teachers were finally included in the list but that they will only sit to negotiate when all the youths arrested in Bamenda and Kumba are released. He said while observing Monday ghost town in the two regions, they are ready for dialogue if those conditions are fulfilled.

Enter Prime Minister

Prime Minister Philemon Yang in a release Friday has called on parents to send their children to school come Monday January 9, 2017 .He invited the education family to put hands together for the smooth start of the second term in these two regions despite ongoing strike action by teachers. The PM has assured all and sundry that security measures for the kick off have been taken.

Philemon Yang also said government is ready to partake in meaningful dialogue with Trade Unionists to arrive a consensus to improve on English sub system of education. He said the issues have been identified and that solutions are underway.

CAPA Gives Unflinching Support To Teachers

CAPA, Cameroon Parents Association (c) Wilson MUSA

The North West region based Cameroon Parents Association, CAPA, has given its unflinching support to striking teachers assuring them that they will observe the ghost town come Monday. The release signed by eight representatives partially reads, We unanimously and unilaterally support the ongoing teachers and lawyers strike, declare a ghost town across north west and south west as from Monday January 9,2017.

The Parents also said dialogue can only be sincere if youths abducted in Bamenda and Kumba are released. They also decry the divide and rule system of North West and South West people implored by the government.

Conf Journalists Condemn Peers

A group of Journalists (two persons) in the North West region under the umbrella of Confederation of Anglophone Journalists have condemned treatment of the current strike action by some Bamenda based Journalists. In a Press conference Thursday in Bamenda, President of the Confederation, Roland Tamukong said Cameroon must remain one and indivisible and called on Journalists to remain impartial. However he received a backlash from a majority of North West Journalists who say he, Tamukong and others who organized the event were beggars and have eaten from the system. We could not confirm allegations that dance groups were invited after scores of media men boycotted ,we could not also confirmed that those who attended were given 50,000FRS as pediem to write a good report in favor of school resumption.

Some North West Fons Resist Bribe

Fons in Ndu sub division, Donga Mantung Division have reportedly refused to cede to demands of Divisional Officer of the area to lure parents send their children to school come Monday. They told the DO that it is the place of teachers and lawyers to tell the students and not traditional rulers.

On his part, the Fon of Tabeken, Ngwayi Polycarp has called on his subjects especially pupils and students to avoid market places and crowded areas, though he did not come out clear on his stance ,it is rumored that he is trying not to victimize himself but supporting the struggle .

North West Governor Holds Security Meeting

The issue of school resumption in the North West region was at center of discussion in a regional coordination and security meeting held in Kumbo, Bui Division of North West region. Adolphe LELE LAfrique called on parents to send their children to school and urged chiefs to persuade them do so.
Cannabis Coalition To Provide 4,200 Free Joints At Trump's Inauguration

Trending News: There Will Be SO MUCH Free Weed At President Trump's Inauguration

Long Story Short

A group called the DC Cannabis Coalition says they plan to hand out over 4,000 free joints throughout Washington, DC on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. The group claims it's to urge federal lawmakers to legalize marijuana.

Long Story

The DC Cannabis Coalition wants marijuana legalized from sea to shining sea. To make sure the message gets through to the incoming Trump administration, the group plans to light up Inauguration Day.

The coalition is providing 4,200 joints, free of charge, to anyone who wants to get in on the action. Pot-packing protesters will march to the National Mall on the morning of January 20th with instructions to light up 4 minutes and 20 seconds into Donald Trumps inaugural address.

(The term 420 is code for smoking cannabis, though its origins are far from certain.)

With any luck, the protest will cloud Trumps judgement, although some marijuana activists have pinpointed Jeff Sessions, Trumps pick for attorney general, as the most obvious potential problem.

Last month, defiant cannabis advocates smuggled marijuana into the Washington office of Jeff Sessions, rolled joints and sprinkled pot crumbs on the floor.

via GIPHY

Activist Adam Eidinger points out, We are looking at a guy who as recently as April said they are going to enforce federal law on marijuana all over the country. He said marijuana is dangerous.

Eidinger founded a group of DC residents who fought for a voter-approved ballot initiative that legalized the recreational use of marijuana within the District of Columbia.

According to Initiative 71, its legal to have 2 ounces or less of marijuana in your possession. Its also legal to grow it in DC and to give it away. Along with the District of Columbia, four states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and twenty-three states have laws accommodating medical marijuana.

For Eidinger, Sessions represents an end to any progress thats been made on pot legalization, which would be a real drag.

While participants in the upcoming Inauguration Day protest may earn brownie points with fellow activists, the free joints come with a catch, because protesters could get caught. Lighting up joints, spliffs, bongs, or blunts on federal property is not legal, and the DC Cannabis Coalition warns protest participants they could be arrested for smoking on the National Mall.

I think its a good protest, insists Eidinger, If someone wants to do it, they are risking arrest, but its a protest and you know what, the National Mall is a place for protest.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Will this encourage legalization, or cause a public backlash?

Drop This Fact

Between 2001-2002 to 2012-2013, the percentage of Americans who reporting marijuana use in the past year more than doubled to 9.5%.
| BY Lynchy |

Carat APAC recently launched a content-led campaign for Mondelez Internationals Philadelphia Cream Cheese with its first-ever pop-up cafe in Singapore. Within the first week of its launch, the Heavenly Inspiration campaign reached over two million Singaporeans on social media, delivered over 10,000 likes and comments and generated over 250 unique posts.

The campaign was kick started with a video that was launched in early November featuring Philadelphias iconic angels landing in Singapore, which followed closely by the opening of a pop-up cafe along Keong Saik road. Members of the public were able to sample from a menu of 10 different snacks made with the brands variety of cream cheese spreads at the pop-up cafe and encouraged to come up with their very own creations.

In addition to riding on the local trend of cafe hopping and sharing of food photography on social media, a variety of recipes using Philadelphias cream cheese were also posted concurrently on Facebook and Instagram to inspire audiences to create their own taste of heaven from home.

The Heavenly Inspiration campaign, which used outdoor and digital channels to inspire audiences to get creative using Philadelphias cream cheese, was a collective effort from three arms in the network.

Carat came up with the idea, the connections strategy and the media plan; MKTG, the Events and Experiential Marketing solutions arm, conceptualised and executed the innovative pop-up concept while Carat Content created the social media assets and mcgarrybowen created the thematic video and out-of-home component. The event itself served a dual role as a sampling experience and also as a hub for the creation of content that is being distributed to millions of Singaporeans through social media networks.

A simple idea was brought to life fabulously by Carat right from conception to complete execution. We leveraged multiple partners to make the campaign truly relevant to our Singapore audience and drive our marketing objective to increase awareness of Philadelphia cream cheese, said Namita Pai Dalevi, Brand Manager, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, South East Asia.
Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper.
The two men were described as Pacific Islander or Maori in appearance, in their late 20s to early 30s, tanned and both of medium build. One of the men had a sleeve tattoo of a black lion head on his left upper forearm.
His new live show in Australia is based on the series Deadly 60 Pole to Pole in which he sought out deadly creatures in a journey from the South Pole to the North Pole.


The second proposition invites a boycott by monarchists on the argument, "Who said we wanted a republic, anyway". Rather than exclude the monarchists from the debate it would be better to have a plebiscite on whether Australia should be a republic first. When that is decided and accepted, a second plebiscite would be held on whether the head of state is elected by the people or the Parliament.
West Virginia Man Arrested For Using Syringe To Squirt Women With His Own Semen

Trending News: A Guy Has Been Squirting Women With A Syringe Full Of Semen

Long Story Short

A guy from West Virginia was arrested for squirting women with a syringe full of his own jizz at an Ohio Walmart. And it wasn't the first time. He'd been on a syringe squirting spree for eight weeks.

Long Story

It looks like we already have a frontrunner for 2017s weirdest (and grossest) crime.

Timothy Blake was charged on December 30 for pandering obscenity, sexual imposition and two counts of menace by stalking, according to local news reports.

What he did was walk around a Walmart and squirt a woman with liquid from a syringe.

Washington County, Ohio, Sheriff's Office

Police learned about the crime from a woman who was shopping at the Walmart in Ohio. She said she was followed by a "creepy" guy and then she felt something wet on her butt. She rushed to the bathroom only to find that the liquid was sticky.

The first report came in two months ago from a woman who had found this on her bottom and after cleaning it off in the bathroom had walked out to find him waiting and staring at her, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks. She said he then took off and she followed him until he got in his truck and left.

Gross.

After police did some tests they found that the liquid was yes, that sticky stuff.

Initially, the 28-year-old suspect said he was spraying egg yolk at the women, but he later admitted that it was semen, spit as well as egg yolk that was squirted on the women. He also admitted that he got his jizz in there by masturbating into the syringe in the parking lot.

Gross again.

And this wasn't the first time. Blake, who is married, allegedly said he did these strange syringe attacks on a dozen occasions.

The saddest part of all this has to be that he blamed the woman at the Walmart because she displayed "exhibitionist characteristics and wanted to be noticed." Yeah, it's totally her fault that you sprayed her with a syringe full of jizz.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

What's grosser than that?

Drop This Fact

Blake said his parents molested him when he was a child, according to CBS News.
Ms King told reporters in Melbourne on Friday: "I think this doesn't pass the pub test.



She said ministerial standards required diligence and the "non-blurring" of public and private lives, but did not expand on whether the rules on family members accompanying MPs needed to be tightened.



Ms King insisted that Ms Ley should release her diary and details of who she met on the trip.



"Most people I know don't just suddenly purchase a property; you've got to go see the property, you need to contact a real estate agent to do a viewing, what was her partner doing as part of that, was that planned?" she said.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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..Honest Reporting..05 January '17..Theclaims in a headline that 2016 was deadliest year for West Bank children in a decade, but the misleading report fails to live up to fundamental journalistic standards.Correspondent Bethan McKernan, who is based in Beirut, uses DCI-Palestine (an anti-Israel advocacy group, more on this group below) to accuse Israel of unnecessarily killing Palestinian youths. To a lesser extent the article quotes Human Rights Watch, which has its own axe to grind with Israel.McKernan speaks about the period of time from October 2015 to the present, with a particular focus on children.But she fails to acknowledge that the Palestinians carried out 2,732 terror attacks against Israelis, many perpetrated by minors. This wave of terror was characterized by shootings, stabbings, car rammings, and firebombings. In other words, the spike in Palestiniancorresponded with a spike in PalestinianMoreover, only 228 Palestinians died in carrying out their attacks. So even when Israelis were under direct and often deadly assault,That indicates an impressive degree of Israeliby any standards.
Reiterates its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries and under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon;



Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it.

Welcomes the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the Government of Lebanonto extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.



Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territoryfor it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.



Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel.

In our conflict with the Israeli enemy, we will spare no effort or resistance in order to liberate the remaining occupied Lebanese territory, and to protect our homeland from an enemy who still covets our land, our water and our resources.The Government affirms the right of Lebanese citizens to resist the Israeli occupation, repel the Israeli aggressions and recapture the occupied territories.

The United States congratulates Prime Minister Hariri on the Lebanese parliaments approval of his cabinet on December 28.The United States stands steadfast in its support for a strong, stable, prosperous, and sovereign Lebanon as the new government works to strengthen state institutions, prepare for timely national elections, and uphold and implement Lebanons international commitments.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

.

..Pressure Points..05 January '17..What happens when UN Security Council resolutions are ignored? That depends, reallyon whether you are any of 192 other members of the United Nations, or are Israel.Defenders of Israel often claim that it is treated differently by the United Nations from any other nation. That claim is accurate, and a brief look at Lebanon offers some proof. It continues to violate Security Council resolutions, year after yearbut no one complains, and no one ever argues that Lebanon must be punished with boycotts or prosecutions for doing so. In fact they are often congratulated for their defiance.The United Nations Security Council has been saying for decades that the Government of Lebanon must exercise control of its territory. Resolution 1559 of 2004 Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias and Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory. By Lebanese militias the UN was referring to Hezbollah, but dared not speak its name. In any event, the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1583 was adopted unanimously in 2005 and in it the Security CouncilAs the French ambassador said about that resolution when it was adopted, in keeping with the present demands of the United Nations, Lebanon must extend its authority throughout the south, in particular, by expanding and deploying its forces and by disarming the militias. But the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1701 of 2006, adopted to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah,But the Government of Lebanon paid no attention, or more accurately was unwilling to comply because it was afraid.In the last week of December, 2016, Lebanon got a new government under Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and as is customary the new Cabinet issued a Ministerial Statement outlining its plans. Those plans openly defied the Security Councils many resolutions on Lebanon and bowed to Hezbollah pressure.Here are the relevant lines:Note that it does not say theof Lebanon has the right to resistance, or the state, or the Army, which would at least have endorsed the authority of the state in principle. The actual language legitimizes Hezbollah as a state within a state and legitimizes its military operations outside the control of the state. It was approved because Hezbollah demanded this, and the opposing forces (who got no visible Western support) were too weak to prevent it.So Lebanon is in violation of Security Council resolutions, and deliberately so. There was plenty of discussion about this issuewhat exactly would the Ministerial Statement say about Hezbollah and its right to armsand some key figures resisted the language Hezbollah wanted. But Hezbollah got its way (on this and several other key issues).What was the U.S. reaction? Here it is, from the White House But of course the Lebanese government had just announced, very clearly, that it was NOT going to uphold and implement Lebanons international commitments.Now, some critics will say this is not comparable to the situation in Israel and the new Resolution 2334 on Israeli settlements, because the Netanyahu government has the power to act to freeze settlements. Why does it not do so? Ah, well, its a coalition government and some members of the coalition would oppose a freeze; indeed they would leave the coalition over this and the government might well collapse. But thats pretty much the situation in Lebanon. Hariri cabinet capitulates to Hezbollah demand was the headline in. Had Hariri not agreed, hed never have become prime minister or his new government would have collapsed.Ofthe two situations are not comparable not when you consider that Hezbollah is a murderous terrorist group that kills people every day, and was likely involved in killing Saad Hariris father Rafik in 2005. As thereported in 2015 about Rafik Hariris murder by car bomb and the UN tribunal investigating that event, the tribunal is producing overwhelming, albeit circumstantial, evidence that Hezbollah murdered the most important politician Lebanon had ever produced, and indiscriminately slaughtered many others in the process. So one can sympathize with Saad Hariri and other Lebanese politicians when they bow to Hezbollah. The people who might leave Netanyahus cabinet will go home, not pick up machine guns and plant car bombs.But the fact remains that Lebanon is defying the Security Council very clearly and very deliberately, and no one says a word about it (except to applaud). No one is threatening a boycott of Lebanese goods until it complies. No one is suggesting that Lebanese politicians are violating international law by their complicity with and now official defense of Hezbollah. And actually, some pressure from the West might be useful in empowering and emboldening Lebanese politicians who are trying to resist Hezbollah, and risking their lives by doing so.But thats not the point here. The point is that plenty of countries defy the UN but in very, very few cases is this even noticed, and in fewer still is anyone punished. Israel remains a special case, whose maltreatment in the UN is a disgraceand one that, until the Obama administration decided to allow Resolution 2334 to pass, the United States fought and prevented in the Security Council. It may be a vain hope that the UN will depart from past practices and stop persecuting Israel, but it seems very likely that under the Trump administration the United States will return to past practices and defend Israel again. That would be a good start for 2017.
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The Delhi government on Thursday asked all private schools except ones built on government land to commence with entry level admission in a transparent manner.

"As per orders of honorable High Court of Delhi, all private schools have to adopt the criteria of admission which must be clear, well defined, equitable, non discriminatory, unambiguous and transparent," Delhi's Directorate of Education (DoE) said in a statement.

The admissions for nursery, KG, prep, and class 1, were started on January for the schools except for the ones built on land allotted to them by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

There are about 300 schools in the capital which are built on government land for which the admission criteria is yet to be clarified by the Delhi government.

The list of such schools can be found at the education department's website, www.edudel.nic.in.

The department also shared a weblink (http://doepvt.delhi.gov.in) and asked the parents and guardians to register their grievance if they find any school non-complying with the rules.

The aggrieved party can address any complaints related to "donation or capitation fee being charged by schools, non display of criteria or procedure of admissions, non-availability of admission forms".

The schools were also directed to display the number of seats available and later allotted to children with a break-up of marks awarded to them on each count, on their notice boards and websites.
In order to give equal opportunity for physically challenged students,the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has come up with new facilities for the for the visually impaired at the Central Library in the Powai campus.

According to a statement from IIT Bombay, the facilities installed include modern aids and appliances such as the latest version of the Jaws-screen reading software, Plextalk pocket daisy player and recorder, Perkins smart Brailler, Braille embosser/printer, Kuzwell or Open book scan and read software, Zoom X or Pearl- document camera-works as instant reader, Sangeeta Software to convert txt files into mp3 files, Eye-Pal Rol portable scanners and readers and Prkins standard Brailler.

IIT-B director Devang Khakhar has expressed delight over the action. He siad that the Centre has taken a positive move towards social inclusion and hinted at the possibility of individual facilities for each visually- challenged student in future.

On the other hand, in an attempt to bridge the gap between emerging technology and emergent users through a bottom-up approach, the students of the Industrial Design Center of the IIT-B have in collaboration with Swansea University of Britain developed a 'physical web' for residents of the Dharavi slums to help them promote their business.

As a part of Google's Internet of Things Technology Research Award, this project was carried out. And as a part of the project, 100 devices called 'beacons' provided by Google are being deployed in the largest slum in Asia in the heart of the megapolis.

In the first phase of this plan, 30 shops in Dharavi are being connected to the physical web through these beacons.

IIT Kharagpur Comes a Step Down to Reduce Fee Burden for Students
Volkswagen AG must face claims it misled U.S. investors after installing so-called defeat devices in diesel vehicles used to cheat emissions tests.

A San Francisco federal judge also rejected a request to dismiss shareholder claims against former VW Chairman Martin Winterkorn, who said investors in VWs American depositary receipts couldnt prove he knew the extent of the companys diesel issue.

The company contended the judge didnt have jurisdiction to hear the dispute, saying any wrongdoing occurred outside the U.S. The argument was rejected by U.S District Judge Charles Breyer.

While much of defendants alleged fraudulent scheme was perpetrated in and from Germany, the court cannot conclude, as defendants urge, that no relevant conduct occurred in the U.S., Breyer said in his order Wednesday. The court concludes that plaintiffs, who are U.S. residents and bring claims based on U.S. securities laws, are entitled to considerable deference to their forum choice.

Shares of VWs most commonly traded ADR plummeted 25 percent in the week after the scandal broke on Sept. 18, 2015, to $27.16 in New York trading. Shares have fallen 20 percent in the almost 16 months since the allegations were made public.

Although total damages in the suit remain unknown, theyre likely to pale in comparison to theoretical shareholder damages in Germany alleged to surpass $9 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

VW spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan didnt immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment on the ruling.

Winterkorns Travel

Lawyers for investors contend the company and Winterkorn were well aware of the fraud in Germany. Winterkorn traveled to the U.S. to promote the company while neglecting to mention the defeat devices, they said.

The case could be one of the final pieces of litigation before the German carmaker in the U.S. The company has already committed to spending almost $20 billion to settle complaints by car owners, dealerships and the government in the U.S. and Canada.

VWs agreement to resolve claims over 480,000 cars in the U.S. with 2.0-liter engines was approved by Breyer in October. The company has reached a preliminary accord to settle claims involving 83,000 VW, Porsche and Audi diesel vehicles with 3.0-liter engines.

The company still faces investor and consumer lawsuits in Germany, along with criminal investigations there and in the U.S. A regional German court on Wednesday ordered VW to replace one customers polluting car, dealing a setback to the companys plan to minimize compensation to Europeans affected by the diesel emissions scandal. The case is the first of its kind in the carmakers home country.

The case is In Re: Volkswagen Clean Diesel Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, 15-02672, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Hyundai isnt the only brand to have debuted an interior designed to improve your health at CES, as Mercedes-Benz has done the same.



Dubbed the Fit & Healthy suite and debuting in a modified S-Class, the German firm has designed a number of functions aimed at enhancing the well-being of occupants while reducing stress levels.

Among the most intriguing functions are the so-called Motion seats. These seats take in-car massages to an entirely new level and are able to periodically move the vehicles seats in response to what sensors monitor about the fatigue levels and posture of a driver.

Speaking of the technology with Car Advice, member of the board of management of Daimler, Ola Kallenius, said: Your car should really be a fitness machine. Its your third place  you have your home, you have your work, and you have your car. Why shouldnt the car interact with your body and your mind in a positive way to actually make you feel better?

Motion seating actually senses, during the ride, how you feel, what the muscles in your back and the position of your spine and so on, is. And it adjusts the seat accordingly  like, if youre sitting in a very long meeting, you usually dont stay in the same position for a very long time: you try to move around and use different positions, to help with your muscles and circulation.

PHOTO GALLERY
The next Nissan Leaf will be a beneficiary of Nissans new semi-autonomous driving system that made its debut on the Serena minivan in Japan last August.



Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said Thursday at the 2017 CES in Las Vegas that the second-generation Leaf will feature the ProPilot system, which enables autonomous drive functionality for single-lane highway driving.

Ghosn declined to publicly say when the new Leaf would appear, but dont expect it before 2018. It will share pieces with the next generation of Renaults electric vehicles, too.

Nissan said its strategy for bringing autonomous driving to the masses is based on four stages. The first stage is autonomous drive for single-lanes on the highway, which helps keep the car centered by reading lane markers, measuring the distance with the vehicle in front, and providing steering assistance.

Stage two is expected in 2018 and will bring autonomous drive on multilane highways, allowing the vehicle to merge and change lanes autonomously. Stage three is autonomous city driving, which Nissan says should become available in 2020, while the fourth and final stage is fully autonomous and driverless vehicles. Nissan did not say when the fourth stage will come into fruition.

The automaker plans to extend its autonomous driving technologies to more models in Europe, Japan, China and the United States, with 10 vehicles to be launched by 2020 by the Renault-Nissan Alliance, including the Nissan Qasqai in Europe later this year.

Photo Gallery

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Toyota is the latest automaker to be targeted by Donald Trump, with the incoming President threatening it with tariffs on any Mexican-built vehicles it imports into the United States.



Throughout his campaign and after claiming a surprising victory, Trump has been an outspoken critic of automakers producing vehicles in Mexico and bringing them into the United States. Ford has already rescinded its decision to construct a new $1.6 billion factory in Mexico and General Motors has been urged to do the same.

On his personal Twitter account, the President-elect wrote: Toyota Motor said [sic] will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Built plant in U.S. or pay big border tax. For the record, Toyota broke ground on its Mexican factory for the Corolla back in November and its located in Guanajuato, not Baja.

Although Trump hasnt said what kind of tax he could enforce on automakers bringing cars from Mexico to the U.S., he has asserted that he will scrap the NAFTA trade agreement in an effort to ensure carmakers keep their production in the U.S.

Speaking in Japan, Toyota president Akio Toyoda commented on Trumps threat: We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts. Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump Administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry.
Unveiled more than a year ago and developed specifically with the ASEAN region in mind, the Honda BR-V has hit Malaysias dealers.



Its available in two grades, named E and V, and can be had from RM85,800 (equal to $19,080) and RM92,800 ($20,635), respectively, on-the-road, with insurance.

Depending on the trim, you get 16-inch alloy wheels, DRLs, rearview camera with parking sensors, 6.1-inch infotainment, keyless entry and go, leather wrapped multifunction steering wheel, leather trim and air condition.

The Honda BR-V can also be specified with three accessories packs, starting with the Utility Package, priced at RM1,280 ($285), which adds cargo tray, trunk organizers, door visor, sun shade and door protector film. The Urban Package includes running board, side step garnish and a tailgate spoiler for RM2,945 ($655), while the Modulo Package offers front and rear lower garnish and tailgate spoilers, for RM3,750 ($835).

Power comes solely from a 1.5-liter four-cylinder i-VTEC engine that pushes out 120 PS (117 HP) and 146 Nm (107 lb-ft) of torque to the wheels through a CVT.

The BR-V was awarded with a 5-star safety rating by the ASEAN NCAP, being equipped with hill start assist, vehicle stability assist and electronic brake distribution, among others.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Contributed

A Penticton couple who met at a singles dance years ago have made a large donation to the South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation.

Although they both lived in the small town of Kamsack, Sask., Ed and Lucille Propp had never met until they attended the same dance  where Lucille tried to teach Ed the heel-and-toe polka.

Ed was a heavy equipment operator for the areas rural municipality, while Lucille worked for 20 years as the assistant to the administrator of Kamsacks small hospital.

Shortly after their marriage, they decided to retire to Penticton where other family members were already residing.

The Propps have now made a $30,000 donation to the foundation's campaign to provide $20 million in medical equipment for the Penticton Regional Hospital expansion.

We use the hospital so much that we thought we should pay something back, he said. We cant just keep taking and taking.

Lucille suffers from a blood disorder (myelodysplasia) which requires her to undergo a blood transfusion every two weeks.

It takes four-and-a-half to five hours, but the staff are so caring, she said.

Ed suffered a heart attack several years ago and has undergone knee surgery at PRH.

The couple have also been active long-time members of the Penticton Seniors Drop-In Centre Society. Ed served for four years on the board, including a year as vice-president.

Construction of the new patient care tower at PRH is now underway.

It should be ready for patients by early 2019.
Dustin Godfrey

Penticton's fire chief has taken a bit of a change of track to try to raise the last stretch of money needed for a new fire boat in an attempt to hasten the process.

After the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen declined to help fund the boat, Fire Chief Larry Watkinson previously considered camping out on a barge on the lake to raise the money, but with the time running low, he's opted to canvass user groups and attempt to reallocate some capital funds to help pay for the boat.

"There's certain groups in our community that spend more time in or near or on the water than others, so I'm certainly out there shaking hands and telling my story," Watkinson said.

Among the donations that have begun rolling in so far, Watkinson says the Penticton Fire Department has received a $10,000 donation from the Penticton Lakeside Resort's David Prystay, which put the boat closer to fruition.

"He certainly sees a significant need for this on our lakes and his patrons of his resort are certainly enjoying the lake, and he wants to have a marine rescue program for the Okanagan Lake," Watkinson said.

Watkinson said he's also going to request City Hall to allow him to shuffle some of the capital funds allocated for the fire department to alleviate the pressure further.

After new donations and reallocating the capital funds, Watkinson says he's about $50,000 away from getting a new boat.

So far, Watkinson says he's had some good reception from those he has presented the case to so far, due in part to some prizes or honours available for bigger donors, including a pair of 20-minute flights over the Okanagan Valley from Canadian Helicopters.

"They certainly appreciate having marine rescue in the lakes, with their helicopters in the air," Watkinson said, adding that the two flights will be awarded through a raffle.

The Penticton Yacht Club is also looking at ways they can help with funds, but they will also be providing a free slip at their docks for the new boat to stay.

Watkinson has also been asked to present to Summerland council next week, where he hopes the district will see the case for helping to fund the marine rescue program.

"Summerland certainly gets an extraordinary service at a low cost, if any," Watkinson said. "We cover all of the shores in Summerland, and I mean, I think it would be in their best interest to support the cause for sure.

"I think they see the value, too. I'm hoping so."

If he doesn't make the funds in time, Watkinson says there may be rescue missions he reluctantly orders firefighters not to go out onto the lake, if the weather doesn't permit.

"The weather would have to be very calm for us to be sending the guys out on the 1988 17-foot Zodiac."
Photo: Oliver Daily News

Supreme Court Justice Peter Rogers has dismissed a petition filed by candidate Penny Duperron disputing last year's School District 53 trustee byelection.

Duperron had launched the challenge after the district failed to hold the required two advanced polls during the byelection.

The district says the judgement stated that the failure to hold the poll did not materially affect the outcome of the election and has therefore dismissed the petition.

In my view, the petitioner has succeeded in establishing that the election was carried out in an irregular fashion, Rogers ruled There was only one advance poll when there ought to have been two. However, the respondent has satisfied me that a second advance poll would not have produced a different result.

Duperron said she was disappointed, but not entirely surprised.

"Courts are reluctant to overturn election results, and I consider it to be a success because it was reviewed by a neutral, impartial third party."

Board chair Marieze Tarr also issued a statement in regards to the matter.

"The board acknowledged and regrets the lack of the second advance poll, however, appreciates the decision of Justice Rogers that supports the Chief Election Officers opinion that it did not impact the election outcome," she said. "The board looks forward to being able to return its focus to educational issues."
Photo: Contributed

A North Okanagan family is pleading for the return of some cherished items taken during a break in.

On Dec. 30 between 8:30 a.m. and 5:45 p.m., a home in the Fosthall Drive area of Coldstream was broken into.

RCMP Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy says numerous items were stolen, including three iPads, a Samsung Galaxy tablet, a computer and numerous watches, rings and earrings.

The family is particularly devastated with the theft of two irreplaceable items, and is hoping the public can assist in their return. The first is a custom ceramic coin bank belonging to one of the young children. It has a picture of a small boy and a woman on it. The second is a veterinarian cardboard box containing the remains of the family's recently deceased dog, said Noseworthy.

RCMP are appealing to anyone with information about this crime, or the location of the stolen items to contact the police at 250-545-7171, or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Photo: Flickr/BC Gov't

British Columbia's Supreme Court has delayed a hearing on a case that seeks to set aside two rulings made by the provincial conflict of interest commissioner involving Premier Christy Clark.

Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher says a hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday has been adjourned until Jan. 13.

Conacher says his group expects to be in court in Vancouver for a full-day hearing to argue that its petitions to overturn the conflict commissioner's rulings should go ahead.

Conflict commissioner Paul Fraser has applied to have the case dismissed, arguing his rulings are protected by legislative privilege and are not subject to review by the courts.

The rulings made last May and August cleared Clark of conflict allegations connected to her attendance at B.C. Liberal party fundraising events, where tickets could be sold for up to $20,000.

Fraser has ruled that the premier's appearances did not constitute a conflict of interest because she did not receive a personal benefit.
Photo: CTV

For the first time in 20 years, Vancouver residents can safely pond skate.

The parks board says ice on Trout Lake is thick enough to support skaters  at least 15 centimetres.

Located in East Vancouver's John Hendry Park, dozens of eager skaters took to the ice, Thursday.

The ice thickness will be monitored daily.

The Trout Lake Community Centre is open during the day for users to warm up.

But the parks board warns other ponds in the city are not safe to skate on.

Skaters at the Vanier Park pond have been ignoring warning signs. And already this winter, someone fell through the ice on Trout Lake on New Year's Eve.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Google Street View

Kamloops RCMP continue their investigation into the death of a 42-year-old male in a street fight on Dec. 30.

In the early morning hours, police were called to the scene of a fight near the 400 block of Tranquille Road.

Police and paramedics found Sean Dunn unconscious on the ground.

Treatment was administered, but Dunn died at the scene.

An investigation into the death is now being led by the Kamloops RCMP Serious Crime Unit.

The incident apparently stemmed from an argument at a local pub, Cpl. Jodi Shelkie said in a press release.
Photo: CTV Vancouver

A child has died in a house fire on Vancouver's east side and five family members rescued from the residence are in hospital.

Capt. Jonathan Gormick of Vancouver Fire and Rescue could not provide an age or gender of the child who died.

He says two other children and three adults who survived suffered smoke inhalation and burns.

Gormick says firefighters arrived to see flames and smoke coming from the first and second floors of the home.

A Vancouver city councillor who lives nearby knows the family, and says the entire street is devastated

"This is really tough I say hi to them every morning. Great kids, always outside playing," Kerry Jang said, tearing up.

Gormick says 45 firefighters, along with police and arson investigators are on the scene, but it's too early to say what caused the blaze.

with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Contributed

Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the death of a policeman and a bystander, the ransacking of 300 stores and arrests of over 600 people.

The country's business chambers said the combination of highway, port and terminal blockades and looting this week forced many stores and businesses to close and threatened supplies of basic goods and fuel.

Mexicans were enraged by the 20 per cent fuel price hike announced over the weekend as part of a government deregulation of the energy sector. Protesters began blocking highways and gas stations and some people have broken into stores to carry off merchandise.

Authorities said one policeman was run over and killed and another was seriously injured when they tried to stop robberies at a gas station in Mexico City. Police in the capital said they had arrested 76 people for looting about 29 stores.

In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a pickup truck trying to flee police during a store looting ran over a pedestrian, killing him, officials said.

Veracruz Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes Linares ventured out Thursday and tried to persuade a crowd not to attack a grocery store that had already been looted a day earlier. He offered the crowd coupons for 500 pesos ($23.25) if they would desist from looting.

In Mexico State, which borders Mexico City, 430 people had been detained as suspected looters. Four state police officers were fired and detained after they were caught on video taking some looted items and putting them in their patrol vehicles.

With blockades affecting everything from gas distribution terminals, seaports and highways to shopping centres and gas stations, the Communications and Transport Department announced it would cancel permits for any truckers who block roads.

Truck and taxi drivers have been among the most affected by the fuel price increases, which took effect as the government ends regulated prices for gasoline and diesel, which it says represented subsidies that unduly benefited wealthier Mexicans.

The change boosted the average price for a litre of premium gasoline to 17.79 pesos (about 90 cents). That makes 4 litres, or about a gallon, equal to nearly as much as Mexico's just raised minimum wage for a day's work  80 pesos (about $4).

President Enrique Pena Nieto said Wednesday that he would try to help groups hit hard by the increases.

"I understand the anger and irritation felt by the general public" over the price increases, Pena Nieto said. But, he added, "If this decision had not been taken, the effects and consequences would have been far more painful."

The Mexican Council of Bishops urged the government to reconsider the price increases, which it said especially hurt the poor.

"One has to be sensitive to the daily needs of the people," the bishops said in a statement. "It is not right to impose laws without taking into account peoples' realities and their feelings."

But the bishops also called on protesters to stop looting and "use peaceful and creative means to express their feelings."

The National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores of Mexico said in a statement Wednesday night that more than 79 stores had been looted and 170 were closed or blockaded in central Mexico, including the capital.
Photo: Contributed

The President of the Okanagan Skaha Teachers Union says the deal announced Thursday between the province and BCTF will have a big impact on local classrooms.

While its still too soon to say just how many of the 1,100 teachers to be hired in B.C. will land in the Okanagan, Leslea Woodward says learning will improve very quickly.

It will mean more support for kids, more support in classrooms and one-on-one time for kids, it will fill in those areas where you have kids falling through the cracks.

Woodward will be working with SD 67 to get job postings up and teachers hired as soon as possible. She says the new teachers wont mean students are uprooted into new classrooms, rather new teachers will help out existing classrooms for the rest of the year

They will be hired as an enrolling classroom teacher, but they could work with another teacher. So you could have two teachers working in a classroom, or taking small groups and teaching with them.

It will be wonderful for kids, really good news for parents and the public, she added.

However, she noted this is just the first step. Its an interim measure as the two sides work to find a deal following last years Supreme Court of Canada decision which found that a law imposed by the province that blocked teachers' ability from bargaining class sizes was unconstitutional.

Theres still a lot more work to do in getting the full implementation in place, Woodard said hoping to see a full deal in place by September.

She is urging the public to pressure their MLAs to fund education in the run-up to the provincial budget set to be announced in February.
Photo: The Canadian Press Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: "Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Brushing aside Donald Trump's dismissiveness, the nation's intelligence chief insisted Thursday that U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an "existential threat" to the nation.

Did Russian hacking sway the results? There's no way for U.S. agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, "The intelligence community can't gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made." But he did say Russian hacking "did not change any vote tallies."

Clapper's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence community's standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.

That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the U.S. intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference.

Shortly after Thursday's hearing, news leaked that Trump would soon name former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana to replace Clapper after the new president takes office.

The intelligence agencies' classified report, which was shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russia's interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the U.S. intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details are included in the classified report.

In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the U.S. was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails.

"We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement," Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russia's interference was aimed at helping Trump win.

An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That version, expected to be a fraction of the length of the classified one, is not likely to answer all the questions about Russia's actions. Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper told the senators. "And so we'll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here."

Clapper was less shy about declaring Russia "an existential threat to the United States." That's strong rhetoric that harkens back to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, language Obama has avoided. For his part, Trump has embraced the possibility of warmer U.S.-Russian ties.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russia's actions constituted an "act of war." The intelligence director said that was "a very heavy policy call," more appropriate for others in the government to decide.
Dustin Godfrey

They may have been hurt and heartbroken after a serious crash on Highway 97, but now Chad Smith and Behina Jahani are all smiles.

Smith and Jahani's dog, Marley, bolted from their truck after the crash, with the pair too injured to try to find her. Thats when the community came together.

"I kid you not, I must have gotten at least a dozen phone calls from 250 numbers saying how they're going to keep their eye open, how they're going to look for Marley, how they're on their way, where do we need them," Smith said.

"I almost started crying just hearing the amount of support."

In the search for Marley, Smith says a few people stood out, going above and beyond. That includes Al Vickers who even bought him lunch during the search.

"He called me and he said he was sitting there, waiting for me to tell him where I needed him," Smith said. "That guy was such a big help. He drove me around, he knocked on doors, he went looking for Marley as well."

Smith has several people whom he says he cant thank enough, including his neighbour, who helped in the search, and the people who ultimately found Marley.

"We just raced over there, we got to Marley, we found her, she was missing a couple of claws, a couple of scratches, we brought her to the vet, the vet okayed her and now she's home," Smith said.

As for the community as a whole, Smith and Jahani say they've found a new love for the South Okanagan.

"They don't make people out here like they do in the city," Smith said. "We are seriously contemplating looking to move out here."
Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2013 file photo reviewed by the U.S. military, dawn arrives at the closed Camp X-Ray, used as the first detention facility for al-Qaida and Taliban militants who were captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The Pentagon announced on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017 four prisoners were sent to Saudi Arabia as part of a final push to reduce the number of men held at the base before President Barack Obama leaves office. The prison's population is now 35, with 19 cleared for release. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

The Pentagon said Thursday that four Guantanamo prisoners have been released and sent to Saudi Arabia, part of a final push by President Barack Obama to reduce the population at the detention centre in the final weeks of his administration.

The four are from Yemen and each had been held at Guantanamo for more than 14 years. They were suspected of being low-level militants with ties to al-Qaida but never charged. They were cleared for release following an extensive security review, the Department of Defence said in announcing the move.

Their release brings the Guantanamo population to 55, including 19 cleared for release. The administration has previously said that it will try to get as many of the cleared prisoners out as possible before Obama leaves office. President-elect Donald Trump this week called for a halt of releases.

They are being sent to Saudi Arabia for resettlement and are expected to take part in a rehabilitation program. The four include Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bwazir, who refused to leave Guantanamo in January 2016 as two other prisoners were being resettled in the Balkans because he wanted to be sent to a country where he had family.

His lawyer, John Chandler, said the prisoner, who has also been identified by the name Bawazir in the past, has a brother and uncle in Saudi Arabia and his mother lives there part of the year.

Saudi Arabia "is where he wanted to go and we are grateful to the King and country for accepting him," Chandler said. "Mohammed was never accused of any crime or wrong doing and never committed any crime. He nonetheless was held by the United States in Guantanamo for almost 15 years of his young life. "

The Pentagon identified the other prisoners as Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim and Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli. The U.S. must find other countries to accept Yemeni prisoners because it will not send Yemeni prisoners back to their homeland, fearing that the civil war there will make it impossible to monitor them and ensure they do not return to militancy.

In Saudi Arabia, the government and state-run media did not immediately disclose the transfers. Over 130 detainees from Guantanamo have been sent to the kingdom, making it second only to Afghanistan.

Transferring the prisoners to Yemen remains impossible as the Arab world's poorest country remains in the grips of a Saudi-led war and rebels hold its capital.
Photo: The Canadian Press Vice President Joe Biden leaves the the Old Senate Chamber following a mock swearing in ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, as the 115th Congress begins. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Vice-President Joe Biden told President-elect Donald Trump Thursday to "grow up."

Biden dismissed Trump's complaint on Twitter about how the Obama administration has handled the transition. The vice-president told "PBS NewsHour" in an interview that it's time for Trump "to be an adult."

Biden said to Trump: "You're president. You've got to do something. Show us what you have."

The vice-president also said that Trump as president will have to propose legislation that Congress and the public can then assess. He said that it'll be "much clearer what he's for and against" once he's in the position of governing.

Vice-President Joe Biden says it's "dangerous" for President-elect Donald Trump to publicly criticize the U.S. intelligence community.

Biden also said it's "absolutely mindless" for a president not to have confidence in or listen to the intelligence agencies. The vice-president said it would be legitimate to question intelligence and ask for more detail or disagree. But he said that's different than Trump claiming he knows more than the intelligence agencies.

Biden said that's like saying, "I know more about physics than my professor." He says that's worrisome, but he assumes Trump's behaviour will change. He said that Trump is surrounding himself with "very smart people" like retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, the billionaire businessman's pick for defence secretary.
Photo: The Canadian Press In this Dec. 28, 2016, photo, members of civic groups sit around a comfort-woman statue after they set up in front of the Japanese consulate as police officers surround them in Busan, South Korea. Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea Friday, Jan. 6, 2017 in response to the placing of the statue. Many Koreans and other women in Asia were forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the "comfort-woman" system. (Kim Sun-ho/Yonhap via AP)

Japan announced Friday that it would recall its ambassador to South Korea and suspend economic talks in response to the placing of a "comfort-woman" statue representing wartime sex slaves in front of its consulate in the Korean port city of Busan.

Both Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan will be temporarily recalled, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.

Many Korean and other women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery in front-line brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the "comfort-woman" system.

Suga called the placing of the statue "extremely regrettable," since Japan and South Korea had reached what was supposed to be a final agreement to resolve long-standing differences over the issue in late 2015.

He said that Japan would suspend some ongoing negotiations with South Korea, including a proposed currency swap arrangement for times of financial crisis.

South Korean activists opposed to the 2015 agreement installed the statue in Busan late last month, one year after the pact was reached. A similar statue by the same sculptor has stood in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul since 2011.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry called Japan's decision to recall its ambassador "very regrettable," adding that both countries should work toward advancing bilateral relations based on trust "even when there are difficult problems."
Photo: The Canadian Press

Pope Francis treated a few hundred homeless people and refugees to a simple sandwich lunch on Friday, and urged the faithful to find God in the peripheries of society, not its palaces.

Francis celebrated Mass marking Epiphany, the biblical tale of the three wise men who set out to find the infant Jesus and offer precious gifts. At the end of the service, homeless people and refugees joined volunteers to hand out 50,000 booklets with biblical tales of God's mercy to pilgrims gathered in a frigid St. Peter's Square.

Francis said he too wanted to give the faithful the gift of God's mercy for the coming year.

He then offered some 300 needy people a simple lunch of a sandwich and drink, the Vatican said, part of his long-running outreach to the poor and homeless who live around the Vatican.

During this Christmas season, Francis has emphasized the humble setting of Christ's birth while criticizing a church that is closed in on itself, its wealth and its achievements. It's a message Francis has repeated during his papacy, faulting those who are obsessed with Christianity's rules and morals over God's mercy, particularly to society's most marginal.

Francis criticized those who are "anesthetized" to God's mercy, who want to "control everything and everyone" and fear any challenges to their wealth and achievements.

They suffer, he said, from "a bewilderment born of fear and foreboding before anything that challenges us, calls into question our certainties and our truths, our ways of clinging to the world and this life."
Photo: The Canadian Press

President-elect Donald Trump says Mexico will reimburse taxpayers for a new border wall and that U.S. money spent will be for the "sake of speed."

Trump's aides are considering a plan to ask Congress to ensure money is available in U.S. coffers for the wall. But Trump would rely on existing law that authorizes fencing and other technology along the southern border.

The potential approach was confirmed by two congressional officials and a senior transition official with knowledge of the discussions; all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Trump said in a tweet Friday: "The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!"
Photo: The Canadian Press A pedestrian makes their way along the bank of the Neris River in Vilnius, Lithuania, Friday.

Blizzards swept parts of eastern Europe on Friday, causing at least five deaths, closing roads and resulting in traffic accidents, travel delays and medical evacuations.

In Poland, the cold snap caused five deaths in 24 hours. Three people died from hypothermia while two people died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by malfunctioning heaters they used when the cold weather set in, the government Security Center said Friday.

In Romania, one of the worst affected areas, authorities said main highways in the south and east were made impassable due to the heavy snow. More than 40 trains were not running due to snow on the track.

Senior emergency situations official Raed Arafat said authorities evacuated 622 people who needed dialysis and 126 pregnant women.

Serbia's state television reported that 17 people, including six children, were injured in a pileup caused by the wintry weather on the outskirts of the southern city of Nis.

Heavy snow and strong winds disrupted traffic in southern Serbia and snow piled up to two-meters (6.6 feet) high, closing several roads. Local official Dragan Dimitrijevic said emergency crews were "helpless against the wind."

"New piles form almost immediately after we clear up," he said.

Turkey's national carrier, Turkish Airlines, cancelled 192 domestic and international flights that were scheduled for Saturday after heavy snow, icy conditions and strong winds were forecast for Istanbul.

Bulgarian authorities said some 650 villages across the country were without electricity due to high winds and heavy snow, while the national road service said that snow plows were unable to operate due to the conditions.

Temperatures are forecast to drop to -20 C at the weekend, and Bulgarian authorities issued a severe weather warning for 20 out of the country's 28 regions, telling people to stay indoors.

In Poland, where temperatures dropped to -25 C early Friday in the southern mountainous region, winds whipped up to 90 km/h, and more than 2,000 households were without heating in the southern Rybnik area, after a major pipeline malfunctioned in the frigid weather.

Elsewhere, temperatures in Germany plunged as low as -25 C overnight, after storm "Axel" sucked in icy air from the Arctic.
Kelowna RCMP have just issued a press release on the incident.

They say a 30-year-old Penticton man was arrested for mischief after a window of the Kelowna RCMP detachment was broken.

Police say the man had fled on foot and refused to stop when confronted by police. He was then taken to the ground after he wrapped a studded belt around his fist and refused to comply with directions.

Once under control, the man complained of breathing difficulties and was transported to KGH, but was quickly released back to police. He is to be released from custody under a promise to appear in court at a later date.

---------------

One man is in custody following an incident that played out in the middle of Ellis Street just after 10 a.m. this morning.

At least half a dozen officers, along with fire and ambulance converged on the scene in front of the TD Canada Trust building at the corner of Ellis St. and Leon Ave.

The suspect was restrained with handcuffs and placed on his stomach in the slushy street for over five minutes before he was taken to a waiting ambulance.

He could be heard breathing loudly and making noises that could be attributed to anxiety or a panic attack -- officers were overheard telling the man to stabilize his breathing.

RCMP at the scene refused to comment on who the man is or why he was being arrested.

According to one witness, the man had approached him on Saturday night asking where he could purchase drugs, before being arrested later that same night by Kelowna RCMP. When the witness ran into the man again this morning just after his release, he appeared to be angry.

He claimed he had four grand and he got released with eighteen (hundred dollars), so he freaked out, says the witness, who did not want to use his name.

He got his money stolen from him, he got angry and booted the window out (at the police detachment) and then I was walking with him towards Queensway and he told me (the police) stole  he had eighteen hundred (dollars) left  and they stole from him.

The witness went on to say officers responded poorly, given the situation.

I watched him do it (kick the window) and then I walked with him  I didnt know what he did, but he explained it to me  we made it from the police station all the way down to Queensway before he even had to run.

And the cops were just slowly walking after him and not calling out to him.

The witness also says he was told the man had been tasered at the scene, but that has not been confirmed.

A window at the police station is visibly splintered but still intact.
CAR government signs limestone agreement

ICR Newsroom By 06 January 2017

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) is one step closer to the exploitation of the limestone deposit in Bombassa and Ndimba villages, on the banks of the Oubangui river.



CAR Trade Minister, Hassan Come, and the Head of China Geo Engineering Corp, Wing Wen Hao, signed on 3 January two draft agreements, one relating to the exploitation of cement in the African country. It earmarks the limestone deposit for use in cement production subject to a positive feasibility study.



In 2010, the government authorised the construction of a 4000tpd cement plant in Nzilla by an Indian company but political unrest saw the equipment looted.

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January 6, Bishop.

Source: Ocarm.org

Roman martyrology: Carmelite Latinpatriarch. Born in France and joined the Carmelites while still a young man. In 1342 he was appointed procurator of the order and, from Avignon, he oversaw the organization and government of the Carmelites.

Etymology: Peter is derived from the Greek Petros meaning "stone". Thomas is Greek form of the Aramaic name Ta'oma' which meant "twin.



SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Born in Perigod, France, around 1305 into a very poor family. Upon the death of his brother, Peter Thomas, in order not to aggravate the family misery, left his parents and his younger sister while still a young man. He went on to the nearby town of Monpazier, forty-five kilometers from Bergerac. Here he attended school for about three years, living on alms and teaching younger pupils. He led the same type of life at Agen for many years, until the age of twenty.

Saint Peter Thomas joined the Carmelite Order when twenty years of age.

He was Procurator General of the Order at the Papal Curia at Avignon and also an official preacher to the Curia there. In 1354, he was appointed bishop of Patti and Lipari. He acted as papal legate to the kings and emperors of his time, seeking to promote peace and to re-establish unity with the Eastern Churches. He was translated to other episcopal sees: in 1359 to that of Corinth in the Pelopennese with the role of papal legate in the East; then to Crete as archbishop in 1363 and finally to Constantinople in 1364 as Latin Patriarch.

Preached Crusade against the Turks throughout Serbia, Hungary, and Constantinople, and travelled with the armies. Enjoyed a reputation between both Catholic and Orthodox spheres as an apostle of Church unity. His efforts for the unity of the Church make this fourteenth century saint a precursor of ecumenism.

He took part in a military operation against Alexandria, Egypt, in 1365 during which he was severely wounded and while he was preparing to embark and return to the curia, when he caught cold during the Christmas feasts of 1365. His condition worsened on Dec. 28; and on Jan. 6, 1366, reduced to skin and bones, he piously ended his earthly life at about the second hour of the night. After having distributed all his belongings. He died in the Carmelite convent of Famagusta.

* PRAYER

Lord, you inspired in your bishop St Peter Thomas

an intense desire to promote peace and Christian unity.

Following his example may we live steadfast in the faith

and work perseveringly for peace. We ask this through our Lord.
Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County:

U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. The speed limit on U.S. 27 in the construction zone has been lowered to 45 MPH. The contractor may have temporary lane or shoulder closures on U.S. 27 between 7 p.m.-6 a.m. As the project progresses, there may be short term temporary lane closures for the safety of the traveling public on city streets within the project area. Flaggers will assist with these closures and they will be properly signed in accordance with the Federal Highway Administrations Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. During Phase 1 of the U.S. 27 project, the contractor will be working on the northbound side of U.S. 27 on the bridges. Work will consist of demolishing and reconstructing the outside sections of the bridges along U.S. 27 North. Also on U.S. 27 South, they will be constructing a large retaining wall between the Olgiati Bridge and 6th Street. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is July 2019. For more info, visit the project website http://www.tn.gov/tdot/topic/US27-reconstruction-chattanooga. [Dement Construction Co., LLC/JM/CNP230]

SR 317 (Apison Pike) the grading, drainage and paving on from Old Lee Highway (LM 5.58) to SR-321 (Ooltewah-Ringgold Road) (LM 7.84): Work on this project continues. During this report period the contractor may have intermittent lane closures throughout the project from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is May. [Wright Brothers Const. Co. /Pruett/CNN279]

SR-320 (East Brainerd Road) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: Work on this project continues. During this report period, the contractor will have intermittent lane closures between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Hamlett Drive as the contractor installs road crossings and borings. The contractor may have short-term lane closures to perform various operations on an as-needed basis. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion is June. [Jones Brothers Contractors, LLC /Pruett/CNN383]

SR-58 miscellaneous safety improvements on SR-58 from Harrison Bay Road, (LM 12.86) to SR-60 (LM 26.19.): Work on this project continues. During this report period, the contractor will have intermittent lane restrictions from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion is May. [Superior Traffic Control, Inc./Pruett/CNQ319]

The tunnel cleaning of the McCallie Tunnel on U.S. 11 (US 64, SR-2), the Stringers Ridge Tunnel on U.S. 127 (SR-8), and the Bachman Tubes on U.S. 41 (U.S. 76, SR-8): The nighttime cleaning operation of McCallie Tunnels, Stringers Ridge Tunnel, and Bachman Tubes occurs normally on Wednesday and Thursday nights during the week with the 3rd Tuesday of the month. Work hours are between 8 p.m.-6 a.m. Tunnels will be closed during cleaning, and detours will be marked accordingly as each tunnel is cleaned. Contract completion date is June. [Diamond Specialized, Inc./Micka/CNQ174]






The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (TDMHSAS), in partnership with both the U.S. and Tennessee Interagency Councils on Homelessness, on Thursday, released an action plan to end chronic homelessness in the Volunteer State. The collaborative plan brings together multiple federal, state, county, and local government agencies, and community partners providing a systematic approach to help eliminate homelessness over the next 10 years.

Last September, Governor Bill Haslam by Executive Order reconstituted the Tennessee Interagency Council on Homelessness to coordinate the States efforts and develop a statewide plan to identify, develop, and ensure sustained partnerships among agencies, service providers, and advocates.



There are far too many Tennesseans with no permanent place to call home who are missing out on opportunities to achieve better lives, Gov. Haslam said. There has never before been such a broad approach in Tennessee that connects federal resources to state and local programs, improves services, and offers individuals a way out of homelessness.



Priority Steps to Implement Tennessees Plan:



 Increase housing availability for individuals, veterans, and families

 Increase job opportunities and available job training programs

 Identify government funding sources at the local, state, and federal levels

 Create a single screening process all agencies can use to determine eligibility

 Create and operate a statewide database to better understand homelessness

This is a game changer, and its one thats achievable with every level of government and community service provider working together, TDMHSAS Commissioner Marie Williams said. Frankly this wouldnt even be possible if it wasnt for coordination at the federal level. The U.S. Interagency on Homelessness is our partner in this effort to never again allow Tennesseans to fall through the cracks. We have the support and the roadmap now to end chronic homelessness.



Tennessees Action Plan Benchmark Goals:



 End veteran and chronic homelessness by the end of 2017

 End homelessness for families with children, youth by the end of 2020

 End all homelessness by the end of 2025

The people we will serve have a role to play in this as well, Ms. Williams said. We need them to be fully invested and willing to fill out forms and schedule appointments to receive an income and benefits that can help them with housing, employment support, temporary assistance for food, job training, childcare, and school enrollment, and other services designed to ensure their successful transition from homelessness. Mental health and substance abuse services will also be available.



Tennesseans Who Will Be Served:



A 2015 statewide count estimated 9,123 homeless individuals in Tennessee

 29% families, individuals with at least one child

 18% chronically homeless

 10% identified as veterans

 7% youth/young adults

Among the many challenges in addressing homelessness in Tennessee is the disparity in housing, employment, and other needed services in the most rural areas of our state, Ms. Williams said. This effort will focus on helping veterans, families, and those most at-risk to have access to education and training so they can secure good employment. There will also be a focus on assisting youth aging out of foster care and juvenile detention and re-entry efforts for adults coming out of hospitals and prisons. We need to ensure they can transition back into society. Employment and housing are key factors there.



I believe this endeavor will help to unify and strengthen communities across Tennessee in a thoughtful and powerful way, a first for the Volunteer State. Properly executed, our plan to end homelessness will breathe new life into our small towns and big cities. Our goal is quite simply: Identify individuals as homeless, streamline the process to help them obtain resources, and track their progress. No longer will anyone have to go it alone.


Antlerless deer hunting will be allowed on all privately owned lands in Unit L counties Jan. 9-13. This is the second year for the five days of hunting following the completion of the deer season on Jan. 8.

Privately owned lands include leased land and lands owned by individuals. It is the responsibility of hunters to obtain verbal or written permission to hunt on privately owned lands. No public lands or wildlife management areas (WMAs) are open during this period. No antlered deer are allowed to be taken.

Unit L deer hunting counties include Bedford, Benton, Cannon, Carroll, Cheatham, Chester, Coffee, Davidson, Decatur, Dickson, Dyer, Fayette, Franklin, Gibson, Giles, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Lake, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Macon, Madison, Marshall, Maury, McNairy, Montgomery, Moore, Obion, Perry, Robertson, Rutherford, Shelby, Smith, Stewart, Sumner, Tipton, Trousdale, Wayne, Weakley, Williamson, and Wilson.

The second Young Sportsman Hunt will conclude all deer hunting in the state on Jan. 14-15.
The 2017 Tennessee Sandhill Crane Festival is set for Jan. 14-15 (Saturday-Sunday) at the Hiwassee Refuge and Birchwood Community Center.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is the primary sponsor for the 26th annual festival and many staff members and volunteers will again be contributing their services. For the sixth year, Olin Chlor Alkali Products is the corporate sponsor for the festival. The festival is a celebration of the thousands of sandhill cranes that migrate through or spend the winter on and around the Hiwassee Refuge in Birchwood as well as an opportunity to focus attention on the rich wildlife heritage of the state and the Native American history of the area.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the recovering population of eastern sandhill cranes began stopping at the Hiwassee Refuge on their way to and from their wintering grounds in Georgia and Florida. TWRA has been managing this refuge for more than 60 years for waterfowl, and the cranes found a perfect combination of feeding and shallow water roosting habitat. As many as an estimated 12,000 of these birds now spend the entire winter at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee rivers.

Free bus shuttle service will be available from the Birchwood Community Center to the Hiwassee Refuge and Cherokee Removal Memorial Park each day beginning at 8 a.m. No public parking is available at the refuge.

Various vendors will be at the Birchwood Community Center beginning at 8 a.m In addition, breakfast will be available for purchase at the community center each day from 7-8 a.m. and lunch will be available from 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Music, special programs, and childrens activities will be ongoing throughout each day. The American Eagle Foundation will be present for its always-popular live raptor show each day with times at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday. There will be a presentation from Lizzie Condon, from the International Crane Foundation on whooping crane conservation efforts.

An official welcome and live music will start the programs each day at 11 a.m. TWRA Information and Education Division Chief Don King, also a Nashville recording artist and friends, including the group Second Nature will perform. Traditional heritage music led by Tom Morgan, Lynn Haas with friends will also perform and will include a special childrens music appreciation program each day.

The group, South Wind, will perform from noon until 12:45 on Saturday.

The nearby Cherokee Removal Memorial will feature Native American folklore specialists. They will present performances, artifacts and objects used in everyday life by Native American inhabitants in the Hiwassee River area.

Along with the wildlife viewing at the refuge, wildlife and birding experts will be on site. They will provide visitors with a unique educational experience by sharing viewing scopes and information.

The Hiwassee Refuge comprises about 6,000 acres. The Birchwood Community Center is only three miles from the wildlife-viewing site at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge. The Cherokee Removal Memorial is found just to the side of the refuge near the Tennessee River.

Sandhill Crane Festival presenting sponsors are Birchwood Area Society Improvement Council and Cherokee Removal Memorial Park and partners include the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, Tennessee Ornithological Society, Cherokee Removal Memorial Park, American Eagle Foundation, Chattanooga Chapter TOS, Hamilton County, Meigs County Tourism, and Rhea County Tourism.
Christopher LeSar, M.D., F.A.C.S. a longtime vascular surgeon in Chattanooga, is opening a new office at 2358 Lifestyle Way, Suite #100. After more than a decade in group practice, Dr. LeSar has launched his own private practice under the name Vascular Institute of Chattanooga.

After seeing thousands of patients, and seeing the many changes in delivery of healthcare, I realized that making the leap into private practice was ultimately better for my patients overall care and treatment experience, said Dr. LeSar. With our new facility, which we call VIC for short, we have easy ground floor access, and a beautiful spacious facility to accommodate the many needs of our patients.

Dr. LeSar is sub-specialized in endovascular care, surgery inside blood vessels. As such, he has particular expertise in salvaging limbs (legs, feet and toes) that may otherwise be amputated. Dr. LeSar is also a nationally and internationally recognized expert in this therapeutic care, and actively trains surgeons around the nation and beyond. VIC will become a regional training center for my colleagues to come and see how we save limbs and change lives, said Dr. LeSar.

"I had clots and pain you dont want in your lifeI feel marvelous today," said patient Buford Fennel. "I was able to do the things I should do, like walking, working in the yard, and fishing.

VIC is like being at home, its a family thingA lot of docs said they would amputate my leg, but Dr. LeSar said he would do everything to save my leg. Because of Dr. LeSar, I can walk today.

I have very much benefited from my strong association and collaboration with medical colleagues, podiatric surgeons, and other members of our local healthcare community," said Dr. LeSar. "We are blessed to have numerous excellent hospital systems in our community and it is our goal at VIC to continue to improve surgical outcomes, both in hospitals, and in an outpatient setting.

As an outpatient vascular facility that is owned and operated by a private medical provider, VIC is the first of its kind in the region. We provide world class care to our community and beyond, in our full-service outpatient vascular center, seeing patients, diagnosing problems with ultrasound and treating them in our state of the art procedure center," said Dr. LeSar. "As a physician, my patients know I care. Here at VIC, they will see this more clearly and come to experience a higher level of access and service that they cannot find elsewhere. My team and I care deeply about our patients, and we believe our new practice reflects that in a very meaningful way.

For more information call 602-2750.




As cold weather begins to settle in the Tennessee Valley, Tennessee American Water reminds its customers to take steps to prevent water damage from frozen and burst pipes as well as frozen meters.

Extreme weather events like sub-freezing temperatures for an extended period can cause pipes in vulnerable areas to freeze and burst and result in costly damage, said Tennessee American Water Director of Operations Kevin Kruchinski. By taking the proper preventive steps, customers can avoid worrying about frozen pipes and making expensive repairs to damaged plumbing inside and outside of the home.



Property owners are responsible for maintenance of the water service line from the meter to the house, as well as any in-home pipes. Tennessee American Water encourages residents to take the following precautions to reduce the risk of freezing and bursting pipes.



Follow these steps before cold weather sets in:



Know how to shut off your water. Locate your main water shut-off valve. You may want to tag or label it so you do not have to search for it in an emergency. This is important to know in a non-emergency situation as well, like making a repair on a small leak on a toilet or sink.

Check sprinkler or irrigation systems. Make sure you have turned everything off and fully drained the system.

Identify your homes freezing points. Check your home for pipes in areas that might be prone to freezing, such as crawl spaces, unheated rooms, basements, garages, and exterior walls.

Strengthen your defenses. Eliminate sources of cold air near water lines by closing off crawl spaces, fixing drafty windows, insulating walls and attics, and plugging drafts around doors.

Protect your pipes. Where pipes are exposed to cold, wrap them with insulation or electrical pipe heater (even fabric or newspaper can help).

When temperatures stay below freezing:



Prevent pipes from freezing. Allow a small trickle of water to run overnight to keep pipes from freezing. Consider collecting the water for later use. Also, the cost of a short-term trickle is much less costly than a repair of a burst pipe.

Keep your pipes warm. Open cabinet doors to expose pipes to warmer room temperatures to help keep them from freezing.

If your pipes do freeze:



Shut off the water immediately. Dont attempt to thaw pipes without first turning off the main shut-off valve.

Thaw pipes with warm air. You can melt the frozen water in the pipe by warming air around it with a hair dryer or space heater. Be sure not to leave the space heater unattended and avoid the use of kerosene or open flames.

Be careful turning water back on. Once pipes are thawed, slowly turn the water back on and double check for any additional cracks and leaks.

Customers can learn more at www.tennesseeamwater.com or on its Facebook page or Twitter.
Networked Insights, a Chicago-based company whose tools crawl the social web and analyze data for marketers, has raised $30 million in Series E funding, the company announced Friday.

The company sifts through 560 million social media posts from 30 million sources daily, it said on its website. It sorts and analyzes that information for marketers and agencies, and pitches itself as a way for them to create better-targeted and more effective campaigns. Its clients include NBC Universal, media-buying agency GroupM, and American Family Insurance, whose venture arm is an investor.

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The funding will help Networked Insights invest in deep learning and artificial intelligence capabilities on its platform, Kairos, the company said. It said it would also use the infusion to enter partnerships and pursue acquisitions.

CEO Dan Neely said the funding would also help Networked Insights teach its artificial intelligence to better understand regional colloquialisms and foreign languages.

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He said the technology initially learned to analyze conversations in English, and expanded to German, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese in 2016. He said he wants the platform to learn Chinese languages in the future.

Networked Insights' artificial intelligence can now understand implied meaning. For example, when someone posts that they haven't gotten their coffee yet, the platform assumes they visit coffee shops and recommends such businesses target them, Neely said.

"Once you understand that hidden, implied meaning from data  you can get highly relevant information about a person," Neely said. "If you have highly relevant information about a person, as a business you can put more interesting and relevant things in front of them."

Aside from building on its artificial intelligence platform, Networked Insights plans to launch other new applications on Kairos this year, as well.

Networked Insights currently employs 80 people, and it plans to hire 35 to 40 more in 2017, according to a company spokesman. About 15 of those positions will be in sales and marketing, with the rest in product and engineering. The company is particularly looking for experts in big data and artificial intelligence, a spokesman said in an email.

It is operating at break-even, and should become profitable this year, Neely said. He is not focused on an exit at this point, and said he would prefer to have a large, profitable company than a public one.

Sands Light Capital, the family office of Arizona Iced Tea co-founder Don Vultaggio, and the Cherng Family Trust, the family office of the co-founders of Panda Express, led the round, bringing Networked Insight's total funding to $80 million. Neely said Networked Insights would use the massive amounts of data collected by those investors' companies to train his company's artificial intelligence platform to be smarter.

Returning investors Goldman Sachs, American Family Ventures, 4490 Ventures and Kegonsa Seed Fund also participated, the company said.

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aelahi@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @aminamania
Bobby Goode announced he will retire from his position as USDA Rural Development State Director effective January 6.

It is my belief that a strong and independent America starts with a healthy, rural economy, Mr. Goode said. I am proud to work for an agency that employs folks who live and work in the communities we serve. We are your friends, neighbors and family and we strive to use our programs to strengthen the rural economy for the benefit of every Tennessean from Memphis to Mountain City and from Copper Hill to Tiptonville.

An employee with the agency for nearly 38 years, Mr. Goode was honored in 2009 when he was appointed to the position of Tennessee State Director for Rural Development by President Barack Obama. Under Goodes leadership the agency has assisted more than 1.5 million Tennessee families and businesses in 233 communities in all 95 counties of Tennessee, investing more than $7.6 billion through affordable loans, loan guarantees, and grants.

In the time before President-Elect Donald Trump appoints a successor, Harriet Cannon will serve as Acting State Director.

USDA Rural Development is moving investments to rural America with housing, business and infrastructure loans and grants to create jobs and strengthen rural economies with an emphasis to assist areas of persistent poverty.

For more information on USDA Rural Development programs available in Tennessee contact the Nashville State Office at 615.783.1300.
A familiar group of founders is bringing a new online broker to town.

The new platform, Tastyworks, launched this week and comes from the founders of broker Thinkorswim, which Kristi Ross , Tom Sosnoff  and Scott Sheridan sold to TD Ameritrade in 2009 for $606 million. The new platform will be a subsidiary of Dough, Inc., which does business as Tastytrade. Sheridan will serve as CEO of Tastyworks.

Ross, co-CEO and president of Tastytrade, said the new platform is meant to help traders of all kinds be active traders.

Historically, active means high-frequency traders or professional traders  we are redefining what active means in this industry, Ross said. Active, to us, is really about the individual investor taking control of their finances.

The new platform, Ross says, is meant to play to a wider audience than the typical brokerage  hoping to appeal to do-it-yourself investors ranging from millennials to retirees and beginners to advanced traders

For traders looking to learn a thing or two, Tastyworks includes Tastytrades content, with shows like Anatomy of a Trade or Splash into Futures. Tastyworks also includes resources like a traders to follow feature, which lets customers follow along as traders explain why they made certain decisions.

Like anything, when you want to get good at something, or feel confident in what youre doing, you need practice, Ross said.

The platforms commission fees were set to align with the trade small, trade often philosophy, Ross said. Traders pay a $1 commission fee to open an options contract, $2.50 to open a futures contract, and $5 to open a stock trade.

Ross said the platform opened a waiting list last year and hopes to add those customers to the platform before the end of January. She wouldnt say how many customers have signed up so far.

I will say this: We have more individuals on the waiting list than we had five or six years into Thinkorswim, she said.

mgraham@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @megancgraham
A new study predicts that by 2019, as much as 50 percent of the U.S. workforce will be agile workers, defined as people working in a temporary, contract, consultant or freelance capacity. (Getty Images)

Let's start the new year by imagining the future of the American workplace.

First off, everyone has a jetpack. (I have no evidence to suggest that will happen, I just really want it to happen.)

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Next, the entire concept of a career has been redefined and most workers move from company to company performing projects of varying lengths and being managed, at least in part, by artificial intelligence.

The jetpack bit might be far-fetched, but the roving worker/AI manager concept is likely on the horizon.

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A new study by the human resources services and staffing company Randstad predicts that by 2019, as much as 50 percent of the U.S. workforce will be "agile workers," defined as people working in a temporary, contract, consultant or freelance capacity.

Already the demand for this type of worker is growing. In a 2012 Randstad survey, 18 percent of companies said they were committed to building an "agile workforce." In this year's study, that figure jumped to 46 percent.

"This preference for working in what we're now calling this agile model, it continues to gain steam, gain strength and gain preference with all classifications of employees, though predominantly among young workers," said Jim Link, chief HR officer for Randstad North America. "Based on our own work experience in our own company and with our clients and customers, we expected the numbers to be up. But I think the rate that some folks responded affirmatively to the survey surprised even us."

So why is this happening? Clearly technology is part of it  workers are becoming more agile simply because they can. As people learn to work from anywhere, the concept of a job housed in an office becomes less central to our idea of what a career entails.

Also, as Link pointed out: "This year was the first time in our surveying where the more preferred benefit provided to employees was workplace flexibility. For years and years and years it has been health care and benefits or some version of that."

The predicted shift is away from a career in the traditional sense and toward an ongoing series of "work experiences."

A worker with a particular skill set is hired by a company to help with a short-term project. The company attracts the worker not just with pay but with a work experience that will enhance the worker's skills and marketability. The company gets the best person for the work that needs to be done, the worker gets paid and gets a valuable experience, then moves on to other opportunities.

"You can go from an experience to an experience to an experience and never work for a company, per se," Link said. "We think work is going to shift more and more that way as this whole idea of agility continues to be a collection of experiences that an employee will gather throughout the course of their lives."

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I would argue that workers attached to a company for only a short time will be less concerned with building relationships with managers, opening the door for management via artificial intelligence. (Feel free to insert your own "Seems like my manager is already artificially intelligent!" joke here.)

A recent Harvard Business Review article made the case for AI management, noting that bad human managers are so prevalent  and cause so many problems, like low morale and employee disengagement  that "the bar is quite low."

Per the article: "It would not require too much for AI to outperform average managers, let alone bad ones. It is as if the automation of drivers would have to outperform a majority of inept drivers, who crash and cause injuries to themselves and others on a regular basis."

The authors, business psychology experts from University College London, examined computer-driven management and noted advantages like more direct feedback (devoid of human bias) and better decision-making since the "human brain is incapable of processing the vast sea of data" available today and translating that information into knowledge.

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Via email, I asked one of the authors, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology, to give me a sense of how an AI boss might work.

He wrote: "It is not as far fetched as we may think. Computers and algorithms already have a lot of data on us. Imagine turning that data into accurate insights about us: who we are, what we want, how we are feeling, and what we need to do. Then imagine that system giving us instructions: to buy, to sell, to e-mail someone, to work on something. Likewise, such a system would be able to give us feedback on our performance. What I just described is an AI manager. If you want a robot manager or 'roboss,' all you need is a hardware or physical body around the AI."

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He said such a system would work best when combined with human intelligence, so workers wouldn't report only to a computer.

The professor agreed an agile workforce would be well suited for this type of management: "First, most people switch from traditional employment to self-employment to avoid having a boss, yet that doesn't mean they are able to manage themselves. Second, gig-workers tend to be more technologically savvy, so you can see them being early adopters in the field. And third, AI bosses will always be much cheaper than having a human boss."

The future will be interesting, folks. We'll all be agile, and country music songs will include twangy gripes about how "my robot boss is a jerk."

Me? I'm holding out for a jetpack.

TALK TO REX: Ask workplace questions  anonymously or by name  and share stories with Rex Huppke at rhuppke@chicagotribune.com, like Rex on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rexworkshere and find more at www.chicagotribune.com/ijustworkhere.
Protesters picket in front of a Staples store in downtown Los Angeles in 2014. The American Postal Workers Union waged a three-year campaign against the chain because of Staples' partnership with the U.S. Postal Service. (Cheryl A. Guerrero / Los Angeles Times)

The U.S. Postal Service will no longer be offering its services at Staples stores across the country.

Those services, which were handled by Staples employees, will be discontinued at about 500 of the office supply retailer's locations by the first week of March.

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The USPS said in a statement that in November it was ordered by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge to discontinue its retail relationship with Staples and that it plans to comply.

Staples confirmed that its partnership with USPS would be ending, saying in a statement that its customers would still have access to shipping services through its relationship with UPS.

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The American Postal Workers Union said in a statement Thursday that it is calling off its three-year campaign against the USPS and Staples partnership. The union had argued that the deal replaced union jobs with low-wage, nonunion workers.

The financially struggling USPS began its partnership with Staples Inc. because it was looking to strike deals with businesses in order to help reduce its costs and increase revenue. The deal started as a pilot program in November 2013 at 84 stores in California, Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as a way to make it easier for customers to buy stamps, send packages or use Priority and certified mail.

Associated Press
Walgreens has quietly joined some of its competitors in offering eye exams in stores.

The Deerfield-based drugstore chain is testing the idea with a clinic on the second floor of a flagship store in the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue. The clinic, which opened last month, offers eye exams by licensed optometrists and opticians as well as contact lenses and glasses for purchase.

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Walgreens spokesman Jim Graham called vision services a "logical extension" of Walgreens' health care and beauty offerings. Walgreens will use the result of the pilot to gauge whether to offer vision services at more stores in the future.

An independently owned, third-party company is staffing the location with eye care professionals, who are not employed by Walgreens. Graham said Walgreens is not releasing information about the company staffing the clinic.

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The center, nestled in a back corner of the store, features all the trappings one would expect from a vision clinic as well as some surprises. Customers, for example, can stand in front of a digital fitting device  a screen with a camera affixed to it  that will suggest frames for customers based on face shape.

Antsy children can also head to a small, colorful kids waiting area with a low-to-the-ground touch screen featuring interactive games.

Walgreens Optical can bill most vision insurance plans directly, and staff can help patients check coverage, Graham said. Eye exams start at $55 without insurance.

A number of other retailers, including CVS Health and Costco, already offer similar services.

Chicagoan Lena Berry stopped by the main counter of the clinic Friday after noticing signs in the store advertising it. She was told the clinic doesn't take her insurance, but she said that if it did, it would be a good option. She likes that patients can make appointments or just walk in.

"It's right across the street from where I work," Berry, an accounting specialist, said on her lunch break. "It's easy to get to."

The Michigan Avenue Walgreens is larger than most of the chain's other stores. Walgreens will have to consider how to make room for vision care in other stores if it decides to expand, Graham said.

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

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So much for redemption.

North Center bartender Amanda Baumgarten was eliminated on Thursday's episode of "Top Chef" after serving a "boring" duck dish to the judges.

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"Everything was fine. It just wasn't very interesting. There was no soul, there was no depth, it was just kind of flat," judge Tom Colicchio told Baumgarten, who works at The Victor Bar.

The contestants were tasked with creating a soulful dish inspired by the late Southern chef Edna Lewis in a challenge that featured Chicago Chef Art Smith on the judging panel.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 11 "Top Chef" contestant and Charleston-based chef Emily Hahn, center, on the set with judges Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi. The new season starts Dec. 1 on Bravo. (Paul Cheney / Bravo Media)

Baumgarten served roast duck with sweet potatoes, dandelion greens, spiced pecans and balsamic onions. She was dinged for dry duck and the chunky elements on her dish, but Baumgarten said she didn't want to serve anything too fussy.

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She barely missed the top ten of Season 14, which pits contestants from previous seasons against new players in Charleston.

Baumgarten, who placed sixth on Season 7 of "Top Chef," didn't seem to mind being sent home again. She recently took a break from cooking after multiple back surgeries, and said she was using the competition to explore whether her heart was still in the kitchen.

"Being back on the show has been really, really great. It was really nice to reunite myself with cooking, something I had put to bed for a little bit, and I feel like I learned that door is still open for me if I would like to walk through it," Baumgarten said.

Baumgarten had a chance to get back in the competition by winning "Last Chance Kitchen," a one-on-one contest for eliminated chefs. Her task was to serve Colicchio a dish using the same ingredients of her duck dish in the elimination challenge.

She served duck with sweet potato and brown butter puree, dandelion salad with sherry gastrique and balsamic duck jus.

Colicchio said he didn't like the shaved red onion in Baumgarten's dish, so he gave the win to her competitor, Silvia Barban.

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"Top Chef" airs 8 p.m. Thursdays. The winner gets $125,000.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Vincent Anzalone said his fiancee ran into their Wicker Park condo earlier this week frightened about a man who was blocking a building door, so he grabbed a hammer to confront the man.

Anzalone, a real estate broker who starred on Bravo's short-lived Chicago show "100 Days of Summer," said the man seemed "really out of it" and appeared to have defecated and urinated in the building's hallway.

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Anzalone, 44, said he didn't use the hammer, and was able to get the man to leave the building without force, at least temporarily. He posted about the incident on Facebook Wednesday with a request for "suggestions for a good self-defense item for my house."

The 100-plus responses ranged from suggestions that he should get a gun to feedback that he should have given the man "a hot meal and a few bucks to get him to a shelter."

As the comments flooded in, Anzalone added an update to the Facebook post: "To be clear on something, when I was heading down the stairs of my building, I didn't know who was down there. All I knew was (fiancee) Jessica was very frightened. So I went down there to face an unknown person. Once I was downstairs, I realized the guy was not a physical threat and the hammer was unnecessary. Capice?"

Anzalone said the viral Facebook post was "really misunderstood. It was something that was meant to be innocuous."

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"I don't want people to think I'm a homeless person basher, because I'm not. I'm very empathetic to that," he said. "I wasn't trying to beat anybody. I was trying to protect my family."

Anzalone said he's never had an encounter like that in the 13 years he's owned his condo. He said he didn't call the police, and the man later returned to the building for a short time.

Anzalone, who is the father of a 3-year-old boy, has happier things to look forward to in 2017. He said he plans to marry his fiancee soon, but the date and location are under wraps.

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Watch the latest movie trailers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Greta Van Susteren, seen here at the National Press Club in Washington on June 19, 2016, is joining MSNBC. (Charles Dharapak / Associated Press)

Greta Van Susteren, who left Fox News in September over a contract issue, has landed at cable news competitor MSNBC.

Van Susteren will anchor a nightly 6 p.m. ET program, "For the Record with Greta Van Susteren," for the NBCUniversal-owned channel. Based out of Washington, she will begin on Monday.

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Van Susteren's hiring, which has been in the works for weeks, follows the announcement that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is joining NBC News.

Kelly will not have a role on MSNBC.

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Van Susteren left Fox News suddenly when her contract was opened for renegotiation in September. The anchor, who had been with Fox News since 2002, had a clause in her deal that tied her commitment to the employment of the network's former chairman Roger Ailes. Ailes left Fox News in July amid sexual harassment charges made against him.

Van Susteren, 62, is a lawyer who gained cable news prominence as a legal analyst during CNN's coverage of O.J. Simpson's murder trial. She was a prime-time host on CNN eight years before joining Fox News.

Van Susteren was replaced at Fox News by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who on Thursday was named to take over the 9 p.m. ET hour being vacated by Kelly.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
On the same day that scores of celebrity mourners were gathering at the neighboring L.A. homes of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher after their deaths last month, fans and filmmakers were weighing the fate of Fisher's most iconic character, Princess Leia.

Cody Christensen, a fan from Cedar City, Utah, has his wish: The father of five daughters has launched a Change.org petition to "Make Leia an official Disney princess."

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"After the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher, we feel that it is only fitting for Disney to do away with the rule that an official Disney princess must be animated and make Leia a full-fledged princess," Christensen writes as part of his petition, which has gained more than 50,000 supporters. "This would be a wonderful way to remember Carrie and a welcoming to one of Disney's new properties that is beloved by millions.

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"What we are asking," Christensen continues, "is that the Walt Disney Corporation hold a full ceremony inducting Leia as the newest Disney princess as well as a special service in memory of Carrie Fisher."

What makes this well-meaning campaign a bit awkward is that the Disney Princess line isn't about coronation into some regal circle as much as it is about marketing. The official Disney Princess designation was first bestowed upon the company's animated royalty two decades ago to move plastic product. This is less about legacies and more about tchotchkes. Why peal the court trumpets of composer John Williams simply for merchandising Belles and whistles?

(Perhaps a better tribute would be Make Fisher a Disney Legend, just as Star Wars creator George Lucas became a part of the Class of 2015. Disney Legends is a hall of fame recognizing individual creative contributions to the company.)

HBO, which will debut the documentary "Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds" on Saturday , recently re-aired its televised version of Fisher's one-woman show, 2010's "Wishful Drinking." In that performance, Fisher - in noting her sometime love/hate relationship with Leia - points to some of the more embarrassing marketed likenesses of the princess-warrior and space slave, including a model figure that she pivots to show off its decidedly adult creep-shot angles.

In that live performance, Fisher notes that she does not even own her own likeness, at least within the Star Wars universe - it's owned by Lucas.

Or at least it was, until 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilm, and thus its full Star Wars franchise, for about $4 billion. Now, it's the Mouse House that decides how Fisher's "Leia face" will be deployed.

All of this figures into creative meetings set for next week to determine Leia's future in the Star Wars films, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Fisher returned as Gen. Organa for 2015's "The Force Awakens," of course. For December's spinoff film, "Rogue One" -- which is set immediately before the event's of 1977's "A New Hope" -- the younger Leia's likeness was digitally re-created.

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Because "Rogue One" also featured a digital re-creation of Grand Moff Tarkin as "performed" by Peter Cushing (who died in 1994), the film has raised anew the issues about the challenges and ethics of posthumous appropriation of an actor's likeness.

Fisher, according to multiple reports, had shot her scenes for this December's "Episode VIII" Star Wars film. Yet the Hollywood Reporter says that a larger role was planned for Leia in 2019's "Episode IX." Her future scenes, the industry trade reports, were set to include a reunion with sibling Luke Skywalker and a "confrontation" with her son.

"Episode IX" director/writer Colin Trevorrow - who reportedly will meet with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy next week to talk creative options - could help decide to scale back Leia's role. And of course, Leia's appearances could be a CGI creation, which would rear the head of not only technological possibility, but also - yet again - the issue of ethics.

Perhaps no one could have found this all as entertaining as Carrie Fisher herself. She always appreciated that in Hollywood, even amid moments of humanity, business always rolls on.

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The delightful legacy of Gary, Carrie Fisher's beloved French bulldog

'No words #devastated': Carrie Fisher remembered on social media

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The fraught history of Princess Leia's infamous bikini

'Star Wars' has always been for women

Carrie Fisher talks 'Star Wars' and Harrison Ford in new memoir 'Princess Diarist'

The women of 'Star Wars' speak out about their new Empire

The perils of being a Princess Leia Pez dispenser, 30 years on

Super friends: Happy surprises and Carrie Fisher abound at C2E2

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Read the Tribune's coverage of Carrie Fisher







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President-elect Donald Trump has been zinging the U.S. intelligence community for weeks about its finding that Russia attempted to influence the U.S. elections  and causing concern by opening his own channel to Taiwan without seeking their advice.

But CIA Director John Brennan said on the eve of his first planned meeting with Trump that "I'm going to give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt."

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Speaking at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics on Thursday evening, Brennan joked that he expects a "robust if not sporty" conversation when he, FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper brief Trump about Russian interference in the election on Friday.

"Russia did interfere in the recent presidential election and we have good understanding of what they did," he said.

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"The president is the first customer of the intel community," he added, noting that "President-elect Trump is going to be coming into office as the first president with no experience in government. . . . This is a time for CIA officers really to strut their stuff ... this is someone who is unschooled in what we can do."

The run-up to Friday's meeting has been dominated by tweets from Trump suggesting, without evidence, that the intelligence agencies had delayed the meeting so that they could buy more time to build a case against Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of interfering in the election by hacking Hillary Clinton's campaign chief's email.

"Yes, he's making comments about the intelligence," Brennan said of Trump. "But let's see what happens after the inauguration."

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

"I would caution people to reserve judgment about what the future reality is going to be.

CIA Director John Brennan, right, speaks with political science professor Robert Pape on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017 at the University of Chicago's International House. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

"There are things said and done on the campaign trail, then you have to roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to keep the country safe."

Asked by a student whether the CIA should be prepared to sidestep Trump and go to Congress or the U.S. public directly if Trump attempts to use the CIA for improper purposes, Brennan made a pointed comment about the role of the legislative branch.

"Congress needs to make sure that they protect the role of the intelligence community and the role of the CIA so that there would not be any type of arbitrary action on the part of the executive leader that would degrade or diminish the capabilities of the CIA or other intelligence agencies," he said.

And despite the seriousness of the topics being discussed, Brennan got a big laugh when he told the audience that, "One of the things I like about the CIA is we don't assess what the U.S. president will do!"

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kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
Family harmony and old time pickin' will be shared by the Singing Echoes at Sacred Sounds Fridays on Friday, Jan. 13, at 7:30 p.m. at the Ringgold Depot, Depot Street and U.S. 41.

Randall Franks, Officer Randy Goode from TVs In the Heat of the Night will emcee. Ticket donation is $6.

"It is such an honor to have one of gospel's music most beloved families to share their talents to encourage youth through our scholarship," Mr. Franks said. "I hope that folks from our area will come out and show their appreciation for all this family has done in gospel music."

Review for the Singing Echoes:

With 45 years of sustaining a musical legacy reaching millions, the Epperson Family, continues a tradition spanning four generations of bringing folks to a love of gospel music and the message that it shares. The Grammy nominated group initially gained national attention for When I Wake Up to Sleep No More.

Originating with the late Lela and Max Epperson, the group now travels with Gary, Debbie, Lynn, Joshua, Adam, Matt and Jonah sharing both musically and vocally pulling from the dozens of hits that span their career.

Gary wrote the hit song, "It's Enough," which climbed to #2 in the charts, ''Beautiful Heaven," and "On Holy Ground," "I'm Depending On Jesus," "Keep Your Eyes On Him," and "The Next Glory Flight."

Among their other hits are "Shouting Happy" and "I Made A Covenant With My Lord," "His Tomb Is Empty Now," written by Lela, and "Two Coats," which was performed in the movie, "The Apostle," "On The Other Side Of Jordan," "I'll Wear A White Robe," "Thank You Lord," "Enter In," and "Look For Me."

Among their latest releases is "Think I'm Excited," and "Looking Forward To Where I've Never Been." Their powerful song, "Empty Hands," written by Debbie, and their big hit "Somebodys Here," written by Gary climbed to the top of the charts.

The State of Tennessee passed a joint House and Senate resolution honoring the Singing Echoes for their service in gospel music in 2009, and again in 2012.

The group holds awards for favorite band, favorite mixed group, favorite musician, and top song.

For more information, visit http://www.singingechoes.com.

The event is a fundraiser for the Pearl and Floyd Franks Scholarship Fund. The Share America Foundation, Inc., a Georgia non-profit, presents scholarships to talented musicians who excel in the Appalachian musical arts.

Donations for tickets are adults: $6, children 5 and under free with adult. Tickets may be purchased locally in at SonShine Christian Books 706.861-7675 in Fort Oglethorpe. Bring seat cushions for added comfort. For more information, Share America Foundation, Inc. P.O. Box 42 Tunnel Hill, Ga. 30755 or visit www.shareamericafoundation.org.
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks during a news conference Thursday on the charges filed against the four individuals suspected in the kidnapping and beating of a disabled man that was captured in a Facebook video. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

There's a lot to unpack from Chicago's latest racial outrage, the Facebook Torture Case, and it's ugly, so let's get to it.

You know the news. Four African-Americans were charged Thursday with hate crimes in the alleged kidnapping and torture of a bound, white and mentally disabled young man.

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Police said they beat him, forced him to drink toilet water, jabbed at him with a knife and cut his scalp, shouting "F---white people!" and "F--- [Donald] Trump!" and laughing while smoking blunts and streaming it all live on Facebook.

I watched some, not all of that video, the way they brutalized that young man, the terror in his eyes, hearing their laughter. And I realized these were human beings, amusing themselves with the pain of a mentally disabled man. There are many words for this, but irredeemable is the one that comes to mind.

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Facebook Live video posted on Jan. 3, 2017, shows the verbal and physical attack of a mentally disabled man. The Chicago Tribune edited this video to protect the victim's identity and for time. (Warning: Contains graphic content) (Chicago Tribune)

And when Chicago's top cop talked of it, he said something worth considering again.

"It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that," said Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. "It still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn't. I'm not going to say it shocked me, but it was sickening."

Johnson's been a cop in Chicago for decades, so he's seen worse. We haven't, but he and other police have.

With City Hall pushing body cameras for all police, I figure the rest of us should soon be able to see what cops see, at the crime scene, with all the brutality that we try to shield ourselves from.

Because cops work in that world where people do such things to each other. Where criminals laugh and inflict pain, on babies, old people, anyone. Most of the rest of us haven't been to that place and we'd be psychologically damaged if we did.

There are other elements of this heater case that should be acknowledged, like the politics of this thing. It's crawling with politics now.

It's partly a racial thing so let's talk race. If the races were reversed, and a mentally disabled black kid were tortured by white barbarians, the political left would be screaming that over-the-top political rhetoric from the right had trickled down and encouraged the brutes. You can argue with me about this, but that won't change it.

Yet it's the other way now, isn't it? And the political right is arguing that anti-Trump rants from the left  including casting white males as the political enemy  have given license to this kind of thing. The two sides will slap-fight each other over this on social media, in anonymous and hateful comments under online news stories, and they'll slap each other in the journals.

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And this is how we craft political weapons from human misery.

But there is another kind of politics at work here, as well, the politics of Chicago musical chairs. From the moment the torture video went viral, picked up by the cable news networks and replayed, over and over, and as talking heads debated whether "evil" was the appropriate word, Chicago politicians hunkered down.

You weren't in the meetings and neither was I, but you can envision them huddling in three distinct groups: One group with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his people; another with new Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx and hers; and a third with Eddie Johnson with his white shirt supervisors and detectives. And in each one, there must have been some staffers, staring at their phones, wondering if this heater case would burn their boss when the music stopped.

Foxx seemed to never miss a camera during the Laquan McDonald controversy. When that video finally surfaced after the mayoral election, showing the white cop shooting a black kid 16 times, Foxx won her election.

She was all over the news then, but for this case, she was rather reserved, though her office pressed the charges.

And Emanuel, hoping to rehabilitate himself with black voters after the way he handled the McDonald fiasco, waited until the water was warm.

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Most of it was left to Johnson, and he made sure to hit his main political talking point early in his Thursday news conference, as the charges were read and national news was made.

"There was never a question whether this incident qualified to be investigated as a hate crime," Johnson said.

The "F--- white people!" and "F--- Trump!" commentary on the video left no other options. So hate crime it was.

But what is a hate crime if not thought crime? I don't like the idea of hate crimes, because people's thoughts should belong only to them, not the government. What's important is action.

And binding and gagging a disabled man, poking at him with a knife as he cowers in a corner, carving a chunk out of his scalp as he whimpers while the kidnappers laugh, all that brutality is certainly hateful enough.

We're sickened and shocked because we watched it all on video.

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But I wonder how we'd feel if we had access to those police body cam recordings, to see what cops see when they walk up and look into a victim's eyes.

Like Eddie Johnson we'd be sickened. And like him, eventually, we wouldn't be shocked.

Listen to The Chicago Way podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin here: wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/category/thechicagoway.

jskass@chicagotribune.com

Twitter@John_Kass
Angelica Nieves-Figureroa, center, the sister of Jose Nieves, is comforted by family, during a press conference regarding the death of her brother at Montclair-Lucania Funeral Home on Jan. 9, 2017, in Chicago. Jose Nieves' father, Angel Nieves, is third from right and his mother, Burlinda Torres, is second from left. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune)

The sister of an unarmed man shot to death by an off-duty Chicago police officer Monday has sued the department, alleging the officer threatened and detained the man and then shot him without justification.

Police have said Jose Nieves, 38, was not armed when the officer shot him to death after a verbal altercation Monday morning on the Northwest Side. The officer and Nieves had argued in the past, police officials said, and police Superintendent Eddie Johnson came to the scene and told reporters, "I have a lot more questions than I have answers at this time."

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No arrests have been made or charges filed, but the officer was stripped of his police powers shortly after the shooting.

Chicago police have provided little information on the shooting in the days since, but department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said police had determined that the officer was acting in a police capacity during the shooting even though he was off duty and had a previous dispute with the victim.

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Guglielmi said the department had investigated the shooting until Thursday, when it handed over the case to the city's Independent Police Review Authority, which also has been looking into the shooting.

The suit filed in federal court early Friday alleges that the officer  identified in court papers as Lowell Houser  "illegally detained and threatened to arrest and physically harm" Nieves before shooting him in the 2500 block of North Lowell Avenue about 9:15 a.m. Monday. The suit, which gives only a basic account of the shooting, echoes the department's statement that the officer and Nieves had been in a confrontation sometime before the day he died.

"The officer stalked, threatened and, ultimately, killed Jose Nieves," Andrew Stroth, an attorney for the family, said in an interview.

Jose Nieves, 38, was shot and killed on Monday morning, Jan. 2, 2016 in the 2500 block of North Lowell Avenue by an off-duty Chicago police officer. (Family photo)

Houser, a 28-year department veteran assigned to the public transportation unit, could not be reached for comment. Guglielmi declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Any decision on potential charges rests with new Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, who herself unseated an incumbent, Anita Alvarez, after heavily criticizing her handling of the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Alvarez charged Officer Jason Van Dyke with murder late in 2015, but she filed the charges 13 months after McDonald was killed and hours before the city's court-ordered release of video of Van Dyke shooting him 16 times. The video prompted prolonged protests, calls for Alvarez's resignation and upheaval in policing in Chicago that continues.

Officers have rarely faced criminal charges in shootings, and the city has almost always cleared them of wrongdoing and declined to discipline them, even when evidence suggested misconduct. IPRA, however, has been more prone to finding officers at fault in shootings since the McDonald scandal erupted, and Foxx campaigned on a reform agenda centered on police accountability.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, Tandra Simonton, offered no details on the status of its review of Nieves' shooting. Asked about the office's view of the publicly known facts of the shooting, she said, "We're not going to speak to that at this point. It's still a continuing investigation."

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks in the 2500 block of North Lowell Avenue after an off-duty officer fatally shot a man Jan. 2, 2017, in the Belmont Gardens neighborhood. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune) (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

IPRA spokeswoman Mia Sissac said her department would give prosecutors whatever help they need.

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"We are working expeditiously," Sissac said. "All hands on deck."

The lawsuit provides few details on the shooting but does allege that the Police Department had been notified before the killing that Houser had detained and threatened Nieves. Nieves' family members have been reported in other media as saying the two had previously clashed, causing Nieves to call police.

Guglielmi confirmed that the department was aware of a previous run-in between the officer and Nieves.

"We certainly suspect that it was not an amicable encounter," Guglielmi said.

Houser has been a focus of at least 20 disciplinary investigations since the early 1990s, department records show. The records provide scant detail on the allegations. Most of the complaints resulted in no discipline or a reprimand, but he was suspended several times, the records show. In 1994, for example, he received a five-day suspension in an incident described as a domestic altercation or disturbance that happened when he was off duty, according to the records.

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A search of a Tribune database of shootings by Chicago police from 2010 to 2015 showed no shootings involving Houser. A search of federal lawsuits showed no others had been filed against him.

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Nieves had been arrested repeatedly, including on felony charges, though he was never convicted of any serious offenses in Cook County, according to court records.

Nieves, known to family as "Cheo," loved dogs and was outgoing and caring toward his family, said his sister, Angelica Figueroa. He worked in construction and security, she said.

The outpouring of grief after his death showed how much he was loved, Figueroa said.

"He was a really awesome person," she said.

dhinkel@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @dhinkel
Former Illinois Gov Rod Blagojevich and wife Patti leave the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago following his guilty verdict June 27, 2011. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

So you're saying there's a chance?

That  more or less  was the reaction of Patti Blagojevich on Thursday after President Barack Obama, a fellow Chicagoan, did not categorically rule out commuting disgraced ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's 14-year federal sentence for public corruption.

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"He didn't say no," Patti wrote to her Facebook friends. "Keeping up the prayers."

What the president actually said was less than illuminating, at least as far as her husband's formal request to have his sentence reduced goes.

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"You know, as a general matter I don't comment on the commutation/pardon process," he told NBC Chicago's Carol Marin when she asked him about Blagojevich. "We have steps that go through the Justice Department, and the White House counsel's office, then I study these cases on an individual basis.

"As you know, I have exercised my commutation powers very aggressively to make sure we are not oversentencing, particularly people in low-level drug crimes. We'll see what gets to my desk."

Still, hope springs eternal for the Blagojevich family. If Obama doesn't intervene, former "Celebrity Apprentice" contestant Rod Blagojevich may be able to lean on his relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
WASHINGTON  President-elect Donald Trump's spokesman, asked Friday about Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's plan to skip the inauguration, said there will be no "shortage of Republicans, Independents and Democrats that will line the Mall to welcome in the next president and see real change to come to America."

Spokesman Sean Spicer also was asked by the Chicago Tribune whether the governor of the country's fifth largest state being a no-show will have negative implications moving forward with Rauner and the state.

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Spicer, speaking during his weekday call with reporters, did not address that question directly.

But he did say: "One of the things that you've seen from the president-elect in terms of the meetings that he's held and the people that he's sought their advice and opinions from is that obviously he wants to bring everyone in America together. He wants the best and brightest ideas to help make this country better."

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"And look, I think there has been an unbelievable demand for people to attend the inauguration," he said. "We have had endless requests."

U.S. House Democrat Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago also has said he will skip the Jan. 20 inauguration in two weeks.

kskiba@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @KatherineSkiba
Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antonietti recounts events in an attack on a special needs teen that was broadcast on Facebook Live and led to hate crime charges being leveled against the attack suspects. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

One day after a chilling live Facebook video made headlines, four suspects appeared in a packed Cook County courtroom Friday to face hate crime charges alleging they beat and tortured a mentally disabled teen in an attack that once again put the city's ugly violence problem on display.

A media throng descended on the Leighton Criminal Court Building for the first appearance by Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper and sisters Tanishia and Brittany Covington since the brutal images captivated and alarmed a world audience.

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Dressed in street clothes, the four entered bond court amid heavy security, Cooper smirking as he walked to stand before the judge. As Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antionetti detailed the charges, a friend of the victim's family seated in the courtroom gallery nodded her head and wiped tears from her eyes.

A short time later, Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil ordered the four held without bail, citing the egregiousness of the allegations.

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The judge addressed each defendant individually, noting that Brittany Covington was going to college, her sister was a parent, Cooper had a paralyzed brother and Hill lived with his mother.

"I'm looking at each of you and wondering where was the sense of decency that each of you should have had?" Ciesil said. "I don't see it."

On hearing the no-bail ruling, the friend of the victim's family clapped and loudly said, "Yes!"

A short time later, Priscilla Covington, a grandmother of the two sisters charged in the attack, hustled past reporters outside the courthouse, apologizing for the women's actions.

"I didn't raise them like that," she said.

The racially charged video shows the four  who are all African-American  cutting the white victim's scalp with a knife, punching and kicking him and laughing as they repeatedly forced his head into a toilet in an apartment on Chicago's West Side.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago, is charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. (Chicago Police Department)

For the first time, authorities alleged that Hill, who knew the 18-year-old victim from attending the same alternative school in Aurora, first beat the victim in the back of a van after he became angry that the teen's mother was contacting him by Facebook about her son's whereabouts. Prosecutors said Hill demanded $300 from the victim's mother if she wanted her son back.

It wasn't until later that the live Facebook video captured the abuse in the sisters' apartment in the 3300 block of West Lexington Street.

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Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Cooper, 18, of Chicago; and Brittany Covington, 18, and sister Tanishia, 24, were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to prosecutors. Hill also was charged with robbery, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and residential burglary, while both Covingtons were charged with residential burglary, they said.

Prosecutors revealed in court that the 18-year-old victim, who lives with his parents in suburban Streamwood, has schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Meanwhile, David Boyd, the victim's brother-in-law, said Friday that the teen has been "struggling" to recover after his ordeal but is safe with his family.

Facebook Live video posted on Jan. 3, 2017, shows the verbal and physical attack of a mentally disabled man. The Chicago Tribune edited this video to protect the victim's identity and for time. (Warning: Contains graphic content) (Chicago Tribune)

A man who runs a Reddit site called Uplifting News started a GoFundMe page for the victim that had raised nearly $70,000 as of Friday evening from more than 2,400 donors, according to the fundraising website. Razor Sheldon, of San Francisco, said he does not know the family but wanted to focus on helping the victim rather than seeking vengeance against the perpetrators.

On his fundraising page, Sheldon called the crime "horrific" and wrote of the victim: "Let's prove to him that there is far more good in this world than the evil he experienced."

Boyd said he spoke with Sheldon and GoFundMe to verify the legitimacy of the fund and said a family member had set up another GoFundMe campaign.

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He said the family is grateful for the outpouring of support but added: "We're not asking anyone for anything. We're a little overwhelmed. We don't want to take advantage of anybody."

Prosecutors said the victim's mother dropped him off at a McDonald's in Streamwood on Dec. 31 to meet a friend. He later asked to stay at the friend's place both that night and the next. But by Monday, the family was no longer hearing from the teen. Later that same day, however, the victim's brother found out on Facebook that his brother was with Hill. The mother reached out to Hill on Facebook to say she wanted her son to return home, prosecutors said.

Angered by the mother's Facebook contacts, Hill, who by then had stolen a van and bought and smoked marijuana with the teen, beat the victim in the back of the van, prosecutors said.

Shortly after the two arrived at the sisters' third-floor West Side apartment, Hill started to harass and slap the victim, prosecutors said. Armed with a knife, Hill was joined by Cooper in ordering the teen to face the wall in a corner, screaming at him and forcing him to kiss the floor and say, "I love black people," prosecutors said.

By Tuesday, Brittany Covington began posting the abuse live on Facebook, prosecutors said. The shocking 28-minute video showed the victim crouched in a corner and mostly motionless with an expression of fear on his face. His mouth was taped shut and his hands and feet appeared to be bound with orange electrical tape.

Police say an apartment on Chicago's West Side was the scene of a brutal attack captured on Facebook Live that led to hate crime charges being filed against four people. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Among the abuse seen on the Facebook video, prosecutors said, was one of the women laughing as she punched the teen; a male foot on the victim's head; the teen groaning in pain as a male pulled a cord around his neck; and the victim screaming in fear when a male approached with a knife, saying, "Should I shank his a--?"

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At one point, prosecutors allege, Hill and Cooper ordered the victim into a bathroom and forced him to drink water from the toilet while punching him in the back of the head and ordering him to say, "F--- Trump!"

Later the teen was bound and gagged, a sock placed in his mouth and his lips taped shut. With the knife, Hill then cut a chunk of the victim's hair, cutting his head, and stabbed him in the left forearm, prosecutors said.

Downstairs residents twice complained Tuesday about the "banging, yelling and stomping sounds along with laughing" from their neighbors, prosecutors said. The second time, both sisters and Cooper chased the neighbors to their apartment while Hill ran out of the apartment building, threatening to come back with a gun, prosecutors said. Cooper then kicked in the neighbors' front door and broke into their residence with the two sisters as the two neighbors fled their apartment, prosecutors said.

The victim was able to flee the building. Passing patrol officers stopped him a block away while outdoors in shorts, a tank top and sandals despite freezing temperatures. Police discovered he had been reported missing from Streamwood by his parents.

He was treated at a hospital for cuts to his head, face and body as well as a stab wound to his left arm, authorities said.

Police believe the victim was tied up for four or five hours.

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The neighbors, interviewed by a Tribune reporter at their residence Friday afternoon, revealed that the victim's family had met with them to express their gratitude. The family offered to pay for the two roommates, 19 and 22, to vacation in the Bahamas, said the women, who asked for anonymity out of concern for their safety.

Their front door had already been replaced.

Before the charges were announced Thursday, the video had became a national rallying cry for conservative pundits who tried to pin the blame for the attack on the Black Lives Matter movement. Debate also raged on social media and cable news stations.

A spokesman for the victim's family said they hoped the incident would open a dialogue about how such behavior can happen.

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"We don't want this to be hoisted out as a cause for some kind of racist or race-related issues," said Chicago attorney Neal Strom. "We don't think things like this should happen to anybody."

sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @steveschmadeke

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Twitter @RobertMcCoppin
Facebook Live video posted on Jan. 3, 2017, shows the verbal and physical attack of a mentally disabled man. The Chicago Tribune edited this video to protect the victim's identity and for time. (Warning: Contains graphic content) (Chicago Tribune)

In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his motivation for Facebook Live, the streaming video app that enables anyone with a phone to live-stream whatever they'd like across the globe.

"We built this big technology platform," Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News, "so we can go and support whatever the most personal and emotional and raw and visceral ways people want to communicate are as time goes on."

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That communication was pushed to shocking boundaries Tuesday in a West Side apartment. There, during a Facebook Live broadcast that ran for about a half hour, people were shown attacking an 18-year-old man with mental disabilities while his wrists were bound and mouth taped shut. On Thursday, Chicago police charged four people with hate crimes and other felonies.

Graphic video and audio are surfacing more often as the ease of streaming and the ubiquity of phones grow. But the case of the Chicago attack shows the dichotomy of live video. It makes images of depravity easier to spread and prosecute. It also underscores the grim societal trend that people with disabilities are more likely to be victimized by violence than those without disabilities.

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In the early days of video recording, amateurs would shoot and store the material, said University of Michigan professor Scott Campbell, who studies new and emerging media. Then the enhanced video capability of phones made it easier to send electronically whatever was recorded.

"Now, it's experiencing the moment and letting it go," Campbell said of Facebook Live, "even though it's not gone. It's lingering."

Police from Streamwood, where the victim had been reported missing, found the Facebook video after investigating texts sent to the man's parents. Chicago police contacted Streamwood authorities after finding him bloody and battered wandering the Homan Square neighborhood about 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. His family had dropped him off at a Streamwood McDonald's on Saturday, ostensibly to meet friends. One of his alleged attackers reportedly knew the victim from a school both attended in Aurora.

Chicago police speak to the news media about the attack of a man with special needs that was captured in a Facebook Live video and the resulting charges filed against four people suspected of the attack. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Campbell, who viewed part of the video, said the attackers failed to realize the power of this latest social media innovation  "how much visibility can occur and how quickly." Instead they probably were focused on impressing a small group of friends, he said.

Facebook Live launched to a limited group of users in August 2015, then started a full rollout in December of that year. Last spring, Zuckerberg said it was like having a television camera in your pocket, giving anyone with a phone "the power to broadcast to anyone in the world."

But less exhilarating consequences emerged. Shortly after Facebook Live debuted, a man in Chicago was shot multiple times while live-streaming himself taunting his rivals. In Turkey, a man upset over a romantic breakup shot himself in the head while viewers begged him to reconsider.

And, in October, a double-murder suspect streamed from a vehicle he'd carjacked while on the run from police in Oklahoma. "This ain't a prank," Michael Dale Vance said, turning the camera to an AK-47 assault rifle on the car seat. "I'm going f------ live."

Some might be quick to blame the technology for creating more graphic video like those and the one recorded Tuesday in the West Side apartment, or contend that human beings are becoming more violent and depraved.

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Campbell said the situation probably is more nuanced.

"Every time something extreme happens, the threshold is extended and there is a new extreme," he said. "Who knows? Maybe somebody will want to top it, and that's the scary thing."

But Campbell doesn't view humanity as being more violent today, and technology "isn't inherently good or bad. We can use it to call mom on Sundays or commit a terrorist attack," he said. "It just depends on how we use it."

In an email response to Tribune questions, Facebook said it does not allow people "to celebrate or glorify crimes" on its network, which is why it removed the original video.

Facebook has a team on call 24 hours a day to respond to reports of inappropriate live videos as they're happening, the company said. A viewer can interrupt a live stream if a violation of Facebook's community standards occurs, and it takes only one report for something to be reviewed.

"Live video on Facebook is a new and growing format," the company said in a statement about the technology and its community standards. "We've learned a lot over the past few months, and will continue to make improvements to this experience wherever we can."

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago, is charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. (Chicago Police Department)

The company also pointed out the benefits of sharing live video of graphic content.

"In many instances ... when people share this type of content, they are doing so to condemn violence or raise awareness about it. In that case, the video would be allowed."

Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, indirectly acknowledged that value in the case of the 18-year-old man punched, stomped and cut with a knife.

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"Had that not been videotaped, the kid probably would have shown up somewhere beaten and bloody with no ability to explain what happened," she said.

That inability is one factor in the under-reporting of crimes against people with physical and mental disabilities, Fernandez said. In addition, the abuser can be someone who the disabled individual depends on for care.

Police say an apartment on Chicago's West Side was the scene of a brutal attack captured on Facebook Live that led to hate crime charges being filed against four people. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

A Bureau of Justice Statistics report released in November showed that from 2010 to 2014, the violent victimization rate against people with disabilities  roughly 31 per 1,000  was more than twice the rate for people without disabilities. The report also noted that people with cognitive disabilities had the highest rate of total violent crime among the disability types measured.

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FBI statistics show the number of hate crimes committed against individuals with mental disabilities dropped to 36 in 2015 from 70 in 2014, the most recent years for which data were available.

Fernandez was able to watch only a few seconds of the video depicting the man's attack, she said, before she became sick to her stomach and had to stop.

Chicago Tribune's Jason Meisner contributed.

tgregory@chicagotribune.com
Minutes before firing gunshots that sparked protests fraught with racial and political animosities, an off-duty Chicago police officer called 911 and gave a dire warning about an escalating confrontation in traffic in the South Side's Mount Greenwood neighborhood.

"You need to send police to 111th and Troy right now before someone gets shot," the officer said in a newly released 911 recording. "I am an off-duty police officer. I'm getting attacked by about 12 mother------- in a car."

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"Do you have your weapon drawn, sir?" the dispatcher asked just before the call ended.

Soon after, the officer and another off-duty cop  both white  fired a combined 18 times, killing African-American 25-year-old Joshua Beal after he grabbed a gun from a car and tried to fire on them, according to authorities' account of the shooting.

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A Chicago police vehicle is parked at the scene of a fatal police-involved shooting in the 11100 block of South Troy Street on Nov. 5, 2016, in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood of Chicago. A man was shot and killed by a police officer following a road rage incident. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune) (Erin Hooley, Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Warning: Graphic content, strong language. A man was fatally shot by a Chicago police sergeant after a road-rage incident and fight involving an off-duty firefighter and another police officer in the 11100 block of South Troy Street on Nov. 5, 2016, in Mount Greenwood. (Submitted by Britnie Nelson) (Chicago Tribune)

The 911 recordings were released along with numerous reports, video and audio clips late Wednesday night by the Independent Police Review Authority, which is investigating the shooting. Though the documents and recordings do not appear to contain any revelations as to whether or not the shooting was justified, they fill out the details of an episode that played out against the backdrop of Chicago's racial segregation, violence and law enforcement woes.

The reports also publicly identify the officers who fired at Beal, who died of multiple gunshot wounds. Sgt. Thomas Derouin, a 14-year veteran, reported firing his 9 mm pistol seven times, while Joseph Treacy, a 10-year veteran, reported shooting his 9 mm handgun 11 times.

Limited information detailing the officers' disciplinary histories was available, but Treacy was handed a 25-day suspension in 2010 for an alleged off-duty drunken driving incident, records show. No details of that case were available Thursday.

Neither officer was involved in a shooting between 2010 and 2015, according to a database of police shootings maintained by the Tribune.

Reached by phone Thursday, Treacy declined to comment, while Derouin could not be reached.

Dean Angelo Sr., president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police lodge, noted that the investigation remains open but said the shooting appeared to have been justified, based on Beal pulling a gun.

"If that is what happened, how could it be anything but a good shooting?" Angelo asked.

Both officers were placed on mandatory desk duty after the shooting but have since returned to full duty, said department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

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One of the newly released documents is a police report stating that Beal suffered eight gunshot wounds  to the abdomen, right shoulder, upper right chest, right groin, back of his left thigh and the lower back, along with graze wounds to the right forearm and the top of his head.

Beal's shooting touched off protests between groups that decried the shooting and those that supported the officers. The demonstrations capped a year of upheaval that followed the release of video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting African-American teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.

McDonald's shooting highlighted long-standing grievances among African-Americans about their treatment by Chicago police, and the U.S. Justice Department launched an ongoing investigation into the department's practices. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, has pressed changes aimed at staying ahead of any reforms the federal authorities might seek.

The shooting, which took place three days before Donald Trump's election as president, happened in Mount Greenwood, a largely white enclave heavily populated by police and firefighters on the mostly black and Hispanic South Side. Dueling protests followed, and the groups traded racial slurs and insults; supporters of the police, largely white, made clear those protesting the shooting, mostly black, were not welcome in the neighborhood.

The confrontation began Nov. 5 when people who had been in a funeral procession got into an argument with off-duty police. Beal and several family members were driving down 111th Street after a funeral for a relative who had been killed in Indianapolis, where Beal resided. According to police, their cars had been weaving in and out of traffic before stopping in a fire lane, leading an off-duty police officer to tell the mourners to move.

An argument ensued and quickly escalated as an officer was assaulted, prosecutors said. Beal went to a black Dodge Charger, grabbed a gun and pointed it at one of the officers, according to police. Beal pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't go off, prosecutors said, and the officers shot him.

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In the records and recordings released Wednesday, the off-duty officer who made the 911 call gave a slightly different account than the one officials have given. He told the dispatcher that the group cut him off, then one car pulled up next him while another car was behind him.

"And now they are running up on another person," he said. "I'm telling you, you better get the police here now."

As the dispatcher tried to confirm his location, the officer said, "Oh, this is (expletive) ridiculous."

Calls from other people also rolled in, their voices growing more alarmed as the situation deteriorated. One of the first callers described a "total race fight" involving about 20 people.

The 911 recordings indicated observers on the scene saw multiple people with guns.

One woman who told the dispatcher of hearing eight to 12 gunshots said she was hiding under a table inside a restaurant where people had gathered for a baby shower.

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Beal's relatives were among those who made 911 calls. A woman who described Beal as her nephew said the family was coming back from the cemetery when they got a call about the shooting.

"We are coming from a funeral and my nephew, they said, has been shot up," she said.

"Please hurry," she told the dispatcher.

After the shooting, one of the officers, Treacy, struggled with Beal's brother, Michael Beal, over a gun, according to a police report.

The officer gained control of the gun, but Michael Beal tackled him and put the officer in a chokehold, according to the report, but the officer maneuvered his way out of the hold. Beal was charged with felony aggravated battery of a police officer and disarming a police officer.

Chicago police officers who use force have to fill out tactical response reports, and it has been common for commanding officers to promptly rule the officers' actions justified, even in cases that would later stir controversy.

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For example, after Van Dyke shot McDonald in October 2014, the officer filled out a tactical response report indicating that McDonald had attacked him with a knife, a claim contradicted by video of the incident. Nonetheless, a few hours after the shooting, Deputy Chief David McNaughton signed Van Dyke's report and wrote that the shooting was justified. McNaughton retired from the department last summer, two weeks after city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson recommended he be fired for, among other things, signing Van Dyke's allegedly false tactical response report.

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Reports from the Mount Greenwood shooting indicate commanding officers moved more cautiously.

About five hours after the shooting, Derouin and Treacy submitted tactical response reports and checked off boxes indicating that Beal had placed them in "imminent threat of battery" and used "force likely to cause death or great bodily harm."

In the following hours, Deputy Chief Terence Williams signed the reports, but he noted that the investigation was ongoing and gave no indication if he considered the shooting justified.

"Based on the facts available at this time, further investigation is needed," Williams wrote.

Chicago Tribune's Dan Hinkel, Annie Sweeney and Jason Meisner contributed.

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emalagon@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ElviaMalagon
Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie answers a question from then-Republican Rep. Ron Sandack while debating a bill to pass a temporary budget in the House on June 30, 2016. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

With Chicago Public Schools facing a $215 million budget shortfall after Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a state aid package, a top state Democrat said Friday that she doesn't expect a deal soon to reinstate the money.

Appearing on WLS-AM 890's "Connected to Chicago" program, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie expressed pessimism about the Republican governor and Democrats soon being able to resurrect the CPS measure.

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Rauner said he vetoed the bill in December because broader pension changes he has demanded haven't emerged.

"I would hope (a deal) will be (coming), and that may be one of the things we're talking about in the next few days, but I don't see light at the end of this particular tunnel as of yet," Currie told reporter Bill Cameron in the interview.

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State legislators are set to return to Springfield Monday for a two-day lame-duck session. The school district is meanwhile trying to figure out how to make do without the money.

The district has said in financial disclosures that it will turn to budget cuts, unspecified legal action and borrowing in efforts to close budget gaps left by shortfalls in expected state assistance.

And district officials have met with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to weigh options, among them unpaid furloughs and school budget cuts, more layoffs at district headquarters and renewed requests that principals hold off on buying items such as textbooks and technology, according to sources.

A stopgap state budget also recently expired, and Currie said she was "hopeful we will find a way to get (a budget) done for the remainder of the fiscal year, the next six months."

"There could be (a deal) at any moment of any day, and I'm looking forward to bipartisan cooperation," Currie said. But she added that "I don't expect that we have a major breakthrough" during the lame-duck session.

The interview will air at 7 p.m. Sunday.

jebyrne@chicagotribune.com
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday vowed to continue his efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department , no matter the outcome of a Department of Justice civil rights investigation launched 13 months ago.

The Justice Department report of findings and recommendations on CPD could come as soon as next week, said several sources familiar with the process. The sped-up timeline is the result of Democratic President Barack Obama preparing to hand over the White House Jan. 20 to President-elect Donald Trump  a tough-on-crime, pro-police Republican.

Justice Department officials "have obviously a deadline that they are trying to rush to meet, finish their job," Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference. "Our job is not finished."

"Our work is not done," the mayor added, referring to police training, technology and oversight changes made in the past year. "We've made, I think, the right decision to make the necessary changes, and while they may be rushing to finish their job, we are going to continue to do our job to make the right changes that are in our interest to provide the public safety throughout the city of Chicago."

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Continuing to push for Police Department changes could be smart politically as Emanuel tries to rebuild support lost in the wake of the court-ordered release of dashcam video that put a spotlight on decades of allegations of police abuse in Chicago and led to the federal investigation. The footage showed white police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teen Laquan McDonald as he walked away from police while carrying a knife.

Since then, Emanuel has committed to stepping up the number of available Tasers used as an alternative to the lethal force of firing a gun, equipping all officers with body cameras, training cops to de-escalate situations, releasing videos of shootings by cops, revamping the police oversight system and significantly expanding the number of street cops and supervisors. Many of those moves were based on recommendations from his Police Accountability Task Force.

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In other cities, the Justice Department report has signified the completion of the first phase of federal intervention in troubled police departments. The report often comes with a "statement of principles" agreed to by federal and city authorities, experts said. That statement is a commitment to work toward a federal court-enforced consent decree that includes a specific set of reforms overseen by an outside monitor.

Elsewhere, it has taken months for such decrees to be reached after the initial probe is done and the statement of principles is agreed on. It's unclear, however, how the Trump administration will handle civil rights investigations of police departments. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois met with Trump's attorney general pick, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions , on Wednesday. Afterward, Durbin told reporters that Sessions told him he was not "prepared to commit" to a position on the Justice Department recommendations, according to Politico.

On Thursday, Emanuel declined to address what he expects to happen, though his administration would have deep involvement in coming up with a statement of principles.

"I don't usually get ahead of the Justice Department," Emanuel said. "I don't make a practice of it. I don't think that's a good idea. OK? So I'm not going to comment on any of that."

Chicago Tribune's Todd Lighty contributed.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

asweeney@chicagotribune.com
The UTC Chemical Engineering Club, or Chem-E Club, is hard at work on their new chem-e car project, which they will take to the regional American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) competition and, with any luck, on to nationals.

Each year, a student team from the Chemical Engineering Department at UTC designs and fabricates a car that can be powered and stopped by chemical reactions. Disassembled, the car must fit into a shoe box.

The car we make has to start and stop based on chemical reactions," said Reed Boeger, club treasurer. "So we create a power reaction, to activate the battery, and a stopping reaction, which sends a signal to the motor to stop."

Last years car, the Chem-eleon, beat out entries from University of Alabama, Auburn University, University of Florida, University of South Florida and went to the national competition. You can read more about that here.

The team has gone to nationals four out of the last six years," said Mr. Boeger. "This spring, in March, in Knoxville, were hoping to take first place back. Weve been working very hard on this car."

The UTC Chemical Engineering Club meets every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 p.m. You can get involved or just follow along with their activities at their Facebook page.
Tarek Mohamed wasn't terribly surprised by the hateful screed written in a letter mailed to his Southern California Islamic center last November.

The note was addressed to the "Children of Satan," called for the extermination of Muslims in the U.S. and referenced Donald Trump's election night victory. But Mohamed, the center's president, had received similar messages before, and knew he would again.

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Authorities examined the letter  and ones sent to other Islamic institutions in California  and quickly determined it didn't rise to the level of a hate crime that could be prosecuted.

But in a increasingly common move, police officials classified the letter as a "hate incident" and, working with the U.S. Postal Service, began a search for the author.



Typically, the standard for a police investigation focuses on whether a crime has occurred. But as police departments across the nation deal with sensitivities about hateful and threatening speech, they are trying to get ahead of the issue.

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On Thursday, four people were charged with a hate crime in Chicago after they allegedly kidnapped, pummeled and slashed a mentally disabled 18-year-old and broadcast the attack on social media. The suspects, who were black, repeatedly shouted profanities about white people and Trump. The victim was white, according to the video of the assault.



The assault was the second incident of black suspects caught on video pummeling a white person in the city since the election. In November, four others were charged with one felony count of vehicular hijacking for an incident in which a white man was punched and kicked as a crowd yelled, "Don't vote Trump." No hate crime charges were filed, however.

Social media video captures a West Side beating while onlookers shout about President-elect Donald Trump. Nov. 10, 2016. (Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Police are encouraging citizens to report any and all bias-motivated incidents, from simple verbal attacks to overt crimes. And detectives are investigating even when the reports don't amount to a crime.

Investigators say that information can help them prevent hate crimes or build evidence against someone who goes on to commit a crime. But it also forces police to walk a fine line, probing without infringing on the free speech rights of those they investigate.

"People have a right to say what they want. No matter how bad it is and how hurtful it is to other people," said Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Det. Chris Keeling, a veteran hate crimes investigator. "We have to know those people are out there, but what we have to fight against is allowing that person's statement to cause us to react in a negative way."

The perceived rise in bias actions has been a source of intense debate across the country ever since Trump rose to the front of a crowded field of GOP candidates last year, and some critics believe his ascension to the presidency has emboldened those who hold anti-Muslim or white supremacist views.

Officials said they don't know whether there are actually more hate crimes since the election or whether they are simply getting more attention. But FBI statistics show reported hate crimes throughout the U.S. rose 7% in 2015.

Police across California said they developed strategies for dealing with hate incidents long before Trump's election, something they said was a necessity in the diverse communities they serve.

There is a difference between a hate crime and cruel or hurtful comments, many of which are protected under the 1st Amendment. The law makes it illegal to physically harm someone based on his or her race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation, among other characteristics.

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Hate incidents are a different matter. A person on receiving end of a hateful email or racist rant can feel attacked, but police say many of these encounters don't amount to a crime.

Some police agencies have been taking down information about both the victims of hate incidents and the offending party. Officials say it's similar to the way they catalog information to calls for service.

Such incidents will often be referred to a department's hate crimes unit, but not entered into a central database tracking those who engage in hate speech, according to Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Horace Frank, assistant commanding officer of the department's counterterrorism and special operations bureau.

Frank said believes having the information on file could be helpful in preventing future hate crimes  or at least help with those investigations.

"Incidents quite often develop into crimes," he said. "The last thing we want to do is to be on the responsive end as opposed to the preventive end."

The LAPD will go to great lengths to identify the perpetrator of a hate incident, even if no crime has been committed, Frank added. In some instances investigators have used partial license plates or even DNA to track down potential suspects, though those tactics are more normally used in the investigation of an actual hate crime, he said.

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LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing speaks with Imam Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini, right, about threatening letters sent to California mosques. The letters didn't rise to the level of a crime, but police have still launched a wide-ranging investigation. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Still, there's only so much police can do without evidence of an actual crime. Sgt. Daron Wyatt, an Anaheim, Calif., police spokesman, said his department aggressively investigates and tracks information on hate incidents, and they will often try to make contact with people engaged in such behavior. But they can't even have a conversation with the offending party without consent.

"If we walk up to someone and say hello  and they say 'I'm not talking and I'm walking away,' then we have to let them walk away," he said.

Peter Bibring, director of police practice for the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California, said there's nothing wrong with police collecting information when they receive reports about possible bias crimes. But he cautioned law enforcement against going a step further and creating specific pools of information regarding people involved in hateful speech, the way they might track those involved in gang activity or other classes of crimes.

"They can go out and ask questions to make sure that there's nothing more serious involved, but they shouldn't maintain information about people unless there's reasonable suspicion to believe they're involved in criminal activity," he said. "They certainly shouldn't maintain information about people just because of their political viewpoints, repugnant though they may be."

Fears that the election might embolden some to commit racially motivated attacks have been stoked by violent assaults in California and elsewhere in the past few weeks.

Last month in Simi Valley, Calif., two men hurled racial slurs at a group of people who had just left an Islamic prayer service. While that on its own might have been considered a hate incident, the clash quickly turned physical. One of the mosque attendees was stabbed, and police have labeled the attack as a hate crime.

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The heightened sensitivity to hate and concerns over potential 1st Amendment abuses have made partnerships between police and advocacy groups that focus on bias more important than ever, officials said. In recent weeks, the Los Angeles city attorney's office has been discussing hate incidents and crimes with the Anti-Defamation League, and the Sheriff's Department has a long established relationship with the league, officials said.

Hate in general is like a bubbling volcano. Once it erupts its already too late.  Nolan Lebovitz, rabbi at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles

Unlike police, the Anti-Defamation League, as a private organization, has more latitude in the types of information it can document, said Oren Segal, director of the agency's Center On Extremism.

"As a non-governmental organization who tracks extremists and hatred, I don't need to get permission to monitor somebody's public statements and their social media account, or if they attend a rally, to collect information," he said. "We're allowed to collect that information  and we're allowed to share it with law enforcement."

While investigators' primary focus in tracking hate incidents might be to collect data and observe trends in extremist behavior, Segal said law enforcement's serious approach to such activity can also help act as a balm for a victimized community.

"Having law enforcement not only take it seriously and document it, but for them to reach out to victims and let them know we're not going to forget about you, goes a long way," he said.

Keeling said the tough stance on hate incidents might cause someone to think twice about committing a bias-motivated crime later on. If a person is the subject of multiple hate incident reports, Keeling said, he or she might get a visit from investigators, something the sheriff's detective hopes acts as a deterrent.

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"If I have a series of reports, and the same name keeps coming up, at some point, as a detective I am going to make contact with that person. But when I contact, it's not always to make an arrest. Sometimes I contact you for intervention, prevention," he said. "I'm trying to keep you from rising to the level and crossing that threshold of a crime."

The aggressive stance from police has been welcomed by some of the communities that are most likely to be the targets of hate speech. Nolan Lebovitz, the rabbi at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles, said a quick response from the LAPD helped calm members of his synagogue after someone spray painted the word "Nazi" on the building in March.

"Whether or not it's officially a crime, hate is something that needs to be addressed seriously," he said. "Hate in general is like a bubbling volcano. Once it erupts it's already too late."

For others who have been targeted, the distinction between a hate crime and a hate incident doesn't mean much. Mohamed doesn't care what term police use to describe the hateful letters sent to California mosques, as long as detectives identify the author and make sure he or she doesn't present a larger threat.

"We don't want to wake with a bloodshed in Southern California, because this letter doesn't meet the criteria of criminal action," he said.

Chicago Tribune staff contributed

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james.queally@latimes.com

@JamesQueallyLAT


Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials - including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country's cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election - contributed to the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow's efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of "actors" involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Barack Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation's top spy officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan.

Given the president-elect's skepticism about the intelligence community - particularly its conclusions about Russia - the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged.

"The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasized that while the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow's intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies' efforts to achieve that outcome.

"There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence" that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior U.S. official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia's cyber operations.

Officials emphasized that "signals intelligence," as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation.

U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having "directed" cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that "only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.

Russia's alleged role in the 2016 election and the question of how the United States should respond have become bitterly polarizing issues in Washington, sowing discord among Republicans on Capitol Hill, complicating the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, and exacerbating an increasingly toxic relationship between the president-elect and U.S. spy services.

Senior lawmakers have called for a full investigation of the Russian hacking. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that Moscow's cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into "activism."

At Thursday's hearing, Clapper said that U.S. spy agencies "stand actually more resolutely" behind conclusions they reached last year on Russia's determination to undermine the U.S. election. He also appeared to take aim at Trump's social media sniping at U.S. intelligence services, saying that "there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement."

Obama last week announced a series of measures designed to punish Russia, actions he characterized as "a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests." Obama moved to impose economic sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies, expelled dozens of alleged Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, and shuttered two compounds that for decades had purportedly served as retreats for Russian diplomats but were described by the administration as locations for espionage activities.

Meanwhile, Trump continued his string of Twitter attacks, accusing U.S. intelligence agencies - with the word "intelligence" set off in quotation marks - of delaying a planned briefing on Russia and the election, a charge that U.S. officials disputed. He also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has denied that his organization got the hacked emails from Russia, over U.S. spy agencies, which think that WikiLeaks got the material through middlemen with ties to the Kremlin.

Trump appeared to retreat on Thursday, accusing the "dishonest media" of misrepresenting his comments about Assange. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence,' " he said, "when in fact I am a big fan!"

U.S. officials said the captured messages, whose existence has not previously been disclosed, added to the confidence level at the CIA and other agencies that Putin's goals went beyond seeking to undermine confidence in America's election machinery and ultimately were aimed at tilting a fiercely contested presidential race toward a candidate seen as more in-line with Moscow's foreign policy goals.

Even so, the messages also revealed that top officials in Russia anticipated that Clinton would win and did not expect their effort to achieve its goal.

Russian officials "were as surprised as the rest of the world," said the second U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

"In this case, you do learn things after the fact based on how they feel about it," the first official said, adding that the intercepts added to the intelligence community's "shifting level of confidence."

The intercepts also echoed some public comments in Moscow. "Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him," Putin said at a news conference last month, adding with a wry smile, "except for you and me."

U.S. intelligence officials believe that Putin has for years held a personal grudge against Clinton, whom he accused of fomenting demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 that embarrassed Putin and rattled the former KGB operative's confidence in his grip on power.

Russia's elite spy services have for years used cyberespionage capabilities to gather information on U.S. policymakers and political candidates - as the United States does on Russia. But Moscow's decision to dump thousands of stolen emails into public view on WikiLeaks was seen as a provocative departure from the traditional lanes of espionage, U.S. officials said.

Clapper on Thursday said there is a difference between "an act of espionage, which we conduct, as well, and other nations do, versus an attack."

U.S. officials said that Russia's goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow's initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump's GOP rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program.

Russia's initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia's aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton's candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump.

Russia also used social media and "fake news" platforms as an "accelerant" to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said.

The Washington Post's Julie Tate contributed to this report.
The Wall Street Journal broke what would seem to be a big story on Wednesday night: According to anonymous sources, President-elect Donald Trump is looking at overhauling our country's intelligence apparatus by paring back the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and possibly even restructuring the CIA.

The Trump team is now saying it's baseless. "These reports are false," incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on a conference call Thursday. "There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure. It is 100 percent false."

The timing of this story couldn't be more conspicuous.

Trump is right in the middle of ramping up his criticism and questioning of the intelligence community's conclusions about Russia's alleged hacking of Democrats in an effort to influence the 2016 election. He's still not granting that Russia did the hacking. And just this week he put the word "intelligence" in quotation marks in a tweet and suggested the intelligence community was out to get him  was scrambling to find proof to back up their preferred theory.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and Adm. Mike Rogers, the National Security Agency director, are both testifying before Congress on Thursday, and Trump is set to be briefed (again) on Russian hacking on Friday. All of which comes at a time when Trump's questioning of the intelligence community has driven a wedge between him and some Republicans.

It's not clear what's going on here, but the fact that this would come out at this particular juncture in time is too difficult to ignore.

Let's step back and acknowledge some well-established D.C. dynamics. The first is the tradition of floating plans that may or may not be likely to come to fruition - either to send a message or because they're trial balloons.

One of the Journal's sources essentially admitted this was a response to what the Trump transition team viewed as politics seeping into the intelligence-gathering process - the same argument some Trump defenders have used to question the intelligence pointing to Russian involvement in the hack. And as they prepared to testify Thursday and brief Trump on Friday on a story line he really doesn't like - sharing information he may not want to see - intelligence officials got a reminder that, whether he chooses to use it or not, he has the power to make their lives very different/difficult.

The other dynamic is the continuing communication issues and conflicting signals inside Team Trump, where it often seems no one is more surprised by what the president-elect or some of his aides do or say than other senior staffers or surrogates.

Still, Spicer's denial is pretty full-throated here, which begs the question: Where did this come from? Did someone close to the Trump transition team totally concoct these plans whole-cloth? If so, why? Is this merely a possibility rather than an actual plan?

The report is based on anonymous sources and has been echoed by other outlets, we would note. Somebody is saying this stuff. It's also not presented as an ironclad proposal or something that's definitely going to happen - more as something the Trump transition team is looking into and planning on. So if it doesn't happen, there's really no accountability.

It all reinforces just how much Trump's incoming administration presents a tough choice for journalists. Usually these kinds of plans do leak out through anonymous sources like this - either because they aren't ready for an official public announcement or because someone gets ahead of the official operation and an entrepreneurial journalist scoops his or her colleagues.

But when you can't even expect the president to follow through on his many publicly stated proposals - see: prosecuting Hillary Clinton, mass deportation, Muslim immigration ban, etc. - how can you rely on anonymous sources to provide accurate information about what will happen in the future? There are just no guarantees. Even if a plan were embraced by Trump, there's no guarantee he might not alter or discard it before it's announced - or even after.

The fact remains that everything for Trump is negotiable, including within his own mind. Will he one day actually overhaul our intelligence community? Possibly. But if he doesn't, these leaks came at a very convenient time.
Though the great powers of the British crown have been taken away by Parliament, Queen Elizabeth accepts her duty to follow tradition. (LEON NEAL / Getty-AFP)

Life for a modern monarch is often a jeweled prison, with an excess of tedium and a dearth of authority. Anyone who detests the idea of royals can take satisfaction in how insignificant they have become. But their adaptation to this shrunken role sheds a revealing light on Donald Trump.

In its first season, the Netflix series "The Crown" depicts the early years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. What becomes more obvious with each episode is that not only does the young sovereign lack the commanding power of William the Conqueror or Henry VIII but she can rarely get her way even on outwardly trivial matters.

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She doesn't want to live at Buckingham Palace. She doesn't want to deprive her children of their father's surname. She doesn't want to quash her sister's marriage plans. Over and over, she capitulates.

Watching, I kept expecting her to rise up and declare, "I'm the freaking queen of England, and I'll do as I damn well please!" She never does. Reverence for the past stands in the way.

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Though the great powers of the British crown have been taken away by Parliament, the cramped discretion Elizabeth endures is also one of her own choice. She could rebel against the suffocating conventions  because really, who's to stop her? But she accepts her duty to follow tradition.

The American presidency has many powers, some stipulated in the Constitution and some established by those who occupied the White House. But presidents have usually observed certain long-standing norms meant to foster respect for the office, promote national cohesion and encourage democratic compromise.

In Britain, the prime minister is the head of government and the queen is the head of state. Here, the president is both, acting as the chief executive of the federal government and the ceremonial leader of the nation. The latter role has been shaped over centuries by men who recognized the limits and gravity of the office they held.

Trump, however, accepts no limits or norms of behavior, insisting on doing exactly what suits him. He refuses to make public his tax returns. He includes his children, who are also his business partners, in meetings about government business.

He pops off on Twitter whenever the urge strikes. He tramples over ethical boundaries. He insults his critics. He exalts himself. He behaves with a sense of entitlement that brooks no opposition.

It's hard to recall that in 1998, congressional Republicans were so appalled by Bill Clinton's illicit affair and brazen deceptions that they impeached him. In his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush made a pointed promise to "uphold the honor and dignity of the office."

That's an obligation dating to George Washington. On the website of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, historian Stephen Knott writes that our first president never "sought to use his office for personal empowerment or gain. Neither did he shelter his friends for the sake of their friendships when conflicts of interest arose." His "restraint, solemnity, judiciousness and nonpartisan stance created an image of presidential greatness, or dignity, that dominates the office even today."

Or did. It may not take Trump long to make Americans forget there was a time when presidents practiced such virtues. Once, a leader who defended a Russian dictator while mocking U.S. intelligence professionals would have been pilloried as an appeaser, if not a traitor. But Donald Trump has shown how easily the outrageous can come to seem ordinary.

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His rise brings to mind Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1993 essay, "Defining Deviancy Down," which lamented the collapse of standards of behavior and the resulting epidemic of violent crime.

"We have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized," he wrote, "and also quietly raising the 'normal' level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard." In short, "we are getting used to a lot of behavior that is not good for us."

It can't be good for a president to cultivate ignorance, to undermine bipartisan policies on a whim, to bully private companies or to demonize anyone who crosses him. Trump's style is at war with the concept of the office as a public trust.

George Washington endeavored to define the presidency in a way that affirmed that he was not a monarch like the one Americans had rebelled against. Today, the queen of England behaves in a manner reminiscent of Washington, while the president-elect impersonates a czar.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.

schapman@chicagotribune.com

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The first striking thing about the recent letter signed by 1,100 law professors urging the U.S. Senate not to confirm attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions , R-Ala., is its extraordinary arrogance and presumption. What makes such a huge gaggle of academics so sure that 1) the Senate is incapable of determining on its own the qualifications of Sessions for a Cabinet position, and 2) What makes them think they know more than senators?

The pious pontification of the law professoriate has become cliche in modern America, leading many pundits (correctly in my view) to criticize our current president for his tendency to think like a law professor, and to view the world in the abstract, removed and unrealistic way in which it is seen from the faculty lounge.

One law professor, Harvard's Duncan Kennedy, nicely limned the problem, when he declared, as a law student at Yale, that his teachers were "either astoundingly intellectually self-confident or just plain smug." He went on to state that their classroom gestures seemed to say, "I am brilliant. I am famous in the only community that matters. I am doing the most difficult and most desirable thing in the world, and doing it well. I am being a Law Professor." Kennedy published those words in 1970, but the problem is even worse now.

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The exaggerated self-importance of the teacher of law is buttressed by immersion in an ideology very different from what most senators and most Americans believe about the law in particular and the world in general. It is strongest in the elite bastions of the Ivy League and on the coasts, where most American law professors trained. Now, one can find it dispersed in most of our centers of legal education.

That ideology is a culmination of a century of the ascendance in the law school of a set of beliefs that seem to convince most professors that the law is really no different from politics and

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that it is infinitely malleable. For too long, they say, the law has has been used as a tool of the rich and powerful to oppress women, minorities and the powerless. It should be the task of judges, legislators, and lawyers alone, they say, to interpret the Constitution and laws and to use that malleability to redistribute power and resources to the oppressed.

There has certainly been injustice in America, but most Americans believe the law should not be used to foster redistribution but to secure life, liberty and property. For them  and President-elect Donald Trump sensed this  the law and the Constitution should be what they were for Trump's judicial hero, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia : fixed guideposts to contribute to the preservation of freedom and opportunity for all Americans. As times change, the law and the Constitution need to change, but this should be done by the orderly processes of legislation and constitutional amendment, not by a judge or a Justice Department bent on ruling by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

The irate myriad of law professors have correctly understood that Sessions' view of the law is much closer (if it is not identical) to that of Scalia and Trump and not to their own. Their ideological zeal and the inevitable tendency of ideologues to believe in the insincerity and malice of those who disagree with them have led them to believe the spurious charges that torpedoed Sessions' judicial nomination decades ago, and to see him as an enemy to the groups they favor.

This is profoundly, to use Trump's word, "sad," because senators who have served with Sessions are in the best position to know the man, and to make the determination whether he is a conservative champion of the rule of law, a believer in the separation of powers and in federalism, or whether he is the malevolent monster described in these law professors' screed.

It is time for law professors to emerge from the smugness and self-delusion in which they have been mired for some time, and to recommit themselves to the noble task of teaching the law as a repository of timeless truths, as something above politics, and certainly above character assassination.

Stephen B. Presser is a professor of legal history emeritus at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law and the author of "Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law."
You almost have to feel sorry for Julian Assange. Shut in at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London without access to sunlight, the founder of WikiLeaks is reduced to self-parody these days.

Here is a man dedicated to radical transparency, yet he refuses to go to Sweden despite an arrest warrant in connection with allegations of sexual assault. His organization retweets the president-elect who once called for him to be put to death. He spreads the innuendo that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, was murdered this summer because he was the real source of the emails WikiLeaks published in the run-up to November's election. And now he tells Fox News's Sean Hannity that it's the U.S. media that is deeply dishonest.

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This is the proper context to evaluate Assange's claim, repeated by Donald Trump and his supporters, that Russia was not the source for the emails of leading Democrats distributed by WikiLeaks.

We all know that the U.S. intelligence community is standing by its judgment that Russia hacked the Democrats' emails and distributed them to influence the election. And while it's worrisome that Trump would dismiss this judgment out of hand, this also misses the main point. Sometimes the spies get it wrong, like the "slam-dunk" conclusion that Saddam Hussein was concealing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

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The real issue is Assange. The founder of WikiLeaks has a history of saying paranoid nonsense. This is particularly true of Assange's view of Hillary Clinton. His delusions have led him to justify the interference in our elections as an act of holding his nemesis accountable to the public.

Bill Keller, the former New York Times executive editor, captured Assange's penchant for dark fantasy in a 2011 essay that described him casually telling a group of journalists from the Guardian that former Stasi agents were destroying East German archives of the secret police. A German reporter from Der Spiegel, John Goetz, was incredulous. "That's utter nonsense," he said. "Some former Stasi personnel were hired as security guards in the office, but the records were well protected," Keller recounts him as saying.

In this sense, WikiLeaks's promotion of the John Grisham-esque yarn that Seth Rich was murdered on orders from Hillary Clinton's network is in keeping with a pattern. Both Rich's family and the Washington police have dismissed this as a conspiracy theory. That, however, did not stop WikiLeaks from raising a $20,000 reward to find his "real" killers.

Add to this Assange's approach to Russia. It's well known that his short-lived talk show, which once aired a respectful interview with the leader of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, was distributed by Russian state television. WikiLeaks has also never published sensitive documents from Russian government sources comparable to the State Department cables it began publishing in 2010, or the emails of leading Democrats last year.

When an Italian journalist asked him last month why WikiLeaks hasn't published the Kremlin's secrets, Assange's answer was telling. "In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum," he said. "There are also newspapers like Novaya Gazeta, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn't a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks, and no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player."

This is bizarre for a few reasons. To start, Assange's description of the press environment in Russia has a curious omission. Why no mention of the journalists and opposition figures who have been killed or forced into exile? Assange gives the impression that the Russian government is just as vulnerable to mass disclosures of its secrets as the U.S. government has been. That's absurd, even if it's also true that some oppositional press is tolerated there.

Also WikiLeaks once did have a Russian-speaking associate. His name is Yisrael Shamir, and according to former WikiLeaks staffer James Ball, he worked closely with the organization when it began distributing the State Department cables. Shamir is a supporter of Vladimir Putin.

This is all a pity. A decade ago, when Assange founded WikiLeaks, it was a very different organization. As Raffi Khatchadourian reported in a 2010 New Yorker profile, Assange told potential collaborators in 2006, "Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations."

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For a while, WikiLeaks followed this creed. The first document published, but not verified, was an internal memo purporting to show how Somalia's Islamic Courts Union intended to murder members of the transitional government there. It published the emails of University of East Anglia climate scientists discussing manipulation of climate change data. In its early years, WikiLeaks published information damaging to the U.S. as well. But no government or entity or political side appeared to be immune from the organization's anonymous whistle-blowers.

Today, WikiLeaks's actions discredit its original mission. Does anyone believe Assange when he darkly implies that he received the DNC emails from a whistleblower? Even if you aren't persuaded that Russia was behind it, there is a preponderance of public evidence that the email account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta was hacked, such as the email that asked him to give his password in a phishing scam. Assange himself is not even sticking to his old story: He told Hannity that a 14-year-old could have hacked Podesta's emails. Good to know.

In short, the founder of a site meant to expose the falsehoods of governments and large institutions has been gaslighting us. Just look at the WikiLeaks statement on the emails right before the election. " To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public's right to know," it said.

That's precious. WikiLeaks did favor a candidate in the election simply by publishing the emails. And the candidate it aided, Donald Trump, is so hostile to the public's right know that he won't even release his tax returns. In two weeks, he will be in charge of an intelligence community that asserts with high confidence the emails WikiLeaks made public were stolen by Russian government hackers. Assange, of course, denies it, and Trump seems to believe him. Sad!

Bloomberg View

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist.
WASHINGTON  You can kick the can down the road, but when Kim Jong Un announces, as he did recently, that "we have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket," you are reaching the end of that road.

Since the early 1990s, we have offered every kind of inducement to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program. All failed miserably. Pyongyang managed to extort money, food, oil and commercial nuclear reactors in exchange. But it was all a swindle. North Korea was never going to give up its nukes because it sees them as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.

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The North Koreans believe that nukes confer inviolability. Saddam Hussein was invaded and deposed before he could acquire them. Kim won't let that happen to him. That's why Thae Yong Ho, a recent high-level defector, insisted that "As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, even if it's offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards."

Meanwhile, North Koreans have advanced. They've already exploded a handful of nuclear bombs. And they've twice successfully launched satellites, which means they have the intercontinental ballistic missile essentials. If they can miniaturize their weapons to fit on top of the rocket and control re-entry, they'll be able to push a button in Pyongyang and wipe out an American city.

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What to do? The options are stark:

1) Pre-emptive attack on North Korea's missile launching facilities. Doable but reckless. It is the option most likely to trigger an actual war. The North Koreans enjoy conventional superiority and proximity: a vast army poised at the Demilitarized Zone only 30 miles from Seoul. Americans are not going to fight another land war in Asia.

2) Shoot down the test intercontinental ballistic missile, as advocated by The Wall Street Journal. Assuming we can. Democrats have done their best to abort or slow down anti-missile defenses since Ronald Reagan proposed them in the early 1980s. Even so, we should be able to intercept a single, relatively primitive intercontinental ballistic missile of the sort North Korea might be capable.

Though such a shoot-down would occur nowhere near North Korean soil, it could still very well provoke a military response. Which is why the new administration should issue a clear warning that if such a test missile is launched, we will bring it down. Barack Obama is gone. Such a red line could be a powerful deterrent.

3) Return tactical U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea. They were withdrawn in 1991 by George H.W. Bush in the waning days of the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union responded in kind. A good idea in general, but not on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang had railed constantly against their presence, but they did act as a deterrent to any contemplated North Korean aggression. Which might make them a useful bargaining chip.

4) Economic leverage on China, upon which Pyongyang depends for its survival. Donald Trump seems to suggest using trade to pressure China to get North Korea to desist. The problem is that China has shown no evidence of being willing to yield a priceless strategic asset  a wholly dependent client state that acts as a permanent thorn and distraction to U.S. power in the Pacific Rim  because of mere economic pressure.

5) Strategic leverage on China. We've been begging China for decades to halt the North Korean nuclear program. Beijing plays along with sanctions and offers occasional expressions of dismay. Nothing more. There's one way guaranteed to get its attention. Declare that we would no longer oppose Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent.

This is a radical step that goes against our general policy of nonproliferation. But the point is to halt proliferation to the infinitely more dangerous regime in North Korea. China is the key. The Chinese have many nightmares, none worse than a nuclear-armed Japan.

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The principal strategic challenge facing the United States is the rise of revisionist powers  Russia, China and Iran  striving to expel American influence from their regions. In comparison, the Korean problem is minor, an idiosyncratic relic of the Cold War. North Korea should be a strategic afterthought, like Cuba. And it would be if not for its nukes.

That's a big if. A wholly unpredictable, highly erratic and often irrational regime is acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city by missile. That's an urgent problem.

North Korea may be just an unexploded ordnance of a long-concluded Cold War. But we cannot keep assuming it will never go off.

Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.

Washington Post Writers Group

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
I shall not be among the thousands of people lining up to get a ticket to hear President Barack Obama give his farewell address at McCormick Place. I am rather pleased that he has decided to remain in Washington and not move back to Chicago, where he would likely have been a fairly constant presence at White Sox and Chicago Bulls games, called upon for regular comments on events local and national, and a nuisance generally. Eight years are quite enough for me. Time, and well beyond time, for him and his family to depart the White House. Time to let its new occupant, a man who, as the joke has it, in moving into public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will be taking a considerable step down in the world.

Nothing personal, please understand. I do not loathe Barack Obama even though I think he was far from a successful president. Disagree with many of his policies though I have, I appreciate that, against the grain of so much in recent American public life, his has been a political life free of corruption and scandal, and himself a man whose affection for his family is genuine and whose earnestness has never been in doubt. Still, Obama joins the long list of presidents in my lifetime almost all of whom, whether I agreed with their politics or not, I was glad to see leave office.

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My first, childhood memory of presidential politics goes back to the 1944 presidential election. "We want Roosevelt, where, where? We want Roosevelt in the White House chair" we grammar-school kids in my largely Jewish Rogers Park neighborhood chanted. "We want Dewey, where, where? We want Dewey in the electric chair." Franklin Roosevelt, of course, died in office. His successor, Harry Truman, settled for a single full term. "Calm down and stay on the job," Truman, with characteristic terseness, is supposed to have said to weeping White House staff members after he announced his decision not to run for a second term.

Roosevelt and Truman benefited immensely from the absence of television. By benefited I mean we did not see so much of them and grow so quickly tired, bored, finally put off by them. Television did not much help Dwight Eisenhower, whose natural speech was a sad combination of jargon and tangled syntax. Oliver Jensen, then the editor of American Heritage, wrote a parody of Eisenhower giving the Gettysburg Address that began: "I haven't checked these figures, but 87 years ago, I think it was, a group of individuals organized a government set up here in this country ..."

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The comedian Mort Sahl used to joke that a pre-election meeting between Eisenhower and his Democratic presidential opponent Adlai Stevenson had to be canceled because Eisenhower's translator took sick.

The falsity of Camelot, the public relations scam of the Kennedy administration, was of course cut short by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But it, too, was already wearing thin, and was decisively put paid to when the grieving widow Kennedy married the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis.

Lyndon B. Johnson provided no relief from presidential tedium, with his speeches that seemed invariably, in his best Texan drawl, to begin "Muh fella Amerucans ..." Johnson's problem was that he was a deeply coarse man  "See that old boy over there," LBJ is supposed to have said, pointing at his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, "I've got his (expletive) in my pocket"  and his attempts at dignified utterance never really came off.

One could run down the remaining presidents quickly enough: the lubriciousness of Richard Nixon, the moral righteousness of Jimmy Carter, the fear of dementia toward the end of Ronald Reagan's second term, the banality of George H.W. Bush, the snake-oil-salesman charm of Bill Clinton, the utter want of subtlety of George W. Bush, Barack Obama's moralizing certitude  overexposed by television, all of them.

Making matters worse is the phenomenon of the modern speechwriter, without whose aid no modern president regularly goes before the public. Because of speechwriters, much of what most of our presidents tell us isn't quite original with them. George Washington, who gave the best and most important of American presidential farewell addresses, at least supplied his own words. John F. Kennedy's most famous utterances were all written by Ted Sorensen. The first speechwriter in history was the philosopher Seneca, who wrote speeches for Nero, until that mad emperor ordered the philosopher's suicide. Too bad, one sometimes feels, listening to the canned goods that have been at the heart of so many presidential speeches, that a few American presidents hadn't followed Nero's example.

None of this tedium would have come forth so emphatically and depressingly were it not for the too-regular appearances of our presidents on television, giving speeches, news conferences, on the links, and the rest of it. At the end of their terms, one wishes them all well, but not so ardently as one wishes their departure. Au revoir, sir, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Joseph Epstein is an essayist, short-story writer and a former lecturer at Northwestern University. A former editor of The American Scholar, Epstein's latest book is "Frozen in Time, Twenty Stories."
Facebook Live video posted on Jan. 3, 2017, shows the verbal and physical attack of a mentally disabled man. The Chicago Tribune edited this video to protect the victim's identity and for time. (Warning: Contains graphic content) (Chicago Tribune)

The video depicts a level of cruelty that seems inconceivable. Yet it unfolds before your eyes: A cellphone video, posted for live consumption on Facebook, shows a mentally disabled young man from the suburbs with his mouth taped shut and his wrists bound as four people punch, cut and mock him.

The story of this incident rapidly went global  yet another act of inhumanity in a city that notoriously ended 2016 with 762 homicides.

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Walk through this slowly:

Chicago police say the disabled man met with an acquaintance at a suburban McDonald's on New Year's Eve before being held against his will days later on Chicago's West Side. His parents had reported him missing when he didn't return home.

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The video broadcast live Tuesday on Facebook shows him tied up in a corner as his captors cut his shirt and slice his scalp. Police say he also was forced to drink toilet water.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago, is charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. (Chicago Police Department)

Police and prosecutors charged four suspects with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Three defendants also are charged with residential burglary and one with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

As cruel as the behavior depicted on the video is, equally ghastly is the sound track  punctuated by laughter. The woman shooting the video belly laughs as one of the offenders slices a chunk of hair from the young man's scalp, bloodying him.

"Let me see ... ooooh," she cackles, getting a closer shot of the victim's head.

The trappings of a party surround the scene. Police say it appeared at least one of the suspects was smoking marijuana. Bottles of booze are captured on the tape.

The behavior is nothing short of monstrous.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called the acts on the video "reprehensible" and racist. At one point, the offenders lash out against "white people" and Donald Trump. All the while, the victim sits in a corner, defenseless.

He was able to get away when his captors confronted a downstairs neighbor and the neighbor called police. On Tuesday evening, police found him wandering in the Homan Square neighborhood, disoriented, injured and wearing shorts in the cold weather. They called an ambulance. They learned he had been reported "missing and endangered" in suburban Crystal Lake.

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Police say an apartment on Chicago's West Side was the scene of a brutal attack captured on Facebook Live that led to hate crime charges being filed against four people. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

We leave questions of guilt or innocence to the courts. But any offenders convicted of these crimes likely will face stiff consequences for their actions, which police initially characterized as "stupid" prank-type behavior. Right. Just a bunch of kids goofing around. Police toughened their narrative by the time charges were filed Thursday, as they should have.

For Chicago, then, another grim moment.

It's become all too routine.

We have the data to prove it.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
State Rep. Monique Davis of Chicagosubmitted a letter of resignation in late December, but it was not received by the Illinois House clerk until Tuesday. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

Voters on Chicago's South Side didn't have a choice last year in the race for the 27th House district. Longtime Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, briefly faced a challenge from Justin Slaughter, but he dropped out before the primary. Davis ran unopposed in the November election.

Then just before Christmas, she filed paperwork to retire from the seat she has held since 1987. But voters won't pick her replacement. Local Democratic leaders did it for them. A handful of Chicago aldermen and suburban township committeemen met privately Thursday and selected Slaughter, a Chicago resident who works for the Cook County Board, to fill Davis' seat. Surprise, 27th District voters! You have a new state rep.

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It's a maddening pattern repeated by lawmakers from both parties: They resign midterm or just before or after an election when it's too late for someone else to compete for the seat. The timing triggers a process that allows local power brokers to choose the next lawmaker.

Roughly one-third of the 177 lawmakers serving in the House and Senate first got their seats in the General Assembly because they were appointed, not elected. An appointed lawmaker still has to run for the seat in the next election cycle, but he or she gets a head start, sometimes nearly a full term, in Springfield. They gain access to staff, campaign donors and special interest groups. Their political patrons prop them up by giving them popular, noncontroversial bills to sponsor. They have all the benefits of incumbency, including campaign lawyers, advice and money.

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That is, they have a built-in advantage over challengers. Which is why more than half of states require a special election when a lawmaker steps down. That gives voters the opportunity to choose their representatives, and it discourages elected officials from stepping down midterm.

Switching to that system in Illinois would require a change to the state constitution. Fat chance. Legislative leaders and insiders have influence over who gets appointed, and they aren't eager to cede that power to voters. That's why they've refused to let voters weigh in on other constitutional changes, such as term limits or redistricting reform.

One legendary example of the state's appointment process gone awry was a 1997 case. Larry Walsh, a local Democratic official who is now Will County Executive, held the heaviest weighted vote to fill a vacancy in the state Senate. He chose himself. Walsh served in the Senate until 2005. The Tribune story describing the appointment began this way: "Will County Democratic Chairman Larry Walsh stands before the mirror and points to his reflection. The figure in the mirror smiles and thanks Walsh for his confidence, and the 43rd District has a new state senator."

During the past two years, nearly a dozen lawmakers have stepped down from their seats. Some sought new jobs. A few decided to retire. One was under criminal investigation. In each case, local political leaders got to choose their replacements. The handoff is rarely fair or transparent.

Some party organizations accept applications, interview candidates and conduct the appointment process in the open. Others only pretend to. Too often, the selection of a new lawmaker is a backroom transaction. Slaughter may well be a fine representative, but did anyone else have a chance to compete? Did local Democratic officials openly and transparently advertise the job opening and interview candidates? No.

The result is a General Assembly populated by so-called representatives who owe their jobs to party bosses, not to voters. No one should be surprised when they act like it.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
The Center for Creative Arts vocal department enters the world of Madame Flora in Menotti's opera production of The Medium.

The opera will be presented on Thursday Jan. 12, and Friday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m. in the Center for Creative Arts at Sandra Black Theater, 1301 Dallas Road. Admission is $5.
Facebook Live video posted on Jan. 3, 2017, shows the verbal and physical attack of a mentally disabled man. The Chicago Tribune edited this video to protect the victim's identity and for time. (Warning: Contains graphic content) (Chicago Tribune)

It didn't take long for the emails to arrive, as I expected.

"Chicago hate crime today against Trump!" said one. "Let's see your column justify that one."

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He was writing about the big news of the day, the "Facebook torture case," as some called it. The case involved the kidnapping and torture  streamed live on Facebook  of a white teenager with special needs, allegedly by two 18-year-old black men and two black sisters, 18 and 24.

The four suspects were each charged Thursday with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and a hate crime. One of the men also was charged with robbery, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and residential burglary, while the two sisters were charged with residential burglary, police said.

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Justify? Why would I want to "justify" such barbaric bullying?

Why would I want to excuse the barbarism that compelled the young people in that video to laugh lustily as they drank alcohol, smoked blunts, cut out a piece of their victim's scalp and forced him to drink from a toilet bowl?

I have no sympathy for the young idiots who can be heard spouting racial epithets and obscene remarks about President-elect Donald Trump and "white people" in general. They could not have produced a more effective video insult to hard-working, law-abiding black Americans if they tried.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago, is charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. (Chicago Police Department)

In that vein, I brace myself whenever a high-profile violent crime is committed by an African-American. I know I'm going to hear from a certain grouchy subset of trolls, energized in part by the notion that black people are getting away with too much or only getting ahead at the expense of white people.

As my Southern-born mother used to say, bless their hearts. You can't lift yourself up, she would say, by keeping somebody else down. Yet, once race enters a crime story, especially a brutally vicious crime like this one that crosses racial lines, so does an ugly brand of racial politics.

Shortly after the Facebook video spread on social media, for example, it was followed by social media comments  unsupported, it turned out  that the attackers belonged to the well-known anti-police-brutality movement known as Black Lives Matter.

The problem with that allegation is that Chicago police said there was no evidence to back it up and DeRay Mckesson, a leading Black Lives Matter organizer, said such violent acts never have been the organization's intention.

Yet the hashtag #BLMKidnapping continued to trend on Twitter, helped along by Glenn Beck, Twitter activists and some other voices for conventional conservatism and the "alt-right," a snazzy new-wave label for old-school white supremacy.

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After all, the more attention they put on Black Lives Matter, deserved or not, the less attention goes to the police conduct issues that the protest movement is trying to raise  ostensibly not to bash police but to improve policing.

Unfortunately, there are many ways to profit by feeding public anger, fears, resentments and suspicions. You can even win elections sometimes.

You can see evidence of today's racial divide in polls like the one taken in late November by YouGov and the liberal Huffington Post. It found that a commanding 84 percent of Hillary Clinton voters thought black people face "a lot of discrimination" in the United States today, compared with 22 percent of Trump voters.

With such stark differences in political attitudes, it is no wonder that a July Washington Post/ABC News poll found 63 percent of adults said race relations are in bad shape, up from 48 in a Pew Research survey last spring.

Police say an apartment on Chicago's West Side was the scene of a brutal attack captured on Facebook Live that led to hate crime charges being filed against four people. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

We would be making a mistake if we try to blame all of that on Barack Obama, the outgoing president told Jay Levine from Chicago's CBS affiliate in a White House interview. It is not that racial tensions have gotten worse, he said, but smartphones and the internet bring the ugliest episodes of different communities to a wider audience than ever before.

"I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive," he said. "It doesn't mean that all racial problems have gone away. It means that we have the capacity to get better."

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Sure, he's protecting his legacy, but he's got a point. Unfortunately too many people don't seem to want us to get better. They'd rather complain.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

cpage@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @cptime
The kidnapping and torture that was streamed live on Facebook has shocked the world. Four young people allegedly bound and gagged a mentally-disabled man then shared their heinous act with the world live. The alleged perpetrators have been caught and charged with kidnapping and, yes, hate crimes.

From the non-stop shooting on Chicago's South Side to police shooting unarmed kids to this. I guess we are getting our answer to the question asked so many years ago, "Can't we all just get along?"
A teenage girl died Thursday morning after she crashed a stolen car fleeing from police, Yorkville police said.

At about 9:06 a.m. Thursday, Yorkville police went to the 700 block of Arrowhead Drive for a report that a package had been stolen from the front porch of a residence, according to a news release from Yorkville Deputy Police Chief Larry Hilt.

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Officers located the car that they believe was involved with the theft, a 2003 Toyota Avalon that had been reported stolen to the department Jan. 2. Police then tried to pull the car over at Omaha and Homestead Drive, according to the news release.

The driver allegedly fled from the traffic stop at a "high rate speed" through the Heartland subdivision, losing control on the 600 block of Heartland Drive, according to the news release. The car struck a large tree in the parkway, ejecting the driver, who the release stated was pronounced dead at the scene.

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The driver was not identified in the press release.

The Kendall County Sheriff's Office assisted with the traffic crash report and the Illinois State Police assisted with traffic crash reconstruction, according to the release.

The release does not state whether there were any passengers or whether any packages were found in the vehicle. A voice mail left for a department spokesman was not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
The attorney defending a Geneva man against a string of charges, including trying to carjack a woman's SUV in Batavia in May, has raised doubts about his client's fitness to stand trial, according to court records.

Marvell Frye, 23, remains in Kane County Jail facing allegations he stole a jacket from a store, used a small wrench to assault a furniture store manager and accosted a woman in a Randall Road store parking lot in an attempt to take her Chevy Suburban all on May 20. He has not yet been arraigned on attempted vehicular hijacking, retail theft and assault charges.

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During an October hearing, Kane County Judge D.J. Tegeler ordered Frye to be evaluated to determine if he is dealing with any mental illness. Recently, attorney Robert Stroh told Tegeler he had doubts about Frye's fitness to assist in his defense, prompting Tegeler to request a Kane County Diagnostic Center psychologist to generate a report on Frye in anticipation of a fitness hearing.

Tegeler scheduled a Jan. 18 court date for an update on the new evaluation.

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Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
Holly Merrell and David Wright of the CSCC Wildlife Society assisted during the clean-up day in McMinn County CSCC Student Senate leaders assembled comfort kits for the American Red Cross. Pictured, from left to right: Student Senate Vice President Joseph Owens, Student Senate President Haley Hodgson, and Student Senate Secretary Rachael Goodson. The CSCC Wildlife Society was one of the groups from CSCC that assisted in clearing of trees and other debris after the tornado devastation in McMinn and Polk counties Previous Next

When Cleveland State Community College heard about the tornado devastation experienced by two of the counties in its five-county service area, the CSCC faculty and staff swung into action to assist with relief efforts. Campus leadership formed an emergency response team to create a plan for supporting communities in need of assistance.



Faculty, staff, and students assisted with clearing trees and tornado debris. One such group was the CSCC Wildlife Society, under the leadership of Robert Brewer, professor of biology, who volunteered in both McMinn and Polk Counties.



The student chapter of The Wildlife Society feels very strongly about service to our community, stated Mr. Brewer. This was an excellent opportunity for us to help our neighbors. Besides, who doesn't love to run a chainsaw?



I am really proud of my team, said David Wright, president of the CSCC Wildlife Society. We all felt the same way about thiswe are very passionate about helping others, and we are fortunate to be in the position where we could help, so we felt that need to pay it forward. We got it cleaned up and made a big difference in a short amount of time. Our main goal was to help as many people as we could, and I think we accomplished that goal.



Holly Merrell, secretary of the CSCC Wildlife Society, helped at both the Athens and Polk County clean-up days. Being from Polk County, I felt a call to action to help those that were affected. I had several friends that lost their homes or had acquired damage from the passing tornado. If I was in a position to help, I was going to do it.



I worked with the Monterey Lion's Club disaster response team both times. We all rolled up our sleeves, got to work, and started putting east Tennessee back together. There's really no other feeling quite like the feeling you get when you help someone in need.

The CSCC family also donated to the college foundations disaster relief fund and invested some of these funds into the purchase of items for 100 comfort kits which were donated to the Red Cross Emergency Shelter at Keith United Methodist Church in Athens and to People Helping People of Benton, after Student Senate leaders assembled the kits.



The campus community also made material and financial donations directly to local charities and participated in an Athens Chamber of Commerce outreach to two specific families impacted by the tornadoes. At CSCCs Holiday Concert and Fall Commencement, donations were collected from attendees and distributed to storm victims. The disaster relief committee gathered names of current students affected by the devastation and contacted them to determine needs and gift cards and other items were distributed to assist with those needs. Faculty, staff, and students also participated in the clean-up day sponsored by Keep McMinn Beautiful and assisted McMinn County tornado relief organizers with sorting donations.

Tornado victim Bryce Coffey said, I am very appreciative to Cleveland State for the gift card and clothing. It really helped me a lot. I was able to buy some more shoes and jackets with it. I only had one pair of shoes, so I just want to say thank you so much for doing that for me. It really meant a lot.
Aurora mayoral candidate Richard Irvin this week announced a plan for what he called problem-oriented policing  what he said would be a proactive approach to battling crime in the city.

Prompted by a murder on New Year's Eve, and then another three days later, Irvin said this is "the time to show a working understanding of how crime affects the city at the root level."

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Irvin is one of four candidates seeking the mayor's office in the Feb. 28 primary and April 4 general election. Also running are state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora; Alderman Michael Saville, 6th Ward; and Aurora Assistant Chief of Staff Rick Guzman. A number of write-in candidates are also running.

Irvin's proposal includes a call for recreating the Community Based Prosecutor position he once held with the Kane County State's Attorney's Office, focusing on Aurora crime prosecution, as well as hiring more police officers.

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"Whenever I hear of rising violence and a rising death toll in the city of Aurora, I take a deep and concerning breath, and recall a time when Aurora mourned close to 30 murders in a single year," he said. "Fortunately, those days are gone and we can never allow them to ever return."

Irvin's plan includes:

 Reinforcement and expansion of community-oriented policing. He wants more cops to walk a beat again, and to address "quality of life issues," such as keeping properties repaired.

 Growth in the number of community groups, with the mayor's office actively involved in forming and sustaining such groups, and getting aldermen involved in their wards doing the same thing.

 Recreating the Community Based Prosecutor unit working directly with police and community groups, and addressing quality of life issues "at the root level."

 Prosecuting as many crimes "as we possibly can" locally, in Aurora branch court, including drunken driving cases.

 Making local, state and federal partnerships for proactive policing, and getting the mayor's office involved with consistent meetings. Irvin said the city needs to be proactive in reducing the number of repeat criminals.

 Reinstating and expanding the peer jury system and other youth crime diversion programs. Irvin called this important to catch kids at a young age and "make them recognize what the law is."

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Irvin also said Aurora needs to buttress its police department by hiring more police officers.

"It's important to prioritize getting police back to their full staff positions," he said. "This is not an area where we can afford to cut costs."

Other mayoral candidates showed general agreement with Irvin, although they said the city's tight budget must be considered when talking about hiring more police officers.

"I support wholeheartedly getting the staff up to what it should be," said Saville.

But he pointed out that this year's budget was lean, and using more resources to hire more police could create budgetary problems elsewhere.

"I voted for 32 balanced budgets in a row, always based on the needs of the community," he said.

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Saville agreed that community-oriented policing has proved successful in lowering crime rates.

"The crime rate continues to tick down, but it's something we always have to be vigilant about," he said.

Guzman said "public safety must always be the top priority of the city." He said he has consistently supported expanding the community-oriented policing strategy across the entire police force.

Guzman also had a role in the city's Neighborhood Support Group Program, "which has already begun the work of engaging the mayor's office directly in forming and sustaining community groups."

He added that he supports the idea of putting more police on the streets, and adopting best practices in law enforcement, but that he "would need to see more details on costs and how Alderman Irvin would propose to fund some of the other proposals."

Chapa LaVia said she is concerned that Irvin's plan does not have "specific proposals" to address issues like gang violence and the heroin epidemic.

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"If there are not specific proposals then the plan is flawed at its foundation," she said. "I do applaud any effort to address issues of community safety, but I believe we need to tackle those two issues head on in order to bring about the kind of positive change we all hope to see."

slord@tribpub.com
Packages were found in a stolen car driven by an Illinois teen who died after she crashed fleeing from police, said Yorkville Deputy Police Chief Terry Klingel.

At about 9:06 a.m. Thursday, Yorkville police went to the 700 block of Arrowhead Drive for a report that a package had been stolen from the front porch of a residence, according to a news release from Yorkville Deputy Police Chief Larry Hilt.

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Officers located a 2003 Toyota Avalon matching the description of the suspect's car and tried to pull the car over at Omaha and Homestead Drive, police said. The Avalon had been reported stolen to the department Jan. 2, according to the news release.

The Avalon driver initially pulled over, but as the officer who initiated the stop got out of the squad car, the Avalon fled at a high rate of speed through the Heartland subdivision, Klingel said.

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The driver lost control of the car on the 600 block of Heartland Drive, where it struck a large tree in the parkway, ejecting the driver, according to the news release. The driver, a 17-year-old girl from Dolton, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

At this time, police are still reviewing videos and do not know the speed the car was traveling, Klingel said. It appears department protocol was followed during the incident, Klingel said.

"It wasn't a pursuit, per se," Klingel said. "She fled the scene of a traffic stop."

Police have not yet identified the girl. Her family has been notified, Klingel said.

More than one package was found in the car or around the scene of the crash, Klingel said.

The Kendall County Sheriff's Office assisted with the traffic crash report and the Illinois State Police assisted with traffic crash reconstruction, according to the release.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
Buffalo Grove recently retained its AAA long-term bond rating, the highest rating available from financial services firm Moodys Investor Services, although the group assigned a negative outlook. (Pioneer Press)

Buffalo Grove recently retained its AAA long-term bond rating, the highest rating available from financial services firm Moody's Investor Services, although the group assigned a negative outlook as uncertainty looms over state finances.

Moody's assigned the negative outlook to the village's AAA rating because of above average pension liabilities locally and the fact that village officials are dependent on economically sensitive revenue from state lawmakers in Springfield, according to a Buffalo Grove news release.

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Even though Buffalo Grove makes pension contributions above recommended amounts, the village's pension liabilities continue to grow, village officials said in the release.

Revenue could become an issue if state lawmakers decide to cut state funds distributed to the village, the release stated.

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The temporary spending plan that state lawmakers approved last year expired with the new year, rekindling the budget impasse in Springfield and debate over state finances between Republican and Democratic leaders in Springfield.

Despite future unknowns, Moody's reconfirmed the village's AAA bond rating because of the village's strong reserve fund and ability to balance budgets, as well as a low debt burden, village officials said in the release.

Moody's also noted the village's location and affluent demographics as reasons for the reconfirmation.

"This rating is the result of prudent financial and budget management, and a conservative approach to managing debt," Village President Beverly Sussman said in the release.
The Riverwalk office complex is pictured. PrimeSource Health Care Systems, which operated there, recently announced layoffs at the location. (Ronnie Wachter / Pioneer Press)

The landlord of the Riverwalk office complex in Buffalo Grove is looking for a new tenant after a health care company recently announced plans to close locally and layoff more than 150 employees, village officials said.

PrimeSource Health Care Systems was set to begin laying off 159 employees at its Buffalo Grove office, 2100 E. Lake Cook Road, suite 1100, on Dec. 31, according to a company filing with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

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Under Illinois law, companies with 75 or more full-time employees are required to notify the department of mass layoffs or closures 60 days in advance of the move.

Chris Stilling, community development director for Buffalo Grove, said village officials have reached out to the landlord of the Riverwalk office complex, which housed PrimeSource, about options for the vacant suite.

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"We've been in touch with the landlord, and they're working to fill that space," he said.

Requests for comment left at PrimeSource's office in Buffalo Grove and with PrimeSource representatives were not returned. According to the company's filing with the state, PrimeSource generally provided administrative management and general management consulting services.

The company's Facebook page said the business has provided on-site mobile health care and billing services since 1982. The mission of the company primarily was to provide services to people in long-term care facilities and retirement homes.

The PrimeSource page on Facebook also was last updated in February 2016.

At the Buffalo Grove Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce, Executive Director Roger Sosa said PrimeSource had not been a member there.

rwachter@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer
Authorities were searching for a man who robbed a bank in Darien late Friday morning, according to the FBI.

Chase Bank in the 7500 block of Cass Avenue was robbed at 11:11 a.m., according to Garrett Croon, spokesman for the FBI's Chicago office.

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The robbery was classified as non-takeover, meaning the robber and teller likely were the only ones aware the robbery was taking place.

Croon said the robber was described as a black man in his 20s, 5-foot-5 to 5-foot-7 tall, with a medium-to-heavy build. He was wearing sweatpants and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and had a blue face mask covering his mouth.

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Anyone with information should call the FBI's Chicago office at (312) 421-6700 or local police.

No more information was released.

Check back later for an update.
Officials of Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills Elementary District 181 said they are proceeding with plans to build a new Hinsdale Middle School with voter-approved bonds, despite a lawsuit challenging the validity of the November election.

Clarendon Hills residents Andrew and Kirsten Schmidt, Karen Weber, Bradford Tocher and Edward Corcoran have filed a lawsuit against District 181, claiming the Nov. 8 referendum asking voters to approve issuing $53.3 million in bonds was invalid. Andrew Schmidt is a former member of the District 181 School Board and Corcoran serves on the Hinsdale High School District 86 Board.

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Superintendent Don White said while processing documents after the election, the district's bond counsel realized the public notice of the referendum was published in DuPage newspapers too early.

The election code states that at least 10 days, but not more than 30 days, prior to a regular election, the election authority has to publish in a local newspaper notice of any referendums that will be on the ballot. The earliest the notice for the District 181 referendum could be published was Oct. 11, the lawsuit states.

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The notice was printed correctly in Cook County, White said, but the DuPage County Election Commission had the notice published in the Suburban Life and The Hinsdalean newspapers between Oct. 5 and Oct. 7, according to the lawsuit, filed Dec. 28 in DuPage County Court.

The same mistake in publishing the notice too soon was made with referendums for another school district, a park district and a library district.

District 181's attorneys are working with attorneys from those taxing bodies and the election commission to resolve the issue. The problem may be resolved legislatively or judicially, White said.

District 181 Board President Mridu Garg said the Schmidts and other residents are within their rights to file a lawsuit, but "the voters clearly supported building a new middle school."

The referendum passed by 54 percent, with about 13,600 votes cast.

"Right now we are continuing as is, because it is not a mistake on our part and we are not the only ones affected," Garg said, referring to the other taxing bodies whose notices were published prematurely.

The school board, however held off at its December meeting issuing any bonds, due to the publishing error, Garg said.

In an email, Schmidt said he filed the lawsuit to ensure the court hears both sides of the case, instead of simply the district's attorneys asking a judge to rule the election results can stand. He and the other plaintiffs are asking that the election code be enforced as written, Schmidt wrote.

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The next court date for the case is Feb. 27.

kfornek@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @kfdoings
An unidentified man was shot to death in his car Thursday night in an Evergreen Park parking lot, police said in a news release.

The shooting occurred at 6:45 p.m. in the parking lot of Walgreens, 8700 S. Kedzie Ave. Witnesses told police the victim was sitting in his car when shots were fired. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. His identity is being withheld until his family is notified.

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Three men ran from the scene following the shooting, witnesses told police.

The South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force and the Evergreen Park police are investigating.

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Bob Rakow is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Forest Preserve District of Will County officials laid out a road map for the coming year that focuses on enhancing visitor services, expanding smaller programs and offering online permits.

Last year, in the midst of an administrative reorganization and downsizing, the district eliminated several larger-scale events  such as Cruise the Creek and Ride the Rock  to focus on smaller programs at more preserves.

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The Forest Preserve District will continue to expand and experiment with local events, such as Food Truck Fridays, Music in the Moonlight Concert Series and a Wellness Walking Series.

It also will continue to shift educational programs and amenities from the Environmental Learning Center in Mokena to the larger, more accessible Four Rivers Environmental Center in Channahon. When its budget allows, camping facilities also will be moved to Channahon, and the Mokena facility will be closed.

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Winter recreational programs also will be moved from Monee Reservoir in Monee Township to Plum Creek Nature Center in Crete Township, and the concession stand in Monee will be closed from Jan. 15 to Feb. 28.

The new plan also includes:

Major restoration projects at Prairie Bluff Preserve in Crest Hill and Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve in Lockport with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Messenger Woods Nature Preserve in Homer Glen, Thorn Creek Headwaters Preserve in University Park/Monee Township, Kankakee Sands Preserve in Custer Township and Hadley Valley Preserve in Homer Glen and Joliet.

A new regional trail connection linking the DuPage River Trail and Rock Run Greenway Trail in Shorewood and Joliet, and several smaller preserve enhancement projects at Hammel Woods  DuPage River Access, Veterans Woods and the Hammel Woods Dog Park.

Water Ways, a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and Illinois Humanities, at Four Rivers from Jan. 28 to March 11.

A new website that offers online program registration and permitting for dog parks, picnics and camping.

Improving the parking lot and roadway at Hickory Creek Barrens Nature Preserve in New Lenox, the parking lots at Lower Rock Run Preserve in Joliet, and Veterans Woods in Romeoville, and segments of the DuPage River Trail in Hammel Woods in Shorewood and the Lake Renwick Bikeway in Plainfield.

Adding one or two additional part-time community service officers in direct response to the increased number of dog parks and permit holders.

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Launching a new financial software system to improve tracking and reporting.

Forest Preserve District officials also discussed its legislative agenda for the coming year and hope to keep alive state grant opportunities, as well as efforts to transfer 135 acres of open space on the site of the shuttered Joliet Correctional Center, 1125 Collins St., to the district.

The district received one of three grants it was promised last year  $400,000 to improve the Plum Valley Preserve  and officials hope the state will release two others, to install a bikeway along the DuPage River and replace the longhouse at Isle ala Cache in Romeoville.

The Collins Street Task Force was created several years ago to repurpose the buildings and grounds when the correctional center was closed by the state in 2002.

Over the years, the group discussed a lot of good ideas, including recreational uses, said Forest Preserve District Commissioner Herbert Brooks Jr., D-Joliet, a task force member.

Ballfields, a park and historical tours have all been talked about, but transferring the 135 acres on the east side of Collins Street to the Forest Preserve District might require dealing with a lot of red tape, he said.

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Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

With nothing happening due to the political stalemate in Springfield, Brooks said he does not expect action on a possible transfer soon.

According to Ralph Schultz, the district's chief operating officer, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency first has to ensure the site is not contaminated, then it would require legislation to transfer the ownership to the Forest Preserve District from the Illinois Department of Corrections.

"It's unique property, with a lot of potential," said Brent Hassert, the district's legislative consultant. "It has some problems, but we can work through that."

District officials also recommended that they renew their contract with Hassert for one more year, at a rate of $3,000 per month.

They decided not to renew their contract with federal lobbyists Smith, Dawson and Andrews because there are no federal legislative initiatives in the works. The contract expires at the end of February.

The full Board of Commissioners will take formal action on both the administrative plan and legislative agenda at its Thursday meeting.

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slafferty@tribpub.com
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My name is Ethan Vandehei and I spent the last two years of my life living in the West African country of Ghana. In May of 2014 I graduated from East Hamilton High School located in Ooltewah, Tennessee. Just four months afterwards I went on a voluntary mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to Ghana. I was one of many young men, ages 18-26, to live and serve in the country for a period of two years.As missionaries we lived among the general population of Ghana. When I first arrived to the country I was considered a greenie by all the senior missionaries.Upon arrival we would meet with our mission president, a man who would later play a very father like role in my life. The mission president then assigned me to a senior missionary or my trainer who would teach me the way to be a missionary and the culture of Ghana. My trainer was named Elder Thapeli and had come from South Africa to serve the Lord in Ghana.We were located in an area called Kasoa which was just outside the capital city of Accra. Our days consisted of waking up every morning at 6:30 and having our personal and companionship scripture study. After which we would spend the day out teaching people the Gospel of Jesus Christ, going from home to home to share our message.I would later be moved to many different parts of Ghana to serve with many other loved companions. One area which stuck out to me particularly was an area just inside the capital of Ghana, Accra. We lived not too far from a well known part of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah Circle. On June 3 of 2015 we experienced some torrential rainfall which led to a flash flood and the loss of many homes and lives. There I was as an 18 year old boy and I was stuck right in the middle of it all.When it first started to rain we thought nothing of it. We were eager to get indoors and catch up ona bit of sleep. At the time I was living with another missionary, Elder Bowring. That night unfolded into something we would have never imagined to be possible.We lived close to the Bishop, ecclesiastical leader of our congregation, who at that moment was at the church, away from his family. The rain seemed to fall with a vengeance showing no signs of stopping. After a couple hours of this we began to be worried about the possibility of a flood. Around 8:00 that night we gave the Bishop a call to check up on his family and make sure everything and everyone was fine. He assured us that all was well and we had nothing to worry about. About an hour later he gave us a call and said that things weren't fine and the water had gotten so high in the area around his house that he couldn't get home. He asked us if we could go and check on his family for him and we agreed.We left our apartment and it quickly became apparent that we were way over our heads. We continued down the street we lived on fighting the rising water. The water quickly went from just under our ankles, to our knees and up to our waist. Every inch closer we got to the family the water matched by getting that much deeper. We maneuvered up the road relying on the almost constant flashes of lighting to light our way. When we made it up to the main road we were surprised to find that a massive rapid, spotted with garbage, car parts and all kinds of misc stuff, had replaced the road. At this point the water had reached up to our chests and things were not looking too good.Once I worked up the nerve to step out into the rapid I was pleading with the Lord to spare my life. I decided it might be best to cover my bases and began asking for forgiveness from all my sins and mistakes. I could almost picture myself floating away lifeless never to be seen again. Miraculously we made it up the rapid and off on to the road the Bishop's family lived on. The bishop's family consisted of his wife, Love, and 2 children, Richson 2 years old and Precious who was 1 month old.After we made the turn off, walking was no longer an option and it turned into a full out swim. We swam up the road to the compound the Bishops family was living in. The water had entirely submerged all the surrounding houses and was probably at a depth of around 9 feet. Love, the mom, was standing on a pyramid like structures made out of stairs with Precious strapped on her back and Richson on her hip. After some prayers and time to see what the water was gonna do we decided we had to get the family out. That was gonna be hard since none of them could swim.We spotted a trash can, I swam out and brought it back in. When we had it we dried it out the best we could and then placed the crying baby inside. We methodically swam up the road, I would lead and figure out the best path while Elder Bowring would stay back and tread water with the baby. After at least an hour of this and many prayers we made it somewhere safe and left the baby with a close family friend. At that time we heard a large explosion and looked back just in time to see a large orange mushroom cloud rising up not to far away from us. A nearby gas station had ignited and blown up claiming the lives of many.After a moment of disbelief we headed back to reunite Love with her daughter Precious. We got back and placed the mom on a bookshelf and repeated the process to all her family was once again safe, dry, and together. The picture below was taken on the 1 year anniversary of the flood.The story of the flood is only one of many great stories I was able to witness and be part of in those two years. After the flood I continued on to serve in 4 different areas with many more amazing people who taught me so much. Perhaps the greatest thing I gained over those two years in Ghana is the knowledge of a loving Savior, Jesus Christ, who is mindful of each and everyone of us. That is the message I spent two years sharing with the people of Ghana and that is the message we strive to share with the world as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Well, it's that time of year when we make our resolutions for the upcoming year and march forward trying to keep those promises we have made.

In past years, my resolutions haven't been particularly unusual: to lose weight, read the Bible more or spend more time at the gym.

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Usually, by the time I get bogged down trying to decipher Leviticus or standing on a scale and wondering if the Earth's gravitational pull has changed, I watch those resolutions fade away.

But this year, I'm pleased to say I'm seeing a 2016 resolution coming to fruition.

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I resolved to stretch myself professionally, pull myself out of my comfort zone and try something new.

For the last 30 years I've identified myself as a "print" journalist. When I went through college and graduate school, it was an "either or" proposition. Either you were a "print" reporter or you were a broadcast "journalist."

And the two endeavors rarely met.

Last year, I decided to delve into a new undertaking. I decided to write a book and to create a series of broadcasts on a murder case I covered when I was a young reporter.

This resolution has made 2016 one of the most professionally fulfilling of my life.

On Monday, my broadcasts will become available to the public.

Folks who are interested in listening to the broadcasts can go to Suspectconvictions.com and subscribe. The subscription is free and the broadcast can be downloaded to your cellphone. This is a project I did in partnership with WVIK, the NPR affiliate in Rock Island.

It's a riveting story about a 9-year-old girl who was kidnapped and slain in 1990 and a man who is accused of the crime. After 26 years in prison, he will be retried in May. There are allegations of police misconduct and hidden evidence.

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We explore those issues and more.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Gathering information for this series has been an adventure. And I assure you that it will be an adventure for those who listen.

I've found myself interviewing homeless men under overpasses in New Orleans, talking to prison guards in Mississippi, interviewing a secret police informant in Iowa and talking to a grieving mother in Illinois and also a number of hardened criminals who have served time.

I fulfilled my 2016 resolution. I stretched myself. Instead of "just" working as a newspaper reporter, I did broadcasting as well. And I'm writing a book.

Instead of focusing only on the ins and outs of the Illinois statehouse, I examined a personal tragedy and talked to folks I otherwise would never encounter.

I stretched myself.

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And my New Year's wish for you is this: stretch yourself, try something new. You'll find it will make for a rewarding 2017.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist and works as a freelance reporter in the Springfield area.
Is it proper for the United States to phase out cash? In the wake of the Donald Trump upcoming presidency and the resurgence of rhetoric vis-a-vis illegal immigrants, whose number is about 11 million, a concern is growing regarding their exploitation by some business firms through paying them in cash, usually below the minimum wage rate.

Cash payments and other concealed business activities pave the way for tax evasion and the ensuing costly consequences for the U.S. government, namely, the loss of tax revenue. According to the IRS, the "tax gap" is defined as "the difference between total amounts of taxes owed to the government versus the amount they actually receive" that is estimated to be about $500 billion annually. I believe only a minor share of this amount is related to illegal hiring and sending money to their home countries by illegal immigrants. The lion's share of it is related to other illegal activities like money laundering, drug trades, and the use of cash to finance terrorism.

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As of October 20, 2016, there was approximately $1,500 billion currency in circulation, according Federal Reserve data. More than 84 percent of this amount is in the form of $100 and $50 bills, making transportation of cash less toilsome for criminal purposes. An inquiring question is who holds this cash and why? It seems half of it is held outside of the U.S. to be used mostly for illegal transactions, and the other half is held domestically. While there are no accurate measures of the extent of the unlawful transactions taking place, the evidence shows that they are indeed growing and so are the ensuing costs for the U.S. economy. Some economists suggest that phasing out cash, especially $100 and $50 bills, can serve as a solution to the problems arising from cash transactions and the illegal activities facilitated by cash.

One may wonder why people in the U.S. still insist on using cash despite the availability of alternative means of payment that are better and more efficient such as, credit cards, debit cards, and online payments. And, why should the government, which has a monopoly on the production of fiat money, hesitate to phase out cash? The best answer is the perks that come with the use of cash such as convenience, real-time clearance, protection of privacy, and of course the lucrative unlawful trades. In addition, massive profit is gained by the government from its monopoly on the production and issuance of money known as seigniorage.

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Reliable data show that foreign demand for the U.S. dollar currency is not only strong but has been on the rise since the great recession of 2008, with the bulk of it being for large denominations of $100 and $50 that are believed to be used mainly for global money laundering and other criminal activities. The U.S. government can effectively curtail such criminal enterprises by gradually discontinuing the production of cash, as suggested by some economists. As cash is being phased out, government can establish a universal debit card payment system to facilitate transactions. Terminating cash is of course a hugely disruptive and unpopular undertaking. However, if doing this can help to undermine illicit activities and boost government tax collection, it will be a well worthwhile endeavor. Some other countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have tried this approach with considerable success.

Cash is the popular means of transactions in the underground economy in the U.S. that includes a wide variety of activities that are deliberately concealed for tax evasion purposes including but not limited to illegal drug trade, extortion, bribery, human trafficking, and money laundering. The size of the underground economy in the U.S. is not that large in comparison to other advanced nations. It is reported as 7.1 percent of the gross domestic product. The important concern is that it has been growing, especially throughout the post-recession years due to growing income inequality and its resulting economic polarization. What's more, some ordinary law-abiding citizens use cash for tax evasion opportunities because no one wants to pay taxes, and every possible opportunity to minimize or shift tax liabilities are utilized. In addition to the tax gap, tax evasion leads to horizontal equity, implying that if some people succeed in not paying their due share of taxes, others have to pay more.

As desirable as it sounds, the complete elimination of untraceable transactions is impossible; however, if the phasing out of cash reduces their frequency, it is a worthwhile achievement, according to many economists, including Kenneth Rogoff, the author of a newly released book "The Curse of Cash." The plan he has suggested is a pioneering one that may revolutionize the payment system of the U.S. while reducing illegal trades. He believes such a plan should be guided by a few important principles. First, lower illegal transactions by gradually phasing out large bills but leave small denominations in circulation for an extended period of time, provide easy access to a universal debit card system for all including unbanked and underbanked people, and finally protect the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

Although rooting out currency sounds like an inconceivable proposition, experts believe it can be done in anticipation of the many collateral benefits as outlined above. It may not lead to the utter elimination of all illegal activities, but it will create a fatal setback for those who use money for criminal doings or financing terrorism. Also, doing this will discourage companies from hiring illegal workers, an issue that many politicians are preoccupied with nowadays. In addition, government may benefit immensely if unreported transactions are diminished by enabling it to collect more taxes. However, it is doubtful, that politicians and other people who have financial stakes in keeping the status quo afloat would go along with such a radical plan.

So, with all due respect to George Bernard Shaw who once said "Lack of money is the root of all evil," as this commentary suggests, too much money can be the source of many criminal activities and this will continue to be the case for now.

Reza Varjavand is an associate professor of economics and finance at the Graham School of management at Saint Xavier University.
Kane County Sheriff Donald Kramer and the office's civilian staff received thanks for their donations to Toys for Tots, which helped give Christmas presents to 11,000 children in the county this past season. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

The sight of U.S. Marines dressed in their finest coming to thank Kane County sheriff's deputies and administrative staff for a donation of eight boxes of toys to Toys for Tots was a humbling experience for Amy Blacksmith and Carolyn Bjornson.

"It was awesome," Blacksmith said. "We just are appreciative for their service and what they do" for Toys for Tots.

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Blacksmith and Bjornson, along with Sheriff Donald Kramer, were the driving forces behind the sheriff's office donation of eight boxes of toys during the Toys for Tots 2016 campaign.

The sheriff's civilian staff raised $600 in a "jeans day" fund  where anyone who wears jeans during the week pays $1  which was matched by a contribution from Kramer. Staff was able to buy $1,400 worth of toys to donate, said Blacksmith.

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Fred Zimmerman, an Elgin Marine Corp League volunteer who coordinates Toys for Tots in Kane County, said the office dramatically increased the amount of donations over the last three years. He credited Kramer with making "a big push" for donations.

Zimmerman and Patrick Kackert, a Marine Reservist and coordinator for the county, recognized the sheriff's office's donations with a plaque at a short ceremony Thursday.

"I am here to say thank you very much for your help," said Zimmerman, who presented Kramer and the civilian staff with a plaque.

Toys for Tots in Kane County collected more than 27,500 toys to give to 11,000 children, Kackert said. The North Aurora businessman is a volunteer coordinator who said his wife, Toni, and volunteer Dorothy Holland are the backbones of the 2016 toy campaign.

The nonprofit, which the U.S. Marines founded in 1947, helped 41 agencies at Christmas with toy donations, Kackert said. The number of agencies increased from 28 in 2015, he said.

Some of the agencies include the Community Crisis Center in Elgin, Two Rivers Head Start in Carpentersville, Aurora Township Youth Services in Aurora and Hope for 2morrow in Aurora.

The sheriff's office was among many in the community that gave to Toys for Tots, Kackert said. Pipe Fitters Local 597, based in Aurora, donated space in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse to house the toys, he said. And GAT Guns in East Dundee raised $31,000, he said. The monetary donation helped the nonprofit buy toys for older children, he said.

Toys for Tots Kane County had over 400 drop-off sites and the sheriff's office has continually increased its donations, Zimmerman said.

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"I was more than happy to help," Kramer said. "We try to do as much as we can. We do the best we can."

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Two west suburban men were arrested and charged with heroin possession, authorities said.

Vincent A. Incaprera, 23, of the 1000 block of West Kane Street in South Elgin, is charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a class 1 felony, and three counts of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, each a class 4 felony, according to a Kane County state's attorney's news release.

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Antoni S. Wojtaszczyk, 36, of the first block of Portsmith Court in Algonquin, is charged with two counts of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, each a class 4 felony, the release stated.

Kane County sheriff's deputies, with assistance from South Elgin police and the Drug Enforcement Administration, served a warrant at Incaprera's residence on Wednesday in South Elgin, the release stated. A search revealed more than 6 grams of heroin, 0.27 grams of cocaine and 12 hydrocodone pills, it stated.

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The heroin and cocaine were packaged in multiple individual plastic bags. During the search, detectives learned that Wojtaszczyk, who was present, also was in possession of illegal drugs, and that Incaprera and Wojtaszczyk had just returned from Chicago, where they had purchased heroin, authorities said. A search of Wojtaszczyk revealed 1.75 grams of heroin and nine morphine pills on his person, according to the release.

Incaprera and Wojtaszczyk both appeared in Kane County bond court Friday.

Incaprera's bail was set at $50,000 with 10 percent ($5,000) to apply for bond, authorities said. Incaprera remains in the Kane County Jail. His next court appearance is set for Jan. 13 before Associate Judge Linda Abrahamson.

Wojtaszczyk's bail was set at $15,000 with 10 percent ($1,500) to apply for bond, authorities said. His next court appearance is set for Jan. 18 in Circuit Judge James C. Hallock's courtroom. Wojtaszczyk was released on his promise to appear in court.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Evanston police are on the hunt for a person believed to have attempted Thursday to abduct a 16-year-old girl, the police announced in a news release issued Friday.

According to police, the teen  who lives in Chicago  was walking in the 1500 block of Howard Street in Evanston around 9:45 p.m. Thursday when she was approached by a man. Police said the would-be abductor tried to cover the girl's face with a white rag or towel, but she was able to run away.

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Evanston police Commander Joseph Dugan said no words were exchanged between the suspect and the victim.

"He walked up to her and put a rag or cloth or whatever he had over her mouth and she was able to get away," he said.

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Dugan said the girl was not injured.

The victim was on her way home when the incident occurred, Dugan said. She was traveling on the Evanston side of Howard Street, which separates Evanston and Chicago, when the man approached her unannounced, Dugan said.

The man is described as being white, in his 50s, short and weighing about 130 pounds, according to the news release. He was wearing a brown hat and vest.

According to police, the man was last seen on foot going northbound through an Evanston parking lot in the 1300 block of Howard Street.

Dugan said detectives were returning to the scene Friday to canvass the area and to see if there were any witnesses. He said the victim will be interviewed again during the investigation.

"She was obviously upset last night so they'll speak to her again," he said.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Evanston Police Department Juvenile Division at (847) 866-5050 or utilize Text-A-Tip by CRIMES (274637) and entering EPDTIP in the message line, followed by the tip information.
North Shore School District 112 won't be creating the dual language academies at Red Oak and Oak Terrace schools in 2017 that were part of the district's now-aborted plan to close four schools.

Some parents Jan. 3 implored the board to move ahead with plans to merge the Spanish-English immersion programs now at Red Oak and Sherwood elementary schools, saying the change offered many benefits with minimal disruption.

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Currently, Red Oak and Sherwood elementary schools both offer dual language and English-only instruction. The split between programs has resulted in uneven class sizes and instances where small cohorts of students remain together from kindergarten through fifth grade.

Under the school closing plan put on hold Jan. 3, dual language students from the Red Oak and Sherwood areas would have attended Red Oak, while monolingual students would have attended Sherwood. The two schools are located on the same property in southwest Highland Park.

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Oak Terrace School in Highwood also would have become a dual language academy with monolingual students attending Wayne Thomas in north Highland Park.

The dual language program mixes Spanish-speaking children learning English with English-speaking children whose parents have chosen to give them a solid foundation in Spanish from an early age.

"Dual language academies would allow the program to continue to grow and flourish," said Missy Feldman, a dual language parent at Oak Terrace School. "Every dual language teacher I have spoken with wants this to happen. Yes, it is unfair to the west side of the district to have to change without anybody else changing. But their school boundaries won't change."

The school board opted Jan. 3 not to merge the Red Oak and Sherwood programs in 2017 after administrators called attention to a few of the complexities of moving students in isolation of school closings. Administrators also pointed out there is limited time to survey parents of monolingual students, who would be asked to make additional transitions.

Assistant Superintendent Monica Schroeder said monolingual students at Red Oak might end up attending two elementary and two middle schools since Elm Place Middle School is set to remain open next year.

"Potentially, you might be asking monolingual students at Red Oak to transfer to Sherwood, and then transfer to Elm Place and then transfer to Edgewood depending on what happens to Elm Place in the next three years," Schroeder said.

Board member Eric Ephraim said the district should implement the academies in the context of a well thought out plan.

"I have been in favor of dual language academies since before it was popular, I think," Ephraim said. "But we need to have a plan. We can't just fly by the seat of our pants."

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Parents advocating for the academies Jan. 3 said the mergers would even out the inequities in class size, eliminate one-section scenarios and provide teachers more time to collaborate with colleagues. Several also pointed out that Red Oak would be able to implement full-day kindergarten if converted to a dual language academy. Full-day kindergarten already is offered at Oak Terrace.

Jennifer Ferrari, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, explained the district likely would be able to allocate some of its federal Title I funding to the extra half-day of kindergarten at Red Oak because the school would serve a higher concentration of low-income students as an all-dual-language school.

Up until mid December, District 112 planned to close Ravinia and Lincoln elementary schools, Elm Place Middle School and the Green Bay Early Childhood Center for the 2017-18 school year. However, the school board put the plan on hold following the abrupt announcement that Superintendent Michael Bregy was leaving Jan. 27.

kberkowitz@pioneerlocal.com

@KarenABerkowitz
A landmark nomination for this John Van Bergen home in Highland Park will be voted on later this month. (Karen Berkowitz / Pioneer Press)

A petition to landmark a John Van Bergen-designed home over the owners' objections is headed to the Highland Park City Council Jan. 23 mired in even more controversy than when it was first introduced last May.

The latest twist in the year-long saga came last month when Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering reprimanded former Preservation Commissioner Lisa Temkin for showing "poor judgment" when she actively participated in the commission's review of the landmark nomination for the home at 1570 Hawthorne Lane.

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Temkin had submitted the original application for landmark consideration before architect Christopher Enck became the applicant of record.

In a written censure, Rotering noted the new application was not amended to remove statements by Temkin. She criticized the commissioner for playing an active role in the review that included making the motions for preliminary landmark protections and authorizing staff to prepare findings in support of the nomination.

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Temkin issued a strongly-worded rebuttal to the censure, which she said was unfounded and a threat to the integrity and independence of the commission.

She said the city's Historic Preservation Ordinance specifically authorizes commissioners to make recommendations regarding properties to be landmarked. She went on to note that most local landmarks in Highland Park were nominated and voted upon by preservation commissioners serving at the time.

The preservation panel voted 6-0 Nov. 10 to recommend landmark status. The panel found the home met four landmark criteria and possessed sufficient integrity of design to make it worthy of preservation.

City Manager Ghida Neukirch said Tuesday she expects the city council will vote on the nomination Jan. 23, rather than send the matter back to the Historic Preservation Commission for reconsideration.

"We've received more than one dozen emails from individuals urging the council not to landmark the property," Neukirch said.

She said people have expressed concern that anyone could apply to landmark any property in the community without the owners' consent.

"Many have also commented on the condition of this property, and offered their opinion that it should not be landmarked," Neukirch said.

The controversy centers on a Prairie-style home built around 1925 that Bill and Karyn Silverstein purchased for $682,500 in September 2015. The couple plans to raze the dwelling and expand the rear yard of their residence.

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In hearings last year, preservation advocates likened Van Bergen's stature and influence in Highland Park to that of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park.

Shortly after purchasing the property, the Silversteins applied for a demolition permit. That triggered a review by the Historic Preservation Commission, which imposed a one-year moratorium on the demolition.

In May, Temkin submitted an application for landmark consideration. However, she withdrew her application after she was advised that as an applicant appearing before her own commission she would not be able to vote. Enck stepped in as the applicant of record.

At a hearing in July, attorneys for the Silversteins argued that Temkin should recuse herself because of her connection to the nomination and because she is the owner of a Van Bergen residence that was singled out in the nomination for its similarity to the home on Hawthorne Lane.

City Attorney Hart Passman advised at the time that Temkin could participate because she was no longer the applicant. Her ownership of a Van Bergen residence did not require her recusal, he said.

The mayor's letter censuring Temkin acknowledged her actions were not illegal.

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"Nevertheless, I find your conduct to be in poor judgment, and that by taking such an active role in the proceedings, you have tainted the outcome of the commission's deliberation," Rotering wrote. "The landmarking process must be approached with seriousness and respect, particularly when it is pursued over the objections of the property owner."

Temkin said the notion she would benefit from the decision because she owns a house by the same architect is not true.

"The idea that I would financially benefit is laughable and insulting," she said.

The Historic Preservation Commission will reconvene next week with three new commissioners taking the places of Temkin, Gerald Fradin and Chair Barbara Thomas. Temkin and Fradin had completed their second terms and were ineligible for reappointment.

Last month, the mayor appointed Rhoda Pierce to a four-year term on the commission and a two-year term as its chairperson. Also appointed to the commission were Sherri Bernstein and Jean Sogin, who previously served on the Historic Preservation Commission, both as a member and chairperson.

kberkowitz@pioneerlocal.com

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@KarenABerkowitz
Pi Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. will host a screening of "Hidden Figures" at 4 p.m. on Jan. 15 at Carmike East Ridge 18, 5080 South Terrace in Chattanooga.

Officials said, "The upcoming 'Hidden Figures' Movie is based on three members of Alpha Kappa Alpha. As members celebrate our Founders Day of Jan. 15, 1908 over the Martin Luther King Holiday weekend, we will gather for a special viewing of the movie. The film tells the stories of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three black female mathematicians who began working for NASA in the 1950's and charted the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit during the Space Race from NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

during segregation. Before the title of computers came to refer to the laptops, desktops, and calculators that we use today, these women, who did the math by hand were known as 'computers.'"
Another outburst on Friday punctuated an ongoing mental fitness hearing for a California man convicted of making terrorism threats in Lake County.

Daniel Pederson, of Calabasas, Cal., was convicted in May of making a terrorism threat, a felony that carries a potential sentence of 6 to 30 years in prison, after he threatened in 2014 to "light up" the Lake County Courthouse, according to authorities.

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But he is currently the subject of a hearing to determine if he is fit for sentencing after spending several months in the secure Elgin Mental Health Center for evaluation and treatment.

The fitness hearing began in mid-December, but was abruptly halted after Pederson began loudly making obscenity-laced statements about a "circle of collusion" and corruption in the Lake County court system. He also repeatedly has criticized his defense attorneys.

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On Friday, Pederson sat relatively quietly for most of the morning as a psychiatrist was testifying, but just before noon, as the hearing was winding down for the day, Pederson began talking loudly from the defense table, claiming that the testimony of the psychiatrist was inaccurate.

He also said "these two need to go," referring to the public defenders representing him.

When Judge Mark Levitt asked Pederson to be quite so "we can continue," Pederson responded "continue raping me?"

Because testimony from the psychiatrist, Dr. Mirella Susnjar, who works at the Elgin facility, had been completed, Levitt continued the hearing to next Monday afternoon for testimony from a final witness.

Prior to Pederson's comments, Susnjar had testified under questioning by Assistant State's Attorney Ben Dillon that she believed, based on evaluations by his fitness team, that Pederson was able to understand the proceedings and players in his case and was fit for court at his sentencing hearing.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Keith Grant, Susnjar testified that Pederson was prone to "inappropriate" comments and actions, and had at least borderline personality disorders.

Grant said Pederson's outbursts in court demonstrated that even if he understands what going on, he is unable to control himself to the extent that he can assist in his defense, one of the factors used to determine fitness under Illinois statute.

The case against Pederson began on Sept. 12, 2014, when prosecutors said Pederson called the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services and said he was going to "kill people" and "light up" the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan, as well as the Gurnee Police Department.

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Authorities said they traced the call to Pederson, is a former Lake County resident.

Pederson has other active cases in Lake County as well. He has previous indictments for violating an order of protection in Vernon Hills in 2013, and five counts of telephone harassment involving a threat to kill in 2012 in Round Lake. He was extradited to Lake County from California in October 2014 due to the telephone threats to Gurnee police and the county.

Initially, Pederson had agreed to a plea deal, but then withdrew his guilty plea and was convicted of making a terrorism threat in a trial before Levitt last year.

Pederson is currently being held in Lake County Jail without bail until his hearing is completed, under Levitt's direction.

jrnewton@tribpub.com

Twitter @jimnewton5
A man described by authorities as the main target of a large-scale operation against cartel-fueled drug dealing by a street gang in the Waukegan area was sentenced to 32 years in prison Friday by a Lake County Circuit Court judge.

Alfonso Gallardo of Waukegan, who officials said was known as "Grande," was convicted in late 2015 of calculated drug conspiracy, street gang drug conspiracy, criminal drug conspiracy and possession of cocaine with intent to deliver.

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He was one of 18 men charged in the 2013 operation.

Gallardo, 48, was sentenced by Judge George Strickland Friday to 24 years in prison, to be served at 75 percent, on the conspiracy charges. He was also sentenced to eight years on the cocaine charge to be served at 50 percent, according to Assistant State's Attorney Rod Drobinski. The sentences will run consecutively.

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"Gallardo was essentially playing the middleman between a cartel and the Latin Kings street gang, operating a complicated and significant distribution system in Waukegan," Drobinski said Friday. "This sentence ensures the community will be protected from him for the foreseeable future."

Drobinski credited the Waukegan Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency with heading up the operation, in which 18 men were charged. Several have been convicted, while three remain at large and were believed to have fled to Mexico, Drobinski said.

Authorities said Gallardo is the first defendant in Lake County to be convicted by a jury on the charge of street gang criminal drug conspiracy.

According to prosecutors and investigators, Gallardo obtained large quantities of cocaine from a source in California. Officials said the drugs originated from Mexico and were distributed locally by Waukegan street gang members.

Waukegan Police said after the operation was made public that the arrests in 2013 struck a major blow to cocaine sales in the city and the surrounding area.

Gallardo had remained in Lake County Jail on $1 million bail since his arrest, and after his conviction, his bond was revoked. He will now be transferred to prison following any post-sentencing motions and will receive credit toward his sentence for his time served in jail.

jrnewton@tribpub.com

Twitter @jimnewton5
The owner of the Zion Dairy Queen allegedly called Deianeira Ford racial slurs in front of her children on Jan. 5, 2017. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune) (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune)

A Dairy Queen franchise store owner in Zion allegedly called a woman racial slurs in front of her children Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, sparking calls for a weekend protest of the fast-food restaurant.

The incident gained traction on social media after the woman, Deianeira Ford of Tinley Park, posted an account on Facebook, describing her version of the verbal exchange and subsequent interaction with police.

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Ford, who is biracial, said she did not receive her full order and asked for a refund after she was told she could not get the rest of it. The 21-year-old Ford alleged that when she asked for a refund of her $5, the store owner, who is white, called her and her children racial slurs.

In a report the Zion Police Department released Thursday, the responding officer wrote that the store owner, who corporate officials later identified as a franchisee, "proudly admitted" to calling the woman and her children the racial slurs and said he "would be happy go to jail over the issue."

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The store owner denied the accusations when contacted Thursday afternoon by the News-Sun.

"It's 99 percent lies. This is blown so far out of proportion it's stupid. Her order was confusing, and I told her, 'Here's your money back,'" he said. "This is so far blown out of proportion."

The experience was "embarrassing, and it was in front of my children," Ford said in a telephone interview. "That was the hardest thing. He did it with my children in the back."

On Facebook, Ford wrote that at one point her daughter asked what the racial slur meant. Her post also said that when she asked the owner his name, he first said it was "'Bill Clinton'" and then said, "'better yet, I'm Donald Trump,' and told me to go back where I came from."

Deianeira Ford, 21, left, of Tinley Park, poses Friday, Jan. 6, 2017 with Meisha Martin, of Zion, in Martin's car. Martin is the grandmother of Ford's children. Ford says the owner of a Dairy Queen business in Zion insulted her with racial slurs. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)

According to the police report, the officer responded to the restaurant at 1215 21st St., near the intersection of Sheridan Road and Route 173, at 11:31 a.m. Wednesday and found Ford "visibly upset and crying." Ford told the officer the complaint stemmed from an order placed at the drive-through window, according to the report.

After hearing Ford's story, the officer approached the man, who appeared "angry and was pacing continually back and forth 180 degrees around me. He was also slightly shaking."

"I asked him what happened with Ford and told him she was so disturbed by his behavior she was willing to sign a complaint against him," the officer wrote. "(He) boastfully told me he would be happy to go to jail over the issue and proudly admitted to calling Ford a slur. He added that he is 'fed up with black people,'" according to the officer's report.

The owner then described how the night before, two "of them" were in his restaurant squirting ketchup all over the floor, the officer wrote. The store owner used slurs "freely to describe black people," the report said.

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Police Chief Stephen Dumyahn said Thursday that he was disturbed when he read his police officer's case report.

"I'm disgusted and discouraged by the comments made by this business owner. I reached out to Miss Ford to tell her that this does not represent the diverse community of Zion," he said.

The store owner was not charged with any wrongdoing.

Ford later updated her Facebook posting, saying both the police chief and mayor of Zion had contacted her.

"It's great to see Zion has great people in charge," she wrote.

Deianeira Ford, 21, of Tinley Park, is greeted by Zion police Chief Steve Dumyahn on Jan. 6, 2017, at the city's police station, where Ford went to thank him for his department's support. Ford says the owner of a Dairy Queen business in Zion insulted her with racial slurs after she questioned an order. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)

Ford said she is in the process of moving from Tinley Park to Zion with her 2-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son. She said she's a full-time college student and recently resigned from a job at a south suburban police department to make the move.

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On Thursday afternoon, Dumyahn released a statement on the city's behalf.

"Although we recognize the rights of business owners and managers to operate their business as they choose, under the law, we do not condone the inflammatory language that was used or the way this customer was treated. "

Social media reacted swiftly following Ford's post.

Clyde McLemore, of Lake County Black Lives Matter, went to the Dairy Queen Wednesday afternoon to talk to the owner, the police report said.

The owner called police because of the harassing telephone calls he was getting from people alerted to the incident on social media, and McLemore was there challenging him about racial issues, according to the Zion police report.

The same police officer responded to that incident and wrote that McLemore left when the officer asked him to, the report said. The officer added that the store owner said there was an incident earlier with a woman and an officer had shown up "and that nothing racial took place," the officer wrote in the case report.

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The owner, "did not recognize me as the officer who spoke to him (Wednesday) morning and I reminded him that he already admitted to me what he did and I was on the scene to handle the current complaint," the officer wrote in the report. "He continued to contradict his story about (Wednesday) morning to me several more times and was becoming angered that I did not believe him."

McLemore said Thursday that Lake County Black Lives Matter is planning a protest starting at noon Saturday at the Dairy Queen.

Another posting suggested a different group was attempting trying to arrange a meeting between the owner and Black Lives Matter, and is seeking an apology to the family and the black community.

McLemore called for the protest on Facebook and said he was asking "everyone Whites, black and brown to stand (with) this family. We will be peaceful but we will stomp out racism in Zion."

Dean Peters, director of communications for Dairy Queen's corporate headquarters, confirmed Thursday that the Zion location is not corporate owned, and the man involved was a franchise owner operator.

"On behalf of the hardworking DQ franchisees and employees around the world, we apologize for the inappropriate actions of this franchisee in Zion," Peters' statement on the company's behalf said. "... It is not what our brand stands for and is not representative of American Dairy Queen Corporation or its franchisee community.

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"We expect our franchisees and their employees to treat every single person who walks through their doors with the utmost dignity and respect. Nothing less is acceptable," the statement added. "Nearly all DQ restaurants are run by individual owners. Nevertheless, it is vital that they understand the importance of treating all of our fans with great respect."

fabderholden@tribpub.com

Twitter @abderholden

Daily Southtown freelance reporter Dennis Sulivan contributed.
DuPage County prosecutors will not be allowed to review psychological medical records of a man in advance of his sentencing for the strangulation of his Naperville roommate, a judge ruled Friday.

Agreeing with privacy concerns expressed by the attorney for Grant Muren, Judge Brian Telander turned down a prosecution request to review records of Muren's stay at a Chicago behavioral hospital.

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Muren, 24, is scheduled to be sentenced March 1 on an aggravated arson conviction and the second-degree murder of Charles Clark, 54, whom Muren choked to death in Clark's townhouse in January 2014.

Assistant State's Attorney Enza LaMonica told the judge during a hearing Friday that prosecutors want to review the records of Muren's treatment to help them obtain a more complete picture of Muren. But attorney Paul DeLuca said the request violated Muren's right to privacy.

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"My client has some protections," DeLuca told the judge.

The nature and dates of Muren's stay at the hospital were not disclosed at the hearing.

Muren, who previously lived in the St. Charles area, was found guilty of the murder and arson charges in September. He had rented a room in Clark's townhouse and within a few hours of moving in on Jan. 20, 2014, had killed Clark during an altercation.

According to testimony at the trial, the two men had been drinking heavily and had engaged in some sexual contact which Muren said was not consensual  before Muren struck Clark with a heavy tray table and strangled him. Afterward, Muren tried to light the townhouse on fire, authorities said, by stuffing his lease paperwork into Clark's toaster and turning on the gas stove.

Prosecutors charged Muren with first-degree murder, but Telander, who heard the bench trial, found him guilty of second-degree murder. The judge ruled that Muren believed he was acting in self-defense when he killed Clark, but his belief was unreasonable. There was defense testimony from witnesses who said they had been victims of past violence, or had seen violence, perpetrated by Clark.

Muren faces anywhere from six to 50 years in prison, with a 30-year maximum for the arson and a 20-year maximum for the second-degree murder. By law, Muren will have to serve the terms consecutively. He has been incarcerated in the DuPage County Jail almost three years, and that jail time will be deducted from his prison sentence.

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
Roxane Gay, author of "Bad Feminist," will speak Jan. 17 at North Central College in Naperville. (Kevin Nance)

Naperville Art League contest

The Naperville Art League wants high school and college students and adults to enter its public art contest.

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This year's theme is "#SillySeriousness."

Artists may submit pieces interpreting the theme in any media, but the art must be original in design, concept and execution. Entries can be turned into the Naperville Art League's Fine Art Center & Gallery, 508 N. Center St., from noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays or Fridays or from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays through Feb. 25.

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The art will be exhibited at the gallery March 15-25 with a special reception and awards ceremony on March 19.

Cash awards will be given for "Best of Show" and "Awards of Excellence."

Applications and other requirements are available from the Naperville Art League by calling 630-355-2530 or going to www.napervilleartleague.com.

Bank donates to Loaves & Fishes

Huntington Bank donated $1,250 to the Loaves & Fishes food pantry as part of its "Thankful Campaign" to support local food banks and encourage others to help hunger relief efforts.

Loaves & Fishes gives out about 60,000 pounds of groceries weekly and provided nearly 4,800 families in DuPage County with nutritious food in 2016.

For each dollar contributed, Loaves & Fishes can buy $10 worth of food from the Illinois Greater Food Depository so the bank's donation will provide about $12,500 worth of food, officials said.

Feminist author to speak at NCC

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Author, professor and cultural critic Dr. Roxane Gay will be the featured speaker for North Central College's Martin Luther King week celebration.

The event will be held at 7 p.m. Jan. 17 at NCC's Wentz Concert Hall at the Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago Ave. Her talk, "Roxane Gay: Bad Feminist and Difficult Woman," will address controversies about feminism and the current political climate.

Gay's collection of essays, "Bad Feminist," is on the New York Times bestsellers list. Gay is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, was co-editor of the online literary magazine PANK and founded Tiny Hardcore Press. She is an associate professor of English at Purdue University.

Tickets are $5 per person to the public. For more information, go to www.northcentralcollege.edu/showtix.

Freedom exhibit coming in February

Naper Settlement will host a traveling exhibit, "Freedom: A History of US," from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History from Feb. 15 to March 12.

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Among the highlights is a rare 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence, a printed draft and an official copy of the U.S. Constitution. The exhibit will also include Abraham Lincoln's handwritten notes for speeches and letters penned by Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr.

The exhibit is included with daily admission to the settlement, 523 S. Webster St.

Naperville resident Alan Keahey took this photo of a blue heron, one of seven finalists in the Forest Preserve District of Will Countys Preserve the Moment photo contest. (Alan Keahey)

Naperville man's photo a finalist in contest

A Naperville man's photograph is one of seven in the running to be chosen as the best in the Forest Preserve District of Will County's inaugural Preserve the Moment photo contest.

Alan Keahey's photo of a heron is competing against Lauren Dundek of New Lenox, frog; Ryan Buzzelli of Lockport, snake; Lani Nishimura of Plainfield, hawk; Kevin Keyes of Westmont, toad; John Sullivan of Crest Hill, raccoons; and Chuck Medrano of Mokena, snow-covered bridge.

They were selected from among more than 700 photos submitted by more than 160 photographers between June 1 and Dec. 31.

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Members of the public will choose the first-, second- and third-place winners. Online voting begins on Tuesday, Jan. 10, on the district's Facebook page, www.facebook.com/WillCoForests. Every "like," "share," and "comment" on each photo will be counted. Voting ends Friday, Jan. 20.

The first-place winner will receive a wireless HP color printer. The second-place prize is a messenger-style bag with a padded laptop sleeve, and third place receives a fleece blanket.

To see all of the photos submitted, go to www.flickr.com/photos/willcoforests.
The City of Naperville will seek the public's input in February on replacing the downtown Washington Street bridge.

The project is expected to cost between $5 million and $6 million, with a majority of the cost funded by the Federal Bridge Program through the Illinois Department of Transportation.

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As a key link to the main thoroughfare into downtown Naperville, the bridge carries an average of more than 27,000 vehicles over the DuPage River every day, according to city documents.

"Washington Street is a major road for the city, and the river runs through the heart of downtown so the bridges are important," Bob Kozurek, deputy city engineer, said. "Washington Street runs the entire length of the city and a lot of people use the bridge to get downtown and to the commuter (parking) lots."

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Built in the 1920s, and rehabilitated a couple times since, the entire bridge probably needs to be restructured, Kozurek said.

In December 2015, a weight cap for vehicles traveling over the bridge was set at 15 tons to ensure the span's safety. Trucks over that weight use alternate routes, including Ogden Avenue, Route 59, Route 53 and Yackley Avenue/College Road.

As the city gets ready to go into the design phase, officials want the public to weigh in on the project.

An overview of the project will be presented at the Naperville Riverwalk Commission meeting Jan. 11 and to the Downtown Advisory Commission Jan. 12.

The first public meeting will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Feb. 9 at the Naperville Municipal Center. Designers will provide background on the project and how the work will progress.

As far as what kind of input the city expects from the public, Kozurek said they want to know what people want the bridge to look like and what characteristics citizens want included.

"There's a lot of different architecture downtown, and the bridge will need to match that," Kozurek said. "There's a lot going on in that area and it's important for us to design a bridge the residents will like."

Once public input is gathered, the city will hold a second public meeting in late spring 2017 to present findings and the proposed bridge design.

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City officials hope to keep at least one lane of traffic in each direction open during construction. That means completing the work in phases, which will take longer than if the bridge is closed entirely and the work done in one phase, Kozurek said.

Construction, the final phase of the project, is not expected to begin until 2019. Federal dollars will fund about 80 percent of the project, and the city will pay the remaining 20 percent.

Naperville officials also hope replacing the bridge will help decrease the number of crashes that happen on or near the bridge. One way designers are looking to alleviate a crash pattern is to extend the bridge's fifth center lane from Aurora Avenue to Chicago Avenue, Kozurek said.

"We're super excited for the project," he said. "It's right downtown and it's going to be a great asset for transportation and look good for the downtown area."

ehegarty@tribpub.com
Oak Park candidates facing petition challenges will have a matter of days to submit their legal briefs as they seek to remain on the April 4 ballot.

Trustee candidate Emily Masalski and village clerk candidates Mas Takiguchi and Elia Gallegos are three of the six candidates defending their petitions in front of the village's electoral board, which first met Jan. 5. The board asked candidates and challengers to file their legal briefs by the end of the day Jan. 9, and the board will reconvene at 3 p.m. Jan. 12 to discuss the challenges.

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The board is made up of Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb, Trustee Colette Lueck and Village Clerk Teresa Powell.

Prior to her hearing, Masalski asked Abu-Taleb to recuse himself from the board, citing an earlier meeting between the two. Masalski said she met Abu-Taleb for breakfast at George's Restaurant on Dec. 27, and she said he asked her "how he could convince me not to run for Oak Park trustee."

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Abu-Taleb said he was meeting with her, and all candidates, to offer assistance prior to Election Day, and said he was merely joking.

"We had a lot of laughs, and we discussed a lot of stuff about the village," Abu-Taleb said. "At one point, like a friend saying to their friend who's about to get married, you say 'Are you sure you want to do this?' and 'Can I talk you out of it?' That is how I presented that to Emily that day. I said to her, I want to make sure that was a joke. If you misunderstood that, let me apologize right now."

Masalski said she wanted to bring up the issue to be sure there was "no appearance of conflict of interest or bias" during the hearing.

"I had to raise it for the record," Masalski said. "It was the very first thing you said to me as we sat down. As you said, we had never met prior to that date. I had just met you for the first time in person. There could be the appearance of bias that could affect my right to a fair and impartial proceeding. That's all."

Village Attorney Paul Stephanides said since Abu-Taleb, Lueck and Powell are not running for village trustee or village clerk in April that there is no conflict of interest and each can remain on the electoral board.

The three candidates face challenges from residents Kevin Peppard and George Lazewski, who each take issue with each candidate's filing petitions.

In challenging Takiguchi's petition, Peppard alleges several of the candidate's petition sheets are "invalid for lack of notarization," while one sheet is an "invalid affidavit" due to issues with the signatures of relatives of Takiguchi. Peppard alleges one sheet has one notary signature crossed out, replaced with a second signature.

Peppard also alleges page 24 of Takiguchi's 26-page petition is missing, while pages 20-23 do not contain a signature from notary Doug Weismantle, who simply drew "four stars where his signature was required."

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Takiguchi said the issues with the crossed out signature was "made in a rush" as they were filed at 4:59 p.m. on the deadline day, while saying he filed his completed petition in full with the village, and guessed the page was lost following its submission. Takiguchi also said Weismantle actually signs his name as four five-point stars as shown on a copy of Weismantle's driver's license, which he provided to the board.

"It creates a greater level of security and less susceptible to forgery," Takiguchi said. "He signed it, he witnessed those 50 signatures and he notarized it."

Regarding Gallegos, Peppard alleges she "failed to fasten those papers in any manner," which he says makes them invalid.

"They were not fastened in any way," Peppard said. "I cited an Illinois appellate court case from this district that says that's fatal."

Gallegos acknowledged the petition sheets she filed were not fastened together, but she asked the board to rule in her favor.

"I do understand that's a fatal error, however, I would say my bid packet contained the required notarized forms and signatures required by the election code," Gallegos said. "I am respectfully asking that my name remain on the ballot for village clerk."

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Though Peppard and Lazewski each have similar allegations against Masalski's petition, the two will move forward with separate challenges against the trustee candidate. Both allege her 118 signatures collected are not enough to appear on the ballot.

"I contend 251 signatures are required to be on the ballot," Peppard said. "I'm not contesting the signatures' validity. I'm saying there's not enough of them."

Masalski said she was following information provided in a 2017 candidate's guide, which she said came from the Illinois State Board of Elections, and felt she filed the proper number of signatures required.

Peppard also alleges Masalski submitted the nominating papers without specifying a date of election, sought to run as a nonpartisan where only independent and partisan were available and filed for a primary election when she meant consolidated election.

"His petition lacks specificity and fails to set forth a specific Illinois state law to support his position," Masalski said.

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

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Twitter: @steveschering
The Oak Park Police Department is investigating four reported armed robberies that occurred over the first five days of 2017.

According to Oak Park police reports, the first robbery occurred between 11:23 p.m. and 11:25 p.m. Jan. 1 at 7-Eleven, 240 Chicago Ave. Two men, one armed with a "long barrel black older revolver," entered the convenience store and stole cash and between four and five packs of cigarettes valued at $150 in total, police said.

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The first suspect is described as 18 years old, standing between 5 feet, 5 inches and 5 feet, 7 inches tall with a black scarf covering his face. The second suspect is described as between 18 and 20 years old, standing between 5-foot-8 and 5-foot-9.

The following day, two men entered Domino's Pizza, 329 Chicago Ave., between 7:43 p.m. and 7:44 p.m. The two men ordered the employee to open the register and stole an unknown amount of cash, police said.

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The first suspect is described as a black man standing between 5-foot-10 and 5-foot-11, wearing a black ski mask and a black hooded sweatshirt. The second suspect is described as a black man standing between 5-foot-11 and 6 feet tall, wearing a black ski mask with a black hooded sweatshirt.

Two armed robberies were then reported by pedestrians walking in the village on Thursday night.

At 7:05 p.m. Jan. 5, a woman walking in the 400 block of North Taylor Avenue reported someone grabbed her backpack. When she turned around, the woman reported someone was pointing a handgun at her and demanded everything she had, police said. The woman then dropped her iPhone 6 and $20 in cash on the sidewalk, which was picked up by a second suspect. Both suspects then left the area on foot.

The suspects, both male, were described as 16 years old, black and wearing black winter hats and dark clothing.

Later that night, at 7:45 p.m., two suspects approached a man in the 100 block of Berkshire Street, displayed a handgun and demanded his wallet, police said. The victim turned over his wallet, which contained $400 in cash and miscellaneous identification and credit cards, police said. Both suspects then fled the are on foot.

The suspects, both male, are described as 16 years old and standing approximately 5-foot-8 and wearing black clothing.

A message left with Oak Park police officers seeking additional information about the incidents was not immediately returned.

Anyone with information about the incidents is encouraged to contact Oak Park police at 708-434-1636 or at police@oak-park.us.

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sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
The Stir, a rock band from Atlanta playing all original music is on tour in late January with another Atlanta band, The Future Babes, to support their new singles "Nightshift" and "Legitimate" from their coming EP "Hear Freedom Ring". They will be playing in Chattanooga Jan. 26 at Ziggy's.

The Stir has opened up for bands like Collective Soul, Beasto Blanco, and Snarky Puppy. They have also shared the stage with people like Paul Rogders (Bad Company), Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crowe), and Jeff Carlisi (38. Special).
A Chicago ambulance was involved in a crash with a Jeep Cherokee around 8:30 a.m. Jan. 6 at Cumberland and Belle Plaine avenues in Park Ridge. (Jennifer Johnson / Pioneer Press)

No injuries were reported in a crash that involved a Chicago Fire Department ambulance and a sport utility vehicle Friday morning in Park Ridge , police said.

The ambulance, which was transporting a patient, was headed north on Cumberland Avenue around 8:30 a.m. when it hit the SUV at Belle Plaine Avenue, said Park Ridge Deputy Police Chief Lou Jogmen.

The SUV, a silver Jeep Cherokee, was headed east on Belle Plaine, Jogmen said, and it ended up on the lawn of a home at the northeast corner of the intersection, which is four-way stop for traffic.

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Jogmen said he was told the ambulance had its lights and sirens activated at the time of the crash. Park Ridge paramedics responded to the scene and completed the transport of the ambulance's patient, he added.

The ambulance was headed to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital at the time of the crash, said Ron Davis, administrative services supervisor for the Park Ridge Police Department.

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A man who identified himself as the husband of the Jeep's driver said his wife was not hurt and was not taken to the hospital.

A Chicago ambulance was involved in a crash with a Jeep Cherokee around 8:30 a.m. Jan. 6 at Cumberland and Belle Plaine avenues in Park Ridge. (Jennifer Johnson / Pioneer Press)

The driver of the Jeep, a 68-year-old Park Ridge woman, was ticketed for failing to yield at an intersection and failing to yield to an emergency vehicle, Davis said.

jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
Ramon Moses (left) and Joel Newman starred in a past production of "Four Score and Seven Years Ago." The musical, which is set against the backdrop of the Civil War, will be presented Jan. 17-20 by Theatre for Young Audiences at Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Road, Munster. (Photo courtesy of Theatre at the Center) (ArtsPower National Touring Theatre)

Theatre for Young Audiences is presenting a musical which demonstrates that people from different backgrounds have important things to teach each other.

"Four Score and Seven Years Ago" runs Tuesday through Jan. 20 at Theatre at the Center in Munster. It tells the story of Lemuel, a runaway slave, and is produced by New Jersey-based ArtsPower.

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Settled in Gettysburg, Lemuel craves the right to vote and wants to fight in the Union Army. His beliefs about the North and South, as well as what it means to be a free man, are challenged when he unexpectedly befriends Jacob, a Confederate soldier.

The two young men may be of different races and supporting different sides in the Civil War, but "they have much to teach each other about bravery and loyalty," states ArtsPower's website.

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"Four Score and Seven Years Ago" deals with "the conflicts between patriotism and pacifism," according to a news release. Lemuel and Jacob "manage to bridge their political differences when they discover that they both grew up in the same Georgia county," the release said.

Their differing views of war are woven into the song "How Can You Lose With God on Your Side."

The show educates, as well as entertains, said Charlie Misovye, group sales coordinator at the theater center.

"We always try to do a show that is basically an extension of the classroom curriculum," he said.

"It's not just another field trip; it is a witnessing of history live, on stage."

The presentation of "Four Score and Seven Years Ago" is done in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day.

Mark Blackman, producer of the touring musical, said the intent is to have students draw a life lesson.

"We hope that they'll walk away with a sense of what prejudice means, and what it does to people," said Blackman, who, along with identical twin brother Gary, created ArtsPower in 1985.

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Blackman describes the music in "Four Score and Seven years Ago" as "very kind of Americana," with roots in the 19th century.

"It certainly has a period sound to it," he said.

Grammy-nominated John Forster wrote the score and lyrics. "Into the Light," which features Forster's lyrics, has been performed on Broadway.

Although primarily designed for 4th through 12th graders in school groups, the musical is open to the public. Misovye said those interested should call him at 219-836-3258 for tickets.

Bob Kostanczuk is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

.

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'Four Score and Seven Years Ago'

Where: Theatre at the Center in The Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1040 Ridge Road, Munster

When: 9:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. Tuesdayand Wednesday; 9:30 a.m., 11:15 a.m. and 1 p.m. Thursday and Jan. 20

Tickets: School group: $6.50 students, $8 adults; $5.50 a student for 100 or more paid student reservations. Public admission: $7.50 students/children, $9.50 adults.

Information: 219-836-3255, www.TheatreAtTheCenter.com
Hobart reisdent Ward Cady, 55, traveled the world for four years in the Navy before working in rail maintenance for the Holland Company for the past 28 years. For work, he's ventured to Australia, Chile, Wales, and India. (Jeff Manes / Post-Tribune)

"A modern day warrior

"Mean, mean stride

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"Today's Tom Sawyer

"Mean, mean pride

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"Though his mind is not for rent

"Don't put him down as arrogant

"His reserve a quiet defense

"Riding out the day's events

"The River"

 Rush

Ward Cady served four years in the Navy, but had no desire to get a tattoo. I grew up with him and his older brother in Lake Village. Skip Cady is no longer with us. Today, I live on the Kankakee River with Ward's only sister. As toddlers, Valorie Cady and I made mud pies together. Ward and his siblings are 1/8 Sioux Indian.

Cady, 55, lives in Hobart with his fiancee Donna Morgan, who is half Japanese.

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The melting pot we call Northwest Indiana.

***

"The house I grew up in was east of U.S. 41 off of Ind. 10 on three acres in Lake Village," Cady said. "We'd walk back to the (Kankakee) River."

Not too far from the Bluegrass community. Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard had one of his fur depots located in that vicinity. Later, he would become one of the founding fathers of Chicago.

"Yeah, there's a lot of history in that area. Basically, we grew up huntin' and fishin'. We also use to walk to Sumava (Resorts) and fish the bayous. Plus, we used hunt and fish (Merlin) Karlock's property because my grandfather ran the ranch for Karlock. Part of the ranch was where Bogus Island and Beaver Lake were."

How things change. Most of that land is now part of The Nature Conservancy's Kankakee Sands project. Let's switch gears. When did you become interested in the martial arts?

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"My sophomore year in high school, back in 1977. I took lessons in Momence, (Ill.) from John Sharkey, Jr. John was huge in the karate world. He's the president of (American Karate Association). In fact, in season two of 'America's Got Talent,' the runner-up act was a karate team. For the final, the team dedicated their efforts to my sensei, John Sharkey, Jr."

The Navy?

"I joined in the fall of '79. I wanted to see the world. I did my basic training and schooling in Orlando. In the Navy, you got a seaman field, an airman field and a fireman field. I was in the fireman field, which had to do with all your air conditioning and refrigeration, steam and heat, hydraulics, sanitation, hull technicians... ."

Where were you sent?

"The Mediterranean. I've been to Spain five times, France five times, Israel, Yugoslavia ... I lived in Italy. My first ship was the USS Puget Sound. She was a destroyer tender.

"We were at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay, Naval Base) for 45 days. I got burned so bad. Me and this guy went out fishing, and I lost a whole body layer of skin. We were out there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. While we (were) there, they treated us to Montego Bay, Jamaica for a weekend. I don't remember much of that. It was very surreal and also was very filthy. I do remember going to a bar where all the women were naked. We bought a huge bag of pot and started drinkin' their shots of Jamaican rum. I blacked out."

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Paradoxically, you started body building while living the life of a drunken sailor.

"Yeah, I won a couple of contests. Funny thing, I graduated high school at 135 pounds. In body building competitions, it's not how big you are, it's how you present yourself."

Do you still work out?

"Jeff, I haven't done nothing in three years. I got in a different department at work, and I have to have my wits about me. I don't have the time."

Who do you work for?

"Holland Company. Their main field or money maker is rail maintenance. It's called flash butt welding. At Holland, we make everything ourselves except for the generator which we get from John Deere. We make the booms, the beds, the hydraulics and the cabinets which are the brains that does all the communication for the welder head."

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I know how to stick weld. Explain flash butt welding.

"The total process is like three minutes. Burnoff takes about 15 seconds. Then it goes to pulsation where you're heating the rails for about 65 seconds. Then there is the flashing stage which looks like the Fourth of July. Then all of sudden you get this big surge of amperage which is probably about a 900-amp kick, that forges the rails together."

Are filler metals used to help make the weld?

"None whatsoever."

What are the lengths of the rails you work with?

"Anymore, they do quarter-mile strings. Holland Company has been using flash butt welding since the early '70s. The original owner, John Holland, made his millions back in the 1930s off of rail car parts."

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How long have you been with the company?

"Twenty-eight years. They've sent me on jobs to Australia four times, Chile two times, Wales, India... ."

How was India?

"Too third-world for me. I loved Australia."

Ward, I swear you know every member of every band since the late-'60s. If there were a special, music-only edition of Jeopardy, you'd win a million bucks. How many concerts have you been to?

"Hundreds. The beginning of my concert career was in July of 1977. I saw .38 Special, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Lynyrd Skynyrd and then Ted Nugent, in that order, at old Comiskey Park. It was billed Super Bowl of Rock III. It was an all-day affair. There had to have been 90,000 people there. My brother Skip bought my ticket for my 16th birthday."

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That had to have been a great concert. Name a couple other classic concerts you've attended.

"The Who's 'Quadrophenia Tour' was great. Roger Waters' 'The Wall' was incredible. I saw some fantastic concerts at the Spectrum while stationed in Philadelphia for a year back in '82."

Anything else?

"In '79, at a Rush concert, I broke my elbow when I fell out of the balcony at the Hammond Civic Center. Rush is one of my all-time favorite bands."

**

Between the Navy and his job with Holland Company, Cady has indeed seen much of the world. He also has been around the barn, rode hard, and put up wet, if you will. While in high school, he survived several horrific automobile accidents. While on liberty during his time in the service, he was knocked through the proverbial ropes on occasion. But that was then.

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Ward Cady has not abused drugs or taken a drink of alcohol in more than 30 years.

Jeff Manes is a freelance columnist for the Post-Tribune.

jeffmanes@sbcglobal.net
A Gary man facing the death penalty can make an appeal with his claims that Indiana's death penalty statute is unconstitutional, a Lake County judge decided Friday.

Darren Deon Vann, 45, is charged in the deaths of seven women, and he is one of two defendants in Lake County potentially facing the death penalty. Last year, Vann's attorneys argued that Indiana's death penalty statute is unconstitutional, but Judge Samuel Cappas denied that claim, following suit with rulings on previous challenges in other prior Indiana death penalty cases.

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Vann's defense team appeared in a Lake County court Friday morning without its client and asked Cappas to be able to appeal that ruling to the Indiana Supreme Court. While prosecutors believed that Cappas was correct in his ruling last year, they didn't object to the defense attorneys being able to appeal, said Michelle Jatkiewicz of the Lake County prosecutor's office. Cappas granted the defense's motion.

The Friday hearing also addressed the state's request for Vann to provide a handwriting sample. Vann allegedly wrote a letter to Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter that "makes statements pertaining to the state's case," according to a court filing, and the state wants a handwriting sample to compare to the letter. The defense and state have gone back and forth about the request for a handwriting sample for months, and Cappas set a hearing for March 31 on the matter where each side can call experts and witnesses.

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His case continues as discovery is still being sorted through, Jatkiewicz told the court Friday, including DNA hair analysis, cellphones and the handwriting sample.

Lake County prosecutors previously requested the death penalty for Vann, as he faces charges in connection with the deaths of Anith Jones 35, of Merrillville; Afrikka Hardy, 19, of Chicago; Teaira Batey, 28, of Gary; Tracy Martin, 41, of Gary; Kristine Williams, 36, of Gary; Sonya Billingsley, 52, of Gary; and Tanya Gatlin, 27, of Highland.

rejacobs@post-trib.com

Twitter @ruthyjacobs
Matthew Beatty, an incoming naturalist at Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton, ignites a prescribed fire March 29, 2015, outside the parks nature center during a demonstration. (Amy Lavalley / Post-Tribune)

Prescribed burns will be allowed on private property, including by farmers not on agriculturally-zoned land, if the Hobart City Council gives final approval to a proposed ordinance.

Councilman Dave Vinzant, D-4th, said local farmer Lou Mikolics brought to his attention that some residents, including himself, farm on property that's not zoned agricultural and were excluded from the measure. It was amended and passed recently on first reading.

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Mikolics has been doing prescribed burns on his Colorado Street acreage for land management purposes.

"We want to treat them as a farm," Vinzant said.

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City Attorney Anthony DeBomis will look at the change before the council votes on the measure for its second, and final, reading.

The council decided to revisit its prescribed burn ordinance after some individuals and organizations, including the Shirley Heinze Land Trust, which owns several parcels in Hobart that it maintains as natural areas, were excluded. Naturalists say prescribed burns are an essential tool in maintaining natural plant life and reducing ticks and invasive species.

The council tightened the ordinance in the spring after city officials received complaints from residents about smoke. But Vinzant had said the council "closed the doors tighter than it should have."

Under the new proposal, private property owners would be allowed to burn on their property if it's for land management purposes, they give prior notification to people living within 300 feet of their property, and they apply for a permit from the city.

The property owner also would need to provide a certificate of insurance, work with the fire department on safety issues, be on the property throughout the burn and pay a fee.

They also need to have permission from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to "pollute the air."

Fire Chief Brian Kerr said he's happy with the revised measure.

"It's well thought out," he said, adding his concern had been for people with breathing problems who lived close to a burn.

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"Hopefully, with the prior notice, people with breathing problems can get out of town when a burn takes place," Kerr said.

Local naturalist Sandy O'Brien, who has conducted prescribed burns at several locations in the city, said she appreciated the council moving ahead with the revised ordinance.

Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Former Porter County Board of Commissioners President John Evans' request to have $5,000 in legal fees reimbursed because of an investigation by federal officials appears to be on hold because the U.S. Attorney's Office has not provided a clear answer on the status of the investigation.

Evans' request came before the County Council in early December. The council tabled the matter, pending additional information on the investigation, and asked council attorney Harold Harper to reach out to the U.S. Attorney's Office to find out more. A Republican, Evans' term on the council ended with the year; he chose not to seek re-election.

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Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, who was president of the council at the time, opened the discussion on the reimbursement and said then the council needed confirmation that the investigation was closed before fulfilling the request.

Under Indiana Code, a municipal officer or employee who is the target of a grand jury investigation can apply for reimbursement for legal expenses having to do with that investigation "if the grand jury fails to indict the officer or employee and the acts investigated by the grand jury were within the scope of the official duties of the officer or employee."

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In a Dec. 20 letter to Harper, U.S. Attorney David Capp said he couldn't be of any assistance because, "This office neither confirms nor denies the existence of a grand jury investigation, or if there is such an investigation, does not comment on the status."

Without a definitive answer from Capp, Harper said, the council can't move forward with the request.

"The wording of the statute puts the council in a difficult position," Harper said. "We will never get a definitive answer from the U.S. Attorney's Office because of the nature of their work."

Evans said he'd have to make another claim for the reimbursement anyway because the previous one was for last year's budget.

"The ball is out of (the council's) court. They were asked to make a transfer in last year's budget. They have no ability to do that now," he said, adding he does not know when he will resubmit the claim, but it won't be before the council's first regular meeting of the year on Jan. 24.

Regardless of if or when Evans resubmits the claim, the stance of the U.S. Attorney's Office on the investigation is unlikely to change, Harper said, as is a resolution of the matter.

"I would have to agree with John (Evans)," Harper said. "It's probably not going to come up unless he submits it again or someone on the council brings it up."

Portage Mayor James Snyder asked for reimbursement of about $93,000 in legal fees from that city's Utility Services Board in early October because of a federal investigation into his proceedings as mayor. The board tabled the matter until it could get more information.

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Snyder was indicted in November for alleged bribery involving a towing contract for the city, and for allegedly obstructing tax laws by impeding the government collection of personal and payroll taxes owed by his mortgage business. He has pleaded not guilty.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Wilmette and Kenilworth voters will have mixed bag of contested and uncontested races awaiting them on the April 4 consolidated election ballot.

In Wilmette, Village President Bob Bielinski is unopposed as he seeks his second four-year term, while one-term Trustee Carol Ducommun is leaving her village post to return to the New Trier Township High School District 203 board, where she previously served.

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Four people are vying for three four-year trustee seats on the village's board: those currently held by Ducommun and by retiring trustees Ted McKenna and Cameron Krueger, both of whom have served their second and final terms. Seeking to replace them, according to the village website, are Reinhard Schneider, currently a member of the village's zoning board of appeals; Kathy Dodd, Stephen M. Leonard, and Joel Kurzman.

The Wilmette Park District will also have a contested race, according to Executive Director Steve Wilson. Four people are running for three four-year terms. Incumbents Amy Wolfe and Bryan Abbott are seeking new terms, while Gordon Anderson, appointed in October 2015 to complete the unfinished term of former commissioner Jim Crowley, is running for the four-year seat now held by board president John Olvany. In turn, Olvany is running for the final two years of Crowley's term, Wilson said.

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The two other contested elections on Wilmette voters' ballots are in Wilmette School District 39 and Avoca School District 37, according to the Cook County Clerk's office.

In School District 39, four seats, currently held by board members Cindy Levine, Kimberly Alcantara, John Flanagin, and Mark Steen, are open. Only Steen, of Wilmette, is running again. Four other people have filed to run, according to the clerk's office: Lisa Schneider-Fabes of Wilmette, who ran unsuccessfully in 2015 for a board position; Jonathan Cesaretti and Ellen Sternweiler, both of Wilmette; and Gail Szulc, of Glenview.

Five people are running for four Avoca District 37 four-year terms. Incumbent Rick Zelinsky of Northfield is running again; also on the ballot are Gil Gibori of Winnetka, Jamie Taylor of Winnetka, Dan E. Garbis of Wilmette, and Jun E. Yoshitani, also of Wilmette. Current board members Rosanne M. Ullman, William S. Bazianos and board president Jeffrey Greengoss are not running again.

Four candidates slated last fall by the New Trier School Board Caucus are the only people running for four four-year terms on the New Trier High School board, according to the Cook County Clerk's office.

That includes current school board member Greg Robitaille, of Winnetka; Ducommon, of Wilmette; Keith Dronen of Wilmette, a former Wilmette School District 39 board member; and Marc Glucksman, who is now a member of the Glencoe School District 35 board.

All races in Kenilworth are uncontested, according to the Kenilworth Village Manager's office and Park District Executive Director Johnathan Kiwala.

Three four-year trustee spots on the Kenilworth Village Board are open: those now held by Scott Lien, Kevin Lennon, and Ann Potter. Potter is running unopposed for the village president's seat, which is up and for which current village president Bill Russell is not running again. Lien is seeking another term, and Cecily Kaz and Jeff Bedwell are running for the other two trustee spots. Timothy D. Ransford is running unopposed for the position of village clerk; Village Clerk James R. McClamroch is not running again.

The election for three four-year Kenilworth Park Board commission terms is uncontested: incumbent commissioner Tim Simonds, who was appointed to fill former commissioner Kevin Flannery's uncompleted term, is running for a full four-year term. The other candidates are William T. Bartholomay and John W. Hart, according to Kiwala.

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In Joseph Sears School District 38, four seats are open, according to the Cook County Clerk's office: incumbent Suzanne Nelson is running again, while incumbents Tim Kollar, Scott Wallace and Stacey Van Metre are not. Running for their seats are John Gottschall, Melissa Ross and Eric Jungbluth.

All uncontested seats will be won by acclamation, barring a contest by write-in candidates. According to the Cook County Clerk's office, the last day to file notification of a write-in candidacy for the April 4 election is Feb. 2.

kroutliffe@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
4 Charged With Hate Crime In Live-Streamed Alleged Torture Of Mentally Challenged Man

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jan 5, 2017 7:34PM



Superintendant Eddie Johnson, April 13, 2016 / Getty Images / Photo: Scott Olson

After a man with mental disabilities was allegedly tortured in a live-streamed video in Chicago Wednesday, all four suspects arrested in connection with the case have been charged with hate crimes, in addition to other charges.

Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; Brittany Covington, 18, of Chicago; and Tanishia Covington, 24, of Chicago each face charges of aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary, according to the Cook County state's attorney office.

The video-which was first streamed live on Facebook then heavily circulated on social media Wednesday eveningshows the victim with his mouth taped while his scalp and sweatshirt are cut with a knife. At least one offender is heard shouting, "fuck white people" and "fuck Donald Trump."

Police announced the arrest of two men and two women at a briefing on Wednesday in which Supt. Eddie Johnson called the incident "brutal" and "sickening." But it was unclear whether or not hate crime charges would be pursued.

Police Commander Kevin Duffin said on Wednesday that it would have to be determined if the attacker's comments were sincereor just stupid ranting and ravingwhen weighing hate crime charges.

Johnson said on Wednesday sounded doubtful when asked if the motivation appeared political. "I don't think that at this point we have anything concrete to really point us in [the direction of political motivation], but we'll keep investigating, and we'll let the facts guide us on how this concludes."

Duffin also previously said that the victim appeared to go willingly with one of the alleged attackers, whom he knew from school, according to police, but said it was "quite a possibility the attack was a kidnapping.

A press conference is scheduled for 2:15 p.m.

The incident was heavily circulated online using the hashtag #BLMKidnapping, but there is no connection between Black Lives Matter and the four people charged.

CPD Arrested and Charged all four offenders with Hate Crime, as well as other charges, from West Side kidnapping and attack. Presser@2:15 pic.twitter.com/EoYnluf573  Chicago Police (@Chicago_Police) January 5, 2017

CPD presented a fact-based investigation to States Attorney w hate crime & kidnapping charges. Charges were approved. Press conf at CPD 2pm  Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) January 5, 2017

Update, 2:45 p.m.:

At an afternoon press conference, Johnson called the actions in the video "reprehensible." "That along with racism have absolutely no place in city of Chicago... regardless of race, gender, sate of mental health or other identifying factor.

Duffin said the victim's "diminished mental capacity" and the "obvious racial" aspect to the hate crime charge. Asked which was the motivating factor, he said, it was "six of one, half dozen the other."

When questioned whether or not the victim was known to have voted for Trump, Duffin replied simply, "no."

Police also provided more details about the attack. The victim was with Jordan Hillwith whom he was acquainted but did not regularly associate, according to policesince Saturday, Dec. 31. Duffin said he was with Hill voluntarily for the first two days, but then a "play fight" escalated into what became the alleged criminal attack. The alleged crime as seen in the video, with the victim bound in the corner, took place over six hours, Duffin said. There was no premeditation before the escalation, according to Duffin.

The victim was able to escape when the offenders kicked in the door of a downstairs neighbor who had threatened to call the police due to noise. The neighbor did call and the victim fled"bloodied and battered," wearing only an inside-out tank top, shorts and sandalsafter police arrived at the downstairs residence in response to the noise call, police said.
The 2017 edition of the Cuban International Book Fair (FIL) will pay tribute to the late former President Fidel Castro for his contributions to the island's culture and literature as well as his efforts to making the FIL a popular event around the world.

In a press conference on Thursday, Juan Rodriguez, president of the Cuban Book Institute, said that the literary event in February will present a collection of 30 books dedicated to the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution as well as a symposium on Fidel's contribution to literature and his reading habits.

"We will present a special collection that was prepared for Fidel's 90th birthday and will hold an event where intellectuals, artists and writers can share ideas and anecdotes about the role of the Cuban leader in the country's culture," he said.

Rodriguez affirmed that Castro was always one of the greatest promoters of the FIL, attending inaugural events or spending long meetings with intellectuals from around the world while it was on.

The 2017 edition of the Cuban International Book Fair will take place Feb. 9-19 at the San Carlos de la Cabana Fortress, east of Havana.

Four million books from different Cuban and foreign authors will be printed for the fair, while 700 new publications will be featured.

"The guest nation at the fair will be Canada which commemorates the 150th anniversary of its founding this year. We will also dedicate the event to the Cuban intellectual and revolutionary, Armando Hart," said the director.

Hart was the first Minister of Culture of the revolutionary governments, and during the last two decades, has dedicated himself to directing institutions that investigate the ideas and works of Cuban national hero, Jose Marti.

"It will be a significant fair, one of the biggest in recent years, not only because the books that Cuban publishers are proposing but also because of the important foreign presence the event will have," said Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, Canada's ambassador to the island, Patrick Parisot, thanked Cuba for inviting his nation to be the guest country and promised the visit of a large cultural delegation.

"The ties between our countries, with millions of Canadians who travel to Cuba each year, have led to strong relations and the expansion of cultural, literary and academic collaboration," said the diplomat.

Parisot confirmed the assistance to the FIL of distinguished Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, as well as other important intellectuals and artists from his nation.
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State Councilor Wang Yong said Thursday China should still deepen reforms in intellectual property rights, despite the fact it has shown great improvement in the area in recent years.

China should pilot comprehensive management reform, ease control on patent agencies and improve relevant public services, Wang said when inspecting the State Intellectual Property Office.

The country should create a fast channel for patent applications in emerging strategic industries and foster a vast number of high-value patents, Wang said.

The country had over 3.47 million patent applications in 2016, up 23.8 percent year on year, said State Intellectual Property Office head Shen Changyu at a national meeting Thursday.

Among them, patent applications for inventions increased by 21.5 percent year on year to 1.34 million, Shen said.

The number of Chinese international patent applications filed under the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty hit 40,000 last year, Shen added.
Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Thursday called for more efforts to reform and develop work on central and state organs.

Zhang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks while addressing a meeting honoring role models from the central and state organs for their outstanding service.

Zhang lauded their contributions to ensure efficient operation of organs affiliated with the Party and the state, as well as in promoting reform, development and stability.

Zhang asked authorities to learn from the spirit of the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee held in late October last year, ensuring the central and state organs are clean, pragmatic and efficient.

He asked central and state organs to promote reform and innovation, strengthen scientific management, practice frugality and fight extravagance.

Zhang said more efforts should be made to contribute to realizing the country's "two centenary goals" and the Chinese dream of great national renewal.

The two centenary goals are completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects by the CPC's centenary in 2021, and building a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious country by the centenary of the People's Republic of China in 2049.
"China actively advanced strict governance of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and resolutely cracked down on high-ranking and low-level corruption," President Xi Jinping said in his New Year greetings, setting the tone for perfecting CPC governance in the new era.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, strict discipline and regulation has been a characteristic of Party management.

The Chinese central leadership's frugality campaign, which features the "eight-point rules," has effectively curbed extravagance and improved officials' work style.

Four years on the campaign shows no signs of fading, instead it has gained crushing momentum as the central authorities strive to maintain close ties with the people and eliminate both "tigers" (corrupt senior officials) and "flies" (corrupt lower-level officials).

As Xi once said: "All people are equal before the law and regulations, and enforcement of such rules allows no privilege or exception."

Nearly 200,000 Party and government staff have been punished for violating the rules in the past four years, including more than 200 officials holding senior positions.

Following the eight-point rules, the CPC central authorities issued more than a dozen regulations or rules aiming to standardize CPC members' behavior and reduce corruption.

For example, on Nov. 2, 2016, the CPC introduced its "upgraded norms of political life within the Party under the current conditions," and a regulation on intra-Party supervision, both aiming to perfect strict governance of the Party.

The latest rules released Nov. 30 on officials' benefits, stipulate that Party and state leaders should vacate their offices in a timely manner upon retiring.

The new rules, regarded as "an expansion and upgrade" to the Party's eight-point guidelines, state that officials should "travel without pomp," minimize their impact on public life and not have vehicles exceeding the set standards.

These documents altogether urge CPC members to further consolidate their communist faith, adhere to the basic Party line, and make solid efforts to win public trust.

In fact, strict CPC governance has been winning hearts across the country. The people are excited by a common cause, rolling up their sleeves to work harder and succeed in the Long March of our generation.

Meanwhile, the anti-corruption drive should maintain high pressure. More sophisticated discipline inspection measures should be used to fight new types of deep-rooted corruption.

All CPC officials should earnestly study the essence of the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee and stay highly consistent in their thoughts, politics and actions, with the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core.

The 19th CPC National Congress will convene in the second half of this year and elect a new Central Committee.

It is expected the CPC will by then gather more cohesive power, make further improvement on how to govern itself, deepen key reforms and bring prosperity to the vast majority of the Chinese people.
In January 2015, a fire in one of Russia's largest university libraries damaged more than 1 million historical documents, an incident which some media described as a "cultural Chernobyl".

Important documents of our age can probably avoid the same fate in the future thanks to a new fire-resistant paper developed by a team of scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhu Yingjie, a researcher from the institute, and his team developed a set of methods to produce paper with a new material, hydroxyapatite, the inorganic constituent of tooth enamel and bone.

The invention was reported on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Chemical Society.

The inorganic material is both fire resistant and water resistant.

"Traditionally, paper is made of plant fibers, which are easily destroyed by liquid. Previous research attempts to produce waterproof paper found it was difficult to achieve fire retardancy and water repellency at the same time," Zhu said.

In 2013, a doctorate student of Zhu was preparing hydroxyapatite nanowires. While he wanted to filter out the water and continue the experiment, he found that instead of getting hydroxyapatite powder on the filter paper, a film formed on the paper.

The discovery inspired Zhu. He conducted more experiments to improve the material's physical properties.

"Traditional papermaking damages natural woods and damages the environment. Hydroxyapatite nanowires are an ideal building material for paper," Zhu said.

The newly published paper shows that the inorganic material behaves like paper, but with excellent thermal stability and with astonishing mechanical wear resistance, according to an anonymous referee of a peer reviewer of ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, which was provided to China Daily.
As China wages a long-term war against air pollution, the government is being urged to seriously study how air pollution, and smog in particular, impacts human health over the long term and deliver targeted interventions as soon as possible.

PM 2.5 density stands at 106 at the Qianmen area in Beijing on Thursday afternoon. The city has experienced several smoggy days in succession.[Photo/China Daily]

Real-time air monitoring by the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed that more than 60 percent of the 338 Chinese cities under surveillance experienced air pollution on Wednesday.

Nearly 25 percent of the cities, including Beijing, saw heavy smog, with AQI readings between 201 and 300.

The World Health Organization said air pollution continues to pose a threat to human health worldwide. About 2 million premature deaths annually can be attributed to its effects.

Wang Hufeng, head of the healthcare reform center of Renmin University of China, said China lacks surveillance, research and evidence-based evaluations of the health impact of the smog hitting increasing parts of China.

"It will be a long and tough war against air pollution, especially particulate matter, in the country and potential related health effects have to be monitored and studied scientifically and constantly," Wang said.

International studies on environmental health have found links between exposure to air pollution and heart, respiratory and kidney problems.

Xu Dongqun, deputy director of the institute of environmental health and related product safety at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the specific health impacts are also highly related to the varieties of the major pollutants.

Monitoring and research for smog-related health effects in the country are necessary to devise effective countermeasures to protect public health on smoggy days, she said. And that requires cooperation among government agencies of health, environmental protection and meteorology, she added.

Globally, the WHO in 2015 for the first time urged members to develop air quality monitoring systems and health registries to improve surveillance for all illnesses related to air pollution.

In response, China's top health authority pledged in late 2016 to set up 126 monitoring sites nationwide to study the effects of air pollution on health.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission has been researching correlations between health and smog, Ma Xiaowei, deputy head of the commission, told a news conference in December.

"This work is still in its primary stage, but we are losing no time," Ma said.

China has started smog risk assessments and a program on smog warning technology to identify typical pollutants that harm people's health and establish an evaluation system, he added.

Common myths explained

Golden train

A high-speed train traveling from Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, to Beijing was tainted yellow and covered with dust due to passing through smoggy regions, according to a picture released on Wednesday.

Explanation

Sun Zhang, a professor at Tongji University's Institute of Rail Transit, said: "The fine particulate matter in smog can form electric conductors or semi-electric conductors if the concentration is quite dense. In severe air pollution, it can cause a pollution flashover, where the conductors give off heat that burns the metal particles in the air and sticks to the surface of a train, making it look dirty.

"In addition, the air pres-sure generated at such high speed draws fine particles and dust to a train's surface."

Smog generator

If a humidifier used drinking water instead of purified water, the mist would make the PM2.5 concentration levels soar. In addition, calcium and magnesium ions and microorganisms in drinking water would be released, contaminating the air quality indoors.

Explanation

Zhao Feihong, head of the Beijing Health Care Association's drinking water committee, said: "Drinking water has been processed and sanitized, making it impossible for it to have any pathogenic microorganisms.

"It's true that there would be some white powder left inside the humidifier or on some surfaces because of the calcium and magnesium ions in the drinking water, but they are not pollutants like those found in smog."

Peng Yingdeng, a researcher from the Beijing Research Institute of Environmental Protection, said methods used to measure so-called soaring PM2.5 concentration levels created after using drinking water in humidifiers are not scientific or authentic, creating misleading results.

Burning gas

A study conducted three-years ago said burning gas could generate large quantities of vapors in the air, which could combine with airborne pollutants to cause smog. Some people said gas consumption could discharge nitrogen oxides, worsening air pollution and proving gas is not clean energy.

Explanation

Wang Zifa, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said: "Based on current gas consumption in China, vapor generated totals 300 million metric tons annually. If all of the vapor was turned into water, which is impossible, it would only account for the equivalent of one-millienth of China's annual rainfall, too small to make difference."

Feng Yinchang, an environmental professor at Nan-kai University, said that many cities have installed equipment to reduce nitrogen oxides, which have helped keep emissions under control.
The World Health Organization has warned that it expects to see more sporadic cases of human bird flu in China, and potentially abroad, and said public vigilance is needed to contain the virus.

The alert comes as authorities in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, confirmed two new cases of H7N9 avian flu on Wednesday. Both patients were in critical condition after being exposed at live poultry markets.

"Given the increasing number of human cases and constantly evolving nature of influenza viruses, continued vigilance and close monitoring are needed to detect infections," the WHO China Office said in a statement.

Winter is the peak season in China for zoonotic flu  strains that can pass from animal to human  and so far several cases of H7N9 have been reported in regions including Shanghai and Fujian and Anhui provinces. Two people died in Anhui in December.

Most of the recent cases involved exposure to infected live poultry or contaminated environments, such as live poultry markets, according to the WHO.

"The information to date does not support sustained human-to-human transmission, although limited human-to-human transmission cannot be excluded," it said. "We expect to continue to see a number of sporadic cases."

China has culled more than 170,000 chickens in four provinces since October and closed some live poultry markets, Reuters reported.

H7N9 was first reported in China in spring 2013. According to WHO data, infections were detected in two travelers arriving in Canada from China in 2015 and one in Malaysia in 2014.

"It's possible similar cases will be detected in other countries among travelers from affected areas, although community-level spread in other countries is unlikely," the statement said, adding that the WHO "does not advise special screening at points of entry" regarding avian flu, "nor does it currently recommend any travel or trade restrictions".

He Xiong, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said he sees no possibility that recent cases will spark an epidemic, since there is no evidence the flu can be transmitted between humans.

The WHO advised, "It's important the general public continue to take precautionary measures to reduce exposure to avian influenza viruses from infected poultry." Such measures include avoiding direct contact with live poultry and adopting good hygiene practices while handling, slaughtering and preparing poultry for consumption.

Mao Qun'an, a spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said in December that China "is well prepared to contain outbreaks".
Primary and secondary schools as well as kindergartens in Beijing will be equipped with air purifiers on a pilot basis to deal with air pollution, the citys education authority said on Jan. 5.

Students in a primary school in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, have their physical education class on Wednesday in a gym covered with an air cleaning system. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Beijing Municipal Education Commission said schools will accelerate the installation of the equipment city-wide through a pilot program financed by the municipal government.

The statement comes after Chinas capital city was shrouded in heavy smog for a majority of the days in recent months, prompting primary schools, secondary schools and kindergartens to suspend classes several times and stop all kinds of outdoor activities.

The decision was made after discussions with environmental experts, research institutions and businesses regarding the feasibility on installing air purifiers in schools, the education authority said.

It also vowed to adopt more emergency measures in the face of pollution challenges to ensure the health and safety of school children.
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A car bomb went off in Syria's northwestern coastal city of Latakia on Thursday, leaving nine people killed and 15 others wounded, state TV reported.

A car bomb went off in Syria's northwestern coastal city of Latakia on Thursday, leaving nine people killed and 15 others wounded. [Photo/Xinhua]

The report said that a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle near a stadium in the city of Jableh in the countryside of Latakia.

It wasn't the first bombing to rock Jableh.

Last May, five bombings hit a hospital and a bus station in the city, killing at least 106 people.

Then, the blasts were considered the first to hit Tartus and Jableh, which have remained largely calm during the country's six-year-old conflict.

Thursday's bombing came amid a cease-fire brokered by Turkey and Russia that took effect last Friday. Both the government and rebels have accused the other of breaching the truce.
Chicago's Law Department Is Facing Sanctions Yet Again

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 5, 2017 8:53PM



City Hall, via senor codo/Flickr

Mayor Rahm Emanuels Law Department was once again slapped with sanctions Tuesday in a case of police misconduct.

U.S. District Court Judge Joan Gottschall rebuked the department for ignoring a court order and failing to make a good effort providing documents relating to the shooting of Divonte Young by Chicago Police.

"The City's cavalier attitude toward the discovery process...warrant findings of willfulness, fault and bad faith," wrote Gottschall in a 24-page ruling, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Young was shot by a plainclothes officer in August of 2012 after he allegedly pointed a weapon at the officer after a foot chase ensued during an alleged shooting. Police allege Young fired on the officer after he identified himself as a police officer when he observed Young first fire a shot near the rear of a building, then at his vehicle. Documents from the Independent Police Review Authority, which recommended finding the officers use of deadly force justified, say that Youngs weapon was not located and it was surmised that a civilian had removed the gun prior to the police officers arrival on scene.

According to Gottschalls ruling, attorney H. Candace Gorman, the lawyer for Youngs family, was given conflicting information on obtaining documents from both IPRA and the Law Department.

"From Gorman's perspective, discovery became a game here. The City apparently waited six months during discovery negotiations to tell her that she needed to take additional steps to obtain IPRA documents. She subpoenaed IPRA, and IPRA produced nothing and sent her back to the corporation counsel's office. The City then agreed to the entry of an order enforcing the subpoena and took an additional month to communicate its intent to prepare a privilege log."

This isnt the first or the second time this has happenedin fact, its the eight time that since 2011 that Emanuels Law Department has faced sanctions regarding potential evidence in cases of police misconduct. Its also the third time in the past six months.

Gottschall removed protections that wouldve allowed the city to withhold documents from Gorman, which now has until Jan. 10 to turn them over.
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A car bomb exploded outside a courthouse on Thursday in Turkey's western city of Izmir, killing four including two attackers and one police, the governor said.

Cars burn after a car bomb explosion in Izmir, Turkey, on Jan. 5, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Izmir Governor Erol Ayyildiz told the state-run Anadolu Agency that a court employee, a female usher, lost her life as well in the bombing attack.

He put the number of the wounded at seven, three police plus four civilians.

The attack occurred near a police checkpoint of the courthouse, and an exchange of fire erupted between three militants and the police, with two militants killed later and the other on the run.

The governor said that two kalashnikovs, eight handmade bombs and eight rocket launchers were seized from the terrorists.

Preliminary reports indicate the Kurdistan Workers' Party outlawed by Ankara is behind the attack, said the governor.

The bombing attack came in the wake of a shooting attack early Sunday on an Istanbul nightclub that left 39 dead, 25 of them foreigners.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the nightclub carnage, but the gunman remains at large.
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Iraqi government forces fight heavy clashes in the northern city of Mosul to drive out the Islamic State (IS) militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq, the Iraqi military said.

In the second phase launched on Dec. 29 to push into the eastern side of the city, Iraqi federal police and army soldiers on Thursday continued their heavy fighting with slow progresses in Mosul's southeastern neighborhoods of al-Salam, Palestine, al-Shaimaa, Domiez and Sumer, a statement by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said.

In the past two days, the troops recovered the nearby neighborhoods of al-Mithaq and Wahda after heavy clashes with IS group.

Thursday's fighting left dozens of IS militants killed and five of their vehicles destroyed, the statement said.

The latest battles in southeastern Mosul brought the troops closer to the center of the east side of the city, according to the statement.

In the eastern front, elite forces of Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) have cleared areas they recaptured earlier, including a vast industrial area on Tuesday.

Fighting including sporadic clashes continued Thursday on the northern front without a change in the front lines, killing two militants and seizing ten vehicles, it said.

The battles in Mosul came as the CTS commandos, army troops and federal police launched on Dec. 29 the second phase of a major offensive to free Mosul. 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.

Last month, battles in Mosul had been slowed as extremist militants used locals as human shields, resorted to suicide car bombs and made mortar and sniper attacks in stiff resistance.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a recent report that the military operations in Mosul, have pushed some 132,000 civilians to flee their homes in the city and its adjacent districts since the beginning of military offensive in October to reclaim the IS largest stronghold in Iraq.

More than 1.5 million people were trapped in the city of roughly two million population previously. Cold winter worsened the conditions for the displaced people who suffered severe shortages of food and water, while camps and other emergency shelters reached maximum capacity.

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.
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Israeli police said they interrogated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night for suspicion of receiving "benefits," amidst a string of criminal investigations of corruption affairs.

The five-hour questioning took place at the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem, where Netanyahu was questioned about two graft affairs on Monday.

The recent questioning was focused on a previously undisclosed case. "Today's interrogation also dealt with an additional affair," police spokeswoman, Luba Samri, said in a statement released after the questioning.

She declined to disclose any details on the case, citing fear of obstruction of investigation, but said that another person was interrogated for the same affair two days ago.

Samri said Netanyahu was interrogated under caution, meaning he was interviewed as a suspect.

Earlier on Thursday, Channel 2 TV news reported that officials involved in the investigation said that Arnon Milchan, a Hollywood producer and an ex-Israeli businessman, was involved in one of the cases.

According to the officials, Milchan spent "hundreds of thousands of shekels" to buy Netanyahu Cuban cigars. He also supplied "pink champagne" to Netanyahu's wife, Sara, Channel 2 said. The goods were sent to the Netanyahu as gifts over a period of at least seven years, the report said.

On Monday, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit officially confirmed for the first time that Netanyahu was under criminal investigations. The statement followed months of unconfirmed reports in local media over the alleged prime minister's involvement in a series of corruption affairs.

Netanyahu dismissed the allegations as "baseless" and hinted it was part of a political prosecution aimed to remove him from the office. "There won't be anything because there isn't anything," he said earlier this week.
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Japan has decided to recall its ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine over the erection of a new "comfort women" statue in South Korea, local media quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as saying on Friday.

Japan will also halt currency swap talks and postpone high-level economic dialogue with South Korea as a statue representing women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two was put up near the Japanese consulate in Busan last month, according to the Japanese government top spokesman.

"We have repeatedly asked South Korea to handle the resolution of this issue appropriately, but the situation has not improved, so we have taken this action," Suga was quoted as saying.

The Korean Peninsula was colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

On Dec. 28 last year, the Park Geun-hye administration reached a "final and irreversible" agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe-led cabinet on the "comfort women" victims.

A handful of aged, surviving South Korean victims oppose the agreement, saying Abe has yet to sincerely apologize for past atrocities and admit legal responsibility of the Japanese government for forcible recruitment of the teenage victims during the colonization.
Deaths Of Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds Don't Dim Affectionate 'Bright Lights'

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 6, 2017 3:08PM



Photo: Home Box Office, Inc.

Unexpected death will, for a while, color anything related to the deceased. So the HBO documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds will certainly have a very different, much more bittersweet flavor when it's broadcast Saturday night than when it played at film festivals last year.

The sudden passing of Fisher on Dec. 27, followed a day later by the death of her mother, Reynolds, felt like fate delivering a cruel double blowsurely most severely to their friends and family, but also to fans of multiple generations. HBO's decision to move the premiere date up (it was originally scheduled to air in March) might be a ratings grab, but it doesn't make this intimate and highly entertaining portrait of the showbiz icons any less worthwhile. And for devoted fans of either woman, maybe it will serve as something like a celebratory public wake.

Death was kind of a minor supporting character in Bright Lights even before last month's sad news. It's clear Reynolds' health was declining as filming progressed. Her final nightclub performance and a physically challenging appearance to accept her Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award reveal her "show must go on" spirit fading with those struggles. Indeed, Fisher acknowledged the documentary was in large part a salute to the end of her mother's performing career and, with it, the closing of a major chapter of her life.

Fisher also throws death into her mix of witty remarks on dark subjects, including her battles with substance abuse and bipolar disorder. The doc also includes footage from 2010 of her tending to her dying father, Eddie Fisher, the singing star who became a tabloid pariah after leaving Reynolds and their young children in the late '50s to marry Elizabeth Taylor.

But Bright Lights by no means comes across as some kind of advance eulogy for its stars. It's breezy, fun and largely lightheartedas much about the eccentricities of the performers as anything. While the movie charts some of the ups and downs in the careers of both women, don't expect detailed stories of the making of Singin' in the Rain or Star Wars. Directors Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens (who worked with both women as an actor) keep the focus on the tight-knit, if consistently bumpy mother-daughter dynamic.

Despite living next door to each other, the dichotomy between the lifestyles and attitudes of Fisher and Reynolds was amusingly wide. Reynolds' home is a combination of proper grandmotherly dAcor and a vintage Hollywood museum, while Fisher's residence is covered in pop culture kitsch. Reynolds seems constantly wary of the camera and how she will appear, while Fisher carries herself with DGAF verve.

The affection between them, however, is also abundantly clear, as well as their emotional dependence on each other. By the time Bright Lights was filmed, it seemed both had reached a stage where any serious differences or past animosity between them had become little more than trivial annoyances.

Fisher, a successful author and screenwriter (mainly as uncredited "script doctor" on other writers' screenplays), had also clearly made peace with her other career achievements being completely overshadowed by the Star Wars franchise. Bright Lights shows her at fan conventions, sitting for autograph and photo sessions she hilariously brands "celebrity lap dances." Though the outrageous fees fans often pay for these encounters padded Fisher's fortune, she does seem genuinely appreciative of the public's affection, though appropriately bemused by Star Wars obsessives.

The film doesn't hide the life of comfort and coddling both stars enjoyed, which directors Bloom and Stevens capture in several scenes. But they also present each woman as a survivor: Carrie crawling back from near-suicidal addiction; Debbie rebounding from personal heartbreak and financial crisis.

The ego-driven tension of show business family life is also illuminated. Reynolds' love for her daughter comes through, but so does her "stage mother" disappointment that Fisher didn't pursue singing. As Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge (and its screenplay) demonstrated, the line between public and private in the Reynolds-Fisher home was razor thin, which makes this final, authorized peek behind their curtains fitting.

Interestingly, during the documentary's festival run there seems to have been some confusion regarding the title, or possibly even a late title change. Some reviews after it screened at Cannes listed the movie with the names reversed: Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. That title was also used in the Chicago International Film Festival schedule (and our festival coverage) and even on HBO's own original teaser trailer.

Simple publicity error? Maybe, but now it seems very appropriate that this famous mother-daughter duo, seemingly inseparable even by death, would share lead billing, even if only inadvertently.

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens. 95 mins. No MPAA rating.

Premieres Saturday, Jan. 7 on HBO.
Sputnik | Jan. 06, 2017

The Mexican Interjet airline says 11 of its Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) aircraft will be resuming operation after a temporary ban.

It was earlier reported that Interjet was conducting an inspection of Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100) aircraft after the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) suspended the exploitation of seven SSJ100 planes.

"After conducting the necessary repair work, Interjet has started to return 11 Superject-100 aircraft into operation," the company said.

Related News:

Mexico's Interjet Grounds 11 Russian-Made Planes over Safety
Visitors use smartphones to take photographs under a Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect sign, following the launch ceremony at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. [Photo/Agencies]

Investors are showing stronger willingness to invest northbound, toward Shenzhen using the new Shenzhen-Hong Kong stocks link, according to figures for first full month of trading, as of Thursday. However, market analysts expect that the southbound flows, toward Hong Kong, are likely to be larger in the first half of this year.

In the month from the Dec 5 launch until Jan 4, northbound flows recorded a total turnover of 28.86 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) with an average daily turnover of 1.52 billion yuanan average daily usage of 6.6 percent of the monthly allowance. Southbound flows saw a turnover of HK$9.9 billion ($1.28 billion) with an average daily turnover of HK$0.5 billion, 3.4 percent of the monthly allowance per day.

Daniel Lo Mun-keung, head of research at Zhongtai International Securities Limited, explained that the Shenzhen market includes more eligible and investable stocks and most of the sectors represent the new economy of China. Investors are attracted to allocating assets in these sectors despite the yuan's depreciation. He added that investors may have used other channels to hedge currency risks.

On Thursday, the remaining balance of the northbound trading quota of the second stock link equaled 12.37 billion yuan and the remaining balance of southbound trading quota was 10.21 billion yuan.

The northbound trading quota for Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connect had a net outflow of 912 million yuan with 13.912 billion yuan remaining in the allowance. The southbound quota still had a balance of 9.82 billion yuan, with a net inflow of 685 million yuan.

Lo expects both directions of both stock connects to be more active this year. As the yuan continues to face depreciation pressure this year, the stocks through train will become one of the few options for Chinese mainland investors to allocate assets overseas. He expects southbound flows to be stronger in the first half of 2017.

The city's benchmark Hang Seng Index rose 1.46 percent, or 322.22 points, to close at 22,456.69 on Thursday and the Hang Seng China Enterprise Index jumped 1.67 percent, 157.69 points, to 9598.68.

According to Lo, the advance of H shares is mainly due to the slowing rise of US stocks, leading to a reallocation of funds to emerging markets. Lo expects H shares to continue to have 10 percent upside growth potential in the coming two months.

The Shanghai Composite Index increased 0.21 percent to close at 3,165.41 and the Shenzhen Component Index moved down 0.13 percent to 10,371.47. The CSI 300 Index edged down 0.02 percent to 3,367.79.
DOJ To Release Chicago Police Probe Findings Next Week: Report

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jan 6, 2017 6:19PM



Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images

The long-ongoing Department of Justice investigation into the Chicago Police Department will be released as soon as next week, according to sources who spoke to WBEZ and the Sun-Times. The probe was launched in the wake of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

The DOJ will likely put forth its findings on Jan. 13 (a date that Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot reportedly said was a target) or Jan. 16, according to WBEZ. Barack Obamas farewell speech at McCormick Place happens on Tuesday Jan. 10, so its hard to imagine the findings being announced ahead of the big celebratory bash.

Essentially since the election of Donald Trump, the Justice Department has been hustling to complete the report ahead of Obamas departure for fears that the president-elect and his vocally pro-police-latitude Attorney General nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who has a poor civil-rights track record, will bury the findings. NBC Chicagos political editor Carol Marin reported last month that a team of attorney and investigators were burning the midnight oil on Christmas Eve and Hanukkah in their beat-the-clock attempt.

Sen. Dick Durbin on Wednesday met with Sessions. Sessionswho, somewhat alarmingly, wasnt aware of the DOJ investigationwould not commit to implementing the proposals that will be put forth.

I tried to fill him in as best I could and ask for a commitment to move forward with it, which at least at this meeting he wasnt prepared to make, Durbin said, according to WBEZ. Theyve been working it for over a year, and if we can get it out and start looking at it and deciding what will be helpful and what we can agree on, thats far better than having this buried in a new administration back in some cabinet.

Whatever recommendations are offered by the Justice Department will likely come in the form of an agreement in principle rather than a consent decree that would mandate specific changes, the Sun-Times notes. Investigators fear that Sessions, skeptic of consent decrees, would not enforce one.

The Justice Department announced the probe into department practices, relating to race and use of force, back in December of 2015, after dashcam footage of Laquan McDonald's shooting death prompted waves of protest in Chicago.
A container ship is constructed at the port of Okto in South Korea in June, 2013. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Maersk Line A/S, the world's largest container shipping line, has teamed up with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd to allow customers to reserve space on its vessels through the Chinese company, illustrating growing cooperation between e-commerce and logistics firms.

Maersk, a unit of Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk A/S, began offering the service to Chinese shippers on Shenzhen OneTouch Business Service Ltd's booking website on Dec 22, a spokeswoman for the shipping line said on Wednesday. OneTouch is a subsidiary of Alibaba.

Shippers traditionally go through freight forwarders to book space for goods on container vessels, but lines such as Maersk are allowing cargo owners to book directly via the internet.

For their part, e-commerce companies are increasingly venturing into logistics activities to try to gain better control over their supply chain networks.

Amazon.com Inc has registered a Chinese business as a freight forwarder and has leased aircraft to handle more of its own deliveries in the United States.

Alibaba has been making inroads into logistics services in recent years by taking stakes in couriers and buying warehouses. The company was not immediately available to comment on the Maersk relationship.

Maersk said this was part of the shipping line's strategy to provide digitized services for customers and that it plans to launch more pilot programs on third-party portals.

Acquired by Alibaba in 2010, OneTouch targets small and medium-sized Chinese exporters with online services such as customs clearance and logistics. It also allows them to book airfreight and parcel delivery services and supports Alibaba's business-to-business marketplace.

Maersk said that the launch of the service was not about bypassing the industry's traditional middleman freight forwarders, as the OneTouch platform still uses such firms to provide services such as haulage.

"The initial launch ... allows existing Alibaba OneTouch (registered) users to lock in the price of required cargo spaces on selected routes by prepaying a deposit amount," the Maersk spokeswoman said.

"This service will be offered on selected routes and ports initially."

It is currently offered on routes from eight Chinese ports, including Shanghai and Ningbo, to ports in Europe and Asia, according to the OneTouch website.

Reuters
Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobile Corp.

Rex Tillerson will get a $180 million retirement package from Exxon Mobil Corp if he is confirmed as president-elect Donald Trump's secretary of state.

Tillerson will give up more than 2 million Exxon shares he would have received over the next 10 years. In exchange, the company will make a cash payment equal to the value of those shares to a trust to be overseen by a third party.

Exxon said on Wednesday that Tillerson has already promised the State Department that he will sell another 611,000 shares he currently owns, worth about $55 million at Wednesday's price, if confirmed. His Senate confirmation hearing begins next week.

Tillerson's selection raised potential conflict-of-interest issues because Exxon has business interests around the globe. Putting his retirement nest egg into a trust is intend-ed to ease concerns that Tillerson could make decisions as secretary of state that would financially help himself or his former associates.

Federal ethics rules do not require government officials to sell off their investments but they must recuse themselves from matters that would affect those investments. Given Exxon's global operations, ownership of Exxon stock could severely limit Tillerson's actions as the nation's chief diplomat.

Tillerson's move comes as pressure mounts on Trump to make clear how he would separate himself from his company. Presidents are exempt from federal ethics rules, though most recent holders of the office have sold off their financial holdings and put them in trusts as if the rules did apply to them.

Trump has said he would hand management control of his business to his two adult sons, along with executives, but has given no indication he plans to sell his ownership interest in his company.

Tillerson has been CEO and chairman of the Irving, Texas, oil giant since 2006.Exxon spelled out the arrangement with Tillerson in a regulatory filing on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Edwin Williamson, a former State Department legal adviser who has reviewed the agreement, said that Tillerson agreed to put the cash he gets from Exxon in a trust that will invest only in Treasury securities and diversified mutual funds.

"They have eliminated anything that runs afoul of the conflicts-of-interest rule," said Williamson, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell in Washington.

Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, however, called Tillerson's payout egregious. Baldwin is proposing to ban corporate payments that are tied to an employee accepting a government job.

To avoid violating federal rules, business executives moving into top government jobs have often sold shares and created trusts as Tillerson is doing. This also gives them freedom to weigh in on policy without constantly consulting lawyers about the possible impact on their personal finances.

Henry Paulson, who was CEO of Goldman Sachs when President George W.Bush nominated him as Treasury secretary, sold about $500 million worth of Goldman stock. His predecessor, former Alcoa chairman Paul O'Neill, sold his stock and options after first saying he should have been be able to keep them.

Like presidents, vice-presidents are exempt from federal ethics rules. After becoming vice president in 2001, Dick Cheney received payments and held stock options from his former oil-industry employer, Halliburton Co. The arrangement became a controversy because Halliburton was a major defense contractor.

Trump operates a sprawling global business with real estate holdings that are not as easily divested as stock. In addition to handing over control to his adult son, he has said he won't make new deals while in the White House and will turn over his company to his adult sons and dissolve his charitable foundation.

Critics say that could leave Trump vulnerable to foreign governments that could try to influence him by rewarding or punishing his business interests in their countries. They say he should go much further and liquidate his assets and put the proceeds in a blind trust.

Because of the way Tillerson's compensation is being dispensed, he will give up about $7 million compared with what he would have been paid if he retired in March as planned before Trump announced his cabinet nomination. Tillerson stepped down as CEO over the weekend.

Under the agreement, if Tillerson returns to the oil and gas industry within 10 years, the money in the trust will be paid out to a charity chosen by the controlling trustee.

Tillerson began his career at Exxon as a production engineer straight out of the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. He replaced longtime CEO Lee Raymond in 2006 and led the company during one of the most turbulent periods in its history, including its most profitable years but also the 2008 financial crisis.

Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The US Commerce Department on Thursday set final dumping and subsidy rates on imports of certain construction products from China, signaling that it may impose punitive duties on the products.

The department said that certain biaxial integral geogrid products from China had been sold in the United States at dumping margins of 372.81 percent and received subsidies of 15.61 percent to 152.5 percent.

As a result of the final affirmative determinations, Commerce will instruct US Customs and Border Protection to require cash deposits at the final rates.

The Commerce launched antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations against imports of such products from China in February 2016, in response to a request from Tensar Corporation based in the state of Georgia.

Punitive duties would be imposed after both the Commerce Department and the US International Trade Commission (USITC) make affirmative final rulings. The USITC is scheduled to make its final determination in February 2017.

Biaxial integral geogrid products are used in the construction of paved and unpaved roads, as well as in other construction projects, such as for reinforcing foundations or working platforms that are built on top of unstable soils.

Imports of these products from China were estimated at about $9.2 million in 2014, according to US official data.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has kept urging Washington to abide by its commitment against protectionism and help maintain a free, open and just international trade environment.
China Modern Dairy Holdings Ltd saw its shares surge almost 10 percent on Thursday, after China Mengniu Dairy Co Ltd announced an offer to buy it out in order to guarantee its stable supply of raw milk.

Hong Kong-listed China Mengniu on Thursday offered to buy 965.47 million shares in Modern Dairy at HK$1.94 apiece (25 cents), thus raising its stake in the latter from current 25.4 percent to 39.9 percent. The total value of the transaction was HK$1.87 billion.

Because the percentage surpassed 30 percent, the dairy giant will have to make an offer to buy out the remaining shares, according to Hong Kong's corporate rules.

On the heels of the news, Modern Dairy shares rallied by 9.39 percent to HK$1.98 during intraday trading and closed at HK$1.91.

China Mengniu stock, meanwhile, fell more than 2 percent, while the benchmark Hang Seng Index rose about 1.4 percent.

Carrie Chan Tsz Man, an analyst at KGI Asia Ltd in Hong Kong, said one concern was that Modern Dairy suffered a loss last year. But the deal was good news for both companies in the long term.

She added that the price of raw milk has been increasing, so it is necessary for downstream dairy companies to secure their supplies of raw milk.

Owning about 230,000 cows in China, Modern Dairy is one of the country's largest dairy farming firms and raw milk producers. In 2008, China Mengniu signed a 10-year raw milk supply off-take agreement with it.

But the proportion of its supply to Mengniu has sharply decreased recently, noted Hannah Li Wai-han, a strategist at UOB Kay Hian Hong Kong.

She added that the percentage used to be above 90 percent but was now only about 70 percent.
Chinese workers lay rails of a local light railway in Huaian city, East China's Jiangsu province, August 2, 2014.[Photo/IC]

Infrastructure is projected to remain the main growth engine for China's economy this year, creating a market worth 16 trillion yuan ($2.32 trillion), China Business News reported.

Some provinces have recently unveiled their investment plans for the new year. Both well-developed eastern provinces and underdeveloped western and central regions have put infrastructure investment, especially in the transportation sector, in an important position.

Among them, provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan and Guizhou have higher share of infrastructure investment figures, the newspaper said.

For example, Guangdong plans to invest 520 billion yuan in key projects in 2017, up 20 billion yuan from the previous year. The southern province also plans to start six railway and seven highway projects this year.

China's fixed-asset investment is forecast to grow at eight percent, said Xu Guangrui, director of the industry research institute under China Fortune Land Development Co Ltd.

Infrastructure is still a main engine for stabilizing investment and economic growth. In 2017, infrastructure investment will grow at a pace of 20 percent, creating a market worth 16 trillion yuan, Xu added.

Fixed-asset investment includes capital spent on infrastructure, property, machinery and other physical assets.

China's fixed-asset investment rose 8.3 percent year on year to 53.85 trillion yuan in the first 11 months of 2016, while infrastructure investment expanded 18.9 percent during the period, the National Bureau of Statistics said earlier.

Fixed-asset investment will focus on urban and rural infrastructure and major transportation projects, as well as some key projects and pillar industries based on supply-side reform, said Wu Weihai, executive director of International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission.
NEW YORK - China and the United States have great potential in infrastructure and trade cooperation in the new year to drive economic growth, said former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of World Bank Yifu Lin on Thursday.

Lin, also the honorary dean of National School of Development at Peking University, made the remarks while delivering a keynote speech at a meeting hosted by the National Committee on US-China Relations and Peking University's China Center for Economic Research in New York.

He emphasized the importance of infrastructure investment in lifting economies out of crisis.

"China has been using infrastructure as counter-cyclical method effectively since the Asian financial crisis, and the country will continue to do that, not only domestically, but also internationally," said Lin.

Lin said that both China's Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank focus on infrastructure.

"We hope these initiatives will embrace all countries including the US," he added.

He said the United States now understands how important infrastructure is to domestic economic growth, and that the country will expand infrastructure investment and construction under the new administration.

"China and the US should work together so that we have a truly global infrastructure initiative," said Lin.

He explained that such an initiative will do good to the developing countries because there are a lot of bottlenecks in their infrastructure. On the other hand, high-income countries will benefit from investing in developing countries as they expand exports.

Asked about possible trade frictions between the two countries after President-elect Donald Trump assumes office, Lin said people should expect trade cooperation instead of conflict.

"In terms of trade, what is good for the US is good for China, and vice versa," he said, adding the two countries can find common ground to support dynamic growth for both nations after serious talks.

He said Trump certainly does not want US consumers to suffer and imposing higher tariffs on goods imported from China will hurt the interests of US consumers.

Lin said if high tariffs are imposed, the United States will have the choice of continuing to import goods from China or importing goods from other countries that are currently more expensive than goods made in China. In both cases, consumers in the country have to pay more.
Momentum is growing in Philippine political circles to prevent South China Sea territorial issues from hampering cooperation with Beijing, observers said.

The Manila Times reported on Tuesday that the Philippines and China will set up talks this year to settle sensitive issues, including the dispute in the South China Sea.

Philippine ambassador-designate to China Jose Santa Romana said the schedule of the meetings was under discussion and that the start of talks would be announced soon.

The talks were part of the agreement between the Philippines and China during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's state visit in Beijing in October 2016.

"The dispute will not serve as an obstacle in terms of developing relations. We will separate it so that we grow on a separate track," Santa Romana said at a forum in Manila on Monday.

Duterte has indicated that under his China policy, contentious issues will be discussed one by one with the use of "quiet diplomacy".

On Thursday, a Philippine lawmaker said the potential joint exploration of the South China Sea by the Philippines and China is allowed under the Philippine Constitution.

"The idea of coming to mutual agreement over natural resources is constitutional and has been beneficial in the past," Rep. Harry Roque said in a statement.

"An independent foreign policy demands that we ask ourselves a very simple question: Is it in the interest of the state to pursue such action? At the moment, my answer would be yes. While some of us can wait for another 10, 20 or 50 years to resolve a territorial dispute that has existed for decades, many Filipinos still suffer in poverty because of the lack of resources and opportunities in our country," he said.

Santa Romana previously said that the Philippines government is "seriously studying" the possibility of conducting joint exploration in the South China Sea with China.

Roque's position is shared by House of Representatives Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, who said he supports efforts to study joint exploration.

Xu Liping, a senior researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said political circles in the Philippines are moving toward the idea of not letting territorial issues stunt cooperation with China.

Li Guoqiang, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies, said the Duterte government will have to figure out how to improve ties with Beijing while keeping the South China Sea from impeding cooperation.

"It is smart to establish double channels for negotiations," he said. "The ambassador is sending a good signal from Manila."

Xinhua News Agency contributed to this story.
PM 2.5 density stands at 106 at the Qianmen area in Beijing on Thursday afternoon. The city has experienced several smoggy days in succession.[Ding shan/For China Daily]

Links found between air pollution and heart, respiratory and kidney problems

As China wages a long-term war against air pollution, the government is being urged to seriously study how air pollution, and smog in particular, impacts human health over the long term and deliver targeted interventions as soon as possible.

Real-time air monitoring by the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed that more than 60 percent of the 338 Chinese cities under surveillance experienced air pollution on Wednesday.

Nearly 25 percent of the cities, including Beijing, saw heavy smog, with AQI readings between 201 and 300.

The World Health Organization said air pollution continues to pose a threat to human health worldwide. About 2 million premature deaths annually can be attributed to its effects.

Wang Hufeng, head of the healthcare reform center of Renmin University of China, said China lacks surveillance, research and evidence-based evaluations of the health impact of the smog hitting increasing parts of China.

"It will be a long and tough war against air pollution, especially particulate matter, in the country and potential related health effects have to be monitored and studied scientifically and constantly," Wang said.

International studies on environmental health have found links between exposure to air pollution and heart, respiratory and kidney problems.

Xu Dongqun, deputy director of the institute of environmental health and related product safety at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the specific health impacts are also highly related to the varieties of the major pollutants.

Monitoring and research for smog-related health effects in the country are necessary to devise effective countermeasures to protect public health on smoggy days, she said. And that requires cooperation among government agencies of health, environmental protection and meteorology, she added.

Globally, the WHO in 2015 for the first time urged members to develop air quality monitoring systems and health registries to improve surveillance for all illnesses related to air pollution.

In response, China's top health authority pledged in late 2016 to set up 126 monitoring sites nationwide to study the effects of air pollution on health.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission has been researching correlations between health and smog, Ma Xiaowei, deputy head of the commission, told a news conference in December.

"This work is still in its primary stage, but we are losing no time," Ma said.

China has started smog risk assessments and a program on smog warning technology to identify typical pollutants that harm people's health and establish an evaluation system, he added.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Passengers catch a train at Nanjing Railway Station on Tuesday. [Photo by Lang Congliu/China Daily]

The world's largest annual human migration, the Spring Festival travel rush, will be even larger this year.

People will make a total of 2.98 billion trips nationwide during the annual travel peak, from Jan 13 to Feb 21, up 2.2 percent year-on-year, according to an official forecast released on Wednesday.

Twelve percent of trips will be made by railway, 84.6 percent by road, 1.4 percent by water and 2 percent by air, according to a report by the National Intelligent Transport Systems Center of Engineering and Technology in China, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transport.

The total volume of passengers taking trains and airplanes will increase by about 10 percent year-on-year, the report said.

The expected peaks are on Jan 25, three days before Lunar New Year's Day, and on Feb 2, the final day of the national holiday period.

Before the festival, the most popular routes are departing from big cities and arriving in suburban areas, mostly carrying migrant workers returning home. After the festival, the migration pattern will reverse, from medium and small cities to big cities.

Bullet trains have become a popular choice, the report said, with the most popular rail lines including Shanghai-Hangzhou, Shenzhen-Guangzhou, Chongqing-Chengdu and Beijing-Shijiazhuang.

Shen Peilan, who lives in Shanghai, will be taking part in the migration. She has booked a high-speed train ticket from Beijing to Shanghai for Jan 26.

"I usually fly between Shanghai and Beijing, but I'm worried about the weather conditions this winter, and flights are hard to predict and likely to be canceled or delayed," the 30-year-old said. "That is why I booked a bullet train ticket this time.

"It was not as hard to book a train ticket as many said it would be, but I guess that is because Beijing to Shanghai is not a popular Spring Festival travel rush route."

Pang Jun, 30, from Hunan province, is not as lucky. He said: "I have to make three trips this Spring Festival: from Beijing to Jiangsu, to visit my girlfriend's parents; from Jiangsu to Hunan, to visit my parents; and from Hunan to Beijing. I will be more exhausted than when I'm working."

It is the first time Pang will visit his girlfriend's home during Spring Festival. "It will be a double challenge in the future."

He and his girlfriend plan to take trains and airplanes.

"By air is expensive, but fast. Train is our top choice, but all tickets from Beijing to Jiangsu province are sold out," he said, adding that they are holding on to the hope they can snap up some return tickets.
Watch President Obama Talk Chicago With Local TV Reporters

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 6, 2017 4:00PM



President Obama speaks during one of his final press conferences at the White House. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

At the top of Obamas mind was the surge in Chicago has seen in violence, which included comments on both the recent brutal attack of a mentally disabled man and the increase in homicides.

"These are neighborhoods that I know, Obama told ABC7s Judy Hsu. There are people who live there that have been affected by it that I know. In some cases, it's happened just a mile or two from my house.

When asked specifically about President-elect Donald Trumps comments on Chicago violence by CBS2s Jay Levine, he called the violence in the city heartbreaking, but didnt mention him by name. Obviously, most issues around crime and safety are local. I cant send the Marines into Chicago, said Obama, adding:

My hope in addition to the work weve done as president - Ive assigned the Justice Department to work with directly with the Mayors Office and the Police Departments there to come up with better solutions, best practices - my hope is that as a private citizen, whos still got a home in Chicago, that Ill be able to contribute.

The president covered a wide range of topics while making the rounds, also answering questions about tensions between Trump and the intelligence community, race relations across the country, and the general legacy hell leave once he departs the office.

Its important that the president elect is getting the very best non-politicized intelligence possible, because our national security is at stake, Obama told NBC5s Carol Marin. My hope is that when the president elect receives his own briefings...some of those current tensions will be reduced.

When Marin asked him if hed commute former Governor Rod Blagojevichs sentence, the president also declined to answer directly. As you know Ive exercised my commutation powers very aggressively to make sure that we are not over sentencingpeople particularly in low level drug crimes, he said. Some of these higher profile cases, well see what gets to my desk.

Obama touched on his legacy as president when Hsu passed him a question from an ABC viewer asking what happened to the change he promised, saying:

I took an economy that was about to go into a Great Depression, and we've now had a little over six years of straight economic job growth, an unemployment rate that's down below 5 percent, and incomes that have gone up and poverty that has gone down. So we have done an enormous amount to create greater opportunity. Now, that doesn't mean there are still folks out there who struggle, and communities that are still depressed. And this is an ongoing battle.

As far as if he will ever move back to Chicago, Obama said that First Lady Michelle ultimately will make that decision. As she points out, shes been dragged around on a whole bunch of wild adventures. She pretty much gets veto power here on out, he said.


New technology may put an end to such imports in the future

The Chinese military has confirmed that it received four Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets in late December, but noted that the Su-35 might be the last combat plane China would import thanks to its own defense advances.

The People's Liberation Army's website, 81.cn, recently said that with the commissioning of the J-20, China's domestically developed stealth fighter, Russia understood that the Su-35 "will lose its value on the Chinese market in the near future", so was eager to complete the Su-35 deal. The Su-35 is Russia's most advanced fighter jet in use.

The article also takes pride in the PLA no longer needing Russian-made air defense missiles or transport planes because it now has the indigenous, cutting-edge HQ-9B long-range surface-to-air missile and Y-20 strategic transport aircraft.

"Therefore we hope very much that Su-35 will be the last (combat) aircraft China imports," it said.

This is the first time the Chinese military has confirmed deliveries of the Su-35, though it did not elaborate.

In late December, some Chinese military enthusiasts posted a photograph of what they said was a Su-35 with the PLA Air Force's colors flying over a military air base in China, sparking a debate on whether deliveries of the aircraft had begun.

Sergey Chemezov, CEO of Rostec, Russia's state technology corporation, said in November 2015 that Russia and China had signed a contract that was estimated to be worth $2 billion for 24 Su-35s. The deal was later confirmed by Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Defense Ministry.

Russian news agency TASS quoted an unnamed source within Russia's international military-technical cooperation system as reporting in mid-December that the first deliveries of the aircraft were scheduled in 2017, but "eventually a decision was made to speed up the process and to provide the first batch in the last days" of 2016.

The Su-35 has engines that can point in different directions for increased maneuverability, and phased array antenna radar, which provides better performance against stealth aircraft. It has a maximum speed of 2,500 km/h and can fly 3,400 km without refueling, according to TASS. The fighter is armed with a 30 mm gun and can carry 12 bombs or missiles, the report said.

China bought a large number of Su-27 and Su-30 multirole fighter jets from Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. China also has built licensed variants. These Sukhoi planes are a pillar of the PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy's aviation wing.

Wang Ya'nan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge, told China Daily that the Su-35 will help the PLA fill the gap before it has enough J-20s. He said the new addition will also facilitate China's efforts to upgrade its current Sukhoi jets.
China urged the Republic of Korea on Thursday to immediately stop the deployment of an advanced US anti-missile system and find an appropriate solution that considers both sides' concerns.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke with a delegation from the ROK's largest opposition party, which is visiting Beijing for talks.

A group of seven lawmakers from the Minjoo Party of Korea started a three-day trip to China on Wednesday. The trip is meant to ease tensions between the two countries aroused by the ROK government's determination to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system despite China's repeated opposition.

It was the second delegation that the Minjoo Party has sent to Beijing since August. Moon Jae-in, former leader of the party, now tops media polls as a presidential candidate.

An early presidential race is expected after the impeachment of ROK President Park Geun-hye, who is involved in a corruption scandal.

Song Young-gil, who led the delegation, said the opposition party aims to play an active role in helping to overcome the difficulties and achieve greater development of bilateral ties.

Ahead of the visit, Song told reporters in the ROK that the lawmakers would also inform Chinese officials of Moon's position: that the deployment of THAAD should be decided by the next administration.

Wang told the delegation on Wednesday that China understands the ROK's need to safeguard the security of the country and its people, but "China is opposed to the damage to China's strategic security interests caused by forcing the deployment of THAAD".

He urged Seoul to cherish the hard-won fruits of bilateral ties and find an appropriate solution through communication and negotiation, "so that the exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in various fields will not be affected".

ROK media have reported that China has taken a series of steps against ROK businesses and entertainers in retaliation, but China has never confirmed it.

On Thursday, ROK Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said the planned THAAD deployment is a sovereign and self-defense action in response to threats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

The ROK Foreign Ministry also called in Chinese Ambassador Qiu Guohong on Thursday.

Shi Yongming, an Asia-Pacific studies researcher at the China Institute of International Relations, said THAAD deployment is of little help in protecting the ROK, and it only helps to defend Washington's military bases there as well as guarding against China.

"The system, once deployed, will make Seoul a military tool and a strategic piece of Washington in East Asia," he said.

Huang Youfu, a Korean studies professor at Minzu University of China, said uncertainty still remains regarding the deployment of THAAD due to the division within the ruling party and the opposition of the Minjoo Party.

"If Moon is elected as the next president, it is likely that the deployment will be delayed indefinitely," he said.
Regulation specifies scope, standards for confiscation of funds in graft cases

The top court has issued a legal interpretation regarding the criterion for confiscating money and property from accused who are deceased or have fled overseas.

Pei Xianding, head of a criminal court of the Supreme People's Court, said the move is mainly to facilitate the nation's anti-graft drive in recovering stolen money in corruption cases.

Pei said rules for confiscating money and property were first written into law in 2012, but the provisions were not specific enough and in certain circumstances were inapplicable.

The interpretation issued on Thursday specified the scope, standards and procedures for confiscation.

Cases in five categories are subject to the legal interpretation, which include corruption cases as well as those involving bribery and terrorism.

According to statistics from the top court, 908 suspects involved in corruption cases were brought back to China from about 70 countries and territories in the first 11 months of 2016. More than 2.3 billion yuan ($33 million) of illicit money was recovered in these cases.

By the end of last year, 38 cases regarding requests for confiscation of money and property had been filed in courts across the country.

Pei said some of these cases are stuck in a preliminary stage and hindered the nation's efforts in fighting corruption.

"Cases involving accused who are either deceased or absconded are more complicated than normal criminal cases because judiciary departments can't bring them to face court trials, which means their ill-gotten money has to be processed without their appearance in court. Therefore, regulations regarding these circumstances should be in place," said Wang Xiaodong, an official with the criminal court of the top court.

In the latest incident, one of China's most wanted economic fugitives, Yang Xiuzhu, returned to China in November last year after she illegally stayed in various countries for more than a decade.

Accused of taking bribes of 250 million yuan in 2003, Yang is the latest name to be crossed off Interpol's list of 100 major Chinese economic fugitives.

Around one-third of the fugitives on the list had returned to China, either by force or of their own volition, by the end of last year.

zhang_yi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/06/2017 page4)
A teacher teaches a class of just four students at Xujiaduo village, Daning township of North China's Shanxi province, Jan 4, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

As China marches toward urbanization, many farmers are leaving their land to find a job in cities. While they leave with hope and dreams, they also leave behind a major problem: their children and their schooling.

A school in North China's Shanxi province that had more than 400 students about eight years ago now has only 15, while there are 20 teachers. With so many children going to cities with their parents for better education, it's those left behind that are suffering.

"Although the teacher works very hard, the students struggle to perform well as there is lack of peer competition and encouragement," said Li Xueping, headmaster of the school.

"All my best friends left to study in cities. It's only during vacation that I get to meet and play with them," said 11-year-old boy Li Xinsheng.

The left-behind children are all from the poorest families. Maybe some will leave later when their parents get economically better, said the headmaster.
BEIJING - China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Thursday said 1,623 people were investigated for duty-related crimes from January to October 2016, a 94.6-percent rise year-on-year.

The SPP said the people involved in the crimes are mostly officials at the grassroots level.

The SPP publicized eight typical criminal cases in poverty relief work, and urged procuratorates at all levels to investigate all duty-related crimes in the sector, in a bid to ensure the poverty relief policies and resources really benefit people in need.
Chinese students who study English will take fewer tests to prove their proficiency after new unified standards for English-language learning are released at the end of this year.

Officials with the Ministry of Education (MOE) said a scale for English proficiency levels will be released, and some old tests will be phased out by 2020.

A report released Wednesday by People's Daily said that universities and language experts have been developing the scale since 2014, when the State Council released a guideline for deepening reforms of testing and recruiting, including a unified testing system for English.

To that end, educational authorities in Anhui province announced that the end of PETS (Public English Test System) in the province starting from 2017, becoming the first province in the country to make such a move. The news has drawn great attention from the public, especially college students who also face CET (College English Test) while in school. If they want to apply for further schooling, attain professional titles in China, or study abroad, more English tests are awaiting them.

In the future, however, Chinese people may only need to take English tests according to their educational backgrounds, as the scale is divided into 9 levels, covers all the education periods from elementary school to university. Specifically, level 1-2 are for elementary students, level 3 is for junior high school students, level 4 is for high school students and level 5-6 are for college students with non-English majors, level 7 is for college students majoring in English and level 8-9 are for the people with superior English language skills.

Along with requirements for listening, speaking, reading and writing, the scale also includes practical skills like written translation and oral translation, which is rare in the world in terms of standards for English proficiency. For students, especially the ones in elementary school, it is more important to cultivate their interest in learning the language rather than forcing them to take tests, according to officials.

"The scale will be helpful in unifying the various kinds of English tests in China that have different standards and also making clear the educational objects of English education in China," said Liu Jianda, an expert in English testing and also vice president of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

In establishing the unified standards of English proficiency in China and the new testing regime, it will help promote communication and mutual recognition among the English tests in China and those that are better-known globally, officials with the MOE said.
BEIJING -- The Ministry of Civil Affairs has drafted provisional measures on social organization inspections, to help support the strategic and functional direction.



Social organizations in China include community groups, trust foundations, industry organizations and non-profit organizations.



At least three percent of all registered social organizations should be inspected, according to the draft document. The inspections will focus on annual reports, information disclosure, management, and finances.



The draft outlined that there would be two types of inspection - "regular" and "irregular" - with the latter focusing on certain sectors or fields.



All expenses related to inspections will be paid by the registration and supervisory organs, according to the document, which underscored that no fees will be collected from social organizations in this regard.



Problems found during the inspections should be made public and penalties meted out in accordance with the law.



The inspection results will be used during appraisals, government procurement of services and tax incentives, according to the ministry.



The provisional measures have been posted on the ministry's website (www.mca.gov.cn) to solicit suggestions.



China had about 675,000 registered social organizations by the third quarter of 2016, according to the ministry.
Stricter measures will be taken to monitor emissions and punish violators as the government tries to reduce pollutants from small factories in northern parts of the country, Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said on Friday.

Large enterprises in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region have been put under environmental supervision, which, as a result, has seen their emissions decline sharply.

However, many small factories are continuing to discharge pollutants, which are partly to blame for the severe smog that has covered most parts of North China in recent days.

It is a challenge for environmental authorities to reduce emissions from those small but highly polluting factories in the region, Chen added.

We have now put these small polluting factories on our priority list of supervision, he said.

By Friday, 31 cities in northern and central parts of the country had been put under red alert, the highest level, amid almost a week of heavy smog, which is forecast to ease starting on Sunday.

Measures to reduce the pollution include suspending industrial production and activities at construction sites and limiting the number of vehicles on roads.

But inspectors sent by the ministry and local governments have discovered many cases of violation, especially by small factories in Hebei, Henan and Shandong provinces that continue to ignore production restrictions.

For example, Yusheng, a building material company in Hebi, Henan province, used its own power generator to restart production after the local government cut its power supply as part of a restrictive move.

The violators will be punished in accordance with the upper limit of punishments, the ministry said.

Chen said these small factories are pursuing profits in disregard of environmental rules, and they can easily restart production without government notice, since environmental authorities are often short of staff.

The authorities will use more remote-sensing and other technologies to cover larger areas, and they encourage the public to report violations by polluting companies to environmental officials.
The one-China policy, which has been challenged by US president-elect Donald Trump, is supported by the Democratic and Republican parties, US Secretary of State John Kerry assured Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday.

Analysts said that through the phone call, Kerry aimed to warn Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan 20, not to undermine the cornerstone of Sino-US relations as the president-elect has done in the past month - from speaking with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen on the phone to questioning the necessity of supporting the one-China policy.

Support for the one-China policy is based on the three joint communiques between the United States and China, Kerry said in his call to Wang. The communiques, issued in the 1970s and 1980s, laid the foundation for the restoration of China-US diplomatic ties.
Momentum is growing in Philippine political circles to prevent South China Sea territorial issues from hampering cooperation with Beijing, observers said.

The Manila Times reported on Tuesday that the Philippines and China will set up talks this year to settle sensitive issues, including the dispute in the South China Sea.

Philippine ambassador-designate to China Jose Santa Romana said the schedule of the meetings was under discussion and that the start of talks would be announced soon.
With many international awards, literary works from the mainland made a mark on the international stage last year.

Zhang Yueran, one of the representative writers born in the 1980s, is noticeable for her new release The Cocoon. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese novels came of age in 2016 bagging many international awards, as in the case of children's literature writer Cao Wenxuan winning the Hans Christian Andersen Award, Hao Jingfang taking the Hugo Award after Liu Cixin, the first Chinese winner of the award in 2015, and Wang Anyi grabbing the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from The University of Oklahoma in September.

Veteran literary critic Meng Fanhua says 2016 was a big year for novels and he says that the power of Chinese stories come from the rural areas, "where we have the strongest literary traditions".

Another veteran critic Bai Ye, who is with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that while traditional and established novel writers continue to produce works, younger writers who were born in the 1970s, '80s and '90s are also gaining ground.

"Every year there are about 5,000 novels published in the country. But, this year, I noticed writers are more keen to reflect the pulse of the society, and their writings are close to everyday reality and easier for general readers to accept."

Bai, who produces an annual report on Chinese novels, also says that rural life is one of the key elements in the books published last year, and adds that as urbanization spreads, the nostalgia for rural life grows as seen in Jia Pingwa's work The Jihua Flower.

The novel, about an abducted girl and her plight, stirred a debate about gender equality soon after its release in March.

Other themes that writers tackled last year were urban life and history.
The private ownership of wild animals has been outlawed in the United Arab Emirates, where keeping exotic creatures as pets is a status symbol for some, reports said on Wednesday.

Wildcats including endangered cheetahs are known to have been domesticated in the UAE and neighboring Gulf countries, with some even spotted being taken outside in the middle of big cities.

In October, one such outing with five tigers on a beach near Dubai's iconic Burj Al-Arab hotel was captured on video and went viral on social media, while others have been filmed driving around with lions.
US President-elect Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a USA Thank You Tour event in Mobile, Alabama, US, December 17, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The history of China's relations with the United States under different US presidents suggests they will be not too good, not too bad even after Donald Trump takes office.

However, considering Trump's non-traditional personality, China should be braced for various scenarios, even unexpected ones, while dealing with the US.

Despite his show of an isolationist inclination during his campaigning, such as his threat to withdraw troops from Japan and the Republic of Korea and dismantle NATO, Trump has so far displayed a hard-line ideological approach, as indicated by his nominations for military, diplomatic, domestic and environmental posts in his administration, which means the US under his leadership is likely to be unwilling to seek compromises.

At the same time, the Republican Party is in the majority in both Senate and House of Representatives and his possible chance to appoint several Supreme Court judges may also fuel policymaking obstinacy.

During his presidential campaign, Trump claimed he would list China as a currency manipulator once he assumes office, causing extensive worries about a possible trade war with China. Such worries are not unreasonable. Trump may increase the pressure on China in trade so as to gain economic benefits for the US.

There is also the possibility that Trump will impose pressure on China on the security front to gain more economic and trade benefits for Washington.

The most constructive decision Trump has so far made concerning Sino-US relations is his nomination of Terry Branstad, believed by some to be an "old friend of China", as US ambassador to China. However, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the nomination is a move to reward Branstad for the political support he and his son once extended to Trump.

Taking all this into account, Sino-US relations are expected to strike a new balance after a period of frictions.--Beijing News
Smoke is discharged from chimneys at a plant in Huai'an city, East China's Jiangsu province, Jan 31, 2015. [Photo/IC]

The severe smog that shrouds Chinese cities and the traffic woes that haunt US cities are reminders of how much the two countries can learn from and help each other in tackling such issues instead of engaging in a trade war which the incoming US administration has hinted it will initiate.

This week, Beijing is once again under a very high alert, shortly after a red one, the most severe smog warning in a four-tier system, announced on Dec 16.

Amid the New Year holiday celebrations and partying, the toxic smog that has blanketed the Chinese capital has become the most talked-about subject of all domestic social media. People's anxiety has reached levels never seen before. They have compared notes on which masks are the most effective and most have expressed dissatisfaction with the efforts made to tackle the smog in the past years, which have made little progress.

"Smog terror," "nuclear winter" and "gas chamber" are just some of the words used to describe the horrendous air pollution.

It is true that the air pollution smog may not disappear in the coming years, but it would reassure people that the fight will one day be its severity lessens rather than worsens. While the Beijing authorities reported this week that there had been more good air quality days last year than the previous year, that the situation is improving is not the general impression the public has.

There are strong doubts that all the environmental laws and regulations are being strictly enforced, and whether the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its subsidiaries have the necessary teeth, as their counterparts in other countries have.

For example, Los Angeles suffered from severe air pollution 20 years ago. Yet a University of Southern California study released a year ago showed that air pollution has declined significantly over the past two decades. As a result, residents are healthier, especially in lung function and lung growth among children.

Stricter regulations and strong enforcement are regarded as a major contributor to the improvement. The state of California, where Los Angeles is located, is now the leader in environmental technology and standards.

That is what China, Chinese cities and provinces should aspire to be in combating air pollution. And it will be a win-win if the two countries strengthen cooperation in this regard.

Everyone loves blue sky. However, it is joyless to see fellow Chinese taking and posting pictures of clear blue sky in Beijing because it's so rare.

While Chinese visiting the US often marvel at the clear sky in the US, many Americans who visit China often praise the high-speed trains and smooth subways.

The Wednesday morning train crash in Brooklyn, New York, which injured more than 100 passengers, came three months after a train crash in Hoboken, New Jersey, that killed one bystander and destroyed part of the historic train terminal.

One of my fellow Chinese journalists based in Washington described her recent ride on the slow and wobbly No 7 train from Flushing, Queens, to the Times Square as torture. Asked why New Yorkers don't complain about this, one fellow American journalist, a New Yorker, replied: "Maybe people are just used to this."

The same problem exists in Washington DC's Metro system which is finally undergoing massive repairs after ignoring decades of warning. Major delays caused by scheduled and unscheduled repairs are commonplace in the US capital.

China has done a marvelous job in building its subway systems. Both Shanghai and Beijing have built subway systems whose total length is greater than that of the one in New York City in about a decade, while the Second Avenue Subway in New York took literally a century to be completed and opened to traffic on Jan 1.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
Migrant workers receive their pay at a construction site in Dazu district, Chongqing, on Dec 26, 2013. [Photo/China Daily]

In a recent joint circular, the General Offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, the country's Cabinet, said Party, Communist Youth League and labor union activities should be organized to ensure employees get their welfare benefits and are treated in accordance with relevant State regulations.

With Spring Festival just three weeks away, the circular comes at the right time, because many employers have slashed almost all the normal benefits employees previously enjoyed for "safety concerns", fearing they could be interpreted as corruption and thus affect their political career. For example, employers have more or less stopped distributing low-priced moon cakes among employees for Mid-Autumn Festival; they have also stopped giving employees desk calendars and diaries for the New Year. Some employers have reportedly even put in place very rigid and complicated procedures for reimbursing employees' transport and communications allowances.

At a crucial point in China's ongoing anti-corruption campaign, one can understand why managers of working units do not want to risk their political future by providing ordinary employees extra welfare for fear of being accused of indulging in "corruption" or "misusing" public money.

Welfare has long been a highly sensitive issue in China. Since it was common in the past for senior public servants to receive massive welfare benefits, such as free housing, dining and transport allowanceswhich ordinary employees did not enjoythe widespread perception among people was that they were "hidden corruption" practices that benefited specific groups.

That's why the public in general applauded the eight measures the top leadership implemented at the end of 2012 to promote thrift and fight extravagance, and crack down on corruption and misuse of public money, especially on the eve of major festivals and holidays.

These measures, no doubt, are necessary to build an austere Party and government. But some State departments, institutions and enterprises have taken the anti-extravagance campaign to extreme extents. Many employers and managers have wrongly interpreted the anti-corruption and anti-waste drive as a "zero-welfare" campaign for ordinary employees. Obviously, this is in contravention of the spirit and original intention of the top authorities' anti-corruption and anti-waste campaign.

For ordinary people, receiving some extra benefits from their employers on important occasions such as Spring Festival have long been seen as approval of their yearlong work. Besides, goodwill gestures from employers can encourage employees to work harder, deepen their bond with their working units and enhance staff cohesion.

The fight against extravagance and waste is necessary to build a frugal society, but it should not compromise the normal welfare and benefits of employees, and the latest circular from the top authorities hammers home this very point.

Early in July 2014, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions issued a notice saying some labor union dues can be used for the collective welfare of workers. But some employers continue to deny normal welfare benefits to ordinary employees on the pretext of fighting corruption. This is all the more worrying because some allowances and subsidies employees enjoyed in the past used to constitute an important part of their incomes and helped them to lead a decent life despite their low salaries.

The top authorities' latest circular should dispel any suspicions employers have on whether providing normal welfare and benefits to employees is tantamount to corruption. The authorities have officially confirmed that the ongoing anti-corruption campaign is to prevent the misuse of public money and curb extravagance, but not to abolish legal allowances and perks of employees. However, given the different interpretations of "normal welfare", the authorities should now give specific definitions of welfare benefits, in order to further ease employers' misgivings.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

wuyixue@chinadaily.com.cn
A tank vehicle loading 26 tons of hydrochloric acid rolled over in Nanxiong city in South China's Guangdong province on April 15, 2012. [Photo/CFP]

Dystar Group, a German company purchased by the domestic company Longshen in 2010, was recently found responsible for discharging 698 tons of waste acid into a canal without proper treatment by Yangzhou Intermediate People's Court. China Youth Daily comments:

According to reports, the court found the average concentration of the waste acid discharged by DyStar was 59 percent, hundreds of times higher than the legal standard. The waste acid has already caused serious pollution and several neighboring tap water plants have had to suspend production.

The company did not start its illegal deeds until a Chinese management took charge. When the chief manager was a German, the company always neutralized its waste acid then sent it to sewage plants for further processing. It was the new Chinese managers who decided to lower the costs and hand over the waste to an unqualified company which then reassigned the project to a third party, leading to the eventual illicit discharge of the waste acid directly into the canal. It seems many of our compatriots have not formed the habit of strictly following legal standards yet.

Reports show that the German manager spent about 3,000 yuan ($433) to process each ton of waste acid. Under the direction of the Chinese chief manager, DyStar disposed at least 2,698 tons of waste acid at the cost of 580 yuan a ton, saving 6.5 million yuan or so.

The damage done by its illegal deeds are beyond measurement, but the punishments for crimes related to environmental pollution are rather light in this country. The court only fined DyStar 20 million yuan, which is hardly enough to prevent it from committing similar misdeeds again, and certainly far from enough to mend the environmental damage it has already done.

The news reports did not mention whether the court found any individual, such as the chief manager, guilty. But it mentioned that he commanded his subordinate staff to cover up any evidence of the discharging of the waste and destroying the evidence in a bid to escape punishment.
At a recent executive meeting of the State Council, China's Cabinet, it was decided to further delegate the central government's power to local authorities.

After the meeting, which was presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, it was announced that local governments will be given the power of approval for 53 administrative items, mainly covering business activities such as qualification certificates for private schools and business permits for cotton processing, that was formerly the central government's.

The move aims to further streamline administration by reducing the certification and evaluation requirements especially at the central government level.

It is expected to create a fairer, more convenient and more transparent market environment.

Since 2013, a total of 230 administration items have been delegated to local governments.

The delegating to lower levels of government the power of approval for 14 of the 53 items will require further approval by the National People's Congress Standing Committee as law amendments are needed.

In addition, another 20 agency-provided evaluation and certificate requirements will also be dropped, including areas such as railway facility construction and qualifications for legal professionals.

"Our reform in streamlining administration for leaner and more effective government is stepping into a crucial stage," Li stressed. "All departments should seriously implement (the decision), and make sure to drop institutional costs for enterprises."
A bus carrying demonstrators drives past the Supreme Court in London, Britain on Dec. 5, 2016. [Xinhua/Tim Ireland]

The European Union (EU) has had a difficult few years, managing a multitude of crises since the financial crashin 2008.

Last June saw the shock vote by the United Kingdom to leave the EU, and 2015 saw the near ejection of Greece from the Eurozone--the EU's single currency bloc.

There can be no doubt, just getting through this year will be an achievement for the EU, it seems hard to imagine how it could hope for much else. The bloc will face several highly-serious issues over the coming months, with some of them posing an existential threat.

Ultimately, it is the rise of populist and nationalist politicians, from the United States to Russia, and just about everywhere in between, that will cause the biggest headaches.

First up is this month's inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Few European leaders built bridges with Trump during his presidential campaign, and none have a personal relationship with him. But within a few weeks EU leaders will be dealing with a president who admires Vladimir Putin and seems lukewarm about NATO commitments.

Member states may well be forced to spend significant money on defense again if they can't be certain of the Americansecurity umbrella.

The next major test for the bloc will be the UK's expected triggering of Article 50 in March. This will mark the start of a two-year process whereby the UK will be expected to negotiate the terms of its departure with the other member states.

Many commentators predict the EU will manage to present a united front, with the goal of extracting a high price from Britain, in the hope this will discourage further exits from the bloc.

However, negotiations will likely not bring about a display of European unity. National governments will quickly prioritise their own interests, and some will push for a quick deal with Britain. In particular, Germany has an interest in securing tariff-free access to the UK market for its exports, and Eastern European members will be under pressure to secure the rights of their nationals living and working in the UK.

When a deal is eventually done, other member states will see that an exit from the organization can be both practical and achievable.

France will hold its presidential election in April. The outcome could possibly trigger the biggest crisis for the bloc.

Currently, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the populist National Front, is leading in opinion polls for the first round of the presidential election. And while she would probably lose in the following round, the events of 2016 illustrated that we no longer live in times where opinion polls are necessarily a good guide to anything. Le Pen has promised to offer a referendum on French EU membership.A French exit would probably deliver a fatal blow to the organization.

The EU will also spend this year worrying about its increasingly unstable neighbour--Turkey.

Turkey's cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants from Syria and elsewhere is considered essential in enabling the bloc to get a grip on a problem impacting many of its members, and fuelling support for populist politicians.

Yet 2017 will likely see the collapse of the EU's migrant deal with Turkey--which allows Greece to deport many migrants back to Turkey--as both sides claim key parts of the agreement are not being met.

Indeed, the Turkish leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to flood Europe with migrants over the EU's alleged broken promises.

September will see Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel face elections for a fourth term in office.

Merkel, who has been Germany's leader since 2005, has seen her popularity slowly erode following her handling of the ongoing Euro crisis and her decision to welcome over 1 million migrants into the country.

While Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) are currently leading in the polls, Merkel will ultimately have to govern as part of a coalition, if she wins. In the nine months or so until the election, there are a whole multitude of evolving European issues which could dramatically change the situation. Never mind the domestic political landscape where Merkel will face a populist challenge from the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

Even in stable Germany, nine months is a long time in politics.

This year will likely not be a happy one for the EU. It faces existential challenges, including a collapse in popular support, an ongoing crisis within its single currency zone and the rise of populist politicians across the bloc.

Increasingly, anti-EU parties in many of the key member states are becoming serious contenders for power, making it difficult for establishment politicians to be seen to be defending the European project.

The nation state is back in vogue.

James Skinner is a contributing editor at China Daily with an MA in International Relations. He has a particular interest in British and American politics, as well as global security issues.
People react after an explosion outside a courthouse in Izmir, Turkey, January 5, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

ANKARA - Suspected Kurdish militants clashed with police and detonated a car bomb in western Turkey on Thursday after their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint, killing a police officer and a court employee, officials said.

The explosion and gunfire outside the main courthouse in Izmir, Turkey's third largest city, highlighted the country's deteriorating security after a gunman killed 39 people in a New Year's Day mass shooting at an Istanbul nightclub.

"Based on the preparation, the weapons, the bombs and ammunition seized, it is understood that a big atrocity was being planned," Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told reporters.

The local governor said the arms included Kalashnikov rifles, hand grenades and ammunition for rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Izmir police shot dead two of the attackers and were hunting a third, a police source and the state-run Anadolu agency said.

"Our heroic police officer martyred in this attack, Fethi Sekin, prevented a much bigger disaster happening, sacrificing his own life without a thought for it," Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a statement, condemning the "heinous" attack.

Two people, believed to have sold the vehicle used in the attack to the assailants, were subsequently detained, security sources said. CCTV footage obtained by Reuters showed a passerby fleeing as the vehicle exploded in a fire ball.

Initial findings suggested that Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were behind the attack, Izmir governor Erol Ayyildiz said.

Dozens of people rushed to the scene of the blast and chanted "God damn the PKK" and other slogans against the militant group. A helicopter was seen flying overhead.

Ayyildiz said a second vehicle had been detonated in a controlled explosion. Anadolu said police suspected the attackers had planned to escape in this vehicle.

NATO member Turkey is part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and is also battling an insurgency by the PKK in the largely Kurdish southeast.

It regularly bombs PKK camps in northern Iraq and its military operations in Syria also aim to stop Kurdish militias it sees as an extension of the PKK from gaining territory there.

"Turkey will be instrumental in its region. These (attacks) will never prevent us from being present in areas like Iraq and Syria, which produce terrorists like viruses," Kaynak said.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on foreign cyber threats, on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, January 5, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - The top US intelligence official said on Thursday he was "even more resolute" in his belief that Russia staged cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 election campaign, rebuking persistent skepticism from Republican President-elect Donald Trump about whether Moscow was involved.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said he had a very high level of confidence that Russia hacked Democratic Party and campaign staff email, and disseminated propaganda and fake news aimed at the Nov. 8 election.

"Our assessment now is even more resolute than it was" on Oct. 7 when the government first publicly accused Russia, Clapper told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said motives for the attack would be made public next week.

Trump on Thursday morning called himself a "big fan" of intelligence agencies. But he has cast doubt on their assessments that Russia targeted the campaign of his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, drawing ire from his fellow Republicans as well as Democrats who are wary of Moscow and distrust Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The intelligence officials at Thursday's hearing said they worried a lack of support from atop the government could prompt valued staff members to leave their agencies.

"There's a difference between healthy skepticism ... and disparagement," Clapper said. Vice President-elect Mike Pence has used the expression "healthy skepticism" to defend Trump's criticism of intelligence findings.

The hearing was overseen by Republican Senator John McCain, a vociferous Russia critic. It was the first in a promised series of briefings and hearings on allegations that Russia tried to disrupt or influence the US campaign, one of the most bitter in recent history.

McCain told reporters that Senator Lindsey Graham, also a vocal critic of Moscow, would chair a new Armed Services subcommittee dedicated to cyber issues.

"Every American should be alarmed by Russia's attacks on our nation. There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference," McCain said.

Trump will be briefed by intelligence agency chiefs on Friday on the hacks. President Barack Obama received a report on the matter on Thursday. An unclassified version will be made public early next week.

"I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case," said Clapper, who leaves when Trump becomes president on Jan. 20. Clapper stopped short of declaring Russia's actions "an act of war," saying that determination was beyond the scope of his office.

Clapper and the two other officials who testified, National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers, and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, did not say what made US intelligence confident Russia was behind the cyber attacks, a conclusion also reached by several private firms.

Clapper said the hacking did not change any vote tallies.
Iraqi rapid response forces cary their weapons during battle with Islamic State militants in the Mithaq district of eastern Mosul, Iraq, January 4, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

MOSUL -- Iraqi government forces fight heavy clashes in the northern city of Mosul to drive out the Islamic State (IS) militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq, the Iraqi military said.

In the second phase launched on Dec. 29 to push into the eastern side of the city, Iraqi federal police and army soldiers on Thursday continued their heavy fighting with slow progresses in Mosul's southeastern neighborhoods of al-Salam, Palestine, al-Shaimaa, Domiez and Sumer, a statement by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said.

In the past two days, the troops recovered the nearby neighborhoods of al-Mithaq and Wahda after heavy clashes with IS group.

Thursday's fighting left dozens of IS militants killed and five of their vehicles destroyed, the statement said.

The latest battles in southeastern Mosul brought the troops closer to the center of the east side of the city, according to the statement.

In the eastern front, elite forces of Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) have cleared areas they recaptured earlier, including a vast industrial area on Tuesday.

Fighting including sporadic clashes continued Thursday on the northern front without a change in the front lines, killing two militants and seizing ten vehicles, it said.

The battles in Mosul came as the CTS commandos, army troops and federal police launched on Dec. 29 the second phase of a major offensive to free Mosul. 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.
A Mobike is parked next to two Ofo bikes. [Photo by Guo Yiming/China.org.cn]

China's ongoing battle between Mobike and Ofo, two major bike-sharing startups, may bring about unexpected side effects causing overcapacity and even damaging related brick-and-mortar businesses.

With an idea of pursuing a low-carbon lifestyle and providing convenience for urban commuters, both companies are ploughing hundreds of millions of dollars into the fledging market.

The Shanghai-based Mobike, backed by tech giant Tencent Holdings, have reportedly secured another US$215 million in its series D funding round, with total investment reaching US$400 million, while the Beijing-based Ofo, backed by taxi-hailing company Didi Chuxing, is said to have gained around US$200 million after its latest round of financing last October.

According to a McKinsey research report and multiple statistics, the bike-sharing market in China is estimated to be around 1.72 billion yuan, slightly over US$250 million - much smaller than expected.

This may fuel the ever stiffening competition among rivals and inadvertently hurt bike factories and local economies, analysts say.

With so much money getting pumped into the industry, bike-sharing rivalries are bound to beef up their "arsenal" and bike factories need to expand their production capacity in face of ever increasing orders which means risks.

Take Yihao for example, Ofo's OEM factory in Tianjin. It will need to sacrifice the production of its own brands in order to meet growing demand from the bike-sharing start-up.

If Ofo were to lose the battle and merge with its competitor, OEM factories might be the hardest hit, losing its original brand and seeing dwindling OEM orders.

Observers say the bike-sharing battle will also result in excess bikes in the market that will also threaten the upper stream of the supply chain, i.e., the manufacturers and hence the local economy.

For better or worse, the final analysis of this ongoing bike-sharing revolution that aims to put China back on two wheels is still hard to tell.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a speech from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, in central London, Britain February 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - The CIA has identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the Democratic National Committee and party leaders to WikiLeaks at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin through third parties, according to a new US intelligence report, senior US officials said on Thursday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Central Intelligence Agency and others have concluded that the Russian government escalated its efforts from discrediting the US election process to assisting President-elect Donald Trump's campaign.

The intelligence assessment was presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday and will be briefed to Trump on Friday. Trump has rejected the broad intelligence community's assessment that Russia staged cyber attacks during the election campaign to undermine Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Russia has rejected the hacking allegations.

"By October, it had become clear that the Russians were trying to help the Trump campaign," said one official familiar with the full report speaking on the condition of anonymity because the complete version is Top Secret.

In some cases, one official said, the material followed what was called "a circuitous route" from the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, to WikiLeaks in an apparent attempt to make the origins of the material harder to trace, a common practice used by all intelligence agencies, including US ones.

These handoffs, the officials said, enabled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to say the Russian government or state agencies were not the source of the material published on his website.

In an interview with Fox News this week, Assange said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and Clinton aide John Podesta from "a state party." Assange did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party.

Details of the report emerged as the top US intelligence official, James Clapper, said on Thursday he was "even more resolute" in his belief that Russia staged cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.

Not all 17 intelligence agencies participated in preparing the assessment. An unclassified version of the report is expected to be released on Friday morning, two officials said.

The report contains some of what the officials called "minor footnotes" about open questions and other uncertainties, in part because some of the evidence supporting the conclusion is inferential.

One such example, the officials said, was that intercepted messages and conversations among senior Russian officials in Putin's inner circle indicated they were aware of the hacking campaign and celebrated Trump's election as a victorious end to the campaign.

The officials declined to discuss the nature of the communications, including whether they were domestic, international, or both.

"People who knew what this was about were celebrating a victory over the United States," said one official.

Another example of inferential evidence, the officials said, was that as time passed and the early leaks attracted media attention that undermined or eclipsed Clinton's campaign, the Russians increasingly focused their hacking "almost exclusively" on Democratic rather than Republican targets.
A combination photo shows four people charged with felonies for the beating of a man with mental health issues, L-R: Brittany Covington, 18, Jordan Hill, 18, Tanishia Covington, 24, and Tesfaye Cooper, 18, shown in Chicago Police Department photos released in Chicago, Illinois, US January 5, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

CHICAGO - Four young African-Americans were charged on Thursday with hate crimes in the videotaped torture of a white man with diminished mental capacity after they streamed it live on social media.

The victim, who was not identified, was picked up on Saturday by one of his abductors in a northwestern suburb of Chicago where his parents had dropped him off at a McDonald's restaurant, police told a news conference.

Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper and Brittany Covington, all 18, were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary, prosecutors said.

Tanishia Covington, 24, faces the same charges, except for residential burglary. Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen vehicle.

The victim, 18, was missing for days, police said.

They said Hill was an acquaintance of the victim, and that he picked him up in a stolen van. While the victim's parents reported him missing, their son and Hill spent the next two days together, visiting friends and sleeping in the van.

On Tuesday, a "play fight" between the two in the Covington sisters' apartment escalated, Kevin Duffin, a police commander, said at the news conference.

The victim was tied up for four or five hours, gagged and beaten. His scalp was cut and he was forced to drink toilet water, Duffin said.

In the Facebook Live video, the attackers could be heard making comments about "white people" as the victim cowered in a corner, his mouth taped shut.

At least one of the attackers could also be heard saying obscenities about President-elect Donald Trump. Police said they did not know whether the victim was a Trump supporter.

"Let me be very clear, the actions in that video are reprehensible," Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.

Police officers located the victim on Tuesday after neighbors complained about noise coming from the apartment. He was outside in freezing weather wearing only a tank top, shorts and sandals, police said.

He was taken to a hospital and later released. Members of the public alerted investigators to the Facebook Live video.

The four suspects are due to appear in a Chicago bond court on Friday.
Professor Sir David Eastwood, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, delivers a keynote speech during the joint workshop between the University of Birmingham and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing on Jan 5, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have underlined the urgent need for Chinese megacities to identify sources that contribute to the lingering air pollution.

This comes as a consortium of seven UK universities, led by University of Birmingham, aims to address air pollution sources in Beijing. The research project, worth 2.6 million ($3.2 million), is in collaboration with leading Chinese institutes such the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Tsinghua University.

Back in December 1952, the Great London Smog killed 4,000 people in the UK. Experts later revised the death toll to more than 12,000. At that time, Londoners were using coal as their main fuel as other energy sources were expensive due to the Second World War.

Despite the different geographic and social settings, Chinese scientists are eager to learn from the lessons London experienced half a century ago.

"The London smog in the 1950s was perhaps easier to deal with than the air pollution in Beijing today," William J. Bloss, Professor of Atmosphere Science at Birmingham, told China Daily website in Beijing. "It is related to the source being largely a single phenomenon of burning dirty coal with high sulfur content in the city for power generation, heating and industries."

"But nowadays we face air pollution problems with small particles and nitrogen dioxide. If we look back to source origins, we can identify industries, power generation, heating, vehicles and agricultural emissions," said Bloss. "It is a mixture of primary pollutants and secondary ones formed in the atmosphere."

"The challenge for Beijing is to understand how all these ingredients come together to generate the haze, and from that we can identify the best emission-control measures to improve the situation," added Bloss.

Launched last January, the project comprises major field observations in Beijing, with the latest one conducted in December. It will then be followed by laboratory and data analysis and numerical model simulations. The research, aiming to identify the concentrations and sources of urban pollution in Beijing, will continue until 2020.

Sir David Eastwood, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, meets with the press in Beijing on Jan 5, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

So, after sorting out the pollutants, how could we tackle the problem?

"The first is legislation, namely the Clean Air Act; the second is better science which enables us to embrace newer and cleaner tech; the third is the heavy industries start to decline in the 1960s-70s," said Professor Sir David Eastwood, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, reflecting on the three factors that led to the end of the Great London Smog.

"The key lies in the development of clean energy tools to cut coal emissions," said Professor Li Jinghai, former vice-president of CAS."A good case in point is that the new technique CAS has recently developed for rural people in Shandong province to replace the old coal burning boilers with more energy-efficient ones.

An inaugural workshop has been simultaneously launched in Beijing on Thursday for environmental specialists from Birmingham and CAS to discuss further collaboration in areas such as river ecosystems and using fossil research to better understand how past steps can tackle current climate issues.
Flight officer Rayan Gharazeddine looks out of a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion as it flies over the southern Indian Ocean during the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 March 22, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

KUALA LUMPUR -- The ongoing search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has entered "final lap" and a tripartite meeting would be held to decide the next step, a Malaysian official said on Friday.

The search of the 120,000-square-km area in the South Indian Ocean is "in the final lap", possibly completed "within these two weeks", Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters.

The governments of Malaysia, Australia and China will wait for the final search report before holding a tripartite meeting, he said.

The state news agency quoted Liow as saying that the tripartite meeting, which could be held at the end of this month, would decide whether to continue the search for the ill-fated flight.

A recent report released by Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which in charge of the underwater search efforts for missing, admitted there is a "high probability" the aircraft is not within the existing search area.

"We cannot just base on assumptions, we need credible clues to look for the plane, so we are waiting for the final report," Liow said when asked about the possibility of extending the search area.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, most of them Chinese, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The three nations have decided to suspend the search operation after finishing the 120,000 square km if no credible information emerged.
Mei Sim Lai has scored a lot of firsts in her life.

She was the first femaleand first Chinesepartner at the chartered accountancy firm Pridie Brewster in 1979. She has been honorary secretary of the City of London branch of the Institute of Directors, one of the most prestigious because it groups together important London companies.

Mei Sim Lai, the first female and first Chinese partner at the firm Pridie Brewster. [China Daily]

Then in 2004, she was given an OBE for services to equal opportunities.

The Malaysian-Chinese businesswoman has also had a privileged position from which to view the evolution of Chinese-UK relations, which reached a "golden era" with the visit of President Xi Jinping in October 2015.

"But as with all relationships, it needs careful handling," says Lai. "There is a need for ongoing respect for each other because things can happen very quickly to affect good relations."

She pointed to the British government's delay over the 18 billion pound Hinkley Point

From page 1 nuclear plant, in which China has a one-third share and which was only given the go-ahead in September. British Prime Minister Theresa May is reported to be much more cautious about closer ties with Beijing in terms of critical infrastructure.

Mei Sim Lai has led several delegations of British companies to China as part of her mission to break down barriers, not just with China but also for women and minority ethnic groups working in the City.

She talked to China Daily at the Oriental Club, an exclusive institution founded nearly 200 years ago by returning British officers and officials from India and the East. It only admitted women in 2010. Miss Lai now sits on its finance committee.

She remembers that, when she first arrived in London in 1970, it was extremely challenging to work and study at the same time as an articled clerk at Pridie Brewster. She is one of 10 children and luckily two of her sisters were already in the UK so she was able to live with them.

"There were very few ethnic minorities or women working here when I started out. People weren't sure if clients would really like someone from a different background," she says. "I stood out, but I wasn't threatening to people. Once clients understood I knew what I was doing, I had no problems but initially I had to prove myself. I worked very hard because I wanted to be the best trainee.'

She stayed for 36 years at Pridie Brewster, where her client-fee income was more than 500,000 a year for her work, which included auditing and business advice to clients. When the firm was taken over by a bigger company in 2005, she set up her own firm, LaiPeters & Co Chartered Accountants, a boutique business on which she now spends about one-third of her time.

The rest of her time she devotes to a long list of public and charitable organisations. As well as helping to set up the China Interests Group of the Institute of Directors in 2006 for members wanting to do business in China and for Chinese wanting to invest in the UK, she is also one of four executive directors of The 48 Group Club.

This influential club was founded in 1949 by some of the first "icebreakers" or Westerners to establish trade relations with China. It brings together well-known figures in business, government and academia with an interest in Sino-British relations.

The promotion of diversity in the workplace remains one of her biggest passions. There has been a debate in the UK in the past few years about how to promote women and ethnic minorities onto the boards of top companies and Lai has been at the forefront of this debate.

"There have been some improvements in this area but it's not been good enough," she says. "Quotas for a limited time might be needed because there are even fewer ethnic minorities than women on boards, even though I know of a lot of very good people who would do well if appointed."
Scotland's tourism authority is hoping a new Mandarin campaign promoting Edinburgh on Chinese social media will lure visitors from what it describes as the world's"most valuable tourism market".

A piper plays in a city center area of Edinburgh that is popular with tourists. GETTY IMAGES

The 40,000 pound($50,000) year-long campaign, funded by Visit Scotland and led by the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, is the first of its kind, and features posts on Weibo and WeChat. Images of Edinburgh's architecture, heritage and history are accompanied with event listings and travel tips for Chinese visitors to the Scottish capital.

Edinburgh is the most visited city in Scotland87 percent of all Chinese visitors to the country hit the hilly coastal cityand it is in the top-five most-visited urban centers in the UK among Chinese tourists, along with London, Cambridge, Oxford and Manchester.

According to Visit Scotland's official statistics, 48,000 Chinese tourists visited the country in 2015, though the actual figure is likely to be far higher because international passenger surveys do not accurately account for group travel, according to ETAG Chief Executive Mags McNeil.

In 2015, 160,000 visitors to Edinburgh Castlethe emblematic fortress that dominates the city's skyline- listed their point of origin as China. During the campaign, ETAG is partnering with 20 local tour operators, including the Scotch Whisky Experience, one of the most popular tours among Chinese visitors.

ETAG and Visit Scotland have also collaborated on a"China ready" program set up in 2015 in which businesses are encouraged to adopt China-friendly payment methods,including Union Pay, and offer Mandarin translation services.

"It's about raising awareness, to help businesses understand this is a growing market, probably the fastest-growing and most valuable tourism market that's ever existed, anywhere," says McNeil. "We help educate them on Chinese culture and preferences- even very simple things like the Chinese liking for a glass of hot, rather than cold, water with dinner."
China is willing to work with America's president-elect and new administration to manage disputes, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday.

The Sino-US relationship is not only related to the benefits of the two nations, but also to the peace and prosperity of the world, Geng said at a regular news conference.

The two countries should uphold the principle of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual trust and cooperation for win-win results, he added.

His comment is in response to an exit memo made on Thursday by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said the US-China relationship is "the most consequential of our bilateral relationships in the world today".

"We have built on the positive and productive relationship that President Obama established with President Xi to expand cooperation on a range of global challenges such as clean energy and health, including paradigm-shifting cooperation in reducing the threat of climate change," he said.

Mentioning that disagreements remain in areas including cyber security and maritime disputes, Kerry noted that China and the US have worked together to increase stability in states like Afghanistan, confront global health epidemics and address development challenges.

The one-China policy is the common stance upheld by both Democrats and Republicans, Kerry told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday in a phone call initiated by him.

The one-China policy is based on the three joint communiques between the US and China, Kerry said. The communiques, issued in 1970s and 1980s, laid the foundation for the restoration of China-US diplomatic relationship.
CHICAGO - Racial issues in the United States have once again been thrust into the international media spotlight this week, with a live Facebook video circulated online showing a group of young African-Americans brutally tortured a mentally disabled white man while shouting anti-white messages and insulting US President-elect Donald Trump.

The four people who the Chicago police said had participated in the assault were charged with hate crimes on Thursday.

The video of the beating lasts about 30 minutes and shows the victim, who the police said had "mental health challenges," cowered in a corner with his hands bound with orange cords and his mouth covered with tape.

In the live stream, the assailants cut the 18-year-old victim's scalp with a knife and yelled obscenities about Donald Trump and "white people" while kicking and hitting him. At one point, they made the victim drink from a toilet.

The beating that revealed bare racial tensions in the country has sparkled massive outrage and deep concerns on the country's painful racial split.

US President Barack Obama described the Facebook Live attack as a "despicable sort" of hate crime while interviewed by a Chicago-area television station on Thursday.

The president said that while he did not believe US race relations had worsened, public exposure to race crimes had grown in the digital age.

"What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time," he said.

In Chicago, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called the assault "sickening," adding that "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that."

Police said all four suspects have given statements admitting to their roles in the alleged attack. They are scheduled to appear in bond court Friday.

The victim, whom the police did not name, was hospitalized for undisclosed injuries.
A man wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody. [Photo/Xinhua]

A man wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight more were wounded in the incident, the local sheriff's office said.

The shooter, who said nothing, appeared to be a man in his 20s who was shot by police as he attempted to reload, MSNBC reported, citing witnesses.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, described the shooter as a "slender man" who was "directly firing at us" while passengers waited for their bags to come off the carousel.

"I put my head down and prayed," Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head.

His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that victim was already dead, Schlicher said.

The shooter reloaded once for a second burst of shooting, Schlicher said, but he could not say how many bullets were fired.

The shooting took place at the Terminal 2 baggage claim, said a post on the airport's Twitter account.

Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC "there was no rhyme or reason to it."

"He didn't say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didn't yell anything," Lea said.

Security officials corralled passengers underneath jetways and on the runway apron, according to images on cable news networks.

Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for US President George W. Bush, said on Twitter shots were fired and "everyone is running."

"All seems calm now but the police aren't letting anyone out of the airport - at least not the area where I am," he said.

A woman tended to a bleeding, seated man outside an airport building, according to a photo posted on Twitter by a Michigan information technology company.

The Broward Sheriff's Office received a call at about 12:55 p.m. local time about shots fired at 100 Terminal Drive at the airport, the department wrote on Twitter.

Florida Governor Rick Scott was traveling to Fort Lauderdale to be briefed by law enforcement, his office said in a statement.

The FBI's Miami office was "aware of the situation" and in contact with local authorities, a spokesman said in an email. No further information was immediately available.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.

Some 20 miles (30 km) north of Miami, the Fort Lauderdale airport is near cruise line terminals at Port Everglades.
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China's Ministry of Public Security has dispatched criminal investigators to the southwestern city of Panzhihua, Sichuan Province to look into a shooting incident.

The Party chief and mayor of Panzhihua city, Sichuan province, were injured on Wednesday in a shooting incident. [Photo / Xinhua]

The city's Party chief and mayor were injured around 10:50 a.m. on Wednesday during a meeting at a local conference and exhibition center.

The suspect, who was identified by the local police as the city's land and resources chief Chen Zhongshu, was found dead with the weapon in a small room on the second floor of the center at 12:33 p.m.

The two officials underwent operations on Wednesday night and are in stable condition. The provincial Party committee has sent representatives to visit the injured.

The criminal motive and source of the weapon are being investigated.
The Chinese military has confirmed that it received four Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets in late December, but noted that the Su-35 might be the last combat plane China would import thanks to its own defense advances.

The People's Liberation Army's website, 81.cn, recently said that with the commissioning of the J-20, China's domestically developed stealth fighter, Russia understood that the Su-35 "will lose its value on the Chinese market in the near future", so was eager to complete the Su-35 deal. The Su-35 is Russia's most advanced fighter jet in use.

The article also takes pride in the PLA no longer needing Russian-made air defense missiles or transport planes because it now has the indigenous, cutting-edge HQ-9B long-range surface-to-air missile and Y-20 strategic transport aircraft.

"Therefore we hope very much that Su-35 will be the last (combat) aircraft China imports," it said.

This is the first time the Chinese military has confirmed deliveries of the Su-35, though it did not elaborate.

In late December, some Chinese military enthusiasts posted a photograph of what they said was a Su-35 with the PLA Air Force's colors flying over a military air base in China, sparking a debate on whether deliveries of the aircraft had begun.

Sergey Chemezov, CEO of Rostec, Russia's state technology corporation, said in November 2015 that Russia and China had signed a contract that was estimated to be worth $2 billion for 24 Su-35s. The deal was later confirmed by Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Defense Ministry.

Russian news agency TASS quoted an unnamed source within Russia's international military-technical cooperation system as reporting in mid-December that the first deliveries of the aircraft were scheduled in 2017, but "eventually a decision was made to speed up the process and to provide the first batch in the last days" of 2016.

The Su-35 has engines that can point in different directions for increased maneuverability, and phased array antenna radar, which provides better performance against stealth aircraft. It has a maximum speed of 2,500 km/h and can fly 3,400 km without refueling, according to TASS. The fighter is armed with a 30 mm gun and can carry 12 bombs or missiles, the report said.

China bought a large number of Su-27 and Su-30 multirole fighter jets from Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. China also has built licensed variants. These Sukhoi planes are a pillar of the PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy's aviation wing.

Wang Ya'nan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge, told China Daily that the Su-35 will help the PLA fill the gap before it has enough J-20s. He said the new addition will also facilitate China's efforts to upgrade its current Sukhoi jets.
(Photo : Getty Images) Russia is trying to forge closer ties with the Philippines.

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Russia's ambassador to Manila said on Wednesday that Moscow is ready to supply the Philippines with sophisticated weapons such as aircrafts and submarines.



The ambassador has also voiced Russia's intentions to become a close friend of the Philippines, a country that has been the United States' traditional ally, adding that Russia is working on diversifying its foreign ties.



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Fiery Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's outbursts against the United States have soured relations between the two countries. He has also worked on scaling back military ties between his country and the United States.



As a sign of the Philippines' changing foreign relations since Duterte came into power in June last year, two Russian warships have docked on a four-day visit to Manila. And speaking aboard the anti-submarine vessel Admiral Tributs, Russian ambassador Igor Anatolyevich Khovaev said that he understood that the Philippines is intent on gaining new foreign partners.



"We don't interfere with your relations with traditional partners and your traditional partners should respect the interest of the Philippines and Russia," the ambassador said.



The visit by the Russian navy comes hot on the heels of Duterte's decision to send his foreign and defense ministers to Russia to strike an arms deal.



Duterte sent the ministers to Russia after US Senator Ben Cardun vowed to block the sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines, citing concern over the huge death toll in Duterte's war on drugs.



However, Khovaev said that Russia is willing to supply the Philippines with small arms and light weapons and will also offer some airplanes, helicopters, and submarines.



"Russia has a lot to offer but everything will be done in full compliance with international law," the ambassador said.



The ambassador added that it was too early to discuss the scope of the military cooperation between the two countries but insisted that the Philippines' old allies have no reason to be concerned.



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(Photo : Getty Images) Statistics reveal that one out of five pregnant women is obese or overweight. Such issue is troubling and the latest finding is linked to neurodevelopmental as well as psychiatric disorders and high risk of autism for children.





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Children with obese parents can possibly experience developmental delays, according to the latest research of National Institutes of Health (NIH).



Fox News reported that in the study published in Pediatrics, researchers found that children with obese parents can experience issues with motor skills and might have social interaction incompetence. Those children with obese parents might fail at solving problems.



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Statistics reveal that one out of five pregnant women is obese or overweight. Such issue is troubling and the latest finding is linked to neurodevelopmental as well as psychiatric disorders and high risk of autism for children.



Dr. Edwina Yeung, NIH epidemiologist and lead author of the research, shared to the Huffington Post through email, "We found associations between parents' weights and children's chances of failing any of a number of domains on a developmental screen."



She said that the screen is a tool used by physicians in order to ensure that the development of kids could be tracked down and recorded. According to her, those kids who failed the domain on screen will be referred to a further testing and for probable intervention services.



The group of researchers collected important information from parents. They also recorded the parents' lifestyle as well as health status including their body mass index during and after pregnancy.



Obese pregnant mothers with obese partners are most likely smokers, diabetic, or hypertensive, and they are less likely to take supplements or multivitamins, which can affect the baby's health inside the mother's womb.



Yeung further said about the current theory that the inflammation found in obese mothers could greatly affect the neurological development of the baby. "Regarding obesity's potential influence from paternal contribution, the thinking is that obesity either changes genes directly, or brings about epigenetic changes - changes in the gene's functioning, but not to the gene itself," Yeung added.



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(Photo : Getty Images) Harbin's annual ice and snow festival kicked off last Thursday and will run until the end of February.

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The annual ice and snow festival in Harbin, China, has officially kicked off. The yearly event not only attracted a huge number of tourists in the region but also featured a lot of artists and their various artifacts.



A statement posted on the festival's website took note of a sample art carving of a two-storey building, which was nearing its third storey. The artist began the production of the project in mid-December last year.



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Although negative predictions on weather conditions broke, hundreds of swimmers still chose to take their chance with nature, dipping themselves into the literally 'ice-cold' Songhua river water, the Daily Mail reported. Dubbed as "winter swimming" by the Chinese community, the event is a common passive activity for the middle-aged and elderly groups.



"I am very excited and feel pretty happy," 51-year-old Yu Dongbo said. "My body feels super cool."



According to China Daily, the event is attracting both local and foreign tourists who come to visit one of the coldest regions in the entire Chinese country.



Qing Wenyu, one of the early local tourists from the Guangxi region in Southern China, spoke of his childhood fantasy to attend the festival.



"Back when I was still in primary school, I read about how it snows in the northern part of our country," Qing said, adding that he had a yearning to tour the venue for almost a decade.



The Thursday event will continue until the end of February, with the number of tourists expected to rise overtime.



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(Photo : Getty Images) Taiwan is strongly against Vietnam's deportation of four Taiwanese to China over telecommunication fraud.

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The Taiwan community on Tuesday strongly condemned the move to deport four of its citizens suspected of telecommunication fraud from Vietnam to China, arguing that it was due to the pressure Beijing imposed on Vietnam.



The suspects were arrested last December in Haiphong, Vietnam, together with one Chinese citizen. The Taiwan government had constantly requested Vietnam to allow them to prosecute their citizens.



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The Hans India quoted an issued statement by the Taiwan Foreign ministry saying that the four suspects had been sent to China against its will and had gone against various regulations that had been put in place.



"China said that in this case, the victims were mostly in China and demanded that all the suspects be sent back to China," the statement read.



The statement released was referring to the over 200 Taiwanese citizens, who were alleged to have engaged in the telecommunication fraud, being deported to China from foreign countries.



The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Tuesday sent out a request to Beijing to give dialogue a chance. MAC added that the move only brought distrust between the two countries and did not assist in the efforts to track the cross-border fraud groups.



Efforts, however, to get valid grounds for communication have been futile since June last year since Tsai-Ing Wen assumed presidency. Tsai, who holds a firm belief that Taiwan should seek its independence, is strongly against the "One-China" initiative that seeks to make Taiwan part of China.



The Daily Mail reported that Kenya, Cambodia, and Malaysia are some of the countries where the Taiwan culprits were arrested and later deported to China.



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Tagschina, Taiwan, Telecommunication Fraud, deportation
(Photo : Getty Images) South Korea believes that Donald Trump's tweets are the best way to glimpse his foreign policy.

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The South Korean government has created a new position in its foreign ministry whose sole role is to monitor US President-elect Donald Trump's tweets in an effort keep track of the his policies on north-east Asia.



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According to the country's media, the South Korean government created the new office because it "is still in the process of building ties with Trump and does not have a lot of insight into his foreign policies - like most of the world."



South Korea believes that Trump's 140-character posts are currently the most effective insight into policies of his incoming administration.



One of Trump's most recent tweets that involved Korea was in response to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's claim that his country was close to being able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets in the United States.



In his tweet, Trump retorted that "it (North Korean nuclear attack) won't happen!"



Trump's tweet was South Korea's first glimpse of the incoming president's attitude towards the North Korean regime and its weapons of mass destruction programs.



South Korea's new tweet analyst passed the message to the country's foreign minister, Yu Byung-se. A ministry spokesperson later declared the tweet to be "a clear warning" from the incoming US president to North Korea.



Since winning the election, Trump has broken precedent by constantly using Twitter to respond to his critics and share his views on foreign affairs.



China is, however, not amused by Trump's unorthodox methods, with the country's state-run news agency, Xinhua, criticizing the billionaire for his views on the social media platform, which have covered a range of issues such as Taiwan and the South China Sea dispute.



"Twitter shouldn't become an instrument of foreign policy," the newspaper said in an editorial.



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TagsSouth Korea, donald trump, Twitter
(Photo : PLAN) CNS Liaoning escorted by her J-15 fighters.

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The U.S. Congress has revealed a plan by China to build a navy of 350 modern surface warships and submarines that can attack targets anywhere in the world.



The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has a current inventory of 490 ships of all types but only 175 of these are the important warships (an aircraft carrier, destroyers, frigates, corvettes and submarines) that will count in any war against the more powerful United States Navy.



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The U.S. Navy has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with 10 in service (Nimitz-class) and two in the reserve fleet. Three new carriers of the Gerald R. Ford-class are under construction. The lead ship in this class, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), will enter service with the navy this year.



The U.S. Navy has 272 deployable combat vessels and over 3,700 aircraft in active service as of February 2016. It now plans to increase this total to 355 warships.



A recent Congressional report indicates China's intent to match the size of the U.S. Navy. The report revealed China plans to increase the size of the PLAN to 351 ships by 2020 with the aim of developing PLAN's ability to strike global targets. Four of these warships will be aircraft carriers.



The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended to Congress the U.S. Navy respond to China's naval challenge by building more warships and to increase its presence in the Pacific region -- a strategy the U.S. military is implementing.



The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 to monitor, investigate and submit to Congress an annual report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and China.



The commission said the modernization plan for the PLAN calls for a large increase in the number of attack submarines and nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Chinese SSBNs are now able to attack targets over 8,000 kilometers away with their JL-2 submarine launched ballistic missiles.



The JL-2 is only deployed aboard Type 094 ballistic missile submarines, of which PLAN has four. Eight more subs of this type are planned. The JL-2 payload is either a single 250-1000 kt warhead or 3 to 4 90 kt MIRV warheads



The Chinese are currently working on a new SSBN and a longer range missile, the JL-3, said the commission.



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TagsU.S. Congress, china, People's Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, U.S. Navy, USS Gerald R. Ford, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
(Photo : Getty Images) China on Thursday rejected India's accusation of practicing double standards on the issue of Masood Azhar, after it once again blocked News Delhis latest proposal on Azhar in United Nations last week.

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China on Thursday dismissed India's allegation of "double standards" on the contagious issue of Masood Azhar, adding that the allegations are untrue and cited lack of "solid evidence" for blocking New's Delhi's latest proposal on Azhar in United Nations last week.



"With regard to the listing matter of the security council 1267 committee, the so-called double standards adopted by China on this relevant issue is not true. We take action based on solid evidence that is the standard upheld by us," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a news briefing.



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Geng also minced no words while responding to a stinging remark by Indian minister M.J Akbar that "We really do expect China to hear the voice of the world, not just voice of India on terrorism."



Geng responded that China took part in discussion in responsible and constructive way, adding that relevant members differed on the contagious issue.



China was apparently the sole country among the 15-member 1267 counter terrorism committee to take objection on India's application on Masood Azhar.



India Chides Beijing for Supporting Pakistan



China's swift response on Thursday came barely hours after India called on Beijing to take pragmatic approach while lending support to Pakistan on the issue of terrorism.



Akbar said on Wednesday that India hopes that as a mature nation, China would realize that it is practicing "double standard" approach in supporting Islamabad on terrorism issue.



India and China have been on a confrontational mode since last year over the issues of Masood Azhar and Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG). Beijing's inflexible stance on NSG and Azhar issues is largely driven by geo-politics, with Pakistan putting consistent pressure on Xi Jinping's administration on both issues.



Pakistan, which China considers its closest ally in South Asia, is India's arch rival in the Indian subcontinent. However, Beijing equally shares politically tense relation with New Delhi over host of issues including unresolved border issues.



Pakistan and India's rivalry is mainly over the issue of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, with Indian government constantly accusing Islamabad of fomenting terrorism on its side of Kashmir. New Delhi alleged that the Pakistani government is funding several high profile terrorists including Masood Azhar to fight insurgency war in Indian Kashmir.



However, Pakistan denied India's allegations and maintained that Azhar is a social activists who enjoys substantial public support across the country.



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TagsMasood Azhar., china, China and India, China and Pakistan, Pakistan, India, India and Pakistan
(Photo : Getty Images) Tibetan Buddhist believers have been barred by the Chinese government from attending the Kalachakra event in India.

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Tibetan disciples were barred by the Chinese government from attending "Kalachakra", a Buddhist event that will be attended by the exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, in Bodh Gaya, India.



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Media outlets from Tibet and Nepal reported that the temporary ban has been issued, and travel agencies have been advised to restrict Chinese citizens from travelling to India until Jan. 10.



India TV reported that China had begun confiscating Tibetan citizens' passports since November last year. Family members of devotees were also advised to inform those members who had traveled to the event prior to the ban to return back to China by Jan. 3.



Zhu Weiqun, the Chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told the Global Times that "Kalachakra" had lost the meaning of its intended purpose.



"Taking advantage of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra teachings have inveigled Tibetans into illegally going abroad over the last decade," Zhu said. "Considering the large scale ritual needs years of preparation, the India-based ceremony frequently degenerates into a political tool."



Not pleased with the turn of events, the Dalai Lama explained that such restrictions have never been imposed before in the mainland. He also advised those who were barred from travelling to keep their faith and assured that they will all be included in his prayers.



"Distance cannot dampen the sacred ties between a Lama and a disciple," the 81-year-old Buddhist leader said. "You can all pray from the far flung areas in Tibet and I assure you that you will receive the Kalachakra empowerment."



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Tagschina, India, Kalachakra, Dalai Lama
(Photo : Getty Images) A herd of elephants at the Mashatu game reserve on July 26, 2010 in Mapungubwe, Botswana.

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Zimbabwe's wildlife agency revealed on Thursday that it sold 35 elephants to China to curb overpopulation and raise conservation funds.



This is the first time Zimbabwe has confirmed the sale of elephants on Dec. 23 after animal welfare activists announced last week that a plane carrying animals was headed to China.



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Zimbabwe's government said that the move was necessary to support its people and conservation efforts, adding that it also plans to sells its ivory stockpile for millions of dollars, according to the CBS News.



Although the price for the 35 elephants was not revealed, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said it was "turning to friendly countries to extract value out of our wildlife."



Furthermore, the agency also did not specify if the elephants sold were adults. However, it made clear that the sale was in accordance with international laws, adding that it has already sold other animals to Europe and the United States before, according to the Washington Post.



The 35 captured elephants from Hwange National Park were reportedly flown and distributed to China's Shanghai Exhibition Park, Beijing Wildlife Park, and Hangzhou Wildlife Park.



Meanwhile, animal rights groups criticized the sale of elephants to China. In defense, Zimbabwe's wildlife agency said that its conservation efforts are limited on selling ivory stockpile and trophy hunting for certain endangered species.



It further revealed that Zimbabwe's government do not allocate funds for animal conservation and that the wildlife agency is raising its own money for support. The agency said Zimbabwe has around 36,000 more elephants than it can support.



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Tagszimbabwe china elephants, zimbabwe elephants, zimbabwe animal conservation, Animal welfare
(Photo : Getty Images) Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was questioned for the second time by the police authorities over allegations of possible corruption in accepting expensive cigars and champagnes from wealthy business people.

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Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was questioned for the second time by police authorities over allegations of possible corruption on Monday.



Israeli media revealed that a five-hour long interrogation was made at Netanyahu's official residence. The prime minister was questioned "under caution," a term meaning that anything he said will be used as evidence against him.



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The 67-year-old prime minister and his wife were grilled for purportedly receiving illicit cigars and expensive champagnes worth hundreds of thousands of shekels from wealthy business people in Israel and abroad. He repeatedly denounced the wrongdoing and has called the reports "baseless."



"There won't be anything because there is nothing," he said, while pointing out prior suspicions against him that never led to any criminal proceedings. He accused the news media and opponents' hostility as opposition to his hardline stable coalition government.



According to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Netanyahu is suspected of "receiving gifts and benefits from businessmen," which relates to crimes of moral integrity. He was also interviewed in a separate case, but police offered no further details.



Netanyahu is known as a connoisseur of expensive cigars in his eight years in office. Some upper class linked to this transgression are American-Israeli "Fight Club" and "The Revenant" producer Arnon Milchan; US billionaire and World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder family; and French tycoon Arnaud Mimran who was sentenced to eight years in prison over a scam.



Netanyahu is the only prime minister In Israel's history to have been elected three times in a row. Should his current government last a full term until 2019, he will become the longest-serving prime minister of Israel upon its completion.



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TagsBenjamin Netanyahu, Israel Prime Minister, Corruption, Sara Netanyahu, Arnon Milchan
(Photo : Getty Images) The worlds longest bullet train made a grand debut in China on Thursday, after it left Kunming station at 11:05 a.m. (local time) for national capital Beijing.

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China on Thursday launched the world's longest bullet train in a latest bid to expand its high speed rail network across the country, which now expands to 20,000 kilometers connecting almost all provinces.



The train embarked on its maiden journey from Kunming station at approximately 11:05 a.m. (local time).



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Nicknamed as "Shangri-la of the World," the bullet train will connect to Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, to national capital Beijing. It will travel a distance of 2,760 kilometers before reaching Beijing in a mere 13 hours, reducing more than half of the usual 34-hour travel time.



Furthermore, the high speed train will pass through some of the most scenic places of the country; however, enjoying a ride is an expensive affair. A first class ticket will reportedly cost 1,475 yuan ($212), while second class ticket will incur 879 yuan ($127).



China apparently has been taking great strides in making bullet trains. The Asian country already boosted the longest high speed rail network in the world. However, China is not restricting the prowess of its bullet train technology within its own geographical limit, as it is trying to expand to other parts of the world.



China is trying to seal a deal to build a high speed rail network in India but is facing a tough competition from Japan.



Last year, China also unveiled a 750-km railway line stretching from Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to the Red Sea port of Djibouti. Moreover, it has also entered a deal to construct railway lines in Afghanistan as well as to connect Nepal and Tibet via rail.



While bullet trains remain a foremost priority, the Chinese government is also making efforts to expand freight train services to other parts of the world. Last week, it launched the first cargo train to London in a bid to give boost to its falling exports.



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TagsChina Bullet Trains, Worlds Longest Bullet Train, china high-speed railway, china, bullet trains
(Photo : Getty Images) President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, right, and Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, meet in Ufa. during the BRICS/SCO Summits on July 10, 2015 in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia.

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Pakistan has reportedly approved Russia's request to utilize Gwadar port in Balochistan, which is currently undergoing some development through China's $46 billion CPEC project, state-media revealed on Thursday.



"The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, as a flagship project of the One Belt and One Road initiative, has drawn a great deal of investments," an article from the Global Times read.



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However, the article further added that aside from receiving a green signal, Russia also reportedly wants to join the CPEC and merge with the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union to gain maximum dividends and establish strategic defense ties with Pakistan, the Indian Express noted.



Although the Russian embassy in Islamabad quickly brushed off such reports, concerns immediately lingered among observers.



The Global Times, on the other hand, pointed that allowing Moscow to join the CPEC is not a terrible idea as such move will become an opportunity for China, Russia, and Pakistan to open more doors for cooperation instead. It further noted that Russia's presence will create a favorable impact to India.



The newspaper said that despite the fact that India has strained relationships with Pakistan and China, Russia has established a good relation with all three countries. Furthermore, Russia's participation will help the international community get rid of the so-called China threat concerns, NDTV reported.



"Russia's participation is not a bad thing... On the contrary, if Russia joins the project, it will be a stakeholder which shares economic risk, especially security risk, and has the same or similar goal," the newspaper said.



Other than Russia, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif revealed that a number of countries have expressed their intents to join the CPEC as half of the world would benefit from the initiative, according to the Times of India.



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TagsPakistan, Russia, Gwadar Port, china, CPEC
(Photo : Getty Images) A 62-year-old man infected with the H7N9 virus died on Friday in Hong Kong, the second confirmed bird flu-related death during the ongoing winter season.

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A 62-year-old man died because of H7N9 virus in Hong Kong on Friday, the second case of bird flu death in the autonomous city, according to hospital authorities.



The man reportedly visited the Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid-December and was admitted to a hospital in the neighboring Dongguan earlier this week. He was later shifted to a hospital in Hong Kong on Wednesday.



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The identity and other important details of the man are still to be ascertained.



As per the information provided by the Center for Health Protection, the patient had claimed that he had no recent exposure to poultry or wet markets.



Hong Kong has so far reported three cases of H7N9 in a mere three weeks; the first patient succumbed to death on Christmas eve. Interestingly, all three patients had made a brief trip to Southern China before arriving at the autonomous city.



In Mainland China, bird flu has so far taken lives of at least four people this season, with the latest case of death reported in the eastern province of Shandong on Thursday. Chinese authorities have also confirmed that 19 citizens have so far been diagnosed with H7N9 virus.



Last month, the bird flu scare had prompted Chinese authorities in Suzhou City, a part of the eastern province of Jiangsu, to temporarily suspend live poultry trading. The decision was made as a precautionary measure to prevent the further spread of H7N9 virus.



China witnessed its last major bird flu outbreak between late 2013 and early 2014, when as many as 36 patients were succumbed to death.



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TagsHong Kong, Hong Kong Bird Flu, China Bird Flu, China and Hong Kong, china, bird flu
(Photo : YouTube Screenshot) Left to right: Tesfaya Cooper, 18; Jordan Hill, 18; Tanishia Covington, 24; Brittany Covington, 18 - all were charged with hate-crime cases for kidnapping an 18-year-old white man with special needs.

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Cook Country prosecutors in Chicago, Illinois, filed hate-crime charges against four African-American suspects who kidnapped an 18-year-old white man with special needs. The assaulters were also indicted with aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with deadly weapon.



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Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington, and Tesfaye Cooper, all 18, and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington are expected to appear in a Chicago court on Friday with Hill further arraigned for robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. All the suspects, except for Covington, will face additional charges of residential burglary.



The victim was last seen at McDonald's on New Year's Eve where he was to meet up with Hill who is an acquaintance from school, Chicago Area North Detectives Commander Kevin Duffin said. When he did not return home the next day, his parents reported him missing and was found days later by Chicago police.



On the disturbing Facebook Live video that was already taken down, the assailants made audible disparaging remarks against white people and obscenities about the newly elected president Donald Trump. The captive was allegedly tortured and tied up for approximately six hours in the Covington sisters' apartment on the West Side, police said.



The victim was made to drink from a toilet bowl, had a part of his scalp removed with a knife, and was gagged and beaten. He managed to escape the apartment while the two female suspects were absorbed in conversing with the angry neighbor who threatened to call the cops.



The 18-year-old was found walking on the street "bloodied and battered" with his tank top inside out. "He was very discombobulated, he was injured, he was confused," Officer Michael Donnelly said.



"The actions in that video are reprehensible," Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a press conference. He added, "There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified to be investigated as a hate crime, but as I said yesterday, we need to base the investigation on facts and not emotion."



A day after the presidential election in November, a group of people was recorded beating a 49-year-old man in North Lawndale while yelling "You voted Trump" and "Don't vote Trump." Four people were charged in connection with the incident.



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TagsFacebook, Illinois, Chicago, Torture, Bully
(Photo : Getty Images) A logo sits illuminated outside the ZTE pavilion on the opening day of the World Mobile Congress at the Fira Gran Via Complex on February 22, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.

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Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE will reportedly be shedding about 3,000 jobs, including a fifth of positions on its grappling smartphone business in China, company insiders with knowledge about the matter told Reuters.



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ZTE's global handset operations will shed 600 jobs, with most of the cuts affecting China.



"Cuts in the handset business in China will be beyond 20 percent," a senior executive said, adding that the lay-offs are scheduled to be completed within the first quarter.



ZTE, however, declined to comment about the news.



It could be noted that based on the industry database IDC, ZTE's worldwide smartphone shipment last year plunged to 36.5 percent compared with that of in 2015.



Also last year, the US Commerce Department first announced that it will impose a ban on exports by US firms to ZTE for purportedly breaking Washington's sanctions on Iran. The ban has not been implemented yet, but if it pushes through, ZTE's supply chain could severely suffer.



Meanwhile, Zhao Xianming, ZTE's chairman, admitted on his New Year speech that the company had "encountered its biggest crisis in its 31 year history."



He also revealed that ZTE, which reported an annual sale of over $15 billion, will reorganize its management structure.



"In 2017... businesses that don't fit our strategic direction or with low output performance will be shut, suspended, merged, or reconfigured, improving the company's core competitiveness."



Reuters also noted that it saw internal memos that show that ZTE has created four new senior vice president positions, which will overlook on investment, internal audit, compliance, and tax.



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A South African test-drives a Sasuka minibus produced by a joint venture of Chinas BAIC Motor and a South African local automaker, on April 19, 2016 at the BAW South Africa plant in Springs, a small town east of Johannesburg (XINHUA)

The year 2016 marked the first year of implementation of the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in December 2015. It also heralded a year of significant progress by the Chinese Government in pushing forward the Belt and Road Initiative. The Sino-African relationship has flourished with close high-level exchanges, deeper political mutual trust, and fruitful economic cooperation on industrial capacity and connectivity. In 2017, China-Africa relations will face both opportunities and challenges.

Opportunities abound

Both governments and enterprises voice strong willingness to strengthen industrial capacity cooperation and connectivity. The Sino-African industrial capacity cooperation, which conforms to the bilateral needs of development, has a solid foundation. China's economic development has seen remarkable achievements since the country adopted reform and opening-up policies over three decades ago.

China, which is still in the middle and later stages of industrialization, faces challenges in further addressing excess capacity, while many African countries, with their lower industrialization levels, need to increase their industrial capacity for further development. Africa has abundant human and natural resources, while China possesses more capital resources and advanced equipment, technology and management expertise. These provide sound conditions for China-Africa industrial alignment and capacity cooperation.

At the opening ceremony of the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would roll out 10 major plans to boost cooperation with Africa during the next three years. To ensure smooth implementation, China will provide $60 billion in funding. The key is to boost interconnectivity within the continent and between China and Africa by aligning China's industrial upgrading with Africa's industrialization and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of Africa. Of that $60 billion, $10 billion is for a fund to support China-Africa production capacity cooperation. China will mainly work with Africa on the construction of three major infrastructure networks, namely railway, aviation and highways. Implementation of the various agreements and projects, as well as China's direct investment and commercial loans are making good progress, as indicated in the Sherpa Meeting on Implementing Outcomes of the FOCAC Johannesburg Summit, held in Beijing in July 2016.

The AU's Agenda 2063 and its first 10-year plan vow to accelerate Africa's industrialization, strengthen infrastructure construction and achieve sustainable development. As early as January 27, 2015, China and the AU signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate on major infrastructure networks and industrialization process in Africa. According to the MoU, China will, within the framework of Agenda 2063, enhance cooperation with African countries in infrastructure construction and industrialization with an aim to accelerate the integration of Africa. In addition, China signed capacity cooperation framework agreements with some African countries such as Tanzania and Ethiopia. Progress has been achieved in a number of key cooperation projects, including renovation and reconstruction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway and construction of a transmission line from Dar es Salaam to Arusha in Tanzania. With a total investment of $220 million, Ethiopia's Eastern Industry Zone encompasses 64 Chinese enterprises, among which 31 went into operation, generating more than 8,000 employment opportunities for local people.

Experience sharing

On October 24, 2016, findings from Afrobarometer's survey of 54,000 participants in 36 African countries showed that the majority viewed China's economic and political activities as a welcome contribution to development for both sides, and showed a positive attitude toward China's investments in infrastructure and business, as well as China-made products.

The survey indicated that China enjoys growing popularity and influence on the continent. Nearly 66 percent of respondents have positive attitudes toward China's influence on their countries. In Niger, Liberia and Cameroon, more than 80 percent of the public holds generally favorable views of China. In Mali, the figure is as high as 91 percent. In addition, 56 percent of respondents believe that China's assistance and investments meet their needs for development "well" or "very well."

The report showed that in the eyes of respondents, China's popularity is second only to the United States' a model of development. Recent years have witnessed an obvious positive trend in the exchanges of governance experience between China and African countries. For example, South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), boosted ties with the Communist Party of China (CPC) by sending its officials to study at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

At the end of July 2016, more than 200 Africans, including 70 ministerial-level officials and 37 envoys and diplomats, visited the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province to learn from China's experiences in development. Africans have taken this experience to heart by establishing or upgrading a number of industrial parks in their own countries and setting up a group of regional vocational education centers and capacity-building colleges for training hundreds of thousands of professionals and technical personnel. The personnel training has helped realize the transfer of technologies to meet the needs of African countries for future sustainable development and industrialization.

Challenges remain

Cooperation between China and Africa still faces challenges that cannot be ignored. First of all, African countries have their own different national conditions. Differences in terms of national status, geographical locations, resource endowment and the industrial development foundation in the continent have impact on the pace and scale of bilateral industrial capacity cooperation. Chinese enterprises should be fully prepared by doing adequate field research and studies for making investments in Africa. However, excess capacity issues in China may vary by region. Different industries in China should cooperate with their African counterparts based on their own advantages so as to achieve better results in industrial alignment.

The African continent as a whole is stable, but some regions are still under the threat of terrorism and political instability. Some terrorist organizations such as North Africa's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Somalia's Al Shabab, Nigeria' Boko Haram and ISIS pose a threat to Africa's peace and security. Apart from terrorist activities, some are facing internal unrest, and even civil war, such as the Mali crisis, South Sudan's civil war and Libya's Tribes Army issue. Even stable Ethiopia had to implement a six-month state of emergency starting October 2016 due to large-scale demonstrations and riots.

A global long-term economic downturn and rising trade protectionism have hampered the recovery of the African economy. Since 2016, Africa's key oil producing countries such as Nigeria and Angola, and mining exporters such as South Africa and Zambia, have been facing economic downturn risks due to the low prices of oil and commodities. There is a great need for global trade liberalization no matter whether it is implementing the Belt and Road Initiative or pushing forward China-Africa capacity cooperation.

The author is senior researcher of the Charhar Institute and senior research fellow of the Institute of West Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
A car bomb exploded Jan. 4 near a United Nations compound in Somalia, wounding at least four officers, police said.



The explosion follows twin blasts on Jan. 2 that killed nine people.



Major Nur Osman, a police official at the scene, told Reuters the attackers planted the bomb in a car parked in a garage just outside a facility owned by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Mogadishu, Somalias capital.



We can confirm four guards working for the United Nations were injured, Osman said.



UNDP posted on Twitter that the blast did not injure any of its staff members. Security officials said they have arrested nine suspects in connection with the attack.



Sheik Abdiasis Abu Musab, military spokesman of the Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab, confirmed the terror group carried out the explosion. Somalia has battled al-Shabaabs insurgency since 2006. The extremist group has also launched attacks on African Union peacekeeping bases and countries that contribute to the force, including Kenya and Ethiopia. The 22,000-member force has pushed al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu but began to lose some regained territory after member countries started to pull back their troops. Uganda, which contributed more than 6,000 soldiers, said it would withdraw all its troops by the end of this year. Burundi, the second largest contributor, has also threatened to pull out by next month.



On Jan. 2, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for two attacks near the Mogadishu international airport. The first bomb targeted a checkpoint while the second went off in front of a hotel opposite the airport. Security officials said the blasts destroyed about 10 houses in the area. Rescue workers yesterday found two bodies in the hotels rubble, raising the death toll to nine. Officials said some families in the area have reported missing children, but their bodies have not yet been found.



This is a terrorist act carried out by a group that does not want to see peace and governance in Somalia, Abdulsalam Hadlive Omer, Somalias foreign minister, told VOA.

Courtesy: WORLD News Service

Publication date: January 6, 2017
An Iowa church has been transformed and revitalized after they heeded Gods call to reach out to refugees within their community.

CBN News reports that if you visit Zion Lutheran in Des Moines today, you will see a diverse congregation that is excited about worshipping God. There is food and fellowship and an uplifting community of believers.

But that wasnt always the case. Seven years ago, the 150-year-old church was struggling. They were convicted that they werent making a true impact on their community, so they decided a major change was needed.

Pastor John Kline says they were inspired by a passage of Scripture in Luke 14.

"In Luke 14 we learned that he wanted us to be a place that would bless people who couldn't bless us back," said Kline.

So they began reaching out to refugee families who lived nearby in a low-income apartment complex. They brought food to the families and asked them about their needs.

"We didn't plan anything, we just walked down the street, and everything unfolded because of faithfulness to God," said Grace Kline, Pastor John's wife.

That action of stepping out in faith was the beginning of Zion Lutherans transformation. Soon, refugees from many different countries began coming to the church. A community of believers with different cultural backgrounds and different languages was forming.

The church had a large population of Burmese people, so they even brought over a pastor who spoke Burmese to be a part of the church.

Now, Zion Lutheran holds services in Burmese, Arabic, and Swahili. It also offers a diverse youth program.

"It's a place where if you're thirsty, you'll get something to drink, if you're hungry, you'll get fed, if you don't have a place you'll find a place, and if you don't have a family, you'll join ours," said Pastor John.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: January 6, 2017
While war in the Middle East dominated international headlines, Islamic extremists in the shadows were taking jihad to Christian civilians in Africa with unprecedented intensity in 2016. In Nigeria, Muslim ethnic Fulanis looked less like nomadic herdsmen and more like well-armed, well-funded jihadist militants. Close Muslim relatives and Islamist village mobs attacked their Christian kin in Uganda, while Somalias Al Shabaab rebels intensified their campaign to drive Christians from northern Kenya. At the same time, courts in Turkey and Pakistan made history by finally providing some measure of justice in cases of slain Christian martyrs.



1  Islamist Militant Massacres in Nigeria

Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacks on Christians in Nigeria increased in number and sophistication in 2016, as what the mainstream press has characterized only as land disputes increasingly took on the militant look of jihadist campaigns that have always featured prominently in the attacks. Organized, well-funded invasions of Christian villages, sophisticated arms and explosives, and suspected links with Islamic extremist group Boko Haram and Islamist mercenaries marked many assaults. Having retaken much of the territory that Boko Haram claimed in Nigerias northeast in 2014-2015, the Nigerian military has reportedly warned Fulani herdsmen that they will be targeted next, according to a Nigerian Defense spokesman. Nigerian senators believe defeated Boko Haram militants have joined Fulani herdsmen, who had already been characterized by the Institute for Economics and Peace as one of the five deadliest terrorist organizations in the world.



The massacre of an estimated 300 predominantly Christian farmers in Benue states Agatu area in central Nigeria from Feb. 22 to Feb. 29 preceded Muslim Fulani attacks the rest of the year in southern, middle and northern states. The militant character of the attacks was especially apparent in Kaduna state, where on Nov. 16 the Rev. Zachariah Gado, state chairman of the Evangelical Church Winning All, decried a campaign of ethno-religious cleansing by Fulani herdsmen militia.



2  Untold Faith, Bravery Revealed in Hidden Pockets of Uganda

In quiet villages in eastern Uganda far from the international spotlight, Christians continued to be beaten, thrown out of their homes, raped, arrested and killed for leaving Islam in 2016 with alarming regularity. Some had their homes or crops burned. In many of the cases, the victims received messages warning that leaving Islam would cost them their lives.



The constant stream of abuses otherwise stirred little attention as the primary culprits were non-state actors such as Muslim family members and village mobs that advocacy groups and government officials felt little power to influence. Aid agencies can be contacted about how these Christians or their families might be helped.





3  Easter Bombing in Pakistan

A deadly suicide bombing at a public park in Lahore, Pakistan killed 75 people on Easter Sunday on March 27. The Islamic extremist group that took responsibility for the blast said it targeted Christians, but later reports showed only 14 of the dead were Christian and 61 Muslim. Most of those killed were women and children.



Another 362 people were injured in the deadliest attack in Pakistan since the December 2014 massacre of 134 schoolchildren at a military-run academy in Peshawar. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the banned Pakistani terrorist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), took responsibility for the bombing. In a media statement, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said a suicide bomber deliberately targeted the Christian community.



Photo: Body of small Christian boy at Mayo Hospital morgue after Islamist suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan. (Morning Star News)



4  Killers in Malatya, Turkey Murders Finally Convicted

After a nine-year legal saga, a Turkish criminal court on Sept. 28 sentenced five men to life in prison for the torture and murder of three Christians in southeast Turkey in 2007. The court found Salih Gurler, Cuma Ozdemir, Abuzer Yildirim, Hamit Ceker and Emre Gunaydin guilty on three counts each of premeditated murder and sentenced them all to life in prison without the possibility of parole.



The number of hearings and the fact that the case took so long to prosecute was the source of a great deal of anguish for Turkeys Christians. Judges and prosecutors were changed more than once, causing significant delays, and subpoenaed witnesses simply refused to show up in court to testify without legitimate reason and without being punished later for contempt of court. Most significant in delays was the attempt to explore links between the killings and a larger alleged attempt by the Turkish military to subvert the Justice and Development Party-led government.



On April 18, 2007, in the office of the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya, the five Muslim, Turkish nationalists killed Ugur Yuksel, 32, and Necati Aydin, 36, both Turkish converts from Islam, and Tilmann Geske, 45, a German national. They bound the three men, interrogated them about their Christian activities, mutilated them and then slit their throats, according to court evidence and testimony.





5  Defying Fierce Islamist Pressure, Courts in Pakistan Deliver Justice

Courts in Pakistan defied history in 2016, daring to deliver justice for minority Christians in the face of fierce Islamist pressure. Six Muslims were sentenced to death for three murders in 2016, with one convicted killer executed. Mumtaz Qadri was hung to death on Feb. 29. While Qadris victim, former Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, was not a Christian, the official was killed for his defense of Aasiya Noreen (commonly known as Asia Bibi) and his attempt to reform the blasphemy laws that unfairly convicted the Christian mother of five and put her on death row.



On Nov. 25, a court in Lahore handed the death sentence to five Muslims for torturing and killing an impoverished Christian couple over allegations of burning the Koran. Eight others charged in the attack were sentenced to two years in prison. Hundreds of villagers in Kot Radha Kishan, incited by Muslim leaders calling for violence via mosque loudspeakers, were involved in the Nov. 4, 2014 assault in which 26-year-old Shahzad Masih and his five-months pregnant wife, Shama, 24, were thrown into a burning brick kiln.



Anti-Terrorism Court Judge Chaudhry Azam handed death sentences to Irfan Shakoor, Muhammad Hanif, Mehdi Khan, Riaz Kamboh and Hafiz Ishtiaq, along with a fine of 200,000 rupees (US$1,900) to each for inciting violence against the Christian couple and throwing them into the kiln. The judge ordered the two-year prison terms for Noorul Hasan, Muhammad Arsalan, Muhammad Haris, Hussain, Muhammad Munir, Muhammad Ramzan, Irfan and Hafiz Shahid.



Masih and his wife worked as bonded laborers at the brick kiln when the throng descended on them after area Muslims accused them of committing blasphemy by burning Koranic pages.

The mob tore the clothes off them, struck them, broke their legs, dragged them behind a tractor and threw them into the burning furnace of a brick kiln  even though Shama was illiterate and could not have known even if koranic verses were among debris that she had burned. Under Pakistans widely condemned blasphemy statutes, intent must be shown for a conviction of desecrating the Koran.





6  Al Shabaab Terrorizes Christians in Northern Kenya

Islamic extremists from the Somali rebel Al Shabaab turned the Mandera area of northern Kenya into a cauldron of fear with bomb, gun and grenade attacks in a campaign to rid the area of Christians. On Oct. 25, Al Shabaab militants took responsibility for a pre-dawn attack in which the rebels shot 12 non-local Kenyans whom they presumed were Christians. On Oct. 6, suspected Al Shabaab militants targeted Christians in a grenade-and-gun attack in the early morning that killed six people.



The attacks targeted predominantly Christian migrant workers from Kenyas interior. A spokesman for Al Shabaab said the Oct. 6 attack was designed to drive Christians from the area. At least one of the victims was reportedly a Muslim. The attack in Mandera, tucked in Kenyas northeast corner near the Somali border, reportedly wounded several others. Among 27 people rescued were Christians who arrived at their church traumatized and in shock. The loud grenade woke me up, and I heard one of the attackers saying the infidels should leave the Muslim area of Mandera, one survivor told Morning Star News. There were loud cries for help as the attackers were shooting from all directions.



In another pre-dawn raid on a predominantly Christian area in coastal Kenya, Al Shabaab rebels on Jan. 31 killed at least four Christians, beheading one of them.





7  Boys Sentenced to Prison in Egypt Escape to Switzerland

Four Egyptian boys who appeared in a video that led to prison sentences for allegedly blaspheming Islam and that sparked a riot in Upper Egypt fled to Switzerland on Sept. 1. A judge on Feb. 25 had sentenced Albir Shehata, 17, Klenton Faragalla, 18, Moller Yasa, 17, and Bassem Younan, 17, all of Al-Nasriyah village in Upper Egypt, to five years in prison for defaming a revealed (or heavenly) religion in a mobile phone video. While taking refuge in Turkey, the boys said they made their video before the release of the Islamic State (IS) mass execution video they were said to be mocking, and that at the time they had never even heard of the group.



They said their defense attorney, in an effort to garner sympathy for them, had claimed they were making fun of IS terrorists in the video, following the release of ISs video showing the beheading of 20 Coptic Christians in Libya. Because of their attorneys statements, however, the fiction about IS being the subject of the boys scorn was widely reported in Egyptian and international media.



After a Muslim found the video on April 6, 2015, a group of Muslims complained to the police, and on April 8 a mob of enraged Muslims began tearing through Al-Nasriyah village, beating any Copt they could find. For three days the rioting raged as thousands of Muslims from adjacent villages came to Al-Nasriyah to join the looting. At least 15 stores were damaged or destroyed. Mobs roamed through Al-Nasriyah chanting Islamic slogans and demanded all Christians be pushed out of the village. During the rioting, the four boys were terrified for their lives.





8  China Ramps Up Pressure on Churches, Rights Activists

After two years of removing 1,800 crosses, demolishing church buildings and arresting, beating and killing protesting Christians in Zhejiang Province, the Chinese government on Sept. 8 released a draft of new Regulations on Religious Affairs that gives it broader powers to crack down on Christianity.



Under the regulations, unregistered and unapproved house churches would no longer be tolerated, and registered churches would come under even stricter guidelines. All building would be tightly regulated. The clampdown comes on the heels of a July 1, 2015 National Security Law that paved the way for increased nationwide repression and persecution in the name of national security. Soon after it was passed, Chinese authorities arrested some 300 prominent human rights activists and lawyers, including several who were defending religious cases, in particular cases from Zhejiang. The law defines criticism of the government as a form of subversion.





9  Indonesia Faces Test of Democratic Values, Rights

The worlds largest Muslim-majority democracy began a precedent-setting test pitting freedom of speech and religion against religious fanaticism when Jakarta Gov. Gov. Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama went on trial on Dec. 13 for defaming the Koran. Hundreds of people outside the courtroom chanted for the incumbent gubernatorial candidate to go to jail for a comment he made earlier in the year.



Ahok told city officials in a Sept. 27 speech, Ladies and gentlemen, you dont have to vote for me because youve been lied to [or fooled] with Surat Almaidah 51 [Sura 5:51] and the like. Thats your right. If you feel you cant vote for me because you fear youll go to hell, because youve been lied to [or fooled], no worries. Thats your personal right. These programs will go forward. So you dont have to feel uncomfortable. Follow your conscience, you dont have to vote for Ahok.



Video footage of the speech went viral on YouTube, and Islamic extremists claimed Ahok had blasphemed against the Koran and Islamic clerics. Ahok on Oct. 10 apologized to all Muslims and anyone who felt offended, saying it was not his intention to slight Islam or the Koran. If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison.





10  U.S.-Iranian Pastor Released from Prison in Iran

Iran released U.S.-Iranian pastor Saeed Abedini from prison on Jan. 16, more than three years after authorities arrested him on charges of threatening national security by planting churches. Abedini was released along with four other prisoners, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, in a prisoner swap, Irans official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. U.S. officials reportedly confirmed that the release was part of a prisoner swap involving seven Iranians held on charges of violating sanctions and came after more than a year of closely guarded talks.



On Jan. 27, 2013, an Iranian court sentenced Abedini to eight years in prison for allegedly threatening national security by planting house churches in early 2000. Seven months earlier, in July 2012, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had briefly arrested Abedini during his visit to set up an orphanage he was building. After interrogation, authorities placed him under house arrest and told him to wait for a court summons to face criminal charges for his Christian faith. Two months later, on Sept. 26, 2012, he was arrested at his parents home and taken to prison.



Abedini was tortured at various times throughout his imprisonment, and in 2015 prison officials further pressured him to recant his faith by threatening to hold him in prison indefinitely. In 2013, Abedini wrote of enduring torture, death threats and pressure to renounce his faith.

If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.o rg/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.



If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at http://morningstarnews.org/don ate/ ?
Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, didnt think things could get worse in 2016.



First came the landmark 5-3 decision in Whole Womens Health v. Hellerstedt, where the U.S. Supreme Court struck down safety measures adopted by Texas state lawmakers to regulate abortion centers. The decision in late June represented a major blow to pro-lifers who hoped a different outcome would have ramped up safety standards nationwide and reduced the number of abortions.



Then the next day, the high court rejected an appeal from a Washington state pharmacist who did not want to betray his conscience and provide abortifacient drugs. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent that those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.



Back-to-back court defeats combined with extreme pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton leading in most presidential polls at the time had pro-lifers reeling.



In a two-day period we thought we were losing our culture, Mancini said.



But six months later, as March for Life staff members and volunteers finalize plans for the worlds largest annual peaceful protest for the unborn in January, theres a renewed sense of optimism in the pro-life movement for 2017 and beyond.



State legislatures across the country continue to make incremental progress on protecting children in the womb. Nebraska became the first state to pass a ban on abortions after 20 weeks in 2010. Since then more than a dozen states have enacted similar limits and numerous other protections.



But pro-life groups have grander long-term goals: defunding Planned Parenthood, making the Hyde Amendment permanent in barring taxpayer-funded abortions, and securing a pro-life Supreme Court to one day overturn Roe v. Wade.



An ambitious agenda that seemed impossible earlier this year without pro-life officials in key government positions, but Election Day results have sparked a fresh outlook for pro-life organizations.



With Hillary, we were looking at a pro-abortion Supreme Court for the next 30, 40 years; we wouldnt get anything passed, said Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League and a pioneer in pro-life activism. But [Donald Trumps] strange election has electrified the movement.



Scheidler was not a Trump fan during the campaign, telling me he thought the president-elect was a playboy and that many of his ideas, such as building a wall at the U.S. southern border, were ridiculous.



After Trump clinched the Republican nomination, his selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate and Kellyanne Conway as his campaign manager helped quell Scheidlers skepticism. But he never believed Trump could actually win.



We were ready to be where the Democrats are now: gloomy, sad, disturbed, Scheidler said. But Trump sneaking through the way he did, theres a really strange optimism.



Other social conservatives share Scheidlers newfound hope. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins even went as far as emailing his donors that God gave America a reprieve in 2016 from judgment.



But Abby Johnson, CEO of And Then There Were None (ATTWN), a non-profit organization that helps abortion workers leave the industry, told me Election Day didnt change anything for her.



Our goal has never been to make abortion illegal; our goal is to make it unthinkable, she said, adding that achieving that cultural shift stems from changing hearts and minds, not playing politics.



ATTWN helped more than 100 abortion center workers vacate the industry in 2016 alonethe most since Johnson started the organization in 2012.



We tell people, No one grows up dreaming of working in an abortion clinic, Johnson said. I think that message really resonates with people.



Johnson, Scheidler, and Mancini all say theres now a negative stigma on the abortion industry and public opinion is trending in a pro-life direction.



A 2016 survey showed a majority of Americans support fewer abortions. And even among persons who identify as pro-choice, 51 percent do not support abortions after the first trimester.



Pro-abortion supporters are taking notice, including politicians. This month a group of 34 pro-abortion U.S. senators, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote a letter to Trump asking him to protect Planned Parenthoods funding.



The economic security of women and their families is directly tied to a womans access to reproductive health care, including birth control and counseling, the senators wrote. We urge you to stand with women and against Congressional Republicans.



Trump has not responded publicly to the letter, which pointed out that during the campaign he said, Planned Parenthood has done very good work for millions of women. But the president-elect also has said, Were not going to fund [it] as long as you have  abortion going on at Planned Parenthood.



The 44th annual March for Life will take place in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 27one week after Trumps inauguration.



Judge rules government cannot mandate sex change coverage



Ruling protects healthcare providers religious liberty



By Samantha Gobba



(WNS)--Doctors and healthcare providers do not have to break with their consciences to perform sex change operations under a preliminary injunction against an Obama administration mandate.



U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor of Texas ruled in favor of eight states and three Christian healthcare groups on Dec. 31 by blocking a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule set to go into effect Jan. 1.



The rule revised section 1557 of Obamacare to place gender identity under the same nondiscrimination protections as biological sex. The HHS Office for Civil Rights recognizes that an individuals gender identity involves the interrelationship between an individuals biology, gender, internal sense of self, and gender expression related to that perception, the mandate states.



Despite complaints that the rule did not include exemptions for religious groups, as found in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, HHS wrote that every insurance company or healthcare provider receiving federal funds, such as payments from Medicare or Medicaid, must provide, refer for, or cover gender transition services.



White House spokeswoman Katie Hill called the decision on Saturday a setback, but hopefully a temporary one, according to Reuters.



But Christian groups battling in the mandate in court saw the injunction as a victory.



The Becket Fund, a nonprofit law firm representing the Catholic hospital network Franciscan Alliance and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations in a lawsuit it filed in August, applauded the decision.



We were thrilled to receive the news on Saturday that the court has protected these medical professionals from having to make decisions that were contrary to their best judgment for patients, Becket Funds senior counsel Lori Windham told me.



The injunction bolstered the organizations confidence that it and eight other states that joined the lawsuit would win against the federal rule.



It shows that the government has really overstepped its bounds by trying to interfere in the private decisions made by doctors and their patients, Windham said.



OConnor, in his 46-page opinion, cited his 2016 ruling in Texas v. United States that challenged a law requiring schools to honor a students gender identity for bathroom use: The meaning of sex in Title IX unambiguously refers to the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.



OConnor ruled HHS not only violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law about rule-making, but also the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which forbids a federal or state governing body from burdening a persons religious freedom.



If Congress wished to assign that decision to HHS, it surely would have done so expressly, OConnor wrote. HHS had no authority to interpret such a significant policy decision.



Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Wisconsin have sued HHS along with Texas.



Another lawsuit, filed in late December by the Catholic Benefits Association, challenges not only the Affordable Care Acts interpretation of Title IX but also Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.



The group hopes to halt the redefining of sex in both places to retain protections for Christian healthcare workers and Christian employers outside the medical field.



Saturdays ruling bodes well for the Catholic Benefits Associations lawsuit, the groups general counsel, Martin Nussbaum, told me. It set a strong precedent regarding the changes in section 1557 of Obamacare and a very helpful analogous precedent with regards to Title VII, Nussbaum said.



Agreeing with OConnor that HHS had acted outside its bounds, Windham said her organization would continue to watch for similar threats to religious liberty: We want to ensure that religious healthcare professionals can continue to serve their communities and follow their faith.

Courtesy: WORLD News Service

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: January 6, 2017
Can you make too good an impression on someone important? Theophylact may have thought so. , he gave an enthusiastic speech before Alexius, Emperor of Byzantium, warmly praising the emperor and his mother Anna Dalassena. He crowed over the emperor's conquest of parts of the Balkans. The emperor was a diplomat and servant of the church, said Theophylact. His speech had unintended consequences.

Evidently the emperor was pleased. In Byzantium (the eastern half of the old Roman Empire), church posts were under government control. They were often given as rewards. The emperor promoted Theophylact to be archbishop of Ohrid in Bulgaria (now Macedonia).

For Theophylact, who was a cultured man, the promotion was like a sentence of exile. In Constantinople, he had libraries, palaces, and shimmering architecture. He taught the sons of important men. Theophylact even taught prince Constantine Doukas, who was expected to become emperor; and he was a friend to the boys beautiful mother, Maria of Alania. By transferring to Bulgaria, he would have to leave all that behind and many friends, too. Like other snobby Byzantines, he considered Ohrid a barbarian backwater. But churchmen were civil servants, who had to go wherever the emperor ordered, so he went.

As Theophylact soon found out, he was leaving behind even more than he had thought. When he drew near to Ohrid, a horrid stench stunned his nose. Evidently sanitation standards were not as high as in Constantinople.

Byzantium's conquest of Bulgaria still rankled Ohrid. Theophylact's coming rubbed salt in the wounds of its defeat. Formerly, the Bulgarians had had their own patriarch. Resentful of their loss of independence, they greeted Theophylact with jeers and insults. To spite him, they sang a victory song, extolling their nation's past triumphs. They were not consoled by the fact that the emperor had given local bishops the privilege of consecrating Theophylact or that the emperor had confirmed that Bulgaria's church would be independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Theophylact was an outsider, and they knew he was expected do his part to keep Bulgaria glued to the empire.

For his part, Theophylact did not like Bulgaria, which he called "of all provinces of the empire, the most pitiable." He was homesick and begged friends to help get him released from the place. After a visit home, he wrote, "So I return to the Bulgarians, I who am a true Constantinopolitan and, strange though it is, a Bulgarian."

Yet he had compassion on Bulgaria's poor. In several letters he pleaded for tax relief and pointed out that one child in five was seized to be sold into slavery as payment for taxes. He urged a show of mercy "lest the patience of the poor be finally exhausted."

One way that Theophylact tried to forget his homesickness was to write. 130 of his letters were published. These are hard to understand today because he wrote in a "puzzle" style used by educated men of that era. Even so, they are full of useful bits of Byzantine and Bulgarian history and satirical comments. He came to love Slavic literature and Slavic church heroes and wrote a life of St. Clement of Ohrid and retold the story of the fifteen martyrs buried at Strumitsa, not far from Ohrid. In "exile," he also wrote commentaries on the gospels and on Paul's epistles.

Amazingly, four hundred years later, Theophylact's January 6th speech was still generating fallout. A German scholar named Erasmus discovered the archbishop's writings. He borrowed some of Theophylact's ideas for a satire called In Praise of Folly. That book, by poking fun at wrongs in the church and society, helped bring about the Protestant reformation in Europe.

Bibliography
When you start a New Year, whom you greet and start that new year with is important. How you start can also determine how you finish. Goethe said, Once you have missed the first buttonhole youll never manage to button up. It is a short maxim but it is wisdom that comes from the experiences of a long life. Whatever you do, it is important to start well. Your starting position is important. Therefore, greet the New Year with God. Start the New Years journey with God. We are like pilgrims leaving home. What is important when you go on the pilgrims journey is to meet an excellent guide. Anyone who challenges himself to conquer the Mt. Everest never climbs a high mountain alone. He climbs the high mountain with a guide. This is the same for those who travel in the desert. You need help from a guide who knows the desert well. The same is true for our spiritual lives. We should not do spiritual discipline alone. We must meet a mature spiritual guide. We need various guides in our lives, but God is the most excellent guide.

God looks through our whole life and guides us in the best way. God is the one who sees far ahead from on high. He is the one who makes all things work together for good. (Rom. 8:28) God knows what we need rather than what we want. God gives us not only what we want, but He knows what is most suitable for us and gives us that. God is Alpha and Omega. He is the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:17).

God is leading us ahead. (John 10:4) God is not the one driving us from behind. God is the one who makes a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, when it is needed, while He is leading us ahead. (Isa. 43:19). God sees what we cannot see and solves problems that we cannot solve. We will never fail if we walk with God. When we walk with God, we are safe. When we walk with God, we can overcome any obstacles that we face. God wants to lead us. The problem is that we refuse to be led by God. God is much more discerning than us, and He is wiser than we are. Gods wisdom is deep, and His understanding is endless. Therefore, do not lean on your own understanding, but acknowledge God in all things. Receive Gods guidance. Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Prov. 3:5-6) How, then, does God lead us?

First, God leads us through the Word. Read the Word of God every day. Seek Gods guidance whenever you read the Word. The Word of God is a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Ps. 119:105) God leads us through the Word day by day. The word of God shows just the way to walk ahead like a lamp to our feet. Like a light to the path, it illuminates the path ahead. Do not try to know too much. Do not try to be aware of everything. God, knowing everything about us, guides us through His Word day by day. God put the various wisdom in the His Word. All Scripture is full of wisdom. Particularly Proverbs and Psalms of the O.T. and the Sermon on the Mount and James in the N.T. are filled with the holy wisdom. Receive the guidance of God followed by the word of wisdom given to you as you meditate on the Word day by day through quiet times with God.

Second, God leads us through the Holy Spirit. Invite the Holy Spirit day by day. Meditate on the Word with the Holy Spirit each day. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of counsel and might. The Spirit is the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD (Isa. 11: 2). As soon as we receive Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into us and abides in us for eternity. Because the Holy Spirit is a person, when we welcome, invite, and rely on Him, He guides us in good ways. The Holy Spirit guides us into the truth when we meditate on the Word (John 16:13). When we meditate on the Word, the Holy Spirit shows us the glory of Jesus, the protagonist of the Word (John 16:14). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of revelation (Eph. 1:17). When we meditate on the Word, the Holy Spirit makes us realize the Word by revealing the hidden mystery of God.

A New Year has begun. Begin the New Year with the Holy Triune God. Receive the guidance of God day by day from God, His word, and the Holy Spirit. May the blessings of God be abundant on you, the saints, who greet the promising New Year.

Reverend Joshua Choon-Min Kang is the senior pastor of New Life Vision Church, located in Los Angeles. This is one of the weekly letters he writes to his congregation. For the original, visit www.nlvc.org.
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Sudan and South Sudan governments on Thursday extended a joint agreement on transit of humanitarian aid through Sudanese territory to the South Sudan for another six months.

"The extension of the memorandum contributes to enhancing the humanitarian relations between the two countries," Sudan's Deputy Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Ahmed Mohamed Osman said.

He reiterated Sudan's readiness to contribute with the international community to delivery of humanitarian assistance to the needy in South Sudan.

"Sudan government is keen to provide all possible facilitations for passage of humanitarian assistance to South Sudan," he noted.

Osman signed the agreement for Sudan, while South Sudan ambassador in Khartoum Mayan Dot signed for his country.

The agreement has enabled the UN World Food Program (WFP) in Sudan to deliver 54,420 metric tons of emergency food aid to over 200,000 people in South Sudan's Upper Nile State.

Khartoum and Juba signed the agreement on transit of humanitarian aid via Sudanese territory to the South Sudan in 2014.

A joint technical committee, including Sudan, South Sudan and the WFP, is supervising the humanitarian aid transport to the South Sudan via land, air and river routes.

South Sudan is facing severe food scarcity due to the civil war which broke out in the newborn state in 2013.
A Chinese pastor who had been detained since December of 2015 has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison, according to his lawyer.

The sentence was given on Wednesday, according to a Radio Free Asia report, and Pastor Yang Hua was found guilty of illegally possessing state secrets.

Hua is pastor of Huoshi Church, located in Guizhou. He was arrested and detained on December 9, 2015, when police raided the church, and Hua tried to stop them from confiscating a hard drive, according to China Aid.

Huas lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the police, alleging that Hua has been tortured throughout his detainment. They have also defended Huas innocence.

Even a day in jail is too much for an innocent person, defense attorney Chen told Radio Free Asia. I have only one thing to say about this. This isnt a judgement: its persecution.

This is a political case that has nothing to do with the law or the truth, Chen continued. This is political persecution pure and simple.

Bob Fu, the founder of China Aid, also released a statement regarding Huas sentence, calling it purely barbaric religious persecution.

We urge President Obama and President-elect Trump to unequivocally condemn this brutal act, Fu said.
For all the churchs efforts at promoting racial unity in urban America, what if our cities are actually designed to keep us apart? In Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation (InterVarsity Press), urban missiologist David P. Leong considers how the basic building blocks of city lifelike neighborhoods, schools, and freewayssustain fault lines of race and class. Mark Mulder, professor of sociology at Calvin College and author of Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure, spoke with Leong about the geographic structures of urban life, and how the church can bend them toward flourishing for all.

What do you mean by geographic structures, and how can we recognize them?

My parents were born and raised in Detroit, but later they moved so that my siblings and I could attend better schools in the suburbs. As a kid, of course, you dont realize how different things are in one place versus another. I had some suspicion that not everyone enjoyed these same blessings. But it wasnt until I began doing high-school youth ministry in Seattle that I began really reflecting on the problems of urban geography.

I was working at a long-established Chinese church in a neighborhood that was home to many Chinese-speaking East Asian immigrants. And I began to see an interesting pattern. The short version is that many of the churchs second- and third-generation Chinese American families were moving out of this urban-ethnic enclave into the more upwardly mobile suburbs about 20 minutes away. Ill never forget speaking to a high-school Christian club on Mercer Island, a wealthy community just a few miles across a bridge ...

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Ask Alexa, and it will be given to you.

Users can now summon the popular Amazon voice assistant for biblical inspiration, cueing audio clips from daily devotionals by top evangelical authors such as Ann Voskamp and Rick Warren.

In December, the company sold millions of its smart devices such as the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot for Christmasnine times as many as the year before. The same month, Amazon added devotional reading as one of Alexas newest skills, developed in partnership with HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

Once the skill is installed, a persons voice command prompts Alexa to play that days devotional clip: Alexa, ask Devotionals to read me today's devotion.

In addition to Voskamp and Warren, the devotionals come from Zondervan and Thomas Nelson authors such as Sarah Young, Lysa TerKeurst, Shauna Niequist, Judah Smith, Lee Strobel, Jefferson Bethke, and more than a dozen others so far.

Youngs Jesus Always and TerKeursts Uninvited were ...

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Knights of Columbus Announces Novena for National Unity Prior to Inauguration Prayer will be addressed to Mary, the Immaculate Conception, patroness of our country



Contact: Andrew Walther, Knights of Columbus, 203-824-5412, andrew.walther@kofc.org



NEW HAVEN, Conn., Jan. 6, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- As America prepares to welcome a new president, the Knights of Columbus is urging its members and other Catholics to pray a Novena for National Unity from Thursday, Jan. 12, through Inauguration Day, Friday, Jan. 20.



Individuals, families, parishes and K of C councils throughout the nation are all invited to participate in the novena, a special prayer offered over nine consecutive days.



The theme of unity is not a new one for the Knights. In an article in early November, just before the election, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson called for Catholics to be a source of unity in our often politically divided country after the election, regardless of its outcome.



In announcing the new novena, Anderson noted: "From its earliest days, the Knights of Columbus has been an organization that is dedicated to both faith and patriotism. This novena provides Knights, and all Catholics, the opportunity to serve their country in a faithful way by bringing unity in values and faith in a way that overcomes any political divisions. Our country is strongest when it is unified, and that unity is strongest when it is shaped by the timeless values of our faith."



The novena prayer asks the intercession of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, under her title of the Immaculate Conception.



The text of the novena reads: Most Holy Trinity: Our Father in Heaven, who chose Mary as the fairest of your daughters; Holy Spirit, who chose Mary as your Spouse; God the Son, who chose Mary as your Mother, in union with Mary we adore your majesty and acknowledge your supreme, eternal dominion and authority.



Most Holy Trinity, we put the United States of America into the hands of Mary Immaculate in order that she may present the country to you. Through her we wish to thank you for the great resources of this land and for the freedom which has been its heritage.



Through the intercession of Mary, have mercy on the Catholic Church in America. Grant us peace. Have mercy on our president and on all the officers of our government. Grant us a fruitful economy, born of justice and charity. Have mercy on capital and industry and labor. Protect the family life of the nation. Guard the precious gift of many religious vocations. Through the intercession of our Mother, have mercy on the sick, the tempted, sinners  on all who are in need.



Mary, Immaculate Virgin, our Mother, Patroness of our land, we praise you and honor you and give ourselves to you. Protect us from every harm. Pray for us, that acting always according to your will and the will of your divine Son, we may live and die pleasing to God. Amen. In 1791, America's first Catholic bishop, John Carroll of Baltimore, entrusted his diocese, which encompassed the entire country, to the Blessed Mother. In 1846, the bishops of the United States reaffirmed that dedication, declaring Mary as patroness of the United States under her title of the Immaculate Conception.



The prayer being used for the novena was originally composed for the 1959 dedication of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which features a bell tower named for the Knights. The prayer received its imprimatur that same year from Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle, who was then archbishop of Washington, where the basilica is located.



More information is available at www.kofc.org/novena.

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home World Baptist missionary fighting Russia's anti-evangelism law returns to U.S.

Donald Ossewaarde, a Baptist missionary who is currently challenging Russia's anti-evangelism law, has returned briefly to his home in Illinois as his lawyers continue to work on his appeal.

Ossewarde was charged on Aug. 14, 2016 for conducting religious services at his home and advertising services on bulletin boards in nearby neighborhoods. He was ordered to pay the fine of 40,000 rubles (about $600). An appeals court upheld his conviction on Sept. 30, but he has vowed to continue fighting until the case reaches the highest court.

He hopes that other Baptist could continue their ministries in Russia as his lawyers defend religious freedom in the former Soviet Union.

"There's different ways we could continue the ministry and that is going to depend on how the court rules," Ossewarde told the Baptist Press.

"We're hoping the court overturns all of the charges, which could mean we could go back to the same type of house church services that we were doing," he added.

Ossewarde said that there are missionaries who have experience in setting up registered organizations in case meeting in a private house is no longer a legal option.

His attorneys are expecting his case to be heard in court as early as March or April. It will be the first appeal of a conviction under the Yarovaya Law, which is named after one of the bill's authors, Irina Yarovaya. His lawyers are preparing another appeal to challenge the law's constitutionality before Russia's Constitutional Court.

Ossewarde has said that the enthusiasm for spiritual things in Russia has waned in the last 25 years. He recalled that many people were interested in learning about the Bible when he first came to Belarus in 1994.

"We would bring ... a truckload of Bibles into a park in the center of town and people would just mob you. Hundreds and even thousands of people would just surround us begging, 'Please, please give me a Bible. I want to know what God has to say.' And it was ... a fantastic time," he narrated.

The minister said that Russians are more interested in secular things these days, but he noted that the loss of interest in God's word is open to interpretation.

Ossewarde plans to return to Russia in the middle of January in order to make preparations to leave permanently. His wife Ruth, who went back to their home in Illinois shortly after his arrest, will remain the U.S. for safety.
10 Stunning Photos Of Christians Celebrating The Feast Of The Epiphany Around The World

Today marks the celebration of the Epiphany. In the liturgical calendar the day highlights the story of the baby Jesus' visit from the Magi in Matthew 2, as well as the story of Jesus' adult baptism by John the Baptist. It is the 12th and final day of the Christmas season, which means it may well be time to say goodbye to your Christmas tree. The word 'epiphany' comes from greek and means 'mainfestation' or 'appearence', and celebrates the mainfestation of God in human form in Jesus Christ.

Across the world, particularly in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, the day is a time of fervent, colourful celebration and display. For those for whom the day merely marks the sad, uneventful end of Christmas festivity, here's a glimpse of how others are delighting in the day of January 6th across the world:

Time for an ice-breaker? Above, Bulgarian men break the ice as they wade in the icy waters of the Tundzha river, in front of others who are dancing and singing (see below) during a celebration to commemorate Epiphany Day in the town of Kalofer.

Today Pope Francis leads the Epiphany mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, and kisses the statue of baby Jesus.

Technically in the Gospel of Matthew, there aren't specifically three Kings, only three gifts. Nonetheless a tradition has developed naming three Kings: Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, who represent Europe, Arabia and Africa respectively. Here a man (centre) dressed as Caspar, one of the Three Wise Men, and his assistants throw sweets from a float during the traditional Epiphany parade in Malaga, southern Spain.

Below, crowds delight in the shower in confectionery.

Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew holds a wooden crucifix during the Epiphany day celebrations by the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey.

Greek Orthodox faithful Nikolas Solis, 29, a pilgrim to the Golden Horn from Greece, kisses a wooden crucifix as he is the first to retrieve it in the traditonal swimming contest.

Wise men bring gifts from afar: a man dressed as one of the Three Kings receives a baby pacifier from a girl during the Epiphany parade in Gijon, Spain.

Volunteers of San Carlos Borromeo parish dressed up as the Three Wise Men give away gifts in the shanty town settlement of 'El Gallinero', in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain.
Attacks On Nigerian Christians Spark National Day Of Mourning

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is calling for this Sunday to be marked as a national day of mourning for Christians killed by Muslim Fulani terrorists in southern Kaduna State.

Repeated attacks by groups of armed Fulani herdsmen on Christian villages and leaders in the country's Middle Belt have seen hundreds killed or displaced.

Nigeria's Federal Government has pledged to establish cattle ranches to resolve the frequent clashes between Muslim herdsmen and Christian farmers, which President Buhari has attributed to "poverty, injustice and the lack of job opportunities". Other analysts cite climate change and desertification as factors.

CAN has described the killings as ethnic and religious cleansing by "Islamic fundamentalists disguising as Fulani herdsmen".

According to Variguard, CAN commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his successes against the Boko Haram terrorists but expressed sadness over what it said was his silence regarding Fulani attacks.

CAN's general secretary Dr Musa Asake said Buhari's silence "speaks volumes over perceived official endorsement of the dastardly and ungodly acts".

He said Sunday, January 8, had been designated by CAN's president as a national day of mourning by Nigerian Christians, including those from the world-wide diaspora.

Asake said: "We are to pray fervently for our southern Kaduna brothers and sisters who are victims of these wanton killings and also for the peace of our dear country Nigeria. Therefore, all Christians are to dress in mourning attire of black clothes or dresses in all our church services on January 8, 2017. We are to pray that God who delivered the Jews from Haman should deliver Christians from Hamans in Nigeria. An injustice to one is an injustice to all."

He said the Church in Nigeria had been subjected to a "systematic genocide and persecution" in recent years through attacks by Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen in which thousands of Christians had been killed and hundreds of churches destroyed.

President Buhari has ordered Nigeria's inspector-general of police to visit Kaduna to assess the situation there and take "strong actions" to end the violence, according to a government statement yesterday. His spokesman said a mobile police detachment had been set up and that the army was setting up an additional two battalions there.

While religion is a factor in the conflict, observers say it is not the primary motivation for the violence, which is driven by competition for land, poverty and injustice.
Bishop Warns Of 'Serious Risks' To CofE Reputation After Cathedral Cash Crisis

Twelve people have been made redundant at the Peterborough Cathedral as the bishop seeks to resolve a "cash flow crisis" at the historic medieval cathedral.

The Bishop of Peterborough launched an inquiry last autumn after the Early English Gothic former Benedictine abbey built in the 12th century, got into financial difficulties.

The cathedral was running at a "substantial" loss, most of its properties were mortgaged, there were no free reserves and serious levels of debt.

In the resulting "visitation charge", a legal document published today, Bishop Donald Allister says the redunancies were "necessary" along with some property sales. And he warns that more "tough decisions" lie ahead.

He also warns that the current independence enjoyed by England's 42 cathedrals poses "serious risks" to the reputation of the entire Church of England.

The cathedral, which will be celebrating its 900th anniversary next year, last year suffered a "cash flow crisis" as a result of problems far deeper than simply managing cash flow, he writes.

Cathedrals are normally the province of a dean and chapter, made up of both canons of the cathedral and, more recently, some lay members as well. Cathedrals also have larger bodies, councils, which meet twice a year to advise the chapter. The bishop has a right to preach in the cathedral and under his or her powers as visitor, can invoke other powers, discussed recently on the Law and Religion blog.

In his charge, the Bishop of Peterborough takes advantage of this.

He says the cathedral is the "mother church" of the diocese as well as the "bishop's cathedral". He says the bishop should be invited to attend and speak at chapter meetings and directs that he sent all copies of chapter papers.

"There has been a culture of small groups within chapter making decisions," he writes. He directs it instead to make its decisions corporately, to give lay members and part-time members with the full-time Canons, and to stop using the term "dean and chapter".

Bishop Allister also warns that the Church of England's reputation is at risk and calls for the laws surrounding cathedrals to be tightened up.

"The Peterborough situation has convinced me that the high degree of independence currently enjoyed by cathedrals poses serious risks to the reputation of the whole Church, and thus to our effectiveness in mission. A closer working relationship of cathedrals with their bishop and diocese would be of benefit to all, both practically and spiritually," he writes.

Canon Jonathan Baker, the Acting Dean, said: "While the cathedral faces many challenges, there are also some exciting opportunities for us to seize as we move into a new phase of serving the diocese and city of Peterborough."

A spokesperson for The Church Commissioners said: "We were made aware of the financial difficulties at Peterborough Cathedral last year and have worked with both the cathedral and Bishop Donald to provide support."

He added: "Cathedrals offer spiritual sanctuary for millions of people each year and are the jewels in the nation's heritage crown. The financial problems that have faced Peterborough Cathedral are being resolved. Together our 42 cathedrals will continue to serve their communities and prosper for the benefit of future generations."

Bishop Allister said in a statement: "This wasn't about attributing blame. It was to help the Cathedral get things onto a better footing for the future."
Chris Pratt Recalls Turning Point in His Life When Stranger Said to Him, 'Jesus Told Me to Talk to You'

Chris Pratt has revealed that he owes a stranger everything that he has now, especially his faith from where his success as an actor sprang.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the star of "Passengers" and the upcoming sequel to "Guardians of the Galaxy" said this stranger he met while he was preparing to join a party in Hawaii completely changed his life for the better forever.

Pratt retraced his rise from anonymity, saying he started out as a door-to-door salesman and then moving to Hawaii to work as a waiter at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant.

The fast-rising actor said he did "great" in his sales job, which gave him the "perfect training" to pursue his dream to become a Hollywood actor despite being rejected by movie producers.

He was going through the motions of life when he met a guy named Henry in Maui, Hawaii while he was sitting outside a grocery store. He said the man approached him and asked him what he was doing that night.

He answered that he was waiting for a friend who is buying him alcohol inside the store.

"You going to go party? Drink and do drugs? Meet girls, fornication?" the man asked.

To that, Pratt replied, "I hope so."

For a reason he couldn't explain, the actor said he was "charmed by this guy," who's "an Asian dude, maybe Hawaiian, in his 40s."

His approach should have made Pratt nervous, but it didn't. He told him, "Why are you asking?"

Henry's answer stunned Pratt: "Jesus told me to talk to you ..."

"At that moment," the actor said, "I was like, I think I have to go with this guy. He took me to church. Over the next few days I surprised my friends by declaring that I was going to change my life."

His travel from the small town of Lake Stevens, Washington to Hollywood wasn't easy and had several detours, Pratt recalled. Looking back at the challenges he faced, the actor said his success was the result of divine timing, including his chance encounter with Henry.

He said Henry "saved" him by leading him to Jesus. After turning his life around to follow God, he said his life mission became clear. He now gives credit to God for all his current success as an actor.
Evangelical Pastor Sentenced To Over Two Years In Prison In China

An evangelical Christian pastor in China who has been detained for more than a year has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

House church pastor Yang Hua, also known as Li Guozhi, was sentenced in Guizhou province on a charge of "divulging state secrets", according to persecution watchdog China Aid.

Police raided his Huoshi Church in December 2015 and arrested Yang after he tried to stop officials from confiscating the church computer hard drives.

His lawyers later filed a suit stating he had suffered torture while in prison.

Bob Fu, president and founder of China Aid, condemned his treatment: "This is nothing but purely barbaric religious persecution. We urge President Obama and President-Elect Trump to unequivocally condemn this brutal act," he said.

Last June Yang wrote to his wife from prison urging her to place her full trust in God.

He wrote: "Our wonderful God, our Lord forever. Who can guess His wisdom and mystery? Our faith is built on His words. He never changes and never does wrong; this is the unchangeable maxim."

He also revealed he had suffered liver disease and scabies in prison. But he added: "The suffering is bearable. The Lord has grace. The canker sore has not returned since May of this year. Thank God."

He concluded: "Never be dejected and despondent, always look up at our Lord, and always keep the spiritual life above the chaos of the real environment.

"Rest in God's arms. 'Some rely on chariots, some on horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord.' Be upright and take care. Be prepared for the rest of the road. I will go with you. If the Lord doesn't allow it, not a single hair (from your head) will drop to the floor."

Yang's original charges were "obstructing justice" and "gathering a crowd to disturb public order".

He completed the sentences on these charges, and was then charged with "illegally possessing state secrets" for which he has now been sentenced.
Homeless Get Picnic At The Vatican Courtesy Of Pope Francis

Pope Francis gave 300 homeless people and refugees a sandwich and a drink to thank them for helping to hand out pamphlets at an Epiphany feast day service on Friday.

The picnic, announced by the Pope's charity office, was the latest gesture from the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to the needy, whose plight he has made a central cause of his papacy.

Francis has ordered showers for the homeless to be set up just off St Peter's Square, and treated 1,500 to Neapolitan pizza after the canonisation of Mother Teresa last year.

On January 6 Christians celebrate the Epiphany, the biblical story of wise men who travel from the East, following a star, to find the baby Jesus.

Speaking from the window of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Francis compared the gifts the wise men  or Magi  are believed to have brought to Jesus to the pamphlets handed out to the roughly 35,000 faithful in St Peter's Square.

"I thought I would give you a little gift too. The camels are missing but I will give you the gift," he said. "I wish you a year of justice, forgiveness, serenity, but above all mercy. Reading this book will help  it fits in your pocket!"

Earlier Francis had celebrated mass in St Peter's Basilica. In his homily on the coming of the Magi he quoted St John Chrysostom, saying that "the Magi did not set out because they had seen the star, but they saw the star because they had already set out. Their hearts were open to the horizon and they could see what the heavens were showing them, for they were guided by an inner restlessness. They were open to something new."

He contrasted their approach with that of Herod, who was "anaesthetised by a cauterised conscience. He was bewildered, afraid. It is the bewilderment which, when faced with the newness that revolutionises history, closes in on itself and its own achievements, its knowledge, its successes. The bewilderment of one who sits atop his wealth yet cannot see beyond it."

He concluded: "The Magi were able to worship, because they had the courage to set out. And as they fell to their knees before the small, poor and vulnerable Infant, the unexpected and unknown Child of Bethlehem, they discovered the glory of God."

Additional reporting by Reuters.
How A Christian Ministry Is Reaching Out To Trafficked North Korean Women

Women from North Korea are being trafficked across the border into north-east China and face abuse and exploitation  but a Christian ministry is reaching out to help them.

Open Doors is serving between 150 and 200 trafficked women every year. They are sold into marriage or servitude from North Korea and many are abused and ill-treated. Open Doors workers offer practical assistance, pastoral care and Bible studies.

One of them, Hwa-Young, said the trafficked women "grew up in severe poverty. They are always hungry. All of them know what it is like to worry about every meal, to eat from the trash and to beg for food.

"They go to pre-school in North Korea when they are about five years old. But they are still forced to watch public executions. Sometimes friends or neighbours were murdered in front of their eyes.

"Even when they are older and leave the country, they still experience that psychological pressure of fear. There is much more freedom here in China, but the women are still not safe. Additionally, most of them have been abused, both in North Korea and in China. They feel numb. They don't even feel the hurt any more."

She said the women were "raised in fear". "Pyongyang was once the Jerusalem of the East," she said, referring to how Christianity used to be prevalent in the capital. "Now the people have to worship idols of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il in this city."

She said the goal of the women's project was to raise up female leaders for the future. Around 10 of them are being trained for women's ministry in China, with the long-term goal of helping build the Church in North Korea, which ranks as the most hostile place for Christians in the world on Open Doors' World Watch List.
Is It The Job Of Christians To Change The World?

One of the most significant and talked about books of the last decade in the evangelical Christian world is James Davison Hunter's To Change The World. In it, Hunter, an eminent sociologist, analyses the strategies used by various Christian groups in their attempts to 'change the world'.

His critique of the models employed by different groups and individuals is well worth reading. He undercuts the whole idea of trying to change the world, calling instead for "faithful presence". He describes this as our calling: "it is not rooted in a desire to change the world for the better but rather... it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment of God's command to love our neighbor." In other words, Christians shouldn't be obsessed with changing the world as their main aim, they should aim to be a faithful presence in every area of society, which will then have the effect of producing what Hunter calls "benevolent consequences of our engagement".

It's not uncontroversial, of course. How could it be, when Hunter takes aim at many of the 'big names' of American evangelicalism? But it raises an important question: is it our job to change the world?

There isn't space here to retrace 2,000 years of Christian theology and practice, but it's important to note that Christians have thought in diametrically opposed ways about these issues. The Popes whose declarations led to the Crusades and the Anabaptist pacifists of the modern day all claim their inspiration from their shared faith, after all. Many of the great reformers who abolished slavery were deeply inspired by their scriptures, yet so were some of the passionate opponents of abolition. The abolitionists were clearly on the right side of history and their dedication and faithfulness to their cause remains an inspiration to civil rights activists around the world today.

Hunter's critique is mainly aimed at large-scale 'culture wars' type engagement in American politics. Changing the world is clearly God's work. The question is the extent to which we're called to join in. The answer has to be... somewhat. As Hunter's own book proclaims: "The call to make the world a better place is inherent in Christian belief and practice."

In a country riven by political strife (the US and UK both fit this description, of course) we must consider whether Christians should simply jump into the trenches and start firing. The evidence of the last couple of generations seems to be that not only will that achieve very little, it will also end up putting people off the Church. Instead of simply joining in the culture wars, there is a better way  a way of modeling faithful presence.

One example came vividly to mind this week, as we mourned the early death of an extraordinary woman. Jill Saward, who died of a stroke aged 51, was a tireless campaigner for the rights of women who have been raped and sexually assaulted. She had been raped herself, aged 21, in her father's vicarage.

By waiving her right to anonymity (the first victim to do so in English law), Saward turned the horror of her attack into a powerful force for good. Theologian Elaine Storkey, speaking of Saward to the BBC, said she was "deeply rooted in the strength of a God who loves you and a Christ who died for you". She went on to argue that Saward's huge influence on improving the law and the way rape victims are treated was based in her Christian conviction. Storkey said: "She could step out in a new way and actually help other people and she has been such a Godsend to other people across the country and around the world... She was a beacon of hope for millions of women across the world and began to change the way that we saw rape." This is the kind of faithful presence that really can change many, many lives.

We should be using every opportunity we get to speak about, act and campaign for justice and the values of the Kingdom. This will look different for each of us. Just because you aren't 'in politics' doesn't mean you can't make a difference. There are many other spheres of influence such as media, education and the arts.

We can use the gifts that God has given us in a number of ways. When we work out what we're good at and where we want to be, we still have the choice to work solely for ourselves, or for the common good.

Doing the latter will always be a choice open to us, even in small, seemingly insignificant ways. There are many, many opportunities to practice faithful presence on a daily basis, which mount up to a lifetime of opportunity. You don't need to try and change the world  leave that to God. The difference you can make, and that we can make together, should never be underestimated.
Missing Chibok Schoolgirl Kidnapped By Boko Haram Found With Baby In Nigeria

Another of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militant group Boko Haram from their school in Nigeria's Chibok in 2014 has been found, according to the Nigerian army.

The girl, identified as Rakiya Abubkar Gali, had a six-month-old baby with her, a spokesperson said, and was discovered while soldiers were investigating suspected members of Boko Haram.

According to World Watch Monitor, Gali is the daughter of Abubakar Gali Mulima and Habiba Abubakar, and is the 24th Chibok victim to be released.

In total, 276 girls, most of them Christians, were taken from their school on April 14, 2014. Dozens have managed to escape, but more than 200 are still missing.

Their capture was part of Boko Haram's seven-year-old insurgency to set up an Islamic state in the north of Nigeria that has killed some 15,000 people.

In October, 21 of the abducted girls were released by militants following talks with the government brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government.

More than 910 schools have been targeted by Boko Haram, whose name means "Western [or non-Islamic] education is a sin". At least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed and another 19,000 forced to flee. At least 1,500 schools have closed.

In a video released in May 2014, then-Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, said women and girls would continue to be abducted to "turn them to the path of true Islam" and ensure they did not attend school.

The group controlled an area about the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has been pushed out of most of that territory over the last year by Nigeria's army and troops from neighbouring countries.

Last month, the army said it had seized a key Boko Haram camp in its last enclave in Nigeria in the vast Sambisa forest. The jihadists still stage suicide bombings in northeastern areas and in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Mom Gives Birth to Quadruplets While Battling Cancer a Second Time: God's 'Gotta Have a Different Plan Up There'

Not even a second battle with cancer could stop this woman from giving birth not just to one, not two, not three, but to four babies in one day.

Kalya Gayton, 29, gave birth to quadruplets on Friday last week at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, WKRN reported.

Gayton, already a mother of two, has fought and won his first battle with cancer and is fighting a second one. She reportedly found out she was pregnant after finishing five rounds of chemotherapy.

Doctors said Gayton has a 50 percent chance of survival over the next five years. But the strong-willed mother is unfazed by it all, telling a TV news reporter, "We know that He's [God's] gotta have a different plan up there for us, and surely everything's gonna work out in the end."

Gayton described giving birth to quadruplets as "nerve-wracking," adding that "to see them when they all came out and to hear them crying, that was really exciting."

She said she was thrilled after finding out that she was carrying four babies inside her even though she did not use fertility drugs. At the same time though she was not sure if she could handle the experience, given the fact that she's in the midst of her second battle with cancer.

"My original goal to make was 34 weeks because I figured if I could beat cancer, surely I could make it to 34 weeks with quads," she said. "I just kept trying to tell myself that I could do it."

Last year, Gayton was first diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a disease that the American Cancer Society says is a cancer that starts in a person's white blood cells.

She underwent treatment and was eventually declared cancer-free.

However, Gayton later showed again the symptoms of Hodgkin's Lymphoma fevers, weight loss and night sweats  while she was pregnant. A biopsy confirmed that her cancer had returned.

"You think you've beat it the first time. When it comes back, you're just wondering why get pregnant with these four babies and then, you know, something like this happens," she said.

Her husband was disconsolate. "She'd worked really hard to [fight] it the first time, and to come back and have to go through it all again, it breaks my heart," her husband Charles said.
Transgender Man Sues Catholic Hospital Over 'Refusal To Perform Surgery'

A transgender man is suing a Roman Catholic hospital in New Jersey after it allegedly cited religion in its refusal to perform surgery as part of his gender transition.

Jionni Conforti, 33, made the federal lawsuit on Thursday in response to being denied a hysterectomy he said was medically necessary for his transition, Associated Press reports. The surgery at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson was scheduled to take place in 2015 but Conforti said the hospital told him the procedure to remove his uterus was not possible because St. Joseph's is a "Catholic hospital".

"I felt completely disrespected as a person," said Conforti.

He added: "That's not how any hospital should treat any person regardless of who they are. A hospital is a place where you should feel safe and taken care of. Instead I felt like I was rejected and humiliated."

Conforti began his gender transition in 2004. The procedure to remove his uterus was eventually undertaken at a different hospital but he says he is pursuing the lawsuit so that others don't face the same perceived discrimination.

When asked on Thursday, a spokesman for St. Joseph's said he hadn't seen the lawsuit yet and so could not comment.

The hospital's "patients' bill of rights" guarantees medical services without discrimination based on "gender identity or expression". However, the issue causes division because the prospect of gender reassignment is contradicted by traditional Catholic teaching which states that gender is not alterable. Previous comments by Pope Francis on the issue reflect the pastoral and theological tensions that the issue poses.

Last week a coalition of Catholic businesses and organisations filed a legal challenge in the federal court of North Dakota, against regulations that Catholic hospitals say force them to perform gender transitioning procedures and abortions against their conscience.

Bishop John Folda of the Fargo, North Dakota diocese said: "While initiating a lawsuit is not something we take lightly, this new mandate represents a grave threat to religious freedom."
What Is Epiphany And Why Does It Matter To The 21st Century Church?

Most of us are now back at work, school or college after the holidays  even those who don't have these daily commitments are probably back into the groove of 'normality'. Christmas seems a long time ago and our minds may well have turned to new years resolutions or, if you're anything like me, wondering when the Spring is going to appear.

Yet today is one of the great feasts of the Church! Epiphany marks the coming of the Magi to visit Jesus and in the Western tradition is the time when we conclude the Twelve Days of Christmas. In the Eastern Church, because of the way the calendars differ, today is the day of Christmas itself  which means hundreds of millions of believers are with their families and celebrating.

As we in the West sit at our desks and persevere with those 2017 'to do' lists, we shouldn't forget about what Epiphany means. In the nativity story, Jesus is born into relative poverty and obscurity in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph have been visited by angels who foretell his birth and by the time is born, the angels have also imparted the good news to the shepherds who come and worship.

This is all clearly important stuff. The astonishing news that the saviour of the universe was to be born in humble circumstances, and his first visitors were lowly shepherds, shouldn't be forgotten. We know Jesus is born of the line of David and his birth in Bethlehem fits in with the prophesies about the Messiah.

Yet the addition of the Magi to the story adds a whole new dimension. There is some dispute among theologians and historians as to who exactly the Magi were. Matthew's Gospel uses the word Magos which seems to imply that they were Zoroastrians (the ancient faith of Persia) and that they may have been priests in that religion. They probably weren't 'kings' but of course they may well have been 'wise men' as the traditional translation has had it. There is no mention that there were three of them although that's often how many have been depicted.

That they come to Jerusalem in search of the baby Jesus is significant, because Zoroastrians were monotheists who had an expectation of a messiah-like figure. Others think that the Magi were in fact Babylonian rather than Persian but that doesn't especially matter in the context of the story. The significance is that they were not Jewish and yet recognised something special and unique in Jesus. They kneel down before him and offer gifts showing the importance they place on him.

This is the first indication we have in the life of Jesus that his ministry will not be just for Israel but for people of all nations. Although it took his followers many years to see it, this was the moment where it was first revealed that the Messiah would come not only for the Jewish people but for people of all backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities.

It is easy, then, to see why for many hundreds of years the Church in both East and West has considered the Epiphany (which literally means 'sudden realisation') so important. It was the point at which Jesus began to be revealed as the Messiah for the whole world.

This has led to a number of traditions from the tasty  Epiphay Cake  to the more prayerful, such as the blessing of doors. In this small ceremony, a chalk is used to mark the year and the letters 'C', 'M' and 'B' on the door of a home or a church. The letters stand for a Latin phrase asking for Christ to bless the house.

Orthodox Christians and many Roman Catholics also use Epiphany to focus on the Baptism of Jesus. He was baptised by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. We read in the Gospels that a voice from heaven says: "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This is another way in which Jesus' identity and purpose was being revealed to those around him. The Epiphany theme is clear  God was making known to specific people at a specific time in history who Jesus was. Be they the Magi or the crowds at Jesus' Baptism, God makes clear that something new, different and exciting was to happen through Jesus. That is the Good News that has been passed down to us and which we celebrate at Ephiphany.

A blessed Epiphany to all readers  and a very happy Christmas to our Eastern sisters and brothers!
When the Spanish galleon Atocha sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys nearly 400 years ago, hope of recovering its cargo seemed lost. This silver ingot from our Important American Furniture sale was a remarkable survivor

On 6 September 1622, the treasure-laden Nuestra Senora de Atocha sank during a hurricane off the Florida Keys, explains Christies specialist Jill Waddell. Two hundred and sixty lives were lost at sea, along with tons of gold and silver bound for Spain. Weighing 79 troy pounds  about 29.5 kg  this bar of silver was marked with the name of a silversmith who also went down with the ship.

A 79 troy pound silver bar recovered from the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha . Dated 1621. 5 in (12.7 cm) high, 15 in (38.1 cm) wide, 2  in (5.7 cm) deep; 79 lb t; 1 oz t; 2 dwt. Sold for $40,000 on 20 January 2017

At a time when colonial cities in North America such as Boston (1630) and New York (1624) had yet to be founded, the Spanish had already been developing New World centres including Potosi, Lima and Mexico City for more than 50 years. The continents mineral wealth became vital to the Spanish throne: from 1561 to 1748, two fleets carrying supplies were sent to colonists each year, returning to Spain filled with silver and gold.

The Atocha was so richly laden with treasures that it had taken two months to load, and it left port at Havana six weeks later than scheduled, continues Waddell. It was the most heavily guarded ship in a fleet of 20, and was carrying clergymen, slaves and members of the Spanish nobility. When a hurricane struck, the boat was slammed into a reef, sinking in just 55 feet of water. Only five of those who had been on board survived.

When news of the ships disappearance reached Havana, a second boat was sent out to search for it and recover lost cargo, but it, too, sank. It was not until the 1970s, almost 400 years later, that the boat was successfully traced by famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher  a former chicken farmer from Indiana.

Having lain at the bottom of the ocean, this silver bar is perfectly preserved, says Waddell. The V mark of its maker, the Atocha silvermaster Jacove de Vreder, remains clearly visible, signalling its authenticity. Also visible is the name of the shipper/owner M. Salgado, and marks indicating that this was the 498th bar to be founded at Bolivias Oruro mint.

An indent at one end is what's known as the 'bite' of the mint's assayer, who would take a small section from each bar produced to determine the purity of the silver. Also visible is the fineness number 2380/2400 and three tax stamps.

In actuality, it looks as though it has fallen off the moon, Waddell remarks. Its got this wonderful, deep-grey, craggy surface, and the marks remain deep and clearly legible. Its one of the most amazing things Ive handled in my career, and captures a remarkable moment in history.
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Crawfish season is about to be back in full swing in the Houston area.

Just before the holidays began a handful of restaurants in the city and the suburbs began dishing out mud bugs to customers who had been craving the boiled critters since last spring.

Warmer temperatures these past few years have led many restaurants to put them on the menu even in November and December.

WELL TAKE THEM: Invasive species of yummy crawfish have invaded northwestern Minnesota

One of Houstons most popular Tex-Orleans chains, BBs Cafe, said that they are kicking out the crawfish jams on Monday, Jan. 16.

Crawfish Shack, somewhat of a hidden gem in Crosby, will open their doors on Wednesday, Jan. 11 according to their Facebook page. A Chron reader tweeted out a photo of a crawfish and sausage platter from The Deck on Fountainview that looked rather appetizing, so we know they are available there right now.

Ragin Cajun locations in Houston have been serving crawfish with all the trimmings since early December.

As always, call ahead to your favorite place to make sure they have crawfish.

SWEET TOOTH: Readers' choice: Houston's top spots for beignets

Atchafalaya Crawfish in Pearland began selling crawfish on Dec. 13, just in time for holiday parties. The to-go crawfish place specializes in live and boiled Louisiana crawfish.

We usually get crawfish from December to July and sell thousands of pounds a year. We will also wholesale a lot more than that to other restaurants, says owner Matt Rhymer. Hes been in the business for 15 years and has been able to study the nuisances of the industry.

According to Rhymer, crawfish season typically ramps up in Houston around Super Bowl time. Fridays during Lent are some of their busiest days.

Right now wholesale price is almost a dollar higher than this time last year, he says. There won't be as much crawfish on the market as last year but it will still be a great year.

My farmers are catching around 300 sacks a day. In April and May that will jump to 3,000 to 5,000 a day, he adds.

FRESH OFF THE BOAT: Seafood restaurants to try in Houston

Lisa Carnley Benoit with the Cajun Stop on the east end of downtown always looks forward to crawfish season as its a boon for business. They began selling them in the last week.

Cajun Stop, open since 2009, is known for authentic Louisiana Cajun fare like po'boys, gumbo, fried seafood platters, red beans and rice, and crawfish etouffe.

Crawfish definitely increases overall sales each year. The six months we do crawfish are the busiest months. We get more customers, we get to introduce our other food items to people looking for crawfish and alcohol sales definitely goes up, she says.

Overall, annually, crawfish season does wonders for the Cajun Stop. Helps build up clientele.

When it comes to crawfish, Benoit says we are blessed diversity.

Between fusion, Asian, Cajun, and choices between sauces and frozen or fresh, Houston has more choices than any other city or state, Benoit says. Other states are catching on to the trend and Im trying to catch up with the trendy new sauces and toppings.

CARBS BE DAMNED: Houston's best Southern comfort food

Rhymer says that the difference between the way Houston eats crawfish and other cities in the south is all in way they are cooked and seasoned. As a Cajun, Benoit says, soaked not sprinkled is always better.

The difference between crawfish in Houston and other cities is people want to sprinkle seasoning on the outside. In this area we season the water and soak them in the water for 20 minutes.

Houstonians like very well-seasoned crawfish, Rhymer says, almost to a fault.

Y'all over season. Louisiana food is about being well-seasoned, he says.
Police are asking the public to help identify a man wanted in connection with a fatal shooting last summer in southeast Houston.

Francisco Ortega Martinez, 35, was shot about 3:30 a.m. on July 17, 2016 in the 7300 block of Lamar. He was pronounced dead at Ben Taub General Hospital, Houston police said.

Houston Fire Department paramedics were tending to Marinez when HPD officers arrived at the scene. He had been shot several times and was found lying in the driveway between his truck and his home, police said.

Police could identify the assailant only as a Hispanic man in his mid 20s. He is about 5-feet-9 and weighs just over 200 pounds.

HPD officials have released a video taken from store security cameras at the scene. It can be accessed on the department's Youtube page: https://youtu.be/vcREzuEO26c

Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS or HPD homicide detectives at 713-308-3600.
Attention sneaker lovers! On Saturday, New Balance is launching its latest sneaker, New Balance 247 Luxe ($119.95), at the The Galleria's Shoe Palace. The launch coincides with simultaneous launches in London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.

The Galleria event will also feature a 7 p.m. performance by Houston-based female hip-hop artist, INGRID. Also FADER magazine (which celebrates music and culture) will be there filming.
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A coalition of organizations is calling communities and "people of conscience" around the country to join rallies, marches and vigils that will take place in more than 45 cities nationwide, including Houston and other Texas towns, for an Immigrants National Day of Action on January 14.

The National Day of Action is set to happen a week before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20 with the purpose of building "momentum to prevent deportations and create defense networks in cities, schools, churches and states," according to the organizers.

Lead by United We Dream, an organization of young immigrants who came to the United States without immigration documents as children, the actions aim to send a message against mass deportation plans announced by Trump during his presidential campaign.

"Immigrant families and young children will be impacted by the election of Donald Trump. He promises to go after and separate families like my own," said Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream. Jimenez was brought to the U.S. from Ecuador when she was 13 years old.

Jimenez said in a conference call that "hatred and bullying against immigrant families have increased in record numbers."

The Southern Poverty Law Center think tank has reported an increase in hate crimes against immigrants after the Election Day.

Jimenez added that many children, including American-born kids, are "afraid of what could happen to their undocumented parents" under Trump's deportation policies.

During his campaign, Donald Trump said he would build a deportation force and announced a ten-point immigration plan that includes the termination of President Obama's executive actions DACA and DAPA that temporarily protect certain immigrants from expulsion.

Shortly after becoming President-elect, however, Trump has declared that he will prioritize the deportation of people with criminal records, without specifically addressing the deportation of other immigrants.

Despite fears among immigrant families, "there is no way that we will stay in the shadows and not fight back," Jimenez said.

The main event of the Day of Action will be a rally held outside the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. with U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois, as keynote speaker.

"We want every senator and every member of Congress to see us and to hear our words, and we want President-elect Trump to understand the might, the resiliency and the power of our immigrant families," said Kica Matos, Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice of the Center for Community Change, one of the organizations of the coalition.

Texas Organizing Project and Fair Immigration Reform Movement are planning activities in Houston. Other cities from Texas participating in the Day of Action are San Antonio and Dallas.

The organizers are updating a list of events by location in the United We Dream website.

Olivia.Tallet@chron.com

Twitter: @oliviaptallet
Ogun Art & Wine is now open at the space that formerly housed Absolve Wine Lounge, 920 Studemont.

The establishment is in the strip center at the intersection of Washington Ave. and Studemont, a few doors down from Beer Market Co.

On Dec. 19, a Facebook post for Absolve announced that the bar, which had operated there for nearly seven years, would be shutting down after another "wine enthusiast" took over the lease at that space. The owners shared that Absolve was the "last foothold in Houston," and that they would be leaving Houston with an "emotional farewell to the service industry."

CLOSED: Houston bars & restaurants we bid farewell in 2016

The new establishment, Ogun Art & Wine, debuted there on Dec. 30 as a wine bar that doubles as an art gallery. Ogun's website describes the place as "setting where art and wine enthusiasts can intermix, and mutually indulge their senses in unique offerings from both categories." The site states that the owners will build on the 19th-century "layout of furniture, art and wine" tradition that Absolve's owners established.

That may be why some of the art and decor look familiar.

Although the owner of the new establishment have also brought in a number of new canvases and a fresh selection of wine that includes "a specialty selection of wine varietals from Southern Africa." The art that's been added to the existing collection includes a number of exotic pieces with an emphasis on African art. Paintings, masks and sculptures influenced by that continent now fill the cozy space.

Have you visited Ogun Art & Wine? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Chris Shepherd has had a long love affair with Spanish food. That was the cuisine that put him on the map when he was the chef at Catalan Food and Wine before he left to open his own restaurant, Underbelly. And we all know what happened with that concept.

It has been years since he's cooked Spanish but that changes on Jan. 16 when he hosts chef Katie Button for a special Catalan Throwback Dinner at Underbelly, 1100 Westheimer.
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Finally, there is a beer made specifically for the large and dedicated community of people who like to drink beer in the shower.

What, you didn't know such a community exists? Neither did we. But it does, and it even has an organizational website full of tips, shower drinking products and shower beer news.

Hot on the shower beer feeds today is a brand-new product out of Sweden, aptly named Shower Beer, which is meant specifically for shower drinking, even though it comes in a glass bottle.

WE'RE IN: Zero experience required for beer drinking job

We asked Shower Beer founder Fredrick Ost whether people should be trusted to not hurt themselves with this product, and he assured us that it's totally fine.

"It fits easily in anyone's hand and won't slip out of your hand that easily," Ost said. "We chose glass since it looks fabulous and feels fantastic to hold!"

Shower Beer is described as a "sweet but strong pale ale" that is 10 percent alcohol and comes in a very small bottle.

TAKE A ROAD TRIP: Best American cities for drinking beer

It is "meant to gulp in three sips while standing in the shower getting ready for the night," according to Ost's marketing firm, Snask, which created the beer in partnership with brewer Fredrik Tunedal of PangPang Brewery in Farsta, Sweden.

The first batch of shower beer sold out instantly, and Ost said the second batch is in production. It's not yet available for international distribution but it could be in the future.

We're very happy for all of the people on this Reddit feed, who can someday take the art of shower beer drinking to the next level. Cheers, and please don't drop it on your foot.
Hot breakfast food, beverages, produce and snacks of both the sweet and salty variety were set up around the Montgomery County Sheriff's District 3 Office Conference Room in New Caney New Year's Eve.

Alumni of the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Citizens Constable Academy organized the effort to provide food and beverages so law enforcement officers working New Year's shifts could stop by, eat and grab some snacks to sustain them through their shift.

"We were there to make sure the officers had food so they wouldn't have to stop and put themselves in danger," said Jodi Ruonavar, Citizen's Constable Academy alumnus. "We were able to provide food to sheriffs, troopers, officers from Cleveland, Splendora, Roman Forest, Woodbranch, Patton Village - just from all over. It was wonderful to be able to see the smiles on the officers' faces."

Over the course of the night, the effort provided food to approximately 67 law enforcement officers.

"I sent out an email to everyone that has been in the academy to help with the effort," Ruonavar said. "There were some that haven't even joined the alumni yet that participated. It means a lot when you have people who want to help. People here in East Montgomery County like our LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers.)"

Produce left over from the event was donated to the East Texas Dream Center in Conroe.

Ruonavar expressed gratitude to Kroger's at Northpark in Kingwood for their substantial donation to the cause.

"Reggie Martin is the manager there," Ruonavar said. "I asked if he was able to donate. When I walked in there yesterday, there were two shopping carts full of donations."

Ruonavar is an alumnus from Class 001 of the Citizens Constable Academy.

"We officially formed in October of 2016," Ruonavar said. "From October until now, we have a crew of 27. We may be small in number, but we're mighty in support."

The Citizens Constable Academy is a free program open to residents of Montgomery County who are at least 18 years old. The 10-week program provides experience and knowledge about various law enforcement divisions and topics including patrol, civil service, neighborhood watch, K9, Shoot-Don't Shoot exercises and many more.

"It's a really good class," Ruonavar said. "You think you know about law enforcement, until you take that class. Even with what you already knew, you learn more. We didn't want it to end."

In fact, Ruonavar still enjoys attending class sessions, which alumni are welcome to do.

"They keep refining and tweaking the class," said Michael Schmidt, Citizens Constable Academy Class 003 alumnus. "Once you go through it, if there's something you've missed, or something they've changed, they're fine with you coming to the next class."

The Citizens Constable Academy aims to host two classes per year. The next class is already full, but citizens of Montgomery County interested in signing up for the following class can get more information at http://www.mcco4.org/citizen-academy or by contacting the Community Resource Division at 281-577-8446.

"It's something you get in your system," Ruonavar said. "Our local law enforcement is working hard. They do it because they love it. It takes special people to put a badge on their chest every day, give their loved one's a kiss with the thought of 'Dear Lord, bring me home.' It takes a special person to put their self in front of someone and shield that person."

Roman Forest Police Chief Stephen Carlisle was one of the officers that stopped by for a hot meal New Year's Eve.

Carlisle plans to launch a Roman Forest Police Department Citizens Academy in 2017. He hopes to begin the first class around May.
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In a police ATV with the engine off in the subdivision of Kings Colony, Roman Forest Police Chief Stephen Carlisle sat silently trying to distinguish between the sound of fireworks and the sound of gunfire.

It was only minutes from midnight on New Year's Eve Saturday, Dec. 31, 2016 and the already foggy night air was thickened even more from firework smoke; limiting visibility.

"Every so often I can hear what I believe to be a gun and the reason I say it's a gun is because it's like somebody pulling a trigger," Carlisle said. "If you hear them shooting, you can hear a pattern of a semi-automatic weapon. If they only fired once; it would be hard to tell."

Fireworks are not permitted for civilian use within the city of Roman Forest. However, the city's firework ordinance does not apply in Kings Colony which borders Roman Forest to the south.

Although it is legal for Kings Colony residents to discharge fireworks; the discharge of firearms is another story, as it is illegal both in Roman Forest and surrounding areas including Kings Colony.

In November 2016, Carlisle issued a zero-tolerance policy for illegal gunfire, illegal hunting and illegal ATV use after a shot was believed to be fired in the direction of Carlisle and a group of other Roman Forest police officers at a traffic stop on Roman Forest Boulevard the weekend of Nov. 19.

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/east-montgomery/news/article/Roman-Forest-PD-cracks-down-on-illegal-firearm-use-10635888.php

This incident was one of several instances of illegal gunfire complaints and stray bullets falling onto Roman Forest homes, cars and surrounding areas over the past few years.

While the illegal gunfire and illegal hunting is believed to be occurring in the undeveloped section of Woodway and Roman Forest sections 3, 4, 5 and 6; much of the illegal recreational and celebratory gunfire occurs in Kings Colony, according to Carlisle.

The Roman Forest Police Department joined forces with the Montgomery County Constable's Office Precinct 4 during New Year's Eve and into the morning of New Year's Day in order to combat illegal activity expected to spike during New Year's including intoxicated driving, illegal firework use, unreasonable noise  over 85 decibels  resulting from loud music and fireworks, and illegal gunfire.

In a post on the Roman Forest Police Department Facebook Dec. 30, 2016 regarding New Year's Eve patrols, an "important focus is on celebratory gunfire. It is illegal to shoot a gun in Roman Forest and in surrounding subdivisions. This is deadly conduct. We have had many bullets come down on houses and cars. Violators will be charged with a crime. Our officers will be teaming up with Montgomery County Pct. 4 Deputies to patrol subdivisions south of Roman Forest with the primary focus on illegal gunfire."

Montgomery County Precinct 4 Deputy Eric Prado began patrolling the area at approximately 7 p.m. New Year's Eve.

"Basically what we've been doing tonight is stopping at the parties, waving, telling them 'Hi'  just basically trying to build a rapport and let them know that we're out here to listen for the shots fired, to see if we can find where they're coming from, to talk to the people with loud music," Prado said. "We're just trying to be proactive."

Prado stated that he had encountered a woman who expressed upset over the seeming lack of concern for illegal gunfire in the area.

"There are people out there who care, but we need help from the community," Prado said. "We have to build a relationship with these folks and get in and say, 'Hey, we're here for you guys.' Reach out to us."

Complaints of illegal gunfire and noise issues from loud music in Kings Colony are relatively common year-round according to Carlisle; however, he expressed a noticeable decrease in these occurrences during the past two New Year's in Kings Colony as a result of the proactive measures taken by Roman Forest PD and Montgomery County Pct. 4 Deputies.

This observation was echoed by King's Colony resident Tiffany Craven, who stated that the gunfire and music volume  which was generating approximately 50 decibels of noise according to a reading taken by Carlisle from her property New Year's Eve  was not as severe as it normally was on weekends.

"Right now, it's actually not bad," Craven said. "I cannot believe the music is not blaring right now. Every now and then you can hear what I'm pretty sure is an AR-15."

So far, stray bullets from celebratory gunfire have not caused known damage to her home.

"That's not to say it won't happen. I don't think they're shooting in our direction, but every now and then you can look out the window and see the 'pow-pow-pow'," said Craven, mimicking the firing of a gun with her hand.

From Carlisle's efforts to establish a relationship with Kings Colony residents, he is encountering cases of homes being hit by bullets that had gone unreported.

"Roman Forest (residents are) the ones we hear from," Carlisle said. "We don't hear from Kings Colony. Now, talking to people out here in Kings Colony, I'm finding out that their houses are getting hit with bullets too; they're just not saying anything."

Without illegal gun use being reported by Kings Colony residents, it is difficult for law enforcement to pinpoint the exact source of the gunfire. The deficit of outreach by Kings Colony residents to law enforcement may be the result of a variety of reasons.

The demographic make-up of Kings Colony is largely Hispanic and several residents speak little or no English, making it challenging to relay information regarding Roman Forest Police initiatives. So, some residents may not know that they can reach out to law enforcement about the gunfire.

According to Carlisle, fear of retaliation for revealing the source of the gunfire, or identity of the shooters, may also be a factor in residents' reluctance to report gunfire.

For some residents, the presence of gunfire is just the norm.

"This happens a lot; pretty much every day," Leslie Garcia, Kings Colony resident, said. "It's normal. It's not really scary."

As was expected, when midnight arrived, a surge of fireworks erupted. Now and then, amid the intermittent pops and explosions could be heard the steady, repetitive sound Carlisle described as gunfire. He ignited the ATV engine and embarked on a search for the sources of gunfire. This involved driving in the direction of the sound, turning off the engine and waiting for a recurrence.

After chasing the sound of gunfire to multiple different streets, no shooters were sighted and without proof, no further legal action could be made.

Although noise complaints and shots fired complaints may have been lower than previous New Year's Eves, Carlisle stated that there was a report of a car being hit by a bullet from above.

The illegal shooting is a year-round issue that Carlisle aims to remedy.

He believes that while enacting the zero-tolerance policy and publicizing alerts and offenses on social media has resulted in a reduction in the number of illegal gun use instances, it has not solved the problem.

"We've caught two hunters, one person illegally riding an ATV and one person illegally shooting," Carlisle said. "By publicizing everything, I think it has gone down, but I still hear gun shots. It's made a difference, but it still hasn't fixed it."

The Roman Forest Police Department is taking steps to establish a relationship with residents of Kings Colony, including outreach and interaction within the subdivision and providing Spanish translations of notices released by the department. Carlisle plans to continue looking at ways to strengthen the communication between Kings Colony residents and the police department.

However, the community's willingness to work with law enforcement will be vitally important to finding the individuals responsible for the illegal gunfire.

"Cooperation with the community is key," Carlisle said. "We need the community's involvement to tell us when it's happening, where to go and let us know who is doing it."

To report the occurrence of illegal gun use in-progress, call the Montgomery County dispatch nonemergency line at 936-760-5800, option 3. For emergencies, dial 911.

To report information concerning illegal gun use that is not in progress, contact the Roman Forest Police Department at 281-399-8182, the Constable's Office at 281-577-8985 or reach out to Roman Forest Police Department on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RomanForestPD/.

For more information visit http://www.romanforestpd.com/.
Alexis Champagne, a sophomore at Taylor High School, has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouting.

The award recognizes girls in grades 9-12 who demonstrate leadership through sustainable and measurable community service projects that require a minimum of 80 hours to complete. Less than 5 percent of Girl Scouts earn the award.

To earn the award, Champagne launched the Bob Cat Book Nook book sharing program at Garland McMeans Jr High School in Cinco Ranch. As part of the project, Champagne stocked shelves full of books that were donated during a book drive she hosted for two months. Students at McMeans can borrow the books free of charge and return them when they are done reading them or replace them with other books brought from home.

"The book nook is in a primary hallway that kids walk through all day long, so kids will be free to take books any time," said Champagne. "The goal is that this will help increase reading and lead to higher test scores and maybe kids with share with each other what they are reading and have discussions about their shared books. Maybe we will see more kids reading at lunch rather than engaging with social media on their phones."

Through earning the Gold Award, Champagne learned that she is able to lead a group, hold meetings with adults, engage professionally with retailers, make important decisions and use power tools. Her project impacted more than 1,000 people.

"It's a major accomplishment and I really wanted to reach the highest goal possible in Girl Scouts," said Champagne.

Visit www.girlscouts.org to learn more.
Submitted photo

The holidays were a little brighter for many charitable organizations in Fort Bend County thanks to a record-breaking year for the Sugar Plum Market.

Presented by the Fort Bend Junior Service League (FBJSL) and Memorial Hermann, the 16th Annual Market raised $310,000. The proceeds were presented to Fort Bend County charities on Dec. 9 at a Check Presentation Party held at Memorial Hermann Sugar Land.
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Johnson titlesponsor for Men Who Cook

Johnson Development is the title sponsor for the Lamar Educational Awards Foundation's largest annual fundraiser, Men Who Cook 2017, set for Feb. 18 at Safari Texas Ranch.

"We are so thankful to have Johnson Development as the presenting sponsor for 2017," said Chip Sutton, L.E.A.F. board president. "The district's growth and their growth will go hand-in-hand for years to come."

Johnson Development has three neighborhoods in Lamar Consolidated Independent School District: Cross Creek Ranch in Fulshear, Jordan Ranch in Katy and The Veranda in Richmond.

Proceeds from the evening will be used by L.E.A.F. to support ideas and classroom projects proposed by Lamar CISD teachers that would otherwise go unfunded.

L.E.A.F. also offers scholarships to graduating Lamar CISD seniors and paraprofessionals working on their teaching certificates.

Contact Janice Knight at www.leafgrants.org or 832-223-0334 for information.

Needville ISDcanvasses votes

Needville ISD trustees held a special Dec. 26 meeting to canvass votes from the Dec. 17 special election.

With a vote of 394-86, the Tax Ratification Election passed with more than 82 percent of voters supporting the TRE and less than 18 percent opposing it.

Superintendent Curtis Rhodes said the community's overwhelming support of the TRE reflects its continued support of the school district and its students and staff.

The TRE will allow the district to move .13 cents from the Interest and Sinking portion of the property tax rate and transfer it to the Maintenance and Operations portion. The total current tax rate of $1.54 per $100 valuation will remain unchanged, but the higher the M&O rate, the more money NISD will receive from the state.

In fact, said Rhodes, the TRE will result in an additional $2 million in state funding for NISD with no tax increase, and some of the funds will be used to address overcrowding at the middle and junior high schools.

"We appreciate the outstanding support for the Needville ISD school and community," he said.
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A 14-year-old student at South Houston High School says an older male classmate raped her in a restroom at the Pasadena ISD school.

"I couldn't stop what was happening," she told KHOU. "There's a lot that I'm feeling right now."

The alleged assault happened Dec. 16, the last day of school before winter. The victim says she's also endured months of bullying. The freshman student, whose identity is protected because of her status as a minor, said that that the assault lasted 10 minutes. After reporting the incident, she was taken to a hospital where a rape kit was performed.

COURT DOCUMENTS: Man forced relative into sex

Her mother says she complained to the school about the bullying, but that administrators did nothing to protect her daughter.

"I had an undying feeling, like a feeling in my gut that something bad was going to happen at this school," she told the station. "I would have thought that would have been priority, when you talk about the safety and well-being of a child and it wasn't taken seriously."

Since the alleged attack, the girl has been homeschooled. Her mother says they're attempting to relocate so that her daughter can attend another school.

IN MAGNOLIA: Pastor indicted on sexual assault charges

School officials have not yet said what the potential consequences are for the accused student in this incident.

The Director of Communication for the school district, Art Del Barrior, released this statement to KHOU:
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Community members will gather at The Woodlands United Methodist Church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Jan. 16, to honor the civil rights leader's legacy.

The 29th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration, hosted by Impact Church of The Woodlands, will feature performances by both adult and children's choirs, a display of the local children's poster submissions for the poster contest and a commemorative tribute to Dr. King by Rob Renfroe, pastor of discipleship for The Woodlands United Methodist Church.

The event has become a staple in the community over the past 29 years.

"It's had a very positive role in the community," said Myrna Irons, the chairperson for the event. "It's allowed the community to work together and share the dream  to honor Dr. King and all his ideals."

One of the highlights of the celebration is the awarding of the "Drum Major Award," which is given to honor a local individual or organization. The name of the award was taken from one of Dr. King's famous speeches, in which he described the human need for recognition as the Drum Major instinct.

"If you want to say that I was a Drum Major, say that I was a Drum Major for justice, say that I was a Drum Major for peace; I was a Drum Major for righteousness," King said.

"That award embodies a person or community organization that gives back, that is selfless, that shares the dream," Irons said.

The event also includes the awarding of scholarships to graduating seniors who competed in an essay contest.

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration will start at noon and is free and open to the public.

"We would like everyone to come out and join us to be together," Irons said. "To show the world, The Woodlands area, to show the Houston area, the Conroe area, that this community is positive (and) that we work together and that we share the dream. Not only (do) we share the dream, but we live the dream."
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The Houston ISD earned two Bs, one C and a D in the tentative, controversial letter grading system that the Texas Education Agency released this week for schools and districts.

The state's largest school system earned its highest grades for closing achievement gaps and in learning gains on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness. It earned its lowest mark for post-secondary readiness. The C was for student achievement on the STAAR,

EDU-EMIGRATION: Unable to get special education in Texas, one family moved to Pennsylvania

The grades, based on the 2015-2016 school year, are meant to show districts the marks they could potentially receive and are not official. Official letter grades will be released in fall 2018 unless local school and district leaders are successful in their continued efforts to lobby lawmakers to abandon this new A-through-F system.

Currently, the state only has two accountability rankings: "met standard," and "improvement required," and Commissioner of Education Mike Morath said those ratings issued in November are the official ratings of the 2015-2016 school year.

SCHOOL SAFETY: South Texas school district warns staff 'may be armed'

"The ratings in this report are for informational purposes to meet a legislative requirement and represent work-in-progress models that are likely to change before AF ratings become effective in August 2018," Morath said. "No inferences about official district or campus performance in the 201516 school year should be drawn from these ratings, and these ratings should not be considered predictors of future district or campus performance ratings."

TEA officials have not finalized the metrics that will be used to calculate letter grades in 2018, which will include five domains. The tentative letter grades released Friday are based on four categories, similar to those in the state's current accountability system.

Cypress-Fairbanks ISD earned an A for student progress, a B for student achievement and closing the performance gap and a C in post-secondary readiness.

UP AND COMING: Houston's top 100 high school football recruits

Fort Bend ISD scored an A in student progress, a B in student achievement, a C in closing the achievement gap and a D in post-secondary readiness.

Superintendents, school board members and other education leaders across the Houston area have decried the letter grades as unfair, simplistic representations of the work they do.

Similar letter grade-based accountability systems have failed in the 16 other states, said Kristin Tassin, president of the Fort Bend ISD board.

"A-F ratings systems create a false impression about an entire neighborhood of children and could potentially negatively impact students, undermining the work they put in each day and the growth they accomplish throughout the academic year," Tassin wrote in a letter to parents and students.

Spring ISD Superintendent Rodney Watson said his district likely will receive an average rating and that many schools could receive a grade of C or lower.

HOUSTON: Racist graffiti scrawled across Memorial High in Spring Branch ISD

"Like the current accountability system, the new system does not take into account poverty levels, language barriers and other factors that influence academic performance and challenge some of our students to a greater degree than students in affluent suburban neighborhoods," Watson said.

Superintendent Greg Smith, of Clear Creek ISD, said it will be difficult to explain to parents and the community that the grades are not necessarily what schools earned but rather a reflection of criteria crafted in Austin.

He said the current system - with two state designations - is all the state needs to keep tabs on low-performing schools.

"Accountability is accountability, but how you go about using ratings based on what we believe is a flawed assessment is perplexing to us," Smith said. "We would prefer multiple measures used to provide a balanced report card. That would make more sense, and we would welcome time to sit down with our legislators to craft another, more meaningful design."

PHYSICAL EDUCATION: Hundreds of Houston-area students hit by school staff each year, data show

Above is a PDF containing the letter grades for schools and districts across Texas. Once the TEA releases this data in an easier-to-process format, the Chronicle will create a database to make looking up individual schools and districts more easily.

Click through above to see the letter-grade ratings for Houston school districts.
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The love bonding former first lady Barbara and former President George H.W. Bush was evident even in the former's last moments.

The ailing former first lady, who died at her Houston home Tuesday, did so with her beau by her side.

A heartbroken, yet "stoic," George H.W. Bush held his wife's hand throughout her last day, a family spokesperson said, living out his commitment made more than 73 years ago to love and care for her until death did they part.

OBITUARY: Barbara Bush, former first lady, dead at age 92

Now Playing: Barbara Pierce Bush, the fiercely loyal, yet independently strong wife of one U.S. president and mother of another, died Tuesday surrounded by her family at her west Houston home. She was 92. Video: Julie Takahashi, Houston Chronicle

But George H.W. Bush is still determined to be the rock of the Bush family, his Chief of Staff Jean Becker said.

"It will not surprise all of you who know and love him that he also is being stoic and strong, and is being lifted up by his large and supportive family," Becker said. "He is determined to be for them as well."

The couple held the title for the longest presidential marriage in American history, beating out John and Abigail Adams' 54-year union in 2000.

Chron.com looks back at their romance.

The elder Bush couple married on Jan. 6, 1945, as World War II raged in the European and Pacific theaters. They tied the knot in Rye, New York, as Bush was recuperating from fighting in the Pacific. He was 20 and Barbara was 19.

They met when Bush was just 16 years old at a Christmas dance at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

"I married the first man I ever kissed," Barbara once told reporters. "When I tell my children that they just about throw up."

BARB FACTS: Things to know about former first lady Barbara Bush

They would later have six children, including future President George W. Bush, former Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Neil Bush.

The former first lady was also the fourth cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States.

In the past the couple had been caught on the "Kiss Cam" at a Texans game at NRG Stadium. They smooched to the delight of thousands, proving that even seven decades later they would still have fun with each other. They were even at the fifth game of the 2018 Astros World Series at Minute Maid Park, one of the biggest moments in Houston sports history.

The former first lady would have turned 93 on June 8 and the former president turns 94 years old just days later.

Tulsi Kamath contributed to this report.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com.
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By the end of September 2016, Houston already had counted 235 murders, putting the city on pace to reach 345 murders by Dec. 31  an unlucky 13 percent jump from the previous year.

That did not happen.

Last years murder tally will hold steady at 302 murders, according to preliminary Houston Police Department data. Thats one fewer murder than in 2015, though it still exceeds the five-year average by more than a quarter.

The citys new police chief, Art Acevedo, credits that to an overtime surge late in the year and the shifting of officers from desk jobs to beat patrols.

Mayor Turner saw that we were on track to go up seriously, and he authorized $2 million in overtime, Acevedo told the Houston Chronicle on Friday. We used a big chunk of that to put additional resources in the hot spots.

The department also moved 175 officers from administrative to patrol duties, the mayor said in a news release Wednesday. The police chief said the additional officers on the street helped deter and interrupt crimes of opportunity.

When you increase the presence, activity and visibility, those bad outcomes decrease, Acevedo said. But, he warned, The gains can be lost.

The new chief, who came to Houston after nearly a decade as Austins police chief, said the overall crime statistics are not alarming, given the citys enormous population, growth and geographical size.

Acevedo added that, to prevent murders in 2017, he plans to more intensively investigate felonies short of murder while freeing up resources by de-emphasizing minor drug crimes.

When people are shooting people, we need to treat that as if it were a murder, because the person that commits an aggravated assault today is the same person thats going to commit a murder.

He also plans to move forward on a cite-and-release program for low-level drug offenses in partnership with Harris Countys newly installed criminal justice leaders, District Attorney Kim Ogg and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

Were going to make sure that we leverage and focus on our resources on what matters most to Houstonians, and thats violent crimes, he said.

Houstons stable murder rate comes as some cities see a jump in violent crime. In a news release, Mayor Sylvester Turner pointed out that Chicago saw 762 murders in 2016, the highest tally in 19 years there.

It is always hard to determine the specific reasons murders and other crimes increase, Turner said. Some say it is something we really have no control over. That may be true, but there are early indications the overtime and increased focus have helped, and for that, I am pleased.

Mitchel Roth, a Sam Houston State University criminal justice professor who wrote a history of HPD, cautioned not to read too much into shifts from year to year or the relatively high tallies in 2015 and 2016.

You see the waxing and waning of statistics, he said. You cant sustain these drops in murder rates forever.

With that caveat, Roth also praised the overtime surge.

I would say that probably helped, he said. Its better than doing nothing, sitting on your hands like a lot of administrations have done.

The city's murder tally for 2015  which exceeded the counts in Los Angeles and Philadelphia showed a significant increase since the 2011 count of 198 murders, the lowest since 1965 and the lowest per capita murder rate ever recorded here.

Murders touched many parts of the city in 2016, as shown by this map of murders reported January through October, the most recently available data.

andrew.kragie@chron.com
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A school district in South Texas comes with a warning that'll make people look twice.

"Please be aware that the staff of Agua Dulce ISD may be armed and are willing to use whatever force is necessary to protect our students!"

NO MORE LICENSES?: Texas legislator files bill that would allow carrying firearms without a license

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports the school district implemented a new policy that allows teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons on campus. Superintendent Wayne Kelly told the newspaper that the policy is designed to deter people from plotting against the schools.

Under the school's policy, teachers and staff looking to conceal carry on school grounds have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and complete 80 hours of training by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

Commission spokeswoman Gretchen Grigsby did not disclose to the Caller-Times how many teachers and employees conceal carry in Agua Dulce ISD. Grigsby also did not disclose how many schools have contacted the commission to train school employees for concealed carry.

NEW YEAR'S DANGER: Texas lawmaker hit by celebratory fire wants to regulate joyshots

The Protection of Texas Children Act, passed in 2013, allows school districts to arm and train one school employee for every 400 students. The Guardian Plan and the Marshal Plan similarly give school districts the authority to allow employees to carry a firearm on school property.

The superintendent told the Caller-Times that the school district can't afford to hire a campus security officer, which would cost $40,000 to $50,000 annually. He also added "response to an emergency by local law enforcement can be spotty."

Kelly said arming staff is the most cost-effective method to improve student safety and "the most effective research-based way of protecting students in an active shooter scenario."
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If you're looking for one of the best cities for beer drinking in America and don't want to leave the Lone Star state, you can head to Austin.

The financial website Smart Asset ranked the top 25 cities for beer drinker,s based on the number of microbreweries per city, the number of microbreweries per 100,000 residents and the number of bars per 100,000 residents.

DREAM JOB: 'Zero-experience' required for job that pays for drinking beer



Also factoring into the scoring are Yelp reviews of breweries and the average price of a pint in each city.

According to Smart Asset, Austin has 31 total microbreweries, which equates to 3.3 microbreweries per 100,000 residents. Austin's other rankings include 23.8 bars per 100,000 residents, 4.14 average Yelp score for breweries and a $4 average for a pint.

Smart Asset did not rank any other Texas cities on the list.



COFFEE AND BEER: Shiner releases new beer made with cold brew coffee

Smart Asset ranked Asheville, North Carolina as the top city for beer drinkers. "Asheville has the most microbreweries per 100,000 residents of any city in the U.S. at 27.12 and is host to multiple annual beer festivals," Smart Asset wrote. "Despite being a relatively small city with only 88,000 residents, beer is so loved here that the population manages to support 24 microbreweries."

By comparison, the Texas Beer Craft Brewers Guild lists 15 different breweries that are operating in Houston.

Other top cities for beer drinkers on the list are Portland, Maine; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, Ohio and Portland, Oregon.

MORE BEER: Brewery Tap reopened at eerie, historic downtown site



According to the survey, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio each have two cities that made the list.

New Orleans has the cheapest pint of beer at $2.50 each. New Orleans, number 21 on the list, 56.6 bars per 100,000 residents, the most in that category on the list. Portland, Oregon has the most microbreweries overall at 72.


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It's one way to be remembered.

A former politician in Taiwan had 50 pole dancing women on 50 different Jeeps as part of his funeral procession when he died at the age of 76 in December. Tung Hsiang's funeral procession lasted two hours, Mashable reports.

PREPARATION: South Korean 'mock' funerals seek to ease life's stresses





Hsiang's son decided to have the Jeeps and dancers because his father "enjoyed a buzz," according to Mashable. Hsiang's brother Tung Maohsiung told a Taiwanese news channel that the former politician "told us he wanted this through a dream two days before the funeral."



While having pole dancers at funerals is generally not a feature of Western ceremonies, it has become something of a trend in China. Having dancers at funerals in China has become frequent enough for the government to request people stop hiring funeral strippers.

Government officials in Taiwan, on the other hand, seem to have less apprehension toward dancers at funerals.
WASHINGTON  Texas U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, a Vietnam War fighter pilot and POW, announced Friday that he will not seek re-election and will retire from Congress after next year.

Johnson, 86, has served in his Plano-based district for 26 years, rising to a senior position on the influential Ways and Means Committee.

Johnson, a Republican, made the announcement in a letter released by his campaign.

"After much prayer," he wrote, "I have decided I will not seek re-election to serve the Third District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. This will be my final term in the appropriately named 'People's House.'"

He won re-election to his 14th House term on Nov. 8 with more than 61 percent of the vote.

As a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, Johnson was shot down in 1966 and spent seven years as a POW in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," which also held current Arizona Sen. John McCain. Johnson spent years in solitary confinement, and was subjected to torture.

Johnson also flew missions in Korea, and was an instructor at the Air Force's "Top Gun" Fighter Weapons School. After establishing a home building business in Plano, he served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1984 to 1991, when he became a member of Congress.

House Speaker Paul Ryan called him a "hero:"

"Sam's retirement from this House is sad news," he said, "but we can take heart today in all this manthe greatest living man I knowhas done and given to our country. I will cherish working alongside him for the next two years."
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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New York governor Andrew Cuomo this week took another giant step on his march to the left. With Vermont senator Bernie Sanders standing by his side, Cuomo proposed a program of free tuition for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers attending schools in the state and city university systemincluding two-year community colleges. The plan, put forward at Queenss LaGuardia Community College on Tuesday, would provide benefits to students from families earning $125,000 or less annually, at an estimated annual cost to taxpayers of $163 million.

The price tag seems modest, given the governors claim that 940,000 New York families would be eligible for free tuition. Albany already subsidizes college students to the tune of some $1 billion annually. But low-balling cost estimates for popular social initiatives is what politicians do, and none does it more flagrantly than a New York pol. The Empire States perennially budget-busting Medicaid program was marketed 50 years ago as a means to save money. It went on to help gut the upstate economy.

As proposed, Cuomos tuition program will be limited to U.S. citizens enrolled full-time at SUNY and CUNY institutions. Its not clear yet whether enrollment in the university systems elaborate remedial-education programs will be covered. This inevitably will become an issue as graduates of so many of New Yorks abysmally performing urban high schools come to discover just how little their diplomas are really worth. What the governor and his socialist partner announced Tuesday is something of a bait-and-switchor, rather, to shift metaphors, an elaborate effort to slap a coat of paint on a hopelessly corroded public-education system and pronounce it worthy.

All other things being equal, an aggressive tuition-assistance program for working-class families could pay solid dividends. New Yorks economy is so sophisticated these days that its absurd to believe that a high school education alone is sufficient preparation for a productive life, even if the diploma comes from a reasonably functioning high school. New York City claims that Gothams high school graduation rate is approaching 70 percent. But thats an ephemeral figure, given the ease with which GED and other alternative programs can camouflage true graduation numbers.

By and large, New York City high schools arent producing college-ready graduates. Using City University remediation standards as benchmarks, StudentsFirstNY, a school-choice activist group, last summer published a study showing that just 34 of New York Citys 428 high schools prepare 75 percent or more of their students to do college-level work. Moreover, fully one-half of the graduates of another 340 schools were unprepared for higher education. Factor in that 30 percent nominal dropout rate and it all adds up to a profoundly depressing return on the citys $24 billion annual education budget. Free college tuition wont mean much to kids who cant do college work, or who never graduate from high school in the first place.

So the governor essentially is proposing a program to provide high-profile assistance to the relatively few big-city students who can benefit from it, while masking the overall failure of urban public education in New York. Cuomo presented himself as an education governor early onConsider me the lobbyist for the students, he declared in 2012and to some degree he delivered. New Yorks charter-school movement is a national model, thanks largely to Cuomo. And he made a sincere effort to impose meaningful testing and teacher-evaluation standards on the states education bureaucracy.

Timeand teacher-union politicswore him down. New York City, with Cuomos implied imprimatur, has just abandoned meaningful teacher evaluations. The coming legislative session may effectively mark the end of the states charter-school experiment. The erstwhile students lobbyist, it appears, has gone to work for the other side.

Cuomos tuition proposal is essentially a cash trickle-down benefiting survivors of the system. It seems meant to mask his surrender on core reforms. Certainly the public-education unions will be pleased by the governors new direction, which is in tune with his abandonment of centrist positions generally.

The shift doubtless was motivated in part by the endless corruption scandals that have stained Albany generally, and Cuomo in particular. The governor was also badly battered from the left during his reelection run two years ago, and he has come under increasing progressive pressure as he considers a third term. Novembers election returns may well have opened opportunities for him on the national level.

Whatever his reasons, Cuomos leftward tack is real. The governor who once touted tax restraint and economic reform has morphed into the architect of minimum-wage hikes, crippling new burdens for business, union alliances, andover the New Years holidayeven a prison-sentence commutation for a notorious cop-killer. Count on the new-look Cuomo sticking around through his 2018 reelection campaign. Beyond that is anybodys guess, but the governor clearly is keeping his options open.

Photo by governorandrewcuomo/Flickr
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans to join forces with hundreds of other mayors around the country in an effort called Cities for Action. This group, according to de Blasio, will provide a counterweight to the policies of the incoming Trump administration: If you combine the power of Americas cities, that could really be a game changer in terms of moderating that agenda.

Progressive calls to resist Trump have increased since the election. Liberals who had long dedicated their political souls to the principle of centralized government have lately discovered what they call progressive federalism. Appeals on social media for massive resistance to Trump are direct, though probably unintentional, echoes of Senator Harry Byrds 1958 vow to shut down Virginias public schools rather than integrate them.

To de Blasios credit, he has been a realist about Trumps victory, and appeared ready to accept the election results immediately. When asked in November why he didnt demand that the president-elect move his transition headquarters out of midtown Manhattan, de Blasio responded succinctly, I dont think you understand how this works. Unlike some of his fellow New York City progressives, the mayor hasnt fallen into the rabbit hole of fervid speculation about Russian electoral intervention.

But de Blasio continues to overstate the extent to which heas a municipal officeris endowed with powers that can check federal authority. On November 10, de Blasio told the press, were part of a nation that was founded on a federalist approach, where a lot of power devolves to the state level and then down to the local level. A few days later, appearing on a popular hip-hop radio station, he repeated, look, the constitutional system has got its strengths and weaknesses, but it really gives a lot of power to states and localities. Two weeks later, following his first post-election meeting with Trump, de Blasio stated, I think the most important point here is the United States Constitution makes clear that local governments make most of the decisions for their own people. And on December 29, the mayor said, The Constitution is the issue here. The Constitution makes very clear that tremendous amount of power is held in local hands and that can be the state level, that can be the municipal level. . . . That, to me, makes abundantly clear that there are severe limits on what the federal government can compel localities to do.

De Blasio is repeating a junior-high level understanding of how federalism works, with power divided between the federal, state, and local levels of government. But while the Constitution has a lot to say about the power of the states, it says absolutely nothing about cities, or any other form of locality. The Constitution requires each state to offer a republican form of government to its citizens, but a series of early twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions clearly established the principle that cities are entirely creations of their states. The Contracts Clause, the Due Process Clause, and even the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment do not apply to municipalities or local authorities. The court summed up its perspective in a key 1933 ruling: A municipal corporation, created by a state for the better ordering of government, has no privileges or immunities under the Federal Constitution which it may invoke in opposition to the will of its creator.

In theory, the federal government is constrained constitutionally in its authority over the states. But if the experience of the massive postwar expansion of federal power has taught states anything, its that they fight Washington at their own risk. The federal governments power to disburse money and to punish states (or obstreperous localities) with the denial of federal funds largely overrides the finer points of federalist jurisprudence.

New York is extremely vulnerable in this area. James Parrott, of the liberal Fiscal Policy Institute, glumly acknowledges that the city and state together take in about $57 billion from the federal government annually, which poses gargantuan challenges for New York state and city budgets. This aggregate sum covers Medicaid and public housing assistance, as well as capital funding for the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Health + Hospitals Corporation. Even a small reduction in the flow of federal dollars would make it hard for an executive as allergic to social spending cuts as de Blasio to resist political pressure from Washington.

The nations mayors can form caucuses of resistance or platforms of maximum simultaneous activity as much as they want. Like it or not, however, de Blasio and his colleagues will have to swallow a healthy portion of whatever medicine the incoming administration is preparing for them.

Photo by Kevin Hagen/Getty Images
Im not going to rat a source out. Thats what political blogger Will Folks, who runs FITSnews.com in South Carolina, told CJR this week on the eve of his latest deposition in a libel lawsuit brought by a former state lawmaker.

It was a bold statementespecially because a state judge ordered Folks in October to reveal, if asked to do so in a deposition, the identities of unnamed sources he cited in blog posts about the ex-lawmaker, Kenny Bingham, who is suing him for defamation.

Folks defied the judges order and refused to cough up the names during a deposition today.

So, what happens now?

We will move to hold him in contempt and the court will take whatever action it thinks is appropriate, says Binghams attorney John E. Parker in an interview. Asked if that could mean potential jail time for Folks, Parker says yes.

The former lawmaker is suing Folks after multiple posts appeared online at FITSnews.com stating Bingham was the subject of an ethics complaint and, in one story, stating how insiders at the Statehouse once believed an indictment against Binghman would be issued. The ex-lawmaker wants to know the identities of unnamed sources in multiple posts, though there was one on-the-record source. In Binghams complaint he said the allegation is false. He has not been indicted.

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Folks maintains his unnamed sources are irrelevant to the lawsuit. Binghams attorney disagrees.

An attorney for Folks, Tom Davis, who is a current state senator, says Folks should not have to divulge those sources in a civil deposition because confidential sources are to journalists what trade secrets are to companies. And, he argues, Folks has a First Amendment right to protect his sources. He has also asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in and sort it out, which would be unusual.

One should not be able to uncover a reporters confidential sources by the simple expedient of filing a civil action and then making a relevant discovery request, Davis wrote in his motion to the High Court.

Bingham declined to comment for this story, saying he would let Parker, his attorney, speak on his behalf. Parker says the lower court has already ruled Folks is required to answer the questions, and the law doesnt protect him. He says he doubts the Supreme Court will get involved.

The latest drama in this case has imposed an uneasy feeling across South Carolinas journalistic landscape, which hasnt exactly embraced Folks. Folks is a smash-mouth libertarian proprietor of an irreverent political blog who breaks news, regularly blisters local politicians, and sometimes slams reporters. He often relies on unnamed sources. Sometimes Folks calls himself a journalist, sometimes he claims he is not.

What I call myself is irrelevant. What I do is the ultimate standard, he says in an email. I break news and offer my insights on it.  Whatever I call myself, there is a voluminous body of work attesting to the news-gathering function I provide to the people of this state.

Adding to the heightening stakes is the request by Folks attorney for the state Supreme Court to intervene. The states highest court can choose whether to hear the case. Doing so would be an unusual move.

That, coupled with the prospect of a blogger being held in contempt for not coughing up a source, has put the states journalistic community in a tricky place: Weigh in or stay out of it?

Beyond brief blurbs when the lawsuit was first filed last year, the case hasnt received much coverage in state media. Bill Rogers, director of the South Carolina Press Association, declined to comment about the case to CJR through the groups attorney, Taylor Smith.

Asked this week whether he would characterize the situation as a press freedom issue for the Palmetto State, Smith said, Thats an interesting question right now.

South Carolina has a reporters shield law, but it does not apply when a reporter is sued civilly. However, Smith says he would like to see the Supreme Court hear the case, despite his personal opinion that Folks is not a journalist.

If Mr. Folks prevails in this litigation, what it may open the door up to is opportunities for journalists in the future to assert such a privilege under the First Amendment when theyre being sued for defamation and want to keep their confidential sources safe, Smith says.

Mainstream reporters in the state, those who are aware of the case anyway, are paying close attention.

Like others, I am interested to see where it goes, says Meg Kinnard, an Associated Press reporter based in the states capital. I know that there is frequently a conversation about what role bloggers play in journalism. Should they be considered reporters? Should they have the same rights or privileges as other reporters?

Doug Pardue, a watchdog and public service reporter for The Charleston Post & Courier, said he wouldnt say Folks is not a journalist.

The question is what kind of journalist he is, Pardue says. I would say he borders on being a gossip columnist, and he suffers from the same problems that gossip columnists suffer from, and that is that he uses unnamed sources.

Indeed, the bloggers use of unnamed sources is now at the heart of this current legal battle. How it shakes out is of concern for Doug Fisher, who teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and was news editor in the state for the AP from 1992 to 2001. He worries about a potentially bad precedent that could have a long-term adverse affect for journalists.

The case scares me, he told me in a phone interview Wednesday as he gamed out the potential outcomes. One is that the Supreme Court declines to hear the case. Another is that the court hears it and rules in the bloggers favor. Or the court hears it and rules against him. That makes it one in three that you get a ruling thats in your favor. I dont like those odds.

Image by: wp paarz, via Flickr

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Corey Hutchins is CJRs correspondent based in Colorado, where he teaches journalism at Colorado College. A former alt-weekly reporter in South Carolina, he was twice named journalist of the year in the weekly division by the SC Press Association. Hutchins writes about politics and media for the Colorado Independent and worked on the State Integrity Investigation at the Center for Public Integrity; he has contributed to Slate, The Nation, the Washington Post, and others. Follow him on Twitter @coreyhutchins or email him at coreyhutchins@gmail.com.
Massachusetts Police Sergeant Gets Jail Term in Insurance Fraud Scheme

Massachusetts police sergeant has been sentenced to serve half a year in a county jail after he was convicted of lying about an on-duty accident and accepting insurance money for a bogus injury.

A jury convicted Hingham Sgt. Kris Phillips on Thursday of filing false insurance claims and misleading a police investigation.

Authorities say the 20-year police veteran made false insurance claims after he said he was injured on duty in July 2015. Phillips said he was struck and injured by a car as a shopper backed out of a parking space.

An internal police review determined the story was false.

Phillips must also pay nearly $2,000 in restitution. He can no longer serve as a law enforcement officer.

Chief Glenn Olsson declined immediate comment.

Arizona Glass Company Owner Arrested for False Insurance Claims and Identity Theft

On November 30, 2016, the Arizona Department of Insurance Fraud Division arrested

Gilbert Martinez, owner of Gilligans Auto Glass, on allegations of fraud schemes, insurance fraud, aggravated identity theft and theft.

The allegations involve Martinezs unauthorized use of several insureds personal information, details of their auto insurance company and vehicle information, all taken

from another glass companys business where Martinez formerly worked.

Gilbert Martinez is alleged to have started Gilligans Auto Glass in June 2016 and then

allegedly reported false windshield-replacement claims to an insurance company posing

as the insureds. So far, the investigation involves 33 known victims whose identities were used without their knowledge to make false claims. The insurance company paid out over $19,000 on the alleged false claims.

The investigation is continuing with the hopes of locating other victims and insurance companies involved. The investigation will be submitted to the Arizona Attorney Generals Office for prosecution.

North Carolina Man Accused of Insurance Fraud

Joseph Raymond Johnson was arrested and charged with one count of insurance fraud, according to an announcement by North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin.

Department of Insurance criminal investigators accuse Johnson of fraudulently reporting that his vehicle was stolen before it was involved in an automobile accident to the Wilmington Police and to Sentry Insurance. Investigators allege Johnson knowingly granted permission to Rashawn Herbert Hines to operate the vehicle.

Johnson was arrested on Dec. 9 in New Hanover County and placed under a $5,000 bond.

California Man Sentenced to Prison for Felony Auto Insurance Fraud

Juda Qadir pled no contest to felony automobile insurance fraud this week. He was sentenced to two years state prison and ordered to pay $6,335 in restitution to Foremost Insurance, a subsidiary of Farmers Insurance.

In 2011, Qadir purchased a Harley Davidson motorcycle and completely remodeled it, including having customized murals painted on it and constructing the seat out of alligator skins. In July 2015, Qadir obtained a suspicious appraisal of $47,000 for his Harley. He then obtained full coverage insurance at Foremost, which obtained a reputable appraisal valuing the Harley at no more than $32,000. In October 2015, Qadir reported the Harley stolen to the Galt Police Department. Qadir claimed he was riding the Harley and ran out of gas. Qadir stated he called a cousin who took him to get a can of gas and when they returned the Harley was gone.

The next day, Qadir reported the theft to Foremost. Foremost became suspicious and investigated the claim. Foremost denied the claim because Qadir lied during an Examination under Oath and failed to provide requested documents.

In 2016, authorities received information that parts from the allegedly stolen Harley were at Qadirs home. A search warrant was served at Qadirs residence, where officers located all of the customized painted parts as well as the alligator seat from the allegedly stolen Harley.
Brentwood Services Administrators Inc. Hires Vinson as Senior Claims Rep in Raleigh, N.C. Office

Brentwood Services Administrators Inc., a company that specializes in structuring and managing alternative market solutions for employers and insurance providers, recently selected Theresa Vinson as a new senior claim representative in the Raleigh, N.C., office, according to Jeff Pettus, president and chief executive officer of BSA.

In her position as senior claim representative, Vinson is responsible for reviewing, processing and handling medical workers compensation claims as assigned by Shirley Girard, senior claims supervisor in the BSA Raleigh, N.C., office. Vinson determines the compensability of the claim and extent of liability. She also communicates directly with clients, employers, injured workers, physicians and attorneys, and manages claims in a timely and economic manner.

Prior to joining BSA, Vinson worked for CorVell Corporate in Raleigh, as a claim specialist. She holds an associate in claims (AIC) designation.

North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Godfread Appoints Ubben and Ost on First Day in Office

Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread appointed Jeff Ubben as deputy insurance commissioner and Marcy Ost as executive assistant as part of his first official day in office. Ubben and Ost were both previously serving in the Insurance Department and bring a wealth of knowledge to their positions.

Ubben has served as general counsel for the Insurance Department for the past four years and will continue in that role in addition to his duties as deputy until a replacement is hired. He is a North Dakota native and earned his law degree from the University of North Dakota in 2006. Prior to becoming general counsel at the Insurance Department he served as an Assistant States Attorney for Burleigh County for several years where he successfully prosecuted multiple large insurance fraud cases.

Ost has served the Insurance Department as executive assistant including fulfilling public information duties since 2014. A native of Dickinson, she graduated from Dickinson State University and prior to joining the Insurance Department, Ost worked in the North Dakota Legislative Council.

Godfread comes to the Department from the Greater North Dakota Chamber, where he served as vice president of government affairs representing statewide business interests to the legislature, executive branch officials and to companies looking to operate in North Dakota.

Novarica adds Raymond, Eberly to Insurance Team

Novarica, a research and advisory firm focused on insurance technology strategy, announced that Keith Raymond and Christopher Eberly have joined the firm, both as a vice presidents of research and consulting.

Prior to joining Novarica, Raymond served as CIO/COO of Futurity First Insurance Group a distributor of annuity, life, LTC and other products for a large portfolio of carriers. His previous roles include AVP of Distribution Systems and Field technology for Mass Mutual, and CIO of Trumbull Services, an application service provider and business process outsourcer for personal and commercial lines which is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Hartford Insurance Group. He has also served as a principal consultant at HCL Technologies with focus on the Life and Annuity business in North America.

Prior to Novarica, Eberly was SVP of Insurance Solutions IT at Voya. In this position he was responsible for all IT services supporting the Retail Life and Employee Benefits business lines. He was responsible for designing, planning, and building technology innovations that enable Voya to deliver new products and reach new markets in these business segments. Prior to leading the Insurance IT organization, he held various leadership roles in Insurance IT, Shared Services, and Distributor Services. In each of these roles he implemented innovative technology, improved processes, created highly performing scalable platforms, and organized teams to better support the associated business teams.
Tomorrows retail stores want to take a page from their online rivals by embracing advanced technology  everything from helpful robots to interactive mirrors to shelves embedded with sensors.

The goal: Use these real-world store features to lure shoppers back from the internet, and maybe even nudge them to spend more in the process.

Amazons new experimental grocery store in Seattle, opening in early 2017, will let shoppers buy goods without needing to stop at a checkout line. Sensors track items as shoppers put them into baskets or return them to the shelf. The shoppers Amazon account gets automatically charged.

Amazon, for good or bad, has been setting the path, said Robert Hetu, research director at Gartner Research. Each retailer is going to have to respond in some way. But its not one-size-fits-all.

Kroger, Neiman Marcus and Lowes are among the companies already experimenting with futuristic retail stores. Robots, for instance, could help guide shoppers to the right aisle, while augmented reality apps could help you see how a particular shade of paint will look in the living room  or how you might look in a pair of jeans. Many of these technologies will be unveiled or demonstrated at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas, which begins Tuesday with media previews.

Plenty of retailers have learned through trial  and error  that technology cant get too far ahead of shoppers. It has to be easy to use and beneficial to shoppers in some way, whether its to save time or money. If retailers get it right, they might succeed in boosting spending at retail stores at a time when consumers increasingly prefer to shop online.

Here are five technologies coming to a store near you.

SMART SHELVES

Web retailers have plenty of data on their customers. Some of these online technologies can even track shoppers from site to site to lure them back with whats known as retargeting ads  promos targeted to what that shopper has looked at before, but didnt actually buy. Smart shelves with sensors promise the same kind of in-depth consumer behavior analytics at retail stores.

At a Kroger store in Cold Spring, Ohio, shelves currently show digitized price tags and information about the products. The next step is to tie that to individual shoppers. For example, for a shopper who prefers gluten-free products, the price tags could light up in the aisle where all the gluten-free options are. The company says this will all be done with the customers permission.

Perch Interactive, a startup that is working with chains like Sunglass Hut and fragrance maker Jo Malone, uses laser and motion sensors to detect when a product is picked up. Perch monitors the interactions and lets retailers know what people pick up but dont buy. It also offers recommendations: When a shopper picks up a Jo Malone product, an interactive display pops up to show a complementary fragrance.

ROBOTS

Amazon and other retailers have long used robots in warehouses to help package and ship orders. But what about interacting with shoppers?

Home improvement retailer Lowes is testing robots in one of its San Jose, California, store, and plans to roll them out to 10 more stores in the state this year. Besides scanning shelves for inventory, the robots can guide customers to specific products in both English and Spanish.

Shoppers will also start seeing robots that interact with them more deeply. Japanese joint venture SoftBank Robotics is testing a 4-foot humanoid robot called Pepper at two Westfield Malls in California. They greet shoppers and can do a little dance, but have the potential to send messages geared to peoples age and gender through facial recognition. SoftBank Robotics says its working with clothing retailers to help suggest outfits to shoppers.

INTERACTIVE MIRRORS

High-end clothing stores are testing interactive mirrors in dressing areas, a key place where shoppers decide whether to buy or not.

Neiman Marcus has installed these outside fitting rooms at 20 stores to offer shoppers a 360-degree view of what an outfit looks like. Shoppers can make side-by-side comparisons without having to try them all on. They can also share video with friends for feedback. Variations include capturing a customers session at the beauty counter and emailing a video to help the person recreate the look at home.

Rent the Runway, an online retailer that lets people rent high-end clothing, teamed up with Samsung to have digital displays highlight its online inventory for shoppers at a new location in New York. A mirror in the store is planned to recommend items that go with what the customer is wearing.

VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY

Home improvement retailers have been embracing virtual reality and augmented reality to help shoppers figure out ways to decorate homes or apartments. With such technologies, shoppers wear a headset to picture how something might look in 3-D, in some cases overlaid on top of their real kitchen or living room. Home Depots augmented reality app lets customers upload a picture of the room on their phone and thumb through thousands of paint and stain colors until they arrive at one thats right.

These tools should become more pervasive. At CES, a major clothing chain is expected to announce a tool for shoppers to virtually try on jeans and other items.

SELF-CHECKOUT

Stores have been pushing self-service kiosks for years to lower labor costs and speed up checkout lines.

It hasnt always been smooth, though. Two years ago, Wal-Mart offered a Scan & Go app for shoppers to scan items as they grabbed them from the shelves. At the checkout counter, the customer merely had to scan a code to complete the transaction. But Wal-Mart scrapped the project after customers found the app difficult to use.

Despite Wal-Marts hiccups, plenty of stores believe they can avoid the pitfalls.

Andy Wong, partner at Accentures Kurt Salmon Digital, said Wal-Mart had a tougher time because its customers are diverse and less techy overall. By contrast, Amazon is trying out its store in Seattle, a tech center, and has a customer base already comfortable with digital shopping. Wong also said Amazon is smart to focus just on groceries, and he expects other retailers to follow Amazons lead and also focus on certain products.

In fact, shortly after Amazon announced its checkout-less store, Panasonic Corp. unveiled an unstaffed bagging system at a Lawson convenience store in Japan. Shoppers place a smart basket with their items on a machine at checkout. The system calculates the bill and automatically bags the items. Shoppers now have to scan items they put into the basket, though wireless tags coming in February will eliminate that step. Shoppers still have to manually pay using cash or card.

As retailers consider automated self-checkout and other technologies, they have to look beyond the tech wizardry.

It all has to go back to the consumer, Gartners Hetu said. For each environment, you have to assess what the consumer will interpret as value.

(AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Officials plan to improve a volcanic mudflow warning system for Mount Rainier in Washington.

Scientists say the upgrades could detect trouble sooner and give southeastern Puget Sound residents more time to evacuate.

Projections show up to 500 million cubic meters of debris could break loose during a volcanic event, Scott Heinze of Pierce Countys emergency management department tells the Seattle Times in a story on Monday.

Officials say a significant mudflow 5,600 years ago filled the valleys of the White River up to 300 feet with sediment in the area that now includes the cities of Sumner, Enumclaw and Auburn.

Officials say they want to increase the number of places with detection technology as well as install a volcanic-monitoring network that could provide weeks or months of advance warning of a lahar, or a mudflow that occurs on the slopes of a volcano.

That for us is the end-all, be-all, Heinze said. The technology thats going into the ground can be utilized in a more predictive way. We just need to have more of it on the ground in the right places.

Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy asked for a review of the current system that had sensors installed in the 1990s. The review helped Heinzes department and the U.S. Geological Survey determine where to plan improvements. Now theyre working to replace outdated analog equipment with digital devices.

Its the difference between having a flip phone and a smartphone, Heinze said. We can make phone calls, but wed like to be able to do more.

The current system has sensors in the Carbon and Puyallup river valleys connected to the state emergency-operations center at Camp Murray. If a mudflow is detected, a warning system can be activated.

Officials plan to ask the Legislature for money to double the number of sirens, costing nearly $2 million, Heinze said.

Were putting the most state-of-the-art equipment in the ground that will tell us a lahar is happening, and were trying to get additional sirens, Heinze said. But they also need to know what to do when the sirens go off. They have to have a plan.
Bedford bar shooting suspects.jpg

John Word, 35, of Cleveland and Clairese Murray, 35, of Cleveland are charged in connection with a New Year's Day killing at a Bedford bar.

(Bedford police)

BEDFORD, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County grand jury will consider charges against two suspects arrested in connection with a New Year's Day killing at a Bedford bar.

John Word, 35, of Cleveland is accused of shooting Trevis Stephens early Sunday at Lounge 2.28 Bar & Grille on Northfield Road. Stephens, 33, died hours later at MetroHealth, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office said.

Clairese Murray, 35, of Cleveland is accused of acting as a getaway driver after the shooting.

Word and Murray waived their rights to preliminary hearings at their arraignments Friday in Bedford Municipal Court. Both appeared via video conference from the Bedford Police Department's jail.

The arraignments were postponed from Thursday to allow both time to meet with court-appointed attorneys.

Judge Brian J. Melling set Word's bond at $2 million and kept Murray's bond at $250,000.

Word's court-appointed defense attorney, John Thomas, declined comment after the hearing.

Word will not be released from custody even if he posts the $2 million bond. U.S. Marshals informed court officials that they would take Word into custody because his arrest violated the terms of his probation in a federal case, Melling said during the arraignment.

In 2007, Word was sentenced to nearly 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm, court records say. He received the sentence under the Armed Career Criminals Act, which allows sentence enhancements for people who possess guns and have three prior convictions for certain crimes.

Word filed a motion for relief after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that a residual clause in the ACCA was unconstitutionally vague. A federal judge granted Word's motion and subsequently sentenced him to time served plus three years' probation, court records show.

Word was released from prison April 8, 2016, according to Federal Bureau of Prison records.

Word's criminal history also includes previous convictions for aggravated assault, attempted felonious assault, attempted robbery and drug-related charges, according to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court records.

Detectives obtained a warrant for Word's arrest Wednesday, just hours after they took Murray into custody. Word turned himself in about 12:30 a.m. Thursday at the Bedford Police Department.

Investigators determined that a bouncer kicked the shooter out of the bar after an altercation. They do not believe Stephens was involved in the altercation that led up to the shooting, police said.

The shooter took a gun from his car and fired shots into the bar, police said.

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Operating a vehicle under the influence, North Rocky River Drive: A Berea man, 45, was arrested at about 1:15 a.m. Dec. 31 after he allegedly tried to ram his Chrysler Town & Country minivan into a police cruiser.

Police were responding to a domestic violence call involving the man when the collision occurred. The man had left his home after the domestic violence incident. The police cruiser was northbound on Nobottom Road near Rowan Drive when the southbound minivan went left of center and almost collided with the cruiser head-on.

Police radioed that the driver of the minivan had tried to hit the cruiser and was headed southbound toward Bagley Road. Another officer pulled over the minivan on North Rocky River near Grayton Road. The man was drunk.

Rescue squad assistance, Mulberry Street: A Lexington, South Carolina woman, 67, was taken to Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights at about 12:30 a.m. Jan. 1 after she stopped breathing while in a car on Mulberry near West Bagley Road.

The woman's husband, who was also in the car, flagged down police. Officers carried the woman from the car and performed CPR. Paramedics arrived one minute later and took over resuscitation efforts before taking the woman to Southwest.

Marijuana possession, Sheldon Road-Grayfriar Drive: A North Olmsted girl, 17, faces charges in juvenile court after police caught her with marijuana in her mother's GMC Envoy.

Police saw the Envoy heading westbound on Sheldon at about 10:20 p.m. Dec. 29. They checked the license-plate number and learned that the Envoy's owner, the girl's mother, was wanted in North Olmsted. Police stopped the vehicle after it turned right onto Grayfriar.

Police smelled marijuana inside the Envoy but the girl denied possessing the drug. However, officers searched the vehicle and found two plastic baggies of marijuana, a marijuana grinder, a container of used cigarillo roaches, a pipe with marijuana residue, marijuana shake and marijuana roaches inside.

The girl said she lied about having marijuana and related paraphernalia because she was scared. She said she was trying to quit the drug.

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Son passing baton to grandson RPM founder's early death forced Thomas Sullivan into top role {1-line drop goes here and here and here here here here here

RPM International Inc. announced three acquisitions this week -- as well as performance problems from Kirker Enterprises, a nail enamel and coatings company it bought four years ago, that hammered profits in its second quarter of fiscal 2017. Sales grew 3 percent during the quarter, but RPM ended the quarter with a net loss of $70.9 million.

(Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- RPM International Inc. announced three acquisitions this week -- as well as performance problems from Kirker Enterprises, a nail enamel and coatings company it bought four years ago, that hammered profits in its second quarter of fiscal 2017

For the quarter that ended Nov. 30, RPM's sales grew 3 percent to $1.19 billion, compared to $1.16 billion for the same period last year.

But the company ended the quarter with a net loss of $70.9 million. Profits were swallowed by a $129.2 million (or 97 cents per share) impairment charge related to its Kirker nail enamel business, as well as a $12.3 million charge (9 cents per share) from its decision to exit the Flowcrete polymer flooring business in the Middle East.

RPM Chairman and CEO Frank Sullivan told analysts that the company had bought Kirker in 2012 expecting it to generate about $100 million in revenues its first year, but that actual revenues were less than half that.

"The deterioration in that business really accelerated recently, and it was as a result of about a 15 percent to 20 percent decline in the overall market," he said.

Kirker tried to stem the losses by changing its customers and supply chain, but that didn't work, "so they lost further market share and some key customers." But Sullivan thinks the losses have pretty much bottomed out for the fiscal year, and that RPM's other consumer businesses "will make up for the shortfall of Kirker in the second half of the year."

In "our core consumer businesses of caulks and sealants, patch and repair products, small project paint, primers, the DAP and Zinsser and Rust-Oleum brands, we were up more than 6 percent on an organic basis in comparison to the recent results of our peers. We're real happy with that," Sullivan said.

RPM, a Medina County-based holding company whose subsidiaries manufacture and market high-performance coatings, sealants, building materials and specialty chemicals, saw its shares slip 4 percent to close at $52.60 on Thursday, down more than $2 a share from Wednesday's close of $54.84.

In other announcements, RPM said its recent acquisitions have combined annual net sales of $102 million, and are expected to contribute to profits within the year:

-- On Tuesday, RPM said it had bought the foam division of Clayton Corp., best known for its Touch 'N Foam consumer polyurethane foam, for an undisclosed amount.

Touch 'N Foam spray polyurethane foam for do-it-yourselfers, and Touch 'N Seal, its professional industrial sibling, are used to eliminate air leaks and drafts, seal gaps and cracks, and insulate homes and buildings against the elements. The products are sold primarily in North America.

Clayton's foam division, based in Fenton, Missouri, near St. Louis, has annual net sales of about $60 million.

-- On Wednesday, RPM announced it had acquired Prochem, a manufacturer of commercial floor-cleaning equipment and professional-grade cleaning chemicals (detergents, shampoos and deodorizers) for cleaning and restoring carpet, upholstery and hard floors.

Prochem, based in Chandler, Arizona, was acquired from the Karcher North America Co., and has annual net sales of about $22 million. Its products are sold primarily to professional cleaning contractors in North America.

-- RPM also bought 80 percent of Arnette Polymers LLC, a manufacturer of specialty resins, hardeners, curing agents and other intermediates used in epoxy and polyurethane materials.

Arnette, based in Richmond, Missouri, has annual net sales of nearly $20 million. It will become part of RPM's Performance Coatings Group and continue to be run by company founders Jim and Micky Arnette and the current management team.
L.A. firm to monitor settlement progress POLICE Cleveland to pay PARC up to $4.95M from A1

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson speaks as monitor Matthew Barge, right, stands behind him at a 2015 news conference.

(Plain Dealer file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The first year of work the city of Cleveland's efforts to reform its troubled police department was marked by outward expressions of good feelings and constructive collaboration.

City officials and the people working with them are quick to pat each other on the back in public for the hard work done to craft policies and listen to the public as it tries to forge a path to the future. Much was also made about the good behavior of officers when the city hosted the Republican National Convention in July.

But time and time again the city has been hamstrung by what it is required to do under a settlement it reached in May 2015 with the U.S. Justice Department over police use of force, according to Matthew Barge, the monitor overseeing what's known as a consent decree.

As a result, Barge said his 18-member team has given more help to Cleveland than others cities undergoing similar reforms have required. Major projects were pushed back, and the soon-to-be unveiled second-year plan is going to include deadlines originally slated to be completed in the first year, the monitor said.

"In some instances, what we have received from the city or the division up front has not been up to par," Barge said in an interview this week.

Greg White, the city's consent decree implementation coordinator, said in an emailed statement Thursday that the plan for the first year had deadlines that were difficult to meet for all parties, including the monitoring team. Nevertheless, he believes the city made "great progress" in 2016.

"The City negotiated the settlement agreement in good faith and is dedicated to implementing its terms," White said.

Tension between the city, monitor

Still, the problems Barge saw in the first year have caused tension with the city. For the first time, he is asking a federal judge to intervene in a dispute.

Barge wrote in a Dec. 19 court filing that he wants Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. to force the city to re-do an equipment study. The study is a requirement of the consent decree so the department can assess what it needs to police Cleveland citizens in a constitutional manner.

The monitor wrote that the study, which the city has now submitted twice, does not provide an adequate plan to modernize the department and is vague on deadlines and other needs. It also says the city has refused to hire an outside contractor to deal with massive upgrades to the police department's computer system, something Barge wrote the city sorely needs.

"For too long, the men and women of the Division have not received the equipment, resources, technology, and infrastructure support required to deliver the type and level of police services that the Cleveland community requires and values," Barge wrote in the filing.

The city disputes the monitor's criticisms, writing in a Dec. 28 filing that the document is designed to be "dynamic" and to change as the city, Justice Department and monitoring team have a better idea of the department's equipment needs.

Oliver will hold a status conference Friday and is expected to address the dispute, among other issues.

Deadlines pushed back

The impasse over the equipment study is far from the only issue the city faced in its first year. Deadlines for completing policies for police use of force, crisis intervention and investigating citizen complaints were repeatedly pushed back as the city, monitoring team and Justice Department continued their work.

Revising the manuals for the Office of Professional Standards and Police Review Board, which investigate citizen complaints against officers and impose discipline when necessary, were also major undertakings much larger than expected, Barge said. The city appeared to be working without enumerated policies for the past few years, as the only set of guidelines the monitor found was rife with generalities, according to court filings.

"We really needed to work very closely with OPS to provide a lot of technical assistance in order to get it to the level of specificity and quality that is necessary," Barge said.

White said in his statement that revising the citizen-complaint process "resulted from a cooperative effort between the City, the Department of Justice, and the monitoring team.

"No one entity was responsible for the final product," White's statement continues. "Rather, all contributed mightily to the effort."

Reasons for delay

To be sure, some deadlines were pushed back for other reasons than just needing help. Even though the city agreed to host the RNC nearly a year before signing the consent decree, the monitor and the city acknowledged that security preparations for the massive event warranted some of the delays.

While the city did not meet its deadline to train officers on the proposed use-of-force policies by the end of 2016, Barge still praised the city's work, saying the new policies were given to the judge for approval much quicker than in other parts of the country.

He also praised efforts on the forthcoming new policies that dictate how officers deal with residents in a mental health crisis, which were the subject of two public hearings held last month.

It is also common for court-mandated reforms of police departments to hit snags. Cleveland's consent decree says the reform process will take between five and seven years, meaning the agreement foresaw possible delays.

But other cities have been hamstrung due to willful defiance of court orders and instructions from monitors. And while there has been dissent from certain corners of the police department, that has largely not been a huge issue in Cleveland thus far. Instead, it's been subpar reports and drafts, according to the monitor.

"We ended up contributing a significant amount more technical assistance than we imagined going in, than might by typical of this process," Barge said.

Looking forward

And the delays continue to pile up, as one project often has bearing on the completion of another. In July, police Chief Calvin Williams went in front of a City Council committee to explain what he would do with the money generated with a then-proposed municipal tax increase. That proposal also served as a staffing plan required by the consent decree, so all areas of the city are adequately staffed with police officers, Williams said at the time.

But that plan cannot be properly evaluated without knowing the department's equipment needs, Barge said. Better equipment would result in less time filling out reports - which officers still do by hand, as many cruisers still do not have laptop computers -- and more time to patrol the streets.

"There's still a lot of moving parts but it would have at least eliminated or made clear what to expect," Barge said of the equipment plan and its relationship to the department's staffing needs.

White said in his statement that he looks forward to working with the monitor and Justice Department to set the city's goals for 2017. He noted that he expected disagreements as the police department undergoes reform.

"The City is confident that any such disagreements will be worked out; however, some may require the assistance of the Court," White said. "Having said that, the City believes that the relationships between the parties and the monitoring team are strong; and, in the end, the resulting level of cooperation will culminate in successfully meeting the requirements of the Consent Decree."

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio Sen. Rob Portman's office has been conducting interviews for his recommendation to President-elect Donald Trump for the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, and settled on a few finalists, according to sources familiar with the senator's search.

Attorneys Justin Herdman, Arturo Hernandez, John McCaffrey and David Sierleja have been interviewed by Portman's staff, according to those interviewed for this story. All four have experience as federal prosecutors.

The next U.S. attorney will succeed Carole Rendon, who is expected to leave the office following Trump's victory in the November election. Rendon, a Democrat, was confirmed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate in July after receiving the blessing from Portman and Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Traditionally, the senator or senators in the same party as the president make recommendations to the president, often in collaboration with the other senator, even if he or she is in the opposing party.

Portman is expected to make his recommendations, but Trump will make the ultimate decision on nominating the next U.S. attorney. The full Senate has to confirm any nominee.

Herdman and Sierleja referred questions Thursday to Portman's staff. McCaffrey declined to comment. Hernandez did not return a phone call.

Portman spokesman Emily Benavides said the process is confidential and did not provide any information. Other attorneys were interviewed, including several current assistant U.S. attorneys, though many were told they did not make the cut, according to those familiar with Portman's search.

Cleveland defense attorney Jim Jenkins confirmed he interviewed with Portman's staff. However, he is not believed to be a finalist for the position.

"We are going to make the U.S. Attorney's Office great again, whoever gets it," Jenkins said.

All four candidates have experience as federal prosecutors.

Herdman, 41, is a partner at the Jones Day law firm, which routinely represents Trump in legal matters. He was at the U.S. Attorney's Office between 2006 and 2013, and worked in the office's terrorism squad. He was also on a team that convicted a group of five activists who plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 Bridge spanning the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 2012.

Hernandez, 50, of Akron, is the director of Global Compliance for RPM International, a Medina-based manufacturer of specialty coatings, sealants and building materials. The company is headed by the Sullivan family, which is active in Republican politics. Hernandez also worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Hernandez also did a tour of Iraq while serving in the Marines, according to his LinkedIn page.

McCaffrey, 55, of Lakewood is a white collar criminal defense attorney for the Tucker Ellis law firm. He is a former FBI agent and also worked as a special assistant U.S. attorney.

McCaffrey has taken on several high-profile cases, including defending Jerrell Bray, a DEA informant who admitted to framing several people in Mansfield for drug deals they did not commit.

He is an acting judge in Lakewood Municipal Court.

Sierleja, 64, of Painesville, has been at the U.S. Attorney's Office for 26 years and currently serves as Rendon's first assistant. In 2006 and 2007, he worked as a prosecutor in Baghdad, working on a case against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and related cases.

He also served as a district attorney in a small Wisconsin county in the 1980s.

The Northern District of Ohio encompasses 40 counties in the northern part of the states, and includes Cleveland, Akron, Toledo and Youngstown.
AKRON, Ohio -- Armed robbers shot an Akron woman's dog in the presence of her newborn baby.

The woman and her baby were not hurt in the incident that happened shortly after noon in the 800 block of Davis Street, according to a police report.

The victim told police two men burst into her home through an unlocked side door with handguns, according to the police report.

Both of them threatened to kill her and then shot the dog. They continued to threaten the woman and pointed their handguns at her, the police report said.

The men ransacked the home and fled westbound on foot through the backyard and onto a home in the 700 block of Davis Street, according to the police report.

A minivan picked up the two home invaders and fled south on Clyde Street.

The dog was taken to a local hospital to be treated. Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said the dog is in stable condition.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section
EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio -- East Cleveland Councilwoman Barbara Thomas issued a statement Thursday contradicting the city law director's opinion that appointments to council made in a Dec. 29 meeting were illegal.

Thomas, who represents Ward 2, and Nathaniel Martin, at-large council member, chose Devin Branch and Kelvin Earby to for the Ward 3 and at-large seats left open when voters recalled council President Thomas Wheeler and Mayor Gary Norton. Ward 4 councilwoman Joie Graham left the meeting during executive session because she didn't agree with the interview process for new members.

Law director Willa Hemmons wrote a opinion that those appointments, and following meeting that election Martin council president and Thomas vice president, violated numerous areas of the city's charter, including lack of quorum.

Thomas said in an interview Thursday that she learned about the opinion after other people saw it on social media. She said Hemmons has still not given her a hard copy, which she said is required by the charter, or a digital copy, despite Hemmons' claim on Wednesday morning that she had emailed the document to council.

Thomas, in her statement, writes that she has consulted with an attorney regarding the opinion and Hemmons "confuses charter provisions which apply to organizational meetings of city Council following a regular election with the procedures council is required to follow to fill a vacancy on council."

Since the document was not served correctly and incorrectly interpreted the charter, Thomas wrote, she did not view it as official.

"I am disappointed because I had hoped that having a new mayor would give us an opportunity for a fresh start and that the administration and council would work together for the benefit of the citizens of East Cleveland," she wrote.

Thomas ended the statement with the hope that the conflict could be resolved peacefully.

Read the full statement and the law director's opinion below.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Nestled among the contemporary townhouses on Clinton Ave., near the burgeoning Hingetown area of Ohio City, there is a stately Italianate that has been painstakingly restored to its original glory.

The home, winner of a Preservation Award from the Cleveland Restoration Society in 2007, is now on the market for $820,000.

Originally built in the 1860s by Robert Sanderson, who had a stake in Globe Ironworks and the Globe Shipbuilding Company, the manor became a boarding house for laborers after his daughter's death in the 1932, according to the restoration society. The Cleveland Catholic Diocese then used it as a halfway house for troubled youth for nearly 30 years.

The home was vacant and in disrepair in the early 2000s when it was purchased by the current owners, who spent more than 18 months on the project.

Highlights include 12-foot ceilings, arched wide pocket doors, tall windows, exquisite crown molding, Brazilian cherry hardwood floors and three fireplaces, including one in the stunning formal blue dining room. Story has it, the hand-carved marble fireplace in the parlor was originally commissioned for a mansion owned by the Van Sweringen Brothers, who founded Shaker Heights and built the Terminal Tower.

The kitchen has all the modern conveniences, from the custom floor-to-ceiling Amish cabinets, granite countertops, breakfast bar island and adjoining family room that opens out to the patio.

Walk upstairs to the home's four bedrooms, a reading area and second laundry room. The master suite includes a walk-in closet and master bath with Tuscan-inspired circular shower, corner tub, Travertine stone tile and heated floors.

Outside, the secluded patio is ideal for entertaining. An attached garage has space for three cars.

For those worried about taking on a nearly 150-year-old house, the renovation included new plumbing, electrical, insulation and HVAC.

Address: 3101 Clinton Ave.

City: Cleveland

Price: $820,000

Square footage: 4,800 square feet

Year built: 1868

No. bedrooms: 4

No. bathrooms: 4 (full)

Lot size: 0.16 acres

School District: Cleveland Municipal

Other notable attributes: New windows, brick exterior, partial basement

Real estate agent and contact information: Patricia Patterson, RE/MAX Crossroads, (440) 925-1023, ppatterson@remax.net.
The Washington Post wrote that "The C.I.A. has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency". Is this the same C.I.A. with their previous assessment who brought us into a war with Iraq? Will we ever learn? We went to war then because of a bunch of lies. The Washington Post did not discuss any evidence at all for its claims.

The New York Times cites "anonymous officials" asserting that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee computer system. No accusations should be believed unless there is actual evidence to substantiate these accusations!

And why has Vladimir Putin remained silent rather than refute his accusers? He chooses not to dignify these lies with an answer. And apparently he figures the American people are too smart to believe these situations time after time after time. Little does he realize the power of our media.

James J. Adams,

Middleburg Heights
Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 11.35.56 AM.png

An ODNR boat heads out to Lake Erie to help in the recovery operation of a missing plane, Friday, January 6, 2017. A Cessna plane with six aboard took off from Burke Lakefront Airport and vanished last Thursday. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer)

(Marvin Fong/ The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Divers are scouring the bottom of Lake Erie inch-by-inch on Friday as they continue efforts to recover the plane that disappeared last week with six people onboard.

Note: The city announced about 11 a.m. Friday morning that divers have not found an intact fuselage and recovery efforts remain underway.

The dive team is using a special underwater locator from the National Transportation Board to zero in on the missing aircraft's cockpit recorder.



"The closer they get, the stronger the signal will be," the city announced Friday morning.



Visibility in the lake is only two to three inches, meaning divers must rely heavily on the locator's signal in their search. They will feel around the bottom of the lake by hand to assist in that process, the city says.



The city said the process will be "slow and deliberate." It may take several hours to comb over small areas.



The divers' mission comes after an announcement Thursday night that investigators narrowed the search area to a 125-foot-by-325-foot grid using the locator aboard a U.S. Geological Survey vessel.



Another vessel, from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, will be deployed Friday to follow the divers as they continue their search. Cleveland firefighters manning that vessel will use a sonar scanner to track the divers' progress and obtain images of the bottom of the lake.



Other vessels and crews are on standby if needed.



Meanwhile, a search of the shoreline has been hampered by snow, ice, and below-zero wind chills, the city says. Foot patrols, mounted units and volunteers have been forced to conduct a limited search due to the frigid conditions.



If weather permits, Cleveland police will use a helicopter to continue searching for debris by air.

The plane was carrying six passengers -- the family of an Ohio beverage executive and their two neighbors -- when it disappeared from radar about 11:30 p.m. Dec. 29. It was bound for Columbus after the group attended a Cleveland Cavaliers game that night.
power lines.JPG

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Now that Ohio's renewable energy standards have snapped back in place by virtue of Gov. John Kasich's veto of Substitute House Bill 554, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron will be required to boost the percentage of renewable energy it distributes to retail customers.

A freeze of the mandates in 2014 capped that percentage at 2.5 percent, but now FirstEnergy will be required to increase that amount, starting with another percentage point of renewable energy in 2017.

"We will continue to comply with the standards," said Doug Colafella, a spokesman for FirstEnergy.

Colafella said FirstEnergy, which distributes electricity in Northeast Ohio through The Illuminating Company and Ohio Edison, will likely buy renewable energy credits (RECs) and solar renewable credits (SRECs) in the fall to meet the mandate.

That's assuming the law hasn't changed again by then.

Leaders in both the Ohio house and senate said recently that they expect to take up the issue of renewable energy. It is likely to be part of a larger discussion about energy policy in general in Ohio.

FirstEnergy already buys some renewable energy, including electricity from the Blue Creek wind farm in northwest Ohio, but it also relies on RECs and SRECS to meet its current obligations, Colafella said.

The so-called RECs and SRECs do not represent actual purchases of electricity, but rather offset the cost of investments in renewable energy made by others.

Colafella said the utility is not obligated to buy its renewable energy or its credits from producers in the state.

American Electric Power, which is based in Columbus, is considering a different approach than FirstEnergy. AEP says that it plans to develop 900 megawatts of wind and solar energy in Ohio over the next five years and that it does not expect any problem meeting the renewable energy mandates.

The Ohio legislature imposed renewable energy mandates in 2008 that called for 12.5 percent of the electricity they distribute to be derived from renewable sources by 2025.

In 2014, a Republican-controlled legislature froze compliance with the phased-in mandates for two years. Last year, it wanted to extend the freeze, but Kasich vetoed the bill, citing the role renewable energy has played in creating jobs in the state.

Matt Englehart, spokesman for JobsOhio, the state's privatized economic development arm, said some companies, including Amazon Web Services, want access to reliable renewable energy. Amazon has contracted to buy wind energy from developers in the state.

With Kasich's veto, the legislation requires investor-owned utilities in Ohio to purchase 12.5 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2027. That could change, however, if the legislature and Kasich agree on new standards.

Colafella said FirstEnergy favored Sub. H.B. 554 for the changes it made to efficiency standards, but was neutral on the bill's continuation of the renewable standards freeze.
What you can expect when you go on Amtrak

Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited, which travels between Chicago and New York City, stops in Cleveland. Another Amtrak line from Chicago to New York City travels through southeastern Ohio, including Oxford, but only stops in Cincinnati.

(Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer)

OXFORD, Ohio - Seeking more out-of-state students, Miami University has pledged $350,000 to attract an Amtrak train stop.

The university this week confirmed its commitment to partner with Oxford in trying to get Amtrak to establish a passenger train stop in the city

MU will match Oxford's $350,000 commitment if a train stop is established.

Amtrak's Cardinal line operates between New York City and Chicago, traveling through the southwest corner of Ohio. The train stops at 32 stations, including Washington, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.

The train comes through Oxford in the early morning hours on Monday, Thursday and Saturday before heading to Chicago, and on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before heading to New York, the university said.

The university and city have discussed the possibility of a stop for the last couple years.

"With Miami drawing many students every year from across the country, such a transportation option would benefit prospective and current students, parents and alumni," the university said in a statement.

In May 2015 Amtrak notified the city that it had received ridership numbers from an internal analysis and it might be feasible to add the stop, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Marc Magliari, a spokesman for Amtrak, told the newspaper it may make "business sense" for the line to stop in Oxford. The city would have to provide the station.

Miami's financial commitment specifies development of an Amtrak stop at Chestnut Fields, Miami's parking lot and facilities at the site of the former Talawanda High School on Chestnut Street.

"The funds will be made available to the project upon execution of a final memorandum of understanding between the city of Oxford and the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak)," said David Creamer, Miami's senior vice president for finance and business services, in a letter to Oxford Mayor Kate Rousmaniere.

The estimated cost to build a 300-foot train platform, an open-air canopy or shelter and access sidewalks ranges from $1 million to $1.3 million, the university said.
naloxone.jpg

Injectable and nasal forms of naloxone, which can be used to block the potentially fatal effects of an opioid overdose, are shown Oct. 7, 2016, at an outpatient pharmacy at the University of Washington. Addiction medicine specialist Dr. Shawn A. Ryan of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center writes that getting naloxone into the hands of average Ohioans is a critical tool in the state's efforts to counter rising opioid overdose deaths that now rank Ohio No. 1 in the nation.

(Ted S. Warren, Associated Press, File, 2016)

Dr. Shawn A. Ryan is president and chief medical officer of BrightView LLC in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI -- It's official: Ohio leads the nation in opioid-related overdose deaths.

There were almost 2,700 cases in 2015, which is a 28 percent increase from 2014, according to the newly released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER data that examine the number of reported opioid-related overdose deaths in each state.

While our state has made strides in addressing unsafe prescribing practices, combating drug trafficking, and expanding access to, and the availability of, naloxone, the opioid-overdose reversal medication, we have not been able to escape this unfortunate reality. Why?

As physicians work to implement new prescribing guidelines aimed at limiting patients' exposure to opioids to help prevent future overdoses, naloxone, a potentially life-saving tool, isn't getting into the hands of the people who are typically first at the scene of an overdose.

Community access to naloxone is part of the larger solution to the opioid epidemic that involves all Ohioans, and we must act now.

Overdoses are occurring in people's homes, in our schools and libraries, and even on our roads.

It is of the utmost importance that our authorities ensure that residents across the state have the overdose antidote available to them. We must clearly outline where to get naloxone and how to use it, even for those who aren't personally affected by the epidemic. Lives are being lost in unimaginable, yet extremely common places each day.

While unsafe prescribing practices have contributed to Ohio's high rate of overdose deaths, we must ensure that ordinary people have access to easy-to-use naloxone products and understand how to use them.

Empowering our neighbors to have naloxone on-hand could prevent many of the thousands of lives lost year after year. Naloxone is the true first step in not only saving lives today, but also helping those in need of long-term rehabilitation get the care they need to overcome addiction.

Our government and community groups have done a tremendous job in putting this potentially life-saving medication in the hands of police officers and community-based organizations, which have played a crucial and effective role in preventing potentially fatal overdoses.

Additionally, our state has implemented policies that expand naloxone access on a broader level. Thanks to laws called Standing Orders, you can purchase naloxone without a prescription in nearly any pharmacy across state, including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid and Kroger. This brings naloxone into the community setting, where most overdoses occur. Even more, Ohio's Good Samaritan law grants immunity to the victim and to those who call for medical assistance in an overdose emergency.

The policies are set in place to provide access to naloxone, but we need to make sure people understand them. Here's what you need to know about naloxone in Ohio:

Anyone can request naloxone from their pharmacist without presenting a hand-written or phoned-in doctor's prescription.

Most insurance covers the majority of the cost of naloxone; some pharmacies offer rebates for those without insurance.

Naloxone is not an illicit drug and cannot itself cause an overdose.

Naloxone works even if someone is not or appears not to be breathing.

You should always call 911 in an overdose emergency. Ohio has laws protecting the rights of those who call for help.

There are two versions of naloxone approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

* A ready-to-use nasal spray called NARCAN(r) Nasal Spray

* An interactive muscular injection named EVZIO(r)

Could you imagine if community-friendly, easy-to-use naloxone were carried in purses and backpacks and stored in medicine cabinets across our region? Overdose deaths would dramatically decrease, lowering the tremendous burden associated with this horrible epidemic, and allowing those suffering from addiction to enter treatment and recovery programs.

When it comes down to it, in hard-hit states like Ohio, opioid overdoses are a community problem and require a community solution. By giving each of us the tools to save a life in an emergency situation, we can get that much closer to ending this epidemic.

No one should succumb to an overdose simply because bystanders weren't aware of naloxone or how to get it. By ensuring Ohioans have the facts and ability to easily access and effectively administer naloxone, we can begin to release this state from the grip of opioid abuse and turn to recovery.

Dr. Shawn A. Ryan, an assistant professor and emergency medicine physician at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, is president of the Ohio Chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He also is president and chief medical officer of BrightView LLC in Cincinnati.

***********

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GOP presidential candidate Donaled Trump visits Canton

President-elect Donald Trump is making calls to help Jane Timken unseat Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, a top ally of Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

(John Kuntz, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At first Greg Simpson thought it was a joke.

At 3:40 p.m. Thursday, the Ohio Republican Party state central committeeman from the Cincinnati area picked up his phone and was told President-elect Donald Trump was on the line.

"At first I thought it was a fake phone call," Simpson told cleveland.com. "Or I thought it was going to be a recorded phone call. Then all of the sudden, he's talking to me."

The call was part of Trump's last-minute effort in what has become an all-out political war with Ohio Gov. John Kasich. On Friday, Simpson and 65 other members of the GOP's state central committee will vote on whether to dump Kasich ally Matt Borges as their chairman. Trump is backing Jane Timken, a prominent Republican activist and donor from Stark County.

Kasich is calling committee members on Borges' behalf. But Trump's involvement in the intraparty battle is an extraordinary step for an incoming president and shows how eager he is to settle scores that date to Kasich's failed White House bid.

The governor repeatedly raised concerns about Trump's temperament after exiting the race last May and refused to vote for him in November. Borges, as the Republican chairman in a crucial battleground, was caught in the middle and was lukewarm in his support for the nominee.

Borges has been on the hot seat since at least October, when he wavered on whether to vote for Trump and angered some party activists by sharing those thoughts with reporters. Borges and Timken both have said they believe they have the 34 votes necessary to prevail Friday.

Those close to Trump's political team in Ohio did not respond to messages Thursday.

Simpson said Trump was courteous in the call and did not use "strong-arm" tactics.

"He said, 'I'm not telling you who to support -- I'm just telling you who I support,'" Simpson recalled, adding that Trump made clear he is behind Timken but did not bash Borges.

After the plug for Timken, Trump stayed on the line to chat about trade policy and other issues. Simpson said he got a kick out of the telephone call and appreciated the personal attention from the president-elect. But the 5-minute call did not change Simpson's mind.

He plans to cast a vote for Borges during Friday's secret balloting.

"I thought Matt did a nice job under the circumstances," said Simpson, who also pointed to Ohio Republicans' dominant record in statewide and legislative races on Borges' watch.

"You can't argue with success like that, you know."
timken-borges.jpg

Stark County attorney Jane Timken (left) and Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges (right) each claim to have the votes to win Friday's party leadership election.

(Twitter/File photo)

The biggest Ohio political story of this very New Year is expected to come to a head today. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is revealing some of his plans for his final two years in office. And a Northeast Ohio mayor won't let a corruption conviction get him down. Read more in today's Ohio Politics Roundup, brought to you today by Andrew J. Tobias.

Grand Old Predicament : The 66 members of the Ohio Republican Party's central committee will meet in Columbus this morning to decide whether to keep Chairman Matt Borges, who is backed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, or whether to seek a change in challenger Jane Timken, backed by President-elect Donald Trump.

Cleveland.com's Jeremy Pelzer, who will be covering the ORP meeting live today, breaks down all the angles. Both candidates have confidently predicted victory.

Game-changer? Trump made a round of personal phone calls on Thursday, urging them to vote for Timken. The calls not only carry the obvious gravitas that comes with the Oval Office, but also put to bed any doubts whether Trump is personally invested in the race's outcome.

"Trump's involvement in the intraparty battle is an extraordinary step for an incoming president and shows how eager he is to settle scores that date to Kasich's failed White House bid," writes cleveland.com's Henry J. Gomez, who interviewed one of the committee members who got a call from Trump.

Why control of the party matters: Via Pelzer: "The race for Ohio GOP chair is a test of whether Trump supporters can wrest control of the party away from Kasich, who filled the central committee with his allies after former chair Kevin DeWine was ousted in 2013."

Also from Pelzer: "The winner of the election will serve as the state GOP's chief, playing an important role in determining the party's strategy for the 2018 midterms and beyond."

See Jane run: Timken generally hasn't responded to interview requests from Ohio media outlets. (Although she did send cleveland.com a photo for publication earlier this week.)

But she spoke this week with the Canton Repository's Robert Wang, whose resulting article fleshes out some biographical details for those unfamiliar with Timken, an attorney and vice-chair of the Stark County Republican Party. (Fun fact: she met her husband, who was a Georgetown University student at the time, in 1987 while working as an intern at a D.C. law firm.)

"The party must have a good relationship with the RNC and the White House, and I have the support of both," Timken told Wang. "It has to have better relationships with the county party chairs. It has to improve relationships among the state committee members. They need to have an active voice. The party needs to be run for all Republicans, not one particular candidate or group of candidates.

"I have great respect for Matt, but I think it's time for a change," Timken said. "... I'm a firm believer in party unity and it would be my hope to bring everyone together. We have to work together as a Republican family."

Borges makes his case: The current Ohio GOP chairman wrote an op-ed that appeared on Cincinnati.com on Thursday that didn't directly refer to the leadership challenge, but nonetheless argued that the state party is on the right track.

"The Ohio Republican Party has experienced unprecedented success through the 2014 and 2016 election cycles," Borges writes. "We have seen historic victories at every level of elected office, and Republicans now control a whopping 73 percent of the countywide offices across the state. While we are proud of our many successes, now is not the time to rest on our laurels. 2016 is over, and our organization has already developed a forward-looking plan to help us build our party as we move into another election cycle."

Montgomery alleges RNC shenanigans: Betty Montgomery, the former Ohio attorney general and a member of the Ohio GOP's central committee, wrote a complaint to the Republican National Committee on Thursday.

Her allegation? Bob Paduchik, recently tapped for the RNC's number-two leadership position, is breaking national party rules by actively supporting Timken's candidacy, writes Politico's Theodoric Meyer.

"I just felt I need to say, 'look, what is the national committee doing being involved in this?'" Montgomery told Politico. "I don't think any state wants to be told how to run its internal elections by Washington," she added.

Paduchik ran Trump's Ohio campaign. Montgomery, meanwhile, is no fan of Trump.

Kasich in Cleveland: The governor was here Thursday to announce the latest step in his effort to increase the Ohio state government's use of data analytics, cleveland.com's Gomez writes.

Kasich appeared at the Cleveland Cole Eye Institute to announce a request for proposals to seek specialists for the effort. "The initiative is among the most ambitious goals the term-limited Republican has on tap for his final two years in office. Kasich believes the kind of advanced data analytics that have become common in the private sector can identify public policy problems and solutions."

Kasich to tackle congressional redistricting: Kasich plans to tackle another lofty goal in his final two years in office -- changing how congressional district lines are drawn, cleveland.com's Jackie Borchardt writes.

"Why is it that things don't get done? Because everybody's locked down and there is at times a fundamental intolerance for another point of view," Kasich said. "How are you supposed to get people together?"

Kasich told reporters he plans to insert the proposal into his state budget, although he didn't sound confident that it will remain there once state lawmakers get a hold of it.

"If they want to declare it not germane, then let them do it and then answer for it," Kasich said.

Federal monitor criticizes Cleveland on DOJ reforms: The federal monitor appointed to oversee Cleveland's court-mandated police reforms says the city has been hamstrung by what it is required to do under the reform plan, writes cleveland.com's Eric Heisig.

As a result, federal monitor Matthew Barge said "his 18-member team has given more help to Cleveland than others cities undergoing similar reforms have required" and "major projects were pushed back, and the soon-to-be unveiled second-year plan is going to include deadlines originally slated to be completed in the first year."

"In some instances, what we have received from the city or the division up front has not been up to par," Barge told Heisig.

"Greg White, the city's consent decree implementation coordinator, said in an emailed statement Thursday that ... first year deadlines ... were difficult to meet for all parties, including the monitoring team. Nevertheless, he believes the city made 'great progress' in 2016."

Local cops cool on doing ICE's job: Cleveland.com's Kaylee Remington asked police in Cleveland and Lorain for their thoughts on a Trump proposal to effectively deputize local law enforcement to help enforce federal immigration laws.

The idea was "met by skepticism," even by Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis, a staunch Trump supporter, Remington writes.

"I don't anticipate the Cleveland Police Department to put together a unit for undocumented people," Loomis said. "That's just not going to happen. We're going to respond to crimes just like we always do."

DNC candidate Perez coming to Ohio: Outgoing U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez will meet with Ohio Democratic Party officials and activists next Wednesday, writes Gomez.

Perez is running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and is believed to have outgoing President Barack Obama's backing. Other DNC candidates, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, met with Ohio Democrats last month.

That's so Youngstown: Mayor John McNally filed paperwork on Thursday signaling his intention to run for a second term, according to the Youngstown Vindicator.

A possible road bump? "McNally said he welcomes competition in the mayoral race and expects his opponents to go after him for his four misdemeanor convictions last year in the Oakhill Renaissance Place corruption scandal."

Mandel adds staff for Senate run: Brooke Bodney, Kasich's top fundraiser, has signed onto Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel's 2018 Senate bid, writes the Columbus Dispatch's Darrel Rowland.

As Rowland notes: "Kasich also is tight with Congressman Pat Tiberi of Genoa Township, who is considering a challenge of Mandel in the 2018 GOP primary."

Asked for his thoughts on Bodney's working for Mandel, who is not exactly Kasich's favorite person, Kasich said: "She doesn't ask me -- do I approve or disapprove? It's just not what I do. She has to make her own choices."

More from Mandel: A Thursday piece by Jewish Insider's Aaron Magid examines Mandel's nascent Senate campaign, probing Mandel's obvious efforts to follow in Trump's political footsteps.

The most interesting part? Mandel told Magid, who apparently was testing how closely Mandel plans to tie himself to Trump, that he has "not seen any evidence" of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

The piece also notes Mandel's strong support for Israel, which could win him some halting support from Jewish voters who otherwise generally lean left.

The Ohio Democratic Party shared the article with reporters, and noted that Mandel's position puts him at odds with U.S. intelligence officials, as well as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, two GOP senators. That "blind eye" proves that Mandel is a "politician we just can't trust," said ODP spokesman Jake Strassberger. (Expect to hear that line plenty of times in the coming months.)

Mandel hopes to unseat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Get Battleground Briefing, our FREE politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox: Sign up here. Tips or links? Send here. Follow along on Twitter: @andrewjtobias
Check out which companies are making headlines after the bell on Thursday:

Shares of Gap soared 12 percent Thursday after the bell after the retail giant reported strong holiday sales from November and December. The company saw a 2 percent increase in comparable sales overall, with a 12 percent increase at Old Navy for the month of December. Gap stores also saw a 1 percent increase in sales for the month, while Banana Republic fell 7 percent during the final month of the year. Gap's CFO, Sabrina Simmons, said the company now expects full-year earnings to come in above $1.92, which was the high end of its prior earnings range.

Amgen shares climbed 5 percent after the biopharmaceutical company won a ban on Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals cholesterol drug, Praluent. Amgen had previously accused the two companies of infringing its patents. On Jan. 3, a a federal judge refused to throw out a court verdict that upheld Amgen's patents for Repatha. The injunction document states that Regeneron and Sanofi will have 30 days before Praluent sales are banned in order to appeal because of the public harm from removing the drug.



Helen of Troy shares climbed more than 4 percent after the bell, following its earnings report. The personal care products company reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.37, beating analysts' estimates of $1.90 a share. Its revenue of $444.4 million missed estimates of $447 million.

Helen of Troy also lowered its outlook for fiscal year 2017 primarily due to "reflect the expectation that the cough/cold/flu season will remain below average." It also cited the unfavorable currency environment as a reason for lowering its revenues to a range of between $1.52 and $1.55 billion and adjusted earnings of between $6.20 and $6.50 per share.

Shares of Shake Shack shed more than 1 percent in choppy trade Thursday after the fast casual restaurant chain named Zach Koff its first chief operating officer. Koff joined the company in 2010 and has been a member of the company's executive team since its IPO in 2015. Separately, Shake Shack also announced its CFO, Jeff Uttz, will retire, effective mid-March.

Reuters and CNBC's Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.
A young person surfs the internet at an internet bar in Huaibei, Anhui, China. Jie Zhao | Corbis | Getty Images

China's top cybersecurity officials have pledged loyalty to the Communist Party leadership headed by President Xi Jinping in the lead-up to a major party congress this year, a move pointing to tighter controls on the internet. At a national meeting of directors at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Tuesday and Wednesday, the officials said one of their priorities was to cultivate an online environment that was "conducive to a s uccessful 19th party congress". In a statement, the directors agreed that the level of urgency and the frequency that Xi had spoken about cybersecurity last year were both "rare" in history. They also pledged their absolute loyalty to Xi.

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Other priorities were cleaning up cyberspace, strengthening cybersecurity and promoting information technologies across various sectors. The statement comes in a critical year of leadership reshuffles ahead of the 19th party congress in autumn, in which the new line-up of the next Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body, will be unveiled. More from the South China Morning Post :

China cybersecurity law likely to harm foreign firms operating on mainland, says Asia finance body chief

China internet controls are a step backward

City going cashless is no small change Zhan Jiang, an international news and communications professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said tighter internet controls were expected. "Any news that involves high-level politicians will be deemed to be sensitive news," Zhan said. "Regulations over public opinion are inevitable."

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watch now

With the Trump rally finally taking a breather on Thursday, Jim Cramer said the FANG rally is back on. FANG is Cramer's acronym to represent the leaders of technology growth in the market. It stands for Facebook , Amazon , Netflix and Google, now Alphabet. The good news about a FANG rally is that it even boosted Apple , which just revealed that its App Store developers brought in $20 billion in 2016, up 40 percent year-over-year. The number Cramer has been most excited about for Apple is its service revenue, which could be growing faster than expected. "The bears on Apple are losing patience. I think the stock is close to breaking out," the "Mad Money" host said.

An employee hands off an Apple iPhone to a colleague at an Apple store in Palo Alto, California. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cramer's parents both worked in retail, so when he heard the news of Macy's and Kohl's dismal holiday sales, he had to get to the bottom of what is really ailing the retail group. "It's not that the mall is dead. It's that the mall's rent is too expensive for all but the most exclusive specialty retailers that can make money selling goods at nosebleed price points," the "Mad Money" host said. In the old days, Cramer's mom worked at Lit Brothers selling lingerie, and his father worked at Gimbels selling men's slacks. They used to marvel at how quickly a small retailer would go under when it would get steamrolled by the expansion of big players like Woolworth's, Grant's and K-Mart. The same vicious cycle continues to happen in retail today, he said. Cloud-based enterprise storage provider and mobile business collaboration platform Box reported a strong quarter at the end of November, yet the stock has fallen more than 5 percent since that time while the broader averages have skyrocketed higher. Cramer spoke with Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie on the complexity of the current business environment. Levie cited an increase in cybersecurity threats, increased business regulations and global collaboration issues as reasons for that complexity. However, regardless of Trump's agenda, Levie remained bullish about the company's future. "We have seen growth under lots of different types of administrations and we believe that we are on a trajectory to continue to grow rapidly in the future," Levie said.



Microscipic view of pancreatic cancer cells. Stocktrek Images | Getty Images
With the Trump rally finally taking a breather on Thursday, Jim Cramer said the FANG rally is back on.

FANG is Cramer's acronym to represent the leaders of technology growth in the market. It stands for Facebook , Amazon , Netflix and Google, now Alphabet.

The good news about a FANG rally is that it even boosted Apple stock, which just revealed that its App Store developers brought in $20 billion in 2016, up 40 percent year-over-year.

The number Cramer has been most excited about for Apple is its service revenue, which could be growing faster than expected.

"The bears on Apple are losing patience. I think the stock is close to breaking out," the "Mad Money" host said.
Visitors crowd the Huawei stand at the 2016 CeBIT digital technology trade fair on the fair's opening day.

Apple is about to face its biggest challenge yet: Its most formidable Chinese rival, Huawei, just launched a high-end phone in the U.S. on Thursday.

The Huawei Mate 9 will be available in the U.S. through Best Buy and Amazon on Friday for $599.99, according to Richard Yu, the director and CEO of Huawei's consumer business group.

The world's No. 3 smartphone maker by volume hopes to become No. 2 within one or two years, Yu said  that means knocking down Apple or Samsung.

"We never hide our ambition," Yu said at a speech at technology trade show CES in Las Vegas, adding: "We have a vision to make the world's best smartphone."

Huawei shipped 33.6 million smartphones worldwide in the third calendar quarter, according to IDC estimates, behind Apple's 45.5 million and Samsung's 72.5 million. Now, the company will be infiltrating Apple's biggest market, American smartphones.

Yu took aim at Apple several times during his speech, noting the cheaper Mate 9 is thinner than the iPhone 7, has a longer battery life and faster charging. Huawei was also the first phone to sport dual cameras, like the iPhone 7's, Yu said.

The Mate 9 also has help from Apple's rivals, with integration of Google 's virtual reality platform, DayDream, and Amazon's artificially intelligent assistant, Alexa.

"'Genius' is no longer in the domain of a chosen few," the Mate 9's promotional video said, showing a picture of a lightbulb. Apple, of course, is known for its Genius Bar and recently introduced an ad featuring bursting lightbulbs.



Of course, there are big shoes to fill. Both Apple and Samsung are expected to put enormous effort into their next generation handsets. For Apple, the 10th anniversary of the iPhone could be a a chance to revive sluggish sales growth; for Samsung, its a chance to recover from its recall of the Galaxy Note 7.

Still, executives from Google and Amazon both told the audience there is even more to come in partnership with Huawei, including a Google augmented reality feature and more Alexa features.

Huawei is also aiming to be the world's biggest spender in research and development, Yu said, and has poured resources into its own chips, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to conserve power and keep the Android platform from slowing down over time.

After being a relatively obscure employee-owned telecom provider a few years ago, Huawei's worldwide sales grew 23 percent in the third calendar quarter, a period where Apple and Samsung saw sales fall, IDC estimates. Yu is part of the reason why.

"Our company is a different management style than other companies," Yu said. "We call it collective wisdom. We are not only diligentwe are also flexible."


New Competition Series Features Host of CNBC's Hit Show "The Profit"

Ten Finalists Compete for a Half-Million Dollar Contract and an Equity Stake in Lemonis's Massive Portfolio of Businesses

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J.  January 5, 2016  CNBC today announced the ten finalists participating in THE PARTNER, the all-new series featuring Marcus Lemonis the renowned investor, entrepreneur, and host of CNBC's hit show "The Profit." Premiering Tuesday, February 28 at 10pm ET/PT, the five episode series follows Lemonis as he searches for the perfect partner to help him manage the fast-growing portfolio of businesses he's acquired. In the end, one candidate will receive the opportunity of a lifetime: a half-million dollar contract, an equity stake, and the chance to help Lemonis manage his empire. Watch trailer: http://bit.ly/2hSdBLO

After investing more than $40 million of his own money in companies featured on "The Profit," Lemonis is now ready to invest in "The Partner." Thousands of people hailing from all corners of the country applied for the opportunity to participate, but only ten were invited to Chicago to take part in the final interview process. They are:

"It has been a privilege to work so closely with some of the most hard-working entrepreneurs in the country, all of whom have shown me the heart and desire to turn their businesses around," Lemonis said. "In this new adventure, I am looking for someone with that same drive and passion to help inspire these up and coming business leaders, sustain their growth and their enthusiasm, and ensure that the sound investments we made today, are even more sound in the decades ahead."

Self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis is best known for lending his expertise to struggling small businesses around the country on "The Profit." As a result of successful partnerships on CNBC's original series, Lemonis has added a variety of new product lines and services to his holding company, Marcus Lemonis Enterprises LLC. When he's not busy teaching business owners his famed "Three Ps": People, Process and Product, he is focused on running two companies of his own  he serves as chairman and CEO of Camping World, the nation's largest RV and outdoor retailer, and Good Sam, the world's largest RV owner's organization.

"The Partner" is produced by Marcus Lemonis Productions LLC and Machete Productions with Amber Mazzola and Marcus Lemonis as executive producers. Jim Ackerman and Luke Bauer are the executive producers for CNBC.

To learn more about "The Partner," visit thepartner.cnbc.com. Like us on Facebook and Instagram and follow us on Twitter. @TheProfitCNBC. #ThePartner

About CNBC:

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 381 million homes worldwide, including more than 94 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc.

For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.

About Machete Productions:

Founded in 2011, Machete Productions is the brainchild of Emmy-nominated Executive Producer Amber Mazzola. Since its formation, Amber and Machete have produced the first unscripted series under the CNBC prime banner, "Treasure Detectives," and then went on to produce The Profit, the #1 original series on CNBC now in its fourth season. Machete also produces the hit series, "WAGS" for sister network E! currently in its third season as well as spin-off WAGS: Miami now in its second season.
Flu cases are on the rise, and health officials are urging people to take precautions. Simple steps, including getting a flu shot, help protect against the flu.

There have been 161 influenza cases to date this flu season, and 95 influenza-associated hospitalizations, including eight children and 78 adults ages 50 and older. Of those hospitalized with influenza, 63 percent were ages 65 years and older.

There are also many simple steps people can take now to avoid spreading the flu to family and friends, and to keep from getting it themselves, including practicing good handwashing hygiene, covering your cough, and not sharing drinking cups and straws, advises State Health Officer Karen McKeown.

Influenza can range from mild to severe, and in some cases can cause life-threatening complications. Symptoms can come on quickly and include fever, headache, dry cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, body aches, and tiredness. If someone does get the flu after getting vaccinated, it is more likely to be a milder case.

Everyone aged six months and older should be vaccinated annually. To schedule a flu shot, contact your health care provider, pharmacy, or local public health department.
An arbitration court ruling that rejected China's claims to the South China Sea and strained Chinese relations with the Philippines will not be on the agenda of this year's Southeast Asian summit, a senior Philippine official said on Thursday.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated last month he wanted to avoid confrontation with China and saw no need to press Beijing to abide by the July ruling that went in favor of the Philippines.

"The Hague ruling will not be on the agenda in the sense that it's already part of international law," Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Enrique Manalo told reporters ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting chaired by the Philippines in April.

"So we really can't discuss the ruling. It's there."

The July 2016 ruling rejected China's territorial claims over much of the South China Sea. Beijing declared the decision as "null and void", but called on countries involved in the dispute to start talks again to peacefully resolve the issue.

What the 10-member ASEAN will focus on is the completion of a framework for a code of conduct to ease tension in the disputed waters, Manalo said.

"We hope we will have a pleasant scenario during our chairmanship. We will talk to China in a way we will put forth our interest just as we expect china will put forth theirs," Manalo said.

Since 2010, China and the ASEAN have been discussing a set of rules aimed at avoiding conflict. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

At the ASEAN summit last year, China's closest ASEAN ally, Cambodia, blocked any mention of the court ruling against Beijing in a joint statement.

Duterte made a stunning U-turn in foreign policy a few months ago when he made overtures towards China and started berating traditional ally the United States.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.


Consumer electronics giant Samsung on Friday predicted a near 50 percent jump in its fourth-quarter operating profit, with the components business expected to offset declines in its mobile unit that was marred by discontinuation of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 handsets.

In a regulatory filing, Samsung said it expected consolidated operating profit for the October-December 2016 quarter to be 9.2 trillion won ($7.8 billion), up from the 6.14 trillion a year earlier, and beating a Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate forecast of 8.2 trillion won.



The fourth quarter profit number, if realized, would be the highest profit figure in three years, according to Reuters. But Daniel Kim, an analyst at Macquarie Equities Research, pointed out on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the major difference was back in 2013, that profit growth was driven by the mobile phone division.



Investors reacted positively to the guidance, with Samsung shares climbing more than 2 percent in morning trade on Friday, beating the broader benchmark index.



Analysts agreed Samsung's business diversity and competitiveness in areas of flash memory, memory and OLED displays helped overcome the bungled Note 7 recall and will continue to support it in 2017.



"The Semiconductor division should be the main source for better-than-expected earnings," Daniel Yoo, head of global strategy at Kiwoom Securities, told CNBC's "The Rundown" before the earnings guidance was released.



Samsung's components business supplies memory chips and display panels to other companies, including prominent smartphone makers such as Apple .
The "Fast Money" traders debated Thursday what is the best play in the auto space, amid tweets from Donald Trump threatening to impose an import tariff to prevent jobs moving to Mexico and other low-cost countries.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump rebuked Toyota Motor on Twitter after the Japanese automaker said it had no plans to curb production in Mexico. Toyota shares ticked lower after the tweet, hitting a session low of $120.32. The stock ended the session slightly above that level at $120.44.

The president-elect has previously threatened General Motors with a border tax, something he argues will encourage companies to keep production in the United States, creating more jobs for Americans. Opponents argue that an import tariff could lead to skyrocketing costs for the American consumer.

Trader Tim Seymour said the relatively tempered move in Toyota Motor was "rational" for the market.

If investors are looking for something in to auto sector, trader Pete Najarian said to look at Goodyear Tire . He said the company benefits from consumer trends favoring vehicles with larger tires.

Trader Dan Nathan said that one potential headwind for California-based Tesla Motors is the pressure to meet demand for its low-cost Model 3. He said he's not sure if the company can produce the car, meet its delivery targets and keep the $35,000 price tag.
watch now

Jose Ramirez Jr. grew up with his eyes on a career in law enforcement. But the 23-year-old Laredo, Texas, native's goal became even more important to achieve in 2012. One of his older brothers, Jeffrey, died while serving as an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection from a heat-related illness.

For the past two years, Ramirez anxiously waited to get accepted to that same agency, to continue his family's legacy.

"I want to be able to protect our homeland," said Ramirez, who has another older brother currently serving with CBP in south Texas. "I want to follow in my brother's footsteps, to honor him."

Two months ago, Ramirez began training at the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico, and is set to graduate in January. He'll join an agency tasked with patrolling 6,000 miles of the country's land border and more than 300 ports of entry including land, air and sea.

Jose Ramirez, U.S. Border Patrol Academy trainee Karina Frayter | CNBC

CBP is aggressively hiring, attempting to bring on some 1,700 agents this year to meet its staffing goals of more than 21,000, according to U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan. Between 55,000 and 65,000 applications are received in any given year, although many don't make it past the initial screening process  about 1 in 175 applicants will become an agent. Despite the emphasis that President-elect Donald Trump placed on border safety and building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border while campaigning, the agency declined to comment on what impact a Trump administration might mean for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as a whole  but hiring plans remain in place. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on border hiring. Retaining new hires can be a challenge, as many of the agency's positions are in remote areas that include difficult climates and terrain. Typically new agents have entry-level salaries of between $50,000 and $70,000, Morgan said.





CBP agent at a port of entry in El Paso, Texas. Karina Frayter | CNBC

"We're looking for men and women who really have an innate set of core values  honesty, integrity, dedication and respect," Morgan said. "Some of the conditions that the United States Border Patrol agents are to work in  they're harsh. Mountainous terrain, waterways, and generally we're not in major metropolitan cities. ... But the mission we have and the great work the men and women of the agency do outweigh that."

U.S. border patrol agents ride ATVs near U.S.  Mexico border. Karina Frayter | CNBC

Agents come from all different academic and professional backgrounds and train for just over four months at the academy, where they will learn to process the more than 1 million people who cross the border daily. They also focus on physical fitness and learn Spanish to become fluent by the time they graduate. Other training includes water safety, combat courses in light and dark, and off-road driving courses to prepare for the challenging terrain agents may face on the job.





CNBCs Kate Rogers in off-road driving training at the U.S. Border Patrol Academy Karina Frayter | CNBC

Dangers are ever-present on the nation's borders, where on a typical day 9,400 pounds of drugs are seized and 23 wanted criminals are apprehended, according to the agency.

"We want our men and women who go out there to get it right," said Dan Harris, chief patrol agent of the U.S. Border Patrol Academy. "When they have to make split-second decisions to save their lives, or someone else's life, or their partner's life, we want them to get it right."

To help recruit millennials for front-line positions, the agency has launched the CBP "Apply Now!" webpage, increased its digital marketing efforts on social media sites like Facebook and is conducting analysis on other law enforcement recruitment sites to improve the agency's visibility.

Hiring more women is also a priority for CBP, which is currently just 5 percent female. However in 2016, 19 percent of all Border Patrol agent hires were female, with the agency participating in more than 200 female recruiting events.





Mark Morgan in a transition meeting at the CBP Headquarters Karina Frayter

Part of that minority group of women is Erika King, now 35 and a 13-year veteran of the agency, stationed in her hometown of El Paso, Texas. King is part of the agent cohort, patrolling part of the 2,000 border miles between the U.S. and Mexico from the air, by ATV, on horseback and on foot. Her duty is called "line watch," manning the fence between the two countries, meant to act as a deterrent for those crossing without documentation.

"You realize very quickly that a situation can go bad in a second," King said, acknowledging the dangers of the job. "But I have a sense of pride; I know I worked hard for this uniform and this badge. I know that I'm doing a service to my community."

Future agents in Spanish class at the U.S. Border Patrol academy Karina Frayter | CNBC
Fins are removed as sharks are procesed on May 20, 2011 in Puqi town, Yueqing city of Zhejiang Province, China. Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in China carrying a symbolic significance of wealth and prestige.

The carrier, which is part of Air China and responsible for cargo shipment on freight planes and the airline's commercial aircraft, did not specify when the policy change would take effect.

Air China Cargo has become the first mainland carrier to ban the transport of shark fin, dealing another blow to the international trade.

Some 36 airlines have now joined the ban globally.

Following the announcement on Friday, a wildlife expert said the move was likely to have a "huge and lasting" impact on shark populations and ecosystems.

In a statement posted on its website, the cargo company said it was committed to playing a bigger role in global sustainability.

More from the South China Morning Post :

Tonnes of endangered pangolins' scales seized in Shanghai

Chinese woman assaulted on bus for talking too loudly on phone

Hong Kong enjoys a breath of fresh air but it's not enough to meet annual quality goals



"We understand the community's desire to promote responsible and sustainable marine sourcing practices, and this remains important to Air China Cargo's overall sustainable development goals," the statement read.

Last year, budget carrier HK Express became the first local carrier to implement a ban, followed in recent months by Cathay Pacific and Dragonair.

Also in July, mainland China's biggest shipping and logistics company, China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco Shipping), pledged a total ban on shark fin transportation.

The shipping giant is the fourth-largest container operator in the world with a 7.7 per cent market share.
Writer and podcaster James Altucher doesn't want people to call him an "advice guru"  but he does give advice, for a living, based on his failures and successes as an entrepreneur.



On the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka, Altucher warned that "society hypnotizes you" into making decisions that are against your best interests. He learned this lesson the hard way: After selling his first company for $15 million, Altucher gambled all that money away on bad investments during the dot-com bubble.



More from Recode Media:

James Altucher is so good at failing, he made $11 million last year

Amazon is opening a bookstore in the middle of Manhattan

We need more apps and devices designed to help families connect to each other



He said this hypnosis extends to more common financial circumstances, too. People will automatically "spend millions on a house, or $200,000 each on a college education for their five kids," he said, even though there are alternatives to both of those decisions.



Last year, Altucher gave up his apartments in New York and has been couch-surfing and Airbnb-ing when he's not traveling. And although he went to college (he holds a B.A. from Cornell University and brags that he was thrown out of grad school at Carnegie Mellon), he said today's prospective students should instead consider getting their education online.


When it came to recording his first solo jazz album, drummer David Whitman chose room B in the famed Capitol Studios in Hollywood, Calif.

I picked that room because it is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best room for recording drums in the world, explained the 1999 Menomonie High School graduate, who now resides in San Diego. Lots of great records were recorded in that room  everything from Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole to Diana Krall and Katy Perry. Id tell you who was in there the day before I was, but I dont think they would appreciate it if I let the secret out.

Oh, Clara! features Whitman on drums, along with Francisco Torres on trombone, Tom Luer on the tenor saxophone, Geoffrey Keezer on the piano, Rob Thorsen on bass, Tomek Miernowski on guitar, Chris Montgomery (who co-produced the album) on guitar, and the trumpet and compositions of Whitmans long-time collaborator, Andrew Neesley.

The title of the album is a word play that pays homage to the significance of Whitmans daughter, Clara Mia, in his life as well as to the connection that four of the musicians on the album have to Eau Claire: Tom, Andy and I each went through the UW-EC Jazz program and played in the top jazz band there, which was a blast  and Geoffrey was born in Eau Claire.

Describing the experience of recording Oh, Clara!, Whitman said, It was a total blast. All of the musicians were excellent, and I have collaborated with most of the band members so many times that its like comin home. We had one short rehearsal a few days before the session, but basically got two takes on each tune and sometimes just one. Quiet  one of my favorite tracks on the record  was done in one take.

Home grown talent

For Menomonie native David Whitman, the earliest musical influences behind his debut solo jazz album can be found close to home. In addition to his parents, Marvin and Rhonda, he said, My brother [Kurt] used to sing the blues and jam tunes on the piano when he came home from school, and I had a lot of fun watching how soulfully he sang and how much enjoyment he got from it.

Whitman credits his fathers interest in music with helping guide him toward his career: Absolutely ... and his encouragement as well.

The mix also includes local musicians like Tim Stanton, Patty Lehman, Larry and Lana Laird, Jeremy Foxwell, Andrew Yonda, Tracy Landis, Scott Plank, and Sally Ward.

Whitman plays a broad assortment of instruments and styles. Primarily jazz drum set, orchestral percussion and solo percussion. Pretty much any music you hear on the radio, at a university, in the movies or in the media or anywhere else, he said.

Whitman began to play the piano in second grade and still plays some. I have been playing a little bit of piano, especially since I began teaching as the Jazz Vibraphone Studio Artist Faculty at San Diego State University. I accompany my vibes students on piano frequently, although I am not particularly adept, he said.

Although he has been away for 11 years, Whitman has fond memories of performing in the Chippewa Valley. In addition to the House of Rock and a regular Monday night gig at Stones Throw on Barstow Street, he recalled, When I lived in Eau Claire a restaurant named The Shanghai Bistro opened up, and I had my groups play there twice a week. We always had a great crowd, and while we were in there, at least, it turned into a really hip jazz supper-club.

During his days in Menomonie, Whitman played at the Mabel Tainter Theater around 2005 as part of its Rising Young Artist concert series. As a kid, I played at the Mabel Tainter many other times in pit orchestras getting that really important, early-on experience, he recalled. I did a few productions there, but the most memorable was I Do I Do!, because my father played the lead role!

Doing whatever it takes

Asked how parenthood has changed his music, Whitman admitted, I have certainly had to learn to play things right without hours and hours of practice time. No all-day woodshed session to get your hands ready. Doesnt matter, because I have to go out there and nail ... it anyway.

It doesnt hurt that hes been open to the advice of others. Whitman names three of the teachers from his days at UW-Eau Claire that he credits with pushing him toward success. Ron Keezer and Jeffrey Crowell were my two percussion teachers. ... I met Ron at the Shell Lake Arts Center summer jazz camp. And Mr. Robert Baca always challenged me as a drum set player. He made it feel like I could always make it better  and he was right. But [he] also made me feel appreciated and successful.

Among the life lessons Whitman has learned along the way toward becoming a professional musician, he sees failure as an essential stepping stone on the avenue to success. I like to say that success is a little monkey riding on the back of a giant elephant namedFailure. ... And it is so crucial to have good communication and people skills, to never think you have arrived or that you are better than people around you.

To young people beginning to play in jazz bands in school, Whitman recommends, Listen to the great jazz that has come before you, practice ferociously, and play with your friends as much as possible. Dont be afraid of wrong notes, if they even exist. Each one is just a learning experience that you should appreciate.
Bachman threw out only the meat that the worker was cutting during the accident, but did not discard "other meat present in the area" where he bled, the complaint alleges.

John Bachman, owner of Lone Star Western Beef , also is accused in the federal court complaint of doing "little to clean or sanitize the areas where [the injured worker's] blood had spurted all over his work area and on the floor and sink in the processing area."

The U.S. Labor Department sued a beef jerky company and its owner over allegations that the owner fired a worker for trying to call 911 when a co-worker of hers cut off part of his thumb in a workplace accident.

Lone Star Western Beef's website indicates the company has facilities in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

"Lone Star has broken the mold when it comes to beef jerky!" the website proclaims. "This ain't no wimpy city slicker beef jerky!"

The incident at the center of the lawsuit  which seeks back wages and punitive damages for the terminated worker  occurred July 7, 2014, in Lone Star's plant in Fairmont, West Virginia.



The complaint says that food processor Michele Butler-Savage that morning heard her co-worker Chris Crane say he had cut his finger, and saw "blood running down" his hand and arm.

Crane had severed part of his thumb while operating a band saw used to cut beef, and Butler-Savage "believed that he sustained a serious injury," the complaint says.



Butler-Savage helped Crane, putting his hand under cold water and putting a paper towel over his hand, while another worker went to get Bachman.

When Bachman arrived of the accident, Butler-Savage had dialed 911, the complaint says. But before the call was connected "Bachman told Buter-Savage not to call 911 and instructed her to hang up the phone," according to the suit.

When she told Bachman that Crane needed an ambulance, "Bachman responded that he would decide whether to call an ambulance and instructed Butler-Savage to get back to work."

Bachman then "collected the severed piece of Crane's thumb" and had a supervisor drive Crane to an urgent clinic, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of West Virginia.

That clinic then transferred Crane, via ambulance, to a hospital emergency room, but doctors there were unable to reattach the severed part to his thumb, according to the suit.

Later that day, Butler-Savage spoke to an inspector from the U.S. Agriculture Department and voiced "concerns about the accident, the cleanup," as well as "the lack of appropriate personal protective equipment," the complaint said. She "also told the inspector that she had tried to call 911."
Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England's Chief Economist and Executive Director, Monetary Analysis & Statistics Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Bank of England's (BoE) Chief Economist bemoaned the inherent risks of placing too much faith in economic forecasting given the failure to foresee the financial crash in 2008 as well as the Brexit vote.

Andrew Haldane conceded the economics profession was in "some degree of crisis", when speaking at the Institute for Government on Thursday. However, he reiterated the central banks view that the U.K. economy would suffer in 2017 as a consequence of the country's vote to leave the European Union (EU).





Crisis mode

"It's a fair cop to say the (economic) profession is to some degree in crisis," Haldane said. "I'm not someone who would say that all that's been done in the past is terrible. It's just that the models we had were rather narrow and fragile. The problem came when the world was tipped upside down and those models were ill-equipped to making sense of behaviors that were deeply irrational," he added. The BoE's chief economist noted the apparent "disconnect" between the historically high levels of political uncertainty and the "remarkably placid" response evident in the financial markets at present. Before the referendum took place in June 2016, BoE Governor Mark Carney warned that the likelihood of a "technical recession" would be superior if the majority of citizens voted to leave the EU. Instead, the U.K.'s economy outperformed all other advanced economies in 2016. More recently, Britain's benchmark stock index, the FTSE 100, extended its record breaking streak on Thursday as the index closed higher for the sixth consecutive day for the first time in two decades. Moreover, the U.K.'s services sector grew at its fastest pace in almost 18 months in December. The Markit/CIPS services purchasing manager's index (PMI) hit 56.2, its highest level since July 2015.

'Michael Fish moment'
European stocks closed lower on the last trading day of the first week of 2017 after the release of the December U.S. non-farm payrolls.



European markets



The pan-European Stoxx 600 ended 0.05 percent down despite major bourses edging higher with sectors mixed. Britain's benchmark stock index, the FTSE 100, recovered from an earlier dip to extend its record-breaking streak on Friday. The blue chip index closed higher for the seventh consecutive day.

Investors have been looking at some key data releases after strong PMI figures across Europe were released earlier this week as well as the most recent jobs data from the U.S. Non-farm payrolls increased by 156,000 in December, according to the U.S. labor department, and the unemployment rate stood at 4.7 percent. Both figures disappointed slightly. The U.S. dollar reached a session high against the yen following the release of data. The Dow Jones industrial average continued higher in spite of weaker-than-expected jobs data, getting ever closer to the elusive 20,000 mark.

Retail sales in the euro zone dropped 0.4 percent month-on-month in November. The year-on-year figure increased 2.3 percent from a revised 3.0 percent rate in October. Despite the contraction, analysts are confident that the sector can expand in the first quarter of 2017. Claus Vistesen, chief euro zone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in an email that "retail sales growth has increased recently, consistent with better survey data. And it could well rise further in Q1." Meanwhile, economic sentiment across the euro zone went up more-than-expected in December supported by better data across all main industries. The economic confidence index jumped to 107.8 in December from a revised figure of 106.6 in November.



Fiat up by 6%
While working as a secretary at a Florida-based asphalt company, Connie Lorenz noticed receipts that weren't quite matching up. "I found about $1.5 million missing," she explains on CNBC's "Blue Collar Millionaires." It turns out the company's president was embezzling money, says Lorenz. She immediately notified the owner. Becoming a whistle-blower changed her life.

Connie Lorenz, president and owner of Asphalt Restoration Technology Systems

Impressed by Lorenz's integrity, the owner offered her the chance to take over and eventually buy him out. Lorenz says on the show: "He had a meeting with me and said if I could help him turn the company around and regain some of his losses that he would give me the company. "I didn't know if the owner was really serious about his offer, but I thought it was a great opportunity, so I spent the next seven years working my a** off trying to figure out the industry. I attended seminars and conferences. I toured asphalt plants. I talked to every contractor out there that did asphalt." Her diligence paid off. In 2006, the owner approached Lorenz and said he was ready to hand over the business. "He truly gave me the company: The assets, the checking account, and the debt too. But there was far more money in the checking account than the debt," Lorenz says.

Connie Lorenz is an avid traveler.
"It's become this snowball effect where just a couple of years ago we had less than 200 studios; we've crossed 500. We'll be growing in 20 international markets, every state in the U.S., and we'll probably break 900 locations by the end of 2017," Long said in an interview at the company's new, bigger headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.

Orange glows on the multiple monitors that line every wall  the technology measuring and displaying heart rates and calorie burn across the class, that has the company seeing green. In just six years, Orangetheory has sold more than 1,000 franchise licenses, more than half are up and running. It now boasts 570 studios in 44 U.S. states and 13 countries. Revenue, according to CEO David Long, is up over 100 percent since 2015.

From the studio lighting to the water bottles to the sneakers worn by much of the staff  the branding is pretty straightforward  but that is not the orange driving most sweat-seekers to work out at this fast-growing fitness company. The so-called orange zone is when you exercise at 84 to 91 percent of your maximum heart rate.

Walk into any one of the 570 Orangetheory fitness studios worldwide, and you'll be struck by how, well, orange everything is.

Orangetheory's fast growth is remarkable. To put it in perspective, Gold's Gym has been around for over 50 years and has just under 600 franchises globally. Planet Fitness, founded in 1992, has just over 1,000.



"I do think it's crowded and getting more crowded," said Sean Naughton, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, but he added, "you have people doing low cost gym memberships and then augmenting that with Orangetheory or CorePower or Barry's [Boot Camp] or SoulCycle, whatever your class du jour."



Orangetheory is a class-based workout, not a traditional gym. The technology-based training is the draw. Each person wears a heart rate monitor, and trainers move them from treadmills to rowing machines to weight-training stations, simultaneously moving their heart rates on a color scale. Cardiac output is measured from green to orange to red and participants can watch all their stats, including calorie burn, on the multiple wall screens. The idea is to spend at least 12 minutes per exercise in the target orange zone, while steering clear of too much red, which may be too intense. You also don't want to hang out in the green, or easy, zone too long.



Helaine Reaves joined Orangetheory in Washington in September and said she is hooked on the workout; she credits the technology and the competition it creates for her results.

"I'm very competitive, so you think that you're going to compete with others, but it's really just you and yourself, which I think is what moves you a little bit quicker and makes you dig in deeper," she said. "You can see what you're doing. I have my app at home. I've got all my workouts since September, so I can see what progress I've made, seeing where I need to add more workouts or back off makes it easier."



In a world where fitness offerings are more plentiful and varied than fried foods at a state fair, and words like "boutique" and "core" and "high-intensity" run rampant in the conversation, technology seems to be the winning hook. Tracking every move, every calorie, every heart beat, apparently makes sweating more palatable  and perhaps even more fun.



"I think technology enables the consumer to see results, understand how to work out better and, up until just a few years ago, I think the lack of technology made it very hard for people to hit their fitness goals," said Long. "How are they tracking progress? How are they understanding what things they're putting effort into are delivering results or not?"



And other newcomers are tapping into Orangetheory's success. Chuze Fitness, a much smaller chain based in Southern California, also offers heart rate monitoring. Chuze is a basic gym model, but also offers small trainer-based classes and has movie screens on the walls  showing films though, not heart rates.



"We've added amenities to really include what some of the big box clubs out there are offering, as well as bringing in the boutique studio concepts inside these big boxes, like the Orangetheories and some of these small studio concepts," said CEO Cory Brightwell.


There's an unwritten Murphy's law of retail: The bigger the hurry you're in, the longer the lines will be at the checkout counter. But at CES this year, a movement is on to make it easier to find what you want and get on with your day.

Leading the charge is a Denver start-up  Spruce Bot  that not only speeds up the checkout process, but lets brick-and-mortar retailers take advantage of a strength too many are ignoring  personal interaction with their customers.

"People will come into our shop and confess if they've been shopping with someone else because they feel guilty," said Taylor Romero, CEO of Spruce Bot. "We used technology to create human connections."



Picture this scenario: You walk up to the store and before you walk in, the clerk not only greets you by name, but asks about something the two of you talked about weeks ago. Or you visit your barber, who doesn't have to ask the usual questions about blade length or style preference.

Spruce Bot isn't an app. Romero theorizes that forcing customers to download and install something on their phone wouldn't work, since it's intrusive. (And, he said, they'd likely delete it as soon as they left the store anyway.) Rather it's a bot that customers connect with automatically when they log on to the store's Wi-Fi. Once they sign up (done by simply entering a confirmation code), they're tied into the system and able to use its features.



Those can be anything from instant discounts to an automated rewards card program (not having to remember to get them punched every time you buy something) to what's called a "handshake checkout."



In that last instance, once customers find a product they're interested in, they can simply remove the price tag, hand it to a sales person and walk out the door.



The start-up got its start at Spruce, a men's barbershop and clothier Romero also owns, but is looking for a wider footprint. It will deploy to some local Denver companies later this month and talks are underway with enterprise companies, Romero said.
Nationalizing the bank would be more of a political problem rather than an economic issue, he explained.

"It's here (in the stability of the Portuguese government) where I find risks," Diogo Teixeira dos Santos, chief executive officer at Optimize Investment Partners, told CNBC over the phone.

Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno told a newspaper on Wednesday that "all options are on the table", including nationalization. Earlier last year, the government had rebuffed calls for the nationalization of the bank.

The Portuguese Central Bank and government have to find a solution for Novo Banco by August  a deadline agreed with European regulators, after previous failed attempts to recover the 4.9 billion euros ($5.2 billion) used to save the bank.

There is another pressing issue to solve in Europe's banking system: Novo Banco  a Portuguese bank that emerged from the collapse of the country's biggest lender.

Portugal is being governed by a minority-socialist led government, who enjoys parliamentary support from two leftist parties (the Left Bloc and the Communist Party). Though there are no general elections scheduled for 2017, it is clear that there are divergent views between the three parties when it comes to Novo Banco, which could shake the stability of the government.

The Left Bloc has previously mentioned that Novo Banco should be state owned, but the government continues to push for a private solution  just like the Italian government did for Monte dei Paschi, until the political turmoil forced a state intervention.

More importantly, the leftist parties want the solution to have zero impact for taxpayers. The government lent nearly 4 billion euros to the rescue of the bank  an amount that it hopes to recover with a sale. Any losses from the sale will have to be paid gradually by the other Portuguese banks.

But, even the best private option at the moment has "a potential impact on public accounts," Lisbon's central bank said Wednesday. The bank announced that an offer from Lone Star, a U.S. fund, is the best placed in ongoing negotiations.

The bank failed to specify what that impact would be and was not available for further comment.

"The intention was always to sell the bank and the Bank of Portugal started seeking suitors in 2014, but had to shelve the process in September 2015 because the three bidders did not meet price expectations," Moody's said in a banking note last October.

"Novo Banco has a very weak credit profile, and it is highly unlikely that the Resolution Fund will obtain sufficient funds to reimburse those that were injected into Novo Banco at the time the bank was created and repay the outstanding government aid," Moody's added.

More worryingly, despite efforts to fix its asset risk challenges, Portugal's third-largest lender has little chances of succeeding.

"We view that despite Novo Banco's efforts to address its asset risk challenges, Portugal's economic growth prospects (we expect GDP to grow by 1.1% in 2016 and 1.3% in 2017) are not sufficiently robust to enable a substantial decline in the bank's very large stock of problematic assets," Moody's concluded.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.


On Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016, after a night of unrest prompted by the fatal police shooting of a black man, Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn said his review of body camera video of the incident proved the officer had acted appropriately.

The individual did turn toward the officer with a firearm in his hand, Flynn stated, later saying the man, 23-year-old Sylville Smith, was raising up with the gun.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said a still photo he was shown from the video demonstrates, without question, that (Smith) had a gun in his hand. In fact, Barrett declared, the officer ordered that individual to drop his gun, the individual did not drop his gun.

This purportedly exculpatory video itself was not promptly released, despite requests from Barrett and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that this occur. It still has not been released. But we know now that public officials did not give an accurate account of what it shows.

We know that because, in mid-December, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm filed criminal charges against Dominique Heaggan-Brown, the former Milwaukee police officer who killed Smith. (Heaggan-Brown was fired over an alleged sexual assault shortly after the shooting.)

According to the criminal complaint charging the officer with first-degree reckless homicide, Smith held a gun as the officer fired his first shot. Smith, struck in the arm, pitched the gun over a fence and fell to the ground. The officer then fired a second, fatal shot to Smiths chest.

A review of the body camera video from (both officers at the scene) confirms that at the time of the second shot, Smith was unarmed and had his hands near his head, the complaint says.

A 2014 state law governing investigations of police shootings requires that gathered materials be released if a decision is made not to file charges. The law is otherwise silent as to whether and when these materials are released.

Barrett has renewed his call for release, while Flynn has weighed in against this. Chisholm told me his office will not release this evidence prior to its use in a criminal proceeding.

In this case, I believe, it is already too late to restore confidence in the integrity of the process. Flynns representations about the video were at best misleading, and Barretts statements suggest he was misled, as was the public.

The whole point of outfitting police with cameras, at taxpayer expense, is to ensure truthfulness and enhance accountability. That did not happen here. And many more months may pass before the video is released.

Other jurisdictions have more enlightened policies. In Chicago, for instance, videos of police shootings are normally released within 60 days, and posted online.

In the legislative session that begins in January, there will likely be renewed efforts to establish consistent state policies regarding police body cameras; a bill to do so in the last session went nowhere.

Now is the time, in the wake of this regrettable case, for the citizens of Wisconsin to insist that the video records they are paying for are not kept secret, or used to mislead them.
The Mexican peso does not look attractive just yet, despite its recent surge following currency intervention by Mexico's central bank, Wells Fargo Securities currency strategist Eric Viloria told CNBC on Friday.

"Given that we would expect continued variability, probably stay clear of it, and then maybe look to buy into some weakness if we're looking out over the longer term," he told "Squawk Box."

On Thursday, the Banco de Mexico intervened to try to stabilize and strengthen the turbulent currency. The peso fell to record lows on Wednesday on worries that President-elect Donald Trump might impose sweeping changes to U.S. trade policy.

Going forward, Viloria said: "We think that it could go lower, but that over time we would expect that it could stabilize, maybe in the coming quarters."
"Sometimes a bit underestimated and in the shadow of the French and German elections, the Dutch elections will be seen as another test case of whether populist parties can make it into government in a core euro zone country," Brzeski explained.

The Dutch elections "are the prelude for the dominant theme of the year 2017 for the euro zone: Politics," Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING in Germany told CNBC via email.

After the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, the Netherlands will give the first indication of whether populism will shape 2017 too .

Dutch voters are heading to the polls in March, the first important election in what will be a key political year in Europe.

The political calendar in 2017 is already quite full. The Netherlands have their general election on March 15. France chooses its next president in May and Germany will vote for the country's chancellery after the summer. Italy is also set for fresh general elections, though the date isn't confirmed yet. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) will be tackling two thorny issues: the U.K.'s Brexit and making sure Greece sticks to the terms of its rescue.

Against this backdrop, analysts wonder how well populist parties will do in the elections. At the moment, opinion polls are projecting the anti-European Party for Freedom will win the Dutch election. However, given the fragmentation of the Dutch political scene, the party's leader, Geert Wilders, in unlikely to get a majority.

"We expect further fragmentation of the political landscape, and, as a result, difficulties in forming a new government coalition," economists at Rabobank told CNBC via email.

"At least four parties will be required to achieve a majority in both the lower and upper house of parliament. Populist parties (most notably the Freedom Party and Elderly Party [50PLUS]) are expected to do well in the elections."

The bank admitted that the controversial Wilders  who was convicted of discrimination against Moroccans at a political rally in 2015  could become the next prime minister. However, his push for a Dutch departure from the EU is unlikely to materialize in such scenario.

"Even if that happens the odds of a Nexit, or other very radical policies, are still quite slim, due to the coalition system in the Netherlands and the bicameral structure of parliament," the economists at Rabobank said.

However, the possibility of an extreme-right prime minister could see repercussions in the other EU countries.

"An interesting element of Dutch politics is that in many ways it is a front-runner for political trends in all of Europe. Populist parties already made it into government in the early 2000s and coalition-forming has become more complicated due to the rise of populist parties on both the right and the left wing of the political spectrum," Brzeski told CNBC.

Furthermore, an election outcome supportive of anti-European policies could be "harmful" for the investment climate in the Netherlands, Brzeski added. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.


While job growth in December disappointed and the unemployment rate got worse, the chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds warned Friday that the U.S. labor force is running out of "well-qualified" American workers.



"We actually need more immigration," David Kelly told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street," calling into question any policies that restrict skilled immigrants from entering the U.S. to take jobs that can't be filled by the existing labor pool.

"We need these workers," he stressed. "We're almost out of well-qualified native-born workers."



Kelly said he's concerned by "signs of further restrictions on immigration in this country," referring to a bill that was reintroduced in Congress this week to restrict H-1B visas, which allow nonimmigrant foreign workers in specialty fields. Republicans and Donald Trump are pushing to have businesses hire more American-born workers.

Politics aside, Kelly said, "One of the remarkable things about the labor market over the next 10 years is [that] around 85 percent of the new growth in the working-age population is going to have to come from immigrants, not from the native-born population."

In a government report that lags its monthly employment snapshot, there were 5.5 million job openings as of the last business day of October, according to the most recent JOLTS, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

The Labor Department on Friday morning said the U.S. economy added 156,000 nonfarm payrolls in December, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7 percent. Both were overshadowed by a sharp gain in wages.
The lift in December's average hourly earnings of 2.9 percent was the best in the recovery and nicely tied up the Obama administration's legacy, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told CNBC on Friday.

"The wage growth is the best wage growth we've seen in the recovery," the outgoing Labor chief told "Squawk on the Street." "I'm heartened by the wage growth we've seen not just in this report, but in the recent trend data, and we've got to continue to sustain that progress."

Friday's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics said wages grew by 10 cents to $26 after November's slide.

It also said the unemployment rate climbed to 4.7 percent and nonfarm payrolls grew by 156,000 in December, missing economists' expectations of 178,000. The gain brought 2016's total added jobs to 2.2 million, down about half a million from last year.

Perez said minimum wage increases last year in states like California and New York boosted the states' economies and enriched their residents, despite criticism that the hikes could kill jobs.

"If those doomsayers are correct that minimum wage increases are a job killer, then we would've seen evidence of that in all these statewide minimum wage increases that have been enacted with the strong support and encouragement of the Obama administration," Perez said.

"And guess what? Once again, the evidence shows that people have more money in their pockets and it hasn't been a job killer," he continued.

Looking ahead, he said the most important thing for his designated successor, CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder, to keep in mind is the rapidly changing nature of the job market.

"I think a key to success for all the workers in this country is to make sure that we equip them not only with the skills to do today's jobs, but the core competencies to do tomorrow's jobs," Perez said.

He said new technologies like autonomous vehicles and the cloud could be job creators if the Labor Department can anticipate their developments. For example, autonomous vehicles will eventually need repairmen, he said.

"We're the department of opportunity," Perez said. "We invest not only in the skills of today, but producing folks who may have been yesterday's steelworker, but now they're today's advanced manufacturer."

Perez called the Bush 43 administration's decreased spending on federal employment and training initiatives "short-sighted," arguing that investment in "human capital" is the best investment a government can make in an era of innovation.

"You can't swim upstream against innovation," the Labor secretary contended. "But what you can do is equip people with the tools to handle innovation."
Just months after creating the Governor's Task Force on Opioid Abuse, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called a special session of the Legislature on Thursday to "ramp up the state's response" to heroin and opioid abuse.

Walker toured the state to sign three executive orders Thursday, stopping at HSHS St. Joseph's Hospital in Chippewa Falls to sign the third.

What most people don't realize, he said, is that heroin, meth and opioid abuse stems from prescription drug abuse.

"This is a public health crisis, and every one of us has a job to play in this," Walker said. "We need to change our perspective as patients, change the mindset that prescription drugs aren't dangerous because they aren't illegal."

While the orders speak specifically about heroin and opioids, Walker said these treatments and recovery options apply to addiction in general.

"When you talk about addiction it goes across the board," he said. "A lot of people think heroin and meth is somebody else's problem. This is our problem."

The executive orders would require state agencies to take further action to combat opioid abuse and addiction, and the Department of Health Services to apply for federal funding for programs responding to the opioid crisis.

Walker is reasonably confident the special session, which he called to demand immediate action, will move quickly through the Assembly and Senate, as legislators have acted quickly on his Heroin, Opiate Prevention & Education agenda items in the past.

"It will go through the legislative process in short order," Walker said. "We can sign in the coming month or two, which is critically important."

The special session will consider action on 11 items, all of which come from recommendations the Task Force on Opioid Abuse released in its report Thursday. Among them, lawmakers are called to:

Allow school personnel to administer drugs to counteract opioid overdoses.

Permit the UW Office of Educational Opportunity to charter a recovery school for high school students who need in-patient care for opioid addiction, allowing them to stay in school during the treatment.

Require pharmacists to prescribe cough syrups and medications currently available over the counter that contain codeine, an opioid.

Permit relatives to commit a drug-addicted family member, similar to the current laws for alcoholism.

Give limited immunity from criminal prosecution to people who overdose and then dial 911 to seek help.
Donald Trump's Cabinet picks lack experience and expertise in the complex issues that are key to success in running their agencies, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer told CNBC on Friday.



The Maryland Democrat singled out former Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson, the president-elect's choice for secretary of State.



"I'm sure Mr. Tillerson is a very able individual," Hoyer told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "But one of his problems is he's dealt not so much on the foreign policy issues ... as he has with the economics issues."



"The welfare of his corporation" has been his focus, "as opposed to necessarily the welfare of his country," the congressman said.

Tillerson faces a contentious confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill later this month  not only on his experience but also his perceived close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he's negotiated business deals concerning Exxon.
Donald Trump on Friday said he had a "constructive" meeting with intelligence officials but did not say whether he accepted the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia tried to influence the U.S. election.

After talking to intelligence leaders, Trump said in a statement that breaches had "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines." However, he stopped short of addressing specific hacking and meddling allegations against Russia, instead highlighting cyberthreats posed by "Russia, China, other countries" and "outside groups and people."

"I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation," Trump said. "While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

He continued: "Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America's safety and security will be my number one priority."

Intelligence officials were expected Friday to release parts of a report that led them to conclude that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election, allegations that Trump has repeatedly decried as an effort to discredit him. A Trump transition spokesman did not immediately respond to a request to comment on whether he has accepted the intelligence community accusations that Russia directed attacks on Democrats.

On Friday, Trump argued that previous breaches of U.S. institutions did not get as much attention as the Russia accusations, which have prompted Obama administration sanctions and bipartisan calls for tougher responses to cyberattacks.



Just hours before his briefing, Trump told The New York Times that the focus on Russia is a "political witch hunt." Trump for months has downplayed the accusations that Russia interfered with the process. He has sowed doubts by claiming that his opponents are using hacking accusations to discredit his electoral win.

Russia has denied links to the breaches of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.



The Department of Homeland Security and FBI previously released limited details on the methods they say Russian civilian and military intelligence services used to breach U.S. political institutions. A more in-depth unclassified report is expected to be made public.



Trump expressed skepticism about the intelligence community's conclusion well before the election. At the third presidential debate in October, after the intelligence community first said it believed Russia directed the recent email breaches, Trump contended that Clinton "had no idea" if Russia was responsible and that "China or anybody else" could have done it.

In early December, he attacked the CIA's credibility based on its conclusions about weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq War, saying that "it's now time to move on."

He questioned the motivations of the intelligence community on Twitter this week, as well.
Donald Trump, accompanied by his family, speaks before they cut a ribbon during the grand opening of Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC on Wednesday October 26, 2016.

The auto sector has been under pressure ever since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize the manufacturing of vehicles outside of America. General Motors and Toyota have both been targets of this, but one analyst told CNBC that Trump's trade policy is flawed and his trade chiefs were "barking" up the wrong tree.

Barings Head of Multi-Asset Marino Valensise told CNBC Friday that there are three things that the new administration is going to do. The first two include cutting corporation tax and more infrastructure project.

"The third is trade and personally I am very worried about that because the troika that has been put in place  Peter Navarro, Trump's pick as Trade advisor, Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce designate, and Robert Lighthizer, the United States Trade representative designate  the people who are going to influence trade policies in the States have got very peculiar ideas."

Velensise further explained that the new administration is "barking at the wrong tree" because even China has been losing manufacturing jobs.

"They have lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs in the past five years. The world is moving forward. Less manufacturing and more services," Valensise said.
A supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waves a flag against an electronic billboard during a rally in Kizilay Square on July 18, 2016, in Ankara, Turkey.

After years of economic expansion, the Turkish economy is set to continue struggling in 2017 on the back of growing terrorist acts, lack of structural reforms, falling tourism figures and increased political uncertainty.

Growth is expected to contract 2.9 percent in 2016, the International Monetary Fund said last November. But as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushes to consolidate power, 2017 could be a lot worse.

"Turkey had sort of a perfect storm last year," Lubomir Mitov, chief central and eastern European economist at Unicredit, told CNBC on Friday.

This storm was caused by several political developments. Turkey's relationship with Moscow deteriorated after a Russian warplane was shot down when it entered into Turkish airspace; there was a failed coup last July to bring down President Erdogan; as well as "an acceleration in the intensity of terror acts" on Turkish soil, Mitov said.

The have also been fighting against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS).

During New Year's Eve celebrations, 39 people, including more than two dozen foreigners, were killed in a nightclub. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

The political context "comes against the background of a quite difficult economic situation," Mitov told CNBC.
SYRACUSE, N.Y.  Syracuse University on Wednesday announced the appointment of Amir Rahnamay-Azar as the schools new senior VP and CFO.

His appointment is effective Feb. 15 and is subject to the approval of the board of trustees, Syracuse University said in a news release issued Wednesday.

Rahnamay-Azar will direct the universitys finance and administration functions.

He takes over for interim CFO Gwenn Judge. She assumed the responsibility following the departure of Louis Marcoccia, who retired in June.

Amir is the kind of strategic thinker, pragmatic financial leader and experienced manager that Syracuse University needs as we position ourselves for significant growth and success in the coming years, Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud said in the release. It is important that our fiscal position supports the ambitious vision and goals laid out in the academic strategic plan. I feel fortunate that we have found a CFO with the experience required and a track record of success.

About the new CFO

Rahnamay-Azar most recently served as CFO at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, where he stepped down June 30 to spend more time with my growing family, according to a July 7 article on the website of the Pittsburgh Business Times. The quote was part of an email message sent to the CMU finance division on May 17, the article said.

In his time at CMU, Rahnamay-Azar was responsible for strategic leadership of central-administrative functions including campus design and facilities development, computing services, budget and financial planning, treasury operations, international finance, controller and audit services, and financial systems, Syracuse University said.

He also directed the implementation of CMUWorks, a service center for human resources, payroll, business systems transactions and support.

Rahnamay-Azar was also responsible for the planning, design, construction and renovation of university facilities, including more than $350 million in capital projects involving campus facilities.

Prior to his tenure at Carnegie Mellon, Rahnamay-Azar served as senior VP for administration and finance at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

He also earlier served as associate senior VP of operations at the University of Southern California.

New role

In his new role at Syracuse University, Rahnamay-Azar will oversee treasury and university investments, along with finance and comptroller functions, planning and budget activities, facilities, campus services, auxiliary services, and risk management, the school said.

He will also provide administrative guidance to the director of internal audit and will work with the chancellor and the chancellors executive team in the allocation and oversight of the universitys operating budget.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
BINGHAMTON, N.Y.  Coughlin & Gerhart, LLP recently announced that attorney Brady L. Begeal became a partner in the firm, effective Jan. 1.

A graduate of Albany Law School, Begeal joined Coughlin & Gerhart in 2010 as a summer associate and in August 2011 became an associate.

Begeals practice is concentrated in business and banking law, commercial law, and municipal and public sector law, the law firm said.

Begeal is a member of the Broome County and New York State Bar Associations, is a graduate of the Broome Leadership Institute (BLI), and is the legal community campaign coordinator for the United Way of Broome County.

Coughlin & Gerhart, which was founded in the 1890s, says it has grown to be a multi-service law firm, with more than 50 lawyers and a professional support staff. The firms main office is located at 99 Corporate Drive in Binghamton. It also has other branch offices in Bainbridge, Ithaca, Owego, Hancock, Walton, as well as Montrose, Pennsylvania.

Contact The Business Journal News Network at news@cnybj.com
The Mint's America the Beautiful quarter dollar for the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Indiana depicts Clark leading his men through the flooded plains approaching Fort Sackville.

The America the Beautiful quarter dollar for Ellis Island National Monument (Statue of Liberty) for New Jersey depicts an immigrant family approaching Ellis Island. The hospital building can be seen in the background.

The quarter dollar celebrating the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., depicts Frederick Douglass seated at a writing desk with his home in Washington, D.C., in the background.

The quarter dollar for the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa depicts an aerial view of Native American mounds in the Marching Bear Group.

The United States Mint started the year by releasing images of the Proof versions of the 2017-S America the Beautiful quarter dollars during the first week of 2017.

The new year means new coins for circulation and for collectors, and the United States Mint started the year by releasing images of the Proof versions of the 2017-S America the Beautiful quarter dollars during the first week of 2017.

While the Mint had announced the winning designs previously and released line art of the five coins on Sept. 1, 2016, the new images are the first of the actual coins. The photos were released about a day before the Mints first numismatic product of 2017  the America the Beautiful Quarters 2017 Proof set  went on sale.

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Over the years, the Mint has expanded the number of annual sets it offers to customers, from annual editions of the standard Proof set, Silver Proof set, and Uncirculated Mint set. With the State quarter dollars program in 1999, the Mint began offering an annual Proof set containing just the copper-nickel clad State quarter dollars. In 2004, it added another Proof set, this one containing the years five State quarter dollars in the 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper composition. The Mint has continued offering the two separate quarter dollars Proof sets since, through the end of the State quarters program into the 2009 District of Columbia and U.S. Territories quarter dollars program, and the 2010 to date America the Beautiful quarter dollars series.

The 2017 set contains five coins, as follows:

??Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa: depicts an aerial view of Native American mounds in the Marching Bear Group; designed by Artistic Infusion Program designer Richard Masters, sculptured by U.S. Mint Sculptor-Engraver Renata Gordon.

??Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.: depicts Frederick Douglass seated at a writing desk with his home in Washington, D.C., in the background; designed by AIP designer Thomas Hipschen and sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Phebe Hemphill.

??Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri: reflects Alley Mill, a steel roller mill built in 1894. This merchant mill was used to convert wheat into flour. Much of the original milling equipment is still in place, and visitors to the park can tour the mill; designed by AIP designer Ronald D. Sanders, sculptured by Gordon.

?Ellis Island National Monument (Statue of Liberty) for New Jersey: depicts an immigrant family approaching Ellis Island with a mixture of hope and uncertainty. The hospital building can be seen in the background; designed by AIP designer Barbara Fox and sculptured by Hemphill.

?George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Indiana: depicts George Rogers Clark leading his men through the flooded plains approaching Fort Sackville. Designed by AIP designer Frank Morris and sculptured by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Michael Gaudioso.

Multiple versions of each

The 2017 America the Beautiful quarter dollars will be issued in multiple versions: in circulation-strike quality versions struck at the Denver and Philadelphia Mints for release into circulation via the Federal Reserve and for collector sales by the Mint in roll and bag quantities; in circulation-strike quality versions struck at the San Francisco Mint for numismatic sales in roll and bag quantities; in the aforementioned copper-nickel clad and silver Proof versions in various sets; and in numismatic and bullion versions of the 5-ounce .9999 fine silver coins in each design.

For details, contact the U.S. Mint.
A 179.50-ounce gold Justh & Hunter ingot with heavy incrustation from the rusted hull of the SS Central America sold for $376,000 at Heritages Jan. 5 Platinum Night auction. It was one of several ingots from the company offered in the auction.

Two notable gold items  an 1851 RE Humbert $50 slug and a gold ingot recovered from the SS Central America  highlighted Heritage's Platinum Night auction at FUN. Flip through this slide show to see each item.

The following is part one of our 2017 FUN Platinum Night auction coverage. Links to additional coverage can be found at the bottom of this post.

A huge gold ingot recovered from a famous shipwreck topped Heritages Platinum Night auction on Jan. 5 at the Florida United Numismatists show in Fort Lauderdale.

The 327.97-ounce gold ingot emerged from the wreck of the SS Central America nearly 30 years ago and was produced during the California Gold Rush by Justh & Hunter, a company that was little-known until 86 of its gold bars were discovered on the Central America.

While the bar is not dated, Justh & Hunter began advertising in California newspapers in May 1855 and the ship sank in a hurricane in September 1857. To put its size in perspective: it weighs 20.49 pounds and at its time of casting had a value of $6,162.78. At the FUN auctions it sold for $564,000.

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The heavy metal came from the Arizona Treasure Collection, a consignment that included several other important bars from the California Gold Rush. Perhaps the most handsome was a beautifully crusty 179.5-ounce gold Justh & Hunter ingot that realized $376,000. All six sides showed evidence of its time in the rusted iron hull of the SS Central America via reddish-brown color, adding character and reminding its owner of its long, undisturbed time in the Atlantic Ocean.

2017 FUN Convention: Check out the full schedule!

The leading gold coin in the auction, at $352,500, was also from the California Gold Rush era  an 1851 RE Humbert 887 THOUS. gold $50 pioneer slug graded Mint State 63 by Professional Coin Grading Service.

Its the finest example certified of the enduringly popular type by PCGS. Heritage writes, the importance of the 1851 fifty dollar gold coins can scarcely be overemphasized. Ask any advanced collector of Territorial gold to name the most significant and memorable coinage design from the early California Gold Rush period, and the Humbert-U.S. Assay Office octagonal fifty dollars will likely be the first named.

More 2017 FUN Platinum Night coverage:

FUN 2017: The high-priced rarities that fell short of their minimum bids:A number of the anticipated top lots at Heritage's FUN 2017 Platinum Night auction failed to meet their reserves set by consignors.



FUN 2017: The early U.S. numismatic treasures that headlined the year's first major sale: There were no million dollar standouts in this years offering. But that does not mean there weren't any notable coins exchanging hands..


All the medals and coins approved by last Congress

Three-inch bronze duplicate medal, illustrated, of the congressional gold medal recognizing the civil rights contributions of the Selma Foot Soldiers are offered for sale by the U.S. Mint, as is a 1.5-inch diameter bronze duplicate medal.

Legislation for a four-coin commemorative program honoring the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 lunar mission became law in December 2016. The shared reverse design of the Apollo 11 coins will be based on an iconic image of astronaut Buzz Aldrin taken on the lunar surface.

The United States Mint is in the last stages of a design competition for the 2018 Breast Cancer Awareness commemorative coin program. Legislation authorizing the coins became law during the 114th Congress.

There would be no Boys Town Centennial to celebrate with commemorative coins in 2017 had it not been for the efforts of founder Father Edward J. Flanagan.

Medal image courtesy of U.S. Mint; background image courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Participants in the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama that precipitated passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were recognized Feb. 24, 2016, with a congressional gold medal for their efforts in the struggle for civil rights.

The 114th Congress passed seven pieces of numismatic legislation in 20152016, approving three commemorative coin programs, three congressional gold medals, and a bill granting authority to the U.S. Mint to make certain compositional changes to U.S. silver coins and requiring that 2016 American Eagle silver dollars bear lettered edges, among other things.

Much of the action occurred in the last weeks of the second session of the 114th Congress, in December 2016, with two medals and one commemorative coin program authorized by law during the month.

Several pieces of legislation that became law during the past two years continued recent congressional trends to recognize little known and previously overlooked military units with gold medals, and to create coin programs designed to recognize service organizations and to raise funds for national causes that are widely recognized.

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One commemorative coin program will recognize one of mankinds greatest achievements on its 50th anniversary.

Boys Town Centennial

The first commemorative coins authorized by one of those bills will go on sale in 2017  H.R. 893, the Boys Town Centennial Commemorative Coin Act.

The act was signed into law by President Obama on July 6, 2015, after being passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was presented to President Obama on June 26, 2015.

The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., on Feb. 11, 2015, and passed the House on June 23. The House bill then passed in the Senate without amendment by unanimous consent on June 25.

A companion bill, S. 301, was also introduced in the Senate, and it had passed in that chamber by unanimous consent on March 25.

As reported in Coin World previously, the law authorizes three different 2017 commemorative coins  up to 50,000 gold $5 half eagles, as many as 350,000 silver dollars and not more than 300,000 copper-nickel clad half dollars in Proof and Uncirculated finishes.

Approved designs for the three-coin Program were unveiled Aug. 23, 2016, by the U.S. Mint at ceremonies held at Boys Town Music Hall in Boys Town, Neb.

The gold coins obverse features a portrait of Father Edward Flanagan. The obverse was designed by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program Designer Donna Weaver and sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Donald Everhart II.

The gold coin reverse depicts an outstretched hand holding a young oak tree growing from an acorn. As stated in the proverbial saying Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, this design represents the potential of each child helped by Boys Town to grow into a productive, complete adult.

The reverse was also designed by Weaver and sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Jim Licaretz.

The silver dollars obverse depicts a young girl sitting alone and gazing upward into the branches of an oak tree looking for help. The empty space around the girl is deliberate and meant to show the childs sense of loneliness, isolation, and helplessness.

The obverse was designed by AIP Designer Emily Damstra and sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph F. Menna.

The coins reverse depicts an oak tree offering shelter and a sense of belonging to the family holding hands below it, which includes the girl from the obverse.

The reverse was also designed by Damstra and sculptured by Menna.

The half dollar obverse depicts an older brother holding the hand of his younger brother in 1917. They walk toward Father Flanagans Boys Home and the 1940s pylon representing what would become Boys Town.

The obverse was designed by AIP Designer Chris Costello and sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Renata Gordon.

The coins reverse depicts a present-day Boys Town neighborhood of homes where children are schooled and nurtured by caring families. Out of these homes come young adults who graduate from high school and the Boys Town program. The reverse, also designed by Costello, was sculptured by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Phebe Hemphill.

Boys Town is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving children and healing families, developed from Father Flanagans Boys Home, which Flanagan founded on Dec. 12, 1917.

Surcharges of $35 per $5 coin, $10 per dollar and $5 per half dollar are to be paid to Boys Town to carry out Boys Towns cause of caring for and assisting children and families in underserved communities across America.

Breast Cancer coins

President Obama signed into law on April 29, 2016, the Breast Cancer Awareness Commemorative Coin Act, Public Law 114-148. The law authorizes the first U.S. coin in pink gold, to be issued in 2018.

In June 2015, U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., and U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, introduced in the U.S. House H.R. 2722, the Breast Cancer Awareness Commemorative Coin Act, which authorizes the production and release of the commemorative coins in 2018.

The U.S. Mint has already begun the process of securing a vendor or vendors to supply the planchets for the up to a combined 50,000 Proof and Uncirculated $5 half eagles in pink gold with a composition not less than 75 percent pure gold.

The act also mandates the production and release in Proof and Uncirculated versions of up to 400,000 silver dollars on planchets of not less than 90 percent silver, as well as up to a maximum 750,000 copper-nickel clad half dollars.

The enabling legislation provides for conducting a public design competition juried by three members each from the Commission of Fine Arts and Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, with the Treasury secretary as chairman.

The competition is being conducted in two phases.

The Phase I application process opened Aug. 1, 2016, and closed Oct. 17. Applicants in Phase I were to submit a portfolio of past work examples for consideration.

Up to 20 artists evaluated from Phase I were selected to participate in Phase 2, which will require submission of proposed designs or final plaster models for the Breast Cancer Awareness coins.

Artists selected to participate in Phase 2 were to be notified Nov. 14 of their selection.

Final submissions must be received by Jan. 31, 2017; winners will be announced in June 2017.

Invited artists in Phase 2 will be compensated $1,000 for their work and be eligible for an additional $10,000 if their obverse or reverse design is selected to appear on a coin.

The initials of each winning artist will appear on the coin bearing their design.

The final designs approved will be sculptured by members of the U.S. Mints engraving staff.

Apollo 11 50th Anniversary

President Obama on Dec. 16, 2016, signed into law H.R. 2726, the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act, Public Law 114-282.

The bill was passed by voice vote in the full House on Dec. 5. The Senate approved the same measure by voice vote on the evening of Dec. 10.

The measure authorizes the most ambitious commemorative coin program in years in that it approves four coins. No commemorative program has featured more than three coins since the 19851986 program for the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games. The 2019 program would be the first U.S. commemorative coin program to offer two silver dollars of different specifications.

The law authorizes:

??A gold $5 half eagle of standard specifications, with a mintage limited to 50,000 coins.

??A silver dollar of standard specifications, limited to a mintage of 400,000 coins.

??A copper-nickel clad half dollar of standard specifications, limited to a mintage of 750,000.

??A silver dollar of the same specifications as the current America the Beautiful 3-inch 5-ounce .999 fine silver bullion coins, limited to a maximum of 100,000 pieces.

The three standard coins can be issued in both Proof and Uncirculated versions, while the 5-ounce silver dollar can be struck only with a Proof finish.

The Apollo 11 commemorative coin program will emulate the 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame coin program in that all four coins are to be concave/convex in shape.

Furthermore, It is the sense of Congress that, to the extent possible without significantly adding to the purchase price of the coins, the coins minted under this Act should be produced with the design of the reverse of the coins continuing over what would otherwise be the edge of the coins, such that the reverse design extends all the way to the obverse design.

These special provisions will challenge the United States Mints technical departments, especially for the 5-ounce silver dollar. While the Mint now has experience in striking copper-nickel clad half dollars, silver dollars, and gold half eagles with a concave/convex shape, and years of experience striking 3-inch 5-ounce silver coins, it has not produced a concave/convex 5-ounce coin. The suggestion that the reverse design continue over the edge to the obverse side will also require experimentation and testing by the Mint.

The House legislation stated, The design on the common reverse of the coins minted under this Act shall be a representation of a close-up of the famous Buzz Aldrin on the Moon photograph taken July 20, 1969, that shows just the visor and part of the helmet of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, in which the visor has a mirrored finish and reflects the image of the United States flag and the lunar lander and the remainder of the helmet has a frosted finish.

The measure also dictates how the designs are to be selected: The Secretary shall hold a juried, compensated competition to determine the design of the common obverse of the coins minted under this Act, with such design being emblematic of the United States space program leading up to the first manned Moon landing.

Proposals for the obverse design of coins minted under this Act may be submitted in accordance with the design selection and approval process developed by the Secretary in the sole discretion of the Secretary. ... As part of the competition described in this subsection, the Secretary may accept proposals from artists, engravers of the United States Mint, and members of the general public, and any designs submitted for the design review process described herein shall be anonymized until a final selection is made.

The Senate passed the measure Dec. 10.

The prices for each of the three standard coins bear standard surcharges: $5 for the half dollar, $10 for the dollar and $35 for the half eagle; and the 5-ounce silver dollar bears a surcharge of $50.

The surcharges raised through sales of the coins, once statutory requirements are met, are to be distributed to the Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museums Destination Moon exhibit, to the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, and to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

Selma Foot Soldiers

The first congressional gold medal approved during the 114th Congress honored the Selma Foot Soldiers, whose protests in 1965 helped lead to passage of the Voting Rights Act. The civil rights advocated were recognized Feb. 24, 2016, on Capitol Hill with the presentation of the congressional gold medal.

The enabling legislation, Public Law 114-5, was signed into law by President Obama on March 7, 2015, the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, so named for the protesters blood spilled by Alabama State Police. It was the first of three marches attempted from Selma, Ala., to the state capital to Montgomery, in search of equality in the voting process.

The marchers had assembled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to begin their quest. The hundreds of protesters were led by John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which attempted to register African-Americans to vote throughout the state of Alabama, and the Rev. Hosea Williams, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Lewis is currently a U.S. congressman who has represented Georgias Fifth Congressional District since elected to Congress in November 1986. Lewis is senior chief deputy whip for the Democratic Party in leadership in the House.

Williams, who continued his civil rights efforts and community service for decades, died at age 74 in 2000.

The obverse design of the congressional gold medal was created by U.S. Mint Artistic Infusion Program artist Donna Weaver. Weaver is a former sculptor-engraver for the U.S. Mint who retired from government service in 2006 after six years on the Mints staff. The design was sculptured by U.S. Mint Medallic Sculptor Phebe Hemphill.

The design captures the Selma Foot Soldiers with arms locked as they march en masse across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The adopted obverse is slightly modified from that recommended June 16 and June 18, 2015, respectively, by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and Commission of Fine Arts.

The top and bottom border inscriptions are switched from the reviewed design. The wide rim from the original sketch of the recommended obverse design was removed, with that element moved to the reverse.

Weaver also designed the reverse, which was sculptured by U.S. Mint Medallic Sculptor Michael Gaudioso. The designs central device depicts an individuals left hand placing a completed ballot into a ballot box, all superimposed over an American flag.

Three-inch and 1.5-inch bronze duplicates of the congressional gold medal are offered for sale to the public by the U.S. Mint.

Filipino Veterans

S. 1555, introduced in the Senate on June 11, 2015, by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, calls for a congressional gold medal to recognize Filipino veterans who honorably served at any time during the period beginning July 26, 1941, and ending Dec. 31, 1946.

The measure passed the Senate on July 13, 2016, and the House approved the measure on Nov. 30. It became Public Law 114-265 when President Obama signed the bill on Dec. 14, 2016.

As stated in the legislation, Filipinos participated in the war out of national pride, as well as out of a commitment to the Allied forces struggle against fascism. 57,000 Filipinos in uniform died in the war effort. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 700,000 to upwards of 1,000,000, or between 4.38 to 6.25 percent of the prewar population of 16,000,000.

The legislation added, The Filipino Veterans of World War II fought alongside, and as an integral part of, the United States Armed Forces. The Philippines remained a territory of the United States for the duration of the war and, accordingly, the United States maintained sovereignty over Philippine foreign relations, including Philippine laws enacted by the Philippine Government.

Filipinos who fought in the Philippines were not only defending or fighting for the Philippines, but also defending, and ultimately liberating, sovereign territory held by the United States Government. ... The United States remains forever indebted to the bravery, valor, and dedication that the Filipino Veterans of World War II displayed. Their commitment and sacrifice demonstrates a highly uncommon and commendable sense of patriotism and honor.

The legislation adds: Following the award of the gold medal in honor of the Filipino Veterans of World War II, the gold medal shall be given to the Smithsonian Institution, where it will be available for display as appropriate and made available for research. ... It is the sense of Congress that the Smithsonian Institution should make the gold medal received ... available for display elsewhere, particularly at other appropriate locations associated with the Filipino Veterans of World War II.

The medal is to bear appropriate designs and the Mint is permitted to issue collector versions in bronze.

Office of Strategic Services

As part of the flurry of legislative activity near the end of the 114th Congress, S. 2234, the Office of Strategic Services Congressional Gold Medal Act, became law.

S. 2234 was introduced Nov. 4, 2015, by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to recognize with a congressional gold medal the services of representatives of all branches of the U.S. armed forces attached to the OSS during World War II. The bill passed the Senate on Feb. 22, 2016, and the House gave its approval on Nov. 30. President Obama signed the act on Dec. 14, creating Public Law 114-269.

The OSS, according to the legislative text, was Americas first effort to implement a system of strategic intelligence during World War II and provided the basis for the modern-day American intelligence and special operations communities. The U.S. Special Operations Command and the National Clandestine Service chose the OSS spearhead as their insignias.

Following the public presentation of the approved congressional gold medals, each is to be delivered to the Smithsonian Institution for future display and research.

The Treasury secretary has the discretion to authorize the U.S. Mint to strike 1.5-inch and 3-inch bronze duplicates of each congressional gold medal for sale to the public.

Silver composition changes

Treasury Department and U.S. Mint officials now have authority to change the 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper alloy used for commemorative silver dollars and the coins in the annual Silver Proof sets.

They were granted the authority when President Obama on Dec. 4, 2015, signed into law H.R. 1698, the Bullion and Collectible Coin Production and Efficiency and Cost Savings Act.

The technical correction legislation was included in a large transportation bill signed into law by Obama.

The Roosevelt dime, America the Beautiful quarter dollars, and Kennedy half dollar currently produced in Proof at the San Francisco Mint for several annual Proof sets, all modern commemorative silver dollars, and various other special silver collector coins, are composed of 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper. That composition was first authorized to be used for U.S. silver coinage in the 1830s. While abandoned for circulation coinage under the Coinage Act of 1965, the alloy was resurrected with the resumption of commemorative coin production in 1982 and Silver Proof sets in 1992.

Under The Bullion and Collectible Coin Production and Efficiency and Cost Savings Act, the language 90 percent silver 10 percent copper that has been a part of the United States Code is now replaced with not less than 90 percent silver. However, the technical amendment does not specify what the balance of the coinage alloy would be; it grants the U.S. Mint leeway in adjusting the silver content with the Treasury secretarys approval as long as the composition is not less than 90 percent silver.

H.R. 1698 was originally introduced in March of 2015 by Rep. William P. Huizenga, R-Mich., chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, and passed by the House in June and forwarded to the Senate. The measure was one of several freestanding bills to be incorporated into the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation Act, also known as FAST Act.

The pertinent sections for the U.S. silver composition modifications are under Title LXXIII of FAST Act, beginning on Page 1264 of 1301.

The measure was also responsible for ordering changes to the edge of collector versions of the American Eagle silver dollars issued in 2016.

The Title LXXIII language mandated that the edges of Proof and Uncirculated silver American Eagles with the W Mint mark of the West Point Mint issued in 2016 for the series 30th anniversary be smooth and be inscribed incuse with an anniversary designation. Since the measure became law in December of 2015, Mint officials were forced to delay release of the collector versions of the 2016 American Eagle silver dollars until experimentation on creating an inscribed edge was completed.

Additional language from H.R. 1698 confirms the Treasury secretarys discretion to allow the Mint to produce Proof and Uncirculated palladium numismatic coins bearing the West Point Mints W Mint mark. The approved language does not indicate moving forward with a bullion investment version. Production of a palladium U.S. coin is already authorized under provisions of the American Eagle Palladium Bullion Coin Act of 2010, Public Law 111-303.

Also adopted are changes in packaging to authorized purchasers for the American Buffalo 1-ounce .9999 fine gold bullion coin. The American Buffalo gold coins, made of pure gold and thus softer, are potentially more susceptible to casual damage than the American Eagle gold coins, which are alloyed with other metals.

The approved legislation also establishes the American Buffalo as the permanent .9999 fine gold bullion coin from the U.S. Mint.

This article includes text excerpted from earlier reporting by Paul Gilkes and Steve Roach.
The ladders and blackboards seen in this still from the new movie "Hidden Figures" are among several subtle nods, or easter eggs, to NASA's early space race history. (20th Century Fox)

Jan. 6, 2017

 The 20th Century Fox film "Hidden Figures" tells the untold story of the African-American women who worked for NASA as "human computers" in the early days of space race.



The movie, which opened wide in U.S. theaters on Friday (Jan. 6), recreates the settings and portrays some of the real-life people who made it possible for the United States to launch its first astronauts into space. "Hidden Figures" takes its audiences into the behind-the-scenes work of the Space Task Group at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and introduces them to mathematicians Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae).



The film as a whole is a nod to NASA's early years, but the filmmakers also included several "hidden" tributes to other history-making individuals, iconic photographs and even a few authentic artifacts. Here are five space history "easter eggs" you might not catch in "Hidden Figures."



(Fair warning: Although none of the details below directly disclose the plot of "Hidden Figures," there are mentions of specific movie scenes that are minor spoilers.)





1. Hidden artist





Though "Hidden Figures" primarily focuses on the "colored computers," the African-American mathematicians are not the only trailblazing women celebrated in the movie.



In a brief scene that goes by quickly, astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) is shown posing with his Mercury spacecraft for a reporter's photo while a woman dressed in coveralls kneels beside the capsule holding a paintbrush and small can. The scene is based on a NASA photo showing Glenn with spacecraft logo artist Cece Bibby.



"That's one of my favorite easter eggs in the movie," said Bill Barry, NASA's Chief Historian.







John Glenn (Glen Powell) and Cece Bibby (Cyndy Powell) pose for a reporter's photo in "Hidden Figures." (20th Century Fox)

Cecelia "Cece" Bibby, who died in 2012 at the age of 84, was recruited by Glenn to hand-paint the insignia on the outside of his Mercury spacecraft, Friendship 7. As such, she was the first and only woman to ascend the gantry and go inside the "white room" that surrounded the capsule on the launch pad.



In the movie, the scene is moved to inside a hangar, but otherwise is fairly faithful to the historic image, down to the McDonnell company logo on the back of Bibby's coveralls.



The scene also includes a second easter egg: the woman who portrays Bibby is Cyndy Powell, Glen Powell's mother.





2. 'Shoe-in' of a set





In its recreation of NASA, "Hidden Figures" includes sets that are based on real locations, like the Mercury Mission Control, but also features settings the filmmakers designed to make the movie more visually interesting.



"Langley was a series of red brick buildings, all with cinder block walls, and that is very good as a work environment but it is not necessarily the most interesting thing to look at when you are making a movie," stated production designer Wynn Thomas in an interview with collectSPACE.







The wind tunnel in "Hidden Figures" is not a set but rather a real Lockheed Martin facility dating to the 1960s. (20th Century Fox)

One location used in the film however, perfectly combined authenticity with aesthetics: the wind tunnel where aspiring engineer Mary Jackson (Monae) gets the heel of her shoe stuck in a grate before a test of the Mercury spacecraft.



The wind tunnel looked real because it was real.



"Fortunately, there is a Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Georgia that has a wind tunnel that they had not changed since they first built it, so it was period correct," described Thomas. "And we were very lucky, the timing was perfect for us, because they were about to fix it up  gut it, tear it up and put in a new one."





3. Want not, waste not





Most of the scenes in "Hidden Figures" that are presented as being at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, were filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, at Morehouse College and at area locations. But that does not mean that a bit of the real NASA facility did not make it into the movie.



"In the movie, when Johnson (Henson), Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) and Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) are standing in the lobby discussing if Johnson can join them in a meeting, you can see in the background two paintings of airplanes," said Barry. "They originally hung in the main headquarters building at Langley."



Today, that building is occupied by the Air Force, which no longer wants them, so NASA was  and at last check, still is  planning to excess them.







A painting that hung at the real Langley Research Center is seen in the background in "Hidden Figures." (20th Century Fox)

"The paintings are of the history of aviation, starting with Icarus and going up to jet airplanes," said Barry. "It just so happened the filmmakers were looking for things to add an atmosphere of NASA to the set and I knew about the three paintings heading for disposal." (Only two paintings appear in the film as the third was damaged.)



"So they diverted them to the movie," he said, noting there was a lot of legal paperwork involved. "But actual paintings the were hanging at Langley do appear in the movie."





4. From photo to film





Two prominent props in "Hidden Figures" were pulled from archival photographs found in space agency's archives.



Thomas and director Ted Melfi pored through photos and film reels to find scenes they could insert into the film (like the April 1959 Mercury astronaut press conference, which they moved up to the early 1960s to fit their timeline), or to ensure details were correct (the filmmakers even asked if there were period photos of the Langley parking lot so they could match the cars and trucks, according to Barry).



For the Space Task Group, Thomas recreated two types of objects seen in iconic photographs.



"We saw the image of the full-size blackboards, so clearly that was an element that needed to be in that room. How else do you tell a story about math?" he said, referring to a 1961 LIFE magazine photo of NASA engineers ascending ladders to all work on the same tall blackboard.







The plexiglass globes in "Hidden Figures" were recreated to match globes that appear in iconic NASA photos. (20th Century Fox)

Also in the room are several transparent nestled globes, which feature an internal sphere representing Earth and an outer sphere mapping the constellations and orbital paths.



"I wanted that globe after seeing a very famous picture of John Glenn. His face is right next to one of the plexiglass globes," said Thomas. "I felt that recreating that globe was a great way to center the movie [because] our story is all about getting around that globe."





5. Parting shot





The same globe, in smaller size, appears in Al Harrison's (Costner's) office (Harrison is a fictional character, loosely based on several real people, including Robert Gilruth, the head of the Space Task Group) and at the end of the film, on Katherine Johnson's desk.



NASA's archives include a few photos of Johnson at work at Langley, with a mechanical calculating machine and one of the globes adorning her desk.







The last scene in "Hidden Figures" captures Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) in a pose inspired by history. (20th Century Fox)

"Look at the very last image of the movie, we recreate that moment," said Thomas.



The camera angle is different than in the photograph, but it captures the spirit and, for those who recognize it, almost blends "Hidden Figures" into the real history that followed.



"The research from NASA was very inspirational." Thomas said.
Low water on the Mississippi River has high cost

A historically low Mississippi River has backed up barge traffic as demand rises. And there's no real end in sight.
Prominent Pastor in China Sentenced to Two-and-a-Half Years After a Year in Detention

Contact: ChinaAid Media Team, 432-553-1080 cell, 888-889-7757, 432-689-6985, media@chinaaid.org

GUIYANG, Guizhou, China, Jan. 6, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yang Hua, a house church pastor who has been detained since Dec. 9, 2015, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison by a court in China's central Guizhou province yesterday.



Photo: Yang Hua



Yang Hua, the common pseudonym of Li Guozhi, was accused of "divulging state secrets." He was originally detained during a raid on his church, Huoshi Church, when he tried to stop police from confiscating a hard drive. The prosecution appointed by the government reportedly tortured him in prison, but were not removed from his case, despite Yang's lawyers filing a lawsuit against them.

"This is nothing but purely barbaric religious persecution," said Bob Fu, president and founder of China Aid. "We urge President Obama and President-Elect Trump to unequivocally condemn this brutal act."

China Aid reports on cases of religious persecution and human rights abuse, such as the detention and trial of Yang Hua, in order to expose the Chinese government's mistreatment of Christians and other Chinese citizens.
France recently implemented a law giving workers "a right to disconnect" from email, messaging and calls after work. It may ultimately be ignored by many workers in France and scoffed at in the U.S., but it addresses a problem many employees deal with.

Emails arriving at night, on weekends and during vacation can create stress and interrupt family life. An "always on" culture can hurt productivity in the long run because employees don't get time to rest and recharge, say researchers. Some companies see the problem.

[To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page.]

Daimler AG, the German automotive giant, has an optional email feature called "Mail on Holiday." It automatically deletes incoming emails during time off. An auto reply offers alternative contacts or suggests resending messages once the employee returns. It's available to 100,000 workers in Germany.

"This prevents congestion in the electronic in-boxes, relieves the pressure of having to read emails during vacations, and the email in-box is empty when the employee returns to work," says Daimler in its employee guide.

The French law took effect Jan. 1 and requires firms with more than 50 employees to negotiate a "disconnection" rule governing after-hour and vacation communications.

The disconnection law was included in a package of comprehensive labor reforms that make it easier to reduce pay and cut workers. Thousands took to the streets in France this past summer to protest it.

"Because this law was very difficult to accept in France, a lot of goodies have been added in it," said France-based OpenVMS consultant Gerard Calliet. Those goodies include the disconnect law.

For Calliet, disconnecting is not an option as far as his client work is concerned.

France changed its labor laws to help lower its 10% unemployment rate. But James W. Gabberty, associate dean and professor of information systems at Pace University in New York, says the email rule will only erode productivity.

"Not confined to a 9-to-5 work regimen, inspiration -- the mother's milk driving innovation that underpins R&D -- depends on spontaneously capturing creative thinking," said Gabberty. That may involve capturing "these fleeting moments of genius" in an email "even when they occur after dinner or in the middle of the night."

But it's the downside of after-hour communication driving the French disconnect law.

Managers may think they are getting a short-term bump in productivity with a weekend email discussion, "but the long-term cost of that ends up hurting everyone," said William Becker, associate professor of management at Virginia Tech.

Becker was one of three researchers who collected data from nearly 300 working adults who published their findings this past summer. "What we found is people won't be able to disconnect from work and recuperate" if they are spending their off-time on work, Becker said.

Employees get exhausted and disengaged from work, which may lead to family problems and an unhappy employee, he said.

But disconnecting is hard, especially for people who work in IT.

"Personally, I think it's a great policy that gives people their lives back," said Alan MacDougall, director of educational technology at the University of New Haven, of the French law. But MacDougall can't imagine that law working for him.

"I went 12 hours without checking my email once over the winter break and of course, the amount of email that piled up was a disincentive to repeat the behavior again," said MacDougall.

He doesn't see America's always-on work culture changing, particularly "when the person leading the country can never turn off," said MacDougall, referring to President-elect Donald Trump's tweeting at all hours.

Maura Thomas, a productivity consultant who has written about the negative impact of constant communications for the Harvard Business Review, believes many managers don't consider the impact they are having on employees with communications sent at all hours.

For workers who are checking emails at night and weekends, Thomas said, many "have resigned themselves to the belief that this is what the job requires."
Smart home devices have a lot of possible uses -- and might even be witnesses to a crime.

That is exactly what is going on right now in Benton County, Arkansas, where prosecutors want to use audio potentially recorded by an Amazon Echo in a murder investigation. But are they going to get what they want?

In IT Blogwatch, we listen in.

So what is going on? Gary Robbins has the background:

Consumers who use...digital assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home could soon learn whether outsiders -- notably attorneys, police and the courts -- can gain access to the audio thats recorded on the...devices.

...

Prosecutors in Benton County, Arkansas are pressuring Amazon to turn over...data that was recorded on one of its Echo...speakers in November 2015. Authorities are hoping the recordings will reveal what led to the death of Victor Collins, who was found dead in a hot tub owned by...his co-worker James Bates.

But how does the Echo play into this? Gabe Friedman elaborates on the case:

Bates was charged with murdering Collins, but maintains his innocence.

...

Prosecutors...requested access to all audio recordings, transcribed records, text records and other data from Bates Echo from the two-day period during which Collins is believed to have been killed...a...judge signed a search warrant for the Echo, which police seized, but most of the data...would be stored in Amazons cloud.

And could the Echo actually help the police solve this case? Amy B Wang thinks it is a longshot:

The Echo...responds to a "wake word," most commonly "Alexa." When it detects the wake word, it begins streaming audio to the cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word...A recording and transcription of the audio is logged and stored in the Amazon Alexa app...if you asked your Echo, "Alexa, what is the weather right now?" you could later go back to the app to find out exactly what time that question was asked.

...

Police did not specify what...they expected to find on Batess Echo -- nor is it clear what the device could have captured that would have been relevant...Only if someone...triggered his device with its wake word would it have begun recording...Even then, it seems unlikely that audio would be conclusive evidence of an alleged murder.

So is Amazon cooperating? Have they handed over the audio? Alina Selyukh has that info:

Amazon has satisfied a portion of the request...the company has provided "account holder information for James Bates and purchase history."

...

However, Amazon declined to share information from its servers. The company...issued a statement..."Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course."

Well, in that case, are there any other smart home devices that the police are looking at. Why yes, it just so happens there are. Ian Morris has the details:

Amazon refused to give data this time...[so] while Amazon's Echo didn't implicate [Bates]...his smart water meter might have...His excessive use of water around the time the crime was committed was recorded and might be relevant to the investigation...however you look at it, this man may well end up in jail thanks to evidence given by his smart home.

Does this case have broader implications on privacy? Jacob Brogan certainly makes a good case that it does:

All of this should offer an important reminder that its not always wise to blindly commit to smart devices...In the name of providing us with easy access to information, theyre also collecting enormous amounts of information about us, information that can be put to surprising ends...Such privacy concerns...may well hold even for devices that arent explicitly designed to listen in on our lives.

Any final thoughts? Alfred Ng has one:

You have the right to remain silent -- but your smart devices might not.
Family Research Council Commends Texas Women's Privacy Act

Contact: J.P. Duffy or Alice Chao, Family Research Council, 866-372-6397



WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Family Research Council (FRC) commended Texas State Senator Lois Kolkhorst for introducing the Texas Women's Privacy Act (SB 6), which will protect women and children. The bill prevents public schools, state government agencies, and political subdivisions from adopting policies that would open women's showers, bathrooms, and changing facilities to men and visa-versa.

It also prevents political subdivisions from forcing private entities, including contractors, to open their showers, locker rooms and bathrooms to people of the opposite sex. It leaves private entities free to determine their own policies regarding the use of shared bathrooms and showers.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement:
Sean Spicer 93 named White House press secretary and communications director

Sean Spicer '93

Sean Spicer, a 1993 graduate of Connecticut College, has been named White House press secretary and White House communications director by President-elect Donald J. Trump. Spicer will also serve as an assistant to the president.

Spicer, who majored in government at the College, has served as the Republican National Committee communications director since 2011 and chief strategist since 2015. He previously served as assistant United States trade representative for media and public affairs in the George W. Bush administration, communications director for the House Republican Conference, communications director for the House Budget Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committees director of incumbent retention.

As White House press secretary, Spicer will be the primary spokesperson for the United States government administration, especially with regard to the president, senior executives and policies. As communications director, he will be responsible for promoting the agenda of the administration and leading its media campaign.

William Frasure, the Lucretia L. Allyn Professor of Government and International Relations at Connecticut College, said Spicers appointment is truly remarkable.

The most important journalists in America will be sitting before him every day. Aside from Trump's, his will be one of the most listened-to voices in the country, he said.

With televised press briefings, 24-hour news cycles and an unprecedented public demand for information, the modern press secretary plays a key role in the success of an administration, said Connecticut College Trustee Martha Joynt Kumar '63, an emeritus professor of political science at Towson University and expert in presidential-press relations, White House communications operations and presidential transitions.

Its about so much more than just providing information on daily operation. The press secretary has the opportunity to try to persuade and not just inform, said Kumar, the author of Managing the Presidents Message: The White House Communications Operation.

The role is particularly challenging, Kumar said, because the press secretary has to simultaneously serve and balance the needs of the president, the White House staff and the press.

Its really important for a press secretary to have the confidence of the president and the staffand particularly the White House chief of staff. Spicer has that, so he is well positioned, Kumar said.

Frasure, who taught Spicer in several classes, remembers him as an enthusiastic student and a great talker who could hold his own in any classroom discussion.

In August, Spicer told The Washington Post that his political ambitions trace back to his time at Connecticut College. Surrounded by mostly liberal classmates, he began to identify as a Republican, he told the Post. He got involved with student government and remembers working to ban smoking in a dining hall and lobbying for cable TV in the residence halls.

During his junior year, Spicer studied away at American University in Washington, D.C. One of his professors there was Conn alumnus Richard Semiatin 80.

"Sean Spicer was a student in my Spring 1992 Washington Semester class, remembers Semiatin, an assistant professor of political science and academic director of American politics and policy at American University. He demonstrated a keen interest in politics from the start. You could already tell that he had an innate understanding of the realities and workings of politics. He worked hard and understood the process of building a career.

Here is someone who took nothing for granted and took initiative whenever it presented itself.

Spicer, who grew up in Rhode Island, earned a masters degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College in 2012. He is a frequent guest on news and political talk programs on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. His official RNC bio touts his willingness to partner with his Democrat counterparts to raise money for good causes; in his Twitter bio, he describes himself as a wicked Red Sox/ Patriots fan.

In his new position, Spicer will play a critical role in representing the president and the agenda of the administration.

The way policy is articulated is often very, very important, Frasure said. Sean will be briefed on virtually everything that is going on. Hell be a witness to historyand a participant in it.

January 6, 2017
Ashley Fox is an MEP for South West England, and is the leader of Britains Conservative MEPs.

Twelve months ago few, if any of us could have predicted the year of seismic political change that lay ahead.

Brexit, a new Conservative leader, an opposition in turmoil, President Trumpthere seemed to be no time to catch your breath before the next major event came along.

With that in mind, I will avoid any specific predictions for 2017 and am taking the views of those who do gaze into crystal balls with an even larger pinch of salt than usual.

However, I suggest that if 2016 was a year of political shocks, during the next 12 months people will expect to see some of the promises being delivered.

Certainly, as far as Brexit is concerned, speculation will soon be replaced by concrete action. Article 50 is going to be triggered in the Spring even if, as I suspect it will, the Supreme Court rejects the Governments appeal.

It is likely that a short Act of Parliament will be required to start the process. In my view this should pass easily through the Commons, where there is a large majority in favour of respecting the referendum result. I anticipate there will be much smoke and noise in the House of Lords but doubt that the Labour Party will whip their peers to frustrate the will of the people. That way lies annihilation at an early general election.

Negotiations will then get underway and flesh be put on the bones of our future relationship with Europe. Make no mistake, the process will be tough. The issues to be tackled are many and complicated. The two parties are setting off from very different starting points.

I am confident we will succeed because both Britain and the remaining 27 EU members ultimately want the same thing  a deal which protects everyones economic interests and recognises the continuing need to co-operate in areas such as security and research.

Anyone who, like me, spends much of their working life in Brussels, knows that this is not simply going to be a transactional arrangement; emotion will also play a part and we need to deploy a combination of negotiation and diplomacy over the next 18 months in our dealings with Michel Barnier, the national capitals and, yes, even with Guy Verhofstadt.

There has been much talk of the possible need for a transitional deal. I doubt it is going to be possible to dot every i and cross every t within 18 months but I do think Britain will leave the EU within the two year timescale, with arrangements made for individual sectors such as financial services where more time is needed to implement change.

The same tailored approach may be adopted in our future relationship with the Customs Union. Instead of an in or out choice, support seems to be forming around a more complex solution under which deals are struck on a sector-by-sector basis.

As Conservative MEPs we will vote on the final deal when it is put to the European Parliament, but the meantime we have a job to do persuading fellow members of Britains case and reassuring them that we remain staunch allies and trading partners.

We are also heavily engaged in the day-to-day business of Parliament, as was illustrated in the final few weeks of 2016 when two important pieces of legislation cleared significant hurdles.

Late night talks between my Conservative colleague Vicky Ford, on behalf of the Parliament, and representatives of the European Council and Commission, led to a provisional deal being struck on revisions to the EU Firearms Directive. The changes were prompted by the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and introduce new rules restricting the ownership of semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines. British law will not be materially changed as we already have amongst the most stringent rules on firearms in the world.

Similar 11th hour discussions secured agreement in committee for Energy and Climate Change spokesman Ian Duncans report on the Emissions Trading Scheme, the EUs flagship climate change policy. This is another example of how Conservatives are showing leadership in the Parliament and defending Britains interests.

Both reports, which are due to be voted on by MEPs in the coming months, required a mixture of pragmatism, sensitive negotiation and tough talking to push them through. These qualities are going to be needed in the year ahead.

I wish you all a happy new year.
Graeme Archer is a medical statistician, a former winner of the Orwell Prize for blogging, and was recently a speechwriter for a Cabinet Minister.

What do you think of Trump, then? asked my brother-in-law over New Year, in an attempt to spark a discussion about politics. Erm  nothing, really, I replied, more or less honestly.

More or less honestly, because while I dont care either for Trumps un-Conservative domestic policy, or his Putin-sucking foreign policy (insert bareback riding joke here), his victory does interest me. And I disagree with those commentators who claim that Brexit and Trump represent very different political phenomena.

So: what did we learn in 2016, from the Brexit-Trump surprises? And: what does that enable us to predict about the coming year?

Here is what I learned.

Despite decades of lectures from every available pulpit  actual pulpits, with bishops and the like, as well as the metaphorical ones inhabited by newspaper columnists, BBC sitcom narratives, and politicians  a working majority in the UK and the US, whether they usually vote Left or Right, prioritise (local) communitarian values over (global) liberal ones.

By communitarian, I mean the belief that those people among whom we live have a higher claim on our attention than do those others who live elsewhere (and it follows from this that new neighbours, should they fundamentally change the culture of your community, need not necessarily be an unalloyed good thing.)

Given that we are all born at random (the entity writing this piece is an Ayrshire boy called Graeme, but he could as easily have been born in Syria and called Mohammed), this is quite an unexpected finding. It certainly surprises liberals, whose cultural dominance led them to believe that most people accept their worldview (of universal equality and hence equal claims on our attention.)

This communitarianism is usually hidden from view, albeit in plain sight, by party allegiance. It comes into play at general elections, but manifest along predictable party lines.

Over-crudely, and historically: working-class areas voted Labour, because it subsidised the loss-making heavy industries that gave their menfolk work. Middle-class county types voted either Conservative or Liberal, according to which candidate promised most strenuously to protect their lush, green views from houses for poor people, and to maintain the charitable status of their privileged, expensive schools.

To call such communitarianism selfish, or to suggest that such voters dont understand that global capitalism and unlimited immigration will increase GDP (as the strange alliance of Blairite leftovers and liberal Right-wingers do), is to miss this central Brexit lesson.

What made our referendum special  and much more important than merely determining our relationship with the EU, however this offends the amour propre of some civil servants  is that it ripped away the tribalism in which we normally sublimate our deepest beliefs about how to build a good society. There was no Tory or Labour candidate to choose between.

And while Im sure, for ConservativeHome readers, the actual question on the ballot paper was of primary interest, my suspicion is that most people understood the question to be: do you care most about your neighbour? Or about the millions of people whod like to move next door, if the government lets them?

A friend at work made me sit up, while I was still planning to vote Remain. My PhD educated and impeccably middle-class friend voted Leave: not because she gives a stuff about the EU, but because shes had enough of the increasing presence of, lets be honest, unchecked extreme Islamism in our cities, and the excuses liberals make for it, and, of course, the terrorism which seems to be fostered by it. Not just the terrorism, though: she wonders about the society her daughters will inherit, and she saw the referendum as a way to make this disquiet known.

The liberal would say to her: but more than half of our immigration  and the type of which youre least fond  comes from outside the EU. So why vote Leave? I tried that with her. This was the only chance in my lifetime to tell the government what I think about the way some immigration has changed things. Voting Tory or Labour has made no difference at all. You think I care about a trading bloc more than I do about who comes to live in my town?

Oh, responds the liberal. Its not either/or. We can open lots of Sure Start centres, and so on. And spend more of your money to help with cohesion. And anyway, what are you, some sort of racist?

The withering response to this mixture of Magic money tree and Immigrations only a problem because of you was made quite clear twice last year, on June 23rd and November 8th.

Which brings us to 2017. The lesson for Labour is sufficiently clear; now let us never speak of their coming oblivion again (OK, maybe next time.) But what about France?

The current assumption is that, should (as seems likely) Marine le Pen make the second round of the French presidential election, she will be beaten, by Any Other Candidate.

The most probable Other Candidate is Francois Fillon, the centre-Right Gaullist. Marine le Pens father is an out-and-out Nazi: how can Fillon possibly lose?

Leave aside the assiduousness with which Marine le Pen is casting off the less palatable characters of the Front National (responding to a Right-wing piece of identity politics from her niece Marion, Le Pens closest (and gay) lieutenant was reported as saying That person is alone and isolated  Were going to get rid of her, make her shut her mouth, the stupid cow.)

In British terms, Fillon is Thatcherite, while (economically) le Pen is shamelessly Old Labour, peddling the myth that Frances bloated public sector doesnt require reform. I agree with Fillon, but on what basis do we assume that the French electorate will? They elected Hollande just five years ago.

The likely second round of the French election, then: a national either/or plebiscite, shorn mostly of traditional party allegiance, with no socialist to vote for. The choice: economic (global) liberalism, versus (communitarian) promises of welfarism and border control. Remind you of anything?

The Scottish Presbyterianism of my youth left a residual hatred of gambling, which probably explains my career choice. (To understand the wickedness of gambling, it helps to learn the rules of probability.)

But were I a gambler? Given the evidence of 2016, I wouldnt bet against le Pen.
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

LBC announced a new signing for its presenter line-up this week. From Monday, Nigel Farage will be presenting an evening show between 7-8pm from each Monday to Thursday. Given his other interests, the show will often be broadcast from Brussels, Strasburg or America.

The reaction from the Left has been hilarious to watch. Youd have thought wed offered a show to Mussolini. Mind you, these are people who seem to believe that anyone right of Tony Blair is automatically a fascist  and for them Blair himself comes quite close.

This is the voice of the intolerant Left  unable to entertain the thought that anyone who has alternative views might sometimes have a point. My instinct is to laugh at people like that, but they are very dangerous, and enemies of democracy.

The truth is that Nigel Farage is a very good broadcaster. Hes eloquent, handles all the junctions well and interacts with callers well, even when they ring up to disagree with him profoundly . Hes actually very charming with people, and even very hostile callers seem to find it difficult to have a real go at him, as they intend to do when they pick up the phone. It will be a fascinating listen.

         

Talking of one of the Bad Boys of Brexit, Arron Banks book may be turned into a Hollywood movie, according to some press reports. The ratings successes of House of Cards, 24 and Designated Survivor show that theres a lot of appetite in the US for politically inspired stories, and they dont come much bigger than Brexit. The question is, who would play Arron Banks and Nigel Farage? Answers in the comments please.

         

I wonder how many of us had heard of Sir Ivan Rogers before his resignation on Tuesday. Very few, I suspect. And yet his departure was treated by the BBC as if there had been a senior death in the cabinet. Admittedly, there was no other news that day, or the next, so it took on an importance that it didnt really merit.

Downing Street moved at lightning pace to replace him with Sir Tim Barrow, who most people seem to think is a very good thing indeed, even if, given his Foreign Office career, he is bound to have supported Remain. I dont subscribe to the theory that a civil servant or politician cant deliver on Brexit if they voted Remain, but I do think it is preferable where possible to fill posts with people whose heart will definitely be in what they do.

I dont know Sir Tim, but Ive spoken to several people I respect who do, and they are unanimous in their view that he will do everything he can to deliver the best deal possible. He is said to get on very well with Boris Johnson, and to know his way around Brussels. Time will tell whether this is a good appointment or not, but the first signs seem positive.

         

Im not going to lie: this was the worst Christmas Ive ever had. On the Wednesday before Christmas, my father died.

The death of a parent is a very private thing, and those who have experienced it will know what I mean by that. It can be a very lonely thing too. At the age of 54, having lost both my parents, I suppose I have become an orphan. That may seem a flippant comment in the circumstances, but its a point in your life at which you know things will never be the same again.

On top of that, I then contracted a terrible cold which meant that on Christmas Day I actually lost my voice. Even now, ten days later, it hasnt fully come back, as listeners to my radio show can hear! This is something I have noticed about getting older  it becomes more difficult to shake off minor ailments. Im sure there are positive things about the ageing process, but at the moment I cant think of many.

         

In two weeks time, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States of America. This week he has spent his time denouncing the FBI and CIA while at the same time praising Julian Assange.

I find it incredible that he is feeding the post-truth fantasists. He bases his antipathy to the security services on the fact that their intelligence was wrong on Iraq. Its quite incredible that the man who is about to become the most powerful man in the free world thinks that one mistake means they inevitably get everything else wrong. Hes refused security briefings from the CIA and FBI since the election, too.

As a president hes certainly going to be very different from any of his predecessors. Well soon see whether hes the disaster many predict, or if he will surprise us all. I hope its the latter, but I fear its the former.

         

Talking of doing things differently, lets take a look at the Number Ten media operation.

It emerged on Wednesday night that instead of giving her traditional new year interview to Andrew Marr, as is the custom, Theresa May will instead be guest of honour on Sophy Ridges new Sunday morning show on Sky News.

Its certainly an interesting move, which will mean that Ridges show will get off to a fantastic start, so good on her and the Sky News interviews team for landing he big one.

Naturally Twitter has gone mental about it, with people suggesting that its all because May wants to be nice to Rupert Murdoch. Ridiculous. I suspect its more about sending a powerful message to the BBC that a change is going to come  and nowhere is this more apparent that in the granting of prime ministerial and Cabinet ministerial interviews.

Gone seem to be the days when a Cabinet or junior minister or junior minister would appear on a news show at the drop of a hat. Its sending production staff apoplectic with rage. And this comes on top of the fact that its also quite difficult for news programmes to get any senior Labour Shadow Minister to appear on the media either. 2017 could well be a very difficult year for the political broadcast media.
Texas Pushes to Protect Women with 'Bathroom Bill'

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 6, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yesterday Lt. Governor Dan Patrick introduced Senate Bill 6, known as the Woman's Privacy Act, that mandates so-called transgender people must use the bathroom of their biological gender. The bill's author, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, said SB 6 would still allow for accommodations for so-called transgender students, such as single-stall restrooms, on a case-by-case basis. However, public entities that violate bathroom policies based on "biological sex" will be subject to a civil penalty imposed by the state attorney general.

Lt. Gov. Patrick has been pushing for this legislation to protect women in public restrooms. Patrick said, "This issue is not about discrimination  it's about public safety, protecting businesses and common sense. I congratulate Sen. Kolkhorst for filing SB 6 and for her commitment to protecting the privacy of Texans and keeping them safe."

"Liberty Counsel commends Lt. Gov. Patrick and Sen. Kolkhorst for introducing the Woman's Privacy Act in order to protect the women residents and visitors of Texas," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "These legislators are upholding their responsibility to protect the privacy, safety, and dignity of citizens in intimate settings like showers and locker rooms, where persons will be in various stages of undress. It is common sense that no one should expect young girls or women to undress and be exposed to males in public facilities," said Staver.

On Dec. 31, Texas Federal Judge Reed O'Connor ordered a halt to the Obama administration from enforcing its unlawful LGBT agenda on public schools, federal agencies, municipalities and private employers. The ruling applies nationwide and specifically states that federal agencies must stop enforcing illegal guidelines which interpret the word "sex" as "gender" in federal statutes such as Title VII and Title IX.

Liberty Counsel has offered or provided pro bono assistance in 24 states regarding "bathroom bills" and religious liberty/LGBT issues in order to protect women and children.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
The recently-passed Neighbourhood Planning Bill could require councils to have an adopted local plan. During the course of its progress through Parliament, Gavin Barwell said that the Government expects authorities to have plans in place by early next year. Anyone who is listening to this debate can be clear that there is a clear deadline to get this work done. Given the sensitivities of Conservative MPs about housebuilding, and the Governments thin majority in the Commons, a major revolt might have been expected over the proposal. But Barwell and Sajid Javid got it through without one.

Which is evidence that Javid, who unlike his predecessors since 2010 came to the Communities department without previous experience of local government, none the less grasps the sensitivies. Theresa May should bear this in mind when mulling his plans for housing. He clearly believes that her aim of building more homes cannot be realised without finding more land for them to be built on  a conclusion which should be entirely unsurprising.

As she herself put it in the major launch speech of her leadership election, we need to do far more to get more houses built. Because unless we deal with the housing deficit, we will see house prices keep on rising. Young people will find it even harder to afford their own home. The divide between those who inherit wealth and those who dont will become more pronounced. And more and more of the countrys money will go into expensive housing instead of more productive investments that generate more economic growth. It could not have been clearer.

There are claims that May, having first set her aim out and then appointed Javid to implement it, now has cold feet. It is inevitable that the practicalities of getting the Goverments business through Parliament will be a Downing Street preoccupation. But the Communities Secretarys plans will come in the form of a White Paper, precisely for this reason. And many of the adjustments he wants wont need primary legislation.

We await the detail. But the political choice for the Prime Minister is straightforward. That her government proceeds more deliberately than David Camerons did is a good thing  not only because there is less risk of backbench revolt, but because one is likely to get better legislation. The glory of White Papers is that they can be prodded and tweaked. But there is none the less a bottom line. She was surely serious about getting more homes built. Since this is so, it follows that she must back the man she appointed to do the job that she asked him to do.
CORNWALL, Ontario  The Seaway Food Festival has announced that the third annual Summer Beer Fest will take place on June 24 in a new location.

For the past two years, Beer Fest has been held at the Nav Centre, but Lamoureux Park will host the 2017 edition.

The move is to accommodate the crowd Beer Fest is expected to draw this year. Last year, 1, 750 people turned out despite the rainy weather.

In the back of my mind, this was always part of the natural progression of what we were trying to do. But none of this would be possible without the tremendous support we have seen from our Seaway Foodies, the city, the restaurants, and our partners, said Sebastien Manigat, Director of the Seaway Festival. We think we are on the cusp on building something really great here, something that the community as a whole can be proud of. We are very conscious of the unique experience that Summer Beer Fest has presented consumers with in the past, and with this move we are very focused on continuing to deliver a top-notch event.

Tickets for the event will go on sale in March. Last year the event saw 16 breweries showcase more than 60 beers and ciders.

We are very aware of all the different moving parts that have to come together, explained Justin Towndale, a Cornwall City Councillor and the Sales and Community Partnerships Coordinator for the event. But we also know that we have a unique opportunity to assemble brewers, artists, vendors, and local businesses together to produce something pretty great. In fact, we view this as a perfect opportunity to give back to our community. Last year, Summer Beer Fest worked with Crafting-A-Cure to raise money and awareness for JDFR. Our hope is to continue to work with local organizations and use our platform to try to make a difference locally.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Area businesses may be targeted for the latest version of telephone book advertising. This according to Chamber Executive Manager, Lezlie Strasser.

A targeted business will receive what appears to be an invoice from DirectPages411, reports Strasser. It leads businesses to believe they are paying for a business directory or telephone book ad and in some cases, it may warn of past due penalties. The Chamber has investigated the matter and has determined it to be a scam.

The Chamber advises area businesses to use due diligence whenever they receive a document they are unsure of. Because businesses may receive all manner of unsolicited mail, particularly those appearing to be an invoice or, other requests for payment, check to make sure you did not have any contact with the firm in question.

We hope that any business receiving such items will contact the Chamber, continues Strasser. Once we are aware of the matter, we will take the necessary steps to make the community aware. In addition, Strasser offers some guidelines to help businesses protect themselves.

 Train your staff to spot potential scams.

 Inspect all invoices to ensure their legitimacy.

 Verify to clarify if a business is above board, i.e the Better Business Bureau.

 File a complaint. Contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501 and the Better Business Bureau at www.ottawa.bbb.org.
home World U.S. included in top 12 nations where Christians experience persecution

The United States has been included for the first time among the top 12 nations where Christians are being persecuted for their faith.

In the 2016 "Hall of Shame" report released by the persecution watchdog organization International Christian Concern (ICC), the United States was listed among the countries where persecution against Christians are increasing.

The list is divided into three categories, The Christian Post reported. The countries that are deemed "worst of the worst" include Nigeria, Iraq and Syria due to the rise of Islamic extremism and terrorist attacks. North Korea is also included in the category for its ongoing crackdown against Christians.

The "core" countries, where Christians are often suppressed and targeted by blasphemy laws, include India, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In India, ICC has documented over 272 attacks on Christians and churches in the first nine months of 2016. Saudi Arabia takes the "lead place" in the category for its part in funding radical Islamic movements globally.

The U.S., Russia and Mexico are listed as "new and noteworthy" nations where Christian persecution is on the rise.

"We felt it was very important this year that we highlight three countries where religious discrimination and persecution are deemed unusual but have reached a certain threshold of concern. These are Mexico, Russia, and sadly, the United States," said ICC president Jeff King.

"While conditions in the US are in no way comparable to other countries on the list, a certain segment of the culture and the courts seem to be intent on driving faith out of the public square. There have been too many court cases with bad decisions to miss the clear trend line," he added.

The report noted that American Christians are constantly being portrayed as "bigoted, racist, sexist and close-minded" in the media, particularly in disputes about traditional marriage. ICC pointed out that Christians have lost in anti-discrimination cases and have been ordered to pay fines for adhering to their beliefs.

Meanwhile, North Korea has remained on the top of the list for 14 straight years. ICC stated that there are around 40,000 to 70,000 Christians who are incarcerated in political prison camps.

Open Doors USA, another persecution watchdog group, has also named North Korea on its World Watch List as the worst country to live in as a Christian for 14 consecutive years.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Lisa Sauve, 29 and Joseph Menard, 54 both of Cornwall were arrested and charged with theft under $5, 000. Sauve was also charged with breaching her recognizance for failing to keep the peace.

It is alleged on Nov. 8, 2016 they attended a Ninth Street store and removed two televisions making no attempt to pay for them as they left the store. Police were contacted and an investigation ensued. During the investigation both were taken into custody and charged accordingly.

FRAUD

CORNWALL, Ontario  A 34-year-old Cornwall man was arrested on Jan. 5, 2017 and charged with fraud under $5, 000 X5. It is alleged between Sept.r 2016 and Oct. 2016 the man made unauthorised transactions using his fathers bank account. Police were contacted and an investigation ensued. On Jan. 5, 2017 the man attended police headquarters to deal with the matter. He was taken into custody, charged accordingly and released to appear in court on Feb. 9, 2017.

BREACH

CORNWALL, Ontario  A 39-year-old Cornwall man was arrested on Jan. 5, 2017 and charged with breach of undertaking for failing to notify a change of address, communicating with his ex-girlfriend and failing to keep the peace. He was also charged with breach of probation for failing to keep the peace. It is alleged while dealing with a property call on Jan. 4, 2017 police learned that the man had breached his conditions and an investigation ensued. On Jan. 5, 2016 the man was taken into custody, charged accordingly and held for a bail hearing. His name was not released as the conditions stem from a domestic incident and would identify the victim.
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The American Red Cross urges people to donate blood amid its blood and platelet shortage this season. It issued an emergency call for donations in response to a severe winter blood shortage.

The organization says it had about 37,000 fewer donations in November and December that was badly needed. This was due to snowstorms and severe weather situations that forced nearly about 100 blood drives to cancer. That's more than 3,100 blood donations going uncollected.

About 40 percent of the country's blood supply comes from Red Cross. However, at present, blood products are being used faster in various hospitals than donations are coming in.

Last year, the organization experienced the same shortage.

"Hospital patients need lifesaving blood this winter, and they're relying on the generosity of volunteer donors to provide hope in the days and weeks ahead," Chris Hrouda, executive vice president, Red Cross Blood Services, said in a press release.

"The Red Cross is doing everything it can to ensure blood products are available on the shelves when patients need it, but we can't do it alone. We need eligible individuals to give blood and platelets as soon as possible," he added.

Donate Now

Eligible blood donors are advised to schedule a donation by using the Red Cross Blood Donor app or by visiting its website. For those who wants to schedule their appointment and donation through a phone call, they can contact 1-800-REDCROSS (1-800-733-2767) for more details.

Health Benefits Of Donating Blood

Aside from helping family, relatives, friends and other people whenever they need blood donation, there are many other benefits of this noble action, according to Medical Daily.

First off, blood donation preserves cardiovascular health. One of the underlying factors of cardiovascular disease is blood viscosity. This could be reduced by donating blood on a regular basis since it eradicates the iron that may potentially oxidize in the blood. Oxidative stress has been linked to various health risks such as stroke and heart attack.

Blood donation may also decrease the risk of cancer. This can also be rooted to the removal of iron in the body. Iron has been linked to the increase of free radical damage in the body. When there is increased free radicals, these may boost the risk of cancer and premature aging.

Blood donation can even help burn calories. In fact, a person can burn about 650 calories per donation of one pint of blood. For those who regularly donate blood, they can lose a significant amount of weight. However, it's just a benefit attributed to blood donation and it should not be used as a weight loss plan.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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A total of 51 countries have banned the spanking of children. Now, France has joined them as a new law has been passed that prohibit the practice. The law, dubbed as the Equality and Citizenship Bill, was officially passed on Dec. 22, 2016, which promotes ending of violence against children including corporal punishment.

"The adoption of this new legislation marks a very important commitment towards the protection from violence of more than 14 million children living in France," Santos Pais, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), said in a press release.

"Ending cruel, degrading or humiliating treatment is an indispensable component of a comprehensive national strategy for the prevention and elimination of violence against children. It lays the foundation for a culture of respect for children's rights; safeguards children's dignity and physical integrity; and encourages positive discipline and education of children through non-violent means," she added.

The decision of the French parliament follows a reprimand by the Council of Europe in 2015 hinting about France's lack of a specific law which prohibits corporal punishment in clear and binding way. This includes spankings and slaps, Breitbart reports.

The move leaves Britain as one of the only four countries in Europe where spanking or smacking remains a legal means to discipline children, Telegraph reports. However, smacking or spanking children is a form of punishment in France, where it's called "la fessee". In fact, about 70 percent of adults are against a total ban and 85 percent report they smack their children.

What Other Countries Prohibit Spanking?

More than three decades ago, Sweden was the first country to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment and humiliating treatment of children. Finland followed by 1983.

Today, a total of 52 countries have already outlaw spanking kids and imposing punishments against children. Other countries that prohibit corporal punishment include Iceland, Israel, Sweden, Greece, Brazil, Argentina, San Marino, Honduras, Albania, Uruguay, Poland, Greece, Austria, Israel, and Kenya, among others.



See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Mi Querida has been a huge success because it is an excellent and unique cigar. Its a cigar that lives up to all of the expectations this cigar had going into the 2016 IPCPR Trade Show.

Wrapper: Connecticut Broadleaf

Binder: Nicaraguan

Filler: Nicaraguan

Country of Origin: Nicaragua (NACSA)

Ancho Largo: 6 x 52

Price: $9.50

Review: Mi Querida Ancho Largo by Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust

Brand Appearances on Countdown: 1 (2015, 2016)

Coming in at #6 is the Mi Querida Ancho Largo by Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust. Mi Querida is the second regular production line by Steve Sakas Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust company. Mi Querida was met with a lot of anticipation in that this would be Sakas first Connecticut Broadleaf release at Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust. Many people connect Saka with Connecticut Broadleaf because of the Liga Privada No. 9, the cigar that started out as Sakas personal blend while he was at Drew Estate.

This is the second cigar by Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust on the 2016 Cigar Coop Countdown joining the Sobremesa Short Churchill. This is the second Connecticut Broadleaf cigar to make this years countdown. Up until this point, Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust is the third company to place multiple cigars on the 2016 Countdown.

The Ancho Largo is a classic 6 x 52 Toro. In addition to a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, the remainder of the blend consists of all Nicaraguan tobacco. While Dunbarton Tobacco and Trusts other line Sobremesa is made at Joya de Nicaragua, Mi Querida is produced at the NACSA factory out of Nicaragua.

The Mi Querida Ancho Largos flavor profile includes notes of earth, cocoa, natural tobacco, mixed fruit, and red pepper. The earth notes had a musty quality that contributed positively to the flavor profile. It gives the cigar a dirty, gritty feel to it  yet at the same time there was a slight creamy texture that helped deliver a small amount of smoothness. Both the strength and body started out in the medium range. The strength ramps up to medium to full in the second half while the body ramps put to medium to full by the second third.

Overall this cigar ranks as one of 2016 best Connecticut Broadleaf offerings. A definite Chuck Norris cigar for sure.

For details of the 2016 Cigar of the Year Countdown, see our 2016 criteria.

Photo Credit: Cigar Coop
"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."



Plato





"This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America."

Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN)







In a time of universal deceit  telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell, the author of 1984







"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.""Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.""A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example."Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.
One can see the appeal to a Trump administration of firing Corday. It's a chance for Donald to parade out his trademarked "you're fired" line and to quickly claim a victory and please part of its base. I would hope, however that the Trump administration has good enough counsel to recognize that there is real risk from attempting to fire Cordray, such that the cost of firing Corday is likely to outweigh any benefits. Put in Trump terms, it's a bad deal.

Actually yes. It is hugely important to the financial services industry in general and to the payday lending industry in particular. The CFPB has two major rule makings pending, one restricting binding mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses that are used to prevent class actions and a second imposing an ability-to-repay requirement on payday and auto title loans. It is not clear when the CFPB will publish final rules on the topics; there is some speculation that the arbitration rule might be out before Inauguration Day. But the thinking is that a change in CFPB leadership might come in time to stave off these rule makings. (Note that both rulemakings would be subject to Congressional override under the Congressional Review Act, but it's quite possible that a few Republicans in the Senate defect on both rulemakings.) In other words the calls to remove Cordray aren't about real outrage over dated employment discrimination allegations at the CFPB, but just shilling for the financial services industry , which is trying to head off the payday and arbitration rulemakings.

The calls for Donald Trump to fire CFPB Director Richard Cordray are getting louder (see here and here ). It's worthwhile understanding what's really afoot here. Cordray's term as CFPB Director expires in July 2018, so firing him in January 2017 doesn't seem to accomplish a lot. If Cordray is fired, the Deputy Director automatically becomes the Acting Director and is fully empowered to do everything that the Director would otherwise do, until and unless a replacement Director is confirmed by the Senate (or recess appointed), a process that will take a while. So we're probably talking about speeding up Republican control of the CFPB by less than a year. Does that really matter?

"The President may remove the Director for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." In other words, it's not quite as simple as just saying "You're fired." To remove Cordray from office "for cause", Trump would need to be able to articulate the cause, and Cordray could contest such a removal.

Given the opinion pieces that are popping up urging the removal of Corday, the putative cause for his removal is likely to be past employment discrimination allegations at the CFPB. As an initial matter, let me just quote Eric Levitz in NY Magazine, who pithily observed that "no one can doubt the sincerity of the Republican Partys commitment to equity in the workplace".

Still, if the employment discrimination allegations are supposed to be the basis for removal, there are a pair of pretty glaring problems. First, these are just allegations (just like the housing discrimination claims against the President-elect). The truth of the matter has not been determined. The GAO report on the matter did not reach any conclusions on the ultimate merits of the discrimination claims. Indeed, it states, "It is important to note that our survey collected employees subjective perceptions of whether or not they had experienced discrimination or observed favoritism and we did not take steps to substantiate individual claims of discrimination or favoritism," much less attempt to determine on any statistical basis whether there were pay differences driven by race or gender. (GAO Report, p.23, n.30). The GAO's criticism of the CFPB was that it did not implement "mandatory diversity training and the creation of employee diversity groups" until 2015. (For more, see also my previous post on this.) If that's all there is, then it hardly seems like "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

Now I don't know the truth of the matter regarding the employment discrimination claims, but neither would the Trump administration, which wouldn't have any further information on the truth of the matter as of Inauguration Day (this isn't the type of information that is likely to be covered in the transition). If the Trump administration wanted to investigate the matter further, it presumably could do so in some fashion, although it's not clear to me what that channel would be. In any case, it isn't a process that could start until after the inauguration. That means that the employment discrimination allegations as they currently stand really don't provide any basis for removal.

Second, even if the employment discrimination allegations were sufficient grounds for removal, they pre-date Cordray's confirmation by the Senate in July 2013. I don't know of any law explicating the issue, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the for cause removal provisions apply only to cause that arose while in the current office. The phrase "in office" refers to the current term of office. In other words, Cordray's Senate confirmation wiped the slate clean in terms of "for cause".

Now you might well say, "so what?" The Trump administration isn't likely to care if the allegations are true or not. Cordray might litigate, but Trump can still claim victory immediately no matter the ultimate resolution.

If that's the view the Trump administration takes, it is being very short-cited. As noted above, removing Cordray does not cripple the CFPB, and it doesn't result in a GOP-appointed Director substantially sooner.

There's also a real cost to trying to remove Cordray for cause. It comes in four possible forms.

First, it will poison Trump's relations with Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee and with Democrats more broadly.

Second, Cordray could contest his removal (and I would expect that he would). I would think there's a decent chance Cordray could get his removal temporarily enjoined, and while there's pending litigation I can't see the Senate moving on confirming a nominee to a position that might not be open. (Indeed, I wonder such a process is enjoyable--there might be separation of powers concerns.) But most critically, if Corday were to litigate his removal, he would be able to get discovery on the Trump administration, including on the President (because after all it is the President who makes the ultimate removal decision). That means his attorneys would get to depose the President and everyone else involved in the removal decision, as well as see the entire associated paper trail. That could be incredibly embarrassing for the President and his advisors. Indeed, I would expect one of two things to emerge: either there would be a very clear paper trail running from a set of law firms and financial institutions preparing a dossier on Cordray that would have been accepted hook-line-and-sinker, or there will be no paper trail at all, which will make it very hard for the administration to justify the removal. And I wouldn't count on being able to successfully make any sort of Presidential privilege claims about documents from the transition.

Third, we might find out if the CFPB has been investigating any of the President's businesses. Remember Trump University and the President-elect's $25 million consumer fraud settlement? That was a private settlement. It didn't cover any liability to the government for violation of federal statutes. CFPB has jurisdiction over private student loans, including not only lenders, but "service providers" and "related parties" and critically, parties that provide "substantial assistance" to the commission of unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts and practices. Similarly, Trump has done condo developments--those are subject to the Interstate Land Sales Act, which is also under CFPB jurisdiction. CFPB investigations aren't public, so I have no idea if any of these issues are on the CFPB's radar, but if the CFPB had been investigating any sort of Trump enterprise when Cordray was removed, well, then we're in Richard Nixon territory, and that doesn't end well.

Fourth, there is a very good chance Cordray would prevail in contesting his removal. That results in an ugly headline about the President having abused his power and acted arbitrarily to remove a good public servant in favor of the financial services industry.

All told, then, the question is whether the Trump administration is willing to incur these costs for a rather limited political benefit that might not actually make any difference in terms of CFPB regulations? I guess we'll see, but it will get very ugly if Trump goes down the removal route.

Update: corrected date of Corday's confirmation (which was 2013, not 2014).
The world has huge telecommunications and wireless connection needs, and with the increasing influence and growth of mobile, the telecommunications industry is forecast to continue growing at a tremendous pace. Furthermore, new telecommunications technologies are being developed in emerging countries, while developing nations expand the pre-existing markets and consumer bases. Competition is stiffest at the very top, though, and with each of the top ten companies valued at over $50 billion, the top ten will be interesting to watch.

Among the top telecom companies in the world in 2017, there have been some familiar faces and performance trends. Perhaps the most notable thing was the fact that China Mobile (News - Alert) topped the world ranks again, eclipsing the American Verizon. Further down the line, there were strong performances by some European giants, notably the Norwegian and Swedish Telenor, which came in strongly at fifth. Here is a breakdown of how the top ten performed last year.

1) China Mobile Limited

At the very top of the world top ten, China leads the list driven by the sheer number of subscribers. In 2016 alone, the company widened its lead at the top of the log, with its market value growing by almost ten billion from that of the previous year, to settle at about $280 billion. With a revenue stream of about $52.7 billion during that time, and profits of $2.9 billion, the Chinese company, headquartered in Beijing is undoubtedly the biggest among telecom companies in the world.

2) Verizon Communications

Second on the list is Verizon (News - Alert), which after the takeover of AOL, valued at 4.4 billion, took the title of top telecoms company in the U.S. from AT&T. It now operates in over 15 countries and has over 100 million retail wireless connections in its kitty. As of 2015, the companys market value stood at $202.5 billion, with the revenue weighing in at $131.6 billion.

3) Proximus Group

Founded in 1994, this Belgian telecom company continues the trend of European companies dominating the telecommunications world. The company is headquartered in Brussels, with most of it owned by the Belgian government. During an important year, the companys revenues dropped in 2015 to $1.59 billion, mostly because of divestments. The companys profits stood at about $1.506 billion, a 2.2 percent growth in 2015 alone.

4) Vodafone

UKs Vodafone enjoys the advantage of being one of the most recognizable brands in the world. The company has more than 440 million subscribers, and more than 100,000 employees. Based out of London, Great Britain, it has one of the widest reaches internationally, operating in up to 150 countries. The company is valued at about $88 billion, and in 2016, posted profits of about $2 billion and about $42.20 billion in revenue.

5) Telenor

One of the truly exceptional Scandinavian companies, Telenor stands tall among other telecommunications service providers, both in the region and the world. As a company looking for a firm foothold in the world market, a seat at the big boys table, its rise has been phenomenal. It is one of the oldest companies in the telecommunications industry, having been in operations for more than 160 years. It was founded in 1855 in Norway, and now has about 38,000 employees. The companys market capitalization, as of May 2016 was $24.6 billion, with sales of around $15.57 billion.

6) Nippon Telegraph & Telephone

The Japanese Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (News - Alert) has also in the past few years been looking to establish itself as a global market leader. It is the biggest service provider from Japan, and enjoys an almost unconditional support from the government there. This has provided an atmosphere of stability in the company, one which saw it post revenues of $104.7 billion and profits of $5.2 billion in 2016. The company is valued at around $71.5 billion.

7) Swisscom AG

Founded in 1998, Swisscom is Switzerlands contribution to the top echelons of the telecommunications world. With revenues of $11.44 billion in 2015, the company goes heads and toes with the best in the business. Its headquarters are at are located at Worblaufen, Switzerland, and majority of it is owned by the Swiss Confederation.

8) Deustche Telekom

Germanys Deustche Telekom is another force to reckon with in the telecommunications industry. With over 151 million customers, it has around 30 million fixed network lines and more than half of that in broadband lines. True to the German traditions of efficiency, the company provides a wide variety of services such as fixed network, broadband, ICT solutions, internet and IPTV (News - Alert). It has a presence in over 50 countries, with more than 220,000 employees. Deustche Telekom has a market value of about $85 billion, and recorded profits of about $3.6 billion in 2016. The companys revenue stood at about $77.29 billion. It has always been a company of firsts. It was the first to present a phone with the new Firefox OS, and in 2015, launched a standardized European network.

9) Telefonica

Now operating in 21 countries, the company has customers with over 341 million connections. It operates in Europe and parts of Latin America and is 100 percent listed, with over 1.5 million shareholders. With a revenue stream of 56.55 billion $, a profit of $3.29 billion in 2016 and a $72.3 billion market value in 2015, the Spanish company is one of the biggest in the business today.

10) Telstra Corporation

Originally a government department, Telstra (News - Alert) is now the biggest telecoms company in Australia. It offers a full range of telecommunication services to subscribers across the country, and reaches almost every household with basic services, including local and long distance telephone call services. It also provides wholesale ISP and RSP services, as well as television advertising and subscription services. In Australia alone, the company serves about 16.9 million mobile service users; offers fixed broadband services to 3.3 million users and fixed voice services to 7.2 million connections. It had revenue of $19.83 billion and $4.24 billion in profits in 2016.

In A Nutshell

As the ease of communication is becoming a huge part of the new collaborative world order, this particular initiative is being driven mainly by technological advancements and a tendency towards globalization. At the center of this are the above stated biggest telecommunications agencies in the world. Please let us know your views on this in the below comments section.

Edited by Alicia Young
With the recent release of 4 Yemen-originated terrorists from Guantanamo bay, President Obama seems dead set on continuing to free individuals who have been incarcerated for acts of terror against the United States. Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports that over the course of Obama's presidency, the population of Guantanamo Bay has been reduced by nearly 75% according to statistics published by the pentagon. Since 2015, the recidivism rates of Gitmo detainees has doubled and yet this trend is expected to continue as Obama's administration has voiced it intentions to release even more Gitmo prisoners prior to the inauguration of President Elect Donald Trump.Following the gruesome murder of 3 adults and one infant, Fort Wayne Indiana is seeking the death penalty for the man who has been charged with the crime. Wane.com reports that Marcus Dansby, 21, will be facing four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in response to the brutal killings. The police reportedly responded to a call around 4 am on September 11th of 2016 where they found the bodies of the four victims with an assortment of gunshot and stab wounds. They found Dansby covered in blood in possession of a blood soaked knife with a broken handle. Dansby is being held until February 27th when his trial will commence.In a puzzling move Wednesday, the Florida State Supreme Court in a 5-2 decision, forbade the imposition of capital punishment in pending prosecutions only to withdraw the decision shortly after. Gary Fineout of the AP reports that shortly after the 5-2 decision, the high court withdrew the decision to forbid the death penalty claiming that the decision was "prematurely issued". This opens up a slew of questions in the legal community of Florida as to the future of capital punishment in the sunshine state.
Internet of things News

FTC Files Complaint Against D-Link Over Router, Camera Security Issues

Joseph F. Kovar

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday filed a complaint alleging that lax security in D-Link's routers and cameras was a risk to consumer privacy.

The FTC Thursday filed a complaint in the Northern District of California against D-Link, charging that the Taiwan-based company failed to take "reasonable steps to secure its routers and Internet Protocol (IP) cameras" and possibly compromising sensitive consumer information "including live video and audio feeds from D-Link IP cameras."

This is not the FTC's first complaint related to connected device security and internet of things (IoT) products. security. The organization last February settled with Taiwan-based ASUSTeK Computer over security flaws in routers that put hundreds of thousands of consumers at risk. It also settled with TRENDnet over allegations that the Torrance, Calif.-based company's SecurView cameras for home security and baby monitoring had faulty software that left them open to viewing or listening by anyone with the cameras' Internet address.

[Related: Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Increased In 2016, Spurred By IoT Vulnerabilities]

In both the ASUSTeK and TRENDnet cases, the settlements included agreements to have their products' security subject to independent audits for 20 years.

In the most recent complaint, a redacted copy of which is available online, the FTC accused D-Link of not properly securing its cameras and routers from unauthorized access and control, and of misrepresenting the security of its products in its promotional materials.

The FTC alleged D-Link failed to take steps to address "well-known and easily preventable security flaws," including hard-coding the username "guest" and password "guest" into some products, allowing the "command injection" software flaw that could let unauthorized users take control of routers, making a private key code for the D-Link software openly available on a public website for six months, and leaving users' login credentials for the company's mobile app unsecured.

In a prepared statement, Jessica Rich, director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection, said, "Hackers are increasingly targeting consumer routers and IP cameras  and the consequences for consumers can include device compromise and exposure of their sensitive personal information. When manufacturers tell consumers that their equipment is secure, its critical that they take the necessary steps to make sure thats true."

D-Link Systems, the Fountain Valley, Calif.-based U.S. subsidiary of D-Link, in response to a CRN request for more information, emailed the following statement: "D-Link Systems, Inc. is aware of the complaint filed by the FTC. D-Link denies the allegations outlined in the complaint and is taking steps to defend the action. The security of our products and protection of our customers' private data is always our top priority."

The company spokesperson, in the email, said D-Link would provide updates when they become available and plans to publish a "Q&A for consumers" on the company website soon.

Daniel Duffy, CEO and chief information officer at Valley Network Solutions, a Fresno, Calif.-based solution provider and D-Link partner, told CRN via email that, while continual innovation leads to "awesome new ideas and technology," it also can lead to disruption and new scenarios for security solutions and, often, new legislation.

"I think the actions and settlements are a good thing, generally speaking, because we know from the robber baron days that many capitalist companies left to their own devices wont do the right thing," Duffy wrote.

However, Duffy wrote, while government helps keep such practices in check, it has yet to prove its ability to police its own security practices.

"I also believe that weve gotten to such a point of imbalance in this country, where the government has forgotten who they work for, and where the media that colludes with the government has forgotten that the people who butter their bread can actually think critically, that any new threats of legislation or action from the government have become a joke, because their own house is in such bad order," he wrote.

Duffy cited such issues as the hacking of Democratic Party emails and the decision of Hillary Clinton to use her own private email server as the kind of things that make it "ironic and laughable" for the government to pursue security actions against a commercial business.

"They need to get their priorities straight and start by looking in their collective mirrors, getting their own house in order and remembering that they work for us," he said.
The port of Rostock is expecting 38 different cruise ships to call 192 times over the course of the 2017 cruise season in Warnemunde, according to a statement.

The year starts for the port on April 27 with the AIDAdiva, and there are five first-time calls including the Columbus, MSC Magnifica, Norwegian Getaway, Seven Seas Explorer and Viking Sky.

AIDA will homeport the AIDAdiva and ADIAmara in Rostock for the summer season, while Costa, MSC and Norwegian are also interporting.

There will be three four-ship calls, and 14 three-ship days at the port in 2017. The Balmoral will close the 800,000 passenger season on Oct. 12 for Fred. Olsen Cruise Line.
While the end of the year is a time to reflect on our past accomplishments and possible seconds at family gatherings, it also is a time when we prepare our strategic objectives for the upcoming year.

For security objectives associated with PCI DSS requirements, we may overlook some key performance indicators for healthy organizations that are a result of good security. Often the default metrics are items such as passing a Report on Compliance or implementing new technology to reduce overall risk. But are we overlooking other benefits?

Good security hygiene requires disciplined consistency. That consistency inherently creates organizational efficiency. An efficiency we can demonstrate as security leaders helps reduce cost, improve resource management while reducing overall risk. Whether it is by better use of automation or redesign of information flow, we should be able to articulate the corporate value of infosec changes beyond simply risk management benefits.

Take for instance a company with a help desk with five individuals responsible solely for addressing malware on all devices. After implementing improvements in the process for malware detection and prevention, perhaps the help desk tickets are reduced enough to re-allocate three of those IT staff to other assignments.

The key is to identify those examples and track metrics early and often.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Remain paranoid, err vigilant, with online security in 2017 ]

The importance of good metrics will only increase over time as data security matures. Looking at the model of cybersecurity insurance, for example, we can see the benefit of certain key performance indicators that can be used to differentiate a company from its peers. As a result, the organization could realize lower premiums or better coverage.

Additionally, for those responsible for PCI DSS or similar assessments should continuously challenge themselves to leverage good metrics to identify improvements for not only security posture but to reduce the level of effort to demonstrate compliance in the future. For example, can the organization:

Increase the average number systems patched with critical security updates within 30 days?



Reduce number of systems with access to cardholder data? (Note: The Council recently released Guidance for PCI DSS Scoping and Network Segmentation to help with this process.)



Increase the percentage of staff with application security training?



Increase the percentage of software subject to dynamic code analysis?



Increase the number of third-party vendor agreements that include security language?

More importantly, if asked, could you measure some of the above statistics today and demonstrate the accomplishment?

The key is to make the metrics something that is relevant for your organization. NIST 800-55 is a great resource for how to develop metrics that are quantifiable, readily obtainable, repeatable and useful.

Quantifiable means that the metrics are percentages, averages and other indisputable numbers that dont change from one assessor to the next.

means that the metrics are percentages, averages and other indisputable numbers that dont change from one assessor to the next. Readily obtainable means that it makes sense from an expense perspective to collect such data.

means that it makes sense from an expense perspective to collect such data. Repeatable so that you have consistent measurements that can be compared for improvement over time.

so that you have consistent measurements that can be compared for improvement over time. And useful so that you are only performing the exercise of collecting data for those items which result in a possible action.

When you have good metrics to rely on, you can gain a better understanding of where your time should be invested the following year when it comes to actual governance:

Do certain departments fail internal audits with a higher consistency? Perhaps more education is required for certain groups or a department should identify someone from within to champion security.



Comparing multi-year reports, are certain PCI DSS requirements regularly more difficult to achieve? Perhaps the company focuses investment next year on more resources and technology to improve that specific area.



In this time of reflection and resolutions, we must ask ourselves how we can improve our chances for success. Not only to better protect data but operate with better information to increase consistency and efficiency of our security practices in the year ahead. Taking the time to identify and design the right measurement goals is a good first step.
Right as we got ready to break for the holidays and a new year, the headlines in the tech world filled up this week with news that a Florida court ruled a defendant in a criminal case must turn over his password to unlock his phone.

Wait. What?

A few years ago, we touched on this topic in After this judge's ruling, do you finally see value in passwords? It was after a judge ruled authorities could use your fingerprint to unlock your smartphone. Based on the nuance of the situation, it built a strong case for the continued use of passwords.

To make sense of what happened in Florida, I reached out to Shawn Tuma (LinkedIn, @shawnetuma), Cybersecurity & Data Privacy Partner, Scheef & Stone, L.L.P., to get his perspective.

Initially, I was going to focus on exploring the implications of a decision in a state court. The concept was predicated on the notion that the judge got it wrong and this was an overreach.

After all, dont we have precedent to stand on?

But then Shawn called me to share some excitement. Based on a more thorough review, he discovered that the Florida court dove into the core of the issue and considered carefully the opinion they issued.

Its not for me to decide whether the court got it right or wrong. What matters is that the court did provide a well reasoned decision that looked at prior precedent and built on the rationale of that precedent.

First, its important to note the distinction between criminal and civil matters (read more here) in exploring why the 5th Amendment matters.

Criminal versus Civil Cases and why the 5th Amendment Matters

A criminal case is brought by the state. It requires a higher burden of proof, but can also carry a higher penalty.

That also means criminal cases have different protections (from the state). This includes the 5th Amendment. Among other things, it protects us against self incrimination. And that matters when it comes to things we know versus things we have.

As Shawn explained in After this judge's ruling, do you finally see value in passwords?

Did you know the US legal system makes a distinction between something you have and something you know?

If you lock a safe with a key, the authorities can obtain authorization to take the key (something you have) and open it. However, if you locked the safe using a combination (something you know), that information is protected under your Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

What that means is that something you have, a key, can be taken and used against you. While something you know, a combination, can ultimately be compelled by a judge. Even then, you have rights -- and a decision -- to comply or not.

Traditionally, this means that while the state can compel you to provide a physical key -- and now a biometric -- to unlock a safe or other device, it cannot require you to divulge a combination or password. Thats because revealing the password is akin to testifying against yourself.

And the fifth amendment protects us against testifying against ourselves.

What happened in Florida

You can read the full opinion here for background on the circumstances of the case. The prosecutors looked at the underlying precedent to argue that supplying the passcode to the device is not actually testifying against yourself.

The judge agreed.

While most of the tech world lamented the mistaken nature of the court, Shawn Tuma read through the opinion and made an interesting discovery:

"The Fifth Amendment privilege protects an accused from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the state with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature." (citing Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 763 (1966))). "The word 'witness' in the constitutional text limits the relevant category of compelled incriminating communications to those that are 'testimonial' in character."

Tuma notes the importance of understanding the phrase testimonial in character.

"[I]n order to be testimonial, an accused's communication must itself, explicitly or implicitly, relate a factual assertion or disclose information. Only then is a person compelled to be a 'witness' against himself."

Tuma explained that at point here is the concept of substantive value. The case then explores the three prongs of protecting from self-incrimination (an interesting read) and suggests:

That is, "it is not enough that the compelled communication is sought for its content. The content itself must have testimonial significance."

Tuma noted that this is the key point and reframes it as Does the testimony go to evidence of elements of the charge - or just how you get to such evidence? He continues by explaining, its the difference between taking testimonial from how it is communicated versus what is being communicated.

In the past, the protection centered simply on the how instead of exploring the substantive value of what was communicated. In this case, the prosecution successfully argued that what was as important.

Tuma clarified the principle difference as The mind has to be extensively used in creating the response or relate him to the offense.

What it means for security leaders

While the specifics and nuances of this case made the argument valid (at least for now), this clearly demonstrates how the law evolves. Even with the precedent previously set.

As Shawn pointed out, it's really a pretty easy approach to understanding law  each case builds on something else and usually there's only one or two lines in a case that really turn it one way or the other it's just a matter of figuring out where that is."

When we ponder How does the law adapt to new technology?

This is how.

Tuma summarized the importance of this opinion by explaining, the methodology that the court used provides a nice example of the evolution of law through the common law method -- which is how the law has traditionally adapted to address new issues."

This is how we advance for better and for worse. Its a lengthy process. We have a role in it, too. Make time to sit with your legal team to discuss the case and explore implications for your organization. Learn from their experience and offer your insights, too. This way we all get a bit better.

What do you think? Did the court get it right? How do you see this evolving, and why? Sound off in the comments below or take it to twitter (@catalyst, @shawnetuma).
With the massive number of new unsecure internet of things (IoT) devices coming on line in 2017, this may be the year that sees the first hybrid terror attack  a physical-space attack made worse by a simultaneous cyber-space distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack directed at the computing infrastructure of first responders.

Imagine a truck bomb detonating in Manhattan and  at the same time  a botnet comprised of millions of IoT devices flooding the NYPD and FDNY digital communications networks with data, crippling the response. In addition to the increased death toll, such an events psychological component would sow unease throughout the population. Terrorists would rejoice that they made the entire Western world afraid of common household appliances.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 sadly demonstrated that policy makers typically act on well-known security problems after people die and media outlets loudly broadcast the body count. For a decade prior to the 2001 event, a group of CIA officers tracked Osama Bin Laden and his organization. Despite their vigorous warnings to others in the US intelligence community, nothing was done to comprehensively address the problem until nearly 3,000 Americans died and the US government was embarrassed into taking the terrorism threat seriously.

We are now seeing this pattern repeated with cybersecurity.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Data breaches through wearables put target squarely on IoT in 2017 ]

Consider two recent examples. First, the recent Dyn DNS denial of service (DDoS) attack which took down dozens of websites using hundreds of thousands of compromised IoT devices, prompted much hand-wringing from government officials and legislators worrying aloud about the potential for a cyber Pearl Harbor. Second, real progress on cybersecurity is absent in the wake of the DNC and John Podesta email hacks  politically-focused events that should have terrified politicians into immediate action.

Why is the government endlessly talking about the problem yet doing nothing about it?

The answer is well described in a recent InfoWorld article which explains that, along with lack of global consensus, the convenience afforded intelligence agencies by an insecure internet is the real reason governments are slow to enact truly effective cybersecurity regulations. For proof, one needs only look to the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) exploited security flaws in certain routers and then kept that information to itself. Immediately following the NSA leak, Cisco and other router manufacturers scrambled to patch the vulnerabilities.

Since 9/11, terrorist attacks have trended from large, complex plots to more easily executed operations involving one or two operatives attacking soft targets. A DDoS attack is relatively simple to execute provided the perpetrators command sufficient numbers of connected refrigerators and security cameras from which to pump data. Terrorists will inevitably use any force multiplier that allows them to increase effectiveness while avoiding the need for complex communication. A hybrid terrorist attack requires only precise timing between the physical-space guns and explosives attack and the cyber-space DDoS attack.

The provisions in PATRIOT ACT were already drafted and on the shelf when 9/11 provided the catalyst for passage by Congress. We should expect that government security agencies have already war-gamed hybrid attack scenarios and have developed regulatory solutions to address the problems. Sadly, it will take a serious, life-ending attack to force government (and private industry) into effective reform.

The most tragic but fascinating aspect of a hybrid terrorist attack is that an average citizen watching news of the event may be a direct participant via the connected refrigerator that just sent an out-of-beer smartphone alert.

Be prepared, 2017 may be the year that cybersecurity is seriously addressed through pain of death.

To add your comments, head over to Facebook.
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SHELTON  Though the latest state job numbers wont be available for a few weeks, the area is starting off the year with an early boost to its January statistics.

UnitedHealthcare announced that starting Monday it is accepting applications for 50 open positions at its Shelton location. The company has set a six-week timeline for filling the new senior claims appeals representative jobs.

Interested candidates can apply online beginning Monday. The company will accept applications through Feb. 23, but the first candidates who apply and are accepted can begin the six-week paid training sessions as early as Jan. 23.

As our membership grows, we need to maintain appropriate staffing, said Mary McElrath-Jones, director of public relations for UnitedHealthcares New England region. The company has nearly 500,000 UnitedHealthcare members in Connecticut.

We looked at 2017 and our business and growth there and determined we needed another 50 (people), McElrath-Jones said. These are our first line responders, so to speak. They are the first person you would get in touch with if you called UnitedHealthcare.

The jobs will be based out of the companys offices at 4 Research Drive in Shelton. The positions are entry level, full time and offer full benefits.

The company last hired customer service representatives in August, filling 25 jobs. There are now 625 employees based out of the companys Shelton office, including those in the area who telecommute, McElrath-Jones said.

Bill Purcell, president of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce, said news of the companys plans to hire is welcome, especially considering the loss of jobs just across the street at Cablevision last year.

France-based owner Altice, owner of Cablevision and its Optimum service, eliminated roughly 600 jobs last fall when it closed call center and customer support operations in Shelton and Stratford.

This is a great counter to that, Purcell said. Its a great way to start the year.

Purcell noted that UnitedHealthcare has settled into its Shelton home since moving from Trumbull a few years ago. We want to support them and their continued growth here, he said.

Those interested in applying for the open positions can visit http://uhg.hr/SheltonJobs 24 hours a day until Feb. 23.

U.S. employers added 156,000 jobs in December, according to federal estimates published this week. Connecticut employment figures are scheduled to be released Jan. 19.

ktorres@hearstmediact.com; 203-330-6227
Town & Country Magazine has released its picks for the top 50 bachelors of 2017. The list of the world's most eligible men is a mix of politicians, businessmen and celebrities.

For those looking to snag one of these eligible bachelors, the magazine provides the most-likely place to find them as well as a caveat for each of them, so there are no ugly surprises.
WILTON  New Jersey State Police are seeking help in locating additional victims of Ethan Chandler, 42, of Belleville, N.J., who was arrested on child sex charges.

Chandler lived in Norwalk, Stamford and Monroe during the mid-1990s, officials said, and worked part time at Hope Church in Wilton.

Cliffe Knechtle, who was an associate and senior pastor at Hope Church from 1989 to 2000, said Chandler worked part time in music and became more involved in youth ministry after he left.

Knechtle said they havent talked since the news of Chandlers arrest. He described Chandler as a very kind, very warm gentleman.

When I was there, he did an outstanding job, said Knechtle, who has been the senior pastor of Grace Community Church in New Canaan since its founding in 2001.

I pray that if they are false accusations, that they be dropped; if they are true, then he would face the truth and come clean and repent and get back on the track of following Christ.

Chandler was initially arrested Dec. 1 at his apartment on the charge of second-degree luring a child. Police said it was the result of an undercover investigation that caught Chandler attempting to lure an individual he believed was a 13-year-old boy for a sexual encounter through a mobile chat app called Kik.

The boy was an undercover detective who responded to a Craigslist ad that Chandler allegedly posted for oral sex with a young man.

After posting bail and being released from Essex County jail, Chandler was arrested again six days later on new charges of second-degree sexual assault and fourth-degree criminal sexual contact, in connection to a 14-year-old boy he met online on a social media site.

These alleged sexual assaults were revealed from evidence police obtained through a search warrant at Chandlers apartment during his initial arrest on Dec. 1, police said.

Chandler was lodged in Essex County jail with bail set at $200,000.

The allegations against Chandler reveal a dangerous sexual predator who used social media to satiate his desire for young victims, New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino said.

Well continue to protect children by patrolling the Internet and diligently pursuing all leads to arrest this type of tech-savvy predator.

The New Jersey State Police and Division of Criminal Justice will continue their investigation and said they have obtained additional information Chandler allegedly sent nude photos of himself to at least three juveniles and may have been having sexual relations with another 14-year-old male.

Officials are aware of Chandlers previous arrest on Feb. 22, 2014, by the Livingston Police Department in New Jersey, after he was discovered in the Livingston Mall bathroom kissing a young man who appeared to be a minor. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

Chandler operates a video production company in South Orange, N.J., that films high school sporting events across the region, called Primetime Sports LLC, which puts him into close contact with children, police said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigations Unit at 609-584-5051, ext. 5624, or to email hitech@gw.njsp.org.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044
Keep your cool, dont be a fraidy cat, seek out dissenters

It wont be easy covering the White House after Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

As a candidate and as president-elect, he showed contempt for almost every news outlet. For a while he even feuded with the Republican-leaning Fox News Channel.

He threatened to sue The New York Times. His campaign banished reporters from The Washington Post, The Huffington Post (an online magazine) and other news providers for unfavorable reports

He sat for only occasional interviews and held no news conference for months, preferring to communicate to the public with postings on Twitter.

There is no reason to think he will change. But as the most important person in the world, he cannot be ignored.

So this is my advice to members of the White House press corps.

First, keep your cool. Be polite to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Strategic Communications Director Hope Hicks (of Greenwich) and other members of the communications team.

But dont be a fraidy cat.

Support the White House Correspondents Associations stance on briefings by the press secretary or a stand-in. They should still be held daily with live video coverage, and the association should continue to decide who sits where.

If your request for an interview or information is turned down or ignored, keep asking.

If you feel you are being stonewalled, thats a story. It could start like this: For the tenth day in a row, the White House refused to release President Trumps daily schedule.

At presidential news conferences  if Trump holds any  keep your questions short and to the point. Dont give a speech.

If the President says something false or misleading, dont argue with him. In your story, dont say he lied. Lying means knowingly telling a falsehood. You wont know if thats the case.

Instead, report what he said and then give the facts. If there is no evidence to back up his assertion, say so.

Finally, get out of the White House. Cultivate sources among civil service professionals.

Many will be unhappy with the changes ordered from on high and may be willing to talk. Persuade them to let you use their names.

They are supposed to be harder to fire than political appointees. If a civil service employee is dismissed for giving you information, even though unclassified, thats a story.

The White House wont like it when you fact-check the president or disclose resistance by career federal employees to the scuttling of policies with broad public support, such as those protecting the environment.

So what? If your credentials are lifted, thats a story.

Your organization can pick up White House news from other outlets, always giving them credit, and add a statement that you have been blacklisted.

Gutsy reporter vs. big bully. Should be good for ratings, circulation or clicks.

Paul Janensch, of Bridgeport, was a newspaper editor and taught journalism at Quinnipiac University. His weekly Memo on the Media can be heard on wqun.com. Email: paul.janensch@quinnipiac.edu.
Alaska Airlines opens regular flights to Havana

The eighth and last US airlines company to open commercial flights to Havana was Alaska, which opened that route on Thursday with a flight from Seattle to the citys Jose Marti International Airport.

Alaskas directive Joseph Sprague thanked Cuba authorities for having guaranteed all conditions for the daily five-and-a-half hour flight with stop-over in Los Angeles.

Alaska is the eighth and last US airline company to open regular and commercial flights to Cuba along another seven who received permits to do so from the US Treasury.

Air operations between the US and Cuba have developed favorably in this first month of regular flights, according to Cuban airport authorities. In 2016 the Havana International airport registered 5.3 million passengers, considered a historic traffic in its history.

American Airlines, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and United are other US companies flying to Havana.
First Cuban exports to the US in 50 years

For the first time in the past fifty years, Cuba will make in January its first exports to the United States, following the signing Thursday in Havana of a contract by the islands CubaExport company and the US Coabana Trading LLC to import artisanal charcoal.

Coabana Tradings Scott Gilbert and CubaExports Isabel Oreilly penned the document that paves the way to further strengthen bilateral commercial relations amidst current restrictions posed by the over-50-year US economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba.

The two sides stressed the importance of the accord and their interest in expanding trade relations in the future through the exports from Cuba of bee honey and coffee, two highly demanded local products at the world market.

Cuba is ready to send the U.S. two containers with some 40 tons of charcoal on January 18. The Cuban artisanal charcoal is made from an invasive woody plant known as Marabu, which has proven very useful in pizza shops and bakeries.

The Cuban official told reporters that each charcoal ton will sell at 420 dollars, the highest price ever reached for this product. Meanwhile Scott Gilbert said that the operation will allow US consumers to know a high-quality Cuban product.

The first Cuban export to the US will take place two days before president-elect Donald Trump takes power. In this regard, the US official said they expect to work with the Trump administration in the same way they did with Obama, for the sake of increasing trade between the two countries.

CubaExport company has been exporting artisanal Marabu charcoal to seven countries over the past five years; the product considered among the best of its kind in the world.
County-specific poll may foretell whether Pa. is going blue or red
"...king of the hate left..."--

"As my friend Capper -- the best Wisconsin blogger ever -- says, there will be more. There's always more." - karoli

"...the psychiatrically attuned Capper..."--

"This is really great of you! I'm so proud to know someone like you"--

"Capper, a reasonable (and maybe even likeable) Lefty..."--

"capper, the Sidney Freedman of the hate left..."--

"I love capper because, well, what's not to love. But I also hate capper for alerting me to nonsense like this."---

"Capper, you really have a knack for this kind of writing. Really."--

"Crap. I agree with capper. Can Armageddon be far behind?"--

"capper is right. OMG, did I actually say that?"--
Now that the Queen has recovered from her seasonal ailment, Justice Secretary Liz Truss will be hoping Her Majesty does not have a relapse to coincide with this years State Opening of Parliament.

If HM is indisposed, Truss, 41, as Lord Chancellor, will have to stand in and deliver the royal speech. Her squeaky voice, ideal for ranting about imported cheese, might sound odd spouting the monarchs gracious words.

Liz Truss, now Lord Chancellor, would have to read the royal speech at the state opening of parliament if the Queen was unwell

Apropos the Queens illness, her return to good health has prompted some sighs of relief among bean counters at Philip Hammonds Treasury, where an obscure document calculating the cost of her passing had been dusted off and nervously perused.

Similar to the Bridge  the official blueprint for her funeral  the Whitehall dossier calculates that the demise of the much-loved monarch, her funeral and subsequent coronation of Prince Charles could set the economy back more than 10billion.

Mourning would last 12 days, with at least one bank holiday, possibly two, costing 3billion each in lost productivity. This is in addition to the cost of a state funeral and crowning of King Charles, not to mention the jumbo security bill.

Says one source: The Queen is greatly loved and no one wants to contemplate her passing. The sheer length of her reign means it will come as a major shock.

Marco Pierre Whites on-off squeeze Emilia Fox, 42, who plays a pathologist in BBC1s Silent Witness, says: There have been some surreal moments during filming. Weve had quite a few sleeping corpses!

'Youll be doing a post-mortem  and then suddenly you realise the body is snoring on the slab.

So unlike the home life of fiery chef Marco!

Emelia Fox in Silent Witness, who says there are some surreal moments in filming the BBC show

Politician-turned-broadcaster Michael Portillo, 63, is diplomatic when asked about former TV colleague Diane Abbotts unconvincing performance as shadow home secretary.

Touchingly dubbed Itchy and Scratchy by host Andrew Neil when they appeared together on BBC 1s This Week, the pair have known each other since they were teenagers.

Michael Portillo is diplomatic when asked about Diane Abbott's performance as shadow home secretary

Maybe Im missing something, but I havent seen much of her, Miguel claims dubiously when asked about Abbotts current role. He adds: Maybe shes been saving herself for 2017. The worst is yet to come!

Thirsty former Ukip leader Nigel Farage is attending Donald Trumps inauguration as a guest of Republican Mississippi governor Phil Bryant. The political rise of God-fearing Bryant, 62, is a cause for local amusement.

Says one good-ole-boy commentator: The running joke in [Mississippi capital] Jackson is that Phil is just three handshakes away from being a Hinds County sheriffs deputy.

Donald Trump will be a guest of Phil Bryant the Mississippi governor at Donald Trump's inauguration

AN Wilson, whose magisterial biography of Queen Victoria was widely acclaimed, is unimpressed at the saucy banter between Victoria and her Scottish ghillie John Brown that the Royal Archive has tried to censor from a new biography.
Do the mandarins of Whitehall have any conception of what its like to live in the real world? Judging from their unions bizarre demand for hefty pay rises for coping with the unsustainable demands of Brexit, the answer is a resounding no.

The timing is truly extraordinary. Their political objectivity is in serious doubt after the petulant attack on the Governments Brexit strategy by outgoing EU ambassador Sir Ivan Rogers.

And there are equally grave questions over whether they have the negotiating skills necessary to deliver Britains orderly departure from Brussels.

The general secretary of Whitehall's civil service union says they are 'dispirited and demotivated' because their average salaries of 77,000 have been frozen STOCK PHOTO

Then there is their current pay, which would make most workers drool with envy. They enjoy average salaries of 77,000, with the highest earners well over 200,000, plus gold-plated pensions.

So what on earth makes them think, with the rest of the country subject to strict pay restraint, that they deserve an extra bribe for simply doing their jobs?

Dave Penman, general secretary of their union, the First Division Association, says they are dispirited and demotivated as the strain of the pay freeze takes its toll.

He should try telling that to the millions of hard-working families who have paid the real price of austerity in higher taxes and a real-terms drop in income.

Instead of whingeing and asking for handouts perhaps they should show a little more humility  and a little more respect for those who pay their salaries.

Great rail safety myth

THE sanctimonious claim of the rail unions that the vicious wave of strikes on the Southern network is motivated by safety was exposed once and for all yesterday as a cynical myth.

Following a comprehensive study, Britains independent rail safety watchdog not only declared driver-only trains to be safe but in some circumstances actually safer than the traditional guard and driver combination, because of sophisticated monitors located in the cab.

Of course we know these strikes  ostensibly against the introduction of driver-only services on Southern  have little to do with concern for passengers. These trains are already in use across the rest of the UK with full union consent.

These strikes  ostensibly against the introduction of driver-only services on Southern  have little to do with concern for passengers

The real motive was given away by RMT president Sean Hoyle, who recently told fellow activists that the aim of the industrial action was to bring down this bloody Tory government.

So please, no more cant about safety. It simply insults the intelligence of commuters whose lives have been made a misery for nearly a year.

We report today that some of those commuters are planning a class compensation action against Southern for the torment and disruption they have been forced to endure. The Mail wishes them every success. The company has taken their money under false pretences and they deserve redress.

But how infuriating they cant also sue the unions, whose vindictive actions are even more to blame for their plight.

Time to help our own

ONE of the great scandals of our age is the political cowardice shown by successive governments in failing to tackle the social care crisis.

In a rare intervention yesterday, the chairs of three select committees urged the Prime Minister to strike a cross-party deal before services collapse altogether.

Meanwhile, billions are still squandered on foreign aid, the latest revelation being that DfID spends 3million a year (enough to provide 800,000 meals-on-wheels) on press officers alone.

What an appalling distortion of priorities. How long can it be before the Government gets the message that charity begins at home?
Homes perched on mountains thousands of feet above sea level are typically the sole preserve of wild animals.

But the owner of a jaw-dropping Alpine chalet featured in a new series exploring The World's Most Extraordinary Homes enjoys views to rival those of any eagle's nest.

As well as the clifftop chalet - which is accessible only by cable car - the BBC Two show visits a California home built from the remnants of an old Boeing 747, a breathtaking retreat that blends perfectly into the Arizona desert, and a stunning, origami-inspired build on New Zealand's South Island.

Scroll down for video

'House on the Rigi' rests precariously on the side of Mount Rigi in the Swiss Alps, 1,665ft above sea level and only accessible via cable car

The '747 Wing House' is in Ventura County at the western edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, northwest of Malibu

'Tucson Mountain Retreat' was built to camouflage in with the Santa Monica mountain range using a centuries old technique

'Te Kaitaka' located on the edge of Lake Wanaka in New Zealand took three years to build and blends into the surroundings using cedar wood cladding

In the new show, the award-winning architect Piers Taylor and actress and property enthusiast Caroline Quentin head out to explore the homes around the world, meeting the owners and architects brave enough to take the projects on.

The first episode focuses on mountain properties, with viewers taken on a whirlwind tour that jumps from locations in the US to Switzerland to New Zealand's breathtaking South Island.

747 WING HOUSE, CALIFORNIA

Owner Francie Rehwald paid $50,000 for a disused Boeing 747 plane, with the architect David Hertz using the wings and the tail fin as part of the construction of her house

In the Santa Monica mountains in California, one homeowner built her dream home from the most unthinkable re-used building material - the wings and tail fins of a disused Boeing 747, which had to be delivered onto site by helicopter.

Owner F rancie Rehwald, a retired Mercedes Benz car dealer, spent less than $50,000 on a decommissioned plane, after seeking out architect David Hertz to help with her two-bedroom build.

But she admits to Caroline - who thinks the house is 'outrageous' - that she hadn't estimated the high costs she would later come up against.

Actress Caroline Quentin and award-winning architect Piers Taylor explore some of the most extraordinary homes in the world

'It was quite a challenge to learn that part of my budget was going to be spent on hiring a sky crane helicopter,' she said.

The owner added of the financial outlay involved in seeing the project through: It was a hell of a lot more than anybody first expected. Nobody had ever built this before.

[It was] Millions and millions [of dollars]... Lets just leave it at that. I use the analogy of when youre three quarters of the way to giving birth you cant turn back.

'Its 100 per cent worth it. Its a phenomenal environment. I feel so lucky to live here.'

Before the process of building the '747 Wing House' could even begin, Francie had to gain permission from 17 different goverment agencies - including Homeland Security - because there was a real risk that pilots could confuse it for a downed plane.

The biggest challenge was transporting the structure to the mountain side site 1,000ft above sea level, with trucks and eventually a helicopter drafted in to complete the job.

HOUSE ON THE RIGI, SWISS ALPS

The alpine chalet sits high above the clouds with stunning views of the Swiss Alps - though it's so far up that at times the view is obstructed completely by mist

The hexagonal shape of the structure is built to withstand the harsh winter weather in the Alps

Owners and architects Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hachler created their mountain holiday home as a retreat high above the clouds

Caroline and Piers travel to the Swiss Alps to visit a unique alpine chalet that is so remote it's accessible only by cable car.

Perched 1,665ft above sea level, the House on the Rigi appears to teeter right on the edge of a cliff.

Astonishingly, the pre-fabricated house was built in just one day, using a helicopter to winch the jigsaw type pieces into place.

Its hexagonal shape gives it stability in the freezing winter winds, while the steel chimney core that anchors the house to the mountain also distributes heat around the house.

The view from the property is often clouded in mist, but when it clears those inside are treated to an incredible panoramic view of the Alps.

Owners and architects Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hachler created their mountain holiday home as a retreat high above the clouds.

TUSCON MOUNTAIN RETREAT, ARIZONA

The virgin plot was bought by David Francis 12 years previously, who had grown up in the Arizona desert area

The home has an innovative take on traditional rammed earth houses, a centuries old technique that creates buildings that absorb heat during the day and release it at night

In the Tuscon Mountain Range of Arizona, Caroline and Piers discover a stunning modern home heavily influenced by ancient building methods.

It was built using an innovative take on traditional rammed earth houses - a centuries old technique that enables structures to absorb heat during the day and release it at night, reducing the need for air-conditioning and heating.

Owned by doctors David and Karen Francis, the 'Tucson Mountain Retreat' was built by DUST Architects, who were entrusted with preserving the natural beauty of the surrounding desert landscape.

Only three cacti needed to be removed and replanted during the building process, but it took the owners another year after completion before they moved in

Although the build was completed in 2013 - with only three cacti needing to be replanted to make room - Karen admits it took them a year to actually move in.

She tells Caroline how she was angry at her husband for how much theyd spent, and joked: I was thinking of killing my husband, but because we were so much in debt, I kind of needed him to continue to work and then it would also look bad if I got the life insurance and the house

'Then we decided to come back and enjoy it.'

Unusually,the house has no corridors connecting the rooms - instead the owners head outside to navigate their way around the scattered cube structure.

TE KAITAKA, SOUTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND

The building was designed to fit in with strict planning regulations in a location that very rarely has plots available for sale

The architects took inspiration from the triangle shaped mountains and origami to create the home's unique structure

New Zealands South Island is the final stop on the presenters' whirlwind tour of the most extraordinary mountain homes.

'Te Kaitaka', built by Stevens Lawson Architects for owners Mark and Susannah, is located a half hour drive from the nearest town of Wanaka in an area fiercely protected by New Zealand's planning laws - so much so that it's extremely rare a plot becomes available.

Sitting just on the edge of Lake Wanaka, the origami-style structure was designed to accommodate all of the strict regulations and took three years to build.

The house was inspired by the surrounding trees and mountains, and has been cleverly camouflaged using wooden cedar cladding to ensure it does not jar with its spectacular natural surroundings.
The man in this sketch may think he's in the clear as a steals a kiss from the maid.

Little does he know there's a second woman in the old-fashioned optical illusion - his wife.

The puzzle, posted to Playbuzz, has left viewers struggling to spot the other woman, so can you find her?

Scroll down to see where she's hiding

In the picture shared on Playbuzz a man is seen kissing his maid - blissfully unaware that his wife is looking right at him

Here's a hint - if you tilt your head to the right you might find she's easier to spot.

The wife is hidden behind the couple, and becomes clearly visible if you look at the image upside down.

If you tilt your head to the right or turn the photograph upside down then it is easy to spot her face behind the covert couple

A host of other optical illusions have been sweeping the web in recent weeks, including an old picture taken by photographer George Steinmetz in 2005 and newly posted to Playbuzz.

Despite looking like an ordinary photograph, the picture hides an optical illusion which some people can see and others can't. So, can you?

Scroll down for reveal

What do you see when you look at this photograph by George Steinmetz of camels walking in the desert? The mind-bending optical illusion has left people baffled

At first glance, it looks like a herd of black camels making their way across the desert.

Look closely though, and you will notice the humped figures you're looking at are actually shadows, rather than the camels themselves.

The lighter shapes at their feet are the backs of the camels, seen from above as they head to grazing pastures near Wadi Mitan, western Oman.

The image, which was first published in the Turkish version of National Geographic magazine and taken using a motorised paraglider to get the aerial view, has been confusing people online. Did you make the same mistake?

Revealed: A lot of people assume the shadows are in fact the camels walking in the desert

A close-up picture reveals that they are in fact the shadows rather than the camels themselves

Here is another optical illusion to tackle - can you spot the man's face hidden in this vintage illustration of a dog?

The image, posted by Playbuzz, dates back to the turn of the century and was the face of a trade card used as an early advertising gimmick.

The face of dog's master is lurking somewhere in the sketch, but can you spot it?

Scroll down for reveal

How fast can you find the dog's master in this vintage illustration from the turn of the century?

If you look closely, you can spot the dog's owner in the middle of the picture - with the dog's ear acting as his hat.

On the side of his cheek you might be able to make out his eyes, nose and mouth - but you'll have to tilt your head to see it.

Playbuzz soon reveals that the master is in fact hidden in the dog's ear and cheek, with the ear acting as his hat
Terry Waite shows us around Trinity Hall where he 'eased himself back into normal life' after being captured 30 years ago

1 BACK FROM HELL

I was special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, when I was captured in Lebanon 30 years ago on 20 January 1987.

He was at RAF Lyneham to greet me on my return five years later. I was elected to a fellowship here at Trinity Hall  where Robert was once Dean  and it became my haven.

I was told to ease back to normal life gradually, so I lived here during the week and with my family at weekends. I wrote my book here. This photo of Robert and me is from 1992. He died in 2000 and I do miss him.

Photo of Terry's Kids: L-R. Clare, Ruth Gillian & Mark in Norfolk

2 DOG DAYS

My mother used to say she had one claim to fame. I knew the dog used in the gramophone logo for His Masters Voice, she told me when I was boy.

He was a farm dog called Nipper and lived near Alderley in Cheshire. I never knew if this was true but when she became ill in later life I gave her this china version of the HMV dog which I bought in an antiques shop near our home in Blackheath.

She kept it in her room until she died. It reminded her of her childhood and now it reminds me of her.

3 STICK MAN

My grandmother was a music teacher and used to accompany silent movies on the piano in the local cinema in Staffordshire. She wanted me to learn but we hadnt the money for a piano as my father didnt earn much as a policeman.

I was a chorister in my local church, and later went to the International Eisteddfod in Wales with the Warrington Male Voice Choir.

I still go each year, and one year I met a chap called Bob who hand-carved walking sticks and he made me this one with a mole on top.

These are the blindfold and magnifying glass that Terry was given while in captivity

4 SAD SOUVENIRS

These are the blindfold and magnifying glass I had in captivity. The blindfold is made of curtain material and I wore it like a bandana when I was alone, but whenever a guard came in I had to pull it over my eyes.

I was eventually given a book to read after three years. But theyd taken my glasses so a guard gave me this chipped magnifying glass. When I was freed I wasnt supposed to bring anything out.

But I was determined to take these two items, which I presented to the college here.

5 JOB FOR LIFERS

Ive had an interest in prisons as far back as my 20s. Bob Gibson, a prison officer at Gartree, believed one of the ways you cut down on violence in prisons is by getting to know the prisoners.

He encouraged young prisoners to learn skills and introduced them to a charity that was producing books in braille so they could make books for blind children.

The lifers in Gartree said they wanted to do my book in braille so they produced 13 volumes of it and presented this one to me.

6 HAPPY HOLS

My children shun publicity but this is a favourite photo I treasure of them on a family holiday in Norfolk. I worked in the diocese of Bristol as a young man, and the assistant bishop offered us his cottage near Blakeney.

The picture shows Clare, Ruth, Gillian and Mark on their bikes and reminds me of our holidays there. There was a sandy beach but the water was cold. My wife Frances would swim but I wouldnt. We had wonderful times building sandcastles and having picnics.
She's rarely seen on an official engagement without a small box clutch, often carried in front of her with both hands, and now etiquette experts have revealed that the Duchess of Cambridge's favoured handbag is down to more than just a fashionable choice.

Recently, the founder of Beaumont Etiquette Myka Meier told Good Housekeeping that the way the Duchess 'holds her bag in front of her in both hands when shaking hands might be awkward'.

But now MailOnline's expert in all things mannerly William Hanson says that the Kate is going about things the wrong way by using her handbag as a shield.

'The Duchess of Cambridge may well prefer not to shake hands with certain people - but there are other ways to achieve this, as used by The Queen and other members of the royal family, than opting for a clutch over a bag with a strap,' he told FEMAIL.

The Duchess of Cambridge always carries a clutch bag which she frequently carries in front of her with both hands and etiquette experts believe it's to avoid awkward handshakes

MailOnline's etiquette expert says there's no need for Kate to deploy her accessories as a shield against unwanted handshakes

'It is protocol that you do not extend your hand to any member of the royal family (blood royal or those who have married in to the family) unless their hand extends first.'

William says that as Kate becomes more comfortable in her royal role, she will realise that there's no need to deploy her accessories for protection.

'With more experience, The Duchess of Cambridge will soon realise that she neednt be too nice, extend and shake hands with everyone,' he explained.

'A courteous smile at those whom she does not have time to shake hands will suffice.'

The Duchess at the Royal Festival of Remembrance in November 2016 (left) and on a visit to Manchester in October 2016 carrying a trusty black suede clutch bag (right)

Former royal butler Grant Harrold suggests that Kate has adopted an elegant pose that is popular with heads of state

If Kate wants to avoid too many handshakes, then a polite smile of greeting should be all she needs

He suggests Kate should look to her father-in-law or her husband's grandfather for inspiration on how to carry herself.

'Male royalty, such as The Duke of Edinburgh, often walk down line-ups with their hands clasped behind their backs, which although technically not correct, they can get away with due to their elevated position,' he said. 'Another good way to avoid unwanted hands.'

However, Grant Harrold a former butler to Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, believes that Kate has adopted her signature pose as it's an elegant posture, rather than out of any desire to avoid handshakes.

'The Duchess of Cambridge is often seen adapting a pose with her hands clasped in front of her with or without a clutch bag,' he explained.

The clutch bag: An impratcial accessory 'Clutch bags arent very practical for parties and gatherings,' says William Hanson. 'Not one does one have to have the right hand free to greet people but someone may pass a glass or plate your way and if one had is already in use for the clutch bag then you've got a bit of a problem. 'Many from the younger generation see strapped bags as the realm of their parents or grandparents so opt for cooler clutches, but there are many funky strapped versions they could use if they saw sense.' Advertisement

'This gesture is adapted by confident people and it is popular with presidents, government minsters and heads of state when they are standing in public.

'I personally believe she has adopted this with a clutch bag for her official engagements, however she has also been seen with other handbags over the shoulder or arm at informal engagements.

'Technically the Duchess is setting a new trend for future generations of Royals and fashion followers alike.

'Royals do indeed set trends as history shows: The bottom button of the Gentleman's waistcoat left undone thanks to King Edward VII.

'History states he accidentally left it undone but it became the fashionable thing to do, even into the 21st Century. The Late Diana, Princess of Wales also set trends with her wonderful dress-code with beautifully coordinated handbags and shoes.

'The Queen and The Queen Mother also helped set trends with their fashions and of course wonderful grace and decorum.

The Queen is known to carry her handbag over her left arm in public to leave her right hand free for greetings

'The Queen is often seen carrying her handbags in her left hand as of course did her mother.

'We all notice that Royals and their fashions change over the decades and this is not unusual and hopefully will continue as it has done for the last several decades.
Shaun Evans reveals he isn't over the moon about Morse' 30th anniversary

The late John Thaw played the legendary Inspector Morse for 13 years, and without him there would be no Endeavour, the prequel series about the Oxford detectives early days.

But ask Shaun Evans, whos been playing the young Endeavour Morse since 2012, how he feels about the new series of his show being used to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Inspector Morse and his reply is icy.

With all due respect, I have a job to do and that is to try and make Endeavour the best it can be. I dont think theres any benefit in paying homage to what went before.

Blimey! That doesnt fit with ITVs take on the new four-part series. The channel had been planning to mark the anniversary with guest stars and heritage characters and stories.

With 2017 marking the 30th anniversary of Inspector Morse, viewers can expect many respectful tips of the trilby from Endeavour to its much admired progenitor, it trumpets, before adding, The cast for the first film includes James Laurenson, who appeared in the very first Morse episode, The Dead Of Jericho, in 1987.

Shaun reckons the involvement of veteran actor James is simply the fortunate casting of a very fine actor rather than a deliberate attempt to connect the two series.

And hes pretty dismissive of the respectful tips of the trilby this new series is planning to doff to the original Morse, a show that generated huge ratings and won six BAFTAs.

I think youd have to look very closely to find references in the script to them, theyre very well embedded, he says. If I can be dead honest with you, when I first see the script for a new episode of Endeavour, if anything jars I say, Whats this, has it got a place in our story?, and if it hasnt, it has to go.

I want the drama to be tight and entertaining. I dont want it to be flabby, paying homage to something Ive never seen. I want people of my generation whove never seen Endeavour before to enjoy this series.

The cast for the first film includes James Laurenson (pictured), who appeared in the very first Morse episode

'I dont see the point in being reverential to what has gone before. If I put a question mark against something, the writer Russell Lewis will come back and say its a reference to Inspector Morse. For me, sometimes that doesnt really have a place in our show. I know I may sound like a spoilsport saying that.

Shauns speaking at a partly disused hospital in north London, where hes on location for the new series.

It picks up barely a fortnight after the end of the last, when Endeavours mentor DI Fred Thursdays daughter Joan quit Oxford to start a new life away from both her parents and from Morse, who had fallen for her.

We see Thursday, played by Roger Allam, barely able to concentrate on his work because of his daughters absence. In contrast, Morse throws himself into his job, although his hangdog expression betrays that hes loved  and lost.

Theres always a bit of heartache in Morses life, its his default setting, grins Shaun, although itd be nice if there was a moment of joy for him at some point. Itd be good to work towards that.

With all due respect, I have a job to do and that is to try and make Endeavour the best it can be. I dont think theres any benefit in paying homage to what went before

The series opener is a tale of skulduggery at the fictional Lovelace College in Oxford. It begins with the unveiling of this thinking machine, a device made by the West that will challenge the Soviets during the Cold War, explains Shaun. But the discovery of the body of one of those involved in its development in a river close to Lovelace College is the start of a case that leads Endeavour and Thursday into great danger.

Shaun admits to experiencing the kind of emotional heartache his character has encountered, but says he never uses it to inspire his performances. Ive been dumped plenty of times, I can assure you of that, laughs the 36-year-old Liverpool-born actor, who dated Irish pop star Andrea Corr for four years after meeting her while filming the movie The Boys & Girl From County Clare in Ireland in 2003.

But I dont think about my personal experiences when Im filming because otherwise you become a pain in the a**e whos constantly thinking about themselves when theyre working.

Everything should come from your imagination, not your experience. Work should help you grow, learn and move forward rather than think back to when you were dumped.

Episode two is set against the backdrop of 60s rocknroll and includes groovy songs with lyrics written by Russell Lewis, while the scene Roger and Shaun are working on today is set at the fictional Cowley Hospital in Oxford, where much of the action for the third episode takes place.

Episode four, set partly at a nuclear power station, is about the concerns surrounding this new form of energy, and includes a couple of tips of the trilby in that it stars Abigail Thaw, John Thaws real-life daughter from his first marriage, and his widow Sheila Hancock too.

ITV thinks highly enough of Endeavour to have commissioned a further six episodes of the show, which will be filmed later this year.

Nobody should get complacent, you have to earn your place on TV, says Shaun. If these four new stories dont do well they wont let us make any more. The series has been recommissioned but it doesnt mean they wont pull the offer off the table.

So does he think these new stories will do well enough to justify six more? I hope so. I wasnt happy with the ending of the last series, I didnt think we reached a satisfying conclusion with Joans departure but in this series theres closure of that storyline and closure too, of a sort, for Endeavour.

The fact that ITV has commissioned half a dozen more stories means that the end of the road for the brilliant but lonely young detective is probably still some way off. Can Shaun see an end to the series?

I think Ill know when its the right time to go, he says. Itll be time to leave it when the storys been told, but the powers that be will be the first to know when I feel that way.

Which is Morse code for saying Endeavour is probably going to be on our screens for the next couple of years at least, but dont bank on him being around as long as the original.
A mother looking to lose weight by swimming in her gym's pool claims to have been fat shamed by two men.

The woman, known on Mumsnet as Bonbon12, took to the parenting website to explain how she was exercising in the fast lane of the pool.

Two men arrived to use the lane, and when she asked them to wait 15 minutes for her to finish, one replied: 'It's not the lard lane'.

A mother has taken to the parenting website Mumset to claim she was 'fat shamed' at her gym pool

'I am a plus size lady who has made it her New Years resolution to lose weight,' she wrote.

'I suffer from knee pain so I have to use the pool for my exercise I can't do running or bike.

'I do little bit of swim-hops/walking which helps my knee and also helps me lose weight.

'When I arrived I went into the fast lane as it was completely empty and was the smallest lane. It suddenly got really busy and that made other lanes quite busy.

The woman was exercising in the fast lane when two men arrived to swim, when she asked them to wait, they referred to her as a 'lard' (stock image)

'Two men moved into my lane. They started a fast swim. I asked them could they wait another 15 mins for me to finish and that I have a knee problem so this is helps me.

'They replied that "that's not our problem and that the pool was for those who do real exercise".

'I replied it is real exercise and then I heard one of the men mutter: "It's not the lard lane" and I left straight away.'

Her story had opinions divided, as while many said the men were rude, they also said she should have moved over to the slow lane (stock image)

Her incident received a mixed response on Mumsnet, with many women saying while it was ride for them to refer to her as a 'lard', she should not have been using the lard lane.

'The lard comment was rude and unnecessary but you were beyond cheeky to expect them to wait 15 minutes for you to finish in the fast lane,' one mother wrote.

'They were disgustingly rude, but the fast lane is for fast swimmers. You should have moved over,' another added.
An exhausted mother has gone to great lengths to have a moment of alone time from her four daughters.

Ashley Gardner, who gave birth to quadruplets after IVF treatment, shared a hilarious video of herself hiding in the pantry eating lollies.

The video, suitably called 'Sums Up Motherhood in 34 Seconds', shows Ms Gardner chewing on a red liquorice stick while one of her daughters tried to peek under the pantry door.

Scroll down for video

Alone time: Mother-of-four Ashley Gardner shares a hilarious video of herself eating red liquorice in the pantry

I see you! But one of her daughters cheekily peeked under the door to look in on her

The Quad Squad: Mrs Gardner and her husband Tyson welcomed quadruplets in December of 2014: Indie, Esme, Scarlett and Evangeline

The video starts with the mother-of-four, from Utah in the U.S, chewing sweets wide-eyed with her back pressed against the pantry door.

In the background her four daughters - Indie, Esme, Scarlett and Evangeline - can be heard squealing.

As she furiously bites down on another piece of liquorice Mrs Gardner said by way of explanation: 'Mum desperately needed a treat to get through the rest of the night'.

'So I'm hiding in the pantry. Eating a treat. Is that wrong?'

Sugar hit: Mrs Gardner hid in the pantry while her husband was out shoveling the driveway, and said she desperately needed a treat to make it through the night

Mrs Gardner and her husband Tyson welcomed quadruplets in December of 2014.

The pregnancy came after an eight-year struggle with infertility, that saw the couple embrace IVF in the hopes of starting their dream family.

Mrs Gardner had two eggs implanted, and in what was a one in 70 million chance, conceived two sets of identical twins.

The couple has since shared an insight in to their life raising four beautiful girls on their YouTube, blog and social media.

But while their Instagram is littered with adorable photos of smiling toddlers, not everyday is easy.

Mrs Gardner said her husband was out shoveling the driveway when she took a moment in the pantry to eat lollies.

Welcome to motherhood: 'They don't ever go away. They want everything you have,' she said of her kids

Adorable: The family runs a YouTube channel and blog to share an insight in to their life as a family of quads

'They don't ever go away. They want everything you have,' she said of her kids.

As if on cue, she panned the camera down to the gap at the bottom of the door.

There one of her daughters could be seen, her face pressed against the floor as she tried to look in to the pantry for her mother.

'See! She's always there,' Mrs Gardner said.

The hilarious video received more than 706,200 views and more than 1,100 comments on YouTube.
New clips for season four of Married At First Sight Australia have offered a glimpse into emotional wedding ceremonies set to air on January 30.

And the latest is one of the most dramatic yet.

The teaser clip cuts to an idyllic ceremony where the groom, 30-year-old Michael, arrives and stands at the altar where he will soon meet his bride for the very first time.

Scroll down for video

Uh oh: New clips for season four of Married At First Sight Australia have offered a glimpse into emotional wedding ceremonies set to air on January 30

Drama: The teaser clip cuts to an idyllic ceremony where the groom, 30-year-old Michael, arrives and stands at the altar where he will soon meet his bride for the very first time

And while first impressions are very important when it comes to new relationships, he failed to impress his soon to be mother-in-law.

Dressed in all pink and sat front row, the bride's mother starts to share her concerns about Michael and accuses him of not making eye contact with her while he was waiting.

'Am I invisible? When the bridesmaids came he talked to them,' she says.

'Am I invisible?' Dressed in all pink and sat front row, the bride's mother starts to share her concerns about Michael and accuses him of not making eye contact with her while he was waiting

Not happy: 'When the bridesmaids came he talked to them,' she says

Get me out of here: 'The way he treated me, the mother of the bride, you'd think he would have some manners. He hasn't said one word to me... he was just so rude,' she says

'The way he treated me, the mother of the bride, you'd think he would have some manners. He hasn't said one word to me... he was just so rude.'

'I felt he's a pig,' she says later on the clip, speaking to another wedding guest.

She also appears to shoot the groom a number of piercing looks throughout the ceremony and is seen laughing sarcastically after he makes a joke.

Awkward: 'I felt he's a pig,' the mother of the bride says later on the clip, speaking to another wedding guest

Bad first impression: The mother of the bride also complains to other guests about the groom

Michael, labelled by the show as 'Australia's pickiest man,' describes himself as 'regimented' and 'hard to date' but also 'sometimes funny' and 'very honest.'

The fitness junkie said in a pre-show interview that he was looking for someone 'fit and healthy who shares the same interests as me' and said he could tell within 15 minutes if a relationship was going to progress any further.

'I have been single for a while,' he said, excited to take on the challenge.

Hopeful: Michael, labelled by the show as 'Australia's pickiest man,' describes himself as 'regimented' and 'hard to date' but also 'sometimes funny' and 'very honest'

Awkward: She also appears to shoot the groom a number of piercing looks throughout the ceremony and is seen laughing sarcastically (pictured) after he makes a joke

Done it before: Among the brave new singles is 53-year-old John, a father-of-two and divorcee from Melbourne

His bride's mother-in-law isn't the only one who has a hard time with the process, with a daughter of one of the other brave new singles sharing her concerns in an earlier preview.

53-year-old John, a father-of-two and divorcee from Melbourne, has been divorced for 18 years after being married to his childhood sweetheart, Mary-Anne, for 17 years - the pair sharing two daughters Jessica, 23, and Emma, 21.

But while John is determined to find love, the clip for the show suggested his match may not be everything he and his daughters had hoped.

In an idyllic beach ceremony, John appears all smiles and enjoying himself before his new 'wife', who he has just met for the first time, says something that leaves his daughters in shock.

Stunning: In an idyllic beach ceremony, John first appears all smiles and enjoying himself

Happier times: They all seem happy before his new 'wife', who he has just met for the first time, says something that leaves his daughters in shock

'I promise to be your soulmate and best friend. I will cook for you... wash your clothes,' she begins to say.

Jessica and Emma look horrified before one turns to the other and says the ceremony was 'confronting.'

Jessica is then seen at the reception running to the bathroom in tears and saying she feels 'stressed.'

'I'm not worried about me I'm worried about you,' she later tells her father, who is seen looking stony-faced.

Awkward: 'I promise to be your soulmate and best friend. I will cook for you... wash your clothes,' she begins to say

Concerned: 'I'm not worried about me I'm worried about you,' she later tells her father, who is seen looking stony-faced

'I don't want to do it anymore.'

John, who is into exercise and owns his own uniform and safety gear business, has said previously that he does get a little lonely and that his life could be better.

'It's now or never, I've got to find somebody,' he said.

John will join 19 other singles in the hope of finding love in the show.

They include single mother Lauren, 33, identical twins Sharon and Michelle, Sean the cowboy and former model Deborah, who is also 53.

While the show does not see the contestants get legally married, each of them are matched by experts and go through all the processes of marriage to see if science really can find them the perfect match.
A Nottingham student nicknamed the Kazakhstan Barbie has lashed back at Muslim critics in her homeland who slammed her latest collection of sexy social media snaps.

The photoshoot shows Dinara Rakhimbaeva, 21, who is studying finance at the University of Nottingham, flaunting her perfect body in sexy lingerie.

The 5-foot 9-inch student has a tiny 22-inch waist, measures 34 inches around her hips and weighs 7 stone.

Dinara Rakhimbaeva, 21, who is studying finance at the University of Nottingham, has been dubbed the Kazakhstan Barbie

The 5-foot 9-inch student has a tiny 22-inch waist, measures 34 inches around her hips and weighs 7 stone

Critics in her homeland have slammed her latest collection of sexy social media snaps

One snap shows her in a lacy black bra, panties and suspender belt while another shows her wearing a flesh-coloured lacy camisole.

But the pictures provoked a storm of controversy back home in Kazakhstan where the majority Muslim population take a dim view of such displays of female flesh.

One person commented: 'Dinara this is too much, there is nothing beautiful in this picture.

'Only people we love should be allowed to see our naked body, you are good looking but you should not expose your body to anyone!'

One snap which generated criticism shows her in a lacy black bra, panties and suspender belt

The model frequently showcases her doll-like figure on her social media accounts

Dinara answered her critics directly on her Instagram, saying: 'I would like to wish you all happiness and love'

And another female social media user complained: 'You should not show your bare t**s like that!'

Dinara answered her critics directly on her social media page by saying: 'You girls seem to have forgotten that you should be kind by nature.

'Why are you so mean? There is so much hate directed towards me but I did not do nothing to you.

'I would like to wish you all happiness and love.'

Miss Rakhimbaeva has previously complained about being compared to Barbie

The model insists her likeness to the doll is purely coincidental

Dinara has asked her critics: 'Why are you so mean?'

Her pictures have provoked a storm of controversy back home in Kazakhstan

Miss Rakhimbaeva, from the city of Almaty in south-eastern Kazakhstan, has previously complained about being compared to Barbie saying her likeness to the doll is coincidental.

She was particularly annoyed at being likened to Valeria Lukyanova, 30 - the so-called 'Ukrainian Barbie' - who had breast implants and wears coloured lenses to look more like the doll.
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Prince William may have been accused of being work shy but he was seen putting his back into it on Thursday as he returned to his pilot duties following a short Christmas and New Year break.

The Duke of Cambridge, who was recently criticised for attending fewer public engagements than his father at the same age, was seen hard at work as he flew into Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge with a patient yesterday afternoon.

Last year he took an extended three-week festive holiday, but this year he has returned to his duties on January 3 straight after the New Year bank holiday like most workers.

The 34-year-old was seen landing at Addenbrookes Hospital, then helping his team to lift the stretcher out of the helicopter and into the back of a waiting ambulance.

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Prince William was seen helping a patient from the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge on Thursday afternoon after returning to work following a short Christmas break

He may have been accused of being work shy but he was seen putting his back into it on Thursday as he returned to his pilot duties following a short Christmas and New Year break

Prince William helped to put back the empty stretcher into the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge on Thursday afternoon

Prince William (right) taking off in the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge following transferring a sick patient to the medical facility

The Duke, who was hard to recognise as he was dressed down in a black coat, black trousers and glasses, then waited with the pilot for around 45 minutes as the paramedics accompanied the patient into the hospital.

William was seen laughing and joking with the pilot as they looked at something on his mobile phone.

At one point three women walked past the air ambulance helicopter but had no idea Prince William was standing the other side as his head was hidden from view. He was later spotted checking his mobile phone and checking over the helicopter.

When the ambulance returned, the Duke was spotted sharing a joke with a female brunette paramedic, then he helped the crew load the stretcher back into the helicopter.

The Duke was hard to recognise as he was dressed down in a black coat, black trousers and glasses for his day at work

The Duke of Cambridge, who was recently criticised for attending fewer public engagements than his father at the same age, was seen hard at work

Last year he took an extended three-week festive holiday, but this year he has returned to his duties straight after the New Year bank holiday like most workers and was seen getting stuck in to his day job

The Duke of Cambridge, who was recently criticised for attending fewer public engagements than his father at the same age, was seen hard at work

The Prince was seen helping staff move the patient from the air ambulance at the hospital

Prince William, who was dressed head-to-toe in black, showed his strength as he hauled the stretcher off the helicopter

A cheery Prince William was in high spirits as he was seen at work on a freezing Thursday morning

Prince William was seen transporting some medical supplies to the air ambulance

The sociable Prince was seen chatting with members of staff on the ground before flying away

Prince William seen taking off in the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge

Prince William is based at the nearby Cambridge Airport and flies an EC145 T2 aircraft

Prince William was seen checking his mobile phone by the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge

William was seen laughing and joking with the pilot as they looked at something on his mobile phone

In 1985, when William was a similar age to George, Prince Charles managed 404 engagements and Diana attended 299

Statistics compiled by Timothy ODonovan, from Berkshire, from the daily court circular, show William attended 188 engagements this year, while Kate attended 140

After pulling the patient out of the ambulance, the royal stood around the helicopter chatting

William, who looked pleased to have completed the emergency mission, then climbed into the helicopter and returned to the air ambulance base in Cambridge.

Statistics compiled by Timothy ODonovan, from Berkshire, from the daily court circular, show William attended 188 engagements this year, while Kate attended 140.

The pair say they are committed to raising their children, but comparisons will be drawn with Charles and Diana who managed more engagement a year when Harry and William were children.

In 1985, when William was a similar age to George, Prince Charles managed 404 engagements and Diana attended 299.

Prince William is based at the nearby Cambridge Airport and flies an EC145 T2 aircraft.

The charity regularly completes more than 150 missions each month, responding to emergencies in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, ranging from road accidents to heart attacks.

In common with all other East Anglian Air Ambulance pilots, he is formally employed by Bond Air Services and draws a salary which he donates to charity.

Kensington Palace declined to comment when contacted by MailOnline.

A smiling Prince William looked like a regular worker as he got stuck into his duties

Prince William (right) was seen talking to a colleague by the East Anglian Air Ambulance at Addenbrooke's hospital

The royal parked the air ambulance on helipad surrounded by public road and public footpath

The royal stood on the ground next to the public footpath and passers by were totally unaware the royal was there working hard
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A rare set of photographs of the 'real' Downton Abbey which include a visit from the future King have been unearthed after more than 120 years.

The magnificent 19th century Highclere Castle in Hampshire was home to George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, and his wife Almina Herbert in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The 1895 album, which goes up for auction next month, contains 44 photographs of the 80-bedroom house, its staff and sprawling grounds, which later served as the set of Downton Abbey in the hit ITV period drama.

Prince Edward (later Edward VII) centre, with the 5th Earl of Carnarvon immediately to his left, pose for a photograph in the grounds of Highclere Castle in Hampshire, now better known as the set of ITV period drama Downton Abbey

Among them are images of the Earl of Carnarvon and Almina - the 'real life Lord' and Lady Grantham who were played by Hugh Boneville and Elizabeth McGovern in the award-winning show.

Other black and white images from the extraordinary collection depict shooting parties including one involving Prince Edward, who became King Edward VII six years later, and the house staff.

At that time there, were as many as 60 members of staff living in and around the castle, including a house steward, butlers, footmen, housekeepers, maids, kitchen staff and hall and steward room boys.

The lives of Carnarvon and Almina were every bit as remarkable as those of Lord Grantham's family in Downton Abbey, which was set around the same period.

The sprawling Highclere Castle, made famous as Downton Abbey. The country pile was home to George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, and his wife Almina Herbert in the late 19th and early 20th century

Highclere Castle as it stands today, left, and in a recently-unearthed photograph from 1895, right. The album, which is up for auction, contains 44 large mounted photographs of the house, staff and estate of Highclere in 1895

Just like in the TV series, the couple turned Highclere Castle into a hospital for wounded servicemen returning from France in the First World War.

Almina was an adept nurse who healed many injured soldiers, receiving hundreds of thank you letters from grateful families.

But it was Canarvon's help in discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun with archaeologist Howard Carter in Egypt in 1922 that he was best known for.

The 5th Earl of Carnarvon (back right) and Carnarvon's then wife, Almina, Countess of Carnarvon (centre) with companions

The 5th Earl of Carnarvon (centre) with two companions. The intimate set of portraits of the real Downton Abbey which include the visit of the future king have been unearthed after more than 120 years and are due to be auctioned

He bankrolled Carter's digs and provided the political clout required for such high profile excavations.

In 1921, Carter was summoned to Highclere to receive the news that Carnarvon was giving up on the digs.

Carter made an appeal to finance one final dig from his own pocket and any find would still belong to Carnarvon, as holder of the concession.

Impressed by Carter's commitment, Carnarvon relented, even agreeing to finance the final dig.

A shooting party, with the 5th Earl of Carnarvon seated at the front on the right. Just like in the TV series, the owners turned Highclere Castle into a hospital for wounded servicemen returning from France in the First World War

Highclere Castle staff pose for a photograph on the grounds of the sprawling estate. The album is valued at 500 and will be auctioned off by Lawrences Auctioneers on February 3

Four months after their amazing discovery, Carnarvon was struck down with pneumonia and died, although legend has it he was in fact struck down by the 'mummy's curse' which bestowed the 'most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb'.

Carter and Carnarvon's close relationship was documented in the ITV drama series Tutankhamum which aired last year, with Carnarvon played by Sam Neill.

Following Carnarvon's deathhis son, Henry, returned to Highclere where he lived until 1986.

An exterior shot of the grand property that later became 'Downton Abbey'. Its owner's help in discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun with archaeologist Howard Carter in Egypt in 1922 that he was best known for

The drawing room at Highclere Castle. Robert Ansell, a specialist at Lawrences, said: 'These fascinating images of Highclere Castle offer a rare glimpse into the life of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and his circle'

A rare photograph of Highclere's interior. Speaking of the photographs, Robert Ansell added: 'Such material is increasingly scarce on the open market and we've received strong interest, particularly with the public enthusiasm for Downton Abbey'

During the Second World War, the castle, that has 80 bedrooms and 300 rooms, briefly became a home for evacuee children from London.

The Carnarvon family have been in residence since 1672 and today's inhabitants are the eighth Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.

The photo album is being sold by Lawrences auctioneers of Crewkerne, Somerset.

The Temple of Diana in the gardens of Highclere, one of the many 'follies' built on the estate's grounds. The structure was erected before 1743 with Ionic order columns from Devonshire House in Piccadilly

An exterior shot of the castle and its grounds. During the Second World War, the castle, which has 80 bedrooms and 300 rooms, briefly became a home for evacuee children from London

Robert Ansell, a specialist at Lawrences, said: 'These fascinating images of Highclere Castle offer a rare glimpse into the life of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and his circle.

'They were evidently commissioned from a local photographer and perhaps mark the visit of Prince Edward to the estate in 1895.

'Such material is increasingly scarce on the open market and we've received strong interest, particularly with the public enthusiasm for Downton Abbey.'
For some of their customers, who are aged up to 70, classes

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Hidden behind the rows of unassuming terraced houses in Seven Sisters, north London, is a wrestling gym with a difference.

Within the confines of the padded room of The Submission Room, men pay to be grappled to the ground, sat on, twisted, bruised and even knocked unconscious - and owner 'Pippa the Ripper' says business is booming.

'It's the sort of business that can vary and fluctuate from week to week, but I would say on average we have 15 to 20 men that come every week and we charge 150 a session,' says Pippa, who prefers not to use her full name.

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Professional wrester and gym owner 'Pippa The Ripper' holds client Steve 'Monkey Boy' in a camel clutch hold during their BDSM wrestling session at The Submission Room session wrestling and BDSM gym in Seven Sisters, north London

'Session wrestling is something that is definitely growing in popularity the more people find out about it.'

Dressed in a Wonderwoman style one-piece, Pippa's days are spent answering calls from clients and taking bookings for the week.

She asks callers if they have any 'fantasy' scenarios or if they want to go up against any particular girl from Pippa's impressive 23-strong roster of professional female fighters.

The 31-year-old has been wrestling ever since she answered an advert in a paper 10 years ago and she opened The Submission Room in 2011.

Pippa tackles Steve to the groun in a 'head scissors' hold. The gym owner's days are spent answering calls from clients and taking bookings for the week - she now boasts up to 20 regular customers - after she set up The Submission Room in 2011

Pippa said: 'The majority of our sessions are semi-competitive but you do get some who want a fantasy session.

'There are some men who call with unusual requests but it's mainly just to do with outfits. Some guys specify that they want us wearing tights. Sometimes a skirt. Nothing too crazy and as long as the girls are comfortable, we accommodate them.'

The very first time Pippa tried session wrestling, she knew she had found something she loved and she struggles to think of what else she would do with her life.

(Left to right) Bikini-clad professional wrestlers 'Pippa the Ripper', 'Pussy Willow'and 'Amethyst Hammerfist' at The Submission Room session wrestling and BDSM gym. Pippa describes their uniform policy as 'nothing too crazy'

Professional wrestler 'Pussy Willow' overpowers client Wilfred during their BDSM wrestling session at The Submission Room. 'There are some men who call with unusual requests but it's mainly just to do with outfits,' owner Pippa explained

Owner Pippa overpowers Steve 'Monkey Boy' during their BDSM wrestling session at The Submission Room which opened in 2011. The female fighters insist their clients, who are aged between 19 and 70, 'don't expect sex'

Girl power: 'Pussy Willow' shows off her muscles ahead of a BDSM wrestling session. The 30-year-old began wrestling after working as a dominatrix. She said: 'When I found wrestling, I felt like I had found my true calling'

'Pussy Willow' overpowers client Wilfred during their BDSM wrestling session. 'I have always loved being strong and now I get to be a strong woman but in a really sensual way,' she said

Pippa said: 'I just absolutely love it. The guys that come here come for all sorts of different reasons. Some are married, some single, some in relationships.

'The youngest guys we get are 19 and the oldest is about 70. It's really good fun and a good way to keep fit. And for some guys it is a sexual kink or fetish.

'For me personally, it's not a fetish but I do get a kick out of it. It makes me feel really powerful and I still get excited going in the ring against a big burly guy.'

Professional wrester 'Amethyst Hammerfist' warms up her muscles ahead of her BDSM wrestling session with client Wilfred. Men can 'tap out' if they find the pain too intense but Amethyst says that some specifically request to be knocked out

Amethyst Hammerfist' holds client Wilfred in a body scissors hold during their BDSM wrestling session. She is says that some clients specifically request to be knocked out - and it's her favourite thing to do

Although Pippa's duties are now primarily managerial, she still enjoys a tussle with her male clients.

One of her many regulars is council worker, Steve. Twice divorced, Steve is a wrestling fan with a foot fetish.

He says he is open with his 33-year-old daughter, and pretty much everyone in his life, about the unconventional way he spends at his weekends.

callers if they have any 'fantasy' scenarios or if they want to go up against any particular girl from Pippa's impressive 23-strong roster of professional female fighters

Pippa with client Steve. Before booking customers in, she asks callers if they have any 'fantasy' scenarios or if they want to go up against any particular girl from her impressive 23-strong roster of professional female fighters

He said: 'Wrestle girls just sort of came up and I thought it sounded really sexy, so I started looking into it and I realised it's a proper business and there are lots of people doing it.

'I come here as often as I can now.

'I don't want to roll about on this floor with a sweaty bloke. No offence to people that do and I'm not homophobic or anything. I'd just rather be rolling around with a pretty girl that's all.

'The girls here are all like my daughters. Most of them are slightly younger than my daughter.

'It's like having a whole different family. My mum passed away a year or so ago.She knew I did it as well. It's not anything to be embarrassed about.'

Gym owner Pippa, 31, has been wrestling ever since she answered an advert in a paper 10 years ago and she opened The Submission Room in north London in 2011. Pippa says she struggles to think of what else she would do with her life

Pippa tackles Steve to the ground. Speaking of the 150 sessions she puts on for clients, she explained: 'The majority of our sessions are semi-competitive but you do get some who want a fantasy session'

Pippa, dressed in a Superwoman suit, said of her wrestlers' choice of outfits: 'As long as the girls are comfortable, we accommodate them'. The very first time Pippa tried session wrestling, she said she knew she had found something she loved

Pippa is clear that the wrestlers at the gym do not have sex with any of the clients and Steve says that's fine by him.

'I wouldn't pay for sex with a woman because sex is easy. That's easy to get sorted out. Domination by someone who knows what they are doing is different.

'It's just so amusing to be pinned down and hurt by little girls. I mean what's not to love?!'

At a session with The Ripper, Steve is down on all fours whilst Pippa pushes Steve by the shoulders. 'Are you going to fight back?' she teases.

Within seconds he is pinned to the ground, his pained expression only visible in between her muscular thighs.

Amethyst is one of the army of female wrestlers men can choose from at the Submission Room. But owner Pippa is clear that the wrestlers at the gym do not have sex with any of the clients - and they are more than happy with the set-up

Purple-haired Amethyst, a former stripper, said of her job at The Submission Room: 'It's very sensual. The guys have to consent to it and a lot of guys request that I do NOT knock them out because they know I love it so much'

Amethyst overpowers client Wilfred. She said of her line of work: 'In the last year and a half, I have knocked quite a few guys out. It's amazing, especially if it is during a session that is really intense and it can be electric'

'I love to knock guys out with I'm looking at them right in the eyes': Amethyst, pictured with client Wilfred in a 'body scissors hold', says tackling men to the ground is one of her favourite things to do

Men can 'tap out' if they find the pain too intense but Amethyst Hammerfist - one of the army of female wrestlers men can choose from at the Submission Room - says that some clients specifically request to be knocked out - and it's her favourite thing to do.

The purple-haired former stripper said: 'It's very sensual. The guys have to consent to it and a lot of guys request that I do NOT knock them out because they know I love it so much.

'In the last year and a half, I have knocked quite a few guys out. It's amazing, especially if it is during a session that is really intense and it can be electric.

'I love to knock guys out with I'm looking at them right in the eyes.'

Client Wilfred gets ready to be tackled to the ground by one of the gym's female wrestlers, 'Pussy Willow'. The 30-year-old said of her job: 'I have always loved being strong and now I get to be a strong woman but in a really sensual way'

Pussy Willow tackles WIlfred to the ground. She said of her clients: 'I actually think what we do is one of the nicest things that you can do for someone because we are letting people come into our world and accepting them for who they are'

'It's my true calling': Professional wrestler 'Pussy Willow' used to work as a dominatrix and insists that her clients 'don't expect sex' but instead enjoy attending sessions 'with no judgement based on their sexuality' which 'makes them happy'

Pussy Willow, 30, is another of the Submission Room's prized fighters. She began wrestling after working as a dominatrix. She said: 'When I found wrestling, I felt like I had found my true calling.

'I have always loved being strong and now I get to be a strong woman but in a really sensual way.

'Men that come here don't expect sex, they come here to wrestle. If they wanted sex, they'd go and see a prostitute.
These heartbreaking images reveal the consequences of a soaring demand for 'designer' dog breeds such as pugs and French bulldogs.

Pups have been found in bins, cardboard boxes and left by the side of the road as the RSPCA reports a worrying increase in the number of increasingly fashionable breeds coming into its care.

In 2016, the animal welfare charity rescued record numbers of pugs and French bulldogs who had been abandoned, seemingly unwanted.

This tiny pug puppy was found abandoned in a garden in Wimbledon on 20 October alongside a note reading: 'Free pug xxx'. The little puppy was named Pumpkin by RSPCA staff

'There's huge demand in England and Wales for certain breeds of dogs that have been popularised and glamorised by celebrities, social media and popular culture,' said RSPCA chief inspector Ian Briggs, who leads the charity's special investigations into the puppy trade.

'In this country, we're seeing a huge increase in the number of people buying pugs and French bulldogs and now the RSPCA is starting to see that trend first-hand.'

The RSPCA was contacted on 4 December after a pug was found lying by the side of the road with serious injuries, having been thrown out of the window of a moving car

The charity launched an investigation after this emaciated blue French bulldog was taken into a veterinary surgery on 21 July. She was thought to have come from either Newport or Cardiff

He added that as reputable breeders struggle to keep up with demand, 'underground' traders are now filling the gap in the market - meaning buyers can get their hands on puppies at cheaper prices, with 'disastrous consequences'.

'This is the price of poor puppy breeding - consumers faced with sick and dying puppies who need expensive veterinary treatment or lifelong behavioural support.

One, a tiny pup named Pumpkin, was found in a plastic pet carrier without a door and had a nasty injury to his eye which he later had removed.

A pair of frightened French bulldog puppies were found in a cardboard box in Pontypool Park, Wales, in November. The male pups were very emaciated and had severe skin conditions

A pug-type puppy abandoned in Wales. In 2016, the animal welfare charity rescued record numbers of pugs and French bulldogs who had been abandoned, seemingly unwanted

Inspector Phil Norman said: 'The note indicates that Pumpkin has been dumped deliberately so it may be that he was an unwanted pet and his owner didn't realise the amount of work it takes to look after a puppy, or that they did not want to pay the cost of vet care.'

Ian says a 'surge' in these breeds is now coming into rescue centres and charities from 'people who did not do their research before taking on a dog that requires a lot of time and commitment'.

The RSPCA was called late at night in March after a member of the public found a pug collapsed in a blanket in the street in Cricklewood, north-west London, with an infected eye

Milo the pug pup was just eight weeks old when he was dumped by a bin in Congleton, Cheshire. The little dog was lucky to be found by a passerby and was taken into RSPCA care

They have also seen 'an increase in the number of these breeds being abandoned either because, as puppies, they didn't sell or became poorly, or as breeding stock they couldn't produce litters anymore.

'Once again, organisations such as the RSPCA are left picking up the pieces, and the animals are paying the ultimate price - often with their lives.'
COLUMBUS  When a local praise and worship band created its debut CD, the group was expecting to sell just a few copies to parishioners.

Then maybe those members of 1C Church would share the music created by The Sent to friends and family around the area. Those expectations were a bit off.

The songs recorded by the Columbus-based Christian band are being listened to by people across the country, as well as overseas.

The coolest part about this whole thing is that the goal was to sell here in the church. We thought people would buy it and give them to other people, said Chris Robbins, band leader for The Sent.

But Robbins, who is also a worship leader at the church, said the album has been purchased or streamed online in countries such as Spain, Austria, Germany and Costa Rica, according to information from the CD distributor.

The group that regularly plays during Sunday morning worship services produced its self-titled album last year.

The CD features eight covers of contemporary Christian songs, including one titled Jesus Rides the Subway that was never released. That song, Robbins said, is the most downloaded track.

Robbins said the project came about after a member of the church asked if they ever thought about putting a CD together. Music has always been a draw for 1C Church, and a CD might create more interest in the decade-old church.

The group started recording its music last March at a studio in Norfolk and released the CD in December.

The Sent is comprised of experienced musicians, including Cory Delp and Mark Garrison, who are members of the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame. Both men and Robbins also play in the country/rock band SideStep.

Robbins, who has been playing in bands for about 30 years, said he wasn't a fan of Christian music until a few years ago. Now, he has found those songs offer more than other genres.

There is something about it that touches you differently than a country song would," he said.

Robbins also believes Christian music is becoming more popular.

I think people are looking for hope, for something to believe in, he said.

The bands name comes from a verse in Bible from the Book of Isaiah reading: And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am. Send me. Other members performing on the CD are Eric Edzards, Gina Borer, Bryan Mahoney, Aaron Korte, Dan Smith and Drew Korte.

The CD can be purchased at the church for $10 and the music is also available through various digital sites including iTunes, Amazon MP3, CD Baby, Spotify and Google Play. Proceeds will go toward a church mission project that Robbins said will be youth-orientated.

The band will perform some of the songs from the album during the 10:30 a.m. worship service on Jan. 15 at the church, located at 3405 21st St. in the Westgate Shopping Center.
After a festive break, Queen Letizia, who is one of Europe's hardest-working royals, returned to work on Friday as she undertook her first engagement of the New Year.

Looking ethereal in a figure-skimming, floor-length blue gown with embroidery, Letizia, 44, appeared relaxed at the traditional celebration of the Pascua Militar in Madrid.

Queen Letizia wore her hair in a plaited low chignon for the event, which is a long-standing tradition for the Spanish military, dating back to 1782.

Queen Letizia of Spain, 44, looked ethereal at a military ceremony in Madrid in a figure-skimming gown as she returned to royal duties after the festive break

As Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, her husband Felipe, 48, donned his full military regalia for the event; the third that he has attended as king.

It is tradition that the attending Queen wears a long dress and Letizia didn't veer from the dress code with her outfit.

The parade, which was combined with a reception at the Palacio Real, was held to mark Epiphany - a national holiday in Spain.

Considered almost as important as Christmas Day itself, Epiphany marks the moment when baby Jesus, at just a few days old, was seen for the first time by the Magi or Three Kings.

As Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, her husband Felipe, 48, donned his full military regalia for the event; the third that he has attended as king

The parade, which was combined with a reception at the Palacio Real, was held to mark Epiphany - a national holiday in Spain

Known in Spain as El Dia de los Reyes (Day of the Kings), it is celebrated with presents and colourful parades, the oldest of which takes place in Valencia.

The biggest and most important, however, is Madrid's - thanks in no small part to the presence of a real king at the procession.

Letizia's last public engagement was on December 19, when she attended a meeting in Madrid.

Queen Letizia wore her hair in a plaited low chignon for the event, which is a long-standing tradition for the Spanish military

The 44-year-old Spanish royal looked perfect in plum as she accompanied Santander chairman, Ana Patricia Botin, to a meeting at the Foundation Against Drug Addiction (FADS) headquarters in Madrid.

Wearing one of her staples - a Hugo Boss skirt suit - Letizia added a colourful tweed top into the mix.
The smile is the same, as is the sultry gaze  not to mention the perky cleavage. This picture of a 22-year-old Meghan Markle, in jeans and vest top, could have been taken yesterday.

So how has Prince Harrys 35-year-old girlfriend remained as fresh-faced as she was 13 years ago?

ANTONIA HOYLE shares the age-defying beauty routine Meghan posts on her Instagram page, from infrared saunas and facial massage to a cheekily named blusher called Orgasm.

Of course, knowing youve bagged yourself a Prince cant hurt either...

Above is a photograph of Suits actress Meghan Markle when she was 22 years old

MASSAGING HER FACE  FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Theres barely the hint of a laughter line on Meghans face, never mind a wrinkle, and shes entirely preserved the complexion of her early 20s. So how has she kept ageing at bay, when other women her age are noticing with a sinking heart the first signs of the passing years  not least the Duchess of Cambridge who, whisper it, has already succumbed to a few fine lines?

Part of the credit must go to celebrity facialist Nichola Joss, who Meghan visits whenever shes in London.

Josss 60-minute Bespoke Sculpting Inner Facial costs 250 and is beloved by everyone from Kate Moss to Kate Winslet. As well as massaging the outside of your face, Joss dons surgical gloves and massages the face from inside your mouth, too. Meghan says: Nichola massages your face from the inside out (yes, really), sculpting your cheekbones and reshaping your face with targeted movements to lift and brighten.

Meghan makes sure she visits celebrity facialist Nichola Joss every time she is in London

As well as this peculiar treatment, Meghan credits her mum, Doria, a yoga teacher and social worker, for her complexion. It was Doria who insisted Meghan started having professional facials at 13  a habit she has kept.

Remembering her first forays into the beauticians, Meghan says: It seemed so silly at the time. We would drive home with my mom saying: You must always take care of your skin. 

Despite her scepticism, Meghan now feels her mother was right, and is ferociously diligent about looking after her complexion. To feel confident in my skin requires a bit of maintenance, from drinking lots of water, to always applying sunblock, and getting a facial as often as possible, she says.

Nivea's Skin Firming Hydration Body Lotion is a favourite of Meghan's and Kate Middleton's

Its a constant battle: she sets herself the seemingly impossible task of ploughing through two litres of water a day to hydrate her skin; uses an electric Clarisonic brush, which has a rotating bristled head, and a tea tree oil cleanser to really get in there morning and night and afterwards applies a Clarins serum and moisturiser.

While she could be said to be ageing better than Kate, they share a love of Nivea products, and Meghan praises the brands Skin Firming Hydration Body Lotion (4.20 for 400ml). Its honestly my favourite lotion . . . its so affordable, and makes my skin look and feel amazing, she says.

She also says she lives by the ethos that most things can be cured with either yoga, the beach or a few avocados.

SAUNAS AND A SEXY HERB

Like most celebrities, Meghan dabbles with a holistic  and at times more Hollywood  approach to health.

In 2015, she said that every week she sits in an infrared sauna  which uses heaters to emit infrared light  to sweat out all the toxins.

She takes at least four supplements a day  including magnesium, crucial for strong bones and healthy body functions; B12 drops, which can alleviate tiredness; multivitamins; Cortisol Manager  a herbal stress-reducing aid  before bedtime; and, occasionally, ashwagandha, a herb that apparently can combat stress, boost the immune system and enhance sexual potency.

The actress also has cupping, which pulls blood to the skins surface with heated cups with the aim of stimulating healing (stock image)

Women who take ashwagandha, which is mentioned in the Kama Sutra, are said to experience an increase in desire and sexual satisfaction. Lucky Harry, eh?

As well as this, she is a devotee of Eastern medicine, especially acupuncture to encourage her bodys energy flow and, like film stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, uses cupping, which pulls blood to the skins surface with heated cups with the aim of stimulating healing.

Its not surprising, then, that Meghan also expresses some rather hippy-dippy thoughts  running is a form of moving meditation. And she practises facial massage at home, as instructed by Nichola Joss.

The exercises involve pulling the skin into a variety of poses to stimulate muscle tone. I swear it works, says Meghan. On the days when I do it, my cheekbones and jaw-line are waaaay more sculpted.

YOGA AND A SIX-MILE RUN

Apparently eschewing personal trainers  if you can self-motivate thats half the battle  Meghans favourite workout is a six-mile run.

But since taking her role in legal drama Suits in 2011, she struggles to find time.

I typically get picked up for work at 4.15am on a Monday, so there isnt much time for jogging and I would rather have that extra hour of sleep. Now, I change it up. Ill do yoga [left] a couple times a week  hot yoga, specifically.

When speaking about her fitness routine, Meghan said: 'Ill do yoga [left] a couple times a week  hot yoga, specifically.

Practised in a room heated up to 37 degrees, the heavy sweating caused by hot yoga is believed to help flush toxins from the skin, as well as allowing devotees to assume deeper stretching positions, and attain ultimate flexibility.

When in LA, where she was brought up by her mother, Doria, and father, former lighting director Thomas, Meghan, said to be 5ft 7in and 9st 6lb, keeps her Size 10 figure (Size 6 in the U.S.) trim with Platinum Pilates.

This is no gentle stretching class. It is completed on a fiendish- looking machine that resembles a medieval rack, with a sliding platform, springs and resistance bands. Its 55-minute workout burns a whopping 700 calories a time.

Meghan is a big fan, saying: Its the instant way to get your body aligned and looking toned. You can see the evidence today, as shes managed to maintain the same trim midriff she had when she was 22.

As if that wasnt enough, Meghan also advocates the regimes devised by Tracy Anderson  the whippet-thin American exercise guru who has trained Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow with some agonisingly difficult routines.

Meghan follows her DVDs at home and in her trailer on set during any spare 15 minutes. It seems theres no such thing as downtime for the ever-active Ms Markle.

SMOOTHIES AND ROSE WINE

Like the Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan is wedded to her smoothie maker, and again, like Kate, she concocts vile-looking green juices to keep the hunger pangs at bay and her energy high.

Whereas most people would crave coffee after a 4.15am start, Meghan says for an easy pick-me-up, I always lean towards a juice  specifically a green juice. Why? Well, its something that Meghan describes as her food-as-medicine philosophy.

Its easy to fall into the trap of rushing for a coffee when you hit that 4pm slump, she explains, but if I blend some apple, kale, spinach, lemon and ginger in my Vitamix juicer in the morning and bring it to work, I always find sipping on that is a much better boost than having a cup of espresso.

Rather than having coffee, Meghan blends apple, kale, spinach, lemon and ginger in her Vitamix juicer (stock image)

Considering that she is dating the hard-partying Harry, it comes as a relief to hear that Meghan doesnt skimp when shes pouring the wine.

In contrast to Kate, who rarely succumbs to alcohol, Meghan believes that wine is a must.

As well as enjoying a glass with dinner, in the summer she proudly declares its rose all day and is so fond of a particular Italian red called Tignanello, which is priced at around 70 a bottle, that she named her website  The Tig  after it.

ORGASM MAKE UP AND HAIR OIL

The rediscovered pictures show Meghan has always had a radiant flush to her cheeks  and today thats aided by daringly named Orgasm, a pinky blusher by NARS (28 narscosmetics.co.uk).

Shes also adept at using make-up to enhance her bone structure, with clever tricks to make the most of what nature has given her: I always put concealer down the bridge of my nose, a highlighter on my cheekbones, and a dab of shimmer in the corner of my eye.

These contouring tricks really help to angle your face.

Meghan's favourite products include using coconut oil (left) as a deep conditioner and Yves Saint Laurent's classic product Touche Eclat to cover dark circles (right)

Off duty, Meghan has perfected the art of her five-minute face with three make-up staples: Touche Eclat by Yves St Laurent, of which she says if youve just worked a 17-hour day and have nothing else on, you will still look relatively alive; mascara  her favourite is Diorshow Iconic  and that risque Orgasm blusher. She also says she cant leave the house without perfume  her favourites being Oribes Cote dAzur and Jo Malone. Another soft spot for a British icon, we see.

As for her hair, Meghan says: Men really love to see hair down. While she uses celebrity hairstylist Michael Silva, she doesnt always plump for products that require an A-list bank balance.

She uses plain old coconut oil as a deep conditioner and hair oil from Wella (Amazon, 14.70) which she says makes her hair slippery and touchable.

ANY DESIGNER BUT POSH SPICE

Perhaps the only thing thats changed since those early photographs is Meghans dress sense. Gone are the jeans and flip-flops, and instead have come more designer clothes.

Meghan  who last year designed a capsule dress collection for the Canadian retailer Reitmans  credits this to her role in Suits, playing power-dressing Rachel Zane, which, she says, helped my education of designers and really knowing what fits my body well.

She credits playing playing power-dressing Rachel Zane in Suits as a way of educating her about designers and knowing what fits her properly

It seems that the determined Meghan is ruthless about eschewing any clothes that dont perfectly flatter her figure. While saying that she loves Victoria Beckham dresses, Meghan admits she cant wear them because I dont have the long torso to support that silhouette.

Instead, she favours classic frocks from French firm Lanvin, which can cost upwards of 1,000, saying: Theyre so well made, with the most beautiful craftsmanship.

Unlike many Hollywood stars, Meghan shows a keen self-awareness about her bad bits.

As well as a longer body, she would love to be taller, and says: As Ive gotten older, I like longer dresses, but my legs come up to my ears and Im not very tall, so when I wear a short skirt Ive got to be really conscious.

As for jewellery, a favourite piece is her 14-carat gold 193 asymmetric letter necklace by LA-based designer Maya Brenner, which carries hers and Harrys initials.

And Meghan prefers classic over ornate  which, if the day should come, will make Harrys task of choosing an engagement ring that much easier . . .
Starbucks knows it can send customers into a frenzy when it announces a new or seasonal coffee drink (pumpkin spice, anyone?)  but its latest latte is likely to raise a few eyebrows.

Starting Tuesday, January 5, the coffee chain will be selling an espresso drink made from the waste of a coffee plant, which usually gets thrown out in the coffee-making process.

Of course, the Cascara Latte tastes nothing like garbage  in fact, it has a surprisingly delicious, subtly sweet flavor that's sure to make it a new menu favorite.

New sips! Starbucks unveiled the new Cascara Latte this week, which will be available to all customers on January 10

Coffee beans are found inside cherries, which are usually discarded during the coffee-making process

Cascara  which means 'husk' or 'shell' in Spanish  is used to describe the cherry that a coffee bean grows inside of.

Typically, the cherries are tossed out when the coffee beans are collected, though some people dry them out and use them for tea.

Now, Starbucks found a tasty and eco-friendly way to use them in coffee drinks, too. The company's roastery in Seattle turned these cherries into a syrup that flavors the new latte and adds a sweet but not too-sugary finish.

However, Starbucks used the cherries to make a subtly-sweet (but not fruity) syrup

Despite the name, though, the drink doesn't actually taste fruity like cherries, but has light notes of brown sugar and maple.

And while the latte will be available to all customers next week, Starbucks Rewards customers can test it out early starting today.

The brand also announced the return of the Smoked Butterscotch Latte, which was first introduced last year and hits stores again today.

The brand will also begin selling new Sous Vide Egg bites in stores

Starbucks revealed that it is looking to double its food business in the coming years, and will be launching several healthy meal and snack options in the coming months.

Beginning on Tuesday, new Sous Vide Egg Bites (in Bacon & Gruyere and Egg White & Roasted Pepper flavors) will be added to the menu in US and Canadian stores.
When Sheryl Newman-Overton went to her gynecologist in July 2015 with a bloated and swollen stomach, she was told it was nothing to worry about.

However, five months later, the mother-of-six and grandmother-of-18 was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer.

Sheryl, a U.S. Army soldier from Tampa, Florida, suspected something was wrong, even though she had never discussed cancer symptoms with her gynecologist.

But after voicing her concerns, only to be told it was nothing, the 54-year-old felt reassured.

Now, she has a 17 percent chance of living to 59.

Sheryl Newman-Overton, pictured with some of her 18 grandchildren, was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer despite being told that her symptoms were nothing to worry about

Tragic: Sheryl, pictured with her husband, went to a gynecologist with complaints of a bloated and swollen stomach but was told her checkup seemed normal

'I didn't recognize the symptoms. I didn't push it,' Sheryl, who was diagnosed in January 2016, told Fox 5 Atlanta.

Dr Kelly Manahan, who has been treating Sheryl, said that cases like this are far more common than we think and many women often overlook the symptoms.

Common symptoms of ovarian cancer include persistent abdominal bloating and persistent abdominal pain. Because of its similarity to other conditions, women often mistake their discomfort as irritable bowel syndrome or constipation.

The cancer is notoriously difficult for doctors to diagnose because most early ovarian tumors are difficult or impossible to feel.

Only 15 percent of cases are diagnosed at Stage I. Sheryl's stage is the final stage when chances of survival are at 17 percent.

Sheryl, from Tampa, Florida, pictured with her oncologist Dr Kelly Manahan, had never heard about ovarian cancer before her diagnosis

In the hospital: Following her diagnosis in January 2016, Sheryl said: 'If they caught this at Stage I, my chance of survival go up.'

HOW TO SPOT OVARIAN CANCER Ovarian cancer is where the disease originates from the cells in and around the ovary. In the majority of cases, ovarian cancer affects women over the age of 50, or postmenopausal women. One in 73 women will develop ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Signs and symptoms: Persistent abdominal pain

Persistent abdominal bloating

Urinary frequency

Acid reflux or heartburn

Feeling full quickly The two main treatment plans are: Surgery, including taking biopsies

Chemotherapy to kill cancer cells, recommended after surgery for most stages of ovarian cancer Survival rates by stage: Stage I ovarian cancer: 92 percent

Stage II ovarian cancer: 70 percent

Stage III ovarian cancer: 39 percent

Stage IV ovarian cancer: 17 percent Advertisement

'Ovarian cancer causes a lot of symptoms where people think, "Well, I'm just getting older, my bowel function is getting slower. It's just one of those things. I'm gaining weight",' Dr Manahan told Fox.

Sheryl said she was surprised the cancer went undetected as she had always gotten her yearly mammogram and had gone in for routine check-ups.

'Why is no one telling this? So we have a fighting chance? If they caught this at Stage I, my chances of survival go up,' she said.

According to the American Cancer Society, 22,280 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017 and over half that number will die from it.

Ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women.

If caught early, the chances of beating the cancer are good. If ovarian cancer is found before it has spread outside the ovary (stages IA and IB), the five-year relative survival rate is 92 percent.

Now Sheryl says she wants to focus on spending time with her family as well as working towards finding a cure.

On Crowdrise, she has started Sheryl's Soldiers walk for awareness to raise money for cancer research.

In the meantime, she's doing everything she can to make other women aware of the tell-tale signs that they might be ignoring.

Sheryl told Fox: 'I want to make other women aware. And if this miserable, hateful disease is going to kill me, then let me at least empower other women to know these symptoms so that it might save their life.'
A crisis-hit hospital was described as being 'in meltdown' today after two patients died in over-crowded corridors - and a third was found hanged on a ward.

One patient died after waiting 35 hours for an available hospital bed, while another - also on a trolley - suffered a fatal aneurysm at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

But now, according to MirrorOnline, a third was killed after accidentally choking on their drip feed cord.

Tragic: Grieving relatives slammed the Worcestershire Royal Hospital over the recent deaths

The newspaper claim one line of inquiry is that the patient - who remains anonymous after being discovered on Beech Ward - got 'tangled in his drip feed cord while in a separate toilet cubicle and died of asphyxiation'.

The source said: 'There is the possibility that it was a tragic accident.'

The hospital have refused to comment on any of the deaths, citing patient confidentiality'.

The deaths, which all happened between New Years Day and Tuesday 3 January, followed a week of enormous pressure on the A&E department.

On Wednesday afternoon, thirty patients were forced to wait in the corridors due to overcrowding issues. That figure decreased slightly to 23 on Thursday 5 January.

The tragic deaths sparked a huge reaction on social media.

Criticisms: The deaths follow a string of scandals to hit the service over the last two years

Struggling: A spokesperson for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, who runs the hospital, apologised for the long delays and said the hospital is tring to treat serious cases first

Simon Harrison wrote on Facebook: 'What do you expect if you shut down other local hospitals/services. Eventually, even the most dedicated individuals cant hold that mess together and this kind of situation occurs.

'Its almost as if the government is looking for the system to fail so they can push an alternative solution.'

Gemma Williams wrote: 'What did they expect all the extra thats been put on Worcester? I blame the cuts and the underhand way our poxy government are privatising our NHS!!!'

Patient Pauline Freeman, 66, from Worcester, waited more than 24 hours on a trolley after suffering a stroke on New Years Day. Her husband John, 64, said: 'The hospital is in meltdown.

'There were people waiting on trollies three-deep in the corridors.

'A porter told me they were sending some patients to other hospitals while they were clearing out a decontamination room to cram in more beds. I personally saw several nurses in tears. The staff are not to blame for this crisis, its a lack of resources and the closure of other health services.

Demand: The three deaths followed a week of enormous pressure on the A&E department

'Unfortunately Im not at all surprised that people are literally dying in the corridors, this is no health service - its hell for the staff and patients.'

A spokesperson for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, who runs the hospital, apologised for the long delays and said the hospital is doing its best to treat the most serious cases first.

Patients are advised to use minor injury units as a first port of call if they can.

The incident follows a case in November when a gran-of-two who was rushed to the hospitals A&E with pneumonia and was forced to wait for 27 hours on a hospital trolley.

Mandy Partridge, 53, dialled 999 when she found herself struggling to breathe three days after she had surgery on her stomach muscles.

Risks: The Care Quality Commission undertook an unannounced inspection of March 24 after it emerged there had been two cardiac arrests in a corridor in one week

But she waited on a trolley in a cramped corridor for over a day before finally getting a bed because the overcrowded hospital 'couldnt find anywhere to put people'.

Mandy, who was eventually treated for pneumonia, was then kept in a surgical ward despite being told she would be transferred to a respiratory wing. She was eventually discharged from the hospital five days later.

The deaths follow a string of scandals to hit the in crisis hospital over the last two years. In April 2015 a specialist doctor - normally deployed to disaster zones across the world - was despacted to the hospital after medics struggled to treat patients.

It was the first time doctor - a Medical Incident Officer - was drafted in to treat patients at a British hospital.

Paramedic Stuart Gardner first blew the whistle on overcrowding in Worcestershire Royal Hospitals corridors in January 2015.

The Care Quality Commission undertook an unannounced inspection of March 24 after it emerged there had been two cardiac arrests in a corridor in one week.




THOUSANDS of women in Britain are having IVF unnecessarily, an infertility expert has claimed, when they are able to have a child naturally.

Almost half of couples labelled infertile after trying unsuccessfully for a baby for a year will, studies show, fall pregnant in the next two years if they just keep trying.

But many panic and pay thousands of pounds for IVF, a British Fertility Society conference heard, because they believe they have a medical problem and need treatment.

Careful with your cash: Experts say that many women will 'waste money' on needless IVF

Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya, from the University of Aberdeen, has said the problem is couples expecting to start their family 'on demand'.

While IVF can help some couples with unexplained infertility, and works particularly for women over the age of 40, many more will waste their money and time, taking large amounts of drugs to stimulate their ovaries and having invasive treatment when they could have got pregnant without ever seeing a doctor.

Addressing the conference in Edinburgh this week, Professor Bhattacharya said: 'The evidence in support of the effectiveness of IVF on its own in couples with infertility can be challenged, because if you looked at a new treatment which was just becoming available with this data in front of you, we would hesitate to say this is a treatment you need to spend time and money on.'

Despite the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, having been born almost 40 years ago, the evidence to show how well IVF works is still very limited.

One study of infertile couples, from the journal Human Reproduction in 2010, found as few as 13 per cent had a baby as a direct result of IVF, with many falling pregnant naturally or with other treatments.

Overstatement? Couples unable to get pregnant after trying for 12 months are classed as having unexplained infertility, which experts say many think means they cannot have children

Another Dutch study suggests as many as a third of couples with a good chance of becoming pregnant chose to have IVF unnecessarily, opting for 'overtreatment'.

Professor Bhattacharya told the conference: 'There is a great belief in a reproductive "switch", turned off with contraception and then on at will.

'Because pregnancy prevention can happen on demand, the corollary of that is there is an expectation conception can happen on demand.'

He said people want a child within 'record time', in a society where instant gratification is the norm, adding: 'When you have a talking fridge in your kitchen now, the expectation is you will be able to conceive when you want to.'

Couples who are unable to get pregnant after trying for 12 months are classed as having unexplained infertility, which experts say many think means they cannot have children.

Critical: Another Dutch study suggests as many as a third of couples with a good chance of becoming pregnant chose to have IVF unnecessarily, opting for 'overtreatment'

Many are rushed into having children, even though the guidance from NICE is to wait for two years before seeking treatment.

The Aberdeen fertility expert added: 'The expectation, as in any branch of medicine, is that if you are sick, you need treatment, and so it can be very, very counter-intuitive to argue against this.'

He is calling for more evidence that IVF is better than doing nothing.

However IVF is more effective in couples who have been unsuccessful using clomifene, a drug used to stimulate ovulation, or intra-uterine insemination which separates fast-moving sperm.

Responding to the call for IVF to be looked at again, Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility, said: 'It is important not to use unnecessary IVF treatments, drugs and interventions.
It happens to the best of us.

You start your year with the best of intentions, hitting the gym with a new-fangled workout routine, promising yourself it will work.

But weeks in you're still as flabby as ever.

According to new research, you could be a 'non-responder'.

Non-responders are people who see no effects from their workout, regardless of whether they hone their technique perfectly.

Experts in kinesiology (body movement) at Canada's Queen's University examined this phenomenon by monitoring various groups of gym-goers.

Canadian researchers have examined why some people do not respond to workouts

Each were given either endurance training (remaining active over time) or interval training (quick spurts of high-intensity exercise).

They found some people, despite following the routine flawlessly, saw no gains from certain exercises.

The reason for this, they said, is that each body requires far more personalized attention than most of us think.

According to Max Zeumer, a personal trainer at New York Health & Racquet Club 13th Street, the most common flaw in workouts is that people do not set goals, and therefore cannot properly measure what works and what doesn't.

'If you're not tracking your progress and not getting results, your training is most likely flawed,' he told Daily Mail Online.

'Oftentimes, people don't have a progressive training program.

'They'll go to the gym to exercise, but not to train.

'Training is an organized plan that is goal-specific with constant progression. If you want to be successful in the gym, you should have a plan that progresses and train with a purpose.'

However, he warns not to be too hasty.

It takes a while to see the results - or lack of results - from a regime, usually about 90 days.

'Every workout works for the first month - sometimes longer,' he explains.

'But if you're not getting results after three months you should try something new.'

He adds: 'Remember- if you don't have a six pack after three months, it doesn't mean your program is flawed!

'If you're not getting stronger, feeling more energy and seeing physical results after three months, it's time for a change.'

Regardless of the specific training program, Max says there are a few key exercises that everyone should try.

These are: Low Bar Squats, Deadlifts, Press and Bench Press.

For non-responders, it's just a case of working out how to incorporate them into a broader program so they work for you.
A nine-year-old girl died hours after a routine operation to remove her tonsils just two weeks before Christmas.

Anyialah Greer, from Detroit, Michigan, was referred for the procedure by her pediatrician to cure her sleep apnea.

Her family was concerned when the 40-minute surgery on December 8, 2015 ended up taking more than two hours.

When she came out of the operating room at 2.23pm, she was bleeding from the nose and drooling.

Doctors assured them all went well. At 3.05pm she was given some painkillers and discharged.

By 6pm she was dead.

The shock has affected the entire community, with tributes flooding in from classmates and teachers, calling Anyialah a 'sweet girl'.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Tragic: Anyialah Greer (left), from Detroit, was referred for the procedure by her pediatrician to cure her sleep apnea. Three hours after being discharged, she died. Left: Her funeral program

Distraught, her 27-year-old mother Sonia Gambrell is now suing the Children's Hospital of Michigan, which opened less than a year ago.

'I still feel like I'm dreaming,' Gambrell, who also has three younger daughters, told The Detroit News.

'Like, 'Where is my daughter?' Someone is going to come up and tell me it's all over, that this was a mistake.

'She can't die from something they do every day.'

Tonsillectomies are the third most common operation performed on children, with roughly 530,000 done a year in the United States.

Official estimates put the mortality rate at 1-in-50,000 for this procedure.

It is commonly performed for people with sleep apnea, a chronic disorder which means sufferers stop breathing while they sleep.

In many cases, this is because their tonsils are enlarged, obstructing their airways.

That day, Anyialah also got her adenoids (tissue behind the nose) removed. But, since that is considered even safer than removing tonsils.

Anyialah's 27-year-old mother Sonia Gambrell is now suing the Children's Hospital of Michigan

'I still feel like I'm dreaming,' Gambrell, who has three other daughters, told The Detroit News

The family now faces a months-long wait for the autopsy and medical records to be released.

However, their attorney Marc Berlin said there are already glaring questions that need answering.

'Someone's going to have to pay for this and answer some very serious questions.

'It's just been devastating for the family, and over the holiday season. Just terrible.

'This was a lovely nine-year-old girl who was doing well in school and was happy. She had some sleep problems and went in for a standard procedure. Then this happens.

'It's such a routine procedure to have one's tonsils removed. So, to have this kind of outcome... it just doesn't add up.'

According to The Detroit News, Anyialah was remembered as a 'sweet girl' who loved Barbies, singing and dressing up.

Anyialah underwent the procedure at the Children's Hospital of Michigan on December 8

The paper quoted the testimonies from her three younger sisters - Armani, Ahyonna and Aubrey - in the funeral program on December 17.

They wrote: 'Sister, we are going to miss you so much.

'We will miss the way you would eat all the food. We will miss the way that you would tell on us when we got on your nerves. Na Na, you made the best noodles ever.'

Berlin said there are now two key areas of investigation: first, why the procedure took so long; second, whether Anyialah was discharged too early.

'We need to look at whether the surgical technique was appropriate, and possibly whether there were problems with the anesthesia.

'We also need to know whether she was in a fit state to be discharged. It certainly doesn't seem that way because she literally died a couple of hours later.'
President of Mauritius is the latest leader to find roots in Bihar... As he traces relatives to Wajitpur village



Mauritius President Rajkeswur Purryag

Heads of foreign governments continue to discover their roots in Bihar. After the Prime Ministers of Mauritius and Trinidad & Tobago, it is now the turn of Mauritius President Rajkeswur Purryag to visit the land of his forefathers in the state.



Purryag is scheduled to visit Wajitpur village in Punpun block of Patna district to get a feel of the place that his ancestors had left behind to sail to Mauritius decades ago.



He is expected to meet his poor relatives who are still living in the nondescript village. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said Purryag had expressed his desire to visit Wajitpur during his upcoming visit to India.

"The state government and the locals will felicitate him in the village and organise events to commemorate his arrival," Nitish said.

Nitish, who went to Wajitpur along with a few ministers and senior officials on Monday to oversee the preparation for the visiting dignitary's trip, said it was a matter of great pride for Bihar that people from the state had climbed to the posts of President and Prime Minister in foreign countries.



"People of Indian origin account for 80 per cent of the total population of Mauritius out of which more than 50 per cent are from Bihar," the chief minister said.

"Even the father of the nation of Mauritius, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, hailed from Bihar." Nitish said that Purryag, who would be coming along with his wife Anitah Purryag, had been elected the President of Mauritius in 2012 after holding the post of the Speaker of the national assembly in his country.



Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during his visit to Wagitpur village to meet up with the Mauritian President's relatives

Prime Minister of Mauritius Dr. Naveenchandra Ramgoolam and his wife Mrs. Veena Ramgoolam share a laugh with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his mother, Smt. Parmeshwari Devi

The chief minister visited a school, a temple and a primary health centre in the village during his stay before going to the house of two villagers, Ganesh Mahto and Mahesh Mahto, who have been identified as Purryag's relatives.

Purryag had requested Nitish to identify his ancestral village in Bihar while the latter had gone to Mauritius after becoming the chief minister in 2007.



On his return, the Bihar government officials succeeded in locating the village in Masaurhi sub-division of Patna district and also dug out the family tree of Purryag's ancestors.



On the basis of it, the Mahtos from the villages were subsequently identified as his relatives.



The visit of Purryag, who will attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Sammelan in Kochi (starting January 7) during his trip to India, has enthused the village. Ganesh Mahto, a mason by profession, said his ancestors had left the village because of the atrocities perpetrated on them by the Britishers.

He, however, said he had no idea about his family's links with the Mauritius President until a team of district administration officials came to his village last month to inform him about his visit.



The chief minister has asked the officials to build a road leading to the Mahtos' house before Purryag's visit




From purely national security standpoint and as applicable to the Armed Forces, the year 2016 has been tumultuous to say the least.

No doubt, many of the past years have been as or more stormy, but, the real lessons lie in our ability to deal with crises as they unfold.

The overall security scenario has not changed one bit when compared to previous years.

Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat paying homage at Amar Jawan Jyoti, India Gate, in New Delhi

But, one aspect that stood out in comparison was our preparedness to deal with a spectrum of security related occurrences.

The year opened with the planned assault by Pakistani terrorists on Airforce Station, Pathankot followed by several other incursions notably in Pampore, Uri, Baramulla, Samba and Nagrota.

While the authorities are continuing their investigations into these attacks; the Pakistani Army complicity in using anti-India terror groups, are well known to all.

Chinks

The deficiencies in our physical security systems need to be understood. Military installations are guarded by human beings and they have limitations.

To obviate the fatigue and pressures on human guards; their efficiency needs to be augmented with electronic and electro- optic systems.

Most of all there is the element of fatigue. Whether it is Camp Bastion or Pathankot, merely depending on guards is not the answer.

For a start, the public must know that most military establishments have a two or three  layered security system.

We have a major chink in our first line of defense. This is where some of our military camps fall woefully short.

It is a common sight to find barbed wire fences, low and weak perimeter walls, etc, in several of our military establishments.

To obviate the fatigue and pressures on human guards; their efficiency needs to be augmented with electronic and electro- optic systems.

That is the standard today. I understand that the Government has taken relevant steps in improving this aspect; however, the civil work services need to be carried out on a war- footing with periodic progress reviews by a high level committee.

That said, we must acknowledge the courageous response of our officers and men to the recent attacks.

Each time our men have proved to be 'salt of the earth' and our officers have always 'led from the front' to defeat radicalised terrorists pushed towards attacking our installations by a cowardly enemy.

Terrorism we will defeat. Our Armed Forces are far too professional to let the enemy have an upper hand.

Contribution of our Central Armed Police Forces in tackling security related events must also be acknowledged.

The year gone by has been otherwise excellent when it comes to the positives.

For a starter, the three services have held several bi-service, tri-services and multinational military exercises aimed at improving battle-readiness in a net-centric, nuclear environment or anti-terror and disaster management situations.

In this context, the emphasis on joint exercises needs to be enhanced many fold, particularly at the lower formation levels (Pictured - Indian forces on the LoC)

The Indian Army's 'Shatrujeet' and 'Chakravyuh'; Navy's 'Malabar' and 'Dakshin- Prahaar'; and Airforce's 'Live-Wire' and 'Iron- Fist' exercises should give comfort to the government on the capability of our Armed Forces to deal with any adversary in the dimensions of land, sea and air.

The grueling battle rhythm demonstrated in these exercises through immaculate planning and thorough professional execution will make any adversary breathless!

In this context, the emphasis on joint exercises needs to be enhanced many fold, particularly at the lower formation levels.

Corps and Division level joint exercises need to be organised more frequently to refine joint standard operating procedures and give a better understanding of each other's operational capabilities.

Shortages

Wherever our Armed Forces' contingents have operated in exercises with foreign forces, there has been appreciation on the professional conduct of our men and officers.

I believe that the days of us being wary about sensitivities of 'other countries' are passe.

In the year gone by we have held exercises with American, Russian Chinese and other Armed Forces.

The step taken by the government in concluding the Logistics Agreement with USA is a desirable step forward.

Such agreements must be signed with other friendly countries as well.

Operationally speaking, the Indian Armed Forces are in fine fettle and training standards are high.

Preparedness can be further enhanced by a thorough review of equipment.

A large part of the inventory of all three Services is facing obsolescence issues.

Quality and quantities have both come down a notch or two in the past few years, due to delayed inductions.

The Armed Forces want critical shortages addressed and important inductions handled expeditiously.

Decision makers must feel responsible towards acquisition and modernisation needs of the Services.

Service Headquarters understand budgetary limitations and the need to prioritise equipment induction.

However, an unjustified delay in the decision making process should be unacceptable. It exacerbates the situation negatively.

Sacrifices

Several important decisions in defense acquisitions were also made during the year gone by.

These related to Rafale multi role fighter, additional Light Combat Aircraft, mountain warfare artillery guns, additional warships and advanced surface to air missile systems.

Other notable achievements related to the progress in design and development of indigenous surface to air missile and the long range inter- continental ballistic missile (Agni 5).

The demands of the Services must be seen in the light of the sacrifices they make and the continued hardships they face (pictured Indian forces on the LoC)

Much has been written on aspects of OROP and implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission.

On several other fronts, in the recent past, the government of the day has taken some very bold steps and been justifiably proud of them.

Then why not take a bold step on these two issues as well? Anomalies need to be resolved early followed by a comprehensive implementation of the OROP and justified elements of the seventh pay commission.

The demands of the Services must be seen in the light of the sacrifices they make and the continued hardships they face.

The War Memorial needs to take shape early and veterans need to be shown their due respect through a national Armed Forces Veterans Day.
COLUMBUS  It was only a matter of days after Gayle Goering left Cornhusker Public Power District when he got a reminder of the devotion of the rural utilitys linemen.

A severe storm that moved through central Nebraska on Christmas Day brought wind gusts of up to 85 mph, rattling Gayle and Carol Goerings farm home southeast of Platte Center and knocking out power for three hours late that night.

The floor and the roof were shaking, said the former member of CPPDs board of directors. The power was out, but I thought Id wait until morning to call Cornhusker about the outage.

He and his wife didnt have to wait until morning. The utilitys linemen were already out restoring power to customers late Christmas night. The couples power was back on early Dec. 26.

Cornhuskers linemen are so dedicated, said the 85-year-old Goering, who attended his last board of directors meeting only days earlier. You really appreciate the linemen on days like that.

Goering, who operated his own longtime business selling farm chemicals and seed corn to area agricultural producers before retiring 15 years ago, first ran for the Cornhusker board in 1986. He was re-elected to four more six-year terms in 1992, 1998, 2004 and 2010, before leaving the board in December.

I should have term-limited myself, joked Goering, adding that he enjoyed his time serving on the board and tried to always cast his votes "with the ratepayers in mind."

Goering missed only two meetings during his 30-year tenure on the Cornhusker board, both occasions because he was in the hospital.

When Goering decided not to seek a sixth term, his next-door neighbor opted to throw his hat in the ring. Jon Gehring, whose property abuts Goerings 320-acre farm, is replacing his neighbor on the board this month.

Cornhuskers 2,250-square-mile service area spans rural portions of six counties  Platte, Colfax, Boone, Nance, Greeley and Wheeler. The utility, which has more than 9,000 customers, is based in Columbus with service centers in Albion and Fullerton.

Goering represented Subdivision 7 customers in Shell Creek, Lost Creek, Burrows and Grand Prairie townships, excluding the villages of Platte Center and Tarnov.

Cornhusker buys all of its power from Nebraska Public Power District.

Goering, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and member of the Platte Center American Legion, remembers when nights were black out on the farm.

I remember not having lights on the farm (during the 1930s), Goering said.

The homeplace was wired and plumbed in anticipation of rural electrification, but there was no power available until 1941, he said.
The Income tax (IT) department says it has gathered proof against Delhi minister Satyendra Jain for his alleged connection with hawala operators.

This might spell further trouble for Delhi's home and health minister who has already been questioned three times by the officials for alleged violation of income tax laws.

An IT dossier, a copy of which is with India Today TV, reveals certain findings, which may form the basis for fresh questioning of Satyendra Jain by the income tax officials.

I-T department says companies controlled by Jain have received `16.39 crore from 56 shell companies of three hawala operators.

The documents also claim that the hawala operators were in direct touch with minister through his personal mobile phone and the transactions happened with some code words.

The income tax department says that companies controlled by Jain have received Rs 16.39 crore from 56 shell companies of three hawala operators - Jivendra Mishra, Abhishek Chokhani, Rajendra Bansal, which are based in Kolkata.

Jain had refuted allegations and had said that he has nothing to do with the hawala operators and he was summoned as a witness and not as an accused.

Jain had claimed that it was an assessment of the companies with whom he was associated in the past and that he has been summoned for the same.

However, sources in Income Tax department confirmed that he has been summoned thrice by the department not just as a witness, but to look into his direct involvement in money laundering.

The document prepared by I-T department revealed that the role of Jain came into the light during interrogation of hawala operators Jivendra Mishra and Rajendra Bansal. (picture for representation)

On Thursday, repeated phone calls and messages to seek the minister's version on the alleged connection with hawala operators, remain unanswered.

The scrutiny of income returns of four companies - Indo Metal Impex Pvt Limited, Akinchan Developers Pvt Limited, Mangalyaatan Projects Pvt Ltd and Paryas Infosolutions Pvt Ltd - owned by Jain have revealed the money laundering was happening through these companies since 2010 till as late as 2015-16.

The document prepared by IT department revealed that the role of Jain came into the light during interrogation of hawala operators Jivendra Mishra and Rajendra Bansal.

The status report of income tax department clearly states: 'Mishra disposed that accommodation entries were provided to Indo Metal Impex Pvt Ltd, Paryas Infosolutions, Mangalyaatan Projects Pvt Ltd and Akinchan Developers pvt Ltd during 2011-2012 through his shell companies.'

'Thereafter further inquiry was conducted by the investigation wing of Kolkata wherein Mishra's statement was recorded of August 29.'

'In his statement, Mishra said that he was introduced to Satyendra Kumar by his friend Raju Bansal, and he was provided cash by the employees of Jain which was transferred to shell companies controlled by him.'

'Thereafter equivalent cheques were issued to various companies of Jain,' it further added.

Further the report stated that Bansal during interrogation told Income tax sleuths that he met Jain at the office of JP Mohta and Associates in 2010.

In the meeting, Jain held discussion with Bansal regarding introduction of bogus share capitals in his companies, and it was allegedly decided that Mohta and his employees will be in touch with Bansal for bogus share capital entries.
Captain Amarinder Singh seems set to assume the mantle of Chief Minister of Punjab once again.

The latest opinion poll by Axis My India for India Today TV suggests that the Grand Old Party may end up very close to the majority mark in next month's elections.

The survey projects that the Congress could bag between 56 and 62 seats in the 117-seat state assembly.

Will the Captain win? The latest opinion poll by Axis My India for India Today TV suggests that the Grand Old Party may end up very close to the majority mark in next month's elections

If this opinion poll result holds on counting day then it will come as great relief for the beleaguered party that has lost state after state since a humiliating defeat in the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is projected to finish second with a tally in the range of 36- 41.

The opinion poll suggests that the tally of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine could crash to around 18-22 seats.

Punjab Congress President Capt. Amarinder Singh, at a special party press conference

The previous opinion poll for Punjab had been put out by Axis My India in October.

When the results of the two surveys are compared, it emerges that the Congress' campaign in the state has been gaining momentum.

The party's expected tally has gone up by seven seats over the past three months.

On the other hand, AAP's campaign, which had peaked at the beginning of 2016, has been on the wane.

The party is projected to have lost six seats in the past three months.

AAP was hit by a series of local-level controversies and high-profile exits and the party does not seem to have recovered fully from those blows.

Poll race

'People in Punjab aren't going to cast their votes for cyclical replacement, said AAP's national spokesperson Ashish Khetan. 'People want systematic change.

'They want a party which is new, which is fresh.'

The Akalis were down and out in October, but they seem to have recovered to some extent.

The SAD-BJP vote share in December (24%) is 2% more than the alliance's projected vote share in October.

'I think Akalis are going to go even further down. And this survey has been done before the election process started,' said Partap Singh Bajwa, Rajya Sabha MP and former Punjab Congress chief.

'Once you have this survey, you see that the Congress is going up and the Akalis are going down.'

Congress' Amarinder Singh is by far the top choice to be the state's next chief minister with 34% of the respondents indicating that he's their preferred pick.

The incumbent, Parkash Singh Badal, comes in second with 22% support.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who has not indicated whether he is willing to move to Chandigarh, comes in third in the popularity sweepstakes, with 16% support.

Despite the loud protestations of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal and others in the Akali leadership, 70% of the respondents in the survey felt that drugs were a major problem in Punjab.

Roughly the same number of respondents (69%) blame politicians of the ruling Akali- BJP government for the menace.

However, when asked which issue would determine their voting preference, the majority of respondents put employment (41%), and development (33%) well ahead of drug control (8%).

SAD was, understandably, not happy with the opinion poll results.

'I think there is something fundamentally wrong with your survey,' said Jangveer Singh, Sukhbir Badal's media advisor.

'I don't know what kind of questions you asked and how you came up with this kind of result.'

Respondents in Punjab seemed more inconvenienced by demonetisation than voters in Uttar Pradesh.

In UP, 58% of the respondents said they were facing problems because of the PM's move.

In comparison, a whopping 82% of the respondents in Punjab said they were facing problems because of note ban.

Despite the problems that are being faced, 72% of the respondents said they supported demonetisation.

The opinion poll was done using the face-to-face interview method from December 12-22.

A team of 26 surveyors did the poll with a sample size of 3,081 respondents.

The data for age-wise vote share in the survey make for interesting reading. Among all age categories, the Aam Aadmi Party's popularity is highest among youngsters with 32% of the youth backing it.

This is 3% more than the party's overall vote share of 29%. Despite not having a prominent Sikh face, AAP seems to have penetrated the upper caste Sikh vote bank as well.

30% of the upper caste Sikhs said they would vote for Kejriwal's party.

This is the same as the number of upper caste Sikhs who said they would vote for the Congress.

The Congress's popularity seems highest among upper caste Hindus and Hindu OBCs.

Despite its image as a saviour of the Sikh faith, the Akalis have lost favour with upper caste, OBC and SC Sikhs.

While the general impression around AAP is that Kejriwal's party is an urban phenomenon with limited appeal in the villages, the opinion poll suggests that the party's popularity is actually higher in rural areas than it is in urban pockets.

The Congress' popularity peaks in urban areas while the Akalis fairly poorly both in the cities and the backwoods.

Axis My India will put out its final opinion poll for Punjab in the last week of January, just ahead of the crucial elections scheduled for February 4 with the results to be announced on March 11.

Captain invites Priyanka to add star power

By Supriya Bhardwaj

Punjab Congress is keen to rope in Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as a star campaigner for upcoming assembly polls.

Captain Amarinder Singh has written to Priyanka Gandhi requesting her to campaign for the Congress party in the poll-bound state.

Party general secretary Ambika Soni, who is also campaign in-charge of Punjab Congress, has confirmed to India Today that Captain Amarinder Singh has made a formal request to Priyanka Gandhi, inviting her to campaign in the state.

Punjab Congress is keen to rope in Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as a star campaigner for upcoming assembly polls

Sonia told India Today, 'Captain Amarinder Singh has already put in a request to Priyanka ji to campaign in Punjab.

Now, she has to decide. Sonia ji and Rahul ji will be campaigning in coming days in the state.'

Captain Amarinder had expressed similar views in the past on numerous occasions urging Priyanka Gandhi to campaign in Punjab.

But, this time, he has written a letter expressing his desire to make her a star campaigner in Punjab elections.

Punjab Congress has also decided that this time local and state leaders will also be star campaigners.
Service charges at eating and drinking establishments in India will no longer be considered mandatory after the Centre made the levy optional at all bars and restaurants.

However, the move has triggered turbulence with heated spats breaking out between patrons and employees at pubs and eateries.

Altercations have become almost inevitable, suggested scores of managers across restaurants in Delhi, awaiting a final verdict over the advisory.

Service charges at eating and drinking establishments in India will no longer be considered mandatory after the Centre made 'tipping' optional at all bars and restaurants

FHRAI, the apex body of hotels and restaurants in the country, has appealed to the department of consumer affairs for withdrawal of the notification.

Service charge is over and above the service tax and other tariffs levied on a restaurant bill and usually ranges from 5-20 per cent.

'It was not a mandatory charge before January 3 and customers could refuse, but now we are seeing refusals at an alarming rate.

The uncertainty over the service levy has left many confused (picture for representation only)

'Yesterday, I resolved a number of fights over service charge payments,' Vikas Bhat, manager at the Warehouse Cafe in Connaught Place, told Mail Today.

Experts feel the government should completely abolish the service charge to avoid any confusion or friction.

A statement from the department of consumer affairs clarified on Monday that in cases where the customer is not satisfied with the service at hotels and restaurants, payment of service charge is 'completely discretionary and should a customer be dissatisfied with the dining experience, he/she can have it waived off'.

Bhat, however, voiced the industry concerns, stressing that the levy was important for the health of the hospitality sector.

'It is not right to make the customers the judge to decide on paying for services rendered by my staff in all circumstances. But I don't have a choice any more as being a server I cannot indulge in a fight with my customers,' he said.

Many Delhiites have welcomed the government move that, some said, had softened to an extent their demonetisation woes.

'If I want to appreciate the service extended by a restaurant, I will tip the waiter, like I always do.

'To my surprise, the hotel stewards have received me with more generosity and courtesy in the last two days and I have been made to feel like a king,' said Anmol Kawatra, an executive with a top private firm in Delhi who was visiting an eatery.

The clash of interests between foodies and their favourite eating joints does not bode well for the business, say observers.

'I am most definitely expecting fights if this confusion prevails,' said a manager of a renowned restaurant in Khan Market.

Vikas Bhat, manager at the Warehouse Cafe in Connaught Place, told Mail Today, 'Yesterday, I resolved a number of fights over service charge payments'

Harry, manager of the city's Lord of the Drinks chain, has acted swiftly. 'To avoid any untoward situation with patrons, I pasted a notice at the entrance of my establishment that we will collect 10 per cent service charge,' he said.

Restaurants have also rejected allegations that they 'pocket the service charge'. An accusation indeed found to be accurate recently at a top London restaurant.

Many in the industry also raised questions over the future of the workers.
Mohammed Mansoor Hussain and Hoor Unisa are desperate to see their son, who has been sentenced to one-year in prison and 300 lashes after being convicted in a robbery case.

Their son, who the parents claim is innocent, is lodged in Wadi Al Dawasir jail in Saudi Arabia.

In a desperate effort to rescue their son, the parents have sought external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj's help.

Hoor Unisa holding her son's picture who is jailed in Riyadh

Mohammed Mansoor Hussain from Malakpet, Hyderabad, was working in Riyadh since 2013.

An MBA degree holder, Hussain worked as a marketing auditor for Abdel Hadi Abdullah Al Qahtani and Sons Limited.

Hussain's family claimed that on August 25 last year he was on his way to the bank to deposit 1,06,000 Saudi Riyal when he was allegedly robbed at gunpoint by some miscreants.

Asaduddin Owaisi, MP from Hyderabad has also requested Sushma Swaraj (pictured) to intervene in the matter

'Two men took the money from him at gunpoint and fled in a car that did not have a number plate.'

'He (Hussain) informed his boss who advised him to lodge a police complaint. When he reached the police station, the authorities took him in custody,' Hussain's mother Hoor Unisa said.

The 32-year-old's mother has now written to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking her immediate intervention to secure her son's release.

'He earlier deposited more than 15 lakh Saudi Riyal to the bank, so how can he steal a smaller amount? The company should think about this,' said the inconsolable mother.

'He (Hussain) described how the incident took place, but the police did not believe him,' she said.

Learning about the incident, Asaduddin Owaisi, MP from Hyderabad, has also requested Sushma Swaraj to intervene in the matter.
The BJP has readied a plan in response to criticism from the West Bengal Chief Minister over demonetisation and the arrest of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders over alleged ponzi schemes.

'Tit for tat' is how the Centre's ruling party described its strategy.

CM Mamata Banerjee and her party have been crying 'political vendetta' after the CBI arrested party leaders - Lok Sabha MP from Krishnanagar, Tapas Pal last Friday, and party leader in Lok Sabha Sudip Bandyopadhyay on Tuesday - in connection with the Rose Valley scam.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee addresses the media after Bandyopadhyay's arrest

On the other hand, the BJP has been alleging that TMC activists have been concertedly attacking its cadre and leaders in reaction to both demonetisation and the arrest of its leaders.

'We don't want any ugly situation to arise. But if the TMC and its chief minister continue to attack us like this, attacking our offices and our leaders, our activists will have no choice but go in for self-defence.

'They (TMC) should remember, their leaders and MPs too stay in Delhi,' said West Bengal BJP leader and national secretary of the party Rahul Sinha.

The BJP, however, seemed ready to 'bare its fangs', both in Delhi as well as the state.

Top party sources told Mail Today that the saffron outfit was 'fed up' of the 'goondaism' (anti-social behavior) of TMC in West Bengal and its activists were ready to launch 'reprisal attacks', though the party has not issued any express directions in this regard.

'These arrests will not stop,' a senior BJP functionary told Mail Today, hinting that the Centre would keep using its machinery to put pressure on Banerjee and her party.

The functionary pointed out that they were successfully able to use the CRPF a few days ago when the BJP office ion Kolkata was attacked by people bearing TMC flags, though the allegations have been denied by the TMC.

TMC MP Sudip Bandopadhyay arrives to appear before CBI in connection with Rose Valley chit fund scam

'Our leader Rahul Sinha was inside the office and as he is a CRPF protectee, we were justified in sending the force to rescue him,' he said.

Moreover, party sources told Mail Today that activists in the state had been asked to be ready to defend themselves, if the need arose.

'Where they find us they can beat us, but it goes for the too. If we find them, we will thrash them too. There is not much of a choice the TMC has left us with,' said a senior BJP leader from Bengal.

Hinting at the way things could go in the future, top BJP leaders told Mail Today that the party had opened its coffers to defend its activists in the state against police repression and vendetta attacks.

'We have beefed up our legal apparatus. We have readied them to fight cases that have been and will be slapped on to our cadre. Most of our cadre is poor, but we will pay for their bail etc.'

Adding to the already murky situation, BJP leaders also hinted that arrests will not stop in the coming times.

'The TMC is rattled because it has been exposed. The 'popular' CM opposed demonetisation, but the people didn't follow her.

Trinamool Congress Party suppoters damages BJP state party office and burn PM Modi effigy after the CBI Arrested TMC MP Sudip Banerjee

'They praised the PM and stood patiently in lines. Now, their leaders are being arrested for complicity in ponzi schemes.

'Mamata and her party thinks hitting the roads to gherao PMO, scuttling law and order in the state and perpetrating violence will pressurize law enforcement agencies to stop looking into her crimes,' Sinha said.

'Sudip Bandyopadhyay is not the only one to be arrested; it will reach the doorsteps of the CM house soon,' Sinha added.

'Meanwhile, in the backdrop of the attack on the BJP office and the residence of MP Babul Supriyo by people carrying TMC flags, a BJP delegation on Thursday met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and demanded that the Centre review the situation in the state.

'We request your immediate and determined intervention in this matter,' BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said.

The co-incharge of West-Bengal and national secretary Sidharth Nath Singh said, 'TMC should introspect about what it was doing. They (TMC) accuse BJP of using the office of the state governor, but there is violence and breakdown of law and order in the state.

Several BJP workers were injured when people carrying TMC flags had attacked its state headquarters here on Tuesday after the arrest of the TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in connection with the Rose Valley ponzi scam.'
After the mass molestation incident in Bengaluru, the national Capital is facing criticism for a similarly shameful incident in the city's Mukherjee Nagar area on New Year's Eve.

A video appeared on Thursday in which hooligans have not only molested a young girl but also attacked and injured police constables.

The incident took place at Batra cinema hall in presence of city police, when over 200 miscreants forced a motorcycle to stop.

After the mass molestation incident in Bengaluru, the national Capital is facing criticism for a similarly shameful incident (pictured - hundreds of people gather to attend the eve of new year celebration in Bangalore)

The mob, many in number, then tried to drag the victim who was riding second pillion (triple loading) off the motorcycle.

The young women was then allegedly molested and when two of her friends tried to rescue her, they were also thrashed.

The police personnel present at the spot have took prompt action and rescued the girl, helping the girl and her friends flee.

A video appeared on Thursday in which hooligans have not only molested a young girl but also attacked and injured police constables (picture for representation only)

Following this, the policemen managed to arrest a couple of accused, but as the crowd grew larger they began to pelt stones at the Batra police officers on duty.

The mob damaged the police post and a PCR van, yet police managed to take away the accused.

Vijayanta Arya, additional DCP, north-west district said: 'The hooligans were in large number and they have over-powered police personnel present at the spot.

'They attacked the police team and took away the accused. Eight police constables, including women personnel, received injuries during the clash'.

The DCP said an FIR has been registered on the same day following the statements of the injured police personnel and police were trying to get a break through in the case.

A minister in Bangalore has been criticised for blaming women for wearing western-style clothes for causing a string of sex attacks during New Year celebrations in Bangalore

'We have started the proceedings of making sketches of the alleged suspects with the help of police personnel present at the spot.

The investigation is currently underway and the accused will be put behind the bars soon,' said Arya.

Police sources said the victim and her friends are students and preparing for competitive examinations.

Sources have also said Delhi Police did not have conclusive evidence and hence facing difficulties in identifying the accused.
An aristocratic financier is battling to keep his pioneering savings and loans firm afloat  with the nest eggs of 12,000 customers at stake.

Graham Wellesley, the Earl of Cowley, is seeking support from investors for his peer-to-peer lending company, Wellesley Group, and has asked the public to pump in 1.5million.

However, so far he has far raised less than 200,000.

At one point last year auditors warned that the firm would face collapse if it did not raise new funds.

Appeal: Graham Wellesley, the Earl of Cowley, pictured with wife Claire, is seeking support from investors for his peer-to-peer lending company, Wellesley Group

As a peer-to-peer lender, Wellesley takes savers' money and loans it to property firms.

These borrowers then pay interest, which is split between Wellesley and savers, allowing them to earn better returns than from a bank account. But this money is at risk if borrowers default.

Wellesley has broken into the mainstream with high-profile adverts on television that promote it as a viable alternative to mainstream banks. It has boasted rates of 4 per cent  far higher than readily available on the high street.

But the industry has been tainted by accusations that it is not transparent.

Wellesley's group accounts were published more than two months late and revealed a 3.3million loss for the 18 months to the end of 2015. It wrote 135 loans worth 235million in the period.

In total, it has handled funds worth 174million on behalf of more than 12,000 retail investors. Savers' funds in the business are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

James Daley, of consumer group Fairer Finance, said: 'I would feel quite nervous about putting my money in. If some of the debts start to go wrong, consumers might start to lose more than they bargained for.'

The business had 10.2million of loans that had gone bad or were past their due date as of December 31, 2015.

Directors pocketed 1.4million in the period. The highest-paid, thought to be Graham Wellesley, took home 447,475. His firm is a major backer of Spanish property, and has 10.4million of foreign assets and liabilities on its balance sheet.

The accounts show it had to restructure a multi-million-pound deal with a builder putting up apartments in Majorca, taking a 2.5million stake in a joint venture.

Shareholders pumped an extra 2.5million of cash into the business in September last year as they struggled to keep it alive.

About 2.4million of this came from Wellesley, with 1.7million of that lent to him by the firm. This unusual arrangement meant he was effectively using the business's money to buy more shares.

The firm said last night it is in a much healthier position than the period covered by the accounts. Graham Wellesley added: 'Our loan book is very healthy, we are not worried or concerned. Any further money raising is to fund stable future growth.'

The Financial Conduct Authority yesterday declined to say if it was investigating the company.
The pensions lifeboat scheme has demanded 75m from Bernard Matthews administrators

The pensions black hole left behind by the former owners of turkey giant Bernard Matthews has reached 75million, it has emerged.

The pensions lifeboat scheme has demanded the sum  nearly four times originally flagged  from the administrators of the collapsed producer.

If the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) does not receive the cash, hundreds of workers will get less money than promised at retirement.

Bernard Matthews was sold to 'Chicken King' Ranjit Boparan, the owner of the 2 Sisters Food Group, in September in a pre-pack administration that saw the multimillionaire businessman take the company's assets, but not its liabilities  and, crucially, not the pension scheme.

That fell into the hands of the PPF. While the buyout saved 2,000 jobs, 700 who were part of the defined benefit pension face cuts to their income in old age.
Ballot threat: Royal Mail is planning to change the pensions of 90,000 staff

Posties could be set to strike over Royal Mail plans to change the pensions of 90,000 staff.

Communication Workers Union (CWU) has warned bosses that any unagreed pension changes will spark a national strike ballot, following the companys announcement of a formal consultation.

Royal Mail told workers in June that the final salary defined benefit scheme was becoming unaffordable and that its current pension surplus would run out in 2018.

The company is now asking workers to consider switching to a stock market-linked defined contribution plan.

This would see the company and employees pay into a pension pot with no guarantees as to the payout.

'With our unions, we have been actively exploring possible changes to potentially enable us to keep the plan open on a defined benefit basis after March 2018 as part of our pension review process,' Royal Mail said.

'Unfortunately, we have not been able to find an affordable way of doing this so far.'

The review remains open to active members of the pension and unions until March.

CWU deputy general secretary Terry Pullinger warned that unilateral adoption of a new scheme could result in strikes.

The consultation period ends on 10 March but Royal Mail said no changes would come into effect before April 2018.

Royal Mail's pension plan has assets of 7.4billion and, unlike many other schemes, is in surplus by 1.7billion. The company said it would have to pay in 1billion a year after March 2018, up from 400million currently, to keep running the fund.

This is significantly more than the annual cash Royal Mail generates which stood at around 290million in 2015/16.
As the FTSE 100 finished at a record high for a sixth day, a downbeat outlook from JP Morgan sent Rolls-Royce shares spiralling.

The stockbroker slashed its target price for the engineering giant from 890p to 730p and said it had concerns about the civil aerospace unit.

JPM warned that earnings at the firm, which has issued five major profit warnings in recent years, could be highly depressed over the next few years. Shares tumbled 4.2 per cent, or 28p, to 639.5p.

It was the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 for the day, but it didnt stop the stock market setting a sixth consecutive closing high.

The FTSE 100 climbed 0.1 per cent, or 5.57 points, to 7195.31. It is now the longest stretch of record closes since May 1997.

Earlier in the day it had set a new record intra-day high of 7211.96.

Shares plunge: JPMorgan slashed its target price for Rolls-Royce stock from 890p to 730p and said it had concerns about the civil aerospace unit

Housebuilders were at the top of the table for a second day after Persimmon, which was up 7.2 per cent, or 130p, to 1940p, reported revenue for the year was up 8 per cent to 3.14billion.

Fastjet took off as it announced plans to raise 23.4million from investors. The airline business wants to use the cash to increase its working capital and improve cash flow.

Fastjet has also entered an agreement with Johannesburg-based commercial aviation company Solenta, in which Solenta will provide and operate three aircraft and supply other services over the next five years.

Solenta will acquire some 95.6m Fastjet shares as part of the deal, giving it a 28 per cent stake in the firm. It will also have the right to nominate two directors to the firms board.

Fastjet said the agreement would help grow the business in a flexible and cost-effective way. Shares flew up 9.8 per cent, or 1.62p, to 18.25p.

STOCK WATCH - SCIENCE IN SPORT Science in Sport soared as sales surged 30 per cent to 12.2million in 2016. The firm develops sports nutrition products, such as powders, gels and cereal bars. The group said investment in its website and operations had seen direct sales double year-on-year. Growth in the US and Italy will be a particular focus for 2017 after Australia delivered ahead of target last year. While costs have increased, the firm said a more efficient product line meant margins were improving. Shares gained 7.7 per cent, or 5.5p, to 77p.

Support services outfit Babcock has won a defence contract with the French Air Force.

Babcock France will provide new training aircraft, simulators and training facilities in an 11-year deal worth more than 427million. Shares edged up 0.5 per cent, or 4.5p, to 955.5p.

Cape climbed as it revealed full-year results are now likely to be materially ahead of expectations.

The industrial services provider said strong trading in the final two months of the year, particularly in Asia, meant results were now set to be better than expected.

Cape has also won additional work at a natural gas project in Western Australia where it will provide painting, insulation, fire proofing and other services.

Shares rocketed 17.4 per cent, or 26.5p, to 178.5p.

PureCircle plunged as it revealed that sales had slipped after US Customs and Border Protection had detained a shipment earlier in the year of stevia  a type of natural sweetener.

It was detained in June amid allegations the shipment contained products produced using forced labour.

PureCircle said the allegations were incorrect and it was committed to human rights and the proper and fair use of labour.

The shipment was released after four weeks. But, with a third of the companys sales coming from the US, the incident had a knock-on effect and PureCircle said gross margin, earnings and profit were likely to be lower.

While growth had been strong in the six months to December 31 and demand for stevia-based products is increasing, sales were down 14 per cent to 38million.

The group is expecting a net loss of 1.6million, compared with a profit of 4million a year ago.

However, PureCircle said increased awareness of obesity and implementation of sugar taxes by governments is driving demand for alternative sweeteners. Shares dropped 4.3 per cent, or 10.75p, to 240.25p.

Software firm Intercede revealed it had received one of its largest ever orders. The deal with the US Government, worth around 2.4million, had been expected in the first half of the year but was delayed.

The order is for software licenses and annual support and maintenance for its MyID identity and credential management software.
RUSHVILLE  Sheridan County residents defended Whiteclay's embattled beer stores Thursday, telling local leaders that shutting them down would "scatter" alcohol-related issues and lead to more drunk driving on surrounding highways.

The four stores sold the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer last year a few hundred yards south of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where liquor is banned but alcoholism is rampant.

State regulators in Nebraska ordered the stores to reapply for their liquor licenses after questions were raised about adequacy of law enforcement in Whiteclay, an unincorporated village with a dozen permanent residents.

Activists who want the stores shut down cite violence and vagrancy in Whiteclay and a variety of social ills on the reservation.

Abram Neumann, who works at Whiteclay's Lakota Hope ministry, has feared for his safety but assumed law enforcement was so far away they "would only be there to scrape my body up off the pavement," Neumann told members of the Sheridan County Board of Commissioners during a public hearing in Rushville.

But beer store owner Steve Sanford said little has changed since his family first purchased D&S Pioneer about nine years ago.

Other local residents worried about the impact closing Whiteclay beer stores would have on nearby towns, including Chadron, Rushville, Gordon and Hay Springs.

One woman submitted a petition containing what she described as 300 signatures from current and former Sheridan County residents who support keeping the beer stores open.

"Closing Whiteclay does not fix the problem," said Jeff Erquiaga, a business owner in Rushville. "All it does is scatter it out.

Most studies show decreasing access to alcohol leads to fewer drunk driving incidents, not more, argued activist John Maisch, a former liquor regulator from Oklahoma.

Other social ills that might spread elsewhere if the beer stores are closed already exist in Whiteclay, Neumann said.

"If its unacceptable in Rushville, it should be unacceptable in my community as well," he said.

Hearings for the other three beer stores will continue throughout the day.

Sheridan County commissioners will meet again Tuesday to decide what, if any, recommendation they will make to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, which has ultimate authority to grant liquor licenses.

The state liquor board is expected to hold its own public hearing in Lincoln in the coming months.
A crack trio of City dealmakers have shared 37million of profits after getting involved in a string of mega-mergers.

Sir Simon Robey, Simon Warshaw and Philip Apostolides pocketed the cash after helping secure huge takeovers such as Shell's 40billion acquisition of rival oil giant BG Group.

The three run investment bank Robey Warshaw from a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair after founding it in 2013.

Accounts show they almost doubled profits and turnover in the year to the end of last March. Revenues rocketed from 23.9million to 43.3million and profit rose from 19.4million to 36.6million.

Cashing in: Sir Simon Robey, Simon Warshaw and Philip Apostolides pocketed the cash after helping secure huge takeovers such as Shell's 40bn acquisition of rival oil giant BG Group

The three partners will split this cash between them. Robey Warshaw's other 11 staff took home more than 5million in wages, or around 455,000 each.

David Buik, of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said: 'They've had a phenomenal run. Virtually any deal which has been half worth doing in London they seem to have been involved in  and well done them.'

The BG deal generated fees for advisers worth 235million  a portion of which would have gone to Robey Warshaw.

The bank also worked on SABMiller's 79billion acquisition by AB InBev. This landmark tie-up, which finally went through in October, created the world's largest brewer, responsible for a third of global beer.

Robey Warshaw acted for SAB and would have picked up a share of the 91million fees it paid to financial advisers.

It is also working for the London Stock Exchange on takeover talks with German rival Deutsche Borse.

It will be entitled to a slice of 85.6million in fees if the sale goes ahead.

Sir Simon Robey Sir Simon Robey, 56, made his name as joint head of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley during the Big Bang of the 1980s. He went to boarding school in Surrey before reading English at Magdalen College Oxford, where he was also a choral scholar. He joined adviser Lazard in 1983 before moving to Morgan Stanley four years later. The married father of three shot to prominence in 1995, helping defend Wellcome from the hostile takeover by GlaxoSmithKline. In 2012, he launched the firm that would become Robey Warshaw and was knighted last year for his work in the arts world.

Simon Warshaw Simon Warshaw spent 27 years with Swiss bank UBS building up a reputation as a top dealmaker. His long-time friend Sir Simon Robey had repeatedly tried to lure the 51-year-old colleague away and finally succeeded four years ago. Warshaws contacts book is thick  a FTSE 100 boss described him as like family. He is known as a calmer figure than the often forthright Robey. And as the son of Michael Warshaw, who built hair salon Molton Brown into a luxury cosmetics giant, business success also runs in his blood. A regular theatre-goer, Warshaw shares his partners appreciation for high culture.

And since the period covered by the accounts, it helped secure the sale of ARM Holdings to Japanese company Softbank for 26billion, sharing a 90million fee pot.

Other, smaller deals have included Aviva's 5.6billion purchase of rival Friends Life and the 374million sale of Chime Communications to Providence and WPP.

Robey Warshaw came to prominence in 2014 when it joined the defence of AstraZeneca from a politically charged power grab by rival pharma giant Pfizer.

There were fears the US firm's attempt to buy its British competitor could cost up to 7,000 people their jobs and see prized expertise moved overseas.

But after months of wrangling, Pfizer finally admitted defeat  a rare failure for a company with a 15-year history of ruthlessly buying up other large businesses.

Robey Warshaw then worked for RSA, the owner of car insurer More Than, during a 5.6billion takeover bid from Zurich, which ultimately came to nothing.

The SAB deal came next  a high-profile battle in which its chairman, Jan du Plessis, held clandestine meetings in Robey Warshaw's office with InBev boss Carlos Brito.

The bank does not have the capacity to offer huge loans, instead securing multi-million-pound fees through the quality of its advisers and the strength of their contacts.

Its other key asset is cost. Although the fees involved are vast, they remain low compared with the bills likely to come from a global behemoth such as Goldman Sachs.

In an interview earlier this year, a boss of a top London private equity firm said contacts, experience and a cool head went a long way.

'In a deal situation, what you really want is someone with a lot of experience  say, 30 years  and real nous,' he said.

Dealmakers earn their fees in private, sometimes by bringing together chief executives from rival companies and persuading them a tie-up is worth doing.

They are also experts in regulation, handling prickly shareholders  and ruthless defence or attack during hostile bids.

There is growing demand for smaller boutique banks made up of respected individuals whose own names carry as much weight as that of their organisation.

Other top rainmakers of recent years have included Zaoui & Co and Ondra, both launched by exiles from global investment banks.

The Zaoui brothers, Michael and Yoel  who are famously called the Messi and Ronaldo of banking  have advised on 120billion of deals with a staff of nine.

Former Lehman Brothers bankers Benoit d'Angelin and Michael Tory have seen their business Ondra play a central role in deals across Europe.
Three arrested after eight suitcases were seized in Panama airport stuffed with MILLIONS in cartel cash



$7.2 million was packed into a hidden compartments in eight separate bags

Dozens of officers have been suspended during the course of the case

The money was thought to have been going to a well known cartel

Panama is a well-known international money-laundering hub



Three have been arrested after police found nearly $7.2 million stuffed inside luggage at an airport in Panama.

Police suspect that the cash, which was mostly in $100 bills, was being moved for a powerful cartel.

The cash had been concealed in hidden compartments in eight separate suitcases that were stowed on a flight to Honduras from Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa.



A policeman stands guard over $7 million confiscated by the police during a news conference in Panama City

The money was found in concealed compartments in the eight separate bags, in an attempt to hide it from airport security

Part of the over $7 million haul from the drug money bust at Tocumen international airport, thought to have been headed for a major cartel

Honduran police have said that authorities have suspended dozens of officers during the course of the investigation.



The money was found during a luggage check in the presence of the owners, when inspectors found a second compartment in the inner part of the bag hidden by a fake bottom, that concealed bundles of money in $100 bills.



Panamanian police described the suitcase stash bust bust as their biggest in years, with the amount seized being the largest ever.



The arrest of the three men, aged 41, 39 and 32, and following seizure of cash has been said to highlight the regional impacts of the international drug trade in Panama.



Bags of $100 U.S. notes confiscated by the police, the largest money seizure in recent history

Panamanian police officers stood guard beside the piles of cash during a press conference

Chief drug prosecutor Javier Caraballo caught the smugglers using gathered intelligence that said the drug money would enter Panama through Tocumen Airport.

Panama is known as a money-laundering hub for drug cartels in Latin America.



Recent changes in international banking laws in Panama have also made the country a serious location for foreign nationals attempting to hide their money for tax purposes, making it a target for money laundering and cash smuggling.

The area is well known for cartel crime, and recently the police have had a few victories, but this bust is the biggest yet
German conservation official shoots an elephant and poses with its corpse in Botswana

Udo Wedekind shot dead elephant in Botswana, south Africa, last year

Posed for photos alongside its corpse, before boasting about its size

'From trunk to tail, it was 7.24m long and weighed three tonnes,' he said



Mr Wedekind's job includes the protection of endangered species



Commercial hunting was banned in African country last month



A German conservation official has shot dead an elephant in Botswana - before posing with its corpse.



U do Wedekind , whose job includes environmental protection and care of endangered species, fired at the animal during a hunting trip in the African country last year.

He then posed for two pictures with its carcass, before boasting about its size and weight.

Boastful: Udo Wedekind poses beside the corpse of an elephant during a hunting trip in Botswana, south Africa

The senior regional government official - named as Mr Wedekind by Thueringer Allgemeine newspaper - then sent the photos to his friends in Germany.

Alongside the images, he wrote: 'From trunk to tail the elephant was 7.24metres long. I would estimate he weighed in at about 3 tonnes.

''The hunt was tough, it was 37 degrees celsius in the shade, and was really humid. There was also thick bush, making the going tough.

'It was really a challenge. I'm so happy that it ended with a real hunting victory.'

Sad: The German official, whose job includes environmental protection and care of endangered species, then boasted about the elephant's size and weight. Above, Mr Wedekind waves from behind the animal's carcass

Ban: Last month, Botswana banned elephant hunting by wealthy foreigners - some of whom were willing to pay up to 20,000 for a licence to shoot the animals. Above, elephants at Chobe National Park in Botswana

Last month, Botswana passed a law banning elephant hunting by wealthy foreigners - some of whom were willing to pay up to 20,000 for a licence to shoot the animals.

However, Mr Wedekind's hunting trip took place last year - before the ban came into force.



At the time of his trip, a conference about elephant shooting was taking place in the country.



The meeting - attended by several German officials - discussed ways in which to protect the species and the banning of the illegal ivory trade.

Today, Thueringen's regional government environment minister, Juergen Reinholz, said: 'It is not of interest what civil servants do in their free time as long as they follow the law and don't break the rules.'

Apology: In January 2012, Spanish king Juan Carlos was forced to apologise after taking part in an elephant hunt in Africa. He was also required to resign his honorary role with the WWF following the expensive trip

Ready to shoot: The Spanish king is pictured with a companion on an earlier hunting trip in Africa

In January 2012, Spanish king Juan Carlos was forced to apologise after breaking his hip while taking part in an expensive elephant hunt in Africa.

In an unprecedented act of royal contrition, t he monarch said: 'I am very sorry. I made a mistake. It won't happen again.'



The king was forced to resign his honorary role with the WWF as a result of the trip.










Bulgaria and Lithuania fear they could be next on Russia's hit-list but U.S. Vice President Joe Biden promises: 'We're in this with you'

Pro-Russian militia have taken control of Ukraine's naval base in Crimea



Crimea's leader has urged the Kremlin to go deeper into Ukraine



Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia expressed concern over the developments



Biden said the U.S. will defend any NATO member against 'aggression'

Its comes amid eports of FSB secret services agents flooding into Transdniestria, a breakaway pro-Moscow region of ex-Soviet state Moldova

The region's leadership has signaled their wish to be integrated into Russia



Fears were rising last night that Russia could seek to grab more territory in eastern Europe as Moscow's noose tightened in Crimea with Ukraine troops forced into abject surrender.



U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sought to reassure the three ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that America will defend any NATO member against aggression.



'We're in this with you, together,' he said in Vilnius, amid jitters in three countries overrun by Stalin during the Second World War which only won their freedom with the collapse of the Soviet Union.



He said: 'Russia cannot escape the fact that the world is changing and rejecting outright their behaviour.'



Scroll down for video



'We're in this with you': U.S. Vice President Joe Biden vowed America will defend any NATO member from aggression as ex-Soviet states expressed concerns over the developments in Crimea

Talks: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite (centre) and Latvia's President Andris Berzins (left) on Wednesday

Under threat: Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite told Biden that Putin's annexing of Crimea was a direct threat to regional security

Pressing forward: President Vladimir Putin, pictured on Wednesday, has signed a treaty to annex Crimea

But Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite warned him Vladimir Putin's annexing of Crimea showed 'the use of brute force to redraw the map of Europe', adding: 'This situation is a direct threat to our regional security.'



The sombre mood was reflected by Bulgarian president, Rosen Plevneliev, who said in London: 'What about Lithuania? What about Estonia? We do have Russian communities and minorities there.

'Is it possible in the 21st Century that they can call Moscow - and Moscow will send troops and occupy and annex some part of their territory?'

This came amid reports of FSB secret services agents flooding into Transdniestria, a breakaway pro-Moscow region of ex-Soviet state Moldova which shares a border with Ukraine.

In recent days the leadership of the region - where Russian troops are believed to be on the ground - has signaled their wish to be integrated into Russia, like Crimea.



The Crimean leader Sergey Aksyonov, meanwhile, openly urged the Kremlin to go deeper into Ukraine to 'protect' ethnic Russians.



'The surge in patriotism we are witnessing in Crimea and Russia, which has united everyone irrespective of political views, convictions and political parties, shall spread farther, into southeastern Ukraine,' he said.



Flying the flag: A soldier holds up a Russian flag on the roof of Ukraine's naval headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimean, on Wednesday morning after the base was stormed by pro-Russian forces

Taking control: Pro-Russian self-defence force members break through an entrance to the Ukrainian Navy headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Wednesday

Being cut out: A member of the Pro-Russian self-defence force reaches for a knife as he takes down a Ukrainian Navy flag at the Ukrainian Navy headquarters in Sevastopol

Russians in these areas 'have fixed their eyes on us, they are hopeful and they expect our support and assistance. People truly need this,' he insisted.



NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was 'deeply concerned' over the spiraling crisis and urged all sides to 'take all possible steps to avoid further escalation', while Nikolai Petrov, professor at the Higher Economic School in Moscow, forecast 'a new Cold War'.



Concern was also rising last night over Russia's bid to steamroller 20,000 Ukrainian troops in Crimea to defect to Moscow, or surrender and be sent back to Kiev.



While many gave up without a fight to prevent bloodshed, the peninsula remained a tinderbox after Ukraine - which refuses to accept the Russian annexation of the Black Sea peninsula - gave permission for its forces to shoot in self-defence.



The Ukrainian naval base in Sevastopol fell without a shot, but 100 loyal servicemen were barricaded inside tonight refusing to bow to the Kremlin's orders.



Later the whereabouts of Ukraine's navy chief, Serhiy Hayduk, were unknown after he was captured by pro-Moscow forces.



Sending a message: Russian flags fly at the top of a chimney near the territory of a Ukrainian military unit in Sevastopol on Wednesday

Waving goodbye: Ukrainian servicemen leave a Ukrainian military unit after it was taken over by Russian forces in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Wednesday

Going home: Ukrainian soldiers left the base with their belongings after being forced out of the building on Wednesday

A Ukrainian officer leaves as Russian soldiers take over the Ukrainian navy headquarters in the Crimean city of Sevastopol

Reports that he had been summoned by prosecutors in Sevastopol were denied by the Russians.



Meanwhile, five warships blockaded by the Russians inside Donuzlav Bay were refusing to surrender.



'We're throwing grenades from time to time so that they can't approach us. We have also put up armed guards,' said a commander.



Russian Black Sea fleet commander Aleksandr Vitko warned: 'Hotheads in the current Ukrainian leadership spoke of permission to resort to arms.



'I would like to warn everyone, and above all Ukrainian Navy personnel: God forbid anyone should shoot even a catapult. Don't play with fire. I ask to be taken literally.'

Some Ukrainian naval forces dejectedly filed out of the naval base saying they had nowhere to go after 20 years service. One was in tears as he left.



Putin's spokesman said 'they will have to take a decision' whether to join the Russian armed forces or be sent to Ukraine.



It coincided with Ukraine announcing plans to withdraw troops from Crimea to the mainland on Wednesday night.



Quiet exit: The servicemen in the Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol were reported to have peacefully given up their base after it was taken over by pro-Russian protesters

Changing hands: The naval headquarters in Sevastopol are now under the control of Russian forces

A woman, believed to be a Ukrainian servicewoman, pictured carrying her uniform as she leaves a military base in Perevalnoye, near the Crimean city of Simferopol

Ukrainian Coast Guard vessels docked in the Black Sea port of Odessa as the country's border guard service announced all its vessels have left Crimea and Crimea's naval ports are now under the control of Russian forces Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema and Defence Minister Ihor Tenyukh were prevented from entering Crimea on Wednesday in a bid to 'diffuse' the tension.

'They are not welcome in Crimea,' said local pro-Moscow leader Sergey Aksyonov.



Russia was tonight poised to seize 20 Ukrainian warships.



Ukrainian military inspectors yesterday began an official reconnaissance of two Russian regions for evidence of a massive military build-up indicating a threat of imminent invasion.



The inspection - amid high tension between the two countries - is under an international agreement and gives four Ukrainian military specialists the right to examine Russian operations in Belgorod and Kursk regions.



The team will monitor around 13,000 square kilometres by helicopter to check for 'undeclared military activity'.



On the crest of a wave: Russian President Vladimir Putin stands next to Crimean Premier Sergey Aksionov as he addresses a rally in Red Square, Moscow, celebrating Crimea's decision to join with Russia

Cult of personality: Russians hold flags adorned with Putin's face and a slogan reading 'We are together!'

Pro-Kremlin activists march across Red Square: Putin pushed every emotional button of the collective Russian psyche as he justified the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation

'During the inspection the Ukrainian experts will have an opportunity to monitor the specified area - including with the use of road transport and a helicopter flight - to make sure that no military activity, threatening Ukraine, is conducted there,' said Russian official Sergei Ryzhkov.



It follows claims that Russian forces pushed to the frontiers of Ukraine in these and other regions, notably Rostov, which is close to the Ukrainian city of Rostov, scene of a number of pro-Moscow protests.



The inspection over several days is under the Vienna Document of 2011, an agreement between members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.



Putin denies he will invade mainland Ukraine but despite this assurance, Kiev continues to call up reservists and establish a new National Guard.



Changes: Workers dismantle a Ukranian language inscription reading 'The Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea' in central Simferopol, the Crimean capital

Nationalistic fervour: Dozens of Russian flags flutter in the breeze below a typically overcast Moscow sky
Incredible footage has emerged showing how the US Military dug deep below Greenland's ice cap to create a hidden site for launching ballistic missiles at the height of the Cold War.

The original plan was to build 2,500 miles of tunnels which would have covered an area of 52,000 square miles  which is bigger than the size of England.

By the time it was abandoned in 1966 due to the ice cap starting to crush the camp, soldiers had already built two miles of tunnels and a facility that boasted a hospital, theatre, church and a shop for 200 of its inhabitants.

By the time Camp Century was abandoned, soldiers had already built two miles of tunnels and a facility boasted a hospital, theatre, church and a shop for 200 of its inhabitants

The project was abandoned in 1966 because the unstable ice above threatened to crush the camp

The original plan was to build 2,500 miles of tunnels which would have covered an area of 52,000 square miles  which is bigger than the size of England

The camp was given the codename Project Iceworm and troops disguised themselves as polar researchers

Camp Century was built in between 1959 and 60 in northwestern Greenland, officially to test sub-ice construction techniques.

The real plan was top secret - creating a hidden launch site for ballistic missiles that could reach the Soviet Union.

It was given the codename Project Iceworm and troops worked under the disguise of polar researchers under the ice, according to The Sun.

A narrator in the video footage says: 'Camp Century is buried below the surface of this ice cap.

'Beneath it, the ice descends for 6,000 feet.

'In this remote setting, less than 800 miles from the North Pole, Camp Century is a symbol of mans unceasing goal to conquer his environment, to increase his ability to live and fight if necessary under polar conditions.

'This is the story of Camp Century: the city under ice.'

Camp Century was built in between 1959 and 60 in northwestern Greenland, officially to test sub-ice construction techniques

Footage has emerged of US Military picking their spot ahead of the start of the project in 1959

A section of the 2,000 miles of tunnels already built before the project was abandoned in 1966

Military personnel busy building the underdground camp way under the ice cap in Greenland

The project was abandoned in 1966 because the ice cap began to crush the camp.

The US removed a portable nuclear reactor that had supplied heat and electricity, but left an estimated 200,000 liters of diesel oil and sewage, according to an international study published in August.

Scientists are warning that as global warming melts the ice cap, the waste could surface and pollute the environment.

Greenland is calling on Denmark to clean up an abandoned under-ice missile project and other US military installations left to rust in the pristine landscape after the Cold War.

The 1951 deal under which NATO member Denmark allowed the US to build 33 bases and radar stations in the former Danish province doesn't specify who's responsible for any cleanup.

Tired of waiting, Greenland's local leaders are now urging Denmark to remove the junk that the Americans left behind, including Camp Century, a never-completed launch site for nuclear missiles under the surface of the massive ice cap.

'Unless Denmark has entered other agreements with the United States about Camp Century, the responsibility for investigation and cleanup lies with Denmark alone,' said Vittus Qujaukitsoq, Greenland's minister in charge of foreign affairs.

An abandoned US Air Force vehicle outside the eastern Greenland settlement of Kulusuk where there used to be a US Air Force base as part of an early warning radar system

In an October 24 letter to Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen, obtained by The Associated Press, Qujaukitsoq asked about Denmark's plans for Camp Century, adding that an international study said the waste includes 'radioactivity, oil and PCB pollution.'

PCBs stands for polychlorinated biphenyls, a man-made chemical once widely used in paints, plastics and other products, but were banned after they were demonstrated to cause cancer and other ailments.

At a meeting on November 17 in Nuuk, the Greenland capital, to discuss the issue, Jensen said Denmark's Environment Ministry was investigating the environmental risks.

'I hope it can be done as quickly as possible,' he told a news conference, declining to give any specifics.

Jensen later told The Associated Press in an email that 'it is still too early to say who will be involved in a possible cleanup.

A rusty container of lubricant oil for a U.S. military vehicle stands among abandoned US military material in 2005

The US military was interested in Greenland during the Cold War due to its strategic location in the Arctic.

Under the 1951 agreement, the US also built four radar stations as part of an early warning system to detect incoming Soviet bombers.

The US Air Force still uses the Thule Air Base, about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) below the North Pole.

Military airfields in Narsarsuaq, Kulusuk and Kangerlussuaq have become civilian airports.

Several other military installations have been abandoned, some in remote areas, in the hope they would be entombed forever in the thick ice cap that covers most of the vast island.

Local authorities have started clearing some of the sites, but don't have sufficient resources, said Rasmus Eisted of Danish engineering company Ramboll, which has been involved in some cleanup projects.

Eisted singled out a junkyard in Kangerlussuaq containing miscellaneous military equipment from the time it was a US Air Force Base known as Sondrestrom.

The continuing cleanup task was larger than first anticipated, he said.

Aleqa Hammond, a former Greenland premier who now represents the mostly Inuit population of the Arctic island in the Danish Parliament, said Greenland could bring Denmark before a UN panel on indigenous issues unless it deals with the junk.

'Denmark is responsible for cleaning up after the Americans,' Hammond said.
A London jihadi has been charged with war crimes after footage emerged of him shouting ISIS slogans ahead of the terror group's public executions.

Harry Sarfo, 29, had been lauded by a judge for a 'wholehearted' confession about his time as a member of Islamic State group, but now faces charges of concealing his true involvement which prosecutors believe extends to killing captives.

He was convicted in 2015 by a Hamburg court of membership in a terrorist organization and breaching weapons export laws but was sentenced to just three years in prison when the judge looked favourably upon his detailed testimony.

Former jihadi Harry Sarfo, pictured in an ISIS propaganda video, said bombing campaigns in Syria will only cause more people to join the terror group

Federal prosecutors said they have now obtained a new warrant against the 28-year-old on suspicion of murder and committing war crimes in connection with the public execution of six people in a square in Palmyra in June 2015.

Prosecutors said he led one of the captives to the execution site and prevented others from fleeing.

The new allegations are at odds with Sarfo's claim in court that he hadn't participated in any killings.

A video, released by the Washington Post, show him praying with fellow terrorists in a huddle, attempting to whip the crowd up by chanting ISIS slogans from the back of a truck and appearing to smile and laugh as prisoners are shot dead in the street.

At one stage, Sarfo seems to load his gun and point it in the direction of one of the captured men, but another terrorist obscures the view.

Following his conviction last July, Sarfo gave several interviews from prison in which he portrayed himself as disillusioned and disgusted by ISIS.

Born to Ghanaian parents in the northern German city of Bremen, Sarfo converted to Islam after moving to London.

He became radicalized while in a German prison for taking part in a robbery and claims to have traveled to Syria in April 2015 to join IS.

He fled the group several weeks later and was arrested in July 2015 upon his return to Germany.

Sarfo, pictured, is awaiting trial in Germany for terror offences. He said he left ISIS last summer because of its 'extreme interpretation' of Sharia law

In August, he hold authorities the terror group sent him away from Syria and back home to Germany telling him they wanted him to be part of a wave of attacks across Europe.

He had spent four days straight driving to Syria to join the extremists before spending three months with them in their Raqqa stronghold.

However, he was arrested when he left the caliphate and tried to return to Europe.

In an interview with the New York Times from his prison cell, where is being held before standing trial over terror charges, Sarfo has revealed how ISIS did not want Europeans to travel to Syria anymore.

He told the newspaper that a commander within the terror group told him what they really wanted them to do was return to Europe to unleash a fresh wave of attacks.

Sarfo explained: 'He was speaking openly about the situation, saying that they have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people.

'And that was before the Brussels attacks, before the Paris attacks.

'They said, "Would you mind to go back to Germany, because thats what we need at the moment".

'And they always said they wanted to have something that is occurring in the same time.

'They want to have loads of attacks at the same time in England and Germany and France.'

A former Royal Mail worker, Sarfo, who moved to London as a teenager, said he trained with ISIS in Syria and experienced bombings 'nearly every day', while he also heard jihadis talking about plans to attack the UK and Europe.

Sarfo said he was attracted to the group because of its ideology of uniting people under one flag, and that he told its leaders he would not be prepared to take part in terror attacks.

ISIS has previously cited bombings as part of the reasons for its attacks in Paris and Belgium

He became radicalised after being forced to leave the UK in 2010 when he was jailed for a robbery in Germany.

While in prison he spent time with an Al Qaeda-linked recruiter and then joined a radical mosque in Bremen after his release.
South Korea will form a special military brigade, which some are calling a 'decapitation unit,' tasked this year with removing North Korea's leadership in the event of war.

The brigade will aim to remove leader Kim Jong-un and paralyze his party's function if war breaks out, according to an official from Seoul's Defense Ministry, who refused to be named, citing office rules.

The brigade was originally planned to be ready by 2019. The official refused to say whether the brigade will train to execute pre-emptive strikes.

The South Korean army K-55 self-propelled artillery vehicles move during a military exercise near the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea January 2015

The plan was included in Defense Minister Han Min Koo's policy briefing to Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who became government caretaker upon President Park Geun-hye's impeachment over a corruption scandal.

South Korea's joint chiefs of staff said a 'Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation' system would use special forces and cruise missiles now under development to destroy areas where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the rest of the country's decision-makers are located.

North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and a slew of rocket test firings last year in attempts to expand its nuclear weapons and missile program.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits a newly built Pyongyang bag factory in this undated photo released January 5

In a worrying development for the South and the US Kim Jong-Un in his New Year's message announced plans to test-fire a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

Speaking at a new year rally in capital Pyongyang the young leader said they are in the final stages' of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile.

But analysts are divided over how close Pyongyang is to realising its full nuclear ambitions, especially since it has never successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile.
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Hundreds of police officers paid tribute to a young Pennsylvania state trooper killed in the line of duty after less than six months on the force.

At a funeral at the Blair County Convention Center, Trooper Landon Weaver, 23, was remembered as a hero and Governor Tom Wolf expressed gratitude for Weaver's service.

'He joined the state police to help to make the lives of all Pennsylvanians safer, more secure, better,' Wolf said.

'He could have done a lot of things  he was a talented person  but he chose to serve us.'

Trooper Weaver was shot dead on December 30 by a suspected abuser as he responded to reports of a domestic dispute at a home in Hesson.

Pennsylvania State Troopers and police officers from around the country line up for the funeral of Landon Weaver

Pennsylvania State Troopers line up outside the Blair County Convention Center in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following a memorial service

Pennsylvania State Trooper Landon E. Weaver's casket is carried to a hearse following the memorial service

Pennsylvania State Troopers salute in unison after the service in tribute to the 23-year-old officer who was killed on duty

Pennsylvania State Trooper Landon E. Weaver who was killed in the line of duty on December 30 having been on the force for less than six months

A motorcade with hundreds of police vehicles escorted a silver hearse carrying Weaver's casket to a cemetery 20 miles away for the burial after the poignant service.

Wolf said Weaver's death 'leaves a hole in the lives of so many people'  including his wife, Macy, his parents, and his friends.

Weaver graduated from Central High in Martinsburg in 2012 and attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania before starting at the state police academy about a year ago.

He and his wife married in June, when Weaver also joined a patrol unit in Huntingdon.

Macy Weaver eulogized her husband, and top state police officials, clergy and others also spoke at the funeral.

'Landon's comrades in the Pennsylvania State Police lost a brother.

'And all of us lost a hero whose purpose was to serve us,' Wolf said.

The memorial of Pennsylvania State Trooper Landon Weaver, who was shot dead on December 30 on a call-out

A young boy joins police officers from around the country who gathered to pay tribute to their fallen comrade

Officers, some lowering their heads, appear solemn at the service for the slain trooper who was killed on December 30

Pennsylvania Trooper Landon Weaver's colleagues carry his casket, which has an American flag draped over it

Police officers salute the hearse of Pennsylvania State Trooper Landon Weaver as it leaves a memorial service at the Blair County Convention Center in Altoona

Pittsburgh Police officers, who joined hundreds of other law enforcers, salute as the hearse containing the casket

Dozens of officers line up outside the Blair County Convention Center in Altoona, Pennsylvania for the memorial service

Mounted Pennsylvania State Troopers flank the entrance to the Blair County Convention Center pay their respects to the family of Huntingdon County Trooper Landon Weaver

Police said Jason Robison killed the trooper.

The slain officer's colleagues later tracked down Robison and fatally shot him when he threatened officers and failed to follow their orders.

Weaver was investigating whether Robison had violated the order issued in April, after the mother of his 6-year-old son told authorities Robison attacked her and said he would kill her.

A police affidavit said Robison texted his son's mother after the shooting to say he 'killed the cop.'
Former CIA Director James Woolsey has left the Trump transition team, saying he did not want to 'fly under false colors'.

Woolsey revealed his decision to step aside as a senior advisor to the president-elect on Thursday - a role he has had since September.

A person with direct knowledge of Woolsey's decision said the former CIA chief had not been significantly involved in the Trump team's discussions on intelligence matters and became uncomfortable being labeled as an advisor.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey has left the Trump transition team where he had been serving as a senior advisor to the president-elect since September

Woolsey told CNN on Thursday that he had not actually advised Trump in some time.

'I didn't want to fly under false colors,' Woolsey said.

'I'm not really functioning as an advisor anymore, and so when I'm on the screen, everybody announces that I'm former CIA director and that I'm a Trump advisor. And I'm really not anymore. So I just thought I should strike that... so nobody was under false impressions.'

In other recent television appearances, Woolsey - who was CIA director under President Bill Clinton - said he believed Russia was involved in the election-related hackings, though he also said others may have been as well.

Woolsey said he was not leaving the team because he was frustrated with Trump's dismissal of U.S. intelligence findings about Russia. He said he still supported Trump and wished him well.

It comes as Donald Trump selected former Indiana senator Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community that Trump has publicly challenged, according to a person with knowledge of the selection.

Woolsey joined Trump's team as an advisor in September. A source said the former CIA chief had not been significantly involved in the Trump team's discussions on intelligence matters

Woolsey said he was not leaving the team because he was frustrated with Trump's dismissal of U.S. intelligence findings about Russia. He said he still supported Trump and wished him well

Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after 9/11 to improve coordination of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trump's decision, as well as others who spoke to The Associated Press about intelligence matters involving Trump, were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly challenged intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf, setting up an unusually public battle with the spy agencies.

On Friday, senior intelligence officials will try to justify their claims when they brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama, who was informed of the conclusions Thursday.

On the eve of his briefing, Trump continued to challenge the intelligence community's assertion that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. He questioned how officials could be 'so sure' about the hacking if they had not examined DNC servers.

'What is going on?' he wrote on Twitter.

A senior law enforcement official said in a statement released by the FBI that the bureau repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the importance of obtaining direct access to the servers 'only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated.' The official said the FBI had to rely on a 'third party' for information, but did get access to the material it needed.

Against that backdrop, Trump's transition team has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies - part of an effort to streamline operations and improve efficiency, not as retribution.

It comes as Donald Trump selected former Indiana senator Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly challenged intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf

Transition officials have been looking at changes at both ODNI and the CIA, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The person said they reflect the views of intelligence officials who have told Trump's team that there is room for streamlining within the multi-agency intelligence community.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday night that Trump was considering the changes. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said the report was '100 percent false' and said transition activities were 'for information-gathering purposes.'

The scope of the changes discussed by some in Trump's transition team was unclear.

But the prospect of a sweeping overhaul still created blowback, contributing to former CIA Director James Woolsey's decision to step aside as a senior advisor to the president-elect.

The CIA declined to comment on potential changes to the intelligence community. Outgoing National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate panel Thursday that his office has not been engaged in such discussions with the Trump transition team. He noted that lawmakers created his office.

'Congress, I think, gets a vote here,' said Clapper, who was testifying on Russia's election interference.

Coats' nomination is likely to soothe those who fear Trump will significantly overhaul the intelligence community. The 73-year-old is a Capitol Hill veteran who served eight years in the House before moving to the Senate in 1989 to take Dan Quayle's place when he became vice president. He stayed in the Senate until 1998, then left to become a lobbyist.

Outgoing National Intelligence Director James Clapper (pictured) told a Senate panel Thursday that his office has not been engaged in such discussions with the Trump team

After a stint as ambassador to Germany under President George W. Bush, Coats joined the high-powered Washington firm of King & Spalding. He helped lead the company's government affairs division and lobbied for pharmaceutical, defense and energy companies.

Coats, who earned $600,000 in his final 13 months at King & Spalding, downplayed his lobbying work when he returned to Indiana for a successful Senate comeback bid in 2010. He served one term and did not seek re-election last year.

Coats was a harsh critic of Russia and pushed the Obama administration to harshly punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. When the White House levied sanctions, the Kremlin responded by banning several lawmakers, including Coats, from traveling to Russia.

Trump has called for improving the relationship between the U.S. and Russia, and has also spoken favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin. His refusal thus far to accept the intelligence community's assessment that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election has sparked concern among lawmakers in both parties.
Couple visited Jutting in jail in Hong Kong separately, but did not attend his trial

Picturesque cottage, inspiration for The Wind In The Willows sold for 845,000

In September they sold their idyllic 19th century grade II listed home in Cobham

The parents of evil British banker Rurik Jutting divorced days before he stood trial for the sadistic murder of two prostitutes at his luxury Hong Kong flat, MailOnline has learned.

The 32-year marriage of father Graham and mother Helen was dissolved on October 19 last year - just five days before their son appeared at Hong Kongs High Court, public documents show.

A month later, Jutting, 31, was found guilty of brutally killing and torturing Indonesian prostitutes Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih at his 4,000-a-month luxury apartment close the former British colonys red light district.

Jutting, who was working as a commodities trader for Merrill Lynch, was described by the judge as a 'sadistic psychopath' for murdering the women in a drug-crazed orgy of torture.

Pressure: Parents of 'sadistic' killer British banker Rurik Jutting divorced in the days before their son went on trial last October for murdering two Indonesian sex workers at his luxury flat in Hong Kong in 2014

Strain: Graham and Helen Jutting dissolved their 32-year marriage on October 19 last year - just before their 31-year-old Cambridge graduate son (above) appeared in court. Legal sources told Mail Online that the strain of the case had proved too much

Mr Jutting, an engineer, and Mrs Jutting, who runs an American-style milkshake bar franchise, are understood to have made a number of financial sacrifices to pay for their sons to be privately educated (above)

Mr and Mrs Jutting married in Merton, south London, in September 1984. Jutting was born in March 1985 and his younger brother Auryn came along two years later.

The couple, who enjoyed beekeeping, have never spoken about their eldest sons arrest in 2014 after the bodies of two women were found at his luxury 4,000-a-month high rise flat in Hong Kong.

But legal sources revealed to MailOnline the stress of the criminal case against Jutting led to the breakdown of their marriage.

It is all very sad because the parents are getting divorced, a legal source said during the trial.

They are private people but you can only guess the enormous strain this has put on them.

While the Juttings are undoubtedly well off, they live a low profile existence.

Mr Jutting, 56, who as an engineer worked in the installation of industrial machinery and equipment, has an interest in vintage motorcycles.

Mrs Jutting, 55, a former nurse and playgroup leader, runs an American-style milkshake bar franchise in Woking, Surrey.

The couple has never spoken about their eldest sons arrest in 2014 but it was Mrs Jutting who her son called first to say he was in trouble. Pictured: Jutting pictured as a six-year-old in his primary school picture at Wallop School in Weybridge, Surrey

Sold up: Before the case started, the couple sold their Grade II-listed mansion Foxwarren, which was the inspiration for Toad Hall in the classic book The Wind in the Willows, where Jutting grew up

They are believed to have made a number of financial sacrifices to give their sons the best possible start in life with their private educations.

The Juttings put their son through 34,000-a-year Winchester College (pictured), and he went on to gain a place at Cambridge. He studied law and history and Peterhouse College

They put Jutting through 34,000-a-year Winchester College, and no doubt felt huge pride when he gained a place at Cambridge. He studied law and history and Peterhouse College.

After graduating he embarked on a high-flying career in banking, working first for Barclays and then Merrill Lynch in London.

He later moved to Hong Kong where he was reportedly earning 350,000-a-year as an equities trader.

His parents began divorced proceedings in March last year, while their son was being held on remand at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre in Kowloon.

In the months before the trial they sold their idyllic 19th century grade II listed home in Cobham, Surrey.

The picturesque cottage, which is surrounded by woodland and was the inspiration for Ernest Shepards illustration of Kenneth Grahames childrens classic The Wind In The Willows, sold for 845,000.

After graduating he embarked on a high-flying career in banking, working first for Barclays and then Merrill Lynch in London. He later moved to Hong Kong where he reportedly earned 350,000-a-year as an equities trader. Pictured above as a schoolboy

His parents began divorce proceedings in March last year, while their son was on remand at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre in Kowloon. In the months before the trial they sold their 19th century grade II listed home in Cobham, Surrey (above)

Jutting denied murdering Ningsih and Mujiasih but neither of his parents were in court to hear the former trader plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and admit the unlawful burial of his victims.

Both parents visited him at the Hong Kong jail where he was held ahead of the trial, although they did not travel together and visited the prison separately.

His brother also visited with his mother while he was awaiting trial.

The legal source said: His father saw him on his own and his mother came with the younger brother.

Juttings mother was also coping with the heartache following the death of her father, Paul Smith, a decorated former Hong Kong Police Superintendent, during the lead up to the trial.

Neither parent sat through the trial where Jutting's life was portrayed as a mix of high pressure, multimillion pound deals for Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) and trawling Hong Kong's nightspots in the Wan Chai red light district looking for prostitutes

The Jutting parents visited their son separately in prison but were not in court to hear how he killed Indonesian prostitutes Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26 in a cocaine-fuelled attack

Born Helen Smith, she appealed for help on a blog to find the whereabouts of her father ashes.

She had become estranged from her stepmother, Mary Smith, her father's second wife who had lived with him in Vancouver, Canada, after he retired.

Mr Smith wanted his ashes to be brought back to Hong Kong, following his death from skin cancer in 2004 and Mrs Jutting appealed for help to track down their whereabouts.

Mrs Jutting is said to be close to her killer banker son. It was her he called shortly after his arrest for double murder in November 2014 saying he was in trouble.

Jutting was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found the Briton guilty of two counts of murder.

In a statement read out by his lawyer, Jutting expressed remorse for the killings and accepted his actions were "horrific".

Remorse: After his conviction, his lawyer read out a statement from Jutting (pictured at university) expressing remorse for the killings and accepting his actions were 'horrific'

"I remain haunted daily both by memory of my actions... and by knowledge of the acute pain I have caused their loved ones, not least Ningsih's young son," he said.

"The evil I have [done] cannot be remedied by me in words or actions. Nevertheless, for whatever it may be worth, to Ningsih's family and friends, and Mujiasih's family and friends, I am sorry, I am sorry beyond words."
LINCOLN  Gov. Pete Ricketts, in order to deal with a large projected hole in state revenue in the next couple of years, will tackle reductions to this year's remaining spending.

Ricketts announced he will propose $276 million in adjustments for the last six months of the 2016-17 fiscal year to balance this year's budget and lay the groundwork for the next two years, with a projected shortfall of nearly $900 million.

State revenues have lagged behind what was forecast, he said Thursday. So he will recommend cuts to this fiscal year's budget, while providing for essential services, funding key investments in K-12 education and the Department of Corrections, and do it without increasing taxes.

He wants the Legislature's newly formed Appropriations Committee to make the changes a priority, and to get the bills (LB22, LB23, LB24) introduced Thursday by Speaker Jim Scheer to the full Legislature by the first week in February.

Newly elected Appropriations Chairman John Stinner said the committee will do as quick a turnaround on the bills as it can. He told the committee Thursday members should address the issue like a special session, packing meetings and hearings into a period of time.

"I don't want to get too far behind on the biennium (budget)," he said. "Really, our objective is the $900 (million shortfall)."

It could be resolved in this proposal, or in the two-year budget, but the committee has to get it done, he said.

As part of his short-term proposal, Ricketts will recommend taking $92 million from the state's rainy day fund, or cash reserve, but leaving it with more than $550 million by the end of the 2019 fiscal year. That's lower than what is thought of as an optimum reserve, but with the economic downturn, using the reserve helps guard against serious cuts, Stinner said.

"That's really your economic shock absorber, is that rainy day fund," he said. "So, using that's the prudent thing to do."

Ricketts has also recommended recapturing about $77 million in unspent money from the budgets of a number of agencies and offices.

The Legislature, for example, has about $5.6 million in unspent funds from 2015-16, and the governor is recommending shifting $3.8 million to the general fund. The Department of Health and Human Services has $178 million unspent from that year, and he would take back $36.5 million.

Ricketts is also proposing specific reductions of $51 million, and $42.4 million in across-the-board cuts, along with pulling $21.5 million from various cash funds with excess balances, and the $11.2 million in state taxes that are expected to be collected from Amazon.com sales in the next six months.

The company announced it will begin charging state taxes to Nebraska customers beginning last Sunday.

In the 2015-16 fiscal year, the state ended up with $95 million in tax receipts below the amount forecasted by the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board. That board then lowered the forecast in October by $172 million, ending with more than $267 million that has to be addressed this year, Ricketts said.

Softness in commodity prices is showing up in lower sales and income tax revenue, he said.

Starting in July, Ricketts communicated with state agencies to constrain their budgets, and has allocated money to agencies more slowly.

The proposal leaves K-12 funding untouched for the remainder of the fiscal year, the governor said. Funding for public schools granted through the state's school funding formula totaled $1.2 billion in general funds and other revenue this year.

Ricketts will unveil his budget proposal for the 2017-19 fiscal years at his Jan. 12 State of the State address.
Shawn Nelson Furner, pictured, stole tools from his workplace at an auto repair shop and then accidentally called his boss as he tried to sell them, authorities say

A West Virginia man stole tools from the auto repair shop where he worked and then accidentally tried to sell them to his boss, authorities say.

Shawn Nelson Furner from Millersville was arrested after allegedly calling up the owner Mike's Auto Repair in a bid to peddle the stolen goods - but then hung up when he realized who he was speaking to.

According to the Times West Virginian, a Marion County deputy responded to a report of two suspicious people, and found Furner and another man in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked on an embankment.

A tow truck showed up to the scene and, as it was preparing to pull their vehicle away, accidentally opened the truck's trunk.

Cops then found several large bags, some containing tools with the brand name Snap-On, according to the report.

The tow truck took the Monte Carlo away, and Furner and the other person were later dropped off, the report said.

But Furner was taken into custody after the owner of Mike's Auto Repair, told cops the shop was burglarized and Snap-On tools had been swiped.

The owner of Mike's Auto Repair, located in Millersville, told the deputy the shop was burglarized and Snap-On tools had been swiped

The owner said that Furner, one of his employees, recently called him about Snap-On tools he was selling.

Deputies say they recovered the stolen tools after they obtained a warrant to search the vehicle and Furner's home.

Furner, of Fairmont, is charged with felony breaking and entering, as well as conspiracy to commit a felony.
A Georgia bus driver was fired after allegedly leaving a six-year-old student on the side of the highway when her parents weren't home.

Julianna Pimentel, a Cumming Elementary kindergartner, was supposed to be taken to an after-school daycare but was instead left on the side of Canton Highway in front of her home by 48-year-old bus driver Shelly McKinley.

Both of Pimentel's parents were at work and the front door was locked.

Shelly McKinley, 48, a substitute bus driver for the Forsyth County School District in Georgia, allegedly left six-year-old Julianna Pimentel on the side of a highway in front of the girl's home

Pimentel was found by Jane Holmes, a private investigator, wandering the highway alone

Jane Holmes, who specializes in missing child cases through Patricia Lane Investigations in Cumming, Georgia, spotted the confused kindergartner around 3pm during her commute home.

Holmes recorded video on her dashcam of a scared and confused Pimentel.

'I lost my family because the bus took me to my house and nobody was there', cried the girl on Holmes' video.

Pimentel had no identification, so Holmes took her to the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, where officials located the girl's parents through the Forsyth County School District.

Holmes captured dashcam footage of a scared and confused Pimentel

The Pimentels were already frantically searching for their daughter after they received a call from the daycare saying she never arrived.

'My wife calls me right away and tells me they found Julianna. As a father I assumed the worst', Gilberto Pimentel, Julianna Pimentels father told FOX 5.

Gilberto Pimentel said his daughter was supposed to be dropped off at an after-school daycare off Canton Highway, not the family home.

McKinley, who worked with Forsyth County School District since 2013, was fired for the December 16 incident, which is still under investigation by the district.

She was filling in for the regular driver.

Pimentel's parents weren't home and she was supposed to be dropped off at a daycare

She worked for four elementary schools and two middle schools previously without problems.

'I feel that its a justice. She put my daughter in harm. Shes an adult - she knew', said Pimentel.

A spokesperson for the Forsyth County Schools District wrote in a statement: 'This situation is very serious.

'We are deeply sorry it happened to a student and her family. We are grateful to Mrs. Holmes for securing the student. Forsyth County Schools is committed to ensuring every student is safe'.

Despite the school district's assurances, Pimentel said his daughter won't be riding the bus again. She's also now wearing a GPS bracelet so they'll never lose track of her.

'She's terrified she's going to be left alone', Pimentel said.

Holmes took Pimentel to the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, where officials located the girl's parents

The school district needs to 'provide a good safe zone for kids and I feel they broke that promise', he added.

A school bus driver is required to keep a child on the bus if there isn't a parent present unless they have permission to do otherwise, according to Georgia Department of Education protocol.
House Democrats are backing away from a last-ditch effort to muddy President-elect Donald Trump's win by raising objections when Congress meets to count the electoral votes Friday after failing to get a senator to go along.

Several House members have been considering raising objections to the official vote certification  an act that wouldn't have halted Trump's win but could have forced debates in each chamber that would have kept the spotlight on the intelligence community's claims of Russian interference in the elections.

Without a senator, the objections will go nowhere, since a member of each chamber must sign a written protest for it to go forward.

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado was prepared to raise an objection to certifying the vote. But to succeed, the objection must be made in writing and joined by a member of the Senate.

'We are not going to file an official objection. We just weren't able to secure a senator,' his spokeswoman, Ashley Verville told DailyMail.com.

Representative Ed Perlmutter was prepared to issue a letter objecting to the certification of Donald Trump's electoral college victory, after failing to find a senator who would join him

If other Democrats object when the House and Senate meet in Joint Session Friday afternoon, they might get brief snippets of floor time, but won't be able to force a debate on the issue. It wasn't immediately clear how many House Democrats might try without getting the requisite Senate support.

Even if they got an objection through, it would have been voted down in the GOP-controlled House and Senate.

The lack of Senate support sets up a scenario similar to what happened after the disputed 2000 election, when several House Democrats, including members of the black caucus, tried to object to the certification to no avail.

In a bitter twist, the loser, Vice President Al Gore, had to preside over his loss as president of the Senate at the time.

'Is the point of order signed by a senator?' Gore was forced to ask objecting Democrats.

'I don't care that it is not signed by a senator,' responded one of them, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), who walked out in protest.

'You will be advised that the rules do care,' Gore responded.

Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) also was considering a challenge to the certification of the electoral votes

Representative Bobby Scott also was considering a challenge  but without a senator it won't go anywhere

Colorado members of the Electoral College waiting to be sworn in to vote for president of the United States at the Colorado State Capitol. December 19, 2016

Perlmutter issued a statement Thursday morning citing charges of Russian interference, on a day when the Senate Armed Services Committee probed Russian cyber hacks.

'It is clear Russia intervened in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This action by a foreign nation was unprecedented, violated our Constitution and undermined the founding pillars of American liberty and democracy. This is not about trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President. This is about the fact that our liberty, freedom and democracy were compromised by Russias intrusion into Americas election,' he said in the statement.

Two other House Democrats, dean of the House Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, and Rep. Bobby Scott also were considering challenges, Politico reported Thursday afternoon.

California Senator Barbara Boxer joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio's attempt to challenge the Ohio vote after the 2004 election.

A group trying to drum up opposition to ratifying the votes presented lawmakers with a document showing Trump electors weren't eligible to vote because didn't live in the congressional districts they represented.

The report said 50 Trump electors didn't live in the right district, Salon reported.
A man has been charged with prison mutiny following a riot which saw hundreds of inmates evacuated from one of the country's biggest jails last month.

Ross Queen, 30, will appear before magistrates in Birmingham on Friday over the disorder at the city prison on December 17.

A West Midlands Police spokesman said detectives were working alongside the Prison Service and G4S to continue to investigate the disorder at the prison.

The riot saw hundreds of inmates evacuated from HMP Birmingham last month

HMP Birmingham, formerly known as Winson Green, can hold up to 1,450 inmates.

It is understood around 260 prisoners were caught up in the incident, which lasted for more than 12 hours.

Ross Queen, 30, will appear before at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Friday

One man, believed to be in his 20s, was taken to hospital with a facial injury as well as cuts, bruises and a reduced consciousness, West Midlands Ambulance Service said.

No prison staff were injured during the melee.

Some 240 prisoners were moved out of the facility as a result of the disorder.
Young people believe sexual assault is normal and just 'what happens' while dancing in festival moshpits, according to police.

During the three-day Falls Festival in Marian Bay, Tasmania over New Year's Eve, five women came forward to report varied sexual assaults, including one alleged rape.

On Thursday, Detective Inspector Steve Burk said in his experience, young people generally believe 'being inappropriately touched by someone else is what happens in the moshpit'.

Young people believe sexual assault is normal and just 'what happens' while dancing in festival moshpits, according to police. One girl was allegedly molested in the crowd during DJ Hot Dub Time Machine (pictured)

On Thursday, Detective Inspector Steve Burk said in his experience, young people generally believe 'being inappropriately touched by someone else is what happens in the moshpit'

'My view is if youre not comfortable treating women like that in the middle of the mall you dont treat them like that in the middle of the moshpit either'.

Detective Inspector Burk revealed at least two other women were inappropriately touched at Tasmania's Falls Festival, but said they are yet to come forward and report the incidents.

Police were made aware of this while obtaining footage from the event.

Detective Inspector Burk's comments were shared on the Tasmania Police Facebook page on Thursday and some said his statement was 'poorly worded'.

'What's a man's comfort got to do with this? It's unacceptable, period,' one woman wrote.

'Very poorly worded statement. I can see what this statement was trying to do, but there's no room for wishy washy statements and it misses the mark,' another said.

On Thursday, police revealed they were investigating whether a serial rapist was behind all five incidents at the Marion Bay camp site, the Daily Telegraph reported.

A young girl was allegedly assaulted on Thursday night during a set from DJ Hot Dub Time Machine and another during hip-hop artist Illy's performance.

During the three-day Falls Festival in Marian Bay, Tasmania over New Year's Eve, five women came forward to report varied sexual assaults, including one alleged rape

Detective Inspector Burk's comments were shared on the Tasmania Police Facebook page on Thursday and some said his statement was 'poorly worded'

On Thursday, police revealed they were investigating whether a serial rapist was behind all five incidents at the Marion Bay camp site

A third incident in the camping grounds on Thursday night was also reported.

The alleged sexual assaults are the latest in a series of negative incidents at the annual festivals held across the country.

At the Victorian leg of the festival in Lorne, more than 80 people were crushed while watching a performance under one of the event's main tents.

In the aftermath of the stampede 19 people were treated in hospital, although none were seriously injured.

Touching on the incident at Lorne in a post to their Facebook page, festival co producer Jessica Ducrou said organisers were 'devastated'.

'We care so very much about your experience at Falls, we spend countless hours planning the Falls Festival year-round, with dedicated teams specifically focused on each event site,' she said.

'Despite 24 years of successful operation of Falls Lorne, a confluence of events resulted in a serious incident that will require an investigation.'
For years he represented despot Kim Jong-un's and his father Kim Jong-il's regimes - but now Thae Yong Ho has become an unlikely star on South Korean TV.

The former deputy ambassador to London, who defected from North Korea last summer, has been a popular figure on variety shows in the New Year.

And the 54-year-old has said the government he used to work for is unstable and doomed to fail.

Thae Yong Ho has said the government he used to work for is unstable and doomed to fail

On a talk show called Now On My Way to Meet You, which features young, usually female, defectors from the isolated North, a video interview between Thae and a panelist was introduced as a chat with the 'British gentleman-like Thae Yong Ho'.

Thae spoke of some of his motivations for switching sides between rivals who remain technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

'On the day we left the embassy and stepped outside, I told my children, from this moment on, as a father, I am breaking you free from your shackles,' Thae said on another show.

The former diplomat has featured prominently in the public eye since his defection last summer

DEFECTOR SHUNS A LIFE IN THE SHADOWS Thae is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jong Yop, the brains behind North Korea's governing ideology, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism. By contrast, Hwang made very few public appearances and lived in constant fear of assassination until he was found dead in his bathtub - from natural causes - 13 years later. His fears were not without some foundation - the year he arrived in South Korea another prominent defector, Yi Han Yong, was shot dead by suspected North Korean assassins, and shortly after Hwang died South Korean authorities said they had arrested an agent of Pyongyang who had been planning to kill him. During his years in the South, Hwang was extremely cautious in public. Surrounded by security staff, he was reported to never touch a glass of water put in front of him at an event. 'The fundamental difference is that Thae is just more laid-back and arguably less self-important,' said Michael Madden, a US-based expert on the North Korean leadership. Advertisement

Thae is currently under the protection of South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), but said he does not fear for his safety in South Korea.

He works at an NIS think-tank that employs many elite former North Koreans.

When Thae's defection was announced, the South Korean government said he had fled because of dissatisfaction with the rule of Kim Jong-un.

But he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London.

A spokesman for the NIS told Reuters it could not comment on any official future plans that may involve Thae.

'Thae has huge potential in terms of being a defector spokesman and icon,' said Sokeel Park of LiNK, an organisation working with defectors.

During an interview with broadcaster MBN, Thae was asked about the difference between North and South Korean TV studios.

'Media control is especially strict,' he said.

'When someone shows up at a studio, questions and answers are agreed upon in advance, and a few practice sessions are filmed before the whole thing is reviewed by the propaganda department.'

Daily life in North Korea at times resembles a scripted TV set, Thae said.

Thae is the most high profile public servant to have defected from the regime of despotic leader Kim Jong-un

On a show featuring defectors called the Moranbong Club, Thae said he had watched the programme when he was working as a diplomat in London after searching North Korea, in Korean, on YouTube.

He said he had recognised another defector panellist on the show, which typically pays its participants for appearances.

'I told my family that I used to do night shifts with this man!' Thae said, gesturing towards Han Jin-myeong, who replied that Thae, who outranked him at Pyongyang's foreign ministry, had sworn at him at the time for not doing his duty properly.

Producers then used visual effects to superimpose North Korean military uniforms on both men.

'Why did you swear at him?' the presenter asked.
Teenager Leo Lagana tips the scales at just 18 kilograms and he stands no bigger than an average four-year-old.

The 16-year-old boy, from Illawarra in Sydney's south, has a rare form of primordial dwarfism - a condition causing underdevelopment of limbs.

Despite his diminutive stature, the Year 10 student has a dynamic personality that's certainly bigger than his height.

Appearing on A Current Affair, a cheeky Leo opened up about school, his obsession with superheroes and how he has fallen in love.

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Teenager Leo Lagana (pictured) weighs just 18 kilograms and stands 98 centimetres tall

The schoolboy who loves superheroes has a personality that's certainly bigger than his height

The 16-year-old boy, from Illawarra in Sydney's south, has a rare form of primordial dwarfism (pictured with American basketball player Michael Holyfield who is 2.11 metres tall)

'I'm strong, I'm fast and I've got muscles... I never shut up, ever.. I could yabbar all day,' he told the Nine Network program.

'I'm sweet 16 but I've never been kissed once... I'm Leo and Batman - but don't tell anybody else who I am. It's a secret.'

Standing 98 centimetres tall, Leo's condition is extremely rare - a one in 130 million chance - that only affects 200 people in the world.

The schoolboy defied doctors since he was born weighing just 1.6 kilograms and 28 centimetres long.

But Leo also suffers from aneurysms - an excessive localised swelling of the wall of an artery - and a rare form of brain disease called Moyamoya.

Despite his condition, his mother Pauline revealed how she has noticed her son having many traits like any other teenage boy.

The Australian teen attended the world's largest gathering of primordial dwarves last year

'Well, he's starting to have an interest in girls,' she said.

'Sometimes, it's hard to see him as a teenager. Looking at him, I still see like a kindergartener really.

'But then I have to step back and think and consider that he is 16 and that he has the needs and wants of a normal 16-year-old.'

However, it's unlikely he will be able to drive a car or sit his Year 12 exams.

Leo defied doctors since he was born weighing just 1.6 kilograms and 28 centimetres long

The cheeky schoolboy shooting hoops with Holyfield, who plays for Illawarra Hawks of the National Basketball League

A smitten Leo admitted he has fallen in love with a friend he calls 'Magic Jess' who he wants to marry when he turns 18.

'I think Magic Jess is hot. She's smoking hot,' he said.

'I'm going to make a good husband.'

When asked to define a feature of being a good husband, he cheekily responded: 'I am going to say, "Magic Jess, would you make me a sandwich, please?" In nice words.'

Quite the hero himself, Leo - who is an ambassador for the KidzWish Foundation - said he wants to raise awareness in an effort to help other disabled children.
A New Hampshire father was left devastated after his job fired him for missing two days of work for the birth of his son on New Year's Day.

Lamar Austin's employer, Salerno Protective Services, based in Manchester, fired him after he chose to be with his wife, Lindsay, as they welcomed their baby boy, Cainan, into the world, according to the Concord Monitor.

Salerno Protective Services, who hired Austin a month ago for a 90-day trial period as a part-time security guard, sent him a text on the night his son was born informing him that he had been let go.

The 30-year-old was expected to be on call 24/7 as part of his trial period. He told the Monitor that the company, which provides security to clients including stores and college campuses, told him they were looking for 'dependable people'.

Lamar Austin, 30, was fired by his employer, Salerno Protective Services, for missing two days of work for the birth of his son, Cainan. His wife, Lindsay Austin, 26, gave birth to their son, the first child born in New Hampshire for 2017, at the Concord Hospital (above)

The father-of-four told the newspaper that he hadn't missed a shift during the trial period, but on one occasion on December 28, he was unable to cover for another employee.

He told the company that he needed to go to a doctor's appointment with his wife, who gave birth to Cainan, the first child born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 2017.

Austin was then scheduled to work on Friday, December 30, and Saturday, December 31.

But he missed both days when his wife went into labor.

'I didn't want to make it seem like I'm trying to miss work or something,' Austin told the Monitor.

'The second day I told my boss, "My wife is still in labor," and he just said, "you're forcing my hand, if you aren't in work by 8 tomorrow we are going to terminate you."'

A GoFundMe account was set up for the family to help with any financial burdens they may encounter until Austin can find another job. Austin, who served in the US Army for more than three years, has also gotten at least three job offers since the incident (file photo)

Austin received a text at 1am on New Year's Day that read: 'As of now, you are terminated.'

New Hampshire is an 'at-will employment' state, which means that an employer or employee can terminate their contract at any time and for any reason, with few exceptions.

Austin told the Monitor that he responded to the text with 'ok'.

'I was in the hospital, it was a long night, and I wasn't trying to argue with nobody about a job while my wife was in labor,' he said.

A GoFundMe account was set up for the family to help with any financial burdens they may encounter until Austin can find another job.

Austin, who served in the US Army for more than three years, has also gotten at least three job offers since the incident.
A Massachusetts sheriff has suggested prison inmates from around the United States should build Donald Trump's proposed wall along the Mexican border.

'I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall,' Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said at his swearing-in ceremony for a fourth term in office Wednesday.

Hodgson, who like Trump is a Republican, hinted that it would be symbolic for criminals to be involved, and would also help them hone their skills.

But critics from the American Civil Liberties Union have said his idea is 'perverse', 'inhumane' and 'unconstitutional'.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson (pictured) has suggested sending prison inmates from around the United States to build Donald Trump's proposed wall along the Mexican border

During his swearing-in ceremony for a fourth term on Wednesday, Hodgson said that the project (file photo of US-Mexico border) would have 'such a positive impact on our inmates and our country'

Hodgson said: 'Aside from learning and perfecting construction skills, the symbolism of these inmates building a wall to prevent crime in communities around the country, and to preserve jobs and work opportunities for them and other Americans upon release, can be very powerful.'

Trump, who will be sworn in on January 20, insisted during his campaign that he would convince the Mexican government to pay for the wall, though Mexican officials have repeatedly said they would not do so.

Officials in the president-elect's transition office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US has a long history of prison labor, with advocates of the idea saying that putting inmates to work can help them learn skills that prepare them for their return to society after completing their sentences.

Opponents contend that inmates are not fairly compensated.

The federal prisons system operates some 53 factories around the US that produced about $500 million worth of clothing, electronics, furniture and other goods in the fiscal year ended September 30, according to its financial statements.

Trump insisted during his campaign that he would convince the Mexican government to pay for the wall, though Mexican officials have repeatedly said they would not do so. Critics of Hodgson's proposal said 'it's humane and very likely unconstitutional'

Still, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts said Hodgson's proposal could violate prisoners' rights.

'The proposal is perverse, it's inhumane and very likely unconstitutional,' ACLU staff counsel Laura Rotolo said in a phone interview.

'It certainly has nothing to do with helping prisoners in Massachusetts or their families. It's about politics.'

In response to a request by the Trump transition office, the Department of Homeland Security last month identified more than 400 miles along the US-Mexico border where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters.
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Chinese investors are not holding back when it comes to buying luxury homes on Queensland's Gold Coast as they splash their cash on the hottest properties they can find there.

On average three properties a week on the Gold Coast are sold to Chinese buyers as the luxury mansion market in the region continues to boom, reports realestate.com.

In the past 10 months alone these Chinese buyers have spent $60 million on five $10 million-plus homes.

The Sails, at 2585 Gracemere, Hope Island, is a three-level home, that has seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms

The latest is an $11 million deal on a Hope Islands Resort giant that had a whopping price tag of $25 million.

Called the Sails, at 2585 Gracemere, Hope Island, the three-level home, has seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and spans 2709sq/m, and earlier this year had a price tag of $16.5m.

The Sails sits behind ornate gates, and is poised at the end of a tree lined 60 metre boulevard.

Spanning three levels, its 2,709m of the latest design innovation, it is snuggled on a north facing waterfront allotment in Hope Island Resort.

The mansion at Gracemere spans 2709sq/m, and earlier this year had a price tag of $16.5m

Gracemere property has alatial dining room crowned by Swarovski crystal chandeliers

It's stylish deep water frontage, has direct ocean access and protected mooring for up to a 160 foot vessel

A newly fashioned gourmet kitchen with walls of bi-fold glass are also in the decadent Sails property

The Corso, on Isle of Capri in the Gold Coast was sold for a massive $15.5 million

With hand cut sandstone and Travertine floors, The Corso also has a butlers pantry, a cold room, a billiards den in a private wing, a theatre

But this is just the start of the opulence as The Corso has six-bedrooms, six-bathrooms and six lock up garage spaces

A gym, a Lanai bar, maids quarters, a wine cellar, a sauna and heated spa are just some of The Corso's other extras

In all there are 5,371 square metres of private land, with deep water frontage, direct ocean access and protected mooring for up to a 160 foot vessel.

The 170 sq/m penthouse suite is perfect for the extended family to come and visit, or a live in nanny or caretaker's quarters with private balcony large enough to 'land a helicopter', the advertising blurb for the property reads.

But this is just one of five mega sales that have taken place over the past 12 months where Chinese investors have cashed in.

As well as the Sails, The Corso, on Isle of Capri in the Gold Coast was sold for a massive $15.5 million; and 159 Hedges Ave, Mermaid Beach was sold for $13.25 million.

While 18 Southern Cross Drive, Cronin Island went for a healthy $11 million, and 46 Norseman Court, Paradise Waters was taken off the market for $10.2 million.

The mansion at 159 Hedges Ave, Mermaid Beach was sold for a hefty $13.25 million to another Chinese buyer

The mansion at Mermaid Beach boasts a magnificent ocean view where residents can sit in serenity

Furnished in a modern and lively way the house at 159 Hedges Ave has a number of sea views

Tastefully decorated inside the 159 Hedges Ave, Mermaid Beach mansion was quickly snapped up

While the property at 18 Southern Cross Drive, Cronin Island went for a healthy $11 million

The 18-20 Southern Cross Drive property is just one in Queensland that Chinese buyers now prefer to buy instead of houses in Victoria and New South Wales

All these mega-mansions were bought by wealthy Chinese buyers who couldn't wait to get their hands on the luxury properties.

The market does not look like cooling off either with more than 300 properties bought by Chinese buyers on the Gold Coast in 2016, according to Ray White Surfers Paradise Group CEO Andrew Bell.

'There has been waves of interest in the Gold Coast from different countries over the years,' Mr Bell said.

'We have seen big buying patterns in the Gold Coast property market from Japan, United Arab Emirates and Russia but the focus has been China for quite a while.

'The Chinese are different because they have lasted a lot longer in the market than any of the other countries and it has put a lot of money into the city.

Inside the 18-20 Southern Cross Drive home classical decor gives the luxury house a stylish glamour

The Southern Cross Drive mansion also has its own infinity pool that stretches out to an impressive sea view

A Gold Coast mansion at 46-48 Norseman Court, Paradise Waters, was taken off the market for $10.2 million

The house at 46-48 Norseman Court, Paradise Waters has five-bedrooms, seven-bathrooms and is a two lounged residence

The toilet facility at the luxury house at 46-48 Norseman Court is one of the home's main features

'The only wildcard now is that we hope the Chinese government and Australian government don't have plans to change foreign investment.'

Chinese homeowners were buying for a number of reasons, but Mr Bell believed that the main reason they were hovering up the best property was to give their children a better future.

'There is a surge of Chinese buyers who are buying luxury homes for their kids to come over and live in and go to university,' he said.

Other Chinese buyers want to settle down and enjoy a luxury lifestyle on the Gold Coast in their Autumn years and retire here when their children eventually move out.

Because of this the Chinese market is ever-growing and looks like it will continue into 2017.
Deng Adut is a household name - a former child soldier who escaped South Sudan, founded a Sydney law firm and was named 2016 NSW Australian of the Year.

But the man who rescued and brought him to Australia as a refugee, his brother John Mac Acuek, never lived to see Mr Adut's triumphs.

Three years ago he was shot dead by rebels while rescuing civilians during South Sudan's bloody ethnic civil war.

John Mac Acuek (R) in 1998 came to Australia as a refugee with brother Deng Adut (pictured together at Mr Adut's law school graduation)

Despite having university degree and speaking seven languages he could not get a job in Sydney outside of factory work and became an aid worker back in South Sudan

He was there because after a harrowing escape from his home country almost 20 years earlier, aid work in East Africa was the only work he could get - even as the first Sudanese to graduate from an Australian university.

'Despite his degrees and diplomas, his obvious integrity, his work ethic and his seven languages, he couldnt find a job in Sydney outside factory work,' his friend Hugh Riminton said.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph on the anniversary of Mr Acuek death, he recalled how the young refugee and his family arrived in Sydney in 1998 with just the clothes on their backs and bag of nappies.

Mr Acuek with aid worker Christine Harrison who sponsored his family's move to Australia

Mr Acuek with Hugh Riminton, who chairs the John Mac Foundation that was set up in his honour three years after his death to fund refugees attending university

They had a hard time adjusting to Australian life, having never even seen a washing machine or fridge back in Africa.

Mr Acuek's wife Elizabeth lit a wood fire in the oven in a failed cooking attempt and a teenage Mr Adut destroyed the microwave trying to heat up a can of coke.

'We discovered KFC, and for months that's what we ate,' he later recalled.

Seven years after his arrival he'd earned a degree from the University of Western Sydney and finished postgraduate study at the University of Geneva.

Mr Adut was named 2016 NSW Australian of the Year (pictured with award) after becoming a prominent lawyer and activist in Western Sydney

He also encouraged Mr Adut to study law because of his argumentative nature, and his brother went on to run criminal law firm AC Law.

But with no work in Sydney, Mr Acuek was forced to leave his family in 2005 to become an aid worker back in South Sudan.

Later he started a business in his old home town of Bor, established a school, supported research to stop a disease killing livestock, and built a hotel the year before his death.

To honour his brother, Mr Adut has started the John Mac Foundation, which raises money to get refugees through university and is chaired by Mr Riminton.
Sears is set to close 150 stores and plans to sell its famous tool brand in a $900million deal that bosses hope will keep the company afloat.

The department store chain, which has 1,500 around the country, is trying to drum up money after years of losses amid failing revenue as more people shop online.

It already closed 78 poor-performing stores in 2016 and more than 200 in 2015, according to CNN.

The news comes after disappointing holiday sales from Macy's and Khol's prompted them to also shutter stores stores and lay off workers.

'Looking ahead, we will continue to take actions to adjust our capital structure, meet our financial obligations and manage our business to better position Sears Holdings to create long-term value', its CEO Edward Lampert said in a statement.

Sears will close 150 of its 1,500 locations nationwide early this year. This comes after the company closed 78 stores in 2016 and more than 200 in 2015

The former retail giant is also selling its famous Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc for about $900 million

IS YOUR SEARS Florence Mall, Florence, Alabama 1901 S. Caraway Road, Jonesboro, Arkansas Enfield Square, Enfield, Connecticut Eagle Ridge Mall, Lake Wales, Florida Albany Mall, Albany, Georgia Columbus Park Crossing, Columbus, Georgia 1235 S. Reed Road, Kokomo, Indiana 2259 S. 9th St., Salina, Kansas Kentucky Oaks Mall, Paducah, Kentucky 9001 Cortana Mall, Baton Rouge/Cortana, Louisiana 197 Westbank Expressway, Gretna, Louisiana 9605 Queens Blvd., Rego Park, New York Walden Galleria, Cheektowaga, New York Boulevard Mall, Amherst, New York 1 Galleria Drive, Middletown, New York 10 Whitten Road, Augusta, Maine Swansea Mall, Swansea, Massachusetts 3099 28th St. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 12737 Riverdale Blvd NW, Coon Rapids, Minnesota 1850 Adams St., Mankato, Minnesota 3600 Country Club Drive, Jefferson Cty, Missouri 3702 Frederick Ave., Saint Joseph, Missouri Advertisement

GOING TO CLOSE? 3902 13th Ave., South Fargo, North Dakota 1000 S. Main St., Roswell, New Mexico 2000 Brittain Road, Akron, Ohio 1075 N. Bridge St., Chillicothe, Ohio 1701 River Valley Circle S, Lancaster, Ohio Richmond Mall, Richmond Heights, Ohio 1901 S. Yale Ave., Tulsa, Oklahoma 428 SW. C Ave, Lawton, Oklahoma Shenango Valley Mall, Hermitage, Pennsylvania 1 Susquehanna Valley Mall Drive, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania 1500 Mall Run Road, Uniontown, Pennsylvania 3595 Capital City Mall, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania 1500 Diamond Hill Road, Woonsocket, Rhode Island 2701 David H. McLeod Blvd., Florence, South Carolina 2101 Fort Henry Drive, Kingsport, Tennessee 4101 E. 42nd St., Odessa, Texas 500 Gate City Highway, Bristol, Virginia Alderwood Mall, Lynnwood, Washington Town Center Mall, Charleston, West Virginia Meadowbrook Mall, Bridgeport, West Virginia Advertisement

Sears didn't disclose how many workers will be affected by the store closures, but a spokesperson said that most are part-time employees.

'We are committed to treating these associates with respect and compassion during this process' they said.

Sears will also sell the Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for about $900 million, the Boston Globe reported.

Stanley, which makes and sells tools under the DeWalt and Black & Decker names, wants to grow the Craftsman brand by selling its products in more stores outside of Sears.

Today, only 10 percent of Craftsman products are sold in other stores.

Sears CEO Edward Lampert (middle) offered the flailing department store a $200 million letter of credit through affiliates of his firm, ESL Investments Inc

Sears, which bought the trademark for Craftsman in 1927 for $500, will continue to sell the tool brand at its Kmart and namesake stores until an undisclosed time.

Under terms of the deal, Stanley will pay $525 million and $250 million after three years, according to a statement by the companies.

Stanley plans to hire more workers and open a new US plant to make more Craftsman products but didnt provide details, the Boston Globe reported.

'To accommodate the future growth of Craftsman, we intend to expand our manufacturing footprint in the US. This will add jobs in the US, where we have increased our manufacturing headcount by 40 percent in the past three years', said Stanley CEO James M Loree in a statement.
Overcrowded A&E units are pleading with the public to stay away in one of the busiest weeks in living memory.

In the space of just 24 hours, an unprecedented 14 health trusts issued desperate messages on social media warning patients they were extremely busy.

Dozens of hospitals across the country are experiencing major internal incidents, but due to controversial guidelines they are forbidden from stating this publically.

And provisional figures show that in the last week alone, a total of 250 mostly elderly patients were languishing on trolleys for 12 hours or more. In the worst-affected casualty departments  mostly in the West Country  around 60 per cent of patients are waiting four hours or more to be seen.

Overcrowded A&E units are pleading with the public to stay away in one of the busiest weeks in living memory

Doctors leaders are urging ministers to hold emergency Cobra-style meetings on the crisis, as they have never seen hospitals under so much strain. A&E units were already busy before Christmas, but the crisis has intensified in the last few days with outbreaks of flu and the arrival of a cold snap.

The situation was made worse by a run of bank holidays when GP surgeries were closed, and unwell patients delayed seeking help. Official NHS figures due later today are expected to show that A&E performance for the last week was the worst on record.

But provisional data from the College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors, shows that an average of 22 per cent of patients waited for four or more hours in the last week of December. This is twice as high as the same week in 2015, when just 11 per cent experienced delays that long.

Dr Adrian Boyle, a spokesman for the College and an A&E consultant at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge, said: Were under an awful lot of pressure at the moment.

In the space of just 24 hours, an unprecedented 14 health trusts issued desperate messages on social media warning patients that their emergency departments were extremely busy

Fundamentally, the problem is we dont have enough beds, either in our hospitals or in social care. Dr Mark Holland, of the Society of Acute Medicine, said: I have never seen acute medicine under so much strain. We predicted a crisis and we have reached crisis ... the Government needs to acknowledge the mess we are in and take measures of kin to the Cobra committee.

Yesterday hospital bosses across the UK posted messages on Twitter, urging the public to avoid going to A&E unnecessarily.

Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group wrote: Staff at A&E are busy saving lives. Only go in an emergency. Other areas issuing messages included Cambridge and Peterborough, north-west London, Kingston in Surrey and North Cumbria.
A Pennsylvania mother pleaded guilty Thursday in the starvation death of one of her five-month-old twin daughters, who died weighing less than five pounds.

Dionne Bishop had been charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child in the 2015 death of her daughter Lakia Hardy. The mother, 30, was sentenced to 13 to 30 years in prison as part of a plea deal.

Lakia died in May 2015 of starvation and dehydration. The baby girl started having difficulty breathing and officers were dispatched to the family's home in Harrisburg. Lakia appeared malnourished and was taken to a hospital, where she died.

The little girl weighed less than five pounds at the time of her death, when at five months old she should have weighed about 15.

Dionne Bishop (left), 30, pleaded guilty Thursday in Harrisburg in the starvation death of one of her five-month-old twin daughters. The girls' father, Leviticus Hardy (right), 34, is awaiting trial on a homicide charge

An autopsy showed Lakia died of complications of child malnutrition syndrome weighing 4.8 pounds, Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean McCormack said according to PennLive.

Her twin sister, Lamia Hardy, was also emaciated and taken to the hospital. 'Lamia could not keep her head up. She had trouble keeping eye contact,' McCormack said.

'She was emaciated... She was on track to die.'

Lamia gained weight rapidly when doctors started treating her, although she was so emaciated they worried they might refeed her too fast. Refeeding syndrome, which occurs in severe cases of starvation, can be fatal.

Bishop answered with a brief, high-pitched 'Yes' when the prosecutor asked her if she agreed to plead guilty.

Investigators also found that Bishop and the girls' father, Leviticus Hardy, weren't giving Lamia medication that she needed for a blood clotting condition, McCormack said.

Hardy, 34, attended Thursday's hearing as a witness, wearing a yellow prison uniform. He is awaiting trial on a homicide charge.
comes amid concern that many old people are out of touch

over the phone can offer a link back to society, Age UK said

Lonely older people can get a huge boost from a simple phone call, a report by a leading charity said yesterday.

A million elderly people face life in isolation but a regular natter over the phone offers a bridge back to contact with the rest of society, Age UK said.

Some older people who are on their own actually prefer getting a phone call to a visit from a stranger, the charity found.

A million elderly people face life in isolation but a regular nattr over the phone offers a bridge back to contact with the rest of society, Age UK said.

The recommendation that phone-a-friend schemes can alleviate the worst impact of loneliness comes amid deepening concern that high numbers of older people are out of touch with family and the rest of society

The charity has estimated 1.2 million people in England qualify as chronically lonely, with half a million over 60s usually spending every day alone, and another half million routinely going five or six days at a time without meeting or speaking to anyone.

It said that loneliness increases the risk of illness, including diabetes, heart conditions, and strokes, as well as depression and dementia.

Lonely individuals find it hard to help themselves through exercise or eating properly, it added.

The great majority of GPs, it said, believe some older people come to their surgeries not because they are ill but because they want someone to talk to.

The report, called No One Should Have No One, said an effective way of helping lonely older people is the use of a traditional befriending service to provide low-level telephone support and short-term face-to-face companionship.

It said: Calls are much appreciated. For some a phone call is what they prefer.

Recent research indicates that people who are very lonely need more than a regular phone call to reduce their feelings of loneliness, but even in these cases providing phone calls is a very useful bridging service.

The recommendation that phone-a-friend schemes can alleviate the worst impact of loneliness comes amid deepening concern that high numbers of older people are out of touch with family and the rest of society

The report said that other ways of helping the lonely alongside phone contact include organising eyes on the ground networks of shopkeepers, hairdressers, vicars and others with good local connections to identify older people who may need help.

GPs, social and voluntary workers could also provide information on elderly people whose lives are isolated, it added.

Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said the charity was running trials in eight areas to find the best ways of helping the lonely. It has run a phone befriending service for more than a decade.

This new analysis shows that about a million older people in our country are profoundly alone, many of whom are likely to be enduring the pain and suffering of loneliness, she said.

The early results of our pilot programme on tackling loneliness in later life are so important: nine in 10 older people who were often lonely when they started the programme were less lonely six to 12 weeks later, with many also saying they felt generally happier, more confident and more independent as a result.

Unfortunately there is no simple solution for loneliness but our pilot programme shows we really can make a difference and provides crucial insights into how the problem can be successfully overcome.

In particular we have learned that to be effective in identifying and helping lonely older people we have to treat them with sensitivity and recognise their individual needs, and we also have to channel the skills of professionals in the NHS and beyond, and the goodwill of local communities.

Izzi Seccombe, social care spokesman for the Local Government Association that represents councils, said: We have long been calling for loneliness to be recognised as a major public health concern and we support Age UK in calling on MPs to put this important issue on the Governments agenda.

Loneliness and social isolation have a major impact on peoples health and wellbeing.
A 21-member syndicate of Queensland Department of Education staffers will share $55 million after winning the Powerball jackpot - the fourth largest jackpot in Australian history.

Each member, ranging in age from 23 to 60, will be $2.62 million richer after Thursday night's win - but 14 team members in the office win nothing after opting out of the ticket purchase.

It was the second-largest single ticket win in Powerball history.

'We were talking in the office yesterday about what we would do if we won and now it has happened,' said the leader of the syndicate.

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The winning ticket was bought at Casino News in Brisbane (pictured). Twenty-one Education Department staffers will be $2.62 million richer after winning the Powerball

On Thursday, photos show people flocking to lottery centres, including this one in Belmont in Perth's east, in a hope they will secure the winning ticket for the $55 million Powerball

'I just can't believe it. Yesterday, while we were talking about what we would do if we won, one of the syndicate members very boldly said that we were going to win and now we have,' said the woman, who like the rest of the winners chose to remain anonymous.

'I don't know what to say. I'm so shocked; it all seems so unreal.'

'Wow, now I'll be able to buy a house and get my teeth fixed. I'll be able to afford braces.'

In comments provided by Tatts Group, she said the winners were planning what to do with the money.

'For some they may retire, others will clear debts and pay off mortgages and others have told me they will help their family,' she said.

'I'm sure there will be a few holidays as well.'

Cindy Lynch, manager at Casino News in Brisbane where the winning ticket was sold, said it was the third division one entry sold at the store.

'To have changed not one life but 21 lives is fantastic,' Ms Lynch said.

'I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

'I wish it was me but this is still so exciting.'

A Department of Education spokesperson could not confirm the reported win.

'I have no idea who did win, other than the fact that it wasn't me,' Education Department spokesperson Steve Rosenthal told Daily Mail Australia.

A 21-member syndicate of Queensland Department of Education staffers (office pictured) will share $55 million after winning the Powerball jackpot

An Education Department employee wrote on Facebook that she was 'jealous AF' of her colleagues - but 'so so so happy for the winners though!!!'

'If the rumours are true though my friend bought the winning ticket! Very happy for her if it's true,' the Education staffer wrote.

A woman who said she was a former employee at the Education Department wrote:

'The winners are at my old work!!! There is 21 of them that go in on the lotto every week and this was the lucky one for them. Not me though - I didn't go in.'

The win was the fourth-largest in Australian history, a Tatts Group spokesperson told the Herald.

More than half a million tickets were sold across the state for the $55 million draw on Thursday and photos show buyers flocking to lottery centres and queuing out the door to secure a ticket.

The numbers on the winning ticket were 36, 8, 23, 39, 31 and 6 with a Powerball of 15.

Three other players with six of the winning numbers picked up $121,040, Perth Now reported.

Another 34 people won $6274.35 apiece in the jackpot.

Lotterywest spokesperson Pina Compagnone said the busiest hour for lottery centres was between 4pm and 5pm when about 650 tickets were purchased each minute.

Queensland ticket holders have been urged to go online to check their ticket against the numbers so the winner can be identified.

'The other piece of information we have at this point in time is that it's an unregistered entry so we don't know the details of the person holding their ticket,' Elissa Lewis from Tatts Lotteries told The Today Show.

'Anyone who purchased an unregistered entry from a Golden Casket outlet in Queensland check your ticket.

'You could be $55 million richer'.

The numbers on the winning ticket were 36, 8, 23, 39, 31 and 6 with a Powerball of 15 (stock image)
Sales of prosecco fizzed ahead of those of the traditional festive tipple of Champagne as Britons rang in the New Year, according to new figures.

Between 11.30pm on New Year's Eve and 12.30am on New Year's Day prosecco accounted for 18 per cent of total drink sales at 800 pubs around the UK while champagne contributed to 17 per cent.

During the time frame the two drinks accounted for more than one-third (35 per cent) of pubs' total drink revenue, research by cloud-based software provider Epos Now found.

In the hour window around the midnight countdown, sales of prosecco and champagne in 800 UK pubs surged

However the surge in sales was not sustained across the whole evening as, between from 5pm on December 31 to 5am on January 1, champagne and prosecco together accounted for just 15 per cent of total pub wet revenues.

Jacyn Heavens, chief executive of Epos Now, told The Caterer: 'It seems many people like to ring in the New Year with a celebratory glass of bubbly but that's typically where it stops.

'Champagne and prosecco are expensive and over the course of the evening as a whole people are still most likely to be enjoying a good old pint.'

A separate poll which compared the revenue figures of 380 pubs and bars across the UK from 5pm 31 December 2016 to 5am 1 January 2017 to the same period a year earlier found a growth in overall sales for pubs.

More people opted for prosecco than champagne, often a cheaper option of bubbly to raise a glass with

Newcastle saw the biggest benefit with an 11 per cent increase, followed by Brighton which was up by 9 per cent and Edinburgh, 7 per cent.
Aldi is trying to lure away staff from rival supermarkets with a bumper pay deal.

The budget chain has already attracted millions of shoppers from established rivals and it is now going after their best employees.

The company has announced a pay rise for staff from next month that will see the minimum rate in London set at 9.45 an hour.

Staff in the rest of the country will get at least 8.53 an hour, which the company insists is the best of all the mainstream supermarkets.

Aldi has announced a pay rise for staff from next month that will see the minimum rate in London set at 9.45 an hour

At the same time Aldi runs a graduate programme where management trainees start on 42,000, rising to 72,000 after four years, with a package that includes an Audi A4 company car and the promise of global travel.

The group employs 29,000 staff in total across the UK and will open its 700th UK store next month.

Some 3,350 of these will see increases based on the new minimum pay rates.

Aldi is also recruiting 4,000 new permanent employees across stores and warehouses this year.

The firm plans to open around 70 new shops this year, taking it towards a target of 1,000 by 2020.

The move will see Aldi pay more than the voluntary Living Wage rate of 8.45 an hour announced by the Living Wage Foundation in November.

It also beats the Governments national Living Wage of 7.20 an hour, which will go up to 7.50 in April.

Aldi claimed its rate of pay will be the highest in the supermarket sector, beating closest rival Lidls recently announced increase to a minimum of 8.45 an hour nationally from March.

Chief executive of Aldis UK operations, Matthew Barnes, said: We recognise the valuable contribution that our thousands of store employees make every day.

The firm plans to open around 70 new shops this year, taking it towards a target of 1,000 by 2020

Their dedication and commitment is a key reason why Aldi is the UKs fastest-growing supermarket.

Industry figures revealed last month that the chains increasing popularity showed no sign of slowing in the 12 weeks to December 4.

Aldi notched up a 10per cent rise in sales over the period, while its share of the sector edged up to 6.2per cent from 5.6per cent a year earlier, according to Kantar Worldpanel.

Lidl saw sales growth of 5.7per cent, giving it a 4.6per cent market share.

The rise of the two discounters have sparked a fierce price war as mainstream supermarkets look to stop customers deserting them. It seems the stores will now face a similar struggle to hold on to some of their best staff.

Katherine Chapman, Director of the Living Wage Foundation, described the move by Aldi as fantastic news. However, she said the group should go further and ensure the same rates of pay are offered to sub-contracted staff such as cleaners.
North Korea has demonstrated a 'qualitative' improvement in its nuclear capabilities - showing the need to bring Pyongyang back to disarmament negotiations, the US has said.

US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a joint news conference after a meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts that the threat from the secretive state becomes more acute each day.

North Korea had conducted 24 missile tests in the past year, as well as two nuclear tests, and learned from each one, he stated.

Kim Jong-un's state is getting more dangerous each day, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a joint news conference

'Even a so-called failure is progress because... they apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test.

'And in our assessment, we have a qualitative improvement in their capabilities in the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity,' he said.

'With every passing day the threat does get more acute,' Blinken said, and referred to comments by North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, on Sunday that his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of a kind that could someday hit the United States.

North Korea had conducted 24 missile tests in the past year, as well as two nuclear tests

Blinken said it was vital for the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries to boost cooperation to defend against the threat.

'At the same time, it's absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained, comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programs, to come back to the negotiating table, and to engage in good faith on denuclearization,' Blinken said, referring to international sanctions.

US President-elect Donald Trump responded on Monday to Kim's comments on an ICBM test by declaring in a tweet that 'It won't happen!'

Experts say preventing such a test is far easier said than done, and Trump gave no indication what new steps he might take to roll back North Korea's weapons programs after he takes office on January 20.

Former US officials and other experts say the United States essentially had two options when it came to trying to curb North Korea's fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs - negotiate or take military action.

North Korea should be brought back to disarmament negotiations, US officials have said

Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, given their close proximity to North Korea.

Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama said Tokyo was watching closely to see what kind of Asia policy Trump would follow, but did not expect major changes.

'Will it be exactly the same as we have it now? I doubt it. But basically, I don't see the direction as changing in a significant way,' he told the news conference, adding that the U.S. security treaties with Tokyo and Seoul were an important pillar of U.S. policy.

Blinken said an effective sanctions campaign required 'determination' and 'patience.' 'I believe that as long as we sustain it and build on it, it will have an effect,' he said.

In another tweet on Monday, Trump said North Korea's neighbor and only ally, China, was not helping to contain Pyongyang - despite Beijing's support for successive rounds of U.N. sanctions.
A senior MP has condemned a move to reveal the identities of key witnesses in the Trojan Horse schools scandal as horrifying and unacceptable.

Andrew Mitchell, the Tory MP for Sutton Coldfield, said two of his constituents are at risk of being exposed and has written to Justine Greening to urge an intervention.

The two whistle-blowers were assured they could remain anonymous when they gave evidence of an alleged takeover of state schools by Islamic hardliners.

They have already received online harassment and fear reprisals from the community, Mr Mitchell said.

The Park View school (pictured) was at the centre of the Trojan Horse plot, which came to light following a letter which detailed an alleged plot by hardline Muslims

Several head teachers are facing disciplinary measures from the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) over the scandal following an inquiry by former Met Police counter-terrorism commander Peter Clarke.

The government has now informed a number of witnesses in the inquiry that their details may be passed to the legal teams of the accused.

Mr Mitchell said: Parliament has consistently shown itself to be sensitive about the mistreatment of whistle-blowers.

These constituents were given specific assurances, which the relevant authorities now propose to breach. Thats simply not acceptable.

He added in his letter that the whistle-blowers were only willing to give evidence on the specific undertaking that it would remain confidential.

He wrote: You will understand that this was particularly important to my constituents because they have been subjected to abuse on social media and other aggravations.

Park View Academy denied the allegations and the governors of Park View Educational Trust described the investigations as a 'witch-hunt'

Accordingly I am horrified to hear that the NCTL have now proposed to make this evidence public.

It came as another witness told BBC Radio 4 that she regretted giving evidence to the inquiry because her identity could now be revealed.

She said: This has made me extremely nervous. The only reason I gave evidence was because I was promised that nobody would be given my name.

I thought it was important to put forward what Id been hearing and seeing. But now I wish I hadnt, because what if my name is dragged through the mud?

We were told our names wouldnt be put forward. We believed that, and now look whats happening.

Andrew Mitchell, the Tory MP for Sutton Coldfield, said two of his constituents are at risk of being exposed

You say one thing and do another and now were supposed to deal with the consequences.

The Clarke report found clear evidence of a group of like-minded individuals working to support extremist views in classrooms but the report found no evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in schools.

An NCTL hearing into five former headteachers - Monzoor Hussain, Lindsey Clark, Razwan Faraz, Arshad Hussain and Hardeep Saini - has been adjourned since last year.

Labour MP Liam Byrne called the situation a dogs breakfast and said the tribunal needed to find a way of distilling the essential facts and give those to the teachers so that accusations could be heard appropriately.

The Department for Education is believed to be examining all the legal issues and has not disclosed any witnesses details, nor has any final decision on whether to do so yet been taken.




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
forcing Andy onto the grass embankment at the side

An enraged cyclist has filmed himself narrowly avoiding being struck by a car - but the internet is still debating who is in the wrong.

The rider, only known as Andy, is riding down an English country road when he prepares to move out to overtake a parked car.

But as he does so a blue Ford Focus zooms by right next to him, also over taking the stationary car.

The rider, only known as Andy, is riding down an English country road when he prepares to move out to overtake a parked car

But as he does so a blue Ford Focus zooms by right next to him, also taking over the stationary car

However it then proceeds to screech to a halt forcing Andy onto the grass embankment to the right of the road and he can be heard swearing angrily.

Thankfully he manages to control his bike and stays upright but the driver winds down his window to accost him.

The two men yell and swear at each other furiously. 'You f****** nearly hit me off!' Andy shouts before the car zooms away.

The incident was captured on the cameras attached to Andy's bikes.

The aggrieved cyclist wrote on YouTube: 'Riding at approx 26mph in 30 zone and I move out to overtake a parked car when this thug in a Focus overtakes me and then brake checks me, causing me to narrowly miss the rear of his car and mount the grass verge.

'Somehow I managed to stay upright on my bike. When I first go to move out the Focus is approx 400m behind but he accelerates so fast to (I estimate 50mph) that he is upon me'.

However it then proceeds to screech to a halt forcing Andy onto the grass embankment to the right of the road

Andy can be heard swearing angrily as his bike strikes the grass at the side of the road

The bike visibly wobbles but thankfully he manages to control it and stay upright

The two men yell and swear at each other furiously. 'You f****** nearly hit me off!' Andy shouts before the car zooms away

However some online viewers wonder whether perhaps the near crash was Andy's own fault.

'Why did the cyclist not Indicate?' one asks.

Another pointed out: 'He didn't pull out safely, he clearly didn't look as he nearly pulled out in to the car!''

But a third commentator saw both sides to the story, writing: 'Both to blame - Cyclist pulled out earlier than needed and right when the car was "on top of" him, and did not signal. Car driver shouldn't have brake-checked. 50/50.'
About $20 million in cash was found under a mattress on Thursday during an investigation into an internet telecom company that prosecutors say was a pyramid scheme.

Federal prosecutors in Boston charged Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, with conspiring to commit money laundering in a case connected to the investigation of TelexFree Inc.

Authorities said Rocha was helping Telexfree co-founder Carlos Wanzeler move $40million of his money out of the country before his wife filed for divorce.

Wanzeler, along with James Merill, founded TelexFree, a company based in Marlborough, Massachusetts that promoted itself as an internet telecom company.

Federal prosecutors arrested Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, after he tried to help Telexfree co-founder Carlos Wanzeler (pictured right, next to co-founder James Merill) move $40million of his money out of the country before his wife filed for divorce.

TelexFree, promoted itself as an internet telecom company, but prosecutors called it a massive pyramid scheme

Rocha was detained following a court hearing, prosecutors said. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The arrest stemmed from an investigation into TelexFree, which prosecutors said was a massive pyramid scheme.

The company made little to no money selling its service while taking in millions of dollars from thousands who paid to sign up as 'promoters' who agreed to post ads online for it, prosecutors said.

TelexFree filed for bankruptcy in April 2014 owing $5 billion to its participants, prosecutors said.

In total, 965,225 victims in the United States, Brazil and various other countries lost $1.76 billion when it collapsed, they said.

Merrill was arrested in May 2014 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud charges in October. His sentencing is scheduled on March 2, 2017.

Wanzeler in 2014 fled to Brazil and could not be extradited.

In 2015, an individual working for Wanzeler's nephew approached a cooperating witness about laundering money in the United States through Hong Kong accounts in order to move the funds to Brazil, according to a criminal complaint.

The intermediary told the witness that she wanted $40 million transferred out of the country because Wanzeler's wife was filing for divorce in the US and knew where the was located, the complaint said.

In total, 965,225 victims in the US, Brazil and various other countries lost $1.76 billion when the company collapsed, prosecutors said (pictured, investigators raiding the company in 2014)

On December 31, Rocha, acting as a courier for Wanzeler's nephew, flew to the United States.

He met with the cooperating witness on Wednesday, and handed over $2.2 million in a suitcase, according to authorities.

After the meeting, federal agents followed Rocha to an apartment complex in Westborough, Massachusetts, and later returned to find a 'substantial amount of cash' hidden under a matress, according to the criminal complaint.

Rocha said the money totaled $20 million, the complaint said.
Leslie Van Houten - Murderer - In prison

She met Charles Manson and the Family in 1968 as a 19-year-old and moved onto his ranch.

Van Houten quickly became infatuated with the monster, and she committed murder less than a year later.

She walked into the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and stabbed the latter 16 times.

Shortly after she was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1971, California banned executions, so her tariff was changed to life.

In April last year, having had 19 of her previous parole hearings thrown out, a panel recommended her for release.

But Governor Jerry Brown overturned the decision and the 67-year-old remains in prison.

Bobby Beausoleil - Murderer - In prison



Beausoleil was an aspiring musician and actor before he joined the Manson family.

He was originally was sentenced to death for the 1969 slaying of musician Gary Hinman, but it was commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972.

He was transferred in 1994 to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem at his request, after he married a woman from Oregon while in prison and fathered four children.

If parole officials recommend his release, the decision will be reviewed by the entire parole board and California Governor Jerry Brown could also block his parole.

He has spent 45 years in prison and has been denied supervised release 18 times.

Paul Watkins - Family member - Dead

Watkins became entranced by Charles Manson and became close to him during his time sporadically living at the ranch.

After the leader's shift towards violence, Watkins left the Family and hid out while they carried out the murders.

He testified against Manson, revealing his 'Helter Skelter' prophecy, and went on to lecture on the effects of drugs and cults.

Watkins died of Leukemia in 1990 at the age of 40.

Catherine Share - Convict - Born-again Christian

Share was a World War Two survivor who was sent to the US after her parents committed suicide in an act of defiance against the Nazis.

She found solace at Manson's ranch where she met Bobby Beausoleil on the shoot of a soft-porn movie.

Share became a recruiter for the Family, bringing in Van Houten, and was although she wasn't convicted of the murders, she was sent to prison for witness tampering and hijacking.

It is claimed she gave birth to Manson's son in prison, but when she walked out a free woman in 1975 having served five years, she turned her back on the cult and became a devout Christian.

Mary Brunner - Convict - Released with new identity

The college graduate was the first follower of Charles Manson's cult and was present during the 1969 murder of musician Gary Allen Hinman.

A year earlier she had given birth to Manson's third son - Valentine Michael Manson - after she and the boy's father had become lovers.

She was sentenced to 20 years to life but was paroled in 1977 and has managed to keep a low profile with a new name.

Susan Atkins - Murderer - Dead

Atkins met Manson in 1967 and gave birth to a son on the ranch which the cult leader named Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz.

She was convicted of the 1969 murder of Gary Hinman, who was beaten to death, as well as the later murders of actress Sharon Tate and four others.

Shortly after she was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1971, California banned executions, so her tariff was changed to life.

Atkins died in prison in 2009, and at the time of her death was the longest-serving female inmate in the state of California.

Linda Kasabian - Family member - Living as a traveller

Having joined the family as a 20-year-old hippie, she moved onto the ranch in 1969.

Kasabian witness the Manson murders and claimed to have fled in horror.

She became the key witness in the murder trials and was granted immunity for her testimony.

Kasabian moved in with her mother in New Hampshire but was hounded regularly, so changed her name and tried to vanish.

A film crew caught up with her in 2009 when she was living as a traveller.

Steve Grogan - Murderer - Free man having served 15 years

Grogan moved onto the ranch in the late 1960s and was with Manson when the LaBiancas were murdered.

Although he played no part in killing them, two weeks later he killed Hollywood stuntman Donald 'Shorty' Shea.

Grogan served less than 15 years for the murder, orchestrated by Manson, and is now living as a free man at the age of 64.

He was initially sentenced to death, but it was reduced to life due to diminished responsibility because of his sobriety and intelligence.

Patricia Krenwinkel - Murderer - Awaiting parole

Krenwinkel helped kill pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people at the urging of Manson 47 years ago.

Shortly after she was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1971, California banned executions, so her tariff was changed to life.

A two-member parole panel has delayed making a decision on whether to release the longest-serving female inmate in California.

The 69-year-old has previously been denied parole 13 times, most recently in 2011.

Charles Watson - Murderer - In prison

Watson, 71, is serving a life sentence for the murders of Tate and four others at her Beverly Hills, California, home on August 9, 1969.

California parole officials recommended in October that Charles 'Tex' Watson, the self-described right-hand man of murderous cult leader Charles Manson, should remain in prison 47 years after he helped plan and carry out the slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people.

The next night, he helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary.

Watson's 17th parole hearing was held at Mule Creek State Prison, near Sacramento.

He can seek parole again in five years.

Squeaky Fromme - Attempted assassin - Released on parole

Fromme was one of Manson's most trusted member of the Family.

She was never actively involved in any of the murders, but was a permanent fixture at the trials where she voiced her support of Manson.

In 1975, she pulled a pistol on the then President Gerald Ford in Sacramento's Capitol Park.

The gun did not go off and Fromme was wrestled to the ground by a Secret Service agent.

She was sentenced to life but now walks free at the age of 68 having been released in 2009, despite escaping to see Manson who she heard had developed cancer.

Source: Biography.com

But what about his ACTUAL family?

A number of people have come forward claiming to be illegitimate children of Charles Manson either by way of rape or relationship.

The definitive family tree of one of the world's most disturbing men may never be fully proved.

But here are the children and their mothers that we know for sure to be his.

Rosalie Jean Willis - Former spouse - Dead

Charles Manson married his first wife Rosalie Jean Willis in 1955 in West Virginia.

Shortly after, they decided to move to Los Angeles to be with his mother, and he stole a car to make the trip for which he was arrested and jailed.

While in prison, Willis gave birth to Charles Milles Manson Jr in 1956.

They divorced a year later and she died in 2009 of lung cancer at the age of 72.

Candy Stevens - Former spouse - Dead

The prostitute pleaded with a judge in court after Manson had been convicted of attempting to forge a cheque.

With tears streaming down her face, she begged the bench to free him so that they could get married.

They tied the knot in 1959, had a child together - Charles Luther Manson - and divorced in 1963.

Charles Manson Jr - Son - Dead

He was born in 1956 with his father in prison.

His mother Rosalie Jean Willis and Manson Sr divorced in 1957 when he was barely a year old.

In 1993, he was found on the side of the road in his car having reportedly shot himself in the head.

Charles Luther Manson - Son - Unknown

The murderer's second son was born shortly after his father and prostitute Candy Stevens married in 1959.

Unsurprisingly, he disassociated himself with the family name and his whereabouts are unknown.

It is not clear if he is alive or not.

Mary Brunner - Partner - On parole

The college graduate was the first follower of Charles Manson's cult and was present during the 1969 murder of musician Gary Allen Hinman.

A year earlier she had given birth to Manson's third son - Valentine Michael Manson - after she and the boy's father had become lovers.

She was sentenced to 20 years to life but was paroled in 1977 and has managed to keep a low profile.

Valentine Michael Manson - Son - Alive

Manson's third son was adopted by his grandparents as a child, and he quickly abandoned the family name.
The federal government has banned the importation of green prawns after white spot disease was detected at fish shops, threatening the $360 million industry.

Imported green prawns are also believed to be behind an outbreak of the disease that has hit four farms in Queensland's Logan River, near the Gold Coast.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said the disease doesn't affect humans but is deadly to local species, forcing the government to protect the prawn industry.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce (pictured) and the federal government have stopped the importation of green prawns after white spot disease was detected at fish shops

'That is a huge concern - it has the capacity to devastate the industry,' Mr Joyce told ABC TV on Friday.

'We are going back to those importers who brought the green prawns in and going through them with a fine tooth comb in regards to their protocols and what they were doing.'

One importer has been banned while a number of others are under investigation, he said.

Mr Joyce says prawns with white spot disease are safe for human consumption once cooked.

He also urged consumers who've bought raw green prawns not to put them in water ways or use them as bait for fishing, amid fears it could contaminate local prawns.

The suspension would remain in place indefinitely until risks were minimised, but would not affect imported cooked prawns, he said.

The outbreak of the disease has threatened local species and the $360 million industry

'We are doing everything in our power to make sure we deal with this and try and nip this in the bud.'

Mr Joyce said contaminated Queensland farms were now being chlorinated to kill the disease while nearby farms were under quarantine.
A runaway giant spool of wire has been filmed rolling down a highway in Pennsylvania forcing cars to veer out of its way.

The massive wire spool fell off the back of a truck on Route 40 at Uniontown, 46 miles from Pittsburgh, on Wednesday morning.

Motorist Dave Cole managed to film the whole ordeal as he drove on the opposite side of the highway.

A massive wire spool fell off the back of a truck on Route 40 in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, forcing cars to veer out of its way as it rolled down the highway

'(The spool) was probably eight to 10 feet across, and I'd say, just guessing, a couple thousand pounds. Pretty good size roll of wire,' Cole told CBS's KDKA.

'I was probably going 20 miles per hour, and it was leaving me way behind,' Cole said.

The spool crossed two lanes of traffic and veered towards four oncoming cars.

It continued rolling like a tumbleweed down the stretch of the highway before hitting a concrete barrier.

The wire spool's escape eventually unraveled when it crashed into a guard rail.

The spool crossed two lanes of traffic and veered towards four oncoming cars
Two Australian popular tourist destinations have been revealed in the top 50 places to explore in 2017.

US travel magazine Travel + Leisure has unveiled the best destinations worth visiting around the world - as Perth and Noosa Heads landed a spot on the list.

With people travelling far and wide for the best food, Perth in Western Australia has been lauded for its spectacular dining scene.

Perth has been named in the top 50 destinations to visit in 2017 (pictured Perth Crown Towers)

The Waiting Room (pictured) in the lobby of Crown Towers is the 'chicest cocktail bar' in Perth

Noosa Heads in Queensland has been ranked in the top 50 destinations to explore this year

Extravagant restaurants with oceanfront views, swanky rooftop bars and stunning beaches are some of the attractions of the city.

Recognised as one of the most remote cities in the world, the magazine has named the Waiting Room in the lobby of Australia's newest hotel Crown Towers.

Dubbed the 'chicest cocktail bar in town', the room features jewel tones, a marble bar with top-shelf spirits and seasonal tasting plates and a sprawling terrace with sweeping views of the sparkling river.

Described as 'Australia's most prestigious luxury hotel', there are more than 500 rooms and a tropical-inspired resort with a lavish swimming pool.

Further up the holiday list is Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast, less than two hours from Brisbane in Queensland.

Perth's Crown Hotel boosts more than 500 rooms and a tropical-inspired resort with pool

Dubbed the 'chicest cocktail bar in town', the room features jewel tones, a marble bar with top-shelf spirits and seasonal tasting plates (pictured Perth's Crown Towers' Waiting Room)

Experience a taste of Asia at Wasabi in Noosa - a restaurant that offers a Japanese-inspired menu with vibrant dishes that are bursting with colours and oriental flavours

Sir Richard Branson relaxing by the swimming pool at his hideaway Makepeace Island in 2015

Surrounded by pink sand beaches, five-star hotels, beautiful hinterland and national parks, Noosa Heads is one of the county's most popular tourist destination.

Described as a 'lavish, Balinese-inspired resort', Sir Richard Branson's hideaway Makepeace Island is located just up the Noosa River.

Experience a taste of Asia at Wasabi - a restaurant that offers a modern Japanese-inspired menu with vibrant dishes that are bursting with colours and oriental flavours.

Noosa Heads in Queensland has been ranked in the top 50 destinations to explore in 2017
A 22-year-old man has been arrested in the slaying of U.S. Senator Jon Tester's nephew after telling a friend in a recorded phone call that he did it because the nephew had abused a 17-year-old girl, authorities said Thursday.

The Spokane County, Idaho Sheriff's Office said investigators arrested 22-year-old John A. Radavich on Thursday evening at an apartment in Spokane Valley on charges of first-degree murder. It was not immediately clear if Radavich had an attorney or someone who could speak on his behalf.

Robert Tester, the 35-year-old nephew of the Democratic senator from Montana, was found dead last September 6, after his eight-year-old daughter reported witnessing part of the homicide. The girl had been sleeping in bed with her father when he was attacked, investigators said.

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John A. Radavich (left) has been arrested in the murder of Sen. Jon Tester's nephew Robert Tester (right)

Tester was found lying in a pool of his own blood, not far from the ax used to kill him.

At the time, a sheriff's department spokesman described the killing as 'extremely bloody and gruesome'. The medical examiner said Tester suffered 'chop wounds' to his head, stomach, and chest.

Radavich was arrested after one of his friends came forward to police with a taped confession at the end of December.

Tester was murdered in front of his own daughter (pictured together above) in September. Police say Radavich carried out the murder in revenge for Tester 'assaulting' his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend

In the recording, Radavich told his friend that Tester had assaulted his 17-year-old girlfriend and 'he had to take care of it by killing Tester'.

Upon further investigation, they found out that the 17-year-old girl in question previously dated Radavich and reached out to him on September 5, after she was allegedly assaulted by Tester.

The sheriff's office did not immediately release more details of the alleged abuse, but said the case remains an active investigation.

Radavich remains held on $1million bond.

Tester is the nephew of Montana Sen. Jon Tester (pictured above with his wife Sharla at the Canadian State Dinner at the White House last March)

Previous suspicions around the case centered on a mysterious Facebook post Tester made on August 25.

In the post, Tester said: 'There's gonna be some hard days ahead of us but I want you all to know that I was victimized by someone close to me. Someone I treated like a brother and trust. I love you all and hope you can understand my never-ending pain.

'He took my best friend from me and turned her life into darkness, thru drugs and manipulation.'

Tester's Facebook profile said he graduated from Charles M. Russel High School in Montana in 2000, is divorced and lived in several towns in Kootenai County in Idaho-where his ex-wife is from.

Sen. Tester's press office confirmed the relationship and said 'his family would prefer privacy during this difficult time.'
It is the beastly battle royale  a snake and spider duelling to the death.

Footage of an unlikely showdown between a redback spider and red-bellied black snake has emerged from from Kurrajong Heights, in New South Wales.

Experts have told Daily Mail Australia the sighting of arachnid eating a snake is incredibly rare  and warned not to intervene.

Footage shows a redback spider and red-bellied black snake battling to the death in a shed

Sabrina Besselsen was terrified to walk into her shed and find the spider hanging up the snake in its web and poisoning it.

Australian Reptile Park's Michael Tate, also known as 'Ranger Mick', told Daily Mail Australia the battle to the death scenario is a rare sight.

Its a rarity to observe. Its likely the snake got stuck there and the redback went in to investigate, he said.

Its pretty hard to get its fangs between the scales, but he would been trying to dislodge the intruder from its web through any means.

Experts have told Daily Mail Australia the sighting of arachnid eating a snake is incredibly rare

The redback spider can be deadly for humans, and experts have warned not to intervene if you see a similar scenario

Red-bellied black snakes can also be inflict a deadly bite, making the showdown particularly dangerous

And it seems the spider got the last laugh: Ms Besselsen revealed the reptile met its fate at the fangs of the arachnid.

Ranger Mick warned onlookers to resist the temptation to rush to the rescue of snakes in a similar scenario.
An engine dropped out of a B-52 bomber during a training mission at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The Air Force confirmed that one of the aircraft's eight engines dropped mid-flight for an unknown reason on J Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge land, located near Upham in Bottineau County, and is buried in snow in a river bed.

Air Force officials sent a helicopter to recover engine debris, which was found located in an unpopulated area about 28 miles northeast of Minot Air Force Base, an Air Force spokesperson told MyNDNow.com.

One of eight engines dropped out of a B-52 bomber for an unknown reason

The incident occurred during a training flight at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota (pictured)

Air Force officials recovered engine debris, which was found on J Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge land (pictured), located near Upham in Bottineau County, and is buried in snow in a river bed

BOEING B-52 FACTS AND FIGURES First flight: 1952 Length: 159 feet, 4 inches Wingspan: 185 feet Speed: 650 mph Range: 8,800 miles without refueling Armaments: 31,500 kilograms of ordnance, which can include bombs, mines and missiles Crew: Five Inventory: 58 active, 18 reserve Cost: US$84 million Source: US Air Force Advertisement

The bomber's five-member crew declared an in-flight emergency when the pilot discovered that an engine had dropped, an Air Force spokesperson said.

They were able to land the plane safely back at the base.

There were no weapons on board the bomber, and no injuries have been reported relating to the incident, which remains under investigation, according to the Air Force.

Col. Matthew Brooks, commander of the 5th Bomb Wing, established a safety investigation board to determine what caused the incident, according to Military.com.

The Boeing-manufactured bomber has been in use since 1952 and is expected to remain operating until 2040, when it'll be replaced by the Northrop Grumman's B-21.

There are 76 B-52's in the Air Force's inventory and are among the oldest in the fleet.
A disgruntled customer claims a publican snatched some of his meal to settle a $5 price dispute over a plate of pasta.

Matt Ingram ordered the pasta of the day - a tasty chicken fettuccine - at the Golden Square Hotel in Bendigo, Victoria, which according to the bar menu was $18.

At almost the end of the meal he counted his change and realised he'd actually paid $23, and queried the cost with owner Ashley McKenzie.

Instead of getting his $5 back, Mr Ingram said he was told: 'Does that look like an $18 pasta to you? What do you want me to do about it?'

A disgruntled customer claims the publican of the Golden Square Hotel (pictutred) in Bendigo, Victoria, snatched some of his meal to settle a $5 price dispute over a plate of pasta

The real estate agent replied that he wanted the difference refunded and claimed after some back and forth Mr McKenzie said he'd have to refund some of his dinner to get it.

'I'm going to have to take the difference off your plate,' the barman allegedly said.

The fed-up customer said he eventually gave in and told Mr McKenzie he could 'take it', after which the remains of his meal was whisked away and his $5 refunded.

Mr Ingram said the price was listed as $23 on a chalkboard in the dining room, but he was sitting at the bar where the menu read $18 and the board was not visible.

Matt Ingram ordered the pasta of the day - a tasty chicken fettuccine (pictured) - and owner Ashley McKenzie took the last quarter after he complained

The Golden Square's other owner Ainza Drummond said Mr Ingram's version of events was untrue and denied any of his pasta was taken.

'This account of Matt Ingram's is not totally true or accurate. We are happy to get criticism so that we can improve our service but he has failed to mention his bad actions and the things he said to Ash,' she wrote on Facebook.

When contacted to give their version of events, Mr McKenzie was unavailable and Ms Drummond would only say they were trying to resolve the issue privately.

Mr Ingram said 'it happened exactly how I described it' and any suggestion he was rude to Mr McKenzie was 'completely false'.

'I made sure I handled it professionally with a calm demeanour, the outcome is just unfortunate,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'I'm not sure why they are denying it, maybe because they understand that what happened isn't right... how do you defend yourself with something like that?

The bar menu of the Golden Square showing the pasta of the day cost $18, but Mr Ingram said he was charged $23

He said Ms Drummond had contacted him online to 'hardheartedly apologise' and he was offered a full refund on his meal, which he declined because he problem was with Mr McKenzie's behaviour.

'She said she's sorry my experience wasn't what I expected' but that's about it,' he said.

However, Mr Ingram said the pasta was 'fantastic' and the social media reaction was a little too over the top.

'It's got far more attention than I thought so I think we're well and truly even. I shouldn't feel bad for him but I do a bit,' he said.

'I don't want a guy to lose his business over such a small issue.'

In addition to comments on his post, locals posted on the pub's Facebook page to asking what the pasta actually cost, to which another joked 'it's $23, but there is a $5 cash rebate when you return a small portion of the pasta'.

He said he visited the pub about once a month but doesn't think he will be returning for a while.

'I definitely think it would be a bit awkward,' he said.
Federal officials investigating the Long Island Railroad commuter train crash in Brooklyn are trying to determine if the train's engineer suffered from sleep apnea.

A LIRR train erratically sped up and slowed down in the last three minutes before it crashed at the end of a platform on Wednesday, injuring 103 people.

The train's engineer exhibited 'typical risk factors' for the disorder, an official close to the investigation said.

The official described the engineer as overweight, adding his wife had complained he snores at night.

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New York City firefighters evacuate two of the 103 people injured in Wednesday's crash at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. Now investigators want to know if the conductor's sleep apnea was the cause

The 50-year-old engineer, whose name wasn't released, told investigators he has no memory of the crash and wasn't using a cell phone at the time, Turpin said.

'The engineer was unable to recall striking the end of the track,' Turpin said.

'He does recall entering the station and controlling the speed of the train.'

The engineer was given a drug test, Turpin said, but the results are not yet known.

The train's engineer exhibited 'typical risk factors' for the disorder, an official close to the investigation said. Authorities are seen above at the crash site on Wednesday

Sleep apnea is a disorder in which breathing stops and starts periodically while asleep.

Symptoms of sleep apnea include snoring loudly and feeling tired even after a full night's sleep.

About 100 people were treated for minor injuries after the crash. The most serious injury appeared to be a broken leg.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said Thursday the train had been traveling at least 10mph when it train slammed into the end of a platform at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning; the terminal's speed limit is 5mph.

Last September, a New Jersey Transit train was speeding when it crashed into the Hoboken station (above) during the rush-hour commute, killing one woman and injuring 112 others

The engineer of the Hoboken train, Thomas Gallagher (right), 48, suffered from undiagnosed sleep apnea

Two other major train crashes in the New York area in recent years were the result of engineers suffering from the disorder.

Last September, a New Jersey Transit train was speeding when it crashed into the Hoboken station during the rush-hour commute, killing one woman and injuring 112 others.

The engineer of that train, Thomas Gallagher, 48, suffered from undiagnosed sleep apnea.

On December 3, 2013, four people died and dozens more were injured when a Metro-North train (above) derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx. The conductor of that train was also determined to have sleep apnea

On December 3, 2013, four people died and dozens more were injured when a Metro-North train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx.

The conductor, William Rockefeller, dozed off while driving the train, according to DNAinfo.

He woke up when he heard a loud noise indicating that a sharp turn was ahead, but the train was driving at 82 miles per hour, too fast for him to slow down.
A woman was bitten several times by a deadly funnel web spider as it crawled across her while she lay in bed.

She said the male arachnid woke her at 3am on December 27 as it crept up her leg before biting her on the arm and torso before she could get away.

The woman, from Bundanoon in rural NSW southwest of Sydney, called a medical helpline but it was an hour before she got the first two vials of antivenom.

Her condition did not improve after another two doses and she was rushed to Liverpool Hospital in Sydney.

The funnel web spider that bit a NSW woman, sending her to hospital for several days

After several days in the intensive care unit she was released but will need further tests to see if the venom caused any long-term organ damage.

'From the ambos who first treated me at home to the incredibly kind doctors and nurses at Liverpool Hospital, Im so grateful for everyones help,' she told the Southern Highland News.

'Im truly surprised to be around to say that!'

Two other people were treated at the local Bowral District Hospital in the past year, in December 2015 and 2016 when males are on the prowl for mates.
President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has issued a blanket mandate for politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, the US ambassador to New Zealand said on Friday.

'I will be departing on January 20th,' Ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters.

The mandate was issued 'without exceptions' through an order sent in a State Department cable on Dec. 23, Gilbert said.

He was confirming a report in the New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous US administrations, from both major political parties, have traditionally granted extensions to allow a few such ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

President-elect Donald Trump's (left) transition team has issued a blanket mandate for politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama (right) to leave their posts by Inauguration Day

The US ambassador to Canada announced his resignation Friday, yielding to the Trump transition team's demand.

'As requested I have resigned as US Ambassador to Canada effective 1/20,' Bruce Heyman wrote on Twitter.

Heyman is close to Obama.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said it was 'common' procedure for all politically-appointed ambassadors to step down as a new US administration comes in on Jan. 20.

The US ambassadors to Canada and New Zealand have confirmed that they are quitting effective January 20. The ambassador to Canada, Bruce Heyman, is seen on the left with his wife, Vicki Heyman. The envoy to New Zealand, Mark Gilbert, is seen on the right

'As requested I have resigned as US Ambassador to Canada effective 1/20,' Bruce Heyman wrote above on Twitter

'All political appointees for the Obama administration were directed to submit their resignation and the due date was Dec. 7, and the resignations are to take effect on Jan. 20,' Kirby told reporters.

'That is common, typical practice...that's the way it works.'

Kirby said, as expected, no career diplomats serving as ambassadors had been asked to resign by the transition team.

He acknowledged, however, that in the past there had been exceptions made for a small number of political appointees to stay on for a short time for personal reasons.

The order could leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. John Emerson, the US ambassador to Germany, is seen left. Matthew Barzun, Washington's envoy to London, is seen right

'But that is totally in the prerogative of the incoming administration,' he added.

The order could leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain, The New York Times reported.

A senior Trump transition official told the newspaper there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring Obama's overseas envoys leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do.

Trump has taken a strict stance against leaving any of Obama's political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20, aiming to break up many of his predecessor's signature foreign and domestic policy achievements, the newspaper said.
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Hundreds of mourners have turned up to farewell the female university student who died tragically when a tree branch fell on her at the Lost Paradise music festival.

Harriet Nixon, 21, died after a large branch fell on her head at Glenworth Valley on the Central Coast ahead of the three-day music festival on December 29.

Ms Nixon was farewelled at Oxley College in Buradoo in the New South Wales Southern Highlands on Friday, eight days after her death.

Mourners were asked to dress in 'colour, pearls and RM Williams' boots in tribute to the 'driven, compassionate and intelligent' young woman.

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Hundreds of mourners have turned up to farewell Harriet Nixon, 21, who died tragically when a tree branch fell on her at the Lost Paradise music festival.

Harriet Nixon, 21, was killed at Lost Paradise music festival in New South Wales last week when a tree branch fell on her

Miss Nixon was working for the festival when she sat under a gum tree with friends before a large branch fell on her head

Mourners were asked to dress in 'colour, pearls and RM Williams' boots in tribute to the 'driven, compassionate and intelligent' young woman

Ms Nixon was farewelled at Oxley College in Buradoo in the New South Wales Southern Highlands on Friday, eight days after her death.

Hundreds of mourners gather to farewell university student Hariet Nixon who died when a tree branch fell on her at the Hundreds of mourners dress in colourful outfits to farewell university student tragically killed by a falling tree at Lost Paradise music festival

Mourners dressed in bright clothing comfort each other at the funeral of 21-year-old Harriet Nixon

Miss Nixon suffered a cardiac arrest at the scene before being taken to hospital where she later died from her injuries

Despite the tragedy the festival went ahead, with a photograph shrine and glow sticks set up to honour Miss Nixon's memory

Revellers in outrageous costumes took to social media to share smiling selfies, unaware that rescue teams were battling to save the life of Miss Nixon

Nixon's death shocked the Lost Paradise community, which has become known for its mind, body and soul vibe along with its hippy-esque dress code

Miss Nixon's friends have paid tribute to her online, calling her 'driven, compassionate and intelligent' (file image)

It's not just about the music: Lost Paradise is a chance for many to express their eccentric styles as they ring in the new year

Miss Nixon was working for the three-day music festival when the accident happened on Wednesday afternoon

Gosford Inspector Bruce Coates said Nixon was working for the festival when she sat under a gum tree with a number of others on Wednesday last week.

A branch, which Insp Coates said was metres long, fell and knocked her unconscious about 4pm. She suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to Westmead Hospital with severe head, spine and shoulder injuries.

Despite the efforts of medical staff, Nixon died on Thursday, the first day of the festival.

A photograph and a shrine of flowers and glow sticks was erected at the event in her memory.

Ms Nixon, from Moss Vale, completed the Gold Duke of Edinburgh program at Oxley College in Bowral and Victoria's Geelong Grammar before attending the Australian National University in Canberra.

Friends of the ambitious adventurer and her family have taken to Facebook to mourn her death.

'Never have I met a young woman who was so driven, compassionate and intelligent. Your smile was infectious and you had a way of making everyone feel at ease,' Serena Maree Armstrong said.

Marguerite Latham said: 'She was the epitome of elegance with a beautiful manner and way with people I will never forget.'

Taking a break: One festival goer takes a moment to relax out of the heat of the sun on the second day of Lost Paradise

From magical to practical: Some Lost Paradise attendees kept it casual in shorts and shirts, while others glammed up in capes and face paint

High summer temperatures hit 40C during the three day event, as some people jumped into a river to cool off

Lost Paradise orgainsers have urged festival goers to stay hydrated as temperatures skyrocket during the three day event

Two men take to the water as the the mercury rose on Friday, the second day of the event

Trees line the waterways at Lost Paradise, where Miss Nixon sustained fatal injuries when a branch fell on her

A tightrope walker holds on tightly to avoid falling into the water underneath him

Minimal clothing is a popular choice for many to keep themselves cool as the mercury rises in Glenworth Valley

One festival goers relaxes in the shade

'Please bring copious amounts of water, a bottle to refill water with, plenty of sunscreen, hats, sunglasses, water spray bottles and protective clothing,' Lost Paradise organisers advise

Getting back to nature: Two people dress up as the famous Australian cockatoo

The young woman went into cardiac arrest and was treated by paramedics before he was airlifted from the festival grounds

Investigations into the death of the 21-year-old are ongoing and a report will be prepared for the Coroner

Ms Nixon is survived by her parents, Fiona and Ralph, and sister, Alicia.

'Our community is much diminished by the loss of such a beautiful, caring daughter, she was such a credit to you and a gracious reflection of your steadfast family values,' local Alison Morellec said.

According to a Facebook post by the Southern Highlands branch of The National Party, of which Ms Nixon's parents were both long-standing members, her funeral will be held at Oxley College on Friday afternoon.

'The family have expressly asked for the following dress code: Colour, Pearls, R.M. Williams - and nothing black please,' the post reads.

Lost Paradise is in its fifth year and has become famous for its relaxing 'mind-body-soul' theme and hippy dress-code.
NBC was drawn into the ongoing feud between Donald Trump and the US intelligence services after it got an inside look at a Top Secret report on Russian hacks that the President-elect won't see until Friday.

The station aired a story on at the report - which concluded that Russia hacked the Democrats to help Trump win - on Thursday, the same day Barack Obama got the first briefing.

An incensed Trump took to Twitter to question - once again - the intelligence services, this time incorporating the new home of his journalistic nemesis, Megyn Kelly, into the mix.

'How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?"' he Tweeted at the start of a three-message tirade. 'Who gave them this report and why? Politics!'

Donald Trump ranted on Twitter Thursday after a report given to Obama in a Top Secret briefing was leaked to NBC. Trump won't get the same briefing on the report until Friday

Trump fumed that 'politics' were to blame for the company getting the inside scoop on the report, which said that Russia did hack DNC and leaked emails to WikiLeaks to affect election

A US official told NBC that 'Highly classified intercepts illustrate Russian government planning and direction of a multifaceted campaign by Moscow to undermine the integrity of the American political system.'

The report concludes that the general destabilization of the US political system then became a campaign to get Trump into the White House as the attacks caused the Democratic campaign to wobble.

It also claims to have identified the Russian officers who used a complex string of third parties to leak hacked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks during the election, NBC said.

NBC is also now the employer of Megyn Kelly, whom Trump had repeated tussles with when she was covering his election campaign for Fox News; at one point he called her a 'bimbo'

Trump's frustration with the NBC reports is likely due to a number of different factors.

The first is that as President-elect, he was not due to see the information outlined to the NBC reporters until Friday.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, saw the information in a briefing Thursday.

The second is that Trump and members of his team are already engaged in an ongoing war of words with intelligence agencies that has intensified ever since the CIA first said that Russia had attempted to sway the US election towards Trump.

Trump and his team view such comments as attempts to invalidate or question the rightness of his election, The Wall Street Journal reported, causing him to become reflexively defensive.

On Wednesday, for example, Trump groused that the Top Secret document seen by NBC had been pushed to Friday, and implied that the intelligence services lacked a proper case.

'The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!' he tweeted.

The Wall Street Journal also said Thursday that Trump was planning to downsize the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to combat a 'politicized environment' in the intelligence community.

Trump's team said that was '100 per cent false'. Trump later tweeted: 'The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!'

The report said that Putin had initially wanted to call the US election into doubt, but later decided to actively promote Trump. It doesn't say if Russian hacks actually won him the vote

The third factor, though perhaps a minor one, is that NBC is now home to Megyn Kelly, whose pointed questioning of Trump during the election led him to call her a 'bimbo'. He later 'apologized' by telling her, 'You've been called a lot worse.'

Kelly devoted passages in her memoir, Settling for More, to what she described as 'threats' from Trump.

According to NBC sources, the Top Secret report goes on to say that the Russian hacks were not just against the DNC, but also the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and American corporations.

Some of them were successful, it says; others were not. Some of the activity by Russia against the US also goes back as far as 2008.

As well as undermining the US political process, the hacks were also intended to punch back at Barack Obama for questioning Putin's legitimacy as President of Russia.

It doesn't go as far as to say that the Democrat hacks actually swayed the election, however.

Trump's twitter rant on Friday didn't end with the complaint about NBC and 'politics', however.

He also questioned why the Democratic National Convention never allowed the FBI to examine its computers.

'The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia......' he tweeted.

'So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?'

Trump continued his Thursday rant by asking why 'The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia'

On Thursday, representatives of the Democratic National Convention told Buzzfeed that thy had offered up all of their data to the FBI when requested.

However, they said, it was the FBI that declined to perform forensic investigations on their computers, not the DNC refusing access to the Bureau.

Instead, forensics were farmed out to a private company, CrowdStrike.

'The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBIs Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justices National Security Division, and US Attorneys Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNCs computer servers, Eric Walker, the DNCs deputy communications director, said in an email.

'Beginning at the time the intrusion was discovered by the DNC, the DNC cooperated fully with the FBI and its investigation, providing access to all of the information uncovered by CrowdStrike - without any limits,' he said.

It's not clear why Trump thinks that the DNC refused to allow the FBI in.
Cancer Council is refusing to recall its Peppa Pig sunscreen because they claim 'less than one per cent' of people will suffer an allergic reaction.

But that one percent has publicly slammed the Peppa Pig sunscreen this week, sharing confronting photos of bad allergic reactions caused by the children's product.

A three-month-old boy was among them, spending three days in hospital being treated for a severe reaction.

Young mother Jessie Swan, from Queensland, claims her three-month-old son (pictured) was left hospitalised after he suffered severe burns and rashes from a SPF50+ sunscreen

In an official statement released to Daily Mail Australia on Friday, Cancer Council said allergic or chemical reactions were a risk with any product, but the percentage of people at risk did not justify a recall.

'Fewer than one per cent of users might have individual allergic or chemical reactions,' a spokeswoman said.

The company said it was re-testing the sunscreen but had found nothing wrong.

Ms Swan claims her son suffered severe burns and rashes from the SPF50+ sunscreen

Two days after application: The mother claimed her son was treated in hospital for two nights

'The product is currently being re-tested, with no indication of anything identifiable in the sunscreen itself,' she said.

'In the absence of any identifiable problem with the product, it is not being recalled.'

Cancer Council said its priority was UV protection above all else.

'The product will help protect them from UV and ultimately skin cancer,' it said.

The company said it was working together with people who had suffered a bad reaction from the product but also urged them to undergo allergy testing.

'We are also providing advice to individuals with severe reactions to undergo allergy testing so that the specific ingredient causing the reaction can be identified,' the spokeswoman said.

The mother said her son was rushed to hospital where he stayed for three days for treatment

But the Cancer Council's advice has come too late for Jessie Swan who was forced to hospitalise her three-month-old son.

Ms Swan, from Queensland, claimed her son endured a painful chemical reaction from the kids-branded lotion.

The mother was so horrified, she shared distressing photographs of her son on the non-profit organisation's Facebook page in an effort to warn other parents.

The sunscreen bottle is designed with the children's popular cartoon character Peppa Pig

The mother was so horrified by her son's reaction to the lotion, she shared distressing photographs of her son on Cancer Council's Facebook page in an effort to warn other parents

'This is my 3 month old son. He has not been in the sun, he was simply outdoors so I put screen on him just in case,' she wrote on Tuesday.

'We've been in hospital for 3 days 2 nights so far trying to treat this horrible rash/burn caused by your 50+ Peppa pig sunscreen.'

How it all started: The distressing mother shared photographs of her son when she noticed the red marks started appearing on his body

Since Ms Swan shared her experience, more parents have come out of the woodwork to share their own horror story with the product.

Brisbane's Delaware family also suffered severe reactions after applying the sunscreen.

All four members of the family suffered 'red sunburn-like rashes', including their eight-month-old baby Kadence.

'I started noticing a burning sensation like an hour into swimming,' Michael Delaware told Nine News.

'It was so painful, I couldn't imagine how the children were (feeling).'

Mr Delaware said Kadence had blisters on her face and she had barely even seen the sun.

'I think it should be taken off the shelves, I don't want any other families to have to go through what we've gone through. It's just been hell.'

All four members of the Delaware family suffered 'red sunburn-like rashes', including their eight-month-old baby Kadence (pictured)

Families have flocked to online forums to share photos of their children's reaction to the sunscreen

Sydney mother Jessica Cook also said the product 'burnt and irritated my little girl's (pictured) skin so bad she was scratching until it bled'

Sydney mother Jessica Cook also said the product 'burnt and irritated my little girl's skin so bad she was scratching until it bled'.

Ms Cook also said she did not patch test the sunscreen before applying it to her child's skin because she felt she could trust an Australian leading brand.

'Fair enough if one or two people have been affected by this, but now (it's) turned into a few dozen,' she said.

'Issue a recall and get this poison off your shelves.'

Ms Cook said she was also surprised the bottle had no warning for people with sensitive skin.

Children and even babies have suffered reactions, their parents claim as a result of the Peppa Pig sunscreen

CANCER COUNCIL AUSTRALIA'S SUNSCREEN RESPONSE As a cancer charity, Cancer Council's focus is cancer prevention and awareness. We take the safety and effectiveness of our sunscreens very seriously and respond to all feedback regarding our products. Yesterday we were saddened to learn via Facebook that a young child had a negative experience with our SPF50+ Kids Sunscreen. We take any concern raised about our products very seriously and have been in direct contact with the boy's mother, Jessie, to investigate this further. This product has been on the market for a number of years. Since it was introduced more than 250,000 bottles have been sold. We have only received a very small number of complaints regarding this product, some of which related to issues with the function of the pump spray, not the sunscreen itself. We investigate all feedback regarding our sunscreen products individually. On some occasions, we conclude that there has been an allergic or chemical reaction to particular, but different, ingredients in the product  this is why we always recommend doing a small patch test before applying any sunscreen to yourself or other family members. Sunscreens in Australia are strictly regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). All Cancer Council sunscreens and their ingredients are fully compliant with these regulations and all of our sunscreens are independently tested to ensure they exceed the SPF level advised on the bottle. Additionally, all products formulated for sensitive skin, including our SPF50+ Kids Sunscreen, are dermatologically tested to ensure that they pass the Repeat Insult Patch Test (RIPT), a recognised formal skin sensitivity test for topically applied products. If you have sensitive skin, doing a personal patch test is even more important. Advertisement

Cancer Council said the product was approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (PDG) and dermatologically tested.

'We would like to reassure everyone that our Cancer Council Kids sunscreen has been formulated to be as suitable for delicate skin as possible,' the organisation said.

'It has a lower level of active ingredients when compared to other products and we have selected preservatives that are known to be more gentle on the skin.'

A beauty queen also warned parents about using the sunscreen on their children after she was left her with painful first and second degree burns.

Mrs Universe Kim Cancellier (left) was left with burns after using Peppa Pig sunscreen

Mother-of-two Kim Cancellier, 31, from Sydney, purchased a bottle of the kids-branded sunscreen in December and decided to test the product on her own skin before using it on her two young daughters, aged three and five.

The former Mrs Oceania International and current Mrs Universe applied the cream twice before heading into the sun at Dee Why beach for around two hours and was left in 'agony' when her skin turned red and flaky.

'Instead of acting as a sunscreen and protecting me from the suns rays it had the opposite effect and turned me bright red,' she said.

Ms Cancellier, an anti-domestic violence advocate, said the burns were so severe she could not move and her skin felt as if it were 'on fire'.

The mother-of-two applied the cream twice before heading into the sun for around two hours and was left in 'agony' when her skin turned red and flaky

Ms Cancellier decided to test the product on her own skin before using it on her two young daughters, aged three and five

'Instead of acting as a sunscreen and protecting me from the suns rays it had the opposite effect and turned me bright red,' Ms Cancellier claimed

Doctors told Ms Cancellier the sunscreen had left her with first and second degree chemical burns on her stomach and chest

The skin under her breast was red raw

'I am burnt to a point my body feels like it's on fire. I can barely move and every small touch causes nothing but agony,' she said.

'I'm 31 and if I'm in this much pain then I can't even begin to imagine the pain a child would be in.'

The Peppa Pig sunscreen is endorsed and sold by the Cancer Council, one of Australia's largest cancer charities.

A spokesperson for the Cancer Council said it takes the safety and effectiveness of its sunscreens 'very seriously' and is investigating Mrs Cancellier's case.

More than 250,000 bottles of the Peppa Pig product had been sold with very few uses resulting in complaints.

'On some occasions, we conclude that there has been an allergic or chemical reaction to particular, but different, ingredients in the product  this is why we always recommend doing a small patch test before applying any sunscreen to yourself or other family members,' the spokesperson said.

Mrs Universe Kim Cancellier has warned parents of her experience with Peppa Pig sunscreen

Four weeks on from the incident and Ms Cancellier's skin still has not recovered fully

Ms Cancellier said she was shocked that the product had been targeted to children, with doctors telling her the sunscreen had left her with first and second degree chemical burns on her stomach and chest.

[My doctor] believed it wasn't an allergic reaction but more of a chemical reaction to the product,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'It was like the sunscreen acted as an accelerant instead of a protectant.

Ms Cancellier took photographs of her skin at intervals during her recovery that show large flakes peeling off, leaving raw fresh skin underneath exposed.

Four weeks on from the incident and Ms Cancellier's skin still has not recovered fully.

The reigning Mrs Universe has been forced to turn down work due to the appearance of her skin

Ms Cancellier did some research and found numerous complaints about the product

The model has been forced to turn down work due to the appearance of her skin

She said it has almost finished peeling, but thinks it will be another week before she will be able to safely go in the sun.

She said she has been forced to turn down work due to the appearance of her skin.

'It was hard as one of my jobs is to model so for the past month I've turned down a lot of photo work, haven't done any TV work or made my contracted appearances with my title.'

Ms Cancellier said the Cancer Council were quick to respond to her complaint and took the product back for testing.
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Snow falling in parts of the Deep South of Friday, as a winter storm sweep through the region threatening to disrupt weekend travel and bring misery to millions.

Both Alabama and Georgia have announced a state of emergency and school has been cancelled in several states.

Motorists are being urged to avoid unnecessary weekend travel as crews rush to pre-treat roads that could be made treacherous by the storm.

One death is already being blamed on the weather. Authorities said 55-year-old Daniel Noble died after his pickup truck slid off a snow-slickened road about 14 miles south of Jackson, Kentucky on Thursday.

Motorists talk outside their cars after being involved in several accidents due to icy roads on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. Winter weather closed schools and made driving conditions hazardous

Cars involved in accidents due to snow and ice sit on on the side of a road on Friday in Nashville

Groceries stores across the Deep South (like this one in Decatur, Georgia are running out of the essentials as residents prepare for a snow storm

Ahead of a winter storm forecast for metro Atlanta, a customer looks for milk in the depleted coolers of a Kroger supermarket in Decatur, Georgia on Thursday

Much of the Deep South is bracing for a rare dose of snow on Friday that could last through Saturday

The snow is set to start falling in the Lower Mississippi Valley this morning before hearing up towards the Carolinas

Parts of Virginia and North Carolina could see as much as a foot of snow in some places

Temperatures will turn bitter cold after the storm, making clean up tricky for those in Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Virginia

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Friday and Saturday from eastern Alabama through north Georgia, including Atlanta, and into the Carolinas and part of Virginia.

School districts in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia either closed or called off classes early as snow began falling there Thursday and more cancellations were planned Friday, including by school systems in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

The storm is already causing travel chaos, with Delta pre-emptively cancelling 350 flights. Delta's main hub is in Atlanta, which is set to get more than an inch of snow.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesman Reese McCranie said the airport will never close, and will remain open through the wintry weather. McCranie said crews will keep all runways, taxiways and roads open.

Shipping giant FedEx also said delays are possible for packages being delivered across the country Friday due to winter weather that has swept through its home base in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lindsey Hodges shops at a Kroger located off in Athens, Georgia on Thursday ahead of the storm

Forecasters are calling for 1-3 inches of snow throughout the weekend in the area. Above, Danny Morgan, left shops at the same Athens, Georgia Kroger on Thursday

Sleet began falling across central and northern Mississippi after dawn Friday.

Schools and colleges mostly opened Friday, but some are dismissing students early.

Some ice is sticking to the elevated interchange of Interstate 55 and Interstate 20 in Jackson that's the heart of Mississippi's highway system. "The Stack," as it's known locally, is notorious for icing in winter weather. Farther north in the state, mostly snow is falling.

Some Mississippi suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee, reported 2 to 3 inches of snow by mid-morning.

In North Carolina, Saturday's ceremonies formally inaugurating Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper were canceled. Activities scheduled for Friday will go on as planned.

Cooper urged people to stay off the roads during what's expected to be 'a significant snow event."'

That wasn't the only event planned. Organizers also moved New Orleans' annual Joan of Arc Parade from Friday to Saturday. The parade marks the official start of Carnival.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley issued a state of emergency that will open its emergency operations center Friday morning and put 300 Alabama National Guard soldiers at the ready to help if needed.

Some parts of North Carolina could receive four inches or more of snow and there's a 'slight risk' of eight inches or more of snow in eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia, according to the advisory of the federal government's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Its forecast called for four inches or more of snow for parts of Georgia, South Carolina and the Piedmont region and foothills of central and western North Carolina. The warning for central North Carolina called for a mixture of snow and sleet with up to five inches locally and as much as seven inches from the central piedmont to the northern coastal plain.

Mike Schichtel, lead forecaster at the Maryland center, said the storm threat is significant for the Southeast.

Winter storm alerts have been issued in many of the states making up the Deep South Bible Belt

'If you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle and you think you're safe, you're not,' Schichtel said. 'Take it very seriously and adjust your travel plans accordingly.'

Luckily though, experts say that that the real issues won't happen until after the evening commute along the I-85 corridor that links Alabama to the Carolinas.

'Fortunately, the icy and snowy conditions will not develop in the I-85 corridor on south and east until after the Friday afternoon commute, which should allow millions to get home,' AccuWeather Meteorologist Maggie Samuhel said. 'However, people on the road in this area Friday night and Saturday are likely to experience dangerous travel conditions and will run the risk of getting stuck.'

Southern residents made sure to hit the grocery stores on Thursday to stock up for the likelihood that roads would become too treacherous on Friday and Saturday.

Stuart Hall, who went to a store near his Cary, North Carolina home on Thursday, said it was about as busy as the holiday shopping season inside.

Lucinda Anderson and her daughter Shaye Rabold walk through Fountain Square Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Thursday as snow starts to fall

Snow falls in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Thursday. School districts in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia either closed or called off classes as early as snow began falling there Thursday

Hall said the parking lot is usually fairly empty when he shops so late in the week. But across the South, many were stocking up on eggs, bread, milk and other staples ahead of the storm's expected arrival late Friday amid threats of snow, sleet and freezing rain across the Southeast.

'Today, it was like mall shopping during the holidays. People going up and down the lanes looking for a spot,' he said. 'As I walked in, I jokingly asked if there was any food and the clerk just laughed.'

Sherrill Suitt Craig went shopping at a store near her home in north Raleigh, but she had to leave for a grocer in nearby Wake Forest because her initial stop was too crowded.

'I have no idea why, but people are acting like complete jackasses when they hear that there is snow in the forecast,' Craig said. 'I was just doing my regular shopping.'

Summit Middle School student Luke Zana catches sleds at Tantra Park on Thursday in Boulder, Colorado

Hikers walk up a snowy trail in Chautauqua Park, in Boulder, Colorado on Thursday

A Northstar California employee gets ready to start the day after the resort has received more than six feet of snow in the last seven days at Northstar California resort on Thursday

In this photo provided by Northstar California, families enjoy the ski slopes after a heavy snowfall at the on Thursday

Crews in Georgia have already moved trucks and dozens of road workers from the southern part of the state, up north to help the state keep the roads clear.

The Georgia Department of Transportation says many workers on Friday began working 12-hour shifts, as up to four inches of snow is expected in parts of the state.

The agency says that statewide, it has 1,900 employees on call and more than 380 pieces of snow removal equipment.

Authorities say they also have 54,030 tons of salt, 65,460 tons of gravel, and 450,000 gallons of brine - a mixture of salt and water used to treat roads.

In DeKalb County, one of Georgia's largest counties near Atlanta, officials say they have 110 cots available for employees who will work 16-hour shifts if necessary.

New York City residents woke up to a small amount of snow on the ground Friday morning

More snow could blanket the Northeast on Saturday as a winter storm heads up from the South

Workmen clear the parking lot in front of the Frederick Douglass mural as snow falls on Friday in New Bedford, Massachusetts

A pedestrian walks by the aptly drawn text on the window of the Green Bean Cafe on Purchase Street as snow falls on Friday in New Bedford, Massachusetts

A man clears the sidewalk on Elm Street as snow falls in New Bedford, Massachusetts on Friday

The same goes for South Carolina where transportation department crews are already spreading salt and sand on highways in Upstate and plan to begin in the central part of the state later Friday.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for 14 counties in the northwestern portion of the state from Friday evening to Saturday morning. A winter storm watch is in effect for three counties in the northeast.

Forecasters say up to seven inches of snow could fall in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. Up to five inches of snow could fall around Lancaster and Chesterfield. Up to three inches of snow could fall north of Columbia. One or two inches of snow are possible around Darlington, Dillion and Marlboro counties.

Lake-effect snow is expected in the Rust Belt today and tomorrow, with the heaviest snowfalls Watertown, New York and Erie, Pennsylvania

In North Carolina, utility companies are already making plans to deal with power outages, though no problems were reported so far early Friday morning.

Transportation department officials are also spreading salt and sand on many roads

Virtually the entire state is expected to see snow this weekend. The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for most of the state for Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. A winter storm watch is in effect in a few areas. Only the southeastern corner of the state is not expecting snow before the storm moves through.

The West Coast is also facing it's own weather issues this weekend, with more snow expected in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California

When the snow melts, it's expected to cause major flooding in California, Nevada and Oregon

Snowfall is expected to range from about 1 inch around Lumberton to as much as 9 inches around Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham and Raleigh. As much as seven inches could fall from Asheville to Charlotte.

Once the storm hits the Atlantic Ocean, the storm could take a northward turn - bringing more snow to Virginia, New Jersey, New York and southeastern New England.

It has been unseasonable warm in the Northeast this week, with temperatures hovering in the 50s - the temperature dropped more than 10 degrees on Thursday and residents in New York City and Boston woke up to a small smattering of snow on Friday.

The region could see even more snow if the South's winter storm decides to turn northward on Saturday.

To the west, heavy snow and strong winds have raised the danger of avalanches in the Colorado high country. A storm tracking across central California is dumping significant snow on the mountains, while a winter storm has already coated northern Utah with nine inches of snow, forcing officials to cancel or delay classes Thursday.

The National Weather Service said snow accumulating for several weeks in Boise, Idaho, reached 15 inches Thursday and broke the previous snow-depth record of 13 inches set twice in the mid-1980s.
Anis Amri (pictured) dined with suspect Bilal A. the night before he carried out the Berlin Christmas market massacre

An accomplice of Christmas market murderer Anis Amri - arrested in Berlin this week - was a fellow Isis sleeper heard trying to buy weapons and explosives on intercepted telephone taps.

Bilal A., 26, dined with lorry hijacker Amri, 24, the night before he ploughed the stolen HGV into a crowd in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding 48.

It has emerged that he was a fellow fanatic who dreamed of killing all 'unbelievers' for his ISIS masters in Syria.

Bilal A. first travelled to Germany from Italy with Amri in 2015. The duo spent their time travelling between radical mosques in the west of the country to flats of Isis supporters in Berlin.

In November 2015 he was arrested by police special forces in a raid on asylum accommodation in Berlin suspected of trying to buy explosives. But he was later freed without charge.

A month before Amri's lorry carnage Bilal A. was sentenced by a court in the capital, on November 24, to a seven month suspended jail term for stealing T-shirts, jackets and jeans from a Karstadt department store in the Spandau district of the city earlier in the year.

Amri killed 12 people and injured 48 when he drove a hijacked lorry into the middle of a crowd

He was sentenced under one of the many aliases he used - Egyptian-born Abu Bakir, even though he came from the Tunisian town of Bizerta.

The same month intelligence agencies heard on his intercepted phone messages that he was again on the hunt for weaponry. One person he spoke regularly with: Anis Amri.

Both attended a mosque regularly in the Moabit section of Berlin - not far from the spot where Polish lorry driver Lukasz Urban was murdered in the cab of his truck so Amri could use it as a guided missile to kill innocents on December 19.
A City worker has admitted killing a former colleague with a single punch because he threw his shoe out of a taxi window.

Business development manager Alexander Thomson, 32, hit recruitment consultant Thomas Hulme, 23, once in the head from behind as they made their way back from a night out in London.

The Old Bailey heard Thomson, who has three previous convictions for alcohol-related crimes, lashed out after Mr Hulme took his shoe and threw it out of the window as they travelled home with friends.

Alexander Thomson (left, outside court), pleaded guilty to manslaughter after killing Thomas Hulme, 23, (right) with a single punch

The pair got out of the taxi to continue the argument, but Mr Hulme collapsed on Farringdon Street (pictured) on August 26 last year

The pair got out of the taxi to continue the argument, but Mr Hulme collapsed on Farringdon Street on August 26 last year.

He was rushed to hospital with a brain haemorrhage and pronounced dead the following evening.

Thomson, who secured a new job in Notting Hill shortly before the attack, appeared in the dock today to plead guilty to manslaughter as the victim's father comforted his daughter, Mr Hulme's sister, as she wept in the public gallery.

Raised in Oxted, Surrey, according to his Facebook Thomson works as a digital marketing consultant at EMR, a London-based cargo company.

Thomson, who lives with his girlfriend in Clapham, southwest London, was released on conditional bail ahead of his sentence on March 10 - when Judge Anthony Bate said he faces jail.

At an earlier hearing it emerged Thomson has three previous convictions for alcohol related offences dating back to 2002 when he was convicted of drink driving.

The following year he was convicted of drink driving, while another offence for battery saw him before the courts in 2013.

At an earlier hearing it emerged Thomson (pictured) has three previous convictions for alcohol related offences dating back to 2002 when he was convicted of drink driving

After his death, Mr Hulme's sister Lucy paid tribute on Facebook, writing: 'Rest in peace to my beautiful big brother. Love you so so much forever.'

Thomson, arriving at the Old Bailey, has been told he faces jail

She has now set up a fundraising page to raise funds in her late brother's memory.

Lucy is climbing Mount Kilamanjaro to raise money for two charities, including One Punch Can Kill UK.

On the page she writes: 'Last year I lost my companion who I grew up with, I lost my friend, I lost my big brother, Tom.

'A huge part of my life suddenly feels empty.

'The pain me and my family have gone through and continue to experience is immense and I would love to prevent someone else from going through it.'

She added: 'One Punch Can Kill UK [is] an organisation I really want to help gain official charitable status, so they can continue and increase raising awareness of the dangers and fatal consequences one punch can have, that I know all too well.

'It is an extremely important, yet I think, under reported and talked about issue in society today.'

Thomson, who had secured a new job in the financial sector in Notting Hill, west London shortly before the attack, had been due to face trial at the Old Bailey

Thomson he appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey in London (pictured) today to plead guilty to manslaughter

Judge Wendy Joseph QC, said: 'This defendant has committed a series of offences under the influence of alcohol and clearly has a tendency to commit unpleasant and violent offences under the influence of alcohol and each of those offences has been more unpleasant than before.

'This has led to the death of a wholly innocent young man.'

The judge told Thomson after he pleaded guilty: 'Your counsel ensures me you are under no illusions of the outcome of this case.'

Following Mr Hulme's death, DCI Perry Stokes, from the City of London Police said: 'This was a tragic incident where a young man has gone to enjoy a night out, but sadly he will not be returning home.'

Lisa Wilding, defending Thomson, said: 'The defendant has been seeing two different counsellors in respect of his alcohol consumption and more specifically the underlying issues that may have been masked by that alcohol consumption.
A British mother accused of cheating on her husband under Bahrain's strict Sharia law was only freed from prison when her 'abusive' Muslim husband dropped the charges against her.

Hannah James, 26, is said to have survived on three meals of rice and water a day after her partner Jassim Alhadder told the police she was having an affair with a married man who works for the government.

After languishing in jail since early December she was finally let go when Alhadder, 29, personally told the authorities to clear her of the alleged adultery.

He told MailOnline: 'I dropped the charges because she is the mother of my child and I still love her.

Broken family: British mother Hannah James, right, who was thrown in Bahranian jail after being accused of adultery by husband Jassim Alhadder, left, was freed when he dropped the charges against her

Anger: Ms James' family say he accused her of cheating on him with a married man after she threatened to leave the country because he beat her. They shared photos on social media, above, which they held up as proof of his violent ways

Locked up: Ms James, right with her four-year-old son, is said to have survived on three meals of rice and water a day after Alhadder accused her of having an affair with a married man

'I am her husband so I had to clear her, because of the laws in the country. She's now been released and she's in safe hands.'

Ms James, from Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, is now stuck in the conservative Muslim country because Alhadder burned her passport, her family has claimed on a crowdfunding page raising money for her legal fees.

Alhadder denies doing so but his stories are inconsistent. He told MailOnline she lost the document but in another interview, he said she destroyed it herself after 'hiding it in the oven' and forgetting about it.

Ms James married Alhadder shortly after moving to Bahrain in March with their British-born son Nelson, four, who is now back in the UK with his grandparents.

Her family claim he turned violent soon after the move - and shared Facebook photos of a black eye and bruise on her arm as proof of the abuse she suffered.

They say Alhadder only accused her of cheating after she stated her intentions to return to the UK because he beat her.

Stranded: Ms James' family claims she is now stuck in the conservative Muslim country Alhadder, above, burned her passport. He has denied the claim but his stories have been inconsistent

Happier times: Ms James married Alhadder shortly after moving to Bahrain in March with their British-born son Nelson, four. Pictured: The family together in the UK

Not so happy couple: But the British mum's family claim he turned violent soon after the move and shared several photos of the bruises on her body as proof of the abuse she suffered at his hands. Pictured: Ms James and Alhadder before they moved to Bahrain

Mercy? Alhadder, who wants revenge on the man who had a relationship with his wife, says he cleared her of the charges because she is the mother of his child and 'because I still love her'

Alhadder has hit back at the family by saying he acted in self-defence, claiming Ms James attacked him after he confronted her about the alleged affair, and that bruises show more clearly on her skin because she is white.

He said: 'She's been going out twice a week drinking and every time she tries to beat me up because she doesn't like me anymore, because she has another man in her life.

'Every time she tries to beat me up and I push her away. And every time she falls down in the house because she's drunk and of course she will get bruises. I didn't mean to hurt her once.'

'She's the one who has put herself in jail, I didn't put her in there. She put herself there when she went with him.

'She's taken my heart with her - she's taken my son, I will never see him again.'

Heartbroken Alhadder says he wants revenge on the Saudi-Bahranian man who he claims had an affair with his wife.

He said: 'He's run away because he's afraid he's going to lose his wife. But I've lost everything, I lost my family because of this guy.

War of words: Alhadder denies beating his wife, above, claiming she attacked him after he confronted her about the alleged affair

Accusation: 'She's been going out twice a week drinking and every time she tries to beat me up because she doesn't like me anymore, because she has another man in her life,' said Alhadder, who said he is heartbroken at the thought of never seeing his son again

'I'm not done with him. This guy who made me lose my family, I have to make him lose his family too.'

Last night, Ms James' mother Shelley confirmed her daughter had been released from jail and was in 'safe hands' but that she was still not allowed to leave Bahrain.

Shelley had earlier written in an online petition that Bahrain 'is a law unto themselves' and that her daughter was 'suffering being in prison'.

Writing on a JustGiving page set up to raise funds to bring her daughter home, Mrs James said: 'Things became very difficult for her as she was suffering from domestic violence.'

The British Foreign Office said in a statement: 'We are providing support to a British woman following her arrest in Bahrain. We remain in contact with both her family and with Bahraini authorities.'
Russia has begun scaling down its forces in Syria after a 15 month operation in support of President Assad.

The head of the Russian General Staff reportedly told news agencies that the country's naval fleet would be first to return from Syria.

It follows a decision made by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military deployment in Syria to be reduced

Russian soldiers pick through the rubble on this Aleppo street, which has been severely damaged in the bombardment

Valery Gerasimov stated, according to TASS news agency: 'In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria.'

A naval group headed by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov will be the first to withdraw, it has been announced.

Andrei Kartapolov, Russia's main commander in Syria, said: 'The tasks set for the aircraft carrier group during its military mission have been fulfilled.'

The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier (pictured) will be withdrawn from Syria, it has been announced

A Russian tank in an Aleppo street, which is strewn with rubble after an intense campaign to regain the city from ISIS forces

Kartapolov said that Russia still had sufficient air defence capabilities in Syria thanks to its S-300 and S-400 systems deployed in the war-torn country.

Moscow launched its bombing campaign in Syria in September 2015, helping to turn the tide in favour of Assad's ailing forces.

Russia boosted its firepower on land in Syria and off the coast in the Mediterranean in support of regime forces targeting the second city of Aleppo, which had been under ISIS control since 2014.

Tanks full of Russian soldiers roll through the forecourt outside Aleppo International Airport, which has been heavily damaging during years of conflict in the city

Russia has been a key ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, pictured with Vladimir Putin

Troops loyal to Russia's ally Bashar al-Assad finally ousted rebels from the city last month, paving the way for the Kremlin to launch a fresh push for a political solution to the conflict.

Putin ordered a reduction in his forces in Syria on December 29, as he announced a ceasefire between government and rebel forces that has since dampened down the fighting.

Russia, along with Turkey and Iran, are currently pushing for peace talks to be held later this month in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.

Putin's latest announced drawdown coincided with the declaration of a ceasefire between government and rebel forces that has led to sharp drop in fighting.

A major exception has been the rebel-held area of Wadi Barada near Damascus, where the regime has stepped up air strikes as the rival sides trade blame over a cut to mains supplies to the capital.

Damascus has been without water from Wadi Barada since December 22.

The United Nations said on Thursday that 5.5 million people had been affected, warning that sabotaging water supplies was a war crime.

Turkey, which has worked closely with Russia to broker the ceasefire, has warned that the fighting is jeopardising the planned talks in Kazakhstan.

Government aircraft on Friday dropped at least 10 barrel bombs, crude munitions notorious for the indiscriminate casualties they cause, on Wadi Barada, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A Russian soldier studies his equipment as an Uran-6 remote operated mine vehicle drives past him

A child was killed as clashes resumed in the area between pro-government forces and rebel fighters led by the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front, the British-based monitor said.

East of the capital, clashes broke out in the Marj district. Three people were killed, one of them a child, according to the Observatory, which has a network of sources on the ground.

In Damascus, there were a number of casualties from rebel rocket fire.

Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as Al-Nusra Front, was Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and remains blacklisted as a terror group by the United Nations and Western governments.

Along with its jihadist rival, the Islamic State group, it is not party to the week-old ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

But rebels deny Fateh al-Sham is in the Wadi Barada area.

Syria's main opposition coalition urged the UN Security Council on Thursday to put an "immediate" halt to what it said were regime violations of the truce.
Marley's current owners replied with a recent picture of their

Ms Williams took to Facebook to try and get in touch with Marley's new owners

too big for the backyard

Her family gave away Marley when she

A dog has been found four years after it was given to new owners through a heartwarming Facebook appeal.

Chloe Ellizabeth Williams, 22, had to give her six-month-old puppy, Marley, away in 2012 after she grew too tall for the family's backyard fence in Rockhampton, Queensland and would often jump over it.

After she lost contact with Marley's new owners Ms Williams took to Facebook to track down her beloved former pet.

A dog has been found four years after it was given to new owners through a heartwarming Facebook appeal (Marley pictured in 2012)

After she lost contact with Marley's new owners Ms Williams took to Facebook to track down her beloved former pet

'In 2012 we owned a beautiful dog named Marley,' Ms Williams wrote on Thursday.

'We had to rehome her due to our fence being too low and we still had five months on the lease so we couldn't just move.

'Anyway my point is we would love to find her and see how she is doing.'

And sure enough Ms Williams found Marley only hours later.

'We always thought about her and wanted to see how she was,' Ms Williams said.

'It was only recently I thought about using social media. Who doesn't have Facebook these days?'

Her current owner, Jac Spring, replied to Ms Williams' Facebook post with a recent picture of Marley (pictured)

Her current owner, Jac Spring, replied to Ms Williams' Facebook post with a recent picture of Marley.

'She has been a very loved dog for the last few years,' he wrote.

Ms Williams said she has spoken to the new owners and plans to visit Marley soon.
on Facebook and has gained thousands of likes

Gabriela told her about the blunder upon seeing the figure

The great-grandmother thought she was

The figurine of Elrond the elf king the grandmother had been praying to

An elderly woman accidentally spent years praying to a Lord of the Rings figurine after confusing it for a saint.

The great-grandmother was alerted to her blunder by her granddaughter, Gabriela Brandao, who pointed out, much to her amusement, that the plastic statue was actually Elrond the elf king.

Gabriela, from Sao Paulo, Brazil posted photos of figurine on Facebook with a caption describing it as the: 'The funniest discovery of 2016.'

She wrote: 'My daughter's great-grandmother prays to this figure of Saint Anthony every day.'

The unnamed woman thought she was praying to Portuguese Catholic priest and friar, Saint Anthony, who is often depicted in robe similar to Elrond's.

Upon seeing the toy, Gabriela tried to explain to her grandma that it was a character from the famous series of books, and movie franchise where he was played by actor Hugo Weaving.

An easy mistake? Portuguese Catholic priest and friar, Saint Anthony (left) and Elrond the elf king played by actor Hugo Weaving (right)

Gabriela told BuzzFeed: 'We tried to explain right away but she didn't understand at first.

'The next day we explained again and she understood and we got her a new figure of Saint Anthony.'

Her post has received over 3,000 likes and hundreds of comments on Facebook.
President Barack Obama did not perform a U-turn over his 'red line' warning to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, John Kerry claimed last night.

The outgoing Secretary of State told a news conference that Obama did not backtrack on the 2012 ultimatum to Assad against using his stockpile of chemical weapons against rebels or civilians.

He described claims to the contrary as an 'unfair perception' which hit the nation's credibility.

John Kerry admitted President Obama's administration was damaged by the failure to attack Bashar al-Assad after he attacked his own people with chemical weapons in 2014.

President Obama, pictured, said the US would use military force against Assad's regime if they used their chemical stockpiles against rebels or civilians but failed to carry out the threat

Assad's regime was accused of using toxic gas outside Damascus in August 2013

However, critics of the administration claim Obama failed to carry out his threat after evidence emerged that Assad had used chemical weapons.

This failure to punish Assad is believed to have emboldened Vladimir Putin to annex the Crimea region of Ukraine.

In 2012, Obama said any use or movement of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a 'red line' and draw a US military response.

A year later, when US officials determined that chemical weapons were used to kill hundreds outside Damascus, Obama sought congressional approval for military action and then pursued a diplomatic solution with Russia.

Speaking in Washington, yesterday Kerry noted the shift against action came after then-British Prime Minister David Cameron failed to get parliamentary approval to join in airstrikes and after many US lawmakers voiced their reluctance to approve the use of American force.

Obama's response was hindered by the failure of then British Prime Minister David Cameron, pictured in August 2013, from securing parliamentary support for airstrikes on Syria

Kerry claimed Obama did not need to use force because diplomacy forced Assad to ditch his chemical weapons although the lack of military action did hurt America's standing

He said Obama ultimately opted for a better solution: a diplomatic deal that enabled Syria to give up its declared chemical weapon stockpiles.

Kerry said: 'The bottom line is, folks, the president never retracted his intent to (use force), he just got rid of the need to do it by embracing a different approach that got all the weapons out.'

He said the negotiated response was more effective than military action because there was no guarantee airstrikes could have accomplished the same thing.

Kerry acknowledged that many people saw the sequence of events as Obama backing down. And he said that view damaged America's effectiveness.

He said: 'I will acknowledge to you absolutely, I heard it all over the place. The perception hurt, yes. The perception hurt.'

Kerry will be replaced as secretary of state by Rex Tillerson, pictured, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp who has close ties with Moscow and is opposed to the current sanctions on Russia

Kerry added: I don't think it's fair because I don't think it actually reflected the decisions that he made and it doesn't reflect the reality of what we were able to achieve.'

Kerry's term as Secretary of State will end this month along with President Obama's term in office.

He will be replaced by 64-year-old Rex Tillerson. Tillerson has spent his entire career with ExxonMobil.

The Texan civil engineer joined the company in 1975 and rose to chief executive in 2006.
Pupils at a 25,000-a-year private school sneaked out of their hotel for a booze and drug-fuelled night out while on a science trip to Tenerife.

Twelve sixth form students from Truro School in Cornwall, sneaked out of their hotel and broke their 10.30pm curfew to go to a local bar in Puerto de Santiago, where they started drinking and one pupil bought cocaine.

The group's antics were too much for one student, who had to be taken to hospital after concerned teachers noticed he was feeling unwell and called paramedics to their hotel.

Twelve sixth form students from Truro School in Cornwall (pictured), sneaked out of their hotel and went on a booze and drug fuelled night out while on a science trip to Tenerife

It is believed the youngster felt under the weather after smoking cannabis.

The school has punished those responsible and it is believed one pupil may have been excluded and another suspended, with others were given 'isolation'.

Truro is an independent preparatory school, which charges 8,625-a-term, offering the chance for pupils to board and attend day classes.

In his statement to parents on the school's website, headteacher Andrew Gordon-Brown writes: 'Our mission is to be a beacon of inclusive excellence developing confident, tolerant and enthusiastic young people who enjoy working with others and are ready to influence the world.'

Letters have now been sent to all parents by Mr Gordon-Brown, in which he called last term's drinking session an 'unfortunate incident' .

In the message the head informed parents of the 'sorry tale' and lauded the actions of his staff.

Apology: Headteacher of Truro School, Andrew Gordon-Brown wrote to parents and called the drinking session a 'sorry tale'

He wrote: 'The incident involved a number of students breaking curfew to go out to a local bar.

'For a small number of students matters were made considerably worse when a small amount of drugs were bought from a local dealer.

The teachers who oversaw the trip are to be commended for the excellent care that they provided the students and for investigating the misdemeanors quickly and thoroughly.

Mr Gordon-Brown added that the school had dealt with those responsible in a firm manner, he said: I fear that you may well read about this sorry tale in the media and wanted to be the first to tell you that having now concluded the investigation I have taken firm, fair and proportionate action to punish the offending students.
Ralph Chambers pictured with young grandson Leo, who is just 10 weeks old. Mr Chambers died after being hit by a car in Bangkok

A doting grandfather messaged his daughter asking her to tell his grandchildren he loved them moments before he was killed by a car which ploughed into him.

Ralph Chambers was drinking with a friend outside a bar in Bangkok when the driver swerved to avoid a dog.

The 68-year-old, from Brockworth in Gloucestershire, died at the scene.

His friend Tony Walden, who had swapped seats with him moments earlier, survived the horror smash.

Mr Chambers had three daughters and four grandchildren.

Daughter Laura, 36, said: 'He texted me an hour before and said "Tell the grandkids I love them."'

Laura, mother to Lily, eight, Lucas, six, and baby Leo, who is just 10 weeks old, is planning her wedding to Royal Marine partner Oliver Snowdon in Mauritius, and is devastated her father will not walk her down the aisle.

The couple considered cancelling the wedding but say it will still go ahead. They plan to scatter Mr Chambers' ashes in the sea in tribute to him.

Mr Chambers with grandson Lucas, who is now six. Shortly before he died, he messaged Lucas' mother, Laura, and told her to tell his grandkids that he loved them

Devoted: Mr Chambers with grandchildren Lily and Lucas in 2010

Writing from her home in Australia, Mr Chambers' oldest daughter Rae, 42, said: 'Dad was a man that you couldnt help liking - he had a way of making a person feel like they were the only one in a crowd. He made you feel so special.

'He was funny. I still use his mushroom joke (why am I cooking mushrooms in the grill? Well because theres not mushroom in the pan) then he would crack up and say "Its the way I tell em!"

'My son, Julio, shakes his head every time I say it but I guarantee he will be saying it to his kids. I already feel lost without him and would give the earth to have him back.'

Family man: Mr Chambers with daughters Jemma (left) and Laura (right). He died after being hit by a car in Thailand on December 28

Mr Chambers with his oldest daughter Rae, who described him as 'a man that you couldnt help liking'

Mr Chambers pictured with his grandchildren Lily and Lucas in 2012

Daughter Jemma, 29, a physio, and Laura described their dad as 'strong, reliable and fearlessly loyal'.

They have been told that the young Thai driver involved in the crash, which happened in the Chon Buri province south east of Bangkok, has visited Tony in hospital every day since.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: 'We are providing support to the family of a British man who sadly died in Thailand and remain in contact with the local Thai authorities.'

Mr Chambers' funeral will be held in his hometown after his family have repatriated his body.

He was the second youngest of nine children, and was originally from Doncaster, Gloucestershire Live reports.

Mr Chambers pictured with daughters Laura (left) and Jemma (right)
Seals are some of Earth's more intelligent creatures, known to have long memories and strong cognitive capabilities.

But this elephant seal in the Falkland Islands is more interested in life's simple pleasures.

The beast was filmed relaxing on the beach next to the feet of an intrigued human.

Just chillin': The beast was filmed relaxing on the beach next to the feet of an intrigued human

But after it appeared to sniff the person's feet, the seal brought its flippers into its body and then rolled over on to its back.

It then tumbled down the hill towards the sea, its thick skin and blubber protecting it from sharp rocks along the way.

After rolling at least 20ft, the mammal came to halt not far from the lapping waves.

It soon got bored of the company and decided some light relief was in order

The seal brought its flippers into its body and then rolled over on to its back

It then looked back up the hill, perhaps to see how far it had tumbled.

There are two species of elephant seals, the northern and southern.

Northern elephant seals can be found in California and Baja California, though they prefer to frequent offshore islands rather than the North American mainland, according to National Geographic.

Southern elephant seals live in sub-Antarctic and Antarctic waters that feature brutally cold conditions but are rich in the fish, squid, and other marine foods these seals enjoy.

After rolling at least 20ft, the mammal came to halt not far from the lapping waves

They breed on land but spend their winters in the frigid Antarctic waters near the Antarctic pack ice.

Southern elephants are the largest of all seals. Males can be over 20 feet (6 meters) long and weigh up to 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms).
An audacious bank robbery has been foiled in Chile after a stunned security guard discovered a tunnel leading to the building.

Police believe amateur thieves created the 25-metre tunnel, which had been equipped with lights.

It started in the bathroom of a building close to the BBVA bank office in the city of Vina del Mar, in the centre of the country.

A policeman in the tunnel in Vina del Mar, central Chile, where would-be bank robbers were just three metres from reaching the building they were targeting

A security guard discovered the tunnel in a bathroom in an empty building close to the bank

It started in an empty building owned by the bank, and the would-be robbers were just three metres short of reaching their target.

Cristian Becerra, from the Chilean police, said the tunnel is around two metres wide and could be used by around two people at a time.

Becerra said officers have collected evidence from the scene that will be used in the hunt for the perpetrators, including sweat and skin.

They also seized tools that they believe were used in the construction of the tunnel, and are trawling through CCTV footage.

The hole was discovered by the security guard of the abandoned building.
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Hundreds of mourners have today attended the funeral of an alleged drug dealer shot dead by police on a motorway sliproad as his local Imam accused police of killing him in a 'vigilante' attack.

Yassar Yaqub's family claim he was 'assassinated' in a pre-planned 'hit' by West Yorkshire Police on the M62 outside Huddersfield on Monday evening.

The 28-year-old father-of-two's funeral was held at the Masjid Bilal mosque and his mother Safia was visibly distraught and had to be physically supported by mourners as his body was taken to a cemetery for burial.

His death has sparked protests in West Yorkshire and his father Mohammed said he was the 'perfect son' and not a criminal - some friends wore hoodies with 'Justice for Yassar' printed on the front at the funeral.

Afterwards Mohammed Akram, Imam at the Masjid Bilal mosque where Yassar Yaqub's funeral was held said: 'They [the police] are there to protect us and these actions were like a vigilante-style operation and there is bad feeling in the community because of what they did.

'It is the kind of thing you see in the movies and you don't expect it on your doorstep. It is quite a shock the way the police have acted. In this case they have acted up front and in the reverse order. They have shot him and now they are investigating'.

Earlier inquest into his death opened and heard he died from gunshot wounds to the chest and a handgun, bullets and a silencer was found in the footwell of his Audi by police.

But associates of Mr Yaqub claim he was a feared drug dealer who had links to gun violence - Bradford Coroner's Court heard today he called himself an office clerk.

Bereft: Yassar's grieving mother Safia (centre) had to be held up by loved-ones as she left the funeral with husband Mohammed (top left of picture)

Funeral: Family including Yassar's father Mohammed (second right with hands in pockets) follow the 28-year-old's coffin to its final resting place

Picturesque: The burial was held at the Castle Hill Cemetery in Huddersfield, where Yassar grew up and lived until he died

Packed: A huge crowd surrounded Yassar's grave today as an inquest heard that he died from gunshot wounds to the chest

Laid to rest: Yassar Yaqub was buried in Huddersfield in a grave covered in roses and with flowers spelling 'Yas', 'Son' and 'Dad'

In prayer: Hundreds of family and friends attend the burial of Yassar Yaqub and are shown here praying as he was laid to rest

Yassar Yaqub's family claim he was 'assassinated' in a pre-planned 'hit' by West Yorkshire Police on the M62 outside Huddersfield on Monday evening - supporters wore special hoodies to the funeral

Campaigners including the Justice 4 Yasser Yaqub group said his funeral and burial was open to all amind warning the shooting had caused tensions in the community.

Huddersfield Imam Mohammed Akram said: 'The community, because a young man being shot dead by the police, is upset, confused and shocked by the events of the past week.

'The general feeling for the community is that it is a huge loss for the family. Knowing that it was their only son that died so tragically at a young age has meant it has had an impact on the whole community.

'While it is still unclear what has happened, people have wanted to express their condolences.

'People are aware the family has had such a tragic loss and it has been a big shock and people have wanted to be with them during their time of need.'

One mourner at the funeral, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'It has been terrible for the whole community these last few days. No one should have to lose their life like Yassar did.

'Their son is dead because of the police and that should never have happened.'

Another mourner said he didn't personally know Yassar but came to pay his respects anyway.

He said: 'As a fellow Muslim I wanted to come and pay my respects. I wasn't able to do anything for him in life so I wanted to do something for him now.

'Today was going to be extremely important for the community to pay their respects while we are still trying to find out what happened.'

An inquest into Mr Yaqub's death also started at Bradford Coroner's Court today - it was opened and adjourned in a three-minute hearing.

Coroner Martin Fleming was told how Mr Yaqub was shot through the windscreen of an Audi car on a M62 sliproad.

The court was told a firearm was found in the front passenger footwell of the vehicle.

The inquest heard that the 'hard stop' of the Audi and a Volkswagen Sirocco happened at 6.10pm on Monday.

Mr Dalby said four unmarked police cars were involved in the incident with one - a Mercedes - cutting across the front of the Audi.

He said the two vehicles collided with each other.

He said: 'During the incident an officer discharged a firearm in the execution of his duty with the shots going through the windscreen of the Audi.'

Mr Dalby said Mr Yaqub was pronounced dead at 6.47pm and was first identified from his fingerprints. He said a post-mortem examination showed he died from gunshot wounds to the chest.

The coroner asked to be kept up to date on the progress of the investigation by the IPCC and adjourned the inquest until March 31. No family members were in court.

Grieving family and friends carried the coffin of an alleged drug dealer shot dead by police to his funeral today

The 28-year-old father-of-two's funeral is being held at the Masjid Bilal mosque in Huddersfield today

Yassar Yaqub's mother Safia Yaqub is comforted as she leaves the Jamia Masjid Bilal mosque

Mohammed Yaqub (centre looking at camera), the father of Yassar Yaqub, is comforted at Masjid Bilal Huddersfield where prayers or his son were held

Mourners arrive with floral tributes at the funeral of Yassar Yaqub at the Masjid Bilal mosque in Huddersfield

Huge crowds followed the coffin and Yassar's family into the mosque for his funeral

Hundreds came to pay their respects to Yassar, who died from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest

Campaigners including the Justice 4 Yasser Yaqub group said his funeral and burial was open to all

Mr Yaqub has compared the death of his son, left, to that of Mark Duggan, whose was shot dead by officers in London in 2011

Meanwhile 15 miles away a 30-year-old man appeared in court charged with firearms offences following the police operation in which he was killed.

Moshin Amin was arrested as part of the operation during which 28-year-old Mohammed Yassar Yaqub was shot by officers beside the M62 at Ainley Top, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, on Monday evening.

Amin, of Dewsbury, appeared before magistrates in Leeds charged with two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and possession of ammunition.

He appeared in the dock and spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth during the four-minute hearing.

Reading the details of the charges, the court clerk said Amin was charged with possessing a converted self-loading pistol, a sound moderator and 11 9mm rounds of ammunition without a firearms certificate.

District Judge Marie Mallon remanded Amin into custody to appear before Leeds Crown Court on February 3. No application for bail was made.

Two men, aged 37 and 26, who were also arrested on Monday evening, have been released on police bail pending further inquiries.

Two friends hug outside the mosque before the short funeral this morning

Yesterday the father of a self-styled 'Stud Badboy' and alleged drugs kingpin said today the police shot dead his son in a 'pre-planned assassination' planned because they 'didn't like him'.

Yassar Yaqub's heartbroken mother Safia could not stop crying as her husband Mohammed insisted his son was 'no risk' to the public despite a gun being found in his car when he died.

The 28-year-old was shot three times through his Audi's windscreen by police marksmen after they cornered a convoy of expensive cars in a 'hard stop' raid using unmarked vehicles on the M62 near Huddersfield.

Today the Independent Police Complaints Commission revealed Yassar died from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest - and that the officers that fired were not wearing body cameras and there is no CCTV of the incident.

In their first TV interview since his death on Monday night Mr Yaqub said his son was a 'kind-hearted young man' and not a criminal, comparing the death of his son to that of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by officers in London in 2011 triggered riots around the country.

As his wife clung on to him for support he told Sky News: 'This is how we have been since the minute we were told. The family more or less doesn't exist any more.

'We feel something very wrong has been done to Yassar and to our family. I do not believe he was a risk at all. The police didn't like him, we know that. I believe he was a target and it was a pre-planned assassination'.

The couple had gone to junction 24 of the M62 after a friend called to say they believed their son had been shot.

He said: 'I rang his phone but there was no answer. We went to the scene and but the road was blocked. We asked an officer but he said he couldn't tell us anything but said we should wait 20 minutes. We kept waiting and after fiver hours we were told that our son had lost his life in a shooting incident with police'.

Last night Mr Yaqub said he would pay to privately prosecute the officer that shot him dead and his parents clutched balloons and sobbed last night as they joined more than 100 mourners on the M62 sliproad where he died during Monday's rush hour.

The Black Lives Matter movement in Britain have also used Yaqub's death to fundraise after suggesting his death was racially motivated.

His businessman father, who is believed to own 100 houses in Huddersfield, has pledged to fund a private prosecution to bring the shooter to justice and said: 'If it were a fight you could understand it but [it was] just bang, finished - that's what's killing me. Looking at the photographs, someone just running up and shooting at him in the dark.

'How can you justify it? It is just impossible. He was driving down, he was cornered. Bearing in mind it was dark, how could you have seen what he was doing? It is not right that the police weren't wearing body cameras.

'Of course I want answers for what has happened. I will go privately if I have to. In the end I need to find out. My lad didn't deserve this  I thought this is something that happens in America but not here'.

Evidence: The silver Audi with bullet holes in its windscreen at the scene near junction J24 of the M62 in Huddersfield where a man died in a police shooting during a 'pre-planned' operation

Firearms officers in six unmarked vehicles hemmed in a Mercedes E Class, a Jaguar, a VW Scirocco and an Audi at junction 24 of the M62 before opening fire at 6pm on Monday night

Protection: Mr Yaqub's 136,000 Huddersfield home is covered in surveillance cameras, with at least 10 sited around the property

M62 shooting victim Yassar Yaqub proudly poses with a 260,000 Lamborghini Aventador - he claimed to be a car dealer but others say his business was drugs

An emotional Mr Yaqub added his voice to protests at his son's shooting, and suggested there were similarities to how the official account of Duggan's death changed.

'I am well aware of what happened with Mark Duggan and because of what was revealed first, and what the outcome was of that, it has worried me a lot,' he said.

'Look how many protests they had to take to get answers. If it's a peaceful protest there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's peaceful'.

Mark Duggan, 29, was shot dead by armed Metropolitan Police in Tottenham, North London, in August 2011, sparking rioting across the capital and other English cities.

Speaking of the circumstances surrounding his own son's death, Mr Yaqub insisted his son was 'brilliant' and 'the best anyone could ever hope for'.

Asked about the gun being found in the car, Mohammed Yaqub said: 'There were two people in the car that is all I know.'

In response to claims that the officer who shot his son should face court Met Police Federation chairman Ken Marsh said that it was wrong that an armed police officer doing 'an honest day's work' should be 'treated like a criminal'.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has confirmed none of the officers involved were using body-worn video cameras.

The watchdog said a 'non-police issue' firearm was found in the car and added that officials were continuing to establish the circumstances around the swoop.

IPCC commissioner Derrick Campbell said: 'I would like to reassure the local and wider community that this will be a thorough and detailed independent investigation.

'We will be carefully examining all the circumstances leading up to Mr Yaqub's death, including the planning of the police operation, and the actions of the officers involved that evening.

'I am, of course, aware there are many unanswered questions but I would urge patience at this time and that people allow our investigation to run its course.
Vice President Joe Biden told President-elect Donald Trump to 'grow up' due to the reality TV star's constant criticism of the US intelligence community.

Biden dismissed Trump's complaint on Twitter about how the Obama administration has handled the transition. The vice president told PBS NewsHour in an interview that it's time for Trump 'to be an adult'.

Biden said to Trump: 'You're President. You've got to do something. Show us what you have.'

Vice President Joe Biden, pictured, attacked President-elect Donald Trump's constant criticism of the US intelligence community advising the billionaire to 'grow up'

The Vice President also said that Trump as President will have to propose legislation that Congress and the public can then assess. He said that it'll be 'much clearer what he's for and against' once he's in the position of governing.

Biden also said it's 'absolutely mindless' for a president not to have confidence in or listen to the intelligence agencies.

The Vice President said it would be legitimate to question intelligence and ask for more detail or disagree. But he said that's different than Trump claiming he knows more than the intelligence agencies.

Biden said that's like saying, 'I know more about physics than my professor'.

He said he is concerned by Trump's behavior but assumes his position will change once he is ensconced in the West Wing.

Donald Trump has tried to undermine confidence in the US intelligence community on Twitter

Donald Trump is expected to meet with US intelligence chiefs later today for a briefing

He said that Trump is surrounding himself with 'very smart people' like retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, the incoming Defense Secretary.

Trump is set to meet with the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence later today.

CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and DNI's James Clapper intend to attend the briefing with Trump on the US intelligence agencies' final report on the subject of Russian hacking of US political groups and individuals.
The strip club that a British backpacker mysteriously died inside has links to an outlaw biker gang, it has been claimed, as her family paid tribute to their 'amazing, special' girl.

Dancer Stacey Tierney, 29, died inside Dreams gentleman's club on December 19 and her family believe she may have been murdered.

Police are reportedly investigating out-of-hours activities at the club and are said to believe she was inside the private area dubbed the 'Fantasy Room' when she died.

People who were with Miss Tierney failed to call an ambulance because they feared the club's operations would be investigated, the Herald Sun reported.

Her family said in a statement on Friday that they were going through an 'extremely difficult time'.

Trip of a lifetime: British backpacker Stacey Tierney, 29, pictured at Wyndham on William, Melbourne, last January, was an exotic dancer at the city's Dreams Gentlemen's Club where she died in mysterious circumstances on December 17. She had been entertaining a private party of unnamed men. Her body was discovered on Sunday - 24 hours after she died

Wild moon child: Friends described Ms Tierney, pictured in October 2015, on Australia's Gold Coast, as a free spirit who was living the 'backpacker's dream' during her three years there. But her cousin Paul Tierney she kept her job working as a stripper hidden from her family

Dreams (pictrued) was previously closely tied to the Comancheros biker gang, according to reports

'Stacey was, and will always be, the most amazing, special, caring person you could ever meet and this loss has devastated our family,' her family said.

'The circumstances surrounding Staceys death are being investigated by the authorities in Melbourne and we wait to hear further news every day.

'While we continue to work with the authorities in Melbourne our primary aim at this time is to bring Stacey home.

'Until we have Stacey home and the investigation is complete we would be grateful if the familys privacy can be respected and we are allowed time to come to terms with what has happened.'

Dreams was previously closely tied to the Comancheros biker gang, according to reports.

The club has been linked to the Comancheros gang since at least 2010, when they were reportedly suspected of extorting strip clubs in Melbourne for money.

Three members of the gang were jailed in 2013 after a 'ferocious' and 'cowardly' attack on a construction worker inside Dreams.

Two others were also jailed in 2013 for their role in a vicious brawl inside the Spearmint Rhino - another club said to have had close ties to the gang - in Melbourne two years earlier.

'Love these girls': Stacey hid the truth about her exotic dancing from her family, according to friend Briar Rose, pictured centre in a picture from Stacey's Facebook page, above. She funded her travels with strip dances, according to friend Yasmin Donaldson, right

Live for the moment: An extraordinary online diary chronicling her adventures show free-spirited Stacey diving from a plane, sunbathing on a yacht, taking epic road trips and enjoying wild parties are prefaced with the words: 'The happiest time of my life is now'

Dingo Divas: Sun-kissed snaps show her living life to the full with trips down Australia's Gold Coast before her mysterious death. In October 2015, she toured Fraser Island and posted a photo of a human pyramid with the caption: 'It took a few attempts but we did it!

The club's manager, Stephen Kyriacou, is reportedly set to be interviewed by police.

Mr Kyriacou used to run the Spearmint Rhino and partied with Hells Angel Christopher Wayne Hudson on the night he shot a man dead and injured two other people in 2007.

According to the Herald Sun, Mr Kyriacou had been at the Spearmint Rhino with Hudson before heading to the Barcode strip club next door.

As Mr Kyriacou was receiving a dance, Hudson assaulted a dancer and shot his lover, Kaera Douglas.

Two men who tried to help the woman were shot and one of them, lawyer Brendan Keilar, died.

Mr Kyriacou, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, gave evidence against Hudson before he was jailed for 35 years.

Miss Tierney's family previously told MailOnline that they had no idea she was working as an exotic dancer.

Her older cousin Paul said: 'We are devastated and think there was foul play.

'And whoever is responsible is a coward and a low life for leaving her dying or dead and failing to get any help. It is shocking behaviour and very distressing.'

'Since she lost her life rumours have surfaced of her being a stripper but we know absolutely nothing about this,' Mr Tierney said.

Beach bum: Backpacker Stacey, pictured on Fraser Island, loved her carefree lifestyle with few commitments. She joyfully described her adventure as having 'no actual plan, just winging it'.

'Down Under!' In February, ten months before her mysterious death, Stacey was pictured on a boat of Australia's coast soaking up the sun and seemingly without a care in the world

Halloween queen: Stacey quit her job at the sports nutrition retailer Bodybuilding Warehouse Stacey arrived in Australia in July 2013, where she set up home in Brisbane. Her closest friends said she was a fun-loving party girl who liked to dress up

Tragic Stacey's uncle Graham Tierney, in Manchester, said: 'I didn't know she was working in that club and I don't think anyone in the family did.

'As far as we knew, she was just travelling around Australia and enjoying it. I saw all her photos on Facebook and it looked like she was having a good time.

'She wasn't the type of girl to get involved with drugs as far as I know but we just do not know what has happened. Maybe her drink was spiked or something like that, who knows?'

He went on: 'I know my brother, Stacey's dad, has been trying to get some answers from the Australian authorities but everyone seems to be tight lipped at the moment. We only know what everyone else knows - the reports which have been in the papers.

'All the family seem very upset because she was such a great girl who was enjoying life.'

Stunning fitness fanatic Stacey, 29, swapped the rain of Manchester for the white-sand beaches of Queensland in 2013, and for more than three years lived the backpacker's dream.

On her Facebook page she posted scores of incredible pictures showing her diving from a plane, sunbathing on a yacht, taking epic road trips and enjoying wild parties, prefaced with the words: 'The happiest time of my life is now'.

She described herself proudly as a 'free spirit' and a 'wild moon child'.

But behind the smiles and ocean sunsets that she invited her family and friends to view, the trained dancer hid the truth of how she was paying for glamorous lifestyle.

HGV driver Paul, 32 - whose dad Alan is brother of the victim's dad Steven - said Stacey from Stockport, Greater Manchester, who had been due to celebrate her milestone 30th birthday in just two weeks on January 20, 'absolutely loved' Australia.

Full of life: During her time in Australia she toured the Gold Coast's tourist attractions including the stunning Whitsunday Islands and Fraser Island with other backpackers, pictured

Stacey, pictured with a friend, chronicled the first two and a half years of her trip of a lifetime in Australia on her Facebook page, but for the last six months of her life the photos dried up

'Happiest time of my life is now': Former Oldham College pupil Stacey was pictured doing yoga on the lookout Torquay Surf Beach on the Great Ocean Road, Victoria, in April - eight months before she died

Paul, from Mitcham, Surrey, explained: 'She had lots of friends there and I really think she wanted to settle there for good.

'She was always in great spirits and just oozed life. She was very pretty and petite and very energetic and would light up a room.

'We were in contact on social media and knew Stacey was working hard to pay for her lifestyle, doing some pole dancing for cash, but not anything shameful which would cause any embarrassment to her family.

He said he still hoped it was not true. 'Her parents would be horrified,' he said.

'It was all harmless dancing, her friends in Melbourne have since told us. She was also into fitness and loved doing all that energetic Zumba.'

Paul said he last saw her two years ago during a trip to Australia. He recalled: 'I went on holiday in June 2014 to help settle another cousin who had just moved over there. At the time Stacey was in Brisbane and we met up for the day and went to the beach. She was in great spirits and loving life.'

Fighting back tears, he said: 'That was the last time I ever saw her. I can't believe she has gone and in such mysterious circumstances.

'We will have no closure until we know what happened. The police have been hopeless and haven't told us much at all.'

Close friend and fellow exotic dancer Briar Rose revealed to MailOnline how Stacey danced 'as much as she could' to fund her travels, a secret the young Briton apparently kept hidden.

Briar Rose said: 'I don't think her family knew she was a [exotic] dancer. I don't think she spoke [to her family] about it. She's been dancing a few years on and off.'

New Zealander Briar worked with Stacey as an exotic dancer in strip clubs in Brisbane and Darwin, hard-partying cities in Australia's north-east.

Ms Rose has revealed how the young Briton had to attend private parties and offer private dances in order to make money.

Asked by MailOnline if Stacey offered private dances, she replied; 'Yes. That's how we all make money. If we didn't do private lap dances we wouldn't get paid so much.'

Stacey, pictured left with a male friend, had been partying with a group of men at the club where she worked on December 18. It is believed the club was closed and she was with them at a private party. Stacey is believed to have complained that she felt unwell and the men left. He body was discovered on December 19, 24 hours later

Paradise lost: The former fitness trainer, from Greater Manchester, in England's north west, had reportedly been partying at the club with a group of men while the venue was closed
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been forced to close six of his Italian restaurants blaming 'rising costs' and 'the impact of Brexit' on their downfall.

The closures will put 120 staff out of work at Jamie's Italian restaurants in Aberdeen, Cheltenham, Exeter, Ludgate, Richmond in London and Tunbridge Wells.

But the outspoken chef is clear why his ventures folded, pointing the finger at the UK's vote for Brexit and the falling pound.

Scroll down for video

Loss: Jamie Oliver has been forced to close six of his Italian restaurants 'due to Brexit'

Shut: The closures will affect Jamie's Italian restaurants in Aberdeen, Cheltenham, Exeter, Ludgate, Richmond in London and Tunbridge Wells

Job loss: The group will try to find jobs for the staff affected by the closures of its restaurants

The top notch restaurants are all scheduled to close in the first quarter, the Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group said on Friday.

The group said it will try to find jobs for staff affected by the closures in different restaurants.

But the business flop comes in the wake of Oliver admitting at an advertising seminar last year: Ive wasted and f***** up about 40 per cent of my ventures.

Chief executive Simon Blagden said: 'As every restaurant owner knows, this is a tough market and, post-Brexit, the pressures and unknowns have made it even harder.

'While our overall business is in very good shape - we finished last year with like-for-like sales growth and an increase in covers - because we refuse to compromise on the quality and provenance of our ingredients and our commitment to training and developing our staff, we need restaurants that can serve an average of 3,000 covers every week to be sustainable.'

Oliver admitting at an advertising seminar last year: Ive wasted and f***** up about 40 per cent of my ventures

Closed: This restaurant in Richmond London, is among those that will be closed

Restaurant: The chef's restaurant group said it had seen lower footfall in its restaurants lately

The restaurant group said it has been stung by the collapse in the pound, which has ramped up the cost of buying ingredients from Italy.

It has also seen rising staff costs and lower footfall traipsing through its restaurants.

According to accounts filed at Companies House, revenue at Jamies Italian rose by almost 9 per cent to 116.1 million in 2015, although profits fell from 3.8 million to 2.3 million.

Folded: There are 42 Jamies Italian outlets in the UK and 28 overseas which employs 3,100 in Britain, but these branches will be among those caught up in closures

Fortune: Oliver, pictured with wife Jools, has accrued a personal fortune of 240million from his business ventures which include cook books, and restaurants

Oliver, who has accrued a personal fortune of 240million from his business ventures has a range of cook books and an international restaurant empire.

He has 42 Jamies Italian outlets in the UK and 28 overseas and employs 3,100 people in Britain.

Mr Blagden added: 'These closures are in no way a reflection on the dedication and commitment of our staff and my first priority is to try and secure those affected alternative jobs within other Jamies Italian restaurants.

'Where this isnt possible, well be working with them to find alternative employment. Jamies Italian has become a much loved presence on the UK high street and we have our teams to thank for that.

'These closures represent less than 5 percent of total turnover and impact less than 5 percent of our team members.

Last year, Keystone Group, which ran Oliver's 'Jamie's Italian' restaurants in Australia, collapsed in June 2016, leaving the celebrity chef's Aussie ventures in debt

However, this is not the first time that Oliver has experienced business troubles.

Last year June, Keystone Group, which ran Oliver's 'Jamie's Italian' restaurants in Australia, collapsed leaving the celebrity chef's Aussie ventures in debt.

Oliver was quick to distance himself from the group, blasting them for leaving his six Australian restaurants with a mountain of debt.

The company, which managed two of Oliver's restaurants in Sydney, and one each in Canberra, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, owed 20 million ($34 million) in unsecured debt.

Debt: Oliver was quick to distance himself from the group, blasting them for leaving his six Australian restaurants (one pictured here) with a mountain of debt

Elsewhere, an investigation by The Daily Mail in 2016 found that Oliver had burned through public money to fund one of his restaurants in the past.

Despite owning a 200million restaurant empire, Oliver saw one of his restaurants handed 155,000 of Local Enterprise Partnership grants.

In 2015, his Jamies Italian restaurant chain was attacked on two fronts: by disgruntled diners and by dissatisfied former staff.

And in echoes of today's announcement Oliver was forced to close one of his Fifteen restaurants run by his brother-in-law, Paul Hunt.

The closure left 44 employees facing redundancy at Christmas.

But it was not surprising, as accounts for his private company, Jamie Oliver Holdings, revealed that it ran up multi-million-pound losses in 2014.

After this latest round of closures, the group said it will now focus on the 'core Jamies Italian estate' and on the expansion of the Barbecoa brand.

The Barbecoa brand will see two new openings in 2017.

Internationally, the firm plans to launch another 22 Jamies Italian restaurants and develop its newly acquired Australian restaurants.
A man's teeth have been bashed out with a mallet in a horrific attack by his own neighbour following a six year feud which started over noise complaints.

Paul Allen, 29, was beaten in his own backyard when his next-door neighbour allegedly jumped over their shared fence and launched an attack.

Mr Allen's nose and jaw were broken, his teeth knocked out and he required 20 to 30 stitches to sew his split lips back together.

Scroll down for video.

'All my teeth are pretty much knocked out, scattered all over the place,' Paul Allen (pictured) told Seven News

'All my teeth are pretty much knocked out, scattered all over the place,' he told Seven News.

'I'm just lucky to be alive, lucky to be alive.'

The attack, which happened about 10pm on Thursday, left Mr Allen with barely any feeling in his face and struggling to talk.

Mr Allen and his neighbours have been involved in a long-running dispute for about six years.

Mr Allen's nose and jaw were broken, his teeth knocked out and he required 20 to 30 stitches to sew his split lips back together

Mr Allen (pictured) claims his next door neighbour jumped over their shared fence and unleashed the attack on Thursday night

The dispute started over noise complaints, and ultimately culminated in Thursday night's gruesome attack.

Mr Allen said he was playing with his pet dog in the backyard of his Penrith home, in Sydney's west, when his neighbour jumped the fence armed with a rubber mallet.

Mr Allen's father, also Paul Allen, was forced to push the attacker away in order to free his son.

'He was just acting like an animal, that's what he was, an animal,' Mr Allen said.

Paul Allen's alleged attacker, Troy Grono, 37, moved into the house next-door about six months ago.

Paul Allen's alleged attacker, Troy Grono, 37, (pictured) moved into the house next-door about six months ago

Troy Grono (left) with his partner Lisa (right), who has been living in the next-door house and reportedly feuding with the Allen family for about six years

While he only moved in about six months ago, his partner Lisa has reportedly been in dispute with the Allen family for about six years.

The neighbourhood feud is alleged to have started when the Allens made noise complaints to the police and Department of Housing.

Mr Allen said the dispute has been ongoing since.

'Just like a rollercoaster, never ending,' Mr Allen said.

The accused, Troy Grono, faced Parramatta Local Court on Friday but was granted immediate bail.

The magistrate warned him however, to stay away from the Allen family.

Daily Mail Australia contacted Troy Grono for comment, but did not get a reply.
A Florida mother has pleaded not guilty in a suspected DUI crash that killed her two boys.

Tonya Capallia-Eason's blood alcohol level was almost double the legal limit while she was driving seven children in her Ford Explorer. The crash followed a boozy night at a Halloween party where she is said to have had two drinks and six shots.

News outlets report Capallia-Eason, 33, waived her appearance in court Thursday, but her attorney entered the plea on her behalf.

Tonya Capallia-Eason pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of her two sons

Tonya Capallia-Eason's sons Nehemiah (right) and Nicholai (left) were eight and nine years old when they were killed in the crash

Capallia-Eason is charged with two felony counts of causing death while driving under the influence. The arrest report revealed her blood-alcohol level was 0.148.

The Florida Highway Patrol says Capallia-Eason failed to negotiate a curve and struck a utility pole on October 22. The car rolled over several times before coming to a halt.

Police say the SUV she was driving overturned in Nassau County, killing eight-year-old Nehemiah Capallia-Bird and nine-year-old Nicholai Capallia. According the boys' obituaries, they enjoyed fishing, hunting and being in the outdoors.

Capallia-Eason confessed to having two drinks and six shots before she crashed her car

Nehemiah (left) and Nicholai (center) were ejected from their seats when their mother crashed into a utility pole in October. Their sister Nina (right) was also injured in the acccident

Authorities say five other children, ages seven to 15, also were injured and taken to the hospital.

The boys' father, Newaygo County firefighter Andrew Bird, told News4Jax he is disgusted but not shocked by Capallia-Eason's plea.

He said: 'I didnt really expect her to plead guilty.'

'There was always a chance that she would, but she still hasnt showed any sense of remorse, of any wrongdoing, so I dont know why she would start now.'

Mr Bird was granted custody of his sons' bodies and of their sister, Nina who was injured in the accident.

Tonya Capallia-Eason crashed her Ford Explorer carrying three of her children while driving drunk after leaving a Halloween party

Capallia-Eason initially lied to investigators saying she was a passenger, not the driver of the vehicle. She went on to say she tried to assist the 'driver' when the vehicle lost control.

The accident report shows Capallia-Eason was wearing a seat belt but it was not clear if any of the other children were wearing them.

James Nelson, 15, was a passenger and witnessed Nehemiah and Nicholai being ejected from the SUV.

Capallia-Eason could face four to 15 years in prison for each charge. Her next court date is set for Jan. 26.
A mother-of-two claims a photo she took at the Tower of London could have been 'photobombed' by the ghost of 12-year-old Edward V - 'solving' a 500-year-old murder mystery in the process.

Mary Ryan, 40, was taking snaps of weapons on display at the historic attraction but failed to notice the face that appeared in the reflection until she returned home to Liverpool.

The hairdresser believes the ghostly face of a young boy could be that of Edward V, who was sent to the Tower along with nine-year-old brother Richard, by their uncle Richard III in 1483.

Mary Ryan believes this 'ghostly face' that appeared in the reflection of a picture she took at the Tower of London next to her daughter Kayleigh is Edward V, 12, who was thought murdered in the tower by his uncle Richard III in 1483

Ms Ryan, pictured with daughter Chloe, said she has been 'freaked out' by the picture ever since making the day trip to London with her family

It is widely assumed they were murdered as the duo were never seen again - but Mary claims her picture could be the first image ever caught of the tragic young prince.

Sir Thomas More, the 16th century statesman and historian, claimed the two princes were smothered by their uncle and buried within the tower - though it was never proved and their disappearance is often cited as one of the world's greatest murder mysteries.

Ms Ryan had visited the tower with partner Andrew Lang, 38, and daughters Kayleigh, 18, and Chloe Lang, 15, in early 2015 and claims the family have been 'freaked out' by the photo ever since.

Ms Ryan said: 'You can see Kayleigh's reflection in the glass on the picture and Andrew's hand on the right hand side.

'But the skin on the boy's face is completely different than the others, which is what made me look at it properly.

'It's horrible. I was really freaked out by it. Kayleigh was really scared by it too. She was worried it could have been following her - she was only 16 at the time.

Edward V was sent to the Tower in 1483 along with his brother Richard, nine, but both mysteriously disappeared. Pictured are other exhibits at the museum, left, and Chloe Lang, right, with a London guard

The family were on a day-trip to London from their home in Liverpool and did not notice the spooky encounter until they got home. Pictured are Kayleigh, 18, and Chloe, 15 at Tower Bridge

'We've not seen anything like this before.

'I love things to do with the paranormal. I'm scared to death of it but I love reading about it.

'Andrew never believed in any of it until he saw this picture. He has been trying to explain it ever since but couldn't. He was very much a non-believer in ghosts until this.

'There was only another glass cabinet behind us and the corridor was about two metres wide at most. It was just enough to fit someone else past but there was no one else there.

'We were at the end of the group so no one was behind us or near us. In fact, there were no young boys even in the group.

'The boy's clothing even looks old, very old. Even his hair and everything [look old].

The picture was taken because Ms Ryan was 'fascinated' by the bejeweled gun on display, pictured

Ms Ryan, pictured with partner Andrew Lang, left, and daughters Kayleigh and Chloe, said she 'loves anything to do with the paranormal'

'The two young princes look very similar to him. I think it's possibly something paranormal as I know definitely no one was there and that tower is known to be highly haunted, and it's where the boys were thought to be murdered.'

The family were on a two day trip to London when the incident occurred and say it happened in the White Tower - the central tower also known as 'the old keep'.

Ms Ryan said: 'We didn't see the face at the time, it was a couple of weeks later when we got home and were looking through when I realised what was in the background.

'It is said to be the most haunted part of the tower, the White Tower.

'When I posted it on social media people said that two young princes were killed there and he looks like one of them. It's really creepy.

The mother-of-two said her partner Andrew, pictured with his daughters, did not believe in ghosts until he saw the picture

'The reason I had taken the picture is I had been fascinated by the gun as it was full of jewels such as diamonds. It must have been worth thousands. I think it had been a gift to the monarchy.

'We have not experience anything paranormal or odd since but I would love to go back. I would be taking more photos and paying more attention to what is in them.

'If I saw something like that at the time I would have been very scared - I would run away probably and left the kids!

'All of us were quite freaked out by it as we couldn't explain it.

'Everyone I have shown the photo to is fascinated by it.'

The White Tower is the oldest part of the landmark and was originally designed to 'strike fear' into the unruly citizens of London.

The basement of the tower is believed to have been used for torture.
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Parts of Britain are as chilly as the Arctic Circle today as the country struggles through a sub-zero cold snap.

And people are sharing tips on social media on how to beat the freezing weather as temperatures fell to -7C.

Workers put their feet up against heaters, cyclists tried using cling film on their feet and market workers heated their gloves on outdoor cookers.

The coldest place in the UK overnight was South Newington in Oxfordshire with -6.7C, compared to Tromso in Norway which basked in a relatively balmy -1.4C.

Tonight will be slightly milder, with a 2C low forecast in the Highlands, but that will still be on a par with Tromso.

One woman put her feet up against a heater at work, while a man decided to wear cling film on his feet while going cycling

Someone running an outdoor market used a gas cooker to heat up their gloves while a man wore a scarf in an unusual way

This woman may have thought she was heating her hands on her iPad while someone else put their feet next to a heating vent

Meanwhile the Met Office has issued a yellow be aware weather warning for drivers in South East England for ice.

Met Office forecaster Emma Sharples told MailOnline today: It will feel quite chilly today generally.

And then theres rain thats already well into northern England and Wales thats spreading southwards.

Then that rain is slowly fizzling out and clearing south eastwards overnight tonight.

She said tomorrow will be mostly dry and cloudy with temperatures rising as high as 10C in the West.

Sunday is expected to be similar, with more mild weather and spots of light rain and drizzle in some parts.

A cyclist looks at mist from Box Hill in Surrey today, as temperatures across southern England again dropped below freezing

Mist is seen from Box Hill today after temperatures fell to -7C overnight and the Met Office issued another ice warning

The sun rises over the mist at Box Hill today as forecasters said the weekend would be slightly milder for Britain

Mist is seen from Box Hill this morning ahead of a weekend that could bring highs of 10C in the West of England

Steam rises above the hot natural spring waters on the rooftop spa at Thermae Bath Spa this morning

A man and woman at Thermae Bath Spa enjoy the contrasting hot water and freezing outside temperatures this morning

Ms Sharples said temperatures will fall again next week, with very cold weather expected again from Wednesday.

Yesterdays lowest UK temperature was -8.2C in Tyndrum, Stirling, making it the coldest night of the winter so far.

The coldest UK temperature of 2016 was -12.4C at Kinbrace, while in 2015 it was -13.7C at Loch Glascarnoch.

The lowest temperature on record was observed in January 1982 with -27.2C at Braemar in Aberdeenshire.

Meanwhile bookmaker Coral said it has seen a flood of bets on 2016/17 being the wettest winter on record.

It has cut the odds 6-1 to 4-1, and also slashed the chances of it being the coldest winter ever from 12-1 to 8-1.

A frosty morning on the South Downs in West Sussex at the Cowdray Estate in Easebourne today

The South Downs in West Sussex wakes up to frost this morning as temperatures are expected to stay low today
Ryanair has now waived the fee as a goodwill gesture - but he must pay next time

Leg room fees would cost more than return flights and '

It causes his limbs to grow

Ryanair has been criticised for charging a disabled 6ft11in teenager for extra leg room because he doesn't use a wheelchair.

Jordan Hamilton, 19, has Klinefelter's Syndrome, a genetic condition which causes his limbs to grow abnormally long.

The teenager, who is nearly 7ft tall and still growing, is due to fly to Malaga with his family but the airline had said he must pay fees for extra leg room - which will almost cost more than the return flight tickets.

Jordan Hamilton (left, with his cousin Steven, right) has Klinefelter's Syndrome, a genetic condition which causes his limbs to grow abnormally long

The teenager (pictured left with his sister Jenny and right with his mother), must pay more for leg room than the price of the return ticket

The 19-year-old, his mother Dianah, 54, and sisters Samantha, 32, and Jenny, 33, are hoping to fly from Belfast to Malaga in Spain for two days next Thursday to celebrate Jenny's birthday.

Normally, the family from Belfast fly with easyJet, who are happy to oblige and let Jordan sit in the front row free of charge, Jenny said.

But when she phoned Ryanair and explained her brother needs to sit at the front to accommodate his legs, the airline insisted he pay 15 each way for the privilege.

This extra charge is nearly the same as the cost of the 20 each way flight, which discriminates against him, his family say.

Jenny said: 'Ryanair said it does not see that as a kind of disability because he's not in a wheelchair. They told me if I wanted extra leg room I would have to pay for it. It costs 15 each way to sit on the front row and the tickets only cost 20 each.

'That means he's effectively going to have to pay double the fare because of his disability.

'I'm incredibly upset about it. If he didn't suffer from Klinefelter's Syndrome he wouldn't require this extra room.'

Jordan is registered disabled and could continue to get taller until he is 21

Ryanair said: 'We have, as a goodwill gesture, waived the fee in this case, but he will be required to pay it if he wishes to fly with Ryanair again'

She added: 'He's being discriminated against, I do not think it is any different from a person in a wheelchair.

'I explained to the person on the phone that it's not like he is fat. He hasn't eaten himself into this state. This is not something he has done to himself.'

Jordan, who has a learning difficulty, is registered disabled and has been supported by charity Disability Action who help him a part-time job at a petrol garage.

KLINEFELTER'S SYNDROME Klinefelter syndrome is where boys and men are born with an extra X chromosome. It affects around 1 in every 660 males. There is no cure and most boys and men with Klinefelter syndrome generally live normal, healthy lives. However symptoms can include: in babies and toddlers  learning to sit up, crawl, walk and talk later than usual in childhood  shyness, problems with reading, writing, spelling and paying attention, mild dyslexia and/or dyspraxia, low energy levels in teenagers  growing taller than expected for the family (with long arms and legs) in adulthood  inability to have children naturally Source: NHS Advertisement

Doctors have told him he could continue to grow until he is 21.

Jenny said: 'He doesn't like attention being drawn to his disability. People are always taking the micky and saying things like 'how's the weather up there?' and it really affects him.

'I've seen him crying trying to fit into a normal seat before. His legs are so long that they just won't fit.

'It isn't nice for the person in front of him either because he ends up putting his knees into the back of their chair.

'It's never been a problem with easyJet before so I can't understand why Ryanair are being so difficult.'

Orla McCann from Disability Action said: 'The protection offered to disabled people in legislation is offered to all disabled people and it is very disappointing that Ryanair has demonstrated such an antiquated understanding of that.

'There are many different forms of disability and not all disabled people are wheelchair users, and service providers should be mindful of what reasonable adjustments they can offer to open up their services to all disabled people.'

A Ryanair spokesman said: 'This passenger requested to be seated in one of our reserved seat rows, and was offered this service on the same basis as all other passengers, namely upon payment of the applicable 15 fee.

'We have, as a goodwill gesture, waived the fee in this case, but he will be required to pay it, on the same basis as all other passengers, if he wishes to fly with Ryanair again.'
Police are to question the 'bewildered' family of a millionaire company director who allegedly murdered his 53-year-old wife before killing himself.

Devon and Cornwall Police have launched a murder-suicide investigation after Michael Beck, 62, and wife Nicola, were found dead at their 1.2million farmhouse in Dunkeswell Abbey in Devon, at 11.40am on Wednesday.

Mr Beck was a company director at a property management firm, and the couple also owned a 1.6million house in London next to Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge.

A murder suicide investigation is underway after a couple were found dead at a 1.2million farmhouse in East Devon

Police said they will be speaking to the parents and siblings of the couple, who did not have any children themselves, as they try to establish the motive behind the incident.

The couple had been trying to sell their Devon property, set in 58 acres, for two years.

Their rural retreat of some 20 years was believed to be finally under offer for a reduced price.

A worried family member contacted police on Wednesday - the day before Mrs Beck's 53rd birthday - and a police unit drove out to the remote converted farmhouse where they made the grim discovery.

Meanwhile a family member told the Telegraph: 'Michael was a very nice chap and obviously we don't know what's behind this.

'We are all bewildered by it, we don't know what was going on.'

According to records, Mr Beck had also owned a string of properties in London, including a house and a flat in Putney.

Actress Susan Hampshire, who lived near the couple's London home, said she was shocked after her neighbours were found dead.

The three times Emmy award-winning TV and film actress lives in the same gated Chelsea road as the Becks did, where the couple had a 1.6million home.

The 79-year-old who starred in The Forsyte Saga and The Monarch of the Glen and was awarded an OBE for her services to dyslexic people said the couple 'weren't quite as chatty' as her other neighbours.

She said: 'It's heartbreaking to think something so awful has happened.

'I don't think anybody on the street knew them well, I've never stepped foot in their house and don't think anyone else has either, which I suppose is a bit unusual.

'I think they spent most their time in the countryside. 'It's so shocking because they seemed like every other couple, I'd see them coming in and out of their car.

'But they weren't quite as chatty as everyone else on the street, they were more private.'

A neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: 'They were very pleasant but they did keep themselves to themselves.

'I'm pretty certain they didn't have many friends in the area. I had no idea they were the kind of people to be involved in something so dreadful, I think it's shocked everyone around here.

'I've never seen any children or relatives going in or out of the house.

'He was heavy built, quite tall, had golden-reddish hair and glasses. I find it difficult to describe his wife as I didn't see her as often I did him.'

Police searched the property in Dunkeswell on Wednesday evening, with the couple named as Michael and Nicola Beck

Meanwhile, neighbours in Devon said the couple are believed to have had a heated row hours earlier.

Carol Quinanm, who lived near the couple, said: 'We met them socially. We found them to be a very nice couple, very pleasant and courteous.

'I feel a little bit numb. It was such a shock when we heard the news, we had no idea, and assumed a tragedy had happened.'

Her husband Peter added: 'It is a tremendous shock and surprise. You don't expect it to happen on your own doorstep.'

Post mortems are to be carried out but police have stressed that a gun was not used in the killings, as had been reported earlier.

Detectives stressed that this was a domestic related incident with no third party involvement.

Officers will speak to members of their wider family about any long-running problems and issues which may have sparked the deaths of a seemingly well regarded couple.

Neighbours had raised concerns about the couple's welfare at the secluded Devon property, which was their second home.

One neighbour, who wished to remain anonymous, told MailOnline: 'Someone told me it was quite gruesome.

'The house was on the market for a long time but I know the couple had trouble selling it.

'They used to commute from London and kept themselves to themselves.'

Another neighbour added: 'There was no real conversation with them. Certainly not with Mr Beck.

'They were away a lot of the time and they kept themselves to themselves. The first I heard of it was from a neighbour.

'I'd heard there were delays in the sale of Abbey Mill Farm. That the final contracts may not have been exchanged. It's a small community here - It's very shocking.'

The farmhouse sits at the end of its own private drive on the fringes of the pretty Devon village

Another villager said: 'They were very rich people. The house is beautiful and is down a private lane and out in the sticks. It is very tragic but we have no idea what sparked this.'

A scene guard remains at the property while a forensic examination and searches are conducted.

It sits at the end of its own private drive on the fringes of the pretty Devon village.

Devon and Cornwall police Detective Inspector Stephen Davies, of the major crime investigation team, said: 'There is no need for the community to have further concerns regarding outstanding suspects.

'We are not looking for anyone else in relation to this inquiry.'

DI Davies would not comment on the cause of death.
A 25-year-old Austrian man is now regretting not re-registering his driving licence when he moved to Switzerland - as it is now set to cost him more than 29,000.

The driver has also spent five hours in a police cell because of tough Swiss laws.

Electrician Marcel E. was first charged a penalty of 13,700, and told he had to pay up by November.

Marcel E. was stopped at Zurich Airport, where his unpaid fine came back to haunt him

He even spent five hours being detained by police in July because his Austrian licence is not valid.

That date passed without him settling the bill, and last month he was stopped at passport control while trying to fly from Zurich to London.

He was slapped with another fine of 18,600 Swiss Francs - which works out at 14,860.

The electrician borrowed the money from a friend, having been told he could be jailed for six months.

Austrian newspaper Haute reports that he has now hired a lawyer and plans to fight the case.

Marcel said: 'To be charged 34,000 Euros is beyond all good and evil. I may be working, but I'm no millionaire.'
The family of a 29-year-old British woman found dead in mysterious circumstances in an Australian strip club have described her as an 'amazing, special, caring person'.

Stacey Tierney, a fitness instructor from Manchester, was found dead at Dreams strip club in Melbourne on December 19.

The dancer had been at a private party with a group of men the day before.

Investigations into her death are continuing, amid claims she had been murdered.

Trip of a lifetime: British backpacker Stacey Tierney, 29, pictured at Wyndham on William, Melbourne, last January, was an exotic dancer at the city's Dreams Gentlemen's Club where she died in mysterious circumstances on December 17. She had been entertaining a private party of unnamed men. Her body was discovered on Sunday - 24 hours after she died

A statement said the family had been through an 'extremely difficult time' since learning about her death.

It added: 'Stacey was, and will always be, the most amazing, special, caring person you could ever meet and this loss has devastated our family.

'The circumstances surrounding Staceys death are being investigated by the authorities in Melbourne and we wait to hear further news every day.

'While we continue to work with the authorities in Melbourne our primary aim at this time is to bring Stacey home.

'Until we have Stacey home and the investigation is complete we would be grateful if the familys privacy can be respected and we are allowed time to come to terms with what has happened.'

Stacey moved to Australia three years ago, living first in Brisbane before moving to Melbourne.

Live for the moment: An extraordinary online diary chronicling her adventures show free-spirited Stacey diving from a plane, sunbathing on a yacht, taking epic road trips and enjoying wild parties are prefaced with the words: 'The happiest time of my life is now'

She had worked as a fitness instructor, doing zumba and spinning classes, both in Manchester and then in Australia.

It has been claimed that the club where she died has links to an outlaw biker gang.

Police are reportedly investigating out-of-hours activities at the club and are said to believe she was inside the private area dubbed the 'Fantasy Room' when she died.

People who were with Miss Tierney failed to call an ambulance because they feared the club's operations would be investigated, the Herald Sun reported.

Dreams (pictrued) was previously closely tied to the Comancheros biker gang, according to reports

Wild moon child: Friends described Ms Tierney, pictured in October 2015, on Australia's Gold Coast, as a free spirit who was living the 'backpacker's dream' during her three years there. But her cousin Paul Tierney she kept her job working as a stripper hidden from her family

Dreams was previously closely tied to the Comancheros biker gang, according to reports.

The club has been linked to the Comancheros gang since at least 2010, when they were reportedly suspected of extorting strip clubs in Melbourne for money.

Three members of the gang were jailed in 2013 after a 'ferocious' and 'cowardly' attack on a construction worker inside Dreams.

Two others were also jailed in 2013 for their role in a vicious brawl inside the Spearmint Rhino - another club said to have had close ties to the gang - in Melbourne two years earlier.

The club's manager, Stephen Kyriacou, is reportedly set to be interviewed by police.

Mr Kyriacou used to run the Spearmint Rhino and partied with Hells Angel Christopher Wayne Hudson on the night he shot a man dead and injured two other people in 2007.

According to the Herald Sun, Mr Kyriacou had been at the Spearmint Rhino with Hudson before heading to the Barcode strip club next door.

As Mr Kyriacou was receiving a dance, Hudson assaulted a dancer and shot his lover, Kaera Douglas.

Two men who tried to help the woman were shot and one of them, lawyer Brendan Keilar, died.

Mr Kyriacou, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, gave evidence against Hudson before he was jailed for 35 years.

'Love these girls': Stacey hid the truth about her exotic dancing from her family, according to friend Briar Rose, pictured centre in a picture from Stacey's Facebook page, above. She funded her travels with strip dances, according to friend Yasmin Donaldson, right

Dingo Divas: Sun-kissed snaps show her living life to the full with trips down Australia's Gold Coast before her mysterious death. In October 2015, she toured Fraser Island and posted a photo of a human pyramid with the caption: 'It took a few attempts but we did it!

Miss Tierney's family previously told MailOnline that they had no idea she was working as an exotic dancer.

Her older cousin Paul said: 'We are devastated and think there was foul play.

'And whoever is responsible is a coward and a low life for leaving her dying or dead and failing to get any help. It is shocking behaviour and very distressing.'

'Since she lost her life rumours have surfaced of her being a stripper but we know absolutely nothing about this,' Mr Tierney said.

Tragic Stacey's uncle Graham Tierney, in Manchester, said: 'I didn't know she was working in that club and I don't think anyone in the family did.

'As far as we knew, she was just travelling around Australia and enjoying it. I saw all her photos on Facebook and it looked like she was having a good time.

'She wasn't the type of girl to get involved with drugs as far as I know but we just do not know what has happened. Maybe her drink was spiked or something like that, who knows?'

He went on: 'I know my brother, Stacey's dad, has been trying to get some answers from the Australian authorities but everyone seems to be tight lipped at the moment. We only know what everyone else knows - the reports which have been in the papers.

'All the family seem very upset because she was such a great girl who was enjoying life.'

Beach bum: Backpacker Stacey, pictured on Fraser Island, loved her carefree lifestyle with few commitments. She joyfully described her adventure as having 'no actual plan, just winging it'.

'Down Under!' In February, ten months before her mysterious death, Stacey was pictured on a boat of Australia's coast soaking up the sun and seemingly without a care in the world

Halloween queen: Stacey quit her job at the sports nutrition retailer Bodybuilding Warehouse Stacey arrived in Australia in July 2013, where she set up home in Brisbane. Her closest friends said she was a fun-loving party girl who liked to dress up

Stunning fitness fanatic Stacey, 29, swapped the rain of Manchester for the white-sand beaches of Queensland in 2013, and for more than three years lived the backpacker's dream.

On her Facebook page she posted scores of incredible pictures showing her diving from a plane, sunbathing on a yacht, taking epic road trips and enjoying wild parties, prefaced with the words: 'The happiest time of my life is now'.

She described herself proudly as a 'free spirit' and a 'wild moon child'.

But behind the smiles and ocean sunsets that she invited her family and friends to view, the trained dancer hid the truth of how she was paying for glamorous lifestyle.

HGV driver Paul, 32 - whose dad Alan is brother of the victim's dad Steven - said Stacey from Stockport, Greater Manchester, who had been due to celebrate her milestone 30th birthday in just two weeks on January 20, 'absolutely loved' Australia.

Paul, from Mitcham, Surrey, explained: 'She had lots of friends there and I really think she wanted to settle there for good.

'She was always in great spirits and just oozed life. She was very pretty and petite and very energetic and would light up a room.

'We were in contact on social media and knew Stacey was working hard to pay for her lifestyle, doing some pole dancing for cash, but not anything shameful which would cause any embarrassment to her family.

He said he still hoped it was not true. 'Her parents would be horrified,' he said.

'It was all harmless dancing, her friends in Melbourne have since told us. She was also into fitness and loved doing all that energetic Zumba.'

Paul said he last saw her two years ago during a trip to Australia. He recalled: 'I went on holiday in June 2014 to help settle another cousin who had just moved over there. At the time Stacey was in Brisbane and we met up for the day and went to the beach. She was in great spirits and loving life.'

Fighting back tears, he said: 'That was the last time I ever saw her. I can't believe she has gone and in such mysterious circumstances.

'We will have no closure until we know what happened. The police have been hopeless and haven't told us much at all.'

Full of life: During her time in Australia she toured the Gold Coast's tourist attractions including the stunning Whitsunday Islands and Fraser Island with other backpackers, pictured

Stacey, pictured with a friend, chronicled the first two and a half years of her trip of a lifetime in Australia on her Facebook page, but for the last six months of her life the photos dried up

'Happiest time of my life is now': Former Oldham College pupil Stacey was pictured doing yoga on the lookout Torquay Surf Beach on the Great Ocean Road, Victoria, in April - eight months before she died

Close friend and fellow exotic dancer Briar Rose revealed to MailOnline how Stacey danced 'as much as she could' to fund her travels, a secret the young Briton apparently kept hidden.

Briar Rose said: 'I don't think her family knew she was a [exotic] dancer. I don't think she spoke [to her family] about it. She's been dancing a few years on and off.'

New Zealander Briar worked with Stacey as an exotic dancer in strip clubs in Brisbane and Darwin, hard-partying cities in Australia's north-east.

Ms Rose has revealed how the young Briton had to attend private parties and offer private dances in order to make money.

Asked by MailOnline if Stacey offered private dances, she replied; 'Yes. That's how we all make money. If we didn't do private lap dances we wouldn't get paid so much.'

Stacey, pictured left with a male friend, had been partying with a group of men at the club where she worked on December 18. It is believed the club was closed and she was with them at a private party. Stacey is believed to have complained that she felt unwell and the men left. He body was discovered on December 19, 24 hours later

Paradise lost: The former fitness trainer, from Greater Manchester, in England's north west, had reportedly been partying at the club with a group of men while the venue was closed
A father has described how he finally feels 'vindicated' after his children's school rescinded a 480 fine given to them for taking a family holiday to Florida.

Mark Mularczyk, 34, and his partner Stacey Kinsella were due to be hauled before the courts today for refusing to pay a 240 council fine, which was then doubled.

The couple from Swindon, Wiltshire, were given the bill for failing to ensure regular attendance of their two children - despite both having exemplary records.

Family: Mark Mularczyk and Stacey Kinsella, pictured with their children Jack-Riley and Lucie-May, who feel 'vindicated' after their fine for taking them out of school was rescinded

But in a dramatic U-turn, the couple received an email from the borough council saying the charges were being dropped - leaving Mr Mularczyk a relieved man.

He said: 'How can anyone possibly say my kids don't attend school regularly when their attendance was 94 per cent last year and 100 per cent the year before?

'I feel as though I've been branded a criminal. The whole process has been quite demoralising.

'The council wanted to fine us 240 and when we refused they doubled it. I refused to pay it because in my eyes I hadn't done anything wrong.'

The couple took their two primary school children - Jack-Riley, nine, and Lucie-May, seven - out of school for nine days on a family trip to Florida last May.

But they returned home to find a letter from the headteacher at Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Patchway, Bristol, saying they were to be fined.

The couple refused to pay and it was passed to the council, before the case was taken further and the pair appeared at Swindon Magistrates' Court in November.

'You go to court and stand there while they ask you how you plead, as if it was a serious crime rather than just taking your kids on holiday,' Mr Mularczyk said.

Unimpressed: The couple from Swindon, Wiltshire, were given the bill for failing to ensure regular attendance of their two children - despite both having exemplary records

'I'm a bricklayer and from May to September it's the best time for work, so I can't go away during the summer holidays.'

But on Wednesday they received an email from Swindon Borough Council saying all charges would be dropped.

The move comes a month after a group of parents from Swindon were cleared for taking their children out of school for holidays in a landmark ruling.

The five accused, from three families, were taken to court for failing to ensure regular attendance for the pupils - despite them all having exemplary records.

But all were found not guilty at Salisbury Magistrates Court in a ruling dubbed a 'victory for common sense', which caused a council rethink.

A council spokesman said: 'The council has revised its policy for school non-attendance in the wake of last month's court hearings at Salisbury Magistrates' Court.

'The prosecution involving Mr Mularczyk and Ms Kinsella was initiated prior to the Salisbury hearings and was based upon the previous 12-week prosecution period.

'The council is now assessing attendance over a 24-week period and, under the new criteria, their child's attendance was above the 90 per cent threshold.

Refusal to pay: The parents they returned home from their holiday to find a letter from Holy Family Catholic Primary School (pictured) in Patchway, Bristol, saying they were to be fined

'It is important to reiterate that the council issues penalty notices for unauthorised absence on behalf of schools and only does so after giving careful consideration to the facts of each individual case.

'The DfE is very clear in its guidance to schools and local authorities in that it expects them to promote good attendance and reduce absence.'

The council's email to the Clerk to the Justices reads: 'The council has determined that it no longer appears to be in the public interest to prosecute these parents.

'We would therefore ask, respectfully, to withdraw these prosecutions.

'The Council will write to these parents explaining the decision and the fact that they will no longer need to attend Court on January 6, 2017.'

Mr Mularczyk added: 'It's the only days they have had off in four years. This year we were in a position, with help from Stacey's parents, to go on holiday.

'It would have cost an extra 2,000 to 3,000 if we went in the summer.

'Being a self-employed bricklayer, summer is my most popular time of the year for work and having two weeks off then would have been stupid.'
A shopkeeper was beaten unconscious by a masked robber who stamped repeatedly on his head.

Shocking CCTV footage caught the attack which happened in a mobile phone shop in St Petersburg, Russia.

One thug demands the shop worker unlock the phone cabinet and as he does he is knocked to the ground with a devastating punch to the side of the head.

Shocking CCTV footage caught the attack which happened in a mobile phone shop in St Petersburg, Russia

The other robber then comes into the frame and starts filling up a bag with the handsets while the first man continues the brutal attack.

At one point the victim holds his hands up, to show the robbers he will not do anything and to take what they want and leave him alone but this only spurs them on.

The attacker begins to horrifically kick the man in the head, knocking him unconscious.

The crooks managed to steal 25 phones from the shelves and take an unknown amount of money from the cash register, with the entire incident caught on camera.

Police say the employee was taken to hospital for his injuries, but they are not said to be serious.

Officers have launched an investigation and anyone with information on the criminals is asked to come forward.
An activist has been fined for trying to smash his way into a police station during an anti-gentrification protest that ruined a couple's wedding.

Arnan Joahill, was part of an unruly mob which turned up chanting 'no justice, no peace, f*** the police' outside Brixton Police Station, south London.

The 25-year-old barman crashed his megaphone on a window at the station as the rally escalated.

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A protester taking part in the Reclaim Brixton demonstration smashes the window of estate agents Foxtons (neither Arnan Joahill, Joshua Virasami or Sapphire McIntosh are pictured)

The Reclaim Brixton demonstration, in April 2015, was meant to highlight rising rents and house prices in the traditionally working class area, which were pushing out residents who had lived there for years.

However, despite starting off peacefully, the protest was marred by violence, including at nearby Brixton town tall where a couple's wedding was ruined by the angry mob.

Joahill, from Streatham Hill, south London, admitted one public order offence, and was slapped with a 500 fine, plus 175 in prosecution costs.

The judge criticised him and said it must have been 'frightening' for the officers inside.

Two other activists who were involved in the anti-gentrification protest were sentenced on Monday.

Sapphire McIntosh, 27, hurled eggs while Joshua Virasami, 26, pushed police officers during the rally - despite the fact neither lived in the area.

Liam Gregory, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey: 'There was an organised protest. One of the protest sites was Brixton town hall.

An unruly mob turned up chanting 'no justice, no peace, f*** the police' outside Brixton Police Station, south London (pictured)

'Mr Joahill was present then, but no offences arose from that. Slightly later during the day, there were further protests and actions outside of Brixton Police Station.

'Mr Joahill was present during that incident. He was carrying a loud hailer, or megaphone. And in due course, on CCTV he can be seen banging that on the window of the police station.

'One officer, immediately on the other side of the glass, can be seen flinching.'

Video footage was played to the court which showed protesters outside the police station.

Joahill can be seen banging his megaphone on the window, while others bang on the front door, which is partly covered by corrugated metal.

Loud chants of 'get them out', and 'no justice, no peace, f*** the police', can be heard in the clip.

The crowd is then seen dispersing as police officers leave the building to restore order.

Sapphire McIntosh, 27, threw eggs during Reclaim Brixton Demonstration

Judge John Bevan QC said: 'He was not involved in spoiling some unfortunate couple's wedding in the town hall.

'But he had a megaphone. So he was plainly having a leading role. I imagine it is quite frightening being in the police station, being beset by hundreds of people.

'I do not think he was on the outer edge. When he was banging his loud hailer on the window, he was in the thick of it.'

Sentencing Joahill, he said: 'I hope having seen what you have seen on screen, you are unimpressed by your behaviour. If you are not unimpressed, you should be.

'I imagine it was very frightening for the police being beset by lots of people, and certainly when that was happening, you were in the thick of it, trying to break the window with your loud hailer. You plainly had a leading role.'

In mitigation, Emma Fenn, defending, said: 'He accepts he lost his head in the heat of the moment, and it is not something he has done before.

'He has altered how he deals with protests. His political activities have seriously declined.

'He has no previous convictions. His conduct does not extend to anything in relation to the town hall. He has positive good character. This is, in effect, a one off. He has stayed out of trouble since.'

The court was told Joahill currently works in the cocktail industry, and is about to start a job in Dubai where he will earn about 660 a month.

He was due to be sentenced on Tuesday alongside the other two - but forgot to fly back in time from Dubai.

Joahill only realised his mistake when McIntosh emailed him asking what time they were due in court the following day.

Although the judge said it would not be held against him, he added: 'I am unimpressed by his incompetence.'

McIntosh, a freelance journalist from Whitechapel, east London, and Virasami, a restaurant worker from Hounslow, west London, both admitted a public order offence.
A man who left his wife fighting for her life when he shattered her skull with a lump hammer did not have the ability to 'finish her off', a court heard today.

Paul Bond, 62, beat his wife Marian Bond with a 2.5lb pound lump hammer as she slept at their 1million home in Over, Cambridgeshire.

After the attack just before 8am on July 11, he called the emergency services and admitted he had 'hurt' his wife, Cambridge Crown Court heard.

Dr Marian Bond, a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, has since made a recovery but will be scarred for life after the attack shattered large parts of her skull and fractured her jaw

The senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, also 62, was rushed to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge after the attack where she was placed in an induced coma as doctors fought to save her life.

She has since made a recovery but will be scarred for life after the attack shattered large parts of her skull and fractured her jaw.

Bond, who was found to have blood on his hands, chest, cheek and dressing gown was later arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

He does not deny carrying out the attack but claims that he only intended to 'hurt' his wife.

He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of grievous bodily harm with intent on November 2 last year.

This was rejected by the crown who maintain the weapon used and the 'multiple' blows he delivered during the attack were intended to murder his wife.

Prosecuting, Amjad Malik QC said Bond chose the 'demotion tool' because it could kill - but said Bond did not have the strength to reign more blows on his wife.

Paul Bond, 62, beat his wife Marian Bond with a 2.5lb pound lump hammer as she slept at their 1million home in Over, Cambridgeshire

He said if the attack was a 'spontaneous' one Bond could have used items from inside the bedroom and even his fists and targeted a different part of his wife's body.

He added: 'He intended to kill her, you can be sure from the circumstances of attack that he did not just intend to cause her really serious bodily harm. He intended to cause her fatal injuries.

'He intended to kill his wife when he swung that hammer down on Dr Marian Bond's head and face area with severe force.'

Mr Malik claimed that after the attack, in which the lights were turned off and the curtains drawn, Bond could not face the reality of what he had done.

He said: 'Although he had tried his hardest (to kill) and he thought that the attack that he had launched and the number of blows he had inflicted had done enough (to kill).

'When he saw the bedroom as she lay with her head on that pillow where she was barely breathing. He had to make a choice. He had to finish her off with further blows to kill her.

'He did not have the strength or the ability to finish her off. He could have left her to die but he chose at that point, in the state that she was in, to change his mind.

'Regret? We will never know because you will not hear from him. That evidence is clear. He called the emergency care services even though, as he said, she is in dire need of help. She is barely breathing.'

In his defence Michael Duffy QC said Bond calling the emergency services shows he did not intend to kill his wife.

Bond listened to the proceedings with a hearing loop as his wife watched from the public gallery.

Judge Andrew Farrell will sum up the evidence on Monday morning before the jury is sent out.

Bond did not give any evidence in his defence.
Arnold Schwarzenegger hit back at Donald Trump's mocking of his television ratings on Friday by invoking Abraham Lincoln and urging the president-elect 'to work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings'.

Trump couldn't resist taking a dig at his successor on The Celebrity Apprentice days after the latest Nielsen ratings showed that Schwarzenegger's New Celebrity Apprentice reboot failed to attract the same number of viewers as The Donald's version.

The Terminator star's debut as host this past Monday on NBC was watched by 4.9million viewers compared to Trump's 6.5million viewers who tuned in to the season premiere in 2015.

'Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got 'swamped' (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT,' Trump tweeted, using the initials of his full name to drive home the point.

'So much for being a movie star - and that was season 1 compared to season 14,' Trump tweeted.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger (center) debuted on Monday as host of The New Celebrity Apprentice on NBC. He is seen above with two of his advisors on the show - Tyra Banks (right) and his nephew, Patrick Knapp Schwarzenegger (left)

President-elect Donald Trump (seen above during his stint as host of The Apprentice in 2005) took to Twitter early Friday morning to mock Schwarzenegger for his low ratings

'Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got 'swamped' (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT,' Trump tweeted (above) on Friday

'So much for being a movie star - and that was season 1 compared to season 14,' the president-elect tweeted on Friday

'Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported [Ohio Governor John] Kasich & [Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton.'

Schwarzenegger responded by reminding Trump that 'there's nothing more important than the people's work.'

'I wish you the best of luck and I hope you'll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings,' the actor tweeted.

Schwarzenegger uploaded a video that he originally posted on November 9, the day after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency.

Schwarzenegger responded on Twitter (above) by reminding Trump that 'there's nothing more important than the people's work.' He urged Trump to 'work as aggressively for Americans as you worked for your ratings'

Schwarzenegger uploaded a video (above) that he originally posted on November 9, the day after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. In the clip, he quotes from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861 urging national unity

He read a famous quote from Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861 urging national unity in the wake of the divisive campaign.

'We are not enemies, but friends,' Schwarzenegger said.

'We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'

Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born film star and former California governor, declined to vote for Trump even though both men are Republicans.

During the Republican primary, Schwarzenegger backed Kasich, according to CNN.

He endorsed Clinton for the presidency.

The New Celebrity Apprentice rolled out its two-hour season premiere on Monday, drawing 4.9million viewers, according to The Wrap.

Trump gleefully noted in his tweets that Schwarzenegger endorsed his political foes during the campaign - Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (left) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (right)

In the key 18-49 demographic, the show pulled in a 1.3 rating/4 share.

Those numbers are down from the last time the show was on the air, with Trump as host.

The debut episode of Trump's final season scored a 2.0 rating/6 share and drew 6.5million viewers.

ABC's The Bachelor was the big winner on Monday, attracting 6.6million viewers and a 2.1/6.

Schwarzenegger's debut lost in the ratings battle to ABC's The Bachelor, the reality dating show. Above is bachelor Nick Viall (center) and the women competing to be his love interest

The roster of celebrities vying to be Schwarzeneggers apprentice this season include Laila Ali, the former boxer and daughter of the late Muhammad Ali; former model Brooke Burke-Charvet; retired NFL running back Eric Dickerson; British pop star Boy George; comedian Matt Iseman; and talk show host Carrie Keagan.

Schwarzenegger's top advisers on the show are billionaire investor Warren Buffett; former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer; onetime supermodel Tyra Banks; actress Jessica Alba; and his nephew, Patrick Knapp Schwarzenegger.
This is the incredible moment Good Samaritans pulled an elderly man from his car after he flipped it in a terrifying crash.

The video was captured by a motorcyclist who stopped to help after he saw the flipped car in Barnet, north London.

It shows the filmer getting off his motorcycle and approaching the car which was lying on its roof on a zebra crossing.

This is the incredible moment Good Samaritans pulled an elderly man from his car after he flipped it in an horrific crash

Together with other pedestrians, the motorcyclist pulled the elderly driver out by his legs and helped him to his feet.

The filmer can be heard saying: 'Is there anyone else in there? Someone call an ambulance, someone call an ambulance.'

Spotting that fluid was oozing from the car, he added: 'It's leaking, is the ignition off?'

He then removed the keys from the ignition before another man asked: 'Was he on the phone do you think? That was a nasty flip he had I tell ya'.

The video was captured by a motorcyclist who stopped to help after he saw the flipped car in Barnet, north London

The filmer can be heard saying: 'Is there anyone else in there? Someone call an ambulance, someone call an ambulance.'

The filmer wrote online: 'Thankfully the driver escaped the wreck with only a cut mouth and a bit of shock.

'In the time after the crash people were driving past recording the scene on their mobile phones so I acted as a 'Traffic Controller' to keep everybody moving and reduce congestion as much as I could.'

Talking about the cause of the accident, he said 'of course there were various speculative reasons as to who was a fault and how it happened. Nevertheless the only one that will ever know exactly what happened is the driver and hopefully he can learn from this in some shape or form.'

'I'm just glad the driver made it out alive and unscathed and nobody else was injured, god forbid if someone was on that zebra crossing. Drive safe out there!' he added.
Nicola Sturgeon has climbed down from a threat to call a quickfire second referendum on independence because of Brexit.

In the aftermath of June's vote, the SNP leader said the referendum result made it 'highly likely' Scotland would see a repeat of the 2014 poll and used her autumn conference to ramp up tensions.

Ms Sturgeon has insisted Scotland - which heavily backed Remain - should not be dragged out of the European Union by the UK-wide Brexit vote.

But today she said a deal which secures membership of the EU single market would be enough to stop her calling a new independence referendum before 2019.

Nicola Sturgeon, pictured on New Year's Day delivering the first of the SNP's new baby boxes, said she would postpone a second independence referendum today in return for a good Brexit deal

The latest polling, carried out shortly before Christmas, indicated the SNP would lose a new referendum on independence.

The First Minister told Good Morning Scotland: In terms of the timescale of Brexit, that's what I've been very clear about.

'Am I going to stop arguing for independence or believing in independence? Am I going to stop believing Scotland is on a journey to independence? No.

'But we're talking here in the particular context and timescale of Brexit, and I'm putting these proposals forward in good faith.

'I'm deliberately saying ''put my preferred option to one side'' and asking people if we can find a consensus and compromise option.'

Ms Sturgeon said she was eager to work with politicians elsewhere in the UK to reach a Brexit deal that kept the UK in the single market.

Leading Brexit supporters have insisted this makes truly leaving the EU impossible because it would mean no end to free movement and rules against the EU striking its own trade deals.

But the SNP leader said she would accept a deal that left Scotland inside and the rest of the UK outside the single market.

She said: 'If that can't be done, then we want to explore ways - and we've put forward how we think this can be done - of keeping Scotland in the single market while continuing to protect free trade across the rest of the UK and said very clearly, of course, that would require additional powers for the Scottish Parliament.'

The latest polling on Scottish independence suggests support for the SNP cause is well behind that for maintaining the Union - which leads 47 per cent to 40 according to a December poll from BMG

Ms Sturgeon said she believed there was consensus building around some of those additional powers, including immigration.

She continued: 'We've put forward very detailed plans about how we avoid a hard Brexit and the reason it's important to avoid a hard Brexit, let's not forget, is because that will have a devastating impact on our economy and on jobs.

'So, I've, in a sense, been willing and am willing to put aside my preferred option of independence in the EU to see if we can explore a consensus and compromise option.'

Ms Sturgeon urged Theresa May to negotiate a Brexit deal that protected single market access

Michael Tomlinson, the deputy chairman of the influential Tory European Research Group, today told MailOnline: 'The Prime Minister has taken a strong lead and we are on the right track.

'But it is imperative that we leave the internal market, the so-called single market, in order to control immigration and open up trading opportunities across the world.

Scottish Parliament opposition leader Ruth Davidson said Ms Sturgeon was scrambling to find an 'escape route' from her posturing on independence

'We know from sources close to the President-elect that Donald Trump is mad keen to do an early trade deal with the UK.

'To take advantage of this - and the numerous other possibilities in Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other like-minded countries - we must be outside the single market.'

A second independence referendum is backed by the Greens but opposed by Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: 'Scotland is kept in limbo as Nicola Sturgeon tries to find an escape route after marching her troops to the top of a mountain, but still keeping the threat of a second referendum on the table as a possibility for the future.

'The First Minister should act in the interests of the whole country by recognising the decision Scotland made just two years ago and respecting that result.'

Scottish Labour MSP Iain Gray said: 'After reading the polls which show that Scots are opposed to her plan for a second independence referendum, Nicola Sturgeon could be forgiven for wanting to back away from another referendum.
Russian hacking or no Russian hacking, Donald Trump says he would have won the presidential election, anyway.

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were 'never going to beat the PASSION of my voters,' Trump declared this morning in a set of tweets that included an invitation to his inauguration for his supporters.

Trump will be sworn into office two weeks from today, on Friday, Jan. 20.

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Russian hacking or no Russian hacking, Donald Trump says he would have won the presidential election anyway

Trump will be sworn into office two weeks from today, on Friday, Jan. 20. Attendance is expected to be far lower than Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009

Tweeting up a storm on Friday morning, Trump appeared swat down government intelligence that claimed the Kremlin meddled in the November election to boost his chances.

Trump's said on numerous occasions that Russia may not have ordered hacks on Democrats that embarrassed the party and its presidential nominee, Clinton.

This morning he tweeted: 'Hillary and the Dems were never going to beat the PASSION of my voters. They saw what was happening in the last two weeks before the......and knew they were in big trouble - which is why they cancelled their big fireworks at the last minute.THEY SAW A MOVEMENT LIKE NEVER BEFORE'

Twenty minutes later he sent out a reminder about his upcoming inauguration, promoting it as can't-miss event.

'Hopefully, all supporters, and those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will go to D.C. on January 20th. It will be a GREAT SHOW!'

An estimated 800,000 people will descend on Washington, D.C. for the festivities, McClatchy reports.

Prospective attendees could request tickets through their congressional office or through the inaugural committee's website.

A million fewer supporters are expected to show up for Trump than Barack Obama in 2009.

Trump is trying to break Obama's record.

'Well, we all did it, together! I hope the "MOVEMENT" fans will go to D.C. on Jan 20th for the swearing in. Let's set the all time record!' he said a Dec. 16 message.

Yesterday Obama received a report on the Russian hacking that he ordered late last year. Details from the classified document were leaked to NBC and the Washington Post

The president-elect's briefing on the report is not until this afternoon. The reports had him fuming

He cast new doubt on Russia's involvement in the cyber thefts in follow-up tweets in response

Yesterday Obama received a report on the Russian hacking that he ordered late last year after Trump threw cold water on the intelligence community's 'high confidence' assessment that the foreign government had interfered in the presidential election.

The report is classified, but a U.S. official told NBC News it revealed that senior Russian officials celebrated when Trump was elected.

The official told NBC, 'Highly classified intercepts illustrate Russian government planning and direction of a multifaceted campaign by Moscow to undermine the integrity of the American political system.'

NBC's report came after the Washington Post published a summary of the classified document, including Russian officials' jubilation.

The celebrating convinced the CIA and FBI, in part, that emails were stolen and released from Democratic Party officials and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta to help Trump win the White House.

The president-elect's briefing on the report is not until this afternoon. Members of Congress will be briefed, too, and a the director of national intelligence's office will prepare a report for public consumption next week.

Trump sent out a furious note about the leaks Thursday night, asking, 'How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!'

He cast new doubt on Russia's involvement in the cyber thefts in follow-up tweets in response.
A five-year-old Thai boy has had boiling water poured on his genitals, leaving him with horrific injuries.

The child was dumped at a hospital in central Pathum Tani province and police are now hunting down his missing parents.

A man and woman arrived at the hospital and told doctors they were the boy's parents before vanishing.

A five-year-old Thai boy has had boiling water poured on his genitals, leaving him with horrific injuries

The young boy was covered in bruises and his lower abdomen and groin had severe burns which appear to have been caused by boiling water.

Police and social workers visited the boy's home but no one was there, with neighbours saying the parents had left the province for work.

Authorities do not believe the man and women who left the child at the hospital are his real parents.

A local police officer said: 'The boy has had some terrible injuries. But he has been very strong. The people who did it must be caught and punished.

'He's told us his name and where he lives so we can work to find them. He'll be in hospital for about a week or two longer then he will be cared for at a children's home.'

The child was dumped at a hospital in central Pathum Tani province and police are now hunting down his missing parents

A hospital spokesman said: 'The boy is being treated and he is getting much better.

'The police and social services are still trying to find the family. We don't know who the people were that brought him in.
A soldier who was gifted with a plane ticket to see his widowed mother on Christmas saw his holiday turn to horror when he was left with severe facial injuries by a gang in Philadelphia on Sunday.

While attending the annual Mummers Parade - a colorful folk festival - on the intersection of 3rd and Oregon in South Philly, 10-15 men put him in hospital because of his Army jacket.

'He's such a good kid, he did not deserve this,' his mother, Lori Freni, told Fox 29.

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Beaten: Austin Freni (left) was savagely beaten by 10-15 men on Sunday according to his mom Lori (right). She said they commented on his Army jacket before the attack

Hospitalized: Freni will need to have his jaw wired shut and plates put in his face, she said. He had flown over for Christmas, as Lori was left widowed two years before

As the family was leaving the parade, Lori said that one man jumped on Austin and began beating him before the rest joined in.

She attempted to come to her son's aid, along with Austin's girlfriend, but the two were also attacked while trying to interfere.

'A group of 10-15 guys walked by and started making derogatory comments about his jacket,' she said.

'Me and his girlfriend tried pulling them off and they hit us. We got hit in the face. She got thrown in the street.'

She continued: 'We're lost. Just in complete disbelief.'

Austin now lays in Jefferson University Hospital in 'rough shape', according to his mother.

Freni, his mom and girlfriend were strolling through Philadelphia after the parade when they the large group of young men walked by them and made 'derogatory' comments about Freni's jacket, she said.

She says that one of those men then hit Freni, and the others leaped in to attack him as well.

'Me and his girlfriend tried pulling them off and they hit us,' she added. 'We got hit in the face. She got thrown in the street.'

Now Freni is in Jefferson University Hospital, facing a long road to recovery.

Kindness: Freni was flown back for Christmas by a stranger who saw his GoFundMe page and paid for his ticket

The shocking attack is made even more upsetting by the circumstances of the soldier's visit.

A kind stranger had paid for Austin Freni, 19, to fly from his army base in Georgia to his mom Lori in New Jersey after spotting his GoFundMe page. He was due to fly out to the Middle East in the New Year.

The soldier had been stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia, and was to head out to the Middle East in two months.

He hadn't been able to make it home for Thanksgiving, much to the disappointment of his mom, who lost her husband to brain cancer two years ago, and later had to leave her job.

Lori was prepared to sell her things to bring her some home for Christmas, she told Fox 29 last month, but set up a GoFundMe page as a last resort.

That page was then stumbled upon by Jennifer Richardson, who then bought them the ticket outright - inspired by her own experiences with her brother, who is in the Marines.

Austin now faces a long road to recovery.

'It just - it makes no sense to me,' his mother continued.

'These guys give up their lives to fight for our freedom and you're going to beat them down.'
A man has died after hitting his head on the tray of a ute at high-octane motor show Summernats festival in Canberra.

Luke Newsome, 30, died at Canberra Hospital on Friday afternoon, a day after he suffered the fatal head injury.

Mr Newsome hit his head as he fell off the back of the flat-tray ute at Exhibition Park about 4pm on Thursday, the first day of the festival.

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Luke Newsome, 30, (right) died at Canberra Hospital on Friday afternoon, a day after he suffered the fatal head injury

Shortly after the fatal incident, Summernats officials banned attendees from riding on the back of flat tray vehicles at the event.

The Queensland man's death is the first ever reported at Summer Nationals, which has been held every year since its inauguration in 1988.

But it is not the first time the event has reported injury.

A crash at Summernats in 2006 injured a number of people and street cruises were also banned following crowd control issues in 2005.

The investigation is ongoing.

Since learning the shock news, tributes for the Queensland man have started flooding in.

Mr Newsome's death is the first ever reported at Summer Nationals, which has been held every year since its inauguration in 1988

Tributes for Mr Newsome (left) are flooding in from shocked friends and family on social media

The crowds gather up against the fence to get a close-up view of the action at the festival

This woman is seen posing alongside a red super car at the Summer National motor show

Friends and family of Mr Newsome have taken to social media to express their shock and sadness at the tragedy.

'You were a legend of a bloke. Such terrible news, thinking of your whole family and friends at this tragic time. You will be greatly missed mate. Rest easy,' one man posted to Facebook.

'My heart aches for the Newsome family and friends and anyone who has ever met Luke,' one woman said.

A group of friends pose alongside a vehicle at the Summernats motor show in Canberra

'Words cannot describe how I feel about the news today. Luke, you are a top bloke who cared about your family and friends. I'm going to miss the catchups when you come home, the jokes and the laughs. Taken too soon but i'm sure Daniel is with you now. RIP mate,' one man said.

His reference to Daniel is reportedly Mr Newsome's brother who also died tragically, in a trail bike accident a few years ago.

While the event has been marred by tragedy, motor enthusiasts appear to still be enjoying the remainder of the festival.

Thousands of motor enthusiasts have shared photos of themselves at the festival, many of whom are soot-covered.

This woman poses for the camera, making sure to capture a lineup of vehicles in the background

It was a social affair at the Summernats motor show, with both ladies and gentlemen turning up for the event

This woman was pictured covered in soot, after apparently standing too close to the action

This woman is pictured in heels and a mini-skirt for the event, a far cry from what the majority of revellers wore
A group of House Democrats are planning one final, futile effort to challenge Donald Trump's election by raising objections when Congress meets to certify the electoral votes today  but the move will get immediately shut down unless a senator decides to signs on.

The Republican Congress would vote down the effort in any event.

Several House members have been considering raising objections to the official vote certification  an act that wouldn't have halted Trump's win but could have forced debates in each chamber that would have kept the spotlight on the intelligence community's claims of Russian interference in the elections.

Their chief problem has been finding a senator who would join their effort to at least secure a debate on the subject.

Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee is now saying she will voice an objection when Congress meets in a Joint Session Friday afternoon.

But a senator has not emerged who would second her effort.

Democratic representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas says she will challenge Donald Trump's election when Congress meets in Joint Session to certify the electoral votes  but hasn't secured a requisite senator to join her protest

Representative Ed Perlmutter was prepared to issue a letter objecting to the certification of Donald Trump's electoral college victory, after failing to find a senator who would join him

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado had been prepared to raise an objection to certifying the vote, but backed off after failing to locate a senator in agreement.

'We are not going to file an official objection. We just weren't able to secure a senator,' his spokeswoman, Ashley Verville told DailyMail.com.

"This is an American question of justice and fairness and the appropriate running of presidential elections," Jackson Lee told Politico.

Her decision to push forward sets up a scenario that echoes the session following the contested 2000 elections, when angry Democrats  including several members of the Congressional Black Caucus  yelled out futile objections, only to get shut down because of the lack of a Senate ally.

In a bitter twist that year, the loser, Vice President Al Gore, had to preside over his loss as president of the Senate at the time.

'Is the point of order signed by a senator?' Gore was forced to ask objecting Democrats.

'I don't care that it is not signed by a senator,' responded one of them, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), who walked out in protest.

'You will be advised that the rules do care,' Gore responded.

Jackson Lee acknowledged her failure to find a supporter in the other chamber. '"I certainly think the difficulty will be if we do not secure a senator,' she told the publication.

Even if they got an objection through, it would have been voted down in the GOP-controlled House and Senate, sealing Trump's win.

Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) has been considering a challenge to the certification of the electoral votes

Representative Bobby Scott also has been considering a challenge  but without a senator it won't go anywhere

Colorado members of the Electoral College waiting to be sworn in to vote for president of the United States at the Colorado State Capitol. December 19, 2016

Perlmutter issued a statement Thursday morning citing charges of Russian interference, on a day when the Senate Armed Services Committee probed Russian cyber hacks.

'It is clear Russia intervened in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This action by a foreign nation was unprecedented, violated our Constitution and undermined the founding pillars of American liberty and democracy. This is not about trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President. This is about the fact that our liberty, freedom and democracy were compromised by Russias intrusion into Americas election,' he said in the statement.

Two other House Democrats, dean of the House Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, and Rep. Bobby Scott also were considering challenges, Politico reported Thursday afternoon.

California Senator Barbara Boxer joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio's attempt to challenge the Ohio vote after the 2004 election.

A group trying to drum up opposition to ratifying the votes presented lawmakers with a document showing Trump electors weren't eligible to vote because didn't live in the congressional districts they represented.

The report said 50 Trump electors didn't live in the right district, Salon reported.
A young man who was viciously attacked by three teens has woken from his coma.

Thomas Dover, 21, was allegedly struck in the back of the head by a teenage boy in a shocking one-punch attack at around 2am on Wednesday while he was walking with a friend in Surfers Paradise.

Mr Dover's sister Candice confirmed on Friday that her family had been able to share a moment with the 'gentle' young man when he stirred from his coma three days after the attack.

'It took a bit of effort to get him to respond, but responding, nodding, he opened an eye, kind of squeezed hands and let us know he in a bit of pain and then fell back asleep,' Candice told the ABC.

Ms Dover also took to Facebook on Friday to express her optimism towards her brother's progress.

'So so excited to have Thom responding so positively!!!!,' she wrote.

She also hit out at the attackers saying that she had hoped they had time to reflect on their actions.

'Hoping that the young men who didn't walk away have had the time to reflect on their choice, and will find it within themselves to make the right choices from now on.'

'It has made me realise how much life is taken for granted and have realised that the one good thing about this is all is that we have Thom & more awareness around the cowards punch and how these stupid decisions impact everyone, not just the victim.'

Thom Dover was the victim of a shocking one-punch attack in Surfers Paradise on Wednesday

He was stabilised at the scene before being rushed to Gold Coast University Hospital

Three teens were charged over the one-punch attack that left Mr Dover fighting for his life.

The 14, 15 and 16-year-old boys charged over the Surfers Paradise attack appeared briefly in Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday morning, but did not apply for bail.

Police will allege the trio verbally abused 21-year-old Thomas Dover and a friend around 2am on Wednesday, before two of the youngsters followed and assaulted the pair.

He was left lying in a pool of blood on the street after allegedly being hit from behind in a 'one punch attack'

Mr Dover was allegedly struck in the back of the head, before falling and hitting his head on the pavement.

He was stabilised at the scene before being rushed to Gold Coast University Hospital.

On Thursday evening, he remained there in a coma with his family by his bedside, just a week after celebrating his 21st birthday, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin.

His friend also suffered minor injuries following the alleged assault.

Friends of Mr Dover (pictured) said the 'kind hearted' 21-year-old would never seek out a fight

Police initially charged the 16-year-old boy from Churchill with grievous bodily harm, common assault and public nuisance on Wednesday, while a 14-year-old from Goodna was also charged with the latter two charges.

A 15-year-old boy from Loganlea was then also charged on Thursday morning with grievous bodily harm over the attack.

It is good news that what happened to him is being taken seriously in the courts, but we hope the kids involved get help too. Candice Dover, Mr Dover's sister

All three will reappear at Southport Children's Court on January 25.

His older sister, Candice, told the Gold Coast Bulletin Mr Dover was showing positive signs but needed more rest.

'It is good news that what happened to him is being taken seriously in the courts, but we hope the kids involved get help too.

'He's stubborn, he's been fighting the sedation and trying to wake on his own.'

However, doctors said he was not yet ready to wake up and wanted to keep him in an induced coma longer.

It was lucky he'd fallen on his face rather than the back of his head.
The man who claims he is the son of Charles Manson has revealed his hospitalized father is 'hanging in there' and has demanded the immediate release of the ailing serial killer from prison.

Musician Matthew Roberts believes his 82-year-old 'dad' - imprisoned for his part in the brutal slaying of nine people in 1969 including pregnant actress Sharon Tate - has served his time and should now be allowed to salvage what's left of his fading years.

'I love my father whoever he is,' Roberts told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

'If he was to be released and I could have some kind of friendship with him and we could be amicable, that would be wonderful.'

Matthew Roberts, 48, (left), claims serial killer Charles Manson (right) is his biological father

Manson was rushed from Corcoran State Prison in California, to a hospital in Bakersfield 60 miles away for treatment after becoming seriously ill.

And Roberts believes Manson is being 'tortured' behind bars and thinks it's 'too extreme' to keep a 'sick, old man' locked up indefinitely.

He said: 'It's hell on earth in prison for him.

'Charles Manson didn't kill anybody - yes he is complicit so he is culpable - so it's not that he's completely innocent, but I think he has more than paid his debt to society.

'I think he's still inside for reasons that don't have anything to do with his crimes.'

Roberts believes Manson is being 'tortured' behind bars and thinks it's 'too extreme' to keep a 'sick, old man' locked up indefinitely

The cult leader was rushed to Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield (pictured) earlier this week after becoming seriously ill, according to reports

Roberts, 48, traveled to Bakersfield from his home in Los Angeles on Thursday to see Manson who is being treated at the city's Mercy Hospital.

Hospital officials refused him entry because he hadn't submitted the appropriate paperwork, but he managed to send a message to Manson, and is hoping to speak with him in the coming days.

Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com after the failed visit, he said: 'The hospital wouldn't let me in so I spoke to an official at the California Department of Corrections and they promised to pass on a message to him on my behalf.

While Roberts has never actually met Manson, he says the killer should be released to 'salvage' his remaining years

'They told me my father is hanging in there and still in custody, but wouldn't share any more.'

Roberts, who has been in touch with Manson via phone and letter over the years but has never met him, says he became concerned for his father's health when he read news reports that he had been hospitalized.

He contacted Manson's friends who told him that he had heart complications, although he can't be sure what he was suffering from.

Then it dawned on him that he needed to make peace with the man he believes is his father, before it's too late.

'It has always been on my mind that I should reach out to him and see him because he might not have too much time left,' he explained.

'My adopted father died in 2014 so I don't want to lose another dad.'

Roberts hopes he can achieve 'closure' by meeting Manson and feels 'compelled' to see him before he dies.

'I think I need that, just once to look him in the eye, I think something can be gained from that,' he said.

Manson (pictured in October 2014) is serving nine life sentences over a gruesome Los Angeles killing spree in 1969, that saw the death of Roman Polanski's actress wife, Sharon Tate

'But he needs it just as much as I do. He's kind of hanging on, waiting for something to happen and that something could or should involve me.

'There may be some bit of something we can both salvage - I don't know what that is yet - but I just have that feeling there's something there. I need to see him before he's gone.'

Roberts, who was adopted and grew up in Rockford, Illinois, was told that Manson was his 'real father', after tracking down his biological mother in 2001.

She told Roberts that she was raped by Manson during a drug-fueled orgy nine months before he was born in 1968 - an allegation he says she later recanted, calling it vigorous sex instead.

Manson and his 'Family' of followers went on to commit nine murders in Los Angeles a year later.

Manson and three of his female followers, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten (pictured walking to court in 1969), were spared execution when a US Supreme Court ruling temporarily banned the death penalty in 1972

Manson is currently serving nine life sentences over the gruesome killing spree. He was convicted of leading a cult in which disaffected young people living in a commune followed his orders and were ultimately turned into killers.

Manson and three female followers, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle and Leslie Van Houten, were convicted of murder and sentenced to death for killings at two gruesome scenes in the summer of 1969.

Susan Atkins (pictured), one of Manson's followers, died of brain cancer in September 2009, after having served 40 years in prison

All were spared execution when a US Supreme Court ruling temporarily banned the death penalty in 1972.

Another defendant, Charles 'Tex' Watson, was convicted later.

They brutally murdered director Roman Polanski's actress wife - Sharon Tate - and six others in Los Angeles over two nights.

For Roberts the shocking discovery was life-changing.

'I didn't want to believe it, he said. I was frightened and angry. It's like finding out that Hitler is your father.

'I'm a peace loving person - trapped in the face of a monster.'

He added: 'My hero is Gandhi. I'm a pacifist vegetarian, an extremely non-violent, peaceful person.

Roberts and Mansons facial features are near identical and they shared the same thick, dark hair as young men.

In 2001 Roberts decided to make contact with Manson and they began swapping letters.

Roberts has since received a string of rambling handwritten notes and postcards, some signed with the swastika - a symbol the killer has tattooed on his forehead.

He says he and Manson are very 'similar' in many ways.

'I've experienced a lot of things in my life, hardships that I believe have given me a unique understanding of him because we're very similar in a lot of ways.'

But while Roberts was initially shocked by Manson's crimes he has since changed his view after researching what happened.

'I can't say with 100% surety he did all those things, in my somewhat intuitive and researched opinion, I can say I do feel he was wrongly accused of most of the crimes he was convicted of,' he says.

Corcoran State Prison officials said Manson was 'not a model prisoner.' He had more than 100 behavioral violations in jail including assault, threatening staff and possessing a weapon

'Some people think he's a monster, some people think he's a guru and as far as brainwashing goes, the girls still support him emphatically, implicitly 45 years later and they haven't been in contact with him once, so are they still brainwashed by him today? Maybe they loved him.

'I don't think people can comprehend that level of love.'

He added: 'I think he should have been released from prison a long time ago and now the door is closing on even the possibility that he could ever get out, and even if he does what's left for him?

'There's a race against the clock and against his deteriorating health.'

But officials at Corcoran State Prison said it was safe to say Manson was 'not a model prisoner.'

The serial killer had more than 100 behavioral violations in jail before he was rushed to hospital earlier this week.
President-elect Donald Trump is 'prepared to listen' to top intelligence officials during a classified briefing at Trump Tower Friday, his spokesman said, but plans to press the nation's top spies on their 'degree of confidence' that Russia interfered in the elections.

Trump has spent the week tangling with the intelligence community, using quotations to mock what he called the 'Intelligence' briefing on 'Russian hacking' on Twitter.

Top intelligence officials sketched out their case for Russian interference at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.

'One thing we need to see is how those conclusions based on the evidence were made,' incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC's 'Good Morning America' on Friday.

HE'S ALL EARS: Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC President-elect Donald Trump is 'prepared to listen' to the intelligence community

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'Was there a direct link? What degree of confidence? Is it probability or certainty?' he asked.

Nevertheless, he said Trump was prepared to listen to top spies, including director of intelligence James Clapper, who defended the intelligence community and its assessments on Capitol Hill Thursday.

'Hes prepared to listen and understand how they got to the conclusions they did,' Spicer said.

He brought up reports, also raised by Trump online, that the FBI never examined the DNC's hacked server.

Donald Trump ranted on Twitter Thursday after a report given to Obama in a Top Secret briefing was leaked to NBC. Trump won't get the same briefing on the report until Friday

Trump fumed that 'politics' were to blame for the company getting the inside scoop on the report, which said that Russia did hack DNC and leaked emails to WikiLeaks to affect election

Trump continued his Thursday rant by asking why 'The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia'

Vladimir Putin's inner circle celebrated after Donald Trump won the US election and were aware of hacks in intercepted messages, according to a newly released US intelligence report

The report says Russia started off trying to undermine the US political process but upgraded to actively trying to get Donald Trump into the White House using leaked emails from hacks

'I think theres a question that needs to get asked. The DNC is saying that the FBI never looked at this server. The FBI is saying that the DNC never gave them access to the server. The question is, regardless of whos right and whos wrong, if the server was never looked at how do you in the intelligence community come to this conclusion?' he said.

'Its a fair question to ask. I think hes going to ask questions like that. Not questioning the intelligence but questioning how the conclusions were arrived at.'

Members of Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle were caught celebrating Trump's victory after Trump's election, according to the report.

The report said that Putin had initially wanted to call the US election into doubt, but later decided to actively promote Trump. It doesn't say if Russian hacks actually won him the vote

'People who knew what this was about were celebrating a victory over the United States,' said a U.S. official, Reuters reported.

The report says the the CIA and others concluded that Russia began trying to undermine the election, then escalated to trying to actively help Trump win. Clapper and others testified that the effort also included 'fake news' and other propaganda efforts.

Trump blasted a leak of the report in a tweet Friday morning.

'How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!' Trump wrote.

Senate Republicans and Democrats blasted Russian interference at the hearing Friday.
Comedian Keegan-Michael Key has revived his 'anger translator' character for one final 'farewell address' before Barack Obama is replaced in the White House by Donald Trump.

Key brought the role back with the help of Jordan Peele, who plays the role of Obama in the skits, during an interview on the Daily Show on Thursday.

The segment started with Peele's Obama calmly addressing the camera, saying, 'Since we last spoke, the country has voted for a new president,' while Key's 'Luther' quietly seethed beside him.

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Comedian Keegan-Michael Key (right) has revived his 'Obama anger translator' character with the help of Jordan Peele (left) for a final 'farewell address'

But after a few seconds, the anger translator lost his cool and fired off the first outburst.

'Trump! Come on, really? How did this happen man?' he exclaimed, before kicking a pinata of the president-elect after it floated into the frame.

'You all go and vote for the dude that's going to make America hate again? Don't you understand? This is how the Hunger Games starts.'

Peele's level-headed Obama then chimed in: 'We all have to accept that we are going to have someone else calling the shots.'

Jordan Peele plays the role of President Obama in the highly popular and successful skits

Key's Luther character shouted in the segment: 'You all go and vote for the dude that's going to make America hate again? Don't you understand? This is how the Hunger Games starts'

'Vladimir Putin, y'all. We got a naked Ruski on horseback going to be running the show,' Key's character boomed.

'It was a close election, but the people have spoken,' 'Obama' said.

The anger translator then interjected again, saying, 'Yeah, they voted for Hillary Clinton, but then this outdated Electoral College mumbo-jumbo voodoo bulls***, you got to be kidding me,' before walking off stage.

Peele's Obama continued the address in-shot, while Key's Luther was heard ranting and raving off to the side.

At one point, the 'anger translated spotted a Donald Trump pinata float into the shot (left), before launching a booming kick at the president-elect's likeness

Key unveiled the new skit during an appearance on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Thursday

Obama then said, 'it's more important than ever that we move on as a country united,' as Luther wandered across the shot and said: 'United in the fact that we can't f***ing stand each other.'

The address then turned to the topic of Trump's policies, prompting the translator to appear out of nowhere and say: 'New policy, the only good immigrant is a smoking hot white one.'

Obama then started to wrap up the address, saying he had greatly enjoyed his time in the White House.

'Except for when, umm, you know, let me think, let me think, when the Republicans wouldn't let me do s***, and then that one dude said I wasn't born here, and then y'all elected him. So you know what, didn't love that part so much,' Luther added, as Obama sat stoically in front.

Key's character closed the segment by delivering a warning for Trump, saying: 'I've got my eye on you, p***y-grabber'

The comedic duo made the highly-popular bit a staple of their performances and television show

The president then said he has met with Trump's team, and promised to support the transition.

But again, Luther interjected, walking towards the camera and saying: 'He doesn't even want the job, I saw it in his eyes, the dude was shook. The only reason he ran is because his factory in China made too many red hats.'

Peele's president tried to close on an optimistic note, saying: 'I assure you, if he succeeds, we all succeed.'

'Unless he succeeds with all the s*** he promises to succeed with,' Key's character said, 'because in that case, we're f***ed.'

Barack Obama speaks next comedian Keegan-Michael Key playing 'Luther, Obama's anger translator' at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 25, 2015

Michelle Obama and the presidents translator, Luther (L), as portrayed by comedian Keegan-Michael Key, look on as the President speaks at the 2015 correspondents' dinner

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele pose in the press room at the 68th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 18, 2016 in Los Angeles

The skit then ended by having Luther read the secret letter Obama planned to leave for Trump, which read: 'go f*** yourself.'

Luther then added one final warning for the president-elect, saying: 'I've got my eye on you, p***y-grabber.'
With a slot car track on the living room floor and a go-kart to get around the swanky $14million pad it seems speed demon Jimmie Johnson's love of the track is shared by his family in their West Village home.

Accustomed to a life in the fast lane, seven-time Sprint Cup Series champion opened up the Manhattan home he shares with his wife Chandra and two daughters, Evie, six, and Lydia, three.

Although their home base is in NASCAR capital Charlotte, North Carolina, the family spends a lot of their down time in the light and luxurious New York apartment.

Scroll down for video

Inside Jimmie Johnson's West Village Apartment: Jimmie and Chandra Johnson's New York home allows the family to always be in the fast lane. Pictured are Chandra (center), Evie (6, right) and Lydia (3, right), enjoying a quiet morning in their lovely apartment

When the seven-time Sprint Cup Series champion isn't racing the tracks, he spends downtime with his wife Chandra and two daughters, Evie (6) and Lydia (3). Although their home base is in NASCAR capital Charlotte, North Carolina, the family spends a lot of its down time in their light and luxurious West Village apartment

Johnson and his fashion-model wife met in Manhattan, and they have since been drawn to the city.

She told Architectural Digest: 'The West Village is heaven.

'It's a really romantic neighborhood and it feels the closest to living in Europe.'

Pictured: The Johnson's West Village apartment building that overlooks the Hudson River. Mrs Johnson told Architectural Digest 'it's a really romantic neighborhood and it feels the closest to living in Europe'

Architectural Digest takes a look at the decor and layout of their West Village apartment in their February 2017 issue

Johnson's is listed as number 82 on the list of 2016's world's highest paid athletes with a net worth of $120 million, and earning upwards of $22.2 million in 2016 alone, according to Forbes

Johnson and his fashion-model wife met in Manhattan, and they have since been drawn to the city

The lush apartment, overlooking the Hudson river, is chic and filled with sparkling sunlight.

Johnson's is listed as number 82 on the list of 2016's world's highest paid athletes with a net worth of $120million, and earning upwards of $22.2 million in 2016 alone, according to Forbes.

The couple were married in 2004, and first moved into a West Village apartment in 2009.

When Chandra became pregnant in 2013, the growing familys sold their three-bedroom unit in the building, buying a five bedroom in the same building for $14.25million, reported Page Six.

The building, Superior Ink, was designed by 'starchitect' Robert AM Stern.

When Chandra became pregnant in 2013, the growing family moved to another apartment in the same building, where they are now

Despite beautiful artwork and fancy furniture, the apartment has a family-like free- spirited vibe.

The two girls can be spotted 'driving go-karts through the hallways or racing slot cars on a toy track in the living room' according to Architectural digest.

Apart from Charlotte and New York, the Johnson's also homes in Aspen, Colorado, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The owner of a beef jerky plant is being sued by the federal government for firing an employee who tried to call 911 when their co-worker severed a thumb.

A lawsuit was filed against John M Bachman, who owned the Lone Star Western Beef plant in Fairmont, West Virginia, by the US Labor Department on Thursday.

Bachman's employee Chris Crane was operating a band saw to cut beef at the plant when he severed part of his right thumb in July 2014, the lawsuit states.

His co-worker Michele Butler-Savage saw blood running down his hand and arm and used her personal cell phone to call 911 as she tried to slow the bleeding with towels.

Lone Star Western Beef plant owner John Bachman (pictured) is being sued by the federal government for firing an employee who tried to call 911 when her co-worker severed a thumb

Another co-worker went to get Bachman, who immediately told Butler-Savage to hang up the phone, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

'Butler-Savage told Bachman that Crane needed an ambulance,' the lawsuit states. '(She) believed that he sustained a serious injury.'

'Bachman responded that he would decide whether to call an ambulance and instructed Butler-Savage to get back to work.'

The owner then collected the severed piece of Crane's thumb and had the plant's supervisor drive Crane to an urgent care clinic.

Crane was then transferred to an emergency room in an ambulance. Doctors were not able to reattach the severed portion of his thumb.

Butler-Savage said Bachman 'did little to clean or sanitize the areas where Crane's blood had spurted all over the floor and wall in his work area', according to the lawsuit.

She said that Bachman also only threw out the piece of meat that Crane was cutting during the accident and did not dispose of the other meat present in the area where he bled.

Bachman allegedly forced his Lone Star Western Beef plant (pictured in new Reading location) employee to hang up the phone and then had a supervisor drive the co-worker to a clinic

Butler-Savage went to the US Department of Agriculture inspector on the day of the accident to express her concerns about how it was handled.

She was fired two days later.

Bachman initially told Butler-Savage that production was slow, but then complained that he had 'lawsuits pending against him', according to the lawsuit.

Butler-Savage then filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which found the company violated federal whistleblower protections for workers who report violations of the law.

'Lone Star Western Beef punished an employee for seeking emergency medical care for a seriously injured co-worker,' said OSHA Regional Administrator Richard Mendelson.

'Her efforts were protected...and showed basic human decency.'

'No worker should have to fear retaliation from their employer for calling 911 in an emergency, or taking other action to report a workplace safety or health incident.'

OSHA is asking that Lone Star Western Beef and Bachman be forced to pay back lost wages and punitive damages to Butler-Savage.

Bachman's plant closed in January 2015 and relocated to Reading, Pennsylvania.
Belgian police missed multiple chances to unmask the ISIS terror cell before they carried out massacres in Paris and Brussels, a secret report has claimed.

Jihadists butchered 130 people in the French capital on November 2015 before extremists killed 32 in attacks on Brussels airport and Metro the following March.

A confidential report has revealed that police in Belgium had numerous opportunities to expose the terror network before they went on the rampage in the two capital cities.

Jihadists butchered 130 people in the French capital in November 2015 before extremists killed 32 in attacks on Brussels airport and Metro the following March

Officers are said to have stopped a vehicle driven by one of the Paris attackers, Brahim Abdeslam (right)- whose brother Salah (left) was later captured - in 2015, and found him with a booklet about 'parental consent for the Jihad'

The Wall Street Journal says it has seen a report by the Comite P watchdog agency which is looking into the work of Belgian police since the two massacres.

In one example, officers are said to have stopped a vehicle driven by one of the Paris attackers, Brahim Abdeslam - whose brother Salah was later captured - in 2015, and found him with a booklet about 'parental consent for the Jihad'.

He was arrested for drug possession but, despite being on the terror watch list, was released after a short questioning.

Officers also failed to examine a USB drive concealed behind the car radio, the report claims, adding that an email address the suspect supplied s_orry@hotmail.com, was fake - another detail that went unnoticed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the report also reveals that the Abdeslam brothers were linked to other suspects while police did not follow up when Salah used a picture of the ISIS flag as his social media profile picture.

On March 22, ISIS-linked attackers struck Brussels airport and the metro killing 32 people

It comes just days after it was revealed that Belgium had prevented six attacks over the past two years, with the country still a prominent target for jihadist assaults.

In January 2015, Belgian police dismantled a cell in Verviers in the east of the country which was later seen as the rough beginnings of the jihadist group that attacked Paris in November that year.

That team of extremists used machine guns and suicide bombs to murder revellers at the Bataclan music venue, at bars and restaurants and outside the Stade de France stadium.

And on March 22, ISIS-linked attackers struck Brussels airport and the metro killing 32 people, despite the arrest in the Belgian capital only four days earlier of the last surviving jihadist from the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam.

Since that attack, Belgian police and intelligence services have seen a major increase in information, 'up to 600 tips daily', Jacobs said.
Egypt Moneek Robinson, 28, is accused of killing her three-year-son and reportedly has no remorse because she believed the boy 'was the soul of Hitler'. She is seen above in a mugshot

A woman accused of killing her three-year-old son has 'no remorse' because she believed the boy 'was the soul of Hitler'.

Egypt Moneek Robinson, 28, is in custody for the alleged murder of her three-year-old son, Aries Juan Acevedo, whose body was found in a suitcase floating in the swamp behind her home in Callaway, Florida.

Robinson's former cellmate Tiffany Powell, 28, who is jailed on attempted murder charges, told investigators that the Florida woman believed her son 'was the soul of Hitler' and has no remorse over his death.

She told investigators that Robinson believes she was protecting everyone by killing the boy because he was an evil child.

According to court records, Powell requested to no longer share a cell with Robinson after talking to investigators.

Egypt Moneek Robinson (left) is in custody for the alleged murder of her three-year-old son, Aries Juan Acevedo (right), whose body was found in a suitcase floating in the swamp behind her home in Callaway, Florida

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Robinson, who is being held at Bay County Jail without bond, the News Herald reported.

Shortly after her arrest, authorities say that Robinson admitted to the murder, saying she stabbed him and threw his body into a suitcase.

According to an incident report obtained by Daily Mail, as soon as one of the responding deputies emerged from his patrol car at the scene of the crime, he was approached by Robinson with the words, 'Just put me into handcuffs. I did it. I killed my baby and put him inside of the suitcase.'

On her way to the sheriff's office, the deputy wrote in his report that she made several unprompted statements about the impending end of the world, and how she was trying to save her son from a Biblical flood.

'The world is going to flood and everyone was going to be drowned and I can't be drowned, therefore, I have to be shot in the head,' Robinson was quoted as telling the officer before declaring, 'I was just trying to save my baby!'

She later added: 'Everyone on Noah's Ark relieved and my baby will relive again!'

Robinson was hospitalized with a self-inflicted wound after her arrest. She is seen above in a Facebook photo

Shortly after her arrest, authorities say that Robinson admitted to the murder, saying she stabbed him and threw his body into a suitcase

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Robinson, who is being held at Bay County Jail without bond, the News Herald reported

Robinson was hospitalized with a self-inflicted wound after her arrest.

The State Attorney's office has filed a motion to include a video of Robinson taken during her time in jail as part of the evidence in future court proceedings, the Herald reported.
A red panda died at Wednesday at a suburban Philadelphia zoo, a year after one of its two triplet brothers died of a brain infection.

Shredder, a two-year-old male, died early on Wednesday morning at Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania. A necropsy found he had an enlarged heart and thickened heart walls, both signs of heart disease.

The red panda, whose species is listed as endangered, was the second of triplets to die at the Norristown zoo. His brother, Clinger, died in November 2015 from encephalitis caused by a brain parasite.

Officials are examining the surviving triplet, Slasher, to ensure he's healthy.

Shredder (pictured), a two-year-old male red panda, died early on Wednesday morning at Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania

Members of staff noticed that Shredder had trouble breathing late on Tuesday.

They examined him during an emergency evaluation and found that the red panda had an irregular heartbeat, as well as fluid in his lungs, zoo officials said. Shredder died a few hours later.

The red panda 'showed no signs of illness and was even seen eating bamboo throughout the day,' the zoo's veterinarian said in a statement shared on Facebook.

'Just as in people, animals' hearts can be abnormal without any signs.'

A necropsy found that Shredder (pictured) had an enlarged heart and thickened heart walls, both signs of heart disease. He began having trouble breathing the night before his death

Slash, the only surviving triplet, will have an echocardiogram to make sure his heart is in good health.

Clinger, Slash and Shredder's brother, died in December 2015 of encephalitis, a brain infection caused by a parasite.

The zoo said Shredder's disease was unrelated to the brain parasite that killed his brother Clinger.

Fewer than 10,000 red pandas live in the wild. The triplets came to the zoo in the spring of 2015 from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

The institute website says that despite sharing a name, red pandas aren't closely related to giant pandas. They are smaller and have no close living relatives.

Shredder is one of three red pandas who arrived at Elmwood Park Zoo in the spring of 2015 (two are pictured above). One of the triplets died last year of a brain parasite
A man has told how he and his 11-year-old autistic narrowly escaped death after they were bitten by a deadly tiger snake.

Matt Horn and his son, Braeden, were both struck multiple times by the venomous serpent in their home in Diamond Creek, Victoria, on Tuesday.

Braeden was playing in the hallway when the snake slithered up to him, Mr Horn said.

Mr Horn (pictured) dragged the snake away but was himself bitten as he protected his son

Matt Horn's autistic 11-year-old son, Braeden, (pictured) was bitten by a deadly tiger snake

A man and his 11-year-old autistic son are lucky to be alive after they were bitten by a deadly tiger snake (pictured)

'He had already started playing with it when my wife saw him out of the corner of her eye,' the father told the Herald Sun.

'It struck him on the toe and his inner leg,' he added.

Mr Horn was bitten twice as he ripped the snake off of his son and managed to wrestle it into a bedroom.

But after trapping the deadly serpent inside the room, he was unable to escape until police and a snake catcher arrived.

Snake catcher Mark Pelley, known as the Snake Hunter, was called in to nab the feisty tiger snake.

'Both of them got bitten and they got away unscathed because they did the right thing by calling triple-zero and the ambulance attended them straight away,' Mr Pelley said.

Matt Horn and his son, Braeden, were both struck multiple times by the venomous serpent in their home in Diamond Creek, Victoria, on Tuesday

'The only problem was the father was trapped in the room (with the snake) and he couldn't get any treatment from the paramedics until I arrived to remove the snake.'

Mr Pelley said tiger snakes weren't normally aggressive and would only strike if people attempted to handle them.

'The son had autism and didn't know what was happening so he handled the snake and it bit him,' the snake catcher said.

Tiger snakes often enter homes to escape the heat on hot nights, Mr Pelley added.

The tiger snake's bite is among the most deadly in the world and the pair could have died. They spent 20 hours in hospital but survived.
A mother says she has forgiven a man whose suicide attempt led to the death of her son - who fell from a ledge as he tried to save him.

Tommy Bennett, 24, died in Honolulu after a friend went on to a 14th floor ledge saying he was going to killing himself.

Mr Bennett died after a window gave way as they both walked back to safety.

His friend, who has not been named, survived the fall in August 2015.

Tommy Bennett, left and right, tried to save a 19-year-old friend from falling from a 14th storey ledge at a dormitory in Hawaii but ended up plunging to his death

The 24-year-old, pictured, was visiting a mutual friend in Honolulu and has been hailed as a hero for his attempts to save the teenager

An inquest in Plymouth heard he died from 'multiple traumas' caused by the fall but he was praised for his actions by the coroner.

The senior Plymouth and south Devon Coroner Ian Arrow recorded a conclusion of accidental death.

He described Mr Bennett as a 'brave and noble man'.

Mr Bennett's mother Lesley Heard, 51, from Plymouth, Devon, now says she has forgiven the man he was trying to save.

She said: 'Because he took a lot of the blame because he was the reason Tommy died, I wanted him to know he was forgiven and I did not hold anything against him.

'Being a mum, my heart went out to him too. I don't want his life to be full of regrets for what had happened. I want Tommy's legacy to be that he gave up his life for his friend.

'I felt it was important for my recovery and his that we spoke.

'We have messaged each other several times but I felt it was really important to tell him that I knew it was an accident, that he was under great pressure at the time and I didn't blame him.'

On her son she added: 'The word 'hero' is banded about too freely, but what my son did was heroic.

'We are all so immensely proud of Tom for his unselfish act in helping someone else.'

The teenager is reported to have been attempting to jump from the 14th floor of a dormitory at the University of Hawaii.

The two men were visiting a student at the dormitory at the time of the incident. It is reported there was a party ahead of the start of the new university semester.

Mr Bennett tried to rescue the teenager from a ledge outside the window, but both men fell.

Mr Bennett's mother Lesley Heard, pictured receiving a Pride of Plymouth Award on his behalf, said she has forgiven the younger man over her son's death

Police say the 19-year-old was badly hurt in the incident and was taken to hospital in a critical condition.

Mr Bennett's friend who was hosting the party, Ted Guillory, speaking shortly after the incident, said: 'Tommy cared about people - and loved - a lot of people in his life, and he proved to me that night that he cared about other people more than he even cared about himself. He is a hero.

'What he did that night was the most heroic thing I've ever seen anybody do.'

Mr Bennett leaves behind his mother and father Lesley and Chris and siblings Annaliese, Emily, Ross and Isabelle.

He was born in the UK and raised in Philadelphia for 14 years. He moved to Hawaii four years ago.
Jolie filed for divorce a week after the family fought on a flight from France to US

Claimed he is casting blame at her for 'consequences of his own actions'

She approved, but accused him of 'grossly mis

The custody battle between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt is only getting uglier.

Jolie is now accusing her estranged husband of 'publicly impugning' her character in new court documents that claim Pitt is 'terrified the public will learn the truth'.

The allegations came as Jolie approved of Pitt's request that their children's records be legally sealed.

Pitt, 53, and his legal team asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to seal all records relating to their six children, claiming their accessibility is a violation of privacy, on Wednesday.

Jolie, 41, agreed with his motives but accused Pitt of using court filings to deflect from his 'own role in the media storm that has engulfed' their children .

Angelina Jolie is now accusing her estranged husband of 'publicly impugning' her character in new court documents that claim Pitt is 'terrified the public will learn the truth'

Jolie, 41, accused Pitt of using court filings to deflect from his 'own role in the media storm that has engulfed' their children in new documents filed by her attorney Laura Wasser this week

Jolie's team accused Pitt of superfluous court filings that 'could have been avoided' but are instead a 'desperate effort to obscure the truth which threatens his reputation'

'There is no question that this case has been of extraordinary interest to the public since its inception,' read the papers, filed by Jolie's attorney Laura Wasser.

'And there is little doubt that (Pitt) would prefer to keep the entire case private, particularly given the detailed investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Children and Family Services into allegations of abuse.'

Wasser then goes on to claim that Jolie has not addressed 'each and every false allegation made by (Pitt)' in an effort to protect their children 'from additional tabloid fodder'.

'Her conduct in this case has been grossly mischaracterized by (Pitt)', the statement continues.

'Likely terrified that the public will learn the truth, (Pitt) is now casting blame at (Jolie) for the consequences of his own actions.'

Jolie's legal team then accuses Pitt of superfluous court filings that 'could have been avoided' and protected his children's privacy, but are instead a 'desperate effort to obscure the truth which threatens his reputation'.

The papers also claim that Pitt has refused to follow the couple's agreement that he will currently only have weekly therapeutic visits with his children.

Since October 2016, therapists have been present during each of Pitt's visits with his children Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

The papers also claim that Pitt has refused to follow the couple's agreement that he will currently only have weekly therapeutic visits with his children

Since October 2016, therapists have been present during each of Pitt's visits with his children Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne

The allegations have come to light as Jolie approved of Pitt's request that their children's records be legally sealed (pictured)

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt a week after the family took a flight from France to California in which the actor allegedly got in a fight with his son Maddox

The frequency and duration of these visits are being decided by the children's therapists, which the papers state were put in place by Jolie and Pitt after the infamous incident on a flight from Europe to California in September 2016.

Pitt and his family allegedly got into an argument aboard a private plane in September, causing an anonymous source to call the DCFS.

Pitt was exonerated in November by officials with the FBI and LA DCFS amid accusations he was physically abusive to Maddox during the flight from France.

Although further weekly therapeutic visits have been scheduled through the end of January, Jolie's team claims Pitt has made repeated requests for more.

The papers state that Pitt's legal team began requesting increased visitation in a non-therapeutic setting which 'was not recommended by the children's therapists and not agreed upon in the prior custody stipulation agreement'.

It states that it is up to the therapists to decide, based on each child's 'individual feelings and progress', when and how Pitt's visits can increase.

Aside from news of the documents, sources tell People magazine that Angelina's lawyers insist Pitt's accusations of her leaking information were only announced due to his fear of private information surfacing in the divorce proceedings.

Pitt was exonerated in November by officials with the FBI and LA DCFS amid accusations he was physically abusive to Maddox during the flight from France

A source claims Maddox and Pax had 'no interest in seeing their dad' amid the ongoing strife

An insider said the children were at odds as some of the girls are 'accusing their older brothers of being responsible for their father'

'Yesterday's filing makes no sense legally,' the source told DailyMail at the time.

'Everyone was surprised that he filed with the court because he already filed with the court before. Besides, Angelina had already signed an agreement to seal the court file. It protects the children and it also protects information about Brad.'

'All parties have already agreed and signed. The accusation that she is not protecting the privacy of her children is clearly false.'

'If Angelina wanted to detail what happened on the plane, she could have. Nothing has been released and Angelina has kept silent.'

Meanwhile, Pitt's lawyers are claiming that Jolie made public the names of her children's therapists and other mental health professionals.

It's the first time since Jolie's September 19 divorce filing in Los Angeles that Pitt has gone on the offensive against his estranged wife.

Jolie - who currently retains temporary physical custody of the children - remains undaunted in her attempts to get sole custody of the kids

At the time of the parting, Pitt said that 'what matters most now is the well-being of' their six children, adding: 'I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time.'

The ongoing strife has caused tension in the household amid the holiday season, according to an In Touch Weekly report, as an insider said that the children were at odds because Maddox and Pax had 'no interest in seeing their dad' amid the tough time.

'Some of the girls are accusing their older brother of being responsible for their not seeing Brad either,' the source said, while another insider told the publication that some of the kids 'can't understand why they're being kept away' from Pitt.

Pitt and Jolie - whose romance is believed to have begun during filming of Mr & Mrs Smith, while he was still married to Jennifer Aniston, in 2005 - are due back in court next month for a hearing in the ongoing case.

The actor is requesting to share joint physical and legal custody of the six kids with Jolie, who wants sole physical custody with Pitt receiving scheduled visits.

Jolie - who currently retains temporary physical custody of the children - remains undaunted in her attempts to get sole custody of the kids.
The future first daughter was on her way to Hawaii with her husband and kids

Married couple Matthew Lasner and Dan Goldstein were kicked off a flight from New York to San Francisco last month when Goldstein started yelling at Ivanka

The man covers his face with his jacket hood and refuses to answer Watters'

One of the two men that were thrown off a JetBlue flight for accosting Ivanka Trump was silent when he was confronted by a reporter over the stunt.

O'Reilly Factor correspondent Jesse Watters confronted one of men outside their Brooklyn apartment recently for his new Fox News show, which premieres this Saturday.

In the video, Watters doesn't name which of the men he is speaking to, but they have been previously identified as married couple Matthew Lasner and Dan Goldstein.

Fox News reporter Jesse Watters recently confronted one of the two men who were kicked off a JetBlue flight for accosting Ivanka Trump

It's unclear which of the two men - Matthew Lasner or Dan Goldstein - Watters confronted since he keeps his head covered with a hood

He was out walking the family's dog when approached

The man's hood is pulled over his head in the video so that his face is obscured.

'You harassed a woman with her baby on a flight. You proud of that?' Watters asks.

The man refuses to comment as Watters holds up a microphone for him to respond.

'Real class act aren't you? Now you're afraid to show your face?' Watters adds.

The clips ends with the man continuing to keep silent. Watters discussed the confrontation on the O'Reilly Factor Thursday night, calling the men 'such cowards'.

The incident the video references happened last month, when Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and their children took a JetBlue flight from New York to San Francisco.

He was quick to tighten his fur-trimmed hood around his face before cameras could see it

Ivanka accosters Daniel Goldstein, left, and Matthew Lasner, right, are pictured above.

Lasner posted this picture of Ivanka seated on the plane just before he and his husband were kicked off last month

Goldstein started yelling at Ivanka as he boarded the flight, while he was holding his own child in his arms.

'Why is she on our flight. She should be flying private,' Goldstein said of the future first daughter.

Ivanka paid as little attention as possible and tried to occupy her children with some crayons to diffuse the situation until the crew escorted the couple off the plane.

Lasner refuted that version of events on Twitter, writing: 'My husband expressed his displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane.'

But just an hour prior to that Lasner wrote on Twitter: 'Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil'

Lasner has been very vocal about his distaste for Trump on Twitter, writing shortly after the election about marching against the President-elect.

He also posted a video when he marched in Chicago with the hashtags '#notmypresident' and '#weslay.'

And he posted a photo on Instagram of himself with one of his protest signs, which read: 'RESIST! Autocracy. RISE UP!'

Lasner also retweeted a man who wrote on Twitter: 'Dear @IvankaTrump + @JaredKushner, there are swastikas being painted across America by people who support your father. PLEASE SAY SOMETHING.'

Just before they took off, Lasner also took a photo of Ivanka sitting on the plane writing that they were kicked off for 'expressing displeasure about flying w/ Trumps.'

And while Goldstein was happy to go after Ivanka ,and Lasner was eager to defend his actions, neither of the men confronted Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner, who was right next to her on the flight standing in the aisle the entire time.

The plane was still boarding when the incident occurred, so the crew was able to get the two men and their child off the flight and avoid any further incident.

Goldstein began saying to the crew as they escorted him off the plane: 'You're kicking me off for expressing my opinion?!!'

It was after they were off the plane that Lasner then posted his tweets defending his husband and the photo of Ivanka sitting in her seat.

Those tweets were then deleted in less than an hour. An hour after that Lasner deleted his entire account.

Since the incident, the couple has received heavy criticism for the act. A Change.org petition was also started - which gained more than 20,000 signatures - calling for Lasner to lost his job as a professor at Hunter College.
An inmate who appeared in a notorious 'cellfie' wearing a guard's helmet and shield during the Birmingham jail riot has denied two charges of prison mutiny.

Ross Queen, 30, has been charged with two counts of collaborating with other inmates to overthrow the lawful authority of a prison.

He is also charged with one count of taking a photograph inside a prison without permission.

Court: Ross Queen, 30, appeared at Birmingham Magistrates Court (pictured) charged with two counts of collaborating with other inmates to overthrow the lawful authority of a prison

The heavily-tattooed lag, who gave his address as formerly Overbury Road, Birmingham, and HMP Birmingham, appeared at the city's magistrate's court today.

Queen appeared in handcuffs in the dock and spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth.

He entered not guilty pleas to all three charges during the 20-minute hearing.

The court heard disturbing details of the riots which involved more than 260 prisoners taking over the G4S-run jail which lasted 12 hours on December 16.

Prosecutor Angela Hallan said: 'The incident escalated into a serious event when a set of keys were taken by a prisoner from the prison operations manager.

'The keys were used to unlock cell doors. The prisoners also had keys to access staff areas.

Jail: The court heard details of the riots at HMP Birmingham (pictured) which involved more than 260 prisoners taking over the G4S-run jail which lasted 12 hours on December 16

'Prison staff were threatened. They tried to stop the movement of prisoners but they were threatened with weapons like syringes.

'The lives of other prisoners were also in danger. It is not possible to tell who took the photograph.

'It quite clearly shows two prisoners wearing riot helmets and holding a riot shield. Officers said he was quite pleased with himself. It could be a potential selfie.'

The court heard that prior to the riots, Queen was on remand in the prison awaiting trial for common assault and breaching a non-molestation order.

Hockam Salhan, defending, told the court: 'He claims he didn't know anything about the photographs.

'He didn't have any involvement in the riot.

Control: Police had to be drafted in to get the riots under control at HMP Birmingham last month

'On 16th December at about 11 o'clock prison officers were in fact escorting him back to his cell after a doctor's appointment where they saw a riot taking place.

'Mr Queen was taken back and locked in his cell. There came a point where someone got hold of the keys and went around unlocking cell doors.

'At that point Mr Queen then came out of his cell and was unsure what had happened.

'He then saw a riot helmet and he picked it up and foolishly put it on and the shield. And somebody took a photograph.

'What then happened was the riot had escalated even further and Queen went into his cell and locked himself in from the inside in fear of being attacked.

'There are prison officers who will be able to support what he says.

'His involvement was that he stupidly came out of his cell and put the helmet on.

'He was moved to Wandsworth Prison and somebody showed him the picture in a newspaper.'

Queen was remanded back into custody at HMP Birmingham and ordered to appear at the city's crown court on February 3.

Prison mutiny, which is contrary to Section 1 of the Prison Security Act 1992, carries a maximum ten year jail sentence.

Queen appeared alongside convicted drug dealer Carl Brookes, 32, in the notorious 'cellfie' snap during the riots.
A conwoman fleeced families out of thousands of pounds by preying on them with a Disneyland holiday scam.

Ashleigh Turbitt offered bargain breaks to the Paris theme park through her firm South Shields Day Trips, which were paid for in advance by excited families and then cancelled at the last minute.

At Newcastle Crown Court Turbitt, 26, from South Shields, pleaded guilty to fraud between February 2015 and July 2015.

Conwoman Ashleigh Turbitt, 26, from South Shields, South Tyneside, who pleaded guilty to fraud at Newcastle Crown Court today

A charge of conspiracy to commit fraud between January 2014 and July 2015, which she denied, will be dropped.

Prosecutor Paul Cleasby told the court that police have impact statements from 50 victims who fell prey to Turbitt's fraud.

Mr Cleasby said: 'This case involves a number of victims who sought to purchase these holidays from Miss Turbitt.

'The officer in the case has attended with personal statements from 50 victims who have suffered. On some, the impact upon them has been significant in the extreme.

'These are once in a lifetime trips people have striven to afford.'

Mr Cleasby said Turbitt will now be pursued under the Proceeds of Crime Act, which means any assets she has may be seized.

Judge Tim Gittins adjourned sentence until March and said Turbitt could have bail in the meantime.

Turbitt was warned by the judge at Newcastle Crown Court (pictured) that a custodial sentence was a possibility

The judge warned her: 'I cannot give you any indication as to what the sentence will be. You appreciate these are serious matters.

'I do not know enough about the case or enough about you as an individual to give you any indication.

'All options are open, that includes custody.'

Graeme Cook, defending, told the court pre-sentence and medical reports will be prepared on Turbitt before the case is back in court.
treatment for free at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences

call him the 'ghost baby' and 'giant head'

His parents say their

A baby with an abnormally large head has had a lifesaving operation to reduce its size by close to 30cm.

Mrityunjay had been dubbed the 'ghost baby' and called 'giant head' after his head swelled to 96cm due to a condition called hydrocephalus that results in excess fluid build up on the brain.

However a procedure to drain 3.7 litres of fluid from his skull has seen the size shrink to 70cm in the space of a month and a half.

Mrityunjay suffers from hydrocephalus that results in excess fluid build up on the brain

His head measured 96cm but after an operation it reduced in size to 70cm

The baby, from Ranpur State, India, is now set to have cranoplasty to reshape his deformed skull.

Dr Dilip Parida, superintendent of the AIIMS hospital at Bhuwaneshwar, said: 'The child was admitted on November 20 with the head containing almost 5.5 liters of fluid.

'We have removed 3.7 liters of fluid so far by external ventricular drainage.

'Now, the circumference of the head has come down from 96cm to 70cm. The cognitive functions of the child have improved a lot, he is stable and has responded well to the treatment.'

Mrityunjay's parents' Kamalesh Das and Kavita say their family have been shunned in their local community due to their son's deformity.

Kamalesh, 35, who works in Kolkata, said: 'People would call our baby a 'ghost' because of his unusual appearance.

The baby's head looks smaller after the procedure. He is now set to have cranoplasty to reshape his deformed skull

Mrityunjay with his mother Kavita and father Kamalesh. His parents say their family have been shunned due to their son's deformity

'As his head reduces to a normal size, the attitude of our neighbours and villagers will change.

'They will stop calling him derogatory names like 'barka matha' (giant head) or 'ghost baby'.

'Now, I am sure that he will be able to lead a normal life. It wouldn't have been possible without the help of the doctors.'

The treatment would have cost around 6,000 but the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India's premiere hospital where the state provides free treatment to patients is covering costs.

Mrityunjay isn't the only baby to suffer the condition. Medical records claim Roona Begum, from Tripura in India, head swelled to 94cm.

Mrityunjay's parents and doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)




Anger is growing over the failure to honour a rape victim who spent nearly 30 years campaigning to stop violence against women after her horrific ordeal.

Jill Saward died yesterday aged 51 due to a brain haemorrhage, decades after she was brutally sexually assaulted at her vicarage home in Ealing, west London, in 1986.

She was just 21 years old at the time and a virgin before the attack, in which a gang burst into the home and also viciously beat her father and then-boyfriend, who were left with severe injuries.

Today many people have called for Ms Saward - who was the first rape victim to waive her right to anonymity in the UK - to be given a posthumous honour in recognition of her years of work to support victims of violence and sexual abuse.

Survivor: Calls have been made for Jill Saward, pictured on This Morning in October last year, who spent years campaigning to end violence against women, to receive a posthumous honour for her work

Author and fellow women's rights campaigner Julie Bindel, pictured, said Ms Saward deserved recognition 'if anyone did'

Others have taken to social media to criticise the honours system for failing to recognise her

Some criticised recent recipients of honours when their achievements are compared to Ms Saward's

Julie Bindel, co-founder of law-reform group Justice for Women and author of several works on domestic violence, said Ms Saward 'deserved recognition'.

She told MailOnline: 'I am totally against the honours system, but nevertheless, if anyone deserved recognition, Jill did.

'We owe her a lot, her bravery and tenacity were next to none, and she sacrificed a great deal to speak up for women who suffered the worst violence and abuse.'

Meanwhile many people took to social media, criticising the honours system for failing to recognise Ms Saward's efforts.

Twitter user @bobwiggin said: 'Jill Saward never received an honour which she richly deserved but not to worry the page of the Queen's chamber has been. #honoursfarce.'

A user known as 'Beckie' said: 'So David Cameron thought his hairdresser was more worthy of an honour than Jill Saward who campaigned on behalf of rape victims?'

Another user known as Tanza added: 'Jill Saward...another who was deserving of an honour, yet died without her contribution to society being fully recognized. So wrong.'

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour, Katie Russell, of charity Rape Crisis, praised Ms Saward for her dedicated work over the years.

She said: Jill was a very dear friend to Rape Crisis; she worked tirelessly for three full decades.

We were all deeply shocked and saddened and moved, we all felt closely to Jill because she was our sister to the cause.

She took her trauma and turned it into a positive decision.

I think there were countless survivors out there that will be really touched.

It is difficult to quantify the exact impact on an individual. But Jills campaigning had a significant impact.

'Sexual anonymity extended, revision of sentencing guidelines, [it led to] a whole range of really positive improvements.

Undoubtedly huge strides have been made in no small parts to the efforts of incredible campaigners and like Jill herself.

Jill would say we still have a long way to go.. In this day and age there are still inappropriate comments made by judges.

It is important that Jills work continues. There is undoubtedly still that need.'

Traumatic: Her father the Rev Michael Saward, pictured with his daughter Jill, and boyfriend were tied up during the attack. Rev Saward died in January 2015 aged 82

Jailed: Martin McCall, left, and Christopher Byrne, right, pictured in police custody after the attack, received just five years and three years in jail respectively for the rape, while gang leader Robert Horscroft was jailed for 14 years for burglary

The brutal attack, which came to be known as the Ealing Vicarage Rape, received widespread media attention. This continued at trial, during which the judge drew criticism when he said the trauma Ms Saward had suffered 'had not been so great'.

Mr Justice Leonard also provoked outrage when he handed rapists Martin McCall and Christopher Byrne shorter jail terms than gang leader Robert Horscroft, who was sentenced for burglary and assault and did not take part in the rape.

Ms Saward is survived by Gavin Drake, her journalist husband of 23 years, and her three sons.

Born in Liverpool in 1965, Ms Saward once wrote she had no issues with being 'tagged' as a rape victim, adding: 'I make no complaint about this tag as it has enabled me to challenge politicians and work for change.'

But in the years that followed, she made sure it was not the infamous attack that came to define her, but rather her response to it.

She went on to write a book about the attack and campaign on issues including sexual violence and violence against women.

Family life: Ms Saward, a mother of three, with her husband Gavin and their baby son in 1998

Tributes: Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, described Ms Saward as a 'heroic and remarkable campaigner' in a heartfelt tweet today. Another suppoerter, Julie Bindel expressed the feelings of many when she said: 'You took the shame away from women who're raped'

KEY FIGURES IN THE ATTACK Father: Canon Michael Saward THE FATHER Extraordinarily, Canon Michael Saward continued living in the vicarage for 13 years after the attack. He went on to become canon treasurer of St Pauls Cathedral. The composer of more than 100 hymns, and a regular letter writer to newspapers, he died two years ago aged 82. THE RINGLEADER Robert Horscroft, 34, got by far the longest sentence, 14 years for burglary  despite not being involved in the rape. His past record for burglary was considered particularly serious by the judge. Released in 1996 after ten years in prison, Horscroft met Miss Saward for two hours in 1998 and sought forgiveness. He was last known to be living in a council flat. FIRST RAPIST Martin McCall, a 22-year-old drug addict, got just five years for raping Miss Saward at knifepoint, with another five for burglary. He was released in 1993, after serving only five years and eight months inside, and worked as a security guard, including at the BBC. It emerged he had been working for the corporation days before presenter Jill Dando was murdered in 1999. Martin McCall, a 22-year-old drug addict, got just five years for raping Miss Saward at knifepoint, with another five for burglary. Pictured, McCall in police custody CRICKET BAT THUG Andrew Byrne was known to have battered Miss Sawards father and boyfriend with a cricket bat as they lay face down. But his full role in the attack alongside his brother was never fully explained as he died before standing trial. Following his arrest, he was beaten so severely by a fellow inmate at Wormwood Scrubs that he never recovered consciousness and died aged 29 in December 1990. SECOND RAPIST Christopher Byrne, 22, received five years for burglary  two more than his sentence for rape. He changed his name after leaving prison and married Maria Petrou in 1993. They had a daughter, but Miss Petrou fled and subsequently killed herself after learning his identity. Byrne was last known to be living in Acton, West London. The judge: Sir John Leonard THE JUDGE Sir John Leonard is said to have regretted to the end of his life the one great blemish on his career, his comment that Jill Sawards suffering had not been so great. He said: I would be very sad to be remembered as the vicarage rape case judge. But his words and the lenient sentences he passed shadowed him to the grave. When he retired in 1993 he made a public apology to Miss Saward. He died in 2002 aged 76. THE BOYFRIEND David Kerr, 21 at the time, bravely struggled with the gang as they beat him with a cricket bat, fracturing his skull and leaving him permanently deaf in one ear. He split from Miss Saward several months later. She had talked of forgiveness and faith, while he could not believe a God would allow something so evil. He ran a business, married and had two children. In 1998, then living in Essex, he told the Daily Mail that he never shared the need to forgive those animals and would still want to kill them. Advertisement

The case led to changes in the treatment of victims of sexual violence. Miss Saward, who subsequently married twice and had three children, won a series of changes to the law, including a ban on accused rapists being allowed to cross-examine their victims if they represented themselves at their trial.

She continued to oppose recent calls for sex attackers to remain anonymous until conviction, and wrote to the House of Lords about the issue only three months ago.

In the wake of the furore over honours for celebrities and mandarins, there were questions as to why Miss Saward was never recognised for her campaigning.

Living by the belief that forgiveness 'gave her the liberation and freedom to move on', Ms Saward even met Horscroft 12 years after the attack and told him he 'did not need to say sorry' for what he had done because 'he was not the one who hurt her'.

Miss Saward suffered a stroke on Tuesday and died in hospital in Wolverhampton. Her husband, journalist Gavin Drake, and their three sons said she had dedicated her life to helping others and had requested her organs be donated.

Today supporters, campaigners and charities came together to pay tribute to Ms Saward and her tireless work on behalf of victims.

Scroll down to read more about the brutal crime that shocked the country

Vicar's daughter Jill Saward was raped at St Mary's Vicarage in Ealing, pictured, in 1986

Tireless work: Ms Saward, pictured in 1990, dedicated her life to campaigning against sexual violence and violence against women

'SHE WAS COURAGEOUS': TRIBUTES TO JILL SAWARD Rape Crisis England & Wales paid tribute to Ms Saward's achievements. A spokesperson said: 'Jill Saward was a good friend and valued supporter of the Rape Crisis movement for three decades. 'Waiving her right to lifelong anonymity, she campaigned tirelessly for both legal and social justice for victims and survivors of rape and sexual violence. 'Jill was able to step outside of her own harrowing experience to highlight the needs and rights of all those impacted by sexual violence. 'Most recently, she was focusing on the need to educate jurors at rape trials through the JURIES campaign, which she co-founded. 'Jill was courageous, pioneering and an inspiration. She will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with her family at this sad time.' Ms Saward co-founded Jurors Understanding Rape Is Essential Standard (JURIES) to campaign for mandatory briefings about myths and stereotypes about sexual violence in trials. Co-founder Alison Boydell said: 'Jill was an indefatigable advocate for victim-survivors of sexual violence and dedicated her life to campaigning and raising awareness of rape and sexual violence. 'She also championed many other campaigns and causes and supported so many through her work, kindness and compassion.' Broadcaster Nicky Campbell tweeted to say Ms Saward had been a 'hero of our times'. He said: 'I'm devastated to hear that Jill Saward has died. She was a beautiful, remarkable and inspiring human being. A courageous hero of our times.' The Rev Arun Arora, director of communications for the Church of England, added Ms Saward was a 'brave woman who campaigned tirelessly'. He said: 'Her courage, fortitude and commitment made her an outstanding campaigner as well as a loyal friend to many.' Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: Jill Saward was a courageous campaigner. Her work led to crucial changes in the law and attitudes. Attorney General Jeremy Wright said: Her tireless campaigning opened the eyes of many politicians and helped to ensure that victims are now placed at the heart of the criminal justice system. Clementine Churchills biographer Sonia Purnell tweeted: Someone who would genuinely have deserved an honour. RIP Jill. Another Twitter user, Richard Davies, wrote: What does it say about our Government when Victoria Beckham gets a NY honour and Jill Saward nothing. Advertisement

In a statement on her website from her family said: 'It is with deep shock and great sadness that we must announce that Jill Saward (Jill Drake) died this morning in New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton, following a subarachnoid haemorrhage on Tuesday. She was 51-years old.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT In comments impossible to imagine today, Jill Sawards trial judge shamelessly trivialised her unspeakable trauma. From that moment and for the next 30 years, she campaigned tirelessly to ensure the courts would treat women better. Her work led to crucial changes in the law and helped place the rights of sex assault victims at the heart of the criminal justice system. So doesnt it say it all about our rotten honours system that while vapid celebrities like Victoria Beckham and self- serving mandarins like Sir Ivan Rogers and Sir Foreign Aid Mark Lowcock are showered with gongs, a woman of grit and integrity who immeasurably improved the lives of countless others got nothing? Advertisement

'In consultation with medical staff, the family readily agreed to Jill's desire to be an organ donor. Jill dedicated the past 30 years of her life to helping other people.

'It gives us great comfort to know that our wonderful wife, mother and sister was able to help other people to the very end.

'We would like to thank all those who contributed to her medical care in recent days.

'We are also so very grateful for the many expressions of prayer, love and support we have received.

'At this stage we would appreciate space and time to come to terms with what has happened.'

Ms Saward co-wrote a book, Rape: My Story, and over the following years appeared on TV, radio and newspaper pages to publicise the plight of rape victims.

Underlying her decision to discuss her trauma openly was a determination to help tighten rape laws and strengthen the framework of support that victims received.

Forgiveness: In 1998 Ms Saward met with Horscroft and told him he 'did not need to say sorry'

Ms Saward, pictured in 1990, was described as a 'wonderful wife, mother and sister' who 'helped people to the very end'

HOW ANONYMITY RULES SHAPED THE COURT CASE Under anonymity rules in place at the time of her case, Ms Saward was not allowed to know the name of her rapist until the day of the court hearing. Until 1988 it was an offence to reveal the name of either a rape victim or the accused, to protect the latter from stigma should charges be dropped or they be acquitted in court. Ms Saward said that the shock of learning the name in court distracted her from concentrating on the evidence she had to give. The case was entrenched with infamy when the one man who did not rape Ms Saward received substantially longer jail sentences than the two that did. Advertisement

Ms Saward previously spoke of suicidal thoughts, and planned to kill herself on three separate occasions, only to stop at the last moment.

As well as setting up a help group for victim's and their families in 1994, she became a committed counsellor.

Her work took an equally political hue, in part through the many battles she spearheaded to change how rape victims were treated in the courtroom.

Among the causes she successfully campaigned for was the barring of alleged rapists from cross-examining victims while representing themselves in court.

She worked tirelessly to hold both the Government and the legal system to account over the rights of sexual violence victims, most recently rallying against calls to allow accused perpetrators anonymity until conviction.

Forgiveness was a key tenet of Ms Saward's philosophy. 'I believe forgiveness gives you freedom. Freedom to move on without being held back by the past,' she once wrote.

Ms Saward, pictured in 1997, is survived by her journalist husband of 23 years Gavin Drake and her three sons
An teenage soldier from Iran has been hailed a national hero after he was blown up by a landmine while risking his life to save a stray dog trapped in barbed wire.

Mohammad Bakhtar, 19 spotted the animal tangled up and in pain near an ammunition depot at a military base in the north west Iranian city of Tabriz.

He rushed over to help the dog - only for a mine to explode, shattering his right leg.

An teenage soldier from Iran has been hailed a national hero after he was blown up by a landmine while risking his life to save a stray dog trapped in barbed wire

The brave actions of the young Sunni soldier have made him a national hero in the Shia-majority country.

Doctors battled to save his leg after the accident on December 17, but their attempts were unsuccessful.

Bakhtar told Al Jazeera: 'I was standing at my post that day ... I heard the poor dog moaning non-stop.

'I knew that it was a minefield, but I couldn't reach the poor dog. Finally, I finally put my right foot to the other side of the barbed fence to release the dog. As soon as he ran, [the mine exploded].'

He was given a hero's welcome when he was transported back to his home town, with printed banners saying: 'Welcome back, brave soldier' (file picture)

Well-wishers travelled from across Iran to praise the youngster for his actions while one senior official described him as 'a source of honour and pride for every Iranian'.

He added: 'I was in pain, but it gave me a very good feeling that thousands of people came to the hospital to visit me.'

The teenager insisted that if he saw the animal in the same position now, he would do the same thing again.
Jailed: Samantha Butler, above, has been sent to prison for 14 years for beating up a 'Sugar Daddy' pensioner

A woman has been jailed for 14 years for beating up a 'sugar daddy' pensioner with a Canals of England picture and torturing him with a hot iron.

Gordon Bland, 79, offered Samantha Butler, 40, cash to 'help her out a bit' after meeting her in his local pub.

But when they got back to his flat in Crystal Palace, south-east London, she immediately hit him over the back of the head and vowed to kill him, he said.

She went on to batter him with a picture frame, throttle him with an electrical cable and repeatedly brand him with his iron.

Butler admitted causing Mr Bland's wounds, which included bleeding on the brain, but denied trying to kill him and claimed the iron must have 'fallen on him.'

A jury at the Old Bailey deliberated for less than an hour to find Butler not guilty of attempted murder but guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

The court heard Butler had 35 previous convictions for 91 offences including theft, assaulting a police officer and child cruelty.

Giving evidence, Mr Bland said he met Butler for the first time on July 9 2016 at a pub called the Royal Albert where he was a regular customer.

He drank four pints, on top of two he had consumed earlier, and struck up conversation with Butler who was sitting on the stool next to him, jurors were told.

Mr Bland said the topic of sex 'was not directly spoken about' and he denied the suggestion by Butler's lawyer that he was 'all over her' at the bar.

Location: Samantha Butler, 40, attacked Gordon Bland, 79, and vowed to kill him when they got to his flat on this road (pictured) in Crystal Palace, South London, to have sex

'I understood she was happy to come back to my flat, hopefully to go to bed was the idea,' he said.

He said that sex was mentioned in that he discussed with her 'a sort of Sugar Daddy arrangement'.

Mr Bland said he offered to 'help her out a bit' with her rent, adding: 'I said she could have what I had on me, which was about 40.'

The victim told jurors that he had made what he thought was a 'Sugar Daddy arrangement' with Butler and given her around 40 which was all he had on him at the time.

She later changed her mind and gave the money back to him, the court heard.

However, when they arrived at his one-bedroom flat, he said he was hit on the back of the head and attacked by Butler with items lying around his home, including an iron.

The attack, which went on for about an hour, caused a series of injuries to his head, shoulders, torso, legs and arms, which included various iron-shaped burn marks and bruising, jurors were told.

Police were called to the flat in Orchard Grove on the evening of July 9 last year after a neighbour heard Mr Bland's cries for help.

Officers wearing body-mounted cameras found the victim lying half-naked between his bed and the settee.

The footage was played to jurors at the Old Bailey and Mr Bland was heard saying that Butler 'turned on me' after they 'came back here for the nookie'.

Butler disputed the victim's account and claimed she passed out fully clothed in his living room only to wake up in her pants and bra, with Mr Bland also undressed on the sofa.

Unlucky-in-love: Mr Bland met Butler at the Royal Albert pub in Upper Norwood

Butler told jurors that she was 'scared' and said: 'I was screaming, asking where my clothes are, throwing things at him - the remote control that was on the side.'

She told jurors that she picked up an iron and the plug 'went flying' and hit the pensioner.

The defendant denied plugging in and pushing a heated iron into Mr Bland's body, or threatening to kill him.

She told jurors that the iron, which appeared to have caused multiple burn marks on his body, 'must have fell on him while he was on the floor'.

Prosecutor Ian McLoughlin queried whether the iron could possibly have fallen on him 'again and again and again'.

Butler, of St Aubyns Road, Upper Norwood, south London, denied attempted murder and grievous bodily harm with intent. But during the trial, she entered a guilty plea to grievous bodily harm.

Reading from Mr Bland's victim impact statement, Mr McLoughlan said the victim was left in 'extreme pain and discomfort' and was still unable to use his left hand as a result of the attack.

He had been unable to carry on his work as a porter at a block of flats on the Thames, a job he had loved.

He described himself as a 'sociable' person whose activities had been curtailed, making him feel 'trapped' in his own home.

He was unable to prepare and enjoy food, struggling to carry out tasks such as chopping onions.

The lawyer told the court that Butler had been diagnosed with an emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Andrew Mooney, mitigating, said all the previous convictions were attributed to getting money for drink or drugs or as a result of drink and drugs.

The mother-of-three left home at 14 and had started taking drugs at 13.

Mr Mooney said she had a history of abusive relationships.
Shellby Conder, 18, has been arrested after allegedly downing five beers in the beer aisle of a Walmart store in the Villages, Florida

An 18-year-old woman has been arrested after allegedly downing five beers in the beer aisle of a Walmart store and groping a paramedic who was trying to help her.

Shellby Conder, from Summerfield, Florida, has been charged with petit theft, battery on a police officer and resisting arrest following the incident in the Villages on Tuesday.

The teenager reportedly told the manager at the Walmart store that she was drunk and needed a ride home.

Conder allegedly grabbed one of the paramedics by the testicles as she was being evaluated.

She is also accused of kicking an officer in the leg as she was put in handcuffs, Click Orlando reported.

According to the police report, she told officers while in the patrol car: 'I'm sorry to who I hit.'

Police said that the woman was clearly intoxicated when they arrived at the store.

She reportedly told officers that she 'drank beer from the beer aisle and wanted to go home'.

Conder is being held on a $15,500 bond at Sumter County Jail.
The remains of five people, including three children, have been discovered inside a home in rural western Oregon that burned down on Tuesday after someone appears to have deliberately started several fires on the property.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that detectives confirm the remains are of a man, a woman and three children. They were found over the last two days in the scorched rubble, and the bodies appear consistent with that of the Kroeker family that owns the property.

The medical examiner will confirm the identities of the deceased.

Feared dead: Officials have recovered from the scene of an Oregon house fire five remains who are believed to be Erin and Keith Kroeker, their 10-year-old twins and seven-year-old girl

Deadly fire: The remains of a man, a woman and three children were uncovered over the last two days inside the Kroekers' fire-ravaged home near Hubbard, Oregon (pictured)

The fire dead body was found by firefighters inside the burning home on Tuesday afternoon

The sheriff's office said it does not believe there is a danger to the public and no suspects are being sought, but sheriff's Lt. Chris Baldridge stopped short of labeling the incident a murder-suicide, reported the station KATU.

'We are just are not ready to comment yet what we found,' the official told reporters on Thursday.

'The home belonged to Erin Kroeker, 39 and Keith Kroeker, 42, and their three children, 10-year-old twin boys named Luke and Braedon, and seven-year-old daughter, Leia.

Investigators were trying to piece together what took place in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, when firefighters found a home, a shop and detached garage ablaze.

The property is near the town of Hubbard amid hop farms in the Willamette Valley off Interstate 5, between Portland and Salem.

Each of the fires ignited separately, Baldridge had said, describing the case as a complex criminal investigation, which is expected to continue into the weekend.

Emily Hamberger told OregonLive.com she has learned from some mutual friends that the Kroekers, whom she knew from church, hosted a dinner party Monday night, just hours before the fires ravaged their home.

Firefighters responded to reports of the house fire at about 3am on Tuesday and found three different structures alight, including the house

Firefighters found the dead body inside one of the structures about 30 minutes after they arrived

When their friends left, Erin and Keith's three children were getting ready for bed.

Hamberger said Keith Kroeker was an elder at the Mid Valley Community Church and his wife helped with the children's choir.

Firefighters responded to reports of a house fire at about 3am on Tuesday and found three different structures, which were not close together, alight. About 30 minutes later, the first dead body was found in the smoldering debris.

About 100 first responders, among them 40 investigators, spent three days sifting through piles of the debris.

The work at the site has been made more difficult due to the size of the crime scene, the extent of the damage to the structures and low temperatures, which caused the thousands of gallons of water used to put out the flames to freeze over.

Last party: A friend said Keith and Erin Kroeker hosted a dinner party Monday. As the last of their friends departed that night, their kids (bottom row) were getting ready for bed

Mrs Kroeker, pictured here with her seven-year-old daughter, Leia, helped with the children's choir at the family's church

Neighbor Michelle Palacios said the Kroeker family have been there for years, the Woodburn Independent newspaper reported.

'We've always been neighborly ... we've gone to each other's jewelry parties, we've exchanged Christmas cookies,' Palacios was quoted as saying. 'This is just bizarre.'
Among the thousand cuts Donald Trump delivered to Hillary Clinton en route to her political death was the accusation that she was cozy with the repressive Sultan of Brunei. A 2012 email released Thursday by the U.S. State Department seems to back him up.

In the message, Clinton aide Huma Abedin told the then-presidential candidate that Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, worth a reported $20 billion, wanted to see her and husband Bill for an intimate 'family style dinner.'

Brunei government officials 'say [the] sultan sees wjc [William Jefferson Clinton] as part of his family and this is treating you in this "informal" way,' she wrote.

The sultan's embrace of brutal Muslim Sharia law to guide his nation's criminal justice system made him the center of controversy two years later when Hollywood celebrities discovered that it criminalized homosexuality  and imposed a potential death penalty for 'sodomy.'

The Sultan of Brunei (left) invited Hillary Clinton (right) to an intimate dinner in 2012, according to an email released Thursday, saying he considered Bill Clinton a part of his family

When the sultan introduced harsh Sharia law as the new legal standard for his tiny country, Hollywood revolted by boycotting hotels he owned (Jay Leno is shown picketing the Beverly Hills Hotel)

In an email, a Clinton aide told Hillary that the sultan considered her husband Bill like a member of his family

The criminal code there also requires stoning to death for adultery, the amputation of limbs for theft, and flogging for abortion and alcohol consumption.

Former 'Tonight' show host Jay Leno led a group of picketers outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, which the sultan owns, saying that 'evil flourishes when good people do nothing, and that is pretty much what this is. This is not complicated. These are not crazy left-wing wacko people.'

Daytime TV host Ellen DeGeneres boycotted the hotel, and other sultan-owned properties. So did businessman Richard Branson and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Trump raised the issue in a June 2015 speech, saying that Clinton 'accepted $58,000 in jewelry from the government of Brunei when she was Secretary of State  plus millions more for her foundation.'

'The Sultan of Brunei has pushed oppressive Sharia law, including the punishment of death by stoning for being gay. The government of Brunei also stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Hillarys Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she would absolutely approve if given the chance.'

The September 2012 email from Huma Abedin laid out the plan for Clinton to visit with the ultra-rich sultan in a more intimate setting than he would allow with most other world leaders

Abedin was Clinton's top aide during her presidential campaign and a deputy chief of staff during her years as U.S. secretary of state

Clinton, it emerged later, followed the ethics rules requiring her to turn the jewelry over to the federal government for its archives. But Clinton Foundation records show gifts totaling between $1 million and $5 million from the sultan.

Trump also blasted the foundation for taking 'up to $25 million from Saudi Arabia, where being gay is also punishable by death. Hillary took millions from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and many other countries that horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.'

It was a conscious effort to put Clinton on defense, seizing the moral high ground on gay rights that liberal Democrats typically claim exclusively as their own.

Huma Abedin's email to Clinton noted a previous 'visit' with the sultan by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton  and Hillary's mother Dorothy Howell Rodham, who had died in 2011.

Donald Trump blasted Clinton in a June 2016 speech for associating with the Brunei dictator

Celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and business leaders like Richard Branson leaped into the 2014 controversy by boycotting hotels owned by the sultan

The message reached Clinton on her private plane when she touched down in Brunei six hours later. It was on that visit that she received the jewelry.

The U.S. State Department's official recap of the trip records that 'His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei and Her Majesty the Queen warmly welcomed Secretary Clinton to their home, the Royal Palace Istana Nurul Iman, for dinner with the Royal Family.'
pilots tracked it with their cameras but it wouldn't show on radar

However after two years of investigations scientists have no clue what it was

The navy footage was handed over to Chilean government experts for analysis

A video from Chile shows a UFO flying in the atmosphere and releasing a

A mind boggling video from the Chilean navy showing a UFO making unusual movements and omitting plumes of an unknown substance has been released causing swathes of speculation.

CEFAA, the Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, have been studying the footage for two years but have failed to identify the object seen in the country's airspace.

A naval helicopter gathered the footage on a routine daylight coastal patrol in November 2014 when the camera operator noticed a flying object ahead.

The Chilean navy helicopter tracks the UFO which was an estimated 35-40 miles away

The technician aimed the camera at it immediately and zoomed in with the infra red (IR) for better clarity.

The pilots tracked the UAP (Unidentified aerial phenomena) from around 35 to 40 miles away and tried several times to communicate with it but received no response.

They then reported the unknown traffic to two radar stations either side of the UFO but neither could detect it on radar despite the object being well in range of both.

However the stations were able to detect by the navy helicopters.

Air traffic controllers confirmed that no traffic, either civilian or military, had been reported in the area, and that no aircraft had been authorized to fly in the controlled air space where the object was located, the Huffington Post reported on Friday.

The flying object starts to omit a gas or liquid substance. The pilots tried to engage with it but received no response

Despite being able to see it the helicopter's on-board radar was unable to detect the object

The helicopter's on-board radar was also unable to detect the object.

The UFO, which was said to be the same size as a helicopter, omitted a long plume of gas or liquid before disappearing into the clouds.

General Ricardo Bermudez, Director of CEFAA during the investigation, said: 'We do not know what it was, but we do not know what it was not.'

General Bermudez, accompanied by nuclear chemist Mario Avila, a CEFAA scientific committee member, conducted interviews with the two officers at their Navy base.

'I was very impressed by these witnesses,' he said.

'They were highly trained professionals with many years experience, and they were absolutely certain that they could not explain what they saw.'

The footage was captured on a sophisticated Surveillance & Reconnaissance (SAR) camera in broad daylight.
A huge fountain which erupted in Rio left a trail of destruction in its wake after a pipe suddenly burst.

Trees were torn down, buildings were damaged and a gaping hole was left in the road after the sudden explosion in Santissiomo, in the west of the Brazilian city.

It took two hours for firefighters to get the jet of water under control.

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Trees were torn down, buildings were damaged and a gaping hole was left in the road after the sudden explosion

Trader Ivan Gomes Pinho, 57, told Extra: 'I saw the world end. I was in the street when I heard a burst and I saw everything flood.'

And he added: 'The water did away with everything.'

His business was badly affected, and Carlos Frederico dos Santos, 54, said the inside of his home was totally destroyed.
President Barack Obama mocked Republicans on Friday for their 'rush' to repeal his health care law, while he's still in office, because they say it's so terrible, and leave it in place while they hash out an alternative.

'What is it that they're afraid of?' Obama asked during an interview with Vox today. 'Why wouldn't they want to say, "Here's our plan." '

Obama offered to support Republicans' health care plan if it is 'demonstrably better' - and he can see it beforehand.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

President Barack Obama mocked Republicans on Friday for their 'rush' to repeal his health care law, while he's still in office, because they say it's so terrible and leave it in place while they hash out an alternative

The 'repeal and delay' strategy has come under scrutiny from Democrats, and some Republicans.

Republicans are united in their belief that the Affordable Care Act, which the president says they renamed Obamacare 'to feed on antipathy towards me,' needs to be amended. A handful of Republican lawmakers are urging their colleagues to put the breaks on repeal until they can agree on replacement legislation.

GOP politicians will be doing health care consumers a 'huge disservice' if they move forward with their repeal and delay strategy, Obama said Friday.

Legislators of both parties should oppose it, he said.

Republicans have said they want to keep popular parts of the law like the provision that guarantees coverage for consumers with pre-existing conditions.

The president said the Republican plan must therefore include at least 'some modest obligation' to require taxpayers to buy health care 'so that they're not gaming the system.'

'Or you've got to be willing to provide huge subsidies to the insurance companies,' he stated.

The outgoing president said, 'I think what you're going to see now, now that we have a Republican president-elect, we have Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, is that all the promises they made about how they can do it better, cheaper, everybody's gonna be satisfied, are going to be really hard to meet.'

'What is it that they're afraid of?' Obama asked during an interview with Vox today. 'Why wouldn't they want to say, "Here's our plan." '

GOP politicians will be doing health care consumers a 'huge disservice' if they move forward with their repeal and delay strategy, Obama said Friday

Obama told Vox Americans need to adopt the nickname of the state of Missouri: 'Show me'

Republicans are going to bring about a 'massive undoing' of what amounts to one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the Democratic president said, and they 'need to put forward very specific ideas about how they're going to do it.'

There should be a public debate over the proposed law, just like there was over Obamacare, and the American people should have the opportunity to decide if they like Republicans' proposal better, he argued during the live interview with Vox that aired on the White House's website.

'If you are absolutely convinced, as you have been adamant about for the last seven years, that you can come up with something better, go ahead and come up with it,' Obama said, in a challenge to Republicans.

The GOP says its confident it has the better ideas. If that's the case, 'they shouldn't be afraid to make that presentation.'

What's the 'rush'? Obama asked. Why don't they want to say what their plan is and provide a side-to-side comparison to Obamacare before they repeal it?

'If you can in fact put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamcare and replacing it with your plan - but I want to see it first,' the president said, earning laughter from his live audience.

The president said he would need third-party experts from across the ideological spectrum, the Congressional Budget Office and news outlets like VOX to review it, too.

President Obama leaves the Blair House after attending an interview with with Vox this afternoon

A congressman close to President-elect Donald Trump has said it's too late to change 2017 insurance plans, and the deadline is fast-approaching to negotiate with insurers for 2018, therefore Obamacare cannot be immediately rescinded.

New York Representative Chris Collins, a member of Trump's transition team, told MSNBC that Republicans are not planning to 'pull the rug out from under' Obamacare enrollees by changing plans for 201.

'We're talking about new plans in 2019, or later, that will be more affordable, let patients pick their doctors, we'll have to figure out exactly how we make sure that Americans are not disadvantaged, and that's a promise we've made,' Collins stated.

Rand Paul, Tom Cotton and other Republican senators have said they believe the party should package a replacement law with Obamacare repeal instead of tackling them separately.

'I think that we as Republicans need to coalesce and pass a solution that solves the problems that Obamacare actually made worse,' Cotton told MSNBC yesterday afternoon.

The Arkansas senator said 'that may not take effect until, say, the open season of 2018 because you need to prove for an orderly transition.

'But I think it would not be the right path for us to repeal Obamacare without laying out a path forward, even if that path, say, transitions gradually over the next year to two years,' he stated.

Obama told Vox Americans need to adopt the nickname of the state of Missouri: 'Show me'.

He argued during the sit down interview that Obamacare had gotten a bad wrap. After the law passed, everything that was wrong with the health care system was attributed to it, he said. 'Even if it had nothing to do with it.'

Republicans' refusal to admit that the law 'was doing some good' also contributed to negative public perceptions, he said in the exit interview.

Critics were misreading data on the law, anyhow, he said. Disapproval ratings included left-wingers who think the Obamacare law didn't go far enough.

'In the dissatisfied column were a whole bunch of Bernie Sanders supporters who wanted a single-payer plan,' Obama stated.

The president will have one last opportunity next week in Chicago to defend the Affordable Care Act in his farewell address before he leaves office. The White House said this week he wouldn't be discussing it publicly after Jan. 20.

Obama deflected claims during the Vox interview that he's fighting so hard right now to keep the health care law in place because he's concerned about his legacy.

'Keep in mind, I'm not the one who named it Obamacare,' he said.

Republicans did. 'They were the ones who named it Obamacare care because what they wanted to do was personalize this and feed on antipathy towards me in their party as an organizing tool, as politics.
A property tycoon has banned single mothers, battered wives, plumbers and low income earners from becoming tenants.

Fergus Wilson, a landlord, defended a document posted online which revealed the latest 'letting criteria' which he has issued to a letting agent.

The 69-year-old set out 11 stringent rules for those who will not be able to rent his properties, which also includes families with children, pet owners, smokers, single adults and workers on zero hours contracts.

He's even banned plumbers from renting out his properties as he believes they overcharge him while carrying out simple repairs and adding extra jobs to the list.

Married couple: Mr Wilson (pictured with his wife Judith) set out 11 rules for those who will not be able to rent his properties in 2017 - including single women

Instead only those who are able to afford rent and can provide a rent guarantee are to be accepted for his properties in 2017.

Fergus runs his Kent property empire along with his wife Judith and said he is continuing to sell-off properties, but that families and single parents pose a problem as it can take up to 13 months to get a possession order if he decides to sell.

Last year he campaigned to become Kent's Police and Crime Commissioner and vowed to take on the bullies who batter their girlfriends, wives or partners.

But he said that typically the bullies cause damage to his properties by kicking down front doors, and also causing damage inside the homes, therefore he doesn't wish to take on those who are victims of domestic violence.

Mr Wilson has sold off many of his properties in Kent, but said families and single parents pose a problem owing to the length of time to get a possession order when he decides to sell

List: This is the controversial document that lists what is not acceptable for Mr Wilson's tenants

WHAT IS THE LAW? WHO CAN LANDLORDS 'BAN' AS TENANTS? Private landlords cannot discriminate against tenants on several grounds, including: Disability Gender reassignment Pregnancy and maternity Race, religion or belief Sex or sexual orientation Landlords cannot refuse to carry out repairs based on any of these factors either. This also means landlords should make 'reasonable changes' to a property to allow a disabled person to live there. That includes changing the tenancy agreement to allow pets if a blind person has a guide dog. What is reasonable varies from case to case and may not apply if the landlord lives in the same property, but a landlord who refuses any changes could be breaking the law. It is not illegal to refuse to rent a home to a benefit claimant, and many landlords opt to refuse on the basis that benefit is paid in arrears and rent is demanded upfront. Mortgage lenders may also have conditions meaning houses cannot be rented to those on benefits. Source: Citizens Advice Bureau Advertisement

However, when it comes to plumbers, he does not want them to rent from him.

He claims this is because they regularly offer to carry out seemingly routine repairs before telling him that more work needs to be done, leading him to believe that they are ripping him off.

In the document, which was issued at the end of December last year, Fergus said: 'Like any business, we are consistently fine tuning to best advantage..'

Landlord: Fergus Wilson defended a document posted online which revealed that tenants must not be 'mums, plumbers of battered wives'

The multi-millionaire claimed he did not discriminate against minorities - as long as they pay the rent.

Fergus added: 'We do a letting criteria every year, and like four out of five landlords we don't accept those on low incomes and housing benefit.

'The average salary in Ashford is 23,000, but with average rents and to provide a rent guarantee someone would need to be earning at least 30,000 a year for our properties.

'The system is against single people, but most of my properties are family homes. We don't have one-bedroom flats.'

'We have said nothing against lesbians and homosexuals or coloureds. As long as they can pay the rent. We are in business to make money so we make a selection based on a sensible business plan.

'If ever a person came in wearing pink socks and defaulted on rent, and it became a regular problem, then we would stop renting to people who wear pink socks.'

Fergus said he takes details of national insurance and employment to prove who is living in his properties to insurers and to prove that his tenants can afford to live there.

Meanwhile he also takes car registration details for council car parking permits and for flats with allotted spaces.
A 14-year-old boy was fighting for his life tonight after being stabbed in a park.

The unidentified teenager was found next to a bus stop outside Ravenscourt Park in West London after collapsing there having climbed a fence to escape.

Blood stains were visible on the pavement in Hammersmith today following the stabbing in an area of the park said to be popular with young people after dark.

Blood stains were visible on the pavement in Hammersmith today following the stabbing

The 14-year-old boy was fighting for his life tonight after being stabbed in Ravenscourt Park

The teenager was found next to a bus stop yesterday outside the park in West London

Metropolitan Police officers were called to the scene at 7.50pm after the boy was found injured in the street  and an area was sealed off inside the park.

Officers said the boys condition was potentially life threatening, following the stabbing just yards away from Ashchurch Grove where homes sell for 2million.

One resident told the London Evening Standard: 'The park is closed at night and the boy would have had to have scaled a five foot fence to get out.'

Lindy Holston, who lives near where the teenager was found, added: 'It is a really nice area so its a big shock that a boy has been stabbed here.

'When I saw the lights and police last night I thought it must have been a traffic accident. For such a young boy to have been stabbed is just shocking.'

Metropolitan Police officers were called to the scene at 7.50pm after the boy was spotted

Police from Hammersmith and Fulham are appealing for any witnesses to come forward

Some 12 teenagers were murdered in London last year with all of them stabbed, according to the report by Standard journalists Justin Davenport and Matt Watts.

A police spokesman said today: The victim, aged 14, was found near a bus stop on Goldhawk Road, near the junction with Ashchurch Grove.

He was taken to a Central London hospital by London Ambulance Service suffering a stab wound. His injury is being treated as potentially life threatening.
An ISIS propaganda chief has died in an airstrike in the Syrian city of Raqqa, US officials have revealed.

The US-based coalition killed senior group facilitator Mahmud al-Isawi in an air strike in the extremists' self-proclaimed capital.

His death, on December 31, was confirmed by the US military command in the region today.

Coalition forces carried out the strike in the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS's self-proclaimed capital

CENTCOM identified the target as al-Isawi, an IS operative who managed instructions and finances for ISIS leaders and provided propaganda and intelligence support.

He was the 16th significant member of the network's external operations killed last year.

Before moving to Raqqa, the longtime ISIS member supported the group's media and intelligence operation in Fallujah.

He also facilitated transregional travel with other operators, and had what CENTCOM dubbed a 'close working and personal relationship' with Abd al-Basit al-Iraqi, emir of the group's Middle East attack network.

Al-Iraqi was killed in a coalition air strike on November 2.

'His death, combined with the recent successive deaths of other ISIL leaders plotting terrorist attacks, has degraded ISIL's trans-regional attack and facilitation network, and is forcing ISIL to increase their focus on internal security,' CENTCOM said.

'The coalition will continue to track and eliminate ISIL terrorists who plot and conduct attacks against coalition nations and our allies, wherever they are hiding.'
When cornered at a Pennsylvania boat launch by pursuing officers earlier this week, police say a female motorist drove into the Susquehanna River, where she continued drinking beer.

Police approached the woman in York Haven on Monday afternoon to arrest her for fleeing from them earlier. She was wanted for running a stop sign.

They say instead of complying with their orders to stop, the driver slammed the gas pedal and accelerated into the Susquehanna River.

Police in Pennsylvania cornered a motorist at the Conewago Boat Launch Area in York Haven, but the woman hit the gas and drove into the river, where she continued drinking beer

They say officers tried to communicate with her, but she just ignored them and drank her beer as her black 2011 Subaru Outback floated in the water about 20 feet off shore, reported the York Daily Record.

A fire department boat eventually brought the woman back to shore and she was taken to a hospital.

The incident began unfolding at around 4pm when officers with the Northeastern Regional Police Department spotted the Subaru SUV drive past a stop sign in East Manchester Township without stopping.

The officers ran the vehicles license plate number through their system to find the drivers address in York Haven and were on their way there when their colleagues at the Newberry Police Department contacted them saying there had been a sighting of the Subaru at the Conewago Boat Launch Area, commonly known as 'The Point.'

Officers from the two neighboring police departments cornered the woman at the boat launch and tried to talk to her, but she gunned her SUV into the water.

When she was brought ashore by firefighters, she was described as going in and out of consciousness. She was taken to York Hospital for treatment.

A fire department boat had ot be launched to retrieve the beer-swigging driver from the Susquehanna River, where her SUV was floating 20 feet off shore

As of Friday afternoon, the beer-swigging motorist has not been named.

Newberry Township Police Chief John Snyder told the Daily Mail by phone that charges were pending against the woman, although he declined the specify them.

Snyder also would not identify the suspect, citing what he called an 'emotionally disturbed situation.'
Waitress: Georgia Harris, of Chelmsford, Essex, was jailed after trying to blackmail a 22-year-old policeman she was dating

A string of messages have appeared on the Facebook profile of a teenage waitress who was jailed after trying to blackmail a policeman she was dating.

Georgia Harris, of Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to eight months in a young offenders' institution after trying to make it sound like the 22-year-old officer had threatened to rape her.

But after Harris, who was 19 at the time, was jailed at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent on Wednesday, a few messages appeared on her Facebook profile.

According to The Sun reporter Brittany Vonow, one of the messages posted yesterday at 5pm read: 'I'm back and ready to party #MasterKey.'

And another shared only hours later said: 'How can I be in prison and be on social media your (sic) all dumb c***s.'

Her Facebook Messenger app was also allegedly accessed around the same time, and HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey, has now launched an investigation.

Mysterious: After Harris, who was 19 at the time, was jailed at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent on Wednesday, a few messages appeared on her Facebook profile (above)

Earlier this week the court heard how Harris secretly filmed the officer as they sat in his car and had a conversation she instigated about a 'hypothetical' sex attack.

She edited the recording and sent him a short clip in which he could be heard saying, 'I'd be raping you' and she replied, 'I don't want you to rape me'.

Harris, now 20, threatened to report him to colleagues unless he paid 250 into her account - but she was arrested after the officer went to bosses at Kent Police.

She had written an apology to her victim, who she met on a dating website, in which she said: 'I was not in my right mind. After all, who blackmails a police officer?'

But Judge Jeremy Carey said he had to lock up Harris - who admitted blackmail - to reflect the seriousness of the offence and deter others.

The court was told how Harris was being driven home by the officer last May when she asked him about rape.

Jailed: Earlier this week the court heard how Harris (pictured) secretly filmed the officer as they sat in his car and had a conversation she instigated about a 'hypothetical' sex attack

Peter Forbes, prosecuting, said: 'She said, 'What would you do if I told you I was just 15?' He asked why she would say that, and said her website profile indicated she was at least 18.

'She said she was 17 and asked him, "If you were to force me to have sex with you, what would that be?" He replied, "I'd be raping you" and went on to explain why that would be the case.'

The officer was 'confused' by the conversation and the couple later argued in an exchange of texts. He told Harris not to contact him again.

She responded by sending him the cropped version of their conversation with a text that said: 'You said you were going to rape me and said you didn't care I was young.'

Alarmed by the turn of events, he asked Harris to call him and she demanded 200 or she would go to the police with the video.

Texts that followed increased the demand to 250, although no money was handed over before she was arrested.

Probe: HMP Bronzefield (file picture) in Ashford, Surrey, has now launched an investigation

Maidstone Crown Court heard on Wednesday that the couple met online in December 2015 and went out a few times.

Harris began to pester him about staying at his home but he refused. When he ignored her texts she warned: 'I know where you live.'

The officer did not understand her behaviour but they continued to meet for dinner and a shopping trip.

He said in a statement he felt he was 'trapped in a corner' and being used for money. 'She has always been talking about money and asking for money,' he explained.

He also described feeling 'vulnerable' following the blackmail attempt and now suffered 'trust issues'.

A probation officer told the court Harris was motivated by financial greed and immaturity.
said: ''It was off the record, and I will abide by that'

When asked to comment on what happened,

Donald Trump headed down to One World Trade Center Friday morning for his meeting with the editors of Conde Nast.

It was a small group he brought along with him for the trip, choosing to have advisor Kellyanne Conway and the current spokesperson for his transition team Hope Hicks accompany him to the meeting.

Conway sported a pair of $695 patent red pumps from Gucci for the meeting.

The only other person Trump chose to take with him was Michel Flynn, his recently selected national security advisor.

Among those who were in the meeting on Friday was Graydon Carter, Trump's longtime adversary and the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair.

The meeting was off the record, and when a Politico reporter asked Carter for comment on Friday, he said: 'It was off the record, and I will abide by that.'

Downtown: Donald Trump (above) met with top editors and digital directors from Conde Nast on Friday morning

Clique: He was joined by advisor Kellyanne Conway and the current spokesperson for his transition team Hope Hicks (above)

Farewell my friends: Donald waved as he exited the building to get into his car on Friday

The group spent just over an hour meeting with top editors and digital directors at the company, arriving at the offices of the media company at 9:55am and then departing at 11:20am, at which time they headed straight back to Trump Tower.

Trump revealed earlier in the day that it was the editor of Vogue who convinced him to make the visit, writing: 'Anna Wintour came to my office at Trump Tower to ask me to meet with the editors of Conde Nast & Steven Newhouse, a friend. Will go this AM.'

Carter had been asked about the meeting on Thursday and said: 'It wouldnt be my first choice to spend a Friday morning in a group like that.

'I try to be a decent host ... I went to Anna Wintour and I said, "Listen, I dont want to make him feel uncomfortable."'

The get together comes three weeks after Trump trashed Vanity Fair in a series of tweets following a story that was run on their website asking if Trump Grill was the worst restaurant in America.

Trump responded by writing: 'Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!'

Meanwhile, of the eight stories previewed on the cover of the new issue of Vanity Fair, five are about Trump.

'Trumpocalypse Now,' reads the cover.

The fact that Trump met with the editors was somewhat of a surprise given how critical many of Conde Nast's titles have been of him both before and after the election.

It was even more shocking that he has agreed to meet at their building, with Trump having taken almost every meeting since he was elected at Trump Tower.

The only other time Trump has done this was with his New York Times meeting shortly after the election.

Wintour visited Trump Tower last month, and it seems highly likely that Ivanka Trump will be appearing on the cover of her magazine in the upcoming months.

She previously featured Melania Trump on the cover of Vogue in 2005 after her wedding.

Graydon Carter (above) would not comment on the meeting

Trump has appeared inside and on the cover of Vanity Fair in the past, and he and wife Melania have attended the magazine's annual Oscar party on three occasions, most recently in 2011.

The magazine has been a harsh critic however of Trump during the election, with Carter personally writing a searing piece on Trump in the November issue.

In that piece he wrote about a number of things, including dining out with Trump.

'Dinner with Trump is generally a one-sided affair. He talks so much and with such velocity that it can make your hair flutter. Whatever wife he has at the time tends to say nothing,' wrote Carter.

The magazine editor later wrote: 'He has touched - embraced - every third rail in American politics. He has offended (and I apologize if I've left some group out): African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, war heroes - war heroes! - families of war heroes, the disabled, women, and babies. Babies! Through word or action, Trump has promoted gun violence, bigotry, ignorance, intolerance, lying, and just about everything else that can be wrong with a society.'

Carter is also the man who first made mention of Trump having small hands, calling him a 'short-fingered vulgarian' decades ago while writing for the magazine Spy.

Trash talk: 'Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!' wrote Trump last month (above)

Trump has lashed out many times in the past at Carter as well, attacking his magazine, his Vanity Fair Oscar party and his own restaurant, Waverly Inn.

'Vanity Fair circulation down 20 percent. My third rate stalker should start looking for a new job,' wrote Trump of Carter in 2012.

He followed that tweet up with another dig at Carter the next day writing: 'Vanity Fair party at Tribeca Film Festival was a bust.'

'Dopey Graydon Carter, who is presiding over dying @VanityFair magazine, is also presiding over dying Waverly Innworst food in city,' wrote Trump on Twitter three years ago.
Britain can use its security and defence skills as a bargaining chip in the EU negotiations, a former top diplomat has suggested.

Jonathan Faull said while it was impossible for Britain to 'buy access' to the single market Europe would be eager to ensure the UK stays inside cross border security systems.

Mr Faull was a senior Eurocrat responsible for responding to David Cameron's reform demands ahead of the referendum - a deal rejected as inadequate by British voters.

Prime Minister Theresa May is due to launch her official Brexit negotiations before the end of March and has vowed to secure UK firms the 'best possible access' to the trading bloc's market place.

Jonathan Faull (pictured last year) said while it was impossible for Britain to 'buy access' to the single market Europe would be eager to ensure the UK stays inside cross border security systems

Brexit Secretary David Davis told MPs last year the Government was prepared to consider paying in for access.

But Mr Faull - who worked at the European Commission for 38 years - told BBC Newsnight: 'Can you buy access to the single market? It's not something that's on sale in that way.'

'You're a member of the single market as a member of the EU or the EEA. Or you're a foreign country outside it, and you conclude agreements with the EU - if you want to and it wants to - regarding the way in which your goods, services, capital and people move around.'

But Mr Faull stressed the personal interest in the matter of Michel Barnier, the Frenchman who is the EU's chief negotiator.

'Michel Barnier has done a lot of work in recent years on defence and strategy issues and he believes the UK is absolutely crucial to the defence and security of Europe, the continent,' Mr Faull said.

'And Franco-British cooperation in defence and security matters is extremely important and he will want - and I think all Europeans will want - a way to be found for that to continue.'

Mr Davis told MPs in December ministers would 'consider' making a financial contribution in order to get 'the best possible access for goods and services to the European market'.

Mrs May is due to spell out more details of her Brexit vision in a speech later this month.
NYPD sources say on the morning of his death, Zabar was visited by his 23-year-old

Nightclub owner slain: Savyon Zabar, 54, a well-known figure on Manhattan's gay nightlife scene, was found strangled to death inside his apartment Wednesday

A popular Manhattan nightclub owner and a prominent member of the citys LGBTQ community has been found strangled to death inside his Upper West Side apartment, in what police have now labelled a homicide.

The body of 54-year-old Savyon Zabar, who weighed around 400lbs and was best known for operating the now-defunct Chelsea hotpot Escuelita, was discovered Wednesday morning by his roommate, who made the 911 call.

EMT workers who responded to the scene at the victims fourth-floor apartment at 151 West 81st Street pronounced Zabar dead.

Initially, police who were summoned to the apartment observed that Zabar's body had no visible signs of trauma.

However, an autopsy later revealed significant deep tissue hemorrhaging consistent with strangulation. Zabar's death is now being investigated as a homicide.

Zabar's roommate walked into his bedroom at 155 West 81st Street and found the 400-pound man lying unconscious on the bed

Familiar faces: Zabar, pictured left with Debbie Harry and right with Rihanna, was best known as the owner of the now-defunct gay Latino nightclub Escuelita in Chelsea

According to the NYPD, there was no evidence of forced entry in the unit and nothing appeared to have been taken.

On Friday, police were looking to interview Zabar's masseur, although so far he has not been named a suspect.

Sources within the NYPD told PIX11 the 23-year-old massage therapist would come to Zabar's home twice a week and the two were involved in a sexual relationship.

On Wednesday, the unnamed masseur told Zabar's roommate that after the rubdown, the 54-year-old club promoter attempted to have sex with him.

When the man left at around 10.30am, Zabar's roommate went inside his bedroom and found the heavyset man lying unconscious on the bed.

Homicide: An autopsy performed on Zabar, seen above with his dogs, Nala and Simba, has revealed significant deep tissue hemorrhaging consistent with strangulation

Zabar was said to have carried on a sexual relationship with a 23-year-old masseur, who was in his apartment the morning he was killed. The photo above shows Zabar with his friends

Savyon Zabar, known to friends by the nickname 'Big Ben,' was remembered as a mainstay of Manhattans gay nightlife scene.

Zabar made headlines in 2012 when he battled the state Liquor Authority, which was trying to strip his gay Latino nightclub, Escuelita, off of its liquor license in the wake of a scuffle that broke out at the venue.

Last April, Zabar was a victim of an armed robbery when two men held him at gunpoint and stole $3,400

Zabar publicly accused the state of trying to force out his establishment catering to Hispanic and African-American gay men in order to keep minorities and members of the LGBTQ community out of the family-friendly Times Square area.

'Minorities are no longer welcome on West 39th Street, as they do not it into the gentrification plans of the city, ' Zabar declared at the time, according to the NY Daily News.

In the end, Zabar carried the day and Escuelita was allowed to keep its license, but closed its doors for good in February 2016.

Last April, Zabar was a victim of an armed robbery when two men held him at gunpoint and got away with $3,400 in cash, two iPads and a cellphone.

Zabar's Facebook page is filled with photos of his two beloved dogs, Nala and Simba, and countless selfies depicting the black-clad club impresario posing up with his many male friends and various celebrities, including Rihanna, Debbie Harry and the Israeli transgender pop star Dana International.

Zabars friends took to social media this week, remembering the 54-year-old as a hardnosed, tough-talking but generous man who lived for the nightlife.

Zabar made headlines in 2012 when he battled the state Liquor Authority, which was trying to strip his gay Latino nightclub, Escuelita, off of its liquor license; the venue closed last year

Six years ago I took on a job with someone very difficult, demanding, headstrong and stubborn, Zabars associate Fernando Munizaga wrote in a Facebook post. We fought, we laughed, we cried, we loved/hated each other but in the end he was like family.

Thank you for challenging me and learning to deal with the best and the worst. Thank you for pushing me (with and against me) and making me a stronger person. At the end you gave me a chance and after all was said and done you made me stronger. Savyon ZabarBig Ben. You will be missed.
Two policemen who appeared to pose for a selfie in front of a raging house fire were slammed by neighbors who called their behavior 'disgusting'.

A massive blaze broke out in a home in Uniondale, New York, on Thursday, and video footage showed the officers smiling in fire and holding up a phone, NBC reported.

The Nassau County Police Department called the video 'concerning' and said an investigation had been launched.

Two policemen who appeared to pose for a selfie in front of a raging house fire were slammed by neighbors who called their behavior 'disgusting'

Moments later, another man (left) was seen posing in front of the house before he was approached by other officers (right)

No one was injured in the fire, but neighbors were still disturbed by the policemen's behavior.

Moments later, another man was seen posing in front of the house before he was approached by other officers.

'Its disgusting. I dont like that, because it shows no concern about the people in the neighborhood,' one man said.

Another woman said she didn't think it was 'appropriate', although the family who lost their home on Thursday defended the officers' behavior.

The family, which includes members in the law enforcement, said they didn't think the police officers had done anything wrong.

The Nassau County Police Department issued a statement that read: 'The contents of this video are very concerning to the department and are currently under investigation.

'If these officers are found to be in violation of any department rules and regulations, they will be appropriately disciplined.'
Police in Germany have arrested a neo-Nazi teenager and his accomplice suspected of planning an attack with 300lbs of explosives.

Armed officers seized 'industrial strength' illegal fireworks and other 'explosive materials' from an apartment in the quiet town of Lauterecken in the far west of Germany two days before New Year's Eve.

Armed officers seized 'industrial strength' illegal fireworks and other 'explosive materials' from an apartment in the quiet town of Lauterecken in the far west of Germany

Police said some material was 'illegally acquired' - understood to be fireworks from Poland - and some 'illegally manufactured' in his home.

Their target was believed to be the nearby city of Kaiserslautern. The 18-year-year old is now in police custody along with his sidekick, a 24-year-old man from North Rhine-Westphalia.

They are being held for breaching explosives regulations and plotting an act of terrorism - namely 'a serious act of violence against the state,' according to prosecutors.

Their target was believed to be the nearby city of Kaiserslautern, which is around 20 miles from Lauterecken

Islamist extremism has been ruled out and the investigation has turned to the far-right scene in Germany. 'The neo-Nazi scene is the focus of enquiries,' a police source told local media.

Police were forced to evacuate nearly 100 homes from the apartment where the teen lived because of the risk of detonation of the seized material.

It was taken from his home piecemeal by a crocodile of police officers handling the volatile substances with extreme care.
A Chinese teenager missed his migrant worker father so much that he faked his own kidnapping this week so that the man could come home to see him.

The 13-year-old, from Chongqing, south-west China, had his hands and feet tied to a tree before messaging his father, claiming he had been kidnapped, according to Chinese media.

The boy later told the police that he had planned the kidnapping because he did not want his father to leave home.

Scroll down for video

Was he kidnapped? The teen was found with his hands and feet bound in a Chinese village

Finding the truth: The police from the Peiling took the boy back to the station for questioning

The teenager, surnamed Zheng, lives in the Peiling district of Chongqing.

According to Peiling police, the teen's father contacted them after receiving a text message which claimed that his son had been kidnapped, reported Chongqing Morning Post.

After talking to the father, the police deducted that Zheng should be located at the Shiling village in Yihe town.

The officers arrived at the village and found Zheng behind a farmhouse.

His hands and feet were bound to a tree at the time.

Police officer Liu Yi told a reporter from the Chongqing Morning Post that Zheng was alone when they found him and he was playing on his phone.

Keeping silent: The 13-year-old refused to answer to the police when they first found him

Suspicious: One police officer said the boy was playing on his mobile phone when they arrived

Officers tried to ask the boy questions, and the boy refused to talk initially.

After officers brought the boy back to their police station and gave him instant noodles, Zheng told them that the kidnapping had been planned and carried out by himself.

A statement from Peiling police said that the boy disappeared on January 2 after he left home for school, and he was found by officers in the afternoon of January 3.

The police also revealed that the 13-year-old had been raised by his grandparents. Zheng's parents divorced when he was little and his father had been working as a migrant worker in another city.

Zheng's father returned home for a short family reunion prior to the staged kidnapping. One the day the man left home to return to his workplace, the boy came out with the idea in a bid to stop his father from leaving.

Police offier Liu Yi also said that Zheng's father had to work in the city in order to support Zheng's education.

Confession: The boy later admitted that the kidnapping had been planned by himself

Father and son: The man later brought the boy home from the police station in Peiling

According to a video report on released on Miaopai by Pear Video, the boy's father brought the boy home from the police station.

He could be heard talking to the boy: 'If you don't want me to go, you can say it directly, then I'll just seek work in Peiling.'

A survey in China last October found that 61 million children were living in the countryside without their parents.

These parents are migrant workers who flock to the bigger cities for work and slightly higher paying jobs while their own parents often care for the children.

The figures were released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

In February last year, China's State Council issued a guideline for local authorities to improve the psychological health of the children.
Gabriel 'Chirete' Herrera, 39, murdered his girlfriend in front of her two-month-old baby

A prisoner already serving time for killing his wife on a conjugal visit took advantage of his continued private visiting rights to also murder his new girlfriend in front of their baby.

Gabriel 'Chirete' Herrera, 39, stabbed Andrea Neri, 20, in a private visiting room in a prison in the city of Villa de las Rosas, in the north-western Argentine province of Salta.

Their two-month-old child was in the room at the time.

Just minutes after Ms Neri went inside with her baby, Herrera emerged holding the child and confessed to a prison guard that he had killed his girlfriend.

The baby was not reported to have been injured and is being taken care of by the victim's mother.

It is the second time Herrera has killed his partner on a private prison visit.

Arrested in 2003 for robbery and murder, in 2006 he killed his former wife Veronica Castro, 29, strangling her with a shirt.

Then held in Metan Prison, Herrera came out of the visiting room and told his victim's mother: 'I have just killed your daughter.'

Veronica Castro's mother came to the Villa de las Rosas prison to support the family of Herrera's latest victim.

He stabbed Andrea Neri, 20, in a private visiting room in a prison in the city of Villa de las Rosas, in the north-western Argentine province of Salta

Just minutes after Ms Neri went inside with her baby, Herrera emerged holding the child and confessed to a prison guard that he had killed his girlfriend

She told local media: 'I told Andrea when she was about to give birth that she should be careful of him because he is a murderer.'

Local director of prisons Cesar Rodriguez said that all prisoners had the right to private visits from spouses or partners.
In a hospital gown and with his arm in a sling, the great-grandson of an ex-New York Post owner is seen on his perp walk after he was shot in a confrontation with police.

Patrick Allen was shot three times, leaving his arm in a sling, by police on Staten Island on the snowy Thursday after a night-gone-wrong of test-firing illegal guns in the woods with a friend.

He and his friend, Jonathan Derbyshire, 24, took the illegal guns and prescription drugs into a Staten Island wooded area, and were firing shots around 1.10am when nearby residents called 911.

Patrick Allen was shot three times by police on Staten Island on the snowy Thursday after a night-gone-wrong of test-firing illegal guns with a friend

Following Allen's shooting and arrest, cops seized his red-painted gun (pictured) and searched for Derbyshire, who fled the scene. They found an AR-15-style assault rifle with a scope and stand, a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, a .45-caliber pistol, a large hunting knife, prescription pills and spent shell casings

After officers arrived, Derbyshire ran through the trees and Allen pulled a gun, police told the New York Post.

Cops opened fire and shot Allen, who was wearing a heavy ballistic vest, three times in the left leg and once in the arm.

The 24-year-old already has eight sealed arrests for crimes such as drug peddling.

He is suspected of regularly buying legal marijuana in Colorado and bringing it back with him to sell in New York for a profit, according to the Post.

Allen is part of an influential New York family filled with bankers, politicians, and a federal judge.

'His mom owns half of Times Square' a stunned building super told the Post.

Another source told the post that Allen's father, criminal defense lawyer Gerald Allen, told cops that he 'basically washed his hands' of Patrick and wants nothing to do with him.

Following Allen's shooting and arrest, cops seized his red-painted gun and searched for Derbyshire.

The 24-year-old already has eight sealed arrests for crimes such as drug peddling

Allen and the friend, Jonathan Derbyshire, 24, took guns and drugs into a Staten Island wooded area, and were firing shots around 1.10am when nearby residents called 911

Allen was treated at Staten Island University Hospital North, and then released into police custody

PATRICK ALLEN'S INFLUENTIAL NEW YORK FAMILY Allen's mom, Tess Leopold, is a former Brooklyn Prosecutor. His grandmother, Adele Hall Sweet, is married to Manhattan federal Judge Robert Sweet. His great-grandmother is former New York Post owner Dorothy 'Dolly' Schiff. Leopold's late father, A. Frederic Leopold, was mayor of Beverly Hills, and her grandmother was Schiff, whose grandfather was legendary financier Jacob Schiff, according to the New York Post. Advertisement

Searching the woods, they found an AR-15-style assault rifle with a scope and stand, a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, a .45-caliber pistol, a large hunting knife, prescription pills and spent shell casings.

Derbyshire was found around dawn.

Neighborhood resident, Pearl Roe 70 said to the Post: 'They were searching around all morning and then at about 6:30 they caught him right here at the end of our property.

'There were so many cops it was incredible. I've never seen that many in one place.'

Allen was treated at Staten Island University Hospital North, and then released into police custody.
Talks aimed at averting a 24-hour strike by London Underground workers from Sunday evening will be held on Saturday, the TSSA union said.

Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union are due to walk out for 24 hours from 6pm on Sunday, causing travel chaos for millions of passengers.

Talks over staffing and ticket office closures collapsed today but the TSSA announced that another meeting will be held at the conciliation service Acas tomorrow.

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said: 'We are extremely disappointed not to have a solution to the dispute this evening but we have just been asked to return to talks with LU under the auspices of Acas in the morning.

'We will be attending and look forward to hearing what they are offering.'

The way of industrial unrest has spread to the London Underground after months of walk-outs on the busy Southern Rail routes.

Train workers in the north are poised to join the winter of discontent next week when the RMT ballots staff on Northern Rail.

RMT leader Mick Cash (file picture) tonight confirmed a Tube strike would go ahead, soon after he announced a ballot for more industrial action on Northern Rail

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling pleaded today he did not have the power to order an end to strikes.

But the wave of industrial action will raise demands from commuters for the Government to be handed new powers to keep transport networks moving.

The RMT tonight confirmed its Tube strike would go ahead following the collapse of talks at conciliation service ACAS today.

General secretary Mick Cash said: 'Despite huge efforts by the union negotiating team, London Underground have failed to come up with any serious plans to tackle the staffing and safety crisis caused by the axing of nearly 900 safety-critical station jobs.

'Instead of resolving the issues, Tube bosses have chosen instead to ramp up the rhetoric with threats to mobilise a strike-breaking army of 'ambassadors' with severe consequences for the current safety regime across the Tube network.

'As a result of the management failure to face up to the current crisis, the talks have collapsed and all industrial actions remains on.

'It is up to London Underground to take full responsibility for this situation and to come back to us with a serious set of proposals.'

A NEW WINTER OF DISCONTENT? THE LATEST STRIKE DATES Drivers' union ASLEF is due to stage three days of Southern Rail strikes on January 10, 11 and 13, plus three more on January 24, 25 and 27. The Tube strike will begin at 6pm on Sunday evening and continue throughout Monday. The RMT is balloting its Northern Rail members on Tuesday - potentially paving the way for more strikes later this month. Advertisement

London Mayor Sadiq Khan tonight said: 'Next week's planned tube strike is unnecessary and will cause misery for millions of Londoners.

'I urge the unions to call it off immediately.

Announcing the Northern Rail ballot earlier this week, Mr Cash said Northern staff were being offered 'a below the rate for the job pay deal'.

'Industrial relations with the firm were already at a low and the latest pay offer shows continued contempt for the workers who run the service and make the company's profits,' he said.

'Our members deserve to paid properly for the work that they do.'

Mr Grayling today demanded Southern Rail workers - being taken out of duty by the RMT and Aslef unions - call off a strike that will close a major commuter network on three days next week.

A Tube strike will begin at 6pm on Sunday and will disrupt services all day on Monday in the latest bout of industrial action

Aslef say driver-only operated trains run by Southern are unsafe - but an independent regulator yesterday said this was not the case.

Mr Grayling today told the BBC: 'Ultimately I don't have the power to force unions to stop striking. I wish I did - but I don't.'

Drivers' union ASLEF is due to stage three days of Southern Rail strikes on January 10, 11 and 13, plus three more on January 24, 25 and 27.

The Tube strike will begin at 6pm on Sunday evening and continue throughout Monday.

The RMT is balloting its Northern Rail members on Tuesday - potentially paving the way for more strikes later this month.
Her voice breaking and eyes filling with tears, an unusually emotional Michelle Obama said Friday that being first lady 'has been the greatest honor of my life' as she bid an early farewell to the White House.

An East Room ceremony honoring the 2017 school counselor of the year, and the work of all school counselors, marked her final event as first lady.

Before the tearful goodbye, there were words of encouragement for young people.

Michelle Obama gave her final speech as first lady on Friday, during the 2017 School Counselor of the Year ceremony, coming to the point of tears as her emotions overtook her at one point

Mrs. Obama urged kids to get the best education they can and then use it to 'lead by example with hope, never fear'

Mrs. Obama, as she has done many times in eight years in the White House, urged kids to get the best education they can and then use it to 'lead by example with hope, never fear.'

'Don't be afraid,' she said.

The first lady also praised the 'glorious diversity' of people of all faiths, colors and creeds in America as 'not a threat to who we are' but as what 'makes us who we are.'

The comment seemed a rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump, who criticized Mexicans, Muslims and others throughout his presidential campaign.

'To the young people out there, do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter or like you don't have a place in our American story, because you do,' Mrs. Obama said. 'And you have a right to be exactly who you are.'

She urged them to get ready to add their voices to the national conversation and 'stand up for our proud American values.'

She said hope has allowed her and husband Barack to 'rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear, that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country'

The first lady's outgoing public hug went to School Counselor of the Year Terri Tchorzynski

The first lady also praised the 'glorious diversity' of people of all faiths, colors and creeds in America

'Being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope I've made you proud,' Mrs. Obama said with damp eyes

Mrs. Obama and the president have raised two daughters, Malia and Sasha, in the harsh glare of public life

Mrs. Obama asked them to remember, when they encounter obstacles and feel like giving up, what she said she and President Barack Obama have talked about since first starting their journey to the White House nearly a decade ago, 'and that is the power of hope.'

She said hope has allowed the couple to 'rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear, that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country.'

Mrs. Obama ended the appearance by thanking the school counselors standing behind her, including Terri Tchorzynski, the 2017 honoree from the Calhoun Area Career Center in Battle Creek, Michigan, for their hard work and dedication.

She has said school counselors often are the 'deciding factor' in whether a student decides to attend college.

'Being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope I've made you proud,' Mrs. Obama said.

The first lady has said she will continue, after she and her husband leave on Jan. 20, to work on issues she championed as first lady.

They include education, fighting childhood obesity and support for military families.

Friday night the Obamas are hosting a slew of famous friends for a final White House bash.

The first lady has said she will continue to work on issues she championed as first lady after her husband leaves office
The aunt of a special needs teenager who was tortured for hours by four friends has told DailyMail.com that he was unable to speak about the attack  other than to repeatedly ask why a friend he idolized had done this to him.

Janet Grant said her 18-year-old nephew, would be mentally scarred by the six-hour ordeal where he was bound, beaten, cut, burned and forced to drink from a toilet.

Brittany Covington, 18; her sister Tanisha Covington, 24; Tesfaye Cooper, 18; and Jordan Hill, 18, have been charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery and a hate crime. Hill attended school with [the victim] for several years.

Speaking on Friday morning Grant said: '[The victim] just keeps saying, 'Why, why? Jordan was my friend. He's been my friend for a couple of years.'

She continued: 'They went to school together, they both had problems. He adores Jordan. I don't know Jordan but [the victim] really liked him. It's one thing if they didn't know each other but [the victim] idolized him.'

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Idolized: The victim's aunt told how the teenager 'idolized' Jordan Hill - even though the victim's mom had not wanted them to associate with each other. The 18-year-old is appearing in court in Chicago on Frday

Charged: The other three alleged members of the torture gang are Tesfaye Cooper, 18; Brittany Covington, 18; and her sister Tanisha Covington, 24.

The four friends arrested in the incident have allegedly expressed no remorse for the torture

JUDGE'S CONTEMPT FOR SUSPECTS A judge rebuked the four black people accused of the attack, sternly asking, 'Where was your sense of decency?' before denying their attorneys' pleas to set bail so they might be released from jail. 'I find each of you a danger to yourself and society,' Cook County Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil said, sounding baffled that the suspects who hold jobs, attend school, live with grandparents and, in one case, care for a brother in a wheelchair, could stand accused of attacking the 18-year-old victim. How, she wondered, could she agree to allow people accused of such 'terrible actions' walk out of jail? The 18-year-old victim, who is from a Chicago suburb, suffers from schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder, authorities said. The suspects are all are charged with two hate crimes  one because the young man was disabled and one because of race. They are also accused of kidnapping and battery, among other offenses. Hill was arrested in 2015 on allegations of armed robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle and residential burglary. Chicago police said they did not know the disposition of those arrests by suburban officers. Tanishia Covington was arrested in 2007 on attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. Police records do not show any convictions as a juvenile. As an adult, she was arrested on charges of battery and aggravated assault, but those charges were dropped. Advertisement

Grant, who is the sister of the victim's father said the family were 'terrible' since the teenager's ordeal.

'He's got enough problems already. They put cigarette butts out on his head, cut a hole in his scalp. Once they took him to Chicago, he had no meds for four days. He couldn't even fight back.

'Physically he'll heal but mentallyhe'll always be looking over his shoulder. Probably won't trust anybody. '

Grant said that she was unsure if any family members would attend the first court appearance of the four accused on Friday afternoon in Chicago.

'I don't even know if my brother's going  everyone is having a hard time dealing with it,' she said.

The family does not know the connection Hill had to the other three accused. His aunt said the only thing she would ask them is 'why  just why?'

His cousin, Kyle Pudowski, 21, told DailyMail.com: 'I don't know what made people do that. It's crazy.'

Mrs Grant added: 'Or even watch people do that. How could a woman watch that? They thought it was going to make them popular  putting cigarette butts out on a kid with schizophrenia and ADD.'

Kyle Pudowski said he hoped that the perpetrators would receive lengthy prison sentences for that they had done.

The aunt added: 'It's not even about the punishment  just why?

Grant said the family had been deeply touched by the outpouring of support from the local community and beyond. A GoFundMe account set up with a goal of raising $10,000 has gone well past $40,000.

'It's wonderful,' she said. 'It's sad it takes something like this.'

Grant said that she had spent a lot of time with the victim and that she and her brother babysat each other's children when they were growing up.

She said: '[He's] a good boy. He would give you the shirt off his back.

'His mom didn't like him hanging out but [he] would say, "that's my friend, that's my friend." He looked up to Jordan.

Start of ordeal: It was at this McDonald's where the victim met Jordan Hill, after being dropped off by his mother

Found: The victim was found on this block in Chicago after escaping from his ordeal

The victim was seen cowering in a corner with his arms tied and mouth taped shut. He was filmed being kicked, punched and cut on his scalp with a knife - the knife is circled

Idol: The aunt of the victim tells DailyMail.com that Jordan Jill, seen on the Facebook video, was idolized by the vulnerable teenager

'[He] thought he was cool. I think he was one of the popular ones at school.'

The family made a brief statement to local TV stations on Monday night.

David Boyd, the victim's brother-in-law, said: 'He's doing well as well as he could be at this time. We are so grateful for all the prayers and efforts that led to the safe return of our brother.

'This should never happen.'

Grant said that the victim's father was too devastated to speak at the brief news conference.

Streamwood Police Department said in a statement that his parents reported him missing on January 2.

They had last heard from him on New Year's Eve after dropping him off at a McDonald's restaurant in Streamwood, close to their home.

As police investigated the disappearance, the parents received text messages from the captors.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the accused made financial demands in the texts.

Police then found a disturbing Facebook live-stream video showing the victim being tortured, beaten and verbally abused. The victim also had his clothes cut and had cigarette ash flicked over the wound on his head.

According to police, the 18-year-old was bound, punched and kicked. At one point, a piece of his scalp was cut off and he was forced to drink toilet water. One of the four accused can be heard screaming, 'f*** Donald Trump, f*** white people' at the victim.

The video lasts for 30 minutes but investigators believe that the vulnerable victim's ordeal went on for six hours.

It was initially posted by 18-year-old Brittany Covington but has since been deleted.

In another video that surfaced Wednesday night, the torturers force the victim to drink water from a toilet

The unidentified victim was able to make a break for it when the downstairs neighbors reported the noise to police

The suspects are pictured above in the live video, including Tanisha Covington (left) and Brittany Covington

The victim, who was friends with Jordan Hill from school, has been returned to his parents

Brittany Covington, left, is seen what appears to be a blunt in grabs from the horrifying video

On January 2, Tanisha Covington (right) posted these pictures of her partying with her little sister Brittany (left)

'DESPICABLE', SAYS OBAMA - BUT RACE RELATIONS NOT GETTING WORSE President Obama denounced the video as 'despicable' - but denied that race relations are getting worse. The President - who has a home in the affluent Hyde Park suburb of Chicago - told CBS this was not a sign of a worsening racial divide. Obama - a community organizer in Chicago and the junior senator for Illinois before he became president - said it was just an example of social media revealing problems that have always been there. 'I don't think it's accurate to say race relations are getting worse,' he told host Jay Levine, saying things were also difficult in Chicago in the mid-1980s. He claimed a block of white councilmen deliberately scuppered all proposals by a black mayor. 'In part because we see visuals of racial tensions, violence and so forth because of smart phones and the Internet,' the president said. 'What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time. 'Whether it's tensions between police and communities, whether it's hate crimes of the despicable sort that has just now recently surfaced on Facebook.' Advertisement

Alongside her sister, Tanisha Covington, 24, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, and Jordan Hill, 18, the group were charged on Thursday with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery and a hate crime.

Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. He, Cooper and Brittany Covington face additional charges of residential burglary, according to Cook County State Attorney's Office.

The four accused will appear in court on Friday at 1pm for a bond hearing.

The four friends arrested in the incident have expressed no remorse for their alleged part in the torture, police said.

Chicago authorities revealed more about the disturbing incident at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

The victim and Hill knew each other from attending school in Aurora, Illinois.

The victim's parents dropped him off at a McDonald's on Saturday so that he could spend the night at Hill's home. '[He] told [his mother] that he was meeting a friend there but never said who,' according to a missing person's report.

'[His mother] believes that the friend [the victim] was meeting is Jordan.'

The parents became worried on Monday after only having sporadic text messages from their son and then his phone being turned off.

Police considered the teenager 'a missing endangered person due to his mental health history and not currently taking his medication.'

His mother thought he may be with another friend, Derek, in the area but she didn't know his last name or if it is his real name because he did 'not like telling his parents who he is with,' the police report stated.

On Thursday President Obama said he believed the 'despicable' actions seen in the video were examples of long-existing hatred, and not a sign of US race relations getting worse. He was a community organizer in Chicago and later senator from Illinois before becoming president

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called the act 'reprehensible' at a Thursday press conference

Hurt: The victim's brother-in-law David Boyd said: 'He's doing well as well as he could be at this time. We are so grateful for all the prayers and efforts that led to the safe return of our brother.'

On Saturday night, Hill had allegedly picked the victim up in a stolen van. For the first two days, the two visited friends and the victim reportedly slept in the van at nights.

On Tuesday, the pair visited the West Chicago residence of the Covington sisters where Cooper was also present.

A few hours after they arrived at the house, Hill and the victim got into a play fight that then escalated to a prolonged torture.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called the act 'reprehensible' on Thursday.

Police said the young man made so much noise as he was being tortured that the downstairs neighbors eventually called police to report the noise.

The group became angered with the downstairs neighbors, and three of them went downstairs to kick the neighbor's door in. It was at this moment that the victim was able to make a break for it.

Outside of the residence, a police officer found the victim 'bloodied and bruised', wearing a tank top and shorts in the dead of winter.

The victim was treated in hospital and has been returned to his parents.

'The actions in that video are reprehensible. That along with racism have absolutely no place in the city of Chicago or anywhere else for that matter, against anyone regardless of their race, gender, state of mental health or any other identifying factor,' Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.

The victim also had his clothes cut and had cigarette ash flicked over the wound on his head.
A 12-year-old girl had her Christmas wish granted by a group of kindhearted high school students in Gallatin, Tennessee.

Her mother, Amy Howell, told her class at Gallatin High School that her daughter, who has a rare brain disease, loved school buses so much she asked for one for Christmas.

In less than a month, her 11th and 12th grade students raised enough money to transform an old school bus into a giant playhouse for Gabby.

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A 12-year-old girl had her Christmas wish granted by a group of kindhearted high school students in Gallatin, Tennessee

Her mother, Amy Howell, told her class at Gallatin High School that her daughter, who has a rare brain disease, loved school buses so much she asked for one for Christmas

'For me personally, it was just so sweet,' Amy Howell told ABC News.

'You put so much of your life into your students. To see it happen, that they want to give back like that, they don't want to do it for the glory, they want to do it because they love you. It was a really sweet thing.'

Jessi Smith, a 12th grader, said the group collected donations from the community and received help from a local middle school which provided art supplies and bean bag chairs to make the school bus a fun place for Gabby.

'Gabby, she ran up to me, she gave me a hug,' Jessi said.

In less than a month, her 11th and 12th grade students raised enough money to transform an old school bus into a giant playhouse for Gabby

Jessi Smith, a 12th grader, said the group collected donations from the community and received help from a local middle school

'She ran to Santa and said, 'I love you Santa, thank you so much.' She was screaming and she almost started crying and it was so sweet.'

Mrs Howell shared the story with her students and thought nothing of it.

'I told the story because I thought it was a funny thing for a kid to ask for,' she said.

Gabby was diagnosed with periventricular nodular heterotopia (PVNH) when she was just eight years old.

Gabby was diagnosed with periventricular nodular heterotopia (PVNH) when she was just eight years old

PVNH is a disorder that causes neurons in the brain to get 'stuck', preventing proper brain activity.

For Gabby, it means that although she grows physically, her brain is incapable of doing the same.

'Today, she can tell you the ABCs and tomorrow she can't. So she'll be like a little three-year-old for the rest of her life,' her mother said.

As well as a gift for Gabby, the group hoped the bus would serve as a token of gratitude to their teacher, Mrs Howell

Despite her disability, Gabby is popular among the Gallatin High School students and enjoys time spent playing with them when she stops by after school.

As well as a gift for Gabby, the group hoped the bus would serve as a token of gratitude to their teacher, Mrs Howell.

'She such a sweet person and she goes above and beyond every single day for all her students,' Jessi continued.
By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor for DailyMail.com

Democrats were shut down in their final, futile attempt to protest President-elect Donald Trump's electoral college win  and this time it was Vice President Joe Biden wielding procedure against them.

Congress met in a Joint Session Friday to certify the electoral college, which met in December in state capitols across the country.

'It is over,' Biden said at one point, after shutting down an array of Democrats who tried to force a debate on the certification of the vote.

Democrats used the often ceremonial meeting to voice a final round of protests about the bitter election, on a day when the winner, Trump, was meeting with top intelligence officials about Russian interference in the election.

Vice President Joe Biden, presiding over a Joint Session of Congress, gaveled down House Democrats protesting certification of the electoral vote that gave Donald Trump the presidency

Time and again, Democrats raised objections to state votes  and each time Biden, as president of the Senate, gaveled them down.

'There is no debate,' Biden said to one of a flurry of Democratic objections.

The objections weren't considered in order under U.S. law unless joined by a sitting U.S. senator  something none of them got.

'Order!' Republicans shouted each time a House Democrat pleaded for consideration.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas objected to multiple state vote counts. When Milwaukee's votes came up, she cited local irregularities, in a state Trump carried even after a recount.

'The Russian intrusion!' she yelled after authorities who control the House cut off her mic.

'Is there one United States senator who will join me?' asked Rep. Maxine Waters

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was among those Democrats raising objections. She cited voter suppression, long lines, and referenced Russian interference

A protester is escorted out of the House Chamber during a joint session of Congress to count the votes

'I object because people are horrified by the  interference in our election,' said California Rep. Barbara Lee

House Speaker Paul Ryan could be seen grinning at several moments as Biden gaveled down Democrats

'Order!' Republicans yelled.

California Rep. Maxine Waters tried to protest Wyoming's vote.

'Is there one United States senator who will join me?' she asked, brandishing her own letter of protest. 'Just one!' she pleaded, to no avail.

Many of the seats of the Democratic side of the aisle were abandoned for the pro forma vote, and many Democratic senators were not present amid rows of empty beige chairs inside the House chamber.

Three protesters shouted out as Biden prepared to read out Trump's final winning vote total.

One yelled about voter suppression.

One of them, Ronaldo Person of Boston, told DailyMail.com what he was protesting about afterward, while a group of Capitol Police officers cuffed and processed him on the third floor of the Capitol.

'Voter suppression. Half of them are minority voters. That's why I'm here,' he said.

Those objecting were Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Barbara Lee of California, Jackson Lee, and Waters.

Jackson Lee tailored her objections to each of the state votes she protested. For Mississippi, she mentioned 'ballots that were provisional that denied individuals access.'

'I have an objecting that is in writing,' the Democrat said.

'Is it signed by a U.S. senator,' Biden asked?

'Not yet,' she responded.

'On behalf of millions of americans including members of the intelligence community...' she continued, presumably turning to the issue of Russian interference.

'Order!' shouted Republicans.

In the end, Trump got 304 electoral votes, to 227 for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Protest candidates got 7 votes.

McGovern got the objections started early, saying Alabama's vote didn't comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

A group of House Democrats had planned one final, futile effort to challenge Donald Trump's election by raising objections when Congress meets to certify the electoral votes today  but the move will get immediately shut down unless a senator decides to signs on.

Several House members have been considering raising objections to the official vote certification  an act that wouldn't have halted Trump's win but could have forced debates in each chamber that would have kept the spotlight on the intelligence community's claims of Russian interference in the elections.

Their chief problem has been finding a senator who would join their effort to at least secure a debate on the subject.

But a senator has not emerged who would second her effort.

Representative Ed Perlmutter was prepared to issue a letter objecting to the certification of Donald Trump's electoral college victory, after failing to find a senator who would join him

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado had been prepared to raise an objection to certifying the vote, but backed off after failing to locate a senator in agreement.

'We are not going to file an official objection. We just weren't able to secure a senator,' his spokeswoman, Ashley Verville told DailyMail.com.

"This is an American question of justice and fairness and the appropriate running of presidential elections," Jackson Lee told Politico.

Her decision to push forward sets up a scenario that echoes the session following the contested 2000 elections, when angry Democrats  including several members of the Congressional Black Caucus  yelled out futile objections, only to get shut down because of the lack of a Senate ally.

In a bitter twist that year, the loser, Vice President Al Gore, had to preside over his loss as president of the Senate at the time.

'Is the point of order signed by a senator?' Gore was forced to ask objecting Democrats.

'I don't care that it is not signed by a senator,' responded one of them, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), who walked out in protest.

'You will be advised that the rules do care,' Gore responded.

Jackson Lee acknowledged her failure to find a supporter in the other chamber. '"I certainly think the difficulty will be if we do not secure a senator,' she told the publication.

Even if they got an objection through, it would have been voted down in the GOP-controlled House and Senate, sealing Trump's win.

Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) has been considering a challenge to the certification of the electoral votes

Representative Bobby Scott also has been considering a challenge  but without a senator it won't go anywhere

Colorado members of the Electoral College waiting to be sworn in to vote for president of the United States at the Colorado State Capitol. December 19, 2016

Perlmutter issued a statement Thursday morning citing charges of Russian interference, on a day when the Senate Armed Services Committee probed Russian cyber hacks.

'It is clear Russia intervened in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This action by a foreign nation was unprecedented, violated our Constitution and undermined the founding pillars of American liberty and democracy. This is not about trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President. This is about the fact that our liberty, freedom and democracy were compromised by Russias intrusion into Americas election,' he said in the statement.

Two other House Democrats, dean of the House Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, and Rep. Bobby Scott also were considering challenges, Politico reported Thursday afternoon.

California Senator Barbara Boxer joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio's attempt to challenge the Ohio vote after the 2004 election.

A group trying to drum up opposition to ratifying the votes presented lawmakers with a document showing Trump electors weren't eligible to vote because didn't live in the congressional districts they represented.

The report said 50 Trump electors didn't live in the right district, Salon reported.
at the clinic on that day

Staff said he had been the only baby boy

A woman took her newborn grandson back to the clinic where he was delivered and accused staff of swapping him for another baby - because she thought he was too ugly to be her relative.

The unnamed woman stormed into the clinic in the city of Santa Marta, in the northern Colombian department of Magdalena, together with the infant and his mother.

She demanded that staff swap the child back, but they told her that he had been the only baby boy delivered at the clinic on the day he was born, and there had been no swap.

A woman took her newborn grandson back to the clinic where he was delivered and accused staff of swapping him for another baby

Carlos Pallares, health secretary on Santa Marta' city council, said: 'The grandmother was not very happy.

'She did not identify the baby as a new member of the family and therefore she decided to come back to the clinic along with the mother of the baby to return him.

She thought the baby had been swapped in clinic in the city of Santa Marta, pictured, in the northern Colombian department of Magdalena

'The situation should be accepted. Sometimes biology, genetics play a role in these mistakes and we should accept them.'

He added that the women eventually took the baby home home after staff at the clinic had checked him over.

The boy was deemed to be in good health, and is now with his family, the Mirror reports.

City council spokesman Chadan Rosado said that the grandmother was undergoing psychological treatment, and urged people not to be too quick to judge her.
Shiloh Heavenly Quine, pictured in June 2015, has become first US inmate to receive state-funded sex-reassignment surgery

A 57-year-old convicted killer serving a life sentence in California became the first US inmate to receive sexual reassignment surgery funded by the state.

California prison officials agreed to pay for Shiloh Heavenly Quine's operation in 2015 under the Eighth Amendment, which requires prisons to treatment for medical and mental health conditions, including gender dysphoria.

Her case has blazed the trail for other transgender inmates to apply for state-funded sex-reassignment surgery.

Quine was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery for ransom and sentenced to life without parole after Shahid Ali Baig was shot dead in Los Angeles, California in 1980.

Quine was held in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, according to court documents filed in 2014.

She will be moved to a women's prison after the operation, which was performed at a hospital in San Francisco, her attorneys said.

Quine's case has also prompted a federal magistrate to require California to provide transgender female inmates housed in men's facilities with clothing and commissary items ranging from nightgowns to necklaces.

Quine (pictured December 2014) was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery for ransom and sentenced for the death of Shahid Ali Baig in 1980

Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, which represents Quine and other transgender inmates, heralded the settlement as a victory.

'For too long, institutions have ignored doctors and casually dismissed medically necessary and life-saving care for transgender people just because of who we are,' he said

Completion of the surgery not only fulfills a landmark legal settlement but marks a victory 'for all transgender people who have ever been denied the medical care we need,' Hayashi said.

But the daughter of Quine's victim said she objects to inmates getting taxpayer-funded surgery that is not readily available to non-criminals, regardless of the cost.

Quine and an accomplice kidnapped and fatally shot Baig, a 33-year-old father of three, in downtown Los Angeles in February 1980, stealing $80 and his car during a drug- and alcohol-fueled rampage.

'My dad begged for his life,' said Farida Baig, who tried unsuccessfully to block Quine's surgery through the courts.

'It just made me dizzy and sick. I'm helping pay for his surgery. I live in California. It's kind of like a slap in the face, she added.

Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, heralded the victory

California was legally required to pay for the operation, corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.

'The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution requires that prisons provide inmates with medically necessary treatment for medical and mental health conditions including inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria,' Thornton said in a written statement.

California corrections officials had fought in court for years to avoid paying for sex-reassignment surgeries.

In one high-profile case, the state paroled Michelle-Lael Norsworthy in 2015, just one day before a federal appeals court was to hear her request for state-funded surgery.

Quine told a prison psychologist who recommended her for the operation that it would bring a 'drastic, internal completeness.'

She expects it will end a dysfunction and depression so deep that she tried to cut and hang herself in prison five times - most recently in 2014 when she was initially told she could not have the operation.

Quine 'felt herself to be a female as early as nine years old', and expressed her gender by dressing in female clothes during a school event at the age of 12, according to court documents filed 2014.

Quine said she tried unsuccessfully to amputate her genitalia when she was about 19, three years before she went to prison.

It was roughly around the same time she tried self-medicating with illegally purchased female hormones.

'She experiences severe [gender] dysphoria and distress resulting from the incongruence between her male physical features and her female gender identity,' according to court documents.

Quine was held in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, (file photo) according to court documents filed in 2014. She will be moved to a women's prison after the operation

Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the federal court-appointed official who controls California's prison medical care, said the cost of sex-reassignment surgeries could approach $100,000, including procedures and medications before and after the operation.

Attorneys at the Oakland-based Transgender Law Center said that figure is exaggerated.
An elderly couple who died in a joint suicide faced a recent history of credit card debt and other financial troubles, court records reveal.

Emi and Glen Yamasaki, both 63, were seen driving to the fifth and highest floor of the parking garage at the Silverton Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday night, before they jumped off together, police said.

Discover Bank reached a $15,400 settlement on their credit card debt in early December, and their next-door neighbors sued the couple for $2,400 on December 15, according court records cited by the Las Vegas Review Journal.

An elderly couple has died after falling from a parking garage at the Silverton Casino (pictured) in an apparent 'joint suicide'

'They exited their vehicle, climbed onto the wall and jumped to the ground,' Metropolitan Police Department Leiutenant C.J Jenkins told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The casino hotel, about six miles south of the Las Vegas strip, was forced to shut parts of the parking garage after the incident.

Court records obtained by the newspaper showed the pair had a history of financial troubles.

Discover Bank filed a complaint against the couple in April, and Emi Yamasaki signed an agreement to make monthly payments of $200 on November 4.

A settlement with the bank was reached, and a judgement of $15,400 was entered against the couple on December 2, according to Clark county District Court records.

The couple had also purchased a home (pictured) in Henderson, Nevada, in 2005 for about $415,000 - although a filing suggests they were at risk of foreclosure

Less than two weeks later, their next-door neighbors Gerald and Charlene Parker sued them in small-claims court, alleging they had fallen behind on annual payments of $3,000 the Review Journal reported.

The complaint claimed the Yamasakis owed them $2,400 after $600 was already paid.

The court records also stated: 'Original note for $30,000 was made March 16, 2011 payable in 10 installments of $3,000 due March 16 annually with no interest starting 3/16/12. Four payments have been made.'

The couple had also purchased a home in Sun City Anthem in Henderson, Nevada, in 2005 for about $415,000 - although a filing suggests they were at risk of foreclosure.

The company Quality Loan Service Corp was named a trustee for the couple's mortgage in a filing in September.

The move could indicate foreclosure proceedings, although that is not always the case, the Review Journal reported.

Neighbors told the newspaper they were shocked at the news, saying the couple, who leaves behind a daughter, would smile and wave to them, or gift them bags of peaches from their own tree.
Tourist footfall has dropped dramatically at Paris's most popular art galleries in the wake of the various terror attacks to have plagued France.

Foreign visitors to the Louvre decreased by a fifth to 7.3 million last year, from just under 10 million the previous year, when it was the most-visited museum in the world.

Meanwhile, the Musee d'Orsay's numbers were down to around three million, 13 per cent less than in 2015.

Foreign visitors to the Louvre have decreased by a fifth to 7.3 million last year from the previous year, when it was the most-visited museum in the world

The Musee d'Orsay's numbers were down to around three million, around 13 per cent less than in 2015

Attendances actually grew at the Pompidou Centre by around nine per cent, but this has come from a huge increase in French visitors making up for a sharp decline in tourism.

Jean-Luc Martinez, the Louvre's director, told Le Figaro newspaper that the drop in visitors could cost the gallery as much as 10 million.

He said: '2016, for the Louvre as for all the Parisian sites, was a difficult year. We should finish the year at 7.3 million visitors, 15% less than in 2015, and a loss of at least 9.7million, not to mention the lower revenues in booksellers or restaurants.'

Attendances actually growing at the Pompidou Centre by around nine per cent, but this has come from a huge increase in French visitors making up for a sharp decline in tourism

In total, hotel bookings in the capital have dropped by ten per cent following what has been a difficult period for the nation.

In November 2015, 129 people killed and hundreds more were killed in a series of co-ordinated terror attacks at the Bataclan Concert Hall, outside the Stade de France and on the capital's streets.
A group of marriage officials in Saudi Arabia have formed a group on WhatsApp to matchmake men with multiple wives in an attempt to deal with the 'problem' of a rising number of divorced women, widows, and spinsters in the country.

The eight officials have established the whatsapp cartel under the name 'polygamy'.

Members of the group said they were calling on young men to take more than one wife in order to cut down the number of Saudi women without partners.

Officials reportedly came up with the idea after noticing an increase in divorces in the city of Makkah.

The eight officials have established the whatsapp cartel under the name 'polygamy'

About 900 women, including divorcees, widows and women who had never married before, put their names forward saying they would not mind being a second, third or a fourth wife.

As well as Saudi women, potential brides on the database came from Yemen, Morocco, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan.

Some of the Saudi women also provided details of the tribes they belonged to, the Saudi Gazette reports.

According to the list, the oldest of the women was 55 years old and the youngest 18.

The women have even provided details of their physiques, with heights ranging from 4'7" to 5'10", and weights between 7st 1lb and 15st 6lb.

The marriage officials would then contact them whenever there was an interested suitor.

About 900 women, including divorcees, widows and women who had never married before have put their names forward (picture posed by model)

Some of the women had very specific traits they were looking for in a new partner - one ask for 13,000, while another said the man to marry her should have memorized the entire Qur'an.

A third woman, who is divorced, said her new husband must also accept her eight children.

Some of the women had just high school educations or no education at all, while others had master's degrees, and one even had a PhD and was teaching at a university.
Driver Steven Bourgoin (pictured), 36, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder in an October road crash that killed five teens in Williston, Vermont

The deaths of five teenagers in a fiery car wreck that police say was caused by a 'deliberate act' from a wrong-way truck driver has been reclassified as murder.

The October 8 crash, which killed five teenagers aged 15 to 16 in Williston, Vermont, has been removed from the list of the state's highway fatalities for the last year, police said Thursday.

Driver Steven Bourgoin, 36, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder and related charges alleging he caused the fatal crash.

Reclassifying the crash from 'highway fatality' to 'murder' is an effort to help block public access to the incident report, including the driver's toxicology report, according to The Times Argus.

Authorities meanwhile said they had found that Bourgoin had acted deliberately at the time of the crash.

'Based on the facts and circumstances we believe it was a deliberate act. It has been charged as a murder,' Vermont State Police Lieutenant John Flannigan said.

Police say Bourgoin crashed into the teens' car while driving the wrong way on Interstate 89, then stole a police cruiser and crashed it into at least seven other vehicles.

Mary Harris (pictured), 16, of Moretown, is one of five teenagers who died in a fiery crash that police say was caused by a 'deliberate act' from Bourgoin

Janie Cozzi (left), 15, of Fayston and Eli Brookens (right), 16, of Waterbury, were also killed in the crash. Police say Bourgoin crashed into the teens' car while driving the wrong way

Liam Hale (left), 16, of Fayston and Cyrus Zschau (right), 16, of Moretown died in the crash. Authorities said they had found Bourgoin had acted deliberately at the time of the collision

They say a toxicology report showed he had a high level of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his system. He was critically injured.

Bourdoin was arraigned in October on a hospital bed in a makeshift courtroom at a hospital, while he recovered from the injuries he had sustained in the crash.

Four of the teen victims were Harwood Union High School juniors; the fifth attended Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire.

Then-Chittenden County prosecutor TJ Donovan said Bourgoin displayed 'a wanton disregard' for human life when he sped the wrong way on the interstate while other motorists honked at him.

Bourgoin was going at an estimated 79 miles per hour at the time of the crash, Donovan said.

Killed in the crash were Mary Harris, 16, of Moretown; Cyrus Zschau, 16, of Moretown; Liam Hale, 16, of Fayston; Janie Cozzi, 15, of Fayston; and Eli Brookens, 16, of Waterbury. Minus their reclassified deaths, the state had 63 highway fatalities last year.

Bourdoin was arraigned in October on a hospital bed in a makeshift courtroom at a hospital, while he recovered from the injuries he had sustained in the crash (pictured)

Police say Bourgoin later stole a police cruiser and crashed it into at least seven other vehicle. Pictured is the scene of the October 8 crash
Philippe Holland was shot several times by plainclothes officers in 2014

A Philadelphia deliveryman who was wrongly shot at 14 times by police has won a $4.4million settlement from the city.

Philippe Holland had just delivered cheeseburger to a house on the 5100 block of Willows Avenue in West Philadelphia on April 22, 2014, when two plainclothes officers responded to reports of shots fired in the area.

A lawyer claims the officers did not identify themselves to Holland, who thought they were trying to rob him, leading him to flee the scene when officers opened fire.

Holland, now 23, suffers from a seizure disorder and chronic pain after one of the bullets hit him square in the face. He was hit by two of the other thirteen bullets.

The $4.4million settlement is the largest in the city's history.

Holland, now 23, suffers from a seizure disorder and chronic pain after one of the bullets hit him square in the face

The mayor's office called the shooting 'an unfortunate, regrettable series of events'.

The officers in question, Mitchell Farrell and Kevin Hanvey, have been on desk duty while the investigation was conducted.

In a deposition, Holland, who worked at Slices & More Pizzeria and Grill, said when he saw the armed men approaching him he panicked, according to Philly.com.

Officers who wrongly identified him as a suspect shot at Holland's car 14 times

Holland now suffers from chronic pain and a seizure disorder from the incident

Holland claims the officers never identified themselves, and he thought he was going to be robbed when the armed men approached him

He jumped into his car through the passenger door side, then saw one officer shining a flashlight into his car while the other held a gun.

He claims they did not identify themselves as police, so he tried to drive away while the two men shot at his vehicle.
A mob of 11 men were caught on surveillance video storming into a Tampa grocery store and stealing entire compartments off the walls.

The suspects burglarized the Super Choice Meat & Grocery store around 11.13pm on December 26. They have not yet been caught.

Footage shows the first suspect walking by the store's front door, checking to see if the coast is clear before he suddenly barges inside.

A mob of 11 men were caught on surveillance video storming into a Tampa grocery store and stealing entire compartments off the walls

The men lifted their shirts over their heads to try and hide their identities from the camera

Two more men quickly follow him, lifting their shirts over their heads to try and hide their identity from the cameras.

Five more men suddenly come in one right after the other, immediately heading to the grocery stores counter to begin stealing lottery tickets and cigarettes.

Then three more men come through to join them as they all begin to grab things and head out the door.

Items and electrical plugs go flying as one man rips an entire compartment off the wall to take with him outside.

The men seemed to fill the small grocery store, whose door was unlocked during the robbery

Five more men suddenly come in one right after the other, immediately heading to the grocery stores counter to begin stealing lottery tickets and cigarettes

Items and electrical plugs go flying as one man rips an entire compartment off the wall to take with him outside

One of the robbers then makes sure to wipe down the fingerprints on the door with a rag as his friends run out.

Two more men then file out, the last one wiping the glass before fleeing.

Authorities said the front door was unlocked during the burglary, according to WFTS.

It does not appear like anyone else, including a clerk, was inside while the men looted the store.

Tampa Police are now hunting for the suspects and have released the footage to the public in the hopes of finding out more information.

Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay is currently offering a $3,000 reward for any information that could lead to the arrest of the suspects.

One of the robbers then makes sure to wipe down the fingerprints on the door with a rag as his friends run out
Jamshid Piruz's sentencing had to be delayed because his interpreter went to the wrong court and left without telling anyone

An Afghan murderer who attacked two police officers with a hammer after arriving in Britain could not be punished yesterday  because his interpreter went to the wrong court.

Around 10,000 of taxpayers money was wasted on a judge, barristers, three police officers and court clerks for the sentencing of Jamshid Piruz.

An interpreter who could speak his Dari language was booked for the hearing because the 34-year-old, who beheaded a Dutch woman in 2007, has such poor English.

But the language expert went to a court in a different town at the wrong time and went home without telling anyone.

Judge Jeremy Gold QC demanded a full written explanation from the person responsible for informing the court of the error. Piruz will now be sentenced at Hove Crown Court next Friday.

The case exposes the Ministry of Justices shambolic privatisation of legal translation services. MPs and spending watchdogs say a catastrophic shortage of interpreters has made courts rely on Google Translate, a basic and time-consuming online translation service.

More than 2,600 court cases have been adjourned in the past five years because of failures in the interpreting service.

This illustrates perfectly what a farce the criminal justice system is in the UK and how inefficient the courts are, said Philip Davies, a Tory MP on the Commons justice committee.

Taxpayers money is being completely squandered on nonsense like this. You really couldnt make it up. How hard can it be to make sure an interpreter turns up at the right court at the right time?

Afgan murderer Jamshid Piruz arrives at Hove Crown Court for sentence. He will now hear his fate next Friday

Lord Marks, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, said: It is utterly farcical that cases have to be rescheduled because the interpreter does not turn up.

How can they not know what day they are needed? I understand mistakes happen but this is just not on. Many interpreters are dedicated professionals and a few just let everyone down.

Piruz was due to be sentenced for the hammer attack on constables Jess Chick and Stewart Young, of Sussex Police, as they investigated a burglary in Crawley last January.

PC Young suffered head injuries but recovered.

Piruz pleaded guilty at Hove to two counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, burglary and affray. He was allowed into Britain unchecked last January following his release after serving seven years of a 12-year sentence for decapitating a female tenant at his house near Amsterdam.

Court documents in the Netherlands said he was inspired by Taliban beheading videos. Piruz, who is jobless, is understood to be a permanent Dutch resident  status that would allow him to enter the UK under EU freedom of movement rules.

Critics condemned the lack of checks on offenders from the EU which left gaping holes in UK border controls. European countries have no obligation to alert the UK about convictions.

PC Jess Chick who was attacked with a hammer by Jamshid Piruz

About 10,000 foreign nationals are in UK prisons, around 11 per cent of the total prison population, with many needing interpreters at their numerous court hearings and appeals.

Courts across England used to rely on local interpreters but in January 2012 ministers handed a monopoly to Capita Translation and Interpreting.

It prompted a wave of criticism from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, which previously provided courts with language experts.

MPs were told the company had failed to send interpreters to up to a fifth of trials, sent people speaking the wrong language, or used incompetent employees.

In October, the heavily-criticised 168million contract was handed to Leeds-based translation service The Big Word.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: We introduced a new system for booking interpreters in 2012, as the previous system was costly and inefficient.
Liberty University in Virginia is set to build a state-of-the-art gun range on campus after Campbell County Board of Supervisors approved plans for the $3million development.

The request to build the range on a 500-acre plot of land on the Lynchburg campus was approved 6-0, WSLS 10 reported.

The gun range will feature a pistol/biathlon range, three rifle ranges, a police shoot house, and skeet and trap shooting.

Scroll down for video

Liberty University is set to build a state-of-the-art gun range on campus after Campbell County Board of Supervisors approved plans for the $3million development

President Jerry Falwell Jr told Fox News that the university has avoided 'sexual assault problems' that are seen at a lot at universities by providing students with 'positive alternatives'

President Jerry Falwell Jr, who is well known as a prominent evangelical leader and an outspoken Trump supporter, told Fox News that the university has used mountain land on the Lynchburg campus for recreational activities which has helped them 'avoid sexual assault problems'.

'We've been able to avoid a lot of the sexual assault problems that you see at a lot of universities by giving students positive alternatives to keep them busy and to keep them entertained.

'The shooting range will be part of that,' Falwell Jr said.

The proposal included a noise ordinance between 10pm and 6am and the site will be monitored 24/7.

Jerry Falwell Jr, left, with president-elect Donald Trump. The university president turned down Trump's offer to serve as secretary of education in November

Liberty University special use permit for recreational shooting on campus mountain land pictured

The range will also be open to community members and local law enforcement officers to train on site.

The Virginia Department of Transportation had no objections to the plans, and although a local resident alerted the board that there are more than 100 homes near the development site, only four residents complained, according to WSLS 10.

Campbell County supervisor Eric Zeher said the university has done an 'amazing job' of taking safety and noise measurements into account.

The university in Lynchburg, Virginia, is a Christian college, founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Sr in 1971

Brad Butler, Liberty University's Planning Coordinator, said the wooded area will have to be cleared for the development, according to ABC 13 WSET.

The campus development will be the first National Rifle Association-supported facility at an American University and will be the first to feature an NCAA certified outdoor shooting range that would accommodate all Olympic shooting sports, according to the proposal.

Liberty University hopes to open the shooting range by Labor Day.

The project was approved by Campbell County Board members 6-0

Falwell Jr graduated from Liberty University in 1984 and took over as president after his father, who founded the school in 1971, died.

In November 2016, Falwell Jr turned down President-elect Donald Trump's invitation to serve as secretary of education.

He said Trump offered him a four-to-six-year commitment, but that Falwell Jr would not be able to leave his position at the university for more than two years.

Early in 2016 he endorsed Trump during the Republican primaries and said the now president-elect reminded him of his own father.

The university president also came under fire after the 2015 San Bernardino shooting when he said if more 'good people' had guns, they could 'end those Muslims before they walked in killing.'

Jerry Falwell Jr. Born June 17, 1962

Son of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University

Took over as president of Liberty University after his father's passing in 2007

After San Bernardino killings in 2015, he said if more 'good people' had guns, they could 'end those Muslims before they walked in killing'

In January, he endorsed Trump for president during GOP primary

Decision caused a rift among conservative evangelicals Advertisement
Investigators say Ellyah was being kept unsupervised in a filthy room strewn with dirty diapers, animal waste and broken toys for five hours at a time

Boy's mother, Patricia Giddings, and her ex-boyfriend, Brandon Bushey, have been charged with criminally negligent homicide

when his head got stuck in a hole cut into plywood plank used as makeshift baby gate in August

An upstate New York mother and her now ex-boyfriend have been charged with criminally negligent homicide after the woman's two-year-old son suffocated trying to escape from a room littered with feces.

The incident took place in AuSable Fork, New York, back in August but the former couple, 21-year-old Patricia Giddings and 24-year-old Brandon Bushey, were only arrested last month.

Investigators said on August 9, 2016, Giddings and Bushey were watching TV in another room in their home at 2426 State Route 9N in AuSable Forks when the woman's son, Ellyah Elvidge, got his head lodged in a hole cut into a four-foot-long piece of plywood.

The wooden plank had allegedly been nailed to the door frame as a makeshift baby gate to keep the toddler in his room.

Life cut short: Ellyah Elvidge, 2, suffocated back in August inside his mother's home in upstate New York while the woman and her boyfriend were watching TV in another room

Felony counts: Patricia Giddings, 21 (left), and Brandon Bushey, 24 (pictured right with Ellyah) have been charged with criminally negligent homicide

According to an arrest report, the bedroom where Ellyah was staying was filled with animal waste, dirty diapers and broken toys, reported the station WCAX.

Giddings allegedly admitted that she would keep her toddler son without supervision inside his filthy room for up to five hours at a time

Prosecutors would later call the enclosure a 'holding pen' and describe the conditions inside the childs living space as deplorable.

When Giddings and Bushey discovered Ellyah lying unconscious in the room, they took him to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead from asphyxiation, meaning that he could not breathe.

During a court hearing last month, investigators testified that Ms Giddings admitted to them that she would keep her toddler son without supervision inside the filthy room for up to five hours at a time.

Ellyah's biological father, Joshua Elvidge, expressed dismay upon learning of his late son's unsafe living conditions.

It's very sickening, and I just wish she could look me in the eyes because what they described, in my eyes, is that he was living like a pig. Like an animal, he told the station after the hearing.

Ellyah Elvidge got his head lodged in a hole cut into a four-foot-long piece of plywood that had been used as a barricade

When Giddings (left and right) and Bushey discovered Ellyah lying unconscious in the room, they took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead from asphyxiation

Split: Bushey (right) broke up with Giddings shortly after Ellyah's death and moved to New Jersey, where he was arrested on December 16

Giddings and Bushey broke up shortly after Ellyah's death and the man moved to New Jersey, where he was arrested on December 16 and later extradited back to New York, reported the Press Republican.

Giddings, who is believed to have a younger child, was taken into custody three days before her ex-boyfriend. Both are being held at Clinton County Jail on $100,000 bond.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein will set up an 'election integrity' organization with leftover funds from her failed recount effort.

Stein, who netted one percent of the national popular vote, will receive a refund of $2 million, the Washington Free Beacon reports, after raising just over $7.3 million for recounts in three states.

Wisconsin has finished recounts in all but two of its 72 counties. A Pennsylvania called off ballot counting before it began. Ballots were counted in fewer than half of Michigan's precincts before a judge put an end to that effort, too.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein will set up an 'election integrity' organization with leftover funds from her failed recount effort

Election officials initially said the Wisconsin effort would cost $3.5 million but it expects to spend more than $2.1 million.

Costs are currently at $1.8 million and two remaining counties expect to bill Stein for an additional $368,000. Stein will be reimbursed for the difference.

The Green Party presidential candidate will receive a refund from Michigan, as well, in the amount of $592,000, the Free Beacon says.

Stein paid $125 a precinct for ballot counting in Michigan's 7,786 precincts. Election officials made it through 3,050 precincts before a judge stepped in.

The rest of the money Stein raised went to travel, staff and legal fees.

She told reporters in mid-December that $1.6 million of the money went to lawyers making her case in court.

A page on Steins website that's since been wiped said staff received $212,500 in payments and while consultants were paid $364,000, the Free Beacon reported.

Another line item was listed as administrative expenses and included travel costs was for $353,618.

Stein said at a Tuesday evening rally in Madison, Wisconsin, that she'd put the remaining funds toward the creation of a new voter integrity project, Count My Vote.

'Its not the only instance in which we the voters were told if we the voters wanted to have a verified vote it was going to cost us an obscene amount of money,' Stein said. 'It seemed like this was part of a broader resistance to transparency and accountability in our vote.'

She said it took a 'bake sale on steroids' to get this far - and not all the votes were counted by hand.

Milwaukee did its recount with a machine. A sum total of 55 percent of Wisconsin's ballots were counted by hand, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Stein, who netted one percent of the national popular vote, will receive a refund of $2 million after raising just over $7.3 million for recounts in three states. She's pictured here in December in New York

The Green Party politician said the group would work toward getting rid of voting machines and push for automatic recounts when ballots are scanned electronically and in close races, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.

President-elect Donald Trump had called the Green Party recount effort 'ridiculous' and a 'scam'

'When we asked for a full recount we only got a hand recount in about half of the precincts, for about half of the voters,' she said at a Tuesday rally outside the Wisconsin state capitol. 'So essentially what we got was half a recount.'

Stein gained 66 votes in the recount effort in Wisconsin, where she netted roughly one percent of the total popular vote. Donald Trump expanded his lead over Hillary Clinton by 131 ballots.

The Wisconsin State Journal said dozens of people showed up to Stein's Madison event on Tuesday but many were reporters.

Count My Vote's first act will be a review of local recounts that it will sum up and release in a report.

'We also want to include in this ensuring we have a right to vote and that we put an end to voter ID laws to this interstate cross check that has taken millions of voters potentially off rolls, also ranked choice voting,' Stein said Tuesday.

Trump was certified as the winner of the presidential election on Friday, in the House of Representatives, after the Electoral College's vote's were formally registered. A protester is seen being led out

Vice President Joe Biden received a standing ovation from Republicans in Congress as he shut down the rancor with his gavel, telling members of his party, 'It is over'

Trump had called the Green Party recount effort 'ridiculous.' Allies of the president-elect were fighting Stein in court.

'This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasnt even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount,' he declared in November.

The president-elect said 'the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing.'

Trump was certified as the winner of the presidential election on Friday, in the House of Representatives, after the Electoral College's vote's were formally registered.

Clinton earned 2.9 million more votes than Trump across the nation but failed to secure a majority of votes in the states she needed to win the Electoral College.

Protesters hollered during the House session today and Democratic members lodged complaints about Russian hacking and voter suppression in the election.
Deianeira Ford, 21, was called the N-word in front of her children by a Dairy Queen franchise owner, police have revealed

A Dairy Queen franchise owner called a customer the N-word in front of her children and then boasted about it to an officer, Indiana police have revealed.

Deianeira Ford, who is biracial, was at the drive-through with her two children when she did not receive her full order and was told she could not get the rest of it.

Ford, 21, asked for a $5 refund from Jim Crichton, the Zion store's owner.

That's when he called the mother and her children n*****s, she said. Her three-year-old daughter asked her what the word meant.

Ford then tried to find out Crichton's name. He first told her it was 'Bill Clinton' then said 'better yet, I'm Donald Trump'.

Crichton then told Ford to go 'back where I came from', she claims.

An officer arrived at the restaurant around 11.30am on Wednesday and found Ford 'visibly upset and crying', according to the police report.

After Ford explained what happened, the officer informed Crichton that she was 'so disturbed' by the owner's behavior that she was willing to sign a complaint against him.

'(Crichton) boastfully told me he would be happy to go to jail over the issue and proudly admitted to calling Ford a slur,' the officer wrote in his report.

'He added that he was "fed up with black people"'.

The officer wrote that Crichton also used racial slurs 'freely to describe black people'.

But when the same officer was called to the store later that day, after a Black Lives Matter organizer arrived to talk to Crichton, the owner had changed his tune.

Crichton had called police to complain he was getting harassing telephone calls about the incident and that he wanted the organizer to leave the store.

The organizer left when the officer asked him to, but Crichton did not recognize the cop and told him an earlier incident had taken place with a woman that same day.

Critchton claimed that 'nothing racial took place' with Ford, despite boasting about using the slur to the same officer just hours before.

'He did not recognize me as the officer who spoke to him this morning and I reminded him that he already admitted to me what he did,' the officer wrote.

Ford asked for a $5 refund from Jim Crichton, the owner of the Zion, Indiana store. That's when he called the mother and her children n*****s, she said

'He continued to contradict his story about this morning to me several more times and was becoming angered that I did not believe him.'

Crichton continued to deny the story was true to the Lake County News-Sun, telling a reporter it was '99 percent lies'.

'This is blown so far out of proportion it's stupid,' he said.

'Her order was confusing, and I told her, "Here's your money back". This is blown so far out of proportion.'

But then, on Friday, Crichton apologized for his 'recent words and actions'.

'As the owner of this restaurant, I should be a model for others,' he told the New York Daily News.

'My actions were inexcusable and unacceptable.'

Ford said she found the incident to 'embarrassing', especially because it was in front of her children.

Ford said Crichton then told her his name was Donald Trump and said she should go 'back to where I came from'

'That was the hardest thing,' she told the Lake County News-Sun. 'He did it with my children in the back.'

But the Zion community has rallied around Ford, with both the police chief and mayor reaching out and the local Black Lives Matter organization planning a protest in front of the store on Saturday.

Police Chief Stephen Dumyahn said he was 'disgusted and discouraged' by Crichton's comments.

'I reached out to Miss Ford to tell her that this does not represent the diverse community of Zion,' he said.

'Although we recognize the rights of business owners and managers to operate their business as they choose, under the law, we do not condone the inflammatory language that was used or the way this customer was treated,' he added.

Ford said the Dairy Queen CEO also personally called her and sincerely apologized about the incident.

She said the company had someone visit Crichton to express their concerns about it as well.

Dairy Queen also released a statement in support of Ford, writing that they expect all their franchisees and employees to 'treat every single person who walks through their doors with the utmost dignity and respect'.

'Nothing less is acceptable,' it read. 'Nearly all DQ restaurants are run by individual owners. Nevertheless, it is vital that they understand the importance of treating all of our fans with great respect.'

'The actions of this franchisee are inexcusable, reprehensible and unacceptable.'

'We do not in any way condone his behavior or language. It is not what our brand stands for and is not representative of a DQ or its franchisee community.'

Crichton is not facing any charges in relation to the incident, with Zion police noting that although it was 'deplorable' it is 'not criminal'.

'One of the foundational rights we have under the U.S. Constitution is the freedom of speech,' the department's statement read.
Disgraced socialite Harriet Wran will work in a thrift shop to give back to society.

The daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran and recovering ice addict spent two years in jail for participating in a robbery that led to the death of a drug dealer.

She will be clocking in at a Ted Noffs Foundation Op Shop to help raise funds for disadvantaged youth, according to the Daily Telegraph.

She reportedly told her mother that she is 'strong enough now to help others.'

Scroll down for video

Harriet Wran, 28, daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran and a recovering ice addict, spent two years in jail for participating in a robbery that led to the death of a drug dealer

Wran will be clocking in at a thrift store to help raise funds for disadvantaged youth. She is pictured with her mother Jill Hickson after her release from jail in September, 2016

The foundation's chief executive Matt Noffs told the Daily Telegraph:

'Harriet has gone through a lot and is keen to give something back... It's early days for Harriet but [her mother] has told us she is getting stronger and feels ready to help.'

The 28-year-old lives in a substance-free family home in Woollahra with the support of her mother, who spent $500,000 on her rehabilitation, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Wran was jailed in 2014 after she and her former boyfriend Michael Lee robbed a drug dealer along with a friend of Lee's.

Lee, 37, was sentenced in September last year to at least 13 years and six months behind bars for stabbing Daniel McNulty to death.

The friend, Lloyd Edward Haines, 31, who knew Lee had a knife but did not anticipate it would be used, was jailed for at least 11 years.

They both pleaded guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to murder and armed robbery with wounding of Mr McNulty's flatmate, Brett Fitzgerald.

Wran, who is a former Sydney Church of England Grammar School pupil, served time for being an accessory after the fact of murder and robbery.

The 28-year-old reportedly lives in a substance-free family home in Woollahra with the support of her mother, who spent $500,000 on her rehabilitation

Wran was jailed in 2014 after she and her former boyfriend Michael Lee robbed a drug dealer along with a friend of Lee's

Wran, who is a former Sydney Church of England Grammar School pupil, served time for being an accessory after the fact of murder and robbery

Michael Lee, 37, was sentenced in September last year to at least 13 years and six months behind bars for stabbing Daniel McNulty to death

The trio went to the unit to get drugs and spontaneously decided to rob Mr McNulty which led to a violent struggle between the occupants and Lee and Haines.

The robbery 'escalated unexpectedly and quickly in a manner that neither offender anticipated or foresaw', the judge said upon the duo's sentencing.
An axe-wielding 'tall, young, beautiful blonde' woman allegedly went on a rampage through a Sydney service station injuring two people.

One victim was left bleeding from a head wound and another was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head and only saved by her thick dreadlocks.

The alleged attacker, aged in her 20s, walked into a 7-Eleven on Stanmore Road in Enmore at about 2.25am on Saturday, police said.

Scroll down for video

An axe-wielding 'tall, young, beautiful blonde' woman allegedly went on a rampage through a Sydney service station injuring two people

The alleged attacker, aged in her 20s, walked into a 7-Eleven on Stanmore Road in Enmore at about 2.25am on Saturday, police said

The first victim, a man aged in his 30s, suffered a serious head wound inside the store when the blonde assailant allegedly came in swinging.

She then turned on a woman in her 40s buying milk outside the store, knocking her out with the butt of the fire axe after her dreadlocks saved her from serious injury.

The attacker appeared calm as she walked away but swung her axe again at another man on Stanmore road, nicking his clothes but not hurting him.

One victim was left bleeding from a head wound and another was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head and only saved by her thick dreadlocks

The attacker appeared calm as she walked away but swung her axe again at another man on Stanmore road, nicking his clothes but not hurting him

Witness Nathan Wood saw the attack unfold and followed the woman while on the phone to triple zero so he could give police a better description.

'There was a guy following her, talking on the phone, he had balls,' a witness told the Daily Telegraph of Mr Woods actions.

The blonde woman was soon arrested by police, strapped to a stretcher, and taken by ambulance to St Vincents Hospital for assessment under police guard.

Mr Wood, a U.S. national applying for Australian citizenship, downplayed his act of heroism.

The male and female who were struck by the axe were taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for treatment and are both in a stable condition

'I see Aussies punching sharks on the news, I figure I have got to do something to earn my citizenship,' he said.

The male and female who were struck by the axe were taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for treatment and are both in a stable condition.

Police are searching for a motive as the parties involved were not known to each other.
Shocking footage has emerged of a company's canteen staff slaughtering a huge whale in front of the cafeteria.

The eight-tonne mammal was allegedly gutted and cut in the company in Xinyu, China's Jiangxi province, on January 5, reports the People's Daily Online.

Whales are a protected species in China and the local agricultural bureau has stepped in to investigate the case.

Shocking: Shocking footage shows the moment staff start to slaughter the animal in China

The company bought the eight-tonne whale and asked chefs to slaughter it, report said

According to the report, the company bought the whale and asked chefs to butcher the animal.

In the footage posted to video-sharing website Miaopai, the chef can be seen sharpening his knife before starting to cut the animal. Two employees can be seen trying to saw off the tail of the mammal.

The whale was said to be over 30 feet in length.

One onlooker told reporters: 'The smell of blood was thick. I have never seen such a big fish. To be honest it was a little scary.'

Giant animal: According to reports, the whale was over 30 feet in length

Investigation launched: The local Agriculture Fishery Bureau are now investigating the video

According to Jiangxi Provincial Agriculture Department Fishery Bureau, a staff member surnamed Wei told reporters: 'Whales belong to two key aquatic wild animal protections.

'Fishing, trading and transportation is not illegal but it must have the appropriate conditions.'

The bureau is currently in contact with Xinyu City's fisheries sector for verification and investigation.

Onlookers came out to watch the incident unfold with some recording the incident on phones

People have been commenting on the story under the Miaopai video post.

One user wrote: 'It is so gigantic, do people dare eating it?'

While another commented: 'It looks disgusting.'

And one said: 'The company is strange.'

Elisa Allen, Director of PETA UK told MailOnline: 'Seeing a larger-than-life animal hacked to pieces to satisfy simple greed should make anyone with the slightest bit of empathy sick.

Whales killed for their flesh endure many hours of severe suffering after being shot with rifles and explosive harpoons before finally dying in agony.

While killing whales is illegal in China and this video has rightly triggered an investigation, when it comes to pain and suffering, pigs, chickens, and cows raised in miserable conditions before their throats are slit in British abattoirs deserve our consideration, if not our outrage, as well.
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When you're cold, the first thing you do is put on warm clothing or hide under a blanket.

And this is exactly what construction workers chose to do when they were concerned about a newly built road in China.

The construction site in China has been covered in over 100 cotton quilts to keep concrete warm and guarantee its strength.

The multi-coloured cotton quilts were placed over a new section of road at Shunhe Viaduct in Jinan, China's Shandong province on January 4, reports the People's Daily Online.

The colourful road measures some 200,000 square metres, over two million square feet.

Images show patches of pink, orange, yellow and blue brightening up the newly built highway.

Beautiful: Photos taken on January 4 show the construction site covered in bright quilts to keep the concrete warm

Clever: A construction worker places the quilts on the highway in an attempt to ensure the concrete remains 'strong'

Ensuring the concrete is warm: The section of road is at Shunhe viaduct in Jinan, China's Shandong province

Like a pretty painting: Colourful quilts cover an elevated section of the newly built highway in China

Like a rainbow road: The quilts come in various colours from greens to pink, yellow and orange
Appeal: Royal Marine Alexander Blackman

A special court of five of Britain's most senior judges will hear the appeal of jailed Royal Marine Alexander Blackman.

In a sign of its growing importance, the case will be presided over by the UK's top judge, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, and four high-ranking colleagues.

Appeals are usually heard by two or three judges. But the fate of Sgt Blackman  known as Marine A when he was jailed for life for murder after shooting a wounded Taliban fighter in Afghanistan  could have far-reaching consequences for other troops facing criminal charges.

The appeal by Sgt Blackman could lead to a landmark ruling  which explains why the judiciary has taken the unusual step of appointing a special panel of five judges. It also reflects the case's importance in the eyes of Parliament and the public because of the anger it has caused about the lack of understanding and support for British troops in warzones.

As well as Lord Thomas, the panel includes Lord Justice Leveson, the third most senior judge in England and Wales, and Lady Justice Hallett, the eighth most senior. The remaining two are High Court judges Mr Justice Openshaw and Mr Justice Sweeney.

The panel includes Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, left, and Lord Justice Leveson, right

The case is listed at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on February 8 and 9.

Sgt Blackman, 42, who is at HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire, won the right to a fresh appeal following a campaign for justice backed by Daily Mail readers.

Their donations funded an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which concluded last month that fresh evidence meant there was 'a real possibility' of his conviction being overturned.

He shot a Taliban fighter who was mortally wounded while trying to storm a British outpost in Helmand in 2011.
If you want to create your own Grand Designs home, but are deterred by the prospect of a potentially lengthy and complex building process, a prefab could be the answer.

In the past, the word 'prefab' has been associated with cheap, mass building in the post-war period. But today's versions can be design masterpieces that are also high-tech and hard-wearing - and the exterior at least can usually be installed on-site within three or four days.

The most famous include the distinctive 'Huf Haus', with its large swathes of glass at the heart of its design. And for those with a smaller budget, there are award-winning designs such as the Modhulus, which cost less than 50,000, excluding the price of the land to build them on.

Many modern timber-framed properties can be installed on site within a matter of days

This luxury Huf Haus design is on the private Avon Castle estate near Ringwood in Hampshire

The cutting-edge designs of modern prefabs have been given a seal of approval by the minister for Housing, Planning and London, Gavin Barwell.

Speaking at a housing conference in London, he said: 'Understandably people will have concerns about quality and design.

'But these aren't the poor-quality pre-fabs of the past. There is simply no comparison,' he added.

'They set the benchmark for the latest, cutting-edge designs. '

'They're built in highly controlled factory settings, and the parts assembled precisely onsite.'

One of the big advantages of prefabs is that they offer huge flexibility with the properties being built off site and then installed within a matter of days on-site, often to the requirements of the owner (for example, buyers may decide to divide the space into three smaller bedrooms instead of two larger ones).

The chief problem, as with any self-build project, is finding the land to put one on. Clear building plots are almost impossible to come by in popular areas of the south of England and even in less in-demand locations they can be tough to find.

That means that many self-builders opt to buy an existing house and knock it down to make way for their project. The downside to this is that it is expensive, however, the potential cost and time savings of a prefab will help keep those bills down slightly.

Once you've got your plot, you need planning permission. A striking modern prefab is likely to stand out from neighbouring homes, however, planners may look favourably on its design status. It would be wise to find a local planner to speak to and get a steer on your council's thoughts.

If you've decided that you would like to build your own Grand Designs using a 21st century prefab, we take a look at some of the options available...

A Huf Haus is from a German company of the same name and can be constructed within days

1. Huf Haus

A Huf Haus is perhaps the most recognizable of the luxury prefab brands due to its distinctive glass and wood frame.

They are built by the German company of the same name and can be constructed within days (interior fittings excluded) - but only by its own team.

They take about a week to install and cost around 300 per square ft, which is 3,230 per square metre.

The starting prices include a basic entry level package with floor coverings, plumping and wiring, bathroom sanitary ware, fittings and tiles, external blinds on all ground floor glazing and an air source heat pump.

For a large family home this can add up to a sizeable amount, however, the houses have substantial wow factor, an upmarket image and a sizeable following.

The large panes of glass are the dominant feature, and mean that the property is flooded with light and has a modern feel.

The design of the house also means that ongoing costs are kept low as tight seals keep heat in during the winter and exterior overhangs keep the sun out in the summer.

A slab or basement must have already been built for construction on a Huf Haus to be begin.

The Huf Haus is associated with luxury and large, open spaces that are filled with light

The wooden frame and large panes of glass are the dominant feature of the Huf Haus

2. Baufritz

Baufritz is another option for those seeking a luxury design, not least due to the speed of construction - typically within three or four days. (However, completion of the interior can take an additional few months.)

The houses are constructed in Baufritz's factory in Germany before being shipped to the site.

The company uses 100 per cent natural materials wherever possible, such as its wood shaving insulation.

The site needs to prepared - with any existing property on a site obviously needing to be demolished. Clearing the land and laying the foundations is similar to a standard build and Baufritz works with contractors before the installation begins.

The average cost of a Baufritz home is 2,000 per sq m, which is 186 per square foot.

This four bedroom detached Baufritz home in Hampshire was built for 750,000, including the interior, but excluding the cost of the land it was built on

The Baufritz home took nine months to complete, including the interior decoration

As well as timber frame, Baufritz uses 100% natural materials wherever possible

3. Scandia Hus

Another option if you're looking to build your own Grand Designs property is Scandia Hus.

They can be built by your own builder, or the company offers a so-called 'turnkey' service, where it builds the entire house for you.

The homes offer good insulation, triple-glazed windows, and underfloor heating. Some people also add PV solar panels, ground source heat pumps and other renewable energy technology.

They cost between 120 and 150 per sq ft for a self build and between 170 and 200 per sq ft for the full turnkey product. (This equates to 1,290 to 1,614 per square metre and 1,830 to 2,150 per square metre).

Buyers can expect for the build to take around six months depending on the design, site conditions and specification.

The foundations are prepared in exactly the same way as a conventional build, with 90 per cent of buildings being trench foundations with beam and block floors.

Homes from Scandia Hus offer good insulation, triple glazed windows, and underfloor heating

The foundations for this type of home are prepared in the same way as a conventional build

4. Modulus

The Modulhus home has been creating a buzz, having recently been crowned winner of an annual design competition in which it was named as the best home you can build on a shoestring.

The two-bedroom house covers 66 square metres and costs from just 49,644 to build. This includes the shell and windows, but no fitted kitchen or bathrooms.

The timber homes, made from fully-finished factory parts, are built off-site - and eco-efficient features, such as solar thermal panels (which are used to help heat water) can be added.

The customer can also choose the roof, be it bitumen, clay, concrete roof tiles or a tin cover.

The price of the project does not include the land that the houses are built on - something which substantially drives up the price of new homes. Foundations also need to be laid before building can begin.

The Modulhus can be built as a stand alone home or several can be built in a terrace or as part of a block.

Award-winning design: The 'Modulhus' has two bedrooms and costs less than 50,000

Plenty of options: The Modulhus can be bought as a finished product or as structure-only

Other companies providing timber framed homes include Framehouses, Scotframe and Potton.

The companies can help guide buyers through the entire purchase from finding the land, to designing the property and obtaining planning permission.

WILL A BANK LEND ON THESE HOMES - SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN AN ISSUE IN THE PAST? Sue Anderson, of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said: 'Like everyone else in the housing world, we're really interested in the potential for offsite manufacture to deliver (potentially) a flow of good quality affordable new build housing at a predictable price and produced over a predictable timescale. 'That said, lenders also need to be guided by valuers (and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) on appropriate valuation mechanisms, and to be assured about the structural integrity, longevity and adequacy for mortgage purposes of any properties of non-traditional construction. 'We are taking an active interest in the development of this market - but it is, of course, a matter for individual lenders to determine their lending criteria, including the types of property on which they are prepared to lend. 'We will be working with our members to ensure that as this market develops further, to ensure any emerging barriers to lending can be identified and addressed.' Advertisement

How do you find the land to build on?

Unless you already own a plot, you need to factor in the cost of buying the land, something that will depend on several factors - perhaps most important its location.

If the land is in a popular location - near good transport links and schools - expect to pay a higher price.

Landfinding services are available to help you in your search. These include Homebuilding & Renovating's plotfinder.net, which collects information from private individuals selling land and estate agents and make it available to subscribers to the service.

The map below highlights some examples of the cost of plots on offer around the country with planning permission for different-sized homes.

How much does it cost to buy land with planning permission around the country?
Theres no reason to feel gloomy now the festivities are over. After all, the days are getting longer and brighter - and a new year is a good excuse to ring some changes. So here are some tips and likely trends for 2017.

Emerald attraction: The Wallis sofa by Pinch Design for Heal's upholstered in Varese velvet

Dreamy green

For those moving house and seeking new schemes, heres a fresh idea. Pantones colour of the year is a spring-like green. The company says the shade is inspired by flourishing foliage.

Certainly, it has a hint of Brussels sprout. No, you may not want it on your walls, but it might encourage us to review the colour, which can be zippy or sumptuously rich.

At Heals, green is the signature colour for spring.

Rich fabrics in zesty hues will be seen throughout the collection from cushions to sofas. Staying on the botanical trail, statement prints are a favourite, says Sabina Miller, Heals head of buying.

The Pendel sofa by Pinch Design for Heals is a signature piece, covered in G.P. & J. Bakers glorious Nympheus fabric. (3429, heals.com).

Naturally occurring green tones are popular among our clients, from sage to forest to even perkier chartreuse colours, says Russell Pinch, of Pinch Design.

'Even neutrals are brighter with pale de-saturated blush, plaster and pale blues', says textile designer Genevieve Bennett.

Spaces to Zone-out

Could 2017 be the year that a peaceful nook with a book becomes more alluring than mindless internet surfing and gormless TV watching? Well, we can hope.

Designer Abigail Ahern thinks we should create digital-free spots in our homes with a deep seated sofa or armchair, sheepskin throws, and chunky knits.

Snuggle up: This Tibetan sheepskin throw is in the sale for 114.75 at Abigail Ahern

In store we are creating lots of low-tech zones with beautiful individual pieces, she says.

A Tibetan sheepskin throw in Dove, Storm or Warm Grey is in the sale for 114.75 (down from 135), abigailahern.com.

Sheepys also has a gorgeous range of British sheepskin rugs and cushions from 89, sheepys.co.uk. And the Tired Man lounge chair will cheer up the surliest sitter. It comes in sheepskin (in the sale from 4,674.15, skandium.com).

Embrace British craft

The New Craftsmen, a company which celebrates British craft, doesnt worry too much about trends (thenewcraftsmen.com).

We look for pieces from throughout the British Isles that represent enduring values and beauty, says founder Mark Henderson.

Heritage piece: The Brodgar bench by Gareth Neal and Kevin Gauld available from the New Craftsmen (3,350)

Whether its the hand-thrown contemporary tableware of James and Tilla Waters from Wales, or the slipware of Devon-based Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew who use methods that are centuries old, or the blending of Orkney chair-making with the flair of the London-based designer Gareth Neal.

For us, its about what will give lasting pleasure, says Henderson.

COOL BLUE KITCHENS

We still love blue and, according to a survey from the home design sharing website, Houzz, were trying it in our kitchens. There are more than 10,000 UK images of blue kitchens on Houzz and blue kitchen was a popular search term last year, says a spokesperson.

Those not brave enough for blue walls can easily accessorise with some swish blue products. You could, for example, buy an Aga in Dartmouth Blue, reminiscent of ominous skies, which is being produced as a limited edition for 2017.

And blue and white crockery is always comforting. Theres nothing like thick-striped Cornish-ware to transport you to the seaside, (mugs from 12, cornishware.co.uk).

Ravishing red: Reuben red by Master Paint Makers inspired by the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection

Artistic flair

For the first time, Londons Victoria and Albert Museum is offering a 40-colour paint range inspired by its collections. Trajans Column is a white shade in homage to the plaster cast of the Roman Triumphal column dating from the 1st century AD, and Reuben Red reflects the rouge used in Victorian fabrics.

For a more decorative nod to the museum, Tile Giant has a new range based on pieces from the V&A archive. You could explore the green theme in your bathroom with the Olive Puddle or Racing Green Puddle glaze tiles (both 93.50 per sq m, tilegiant.co.uk).

Slick surface: The concrete hauteville chair by Lyon Breton available at Amara for 349

Concrete Idea

Those fed up with the Danish hygge theme (taking pleasure in the ordinary) and feeling over-heated in candle-laden homes will welcome the trend for concrete, with its slick, cool outlook.

Online retailer Amara pinpoints it as the material of choice for 2017. It offers some chic accessories from Lyon Beton, which specialises in the hardy material. Theres the concrete floor lamp (165) and magazine rack (125). It also sells wallpaper imitating various shades of pavement (199 for a 9m roll, amara.com).

Skinny Linear

What is it? Good question. Its a penchant for clean, fine, black lines in geometric shapes. So, it might not work in a cosy cottage with wonky walls. But, it could be neat and stylish in a student bedroom or city flat because it has a light touch. Its a theme for Habitat next year.

Fine lines: The Tingo shelving by Habitat provides an interesting framework for storage

The Quad ceiling light has a multi-linear composition, with a fine black wire in overlapping geometric shapes that cast beautiful shadows when lit, says Polly Dickens, creative director for Habitat.

Weve created the sleek Nestor tables (from 595) with their marble tops floating on skinny frames  and the Tingo shelving (from 795) designed by Matthew Long has a sloping shelf detail for a quirkier design.

Statement piece: An armchair by Doshi Levien for their new collection with John Lewis

High desing

London duo Doshi Levien have created a 13-piece premium collection called Open Home for John Lewis, which will be available from February.
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In sunny Israel, solar energy supplies only a small percentage of the nation's power needs, leaving it far behind countries with cloudier and colder climates.

Now the fledgling solar industry is trying to make a leap forward with a large-scale project boasting the world's tallest solar tower, as a symbol of Israel's renewal energy ambitions.

With Israel traditionally running its economy on fossil fuels, renewable energy has long been hobbled by bureaucracy and a lack of incentives.

In this Dec. 22, 2016 photo, 50,000 mirrors, known as heliostats,encircle the solar tower in the Negev desert, near in Ashelim, southern Israel. In sunny Israel, solar energy supplies just a small percentage of the nation's power needs, leaving it trailing far behind countries with cloudier and colder climates. Now it is trying to turn that around with a large-scale project, highlighted by the worlds tallest solar tower, that could mark a giant leap for the countrys fledgling renewable energy industry. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

HOW IT WORKS The solar tower that will be the world's tallest at 250 meters (820 feet). Solar towers use a method differing from the more common photovoltaic solar panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity. Towers use a solar-thermal method: Thousands of mirrors focus the sun's rays onto the tower, heating a boiler that creates steam to spin a turbine and generate electricity. Encircling the Ashalim tower are 50,000 mirrors, known as heliostats, in a shimmering blanket of glass over the desert. Advertisement

But the country is starting to make an effort, setting a goal of generating 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from the current 2.5 percent.

The Ashalim project, deep in the Negev desert, is made up of three plots, with a fourth planned for the future, each with a different solar technology.

Together, the fields will be Israel's largest renewable energy project when completed by 2018.

They are set to generate some 310 megawatts of power, about 1.6 percent of the country's energy needs  enough for about 130,000 households, or roughly 5 percent of Israel's population, according to Israel's Electricity Authority.

"It's the most significant single building block in Israel's commitment to CO2 reduction and renewable energy," said Eran Gartner, chief executive of Megalim Solar Power Ltd., which is building one part of the project.

The centerpiece is a solar tower that will be the world's tallest at 250 meters (820 feet).

Solar towers use a method differing from the more common photovoltaic solar panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity.

Instead, towers use a solar-thermal method: Thousands of mirrors focus the sun's rays onto the tower, heating a boiler that creates steam to spin a turbine and generate electricity.

Encircling the Ashalim tower are 50,000 mirrors, known as heliostats, in a shimmering blanket of glass over the desert.

The tower is so tall because the panels were squeezed together to maximize use of the land  and the closer the panels are the taller the tower must be, Gartner explained.

In this Dec. 22, 2016 photo, 50,000 mirrors, known as heliostats,encircle the solar tower in the Negev desert, near in Ashelim, southern Israel. In sunny Israel, solar energy supplies just a small percentage of the nation's power needs, leaving it trailing far behind countries with cloudier and colder climates.

Another solar-thermal plot at Ashalim will be able to store energy even when the sun goes down.

A third plot will use photovoltaic solar technology to produce energy.

Yaron Szilas, CEO of Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy, the lead developer of the second solar-thermal plot, said combining the three technologies was a wise move because each has its own advantage.

The amount of electricity it produces will be comparable to large-scale solar fields in California and Chile.

There are around a dozen solar tower fields around the world, the largest being the Ivanpah plant in California with some 170,000 heliostats around three 140-meter-tall (460-foot) towers.

Israel has developed some of the world's most advanced solar energy equipment and enjoys a nearly endless supply of sunshine.

But Israeli solar companies, frustrated by government bureaucracy, have mostly taken their expertise abroad.

Workers have already been busy installing a whopping 55,000 mirrors around the Ashalim solar power station in the Negev desert near Kibbutz Ashalim, southern Israel

Countries with cooler climates have outpaced Israel. Germany, for example, gets nearly 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

"Israel has a potential to be a sunshine superpower," said Leehee Goldenberg, director of the department of economy and environment at the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a non-governmental organization. Despite some steps in the right direction, "Israel's government hasn't really been pushing to reach its small goals regarding solar energy."

Workers are seen to place the towering reflective surfaces around the area with the aid of cranes to create a breathtaking sea of glass

Israel has often been reluctant to hand out huge parcels of land, a necessity for large-scale solar power production, Gartner said.

Large projects also demand access to state-owned infrastructure like gas, water and electricity, and connecting to those utilities out in remote plants in the Negev desert often takes time.

Israel's Finance Ministry said the price of generating solar power in Israel has come down, and the ministry has pushed new laws to promote the industry.

Recent legislation has also provided incentives and cut down some of the bureaucracy for Israelis wanting to install solar panels on their roofs.

The results of the new solar tower are expected to have a huge impact on the country

The ministry said if Ashalim is successful, it will aim for more such facilities.

After the discovery of major natural gas deposits offshore, Israel now gets 70 percent of its energy from cleaner-burning gas. That discovery was welcome, Szilas said, but it has also delayed the impetus for promoting renewable energy.

The developers in the Ashalim project say they want Israel to step up its renewable energy goals.

"With all the sun that we have and how progressed we are in technology, these goals are very, very, very modest," Szilas said.
Alexa, are you spying on me?

It's a fair question in light of attempts by authorities investigating the slaying of an Arkansas man to obtain voice recordings collected by an Amazon Echo speaker and its Alexa digital assistant.

Yet the popularity and capabilities of voice-enabled products such as the Echo continue to grow.

At the CES gadget show in Las Vegas, which opened Thursday, Whirlpool, Samsung and other manufacturers are unveiling new ways to use voice services to control laundry machines, refrigerators and other home systems.

John Herrington, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics America, unveils new refrigerators with Family Hub 2.0 during a Samsung news conference before CES International, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. Family Hub 2.0 features an interface on the refrigerator with apps that can be controlled by voice recognition. (AP Photo/John Locher)

ALEXA'S TAKEAWAY Prime members can ask Alexa to reorder from Amazon Restaurants by saying a restaurant name or cuisine type, for example, 'Alexa, order sushi from Amazon Restaurants.' The service pulls a customer's order history from a specified restaurant or cuisine type and lists meal options available for reorder. The selected meal is then sent for delivery to a customer's default address. Advertisement

Consumers are apparently willing to trade a certain amount of privacy for convenience.

So what exactly is being collected, stored or shared ?

To work, the Echo is always listening.

Once it hears someone utter a keyword, such as 'Alexa,' it shares what it hears with Amazon's servers to process a response.

Those conversations are then stored indefinitely.

Google's Home speaker works in a similar fashion.

The Echo 'has to listen to everything. That's kind of disturbing,' said Ryan O'Leary, vice president of WhiteHat Security's threat research center.

'It doesn't capture voice until it hears the keyword, but it could.

'You're trusting the devices to not do that, but it's entirely possible.'

In the Arkansas case, authorities investigating the death of a man found floating face-up in a hot tub at a friend's home requested the contents of the home's Echo and Amazon's stored recordings in hopes they might contain evidence.

The friend is charged with murder.

A judge has signed off on the search, but Amazon has balked.

Amazon has declined to comment specifically on the case but said the company objects to 'overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.'

Some experts worry that allowing such a search would erode people's privacy.

DID ALEXA WITNESS A MURDER? Amazon said it objects to 'overbroad' requests as a matter of practice 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 suspect's 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 that's 'as old as Methuselah.' The issue emerged in the slaying of Victor Collins, who was found floating face-up last year in the hot tub at a friend's 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. Advertisement

'It's not necessarily a direct threat for the average person, but the same thing can be said with any kind of privacy concern,' O'Leary said.

'People say you shouldn't be concerned if you're not doing anything wrong, but that's a dangerous precedent to set.'

Meanwhile, companies keep asking consumers to invite them into their homes.

Whirlpool is adding Alexa voice control to its smart-home appliances, including a washing machine, a stove and a refrigerator.

Someone can instruct the oven to pre-heat to 400 degrees by speaking a command to an Alexa-enabled device, such as the Echo.

The Bonjour voice-controlled alarm and personal assistant is on display at the Holi booth during CES Unveiled before CES International, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Simplehuman has a voice-activated trash can, and GE Lighting has a table lamp using Alexa voice control.

For now, voice control is mainly an add-on feature rather than a core component of gadgets. It's there for those who want to use it, but it's not essential for the product to function.

Many manufacturers are opting to use Amazon's Alexa service for now, though some are embracing voice systems from Google, Apple or Samsung.

Nvidia's Shield TV streaming device, for instance, employs Google's Assistant service so viewers can control video playback or find out the weather with just a voice command.

Meanwhile, Samsung's new Family Hub lets people use their voice to add items to shopping lists and order groceries online.

CES chief economist Shawn DuBravac said as many as 700 companies could announce Alexa-integrated products during the gadget show, on top of more than 1,500 existing ones.

As the smart home becomes more entrenched, DuBravac said, voice control could change the way we interact with technology in much the way the mouse did in the 1980s.

'Connected microphones are starting to appear in everything from cars to children's toys,' said James Plouffe, lead solutions architect at mobile-security company MobileIron. 'Consumers should think carefully about how comfortable they are with the prospect of a live mic in common household items.'

Because Amazon says it uses information gathered by the Echo to improve its voice technology, that information has the potential to 'live forever' online, Plouffe said.

The issue first grabbed headlines a couple of years ago, after Samsung said sensitive conversations could be captured by its voice-controlled smart TVs.

WHAT IS AMAZON ECHO? Amazon Echo is a voice-controlled smart speaker that works alongside a smartphone app. Using a virtual assistant called Alexa, the speaker can respond to voice commands from the user, such as setting an alarm or ordering a cab. Echo also works with services like Spotify as a 360-degree wireless speaker. The Amazon Echo and smaller Echo Dot speakers were launched in the UK in September in black and white Advertisement

Based on the flood of new voice-controlled gadgets headed to market, tech companies are betting that consumers will get over their fears.

Derrick Dicol, executive director of Comcast's Xfinity home, which uses voice controls in its home automation products, noted that people had to get used to sharing their banking information online.

'This is less invasive than that,' he said. 'It's just a different thing people have to feel comfortable with.'
In October last year, Samsung users around the world reported cases of their Galaxy Note 7 phones catching on fire, leading to a mass recall of the devices.

But despite this hugely publicised setback, which was estimated to cost Samsung 2.4 billion ($3 billion), the firm's profits surged last year.

Samsung said that its profits in the last quarter of 2016 were up 50 per cent, and at the highest level in more than three years.

Scroll down for video

In October last year, Samsung users around the world reported cases of their Galaxy Note 7 phones catching on fire, leading to a mass recall of the devices. But despite the worrying setback, the firm's profits surged last year

Analysts had expected Samsung's profits to surge thanks to its mainstay semiconductor business, but the result surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts.

The semiconductor division cashed in on strong demand and a tight supply for microchips during the September-December period, likely contributing to more than half of its quarterly earnings.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected a figure of 8 trillion won (5.4 billion/$6.7 billion).

But in its earnings preview, Samsung said it posted 9.2 trillion won (6.3 billion/$7.8 billion) in operating profit, up from 6.1 trillion won (4.1 billion/$5.1 billion) a year earlier.

It was the biggest quarterly income since the third quarter of 2013.

'It's thanks to the improvement in semiconductors and displays on top of favourable foreign exchange rates,' said Kim Young Woo, an analyst at SK Securities.

The result is good news for the tech giant that was obliged to do multiple recalls last year of products that included a popular smartphone and a washing machine (pictured)

WHY WERE THE BATTERIES EXPLODING? Lithium batteries are use in a range of consumer electronic devices, favored by manufacturers because they are lightweight and pack much more energy into a small space than other power cells. But storing so much energy in a tiny space, with combustible components separated by ultra-thin walls, makes them susceptible to overheating if exposed to high temperatures, damage or flaws in manufacturing. If the separators fail, a chemical reaction can quickly escalate out of control. Koh Dong-jin, Samsung's mobile president told reporters in Seoul: 'The flaw in the manufacturing process resulted in the negative electrodes and the positive electrodes coming together.' It is unclear how Samsung failed to discover the battery problem before launching the Note 7. Advertisement

The result is good news for the technology giant that was obliged to do multiple recalls last year of products that included a popular smartphone and a washing machine.

It is still unclear why the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones were prone to overheating and catching fire, but it prompted two recalls and eventual discontinuation of the flagship product.

Tim Baxter, chief operating officer at Samsung's US business, told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that Samsung will share the root cause of the Galaxy Note 7 fires 'very soon.'
If the 'galaxy far, far away' of Star Wars is too vague for you, NASA may have the answer.

A team of researchers has compiled a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

Called NED-D, is a critical resource, not only for studying these galaxies, but also for determining the distances to billions of other galaxies strewn throughout the universe.

This graphic shows all the cosmic light sources in the sky that are included in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on over 100 million galaxies. The colors represent the density of sources recorded in the full database, ranging as high as 3.6 million sources per square degree of sky (light yellow).

HOW TO WORK OUR WHERE A GALAXY IS Since other galaxies are extremely far away, there's no tape measure long enough to measure their distances from us. Instead, astronomers rely on extremely bright objects, such as Type La supernovae and pulsating stars called Cepheids variables, as indicators of distance. To calculate how far away a distant galaxy is, scientists use known mathematical relationships between distance and other properties of objects, such as their total emitted energy. More objects useful for these calculations have emerged in recent years. NED-D has revealed that there are now more than six dozen different indicators used to estimate such distances. Advertisement

'We're thrilled to present this catalog of distances to galaxies as a valuable resource to the astronomical community,' said Ian Steer, NED team member, curator of NED-D, and lead author of a new report about the database appearing in The Astronomical Journal.

'Learning a cosmic object's distance is key to understanding its properties.'

Steer and colleagues presented the paper this week at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

NED-D began as a small database pulled together in 2005 by Steer.

As the catalog continues to grow, astronomers can increasingly rely on it for ever-greater precision in calculating both how big the universe is and how fast it is expanding.

NED-D is part of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on more than 100 million galaxies.

NED-D now hosts upwards of 166,000 distance estimates for more than 77,000 galaxies, along with estimates for some ultra-distant supernovae and energetic gamma ray bursts.

To date, NED-D has been cited by researchers in hundreds of studies.

Since other galaxies are extremely far away, there's no tape measure long enough to measure their distances from us.

Instead, astronomers rely on extremely bright objects, such as Type La supernovae and pulsating stars called Cepheids variables, as indicators of distance.

To calculate how far away a distant galaxy is, scientists use known mathematical relationships between distance and other properties of objects, such as their total emitted energy.

If the 'galaxy far, far away' of Star Wars is too vague for you, NASA may have the answer - a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

More objects useful for these calculations have emerged in recent years.

NED-D has revealed that there are now more than six dozen different indicators used to estimate such distances.

'NED and its associated databases, including NED-D, are in the process of transforming from data look-up services to legitimate discovery engines for science,' said Steer.
It is one of the most popular fictional doomsday situations, featured in films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, but the danger of an asteroid destroying life on our planet is a reality.

For years scientists have been trying to work out how to deal with the threat of an asteroid, which could hit us with little or no warning.

Now the White House has released an official document describing the plan if a meteor or asteroid was to head our way, and it shows we are under-prepared.

The White House has released an official document describing the plan if a meteor or asteroid was to head our way, and it shows we are under-prepared. Artist's impression pictured

THE SEVEN MAIN GOALS Enhance NEO detection, tracking and characterization capabilities. Develop methods for NEO deflection and disruption. Improve modelling, predictions, and information integration. Develop emergency procedures for NEO impact scenarios. Establish NEO impact response and recovery procedures. Leverage and support international cooperation. Establish coordination and communications protocols and thresholds for taking action. Advertisement

The White House published its 'National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy'.

The document 'seeks to improve our nation's preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration of existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities that are currently lacking.'

NEOs are asteroids or comets that have an orbit that brings them near or into Earth's orbit.

If one of these was to zoom towards Earth in the future, it would not be the first time.

A 56 foot (17-metre) meteor that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, injured more than 1,000 people came with no warning.

This is why one of the strategies outlined in the document is to improve on Nasa's methods of detecting NEOs before it is too late.

In seven main goals described in the document, the White House also focuses on improving modelling and predicting where NEOs will travel.

The country also plans to improve it emergency alert systems and invest in hi-tech space probes that could annihilate threats.

The document notes, as with other low-probability, high-consequence hazards, 'potential NEO impacts pose a significant and complex challenge.'

'This Strategy is a step in addressing the myriad challenges of managing and reducing the risks posed by both large and small NEOs,' it claims.

At the end of last year, Nasa warned we are not prepared for an asteroid strike.

Dr Joseph Nuth, a researcher at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December.

He said: 'The biggest problem, basically, is there's not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment.'

In the 1998 film Deep Impact, a comet is hurtling toward Earth and could mean the end of all human life. The US government keeps the crisis under wraps, but a crack reporter uncovers the truth, forcing U.S. President Beck (Morgan Freeman, pictured) to announce his plan

NASA'S ASTEROID REDIRECT MISSION Nasa is planning an ambitious mission that will see a robotic spaceship visit an asteroid to create an orbiting base for astronauts. The robot shipwill pluck a large boulder off the space rock and sling it aroundthe moon, becoming a destination to prepare for futurehuman missions to Mars. Nasa plans to study the asteroid for about a year and test deflection techniques that one day may be necessary to save Earth from a potentially catastrophic collision. Advertisement

While dangerous asteroids and comets rarely hit Earth, Dr Nuth warned that the threat was always there.

He said: 'They are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers, they're 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially.

'You could say, of course, we're due, but it's a random course at that point.'

Nasa is working on a series of missions including an asteroid redirect mission, that will see a robotic spaceship visit an asteroid to create an orbiting base for astronauts.

The space agency has a team of scientists who are always watching the skies for potential threats.

But while the US is upping its tactics to seek out the dangerous space rocks, other countries might be even less prepared.

In a planned mission, a robot ship will pluck a large boulder off an asteroid and sling it around the moon, becoming a destination to prepare for future human missions to Mars, the US space agency revealed last year

In the Spacecraft Structures Lab at Nasa's Langley Research Center, the Asteroid Redirect Mission robotic contact and restraint system was prototyped and tested

The US is undecided on whether to invest and prepare costly space technology to intercept those that will not affect its own country.

The document, however, suggests the country is looking to collaborate with other nations in the future.

'NEO impacts are a global hazard and could have major environmental, economic, and geopolitical consequences detrimental to the United States, even if the impact is beyond US territory,' it says.

'Although currently a global leader in detecting and tracking NEOs, the United States will depend (in part) on international cooperation and coordination to help develop capabilities for characterization and future capabilities related to the development and implementation of deflection and disruption capabilities for NEOs.'


With average winter temperatures reaching well below -30C (-22F), the Himalayan Plateau is not an area for the faint hearted.

But despite the icy conditions, new research suggests that people may have lived in the area as long as 13,000 years ago.

A study of human hand and footprints suggests that humans established permanent settlements in the Himalayas between 13,000-7,400 years ago.

Locals previously believed the prints, found 14,000ft above sea level, belonged to a Yeti-like mythical beast.

An analysis of human hand and footprints suggests that humans established permanent settlements in the Himalayas between 13,000-7,400 years ago

WHAT DO THE PRINTS SHOW? An international team of researchers, led by the University of Innsbruck in Austria looked at human hand and footprints found in 1998 in fossilised hot spring mud near the village of Chusang on Tibet's central plateau. Early analysis of the prints indicated that they were made by people about 20,000 years ago. But the new analysis dates them to at least 7,400 years ago, and possibly as early as 13,000 years ago. That makes the Chusang site the oldest reliably dated archaeological site on the Tibetan Plateau. Advertisement

The finding challenges previous studies which suggest that a permanent human settlement only first appeared 5,200 years ago, after the advent of agriculture.

But the new estimation is consistent with genetic research of modern Tibetan Plateau people, which shows that they adapted to the high-elevation environment at least 8,000 years ago.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Innsbruck in Austria looked at human hand and footprints found in 1998 in fossilised hot spring mud near the village of Chusang on Tibet's central plateau.

Early analysis of the prints indicated that they were made by people about 20,000 years ago.

But the new analysis dates them to at least 7,400 years ago, and possibly as early as 13,000 years ago.

That makes the Chusang site the oldest reliably dated archaeological site on the Tibetan Plateau.

While some have suggested that the prints only show that people lived there short-term during seasonal movement, the researchers believe this is not the case.

The distance between lowland environments and the Chusang village would have required at least 230 miles (370 kilometres) of walking across the Himalayan arc  a path known to be treacherous.

Locals previously believed the prints, found 14,000ft above sea level, belonged to a Yeti-like mythical beast

The distance between lowland environments and the Chusang village would have required at least 230 miles of walking across the Himalayan arc  a path known to be treacherous. Pictured is the Tibetan Plateau

The researchers say their findings shed new light on human colonisation of high-elevation environments.

Randy Haas, who worked on the study, said: 'High-elevation environments (over 8,000 feet above sea level) were some of the last places in the world that humans colonised, and so they offer something of a natural laboratory for studying human adaptation.

'Research on high-elevation populations around the world tells us that there were multiple adaptive pathways involving various combinations of physiological, genetic and cultural responses.

'Our findings clarify that genetic and cultural responses on the Tibetan Plateau played out over considerably longer time spans than previously thought.'

Researcher Mark Aldenderfer is shown here next to the primary prints location. The researchers say their findings shed new light on human colonisation of high-elevation environments

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Innsbruck in Austria looked at human hand and footprints found in 1998 in fossilised hot spring mud near the village of Chusang on Tibet's central plateau
Spacewalking astronauts hooked up fancy new batteries Friday on the International Space Station's sprawling power grid.

NASA reported that all three lithium-ion batteries were up and running, a successful start to the space agency's long-term effort to upgrade the aging solar power system.

Before venturing out, Commander Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson got a hand from a robot that took care of most of the grunt work  Dextre, a hulking machine with 11-foot arms.

Peggy Whitson takes a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, Jan. 6, 2016. Whitson and Commander Shane Kimbrough went spacewalking to hook up fancy new batteries on the International Space Station's sprawling power grid.

Remotely operating Dextre outside the 250-mile-high lab, flight controllers in Houston spent the past week replacing decade-old, nickel-hydrogen batteries with the new ones.

Handling all those batteries  each about half a refrigerator in size  was cumbersome and time-consuming.

On Friday, it was up to Kimbrough and Whitson to wire up three of the six new batteries delivered last month in a Japanese cargo capsule.

The two made fairly quick work of it.

'I'm on a roll, right?' Kimbrough asked Whitson halfway through the job.

The two were so far ahead that they tackled some extra work.

DEXTRE THE HANDY SPACE ROBOT The most sophisticated space robot ever built, Dextre is a space handyman with a mission: keep the International Space Station (ISS) ship-shape. Dextre's role is to perform maintenance work and repairs like changing batteries and replacing cameras outside the ISS. The most sophisticated space robot ever built, Dextre is a space handyman with a mission: keep the International Space Station (ISS) ship-shape. Dextre has two arms measuring 3.35 metres in length (almost as long as the robot is tall). Each arm has seven joints that are able to move up and down, side to side, and are also able to rotate, or roll. This gives the space handyman a much wider range of motion than the human arm. Your wrist can move in three directions, as can your shoulder, but your elbow can only move in one direction, whereas Dextre can bend backwards at the elbow to touch the back of its arm. Dextre's hands are actually grippers that work much like a Swiss Army knife: each hand has a retractable motorized socket wrench to turn bolts and connect or detach hardware; a camera and lights for close-up viewing; and a retractable umbilical connector (like a plug-in) to provide electricity, data and video connections when the robot handles sensitive electronic equipment and to support experimental scientific experiments. Dextre has two arms measuring 3.35 metres in length (almost as long as the robot is tall). Advertisement

'I look forward to doing it again,' Kimbrough told Mission Control as the 6 -hour spacewalk drew to a close.

Kimbrough and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet will plug in three more batteries next Friday.

NASA expects it will take two to three years to change out all 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries that make up the station's solar power system.

The lithium-ion batteries are so efficient that only 24 will be needed, saving space for other items during supply runs.

Don't look down! The helmet cam view of US astronaut Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson performing a spacewalk in order to implement an upgrade to the space station's power management

The batteries store power that is tapped whenever the orbiting outpost is on the nighttime side of Earth.

Dextre, the station's robotic handyman, removed the old batteries and popped in the new ones in a series of maneuvers that began on New Year's Eve.

The robot also loosened bolts on metal attachment plates for the new batteries, saving the spacewalkers even more time.

US astronauts Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson performing a spacewalk in order to implement an upgrade to the space station's power management. Kimbrough and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet will plug in three more batteries next Friday

Starting Sunday, Dextre will be back at it, paving the way for next Friday's spacewalk.

NASA's chief astronaut, Christopher Cassidy, said from Mission Control that sticky bolts often stymie astronauts, so everyone was grateful to turn over the chores to Dextre, short for dexterous.

Spacewalks are high-risk activities, NASA managers noted, and so reducing crew time outside is always preferable.

Almost as a reminder, Mission Control's main contact for the spacewalkers was Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who nearly drowned in 2013 when his helmet flooded with water from his spacesuit's cooling system.

He directed Kimbrough and Whitson's every move, and praised them for 'an awesome job.'

Most of the old batteries will be junked along with other station trash in a month, burning up in the atmosphere along with the Japanese supply ship that delivered the new batteries.
This is a result of missing the revenue and profit goal by 3.7% for the year

However, with adding his salary, Cook took home more than $ 11 million

$1.53 million less in 2016 than the previous year

Although Apple ended 2016 with $215.6 billion in sales, it wasnt enough to hit the revenue and profit goal for the year  and CEO Tim Cook and the rest of the iPhone maker's executives are paying for it.

A regulatory filing reveals Cook received $1.53 million less in 2016 than the previous year, as his incentive pay dropped from $10.3 million to $8.75 million.

The decline in sales didnt just affect Cooks compensation, but a number of other high-level executives also suffered for Apples first annual revenue decline in 15 years.

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While Cooks base salary did increase from $2 million in 2015 to $3 million last year, his incentive plan compensation dropped from $8 million to $5.37 million. However, other executives saw a $2.21 million drop in this area from the previous year

APPLE BY NUMBERS A regulatory filing reveals that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other high-level executives also suffered from the firm's decline in sales. Apples annual sales were 3.7 percent below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target. Cook received $1.53 million less in 2016 than the previous year  his incentive pay dropped from $10.3 million to $8.75 million. However, other executives saw a $2.21 million drop in this area from the previous year. Advertisement

The filing, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, also lists how badly of a year the Cupertino company had altogether.

Apples annual sales were 3.7 percent below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target.

And as a result, the executives were only given 89.5 percent of their targeted annual cash incentive.

While Cooks base salary did increase from $2 million in 2015 to $3 million last year, his incentive plan compensation dropped from $8 million to $5.37 million.

His incentive pay may have taken a hit, but the CEO still took home a total of 11.74 million for 2016.

On the other hand, other executives saw a $2.21 million drop in this area from the previous year - but each took home more than 23 million in total.

A filing from August highlighted that Cook received 1.26 million Apple shares, valued at around $135 million at the time, that were previously restricted.

He earned a majority of these shares by sitting as CEO for Apple for five years.

And the reset were given to Cook because of Apples stock performance.

The drop in sales for 2016 may have been a result users being disappointed with the new iPhone 7 line - as it seems to be just a refreshed iPhone 6.

A regulatory filing (pictured) reveals Cook received $1.53 million less in 2016 than the previous year, as his incentive pay dropped from $10.3 million to $8.75 million. A number of other high-level executives also suffered for Apples first annual revenue decline in 15 years

It was also found in a survey that Apple products only accounted for 44 percent of new smartphone and tablet activations in the week leading up to Christmas.

And although that was more than double what Samsung had  Apple was still down by 5 percent from 2015.

The iPhone 7 may have been a flop among the crowd, but the firm says the next smartphone will be 'the most radical design ever'.

The iPhone 8 is set to be unveiled this year for the firms 10 year anniversary  so many iOS users are sure Apple will impress them with new cutting edge technology.

Apples annual sales were 3.7 percent below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target

IPHONE 8 RUMORS Several rumors have been circulating about the iPhone 8, and suggest the next device may have: - Dual-lens 3D camera - Augmented reality to generate real-time views of surroundings - Curved glass casing - Plastic OLED screen - Wireless charging - A folding element - New 5 inch (12.7 centimeter) and 5.8 inch (14.7 centimeter) models - A new 'pure white' model. Advertisement

An unnamed employee at an Apple site in Herzliya, Israel, where hardware is being developed for the iPhone 8, has leaked some details about the new handset in September 2016.

The unnamed employee told Business Insider that the iPhone 8 would be 'different' from previous handsets, which have been critiqued as being too similar.

Until now, little has been known about Apple's next iPhone, although reports by a source speaking to Nikkei Asian Review have said that it will have a curved screen.

If those rumors are true, the iPhone 8 could rival the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge which came out in February this year.
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Where do Brits who like good food go on holiday?

Perhaps San Sebastian for its extraordinary gourmet restaurants and pintxo bars; or maybe Singapore, where two hawker stalls were recently awarded the prestigious Michelin star; or even Japan's culinary heart and capital, Tokyo, where a single tuna once sold for more than 1million at auction.

But while some obsessives think nothing of travelling to the other side of the world to feed their palates, there's an unsung hero closer to home - Cornwall.

There are some delicious escapes to be found in Cornwall. Port Isaac, pictured, is home to two Michelin-starred restaurants from chef Nathan Outlaw

Staying at one of the chef-owned B&Bs is the perfect way to combine food and travel and in Padstow, you have plenty to choose from. Above, the Treyarnon room in Rick Stein's St Edmunds House

Aside from Rick Stein, Padstow's other celebrity chef is Paul Ainsworth, who opened his Padstow Townhouse recently. Above, the 'Marshmallow' bedroom

At Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, the turbot with Hollandaise sauce (above) is one of the most iconic dishes on the menu, but expect it to make quite a dent on your wallet

Paul Ainsworth won Great British Menu in 2011 for his nostalgic dessert creation, but one of his best known treats is a bread and butter pudding (above)

Don't get me wrong - the county has always been a popular holiday destination for Brits and has long been known for its seafood. But now a slew of chef-owned B&Bs are making the region more attractive than ever for the gastro-nomads who want to eat, stay and explore.

For my gourmet escape, I made a bee-line for the home town of celebrity chef Rick Stein - Padstow.

It's no secret that Rick Stein's restaurants dominate the tiny fishing port, but the legendary chef also owns several B&Bs in the area. Some of these, I was surprised to learn, date back to the 80s.

I stayed in St Edmunds House, a gorgeous property just behind his main restaurant - The Seafood Restaurant - offering commanding views of the harbour. It joined the group in 2000 and is a dream in minimalism - as imagined by Rick's ex-wife, Jill Stein.

The building had originally been two houses. But despite its substantial size, there are just six bedrooms, each named after a local surfing beach. The focus is on luxury and for 300 a night, you get plenty of it.

Padstow has long been a popular seaside destination for Brits and with idyllic views like this, it's not surprising

Padstow harbour is almost always busy with boats (pictured) and there are many quaint little shops to explore in the town

My room was Treyarnon, a huge 'suite' with a four-poster bed commanding the space, and a bath tub that's big enough to swim in. Trust me, I tried.

That night, I met Rick's son, Jack, for dinner in The Seafood Restaurant.

Over oysters, langoustines and a broadsheet-sized menu, Jack told me about how his dad had started with a nightclub that gave him no end of headaches and turned it into a very successful restaurant.

More than 40 years on, the restaurant is still going strong with a constant stream of diners throughout the night  even though a simple supper there will inflict quite a dent on your wallet.

It's hard not to marvel at the success.

Later, my restful nights sleep was shattered by the seagulls that seemed to call relentlessly at 5am every morning in Padstow  perhaps in response to the incoming fishing boats.

St Edmunds House (above) is a gorgeous property just behind Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, offering commanding views of the harbour

There is always fresh catch to be found on the menu at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, including a selection of different oysters and enormous platters of fruits de mer

The Seafood Restaurant doesn't just offer butter-laden dishes - there are also unexpectedly delicious takes on recipes from the Far and Middle East

Its impossible to appreciate the unrequested wake-up call but at least it gave me some time to gather my thoughts over an Earl Grey before heading down to The Seafood Restaurant for breakfast.

Still full from the indulgent dinner the night before, I opted for a nibble from the sizable selection of fresh fruit and a cafetiere of their wonderfully aromatic coffee to start my day.

Actually, I had another reason to choose a light breakfast  I had planned to visit the nearby town of Port Isaac for lunch.

Nathan Outlaw, who has a seafood restaurant at The Capital Hotel in London, has his two-Michelin-starred flagship in Port Isaac as well as another, more casual, one-Michelin-starred establishment.

After trudging around the coast in the temperamental Cornish weather, I sat down in the tiny dining room of the one-Michelin-starred Outlaw's Fish Kitchen.

Seafood was the only thing on offer and everything was served on small plates.

Port Isaac is just a short drive from Padstow and the views on a sunny day rival that of the Caribbean. It's also the perfect place to set off for a coastal walk

Qin went to the one-Michelin-starred Outlaw's Fish Kitchen while in Port Isaac where there were dishes like smoked anchovies (left) and crispy ling (right) on the menu

I went for the raw brill with smoked anchovies, basil and pistachio; a crispy ling with chilli jam; and the plaice dusted with a rosemary and cheese crumb. Its delicious stuff.

Back in Padstow, I checked into my second B&B  Paul Ainsworths Padstow Townhouse, an all-suite property.

My room, Marshmallow, was inspired by former British colonies. It had a sizeable lounge area, a huge bathroom with a free-standing bath and a double shower, bespoke toiletries from St Kitts Herbery and a very well-stocked bar.

But its not just these luxurious features that made the experience  it was all the extra touches.

The Townhouse was just like home.

Downstairs, theres a kitchen that's always stocked with freshly baked cakes and a fridge full of drinks  just in case the bar in your room ran out. In the hall, there were Dubarry wellies that you could borrow if you wanted to go for a walk in the country. But perhaps the best bit was the turn-down service.

Paul Ainsworth's Padstow Townhouse is situated in a quiet residential area of the town (left). You catch a ride to dinner in the electric car (right)

There's an eclectic combination of flavours on the a la carte menu at Paul Ainsworth's No 6, which also features a combination of seafood and meat

Unlike other restaurants by the sea, No 6 focuses much more on meat and showcases some of the regional produce

Paul Ainsworth's Padstow Townhouse is an all-suite property. Each room has a lounge area (left) and bar and has been kitted out with bespoke amenities from the nearby St Kitts Herbery

Even bedtime is delicious at Padstow Townhouse. Waiting for Qin after dinner was a flask of rich, spiced hot chocolate and pistachio cookies to send her to bed

It's hard to get up in the mornings - until you remember that breakfast is calling. Above, the French toast with bacon and maple syrup Qin had at Rojanos in the Square

After a seriously good meal at Paul Ainsworth at No 6, the Michelin-starred restaurant that put Paul on the map, I returned to my room to discover a flask of rich, spiced hot chocolate and pistachio cookies to send me to bed.

Though if Im honest, the scallops, monkfish and trifle that I had for dinner had more than finished me off.

When the seagulls came calling again the next morning, I was certainly not ready to get up or to leave. But the promise of breakfast lured me out of bed.

In the morning strolled down to Rojanos in the Square, Pauls other restaurant in Padstow, for breakfast.

I ordered my first cooked breakfast of the weekend  French toast with bacon and maple syrup.

If I was a connoisseur of bacon, my fridge would be tightly packed with the one served at Rojanos  its the sort of thing that you taste and just know the quality is impeccable. A basket filled with freshly baked pastries also arrived at the table, which I was frankly too full to touch.

Its a shame. A real shame. Because this might just be my most delicious Cornish break yet.
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Russia's dwindling population of Mari pagans have been captured in a series of striking photos.

The snow-streaked images depicting the community's witchcraft rituals and everyday life were taken by Ikuru Kuwajima deep in the sacred forests between Moscow and the Urals, which have been home to the Finno-Ugric Mari people for centuries.

Mr Kuwajima said that although most Mari were Christianised during Russia's expansion and Sovietisation, some locals have kept a dual faith and still practise pagan traditions such as Mummering and 'white and black magic' in their worship of nature.

Fascinated by this enduring and mysterious religion, the photographer travelled from his home in Kazan, Tatarstan Republic, Russia, to shoot the mesmerising images. He told MailOnline Travel: 'The practice of pagan rituals and even secret witchcraft has survived until now among the Mari people, especially in the villages.'

However, while shooting the series, between 2013 and 2015, he noted that there is a 'lack of interest in reviving their traditions and language among generally Russianised younger generations, which is casting shadow on the future of the Mari's old beliefs and traditions'.

The photographer was keen to convey the 'anxiety' he felt at times travelling around sacred forests and villages, photographing the magical rituals of 'Europe's last pagans' in a region where only an estimated 600,000 Mari remain.

Russia's dwindling population of Mari pagans have been captured in a series of striking photos. Above, local children wear costumes for the mummers play on the Mari's holiday Shorykyol, which translates as the week of a sheep's head

The snow-streaked images depicting the community's witchcraft rituals and everyday life were taken by Ikuru Kuwajima deep in the sacred forests between Moscow and the Urals, which have been home to the Finno-Ugric Mari people for centuries. Above, a woman walks with her cow in the birch forest in the village Ilet in the Mari El Republic

A local healer, above, uses 'white magic' in her fortune telling and healing rituals

An Orthodox Christian's winter swimming on Epiphany takes place at the Green Spring, which doesn't get frozen even in the winter. The majority of the Mari people were baptised before the Bolshevik Revolution while some of them kept their traditional pagan faith, according to Mr Kuwajima

Local children wear costumes for the mummers play on the Mari's holiday Shorykyol, which is when locals put on costumes and masks, visit neighbours and sing songs

Mr Kuwajima said that although most Mari were Christianised during Russia's expansion and Sovietisation, some locals have kept a dual faith and still practise pagan traditions such as Mummering and 'white and black magic' in their worship of nature. Above, a man camps in the forest in the Mari El Republic

Kuwajima told MailOnline Travel: 'The practice of pagan rituals and even secret witchcraft has survived until now among the Mari people, especially in the villages. Above, a Mari Man in the sacred grove before the beginning of the prayer'

The Mari people's pagan prayer takes place in the sacred grove. The pagan ritual occurs in various sacred groves in the summer and autumn, and locals bring feasts as sacrifices for their gods

Fascinated by this enduring and mysterious religion, the photographer travelled from his home in Kazan, Tatarstan Republic, Russia, to shoot the mesmerising images. Above, an old bus stop is decorated with a Mari-themed mosaic

This archive photograph shows the Mari People in the early 20th century. Mr Kuwajima said: 'Russias expansion, Sovietization and westernisation of Russia along with rural population decline made major changes to the belief and lifestyle of the Mari while their forests were partly turned into fields. Yet, despite that the majority of the Mari were Christianised over the centuries, many of them kept dual faith and their pagan traditions even during the Soviet era'

Mr Kuwajima visited the Mari El Republic over the course of the year, travelling to villages and spending time with locals Above, a local girl wears a mummers costume on Shorykyol

Kuwajima said he was keen to convey the 'anxiety' he felt at times travelling around sacred forests and villages, capturing the magical rituals of 'Europe's last pagans'. Above is the interior of a local hunter's home in a Mari village

Eerie: Above, a sacred grove near the village of Shorunja. The Mari people individually come to the sacred grove to pray, especially in times of trouble, and tie towels to the branches of the sacred wood

The scarves and pieces of cloth tied to ropes around sacred trees are especially colourful against the snow blanketed forest

A Mari priest plays a traditional musical instrument near his apartment built in the Soviet era. The Mari's pagan rituals were banned during the Soviet time, but some locals secretly continued at home and in the sacred groves. Their rituals started taking place again officially after the collapse of the Soviet Union

This jarring juxtaposition of old and new shows adverts for a phone company depicting a Mari woman in a traditional costume with the slogan 'talk in your native language' in the centre of a town Morki in the Mari El Republic

Dwindling population: Sergei is the only villager left in his area and has been living like a hermit (left). A Mari girl in the sacred grove during prayer time (right)

The photographer noted that now there is a 'lack of interest in reviving their [the Mari's] traditions and language among generally Russianised younger generations, which is casting shadow on the future of the Maris old belief and traditions'. Above, spring water in the Green Spring in Ilet

Illustrating their dual faiths this local healer's home has icons of Orthodox Christianity hanging on the wall even though they practise pagan traditions

Above, a statue in a field full of snow in a Mari village. Mr Kuwajima admitted: 'The villages dont look so different from other Russian villages at a glance. Yet, being in the villages, from time to time, some elusive and bizarre feelings came to me, especially when I observed some pagan rituals, walked around the sacred places and heard about locals peculiar stories on witchcraft, paranormal phenomena and people disappearing in the forest'

He added: 'Being in the forest alone, I heard the wind blowing out of silence and saw the birches swaying, and it made me a little anxious and reminded me of locals stories about the forests, making me wonder if that is the source of their belief and traditions that have survived for centuries.' Above, herons' nests line the branches of the trees in a village

Although the photographer encountered people practising white magic he said black magic practitioners were more elusive. Above, a sculpture of a skeleton at a local artist's house in a village (left) and a moose's head in the house of a hunter (right)

There are estimated to be 600,000 Mari people left but few who are still pagans. Above, a Mari woman in a traditional daily costume bakes pancakes in an oven

Mari tribes have been recorded since the fifth century but could date back further. Above, the sacred grove in winter (left) and dead butterflies found by the window an abandoned house (right)

The Mari people lived in the forests for centuries. The photographer said: 'The series of photographs reflect on my vision of this region, where my perception was a little hazed by anxiety from some bizarre and unknown things hidden in the forests, local stories and rituals'
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The haunting eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and its archaeological legacy has long fascinated historians.

Unearthing the devastation at Pompeii, scholars in the 19th century created fascinating maps, ground plans and frescoes, which have now been presented in vibrant colour, in a new book.

Brothers Fausto and Felice Niccolini were on hand to illustrate the excavations of the Italian city, which had been buried under volcanic ash in just 24 hours, over 1,600 years ago - killing an estimated 2,000 inhabitants.

Making use of the recently-developed technique of colour lithography, they documented its long-submerged buildings, frescos, statues, and astonishing grand painted walls.

But perhaps most intriguing of all, their depictions offered unprecedented access to Pompeiis private residences - a glimpse into ordinary life as it was at the time.

This resulting compendium, The Houses and Monuments of Pompeii, newly published by Taschen, reveals images of everything from practical utensils of everyday use to intricate works of art, as well as haunting plaster casts made of victims of the eruption.

The haunting eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and its archaeological legacy, re-imagined here in colour lithograph during excavations in the 19th Century, has long fascinated historians

Unearthing the devastation at Pompeii, scholars in the 19th century created fascinating maps, ground plans and art, such as this lithograph, which have now been presented in a new book

Brothers Fausto and Felice Niccolini were on hand to illustrate the excavations of the city, producing images such as this, of the temple of Isis in Pompeii

Making use of the recently-developed technique of color lithography, they documented its long-submerged buildings, frescos, statues, and astonishing grand painted walls

Over 1,600 years ago and with hardly any warning, the entire city of Pompeii was buried under volcanic ash in just 24 hours

The Niccolinis' depictions offer unprecedented access to Pompeiis private residences - a glimpse into ordinary life as it was at the time, including objects and decorations such as these

Before its devastation, Pompeii, mapped out here, had an advanced infrastructure and an estimated population of 20,000

Pompeii remained undiscovered until 1748, when explorers were astounded to discover that beneath the ash, the ancient city was almost perfectly preserved

In total, these colour plates illustrated more than 1,000 items, each extensively documented and specified for the first time

The Houses and Monuments of Pompeii, newly published by Taschen, reveals images of everything from practical utensils of everyday use to intricate works of art, as well as haunting plaster casts made of victims of the eruption, pictured
She got her driver's licence back this week after a six-month ban for speeding.

Now, Married At First Sight's Erin Bateman is going nowhere in a hurry.

The cash-strapped reality star has admitted she was forced to sell her car - and other belongings - during the suspension.

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On the road again! Erin Bateman got her driver's licence back this week after a six-month ban for speeding

In an Instagram post on Thursday, Erin was snapped smiling and flashing her new licence.

She covered her eyes with large, sunglasses as she appeared to go makeup free for the clip.

Fans got a good look at her licence photo, in which the reality star wore her fringe down, almost covering her eyes.

'Guess who's officially a licensed driver again?!' she wrote in the caption.

Strapped for cash! The cash-strapped Married At First Sight star admitted to selling her car - and other belongings - during the suspension

'During my 6 month long lesson I decided public transport isn't so bad after all. So, I sold my car!!'

The brunette beauty added: 'And now there will be many more months of PT life still to come for me! By choice this time!'

Some commenters on the post took the length of the suspension as a sign that Erin lost her licence due to a DUI.

'Hate to say but I work within the system and 6 months or more is either drink driving or drugs.' one commenter wrote.

DUI claims: Some commenters on the post took the length of the suspension as a sign that Erin lost her licence due to a DUI

DUI denial: Speaking to The Daily Mail the reality star said the ban was for 'nothing more than speeding fines that all eventually added up'

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the reality star confirmed that these assertions were untrue.

'Please make it very clear that I've always been very open and honest about HOW I lost it. Which was nothing more than speeding fines that all eventually added up.' She said.

'I did not lose my license for drug or alcohol related reasons! (sic).'

Erin's admission that she sold her car during the suspension comes after the budding beauty blogger took to Instagram earlier the same day to announce she was selling her designer wares.

For sale! Erin's admission that she sold her car during the suspension comes after the budding beauty blogger took to Instagram earlier the same day to announce she was selling her designer wares

'I'm selling some of my designer goodies,' Erin wrote, '[The] reason being is I need to be a responsible adult, for me this means off loading expensive stuff that I really couldn't afford to begin with.'

In an earlier post shared to her blog, she wrote: 'being more or less unemployed, Ive had to let my common sense take a bit of control over my spending habits.

Money struggles: Erin wrote, '[The] reason being is I need to be a responsible adult, for me this means off loading expensive stuff that I really couldn't afford to begin with.'

The 26-year-old did not imply a link between a sale of her car and her struggles with money when she spoke to Daily Mail Australia.

'I sold it because I no longer felt I needed it?' She said.

'I actually find the time spent on the tram/train really relaxing.'

Erin met and 'married' her apparent boyfriend Bryce Mohr on controversial reality series Married At First Sight.

TV wedding: Erin met and 'married' her apparent boyfriend Bryce Mohr (R) on controversial reality series Married At First Sight

The beauty is typically quiet about whether or not the pair are still together, although they were snapped with each other as recently as November.

In the comment section on Thursday's licence post, her TV co-star Clare Verrall told fans they were.

'@clintsarra they are still together :) (sic)' She wrote.

Confirmed? The beauty is typically quiet about whether or not the pair are still together, although her co-star Clare Verrall (pictured) claimed on Instagram Thursday that they were




The countdown is well and truly on for the arrival of Baby Burgess, who is due in the coming weeks.

But ahead of his or her arrival, expectant mum Phoebe Burgess revealed to fans that she's been putting the final touches on the bub's nursery.

And it seems everything is ready for baby, right down to the finer details, with the 27-year-old telling her followers: 'Nesting has officially become a sport'.

'Nesting has officially become a sport': Heavily pregnant Phoebe Burgess has been adding the finishing touches to her baby's nursery and shared the results to her Instagram Story on Thursday

The heavily pregnant TV personality, who is expecting her first child with husband of one-year, rugby league star Sam Burgess, added the hashtag '36 weeks' to her Instagram Story, uploaded on Thursday.

The post shows some children's books, displayed neatly on floating shelves, accompanied by some knick-knacks.

While the books and decorations don't appear to be new, as they were visible in an image from late last year, things do appear to have been moved around and the room appears more 'styled'.

'36 weeks': The heavily pregnant personality is expecting her first child with her NRL star husband, Sam Burgess, with the baby due this month

'Books, books, books': Phoebe also shared a close-up shot of one of the shelves with Paddington Bear and alphabet books, and the journalist appears to be hoping the baby picks up a love for reading like mum

Ready to pop! The countdown is well and truly on for the fashionista, who joked recently about being able to no longer conceal her baby bump

Phoebe also shared a close-up shot of one of the shelves with Paddington Bear and alphabet books, and the journalist appears to be hoping the baby picks up a love for reading like mum, captioning the Story: 'Books, books, books for Baby Burg'.

The shot also included some porcelain ornaments, including a lion and giraffe.

A little piece of English international footballer dad Sam was also shown, with a small England Rugby League jersey is on display on a hanger dangling from the bookshelf.

Star husband: Last Friday, the couple shared shots on social media as they put together the baby's room, with Sam standing in the crib while installing a canopy above the cot himself

'Success': Toward the end of the clip, Phoebe displayed the completed grey crib canopy to her Instagram followers

Last Friday, the couple shared shots on social media as they put together the baby's room, with Sam standing in the crib while installing a canopy above the cot himself.

The Story was captioned: 'bit of (unorthodox) baby DIY'.

The images also showed a plush white reading chair, a baby table, and the nursery's neutral detailing including a large white rug to cover the mahogany wooden floorboards
She's proved you can build a successful career upon endless days at the beach wearing skimpy swimwear.

And bikini blogger Natasha Oakley, 25, has racked up another lavish beachside holiday on an exotic island.

The model took to Instagram on Friday to flaunt an envious escape to Anguilla with her blogger pal Devin Brugman.

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Another day on the job: Natasha Oakley has made a living off of her incredible beach body as the model face behind bikini blog, A Bikini A Day, which she co-founded with pal Devin Brugman

Luxe life: The blogger took to Instagram on Friday to flaunt an envious escape to Anguilla with her bikini blogger pal Devin Brugman

The picturesque pair make their livelihood from their incredible beach bodies, as the model faces of bikini blog, A Bikini A Day.

The Sydney-born beauty previously spoke to Beauticate about how she and Devin started getting flown around the world to do photo shoots in their bikinis, after they amassed a huge following online.

Living the luxe life, the blogger recorded herself hopping off a flight to then board a private plane to take her to the British Overseas Territory in the Eastern Caribbean.

Beach ready! Showcasing her taut abs and slender frame, Tash donned a revealing red top which tied up between her bust and a figure-hugging denim skirt to travel to the island resort

'Oh my god': The Instagram star was in high spirits as she marveled at the island from the sky, and later from within the grounds of her private villa

Showcasing her taut abs and slender frame, she donned a revealing red top which tied up between her bust combined with a figure-hugging denim skirt.

The Instagram star was in high spirits as she marveled at the island from the sky, and later from within the grounds of her private villa.

Designer digs: The bloggers will stay in a private three-story ocean-view villa for the next week

Room with a view! Their trip appeared to be made with other bloggers, and is believed to have been set up by Revolve clothing, who Natasha regularly promotes on her blog

Her trip appeared to be made with other bloggers, and is believed to have been set up by Revolve clothing, who Natasha regularly promotes on her blog.

Natasha and Devin both made sure to mention the brand, using '@revolve' and '#revolvearoundtheworld' in a majority of their social media uploads.

There were plenty of audible 'wow's' and 'oh my god's' as they walked through their private ocean-view villas for the first time.

Lush! The open plan design includes multiple lounges and daybeds, and the villa opened up to a patio with a private pool

Cocktails on arrival! The ladies were treated to a tray of delicious drinks on arrival, while a table of canapes was seen in the background of the video

The three story villa featured a luscious pool and private access to a beautiful cliffside view.

Upon entering the spacious residence with a group of other popular influencers, they were treated to an assortment of canapes and cocktails.

Focused on producing content for their more than 3.5 million combined Instagram fans, the girls paused mid-tour in one clip saying 'One second, I just got to film this.'

The high life! The blogger recorded herself hopping off a flight to then board a private plane to take her to the British Overseas Territory in the Eastern Caribbean

Sunshine selfie! Taking the opportunity to embrace the summer sun, the blonde stunner shared a selfie claiming she already had an 'Anguilla glow'

Taking the opportunity to embrace the summer sunshine, the blonde stunner shared a selfie claiming she already had an 'Anguilla glow.'

Her business partner Devin indicated that their visit would be brief via Instagram stories dubbing the villa 'home for the week.'

The jet-setting duo are yet to post any bikini-clad shots from the idyllic island getaway.

More to come: The jet setting duo are yet to post any bikini-clad shots from the idyllic island getaway, but are likely to treat their amassed 3.5 million followers to some over the next week

Not shy! The pair regularly make their fans jealous by promoting a never-ending holiday through the most sought-after destinations

The pair regularly make their fans jealous, promoting a never-ending holiday through the most sought-after destinations.

Tash most recently spent time in Byron Bay at Rae's resort on Wategos Beach.

She posted 22 pictures in her short two-week stay, half of which were in bikinis.

Beach babe! Tash most recently spent time in Byron Bay at Rae's resort on Wategos Beach

Stunning! Tash uploaded 22 pictures in her short two-week stay in Byron Bay, half of which were of her enviable frame sporting a myriad of bikinis

However, their blogging roles also take them far from their native Australia, having travelled globally on numerous occasions over the last year.

The United States, Bora Bora, Peru, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom and Saint Barts are all destinations the pair have visited in the past six months alone.

While on their amazing vacations, the pair spruik fashion and bikini labels, including their own lines Monday Swimwear and Monday Active.

Work it! While on their amazing vacations, the pair spruik fashion and bikini labels, including their own lines Monday Swimwear and Monday Active

Successful: Tash and her busty pal Devin launched the blog A Bikini A Day back in 2012 and have since released their own bikini collection, Monday Swimwear and more recently an activewear line, Monday Active

Since launching their blog back in 2012, it has allowed the bikini-clad travelers to see the globe.

Last year, they unveiled their six-week fitness programme, Body Love, which includes a total of ten workouts with strength and cardio training.

The mantra for the workout program is 'loving your body, and then giving your body love', with a message of embracing one's imperfections.
She's Sydney's PR maven, her everyday movements captured in detail to social media.

But behind the scenes is a team of hardworking 'Sweaty Betties' who help Roxy Jacenko, 36, perform her job with ease, with one of her employees even taking on the role of nanny to children Pixie Curtis, five, and Hunter, two, on their current holiday in Hawaii.

Meet publicists Holly Asser, Anthea Floudas, Grace Garrick, Gemma Oldfield and Brittany Kerin.

Holly Asser

Holly Asser: The blonde beauty (right) is a senior publicist at Sweaty Betty PR, and often Roxy Jacenko's right-hand woman

Holly is a senior publicist, working at Sweaty Betty for almost three years and is Roxy's right-hand woman.

Managing a range of lifestyle brands for Roxy's PR firm and always dressed to impress, the slender beauty holds a striking resemblance to Roxy.

Numerous snaps on her Instagram account sees the petite blonde either posing with Roxy at lavish events, or promoting the company's various endeavours.

Holly is enjoying a long-term relationship with Jake Kaiser, 25.

Beach babe: The slender personality holds a striking resemblance to Roxy

Impeccable style: Holly has a killer wardrobe, always dressed to impress at various events

Her main man: Holly is enjoying a long-term relationship with Jake Kaiser [pictured], 25

Anthea Floudas

Glamorous: The brunette is a publicist with a wardrobe to rival Kim Kardashian West

Anthea is a publicist with a wardrobe and striking natural beauty, to rival Kim Kardashian West.

Sporting body-hugging frocks, glamorous curls and a flawless complexion, the curvaceous brunette enjoys a life of travel, fashion and good food.

Jetsetter: The curvaceous beauty enjoys a life of travel, fashion and good food

Anthea was spotted enjoying model Hailey Baldwin's 20th birthday, held by ModelCo cosmetics in December last year, at Double Bay hotspot, Mrs Sippy.

Fellow Sweaty Betty's Grace Garrick and Holly Brooke were also in attendance.

Red carpet: Anthea was spotted enjoying model Hailey Baldwin's 20th birthday, held by ModelCo cosmetics in December last year, at Double Bay hotspot, Mrs Sippy

Dressed to impress: Anthea often is seen highlighting her frame in a number of figure-hugging frocks

Grace Garrick

Grace Garrick: The blonde beauty is a publicist for Roxy's other company, Ministry of Talent

Grace is a publicist for Roxy's other company, Ministry of Talent and has worked for the PR maven for more than two years.

Ministry of Talent focuses on promotion of bloggers and social media influencers.

Avid traveller: Grace highlighted her toned bikini body in a recent snap shared to Instagram

Her latest vacation was in Byron Bay, which she happily documented to Instagram.

Other images on the blonde beauty's page, sees Grace highlighting her toned bikini body, achieved through F45 training sessions, enjoying beverages at Sydney hotspot Bar Machiavelli, or sharing close-up shots of the company's promotional events.

Content: Grace has recently enjoyed a Christmas break, soaking up the sun at picturesque locations

Proud employee: Grace often shares snaps with her boss and co-workers to Instagram

Gemma Oldfield

High-flying style: Gemma is another employee and accompanying Roxy on her current vacation in Hawaii

Gemma is a junior publicist at Sweaty Betty and has been working for Roxy since July.

She recently made headlines of her own after it was revealed she has accompanied Roxy on her current vacation in Hawaii acting as a nanny to her small children.

The blonde beauty has taken to Instagram to share a series of island snaps, with Roxy's children Pixie and Hunter.

Cute: The blonde beauty has taken to Instagram to share a series of island snaps, with Roxy's children Pixie, five, and Hunter [pictured], two

One particular snap shared with Gemma's followers saw her helping Hunter have a splash in the hotel pool, holding onto him while he was supported by arm floaties.

'Lucky I have my bronze medallion,' she playfully captioned the image.

Prior to working for Roxy Gemma was a radio newsreader in regional Queensland.

Life's a beach: Gemma is often spotted at Bondi Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs, in close proximity to Sweaty Betty's Double Bay headquarters

Putting in the hard yards: Gemma often shares snaps as she heads to and from various promotional events for the firm

Brittany Kerin

Brittany Kerin: The blonde is a junior publicist and brand manager for the firm

Brittany is a junior publicist and brand manager for the firm, working for Roxy since May last year.

The fashion-obsessed blonde also has her own blog, Aberrant Fashion, where she documents her outfits and travels.

Proud to be part of Sweaty Betty PR, the curvaceous blonde gushed on Instagram after the staff Christmas party in December.

'The A Team love you all,' she captioned a snap, alongside three love heart emojis.

A-team: Proud to be part of Sweaty Betty PR, the curvaceous blonde gushed on Instagram after the staff Christmas party in December

Social media savvy: 'The A Team love you all,' she captioned a snap, alongside three love heart emojis

Last August Roxy was accused of building an army of 'clones' after her in-depth 60 Minutes interview was aired.

Despite the show covering her husband Oliver Curtis' two-year jail sentence for insider trading, her breast cancer battle and how she balances business and family life, it was the staff of 'Roxy lookalike workaholics' that caught the attention of viewers.

Footage from inside the company's Double Bay office prompted social media users, news outlets and radio personalities to pick up on the 'Stepford Wives' aesthetic.

Lookalikes? Last August Roxy was accused of building an army of 'clones' after her in-depth 60 Minutes interview was aired

The open plan office showed a number of women - all young, blonde, white and dressed in black - at their desks behind the company's founder.

News Corp jokingly suggested that Roxy's business 'secret' was out, stating that she'd successfully made an 'army of clones'.

Roxy responded to her critics on Instagram by sharing a photo of her staff.

'You might discover that brunettes are very welcome in our office': Roxy responded to her critics on Instagram by sharing a photo of her staff

Headlines: Last June, Roxy's husband Oliver Curtis, 30, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, for conspiracy to commit insider trading

She wrote: 'For the half-wits who today suggested I have blonde 'clones' - a little research and you might discover that brunettes are very welcome in our office.'

Regardless, her staff have been a constant source of support to Roxy in a challenging last year.

She's a fighter: Just three weeks after Oliver's imprisonment, Roxy announced she was battling breast cancer

Show of support: Roxy's Sweaty Betty employees gifted her with a gourmet watermelon cake from Black Star Pastry

Last June, Roxy's husband Oliver Curtis, 30, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, for conspiracy to commit insider trading.

Just three weeks later, Roxy announced she was battling breast cancer.

She underwent a month of radiation treatment, but was not short of support.

Her Sweaty Betty employees gifted their boss a gourmet watermelon cake from Black Star Pastry, as well as giant bouquets of flowers from close friends and acquaintances.

Well-earned break: Roxy has also been spotted enjoying casual drinks with her Sweaty Betty employees at various Sydney hotspots

Thirsty work: The group's outings are often documented to Instagram
Former Married At First Australia star, Clare Verrall, has slammed the show's producers for using manipulative psychological tactics during filming.

Appearing in a new documentary by filmmaker Gena Lida, titled Creating A Monster, Clare claimed that the producers matched her with Jono Pitman despite knowing that they were incompatible.

'I am someone who is very controlling, I know that about myself. I'm also very bossy, I know that about myself. And ironically I'm a know-it-all, which I know about myself,' the Melbourne property manager laughed.

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'The show is more manipulated than fabricated': Married At First Sight's Clare Verrall has claimed that producers matched her with Jono Pitman despite knowing that they were incompatible

'And they [the producers] see those traits and they know that those traits are not going to match up well with the person that they've matched you with.'

She went on: 'They're like, 'villain- she's going to be controlling, she's going to be bossy, he's going to rail against it.'

'The show is more manipulated than fabricated.'

'They give you the exact opposite': She listed some of the tactics used by producers to cause distress

Behind the drama: The bubbly blonde also explained how the show's editors twisted a scene where Clare seemingly snaps at Jono during a canoeing trip

Listing some of the tactics used by producers to cause distress, Clare explained: 'They ask you, 'What car do you want? What flowers do you want?' All these things and then they give you the exact opposite to try to upset you and make you freak out.'

The bubbly blonde also explained how the show's editors twisted a scene where Clare seemingly snaps at Jono during a canoeing trip.

While viewers merely saw a frustrated Clare berating Jono for not enjoying himself, Clare explained that she was actually asking him to pretend to be happy so that they could wrap up the scene.

'I was getting heatstroke': Clare explained that she was actually asking him to pretend to be happy so that they could wrap up the scene

'I was getting heatstroke, it was 45 degrees!' she explained.

Clare and Jono's dysfunctional TV marriage started off rocky with Jono admitting she was not what he 'ordered'.

After barely making it through their honeymoon as a couple, things spiralled out of control as soon as they moved in together.

The pair ended up calling it quits just two weeks into the experiment.
She's best known for her role as Rory Gilmore in the idyllic Gilmore Girls.

But it seems Alexis Bledel's next role will be significantly darker, as it was announced she'll be joining Hulu's dystopian Handmaid's Tale, according to TV Line.

The 35-year-old actress will play the role of Ofglen in the 10 episode series, which is based on Margaret Atwood's best-selling novel.

Breaking new ground: It seems Alexis Bledel's next role will be significantly darker than her turn in Gilmore Girls, as it was announced she'll be joining Hulu's dystopian Handmaid's Tale

Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss, 34, will star as Offred, a young woman who fights to survive in a theocracy ruled exclusively by men after the United States government has fallen.

Alexis's Ofglen will be a companion to Offred, and is set to be a recurring character who appears pious, but will actually look to subvert norms.

Her character is also secretly a lesbian, which no doubt will cause tempers to flare in a society where women are sexually subjugated.

Hulu also released a first look of Alexis as Oflgen, which seems to suggest that despite the future setting, the show will feature a return to a colonial style.

Popular: She's best known for her role as Rory Gilmore in the idyllic Gilmore Girls (pictured here in November 2016 with Gilmore Girls co-stars Kelly Bishop and Lauren Graham)

In the photo, Alexis can be seen sporting a burgundy tunic and white bonnet as she holds her right hand over her chest.

While the show is set to debut on Hulu on April 26th, Alexis's fans may get to see a lot more of the star in the future.

Back at the end of November, Alexis confirmed that a sequel is in the works for The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants with costars Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera.

Big news! Back at the end of November, Alexis confirmed that a sequel is in the works for The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants with costars Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera

During an appearance on The Tonight Show, she told host Jimmy Fallon she was up for a third installment about the nearly magical pants.

'We would all love to do it. I think it would be so much fun and we talk about it. It would be so much fun,' said Alexis, who starred in the 2005 original and its 2008 sequel.

'And I think we should absolutely do it. Were working on it, so well see if it happens!,' she added.
Downton Abbey star Jim Carter has dropped the strongest hint yet that a film of the period drama is on the way, after revealing the cast have been told to keep themselves available.

Whilst the 68-year-old said that he and his fellow stars have not yet seen a script, he reiterated that there is a willingness among them to do a big-screen version of the hit ITV series.

And last night, screenwriter Julian Fellowes said we are all hoping it will happen and suggested the script is in the pipeline.

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Keeping themselves available: Jim Carter gave his strongest hint yet that there would be a Downton Abbey film during an appearance on Good Morning Britain on Thursday

Speculation reached fever pitch yesterday morning when Carter  who played the butler Carson  was probed on the possibility of a Downton Abbey film during an interview on Good Morning Britain.

Having initially appeared reluctant to let anything slip, he said: Weve been asked to keep ourselves available at dates in the future.

When presenter Susanna Reid reacted with excitement, he hastily added: I think theres a willingness there to do a film but until theres a script theres no film.

Reunion? Carter said he'd be 'gossiping' about the possibility of the movie while having dinner with a few of [the cast]

Excitement: Carters comments are arguably the most revealing yet, as they suggest that filming schedules are being planned

Rumours that Lord Fellowes was planning a film version have been rife since Downton Abbey left our screens on Christmas Day in 2015, and actresses Michelle Dockery and Lily James have fuelled speculation in recent interviews.

However, Carters comments are arguably the most revealing yet, as they suggest that filming schedules are being planned.

And is not only fans who are interested in a potential comeback, as Carter said: Im having dinner with a few of [the cast] tonight. Well all be gossiping about this very topic probably.

Will they be back? Cast members Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael may return to their roles as Lady Edith and Lady Mary respectively

Favourite Butler: Fastidious Carson (Carter) and housekeeper wife played by Phyllis Logan have been tapped to come back

Responding to the comments, Lord Fellowes told the Daily Mail: It hasnt been confirmed or commissioned but we are all hoping it will happen. Thats all I know.

On the rumours that he has started writing a script, he said: Obviously I have been thinking about it because if they suddenly give the go-ahead I dont want to be completely caught standing. But I wouldnt take it as more than that.

Last August, Miss Dockery, who played lead character Lady Mary, said: I think there is potential for a [Downton Abbey] film.

Not confirmed yet: Creator Lord Fellowes said he and the cast are 'all hoping' for the film to be greenlit

That is something I would wholeheartedly consider, so we will see. It may not be over yet.

And a few months later, Miss James, who played Lady Rose, said: Weve all heard this rumour - the cast - that the script has been written.

Theres a hard copy somewhere but none of us have seen it or know whats in it. So well all keep our fingers crossed that it all comes together.
She is rumoured to have split from her personal trainer fiance Dan Adair.

And bikini model Natalie Roser, 26, has all but confirmed the whispers this week by unveiling her brand new personal trainer, Christian Miranda.

Taking to Instagram, the blonde bombshell shared a sweaty post-workout snap while posing alongside her buff exercise aide, with the caption: 'Why did I agree to this? Sweat game was real this morning with @christianmiranda.'

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What a coincidence! Bikini model Natalie Roser, 26, has all but confirmed rumours that she has split from her personal trainer fiance Dan Adair by unveiling her brand new trainer, Christian Miranda on Friday

Christian is pals with The Footy Show's controversial presenter Beau Ryan, who made headlines following his alleged affair with Hi-5 star Lauren Brant in 2015.

While most of the Bondi-based beauty's fans congratulated Natalie on her workout, one follower slyly commented: 'Serious trolling to @Danadiar LOL.'

Indeed, she and Dan have not been pictured together for several months.

What a small world! Christian is pals with The Footy Show's controversial presenter Beau Ryan, who made headlines following his alleged affair with Hi-5 star Lauren Brant in 2015

Not featured: Natalie and Dan (left) have been noticeably absent from each other's Instagram accounts in recent months

Where's Dan? He hasn't been seen on the models account in 36 weeks while Natalie has been absent from his account for 28 weeks

Dan hasn't been seen on the models account in 36 weeks while Natalie has been absent from his account for 28 weeks.

The couple became engaged during a July 2015 holiday and had previously made plans to wed on October 22.

But the nuptials were unexpectedly called off, with a representative for the couple issuing a detailed response to Daily Mail Australia explaining why it was not going ahead, denying any romance breakdown.

'Their wedding's been moved not due to a third person in the relationship problem,' the spokesperson said.

Changing plans: The couple became engaged during a July 2015 holiday and had previously made plans to wed on October 22, before the nuptials were unexpectedly called off

'There is no third person and there is nothing wrong with their relationship': A representative for the couple issuing a detailed response to Daily Mail Australia explaining why it was not going ahead, denying any romance breakdown

'It was moved because the reception [venue] ended up closing down and they haven't yet found a replacement place to have the reception at.

'That's the only reason why it's been moved. There is no third person and there is nothing wrong with their relationship.'

A source recently told The Daily Telegraph that they had parted ways before Christmas last year.
Does adventurer Ben Fogle think he's the next James Bond? The 43-year-old TV presenter posed for a close-up while emerging from the sea in Barbados in a pair of white trunks, emulating Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, and posted the snap online.

Amid a flurry of praise from his female fans, Ben's fellow adventurer, Sean Conway, commented: 'Move over Daniel Craig.'

Rather implausibly, Ben apparently wanted to direct their attention elsewhere. 'New year. New hair. New adventures,' he wrote.

Ben Fogle, left, posed for a close-up while emerging from the sea in Barbados in a pair of white trunks, emulating Daniel Craig, right, in Casino Royale, and posted the snap online

Stephen Fry is a curious cove, isn't he? In London's louche Soho, the portly polymath bumped into Mark Williams, who played Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films. Williams says: 'For the first couple of Harry Potter films, I dyed my hair ginger. When I met Stephen in the street, he just stared at me and asked: "Is that for professional or sexual reasons?" ' Williams adds: 'That's how you know he really is a wit and that it's not scripted.' Hmm!

Samantha Cameron hasnt launched her fashion label, but shes got the sartorial thumbs-up from designer Stella McCartney. I havent seen Samanthas new line, but Im sure its great, Sir Paul McCartneys daughter tells me. The industry is tough, but shes clearly a strong woman with a good head for business. Im sure her label will convey that message of empowerment for women.

Nimble Spice Geri shows off her curves

Expecting: Geri and Christian Horner

Is former Spice Girl Geri Horner  nee Halliwell  taking her fitness regime a step too far as she prepares for the birth of her second child?

The 44-year-old shared this striking picture of herself doing an unorthodox form of antenatal yoga.

Arching her back while using her hands to support her weight rather precariously on the chair behind, Geri, who also has a ten-year-old daughter, Bluebell, is assisted by a woman holding a strap around her hips.

Though not a bona fide yoga position, this technique is supposed to help loosen the muscles around the hips, as well as stretch the back, which is often strained by the weight of the baby.

Geri revealed in October that she was pregnant by her husband, Red Bull F1 team chief Christian Horner, whom she married in 2015.

However, her fans, though impressed by Geris suppleness, have overwhelmingly advocated a much easier  and safer  relaxation technique.

Have a cup of tea and a biscuit, wrote one mother.

Unorthodox: This technique is supposed to help loosen the muscles around the hips, as well as stretch the back, which is often strained by the weight of the baby

The Sixth Sense star Olivia Williamss latest film role had a sting in the tail. Olivia, who appears in ITVs new period drama The Halcyon, has just finished shooting a film in Scotland called Victoria And Abdul, in which Dame Judi Dench plays Queen Victoria again. We shot it in the Cairngorms last September and it was absolutely beautiful, says Olivia, 48. The weather was perfect, but I have to say, none of the tourist material I read even mentioned the midges. We were covered in them!

Paris takes pampered pooch to the dentist

Hotel heiress Paris Hilton and her 6,500 teacup chihuahua, Diamond Baby, are inseparable.

Hilton is so obsessed with the pooch that she takes her everywhere  even to the dentist. Judging by this photograph she posted on social media, the socialite, 35, decided to turn an otherwise mundane check-up at the clinic in Beverly Hills into a mini fashion parade. She wore 560 Fendi sunglasses and a 400 Prada cardigan, while her tiny canine pal was kitted out in her very own hoodie.
The thermometer barely scraped 36F in Vancouver DC on Thursday.

But that didn't stop Supergirl...or the actress who plays her, Melissa Benoist.

She gamely slipped her slender figure into her skimpy costume - a blue and red mini-dress, complete with gold belt, red cape and over-the-knee red boots - as she filmed season three of the CW superhero drama in the frozen north.

She's so happy: Melissa Benoist seemed completely immune to the cold, like her Superwoman character, as she filmed in Vancouver where the thermometer barely hit 36F on Thursday

To her credit, the smiling 28-year-old resisted the urge to wrap the cape around herself as she walked around the outdoor set as the cameras rolled.

However, Melissa did put on a warm padded jacket as soon as filming finished.

Supergirl's second season wrapped on CW on November 28 after moving from CBS. The third season is due to air on January 23.

Meanwhile, Melissa seemed happy with her new single life after filing for divorce from husband Blake Jenner last month, citing 'irreconcilable differences,' according to TMZ.

Chilled out: The 28-year-old gamely slipped her slender figure into her skimpy costume - a blue and red mini-dress, complete with gold belt, red cape and over-the-knee red boots

The couple, who met when they co-starred in Glee, were married for just 21 months after tying the knot in March 2015.

The actress has also asked the court to eliminate Jenner from her legal name, and has asked that neither party be ordered to pay the other spousal support.

The Houston native's star has risen since she played Marley Rose in Glee from 2012 to 2014.

It's a wrap: The beautiful blonde put on a quilted coat as soon as the cameras stopped rolling

Three's a wow: Melissa is filming the third series of Supergirl, due to kick off on CW on Jan. 23

She has appeared on shows including Homeland and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Melissa's movie credits include Whiplash, with Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons; The Longest Ride as Scott Eastwood's love interest; Band of Robbers and the upcoming Patriots Day, alongside Mark Wahlberg.

The 5 ft., 8 in. beauty began appearing as Supergirl last year opposite co-stars Mehcad Brooks, Chyler Leigh and Calista Flockhart.
She's the glamorous soap star who isn't shy of flaunting her enviable physique.

And Jodi Jordan - nee Anasta - took to Instagram on Friday to document her return to exercise in 2017 with a 'sweaty' snap in her activewear.

The 31-year-old actress flaunted her taut abs and toned pins in the mirror selfie as she wore a black Puma crop top with matching shorts.

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'So sweaty!' Jodi Anasta flaunts taut abs in sizzling post-workout selfie to Instagram on Friday... after revealing her 2017 workout and juice cleanse plans online

She drew further attention to her gym-honed physique by dragging her shorts down by the pockets as she posed for the photo

'Back at it!! Sooooo sweatY!!!' wrote the TV star to her more than 200k followers.

Jodi's hair appeared slightly damp for the picture, as she was believed to have just finished an intense workout.

The glamorous actress, who had a triumphant return to the small screen in 2016, recently announced her health and fitness plan for the new year online.

'Gym time baby!' The actress revealed her 2017 workout and juice cleanse plans after ringing in the new year with her daughter Aleeia

The stunning brunette revealed her plans to start January off with a two-week juice cleanse with organic Smart Cleanse brand.

Jodi wrote how she was planning to get her health back on track after the silly season.

The Neighbours star looked ready to kick her health back into shape, wearing a sporty white single while holding a glass of juice

'Starting 2017 with purpose!! It's been a big December but now it's time to get back on track...fitness kick before I start back at work Gym time baby!!!!(sic),' she explained.

Fitness kick! Jodi regularly hits the gym to maintain her enviable physique

On brand! Jodi was announced as an ambassador for sportswear brand Puma in June 2016, and has since promoted the brand in various social media snaps

Jodi was announced as an ambassador for sportswear brand Puma in June 2016.

Since the partnership was unveiled, the actress has been open with promoting the brand on social media in branded exercise gear.

The new resolutions come after the doting mother chose to ring in 2017 with her two-year-old daughter Aleeia.

Family new year: She appeared in high spirits in the snap, holding a fairy wand covered in hair elastics with her smiling daughter Aleeia and mother Bronwyn

'It hasn't been the easiest year': Jodi has credited her daughter for getting her through the year in the caption of a silly selfie

Last Sunday she posted an adorable snap, hinting at a family night in.

The actress added love heart emojis to her sweet tribute: 'Last night... #MyEverything.'

She appeared in high spirits in the snap, holding a fairy wand covered in hair elastics with her smiling daughter Aleeia and mother Bronwyn.

Only days earlier she had credited the tot for getting her through the year in a caption of a silly selfie.

'My girl got me through it every step of the way': The proud mother went on to praise her daughter for giving her strength

'Not going to lie... it hasn't been the easiest year,' wrote the brunette.

The former Home and Away star continued: 'but my girl got me through it every step of the way.

'I love this pic of us-it epitomises my daughter and I. Who we are, what we are, and how we do life together......no matter what,' she ended the doting post.

Jodi split from her husband and the father of her child, NRL Roosters great Braith Anasta, in December 2015.

Divorced: Jodi split from her husband and the father of her child, NRL Roosters great Braith Anasta, in December 2015

But Jodi has also been sharing a new romance in recent weeks.

The actress appears to have found love again with Double Bay real estate agent Warren Ginsberg, sharing pictures together on social media.

Her ex-husband has also moved on, dating personal trainer Rachael Lee.
Contrary to what Yoda claimed on his own deathbed  there is no longer another Skywalker.

Disney is currently brainstorming over what to do about Princess Leia's storyline in the remaining two Star Wars films.

All connected with the franchise are still reeling from the death of Carrie Fisher last week at the age of just 60.

Leia-d to rest: Disney weighing up options for Princess Leia in final two Star Wars films in wake of Carrie Fisher's death

The actress played the iconic heroine in the original trilogy between 1977 and 1983, as well as 2015's The Force Awakens.

With the help of some time reversing CGI, she was also able to make a cameo appearance in the most recent Rogue One spin off, where she played the youngest version of the character yet.

Governor Tarkin meanwhile - played in the original trilogy by Peter Cushing, who died in 1994 - had his visage completely digitally created for the film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the now-General Organa was set to feature in at least two pivotal scenes in the continuing story arc: her reunion with long lost brother Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and her confrontation with son Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) after he murdered his father Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in the Climax of The Force Awakens.

Resurrected: With the help of some time reversing CGI, she was also able to make a cameo appearance in the most recent Rogue One spin off, where she played the youngest version of the character yet. Governor Tarkin meanwhile - played in the original trilogy by Peter Cushing, who died in 1994 - had his visage completely digitally created for the film (both pictured in 1977's A New Hope)

It is unknown if both scenes were to take place in Episode VIII, or Episode IX, or one in each; however insiders claim Fisher was set to play a much bigger part in the finale than the middle.

All of Carrie Fisher's scenes in for Episode VIII - in its current form - have reportedly been completed.

However, a complete re-write is not out of the question; Rogue One for example, which reportedly ran into screenplay problems, was given a massive overhaul, with the eventual end result delighting critics and fans alike.

Rian Johnson - who is directing Episode VIII - also admitted revamping his film after he based the story on an early draft of JJ Abrams's The Force Awakens, which ended up being a very different film upon completion.

Missed: All connected with the franchise are still reeling from the death of Carrie Fisher last week at the age of just 60

The one option that fans and studio alike seem least keen to broach is recasting to role; Disney was wisely insistent on rehiring the original actors to play roles that easily could have been filled by others, such as Kenny Baker's R2-D2 and Peter Mayhew's Chewbacca.

Angus MacInnes - who played the ill-fated Gold Leader Jon 'Dutch' Vander - was another original actor brought back to reprise his roll as an Easter egg for Rogue One.

He told documentary maker Jamie Stangroom that while CGI is an impressive tool for altering appearances, its is not quite ready to create full performances yet.

'Peter Cushing - which was a complete CGI re-rendition, which I thought was kinda eerie... it was really bizarre. I mean Peter's been dead for over 20 years. 'He just looked a bit odd.

Stay on target: Angus MacInnes - who played the ill-fated Gold Leader Jon 'Dutch' Vander - was another original actor brought back to reprise his roll as an Easter egg for Rogue One

Almost: He told documentary maker Jamie Stangroom that while CGI is an impressive tool for altering appearances, its is not quite ready to create full performances yet

'Because CGI isn't 100 per cent. There's those little nuances that you look at and think "that's not quite the guy".'

He admitted seeing yourself in a roll you played 40 years ago was 'a little disorientating', but there was no reason people shouldn't be digitally resurrected after they die  technology allowing.

'Movies are about fooling people into believing there's a reality going on, and it's all about how well you do that. It's irrelevant if you are actually there.

'I'm in Rogue One, but I did that 40 years ago, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is the fact people are watching and going: "Yeah that's cool".'
Glamourous WAG Rebecca Judd showed off her thigh gap in two photos shared to Instagram on Friday, after giving birth to twins in September.

The Channel Nine presenter, 33, flaunted her petite frame in tight activewear from her own brand, Jaggad. One particular photo focused solely on her slim legs.

Posing for the fitness selfies in a crop top and leggings, the mother-of-four confidently displayed her post-baby body to her 594,000 followers.

Post-baby body: Rebecca Judd showed off her thigh gap in two photos shared to Instagram on Friday, after giving birth to twins in September

While placing her hand between her legs, she also showcased her flat stomach and a hint of cleavage in the photo, which was taken from an above angle.

Stepping out in style, Bec wore a full-face of makeup and matching exercise gear from her established s portswear label.

The svelte beauty, who appeared to have stopped for a coffee before taking the snap, later shared a close-up image of her lithe legs while seated.

The second image clearly drew attention to one central feature - the notable gap between Rebecca's toned thighs.

Slim figure: The second image clearly drew attention to one central feature - the notable gap between Rebecca's toned thighs

Only some fans were alerted to Rebecca's follow-up snap, as she chose to share it on her Instagram Story, and not her Instagram account.

In the first photo, which was posted to her regular feed, she chose to caption it simply with a promotion of a new Jaggad store location.

The media personality appeared to deactivate comments for the post, which was likely the result of receiving fan backlash in the past.

Dividing opinion: The media personality appeared to deactivate comments for the post, which was likely the result of receiving fan backlash in the past

The TV presenter sparked criticism in September when she detailed her postpartum struggles by telling Instagram fans she felt 'semi human' and had taken to wearing '50 pairs of Spanx' after ditching her maternity wear.

While some fans expressed their support, others suggested that wearing shapewear was simply unnecessary, particularly so soon after birth.

'It's disheartening to see... Take the spanx off and relax, helps other women feel less pressure about being out of maternity wear,' one follower wrote.

'Hard to believe you were ever pregnant!' Since welcoming twins Tom and Darcy last year, Bec has surprised her fans with her remarkably slim appearance in Instagram photos

Since welcoming twins Tom and Darcy last year, Bec has surprised her fans with her remarkably slim appearance in Instagram photos.

Comments from fans included: 'Hard to believe you were ever pregnant!', 'Is this you today after babies???' and 'Did u just give birth to twins??? Stunning as ever!!'

Back in 2015, Bec told Daily Mail Australia: 'I've been really thin my entire life.'

Natural look: Back in 2015, Bec told Daily Mail Australia: 'I've been really thin my entire life'

'I was getting called skinny - same as my mum when she was in school': Bec previously explained that her naturally slim frame was inherited from her mother

She added: 'Even in school at six years old, seven years old, eight years old I was getting called skinny - same as my mum when she was in school.'

The wife of former Carlton captain Chris Judd, 33, welcomed identical twins via an emergency cesarean section in September.

The couple also share five-year-old son Oscar and two-year-old daughter Billie. They married on New Year's Eve in 2010 after dating for several years.

Pregnancy: The wife of former Carlton captain Chris Judd, 33, welcomed identical twins via an emergency cesarean section in September
She welcomed son Jonathan in March with her husband Adam Shulman.

And 10 months later, Anne Hathaway showed off her flawless post-baby body while stepping out in snakeskin printed leggings.

The 34-year-old actress was spotted shopping in West Hollywood on Thursday while sporting fitted bottoms with a graphic T-shirt and a grey jacket.

Stylish but casual: Anne Hathaway showed off her flawless post-baby body while stepping out in snakeskin printed leggings

The Princess Diaries star chose leggings with grey and black tones, which showed off her sculpted legs.

Anne wore a shirt that read 'I saw that. -Karma.'

The mother of one layered a casual coat on top while toting a black backpack over one shoulder.

She hit the pavement in black and white Nike sneakers with blue framed Sunday Somewhere sunglasses shielding her eyes.

Heading home: The 34-year-old actress was spotted shopping in West Hollywood on Thursday while sporting her fitted bottoms, a graphic T-shirt and a grey jacket

The star was seen leaving the trendy shop Maxfield with a large shopping bag.

Anne styled her brunette locks loose while opting to go makeup free.

Her outing comes just five days after she revealed on her Instagram that's she's taking a break from social media.

Anne, who posted a clip of a lit candle along with the message, wrote: 'I wanted to let you know I am taking a pause from Instagram and Facebook. Until next we meet.'\

Taking a break: Her outing comes just five days after she revealed on her Instagram that's she's taking a break from social media

The screen star also wished her followers a Happy New Year, adding that she's 'grateful for 2016 for the birth of my son and all that has meant, for the lesson(s) that there are no guarantees and we should celebrate and delight in each other now and not later.'

In December, the Golden Globe winner wowed in a lovely black dress with chunky heels and a choker for the Winter Wonderland Ball in New York City.

Anne and her husband Adam, 35, welcomed son Jonathan on March 24 in Los Angeles.

The new parents married in September 2012 in Big Sur, California after dating for four years.
Via The Guardian, a portent of the future: Nomads no more: why Mongolian herders are moving to the city. Click or tap through for the full report with photos and videos. Excerpt:

Look down on Ulaanbaatar from the hills at its edge, and you will see a central hotchpotch of new skyscrapers and crumbling Soviet tower blocks surrounded by an unplanned periphery of white yurts, or, as they are known in Mongolia, gers. Thousands and thousands of gers.

These are the homes of around 600,000 former herders who  like Altansukh  have migrated to the Mongolian capital in the past three decades. The scale of the migration is extraordinary: around 20% of the countrys people have moved to Ulaanbaatar, doubling the citys population and significantly increasing its physical footprint.

I arrived in Mongolia in 1998, and at that time there were still some areas of Ulaanbaatar that were totally empty, says Mitsuaki Toyoda, the head of mission for Save the Children, which runs aid programmes in the citys deprived suburbs. But over the years it has just expanded and expanded.

One partial explanation lies in the environment. Over the past 70 years, the average temperature in Mongolia has risen by 2.07 degrees, more than double the average global increase of 0.85 degrees over the past century. This has exacerbated a periodic weather phenomenon known in Mongolia as the dzud, which creates summers that are unusually dry, followed by spells during the winter that are unusually cold.

The dry summers make it harder to grow and harvest grass, while the harsher winters require an even bigger supply of fodder. When the cold hits, sheep and cattle have less fodder to feed on, causing widespread loss of life (for animals), and livelihood (for humans). Dzuds in 1999 and 2009 killed around 10 million and 8 million livestock respectively, and were followed by a spike in migration to Ulaanbaatar, government records show.

Aid workers fear further mass-movement in the coming months and years: another dzud is thought to be underway this winter.

Herding is a way of life for over a third of Mongolians, and of symbolic importance to the whole country. Thanks in part to rural-to-urban migration, it is now under threat.

But whether this migration is directly linked to climate change is a subject of debate. As the world warms, world leaders must prepare for the likelihood of refugees fleeing the weather rather than war  but the situation in Mongolia is too complex to be considered a straightforward test case.

Climate change is responsible for some portions of the loss [of livestock]  but not all of it, says Dr Batjargal Zamba, an adviser at Mongolias environment ministry. Its a combination of change to climate, and also a change to Mongolian economic activity and lifestyle.
Roxy Jacenko's Instagram followers were green with envy as the PR queen got the chance to swim with dolphins in Hawaii on Friday.

Interestingly, the 36-year-old and her daughter Pixie were joined by Adam Blumenthal, who is the co-founder of a business specialising in another type of 'green.'

The entrepreneur - who's connection to Roxy is currently unclear - is part of a multi-million dollar marijuana operation which legally develops and distributes marijuana products with bases in Switzerland and Israel.

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Green with envy! Roxy Jacenko her daughter Pixie and son Hunter were joined on a Hawaiian dolphin adventure with Adam Blumenthal (R), who is part of a multi-million dollar marijuana operation. Their connection is unclear

In one image, Roxy's adorable daughter Pixie looked frightened by the presence of dolphins swimming in the water below.

The cute redhead clutches onto her mum, who has her arm lowered to the water as if trying to convince her daughter that everything is okay.

In another snap, the five-year-old looks much happier as a dolphin has its mouth open beside her.

She wears an adorable yellow ribbon in her hair as a nearby instructor appears to be in control of the situation.

Scared? In one image Pixie looked frightened by the presence of dolphins swimming in the water below. Adam's partner Annabelle (L) was also in attendance

That's better! In another snap, the five-year-old looks much happier as a dolphin has its mouth open beside her

Roxy's two-year-old Hunter also joined the group in one photo, giving a cheeky grin as he stands beside Adam and his partner Annabelle.

Adam's firm Creso Pharma is one of the first marijuana producers to be floated on the ASX since the substance was legalised in Australia for medical use late last year.

According to the businessman's Linkedin profile, the company's strategy is to 'develop, register and commercialise Pharmaceutical-grade-Cannabis and Hemp based products to the Highest GMP ( Good Manufacturing practice ) quality standards.'

His profile on Creso's website states: 'He has successfully worked on several medical marijuana deals spanning Israel, Canada and Switzerland.'

Top quality! According to Adam's Linkedin profile the company's strategy is to 'develop, register and commercialise Pharmaceutical-grade-Cannabis and Hemp based products to the Highest GMP ( Good Manufacturing practice ) quality standards.'

Medical use! The businessman's firm Creso Pharma is one of the first marijuana producers to be floated on the ASX since the substance was legalised in Australia for medical use late last year

Roxy, Pixie and Hunter are not joined by their father Oliver Curtis on their Hawaiian vacation.

He is currently serving a two-year prison sentence for insider trading.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Roxy in regards to her connection to the Cannabis entrepreneur.
He is the actor and director who has been hidden behind his facial hair for years.

But Mel Gibson faced photographers for the last time with his great big bushy beard on Thursday.

Mel arrived on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon to tape his spot as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and once inside, the clippers came out and the beard was GONE.

It's gone! Mel Gibson finally had his facial hair shaved off... by a stranger on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show

The Oscar winner rocked up in jeans, a navy polo shirt and a zip up black denim motorcycle jacket.

For a man possibly facing a shave, Mel's beard was still relatively neatly trimmed, significantly more trimmed than it has been at phases over the last year, including the Hacksaw Ridge premiere.

His big bushman's beard has become a major talking point and he has made jokes at his own - and its - expense, sarcastically telling USA Today in October that he can 'wring it out and make soup' at the end of each week with the leftovers contained within it.

Scared: There was no going back as to the audience's surprise, the clippers took a big strip out of the beard that had lasted for since early 2014.

Be brave: Soon roles were soon reversed and the audience member with a half-shorn head was taking to Braveheart's beard

Full service job: Mel joked to Kimmel that the shave had gone very well and 'the guy threw in a Brazilian wax for free!'

The promotional line for Kimmel was 'Mel Gibson gives a stranger a haircut', however the job he provided was seemingly inspired more by a sheep shearer than bushman.

Soon roles were soon reversed and the audience member with a half-shorn head was taking to Braveheart's beard.

As to the audience's surprise, the clippers took a big strip out of the beard.

After retreating backstage in order to complete the job, Mel returned for the traditional interview clean shaven.

He joked to Kimmel that the shave had gone very well and 'the guy threw in a Brazilian wax for free!'

Not a happy customer: The promotional line was 'Mel Gibson gives a stranger a haircut' however the job he provided was seemingly inspired more by a sheep shearer than bushman

Coming to Kimmel: Mel arrived on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon to tape his spot as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Big bushy beard: Mel's big bushman's beard had become a major talking point and he had made jokes at his own - and its - expense

Earlier, Mel's beard was on full display as the Australian actor arrived at Kimmel's studio where he faced a line of fans and photographers.

Mel carried his glasses in his left hand, though he showed no sign of needing them as he signed autographs for the waiting fans.

The Australian veteran actor appeared to patiently sign the various film memorabilia presented to him, for movies ranging from Mad Max to Braveheart, as well as his latest film.

Sure sighted: Mel carried his glasses in his left hand, though he showed no sign of needing them as he signed autographs for the waiting fans

The many movies of Mel: The Australian veteran actor appeared to patiently sign the various film memorabilia presented to him, for movies ranging from Mad Max to Braveheart, as well as his latest film

Super charged: In his right hand, Mel carried his iPhone, which seemingly was low on battery as it was still plugged in to its charger, which dangled from Mel's fingers

In his right hand, Mel carried his iPhone, which seemingly was low on battery as it was still plugged in to its charger, which dangled from Mel's fingers.

But the electric gadget that would dominate Mel's evening lay inside.

The Hacksaw Ridge director is nominated for Best Director at the Golden Globe Awards to be presented on Sunday.

Those awards are set to be hosted by Jimmy Fallon, who also presents a late night talk show on NBC.

But it was Fallon's late night rival who secured perhaps the Mel moment of 2017.
She's never been shy about showing off her body - or her dance moves.

And on Thursday, Bella Thorne did both while at a DNCE's private show with her friends, sharing her fun on Snapchat.

The 19-year-old - who rocked blue, black and silver colored hair - twerked up a storm at the late night peformance.

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Not shy: On Thursday, Bella Thorne did both while at a DNCE private show with friends, sharing her fun on Snapchat

The teenager even planted a kiss on her best friend Bella Pendergast's lips in between sets.

She recently returned back to Los Angeles following a holiday in the Bahamas.

For the concert, Bella styled her shoulder-length multi-colored locks loose with waves.

The Shake It Up star paired her bold colored tresses with a skintight crop top that had 'Your loss, baby,' written across it.

Pals for life! The teenager even planted a kiss on her best friend Bella Pendergast's lips in between sets

Memories: She recently returned back to Los Angeles following a holiday in the Bahamas

The teen finished off the ensemble with ripped denim and a suede jacket over a chambray top - with her flat stomach on full display.

While at the DNCE show, Bella turned to her friend Bella Pendergast and smooched her on the lips.

She also gyrated her hips against her as she attempted to twerk for her Snapchat followers.

Fun time with pals: She also gyrated her hips against her as she attempted to twerk for her Snapchat followers

Not done yet: Bella took her dance session seriously, choosing to bend down as she gyrated against her friend

Bella then decided to do a solo hip moving session.

The giddy star had a mini photo shoot with her friend in the bathroom before they returned to the show.

Bella also shared a video of Joe singing on stage with his DNCE band mates; she also wrote that DNCE member JinJoo Lee is 'soooo hot.'

No care in the world for her tonight: Bella then decided to do a solo hip moving session - this time near speakers

Bold: Bella styled her shoulder-length multi-colored locks loose with waves

Casual: The Shake It Up star paired her bold colored tresses with a skintight crop top that had 'Your loss, baby,' written across it

Before: The star took a snap in the mirror after she got ready

Mirror on the wall! The giddy star had a mini photo shoot with her friend in the bathroom before they returned to the show

Belt it out: Bella also shared video of Joe singing on stage with his DNCE band mates

Fan moment: The star also Snapped DNCE member JinJoo Lee while she played the guitar
In the short time since the shocking deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, countless Hollywood stars have paid tribute to the screen legends.

And Gwyneth Paltrow was among a number of famous faces who gathered at Carrie's Beverly Hills home on Thursday, for a private memorial service.

Accompanied by her boyfriend Brad Falchuck, the Oscar-winning actress cut a sombre figure as she made her way through the leafy locale.

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Memorial: Gwyneth Paltrow and her boyfriend Brad Falchuck were among the mourners who gathered at Carrie Fisher's Beverly Hills home for a private memorial service on Thursday

She kept her style understated for the sad occasion, wearing a lilac dress with a pussy bow neckline under a camel coat, which she teamed with tan booties.

With her golden tresses resting on her shoulders in gentle waves with a centre parting, the 44-year-old actress chatted with her beau, who donned a black coat over a crisp white shirt.

Inside, they rubbed shoulders with a number of stars, including George Lucas, Courtney Love, Meg Ryan, Penny Marshall, Ellen Barkin, Ed Begley Jr., and Meryl Streep, who was seen arriving with an arrangement of white flowers.

Sombre: The actress cut a sombre figure as she made her way into the late actress's home

Hollywood pals: The 44-year-old star was among a host of celebrities who were in attendance

Legendary host: Carrie's Beverly Hills home was the venue of many parties over the years

Carrie's brother Todd Fisher was also in attendance, as well as her actress daughter Billie Lourd, whose Scream Queens co-star Taylor Lautner showed his support.

The Stars Wars star's half-sisters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, and her ex-husband Bryan Lourd were also among the many gathered mourners.

As a touching gesture, Carrie's beloved dog, Gary, was included among the gathering of special guests, who had come together to bid the star a collective farewell.

Understated: Gwyneth went for understated style in a lilac dress under a stylish camel coat

Familiar foods: The 125 guests dined on a familiar and comforting menu from Carrie's gatherings: fried chicken, collard greens and conbread

Eulogies: Meryl Streep, Stephen Fry and Carrie's daughter Billie Lourd were among those who delivered eulogies at the ceremony

Tragic: Debbie Reynolds, left, died of a suspected stroke just a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher's December 27 death

According to People magazine, the funeral service was arranged by Carrie's daughter Billie, who wanted it to take place at the star's home, where she enjoyed frequently entertaining her beloved friends.

A source said: 'Billie wanted the people her mother loved to gather in that living room one last time.'

The publication reports that Billie, Meryl, Tracey Ullman, Bruce Wagner and Stephen Fry were among those who delivered eulogies in front of the 125 guests

Favourite song: According to a source, Meryl Streep performed her late pal's favourite song, Happy Days Are Here Again

Tribute: A public memorial for Carrie and Debbie is reported to be taking place later this year

Pals: Carrie's enduring screen career meant that she'd made countless friends in Hollywood

'All the tributes circled back to Billie and how much Carrie loved her,' added the source, who revealed that guests were fed a familiar staple from Carrie's legendary parties: a hearty meal of fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread.

Eyewitnesses say that Meryl, who was a longtime close friend of the family, performed her late pal's favourite song, Happy Days Are Here Again.

'By the end, everyone was singing,' said the source.

Carrie was cremated earlier this week following her shocking December 27 death, which came days after she went into cardiac arrest aboard a London-to-Los Angeles flight.

Special guest: As guests arrived, they were greeted by Carrie's beloved dog, Gary

Outpouring: Countless stars have publicly paid tribute to Carrie since her shocking death

Saying goodbye: Debbie Reynolds' private funeral is expected to take place on Friday

As her fans and loved ones reeled from the tragedy, her mother Debbie Reynolds died from a suspected stroke at the age of 84 just one day later.

According to reports, her funeral is scheduled to take place on Friday, and some of Carrie's ashes will be buried with the Singing In The Rain actress.

It has also been reported that a public memorial service is being planned later in the year for both actresses, though final details have been to be announced.

Together forever: Some of Carrie's ashes are expected to be buried with Debbie on Friday

Singalong: The attendees all sang along together with Meryl Streep at the private gathering
Irina Shayk covered up in a long black sweater dress on Thursday while visiting boyfriend Bradley Cooper.

The 30-year-old model rumored to be pregnant with Bradley's child stopped by his Los Angeles home on his 42nd birthday.

Irina kept it simple in an all-black ensemble that included the striped sweater, black leggings and thigh-high black boots.

Birthday visit: Irina Shayk visited boyfriend Bradley Cooper at his Los Angeles home on Thursday on the actor's 42nd birthday

The Russian model had her long dark brown hair down and was carrying a gift.

She was also spotted on Thursday at a salon with her hair up in a bun and wearing black sunglasses.

The brunette beauty kept any clear sign of a baby bump hidden under the loose sweater.

Irina also was out and about on Wednesday as she went shopping at Barney's New York in Beverly Hills.

Lady in black: The Russian model rumored to be pregnant with Bradley's child covered up in a black sweater dress

The Victoria's Secret model and Bradley started dating in 2015 shortly after his split from British model Suki Waterhouse.

Pregnancy rumors gained steam in December after Irina walked in the Victoria's Secret Fashin Show in Paris with an outfit that covered her stomach.

Irina also has been flashing an 'engagement-style' ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

Cute couple: Bradley and Irina are shown in July in London at Wimbledon

Bradley will again lend his voice as the genetically engineered raccoon-based bounty hunter and mercenary Rocket in the upcoming Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2.

The Marvel Studios film also starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and Vin Diesel is scheduled for release on May 5.

Bradley also will direct and star in a remake of A Star Is Born also starring Lady Gaga.
He sparked health fears when he stepped out looking very frail just three weeks ago.

But Val Kilmer appeared to be on his way back to his normal healthy self on Thursday night.

The actor - who turned 57-last week - made a rare public appearance at the at W Magazine Celebrates the Best Performances event at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

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The Batman Forever star looked ready for a night's partying in black shoes and grey slacks, with a fitted black zip-up over a navy and white striped T-shirt.

With his blonde hair slicked back, he carried his spectacles in his hand as he made a bee-line into the shindig.

In December a thin and frail-looking Val cut a very different picture when he was spotted out in La Jolla.

Val has denied numerous times over the past couple of years that he was suffering from throat cancer.

Most recently in November he took to Facebook to again deny it after his friend and Ghost And The Darkness co-star Michael Douglas claimed he is 'dealing with exactly what I had', referring to his own oral cancer.

The actor wrote in response: 'I love Michael Douglas but he is misinformed. The last time I spoke to him was almost two years ago, when I asked him for a referral for a specialist to get a diagnosis for a lump in my throat.

He added: 'I ended up using a team at UCLA and have no cancer whatsoever. I still have a swollen tongue and am rehabbing steadily.'

Kilmer is a Christian Scientist, who believe illness is an illusion that can be healed by the power of prayer, rather than by medicine.

Thursday's party was held ahead of Sunday's Golden Globes ceremony, and brought together much of the talent on the list of nominees, including Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Hailee Steinfeld, Lily Collins and Justin Timberlake.

Val meanwhile hasn't been seen on the big screen or small screen since 2014; however he does have two films lined up for 2017.

He will appear in British crime drama film the Snowman opposite Michael Fassbender, as well as Terrence Malick's upcoming American drama Song To Song, also starring Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, and Fassbender again.
She's been frequently spotted making the most of the Sydney sun while she guest hosts on Studio Ten this summer.

And The Bachelorette's Georgia Love, 27, looked as loved-up as ever while enjoying a swim with her beau Lee Elliott, 35, on Friday.

The genetically blessed pair showed off their stunning bodies while striking a pose in the pool.

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Summer loving! The Bachelorette's Georgia Love and Lee Elliott soak up the sun during a loved-up pool dip

While holding a bottle in one hand, Georgia flings a slim leg skywards as she floats in an inflatable donut.

The brunette beauty wears oversized sunglasses and a retro floral bikini which shows off her tanned skin.

Her beau looks handsome as he flaunts his bulging arm muscles in the water, wearing a pair of black board shorts.

Liking the weather: Earlier this week Georgia shared a photo of the couple on a Sydney beach, sharing a favourable review of the city

The couple's feelings for each other are evident as their legs touch affectionately in the crystal clear water.

Georgia captions the photo by referencing a famous song from the musical Grease.

'Summer lovin' had me a blast,' she writes.

Guest gig: Georgia has been spending time in Sydney as she fills in for Sarah Harris on Studio Ten

The former WIN journalist also adds a series of hilarious hashtags 'sunsoutgunsout' 'sunsoutbunsout' and 'goodthanksyourself.'

With both Lee and Georgia never missing an opportunity to use a pun, the reality TV star also used the hashtag 'donutbejealous.'

The photo was likely taken in Sydney, where the couple were seen on Wednesday enjoying one of the harbour city's many beaches.

Established: The journalist has years of experience

Going strong: The couple, who fell in love on The Bachelorette last year, are clearly as loved up as ever if latest Instagram posts are anything to go off

The Studio 10 guest presenter looked delighted with her decision as she reclined on the sand in a polka dot bikini.

Her brunette locks were pulled back off her face, which was sheltered from the sun with a pair of oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses.

Lee, 35, flaunted his muscular arms and bronzed skin as he propped himself up on a towel nearby.

Living it up: The couple rang in the new year at an black-tie party in Melbourne

Georgia captioned the photo, shared to Instagram: 'Not bad Syders.'

But the couple rang in the new year at a black-tie party in Melbourne, with Georgia taking to Instagram to gush about their love for each other using a song lyric.

'You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you,' she wrote alongside a picture of the couple staring adoringly into each other's eyes.
Stephen Fry paid his respects to his dear friend Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds at their joint memorial service in Beverly Hills, California, on Thursday.

The 59-year-old looked understandably sombre as he arrived at the sad occasion with husband Elliott Spencer, 29, supporting him by his side.

The former QI host, who gave a eulogy at the service, had bonded with the actress over their mutual suffering of depression in 2006 - and the pair remained firm friends until her untimely death last month.

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Saying goodbye: Stephen Fry (above) paid his respects to his 'dear friend' Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds at their joint memorial service in Beverly Hills, California on Friday

Helping hand: The 59-year-old looked understandably sombre as he arrived at the sad occasion with his husband Elliott Spencer, 29, (L) supporting him by his side

The comedians, who married in 2015, both dressed in low-key but traditional black suits for the private service, held at Carrie's home.

Elliott sported a classic black shirt, while Stephen opted for a thicker jumper beneath his jacket as he made his way through the grounds with a host of other stars.

Once inside, Stephen was one of five who gave a eulogy in the actress' memory to the other 125 guests - with her daughter Billie Lourd, 24, and friends Tracey Ullman Bruce Wagner, and security expert Gavin de Becker also making tributes.

Honour: Stephen later gave a eulogy to the 125 guests, alongside her daughter Billie Lourd, 24, and her friends Tracey Ullman Bruce Wagner, and security expert Gavin de Becker

Respectful: The comedians, who married last year, both dressed in low-key but traditional black suits for the private service, held at Carrie's home

A source told People magazine of the speeches: ' All the tributes circled back to Billie, and how much Carrie loved her.'

Stephen was one of the first to pay his respects to Carrie on social media after she lost her life to a heart attack aboard a flight from London on December 23.

He wrote sadly to his followers: 'She was the brightest, funniest, bravest, kindest, cleverest and sweetest person I ever knew. A crushing blow to lose @carrieffisher'

RIP: Stephen was one of the first to pay his respects to Carrie on social media, after she lost her life a heart attack on December 23 aboard a flight from London

Tribute: He called her 'the brightest, funniest, bravest, kindest, cleverest and sweetest person I ever knew', before posting an image of the funny gifts she had given him over the years

Proving their close relationship, the actor then followed up his kind words with a photo of the most recent gifts the actress, most famous for playing Princess Leia, had given him.

'She loved to give one the oddest and most randomly silly presents,' he captioned the array of items, including a Jane Austen action figure, before adding: 'These are the last three things she gave me.'

Stephen and Carrie became friends in 2006 when they appeared together in the Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive documentary.

Things in common: Stephen and Carrie became friends in 2006 when they appeared together in the Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive documentary

Having both suffered from bipolar disorder and drug use in the past, Stephen visited Carrie in the film to discuss their common difficulties with the illness.

The pair had remained firm friends ever since - with Stephen and Elliott most recently accompanying Carrie to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens London premiere in late 2015.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow was also among the famous faces who gathered at Carrie's home for the service, held in honour of her and her mother Debbie Reynolds - who passed away the day after Carrie.

Bonded: The pair remained friends ever since - with Stephen and Elliott even accompanying Carrie to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens London premiere in late 2015 (above)

Memorial: Gwyneth Paltrow and her boyfriend Brad Falchuck were among the mourners who gathered at Carrie Fisher's Beverly Hills home for a private memorial service on Thursday

Accompanied by her boyfriend Brad Falchuck, the Oscar-winning actress cut a sombre figure as she made her way through the leafy locale.

She kept her style understated for the sad occasion, wearing a lilac dress with a pussy bow neckline under a camel coat, which she teamed with tan booties.

Inside, they rubbed shoulders with a number of stars, including George Lucas, Courtney Love, Meg Ryan, Penny Marshall, Ellen Barkin, Ed Begley Jr., and Meryl Streep, who was seen arriving with an arrangement of white flowers.

Sombre: The actress cut a sombre figure as she made her way into the late actress's home

Hollywood pals: The 44-year-old star was among a host of celebrities who were in attendance

Carrie's brother Todd Fisher was also in attendance, as well as her actress daughter Billie Lourd, 24, whose Scream Queens co-star Taylor Lautner showed his support.

The Stars Wars star's half-sisters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, and her ex-husband Bryan Lourd were also among the many gathered mourners.

As a touching gesture, Carrie's beloved dog, Gary, was included among the gathering of special guests, who had come together to bid the star a collective farewell.

Understated: Gwyneth went for understated style in a lilac dress under a stylish camel coat

Familiar foods: The 125 guests dined on a familiar and comforting menu from Carrie's gatherings: fried chicken, collard greens and conbread

Eulogies: Meryl Streep, Stephen Fry and Carrie's daughter Billie Lourd were among those who delivered eulogies at the ceremony

Tragic: Debbie Reynolds, left, died of a suspected stroke just a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher's December 27 death

According to People, the funeral service was arranged by Carrie's daughter Billie, who wanted it to take place at the star's home, where she enjoyed frequently entertaining her beloved friends.

A source said: 'Billie wanted the people her mother loved to gather in that living room one last time.'

The source added that guests were fed a familiar staple from Carrie's legendary parties: a hearty meal of fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread.

Favourite song: According to a source, Meryl Streep performed her late pal's favourite song, Happy Days Are Here Again

Tribute: A public memorial for Carrie and Debbie is reported to be taking place later this year

Pals: Carrie's enduring screen career meant that she'd made countless friends in Hollywood

Eyewitnesses say that Meryl, who was a longtime close friend of the family, performed her late pal's favourite song, Happy Days Are Here Again.

'By the end, everyone was singing,' said the source.

Carrie was cremated earlier this week following her shocking December 27 death, which came days after she went into cardiac arrest aboard a London-to-Los Angeles flight.

Special guest: As guests arrived, they were greeted by Carrie's beloved dog, Gary

Outpouring: Countless stars have publicly paid tribute to Carrie since her shocking death

Saying goodbye: Debbie Reynolds' private funeral is expected to take place on Friday

As her fans and loved ones reeled from the tragedy, her mother Debbie Reynolds died from a suspected stroke at the age of 84 just one day later.

According to reports, her funeral is scheduled to take place on Friday, and some of Carrie's ashes will be buried with the Singing In The Rain actress.

It has also been reported that a public memorial service is being planned later in the year for both actresses, though final details have been to be announced.

Together forever: Some of Carrie's ashes are expected to be buried with Debbie on Friday

Singalong: The attendees all sang along together with Meryl Streep at the private gathering
Last month, he sent EastEnders fans into a tweeting frenzy, as they excitedly discussed a prominent bulge in his trousers during a memorable episode.

And as Danny Dyer performed in his role as Mick Carter for Thursday night's episode of the long-running soap, he stirred viewer reactions once again as his bulge returned in a grey fitted tracksuit.

This time around, the 39-year-old actor shared bulge-baring duties with Richard Blackwood (Vincent Hubbard), 44, who donned tight Lycra gear as they worked out together in Albert Square.

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Battle of the bulges! Danny Dyer and Richard Blackwood sparked excited reactions from fans as they worked out in very revealing outfits during Thursday night's episode of EastEnders

'Oh Vincent & Mick, how I love thee - always a welcome return of sausage surprise to @bbceastenders,' cooed one fan on Twitter, while another asked: 'Can @bbceastenders just be Mick & Vincent going running forever more?'

One viewer declared the eye-catching moment as the 'battle of the bulge with Mick and Vincent', while a grateful fan stated: 'Whoever decided to put Richard Blackwood head to toe in lycra... Thank you!'

Safety appeared to be of paramount concern for another EastEnders viewer, who tweeted: 'My word Vincent. You could have someone's eye out with that.'

Eye-catching: Richard's Lycra ensemble left very little to the imagination as he worked out

Fitness: Their cheeky characters were seen working out together in Albert Square

Excitement: Fans soon took to Twitter to share their excitement over the revealing scene

The memorable moment came about just two weeks after Dan's character Mick was seen wearing a pair of very tight beige trousers .

During the show, Mick interrupted his on-screen wife Linda Carter and pal Sharon Mitchell to ask: 'I think these are a little bit tight, don't you?'

Sharon (played by Letitia Dean) quipped to Linda (Kellie Bright): 'So the rumours are true!', with social media also going into meltdown over the cheeky scene.

Repeat: This isn't the first time that Danny has sparked such a reaction from EastEnders fans

Impressive: Richard's bulge appeared to prove particularly popular with the show's fans

Insatiable: A number of the show's fans expressed their desire to see a lot more of the same

Viewers were keen to write about what they had seen and wondered whether or not everything they saw was real.

One person wrote: 'Just had to rewind #eastenders to take a good look at Danny Dyer's bulge after that scene. Definitely a pair of socks down there!'

However, another seemed smitten, writing: 'Danny Dyer in those trousers', with a series of heart-eye emojis.

Another user shared her joy and pleaded to the soap bosses: 'Can we have more tight-trousered Danny Dyer, please? #eastenders.

Are you pleased to see me? Danny sent Twitter fans wild after donning a pair of very tight trousers during an episode of EastEnders last month

'I think these are a little bit tight don't you?' The actor sent pulses racing as his character Mick Carter interrupted his on-screen wife Linda Carter and pal Sharon Mitchell on Tuesday's episode of the BBC One show

'So the rumours are true': Stepping out in a pair of incredibly tight beige jeans, Sharon (played by Letitia Dean) quipped to Linda (Kelli Bright): 'So the rumours are true!'

Meanwhile, another viewer put two and two together while pointing out a past appearance of him on ITV2's Celebrity Juice: 'Just seen a glimpse of what Danny Dyer meant about his testicle on Celeb Juice (shocked and crying with laughter emoji) #TightTrousers #Eastenders.

Last year, This Morning host Holly Willoughby couldn't hide her shock after the Who Do You Think You Are? star flashed his massive b*****k on Celebrity Juice.

During his appearance on the always outrageous ITV2 show, Danny was asked by host Keith Lemon about the rumours about his testicle size.

Danny replied: I got one massive bollock yeh one massive b*****k. Its a mad thing yeh. It weighs a f****** ton. Id love to whack it out. Can I whack it out?

A right eyeful: Viewers were keen to write about what they had seen and wondered whether or not everything they saw was real

Know we know what he means: Another viewer put two and two together while pointing out a past appearance of Danny where he referenced his large testicle on ITV2's Celebrity Juice

Holly was instantly taken aback by the news as asked, How exactly is he going to clear up that rumour?, while the audience began to cheer for Danny to show it to his fellow celebrities.

Danny then turned to Holly and said: Ill show you it. Just go from Hollys reaction right? Go from Hollys reaction ready?

Fearne Cotton urged Holly on as the This Morning host squealed: I cant believe Im doing it. This is on medical grounds. I cant believe Im doing this.

Hollys reaction said it all as she gasped in horror when Danny gave them a clear look at his testicle.

Speechless: Holly Willoughby couldn't hide her shock (and horror) after Danny flashed his massive b*****k on Celebrity Juice earlier this year
They've returned to LA from a sun-soaked getaway in Mexico.

And Kate Bosworth, 34, and husband Michael Polish, 46, looked refreshed as they attended a party celebrating jewellery designer Susan Foster on Thursday.

The actress looked stunning in a sophisticated black bandeau dress and a pair of matching heels.

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Loved-up: Kate Bosworth, 34, and husband Michael Polish, 46, looked refreshed as they attended a party celebrating jewellery designer Susan Foster on Thursday

The blonde beauty's delicate decolletage was on display, and she tucked her sleek tresses behind her ears.

She sported a slick of vibrant red lipstick and accessorised with dangly silver earrings and a black box clutch.

Filmmaker Michael, 46, looked dapper in a black suit and sweater worn over a white shirt.

Looking good: The actress looked stunning in a sophisticated black bandeau dress and a pair of matching heels

Cheers! Kate proposed a toast to Susan over dinner

Here's to you: Kate flashed a pearly white grin as she raised her wine glass

The actress proposed a toast to Susan over dinner, flashing a pearly white grin as she raised her wine glass.

Speaking on the night, Susan said: 'I design jewelry for the classic, modern woman. With this, I was excited to partner with Kate this evening to celebrate the collection in Los Angeles because she is a true embodiment of the jewelry - a feminine and timeless beauty.'

Kate will soon be seen in BBC miniseries SS-GB which follows the exploits of a British homicide detective who must investigate a murder in a German-occupied England during the First World War.

She is also set to star in The Domestics, which has been described as a thriller and a survival love story.

Glowing: The blonde beauty's delicate decolletage was on display, and she tucked her sleek tresses behind her ears

Artistic: Michael held up a watercolour portrait of the couple in a Gatsby-era style

In it, a young husband and wife must fight to return home in a post-apocalyptic mid-western landscape plagued by brutal gangs.

She will also star as actress and Manson family victim Sharon Tate in a biopic Polish is slated to direct.

The couple have previously worked together on such films as the 2013 drama Big Sur and the 2015 mystery Amnesiac.

All smiles: Kate put on a close display with Susan, who caught the eye in a monochrome Monse dress

Gal pals: The pair shared a friendly hug for the camera

The perfect accompniments: Kate wore an array of dazzling Susan Foster jewellery

A nice touch: Each guest had a specially designed portrait as their seating card

Their new film will be based on Greg King's 2000 biographical book Sharon Tate And The Manson Murders. Polish will be screenwriting as well as directing.

In August 1969, Sharon Tate was over eight months pregnant by her husband Roman Polanski when she was butchered in her home by members of the Manson Family.

The perpetrators not only stabbed her 16 times, but also struck down three more people in the house and a man parked in the driveway. Tate was 26 years old.

Deep in conversation: The pair looked enthralled in their conversation
She's the blogger known for flaunting her enviable lifestyle online.

And Thursday was no different for Nikki Phillips, 33, although this time, she took to Instagram to also show off her enviable physique in a low-cut one-piece swimsuit while holidaying in Callala Bay.

The Kiwi model looked radiant as she beamed for the camera while frolicking on a beach on NSW's idyllic south coast.

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Soaking up the sun: The model and presenter appeared to be having the time of her life as she enjoyed her quiet getaway

'Happiness is summer holidays  only a few more days left but I'm making the most of it! Sun, swim, eat and repeat,' she captioned.

In a second snap, Nikki sits on the steps of her holiday home with a beautiful beach visible behind her.

She wears her golden locks in a chic top knot, pairing the look with dark sunglasses and a shoulder-baring top.

'Nothing beats beach life': Nikki Phillips says goodbye to summer break after spending the new year soaking up the sun on the sand

Denim shorts and espadrilles complete the holiday look.

'This place pure relaxation,' she captioned the photo, 'Nothing beats beach life and having the ocean at your front door (literally).'

She added the hashtags 'timetosaygoodbye' and 'callalabay' to her fashionable snap.

Puppy love! Television presenter Nikki Phillips shared an adorable snap from her summer vacation as she posed with her two dogs while holidaying on NSW's south coast

Later that day she also shared a happy moment with her 'babies.'

Posed in between two dogs and with a bright smile on her face, she told her Instagram followers about the happiness the pups had brought to her life.

'These two - making life better since way back,' she wrote in the caption.

The dogs, Lochie and Tygalilly, did not share their owner's beaming face, but appeared content as they perched on the sidewalk.

Loved up: Nikki was holidaying with husband of two years, Dane Rumble

Nikki looked rejuvenated in a daisy-print sundress, a black broad brim hat and a pair of oversized rounded glasses.

Her shoulder length blonde locks hung naturally in messy waves, and she appeared to be makeup free.

Earlier in the week, Nikki was pictured on the beach with Lochie, flaunting her gym-toned body in a blue and white bikini.

She has spent her holiday break with husband Dane Rumble, a musician-turned-jewellery-designer.
She's the blonde beauty who first made waves on Home and Away.

But now Samara Weaving is swimming in some real Hollywood success, scoring her first Hollywood feature film.

The 24-year-old stars in teen movie Monster Trucks, and is also filming the lead role for Netflix horror flick The Babysitter, The Saturday Telegraph reported.

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'You dont want to dream too big in case it doesnt happen': Home and Away's Samara Weaving reveals secret to success after scoring Hollywood gig

The niece of Aussie thespian Hugo Weaving told the publication she felt blessed to achieve success after leaving her soap role.

The actress played Indi Walker from 2009 to 2013 in the beachy drama.

'Life after Home and Away has been good. Im very lucky and fortunate,' Samara said.

Not in the bay anymore! Samara views herself as 'very lucky and fortunate' to have her success

'A lot of people can go over to the States and it doesnt work out so its total luck of the draw.'

The Adelaide-born beauty said her goals were to stay humble and not put too much pressure on herself.

'You dont want to dream too big in case it doesnt happen. Im just taking it one step at a time. Ive been very fortunate in the work Ive been getting,' Samara said.

Started in a soap: The actress played Indi Walker from 2009 to 2013 in the beachy drama

While making her mark in Los Angeles, Samara has also come to attention in another unlikely place- the US election.

In June last year, a photo taken of the actress on the set of Ash vs Evil Dead found its way to the centre of the fake news cycle.

Samara had been made up to look like she had scratch marks and a bloodied eye on the set of the horror TV series.

Unlikely fame: While making her mark in Los Angeles, Samara has also come to attention in another unlikely place- the US election

But the photo was later circulated by Conservative Nation, a pro-Trump group, on Twitter.

'Here's what happened to female Trump supporter when she met 'peaceful' and 'tolerant' liberals,' the tweet read.

The actress later called out the phoney story on Twitter, writing: 'I'm not American. I can't vote in your country. This is so stupid ... get rid of this please!'

It was only for TV: The actress later called out the phoney story on Twitter, writing: 'I'm not American. I can't vote in your country. This is so stupid ... get rid of this please!'




She usually shares photos of herself in designer clothes or skimpy bikinis.

But on Friday, The Bachelor's Keira Maguire seemed a little more downbeat than usual as she posted an ominous image of herself with a gloomy caption.

In the Instagram photo, the 30-year-old had her back to the camera as she walked down a long empty road alone.

Is everything okay? Keira Maguire said she was 'glad this week is over' in an ominous social media post on Friday

'Glad to see this week over,' she wrote.

It was a stark change from one of her posts earlier this week.

On Tuesday, the bikini-clad stunner shared a short clip of herself to Instagram squeezing a bottle of tanning oil at Palm Beach.

If you've got it! On Tuesday, The Bachelor's Keira Maguire flaunted her incredible bikini body as she worked on her tan at Palm Beach

Flaunting her washboard abs and putting on a busty display, Keira had her short locks out and over her shoulders, wet from a dip in the ocean.

She kneeled on a towel as she squeezed the oil out of the bottle.

Wearing dark tinted sunglasses, the reality TV reject appeared to be wearing very minimal makeup.

Looking good: Wearing dark tinted sunglasses, the reality TV reject appears to be wearing very minimal makeup

Keira captioned part of the shot: 'TAN TIME.'

It comes after she revealed in an Instagram post last week that she was heading to the idyllic Byron Bay for a short break.

'Bye Sydney. Time to trade in the jeans for the kinis ... Byron I'm coming for you.....,' part of her post read.

She recently made headlines after revealing her $22,00 plastic surgery transformation to NW magazine, claiming: 'I've always wanted to be perfect!'
She's just jetted home from a family trip to rainy Colorado.

And it looked like Chloe Grace Moretz had brought the wet weather back with her as she braved the rainy streets of Beverly Hills on Thursday.

The Amityville Horror star, 19, looked cheerful and cozy in layers as she and her female friend engaged in an animated conversation.

Keeping dry: Chloe Grace Moretz managed to keep dry while out with a friend in the rainy streets of Beverly Hills on Thursday, after returning from a family trip to Colorado

Prepared for a downpour, Chloe wore a classic raincoat in a dark color and a simple, black beanie cap for the outing. Her long-sleeved black top with a colorful print of planet Earth peaked out through the open jacket and its rolled-up sleeves.

The recurring 30 Rock performer finished off the look with black skinny jeans, dark Oxford shoes and bright red socks on full display.

Chloe had just returned from a family vacation to Telluride, Colorado.

Looking good: Her friend carried a Prada shoulder bag and wore a long overcoat in a two-tone neutral print which flowed as she walked with its high side slits

Ex lovers: Chloe has been romantically linked to Brooklyn Beckham, 17, son of David and Victoria Beckham, seen here in his Instagram post from Thursday

She was joined on vacation by her producer and manager mother, Teri Duke Moretz, along with all four of her older brothers and a few friends.

Her ex Brooklyn Beckham, 17, son of David Beckham and Victoria Beckham, was noticeably absent after their split, recently on his own trip with family to Maldives.

The Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising star joked with her social media followers about her cold weather activities while on the trip, captioning one snowy photo while horseback riding with her brother, Brandon, with 'To-hell-uride.'

Family vacation: The 30 Rock performer was joined on vacation by her mother, Teri Duke Moretz (L); the two are pictured in an Instagram Chloe shared from the winter break

The politically outspoken actor whose Instagram bio features a quote from Democratic Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has several projects in the works for the upcoming year.

Chloe is currently filming horror flick Suspiria and will also star in both The Miseducation of Cameron Post and November Criminals, all slated to be released this year, according to IMDB.

Chloe's mother is also the executive producer on November Criminals.
She said goodbye to the late Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in a private memorial service on Thursday.

And later that day, Gwyneth Paltrow headed out once more to attend Hollywood agent Cade Hudson's star-studded birthday party in Beverly Hills.

Accompanied by boyfriend Brad Falchuck, the 44-year-old actress took her look from day-to-night by slipping out of the camel-toned ankle boots she wore to the somber event and into a pair of sleek nude pumps.

Day-to-night: Gwyneth Paltrow, 44, was spotted leaving Hollywood agent Cade Hudson's star-studded birthday bash after saying her goodbyes to Carrie Fisher

Low-maintenance: As it was for the memorial, her makeup was kept to a minimum and her blonde tresses were blown out into slight waves

Calling an Uber? Emma Roberts was seen in a turtleneck sweater drss that reached past her knees, on her phone after leaving the party with Rachel Zoe

As it was for the memorial - which was attended by A-listers coming to show their respect for the iconic mother-daughter duo that passed within 24 hours of each other - her makeup was kept to a minimum and her blonde tresses were blown out into slight waves.

When Gwyneth exited the party with her 45-year-old beau, she held onto two white paper gift bags, which were given to all the guests in attendance.

Easy going: The multi-functional getup consisted of a pale lilac dress with a bow around the collar, a camel coloured over-sized coat, and patent nude pumps

Goodies: When Gwyneth exited the party with her 45-year-old beau, she held onto two white paper gift bags

Aside from Paltrow, CAA agent Cade represents some of Hollywood's elite.

His list of clients boasts the likes of George Clooney, J. J. Abrams, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Sharon Stone, and Meryl Streep.

So it's no surprise that his annual birthday bash is attended by the greats, as well.

Looking good: Bella Thorne, 19, wore skintight distressed denim while dancing and twerking at Hudson's birthday party

Ready to go: Roberts looked excited to leave and get to opening her goodie bag

Morose men: Sean Penn and Chord Overstreet were nonchalant when leaving the party

Joining Paltrow this year at were Bella Thorne, Emma Roberts, Paris Hilton, Rachel Zoe, Sean Penn, Seth MacFarlane and many more as guests sipped on SVEDKA cocktails to celebrate.

Bella Thorne, 19, looked incredible in painted-on skinny jeans, a light pink crop top and camel boots and leather jacket.

Emma Roberts, 25, looked cozy yet chic in a taupe-coloured turtleneck sweater dress that reached down past her knees and featured a slit in the hem.

New lovers: New couple Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner exited the party together

Comedian is here: Funny man Seth MacFarlane must have forgotten his goodie bag inside

Her entourage was spotted speaking with celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.

However Roberts, wearing patent leather black booties, was much more interested in her phone.

Joe Jonas and Cody Simpson - both pop stars and the exes of model Gigi Hadid - were also in attendance at the star-studded event.

Cade's BFF, showman Jeff Beacher, also attended the bash.

Jonas took the stage alongside his band DNCE to perform for Cade's 30th birthday.

Busy: Brother and sister Dylan and Hopper Penn were also at the party with their father

That's hot: Paris Hilton took time away from traveling to show up to her friend's birthday party
The reality star has spoken for the first time of her fears she would die in the October $10million jewelry robbery.

Kim Kardashian has addressed her horrific ordeal in Paris and her husband Kanye West's struggles.

The two events to rock the Kardashian clan last year will be addressed in this season's Keeping Up With A Kardashians, a teaser trailer released by E! on Friday revealed.

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Emotional video: Kim Kardashian has addressed her horrific ordeal in Paris and her husband Kanye West's struggles in a teaser trailer released by E! on Friday

The 30 second clip lays bare just how harrowing Kim's ordeal was with the 36-year-old visibly distressed.

As sisters Khloe and Kourtney listen, a distressed Kim sits curled up in a ball on the couch as she recounts what happened that October night when armed gunmen burst into her hotel and robbed her.

Crying, the star - who was bound and thrown in a bathtub - tells her sisters: 'They're going to shoot me in the back. There's no way out.'

So shaken is the mother of two, she said she struggles to even speak about what happened.

'I thought they were going to shoot me in the back': As sisters Khloe and Kourtney listen, a distressed Kim sits curled up in a ball on the couch as she recounts what happened that October night when armed gunmen burst into her hotel and robbed her

'It makes me so upset to think about it.'

But of course just a month later, Kim and her family would be dealt another blow when Kanye West had to go to hospital following a mental breakdown.

In the trailer it cuts to Kim sitting at a table as if about to eat, but is instead distraught as she takes a phone call, learning that her husband has been admitted to the UCLA Medical Center.

Felt powerless: The 36-year-old explains there was no way out and it still makes her 'so upset to think about it'

Tough year: But of course just a month later, Kim and her family would be dealt another blow when Kanye West had to go to hospital following a mental breakdown

It is not clear if she is talking to the rapper or whether it is his trainer Gunnar Peterson who was with Kanye at the time of his breakdown.

'Don't scare me, please. What's going on?' Kim says, crying on the phone.

As her mom Kris Jenner rushes over to find out what is wrong, Kim tells her family, 'I think he really needs me, and I have to get home.'

Emotional reaction: In the trailer it cuts to Kim sitting at a table as if about to eat, but is instead distraught as she takes a phone call, learning that her husband has been admitted to the UCLA Medical Center, and she says, 'Don't scare me, please. What's going on?'

By his side: As her mom Kris Jenner rushes over to find out what is wrong, Kim tells her family, 'I think he really needs me, and I have to get home'

A police officer stands guard at the entrance of a luxury residence on the Rue Tronchet in central Paris, France, on October 3, where masked men robbed Kim

In this October file photo, cameras are set up as police officers stand guard at the entrance to the hotel residence at the Rue Tronchet, near Madeleine, central Paris, where Kim was robbed

While Kim and Kanye have faced a very tough end to 2016, her sisters explain that they are all such a strong family that they all struggled in the wake of the events.

Khloe says: 'We're so close, we feel each others' pain.'

Then she continues in a joint voice over with Kourtney: 'Every laugh is louder, every shock has an impact.'

Keeping Up With The Kardashians returns to E! in March.

''We're so close, we feel each others' pain': While Kim and Kanye have faced a very tough end to 2016, her sisters explain that they are all such a strong family that they all struggled in the wake of the events
It's only early January, but 2017 is already looking to be a year to remember for Mel Gibson.

In an unexpected comeback, the Australian star is nominated for two categories at this Sunday's Golden Globes.

And he's also set to welcome his ninth child - something he is just as proud of, if his behaviour at Friday's AFI Awards is to be believed.

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Oh baby! Mel Gibson, 61, pats pregnant girlfriend Rosalind Ross, 26, on the bottom at the AFI Awards in Los Angeles on Friday

The pair posed happily together on the red carpet, with father-of-eight Mel, 61, proudly patting his 26-year-old girlfriend on the behind.

Rosalind, an ex-equestrian vaulter, looked lovely in a red dress which highlighted the mother to be's growing bump.

She smiled as Mel kept his arm around her waist, while facing the cameras.

Mel sported a new fresh-faced look, having publicly shaven off his beard on live TV the previous evening.

The pair posed happily together on the red carpet, with father-of-eight Mel, 61, proudly patting his 26-year-old girlfriend on the behind.

Rosalind is the first love interest to emerge publicly with Mel since his infamous 2010 split with his former flame, Oksana Grigorieva.

Oscar winning director and actor Mel was at the AFI Awards thanks to his latest movie - Hacksaw Ridge - which was named one of the ten outstanding films of the year by the American Film Insistitute.

It was just one of many expected honours for the movie, which stars Mel as Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat as a medic during World War II.
From Fendi to Moschino, Bella Hadid has already proven to be the face of 2017.

But that does not mean she always wants her famous face to be recognized, so the star pulled off an entirely different look on Thursday evening while out at Los Angeles nightclub Bootsy Bellows.

The 20-year-old model debuted new bangs but her new 'do may not be permanent as her locks looked suspiciously like a wig.

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'Pinkys up': Bella Hadid stepped out on Thursday debuting short, chopped bangs as she partied in Los Angeles, California

Given Bella's records of previously playing with blonde wigs and various hairstyles, the IMG model may have been toying with another look on Thursday.

However, the model was seen on her hairstylist Jen Atkin's Snapchat before heading out for the evening, she could have gone the big chop.

Bella seems to have decided the night was a dress up party, looking a little like a Russian raver from the Nineties.

The younger sister of Gigi Hadid sported a white bra top that she paired with a silky pink mini skirt, adorned with fuzzy ruffles at the bottom.

Getting wiggy with it: The 20-year-old's new 'do may not be permanent as her locks looked suspiciously like a wig.

Legs for days: The younger sister of Gigi Hadid donned a pink and red bomber jacket, a cropped bra top and a silky ruffled mini skirt

Added extras: The model accessorized with a white sailor cap, Nike sneakers, Chanel clear sunglasses and a shimmering silver choker necklace

Her matching bomber jacket featured the same fuzz on the arms as well as red patches.

The model accessorized with a white sailor cap, Nike sneakers, Chanel clear sunglasses and a shimmering silver choker necklace.

She certainly had something to celebrate as Bella and her 21-year-old sister Gigi are the new faces of the Spring/Summer 2017 campaign with Moschino.

Emergency call? Bella's celebrity stylist Jen Atkin was seen with Bella before she headed out so whether she got real bangs remains up in the air

Always switching it up: The 5ft9in model is not a stranger to playing with wigs; pictured here in November 2016

Bangs: Bella has also featured clip-on bangs before; pictured here in September

They took the catwalk by storm earlier in September at Milan Fashion Week in Italy.

And the sisters obviously made an impression on creative director Jeremy Scott, as they were revealed as the front women of the fashion house's SS17 campaign on Thursday.

That's a great start for 2017 after Bella, Gigi and their brother Anwar, 17, joined mum Yolanda in Aspen, Colorado for the holidays.
There were plenty of heartfelt tributes to David Bowie in the wake of his death a year ago next Tuesday, but few were as moving as the simple instrumental version of Life On Mars that was performed on Radio 2 by Rick Wakeman.

The pianist had played on the original back in 1971, and his measured, unadorned approach touched the hearts of so many grieving fans that it was immediately released as a single, with the proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support. The former Yes maestro, who also appeared on Bowie's Changes and Oh! You Pretty Things and is credited as 'Richard' Wakeman on the Hunky Dory album, maintains that Life On Mars is the greatest song he ever played on.

Such was the reaction to his homage that he has now adopted the same technique on a 15-track album. Once derided for the highfalutin indulgence of Yes at their progressive rock worst, his playing here is notable for its delightful deftness of touch.

Master: Rick Wakeman's album Piano Portraits is a collection of songs he played on in the seventies, classic rock covers and classical pieces - where he shows superb playing

Released next week, Piano Portraits is in part a reinterpretation of songs that Wakeman first played on when he was a session musician in the Seventies, including Cat Stevens's Morning Has Broken and Bowie's Space Oddity. Naturally, Life On Mars crops up again.

'I've been wanting to do a piano album for years, and nearly all the tracks have a memory for me somewhere down the line,' says Rick, 67, who studied at the Royal College Of Music and has included several classical pieces alongside the familiar rockers.

Wakeman's album is bookended by two Beatles songs and has covers of 10CC and Led Zeppelin alongside two Bowie songs

Pride of place goes to Bowie. Wakeman's Life On Mars adds credence to his oft-repeated admiration for Bowie's unorthodox chord structures ('he was a very clever guy'), while he displays supreme skill in bringing out Space Oddity's winning melody.

Not all of the classic rock-era revamps work so well. Little is added to 10CC's I'm Not In Love. Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven opens with tender nuance, but fails to maintain its momentum over six meandering minutes.

However, the classical pieces provide evidence of Wakeman's enduring melodic mastery: he shows superb technique on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and his take on Holst's I Vow To Thee, My Country is wonderfully fluent.

The album is bookended by two Beatles songs. The opening Help!, buoyed by an impromptu excerpt from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, is played as a soft lament rather than a frenzied outburst. The closing Eleanor Rigby is an unusually frenetic finale to an album of elegance and poise.

Given the dearth of young British guitar bands, Surrey quintet You Me At Six are a breath of fresh air. Big enough to headline Wembley Arena, they edged towards the mainstream with 2014's radio-friendly Cavalier Youth and immediately topped the charts for the first time.

Fifth album Night People, out today, maintains their progress without losing sight of their rocking roots. Anthemic choruses and powerful riffs abound, but there are twists, too, with Nashville producer Jacquire King adding economy to a sound on the cusp of indie and hard rock.

Night People: You Me At Six's fifth album maintains their progress without losing sight of their rocking roots

Many of the reference points are American. Heavy Soul evokes the heartland thrust of The Killers's Sam's Town. Plus One is closer to the Kings Of Leon, another act produced by King.

With recent single Swear hinting at the grand sweep of Muse, and nods to U2's atmospheric uplift, the ten songs here hurtle by in 35 minutes, with no number outstaying its welcome and ballad Spell It Out bringing a refreshing change of pace.

With a tour looming, this is an album made for arenas.
Sweet Charity is a peculiarly unsettling musical that manages to be both ditzy and dark. The story, about a giddy dance hall hostess looking for true love, is sweet and jolly.

Yet there are bleak, and even sinister, moments, too. It doesn't make for entirely comfortable viewing.

Thanks to writer Neil Simon, the show brims with good humour and Manhattan street savvy.

Sweet Charity is a peculiarly unsettling musical that manages to be both ditzy and dark in telling the story of a dance hall hostess looking for love

And thanks, in turn, to Cy Coleman's music and Dorothy Fields's lyrics, it boasts a fine set of brassy show tunes  including Hey Big Spender, Rhythm Of Life and If They Could See Me Now.

Yet for all its undoubted swank, due to the sexual politics of the Sixties that saw women exploited as much as they were set free, there's a sadness running through it.

Warmth: Kalsa Hammarlund takes the title role in Sweet Charity

Kaisa Hammarlund  a pocket-size Joanna Lumley  is suitably ebullient in the lead role of Charity Hope Valentine, but there's no getting away from the fact that she's a badly abused pup in a dog-eat-dog world.

Charity's greatest virtue is also her greatest error  running her heart like a hotel. Hammarlund lights up the stage as the trusting scatterbrain  and she's got a warm, childlike singing voice. But what she captures above all is how being free and easy can also make you a soft touch; and vulnerable.

Bob Harms does much to keep the tone light as big-hearted movie star Vittorio Vidal, who accidentally hooks up with Charity, only for her to wind up scuttling around his hotel room under a dinner trolley when his high-maintenance girlfriend returns.

The really interesting turn comes from Daniel Crossley, a latter-day Norman Wisdom, as the shy tax accountant who becomes Charity's devoted admirer. Crossley is a song-and-dance man from his chest to his toenails, but he never loses a certain shiftiness that turns out to bear the story's bitter fruit.

The singing and dancing are meant to provide a sugar coating; and Derek Bond's resolute production certainly sweetens proceedings.

James Perkins's snazzy stage design of primary colours also has Sixties chic, with its grid of flashing floor lights.

Bond even recasts the show's evangelical church leader as a woman, in order to conceal its uncomfortable core and make it seem (as he says) 'less creepy, and more empowering'.

James Perkins's snazzy stage design of primary colours also has Sixties chic

Aletta Collins's choreography, meanwhile, turns Charity's fellow dancers into battle-hardened call girls with the sort of provocative struts that Bob Fosse made famous in Chicago and Cabaret.

There is terrific work throughout from these chorus girls, flashing miles of mini-skirted leg as they show that they're tough nuts, but not sourpusses.
Pot smokers to defy Trump, light up at his inauguration

Marijuana legalization advocates plan to pass out joints -- 4,200 of them -- at Donald Trump's inauguration, defying the president-elect and the seamless Republican rule he's bringing to Washington.

Since February 2015 it has been legal here to grow up to six cannabis plants at home and possess up to two ounces of pot, so long as you are 21 or older.

But it is illegal to smoke the stuff in public, and especially to buy or sell it. That is because Congress, which largely oversees the US capital, barred it from regulating sales of marijuana.

Pot's legal status in Washington, DC could vanish if the upcoming Republican Congress votes to cancel the legalization that was approved in a referendum ETIENNE ANSOTTE (BELGA/AFP/File)

So pot's legal status in Washington is fragile. And it could vanish altogether if the upcoming Republican Congress votes simply to cancel the legalization that was approved here in a referendum.

"By giving away marijuana at inauguration, we're setting up the battle flag," said Adam Eidinger, 44, initiator of the 2014 pot referendum and founder of the DC Marijuana Coalition. "We're about to lose our right."

At his home, six pot plants are growing out on the balcony. A fire burns in the fireplace as three colleagues -- Elizabeth, Natalie and Felicia -- roll joint after joint on a coffee table.

Eidinger reckons 4,200 joints are about four pounds (just under two kilos) and worth around $20,000.

To abide by the limit on how much any single person can possess, the reefers will be handed out by 50 people on Inauguration Day, January 20.

Elizabeth takes about a minute to roll a joint, and Felicia just 40 seconds. It is just pot, with no tobacco mixed in. Adam has contributed from his own private stash of high power pot, rich in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in cannabis.

The goal is for everyone to light up on the National Mall precisely four minutes and 20 seconds after Trump begins his inauguration speech from the steps of the Capitol to the vast crowd that will gather below. 4/20 is a universal code for marijuana lovers.

There is just one problem: Marijuana is still illegal on any federal land, such as the Mall. So the people who get the free joints will have to make a decision.

"They can go home and smoke it and watch the inauguration on TV. Or they can choose to commit an act of civil disobedience, and smoke on the Mall and make a statement," said Eidinger.
Republicans aim to defund Planned Parenthood via Obamacare repeal

US Republicans will seek to defund US women's health care provider Planned Parenthood through a bill that repeals President Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, the top Republican in Congress said Thursday.

"Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters when asked how his party would attempt to defund the organization now that the White House and both chambers of Congress will be in Republican hands when Donald Trump is inaugurated president on January 20.

Reconciliation is a special congressional procedure by which legislation can bypass Senate blocking tactics and need only a simply majority to pass, rather than a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member chamber.

Many Republicans have long sought to end all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, which reportedly received more than $550 million in government funding in 2014, about half its total revenue WIN MCNAMEE (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File)

Planned Parenthood has been perennially attacked by conservatives. Many Republicans have long sought to end all federal funding to the decades-old network, which reportedly received more than $550 million in government funding in 2014, about half its total revenue.

Conservatives have accused the decades-old network of serving as an abortion factory. Outrage swelled in 2015 when video secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists showed a Planned Parenthood official discussing the scientific research community's demand for fetal tissue, and the best abortion techniques for preserving certain organs.

The groups assailed the organization for trafficking in fetal tissue, a charge sternly denied by Planned Parenthood.

In August 2015, at the start of the presidential race, Senate Republicans introduced a controversial bill to halt federal funding to Planned Parenthood, but Democrats were able to block the legislation.

US law has barred federal funding for abortions since 1976, but health providers that offer abortions are allowed to use government funds for other services.

Planned Parenthood is described by its supporters as a vital supplier of health care services, including contraception, family planning, HIV prevention and cancer screenings for millions of women in the United States.

It operates some 650 clinics nationwide.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, slammed Ryan's plan as "dangerous" to people's health and "unpopular," and warned it would leave women across the country without care.

"Planned Parenthood... the one in five women who have come to Planned Parenthood, the entire public health establishment and the millions of supporters across the country are ready to defend care with everything we've got," Richards said.

Democratic lawmakers also reacted swiftly.
Trump deposed in lawsuit against celebrity chef Andres

President-elect Donald Trump gave sworn testimony Thursday in his $10 million lawsuit against celebrity chef Jose Andres for canceling a deal to open a restaurant in Trump's new Washington hotel.

The deposition of Trump, who takes office on January 20, lasted just over one hour, said Alan Garten, the chief attorney for The Trump Organization, the holding company for the property tycoon's businesses.

Trump sued Andres in July 2015 after the Spanish-born chef backed out of a contract to open a Spanish fine dining restaurant in Trump's new luxury hotel down the street from the White House.

US President-elect Donald Trump is suing celebrity chef Jose Andres (pictured) for backing out of a contract to open a Spanish fine dining restaurant in Trump's new luxury hotel down the street from the White House in Washington, DC NICHOLAS KAMM (AFP)

Andres said he pulled out over remarks by Trump, then a Republican presidential contender, criticizing Mexicans as rapists.

According to Trump's lawsuit, he is seeking damages that exceed $10 million.

Last month, the award-winning Andres, who owns several restaurants in the US capital and elsewhere in the country, proposed to the president-elect, via Twitter, that they settle their differences "in a friendly way" and donate the money to a charity.

But Garten indicated that such a settlement was not on the horizon.

"The case is fairly straightforward," Trump's lawyer said.

"In short, the parties entered into a valid and enforceable lease, which the tenant clearly breached by walking out and failing to perform its obligations, thereby entitling the landlord to recover damages in the form of unpaid rent, cost of build out, lost profits and other expenses."

Andres' ThinkFoodGroup declined to comment Thursday.

The Trump Organization did not say where the deposition was held. According to Politico, it was videotaped at Trump's headquarters in Trump Tower in New York, where the future president is holding meetings before his inauguration.

Trump filed a similar lawsuit against chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who also pulled out of a deal to open a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

The lawsuits are among legal actions that could cloud the presidency of the businessman, who has already taken steps to end some of those entanglements.

Just after his November 8 election, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits over alleged fraud at Trump University.

And on December 24, he announced he would dissolve his controversial philanthropic foundation, the Trump Foundation, to avoid conflicts of interest.
Baidu family robot a Chinese spin on Amazon Echo

Chinese internet colossus Baidu is out to make a splash with 'Little Fish,' a family robot that is a voice-controlled virtual valet akin to Amazon Echo or Google Home.

Baidu showed off "Little Fish," a translation of its Chinese name "Xiaoyu Zaijia," on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas ahead of its release in China later this year.

"I think 2017 will be the year of conversational computing," Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng said while demonstrating Little Fish for AFP behind closed doors at the show.

Chinese internet company Baidu displays its new Little Fish voice-controlled home assistant unit which also features a touch screen Glenn CHAPMAN (AFP)

"We see a clear path of conversational computers changing everything."

Using voice to interact with computers that are able to essentially learn from experience was among the hot trends at CES. Arrays of device makers added digital aide capabilities with the help of Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant technology.

Unlike "faceless" Amazon Alexa or Google Home devices that rely on people asking for information or controlling devices by speaking, Little Fish also features a touch-screen on top of its orb-shaped base.

A camera on top tracks faces, and the screen swivels to keep facing a speaker.

"Speech is the fastest way for you to communicate with a computer, but a screen is a very fast way for a machine to communicate back to you," Ng said.

For example, it would be quicker to glance at a requested list of top restaurants from Yelp than it would be to listen to the computer read all the names and descriptions, he said.

- Transformative -

Little Fish uses Baidu's operating system DuerOS, which is already employed by other devices in China, such as set-top TV boxes that can switch channels by voice command or figure out names of actors on screen when asked.

The bigger vision is to build DuerOS into a broad range of gadgets that tap into Baidu's internet capabilities for search, food delivery, online commerce and more.

"If this takes off, I am not worried about how we will make money," Ng said when asked about revenue plans.

"It will transform how you use devices in your home. There are plenty of business models."

Little Fish, a second-generation device, will be released in China at a price yet to be disclosed, according to Baidu.

Baidu partnered with hardware firm Ainemo to build it.

"We believe family robots will be the next big category that will be a member of everybody's home," Ainemo chief executive and founder Chenfeng Song said in a release.

- AI taking hold -

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is getting a foothold in homes, with developers feverishly adding "skills" to Amazon Echo speakers infused with Alexa.

Google, meanwhile, is using its AI prowess in Android smartphones, messaging software, and a vase-sized Home digital assistant.

The home hubs, sometimes referred to as smart speakers, fetch content or answers from the internet, and can act as remote controls for other devices in houses.

"We are moving technologies beyond the smartphone," said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) that organizes CES.

"Ultimately, vocal computing is replacing the (screen)."

Chinese tech giant Huawei said at CES that it is adding Amazon's Alexa to its flagship smartphone for its US launch.

China-based Lenovo announced it was launching a smart home assistant powered by Alexa, joining the growing roster of contenders in the market for voice-activated devices.

"In the smart home, voice is clearly important," DuBravac said.

"We are seeing that play out at CES."

He expected voice technology to quickly improve, within years perhaps even being able to recognize speakers so accurately it could be used for biometric security, or simple parental override of internet use by offspring.

"I know that in my home with my boys, I would like Alexa to recognize my voice as the ruler of the coop," DuBravac quipped.

While digital assistant technology is being built into televisions, appliances and more, hub devices such as Alexa will be key to voice-controlled computing, according to the economist.

NPD analyst Ben Arnold said at CES that he is "bullish on everything voice and AI," with the technologies eventually "pollenating" devices so thoroughly they essentially become home operating systems.

Jing Kun, GM of operating system DuerOS, holds Baidu's new 'Little Fish' voice controlled virtual valet which is powered by DuerOS like other devices in China Glenn CHAPMAN (AFP)
Australia call for concussion subs as Renshaw forced out

Australia urged the International Cricket Council to follow their lead and introduce concussion substitutes after opener Matthew Renshaw was ruled out of the third Test against Pakistan following a blow to the head.

The 20-year-old rookie was feeling unwell and suffering headaches after being hit on the helmet for the second time in three days during the Sydney Test.

Cricket Australia have new rules in place for concussion subs in domestic games following recommendations from an independent investigation into the death of Phillip Hughes, who died after being struck by a bouncer during a Sheffield Shield match in November 2014.

Australia's batsman Matthew Renshaw (L) snicks a ball to Pakistan's fieldsman Younis Khan on the second day of their third Test match, at the SCG in Sydney, on January 4, 2017 William West (AFP/File)

Team doctor Peter Brukner called on the ICC to consider similar rules for international matches.

"The more experience we have with this, the more common it is, there will be pressure on the ICC to do something about a concussion sub," Brukner told reporters in Sydney.

"The concern we have is there is a tendency for the player, and the coaches and so on, to want to continue, because they dont want to let the team down, they dont want to be a player short.

"So it would be helpful in that regard if we had a sub that would make it easier to pull players out with a concussion. That's for the ICC and the politicians to sort out really. I'm more concerned with looking after Matthew."

Brukner said he had not been pressured by the Australian team to allow Renshaw to play on in the Sydney Test despite his blows to the head.

"At this point I have to say the coach and the captain have been absolutely supportive," he said.

"They've said to me all along, 'It's your decision, doc'. I've had no pressure at all to keep Matthew in the game."

Renshaw was struck on the helmet while fielding close to the bat on Thursday. He was also caught by a bouncer while batting on Tuesday.

Brukner said Renshaw had complained of suffering headaches after the latest blow.

"He rested in the dressing room and then, when we returned to the hotel, we performed concussion tests and his cognitive, balance, coordination and reaction times were all within normal limits," he said.

"However, on Friday morning he was still symptomatic and so we have taken the decision to withdraw him from the match as he is suffering from concussion."

The Yorkshire-born player scored 184 in the first innings for a maiden century in his fourth Test.

Brukner said wicketkeeper Matthew Wade would play Friday after recovering from a stomach illness, which forced him from the field on Thursday.

Peter Handscomb took over wicketkeeping duties in Wade's absence.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group ISIS against his organization, in an audio message released Thursday.

In his message, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Al-Baghdadi had alleged that Al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.

'The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites,' Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm.

Al-Qaeda's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri at an undisclosed location making an announcement

'The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites,' Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, is locked in a battle with the so-called Islamic State, which sprang from its Iraqi faction, for the leadership of a global jihad.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian, denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.

'What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia,' he said.

And he insisted he had not called for Shiite Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shiite-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.

'I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats (places if worship) and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shiite militiamen,' he said.

ISIS and Al-Qaeda have both carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some Al-Qaeda propaganda has called for less indiscriminate tactics.

ISIS has stopped paying the salaries of its fighters in Mosul. They earn roughly $350 per month

Zawahiri also denied Al-Baghdadi's charge that Al-Qaeda had supported ousted former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who attempted to rule through the ballot box.

The Al-Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistan's unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.

He communicates with the group's remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating the need to target the United States.

The audio message restated the urgency to 'tell America, to other than Allah we do not kneel' but also argued for a dialogue on tactics with other jihadists.
US House votes to repudiate anti-Israel UN resolution

The US House of Representatives voted Thursday to condemn a UN resolution reprimanding Israel over its settlement activity, blasting last month's move by the international body as "an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace."

The congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote instead of vetoing the UN resolution, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

All Israeli settlements are viewed as illegal under international law AHMAD GHARABLI (AFP/File)

"I am stunned at what happened last month. This government -- our government -- abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the chamber shortly before the House vote.

"It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN," he added. "It's time to rebuild our partnership" with the Jewish state.

White House aides have said that while Obama is a firm supporter of Israel, he felt that after eight years he had simply run out of ways to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel building on Palestinian land is sabotaging hopes for peace.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

It also demands that the United States ensures that no action be taken at the Paris Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict scheduled for January 15, that would impose an agreement on the two sides.

The French-organized talks, to be attended by around 70 countries -- but not by Israeli or Palestinian representatives -- are being held to reiterate international support for a two-state solution to the conflict.

A similar bipartisan resolution was introduced in the US Senate, where Republican Ted Cruz on Thursday slammed Obama and his administration, saying the failure to veto the UN measure marked their attempt "to lash out... at Israel with their last breath in office."

Cruz said he will propose legislation designed to cut US funding to the United Nations unless the anti-Israel resolution is repealed or made more balanced.

But some congressional Democrats insisted the Capitol Hill vote had more to do with taking a final jab at Obama than condemning his administration's lack of action.
Derailed New York commuter train was going too fast: probe

A New York commuter train that derailed this week at a Brooklyn station, leaving more than 100 people injured, was going twice the speed limit at the time of the crash, federal investigators said Thursday.

The Long Island Rail Road train was going more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) per hour when the accident occurred Wednesday at Atlantic Terminal, said a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, Ted Turpin.

The track speed limit is five mph, he told a press conference.

A man is put into an ambulance outside the Atlantic Terminal January 4, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City following a train accident Kena Betancur (AFP)

The spokesman said the investigation was ongoing, and did not indicate why the engineer might have been speeding when the train slammed into a bumper at the end of the tracks at around 8:30 am (1330 GMT).

The driver remembers entering the station but was "unable to recall striking the end of the track," said Turpin.

The 50-year-old train engineer was finishing his overnight shift when the accident occurred. He told investigators he was not using his cell phone at the time.

He submitted to drug and alcohol testing, but results were not yet available.

Train accidents are not rare in the United States, where the rail system suffers from chronic underfunding. Investigators often take time to discern the precise causes.

Authorities emphasized how happy they were that the crash left no one dead or seriously hurt, given there were hundreds of passengers on board.

In September, a commuter train derailed during rush hour as it entered the station in Hoboken, New Jersey. One person died and 114 were injured.
Canada not afraid of Trump-induced US investor flight

Canada's international trade minister said Thursday that pressure by US President-elect Donald Trump would not keep American firms from investing in Canada or prompt them to withdraw any investments already made.

"The fact that Canada is now one of the countries in the world that supports an open society and open trade is a good reason to invest in Canada," Chrystia Freeland told a press conference.

"US businesses that have already made investments in Canada understand the intelligence and the quality of Canadian workers," she added.

US and Canadian flags hang from a lamp post on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 9, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP)

The minister's comments follow Trump's threats to slap General Motors, Ford and Toyota with import taxes for building automobiles in Mexico intended for the US market.

Ford announced Tuesday it would cancel plans for a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico after coming under attack by Trump.

Canada, the United States and Mexico have been linked since 1994 by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has said he would like to renegotiate.

But Freeland stressed the unique nature of the two countries' economic interdependence.

"I think that this is a very special relationship that we have, a very different relationship, compared to the relationship the US has with other countries," she said.

"I think that it is the most productive trade relationship that we have and the most balanced one we have in the world," Freeland said, noting that Canada is the top export market for 37 US states, with nine million US jobs dependent on such trade.
Japan recalls S. Korea envoy over 'comfort woman' statue

Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea on Friday to protest the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate in the city of Busan last month.

In a move likely to reignite a feud over the so-called "comfort women", Japan's chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga also announced that Japan is ordering home its consul-general in Busan and suspending discussions over a Japan-South Korea currency swap.

"Japan and South Korea are neighbours," Suga said. "It's a very important country. It's extremely regrettable we had to take this action."

The statue of a 'comfort woman' (C) in Busan, South Korea, that has provoked the recall of Japan's ambassador to its neighbour

"The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned to quickly remove the statue of the girl," he added.

Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The plight of the women is a hugely emotional issue that has marred relations between the two Asian neighbours for decades and which, for many South Koreans, symbolises the abuses of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

The statue is a copy of one that sits across the road from the Japanese embassy in Seoul and that for more than five years has been a rallying point for supporters of the few surviving South Korean former sex slaves.

The statue in Busan was initially removed by local authorities after South Korean activists placed it in front of the Japanese consulate in the southern port city last week.

But they did not stop it being put back after Japan's hawkish defence minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo the next day.

Suga, however, made no mention of Inada's visit to the shrine, which honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead -- but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes. Her visit drew harsh criticism in South Korea as well as China.

-- 'Very regrettable' --

South Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-Hyuck lamented Japan's actions as "very regrettable", but struck a conciliatory note.

"Even if there exist difficult issues, the government emphasises again that it will continue developing South Korea-Japan relations based on trust between the two governments," he said.

However, later in the day South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se summoned the Japanese ambassador.

Jiji Press said they spoke for about an hour and that Yun expressed "regret" over Japan's actions.

Activists had first placed the new statue outside the consulate to mark their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the "comfort women" issue.

Under that accord, which both countries described as "final and irreversible," Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women.

But critics said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for wartime abuses.

The statue in Seoul -- a bronze of a young woman seated with a small bird on her shoulder -- has proved a popular symbol.

Japan says it should have been removed after the comfort-women accord was signed, but Seoul argued it had only agreed to look into the possibility of moving it.
UN rights envoy to probe Myanmar Rohingya violence

The United Nations on Friday said its human rights envoy for Myanmar will probe escalating violence in the country, including a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, when she visits next week.

UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee's 12-day trip, starting on Monday, will also take her to Kachin state, where thousands have been displaced by fighting between ethnic rebels and the army.

Intensifying clashes between Myanmar's military and ethnic minorities has undercut Aung San Suu Kyi's vow to bring peace to the country following her party's elevation to government last March.

Areas of Rakhine in Myanmar have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands of the Rohingya minority fleeing to Bangladesh STR (AFP/File)

The Nobel prize winner has also faced strong international criticism for failing to rein-in a months-long military crackdown on Rohingya villagers in northern Rakhine State.

Areas of Rakhine have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands of the Rohingya minority fleeing to Bangladesh.

Lee has slammed the lockdown as "unacceptable" and called for an investigation into claims troops have raped, murdered and tortured civilians from the Muslim minority.

The army vehemently denies the allegations.

"The last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there," Lee said in a statement on Friday.

"Apart from what is happening in Rakhine, the escalation in fighting in Kachin and Shan (state)... is causing some disquiet regarding the direction that the new government is taking in its first year."

Lee's criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, who are loathed by many within Buddhist majority Myanmar, has seen her face threats and demonstrations on previous visits.

Hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu caused outrage when he called her a "whore in our country" for criticising controversial legislation considered discriminatory to women and minorities.

Myanmar's government says its troops in Rakhine are carrying out legitimate clearance operations to hunt down "terrorists" who attacked police border posts in October.

On Wednesday an official commission probing the violence dismissed claims security forces are trying to force the Rohingya out of the country and said there was no evidence troops had carried out rape.

But days earlier the government detained eight members of the police after a video emerged showing officers beating and kicking unarmed Rohingya villagers.
Award-winning Indian actor Om Puri dies of heart attack

Om Puri, the acclaimed Indian actor who appeared in hit films including "Gandhi", "City of Joy" and "East is East", died Friday after suffering a heart attack.

The award-winning character actor, whose career ranged from arthouse Indian films to Hollywood epics, died of a heart attack at his home in Mumbai, a family member told the Press Trust of India. He was 66.

"It's really a great loss," the veteran scriptwriter Javed Akhtar told PTI.

Acclaimed Bollywood actor Om Puri, who aslo played a role in Richard Attenborough's epic Ghandi, has died in Mumbai aged 66 JUSTIN TALLIS (AFP/File)

"Wonderful person, great actor and with such impressive body of work, right from Satyajit Ray to any commercial Hindi film to films in US and Pakistan," he said, referring to the renowned Indian director.

Bollywood stars tweeted their shock at the news, which broke early Friday, with Amitabh Bachchan saying he was "shocked" to learn of Puri's death.

"A dear friend, a lovable colleague and an exceptional talent ... in grief!" he said.

Actress Priyanka Chopra said it was "The end of an era", adding, "the legacy lives on".

Puri made his debut in the mid-1970s before going on to star in a number of major Hindi hits as well as, controversially, in some Pakistani movies.

He was known in India for his role in edgy arthouse movies such as Aakrosh (1980) and Ardh Satya (1982), for which he won the National Indian Film Award for Best Actor.

But he also acted in major Hollywood hits, featuring alongside the likes of Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks and Patrick Swayze.

"Though I did try to resist commercial films for quite some time, I succumbed to it finally as money was equally important as art," Puri wrote in his autobiography.

"But as an artist I never compromised on what I had to do on-screen, even if the film was not up to the standard."

- Controversy -

Puri appeared in a number of British films, notably Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic on the life of India's independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi.

He starred in the 1999 Bafta-winning comedy "East is East" as a fish-and-chip shop owner who struggles to get his British family to follow the strict Pakistani customs he is used to.

He was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, for his services to the film industry and in 2004 received an honorary OBE for contributions to British cinema.

The award-winning actor made an impact on the other side of the Atlantic too, appearing alongside Nicholson in "Wolf" (1994) and Val Kilmer in "The Ghost and the Darkness" (1996).

In 2007 he played Pakistani general Muhammad Zia ul Haq in Hollywood film "Charlie Wilson's War", which starred Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Puri -- who was born in Ambala, now in Haryana state -- to a Punjabi family in 1950, also starred opposite legendary British actress Helen Mirren in the 2014 film "The Hundred Foot Journey".

He was sometimes in the headlines for the wrong reasons, enduring an acrimonious and well-publicised split from his wife Nandita Puri.

In October he was accused of insulting Indian soldiers shortly after 19 were killed in an attack on an army base in Kashmir when he asked, "who had asked the soldiers to join the army?".
Syria aircraft strike rebels near water source

Syrian government aircraft bombed a rebel-held district that is the capital's main water source on Friday as the rival sides traded blame over a cut to mains supplies, a monitor said.

Damascus has been without water from Wadi Barada, a once popular hill station northwest of the capital, since December 22, leaving some 5.5 million people thirsty.

The United Nations warned on Thursday that sabotaging water supplies is a war crime.

Syrians walk past a poster of President Bashar al-Assad as they go to fill plastic containers with water at a public fountain in the capital Damascus LOUAI BESHARA (AFP)

Government aircraft dropped at least 10 barrel bombs, crude munitions notorious for the indiscriminate casualties they cause, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A child was killed as clashes resumed in the area between pro-government forces and rebel fighters led by the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front.

East of the capital, clashes broke out in the Marj district despite a ceasefire in force since December 30. Three people were killed, one of them a child.

In Damascus, there were a number of casualties from rebel rocket fire.

Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as Al-Nusra Front, was Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and remains blacklisted as a terror group by the United Nations and Western governments.
Konjuh weathers Goerges storm to reach Auckland Classic final

Croatian teenager Ana Konjuh outlasted Julia Goerges in a two-hour battle Friday to set up a final against diminutive American Lauren Davis in the WTA Auckland Classic.

Konjuh, 19, a former Australian and US Open junior champion, surprised herself with the way she rallied to beat 28-year-old Goerges, last year's runner-up, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

"When I came here I wasn't playing that well, and my serve wasn't that good tonight," Konjuh said, after downing Goerges despite serving eight double faults and having only a 49 percent first-serve success rate.

Croatia's Ana Konjuh in action against Germany's Julia Goerges in the WTA Auckland Classic semi-finals on January 6, 2017 MICHAEL BRADLEY (AFP)

In the other semi-final, the 1.57 metre (5ft 2in) Davis was leading Jelena Ostapenko 4-6, 6-4, 4-1 when the Latvian, who was suffering from a viral illness, pulled out.

The seventh seed had started strongly, breaking Davis twice to go 5-1 up before taking the set 6-4.

But as she began to wilt she dropped the second set 4-6 and looked drained as play progressed in the third.

"She was playing good, but I had good chances in the second set to win the match, but then I didn't and unfortunately I couldn't finish the tournament," Ostapenko said.

"During the match my throat was very painful. My concentration wasn't good. I wanted to play, but just couldn't, because I'm sick."

Davis has advanced a step further than her previous best in Auckland, when she lost to fellow American Venus Williams in the 2015 semi-finals.

For Konjuh it is only the second time she has made a WTA final after winning in Nottingham last year as an 18-year-old.

Despite an erratic serve, the tenacious Konjuh had too much variation in her ground strokes for Goerges who was unable to repeat the consistency with her serve and forehand which she showed when beating Caroline Wozniacki in the quarter-finals.
Kenya doctors reject offer as strike hits second month

Kenyan doctors on Friday rejected the government's offer of a 40 percent pay rise in the latest bid to end a month-long strike that has crippled public hospitals across the country.

Thousands of doctors in the country downed tools on December 5 to demand a 300 percent pay rise that they say was agreed in a 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), and several rounds of negotiations have failed as the medics dig their heels in.

Nurses are also striking, although some returned to work in mid-December after reaching a separate deal with authorities.

Kenyan Defence Force (KDF) doctors tend to an injured man at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi on December 10, 2016, after being deployed during a five-day strike JOHN MUCHUCHA (AFP/File)

Union officials on Wednesday met with President Uhuru Kenyatta who offered to raise minimum salaries from 140,244 shillings (1270 euros, $1350) a month to 196,989 shillings.

"The union officials today presented that offer to the doctors for deliberations and they humbly rejected it," the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) wrote on its Twitter account.

The union said the offer failed to take into account other agreements mentioned in the CBA, from the need to better equip hospitals to funding research and addressing the security of doctors at work.

"The issue of discussion is not increase in salaries or allowances for that matter, it is implementation of the CBA," said cardiologist and union member Elijah Ogolla.

KMPDU secretary general Ouma Oluga said that while the strike was still on, doctors were open to further negotiations.

Another meeting between the government and the union officials was due to take place later Friday.

The strike has been devastating for sick Kenyans whose only other option is private healthcare, which is out of reach for most.

Poor salaries and working conditions have led to an exodus of Kenyan doctors to other African countries and abroad, that prompted the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) to warn of "catastrophe" in the health sector in 2014.

The strike has received wide support from the media and citizens on social networks.

Editorials have called for government to pay doctors a decent wage and end the damaging strike, while Kenyans on Twitter point to endless corruption scandals while the doctors struggle for wage increases.

The latest move to outrage the union was a decision by lawmakers just before Christmas to award themselves each 10 million shillings as an exit package ahead of 2017 elections.

"When the government loots it has no limits but when doctors ask for fair pay the president says he has limits," the union tweeted earlier this week alongside an image of the newspaper headline announcing the bonus.
For Mosul displaced, shelter is often just down the road

The first stop for the thousands of civilians forced to flee their homes in Mosul is often inside their own city, sometimes in the homes of complete strangers.

Mohammed fled the violence on the western side of the Iraqi city, which is traversed by the Tigris river, and found shelter in an abandoned house in Al-Intisar, a neighbourhood in the east.

"I know nothing about this house," said Mohammed, a 62-year-old man with black teeth. "The owners left for Baghdad, they were displaced too. The neighbourhood's residents told me I could stay so I did."

An Iraqi family wait with their belongings to return home on the western edge of Al-Intisar neighbourhood in southeastern Mosul, northern Iraq on January 5, 2017 Dimitar DILKOFF (AFP)

Mohammed explained that moving to one of the many displacement camps set up by the United Nations and other relief agencies around Mosul was not an option. "It's like prison, they don't let you out," he said.

The tour of his new, temporary home is quickly done: three rooms, a rug hanging from one of the walls and a full tea service.

"There's a generator but no water," said Mohammed, who moved in with one of his two wives, a son and his pregnant daughter-in-law.

The neighbourhood of Al-Intisar they now live in was retaken by Iraqi forces recently but is close to the front line, where the Islamic State group is resisting with suicide bombings and mortar and sniper fire.

The area is still a war zone -- the crackling of gunfire, the thrum of helicopters overhead and the rumble of tanks moving down the streets can be heard throughout much of the day.

Nearly three months into the offensive launched by Baghdad and its allies to retake the city, IS has lost around two thirds of the eastern side but fully controls the west bank.

Hundreds of thousands of Mosul residents still live in the war-torn city, in which the US-led coalition says there are 200,000 buildings, complicating the government's advance.

- Solidarity -

After living under the tyrannical rule of the "caliphate" proclaimed by IS following its capture of Mosul in June 2014, residents are now directly exposed to the battle aimed at ousting the jihadists from their city.

According to the UN, more than 125,000 people have fled their homes since the start of the offensive on October 17.

Only 14,000 of them have been able to return to their homes in areas recaptured from IS, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

Those fleeing from inside the city often attempt to remain as close as possible to their homes, picking their way through battle lines as they push their belongings on carts and look for a temporary home.

Abu Ahmed, his wife and their three children are among those Mosul residents displaced within their own city, whose exact number the chaos of urban warfare makes impossible to determine.

They benefited from the hospitality of friends who welcomed them in Al-Intisar but Abu Ahmed said he was worried about his son, who is three and a half years old.

"There are bombings, air strikes. Now he already knows the language of war. A child like him should not have to know this," he said.

Commanders have warned that the battle for Mosul could last many more months and the future of Iraq's second city looks bleak but stories of solidarity between its residents offer some hope.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi this week praised what he called "the Iraqi spirit" displayed in Mosul by families opening their doors to displaced civilians, sometimes dozens of them at a time.

In Al-Intisar, a mother of seven girls welcomed five families in her home for several days.

"Praise to God, I opened my house and welcomed them. I didn't know them," said the lady, who gave her name as Umm Dunia.

She recalled how her family and the 20-odd extra guests she hosted hunkered down in the house while Iraqi forces battled jihadist fighters in the street.

"We would keep the water we'd used to wash ourselves in a basin. That way it wouldn't run into the street and give away the presence of people inside the house," she said.

People observe an Iraqi army helicopter as they target an Islamic State (IS) group position on the western edge of Al-Intisar neighbourhood in southeastern Mosul on January 5, 2017 Dimitar DILKOFF (AFP)
Netanyahu welcomes US House vote on settlements

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday welcomed the US House of Representatives' condemnation of a UN reprimand of Israel's settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

"After the outrageous anti-Israel resolution at the UN, the US House of Representatives voted (Thursday) resoundingly to support Israel and reject this one-sided resolution," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Last month's landmark resolution in the United Nations Security Council demanded that "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power since 2009 Gali Tibbon (AFP/File)

The Council also stated that the settlements have "no legal validity" and are "dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution."

In a rare and telling gesture the United States did not use its veto and instead abstained, enabling the adoption of the first UN resolution since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy.

Thursday's congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

Ahead of Trump's January 20 inauguration, the Obama administration's UN abstention was a fresh bone of contention after years of friction between the outgoing president and Netanyahu, who hinted that Obama was out of step with his country.
India GDP growth to slow to 7.1 percent amid cash crunch

India's government said Friday that the economy would grow by 7.1 percent in the financial year ending in March, slower than the growth registered during the previous year, amid warnings of a cash crunch hitting business activity.

"The growth in GDP during 2016-17 is estimated at 7.1 percent as compared to the growth rate of 7.6 percent in 2015-16," the statistics ministry said in a statement.

The announcement came as analysts warned of an economic slowdown in the country following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's shock decision to ban 86 percent of India's currency in November.

India's government says the economy will grow by 7.1 percent in the financial year ending in March Sam PANTHAKY (AFP/File)

But India's chief statistician TCA Anant said the ministry's GDP estimate did not consider economic data from November or December.

"It was felt in view of the policy of denotification of notes there is a high degree of volatility in these figures and (a) conscious decision was taken not to make projection using the November figure," Anant told journalists.

A dip in manufacturing and construction activity contributed to the slowdown, according to the statement released by the ministry.

Prime Minister Modi's move to ban 500 ($7.50) and 1,000 rupee notes sparked turmoil in the cash-reliant nation, generating long queues outside banks and ATMs, as people struggled to swap their old currency for newer bills before the deadline expired on December 30.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh -- whose economic reforms are credited with rescuing India from the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s  was critical of the decision and said it could shave two percentage points from the country's GDP.
Fearful Egyptian Copts mark Christmas after church bombing

It is Christmas Eve for Egypt's Copts but Marie Labib is not in a festive mood, with dark thoughts haunting her weeks after a church bombing killed 28 members of her community.

Copts, who make up about one tenth of Egypt's population of more than 92 million and who celebrate Christmas on Saturday, have long complained of discrimination.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the December 11 suicide bombing that killed 28 worshippers during Sunday mass in Cairo, the latest bout of bloodshed in the Muslim-majority country.

Copts, who make up about one tenth of Egypt's population of more than 92 million, celebrate Christmas on January 7 MOHAMED EL-SHAHED (AFP)

"No one feels festive. I haven't baked a cake," said Labib, a 47-year-old mother of two who lives in the upscale Cairo district of Maadi.

In her living room a huge picture of Jesus Christ hangs on a wall and a small Christmas tree strung with lights sits on a table.

"Fear grips me each time one of my three children goes out," she said, adding that she has urged her daughters to hide the cross worn around their necks "to avoid any possible attack".

The church bombing as well as the murder on Monday in second city Alexandria of a Coptic wine merchant, whose throat was slit by a man for apparently religious motives, has compounded fears among Copts.

- 'Normal to be worried' -

"I don't feel secure. It is as if someone could kill me thinking that this act would bring them closer to God," said Marina Najji, one of Labib's daughters.

The 25-year-old bank employee said she would not heed her mother's advice to conceal her cross under her clothes when she is out "because it is a part of me".

But she quickly added: "This is not a happy holiday and I hope it will pass without any problem".

The December 11 attack was the second church bombing targeting Egypt's Copts since 2011, when 21 worshippers attending New Year's Eve mass in Alexandria were killed.

The wine merchant's murder has only deepened the sense of nervousness.

"It is very normal to be worried after two attacks taking place in less than a month," said 37-year-old accountant George.

George, who lives in the Pyramids district of Cairo, said he went to Alexandria last week to attend New Year's mass and was shocked by the tight security.

- 'You can't feel safe' -

Metal detectors have been installed at the gates of the churches in Cairo and Alexandria for Coptic Christmas and barriers erected around them to prevent anyone from parking cars in the area.

George said he was body-searched before he went inside the Alexandria church by security agents checking for explosives.

"It's regrettable that even in church you can't feel safe," he said.

Early Friday morning worshippers thronged the Virgin Mary church in north Cairo, entering one by one through a metal detector.

"These are merely precautionary measures. They are not meant to frighten worshippers," said a church official who declined to be named.

Adel Ishaq, a 30-year-old father of a two-week-old girl, said he knew three people killed in the December 11 church bombing.

Since that bloody attack he has been struggling with his fear of going to church and his mother has implored him to stay away from the house of worship.

"Each time I get ready to go to church fear overwhelms me because I think that I could be the next victim, but I manage to overcome it," he said.

"Ever since the bombing, Copts feel they have to overcome a challenge," said Saeed Saadallah, a man in his 70s.

There have been dozens of anti-Christian attacks in Egypt in recent years.

In August 2013 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi torched a dozen churches and Coptic properties after a police crackdown that left hundreds of Islamist demonstrators dead.

Egyptian security forces inspect the scene of the bombing at Saint Peter and Saint Paul Coptic Orthodox Church on December 11, 2016, in Cairo's Abbasiya neighbourhood KHALED DESOUKI (AFP/File)

Metal detectors have been installed at the gates of the churches in Cairo and Alexandria for Coptic Christmas and barriers erected around them to prevent anyone from parking cars in the area MOHAMED EL-SHAHED (AFP)
Netanyahu lawyer says graft allegations lack substance

A lawyer for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday there was "nothing of substance" in allegations he illegally accepted gifts from rich supporters.

Police on Thursday questioned Netanyahu for five hours at his Jerusalem residence as part of a corruption probe, the second such interrogation in four days.

"It is clear that there is nothing of substance in the suspicions," attorney Jacob Weinroth said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on January 1, 2017 GALI TIBBON (AFP/File)

Weinroth did not directly refer to the police suspicions against his client, but referred throughout to media allegations.

Among them is a report by privately owned Channel Two television saying police suspect that over the course of seven or eight years Israeli businessman, Hollywood producer and Netanyahu friend Arnon Milchan sent him boxes of expensive cigars with a total value of tens of thousands of dollars.

It said police also suspect that Milchan gave Netanyahu's wife Sara pink champagne priced at about $100 a bottle.

According to Haaretz Newspaper, Milchan owns a 9.8-percent stake in Israeli Channel 10 television, a competitor to Channel Two.

Forbes magazine lists his net worth as $5.8 billion.

Milchan has produced many films, including the Julia Roberts blockbuster "Pretty Woman".

Weinroth's statement said, without confirming the report, that there was no law against having generous friends.

"Any reasonable person understands that if a close friend brings his friend cigars as a gift there is not and cannot be any shred of prohibition, any trace of criminal offence."

Haaretz said that Milchan is "also a partner and acquaintance of Australian billionaire James Packer, whose name has also been linked to the case involving the perks."

It said that Milchan had given testimony to the Israeli police.

The probe has raised questions over whether Netanyahu, 67 and in his fourth term as prime minister, would eventually be forced to resign.
On January 24, we will kick off the 2017 Derby Dozen on Bloodhorse.com. Ever since my Daily Racing Form colleague Steve Feldman and I inaugurated the first Derby Dozen in 1993, analysis of the early Kentucky Derby contenders has become a rite of winter. As I watch the first snow of the winter fall on Hamilton Square on a cold gray morning I cant help but think of Amanda McBrooms brilliant closing lyrics to her hit song The Rose: Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snow, lies the seed that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes the rose.

What better way to bring color to winter than to envision roses in bloom on the first Saturday in May, scented green leaves adorning glasses of mint juleps, and the famed Twin Spires piercing a bright cerulean sky. Each year those images beckon all those who dare to dream.



At this time of the year, hopes run high, as trainers and owners across the country look at their promising 3-year-olds and have visions of grandeur and Kentucky Derby immortality. This is that special time when the different paths on the Derby trail are being meticulously mapped out and everyones dreams are still alive. -- but with the knowledge that one wrong decision, one bad ride in a crucial race, one bad step, or one lingering illness can crush those dreams in a heartbeat.

With every move and every scheduled prep race so critical, there are many ways of approaching the arduous and often perilous road to Louisville. Be aware that many trainers are going to lose their way and prove unable to complete the journey, due to various types of misfortune or poor decisions or the pressure that continues to build over a four-month period. Only one will make every right decision, luck out with injuries, have their horse peaking on the first Saturday in May, and get to drape the blanket of roses over their horses neck.

Some years we have a single standout horse, on whom all eyes will be focused from the very beginning. Other years we have false early favorites who fail to move forward and give way to the emergence of late-developing stars. On some occasions we will see a wide-open Derby trail from start to finish, with no one stepping forward to assume the role of clear Derby favorite. And then you have a year like this, with four solid contenders with excellent Derby pedigrees who are difficult to rank. Trying to separate major stakes winners Classic Empire, McCraken, Mo Town, and Mastery is not an easy task. The big shame was losing the talented and classy Not This Time to injury. He looked to be any kind and would have been ranked first or second on most Derby lists.

But whether you have one of the Derby favorites, a solid second or third tier horse with stakes credentials, or a late-developing, promising horse, you must avoid the pitfalls that have claimed so many horses over the years.

Sometimes, the hardest pitfall to avoid is having your horse peaking too early. How often have we seen horses, whether proven stakes competitors or brilliant up-and-comers, win by the length of the stretch in very fast time and earn extremely fast speed figures? Although that creates a great deal of buzz and a likely spot in the next Derby Future Wager field, it usually is nothing more than a quick high that eventually leads to an equally quick exit from the Derby trail.

The truth is, that is the last thing you want to see in January and February. The road to the Derby is all about progression and you do not want to leave your horse with nowhere to go but down. We have seen it on a number of occasions with talented Todd Pletcher-trained horses, many of whom break their maidens or win allowance races early in the year like potential superhorses and get the public and the experts all excited. But trying to keep an inexperienced horse with that much brilliance in top form and prevent him from crashing is very difficult to do, as Pletcher can attest. The one time Pletcher won the Derby it was with an experienced horse with major 2-year-old stakes credentials who actually lost both his Derby preps at 3, but used each one to move forward and peak on Derby Day. Following the Derby, that horse, Super Saver, ran three more times and was out of the money in all of them. But Pletcher had him peaking on the one day that mattered.

On many occasions, Pletcher has attempted to get to the Derby with horses who had as few as three or four career starts, several of them with no 2-year-old races under them, which means they had to face the dreaded Apollo curse. But when they are so brilliant early on and demonstrate such extraordinary talent it makes it difficult to tell your owner his or her horse isnt ready for the Derby. As a result, many of those horses were never heard from again or disappeared for long periods of time.

Bob Baffert on the other hand is the modern-day Ben Jones, as demonstrated by his remarkable Derby record. Bafferts training philosophy is reminiscent of legendary trainers such as Max Hirsch, Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, John Gaver, and Ben and Jimmy Jones. Unlike most of the conservative trainers of today, Baffert, like those mentioned above, works his horses consistently fast and will work them six and seven furlongs. Those that cant handle it will fall by the wayside, but those that can come into the Derby sharp, fit, toughened, and in peak form. Bafferts owners are OK with that method, because the vast majority of them want to win the Kentucky Derby more than anything else and no one knows how to go about it better than Baffert, who like another multiple Derby winner, D. Wayne Lukas, came from the speed-oriented world of Quarter Horse racing.

Because Bafferts horses are in such great condition and are able to handle the rigors of the Derby so well, they always go on to run just as big in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. All four of Bafferts Derby winners came back in two weeks to win the Preakness. One captured the Triple Crown and two others were narrowly beaten in the Belmont Stakes.

So, even though Bafferts horses work fast and often longer than most horses, it gets the spit and vinegar out of them in the morning and keeps them from running too fast in the afternoon and peaking too soon. You just dont see Bafferts horses leaving their race on the track. It is not until April and the final preps that he really starts cranking them up for their big efforts. They then come to Churchill Downs razor sharp, but with a lot left in the tank, and by Derby Day they are not only ready to peak but actually improve their form through the Triple Crown.

Baffert, as usual, has a number of Derby prospects, headed by the aforementioned grade I winner Mastery, of whom he is extremely high. He did recently lose two talented horses in Klimt and Iliad after he parted company with one of his big owners, Kaleem Shah. But keep an eye on maiden winners Beach Bum, Dabster, Irish Freedom, and American Anthem, who runs Saturday in the Sham Stakes.

All Pletcher departed 2016 with on the stakes front is the ultra-quick Champagne runnerup Syndergaard, but has since unveiled brilliant maiden winners Alum, Battalion Runner, and Malagacy. However, he finds himself in the same position mentioned earlier  playing catchup with late-developing horses. All look as if they have a bright future, and well see if Pletcher can get them to keep moving forward.

The best of the best right now looks to be the Breeders Cup Juvenile winner and likely 2-year-old champion Classic Empire, who has recovered from his brief mental lapse in the Hopeful Stakes to develop into a true professional classic type horse. He is in excellent hands, being in the barn of Mark Casse and his son Norman, who no doubt will be a top trainer himself one day. The Casse barn has improved every year and has now become a dominant force in racing. So we know Classic Empire, with his sensational pedigree on both sides, will be brought up to the Derby the right way.

McCraken has already won a pair of major stakes at Churchill Downs, and did it the right way, with a powerful turn of foot. Another impeccably bred horse, McCraken is trained by the popular Ian Wilkes. Although he may seem to be inexperienced when it comes to the Derby, be aware that it was Wilkes who teamed up with his mentor Carl Nafzger to win the 2007 Run for the Roses with Street Sense. With Nafzger, who won the Derby with Unbridled in 1990, semi-retired in 2007, Wilkes played a major role in getting Street Sense to win the Derby. It was truly a team effort.

As for Mo Town, a beautiful-moving horse I have been extremely high on since he broke his maiden so impressively and carried it over to the Remsen Stakes, he is trained by Tony Dutrow, who is not your typical Derby-type trainer, as he tends to give his horses time and doesnt rush them. But Dutrow is a trainers trainer who always does right by his horses. And it looks as if Mo Town, who has already started working at Payson Park, is going to take him to Louisville. If he gets there, you can bet he will be in top form and ready for a peak effort. Dutrow looked to have a Derby contender in 2010 in Winslow Homer, winner of the Holy Bull Stakes, but the colt fell off the Derby trail with a stress fracture.

So, we have four solid leading Derby contenders at this point, all with classic pedigrees, all with the right running style, and all in excellent, experienced hands. Thats pretty much all you can ask for in January.

With a pair of historic grade I Derby preps, the Wood Memorial and Blue Grass Stakes, downgraded to grade II this year, it is hoped the aforementioned trainers pointing for these races long range as their final Derby prep keep the schedule they had mapped out rather than chase grade I races, of which there are now only three  in California, Florida, and Arkansas. The Wood and Blue Grass are still prestigious races that suffered when the dates of the Florida Derby and Louisiana Derby were moved forward. That meant that the horses in those races went straight to the Kentucky Derby rather than have their final prep in the Wood or Blue Grass.

So, it is time to embark on another Derby trail. History has shown us you never know what to expect on this long twisting road with surprises and obstacles at every turn.

As Rod Serling would say every week on The Twilight Zone, Youre traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Thats the signpost up aheadyour next stop.Churchill Downs!

See, always expect the unexpected on the Derby trail.
Trump says hacking had 'no effect' on his election

Donald Trump asserted that hacking did not sway the US election, after a briefing on an intelligence report that blamed Russia's Vladimir Putin for a cyber campaign to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

While the president-elect held fast to his rejection of the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, he accepted the possibility that Moscow was involved in hacking US targets including the Democratic National Committee.

After meeting four top intelligence chiefs, Trump acknowledged that cyber attacks by Russia, China and other countries threaten US institutions, political parties and businesses.

President-elect Donald Trump says controversy over allegations that Russian hackers tried to interfere in the US election amounts to a "political witch hunt" SAUL LOEB (AFP/File)

But he offered no direct acceptance of the intelligence chiefs' conclusion that Moscow staged an unprecedented attempt to influence the 2016 White House race by hacking and leaking documents that, they said in a new report, also aimed to boost Trump's campaign.

"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election," Trump said in a statement.

Trump met the heads of the Directorate of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency in New York on their report into Moscow's alleged interference.

- Putin 'preferred Trump' -

A declassified version of the report -- released to the public by the Director of National Intelligence -- said Putin personally ordered a campaign of hacking and media manipulation to undermine the Democrat's candidate, Clinton, who had widely been expected to win the November 8 election.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," they said.

The report offered little new evidence on how US intelligence agencies reached their conclusion, and Russia has denied any election meddling.

President Barack Obama had already taken retaliatory action on December 29, expelling 35 Russians he said were intelligence operatives, and placing sanctions on a number of other Russian officials and entities.

"I think that what is true, is that the Russians intended to meddle and they meddled," Obama said in excerpts of an interview set to air Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"One of the things I am concerned about is the degree to which we've seen a lot of commentary lately where there are Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seem to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans are Democrats. That cannot be," Obama said.

Trump's meeting with intelligence chiefs, which the Republican called "constructive," may have smoothed over ruffled feelings between the intelligence bureaucracy and the incoming president.

Just before the meeting, Trump branded the focus on Russia a "political witch hunt" in an interview with the New York Times.

But Trump subsequently said that as soon as he takes office on January 20 he will give a team 90 days to come up with a plan to halt cyber attacks.

"Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyber attacks," he said.

Trump later blamed Democratic Party for lax cyber security.

"Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican National Committee had strong defense!" he wrote on Twitter.

- Election legitimacy -

The report was likely to increase sensitivity over the outcome of an election in which Clinton won the popular vote but lost to Trump in the electoral college, which decides the winner.

"We must also be clear that there is no evidence that there was any interference in the voting or balloting process," said House Speaker Paul Ryan in a statement.

"We cannot allow partisans to exploit this report in an attempt to delegitimize the president-elect's victory. Donald Trump won this election fair and square because he heard the voices of Americans who felt forgotten."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has strongly criticized Trump's dismissal of the intelligence on Russia, agreed.

"Russian cyber attacks did not affect the vote tally and were not responsible for the outcome," Graham said in a statement.

However, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff rejected that conclusion.

"The president-elect's statement that the Russian hacking had 'absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election' is not supported by the briefing, report or common sense," he said.

How Russian hackers allegedly attacked the US Democratic Party

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (L) and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers (C) testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee JIM WATSON (AFP)
Abbas urges Trump to drop embassy move pledge

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday warned US President-elect Donald Trump that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would be crossing a "red line" and could jeopardise peace prospects.

"Any statement or position that disrupts or changes the status of Jerusalem is a red line which we will not accept," he said in a speech, a transcript of which was published by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Trump has said he plans to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a controversial move bitterly opposed by Palestinians as a unilateral action while the status of the city remains contested.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, seen January 6, 2017, said, "Any statement or position that disrupts or changes the status of Jerusalem is a red line which we will not accept" HAZEM BADER (AFP)

Abbas said that if the embassy was moved "the peace process in the Middle East, and even peace in the world, will be in severe trouble."

He called on Trump to visit the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinians regard Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel proclaims the entire city as its undivided capital.

The United States and most UN member states do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city's status is one of the thorniest issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump has said he will move the embassy to Jerusalem and has nominated David Friedman, a bankruptcy attorney, as his ambassador.

Friedman supports settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, characterised by successive US administrations as an "obstacle to peace."

In a Trump transition team statement last month, Friedman said he wanted to work for peace and looked forward to "doing this from the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem".

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said last month told a radio channel moving the embassy was a "very big priority" for Trump.

Israel captured Arab east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and subsequently annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
Zimbabwe bans street food over typhoid, cholera fears

Zimbabwe has banned street food vendors in the capital Harare after a typhoid outbreak blamed on poor sanitation and erratic water supplies.

Portia Managazira, director for epidemiology and disease control in the health ministry, told AFP there had been more than 2,300 suspected cases of typhoid nationally in the last year, and 12 deaths.

"The cases were mostly from Harare... We are still in emergency response mode and we are doing everything possible to get the situation under control," she said.

Harare, a general view of which is seen in 2008, has been reeling under an acute shortage of piped water and rubbish is not being collected for days ALEXANDER JOE (AFP/File)

Harare has been reeling under an acute shortage of piped water and to add to the woes of residents, already grappling with an economic meltdown and long power cuts, rubbish is not being collected for days.

"Our biggest fear is cholera," Health Minister David Parirenyatwa told journalists. "We can manage, more or less, typhoid. But cholera will just be a nightmare.

"We have agreed to prohibit and stop the vending of food -- processed or unprocessed, fruit and vegetables - at undesignated places."

In 2008, cholera claimed at least 4,000 lives in Zimbabwe. It happened at the height of the country's economic crisis when most of the public hospitals were closed due to a shortage of medicines and the flight of health workers abroad.

The water crisis has been worsened by a severe drought plaguing the southern Africa region, fuelling a flourishing business where illegal sellers supply water in buckets and large tanks.
Michelle Obama issues emotive parting message

Michelle Obama urged young Americans not to fear the future but fight for it, delivering an emotive farewell speech Friday in which she said being first lady was the greatest honor of her life.

After eight years in the White House, the 52-year-old will be leaving with her husband Barack Obama on January 20, when Donald Trump is sworn in as president.

"For all the young people in this room and those who are watching, know that this country belongs to you, to all of you, from every background and walk of life," she said in the East Room of the White House.

Michelle Obama gives her final remarks as US First Lady at the 2017 School Counselor of the Year event at the White House in Washington DC, January 5, 2017 CHRIS KLEPONIS (AFP)

"Being the first lady has been the greatest honor of my life," she said at an event for School Counselor of the Year. "I hope I have made you proud."

As first lady, Obama focused her public role on encouraging healthy lifestyles, education for girls and in supporting military families.

But it was as a role model for minorities that the first African-American first lady wielded the most influence -- most spectacularly by denouncing Donald Trump's attacks on immigrants and Muslims during the White House race.

"If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition," she told the audience.

"With a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible, including becoming president. That's what the American dream is all about," she said.

"Know that religious diversity is a great American tradition too," Obama said. "Our glorious diversity is what makes us who we are."

- 'Don't be afraid' -

During last year's campaign Obama was a vociferous critic of Trump.

She made no direct reference to the president-elect Friday but the mogul's victory framed her remarks.

"You cannot take your freedom for granted," Obama said. "You have to do your part to protect and preserve those freedoms."

"So don't be afraid -- you hear me young people? Don't be afraid, be focused, be determined, be empowered... lead by example, with hope, never fear."

In a speech delivered in New Hampshire in October, a few weeks before the election, the first lady had denounced, her voice trembling with emotion, what she called Trump's "frightening" attitude towards women.

"It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted," Obama said, in a takedown of the now president-elect that sent shockwaves around the country and beyond.

"This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable," she charged.

In addition to her work combatting obesity and assisting veterans' families, over the last two years Obama has spoken more pointedly on questions of race and inequality in American society.

A recent Pew Research poll found that 72 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of the first lady.

But despite her political superstar status and a reputation for style, wit and tact, Obama has repeatedly said she has no electoral ambitions herself.

"Michelle will never run for office," Barack Obama reiterated in an interview several weeks ago. "She is as talented a person as I know. You can see the incredible resonance she has with the American people.
Turkey to naturalise Syrian, Iraqi migrants: Erdogan

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday announced that some of the millions of Syrian and Iraqis who have fled to Turkey would be given Turkish nationality.

"Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks" have been carried out, Erdogan said in a speech broadcast on television.

"There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Let's make use" of that talent, he argued.

A Syrian child walks at a refugee camp in the Kilis district of Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, on October 23, 2016 OZAN KOSE (AFP/File)

"Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, let's give them the chance to work as citizens, like the children of this nation," he said.

Erdogan said the interior ministry "is ready to implement the measure at any time." But he gave no further details, notably about how many would gain Turkish nationality.

According to Turkish government figures, the country is hosting more than three million Syrians and Iraqis who have fled war.

Erdogan outlined a naturalisation plan last summer but the idea met with angry protests and xenophobic comments on social media.
The Latest: Official: Train's speed was erratic before crash

NEW YORK (AP)  The Latest on the investigation into a commuter train that crashed at a New York City station, injuring 100 people (all times local):

7 p.m.

A Long Island Rail Road train erratically sped up and slowed down in the last three minutes before it crashed at the end of a platform this week, injuring 100 people. That's according to a U.S. official briefed on the investigation who wasn't authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation and requested anonymity.

ADDS THAT THE TRAIN HIT A BUMPING BLOCK - Two injured passengers sit outside the Atlantic Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York after a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The official says the train approached Atlantic Terminal in New York at 33 mph and then dropped to 15 mph, in accordance with the speed limit for the area. The official says in the last three minutes before the Brooklyn crash the train accelerated and decelerated between 2 mph and 10 mph.

The train hit a bumper at 10 mph, double the 5 mph speed limit.

___

By Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo.

___

6:30 p.m.

A federal investigator says a Long Island Rail Road train was traveling more than double the speed limit when it crashed this week at the end of a platform as it pulled into a major transportation hub, injuring 100 people.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said Thursday the speed limit in the New York City terminal is 5 mph and the train was going more than 10 mph.

Turpin says the train's engineer told investigators he remembers entering the station but has no memory of the collision. He says the engineer told investigators he was not on his cellphone at the time. The engineer has been working at the LIRR for 16 years.

The rush hour train crashed as it entered Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, hurling passengers onto the floor and slamming them into each other.

___

12:30 a.m.

Federal investigators say it could be days before they determine why a Long Island Rail Road train crashed at the end of a platform as it pulled into a major transportation hub, injuring 100 people.

The rush hour train crashed as it entered Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn Wednesday morning, hurling passengers onto the floor and slamming them into each other.

The front of the slow-moving train hit a bumping block, left the tracks and smashed into a small structure, apparently a work area. Authorities say a rail pierced the floor of a train car. About 100 people were treated for minor injuries.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jim Southworth says it will take three to seven days to investigate the accident scene before they determine what caused the crash.

An injured passenger is taken from Atlantic Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York after a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

ADDS THAT THE TRAIN HIT A BUMPING BLOCK - An injured passenger is taken on a gurney by firefighters from Atlantic Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York after a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

ADDS THAT THE TRAIN HIT A BUMPING BLOCK - An injured passenger is taken on a gurney by firefighters from the Atlantic Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York after a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

ADDS THAT THE TRAIN HIT A BUMPING BLOCK - An injured passenger is taken from the Atlantic Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York after a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Emergency personnel work at the scene at Atlantic Terminal after New York City authorities said a Long Island Rail Road train hit a bumping block at the station in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (Aaron D. Neufeld via AP)
The Latest: Sued hospital says it follows religious guide

TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  The Latest on a lawsuit filed by a transgender man who says a Roman Catholic hospital wouldn't perform a hysterectomy procedure on him (all times local):

6:15 p.m.

A New Jersey Roman Catholic hospital sued by a transgender man who says he wasn't allowed to have a hysterectomy says it follows religious directives.

Jionni (jee-AH'-nee) Conforti says St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson wouldn't perform a procedure medically necessary as part of his gender transition.

The hospital said Thursday it follows ethical and religious directives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in making decisions about care and treatment. The directives say procedures judged "morally wrong" by the church don't have to be performed.

Conforti had scheduled the surgery at the hospital in 2015. He says a hospital administrator told him the procedure to remove the uterus couldn't be done because it's a "Catholic hospital."

He's seeking monetary damages and a requirement the hospital perform needed medical care for transgender patients.

___

10:30 a.m.

A transgender man has sued a Catholic hospital in New Jersey after he says it cited religion in refusing to allow his surgeon to perform a hysterectomy procedure.

Jionni (jee'-AH-nee) Conforti says the procedure was medically necessary as part of his gender transition.

His lawsuit filed Thursday comes at the same time as new regulations hailed as groundbreaking anti-discrimination protections for transgender individuals have come under legal attack from religious groups.

The 33-year-old Totowa man had scheduled the surgery at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson in 2015. But he alleges in the lawsuit that a hospital administrator then told him that the procedure to remove the uterus couldn't be done because it was a "Catholic hospital."

A hospital spokesman said he hasn't seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

___
Somber stars attend memorial for Reynolds-Fisher at compound

Friends and family members gathered at the next-door homes of Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher on a gloomy Thursday in the Hollywood Hills for an intimate memorial to mourn the late actresses.

The service was held at Fisher's home and the eulogies were delivered by her daughter, Billie Lourd, and friends like Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Stephen Fry, while the 125 guests dined on fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread, according to People magazine.

Streep, who starred in the adaptation of Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel "Postcards from the Edge," carried white flowers as she walked up the long driveway to the wooded compound, choosing to ignore questions from reporters gathered on the street. Inside, People reported that Streep sang Fisher's favorite song, "Happy Days Are Here Again," and everyone joined in.

Actress Meryl Streep arrives with flowers at a memorial service at the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. Streep starred in the film, "Postcards From the Edge," based on Fisher's 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same title. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Streep knew both mother and daughter  she had presented Reynolds with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the film academy's Governors Awards in 2015.

Outside, Meg Ryan, Ellen Barkin and Ed Begley Jr. were among those entering the property in the tony Coldwater Canyon area of Los Angeles, just north of Beverly Hills. According to People, other celebrity guests included Penny Marshall, Richard Dreyfuss and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Also visiting the compound Thursday were Jamie Lee Curtis, who stars with Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, on TV's "Scream Queens," and Eric Idle, a friend of Fisher's who rented her his home during the filming of "The Empire Strikes Back."

Fisher and Reynolds died last week, one day apart, casting a pall over Hollywood's annual holiday break. Fisher, 60, an actress and writer who starred as Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, died Dec. 27 after suffering a medical emergency Dec. 23 aboard a flight from London. Reynolds, 84, an Oscar-nominated actress who shot to fame after starring in "Singin' in the Rain" at age 19, passed away Dec. 28 after being briefly hospitalized.

"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie,'" Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher, told The Associated Press. "And then she was gone."

Fisher and Reynolds will be buried together at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills, reportedly on Friday. The sprawling location is the resting place of numerous celebrities, including Lucille Ball, Dick Van Patten, Liberace, Florence Henderson, David Carradine and Bette Davis.

Todd Fisher and other family representatives did not immediately respond to requests for further details about the memorial and burial services.

Lourd, 24, made her first public comment on the deaths of her mother and grandmother on Instagram Monday.

"Receiving all of your prayers and kind words over the past week has given me strength during a time I thought strength could not exist," Lourd wrote under a picture of the three women. "There are no words to express how much I will miss my Abadaba and my one and only Momby."

People inside and outside of show business have continued to mourn the two Hollywood legends. Last week, fans created an impromptu star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame for Fisher, and peers like "Star Wars'" Mark Hamill have written heartfelt tributes.

HBO bumped up plans to air the new Fisher Stevens-directed documentary about the mother, daughter duo, "Bright Lights," which is now set to air on Saturday.

Elsewhere Thursday, Broadway theaters announced plans to dim their marquee lights Friday night. The Broadway League says the lights will be dimmed for one minute at 7:45 p.m.

Reynolds and Fisher both made their Broadway debuts in 1973 in the musical comedy revival of "Irene," which earned Reynolds a Tony Award nomination. She also appeared on Broadway in "Woman of the Year" and the musical revue "Debbie."

Fisher's Broadway credits include her one-woman show "Wishful Drinking," ''Agnes of God" and "Censored Scenes From King Kong."

___

Photographers Scott Fain and Reed Saxon contributed to this report.

Actor Ed Begley Jr. arrives at a memorial service at the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Journalists stand outside the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

A private security guard tells journalists to cross the street outside the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

FILE- In this Jan. 25, 2015, file photo, 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. "La La Land" star Ryan Gosling thanked Reynolds at the Palm Springs Film Festival on Monday, Jan. 2, 2017, for serving as an inspiration to the cast and crew of the film. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Invision/AP, File)

A private security guard talks to a driver arriving at the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Los Angeles police officers and private security appear outside the homes of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Reynolds died Dec. 28 at the age of 84, a day after her daughter died at the age of 60. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

A man, center checks guests in as they arrive for a memorial service at the homes of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher in Los Angeles on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. A procession of stars arrived at the next door homes of Reynolds and her daughter Fisher on a gloomy Thursday afternoon amid reports that the private memorial was scheduled at the compound to mourn the late actresses. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Lawmakers vote to rebuke UN for 'anti-Israel' resolution

WASHINGTON (AP)  The House overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan measure Thursday that rebukes the United Nations for criticizing Israeli settlements as Republicans used the debate to accuse President Barack Obama of turning his back on the Jewish state.

Lawmakers voted 342-80 for the non-binding resolution that declares unwavering support for Israel and insists that the United States reject any future U.N. actions that are similarly "one-sided and anti-Israel."

"Our government abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the U.N."

The measure divided Democrats. Nearly 80 opposed the measure because they said it contained inaccuracies and distorted the complexities of the Middle East peace process. They also accused Republicans of attacking Obama unfairly in the waning days of his presidency.

"The point of the measure seems to be to bash Obama on the way out," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who along with many other Democrats still voiced strong support for Israel. They said Obama deserved credit for engineering last year's new, long-term security agreement that gives Israel $38 billion in U.S. military aid, including $5 billion for missile defenses.

A similar bipartisan measure to reprimand the U.N. has been introduced in the Senate. "Israel is always the bad guy in the eyes of the United Nations," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the measure's co-sponsors.

Attention from the move by the U.N. last month could provide fuel for pro-Israel initiatives favored by conservatives on Capitol Hill. For example, a small group of Republican senators is proposing to withhold 50 percent of the State Department's 2017 budget until the U.S. Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to shift the embassy.

But a spokesman for Jordan's government told The Associated Press on Thursday that the embassy move would be a "red line" for Jordan and "inflame the Islamic and Arab streets." Jordan serves as custodian of a major Islamic shrine in east Jerusalem and the Palestinians seek a capital there.

Israel and its supporters lashed out at Obama for his decision to abstain and allow the U.N. Security Council to approve in December a resolution calling Israel's settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem "a flagrant violation under international law."

Although the U.S. is opposed to the settlements, it has traditionally used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to scuttle resolutions that condemn Israel. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinians must be resolved through direct negotiations, according to longstanding practice and policy.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, accused Obama of a "shameful ambush" and said he was looking forward to working with Trump, whom he described as his friend.

But Secretary of State John Kerry said in a late December speech that the U.S. was standing up for a two-state solution when it abstained on the resolution. He criticized Israel for settlement building and blamed Netanyahu for dragging Israel away from democracy.

Kerry said expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are leading to an "irreversible one-state reality."

The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, for an independent state. They say that Israeli settlements in these areas, now home to about 600,000 Israelis, are threatening their plans for independence by taking in lands where they hope to establish their state.

The U.N. resolution, along with Kerry's speech, essentially endorsed the Palestinian position by calling for the pre-1967 lines to serve as the reference point for a final border.

Netanyahu, who opposes a return to the 1967 lines, has condemned the moves as "skewed" and "shameful."

Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the panel's top Democrat, sponsored the House measure. The U.N. resolution "undermines the prospect for Israelis and Palestinians resuming productive, direct negotiations," according to their legislation, and should be "repealed or fundamentally altered."

___
Dairy official says he hasn't seen human trafficking lawsuit

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  The manager of an Idaho dairy named in a human trafficking lawsuit declined to comment on the allegations Thursday, saying they hadn't yet been notified of the legal action.

Six Mexican veterinarians filed the lawsuit against Funk Dairy Inc. in Boise's U.S. District Court earlier this week, contending they were recruited to work at the southern Idaho facility as animal scientists, but instead were forced to work as general laborers for about a year.

"As of right now we've not been notified of any lawsuit against Funk Dairy," said dairy manager Curtis Giles. "We care about our employees and make sure they're being taken care of in all aspects of their employment."

This 2015 provided by Brenda E Gastelum Sierra shows Cesar Neron Martinez Rodriguez in a pen for newborn calves at the Funk Dairy in Murtaugh, Idaho. He is one of six veterinarians who say they were recruited from Mexico to work at the Idaho dairy farm as animal scientists, but were instead forced to work as laborers, milking cows and shoveling manure for about a year. On Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, they filed a federal human trafficking lawsuit against the dairy's owners and the lawyer who arranged work visas. (Brenda E Gastelum Sierra via AP)

Giles is one of the named defendants, along with dairy owner David Funk and immigration attorney Jeremy Pittard. Earlier this week, Pittard said his only involvement in the case was to help arrange visas at the request of the dairy. Pittard declined comment on the working conditions at the dairy because he didn't visit it, but said the business had a good reputation in the area.

The lawsuit claims the veterinarians were illegally forced to work as general laborers despite having professional worker visas, received substandard housing and lower wages than promised and were threatened with deportation if they did not do their assigned work well. They are seeking unspecified monetary damages under federal laws to fight human trafficking and target criminal conspiracies.

Veterinarians Cesar Martinez-Rodriguez, Dalia Padilla-Lopez, Mayra Munoz-Lara, Brenda Gastelum-Sierra, Leslie Ortiz-Garcia and Ricardo Neri-Camacho also claimed in the lawsuit that their employers exploited their fear, inability to speak English, and unfamiliarity with the American legal system to force them to stay at the dairy from 2014 to 2015.

This 2015 self-portrait by Cesar Neron Martinez Rodriguez shows him at work at the Funk Dairy in Murtaugh, Idaho. He is one of six veterinarians who say they were recruited from Mexico to work at the Idaho dairy farm as animal scientists, but were instead forced to work as laborers, milking cows and shoveling manure for about a year. On Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, they filed a federal human trafficking lawsuit against the dairy's owners and the lawyer who arranged work visas. (Cesar Neron Martinez Rodriguez via AP)
Japan recalls envoy to South Korea over comfort-woman statue

TOKYO (AP)  Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea in response to the placing of a comfort-woman statue in front of its consulate in the Korean city of Busan.

Both Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan will be temporarily recalled, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said after a Cabinet meeting Friday.

"Comfort women" was the euphemism for women in Asia forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers at front-line brothels during World War II.

In this Dec. 28, 2016, photo, members of civic groups sit around a comfort-woman statue after they set up in front of the Japanese consulate as police officers surround them in Busan, South Korea. Japan is recalling its ambassador to South Korea Friday, Jan. 6, 2017 in response to the placing of the statue. Many Koreans and other women in Asia were forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the "comfort-woman" system. (Kim Sun-ho/Yonhap via AP)

Suga called the placing of the statue "extremely regrettable," since Japan and South Korea had reached what was supposed to be a final agreement to resolve their differences over the issue in late 2015.

Activists in South Korea oppose the agreement. A comfort-woman statue put up front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011 remains in place, and activists installed a similar statue by the same sculptor in Busan late last month.
Looting, protests in Mexico over gas price hikes turn deadly

MEXICO CITY (AP)  The death toll in protests and looting fueled by anger over gasoline price hikes in Mexico rose to six Friday when authorities confirmed that two men died in a confrontation between protesters and police in the central state of Hidalgo.

There were four previous deaths in looting-related incidents and over the course of the week, at least 300 stores were looted and more 1,000 people were detained, officials said.

The protesters in Hidalgo were blocking a highway on Thursday and confronted police who were trying to keep order, when gunfire broke out. Two people also were found dead near looting in the eastern port city of Veracruz. Earlier, officials said a bystander was run over and killed by a driver fleeing police in another part of Veracruz state, and a police officer was killed trying to stop robberies at a gas station in Mexico City.

People ransack a store in Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. Anger over gasoline prices hikes is fueling more protests and looting. Officials say the unrest has resulted in the death of a policeman, the ransacking of hundreds of stores and arrests of hundreds of people. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

In the northern city of Monterrey, officials said a crowd of protesters had smashed some of the stained glass windows of the Nuevo Leon state capital building. Several reporters were hurt, and 182 people were detained.

The country's business chambers said the combination of highway, port and terminal blockades and looting this week forced many stores and businesses to close and threatened supplies of basic goods and fuel. The scenes of mass lootings came as parents were trying to buy presents for the Jan. 6 Three Kings Day holiday.

The looting and protests quieted somewhat Friday, but protesters continued to post themselves at highway toll booths with banners.

Mexicans were enraged by the 20 percent fuel price hike announced over the weekend as part of a government deregulation of the energy sector.

While acknowledging the anger, President Enrique Pena Nieto said Thursday he would forge ahead anyway with the deregulated price scheme, which would do away with fuel subsidies and allow gasoline prices to be determined by prevailing international prices.

"I know that allowing gasoline to rise to its international price is a difficult change, but as president, my job is to precisely make difficult decisions now, in order to avoid worse consequences in the future," Pena Nieto said in a televised address. "Keeping gas prices artificially low would mean taking money away from the poorest Mexicans, and giving it to those who have the most."

Pena Nieto said the other big challenge for Mexico in 2017 was to "build a positive relationship with the new U.S. administration," something he said would be done with Mexico's "unbreakable dignity."

Veracruz Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes Linares ventured out Thursday and tried to persuade a crowd not to attack a grocery store that had already been looted a day earlier. About 300 people were detained in Veracruz.

In Mexico State, which borders Mexico City, 529 people had been detained as suspected looters. Four state police officers were fired and detained after they were caught on video taking some looted items and putting them in their patrol vehicles. The state government said the looting had quieted Thursday. But video of the Wednesday disturbances showed riot-like scenes of people streaming out of stores carrying flat-screen TVs and other items.

Officials claimed many of the lootings incidents were promoted through social media.

With blockades affecting everything from gas distribution terminals, seaports and highways to shopping centers and gas stations, the Communications and Transport Department announced it would cancel permits for any truckers who block roads.

The change boosted the average price for a liter of premium gasoline to 17.79 pesos (about 90 cents). That makes 4 liters, or about a gallon, equal to nearly as much as Mexico's just raised minimum wage for a day's work  80 pesos (about $4).

The National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores of Mexico has said in a statement that more than 79 stores had been looted and 170 were closed or blockaded in central Mexico, including the capital.

A man lies dead in the street after being shot by unknown attackers in an area were looting was taking place in the port city of Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. The Veracruz state prosecutor confirmed that two people were killed but said the attackers were not yet identified. Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the deaths of several people and the arrests of hundreds.(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

People ransack a store in Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. Anger over gasoline price hikes is fueling more protests and looting. Officials say the unrest has resulted in the death of a policeman, the ransacking of hundreds of stores and arrests of hundreds of people. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

People ransack a store in Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. Anger over gasoline prices hikes is fueling more protests and looting. Officials say the unrest has resulted in the death of a policeman, the ransacking of hundreds of stores and arrests of hundreds of people. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

People ransack a store in Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. Anger over gasoline prices hikes is fueling more protests and looting. Officials say the unrest has resulted in the death of a policeman, the ransacking of hundreds of stores and arrests of hundreds of people. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

State police stand guard in a parked vehicle next to Plaza de las Americas shopping center in Ecatepec, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Security forces are out as protests and looting over gasoline price hikes in Mexico continue. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Police stand guard next to an Oxxo convenience store, shortly after running off people trying to break into the store in Ecatepec, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Security forces are out as protests and looting over gasoline price hikes in Mexico continue. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017 photo, residents steal gasoline and diesel from a service station after protests against fuel price hikes in Allende, Veracuz state, Mexico. The gas station workers who inactivated the pumps were intimidated by demonstrators into turning them back on, and allowing the residents to take fuel. (AP Photo/Erick Herrera)

A navy policeman takes pictures of a man man shot by unknown attackers in an area were looting was taking place in the port city of Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. The Veracruz state prosecutor confirmed that two people were killed but said the attackers were not yet identified. Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the deaths of several people and the arrests of hundreds.(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A man shot by unknown attackers lies dead as police, background right, secures the area were looting was taking place in the port city of Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. The Veracruz state prosecutor confirmed that two people were killed but said the attackers were not yet identified. Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the deaths of several people and the arrests of hundreds.(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A woman holds a stick as she and other neighbors try to prevent looting in the port city of Veracruz, Mexico, Thursday Jan. 5, 2017. Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the deaths of several people and the arrests of hundreds.(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Police stand guard next to an Oxxo convenience store, shortly after running off people trying to break into the store in Ecatepec, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Security forces are out as protests and looting over gasoline price hikes in Mexico continue. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
GOP has Trump's back as he questions US intelligence

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was among those piling on when President Barack Obama came under fire several years ago for reading some of his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receiving them in-person.

"I have a hard time comprehending that, because the primary job of the commander in chief is to keep the country safe," Ryan said in an October 2014 interview on Fox News Channel. "And you need to get from your intelligence community, your defense community  especially when we have troops in harm's way  what's going on."

Yet now, as President-elect Donald Trump refuses daily intelligence briefings, questions U.S. spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trump's back. Far from strongly defending the U.S. intelligence community, they're siding with the new leader of their party, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

In this Jan. 5, 2017, photo, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. listens during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. As President-elect Donald Trump questions U.S. spy agency conclusions about Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election and praises Russian President Vladimir Putin and appears to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Ryan and other Republicans have Trumps back and are much less eager to defend the U.S. intelligence community. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, unfailingly supports the military and joined with European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Asked at a press briefing Thursday whether he had full confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies, now-Speaker Ryan offered a tepid endorsement that began and ended on a note of criticism.

"Well, they don't always get everything right. We've seen that clearly," Ryan said. "But I do have faith that our men and women in our intelligence community are doing an incredible job, sacrificing for our country. But there's always room for improvement."

Earlier Thursday, in an interview with WTAQ radio in Wisconsin, Ryan passed up the chance to distance himself from Trump's elevation of Assange in a tweet earlier this week, when Trump cited Assange's claim that Russia had not been the source of Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks revealed.

Instead, even while criticizing Assange, Ryan defended Trump, saying that what the president-elect is "rightfully concerned about is partisans are trying to use the Russian hacking incident to ... call into question the legitimacy of his victory."

And Ryan endorsed Trump's claim, disputed by intelligence officials, that intelligence leaders had delayed a briefing for Trump on the hacking issue that is set to take place later Friday. In dismissing the intelligence on Russia, Trump highlighted a glaring intelligence failure  the claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion and war.

With a couple of exceptions  most notably Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina  other GOP lawmakers and leaders have also stayed largely quiet as Trump lauds Putin and derides U.S. intelligence.

During a hearing Thursday with intelligence agency officials on the alleged Russian election meddling, Republicans on the panel largely avoided making comments that would contradict Trump's well-publicized skepticism that Russia had anything to do with hacking Democratic emails. The exceptions were McCain and Graham.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas even appeared to try to build the case for Trump, ticking off several Trump proposals, from increasing defense spending to accelerating nuclear weapons modernization, to challenge the notion that Putin would favor Trump over Hillary Clinton.

"There is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia," Cotton argued.

The hearing provoked an angry outburst from Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

"The notion that the soon elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military ... no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there should be howls," McCaskill said. "And mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side."

In most cases, Republicans haven't actually embraced Trump's stances, they've just declined to call him out on them, noted Gary Schmitt, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer before serving as executive director on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during Reagan's second term.

"It's a normal situation in which the nominal head of your party, you don't want him to be undercut," Schmitt said. "But my view is if it looks like the substance is clearly on the side of the intelligence community, you're not doing anybody any favors by protecting him."

___=
Middle school teacher accused of asking teen for nude photos

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  An Orlando, Florida, middle school teacher is accused of requesting and receiving nude photos from one of his former teenage students.

News outlets report the Orange County Sheriff's Office says 31-year-old Andrew Montalvo was arrested Wednesday and charged with obscene communication.

Records show the seventh-grade Avalon Middle School civics teacher kept in contact through social media with the 16-year-old victim, whom he had taught when she was 14.

Investigators say Montalvo told deputies he was intoxicated when he asked the girl for the photos, which she sent to him.

Deputies say Montalvo also paid the victim and her friend $2,000 so they wouldn't turn over the messages to authorities.
UK's May to visit Trump in weeks following inauguration

LONDON (AP)  Prime Minister Theresa May's office says the British leader will meet Donald Trump in Washington in the weeks following his Jan. 20 inauguration as U.S. president.

May's top staffers met Trump aides last month to finalize the spring visit. No dates for the trip were announced Friday.

May's predecessor, David Cameron, met President Barack Obama in March 2012 following his second inauguration that January.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016 file photo, Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers' Questions session, in parliament in London. Prime Minister Theresa May's office says Thursday Jan. 5, 2017, the British leader will meet Donald Trump in Washington in the weeks following his Jan. 20 inauguration as U.S. president. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

British officials hope to bolster economic ties with the U.S. as the U.K. leaves the European Union.

But May's efforts to strike up a working relationship with Trump are complicated by the tycoon-turned-politician's bond with former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage.

A key player in Britain's vote to leave the bloc, Farage sees Trump as an anti-establishment ally and was the first U.K. politician to meet him after the Nov. 8 election.
Kosovo calls on France to release its ex-premier Haradinaj

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP)  Kosovo's government is calling on French authorities to release a former prime minister who has been detained facing possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges.

A French court Thursday ruled that Ramush Haradinaj, detained a day earlier, should stay in custody until it decides whether to turn him over to Serbian officials.

Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa on Friday urged "the French government to take into consideration that such warrants are fully political and have no legal or juridical base."

Former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, right, is rushed by police officers inside the Colmar courthouse, eastern France, Thursday Jan.5, 2017. Haradinaj is facing possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges after being arrested at a French airport. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

France's Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on Kosovo's call for Haradinaj's release.

The French court says it is awaiting the formal extradition request from Serbia before it sets a date for a hearing.

Haradinaj, 48, a guerrilla fighter in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia and now an opposition political leader, is accused by Serbia of committing kidnappings, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.

Hundreds of former Kosovo guerrilla fighters and supporters from opposition parties staged a protest outside the French embassy to call for Haradinaj's release.

In Belgrade, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday expressed hope France would extradite Haradinaj and wouldn't let politics override legal matters.

In a message Friday on Facebook, Haradinaj deplored that France would "still respect decisions of (Slobodan) Milosevic's former regime."

Haradinaj was cleared of war crimes charges in two lengthy trials by a U.N. war crimes tribunal. Two years ago Haradinaj was detained in Slovenia at Belgrade's request, but later released.

"I have a message for Serbia's friends within Kosovo and abroad: Kosovo's road to statehood cannot be stopped by anyone," he said.

Mustafa said the government is planning to take measures if "Serbia, misusing the international law and order mechanism, continues the application of such politically unacceptable and immoral acts to Kosovo's activists and fighters for freedom."

Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said the Kosovo government denied a request from Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to visit Kosovo Friday as a response to Haradinaj's arrest in France.
Denmark receives extradition request from Seoul

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Denmark has received an extradition request from Seoul for the daughter of the former confidante of South Korea's president, as part of a corruption investigation.

Prosecutor Mohammad Ahsan said Friday the request will be studied thoroughly before a decision is made on whether to extradite Yoora Chung. He could not say when that would be.

Chung was arrested in Aalborg, northern Denmark, Jan. 1, on an international arrest warrant. She is the daughter of jailed Choi Soon-sil, who is suspected of bribery and receiving favors from companies in return for manipulating government affairs.

Investigators in Seoul are looking into suspicions that South Korean group Samsung sponsored Choi in exchange for government favors.
Kosovo charges a Serb with war crimes in 1998-99 war

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP)  Kosovo prosecutors have accused a Serb citizen of war crimes during the 1998-99 war.

A statement on Friday identifies the defendant as B.S. He was extradited from Bosnia Herzegovina a month ago, and is accused of war crimes committed in March 1999 against civilians in Fushe Kosove, close to the capital, Pristina.

If convicted the defendant may be sentenced from five years to life imprisonment.

Some 10,000 people died and 1,700 remain missing from the war as Kosovo fought to break away from Serbia.
Dead sharks dumped at Florida park under investigation

TITUSVILLE, Fla. (AP)  Wildlife officials are trying to determine who has been dumping dead sharks at a park in central Florida.

Florida Fish and Wildlife officials tell WESH-TV (http://bit.ly/2iX3uBU) that they received a tip about someone dumping sharks next to the Indian River at Kennedy Point Park in Titusville.

Officers removed three dead sharks from the shore there Thursday. Each one was about 2 feet long.

Officials say the animals will be taken to a lab where they'll determine what kind of sharks they are and how old they were. It's unknown exactly how long the carcasses had been left there.
Selfie in front of burning home lands 2 NY cops in hot water

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP)  The Nassau County Police Department is investigating after two officers apparently posed for a selfie in front of a smoldering home on Long Island.

WNBC-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2hXgJ8V ) video surfaced Thursday afternoon that shows the unidentified officers appearing to pose for a picture in front of a house in Uniondale that just went up in flames.

No one was injured, but the home was destroyed. Some neighbors say the officers' stunt showed no concern for the people of the neighborhood.

A statement from the police department called the video "very concerning" and said the officers will be appropriately disciplined if they are found to have been in violation of any rules or regulations.

The people who lived in the home, a law enforcement family themselves, say the officers didn't do anything wrong.

___
Lyle Menendez talks prison life after parents' 1989 murders

IONE, Calif. (AP)  Lyle Menendez says his childhood prepared him "surprisingly well for the chaos of prison life."

Menendez and his younger brother, Erik, killed their wealthy parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The brothers admitted the killings. They were convicted of murder in 1996 and sentenced to life terms without parole.

Lyle Menendez is now 48. He tells ABC News in a phone interview from a California prison that he maintains a close bond with his brother, even though he is being housed at a separate facility. He also reiterated claims of sexual abuse at the hands of his father.

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 1995, file photo, Lyle Menendez looks up during testimony in his and brother Erik's retrial for the shotgun slayings of their parents in Los Angeles. With Lyle is his attorney Terri Towery. Menendez told ABC News in a phone interview from a California prison released Jan. 5, 2017, that he maintains a close bond with his brother, even though he is being housed at a separate facility. (Steve Grayson/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Kitty Menendez's brother denied those claims to ABC News, saying there's "no indication" Jose Menendez abused his sons.

Lyle Menendez also says he's happily married, though he is barred from having conjugal visits with his wife.
The Latest: GOP uneasy about how to replace health care law

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on Congress (all times EST):

3:50 p.m.

There's growing Republican unease about repealing President Barack Obama's health care law without having a replacement plan ready to go.

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2016, file photo. the American flag flies in front of the U.S. Capitol dome at sunset on Capitol Hill in Washington. The end of the 2016 presidential election is at hand. A joint session of Congress is set to count the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2017, a traditional ending to a most unconventional presidential election. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)

With Donald Trump about to enter the White House, Republicans plan to void the health care law this year as quickly as they can.

Writing a GOP alternative is more complicated and likely to take added time.

Increasingly, Republicans are expressing nervousness about voting to dismantle Obama's law without having a substitute in hand.

Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker told reporters Friday that Republicans could end up in a "box canyon" if they annul the existing statute without having their own package ready.

With 20 million Americans getting coverage under Obama's law, the GOP could face a political nightmare if they repeal the statute but can't enact a replacement.

___

1:25 p.m.

It didn't take long for Democrats to object to the counting of Electoral College votes.

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts objected to Alabama's votes for Donald Trump, saying the election in that state did not comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

However, since no senator joined in the objection, it was rejected. Other Democrats objected to votes in Florida and Georgia.

House Democrats are raising objections to Trump's election as a joint session of Congress tallies the votes. They can slow the count but do not have the votes to change the outcome.

Vice President Joe Biden is presiding over the count. In denying one objection, Biden said, "It is over."

___

11:42 a.m.

Longtime Texas Republican Congressman Sam Johnson has announced he will retire at the end of the term.

The 86-year-old Johnson was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and Korea before his election to Congress in 1990. He spent seven years as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton.

On Capitol Hill, Johnson has been a stalwart conservative as a fierce defender of gun rights, an opponent of tax increases, and a hawk on military matters.

He attracted attention recently when introducing legislation to curb Social security benefits.

Johnson has slowed in recent years and told supporters that "the Lord has made clear that the season of my life in Congress is coming to an end."

Speaker Paul Ryan called Johnson "the greatest living man I know."

___

9:30 a.m.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio says he won't support his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions, who is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general.

Brown says he met with Sessions this week and says the Alabama Republican has a civil rights record "at direct odds with the task of promoting justice and equality for all."

The Ohio senator says the U.S. needs leaders who can ensure strong voting rights and reform the criminal justice system.

Brown said Friday he also pressed Sessions on the Justice Department's role in helping Cleveland improve relations between police and community. The city and the federal government are working together through a consent decree, something Sessions has opposed in the past.

___

8:05 a.m.

Republicans who once offered unstinting support for US intelligence agencies and sustained criticism of Russia have changed their message.

Today, as Donald Trump questions intelligence assessments about Russian hacking and offers praise for Vladimir Putin, many congressional Republicans are backing him up.

Far from strongly defending the U.S. intelligence community, they're siding with the president-elect, even when he makes comments or takes stances that would seem anathema to the GOP.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says Trump is right to be concerned about partisans trying to use Russian hacking to question the legitimacy of his victory.

It's a remarkable turnabout for a political party that cheered President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union and joined European allies in blistering Putin after Russia's annexation of Crimea.

FILE - In this June 4, 2004 file photo, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, salutes to delegates after he was honored at the GOP state convention in San Antonio. Johnson has announced he will retire at the end of the term. The 86-year-old Johnson was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and Korea before his election to Congress in 1990. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

FILE - In this Nov. 29, 2016 file photo, Attorney General-designate Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Wal-Mart names John Furner as Sam's Club next CEO

NEW YORK (AP)  Wal-Mart says it named John Furner as CEO of its Sam's Club stores to replace Rosalind Brewer, who is retiring next month.

Furner, who is 42, will head the membership-only warehouse chain next month. Furner has been Sam's Club's chief merchandising officer since October 2015. Wal-Mart says he first joined the company as an hourly store associate in 1993.

Brewer will leave her position February 1. The 54-year-old has been CEO of Sam's Club for five years and has had a variety of executive roles since joining the company about 11 years ago.
Guyana to raid commercial bank accounts, collect back taxes

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP)  The South American country of Guyana has narrowly passed a bill that allows officials to raid the commercial bank accounts of business owners who owe a large amount of unpaid taxes.

Opposition leaders complain that the measure doesn't require a court order and say they fear the Guyana Revenue Authority would abuse such a right.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan says the bill approved late Thursday will affect only companies that collect the 14 percent sales tax and don't remit it. He says the understaffed revenue agency has struggled to collect sales and value-added taxes from businesses.
Italy kicks out long-time resident accused of extremism

ROME (AP)  Italy has expelled a Tunisian man accused of religious extremism and befriending a jailed would-be foreign fighter, the country's latest effort to crack down on the radicalization of young Muslims by getting rid of them.

The Interior Ministry said the 26-year old, identified by Italian newspapers as Marouan Mathlouthi, was sent back to Tunisia on Thursday. The ministry alleged he had befriended a fellow Tunisian who was arrested in 2015 on terrorism-related charges because of alleged plans to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria.

A ministry statement said Mathlouthi, who had lived in Italy since he was an infant and was married to an Italian, had jihadist propaganda on him and had written on his Facebook page, "I don't know if I should be good or stage a massacre, I have to think about it."

The expulsion, the second of the new year, brings to 134 the number of suspected extremists expelled by Italy since January 2015.

As Italy continues ousting individual extremists for reasons of state security, it also plans to overhaul its expulsion program for the thousands of migrants who simply fail to win asylum each year.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti has said he would ask Italy's Parliament to approve the creation of smaller, regional detention centers to hold migrants undergoing the bureaucratic process of being sent home.

Italy's existing holding centers are overcrowded and have been the subject of recent migrant protests over poor conditions and in a recent case, the death of a young woman awaiting medical care.
Palestinian president urges Trump not to move US embassy

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP)  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is urging Donald Trump not to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Abbas on Friday invited Trump to visit and said "We call on you not to implement your statement...because we consider it as an aggressive statement, when you say you want to move the embassy to Jerusalem."

Trump's spokeswoman has said the President-elect is determined to move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv when he takes office.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would signal U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a move that would break decades of American policy.

The fate of east Jerusalem with its holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians is at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Top NY lawmakers to skip Cuomo state of the state addresses

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Top state lawmakers in New York are skipping Gov. Andrew Cuomo's state of the state addresses in an unusually public display of the tensions between legislators and the Democratic governor.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Republican Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, Republican Senate Leader John Flanagan and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will not attend any of the six addresses by the Democratic governor next week, their spokespeople said.

Many lawmakers are still seething at Cuomo, who they blame for killing a proposed legislative pay increase last month, the first in 18 years.

"Sen. Flanagan was invited to attend, but declined," said Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif. "He will be in Albany, in session, fulfilling his duties as Senate Majority Leader."

As for Heastie, "we have a lot of work to do here in Albany and that is what we will be focusing on," according to spokesman Mike Whyland.

Lawmakers had hoped that a state commission would authorize raising their $79,500 salary late last year, in time for it to take effect in 2017. But Cuomo's appointees on the commission blocked the raise. Then last month negotiations over convening a special session to consider another pay raise proposal sputtered when Cuomo demanded that they also consider ethics reforms and other proposals unrelated to legislative pay.

New York's governor typically delivers a single address to lawmakers in Albany at the start of the legislative session. Last year, Cuomo gave the speech in the convention center adjacent to the state Capitol, where he was heckled by a Democratic Assemblyman.

This year, as relations with lawmakers deteriorated further, Cuomo announced a new approach involving three days of six regional addresses, beginning in New York City and Buffalo on Monday.

If the snub bothers Cuomo, he isn't letting on.

"By definition, these regional addressees are designed to communicate directly with the citizens of New York, not legislators," said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi. "Our goal has always been to bring the issues to the people, to develop the public support, and then have it communicated to the elected representatives."

The state constitution, however, clearly envisioned lawmakers as the target audience. It requires the governor to "communicate by message to the legislature at every session the condition of the state." Prior to 1923 governors traditionally delivered a written message to the Legislature.

Cuomo's road show continues Tuesday with speeches on Long Island and Westchester County and wraps up Wednesday with addresses in Syracuse and Albany. Specific times and locations have not been announced.
Pakistan makes case for Indian terrorism to UN

ISLAMABAD (AP)  Pakistan's foreign ministry says Islamabad has handed over a dossier to the United Nations over the alleged involvement of India in acts of terrorism in the Islamic nation.

In a statement, it said Pakistani ambassador Maleeha Lodhi on Friday delivered a set of documents regarding India's alleged role in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The announcement comes months after Pakistan captured an Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav, saying he was behind acts of terrorism in the country. So far, Islamabad has not granted consular access to Jadhav following India's request.
Power returns to Vegas' Rio Casino after week of issues

LAS VEGAS (AP)  Power is finally back on at a Las Vegas casino after the hotel was partially dark for about a week.

The Las Vegas Sun reports (http://bit.ly/2hY1vR1 ) that electricity has been fully restored at the Rio after about 500 rooms on two floors went dark on Dec. 29.

The newspaper reports that a nightclub at the casino reopened Thursday night.

The outage was caused after a sink in a service area overflowed and shorted a fuse in the tower's power system. The hotel moved to a backup generator that was compromised by water from a fire sprinkler and gave out the next morning.

The Rio's parent company is Caesars Entertainment.

The Associated Press previously reported that hotel guests were transferred to other rooms in casinos owned by Caesars, but also to competitors' rooms.

___
James K. Jim Winters, Jr.

James K. Jim Winters, Jr, age 68, of Carlisle, after a long battle with Alzheimers disease passed away peacefully on Tuesday, January 3, 2017, surrounded by his loving family and friends. This disease no longer has its hold on him and he is finally free.

Jim was born February 25, 1948 in Manchester, NH to the late Chief Master Sergeant James K. and Alice (Masterbone) Winters.

Jim graduated in 1970 from the University of Delaware with an Army ROTC scholarship and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing. He then obtained his Master of Arts degree in Quantitative Theory from Central Michigan University in 1980.

Jim retired from AAFES as a Senior Vice President after 35 years of dedicated service.

His assignments included Andrews Air Force Base; Thule Air Base, Greenland; Cameron Station, VA; Lajes Field Air Force Base, Azores; U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA; Fort Monmouth, NJ; Clark Air Force Base, Philippines, and AAFES corporate headquarters in Dallas, TX. Prior to his career at AAFES, he proudly served his country in the United States Army. He was a caring husband and father to his three children.

He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 40 years, Carmen (Bologna) Winters; daughters Brigitte (and husband, Bradley) Shughart, Sheryl (and husband, Ryan) Banta; son Frank Costello; brother William (and wife, Joan) Winters, sisters Marilyn Winters and Toni Ruster; five grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.

Memorial services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, January 21, 2017 at St Patricks Catholic Church, 85 Marsh Drive, Carlisle, PA 17015. Burial will be at the convenience of the family.

To sign the guestbook, please visit www.hoffmanfh.com
US veteran arrested in airport shooting; 5 dead, 8 wounded

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP)  An Army veteran who complained that the government was controlling his mind drew a gun from his checked luggage on arrival at the Fort Lauderdale airport and opened fire in the baggage claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight, authorities said.

He was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, one witness said.

"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," the witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

Law enforcement officers stand guard at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, Alaska, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Santiago had walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the U.S. government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

Agents questioned an agitated and disjointed-sounding Santiago and then called police, who took him for a mental health evaluation, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent George Piro, who is in charge of the Miami field office, confirmed that Santiago had come into the Anchorage office and said he clearly indicated at the time that he was not intent on hurting anyone.

Authorities said the motive for the attack was under investigation. Shortly after the shooting, and before details of Santiago's mental health became public, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that it remained to be seen whether it was terrorism or the work of "someone who is mentally deranged."

Piro said authorities are looking at leads in several states and have not ruled out terrorism. "We're looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle," he said

Santiago, who is in federal custody, will face federal charges and is expected to appear in court Monday, Piro said.

One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition for his handgun, sending panicked travelers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.

Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen.

Bruce Hugon, who had flown in from Indianapolis for a vacation, was at the baggage carousel when he heard four or five pops and saw everyone drop down on the ground. He said a woman next to him tried to get up and was shot in the head.

"The guy must have been standing over me at one point. I could smell the gunpowder," he said. "I thought I was about to feel a piercing pain or nothing at all because I would have been dead."

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from Anchorage aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

At Fort Lauderdale, "after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

The attack also exposed another weak point in airport security: While travelers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach the gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggage claim areas, are more lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

In 2013, a gunman with a grudge against the Transportation Security Administration shot and killed one of the agency's screeners and wounded three others during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport. Last November, an airline worker was shot and killed near an employee parking lot at Oklahoma City's airport, and in 2015 a machete-wielding man was shot to death after he attacked federal security officers at the New Orleans airport.

"The fact is that wherever there are crowds, such as at our airports, we remain vulnerable to these types of attacks," Nelson said.

The Fort Lauderdale gunman said nothing as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding," according to Lea. The killer went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

"He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him," Lea said.

The gunman was arrested unharmed, with no shots fired by law enforcement officers, and was being questioned by the FBI, Sheriff Scott Israel said.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said 30 to 40 people were injured  scrapes, bruises and broken bones  after the shooting.

The condition of the wounded was not disclosed. At least one of the victims was seen lying in a pool of blood with what appeared to be a head wound.

The airport was shut down, with incoming flights diverted and outgoing flights held on the ground. Airport Director Mark Gale said it will try to reopen at 5 a.m. Saturday but urged travelers to check with their individual airlines on flight status. He said 10,000 of the airport's stranded travelers were being bused overnight to the city's spacious Port Everglades cruise ship terminal.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said. President-elect Donald Trump said that it is a "disgraceful situation that's happening in our country and throughout the world" and that it was too soon to say whether it was a terrorist attack.

Santiago's brother, Bryan, told the AP that his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiago's girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months. Bryan Santiago said that he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was sent to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.

The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted  from specialist to private first class  and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honorable discharge.

John Schilcher told Fox News he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

"The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground," said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. "The firing just went on and on."

"I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me," he said. "That's when I assumed it was safe."

___

Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro and Adriana Gomez-Licon in Miami; Lolita C. Baldor and Eric Tucker in Washington; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; David Koenig in Dallas; and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

Law enforcement officers walk around Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

People stand on the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Pople flee the area outside the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport after a shooting took place Friday, Jan. 6, 2017 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Law enforcement personnel search a garage area at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Law enforcement officials head to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

An injured woman is loaded into an emergency vehicle at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a gunman opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

People hide aT pole at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (AP Photo/Julie Brown)

People stand on the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

A shooting victim is taken into Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Authorities said multiple people have died after a lone suspect opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, international airport. (Taimy Alvarez /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

A shooting victim is unloaded from an emergency vehicle and taken into Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Authorities said multiple people have died after a lone suspect opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, international airport. (Taimy Alvarez /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Police officers stand on the perimeter road along the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

In this still image from video provided by NBC TV Local10, people stand on the tarmac after shots were fired at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Local10 and other news media outlets reported Friday that multiple people were shot. (NBC TV Local10 via AP)

Law enforcement personnel shield civilians outside a garage area at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

A shooting victim arrives at Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Authorities say a lone shooter opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, international airport Friday, killing "multiple" people before he was taken into custody. The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene. (Taimy Alvarez/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

People exit the Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, after a gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

Passengers run on the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

Passengers wait on the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

An injured woman is taken into Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Authorities say a lone shooter opened fire at the airport Friday afternoon, killing "multiple" people before he was taken into custody. (Taimy Alvarez/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

An injured woman is brought to an emergency vehicle at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a gunman opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (David Santiago /El Nuevo Herald via AP)

Law enforcement personnel stand outside a garage area at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal of the airport, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody. (David Santiago /El Nuevo Herald via AP)
Authorities in Jamaica say an inmate accused of killing two U.S. missionaries has escaped.

Police said Friday that Dwight Henry, 25, escaped custody after he was taken to a hospital for medical care.

Henry is accused of murdering Randy Hentzel, 48, and Harold Nichols, 53, in April of 2016 along Jamaica's north coast.

The victims had lived and worked in the area since 2002. Police have not yet provided a motive for the killings.

Dwight Henry, 25, (pictured) escaped custody while being treated at the hospital

Harold Nichols (red shirt) and his wife Teri Nichols (blue shirt) worked for Teams for Medical Missions in Jamacia

Randy Hentzel (pictured) was killed in April along with Harold Nichols. The reason for the murder is not known at this time

Mr Hentzel from Donnellson, Iowa, died of a gunshot wound. Mr Nichols from Randolph, New York died of a gunshot and 'chop wounds' according to the Jamaica Gleaner.

The victims and their wives worked for a Pennsylvania-based ministry called Teams for Medical Missions.

On the Teams for Medical Missions Facebook page, the organization wrote: 'One of the men charged with the murder of our two missionaries back in April has escaped custody.

Randy Hentzel (left) and Harold Nichols's alleged killer escaped custody after being taken to a hospital for medical treatment

Harold Nichols is survived by his wife Teri Nichols who both worked for the Pennsylvania-based ministry. Here they are pictured before a backpacking trip

Randy Hentzel was killed at 48-years-old and is survived by a wife and five children

'Please join us in prayer that he will be apprehended soon.'

'Please pray for our two widows as this news triggers much pain.'

The two were killed during a motorcycle trip along the beach according to CNN. The victims were headed to a construction site where they were helping build a home for a family in need.

Mr Nichols is survived by his wife and Mr Hentzel is survived by his wife and five children.
Judge: Michael Brown's parents must release documents

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Michael Brown's parents must turn over his academic and certain medical records as part of their lawsuit over his 2014 Ferguson police shooting death, a federal judge has ruled, rejecting their claims that demands for such documents are harassing and invasive.

U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber's sweeping order Wednesday also requires Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden to turn over to the defendants' attorneys their own medical records for the five years preceding the black, unarmed 18-year-old's death. He ordered them to do so by Tuesday.

Brown's parents argue they sustained permanent injuries, including mental anguish, over his death. But Webber ruled their medical records are among those needed by the city of Ferguson, the white officer who shot Brown and later resigned, and that officer's former chief in calculating any potential damages.

"The court will not limit the medical records to treatment sought by the plaintiffs for damages specifically related to this matter because (the) defendants will need to evaluate whether the claimed injuries actually occurred as a result of the death of their son," Webber wrote.

Brown's parents have rebuffed the defense's repeated demands for documents about their late son and themselves, insisting that such requests are harassing, invasive and overly broad. Webber concluded the parents failed to make that case with supportive facts or law.

"Repeatedly asserting the same objections to each request is not enough to protect against disclosure," Webber wrote.

Brown's parents argue in their lawsuit that the death of their son during a confrontation with then-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson deprived them of financial support through his future potential wages. An attorney for the lawsuit's defendants has countered that Brown's lifelong medical records are relevant in determining his potential life expectancy and future income.

In her 2016 book, "Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil," McSpadden acknowledged her son had high blood pressure, headaches, impaired vision and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In court filings, Brown's parents have said these medical conditions "have no bearing on a person's life expectancy."

But while Webber concluded it's not necessary for the lawsuit defendants to have Brown's entire medical background, he still ordered the parents to turn over Brown's health history from the time he was 10 years old until his death.

Webber also required the parents to release their tax returns since 2009, calling such records "a straightforward way" in assessing how their income has changed since Brown's death. The parents also must reveal any income they received through sales of merchandise or memorabilia featuring their son's likeness, as well as proceeds from any GoFundMe campaigns or other fundraisers linked to his death.
Jury seated in trial over meningitis outbreak that killed 64

BOSTON (AP)  A jury has been seated to hear the case against a former top executive at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy blamed for a national meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people in 2012.

Barry Cadden is charged with 25 counts of second-degree murder and other offenses under federal racketeering laws. He is the co-founder and former head pharmacist of New England Compounding Center in Framingham.

Federal prosecutors allege that the center used expired ingredients and failed to follow industry cleanliness standards, resulting in tainted steroid injections.

FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2014, file photo, Barry Cadden leaves the federal courthouse in Boston after a hearing. Jury selection is set to begin in his murder trial Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017, in Boston. Cadden is a former top executive and head pharmacist of New England Compounding Center, blamed for a national meningitis outbreak that killed dozens of people in 2012. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)

Cadden has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer has said that prosecutors overreached in charging him with causing deaths.

Jury selection began Wednesday in U.S. District Court, and a panel of five men and 10 women was selected Friday.
Amgen, Gap and Symantec rise while Verizon and ICU skid

NEW YORK (AP)  Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Friday:

Gap Inc., up 9 cents to $23.34

The retailer reported improved sales in November and December.

ICU Medical Inc., down $15.47 to $131.88

The medical device maker said sales at a business it is buying are still falling.

Amgen Inc., up $3.80 to $156.78

A federal court ruled in Amgen's favor in a dispute with two other drug companies.

G-III Apparel Group Inc., down 85 cents to $27.80

The apparel and accessories company cut its profit and sales forecasts, partly because of warm weather.

Helen of Troy Ltd., up $6.85 to $96.10

The personal and household products company reported a bigger profit than analysts expected.

Ruby Tuesday Inc., down 87 cents to $2.66

The restaurant chain reported weak results and, after closing around 100 locations, said sales at its remaining locations are still falling.

Verizon Communications Inc., down 80 cents to $53.26

Companies that pay large dividends traded lower as bond yields rose.

Symantec Corp., up 36 cents to $25.01
Small percentage of hate crimes aimed at whites

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  The horrific beating of a mentally disabled white man in Chicago by four black assailants broadcast on social media is highlighting anti-white hate crimes at a time of increased racial strife in the United States.

But federal statistics and experts say anti-white incidents remain a smaller percentage of overall hate crimes. Anti-black hate crimes are still the largest number of cases.

According to the 2015 FBI hate crime statistics, the latest available, there were 613 anti-white-related crimes out of 5,850 total cases. That's around 10.5 percent of all reported hate crimes, and within the yearly average, federal numbers show.

This image from a video that was broadcast live on Facebook and later posted on Vidme shows a frame in which a man, right, is assaulted in Chicago. The video shows the man with his mouth taped shut as a woman and other people cut off his shirt and hair with a knife, and someone pushes his head with his or her foot. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017, that the victim has mental health challenges, and he called the video "sickening." (Vidme via AP)

By comparison, the FBI reports there were 1,745 anti-black hate crimes or about 30 percent of all reported incidents. Jews were the most targeted religious group that year and were victims of 11 percent of all hate crimes. It's not clear how many anti-Jewish hate crime victims also may have been attacked because of their race.

That data also suggested that blacks and Jews remain disproportionally targets of hate crimes compared to their population as opposed to whites. African-Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population, while non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity." Filing reports for the federal count is voluntary, but guidelines call for reports to be submitted even if they list zero hate crimes.

Even then, experts say the FBI data on hate crimes isn't a full picture since anti-black cases are skewed lower by the lack of reporting participation by some southern law enforcement agencies.

Some large Florida cities, like Miami, reported no hate crimes to the FBI in 2015, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, California State University. "I doubt that cities as diverse as those had no hate crimes," he said.

In Chicago, two men and two women  all black  are facing hate crime charges in connection with the brutal beating of a mentally disabled white man that was streamed on Facebook Live. The video shows the victim is tied up and the suspects are making racial slurs and references to his mental capacity, Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin said.

The suspects are accused of forcing the victim to drink toilet water and kiss the floor, stuffing a sock into his mouth, taping his mouth shut and binding his hands with a belt.

The 18-year-old victim, who is from a Chicago suburb, suffers from schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder, authorities said.

The victim also was taunted with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

Eighteen-year-olds Brittany Covington, Tesfaye Cooper and Jordan Hill, and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington also face kidnapping and battery charges in connection with the attack.

The case heightened political tensions on social media and opened yet-to-be healed wounds from a nasty presidential election campaign. Some conservatives suggested the attack highlighted growing anti-white violence and was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, although police said there was no indication of any connection.

The FBI does classify attacks based on disability as a hate crime. Federal numbers show 88 incidents related to attacks on disability in 2015.

In addition to underreporting, Levin said strong federal data of the race and ethnicity of assailants is incomplete because of the lack of consistent reporting.

The 2015 FBI data showed that of the 734 total reported offenses committed against whites  a single incident could have multiple offenses like assault or theft  46 percent of those were committed by blacks.

In contrast, of the 2,125 reported offenses committed against blacks, 58 percent of those who committed by whites.

Still, despite the data, Levin said the Chicago beating is resonating because it was shown via social media and racial relations are tense following the November election. Live streams and 140 Twitter characters inflame the fires.

Levin described the situation as "a logjam of motivations" for conflict, saying it's like nothing he's ever seen.

"We are seeing the coarseness that exists in society generally, those embers, have crossed the fire lines to all parts of the racial, ethnic and ideological spectrum," Levin said.

___

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

___

Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/russell-contreras .

These booking photos provided by the Chicago Police Department show, from left, Tesfaye Cooper, Brittany Covington, Tanishia Covington and Jordan Hill, four people charged, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, with aggravated kidnapping and taking part in a hate crime after allegedly beating and taunting a man in a video broadcast live on Facebook. (Chicago Police Department via AP)

Family spokesman David Boyd, right, and others hold a news conference Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, in Crystal Lake, Ill., after an 18-year-old man was assaulted in Chicago earlier this week. Four people were charged with hate crimes Thursday in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled white man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet. Boyd is the brother-in-law of the victim. (Patrick Kunzer/Daily Herald via AP)
Civil rights groups gear up to fight Sessions nomination

Leaders of civil rights organizations on Friday reasserted their criticisms of attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions as unqualified for the role, and urged his Senate colleagues to put the Alabama Republican's record to a thorough vetting.

Sessions' hearing is set to begin Tuesday and he is expected to be confirmed in the GOP-controlled chamber. Two days of testimony are scheduled, including a day for Sessions to address the committee, and a day for rebuttal witnesses from those opposing his nomination.

Echoing Senate Democrats, the civil rights groups want to delay the hearing. They say the Judiciary Committee needs more time to review his voluminous nomination materials, which they also say may be incomplete.

FILE - In this Nov. 29, 2016 file photo, Attorney General-designate Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

"The hearing has to be meaningful," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who rejected any suggestion that the hearings are a foregone conclusion. "The point of the hearing is to reveal who the candidate is and to inform and educate the senators about his qualifications. It's an opportunity for the Senate to actually do its job. They haven't been in Alabama. They don't know everything about his record."

Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, added, "Collegiality is no substitute for the constitutional requirement of advice and consent. That is a standard we expect the committee to adhere to."

Some also noted the timing of the hearing, expected to last two days and coming ahead of the Martin Luther King Jr., federal holiday on January 16.

Sessions, 70, was born and raised in Selma, Alabama  regarded by many as the crucible of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and scene of "Bloody Sunday," where blacks were beaten during a peaceful protest as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

"For many of us, it's a clear reminder that we are continued to be called to action," said Janet Murguia of La Raza. "We need an attorney general who understands the experiences of all Americans, who sees our community as part of this country. He demonstrates again and again that he is not that person."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, plans to lead a march on January 14 that will begin at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington.

Earlier this week, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks was among several people arrested after a sit-in protest in Sessions' Mobile, Alabama, office. While he declined to elaborate on specific plans, he said the action was "not a one-off."

"You can expect an escalating campaign of opposition," Brooks said.

Sharpton added that members of his organization could make "house calls" to senators their districts in coming days ahead of the final vote to encourage them to reject Sessions' nomination.

Since November, the groups have expressed alarm at several of the picks by President-elect Donald Trump for his administration, saying they threaten national unity and could unravel decades of progress for racial, religious and sexual minorities. But they have especially balked at Sessions' nomination, calling him racially insensitive and hostile to civil rights issues.

Among the reasons they cite as to why the lawmaker is unfit for the role are his stances on voting rights, the use of federal consent decrees and immigration. They also point to Sessions being denied a federal judgeship in 1986 after hearings in which he was accused of making racially-charged remarks as a U.S. attorney.

___
Bruins plane diverted because of Florida airport shooting

BOSTON (AP)  The Boston Bruins' plane was diverted to Miami International Airport on Friday because of a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

An arriving airline passenger with a gun in his luggage opened fire in the baggage claim area at the Fort Lauderdale airport, killing five people and wounding eight before surrendering to authorities.

The Bruins' planed landed in Miami shortly after 5 p.m. They are scheduled to play the Florida Panthers on Saturday.

Edmonton Oilers left wing Patrick Maroon (19) scores past Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask (40) in the third period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, in Boston. It was Maroon's third goal of the game. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Stars have paid tribute to Bollywood actor Om Puri, star of cult British film East Is East, who has died aged 66.

The prolific actor, whose career spanned four decades, suffered a heart attack after returning to his home in Mumbai from a film set on Thursday.

Leading the tributes were his former co-stars and others in the film industry.

Om Puri

Archie Panjabi, who played Puris daughter in Bafta-winning East Is East, wrote on Twitter: Devastated to hear of the sad loss of @OmRajeshPuri. He was a true gem. Rest in Peace.

Devastated to hear of the sad loss of @OmRajeshPuri. He was a true gem. Rest in Peace.  Archie Panjabi (@archiepanjabi) January 6, 2017

Really sad that #OmPuri has passed away. A great man, a great talent, he taught me a lot. He was a guiding light whilst making #EastisEast  Chris Bisson (@ChrisBisson) January 6, 2017

Emmerdale actor Chris Bisson, who also starred in the film as one of his children, wrote: Really sad that #OmPuri has passed away. A great man, a great talent, he taught me a lot.

He was a guiding light whilst making #EastisEast.

East Is East and Downton Abbey star Lesley Nicol wrote: So very sad to hear that the talented and beautiful actor Om Puri has passed away  much love to you dear soul  East is East family.

Kunal Nayyar, best known for starring in US sitcom The Big Bang Theory, wrote a message to Puri.

He said: Dear Om Puri, the truth you brought to everything you did, will never be matched  your body may be gone, but your spirit will remain forever.

Priyanka Chopra, who appeared with Puri in 2006 Hindi film Don, shared a picture of the two of them together on her Instagram page.

She wrote that his death marks the end of an era and that his legacy lives on.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of the first to share a tribute to Puri.

The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 6, 2017

A message from Modis office tweeted: The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films.

Puris death was announced by Bollywood director Ashoke Pandit on Friday, who tweeted that he was sad and shocked.

Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP.  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) January 6, 2017

Puri had won a slew of national awards and international fame for his work in several critically acclaimed films during his prestigious career.

His breakthrough film was the 1983 gritty drama Ardh Satya or Half Truth, about a young policemans crisis of conscience as he deals with the nexus of crime and politics in India.

Puri had a small role in Richard Attenboroughs film Gandhi, based on the life of the Indian freedom leader Mohandas Gandhi.

You will live in our hearts forever through the impressions you have left with your versatility. We will miss you. RIP #OmPuri  Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) January 6, 2017

He also acted in several Hollywood films, including City Of Joy, Wolf and Charlie Wilsons War.

Puri won plaudits for his portrayal of a tough but loving Pakistani patriarch in the 1999 comedy drama East Is East, for which he was nominated for a best actor Bafta.

He later reprised his role as George Khan in the 2010 sequel West Is West.

Very sad news about Om Puri, the first great actor I ever worked with and a true inspiration and great man..thoughts go out to his family.x pic.twitter.com/ScR1Wv5nMd  Jimi Mistry (@JimiMistry) January 6, 2017
Sentinel reporter Joshua Vaughn was recently featured on a podcast dedicated to the journalism industry.

On Thursday, Vaughns interview with Its All Journalism was released and is now available through itsalljournalism.com or by searching Its All Journalism on iTunes or other podcast providers.

Vaughn, who covers the crime and courts beat for The Sentinel, talked to Its All Journalism host Michael OConnell about the unique way The Sentinel uses data to inform and expand its coverage of the criminal justice system.

Over the last year Vaughn has written one Closer Look series a month that focuses on different topics within the criminal justice system. He received a Lee Presidents Award for his work from Lee Enterprises, the parent company of The Sentinel.

The series has been largely data-driven and made in part possible by a set of programs developed by Vaughn and The Sentinel that scrape and aggregate information from public criminal justice records.

The stories have ranged from looking at how addiction is handled in the criminal justice and the effects of advances in trauma care on homicide rates to an examination of racial disparities in the local criminal justice system and the use and effectiveness of bail.

Most recently Vaughn dug deeper into court records to see what was really going on with a startling jump in criminal filings in 2016.

Through an analysis of court records, The Sentinel was able to uncover that a large portion of the nearly 500-case spike  nearly 75 percent  came from increased filings for DUIs and misdemeanor-level drug offenses. This may indicate an increase in enforcement efforts as a driver of the case load increase rather than a sudden jump in criminal activity.

Its All Journalism is a weekly podcast dedicated to topics involving the changing landscape of news and journalism.

OConnell is a veteran of print and online news with several decades of experience and currently is the morning web editor for Federal News Radio in the Washington, D.C., metro area.
Jimmy Walker struck three birdies in the final five holes to take a two-shot lead after the opening round of the SBS Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.

The 37-year-old finished his blemish-free round in style, signing for an eight-under-par 65 thanks to six birdies and an eagle.

That came on the par-five fifth when he sank a 38-foot swinging putt, setting the tone for an electric round on the green in Kapalua, Maui.

Jimmy Walker

Walker is two shots clear of American duo Jim Herman and Justin Thomas while Jason Dufner, Daniel Berger and Ryan Moore are all placed on five under.
Russia has announced it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and some other warships from the waters off Syria as the first step in a reduction of its forces in the war-torn Middle East country.

General Staff chief General Valery Gerasimov said the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier and accompanying ships will be the first to leave.

Gen Gerasimov was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying: In accordance with the decision by the supreme commander-in-chief (President) Vladimir Putin, the Defence Ministry is starting to downsize the grouping of armed forces in Syria.

Russian Su-33 fighter jets stand on the flight deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/ Photo via AP)

Moscow has been a key supporter of President Bashar Assads government and forces in Syrias devastating civil war.

Gen Gerasimov did not give further details on the force reduction, which follows an order by Mr Putin on December 29.

Syrian forces retaking of the city of Aleppo last month and a Russian/Turkish-brokered ceasefire, in place for nearly a week, make Russian forces less critical to Mr Assad, but it is unclear how extensive the military reduction will be.

The carrier during its mission to the Mediterranean (Russian Defence Ministry Press Service/ Photo via AP)

Air strikes from the Admiral Kuzetsov began in mid-November, the first time the carrier has been used in combat. It has lost two aircraft. An Su-33 fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria, and in November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the carrier.

Russia and Turkey, a strong supporter of Syrias moderate opposition, brokered the ceasefire, which came into effect on December 30. The truce has mostly held but not altogether halted fighting in the country, and the government and opposition have blamed each other for violations.
A teenager who fled to the UK after his father was killed by the Taliban has made an emotional plea to the Home Secretary to halt his deportation to Afghanistan.

Shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens presented a 14,000-strong petition and a letter to Amber Rudd, urging her to allow 19-year-old Bashir Naderi to stay in the UK.

Printed. Here it is ready to go. 14k+ people signed this petition demanding @AmberRudd_MP let #Cardiff teenager @naderi_bashir stay in UK pic.twitter.com/llueAkUAhS  Jo Stevens (@JoStevensLabour) January 6, 2017

Ms Stevens was joined at the Home Office in London on Friday by Mr Naderi, his girlfriend, Nicole Cooper, and her family, along with other supporters.

Mr Naderi, who lives in Cardiff, said he was just a normal student, living my own life before he was detained by the authorities in November but that the support he had received since was unbelievable.

He added that he never ever thought that I would go back to Afghanistan after fleeing the country aged 10 for his own safety.

Bashir Naderi speaks to the media (Kirsty O'Connor/PA)

Ms Cooper fought tears as she spoke after handing in the petition.

She said Mr Naderi was treated badly during his detention and added: Seeing him in like a prison  thats not the place you want to see your partner whos done nothing wrong. Its just heartbreaking and someone like Bash shouldnt have to go through things like this.

The college student arrived in the UK after his father was killed nine years ago and speaks no Afghan languages but was ordered for forced removal by the Home Office in November.

His deportation was put on hold after a stay of removal was obtained a few hours before he was due to board a flight to Kabul, and Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill is now considering whether to make a fresh case for deportation.

Ms Stevens accompanied Mr Naderi to the home Office (Kirsty O'Connor/PA)

Ms Stevens said she became involved in Mr Naderis case just a few days before he was due to be put on a plane.

She said: It seemed to me to be perverse that we welcome a child into the UK, hes integrated, learnt English, spent a very happy time with a foster mum, hes at the point in his life where hes finishing his college course and he could make a financial contribution to the country and yet the Home Office say that he should go back to Afghanistan where he has no family.

[Where] he is unable to communicate effectively or look after himself and he would be in severe danger so on a human level, never mind a political level I just thought it was very wrong.
Astronauts are carrying out a spacewalk to hook up new batteries on the International Space Stations sprawling power grid.

Commander Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson got a hand from a space station robot that took care of most of the grunt work.

Remotely using robotics aboard the 250-mile-high lab, flight controllers in Houston have spent the past week replacing decade-old, nickel-hydrogen batteries with better-charging lithium-ion ones.

Spacewalk (Nasa/PA)

.@AstroPeggy floats in space while tethered to the worksite where she'll retrieve adapter plates. https://t.co/Yauix4S2b6 pic.twitter.com/SKa9ZmqnXZ  International Space Station (@Space_Station) January 6, 2017

Handling all those batteries - each about half a refrigerator in size - was cumbersome and time-consuming.

On Friday, it was up to Mr Kimbrough and Ms Whitson to wire up the three new lithium-ion batteries, delivered last month by the Japanese. Spacewalkers will plug in three more next Friday in a long-term effort to energise the stations ageing solar power system.

.@AstroPeggy is starting her 7th spacewalk today (ties @Astro_Suni's record) and @Astro_Kimbrough is starting his third spacewalk. pic.twitter.com/BkhZxqYDNf  International Space Station (@Space_Station) January 6, 2017

Nasa expects it will take two to three years to change all 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries that make up the solar power system. The lithium-ion batteries are so efficient, only 24 will be needed, saving space for other cargo during supply runs.

The space stations robotic handyman, long-armed Dextre, removed the old batteries and popped in the new ones in a series of manoeuvres that began on New Years Eve. Dextre - short for dexterous - also loosened bolts holding down special metal plates that were launched with the new batteries.

Spacewalkers exit station hatch minutes after spacesuits turned on to battery power. pic.twitter.com/BYjy8EwSYq  International Space Station (@Space_Station) January 6, 2017

Nasas chief astronaut, Christopher Cassidy, said from Mission Control that sticky bolts often cause problems, so everyone was grateful to hand over the chore to Dextre.

Spacewalks are high-risk activities so reducing crew time outside is always preferable. Almost as a reminder, Mission Controls main contact for the spacewalkers was Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who nearly drowned in 2013 when his helmet flooded with water from his space suits cooling system. He directed Mr Kimbrough and Ms Whitsons every move.
A safari park which is home to the last elephant in Scotland has launched a search to find her a mate after the death of her long-term partner.

Mondula, 46, known as Mondy, has been with Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling, but has been left distraught after partner Toto died in March last year.

Large mammal keeper Lynn Wyllie gives Mondy a foot rub (Andrew Milligan/PA)

The pair had been together for 20 years, leaving a gap in Mondys life.

Park bosses have been keeping Mondy busy since her partners death but have now launched a search across Europe to find her a new companion.
England flanker James Haskell is poised to make his comeback after seven months on the sidelines when Wasps face Leicester on Sunday.

Haskell has been named on the bench for the Aviva Premiership showdown against the Tigers at the Ricoh Arena after completing his recovery from a toe injury that ended his summer tour to Australia.

The back row limped off towards the end of the series-clinching second Test in Melbourne and underwent surgery.

His return leaves him with three fixtures to prove his fitness ahead of the RBS 6 Nations opener against France on February 4, with Wasps also facing Toulouse and Zebre in the Champions Cup this month.

Haskell was instrumental in England completing an historic series victory on Australian soil, with a bone-jarring tackle on David Pocock the highlight of his two performances.

James Haskell helped England to Grand Slam success in the Six Nations during 2016

His availability could be well-timed, with Eddie Jones learning on Monday if Chris Robshaw, another key back row forward, can play any part in the Six Nations due to a shoulder problem.

Jones has received further good news with confirmation that Joe Launchburys calf problem is not as severe as first feared and he should be available for the entirety of Englands Grand Slam defence.

TEAM NEWS: Dai Young has named his side to face Leicester Tigers at the Ricoh Arena this Sunday, 8 January, kick off... Posted by Wasps Rugby on Friday, January 6, 2017

Launchbury went for a scan on Monday night and has been pencilled in for a return against Toulouse on Saturday week.

Joe looks like he isnt going to be fit against Leicester, but we dont see any reason why hes not going to be fit for Toulouse at this stage, Wasps director of rugby Dai Young said.

I dont pick the Six Nations squad obviously, but were expecting him to be fit for Wasps next week.
Little precedent, wide latitude for S.Korea court in impeachment trial

By Joyce Lee

SEOUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The South Korean court that will rule on the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye has only one precedent and little in the law books to go by, and several legal experts said it will have wide discretion in deciding if she is fit to remain in office.

Seven of nine experts interviewed by Reuters said they believed the Constitutional Court's yardstick in deciding whether Park should remain in office would be less than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for criminal trials, making it more difficult for her to win the case.

South Korean law does not specify the standard needed by the Constitutional Court to reach a ruling. It calls for criminal procedural law to be applied during an impeachment trial "at a level that does not clash with the nature of a constitutional trial".

Experts say this means that the Constitutional Court has discretion on deciding which part of criminal procedure it will apply, including whether to use a rigorous level of proof, a lower standard, or apply a rigorous standard for some deliberations and a lower standard for others.

Two experts, however, said a high standard would be needed to establish grounds for upholding impeachment.

Park, 64, was impeached by parliament last month over an influence peddling scandal. If the nine-judge Constitutional Court rules that she did allow a friend to have influence over state affairs, as alleged, and that it was an impeachable offence, she will be ousted, making her South Korea's first democratically elected leader to be forced from office.

"This is not a criminal trial, it's a constitutional trial deciding whether a president is no longer fit to carry out presidential duties," said Noh Hee-bum, a lawyer who worked as a Constitutional Court research judge from 1998 to 2015.

"Although it's not expressly stipulated in law, it is the prevailing view that the level of proof is not as severe."

That, some experts said, would make it more difficult for Park.

"The common view, a lower burden of proof, is comparatively unfavourable to Park than a higher burden of proof would be," said Koh Moon-hyun, a professor at the Soongsil University College of Law.

Park has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and her lawyers have argued that the case should be thrown out.

"In an impeachment proceeding, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is needed," her lawyer, Lee Joong-hwan, said in court on Tuesday, citing a publication by the research institute attached to the Constitutional Court.

"We can see that this means a rigorous level of proof is needed based on evidentiary principles of criminal procedure," he said.

The parliament's impeachment committee and its legal counsel, who are the prosecutors in the case, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Two sessions of the trial have been held this week and Park did not attend, as expected. Lee said he believes she will not appear, barring special circumstances. The court can take several months to deliver a ruling.

FRIEND AND HER DAUGHTER

Park is accused of violating her constitutional duty by allowing her friend Choi Soon-sil to wield undue influence over state affairs and colluding with her to pressure big businesses into making contributions to foundations and enterprises backed by Choi.

Choi is in custody as she undergoes criminal trial for abuse of power and fraud, while her daughter, 20-year-old equestrian competitor Chung Yoo-ra, has been detained by police in Denmark and faces extradition proceedings after being charged with "committing economic crime" in South Korea.

Both have denied any wrongdoing.

In South Korea's only previous presidential impeachment, the Constitutional Court overturned a 2004 parliamentary impeachment of then-President Roh Moo-hyun.

The 2004 case mainly involved Roh's public comments supporting a political party as an election loomed, which the court said violated a law requiring government officials to be politically neutral but was not serious enough to warrant impeachment. The judges voted 6 to 3 to overturn that motion.

In that decision, the court cited five examples of grounds for impeachment, and experts said the impeachment committee is likely to argue in favour of at least three of them in Park's case - "acts of corruption," "harming the national interest" and "violating the people's basic rights".

As the only precedent, the Constitutional Court is expected to closely adhere to the logic of the 2004 ruling - especially on what constitutes grounds for impeachment, experts said.

Lee In-ho, a professor at Chung-Ang University School of Law, said although the level of proof required to convince the judges was not expressly spelled out in law, a high standard would be needed.

"In 2004, the Constitutional Court ruled that if facts do not verify that the president directed, abetted or otherwise unlawfully participated in the act in question, it is not grounds for impeachment," Lee said. "I believe the judges will decide that a rigorous level of proof similar to a criminal trial is needed."

For the impeachment to stand, at least six of the nine judges must rule in favour of it.

The terms of two of them are set to expire soon - one on Jan. 31 and the other on March 13 - potentially leaving just seven judges, the minimum required. If the case goes past March 13, that could work in Park's favour because the number of judges needed to uphold impeachment remains at six.
Brittle Kosovo, Serbia ties feel strain over ex-PM's arrest

By Fatos Bytyci

PRISTINA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Brittle diplomatic ties between Serbia and Kosovo came under further strain on Thursday in a row over international arrest warrants issued by Belgrade for former Kosovar guerrillas, including an ex-premier detained in France.

Ramush Haradinaj, a guerrilla commander during the 1998-99 war against Serbian rule who served briefly as prime minister in 2004 and 2005, was arrested on Wednesday and remanded in prison by a French court on Thursday.

Kosovo asked the European Union on Thursday to press Serbia to drop the warrants against him and others, and angry government and opposition leaders in Pristina called for a halt to EU-mediated normalisation talks between Belgrade and its former, mainly ethnic Albanian province.

The talks are a precondition for both countries to make progress towards membership of the bloc.

As Serbia - which still formally considers Kosovo part of its territory - confirmed it would seek Haradinaj's extradition, Kosovo cancelled a visit by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to a mainly ethnic Serb town in Kosovo scheduled for Friday, the eve of Christian Orthodox Christmas Day.

A Serbian government official who asked not to be named said Nikolic's forward team was "harassed" at the border crossing and could not perform necessary security checks.

"The visit will not proceed as planned, this is likely related to the Haradinaj arrest," the official said.

Serbia has charged him with murders of Serbs in the late 1990s war, while the majority of Kosovo's 1.8 million population are opposed to any trials of ex-guerrillas they see as freedom fighters.

A security source in Pristina told Reuters that, in all, there were currently around 20 Kosovo citizens subject to Interpol Red Notice arrest warrants - mainly ex-members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that fought Serbian security forces.

Kosovo's minister in charge of the EU-brokered dialogue with Serbia, Edita Tahiri, said she had written to Brussels asking it to use its leverage to make Serbia withdraw the arrest warrants.

"With these primitive acts, Serbia is not only hurting the spirit of the dialogue to have good neighbourly relations, but is proving that it is a destabilising factor in the whole region, and international partners should be seriously worried," Tahiri told local media.

Serbia hopes to complete accession talks with the EU by 2020. Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, has signed a trade and association pact with the EU but remains far from membership due to serious corruption and organised crime.

FRANCE TO STUDY EXTRADITION REQUEST

Haradinaj appeared late on Thursday at the appeals court in Colmar, eastern France, which ruled he would remain in prison until Serbia made a formal request for his extradition. That would then be studied by the relevant institution, the court said.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday that, if France did not extradite Haradinaj, West European states should stop "patronising" Serbia about judicial reforms it had undertaken to help qualify for EU accession.

After his stints as premier, Haradinaj was tried and acquitted twice of war crimes at a U.N. tribunal in The Hague. At the time, Kosovo was a ward of the United Nations.

The war ended after NATO bombed Serbia for 11 weeks to compel it to withdraw forces who had killed some 10,000 Albanian civilians in counter-insurgency operations.

In June 2015 Haradinaj, now an opposition party leader, was arrested by Slovenian police but freed after two days following diplomatic pressure.

Around 130,000 people were killed in a decade of conflict following the break-up of old federal Yugoslavia, and its successor states were loath to prosecute their own ethnic kin.

Western governments that believed prosecutions of all sides were needed to bring reconciliation and stability to the region and move it closer to the EU set up two international criminal courts - one for former Yugoslav republics (ICTY) such as Bosnia, and one for Kosovo, both based in The Hague.
Pakistani province launches app for women to report harassment

By Waqar Mustafa

LAHORE, Pakistan, Jan 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A smartphone application enabling women to report incidents of harassment to police in Pakistan's Punjab province went live this week as authorities step up efforts to promote women's safety in one of the worst provinces for crimes against them.

With a click of a button, users who feel threatened can call an emergency response police team who should be able to track their location via a built-in global positioning system (GPS).

"Though the app primarily covers street harassment, it also has a feature for woman who is inside the house and is suffering physical violence to call for help," said Fauzia Viqar, chair of the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women, a body promoting women's rights, which was involved in the launch of the app on Thursday.

She said users can also use the app to mark unsafe locations and access a toll-free helpline which provides information on laws to protect women's rights among other services.

Domestic abuse, economic discrimination and acid attacks make Pakistan the world's third-most-dangerous country for women, a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll showed.

About 500 women are killed in Pakistan every year at the hands of relatives over perceived damage to family "honour" that can involve eloping, fraternising with men or any other infraction against conservative values.

A study by the Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani women's rights group, in 2013 found that Punjab province alone accounted for 5,800 crimes against women - 74 percent of crimes against women in the whole of Pakistan.

Women's rights campaigners welcomed the launch of the app but expressed concern not all women would have access to it.

"It can ensure timely rescue. But it may not be effective in rural areas where people are generally poor and do not have smartphone," said Romana Bashir, who heads women's rights organisation, the Peace and Development Foundation.

She also said there was a need to raise awareness among police officers of violence against women.

"We often have complaints of police themselves sometimes misbehaving with the complainants of harassment. They need to be educated on gender issues so that women trust them," Bashir told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Last year, the province of Punjab, Pakistan's largest, passed a law giving legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence.
Gap bucks trend with surprise December comparable sales rise

Jan 5 (Reuters) - Gap Inc reported a surprise rise in December comparable sales, and said it expected 2016 profit to be above the higher end of forecast, in sharp contrast to weak holiday sales from department store operators and some apparel retailers.

Shares of the company, which benefited from strong demand for its Gap and Old Navy brands, were up 8 percent at $25.14 in after-market trading on Thursday.

The company has been revamping the Gap and Banana Republic brands, looking to replicate the success of the low-end Old Navy apparel.

Comparable sales of its signature Gap brand rose 1 percent in December, compared with a two percent decline a year earlier.

Old Navy brand sales rose 12 percent, compared with a 7 percent fall a year earlier.

The company's comparable sales rose 4 percent in December, while analysts on average had expected a 0.7 percent decline.

"If you look back in the past few months, September was down 10 percent, October was down seven and November was down three... they have actually been working towards improvement," Instinet analyst Simeon Siegel told Reuters.

"This is the quarter where they pushed to positive," he said.

Gap and other traditional apparel chains have been struggling with the growing popularity of online retailers and fast-fashion chains such as H&M, Forever 21 and Inditex's Zara, which are known for offering trendier clothes at cheaper prices.

Gap, which is also shutting stores and reducing overhead costs, said it now expected full-year 2016 adjusted profit to be modestly above the higher end of the previously forecast range of $1.87-$1.92 per share.

Department store chains Macy's Inc and Kohl's Corp both cut their 2016 profit forecasts on Wednesday, after their holiday season sales fell more than expected.
When the news broke Tuesday that Megyn Kelly was leaving the Fox News bubble to pursue a broader audience at NBC, my initial thought was: Who cares? Talking heads frequently switch networks, and Americans increasingly get their news not from TV, but from social media sites.

But Kellys imminent move is huge because its Kelly. The very fact that NBC covets her polarizing brand is vivid evidence of how profoundly the broadcast media has changed since the kinder, gentler era of Uncle Walter Cronkite.

Back then, long before cable news and the Internet, the TV anchorman (always a man) was broadly and implicitly trusted across the political spectrum. In the words of journalist-historian David Halberstam, the anchorman represented in a real way the American center ... a mass figure who held centrist attitudes for a mass audience. But today, the mass audience has been fractured and narrowcasted to the point where its difficult to locate even a shrunken American center.

Years ago, a commercial network would never have pitched an eight-digit annual salary to someone like Megyn Kelly, whose every utterance infuriates millions of viewers.

But in the current environment, NBC is fine with hiring someone who declared on air (in 45 segments) that the New Black Panthers were a major public menace, and that it was a verifiable fact that Santa Claus and Jesus were white (Santa is fictional, and scholars say that Jesus was of Mediterranean stock and looked like todays average Palestinian).

Its noteworthy that after the news of her hiring broke yesterday, Kellys Facebook page was flooded with denunciations from both ends of the spectrum.

Thats de rigueur for any anchorperson in our wildly disputatious nation  Uncle Walter would be shocked  but even more so for Kelly. Left-leaning critics called her a front of right-wing disinformation, and attacked NBC for rewarding her. But right-wing critics called her a fake conservative whod sold out to the enemy.

Many in the conservative camp have long been mad at Kelly. They fumed when she questioned Donald Trump, during the first Republican debate, about his misogynist history; when she told Newt Gingrich that he needed to work on his anger issues; when she confronted Dick Cheney over his horrific Iraq track record (You got it wrong); when she tore into a male guest who called paid maternity leave a racket (her retort: What a moronic thing to say). Theyve long been ticked off that liberal commentators have praised Kelly as Fox News lone sane anchor.

Indeed, part of her appeal  at least for those outside the Fox bubble  was that she seemed far more professional than the bloviating mouth-breathers (OReilly, Hannity) who bracketed her evening show. How that appeal, and her polarizing past, translates to NBC is anyones guess.

Reportedly, shell try to soften her image by launching a daytime weekday show (in her words, a little Charlie Rose, a little Oprah, and a little me), but that format has been a graveyard for lots of TV personalities, and its debatable that anyone cares to watch her swap celebrity gossip.

She has also been tapped to launch a Sunday evening show to compete with 60 Minutes, but that aging audience seems intractably loyal.

She will reportedly join the NBC News team to cover major events, but that ensemble format (and the strong competing egos) could dilute her edgy brand.

But NBC is clearly hoping that Kelly can bring along some of her viewers  notably, Republican-leaning women  and thus broaden its ideological reach.

For a broadcast news division on the cusp of the Trump era, a news division widely tagged as liberal, hiring Kelly is probably smart. If she can boost the ratings by asking tough questions with a conservative sensibility, NBCs money would be well spent. After Kellys recent clash with Newt Gingrich, Trump social media director Dan Scavino tweeted a not-so-veiled threat: Watch what happens to her after this election is over. Well, now we know.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
Senior Russian officials in Vladimir Putin's inner circle were caught celebrating Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton by US intelligence agents, a report delivered to Barack Obama on Thursday revealed.

'People who knew what this was about were celebrating a victory over the United States,' said one of multiple US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The report - which will also be given to Trump on Friday - says that the CIA and others have concluded that Russia started out trying to undermine the election, then escalated to trying to actively help Trump win.

Vladimir Putin's inner circle celebrated after Donald Trump won the US election and were aware of hacks in intercepted messages, according to a newly released US intelligence report

The report says Russia started off trying to undermine the US political process but upgraded to actively trying to get Donald Trump into the White House using leaked emails from hacks

Intercepted messages also show Russian officials acknowledging a hacking campaign against Democrats, and identify the Russian officials who used third parties to pass stolen emails to WikiLeaks, the sources said.

'By October, it had become clear that the Russians were trying to help the Trump campaign,' said one official familiar with the Top Secret-classified full report.

In some cases, one official said, the material followed what was called 'a circuitous route' from the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, to WikiLeaks.

That was apparently an attempt to make the origins of the material harder to trace, a common practice used by all intelligence agencies, including US ones.

These handoffs, the officials said, enabled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to say the Russian government or state agencies were not the source of the material published on his website.

In an interview with Fox News this week, Assange denied that emails stolen from the DNC, and Clinton aide John Podesta, came from 'a state party.'

When asked by Sean Hannity if he could '1,000 per cent' confirm Russia did not give him the emails, he said: 'Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.'

He did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange claims he didn't get the Democrats' emails from Russia, but report allegedly identifies Russian officers who used third parties to get them into Assange's hands

The report contains some of what the officials called 'minor footnotes' about open questions and other uncertainties, in part because some of the evidence supporting the conclusion is inferential.

One example of the inferential evidence was the Russian officials celebrating Trump's win.

Of course, Russia was always going to be more positive towards Trump than the hawkish Clinton, who was accused of meddling in Russian affairs several times by Putin when she was Secretary of State.

Trump, meanwhile, had repeatedly taken a soft tone with Putin throughout his election campaign, saying that he would welcome an opportunity for the countries to work together.

And he had made positive remarks about Putin long before he made his election push. In 2013 he tweeted: 'Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?'

Trump has long had a much more rosy view of Putin (as in this 2013 tweet) than Hillary Clinton, who was accused several times of meddling in Russian affairs when she was State Secretary

Another example of inferential evidence, the officials said, was that as time passed the Russians increasingly focused their hacking 'almost exclusively' on Democratic rather than Republican targets.

That occurred after early leaks attracted media attention that undermined or eclipsed Clinton's campaign, they said.

There was also a strong resemblance between the US hacks and those Russians have made against European targets, including the use of the same computer malware.

According to NBC sources, the Top Secret report goes on to say that the Russian hacks were not just against the DNC, but also the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and American corporations.

Some of them were successful, it says; others were not. Some of the activity by Russia against the US also goes back as far as 2008.

As well as undermining the US political process, the hacks were also intended to punch back at Barack Obama for questioning Putin's legitimacy as President of Russia.

It doesn't go as far as to say that the Democrat hacks actually swayed the election, however.

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, said Thursday that he was 'even more resolute' in believing Russia staged the cyber attacks during the election

Details of the report emerged as the top US intelligence official, James Clapper, said on Thursday he was 'even more resolute' in his belief that Russia staged cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.

The report also suggested that Putin has devoted increasing time and resources to marrying internet vulnerabilities with traditional Russian and Soviet tactics like blackmail and bribery.

That could be a concern as the Democratic databases and email servers the Russians hacked also contained personal information that WikiLeaks has not published.

Such information could be used to search for financial, medical, browsing history and other records that can be used to target individuals for recruiting efforts by Russian spies.

Trump has rejected the broad intelligence community's assessment that Russia staged cyber attacks during the election campaign to undermine Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

He also attacked NBC for airing a story about the report on Thursday night, Tweeting: 'How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!'

Russia has also rejected the hacking allegations.

Not all of the 17 intelligence agencies participated in preparing the assessment.
Trade min Seko says Japan will keep contributing to US employment

TOKYO, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Japan's trade minister Hiroshige Seko said on Friday that Japanese companies have and will continue to contribute to employment in the United States.

In a regular press conference after a cabinet meeting, he said it is important for Japan's auto industry to gain understanding of its strong efforts to contribute to the U.S. economy.
Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on January 6

PRAGUE, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 1 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA========================== Real-time economic data releases.................... Summary of economic data and forecasts........... Recently released economic data.................. Previous stories on Czech data............. **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/2E/events-overview ==========================NEWS================================== DELISTING: Pegas Nonwovens, maker of artificial textiles used mainly for diapers, says plans to delist from Warsaw stock exchange. Story: Related stories: CARS: Czech new car registrations rose 12.5 percent in 2016 to a record of 259,693 vehicles, the Car Importers' Association said on Thursday. Story: Related stories: CEE MARKETS: Hungarian stocks hit another all-time high on Thursday, the fourth record in as many sessions, on the back of a strong showing by drug maker Richter, which said it planned to boost its global standing after a strong year last year. Story: Related stories: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2017 vs Euro 27.016 26.983 -0.12 -0.03 vs Dollar 25.524 25.803 1.08 0.48 Czech Equities 934.07 934.07 -0.01 1.35 U.S. Equities 19,899.29 19,942.16 -0.21 0.69 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1600 GMT ==========================PRESS DIGEST======================== TAXES: Finance Minister Andrej Babis wants to lower taxes, especially the vaule-added tax (VAT), cut dividend tax and also decrease the payments into the welfare system. However, any change is possible only for the next government, Babis said, because the current coalition agreed that taxation can be adjusted only if all three members agree to it - Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka's Social Democrats are against tax cuts. Hospodarske Noviny, page 1 PROPERTY: Social Democrats' headquarters, Lidovy Dum in downtown Prague, has been blocked by a court in connection with a 337-million debt the ruling party of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka owes to the late lawyer Zdenek Altner. E15, page 1 (Reuters has not verified the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy.) For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX For updates on CEE currencies TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets Prague Newsroom: +420 224 190 477 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
Bangladesh police kill prime suspect in July cafe attack

By Serajul Quadir

DHAKA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Bangladeshi police shot dead two Islamist militants on Friday in a gunfight in Dhaka, including a prime suspect in the killing of 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, in a cafe in the capital last year.

Nurul Islam Marjan, 30, a commander of a splinter group of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was killed along with another suspected militant, Saddam Hossain, 35, the chief of Dhaka's counter-terrorism police, Monirul Islam, said.

Marjan was on a police wanted list for his role in the attack on the cafe last July, which raised alarm over the rising threat of Islamist militancy and cast a shadow over foreign investment in the poor Muslim-majority country.

Hossain was a "leader of killers in most of the sensitive killings in the northern region including a Japanese citizen", Home Minister Asaduzzamn Khan said.

Kunio Hoshi, 65, of Japan, was attacked in 2015 by unidentified assailants in Rangpur district, 335 km (210 miles) north of Dhaka and died on the way to hospital.

Attacks on foreigners are rare in Bangladesh. But it has seen a rising tide of Islamist violence over recent years, in which online critics of religious militancy have been hacked to death.

So far police have hunted down and killed at least 40 suspected militants linked to the cafe attack.

Police have attributed several attacks over the past two years to JMB, which says it is affiliated to Islamic State although the government insists Islamic State has no presence in Bangladesh.
Tanzania tourist arrivals rise 10.4 pct in 10 months to October

DAR ES SALAAM, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The number of tourists visiting Tanzania rose 10.4 percent in the 10 months to October compared with the same period last year, the finance and planning ministry said on Friday, despite higher prices for some attractions.

Tourism is the main source of foreign currency in Tanzania, best known for its beaches, safaris and Mount Kilimanjaro.

As part of an initiative to boost revenue, the government lifted an 18-percent VAT exemption in July on some tourist attractions, including wildlife park entry.

Tour operators had opposed the tax, saying it would stifle the tourism sector which employs more than 500,000 people.

However, arrivals increased to 1,020,816 in the most recent period, according to the ministry of finance and planning.

Tanzania made $2.23 billion in 2015 from 1.1 million tourist arrivals, a slight decrease from 1.14 million arrivals in 2014.

"Claims that tourists have run away from Tanzania because of the introduction of value added tax (VAT) on some tourism services are without merit," the ministry said in a report.
Disgruntled soldiers seize control of Ivory Coast's second city

By Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly

ABIDJAN, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Disgruntled soldiers demanding salary increases and the payment of bonuses seized control of Ivory Coast's second-largest city, Bouake, on Friday, according to the defence minister.

Ivory Coast - French-speaking West Africa's largest economy - has emerged from a 2002-2011 political crisis as one of the continent's rising economic stars.

However, the army, thrown together at the end of the conflict from a mixture of former rebel factions and government soldiers remains an unruly force riddled with internal divisions.

A statement from Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi read out on state-owned television said a group of soldiers had used their weapons to force their way into the military headquarters in Bouake soon after midnight and then made their demands.

"All soldiers are asked to remain calm and return to barracks so that lasting solutions can be found," it said.

Heavy gunfire was heard from around 2 a.m. (0200 GMT) in Bouake - a city of around a half million inhabitants in the centre of Ivory Coast - and sporadic shooting continued into the late morning.

Bouake was the seat of a rebellion that controlled the northern half of the country from 2002 until Ivory Coast was reunited following a civil war in 2011.

Shooting also broke out mid-morning at a military base in Daloa, the main trading hub in the western cocoa belt, and residents said soldiers, some of them masked, were patrolling the streets in 4x4s.

Cocoa prices rose as the unrest prompted a wave of buying.

Military sources had said demobilised combatants - mainly former rebels from the decade-long conflict - were behind the uprising, during which weapons were looted from Bouake's police stations. But authorities and a lawmaker later blamed soldiers on active duty.

"None of them are demobilised fighters," said Bema Fofana, a member of parliament representing Bouake who spoke to several of the soldiers. "There are fewer than 200 of them that I saw."

Fofana said the soldiers had said they were demanding 5 million CFA francs ($8,000) each, as well as a house.

"ON ALERT"

The soldiers set up positions at entry points into the city and blocked at least one road. Footage from state-owned RTI television showed a pick-up truck laden with soldiers racing through mostly empty streets.

A helicopter, which residents said was from Ivory Coast's U.N. peacekeeping mission, buzzed overhead.

An army officer who was not part of the mutiny said there were many rebel soldiers at the north and south entrances to the city. "We are on alert and await instructions from the hierarchy," he said by telephone from Bouake.

He added that the mutineers had taken the second in command at Bouake's main military base hostage.

Residents stayed home and businesses remained closed.

"The city is deserted," said Ami Soro, a teacher living in Bouake. "Men in balaclavas are patrolling the city on motorcycles or in cars. They aren't attacking residents ... They told us to stay at home."

An officer at Ivory Coast's military headquarters in the commercial capital Abidjan said reinforcements had been sent, adding: "The situation remains unstable and serious in Bouake."

A similar uprising occurred in 2014, when hundreds of soldiers barricaded roads in several cities and towns across the country demanding payment of back wages.
Brazil gang kills 31, many hacked to death, as prison violence explodes

By Pedro Fonseca and Brad Brooks

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Jailed members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang killed 31 inmates at a penitentiary on Friday, decapitating and cutting out the hearts of most of them, in revenge for a separate prison massacre that left 56 dead this week.

The bloodletting in the Monte Cristo prison in the Amazonian state of Roraima, carried out by members of the First Capital Command (PCC) gang, sparked fears that months of violence between criminal groups controlling Brazil's prisons had spiraled out of control.

The PCC itself was targeted on Sunday in neighboring Amazonas state in Brazil's worst prison slaughter in more than two decades.

In a cellphone video that circulated widely on social media, self-described PCC members are seen hacking away at bodies littering an outdoor patio inside the prison.

"You killed our brothers, didn't you? Look here, look what is going to happen you! This is revenge for what you did to our brothers," a PCC member is heard saying on the video as dozens of bodies lie in thick pools of blood.

One victim, bare-chested and wearing sky-blue surfer shorts, began to move on the ground. The inmate taking the video calls out to fellow gang members "We've got a live one!" before another gang member rushes over and cuts off the victim's head with a white-handled barbecue knife.

State officials said the riot in Roraima's largest prison was brought under control by elite police forces. Earlier, authorities put the death toll at 33 but by Friday evening lowered that figure to 31 dead. Violence between rival drug gangs at the same jail had already led to 10 deaths in October.

Roraima's top security official Uziel de Castro blamed Friday's violence at the state-run prison on the PCC. He later added that it was believed most of the inmates killed Friday were not members of the group responsible for this week's attack on the PCC in Amazonas and indeed had no gang affiliations.

Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes insisted that the government had control over Brazil's prison system - the fourth largest in world and home to more than 620,000 inmates.

Security experts had predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled penitentiaries in the wake of Monday's massacre.

"It's getting really ugly. This situation is clearly snowballing and there is nothing the government can do to stop the violence in the short term," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Sao Paulo.

"We are paying the price for 50 years of total neglect of the penitentiary system."

UNEASY ALLIANCE

In Monday's uprising, PCC members were attacked by the North Family drug faction, which controls the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas, according to officials. North Family is believed to dominate cocaine traffic in Amazonas from Colombia and Peru, according to authorities.

The group is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after PCC.

For more than two decades, PCC and Red Command maintained an uneasy alliance, ensuring that a steady flow of drugs and guns flowed across Brazil's long jungle border.

But about six months ago PCC and Red Command split, as PCC moved to take control of lucrative drug routes across the border with Paraguay and become Brazil's dominant gang.

Experts say PCC also has been moving to infiltrate areas in Red Command's home base of Rio de Janeiro, further stoking a turf war that threatens to spill onto the streets of Brazil's biggest cities.

Since the split, Red Command has allied itself with smaller regional gangs to confront PCC, primarily in the north and northeast of Brazil, where prison violence boiled over this week.

Alcadipani, the public security expert, said Brazil's penitentiary system has been "self-regulated" by the gangs and that mass killings were rare until recent months because of a truce between the country's biggest criminal factions.

"But we see that as soon as we have a gang war, these killings are inevitably going to happen because the state has no control over the prisons," said Alcadipani.
Oil bonuses an early sign Uganda suffering resource "curse", say critics

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Hefty bonuses paid to Ugandan officials who oversaw tax dispute settlements with international oil firms are a sign hydrocarbon discoveries are increasing corruption in the country, government opponents and transparency campaigners said.

Commercial production is due to start in 2020 and some campaign groups are warning Uganda is already suffering the resource "curse", in which a rush of petro-dollars suffocates the rest of the economy, encourages graft and stirs unrest.

Uganda first discovered oil more than a decade ago but production has been stalled by lengthy rows between government and oil companies over tax payments and infrastructure.

Local media reported some 40 senior officials in the impoverished country's tax agency, energy, finance and justice ministries received bonuses, some exceeding $100,000.

"This is nothing but the beginning of the resource curse," said Dickens Kamugisha, chief executive officer at African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO).

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), which paid the officials, said the bonuses were legal.

A first tax row erupted in 2010 between President Yoweri Museveni's government and Heritage Oil after the firm sold its stake in two oil blocks to its then partner, Tullow Oil. The government netted $434 million after arbitration.

In a second case, Tullow disputed a Uganda tax assessment of $473 million against its asset sale to China's CNOOC and France's Total in 2012. Tullow paid $250 million in an out-of-court settlement in 2015, nearly half of what was originally claimed.

The URA said in a statement that the payouts were to "appreciate the professionalism and ... ability to resist all pressure and compromise given the magnitude of the figures involved."

About 6 billion shillings ($1.66 million) were paid out in total to officials who included the head of the URA, the Treasury's top technocrat and a former attorney general.

Ugandans have expressed anger at the payments on social media and on radio talk shows, asking why well paid civil servants had to be rewarded for doing their job.

Independent legislator Wilfred Niwagaba told Reuters he planned to introduce a parliamentary motion on Jan. 10 demanding the bonuses be returned and the recipients prosecuted.

"This is contemptuous abuse of public funds. How do you talk of bonus payments as if government is now a profit-making company. We're staring a resource curse in the face," Niwagaba said.
Namibians sue Germany in U.S. over early-1900s genocide

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Descendants of the Herero and Nama people from what is now Namibia are suing Germany in the United States over a genocide carried out by German colonial troops in the early 1900s, in which more than 100,000 people were killed.

According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Germany has excluded the plaintiffs from talks with Namibia on the matter, and has publicly said any settlement will not include reparations to victims' families, even if compensation is awarded to Namibia itself.

"There is no assurance that any of the proposed foreign aid by Germany will actually reach or assist the minority indigenous communities that were directly harmed," the plaintiffs' lawyer Ken McCallion said in an email.

"There can be no negotiations or settlement about them that is made without them."

The proposed class-action lawsuit seeks unspecified sums for thousands of the victims' descendants for the "incalculable damages" that were caused.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said on Friday that Berlin had acknowledged the genocide and that the two governments had been in talks for just under two years about how to describe and deal with Germany's past criminal actions.

German development aid to Namibia was already at nearly "world record" levels on a per capita basis but the inter-governmental discussions could lead to potential additional payments, he said.

Germany had "good reasons" for not negotiating directly with the Namibian groups involved, Schaefer told a regular government news conference, without elaborating. He said Berlin learned of the lawsuit only through news reports.

The genocide took place from roughly 1904 to 1908, when Namibia was a German colony known as German South-West Africa, after the Herero and Nama groups rebelled against German rule.

According to many published reports, victims were also subjected to harsh conditions in concentration camps, and some had their skulls sent to Germany for scientific experiments.

Some historians view what occurred as the 20th century's first genocide, and a 1985 United Nations report said the "massacre" of Hereros qualified as a genocide.

Germany has already paid victims of the Holocaust during which the Nazis killed, among others, about six million Jews.

The plaintiffs, including some from New York, on Thursday sued under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 U.S. law often invoked in human rights cases.
Dear Editor:

Many critics of President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, root their denunciations in the senators checkered experience as an Alabama prosecutor  including his opposition to the Voting Rights Act and racist comments  yet fail to acknowledge his recent record in Congress.

Particularly concerning to those across the political spectrum should be civil asset forfeiture and the stance Sessions holds on this issue.

Civil asset forfeiture is the practice whereby law enforcement agencies confiscate the property of individuals suspected of illegal activity without due process. Through asset forfeiture the federal government seizes wealth and increases government revenues in exorbitant amounts.

A Washington Post Wonkblog post from 2014 compared forfeiture deposits to burglary losses in 2014 and found that the United States government deposited more than $5 billion in asset forfeiture funds while burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion. The article concluded that law enforcement agencies took more from individuals than did burglars!

When examining the subject of civil asset forfeiture in a 2015 Senate Judiciary hearing, Sessions espoused his defense. He claimed he was very unhappy with criticism of the program and that taking and seizing and forfeiting, through a government judicial process, illegal gains from criminal enterprises is not wrong.

When one considers this along with the senators racially inflammatory statements, stances on criminal justice and drug reform, inability to secure a federal judgeship, and support for government surveillance it becomes apparent that the gentlemen from Alabama is in no way fit to lead the department responsible for administering justice.

As such, I ask my fellow citizens to join me in voicing opposition to this nomination by contacting Sen. Toomey and Sen. Casey today.

Jeff Stuby

Carlisle
Air strike in Syria kills jihadist, group says

BEIRUT, Jan 6 (Reuters) - An air strike in Syria killed a leading member of a major jihadist group and his son on Friday, his group said, in the second deadly air strike targeting the militant group this week.

The Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, previously known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, accused the U.S.-led military coalition of killing Sheikh Younes Shoueib, a member of its shura council, in a statement published on Telegram, a messaging service.

It did not say where he was killed. Fateh al-Sham is one of the most powerful rebel groups in the northwestern province of Idlib, where earlier this week some two dozen people were killed in an air strike on one of its headquarters. The group also accused the U.S.-led coalition of carrying out that strike.
Syrian rebel official denies report of ceasefire near Damascus

AMMAN, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A senior Syrian rebel official denied a report on Friday that a ceasefire had been reached in the Wadi Barada area near Damascus where government forces and their allies are fighting rebels.

Munir Sayal, head of the political wing of the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, told Reuters the report carried by a media outlet run by Hezbollah was untrue.
Syrian rebels deny report of ceasefire near Damascus

AMMAN/BEIRUT, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A senior Syrian rebel official denied a report on Friday that a ceasefire had been reached between rebels and government forces in the Wadi Barada area near Damascus, where bombardments have knocked out the capital's main water source.

The government and allied fighters from the Lebanese group Hezbollah launched an attack two weeks ago to take back Wadi Barada where a spring provides supplies to four million people in the capital.

A military news outlet run by Hezbollah reported that a ceasefire had been reached for "a number of hours" in the area.

But Munir Sayal, head of the political wing of the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, told Reuters the report was "a lie".

He said that the government had on Thursday rejected a ceasefire that would have allowed for repairs to the water pumping station and for people to return to two nearby villages from which they had been displaced.

Rebels say the government bombed the water pumping station at the start of the campaign. The United Nations has said it was put of action by "deliberate targeting" but has declined to say which side was responsible.

The fighting in Wadi Barada has overshadowed a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey to pave the way to peace talks they hope to convene in Kazakhstan this month.

Syrian rebel groups said on Monday they had decided to freeze any talks about their possible participation in the negotiations unless the Syrian government and its Iran-backed allies end what they said were violations of the ceasefire.

"Iran and the Assad regime are exploiting the fragile ceasefire to seize liberated areas around the capital before the start of the Astana negotiations," Sayal said.
Ex-Republican Party head Barbour to lobby U.S. for Ukraine

By Mike Stone and Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Haley Barbour, former Republican Party leader and Mississippi governor, has been hired by the Ukrainian government to lobby U.S. politicians, according to documents filed this week.

The hiring of Barbour and his lobbying firm BGR Group comes at a time when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's public embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased worries in Washington that the new administration may side with Russia in the Ukrainian dispute.

Russia has increased its military presence in Ukraine since annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

Barbour and BGR agreed in late December to a $50,000 a month retainer to "design and implement a comprehensive government affairs and business development strategy" for the Ukraine government - including "arranging meetings" with U.S. officials, according to a disclosure filed Jan. 1 with the Department of Justice.

BGR also said in the federal disclosure filing that it "seeks to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations and encourage private U.S. businesses to invest in Ukraine."

American firms that do business with foreign governments are required to file disclosures with the Department of Justice detailing the work they agree to undertake and the amount of payment.

A BGR representative declined to elaborate on the specifics of the agreement.

Barbour, who served as head of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997, co-founded BGR in 1991. He continued to build an expansive lobbying operation after his term as Mississippi governor from 2004 to 2012.

Barbour considered running for president in 2012, but ultimately sat out the race.

Barbour and BGR have also done work for other foreign governments, including Kurdistan, India, South Korea and Bangladesh.
Turkey dismisses 6,000 more workers in post-coup crackdown

ANKARA, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Turkey dismissed more than 6,000 more police, civil servants and academics under emergency rule on Friday, continuing a purge in the wake of a failed coup last July, according to decrees issued in the Official Gazette.

The decrees ordered the dismissal of 2,687 police officers, 1,699 officials from the justice ministry, 838 from the health ministry, more than 630 academics and 135 officials from the religious affairs directorate.

They also stated that individuals overseas who are being sought by the Turkish authorities might have their citizenship removed if they fail to return within three months.

Some 120,000 people have been suspended or dismissed since the coup, although thousands of them have since been restored to their posts. More than 41,000 have been jailed pending trial out of 100,000 who have faced investigation.

Parliament, dominated by the ruling AK Party, voted this week to extend emergency rule by another three months in a move the government said was needed to sustain a purge of supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Turkey accuses Gulen and his network of followers, which it terms the Gulenist Terror Organisation (FETO), of being behind the July 15 coup attempt. Gulen denies the allegations.

Emergency rule enables the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms when deemed necessary. It was imposed after the attempted coup and then extended for a second three-month period in October.

Friday's decrees also give state-appointed administrators the right to sell companies they take over. Hundreds of firms, many of them smaller provincial businesses, have been seized in the post-coup crackdown.

One of the decrees allows private security guards to carry guns under certain conditions at work, an apparent response to a shooting claimed by Islamic State at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Day in which 39 people were killed.
U.S. housing regulator accuses Bank of America of bias in lending

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed charges on Friday against Bank of America and two of its employees, saying they wrongfully discriminated against prospective Hispanic mortgage borrowers in South Carolina.

HUD said it expects the case will be heard in federal court, where a judge could potentially order the bank to pay damages, attorneys fees or other relief. HUD filed the complaint in its Office of Administrative Law Judges.

A Bank of America spokesman strongly rejected HUD's claims.

"We are committed to fair lending principles and are proud to be one of the country's largest mortgage lenders to Hispanic borrowers," the spokesman, Terry Francisco, said.

The case against Bank of America was prompted by a complaint filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance.

The alliance raised concerns about possible discrimination, after it conducted a series of "tests" in February 2013 through January 2014 to compare how bank employees treated female Hispanic versus female non-Hispanic prospective borrowers in a Charleston-based branch of the bank.

This is not the first time that Bank of America has faced allegations of discrimination.

The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to let Miami pursue lawsuits accusing both Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co of engaging in predatory lending against black and Hispanic home buyers. The city accused the banks of steering those borrowers into higher-cost loans that they could not afford.

In the testing by the National Fair Housing Alliance in Charleston, South Carolina, the Hispanic borrowers were offered less favorable lending terms compared with the non-Hispanic borrowers and the bank was less prompt in helping connect the Hispanic borrowers with the loan officer, the testing found.

For instance, one non-Hispanic borrower received an estimate with lower closing costs and monthly payments, as well as an offer by the bank to pay $2,000 of her closing costs.

The Hispanic borrower, in contrast, would have faced higher monthly payments and did not receive a similar offer for the bank to cover her closing costs.
Recent media reports revealing that a $13.7 million USAID programme for democracy and accountability is to be implemented by a private US company alleged to have links to the CIA, raise several questions regarding the nature of the governments relationship with the US.

A leading newspaper cited on its January 2, 2017 edition that the US Embassy in Colombo confirming that the company Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) would work closely with the Parliament, Independent Commissions and related ministries to carry out the project. Another leading TV channel bulletins of 2, 3 and 4 Jan. 2017 also exposed the companys alleged links with the CIA.

An alarming aspect of the expose is that so few parliamentarians are even aware of the projects existence, leave alone details of the bilateral agreement signed by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya last September in Washington, with a government delegation. The Strengthening Democratic Governance and Accountability Project (SDGAP) as it is described, is not subject to Sri Lankan law but to the laws and regulations of the US, under the terms of the agreement. It does not come under the purview of Sri Lankas Auditor General - the Auditor Generals Department itself is apparently under scrutiny under another USAID (US Agency for International Development) project. It would be relevant to ask whether there has not been a serious dereliction of responsibility by political leaders, in allowing politically sensitive internal reforms to be outsourced in this manner to foreign agencies. The fact that the contractor has alleged links with funding the countrys intelligence agency makes matters worse.



The US embassy has said that USAID also has projects working with Parliamentary Committees on Public Accounts and Public Enterprises, the National Procurement Commission, and others to support transparency, accountability, and capacity development.



Ironically, interviews by the said TV channel news showed how uninformed government ministers were about this project meant to promote transparency and accountability. Minister of Public Administration and Management Ranjith Madduma Bandara denied the involvement of any American Company to train our officials, while Speaker Jayasuriya said he was unaware of DAIs alleged CIA links. Deputy Media Minister Karunasena Paranavitana at a press conference said that USAID was the implementing agency, and that maybe they were looking for a subcontractor. When a journalist persisted with questioning he agreed to look into the matter.



DAI is said to be one of the largest US government contractors in the world, particularly active in Latin America. Its subversive role in Venezuelan politics has been thoroughly documented by Eva Golinger in her 2005 book The Chavez Code  Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela. Golinger calls on Venezuela to expel DAI, which she describes as a CIA front and an organization dedicated to destabilizing governments unfavourable to US interests.



DAI was awarded a multi-million dollar budget from the USAID in Venezuela to assist civil society and the transition to democracy writes Golinger. More than 2,000 documents partially declassified from the USAID regarding the agencys activities in Venezuela reveal the relationship between the DAI and sectors of the Venezuelan opposition that have actively been involved in coup detats, violent demonstrations and other destabilization attempts against President Chavez (Chavezcode.com).



Explaining how the CIA operates abroad Golinger writes: The use of a chain of entities and agencies is a mechanism employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to channel and filter funding and strategic political support to groups and individuals that support US agenda abroad. The pretext of promoting democracy is a modern form of CIA subversion tactics, seeking to infiltrate and penetrate civil society groups and provide funding to encourage regime change in strategically important nations, such as Venezuela, with governments unwilling to subcomb (sic) to US dominance.

The role of the USAID in Sri Lanka today has undergone considerable change since it started operations in the1950s with the PL-480 food aid programme, with humanitarian overtones. With geographic location assuming importance in the power-games being played out in the region today, it would appear that strategic considerations have entered the equation in the USs engagement with the island.



USAIDs Asia Bureau Asst. Director Jonathan Strivers outlining budget priorities for 2017 opened his address to a US Congress Foreign Affairs subcommittee last year by referring to the role of the USAID in advancing US foreign policy goals in South Asia. In Sri Lanka he said that US support helped advance the reform, accountability and reconciliation agenda and that the USAID would be working with key institutions, including Parliament, the Judiciary, the Elections Commission and Auditor General.



These remarks show how USAIDs focus has shifted away from economic development. It is in the context of these changes that the aid agencys alleged collaboration with the CIA in Sri Lankan would need to be investigated. There have been numerous instances documented where the USAID projects were found to have had links with the CIA. Foreign Policy magazine of April 3, 2013 cites an explosive Associated Press investigation that revealed how the US covertly launched a fake Twitter platform in Cuba called ZunZuneo (referring to the Cuban hummingbirds tweet) with a view to sparking a Cuban Spring and bringing about the collapse of the islands communist government (U.S. Secretly Created Cuban Twitter to Stir Unrest- AP April 4, 2014).



Heres what FP further has to say about the murky side of USAIDs activities: Though better known for administering humanitarian aid around the world; the USAID has a long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the agency often partnered with the CIAs now-shuttered Office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in terror and torture techniques and encouraged official brutality, according to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report. The USAID officials have always denied these accusations but in 1973, Congress directed the USAID to phase out its public safety programme - which worked with the CIA to train foreign police forces - in large part because the accusations were hurting Americas public image.



USAID is perhaps the new CIA said Peter Kornbluh, Director of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University. Talking to Democracy Now about USAIDs fake Twitter operation he described how it was part of a broader US effort to use the Internet and social media to create a communications vehicle that could be used to spur unrest. And it was funded under a programme to promote democracy.

Does this all sound familiar?
Every government sans DS, SWRD and Chandrikas, had a de facto Super Minister in them. What Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe attempts is only to legitimize the position. Would this understanding be a therapy for the near-anarchic, twin control state of affairs, that reigns today?

During the reign of George I, the German King who ruled England in 1721, and did not speak Englishan appointment of a minister who knew both the languages as interpreter to cabinet became crucial. The term interpreter was too coarse to address a cabinet minister, hence it was agreed that Sir Robert Walpole, the minister [who was proficient in German] be assigned with the task , and to name him the Prime-Minister, introducing a new title to global Parliamentary democracy. Over the years gradually the monarchs powers were vested in the Prime Minister, making the king only a figurehead with PM wielding power in a cabinet of ministers. It is quite natural for the Maithri faction of SLFPers to raise concerns over the proposed Development [special provisions] Bill, fearing the idea as a smart manipulation by astute Wickremasinghe to weaken Executive Presidency through a transfer of powers to a Super-man. Further it could be seen as a remedy to obstacles in constitutional amendments.



The Bill is not to help create a Super Minister as claimed by the opposition; Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama speaking to media said on Friday. He added, the Bill is not to create a Super Minister and the Government opposes creating such a post. We are trying to introduce an agency where the ministries will also be allied to provide the necessary facilities. According to JO sources a section of this bill says that cases cannot be filed against the officials appointed to these agencies.



The governments move to create the post of Super Minister with omnipotent-like powers could even undermine the authority of President Maithripala Sirisena, the joint opposition said. This post will be vested with legal immunity, as per draft bill; therefore, if something goes wrong or the Super Minister makes an errant judgment, then no one will be able to take legal action against him.

Illegitimate Super-ministers of the pastFelix,



J R and Basil

DS Senanayake 1947-1952 and son Dudley in his two short-lived governments of 1952 and 1953, they did not groom a second-in-command or develop favourites. SWRD Bandaranaike followed in 1956 C P de Silva undisputedly occupied the number two slot, both in the SLFP and in the government, but did not enjoy any special powers.



However, in 1960, Sirimavo being a new-comer to politics obviously needed a trustworthy lieutenant  the ideal person she could not find within the party hierarchy; hence she was compelled to turn to the family. The Prime Minster Sirimavo engaged the services of her own brother Dr. Mackie Rattwatte as her Confidential Secretary and husbands cousins son, young advocate Felix Dias Banaranaike in to her cabinet and entrusted the Finance portfolio. The 29 year old brilliant lawyer remained the invincible Super-Minister during both the terms, 1960-64 and again from 1970-1977, wielding power and creating autocratic tendencies that led to the downfall of Sirimavo in 1977.



Sirimavos cabinet was more organized and less faction-ridden than SWRDs, but the chain of command of leadership within it was affected by the prominence enjoyed by Felix Dias, who had no parliamentary experience. Sirimavos reliance on Felix stemmed from personal reasonsimportance attached to kinship and the fact that he was the only debater of the first rank in the cabinet. The senior members like C P de Silva and Maithripala Senanayake with long record of parliamentary and cabinet experience were offended by the power and influence of Felix. So long as he won the confidence of the PM there was little that they could do to assert their own authority within. In addition to Minister of Finance, he also held the important portfolio of Deputy Minister to Sirimavos Defence and External Affairs. Like JRJ in presenting his 1962 budget he proposed a cut in rice subsidy. However opposition from sections within the government led to his resignation as Finance Minister.



JR Jayewardene

J.R. Jayewardene, the undisputed number two and the only contender for leadership demanded the creation of a special ministry called State for him with no specifically assigned tasks but with powers to interact/interfere with any ministry. Dudley Senanyake in 1965-1970, focused on agriculture sect, leaving the rest of the administration in the hands of JRJ the Super minister. Unlike in other two Super-ministers, JRJ enjoyed the luxury of having a close relationship with the head of the state only for a short time. Junius Richard, the orator stunned the world at San Franciscos Japanese Peace Treaty in September 1951, according to world headlines;



the young minister from Ceylon was mobbed by well-wishers who insisted on shaking hands. The voice of free Asia, eloquent, melancholy and strong with the lilt of an Oxford accent, dominated the conference todayNew York Times: Sep 6 1951.



But his loyalty to his leader and sincerity was questionable. JRs association with Esmond Wickremesinghe made the PM suspicious of his second in command. Dudley thought they were conspiring against him to take over the leadership. JRs own position within government and his once friendly position with Dudley Senanayake sharply deteriorated. This even led to a cabinet reshuffle in 1968. The PM took away the responsibilities of JR in Broadcasting without even discusing the matter with him and created a separate ministry to deal with the subject. The Super-minister status of JRJ lasted only three and a half years, whereas in the case of Felix and Basil they enjoyed it during the full terms of respective governments.



Basil Rajapaksa, the Super-Minister

Basil Rajapaksas extraordinary ministry did not make an issue with most of the critics of Super Ministry bill. Under the Rajapaksa regime Basil being the Economic development Minister acted as a super-minister interfering with every ministry. He was able to take decisive conclusions regarding the economy. All those who feel for the well-being of the UNP-SLFP unity government and the proponents of yahapalanaya must oppose the Super Ministry bill. If the leaders of it are allowed to indulge in self-aggrandizement, like Rajapaksa regime it will become extremely unpopular and collapse. It will definitely be the kiss of death for the alliance. If the powers of the President are going to be betrayed with the appointment of a super-minister, it will create a serious situation. An important responsibility of the Treasury to decide as to which investor should be given tax holidays and which investor should not would come under the Super-minister as per clauses already incorporated in the bill, means it obviously will exceed the authority exercised by Basil in the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime.



The only positive factor in it is the official introduction of the position, Super-minister; perhaps whoever it is, could match the record set by Sir Robert Walpole three centuries ago and Sri Lanka can reserve a folio in Guinness Book of Records!
Daily Mail/AFP/6 January 2017- Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group the Islamic State against his organization, in an audio message released Thursday.

In the message found and translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group, the Egyptian extremist accuses IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of slandering his group.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, is locked in a battle with the so-called Islamic State -- which sprang from its Iraqi faction -- for the leadership of a global jihad.

In his message, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Al-Baghdadi had alleged that Al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.
the state-owned Global Times warned that China would not stick rigidly to rules set out by the United Nations if the West and India do not do so either (GeoNews)

(Geo News), January 05, 2017 -Chinas state-owned media has warned New Delhi against its continued lust for long-range nuclear missiles, hinting that Beijing would help Pakistan achieve similar capabilities if the West continues to be indifferent to the India-Pakistan nuclear race.



In an editorial published Tuesday in its Chinese as well as its English edition, the state-owned Global Times warned that China would not stick rigidly to rules set out by the United Nations if the West and India do not do so either.



If the Western countries accept India as a nuclear country and are indifferent to the nuclear race between India and Pakistan, China will not stand out and stick rigidly to those nuclear rules as necessary. At this time, Pakistan should have those privileges in nuclear development that India has, said the newspaper, which is owned by Chinas official state-run Peoples Daily newspaper. The editorial said China was sincere in developing friendly ties with India, but that the country would not sit still if India goes too far.



New Delhi understands that it does little good to itself if the Sino-Indian relations are ruined by any geopolitical tricks... If the UN Security Council has no objection over this, let it be. The range of Pakistans nuclear missiles will also see an increase. If the world can adapt to these, China should too, it said.
Ministers Malik Samarawickrama (L) and Ravi Karunanayake at the media briefing.

Pic by Pradeep Pathirana

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe

China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH), the Chinese company with which government plans to enter into an agreement to develop Hambantota port, will still go ahead with the deal minus the 15,000 acres of industrial land, which would make the port viable, a high ranking government minister said yesterday.

Yes, they (land and the port) are not connected, Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama said in reply to a question by Mirror Business during a media briefing yesterday, which saw heated exchanges of words taking place between journalists and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake.

Adding to Samarawickramas comments, Karunanayake said the port and the industrial zones would be developed by two separate companies. That is the distortion which is going around, Karunanayake noted.

However, all Chinese companies conducting development work in Sri Lanka are owned or ultimately controlled by the Chinese government. The development of the port and industrial zones are expected to bring in nearly US $ 10 billion in foreign direct investment.

The comments by the two ministers however appear confusing, at least on the surface, since a fortnight ago Samarawickrama had said that the only reason why the Chinese would be able to make the loss-making, volume-low Hambantota Port profitable was by creating trade volumes through the industrial zones in Hambantota, where products can be manufactured cheaper than in China.

To make the port viable, we need to manufacture goods. They (CMPH) cant sit around doing nothing. Ships need to come, goods need to be traded. So we are creating special industrial zones to manufacture export products to create trade, he had said. The government is hoping to transfer 80 percent of the Hambantota Port shares to CMPH for US$ 1.12 billion for a period of 99 years in order to repay expensive debt and support fragile foreign reserves, and allocate 15,000 acres for China to develop three industrial zones in the Hambantota, Moneragala and Matara districts.

Civil society groups and prelates of some of the leading Buddhist sects this week have expressed their opposition to providing land to China.

Residents near the port have also protested recently in fear of the government expropriating their land.

However, Samarawickrama yesterday reaffirmed that 95 percent of the lands for the industrial zones are state-owned, and the remaining 5 percent would be purchased at a fair price, after cordial negotiations.

He added that the plans for the industrial zones, which he had last month said would create 400,000 jobs for Sri Lankans, are still in the conceptual stage, but that one Chinese company has already agreed to create a joint venture vehicle for the zones.

Meanwhile, Samarawickrama asserted that the signing of the three agreements to transfer ownership of the Hambantota Port will be completed in one or two weeks and that there is no delay. He had a fortnight ago said that the government is hoping to sign the agreements by 7th or 8th, which Cabinet Spokesman Minister Rajitha Senaratne too had confirmed this week, which Samarawickrama denied yesterday.

I did not say that the agreement would be signed on January 7th. I said that the agreements would be signed in the month of January. It would take one or two weeks more, he said. However, minutes later he said, We are hoping to finish everything before end of January, but of course it depends on the discussions and whether we can come to an agreement. We dont want to rush anything, but we want to take our time and make sure we have a proper agreement.
With the dawn of the New Year and President Maithripala Sirisenas third year in office, the government seems to instill more hopes into the people by launching its development plans, despite it sustaining a heavy blow with the defeat of the Development (Special Provisions) Bill in eight out of nine provincial councils at the end of the just concluded 2016.



Apart from the ambitious development plans that are being placed before the country, the government hopes to introduce a new Constitution during the year through a Constitutional Assembly process mainly in order to democratize society, rid the polity of corruption and bring in reconciliation in the country that had been ravaged by a thirty year ethnic war. However, the government has to continue this process with a damaged credibility in the light of many incidents that occurred during the first two years of the Presidents rule.



Interestingly, Sri Lanka has brought in either total or partial Constitutional changes whenever it was able to muster the two thirds Parliamentary power. However, the last three Constitutional amendments, namely the 17th, 18th and the 19th amendments, in a way, were forced down into some of those voted for them in the Parliament. Hence, some politicians who supported the institution of independent commissions through the 17th Amendment to the Constitution ludicrously voted for the 18th Amendment to abolish those very commissions and the 19th Amendment that reinstituted them.



With Britain granting Independence to Sri Lanka along with many of its past colonies, the country had seen three new Constitutions  in 1947, 1972 and 1978- for the past 68 years, whereas America and India saw only one each for the past 219 years and 65 years respectively.The short lives of the Sri Lankan Constitutions could be attributed to the efforts by the Sri Lankan Constitution makers to address the immediate needs of the incumbent rulers rather than to plan the future governance considering the evolution of the local and international political, economic and cultural situations.

The 16 amendments to the second republican Constitution of 1978 by the J.R. Jayawardene government in just ten years until that government lost its two thirds majority power clearly points to the shortsighted handling of the basic law of the country by its rulers.



The 1947 Constitution that was drafted by the colonial rulers in line with their outlook and future plans had been a major grievance cited by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) during its insurrection in1971. That in turn was a main factor that prompted the United Front government of former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike to introduce a new Constitution in 1972, severing all political and judicial ties with Britain and not attempting to address any other issue in that Constitution.



Although the closed economic policies of the United Front almost ruined the countrys economy, there had been a very strong ideology against the open economy proposed by the United National Party (UNP) in 1977, while the trade union movement affiliated to the old left parties that championed the closed economy rules the roost among the working masses then. Hence, Prime Minister J.R. Jayawardene who came to power in 1977 with five sixths of Parliamentary power wanted to bring in a powerful and somewhat dictatorial executive president and the proportional representation (PR) system in elections with a view to introduce his open economic policies through a stable government. Accordingly, he adopted the 1978 Constitution. Therefore, it is clear that all three new Constitutions implemented after Independence had been meant for the addressing of immediate requirements or ambitions of the incumbent rulers.



The current discourse on the new Constitution is also no different. It all started after the announcement of the last Presidential election by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in October 2014. It was purely an upshot of power politics and not a genuine craving for good governance as professed by those who stood against the Rajapaksa regime.



The high-handed administration by Rajapaksa created a muster shed for all anti-Rajapaksa groups and those who had been harassed by his executive powers who simply agreed to abolish the executive presidency under a future government.The announcement of Maithripala Sirisena as the common Presidential candidate of the Opposition political parties for the 2015 January Presidential election on November 21, 2014 came along with that promise. They were also given another popular slogan on corruption by the frauds and corruption rampant during that regime.



There had already been an opposition against the current PR electoral system and a consensus on a mixed system had been arrived at through a ten year Parliamentary select committee process. In the meantime, Rajapaksa had chased away all minority ethnic and religious groups from his camp with his inaction against the communal rabble rousers which amounted to a covert support of them. In fact, things happened in a manner that minority communities suspected Rajapaksa or his siblings were behind the attacks against the minorities and were compelled to repose hopes on those who challenged him at the Presidential election.



Therefore, all these anti-Rajapaksa sentiments were used as the basis for the promise given by the current rulers during the last presidential and general elections on a new Constitution. However, what the people experienced during the past two years gives rise to many doubts on the genuineness of the rulers with regard to this very promise. For instance, in spite of Maithripala Sirisena, the common candidate predicting during his first press briefing on November 21, 2014 that a referendum on the abolition of the executive presidency would have to be conducted, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted by his government in April, 2015 with the partial pruning of executive powers of the President, on the grounds that a referendum was needed for the total abolition of the system. Besides, while questions are being raised on the legal immunity conferred on the President,the government recently presented the Development (Special Provisions) Bill with provisions for immunity conferred on certain authorities.



As far as the much hyped anti-corruption drive of the new government is concerned, the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) Chairman and JVP Parliamentarian Sunil Handunnetti recently said that the the government had been captured by the very thieves whom they had promised to capture. In fact, the President himself recently pointed out that the major corruption cases were being swept under the carpet, while the government has been accused of one of the largest ever frauds in the country- the Central Bank bond issue.



On the ethnic front, even the Cabinet spokesman, Minister Rajitha Senarathna said this week that he had a problem accepting the verdict in the Raviraj murder case. Citing the outcome of this case and the case on the Kumarapuram massacre, TNA spokesman and Paliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran said these verdicts vindicated the demand for foreign judges in the proposed accountability mechanism. On the other hand, the President and some other leaders of the government, after cosponsoring a UNHRC resolution which provided for the involvement of foreign judges in the process, had backtracked on the matter later. And the government has failed to break the stalemate that prevails for more than thirty years in the discourse on issues such as an unitary state, federalism, devolution of power, north-east merger etc. Not a single person- Tamil or Sinhalese- seems to have changed his stand which was taken purely on ethnic lines on these issues during these three decades. Besides, some leaders of the government seem to have accepted the right of some sections of society to be above the law.



Hence, it is the onus on the part of the government to alleviate the doubts on the genuineness of the government in general and some leaders in particular, before continuing the Constitutional reforms, especially if it intends to go for a referendum on the matter.
The Hambantota Magistrate has issued a court order banning all protests in the Hambantota area within the course of the day.



Sources said this order was conveyed to 26 individuals personally.
Smuggled conch shells on display following a raid

During the customs raids in the year 2016, customs officers of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) managed to seize several illegal imports smuggled into the country such as foreign currency, gold, jewellery, cigarettes, gems and narcotics.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror BIA Deputy Customs Director Parakrama Basnayake said that the Sri Lanka Customs at BIA had been able to conduct a large number of raids during the year 2016, in comparison to the previous years. Basnayake also noted that the Customs treats all passengers equally, with the exception of the President.

During the raids, 30 incidents had been reported on foreign currency, 28 cases on gold and jewellery, 24 cases relating to cigarettes, 14 reports falling under offences relating to bio-diversity, four cases on narcotics, 8 cases relating to gem stones and 3 cases on medicinal drugs.

From the raids on foreign currency alone, the BIA Customs officers had been able to earn the government a revenue of Rs. 330 million.

A large stock of gemstones raided last year

There were 28 cases reported on gold and jewellery smuggling through which the government received an additional income of about Rs.15 million.

However when compared with the previous years, a slight decrease has been reported in the attempts to smuggle gold and jewellery out of the country. In contrast, countries like India and Singapore increased attempts of smuggling gold were reported.

Following a series of customs detections it was disclosed that smugglers had changed their method of exporting gold and jewellery into other countries. Incidents have been reported where smugglers had opted to move goods via sea routes instead of transporting goods by plane. Customs had also reported several incidents on gold smuggling in the northern region of Sri Lanka and from India, during the last year.

A stock of jewellery seized by officers

24 incidents of illegal cigarette imports had been reported and the largest detections were made during the latter part of the year. The total value of cigarettes seized was an estimated Rs. 21 million.

According to our sources the reason behind the increase in illegal imports of cigarettes was the increase in demand following the VAT increment last year. Most of the illegal cigarette imports were from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and China. The most amount of cigarettes imported during the end of last year was from China. The demand was attributed to the high quality of their cigarettes. It was noted that cigarettes could be imported at a very low price, however the resultant income when introduced to the Sri Lankan Market would eventually be very high. Due to this reason Customs had taken steps to impose huge fines for Chinese cigarette imports, with the intention of discouraging such efforts. Officials believe that the increase in the Chinese population in Sri Lanka, would have contributed to the increase in illegal cigarette imports, with a view to catering to the requirement of the Chinese people in the country.

Replicas of antiques were also seized during raids

The Customs Bio-diversity, Cultural and National Heritage Protection Branch had conducted 14 raids at the BIA departure lounge. Endemic species legally protected in Sri Lanka; species of fauna and flora, were seized while attempting to be smuggled out of the country.

Eight gemstone raids had been done by the Customs during the past year and more than Rs.10 million was earned by the government as a result.

During the past year the BIA customs had also seized narcotics such as Cocaine, Heroin and Kerala Ganja on five occasions.

Uncut gemstones

Two female citizens of Venezuela and Bolivia were arrested with 1,240 grams and 2,615 grams of cocaine respectively, in their possession, on two occasions. Most of the stocks of Kerala Ganja arrives in the island via sea routes while Sri Lanka has now become the distribution hub for Kerala Ganja. Small amounts of Kerala Ganja are transported by airlines.

There have been numerous inquiries from public as to the fate of narcotics seized by the Customs. As such, Sri Lanka Customs should adopt transparency mechanisms on this issue. However, it should also be noted that the Customs generally hands over any narcotic consignment to the Police Narcotic Bureau (PNB) within 24 hours after the raid. At this point, the total responsibility with regard to the consignment is with the PNB.

On three occasions during the past year, the customs had seized common medicinal drugs freely available in the country, being illegally imported to Sri Lanka.
The Christmas tree at Galle Face, Colombo, which was hailed as the worlds tallest, is currently being dismantled, although Guinness World Records had told Daily Mirror that Sri Lanka has yet to apply for the achievement. The tree was constructed at a cost of Rs. 12 million, which was marred in controversy as the Archbishop of Colombo had called the exercise a waste of money, which had divided public opinion. Pic by Damith Wickramasinghe
David Pieris Motor Company Ltd (DPMC), the largest automotive company in Sri Lanka awarded winners of the Bajaj Thegi Nidhanaya promotion at an event held at their City Office in Battaramulla.

The campaign which began on the 10th of October 2016, livened up the festive season as DPMC rewarded its loyal customers who purchase genuine Bajaj spare parts for their Three Wheelers and Motorcycles.

To qualify for the grand draw, Bajaj customers simply had to scratch the Ali Pancha (baby elephant)hologram sticker on the packing of genuine Bajaj spare parts and SMS the serial number which appears there. The purchaser of the genuine spare-partwas then eligible to take part in the promotion.Three lucky winners won a stylish Bajaj Pulsar NS150 motorcycle each, while 43 LED Smart TVs were given away to five contestants who were placed 2nd. The five 3rd place winnersreceivedtwo door refrigerators. In addition, 10 smartphones that were given away at the weekly draws held from the 10th October to the 10th of December 2016.

Speaking at the event, Manjula De Alwis- Assistant General Manager of David Pieris Motor Company Ltd., stated, When you buy Bajaj genuine spare parts you are always a winner, because you know it will get the best out of your Bajaj vehicle, enhance re-sale value and performance as well as to give you peace of mind. This campaign was just an added bonus and our way of thanking our customers.
Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said today said he had no confidence in the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTF) appointed by the Prime Minister.

He said the CTF, which recommended the inclusion of at least one international judge on every bench set up to hear allegations of war crimes and the violation of human rights that had taken place during the final stages of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka.

The minister said some of the members of the CTF Committee were representatives of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO).

No one is complaining about the independence of the judiciary anymore. We have reconciliation and peace processes in place. This report, at this juncture, is totally unwarranted. Therefore, we dont have to follow these recommendations by the CTF, he told the Daily Mirror.

The minister said no one could force us to have foreign judges or make us do things for the sake of reconciliation and impartiality. If forcing continues, Sinhalese and Muslims will also be compelled to ask for justice for the crimes committed by the LTTE. They will ask for probes on terror attacks on the Dalada Maligawa, Sri Maha Bodhiya, Aranthalawa, Kattankudy and so on, he said.

He said even the UN could not force the government to include foreign judges, as it was against the UN charter to force or to pressure member states, be it large or small, powerful or weak. Having foreign judges in local tribunals is also a violation of the Constitution.

The minister said this situation was the result of the agreement signed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa with former UN Chief Ban Ki-moon.

The CTF presented its final report to former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the Chairperson of the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) on Tuesday at the Presidential Secretariat.

It was set up by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on January 26 last year to obtain public views, particularly those of affected communities across the country, on the reconciliation mechanisms proposed by the Government and incorporated in the Resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council. (Lahiru Pothmulla)
Claiming that Kashmir was an integral part of Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday needled India yet again by praising slain Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani as a vibrant and charismatic leader.



Addressing the inaugural ceremony of a two-day international parliamentary seminar on Kashmir here, Mr. Sharif also praised the spirit and determination of the Kashmiri people for their struggle for the right to self-determination.



Our hearts beat and sink with our Kashmiri brethren, Radio Pakistan quoted Mr. Sharif as saying.

The world needs to tell India that enough is enough with regard to its policy towards Kashmir, he said, while asserting that Kashmir is an integral part of Pakistan. He claimed the martyrdom of vibrant and charismatic Kashmiri leader Burhan Wani has given a new turn to the Kashmiri movement.



The Pakistan premier regretted the Indian aggression against Kashmiri people in the wake of protests triggered by the killing of Wani by security forces on July 8.



Mr. Sharif said supporting the Kashmiri struggle for their right to self-determination was the faith of every Pakistani.



ISLAMABAD, (The Hindu), January 05.01.2017 -

He said Pakistan would continue to extend moral, political and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their indigenous struggle and continue to shake the conscience of the international community for their rights.
The Central Bank is likely to issue a formal directive in due course to the effect of higher minimum capital requirements for licensed banks after the Monetary Board, the institutions governing body, studies the proposal as they are well in favour of sector consolidation, according to the Central Bank Governor.

Speaking to the press after unveiling the banks mid-term monetary and financial sector policies in its road-map, Dr. Indrajith Coomaraswamy said a final decision would be taken by the Monetary Board, which he chairs and the Secretary to the Finance Ministry has voting powers. However, the road map itself is silent on raising minimum capital level of banks as proposed by the countrys Finance Minister. Finance Minister, Ravi Karunanayake proposed to double the minimum capital of licensed commercial banks from Rs.10 billion to Rs.20 billion in its 2017 budget which was passed by a majority in Parliament December, last year.

Asked if a directive was likely to be issued raising minimum core capital level of licensed commercial banks, Dr. Coomaraswamy said, I think so, yes. Personally I think, we need to move in the direction of consolidation. This is one of the means through which you can encourage or incentivize consolidation. But its a Monetary Boards decision.

Despite the fact that the Central Bank welcomes the Finance Ministers proposal to raise minimum core capital, the proposal apparently could face an obstacle if foreign banks, which are either likely to resist the move outright or close down shop if they do not see the financial rationale of raising capital bar compared to the scale of operations in the country. The Central Bank is already believed to have communicated the cocern with the Finance Minister and the matter is now being evaluated at ministerial level.

The Central Bank in recent times came under flack for the undercapitalization of some of the small and mid-sized commercial banks for their regulatory forbearance.

However, the Governor said he wanted to do away with such go-soft policies and would be tougher on financial sector going forward.

Meanwhile, higher minimum capital requirements are less likely to impact many players in the financial sector as in recent times even some of the small and mid-sized commercial banks, which were falling well behind the capital threshold, have taken some tangible steps to raise the capital.
We mourn the loss of world renowned judge Justice Weeramantry who passed away on Thursday evening. Perhaps, he felt it was the right time to part after profound 90 years of service to humanity. Yet, to those who were near and dear to him, to those who cherished every single second in his presence, his departure was too early. But the world order is given and we cannot escape reality. C.G. will certainly be guided by the angels, with soothing songs, in his journey to the heavens. Let us say our goodbyes to the greatest man of peace in our time, by recollecting some of his great works for humanity.



Judge Weeramantry was undoubtedly one of the most distinguished and respected jurists in the world. His judgments and opinions expressed in various publications, lectures and keynotes at both local and international fora bear testimony to his erudite scholarship and extraordinary ability to interpret the underlying philosophy of legal principles, congruent with the teachings of global religious and cultural wisdom.



C.G. was the very first jurist to communicate religious teachings to the judgments of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In many of his publications, C.G. argued that this notion needed more acceptance to ensure peaceful co-existence of all religious and cultural groups.



At the ICJ, Judge Weeramantry derived obligations and legal principles from religious and cultural wisdom, and advocated that international adjudication needed more alignment internationally. He therefore extracted and interpreted these cultural notions in his rulings. In many of his opinions, C.G. not only quoted from the rich repositories of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, but also highlighted the traditions and customs of the Aborigines, Maoris and Incas.



His outstanding contributions to international justice and peace were recognised by the City of Hague in 1998, at the time it celebrated its 750th anniversary. Eighteen areas in which the city excelled over the 750 years were chosen and individuals recognised in these areas. Hence, it was Judge Weeramantry who was chosen as the most prominent personality to have contributed to international justice. Accordingly, a booklet was published on the 18 personalities selected and their contributions exhibited for a month at the city hall.



Justice Weeramantry always feared the outbreak of a nuclear war. Needless to say the world is not strong enough to undergo such devastation.



When the UN General Assembly appealed to the ICJ for an opinion on the legality of the use or threat of nuclear weapons, C.G. made a dissenting opinion to condemn nuclear weapons outright, and considered this act totally illegal in all circumstances. Henceforth, his opinion is regarded as a leading exposition of the illegality of nuclear weapons, and its resultant environmental damage to current and future generations for thousands of years to come.



More often than not, it is C.G.s authority that is cited when concerns of illegality and environmental damage caused by nuclear weapons table for discussion. In August 2016, a special session was held in Japan where Justice Weeramantry was invited to be the Chief Guest to commemorate the judgment on the use of nuclear weapons.



With regards to the environment, C.G. has rendered yeoman service to highlight the significance of environmental law as a rapidly-developing branch of international law. In the words of Professor Philippe Sands, Global Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law: Judge Christopher Weeramantry has made a singular contribution to the development of modern environmental law... If international environmental law has been mainstreamed, then, much of the credit must go to Judge Weeramantry.



C.G. has also written on the teachings regarding the environment of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. One such masterpiece is his book Tread Lightly on the Earth: Religion, The Environment and the Human Future.



In May 2016, Judge Weeramantry was chosen to deliver the keynote address on the occasion to commemorate the 800th year of Magna Carta. He was also emeritus Professor of several universities worldwide.



Erudite Weeramantry never failed to take the maximum out of his prowess. He wrote two pioneering works on the legal content of Islam and Christianity, referring to the specific teachings related to trusteeship of the environment. The books Islamic Jurisprudence: An International Perspective and The Lords Prayer; Bridge to a Better World stand tribute to this.



The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) appointed Judge Weeramantry as the Chairman of a committee of judges to draft a manual of international environmental law for the use of the personnel of the judiciary worldwide. This was necessitated by the fact that many judges were now called upon by their domestic jurisdictions to decide matters in the developing area of environmental law and often did so without any knowledge on the latest developments in the subject area.



When the US celebrated its bicentennial anniversary in 1976, a world congress was held on Equality and Freedom - the underlying themes of the US Constitution. Three presentations on equality and freedom were arranged from the standpoints of the western, communist and third world, and Judge Weeramantry was invited to make the presentation for the third world. His speech was serialised in various journals including The Asiaweek and Christian Science Monitor, and was described by a reader of Asiaweek of April 15, 1977 as A Magna Carta for the Third World.



C.G. has also been a pioneer in seeking to prevent the enormous powers of modern science and technology from damaging the environment. Outstanding futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke often described C.G. as The prophet of the space age. In his foreword to Judge Weeramantrys work in protecting human rights in the age of technology, he observed:



This monumental work deserves a wide readership, because it is concerned with nothing less than the survival of humanity and necessity of making the right use of the awesome new powers that science and technology has given us... So I am happy to see Judge Weeramantry outlining many of the steps that must be taken if we are not to follow the dinosaurs into oblivion.



No more need to be said to highlight the calibre of this gentleman, or even to establish his pre-eminence as a scholar and jurist. He is a man who has done his outmost for the sustainable development and protection of the environment for many generations to come. Sadly, the world has lost a guiding light.
President Maithripala Sirisena said yesterday that the government had not reached an agreement over the Hambantota Harbour and the Industrial Zone.

He said the government would not reach an agreement which would be harmful for the countrys heritage and dignity or in violation of the Constitution, with any foreign country or institution.

If the government reached an agreement with any country or institution, it would be done in a transparent manner and only after preparing the basics of the agreement. The agreement would be presented to the Attorney General, Cabinet and Parliament once the preliminary preparations were made, he said, speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC).

He said the people had elected him as the countrys main servant and placed their trust in him two years ago. I will not betray that trust no matter what, he said. (Darshana Sanjeewa)
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday that the Volkswagen Company had not invested in the Kuliyapitiya vehicle assembly plant.

He was referring to a news item carried by a TV channel quoting the investor in Kuliyapitiya that Volkswagen had no stake in the assembly plant.

"If this channel inquired from me I would have revealed the truth. One must not contaminate his or her mind just because he or she has a grudge against me," he said, speaking at the opening of Kalu Ganga Water Project in Horana last evening.

He said the government had decided not to allow Volkswagen to invest in Sri Lanka as the company had an issue.

However, he said Volkswagen would be one of the brands of vehicles which would be assembled at the Kuliyapitiya plant. (Yohan Perera)
With the National Government giving high priority to climate change concerns in its sustainable development mission launched on January 2, a vital step will be the Youth Climate Summit (YCS) to be held at theMAS Athena in Thulhiriya from January 20 to 22. This is based on the concept that the youth, as the leaders of tomorrow should themselves workout creative imaginative and sustainable solutions to tackle climate change concerns that prevail now and may arise later. This concept is believed to be better than the policy of the older generation working out solutions and just passing them on to the younger generation.



According to a statement issued by the National Organisers and international partners, the global temperature is rising and clear evidence of it has been found by scientists worldwide though some unpredictable leaders such as United States President-elect Donald Trump are insisting that climate change is largely a hoax made in China. Whatever such dubious claims, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is almost certain that humans are the main cause of current global warming. IPCC confirms that human influence on the climate system is clear and growing, with impacts observed across all continents and oceans.



The organisers say the negative consequences of climate change will make lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people vulnerable mostly in developing countries including Sri Lanka. Stabilizing temperature-increase to below 2C relative to pre-industrial levels -- as agreed upon by almost all countries at the Paris Climate Summit in December 2015 -- will require the global community to make an urgent and fundamental departure from business-as-usual trends.



We need to be especially aware that todays youth will be responsible for how we would be handling climate change tomorrow. The responsibility on todays youth towards climate action is immense and they need to creatively workout a low carbon and climate resilient future. Youth need to be actively engaged at local, national and global levels in raising awareness, running educational programmes, conserving our nature, promoting renewable energy, adopting environmentally friendly practices and implementing adaption and mitigation projects, the organisers say.



Youth Climate Summit (YCS) is a dynamic Climate Education process to empower youth and incubate Climate Action. Inspired by successful experiences of similar events in the United States pioneered by the Wild Center in New York, the summit will be the platform to present and exchange the best available, science-based information about climate change with young people in collaboration with leading climate action practitioners from the academia, government, commercial sector and civil society organizations. Through inspiration, promoting climate literacy, community engagement and youth leadership development, the Youth Climate Summit initiative is aimed at developing Youth Climate Action Champions.



Through a competitive process 100 students from Sri Lankan universities have been selected to participate in the YCS. The Selected Climate Action initiatives of participants will then be provided with incubation support through mentorship, advocacy, networking and resource mobilization through partner organizations and experts.



The US Embassy here is the main funding Partner while the Climate Change Secretariat of the Ministry of Environment and Mahaweli Development and the Wild Centre in New York will be the technical partners for the YCS. The Disaster Management Centre, Asia Pacific Alliance for Disaster Management Sri Lanka, Janathakshan, Sri Lanka Youth Climate Action Network (SLYCAN), Eco-V Volunteers and many corporate sector organizations are also joining hands to make this summit a success. The main organizer is the Community Resilience Center, a volunteer lead organization, dedicated to promote community capacity against challenges such as natural disasters, environmental pollution and climate change.
What does Patali know about politics that Harini doesnt know?

Sri Lanka is going through great pains to get its economy in order after the
RT.COM/ 6 Jan, 2017 - South Koreas determination to deploy its US THAAD anti-missile systems is widening the rift with its powerful neighbour China, who has urged Seoul to reconsider its decision.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry again reminded Seoul of its strategic concerns and clear opposition to Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment on South Korean soil after Washington and Seoul struck a deal in July amid new threats from North Korea.
REUTERS: Sri Lanka will aim to attract US $50 billion of mostly foreign investment in the next five to 10 years to help develop its infrastructure, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

said this week.

He said that after completing an International Monetary Fund stabilisation programme last year, the government would focus on development, using the islands strategic location in the Indian Ocean and devices like new industrial zones to draw investment.

The aim is to create a US $4 billion new market for exports with (free) trade agreement from India, China, and Singapore. We are focusing on electronics, information technology services, tourism, Wickremesinghe told reporters in Colombo.

He said the bulk of the investment would have to come from foreigners - principally Japan, China, Korea, India, Singapore and some from the Middle East - and that he expected offshore investments of US $2 billion to US $3 billion this year.

The government has already announced plans to incorporate a financial centre into a US $1.4 billion luxury property development project near the main port in Colombo built with money from China Communication Construction Company (CCCC).

An economic and technology cooperation framework agreement with India and a free trade agreement with China and Singapore are expected to be signed this year, he said.

In his 2015 election campaign, Wickremesinghe promised to create one million new jobs in the five years to 2020.

Sri Lankas economy is still recovering from a debt and balance-of-payments crisis hit last year, although an economic reform programme is in place as required by the IMF when it extended a US$1.5 billion, three-year loan. Political risks stemming from the unlikely coalition between President Maithripala Sirisenas centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Wickremesinghes centre-right United National Party (UNP) have also weighed on investor sentiment, although Wickremesinghe dismissed those concerns on Wednesday.
(RT.COM) 05.01.2017- Top Turkish officials have questioned the use of Incirlik Air Base by the US-led coalition, citing a confidence crisis with Washington and inadequate support for Turkeys ground forces in Syria.



The US-led coalition does little to provide aerial support to Turkish troops deployed in Syria as part of the Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told state-run Anadolu news agency on Wednesday.



What purpose are you serving if you do not provide aerial support against Daesh [Islamic State] in the most sensitive operation for us? he added.



In his Wednesday statement, Cavusoglu also accused Washington of aiding Kurdish militias  considered terrorists by Ankara  and preferring terrorist organizations over its ally [Turkey].

His remarks were echoed by Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik, who said that the lack of US air support for Turkeys operation in al-Bab raises questions about the American presence at Incirlik.
Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo will mark its 100th milestone this year, with several programmes lined up throughout to proudly declare a century of providing sound education as well as opportunities to pursue extra-curricular activities.



Visakha Vidyalaya has remained a most sought-after education institution for many years, and as the school which requires the highest marks for entry through the Grade 5 Scholarship examination.

The school also takes pride in having the maximum number of achievers and the highest scorers at the GCE Ordinary Level and Advanced Level examinations, especially in the Bio-Science stream with the largest number of girls entering medical faculties.



Apart from traditional careers, Visakhians hold top positions and are performing well in other non-traditional professions in various sectors; becoming visionaries in their own fields both here and abroad. Visakha thus has its reasons to vividly commemorate 100 years of excellence.



The first major fund raiser in the exciting line up of events for the year is the Visakha Centenary Walk 2017. Organised by the Visakha Vidyalaya Old Girls Association, jointly with the School Development Committee, the walk will be held on February 11. Starting from the school premises at 7.30 a.m., it will proceed along Vajira Road, Galle Road; turn to Bauddhaloka Mawatha at the Bambalapitiya junction and to Havelock Road at Thunmulla and back to school via Vajira Road. On return to the school, a mini- carnival will add more glamour at the school premises with food and beverages as well as DJ music to keep the crowd toe-tapping until 1.00 p.m.



The proceeds of the walk will be exclusively channelled towards the construction of the new building for the primary school. The proposed three-storey building would enable Grade 3 and 4 classes - currently located within the senior school - to be housed along with the rest of the primary classes, bringing the primary school to one single location. A pavilion will also be included in the ground floor of the building. The primary building, one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by the Visakha Vidyalaya Old Girls Association, will be a centennial gift to their Alma Mater.



Apart from the walk, the first programme that marks the schools 100th successful year is the Bodhi Pooja on January 16, which is officially the schools date of birth. On January 21, an alms-giving for 100 Bhikkunis will be held at the school premises. A special Commemorative Coin will also be launched at a ceremony.



Further, an educational exhibition is scheduled for March. The second major fund-raiser for the year (apart from the walk), will be the Visakha Carnival that will take place on April 7 and 8. It is expected to be a grander version of the traditional Avurudu Pola that takes place in the school annually. A campfire will be held for past and present girl guides in August while the Visakha Geetha Natakaya will be held in October.



The progress of the school over the years and the prestige it enjoys today as an outstanding seat of learning in the country are indeed a fitting tribute to the founder, the farsighted and philanthropic Mrs. Jeremias Dias, who envisioned the need to educate girls in the Buddhist way of life through this institution. Visakha continues to flourish at the forefront of girls education in Sri Lanka, 100 years on.
The West African state of the Congo has always been taking one step forward, two steps back. This goes back to the days when Congo became independent from Belgian rule in 1960.



Now we see it again. There were supposed to be elections at the end of last year. But President Joseph Kabila has clung to power. Last week after months of negotiations led by the Catholic bishops a deal has been agreed. If Kabila is given one more year in office then he will call elections in a years time.



The latest round in Congos modern history goes back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 when Hutu extremists organized the mass killing of at least half a million Tutsis. The killings triggered a civil war that led to the eventual defeat of the Hutu-led Rwandan army. As they retreated they forced two million Hutus to leave with them, most of them settling in eastern Congo in refugee camps. From there the Hutus, now well fed by western charities, began to launch armed incursions back into Rwanda. They were supported by the Congolese (then called Zaire) under the leadership of the tyrant, President Mobutu Sese Seko.



It was around that time that Rwandan President Paul Kagame, decided on a successful regime change in the Congo. Mobutu was driven out of the country. The Tutsi, Laurent Kabila, became president. There were no government institutions to speak of in the Congo and Kabila was out of his depth. He banned all the political parties. He became a second Mobutu and rejected Rwandan advice. Rwanda decided to eliminate the refugee camps and defeat the Hutu militants that were active around its border. It also invaded the Congo but this seemed not to help the security situation. What happened was the creation of a new rebel Hutu group. By the end of 1997 they had precipitated the worst killings since the genocide and 15,000 had filtered back into Rwanda.



Nevertheless, the Tutsi-led Rwandans seized control of much of the Congo, claimed high offices in the Congolese government, causing popular resentment to build against them. Kabila became dependent on the Tutsis, soon after to be overthrown by Rwandan troops.



This sparked what has been called Africas world war. The Rwandans searched for a new Congolese pro-Rwandan puppet. But Angola, Zimbabwe, Chad, Libya and Sudan intervened on Kabilas side.

Kabila later was assassinated by one of his guards. The present ruler of the Congo, his son Joseph, took over the presidency. The war became a war for plunder for the Congos rich natural resources. The Rwandan-led foreign intervention had not been successful.



After much negotiation the war ended officially in 2002 but violence in the East continued. The foreign intervention by Rwandas Tutsis had failed. Kabila remained firmly in the saddle and has continued to rule to the present day, a ruthless president who ordered the killing of anyone who organized- even spoke- against him. Unsurprisingly, a significant part of the population agitated against his rule, demanding elections, pushing for the observance of human rights and bringing a halt to Kabilas personal exploitation of the Congos resources.



Thanks to the Catholic bishops negotiation it led to Kabila for the first time agreeing to make a definite pledge that he will abide by the constitutional requirements forbidding him not to stand for a third term. He has agreed that an interim prime minister will come from the main opposition

bloc led by his long-time opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi, who is 84. The new agreement will also insure that Kabilas one-time ally Moise Katumbi, and perhaps his most important opponent, be permitted to return from exile. Nevertheless, the opposition was not strong enough to prevent Kabila claiming another year in office. Kabila has played on the lack of the oppositions strength to push through his demand that elections will not be held until April 2018. He claimed that elections scheduled for the end of last year would not work because millions of voters had not been added to the electoral rolls. The West loudly criticized this move of Kabila.



Kabila has not hesitated over the years to order his security forces to deal with any opponents that protested against him. More than 50 protesters were killed in September, some of whom, according to the BBC, died after police threw them into opposition buildings set alight by the security forces. Another 40 were killed at the end of last year as they protested against Kabilas decision to cancel the scheduled election.



Will Kabila honour the deal arrived at with the bishops? Nobody knows. The president and his opponents have so far not signed the accord and some issues have yet to be solved. Some opposition groups, especially youth movements, are critical of the deal. This could give Kabila an escape route.
16th meeting of FSDC held in New Delhi

Published: January 6, 2017

The 16th meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) was held in New Delhi. It was chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

It was attended by heads of all financial sector regulators as its members. It reviewed the major issues and challenges facing the economy.

Key Highlights of the meeting

Indian Economy: India appears to be much better placed because of improvement in its macroeconomic fundamental despite fragile world economy. It reviewed the major issues and challenges facing the economy.

India appears to be much better placed because of improvement in its macroeconomic fundamental despite fragile world economy. It reviewed the major issues and challenges facing the economy. Banking: The status of NPAs of public sector banks and measures taken by the government and the RBI for tackling the stressed assets were reviewed . It also discussed about further action to be taken in this regard.

The status of NPAs of public sector banks and measures taken by the government and the RBI for tackling the stressed assets were reviewed It also discussed about further action to be taken in this regard. Financial inclusion/ financial literacy: Discussed about the various initiatives taken by the government and regulators for promoting financial inclusion/ literacy. It also discussed further measures for promoting the same.

Discussed about the various initiatives taken by the government and regulators for promoting financial inclusion/ literacy. It also discussed further measures for promoting the same. Technology: Discussed issues pertaining to Fintech, digital innovations and cyber security. It also discussed on further steps to be taken.

Discussed issues pertaining to Fintech, digital innovations and cyber security. It also discussed on further steps to be taken. Demonetisation: It will help in eliminating the shadow economy and tax evasion. It will have a positive impact on GDP and fiscal consolidation in the long run.

Besides, a brief report on the activities undertaken by the FSDC sub-committee chaired by RBI Governor Urjit Patel was placed before the FSDC meeting.

About Financial Stability and Development Council

The Central Government had established Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) in December 2010 with the Finance Minister as it Chairman.

The idea to create it was first mooted by the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms in 2008.

in 2008. It is a super regulatory body for regulating financial sector which is a vital for bringing healthy and efficient financial system in the economy.

The FSDC envisages to strengthen and institutionalise mechanism of (i) maintaining financial stability, (ii) Financial sector development, (iii) inter-regulatory coordination along with monitoring macro-prudential regulation of economy.

Composition of FSDC

Chairman: Union Finance Minister.

Union Finance Minister. Members: Heads of the financial sector regulatory authorities (i.e, RBI, SEBI, IRDA, PFRDA), Finance Secretary and/or Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (Union Finance Ministry), Secretary, Department of Financial Services, and Chief Economic Adviser.

Heads of the financial sector regulatory authorities (i.e, RBI, SEBI, IRDA, PFRDA), Finance Secretary and/or Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (Union Finance Ministry), Secretary, Department of Financial Services, and Chief Economic Adviser. FSDC can invite experts to its meeting if required.

Two Core functions

Act as an apex level forum to strengthen and institutionalize the mechanism for maintaining financial stability.

Enhance inter-regulatory coordination and promoting financial sector development in the country.

Other functions

Focus on financial literacy and financial inclusion.

Monitor macro-prudential supervision of the economy.

Assess the functioning of the large financial conglomerates.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2017

Topics: Arun Jaitley  Banking  Business  Economy  FSDC  National

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Blast through 2017 was ironic, if not nightmarish and tragic. The gun attack that killed nearly 40 revellers in Turkeys sultanate city of Istanbul two hours after the clock struck 12 could be a harbinger for things to come. One need not be an artful soothsayer or a much-sought-after political analyst to predict that the year that is six days old today will be one of chaos and bloody mayhem, despite the billions of wishes for a happy and peaceful New Year as they kissed, hugged, texted and emailed each other.



If war is defined loosely as a violent conflict between two groups of people or an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will, then history is yet to see a day without a war since we formed ourselves into tribes, communities and, later, into states. According to a 2003 New York Times book What Every Person Should Know about War, in the past 3,400 years of recoded history, humans have been at peace for 268 years or just 8 percent of recorded history.



One wonders whether war and aggression are in the human genes. Men fight, and women, too. Perhaps, we are inherently aggressive. But the innate inclination towards aggression does not mean we are born killers.



Most human beings abhor taking the life of another human being. Even soldiers are reluctant to kill. According to a survey carried out by United States Army Colonel S.L.A. Marshall, only about 15 percent of the US infantry men fired their guns at all in battle during World War II, even when their positions were under attack and their lives were in danger. Studies have concluded that soldiers with killer instinct are rare. The sage will say nonviolence is the height of bravery or the weapon of the strongest.



Yet, war takes place. We have not fully made use of our innate potential to live in peace or make peace. This peace instinct, it appears, has been subdued by our greed for more power and wealth, our madness driven by ideological bigotry and a feeling of insecurity which makes us look at the other with suspicion. When we organise ourselves into states possessing means of military violence, this greed, this madness and this insecurity drive us to take measures which are not conducive to peace. As a result, international relations have become a continuous struggle for power.



In this power game, states resort to war  the ultimate test of power -- when diplomacy is seen as a liability and does not serve their national interests. States also resort to proxy wars to pursue their national interest goals which may include acquiring territory and protecting economic interests such as energy security, navigational routes and transnational business interests. One should not forget that states also go to war on ideological grounds or on the pretext of promoting one ideology or another to plunder other peoples resources. War is also promoted to boost arms sales which have become a major source of income for many industrial countries. Nineteenth-century Prussian General and thinker Karl von Clausewitz in a celebrated statement said, War is not a merely political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.



Thus wars and proxy wars  whether one calls them just wars, holy wars or wars on terror -- are here to stay as long as power politics governs us. In power politics, morality has little place and, if taken into account, it is done only to achieve ones self-centred goals. Selective morality devoid of its universal character  applicable to all cases -- is nothing but immorality and it prevents oppressed people from finding justice.



No wonder, far from us is the day when swords will be turned into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks, with nations refusing to lift their swords against another nation while feeling they no longer need to learn war.



This was probably why the year that passed us, like many years before it in living memory, ended up as a year of war, a year of terrorist attacks and a year that saw the rise of populism and the white supremacist rightwing, as manifested in the electoral surprises of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. By no means, could it be called a year of human rights, justice and peace. Sadly, even the only peace deal  the agreement to end the five-decade-old Colombian conflict  did not survive a referendum.



The New Year inherits more than 50 wars that defiled 2016. With the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan making regular headlines not so much because of their intensity as because of big power involvement, occasionally the world was reminded that there were other conflicts crying for peace in countries such as occupied Palestine, Turkey, Bahrain, Ukraine, South Sudan, Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria, the Philippines, India (Kashmir) and Myanmar (Rohingiya and Karen). And there were terrorist attacks which make no country safe. With ISIS on the run in Syria and Iraq, 2017 is likely to see more terror attacks.



If these violent conflicts were the main dish at the 2017 blast-through party, then the January 20 inauguration of maverick Trump as the 45th President of the United States, arguably the worlds most powerful state, appears as the devils dessert. He has warned he will reverse whatever peace measures outgoing President Barack Obama has taken. They include measures to normalise relations with neighbouring Cuba and a peace resolution at the United Nations Security Council to urge Israel to stop settlement building activities and work for a two-state solution.



Trumps promise to shift the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which under international law is an occupied Palestinian city, is likely to give rise to a third Intifada or more violence in the Palestinian territory. If his tweets are anything to go by, his regime will give more priority to the security of the homeland than to human rights issues or democracy building efforts. Even in the US, democracy is likely to be at its lowest ebb under Trump. The only silver lining appears to be Trumps cooperation with Russia to end the Syrian conflict and defeat the terror outfit ISIS.



But Trumps friendship with Russia can also be a ruse to weaken the growing security alliance between Moscow and Beijing. Since Trump was elected on November 8 last year, he has been quarrelling with China. By keeping Russia on his side and making Taiwan happy, Trump is moving like a ruthless businessman to contain China. Whether the realities on the ground will compel him to soften his tirade against China, after he moves to the White House, is a big guessing game in world politics today.



The gloomy picture apart, the New Year is not going to be only war and more war. On January 15, France will host a major conference to give a fresh start to find a solution to the 100-year-old Palestinian crisis. 2017 marks the 100th year of the infamous Balfour declaration by which Britain allowed European Zionists to set up Israel in Palestine. Though Israel has said it will boycott the conference, a resolution based on the conference outcome is likely to be taken up before Trump takes over the White House as a UN Security Council motion.



On Sunday, we not only welcomed a New Year, but also a new UN Secretary General. One hopes the spirit of peace at the Paris Conference will give the New UN Chief Antonio Guterres the necessary energy to work towards a peaceful resolution of the worlds conflicts.
This article discusses the judicial vision articulated by Judge C. G. Weeramantry in his time as a member of the International Court of Justice. It seeks to trace the development of his vision by examining his earlier writings, and the factors which shaped his approach to international law. It discusses some of the key elements of his vision: his sensitivity to Third World concerns, his attempts to create a universal international law which represents all the worlds cultures, and his views of the judicial function and the international rule of law. The following are excerpts from the article.

Introduction

Christopher Gregory Weeramantry was elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) in November 1990; he left that office, after serving for one term on February 1, 2000. Judge Weeramantry was fortunate to have been a member of the Court at a time when it heard cases which raised issues of the first importance to international law - as exemplified by the Lockerbie Litigation, The Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinions, and, most recently, the Yugoslavia Cases. The Dissenting and Separate Opinions that Judge Weeramantry produced in these and other cases, such as the East Timor case, the Gab Ikovo case and the second Nuclear Tests case have received widespread scholarly attention and comment. Furthermore, elected Vice-President by his colleagues in 1996, Judge Weeramantry served as Acting President to the Court in several immensely important decisions, including the Lockerbie case and NATO cases.



It is clear that although he served for only one term, he had a profound impact on the jurisprudence of the Court.



The purpose of this short article is not so much to outline the contributions that he has made to international law in the many fields on which he has written - a large task better left to scholars who have specialized expertise in the relevant areas, such as maritime boundary delimitations or international environmental law - but to try to identify and discuss in a preliminary sort of way, some of the overarching themes and concerns of Judge Weeramantrys work. My basic approach is to place his work in the International Court of Justice within the broader context of his legal, judicial, and scholarly career which has now spanned more than 50 years. In so doing, my attempt is to trace the evolution of a judicial vision which found its most elaborate expression in his work on the Court, but which developed over many decades in areas far removed from international law. The significance and appeal of his career on the bench lies in something more intangible than the immense learning and erudition he brought to bear on the issues he had to decide, as in the case of his analysis, for example, of the Necessary Parties Principle in the East Timor case, for his discussion of the character of a counter claim. Rather, it is his deeply humanist vision of international law and justice and his fearless use of his position on the bench to articulate and realize it, that makes his work so compelling and his tenure on the Court so distinctive, and my attempt here is to sketch some of the main elements of that vision.



A JUDGE IN THE MAKING

When he was first appointed to the International Court of Justice in 1990, seasoned Court watchers had reason to be sceptical about the contribution that Judge Weeramantry could make to the jurisprudence of the Court. Simply put, he lacked many of the most important pre-requisites which serious candidates for the position were supposed to possess: First, he had come to international law relatively late in his life; it was not until the early 1950s that he began to write on topics of international law. Secondly, he was something of an outsider in the fairly closed world of international law - the academic, diplomatic, and UN circles from which candidates were supposed to emerge; he had not acted as legal adviser to his government, and had never even been nominated for the International Law Commission, a customary and significant stepping stone for any potential candidate for the Court.



Judge Weeramantrys interest in international law evolved over a long period of time. He had been admitted to the Bar in Sri Lanka at the age of 21 and had practised as a lawyer for 17 years. While practising as an advocate, he also taught contractual law at the Law College of Sri Lanka - an experience which led him to write a treatise on the law of contracts which is still regarded as a classic in the field, and which helped establish his reputation as a world authority on the Roman-Dutch law of contracts. After a brilliant career at the Bar, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, the youngest Judge in the history of that Court. He served on the Bench for five years and wrote several notable judgments on issues such as unjust enrichment and Muslim family law.

Following this, he accepted a position as Professor of Law at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The next book he wrote, The Law in Crisis: Bridges of Understanding was, as the title suggested, a broad examination of the very character of law: it is in this context, interestingly, that he discusses Grotius - not as an international lawyer, but as a jurist. This book was followed by a number of others which dealt with a very wide variety of subjects: Equality and Freedom: Some Third World Perspectives in 1976; Human Rights in Japan in 1979; Apartheid: the Closing Phases in 1980; and An Invitation to the Law in 1980. In 1983, he published The Slumbering Sentinels: Law and Human Rights in the Wake of Technology, which is among the first books to examine the relationship between scientific progress and human rights.



An examination of these works suggests some of the major themes that were beginning to preoccupy Judge Weeramantry at the time.



First, he was deeply concerned about what he recognized as a crisis undermining the law, arising from its failure to further the cause of justice and its unresponsiveness to the problems of ordinary people, which in turn led such people to disregard and fear the law.



Secondly, his shift to academia enabled him to examine many of the issues he had focused on as a lawyer and a judge in Sri Lanka from a broader perspective. The political, social, and economic problems afflicting Sri Lanka could be seen in the larger context of the problems confronting Third World countries undermined by political corruption, ethnic divisions, and power struggles within, even while attempting to detach themselves from the heritage of colonialism and to establish their economic and political independence in a somewhat hostile international system.



Thirdly, his research led him to believe that the great problems of our time - of war, poverty, the violation of human dignity and environmental degradation - could only be resolved at the international rather than purely local level. International Human Rights Law was the subject which attracted his most immediate attention, and this became the basis of his growing interest in the potential of international law.



Next, at a more technical level, his work as a scholar in contractual law, and the parallels between treaties and contracts, furthered his interest in international law, given that treaties were the clearest manifestation of international law; pacta sunt servanda. Indeed, it could be argued that international law depended more on contract than did domestic law.



Finally, Judge Weeramantrys career as a lawyer and as a Judge had familiarized him with the issue of administering and developing a legal system that would operate effectively in a pluralistic society. Sri Lankas legal system involved a complex combination of English Common Law, the Roman-Dutch Law, the Thesawazhamai Code applicable to Jaffna, the Muslim Code, Kandyan Law, and the law of the low country Sinhalese - to name some of the complex local laws that members of the Sri Lankan judiciary had to recognize and apply.



He studied these systems in detail and wrote lengthy judgments on, for example, Muslim Family Law. The practice of law in Sri Lanka, and the work on the Bench effectively required him to become a comparative lawyer. Indeed, his book on contracts was subtitled Being a Treatise on the Law of Contracts as Prevailing in Ceylon: And Involving a Comparative Study of the Roman-Dutch, English and Customary Laws Relating to Contracts. Two themes of enduring significance seem to have emerged from these experiences: First, he developed a particular interest in the parallels.



CONCLUSION

Judge Weeramantry came to international law late in his career. His interest in the subject did not develop out of an ambition to become a diplomat or a statesmen, or even an international jurist, and to ascend thereby to a more glamorous and elevated stage. Rather, his interest was based on the belief that only international law could address the major problems of war, poverty and the violation of human dignity. His work was informed by a growing realization that these issues were never purely national in character. He was not so much concerned with the distinctions between domestic law and international law, but rather with the broader concepts: the relationships between law and justice, and between law and society - be it a particular domestic society or the international community itself. For him, what makes international law distinct is its potential for establishing international justice and it is this view of international law which has shaped his jurisprudence.



It is surely paradoxical that this outsider, trained essentially as a domestic lawyer, has been so eloquent in asserting the completeness and authority of international law, and who has been so insistent in articulating an international law that sought to serve the needs of international society.

It is also paradoxical that it is a supposedly Third World jurist who has sought to create a truly universal international law - one that reflects the experiences and aspirations of the different peoples of the world instead of relying on philosophical ingenuity to suggest that Western doctrines and ideas are universal.



Yet, his achievement may suggest an advantage of being the outsider; it is the outsider who might be in the best position to reassess, with his different vision, an institution or a discipline.
The 60-year-old mother of Samantha Kumara alias Wele Suda, who was sentenced to death for possessing heroin, was arrested by the Excise Department Officers on charges of possessing 10 grams of heroin in Wellawatte.

Deputy Excise Commissioner Kapila Kumarasinghe said they also arrested a 28-year-old male suspect said to be a son of a relative of the 60-year-old woman, who was identified as Rajagalgodage Malani.

A packet of 10 grams of heroin was found in possession of the male suspect as well, they said.

The arrests were made last night at Rajaguru Sri Subhuthi Mawatha in Wellawatte on information received by the Excise Officers of Colombo.

The raid was carried out under the instructions of Western Province Deputy Excise Commissioner B. Dayaratne and Colombo Excise Superintendent Prabath Jayawickrama.

The suspects would be produced in the Mt. Lavinia Magistrates Court today. (Bimal Shyaman Jayasinghe)
The dawn of the New Year 2017 saw former President Rajapaksas public claim that he would oust the Yahapalanaya government of the conjoined parties this year, to munch along with. He left political circles excited about how and when he would take over if he did, when he chose a breakfast meeting with foreign correspondents to say he would work towards a change of government.



PM Wickremesinghe wanted to make Rajapakasa sound a joke and said he would allow Rajapaksa to do whatever he wanted to, while he (PM Wickremesinghe) was away in Switzerland for a week. But Rajapaksa wouldnt want anyone to go joking about his effort to change government in 2017. I will not do it when Wickremesinghe is away. Rajapaksa was quoted in the media. He said he was no backstabber, hinting he was no Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-Chandrika type who schemed his ouster and said the change would not be far away either.



State Minister Priyankara Jayaratnes resignation immediately after Rajapaksas forecast of a change of government came as a bolt from the blue for many. Jayaratne claims there are many who would follow him. Theres already speculation of a cabinet reshuffle immediately after the 2nd anniversary of Maithripala Sirisenas swearing in as President in January 9, 2015. Since then, for President Sirisena, the past two years were all about scheming and manoeuvering to gain control of the SLFP.

Obviously, arm twisting, threats and offers of positions in the government cannot go on for long without any serious change in the balance of power within the party. With LG elections and 3 PC elections lined up for 2017, President Sirisena has much to lose and Rajapaksa not so much.



Rajapaksa still remains a troublesome influence to the Sirisena leadership with his hold on the rank and file of the SLFP. President Sirisenas problem lies with his heavy focus on holding onto co-habitation in government with a SLFP that in its rank and file is anti UNP. All his manipulations are thus restricted to parliament and national politics. He seems to believe, projecting himself as good a Sinhala Buddhist leader as Mahinda Rajapaksa, with his sympathy towards Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and continued promise of standing with war heroes, that he would draw wide Sinhala support for himself. He seems to want himself projected as a Sinhala Buddhist President, compassionate towards minorities. This has not brought any dividends to him as calculated by his closest confidantes.



His duplicity in siding with security forces, presenting them as war heroes and refusing independent investigations into war-related crimes with international legal assistance, his denial of release even for youth detained without any charges, while also calling for reconciliation and ethnic harmony, has only made him another Sinhala political leader for the Tamil constituency. With no determined and aggressive political campaigning to convince the South of the political need and importance of addressing war crimes and related issues, within the Sinhala constituency, he is seen as one who compromises with separatist Tamil politics. He thus has no real and strong political platform to work on in overcoming the Rajapaksa factor.



As General Secretary (GS) of the party, Sirisena was a very inactive party organiser, who could not develop his authority within the party. It was therefore President Chandrika Kumaratunge and subsequently Mahinda Rajapaksa as leaders who dictated terms in the party. During his tenure as GS of the party, he wasnt even relevant in signing nominations for elections. With the SLFP contesting within the UPFA in all elections in the past 2 decades, it was the UPFA General Secretary who was important.



Meanwhile over the past decade, as leader of the party and as the Sinhala leader who won the war, Rajapaksa changed the entire structure of the SLFP at local level and especially at local government level. He brought in new players as Pradeshiya Sabha and Urban Council Chairmen, who were not directly affiliated to the party, but were directly linked to his projects. This new breed of local politicians were actually village thugs who were made strongmen in the areas. Promoted as his direct link, they were provided with numerous projects to earn extra income. With such political affiliation with Presidential power under Rajapaksa, they were able to intervene in the daily lives of the local people. They therefore dont come directly under party discipline though representing the party and are now difficult to be replaced by the party.



They still remain loyal to Rajapaksa, thus making it difficult for the Sirisena leadership to decide on LG elections. This is a proven fact, each time President Sirisena consents to postpone LG elections. That reluctance to hold LG elections is now openly exhibited with the Chairman of the De limitations Commission saying it was the government that wanted its report delayed. He is proven right with the two government nominees in the Commission refusing to sign the report and Minister Faizer Mustapha refusing to accept the report without their signatures.



This hesitance and lack of confidence in going for LG elections has had its impact on parliamentary politics too. The SLFP that has over 86 out of 95 UPFA MPs, is now being asked why they should be under a UNP leader in government. They are being told the SLFP is being belittled and discredited under a UNP rule that is deciding all policy in the government. These are not just arguments made for the sake of political advantage, but a situation most Cabinet, State and Deputy Ministers experience in their day to day work. This contradiction is also now in the open with all SLFP provincial council members voting against the Development (Special Provisions) Bill, an important bill the PM was eager to have.



It seems Rajapaksa was working towards this conflict. It was apparent he was taking over the campaign against the government into his own hands when he came on stage at the Ratnapura rally in early October last year. That rally saw Rajapaksa at his fiery best, for the first time after his two defeats asking the large crowd if they wanted a SLFP government. He told the cheering crowd that it was no big game for him to shift allegiance within this parliament.



What allows Rajapaksa to challenge this government is not just numbers in parliament and his hold on local SLFP politics. It is the inability and uncertainty in this government in giving direction to where it wants to lead the country. Lack of clear policy is very much evident every time the PM makes a new development strategy statement. Perhaps the third by now, since the August elections. The government, despite its development rhetoric, has not been able to get any serious project off the ground. Not even the much-hyped Megapolis programme.



The inability of the government in bringing back discipline and efficiency to the policing of society, in the delivery of justice on corruption cases and in creating employment for youth especially, has eroded all hopes of a new change. With increasing allegations against Ministers of the present government on mega corruptions, this government now looks chaotic in office. All it had achieved was, going back to Chinese projects that Rajapaksa began, now with very difficult conditions to adhere to.



All this is not what President Sirisena could claim for the SLFP as worthy of defeating Rajapaksa. It is this trap from which President Sirisena cannot wriggle out. He has publicly vowed to hold on to this co-habitation that he cannot justify in front of the SLFP in which he is not the accepted leader outside the parliamentary group. What then can be his next move? Everything now leads to a compromise with Rajapaksa, perhaps on his own terms. That seems the confidence Rajapaksa exhibits, when he says he would form a government of his choice.
The upcoming Year of the Chicken, the start of which China marks on January 28, will be a testing time for the country's leadership. Beijing is already in the throes of preparing for several crucial summits in the new year, all leading up to a key once-in-five-year Communist Party (CPC) meet, the 19th Party Congress, set to be held in October or November.

What will the year have in store for China, as well as for its relations with India and the world?

Hold the economy steady, press ahead with reforms, and improve the well-being of ordinary people, is the declared focus for the CPC in 2017, according to the economic work conference held late last year, which declared stability as the main emphasis. At home, keeping the economy stable is certainly the abiding priority, by managing the increasingly intractable problems of corporate debt and excess industrial capacity in many sectors, while at the same time, trying to prevent huge job losses.

To ensure GDP last year didnt fall below the 6.5-7 per cent target, the government had to strike a balance, even if it meant delaying ambitious economic restructuring and pumping money into the economy.

On New Years Eve, just as India was glued to television sets for the PMs speech, so was China, looking to President Xis annual address for clues as to which direction policies would be headed in 2017. Xi delivered an expectedly populist message, stressing that what worried him the most was the difficulties of the masses  peoples employment, housing and health. Ten million people were lifted out of poverty in the past year, he said.

President Xi Jinping, in his new year address, delivered a tough message to the world. (Photo: Reuters)

Xi also delivered a tough message to the world, saying that China wouldnt swerve when it came to issues involving its sovereignty and territorial integrity. As much as Beijing is hoping for stability on its home front during a year of political change, it is more than aware that a calm external environment may be elusive in the new year.

The biggest concern, of course, is dealing with its arch-rival, the United States, under Donald Trump, who takes over on January 20. Trump began the new year just as he ended 2016  aiming barbs at China. He tweeted that China was taking out massive amounts of money and wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but wont help with North Korea. Nice!.

He also continued appointing to key offices economists and experts known for their strong views against trading with China, although he somewhat assuaged a worried Beijing by appointing as envoy to China a long-time close acquaintance of President Xi.

Beijing, meanwhile, responded by ending the year with a show of strength by deploying its aircraft carrier for the first time in drills in the western Pacific and in the South China Sea.

While a hard-line Trump may certainly open up opportunities for India, Delhi's relations with Beijing are likely to remain tested in 2017, just as they were last year by key differences on three issues that continue to strain ties: Chinas stalling of Indias bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), its blocking of sanctions at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) against the Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar, and its continued building of infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

There is little to suggest Beijing may change course on any of these issues, even if a widely-respected former Chinese diplomat and strategic expert, Mao Siwei, surprised observers in the new year by coming out with a rare criticism of Chinas moves at the UNSC and its shielding of a well-known terrorist, arguing it should change tack.

Whether India will find ways to retaliate remains to be seen. President Pranab Mukherjees hosting of the Dalai Lama in Rashtrapati Bhavan at an event with other Nobel laureates was seen by some in Beijing as a sign of things to come, although Indian officials insist the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader attending a non-political event with other Nobel laureates was hardly reason for Beijing to vent its anger.

The Dalai Lamas scheduled March visit to Arunachal Pradesh is likely to elicit a stronger response. Perhaps looking to March, the Communist Partys hardline tabloid paper, Global Times ended the year with a warning for India on the Dalai Lama issue. Even the US would have to think twice before it messes with China on such sensitive problems, so what makes India so confident that it could manage? Sometimes India behaves like a spoiled kid, the paper thundered, carried away by the lofty crown of being the biggest democracy in the world.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)
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Here are Todays News Headlines by GK Today for November 4, 2022 ContentsINDIAECONOMY & CORPORATEWORLD INDIA  PM launches new Complaint Management System portal of Central Vigilance Commission (CVC)  Ministry of Education releases Performance Grading Index for States/UTs for 2020-21; Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh attain Level -2 grading  ..

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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recently inaugurated Yotta D1  Indias second and North Indias first hyper-scale data centre  in Greater Noida. ContentsWhat is Yotta D1?What is Yotta Greater Noida Data Center Park?Investments by Yotta InfrastructureWhat are the challenges faced by the Yotta Data Centres? What is Yotta D1? Yotta D1 is the ..

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Union Home Ministry recently notified an order granting citizenship to religious minorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan residing in Anand and Mehsana districts in Gujarat. ContentsWhat is the recent MHA order on citizenship?Is this the first time that the citizenship is granted to religious minorities from neighbouring countries?How is the recent MHA order different from ..

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1. With respect to the National Film Awards, consider the following statements: Shabana Azmi holds the record for having won the Best Actress Award five times. Nargis won the inaugural Award for Best Actress in 1954. Riddhi Sen is the youngest recipient of the Award till date. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? ..

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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warned that several world heritage sites may become glacier-free by 2050. What are the findings of the UNESCO survey? A survey of 18,600 glaciers at 50 World Heritage Sites found that the glaciers at one-third of these sites will perish because of global warming regardless of ..

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October 2022 witnessed the second highest collection of GST since the inception of the tax regime. ContentsHow much GST was collected?What is the trend of GST collection for the past few months?Why is there a surge in GST collection? How much GST was collected? The GST collection for October 2022 was Rs 1.52 lakh crore ..

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(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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West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells containment and delivery systems for injectable drugs and healthcare products in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in two segments, Proprietary Products and Contract-Manufactured Products. The Proprietary Products segment offers stoppers and seals for injectable packaging systems; syringe and cartridge components, including custom solutions for the needs of injectable drug applications, as well as administration systems that enhance the safe delivery of drugs through advanced reconstitution, mixing, and transfer technologies; and films, coatings, washing, and vision inspection and sterilization processes and services to enhance the quality of packaging components. It also provides drug containment solutions, including Crystal Zenith, a cyclic olefin polymer in the form of vials, syringes, and cartridges; and self-injection devices, as well as a range of integrated solutions, including analytical lab services, pre-approval primary packaging support and engineering development, regulatory expertise, and after-sales technical support. This segment serves biologic, generic, and pharmaceutical drug companies. The Contract-Manufactured Products segment is involved in the design, manufacture, and automated assembly of devices used in surgical, diagnostic, ophthalmic, injectable, and other drug delivery systems, as well as consumer products. It serves pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and medical device companies. The company distributes its products through its sales force and distribution network, as well as contract sales agents and regional distributors. West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. was incorporated in 1923 and is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania.
Belden Inc. provides portfolio of signal transmission solutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. It operates in two segments, Enterprise Solutions and Industrial Solutions. The Enterprise Solutions segment offers copper cable and connectivity solutions, fiber cable and connectivity solutions, interconnect panels, racks and enclosures, and signal extension and matrix switching systems for use in applications, such as local area networks, data centers, access control, 5G, fiber, and home and building automation. It also provides power, cooling, and airflow management products for mission-critical data center operations; and end-to-end copper and fiber network systems. This segment serves commercial real estate, hospitality, healthcare, education, financial, government, and broadband and wireless service providers, as well as end-markets, including sport venues, stadiums, data centers, military installations, and academia. The Industrial Solutions segment offers infrastructure components and on-machine connectivity systems; and industrial Ethernet switches, network management software, routers, firewalls, gateways, input/output (I/O) connectors/systems, industrial Ethernet cables, optical fiber industrial Ethernet cables, Fieldbus cables, IP and networking cables, I/O modules, distribution boxes, and customer specific wiring solutions. This segment provides its products for use in applications comprising network and fieldbus infrastructure; sensor and actuator connectivity; and power, control, and data transmission; and supplies heat-shrinkable tubing and wire management products to protect and organize wire and cable assemblies. It serves distributors, original equipment manufacturers, installers, and end-users. The company was formerly known as Belden CDT Inc. and changed its name to Belden Inc. in May 2007. Belden Inc. was founded in 1902 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri.
Farmingtons two dialysis centers will be seeing several new patients from Madison County now that the Renal Advantage, Inc. (RAI) Care Center in Fredericktown has closed its doors. Farmington is now the nearest source of dialysis treatments for Madison County residents.

Farmington RAI Care Center Manager Kathy Panopoulos said the Fredericktown care center had been open since around 2007 and at its busiest saw at least 18 patients a week. At the time of closing, the Center in Fredericktown was providing nine area patients with their weekly dialysis treatments.

Panopoulos said the majority of the patients who received their treatments at the care center in Fredericktown are now receiving those treatments at the RAI Care Center in Farmington. She also said the Farmington facility is having no difficulty accommodating the Madison County patients.

We have space for them, Panopoulos said. With no problems at all.

Madison Medical Center (MMC) Administrator Lisa Twidwell said its unfortunate for the center to be leaving the area.

Its really sad for our community, said Twidwell. I hate to see it go. But its nice that theres another option 20 minutes up the road.

Twidwell said the center provided a convenient location for in-patients at MMC and also for nursing home residents who require regular dialysis, many two to three times per week. She said the challenge now will be for Madison County residents to secure transportation to and from Farmington for their dialysis treatments if they do not have access to their own. She said Southeast Missouri Transportation Service can assist with that challenge.

RAI is owned by Fresenius Medical Care, a company based in Germany with a North American headquarters in Massachusetts. Calls to the company were not immediately returned.
Gear4music (Holdings) plc engages in the retail of musical instruments and equipment in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, and internationally. The company provides electric, acoustic, and bass guitars, and related accessories, such as guitar amplifiers and effects pedals; drums and percussion products consisting of electronic drums, acoustic drum kits, drum pads, hybrid drumming products, cymbals, snare drums, individual drums, and drum hardware and accessories, such as noise controllers, parts and spares, and drumsticks; and pianos and keyboards, such as digital, stage, hybrid, and grand pianos, as well as MIDI keyboards, synth key products, and accessories. It also provides orchestral instruments, such as woodwind, string, electric strings, brass and world instruments, and percussion products, as well as related accessories. In addition, the company offers live sound and lighting products comprising PA systems and speakers, microphones, wireless systems, monitoring systems and related products, mixers, recorders, accessories, lights, head lights, and lighting controllers and effects, and haze, fog and smoke, and bubble effects machines; and studio and production recording equipment, such as audio interfaces, monitors, microphones, mixers, controllers, synthesizers, headphones, outboards, audio computers, drum machines, furniture, and synth accessories, as well as studio software, sequencers, samplers, and drum machines. Further, it provides DJ equipment, such as controllers, decks, mixers, headphones, effects units, controllers, and furniture, as well as scratch and mobile DJ products, and vinyl accessories; and home audio products comprising headphones, portable audio, podcasting, turntables, Hi-Fi, home cinema, and installation products. It serves through 20 Gear4music branded websites and showrooms in 15 languages in York, Sweden, and Germany. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in York, the United Kingdom.
A local woman has been charged after she reportedly led police in a pursuit and knowingly hid someone from an officer trying to serve a felony warrant.

Roznia Anderson, 26, of Potosi, is being charged with a class D felony of interfering with an arrest, a class D felony of hindering prosecution, failure to yield to an emergency vehicle and possession of a license plate issued to another.

According to a probable cause statement, back on Dec. 13 officers went to Andersons house in the 10,000 block of Kingsley Road in Washington County because they received information that Justin Eckhoff was staying there. Eckhoff had an outstanding warrant for his arrest and Anderson allowed the deputies inside the home to search for him.

The report said the officers were unable to find Eckhoff. Anderson told police he had some clothes there and she spoke with him a few times in the last 24 hours. The officers explained to Anderson that she needed to call if he returned.

On Dec. 14 one of the officers saw Anderson in her 1993 Chevrolet passenger car on Rogue Creek Road exiting the private lake development of Rogue Creek Valley. The officers were sitting at the entrance to the development.

One of the officers reported that as the car passed he saw people in the front and rear seats of the car, so he pulled out onto the road to follow the car. When he did the car picked up speed. He reported that when he saw the car cross the center portion of the road he activated his lights and siren.

The driver of the car failed to stop and the officers continued to follow them. The car went for a mile up the road before stopping and while it was slowing down the officer saw the passenger side door open, as if someone were contemplating jumping from the car.

As the car came to a rest, a man wearing a camouflage jacket and blue jeans exited the car and ran into the woods. One of the two deputies ran after the man but was unable to catch him. When he returned to the car, the other officer had three people detained.

After speaking with the people the officers were able to determine that it was Eckhoff who ran from the car. They were able to gather information, with permission of Anderson, from her cell phone, which shows she had been with Eckhoff.

According to one of the witnesses, Eckhoff and Anderson just left her house together and picked up the other people. A text message was sent to Andersons phone from Eckhoffs girlfriend telling her to tell him to get ahold of her or else she was calling his drug court officer and it was going to be worse on him.

Anderson was being held in the Washington County Jail on a $25,000 bond. Eckhoff is wanted on an outstanding felony warrant for endangering the welfare of a child involving drugs and endangering the welfare of a child by creating a substantial risk.
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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America 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
BUCKINGHAM -- After a five-hour public hearing Thursday night, the Buckingham County Board of Supervisors voted to approve a controversial compressor station, part of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline project spearheaded by Dominion, over the objections of dozens of opponents.

In all the board has been part of a full and wide discussion of this matter, said Supervisor Donald E. Bryan, who added that the board had been grappling with the compressor station proposal for about two years and said he had consulted other counties with compressor stations and found no evidence of detrimental health or noise effects.

Two supervisors abstained, one because he works for Dominion and the other because he has interest in land pertaining to the pipeline.

Annie Parr, born and raised in Buckingham, where her family has owned hundreds of acres of land for generations, was incensed by the vote.

Shame on every one of you, she told the supervisors at the end of the hearing, during which 95 speakers signed up and the boards 141-capacity chambers were packed with pipeline and compressor station opponents from Buckingham and elsewhere in Virginia.

* * *

The proposed 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina is being developed by a partnership led by Dominion but also consisting of Duke Energy and its Piedmont Natural Gas subsidiary and Southern Company Gas, owner of Virginia Natural Gas in Virginia Beach.

Its an injustice, if for no other reason than eminent domain for private gain, Parr said before the meeting. Its a lot of issues involved, but thats the bottom one.

The 53,783-horsepower compressor station would create the pressure to push the gas from Marcellus shale plays in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio through the pipeline on a 68-acre parcel along state Route 56 in western Buckingham, where the ACP would intersect with the Transco Pipeline.

The county Planning Commission has already approved the permit, with a lengthy list of conditions related to noise, lighting, site layout and air pollution controls. The Board of Supervisors tacked on some additional conditions, though those were not available Thursday night. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality must still approve an air permit for the station.

Irene Leech, a 58-year-old cattle farmer, said the proposed pipeline would bisect land that has been in her family for 100 years.

Our land is our heritage, she said. Its not a commodity I could sell to take care of myself. ... I cant imagine having to put my head down every night in that blast zone.

Most of the 95 people who signed up to speak, which included members of the Friends of Buckingham community group and the Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville, a nearby spiritual community that opposes the pipeline and compressor station, implored the board to deny the permit.

Mitigation means that there is something wrong stirring in our spirits that we are worried about, said Dhyani Simonini, a retired teacher.

There is something wrong here. I know that the boards of Buckingham County have always cared about two things: They have cared about prosperity for the county and jobs. And there is nothing wrong with those values. But you have to watch out.  I ask you to turn down this compressor and to say, This is an agricultural county, and we have everything we need to find the jobs.

The objections centered on safety hazards, emissions and noise from the proposed station, which would have a footprint of about 18 acres on the parcel, as well as environmental justice and racism arguments, given the fact that the Union Hill location is in a predominantly black community.

The Rev. Paul Wilson, pastor of the Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches, told the supervisors that approving the permit amounted to a violation of the 10 Commandments.

Dominion is not a god; Dominion does not have a soul, he said. God will hold you accountable, the church will hold you accountable, the people will hold you accountable. ... Let there be no blood on your hands.

Some speakers also worried about blowdowns, when gas is vented from the pipeline for maintenance or during emergencies.

Evan Johns, an attorney for Appalachian Mountain Advocates, and other speakers said the compressor station was ineligible for a special-use permit because the pipeline is not a public utility and the station is a transmission compressor, not a distribution compressor.

The agricultural district in question permits only public utility booster or relay stations, a category that does not extend to the proposed Buckingham station, they argued.

The hearing came less than a week after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a draft environmental impact statement that said the $5.1 billion pipeline would have some adverse and significant environmental impacts, though most would be reduced to less-than-significant levels with mitigating measures proposed by the partners building the pipeline and recommendations by federal regulators.

* * *

The Buckingham station is one of three proposed to maintain pressure in the pipeline, which would bring gas from the Marcellus shale fields to southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina.

Carla Picard, a spokeswoman for the pipeline, told the Board of Supervisors that North Carolina, in particular, is starved for this particular resource.

The Buckingham station would allow the new pipeline to move natural gas to and from the Transco line, which extends up the East Coast from the Gulf of Mexico. And though critics of the pipeline have questioned its necessity and alleged that the pipeline is really about connecting shale gas to export terminals, Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby called that total misinformation.

All of the natural gas will be purchased by public utilities in Virginia and North Carolina, he said. Ruby said the pipeline has already reached easement agreements with more than half of the 2,900 private landowners along the route, including in Buckingham. He called eminent domain an absolute last resort.

Picard and Ruby said the compressor station would be equipped with best-in-class features to limit emissions and noise.

The feared blowdowns would occur only about once every five years, Picard said, with other release of gas being kept to a minimum.

The methane that runs through this pipe is our product, she said. Were highly motivated to keep it in the pipe.

A noise study Picard presented said the compressor station would be barely perceptible over background levels.

Dominion employees and contractors have been exposed to far more methane venting than the general public and have not suffered any headaches, nosebleeds or any other health effects, the ACP presentation to the board said.

Picard added that the station would be subject to rigorous federal and state requirements and would be continuously monitored. The station and pipeline would also provide $8.7 million in tax revenue to the county in its first eight years of operation, according to the pipeline presentation.

Maybe youre really hoping against hope that Dominion is going to become Santa Claus for the county with no risk, Jeff Kamen, a former journalist who lives near the proposed station, told the board. Theyre not Santa Claus.  We are flyover for them, whatever they told you tonight.

Not everyone was against the pipeline, however. Kevin Battle, a union boilermaker, said he and other workers were eager for the chance to help build the compressor station.

A few speakers took aim at the opponents.

Every person here, when they go home at night, wants their heat on and cold food in the refrigerator, said Jared Turner, who said he makes his living building and maintaining power plants. Did anybody walk to this meeting?

Dominion hopes to secure federal approval later this year and begin construction by this fall.
Following a three-month investigation, authorities with the Blue Ridge Narcotics and Gang Task Force arrested a Madison County man on multiple drug and firearms charges.

On Wednesday, 24-year-old Gregory Alonzo Wormley Jr., of Radiant, was charged with distribution of cocaine, possession of marijuana and simultaneous possession of a firearm and a schedule II drug.

Authorities executed a search warrant at a home on Marshall Road, where police found cocaine and marijuana. Police said additional charges are likely.

Wormley is currently being held without bond at the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange County.

The Blue Ridge Narcotics and Gang Task Force is a multi-jurisdictional task force responsible for investigations in the counties of Culpeper, Fauquier, Greene, Madison and the town of Culpeper.

Anyone with information regarding illegal narcotics or gang activity is asked to contact the Blue Ridge Task Force at (540) 547-2997 or at BRNGTF@gmail.com. Callers may remain anonymous and any contact information will be kept confidential.
A suspect has been arrested after the Orange County General District Court Clerks Office was evacuated Thursday due to receiving a bomb threat.

The clerks office received the threat via phone at approximately 11:08 a.m., according to a news release from the Orange County Sheriffs Office.

The town of Orange and the University of Virginia police departments assisted in the response with explosives-detecting K-9s. The building was cleared, and normal operations returned at about 12:30 p.m.

The Sheriffs Office named former Orange and current Albemarle County resident Robert Nathan Jordan, 35, as the suspect.

Jordan was supposed to appear in Circuit Court in Orange on Thursday on previous felony drug charges, according to the release, but did not appear.

He was arrested on a failure to appear warrant and was taken into custody. Jordon was then interviewed by investigators with the Sheriffs Office and confessed to making the bomb threat, according to the release.

Jordan was charged with threatening to bomb or burn a structure. He is being held without bond at the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange.
In his last stretch before retirement, Dave Chapman said Thursday that the person best suited to replace him as the citys commonwealths attorney was the man he hired as an assistant prosecutor more than 10 years prior: Joe Platania.

In early December, Platania said in a Facebook post that he intended to run for head of the Charlottesville prosecutors office when Chapman retired at the end of 2017. At a news conference in CitySpace on Thursday, Platania formally announced his candidacy to a packed house of local attorneys, prosecutors and leaders in the criminal justice community.

Chapman, a University of Virginia School of Law graduate whos helmed the office since 1994, spoke about the challenges and requisites of the job before calling Platania to the podium.

We need someone who has the breadth of experience that gives them the ability to see how much gray there is out there in what we do, Chapman said. Theres so little black and white, and theres so much that is dependent on judgment.

Calling for a candidate who has practiced at the very highest level as a trial practitioner, Chapman said his successor needed to have the courage and wherewithal to see a complicated murder trial through and not have their knees knocking. Platania, a former defense attorney and special assistant federal prosecutor since 2008, was one of two prosecutors who secured a conviction in an emotional murder trial at the end of November.

You have to be the person who can walk down the Downtown Mall without any hesitation or fear, even though youre near people who youve put in jail, perhaps for multiple years, but they call you on a first-name basis, Chapman said.

Chapman added that Charlottesville hosted the most progressive criminal justice system in the state and that the next person in his post must have the vision to be able to see what is down the road and must come next, and the ability, willingness and desire to be a part of processes or lead processes to take us in those directions.

Such a person has worked in my office for more than 10 years, Chapman said. I am so pleased to introduce Joe Platania to you all  he deserves to be the next commonwealths attorney in our community.

A member of the office since 2003, Platania took the podium and evoked two incidents that encapsulated the charge of a local prosecutor. He first told the crowd about an elderly woman who had been defrauded and taken advantage of by two men, and then about a man with a long rap sheet who was charged with distributing a small amount of cocaine.

The men caught defrauding the elderly woman were given prison sentences and ordered to repay their victim, while the man with the drug charge was diverted to the local drug court to receive treatment for his addiction  he recently celebrated 18 months of sobriety, Platania said.

Each of these two cases include violations of the law; each highlight an opportunity to exercise prosecutorial discretion, Platania said. There is no place in a safe and stable community for violent offenders, for those who target and victimize the vulnerable, but this community demands more from its prosecutors than simply jailing those who commit crimes.

Platania continued that under his command, the office would place an emphasis on correcting behavior, along with punishing conduct, and that he would continue the offices tradition of providing professional, balanced and ethical prosecution of criminal cases.

I think the job of commonwealths attorney is to pay attention to striking the balance between keeping the community safe along with treating people charged with a crime fairly, Platania said. Its a delicate, tough balance to strike, but I think it should guide everything we do and every case we prosecute.

That balance was important for community advocate and longtime local Eddie Harris, who works with the criminal justice system through his ReadyKids program REAL Dads.

I feel like Joes going to be fair, hes going to fight for justice on both sides: Justice for the community, but also respect for the defendant, he said.

Harris commended Platanias stance on pairing drug offenders with treatment options, and said that while not every case gets the outcomes described in Platanias speech, there is comfort in knowing the prosecutors compassionate approach.

Theres no other person that I think could begin to fill the shoes of Dave Chapman, said Harris. I trust the communitys safety to Joe Platania, and I know hes going to do us justice.

The citys primary election for the position will take place on June 13. A 1998 J.D. graduate of Washington & Lee University, Platania was an assistant public defender at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Public Defenders Office from 1999 until 2003, when he was hired by Chapman. In 2008, he became a cross-designated special assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia.

Platania is the only candidate in the running thus far.
An Ashland man was killed in Louisa County on Thursday night when a pickup truck crossed the center line of U.S. 33 and struck his moped head-on.

The Virginia State Police said Timothy R. Wilmore, 22, died at the scene when his 2015 Tao moped was hit by a 2015 Ford F-150 driven by Danny K. Torgerson, 47, of Louisa County. The truck then ran off the road and struck a tree.

The crash occurred just east of Route 657.

Torgerson, who was not wearing a seatbelt, according to authorities, was transported to the University of Virginia Medical Center for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

Wilmore was wearing a helmet, police said.

State police said Torgerson was charged with DUI and that other charges are pending.
RICHMOND  Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, has filed legislation that seeks to block Gov. Terry McAuliffes new anti-bias executive order in state contracting.

McAuliffes measure, which he announced on Thursday in Charlottesville, requires contractors that do business with the Executive Branch to adhere to a nondiscrimination policy that includes bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Ahead of the session that begins Wednesday, Marshall filed House Bill 1667. It would prohibit state agencies and other public bodies from requiring any contractor entering into a public contract to agree to additional nondiscrimination provisions with respect to gender identity or sexual orientation.

The bill also would provide civil immunity for any business or nonprofit organization that does not provide any benefit or accommodation with respect to gender identity or sexual orientation.

Marshall said in a statement that he filed the bill to prevent McAuliffe from imposing his new and unauthorized sexual conditions for state contracts.

Every Democrat and Republican attorney general before 2014 has understood Virginias Constitution to mean that a governor cannot add sexual orientation or other protected classes to Virginia law without the General Assemblys approval, Marshall said.

Speaker of the House William J. Howell, R-Stafford, had criticized McAuliffes executive order on Thursday, saying it would harm religious liberty by discriminating against individuals, businesses, and faith-based charities that provide critical services to the commonwealth and its citizens.

As for Marshalls bill, Howell said in a statement on Friday:

We appreciate Delegate Bob Marshalls efforts to stand up to Governor McAuliffes Washington-style executive order. The House Republican leadership is still evaluating our options to defend religious liberty and protect individuals from government overreach.

The governors office criticized Marshalls measure.

The governor hopes the General Assembly would not pass a bill actively sanctioning discrimination against LGBT Virginians, said Brian Coy, a spokesman for McAuliffe.

However, he does not generally make a practice of signing bills overturning his own executive orders, so its safe to assume hed veto this one if it does pass.

Marshall previously filed a bill to force transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate. That bill also would require school principals to notify a students parents if the student makes any attempt to be treated as the opposite sex.

McAuliffe has pledged to veto any bill that restricts the rights of Virginians based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
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LONDON - England - As Britain's population grows exponentially due to unfettered migration, the NHS is left on its knees, used and abused by millions.

The state of the NHS, not only from health tourism coming into Britain on a constant basis, but from abuse of use by EU migrants, and drunken louts, is a disgrace to behold.

Call for an ambulance, and it may never come, thats because resources are stretched way too thin considering the massive increase in population on this tiny isle called Britain. Dying on a trolley after a 35 hour wait is now just a common every day occurrence.

You may be in dire straits, your kid is sick and unconscious, the ambulance never arrives, in desperation you drive to the nearest hospital but are greeted by hundreds of people. By the time it comes around to your ticket, five hours later, your child does not have a pulse. The overworked doctors and nurses simply shrug their shoulders, there is nothing anyone could do. Its another day in the dying NHS, an overcrowded death factory, where millions of desperate sick humans fawn for a simple five minute session with a weary eyed sleepless doctor.

Why not visit the wards, where no one speaks English, or the maternity wards where Nigerian women fly in daily to Heathrow to have their quintuplets all paid for by the British taxpayer, expensively delivered, lock stock and barrel. After they drop their sprogs, theyre on the next flight out, never to be seen or heard of again, unless they have some life threatening emergency that is. Naturally, there are no checks on the deluge into Britains hospitals, and anyone can get treatment costing thousands without a word being uttered.

The sheer amount of wasted taxpayers money to health tourism per annum is astonishing, were talking 6 billion in eight years, not like a few quid here or there. Add on the massive influx from poor Eastern European countries, and the cost sky rockets although no one is saying a word about it.

The NHS when it was first introduced was only built for Britain, not for the whole earths population. This is why it will not survive in its current form for another three years tops, maybe four if the current borderless situation carries on.

It is imperative that Brexit is honoured, and that Britains borders are controlled heavily. The NHS has to implement strict checks on foreign health tourists, otherwise there will not be an NHS any more.
Dayton History have not renewed their agreement with local German club to host the annual Germanfest Picnic.

Update 1/6/2017: Following considerable criticism on social media and elsewhere, Brady Kress, Dayton Historys president and CEO, released a statement today that read While we will no longer host the GermanFest Picnic, importantly, we have also decided that we will not create our own German heritage event. It was never our intent to harm the club.

Dayton Liederkranz-Turner, the organization behind the popular Germanfest Picnic, will not be holding its 2017 festival at Carillon Park.

Liederkranz-Turner is the oldest German-American club in the Dayton area, dating back to 1890. The festival was held at Carillon Park for 30 out of its 33-year history. A statement from the club's facebook page read as follows:

"We were shocked to receive this letter from CarillonPark yesterday. Not only have they terminated their relationship with Germanfest Picnic, they are planning their own competing event for the same timeframe."

Dayton History, the non-profit organization that operates Carillon Park had originally planned its own 10-day German Heritage Festival. Those plans have now been scrapped.

The location of the 2017 Germanfest Picnic, currently planned for August 11-13, will be discussed at the Liederkranz-Turner annual meeting this Sunday.

Stay tuned for updates.
Amazon's wildly popular Echo smart home appliance sold out days before Christmas  and won't be back in stock for weeks. Amazon's website says it won't be shipping any more of the $179.99 devices until January 25.

"Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping [Echo products] in stock," Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke said in a press release.

Amazon says it sold more than nine times the number of Echo devices it did last year, due likely in part to a 20% discount that made the Echo price-competitive with Google Home, its main competitor.

You Can Still Find an Echo  For a Price

Amazon's supply chain woes trickled down to their national resellers, nearly all of which ran out of Echoes. Shoppers willing to do some post-holiday footwork at regional retailers might be rewarded, but shouldn't expect the tech to be marked down like it frequently was during the Black Friday and holiday seasons.

Shoppers willing to do some footwork at regional retailers might be rewarded, but shouldn't expect the tech to be marked down.

A salesperson with Tennessee retailer Electronics Express told DealNews they had a handful in their warehouse as of Dec. 31, and Nebraska Furniture Mart listed the Echo as in stock in its Omaha store.

Amazon maintains a list of official resellers on its website, so if you're still looking for an Echo, check to see whether there's a brick-and-mortar retailer near you.

If all else fails, new Echoes are still popping up on eBay  though often for a substantial markup.

The Dot Is a Great Alternative

The Echo is a voice-controlled appliance that taps into Amazon's Alexa cloud services to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. With an Echo, you can control smart lights, stream music from a variety of services, or get information about things like recipes, unit conversions, or mixed drinks. But the Echo isn't the only device that can do all this.

SEE ALSO: What Is the Amazon Dot and Why Would You Want One?

While Amazon won't have any Echoes for weeks, the diminutive Amazon Dot ($49.99) and the portable Tap ($129.99) are available immediately.

The Amazon Dot provides the same functionality as the Echo for less than a third of the price, but has a much smaller speaker than the Echo. Instead, the Dot includes Bluetooth connectivity and a headphone jack, for easy connectivity to an external speaker. The Tap is similar to the Echo, but is portable, and only listens when you press a button on the unit.

Readers, will you wait for Amazon to get the Echo back in stock, pick one up on eBay, or consider something else? Let us know in the comments!
Demonization has affected all the sectors of the market, including two-wheelers. Although there's lack of cash in the economy, some bike manufacturers have sold even more motorcycles in December 2016 as compared to December 2015. Let's have a look at the sales figures.

Yamaha Motor India

Despite the slump in sales for consumer goods, Yamaha has seen a steady growth. Registering sales of 49,775 units in December compared to 38,833 units in December last year, the company recorded a growth of 32 per cent. In fact, annual sales have gone up by 28 per cent, with Yamaha having sold 7.86 lakh two-wheelers in 2016 compared to 5.94 lakh units in 2015. Yamaha has been further strengthening its focus on two-wheeler sales with the launch of the Ray ZR in 2016 and the Fascino in 2015. The focus on scooters seems to be paying off and the Fascino has been well-received by the Indian audience and has been doing quite well. The sales are expected to rise even further with Yamaha planning to launch two more scooters this year. Moreover, the company is also launching the FZ-250 on January 24th, which will further strengthen its foothold in the premium motorcycle segment.

Royal Enfield

Against sales of 40,037 units in December 2015, Royal Enfield has registered 41 per cent growth in December 2016, selling 56,316 motorcycles. interestingly, the company has registered a record export growth of 160 per cent with 1,082 units in December 2016 compared to the 416 units of the corresponding month last year. It is safe to say that the launch of the Himalayan in countries like Australia and Colombia has brought in a good result for the company. Moreover, the growth in the Indian market is a result of the company's advanced products and the increase of its production capacity as well. RE has also added 117 new dealerships to its already strong dealer network, further extending it to a total of 642 stores pan-India.

TVS Motor:

Recording a 7.5 per cent sales decline against 194,001 units in December 2015, TVS Motor managed to sell 179,508 units in December 2016. While it remained almost constant in the export market with a hike of around 1 per cent, the company registered a downfall in the domestic market in both the motorcycle and the scooter segment. The reason for the decline of the company could be the extensive focus on the premium segment with the newly-launched Apache RTR 200 4V and other upcoming flagship products. While the new TVS Victor managed to steady the foothold of the company, the Jupiter that also received an update as the MillionR edition (with front disc brake) to maintain its charm in the respective category.

Bajaj Auto:

Bajaj was also significantly affected by demonetisation as it witnessed a slump of 18 percent in its motorcycle sales. The company sold 2,03,312 units in December 2016 against the 2,47,782 units sold in the same month of 2015. While the company's products like the V15, Platina 100 ES, CT 100 and the Pulsar are in best-selling motorcycles of the country, Bajaj might also feel the need of some scooter models in its portfolio now. The company has also discontinued most of the Discover models from its line-up and are now just selling the old Discover 125 in the market. However, Bajaj has lots of expectations from its new Dominar family that the company bets on to become a million-dollar brand in a couple of years. Also, the updated 2017 range of existing Pulsar models, currently on sale, might also help Bajaj gain its momentum.

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India

While witnessing a 66 per cent hike in exports, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India registered an overall sales decline of 20.3 per cent. The company sold a total of 231,654 units in December 2016 against 2,90,712 units in the same month of 2015. The company is already doing best in the scooter segment with the top-selling Activa 3G, while its foothold in the motorcycle segment is a bit dicey. While offering a good range of commuters as well as some premium models, Honda has the third position in the motorcycle segment. The reason might be comparatively high prices of its products as compared to that of Hero and Bajaj. However, the quality that HMSI offers with its products worth that little extra cost has gradually started to click with buyers.

Hero MotoCorp

Hero MotoCorp proved once again why it is the largest two-wheeler manufacturer. Despite poor sales in the last couple of months, the company sold a record, over 6.76 million units of two-wheelers in the period of 2016, translating into a growth of 4.3 per cent over the previous calendar year. Hero sold 3,30,202 units in December 2016, against 4,99,665 units in the corresponding month last year, registering a drop of 33.9 per cent. This is not only due to demonetisation but the companys manufacturing facilities at Gurgaon, Neemrana and Haridwar being closed from December 26th-31st on account of annual maintenance was also a major contributing factor to the same. HMCL is the market leader in the motorcycle segment, while gradually progressing in the scooter segment as well. It's new products including the Maestro Edge and the Duet are doing quite well while some new models are also reported to be in the pipeline, including a 125cc scooter.

Source: BikeDekho.com
Passengers travelling on select domestic sectors in the economy class can avail this exclusive offer, under which the air fares starts as low as Rs 1080.

New Delhi: Air India today announced a limited period special fares scheme under which passengers can book tickets at the price of second class AC of Rajdhani express trains.

Passengers travelling on select domestic sectors in the economy class can avail this exclusive offer, under which the air fares starts as low as Rs 1080, Air India said in a release.

In June last year, the national carrier had rolled out a similar scheme. And by the time it was discontinued in September, as many as 21,678 passengers had availed of the offer.

The "Special Fares" scheme commences from tomorrow, the release said, adding tickets booked between January 6 and April 10 will be valid for travel period between January 26 and April 30, 2017.

Tickets can be purchased only from the Air India website, airline city booking offices and travel agents, the airline added. Also, a lucky draw on select flights will be conducted every Tuesday and Wednesday on the special fares route during the validity of the schemes, it said.

Air India had launched "Super Fares" scheme under which passengers unable to get confirmed bookings on Rajdhani Express trains had the opportunity to book tickets four hours prior to the departure of flight, at the fares equivalent to Rajdhani Express' first class.
KMB has revised its base rate downward by 0.10 per cent to 9.30 per cent per annum with effect today

Mumbai: After reducing its marginal cost of funds-based lending rate, Kotak Mahindra Bank today announced a 0.10 per cent cut for loans under the older base rate system.

"KMB has revised its base rate downward by 0.10 per cent to 9.30 per cent per annum with effect today, it said in a statement.

The bank had announced a cut of up to 0.45 per cent in its MCLRs across tenures earlier this week. Of this, 0.20 per cent was attributed to the benefit of additional deposits while the bank used its discretion to cut rates by another up to 0.25 per cent, hoping for better days ahead.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday restrained the transfer of 2G spectrum originally granted to Aircel to any other entity or service provider and also threatened to cancel Aircels use of 2G spectrum if T. Anantha Krishnan, owner and controller of Maxis Group, continues to evade appearance before Indian courts.

A three-judge bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justice N.V. Ramana and D.Y. Chandrachud passed this order on an application from Centre for PIL alleging that Aircel was proposed to transfer its shares and a communication to this effect has been sent to Mumbai stock exchange by RCom and Airtel. Maxis Group, a Malaysian company, owns 74% stakes in Aircel which was originally granted 2G spectrum licences in November 2006.

Appearing for CPIL, counsel Prashant Bhushan submitted that the accused are evading summons and since spectrum licence had been obtained by Aircel through the proceeds of crime, the court should order attachment of the properties.

He also informed that RCom and Airtel have proposed to purchase the shares.

Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal informed the court how Anantha Krishnan of Maxis group of companies was evading summons.

When BJP MP Subramanian Swamy sought a probe against P. Chidambaram for his role in granting FIPB approvals for the investments, the Bench said this issue will be heard later.

After hearing the counsel the Bench in its order made it clear that it proposed to cancel the 2G licence granted to Aircel if the Malaysia-based Anantha Krishnan, who bought the majority shares of the Indian telecom company, and his one-time key aide and director Augustus Ralph Marshal fail to present themselves before Indian courts in response to summons issued to them.

Justice Khehar observed Aircel is not before us. At the moment it is not attachment. If money is earned as a matter of fraud and if a party refuses to appear, we can ask the party not to sell spectrum. We must have the 2G accused before us. No matter where he is, he must come here and he cannot run away from the process of law, we will not tolerate that. If he wants to use the spectrum, he must come here and face the law. It is imperative to ensure that the process of law is not frustrated by non service of summons.

The bench also said that it proposed to pass an order to restrain Aircel from earning any revenue from the 2G spectrum licence it received if the accused fail to appear in court. The bench asked the DoT and Ministry of Communication and Telecom to devise modalities in the meantime to ensure that 65 million Aircel subscribers are not affected and that they get services from some other network provider.

The government has also been asked to have the court order published in two leading newspapers in Malaysia so that Maxis and others are officially apprised of the order.
When Om, or Omji as I insisted on calling him, came home with his friend and companion Seema Kapoor, he was not feeling well.

Excessive smoking had killed his taste buds. He couldnt savour any of the food we served him for lunch. At the end of the two hours, Om promised he would take better care of his health.

He never did. Just recently he was in hospital with a cancer scare, and again he promised to stop smoking and cut down on his drinking.

But unhappy people need an outlet, some kind of numbing comfort for their soul, even artistes as steeped in brilliance as Om.

On hearing of his sudden death, I relived Oms most glorious performances. The implosive anger he projected in his best parts in Govind Nihalanis 'Aakrosh', 'Ardh Satya', 'Droh Kaal' and Shyam Benegals 'Arohan', 'Susaman', was squandered in the comedies he insisted on doing with Priyadarshan and David Dhawan.

With Om I could be as critical as I wished about his work. He would never take my comments amiss. Normally when actors ask for an honest opinion they dont mean it. Om did. Each time I would see him in some frightful corny kitschy cringe-worthy potboiler with his belly hanging down to his knees, I would remind him he was the actor from 'My Son The Fanatic' and 'The Mystic Masseur' (the latter a loving delightful adaptation of V S Naipauls novel and one of Oms unsung gems).

He would remind me of his financial responsibilities. Ive a son. He needs careful nurturing. I cant just sit back and relax. My colleague Naseers children are grown up. His responsibilities are over. And besides he has earned a lot more than me. Ive been paid peanuts for my efforts. I was paid a mere 7 lakh rupees for playing one of the central characters and working four months non-stop in Raj Kumar Santoshis 'China Gate'. Im sure Naseer mustve got five times more money for the same film. Surely big filmmakers like Santoshi Saab should be more cautious of my worth. But Ive no complaints. I may return to theatre, or do a small but meaningful film that gives me satisfaction as an actor.

Om was exhausted of his own prolific output and deeply embittered by his professional and personal conflicts.

In one of our most recent conversations he had said to me, Enough is enough. Ive slogged for thirty years. Ive accumulated a decent bank balance, though it may not be decent by Bollywood standards. Ive done roles for fun and for job satisfaction. Now I need to take it easy. I keep turning down offers. I need a break.

The break has come so suddenly and unexpectedly. Friends like Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi are in a state of shock. The two actors together with Om formed the titanic triumvirate of non-mainstream actors who changed the way we look at cinema. While Naseer and Shabana have come to terms with their lack of fluency with commercial cinema, Om till the end remained torn between the two extremities represented by Shyam Benegal and David Dhawan.

The meager remuneration as compared with actors much less skilled who were stars, bothered Om.

I am being used like a potato in every dishbe it a comedy, thriller or a love story. The bloody bhindi costs Rs 60 per kg. But the price of potato remains unchanged. I have to make my family and I financially secure. To a large extent, Im already on the way to doing that. If today I decide to migrate to a small town, I dont have to worry about my income. But I want a little more from my career. I do have certain ideas for films swimming in my head. Sometimes I feel being part of an escapist entertainer is just fine. At other times I feel like addressing myself to issues that bother me.

He was a restless unhappy man who couldnt lie to himself, trying till the end to find a peaceful ground in his personal life. The rage that imploded in his best performances often manifested in foot-in-the-mouth declarations on public platforms, like the one recently about our soldiers. Om repeatedly got into trouble with his unthinking sound bytes. He took the backlash on his chin like a man. But he wasnt prepared for this one final blow that dealt his life on Thursday morning.

I will miss your gravelly voice on the phone as you spoke out on your personal and professional lives. In spite of my cleaning up some of the Puri pronouncements when it was published invariably got the actor into trouble. But he never denied his quotes, never said he was misquoted. Om owned up to his mistakes. Thats what made his performances so authentic. He never lied to the camera. He never lied to himself.
Mumbai: Om Puri's sudden demise has sentshockwaves in the industry and among his fans. An actor of immense talent, Puri has left behind an impressive body of work in Indian cinema, Hollywood, European movies as well as television.

Here's revisiting some of those performances by the veteran actor which will remain etched in the minds of cinema lovers forever.

Aakrosh (1980): In this memorable debut by Govind Nihalani, Puri played a poor peasant, who is falsely accused of killing his own wife. In the entire film, Puri speaks only in flashbacks, but breaks his silence towards the end with a scream after killing his sister to save her from the fate that his wife suffered.

Bhavni Bhavai (1980): This Ketan Mehta film saw Puri play a poor narrator. The film also starred Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah in lead roles.

Arohan (1982): Directed by Shyam Benegal, the movie, set against the backdrop of Naxalbadi movement, saw Puri play the role of a poor farmer who ends up in jail while fighting against the system. He received the National Award for Best Actor for this role.

Ardh Satya (1983): Again directed by Nihalani, the film saw Puri play the role of Anant Welankar, an idealistic sub-inspector with Bombay Police, who struggles to come to terms with the corruption around him. In one of the most memorable scenes, Puri's character casually recites a poem to Smita Patil but as the reality of the lines sink in, his voice changes.

It is considered as one of the best cop films made in Indian cinema and Puri received a National Award and Filmfare Award for best actor.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983): To break his image as a serious actor, Puri took a shot at comedy with Kundan Shah's cult classic. He played the role of a corrupt property builder called Ahuja.

Puri in an interview to PTI recalled how he came to be a part of the film. The actor said people knew him only as someone with no sense of humour prior to the film.

"I did not have a sense of humour because I was struggling. I wanted to break that image...," he had said, adding that they came up with comedy play, which became a huge hit and eventually landed him a role in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

Mirch Masala (1987): This Ketan Mehta film saw a gathering of almost all the leading names in parallel cinema - be it Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Dina Pathak, Om Puri or Ratna Pathak Shah.

Puri played the role of an old guard who gives up his life to protect the women working in a masala factory.

City of Joy (1992): It is an English film directed by Roland Joffe, based on the novel of the same name. Puri played a rural farmer called Hazari Pal, who moves to the fictitious Anand Nagar slum of Kolkata with his family in search of a better livelihood.

Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze and Shabana Azmi were his co-stars in the movie.

In Custody (1993): His role in this movie, opposite Shashi Kapoor, is one of his most under-rated performances. Based on the novel written by Anita Desai, Puri played the role of professor at a local college.

He teaches Hindi but is in love with Urdu language. He is keen to interview the great Urdu poet, Nur, but his various attempts get thwarted thanks to Nur's personal issues and his extended brood. Also called "Muhafiz" in Hindi, Puri received widespread appreciation for his role in the Ismail Merchant-directed movie.

East is East (1999): He played patriarch Zaheed Khan, a first generation Pakistani, living in London and married to a British woman. Khan struggles to strike a balance between his traditional values and his children's modern outlook.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014): Puri starred as the head of Kadam family, who have relocated to France from India. They open a restaurant directly across the road from Madame Mallory's (Helen Mirren) Michelin-starred eatery, leading to a clash.
The whole country went numb with shock on Friday on learning about the demise of veteran actor Om Puri. The versatile actor, who was a super star of parallel cinema in the 80s, was one of the earliest international stars from Bollywood.

With movies like Ardh Satya and Mirch Masala, Om contributed much to the Indian New Wave with Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi. One of his finest performances came in the 1983 satire Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, whose director Kundan Shah remembers, The role Om did was to be played by Pankaj Kapur, but the actor who was supposed to play Tarneja backed out and Pankaj was given Tarnejas role. I approached Om 15 days before the shoot. When I told about the role, he said, Main kar loonga na! I barely had Rs 5,000 or Rs 6,000 to offer, and he said, fine, no problem.

A hallmark of Oms talent was his ability to imbibe the characters spirit. While dubbing for the movie, he used to arrive on a motorcycle as part of preparing for his role in Ardh Satya. He was learning to ride the bike to get into the skin of his character.

A superlative actor: Juhi Chawla

I worked with him briefly in A Hundred Foot Journey. I was doing a guest appearance and had just two days shoot. Being in a totally new unit, I was a little awkward on the sets. The entire team had been filming in France and only the opening scene in India was left to be shot. They had come to Mumbai for the scene in which I was involved. I was the odd one out but Om Puri ji came to sit and chat with me to put me at ease. There was just one shot in which we were in the same frame. When I saw the film, I was amazed by his wonderful performance. Effortlessly funny, yet so effective in the emotional parts, he was superb. A superlative actor he is.

Man with no airs: Jayaram

He is an actor of international stature. May be because of a common theatre background, similar timbre in voice or in their way of acting, I have always felt certain parallels between Thilakan chettan and him. Therefore, I was imagining Thilakan chettan in the role in Aadupuliyattom had he been alive, and the next choice was Om Puri.

We had spoken over phone to invite him to the movie and later, the synopsis was sent. The air was tense on the day he joined the sets. All of us knew him only through the tougher onscreen charcters. We had no idea how he would react to things. To our surprise, he proved that hes far behind the caravan era. He preferred to sit outdoors on a chair. It was as if he was there to act in his first movie. He asked me whether his dialogues were okay when I considered him a legend! He wanted to be in our company, enjoy the food we all had.

He liked my sons (Kalidas) performance in the Cadbury ad and called him up to appreciate it. The void hes left is irreplaceable forever.

(with inputs from Meera Manu)
Pediatric evidence revealed that although healthy preterm infants reach some developmental milestones on the same maturational timetable as their full-term peers. (Photo: Pixabay)

Washington: Premature babies perform well in a developmental task linking language and cognition compared to their full-term counterparts, finds a new study. The study was published online in journal of Developmental Science.

Researchers from Northwestern University in the US found that preterm infants are maturationally on par with full-term infants in establishing this link.The study, the first of its kind with preterm infants, tests the relative contributions of infants' experience and maturational status.The team compared healthy preterm and full-term infants at the same maturational age, or age since conception.

"This study permits us to tease apart -- for the first time ever -- the roles of infants' early experience and maturational status in establishing this critical language-cognition link," said senior study author Sandra Waxman. To illustrate, they considered two infants conceived on the same date.If one happens to be born a month early, then although the infants will always share the same maturational age (age since conception), the preterm infant will have an opportunity to acquire an extra month of postnatal experience listening to language.

They compared preterm and full-term infants to identify the developmental timing of their link between language and object categorization.The new study was designed to capitalise on this tightly timed "familiarity-to-novelty" shift in full-term infants.The results showed a robust early link between language and cognition in preterm infants, revealing that this vulnerable population begins life with a strong foundation for linking language and meaning.

Pediatric evidence revealed that although healthy preterm infants reach some developmental milestones on the same maturational timetable as their full-term peers, they nevertheless tend to encounter obstacles in language, cognitive and attentional processing capacities. This is evident in their use of early intervention services from infancy through school age.
Dylann Roof CHARLESTON  Dylann Roof, the gunman who massacred nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, complained in court filings Thursday that too many witnesses are testifying about the anguish and horror the victims and their families during and after the shooting. CHARLESTON  Dylann Roof, the gunman who massacred nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, complained in court filings Thursday that too many witnesses are testifying about the anguish and horror the victims and their families during and after the shooting.





The motion where Roof objects to whats known as victim impact testimony comes on the second day of the sentencing phase of his trial. Last month, he was convicted on 33 charges and now the jury will decide if he receives the death penalty or life in prison.





Prosecutors said they have prepared as many as 38 witnesses to deliver testimony to illustrate the void felt in these victims families in the wake of the tragedy.





Roof is continuing to act as his own attorney. But in a contentious courtroom exchange that happened Thursday during the jurys morning break, David Bruck, Roofs stand-by counsel, spoke on his clients behalf calling the proceeding a runaway freight train.





Bruck revealed to Judge Gergel that he and his colleagues, not Roof, had drafted the motion to limit victim testimony on his behalf. And Bruck implored the judge to allow him to be able to object on Roofs behalf  Gergel denied the request.





I have to be heard on his behalf because he cannot do it, Bruck begged the judge. This man cannot protect his own rights. He cannot do it.





Hoping to persuade the judge, Bruck added, This is his sentencing not a memorial service.





Prosecutor Jay Richardson said that he doesnt believe that the government will call all 38 witnesses on their list, but added that Roof is the one who chose to kill nine peopleparticularly good people!





On Roofs motion regarding victim impact, Gergel told Roof he appreciates the issues he raised about the amount of victim impact testimony and said he is monitoring this.





On the first day, the government was only able to call its first four witnesses due to the length of each persons time on the stand.





The testimony, for example, included Emanuel AME pastor Sen. Clementa Pinckneys widow Jennifer recounting how her and her daughter hid in the church that night to survive the shooting. Witnesses have also detailed heartwarming tributes to their fallen loved ones.



Roofs motion cited several well-known capital trials in an attempt to sway the court that the amount of victim impact testimony is excessive.



He said that at the trial of Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh, there were 38 victim impact witnesses  the same number as Roofs trial  despite the fact that in that incident there were 168 people who were killed.





Dylann Roof cold to victims, but apologized to his parents

Dylann Roof

COLUMBIA, S.C.  Before Dylann Roof was arrested for killing nine black church members, he scribbled a note to his mother, apologizing for all the repercussions his actions would cause. Weeks later, in a jailhouse journal, he wrote that he had no regrets.





The evidence, along with his manifesto, hundreds of photos and a confession to the FBI, draw a portrait of a young white man consumed by racial hatred who carefully planned the killings, picking out meek, innocent black people who likely wouldnt fight back.





Jurors who convicted Roof of hate crimes and other charges will decide whether he should be executed or face life in prison.





ROOF AND RACISM





Roof has pointed out that there was no dramatic confrontation that led him to begin hating blacks. Instead, when the Trayvon Martin case made the news, Roof went to Wikipedia to read about the black teenager who was shot to death in 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was acquitted. That led Roof to research black on white crime and to websites that offer false statistics inflating how often those crimes happen.





Roof was careful in his writings to say his beliefs came just from himself, not his parents. But one of Roofs old friends suggested otherwise.





I dont think his parents liked his decisions, the choices that he made to have black friends, said Christon Scriven, who is black.





Roof would go between partying with black friends and spewing racist diatribes to his white buddies, Scriven said shortly after the shootings.





Roof also believed the false claims that blacks were better off as slaves and are inferior at their cores to whites. He compared African-Americans to dogs, saying everyone feels bad when a man beats a dog, but no one is surprised when a dog bites a man.





As he sat in jail after his arrest, Roof mused about adopting a white child someday and sought to explain his thoughts on other races, according to a journal found in Roofs cell.





Lauren Knapp of the Charleston County Sheriffs Office read the journal aloud in court Thursday. In it, Roof wrote that he felt he would probably eventually be pardoned if he were sentenced to life in prison and believed Adolf Hitler would eventually be canonized as a saint.





He also ranted that Jewish people made America worse by pushing desegregation, that the Hispanic population was growing too quickly and introducing more crime to the nation and Muslims were just as bad as blacks and perhaps more dangerous.





The Muslims violent behavior is increased exponentially by their sick religion, Roof wrote.





THE SON





When authorities searched Roofs car, they found birthday cards from his mom and dad, who were divorced, and what appeared to be suicide notes to each of his parents.





Roofs writings to his mom show a son worried about how she would feel.





At this moment I miss you very much, he wrote. And as childish as it sounds, I wish I was in your arms.





Roofs mom suffered a heart attack in court shortly after prosecutors called him a cold and calculated killer in their opening statement.





Roof worked for his contractor father for a time.





I love you and Im sorry, Roof wrote. You were a good dad.





In Roofs birthday card, his father promised to buy him a gun.





THE FRIEND





Dylann Roof

Roof had a few friends he would hang out with when he got tired of his parents. One of them, Joey Meek, pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about what he knew about Roofs plans.





Meek is awaiting sentencing. His guilty plea included an offer to testify against his friend if asked, but he hasnt been called to the stand.





Meek and Roof were good friends until Roof dropped out of high school. They reconnected in the months before the shooting, drinking and smoking marijuana. Scriven also would hang out with them at Meeks house.





Both friends said he talked about a mass shooting. Scriven said Roof wanted to target the College of Charleston, which Roof denied in his jailhouse journal. Meek said Roof talked about killing blacks.





Meek insisted to reporters he had no idea of Roofs exact plan and was stunned to see his friend in a surveillance photo on TV the morning after the shooting. I didnt THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him, Meek said.





THE LONER





In Roofs opening statement to jurors to start the penalty phase of his trial, he said there was nothing wrong with him psychologically except Im probably better at constantly embarrassing myself than anyone whos ever existed.





Agents recovered hundreds of photos from Roofs cameras. Some were of him posing with the Confederate flag, others were at historic sites across South Carolina. They appeared to be taken with a tripod and a timer, and he is the only person in almost all of them. There are even a few of Roof with a cat in his bedroom.





Roof wrote in his jailhouse journal that he enjoyed being sad and having pity on himself because sadness was such a strong emotion.





Roof told agents when he confessed he reached out to no other white supremacy groups and spoke to no one else about his plans.





His journal ends with another lament: One of my only regrets is that I was never able to fall in love.





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Source: BuzzFeed News, Mike Hayes, January 5, 2017Source: The Washington Post , Associated Press, Jeffrey Collins , January 6, 2017
London: Nearly half a million people over the age of 60 in the UK suffer from such extreme loneliness that they spend an entire week without meeting anyone or getting any phone call, according to a new report.

The UK's largest charity working with older people, Age UK, had commissioned a research which highlighted that 1.2 million elderly people in England have experienced loneliness for several years, which can cause chronic health problems. The group has launched a pilot programme to train neighbours and workers to identify older people who are at risk of loneliness.

"Unfortunately, there is no simple solution for loneliness...our pilot programme shows we really can make a difference. We have learnt that to be effective in helping lonely older people we have to recognise their individual needs and we also have to channel the skills of professionals in the NHS and beyond, and the goodwill of local communities," said Caroline Abrahams, director of Age UK.

The charity believes that this extreme loneliness among the elderly is putting additional pressure on already strained health services and has called on local politicians to make combating loneliness a key consideration in funding decisions. People identified as lonely by Age UK groups were provided with telephone support and short-term, face-to-face companionship, with the aim of helping them reconnect with their communities.

Many were introduced to existing social groups, such as lunch clubs. Others were enabled to set up their own social networks, via introductions to people with similar interests, or via IT skills enhancement that allowed them to use Skype to stay in touch with friends and family. The results of the pilot scheme will feed into Age UK's submissions to the Commission on Loneliness, devised by Labour

MP Jo Cox before she was murdered last year by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair.

Research agency TNS polled UK residents aged over 60, asking them how many days a week they usually spent alone with no visits or telephone calls. Out of 2,241 people, 498 said they spent seven days on their own and 464 said five or six days. The results were then extrapolated to reach the UK-wide figures.
The accused has not yet been identified and the police are trying to trace him. (Photo: Representational Image)

Mumbai: A 29-year-old woman was stabbed by an unidentified person near Mahalakshmi Race Course in Central Mumbai, police said on Thursday.

The incident occurred at around 7.30 pm on Thursday near the race course. Police got information about it after Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room.

Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital to see the victim, who is reported to be out of danger.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder, in connection with the incident.

The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked at a private company in Mumbai. Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man.

Last evening, at around 7.30 pm, the man went to meet her at the race course and found her sitting under a tree with stab marks on her chest, following which she was taken to hospital.

Further investigation into the incident was on, police added.
The old woman was found dead in her house. (Representational Image)

Chandigarh: An 80-year-old woman was found dead at her house in Bhatgaon village of Sonepat district with a bottle inserted in her private parts, with police suspecting it to be a case of murder.

The victim's body was first noticed by her son, Jai Bhagwan, on Wednesday morning when he came down from the first floor of the house, police said on Friday.

The toilet cleaner bottle was forcefully inserted in the private parts of the woman. She died due to excessive bleeding, a police officer said.

A case under relevant sections of IPC, including section 302 (punishment for murder) has been registered against the unknown persons, Sonipat DSP Aryan Chaudhary said, adding investigation into the case is on.
Bengaluru: An alert young man whose house had a CCTV camera that was aimed at deterring miscreants in the neighbourhood, and to whom the girl who was molested on New Year's day in Kammanahalli turned to, has since gone AWOL after he called a friendly cop in Hennur police station.

But the young man, Prashanth Francis, did set the wheels in motion that ultimately led to the four louts' arrest.

It was Prashant, as Deccan Chronicle reported on Wednesday, who called the savvy cop whom he knew in Hennur. It was that cop, Inspector Srinivas, who called Banaswadi police station while simultaneously checking all the CCTV footage he had available to him from all the traffic lights in the area, until he spotted the young men with the stylised hair cuts talking to a man in a restaurant, whom the cop recognised.

Inspector Srinivas tracked down the restaurant employee and armed with the information he gleaned from him, hunted down the main molester and the three other pervs. That's the story behind the success of Praveen Sood's first major case after the New Year's day mass molestation threatened to tarnish his reputation within 48 hours of taking over as the city's police commissioner.

Bengaluru City Police have nabbed four of the six accused including the prime one in the heinous incident which occurred in Kammanahalli.

The accused - Aiyappa alias Nithish Kumar (19), Leno aka Lenin Patrick (20), the man with the bizarre girl tattoo, Sudesh alias Sudi (20) and Somashekhar alias Chinni (24) had been stalking the girl for four days. Aiyappa, the prime accused, is a delivery boy with a prominent food delivery agency and had delivered food to her room on a couple of occasions. The Commissioner told a packed news conference on Thursday that police were in touch with the victim and were doing their best to encourage her to participate in the investigation.

While refusing to divulge any information about the victim, all Mr Sood would say was that the victim had arrived in Bengaluru city just a week ago before the incident took place.

While thanking the Prashanth Francis, and the swift action taken by his own police team, Sood said that the four accused who are arrested were stalking the victim four to five days. "It is a clear case of molestation and we did not delay even a moment after we saw the CCTV footage. A suo motu case was registered and investigation was on. The accused were in a group, and had been followed her for some time before the heinous incident. We have booked all the four with same charges as that of prime accused as they had planned it together," he said.

Girl stalked in safe city

She was told that Bengaluru was a safe city but within days of her arrival, she was stalked, groped and molested by two men, who were part of a six-man gang, four of whom were arrested on Thursday on charges of molestation. The victims first reality check of Bengaluru has now left her traumatized for life.

Pics of women, not valid?

While the alleged molestation at MG Road and Brigade Road has dented the image of namma Bengaluru, the Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said no molestation incidents had happened. Photographs of distraught women comforted by women cops seem to have not been taken into cognizance.

Harshest punishment needed

As the clamour in the city grew to nab the molesters - both the New Year's Eve mob and the lone wolf attack in Kammanahalli - there were growing demands that the four youngsters who had been arrested in connection with the violent attack of the young woman should face imprisonment of up to 7 years if convicted.
An argument between a farmer and a group of drunks over giving way to each other on a village road led to the group killing the farmers father and injuring him seriously on Thursday.

Hyderabad: An argument between a farmer and a group of drunks over giving way to each other on a village road led to the group killing the farmers father and injuring him seriously on Thursday.

Police said the gang attacked Sujajuddin Pasha and Syed Pasha with sticks and iron rods resulting in the death of Sujajuddin. The incident happened in Ranga Reddy district.

Meanwhile, tension gripped the Aina village in Doma mandal of Sujajuddin as he was a religious figure and was associated with a dargah in the village. Police rushed reinforcements to prevent violence.

Police said that on Thursday evening, Sujajuddins son Syed Pasha was going to their fields on his bike.

Meanwhile, Yadaiah, Buggaiah and Raju who were consuming alcohol along with friends in the nearby fields were going towards the village on their bikes. When Pasha and the drunks came face to face they found that both could not move on the narrow road. This led to an argument between them.

Later, the trio went back to the fields and along with their friends came back armed with sickles, rods and sticks to attack Pasha. However, village elders intervened and restored peace.

At night, when Pasha and Sujajuddin were in their fields, Yadaiah, Buggaiah, Raju and their friends attacked them with iron rods and sticks after covering their faces with handkerchiefs, Parigi inspector P. Prasad said. Seeing the father and son collapsing in blood they thought the duo had died and fled.

Sujajuddin died while being shifted to hospital. Pasha is under treatment and his condition is critical.

Meanwhile, people from surrounding villages came to Aina hearing about Sujajuddin's death as he was a religious man and used to perform rituals for the sick who visited him.

Fearing that the incident would spark clashes between two communities, the police beefed up security in the village. Inspector P. Prasad said they have taken steps to prevent violence.

A murder case was registered and special teams have been set up to nab the suspects.
CHENNAI: Along with the high-decibel clamour asking AIADMK general secretary Sasikala Natarajan to take charge as Chief Minister, there is now a long queue of loyalists comprising several legislators, including ministers, offering to resign their seats to facilitate her contest from there. Leading the list is Andipatti MLA Thanga Tamil Selvan, who made way for late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa to contest from his constituency in 2001.

Tamil Selvan, who had on Monday defined a plan of action for Sasikala's take over as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, said on Tuesday that he would step down to ensure that the AIADMK chief contests from his constituency, represented by late M. G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa in the past. Andipatti has a special place in the history of AIADMK. Our late leader M.G. Ramachandran contested from this constituency in 1984 and I resigned as an MLA in 2001 to pave way for Amma (Jayalalithaa) to enter the Assembly. And now, I am ready to step down and make way for Chinamma, Mr Tamil Selvan said.

We will make sure that she wins by a margin of at least 1 lakh votes, he said. Late Jayalalithaa contested the by-election from Andipatti in 2002 to become the Chief Minister after she was removed from the post in September 2001 through a Supreme Court order. T. Nagar MLA Sathyanarayanan said he would have no problem in resigning if Mrs Natarajan wishes to contest from his seat. The question (of not quitting) does not arise at all. I will quit for Chinamma, he said.

Perambur MLA P Vetrivel, who resigned his R K Nagar seat for late Jayalalithaa in 2015, says he would just not mind doing the same for Sasikala now. Of course, I am ready to resign to enable Chinamma to contest, he said. Since R.K. Nagar, the seat represented by Jayalalithaa from June 2015 to December 2016, is vacant, there is also speculation that Mrs Sasikala would enter the fray from there. This will help send a signal that she is the real political heir of Amma (Jayalalithaa), a senior party leader said.

Former minister and Mettur MLA S. Semmalai says he would feel lucky if he makes way for Mrs Sasikala to contest from his constituency. I felt blessed when Amma gave me the opportunity to initiate the debate on the Motion of Thanks to Governors Address last year and I had recorded it on the floor of the House. I would feel myself lucky if Chinamma contests from my seat, Mr Semmalai said. Tiruttani MLA P.M. Narashiman said, Definitely, if she contests from here it would be a great honour for us and moreover the temple town of Tiruttani.
Lucknow/New Delhi: Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh on Thursday continued attempts to claim ownership of Samajwadi Party (SP) even as further efforts were being made for a rapprochement between the warring factions led by the father and the son.

Akhilesh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh who was on Sunday made 'President' of SP by his faction in place of Mulayam, appointed heads of seven more district party units, demonstrating his strengthening grip on the party.

Read: SP war: Mulayam, Shivpal rush to Delhi to meet EC; Akhilesh huddles with MLAs

State SP president Naresh Uttam appointed district presidents in Mainpuri, Moradabad, Fatehpur, Etawah, Farukhabad, Hardoi and Firozabad "on directives of national president Akhilesh Yadav", said a press release issued by the Chief Minister's camp.

The existing presidents of these district units were also sacked with immediate effect to pave the way for new faces.

On Wednesday, Akhilesh had named party unit chiefs of four districts -- Deoria, Kushinagar, Azamgarh and Mirzapur. Presidents in all these districts were dumped by Shivpal Yadav, who is state president of another faction of SP backed by his elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav.

This came even as the rival factions raced against time to garner support of party MPs, MLAs and delegates to prove majority before the Election Commission to claim 'Samajwadi Party' name and 'Cycle' symbol.

Mulayam and Shivpal rushed to the national capital this morning to furnish details of support he enjoys in the embattled party to the poll panel.

But Akhilesh stayed put at his official residence in Lucknow, collecting signed affidavits to back his claim of majority support. There was a claim that he had secured signed affidavits of over 200 MLAs and MLCs.

SP MP Naresh Agarwal, who is close to Akhilesh, claimed a majority of the party MLAs, MLCs and MPs were with him. He was confident that EC would allot the 'cycle' symbol to the Akhilesh camp.

In Delhi, Mulayam held a meeting his close confidante Amar Singh amid a talk that they may approach the Election Commission with letters of support from over 50 per cent of the legislators and office bearers.

Mulayam's close aides said he had sought time from the Commission to put forth his stand but the poll panel firmly denied that any appointment had been sought.

Hours later, Mulayam returned to Lucknow along with Shivpal, without approaching the Commission.

Sources in the poll watchdog said they have not received any document from the SP founder.

"In fact, his side is yet to submit the letter removing Ram Gopal Yadav as National General Secretary," an official claimed.

After Mulayam's return to Lucknow in the evening, SP leader Azam Khan, who has been working for a patch-up, met Akhilesh for the second time in the day.

Akhilesh told his supporters, who met him at his 5, Kalidas Marg residence, to gear up for the elections and ensure a landslide for the party.

Cabinet minister Ravidas Malhotra, who was present at a meeting Akhilesh had with MPs, MLAs and MLCs, quoted him as saying, "Netaji is my father. I have asked him (Mulayam) to give me authority for three months. After returning to power,

he may decide whatever he wants."

Another minister Shanklal Manjhi, who too attended the meeting, said, "SP is incomplete without 'Netaji' but Akhilesh is its face. Without him party is incomplete."

On the other hand, sources in the Mulayam camp said the party supremo was armed with signed affidavits of MLAs, MLCs and MPs which he will furnish to the EC but their number was not given.

Interestingly, some old socialists still expect a patch-up so that SP could go to polls a united house.

The Election Commission has initiated the process for the two warring factions of the Samajwadi Party to prove their majority for getting the party name and symbol. In the 403-member UP Assembly, SP has 229 MLAs.

The EC has asked both factions to show strength of MLAs, MPs and MLCs supporting them through signed affidavits by January 9.

Meanwhile, Quami Ekta Dal (QED) MLA Sigbatullah Ansari met Akhilesh, saying he had been invited by him.

Merger of QED, headed by gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, with SP was the bone of contention between Akhilesh and Mulayam as the Chief Minister was strongly opposed to it.
The image can be accessed by clicking on the historical imagery icon on Google Earth and scrolling back to May, 2016. (Photo: Twitter @rajfortyseven)

New Delhi: A Google Earth image has shown a Chinese nuclear submarine docked in Karachi harbour in May 2016, in an indication that Beijing might be scrutinizing Indian warships' movements far more closely than earlier.

According to a report in NDTV, the image, spotted first by a satellite imagery expert on Twitter (@rajfortyseven) appears to show a Chinese Navy Type 091 'Han' class fast-attack submarine, the first class of nuclear powered submarines deployed by China.

The image can be accessed by clicking on the historical imagery icon on Google Earth and scrolling back to May, 2016, said the report.

However, Indian nuclear experts say that the docked submarine could be the even more powerful Chinese Type 093 'Shang' class, far quieter and tougher to detect and equipped with newer weapons and advanced technology, including a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear-powered submarines, unlike conventional submarines, have an unlimited range of operations since their nuclear reactors rarely require to be refueled. The submarines, armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles, can be deployed underwater for extended durations where they are difficult to track, said the report.

Indian Navy officials have been convinced for many years that the presence of Chinese nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean is part of a choreographed exercise to expand Beijing's military presence in the region.

Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said in December, "As far as People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships and submarines are concerned, the Indian Navy keeps a close eye and monitor their movements. We launch surveillance missions in the form of aircraft and ships to keep a track of them."
The top court had on April 4 begun final hearing of the convicts' appeal almost two years after staying their execution. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Friday hear an appeal filed by the December 16 gangrape convicts, Akshay, Vinay Sharma, Pawan and Mukesh, challenging the Delhi High Court order which had awarded them death sentence.

The top court had on April 4 begun final hearing of the convicts' appeal almost two years after staying their execution.

Two of the four death-row convicts had written to former Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Deepak Misra, stating that they do not approve of the defence counsel appointed by the court to argue their case before the top court as they had given statements against them to the media in the past.

The trial court had in September 2013 awarded death sentences to the convicts. Six months later, the Delhi High Court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts moved the apex court in 2014, which stayed their execution.

Earlier, the apex court had declined the request by two amici curiae, senior counsel Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay R Hegde - to withdraw from assisting the court in the hearing of the appeals by the convicts in the gangrape case.

Asking both to continue assisting the court in the hearing of the appeals by the four accused convicted and sentenced to death, the three judge bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan said: "We can appreciate the anguish expressed by the learned amici curiae".

Six people gang raped a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in a moving bus and beat her and her male friend.

After violently raping and attacking her, they threw the girl outside the vehicle, along with her male friend. The girl succumbed to her injuries in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.

The incident led to large scale protests across the country, forcing the government of the day to make strict and punitive laws related to harassment of women.

One of the accused, Ram Singh hanged himself in prison, while another man, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home.
Chennai: Sasikala Natarajan, who last month became the new AIADMK chief following the death of J Jayalalithaa, is an unwanted figure in the former Tamil Nadu Chief Ministers constituency of RK Nagar in Chennai.

According to an NDTV report, many workers from AIADMK, mostly women, protested on Thursday as lawmaker P Vetrivel appealed to Natarajan to fight from the seat Jayalalithaa represented.

Vetrieval was present at a silent rally in Chennai to mark 30 days of Jayalalithaas death. There, people organized protests against Sasikala, said the report.

"We only came for Amma. Tell Chinnamma (Sasikala) to not imagine we have come to vote for her," a senior citizen was quoted as saying at the protest.

V Padma, another woman worker said, "She was in hospital for 75 days. Did they show Amma to us?"

Another protester also wanted Jayalalithaa's niece Deepa Jayakumar to contest from RK Nagar, calling her the real heir to Jayalalithaa.

Vetrivel called the protests insignificant and blamed it on the Opposition DMK, claiming the opposition party had orchestrated them. However, DMK dismissed the allegation as cheap.

Sensing discontent, some senior AIADMK office bearers have already suggested that Sasikala contest elections from Madurai, said the report.

This development comes even as some ministers in Tamil Nadu's AIADMK government have urged Sasikala to take up the post of the state's Chief Minister.

Meanwhile, Jayalalithaa's niece Deepa Jayakumar had surprise visitors in the form of a few hundred AIADMK workers who gathered outside her home in Chennais T Nagar, asking her to lead them.

"At an appropriate time I shall announce my decision. None can stop me," she was quoted as saying.
It's a hot button issue and it's going to come up during the 2017 Legislature.





81 men sit on death row in Nevada, and a new chamber was just built at Ely State Prison. But the last execution took place more than a decade ago.





State Senator Tick Segerblom wants to end the practice all together. He, with Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, is proposing a bill that would make the state's maximum punishment life in prison without parole.





"I don't think a society has the right to decide who is going to live or die," Segerblom said.





Besides the moral argument against the death penalty, Segerblom said money is also a factor. He said the state spends millions of dollars on death penalty cases, but no one is executed.





"It's really just a feel good issue for people to say 'We're going to kill someone because they did something bad,' but at the end of the day, we never do kill the person and we spend millions of dollars trying to get to the point where we could kill them but it never happens."





Besides the state and federal appeals that take up both time and money, the drugs to execute people are not available. Segerblom said the state spends millions of dollars to get prisons to the point where they can be executed but it is never going to happen.





Tod Story with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada agreed that the money spent on death penalty cases is far more than putting a prisoner away for life.





According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a state audit of the cost of death row versus life in prison showed it costs sometimes double for someone to be sentenced to death than to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.





Story said the argument against the death penalty goes beyond just the cost. He believes it is fundamentally about the society we want to be.





"I think the fundamental question comes down to whether we as a government, we as a people, we as a society, can take away someone's life," he said.





Supporters of the death penalty have said that it is a deterrent, arguing that people won't do something if they know they could face the death penalty for it.





For instance, Illinois is 1 of 18 states that has repealed its death penalty and the murder rate in Chicago has skyrocketed lately.





Both Story and Segerblom dismiss the argument that having a death penalty does anything to stop crime.





"There is no correlation between whether you have the death penalty, you don't have the death penalty as far as violent crime," Segerblom.





"We still have the death penalty here in Nevada and we had if not the highest, but one of the highest, murder rates here in Las Vegas last year," Story said, "We know that it is not a deterrent."





Segerblom is purposing the legislation when the Legislature meets in February, but he is not entirely sure it will pass or that the governor will sign it.





"I had a bill a couple of sessions ago just to ask to study the death penalty and the governor vetoed it," he said.





Story remains optimistic that Gov. Sandoval will sign it.





"I think anything is possible," he said, "I think the governor has indicated his willingness to entertain the idea."

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Source: knpr.org, January 6, 2017
The report further reveals that apart from India, ISIS is also believed to be training some youth from Bangladesh and the Maldives at the same camp. (Photo: AFP/Representational Image)

New Delhi: With the specific purpose of targeting and making inroads into India and Bangladesh, intelligence agencies say that the Islamic State (ISIS) has launched a special operation to train cadres from these countries at its Nangarhar camp in Afghanistan.

The countrys external intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing has, in a recent classified report submitted to the Centre, said that ISIS, which has been trying desperately to establish its presence in India, may well have managed to lure some of the youth who recently fled from states like Kerala to the Nangarhar training camp.

It is suspected that more than 20 young men from India, mostly from southern states like Kerala, are being trained by ISIS at the Nangarhar camp which is close to Jalalabad. It is suspected that these youth may have managed to enter Afghanistan by first going to some Gulf country and subsequently managed to reach the Nangarhar camp. ISIS will try and send these men back into India to launch some terror operations, the report states, details of which have been accessed by this newspaper.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had recently launched a massive operation in southern India and had arrested more than a dozen men who had links with ISIS and were planning to carry out subversive activities in the region.

Top government sources said the information forwarded by RAW has also been shared with other security and intelligence agencies, including NIA, for necessary follow-up action.

The report further reveals that apart from India, ISIS is also believed to be training some youth from Bangladesh and the Maldives at the same camp.

Over the last few years ISIS has been aggressively campaigning on the social media to attract and radicalise youth from India and Bangladesh in an attempt to gain a foothold in the two countries. It is suspected that terrorists involved in the attack at a high-profile cafe in Dhaka in July last year were radicalised by ISIS.

Sources said the Centre has taken a serious note of the inputs and asked NIA and the Intelligence Bureau to closely track all activities of ISIS in the country and adjoining region. Both NIA and IB have a special cell that monitors ISIS operations.

ISIS training cadres in Afghanistan is serious as this could impact the security situation not just in India but the entire region. If the terror outfit succeeds in making inroads in Bangladesh and the Maldives, it is dangerous for Indias internal security. We are closely monitoring the situation, a senior intelligence official said.

Given the increased security co-operation between India and Afghanistan, efforts are being made by Indian security agencies to neutralise the Nangarhar camp. Sources said that intelligence agencies have also shared this information with US security agencies which have a sizeable presence in Afghanistan. Indian security forces have already been deployed in Afghanistan to provide cover to its assets, including consulates and various development projects.

As far as Afghanistan is concerned, theres a great deal of co-operation between India, US and Afghanistan on various security related issues. We are working together to counter the increasing influence of ISIS in the region as it will impact all stakeholders, the official added.
New Delhi: Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju on Friday tendered unconditional apology for contemptuous remarks in his blog on the Soumya rape case. He offered the apology to the apex court which was accepted by it and the contempt proceedings against him were closed.

Justice Katju had sparked controversy after he stated that the Supreme Court had 'grievously erred by law' in the Soumya case, in which the death sentence of the accused Govindachamy was commuted.

Katju was earlier invited by the Supreme Court to explain why the judgement requires review. In November the top court issued him a notice of contempt for "scandalising" judiciary as he appeared before a bench and had heated exchanges with it.

But with Katju now offering an apology for his conduct, the contempt proceedings will be stopped against him. The order was passed by a bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and U U Lalit which accepted the apology and decided to close the contempt proceedings against the former judge.

"In view of the apology tendered, which has been verified, we close the instant contempt proceedings," it said.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, appearing for Justice Katju, read from the reply tendering the apology. Justice Katju was earlier granted exemption from personal appearance.
Thiruvananthapuram: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and other party men were detained on Friday by the police in Thiruvananthapuram for protesting against demonetisation outside the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) office.

Tharoor, the local MP from Trivandrum, had said earlier that the demonetisation exercise was implemented badly and in an astonishingly incompetent manner.

The problem goes to such basic elements of planning such as not having enough currency before you spring this on the nation, when 86 per cent of your currency would become illegal in three-and-a-quarter hours. Thats astonishing. Nobody in the world has done this. Secondly, even the lack of planning in something as basic as making the new notes the same size as the old so that they can fit in the ATM is mind-boggling. Then you scramble to find 55,000 engineers to recalibrate 2.5 lakh ATMs. This makes the government look amateurish, Tharoor had earlier said at an event in New Delhi.

We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office, but were arrested by police and later released, Tharoor said to ANI on his arrest.
Security men guard during an AIADMK rally to pay tribute J Jayalalithaa in Coimbatore. (Photo: PTI)

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking direction to the Centre to bestow Indias highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, upon former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar rejected the PIL filed by K K Ramesh, Managing Trustee of Tamil Nadu Centre for Public Interest Litigation.

The petitioner after narrating Jayalalithaa's life history, said she had bagged Tamil Nadu state film awards for best actress apart from many other awards and was a five-time Chief Minister.

The petitioner went on list the many welfare schemes launched by her including Amma canteens to provide food at lowest price and free laptops and cycles for students.

As she cared for the people of Tamil Nadu as a mother, she was called 'Amma', he said.

Ramesh said he was constrained to file this petition as his December 15, 2016 representation to the Union government on the matter had not evoked any response.

But the the court stated that it does not want to interfere in such matters.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam last month met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hand over a letter requesting the government to bestow the Bharat Ratna on Jayalalithaa and to install a bronze statue in the Parliament complex.

The Tamil Nadu Cabinet on December 10 decided to recommend Jayalalithaa's name for India's highest civilian honour.

In its first meeting chaired by Chief Minister O Panneerselvam after Jayalalithaa's demise, the Cabinet also decided to recommend to the Centre installation of her life-size bronze statue.

Later that month, at the General Council meeting of the AIADMK, legislators recommended that Jayalalithaa receive the Magsaysay Award and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Resolution number 11 adopted at the General Council says, "This council resolves to make all efforts to bestow Ramon Magsaysay Award, popularly known as Asia's Nobel Prize, on our chief minister Puratchi Thalaivi Amma for her service to the humanity, and Nobel Prize for Peace for her efforts to eradicate poverty by feeding the needy (through Amma canteens)."
New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a charge sheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, who was arrested in Kashmir in July last year, alleging that he was working for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and was planning to carry out attacks at several places including Delhi.

The agency has filed the charge sheet under various provisions of IPC, UAPA, sections of Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act against Ali, who has been been in judicial custody since August.

According to court sources, the charge sheet, filed before District Judge Amar Nath, claimed that the recent unrest in Kashmir Valley had been orchestrated by Pakistan-based LeT.

The agency claimed that since summer last year, the banned outfit, with the "help of Pakistani forces deployed on the border", pushed heavily armed terrorists into India with a direction to mix with local people, create disturbance and attack police and security forces.

NIA, in its charge sheet, has also alleged that along with his associates, Ali had planned terror attacks to destabilise the security and sovereignty of India.

The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir besides Delhi, the charge sheet claims.

It alleged that given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18.

A fourth-class dropout, Ali, who hails from Jahama village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from village Yahama in Mawar area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on July 25. The army had claimed to have recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs 23,000 in Indian currency from his possession.

According to NIA, Ali was trained at a Lashkar camp in PoK to carry out various activities, including map reading and operating GPS devices.
Abu Azmi went on to say that women should be cautious about their security as long as crimes against them do not stop. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

New Delhi: It seems like Abu Azmi still hasn't learnt from his past mistakes, as the Samajwadi Party leader on Friday stirred a fresh controversy with his derogatory remark stating that people allowing women to wear short clothes are the ones who actually disrespect them.

"I have never disrespected women, but those who allow women to wear short clothes, disrespect them," Azmi told ANI, adding that he would be called orthodox for asking women to wear proper clothes.

Azmi went on to say that women should be cautious about their security as long as crimes against them do not stop.

"Until and unless these people won't mend and such incidents keep on happening in the country, till then the girls should be cautious and take care of their own security," the Samajwadi Party leader said.

Azmi also ridiculed live-in relation terming it unacceptable in Islam and said that a woman should stay with a man only after marriage.

He further defended his earlier offensive statement on the Bengaluru molestation case, saying that his remark was misquoted for the sake of TRP.

"The media has quoted me out of context just for the sake of TRP. They have cut pasted the statement while neglecting as to what the person is trying to say," he said.

He also demanded strict action against the accused in Bengaluru molestation case.

Azmi also called for stringent laws to deal with cases related to rape and molestation.

"After Delhi's Nirbhaya gang-rape case, amendments in the law were made, but such cases are still increasing. Women do wear fashionable clothes in Dubai, Saudi Arab, Kuwait and Arab countries, but no one has the audacity to touch them because of the stringent law there. Such law should also be enforced in our country," he added.

Azmi said that he got support from various people for raising his voice for the Indian culture.

The Samajwadi Party leader had earlier this week said that nudity has become new fashion in India.

"In this modern era, more a girl exposes the more she will be called fashionable. I believe if my daughter or sister is celebrating 31st night after sunset and she doesn't have her father or husband with her and is with other men, then she can't be treated with respect," Azmi said.
New Delhi: Recalling Bollywood actor Om Puri's long career in theatre and films, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday condoled the passing away of the veteran actor.

"The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films," the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) tweeted.

The deep, masculine and baritone voice of Puri will no more be heard in person as the veteran actor breathed his last, at the age of 66, today.

Reportedly, he passed away after a massive heart attack, early this morning.

Film maker Ashoke Pandit took to his Twitter handle to share the news, "Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP."

Om Puri, born on October 18, 1950, to a Punjabi family, was an actor, who appeared in mainstream commercial, Pakistani, Hollywood, independent and art films.

The actor, who had more than 100 films to his credits, was also honoured with Padma Shri and two National Film Awards, during his acting career that stretched for more than four decades.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to give urgent hearing to a plea seeking postponement of the Union Budget to March, after the Assembly polls in 5 states were completed.

A bench of the SC headed by CJI Jagdish Singh Khehar said, "will hear the matter in due course of time, but not now".

Advocate ML Sharma, who filed the PIL on the issue, mentioned it and sought an urgent hearing.

The PIL has also sought a direction to strip Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of its lotus election symbol for alleged violation of the model code of conduct which came into effect after declaration of assembly polls in five states.

The Budget is scheduled to be held on February 1, and the NDA government is in no mood to postpone it.

The Opposition parties had earlier on Thursday approached the Election Commission demanding that the Budget be postponed to a date beyond March 8, the last date on which voting for Assembly elections will be held.

The Opposition contends that holding the Budget before the Assembly polls will allow the BJP to woo voters through various schemes.
Bengaluru: A suo motu case has been registered against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Anant Kumar Hegde on charges of assaulting a doctor.

Hegde, who is the MP from Kanara constituency, had on January 2 thrashed two doctors and a private hospital worker in Sirsi as they were making delay in admitting his mother who sustained a leg injury.

The BJP MP's mother Lalita Hegde suffered a leg fracture after a fall in her house and was rushed to TSS Hospital in Sirsi.

Since the doctor on duty was busy in the operation theatre, he didn't attend to Hegde's mother on priority which irked the latter. The MP then dragged the doctor out of the ward and manhandled him.

When another doctor and an employee tried to intervene, Hegde assaulted them as well. Hegde had also threatened the hospital authority of consequences if they lodge a police complaint against him.
As the security forces were laying cordon around the locality, the militant hurled a grenade in a bid to escape but his attempt was thwarted. (Photo: Representational Image)

Srinagar: In a major success, security forces on Friday killed a top Lashkar-e-Taiba militant Muzaffar Naikoo alias Muzz Moulvi in an encounter on the outskirts of Srinagar.

Security forces launched an operation in Gulzarpora locality of Mochuwa late last night following information about presence of a top militant in the area, a police official said.

As the security forces were laying cordon around the locality, the militant hurled a grenade in a bid to escape but his attempt was thwarted. Constable Hoshiyar Singh was injured in the grenade blast, the official said.

There was exchange of fire for some time and the encounter ended with the killing of the lone militant, he said.

The slain militant was identified as Muzaffar Naikoo alias Muzz Moulv of Lashkar, he said, adding the body has been sent to his native village in Sopore area of north Kashmir.

The Lashkar militant was active for past many years in north Kashmir and had recently shifted to Srinagar, the official said, adding security agencies are investigating the motive behind Naikoo moving to the city.
Pakistan chose to vote against the recent resolution in the United Nations General Assembly that had called for a global moratorium on the death penalty and was adopted by a majority of member-states.





The gist of this resolution has been adopted by the UN General Assembly every 2 years since 2007. The resolution adopted on Dec 19, 2016 was backed by 117 states, while 40 voted against it and 31 abstained. As against the voting pattern in 2014, the new supporters of the moratorium call were Guinea, Malawi, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and Swaziland.





South Asia maintained its fondness for the death penalty as Pakistan joined Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Maldives in rejecting a universal moratorium, while Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka voted in favour.





Those who defend the death penalty as a principle enjoined by Islam may look at the division among the Muslim states (the category includes all members of the OIC).





Those voting in favour of a moratorium included: Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bosnia Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Suriname, Togo, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.





Those who abstained included: Bahrain, Cameroon, Comoros, Djibouti, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda and the UAE.





The Muslim states that voted against were: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Guyana, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.





We find that 24 of the OIC's 57 member states voted in favour of the moratorium, while 13 abstained and only 18 voted against. In other words, Pakistan is in the minority group of 18 OIC member-countries that opposes the moratorium.





It is for Pakistan's government and its Islamic scholars to ponder as to why a majority of the OIC members do not find any faith-based bar to the acceptance of a moratorium on capital punishment. They may also consider the possibility that, as in the case of some international treaties, reservations expressed in the name of religion are in fact dictated by the culture or custom of the countries concerned.





What is more distressing for human rights activists, abolitionist groups and promoters of humanitarian laws in Pakistan is the authorities' aversion to any scrutiny of the rationale for their love of the death penalty regime.





What one hears of references to the death penalty during the Universal Periodic Review or at talks with the European Union on the GSP+ status is not the result of any serious deliberation. Indeed, one doubts if any discussion on the subject has ever taken place in Pakistan. That there is an urgent need for such a discussion can easily be established.





The recent cases in which the Supreme Court acquitted two individuals who had already been executed, or ordered the release of persons who had spent long years on death row, have strengthened the call for abolition of the death penalty on the ground of high risk of miscarriage of justice. A number of other issues that have surfaced over the past many years also need to be addressed. These are:





-- The view that the death sentence is not a deterrent to crime has not been challenged nor has the view that hangings brutalise society.





-- The Qisas law has prevented the president from pardoning death convicts or commuting their sentence although his power to do so under Article 45 of the Constitution remains intact. How does one explain the fact that the army chief can pardon a person awarded the death sentence by a military court while the president cannot do so?





-- The scholars agree that Islam prescribes the death penalty in only 2 instances. How does the state defend the fact that capital punishment is prescribed for 27 offences in the name of religion?





-- The judiciary has pointed out the problems it faces in cases in which capital punishment is mandatory if the evidence on record warrants a lesser penalty.





-- The possibility of a minor or a mentally challenged person being executed keeps cropping up every now and then.





One ventures to suggest a look at the Indian response to the issue of the death penalty in view of the shared legal tradition.





The Law Commission of India recommended in August 2015, vide its Report No. 262, that "the death penalty be abolished for all crimes other than terrorism-related offences and waging war". The commission agreed to retain capital punishment for certain offences in view of the parliamentarians' plea that "abolition of death penalty for terrorism-related offences and waging war will affect national security", although in the commission's view "there is no valid penological justification for treating terrorism differently from other crimes."





The commission noted the significant steps taken during India's decades-long efforts to restrict the use of the death penalty: removal of the requirement of giving special reasons for awarding life imprisonment instead of death (1955); introduction of the requirement of imposing the death penalty (1973); and the Supreme Court's decision that the death penalty should be restricted to the rarest of rare cases (1980). The conclusion reached by the commission was:





"Informed also by the expanded and deepened contents and horizons of the right to life and strengthened due process requirements in the interactions between the state and the individual, prevailing standards of constitutional morality and human dignity, the commission feels that time has come for India to move towards abolition of the death penalty."





During the latest debate in the UN General Assembly, however, India again voted against the resolution calling for a moratorium although it could have shown some respect for the Law Commission's recommendation by abstaining. Which only goes to show that, in developing countries, state policies are often determined by authorities that are too timid to disturb the status quo or too proud of their conservatism to heed the counsel of experts who are conscious of the call of the age.

Pakistan: Reviewing the death penalty

The first thing you notice about the death penalty is how much preparation is involved. In two years, Pakistan has carried out 419 executions. 419 death row prisoners wore a hood as six warders accompanied them to the scaffold each time. 419 bodies remained suspended for 30 minutes after being hanged. Some of these bodies likely ended up in prison graveyards, unable to break free from jails even in death.





On December 17, 2014, Pakistan lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in the wake of the tragic terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. Originally lifted for terrorism related offences in March 2015, the moratorium was lifted for all capital offences. In the face of international opposition, the government has consistently maintained that the death penalty is the only effective means of fighting terrorism.





However, an analysis of the 419 executions that have occurred in less than 2 years by Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a rights group, reveals significant flaws in this narrative. In Pakistan, criminal culpability is at best, widely misunderstood and at worst, casually measured with irreversible consequences. The numbers that confirm this are frightening.





27 offences are liable for a black warrant in this country, explaining the macabre achievement of having one of the worlds most populated death rows.





The 100th prisoner to be hanged after executions resumed was mentally ill, unaware until his death as to why he was being punished. Undiagnosed until 2014, Muneer Hussain was mentally unwell since childhood and later, killed two family members.





There have been at least six juveniles executed since the moratorium was lifted in December 2014. Between then and March 2016, at least 444 mercy petitions were sent to the President of Pakistan, including one for schizophrenic prisoner, Imdad Ali and Abdul Basit who is a paraplegic prisoner. So far, the known number of presidential pardons granted stands at zero.





In Pakistan, the judicial system that enables the carrying out of death sentences warrants close examination. The legal infrastructure is faulty, mired in red tape, beholden to power, creating a permissive environment for the routine miscarriage of justice.





In November this year, the Supreme Court exercised its suo moto right to reassess a case of kidnapping in Bahawalpur in Punjab, for which two brothers had been sentenced to death. Unsurprisingly, the prosecutions case was riddled with contradictions, with insufficient evidence and incongruous eyewitness testimonies, and the SC acquitted the condemned prisoners. Only Ghulam Qadir and Ghulam Sarwar were no longer prisoners, having been executed last year.





Given the Bahawalpur case, it is critical to overhaul a system that hangs the living, and exonerates the dead. The dearth of resources for law-enforcement incentivises corruption and other abuses of authority. Police lack forensic capabilities and other reliable means of investigation. As a result, there is over-reliance on confessions, easily obtained through torture.





1,424 cases of torture have been uncovered in just one district of Faisalabad from 2006 to 2012, according to Justice Project Pakistan





444 mercy petitions have been sent to the president between Dec 2014 and March 2016; none have been granted so far





JPP uncovered 1,424 cases of torture in just one district of Faisalabad from 2006 to 2012. At 17, Abd-ur-Rehman was subject to such brutal torture following his detention that he admitted to every accusation levied at him, including being told that his name was Azam. Today, no one in Karachi Central Jail, where he remains imprisoned, knows him by the name he was born with. His involvement in an attempted burglary has kept him on death row for the last 18 years  well over half his life.





Every defendant is entitled to effective legal counsel at all stages of proceedings under the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Pakistan is a signatory. Though Pakistan provides needy capital defendants with counsel at state expense, the quality of representation is poor. In fact, it is generally not perceived as acceptable for lawyers to be seen in a jail.





Such scant contact between lawyers and their clients in criminal cases actively enables the miscarriage of justice, given the former essentially forgoes the chances of uncovering potentially exculpatory evidence. But with a fee below the minimum wage (a minimum of Rs2,000, with a daily fee of Rs200), there is little motivation for a state-appointed attorney to pursue a case.





International law dictates that capital punishment be reserved only for the most serious crimes, subject to fair and legitimate processes that protect a defendants basic rights and provide avenues for post-conviction relief. Pakistan has not lived up to its obligations. At each stage of a defendants encounter with this system, severe violations emerge.





Calling for anything short of a complete moratorium on executions means the continued killing of individuals whose rights have repeatedly been violated from the time of their arrest to their conviction and beyond. Sending even one innocent person  and the government sent two in the Bahawalpur case  to the gallows should prompt this step.





Given these systemic failings, legal reforms, while an important first step, are inadequately implemented at the local level. An executive mechanism to examine mercy petitions must be assembled which refers credible mercy petitions to the presidency.





Because of the lack of transparency, it is recommended that independent actors such as the National Human Rights Commission, a statutory body constituted under the National Human Rights Commission Act 2012, conduct investigations into cases.





Wrongful and unjust death sentences must be commuted. Because the death sentence warrants a high standard of proof, the state should also commute cases for individuals whose convictions were based primarily on confessions, in recognition of the high prevalence of custodial torture and inadequate safeguards in place.





Passing the Anti-Torture Bill, which has been pending since 2012, would be a good place to start. In short, Pakistans criminal justice system needs to undertake a detailed review of the death penalty.





Source: Dawn , Rimmel Mohydin, Zainab Malik, December 22, 2016. Rimmel Mohydin and Zainab Malik work on public and policy advocacy at Justice Project Pakistan.

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Source: dawn.com, January 6, 2017
New Delhi: Terming the demand of opposition parties to defer the Budget Session as "anti-people", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the Union Budget is for the country and would not be state specific.

"No budget means no development, no welfare. Is this what you want? And no support to poor people, no support to farmers, is that what your wish is? Why are you opposing? Budget is budget," Naidu said.

He was responding to a question regarding opposition parties' demand that the presentation of the Union Budget on February 1, ahead of the Assembly elections in five states, be deferred till March 8, the last day of voting.

Speaking to reporters here, Naidu said the budget would not be state specific.

"The budget will be about the people, their future, what are the taxation proposals, what is the revenue model...It will be presented before the Parliament, that is for the country, it will not be state specific," the Information and Broadcasting minister said.

He said that he was not able to understand the objection raised by the opposition.

"At the end of the day, they are afraid that all their efforts at disinformation against the Modi government have failed and the latest disinformation of the opposition on demonetisation is boomranging on them. They have realised, you have seen survey after survey," he added.

He claimed that even in Uttar Pradesh there is a massive support for demonetisation because of which the opposition parties are rattled.

"Now they have changed their agenda again and are trying to now stop the budget which is an anti-people move again, which will again boomerang on them," he added.

Asked about the feud in Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Naidu said BJP would contest the UP election on the issue of development.

He said the issue was not who is the victor within the family but that people gave the party a chance for five years and it did not fulfill their promises.

He said several of the states which were in the group called 'BIMARU' earlier like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh developed after BJP governments were formed there.

On a question about TMC, Naidu said there were some allegations which were made in the past and the government was allowing investigative agencies to do their job independently.
Satellite image of the nuclear-powered submarine docked at Karachi port in May last year. (Photo: via web)

New Delhi: The Chinese dragons footprints in the Indian Ocean seem to be growing by the day, with reports of satellite imagery indicating that a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine had docked at Pakistans Karachi port in May last year.

Initial reports of the submarine docking at Karachi had surfaced in May last year itself but the satellite imagery now appears to have triggered fresh concern in the Indian security establishment.

The Indian Navy has been closely monitoring movement of foreign vessels in the Indian Ocean in Indias vicinity, especially Chinese submarines which may have been keeping a close watch on Indian warships.

This comes at a time when the Indian Navy itself desperately needs fresh induction of submarines to replenish its ageing fleet.

During the tenure of the Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka earlier, the presence of Chinese nuclear submarines in Sri Lankan waters had shaken New Delhi which had promptly taken up the matter with the then regime in Colombo.

In fact, an internal defence thinktank correspondent of the Indian Government prepared a few years ago had revealed that, Chinas recent strategic manoeuvres in and around the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) pose a threat to both Indias economic and security interests.
This SUV was suspected to be used by the poachers to hunt deer in Bhadra Tiger Reserve a few days ago.

Chikkamagaluru: Did Bengaluru-based realtor Rafiq Ahmed, accused of poaching two Sambar deer at the Bhadra Tiger Reserve, manage to give the police the slip on Thursday evening?

After getting information from Chikkamagaluru SP K. Annamalai that the five people who have been arrested in the poaching case were trying to get bail through an advocate in Chikkamagaluru, District Crime Information Bureau (DCIB) sleuths assembled outside the advocates office near a temple at Vijayapura around 7.30 pm and caught Mustaq Ahmed and Ansar. besides seizing a four-wheeler. Others accompanying Mustaq escaped and it is suspected that Rafiq Ahmed was one of them.

The Basavanahalli police handed over the duo to forest officials, who questioned Mustaq and Ansar on Friday. Both of them maintained that Rafiq was not with them. They told the forest officials that they met the advocate in Chikkamagaluru to seek bail for their neghbour Akhtar Ahmed, a resident of Udayavara in Sakleshpur taluk of Hassan district.

Forest officials suspect that while 11 members of the group were caught red-handed with deer carcasses from their vehicles at the Kemmangundi checkpost early on Sunday morning, Rafiq fled from the scene in a four-wheeler with the firearm used in the hunt.
The SC said that police and other officials need not seize the roosters, but they could seize instruments like katti (knife) which is used in cockfights. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the Hyderabad High Court order prohibiting cockfights, and refused to stay the ban on the sport.

However, the apex court ordered the release of all roosters intended to be used in cockfights and seized by authorities.

In his petition, BJP leader K. Raghu Ramakrishna Raju said that roosters are generally reared by a few farmers as part of tradition and sought directions from the apex court on seizure of such roosters by Police and other official machinary. The SC said that police and other officials need not seize the roosters, but they could seize instruments like katti (knife) which is used in cockfights.
Vice-president of TCDOA V. Sarvesh said that they would continue the protest and indefinite hunger strike.

Hyderabad: Talks at Khairatabad RTA office with the initiation of transport minister P. Mahender Reddy to resolve the issue between cab drivers and the managements will continue on Saturday, with no fruitful results on Friday. Telangana Cab Drivers and Owners Association (TCDOA) announced that their strike would continue.

The TCDOA opposed the RTA officials suggestion to invite as many as 12 unions including lorry and private bus associations that have no bearing on the ongoing strike.

Vice-president of TCDOA V. Sarvesh said that they would continue the protest and indefinite hunger strike. The health condition of the association president V. Shiva is becoming critical day-by-day as he continues with his indefinite hunger strike. We demand the government hold talks with Uber and Ola managements and cab drivers. We shall continue our protest programmes on Saturday, he said.

In another development, the Uber management said that it got an injunction order from the Rangareddy district court against the ongoing blocking of the cars by the cab drivers associations.

The General Manager of Uber for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Deepak Reddy said that the management would focus on the safety of the working driver-cum-partners and riders in view of the ongoing cab drivers strike. He sent a voice message to all the cab drivers saying that the ongoing agitations were taken up by some small groups and associations and there was no need to worry for other working drivers.

Both the Ola and Uber managements have said that there is very little impact on the regular cab services with sufficient number of vehicles to be made available within one or two days.
A case has been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. However, the police have not yet been able to trace the accused who have been identified. (Photo: ANI Twitter)

Lucknow: In yet another instance of barbarism, enraged over a girls attempt to resist rape, four men in Baghpat district chopped off her ear.

The incident took place in Ramala police circle in Baghpat district from where the girl was abducted by the four men.

Her mother, who tried to save her, was also attacked by the men, police said. When the men tried to rape her, the girl fought back and raised an alarm.

The enraged abductors chopped off the girls ear when she raised an alarm and fled.

A case has been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. However, the police have not yet been able to trace the accused who have been identified.

The local BJP MP Satyapal Singh was quoted by the local reporters as saying that, I spoke to the Superintendent of Police. There was no rape attempt and the complaint was made days after the incident which proves that it is an afterthought.
Chennai: Tamil Nadu will sorely miss J. Jayalalithaa and her guidance, but the AIADMK Government is committed to ensure that the policy goals and objectives laid down by her are fulfilled, Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam told Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he demanded that Bharat Ratna be conferred on the late Chief Minister.

Meeting the Prime Minister at his official residence in New Delhi, Mr Pannerselvam spoke to him at length how himself, the AIADMK, and Tamil Nadu would miss late Jayalalithaa and thanked him for flying down to Chennai to pay last respects to her.

The Chief Minister thanked the Prime Minister for meeting him at short notice...The Chief Minister thanked the Prime Minister for his presence at Chennai on 6th December to pay last respects to the late Chief Minister Puratchi Thalaivi Amma who was one of the most influential leaders of our time and stated that this gesture of the Prime Minister in Tamil Nadu's hour of grief was a great consolation, a press release from the Chief Minister's Office said.

The Chief Minister stated that while Tamil Nadu will sorely miss Puratchi Thalaivi Amma's leadership and guidance, the State Government is committed to ensure that the policy goals and objectives laid down by late Chief Minister Puratchi Thalaivi Amma are fulfilled, the release said.

Noting that late Jayalalithaa represented hopes and aspirations of millions of people of Tamil Nadu had an appeal that extended beyond Tamil Nadu, Mr Pannerselvam said she richly deserves the nation's highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna and it would be a fitting tribute to the great leader. He also demanded that Jayalalithaa's full size bronze statue be installed in the Parliament House.

The first Cabinet meeting chaired by Mr Panneerselvam on December 10 had adopted a resolution regarding the demands. The Prime Minister assured the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu of early action on the issues raised in the two Memoranda presented by the Chief Minister and the request made for conferring the Bharat Ratna on the late Chief Minister Selvi J. Jayalalithaa, the press release said.
Resolution number 9 says the late Jayalalithaa always called herself a "farmer" and since she has brought smiles on the faces of farmers across Tamil Nadu through her "innovative schemes", her birthday should be observed as National Farmers' Day.

CHENNAI: Authors of the resolutions adopted at the AIADMK general council meeting did not do their homework. By proposing the late Chief Minister's name for Nobel Peace Prize and demanding that her birthday which falls on February 24 be declared as National Farmers' Day, they came off poor since none of these seem to be possible.

Resolution number 11 adopted at the General Council says, "This council resolves to make all efforts to bestow Ramon Magsaysay Award, popularly known as Asia's noble prize, on our chief minister Puratchi Thalaivi Amma for her service to the humanity and Nobel Prize for Peace for her efforts to eradicate poverty by feeding the needy (through Amma canteens)."

A person's name cannot be nominated for a Nobel Prize posthumously and a person could be awarded a prize posthumously if he/she had already been nominated before February 1 of the same year, which was true of Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Nobel Prize in Literature 1931) and Dag Hammarskjold (Nobel Peace Prize, 1961).

The authors of the resolution seem to have not done their research properly since it is a well-known fact that the Nobel Committee had in 1948 decided not to award the peace prize that year because they could not bestow the honour on Mahatma Gandhi, who passed away in January that year.

Resolution number 9 says the late Jayalalithaa always called herself a "farmer" and since she has brought smiles on the faces of farmers across Tamil Nadu through her "innovative schemes", her birthday should be observed as National Farmers' Day. This is again a goof-up as already, the Union Government commemorates each year on the first Friday of December as National Farmers Day to honour our gallant farmers and fishers.

Political analyst Prof Ramu Manivannan says these kinds of proportions are part of the cult worship that the AIADMK may want to sustain and says the demand for observing her birthday, as National Farmers Day is unjust.

"This again shows the legacy of the cult behaviour that the AIADMK has been practicing. I don't think Jayalalithaa has done anything specific for the farming community. I don't see any logic in the demand for observing her birthday as Farmers Day," Mr Manivannan, head of politics and public administration department, University of Madras, told Deccan Chronicle.

Why not Water Day?

The AIADMK could have demanded observation of Water Day as a mark of respect to her, said Mr Manivannan , head of politics and public administration department, University of Madras. The late leader was passionate about fighting for the water rights be it Cauvery or Mullaiperiyar and that she had also introduced rain water harvesting system that benefited millions. With due credit to her, she did fight for water rights of the state and they could pay tribute to her by asking for a Water Day, he said.
Kochi: Professor Lynette Joubert who is a senior lecturer in social sciences at the University of Melbourne and honorary professor at University France-Comte, France, and is also trained as a clinical psychologist and social worker, says that the skill envisaged by the profession of social work has a caring component in it which is assimilated through field work, listening, non-verbal communication and skill in building relationships .

Attending the DYUTI (Development Yearnings for a United and Transformed India) conference series organized by the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in Kochi, she said that there is lot of similarities with the curriculum followed for the social work education in India and Australia. The caring component of the social worker transcends theory and technology and it does not differ from Australia to India, she said.

Professor Lynette said depression has to be classified to mild, moderate and severe for providing better mental health intervention. Stigma related to mental illness is present in Australia like India. Mental health team involves mental health professionals and the mental health social worker is a member in it, she added. Professor Lynette, who is also honorary associate professor at the Peter McCollum Cancer Centre, said internationally, the number of ageing population is on the rise and India is also about to witness it within the next four decades.

One of the major problems faced by the elderly across the globe is isolation. This gradually leads to unhappiness, depression, and suicidal ideation. Towards the end of the life what matters is the strings of relationship. Social work profession mandatorily teaches its professionals the emotional quality of care called empathy leading to sustaining the relationship. It gives due importance for social network which is the interface at which the person and community regularly meet. Social workers in India need to undertake an exercise to identify the gravity of the psychosocial needs faced by the elderly as we do back in Australia, she said.
Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday announced Rs 1,000 monthly living wages for "distressed lonely women" in the state.

Making an announcement in the Legislative Assembly, Rao said as per the preliminary estimates, there may be about 2-3 lakh poverty stricken, lonely women in the state.

As women are more prone to poverty, we took a decision to provide living security by supporting them by extending Rs 1000 every month to distressed lonely women.

Immediately, orders are issued. We will allocate funds for this purpose in the budget that will be introduced in March 2017, Rao told the Assembly.

The statement however did not elaborate on the eligibility guidelines of the scheme.

The scheme will be implemented for the next financial year and necessary directions are issued to all District Collectors to organise programme to enroll the details of

lonely women, he further said.

Meanwhile, replying to a query during the Question Hour, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries, K T Rama Rao said the state government is examining the possibility of setting up industrial clusters along the Hyderabad-Warangal route.

"A request is being made to Government of India under the recently approved National Investment Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) to include Hyderabad-Warangal corridor," he informed the House.

According to him, initial study reports indicate three possible clusters on the anvil- Yadadri Cluster, Janagaon Cluster and Warangal Cluster.

He said the government is in the process of setting up a Mega Textile Park in Warangal and Detailed Project Report is being prepared for Phase-I in 1,000 acres.
Blog Hinangai

While there is much discussion in Guam about the economic benefits of increasing the islands military presence, the damages/dangers that they represent are rarely mentioned. This blog, a supplement to the Peace and Justice for Guam Petition, is meant to counter that by providing information about the US military in Guam, with the hopes of steering policy away from a dangerous unilateralist course to more sustainable notions of regional development and a strengthening international solidarity.
Mumbai: Congress on Friday asked government to pay 20 per cent interest to farmers on their bank accounts as "compensation" for hardships faced by them in the wake of demonetisation of high value tenders.

"Government should give 20 per cent interest on bank accounts of farmers as compensation for demonetisation distress. We will give voice to the hardships faced by people due to scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes overnight on November 8 last year," state unit Congress president Ashok Chavan said while addressing a gathering in Wardha in east Maharashtra.

He said the farmers and farm labourers are among the "worst sufferers" of demonetisation while citizens too could not withdraw their own money from banks.

Chavan recalled that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had launched her campaign to strengthen the Congress' ideology from Wardha.

Wardha is a sister city for Sevagram, and both were used as major centres for the Independence Movement and have importance place in Gandhian era.

Chavan paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave.

The Congress MP also participated in a morcha to district collectorate.

A memorandum containing demands like complete waiver of crop loan to farmers; to women SHGs; scrapping of commission levied on all online transactions; grant of 20 per cent bonus on the basis of MSP of agricultural produce, release of financial assistance to drought-hit farmers as per the High Court's order, was handed over to the district Collector.

Meanwhile, a 'Jan Akhrosh Morcha' was taken out on the collector's office in neighbouring Yavatmal district against demonetisation and a memorandum was submitted to Collector.
Kolkata: Locked in a bitter feud with the Centre over demonetisation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday sought resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and mooted a "national government" headed by BJP veteran L K Advani, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley or Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The TMC supremo, who has declared an all out war against the Modi dispensation over demonetisation and arrest of her party MPs in chit fund scam, sought President Pranab Mukherjee's intervention to "save the country from Narendra Modi".

"All opposition parties should forget their differences and come together to save the nation.

"It's high time the President intervened and saved the country. That person (Modi) can't lead the nation. He should step down. There should be a national government," she said, suggesting the names of Advani, Jaitley and Singh to replace Modi.

She appreciated Mukherjee's yesterday's statement that demonetisation could lead to a temporary slowdown of the economy.

"I have never seen such a vindictive government at the Centre. They are breaking age-old institutions like the Planning Commission and others. They are breaking the backbone of the government," she told reporters.

The Chief Minister claimed West Bengal had lost Rs 5,500 crore following demonetisation and accused the Centre of "letting loose a reign of terror" on Opposition parties.

A combative Banerjee also dared the BJP leaders to "touch her" when she visits the party-ruled Jharkhand.

"Two of my ministers and party leaders will visit Jharkhand and meet the tribal whose land has been forcibly taken away by the state government. After they come back and give me a report, I will visit Jharkhand. They (BJP) have said they will beat me up, If I visit a BJP-ruled state. I want to see if they can even touch me," Banerjee said.

Her comments followed BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya's recent warning to the TMC to "mend its ways or face consequences" after a string of attacks on party offices and leaders following the arrest of Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Trinamool Congress' leader in the Lok Sabha, in a chit fund scam case.

Vijayvargiya had wondered whether TMC MPs and even Mamata Banerjee would be able to go around the country and enter New Delhi if his party started protesting against them.

Mamata alleged that the Centre wanted to close down companies whose possible revival was being looked at by Board for Indistrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

"Yesterday I received a letter in which it has been indicated that it wants to close down BIFR companies. In Bengal we are trying to retrieve BIFR companies and the Centre wants to close them down," she said.

BIFR was an agency of the Government of India under Ministry of Finance whose objective was to determine sickness of industrial units and to assist in reviving those that may be viable and shutting down the others.

On 1 June, 2016, the Government of India closed it and established National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).
Lucknow: In their first one-to-one meeting since the vertical split in Samajwadi Party, Shivpal Yadav on Friday held talks with defiant nephew Akhilesh at his residence here on a "compromise formula" for a possible patch-up.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired at the brief meeting Shivpal had with Chief Minister Akhilesh.

Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav as well.

However, sources privy to the fast-paced developments did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the "outsider" whose return to SP triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a "compromise formula".

Another possibility could be resignation of Shivpal from the post of state SP chief, a charge held by the chief minister before the current family feud broke out.

It was the first meeting between Akhilesh and Shivpal since the chief minister donned the mantle of SP chief replacing his father Mulayam.

An inkling of a patch-up came late last night when Akhilesh planned to go to the airport here to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayam's return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had yesterday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for three months.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam this morning reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the EC to claim that it was the "real" SP.

Leader of the Akhilesh camp Ramgopal Yadav claimed they have collected signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates, "making it crystal clear as to which was the real SP".
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday came under fire from Congress and Telugu Desam legislators, who accused him of neglecting SCs and STs in the state.

Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Mohd. Ali Shabbir said there were only one SC and one ST minister in the TS Cabinet despite the two communities accounting for 26 per cent of the population.

What happened to the promise of earmarking Rs 50,000 crore for Dalit development, Rs 20,000 crore for tribals, Rs 25,000 crore for BCs and Rs 5000 crore for minorities, he asked.

At Assembly media point, TS TD MLA A. Revanth Reddy slammed Mr Rao and his relative ministers for their absence during discussion on SC, ST Sub-Plan.

He flayed the government for gifting Rs 4 crore cash and 1,000 sq. yd. prime land to shuttler P.V. Sindhu while ignoring 13-year old Malavath Poorna, the student of AP Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society who conquered Mt Everest.

Government paid a meagre Rs 25 lakh to her and washed off its hands, he alleged. Mr Reddy was peeved at absence of Mr Rao, K.T. Rama Rao and T. Harish Rao from the Assembly during the discussion on a key subject. It only shows the importance giving to SCs, STs by KCR and his family. He is anti-Dalit and anti-Girijan. Should Jagdishwar Reddy talk about the problems of SCs and STs? he asked.
Hyderabad: Wednesdays aggressive verbal attack by MIM Floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi on the TRS government with regard to fee reimbursement not only on the floor of Assembly, the first one since the formation of Telangana, has raised many eyebrows.

Many believe Deputy Chief Minister Mohd. Mahmood Alis son Mohd. Azam Alis moves to launch Adaab Telangana, a new Urdu daily, to be the reason for the cracks in the TRS-MIM relationship.

Sources said that the departure of a senior scribe, known to be a close confident of MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, from Etemaad Urdu daily to Azam Alis upcoming newspaper has also irked the Owaisi brothers, the youngest of whom, Burhanuddin, is the editor-in-chief of Etemaad.

An attempt to break the MIM grip on its strongholds was made during the recent reorganisation of districts, said the sources.

However, the MIM got wind of these plans through its moles in the government and managed to lean on the powers-that-be while the plans were in draft stage and save its strongholds, TRS sources said.
A few weeks before 2016 took its leave, David Hale, the US ambassador to Pakistan, announced that the United States government, via the United States Agency for International Development, would be investing $7.3 billion toward increasing the number of female teachers in Pakistan. The announcement came as part of the 16 days of activism initiative by USAIDs Gender Equity Programme, which the Aurat Foundation is implementing. Around the same time, USAID also signed an agreement with Wapda to provide $81 million for the construction of the Kurram-Tangi Dam that will help generate 18MW of activity for the Waziristan region.

As the numbers show (and these are not cumulative figures; USAIDs total investment in Pakistan is much larger) USAID invests many millions of dollars in Pakistan, funding a variety of projects and fuelling a good portion of Pakistans NGO sector. In about few days, when President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the future and continuity of these expenditures is in peril. According to an article published in Foreign Policy, officials at USAID had not (until the end of November) been contacted by the new administration. The situation is unexpected; the same official noted that incoming US Presidents generally have detailed plans and policy briefs regarding how they want US aid commitments to be disbursed. This means there is little clarity regarding the $34 billion that the US Congress has approved as expenditures for USAID in the upcoming fiscal year.

The uncertainty regarding USAIDs future (and consequently the future of its activities in Pakistan) is not limited to delays in communication between the President-elect and the agency. According to foreign policy experts, Trumps America First doctrine may spell far more drastic changes in US investments in development programmes in the rest of the world. In June 2015, Trump proclaimed that the US should cut off aid to all the countries that hate us and use the money to build its own infrastructure. In true Trump style, he backtracked on the statement in April 2016, when he said that the US should continue giving aid to countries like Pakistan because we dont want to see total instability.

Regardless of which of the two statements represents Trumps actual intentions, the prognosis in general is not a good one. Alex Thier, a development expert writing for DevEx, a development focused website, noted that scrapping USAID and having it absorbed into the state department has been a recurrent proposal of conservatives in the US. One of the champions of this position was Newt Gingrich, who until a few weeks ago was a frontrunner as Trumps pick for secretary of state. Even as that points to a less stringent view on foreign aid expenditures, it is unlikely that the large budgets for programmes such as gender equity, capacity building for democracy, etc. will keep the same form that they have over the past eight years. Experts note that the positions of vice-president-elect Mike Pence on womens reproductive rights also mean that funding for family planning programmes around the world is likely to dry up.

The conservatives who are likely to have important roles in the Trump administration will probably recognise that development aid is a means to court and insure the support of other nations and maintain US influence. At the same time, it is possible that they will focus less on ideals and more on whether the countries whose coffers are being filled are delivering what the US demands of them. Focus is likely to be on getting the best deal for the US, with little interest in the constraints facing the recipient countries.

As a recipient of USAID funds, Pakistan would be wise to stay warned and ready for the coming future. As money for women focused and gender equity programmes dries up, there is a grave risk for Pakistans NGO sector. Womens organisations that rely significantly on USAID funds to implement programmes should immediately look through their budgets and focus on diversifying their funding base via local donors. Even more importantly, they should make an effort to use the money they have received to build up their cash reserves in the event there is no more money coming in the future.

By arrangement with Dawn
The US Armys move to allow those wearing turbans, hijabs or beards to join the military is a progressive step that respects religious diversity. From now, brigade-level permission will be given to those desiring to retain their unique religious identity, while earlier such permissions had to come from HQ level. The New York Police Department too now lets Sikhs grow beards and wear turbans. This is a sea change from old, conservative norms that ignored changes in American society. The commitment of religious minorities willing to serve their adopted country or country of birth loyally in civil and military forces is being recognised too. The respect for religious and personal freedoms even within strict military or police discipline will lead to greater understanding and cohesion, and is an example worth emulating elsewhere, where religious differences drag down human interaction over mutual suspicions.

To have minorities serving in the police is becoming important at a time when prejudices have to give way lest the minorities continue being targeted by forces with a majoritarian bias. This may be particularly relevant in the United States, where divisions are perhaps more racial than religious, as blacks are known to be unfairly targeted, and many black youths have been shot dead for no reason other than the colour of their skin. To actively seek to bring diversity in uniformed forces is one way on the path to better understanding. The US is showing the way, and the model should be adapted globally, while eschewing the temptation to make this just tokenism.
Sony announced the launch of two new 4K HDR ( High Dynamic Range ) television series designed to deliver wider brightness range, higher contrast and spectacular picture quality. The new flagship XBR-A1E Bravia OLED and XBR-X930/X940E series TVs make the best use of 4K HDR content with the combination of Sonys unique image processor and display technologies.

The XBR-A1E BRAVIA OLED series is powered by Sonys 4K HDR processor X1 Extreme, the worlds first Acoustic Surface sound system. A1E series uses the first of its kind audio technology to emit great sound from the screen itself.

Also introduced today, the X930E/X940E series features new LED backlight driving technology alongside the X1 Extreme processor, Slim Backlight Drive+, which allows for an even more precise local dimming control. The XBR-X930E/X940E series also features the 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme, which offers 40 per cent more real-time processing power than Sonys 4K Processor X1.

Both the new XBR-X930E/X940E and XBR-A1E BRAVIA OLED series TV will support Dolby Vision, the HDR format from Dolby Laboratories. Both series will be powered by Android TV wherein users can function using Google Home.

Pricing and availability of the device will be announced at the CES event that is currently on-going in Las Vegas .

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
CES 2017 has seen many wacky technologies being launched and one of those things is Hondas self-balancing motorcycle which is modified NC750S which uses technology derived from Hondas self-balancing unicycles to keep itself upright. Plus, it can follow the user around at walking pace.

Honda has thrown itself into self-balancing personal transport gear. The U3-X and UNI-CUB unicycle devices are, fun little jiggers built to solve a potentially devastating problem Japan is facing earlier that the rest of the world.

By 2050, projections have shown a population with nearly twice as many 70-80 year olds as 20-30 year olds. There won't be enough youngsters to do the work of keeping the country going as well as taking care of the oldies.

So Honda and the rest of the Japanese robotics industry are scrambling to figure out how to make older people as mobile and independent as possible. Self-balancing walking pace unicycles like the two mentioned above provide last-mile transport assistance that open up most of a city to somebody that can't walk long distances, when you consumers them in conjunction with public transport.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The New York Times pointed to a recent investigative report on government subsidies offered to Apple supplier Foxconn.

An influential Chinese state-run tabloid has chided the New York Times over its reporting practices after Apple Inc removed the newspaper's app from its China app store at the request of the Chinese government.

The Global Times editorial, released on Friday, said the New York Times had in the past four years been "trying to wield influence in China's internal affairs" by doing investigative stories on sensitive subjects. It did not give specific examples.

"China is sincere in opening itself up but the prerequisite is to ensure its political security," said the editoral in the Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily. "The Western media should not question China if it is to close its doors by scrutinizing one particular issue."

Apple removed the newspaper's English and Chinese-language apps on Dec. 23, citing requests from authorities.

The Global Times said Apple "cares most about business, so it is willing to respect Chinese laws", adding that Apple faced tough competition from local brands in Greater China.

The New York Times pointed to a recent investigative report on government subsidies offered to Apple supplier Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precison Industry Co, as a possible reason for the ban.

In an report on the app's removal, the New York Times cited their own spokeswoman as saying the app was removed shortly after a journalist made requests to government authorities, Foxconn and Apple seeking comment for the story.

The New York Times called on Apple to reconsider the ban, and said the block was part of a wider attempt to prevent readers from accessing the U.S. publication.

The newspaper is one of many foreign publications that is blocked within the country by China's cyberauthority. But the apps from other blocked news sites, including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, remain available on the China app store as of Friday.

The internet regulator has yet to respond to Reuters' queries on the matter.

"The development of the internet in China must respect China's laws and regulations, in principle," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Thursday in response to a question about the apps.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
In the coming months, the Google Assistant on Android TV will come to the NVIDIA SHIELD, along with all Android TVs in the US running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat, such as the AirTV Player, Sharp Auos, Sony Bravia, Xiaomi Mi Box and more.

Google is planning on making Google Assistant available on Android TV in the coming months. As part of an upcoming update on supported TVs and set-top boxes powered by Android TV, users will now be able to ask the Google Assistant for help so they can enjoy the content they love, faster than ever, on their screens in their homes.

In the coming months, the Google Assistant on Android TV will come to the NVIDIA SHIELD, along with all Android TVs in the US running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat, such as the AirTV Player, Sharp Auos, Sony Bravia, Xiaomi Mi Box and more. And once available, the NVIDIA SHIELD will be the first TV device to offer a hands-free Assistant experience  so Dim the lights will only be an Ok Google away.

Over time, users will also see the Assistant come to their other new surfaces like smartwatches running Android Wear 2.0, Android-powered in-car infotainment systems and other types of devices through the Embedded Google Assistant SDK.

Last month, the search giant announced Actions on Google  a developer platform for the Google Assistant. Since then, the company has had a number of services release new and interesting ways for Google Home users to have a conversation with them  from meditating with Headspace to getting things done in the kitchen with Food Network.

Moreover, at the CES this week, users can expect a handful of other partners including Diamler and Hyundai announcing their integration with Google Assistant and Google Home.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Alongside the standard new features and improvements that the Android 7.0 Nougat update consists of, Motorola is also expected to include some of its own updates with the new release.

Motorola kicked off the roll-out of Android 7.0 Nougat update for Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus in Asia and South America back in December. No reports regarding when the update will be available in other markets had been shared at that time. However, according to Motorola Germany, the Moto G4 is expected to receive this update in late January.

The company has managed to provide the latest Android update quite sooner than most major companies including Samsung, LG, Huawei and HTC. Two other flagship smartphones  Moto Z and Moto Z Force have already received the upgraded.

Alongside the standard new features and improvements that the Android 7.0 Nougat update consists of, Motorola is also expected to include some of its own updates with the new release.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Sunday marks 1,000 days since the mass kidnapping, and most of the Chibok schoolgirls remain in captivity. (Photo: AFP)

Lagos: She was found wandering in a forest, the first of the nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram to escape on her own and reach freedom. That was in May. Since then, Amina Ali Nkeki has been sequestered by Nigeria's intelligence agency, embraced just once by her family months ago.

Some say Nigeria's government is keeping the young woman silent because it doesn't want her telling the world about military blunders in the fight against the Islamic extremist group, and about her desire to be reunited with the father of her child, a detained former Boko Haram commander.

"I worry, sometimes, that I don't know if she is alive or dead," her mother, Binta Ali Nkeki, sobbed during an exclusive telephone interview with The Associated Press from her remote northeastern village of Mbalala. She said she hasn't seen her daughter since July.

Sunday marks 1,000 days since the mass kidnapping, and most of the Chibok schoolgirls remain in captivity. The few who have been freed, like Amina, have found themselves not completely free.

The mass abduction horrified the world and brought Boko Haram international attention. The failure of Nigeria's former government to quickly act to free the schoolgirls sparked a global Bring Back Our Girls movement, with even U.S. first lady Michelle Obama posting a photo with the logo on social media.

Amina was the first to escape on her own. Months later, in October, the government negotiated the release of 21 Chibok girls. Another girl was freed in November in an army raid on an extremist camp in the Sambisa Forest. On Thursday, yet another girl was found during military interrogations of Boko Haram suspects, along with her baby.

In December, when Amina's mother heard that "freed" Chibok girls would be allowed to come home for Christmas, she borrowed money for transport to reach the town where the girls were kidnapped from a government boarding school in April 2014.

When Binta reached Chibok, she was welcomed by the 21 girls, who tried to reassure her that her daughter was "fine, in good health," even though she had not been allowed to accompany them.

Human rights groups and lawyers have criticized Nigeria's treatment of the freed girls, who are held in Abuja, the capital, nearly 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Chibok. The government says the girls are getting medical attention, trauma counseling and rehabilitation.

Officials in the government and the presidency did not respond to requests for comment, following a familiar pattern.

People who have spoken to the freed girls say they have stories that the government does not want told, including that three Chibok girls were killed last year in Nigerian Air Force bombings of Boko Haram camps.

Amina has said she wants to be home with her mother, and she has insisted that the father of her child is a victim, like herself, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram and forced to fight for the insurgents.

Her mother says that when her daughter was rescued - hunters found her, the father of her child and the 4-month-old baby in a forest - she said she didn't want to go back to school. But her mother and brother, Noah, persuaded her to take up Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's promise to give her the best education possible.

"They told her that soon she will be starting school," Noah Ali Nkeki told the AP in an interview. He got the news in a rare phone call from his sister on Thursday, the first time he had heard from her in three months.

He cannot call her. Officials call him using a blocked number and then put his sister on the line. The girl's mother doesn't get to speak to her because she doesn't own a cell phone and reception in her village is poor.

"I don't know what the government is trying to do. They have had her now for seven months," Noah said.

Binta, a gaunt woman whose eyes mirror the pain of a hard life and whose hands are rough from farming, was widowed five years ago. Eleven of her children have died, in childbirth or soon afterward. The only survivors are her son and only daughter.

"I wonder how my only grandchild is doing," she said of Amina's daughter, Safia. "Do you think she's walking by now?"

Binta was suicidal after her daughter's kidnapping, community leaders have told the AP, after hearing reports of Boko Haram's threats to sell the kidnapped girls into slavery, marry them off to fighters and force them to convert to Islam. Chibok is a Christian enclave in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.

Binta rallied after she got a message from Amina in 2015, when Boko Haram attacked Chibok again. Two male fighters accompanied by a girl carrying ammunition came across an elderly woman too feeble to flee. The girl, speaking the Chibok language that the fighters could not understand, asked the woman: "Do you know who I am? I am Amina. My mother's name is Binta in the village of Mbalala. Please tell her you saw me."

The elderly woman described the encounter to community leaders, who deliberated, worrying that the "proof of life" message might be too much for her mother to bear.

Then human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogede stepped in. "I suggested that they pass on the message. If I had a daughter who was missing, and she tried to send a message to me, l'd be very upset if someone withheld it. Amina tried to reach out, let's help her complete the effort," he counseled.

Ogede is upset about the politicization of the freed Chibok girls.

When Amina was freed, she and her family were flown to Abuja, where TV cameras and photographers documented Buhari welcoming her at the presidential mansion. That happened again with the 21 freed girls.

The girls needed trauma counseling and medical care, not exposure to the media, Human Rights Watch said at the time.

On Christmas Day, the freed girls visiting Chibok did not get to see their parents. They were kept in the house of a local legislator until Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima arrived to "present" them to their parents the next day. Witnesses said the girls were angry that they were kept from going to their homes and to their church's Christmas Day service.

Shettima's spokesman, Isa Gusau, denied that version, which came from some of the parents. "I am not sure they were denied access to their parents because that was the essence of them being taken to Chibok in the first place," he told the AP. "If you say their movements were restricted for security reasons and for their safety, I think that makes sense."

Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Chibok association of parents of the kidnapped girls and who is not related to Amina, said the Department of State Security intelligence agents who accompanied the girls deemed it was unsafe for them to visit parents in outlying villages. But those with homes in Chibok town were not allowed to stay with their parents, either.

Amina's mother, despite her tears, still has some faith in Nigeria's actions.

"Anything that the government wants to do with Amina, I have no problem with that," she said. "But I just want to see my daughter with my own eyes."
The unrest erupted early on Friday in the second-largest city, Bouake, when the soldiers began demanding higher pay. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Abidjan: Authorities in Ivory Coast say soldiers have launched mutinies in three cities across this West African country.

The unrest erupted early on Friday in the second-largest city, Bouake, when the soldiers began demanding higher pay. Residents say there has been intermittent gunfire since around 1 a.m.

Similar mutinies erupted later today in Daloa and Korhogo. Karim Sanogo, a student in Daloa, says heavily armed men are parading through town and security forces have abandoned their posts.

Bouake was the stronghold of the rebel-controlled north throughout the country's civil war. Many of those fighters have been integrated into Ivory Coast's army.

The soldiers, however, say not all the promises made in a 2007 agreement were implemented.
When the girl called Uber, she was offered a $20 credit and told that the driver would no longer work for the company.

Washington: Two women plan to file lawsuits this week against Uber, claiming their drivers terrorised them  and that the company tried to cover it up, according to the New York Post.

One woman claims that a driver taking her to the Upper East Side instead diverted to the Bronx against her will, and she finally had to jump out at a light. She said when she called Uber, she was offered a $20 credit and told that the driver would no longer work for the company.

In the second case, a woman claims that she found herself in the back of a car with a delirious driver who turned directly into oncoming traffic at least twice and admitted having driven many hours without sleep.

She says she called the company to complain but the trip data had been wiped out, leaving her with no record of the ride and no way to report the driver to the Taxi & Limousine Commission.

The suits will contend that the company is not properly training its drivers and is making them work long hours, says the plaintiffs lawyer, Brad Gerstman, who is also a lobbyist for the yellow-taxi industry.
Washington: President-elect Donald Trump says Mexico will reimburse taxpayers for a new border wall and that US money spent will be for the "sake of speed."

Trump's aides are considering a plan to ask Congress to ensure money is available in US coffers for the wall. But Trump would rely on existing law that authorizes fencing and other technology along the southern border.

The potential approach was confirmed by two congressional officials and a senior transition official with knowledge of the discussions; all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Trump said in a tweet Friday, "The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!"

"There's a lot of things that can be done within current law," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a long time proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, though he emphasized that a lasting solution on immigration would take action by Congress. "You cannot minimize the potential impact of the administration doing what they can do under the law," he said.

However, some immigration hard-liners have already expressed the desire to see Congress take a vote, given how prominent the wall was during Trump's presidential campaign, and their desire to act on the issue.

Trump's vow to build an impenetrable, concrete wall along the southern border was his signature campaign proposal.

"Build the wall!" supporters would chant at his rallies. Who's going to pay for it?" Trump would ask them.

"Mexico!" Trump often promised the wall would be built of hardened concrete, rebar and steel as tall as his venues' ceilings, and would feature a "big, beautiful door" to allow legal immigrants to enter.

Most experts viewed such promises as unrealistic and impractical, and Trump himself sometimes allowed that the wall would not need to span the entire length of the border, thanks to natural barriers like rivers. After winning the election, he said he'd be open to stretches of fencing.
Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped Raj Shah, a young Indian-American who played a leading role in the Republican partys anti-Clinton campaign during polls, as his deputy assistant and communication and research director.

Shah, whose parents immigrated to the US from Gujarat, has been appointed as deputy assistant to the President and deputy communication director and research director, as per an announcement made by the Presidential Transition Team. Shah, who is in his early 30s, is currently head of Opposition Research in the Republican National Committee.

In this position, he led a team of experts to carry out research against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate. Shah was behind all the anti-Clinton campaign during the presidential elections. The announcement of Shahs appointment was made by incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Religious diversity

Hindus and Jews have gained ground in the new US Congress.

However, a latest research suggests that the members of the legislative body remain overwhelmingly Christians despite significant change in the religious demographic profile of the country in less than five decades.



Number of members in US Congress

30 Jews

3 Hindus and Buddhism each
Myanmar has faced strong international criticism for failing to rein-in a months-long military crackdown on Rohingya villagers in northern Rakhine State. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Yangon: The United Nations on Friday said its human rights envoy for Myanmar will probe escalating violence in the country, including a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, when she visits next week.

UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee's 12-day trip, starting on Monday, will also take her to Kachin state, where thousands have been displaced by fighting between ethnic rebels and the army.

Intensifying clashes between Myanmar's military and ethnic minorities has undercut Aung San Suu Kyi's vow to bring peace to the country following her party's elevation to government last March.

The Nobel prize winner has also faced strong international criticism for failing to rein-in a months-long military crackdown on Rohingya villagers in northern Rakhine State.

Areas of Rakhine have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands of the Rohingya minority fleeing to Bangladesh.

Lee has slammed the lockdown as "unacceptable" and called for an investigation into claims troops have raped, murdered and tortured civilians from the Muslim minority. The army vehemently denies the allegations.

"The last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there," Lee said in a statement on Friday.

"Apart from what is happening in Rakhine, the escalation in fighting in Kachin and Shan (state) is causing some disquiet regarding the direction that the new government is taking in its first year."

Lee's criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, who are loathed by many within Buddhist majority Myanmar, has seen her face threats and demonstrations on previous visits.

Hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu caused outrage when he called her a "whore in our country" for criticising controversial legislation considered discriminatory to women and minorities.

Myanmar's government says its troops in Rakhine are carrying out legitimate clearance operations to hunt down "terrorists" who attacked police border posts in October.

On Wednesday an official commission probing the violence dismissed claims security forces are trying to force the Rohingya out of the country and said there was no evidence troops had carried out rape.

But days earlier the government detained eight members of the police after a video emerged showing officers beating and kicking unarmed Rohingya villagers.
The woman told cops that she had been sexually assaulted, before feeling away with their car. (Photo: Pixabay)

Eloy, Arizona: A naked woman has been accused of stealing a police car and leading the cops on a 100mph long chase before being brought under control by a stun bag, Arizona police have said.

According to a report in the Mirror, the woman told cops that she had been sexually assaulted, before feeling away with their car.

The incident took place at a petrol station after the authorities at the place informed police about a naked woman standing outside. Soon after reaching the spot, police tried to calm the woman down and cover her with a blanket. Instead she climbed into the car and sped off.

The cops then took help of a civilians car and chased her. They finally managed to confront her after an hour-long chase when the stolen cars tyres were punctured by nail-studded strips laid down by the cops.

Police also said that they hit her with a stun bag because they feared that she would run away. They also said that they are investigating the matter further and even probing the sexual assault claim made by the woman.
Washington: US spy chiefs were set to confront an openly dismissive President-elect Donald Trump Friday with their evidence that Russia mounted an unprecedented bid to disrupt the US elections by hacking his Democratic rivals.

The meeting comes amid high tension between the leaders of the US intelligence community and their future boss, who has bridled at any suggestion that Moscow tipped the election in his favour.

"My hope is that when the president-elect receives his own briefings and is able to examine the intelligence, as his team is put together and they see how professional and effective these agencies are, that some of those current tensions will be reduced," President Barack Obama told Chicago's NBC affiliate on Thursday.

After Trump first raised doubts early last month, Obama ordered the intelligence community to produce a comprehensive report on cyberattacks and Russian interference in the election.

Obama was briefed on the report Thursday, and the intelligence chiefs were scheduled to detail it to Trump on Friday.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan were expected to take part in the briefing.

High confidence

Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday he had "very high" confidence in their findings.

"The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other people's," he said. "But we have never encountered such a direct campaign to interfere with the election process as we have seen in this case."

"This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news."

Clapper, Rogers and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defence for intelligence, said in a joint statement that "only Russia's senior-most officials" could have authorized the operation, in which hackers stole Democratic Party files and emails.

Those files were then disseminated via WikiLeaks, embarrassing the party and harming losing candidate Hillary Clinton's White House effort.

"Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations, leaking data stolen from these operations and targeting critical infrastructure systems," Clapper said.

Trump's doubts

Trump, who has pledged a rapprochement with President Vladimir Putin's Russia after taking office on January 20, has repeatedly dismissed the findings.

The Republican has mocked via Twitter past intelligence errors of the CIA, FBI and other agencies, challenging them to prove that the hacking and leaks could be traced up to the top of Putin's government.

Late Thursday, he again asked "how and why are they so sure about hacking," claiming that the DNC prevented the FBI from accessing their servers. BuzzFeed News reported that the FBI had in fact never asked to examine them.

US officials familiar with the report told CNN that the liaisons who delivered the stolen emails from Russia to WikiLeaks had been identified.

And US intelligence agencies intercepted communications from senior Russian officials indicating they had celebrated Trump's victory as a win for Moscow, according to a report in The Washington Post.

An unclassified version of the report presented to the president stripped of sensitive details -- will be released to the public early next week.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper said.

Nevertheless, Thursday's much-anticipated hearing did not offer any new evidence to back the allegations.

When asked by senators to provide more proof, Clapper repeatedly said he could not do so in public, saying it risked damaging the intelligence community's sources and operations.

"We have invested billions, and we have put people's lives at a risk to glean such information," he said.

Soured relations

Friday's briefing for Trump will come amid worries he has already poisoned relations with key parts of the all-important national security establishment.

Trump raised more hackles on Wednesday by citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to suggest that anyone, even a 14-year-old child, could have been behind the hacking.

Under strong criticism from politicians of both parties for placing more credibility in Assange than the CIA and FBI, Trump defended himself Thursday.

"The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump said on Twitter.

"The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange, wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth."

Without naming Trump, Clapper said there was "a difference between healthy skepticism and disparagement" of the intelligence community.

"And I've received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about, you know, the disparagement of the US intelligence community," he said.

"Public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial," he said.
The French defense procurement agency (DGA) selected Thales to provide up to 70 SpyRanger Mini-Drone Reconnaissance Systems (SMDR) for the French Army. Induction of the first batch of 35 systems is expected to begin in 2019. The total cost of the contract, with options, could reach 104.3 million (US $108.8 million).

Each SpyRanger system consists of three drones, a ground segment (launcher, control unit, and communications module) and associated technical support. Its man-portable configuration consists of two drones and the ground segment packed in two backpacks weighing 25kg each. Thales developed the SpyRanger system in less than 13 months, under a cooperation Thales established with two small French companies  Aviation Design and Merio. The SpyRanger will equip the services and succeeds the Airbus DS Drac system, which entered service with the Army in 2008. The SpyRanger won over the rival Airbus and SurveyCopter that offered the SkyGhost ER.

The French army required a reconnaissance system that consists of mini-UAVs that can operate in day and night over a distance of up to 30 km, with an endurance of 150 minutes. The drones maximum take-off weight is 14kg, including payload weighing up to 1.2 kg. Battery powered and electrically propelled, it is inaudible at 200 meters. The SpyRanger has a wing span of 3.8 meters; it can operate at an altitude of 4,500 above sea level, at speed up to 90 km/h. Its endurance is 180 minutes. The drone can operate at wind conditions below 19 m/s. According to Thales, the system operation is simple and does not require special skills.

Mission preparation would usually take about 12 minutes, preparing the mini-drone to launch from a light ramp provided with the system. Once airborne SpyRanger is fully autonomous, operated by a single operator. Operating options include assisted modes, providing dynamic route selection to follow moving targets. The system also employs electronic stabilization, automatic target detection, geotracking, and video tracking.

The mini-drone carries a single gyro-stabilized multi-sensor electro-optical payload and protected, tactical datalink that transmits the video in real-time to the user. The high resolution of the HD IR&TV system enables positive identifications of objects on the ground. The system will be able to operate under a regimental intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance command, and control system (C4ISR) or independently, as a stand-alone asset operated at the tactical level.

The selection of Thales for this contract strengthens the French groups position in the unmanned systems sector, offering complete systems from micro-drones, mini and tactical drones, as well as on-board sensors, communication means, and ground control stations.
Washington: US First Lady Michelle Obama has selected 16-year-old Indian-American Swetha Prabakaran to serve in the inaugural Student Advisory Board of an education campaign which seeks to provide educational opportunities for teenagers in America.

Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadus Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for Better Make Room campaigns Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences.

The board members will be traveling to the White House on Friday to attend Mrs Obamas School Counselor of the Year Ceremony. Born in Indianapolis, she is among seventeen students selected by the White House to serve on Better Make Room Student Advisory Board. The inaugural Board has 12 high school students and five college students.

Swetha, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, is the founder and CEO of Everybody Code Now!, a non-profit body working to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.

She is the only Indian-American in the list. I am deeply honoured to be able to serve on this board. I look forward to working with The First Ladys Reach Higher Initiative, Swetha said.
North Koreans gather during a mass rally to vow to carry through the tasks set forth by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his New Year's address, at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (Photo: AP)

Pyongyang: Thousands of North Koreans have rallied in Pyongyang, chanting communist slogans and vowing support for leader Kim Jong-Un, who in his New Year's message announced plans to test-fire a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

Clad in thick winter coats and pumping their fists in the air, those assembled in Kim Il-Sung square chanted "long live comrade Kim Jong-Un" and held banners proclaiming "let us accelerate the victorious advance of socialism!"

Kim marked the New Year with a 30-minute televised speech that largely focused on the country's rise as a nuclear power, announcing that it was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile of the kind that could threaten US soil.

"The people should regard Kim Jong-Un's New Year address as a motto of life and struggle," state media KCNA quoted a party official at the rally as saying.

Kim's New Year address drew swift response from US president-elect Donald Trump, who took to Twitter vowing to halt Pyongyang in its tracks.

In 2016, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches in its quest to develop a nuclear weapons system capable of hitting the US mainland, prompting Washington to reinforce its antimissile defenses in the region.

But analysts are divided over how close Pyongyang is to realising its full nuclear ambitions, especially since it has never successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Kim also admitted to his "shortcomings" as a leader in his New Year's speech and pledged "devoted efforts" to make North Korea prosperous again.

Thae Yong-Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador to Britain who defected to the South in August, has referred to growing public discontent about the leadership, saying ordinary North Koreans have had to learn ways to survive on their own rather than relying on the party.
The victim Joth Wilson, was found in a mangled state by his 33-year-old husband Maioha Tokotaua under a train bridge in Gladstone, Queensland. (Photo: Facebook)

Gladstone, Queensland: A gay man was left with a broken neck, back and ribs after he was thrown off a bridge in the Australian state of Queensland for rejecting sexual advances by a married man.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the victim Joth Wilson, was found in a mangled state by his 33-year-old husband Maioha Tokotaua under a train bridge in Gladstone, Queensland.

A medical report of the victim stated that he sustained critical injuries including a brain haemorrhage. The report also stated that Wilson was left with a damaged spinal cord due to which it was nearly impossible for him to walk again. Moreover, he also had third-degree burn marks on his body, indicating that someone had tried to set him alight.

The victims husband told the investigators that he believed his partner was attacked by a married man who feared that Wilson might tell his family about the sexual favors he sought from him.

I found him after two hours, on the train tracks. He looked mangle, said Wilsons husband Tokotaua, who rushed him to a hospital in Brisbane.

There were these guys who had been harassing us for some time after one of them, who is married with children, made an advance that Joth rejected, Tokotaua said.

There's no money involved, no drugs, no debt, there's just no motive for the attack other than they were intimidated that we might tell their families, he added.

We are trying to work out the circumstances as to him being at the bottom of the bridge. The investigation of a third party being involved is still being investigated, said investigators. The victim remains on life support system.
Vatican City: Pope Francis treated a few hundred homeless people and refugees to a simple sandwich lunch on Friday, and urged the faithful to find God in the peripheries of society, not its palaces.

Francis celebrated Mass marking Epiphany, the biblical tale of the three wise men who set out to find the infant Jesus and offer precious gifts. At the end of the service, homeless people and refugees joined volunteers to hand out 50,000 booklets with biblical tales of God's mercy to pilgrims gathered in a frigid St. Peter's Square.

Francis said he too wanted to give the faithful the gift of God's mercy for the coming year.

He then offered some 300 needy people a simple lunch of a sandwich and drink, the Vatican said, part of his long-running outreach to the poor and homeless who live around the Vatican.

During this Christmas season, Francis has emphasized the humble setting of Christ's birth while criticizing a church that is closed in on itself, its wealth and its achievements. It's a message Francis has repeated during his papacy, faulting those who are obsessed with Christianity's rules and morals over God's mercy, particularly to society's most marginal.

Francis criticized those who are "anesthetized" to God's mercy, who want to "control everything and everyone" and fear any challenges to their wealth and achievements.

They suffer, he said, from "a bewilderment born of fear and foreboding before anything that challenges us, calls into question our certainties and our truths, our ways of clinging to the world and this life."

Francis' pastoral outreach, particularly to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, has been criticized by conservatives who have argued that church teaching prohibits these Catholics from receiving Communion. Francis says God's mercy is infinite and that the Eucharist isn't a prize for the perfect, but medicine for wounded souls.
Vatican City: Pope Francis is urging the faithful to find God in the peripheries of society, not in its palaces, and not to fear things that challenge the ways of the church.

Francis celebrated Mass on Friday marking Epiphany, the biblical tale of the three wise men who set out to find the infant Jesus in a manger.

During this Christmas season, Francis has emphasised the humble origins of Christ's birth while criticising a church that is closed in on itself, its wealth and achievements. It's a message Francis has repeated during his papacy to fault those who are obsessed with Christianity's rules and morals over God's mercy.

The pope criticised those who "want to control everything and everyone" and who fear "anything that challenges us, calls into question our certainties and our truths, our ways of clinging to the world and this life."
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May is set for her first meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump in the spring, Downing Street said on Friday.

The meeting comes in the wake of the British PM's joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, travelling to the US to meet members of Trump's team in mid-December and is expected to take place as early as next month.

"The Prime Minister suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful. We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the Prime Minister looks forward to visiting the new President in the spring," Downing Street said.

The meeting is expected to take place at the White House after the January 20 inauguration of the new American President and before Mays deadline to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to trigger Britains official exit negotiations from the European Union (EU).

Theresa May, like her predecessor David Cameron, has previously expressed concern about Trump's stance on immigration, saying in December 2015 that his suggestion that Muslims should not be allowed to enter the US was, "divisive, unhelpful and wrong".

But she went on to welcome his election unreservedly. Her aides were also equally outspoken in the lead up to the election.

In May last year, before becoming joint chief of staff at Number 10, Timothy said on Twitter that he did not want "any 'reaching out' to Trump", while Hill tweeted: "Donald Trump is a chump."

The President-elect had first invited Theresa May to visit in a phone-call shortly after his election victory in November. It was known that she would visit Washington in the early months of 2017.

Downing Street is yet to confirm a date for this visit but it is widely believed the visit will take place within weeks of the January 20 inauguration ceremony for the new President in Washington.
Fethi Sekin and a court worker named as Musa Can were killed after the bomb exploded outside a courthouse in the Aegean city of Izmir in an attack blamed on Kurdish militants. (Photo: Representational Image)

Ankara: The policeman killed after a car bomb hit the Turkish city of Izmir was given a hero's farewell Friday after the prime minister said his actions had prevented an even "greater disaster".

Fethi Sekin and a court worker named as Musa Can were killed after the bomb exploded outside a courthouse in the Aegean city of Izmir in an attack blamed on Kurdish militants. Nine people were also wounded.

The two dead were remembered in an emotional ceremony at the courthouse attended by thousands including Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag.

Officials praised traffic policeman Sekin for preventing a "massive massacre" after he stopped the car and chased down the two assailants before the explosion and the subsequent gunfight. The attackers were killed during clashes.

"He prevented a greater disaster byignoring his own life and by giving his life. He showed great heroism neutralising those committing these cowardly plans," Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said late Thursday.

"In our Izmir, he saved many innocent fellow townsmen from a major disaster."

The two men's coffins were draped in the red and white Turkish flag and carried in a hall watched by hundreds of mourners including court workers and members of the ruling party.

"This attack was not only against the judges, prosecutors, court officials working at the courthouse, the police protecting them, this attack was against Turkey, the Turkish nation's unity, its fraternity," Bozdag told the crowd.

Bozdag vowed the attack would never damage Turkey's fight against terror less than a week after a gunman stormed an Istanbul elite nightclub during New Year's celebrations, killing 39 people.

"Turkey will continue to fight in the most effective manner against terrorism until it ends... until the last terrorist," he added in televised comments.

Bozdag later told reporters 18 people had been detained in connection with the blast and the identity of the "terrorists" established, whom he said had planned to wreak havoc inside the court.

According to press reports, police seized two Kalashnikovs, seven rockets and eight grenades suggesting a far more bloody attack was planned.

Bozdag blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the attack, saying the group "gave instructions" for the attack.

The PKK is a proscribed terror organisation by Ankara, the United States and European Union and has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
The operation, which aims to recapture the towns of Rawa, Aanah and Al-Qaim, the last main populated areas held by IS in Anbar province was launched on Thursday. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Baghdad: Baghdad's forces retook a series of villages from the Islamic State group in western Iraq as they fought to oust it from territory near the Syrian border, officers said Friday.

The operation, which aims to recapture the towns of Rawa, Aanah and Al-Qaim, the last main populated areas held by IS in Anbar province was launched on Thursday.

"Our military units liberated seven villages from Daesh control between the town of Haditha and the town of Aanah," said Staff Major General Qassem al-Mohammedi, the head of the Jazeera Operations Command, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Staff Major General Noman Abed al-Zobai, the commander of the 7th Division, said that seven villages had been recaptured, and government forces had reached the outskirts of Al-Sagra, an area southeast of Aanah.

Iraqi forces have retaken Ramadi and Fallujah, the two main cities in Anbar province, but security in recaptured areas remains precarious.

Anbar is a vast province that stretches from the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the western approach to Baghdad, and has a long history of insurgent activity.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces have since regained much of the territory they lost.

They are now fighting to recapture Mosul, the last Iraqi city where IS holds signficant ground.

But the recapture of major population centres held by IS will not mark the end of the conflict against them. The jihadists are still able to carry out frequent bombings in government-controlled areas, and are likely to turn increasingly to such tactics as they lose territory.
The attackers were armed with automatic rifles, rocket launchers and hand grenades. (Photo: Representational Image)

Izmir: Turkey's justice minister says police have detained 18 people in connection with a foiled attack at courthouse in the western city of Izmir that nevertheless killed a policeman and a courthouse employee.

The two assailants were also shot dead in Thursday's incident after they detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a road block and engaged in a shootout with police. The attackers were armed with automatic rifles, rocket launchers and hand grenades.

Bekir Bozdag said Friday that authorities had "no doubt" that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, "gave the orders" for the attack.

He was speaking at a memorial service for the slain police officer, who is believed to have thwarted a larger attack.

The attack was the latest in a string of assaults that have hit Turkey.
Ankara: A car bombing rocked the Turkish city of Izmir on Thursday, killing at least two people and triggering a shootout that left two suspected militants dead, as authorities chased the fugitive killer behind the New Year attack in Istanbul.

Turkey is on edge after the shooting rampage at the Reina nightclub unleashed shortly after revellers rang in 2017 which killed 39 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group.

A top official said the gunman may be a Turkic Uighur and several people of Uighur origin were arrested on Thursday.
Beijing: In a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in China's repeated efforts to block India's bid to slap a UN ban on JeM leader Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should "adjust" its stand accordingly.

In his lengthy blog on social media WeChat public account about the India-China stalemate over Azhar, Mao Siwei  who previously served as China's Consul General in Kolkata  said China should take advantage of India's complaint against Azhar and "get rid of the passive diplomatic situation" between the two countries.

The blog published on December 28, two days before China refused to lift its technical hold on India's application, allowing it to lapse, Mao highlighted the history of Pakistan- based terror organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and how they carried out violent attacks whenever India and Pakistan made efforts to normalise their relations.

Referring to the Indian evidence furnished against Azhar in Pathankot terror attack, he cited the charge sheet that the evidence included Facebook and telephone records as well as DNA samples through food wrapping paper and walkie-talkie.

"In the light of the above, I deeply feel that now is the time China should take India's complaint as an opportunity to seriously study and adjust the position, get rid of the passive diplomatic situation, on the listing of JeM chief in the (UN) 1267 list," he wrote.

"First, is Azhar a terrorist? Second, was the Pathankot attack perpetrated by the Jaish-e-Mohammed group? To the first question, the answer should be yes," he said.

Though his appeal went unheeded, it reflected a different opinion among sections of China's diplomatic community which is concerned over the negative fallout of the issue on India-China ties and Beijing's claims that it followed a "very objective, just and professional attitude" in blocking India's application at the UN.

Responding to remarks made by External Affairs Minister of State M J Akbar on the Azhar issue, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters here yesterday that "we have taken a responsible and constructive part in relevant discussion in a professional and objective way".

His comments are a rare instance of public expression of differing opinions in China.

Efforts by PTI to reach Mao, a prolific commentator on India-China ties in the Chinese social media, were not immediately acknowledged.

"As a result of (China's technical hold), the issue of sanctions against Azhar became a major issue affecting Sino-Indian relations and constitutes an important factor for the decline of Sino-Indian relations in 2016," Mao wrote.

He served as Consulate General of China's Consulate in Kolkata between 2007 to 2010. Before that, Mao also worked as a diplomat in Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and served as a visiting scholar at JNU, Delhi.

In his blog, Mao said "the timing of Pathankot attack has a special meaning" because before that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore suddenly to greet his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and to attend his grand-daughter's wedding.

"The visit was likely to turn around (India-Pak ties). However, only a week later, Pathankot attack occurred, and the process of reconciliation died without (even) starting between India and Pakistan. The incident once again proved the ability of Pakistani non-governmental armed groups to influence the relations between both the countries," he said.

He also highlighted how 9/11 Mumbai terror attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) also disrupted progress in India-Pakistan relations and how China blocked efforts to bring about a UN ban on LeT and its leaders.

Citing media reports, he said US, Britain and France proposed in 2006 and 2008 that Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its leader Hafiz Saeed were included in the UN list of 1267 and referred to China blocking the move on the grounds of "insufficient evidence". But after the 9/11 Mumbai terror attacks, China has not blocked requests when they came up before the 1267 Committee.

"In this case, China no longer blocked, December 10, 2008, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its "Loyalist" political leader Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and other four people were included in the list," Mao said.

He also listed the history of Azhar, including his capture in Jammu and Kashmir by Indian police and later his escape following hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999 which was diverted to Kandahar in Afghanistan, to back his stand.
Rawalpindi: The new Pakistani Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday rejected Indian claims of surgical strikes and said that Pakistan armed forces were fully geared to respond to any aggression by New Delhi.

Military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said in a series of tweet: ""#COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa rejects self defeating claims by Indian COAS about 'so called surg strikes' and its possible recurrence."

"Pakistan Armed Forces are fully geared to respond to any aggression by India" COAS. "

Addressing a ceremony at the Khuzdar University, the Army Chief also expressed confidence that the current security challenges and external efforts to derail Balochistan's peace will end with the growing realisation of assured geo-economic advantages of a fully developed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), reports the News International.

India in September last year, said it conducted surgical strikes on terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir along the Line of Control, a claim Pakistan rejected.

The surgical strikes took place eleven days after a pre-dawn attack by militants on an Indian army brigade headquarters in Uri in Kashmir on September 18. The attack left 18 soldiers dead.
Beijing: Pakistan has approved Russia's request to use Gwadar port in Balochistan being developed by China under the $46 billion CPEC, an article in the state-run media said today, notwithstanding the denial of Russian Embassy in Islamabad.

"The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as a flagship project of the One Belt and One Road (OBOR) initiative, has drawn a great deal of investments," the article in Global Times said.

"Apart from the fact that Pakistan has approved a Russian request for using the Gwadar Port, located in Balochistan Province, for its exports, media reports were swirling that Russia planned to merge the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with the CPEC," the article titled 'Russia can be a welcoming presence at CPEC' said.

"Although the Russian embassy in Islamabad later denied the reports, concerns and speculations have been lingering among some observers," it said.

"It isn't something terrible if Moscow joins the CPEC. Instead, it will be an opportunity for China, Russia and Pakistan to enhance cooperation," the article said, adding that Moscow's participation will have a positive impact on India.

"India has been opposed to the CPEC due to the long-term tension between New Delhi and Islamabad, and its historical border disputes with China. Traditionally, Russia has developed a very good relationship with India, as well as China and Pakistan," the article said.

Russia's presence in the CPEC would help prevent the international community, including India, from paying excessive attention to China and remove the unnecessary worries over the so-called China threat.

The cooperation between BRICS countries like China, Russia and India is the key to the success of OBOR development, it said.

"As was said above, Russia's participation is not a bad thing and there is no need to exaggerate neither its competition nor negativity. On the contrary, if Russia joins the project, it will be a stakeholder which shares economic risk, especially security risk, and has the same or similar goal. It's a good thing," it said.
The wife, right, of a judge is escorted from the Supreme Court by her brother in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Pakistan's chief justice has ordered police to complete a probe into allegations that a 10-year-old girl working as a maid was tortured by an influential judge and his wife. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan's Chief Justice on Friday ordered police probe into the alleged torture of a 10-year-old girl working as a maid for an influential district judge.

Mian Saqib Nisar on Wednesday took suo motu notice of the alleged torture of the maid by a judge and his wife in Islamabad after disturbing photos of her appeared on social media last week, showing her badly beaten and bruised.

He ordered Deputy Inspector General police today to probe the case and present the victim during the hearing next week, according to a court official.

He also ordered the court would act as parents of the girl in the case and rejected the pardon given by the victim's father to Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife.

During today's hearing, two women appeared claiming to be mothers of the victim, following which the Supreme Court ordered DNA test to ascertain the parentage.

The case took another twist on Tuesday after father of the girl told a local court that there was no truth of torture and that he reached at a private settlement with the judge.

In the First Information Report registered with Islamabad police, the girl said she had been working at the Khan's house for nearly two years.

Initially, the girl told police that she was often beaten up in the house. Most recently, she alleged that 'Mano Baji', judge's wife, shoved her hands onto a burning stove and then beat her after a broom went missing.

She also claimed the owners of the house would usually lock her up in a storeroom at night besides starving and beating her up.
The cafe in Dhaka where the terrorist attack took place in July 2016.

Dhaka: One of the masterminds of Bangladeshs worst terror attack at a popular cafe here and another top militant behind the murder of a Hindu priest were killed on Friday in a shootout with police, the latest success in the anti- terrorism drive in the Muslim majority nation.

Islamic State-linked Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideens most wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marzan and another extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital during a pre-dawn raid. One is identified as Marjan and another is Saddam Hossain, an accused neo JMB member, Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said.

Police said Marzan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshans Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhakas posh diplomatic area that killed 23 people, including 17 foreigners. An Indian girl was among them.

On September 10, police detained three persons from Azimpur including Marzan's wife Afrin alias Prioti. Earlier, a Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and the key player in the recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27. Saddam was wanted for at least 10 murder cases, including Japanese national Kunio Hoshi murder.
China today refuted reports that it pressurised thousands of Tibetans not to attend the Kalachakra puja, the most prominent Buddhist ceremony being held by the Dalai Lama in India, and dismissed the event as a political tool to propagate ideas of "hating" China.





"Taking advantage of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra (wheel of time) teachings have inveigled Tibetans into illegally going abroad over the last decade," Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told state-run Global Times.



The Dalai Lama will this month preside over the 34th Kalachakra initiation at Bodhgaya, where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment more than 2,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world are expected to attend the event.

As preparations got under way on Wednesday, the chairman of the organising committee Karma Gelek Yuthok said almost 7,000 pilgrims had returned to China, citing pressure from authorities there, the Global Times report said.



Denying the number of pilgrims from China is far less than "thousands", Xu Zhitao, deputy director of the bureau of the Tibet question at the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said there are pilgrims from China attending the ceremony who hold Chinese passports.



"Therefore, the government by no means threatened them to return, although the government does not encourage them to attend the ritual," Xu told the Global Times.

Xu pointed out that the ritual, organised by the Tibetan "government-in-exile certainly involves politics".



"Considering that the large-scale ritual needs years of preparation, the India-based ceremony frequently degenerates into a political tool," Zhu said,.



He said that the organising committee has made use of the occasion and the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama to propagate ideas of "hating the Chinese government".



The organising committee also attempted to establish relations with the Tibetans from China through the ceremony, he said.



"The number of Tibetans attending the ritual decreased dramatically in recent years after the local governments clarified to local Tibetans that the ritual is about separatism, and also due to tightened border control," Zhu claimed.
The Bombay High Court today refused to order a CBI probe on activist Anna Hazare's plea into the the alleged sugar cooperative factories scam involving Rs 25,000 crore in which he has named politicians including NCP President Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar.





The court asked Hazare to first file a police complaint and said it could not order a CBI inquiry "at this stage". "First file a police complaint based on your allegations and if they (police) refuse to register it, then approach their higher authorities and even if that does not work out then come to us.



"At this stage, we would not order a CBI inquiry... You are asking for a CBI probe without even the offence being registered by police. How can you ask for transfer of probe when offence has not been registered ?," asked the high court. As Hazare's counsel sought time to register a police case, the bench adjourned the matter to February 13.



The court was hearing a criminal PIL filed by Hazare seeking CBI inquiry into the sugar co-operative factories scam and a probe by Special Investigating Team into the alleged role of politicians. Hazare has filed two more civil PILs on the same issue which are expected to come up for hearing in due course.



The petitions alleged that fraud had been committed in governance by first burdening sugar co-operative factories with debts and thereafter selling these sick units at a throw away price, causing loss of Rs 25,000 crore to the government, cooperative sector and members of public.



The petitions also prayed to appoint a court receiver to take possession of all the properties held by persons against whom a prima facie case exists in the alleged scam. The petitions name Sharad Pawar and his nephew and former Maharashtra Minister Ajit Pawar as respondents.



The petitions also demanded setting up of a Commission of inquiry to probe the alleged illegal sale of sugar cooperative factories in Maharashtra either by the government or the cooperative banks.



The petitions demanded an inquiry by CBI into allegations of corruption and misuse of government and cooperative funds in the scam involving lease and sale of co-operative sugar factories in Maharashtra which caused a loss of Rs 25,000 crore to the exchequer.



The petitioner stated that the statistics and facts mentioned in the petition have been collected from authorities through Right to Information Act. Hazare pleaded that "the scam" had engulfed the entire state and pulled it back by nearly 50 years causing losses to the government and putting the state under financial debt to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees.
One of the masterminds of Bangladesh's worst terror attack at a popular cafe here and another top militant behind the murder of a Hindu priest were killed today in a shootout with police, the latest success in the anti- terrorism drive in the Muslim majority nation.





Islamic State-linked Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's most wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marzan and another extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital during a pre-dawn raid.



"One is identified as Marjan and another is Saddam Hossain, an accused neo JMB member," Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said.



Police said Marzan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshan's Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka's posh diplomatic area that killed 23 people, including 17 foreigners. An Indian girl was among them.



On September 10, police detained three persons from Azimpur including Marzan's wife Afrin alias Prioti. Earlier, a Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and the key player in the recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27.



Saddam was wanted for at least 10 murder cases, including Japanese national Kunio Hoshi murder, Jogeshwar Dasadhikari murder and attempt to murder a Bahai community leader in Rangpur, Monirul said.



Jogeshwar was hacked to death during an attack on a temple in Bangladeshs Panchgarh district in February last year. "Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a raid around 3am...Sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us. In retaliation, we fired back that left the two injured," Monirul said.



Later, they were declared dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital. According to an investigator, former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the Neo-JMB, a new faction of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) affiliated with Islamic State, Dhaka Tribune reported.



He also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Marjan had expertise in operating heavy arms. Marjan had stayed in the militant den of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha for a long period where he reportedly gave motivational training to seven militants. Of the seven, five took part in the Gulshan terror attack.



On July 1, militants stormed the bakery. The attackers took diners and restaurant staff hostage and had confrontations with police, killing two police officials. Next morning, a joint commando force stormed the bakery, killing all the attackers and rescuing the captives, ending the terror siege of nearly 11 hours.



Bangladeshi security forces had launched a crackdown against Islamist extremists following the cafe siege, which sullied the country's image as a relatively moderate Muslim nation.
In a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in China's repeated efforts to block India's bid to slap a UN ban on JeM leader Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should "adjust" its stand accordingly.





In his lengthy blog on social media WeChat public account about the India-China stalemate over Azhar, Mao Siwei - who previously served as China's Consul General in Kolkata - said China should take advantage of India's complaint against Azhar and "get rid of the passive diplomatic situation" between the two countries.



The blog published on December 28, two days before China refused to lift its technical hold on India's application, allowing it to lapse, Mao highlighted the history of Pakistan- based terror organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Muhammad and how they carried out violent attacks whenever India and Pakistan made efforts to normalise their relations.



Referring to the Indian evidence furnished against Azhar in Pathankot terror attack, he cited the charge sheet that the evidence included Facebook and telephone records as well as DNA samples through food wrapping paper and walkie-talkie.



"In the light of the above, I deeply feel that now is the time China should take India's complaint as an opportunity to seriously study and adjust the position, get rid of the passive diplomatic situation, on the listing of JeM chief in the (UN) 1267 list," he wrote.



"First, is Azhar a terrorist? Second, was the Pathankot attack perpetrated by the Jaish-e-Mohammed group? To the first question, the answer should be yes," he said.



Though his appeal went unheeded, it reflected a different opinion among sections of China's diplomatic community which is concerned over the negative fallout of the issue on India- China ties and Beijing's claims that it followed a "very objective, just and professional attitude" in blocking India's application at the UN.



Responding to remarks made by External Affairs Minister of State M J Akbar on the Azhar issue, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters here yesterday that "we have taken a responsible and constructive part in relevant discussion in a professional and objective way".



His comments are a rare instance of public expression of differing opinions in China. Efforts by PTI to reach Mao, a prolific commentator on India-China ties in the Chinese social media, were not immediately acknowledged.

"As a result of (China's technical hold), the issue of sanctions against Azhar became a major issue affecting Sino- Indian relations and constitutes an important factor for the decline of Sino-Indian relations in 2016," Mao wrote.



He served as Consulate General of China's Consulate in Kolkata between 2007 to 2010. Before that, Mao also worked as a diplomat in Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and served as a visiting scholar at JNU, Delhi.



In his blog, Mao said "the timing of Pathankot attack has a special meaning" because before that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore suddenly to greet his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and to attend his grand-daughter's wedding.



"The visit was likely to turn around (India-Pak ties). However, only a week later, Pathankot attack occurred, and the process of reconciliation died without (even) starting between India and Pakistan. The incident once again proved the ability of Pakistani non-governmental armed groups to influence the relations between both the countries," he said.



He also highlighted how 9/11 Mumbai terror attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) also disrupted progress in India- Pakistan relations and how China blocked efforts to bring about a UN ban on LeT and its leaders.



Citing media reports, he said US, Britain and France proposed in 2006 and 2008 that Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its leader Hafiz Saeed were included in the UN list of 1267 and referred to China blocking the move on the grounds of "insufficient evidence". But after the 9/11 Mumbai terror attacks, China has not blocked requests when they came up before the 1267 Committee.



"In this case, China no longer blocked, December 10, 2008, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its "Loyalist" political leader Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and other four people were included in the list," Mao said.



He also listed the history of Azhar, including his capture in Jammu and Kashmir by Indian police and later his escape following hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999 which was diverted to Kandahar in Afghanistan, to back his stand.
Congress today demanded a "free, fair and independent" investigation into the 'Sahara diaries' alleging that the matter was being "hushed up" by the government even though bribery charges have been made against some politicians.





Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala sought to pick holes in the Income Tax Settlement Commission (ITSC) order granting immunity to Sahara group from prosecution and penalty.



The purported diaries were recovered from the business house following raids conducted in November 2014 listing the alleged pay-offs to politicians.



"Modiji claimed that he was a watchman of country's trust and treasure chest. Shocking and scandalous facts in 'Birla' and 'Sahara' papers now require an independent investigation.



"We want that the Prime Minister's credibility should never be in doubt. He should not be worried about ordering an independent probe," he said.



Surjewala alleged that the 'Sahara Group' appears to have gained a concession of not paying income tax on the income of Rs 1,910 crore and received complete immunity from penalty and prosecution.



Raising a number of questions, he said the Modi government should answer as to how the Commission could settle the entire matter of Sahara papers in only 16 days and why it was in a "tearing hurry" to close this entire Sahara issue.



"It is time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi answers these questions to people of India," he said.



"Shockingly, the entire case against Sahara Group is now being sought to be closed in a hush hush and conspiratorial manner with startling speed. This further indicates that Modi Government has 'something to hide' and is in an alarming hurry to brush the entire matter under the carpet," the Congress leader said.



Surjewala alleged that the entire matter of Sahara papers has been settled by Income Tax Settlement Commission in only 16 days in three hearings on October 25, November 4 and November 7, 2016, with judgement delivered on November 10.



He further alleged that of these 16 days, four were holidays and effectively, from hearing to decision, Sahara Papers have been settled in 12 days.



"There has to be a probe that does not fall within the precincts of government and where the probe can only really be termed as neutral, independent, free and fair," he said.



The Congress leader said the Sahara Group has filed a revised income tax return after the raid and disclosed an extra income of Rs 1,217 crore which was not disclosed earlier and even the Income Tax Settlement Commission proceeded to calculate taxable income of Rs 1,910.76 crore.



He claimed papers filed by Sahara group companies disclosed a total expense of merely Rs 9.7 crore for 2009-10 to 2012-13 and the IT Settlement Commission permitted it operational expenses of Rs 1,956.50 crore between 2009-10 to 2014-15.



"Net effect is to give 100 per cent concession on the taxable income of Rs 1,910 crore found after the Sahara raid and disclosed by computer record, Excel sheet and papers.



"The simple point is why was Sahara group permitted to claim expenses of 150 to 200 times the original amount filed with Registrar of Companies? Why was Sahara group permitted to claim concession on undisclosed income in this fashion?



"What is the underlying reason for showing such benevolence to an industrial house, which has been caught with unaccounted cash and papers reflecting non-disclosure of income running into a few thousand crores?" he asked.


ALBANY POLICE

Tools taken  Thursday, Jan. 5, 7:36 a.m., 2100 block of pacific Boulevard. Baldwin General Contracting reported the Thai House, a building the company is renovating was broken into and a large quantity of construction tools were stolen.

Identity theft  Thursday, Jan. 5, 8:24 a.m., 1100 block of Hill Street. A caller reported he'd learned someone had accessed his social security number and used it to order $3,000 worth of iPhones. Verizon is working to help rectify the situation.

Stolen trailer  Tuesday, Jan. 3, 10:38 a.m., 100 block of Lyon Street. Police are still seeking a box trailer with the Smith Glass logo on the side. The trailer was reported stolen over the weekend.

LINN COUNTY SHERIFF

Car stolen  Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2:28 p.m., 47400 block of Santiam Highway. After a woman had surgery and spent three days indoors, she discovered her car had been stolen. She said the car was locked and that she had the keys when it was taken.
Perhaps the most unexpected fashion icon of the year has just added another glossy credit to her name.





Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian-born novelist and feminist known for novels like Americanah and Purple Hibiscus; recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, the O Henry Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award (among others); and author of a viral TED Talk, We Should All Be Feminists, which has been viewed over 3 million times since its delivery in 2012 as well as sampled by Beyonce, is now the face of No7, the make-up brand owned by the pharmacy chain Boots.



This follows her front-row appearance at Diors spring runway show, where she was both guest of honour and inspiration as well as her inclusion on Vanity Fairs International Best-Dressed List.



Though her feminism may seem at odds with this embrace of the fashion world, Adichie has argued that diminishing things that are considered feminine, such as make-up and fashion, is part of a culture of sexism. Excerpts from an interview:



How have your feelings on makeup evolved?



In general, the cultures that I know  Nigeria, the US, the UK, Western Europe  all largely judge women quite harshly for appearances. But in Nigeria, theres a slight difference. There isnt much of a judgment if youre an accomplished woman and seem to care about your appearance.



But I do remember that when I moved to the US  and I think maybe there are different standards for people who are supposed to be particularly intellectual or particularly creative  I very quickly realised that if you want to seem as a serious writer, you cant possibly look like a person who looks in the mirror.



Why do you think things that are associated with femininity, like fashion and beauty, are not taken seriously?



Its about a culture that diminishes women. The things we traditionally think of as masculine are not things our culture dismisses as frivolous. Sports, for example, we think of as masculine. Its something our culture takes seriously.



Why did you finally decide to wear make-up, no matter what people thought?



As you grow older, you realise theres very little time for rubbish. You realise life is short, and its so much better to be who you are. When I was younger, I didnt have the sense of self to do that.



But its interesting because even when I didnt wear make-up in the US, I wore make-up in Nigeria because I wanted to look my age and not too young.



In Nigeria, in particular, it was easy for men to dismiss what I said because they thought I looked like a small girl. I remember seeing a man at the airport after my first novel was published, and he looked at me, quite quizzical, and said, You look like the writer. And I said, Well, I am her. His face fell. And he said, I didnt think the writer would be such a small girl.



At some point, I wanted to be who I am. And who I am is a person who enjoys, from time to time, putting a bright colour on my lips.



What are your thoughts on the #nomakeup movement?



Women have choices to make. When youre not feeling good, you dont have the energy to do your face the way you usually do. I really respect Alicia Keys choice not to wear make-up because she felt it was a mask. And she feels now that shes more truly herself. I think, Amen to that. If make-up feels that way for you, then dont do it. We have to allow women a multiplicity.



Why do you think we dont?



I think people will judge appearance. Humans are visual beings. What I would love to see changed is the baggage we bring to those judgments. When we see a man whos well dressed, we dont assume that he must be shallow or he must not be a serious person.



A lot of this is especially important to teenagers and women in their 20s. What would you say to this group?



Theres no such thing as perfection. Originality is a beautiful thing. I think its much harder now than when I was younger because we didnt have the internet. Id say dont watch too many of those YouTube make-up videos. They use way too much product. Its important to have a much wider range of whats considered beautiful.



Will you continue to be a presence in the fashion world?



If you were raised by Grace Adichie, my mother, you had better be interested in fashion. From the time I was a little girl, she would dress me up. Im a bit of a shoe fiend. I make no apologies for it. Theres a part of me that likes shoes, and likes dresses, and likes make-up, and likes books, and likes to write. I think thats the case for many women. But our culture makes us think we have to choose slices of ourselves that were comfortable showing the world.




Openly attacking Lt Governor Kiran Bedi in the backdrop of tense ties with the Congress regime here, the ruling party MLAs barring the Ministers and the Assembly Speaker today accused her of acting in a "dictatorial style" and sought the Centre's intervention to rein her.





A day after Bedi cancelled the orders of Chief Minister V Narayanasamy banning use of social media for official communication, eight of the 15 Congress MLAs in the Union Territory said they have sent a joint memorandum to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh complaining about her "publicity mongering" and "rigidly autocratic style of functioning".



"If Puducherry has to be a progressive Union Territory it cannot be retrograde in communications. Hence @CM_Puducherry's order stands cancelled: @PMOIndia (sic)," Bedi tweeted yesterday, in an escalation of tense ties with the Congress government in Puducherry.



Addressing a joint press conference, the MLAs said Bedi was not acting in coordination with the elected ministry since assuming the office on May 29 last.



Former minister K Lakshminarayanan, the spokesman of the group of MLAs, said they urged Singh to intervene and direct Bedi to "function in conformity with the decisions the elected government takes instead of acting arbitrarily and in a dictatorial style."



"We have drawn the attention of the Union Home Minister to undemocratic and publicity mongering conduct of Kiran Bedi," he said.



Out of the 15 Congress MLAs in the 30-member Assembly, eight addressed the press meet. The other seven legislators are incumbents of Constitutional posts such as Chief Minister, Ministers and Speaker.



Asked if they wanted the Centre to recall the Lt Governor, Lakshminarayanan said "We do not make such demand. We only urge the Union Home Minister to intervene and prevent Kiran Bedi from acting arbitrarily and from contravening all the set rules and regulations and encroaching upon the powers of the elected ministry."



The memorandum, a copy of which was distributed to media, said that ever since Bedi assumed office "her conduct was in such a nature that it was reminiscent of what Administrator would be like if Puducherry was under President's rule."



It said the Chief Minister with about 25 years of experience as a Parliamentarian and Union Minister did not want any collision course with her and desired to have 'cordial relations' with the Lt Governor for smooth functioning of the respective democratic institutions.



"Unfortunately this had not been reciprocated in the proper spirit by the Lt Governor," the memorandum said, adding the cancellation of the CM's order against social media usage had sent "an open signal for collision course chosen by Lt Governor against an elected government."



It was also stated that in the event of any difference of opinion with elected government, the Lt Governor should endeavour to settle by mutual discussions and at the most by making a reference to the Centre to tackle any disagreement as had been laid down in statues.



"But unfortunately from day one Kiran Bedi had been rigidly autocratic and uncompromising in her attitude towards elected government's management of the administration giving rise to controversies and drawing criticisms from various sections including political parties," it said.



The memorandum said her conduct was not conducive for smooth administration of Puducherry and on the contrary "it is unbecoming of a Constitutional authority appointed by the Centre to be the Administrator here".



It sought directions from Union Home Minister to the Lt Governor "to act in conformity with elected government's decisions before the present situation snowballed into a constitutional crisis".



Besides Lakshminarayanan, the other MLAs who are signatories to the memorandum are Deputy Speaker V P Sivakolundhu, Government whip R K R Anandaraman, V Vijayaveny, E Theeppainthan, T Jayamoorthy, N Dhanavelu, and M N R Balan.

The latest friction in the ties between Bedi and the government came after Bedi cancelled the Chief Minister's January 2 order banning use of WhatsApp for official communication even as Bedi was pushing with her plan to promote WhatsApp communication by officials.



She had recently formed a WhatsApp group for exchange of information and details of implementation of various government schemes with an Officer on Special Duty at Raj Nivas as the group administrator.



The government's circular was seen as a counter to Bedi suspending a Puducherry Civil Service officer for posting an "obscene" video clip on the WhatsApp group.
The virtual currency bitcoin has been swept up in yet another speculative frenzy, pushing its price toward the peak it last reached in late 2013.



The price of bitcoin has been buoyed by increased interest from places like Venezuela, where the local currency has lost much of its value, and India, where the government recently removed the largest cash notes from circulation.



More broadly, a tilt toward isolationism that has emerged in US and European politics  highlighted by Donald Trumps election victory  has given a new sheen to a currency that can move between countries with little oversight. The more there is an expectation for new barriers to be erected, the more there is an expectation that bitcoin will be valuable for moving money across borders, said Gil Luria, the director of research at Wedbush Securities.



Still, most of the people actually buying and selling bitcoins these days are coming from a single country: China. Some wealthy Chinese have used bitcoin to evade their governments strict controls on moving money in and out of the country, according to bitcoin specialists in China.



But the heavy trading on Chinese bitcoin exchanges, much of it by automated software, suggests that most of the price movement is a result of bets by speculators. In recent days, the price of a bitcoin has been about 3% higher on these exchanges than on dollar denominated exchanges, suggesting more demand in China than outside.



The importance of speculators suggests that the value of bitcoin is still driven by the hope of how it might be used someday, rather than real-world use today, which has generally been difficult to quantify. In dollar terms, a bitcoin was going for about $1,025 on Tuesday, or about 140% more than what it cost at the beginning of 2016.



The volatile price has led many analysts to conclude that is less similar to a currency than to a commodity, like gold, which has a value resulting from its scarcity. In bitcoins case, the rules of the network dictate that only 21 million bitcoin will ever be created. The recent rise has brought the price of 1 bitcoin to within striking distance of the price of an ounce of gold, which was about $1,150 on Monday.



The price has increased in the last year despite the lack of interest in bitcoins from banks and a majority of more sophisticated investors. After showing early interest in the currency, most big banks have moved on to make investments in the blockchain, the new type of ledger technology introduced by bitcoin, while eschewing bitcoin itself.



Some central banks have talked about issuing their own national currencies on some sort of blockchain inspired by but unrelated to the blockchain that bitcoin uses. Bitcoin and the blockchain were introduced in late 2008 by a mysterious coder who used the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Anyone with a computer and internet access can open a bitcoin wallet and help maintain the blockchain ledger where all bitcoin transactions are recorded.



Because it is run by a decentralised network of computers around the world, bitcoin does not require a central authority like a central bank or financial institution. That has made it attractive to people who hope to do financial transactions anonymously, such as the drug dealers who have sold illicit goods for bitcoins on the Silk Road website and its successors.



New bitcoins are released at regular intervals to computers helping to support the bitcoin network, and previously released bitcoins can be bought and sold on exchanges around the world. Since 2009, the price of bitcoin has generally been defined by long periods of stability marked by short periods of speculative excitement.



The only other time the price of bitcoin has exceeded $1,000 was in late 2013, when the demand was driven by a surge of interest from Chinese investors and traders.



The price soon crashed when one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt Gox, which was based in Tokyo and went bankrupt, announced that it had lost most of the bitcoins held by its customers (the cause remains in dispute). The bitcoin price fell to its low  under $200  in early 2015.



Since then, the price has risen in fits and starts, in part because of continuing hacking and fraud, and because of fights over the direction of the bitcoin network.



Many bitcoin businesses have wanted to edit the basic bitcoin software to change the number of transactions that can move through the network every day. But the proposed changes have run into opposition from the team of coders responsible for maintaining the basic bitcoin software. Many Chinese bitcoin companies have sided with the coders.



Issue of security



That disagreement has led to slowdowns on the bitcoin network, with some transactions taking days to be processed. The slowdowns have made it harder to use bitcoin for everyday payments.



But through the controversy the security of the basic bitcoin wallets and transaction software has held up, making it a potential alternative for people in countries with less secure currencies and financial institutions.



In November, interest in bitcoin spiked in India after the government announced moves to quickly ban the largest bank notes, in an effort to crack down on corruption. The continued fall in the value of the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, has led to reports about Venezuelans desperate to exchange their money for bitcoin.



But despite the new demand, the total value of all outstanding bitcoin, about $16 billion, is still only that of a medium-size US company, and is not large enough to sustain the demand of even a moderate number of Indians or Venezuelans looking to store their wealth in the virtual currency.



That points back to the importance of speculators, who are betting that someday soon people worldwide will turn to bitcoin for their daily financial needs, and push the price much higher. I ascribe only 10% of the value of bitcoin to current day usage, and more like 90% of it to the expectation of future usage, Luria of Webush Securities said.




The ceasefire across Syria negotiated by Russia, Iran and Turkey could be a game changer for West Asia if the truce holds and is followed by negotiations between the government and opposition.





The cessation of hostilities became possible only after insurgent factions were expelled from opposition-held eastern Aleppo by the Syrian army and its Russian and Iranian allies.



The return of this sector of the country's former commercial hub amounted to a famous victory for Russia, which provided air support. It was a victory also to Iran, which deployed ground forces as well as Damascus, which has gained control of 80% of the populace still in Syria and its five main cities.



For the opposition, the loss of east Aleppo signified the end of the revolution, though a revolution in name only. It was, instead, a revolt staged by a divided opposition activists and multiple, competing paramilitary factions backed by Western and Sunni external powers. These factions were gradually taken over by al-Qaeda-inspired radical Sunnis seeking to transform Syria into a coercive, puritan version of an Islamic State.



This has been rejected by the countrys Christian and other minorities as well as most Syrian Sunnis, the majority community, whose sons are soldiers fighting the radicals.



The insurgents departure from east Aleppo amounted to a defeat for Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as the US, Britain and France which sponsored the opposition and armed the insurgents. Without the backing of these powers, they would never have been able to conquer eastern Aleppo, impose themselves on the countryside, and attempt to overthrow the regime in Damascus.



Ankara has many reasons to break ranks with these powers and join Moscow and Tehran in serious efforts to end the war. Turkey has borne the burden of 2.7 million Syrian refugees and has been destabilised by spill-over from the Syrian conflict. Turkey has suffered 19 deadly bomb attacks, killing 411 people.



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is angry over US sponsorship of Syrian Kurds in offensive against IS capital at Raqqa in north-central Syria. He fears the Syrian Kurds will join dissident Turkish Kurds in their battle against Ankara. Erdogan, who sees himself as a major regional leader, is also furious over Turkey's exclusion from the US-Iraqi campaign against IS in Mosul in Iraq.



By joining forces with Russia and Iran, Damascus defenders, Turkey has made a volte-face. Since the unrest began in Syria in 2011, Ankara has sponsored rebels, jihadis, and the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated expatriate opposition and funnelled fighters, funds and arms across its border into Syria with the aim of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by military means.



While continuing to call for his ouster, Ankara is now seeking his removal through negotiations. Since opposition groups backed by the US and Saudi Arabia have agreed to the ceasefire, it appears they too have opted for a negotiated end to the conflict and the preservation of Syrian national unity, sovereignty and integrity.



Russia and Iran have agreed to shelve the Assad issue temporarily because Turkey can deliver key insurgent groups as well as the High Negotiation Committee, regarded internationally as the opposition spokesman. Seven armed factions have signed up to the ceasefire, including Ahrar al-Sham, the second most powerful of these factions, and Saudi-founded Army of Islam.



Astana meet



If the ceasefire takes hold, talks co-sponsored by Russia and Turkey will open in the Kazakh capital of Astana, where the pro-Assad and anti-Assad camps could try to reach a compromise over his fate. Assad has agreed to the formation with a unity government with ministers from the opposition.



However, he could come under pressure from Russia and Iran, which have spent blood and treasure to keep him in office, to cede key powers to this government which will write a new constitution and hold fresh elections. This formula could sa-tisfy the anti-Assad camp which may, perhaps, at long last, come to understand that his early departure could create a vacuum which would be filled either by al-Qaeda or rival and warring fundamentalist warlords.



If a compromise can be reached, government and opposition representatives could, once again, meet in Geneva under UN auspices to forge a deal to end the war. If successful, Damascus, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the US-led coalition will still have to deal with insurgents not party to or excluded from the ceasefire, notably IS and al-Qaedas Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra). For such campaigns Turkey, which has a 900-km border with Syria, is the essential partner.



Once that border is sealed and IS and the Jabhat are cut off from reinforcements, arms and supplies, it will be possible to uproot the former from Raqqa and the latter from the north-western Syrian province of Idlib. Without tackling both and insurgents not adhering to the ceasefire, Syria will continue to be conflict-ridden, unable to reconstruct devastation from six years of war, and persuade 4.5 million Syrian refugees to return home.
Indian citizens who are not resident of India will be able to exchange old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at RBI offices till June 30, the External Affairs Ministry announced today.





The Ministry said the provision to exchange the notes would be subject to the regulations of the notification -- Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Currency) Regulations, 2015 which put the limit of bringing back currency into the country at Rs 25,000 per person.



The announcement comes a day ahead of the three-day-long Pravasi Bhartiya Divas convention in Benguluru which is expected to be attended by overseas Indians from across the world.



"The Ministry of Finance through a gazette notification S.O. 4251(E) dated December, 30, 2016, in exercise of the powers conferred by relevant provisions of the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance 2016, has announced that this facility (exchanging old notes) would be available to all Indian citizens who were outside India from November 9 to December 30 to tender these SBNs (specified bank notes) at the specified Issue Offices of RBI until 31 March 2017.



"For those citizens of India, who are not resident in India, this facility would be available till June 30, 2017 in order to allow them adequate time to plan a visit as per their convenience," the MEA said in a statement.



It said separate FEMA provisions will also be applicable to persons in Nepal and Bhutan which would continue to apply.



"The facility would be subject to the regulations of the notification 'Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Currency) Regulations, 2015'. As per these regulations bringing back such currency into the country is restricted to Rs 25,00 per person. Separate FEMA provisions are applicable to persons in Nepal and Bhutan which would continue to apply," the MEA said.
The Devaraja police in the city have launched a unique drive to nab two-wheeler thieves who have become a bane for city-dwellers.





The drive is expected to prevent theft of unlocked two-wheelers or even those that are left in parking lots with keys on.



Police have been keeping a tab on unlocked vehicles by chaining them till owners come and produce relevant documents. The drive has been underway since August 2015 in the police station limits, which covers a major portion of the Central Business District (CBD), in the city.



Ramesh, of Kyathamaranahalli, got a first-hand experience when he had to get his bike released from police custody after he left it unlocked in Krishnaraja Hospital. He said he was thankful to the police for their timely intervention.



I had recently come to KR Hospital to tend to my mother who is being treated here but in a hurry, I left my bike unlocked. When I returned to the parking lot, I did not find my bike where I had left it. I was disappointed as I assumed that it was stolen but on making enquiries, I learnt that the police had shifted the bike to a safe place and would return it if I produced relevant documents, he said.



Ramesh said he finally found his bike chained and locked safely near the main entrance of the KR Hospital on Irwin Road side. He said police handed over the vehicle after he submitted a copy of the RC book and his driving licence.



Police personnel Y Gangadhar and Praveen said that they work in two shifts of 6 am to 3 pm and 10 am to 6 pm and make their rounds of the hospital to spot unclaimed vehicles. The personnel said they shift vehicles that are not claimed till 6 pm and release them if owners produce relevant documents. We receive copies of the documents, verify them, collect their mobile number and other details, get their signature and hand over the vehicle. If somebody cannot produce the copies of the RC book and DL immediately, because most of the people who come to the hospital are under stress, we accept a copy of their Aadhaar card. In case of any doubts, we also verify the ownership of the vehicles on the mobile app of Karnataka Vehicle Registration, they said.



As per the direction of our Inspector S Nagesh, we inform security guards on the premises before shifting vehicles. While returning vehicles, we try to make riders aware about parking vehicles properly and about checking locks before leaving them in parking lots, they said.



The personnel said they do not meddle with the handles of vehicles but instead keenly observe the direction of the key hole of ignition slots to assess whether they are locked or not.



Sub-Inspector K Lepaksha said a similar drive to check theft of two-wheelers has been taken up on Sayyaji Rao Road just outside KR Hospital on the perpendicular side up to Guru Sweets, near Devaraja police station on Dhanvantri Road up to Shivarampet and near Olympia theatre on the parallel and perpendicular roads of Sayyaji Rao Road.



On an average, our personnel secure around 40 two-wheelers per day under three beats. At least 25% of them are found along with keys. While 10% of people argue and react negatively, 90% of them are happy and laud our efforts in safeguarding their vehicles. As we have begun the beats during daytime, vehicle thefts have come down drastically but increased during the night. We are now strengthening the beats during night time, he said.



Encouraged by our initiative, similar beats have been started under the areas of Lashkar police station and also Nazarbad police station, he said.



Miscreants need just 30 seconds to steal a locked two-wheeler and 10 seconds to steal an unlocked bike. He said riders should take the responsibility of their belongings, Lepaksha said. People must also be alert about anyone offering to sell a vehicle or a valuable at a lower price and inform the jurisdictional police as it can be a stolen vehicle, Lepaksha said.


At least five persons have been shot dead and eight others injured when a gunman opened fire at US' Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, the latest mass shooting incident to rock the country.



The 26-year-old suspect, identified as Esteban Santiago, was taken into custody. His motive was not immediately known.



A Iraq war veteran, Santiago was discharged from the Alaska Army National Guard last year due to unsatisfactory performance. Florida's Broward County Sheriff's office said five people were dead and eight had been taken to a nearby hospital.



The shooting took place yesterday in Terminal 2 in the baggage claim area, outside the TSA checkpoint, police said. Air Canada and Delta Airlines operate out of Terminal 2.



People were corralled onto the tarmac and paramedics were at the scene, police said. All services at the airport have been temporarily suspended, the airport tweeted.



"The President (Barack Obama), on behalf of the American people, extended his sincere condolences to the families and other loved ones of those killed and noted that his thoughts and prayers are with the wounded," said Ned Price, Spokesman of National Security Council, the White House. Federal authorities will continue to assist the ongoing investigation into this horrific shooting, Price said.



Earlier, Obama spoke by phone with Florida Governor Rick Scott and Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief following the tragic loss of life in the incident.



"Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!," US President-elect Donald Trump said in a tweet. Hundreds of people were standing on the tarmac as dozens of police cars and ambulances rushed to the scene.



Police received a call just before 1300 local time (2330 IST yesterday) about shots fired at Terminal Drive. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in a tweet, "I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running."



A Miami TV station tweeted footage claiming to be from inside the baggage terminal. The video shows several injured people lying on the floor as witnesses shout for medical help.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that the shooter acted alone and there is no evidence of a partner.



"At this time we do not have a motive, but we are actively investigating that," she said. Florida Governor Rick Scott wrote on social media, "I am on my way to Fort Lauderdale International Airport to be briefed by law enforcement."



"The shooter was very skinny. He seemed to be very young... He was just letting himself be dragged by the police. It was scary," an eyewitness said. More than 325 departure and 325 arrival flights come in and out of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in a day, according to the airport's website. Over 73,000 travellers are at the airport on a daily basis.



According to Pentagon, suspect Santiago was recipient of several medals including one 'Global War on Terrorism Service Medal'. Police said he arrived at the airport with a checked gun. After he claimed his bag, he took the gun from bag. Thereafter, he went into the bathroom to load it.



Santiago started shooting as he came out of the bathroom. His brother was quoted as saying in the local press that Santiago was receiving psychological treatment while living in Alaska.



"Our hearts ache for those killed in this senseless attack, and we pray for the swift recovery of all who were wounded. No words can replace the loss of loved ones. No moments of silence can quiet the voices across America calling for action," said Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader.


A SpiceJet flight from Bengaluru with 176 people on board made a precautionary landing at the New Delhi airport on Friday morning following partial failure of the hydraulic system.





All passengers and crew of the Delhi-bound SpiceJet flight SG 136 are safe, the airline said in a statement. The Boeing 737 aircraft landed at around 8.45 am.



In a statement, the airline said, SpiceJet flight SG 136, Bengaluru to Delhi, experienced, during cruise, partial hydraulic failure due to loss of hydraulic fluid. The crew carried out the emergency procedure and landed safely at Delhi. The ATC was kept in the loop. It was an uneventful landing. All passengers and crew are safe.

The airline also denied that the plane made an emergency landing at the New Delhi airport. At no stage did the crew request for any emergency or

priority landing.


It must be January in Oregon.

Christmas decorations have been taken down and put away.

Relatives from other states have gone home.

And the flu bug has arrived with a bang.

Confirmed cases of influenza in the mid-valley are up markedly compared to this time a year ago and staff at local medical centers are seeing a daily influx of people of all ages with symptoms.

Linn and Benton county public health officials are urging people of all ages to get flu vaccinations.

There are a lot of sick people around, said Charlie Fautin, deputy administrator of the Benton County Health Department. Some of it is real influenza, and there are a lot of colds going around this winter.

Sarah West, a registered nurse at the North Albany Urgent Care of Samaritan Health Services, first saw patients with flu-like symptoms in October, but the numbers have jumped in the last couple weeks.

Yes, it has really picked up after the holidays, West said. People were traveling and they were around groups of other people.

Samaritans Corvallis facilities recorded 57 confirmed cases of influenza during eight months last season. In just two months this season, more than 70 cases have been confirmed.

We are probably seeing 100 patients per day here and at our Geary Street clinic and at times, up to half of them are complaining of flu-like symptoms, West said.

And, she added, the flu seems to be affecting all age groups.

Parents worry about becoming sick and not being able to take care of their young children, West said. Also, people have to be careful that they dont become dehydrated because they cant hold down fluids.

West said there appears to be an ample supply of injectable flu vaccine available.

West said that if patients check in with health workers soon after the first symptoms of influenza, Tamiflu is effective and can shorten symptoms by about a day.

But, if they have had symptoms for a few days, its too late for that, West said. Plus, there are side effects with Tamiflu.

Those side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, nosebleed, eye redness or discomfort, sleep problems, cough or other respiratory problems.

West said medical staff members are not immune to influenza, even though all Samaritan Health Services staff received immunizations.

We have had staff out off and on for the last month, West said.

She also urged people to practice good hygiene to help avoid the flu.

I wash my hands constantly, West said.

This seasons vaccine is considered a good match for the main strain of influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Vaccines take two weeks to become effective.

Health officials recommend vaccinations for anyone older than six months.

West said high-dose vaccines are available for people over age 65.

Especially susceptible are older people who live in communal facilities such as nursing homes or assisted living centers.

Beginning Thursday, all Samaritan Health Services hospitals started limiting visitors to their birth centers.

Each new mom and pediatric patient will be allowed a total of four visitors during their hospital stay, and no visitors under the age of 12 will be allowed in the birthing centers or pediatric units unless they are a healthy sibling of a newborn or pediatric patient.

This means four designated visitors throughout the entire hospital stay, not just four at a time.

The designated support people need to be free of flu symptoms and follow infection control guidelines, such as hand washing.

Basic influenza infection control measures:

 Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue or your upper sleeve.

 Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and regularly, or use alcohol-based hand sanitizers when soap and water are not available.

 Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. This is how germs are spread.

 Get your seasonal flu shot. The vaccine remains the best way to prevent influenza illness for ourselves, our families, and our patients (subject to availability).

 If you are sick, stay home.
Hectic parleys to resolve the raging crisis within the Samajwadi Party (SP) continued on Friday with a series of meetings between the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav factions.





Mulayams brother Shivpal Singh Yadav, who was removed as state unit president by Akhilesh after his anointment as the national president of the SP, also had a meeting with the chief minister in the morning, raising hopes of a resolution to the crisis.



SP Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh also held three rounds of meetings with Mulayam, and, according to a source, has offered to resign from the party if that helps bring Akhilesh and Mulayam together.



Singh, however, took potshots at Akhilesh for betraying Mulayam and Shivpal.

Akhilesh was brought up by Shivpal... I have also contributed to Akhileshs education, the MP told a news agency. A source said Shivpal and Singh had offered to resign, but Mulayam was opposed to the idea.



Senior minister Azam Khan also met Akhilesh and Mulayam to find a solution to the crisis, but to no avail, the source said.



Mulayam, who was scheduled to address a press conference at 4 pm, cancelled it in the last minute, triggering speculation that a compromise formula had been agreed upon.



Meanwhile, in Delhi, SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav did not meet Election Commission officials with the affidavits submitted by party MLAs, MLCs and MPs who had supported Akhilesh, after reports emerged that efforts were on in Lucknow to find a solution to the crisis.



Mulayams brothers Abhay Ram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav also arrived from Saifai, the native village of the Yadavs, to unify the warring leaders.



Another source said Akhilesh had hinted that he would not wait for the compromise formula indefinitely and was likely to announce the list of his factions candidates next week.



The polls are very close and any delay will only damage our electoral prospects... we will declare our list if a compromise is not achieved within the next couple of days, said a leader close to Akhilesh.



Some leaders in the Akhilesh faction are against a compromise with Shivpal.

We have the numbers... ours is the real SP, a leader from the Akhilesh camp said.


The government has decided to provide Indias only Braille atlas free to at least 300 schools that cater to the needs of blind students.





Created by the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation (NATMO), Kolkata, these maps are on a scale of 1:13 million, which make them bigger than the ones used by regular students.



Earlier, NATMO used to give these maps free to only those schools for the blind that are short of funds. A decision has now been taken to provide them free to all such schools.



We will give away the maps free to those schools that approach us. The Department of Science and Technology will subsidise the cost. This has been decided following suggestions from some parliamentarians, NATMO director Tapati Banerjee told DH on the sidelines of the 104th session of the Indian Science Congress here.



NATMO received a special prize for its Braille maps from Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the inauguration of the science meet on January 3.



There are about 350 blind schools in India, the maximum in Uttar Pradesh followed by Maharashtra. With an estimated two million visually impaired children, the number of schools that cater to their needs is far too less.



The production cost of each map in the A3 size varies between Rs 100 and Rs 150. With each atlas containing 80-84 pages, the map book costs between Rs 8,000 and Rs 12,000.



Banerjee said maps were available in several categories like administrative and political as well as maps on roads, population and even on the drainage pattern. The maps come with texts in Braille and English (or a vernacular language). The demand to include vernacular languages came from state governments to benefit teachers in these schools.



NATMO purchases satellite data from the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, which is then converted into Braille maps.


From powerful roles in police trilogy films Ardh Satya, Drohkaal and Dev to light-hearted characters in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Chachi 420 and Hera Pheri, actor Om Puri leaves behind a legacy very few would surpass.





The veteran actor died due of a cardiac arrest in Mumbai on Friday morning.

In his 44 years in theatre, silver screen and television, Puri worked with almost all the top actors and carved a niche for himself.



Puri was born into a humble Punjabi family in Ambala. His father worked in the Indian Army and the Railways. An alumnus of National School of Drama and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Puri dreamt big and rose to the top. However, he ran into several controversies of late due to his comments and personal life.



Puri married twice, first to Seema Kapoor, sister of actor Annu Kapoor, in 1991, but their marriage ended within eight months. In 1993, he married journalist Nandita, and has a son, Ishaan. They separated in 2013. Nandita wrote a biography of her husband titled Unlikely Hero: The Story Of Om Puri, but he objected to some of the very private incidents detailed in the book. She also filed a case of domestic violence against him. Puri made his film debut with the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal based on a Marathi play of the same name by Vijay Tendulkar.



Some of the films in which he played memorable roles include Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Dharavi (1992), Aakrosh (1980), Mithin Chakraborty-starrer Disco Dancer (1982) and Maachis (1996).
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) asked a terror suspect to mingle with people protesting the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani, and throw grenades at security forces to further fuel the agitation in Kashmir, an NIA charge sheet said on Friday.





Filing its charge sheet against Bahadur Ali in connection with the conspiracy to launch terror strikes in Delhi and other places, the NIA said the proscribed outfit has a well-organised machinery to recruit vulnerable Pakistani youth to wage war against India with the "help of network of their supporters and facilitators".



Ali was arrested on July 25, almost a month after he infiltrated into India along with two other operatives Abu Saad and Abu Darda who were killed in June. He is charged with having membership of a terrorist organisation, conspiracy to commit terrorist act, possession of prohibited fire arms and explosives and possession of counterfeit currency.



"The pocket diary recovered from Bahadur Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in Kashmir  Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, Udhampur etc, besides Delhi. Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked with carrying out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi," it said.



Following protests in Kashmir over Wanis killing, PoK-based LeT control station Alfa-3 told Ali that LeT cadres were "successful in fuelling large scale agitation" in the Valley.



The Alfa-3 then instructed Ali, who is a Class IV dropout, to "mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir Valley", according to the 50-page charge sheet.



Ali and two others had crossed over to India from Mandakuli terror launch pad and walked for about seven days to reach Handwara in Kashmir. From there, they contacted their PoK handler "Walid bhai". According to the chargesheet, data retrieved from GPS device contained the coordinates of the LeTs Mandakuli launching pad.



On June 22, Darda and Saad went to Wadar village and sometime later, Ali heard gunshots and fled. The handler later told him to continue his journey and reach Yahama.



On July 24, he was asked to receive a group of terrorists but the next day he was caught by the security forces. The items confiscated from Ali include a compass, an ICOM wireless set, a matrix sheet containing codes, two unicode sheets, coded text, Rs 23,000 cash (in which three were fake), a GPS set and one map sheet.



Ali provided information that led to an encounter with the terrorists from across the border in which four of them were killed.


Call it the height of apathy or negligence by the elected representatives and officials concerned, the original manuscript of Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari, a Kannada version of the great Indian epic Mahabharata penned by 15th-century poet Kumaravyasa, is vanishing gradually at a house in Koliwad village in the taluk.





The poet, who was considered the king of metaphors was born in Koliwad, 35 km from the city. He was one of the greatest poets in Kannada literature.



His literary work explores a wide range of human emotions and showcases his extensive mastery over vocabulary.



The poet authored Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari or Gadugina Bharata on talegaris (palm leaves) in the 15th century. However, 350 such talegaris are in a pathetic state. At present, they have been placed in a small wooden box in the house belonging to the descendants of the great poet at Koliwad. As some of them are already damaged, they will disappear forever if immediate measures are not taken to protect them.



Expressing unhappiness over the delay in protecting the poets work, Dattatreya Patil, a 15th generation descendant of Kumaravyasa, said repeated pleas for preserving the original work of the great poet had fallen on deaf ears of the officials and the elected representatives.



He said a memorial constructed in the village a year ago for the poet was yet to be inaugurated. Kumaravyasas birth anniversary should be celebrated every year in a grand manner, Patil said.



Kiran Singh, officer on special duty to Kannada and Culture Minister Umashree, said, Measures will be initiated for the preservation of the palm scripts if the village elders or successors of the poet submit a proposal addressed to her. They should submit a photograph of the palm scripts along with the proposal. Steps will be taken to inaugurate the memorial, he said.



Only the government can take a decision on celebrating Kumaravyasas birth anniversary, the officer said.


Less than a month before five states go to the polls, the BJPs two-day conclave opened here on Friday evening with party chief Amit Shah ridiculing the Opposition parties saying they were unhappy as the note ban had taken away their pro-poor plank.





At the same time, the other historic decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the surgical strike in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has helped India acquire a strong state image globally.



Briefing the media on Shahs inaugural address to the delegates at the BJP national executive meet, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the party president described demonetisation and the surgical strikes as two courageous and historic decisions of the Modi government. He said that despite the Oppositions criticism of the surgical strikes and the banknote ban, the people of the country were with Modi.



Javadekar quoted Shah as telling the leaders that the 2014 poll mandate was not to merely run the government but to change the fate of the country and empower and provide justice to the poor.



Shah made it clear that the elections would be fought broadly on Modis standing as an administrator, his governments delivery on development and pro-poor agenda and nationalism. Though Shah told his partymen not be on the defensive about demonetisation, but go forth confidently and face the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh and four other states, he did not give any indication when the cash withdrawal restrictions would be eased further.



The queues outside banks and ATMs and the peoples pain are diminishing was Javadekars reply to a question on whether Shah had given a timeline on when the currency situation would return to normality.



Shah, in his attempt to answer critics seeking whether black money has come back to the banking system, told the delegates that every money is accounted for and the drive against high-denomination currency will expand tax base and add money to the governments coffer, which would be channelled into welfare schemes.



Shah, according to Javadekar, said the party was going to the state polls on a confident note, taking into account that the BJP had won 8,000 of the 10,000 seats in the civic polls held recently in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Maharashtra.


Prime Minister Narendra Modis call for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state legislatures won endorsement from the BJP national executive late on Friday.





Terming the prime ministers call a another path-breaking initiative in the electoral reforms, the conclave adopted a political resolution that described the move together with several other important reforms would pave the way for cleaner and healthier electoral practices in the country.



It called for a wider debate on the PMs call among the political parties, intelligentsia and the voters at large, indicating that Modi would pursue the idea more vigorously soon.



With the partys backing, Modi is expected to call a meeting of political parties for working at a consensus on the subject before the budget session of Parliament.



The BJPs two-day executive also put on record Modis initiatives in various sectors as not merely for reform or largely about tinkering the existing system but intended to bring about a fundamental course correction and transformation at the grass roots.



A new culture of honesty, discipline, commitment and patriotism is the end goal of our government, it said, adding that the prime ministers relentless efforts in leading from the front to usher in a new work culture and ethics where honesty is respected and rewarded and dishonest are shown the path of reform.



The conclaves political resolution claimed the surgical strikes have had the required effect on our neighbour. This can be gauged from the fact that there is near normal silence on the border and also the initiative taken by Pakistan to call for DGMO level talks.
The Rajasthan High Court has questioned the state government over renaming of the Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendras to Atal Sewa Kendras, in the name of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.





The single bench of Justice M N Bhandari issued a notice on a petition by former Congress MLA Sayam Lodha, who termed the decision of the state government illegal and arbitrary.



The petition stated that both Rajiv and Vajpayee are former prime ministers and Bharat Ratna awardees and hence, there should be no disrespect to either of these personalities. The government decision has shown former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in poor light, it added. Puneet Singhvi, counsel for the petitioner, stated that the administrative order which renamed the Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra to Atal Sewa Kendra is illegal. He said a legislative notification issued by the Centre could not be superseded by an administrative order of the state government.



To put forth a strong argument, Singhvi said the Central government, through an amendment to the National Rural Employment Act, 2005, made a provision for the construction of the Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra as a village knowledge resource centre and Gram Panchayat Bhawan at the gram-panchayat level, and was promptly notified through an extraordinary gazette in 2009.



The petition also pointed out that Rajasthan is the only state to have renamed the kendras.


Security forces killed a senior commander of the Al-Badr militant outfit in an encounter in central Kashmirs Budgam district in the early hours of Friday.





Sources said following specific information about the presence of Muzafar Naiku alias Muza Molvi, one of the most wanted militants in Jammu and Kashmir, in Gulzarpora village of Budgam, the armys Rashtriya Rifles and special operations group of the Jammu and Kashmir Police surrounded the area during the night.



As the search party zeroed in on the target, the holed up militant opened fire, resulting in an encounter in which Naiku was killed, while a policeman sustained injuries, the sources said.



Naiku, according to the police, was one of the longest-surviving militant in Kashmir and was earlier a commander of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).



However, in May 2015, the outfit expelled Naiku for using the name of LeT and collecting money from people.



This person (Muzafar Molvi) is not affiliated with our outfit and is an agent of the

Indian security agencies, LeT spokesperson Abdullah Ghaznavi had then been quoted as saying by a local news agency.



Later, according to sources, Naiku joined the Al-Badr outfit and shifted his base from north to central Kashmir. A senior police officer termed the killing of Naiku a big achievement for the security forces, claiming it has broken the backbone of the Al-Badr outfit, which was trying to re-establish its base in Kashmir.


Jan. 24, 1928  Jan. 4, 2017

David H. Schultz of Corvallis passed away on Jan. 4, 2017, at Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis.

Dave was born in Marion, South Dakota, to Susan Fast and Reverend D. P. Schultz, he was sixth of seven children. The family moved to Oregon in 1940.

Dave was married to his high school sweetheart, Helen Neufeld, on March 5, 1948, and would be celebrating their 69th wedding anniversary this coming March 5.

Dave is survived by his wife, Helen; daughter Pam Blair and son-in-law Jim Blair of Salem; son Greg Schultz of Lebanon; granddaughter Kellie Grant of Salem; sister June Heinrich and husband Dr. Gene Heinrich of Sanger, California; sister Ann Friesen of Reedley, California; and numerous nieces and nephews.

During his work life, Dave was a sheet metal journeyman with Local 16 working residential and commercial jobs throughout the Willamette Valley. He served in the Army from 1946 to 1947 in Germany.

Dave and Helen enjoyed traveling in their motor home and living the Snowbird life between Oregon and Arizona. Dave also loved to deep sea fish on his boat at Newport.

Per Daves wishes, no services will be held.
Tours planned by the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) have failed to evoke a good response from delegates participating in the three-day Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD).





The KSTDC had organised paid tours to Nandi Hills and sightseeing in Bengaluru and Mysuru on Thursday and Friday. The itinerary and schedule were put on the public domain on December 31. The agency had also invited delegates to travel on the states own luxury express, the Golden Chariot, from January 4 evening to January 7 morning. The KSTDC was scheduled to take guests to Mysuru for a royal heritage walk and to Kabini for a wildlife safari.



KSTDC received just two bookings for the Golden Chariot. We had to cancel it and refund the money because of poor response. There were no bookings for day trips. Just 15 people have shown interest for the day tour, that too after the conclusion of the PBD, a senior KSTDC official said, adding that an itinerary will be chalked out based on the final bookings.



The official cited inadequate publicity and the delegates tight schedule for the poor response.



Delegates are coming on an official tour after a long Christmas-New Year break. This could be another reason for the poor response. Non-resident Kannadigas will not be interested in local places and will be keen on spending time with their families here, the officials added.



Another tourism department official said that considering the poor response, the department was planning to organise either a low-cost or even a free day-long tour for delegates.

The response to the industrial tours, however, was better, with 150 registrations.




The high court on Friday dismissed a PIL challenging the appointment of Lakshman as Karnataka State Pollution Control Board chairperson.





A division bench comprising Chief Justice S K Mukherjee and Justice R B Budihal, rejected the PIL after Advocate General Madhusudan R Naik submitted to the court that the appointment was in accordance with the law.



The petitioner, T Nara- simha Murthy, has contended that Lakshman has been appointed on political influence and that he does not have the required qualifications to hold the post.


Critically acclaimed actor Om Puri died on Friday following a massive heart attack. He was 66.





He is survived by his estranged wife Nandita and son Ishaan.



He returned to his house at Andheri on Thursday evening after a shoot. His doorbell went unanswered on Friday morning, following which his driver raised an alarm. Om Puri was found dead on the kitchen floor.



A postmortem was conducted at Cooper Hospital, after which the body was driven back to his house. The last rites were performed at the Oshiwara crematorium.

Nandita was sobbing, and broke down at the hospital. Several top Bollywood actors offered their condolences on social media.



Some visited his house and the crematorium. Among those who paid their tributes were Shashi Kapoor, Raza Murad, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Vidya Balan, Prakash Jha, Neena Gupta, and Sudhir Mishra.



Fans thronged the house and crematorium for a last glimpse of the versatile actor.



A recipient of two national awards and two Filmfare awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, Om Puri had an illustrious career spanning over four decades.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi mourned the death and recalled Om Puris long career in theatre and films.



Maharashtra Governor CH Vidyasagar Rao said, He was one of the most brilliant artistes produced by the Indian film industry. He had the rare ability to infuse life in the characters portrayed by him. With a deep baritone, he played roles remembered even after the passage of several years. Om Puriji was a socially committed person.




The much-awaited railway overbridge (RoB) on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) near Jalahalli was thrown open to traffic on Friday by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.





This will bring relief to motorists travelling on the stretch and at the Goraguntepalya junction.



Before the construction of the ROB, motorists from Goruguntepalya junction going towards Jalahalli, BEL Circle, Hebbal and Krishnarajapuram had to wait for at least 15 minutes at the level crossing near Jalahalli.



Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) and South Western Railway have jointly financed the Rs 40-crore project. The RoB was opened to traffic on an experimental basis for the last 10 days.



The BDA began work on the project four years ago to ease traffic woes. A portion of defence land was needed for the construction of the RoB. However, defence authorities refused to hand over the land and thus the project was delayed, a BDA official said.



Abhinav Suresh, a student from Yeshwantpur National Public School, last year, had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about how he was reaching school late due to the incomplete RoB work.



Suresh, in the letter, stated that it took him 45 minutes to cover a stretch of three km. Modi, on receiving the letter, directed defence authorities to hand over the required land, after which, the project moved at a fast pace.


The Torrey Pines High School Scholarship Fund (TPHSSF) will hold a fundraiser Saturday, Jan. 7 from noon  2 p.m. at Powerhouse Park in Del Mar to honor the memory of Nicolas Leslie, TPHS Class of 2014.

Leslie, a 20-year-old Del Mar native, was murdered in the ISIS-sponsored terrorist attack in Nice, France on July 14, 2016. The much-beloved only child of Del Mar residents Paola and Conrad Leslie, Nick was in France participating in a summer study abroad program through UC Berkeley where he was set to begin his junior year in the Haas School of Business.

The TPHSSF recently created the Nicolas Leslie Memorial Scholarship to further Nicks legacy at TPHS and beyond. While at Torrey, Nick excelled in his academic studies, played on the lacrosse team and pursued his passion for water sports. He founded the startup company N2 Kitesurfing to earn money for college by teaching kitesurfing. He also served as Congressional Debate co-captain for the TPHS Speech and Debate Team where he enjoyed mentoring younger students who respected him and often sought his guidance. Nicks life reflects all that is best about the greater TPHS community  a love of the outdoors, enlightened global engagement and compassionate entrepreneurism.

This event will give the community the opportunity to demonstrate its support of the Leslie family and celebrate Nicks life, said Sharon Rosen Leib, the events lead organizer and board member of both the TPHSSF and TPHS Foundation, nonprofits supporting all Torrey Pines students.

Nicks father, Conrad, will be speaking about his sons inspiring accomplishments and joie de vivre, Leib said.

Newly elected California Assemblyman Todd Gloria will also be in attendance to pay tribute.

Jersey Mikes will be donating sandwiches for the lunchtime gathering. Tickets are $20 in advance and $30 the day of the event, and may be purchased at www.tphssf.org - all proceeds go directly to fund the scholarship. The first Nicolas Leslie Memorial Scholarship will be awarded to a deserving TPHS student at a ceremony in May 2017.

For more information, please contact Sharon Rosen Leib, (858) 775-9051 or srleib@me.com.
By Matt McGrath

5 January 2017 (BBC News)  An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, scientists say. A long-running rift in the Larson C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away. Larsen C is the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica. Researchers based in Swansea say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up. [] If it doesnt go in the next few months, Ill be amazed, project leader Prof Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University, told BBC News. [] As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels. But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean. This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels. According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm. [more]
Jan. 21, 1942  Dec. 30, 2016

William Earl King, 74, died Dec. 30 at the Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House in Albany after internal bleeding and organ failure.

He was born Jan. 21, 1942, to Donald and Ernestine in Boise, Idaho. Billy was the oldest of five children who all had amazing stories that charmed and scared us late at night during our famous King Kampouts at Green Peter Reservoir.

Billy joined the Navy in 1959, served several years, was honorably discharged, and moved home to marry the love of his life, Judith Kaye Hawkins. They moved to Albany where they raised their two children. Billy helped form what became the City of Millersburg. He was elected and served on the Millersburg City Council and on their planning commission.

He could fix anything and added Kings Electronics as a side business behind his home. He also raised a farm of cows, pigs, chickens and goats. Billy created works of art and furniture with black walnut, his favorite wood. He worked at the Albany paper mill for over 30 years and retired as a talented instrument technician.

He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Judy; daughter LeeSa and partner Dawn; and son Kevin and his wife Karrie. He loved being Popo (grandfather) to grandsons Kaine Forden and wife Danica, and Kole Daniel and girlfriend Taylor.

His love for birds, chipmunks, cats and his doggie, Princess, warmed our hearts. He had a wicked sense of humor and loved to tease. Billy will be missed, but he and his story will not be forgotten.

Billy requested no services. Please consider a donation to any local animal shelter or Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House in his name.

Fisher Funeral Home is handling arrangements.
RunningShaadi.com Trailer: Taapsee Pannu And Amit Sadh's Next Will Break All Bollywood Match Making Cliches!
A pensioner who has dedicated his life to type 1 diabetes campaigning is to receive one of the countrys highest honours for his services to healthcare.

Fred Holland, from Kidderminster, is to be presented with a British Citizen Award (BCA) at Westminster Palace later this month.

The accolade was set up in 2015 in a bid to reward people who help make a difference and improve society.

The 80-year-old began his diabetes work when his daughter Vivienne was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1971.

Speaking to the Kidderminster Shuttle newspaper, Mr Holland said: I realised when my daughter was diagnosed that there was absolutely nothing for diabetes patients in the area and I wanted to change it.

In the beginning, there was two nurses working out of what was like a broom cupboard. We now have what I believe is some of the best diabetes care and facilities in the world.

Her diagnosis prompted him to set up the Wyre Forest branch of the British Diabetic Association (Diabetes UK) in the same year.

As chairman of the organisatio, Mr Holland has helped increase awareness of the condition as well as raise much-needed funds for research, which totals nearly 2 million.

He added: I feel a bit funny about the award. I really am excited  its amazing. I feel it is my dedication in life to help others and to help save lives by improving diabetes awareness and care. After all these years, this happens, it is just amazing. I thought it was a hoax.

Over the years his hard work has been recognised by other organisations, including Kidderminster Hospital, where in 2012 a diabetes unit was named after him.

Two years later he became the first British person to receive an award from the International Diabetes Federation. He also received a letter from former prime minister David Cameron who congratulated him.

Mr Holland was nominated for the BCA by the Kidderminster Hospital chaplai, Reverend Guy Hewlett, who called him an absolute marvel.

Picture: The Shuttle
Samsung forecasts record Q4 profit after Galaxy Note7 debacle in third quarter

Samsung may have failed with its Galaxy Note 7 last year but the company continues to offer better overall financial outlook. Samsung says its Q4 profit has jumped 50 percent from the same period last year. This is the highest gain in profit for the company in more than three years.

Samsung says the better than expected profit is primarily on the back of strong chip sales and rebound in smartphone sales. Post Galaxy Note7 debacle, Samsung said it anticipates a loss of $2.1 billion in operating profit. Samsung's upbeat outlook in profit comes in at a time when the smartphone industry is going through sluggish sales.

"Samsung posted solid earnings only with sales of older smartphone models like the S7 after the Note 7's discontinuation," Kim Sung-soo, a fund manager at LS Asset Management told Reuters.

Samsung says its operating profit for October-December period could have come in at 9.2 trillion won ($7.8 billion). The guidance comes in well above the street estimates of 8.2 trillion won.

A larger part of the record quarterly profits comes from strong chip sales and robust demand for OLED displays for smartphones. Samsung has a near monopoly in the 'organic light-emitting diode screens for smartphones' category. According to recent rumours, Apple is likely to switch to OLED panels for next-generation iPhone and Samsung will be the major supplier.

"Analysts expect Samsung's chip division to earn a record of more than 4 trillion won in operating profit in October-December thanks to strong demand from smartphone makers, including major client Apple Inc (AAPL.O), and high-end data storage products," reports Reuters.

Samsung booked most of its losses from Galaxy Note 7 aftermath in the third quarter of 2016. Samsung's profit may have soared, the company continues to pressure on the revenue side with a decline of 0.6 percent.
Winners of the hackathon will receive funding from Lenovo Capital, as part of th $1 million announced at the launch of the Moto Z.

Motorola has announced its Moto Collide hackathon in India. The event is part of the $1 million investment that Lenovo had announced at the launch of the Moto Z last year. Motorola is inviting startups and developers to build Moto Mods in the hackathon. Winners will receive funding from Lenovo Capital for manufacturing the Mods for the Moto Z and Moto Z Play.

Registrations for the hackathon are open at www.motocollide.com, till January 22, and the event itself will be held on January 25. Developers will have to obtain the Moto Mods Development Kit from this website, and build the mod at the hackathon.

The event may provide an unique opportunity for Indian developers to build mods that are more suitable for the country. Further, the pricing for these may also be cheaper, given that the target market will originally be Indian users.

Whatever be the case, the Moto Collide event is a sign that Motorola is genuinely serious about its Moto Z. In fact, the company had earlier told us that the next iteration of the Moto Z will still be modular, and the existing Mods will fit that device as well.
Systems biology company Physiomics confirmed on Friday that is has been awarded the Innovate UK grant as part of its Biomedical Catalyst 2016 Feasibility Study Competition that was the subject of a provisional announcement on 22 November.

The AIM-traded firm said the proposed project is titled Decision Support Systems For Stratified Cancer Treatment.

In line with its strategic objective to explore the personalised medicine market set out in its full year results, the objective of the project is to create a prototype decision support system to improve cancer care by helping medical professionals make treatment decisions based on patient specific data.

The ultimate objective would be to create a practical tool that could be licensed initially to NHS providers in the UK to support clinical decision making and improve outcomes for individual patients suffering with certain types of cancer, Physiomics board explained in a statement.

In the first part of the project academic collaborator Professor Mark Middleton will provide anonymised data from individual patients with certain cancer types.

Physiomics will then use its Virtual Tumour technology to create a decision support tool that will prospectively suggest an optimal treatment regime for new patients presenting with these cancers.

In the third part of the project, the Oxford Academic Health Science Network will develop an economic case and support the creation of a commercialisation plan for the tool.

Once a prototype has been successfully developed, further funding is likely to be required to create a fully distributable commercial tool, the board said.

The grant revenue is expected to be 132k over a twelve month period commencing February 2017, hence just under half of it is likely to be recognised in the company's current financial year.

Some of this revenue will be used for disbursements to project collaborators and the balance will make a significant contribution towards the time spend by Physiomics personnel on the project.
Sirius Real Estate , an operator of branded business parks providing workspace in Germany, has completed the sale of its Rupert Mayer Street business park in Munich for 85m to Siemens.

It has agreed to lease back and manage the asset for six years after the sale. The company has also made progress towards the completion of two other disposals for 7.4m as well as the acquisition of four further business parks for 34.9m.

Since the Rupert Mayer Street site was acquired the companys asset management activity has increased net operating income from 4.4m to 5.3m with the value of the asset increasing by 48% from the 57.5m it cost to acquire.

Siemens occupied 100% of the site when acquired and have subsequently vacated the site since. The Sirius management team has successfully filled the site with a mixture of conventional and flexible workspace leases and is now 88% occupied.

The sale price represents a 9% premium to the company's book value of 78.1m as at 30 September 2016. The purchaser, Munich based Fiduciary Capital, has an initial European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) net yield of 5.7%.

The sale has been structured as a sale and leaseback with a lease of six years and rent of around 5m per annum for the first five years and a cost equal to the net operating income of the site in the final year.

In September 2016, the company also disposed of Merseburg for 5.9m, due to be complete by March 2017, and 8,155 square metres of land at its CollnParc site for 1.5m, completed at the end of November 2016.

In December 2016 the group purchased an asset in Frankfurt for 4.5m and in November 2016 it purchased an asset in Cologne for 22.9m.

As previously announced, in November 2016 the group also purchased an office building in Dreieich for 4.6m and in October 2016 it bought an asset in Krefeld for 2.9m.

Following the above transactions, the group has around 70m from existing cash resources and debt facilities for further acquisitions.

Andrew Coombs chief executive officer of Sirius Real Estate, said, "The sale of the Rupert Mayer Str. business park in Munich is significant, as it is our first sale of a major mature core site under our strategy to recycle capital into higher opportunity assets where we can increase income levels and capital values and thereby increase total returns to shareholders.

The four new acquisitions provide us with significant value-add opportunities and we are looking forward to incorporating these into our asset management and investment activities and getting to work on deriving significant additional value from them all."

Coombs believes the company is making good progress towards moving up to the main markets of both the London and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges and expects to complete these moves in or just before March 2017.

The share price rose 1.88% to 0.539p at 1021 GMT on Friday.
Britain will not be able to buy access to the European single market once it leaves the bloc, a former British European Commision official said.

Jonathan Faull, who retired from the Commission last week, told BBC Newsnight on Thursday that access to the single market was not for sale.

I dont think it is a question of buying your way somehow into the single market.

Youre a member of the single market either as a member of the European Union or the European Economic Area, or youre a foreign country outside it and you conclude agreements with the European Union if you want to and it wants to regarding the way in which your goods, services, capital and people move around.

"Or you don't and you have one or two international rules which apply and that's it, that's a choice to be made by both sides."

Brexit Secretary David Davis previously said that the UK could make contributions to the EU budget in order to maintain access to the single market.

Prime Minister Theresa May is set to trigger the formal process of extricating Britain from the EU by the end of March, but is clambering to form a negotiating team after the recent resignation of EU ambassador Sir Ivan Rogers and the subsequent appointment of veteran diplomat Sir Tim Barrow on Thursday.

May is anticipated to give a major speech on Brexit soon and is expected to say she will prioritise curbs on immigration of over the single market, while a group of 30 business leaders have written to the Prime Minister to keep the country in the single market.

It has been suggested that Britain could adopt the Norway model, access to the single market and paying contributions to the EU budget, but Norway also adheres to the principle of the free movement of people.

Faull also said that May could be repeating the same mistakes her predecessor David Cameron made when negotiating with the EU, if May thought Angela Merkel would be more benevolent to Britain should she win the election in Germany later this year.

"I think it would be a mistake to see the EU institutions as somehow wholly different from the 27 countries. These are all actors that will be working together on this.

"I think one should look perhaps at the experience of the negotiations which took place before the referendum. where perhaps some similar thoughts were expressed and turned out not to be fully realised."

European security

He also said that the EU chief negotiator, Michel Barnier thinks that Britain is important to security in Europe as Banier has done a lot of work in recent years on defence and strategy issues.

Faull said that Banier believes the UK is absolutely crucial to the defence and security of Europe, the continent, and Franco-British co-operation in defence and security matters is extremely important and he will want, and I think all Europeans will want, a way to be found for that to continue.

He added: "That's more complicated if you're outside the EU, because part of the mechanisms used for this purpose are today EU mechanisms - so all of that will have to be looked into."
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has upped its year-end target for the Stoxx 600 index to 390 from 360, which implies around 7% upside from current levels over the whole of 2017.

To get more bullish than that, we would have to either be more confident of earnings growth or willing to put European equities on a higher multiple. The latter is perhaps possible if the political risks surrounding Europe diminish post the French election, particularly if some of the reforms promised by Fillon or Macron are forthcoming.

The bank pointed out that thanks to a strong year-end rally in equity markets, its 2017 target was reached at the end of last year.

Merrills target for 2017 means +10% total returns for European equities this year if you include dividend yield.

Despite these upgrades, the sharp year-end rally limits our ability to be more bullish. We are already forecasting earnings that are likely to defy the usual downgrade from the bottom-up consensus.

The European equity markets is also now on 15x 12m forward price-to-earnings making our upside contingent on earnings growth coming through and continuing into next year.

BofA lifted its earnings growth forecast from 7-8% to 11% for 2017 and 8% for 2018 on better growth, a weaker euro and strong commodity prices. If achieved, 2017-18 would be the best years for European earnings since the global financial crisis.

Merrill is overweight European oils, media, pharmaceuticals and utilities. It is underweight UK retail and travel and leisure as they are exposed to the UK consumer on delayed Brexit pain, and food & beverages.

At 0945 GMT, the Stoxx 600 index was down 0.3% to 364.66.
Euro-area economic confidence rose more than expected in December as sentiment improved in the retail trade, industry and among consumers.

The European Commission on Friday said its Economic Sentiment Indicator increased by 1.2 points in the euro-area to 107.8, beating expectations for a reading of 106.8.

France, Germany and the Netherlands drove the growth with the ESI rising 2.0 points, 1.9 points and 1.6 points, respectively.

Consumer confidence gained 1.1 points, driven by an improved outlook on unemployment, the economy and personal financial situations.

A strong increase in retail trade confidence, up 1.7 points, was fuelled by more optimistic views on the present business situation and a slightly more positive assessment of the volume of stocks. Managers' business expectations remained broadly unchanged.

Industry confidence edged up 1.2 points, boosted by an increase in managers' production expectations and improved assessments of overall order books and the stocks of finished products.

The economic data released since this year has painted a very much optimistic picture for the economic growth, said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets.

This also confirms that the European Central Banks loose monetary policy is also providing strong tailwind.
Russia has started withdrawing troops from Syria as part of a ceasefire deal between the nations, Moscow announced on Friday.

A ceasefire between opposition groups and the Syrian government was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in late December.

The head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said the Russian naval fleet, led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, started reducing troops from Syria on Friday, Reuters reported.

"In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria," Gerasimov said.

"I want to congratulate the entire crew of the naval aircraft carrier group on the successful completion of their assigned tasks."
European stocks crept lower as investors sentiment towards risk tapered off in anticipation of the US jobs report this afternoon.

At midday, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 was 0.31% lower, Germanys DAX dipped 0.13% and Frances CAC 40 was down 0.44%.

Meanwhile, oil prices rose as Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi implemented supply cuts. West Texas Intermediate gained 0.6% to $54.11 per barrel and Brent crude increased 0.72% to $57.30.

The US non-farm payrolls report is coming up at 1330 GMT along with the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings. This will be the first payrolls since the Federal Reserve upped its key funds rate last month.

Analysts expect the data show the US economy added 178,000 jobs in December, the same as November, but below the 12-month average of 193,000.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is expected to have edged up to 4.7% from 4.6% in November.

Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex said: Talking of the non-farm jobs data, it is momentous for more than just being the first of 2017. It marks the last report of the Obama-era, and sadly for the departing President analysts are forecasting that he will be going out with more of a whimper than a bang in regards to this specific metric.

On the macroeconomic front, euro-area economic confidence rose more than expected in December as sentiment improved in the retail trade, industry and among consumers.

The European Commission on Friday said its Economic Sentiment Indicator increased by 1.2 points in the euro-area to 107.8, beating expectations for a reading of 106.8.

Meanwhile, retail sales in the 19 countries that share the euro fell as expected in November, according to the latest figures from Eurostat.

Retail sales were down 0.4% compared with October, in line with forecasts. On the year, sales were up 2.3%, compared to a 2.4% increase in October.

Figures from Destatis showed total German manufacturing orders fell 2.5% in November from October, when they rose a revised 5%. This was steeper than the 2.3% decline expected by economists.

Retail sales in Germany were down 1.8% on the month in November, far worse than consensus expectations for a 0.9% drop.

In corporate news, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis edged lower as it agreed to pay up to $1.6bn to buy Ionis Pharmaceuticals and its unit Akcea Therapeutics for the rights to two cardiovascular drugs.

Fellow pharmaceutical company Sanofi was also on the back foot after a US Federal judge ruled that the drug maker and its partner Regeneron Pharmaceuticals infringed the patent that Amgen holds for its new cholesterol drug.

Budget airline easyJet flew higher after it said passenger numbers jumped 15.1% to 5.57m in December compared to the same month the previous year, while the load factor rose 3.3 percentage points to 89.9%.
London stocks nudged slightly lower on Friday as traders awaited the release of the US non-farm payrolls report.

At 1157 GMT the FTSE 100 fell 0.12% to 7,186.93 points.

Meanwhile, oil prices rose following the start of supply cuts by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Brent crude rose 0.83% to $57.37 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate increased 0.79% to $54.19 per barrel at 1145 GMT.

There are no major UK data releases due but the US non-farm payrolls report is at 1330 GMT, along with the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings.

Analysts expect the data show the US economy added 178,000 jobs in December, the same as November, but below the 12-month average of 193,000. The unemployment rate is expected to have rose to 4.7% from 4.6% in November.

David Morrison, senior market strategist at SpreadCo, said: Market participants appear to be hanging back ahead of todays first non-farm payroll release of 2017. This will also be the first update since last month when the US Federal Reserve raised its key fed funds rate for only the second time in 10 years.

As far as investors are concerned, anything above 150,000 is broadly positive - even if it glosses over the fact that job gains over the last few years have mainly been low wage and low skilled while job losses have come from higher paying sectors, such as the shale oil industry.

On the corporate front, budget airline easyJet flew higher after it said passenger numbers jumped 15.1% to 5.57m in December, compared to the same month the previous year, while the load factor rose 3.3 percentage points to 89.9%.

Interdealer broker TP ICAP, formerly Tullett Prebon, gained ground as it said it saw increased trading activity in the final quarter of 2016 and expects an increase in revenue for the year.

Engineering group Fenner surged after saying it expects results for the current financial year to be comfortably above previous expectations amid stronger order intake and improved customer enquiries.

Manufacturing company Rotork and engineer Smiths Group were both on the front foot after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of the stocks at buy.

British American Tobacco nudged a touch higher after RBC Capital Markets upped its stance on the stock to sector perform from underpeform.

On the downside, consumer credit lender International Personal Finance tumbled as it said it would appeal against a decision by the Polish tax authority regarding the accounts of its Polish business for the 2008 financial year.

Miners were under the cosh as metal prices fell with Fresnillo, Randgold Resources and Acacia Mining in the red.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,188.44 -0.10%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 18,305.65 -0.01%

techMARK (TASX) 3,416.41 -0.30%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Worldpay Group (WPG) 285.00p 2.48%

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 65.69p 1.61%

British Land Company (BLND) 637.50p 1.59%

Land Securities Group (LAND) 1,057.00p 1.34%

Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,468.00p 1.24%

easyJet (EZJ) 1,068.00p 1.23%

Intu Properties (INTU) 282.20p 1.15%

Smiths Group (SMIN) 1,439.00p 0.98%

Barclays (BARC) 234.80p 0.97%

Glencore (GLEN) 293.40p 0.88%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Fresnillo (FRES) 1,363.00p -2.50%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,575.00p -1.94%

Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,643.00p -1.56%

Merlin Entertainments (MERL) 453.90p -1.37%

Dixons Carphone (DC.) 336.30p -1.35%

DCC (DCC) 6,230.00p -1.19%

Croda International (CRDA) 3,240.00p -1.13%

Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 327.10p -1.12%

Shire Plc (SHP) 4,844.50p -1.11%

Compass Group (CPG) 1,448.00p -0.89%

FTSE 250 - Risers

TP ICAP (TCAP) 470.30p 8.51%

Daejan Holdings (DJAN) 6,310.00p 4.21%

Rotork (ROR) 258.90p 3.68%

IG Group Holdings (IGG) 528.00p 3.53%

Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW) 496.80p 2.79%

Derwent London (DLN) 2,791.00p 2.61%

Redefine International (RDI) 39.41p 2.47%

Workspace Group (WKP) 810.00p 2.47%

Big Yellow Group (BYG) 708.00p 2.31%

Safestore Holdings (SAFE) 364.10p 2.22%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

International Personal Finance (IPF) 163.90p -6.82%

IP Group (IPO) 174.20p -4.13%

Ashmore Group (ASHM) 295.40p -2.80%

Electrocomponents (ECM) 468.80p -2.46%

Nostrum Oil & Gas (NOG) 435.00p -2.40%

Centamin (DI) (CEY) 138.60p -2.33%

Polymetal International (POLY) 889.00p -2.15%

Man Group (EMG) 123.40p -2.06%

Hochschild Mining (HOC) 233.80p -2.05%

Acacia Mining (ACA) 403.30p -1.99%
Stocks in London nudged lower in early trade as investors erred on the side of caution ahead of the US non-farm payrolls report.

At 0830 GMT, the FTSE 100 was down 0.2% to 7,184.38. On Thursday, the index hit its sixth consecutive all-time high.

Meanwhile, oil prices slipped a touch despite the start of supply cuts by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. West Texas Intermediate was down 0.2% to $53.64 a barrel and Brent crude was off 0.3% at $56.71.

There are no major UK data releases due but the US non-farm payrolls report is at 1330 GMT, along with the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings.

Analysts expect the data show the US economy added 178,000 jobs in December, the same as November, but below the 12-month average of 193,000.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is expected to have edged up to 4.7% from 4.6% in November.

David Morrison, senior market strategist at SpreadCo, said: Market participants appear to be hanging back ahead of todays first Non-Farm Payroll release of 2017. This will also be the first update since last month when the US Federal Reserve raised its key fed funds rate for only the second time in 10 years.

As far as investors are concerned, anything above 150,000 is broadly positive - even if it glosses over the fact that job gains over the last few years have mainly been low wage and low skilled while job losses have come from higher paying sectors, such as the shale oil industry.

On the corporate front, budget airline easyJet flew higher after it said passenger numbers jumped 15.1% to 5.57m in December, compared to the same month the previous year, while the load factor rose 3.3 percentage points to 89.9%.

Clarkson was in the black after it confirmed that full-year results for 2016 are likely to be in line with expectations.

Interdealer broker TP ICAP, formerly Tullett Prebon, gained ground as it said it saw increased trading activity in the final quarter of 2016 and expects an increase in revenue for the year.

Engineering group Fenner surged after saying it expects results for the current financial year to be comfortably above previous expectations amid stronger order intake and improved customer enquiries.

Manufacturing company Rotork and engineer Smiths Group were both on the front foot after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of the stocks at buy.

British American Tobacco nudged a touch higher after RBC Capital Markets upped its stance on the stock to sector perform from underpeform.

On the downside, consumer credit lender International Personal Finance tumbled as it said it would appeal against a decision by the Polish tax authority regarding the accounts of its Polish business for the 2008 financial year.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,184.38 -0.15%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 18,332.29 0.13%

techMARK (TASX) 3,424.32 -0.07%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 65.70p 1.62%

Smiths Group (SMIN) 1,443.00p 1.26%

Worldpay Group (WPG) 281.50p 1.22%

Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) 1,994.00p 1.06%

Persimmon (PSN) 1,953.00p 0.67%

Intu Properties (INTU) 280.80p 0.65%

International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 470.90p 0.62%

British Land Company (BLND) 631.00p 0.56%

Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI) (CCH) 1,778.00p 0.51%

Land Securities Group (LAND) 1,048.00p 0.48%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Fresnillo (FRES) 1,354.00p -3.15%

Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 324.80p -1.81%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,590.00p -1.72%

Tesco (TSCO) 196.40p -1.33%

Anglo American (AAL) 1,132.50p -1.09%

Rio Tinto (RIO) 3,077.00p -1.08%

Glencore (GLEN) 287.85p -1.03%

Barratt Developments (BDEV) 492.70p -0.96%

Merlin Entertainments (MERL) 456.10p -0.89%

Mondi (MNDI) 1,650.00p -0.78%

FTSE 250 - Risers

TP ICAP (TCAP) 474.60p 9.51%

IP Group (IPO) 187.47p 3.17%

Virgin Money Holdings (UK) (VM.) 332.20p 2.88%

Rotork (ROR) 256.10p 2.56%

PayPoint (PAY) 989.50p 2.43%

Daejan Holdings (DJAN) 6,195.00p 2.31%

Renishaw (RSW) 2,718.00p 2.18%

Redefine International (RDI) 39.23p 2.00%

Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW) 490.00p 1.39%

Drax Group (DRX) 384.90p 1.34%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

International Personal Finance (IPF) 150.50p -14.44%

Morgan Advanced Materials (MGAM) 284.00p -2.41%

Computacenter (CCC) 785.50p -2.24%

Entertainment One Limited (ETO) 228.30p -1.89%

Centamin (DI) (CEY) 139.70p -1.55%

Indivior (INDV) 301.20p -1.41%

Bovis Homes Group (BVS) 806.50p -1.35%

Brewin Dolphin Holdings (BRW) 302.50p -1.24%

Ferrexpo (FXPO) 130.00p -1.22%

Acacia Mining (ACA) 406.70p -1.17%
Engineering group Fenner said on Friday that it expects results for the current financial year to be comfortably above previous expectations amid stronger order intake and improved customer enquiries.

The company said trading in the first quarter has been satisfactory, reflecting progress made in all its business.

In CDI, which is the principal oil & gas business of Fenners Advanced Engineered Products division, the company is seeing an improving trend in order intake and customer enquiries reflecting its strengthening market position, together with a further rise in the US rig count.

Within AEP's specialist industrial businesses, Hallite is well ahead of last year, mainly thanks to marketing initiatives and operating efficiencies with the other businesses broadly in line with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the medical businesses are performing well and in line with expectations.

In Engineered Conveyor Solutions, the North American industrial business is continuing to make progress on the back of the ongoing refocusing/restructuring programme announced last year. Fenner said there has been some increase in order intake from customers within the coal industry albeit from very low levels.

In Europe, trading continues to be satisfactory, despite low levels of major project work.

In Australia, ECS is ahead of last year's results although, as expected, higher commodity prices and the general improvement in sentiment within the mining industry have not yet translated into increased orders for conveyor belts as miners focus on controlling costs.

In China, restructuring within the coal mining industry has, as expected, led to ECS seeing a much reduced order intake.

Whilst market conditions remain similar to those reflected in our November statement, we are performing well and gaining traction from market share gains and from our refocusing of the businesses, the company said.
British high streets endured a fourth Christmas of falling sales as shoppers switched to buying gifts online from the comfort of their sofa. Underlying sales dipped 0.1% in December, after a 5.3% fall in the same month in 2015, as clothing retailers had a particularly tough year, said the consultancy firm BDO.  Guardian

Higher taxes and jitters over the EU referendum pushed down high-end London property prices last year as sellers accepted more realistic offers, according to upmarket estate agent Savills. But while owners of multimillion-pound London homes were forced to rein in their expectations, housebuilder Persimmon reported rising revenues from sales of less expensive homes around the country.  Guardian

The boss of Wall Street giant JP Morgan has warned the French president that the country is unlikely to lure banking jobs away from London after Brexit unless the nation overhauls employment legislation. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgans respected chief executive, is said to have told Francois Hollande in October that France must loosen its tight labour laws, which currently make it difficult for banks to recruit and shed staff, if Paris is to rival London as a financial hub.  Telegraph

Trade unions at Royal Mail are threatening the first national strike in eight years after plans to ditch its final-salary pension scheme were revealed. The company said that it intended to close the defined benefit retirement scheme for 90,000 workers in 2018 and move them to a defined contribution plan.  The Times

The Bank of Englands chief economist has conceded that the economic establishment is in some degree of crisis after its recent forecasting failures. Andy Haldane said the professions models had been fragile and ill equipped as he also admitted to mistakes in the Banks predictions of a sharp slowdown after Brexit.  The Times
Doctor who performed abortion on Ohio girl sues to stop Indiana AG from accessing records

An Indianapolis doctor thrust into national news on abortion is suing to stop Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita from obtaining medical records.
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NEW YORK (AP)  After controlling the Craftsman name for 90 years, troubled department store operator Sears said it will sell the famous tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker.

Stanley, which makes and sells tools under the DeWalt and Black & Decker names, wants to grow the Craftsman brand by selling its products in more stores outside of Sears. Today, only 10 percent of Craftsman products are sold in other stores. Sears said it will continue to sell Craftsman, including at its Kmart and Sears Hometown stores. The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company first took control of Craftsman in 1927 when it bought the trademark for $500.





. . .
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WOODLAND, Calif. (AP)  A crane operator faces trial on manslaughter charges in the 2014 deaths of his son and another worker at a Northern California bridge construction site.

Mark Powell was arraigned last month in Yolo County Superior Court on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Marcus Zane Powell, 25, and pile driver Glenn Allen Hodgson, 49, The Sacramento Bee reported Sunday.





. . .
One of Donegal's best known and critically acclaimed restaurants has closed.

Castle Murray House at St John's Point is a 10-bedroom boutique hotel which has won numerous awards for its superb French cuisine as well as its bar and accommodation.

The hotel was also in the global spotlight two years ago when Hollywood actor Paul Ruud spent several days there with friends for his stag party.

It is understood that staff were called to a meeting at Castle Murray House earlier this week where they were informed of the immediate closure of the restaurant.

Last night, owner Marguerite Howley posted a statement on the hotel's Facebook page saying, "We wish to inform you of the closure of the bar and restaurant at Castle Murray House Hotel as of 5th of January."

She added, "It is with great sadness that our fourteen and a half year journey with the restaurant must come to an end. This business has been a labour of love for us both but unfortunately the business is no longer viable. It has been an incredibly difficult and emotional decision and we will deeply miss each and every one of our Castle Murray team and our customers."

On a more positive note, Mrs Howley ended by indicating that the premises "will be reopening as a different concept during 2017 and we are very optimistic for the future".
PRESS RELEASE

ECB statement on Luc Coene, Member of the Supervisory Board and former Member of the Governing Council

Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), issued the following statement on the news of the death of Luc Coene, Member of the Supervisory Board and former Member of the Governing Council:

It is with great sadness that I received the news of the passing of Luc Coene. Since 2003, Luc has closely worked with the ECB in various rolesas Vice-Governor and Governor of the National Bank of Belgium and as ECB Representative Member of the Supervisory Board. With gratitude we will remember his dedication and engagement in these roles and his wider contributions to the central banking and banking supervision community. On behalf of the members of the Governing Council and the Supervisory Board and the staff of the ECB, I want to express our deep condolences to his family and friends.

Daniele Nouy, Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, added: Luc was a dedicated and valued member of the Supervisory Board. We will miss his thoughtful contributions and prudent analysis.

For media queries, please contact Ronan Sheridan, tel.: +49 69 1344 7416.
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COPENHAGEN  The organisers of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit have announced that their popular sustainable fashion conference will now become a yearly event with the fifth edition set to take place on 11 May 2017 at Copenhagen Concert Hall. The summit, which is under the patronage of HRH Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, is attended by businesses, non-profit organisations, policy-makers and media organisations.
A 70-mile long crack in the Larsen C ice shelf grew another shocking 11 miles in December alone. That leaves just 12 miles before an iceberg the size of Delaware snaps off into the Southern Ocean.

The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5000 square kilometers [approx. 3,100 square miles] following further substantial rift growth, wrote the Project MIDAS team, which has been studying the ice shelf.

After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 kilometers [about 11 miles] during the second half of December 2016.

During the last Antarctic winter, the rift averaged about three miles per month of growth. In December, NASA released a set of images that found the crack measured 70 miles in length, 300 feet wide and one-third of a mile deep.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/809563783245008898

The sudden acceleration of the split in the ice has scientists convinced that a massive calving event is imminent.

If it doesnt go in the next few months, Ill be amazed, Professor Adrian Luckman, project leader from Swansea University, told BBC News.

By itself, the iceberg that is set to break off wont lead to a rise in sea levels, as the ice shelf already floats on the ocean. However, the Larsen ice shelf acts as a buttress against continental glaciers that could then be free to slide into the sea. BBC reports that if all the ice that Larsen C holds back were released into the ocean, global waters would rise by 10 cm, or four inches.

Globally, sea levels have risen about eight inches since 1901. Its effects can be seen in increased flooding in South Florida, coastal erosion in Louisiana, intrusion of seawater into ground aquifers and stronger storm surges such as those seen in Superstorm Sandy.

Antarcticawhich holds 90 percent of the Earths fresh wateris losing about 92 billion tons of ice per year. The rate of loss has doubled from 2003 to 2014.

Long-term satellite observations show that Antarctic glaciers are rapidly retreating. A separate rift in the East Antarctic is forcing a British research station to relocate.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/573222521736048640

The Larsen C is the latest section of the huge ice shelf to break off. Larsen A collapsed in 1995. In 2002, Larsen B began to break apart. Within six weeks, a 1,235 square mile chunk of ice slipped away.

When the Larsen C ice shelf breaks off, it will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula, said the U.K.-based Project MIDAS team.
Before Inauguration Day, the Trump era has opened with an extremist agenda that poses an alarming threat to our people, our environment and the core values we share about justice, fair play and our commitment to leave future generations a livable world. Already, weve seen a set of cabinet nominees dominated by fossil fuel advocates, billionaires and bankers; a president-elect who says nobody really knows whats happening to our climate; and a full-on witch hunt for the experts who know the truth.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/810546123228217344

This is not normal. Its the most radical approach to American governance weve seen in our lifetime. Whatever we voted on in November, nobody voted for dirty water and air. Nobody voted to walk away from climate leadership and millions of clean energy jobs. And nobody voted to hand over our country to a pollute-ocracy that puts polluter profits firstand puts the rest of us at risk.

The following list addresses some, but not all, programs, policies and initiatives the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers have targeted. This could become the worst legislative and executive assault in history against the common sense safeguards we all depend on to protect our environment and health. At risk is the water we drink, the air we breathe, our public oceans, coasts and lands and the very approach weve taken for generations in this country to protect our common inheritance.

At the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), we will stand up and hold this government to account, by making sure the public understands whats at stakefor our country, our people and the common future we share.

Climate and Energy

The Clean Power Plan: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the first national standards reducing dangerous carbon pollution from our largest source, fossil fuel power plants. The Clean Power Plan provides reasonable state-specific goals for carbon cuts, flexibility for states to meet them and a federal plan that will cut a key driver of climate change 32 percent by 2030 and stimulate growth in clean energy. More here and here.

Here are 10 questions the Senate must ask Scott Pruitt and Rex Tillerson. https://t.co/vsK1hAhcT4 via @EcoWatch  NRDC ?? (@NRDC) January 4, 2017

International Climate Agreement: The Paris climate agreement signed by nearly 200 nations and effective as of Nov. 4, 2016 is a global response to the threat of climate change. It aims to hold global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. More here and here.

HFC International Commitments: In October 2016, more than 140 countries signed onto the Kigali Agreement, which calls for phasing down powerful climate-warming pollutants called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the Montreal Protocol, the treaty that saved the ozone layer. Industry supports the agreement. More here.

Reducing Methane Pollution and Natural Gas Waste in the Oil and Natural Gas Industry (BLM & EPA): These standards will reduce methane, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and toxic air emissions from fracking and other oil and gas operations. Leaks and purposeful venting waste gas that could be sold and used while threatening health and worsening climate change. More here and here.

Restrictions on public financing for overseas coal projects: The Obama administration restricted U.S. funding for overseas coal power plants to limit climate change. This affects the Export Import Bank and other entities. More here.

Assessing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act (CEQ): The White House Council on Environmental Quality issued guidance to federal agencies on analyzing the climate impacts of their proposed actions before deciding on how to proceed. More here.

Clean Energy

Vehicle Standards: To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA set tighter fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks for 2022-2025. The State of California has similar auto standards through 2025, authorized under the Clean Air Act via an EPA waiver. EPA also set standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks to save fuel and reduce carbon pollution. More here.

Clean Energy Tax Incentives (PTC & ITC): Renewed by Congress in 2015, these wind and solar incentives are driving clean energy investment over new natural gas in the electric sector. The clean energy economy now employs more than 2.5 million Americans. More here and here.

DOE Energy Efficiency Standards: The Obama administration (DOE) minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, air conditioners, clothes washers and other appliances and equipment save U.S. households on average $500/year on energy bills. These standards, which are required by law, also are often supported by manufacturers who do not want to deal with a patchwork of state regulations and because they know consumers will benefit from more efficient appliances. More here.

Nature & Our Natural Heritage

Arctic/Atlantic: In 2016 the Obama administration excluded the Arctic and Atlantic oceans from the next 5-year oil and gas leasing plan and provided permanent protections from all future drilling for the majority of the U.S. Arctic and key portions of the Atlantic. More here and here.

Putin and Tillerson Talk Drilling the Arctic on Saturday Night Live https://t.co/XmF2XL3N9U @savethearctic @EnvAm  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) December 18, 2016

Turning Federal lands and Waters over to Private Fossil Fuel Companies: The Trump administration may quickly move to expand coal, oil, and gas leasing across the federal estate, opening new areas and accelerating permitting and approvals for existing leases. Legal challenges are expected for each action. More here.

Coal Leasing: In early 2016, the Obama administration moved to protect public lands from new coal leasing while reforms are developed to ensure taxpayers receive fair value from mining companies. More here.

Keystone XL: In November 2015, President Obama rejected the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would have undercut Americas global leadership on fighting climate change. The pipeline would have run 1,200 miles from Canada through Nebraska to the Gulf Coast carrying more than 800,000 barrels of carbon-heavy petroleum daily. More here.

Dakota Access Pipeline: Last month, the Obama administration ordered a full environmental impact statement of the pipeline and a review of the route in response to concerns of indigenous Americans that their voices had not been heard. More here.

Pebble Mine: This proposed acid-generating copper and gold mine in Bristol Bay, in southwest Alaska, threatens a massive salmon fishery, beluga whales, a critical watershed and other wildlife. The IUCN World Conservation Congress opposed it. The EPA has made significant progress protecting the area through the Clean Water Act. More here.

Antiquities Act: Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, the Obama Administration has moved to protect our natural and cultural heritage by designating monuments that include more than 1 million acres of land in Utah to be co-managed with tribes, and the worlds largest marine protected area. There could be challenges to the act and individual monuments. More here and here.

Public Lands: The Obama Administration has expanded areas designated as public lands, which are held in the public trust for all Americans, helping protect them from environmental damage. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have launched a concerted effort to sell off public lands through budget riders and bills. More here and here and here.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/816841744461561856

Roadless Rule: Enacted in 2001 under President Clinton, this protects almost 60 million acres of national forest land against logging and road building, 17 million of which is old-growth forest in the Tongass in Alaska. Alaska is challenging the rule in federal court in DC. More here.

Endangered Wildlife

Endangered Species Act: The law has added protections for endangered sage grouse, gray wolves and salmon. The Department of Justice also is defending in court recovery plans. More here and here and here.

Marine Mammal Protection Act: The act has been used to limit offshore oil and gas development and to protect marine mammal species such as whales and dolphins from excessive Navy sonar. More here.

Wildlife Trade: By executive order, Obama committed to increased efforts in combatting wildlife trafficking. The Fish and Wildlife Service banned ivory imports and elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe and Tanzania. More here and here.

Agricultural Pollution and Dangers to Health

Decision Regarding Neonic Insecticides & Bees: Early in 2016, EPA issued a scientific finding that the most prominent neonic (neonicotinoid) insecticide, Imidacloprid, widely used on cotton and soybeans, is harmful to bees. More here.

Clean Air & Water

Clean Water Rule: The Obama administration advanced this rule to protect from pollution water sources for drinking water supplies of 117 million Americans. More here and here.

Ozone Standard: In 2015, the administration strengthened ozone health standards that protect public health, especially for children, older adults and people with lung diseases such as asthma. The standards also will improve the health of trees, plants and ecosystems. More here.

Clean Air Act/Startup, Shutdown, Malfunction Rule: The EPA has moved to close loopholes in 36 State Implementation Plans that allow refineries, power plants and other facilities to release bursts of harmful air pollution during startups, shutdowns and malfunctions, and dont meet Clean Air Act requirements. More here.

Toxic Air Pollution Standards: There have been legal and legislative attacks on EPA standards limiting toxic air pollution from cement and brick kilns and industrial boilers. These help avoid an estimated 8,000 premature deaths and 52,000 asthma cases per year. Brick Kilns litigation could heat up in late February. More here and here.

Army Corps Nationwide Permit Renewals: The Army Corps of Engineers uses general permits to authorize discharges of dredged or fill material into waters protected by the Clean Water Act. The existing slate of roughly fifty nationwide general permits is due to expire on March 18, 2017, and the Army Corps has been on target to finalize a replacement set of permits by that date. More here.

California Bay Delta and San Joaquin River: Congress and the Trump Administration could attempt to undermine federal protections for salmon and other endangered species in Californias Bay-Delta estuary, and possibly try to repeal the settlement agreement to restore Californias San Joaquin River. House Republicans have passed similar legislation in recent years, threatening thousands of fishing jobs, water quality for millions, and the long term health of this estuary. More here and here.

ToxicsPoisoning Our Children

Pesticide that Harms Kids: EPA recently said it plans to ban insecticide chlorpyrifos because it harms childrens brains. The agency is due to finalize this ban in March 2017. More here.

Toxic But Ineffective Chemicals in Antibacterial Soaps: In September 2016, in response to NRDCs petition and litigation, FDA banned certain antibacterial chemicalssuch as triclosanin soaps that were not proven effective and posed health hazards. More here.

Bill to Exempt Pesticides Applied to Waterways from the Clean Water Act: For 5 years, various members of Congress have tried to pass a measure putting public health at risk by exempting pesticides applied directly to waterways from the Clean Water Act NPDES permit requirements. The latest iteration was renamed the Zika Vector Control Act. More here.

Science on Carcinogens: The chemical industry has targeted a National Institutes for Health report on cancer-causing chemicals. Also targeting the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which has linked Roundup (glyphosate) to cancer. More here.

Health Risks of Herbicide Glyphosate: EPA to decide whether this ingredient in Monsantos Roundup causes cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer found it does. Its use is linked to butterfly decline. More here.

https://twitter.com/food_democracy/status/812414611563679744

Protecting Children from Toxics: EPAs scientific review panel set a 10-fold safety factor to protect children from widespread exposure to highly neurotoxic insecticides called organophosphates, such as chlorpyrifos. EPA cited human epidemiological evidence of harm to children. More here.

Toxic Substances Control Act/2016 Amendments: Recent updates to TSCA require EPA to take several key actions by June to establish risk evaluation, prioritization, and science policy rulings. More here.

TSCA/10 Priority Chemicals Determination: EPA has proposed its 10 priority chemicals to evaluate under the recently updated Toxic Substances Control Act and is due to finalize that. More here.

Cross-Cutting Attacks on Environmental Protections and Regulation Generally

Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act: This bill, which the House has passed several times, would basically shut down the entire regulatory system, not just on environmental issues, by preventing any major regulation from taking effect unless both houses of Congress vote to approve it within a limited time period. More here.

Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act: This bill, passed by the House, would establish a regulatory review commission to identify redundant or obsolete regulations to repeal. Requires a cut-go one-in, one-out approach to agency rule-making and 15 percent cut in overall costs, measured as costs to industry. More here.

Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA): This bill, passed by the House, would revamp and significantly slow down and even shut down, the regulatory process. One provision could result in preventing rules from ever taking effect by enabling industry to repeatedly ask for more analysis. The provision is similar to a fatal flaw in the original TSCA law that Congress voted to remove in the new version of that Act. More here.

Secret Science Bills: This bill, passed by the House, would make it difficult for EPA to issue environmental standards by making it impossible for the agency to use many kinds of scientific studies and economic models. More here.

Trumps 100-day Plan to Arbitrarily Cut Regulations: The president-elect has promised to eliminate two regulations for every new one it approves. But regulations exist to help ensure consumer health and safety protections. More here.

The Right to Public Engagement on Federal Actions: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): Signed into law on Jan. 1, 1970, NEPA ensures that the government assesses the environmental impacts of proposed actionssuch as permit applications, federal land management and constructing highwaysand provides transparency along with giving citizens a voice in government decisions. Rolling back or gutting NEPA has been considered in Congress. More here.Gage Skidmore
(Photo:  Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)Israeli settlements expand in sight of Bethlehem on the West Bank photographed in February 2016.

The American group Christians for Fair Witness is imploring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "stop the reckless and indefensible settlement building and threats of annexation" in a call to Israelis and Palestinian to take control of their own future.

The Fair Witness group led by a Dominican nun and litigation lawyer Sister Ruth Lautt calls on . Netanyahu to "put the future of the State of Israel ahead of your own political ambitions" and to acknowledge the need for a two-State solution and back this up with corresponding actions.

At the same time the group call on Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to repudiate his former pattern "of walking away from peace offers."

Christians for Fair Witness call on Abbas to, "stop setting pre-conditions for negotiations which you know will not be met and stop looking to the international community to do that which only Israelis and Palestinians can themselves do."

The group said that international resolutions and statements will not achieve sovereignty for Palestinians or put an end to the occupation b Israel.

In a Jan. 5 statement released in New York, the ecumenical group made up of concerned church people, lawyers and other professionals, noted that world powers are preparing to convene at a summit in Paris later this month to discuss the future of Israel and Palestine.

NEITHER ISRAELIS NOT PALESTINIANS INVITED

It said that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have been invited to take part in the actual summit, but that that they were invited to a separate meeting following the summit where the participating countries will present them with the conclusions.

"While we do not doubt the good intentions of the international community, it would be fair to call this approach somewhat colonialist and condescending. Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East urges the parties themselves to take their futures into their own hands."

The group implored both Netanyahu and Abbas to begin to demonstrate statesmanship and leadership and start the hard work of preparing their people "for the compromises necessary for a lasting full status agreement and the possibility of peace."

Christians for Fair Witness noted that in the end the international community's recommendations will not halt the conflict in the Holy Land.

"Only a peace treaty between the parties can do that. Therefore we look to Israel and the Palestinians to return in good faith to the negotiating table and sign off on a just final status agreement within a pre-determined period of time. "

The call came after Israel responded angrily to a Dec. 23 United Nation Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and it recalled two of its ambassadors to countries that voted for the motion and threatening to cut aid to one of them.

The security council adopted the landmark resolution demanding Israel halt all settlement building and expansion in the occupied territories after U.S. President Barack Obama's administration refused to veto the resolution, abstaining on the vote in a landmark decision.

A White House official said Obama had taken the decision to abstain in the absence of any meaningful peace process. The resolution passed by a 14-0 vote, and a packed chamber gave it loud applause after the U.S. ambassador, Samantha Power abstained.

Netanyahu's office quickly condemned the vote as "shameful", saying also that Israel is expecting to work more closely with the U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump.

Jane Eisner editorialized in the progressive Jewish magazine, The Forward, Jan. 3 "Secretary of State John Kerry made a long and forceful case for why the two-state solution is so endangered, so necessary, and why it is worthy of rescue.

"Personally, I thought his statement was generally accurate and heartfelt on the merits, but disappointing and dumb on the politics, a cri de coeur that did nothing to advance the cause and did everything to unite his opponents and divide his supporters.

"Fine. Pillory him, along with President Obama for failing to veto  for the first time in eight years - a United Nations resolution that pretty much repeated what zillions of others have said, though this time with language slightly more favorable to Israel.

"You may have taken advantage of this gigantic misstep to rewrite the narrative, but first you have to come up with the plot."
Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o...
Education officials have spent the last few months crisscrossing their states for town hall meetings and listening tours to hear what parents, teachers, and others want to see in new education plans states must submit to the federal government this year under the new federal K-12 education law.

Now that many states are inking their first drafts, questions remain: Did the feedback from principals, community advocates, teachers, and others matter? To what degree will they be included in the final documents? And did state education officials do enough to get the perspectives of the variety of stakeholders required by the Every Student Succeeds Act?

The short answer: It depends on the state, how one defines meaningful engagement, and what the objectives were when the state embarked on its stakeholder engagement processwhether it planned to dream big or tinker around the edges of its current system.

The majority of states are still collecting information through online surveys and in-person forums, although a few have published drafts of their plans and are into their second round of public comments.

District superintendents have generally been favorable toward state outreach efforts. Many sit on advisory committees and discussion groups the departments have set up. But the tight time frame in which states were trying to craft their ESSA plans while simultaneously waiting on federal regulations was a concern for some, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of policy and advocacy at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. (The plans were initially due to the federal education department in March or July 2017, but the department released new regulations on Nov. 28 that pushed the submission dates to April or September.)

Others worried that some states appeared to have predetermined what would be in the new plans, Ellerson Ng said.

Narrow Planning Window

Dan Shelton, the superintendent of the Capital school district in Dover, Del., who is in one of the states discussion groups, said there was certainly more stakeholder engagement during the ESSA planning process in his state than in the lead-up to the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. But the narrow window to complete the plan and the states focus on key areas could curtail officials ability to delve deep enough to make significant changes.

What we are focusing on are the obvious places that there will be disagreements, Shelton said. We are talking about our success framework. We are talking about n-sizes. We are talking about what we measure. ... Its not that were not talking about the things [that matter]. The question is, are there other things that we are missing because we are focused on a couple of really hot topics?

And while teachers were members of many discussion groups across the country, the American Federation of Teachers said it had to work harder in some states than others to ensure that teacher and parent input were reflected in the process. Randi Weingarten, the unions president, said Ohio was one such state where advocates had to put in extra effort to ensure that parents and teachers were heard.

Weingarten said that meaningful stakeholder engagement went beyond just holding meetings. It was also about ensuring that concernswhether related to teacher evaluations, art and music education, social-emotional learning, and assessmentswere respected and addressed.

Input to Guide ESSA Planning In responses to an open-ended survey question, teachers and district leaders shared the advice they would like to give their states regarding the development of plans for ESSA implementation. Both teachers (27%) and districts leaders (22%) most often said they want their states to limit or modify testing and its role in evaluating students or teachers.

It doesnt mean that everything we say should be gospel, she said, but it means that there is a real give and take.

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Education Department did not specifically respond to the complaint, but said the state conducted massive stakeholder outreach that included meetings across the state, online surveys, and webinars. Many educators and parents participated in the online surveys and attended the 10 community stakeholder meetings the state hosted. The department also regularly meets with parents and educators associations and discusses ESSA in those sessions, she said.

Parent Involvement

The National Parent Teacher Association sought to have a designated parent serving on ESSA committees, and, in the cases where that did not happen, it urged local affiliates to contact state education officials directly or work with their districts to ensure their voices were heard. The group also considered whether information about the law and how parents could be involved was easy to find, available in several languages, and easy to understand, and whether there were multiple opportunities for parents to provide input. It also looked at whether summaries of the feedback sessions were available online for those who could not attend the meetings.

Jacki Ball, the groups director of government affairs, gave a simple example of one way that South Carolina sought input from parents through a short online form that asked parents and students, among other things, What do you wish was different about your school or our school system?

Thats very basic, but, at the same time, it provides very good information for the department of education about what a parent would look for in their childs school, Ball said.

One particular hurdle, especially in engaging English-language-learner parents, is that some states do not have a track record of working collaboratively with the community. On the flip side, some English-learner parents were asked to dive headfirstfor the first time in many casesinto a rather complex topic, said Maria Moser, the senior director of teaching and learning at the National Council of La Raza.

We are trying to build a bridge between two sides, and there are pieces that are missing on both ends, Moser said.

To their credit, state education officials have been willing to speak at meetings organized by the groups affiliates, Moser said, but,"I would say that it hasnt been a strategic effort in those places.

An example of such collaboration is in Tennessee, where the Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition, a collection of civil rights groups and civic organizations, has met separately with state education staff to discuss their concerns about equity, state intervention in struggling schools, and parent and community engagement. But the group was also able to help the state in an area where it needed assistance: It facilitated several meetings with Spanish-speaking parents and state education officials.

In some cases, advocates are still finding that nearly a year after the Every Student Succeeds Act was passed and months into the stakeholder-engagement process, many parents still do not have a grasp of even the most basic components of the law. That, advocates say, calls into question not just the efficacy of the states education and outreach efforts but also the quality of the feedback that parents and other stakeholders can provide if they do not know how the law could alter K-12 education and the new opportunities it provides for local districts.

Still, states more often than not made an effort to reach out to stakeholders.

In Georgia, where the Common Core State Standards were adopted without much input and were greeted by a loud backlash, State School Superintendent Richard Woods said the ESSA engagement process was about building relationships and communicating priorities.

Among its efforts, the state created seven committees with representatives from various stakeholder groups, that included parents, representatives from the charter sector, the civil rights community, principals, and superintendents. The department held eight public forums between August and November, in which the public had the opportunity to join the discussions and ask questions. Students also had the chance to weigh in.

They were very forward-thinking, Woods said of the students, who offered insights about school climate and the burdens of poverty on education. Sometimes we dont necessarily take those things into consideration, but its always good to  sit down and listen to those we serve.

Continuing Process

The outreach does not stop once the ink on the plan dries, Woods said.

We dont want them to feel that they came, showed up, and nothing was done, he said. We definitely want to maintain that level of communication, but also let them know  your work is not done, this is just the beginning, and we expect and hope that youd be part of the process.

We dont want them to feel that they came, showed up, and nothing was done. We definitely want to maintain that level of communication."

Georgia educators who served on the working committees said that it was important for states to solicit and include the opinions and expertise of individuals who work in schools and who will be charged with shepherding the plans into reality.

Philip D. Lanoue, the superintendent of the Clarke County school system in Athens, Ga., and the 2015 AASA National Superintendent of the Year, said he appreciated the states process, but worried that the efforts may not go far enough to reshape accountability and assessments.

Thats my concern. That we ask the question, Are we assessing what kids are really going to need to be successful in their world, not our world?  said Lanoue, a critic of high-stakes testing.

Washington, another state that has gotten plaudits for its stakeholder engagement efforts, convened 12 working committees that tackled topics such as teaching and learning, early-childhood education, assessments, students with disabilities, and parent and community engagement. These committees also reported to an overall ESSA Consolidated Plan Team, which included members of the state legislature, ethnic commissions, the Tribal Leaders Congress, and the principals and administrators associations.

The department also solicited views online, held listening sessions across the state, and offered to pay for transportation and accommodations for parents who served on the working groups. What emerged from the nearly 10-month process was a draft plan that reflected the wishes of the stakeholders, said Gil Mendoza, the deputy superintendent for K-12 education, who is leading the ESSA stakeholder engagement process. As examples, he cited policies related to English-learners, migrant students, and early-childhood education.

The focus on student growth and not just performance on state tests also came directly from that input, Mendoza said. The state so far has settled on chronic absenteeism, 9th graders on track to graduate, and dual-credit enrollment as part of the school quality and student success indicators in its ESSA accountability plan. But some members of the community also wanted to add industry certification for career and technical education. The state plans to add industry certification in the second year, after conducting more research, he said.

A Living Document

This is a living document, Mendoza said. We are going to need to reach out again and say, Help us look at best practices that are going to work for you, because we not the ones implementing it. Local districts are implementing it.

Parents and teachers who took part say they are happy they did, though the impact is still unclear.

Kevin Ohlandt, a parent of a special-needs child in Delaware and author of an education blog, got the opportunity to discuss scaling back standardized tests and moving to a weighted student funding formula that would provide additional money to districts based on students needs.

I loved getting my voice out there and pushing for certain issues, he said. I have a suspicion that, at the end of the day, its going to be done in a certain way that willhow do I put it?benefit corporations more than students.

On the other end, Heather Byington, a National Board-certified teacher in the area of English as a new language and a teacher for nearly 18 years in Washington state, already has tangible results to show for her participation.

Byington served on a committee on English-language learners, which reviewed current policies related to English-learners and opportunities under ESSA to do things differently.

Some of the groups suggestions, including that the state allow districts to assess students in their native languages to the fullest extent possible and increase the amount of money available for immigrant students, were approved by Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn and are part of the states draft plan that is now subject to public comment.
While education professionals around the nation prepare for the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act , four educatorsincluding a teacher, principal, district leader, and state chiefand a civil rights advocate share their unique perspectives on the new law:

Voices: Teacher

Classroom-Level View of Laws Strengths, Potential Soft Spots

Misti Kemmer is a 4th grade magnet teacher at Russell Elementary, a Title I school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

What do you think will be the most helpful part of the new Every Student Succeeds Act?

Im really interested in whats going on with Title II, the professional development piece. Im seeing language that will allow states to really give teacher-leadership a chance. We get a lot of professional development thats not necessarily applicable to what were doing. And, the way the laws written, theres a really great opportunity for classroom teachers to step up as leaders, if the state uses the money in that way.

What are you most concerned about with the law?

Im really concerned about the way that states interpret the law, especially around areas of teacher evaluation and testing. I started teaching under No Child Left Behind, and I work in a low-income, urban school, and it was very, very punitive. If test scores werent here, we were somehow in trouble. My concern is that could happen again if too much weight is put on test scores or if the weight isnt put on [them] in a thoughtful way.

What do you need more information about as ESSA goes into effect?

Kind of everything, to be honest. Im the kind of teacher who seeks these things out on my own, but I could go to my campus tomorrow and say, Does anyone know what ESSA is going to do for us? and I can guarantee 90 percent of people there are going to say, Whats ESSA? Information is out there, but it has to be sought out. I tried to read the law myself, and its politi-speak and Im a classroom teacher. Im trying to wrap my head around it, trying to understand what this is going to mean for classrooms, what this is going to mean for my students and where I teach, how different states are going to handle this, and whats it going to look likejust all of that. I still have a lot of questions.

Madeline Will

Voices: Principal

New Opportunities, Unsettling Changes In New Laws Wake

Jennifer E. Nauman is the principal of Shields Elementary School in Lewes, Del.

What do you think will be the most helpful part of the new Every Student Succeeds Act?

I love the idea that they are actually setting aside 3 percent [of Title II funds] for principal professional development or principal support. A lot of times, when you get into the principalship or the assistant principalship, you have to go outside of your district, even your state, to be professionally developed. But when the states are required or given the opportunity to allow for principal professional development, I think it will trickle down. [In addition] Title I funds will be more flexible, which will help me as a principal to have a little bit more flexibility with what my students need, what my teachers need, and to base my spending on that.

What are you most concerned about with the new law?

I am worried that things can get lost in translation when you start regulating the law. ... Everybody interprets the law a little differently, and when we start making too many regulations, it could quickly go back to what we had. Im also concerned about the accountability piece. ... I want to make sure its fair to all schools, no matter what their demographics are, ... and make sure that whatever measures are put in place to help schools that are struggling are fair and are actually helpful.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge under ESSA?

Well have a change in our national secretary of education. We will have a new governor [in Delaware] as well. Seeing how the new administration interprets everything and how it is rolled out, both nationally and at the state level with the change in administration, [are concerns]. I just want to make sure that we remain student-focused.

Denisa R. Superville

Voices: District Leader

Despite Capacity Issue, Eagerness to Embrace Personalized Learning

Gail Pletnick is the superintendent of the 25,000-student Dysart Unified School District in Arizona.

What do you think will be the most helpful part of the Every Student Succeeds Act?

Students are now being prepared for an innovation and networking age, not an industrial age. Although ESSA isnt perfect, theres talk about multiple measures. ... ESSA is going to provide us with the opportunity to move in a direction that is more comprehensive and integrated and allows us to focus on personalized learning.

What are you most concerned about when it comes to the new law?

We have been under a compliance atmosphere for so long. ... There was such limited freedom to individualize under the old system. I worry that some of the components of ESSA can still be translated at the state level to one the one-test-score-tells-us-all approach.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge under ESSA?

I worry about the ability of [states] to create accountability systems that meet the mandates under ESSA but really take advantage of the opportunity we have to do things differently. ... Weve had a number of cuts to educational funding and a number of challenges because of limited resources.

Alyson Klein

Voices: State Chiefs

Hoping to Maximize Big State Investments As New Law Rolls Out

Brenda Cassellius is the Minnesota commissioner of education.

What do you think will be the most helpful part of the new Every Student Succeeds Act?

This will allow us as a state to focus attention on our Worlds Best Workforce initiative sparked in 2013. The state invests such a larger portion of money into public education than the federal government does, but No Child Left Behind allowed people to forget that. ESSA lets us get back to that work.

What are you most concerned about with the new law?

Considering [President-elect Donald Trumps] rhetoric during the campaign, itll be interesting to see if the president-elect can shift his dialogue from campaign rhetoric to governing rhetoric and that he advocates for better equity for all students.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge under ESSA?

I dont know about challenges. I hope the federal government maintains the value they have for state and local control.

Daarel Burnette II

Voices: Civil Rights

Hope, Concerns, for Students Often Left Out of Spotlight

Liz King is the senior policy analyst and director of education policy at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

What do you think will be the most helpful part of the new Every Student Succeeds Act?

I would say the continued focus on student achievementboth in the aggregate for a school as a whole but then also for individual groups of studentsand the attention that will be brought to the opportunities available to historically marginalized students. I think thats probably tied with requirements around parent and family engagement and consultation. We know that this has been an area of weakness in education policy over the past 20 years.

What are you most concerned about with the new law?

Certainly the piece that we are most concerned about is the reduction in the federal role and the amount of discretion given to states to design accountability systems and decide where and when and why to intervene in schools where groups of students arent receiving the support that they need. This causes us considerable concern because there is not a good track record of states and districts when left to their own devices focusing on the needs of historically marginalized students. Were hoping to be wrong. Were hoping that the states and districts and schools will rise to the challenge and improve the quality of education for those students, but we are definitely concerned.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge under ESSA?

The biggest challenge will continue to be that so many of our education policy conversations sound completely foreign to the most important stakeholders, which are students and parents and families and communities. We need to find ways to talk about these policy questions in a way that resonates with the concerns that communities have for improving education.

Evie Blad




Indonesia targets to stop corn imports in 2017

Indonesia's Agriculture Ministry has targeted to stop the import of corn for feed use in 2017, an official of the ministry told Antara News.

The ministry "has expanded the corn plantation area by two million hectares and has encouraged feed producers to buy corn produced locally", the Ministry's Directorate General of Animal Feed, Triastuti Andajani, said in a statement.

The Indonesian Feed Millers Association (GPMT) forecast that feed production in 2017 could reach 18.5 million tonnes. Corn demand for animal feed in 2017 is estimated to reach 12.85 million tonnes.

In September 2016, the ministry and GPMT signed a memorandum of understanding, which was followed by cooperation between the agriculture offices in 33 provinces and local feed producers to buy locally-produced corn.

Data from the ministry revealed that corn imports in 2016, as of December, had fallen to 884,679 tonnes, or 68% as compared to imports during the last five years. Indonesia had imported 3 million tonnes of corn in 2011, 1.5 million tonnes in 2012, 2.95 million tonnes in 2013, 3.1 million tonnes in 2014, and 2.74 million tonnes in 2015.
Jordan Hill and Tesfaye Cooper are two of the four teens charged with hate crime for torturing a mentally disabled Donald Trump supporter in Chicago. Jordan is from Carpentersville, IL, a town in the Chicago metropolitan area. Tesfaye is from Chicago. The attack was recorded by Brittany Covington and live streamed on Facebook.

Brittanys sister, Tanisha Covington, was also involved in the kidnapping. Brittanys 30-minute Facebook Live video shows the teens tie the mentally disabled man up and scream insults about white people and Donald Trump. People around the nation used social media to express their anger.

Jordan Hill Carpentersville IL Tesfaye Cooper Facebook Chicago Torture

A picture of the victim, Austin Hilburn is shown in the following tweet:

pic.twitter.com/JTdEGw4S0M His name is Austin Hilbourn. Please pray for him and his family. May he recover fast. #BLMKidnapping  Tennessee GOP (@TEN_GOP) January 6, 2017

Some responses to the incident dont make sense:

The tweet below explains that there would be riots if the four teens were white. I think black people would stand alongside whites if they decided to riot in response to the incident. I have seen white people in Black Lives Matter riots. The incident was horrific, making it difficult not to express anger towards the four teens.

pic.twitter.com/8JARibCb3K Can you imagine how many riots we would have around the country if the terrorists were white? #BLMKidnapping  Steve Hirsch (@Stevenwhirsch99) January 5, 2017

The tweet below mentions President Barack Obama. I would love to hear the presidents response to the incident. Theres no doubt that the president is ashamed of the four Chicago teens.

If 4 white people tortured a mentally challenged black person & shouted F**K Obama, every major city would be burning tonight #BLMkidnapping  Nat Shupe (@NatShupe) January 6, 2017

The wrong reaction to the incident is, Why would she live stream the video on Facebook? The correct response to the kidnapping is, How could the four teens be so evil?

What do You think about the incident? Share Your thoughts in the comment section below!
Why did Tom Cruise skip attending a Scientology event last year? It is well-known that actor Tom Cruise is a devout follower of Scientology but his absence at the recent opening of San Diego super center has set tongues wagging. Has the actor fallen out with the controversial religion? One does not know but hopes that ex-wife Katie Holmes will be able to shed light.

Tom Cruise did not attend the San Diego event of the Church of Scientology that was about the grand opening of the Church's new center. The high-profile event had generated a lot of hype and thus, the absence of the actor has created a stir in the media with many saying that the actor has decided to leave the Church.

However, Leah Remini, a former Scientologist, has denied the speculations and confirmed that Cruise is fully dedicated and loyal to his religion. She said that Tom and all Scientologists are taught to believe that people like her are literally the devil and that they mean them harm, reports Vulture.

On the other hand, Katie Holmes, ex-wife of the actor, who was also into Scientology, may be able to shed light on the religion. Her five-year contract that barred her from speaking about the religion is finally ending in 2017.

As of now, she is busy in her directorial venture All We Had and said that she has chosen a female protagonist because she has been surrounded by many women all her life, claims The New York Timesx.

In a phone interview, the 37-year-old actress said that she feels comfortable with telling female relationship stories. Talking about her daughter Suri, Holmes said that she is the inspiration behind everything and this is why she gave a special thanks to her after the movie was made. She wants Suri to know how important she is.

As for the experience behind the camera, she said that it was empowering and she knew it that it was going to be very intense. Katie Holmes had her acting and directing notes in hand and on the first day, she just directed but on the second day, she felt anxious. Still, she went for it and admitted that one fumbles and makes mistakes.
The Pirate Bay has been experiencing a lot of challenges recently as the authorities in US are doubling its effort for the anti-piracy campaign. With this, it seems that the famous torrent site will run servers in Carribean region Antigua. Meanwhile, KickAss Torrents which has shut down for some period of time has resurrected and is back for good.

According to International Business Times, The Pirate Bay might end 2017 moving to a Caribbean region named Antigua since it has received protection from numerous strict anti-piracy and anti-copyright-violation laws. With this, it seems that TBP and its domains will not shut down anymore.

Based on some reports, it was predicted that after nearly 14 years, The Pirate Bay will drop its treasured .org domain name. A few months from now copyright holders will release a court case and acquire an order against the US-based Public Interest Registry (PIR). Previously, PIR resisted a voluntary deferral but soon it will be enforced to seize the domain by court order.

Additionally, with the Swedish .SE domain also in danger, The Pirate Bay will send a special representative to Antigua and Barbuda to request virtual asylum in the Caribbean. This seems to be a brilliant match since Antigua and Barbuda is still involved in a long-running clash with the US. I

t was also noted that Caribbean nation has already threatened to lift the protection of US intellectual property rights in 2017, as a matter of fact, it has an idea of creating its own pirate site.

On the other hand, iTechPost stated on its article that the original staffs of KickAss Torrents which is also called KATcr, have brought life to the site again. With this, the KATcr is anticipating that it can conquer future shutdowns.

Although, the look and feel of the new site is similar with the old one, it flaunts a DMCA takedown process. A staff stated that this takedown procedure is same as YouTube's, stating that they do not actually store any copyrighted material on their servers. Also the staff toughly said that KickAss Torrents is a community-based forum and torrent search engine, adding that torrents are not illegal.

With The Pirate Bay predicted to move it servers in a Carribean region this might be a benefit as the place is protected from anti-piracy law. Moreover, a lot of uploaders in KickAss Torrents has started uploading videos and other contents which its subscribers will definitely enjoy.
Transcription

1 The New Mexico Medicaid Program Notice of Privacy Practices Summary Effective Date April 14, 2003 What types of information does NM Medicaid collect? In order to assist you, NM Medicaid may collect certain information about you. This may include your: name address birth date financial information information about your health NM Medicaid may ask you for your medical history or medications you may be taking. NM Medicaid may also ask you if you have any health problems. What does NM Medicaid do with this information? shares information about you with people who provide treatment for you discusses your information with other people who are also involved in your health care or who pay for your care shares your information with other government agencies shares some of your information to collect payment from others When else can NM Medicaid release your information? if it is needed to prevent or control the spread of a disease to the courts or law enforcement if NM Medicaid is ordered by a court to do so What are your rights? to see any medical information we may have about you to get a copy of any medical information we may have about you to ask us to make corrections if you think there are mistakes in any health information we may have about you to know with whom NM Medicaid has shared your information to ask us not to share parts of your medical information What do you do if you have a complaint? If you want to file a complaint, you may write to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Officer at NM Medicaid at the address below. MAD077 1 New Mexico Medical Assistance Division HIPAA Privacy Officer P.O. Box 2348 Santa Fe, NM (Santa Fe area only) You may also file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the address below. Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services 200 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, D.C

2 If you file a complaint, it will not be held against you or any member of your family. More information is included on this form. Please read the "Notice of Privacy Practices". NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY. If you are a person with a disability and you require this Notice in a different format or require assistance to understand this form, you may ask for help from the HIPAA Privacy Officer. How the New Mexico Medicaid Program May Use or Disclose Your Health Information Treatment The people who provide health care services to you will use information about you to decide how best to care for you. We may share health information about you to provide the services you may need, such as physical examinations, nutritional services, medications and prescriptions or hospitalization. We also may share health information about you with people outside the New Mexico Medicaid Program who may be involved in your medical care, such as family members, physicians or others who provide part of your care. Payment NM Medicaid may share information about you to get payment for our services from your health plan or insurance company. For example, we may need to give your health plan information about a clinical exam or immunizations you received (or your child received) so your health plan will pay us or pay you back for the treatment or services we provided. We may also tell your health plan or insurance company about a treatment you are going to receive so they can approve it and agree to pay for the treatment. Health Care Operations We may use your health information to review the treatment and services you received and to evaluate the care given to you. We may combine health information about many recipients to decide whether additional services should be offered, what services are needed and whether certain new treatments and services are working. NM Medicaid may share information with doctors, nurses, technicians, medical interns, other NM Medicaid staff, and other government agencies or divisions for review purposes. NM Medicaid may combine the health information NM Medicaid has with health information from other health care providers to compare how we are doing and to see where we can make improvements in the care and services we offer. We may also share your information for reviews and grievances. Sometimes NM Medicaid will remove your name from information so others may use that information to study our health care services. We may release part of your information to follow workers' compensation rules. Appointment Reminders and Information NM Medicaid may call or write to you to remind you that you have an appointment for treatment or medical care. NM Medicaid may tell you about health-related benefits or services that may be of interest to you. Individuals Involved in Your Care or Payment for Your Care NM Medicaid may give information about you to a friend or family member who is involved in your medical care. NM Medicaid may also give information to someone who helps pay for your care. MAD077 2

3 Veterans and Specialized Government Functions If you were a member of the armed forces, NM Medicaid may release health information about you as required by the Veterans' Administration. NM Medicaid may also release information about you for security or military reasons. As Required by Law NM Medicaid must share health information about you when required to do so by federal, state or local law. Public Health Risks NM Medicaid must share health information about you for public health reasons as required by federal or state law: To prevent or control disease, injury or disability; To report child abuse or neglect; To report reactions to medications or other problems with products; To notify people of recalls and defects about products they may be using; To notify a person who may have been exposed to a disease or may be at risk for catching or spreading a disease or condition; To notify the appropriate government authority if NM Medicaid believes a patient or client has been the victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence; To prevent a serious threat to health or safety. Health Oversight Activities NM Medicaid may share health information for accreditations, audits, investigations, inspections, and licensing. This is necessary for the state and federal government to monitor the health care system, government programs and laws. Lawsuits and Other Disputes If you are involved in a lawsuit or other legal dispute, NM Medicaid may share health information about you in response to a court order or for a fair hearing. NM Medicaid may also share health information about you in response to a subpoena or other lawful process by someone else involved in the dispute. Law Enforcement NM Medicaid may share information about you if asked to do so by a law enforcement official, subject to federal and state laws and regulations. NM Medicaid may also share information in response to a court order, following a subpoena, warrant, summons or similar legal process. Other Uses of Health Information NM Medicaid will not use or share health information about you for any reason other than those listed above without your written permission. If NM Medicaid shares information about you with your permission, NM Medicaid cannot take back the information already shared. NM Medicaid also must keep records of the services you received which NM Medicaid either paid or denied. MAD077 3

4 Your Rights Regarding Your Health Information Right to Inspect and Copy You have the right to see and receive copies of the health information NM Medicaid has about you. To inspect and request copies of your health information, you may contact the HIPAA Privacy Officer. If you want to see your health information that may be in more than one location or if you have any questions about your information, you must write to the HIPAA Privacy Officer. If you ask for copies, NM Medicaid may charge you for the costs of copying and mailing the information to you. NM Medicaid may deny your request as permitted by the HIPAA Privacy Rule. If NM Medicaid denies your request to see your health information, you may ask us why and ask for a review of our decision. A licensed health care professional chosen by us will review your request and the denial. The person who reviews the denial will not be the same person who originally denied your request. NM Medicaid will do whatever the reviewer recommends. Right to Request a Correction to Misinformation If you believe that health information NM Medicaid has about you is not correct or is incomplete, you may ask us to correct it. You have the right to ask for a correction for as long as the information is kept by NM Medicaid. To ask for a correction, you must write to the HIPAA Privacy Officer who will review your request. You must give us a reason that supports your request. NM Medicaid may deny your request for a correction if it is not in writing or does not include a reason to support the request. NM Medicaid may also deny your request if you ask us to correct information that: was not created by NM Medicaid is not part of the health information kept by NM Medicaid is correct and complete was created by a business agent whose records cannot be obtained. Right to a Record of Information We Have Shared NM Medicaid keeps a record of your health information that has been shared. You may ask for a copy of the record of information that has been shared by writing to the HIPAA Privacy Officer. The HIPAA Privacy Officer will write to you about the results of your request. You cannot ask for any information that was shared before April 14, NM Medicaid will give you one free copy per year. NM Medicaid may charge you for the copy if you ask for more than one copy in a 12-month period. If there is a charge, NM Medicaid will tell you what it is and if you do not want to pay, you can take back your request. Right to Ask for Limits on Shared Health Information You have the right to ask NM Medicaid to limit the health information about you that NM Medicaid shares with someone who is involved in your care or who pays for your care. For example, you could ask that NM Medicaid not use or share information about a treatment or prescription you received. NM Medicaid may not be able to agree to your request, for example, if required by law. If NM Medicaid does agree, NM Medicaid will do what you ask us to do unless the information is needed to provide you emergency treatment. To ask for limits or restrictions on your health information, you may ask for assistance from the HIPAA Privacy Officer. If you ask for limits or restrictions on your health information that may be at more than one location or if you have any questions about your information, you may write to the HIPAA Privacy Officer telling NM Medicaid: what information you want to limit and to whom you want the limits to apply (for example, to your spouse). If you have asked to limit the health information NM Medicaid uses or shares and if NM Medicaid has agreed, you have the right to change your mind by writing to the HIPAA Privacy Officer. MAD077 4

5 Right to Request Private Communications You have the right to ask that NM Medicaid communicate with you about your health information other than by mailing. You may also ask that NM Medicaid send communications to you about your health information to the address you choose. NM Medicaid will grant your request if possible. Right to a Paper Copy of This Notice You have the right to a paper copy of this notice at any time by writing the HIPAA Privacy Officer. You may also get a copy of this notice at our website. Complaints If you believe NM Medicaid has violated your privacy rights, you may complain to the HIPAA Privacy Officer, or you may file a complaint with the Secretary of the United States Health and Human Services Department at 200 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC If you file a complaint, it will not be held against you or any member of your family. Additional Information If you have questions about this notice, or if you need more information, write to the HIPAA Privacy Officer at: New Mexico Human Services Department HIPAA Privacy Officer P.O. Box 2348 Santa Fe, New Mexico Information About This Notice NM Medicaid may change this notice at any time. NM Medicaid will post a copy of the current notice in our main office. The notice will show the effective date on the first page. Each time you go to an HSD County Office, you may ask for a copy of our current Notice of Privacy Practices. If NM Medicaid changes the notice, NM Medicaid will send you a copy of the revised notice. The revised notice will be available at the HSD County Offices and on the NM Medicaid web site. MAD077 5

6 HIPAA COMPLIANT AUTHORIZATION FOR THE RELEASE OF PATIENT INFORMATION PURSUANT TO 45 CFR TO: Name of Healthcare Provider/Physician/Facility/Medicare Contractor Street Address City, State and Zip Code RE: Patient Name: Date of Birth: Social Security Number: I authorize and request the disclosure of all protected information for the purpose of review and evaluation in connection with a legal claim. I expressly request that the designated record custodian of all covered entities under HIPAA identified above disclose full and complete protected medical information including the following: All medical records, meaning every page in my record, including but not limited to: office notes, face sheets, history and physical, consultation notes, inpatient, outpatient and emergency room treatment, all clinical charts, r ports, order sheets, progress notes, nurse's notes, social worker records, clinic records, treatment plans, admission records, discharge summaries, requests for and reports of consultations, documents, correspondence, test results, statements, questionnaires/histories, correspondence, photographs, videotapes, telephone messages, and records received by other medical providers. All physical, occupational and rehab requests, consultations and progress notes. All disability, Medicaid or Medicare records including claim forms and record of denial of benefits. All employment, personnel or wage records. All autopsy, laboratory, histology, cytology, pathology, immunohistochemistry records and specimens; radiology records and films including CT scan, MRI, MRA, EMG, bone scan, myleogram; nerve conduction study, echocardiogram and cardiac catheterization results, videos/cds/films/reels and reports. All pharmacy/prescription records including NDC numbers and drug information handouts/monographs. All billing records including all statements, insurance claim forms, itemized bills, and records of billing to third party payers and payment or denial of benefits for the period to. I understand the information to be released or disclosed may include information relating to sexually transmitted diseases, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), or human Page 1 of 2

7 immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and alcohol and drug abuse. I authorize the release or disclosure of this type of information. This protected health information is disclosed for the following purposes: This authorization is given in compliance with the federal consent requirements for release of alcohol or substance abuse records of 42 CFR 2.31, the restrictions of which have been specifically considered and expressly waived. You are authorized to release the above records to the following representatives of defendants in the above-entitled matter who have agreed to pay reasonable charges made by you to supply copies of such records: Name of Representative Representative Capacity (e.g. attorney, records requestor, agent, etc.) Street Address _ City, State and Zip Code I understand the following: See CFR (c)(2)(i-iii) a. I have a right to revoke this authorization in writing at any time, except to the extent information has been released in reliance upon this authorization. b. The information released in response to this authorization may be re-disclosed to other parties. c. My treatment or payment for my treatment cannot be conditioned on the signing of this authorization. Any facsimile, copy or photocopy of the authorization shall authorize you to release the records requested herein. This authorization shall be in force and effect until two years from date of execution at which time this authorization expires. Signature of Patient or Legally Authorized Representative (See 45CFR (c)(1)(vi)) Date Name and Relationship of Legally Authorized Representative to Patient (See 45CFR (c)(1)(iv)) Witness Signature Date Page 2 of 2
Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx were spotted holding hands while they celebrated New Year's Eve together in Miami. The rumored couple can no longer keep their relationship from public's eye as they spent their last romantic days of 2016.

According to a report from Hollywood Life, Katie and Jamie were able to escape paparazzi and the cameras once again as the two enjoyed the New Year's Eve celebration in the sunny warmth of Miami. The report added that the couple had a dinner first on December 30 in South Beach before they went to the Soho House Miami to welcome the New Year.

Then on January 1, after midnight perhaps, Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx were spotted holding hands while they were enjoying a stroll near the pool. And according to the witnesses and the sources, the couple seemed to be very serious and romantic as per US Magazine.

Katie and Jamie have been speculated to have started dating since October of 2013 and until now only one photo of them has even shown in public. Maybe the rumored couple incite envy to some of the celebrities because despite of their popularity and being famous, they still manage to go incognito and keep everything from the public's eye.

Well, in connection to this report, Katie Holmes just posted a photo on her Instagram account wherein her background is a place where it looks bright and sunny. She also wished her followers a "Happy January" while having no make-up and looks like she just got out of bed. The actress and Suri's mom also managed to display a giant smile on her face which means that she is really happy and satisfied.

Because of the photo, some say that Katie was with Jamie Foxx in Miami and this looks like the start of slowly making their relationship public.

Since it started with the first days of 2017, people are now hoping that Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx are now ready to tell and show everyone that they are indeed dating and sharing a romantic relationship.
For more than a decade now, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has been investigating how a clutch of companies in the Adani Group led by Gautam Adani allegedly evaded taxes and laundered money while trading in cut and polished diamonds and gold jewellery. The DRI, which is an investigative wing of the Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance, has issued a number of show-cause notices to firms in the group alleging evasion of taxes to the tune of roughly 1,000 crore. Adani is considered to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While the allegations against the Adani Group have meandered through various tribunals and courts of law, questions are being raised as to whether the Ministry of Finance is deliberately dragging its feet in moving a review petition before the Supreme Court that could safeguard its revenue interests. Four detailed questionnaires were sent by the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) to (i) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and five of his senior officials; (ii) the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman and the Director General of Foreign Trade; (iii) Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad; and (iv) Adani himself. These questionnaires were e-mailed and also sent by regular post on 18 November 2016. Whereas spokespersons of Adani and the law minister responded, Jaitley, Sitharaman and officials in their respective ministries did not answer the questions more than a month and a half after these were sent to them.

Here is the story in a nutshell. A set of firms in the Adani Group apparently misused various export incentive schemes through a complex web of front companies located in different parts of the world. These shell companies, which indulged in high-velocity circular trading among related corporate entities, were also used to launder money, the DRI has claimed. All the corporate entities were directly or indirectly controlled by, or associated with, Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), a flagship firm of the Adani Group which was called Adani Exports Limited before 2007. The DRI has alleged that AEL flagrantly misdeclared the freight on board (FOB, also called free on board) values of cut and polished diamonds (CPD) and gold jewellery.

The investigative agency has also claimed that group companies and their associates indulged in circular trading to artificially inflate exports and fraudulently avail of financial benefits from various export promotion schemes initiated by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI). Such schemes included the Incremental Export Promotion Scheme introduced by the DGFT in 2003-04 under which came the Target Plus Scheme (TPS) introduced in the Foreign Trade Policy 2004-09. Responding to the EPWs questionnaire, a spokesperson of the Adani Group denied these allegations. Copies of the various show-cause notices issued by the DRI to group companies are with the EPW and material from these notices has been drawn for this article.

Misuse of Export Promotion Schemes

Among the different export promotion schemes initiated by the MCI, a particular scheme sought to provide certain corporate entities exporting goods or services called trading houses to avail of benefits that are proportionate to the quantum of exports achieved. Trading houses are ranked on the basis of their total annual exports and the highest exporters are designated star trading houses. For 200304, the DGFT announced a scheme called the Duty Free Credit Entitlement (DFCE) scheme.

Under the DFCE, certain benefits were provided to trading houses recognised by the government as star trading houses or status holders. Specific exporters were recognised as status holders on the basis of the FOB/NFE (net foreign exchange) value of goods and services ... as well as on the basis of services rendered by the service provider during the preceding three licensing years or the preceding licensing year, at the option of the exporter. Under the DFCE scheme, a status holder would receive financial benefits equal to 10% of the total incremental exports achieved in 2003-04 over the exports in the previous financial year, that is, 200203, provided the incremental growth was at least 25%.

AEL and its group/associate companies had earlier been exporting various commodities from foodgrain to textiles. The Adani Group had a relatively small export turnover of just over 400 crore in 200203. The DRI has claimed that after the announcement of the DFCE scheme, AEL formed a consortium with different corporate entities to artificially inflate its exports to take advantage of the scheme. These five group companies were Hinduja Exports Private Limited (HEPL), Aditya Corpex Private Limited (ACPL), Bagadiya Brothers Private Limited (BBPL), Jayant Agro Organics Limited (JAOL) and Midex Overseas Limited (MOL). It is further alleged that in addition to these five Indian companies, AEL directly and indirectly managed and controlled 45 overseas corporate entities.

In 2003-04, the total export turnover of AEL suddenly jumped more than 11 times, to be precise, by 1,181%. The turnover of HEPL rose by as much as 160 times (16,624%), ACPL's by over 150 times (15,819%) while that of MOL rose more than seven times (765%) in these two years (see Table 1).

Besides the DFCE, other export promotion schemes that were introduced by the DGFT included the TPS in September 2004 which offered incentives to status holders varying between 5% and 15% of the incremental growth in the turnover of exports (see Table 2). Initially, studded gold jewellery and CPD were permitted to be included while calculating the FOB figure and therefore, towards claiming incentives under the TPS.

DGFT Notifications

On 31 March 2007, the DRI issued a show-cause notice pointing out that there had been a sudden and unprecedented increase in the Adani Groups export turnover of CPD, gold jewellery, rough diamonds and third party exports (all of which could be included at that time in calculating the figure of incremental growth of exports for availing benefits from the DGFT) between 200304 and 200405. According to the notice, the bulk of these exports took place after September 2004 when the TPS was introduced.

The following year, the groups exports came crashing down. In 2005-06, the total exports of the Adani Group were barely a third of that achieved in the previous year. Exports of CPD and articles of gold came down sharply. Why? Simply because the benefits were withdrawn after the government realised that the export promotion schemes were being misused. As the MIC became aware of the misuse of the Incremental Export Promotion Scheme, some amendments were made to the Exim policy. In January 2004, the DGFT issued a number of notifications clarifying that exports of precious metals in any form, including plain jewellery and rough, uncut and semi-polished diamonds and third-party exports would not be permitted for inclusion in calculating the FOB figure.

The amendments were opposed by AEL and other exporters. They contended that the notifications were seeking to withdraw benefits already given to exporters. On 7 February 2004, AEL filed a petition in the Gujarat High Court challenging the validity of the notifications issued on 28 January that year. On 23 July, the court [in Adani Exports Limited v Union of India (UoI)] ruled against AEL and others upholding the validity of the notifications. AEL then filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court. The DGFT also filed an SLP against the order of the high court. Appeals were also filed by other firms and the government in similar cases against the orders of various high courtssuch appeals included ones filed by Kanak Exports, the UoI and the DGFT challenging an order of the Bombay High Court.

The Exim policy was later further amended (through notifications issued on 23 February 2005 and 20 February 2006) to exclude studded gold jewellery and certain categories of products (diamonds and other precious, semi-precious stones) from the list of items entitled to receive export benefits under the TPS.

Findings by Supreme Court

In October 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the appeals filed by the DGFT and the UoI, dismissing the appeals filed by others. It was pointed out that there had been a spectacular rise in the turnover of two firms, Rajesh Exports and Kanak Exports, between 200203 and 200304 (Table 3).

The more than 2,000% rise in exports came entirely in the form of gold coins and jewellery. For Adani Exports, over 80% of its export turnover came from diamonds and supplies from status holders. In other words, the Adani Group would not have met the minimum turnover and growth criteria that had been laid down in the Exim policy and the amended DFCE scheme (Table 4).

It is evident from Figure 1 that the export turnover of AEL rose sharply from 377 crore in 200203 to 4,657 crore the following year and further to 10,808 crore in 200405. This sudden spurt in turnover occurred during the period AEL availed of benefits from the DFCE scheme and the TPS. Subsequently, when in 2004 the DGFT issued notifications clarifying that the particular items would not be eligible for export incentives under the DFCE scheme (in 2004) and the TPS (in 2005 and 2006), AELs export turnover collapsed. The Supreme Court pertinently observed that there was a 1,135% surge in AELs exports during 200304, whereas the companys exports had declined in the preceding six years.

The division bench of the apex court comprising Justices A K Sikri and Rohinton F Nariman used very harsh language to highlight how the firms misused benefits by fraudulently inflating export turnover, citing conclusive evidence of how AEL increased its exports of rough diamonds despite the fact that India is not a rough diamond producing country. The order reads,

The same set of diamonds were rotating and these never entered the Indian domestic territory or to the end consumers abroad. The value of such exports in the past two years may exceed 15,000 crore  Many of these exporters exported to their own counterparts in Dubai and Sharjah. The jewellery attracted a 5% import duty at Dubai, the consignments were declared as jewellery in India but were declared as scrap in Dubai to avoid the import duty. (DGFT and Another vs Kanak Exports and Another 2015)

Setting aside the direction of the Bombay High Court granting the exporters benefits of incentive schemes that had accrued in the past, the Supreme Court bench concluded,

It was pernicious and blatant misuse of the provisions of the Scheme and periscopic viewing thereof establishes the same. Thus, the impugned decision reflected in the notifications dated 21 and 23 April 2004, did not take away any vested right of these exporters and amendments were necessitated by over-whelming public interest/considerations to prevent the misuse of the Scheme. Therefore, we are of the opinion that even when (the) impugned Notification issued under Section 5 could not be retrospective in nature, such retrospectivity has not deprived the writ petitioners/ exporters of their right inasmuch as no right had accrued in favour of such persons under the scheme. This Court, or for that matter the High Court in exercise of its writ jurisdiction, cannot come to the aid of such petitioners/exporters who, without making actual exports, play with the provisions of the Scheme and try to take undue advantage thereof.

DRI Investigations against Adani Group Firms

The network of the Adani Group is worth mapping. Adani Enterprises Limited (which was earlier Adani Exports Limited or AEL) is a public limited company in which Gautam Adani and his brothers Rajesh Adani and Vasant Adani are directors. With Samir Vora (Gautam Adanis brother-in-law) at the helm of affairs, ACPL and HEPL (partnership firms that were taken over by the Adani Group) played the role of the proverbial knights on the chessboard while MOL, JAOL and BBPL were the pawns. Background checks on these pawns conducted by the DRI indicate that their main activities used to be exports of molasses, soybean, castor oil, rice and other agricultural products.

While HEPL entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with JAOL and BBPL, ACPL signed one with MOL. The MoUs stated that the entire export-oriented operations in CPD was to be handled by HEPL and ACPL in order to achieve the required increment in export turnover, thus enabling the Adani Group to obtain benefits under the TPS. Pursuant to these MoUs, Deven Mehta (director, HEPL) was appointed as the authorised signatory for BBPL and JAOL while Saurin Shah and Vishwas Shah (employees of AEL) were appointed as signatories for MOL. The alleged collusion among the firms and their representatives resulted in accrual of benefits to HEPL and ACPL under the TPS and to the signatories of AEL who allegedly gained between 2% and 2.5 % of the FOB value in an unauthorised manner, the DRI has claimed in its show-cause notice.

The DRI has alleged that the import and export operations of all six companies were handled by Vora. The DRI went on to claim that total exports of CPD by the Indian companies in the Adani Group in 200405 were worth $1,643.02 million, out of which goods worth $1,314.19 million (or 79.98% of the total) were exported to eight specific companies situated in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Hong Kong or Singapore. Similarly, during 200405, out of the total imports worth $1,641.68 million, imports worth $1,304.13 million (79.44%) were from only seven companies in the countries mentioned. Similar patterns emerged for 200506 as well. Two Hong Kong-based companies, Kwality Diamonds and Seven Stars and four UAE-based companies, Excel Global, Jewel Trade, Crown Diamonds and KVK Diamonds, acted as suppliers and buyers of the CPD to and from AEL and its group companies. In addition, eight companiesWingate Trading, Sphere Trading, Global Enterprises, Top Rich (all in Hong Kong), Planica Exports Private Limited, Emperor Exports Private Limited, Gracious Exports Private Limited and Orchid Overseas Private Limited (in Singapore)were all incorporated after September 2004 after the introduction of the TPS. Wingate Trading, Sphere Trading, Top Rich and PNJ Trading stopped their business activities in 2005. This, according to the DRI, suggests a clear link between the way in which trading malpractices took place and the timing of the DGFT notifications.

Further, the proprietor of three companies, namely, Wingate Trading, Sphere Trading and PNJ Trading, was one Nishaben Vijay Gandhi. While PNJ Trading exported CPD to Indian firms from Hong Kong, Wingate and Sphere imported CPD from the same set of Indian companies. These transactions took place among the firms at profit margins varying between 5% and 10% and would return full circle at a remarkable velocity. According to the DRI, goods imported were often exported out of India on the same day! Theoretically, the same goods could have been exported more than 100 times in a year and in terms of the various slabs of incentives under the TPS, an unscrupulous exporter could have earned a phenomenal 1,500 for every 100 invested, the DRI has calculated.

The story was no different in Singapore. There was a common set of five directors shared across AELs trading partners. Email messages reproduced in the DRIs show-cause notice that were retrieved by the Directorate of Forensic Sciences indicated that AEL controlled and managed its trading partners in Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Circular Trading of Studded Gold Jewellery

In 2009, the DRI issued a fresh set of two show-cause notices alleging that AEL and its associate companies, HEPL, ACPL and MOL, that had allegedly availed of extraordinary benefits under the TPS, also indulged in fraudulent circular trading by importing gold bars of 995 purity from the UAE and then exporting the goods in the form of crude studded gold jewellery purity back to the UAE. The jewellery was subsequently melted down and imported back to India in the form of gold bars to boost the groups export turnover. What is remarkable is the rate at which these activities took place: between September 2004 and February 2005, the firms in the Adani Group exported over 59,500 kilograms (kgs) of what is supposed to be studded jewellery valued at over 3,843 crore ($861.40 million).





The entire trading operations involving first, import of gold jewellery into the UAE and export of gold bars from the UAE; second, receipt of funds for the exports into accounts of dummy exporters of the gold bars; and finally, payments of funds from the accounts of dummy importers of studded gold jewellery, was controlled and managed by the employees of Adani Global FZE, Dubai, which is a subsidiary of Adani Exports and GA International. Adani Global FZE, Dubai is a company owned and managed by Vinod Shantilal Shah, also known as Vinod Shantilal Adani, the older brother of Gautam Adani.

Interestingly, these export orders comprised gold bangles weighing anywhere between 100 grams (g) and 240g and pendants weighing over 70g each. Studded jewellery of such dimensions, using gold with 995 purity, is rare in the jewellery business due to the inability of pure gold to hold precious stones. This has been argued by the DRI. The lengths of the production cycle and the export cycle of this jewellery were unbelievably short: more than 100 kg of the goods were manufactured within two to three days of the receipt of gold by the workers and the goods were then promptly exported. In particular instances, the export consignments each weighed as much as 500 kg, which is reportedly unusual. Moreover, the Indian firms charged an exorbitant 7% as making charges to artificially inflate the value of the goods exported, the DRI has alleged.

The investigation also unearthed that Adani Global FZE had insured itself against the risk of storage and transport of the jewellery and gold bars. This insurance policy was bought from Oman Insurance Company, Dubai. The fact that Adani Global FZE obtained an insurance policy covering not only itself but other importers and exporters in these operations, which included the refinery where the gold scrap was melted down and converted into gold bars, speaks of the dubious nature of these transactions, the DRI has alleged. At the time when Adani Global FZE bought the insurance policy, it had neither imported any gold jewellery nor exported gold bars. Further, after the DGFT issued notifications amending the Exim policy in February 2005, the companies abruptly stopped exporting studded gold jewellery. The value of export incentives obtained by the Adani Group companies in this specific instance was more than 575 crore ($130.68 million).

Abuse of the DFCE scheme

Permission for setting up private or public bonded warehouses was obtained by AEL from the customs department in July 2003 after the introduction of the Incremental Promotion Scheme. This, in effect, meant that goods imported, stored, manipulated and exported from these warehouses would be exempt from payment of customs duty. In accordance with the TPS, AEL imported CPD and re-exported the same after value addition of 5%. This has been shown in the companys books of accounts. The Adani Group firms obtained DFCE certificates from the DGFT and utilised these for importing gold and silver without paying duty, that is, by claiming exemption from payment of duty under the Incremental Export Promotion Scheme. In its application to the DGFT, AEL also acknowledged that it did not take into account the re-export of imported goods while computing the value of exports.

The DRI notice issued seeks to establish that exports of CPD made by AEL were squarely covered as re-export of imported CPD. Further, these imported gold bars, after conversion into 100g bars, were sold in the open market. Hence, the gold and silver bars imported without payment of duty under DFCE scheme cannot be accounted as inputs for the CPD exported by AEL and would be liable for payment of customs duty. The DRI has alleged that this was done intentionally in circumvention of the July 2004 order of the Gujarat High Court prohibiting the inclusion of gold exports in the DFCE. This order of the Gujarat High Court was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Kanak Exports. The DRI notice proposed confiscation of the seized 250 gold bars (of 1 kg each) imported by AEL and confiscation of around 25,000 kg of gold bars and 31,000 kg of silver bars together valued at more than 4,000 crore.

Artificial Value Addition

There are a few thousand instances of circular trading that have been detailed in the DRIs notices. The firms claimed value addition of 5%10% in their official books of account although all that was done was to sort, sieve and clean the diamonds by boiling them in water. Such activities do not involve great technical expertise and, if the DRI is to be believed, raise doubts about the genuineness of the transactions that have been recorded. The imports and exports of diamonds took place in small dingy rooms measuring 10 feet (ft) by 12ft inside the bonded warehouse where manufacturing activities are disallowed, the DRI has alleged.

After the DRI issued show-cause notices, in an adjudication order issued in January 2013, the commissioner of customs, import (Mumbai) held that:

(i) No processing was carried out by any of the six notices to achieve value addition of 5%10%;

(ii) The noticees have not shown how simple processes of boiling, sieving and assortment, if carried out, can result in value addition of 5%10%;

(iii) The FOB value declared in the shipping bills by simply adding 5%10% of the CIF (cost, insurance and freight) value is artificial and hence, the export value declared should be rejected under Section 14 of the Customs Act, 1962.

The commissioner then imposed a penalty of 25 crore on AEL and penalties of 2 crore each on the five other companies. Additionally, it imposed heavy penalties on the directors of all six companies, including Gautam Adanis brother Rajesh Adani and brother-in-law Samir Vora. The commissioner upheld the charges made in the DRIs notices that tax benefits to the tune of 1,000 crore had been fraudulently obtained by the Adani Group companies.

To recapitulate, the DRI had from 2007 onwards alleged that the companies had misdeclared the FOB value of export goods in contravention of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 and Foreign Trade (Regulation) Rules, 1993; that the group through its directors had entered into a conspiracy with people and entities based in Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong to undertake dubious imports and exports of diamonds to take undue benefits of the TPS; entered into MoUs with group companies for claiming incremental exports; misdeclared value addition of 5%10% by assortment, boiling, sieving and repacking without any manufacturing/processing or change in the form of the cut and polished diamonds; and failed to declare details of commission payable in shipping bills. It was estimated that benefits worth 679.62 crore were claimed by AEL and its associate companies in 200405 and an additional 218.16 crore were claimed in 200506.

The Reversal: CESTAT Order

A development then took place that shocked the DRI. The order of the commissioner of customs was set aside by the Mumbai bench of the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), Western Zone. By an order dated 9 April 2015 which was issued more than four months later on 26 August that year, CESTAT members Anil Choudhary and P S Pruthi summarily dropped all the charges against the Adani Group. The tribunal chose to accept the FOB value declared by the companies and disagreed with the DRIs claim that there had been circular trading. The CESTAT disagreed with the commissioner that no process had been carried out in the bonded warehouse since the diamonds were sorted, sieved and boiled. It disagreed with the commissioner that these processes could not have added value to the extent of 5%. The tribunal was of the view that the transaction values of the CPD were genuine and that foreign exchange had been fully realised through the sales proceeds. The allegedly fraudulent intentions with which the value of exports were misdeclared and artificially inflated as well as the claims of circular trading were all effectively ignored by the CESTAT.

The tribunal ignored the evidence that the DRI had adduced to its show-cause notices to indicate circular trading. One such piece of evidence was an email exchange between different employees of group companies, including Adani Global. The first names of these employees were Asha, Mary, Rakesh, Tejal and another employee was S M Shah. According to the DRI, these email exchanges indicate that the same set of diamonds would be imported, exported, imported again and re-exported from and to India, Dubai and Singapore in a cyclical manner.

The CESTAT also chose to ignore a letter dated 26 May 2015 written by the Additional DGFT to the joint secretary (drawback), Central Board of Excise and Customs in the Finance Ministry which stated,

there are cases of circular trading and many other types of mischief reported under the Target Plus Scheme ... Such petitioners do not become eligible for such shipping bill claims as per the judgment of the Supreme Court. So, any claims arising on account of such shipping bills may be disallowed. Therefore, (the) Department of Revenue and (the) DRI are requested to give the complete list of exporters along with details of Shipping Bills who have misused under both the schemes. (the DFCE and/or the Target Plus Scheme)

Officials in the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate (who spoke to the lead author of this article on the condition that they will not be identified) said that no investigations had been conducted nor action initiated by their respective departments. A senior customs officer based in Mundra port (through which many of the consignments of diamonds were imported and exported and which is part of the Adani Group) said a number of disputes relating to alleged misuse of export benefits were pending with the DGFT. The Adani cases are among the many hundred revenue-sensitive matters on which DGFT has not taken a decision and this is because there is no audit of, or accountability in, the proceedings of the DGFT, said this person.

A senior official of DGFT, who too spoke to the lead author of this article on the condition of anonymity, explained,

the best course of action will be to ensure that no benefits are given under the TPS scheme and the benefits that have already been availed of under the DFCE scheme (for exports in 200304) be declared void ab initio. Since the exports of CPD have been held to be fraudulent by the Supreme Court in the Kank Exports case, the benefits under the DFCE already issued to AEL should also be disentitled. It is unfortunate that there are no clear guidelines for expeditious action in such cases of fraud.

A Systemic Problem

On 31 March 2016, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) relaxed the rules applicable to importers of rough cut and polished diamonds. It permitted banks to approve a clean credit facility extended by foreign suppliers to Indian importers of CPD beyond the stipulated 180-day period. Clean credit refers to the credit facility extended by foreign suppliers to Indian importers without imposing the requirement of the need to furnish a letter of credit or a fixed deposit to serve as an underlying guarantee.

While it is contended that this move is intended to ease operational difficulties faced by importers, experts monitoring the diamonds trade suggest that this could be an invitation to fresh trouble. One such person said that these provisions can be easily abused by importers to launder money, that it is quite easy to create an offshore corporate entity that could import goods from an Indian exporter and delay remittances, or worse still, default on payment. This expert apprehended that such malpractices could undermine the financial positions of banks. On one side, the trading firms books of accounts would show higher receivables as a part of its balance sheet which may serve as a premise to obtain more credit from Indian banks even as the unscrupulous trader would by then have encashed the proceeds from the sale of the diamonds in, say, Hong Kong, to move the assets out of India.

The systemic nature of such fraud is worth noting. A report by the Financial Action Task Force, released in October 2013, titled Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing through Trade In Diamonds stated that India, which accounts for more than 90% of the total business of CPD in the world, has seen instances of companies grossly overvaluing the goods they exported. The report explained how such activities are conducted and operationalised to transfer sums of foreign exchange outside India, giving examples of diamonds round-tripping back to India at inflated prices.

In its judgment in the Kanak Exports case, the Supreme Court highlighted another instance of mis-utilisation of export incentives relating to Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and its group company IPCL (formerly India Petrochemicals Corporation Limited). The Court said that RIL and IPCL manipulated export turnover to maximise export benefit entitlements under the DFCE scheme and the TPS. It held that IPCL had artificially inflated its export performance in 200304 and was hence not eligible for benefits under the DFCE scheme. The Court observed that goods worth 2,127.18 crore manufactured by RIL were exported in the name of its group company IPCL to claim extra benefits under the DFCE scheme. A DRI report had earlier stated that RIL lowered its export turnover for 200304 by a similar amount to show that it had achieved a rate of growth of exports above 100% (between 200304 and 200405P) to claim TPS benefits at the rate of 15%. The Supreme Court upheld the DRIs contention in this instance.

Conclusions

The DRI filed an appeal against the CESTAT order in the Supreme Court which was disposed of on 12 April 2016. The Ministry of Finance now has to file a review petition against this decision. The question that remains unanswered: what has dissuaded the ministry from filing this review petition even though more than nine months have gone by?

According to a Delhi-based lawyer familiar with the case who (like the others) spoke to the EPW on condition of anonymity, the entire argument of the DRI is premised on a DGFT notification which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2015 in the Kanak Exports judgment. The advocate added that this case is of great significance since it is first relating to circular trading which has reached the doors of the countrys apex court. He said that if the Revenue Department fails to convince the Supreme Court about its case against the Adani Group through its review petition, the consequences could well be disastrous for the government as this could affect all circular trading cases that are in the pipeline.

A questionnaire was sent by the EPW to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Law and Justice, seeking to enquire if his ministry would recommend a review of the Supreme Courts decision on the DRIs appeal against the CESTAT order. A response came from Saurabh Kumar, Additional Private Secretary to the minister, who said the questions should be sent to the Finance Ministry and the MCI.

As already stated, a detailed questionnaire sent on 18 November 2016 to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, copies of which were marked to the revenue secretary, the chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs, the chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes, the director, Enforcement Directorate and the Director General, DRI, were not replied to. On the same day, another questionnaire was sent to Minister of State for Industry and Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman and the director general, Foreign Trade, which also went unanswered.

In response to the EPWs questionnaire, Jatin Jalundhwala, Chief Legal Officer for the Adani Group stated that the CESTAT had dealt with all the allegations made by the DRI, including those relating to circular trading and the relationships with overseas buyers and suppliers, and had set these aside. He stated that the CESTAT had held that all the exports and imports of CPD by the Adani Group were genuine and thus, (the) FOB value of CPD exported cannot be re-determined. Jalundhwala added that the Supreme Court by dismissing the appeal filed by the Customs Department also affirmed the validity/genuineness of transactions of imports and exports ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reference

Financial Action Task Force (2013): Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing through Trade in Diamonds, FATF Report, Oct, http://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/ML-TF-through-trade-in-diamonds.pdf.
Colin Munro became the third New Zealand player, after Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill, to hit a T20I century as the hosts flattened Bangladesh to wrap up the series in Mount Maunganui

New Zealand 195 for 7 (Munro 101, Bruce 59*, Rubel 3-37) beat Bangladesh 148 (Sabbir 48, Sodhi 3-36, Williamson 2-16) by 47 runs

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Colin Munro's marauding 52-ball hundred - his first in T20 internationals - powered New Zealand to a series win with a game to spare. Munro struck seven sixes and seven fours to lead the hosts to 195, which proved 47 too many for Bangladesh.

New Zealand, though, had to deal with the anxiety of Luke Ronchi leaving the field in the eighth over of the chase because of a groin injury. He did not return, with rookie Tom Bruce taking the wicketkeeping gloves.

Bangladesh threatened briefly with a rapid 68-run stand between Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Rahman, but lost their last seven wickets for 44 runs to be dismissed for 148 in 18.1 overs.

Bangladesh had started positively, though, after opting to bowl in Mount Maunganui. Their captain Mashrafe Mortaza struck with the first ball to remove Ronchi, before the spinners made further inroads to reduce New Zealand to 46 for 3 within six overs.

Munro took charge and added 123 runs - a New Zealand record for the fourth wicket in T20Is - with Bruce, who helped himself to an unbeaten 59 off 39 balls, including five fours and a six.

Munro signalled his intent with a blast down the ground off Mashrafe in the first over. Despite the loss of Ronchi, Williamson, and Corey Anderson, Munro went on a boundary-hitting spree. He hit Rubel Hossain for back-to-back fours in the second over and then launched offspinning allrounder Mosaddek Hossain for two sixes in the eighth over.

Munro reached his fifty off 31 balls in the 11th over before hammering Shakib Al Hasan for a six over cover and four to long-on. He found excellent support from the newcomer Bruce, who rotated the strike well in addition to putting the bad balls away.

Munro hit top gear when he nailed Mahmudullah behind square for two sixes in three balls in the 13th over. Mahmudullah eventually conceded 28 runs off that over as Munro zoomed from 64 to 92.

He brought up his century with a quick single in the 16th over, becoming the third New Zealand batsman, after Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill, to score a T20I hundred.

Tom Bruce struck his first T20I fifty in his second match  Getty Images

Munro was dismissed in the next over by Rubel, who proceeded to dismiss Colin de Grandhomme and Jimmy Neesham. He also ran Mitchell Santner out and finished with impressive figures of 3 for 37.

Bangladesh's start strangely mirrored New Zealand's. The visitors lost three early wickets before the fourth-wicket pair lent the innings some impetus. Imrul Kayes holed out in the first over, Tamim Iqbal fell to a horrible mix-up in the fourth, and Shakib chipped Ben Wheeler to cover-point, leaving his team at 36 for 3 in 4.1 overs. The early losses put additional pressure on Sarkar, who had managed only 1 and 0 in his last two innings.

He regained form with a glance past fine leg and two sixes over long-on. He went on to hit Trent Boult for two fours in the 11th over before top-edging a pull to short fine leg. He had made 39 off 26 balls.

Sabbir played some adventurous shots, including a scoop over the wicketkeeper's head and a number of blasts over long-on, but sliced Ish Sodhi to long-off for 48. Sodhi then combined with Williamson to derail Bangladesh's chase.

Sabbir missed out on a fifty despite having batted so well with his three sixes, ranging from the scoop over the wicketkeeper's head to big blasts over long-on.

Ish Sodhi, who conceded 16 off his first over, removed Sabbir before taking the wickets of Mahmudullah and Mashrafe Mortaza as Bangladesh sunk fast in the chase.
I am a retired newspaperman. I am 69 and live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 45 years, Lou Ann. We grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.

More on who I am is here.

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An EastEnders Ben Mitchell superfan has hit out at the negative reaction he has received to his 5,000 collection of personalised memorabilia from online trolls.

Shaun Smith has amassed an entire flat full of custom-made items emblazoned with the face of his hero, played by 26-year-old actor Harry Reid.

The 48-year-old's collection includes canvases, candles, photo frames and a life-size cardboard cut-out of the soap star.

Shaun, who considers himself to be Harry's biggest fan, personalises a lot of objects himself, using pictures he screenshots and attaching them to everyday household items including drink mats, snow globes and clocks.

But Shaun, from Basildon, has been bombarded with online abuse since his devotion to the BBC One actor's portrayal of hardman Phil Mitchell's son in EastEnders has been revealed.

"I've come out of my shell since watching Ben, I don't care now, it's Harry Reid who I have to thank for it," he said.

"It's not because I fancy him, but because of the role he plays.

"He helped me come out, that's why I like him, because of the way he's acted in EastEnders."

And Shaun, who is unable to work because of mental health problems, has found that watching Harry's portrayal of Ben has helped him cope with his own sexuality.

Estranged from his family after a difficult childhood, Shaun has been struggling with grief after the death of his mother, Jana, who died aged 74 after falling down the stairs two years ago.

She had always been supportive of her son's sexuality, but this did not help him overcome his fears of being open about being gay.

That changed when Shaun, who is single, watched an episode of EastEnders where Ben Mitchell defies his father by kissing his secret boyfriend in the packed pub.

"About 8 months ago when I first saw Harry kissing the actor who plays Paul in the Queen Vic that was the moment, that made me think he's not afraid to be gay," said Shaun, who had never seen an EastEnders episode until a year ago.

"If he can play a part in EastEnders you can be like that in real life."

It was this scene that sparked the beginning of Shaun's admiration, which had led to the mass decoration of his home, where he lives with his rescue dog Ruby.

But after news broke of the former chef's passion he's been called a "nonce" and a "paedo" by commentators on social media sites, owing to the 24 year age difference between himself and the soapland star.

"I don't care what people say but I do when they call me a nonce," he said.

"He helped me realise that being gay is okay and life isn't that bad because of the part he plays.

"I have had some lovely comments too and I thank those people.

"A lot of people have made friend requests and I'm accepting them but deleting them if they get nasty."

He has become so recognisable that he has even been asked for his autograph.

But he has stopped wearing his customised jacket in town because of the cruel comments,with some so offensive that Shaun considered taking apart his shrine.

Friends have encouraged him to not let people get him down and to ignore the comments.

Sarah Lucas, 25, from London, said: "It's not pictures of Harry, it's pictures of Ben Mitchell.

"We've helped him do this, He's not doing any harm.

"If they don't like it don't read about it and don't comment on it."

Arnie Ferriday, 18, from Basildon, often prints out photos from Shaun to add to his collection.

"I would take them all home with me and keep them until he feels better," he said.

"These people are bullies."

Shaun, who has special needs, went to the now closed Fairview School, and has lived in Basildon for six years.

He is also a huge fan of Hazel O'Connor in the 1980 film Breaking Glass, as well as amassing a huge collection of horror films.

"I would love to show her my collection," he said.

"But my only dream at the moment is to meet Harry, shake his hand and thank him and have some pictures with him."

Despite the abuse, Shaun is planning to add even more to his house, including a double duvet and pillow covers.

But he think he would stop watching EastEnders if Harry left the soap.

"It would upset me if he left, I would feel like I wouldn't have his support anymore," he said.

But even if the actor left the show, Shaun is committed to watching him in other projects: "To me he'll always be Ben Mitchell."
The resurgence of Chinese investment in Portugal  this time in the big commercial banks  comes at a time when some European, and particularly Portuguese, lenders are on their knees.

In late November, leveraged Chinese conglomerate Fosun International announced a purchase making it the biggest shareholder in Banco Commercial Portugues (BCP), overtaking Angolas national oil company, Sonangol. As this edition of Euromoney went to press, China Minsheng Financial and US private equity firm Lone Star were reportedly the frontrunners in the central banks auction of Banco Espirito Santos bridge bank, Novo Banco.

It is a year and a half since Fosun and Beijing-based insurer Anbang were bidders in the previous, aborted auction of Novo Banco. At the time, bankers said local regulators were concerned about the creation of Chinese successors to the Espirito Santo groups bloated industrial and financial network in Portugal. Fosun has already bought the insurance arm of Caixa Geral de Depositos, as well as the former healthcare business of the Espirito Santo group.

The sale of Novo Banco will almost certainly come at a loss to the 4.9 billion 2014 bailout, so banks were relieved to know late in 2016 that their obligatory repayment of the rescue will be in annual instalments, not a lump sum. However, Novo Banco could still cause them headaches if it cannot find a buyer.

Buffer

Meanwhile, if BCPs private placement has given a 16.7% stake to Fosun, the banks value is so low Fosun only needed to inject 175 million. The investment gives BCP, at best, a little more buffer as it approaches a June deadline to repay 750 million of contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds received by the state in 2012.

More hopefully for BCP, Fosun says it will hold onto its 16.7% stake for at least three years and might increase its shareholding to 30%. BCPs shares rallied on the news, bringing cheer to big BCP shareholders with their own problems like Sonangol, Spains Banco Sabadell and Portuguese utility EDP.

Fosun is probably not the ECBs preferred candidate for the owner of Portugals biggest listed bank. Chairman Guo Guangchang has promoted his use of the so-called float from his insurance companies to buy into other corporations; some worry he will take the same approach at BCP.

Chinese investment in Portugal, it seems, is no more the ideal cure-all for the local banking sectors troubles than its Angolan predecessor. Fosun has never owned a commercial bank anywhere in the world.

But if they have tried to resist it in the past, European regulators may now be less fussy about the expertise and financial standing of those who buy into their banks  in Portugal or in Italy.
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the natural world are best explained by a mind (or minds) rather than by non-intelligent processes like random mutation and natural selection. The case for ID draws upon an array of phenomena, including genetic information, epigenetics, the blood clotting cascade, bacterial flagella, fine-tuning of the physical constants of the laws of nature, and so on. From the far reaches of the cosmos to the intricacies of the cell, nature manifests the hallmarks of mind. The more scientists probe the stunning complexity of nature, the stronger the case for ID becomes.

The same can be said for a commonplace biological phenomenon: fats. Recently we visited with an expert on fats (technically known as lipids), a professor of biochemistry at one of Israels institutes of higher education who has studied the subject for nearly his entire career. He asked that his identity be kept in confidence  a fair request given that those who dislike his views have targeted him in the past. For scientists sympathetic to ID, its a familiar story.

What really matters, of course, are his claims, evidence, and arguments.

Q: In laymans terms, what is a lipid?

A: Lipid is basically the technical word for fat.

Q: Youve been studying lipids for about three decades. Tell us about your research.

A: During my PhD work in the mid 1980s, I focused on how some lipids can help attach proteins to a biological membrane in the cell. But it was during my postdoc, which started in 1987, that I started working on lipids directly, even though my PhD, by accident, had also touched on lipids. And for the last 25 years as a faculty member at an institute of higher education in Israel, Ive been working on more or less the same questions; certainly the same class of lipids for over three decades now. In fact, just before you got here, I submitted my 229th paper. And I was as excited about it as all the other ones. I actually got the student who did the work to push the submit button. It was her first paper. And I was just as excited about submitting the paper as she was.

Q: You sound enthusiastic about your research. What makes it enjoyable?

A: For me, the amazing thing is that as much as I work on a particular research questions, theres always something new to discover. The more you discover, the more you discover that there is to discover. Biological life is unbelievably complex. And it only gets more complex the more we dig. Non-scientists will often say to me, Have you found the answers yet? And Ill say to them, Yeah, we found the answers to some questions, but unfortunately, that opened a pile of questions for another set of issues, which we are working on at the moment. So its never-ending. And if you are a curious person like me, then its exciting and fun. Im always telling my students, Look, if what you do isnt fun, dont do it. There are a lot of headaches in the actual mechanics of doing science. You need to be funded, you need to have lab space, you need this, you need that. But the best thing is that its fun.

Q: Tell us about your current research on lipids. What are you up to now?

A: I work on a class of lipids called sphingolipids. Their name derives from the Sphinx, believe it or not, because J.W. Thudicum, the chemist who discovered them in 1884, considered them enigmatic. Over the last few years, Ive worked on two genetic diseases, cystic fibrosis and Gaucher disease. Lots of people know about cystic fibrosis, but few know about Gaucher disease. Its found in high levels in the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Everyones heard of Parkinsons disease, right? It turns out that mutations in the gene which is involved in Gaucher disease also cause some people to have Parkinsons disease. Its unclear what that connection is. We do know that theres a genetic link  its been worked out by genetic mapping  but were still working on the mechanistic connection. Weve made no findings in that field at the moment, but were working hard to understand whether our work on Gaucher disease might be at all applicable to the more well-known work on Parkinsons disease.

Q: Youve spent a lot of time studying lipids. Youve had plenty of opportunity to consider the important question, How did lipids arise in the first place? In your view, can unguided evolutionary processes like natural selection and random mutations adequately explain the origin of lipids?

A: Lipids are amazingly complex. If you look at the lipids that we have in our lipid bilayers today, youll find a huge number of chemical structures, each of which differs slightly in its composition. I dont want to go into chemistry too much, but there are different chain-lengths, different double bonds, different side chains, different head groups, and so on. Its been estimated that there might be 10,000-100,000 different chemical structures of lipids in the cell. And if you change even one of them, you could end up with dysfunction in the cell. Thats right. The smallest change in the lipid bilayer is often pathophysiological.

Complexity abounds not just in the lipid bilayer at the cell surface, but within the cell as well. Inside the cell, we have organelles  the nucleus, the Golgi apparatus, the lysosome, and so on. Each one of these is surrounded by a different lipid bilayer. No two organelles have the same lipid composition. Moreover, a lipid bilayer has two layers: one pointing out, one pointing in. The lipid composition of the two halves of the bilayer is not the same. It differs completely. Moreover, lipids change their composition depending on the physiological state of the cell. Its amazing. So, when I look at the complexity of the lipid bilayer that exists today and I compare it to the supposed primitive bilayer in the ancient past posited by evolutionary biologists, I cannot begin to understand how we went from that simple thing to a huge and complex thing today. Even if that simple membrane existed, how did it become todays lipid bilayer? I cannot begin to get my head around that. So when I look at the lipid bilayer, I say, Wow, this is amazing. How did that happen?

Q: An evolutionary biologist might reply that evolutionary processes can produce such complexity. How would you respond? Have evolutionists provided a detailed and substantive account of how lipids came to be?

A: There are papers suggesting that lipids evolved by this or that chemical process. But as a scientist, I go through those papers and I end up with many questions. You want to say that gene duplication occurred? You want to say that enzymes evolved by a mutation here or a mutation there? Fine. But please explain to me the mechanisms by which these alleged events occurred. How exactly, chemically, did lipids evolve? To me, its not a question of this or that philosophy; its a question of science. At the level of biochemistry  a mechanistic level  do these studies provide a valid explanation of how lipids evolved? And I personally have yet to see that. In almost any field of biochemical sciences, I just dont see it.

Q: Some theistic evolutionists, like Francis Collins, might say that God created natural processes that are capable of giving rise to biologically complex phenomena, including lipids. Your response?

A: First of all, I have to say that I absolutely admire Francis Collins. And I have no problem with people who believe in theistic evolution. But I nevertheless have a number of simple questions. How exactly did it happen? Can you explain these evolutionary processes to me mechanistically? And this is where theistic evolutionists arguments fall down, because we dont have adequate mechanistic explanations. Now, it is a valid position to say, We dont have these explanations now, but we may have them in the future. I personally dont know if I have enough faith to believe that we will come up with valid biochemical mechanistic explanations to explain the complexity of life as we see it.

Q: How, then, did lipids come to be?

A: My explanation is that they are designed objects. Design wasnt always my explanation  I was an atheist until my late teens. But I say lipids are designed, and designed in such a way that enables them to function very well.

Q: How did a designer do it?

A: Let me be very clear. I have no idea. Okay? I honestly dont know. And I dont lose sleep at night because I dont know how the designer designed it.

Q: In that case, how do you know a designer was involved?

A: When I look at life, I find a code. And that code, as far as I understand it, cannot be explained by purely naturalistic phenomena. I dont see the biochemical mechanisms that can explain that code. So, how do we know the code was designed? Consider the example that Professor John Lennox uses. Lennox says that were looking for life in outer space by the SETI program. Were looking for patterns. Were looking for a signal to come back from somewhere in outer space which has some binary code, which couldnt have happened by chance or natural processes. And if we discern this code, then well conclude that theres life out there. When we look at life on earth, it has many codes. To my mind, the best explanation of these codes is that somebody actually designed them, just like somebody designed the code were waiting for from outer space.

Q: Isnt your argument an example of God-of-the-gaps reasoning?

A: We have to be very careful. The fact that we dont know something doesnt mean that it couldnt have happened. Many things we didnt know two hundred years ago, we know today. Yet we know that designers can produce things like software code or my beloved Macintosh PowerBook. We also see similar complexity and codes in lipids, genetic information, bacterial flagella, and so on. We know in our experience that whenever we see that level of complexity, a designer had something to do with it. So, thats why it seems to me that I am not making a God-of-the-gaps argument. I have positive reasons for my conclusion  reasons that are based on knowledge, not mere ignorance.

Q: So just to be clear, you really have a two-part argument. Number one, all known natural processes are inadequate to produce these highly complex lipids. And number two, we know that designers can produce this level of complexity. So from our experience we have not just negative reasons against unguided processes, but also positive reasons based on what we know designers do. And thats true even if we dont know exactly how they did it. Is that right?

A: Yes. But let me take it one step farther. We have not yet managed in the lab to design a lipid bilayer that corresponds to the complexity that we see in nature. As I mentioned, lipid bilayers have two halves. The two halves dont have the same lipid composition. Today weve managed to make artificial lipid bilayers, which are called liposomes. But for the most part, they are totally symmetric. They have the same composition on the inside as on the outside. Even as of 2017 we dont know how to make a so-called asymmetric lipid bilayer. Theres a level of design in lipids that is far beyond our powers of invention.

Q: Thank you for your time.

A: I am honored to be interviewed.

Image: Lipid bilayer, by National Institutes of Health via Wikicommons.
Not that its more bizarre than other Trump decisions even if theyre really Mike Pence, the de facto president, decisions, but Trumps announcement yesterday that hes appointing 73 year old Dan Coats director of national intelligence, succeeding James Clapper. Coats was always a satellite of Indiana laughingstock Dan Quayle, first as a staffer in Quayles congressional office, then as Quayles replacement when Quayle ascended to the Senate and then as the appointed Senate replacement when Quayle was picked by George H.W. Bush as a running mate. In 1998 Coats retired from the Senate to become a lobbyist, a very rich lobbyist with a reputation for sleaze. In 2010 he decided to run for the Senate again, served 6 unremarkable years, accomplished nothing whatsoever and announced he was retiring.

The best thing anyone can say about the tired, low energy Coats is that hes respected by his fellow crooked senators on both sides of the aisle. Theres a rumor that Pence was able to slip Coats into the job when Chris Christie turned it down. Coats who is pro-torture and gang ho about domestic spying isnt remotely capable of doing the job and hes the ideal man from the perspective of Trump-supporter Vladimir Putin.

Earlier Thursday, McCain began in earnest his war against Trumps willful ignorance about national security and intelligence. As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCAin invited Clapper plus Mike Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcel Lettre II to testify about Russian interference in the U.S. election that put Trump in the White House. These are the takeaways from todays hearing:

1. Intelligence officials think Russians definitely meddled in the U.S. campaign





Russians hacked into party databases and candidate emails, and tried to spread propaganda and fake news. Basically, they tried everything they could to meddle in the presidential campaign, intelligence officials said Thursday. (The CIA and the FBI agree that Russia wanted to help Trump win.)





Why did they do all this? We have to take a 30,000-foot view to answer that question.





The Russians are bent on establishing a presence in the Western hemisphere for a variety of reasons, Clapper said. He said they want to gain military allies, sell equipment, set up air bases and, crucially, set up intelligence-gathering facilities.





And intelligence officials think Russia is getting more and more aggressive in trying to extend its reach to our side of the world; its hacking into Democratic emails is Exhibit A.





2. Russia's leaders authorized some of the hacking





The three intelligence officers released a statement before the hearing. One key line in it read that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized the hacking of the Democratic Party's emails.





The leaks arguably had an impact on Democrats at a critical moment in their campaign: You'll recall that some of those emails were leaked on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in the summer and resulted in the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.





This assertion that Russia's top leaders signed off on this directly flies in the face of Trump's insistence on repeatedly giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt. Shortly before the new year, Trump praised Putin for not retaliating to President Obama's sanctions on Russia for the hacking.





Most recently, Trump promoted a theory by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that Russia had nothing to do with the hack  taking him at his word, despite the findings of his own intelligence community.





Clapper dismissed that idea outright on Thursday, and The Post's nonpartisan fact-checking team said Assange's claims that Russia wasn't involved are a distortion of the facts.





 3. There's no way to know the electoral effect of Russia's supposed meddling





No one alleging Russian hacking has insinuated that it propelled Trump to victory, and intelligence officials repeated that Thursday.





Clapper: We have no way of gauging the impact, certainly the intelligence community cant gauge the impact, it had on choices the electorate made.





Of course, the fact that those lines could be drawn between Russia's hacking and Trump's win seems to be Trump's main beef with all this. After all, he won three key states  Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  by less than 1 percent. Absent those very narrow wins, we'd probably have spent the past two months talking about President-elect Hillary Clinton's massive popular vote victory. The idea that WikiLeaks revelations could have shifted even a fraction of votes in those key states  and that Russia could have been behind those revelations  is obviously a very, very sensitive one for the president-elect.





4. Intelligence leaders feel the need to defend themselves from attacks like Trump's





The quote that will probably make the most headlines from this hearing comes from Clapper, who said that skepticism of intelligence is healthy (the intelligence community is not perfect) but that I think there is a difference between skepticism and disparagement.





He went on to say: I dont think the intelligence community gets the credit its due for what it does day in and day out to keep this nation secure.





Clapper, nor anyone else testifying at Thursday's hearing, didn't directly point fingers at the president elect. But Trump was definitely the elephant in the room.





5. Some Senate Republicans are ready to get tough on Russia, regardless of whether Trump is on board





It's probably not a coincidence that this hearing was held just two days after the new Congress was sworn in.





McCain has been vocal about his desire to thoroughly investigate Russian efforts to affect U.S. politics since The Post reported that the CIA thinks Russia tried to sway the election for Trump.





Crucially, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has given his approval to some of the investigations.





Another vocal hawk, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), said in the hearing that he wants to throw rocks at Russia.





McCain, along with Senate Democrats, also wants to up the ante by putting together a special investigative committee, not unlike House Republicans' two-year investigation of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. It remains to be seen whether GOP leaders will sign off on a full-blown separate investigation. But in the meantime, expect plenty of day-long hearings like what we just saw Thursday.





6. We'll know more about what the intelligence community thinks next week





Intelligence officials said they plan to make public sometime next week an unclassified version of a report that Obama and Trump are receiving on Russian interference in the campaign.
Royal Bank of Scotland has an end-2017 target of 7.2 on the USD/CNY

The Chinese Yuan is likely to face volatility in 2017, however, a big move is unlikely in the first 2-3 quarters, as China prioritizes domestic deleveraging given political pressures, said Harrison Hu, Chief Greater China Economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

However, the probability of a big move in late 2017 looks high, as the scope for muddling-through shrinks as FX reserves fall further, said Hu in the note.

The PBOC will not risk lifting the peg in the first half of the year

Though the decline in Chinas FX reserves in 2016 has been around $300 billion, which is lesser than the $513 billion decline in 2015, on other fronts like PBoCs FX and BOP reserve assets and the FX outflows of corporate and households the decline has been larger in 2016 than the year before.

Hence, it is unlikely that the PBoC will either allow a one time devaluation or free-float the Yuan, as such an event can lead to unpredictable chain reactions.

Late 2017 will lead to one of the following scenarios

After the initial few months of the year, clarity will emerge about the US-China relationship and the economic condition of China. This will lead to either of the two scenarios.

A good scenario

If China manages to stabilize growth without injecting a huge stimulus, reduces financial risks by deleveraging, manages the large debt overhang with State-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms and the US and China avoid a trade war; more capital will return to China.

In such a situation, China can free float the Yuan with limited volatility. Due to strong fundamentals, any overshooting will quickly correct itself.

Adverse scenario

If China fails to stabilize its economy, allows the debt to blow out of proportion, and enters into a trade war with the US - it increases the requirement for adjustment of the Yuan.

If the above scenario plays out, then the Chinese government is likely to opt for a one-off devaluation, which is an unpleasant option.

We think, the good scenario, is more likely to drive the markets and this be more noteworthy, said Hu. 2017 would thus be a critical year for China's transition, not only in its exchange rate regime but also for its economic and financial system as a whole. We maintain our end-2017 forecast of USDCNY at 7.20 (with 7.30 likely within the year).
Hi Guys, Ozbound,



I read a post (by ozbound) that said that if you are outside of Australia for more than 1 year after making initial entry, then the 4 year citizenship clock is reset and starts calculating again. I am not sure about this looking at the citizenship calculator. Could you please look at the screenshot attached (also, same details given below - just so if the screenshot does not attach correctly). Why is this showing that Residence requirements have been met even though the tentative dates have been input to show that the dates outside Au have been more than 1 year in between initial entry and actual entry ? Is the lawful residence date in the input correct taking into consideration the dates outside Au ?



Please let me know if the calculation is correct ? Or the input needs to change ?





Input Details below (as well as in the attached screenshot):



Permanent residence date: 29 May 2014 (Same as Initial entry date)



Lawful residence date 29 May 2014 (Same as Initial entry date - should this change ? Before you answer please check the outside of Australia dates below because with these dates it says residence requirement met)



intended lodgement date - 10th Feb 2019



Outside Au dates: From 8th June 2014 to 2nd Feb 2016



With the above info it says residence requirement met. But here the input shows outside Au more than 1 year. If so why does it say residence requirement met ? If the lawful residence or permanent residence date is incorrect- then that should get highlighted when I enter the Outside Au dates correct ?



The lawful residence definition says "Lawful residence means living in Australia on a valid Australian temporary or permanent visa" - not sure how to interpret this because it not giving any error considering I have put an outside Au dates of more than 1 year.



Thank you
Anything official with your name and your address.

They may not ask for it but it is always best to take as much as possible to prove who you are and where you live etc. in case it is asked for.
yusszzxx said: estimated expenses :

rent : RM2,000. (decent studio nearby city center)

- LRT to work : RM 220 (22 days work a month RM10 a day)

- Food : RM 1,500 (breakfast RM10, Lunch RM20, Dinner RM20) average decent price of food - half of this cost if you go for local street/stall/off city center food.

- Groceries : RM 1,000

- Weekend out (drinks etc) : RM 1,000



so u still have RM 4,500 left for savings Click to expand...

You left out taxes, about 20% from experience. But agree you can get by on a salary of RM10K, as long as you don't hit the bars and 5-star restaurants too often. The prices you quoted for food are for medium scale restaurants, not top-of-the-line. My wife and I get by fine on RM10K and save over half my salary. But our cars and house are paid for, along with my scooter. I use the scooter to go to/from work only spending about RM10 per week for transportation.You also left out electricity which can be very high if a person uses AC a lot, we spend between RM500-550 per month for a 3-room single story link house. It would be cheaper for a condo. And to honest RM2000 is on the low side for renting a condo today in most of KL. I live in Setapak, not an expensive area by anyone's standards and the condos near me are going for RM2500 starting. If you look at Mount Kiaria, KLCC or Bangsar (or any other expat area) it's higher.




Spoiled dirtbag Duncan Hunter getting high at a committee meeting





After the Republicans were exposed sneaking around in the dead of night to back an amendment by accused Virginia pedophile Robert Goodlatte that would have shuttered the Office of Congressional Ethics so that all ethics charges would go to the wheelin and dealin House Ethics Committee where pedophiles like Goodlatte routinely get a little pach-in-tukas and told to be more discreet you could barely find anyone who would admit being one of the 172 Republicans who voted for it. But Duncan Hunter (R-CA) couldnt deny his venomous antipathy for the office. A severe alcoholic with no respect for the rules, Hunter originally snuck into office disguised as his long-serving/suddenly retired father, also named Duncan Hunter. Duncan the Younger, though, is a no-account bum with zero accomplishments since first getting into Congress in 2009. Hes a vicious xenophobe and homophobe and an early Trumpist who advocates nuking Iran. Hes also a crook.





Hunters blood red backward district went for Romney and McCain with about 60% of the vote. His is a district the DCCC doesnt ever contest. Hunter was just reelected with 63.9% of the vote, despite being embroiled in a congressional ethics mess which shows him stealing campaign funds for personal use, which he called when caught red-handed, an oversight. So far, hes paid back about $62,000 in illegally expropriated funds. The biggest single sources of campaign cash comes from legalistic bribes from companies with business before his committees in the sea transport and defense industries and this cycle he raised $1,188,103 compared to his Democratic opponents $27,016.





Widely considered one of Congress worst slime-buckets, Hunter is infamous for selling legislation to companies willing to write his campaign checks. And he uses his campaign cash for personal expenses. The GOP-controlled House Ethics Committee always looks the other way as he pockets the cash but the Office of Congressional Ethics called him out for it, and his cases have been widely reported in his district , embarrassing the crooked congressman and his crooked family and fueling a vendetta against the Ethics office.

The ethics office last year conducted a review of Hunters campaign expenses. Release of the report, and any follow-up action by the House Ethics Committee, was recently postponed pending swearing-in of the new Congress.



Hunter, R-Alpine, has reimbursed his campaign about $62,000 in campaign expenses that were personal in nature or lacked proper documentation, including oral surgery, a garage door, video games, resort stays and a jewelry purchase in Italy.



The expenses came to light after inquiries by the Federal Election Commission and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Hunter then hired a law firm to conduct a review that has not been made public.



Use of campaign funds for personal benefit is prohibited by federal law, as it might give undue influence to contributors. Most of Hunters campaign funds come from defense and transportation companies whose business is affected by committees upon which he serves.

Other things Duncan Hunter has been caught using his bribes for:

 flying his pet rabbit around the country

 gas for the family car

 groceries

 a nail salon

 surf boards

Union Tribune He also pays his unqualified wife $3,000/month to run his home campaign office. Another Southern California congressmember who asked to not be identified told me that Hunter is the biggest dirtbag from California since his daddys business partner, Duke Cunningham got shipped off to prison [for] doing the same kind of bullshit Hunter Sr, did and Hunter Jr. still does. In October, the reported that Hunter was pressuring the U.S. Coast Guard to buy or lease a polar ice-breaking ship owned by one of his top campaign contributors, although the Coast Guard has repeatedly said the vessel doesnt meet its needs. Louisiana-based shipbuilder Edison Chouest Offshore has written checks to Hunter for at least $18,000 to get the floating junk pile taken off its hands. Hunter didnt care that the Coast Guard said spending the money would be a waste of taxpayer money since the ship was incapable of doing what the Coast Guards needs. In fact, it suffered mechanical failure and lost control of an oil rig it was towing, which then ran aground off Kodiak Island in Alaska. The Chouest funds were all received May 8, 2015  six days before the Coast Guard was to have an acquisitions hearing before a Congressional subcommittee chaired by Hunter.




Struggling with an Addiction?

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The destinations of the 1.67 million faxes sent by the free and low-cost internet fax service FaxZero.com during 2016 ranged from corporations to government entities.

"At the end of each year, I take a look at which companies and organizations received the most faxes from FaxZero users," said Kevin Savetz, the website's founder. "I'm pleased that so many businesses and agencies urge their clients to use FaxZero, because the service is so convenient and FaxZero carefully guards all personal information."

Just as in the last two years, in 2016 Amazon.com was the most popular destination of FaxZero users, with 14,323 faxes being sent there.

Debt and credit services were also among the top destinations. American Express's AMEX Assurance Company was the second most-faxed company with 5,572 faxes sent via FaxZero. Also popular was FedLoan, servicing the U.S. Department of Education (3,764 faxes), and the disputes department of the credit score tracker Equifax (2,429 faxes).

FaxZero helps people get in touch with social service agencies, too. In 2016, that included FSSA: Indiana Family and Social Services (4,347 faxes sent there), Texas Health and Human Services Commission (2,715 faxes) and the Department of Transitional Assistance (2,665 faxes).

Also faxed quite a bit last year were: Cerebral Palsy of Massachusetts (2,625 faxes), the National Personnel Records Center (2,598 faxes) and the Autism waiver provider CHAMP: Children Achieving Maximum Potential (2,597 faxes).

Other often-faxed entities were: Credentials, Inc., AFLAC, Ameritrade, the Aetna claims department and various credit card companies.

For the first time, the permit reservation department for Yosemite National Park showed up among the list of most-faxed destinations, at 2,185 faxes received via FaxZero.

In prior years, top recipients have included: eBay, the Health and Human Services Commission, Twitter, the New York Department of Labor and Sallie Mae Loan Deferment.

Savetz, who started FaxZero in 2006, has expanded the service to work not only with computers but cell phones as well. FaxZero accepts documents in DOC, PDF and other formats. A fax cover page can be created via the website, or users can add a custom file. Faxes generally take five minutes or less to transmit.

"It's gratifying to see how many businesses, agencies and individuals find FaxZero helpful," Savetz said. "I'm looking forward to millions more free and low-cost faxes being sent in 2017."

FaxZero lets users send five free faxes per day (with a three-page limit per fax) to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. FaxZero also offers a premium faxing option for $1.99 per fax, with no daily limit and up to 25 pages per fax. There's also an international fax option for as low as $2 (pricing depends on nation faxed) that allows users to send faxes to more than 180 countries around the world. FaxZero has a directory that makes it simple to fax a Congressperson or Senator for free.

"Internet faxing is increasingly popular as it's so convenient," Savetz said. "The more than 14.3 million faxes sent via FaxZero since its inception is more evidence of that."

FaxZero has been featured in publications such as U.S. News, Reuters and PC World. Savetz, an expert on internet faxing since the early 1990s, is the creator of more than 90 FreePrintable.net sites including FreeFaxCoverSheets.net, with its nearly 300 fax cover sheet designs.

FaxZero.com is part of Savetz Publishing, Inc., a company devoted to creating useful and informative web sites of interest to consumers and small businesses.
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Toyota, which produces its Tundra and Tacoma pickups in San Antonio, became the latest automaker to be targeted by a tweet attack from President-elect Donald Trump.

Toyota Motor said (it) will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax, Trump tweeted Thursday about the Japanese automakers plan to open a car factory in Mexico.

The message  made to one of the worlds largest automakers  came after Trump targeted Ford Motor Co. and General Motors this week, with Ford canceling a $1.6 billion plant planned for Mexico.

When asked in a phone interview if Toyota would follow in Fords footsteps and stop plans to add the plant, the companys Chief Communications Officer Scott Vazin said: Were in, if you will, standby mode.

Were not making any rash decisions. Weve been in the U.S. for 60 years and manufacturing in the U.S. for 30 years. When we make a decision, we want to be thorough about it.

Efforts to reach Trumps tran- sition team were unsuccessful.

In his tweet, Trump incorrectly identified Toyotas planned new manufacturing plant as being in Baja. Toyota broke ground in November on a $1 billion plant for the next-generation Corolla in Guanajuato, Mexico, that will build up to 200,000 sedans a year.

The company does operate a manufacturing plant in Baja California, Mexico, but it builds Toyotas midsize Tacoma pickups. That plant is in the process of a $150 million production investment to increase annual production by 60,000 vehicles to meet high demand. It currently makes 100,000 Tacomas a year.

During the presidential election, Trump promised to not only keep jobs in America but to bring manufacturing back to the country. He threatened to renegotiate trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement that were unfair to American businesses and to impose taxes on businesses that choose to move jobs out of the U.S. to produce goods for the American market.

One of his threats has been a 35 percent tax on individual companies that import vehicles and goods into the U.S. from Mexico in an effort to keep industry in the U.S., a step that seems unlikely under current NAFTA tariff rules.

He also slammed Ford that drew his ire during the campaign for its plans to move production of its Ford Focus to the new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico.

On Tuesday, Ford announced it had decided to cancel the Mexico project and instead invest $700 million in a Michigan plant.

A day later, the president-elect tweeted his support of the change of plans. Ford, however, still is moving Focus production to an existing plant in Mexico.

General Motors drew Trumps attention earlier this week, when he tweeted Tuesday that General Motors would face a big border tax! if it shipped Mexican-made Chevy Cruzes into the United States tax free across border.

In a statement refuting Trumps tweet, spokesman Pat Morrisey said: General Motors manufactures the Chevrolet Cruze sedan in Lordstown, Ohio. All Chevrolet Cruze sedans sold in the U.S. are built in GMs assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. GM builds the Chevrolet Cruze hatchback for global markets in Mexico, with a small number sold in the U.S.

As for Toyota, it pointed out that the company has been part of the cultural fabric in the U.S. for nearly 60 years. Production volume or employment in the U.S. will not decrease as a result of our new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, announced in April 2015. With more than $21.9 billion direct investment in the U.S., 10 manufacturing facilities, 1,500 dealerships and 136,000 employees, Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry.

Toyotas investment in San Antonio is valued at an estimated $2.2 billion. The South Side plant builds 111,000 Tacomas and 122,000 full-size Tundras annually. More than 3,000 workers are employed at its plant, and more than 4,000 people work for on-site suppliers.

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Besides its U.S. factories, Toyota operates four other plants in North America, two in Canada and two in Mexico. The Guanajuato plant would be the third production facility for Toyota in Mexico.

Vazin was unaware of any plans to meet with Trump or his transition team to discuss the president-elects message. He said Toyota is looking at giving his administration some time to establish itself.

Its tough to dissect a tweet and get a full understanding of what the background is, but we made that announcement (about Guanajuato) back in April of last year, well before President-elect Trump was elected; so were taking a cautious approach and were eager to learn more about their policies, he said.

In a Wall Street Journal article published around the same time as Trumps tweet, Toyota Motors President Akio Toyoda said a good relationship with Trump was critical for Toyota, which sold more than 2.4 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2016.

In a conference call Wednesday, Toyota Division General Manager Bill Fay, when asked about Trumps previous statements regarding putting import taxes on vehicles from Mexico, said our goal is to work with the new administration and Congress to ensure that they develop business and tax policies that are fair and equitable across all industries so we can continue to grow the economy.

Nissan Motors CEO Carlos Ghosn made it clear hed heard Trumps message during an interview Thursday.

Im hearing We in the U.S. have a very large market, and we want our fair share of the benefits both in terms of trade and jobs, said Ghosn, who runs Japans second-largest automaker. Im not hearing, Close the border.

Trump also has leveled criticism against nonautomotive companies. Air-conditioning company Carrier Corp., which planned to shutter a factory in Indianapolis and move production to Mexico became a Trump Twitter target soon after his election victory.

Bloomberg News and the Associ- ated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - Wading into the deepening GOP divide over President-elect Donald Trumps skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community, Texas Republican Michael McCaul said Thursday that he believes the incoming president understands that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not our friend.

McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and a campaign adviser to Trump, said he is confident in the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia deliberately attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election.

Although Trump has brushed off suggestions of Russian meddling in the election, McCaul said that his personal interactions with the president-elect make clear that he understands the Russian threat.

I dont want to get into my private conversations with him. I want to keep those confidential, said McCaul, who has advised Trump on national security and cybersecurity matters. But I will say that he acknowledged that Mr. Putin is not our friend.

McCaul, who sought the job of Homeland Security secretary, made his remarks during a Capitol Hill press conference on cybersecurity recommendations for the Trump administration and Congress. His statements came as Republicans are increasingly split over Trumps public attacks on the CIA, which says it has found evidence that Russia intervened in the November elections to help Trump.

Trump also has tweeted praise for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been variously blamed and credited with releasing the hacked emails of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and top Democratic Party officials.

Assange denied that he got help from the Russians, a claim that has been met with widespsread skepticism by Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Texas U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, an ex-CIA officer, who said Assange is not a credible source.

The debate over Russian hacking and the Obama administrations retaliatory sanctions could be potent in the upcoming confirmation hearings for Trumps cabinet picks, particularly ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson, who has developed close business ties to Russia.

Amid congressional hearings Thursday on the suspected Russian hacking, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledged that Russia and other nations represent a hacking threat, but doubted that it was a factor in the 2016 election. He told reporters there is no evidence whatsoever that Russias efforts against us, which have been longstanding, did anything to affect the campaign.

While some Republicans have expressed the need for what McCaul called a healthy amount of skepticism about U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts, one of the nations top intelligence officials told the Senate that Trumps public comments have damaged the American intelligence community.

Theres a difference between skepticism and disparagement, said James Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Clapper said that the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment now is even more resolute, about Russias use of hacking, disinformation and fake news to influence the election.

Trump has said he will address the Russian hacking scandal next week. Administration officials said Obama received a classified briefing on the intelligence communitys findings on Thursday. Trump is scheduled to get the briefing Friday.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer suggested to reporters Thursday that they look into reports that the FBI never contacted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to look into their allegedly hacked servers. I would equate this with no one actually going to the crime scene to actually look at the evidence, he said.

Spicer also denied reports that Trump plans to reorganize the U.S. intelligence community, calling the idea 100 percent false.

McCaul, who co-chairs the Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force, said he talked to Trump about Russias role in the DNC hacks during the campaign. Those and other warnings apparently were waved off.

McCaul told reporters that he initially was told that Russias aim was to undermine the seeds of democracy, rather than help any particular candidate. Since then, however, he said, That position has changed.
HOUSTON  MD Anderson Cancer Center will cut its payroll by about 1,000 people, including 800 to 900 layoffs, the institution's leaders announced Thursday.

No doctors or clinical-care nurses will lose their jobs as MD Anderson reduces costs to try to stem operating losses. The layoffs will save the cancer hospital about $120 million.

The reduction, nearly 5 percent of MD Anderson's 20,000-employee workforce, had been feared at the acclaimed cancer center since late last month when officials confirmed operating losses of more than $50 million in both September and October. A cost-containment plan had been implemented then that stopped short of layoffs, but officials warned that staff cuts were under consideration.

I want to inform you of a decision that will impact our MD Anderson family, an action weve all been working tirelessly to avoid, Dr. Ron DePinho, president of MD Anderson, said in a video to employees Thursday morning. Despite great effort from our entire MD Anderson community, it has become clear that we must act now to protect our ability to continue investing in our mission to end cancer.

At a subsequent news conference, DePinho said Thursday was a sobering day for us all because the institution is built on the excellence of our people.

The layoffs began Thursday and should mostly finish Tuesday, officials said. They said it could be a few days after for those who could not immediately be located.

Dan Fontaine, MD Andersons executive vice president of administration and chief financial officer, would not disclose the highest salaried employee to be affected by the cuts. Senior executives have been criticized because some of DePinhos top lieutenants make in excess of $1 million a year. DePinho makes more than $2million. This week he also received a $208,000 annual performance bonus, which he said hes donated back to the Houston cancer hospital.

DePinho said the implementation of an electronic health record systems in 2016 was a key factor in the losses. The system is expected to lead to more efficient care but in the short term forced physicians and other staff to spend significant time learning a new system  and less time with patients.

We are seeing a recovery trend, but more time is needed, he said.

The cuts were recommended Wednesday by MD Andersons shared governance committee. The recommendations were immediately accepted by the cancer centers senior leaders.

MD Andersons operational losses declined to $9 million in November, after which officials had said they would be watching December figures to determine if cuts would be needed.

Officials said Thursday last months numbers aren't yet available but didnt look good enough to avoid cutting staff.

DePinho emphasized that the cancer hospitals long-term financial health is "strong." Because of other revenue streams, such as philanthropy and state funding, MD Anderson is in the black.

DePinho said patients will remain our number one priority.

In todays health care environment, we must be as efficient as possible while improving quality and patient satisfaction  and investing in our mission, he said. I can assure you that the health and safety of our patients will not be impacted by these changes, and we will continue to provide the worlds best cancer care to those counting on us to save their lives.

Fontaine said employees laid off will receive severance but would not disclose the financial details.

todd.ackerman@chron.com
WASHINGTON  Immigration rights groups plan protests and gatherings in San Antonio and around the country Jan. 14, the beginning of what they describe as a protracted fight against proposals spelled out by Donald Trump in his drive to win the White House.

On Thursday, leaders of the groups spelled out national day of action plans taking shape at some 50 locations in 20 states to set in motion what several referred to as the fight of our lives to combat Trumps plans for deportations and strict enforcement of immigration laws.

The president-elect, who will be inaugurated Jan. 20, appears to have softened his stance on immigration since the election, declaring last month that he will focus on removing up to 3 million undocumented immigrants who have criminal records.

Trumps assertion has been interpreted to mean that he would not seek to deport some 750,000 young people protected under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Nonetheless, pro-immigration leaders are planning for the worst, noting that many questions remain about DACAs future and other Trump initiatives. Many also oppose the appointment of a noted immigration critic, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as attorney general.

There is no certainty about whether or not the administration will change their minds on DACA, said Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, which claims 100,000 members in 26 states.

Activists said they are expecting thousands of participants at some of the Jan. 14 events, which include protests, marches and vigils. One of the largest gatherings is scheduled for downtown Washingtons Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, news conferences Jan. 14 hosted by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement were described as kickoffs for plans for resistance. Few details on the Texas events were available.

On a conference call with reporters, leaders said they expected a need for civil disobedience tactics.

We fully expect that we will need to escalate in the coming days, in the coming months and in the next four years, said Kiki Matos of the Center for Community Change, a Washington-based nonprofit.

Is civil disobedience on the menu of things that we will have to engage in? Absolutely. And unfortunately, that is likely to happen sooner rather than later, she said.

bill.lambrecht@hearstdc.com
In the first-ever alfalfa checkoff marketers will donate $1 per bag of seed.

SALEM, Ohio  The National Alfalfa & Forage Alliance kicked off the first-ever alfalfa checkoff Jan. 1  the U.S. Alfalfa Farmer Research Initiative.

The new checkoff is a farmer-funded investment in alfalfa-related research to help drive innovation and profitability in the alfalfa industry.

The alliances board of directors voted unanimously to begin the national checkoff program to facilitate a farmer-funded program, advancing industry research.

The checkoff program will be implemented voluntarily by seed brands, donating $1 per bag of alfalfa seed.

Research

Alfalfa is Americas most valuable field crop, but most people dont realize it, said Beth Nelson, president of the National Alfalfa and Forage Alliance. We have seen the acres decline over the years and we blame that on a lack of research in the industry.

NAFA is asking alfalfa growers and industry representatives to weigh in on research topics they feel are a priority for the industry. To do so, visit NAFAs website at www.alfalfa.org and provide input.

The survey results will be used to establish priorities for the first call for research proposals, which will be announced this spring.

Since in many cases there isnt a first purchaser of alfalfa, because much of the harvested product is used on the farm or sold to a neighboring farm, they had a challenge orchestrating a collection point, said Nelson, who has been NAFA president since 2006.

Collection goal

Our goals is to raise half a million dollars, if we get more seed companies on board, that goal is likely to double, Nelson said.

Ohio farmers planted an estimated 390,000 acres of alfalfa and alfalfa mixtures in 2016, up roughly 60,000 acres from 2015s totals according to the USDAs National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Pennsylvania farms planted around 360,000 acres of alfalfa and alfalfa mixtures in 2016, down around 80,000 acres from 2015.

With alfalfa planted at an average rate of 15 to 20 pounds of seed per acre and alfalfa seed being sold in 25-pound bags, it is estimated that Ohio and Pennsylvania alone could contribute more than $700,000 toward research if all seed companies were involved in the program.

NAFA will not keep any administration funds.

The unique thing about this program is that 100 percent of the funds raised will be used to support public research into alfalfa and alfalfa forage systems, and it will be driven by the alfalfa industry, primarily farmers, Nelson said.

The alliance hopes alfalfa farmers patronize participating alfalfa seed brands to support the U.S. Alfalfa Farmer Research Initiative.

Our hope is to start the program in 2017 and then have it run in perpetuity, she said.

If your favorite alfalfa brand is not on the list, contact NAFA at 651-484-3888 for information on how a seed marketer can become a participating brand.

Seed marketers facilitating alfalfa checkoff

 Alforex Seeds  Gold Country Seed  ProHarvest Seeds  Americas Alfalfa  Hubner Seed  Rea Hybrids  Browning Seed  Jung Seed Genetics  S&W Seed Company  Channel  Kruger Seeds  Simplot Grower Solutions  CROPLAN  Latham Hi-Tech Seeds  Specialty  DEKALB  Legacy Seeds  Stewart  Dyna-Gro  Lewis Hybrids  Stone Seed  Fontanelle Hybrids  NEXGROW  W-L Research  Forage First  Prairie Creek Seed

Dont see your favorite alfalfa brand on the list? Contact NAFA at 651-484-3888 for information on how a seed marketer can become a participating brand.
Farmers are being urged to use the New Year as an 'opportune time' to re-evaluate their businesses, placing them in the 'strongest position' ahead of Brexit and the 2020 CAP reform.

According to farm accountant Old Mill, many dairy producers have been re-assessing their businesses following the prolonged period of low milk prices, leading to some very positive changes.

With all commodity prices now looking more optimistic, the New Year is often seen as the perfect time to examine the direction of any farming business.

The past year has been extremely tough, particularly for farmers in the dairy sector, says director of rural services Dan Knight.

But Ive been encouraged by how many families are using this time to take a hard look at their personal and business strategies.

Farming businesses often change to new cost efficiencies in the New Year, and others have drawn up succession plans. While still more have either committed to growth or refocused efforts on alternative enterprises.

But as commodity prices improve, its important not to allow inefficiencies to creep back in, warns Mr Knight.

With CAP reform looming in 2020, as well as the uncertainty of Brexit, we dont know what lies ahead. Right now, the weak Pound means British agriculture could enjoy a buoyant couple of years, so its important to make and keep as much money as possible, in case another downturn  or loss of government support  sits on the horizon.

'A frank conversation'

In the short-term, farmers are being urged to consider how to reduce their tax liabilities ahead of the 2017 tax year-end.

They should then sit down and examine their longer-term strategy, to ensure the business is in the strongest position going forward, explains Mr Knight.

To begin with its essential to have a frank conversation with everyone who has an interest in the business, he says.

Involve future generations and ensure every party is clear about their personal and business objectives; that may not be to maximise turnover, but to earn enough to have the lifestyle of choice.

Its also important to consider retirement provision when the older generation steps back. They will want to be financially independent, so look at what other income they do  or potentially could  have.

Succession planning

When it comes to succession planning, families often 'fail' to recognise the distinction between being equal and fair.

Trying to split assets equally between siblings may not be fair or good for the business. If one child gets a house and an income stream, while another gets the farm, that may be a fair outcome which enables the business to continue, Mr Knight says.

Tax planning is always a critical consideration when it comes to re-evaluating business strategy and inheritance, particularly where diversification is involved. But it should not be the driving factor: Make the tax fit the objectives, not the other way around.

Every business will find a different way to take advantage of emerging opportunities, explains Mr Knight.

But by having a conversation about their strategic direction families will feel more confident about the future. Its an exciting time to move ahead.
A 1.5 million programme is aiming to give family farms the tools to build more 'viable businesses', as part of support given by the Prince's Farm Resilience Programme.

The new scheme aims to give farm businesses the tools to evaluate their long-term sustainability, enabling them to make informed business decisions about their future direction.

Building on the success of the Prince's Dairy Initiative, the new programme is open to small dairy, livestock or mixed farms. It will offer free workshops and one-to-one guidance to 300 farms across the UK.

"Family farms are at the heart of the British countryside and their health is vital for the future of our rural communities," the trust said.

"The last three years of declining farmgate prices has put an unprecedented strain on farm businesses. In response we have developed a programme of support for small family farms built on the successful delivery model of The Princes Dairy Initiative."

'Times have been tough'

Richard Laverick, AHDB Chief Technical Officer, said: "Times have been tough across farming sectors for some time now and exceptionally hard for smaller, family-run businesses who dont necessarily have access to the right advice or resources for their specific situation.

"We need to give these farms the opportunity and help to focus on their businesses and give them the knowhow to make confident decisions, however tough, on the changes they need to make to ensure their business is sustainable in the long term."

The Princes Farm Resilience Programme is offered in Ayrshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, East Sussex, Lanarkshire, Monmouthshire, Northumberland, Powys, Shropshire, Somerset, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland.
Warrenton, VA (20186)

Today

Morning clouds will give way to afternoon sunshine. Expect mist and reduced visibilities at times. High 73F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
While Donald Trumps crusade to win the White House was the top story of 2016, journalists in the Religion News Association (RNA) saluted the brash billionaires opponents by giving their top honor to the Muslim parents who made headlines by denouncing him.

Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Gold Star parents of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq, shared the Religion Newsmaker of the Year honor. The Khans made a dramatic Democratic National Convention appearance to proclaim that Trumps proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country would be unconstitutional.

The RNA description of the annual polls No. 1 story stressed that Trump received strong support from white Christians, especially evangelicals. ... Many were alarmed by his vilifying Muslims and illegal immigrants and his backing from white supremacists. GOP keeps majorities in Congress.

The theme continued in the No. 2 story: Post-election assaults and vandalism target Muslims and other minorities. Some assailants cite Donald Trumps victory as validation. Critics denounce the appointment of Stephen Bannon as White House strategist over his ties to white supremacists. News related to Trump appeared in three other RNA Top 10 stories.

While white evangelical votes were crucial, I would have stressed two other religion trends linked to Trumps stunning win.

The first was captured in a midsummer Christianity Today headline that, citing Pew Research Center polling, stated, Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump. Pew found that more than half of white evangelicals were upset about the 2016 White House options and said their aim was to defeat Hillary Clinton, not support Trump.

Election Night plot twists also showed that Clinton lost because she lacked support from Rust Belt working-class Democrats, many from Catholic, labor-union homes that twice backed President Barack Obama.

The RNA Top 10 selections did not include items linked to bitter battles over religious liberty, Obama White House orders on transgender rights or the Supreme Court opening caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. These issues were crucial in producing the strong Election Day turnout by religious conservatives.

Heres my take on the rest of the RNA Top 10:

3. With strong support from religious activists, Standing Rock Sioux members protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, which they say will foul water and sacred lands.

4. Creating new tensions with doctrinal conservatives, Pope Francis seeks  in the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia  a vague, pastoral approach to Communion for Catholics who have divorced and remarried. He leads a symbolic Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border and tells reporters that Trump is not acting in a Christian manner when calling for a wall along that border.

5. At least 4,600 migrants are killed in shipwrecks while fleeing conflicts fueled by radicalized forms of Islam in North Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The crisis fuels tensions across Europe, including immigration policy debates before Englands Brexit vote.

6. Terrorists linked to, or inspired by, the Islamic State kill scores of civilians at airports in Istanbul and Brussels, at various German sites and in Nice, France. A terrorist killed 86 people in Nice by driving a truck through a seaside holiday crowd. Also, a suicide bomber killed 25 Copts  mostly women and children  during a Dec. 11 attack on worship in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, near Cairos main cathedral.

7. Some scholars hail the end of white Christian America and surveys keep showing growing secularism in the American population. Nevertheless, the former provide decisive votes for Republicans, while the left-leaning Nones (the religiously unaffiliated) fail to provide crucial votes for Democrats.

8. Backed by strong clergy support, #BlackLivesMatter protests continue after more police shootings of African-Americans. Religious leaders of all kinds play a prominent role in uniting communities after deadly attacks on police officers.9. Although white evangelicals voted Trump by a 4-1 margin, their leaders split sharply  especially in the Southern Baptist Convention. Many evangelicals of color opposed Trump, although exit polls hinted at surprising support from Latino evangelicals. Supporters cited his pledges to oppose abortion, while opponents stressed character issues and his statements on race and immigration.

10. Claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, gunman Omar Mateen kills 49 at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Homegrown terrorists injure dozens at a Minnesota mall, at the Ohio State University campus and at New York-area targets.
UPDATED: As of about 10 p.m. Monday, Dominion Energy had restored power to about 3,000 homes and businesses that lost electricity at about 8 p.m. due to an equipment issue, according to the Do
Pitts: Before voting, take a look at your sample ballot in Cumberland County and NC

opinion
ELKO  While General Moly has been searching for financial investments for its Mt. Hope project, the proposed mine hit another roadblock after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its record of decision.

The three-judge panel issued its unanimous decision Dec. 28 and overturned the U.S. Bureau of Land Managements approval of the proposed molybdenum mine. the site is about 21 miles north of Eureka.

In 2013, General Moly lost a $665 million term loan after China Development Bank suspended work on it. In 2015, the company entered into an agreement with AMER International Group, which made the private, Chinese-based company a major shareholder of Mt. Hope.

General Moly continues to search for financial backing for the Mt. Hope project. According to the companys third-quarter report, Mt. Hope had $13 million in a cash reserve account that is expected to fund ongoing projected care and maintenance expenses through 2021.

The record of decision for the mine was issued in November 2012. Great Basin Resource Watch and Western Shoshone Defense Project challenged the BLMs decision in U.S. District Court in Nevada. The court upheld the BLMs decision in August 2014, but the two organizations appealed the case to the 9th Circuit a month later.

The court stated the BLMs environmental review of the Project violated NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] in several ways.

While some construction had been done on the property, nothing significant has been completed, according to the two organizations. With the 9th Circuits decision, the company would have to receive a new record of decision before any significant construction could take place on the property.

We are pleased that the court did the right thing to invalidate BLMs approval of the Mine. Such flagrant violations of federal law need to be clearly recognized and acted upon to protect the public interest in clean air and water, said John Hadder, executive director of Great Basin Resource Watch.

The 9th Circuit agreed with the two non-governmental groups that the BLM failed to conduct the required analysis of the baseline air quality conditions at the proposed mine.

The court held that BLMs analysis of air impacts in the FEIS was inadequate because the agency did not provide any support for its use of baseline values of zero for several air pollutants.

The use of a zero baseline for a few of the air contaminants is significant in terms of satisfying air quality standards, Hadder said. In the case of nitrogen dioxide (a harmful criteria pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act), the projected Mine emissions alone are just below the clean air standard. A realistic baseline for nitrogen dioxide, now required by the court, coupled with the now required cumulative air impact analysis, may very well cause the Mine to violate the Clean Air Act. We are very grateful that the Ninth Circuit specifically required BLM to correct these glaring omissions in the agencys review of the Mine.

In a press release, General Moly stated the 9th Circuits decision was a narrow reversal of the BLMs findings related to air quality analysis.

We are pleased that the majority of the Mt. Hope EIS completed by the BLM was supported by the 9th Circuits decision, and we will work with the BLM to resolve the technical deficiencies concerning the baseline air quality requirements under NEPA, General Moly CEO Bruce D. Hansen stated on the companys website. We are evaluating with our legal team and communicating with the BLM to fully understand the process and timing associated with addressing these issues raised by the 9th Circuit, and will move forward as expeditiously as possible to support the ROD. In addition to advancing the Mt. Hope project, we are continuing to progress efforts with our strategic partners at AMER International Group and others as we review other value accretive base metals and molybdenum related opportunities.

No one from the company could be reached for further comments.
Summary

Company Announcement Date: January 05, 2017 FDA Publish Date: February 08, 2018 Product Type: Food & Beverages

Bakery Product/Mix

Allergens

Food & Beverage Safety Reason for Announcement: Recall Reason Description Undeclared egg Company Name: Bakers of Paris Brand Name: Brand Name(s) Whole Foods Market Product Description: Product Description Croissants

Company Announcement

Bakers of Paris is recalling plain, almond, and chocolate croissants sold in 18 Northern California Whole Foods Market stores due to an undeclared allergen. The croissants, sold individually in self-service cases and in clear plastic packs of four, are made with an egg wash which is not declared on the ingredient list. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to eggs run the risk of serious or life-threatening reactions if they consume this product.

No allergic reactions have been reported to date.

Products were labeled as follows and carried the following UPCs:

Croissant 4 Pack Baker Paris, 24159300000

Chocolate Croissant 4 Pack Baker Paris, 24159500000

Almond Croissant 4 Pack Baker Paris, 24159400000

Croissant Assorted 4 Pack Baker Paris, 24159800000

Chocolate Croissant, 46000058528

Croissant, 46000058529

Almont Croissant, 46000058559

The recalled products have packed on dates of 1/4/17 or earlier and sell by dates of 1/7/17 or earlier. The products were distributed only to 18 Whole Foods Market stores in Northern California. A full list of affected stores is below.

Customers who have purchased this product at a listed Whole Foods Market store should discard it and may bring in their receipt for a full refund.

Consumers with questions may contact Bakers of Paris at 415-468-9100, ext. 2215 or customer-service@bakersofparis.com.

Product has been recalled from the following Whole Foods Market locations:

Address City State Zip Code 3000 Telegraph Avenue Berkeley CA 94705 2001 Market Street San Francisco CA 94114 5200 Dublin Blvd Dublin CA 94568 1765 California Street San Francisco CA 94109 1025 Gilman Street Berkeley CA 94710 690 Stanyan St San Francisco CA 94117 230 Bay Place Oakland CA 94612 3502 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Lafayette CA 94549 4800 El Camino Real Los Altos CA 94022 3950 24th Street San Francisco CA 94114 1150 Ocean Ave San Francisco CA 94112 774 Emerson Street Palo Alto CA 94301 450 Rhode Island San Francisco CA 94107 1250 Jefferson Ave Redwood City CA 94063 1010 Park Place San Mateo CA 94403 100 Sunset Drive San Ramon CA 94583 399 4th Street San Francisco CA 94107 1333 E. Newell Ave. Walnut Creek CA 94596

Company Contact Information Consumers: Bakers of Paris 415-468-9100, ext. 2215 customer-service@bakersofparis.com Media: Caroline Hughes 415-845-6604 chughes@bakersofparis.com
TravelSupermarket have compiled their top 20 most extreme adventures to inspire holidaymakers for their next trip.

Adrenaline trip list

The travel experts have moved away from the typical summer's beach holiday in a bid to tempt their customers to a different experience in 2017 which could be a possible trip of a lifetime.

In the company's top two choices of fun trips, they recommended the world's fastest zip line in North Wales as their number one trip which exceeds at a speed of 100mph, souring adrenaline junkies 498ft above Wale's Quarry.

The experts also attempted their customers to visit the intense sport free falling, at 100km/h with scad diving in Soweto, South Africa, in which they put in second place.

Emma Coulthurst from TravelSupermarket.com said:

''Obviously, some of these adventures are not for the faint-hearted,' says 'But sometimes it's good to get a little bit out of your comfort zone. And one thing's for sure - you'll definitely have a holiday to remember!''

More trips can be found at: TravelSupermarket.com.
Norma Jean Martines credentials stand up against most, having written for a number of well known artists including Ronan Keating so it was no surprise that her recently released debut album, Only In My Mind took the music world by storm at the end of 2016.

Norma Jean Martine

Now Norma Jean is releasing Still in love with you as a single.

Still In Love With You is a beautiful example of her rock tones blended with subtle blues rooted guitar pop coupled with strong vocals and highly emotive lyrical work.

The Middletown, US born, Norma Jean Martine lures the listener in with her entrancing voice and sincerely heart-felt lyrics in this upbeat love anthem about a past relationship. She uses her raw vocals tell the story of familiar warm nostalgic adoration.

Norma Jean explains: Still In Love With You is about my first love. I think when you share a lot of your first experiences with someone, and really love someone for the first time, you love them forever even if youre just in love with the memory of what was.

The music video for Still In Love With You (click to play), was shot in and around Berlin by acclaimed filmmaker Mia Hennig of Bear Film.

Norma Jean Martine is currently performing sold out shows around Europe and the UK with a special stripped back acoustic show on 11 January & 8 February at the Servants Jazz Quarters, in Dalston. Norma Jean Martines live shows will feature previous singles I Want You To Want Me, a gentle piano sound that develops into an indie pop song about love, loneliness and fate, a track showcases Martines husky powerful vocals, and No Gold. Which seems to have been influenced by Adeles Send My Love.

Still In Love With You is taken from the album Only In My Mind out now on Virgin EMI Records.

by Matt Shine for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
ELKO  Now that the majority of mining-centric counties have joined together under the Northeastern Nevada Regional Development Authority, its executive director, Pam Borda, is in the process of finding money for new strategic planning.

Elko County Commissioners voted Tuesday to allow Borda to begin applying for grants.

Things have changed a lot over the last several months for NNRDA, Borda said.

The last time the organization did strategic planning was about five years ago when it only handled Elko County.

We have a very outdated plan and in fact have implemented the vast majority of that plan, she said. Now we have additional members since we did that one.

About four years ago, the Governors Office of Economic Development wanted five counties  Elko, Eureka, Lander, White Pine and Humboldt  to become a mining region for economic development.

My position at that time was I did not want any county to be forced to be a member of our organization and if they wanted to come willingly wed love to have them, Borda said.

Elko County, the four cities within its borders, Lander, Eureka and White Pine counties and Ely have all joined. Borda is in the process of talking to Humboldt County to also join. The commissioners approved the agreement Tuesday to add Eureka and White Pine counties and Ely into the authority.

The importance of doing a new strategic plan is really critical for me, Borda said. I believe its hard to go forward with a vision if you dont have a plan with which to do that. Our last plan served us very well, but now were a much larger region.

Borda said she has led the organization for seven years and over that time, she has learned one size fits all doesnt work.

There is no such thing as a regional strategic plan thats going to meet the needs of every community I serve, she said.

Borda proposed to the Economic Development Authority on the state and federal level to create a plan for each community and then combine the portions that have regional impacts to design the regional plan.

What that provides for me is a blueprint for each community about specifically what we need to do for them to grow their economy and have them healthy, she said. Even though were all a mining region, there are some exceptions to that. West Wendover is not mining at all and their needs are different than Carlin for example.

The last couple years, NNRDA did a pilot program in Wells and it has been hugely successful, Borda said.

Its always a struggle on how to fund the plans, she said. The average cost of a first phase of a plan is about $80,000. The federal Economic Development Authority was interested in helping with the funding, but the grant would be a 50-50 match. Elko city has already budgeted $40,000 to do the first grant.

Borda said she would apply for grants as individual areas have funds available.

She said the county doesnt need to come up with any of the money, but she needed the Countys permission to apply for the funding.

Thats a lot easier than coming up with $40,000, said County Commissioner Rex Steninger.

Were not asking you for any money at all, just the ability to use your avenue to the federal government to apply for this grant, Borda said.

She is working with the various communities to see when each one has funding to apply for grants. Borda said West Wendover wants to apply next year.
The Duchess of Cambridge is set to visit Centre's Early Years Parenting Unit next week.

Duchess and Duke of Cambridge

The 34-year-old royal - who is the patron of Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF) organisation - is set to make an appearance at the centre on Wednesday (11.01.17) to "find out" and learn more about their work with children under five years old.

The news of Catherine - who was known as Kate Middleton prior to marrying the 34-year-old royal Prince William - was announced on Kensington Palace's Twitter account on Thursday (05.01.17).

They tweeted: "The Duchess of Cambridge, @AFNCCF Patron, will visit the Centre's Early Years Parenting Unit on 11 January (sic)."

And Kensington Palace has since retweeted a message from the charity about Catherine's pending trip.

The post read: "Our Patron, HRH Duchess of Cambridge will visit @AFNCCF to find out about our work with under 5s @KensingtonRoyal (sic)."

Catherine's visit is also set to "draw attention" to mental health issues among young children and how to intervene.

Another tweet from Kensington Palace said: "The @AFNCCF visit marks The Duchess' continued desire to draw attention to child mental health issues & the importance of early intervention (sic)."

Meanwhile, the brunette beauty has become a the patron of the Royal Photographic Society, and received the lifetime honorary membership for the educational charity, which promotes and supports those interested in the art form, after the official portrait pictures she took of her 20-month-old daughter Princess Charlotte were released.

As well as taking images of her three-year-old son Prince George cradling her youngest child as a tiny tot, Catherine - who is a graduate in the history of art - has previously released images of her family from important milestones over the years, which include Charlotte's first birthday, George's first day at nursery, and a series of pictures from their travels in South East Asia.
Prince Harry believes his voluntary work is "God's test" to him.

Prince Harry

The 32-year-old royal - who is the patron of Sentebale, which is a charity supporting children with HIV, and volunteers to safeguard Malawi's elephants - believes it is imperative he helps to look after endangered elephants in Africa and ensures wilderness doesn't become extinct, and has claimed it is a spiritual path set out for him to follow.

Speaking about the project, he said: "This is God's test: if we can't save some animals in a wilderness area, what else can't we do."

And the flame-haired hunk is desperate to help as much as possible so future generations can see the same creatures he has been able to see.

He explained: "We need to look after them because otherwise our children will not have a chance to see what we have seen."

And the star - who is the grandson of the British monarch Queen Elizabeth - believes Africa is the only place "in the world" where he feels normal.

He told Town and Country magazine: "I feel more like myself than anywhere else in the world.

"I have this intense sense of complete normality."

Meanwhile, Harry - who has been dating 'Suits' actress for eight months since the pair embarked on their relationship in May last year - has been given the seal of approval from the 35-year-old actresses family.

Speaking previously about the couple's relationship, Meghan's brother Thomas Markle Junior said: "They're extremely happy together, they look great together and she's done good.

"She's very much in love and she's obviously happy because if she wasn't happy, she wouldn't be there.

"I think it is wonderful. As long as he takes care of and loves Meg, he doesn't have to do anything else - although I would like to shake his hand and meet him."
The cast of 'Downton Abbey' have been asked to clear their diaries to shoot a film of the hit period drama.

Jim Carter as Mr Carson

Jim Carter - who portrayed Mr Carson in the ITV programme - has teased that a big screen adaptation of the popular series is definitely in the pipeline for the near future as bosses have been in touch with him and his former co-stars about making sure they're free to shoot the scenes later this year.

Speaking on 'Good Morning Britain' on Thursday (05.01.17), he said: "We've been asked to keep ourselves available for dates in the future. But nobody has seen a script."

Joanne Froggatt - who portrayed Anna Smith in the period drama for five years - set tongues wagging last year when she revealed that Julian Fellowes had penned the script for the forthcoming blockbuster.

She said at the time: "We've all heard this rumour - the cast - that the script has been written.

"There's a hard copy somewhere but none of us have seen it or know what's in it.

"So we'll all keep out fingers crossed that it all comes together. We're all willing it to happen. I'd absolutely jump at the chance to star in it if I'm asked. I'll squeeze it in."

However, although the script is still a mystery, Michael Fox - who played Andy Parker - confirmed Dame Maggie Smith will reprise her role as Violet Crawley when the blockbuster eventually hits the big screen.

He said: "She elevates it to something else, because she is such a legend and a national treasure. The film without her would still be good with all the other actors, but it puts a stamp of quality with her in it."

Viewers were thrown into mourning in 2015 when 'Downton...' came to a dramatic end following five years on screen but creator Julian has always shared his burning desire to turn the drama into a film.

However, the 67-year-old director hinted that he was waiting on vital cast members - believed to be Hugh Bonneville and Michelle Dockery - to free up their schedules.

He said recently: "Let's just say it's not me slowing things down. The difficulty is rounding up the actors. One is in America making a new series, another is in a play ... My lips are sealed! It's very unlikely there won't be a film because there is an audience out there for it. I do hope there is going to be a 'Downton Abbey' film. It's going to be fun once everything is sorted but we just need to restructure it."

It's believed filming for the movie will kick off later this year.
This is the beginning of anything you want ! Happy new year guys love and respect jumping into #2017

A video posted by Sidharth Malhotra (@s1dofficial) on Dec 31, 2016 at 5:47pm PST
Angelina Jolie has slammed estranged husband Brad Pitt in her new court filing, saying the actor is insistent on sealing divorce documents because he is 'terrified the public will learn the truth' .



Pitt, 53, asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to seal all records relating to their six children, accusing Jolie of compromising their kids privacy by releasing details to the media through public court filings.





According to the new documents, the 41-year-old actress has agreed to keep papers sealed but she strongly disputes the actor's claims that she freely publicized sensitive information.



"There is little doubt that (Pitt) would prefer to keep the entire case private, particularly given the detailed investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Dept of Children and Family Services into allegation of abuse," the new court documents state.



But a source close to the situation said that Pitt has been cleared in all investigations.



"It's nice to see that she has finally come around to supporting the sealing of documents weeks after he requested this action. Considering that both the FBI and child services thoroughly investigated this matter and cleared the father, this line of attack doesn't make much sense," a source said.



Jolie was granted full custody of all their six kids on December 2. The Court documents at the time stated that Pitt would continue to have agreed-upon therapeutic visits with the children.



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Next Story : Not Your Average Gift: Our Handpicked Thoughtful Diwali Gifts
Winter is truly here in Fethiye. There is more snow on the mountains than there has been for many years. Talking to some of the local people they cant remember a winter that was so cold.

That doesnt stop the sun from shining though and there are days when you can spend the morning in a sunny Fethiye and have a BBQ in the snow in the afternoon.

Fethiye Times went out and about to capture some shots of sun and snow in Fethiye. (These photographs were all taken on 31st December 2016)

Sunny days

The sea turns an intense shade of blue at this time of year and makes a wonderful contrast to the snow capped mountains.

Stormy skies

Looking towards Babadag and Mendos the view is very different

Snow time!

A trip to the mountains is just too great a temptation so next stop Nif and Krkpnar.

Nif is blanketed in pure white snow

A winter wonderland

As you go higher the landscape becomes a winter wonderland.

There were plenty of families enjoying a day out.

Building snow(men, women and children!)

Picnic time!

The Turkish people do love to picnic whatever the weather.

And you can even buy everything you need for your sucuk sandwich (sucuk ekmegi) by the roadside. Dont forget to take something to cook it on though!

On the way back down to Fethiye we were greeted by this stunning sighta perfect end to a perfect day!
The 48Hong Kong fashion week for winter will kick off from January 16. The event will witness participation of more than 1,500 exhibitors from 19 countries and regions, showcasing the latest collections and fashion designs from international brands and an assortment of fabrics and accessories. The fashion show will focus on the theme Hall of Games.

The four-day fashion event is being organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) will have about 20 fashion events, including fashion shows, trend forecasting seminars, buyer forums and networking receptions, providing an excellent platform for buyers to gather the latest market intelligence and source fashion products and accessories.

Italy, Pakistan and Sweden will debut at the Hong Kong fashion week while there will be five pavilions at the fair representing India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau and Pakistan. The event will also feature a number of thematic zones, including two new zones: fashionable sportswear and denim and casual wear. These zones will help the buyers easily identify relevant products and suppliers.

The 48th Hong Kong fashion week for winter will kick off from January 16. The event will witness participation of more than 1,500 exhibitors from 19 countries and regions, showcasing the latest collections and fashion designs from international brands and an assortment of fabrics and accessories. The fashion show will focus on the theme Hall of Games.#

Ten fashion shows, including designers collection and brand collection shows will be held during the event. Young designers from 14 fashion labels will be showcasing their design talent at the fashion event. The fashion show will feature various collections including Chinese arts and crafts and modern womenswear among others.

For products, Italian brand Salto will display its collection of eco-leather silver pleated skirts, fully designed and manufactured in Italy. Japanese designer Hikami Masahiro will feature his childrens shoes brand and Ninos, an amalgamation of nearly 70 years of traditional craftsmanship and delicate designs will be also be showcased at the international fashion show. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Nusli Wadia led Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Company has strategised a new move to rejuvenate its retail business. This will be done by outsourcing production, investing Rs 100 crore till 2020, double the number of multi brand outlets to 10,000, while increasing franchise stores from around 250 to 500 and also script a turnaround in fiscal 2018.A news agency quoted CEO for the retail segment Nagesh Rajanna as saying that they are reinventing and major investments have been lined up and they would also launching 3-4 new products every year.

Nusli Wadia led Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Company has strategised a new move to rejuvenate its retail business. This will be done by outsourcing production, investing Rs 100 crore till 2020, double the number of multi brand outlets to 10,000, while increasing franchise stores from around 250 to 500 and also script a turnaround in fiscal 2018.#

According to Rajanna, these measures would help the textile retail segment more than treble its sales to Rs 1,000 crore by fiscal 2020 as against Rs 305 crore in the prior fiscal."The retail business of Bombay Dyeing will make up for 33 per cent of revenue of overall sales by 2020 as against 17 per cent currently, Rajanna informed. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Government of India has imposed anti-dumping duty on jute imported from Nepal and Bangladesh as these imports are undercutting and suppressing the prices of the domestic industry. The duty has been imposed in the bracket of $6.30 to $351.72 per tonne on all forms and specifications of jute yarn/twine, jute sacking bags and hessian fabric for five years.

The performance of the domestic industry has deteriorated in terms of profitability returns on investments and cash flow. Injury to domestic industry has been caused by dumped imports, said a revenue department notification.

Local players had complained about the imports of jute products and a probe was initiated on the same by the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) in 2015.

Government of India has imposed anti-dumping duty on jute imported from Nepal and Bangladesh as these imports are undercutting and suppressing the prices of the domestic industry. The duty has been imposed in the bracket of $6.30 to $351.72 per tonne on all forms and specifications of jute yarn/twine, jute sacking bags and hessian fabric for five years.#

The duty has been imposed on the aforementioned products from Nepal and Bangladesh by the revenue department after considering the final findings of the DGAD. (KD)

Click here to read the notification by the revenue department.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
MAS Fabric Park, second industrial park of leading intimate apparel supplier MAS Holdings, has been opened in Giriulla, Sri Lanka and operations are expected to commence in it soon. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe ceremonially opened the park that is set up on the site of the former Kabul Lanka lace factory that was shut down over 12 years ago.

The park will require an investment of $28 million and is expected to create over 3000 direct employment opportunities.

The Government of Sri Lanka handed over the factory site to the company with the intention to accelerate the economic progress in all parts of the country. The park will feature state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies to develop products that can compete in the global market, according to Sri Lankan media reports.

MAS Fabric Park, second industrial park of leading intimate apparel supplier MAS Holdings, has been opened in Giriulla, Sri Lanka and operations are expected to commence in it soon. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe ceremonially opened the park that is set up on the site of the former Kabul Lanka lace factory that was shut down over 12 years ago.#

A MAS Fabric Park is already operational in Thulhiriya since 2006 and the new park will replicate sustainable features and services of the former. These include water treatment and supply, various engineering services and uninterrupted power supply.

MAS Holdings collaborated with the Board of Investments (BOI) to set up and develop the park in Thulhiriya, thus becoming a successful public-private partnership of the country. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Ignoring 150 years of pioneer ranching heritage in Clark County, in a last gasp of tyranny, lame duck Obama illegally grabbed 300,000 acres of Nevada land from the farmers, ranchers, recreationalists, and from all Nevadans, and placed it under the protection of the BLM.

In two strokes of his pen, the outgoing unpopular president also abused his presidential power under the ill-conceived Antiquities Act to steal another 1.5 million acres in Utah, calling it the Bears Ears National Monument. Obama needs to be grabbed by the ears, shaken, and reminded that he is not the dictator of America  his power is limited under a Constitution which set up a government of laws and not of men.

In his Obamagrab, the power hungry president trampled on the rights of local Nevadans, by-passed Congress, ignored the process of public and political input into any such land designations, and instead, in a back-room deal with fellow lame duck Harry Reid, who has had his greedy federali eye on the Gold Butte area for many moons, claimed that he had dictatorial authority under the Antiquities Act to single handedly rip off Nevadas land and place greater protections and restrictions on Nevadans use of the land.

The Antiquities Act was originally passed to stop the looting of archaeological sites, and mentions nothing about protecting rock formations or desert tortoises, which were the excuses used by Obama, Harry Reid, and Dina Titus to justify their domestic terrorist theft of this gigantic tract of land. Even our liberal governor Brian Sandoval objected to this high handed, illegal act, pointing out that it by passed Congress and the public. (Of course, dictators dont consult with legislators or the public.)

The real purpose, of course, is to destroy the Cliven Bundy family by taking away their ability to make a living by producing beef for consumption by Americans. Before the Bundys ancestors established their ranch at Gold Butte in the 1870s, few desert tortoises inhabited the area. But cattle ranching was a boon to the tortoises, because their favorite dessert is cow pies, which provide pre-digested woody plant food (out of the reach and inedible by the tortoises) and moisture for these denizens of the desert.

In the environmentalists eyes, of course, using the land productively is a violation of their belief that man is an intruder on this planet, a denial of the Judeo-Christian belief that the earth was created by God for the use of mankind. They ignore the proven fact that ranching helps, rather than harms, the tortoises.

Harry Reid is also paying back a favor he owes to the people who donated large sums to him and to the Democratic Party in return for aiding their plans to establish an energy farm close to the Bundy ranch. For purposes of environmental mitigation, they needed to move the displaced tortoises from their energy farm to Bundys ranch.

Harry got his buddy Neil Kornze appointed as head of the BLM. Before coming to the Bureau of Land Management, Kornze worked as a Senior Advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Kornze then returned Harrys favor by having his armed goons invade the Bundy ranch. These invaders were turned back by cowboys and patriots determined to protect liberty against tyrannical federal bureaucrats. They won, but now the feds are getting even through the Obamagrab, and by their criminal prosecution of the Bundys and their compatriots, most of whom are still confined in federal prison awaiting trial, even those who were acquitted of criminal charges in Oregon.

In picking Ryan Zinke from Montana as his Secretary of Interior, president-elect Trump recently commented: My administrations goal is to repeal bad regulations and use our natural resources to create jobs and wealth for the American people, and Ryan will explore every possibility for how we can safely and responsibly do that.

All Nevadans should contact President Trump and urge him to rescind this Obamagrab. Lets find out if he is willing to make good on his promises to repeal bad bureaucratic regulations. We hope he will.

The Bundy family released a statement calling out Obama for his illegal actions:

We, the Bundy Family, would like to say to President Obama that we are saddened, but not surprised, by your decision to make our ranch and home a national monument. If any of this were really about protecting the land, you would come here, work with the local people who love this land, those who have a vested interest in this land, and take the time to learn what this land really needs. This is about control, pure and simple. You dont love this land, you have never visited here, but you love being in control of this land. The problems we have had with federal land management have never been about cows, tortoises, or fees. It has always been about the constitutional limits on the federal governments authority. While you enjoy a vacation in Hawaii we are here caring for this land and resisting federal overreach. Shame on you for undoing with your pen the good work we have done with our sweat for generations. We call on Attorney General Adam Laxalt to fight this to the fullest extent of the law!

Prepare to saddle up patriots, said Karl Koenigs, who stood with the Bundys in Nevada and Oregon. [Its] Time for another win.

We appreciate all elected officials from Nevada who have worked to restore Nevadas lands to Nevada.
Solapur will get a Rs 300 crore garment park in order to promote the city as a garment and uniform hub of India. The government of Maharashtra will provide the necessary infrastructure to successfully establish and launch it, said Subhash Deshmukh, the textile minister of the state. It is likely to generate employment for over 60,000 people.

Narsing Girji Mills 27 acres of land has been identified as the place to set up the garment park, said Deshmukh while addressing the audience at the inauguration ceremony of the first global uniform and garment manufacturers fair in Solapur.

The garment parks bhoomi pujan ceremony will be held on January 26, added Deshmukh. The park will provide employment to over 60,000 bidi workers, apart from multiple other unemployed people.

Solapur will get a Rs 300 crore garment park in order to promote the city as a garment and uniform hub of India. The government of Maharashtra will provide the necessary infrastructure to successfully establish and launch it, said Subhash Deshmukh, the textile minister of the state. It is likely to generate employment for over 60,000 people.#

Solapur has over 1,000 manufacturing units that employ over 60,000 skilled workers and contributes close to Rs 1,100 crore to the Rs 18,000 crore uniform industry of India.

The minister also said that the city in the state of Maharashtra is all set to become a textiles hub for armed forces and police uniforms.

More than 6,000 retailers are expected to attend the fair organised by the Shri Solapur Readymade Kapad Utpadak Sangh in association with the textile ministry of Maharashtra and Mafatlal Fabrics. About 82 stalls displaying latest designs in garments and uniforms have been set up at the trade event.

Spot loans of up to Rs 10 million will be sanctioned for the local garment industry by the Bank of Maharashtra during the three-day fair, said Ravindra Marathe, chairman and managing director of the bank.

Solapur has more than 1,200 garment manufacturing factories. There are a number of medium and small scale industries in the district and the textile sector is an important aspect of the economy. During the last decade, Solapur has witnessed major revamp with the growth of garments manufacturing sector.

The industry in Solapur already caters to the requirements of many institutions located in India and has direct garment export houses as well. It manufactures uniform wear, mens wear and kids wear, and offers good quality products at competitive prices. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
As soon as the news about the Bangalore molestation case on the New Year's night of 2017 broke out, politicians handled the incident very badly by giving out inflammatory statements questioning women's dressing style and behaviour. Politician Abu Azmi was the first to add fuel to the fire by saying "If there is sugar, ants will come automatically to it." His comments were criticised by all sections of the society alike.

Malaika Arora's Post On Women's Safety Is Thought-provoking!

Now Abu Azmi's son Farhan Azmi (husband of Ayesha Takia) has joined the bandwagon and went a step further than his father by slut shaming Bollywood celebrities who took a stand against molestation. Esha Gupta slammed politician Abu Azmi on Twitter for his remarks as, "The only woman to blame here, n she probably would have blamed herself too, is the woman who unknowingly gave birth to a jerk like u#AbuAzmi."



Now, it would have been wise for Farhan Azmi to apologise on behalf of his father's irresponsible statements, but he chose to rather follow his dad's footsteps instead and replied to her tweet in a slut shaming manner, "Esha, woman who gave birth to @abuasimazmi is my grandma, who is no longer amongst us to defend herself. She was far more dignified than U."

Bengaluru Molestation Case! Salim Khan Asks PM Narendra Modi To Address The Issue Immediately

To add more salt to injury, Farhan retweeted photos of Esha Gupta posing in a bikini and being backless while captioning it as, "@eshagupta2811 you just look at in the mirror and say what NANGAPAN you gave to our society through films @abufarhanazmi @abuasimazmi," and "@eshagupta2811 look at the pic of yours & say do u have any right to speak about @abuasimazmi @abufarhanazmi #SHAME."

Akshay Kumar Opens Up About The Bengaluru Molestation Case! Says We Are Evolving Backwards

The only woman to blame here,n she probably would have blamed herself too,is the woman who unknowingly gave birth to a jerk like u#AbuAzmi  Esha Gupta (@eshagupta2811) January 3, 2017

Esha, woman who gave birth to @abuasimazmi is my grandma,who is no longer amongst us to defend herself.She was far more dignified than U https://t.co/ZfxSdNpTOT  Farhan Azmi (@abufarhanazmi) January 4, 2017

@eshagupta2811 look at the pic of yours & say do u have any right to speak about @abuasimazmi @abufarhanazmi #SHAME pic.twitter.com/ivOjGhJv1z  Amit Prakash Singh (@amitprakash007) January 4, 2017
Students Will Watch My Films

In one of his last interviews, which took place at a hotel here on December 23, 2016, Om Puri told IANS, "My contribution as an actor will be visible once I leave this world and the young generation, especially film students will watch my films."

His Contribution To Showbiz

The 66 year-old actor died of a heart attack at his residence here early morning on Friday. Today, as he leaves a void in the world of cinema with his untimely demise, the film fraternity is looking back at his vast contribution to showbiz.

His Legacy Will Live On

Theatre, television, Indian and British films, Hollywood and Pakistani cinema - he did it all and left a lasting impression. His legacy, celebrities said, will live on.

'A Lover Of Alternate Cinema'

A lover of alternate cinema with socially relevant themes at its core, Om Puri said, "For me, the real hard-hitting cinema was between 1980s and 1990s where Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Basu Chatterjee, Mrinal Sen and Gulzar made some remarkable films."

In Pic: Om Puri With Naseeruddin Shah

He worked in multiple projects with Nihalani and Benegal - films like Aakrosh', Ardh Satya' and Tamas' which catapulted him into the realm of great actors. Both the directors were overcome by emotions when IANS contacted them after news of Om Puri's death broke. In shaky voices, both said it was too early to talk.

There's No One Like Him..

Just days earlier, he was happily interacting with young scribes to promote his upcoming political satire Rambhajan Zindabad'. Casually dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and a black shirt, he was, as was his style, devoid of any airs about his stardom - a position not defined by fanatical, frenzied fans, but by the sheer following of his nuanced performances and undying passion for art.

An Unlikely Hero..

He was - as the biography by his former wife Nandita Puri - rightly says, an Unlikely Hero'. The veteran actor, a recipient of Padma Shri, started his journey as an actor with a Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal' in 1972. If he featured in some intense dramas, he also balanced out his filmography with movies like Mirch Masala', Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro' and more.

Om Puri On Two Kinds Of Cinema

"There are two kinds of cinema - one is just for entertainment, the other touches your heart. Both have their own purpose," Om Puri had told IANS.

Used To Encourage Films

When he was chairman of the National Film Development Corporation, Om Puri was focused on encouraging meaningful films. The National School of Drama alumnus was also president of Cine and TV Artistes Association.

He Will Be Missed..

More recently, he featured in Bollywood films like Ghayal Once Again' and Mirzya', as well as in Pakistani film Actor In Law'. He even used his distinct baritone for the voice of black panther Bagheera in the Hindi dubbed version of Hollywood film The Jungle Book'.
The leggy lass Lisa Haydon took to her social media handle to wish her daddy dearest Mr. Venkat, a very happy birthday and also called him a "legend". She posted an image standing with her father against the backdrop of a beach, which probably looks like the Bondi beach in Australia and captioned it as, "Happy Birthday week to my Daddy Dearest - straight up legend."

Bengaluru Molestation Case: Esha Gupta Takes A Stand, But Gets Shamed In Return!

There's no separation between Lisa Haydon and the beach, as almost all her pictures on Instagram are taken while chilling on the beaches. Whenever she goes on a vacation, she makes sure she selects places which have pristine beaches as that is her true calling.



Also, Lisa Haydon welcomed the New Year 2017 chilling with her husband Dino Lalvani at the Hayman Islands. The actress was seen sun bathing, scuba diving and enjoying various other water sports.

For those of you who don't know where the 'Hayman Island' is located, it's a beautiful holiday destination at the heart of the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia and it's a private island, which can be accessed only by a few lucky ones and Lisa Haydon is one among them!

Malaika Arora's Post On Women's Safety Is Thought-provoking!
It's just the beginning of 2017 and we lost one of the most versatile and talented actors of the B-town! Actor Om Puri, who was 66, is no more with us as he suffered a cardiac arrest on Friday morning in Mumbai.

Filmmaker Ashoke Pandit confirmed the news of his demise on Friday morning and wrote, "Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP."

Director Karan Johar also gave his condolences on Twitter and wrote, "Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist....."

"Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm can't believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked," wrote Anupam Kher.

The actor has appeared in mainstream Bollywood cinema as well as Pakistani, British and Hollywood films. B-town is surely going to miss this gem of Indian cinema!

May his soul rest in peace.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui is saddened by the demise of veteran actor Om Puri. The actor says he was supposed to work with him in Manto.

Nawazuddin will be bringing the life of Pakistan's short story writer Sadat Hassan Manto alive on the silver screen through actress and filmmaker Nandita Das's project titled Manto.



Calling him an inspiration and the best actor in the world, Nawazuddin condoled his death on Twitter.

He posted, "The best actor in world, An inspiration to me and many, he was suppose to work with me in 'Manto'. Deeply saddened by the news."

Nawazuddin Siddique also talked about the late actor with Bollywood Life, "It is very sad to hear this news. I think he was one of the best actors in the world. Two or three days from now I was going to do a scene with him in Manto. He was in the film and we had prepared for it too. He was playing the judge and I was going to play Manto. We were going to have a discussion, but it is a very big loss to the industry. It feels really bad."



Also Read: PICS! Deepika Padukone Attends First Hollywood Premiere Of xXx; Makes Heads Turn With Her Appearance

A Padma Shri awardee and National Award-winning talent, Om Puri died on Friday of heart attack. He was 66.

His work extended from theatre, television, Indian films to those in Britain and the US too.

A National School of Drama alumnus, Om Puri also featured in movies like Mirch Masala and explored his ability to dabble in the comedy genre with Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Chachi 420, Hera Pheri, Malamaal Weekly and more.

Om Puri also nurtured an international career, which started with a cameo in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. With iputs from IANS.
Vishal Bhardwaj is back with yet another riveting tale in the form of Shahid Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut's Rangoon. After dropping a couple of posters last night, the makers have finally revealed the first glimpse of the film.

Countdown Begins For Rangoon Trailer, Shahid Kapoor Shares The First Look!

High on action and romance, Rangoon is set in the period of World War II in 1944 when India was in the brink of attaining independence. Saif Ali Khan, a movie producer sends his girlfriend Julia (Kangana Ranaut), the reigning queen of Bollywood circa 1940 to entertain the soldiers fighting a war in Burma. Shahid Kapoor, an army man and a freedom fighter is assigned the task of protecting her during the visit. However, the two fall for each other and what follows next is a story of 'love, war and deceit'.

Watch the trailer here...

While Shahid and Saif are at their cinematic best, it's Kangana's feisty avatar that catches the eye more. The period drama boosts of some high production value with some doses of humour element too.

Also read

Produced by Sajid Nadiadwala, Vishal Bhardwaj and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the thrilling love story ala Casablanca style is slated to release on 24th February, 2017.
Pamela Anderson, the much celebrated Canadian-American actress and model known for her role in Baywatch expresses her wish to relocate and live in Europe.

Anderson says that the reason for her wish to move to Europe is the fact that most of her friends live in either UK or France. So the actress is now planning to leave her California residence and settle in some place in Europe.

"I'm looking for an apartment to rent in London or in Paris. I have more friends there than in LA. I'd like to end up somewhere in Europe. Dancing on chequered tables or on a boat sailing around the world..." Said Pamela Anderson in a statement.

The Baywatch star has also expressed her desire to pay a visit to the second largest continent on the planet. She says she has never been to Africa and so it is on her list.

"I'm at a crossroads. I have big dreams. There are so many places to see. I've never been to Africa and I want to help elephants and rhinos so I could see myself living there," Anderson added further.

Pamela Anderson recently had also requested the US President Barack Obama to consider on the matter of WikiLeaks and pardon Julian Assange.

"I request that you consider Pardoning Julian Assange in your last days in office. It would be a bold and exciting move for the time we live in- the information age generation. Please stop the grand jury investigation, and the bullying that is turning the world off America." She stated in a letter.

Mobile Summary: Pamela Anderson says she is looking to rent an apartment in London or Paris as she wants to leave her California residence and settle somewhere in Europe. But why?Find out...
Veteran Bollywood actor Om Puri passed away in the wee hours of morning today (January 6, 2016) at his residence in Mumbai due to a heart attack. He was 66.

The National award-winning actor is known for his stellar performances in films such as Ardh Satya, Arohan, Aakrosh and Gupt: The Hidden Truth among others. Apart from films, the Padmashree awardee has also acted in the television series like Bharat Ek Khoj and Kakaji Kahin.

The TV fraternity is in shock over the actor's sudden demise and many television stars took to express their condolences for the late actor on the social media. Check out the tributes from the TV stars to the late actor...

Vivek Dahiya "While our industry talks about the big leap to Hollywood, this man did it before any of the others! Saddened by the loss of #OmPuri ji." Nikita Dutta "You were extremely talented and your brilliance shall live in our hearts always. Glad I had the privilege to meet you. #RIPOmPuri." Kapil Sharma "It's sad to hear about the sudden demise of a great actor n friend Om puri sahib.. may his soul Rest In Peace." Arjun Bijlani "I will never forget the meeting I had with u om Ji.u were so warm and the advice u gave me I shall never forget.#RIPOmPuri ." Rithvik Dhanjani "The industry has lost a gem today a man who gave life to so many characters beyond imagination RIP #OmPuri ji." Karan V Grover "Noone is dead untill d ripples they cause in d world die away& d ripples caused by ur craft shall b remembered fr millenniums #OmPuri R.I.P." Karanvir Bohra "Oh my god! I can't beleive this.....omji is no more. I'm Speechless. The industry has lost one of its best."

Ragini Khanna: "RIP Om Puri siryour memories will forever be etched in my heart."

Karan Kundra: "Very sad news! Have grown up watching his versatility! RIP #OmPuri ji."

Vrushika Mehta: "Rest in peace #OmPuri sir ...... #omnamahshivaya."

Karan Tacker: "The man who brought so many characters to life, #OmPuri ji you will be missed .."

Ali Asgar: "Sad day ...Rest in peace 0m puri sir #OmPuri."

Kavita Kaushik: "R.i.p om puri sahab one of the finest actors of the industry."

Ashish Sharma: "RIP #OmPuri an inspiration an institution ends..saddened."

Kiku Sharda: "My favourite 'Ahujja' is no more ,,,,, RIP Om Puri Sir."

Faisal Khan: "Will miss you #OMPURI sir #RIP."

It's definitely a sad day indeed! Rest In Peace, dear sir!


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The following are the biotech stocks that made their way onto the Day's Gainers & Losers' list of January 5, 2017.



1. EnteroMedics Inc. (ETRM)



Gained 89.95% to close Thursday's trading at $3.97.



News: Related to VBLOC neurometabolic therapy for the treatment of obesity.



The company's vBloc neurometabolic therapy has now been implanted at MedStar Health in Maryland and Roper St. Francis in South Carolina. This brings the total number of institutes to have implanted the therapy to 13.



The vBloc therapy is approved for use in helping with weight loss in people aged 18 years and older who are obese. It has received FDA approval and CE Mark.



2. Prana Biotechnology Ltd. (PRAN)



Gained 31.61% to close Thursday's trading at $2.54.



News: No News



Latest developments:



The company's most advanced compound is PBT2 for Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. Phase II trial results of PBT2 in Huntington disease and Alzheimer's disease were reported in February 2014 and March 2014, respectively. While the Huntington disease trial results were positive, the Alzheimer's trial results were not.



In February 2015, when the company met with the FDA and presented its plans to initiate a Phase III trial in Huntington Disease, the regulatory agency imposed a Partial Clinical Hold based on non-clinical (animal) findings, limiting the dose of PBT2 that can be given to patients with Huntington disease.



The last we heard was that the company has prioritised clinical development of PBT2 in Europe. When the company met with the Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Agency in London and the Medical Products Agency in Stockholm last month, both the agencies recommended further non-clinical work to be undertaken before proceeding with a phase III trial. In a Press release dated December 23, 2016 Prana noted that it has commenced a process of reviewing other potentially suitable opportunities to boost shareholder value in the medium to longer term.



3. GenVec Inc. (GNVC)



Gained 19.29% to close Thursday's trading at 4.02.



News: The company has entered into an exclusive option agreement with Washington University to license intellectual property and technology related to gene editing and pulmonary endothelial cell targeting. GenVec plans to initially focus on research utilizing the technology to develop treatments for hemophilia.



The option agreement is also said to complement and expand applications for the GenVec's AdenoVerse Gene-Delivery Platform.



The company's most advanced compound is CGF166 for hearing loss, under a phase 1/2 clinical trial. The drug candidate is being developed under a collaboration agreement with Novartis.



4. Pieris Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PIRS)



Gained 19.74% to close Thursday's trading at $1.76.



News: Piers has inked a deal with privately-owned French pharmaceutical company Servier.



Under the strategic immuno-oncology co-development alliance, Piers and Servier will jointly pursue several bispecific therapeutic programs including Pieris' proprietary dual checkpoint inhibitor PRS-332.



Besides an upfront payment of $31.3 million from Servier, Pieris is entitled to receive milestone payments worth approximately $338 million related to PRS-332, and up to roughly $201 million for each of the other programs.



5. Halozyme Therapeutics Inc. (HALO)



Gained 17.96% to close Thursday's trading at $12.61.



News: Phase II study of investigational agent PEGPH20 in advanced pancreas cancer met key goals.



A combined analysis of Stages 1 and 2 of the phase II trial showed a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival in patients treated with PEGPH20 plus ABRAXANE and Gemcitabine when compared to patients receiving ABRAXANE and Gemcitabine alone.



An analysis of Stage 2 of the study showed a 91 percent improvement in median PFS in the PEGPH20 arm over the control arm - i.e., 8.6 months in the PEGPH20 arm and 4.5 months in the control arm.



6. CTI BioPharma Corp. (CTIC)



Gained 12.34% to close Thursday's trading at $4.46.



News: The FDA has removed the clinical hold on Pacritinib, the company's lead drug candidate for primary myelofibrosis.



A full clinical hold was imposed on Pacritinib last February due to excess mortality and other adverse events in a pivotal trial of Pacritinib, dubbed PERSIST-1.



Now that the clinical hold has been lifted, the company expects to start a new trial, named PAC203, in the second quarter of 2017.



7. Otonomy Inc. (OTIC)



Gained 10.80% to close Thursday's trading at $17.95.



News: Phase III trial of OTIPRIO in patients with acute otitis externa met the primary endpoint.



In a pivotal phase III clinical trial in patients with acute otitis externa (AOE), also known as swimmer's ear, OTIPRIO met the primary endpoint by showing a statistically significant increase in clinical cure rate compared to sham (no treatment) at Day 8.



OTIPRIO is already approved for the treatment of pediatric patients with bilateral otitis media with effusion undergoing tympanostomy tube placement surgery.



Otonomy expects to submit a supplemental New Drug Application with the FDA, seeking approval of OTIPRIO for acute otitis externa, in the first half of 2017.



8. Vital Therapies Inc. (VTL)



Gained 11.58% to close Thursday's trading at $5.30.



News: No news.



Anticipated event: Q4 and full-year 2016 financial results to be reported in March of 2017.



The company's lead product candidate is ELAD, an investigational extracorporeal liver assist device to supplement hepatic function in order to improve survival rates among subjects with liver failure.



A phase III trial of ELAD in Acute Alcoholic Hepatitis (AAH), dubbed VTL-308, is underway - with top-line results expected around mid-2018.



Losers



1. 22nd Century Group Inc (XXII)



Lost 14.15% to close Thursday's trading at $0.91



News: The FDA has requested more information related to independent clinical studies if the company wants to disclose that its BRAND A Very Low Nicotine tobacco cigarettes reduce smokers' exposure to nicotine.



According to 22nd Century, relative to 'Big Tobacco' cigarette brands, including Marlboro, Camel, Newport and American Spirit, BRAND A contains 95% less nicotine.



The company has withdrawn its existing Modified Risk Tobacco Product Applications (MRTPAs) and Premarket Tobacco Product Applications (PMTAs) for 'BRAND A' Very Low Nicotine tobacco cigarettes in order to file even more expansive and robust applications.



2. AEterna Zentaris Inc. (AEZS)



Lost 17.81% to close Thursday's trading at $3.00.



News: Confirmatory phase III clinical trial of Macrilen fails.



The phase III trial was designed to validate Macrilen as a growth hormone stimulation test for the evaluation of growth hormone deficiency in adults (AGHD) in comparison with insulin tolerance test, the historical gold-standard for the evaluation of AGHD. But the trial has failed to achieve its objective.



3. Ardelyx Inc. (ARDX)



Lost 10.38% to close Thursday's trading at $12.95.



News: No news



Near-term catalyst: The company's most-advanced drug candidate is Tenapanor, which is under phase III trial, for the treatment of hyperphosphatemia in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on dialysis. Results from this study are expected this quarter (Q1, 2017).



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U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., partnered with U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., to introduce the Nevada Land Sovereignty Act (S. 22, H.R. 243). The legislation prevents the threat of executive action designating or expanding national monuments without Congressional approval or local support.

Late last month, without even having a say in the matter, Nevadans witnessed the executive branch quickly lock up hundreds of thousands of acres of local, public land with an effortless stroke of the pen, stated Heller. No matter which political party is occupying the White House, these types of unilateral federal land grabs by the executive branch should not be allowed. Public input and local support remain critical to the decision-making process of federal land designations. This legislation prevents actions like last months Gold Butte land grab from occurring without input from Congress and local officials. Id like to thank Congressman Amodei for his partnership on this bill.

Whether you agree with our proposals or not, I have always supported a public and transparent process which includes input from interest groups, local communities, and elected representatives, said Amodei. Unlike all of our Nevada lands bills that allow stakeholders an opportunity to voice their concerns and ultimately reach a consensus agreement that achieves bipartisan support, the Obama Administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress and local input. I continue to be amazed by the fact that some people hug unilateral, non-transparent monument designations, while at the same time, protesting vehemently over the introduction and public discussion of Congressional lands bills proposals. In contrast to the last eight years of this Administrations one-sided approach on major land management decisions in Nevada, our bill simply ensures local stakeholders have a seat at the table going forward.

Heller and Amodei stated that over the past two years, President Obama unilaterally placed restrictions on over one million acres of public land in Nevada alone via the American Antiquities Act of 1906. One million acres amounts to more land than the entire state of Rhode Island. This Administration has used the law more than any other previous Administration.

Presidential powers under the Antiquities Act have been reduced twice. The first time followed the unpopular proclamation of Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943. The 1950 law that incorporated Jackson Hole into an enlarged Grand Teton National Park also amended the Antiquities Act, requiring Congressional consent for any future creation or enlargement of national monuments in Wyoming.

In 1979, Jimmy Carters use of the Act created 56 million acres of National Monuments in Alaska. After that, Congress acted again to limit presidential power, requiring Congressional approval for withdrawals in Alaska over 5,000 acres. The Nevada Land Sovereignty Act would mirror the Wyoming exemption.
DEARBORN (dpa-AFX) - Lincoln Motor Co. recorded 10 percent gain in sales in U.S. Luxury market reported a gains of less than one percent. The company said Continental was responsible for 64 percent of its growth in December. Continental sales in December totaled 1,845 vehicles, up from November's 1,419. Lincoln sold 32,558 vehicles in China in 2016 - a near threefold increase over 2015. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - International Personal Finance's (IPF.L) Friday said they would appeal with the District Administrative Court regarding the decision of the Polish Tax Chamber. IPF said they strongly disagree with the decision of the tax authority on the 2008 financial year. The decision involves a transfer pricing challenge relating to an intra-group arrangement with a UK entity together with a challenge to the timing of taxation of home collection fee revenues. 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.
Independent Directors to Chair all Board Committees

Avolon, the international aircraft leasing company, announces the appointment of three independent non-executive Directors to its Board. Dr (Mr) Ciaran hOgartaigh, Mr Joe Nellis and Mr Denis Kalscheur joined the Avolon Board on 4 January, 2017.

Dr Ciaran hOgartaigh

Ciaran hOgartaigh is Professor of Accounting and Dean of University College Dublin (UCD) College of Business. Dr hOgartaigh has been published in international peer-reviewed journals on audit and accounting matters and he also serves on a number of Audit Committees including the Audit Committee of Ireland's Department of Finance.

Mr Joe Nellis

Joe Nellis was most recently a Managing Director of the Business Development team at GE Capital which oversaw the signing and closing of nearly $200 billion of transactions in a 24 month period as part of GE's transition to a more focused, digital industrial company.

Mr Denis Kalscheur

Denis Kalscheur is a 25 year aviation industry veteran and previously served in both Vice Chairman and CEO roles at Aviation Capital Group Corp (ACG), a top ten global aircraft leasing business.

Full biographies are set out below.

Board Composition

Following these appointments, the Avolon Board will comprise nine Directors: four independent non-executive Directors, three non-executive Directors (including the Chairman of the Board) and two executive Directors.

Board Committees

Denis Nayden, independent non-executive Director and Avolon's Vice Chairman, serves as Chair of the Risk Committee. On joining the Board, Dr hOgartaigh was appointed Chair of the Audit Committee; Mr Nellis Chair of the Remuneration Committee and Mr Kalscheur Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee.

Avolon Chairman, Adam Tan, said: "We are delighted to announce the appointment of three new independent Directors to our Board. Each of Ciaran, Denis and Joe brings different but complementary skills to our Board and their expertise will be invaluable as we continue to build Avolon into a global sector leader. Effective corporate governance and oversight is central to long-term business success. A strong, experienced and independent Board, which works to protect all stakeholder interests, is central to our strategy to build Avolon into a global leader in aircraft leasing."

Avolon CEO, Domhnal Slattery, added: "Our Board has been significantly strengthened with the addition of our three new Independent Directors. They bring with them deep experience across different business sectors. Together with the Avolon team, I look forward to working with them as we continue to build Avolon into the premier player in aircraft leasing."

Director Biographies

Dr Ciaran hOgartaigh

Ciaran hOgartaigh is Professor of Accounting and Dean of UCD College of Business which operates across five locations, two in Dublin and one each in Hong Kong, Singapore and Sri Lanka. UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School is one of about 70 triple-crown accredited business schools in the world. Its programmes are consistently ranked in the Top 100 in the world by the Financial Times. Under Dr hOgartaigh's stewardship, UCD has launched an MSc in Aviation Finance, the first of its kind in Europe, supported by a consortium of the aviation finance community including Avolon. A first class honours, first-in-class graduate of NUI Galway, Ciaran trained as a Chartered Accountant and auditor with Arthur Andersen. He has a PhD in Accounting from the University of Leeds and has been published in international peer-reviewed journals on the audit expectation gap (funded by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board) and on investor reactions to differences between US and International GAAP. A former Fulbright scholar, he has served as Audit Committee Chair at the Department of Marine, Communications and Natural Resources (Government of Ireland) and is a member of the Audit Committee at the Department of Finance (Government of Ireland) and the National Museum of Ireland.

Mr Joe Nellis

A 30 year financial services veteran, Joe Nellis was most recently a Managing Director of the Business Development team at GE Capital. This group was chartered with signing and closing nearly $200 billion of transactions in a 24 month period as part of GE's transition to a more focused, digital industrial company. Mr Nellis joined GE Capital in 1990, where he was responsible for technical accounting matters for various commercial lending units. In 1993, he joined GE Capital Americas, serving in various leadership roles in finance, business development and sales. In 2004, he moved to London and served as Commercial Leader for GE Capital Solutions, Europe. In 2007, Joe led Business Development for GE Capital Real Estate North America, leading mergers and acquisitions. He was instrumental in identifying and driving new relationships, and consolidating U.S. and Canadian opportunities. He moved to the Restructuring Operations unit in 2009 and added similar duties on a global scale in 2012 with GE Capital Real Estate. Mr Nellis began his career in Arthur Andersen's Audit Division in New York and also spent two years with CS First Boston.

Mr Denis Kalscheur

A 25 year aviation industry veteran, Denis Kalscheur previously served in both Vice Chairman and CEO roles at Aviation Capital Group Corp (ACG), a top ten global aircraft leasing business. Earlier in his career he served as an aviation and aerospace services company CEO as well as an airline CFO and treasurer. Prior to ACG, Mr. Kalscheur was SVP Treasurer of Pacific Life, a leading U.S. based insurance company where he was also Chairman of its subsidiary, College Savings Bank (CSB), a New Jersey chartered savings bank. Prior to joining Pacific Life, he served as an independent director and Chairman of the Audit Committee for CSB. Mr. Kalscheur currently serves as an independent director for publicly-traded Pacific Mercantile Bancorp and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Pacific Mercantile Bank, where he is Chairman of the Audit Committee and a member of the Credit Policy Committee.

- END -

About Avolon

Headquartered in Ireland, with offices in the United States, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Avolon provides aircraft leasing and lease management services. Avolon is a wholly-owned, indirect subsidiary of Bohai Capital Holding Co., Ltd., a Chinese public company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. On 6 October, 2016, Avolon announced an agreement to acquire the aircraft leasing business of CIT Group which will create a leading aircraft leasing business with an owned, managed and committed fleet of 910 aircraft valued at over US$43 billion.

Website: www.avolon.aero

Twitter: @avolon_aero

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170106005245/en/

Contacts:

Avolon

Jonathan Neilan

US Europe

T: +353 1 663 3686

M: +353 86 231 4135

avolon@fticonsulting.com

or

Sean Pattwell

Asia

T: +852 3768 4543

M: +852 9227 8321

avolon@fticonsulting.com


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP) said that it expects earnings for 2017 to be in the range of $1.25 to $1.33 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report earnings of $1.25 per share for fiscal year 2017. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. The company anticipates 2017 capital spending of $1.5 billion, a 14 percent increase over the previous forecast for 2017 capital spending.



It reaffirmed its earnings guidance in a range of $1.16 to $1.20 per share for the year ending December 31, 2016. Analysts expect annual earnings of $1.18 per share.



Guidance for 2017 includes earnings per share growth expected to come from: utility growth, Increased earnings per Enable Midstream Partners' forecast, and Increased earnings contribution from CenterPoint Energy Services, partly attributable to recent acquisitions.



In addition to these drivers, the company expects lower interest expense and a full year of dividend income from CenterPoint's investment in Enable's preferred units.



Both the electric and gas utilities are expected to contribute to the growth in capital spending:Houston Electric anticipates capital spending of $922 million in 2017 in support of sustained industrial, commercial and residential customer growth. Gas Distribution anticipates capital spending of $534 million in 2017 to accommodate continued growth, particularly in the Houston metro and Minnesota jurisdictions, as well as pipe replacement needs in the six states served by CenterPoint.



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VARENNES, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- The Jean Coutu Group (PJC) Inc. (TSX: PJC.A) (the "Corporation" or the "Jean Coutu Group") reported today its financial results for the quarter ended November 26, 2016.

Summary of results (Unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars, except per share amounts) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Third quarter 39-week period 2017 2016 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- $ $ $ $ Revenues 763.7 749.2 2,188.5 2,148.2 Operating income before amortization ("OIBA") 79.9 87.0 235.4 251.7 Net profit 51.2 57.8 151.7 162.2 Per share 0.28 0.31 0.82 0.87 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Highlights

-- Revenues increased by 1.9% to $763.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 compared with the same quarter last year. -- Sales of the commercial section of our distribution centers increased by 5.4% during the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 compared with the same quarter last year. -- Repurchase of 1,215,704 outstanding class "A" subordinate voting shares at an average price of $19.91 per share during the third quarter of fiscal year 2017.

Financial results

"During the third quarter, network retail sales and front-end sales of our distribution centers grew strongly, eloquently reflecting the success of our business strategies and the effectiveness of their implementation," said Francois J. Coutu, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We will continue to make the necessary efforts to enhance our offering to drive growth in retail sales and maintain our leadership."

Revenues

Revenues consist mainly of sales and other revenues derived from franchising activities. Merchandise sales to PJC franchisees made mostly through our distribution centers account for the greater part of our revenues.

Revenues amounted to $763.7 million for the quarter ended November 26, 2016, compared with $749.2 million for the quarter ended November 28, 2015. For the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017, revenues amounted to $2,188.5 million compared with $2,148.2 million for the same period of the previous fiscal year, an increase of 1.9%. This increase is attributable to the overall market growth despite the deflationary impact on revenues of the volume increase in prescriptions of generic drugs compared with brand name drugs as well as the price reductions of generic drugs. The increase in sales of the commercial section of our distribution centers reflects the success of our business strategies as well as the strength of our brand.

OIBA

OIBA decreased by $7.1 million to $79.9 million for the quarter ended November 26, 2016 compared with $87.0 million for the quarter ended November 28, 2015. This diminution is mainly due to the lower contribution of Pro Doc to the OIBA and by an increase in general and operating expenses such as labor and other expenses related to the transition to the Varennes location. OIBA as a percentage of revenues ended the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 at 10.5% compared with 11.6% for the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

For the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017, the Corporation's OIBA decreased by $16.3 million amounting to $235.4 million compared with $251.7 million for the same period of fiscal year 2016. A charge of $0.2 million for share-based payments instruments (stock appreciation rights and deferred share units) was recorded during the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017 compared with a reversal of $3.5 million of liabilities for the 39-week period of fiscal year 2016. The variation of the expense for those share-based payments instruments is mainly attributable to the fluctuation of the Corporation's common share market price. Furthermore, gains on the sale of property & equipment and investment property of $6.8 million were recorded in the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017. OIBA before the expense for those shared-based payments instruments and the gains on the sale of property & equipment and investment property decreased by $19.4 million compared with the same period last year. As a percentage of revenues, OIBA ended the 39-week period of 2017 at 10.8% compared with 11.7% for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Pro Doc

Gross sales of Pro Doc drugs, net of intersegment eliminations, amounted to $51.1 million for the quarter ended November 26, 2016, compared with $51.7 million for the quarter ended November 28, 2015. Pro Doc's contribution to the consolidated OIBA amounted to $17.9 million for the quarter ended November 26, 2016, compared with $23.4 million for the quarter ended November 28, 2015. This decrease is mainly attributable to the increase on April 28, 2016 of the maximum professional allowances allowed by the regulation on benefits authorized to a pharmacist from 15% to 25% and from 25% to 30% on October 28, 2016. Pro Doc's contribution to the consolidated OIBA as a percentage of gross sales, net of intersegment eliminations, ended the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 at 35.0% compared with 45.3% for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Gross sales of Pro Doc drugs, net of intersegment eliminations, amounted to $152.0 million for the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017, compared with $151.0 million for the same period of fiscal year 2016. Pro Doc's contribution to the consolidated OIBA amounted to $57.1 million for the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017, compared with $68.4 million for the same period of fiscal year 2016. Pro Doc's contribution to the consolidated OIBA as a percentage of its gross sales, net of intersegment eliminations, ended the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017 at 37.6% compared with 45.3% for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Net profit

Net profit amounted to $51.2 million ($0.28 per share) for the quarter ended November 26, 2016 compared with $57.8 million ($0.31 per share) for the quarter ended November 28, 2015.

Net profit for the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017 amounted to $151.7 million ($0.82 per share) compared with $162.2 million ($0.87 per share) for the same period of fiscal year 2016.

Information on the PJC network of franchised stores

The Corporation carries on the franchising activity under the banners of PJC Jean Coutu, PJC Clinique, PJC Jean Coutu Sante and PJC Jean Coutu Sante Beaute, operates two distribution centers and coordinates several other services for the benefit of its franchisees.

For the quarter ended November 26, 2016, on a same-store basis, the PJC network's retail sales increased by 3.6%, pharmacy sales increased by 4.4% and front-end sales increased by 2.8%, compared with the corresponding period last year. Sales of non-prescription drugs, which represented 9.0% of total retail sales, increased by 2.8% compared with 3.9% for the corresponding period of fiscal year 2016.

For the 39-week period of fiscal year 2017, on a same store basis, the PJC network's retail sales grew by 2.2%, pharmacy sales increased by 1.9% and front-end sales increased by 3.2%, compared with the same period last year. Sales on non-prescription drugs which represented 8.8% of total retail sales, increased by 3.9% compared with 3.2% for the same period of fiscal year 2016.

Generic drugs reached 71.4% of prescriptions during the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 compared with 69.8% of prescriptions for the comparable period of the previous fiscal year. The increase in the number of generic drugs prescriptions with lower selling prices than brand name drugs had a deflationary impact on the pharmacy's retail sales.

For the third quarter of fiscal year 2017, the introduction of new generic drugs reduced pharmacy's retail sales growth by 0.7%. Furthermore, price reductions of generic drugs reduced retail sales growth by 0.3% and the periodic deductions agreed upon between the "Ministere de la Sante et des Services sociaux" (MSSS) and the "Association quebecoise des pharmaciens proprietaires" (AQPP) increased the growth of those sales by 2.3% due to the impact of the retroactive adjustments of these deductions recorded when they were introduced in September 2015.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Third quarter 39-week period Network performance (1)(unaudited) 2017 2016 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Retail sales (in millions of dollars) $1,094.6 $1,053.4 $3,232.1 $3,149.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Retail sales growth (in percentage) Total stores Total 3.9% 0.4% 2.6% 2.4% Pharmacy 4.5% (1.4)% 2.2% 2.0% Front-end (2) 3.4% 2.9% 3.8% 2.5% Same store Total 3.6% 0.1% 2.2% 1.9% Pharmacy 4.4% (1.6)% 1.9% 1.7% Front-end (2) 2.8% 2.4% 3.2% 1.9% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prescriptions growth (in percentage) Total stores 3.7% 2.5% 3.9% 2.8% Same store 3.4% 2.4% 3.6% 2.5% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Franchised outlets' retail sales are not included in the Corporation's consolidated financial statements. (2) Front-end retail sales exclude sales of services which are included in the total retail sales growth.

PJC network of franchised stores expansion

During the third quarter of fiscal year 2017, there were 3 openings in the PJC network of franchised stores, including 1 relocation and 4 stores were closed. Also, 4 stores were significantly renovated or expanded.

As at November 26, 2016, total selling square footage of the PJC network amounted to 3,283,000 square feet compared with 3,217,000 square feet as at November 28, 2015.

Issuer bids

On April 27, 2016, the Corporation announced its intention to repurchase for cancellation, if it is considered advisable, up to 4,063,000 of its outstanding Class "A" subordinate voting shares.

For the quarter and 39-week periods ended November 26, 2016, the Corporation repurchased under its normal course issuer bid 1,215,704 Class "A" subordinate voting shares at the average price of $19.91 per share for a total consideration of $24.2 million including related costs. An amount of $18.2 million representing the excess of the purchase price over the carrying value of the repurchased shares was included in retained earnings for the 39-week period ended November 26, 2016. The shares repurchased during the 39-week period ended November 26, 2016 were canceled during that period, except for 114,191 shares that were canceled after November 26, 2016.

Dividend

The Board of the Jean Coutu Group declared a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share. This dividend will be paid on February 3, 2017, to all holders of Class "A" Subordinate Voting Shares and holders of Class "B" Shares listed in the Corporation's shareholder ledger as at January 20, 2017.

Regulatory changes

On June 10, 2016, the Quebec National Assembly adopted the proposed Bill 81 An act to reduce the cost of certain medications covered by the basic prescription drug insurance plan by allowing calls for tender allowing the Minister of Health and Social Services to issue a call for tenders to add drugs to the Drugs List as well as, in relation to drugs having been the object of such a call for tenders, for the services of a wholesaler to supply the pharmacist owners. A draft regulation to determine the conditions and applicable mechanisms to any call for tenders was published in the "Gazette officielle du Quebec" on August 24, 2016. The final version of this regulation has not been published yet. It will be in effect the 15th day following its publication.

The Bill 92 entitled "An Act to extend the powers of the Regie de l'assurance maladie du Quebec, regulate commercial practices relating to prescription drugs and protect access to voluntary termination of pregnancy services" is assented by the National Assembly of Quebec since December 7, 2016. Some of its provisions seek to constrict commercial practices of all stakeholders regarding the commercialization of medication in order to strengthen the professional independence of the pharmacist, the freedom of choice of the patient and encourage more competitive conditions on the market. Other provisions of the Bill requiring detailed billing for medication will come into force on September 15, 2017.

Strategies and outlook

With its operations and financial flexibility, the Corporation is very well positioned to capitalize on the growth in the drugstore retail industry. Demographic trends are expected to contribute to the growth in prescription drugs consumption and to the increased use of pharmaceuticals as the primary intervention in individual healthcare. Management believes that these trends will continue and that the Corporation will maintain its growth in revenues through differentiation and quality of offering and service levels to its network of franchised stores, with a focus on its real estate program and operating efficiency. The growth in the number of generic drugs prescriptions, with lower selling prices than the branded name drugs, would however have a deflationary impact on retail sales in pharmacy. The regulation amending the benefits authorized for pharmacists increased the maximum professional allowances from 15% to 25% for a period of 6 months since April 28, 2016 and to 30% for the following 3 months. After this period, no limit will apply for a period of 2 years and 3 months. Those increases in professional allowances as well as additional generic drugs price decreases will reduce the profitability of the subsidiary Pro Doc.

Conference call

Financial analysts and investors are invited to attend the conference call on the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 financial results to be held on January 6 5, 2017, at 9:00 AM (ET). The call-in number is 514-392-1478 or toll free at 1-866-225-0198. Media and other interested individuals are invited to listen to the live or deferred broadcast on The Jean Coutu Group corporate website at www.jeancoutu.com. A full replay will also be available by dialing 514-861-2272 or toll free at 1-800-408-3053 until February 5, 2017. The access code is 2554453 followed by pound sign (#).

Supporting documentation (Management's discussion and analysis and investor presentation) is available at www.jeancoutu.com using the investors' link. Readers may also access additional information and filings related to the Corporation using the following link to the www.sedar.com website.

About The Jean Coutu Group

The Jean Coutu Group is one of the most trusted names in Canadian pharmacy retailing. The Corporation operates a network of 418 franchised stores in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario under the banners of PJC Jean Coutu, PJC Clinique, PJC Sante and PJC Sante Beaute, which employs over 20,000 people. Furthermore, the Jean Coutu Group owns Pro Doc Ltd ("Pro Doc"), a Quebec-based subsidiary and manufacturer of generic drugs.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, and which are based on the Corporation's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions that were made by the Corporation in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends. All statements that address expectations or projections about the future, including statements about the Corporation's strategy for growth, costs, operating or financial results, are forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release, including statements regarding the prospects of the Corporation's industry and the Corporation's prospects, plans, financial position and business strategy may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Canadian securities legislation and regulations. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "project", "could", "should", "would", "anticipate", "plan", "foresee", "believe" or "continue" or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology. Although the Corporation believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. These statements do not reflect the potential impact of any nonrecurring items or of any mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, asset write-downs or other transactions or charges that may be announced or that may occur after the date hereof.

While the list below of cautionary statements is not exhaustive, some important factors that could affect the Corporation's future operating results, financial position and cash flows and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements are changes in the legislation or the regulatory environment as it relates to the sale of prescription drugs and the pharmacy exercise, the success of the Corporation's business model, changes in laws and regulations, or in their interpretations, changes to tax regulations and accounting pronouncements, the cyclical and seasonal variations in the industry in which the Corporation operates, the intensity of competitive activity in the industry in which the Corporation operates, the supplier and brand reputations, the Corporation's ability to attract and retain pharmacists, labour disruptions, including possibly strikes and labour protests, the accuracy of management's assumptions and other factors that are beyond the Corporation's control. These and other factors could cause the Corporation's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any estimates or projections of future performance or results expressed or implied in those forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of assisting in understanding the Corporation's financial position and results of operation and to present information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. Investors and others are thus cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes and they should not place undue reliance on them. For more information on the risks, uncertainties and assumptions that would cause the Corporation's actual results to differ from current expectations, please also refer to the Corporation's public filings available at www.sedar.com and www.jeancoutu.com.Further details and descriptions of these and other factors are disclosed in the Corporation's Annual Information Form under "Risk Factors" and also in the "Critical accounting estimates", "Risks and uncertainties" and "Strategies and outlook" sections of the Corporation's annual management's discussion and analysis for fiscal year ended February 27, 2016. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the Corporation's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change after such date. The Corporation expressly disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by the applicable securities laws.

THE JEAN COUTU GROUP (PJC) INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of income 13 weeks 39 weeks For the periods ended November 26, 2016 and November 28, 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted) $ $ $ $ Sales 693.3 678.2 1,978.8 1,938.5 Other revenues 70.4 71.0 209.7 209.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 763.7 749.2 2,188.5 2,148.2 Operating expenses Cost of sales 605.3 587.7 1,729.0 1,682.5 General and operating expenses 78.5 74.5 224.1 214.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operating income before depreciation and amortization 79.9 87.0 235.4 251.7 Depreciation and amortization 10.3 8.2 30.4 23.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operating income 69.6 78.8 205.0 228.0 Financing revenus (0.5) (0.4) (1.5) (1.1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Profit before income taxes 70.1 79.2 206.5 229.1 Income taxes 18.9 21.4 54.8 66.9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net profit 51.2 57.8 151.7 162.2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic and diluted profit per share, in dollars 0.28 0.31 0.82 0.87 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Condensed consolidated statements of comprehensive income 13 weeks 39 weeks For the periods ended November 26, 2016 and November 28, 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars) $ $ $ $ Net profit 51.2 57.8 151.7 162.2 Other comprehensive income Items that will be reclassified subsequently to net profit: Net change in cash flow hedge: Gain (loss) for the period 0.1 0.4 (0.8) 1.3 Reclassification of loss (gain) to non-financial assets (0.1) (0.2) - (0.3) Income taxes (recovery) - (0.1) 0.2 (0.2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 0.1 (0.6) 0.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total comprehensive income 51.2 57.9 151.1 163.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE JEAN COUTU GROUP (PJC) INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of changes in equity

For the periods ended November 26, 2016 and November 28, 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars) Capital Treasury Contributed Hedging Retained Total stock stock surplus reserve earnings equity ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- $ $ $ $ $ $ Balance at February 27, 2016 405.2 (2.2) 58.7 0.6 658.0 1,120.3 Net profit - - - - 151.7 151.7 Other comprehensive income - - - (0.6) - (0.6) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total comprehensive income - - - (0.6) 151.7 151.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Redemption of capital stock (6.0) - - - (18.2) (24.2) Dividends - - - - (66.5) (66.5) Share-based compensation cost - - 0.6 - - 0.6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Balance at November 26, 2016 399.2 (2.2) 59.3 - 725.0 1,181.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Balance at February 28, 2015 416.0 (2.8) 58.1 - 556.1 1,027.4 Net profit - - - - 162.2 162.2 Other comprehensive income - - - 0.8 - 0.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total comprehensive income - - - 0.8 162.2 163.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dividends - - - - (61.7) (61.7) Share-based compensation cost - - 0.7 - - 0.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Balance at November 28, 2015 416.0 (2.8) 58.8 0.8 656.6 1,129.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE JEAN COUTU GROUP (PJC) INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of financial position

As at As at November 26, February 27, 2016 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars) $ $ Current assets Cash and temporary investment 152.4 100.3 Trade and other receivables 231.0 194.5 Inventories 265.6 224.0 Prepaid expenses 8.0 8.4 Income taxes receivable - 8.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 657.0 536.0 Non-current assets Long-term receivables from franchisees 29.2 27.5 Investment in associates and joint ventures 30.2 29.6 Property and equipment 492.8 510.7 Investment property 17.2 20.9 Intangible assets 204.6 203.0 Goodwill 36.0 36.0 Deferred tax 0.1 0.1 Other long-term assets 16.4 15.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total assets 1,483.5 1,379.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Current liabilities Trade and other payables 267.5 234.8 Income taxes payable 6.5 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 274.0 234.8 Non-current liabilities Deferred tax 9.0 6.6 Other long-term liabilities 19.2 17.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total liabilities 302.2 259.2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equity 1,181.3 1,120.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total liabilities and equity 1,483.5 1,379.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE JEAN COUTU GROUP (PJC) INC.

Condensed consolidated statements of cash flows 13 weeks 39 weeks For the periods ended November 26, 2016 and 2016 2015 2016 2015 November 28, 2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (unaudited, in millions of Canadian dollars) $ $ $ $ Operating activities Net profit 51.2 57.8 151.7 162.2 Adjustments: Depreciation and amortization 10.3 8.2 30.4 23.7 Interest income (0.6) (0.3) (1.5) (1.2) Income taxes 18.9 21.4 54.8 66.9 Gain on disposal of property and equipment (0.6) - (6.8) - and investment property Others 0.6 1.5 3.1 3.6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 79.8 88.6 231.7 255.2 Net change in non-cash asset and liability items (17.9) 6.8 (38.9) (3.1) Interest received 0.6 0.3 1.5 1.2 Income taxes paid (11.5) (17.0) (36.9) (101.1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash flow related to operating activities 51.0 78.7 157.4 152.2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investing activities Investments in associates and joint ventures - - (0.8) - Purchase of property and equipment (2.9) (28.3) (16.1) (82.6) Proceeds from disposal of property and equipment 0.2 0.1 14.2 0.2 Purchase of property and equipment - (0.2) - (0.2) Proceeds from disposal of investment property 3.0 - 3.3 - Net change in long-term receivables from (2.4) 1.3 (3.9) (2.8) franchisees Purchase of intangible assets (1.0) (2.6) (11.8) (5.7) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash flow related to investing activities (3.1) (29.7) (15.1) (91.1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Financing activities Financing fees (0.1) (0.1) (0.1) (0.1) Redemption of capital stock (21.9) - (22.7) - Dividends paid (22.1) (20.6) (66.5) (61.7) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash flow related to financing activities (44.1) (20.7) (89.3) (61.8) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Effect of foreign exchange rate changes on cash and - 0.6 (0.9) 0.9 cash equivalents ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net change in cash and cash equivalents 3.8 28.9 52.1 0.2 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 148.6 93.2 100.3 121.9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash and cash equivalents, end of period 152.4 122.1 152.4 122.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash and cash equivalents consist of: Cash 152.4 95.6 Temporary investment - 26.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 152.4 122.1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contacts:

Source:

The Jean Coutu Group (PJC) Inc.

Andre Belzile

Senior Vice-President, Finance and Corporate Affairs

(450) 646-9760



Information:

Helene Bisson

Vice-President, Communications

(450) 646-9611, Ext. 1165




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.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. ("DIRTT" or the "Company") (TSX: DRT), a leading technology-enabled designer, manufacturer and installer of fully customized, prefabricated interiors, today announced that it has obtained approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") to commence a normal course issuer bid (the "NCIB") with respect to its common shares (the "Common Shares"). The NCIB will commence on January 10, 2017 and will terminate on the earlier of January 9, 2018, the date on which the Company has purchased the maximum number of Common Shares permitted under the NCIB or date on which the NCIB is terminated.

Under the NCIB, the Company may, over a 12-month period commencing on January 10, 2017, purchase in the normal course through the facilities of the TSX up to 7,141,021 Common Shares, such amount representing 10% of the public float of the Common Shares and approximately 8% of the 84,878,891 issued and outstanding Common Shares. Furthermore, subject to certain exemptions for block purchases, the maximum number of Common Shares that the Company may acquire on any one trading day is 37,139 Common Shares, such amount representing 25% of the average daily trading volume of the Common Shares of 148,556 for the six calendar months prior to the start of the NCIB. All Common Shares purchased by the Company under the NCIB will be cancelled.

DIRTT believes that, from time to time, the market price of the Common Shares may not fully reflect the underlying value of the Common Shares and that at such time the purchase of the Common Shares represents attractive investment value and would be in the best interests of DIRTT and its shareholders.

The Company has engaged National Bank Financial Ltd. to act as broker and to administer the NCIB.

About DIRTT

DIRTT Environmental Solutions (Doing it Right This Time) uses its proprietary 3D software to design, manufacture and install fully customized prefabricated interiors. The Company's customers in the corporate, government, education and healthcare sectors benefit from DIRTT's precise design and costing; rapid lead times with the highest levels of customization and flexibility; and faster, cleaner construction.

DIRTT's manufacturing facilities are in Phoenix, Savannah, Kelowna and Calgary. DIRTT's team supports nearly 100 Distribution Partners throughout North America, the Middle East and Asia. DIRTT trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "DRT." For more information visit www.dirtt.net.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward looking statements" and certain "forward looking information" as defined under applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "plans" or similar terminology. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's expectations or intentions regarding potential future purchases of Common Shares. Forward-looking statements are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions that while believed by management to be reasonable, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors identified in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. Such forward-looking information represents management's best judgment based on information currently available. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual future results may vary materially. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.

Contacts:

Scott Jenkins

President

sjenkins@dirtt.net

403.723.5009



Derek Payne

CFO

dpayne@dirtt.net

403.313.9879



Investor Relations

ir@dirtt.net




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A report released by the Labor Department on Friday showed that employment in the U.S. rose by less than anticipated in the month of December. The Labor Department said non-farm payroll employment climbed by 156,000 jobs in December, while economists had expected an increase of about 175,000 jobs. While the increase in employment in November was upwardly revised to 204,000, the increase in employment in October was downwardly revised to 135,000, reflecting a net addition of 19,000 jobs. The report also said the unemployment rate inched up to 4.7 percent in December from 4.6 percent in November, matching economist estimates. Additionally, the Labor Department said the annual rate of growth in average hourly employee earnings accelerated to 2.9 percent from 2.5 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- Are you an aspiring writer who wants to see if you have what it takes to be a published author?

If so, here's your opportunity to see your story published in Canada's largest newspaper and to study with some of the top creative writing teachers in the country.

Starting Saturday, January 7, writers and aspiring authors who live in Ontario can enter the Toronto Star 2017 Short Story Contest, the biggest contest of its kind in Canada and one of the largest in North America. The annual contest, which attracts approximately 2,000 entries each year, is co-sponsored by the Toronto Public Library and the Humber School for Writers.

All submissions must be received by 5 p.m., Tuesday, February 28, 2017.

The first-place winner in the contest, which now is in its 39th year, will receive $5,000, plus the tuition fee for the 30-week creative writing correspondence program at the Humber School for Writers, which has an approximate value of $3,000.

In addition, the second-place winner will receive a cash prize of $2,000 and the third-place winner will get $1,000.

The contest is open to all Ontario residents 16 years of age or older. Entrants can write on any topic they want. Stories must be original, previously unpublished and no longer than 2,500 words. Entries are limited to one per person. There is no fee to enter the contest.

The Toronto Public Library has been a partner with the Star in presenting the contest for the last eight years. This is the sixth straight year that the Humber School for Writers has also been a partner in the contest.

"The Toronto Star Short Story Contest is an exciting venture for all of Ontario, allowing us a glimpse of the wide-ranging talent we have in Toronto and all over Ontario," said Vickery Bowles, City Librarian of the Toronto Public Library.

A Humber School for Writers' panel will read all of the entries and narrow the submissions to a short list of 25-30 stories. The winners will be selected from the short list by a panel of distinguished judges, including Bowles, award-winning Toronto short story author Pasha Malla, Toronto Star books editor Deborah Dundas and theatre critic and author Richard Ouzounian.

Winners will be announced in April and their stories will be published in full in the Toronto Star. For complete contest rules, please visit www.thestar.com/shortstory

About the Toronto Star:

The Toronto Star, founded in 1892, is read by approximately 3.0 million readers a week in print, online (thestar.com) and on Toronto Star Touch, one of the news industry's most-innovative tablet apps. The Toronto Star is a division of Star Media Group, which includes Toronto.com, Torstar Syndication Services and the Kit, a fashion and beauty publication. Star Media Group also includes the Metro free daily newspapers in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Halifax, and the jointly-owned Chinese language newspaper Sing Tao. Star Media Group is a division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, which is a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation.

About Toronto Public Library:

Toronto Public Library is one of the world's busiest urban public library systems. Every year, 19 million people visit our branches in neighbourhoods across the city and borrow 32 million items. To learn more about Toronto Public Library, visit our website at torontopubliclibrary.ca or call Answerline at 416-393-7131. To get the most current updates on what's happening at the library, follow us on Twitter @torontolibrary.

Contacts:

Toronto Star

Bob Hepburn

Director, Community Relations and Communications

(416) 869-4947

bhepburn@thestar.ca



Toronto Public Library

Gregory McCormick

Manager, Cultural and Special Event Programming

(416) 393-7098

GMcCormick@torontopubliclibrary.ca




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- Eguana Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EGT)(OTCQB: EGTYF), one of the technology leaders in power conversion and control systems for distributed energy storage, is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Greg Pollard, effective January 1, 2017, as Interim Chief Financial Officer.

Mr. Pollard, a Chartered Accountant, has in excess of 30 years' experience in the energy and accounting sectors, including over 20 years with major international accounting firms, including most recently Ernst & Young LLP in both Houston, Texas and Calgary. Following Mr. Pollard's tenure with Ernst & Young in 2012, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Connacher Oil and Gas Limited until 2015, as well as the Audit Chair and a Board Member of Alberta's Balancing Pool.

"With our expanding partner base and key activities in international markets Eguana is executing the transition to becoming a global player in the energy storage sector" commented Justin Holland, CEO of Eguana. "Greg brings a wealth of experience to the senior team and in addition to his leadership qualities has expertise in regulatory disclosure and corporate governance which will help guide Eguana as we execute our 2017 strategic plan."

As part of Mr. Pollard's compensation, will be issued 200,000 options per quarter to a maximum of four quarters pursuant to the Company's Stock Option Plan at an exercise price equal to the closing price of the common shares on the TSX-V on the day immediately preceding the last trading day of each quarter.

About Eguana Technologies Inc.

Eguana Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EGT)(OTCQB: EGTYF) designs and manufactures high performance power controls for residential and commercial energy storage systems. Eguana has more than 15 years' experience delivering grid edge power electronics for fuel cell, photovoltaic and battery applications and delivers proven, durable, high quality solutions from its high capacity manufacturing facilities in Europe and North America.

With thousands of its proprietary energy storage inverters deployed in the European and North American markets, Eguana is one of the leading suppliers of power controls for solar self-consumption, grid services and demand charge applications at the grid edge.

To learn more, visit www.EguanaTech.com or follow us on Twitter @EguanaTech.

Forward Looking Information

Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and involves a number of risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements, or future events or developments, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date hereof. Readers are also directed to the Risk Factors section of the Company's current Annual Information Form which may be found on its website or at sedar.com The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained herein to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

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:

Eguana Technologies Inc.

Justin Holland

CEO

+1.416.728.7635

Justin.Holland@EguanaTech.com



Eguana Technologies Inc.

Greg Pollard

(Interim) CFO

+1.403.508.7177

Greg.Pollard@EguanaTech.com

www.EguanaTech.com




Have you ever tried to tell your boss what to do?

The chain of command in the workplace also applies to the levels of government, as Nevada voters recently learned when the gun background check initiative did not take effect Jan. 1 as planned.

In voting for the bill, Nevadans were essentially telling the federal government what to do: to handle the extra background checks for us. But the FBI informed the Nevada Department of Public Safety in mid-December that it would not, and requested the state handle it.

The FBI letter stated that the recent passage of the Nevada legislation regarding background checks for private sales cannot dictate how federal resources are applied, and that the states more comprehensive database should be used.

Attorney General Adam Laxalt says thats not possible, based on the way the law is written. Democratic lawmakers already are planning a fix in the Legislature, which meets a month from now.

But the law faces another challenge as well. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a private gun seller in Clark County filed a lawsuit last week claiming the law improperly creates a taxable event for gun sellers in violation of the state Constitution. It also says that would violate the sellers right to due process in the event they did not have the checks conducted.

Pretty complicated stuff, considering that eight states already have successfully enacted comprehensive gun background checks.

So, why did the ballot initiative direct the feds instead of the state to do the checks? Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius believes it was all about the money.

The framers of the background check initiative knew that if they required gun dealers to use the state database, they would also have to include a fee to cover the costs to the state.  By mandating that gun dealers contact the FBI, however, the initiative didnt have to impose a new fee and was thus potentially more palatable to voters, he stated in a recent column.

The gun initiative was already pretty unpalatable to Nevada voters, at least those outside of Clark County who regularly buy and sell guns for purposes other than committing crimes. The measure passed by less than a percentage point, and failed in all counties outside of Clark.

We dont know whether lawmakers can fix the citizen-imposed gun law, or whether Gov. Brian Sandoval would veto any legislation as he did four years ago. What we do know is that Laxalt will continue to take whatever steps he can to prevent the law from being implemented. Both state leaders see universal gun background checks as an erosion of Nevadans Second Amendment rights.

Proponents of the law are correct when they say that guns are dangerous. Even in the absence of malice they tend to kill innocent people when handled carelessly. But the only thing worse than owning a gun is having the government declare you are not allowed to have one.

The gun background check law does not go that far, of course, it is merely a step in that direction. Opponents who fear the government is trying to take their guns away were surprised to learn that the FBI doesnt want to track them in Nevada.

Nevadans For Background Checks apparently was surprised as well. The group sent Laxalt a letter demanding he clear the way for their flawed initiative.

In response, AG spokeswoman Monica Moazez stated It is clear that the proponents of the Background Check Act failed to properly draft the central feature of the Act, namely who is responsible for performing background checks.

We agree. Either FBI officials need to let Nevada voters boss them around, or the group needs to start over from square one.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A federal judge has ruled that Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios can go to jury to stop production of Axanar, a crowdfunded Star Trek fan movie.



The judge said that a jury will decide the question of 'subjective substantial similarity' of Axanar to older Star Trek films and television shows.



U.S. District Court Judge Gary Klausner ruled that Axanar has 'objective substantially similar to the Star Trek Copyrighted Works.' The judge stopped short of declaring the Star Trek holders the victors in the lawsuit and said that the jury can decide whether the film violates copyright infringement.



Klausner noted that the 'defendants expressly set out to create an authentic and independent Star Trek film that stayed true to Star Trek canon down to excruciating details.'



Paramount and CBS own the copyrights to Star Trek motion pictures and television series respectively and they saw Axanar as a violation of their intellectual property.



The companies' lawsuit was filed almost a year ago, after Alec Peters' Axanar Productions aimed to raise funds on Kickstarter for a prequel to the 1960s Gene Roddenberry television series.



Axanar is a 21-minute YouTube video and a proposed feature-length version that successfully raised more than a million dollars in crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The forthcoming feature film was touted as a professional-quality Star Trek fan film.



Axanar is the story of Garth of Izar, an obscure character and the legendary Starfleet captain who appeared in a 1969 episode. The film tells the story of Garth and his crew during the Four Years War, the war between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets.



Judge Klausner ruled that the character of Garth as well as the characteristics of Klingons and Vulcans may be entitled to copyright protection.



In addition, the plaintiffs submitted evidence showing costumes as well as settings such as planets from the Star Trek copyrighted works to be similar to those used by the defendants in Axanar.



The judge also noted that while Axanar argued that the film is not commercial as they would be distributed for free, the defendants stood to gain at least indirect commercial benefit from the viewership boost for the film.



Klausner said that a jury will best answer whether Axanar Productions' actions were the result of reckless disregard for, or willful blindness, to the copyright holders' rights.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
DUBLIN, Jan 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Man-Portable Rocket Launcher Market 2017-2021" report to their offering.

The report forecasts the global man-portable rocket launcher market to grow at a CAGR of 5.03% during the period 2017-2021.



The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global man-portable rocket launcher market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers man-portable rocket launchers, including man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) that find applications in both the military and homeland security sectors for various operations such as air, ground, and naval strikes.

One trend in the market is emergence of multi-featured systems. The lightweight, man-portable recoilless rifle, M3 Carl Gustaf, developed by Saab is a cross between an artillery gun and a Bazooka. The system has its propellant at the base of the projectile like a rocket, which stops it from burning beyond the barrel, and therefore, the propulsion system in the rocket or missile helps in the faster forward movement of the missile. The system has been made recoilless by enabling the propellant gas to be directed backward. M3 Carl Gustaf is a tube-like artillery that follows the same model. In addition, its tube-like structure also allows the elimination of most of the heavy and bulky recoiling mechanisms in traditional rocket launchers. These recoilless weapon systems are often referred to as rifles because of their spiral rifling in the barrel, which stabilizes the projectile.



According to the report, one driver in the market is growing usage by law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement agencies across countries have started using portable rocket launchers to fight internal extremism and terrorism and to maintain the overall law and order situation within the country. Since 1990, the US police department has been receiving over $4.3 billion worth equipment like machine guns, rocket launchers or grenades, and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles. Further, the excess military equipment available to army troops is handed over to the state police.

Key vendors:



General Dynamics

Lockheed Martin

Raytheon

Saab

Thales



Key Topics Covered:



Part 01: Executive summary



Part 02: Scope of the report



Part 03: Market research methodology



Part 04: Introduction



Part 05: Market landscape



Part 06: Market segmentation by application



Part 07: Geographical segmentation



Part 08: Market drivers



Part 09: Impact of drivers



Part 10: Market challenges



Part 11: Impact of drivers and challenges



Part 12: Market trends



Part 13: Vendor landscape



Part 14: Appendix



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nj854w/global

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716
WINNIPEG, MB--(Marketwired - January 06, 2017) - 3D Signatures Inc. (TSX VENTURE: DXD) (OTCQB: TDSGF) (FRANKFURT: 3D0) (the "Company" or "3DS") is pleased to announce the appointment of Joost van der Mark as its Chief Business Officer ("CBO"), effective January 6, 2017, subject to approval of the TSXV. Mr. van der Mark brings more than two decades of executive experience to 3DS, having worked with several major international healthcare companies as well as earlier stage biotechnology and healthcare firms.

Mr. van der Mark has an accomplished history of strategic operations, sales and marketing, clinical research, market access, business development and general management success in the global healthcare industry. He joins 3DS from BioSyent Inc., where he served as Vice President of Corporate Development with responsibility for business development and market access initiatives. Prior to joining BioSyent, Mr. van der Mark co-founded Orphan Canada, which subsequently sold its assets to Knight Therapeutics in 2014. In a career spanning more than two decades, he has also held progressive positions at Bayer, Sanofi and Nycomed. Mr. van der Mark has a M.Sc. in Physiology/Pharmacology from Western University and a MBA from York University (Schulich).

"We are very pleased to have recruited an executive of Joost's caliber to this key position with the Company," said 3DS' CEO, Jason Flowerday. "Joost is a seasoned leader with a strong track record of delivering strategic guidance and profitable growth to both major international pharmaceutical companies and emerging healthcare companies. I have tremendous confidence in his ability to help us establish valuable pharma and lab partnerships, determine our business development priorities and sharpen our overall execution."

In connection with Mr. van der Mark's appointment as CBO and pursuant 3DS' stock option plan, the Board of Directors of the Company granted Mr. van der Mark 220,000 stock options (the "Options"), exercisable at $0.75, the closing price of the Company's shares on the TSX Venture Exchange on January 5, 2017. The Options will vest in tranches from July 7, 2017 to July 7, 2019 and once vested are exercisable for ten years from the date of grant.

About 3DS

3DS (TSX VENTURE: DXD) (OTCQB: TDSGF) (FRANKFURT: 3D0) is a personalized medicine company with a proprietary software platform based on the three-dimensional analysis of chromosomal signatures. The technology is well developed and supported by 16 clinical studies on over 1,500 patients on 13 different cancers and Alzheimer's disease. Depending on the desired application, the technology can measure the stage of disease, rate of progression of disease, drug efficacy, and drug toxicity. The technology is designed to predict the course of disease and to personalize treatment for the individual patient. For more information, visit the Company's website at http://www.3dsignatures.com.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to assumptions, risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from the historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by the use of forwarding looking wording such as "will", "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. In particular, the Company's statements, explicit or implied, that it expects to benefit greatly from its association with the individuals named in this news release is forward-looking information. Although 3DS believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Risk factors and assumptions that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by forward-looking information include, among other things: the ability to obtain all required approvals; the state of the capital markets; market demand; technological changes that could impact the Company's existing products or the Company's ability to develop and commercialize future products; competition; existing governmental legislation and regulations and changes in, or the failure to comply with, governmental legislation and regulations; the ability to manage operating expenses, which may adversely affect the Company's financial condition; the Company's ability to successfully maintain and enforce its intellectual property rights and defend third-party claims of infringement of their intellectual property rights; adverse results or unexpected delays in clinical trials; changes in legal, general economic and business conditions; and changes in the regulatory regime. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information, please contact:



Stephen Kilmer

Investor Relations

647-872-4849

stephen@kilmerlucas.com



Or



Hugh Rogers

VP Corporate Finance

204-582-0922

investors@3dsignatures.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A Cuban company has signed agreement with its US counterpart for the first commercial exports in half a century from the Communist nation to the United States. Under a deal signed by Isabel O'Reilly, director of CubaExport, and Scott Gilbert, President of Coabana Trading LLC, in Havana Thursday, Marabu charcoal will be sold at $420 per ton, Cuba's state newspaper Granma reported. This is the highest price achieved by CubaExport in over 10 years marketing this product, which normally sells on the international market for between $340 and $380. 'This will be the first contract, but we hope to continue our relations for many years to come and not just with vegetable charcoal, but other exportable products such as honey and coffee,' O'Reilly was quoted as saying. On January 18, two days before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, the first 40 ton shipment will arrive in the U.S. from Cuba, representing a historic occasion the first export of Cuban goods to the U.S. in five decades. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A series of precision U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives this week in northwestern Syria's Idlib province killed more than 20 militants and destroyed eight vehicles and nine structures, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Thursday. On January 3, U.S. forces struck a large al-Qaida headquarters near Sarmada, which was used by the terrorist fighter network as a gathering place, and their leaders directed terrorist operations out of this location. We are confident these strikes will degrade al-Qaida's ability to direct operations in Syria, Cook said. 'Al-Qaida remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States and the West. We will continue to take action to deny any terrorist safe haven in Syria. We will not allow al-Qaida to grow its capacity to attack the United States or our allies and friends around the world,' he told reporters. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Thursday, the United States and Iraq signed a loan guarantee agreement that, once entered into force, will enable Iraq to access up to $1 billion in low-cost financing from international capital markets. The loan guarantee was pledged by President Obama at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit in May 2016 to support Iraq in the fight against ISIL, the U.S. Department of State said. In addition to facilitating access to essential financing as Iraq addresses multiple humanitarian crises, the guarantee agreement bolsters important economic and institutional reforms aimed at consolidating a foundation for stability and growth. This loan guarantee also reinforces Iraq's work with other partners, including the International Monetary Fund, to implement its economic reform agenda. This agreement is an important step in the process for Iraq to obtain greater access to international capital markets. After specific legal requirements and policy considerations have been concluded, Iraq will be able to benefit from this U.S. sovereign loan guarantee, according to the State Department. 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) -- 01/06/17 -- First Mining Finance Corp. ("First Mining" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: FF)(OTCQX: FFMGF)(FRANKFURT: FMG) announces that today it filed an amended independent Technical Report for its Pitt Gold Project which has been prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). The report is entitled "NI 43-101 Technical Report and Review of the Preliminary Resource Estimate for the Pitt Gold Project, Duparquet Township, Abitibi Region, Quebec, Canada".

The Technical Report for the Company's Pitt Gold Project covers veins 1, 2, and 3, with a combined Inferred mineral resource of 1,076,000 tonnes grading 7.42 g/t Au containing 257,000 ounces Au. A cut-off grade of 3.0 g/t Au over a minimum horizontal width of 1.5 metres was used to calculate the Inferred resources set out in the Technical Report which has an effective date of December 15, 2016 and was prepared by Micon International Limited ("Micon").

The amended technical report replaces the previous technical report for the Pitt Gold Project filed by First Mining on September 7, 2016. The amended technical report reclassifies the Indicated resources set out in the original report and concludes that all of the resources for the project are in the Inferred category. The change in the classification of the resource that was previously reported as Indicated is due to certain changes in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves that have been implemented since 2011.

A copy of the amended Technical Report can be accessed under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, or on the Company's website at www.firstminingfinance.com.

Dr. Chris Osterman, P.Geo. CEO of First Mining, is a "qualified person" as defined by NI 43-101 and he has reviewed and accepts responsibility for the technical information contained within this news release. Mr. William J. Lewis, P.Geo, Senior Geologist and Mr. Alan J. San Martin, MAusIMM, of Micon, the authors of the Technical Report, have also reviewed the technical information contained within this news release as independent "qualified persons" within the meaning of NI 43-101.

ABOUT FIRST MINING FINANCE CORP.

First Mining is a mineral property holding company whose principal business activity is to acquire high quality mineral assets with a focus in the Americas. The Company currently holds a portfolio of 25 mineral assets in Canada, Mexico and the United States with a focus on gold. Ultimately, the goal is to continue to increase its portfolio of mineral assets through acquisitions that are expected to be comprised of gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc and nickel.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF FIRST MINING FINANCE CORP.

Keith Neumeyer, Chairman

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:

Patrick Donnelly

President

604-639-8854



Derek Iwanaka

Vice President

Investor Relations

604-639-8824

info@firstminingfinance.com

www.firstminingfinance.com




BOUCHERVILLE, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- FinishMaster, Inc., ("FinishMaster") a subsidiary of Uni-Select Inc. ("Uni-Select")(TSX: UNS), announced today it has opened its first location, a greenfield branch, in Portland, Oregon. The Portland opening is the most recent development in FinishMaster's plan for strategic expansion in the Northwest. It follows the opening of the first FinishMaster branch in Seattle, Washington in September 2016.

From process analysis and inventory management to technical resources and product support, the local FinishMaster team will work diligently to establish strong relationships with customers in the Portland metro area and surrounding cities and counties. It is well equipped to provide all the tools necessary to help customers drive growth in their business.

With the addition of Oregon, FinishMaster is now located in 32 states and has committed to continuing to grow its national footprint organically and through select acquisitions.

"It's an exciting time to be part of FinishMaster. We continuously challenge ourselves to grow and find areas where we can do more. Our ability to acquire select companies and open greenfield locations, as needed, positions us as a leader in service and support in our market," said President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Arndt. "Opening a greenfield branch in Portland is an opportunity to elevate the standard in customer experience in a new market, and we look forward to building long-term partnerships with new customers."

"The opening of a new location in the Northwest is a great kick-off to 2017 and strengthens the foundation for continued growth in a key market. We are committed to continually build our customer coverage across the Northwest," added Henry Buckley, President and Chief Executive Officer of Uni-Select.

ABOUT UNI-SELECT

Uni-Select is a leader in the distribution of automotive refinish and industrial paint and related products in Canada and the United States, as well as in the automotive aftermarket parts business in Canada. In Canada, Uni-Select supports over 3,900 shops and stores through a growing national network of more than 1,150 independent customers, many of which operating under Uni-Select store banner programs, and corporate stores.

FinishMaster, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uni-Select, is the leading national independent distributor of automotive paints, coatings and related accessories in the United States. It operates a national network of automotive refinish corporate stores under the FinishMaster banner and supports more than 6,000 collision repair centre customers.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

The information provided in this press release may include some forward-looking information, which could include certain risks and uncertainties, which may cause the final results to be significantly different from those listed or implied within this news release. For additional information with respect to risks and uncertainties, refer to the Annual Report filed by Uni-Select with the Canadian securities commissions. The forward-looking information contained herein is made as of the date of this press release, and Uni-Select does not undertake to publicly update such forward-looking information to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise, unless required by applicable securities laws.

Contacts:

Uni-Select Inc.

Eric Bussieres

Chief Financial Officer

450 641-6958

investorrelations@uniselect.com




LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - January 06, 2017) - Today, ORA was launched internationally at CES 2017, the largest consumer technology show in the world. ORA is a personal health and safety alert device that's disguised in jewelry and sportswear. ORA works with a smartphone, keeping the wearer safe and connected wherever there is cell phone coverage, unlike most other medical alert devices that limit people to their home. The brains behind the device, the ORA Link, clip in and out of stylish designs easily, allowing for versatility to match any style.

ORA is supported by Dr. Jenny Basran, Head Geriatric Medicine, Saskatchewan "The main reason older adults don't wear medical alert devices is because they are unattractive and make them feel old."

"Although we expected older adults to be interested in ORA as an alternative to medical alert devices, we are pleased to see much broader application. Individuals with medical challenges such as dizziness, MS, Parkinson's, and stroke survivors have embraced ORA. Regardless of age or circumstance, no one should have to wear something that looks like a garage door opener," says Serese Selanders, Founder and CEO.

ORA has already proven itself. ORA wearer, Gladys Zirk nearly lost her life due to an unexpected medical emergency. Fortunately her life was saved because she was wearing ORA, which alerted both her children and 911, who were able to respond. "Because of ORA I am here today," says Zirk.

Kasiel Solutions Inc., the creator of ORA, is aggressively expanding its market reach, and is accepting applications from distributors and resellers.

The app will be available for free on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

For more information on ORA please visit www.oraforyou.com, Facebook @oraforyou or Twitter @oraforyou

Video Available:

Gladys Zirk's story: https://youtu.be/rSkqdaYs6SY

ORA Elevator Pitch: https://youtu.be/thk_5nm6328

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/1/3/11G126362/Images/Banner-b5bacb6d4f88bf3983fce772ac243183.jpg

For interviews, questions or comments, please contact:

Serese Selanders

Founder & CEO

306-291-0927

serese@oraforyou.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- The Honourable Judy M. Foote, Minister responsible for Canada Post, issued an interim order on May 26, 2016, to stop the distribution by Canada Post of the publication Your Ward News.

As provided under section 43 of the Canada Post Corporation Act, a person affected by that order requested that a Board of Review be appointed. The Minister of Public Services and Procurement therefore appointed an independent Board of Review, comprised of three members who have legal and academic credentials: Ms. Fareen L. Jamal, Ms. Elizabeth Forster and Mr. Peter John Loewen.

The Board will review the matter to determine if the affected persons were, either committing or aiding the commission of an offence in sending, or causing to be sent, the material at issue by means of mail. The Board will consider matters relating to the offences of defamatory libel and hate propaganda found in sections 300 and 319(2) of the Criminal Code.

Ce texte est egalement disponible en francais.

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Contacts:

Media Relations

Public Services and Procurement Canada

819-420-5501

media@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., revealed Thursday that Republican lawmakers will include a measure stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood in legislation to repeal the healthcare reform law known as Obamacare. Planned Parenthood, a provider of various women's health services, receives approximately $500 million a year in federal funding but is a frequent target of the GOP for offering abortions. The move to link defunding the organization to the repeal of Obamacare is likely to be popular among most Republicans but could complicate efforts to pass the legislation. Republicans intend to use the budget reconciliation process to pass an Obamacare repeal bill, preventing the legislation from being filibustered in the Senate. However, the decision to include the measure defunding Planned Parenthood could lead some GOP Senators to oppose the bill. Republicans currently hold a 52 to 48 majority in the Senate, but all of the Democrats are expected to oppose the bill. Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have also both opposed previous efforts to strip funding from the organization. Additionally, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ken., has expressed opposition to the underlying budget measure, because it would add $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years without ever balancing. (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.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: INF) and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: RA) (each, a "Fund," and collectively, the "Funds") today announced that their Boards of Directors declared their monthly distributions.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1167 per share, payable on January 26, 2017 to stockholders of record on January 19, 2017. The ex-distribution date is January 17, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $13.08 on January 5, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.71%.

Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1990 per share, payable on January 26, 2017 to stockholders of record on January 19, 2017. The ex-distribution date is January 17, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $22.55 on January 5, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.59%.

Shares purchased on or after the ex-distribution date will not receive the distribution discussed above. Please contact your financial advisor with any questions. Distributions may include net investment income, capital gains and/or return of capital. The distribution rate referenced above is calculated as the annualized amount of the most recent monthly distribution declared divided by the stated stock price. Any portion of the Fund's distributions that is a return of capital does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income." The tax status of distributions will be determined at the end of the taxable year.

Brookfield Investment Management Inc. (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser and represents the Public Securities platform of Brookfield Asset Management. The Firm provides global listed real assets strategies including real estate equities, infrastructure equities, real asset debt and diversified real assets. With approximately $15 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2016, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. The Firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $250 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. are managed by Brookfield Investment Management Inc. The Funds use their website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Funds are routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfield.com.

Contacts:

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc.

Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc.



Brookfield Place

250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor

New York, NY 10281-1023

(855) 777-8001

funds@brookfield.com




HOUSTON, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 01/06/17 -- Equus Total Return, Inc. (NYSE: EQS) ("Equus" or the "Company") today announced that its shareholders have authorized the Company's Board of Directors (hereinafter, the "Board") to cause the Company's withdrawal of its election to be classifed as a business development company ("BDC") under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the "1940 Act"). The authorization from the Equus shareholders, which expires on July 31, 2017, is a consequence of the Company's Plan of Reorganization announced on May 15, 2014 (sometimes also referred to herein as the "Plan").

In announcing the Plan, Equus stated its intention to implement the Plan which entailed: (i) the restructuring of the Company by way of an acquisition of, or merger with, an operating company (referred to in the Plan as a "Consolidation"), and (ii) a withdrawal of the Company's election to be classified as a BDC. Although Equus has now been authorized to withdraw and terminate the Company's BDC election under the 1940 Act, it will not submit any such withdrawal unless and until Equus has entered into a definitive agreement to effect a Consolidation -- ergo to acquire or merge with an operating company. The Company is presently evaluating suitable target companies which Equus may acquire or with which Equus or a special purpose subsidiary may merge into to accomplish a Consolidation.

"The authorization from our shareholders to withdraw our BDC election is an important step in the process of effecting a transformative change in the strategic direction of Equus," stated John Hardy, the Chief Executive Officer of Equus. "Our Management and Board will have the discretion to enter into a definitive agreement on behalf of the Company that would, if consummated, result in the transformation of Equus into an operating company, which could also unlock the potential for growth and provide greater liquidity for our shareholders."

The completion of the Plan and the restructuring of Equus into an operating company are subject to various conditions, risks, and uncertainties, among which include the following:

Although the Equus shareholders have authorized the Company's withdrawal as a BDC, they have not approved a Consolidation, the consummation of which is the final step in the Plan. Moreover, the Equus Board has not, at this time, either reviewed or approved any proposed Consolidation and the Company cannot guarantee that, given such Board approval, the Equus shareholders will in turn approve the same. Consequently, the Company cannot guarantee that it will withdraw its BDC election or that Equus will otherwise complete the Consolidation and become an operating company not subject to the 1940 Act.





Even if Equus enters into a definitive agreement that would result in a Consolidation, it may not be able to fulfill the closing conditions thereunder and, therefore, may ultimately not complete a Consolidation within the time frame authorized by the Equus shareholders to withdraw the Company's BDC election.





If Equus is able to be restructured as an operating company instead of a closed-end fund, it will continue to be subject to various investor protections afforded to operating company shareholders pursuant to Delaware corporate law, the Securities Exchange Act, and the rules of the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE"). Nevertheless, since Equus will not be regulated under the 1940 Act following a Consolidation, the Company will not be subject to a number of limitations and restrictions of the 1940 Act intended to protect shareholders, including, for example, restrictions on leverage, types and domicile of investments, and restrictions on the Company's ability to change its business. Further, even though Equus would continue to be subject to various restrictions concerning its securities and interested transactions under the Securities Exchange Act, NYSE rules, and Delaware law, it would not also be subject to more restrictive 1940 Act provisions concerning similar issues, such as share repurchases below net asset value, the issuance of Equus securities other than common stock for investments and acquisitions, the ratio of independent to interested directors on the Equus Board, related party transactions, and director and officer incentive compensation.





These risks should be considered in addition to the items identified as "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on March 30, 2016.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding possible future circumstances. These forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current expectations and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in such forward-looking statements including, in particular, the performance of the Company, including our ability to achieve our expected financial and business objectives, our ability to execute our reorganization and complete the transactions contemplated thereby, the other risks and uncertainties described herein, as well as those contained in the Company's filings with the SEC. Actual results, events, and performance may differ. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as to the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. The inclusion of any statement in this release does not constitute an admission by the Company or any other person that the events or circumstances described in such statements are material.

Contacts:



Patricia Baronowski

Pristine Advisers, LLC

(631) 756-2486




BUENA PARK, CA--(Marketwired - January 06, 2017) - Medieval Times will celebrate Martin Luther King Day with discount ticket prices that can save patrons up to $23 per ticket. Adult tickets are $38.95* and children's tickets are $27.95* on Monday, January 16, 2017, only. The entire family can enjoy a two-hour live Medieval Times tournament show, four-course feast, magnificent pure Spanish horses, and authentic sword fights and jousting at a special discount. This is a one-day special offer valid only for the 6 pm tournament show at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament in Buena Park, California.

Call 1-888-WE-JOUST (935-6878) or visit www.MedievalTimes.com for information and reservations.

*Must use or mention code MLK17 at time of purchase. May not be combined with any other discount, special offer or group rate. Not valid for prior purchases. Restrictions may apply. Upgrade packages, tax, gratuity and applicable fees are additional. Valid only at the Buena Park castle on 1/16/17.

Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament's California Castle is located at 7662 Beach Blvd. in Buena Park, CA. Medieval Times is North America's No. 1 dinner attraction and Orange County's Celebration Destination. In 2016, Medieval Times received its sixth Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence.

Contacts



Jaci Hernandez

Medieval Times Marketing Associate

714-523-1100 ext. 2220

jaci.hernandez@medievaltimes.com



or



Dennis John Gaschen, APR, Fellow PRSA

714-633-6434

dgaschen@fullerton.edu
Arcadia Healthcare Solutions, a Burlington, Mass.-based an EHR data aggregation and analytics technology company, raised $30m in funding.

Backers included the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, GE Ventures, and existing investors Peloton Equity, Zaffre Investments, and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its product development plans in the core Arcadia Analytics platform and expand population health management market activities across the country.

Led by chief executive officer Sean Carroll, Arcadia Healthcare Solutions provides a healthcare data aggregation and analytics technology platform focusing on serving ambulatory networks affiliated with large payer and provider organizations, including health plans, accountable care organizations, integrated delivery networks, and large independent physician groups, among others.

The company serves over 60 enterprise customers.

While continuing to focus on organic growth, the company has also made two acquisitions since its founding in 2002, including Concordant, an EHR support services company (in 2011) and Sage Technologies, a managed care services company (in 2015).

Arcadia also has offices in Seattle, Pittsburgh, and outside Chicago in Rockford, IL.

FinSMEs

06/01/2017
Buzzoole, a Naples, Italy-based influencer marketing platform, raised $830k in funding.

The round was led by Impulse VC with participation from R301 Capital.

The company intends to use the funds to expand in Russia, France, Spain and India, add new features and invest in technology.

Led by Fabrizio Perrone, CEO, Buzzoole is a self-service Influencer Marketing Platform that automates the entire process of identifying, connecting, engaging, delivering and measuring valuable influencer marketing campaigns.

Buzzoole allows influencers to connect social accounts, optimize their online presence, discover what topics they are influential in and be rewarded. An algorithm enables them to optimize their digital activity and get in touch with companies to test products, be rewarded with special offers and be invited to events.

The platform also allows both large industries as well as small businesses to identify the influencers in their target markets and to generate word of mouth marketing about products and services identified through trendsetters, reimbursing them with dedicated offers e.g. discounts, testing products, exclusive invites or Buzzoole credits that are convertible into gift cards.

The company, which has already partnered with over 350 brands including Unilever, Mastercard, Ferrero, Toyota, Ford, Red Bull, Samsung, Danone, and Nestle, also has offices in Rome, Milan and London.

FinSMEs

06/01/2017
Integrated Diagnostics (Indi), a Seattle, WA-based molecular diagnostic company, raised $6.1m in Series C funding.

Backers included Baird Capital and InterWest Partners.

Co-founded in October 2009 by systems-biology pioneer Dr. Lee Hood, and led by Albert A. Luderer, Ph.D., chief executive officer, and Paul Kearney, Ph.D., president and chief scientific officer, Indi is advancing Xpresys Lung 2, a molecular diagnostic blood test designed to assist physicians in identifying benign patients who present with a low to moderate risk lung nodule that is 8  30mm in diameter. These patients are typically described as having indeterminant nodules that are diagnostically challenging.

The test is performed early in the patients work-up and prior to deciding whether invasive diagnostic procedures such as bronchoscopy, needle biopsy or diagnostic surgery should be deployed. Xpresys Lung 2 requires a blood sample to be analyzed at Indis Seattle laboratory. The lab is CLIA licensed and accredited by the College of American Pathologists.

FinSMEs

06/01/2017
Rethink Robotics, a Boston, MA-based provider of smart, collaborative robots for manufacturing, raised $18m in new funding as part of its Series E financing round.

The new round included Adveq, and previous investors Bezos Expeditions, CRV, Highland Capital Partners, Sigma Partners, DFJ, Two Sigma Ventures, GE Ventures and Goldman Sachs.

The company intends to use the funds for its global expansion initiatives and new product development.

Led by Scott Eckert, president and CEO, Rethink Robotics provides robots to manufacturers around the globe  from DECO Lighting in Los Angeles to DHL in Germany to Wasion Group in China, to automate tasks. Its Baxter and Sawyer robots, powered by the Intera software platform, adapt to real-world variability, can change applications quickly and perform tasks like people do.

The Rethink product suite is available in Asia, Europe and North America.

FinSMEs

06/01/2017
Civil Guard discovers 127 kilos of cocaine on Spanish navy training ship Three sailors in custody on suspicion of smuggling drugs and trying to offload them in New York

The navy training ship Juan Sebastian Elcano, in a photo from 2007. efe

A Spanish navy training ship has involuntarily become a tool for drug traffickers. The Civil Guard has seized 127 kilos of cocaine from the Juan Sebastian Elcano, a vessel that serves as a floating symbol of the Spain brand all over the world. The haul of drugs was located in the storeroom where the sails are kept during a search carried out in Cadiz, after the ship had completed a six-month cruise that covered 18,000 nautical miles.

In July, while the boat was moored off of Pontevedra, in northwest Spain, the military police detained three sailors on orders from a military court. The three men  two Spaniards and an Ecuadorian  were accused of having sold as much as 20 kilos of cocaine to drug traffickers in New York, when the boat made a visit there between May 10 and 15. In mid-April, the Juan Sebastian Elcano made a visit to Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), where the drugs were thought to have been loaded.

In April, the Juan Sebastian Elcano made a visit to Colombia, where the drugs may have been loaded

The tip-off was passed to the Spanish authorities by the US department of Homeland Security Investigations (HIS), after the New York authorities detained the dealers the Spanish sailors had contacted. The arrested men later supplied the identities of the sailors to the police.

When the sailors were arrested, the authorities were unable to locate the drugs. Only when the vessel arrived in Cadiz could a thorough search be carried out. The storeroom where the cocaine was eventually located was only accessible to a few of the crew members  but the two Spaniards detained were among them.

Civil Guard sources say that the investigation is still open and they are not ruling out new developments. They are trying to find out whether this is the first time that the suspects had smuggled drugs  which seems unlikely, given the quantity seized  and whether they had accomplices on or off the boat. It is known that for each kilo of cocaine they transported, the sailors were paid $5,000 (around 3,800).

A number of guests boarded the ship while the drugs were on board, including senior Defense Ministry staff

The vessel has a crew of 23 officers, 22 NCOs and 139 sailors. On its recent journey from Galicia to Cadiz, a number of guests boarded the Juan Sebastian Elcano, including senior staff from the Defense Ministry. Unbeknown to them, the vessel was carrying the haul of cocaine.

This recent discovery is not the first time that drugs have been located on a Spanish navy boat: two corporals were sentenced to five years in prison in 2013, after they were found to be transporting a shipment of hashish from Ceuta to Cadiz in a patrol ship.
Allied is a kind of movie that belongs in a bygone era. Its got two big attractive stars in a World War 2 set love story with a fairly implausible plot. Its directed by Robert Zemeckis who was terrific in the 80s and early 90s but seems to have lost his way in the new millennium.

Allied in fact plays very much like a film from the 80s with huge and rich aesthetics, but fails to prove itself as a love-story, thriller worth watching on the big screen.

Brad Pitt plays Max, a Canadian Intelligence Officer who lands in Casablanca and is teamed up with the French spy Marianne (Marion Cotillard) on a mission where they go undercover as husband and wife. Theyre handed the task to eliminate a German military head honcho. Predictably, role-play turns into something more as the two fall in love as they maneuver through their mission. What happens next is the more interesting part where Max suspects Marianne may not be who he think she is and embarks on a mission of his own to uncover the truth.

The problem arises pretty early on, when the film presents a fairy tale version of Morocco. Theres zero authenticity as everything, including Maxs car and pristine streets looks squeaky clean. Were straightaway placed in a world where nothing is authentic so expecting the audience to believe in an already outlandish plot becomes a bit of a jaunt.

The whole Mr and Mrs Smith style narrative of keeping the audiences in the dark regarding the true motivations of the protagonists doesnt really work because the film never really embraces the pulpy thrills of that movie. Instead it takes itself too seriously even though the escalation of ludicrous events continues.

Theres only so much you can take from the over the top production design, the extravagant period costumes and the giant set pieces when the story by Steve Knight just refuses to rise above the cornball level. It does not help that there is absolutely no chemistry between Cotillard and Pitt whose suspect love story is supposed to keep your attention going. The supporting performances from big names like Lizzy Caplan as Maxs lesbian sister, Matthew Goode as an injured vet, and Jared Harris as the cliched commanding officer pop up and disappear from the film without making any lasting impact. The best performance is in fact given by the CGI created sandstorm which, in an unintentionally hilarious manner, depicts the sexual proclivities of Max and Marianne during a love scene.

Its befuddling that Pitt does such a massive belly flop with this film considering his terrific turns in the excellent WW2 film Fury just a year ago and Inglorious Bastards before that. There are shades of Hitchcock in the film but the twists and turns are painfully predictable for anyone who has seen half a dozen thrillers. Allied is ultimately an indulgent film that neither manages to entertain those looking for cinema of grand scale nor has the smarts to stand out in a crowd of big budget potboilers.
Growing up in the Madras of the 80s one was familiar with cinema and hence with the names Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, followed by that of Telugu megastar Chiranjeevi. Today, the Telugu film industry runs out of Hyderabad, but back in the black-and-white era up to the 80s, these films were produced out of the Chennai studios. Heroines, music directors and stories were common to both Telugu and Tamil films from the days of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan. Out of the four main studios of AVM, Gemini, Prasad and Vijaya Vauhini, the latter two were founded by the late Nagi Reddy and LV Prasad, who produced the Telugu films which made NT Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageshwara Rao icons in Andhra Pradesh.

It was with the advent of colour and the rise of younger heroes in Tamil, that Telugu cinema also saw an upcoming actor who went by the screen name Chiranjeevi. Legend has it that Konidela Siva Sankara Vara Prasad (his original name) was a struggling actor from the Madras Film Institute who did odd jobs in the citys famous hotels when he was not auditioning for directors. One such director, K Balachander, spotted the spark in him and sort of gave him an image makeover and lead roles, as he had done a few not-noteworthy Telugu films till then. Balachander had introduced the perfect anti-hero/villain in Tamil in 1976 (and rechristened him Rajinikanth); the roles which Rajini did in Tamil, Chiranjeevi was selected to do in Telugu (Avargal, 1977; Idhi Kadhaa Kaadhu, 1979). In 1981, the role of the sadist-villain to Jaya Pradas innocent village wife in 47 Natkal (47 days) marked Chiranjeevis Tamil debut.

Chiranjeevi (named by his mother after Lord Hanuman) came with no prior film connections or godfather(s). He entered southern cinema at a time when the Telugu film industry maintained its erstwhile traditional, hierarchical set-up and slowly carved his own niche. His films with directors like Bapu, Kondandarama Reddy and K Vishwanath set him apart from the ruling NTR and ANR. The actor worked round the clock and did almost all kinds of roles irrespective of whether or not they were leads (similar to Rajinikanths career graph) from 1979-1982. Chiranjeevi struck pure gold with the 1983 blockbuster Khaidi  a lucky title with which he later delivered another super-hit in 1988, Khaidi No. 786. Three decades later, it is also the title of his 150th film releasing on 11 January 2017  Khaidi No. 150.

A career which embarked on unsure ground now holds fort for an entire clan of talents who occupy positions of success in the Telugu film industry. The rise of Megastar Chiranjeevi contributed a lot to the meteoric heights attained by the Telugu film industry as a whole, which, after the success of his movies, is the second-largest film industry in India.

From comedy films (Intlo Ramayya Veedhilo Krishnayya, Gharana Mogudu, Yamudiki Mogudu) issue and music-based films (Subhalekha, Swayamkrushi, Aabathbhaandavudu), Chiranjeevis repertoire straddled a fair range, and his roles opposite Sridevi, Radhika, Radha, Suhasini and Bhanupriya stand the test of time. Chiranjeevi stayed away from what NTR and ANR were known for  mythology and melodrama. Instead he developed a loyal bunch of directors who repeatedly wrote and made films just for him in the 80s and 90s, till the mid-2000s, when he took a break to join politics.

Chiranjeevis home banner Geeta Arts (run by his brother-in-law, producer Allu Arvind) grew from strength-to-strength and even bankrolled the Aamir Khan version of Suriyas Ghajini. While Chiranjeevis son Ram Charan and nephew Allu Arjun are household names now, he also had to battle competition from ANRs son Nagarjuna, veteran producer RamaNaidus son Venkatesh and actor Krishnas son Mahesh Babu. Each hero had his own kingdom; Chiranjeevis stood a tad taller as he had built his position in commercial cinema from the base, with every successive film. Chiranjeevis popularity didnt diminish when his younger brother Pawan Kalyan entered the movies, and wisely, Chiranjeevis family of heroes have not acted together in a film so far.

Chiranjeevi has won both film awards and civilian honours; he was also the tourism minister in the Congress-led government in AP. The megastar, who celebrated his 60th birthday last year, has indeed come a long way.

Remakes or original stories, Chiranjeevi made every film he acted in, his own. His 150th film  Khaidi No. 150  is based on Vijays Kaththi (both versions are written and directed by A R Murugadas). However, the treatment of the theme (farmers suicide), the song situations (Kajal Agarwal, who was his son Ram Charans heroine in Magadheera, has been cast in Khaidi No. 150) and the fight sequences will be in true Chiru style. Chiranjeevi is clearly back to doing what he does best: rule the box-office like a boss.
The Supreme Court on Friday proposed to cancel the 2G license granted to Aircel if Maxis owner T Ananda Krishnan, who bought the majority shares of Aircel, and its Director Ralph Marshal do not present themselves before it.

SC stays transfer of 2G licence from Malaysia's #Maxis which was originally alloted to #Aircel to any other telecom company  Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 6, 2017

A bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar said that Krishnan and Marshal will have to appear before the court on 27 January.

SC said Aircel spectrum to be seized & transferred in 2 weeks if controller & owners don't appear in court in connection with the case  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

Keeping in mind the interest of existing Aircel subscribers, the apex court also asked the Department of Telecom and Ministry of Information and Technology to devise ways to avoid adverse impact on Aircel subscribers by provisionally transferring 2G licence to others.

The SC also restrained earning of any revenue by using the 2G spectrum licences which were originally granted to Aircel, PTI said.

The Aircel-Maxis deal case also involve former Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother and businessman Kalanithi Maran and others. As reported earlier, the Central Bureau of Investigation has chargesheeted Maran, his brother, Chennai-based firm Sun Direct TV, Krishnan, Marshall and the two accused firms  Maxis Communications Berhad of Malaysia and Astro All Asia Networks.

The chargesheet alleged that Dayanidhi Maran used his influence to help Krishnan buy Aircel by coercing its owner Sivasankaran to part with his stake.

It was alleged by Sivasankaran that Dayanidhi Maran favoured the Maxis Group in the takeover of his company. In return, he alleged, the company made investments through Astro Network in a company stated to be owned by the Maran family.

The chargesheet was filed under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and other relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

With agency inputs
India expects growth of around 7 percent in the first half of the next fiscal year, two officials said, painting a rosier picture for the economy than many economists after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's shock move to abolish large banknotes.

Nearly 90 percent of transactions used to be in cash in India, which was gripped by a severe shortage of currency after Modi's 8 November decision to take Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, worth about $7.5 and $15, out of circulation overnight.

Several private economists have said the move could drag down growth in the next fiscal year to 6.5 percent to 7 percent, as small businesses fired workers, consumer demand fell and farmers' winter sowing efforts were hit.

Demonetisation, as it is termed, has become a major election issue in states going to the polls this year, such as Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with 200 million people, where the performance of Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party could shape his political future.

The notes, accounting for 86 percent of the cash in circulation, were withdrawn in an effort to crush India's huge shadow economy, boost tax revenues and promote the use of bank accounts and digital transactions, but perceptions that the ambitious operation was botched have hurt Modi's standing.

The government officials, involved in budget discussions for the 2017/18 fiscal year, acknowledged that growth in Asia's third-largest economy would still be less than the 7.75 percent initially projected for the current fiscal year.

It could even fall as low as 4 percent in this year's January-March quarter, they said.

The budget, expected to be presented on 1 February, leaves Modi little room to hand out large, populist sops, despite demands by politicians, businessmen and other lobby groups for relief to the industry and taxpayers.

"There is no scope for big-ticket spending, like debt waivers for farmers, or transferring money into poor people's accounts," said one of the officials, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Still, the officials said the finance ministry's internal projections leave sufficient room to allocate funds for investments and infrastructure spending, without derailing India's fiscal deficit target.

India plans to cut its fiscal deficit to 3 percent of GDP in the fiscal year to March 2018, versus this year's target of 3.5 percent.

Modi can fund increases of 10 percent to 15 percent in some ministries' budgets and focus on job creation in areas such as farming, construction and small businesses, the officials said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley could announce tax incentives for individuals and firms to boost consumer demand, amid lingering uncertainty over the implementation of a nationwide goods and services tax, said one of the officials.

A senior farm ministry official said budget spending on the sector for the next fiscal year could rise to about Rs 50,000 crore ($7.37 billion), up 40 percent on the current year.

Major subsidies, including those on food, fertilisers and petroleum products, estimated at about Rs 2.32 lakh crore ($34.22 billion) for this fiscal year, are expected to go up only marginally, the officials said.

The officials said good monsoon rains could accelerate growth in the second half of the year.

Modi is staying within budget limits so far, despite a series of incentives to poor people, farmers, women and small businesses announced on New Year's Eve.

The incentives would only cost about Rs 3,500 crore a year, said Soumya Kanti Gosh, chief economic adviser at state-owned State Bank of India.
Mumbai: The purchasing sentiment of Indians during December fell steeply by 0.42 points due to demonetisation with the Buying Propensity Index (BPI) standing at 0.26 points, a nine-month low, according to TRA Reserach. The BPI in November 2016 had stood at 0.68 points.

"The country's buying sentiment was consistently recovering since July 2016, but the surprise demonetisation announcement was the biggest factor causing unnatural fluctuations in the buying sentiment as reflected by the Index," TRA Research CEO N Chandramouli said on Thursday.

Noting that the buying sentiment in December has fallen precipitously to the lowest in nine months, he said the the December drop was probably when the pain of demonetisation began to be felt more severely after the first salary cycle.

The Index, based on research across 3,000 consumer-influencers across the eight tier I cities, found that Delhi was most severely impacted with a month-on-month fall of 122 percent in citizen keenness to buy, registering a negative sentiment in December at -0.14, followed by Kolkata with a BPI fall of 90 percent.

The three cities which showed a medium fall in BPI were Mumbai (58 percent), Pune (46 percent) and Chennai (35 percent), while, Bengaluru and Hyderabad had a lower negative impact of the note ban with a drop of 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
At a time when the Narendra Modi government is battling increasing reports on demonetisation's negative impact on the consumption and economy, two Nobel laureates have come out in support of the scheme - Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh, and French economist Jean Tirole.

According to separate reports in The Hindu (read here and here), both economists have said that cashless economy is a boon and that it will kill black money and corruption.

Both the economists are in India at present. While Yunus was , who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, was in Visakhapatnam to attend an international symposium, Tirole, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2014, was in Kolkata to deliver Dipak Banerjee Lecture at Presidency University.

Talking to the newspaper, Yunus said: Demonetisation kills black money and has increased liquidity.

However, he said for a successful shift to cashless model, there should be incentives.

"Most important, demonetisation has brought the rural and unorganised sectors into the banking fold," Yunus has been quoted as saying in the report.

Meanwhile, Tirole has added a note of caution syaing the poor, who are the most dependent on cash, should not be made to suffer.

People want to get rid of cash for several reasons," Tirole said explaining the rationale behind the move at Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden. According to him, these countries are trying to get rid of cash because "it is more convenient".

For him, the reason for the Indian government's move is "to get rid of corruption.

Prime minister Narendra Modi, while announcing the decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, had said that the move was aimed at curbing corruption, black money generation and terror funding. There was no mention of shift to cashless economy as an objective.

However, in a later speech the prime minister had psuhed for less-cash, if not cashless, economy, which would curb corruption.
New Delhi: Terming the demand of opposition parties to defer the Budget Session as "anti-people", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the Union Budget is for the country and would not be state specific.

"No budget means no development, no welfare. Is this what you want? And no support to poor people, no support to farmers, is that what your wish is? Why are you opposing? Budget is budget," Naidu said.

He was responding to a question regarding opposition parties' demand that the presentation of the Union Budget on 1 February, ahead of the Assembly elections in five states, be deferred till 8 March, the last day of voting.

Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, Naidu said the budget would not be state specific.

"The budget will be about the people, their future, what are the taxation proposals, what is the revenue model...It will be presented before the Parliament, that is for the country, it will not be state specific," the Information and Broadcasting minister said.

He said that he was not able to understand the objection raised by the opposition.

"At the end of the day, they are afraid that all their efforts at disinformation against the Modi government have failed and the latest disinformation of the opposition on demonetisation is boomranging on them. They have realised, you have seen survey after survey," he added.

He claimed that even in Uttar Pradesh, there is a massive support for demonetisation because of which the opposition parties are rattled.

"Now they have changed their agenda again and are trying to now stop the budget which is an anti-people move again, which will again boomerang on them," he added.

Asked about the feud in Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Naidu said BJP would contest the UP election on the issue of development.

He said the issue was not who is the victor within the family but that people gave the party a chance for five years and it did not fulfill their promises.

He said several of the states which were in the group called 'BIMARU' earlier like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh developed after BJP governments were formed there.

On a question about TMC, Naidu said there were some allegations which were made in the past and the government was allowing investigative agencies to do their job independently.

For full coverage of Union Budget 2017 click here.
By Se Young Lee

| SEOUL

SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) said on Friday its fourth-quarter operating profit likely leapt 50 percent from a year earlier to its highest in more than three years, beating expectations on strong memory chip and display sales. The South Korean technology giant said October-December profit was likely 9.2 trillion won ($7.8 billion), the highest since the third quarter of 2013 and well above the 8.2 trillion won tipped by a Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate from a survey of 21 analysts. The estimate was also higher than any individual forecast in the survey. The upbeat outlook comes despite the anticipated $2.1 billion profit hit the firm earlier forecast for the quarter due to the withdrawal of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 premium smartphone in October, one of the biggest product safety failures in tech history. Investors anticipate a surge in sales of memory chips and organic light-emitting diode screens for smartphones will more than make up for the Note 7 setback, and translate to strong earnings growth for the October-December period and through 2017.

The world's biggest maker smartphones, TVs and memory chips will not disclose detailed earnings, including the performance of its individual businesses, until late January.Analysts expect Samsung's chip division to earn a record of more than 4 trillion won in operating profit in October-December thanks to strong demand from smartphone makers, including major client Apple Inc (AAPL.O), and high-end data storage products.

Many analysts also expect the mobile division's quarterly profit to rebound from the third quarter, when the firm booked the bulk of its Note 7 losses, and post its first annual gain in three years thanks to healthy sales of Galaxy S7 smartphones.Samsung Electronics said fourth-quarter revenue likely fell 0.6 percent from a year earlier to 53 trillion won.

($1 = 1,180.5500 won) (Reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the CBI to look into the allegation of "unnecessary" purchase of 111 aircrafts and leasing of some other by Air India between 2004 and 2008 when the Congress-led UPA was in office costing Rs 67,000 crore to the exchequer.

The allegations, made by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation, include allotment of bilateral routes to private airlines at the expense of the national carrier.

The allegations by the CPIL also include an aborted order for the porches of biometric passenger identification system allegedly at an inflated price.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel was the Civil Aviation Minister when the aircraft were purchased and taken on lease.

Noting that most of the allegations in the petition by the CPIL have resulted in adverse comments by the CAG/PAC, the bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice N.V. Ramana and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said: "... the CBI shall take into consideration all the allegations made in the pleadings of the instant petition, and take a call thereon, based on the evidence collected."

The CBI is already investigating into the allegations and had registered case on 27 February, 2013.

Having asked the CBI to look into the allegations, the court in its order said: "As and when the final determination is rendered, whether to initiate criminal proceedings or otherwise, it shall be open to the aggrieved party (if any), to take recourse to the remedies available to it, in consonance with law."

Disposing of the PIL, the court said: "We hope and expect, that the CBI will adhere to the time frame indicated to us, namely, June, 2017.

Opposing the plea by the CPIL, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the court that most of the allegations made in the PIL have resulted in adverse comments by the CAG and later by the Public Accounts Committee in 2014 which was then headed by the BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi.

He also informed the court that following adverse observations by the PAC, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has submitted a detailed response on 19 January, 2015. The Ministry on 3 May, 2016 gave further response in wake of more queries from the PAC.

The court was informed that the PAC report was proposed to be laid before the Parliament in its winter session which ended in logjam on account protests by opposition on demonetisations.

The counsel for the petitioner organisation CPIL had sought a court monitored probe. But Chief Justice Khehar said one could understand the plea if the same government was there.

"When the government is different, (the) party in power is different... We must have faith in our investigating agency," he said.
The beaches south of the city of Valencia, some of them within the protected Albufera Natural Park , home to the large fresh water lagoon of the same name, are fast being eroded, with the shoreline diminishing by some 50 meters since 1984, and sparking concern over the repercussions on this environmentally sensitive area. Scientists say rising sea levels could soon lead to the flooding of the Albuferas wetlands , returning their salt content to levels not seen for 1,000 years, destroying its unique ecosystem..

The Casbah beach at El Saler, Valencia. MONICA TORRES

The storms that battered Spains Mediterranean coast just before Christmas saw Valencias promenade threatened with flooding after the sea washed up over beaches. Heavy rain causes spikes of erosion, as we have seen, says Antonio Vizcaino, the head of Valencia City Halls Devesa-Albufera office, responsible for managing the park. The impact is temporary but the underlying processes are unrelenting. And if theyre not corrected, the sea will end up swallowing the beaches completely.

Valencias southern beaches have steadily been eaten away by the sea since the 1950s, a phenomenon that can be observed in detail from Landsat images. Jose Serra, Professor of Ports and Coastlines at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, says there are several factors to blame, the main one being the expansion of the Port of Valencia, which has crept two kilometers out to sea over the last century.

Valencias southern beaches have steadily been eaten away by the sea since the 1950s

The port is a total barrier to the movement of solids along the coastline, says Serra, who is leading a team hired by the port authorities to study the impact of recent infrastructure development. In this part of the Mediterranean, the main current runs from north to south. And when this is interrupted, the beaches to the south of the port are deprived of the sand that would otherwise be deposited there.

Some 1.8 million years ago, the sediment transported by the Turia and Jucar rivers closed off a small section of the Gulf of Valencia, creating the Albufera lagoon. The narrow strip of land that separates the lagoon from the sea  under attack from the erosion of its beaches  is dotted with popular tourist spots such as El Pinedo and El Saler, along with the ecologically significant Devesa forest. Serra says the sand loss there is aggravated by the use of reservoirs and the river for agricultural purposes and human consumption, diminishing the amount of solid material the Turia would normally dump in the estuary, situated just to the south of Valencias port.

Disappearing beaches are also a global phenomenon. Rivers carry less and less sediment, says Serra, adding: that has a knock-on effect on the beaches. On the other hand, reservoirs are increasingly blocked with sand, which reduces their capacity.

Meanwhile, Sergi Campillo, head of Valencias Natural Conservation Areas is demanding that the government act to redress the situation. We need a solution that will give the beaches stability and prevent the sea practically reaching the houses when theres a storm.

Sand loss is aggravated by the exploitation of the river for agricultural purposes

The urban development of the swathe of land separating the Mediterranean from the Albufera during the 1970s has also caused the sea to creep in, according to both Vizcaino and Serra. The dunes were flattened to allow the construction of buildings, roads and parking lots, leaving the beaches bereft of their natural stock of sand. A decades-long project to replace as many dunes as possible has reduced the rate of the erosion but it has not managed to stop it altogether.

Now experts are considering two short-term measures to mitigate the erosion. One is the construction of artificial reefs below the seas surface along the coast  a measure already in place elsewhere. The other is to build up the sand on the beaches by bringing it in from outside. According to Serra, this could come from a bank 100 meters deep to the north of Cape Cullera, which has 100 million cubic meters of sand of the right type.

English version by Heather Galloway.
In yet another horrific crime which shows that violence against women is not just a problem limited to Delhi or Bengaluru but something which plagues the entire country, four men from Baghpat area of Uttar Pradesh allegedly chopped off the ears of a teenage girl after she resisted their attempt to gang rape her.

According to News18, the incident took place on Wednesday when the four men allegedly abducted the girl from the Ramala police station area.

The four culprits also beat up the girl's mother when she rushed to her rescue and fled the spot after the girl raised an alarm.

A case has been registered under Sections 354, 324 and 323 but the accused have not been arrested till now.

CNN-News18 also reported that the local police did not immediately register a complaint. It was only when this incident led to outrage in the village in Baghpat and in the media that the police initiated a probe.

Making sure that the tradition of politicians putting their foot in their mouths continues, Satyapal Singh, BJP MP from Baghpat, had this to say about the incident:

Spoke to SP, there was no rape attempt made.Complaining now after days have passed, shows its an after thought:Satyapal Singh,BJP MP Baghpat pic.twitter.com/5PuhHpLPEh  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2017

This barbaric incident is being reported just a day after a video of a mob running amok and attacking policemen with stones after they prevented two men from assaulting a woman on New Year's Eve in New Delhi surfaced on Thursday.

Police had said that almost 1,200 to 1,500 students had been questioned in connection with the incident that took place at Mukherjee Nagar in northwest Delhi on the night of 31 December.

Two men in yellow and blue jackets tried to pull down a woman riding pillion on a motorbike near Batra Cinemas, investigators had said.

"The two men fled after the police intervention. Police tried to explain to a few youths standing there that they should celebrate New Year but not at the expense of other people's safety. They should not misbehave with women who are passing through the area," a policeman, who was present on the spot, had said.

After the two men fled, a large group of students came and allegedly started pelting the policemen with stones, forcing them to take shelter in a police booth.

With inputs from PTI
On Thursday, President Pranab Mukherjee delivered a New Year's message to governors and lieutenant-governors from all Indian states via video-conference. The full text of his address is reproduced below:

My dear governors and lieutenant-governors:

Let me begin by extending warm greetings and best wishes to you for a year full of peace, prosperity and happiness.

The year that has just gone by was a year of mixed fortunes. It began on a very promising note with the economy performing well, overcoming the weak global economic trends. GDP growth of 7.2 percent in the first half of 2016-17  same as that of last year  is a pointer to the fact that our economic recovery has been on solid grounds. In 2014 and 2015, below normal rains had caused rural distress. A good monsoon in 2016 is expected to improve agricultural production and increase rural employment and incomes. Though our exports have been affected by weak global demand, we have a stable external sector. Reviving exports will remain a challenge but we can overcome it by improving the competitiveness of the domestic industry.

Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy.

We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term. While I appreciate the thrust on transition from entitlement approach to an entrepreneurial one for poverty alleviation, I am not too sure that the poor can wait that long. They need to get succour here and now, so that they can also participate actively in the national march towards a future devoid of hunger, unemployment and exploitation. The recent package announced by the prime minister will provide some relief.

Honourable governors and lieutenant-governors:

This year, there will be elections in as many as seven states. The dates for elections in five states have already been announced. The conduct of free and fair elections has made our democracy one of the most vibrant in the world. Elections reflect the attitudes, values and beliefs of the people towards their political environment. They symbolise the sovereignty of the people and provide legitimacy to the authority of the government. They also serve the purpose of regulation of public policies and mobilisation of public opinion.

As we have all experienced, elections are usually marked by competitive populism, electoral rhetoric and votebank politics. Noisy debates can deepen the fault-lines in the society. You, as governors and lieutenant-governors, command respect and attention of the people of your state. Through your interaction and wise counsel, you can play an important role in easing the tensions in society. Goodwill must prevail between different communities. At times, harmony may be put to test by vested interests. Communal tensions may rear their ugly head. Rule of law must form the sole basis of dealing with any such challenging situation.

Governors and lieutenant-governors:

In a pluralistic democracy like ours, tolerance, respect for contrary views and patience are a must. These values have to be preserved. India is a multi-faceted nation of 1.3 billion people, 122 languages, 1600 dialects and seven religions. In the words of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru which I quote: "It is a country held together by strong but invisible threads (unquote). Indias strength lies in her diversity. The multiplicity in culture, faith and language is what makes India special. There will always be divergent strands in public discourse. We may argue. We may disagree. But we cannot deny the prevalence of multiplicity of opinion. You can, through your calm influence, inculcate amongst the citizens of your state this fundamental ethos of our civilisation.

Honourable governors and lieutenant-governors:

You are the first citizens of your states. When you assumed this exalted office, you had taken an oath to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution. This pious document protects the liberty of the people and promotes the well-being of the citizens. It decrees inclusiveness, tolerance, self-restraint, and protection of women, senior citizens and weaker sections as essential ingredients of our polity. Our institutions of democracy must operate on these vital features. Strong credible institutions lead to good governance ensuring a healthy functioning of the democracy.

Dear governors and lieutenant-governors:

You all have a very important role to play in the improvement of higher education in your states. As chancellors and visitors of various universities, you can work with the academic leaders to effect holistic changes for quality up-gradation in the institutions of higher learning. I have been exhorting the academia to concentrate on attaining excellence through original research and technology development.

A look at numerous social problems affecting millions of women and men in our farms and factories clearly shows that humane values have not yet become a dominant driver of our intellectual pursuits.

This should receive your focused attention. Our interactions at the conferences at Rashtrapati Bhavan have yielded several positives in areas like: faculty sourcing and development; ICT for pedagogic refinement; research and innovation; industry-academia interface; and alumni involvement. I am aware of the good work being done by many of you in this field. Interaction amongst academic institutions can help spread best practices. These institutions can leverage knowledge and experience to the benefit of all. Your keen interest can rejuvenate a sector that is best positioned to support an innovation-led knowledge economy.

Another area where I envisage a role for you is in promoting art and culture in your respective states. As I have said elsewhere, art and culture are our link with the past. They provide the foundation for our current thought and by extension, the platform for our future action. They also provide a stable base to life and make it possible for us to have a joyous existence. With art and culture, we can experience life in its fullest and most meaningful form. They add to the overall happiness and well-being of the society.

Honourable governors and lieutenant-governors:

Before I conclude, I express my deep appreciation to you all for coming together on this platform for our interaction. Within the limited time available, let us share some of our key concerns. I do look forward to our extended interface in the Governors Conference, when we will have the time to hear each one of us in detail.

Thank you.

Jai Hind.
Srinagar: A top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) outfit was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Kashmir's Badgam district.

According to police, the security forces launched an operation on Friday morning following an information about the presence of a wanted LeT commander hiding in Gulzarpora village.

"The security forces were fired upon after they closed on the house where Muzaffar Ahmad Naiku ali alias Muza Molvi was hiding," the police said.

"The militant was killed in the encounter which has ended now.

"Searches are still going on in the area."

The police said the slain commander was one of the longest surviving militants and the most wanted guerrilla in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Supreme Court on 5 December rejected a plea by expelled AIADMK MP Sasikala Pushpa and an NGO seeking CBI or a judicial probe into the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa. A bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said that a similar petition is pending before the Madras High Court.

"We are not inclined to entertain the matter as a similar one is already pending before the Madras High Court. The petitions are dismissed," the bench said.

The apex court, besides Pushpa's plea, also dismissed a writ petition of an NGO on similar lines. "What are we supposed to do here? You have filed a petition under Article 32 (violation of fundamental rights of citizens by the State) of the Constitution... We will dismiss these petitions, and if you press further, we will impose costs on you," the bench told the petitioners' side.

Pushpa had moved the Supreme Court on 18 December, 2016 alleging that former Chief Minister 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".

She had sought directions to the Centre, the Tamil Nadu government and Apollo Hospital, where Jayalalithaa was hospitalised, to disclose details of her health report and treatment in a sealed cover to the apex court.

A similar plea was filed by Tamil Nadu Telugu Yuva Sakthi claiming that doubts have been raised over the circumstances of the AIADMK leader's death and her medical reports needed to be examined by experts.

Earlier in December, Firstpost had reported that a leaked email from a senior journalist quoted the Apollo management as saying that the late chief minister was on "wrong diabetes medicines" before being hospitalised in September.

"What has added grist to conspiracy theories surrounding Jayas illness and death, is an email, allegedly written by senior journalist and NDTV consulting editor Barkha Dutt, to various email addresses within the private news channel. The email written by Dutt passes on information to the channel on 'off record' details given to her by 'one of the Apollo Reddy sisters' who form part of the management of the hospital, alongwith their father Pratap C Reddy. In the email, Dutt is alleged to have written  she was being given wrong medicine for diabetes before she was brought to them  the she being referred to in the email is Jayalalithaa, who suffered a cardiac arrest on the intervening night of 4-5 December, a few hours before this email was purportedly written."

With inputs from agencies
The Maratha Kranti Morcha, the silent protests that began in August last year after the infamous Kopardi gangrape and murder, will resume in Mumbai on 31 January.

According to Hindustan Times, the organisers of the protests said that the Mumbai march will see the highest-ever turnout. The march will also take place just before elections to civic bodies in major cities in Maharashtra.

"To maintain the pressure built on the government, we have decided to hold a march in Mumbai. More than three crore community people came onto the street during the marches in various districts. It resulted in positive steps by the government in the past few months. The major demand of reservation is still pending in court and by organising the march, we want the government to expedite the process," the report quoted Mansingh Pawar, one of the organisers, as saying.

Another report in The Free Press Journal said that the march will begin at 1 pm from Marine Drive and the organisers will directly approach Governor C Vidyasagar Rao with their demands.

The incident which eventually led to the Maratha Kranti Morchas took place on 13 July 2016, when a 15-year-old Maratha girl was allegedly gang raped and murdered by four Dalit youths who inflicted injuries all over her body and broke her limbs before throttling her at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar.

After the gangrape, Maratha Kranti silent morchas were held in Akola, Nanded, Beed, Osmanabad, Aurangabad, Jalgaon and Jalna districts over August and September. They had received huge response, forcing all political parties to take note of the community's grievances.

From August to November, more than 40 Maratha Kranti Morchas were held across the state, with several lakhs taking to the streets.

However, the march which took place in Nagpur in December received a lukewarm response. While the previous marches generated massive responses with participants running in lakhs, the first march after demonetisation drew around only 15,000 people that according to organiser Sakal Maratha Samaj's claims should have drawn 2.5 million, according to a report by Livemint.

The Maratha protests were low-profile for quite some time after demonetisation and first phase of local municipal bodies polls. In fact, funding for the march which involves arranging for transport and refreshments among other things, post demonistisation of higher currency notes was deemed to be one of the biggest problems, according to Mumbai Mirror.

With inputs from agencies
The Supreme Court accepted an unconditional apology from former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju on Friday according to a report in DNA. The apex court also closed the contempt proceedings against Katju.

"I offer my unconditional apology for publishing the above captioned writings and have deleted the same from my blog entries on Facebook," Katju said, in his apology, read out in court by senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan. "I express my respect for the judicial appointment process and for the judiciary as an institution of governance," he said.

Urging the court to take his unconditional apology on record, Katju told the court: "I am prepared to read it in open court if I am called upon to do so." In their order, the bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit said: "In view of the apology tendered, we accept and close the proceeding."

The apex court issued a suo moto contempt notice to a former judge for the first time in India's judicial history, The Indian Express reported. Katju had criticised the court's judgment in the Soumya rape and murder case in which the death sentence of the convict Govindacahamy was commuted.

Katju, in his Facebook post, had said: "The Supreme Court judgment in the Soumya case is wrong I submit that the Supreme Court has erred in law in not holding the accused guilty of murder, and its judgment needs to be reviewed to this extent."

A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, issuing the notice to Katju on 11 November, said: "He is a respected gentleman. We request him to come in person and debate his Facebook post criticising the judgment. Let him come to the court and let's debate over the fundamental flaws in our verdict."

With inputs from IANS
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, who was arrested in Kashmir in July last year, alleging that he was working for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and was planning to carry out attacks at several places including Delhi.

The agency filed the chargesheet under various provisions of IPC, UAPA, sections of Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act against Ali, who has been in judicial custody since August.

According to sources, the chargesheet, filed before district judge Amar Nath, claimed that the recent unrest in Kashmir Valley had been orchestrated by Pakistan-based LeT. The agency claimed that since summer last year, the banned outfit, with the "help of Pakistani forces deployed on the border", pushed heavily armed terrorists into India with a direction to mix with local people, create disturbance and attack police and security forces.

CNN-News18 quoted sources who told the channel that even though Ali was questioned post Uri attacks, he could not reveal much. Ali told NIA that LeT, suspected to be behind the Uri attack, had tasked a different group with the job and he or his group only knew that multiple attacks were planned by Lashkar in Jammu and Kashmir.

NIA, in its chargesheet, also alleged that along with his associates, Ali had planned terror attacks to destabilise the security and sovereignty of India. The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir besides Delhi, the chargesheet claims.

It alleged that given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

A special court on 19 December had extended the judicial custody of Ali till 18 January.

A fourth-class dropout, Ali, who hails from Jahama village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from village Yahama in Mawar area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on 25 July. The army had claimed to have recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs 23,000 in Indian currency from his possession.

According to NIA, Ali was trained at a Lashkar camp in PoK to carry out various activities, including map reading and operating GPS devices.

In August 2016, armed with the confessional statement of an alleged Pakistani LeT operative, the NIA confirmed that Ali, who was captured in Jammu and Kashmir last month, is a terrorist with the terror outfit LeT. They said that Ali was trained by the LeT to infiltrate Kashmir and 'mix with locals and create trouble'.

The anti-terror probe agency also said it is gathering further evidence regarding the role of Pakistan-based LeT in the ongoing turbulence in the Valley for the last 33 days. In a confessional video, Ali alias 'Saifullah' also named various terror groups in Pakistan and confirmed the involvement of Pakistan in the Kashmir unrest following the death of militant Burhan Wani.

Addressing a media conference, IG NIA Sanjeev Singh said Ali was guided by the control room of terrorist groups in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir aided by Pakistani forces. He said, "Recovered articles show that terrorist was provided great references in codes. It shows very highly trained people trained him."

He also hinted on the role of Pakistan in the current unrest in Kashmir. "We have collected all kinds of evidences. Bahadur Ali was directed to take advantage of current situation in Kashmir," said Singh.

In a confessional video, Ali gave information on the LeT training camps. He said, "There were 30-50 trainees at training camps of LeT from different parts of the countries including Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

The NIA's comments came a day after India handed over a "strong demarche" to Pakistan over its continued support to cross-border terrorism in India.

Ali even outlined his journey from the training camps and into India. He described how he crossed over to India on 11/12 June along-with two other LeT commanders and described how the Pakistani Army monitored the process, "There were a few army officers in civilian clothes who checked our preparedness with a check-list."

Ali told his interrogators that he was informed by his handlers from a control room code-named 'Alpha-3', believed to be located at a high altitude somewhere in PoK, about the unrest in the Valley following the killing of Wani, a Hizbul Mujahideen militant on 8 July.

His handlers from the control room asked him to throw grenades at the security forces and also informed him that other cadres of the terror group had managed to sneak into the Valley, mingled with protesters at other places and were fuelling tension in the Valley.

With inputs from agencies
Baghpat (Uttar Pradesh): Four persons allegedly tried to rape a 20-year-old girl and cut off a portion of her ear when she resisted the attempt in Asara village in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh.

The police said they were looking into the gruesome incident and are trying to arrest the culprits.

The four men had dragged the girl when she came out of her house and shut her mother inside a room when she rushed to her rescue. They later cut off a part of her ear, her family members said.

As villagers rushed to the spot, the culprits fled, leaving the bleeding girl and her mother behind. When they approached the police to lodge a complaint about the incident which occurred on 30 December, authorities did not lodge any report, they alleged.

Asara village was in the news after its panchayat barred women from using mobile phones and wearing jeans in 2012 and

2013.
New Delhi: On Friday, BJP President Amit Shah addressed party office-bearers in Delhi ahead of two-day National Executive meet, where its top brass is expected to give final shape to BJP's poll strategy in assembly elections in five states.

The party is seeking to make demonetisation, which it has terms as a "war against black money and corruption", a major poll issue, besides encashing on the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the "pro-poor" schemes.

Shah finalised the party's resolutions to be passed in the two-day national executive meeting that will be inaugurated with his address later in the day.

The BJP chief will seek to motivate the party leaders to steer the party to victory in five states that go to polls in February-March, especially in high-stakes Uttar Pradesh.

The party leaders will discuss and review the ground situation in the poll-bound states, BJP leaders said.

The party will use the occasion to burnish its pro-poor and pro-weaker sections credentials by citing several government schemes, including the recent sops announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The top BJP brass is also expected to target the opposition over its attack on the government for advancing the Budget Session of Parliament and may project it as yet another attempt by the Congress and the other rival parties to derail Modi's "pro-poor" agenda.

With the mood in the saffron camp optimistic following the prime minister's huge rally in Lucknow recently and what it believes to be a positive public response to the currency ban, the party is expected to project the opposition's criticism of the exercise as an attempt to protect the corrupt.

Two resolutions, one political and the other economic, are likely to be passed at the meet.

The army's surgical strikes last year to target terror launchpads across the border could also find a mention at the meeting.

The Election Commission has announced the dates for Assembly polls in five states  Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand.

BJP's central election committee is likely to announce the names of party candidates after the auspicious 'Makar Sankranti' which falls on 14 January.
President Pranab Mukherjees statement that demonetisation may lead to a temporary slowdown of the economy bears extra weight as its coming from somebody who has had stellar stints as finance minster of the country during some crucial years. It is also a blessing in disguise for the Congress that has been trying to intensify its opposition to demonetisation and turn it into a nationwide campaign.

While addressing the governors and lieutenant-governors on Thursday, Mukherjee said, "Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy. We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term."

The presidents statement will give teeth to the Congress' nationwide stir that has been called '8/11 Attack on Indias economy', which began on 3 January.

However, the actual agitation against the Narendra Modi government will begin on 6 January, with Congress party workers planning to gherao district collectors offices across the country.

"The Congress started its nationwide protest campaign against the ills of demonetisation  which has been named '8/11 attack'  on 3 January. The common man ought to know the truth about demonetisation, which is the biggest scam in the political history of India. The party has chalked out a comprehensive agitation programme  from press conferences, gherao of collectors offices in all districts to our vice-president Rahul Gandhi touring different states," Congress leader and spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told Firstpost.

For the first two days (3 and 4 January), press conferences were conducted at state capitals and district headquarters by PCC state executives and senior party leaders to create mass awareness. Itll be followed by the gherao of district collectors offices and womens rallies. The womens wing of the Congress will stage demonstration rallies in various parts of the country, with the slogan "Garib ki jeb khali, baja thaali"on 9 January.

"Weve already organised two centralised dharnas against the note ban followed by staging protests at block-levels. On 7 January well intensify our agitation by organising district-level protests across Delhi. A similar action plan has been adopted in other parts of the country," Delhi Congress spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee said.

The party has engaged its general secretaries and state chiefs to disseminate its stand against the note ban among the public through press briefings and meetings.

"After holding a press conference in Kolkata, I headed to Ranchi and then to Patna. We've adopted an aggressive stand against the ill-effects of note ban on the poor and common man. This move has witnessed a large-scale exodus of labour force from production centres, resulting into unemployment, Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed said.

This time instead of mere sloganeering and staging demonstrations, the party has equipped itself with facts and figures to counter the Modi government.

By releasing a booklet  Demonetisation: 8/11 Attack on Indias economy, the Congress has tried to expose the ill-preparedness of the demonetisation move and its cascading effect on various sectorsfrom employment to industry.

"Through this booklet, weve countered the claims made by our prime minister regarding demonetisation  and that of curbing the black money menace  as the biggest and boldest reform. Modijis roll out plan indicates a blatant disregard of institutional integrity," Surjewala added.

If sources are to be believed, armed with the presidents remark on demonetisation, the Congress will organise a national-level convention to "break myths about demonetisation" any day between 11 and 14 January.

"The presidents remark made today is not just another statement on ill-effects of demonetisation. After all he had been the finance minister of this country for years and his observations are based on facts rather on perceptions. This is a big boost to our agitation programme, a Congress leader remarked.

Rahul, who had organised a press conference along with Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and a few Opposition parties in Delhi on 27 December to attack the prime minister and his policy, demanded a 'white paper' to expose the truth behind demonetisation. The party has asked five questions and made five demands in its recently released booklet.

However, there is one question that the countrys oldest political party ought to answer: Where is Rahul Gandhi and why is he missing? Especially, when the Congress needs him the most as its anti-Modi mascot, to fight the ghost of demonetisation?

Immunity for Sahara or immunity for Modiji? If your conscience is clear Modiji why fear investigation? https://t.co/VFXnCECUij  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) January 5, 2017

While on Thursday, Rahul tweeted demanding an inquiry into the Sahara diaries, his physical presence will not only save his party leaders from facing the medias embarrassing questions on his 'sudden disappearance' from the battleground, but will also give credibility to the partys anti-note ban agitation.
Spanish Supreme Court judge Antonio Salas has blamed evil for violence against women , arguing on Twitter on New Years Day: if women had the same physique as men this would not happen. The judge, who believes that violence against women is a very serious problem in our society and one that is very difficult to solve, was reacting to Spains first murder of a woman by a man of the year.

A march in Spain protesting violence against women. Samuel Sanchez

On January 1, a womans life was taken by her ex-boyfriend in the Madrid region.

Salas comments have triggered a Twitter storm in Spain, sparking debate about the causes of violence against women. When journalist Elisa Beni expressed her astonishment on Twitter at the judges comments, Salas stuck to his guns.

Sensitivity as a measure, hasnt served for much. Men who are abusive dont care

Judge Antonio Salas

Do you really think that if women were stronger than men, they would still get abused?

Teresa Franco, a delegate for women's affairs with the Spanish association of military personnel AUME, argued that men do not kill women because they are wicked (biologically) but because they have learned that women belong to them.

Salas replied: So, those who abuse and kill do so because of an educational problem, not because they are intrinsically bad. I dont believe thats how it is.

Didnt abusers get the same education as people who dont abuse women? he added.

Besides attributing violence against women to innate evil and the greater strength of men, he also argued that it would be wrong to explain this phenomenon with a one-size-fits-all formula.

In 2016, 44 women were murdered by their partners or former partners in Spain. On top of that, Spanish judges received an average 426 complaints a day regarding violence against women from July to September 2015.

The evil in human nature doesn't have a solution. You see it every day in the news. If anyone has a viable solution, say it already!!!

During the Twitter debate, Salas also brought up partner abuse in homosexual couples: Theres a lot of it, but it doesnt get studied.

AUME delegate Franco replied, saying that abuse in homosexual relationships is being studied and told the judge that he needs gender training.

There is very little respect for other peoples opinions, Salas replied. I dont think gender training is necessary. Ive always respected women and men equally. But I prefer the former. Always have.

Ines Herreros, a prosecutor who specializes in violence against women and is a member of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors, also joined in the debate. She tweeted, to deny that the cause of violence against women is just because they are women supposes a 12 year and five-day delay, referring to when Spain introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on gender-specific violence.

Responding to Herreros, Salas asked: What advances have been made in the last 12 years and five days, in terms of statistics?

Do you really think that if women were stronger than men, they would still get abused? Journalist Elisa Beni

Herreros pointed to increased awareness and that the state is collecting statistics we didnt have before.

Raised awareness, as a measure, I think, hasnt served for much. Men who are abusive dont care, replied the judge, adding that laws related to violence against women are more political than judicial.

He also questioned the need for judges and lawyers to take gender sensitivity training.

Herreros replied: The best thing is when we learn directly from the experiences of women, combined with studies.

This is all well and good, but you cant consider a female weightlifting champion to be inferior to her boyfriend. With respect, countered Salas.

English version: Alyssa McMurtry.
The Opposition leaders are crying themselves hoarse about the Union Budget being presented on 1 February, just three days before the first phase of polling in Assembly elections across five states.

It will provide an opportunity to the government to make populist announcements to influence voters, lamented Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi.

On the face of it, Azad has hit the nail bang on its head. And there have been at least two precedents  in 2007 and 2012  of Union Budgets being presented after the state elections. Its precisely to stop governments from taking the populist route before elections that we have a "model code of conduct" that kicks in well in time. But there is a problem about the bogey being raised now against the budgets timing. Neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Finance Minister Arun Jaitley thought up the idea of advancing the budget from end-February to 1 February after the polls were announced to the Assemblies of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur on Wednesday.

The government has been talking about it from 21 September last year. Economists have been raving about the advantages that the country would reap from an early budget.

Where have the Opposition leaders been all this while? Were they too busy attacking the governments "surgical strikes" first on Pakistan and then on black money to find that Jaitleys budget would come up around the time as state elections?

Having woken up late at this juncture, the Opposition leaders must remind themselves that Uttar Pradesh and four other states dont make up India. They must also remember that this budget is for the whole of India and not for just the five states that will elect Assemblies between 4 February and 8 March.

To satisfy the Opposition, the Election Commission (EC) has no choice other than to ask the government to postpone the budget to 9 March or later. But the real question the EC must ask itself is whether all of India must be denied the immense benefits of an early budget  especially since the government has been harping on it for more than three months and since its being done for the first time  because of elections in a few states.

Its true that the EC bans foundation-stone ceremonies and inaugurations of even previously approved projects once the election schedule is announced. But a Union Budget is not a government maternity home that should be stopped at this juncture. And the EC knows that it has been indeed making exceptions to the model code of conduct whenever the advantages to people outweighed the unfairness of populism.

It was first on 21 September last year that the government decided to advance the budget to "the first week of February".

It was on the very same day that the government "in principle" decided to do away with the old British legacy of having a separate Railway Budget.

Among other things, the government said on 21 September that presenting the budget earlier would help not only government departments but even companies and individuals to plan their spending and taxes better. February-end presentation of budget has so far meant that after the statutory Parliamentary clearance and Presidential notification, government departments begin spending as late as June.

Did anybody object?

Again on 26 October, Modi talked about it.

The prime minister said the Budget would be advanced by "about a month".

Did anybody object?

Then finally on 15 November 15, the government announced that the budget would be presented "on 1 February".

Did anybody object?

In fact, economists and others have been singing praises of the governments move. To begin with, an early budget will provide ample time to pass the Finance Bill by March, so that expenditure can begin right from day one of the fiscal year. New tax proposals can come into effect earlier than in the past. Equally importantly, it will help states plan their own budgets better, because they will know whats coming to them and whats not.

Even if the Opposition was ignorant and not doing its job as it should be, there was a wink and a nudge from the government early on. In fact, while announcing the governments decision on 21 September, Jaitley said that a final date for the budget would be decided keeping in mind the polling days.

And even on 26 October when Modi spoke about it, officials were quoted by the media as saying that the election schedule would be a consideration.

On their part, Modi and Jaitley must stop playing a cat-and-mouse game with the budget, and tell us clearly why they wanted to keep in mind the election dates earlier and why they are going ahead with it now, just three days before the first phase of polling. In the absence of honest communication, good intentions are susceptible to unhealthy interpretations. The famine of information that we faced in the case of demonetisation must not repeat itself.

As for Opposition leaders, the danger of a budget in the thick of elections is at last staring in their faces. It has dawned on them with a slowness that would put a snail to shame.

There is no doubt that the Opposition is pathetically bereft of issues. It gropes for an issue to talk about with the desperation of a sinking man in the sea trying to grab at any straw floating around him.

For the first time after Modi took reins in 2014, demonetisation presented itself as a god-sent opportunity for the anti-Modi brigade to haul him over the coals for all the misery he put the common man through. But the Opposition goofed up on the chance more than Modi botched up the execution of demonetisation. As if to make up for it, the leaders have made a sudden discovery about the timing of the budget.

Look at what CPM leader Sitaram Yechury has to say:

We think that an 'early' Annual Budget is a bad idea, and it is being advanced for petty political reasons. https://t.co/msTB2wvV88 pic.twitter.com/97zubGzOvD  Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) January 4, 2017

Yechury says a 1 February budget would present a "misleading" GDP growth because it would take into account only two quarters of the outgoing fiscal year. He is right, but he should have known it earlier.

But does Yechury really think that voters will care a fig about GDP statistics in deciding whom to vote? And since Yechury has time and again said that Modi has made a complete mess of Indias economy with demonetisation, what is he afraid of? One would expect Yechury to rest assured that Modi will lose the latest round of Assembly elections. Or does Yechury have indications to the contrary?

You can be reasonably certain now that if the government goes ahead with 1 February budget, the ugly spectre of Opposition derailing Parliament once again looms menacingly ahead.

The author tweets @sprasadindia

For full coverage of Union Budget 2017 click here.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's "bonhomie" over booze ban has seen political pulses racing, tongues wagging and media dive headlong into furious speculation. Does this signify a new axis? Is there more to the schmoozing than meets the eye? Locked in an alliance with an unreliable partner in Lalu Yadav, is it an attempt by the Bihar chief minister to hedge against future uncertainty? Is the Prime Minister scouting for help to tide over demonetisation crisis?

Not to discount any of the possibilities because there are no permanent friends or foes in politics, some of the speculation do seem a little far-fetched. A simpler and more obvious explanation remains painfully ignored. Why should it surprise us to see a semblance of concord between two mature, seasoned politicians while they go about interacting on a public platform, even if they are rival forces? If the country's Prime Minister and the chief minister of a state find common ground over a policy decision, why should we rush to float expansive theories or suggest that they have buried all past differences and have become overnight BFFs?

The answer isn't difficult to arrive at. We have taken Centre-state animosity as the new normal. The language of politics has become so debased, so vicious, the bar so low that even polite interaction between two rival political leaders and mild mutual praise take us by surprise as we hurry to unearth hidden meanings. Behind our struggle to explain the Modi-Nitish interaction lies an unease that stems from an inability to accept responsible behavior from even leaders holding Constitutional posts.

There has been a lot of talk about cooperative federalism in Centre-state relationship. The Constitution describes India as a Union of States and has put a federal system by delegating identifiable powers between the Centre and states. There have been arguments about a strong unitary bias since Delhi enjoys primacy in areas such as legislative and administrative. In practice, however, this federalism has been further undermined through the institutionalization of a Congress culture that made India into a quasi-federal state. The Centre would run the country from Delhi and the states would be allocated doles and emoluments based on their obeisance.

One of the first policy decisions that Modi took was to introduce greater federalism in the structure and work towards making the states an equal stakeholder in the India story. The Planning Commission was junked in favour of Niti Aayog where the states had a greater say in achieving national targets and a bigger piece of the revenue pie. Their share went up from 32 percent to 42 percent.

But this did not result in an improvement in relationship. On the contrary, a confrontationist attitude from NDA government secure in its numbers in the Lower House and an increasingly panicked opposition alarmed by the rise of Modi's popularity resulted in a complete breakdown of "cooperative federalism".

This has been followed by an unprecedented defilement of language. When the mode of communication becomes corrupted, it drags down the entire political discourse. Each day, the bar is set lower. This isn't a difference of opinion, policy or ideas but a deep, personal, palpable animosity.

We find Arvind Kejriwal calling the Prime Minister a "coward" and a "psychopath', Mamata Banerjee referring to him as a "donkey" and "danga babu", Sonia Gandhi calling him "maut ka saudagar" and her son Rahul Gandhi using "khoon ki dalali" to describe the government's surgical strikes against Pakistan.

The fall in political discourse has been followed by a complete breakdown in relationship resulting in irreparable damage to the federal structure. This is more worrying. The hostility runs so deep that it threatens to derail legislative process which calls for discharge of collective duties and responsibilities. The GST has already missed the 1 April deadline. Going by the way Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra walked out of a pre-budget meeting crying "financial emergency" and calling the budget a "meaningless exercise", it is anybody's guess when GST will finally see the light of day.

The irony is that while Mitra calls the budget "meaningless", his party colleague Derek O'Brien joins hands with Congress to rush to the Election Commission and demands a postponement of the budget because it is too close to the Assembly polls in five states.

Between this surreal drama of ridiculousness, the sane behavior of Nitish and Modi naturally strikes us as unusual. It speaks volumes about the state of our polity.
The Madras High Court has dismissed a public interest litigation seeking direction to Centre to announce Bharat Ratna for late AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa (her name is sometimes spelt as Jayalalitha as well), who passed away in December 2016, ANI reported.

Madras High Court dismisses a PIL seeking direction to Centre to announce Bharat Ratna for J Jayalalithaa  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

The news might come as disheartening to the follower of the AIADMK leaders, especially since, last month, the Tamil Nadu cabinet at its first meeting had passed a resolution to recommend Jayalalithaa for "Bharat Ratna", the highest civilian honour of the country.

The Bharat Ratna was one of the many resolutions that were passed in the meeting, chaired by Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, to honour the late Chief Minister.

The cabinet had also decided to propose to the Centre to install her life-size bronze statue in Parliament complex and raise a memorial building for the leader at the MGR Memorial site, where she was laid to rest.

The Cabinet also resolved to rename the memorial as Dr Puratchi Thalaivar MGR and Puratchi Thalaivi Amma Selvi J Jayalalithaa Memorial.

The Cabinet had also proposed to unveil a portrait of the leader in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.

The meeting condoled Jayalalithaa's death saying the 68-year-old leader had dedicated her life for the betterment of the people of Tamil Nadu, and help the state take giant strides in sectors like social welfare, education and growth.

"We promise to work in the path laid down by Amma who is now watching us perform" from Marina where she was buried, the Ministers said, condoling her death.

She was an "unparallelled leader" in the sense that she was AIADMK General Secretary for 28 of her 35 years of public service, a seven-time MLA and leading the party to many victories including the 2011 and 2016 assembly polls and 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the resolution said.

She had overcomed many challenges presented by rivals and had ruled the state with the sole motive of people's welfare, it added.

It said Jayalalithaa had donated gold jewelleries she was wearing to the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri during the 1965 Indo-Pak war.

Tracing her life from her being born to Sandhya-Jayaram in 1948, it said Jayalalithaa grew to be a bright student in school and excelled in arts like music and dance.

She was even lauded by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for her speeches in Rajya Sabha on issues including internal security, it said.

Earlier, Panneerselvam and other Ministers paid floral tributes to Jayalalithaa's portrait and then held the meeting.

With agency inputs
Bhubaneswar: With the CBI arresting two Trinamool Congress MPs for their alleged involvement in the Rose Valley chit fund case, opposition Congress and BJP in Odisha on Thursday demanded action against some BJD leaders for "being hand-in-glove" with the ponzi scheme company.

BJP state vice-president Samir Mohanty at a press conference, without taking any name, alleged that a ruling party MLA from Cuttack had arranged a rented house in Mancheswar area of Bhubaneswar for Rose Valley Group chief Goutam Kundu's media venture.

He also alleged that a BJD minister had arranged a meeting of Kundu with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and said, "We seek a clarification from the chief minister on this."

Mohanty alleged that the BJD and the TMC had a "secret understanding" as per which, the former would provide its people for a rally planned by Mamata Banerjee's party in Odisha on January 10.

Asserting that the BJP would make the chit fund scam a major issue in the panchayat polls scheduled to begin from February 13, Mohanty said the state government had failed to return the money to the small investors even though two-and-a-half years had passed.

Reacting to the allegation, senior BJD minister Damodar Rout said, "The CBI took up the chit fund investigation on the Supreme Court's directive. Now, the BJP is in power at the Centre and the CBI is a central agency. So, why are they not cracking the chit fund case at the earliest?"

"BJP has been levelling baseless allegations to stay in the media limelight in view of the upcoming panchayat polls," said BJD spokesperson Rabi Narayan Nanda.

Congress too mounted an attack on the BJD over the chit fund scam.

"Cuttack-Barabati MLA Debashish Samantaray was involved in Astha chit fund and there was a Mercedes car in his driver's name. However, the whole issue was covered up," alleged Odisha Congress treasurer and Cuttack Nagar Congress chief Mohammed Moquim.

"We demand that the CBI bring the MLA and others into the purview of its investigation," he added.

BJD MLA Samantaray, however, rejected the allegations saying, "I am in no way involved in the scam. I have no links with any ponzi scheme company."
The People's Democratic Party (PDP) has invested great hope in a show of strength on Saturday, the first death anniversary of the partys founder Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who was chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir when he passed away.

Though the party hopes to mobilise large numbers of workers to go to Srinagars Sher-e-Kashmir stadium from different parts of the Valley, it is a tall order for several reasons. For one thing, even many of the PDPs erstwhile supporters were terribly alienated from the party following the killing and blinding of youths during the agitations that raged for more than three months from 8 July last year. Two, this is the peak of an extremely cold winter. The Valley had the years first snowfall on Wednesday. Three, people are angry and frustrated over lengthening power cuts.

The party has nevertheless tried to put its best foot forward collectively over the past few weeks. Even though the government shifted to the winter capital, Jammu, at the end of October, the party mobilised its MLAs and other senior leaders to work in their constituencies during December. Several of them held public meetings and set up grievance redressal cells.

Led by MLAs, party workers are talking of new jobs, loans and other measures to revive public support. Party workers hope that such promises will help them to bring out a large number for the public meeting slated for Saturday.

They hope in turn it will give a fresh boost to the partys image and support base. A high-profile event can give a boost in an age driven by media visuals. Opponents of the party have made a point of the fact that only a few thousand people attended Sayeeds funeral, though he died in office and the funeral was held in his native town, Bijbehara.

Huge challenges

The challenge is huge, for the ruling partys image plunged during the agitations since July - which centred on south Kashmir, the bastion of the PDP.

Not only that, activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami were among the key organisers of the uprising. That is ironic since, ever since the PDP was formed in 1999, Jamaat-e-Islami workers have covertly given crucial support to party candidates during elections - most of all in south Kashmir constituencies such as Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian.

The Jamaat was happy to support any party against the National Conference, which they have despised for decades. But they seem to detest the BJP  and any alliance with it  even more. So active were Jamaat activists during those turbulent months last year that it was as if the partys own support base was organising agitations against the government run by the party.

In fact, ever since the PDP took power in coalition with the BJP a couple of years ago, militancy has gained momentum in south Kashmir - and Jamaat-e-Islami families have been among its leading supporters.

Some observers noted that Jamaat-e-Islami activists were prominent among those who rallied to a public protest led by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik in Pulwama last week, defying ban orders. This is most ironic. For, ever since the JKLF initiated militancy in 1988, Jamaat activists have been most uncomfortable with the outfit, which claims to be secular and democratic. Indeed, Jamaat-oriented militants led by Syed Salahuddin, and backed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had largely demolished JKLF through Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in 1990.

Many have interpreted the widespread public anger in south Kashmir as a result of shocked disappointment over the PDPs coalition with the BJP. Many Kashmiris point out that, during the election campaign in 2014, the party, led by current Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, had sought votes expressly to prevent the BJP from coming to power in the state.

Another factor that has rankled is that the centre did not give the state large disbursements for flood rehabilitation and other programmes, even after the PDPs coalition with the BJP. Indeed, many view this as the key to anger, more than the coalition itself.

In the light of these various factors, the public meeting on Saturday is far more than just a ritual of remembrance. Some party workers hope it will be a high-profile marker of the new beginning they are trying to make in grassroots activism.
New Delhi: A two-day meeting of the BJP National Executive will begin on Friday in Delhi, nearly a month ahead of the start of assembly elections in five states.

The meet will begin at around 10 am at the NDMC Convention Centre, in which office-bearers and state unit presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will discuss the assembly elections.

Party sources said the Uttar Pradesh elections are likely to take centrestage at the meeting, apart from demonetisation and surgical strikes on terror launchpads across the Line of Control in September 2016.

The meeting  which will see the participation of former BJP Presidents, party Chief Ministers and around 350 party members  will adopt economic and political resolutions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address party leaders around 4 pm on Friday. Both resolutions will be adopted before Modi's speech.

Modi, along with BJP President Amit Shah, will then officially inaugurate the meet.

Shah is likely to address the meeting after 5 pm, the sources said.

They said the economic resolution is likely to focus on demonetisation and black money and condemn the role of opposition parties, especially the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress in opposing the 8 November demonetisation.

It is also likely to endorse the Modi government's endeavours for the betterment of farmers and agriculture.

The political resolution is expected to focus on surgical strikes in the aftermath of the Uri terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

The cross-border operation will be hailed as a big achievement of the government, being dubbed one of the historical events in Independent India.

The strikes will be projected as an instrument through which the world started viewing the country differently.

On the second day, the meeting will begin at 9 am Modi will deliver his concluding speech at around 4 pm on Saturday.
President Pranab Mukherjee in his New Year message to Governors and Lieutenant Governors on Thursday said that the country has to be extra careful to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.

His statement comes close on the heels of his meeting with the Opposition parties, who registered their protest against holding the budget on 1 February  just three days ahead of the state assembly polls. It was not about demonetisation, but the Opposition was worried that the BJP might get benefitted out of budgetary announcements.

Did the president, who has had stellar stints as finance minster of the country during crucial years, want to say that an early budget would be beneficial for the country and weaker section of the society? One needs to read the presidents lips.

Besides demonetisation issue, the President through his address yesterday without mentioning the word budget wanted to make it clear that Union Budget cant be delayed beyond 1 February. The budget date was finalised well ahead keeping immense benefits in mind. In fact the president had welcomed demonetisation move. Budget date, assembly elections and this demonetisation issue  all shouldnt be mixed up to draw wrong conclusions. If the previous governments had worked as per their ways, the present government should be allowed to function as per its decisions, a retired senior bureaucrat, who had closely worked with Pranab Mukherjee in the Ministry of Finance told Firstpost, on condition of anonymity.

The government had justified its decision to have an early budget on 1 February instead of 28 February by saying that the move would help in giving approvals to annual spending and tax proposals well within time.

Before opposing the Union Budget date vis-a-vis election dates, the Opposition needs introspection.

First, the budget day (1 February) was decided several months before the announcement of poll dates. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a clear indication on 26 October 2016 that the budget date would be advanced to 1 February. A formal announcement was made on 16 November 2016.

Second, the entire country was aware that elections for state assemblies would take place in early months of 2017. No objection was raised in both the cases. But, immediately after election dates were announced, the Opposition parties including the Congress left no stone unturned to get the already finalised budget date postponed.

Political parties do have their reasons to worry, anticipating that it would be advantageous for the ruling BJP government at the Centre. At this juncture President makes this important statementwhich many would like to interpret in their own ways. Even economic experts believe that altering the budget day would be of no help.

Shifting the budget date wont make any difference, remarked Surajit Mazumdar, professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

According to experts, the advancement of budget announcement date will help the entire budgetary exercise to be over by, and the Finance Bill to be passed and implemented from 1 April onwards, instead of June. Itll help companies and households to finalise their savings, investment and tax plans.

The Finance Bill and Appropriation Bill containing tax changes and expenditure details respectively are passed in May. Several tax proposals come into effect only after the Finance Bill is passed in May. But, with the budget on 1 February, the government will get ample time.

Even Pranab Mukherjee who had served as FM in three phases is well aware of it.

The advantage here is that the Finance Bill will be passed in the Parliament in the next two months  February and March, and expenditures can begin from 1 April, unlike now. As per the traditional practice, after presenting the budget in Parliament on the last day of February, the Cabinet has the last month (March) left to get all the legislative approvals for the annual spending and tax proposals before the beginning of the new financial year on 1 April. Early presentation of budget will help the entire exercise to get over by 31 March, and expenditure as well as tax proposals can come into effect right from the beginning of new fiscal, thereby ensuring better implementation, economist Prof Arun Kumar had earlier told this correspondent.

Political analyst Prof MD Nalapat said, February 1 budget is perfectly fine. Itll give the government more than one month period towards implementation. Unlike in the past, productive days wont get wasted.

The industry too has no qualms about the budget date.

Budget date should not be postponed just because elections dates have been announced. 1 February is perfect as the government will be able to give funds to respective sectors well within time, unlike in the past. Even, President Pranab Mukherjee said yesterday that the government has to be extra careful in alleviating the sufferings of the poor. A timely implementation of budgetary proposals is must for this, added secretary general, Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) Anil Bhardwaj. The MSME sector is considered as the backbone of Indian economy.

For full coverage of Union Budget 2017 click here.
A possible truce is in sight in the Samajwadi Party family feud between father-son duo Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav. On Friday, Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh met with SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav at his residence, prior to which Shivpal met Akhilesh Yadav.

However, sources privy to the fast-paced developments told PTI that they did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the "outsider" whose return to SP triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a "compromise formula".

The PTI report ruled that another possibility could be resignation of Shivpal from the post of state SP chief, a charge held by the chief minister before the current family feud broke out.

This was the first meeting between Akhilesh and Shivpal since the chief minister donned the mantle of SP chief

replacing his father Mulayam.

An inkling of a patch-up came late Thursday night when Akhilesh planned to go to the airport in Lucknow to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayam's return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had on Thursday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for three months.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam this morning reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the EC to claim that it was the "real" SP.

Uttar Pradesh: Meeting underway at Mulayam Singh's residence, Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh present in the meet.  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2017

Currently, the party is divided into two camps  Mulayam Singh Yadav-Shivpal Yadav-Amar Singh camp and Akhilesh Yadav-Ram Gopal Yadav camp  and both have claimed majority support of party MPs and MLAs, and sought control of the party name and its election symbol. Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India has given both parties time till 9 January to prove majority.

Ram Gopal Yadav said on Friday that they are ready to submit their list to the Election Commission. He said, "Election Commission asked us to submit affidavits by 9 January of the documents. Will submit affidavit of MLAs, MLCs, MPs between 3-4pm today." He also said, "Out of 229 MLAs, 212 signed affidavit. 56 out of 68 MLCs, 15 out of 24 MPs have signed the affidavit."

Party under leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is the real Samajwadi party, and should be seen so. Cycle symbol must be allotted to us:Ramgopal pic.twitter.com/0TTMWdYJD7  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2017

According to reports by CNN-News 18, Akhilesh, on the other hand, is all set to go into alliance with Congress. CNN-News18 reported that according to insiders, the two parties are likely to announce the alliance next week.

However, according to newspaper Amar Ujala, the Akhilesh camp has the support of 265 MLAs and MLCs, of which there are 209 of the 229 SP MLAs and 56 of the 65 SP MLCs.

A report in The Times of India said with Akhilesh gaining an upper hand over his father and party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the prospects of an alliance between Congress and Samajwadi Party have increased. "Akhilesh is likely to meet Rahul on 9 January. The discussions are expected to also involve Priyanka Gandhi and will aim to thrash out details of a deal that could see Congress contesting 90-105 seats in partnership with SP, well-placed sources said," the newspaper reported.
Thiruvananthapuram: Joining the nation-wide agitation against demonetisation of high value currency notes, thousands of Congress workers in Kerala staged protest on Friday outside central government offices across the state.

Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala courted arrest in front of the Reserve Bank of India regional office in Thiruvananthapuram.

The mass agitation was part of the country-wide stir called by All India Congress Committee from booth to national level against the Narendra Modi government's anti-people policies and its failure to resolve the problems faced by common man, hit by demonetisation.

We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office but we were arrested by Police and were later released: Shashi Tharoor,Congress pic.twitter.com/9oakvpZmdq  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

Prominent leaders, MLAs, MPs and AICC representatives led the picketing in front of various central government offices, including head-post offices in the districts.

A large number of workers, led by Chennithala, staged demonstration at the RBI office in the state capital.

Senior district leaders, including MP Shashi Tharoor and MLA V S Sivakumar also took part in the protests.

Hundreds of party workers from various parts of the district took out a march to the apex bank office in the city.

There were reports of scuffle during the protest when party workers tried to break the police barricade and enter the office premises.

Thiruvananthapuram(Kerala):Police detained Shashi Tharoor &othr Congress leaders who were protesting agnst #DeMonetisation outside RBI offce pic.twitter.com/FYOSCpG98i  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

Veteran Congress leader and former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy launched the agitation in front of the head-post office in Kozhikode, while KPCC president V M Sudheeran led the protest in Thrissur district.

AICC secretary Deepak Babria too held the protest before the BSNL office in Kochi.

The protests were organised under the aegis of respective District Congress Committees.
While there seems to be no end to the ongoing tussle inside the Samajwadi Party, reports have said that Akhilesh Yadav is all set to go into alliance with Congress. CNN-News18 reported that according to insiders, the two parties are likely to announce the alliance next week.

It would be worth remembering that before the split in Samajwadi became apparent, Akhilesh Yadav's willingness to form an alliance with Congress was already a talking point, and the Congress on several occassions showed willingess to contest the upcoming seven-phase polls in Uttar Pradesh with the Samajwadi Party. Not just that the supposed alliance had also emerged as a point of conflict between the two camps in Samajwadi Party.

Currently, the party is divided into two camps  Mulayam Singh Yadav-Shivpal Yadav-Amar Singh camp and Akhilesh Yadav-Ram Gopal Yadav camp  and both have claimed majority support of party MPs and MLAs, and sought control of the party name and its election symbol. Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India had given both parties time till 9 January to prove majority.

However, according to Amar Ujala, the Akhilesh camp has the support of 265 MLAs and MLCs, of which there are 209 of the 229 SP MLAs and 56 of the 65 SP MLCs.

A Times of India report said with Akhilesh gaining an upper hand over his father and party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the prospects of an alliance between Congress and Samajwadi Party have increased. "Akhilesh is likely to meet Rahul on 9 January. The discussions are expected to also involve Priyanka Gandhi and will aim to thrash out details of a deal that could see Congress contesting 90-105 seats in partnership with SP, well-placed sources said," the newspaper reported.

It is worth remembering that earlier, Congress' chief ministerial candidate, Sheila Dikshit had showed a willingness to step down if Congress and Samajwadi Party were to go to polls together.

And now with the dates for the seven-phase poll in Uttar Pradesh already being announced, time is not really on the side of either of the two parties.

But, will Mulayam Singh Yadav join the alliance or not remains to be seen. However, senior members of the Samajwadi Party are hopeful of a possible truce between the two warring camps in the party. Party member Azam Khan recently said that he will keep trying to find a truce between the warring father and son duo until the end.

Speaking with journalists on Thursday, the SP leader seemed confident of a truce and said that both father and son are very emotional about the situation. "I will talk to the chief minister as well as Netaji. I am hopeful that both will agree. I am hoping that it will get done soon," Khan told Hindustan Times.

Khan had been regularly communicating with both Mulayam and Akhilesh and had earlier showed concern that if the infighting in Samajwadi Party was not resolved in time, it would likely benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had showed an impressive performance in the Lok Sabha Elections in 2014.

As News18 had reported earlier, Khan had said that he is ready to bend in front of anyone and go to any one to resolve the matter.
Officially, children in Uruguay have not had a visit from the Three Kings since 1919, when the country adopted one of the worlds only secular calendars after its State-Church separation two years earlier. Yet on this January 6, thousands of presents will fill peoples homes and workers will enjoy a day off.

A Three Kings parade in Seville, Spain. AFP

More information Uruguay no cree en los Reyes Magos

Instead of being known as Dia de Reyes (or Three Kings Day) as it is in most Spanish-speaking countries, Uruguayans will be officially celebrating the Dia del Nino (Day of the Child).

The religious feast of the Epiphany, which is celebrated on January 6 by the Western Catholic Church, will end a special season for the countrys Roman Catholic community, which represents around 41% of the population  one of the lowest figures in the region.

Spurred on by church authorities, the community is attempting to rekindle the religious origin of this feast in Latin Americas most secularized nation, where 38% of the population says it does not practice any religion.

Nothing is stopping the various faiths from engaging in proselytizing activities or seeking to gain new members

Victor Rodriguez Otheguy, Uruguay Association of Free Thinkers

Headed by Cardinal Daniel Sturla, who was appointed by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church has embarked on a new evangelization of Uruguay aimed at attracting part of that 38% of non-confessional citizens, many of whom say they believe in God.

And one of the main hurdles is the countrys calendar, which was designed in 1919 by a liberal and church-opposing elite who, after winning a major battle in parliament, managed what not even the French or Soviet revolutionaries had achieved: removing religion from the calendar.

However, Catholic feasts were maintained, albeit under different names. When other parts of the world celebrate Christmas, Uruguayans have Family Day. Easter Week is known as Tourism Week, and the feast of the Immaculate Conception, held on December 8, is Beach Day in Uruguay.

The Rambla seaside promenade in Montevideo. Jacinta R. Trobo

Things have been this way for nearly 100 years, but the Roman Catholic Church now wants Uruguayans to rediscover the real origin of those national holidays.

And so religious leaders this year asked the faithful to place images of the Nativity on their balconies, churches were told to remain open at least four hours a day, and prayer groups were organized. Meanwhile, Cardinal Sturla denounced the imposition of the secular state model in a series of interviews and sermons.

Anything to do with Catholicism triggers a response that is surprisingly acrimonious, and which has nothing to do with secularism, but rather with the secularizing drive of 100 years ago, the cardinal has said.

Victor Rodriguez Otheguy of Uruguays Association of Free Thinkers, feels that this call for a new evangelization is part of a global trend initiated by the new Pope in Rome.

The liberal elite managed what not even the French or Soviet revolutionaries had achieved

Nothing is stopping the various faiths from engaging in proselytizing activities or seeking to gain new members; that is protected by the Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom, he notes.

But Otheguy says that what the Catholic Church aims to do is to reintroduce religion education into the public education system.

No to Mary statue

In 2016, Sturla failed in his attempt to erect a statue of the Virgin Mary on Montevideos Rambla, a 22-kilometer seaside promenade and the capitals main landmark.

The promenade has no Catholic symbols, although it does contain a statue of Yemoja, a water goddess from the Yoruba religion of West Africa, along with another of Chinese philosopher Confucius.

But Uruguays secularists, both from the right and from the left, refused to budge, and Catholics were left without a statue of Mary.

And so the Three Wise Men continue to bypass Uruguay, although the presents keep showing up every January 6.

English version by Susana Urra.
Will Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) be the dark horse in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly election?

Opinion polls do not offer much hope to the party, placing it at number three behind the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party, but given the way all parties are placed at the moment it could spring a surprise.

The ABP-CSDS poll predicts 93-103 seats for the BSP, with 22 percent of vote share, well behind SP's 141-151 seats and the BJP's 129-139 with 30 and 27 percent vote share respectively. India Today-Axis survey gives a clear majority to the BJP (206-216 seats, 33 percent vote share). The SP and BSP come second and third with 92-97 and 75-85 seats with a vote share 26 percent each. Obviously, things don't look bright for Mayawati's party.

In the 2012 Assembly election, the party's vote share stood at a little above 25 percent, nearly five percent down from its share of above 30 percent in 2007. The five percent gap, however, does not quite explain the huge swing in terms of seats in favour of the SP, which ended with 224 seats. The BSP's tally came down by 126 seat to 80. In the parliamentary polls of 2009, the party had secured 27 percent of votes and 20 seats. The point is that the party has been a steady performer in terms of garnering votes.

With the incumbency factor working against the ruling party, given the current situation of vertical split and a bit of clever social engineering, a similar swing back in favour of the BSP could have been anticipated in the coming election. However, the general election of 2014 has left all existing equations in the state topsy-turvy, and the BSP vulnerable. Riding on the Narendra Modi wave the BJP scored a majestic victory  71 seats with a brute vote share of above 42 percent. The BSP's vote share touched a low 19 percent, indicating a chunk of Dalit votes, perhaps excluding those of Yatavs, the core supporters of Mayawati, had shifted to the BJP.

Has Mayawati done enough between 2014 and 2017 to recover her depleted base? It's not her style to communicate directly with target groups or even party cadre. The answer depends a lot on how the voters' perception of the BJP has changed in the period. Sure, the Modi 'wave' has evaporated but the goodwill for him is somewhat intact. Whether it converts into votes in a state election where local issues dominate is a different matter though. The BJP's image has taken a beating after some incidents of atrocity on Dalits in Gujarat and elsewhere in the country. Moreover, the big change the party promised is yet to be visible on the ground.

That the enthusiasm for the party has declined is evident from the surveys. The India Today-Axis survey puts the BJP's possible vote share at 33 percent; the other survey pegs it at 27 percent. So if the BJP is losing votes who is gaining them?

Given the intense battle for control in the Samajwadi Party between Mulayam Singh Yadav and son and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, it is unlikely that the party would emerge a strong contender for power. If they go their separate ways the party's vote base would get divided. Akhilesh may appear stronger now but he certainly is less adept at building social coalitions as his father. Development as a poll issue has limited traction in a caste-ridden society. Without him by his side the aging and ailing Mulayam is also hamstrung. He is no more fit enough to carry out tough election campaigns. It is also possible that his support base sees Akhilesh as a better option for the long term.

Whatever the case, the SP is not in a position to take benefit of the votes moving away from the BJP. With Congress still showing no sign of being a serious contender to power, the only option left is the BSP. In case the Samajwadi Party family feud does not end, the Muslim votes are likely to shift to Mayawati's party. With a section of Dalits who shifted in 2014 back in BSP fold and a section of Brahmins weighing in, she can expect a turnaround. It's too early to write her off.
By Pedro Fonseca and Brad Brooks

| RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO At least 33 inmates were killed in a prison riot in Brazil on Friday, officials said, possibly in retaliation after members of a powerful drug gang were targeted in the worst prison massacre in decades that left 56 people dead earlier this week.Several of the dead were decapitated, had their hearts cut out and their bodies burned on a bonfire, the Estado de S.Paulo newspaper reported, citing security officials.State officials said the riot in Monte Cristo, Roraima state's largest penitentiary, was brought under control by elite police forces. Violence between rival drug gangs in the prison had ended with 10 dead in October. At least 93 prisoners have been killed in three separate prison riots this week in Brazil, sparking fears that months of violence between drug gangs who control many of the country's prisons was spiraling out of control.The top security official in the state of Roraima, Uziel de Castro, speaking on BandNews radio, blamed Friday's violence at the state-run prison on the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command (PCC) drug gang, which was targeted in Monday's massacre at a prison in Amazonas state.Brazilian Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes said, however, the killings in Roraima were the result of an internal PCC feud and not connected to Monday's prison massacre in Amazonas. He insisted that Brazil had control of its prisons.Security experts had predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled prison system in the wake of Monday's massacre.

"It's getting really ugly. This situation is clearly snowballing and there is nothing the government can do to stop the violence in the short term," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Sao Paulo. "We are paying the price for 50 years of total neglect of the penitentiary system."UNEASY ALLIANCE

In Monday's uprising, members of PCC were attacked by the North Family drug faction, which controls the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas, according to officials. North Family in Amazonas is believed to dominate cocaine traffic from Colombia and Peru, according to authorities.The group is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after PCC.For more than two decades, PCC and Red Command maintained an uneasy alliance, ensuring that a steady flow of drugs and guns flowed across Brazil's long jungle border.

But about six months ago PCC and Red Command split, as PCC moved to take control of lucrative drug routes across the border with Paraguay and become Brazil's dominant gang. Experts say PCC also has been moving to infiltrate areas in Red Command's home base of Rio de Janeiro, further stoking a turf war that threatens to spill onto the streets of Brazil's biggest cities.Since the split, Red Command has allied itself with smaller regional gangs to confront PCC, primarily in the north and northeast of Brazil, where this week's prison violence has boiled over.Alcadipani, the public security expert, said that Brazil's penitentiary system has been "self-regulated" by the gangs and that mass killings were rare until recent months because of a truce between Brazil's biggest criminal factions."But we see that as soon as we have a gang war, these killings are inevitably going to happen because the state has no control over the prisons," said Alcadipani. (Reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo, Alonso Soto in Brasilia; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Pedro Fonseca and Brad Brooks

| RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO Jailed members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang killed 33 inmates at a penitentiary on Friday, decapitating and cutting out the hearts of most of them, in revenge for a separate prison massacre that left 56 dead this week.The massacre in the Monte Cristo prison in the Amazonian state of Roraima carried out by members of the First Capital Command (PCC) gang sparked concerns that months of violence between criminal groups controlling Brazil's prisons was spiralling out of control.The PCC itself was targeted on Sunday in neighbouring Amazonas state in Brazil's worst prison slaughter for more than two decades. In a cellphone video that circulated widely on social media, self-described PCC members are seen hacking away at bodies littering an outdoor patio inside the prison. "You killed our brothers, didn't you? Look here, look what is going to happen you! This is revenge for what you did to our brothers," a PCC member is heard saying on the video as dozens of bodies lie in thick pools of blood.One victim, bare-chested and wearing sky-blue surfer shorts, began to move on the ground. The inmate taking the video calls out to fellow gang members "We've got a live one!" before another gang member rushes over and cuts off the victim's head with a white-handled barbecue knife. State officials said the riot in Roraima's largest prison was brought under control by elite police forces. Violence between rival drug gangs there had already led to 10 deaths in October. Roraima's top security official Uziel de Castro blamed Friday's violence at the state-run prison on the PCC. He later added that it was believed most of the inmates killed Friday were not members of the group responsible for this week's attack on the PCC in Amazonas and indeed had no gang affiliations.

Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes insisted that the government had control over Brazil's prison system - the fourth largest in world and home to more than 620,000 inmates.Security experts had predicted more violence in Brazil's gang-controlled penitentiaries in the wake of Monday's massacre. "It's getting really ugly. This situation is clearly snowballing and there is nothing the government can do to stop the violence in the short term," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Sao Paulo. "We are paying the price for 50 years of total neglect of the penitentiary system."

UNEASY ALLIANCE

In Monday's uprising, PCC members were attacked by the North Family drug faction, which controls the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Amazonas, according to officials. North Family is believed to dominate cocaine traffic in Amazonas from Colombia and Peru, according to authorities.The group is allied with the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command drug gang, Brazil's second most powerful faction after PCC.

For more than two decades, PCC and Red Command maintained an uneasy alliance, ensuring that a steady flow of drugs and guns flowed across Brazil's long jungle border. But about six months ago PCC and Red Command split, as PCC moved to take control of lucrative drug routes across the border with Paraguay and become Brazil's dominant gang. Experts say PCC also has been moving to infiltrate areas in Red Command's home base of Rio de Janeiro, further stoking a turf war that threatens to spill onto the streets of Brazil's biggest cities.Since the split, Red Command has allied itself with smaller regional gangs to confront PCC, primarily in the north and northeast of Brazil, where prison violence boiled over this week.Alcadipani, the public security expert, said that Brazil's penitentiary system has been "self-regulated" by the gangs and that mass killings were rare until recent months because of a truce between the country's biggest criminal factions."But we see that as soon as we have a gang war, these killings are inevitably going to happen because the state has no control over the prisons," said Alcadipani. (Reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo, Alonso Soto in Brasilia; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andrew Hay)

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By James Pearson

| SEOUL

SEOUL South Korea's newest celebrity took an unusual route to the nation's TV screens - years spent working his way up through the ranks of North Korea's diplomatic corps, followed by months secluded in the custody of the rival South's spy agency. Since his release Thae Yong Ho, the former North Korean deputy ambassador to London, has spent the first week of the new year speaking on South Korean variety shows, joking with fellow defectors and espousing South Korea's line that the North Korean government he once defended is unstable and doomed to fail. In a further propaganda coup for Seoul, the gregarious Thae, newly granted South Korean citizenship following his high-profile August defection, is embracing life in the capitalist South as a public figure.On a talk show called "Now On My Way to Meet You", which features young, usually female, defectors from the isolated North, a video interview between Thae and a panelist was introduced as a chat with the "British gentleman-like Thae Yong Ho".The 54-year-old Thae spoke of some of his motivations for switching sides between rivals that remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty."On the day we left the embassy and stepped outside, I told my children, from this moment on, as a father, I am breaking you free from your shackles," Thae said on another show. "Now it's up to you".ASSASSINATION FEARS

Thae is the highest-ranking official to have fled North Korea for the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jong Yop, the brains behind North Korea's governing ideology, which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism.By contrast, Hwang made very few public appearances and lived in constant fear of assassination until he was found dead in his bathtub - from natural causes - 13 years later. His fears were not without some foundation - the year he arrived in South Korea another prominent defector, Yi Han Yong, was shot dead by suspected North Korean assassins, and shortly after Hwang died South Korean authorities said they had arrested an agent of Pyongyang who had been planning to kill him.During his years in the South, Hwang was extremely cautious in public. Surrounded by security staff, he was reported to never touch a glass of water put in front of him at an event.

"The fundamental difference is that Thae is just more laid-back and arguably less self-important," said Michael Madden, a U.S.-based expert on the North Korean leadership. "That might be due to Hwang's background as a philosophy professor and senior ideology official, whereas Thae was more of a schmoozer."Thae, who remains under the protection of South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), said he does not fear for his safety in South Korea, and works at an NIS think-tank that employs many elite former North Koreans.When Thae's defection was announced, the South Korean government said he had fled over dissatisfaction with the rule of Kim Jong Un. But he also had two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London, where one had earned a place at a prestigious college."We can't send our boys back to North Korea," Thae quoted his wife as saying in one recorded interview with a panel show.

THAE BE CONTINUED

Relations between North and South Korea have been especially strained in recent years, with Seoul making renewed efforts to put pressure on Pyongyang's diplomatic allies.A spokesman for the NIS told Reuters it could not comment on any official future plans that may involve Thae.There are other well-known North Korean defectors who speak English and have international book deals.Many hail from rural areas bordering China and brought heart-wrenching stories of victimhood and escape.Thae, however, is from Pyongyang's elite, speaks near-perfect English with a British accent, and is known to be charming, urbane and charismatic.

"Thae has huge potential in terms of being a defector spokesman and icon," said Sokeel Park of LiNK, an organisation working with defectors.During an interview with broadcaster MBN, Thae was asked about the difference between North and South Korean TV studios."Media control is especially strict. When someone shows up at a studio, questions and answers are agreed upon in advance, and a few practice sessions are filmed before the whole thing is reviewed by the propaganda department".Daily life in North Korea at times resembles a scripted TV set, Thae said.On a show featuring defectors called the "Moranbong Club", Thae said he had watched the programme when he was working as a diplomat in London after searching "North Korea", in Korean, on YouTube. He said he had recognised another defector panellist on the show, which typically pays its participants for appearances."I told my family that I used to do night shifts with this man!" Thae said, gesturing towards Han Jin-myeong, who replied that Thae, who outranked him at Pyongyang's foreign ministry, had sworn at him at the time for not doing his duty properly.Producers then used visual effects to superimpose North Korean military uniforms on both men."Why did you swear at him?" the presenter asked."I can't say here!," said Thae, laughing. (Additional reporting by Yun Hwan Chae; Editing by Tony Munroe and Alex Richardson)

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Beijing: China on Thursday refuted Indian allegations that it had double standards on terrorism and said it took a "just" stand by blocking New Delhi's bid to list Pakistani Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.

"Allegations that China adopts double standards on the UN Security Council 1267 committee listing matter does not stand. China takes action based on solid evidence, that is the one standard we use," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

Geng was responding to remarks by Indian Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar on Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Azhar, accused of masterminding the 2016 Pathankot terror attack on an Indian air base.

"We have taken a responsible and constructive part in relevant discussion in a professional and objective way. Relevant members differed on this issue. The purpose of China to put forward technical hold on that issue is to create enough time for the committee and relevant parties to consult with each other on the relevant issue," Geng had said.

China was the only country among the 15-member Counter-Terrorism Committee of the UN Security Council that objected to India's application to list Azhar as a global terrorist.

"China takes a very objective and just and professional attitude. Up to now the Committee is yet to come to an agreement on this issue and we would like stay in communication and coordination with all relevant parties including India," Geng added.
Washington: President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Senator Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community that Trump has publicly challenged, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday. Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after 9/11 to improve coordination of US spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trump's decision, as well as others who spoke to The Associated Press about intelligence matters involving Trump, were not authorised to discuss the matters publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly challenged intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf, setting up an unusually public battle with the spy agencies. On Friday, senior intelligence officials will try to justify their claims when they brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama, who was informed of the conclusions Thursday.

On the eve of his briefing, Trump continued to challenge the intelligence community's assertion that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. He questioned how officials could be "so sure" about the hacking if they had not examined DNC servers.

"What is going on?" he wrote on Twitter.

A senior law enforcement official said in a statement released by the FBI that the bureau repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the importance of obtaining direct access to the servers "only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated." The official said the FBI had to rely on a "third party" for information, but did get access to the material it needed.

Against that backdrop, Trump's transition team has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies  part of an effort to streamline operations and improve efficiency, not as retribution. Transition officials have been looking at changes at both ODNI and the CIA, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The person said they reflect the views of intelligence officials who have told Trump's team that there is room for streamlining within the multi-agency intelligence community.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday night that Trump was considering the changes. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said the report was "100 percent false" and said transition activities were "for information-gathering purposes."

The scope of the changes discussed by some in Trump's transition team was unclear. But the prospect of a sweeping overhaul still created blowback, contributing to former CIA Director James Woolsey's decision to step aside as a senior adviser to the president-elect.

A person with direct knowledge of Woolsey's decision said the former CIA chief had not been significantly involved in the Trump team's discussions on intelligence matters and became uncomfortable being labeled as an adviser. In an interview on CNN, Woolsey said he did not want to "fly under false colors."

In other recent television appearances, Woolsey  who was CIA director under President Bill Clinton  said he believed Russia was involved in the election-related hackings, though he also said others may have been as well.

The CIA declined to comment on potential changes to the intelligence community. Outgoing National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate panel Thursday that his office has not been engaged in such discussions with the Trump transition team. He noted that lawmakers created his office.

"Congress, I think, gets a vote here," said Clapper, who was testifying on Russia's election interference.

Coats' nomination is likely to soothe those who fear Trump will significantly overhaul the intelligence community. The 73-year-old is a Capitol Hill veteran who served eight years in the House before moving to the Senate in 1989 to take Dan Quayle's place when he became vice president. He stayed in the Senate until 1998, then left to become a lobbyist.

After a stint as ambassador to Germany under President George W Bush, Coats joined the high-powered Washington firm of King & Spalding. He helped lead the company's government affairs division and lobbied for pharmaceutical, defense and energy companies.

Coats, who earned $600,000 in his final 13 months at King & Spalding, downplayed his lobbying work when he returned to Indiana for a successful Senate comeback bid in 2010. He served one term and did not seek re-election last year.

Coats was a harsh critic of Russia and pushed the Obama administration to harshly punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. When the White House levied sanctions, the Kremlin responded by banning several lawmakers, including Coats, from traveling to Russia.

Trump has called for improving the relationship between the US and Russia, and has also spoken favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin. His refusal thus far to accept the intelligence community's assessment that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election has sparked concern among lawmakers in both parties.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that there is no question that Russia was behind hacking of political computer systems  something they say could only have occurred with the approval of top Kremlin officials. That conclusion is detailed in the classified report Obama ordered up on Russia and other foreign influence in US elections dating back to 2008.
By Humeyra Pamuk

| ISTANBUL

ISTANBUL In a working-class Istanbul neighbourhood that Central Asian migrants have called home for decades, there is horror but scant surprise that a gunman who killed 39 people in a nightclub on New Year's Day may have spent time in their community.Just beyond the ancient walls on Istanbul's historic peninsula, Zeytinburnu could not be farther removed from the upscale Ortakoy district on the shores of the Bosphorus where the gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle last Sunday.Its bustling streets are full of Kazakh and Uzbek shops and restaurants, their signboards written in Uighur Arabic script. Old men wearing fur-lined caps greet each other as women, some covered from head to toe, browse in shop windows.The gunman, whom Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak has said is thought to be an ethnic Uighur, is believed to have travelled by taxi from Zeytinburnu before the shooting and to have returned to a restaurant there afterwards, asking to borrow money to pay the driver. He is still at large.The restaurant remains open, but several of its employees have been detained.Many Turks feel strong ethnic and cultural ties with the Turkic speaking peoples of Central Asia, including western China and the nearby states of the ex-Soviet Union, and have welcomed migrants who live alongside them in areas like Zeytinburnu.But some in the community say its fabric has changed with a new wave of immigration in recent years."Some of those who arrived have set up separate prayer rooms of their own instead of going to the official mosques ... they teach them things we don't know," said Recep Sadettin Akyol, 37, chairman of the East Turkestan Migrants Association."Apartments are being rented just for the day. You can't tell who's coming in or who's leaving. Nobody informs the local administrators," said Akyol, who is of Kazakh origin but was born and grew up in Istanbul.The Uighurs are a largely Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority in far western China with significant diaspora communities across Central Asia and Turkey.

East Turkestan is a name they use for part of China's western Xinjiang region from where hundreds, possibly thousands, fleeing what rights activists say is religious persecution have travelled clandestinely to Turkey in recent years.Beijing denies restricting their religious freedoms and blames Islamist militants, including those it says come from a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), for a rise in violence in Xinjiang in which hundreds have died.It says some end up fighting alongside militants in Iraq and Syria. On a trip to China last September, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan vowed deeper counter-terrorism cooperation."We have our brothers here from East Turkestan who we've lived together with for years, who love our country and who our society is not at all bothered by," said Huseyin Sariyel, a local administrator in one of Zeytinburnu's neighbourhoods."But there are people here who welcome the ones who are coming to Turkey illegally," he said, adding that local authorities needed more powers to register where they stay."There are hotels with rooms for the day, people convert shops into houses and charge per head. If more authority is given to us we can investigate and take precautions," he said.

WAHHABIST INFLUENCE

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the nightclub attack, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria. Security sources believe the gunman, who they describe as well-versed in guerrilla warfare, may be a national of a Central Asian country and may have trained in Syria.It would not be the first time that an assailant with such a profile had carried out an attack in the region.Kyrgyzstan's state security service said a suicide bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek in late August was ordered by Uighur militants active in Syria and coordinated through a native of Kyrgyzstan living in Turkey.

"Among the arrivals (in recent years), we have seen people who have been influenced by the Wahhabi movement which is influential in Central Asian and Turkic countries," said Akyol, the chairman of the migrants' association."We have said there are those who are exposed to this ideology trying to reach Turkey. They will need humanitarian help but also education ... but we have seen that there is a vacuum," he said.The austere Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam is the state sect of Saudi Arabia, and the term is also used to describe the ultra-conservative religious ideology of militant groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State.The Turkish authorities have not named the suspect in the nightclub attack, although they have said they have identified him and know where he might be hiding.Police in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir detained 20 suspected Islamic State militants, some of Central Asian origin, on Wednesday. Fake passports, mobile phones, and equipment including night vision goggles were seized.Like other long-term residents of Zeytinburnu, former journalist Osman Kumandan, a 65-year-old Turk of Kazakh origin, is wary of some of the district's more recent arrivals."The ones who came recently ... are harsh and somewhat primitive. But it seems they came here deliberately," he said."There are people in Turkey who provide them with the means, saying many came before and found shelter here, undetected." (Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Peter Graff)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

| NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD

NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD Iraqi troops entered Mosul from the north for the first time on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle for the city that also saw elite forces bridge a river under cover of darkness in an unprecedented night raid.The operations were part of a major new push launched last week to seize ground in the city, after progress in the nearly three-month-old operation had stalled for weeks because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.Troops would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said on Friday.The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said troops had taken territory in an overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul."We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.Iraqi army units later breached the city from the north for the first time since the offensive began on Oct. 17, entering the residential al-Hadba apartments complex, officers at a nearby command post told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much of the area they controlled amid resistance from Islamic State.Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.In the latest phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday.The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in battles to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment."The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.

'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'

"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.Iraqi forces meanwhile pushed IS militants back in an area northwest of Baghdad towards the Syrian border, military sources said, in a separate, smaller operation launched on Thursday and part of the wider fight against the group in Anbar province.They encountered little resistance from the militants, who withdrew towards Aneh, around 50 km northwest of the town of Haditha, the sources said. (Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)

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New Delhi: As the Suriname government granted permission in early January to researchers to begin operations to discover the forgotten mass graves of Indian indentured workers killed in police firing in 1902 in the tiny South American nation, where nearly 40 percent of its people are of Indian extraction, new evidence has emerged that could give significant pointers to the location of the graves.

Late last year, Benjamin Mitrasingh, an archaeologist in Suriname, had proposed to use modern technology and aerial surveys to locate the graves of Indian indentured workers killed 110 years ago in Marienburg. The 1902 massacre took place at Marienburg factory and sugarcane plantation when angry agricultural workers protesting against low wages were fired upon by Dutch colonial forces. About 24 workers were killed and their bodies dumped in unmarked mass graves.

As Mitrasingh waited for government permission to commence his investigation, researchers in the Netherlands - Suriname, a country of a little over 500,00 people, gained independence from the Dutch in 1975 - working in the archives located a map that could give indications to the site where the mass graves were located. Sandew Hira and historian Radhinder Bhagwanbali have done considerable research on the subject of Indian immigrants in Suriname.

Bhagwanbhali had been researching on the subject of resistance on the plantations against the indentured labour system. "During his research, Bhagwanbali went into the archives and studied the reports of the Dutch military regarding the uprisings by the workers. He found this map in the military files," Hira said in an email interview with IANS. A copy of the map was sent to Mitrasingh, he added.

Bhagwanbali is the author of three books on migration and the indenture system in Suriname. Hira has been working on creating a database of all Indian indentured labourers who arrived in Suriname. He has put together a list of all those Indian workers killed in the Mariengburg massacre with their names and details about their home villages in India from immigration sources. Hira is keen to get some recognition in India for those who died in the Marienburg uprising.

"I have written a letter to the Indian government with the names, village addresses of those killed in the uprising so that they get recognition in their homeland. I am still awaiting a response from the Indian government", he added. Hira's list was sent to the ministry for overseas Indian affairs in July 2012.

However, Mitrasingh is not very hopeful of getting any real evidence from Bhagwanbali's map. "It is not an actual military map which gives coordinates and specific locations of the graves," he said. The map discovered by Radhinder Bhagwanbali looks like a rough sketch that depicts the rail tracks, the roads and other topographical features of the area.

After securing the government's go-ahead, Mitrasingh has been assured full support by the district commissioner, the surveyor's office and the Marienburg coordinator for his investigations. The surveyor's office will provide a detailed map of the disused rail system at Marienburg. According to media reports, a local businessman has offered the use of his company helicopter for an aerial survey of the area.

There were about 10 major incidents of workers protests by Indian indentured labour in Suriname between 1873 and 1902 and the Marienburg agitation was among the largest. Indian indentured workers were taken to Suriname as agricultural labour to work on the sugarcane plantations during colonial times. Suriname was first colonized by the British, and captured by the Dutch in 1667. .Conditions on the plantations were miserable with overwork, poor living conditions and low wages.

The Mareinburg estate and sugar factory was the biggest business enterprise in Suriname at one time. In 1902, Dutch security forces fired on the protesting workers, killing 24, whose bodies were dumped in unidentified mass graves. According to local belief in the region, the bodies were transported on the train that brought the sugarcane to the sugar mill and buried in large pit near the rail tracks.

The plans to locate the mass graves at Marienburg have evoked a good deal of interest in Suriname. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1983-84 when drilling was undertaken at one site. In 2006 a monument was unveiled to commemorate the workers uprising.

IANS
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has dismissed as "dream" the claim by his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa that he would make a political comeback by toppling the current government this year.

"Certain people can dream but the government would not be toppled before 2020," Sirisena said, addressing a gathering last night at the state radio.

"The government could only be changed by the public at the next election. There will be no action to violate the law and violate the constitution," Sirisena stressed, referring to Rajapaksa's recent comments that the Joint Opposition of his supporters could change the government through a roll in the head count in parliament.

Rajapaksa's supporters expect Sirisena to break the unity government with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe by sacking him and setting up a Sri Lanka Freedom Party government.

"People who tasted power by abusing all privileges are keen to see the government toppled. I clearly tell them that there will be no room for that without public approval," he underlined.

Sirisena said 2017 would be important to Sri Lanka in its economic revival and development.

"We have planned for development projects with international cooperation," he said.

Earlier this week, Wickremesinghe challenged Rajapaksa to topple the current government, saying: "I will be going next week to Switzerland for one week giving Mahinda time to bring the government down."
Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena has confirmed that one of the main priorities of her administration will be to pedestrianize one of the capitals main shopping streets, the Gran Via. Speaking on Cadena SER radio station, Carmena said that City Hall was carefully and calmly analyzing the impact of traffic restrictions imposed over the last month on the thoroughfare and some adjoining streets. The mayor said that her plans would not affect public transportation.

The Gran Via during one of the days traffic was restricted. EFE

Carmena mentioned the example of the Basque city of Bilbao, whose own Gran Via is deliciously pedestrianized and allows access to public transportation.

There have been a series of restrictions on traffic in downtown Madrid throughout December, with the latest running from December 23 to January 8.

Madrid City Hall has introduced a range of traffic restrictions in recent months

Initially, the restrictions on private car use caused bottlenecks at key junctions into the city center, particularly along the main Castellana boulevard.

On December 29, motorists in the Spanish capital were hit with unprecedented measures to reduce traffic, with only vehicles whose license plate ended with an odd number permitted to enter within the M-30 beltway.

The last week of December also saw a 70 km/h speed limit imposed on the M-30 beltway in a bid to reduce emissions. Radar controls have been adjusted accordingly, and police and traffic officers were posted on bridges using mobile radars as a further measure.

There have also been bans on parking in metered public spots in the downtown area during the final months of the year.

Carmena took office in 2015 at the head of the Ahora Madrid coalition, which was backed by anti-austerity party Podemos. She has made clear that under her tenure City Hall intends to reduce the use of cars in the capital, partly to reduce congestion, as well as in response to alarmingly high air pollution levels.

Air pollution caused an estimated 29,980 premature deaths in Spain in 2013, according to the Air quality in Europe  2016 report released by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Asked whether she would run for a second term in 2019, the 72-year old said: This will be a single legislature. As I said from the beginning, the idea is that politics is not a career.

English version by Nick Lyne.
By Steve Holland

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday picked former U.S. Senator Dan Coats as his director of national intelligence, two senior transition officials said, as he puts his own stamp on a U.S. intelligence community that he frequently criticizes.The official announcement was expected this week as Trump makes decisions on some of the remaining major positions he must fill as he prepares to take over the White House on Jan. 20.Coats, 73, is a traditional conservative from Indiana who just finished a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. He was also a U.S. ambassador to Germany for Republican President George W. Bush.Two senior transition officials said Trump had chosen Coats. Separately, a source close to the transition said Trump had also considered New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for the job but that Christie had chosen not to take it.Trump was also nearing decisions on two other Cabinet positions, agriculture secretary and secretary of veterans affairs, with announcements expected soon, the source close to the transition said.

The leading candidate to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture was former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, although one source said Idaho Governor Butch Otter was also in the mix.As for the veterans position, Trump on Tuesday met with Leo Mackay Jr., a former deputy secretary for veterans affairs and a senior vice president of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), about the Cabinet post.

Toby Cosgrove, chief executive officer of the Cleveland Clinic, had been considered for the veterans job but withdrew from consideration.Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia had a hand in hacking during the presidential campaign.He was to get a briefing about the intelligence community's findings on the topic from senior U.S. officials on Friday at Trump Tower in New York.

Some U.S. Intelligence officials on Thursday welcomed Coats' selection, saying they hope his appointment was a sign that Trump was seeking to mend fences with the intelligence community after months of enmity over its assessment that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election through hacking.One official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a domestic political issue, said he also hoped that if he is confirmed, Coats can negotiate what he called "a truce" between the intelligence community and Trump's choice for national security adviser, the former Defense Intelligence Agency director, retired Army Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, who was fired by the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper. (Additional reporting by John Walcott; Editing by Peter Cooney and Jonathan Oatis)

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has issued a blanket mandate requiring politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand said on Friday."I will be departing on January 20th," Ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters.The mandate was issued "without exceptions" through an order sent in a State Department cable on December 23, Gilbert said.He was confirming a report in the New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous U.S. administrations, from both major political parties, have traditionally granted extensions to allow a few ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Officials from the State Department and Trump's transition team were was not immediately available for comment.The order threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain, the New York Times reported.

A senior Trump transition official told the newspaper there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring Obama's overseas envoys leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do. Trump has taken a strict stance against leaving any of Obama's political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on January 20, aiming to break up many of his predecessor's signature foreign and domestic policy achievements, the newspaper said.

Diplomats told New York Times the order has thrown their personal lives into a tailspin, leaving them scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to stay in their countries so their children can remain in school. (Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Additional reporting by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru.; Editing by Sunil Nair and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Stephane Nitschke

| BREMERHAVEN, Germany

BREMERHAVEN, Germany Hundreds of U.S. tanks, trucks and other military equipment arrived by ship in Germany on Friday to be transported by rail and road to eastern Europe as part of a NATO buildup that has drawn Russia's ire.Two shiploads arrived in the northern port of Bremerhaven and a third was due in a few days, bringing the fleets of tracked and wheeled vehicles for use by around 4,000 U.S. troops being deployed for exercises in NATO states near Russia.U.S. and Polish forces will participate in a large "massing" exercise in Poland at the end of January as part of a series of measures aimed at reassuring U.S. allies in Europe after Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine."The best way to maintain the peace is through preparation," Major General Timothy McGuire told reporters when asked if the large deployment was meant to send a message to Russia. "This is just showing the strength and cohesion of the alliance and the U.S. commitment to maintain the peace on the continent," he said.

NATO countries say their planned deployments to eastern NATO countries are purely defensive, but Russia has rebuked what it sees as an aggressive western buildup in eastern Europe. In addition to U.S. troops going to Poland, NATO members Germany, Canada and Britain are also sending battalions of up to 1,000 troops each to the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.They say the four battalions, backed by additional U.S. forces on rotation, are justified by Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Those actions alarmed the Baltic states, which worry they could be the next targets of Russian pressure.

Among their equipment will be 87 Abrams M1A1 tanks, 20 Paladin artillery vehicles and 136 Bradley fighting vehicles.The equipment will be used by the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, arriving this month from Fort Carson, Colorado for the first of what Washington promises will be back-to-back nine-month rotations in the "foreseeable future."Beginning in February, U.S. military units will spread out across Poland, the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania and Germany for training, exercises and maintenance.

The Army is also sending its 10th Combat Aviation Brigade with about 50 Black Hawk and 10 CH-47 Chinook helicopters and 1,800 personnel, as well as a separate aviation battalion with 400 troops and 24 Apache helicopters.Germany's Left party, which has called for closer ties with Russia, said Berlin had a historic obligation to work for peace and disarmament, and it would protest against the deployment."Tanks never create peace anywhere," said Christian Goerke, who heads the party in Brandenburg state. "Quite the contrary, a troop deployment of such a scale is part of always increasing buildup and provocation." (Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Reuters TV; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet with Donald Trump in Washington in the spring, a representative said, in the first visit with the new president by the leader of one of the United States' closest allies.In a phone call with Trump in late November, the Conservative prime minister and the Republican president-elect agreed to work on building relationships through the U.S. presidential transition and to meet at the earliest opportunity."We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the Prime Minister looks forward to visiting the new president in the spring," May's representative said in an emailed statement on Thursday. The statement did not provide further details on the timing of her visit to the U.S. capital.During the call, May's second such conversation with Trump since his election on Nov. 8, the prime minister "suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful," the statement said.

Trump takes office on Jan. 20.Britain has long cherished its so-called "special relationship" with the United States as a central pillar of its foreign policy, but May has struggled to build relations with Trump's transition team.

The first phone call between the two was made following Trump's election. However, he spoke to nine other world leaders before talking with May, raising eyebrows in London.Trump also caused astonishment in Britain in November when he suggested that Nigel Farage of the opposition UKIP party, a firebrand of the Brexit cause and vitriolic critic of the ruling Conservatives whom he counts as a friend and supporter, should be Britain's ambassador to Washington.

London responded that there was no vacancy, but the suggestion, an unprecedented breach of diplomatic protocol, was embarrassing for the government. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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The protests and riots in Mexico, triggered by a 20% spike in gas prices, have claimed three lives this week. On Wednesday a police officer was killed in Mexico City. On Thursday two suspected looters were shot dead on the streets in the city of Veracruz, according to Efe news agency.

One of the victims in the city of Veracruz. Felix Marquez (AP)

More information Tres muertos en los disturbios por el alza del precio de la gasolina en Mexico

In the five days since the unrest began, Mexican police have arrested more than 600 people.

In late December the Mexican government announced it would begin to deregulate gas prices, which had previously set by the state. On January 1, when the first stage of new policy came into effect, the price of gasoline at pumps shot up by 20.1% and diesel costs spiked 16.5%, sparking widespread unrest.

The situation in Mexico City was calmer on Thursday, but the chaos increased in other regions. According to Enrique Solana, President of the National Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, some 800 small and medium businesses and 250 large stores have suffered damage nationwide.

The police officer who died on Wednesday in Mexico City was hit by a car while he tried to stop a robbery at a gas station, Mexican police said on Thursday. Police also said they had arrested 106 people in the capital and deployed 9,000 extra officers.

A man in Mexico City protests against the hike in gas prices. E.C.

In the State of Mexico, more than 430 people have been arrested for acts of vandalism, police say.

In the port city of Veracruz, two people were shot dead during riots that paralyzed the popular tourist destination. The shooters have yet to be identified, according to Efe. Local business leaders added that over 100 shops had been targets of looting and called for federal law enforcement agencies and the army to be brought in, city damage to the tune of 4.4 million.

In Ixmiquilpan in the central state of Hidalgo, police used tear gas on crowds, but failed to disperse protesters who were throwing rocks. According to the local secretary of security, gun shots were heard. Eight civilians and five police officers were injured, according to the same source, although it was not clear if those injuries resulted from gunfire.

The protests prompted Mexicos President Enrique Pena Nieto to make a televised appeal for calm on Wednesday. He said the decision to increase the price at the pumps was related to the increase in global oil prices. He said that although it would be a difficult change it was necessary for economic stability.

Business leaders in Veracruz called for the army to be called in to restore order

The full liberalization of gas prices was initially scheduled for 2018, but the Mexican government opted to start the process a year earlier.

Besides the increase in oil prices, the uncertainty about the arrival of Donald Trump and the future of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the depreciation of the peso, raising the minimum wage and rising electricity costs, all also add to Mexicos economic concerns, said Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis at Banco Base late last year.

English version by Alyssa McMurtry.
About a year and a half ago, I sung the praises of Cake Thai Kitchen , a tiny spot in Miami's Upper East Side opened by chef Phuket Thongsodchareondee (a/k/a "Cake"). From this little hole in a wall, Cake was putting out some of the best Thai food I've eaten in this city. This was not the "regulation issue" menu of so many other local Thai spots; Cake offered some boldly-flavored street foods, executed with that percussive attack of spicy / sour / salty / bitter / sweet / herbaceous that brings such joy when Thai food is properly done.The only thing I couldn't unreservedly recommend about Cake was its location. It was actually great for me personally, a few miles from home and literally just a one-block detour from my usual commute. But despite some new upmarket neighbors  Paulie Gee's on the next block, The Anderson around the corner  this particular stretch of Biscayne Boulevard remains somewhat dodgy, and the utilitarian-at-best venue might not be everyone's idea of a night out on the town.If I wasn't solo, it was usually a take-out option for me too.Well, now you can have your Cake and eat there too. [Go ahead, just kill me now].A second Cake Thai has opened in trendy Wynwood, just off the "gateway" corner of 29th Street and NW 2nd Avenue. I made my way over there for lunch just before the new year (see all my pictures in this Cake Thai - Wynwood flickr set ).It won't be mistaken for the Four Seasons, but the dining room, with seating for about 30, is bright and airy, the walls covered with white tiles, the ceiling festooned with upside-down woven baskets for decoration.The opening menu at Cake Wynwood is abbreviated in comparison to the original location: about thirty dishes, roughly half as many as on the Biscayne Boulevard menu. It's something of a "greatest hits," but also includes some items that were semi-regular blackboard specials at the mothership (the chive cake with chili vinegar and dark soy sauce, the chicken in red curry with pickled bamboo shoots). There's also at least a few things that are completely new, at least to me: a duck larb, some new soups and large format dishes.The new kitchen gives Chef Cake a little more room to play, and so we can expect some more in-house pantry items to be making their way onto the menu. His nuea dad deaw  dried and fried beef jerky, made here with rich, fatty brisket buried under an avalanche of crispy fried shallots  is served with house-made sriracha sauce and pickles.I never order pad thai. I'll invariably pick at it if the kids order it, and invariably be disappointed. Until I tried Cake's, which brings the proper balance of sour and spicy and funky to a dish that is usually just insipidly sweet. Some plump, fresh head-on shrimp also help elevate the dish. Fresh bean sprouts add crunch.In contrast, the grilled chicken wings may be the mildest dish on the menu  just butter, coarse sea salt and pepper to flavor them  but they're meaty, juicy, fatty, and crispy. These are all good words.The best thing we ate on our first visit was a soup dish I'd not seen at Cake before. The kway teow tom yum featured thin rice noodles swimming in a pork broth that's simultaneously tangy and bright while also rich and slick with fat (the menu describes it as a "tangy tonkotsu broth," which is right about on target), garnished with a trifecta of pork: charshu like ribbons of roasted pork, tender ground pork, and golden chicharrones. Wilted morning glory and a hillock of fresh cilantro complete the dish. It's wonderful, like the love child of Thai hot and sour soup (tom yum) and Japanese ramen.Another perk of the new location: they now have a small but effective wine and beer list, including Chang beer from Thailand, Hitachino Nest from Japan, and an assortment of rieslings and other aromatic whites and smartly selected reds (Beaujolais!) to pair with Cake's food.But the best news, for my selfish purposes, is that they are not planning to close the Upper East Side location, which is much closer to home for me; rather, they're looking to spruce it some, to make it look and feel more like its new sibling.I'm looking forward to that too.180 NW 29th Street, Miami, Florida305.573.5082
What happened

Shares of natural-gas-gathering companies Midcoast Energy Partners (NYSE: MEP) and DCP Midstream Partners (DCP 1.50%) climbed 17.5% and 13.1%, respectively, in December thanks to rising natural gas demand and production.

So what

The past couple years have been particularly hard for both Midcoast and DCP Midstream. Natural gas gathering and processing is a part of the natural gas transportation and logistics network that is most vulnerable to changes in production. The further away you go from the end user of a product, the less consistent demand can be. It also didn't help that, in several cases, the services these two companies provided were not on fixed fee or volume-protected contracts.

A lot of Midcoast and DCP's woes were from a decline in natural gas prices and volumes, but we're starting to see a change on that frontier. Increased demand from U.S. liquified natural gas exports -- 1.5 billion cubic feet per day last month -- and from new natural gas chemical facilities popping up across the US are leading to higher prices. This is translating to more drilling and greater production. It shouldn't be surprising to see these gains in stock price when you also consider that the total count of active natural gas rigs in the U.S. has grown by 50% in the past six months.

One of the reasons this is so important for both DCP and for Midcoast is because they were both considered problem children for their parent companies -- Spectra Energy (SE) and Enbridge (ENB 0.80%). It also just so happens that the two parent companies are in the middle of a major merger.

As recently as the second quarter of 2016, Enbridge Energy Partners (EEP) was looking into strategic alternatives for Midcoast. Typically, the term strategic alternative is a veiled way of saying sell the business. Likewise, it wasn't that long ago that DCP's sponsor companies, Spectra Energy and Phillips 66, gave the company two long haul natural gas liquids pipelines and $1.5 billion in cash to prop up poor results.

Since that time, though, a lot has changed. On top of the rise in gas rigs and consumption, the two companies have taken several steps to improve profitability. Midcoast announced during its most recent earnings release that it had cut costs significantly and would be able to fully support its distribution with cash from operations. DCP Midstream Partners, on the other hand, just announced on Jan. 4th that it would acquire all outstanding assets from the holding company co-owned by Spectra and Phillips 66 and become a stand-alone business.

Both Enbridge and Spectra Energy have not made any mention how all of their subsidiary partnerships will be handled when the two combine, or whether it may need to sell some assets. With both Midcoast Energy Partners and DCP Midstream Partners looking like more stable companies lately, it will at a minimum make it easier to find a buyer if the combined company decides to unload these assets.

Now what

Things are looking better at Midcoast and DCP Midstream Partners lately, and increasing natural gas production will help that along even more. That being said, there is still a lot up in the air between DCP's recent restructuring announcement and the Spectra Energy-Enbridge marriage that has not yet been finalized. These two things mean much could change quickly for both companies.

Even though both have shown signs of improving, neither really has the balance sheet strength or operations results to have complete confidence to stand on their own. So until we get some more definitive decisions on what their parent companies plan to do, it's probably best to sit on the sidelines.
Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says he will play by the rules if the Trump administration reshapes auto industry regulations and policies.

When the President of the United States says something, everybody listens, he told the FOX Business Networks Liz Claman during an interview at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

We are business people who are very pragmatic. We play by the rules. If the rules are going to change, we are going to adapt, he said.

The comments by Ghosn came a day after President-elect Trump targeted Toyota (NYSE:TM), the worlds largest automaker, with a hefty border tax if it builds its Corolla cars for the U.S. market in Mexico.

Ghosn said Nissans largest manufacturing plant, based in Smyrna, Tennessee, manufactures 640,000 cars a year. His main concern, he added, is how to keep up with consumer demand.

We are in a situation where we are going to manufacture a lot of cars in the United States, he said. Our concern is, where do we build the new capacity?
Jobs, Trump's tweets and cool gadgets are all On Our Radar today:

Jobs Report

Jobs day! The labor report just crossed the wires, the last one during the Obama administration and of 2016. 156,000 jobs were added in December, with 2.2 millions jobs added to the labor force in 2016. The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.6% to 4.7%.

Stay tuned to Fox Business Network and FOXBusiness.com for a complete breakdown and market impact! Plus, Peter Barnes sits down with Cleveland Fed Chairwoman Loretta Mester on Mornings with Maria.

Who's Gonna Pay For It?

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump tweets again, this time about the border wall. After facing criticism that Congress, not Mexico, will be funding his campaign's promised wall, Trump responded that it will be paid back by Mexico later! Is Trump making good on the promises that got him elected, or is he flip-flopping?

CES Day 3!

Smart insight from Neil Cavuto today at 12pm ET. Also, watch as Congress officially counts the Electoral College votes and declares Trump the President-elect at 1p ET

Its the coolest tech show of the year! The annual Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas and Liz Claman is speaking with some of the biggest names in business. Today at 3pm, Ford (NYSE:F) CEO, Mark Fields sits down with Claman to talk about Trumps pressure on the auto industry and future auto innovation. Dont miss it!
A South Korean court has sentenced the former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser to seven years in prison after the company's disinfectant for humidifiers killed scores of people.

Seoul Central District Court ruled Friday that Shin Hyun-woo, Oxy chief from 1991-2005, was guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising the deadly product as being safe even for children. Seven years is the maximum prison term the court could issue.

The court said the disaster could have been prevented if Shin and others in the company, a subsidiary of British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, had tried to ensure the chemicals' safety.

Executives at Lotte Mart, Homeplus and other retailers were also found guilty of selling the toxic product.

The fatal disinfectant, sold for about a decade until late 2011, reportedly killed more than a thousand people.
Great dividend stocks are as close to a money tree as you'll find. Image source: Getty Images.

Dividend stocks can make for wonderful investments -- particularly companies with a strong track record of giving shareholders a reasonable payout while still retaining enough cash to invest in growing the business.

We reached out to seven of our top contributors and asked them to discuss a dividend stock that investors should have on their shopping list right now, and they gave us a diverse group includingJohnson & Johnson(NYSE: JNJ),Nike(NYSE: NKE),Procter & Gamble(NYSE: PG),Consolidated Edison(NYSE: ED),Sysco Corporation(NYSE: SYY),Raytheon Company(NYSE: RTN), and Enterprise Products Partners L.P.(NYSE: EPD).

Are you looking to get paid in 2017? Look no further than these stocks. Keep reading to find the ones that are right for you.

A beaten-down market beater

Steve Symington (Nike): Shares of Nikeare down nearly 20% this year, but that certainly isn't a reflection of the sportswear and shoe juggernaut's latest financial results.

More specifically, Nike shares climbed modestly after the company delivered a strong fiscal second-quarter 2017 reporttwo weeks ago. Revenue climbed a better-than-expected 6.4% year over year (8% at constant currency), to $8.18 billion, driven by an 8% constant-currency increase in NIKE Brand revenue, to $7.7 billion, and a 5% increase from Converse -- a business Nike acquired in 2003 for just $305 million -- to $416 million. Within the former was 5% growth in NIKE Brand footwear, to $4.82 billion, and a 7% increase in apparel revenue, to $2.54 billion -- both solid, but not overwhelmingly impressive results given today's increasingly competitive retail environment.

Nonetheless, Nike remains a financially sound, cash-generating machine bent on returning capital to shareholders. The company ended last quarter with $5.9 billion in cash on its balance sheet, down only $173 million from the same year-ago period despite making hefty investments in infrastructure, repurchasing 56 million shares for $3.1 billion under a four-year, $12 billion repurchase program authorized in November 2015, and increasing its quarterly dividend (for the 15th consecutive year) two months ago by 13%, to $0.18 per share.At today's prices that equates to a solid annual yield of roughly 1.4%. Combine this with Nike's steady supplemental capital returns and top- and bottom-line growth even in the face of currency headwinds and persistent competition, and I think Nike stock is a worthy portfolio candidate for any dividend-seeking investor.

The bluest blue chip of them all

Brian Feroldi (Johnson & Johnson): When it comes to dividend stocks, I'm a firm believer that investors should favor companies that have stood the test of time. If that sounds like a reasonable strategy to you, then I think you should seriously consider adding Johnson & Johnson to your watchlist.

This company's long-term history is nothing short of remarkable. Johnson & Johnson has grown its adjusted profits each year for more than 32 years in a row. Better still, the company has annually increased its dividend -- which currently yields 2.75% -- for 54 consecutive years. That's an amazingstreak that spans multiple recessions, which is telling about how strong this company is.

Johnson & Johnson has been able to put up those amazing numbers in part because consumers and healthcare professionals alike trust its brand. That strong connection is a big reason that the company holds the No. 1 or No. 2 position in about 70% of the markets in which it competes.

While J&J's stock is currently trading near its all-time high, its trailing price-to-earnings ratio is only 20. That's a discounted valuation when compared to the S&P 500 in general, which makes this a great stock to buy today and to add to on any future dips.

This defensive dividend just keeps growing

Neha Chamaria (Consolidated Edison): If you're looking for good dividend stocks, how about a defensive utility stock that boasts good cash flow and a track record of dividend increases, and has recently pulled back in price? Consolidated Edison stock's 8% drop over the past six months offers income investors an opportunity too good to ignore.

As a regulated electric and gas utility that charges decoupled rates, Con Ed knows well in advance how much in revenue it will generate, which is a huge advantage for any business organization. As fixed revenue means pretty stable earnings, Con Ed has been able to reward shareholders richly over the years: It has increased its dividend for 42 straight years now.

ED Dividend data by YCharts.

That dividend streak is unlikely to break unless people learn to live without electricity and gas. In fact, Con Ed's growth plans stretch well into two decades, reflecting management's foresight and confidence in the business. From modernizing its existing network to investing billions in renewables like solar and wind, Con Ed has its plans in place. These investments should help the company expand its customer base and further bolster its position in the industry, which should translate into rich dividends for investors for years to come. Given the stock's recent drop and a dividend yield of 3.6%, I believe it's time to load up on Con Ed.

A safe bet

Evan Niu, CFA(Procter & Gamble): Given the fact that I'm a tech analyst, it might be surprising that I'd advocate putting Procter & Gambleon your dividend stock shopping list. But that's actually precisely the point, at least for my personal portfolio. My portfolio tends to be overweighted in tech, since that's primarily what I follow, and the search to balance and diversify my portfolio with a solid non-tech dividend payer led me to put the household name on my own personal shopping list. To be clear, I haven't bought shares yet, but it's definitely one of the candidates.

Procter & Gamble really requires no introduction, nor does its plethora of brands that you probably buy every time you go to the store. It's no surprise that P&G is one of the market's favorite dividend stocks, and has consistently paid out for over 125 years. The company is a paragon of implementing a consistent and sustainable dividend policy, including modest but healthy increases every year -- all while maintaining conservative payout ratios that don't put the dividend at risk. Shares yield around 3.2% at current levels, which should please income seekers.

It's true that the company has hit a few headwinds in recent years, including a difficult foreign exchange environment that hurt international sales, and it began streamlining operations by getting rid of more than half of its brands a couple of years go, but overall Procter & Gamble is a solid pick.

Cybersecurity provides upside for this defense stock

Daniel Miller(Raytheon): If your shopping list is anything like mine, it might have changed quite a bit since November. However, one of the stocks high on my list remains -- and, in fact, has become slightly more intriguing since Donald Trump's victory: Raytheon Company.

Raytheon is one of five major U.S. defense contractors, with 2015 revenues topping $23 billion and a well-balanced business that generates about 31% of its top line internationally. It operates in five distinct segments, which are also well balanced, with four of those segments generating the vast majority of revenue: Space and Airborne Systems (SAS), Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS), and Missile Systems (MS).

Now, while those four business segments generate most of its sales, its fifth segment, a joint venture called Forcepoint, provides cybersecurity solutions to government as well as commercial clients. While it only generated 1% of sales in 2015 and around 3% this year, its cybersecurity business should easily increase its top line in the double digits for the foreseeable future. The need for cybersecurity services isn't going away, and if Raytheon can turn this business segment into a fifth pillar of revenue, this is a company well poised to reward shareholders over the long term.

Also, investors can rest assured that Raytheon's recent dividend history has been shareholder-friendly. It has increased its dividend each of the past 12 years, raising it 9.3% in 2016, and also repurchased $1 billion in shares during 2015 alone. Its dividend yield of 2% won't blow investors away, but it's well positioned for the future with strong cash flow, a healthy dividend, and a balanced portfolio of businesses and technologies.

This dividend stock looks tasty

Dan Caplinger (Sysco): Everyone has to eat, and among dividend stocks with long histories of growing payouts, Sysco stands out for its track record of success. The company recently announced its 47th consecutive annual dividend increase, making a 6% boost to its quarterly payment to bring its per-share amount to $0.33. That works out to a 2.5% yield, which isn't the highest in the market, but it's still a healthy payout in a market in which that yield manages to match what the 10-year Treasury is paying.

Sysco has been able to grow both through smart internal initiatives and with targeted strategic acquisitions. The company's purchase of European food distributor Brakes Group early in 2016 has helped Sysco keep its top line rising, and in its most recent quarter, Sysco managed to grow earnings nearly 30% from year-ago levels.

Looking forward, things look even better for Sysco. The restaurant industry, which is a major customer for the company, has started to recover, and those who follow the sector see even better times ahead as a wave of consumer confidence emerges that could send more people out to eat. Even though some investors are still disappointed that the company's attempted acquisition of U.S. Foods was blocked by regulators, Sysco has plenty of room to take advantage of a more favorable business environment and to look for ways to raise its dividend even further in 2017 and beyond.

A steady pipeline of cash flow

Jason Hall (Enterprise Products Partners): The oil and gas industry continues to be a tough place to invest. Yes, a lot of energy stocks did pretty well in 2016, riding a recovery from oil prices in February 2016 that were the lowest we have seen since 2004. But even as a lot of oil stocks were coming back from the brink, dozens of former big dividend payers have cut or even eliminated their payouts completely.

Yet Enterprise Products Partners has largely been able to avoid any concerns about having to cut its distributions -- actually, it has modestly increased payouts over the downturn:

EPD Dividend data by YCharts.

This is partly due to the nature of its midstream operations, which can be largely immune from oil and gas prices, but it's also a product of excellent management, which has done a solid job of playing defense with investors' capital in every market condition. The result? A nearly 6% yield at recent share prices, and a likelihood of more increases in years to come. If you're an income investor looking for an excellent oil and gas stock, look no further than Enterprise Products Partners.

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Brian Feroldi owns shares of Nike. Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. Daniel Miller has no position in any stocks mentioned. Evan Niu, CFA, has no position in any stocks mentioned. Jason Hall has no position in any stocks mentioned. Neha Chamaria has no position in any stocks mentioned. Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nike. The Motley Fool recommends Enterprise Products Partners and Johnson and Johnson. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Thousands of Philadelphia toddlers have started 2017 in a citywide pre-kindergarten program as a new sugary beverage tax created to fund it hit store shelves.

The city launched the pre-K program this week with more than 2,000 children enrolled at 90 locations. The 3- and 4-year-olds don't have to come from families of certain income levels, but the free program targets high-need neighborhoods.

During the enrollment period this fall, officials received more than 3,700 calls. Over 2,200 families applied, and the city expects to have all of those applications completed by the end of January.

Three-year-old Makayla Grant finished her first week in the program Friday at SPIN Parkwood Pre-K in Northeast Philadelphia. Her mother, Lakesha, spends time reading with her and teaching her letters, colors and numbers. But she and her husband, Eric Grant, wanted Makayla to interact more with other children and develop her social skills.

Before going to pre-K, Makayla attended the local YMCA, which cost about $200 a month. Daycares can cost $200 a week. Eric Grant  who recently finished his active duty Army career and returned to Philadelphia from Camp Casey in South Korea  was surprised that the city had established a pre-K program. He called it "very beneficial."

"People aren't going to stop drinking soda, so they might as well use the money to do something beneficial for Philadelphia," he said. "Maybe more people will see that it's going to something positive."

The 1.5 cent per ounce tax on sodas and other sugary drinks is expected to raise $91 million over the next year.

But even as it gets the new program started, the city is looking at a lawsuit filed by the American Beverage Association over the tax. City attorneys have asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear the case.

Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney proposed the tax soon after taking office last year as an innovative way to pay for universal pre-K, one of his campaign priorities. Kenney sold the tax  which would also fund recreational projects across the city  by emphasizing the public good over public health.

More than 180,000 Philadelphians live in deep poverty, many of them children. The average household income for families who applied during the recent enrollment period is just under $35,000 a year. More than eight in 10 applicants live at or below the federal poverty rate.

The city council passed legislation creating the tax last summer. Kenney's office stresses that the tax is paid by distributorships. The companies, however, can then pass it on to consumers.
Tobacco companies have had to deal with threats of litigation for decades, and to a large extent, they've managed to hold back the tide of lawsuits with minimal financial damage. Yet for Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM), 2016 brought a new potential risk related to legal action, when the company failed to persuade the European Union to renew an anti-smuggling agreement with the tobacco giant. As a result, it's possible that relations between Philip Morris and regulators in Europe could become colder, posing long-term issues that could threaten other initiatives like reduced-risk products.

Image source: Philip Morris International.

How Philip Morris got a 12-year reprieve from smuggling-related lawsuits

More than a decade ago, European officials were highly concerned about the level of counterfeiting and contraband-smuggling that was happening on the continent. Even though Philip Morris International made efforts to try to reduce the incidence of illegal trading and shipment of cigarettes, the EU was concerned about the hundreds of millions of euros in unpaid taxes that were lost because of smuggling activities.

In order to spur a unified regulatory effort, the EU entered into an agreement with Philip Morris in 2004. The 12-year deal provided a mechanism to help assist in the long-term prevention of large-scale smuggling of genuine Philip Morris cigarettesin the European market. That wouldn't stop the flow of counterfeit cigarettes, but it at least assured that genuine Philip Morris products wouldn't be as likely to show up in illicit trade.

Specifically, the deal required Philip Morris to take greater measures in identifying who its final customers were, along with more extensive tracking and tracing of cigarette movements throughout the shipping process. Under the agreement, Philip Morris agreed to make payments that could have amounted to about $1.25 billion. In addition, further payments would be required if the EU seized Philip Morris products above a certain defined amount. In exchange, the agreement resolved any past disputes related to contraband cigarettes.

Why the deal didn't get renewed

2016 brought the expiration of the 12-year term of the agreement, and the EU decided in July not to renew the pact. The decision was somewhat contentious, because some member countries in the EU would have preferred to keep agreements in place even when the members of the European Parliament as a whole had voted to recommend not renewing them.

In the end, several factors led to the EU's decision not to renew. On one hand, anti-smoking advocates argued that insulating Philip Morris and other tobacco companies could potentially allow them to hide illegal activities. Others pointed to innovations that the agreement wasn't tailored to deal with, including tobacco used for rolling one's own cigarettes or black-market-produced cigarettes.

Arguably more compelling was the idea that agreements were no longer needed because of advances in the methods that Philip Morris and customs officials use to prevent smuggling activity. Philip Morris has repeatedly noted its role in such efforts, pointing to its cooperation in helping to fight counterfeiting and ensure that only genuine products get sold in full compliance with tax and customs rules.

What happens now?

The expiration of the agreements also brings to an end the protection against litigation that the agreements provided. As a result, some fear that a wave of lawsuits will emerge from those arguing that Philip Morris was complicit in permitting or enabling smuggling activity to take place.

Yet the bigger issue from a long-term perspective is whether Philip Morris failed to do everything it could to maintain good relations with the EU's regulators and leaders. Illicit trade isn't in Philip Morris International's interest either, but the company will have to do go before EU regulators many times in the future. It will be critical for Philip Morris to count on fair assessments of requests on matters like the increased adoption of reduced-risk products, plain packaging laws, and other important issues that will have equally large impacts on its business.

It's too early to tell whether Philip Morris International's failure to earn an extension of its EU agreement will have dramatic long-term consequences. As a measure of how well received the company is among European regulators, however, it's a big warning sign that could mark Philip Morris' largest failure in 2016.

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The Detroit Auto Show will showcase the next wave of automotive technology, as automakers race to develop a self-driving car for the masses.

In early previews Sunday and on the heels of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, several automakers will make self-driving cars one of the main highlights of the North American International Auto Show.

An upgraded version of Fords (NYSE:F) self-driving Fusion Hybrid will make its way to Detroit after making an appearance at CES. Waymo, the new name for Alphabets (NASDAQ:GOOGL) autonomous car unit, will show the public a self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which has served as a test vehicle. The driverless Pacifica is the result of a partnership between Alphabet and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (NYSE:FCAU).

Separately, Fiat Chrysler may bring its all-electric Pacifica to Detroit. A hybrid version goes on sale this year.

Volkswagen is also in the mix on the self-driving front, saying it will have an autonomous electric car concept at the show.

As for mainstream vehicles, the next generations of the Toyota (NYSE:TM) Camry, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Terrain and Honda Odyssey are due for introductions in Detroit.

Two months after a bevy of luxury vehicles debuted in Los Angeles, Mercedes-Benz will have a new E-Class Coupe, and BMW is ready to reveal its 2017 5-Series lineup.

A new Lexus LS, the Toyota brands flagship sedan, is also in the pipeline. From Audi, car shoppers will see a Q8 SUV concept.

Below are some of the reveals on the Detroit schedule, plus one that car enthusiasts are dreaming about.

1. Ford Fusion Hybrid self-driving car

The driverless Fusion is the vehicle of choice for Ubers test program in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Fords next version, based on the refreshed 2017 Fusion Hybrid seen in showrooms today, has faster computer processing and other tech upgrades.

Ford plans to offer a fully autonomous vehicle for ride-sharing services by 2021.

2. Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid self-driving minivan

Waymo will update industry-watchers on its own program to develop self-driving vehicles. Chrysler delivered 100 purpose-built Pacificas to Waymo in December, expanding Waymos test fleet.

3. Chevrolet Corvette ZR1

General Motors has been rumored to be working on the next top-of-the-line Corvette in advance of a Detroit reveal. But a recent report from the website GM Authority suggests that GM will hold off on showing the 2018 Corvette ZR1 to the world.

The ZR1 is expected to bear a close resemblance to the Z06, a 650-horsepower Corvette that starts at roughly $80,000. Based on published photos of test cars, Chevrolet may add a large rear wing and other racing features.

4. Kia Stinger

This is one reveal thats definitely on the books. Kia will bring a new sports sedan, three years after showing off the GT4 Stinger concept. The production version in Detroit is expected to be called the Kia Stinger, and Kia says it will be the fastest-accelerating Kia to date.

Kia launched a website to tease the reveal scheduled for Jan. 8.

5. Toyota Camry

The Camry, a mainstay in Toyotas lineup, closed 2016 as the best-selling passenger car for the 15th year in a row. However, sales dropped 9.5% versus 2015, as automakers grapple with a seismic shift from cars to crossovers.

Toyota is looking to jumpstart Camry sales with a redesigned version for 2018. The company released photos offering a sneak peak of the new Camry, which has a sharper look.
Image source: Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated.

What happened?

Shares of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE: RBA) declined by around 12% last month. That's something of a drop in the bucket compared to all of 2016, when the stock rose by an investor-pleasing 46%. In fact, you could just look at it as the stock cooling off after a nice run. Only there was some interesting news on Dec. 7, the day the stock started to head lower, that you need to keep in the back of your mind.

So what?

One of the big pieces of news at Ritchie Bros. last year was its October agreement to buy IronPlanet. IronPlanet is an online marketplace for selling used equipment, and it's expected to help further Ritchie Bros.' growth efforts. That's good in theory.

However, on Dec. 7, Ritchie completed the sale of $500 million worth of debt to help fund the deal. That in and of itself isn't big news. However, at the end of the third quarter, Ritchie already had around $100 million worth of long-term debt on its balance sheet. So this acquisition is materially increasing the company's debt load. That's something that should worry investors, as it increases costs and financial risk.

And then, on Dec.15, Ritchie Bros. received a request for additional information from the U.S. Department of Justice relating to the acquisition. The company played down the importance of the DOJ request, but clearly the IronPlanet purchase is receiving extra scrutiny, which is never a good thing.

Now what?

Ritchie Bros. is a good company looking to grow its auction business, with an increasing focus on the online space. It's hard to argue with the direction management is going. However, using back-of-the-envelope math, after the bond sale, debt will increase from about 12% of the capital structure to around 45%. That's a big increase in leverage, even if it's for a good cause. Investors should keep a close eye on the company's balance sheet and interest expenses for a little while. And don't forget the DOJ request, which shouldn't be a big deal... but you can't dismiss it, either.

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Investors in Altria Group (NYSE: MO) had a great year, with the stock producing 20% returns for shareholders throughout 2016. Even though the tobacco industry is always challenging, Altria has seen a number of positives recently, and bullish investors are optimistic that they could help make 2017 an even better year both for the company's business and for investors in the stock. Let's take a look at some of the reasons why 2017 might be Altria's best year yet.

Image source: Altria Group.

A big step forward in reduced-risk products could come this year

Most people know Altria for its popular Marlboro brand of cigarettes. But one area that has become increasingly important for Altria is the rise of alternatives to traditional cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes that use liquid-based formulas to simulate the smoking experience by producing vapor have become extremely popular in the U.S., and many have identified it as a growth industry.

Altria has already taken steps to enter the e-cigarette industry through its investments in Nu Mark. The MarkTen XL brand is now available in tens of thousands of retail locations across the nation, and early financial results from the e-cigarette line have been promising. A wide range of flavors allows MarkTen XL users to have different experiences using a single device, with different cartridges available to let users switch between flavors.

Yet 2017 could bring something much better if things go well at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Partner and former subsidiary Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM) filed an application with the FDA for approval of its iQOS heat-not-burn tobacco technology late last year, and regulators are considering whether to accept the application for further review. iQOS has done extremely well in Japan and other test markets, and it has the advantage of using actual tobacco rather than a liquid. If iQOS gains FDA approval, Altria will have exclusive rights to market it in the U.S., and that could be a big step forward for the company's reduced-risk portfolio in pointing the way forward to faster growth.

Beer time for Altria

2017 will also be the first year in which Altria gets results from its new stake in Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD). After the completion of A-B InBev's merger with SABMiller, Altria has more than a 10% stake in Anheuser-Busch, and profits will flow onto Altria's financial statements going forward.

Altria's former stake in SABMiller made substantial contributions to the company's overall profits, and that should continue to be the case for Anheuser-Busch. A-B InBev reported profits of $8.27 billion in 2015, and although 2016 results will be depressed due to items associated with the merger, investors can expect solid profits in 2017 and beyond. Concerns about sluggish performance in more developed markets have some investors nervous about the impact of Anheuser-Busch on Altria in the immediate term. But with the merger giving A-B InBev greater exposure to key markets like South America and Africa, further long-term earnings growth is possible -- and likely.

Bigger buybacks could help Altria stock

Finally, Altria has already signaled that it will increase its commitment to helping shareholders by returning more capital. In connection with the completion of the SABMiller merger, Altria said that it would boost its buyback authorization from $1 billion to $3 billion. The purchases should be completed by mid-2018, assuming that the stock's price action doesn't lead Altria to change its mind about the timing of its repurchases under the program.

Higher buybacks also haven't affected Altria's commitment to shareholders through dividend payments. The company did its regular annual dividend increase during the fall of 2016, and there's little reason not to expect another 7% to 8% increase in the payout by the end of 2017. With so many investors relying on Altria for both income and gain potential, the tobacco giant knows that it needs to build shareholder-friendly initiatives into its overall corporate strategy in order to keep its stakeholders happy.

Many investors are nervous about the stock market in 2017, but Altria enjoys some encouraging prospects. If these three items play out well, then 2017 could well be Altria's best year yet.

10 stocks we like better than Altria Group When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

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Japan's trade minister Hiroshige Seko said on Friday that Japanese companies have and will continue to contribute to employment in the United States.

In a regular press conference after a cabinet meeting, he said it is important for Japan's auto industry to gain understanding of its strong efforts to contribute to the U.S. economy.

Seko was speaking after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose heavy taxes on Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> if it builds its Corolla cars for the U.S. market at a plant in Mexico.

(Reporting by Ami Miyazaki and Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
President Barack Obama said on Friday that criticism from the left wing of his own Democratic Party helped feed into the unpopularity of Obamacare, his signature healthcare reform law.

Obama has been spending part of his last two weeks in office urging supporters to speak out against plans by Republicans - who will soon control both the White House and Congress - to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

At a town hall event with Vox Media, Obama acknowledged the politics have been stacked against his reforms, mainly blaming Republicans who he said refused to help make legislative fixes to Obamacare, which provides subsidies for private insurance to lower-income Americans who do not have healthcare plans at work.

But Obama also said Liberals like former Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders had contributed to the program's unpopularity.

During Sanders' campaign for the presidential nomination, he proposed replacing Obamacare with a government-run single-payer health insurance system based on Medicare, the government plan for elderly and disabled Americans.

"In the 'dissatisfied' column are a whole bunch of Bernie Sanders supporters who wanted a single-payer plan," Obama said in the interview.

"The problem is not that they think Obamacare is a failure. The problem is that they don't think it went far enough and that it left too many people still uncovered," Obama said.

Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Sanders, agreed that many people would rather the government "take on the private insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies" and play a bigger role in providing healthcare.

"There are many millions of Americans, including many of Bernie's supporters, who don't understand why we are the only major country on earth that does not provide healthcare as a right and they don't understand why we pay more but get less for what we spend on healthcare," Briggs said.

Polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation last month showed 46 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare, while 43 percent have a favorable view. Americans are also split on whether the law should be repealed.

Trump and congressional Republicans have vowed to quickly repeal the law, but Obama and Democrats have argued they should reveal a replacement plan before dismantling the program.

More than 20 million previously uninsured Americans gained health coverage through Obamacare, according to the White House. Coverage was extended by expanding the Medicaid program for the poor and through online exchanges where consumers can receive income-based subsidies.
Chipotle is facing another hefty lawsuit, but this time it's not really about the food.

A California woman is suing the Mexican Grill for $2 billion, and has accused the chain of using a photo of her dining at the restaurant in several promotional materials-- without obtaining her consent.

Leah Caldwell, of Sacramento, Calif. says she was dining at a Denver-area Chipotle in 2006 when photographer Steve Adams snapped a photo of her enjoying a meal. The photo was taken without the customer's knowledge and, according to the compaint, Adams later asked Caldwell to sign a release form as she left the restaurant, but Caldwell refused.

CUSTOMERS SUING CHIPOTLE OVER '300 CALORIE' BURRITO

The lawsuit, first filed in U.S. District Court in California and later transferred to the U.S. District Court in Colorado, names both Chipotle founder and CEO Steve Ells and the photographer Steve Adams as defendants, reports Denver 7.

Since 2006, Caldwell claims she has seen her likeness represented in Chipotle marketing material on several occasions. She says she first saw the photo back in Dec. 2014 at a Chipotle restaurant in Orlando and again in March 2015 at two different Chipotle restaurants in the Sacramento Area.

The suit states that Chipotle bought the photo from Adams without checking to see if the photographer had obtained rights from the subject. The complaint also says that the photo of Caldwell dining at Chipotle in 2006 had been edited so that alcoholic beverages were digitally added to the image to near her meal.

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The plaintiff still claims she had no knowledge of the photo being taken a decade ago, but she acknowledges that Caldwell was asked to sign a release, which she declined.

Caldwell is seeking a grand total of $2,237,633,000-- the amount of money the suit claims Chipotle has made from the use of the photo between 2006 and 2015. Once Chipotle 2016 profits are made public, the suit is calling for that amount to be added to the total.

A Chipotle spokesman told Denver 7 that the company does not comment on pending legal cases.
A Florida family facing a long road to recovery as their 5-year-old receives cancer treatment is asking well-wishers to send cards to lift her spirit.

Rylee Bernosky, of Volusia County, complained of a headache last month and was taken to the hospital. Doctors discovered a malignant tumor on her brain stem. Medulloblastoma are fast-growing, high-grade tumors that affect less than 2 percent of all primary brain tumors, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.

Doctors at Arnold Palmer Childrens Hospital successfully removed the tumor and Bernosky will undergo chemotherapy and radiation.

Bernoskys family set up a GoFundMe page and have shared their address for those who would like to send cards, noting that Bernosky loves getting mail:

Rylee's Mailbox.

P.O. Box 530095

DeBary, FL 32753-0095
Alternative medicine practitioners like homeopaths and acupuncturists may claim to treat allergies or asthma, but a study in Canada found that many there offer remedies that are unproven or even dangerous.

"Complementary and alternative medicine continues to grow in popularity - particularly in the areas of allergy and asthma - despite ongoing controversies," said lead author Timothy Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta.

"Both asthma and allergies can be a serious health condition," Caulfield told Reuters Health by email. "These kind of public representations can be misleading and may lead to inappropriate care."

The researchers write in BMJ Open that government data from 2008 found that more than 70 percent of Canadians use complementary and alternative medicine.

In the U.S., they say, people spent over $30 billion on complementary and alternative medicine in 2012 alone.

Caulfield and colleagues sought to investigate alternative medicine practitioners' marketing claims, including those of chiropractors and acupuncturists.

They also investigated claims made by homeopaths, who use diluted plant and mineral tinctures as treatments, and naturopaths, who use a combination of various alternative medicine remedies to treat illness.

The study team performed Google searches in March and April of 2016 and identified 392 websites of alternative medicine clinics located in 10 of Canada's largest cities.

The researchers checked to see if the websites mentioned allergy and food sensitivities or asthma, and if they claimed to be able to diagnose or treat the conditions.

Overall, alternative medicine websites were more likely to advertise that they could treat allergy or asthma rather than diagnose it.

More than half the sites claimed to treat allergy or asthma, while only a quarter claimed to diagnose allergy and about 3 percent claimed to diagnose asthma.

Naturopaths were most likely to make a claim about diagnosis or treatment, with 85 percent making claims about allergies and 64 percent about asthma.

A majority of acupuncturists, 68 percent, and homeopaths, 60 percent, made claims about diagnosing or treating allergies, while around half of both groups claimed to diagnose or treat asthma.

Chiropractors were the least likely to make claims about allergy or asthma, with a third of websites mentioning allergy and 38 percent mentioning asthma.

Many of the testing methods and treatments advertised on the alternative medicine websites do not have any research evidence to support them, the researchers write, and only two treatments mentioned are proven to work.

Some advertised treatments, including spinal manipulation and injection of hydrogen peroxide, may actually cause harm to patients, the researchers write.

The researchers also noted that some websites cited medical treatments like antibiotics and vaccinations as a cause of allergies and asthma.

"Allergies including asthma affect a high proportion of children and adults resulting in a high burden of disease and uncommon but preventable deaths," said David Osborn, a clinical associate professor at the University of Sydney who studies allergy treatments.

"It is unethical to advertise products that do not work or may do harm, particularly if claims of benefit are being made, which they frequently are," Osborn, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email.

Osborn added that patients often will not research whether advertised treatments actually work.

"From the medical point of view, we are highly concerned about the use of unproven and potentially harmful tests and treatments," Osborn said.

The researchers say new policies may be needed to protect the public.

"People should be very skeptical of the marketing information found on these websites," Caulfield said. "Seek out independent, science-based information!"
During surgery to remove a 16-year-old girls appendix, surgeons discovered a surprise guest a tumor with a brain, hair and neurons that could transmit electric impulses like a normal brain.

The nearly 4-inch-wide tumor also had a thin plate of skull bone covering the 1.18-inch brain, which included a tiny version of a cerebellum and a mass that resembled a brain stem, New Scientist reported.

While its not uncommon for brain cells to be found in ovarian teratomas tumors that contain foreign tissue including hair, teeth, cartilage, fat and muscle this patients situation was unusual.

Neural elements similar to that of the central nervous system are frequently reported in ovarian teratomas, but structures resembling the adult brain are rare, Angelique Riepsamen at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told New Scientist.

Its not known what causes ovarian teratomas, but one theory is that immature cells turn rogue and produce different body parts, New Scientist reported.

Fortunately, the unnamed patient didnt suffer symptoms, but neurological symptoms can occur when the immune system labels the brain cells in the ovary as foreign and attacks while also attacking the cells in the womans real brain. Other cases have reported that women with the unusual tumors have developed personality changes, paranoid thoughts, confusion, agitation, seizures or memory loss.

Doctors removed the tumor and the patient is recovering.
A Detroit family is demanding answers after their 9-year-old daughter died within hours of having a tonsillectomy the third most common childhood procedure in the United States, with 530,000 operations performed per year.

The Detroit News reported that Sonia Gambrell plans to sue Detroit Medical Center, which owns Childrens Hospital of Michigan, where her daughter Anyialah Greer underwent the surgery on Dec. 8 prior to suffering cardiac arrest.

Fox 2 Detroit reported that Gambrell had put off the sugery for years due to nerves, but doctors said removing Anyialahs tonsils would remedy her snoring problem. The procedure, which doctors assured Gambrell was medically necessary, was supposed to take 40 minutes but took two hours instead.

After being discharged, Anyialah drifted in and out of sleep, and Gambrell said she knew her little girl didnt feel well, the news station reported.

"She wasn't ready to leave yet, Gambrell told Fox 2 Detroit. I felt like we were brushed off. She left too soon.

Within a few hours of the surgery, Anyialah was dead.

Medical reports suggest an obstructed airway, an undetected heart condition, or anesthesia complications may have left Anyialah at risk, the Detroit News reported.

Gambrell alleges the ear, nose and throat specialist who performed the surgery, Dr. Bianca Siegel, wrongfully discharged her daughter because she was not in stable condition post-surgery.

What was the anesthesiologist doing? What happened in the OR? What did the nurses know? James J. Harrington IV, a partner with Fieger Law of Southfield who specializes in medical malpractice, whom the family hired for representation, told the Detroit News. As far as Im concerned, every single person who looked at this kid has to answer questions. I am furious about this.

Gambrell, meanwhile, told the Detroit News she wishes she had kissed her daughter before she went into the operating room.

I still feel like Im dreaming, she told the news website. Like, Where is my daughter? Someone is going to come up and tell me its all over. That this was a mistake. She cant die from something they do every day.

According to Fox 2 Detroit, representatives from the Children's Hospital expressed their condolences in a statement.

We were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Anyialah, the statement reads. We take the care and service we provide to our patients very seriously and we are here to support the family during this difficult time."

Autopsy results are not expected for several weeks.
To combat the countrys harrowing opioid addiction epidemic, many doctors are moving away from prescribing powerful painkillers to patients, but a nationwide survey finds that 34 percent of physicians believe this tactic may actually be hurting people with chronic pain issues.

Dr. Joseph Audette, pain management chief at Atrius health and pain management specialist, told Fox News Jon Scott that the message to doctors is not to stop writing prescriptions for pain management medications, but to be more cognizant of a patients possible addiction issue.

That sometimes is harder than it may seem to sort out, but as physicians, we dont want to be contributing to a national health crisis that were seeing all around us, Audette said on Fox News Happening Now.

Audette, who has previously said regulations will not be the only answer to Americas addiction problems, called for a multi-faceted approach to addressing the deadly epidemic.

One aspect of that is to try not to have an excess amount of prescription drugs in the general population that are not being used for medical purposes, Audette said.

With more than one-third of physicians who participated in the survey saying the prescription pullback is prolonging patients misery, Dr. Tiffany Sizemore, a quadruple board certified cardiologist, said its more complicated than that.

In my practice, I dont treat a lot of what we call chronic, non-malignant pain, Sizemore said. I send those patients to a pain management specialist that is who should be managing their pain.

Sizemore added that unless a patient that has a malignant cancer, there are very few cases that should require long-term painkillers.

The problem is a lot of doctors dont want to take the time to counsel these patients and explain to them the problems that they are having, she said.
Chicago. The Windy City. Chicagoland. The second city.

What is happening in my hometown? Last year Chicago had the ominous distinction of being the deadliest city in America.

With 779 homicides, Chicago exceeded New York and Los Angeles combined.

Sadly, the "second city" is second to none -- when it comes to violent crime.

But what gives? Why is violent crime skyrocketing there but not in other big cities? And what can Chicago do to stop the carnage?

First the why

Ganglang violence is rampant and showing no signs of slowing down. Law enforcement officials are up to their eyeballs in crime.

And the dirty little secret, nobody wants to address -- the culture of crime has become the norm in Chicago. Much like it was in L.A. in the 80s.

Those are the hard truths Chicago needs to admit to.

Bill OReilly says bring on the National Guard. And also deliver swift and harsh punishment to anyone in possession of illegal guns.

I agree but also think we need to go further.

The Second Amendment was created for the protection of the citizenship. Chicago's harsh gun laws are a big part of the problem. It's high time to allow Chicagoans to carry a weapon to protect themselves against the millions of illegally obtained firearms that the bad guys are packing.

Also, I think a well-funded and massively increased -- in both size and power -- "gang task force" should be the first priority.

Remember what finally broke the crime wave in Los Angeles 30 years ago? It was the gang task force assisted by actual gang bangers in conjunction with cops hired from the very neighborhoods where violent crimes were being committed.  THATS what finally turned that city around. They know what sets off the violent episodes and only they can cool the tensions before they turn violent.

And for Gods sake Mayor Rahm Emanuel. You are a failed mayor . Your liberal, anti-cop doctrines are hanging law enforcement out to dry. Cops need to know their mayor is behind them 100 percent as they walk into the deadly neighborhoods of Chicago's south and west sides.

It's a multi-pronged strategy and boy -- it will cost a bundle. But there is no other way.

I hate that my friends are calling my hometown "Chi-RAQ." It's disgusting.

Chicago is such a beautiful city on the lake and right now its a city with such a disregard for a basic human right. The right to live.

So Wake up, Chicago!

Wake up, Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Wake up, Governor Bruce Rauner.

Do your jobs. It's a matter of life and death.

+++++++++++

Authors note: Saturday, January 7, marks my four year anniversary at the helm of the Fox News show Cashin In. It's been a pleasure to bring you the show over the years.

In fact, I take this role very seriously. So much so that I have never missed hosting Cashin In in the last 4 years. Thats going on 200 consecutive shows. And the show's branded segment, known as Wake up America has become a social media phenomenon.

Our hard hitting commentary is clipped and shared far and wide on social media -- sometimes even racking up more than 5 million views.

Then theres the Wake Up, America book that was spun from these commentaries. It spent 7 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Its all thanks to you, my awesome view crew and you, the reader. Thank you for being so engaged in making America great... Maybe we even had a little part in the process of electing the first "outsider" president.
Im amazed by the continuing stream of negativity Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been communicating to the American people.

Schumer asserted on CNN The only way were going to work with him [Donald Trump] is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues.

He further warned on MSNBC that "It's hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that we [Democrats] could support."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM NEWT GINGRICH

Schumer knows better than to get defined as Senator No. Back in January, 2007 he published Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the collapse of the Bush Republicans eliminated the need for constructive thought. The pressure of the militant left forced the Obama-led party down a path very different than Senator Schumer had hoped for.

I admired the intelligent, positive analysis in this book so much that I joined Senator Schumer for an event at the National Press Club to help launch his book. I told the reporters that he had captured the subtler party-changing aspects of the Contract with America. I still recommend his chapter on what we accomplished as a very insightful analysis by a professional politician.

Schumer wrote his book before the 2006 elections. President George W. Bush and the Republicans looked very formidable. Their collapse during 2006 and their further disintegration in the financial crisis of 2007-2008 was not yet visible when he was writing.

His book is really in the tradition of President Ronald Reagan, Congressman Jack Kemp and the Contract with America. It is based on an understanding that an opposition party will get trapped into a minority status but an alternative party can build a majority.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the collapse of the Bush Republicans eliminated the need for constructive thought. The pressure of the militant left forced the Obama-led party down a path very different than Senator Schumer had hoped for. Under President Obama 25 million people dropped out of the middle class. The very people Senator Schumer wanted to focus on were being crushed by high taxes, regulations, and a failing health care program that crippled small business and the economy.

Then presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel warned in 2009 that the new president ought to focus on jobs rather than health care. However, the Obama presidency was about transforming America into a government-dominated, bureaucratically-controlled state committed to radical values. ObamaCare would help achieve that goal. Economic recovery favoring the middle class, small businesses, and small towns would prop up precisely the people Obama had contempt for.

Obama's leftwing, radical policies and failure to perform on the economy, foreign policy, and healthcare, combined with Hillary Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate and Donald Trump's extraordinary leadership capabilities, led to a defeat no Democrat expected.

At 6:00 p.m. election night the Democrats thought they were going to win by a landslide. By 10:00 p.m. that night they knew they were in a shockingly close race. By 2:00 a.m. they knew they had lost the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they learned that Americans had elected more than 4,100 Republican state legislators, the most in American history.

Liberals in general and Democrats in particular are still in shock.

That shock is tying Senator Schumer's hands.

Senator Schumer should be Senator Middle Class, offering positive solutions to the American people. Unfortunately, he is trapped by the activist wing of his party into becoming Senator No. This is a very dangerous path for him to take.

A negative, anti-Trump opposition party will get weaker and weaker.

To most Americans, obstructionist ideological partisans are exactly what is wrong with Washington.

The current Schumer stance creates a great opportunity for Republicans to be a positive, problem solving party  one capable of improving the lives of all Americans.

Senator No will lose to President Yes.
In the latest bid to derail a Trump Presidency, a group of celebrities have created a video asking anti-Trump supporters to sign a petition to be sent to members of Congress to stand up to Donald Trump. The video was created by the social media campaign Humanity for Progress, formerly known as the pro-Hillary Clinton group, Humanity for Hillary.

Unfortunately, videos like this only promote more negative discourse and separation. They bring about more fear and scarcity when we need love, abundance and unity. Whether you like it or not, Donald Trump will become the 45th President of The United States on Friday, January 20, 2017. Thats as much a fact as the sky being the color blue and the grass being green. Similarly, you wouldnt argue that the Denver Broncos werent the Super Bowl Champions or that the Chicago Cubs didnt win the World Series, and you cant argue that Donald Trump didnt win the election.

Trump won and theres nothing you nor anyone else can do to change that. Asking people to sign a petition that urges congress to stand up to Donald Trump is childish and accomplishes absolutely nothing. Instead of trying to fight the inevitable, how about giving the guy a chance? You may not like Donald Trump, but the fact is he is going to be the next leader of the free world and its time to grow up emotionally, stop acting stupid, put your hate for him on the shelf and stand behind our new president. Trump built a business empire like few others have ever done, and whether you voted for him or not or like him or not, its time to give him the opportunity to bring that same success to the office of Commander in Chief.

In the video, Keegan-Michael Key and Sally Field say, We demand that you block nominees who threaten the rights of women, the LGBT community, people of color, immigrants and the poor. Unfortunately, Key and Field miss the point entirely. Nobody is saying that Donald Trump is perfect. Hes definitely not going to be the most polished or politically correct president. Even many of his supporters strongly and publicly disagree with some of the things he has said and done in the past. But thats not the point!

The point is trying to stand in the way of the President of The United States is wrong and interfering with democracy. Quit your whining and instead of wasting your mental energy trying to change the unchangeable, finally accept the fact that Donald Trump is our next president and lets adopt a spirit of unity and togetherness for the betterment of our country. Were all stronger when we come together as one.

Finally, to Key, Field and the other celebrities in the video, I urge you to take a look in the mirror. Are you perfect? Have you ever said mean things about someone else? Should we hold that grudge against you for the rest of your life? Should we start a petition for people to boycott your movies and television shows? I dont think so.

Donald Trump is our next president and thats a fact. Prior to November 8, 2016, it was perfectly acceptable to be pro Hilary or pro Trump. But not anymore. Theres only one right thing to do: Support President-Elect Trump and together lets make America great again.
Across the Christian church today, a number of faithful believers will celebrate Epiphany. But how many will consider the cultural similarities of this holy day to the stories featured in the national film release of Hidden Figures this weekend?

To believers in Jesus, one of the most powerful messages of Epiphany is the mercy and love demonstrated to all humanity through the revealing of the Son of God to the star-following, foreign-born wise men, who fell down and worshiped the Christ child upon finding Him.

Regardless of race, social status, or gender, God's grace is given to all who come to him in faith in Jesus--what Manhattan pastor Tim Keller refers to as "the only hope that matters."

Segue to another group of wise humans looking to the heavens--this time African-American women working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (later known as NASA) in the 1950s and 60s--seeking equal treatment regardless of their race and gender.

Featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's excellent book Hidden Figures, the lives of Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson will be brought to audiences attention nationally in theaters today.

These women were a part of a larger group of female mathematiciansboth black and whitewho served the American government's WWII efforts in aeronautics and then later in the Cold War space race against the former Soviet Union.

Known as "computers," these math whizzes provided essential work in the development of air flight--military and commercial. The barriers they broke through in what had been a white, male-engineer-only world took incredible courage, humility, and perseverance.

Seeking equal treatment in the workplacewhether it be achieving equal pay, the ability to advance into administrative roles, achieving the status of engineer, or even sitting in on strategy meetingsVaughn, Jackson, and Johnson also faced the racial prejudices of the Jim Crow era as wellincluding segregated buses, bathrooms, and cafeterias to name a few.

Ms. Shetterly does a thoughtful job chronicling these challenges in a time where African-Americans wrestled with the irony of serving a country that was fighting for freedom in other lands while curtailing their own.

Eighty percent of the worlds population is colored, the NACAs chief legal counsel Paul Dembling wrote in a 1956 file memo. In trying to provide leadership in world events, it is necessary for this country to indicate to the world that we practice equality for all within this country.

Providentially, Vaughn, Jackson, and Johnson were educated and positioned to work in an environment during a time when African Americans (particularly females) had very few opportunities to escape their position in life.

Consider Katherine Johnson.

Raised in West Virginia, Katherines teachers quickly recognized her God-given talents in mathematics. Graduating at age 14, Johnson enrolled at West Virginia State University. Exhausting the college's math curriculum by her junior year, her Ivy League trained professor W. W. Schiefflin Claytor (only the third African-American to earn a Ph.D. in math in 1933) had to create advanced courses to continue to challenge her.

Becoming a math teacher and wife, Johnson was later encouraged by her alma mater to be a part of integrating West Virginia Universitys graduate schoolbecoming one of three African Americans to attend in the summer of 1940. Her pregnancy with her first child would lead to the decision to stay homeforgoing graduate schoolbut her work was far from through.

Fast-forward 13 years to Katherine and her familys move to Newport News.

Joining Carver Presbyterian Church and developing a strong network in the community, she would make her mark in the workforce with her job appointment to NACA as a computer in June 1953breaking tremendous barriers from aeronautic innovations to gender and race roles.

For any number of reasons, concrete and ineffable, there was something about Katherine that made her as comfortable in the office as she was in the choir loft at Carver Presbyterian. She didn't close her eyes to the racism that existed; she knew just as well as any other black person the tax levied upon them because of their color. But she didn't feel it in the same way.

Although little known nationally for most of her life, Katherine played a vital role in the space programeven earning the respect of astronaut John Glenn, who famously asked her to confirm the IBM computers trajectory calculations before his historic orbiting of the Earth in 1962.

But what if the diverse team that was behind this American first had been recognized publiclyespecially before the 135 million people who viewed Glenn's lift off on television?

Imagine the impact this could have had on race relations and women pursuing careers in science.

In an era of racial hostility leading up to the explosive election year of 1968, which not only saw race riots but also the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., what if the work of men and women of different backgrounds and races had been heralded along with the astronauts (the 1968 Time Men of the Year) who flew Apollo 8 around the moon or a year later with the crew of Apollo 11s landing on the moon?

This idea of hope that comes through unityespecially diverse teams of people working togethercannot be underestimated. For who could have imagined the meeting of a poor Jewish couple and wealthy high-ranking foreigners to worship the King of kings being celebrated over 2000 years later?

And like the wise men remembered on Epiphany, thanks to women such as Ms. Shetterly and her work in Hidden Figures, wise women of deep faith and talent such as Katherine Johnson continue to inspire hope and collaboration in othersmuch needed traits in our world in 2017.
The Obama administration Thursday added the son of Al-Qaeda founder and September 11th mastermind Usama bin Laden to a terror list, marking the 239th terrorist designation from the State Department since 2012, a State Department spokesperson told Fox News.

The State Department designated Hamza bin Laden, 27, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), which imposes sanctions on foreign people thought to have committed or pose a serious risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten U.S. national security, foreign policy, or the economy of the United States.

Al-Qaeda senior leader Ayman al-Zawahiri earlier announced Hazma bin Laden as an official member of the terrorist group, according to a 2015 audio message obtained by the State Department. That message also contains bin Laden threatening revenge against the United Statesspecifically calling for lone wolf attacks against Washington D.C., Paris, and Tel Aviv.

FOUR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES TRANSFERRING TO SAUDI ARABIA, AS PART OF FINAL WAVE

The State Department said that in 2016, bin Laden called on Saudi Arabian-based tribes to unite with Al-Qaedas affiliate in Yemen to wage war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Hamza bin Laden was designated under Executive Order 13224 because he fits the criteria for a terrorist designation, Rhonda Shore, spokesperson for the Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism at the State Department, told Fox News. On July 9, 2016, al-Qaida issued another audio message from Hamza bin Laden threatening revenge against the United States and warned Americans they would be targeted in the United States and abroad.

When asked why bin Laden was just designated a terrorist on Thursday if the Obama administration had intelligence regarding his terrorism ties as far back as 2015, a State Department spokesperson told Fox News that records of this kind can take extensive time to prepare, and designations of terrorists are typically a multi-month process involving not only the secretary of State and the State Department, but the Secretary of Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Department of the Treasury.

'REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ISIS' TV SKETCH FACES BACKLASH

According to the spokesperson, terrorist designations are used to expose and isolate organizations and individuals, while imposing serious sanctions on them, and enabling coordinated action across the U.S. government, and internationally, to disrupt the activity of terrorists, such as denying them access to the U.S. financial systems, and enabling U.S. law enforcement actions.

The State Department is calling the move a powerful tool, and a measure to notify the U.S. public and international community that bin Laden is actively engaged in terrorism.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment regarding the whereabouts of Hamza bin Laden.
As Congress prepares to certify Donald Trump's election as president on Friday, it will follow a system set up by the Founding Fathers.

The Founders feared a direct, popular election of the president. So while the Founders erected a system for eligible voters to cast ballots for president, they simultaneously constructed a series of circuit-breakers to potentially curb the will of the masses. This diffusion of political power when selecting a chief executive is the quintessence of the Electoral College.

The first circuit-breaker is the Electoral College itself. The Founders distributed electoral votes based on the population of each state. They granted the smallest states a minimum of three electoral votes  based on the standard distribution of at least two U.S. Senators and one member in the U.S. House of Representatives. But bigger states would command more sway in the Electoral College, because, well, they were bigger. Hence, the reason New York and Virginia were power players in the early years.

In essence, voters were choosing electors for their state who would cast ballots on behalf of the candidate who emerged victorious. However, electors are free to vote the way they want and not bound to the candidate who prevails in a state. That produces the periodic phenomenon of faithless electors casting ballots in the Electoral College.

Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C. have laws latching electors to candidates. But those statutes are generally viewed as unenforceable. There have only been 157 instances of faithless electors for president or vice president in the history of the republic, and none has swayed the outcome of an election.

Prior to this cycle, the last faithless elector incident came in 2004. An unknown elector from Minnesota cast his or her ballot for then-Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., the Democrats vice presidential nominee, instead of now-Secretary of State John Kerry, then the Democratic standard-bearer.

In the 2016 election, two Texas electors broke from President-elect Trump. One cast a ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. One voted for former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. In Washington state, there were four faithless electors. Three Washington electors pledged to Hillary Clinton voted for Colin Powell. One voted for Native American activist Faith Spotted Eagle. In Hawaii, a Clinton elector voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

That gave Trump 304 votes in the final electoral tally to Clinton's 227.

The Archivist of the United States has transmitted the electoral certificates provided by the governors to both the House and Senate.

The Electoral College vote will be officially tabulated Friday, when Congress holds a Joint Meeting with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Vice President Joe Biden presiding.

Congress will tabulate the states' electoral slates in alphabetical order. Four vote counters, known as tellers and typically two House and two Senate members, will announce the results.

If there is a dispute over a state's electors, a debate can be called. This is the second circuit-breaker, and is in accordance with the Founders' dictate that the House and Senate would serve as the ultimate arbiter of each states electoral slate.

If theres a disagreement, a member of the House and Senate must jointly contest an individual states electoral ballots. If that happens, the House and Senate would dissolve into their separate bodies, debate the issue for two hours and then vote to accept or reject that states electoral vote. Both houses would later reconvene to finally settle the issue.

In early 2001, various members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) aimed to challenge Floridas electoral slate from the previous falls disputed presidential election. Then-Vice President Gore repeatedly asked each CBC member if they had a Senate sponsor to jointly contest the Florida electoral slate. None did.

I dont care that it is not signed by a senator, famously proclaimed Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., when pressed by Gore if she had a Senate advocate.

The irony of course is that the person who stood to benefit from a successful challenge of Floridas electoral ballot was none other than Gore  the 2000 Democratic Presidential nominee.

In other words, this was getting awkward.

But not for long.

The chair would advise that the rules do care, Gore chastened Waters as he rejected her petition.

The move triggered applause from Congressional Republicans in the House chamber.

In January 2005, then-Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, challenged her home state's electoral slate during Joint Meeting over reports of voting irregularities during the 2004 election. This time, Tubbs Jones found a Senate patron in Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The House and Senate met separately to debate and vote on the objection, eventually finding Ohio's electoral votes to be in order. As a result, then-President George W. Bush secured a second term in the White House.

There is a final circuit-breaker. Lets say the House and Senate cannot settle a dispute over the electoral vote and no candidate reaches the magic number of 270? Thats when the House decides the president in what is called a contingent election. This has only happened twice in U.S. history. The House votes by state delegation (one vote per state, so California is no more influential than, say, North Dakota). A contingent election in 1801 elected Thomas Jefferson. The contingent election of 1825 tapped John Quincy Adams.


The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Thursday to rebuke the United Nations for passing a resolution criticizing Israeli settlements.

Lawmakers voted 342-80 in favor of the bipartisan non-binding resolution, which declares unwavering support for Israel and insists that the United States reject any future U.N. actions that are similarly "one-sided and anti-Israel."

A visibly angry House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. opened debate on the resolution by saying that the Obama administration "abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most."

"Do not be fooled," Ryan said. "This U.N. Security Council resolution ... was about one thing and one thing only. Israels right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state.

"These types of one-sided efforts are designed to isolate and delegitimize Israel. They do not advance peace, they make it more elusive."



The House measure divided Democrats, 109 of whom joined 233 Republicans in approving the measure. However, nearly 80 more opposed the measure because they said it contained inaccuracies and distorted the complexities of the Middle East peace process. They also accused Republicans of attacking Obama unfairly in the waning days of his presidency.

"The point of the measure seems to be to bash Obama on the way out," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who along with many other Democrats still voiced strong support for Israel. They said Obama deserved credit for engineering last year's new, long-term security agreement that gives Israel $38 billion in U.S. military aid, including $5 billion for missile defenses.



A similar bipartisan measure to reprimand the U.N. has been introduced in the Senate. "Israel is always the bad guy in the eyes of the United Nations," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the measure's co-sponsors.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said the resolution "proved once again that the US-Israel alliance is based not only on shared interests, but also on shared values ... This special relationship has endured the test of time and I have no doubt that it will continue to be strengthened in the future."

Israel and its supporters lashed out at Obama for his decision to abstain and allow the U.N. Security Council to approve in December a resolution calling Israel's settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem "a flagrant violation under international law."

Although the U.S. is opposed to the settlements, it has traditionally used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to scuttle resolutions that condemn Israel. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinians must be resolved through direct negotiations, according to longstanding practice and policy.



Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, accused Obama of a "shameful ambush" and said he was looking forward to working with Trump, whom he described as his friend.



But Secretary of State John Kerry said in a late December speech that the U.S. was standing up for a two-state solution when it abstained on the resolution. He criticized Israel for settlement building and blamed Netanyahu for dragging Israel away from democracy.



Kerry said expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are leading to an "irreversible one-state reality."



The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, for an independent state. They say that Israeli settlements in these areas, now home to about 600,000 Israelis, are threatening their plans for independence by taking in lands where they hope to establish their state.



The U.N. resolution, along with Kerry's speech, essentially endorsed the Palestinian position by calling for the pre-1967 lines to serve as the reference point for a final border.



Netanyahu, who opposes a return to the 1967 lines, has condemned the moves as "skewed" and "shameful."



Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the panel's top Democrat, sponsored the House measure. The U.N. resolution "undermines the prospect for Israelis and Palestinians resuming productive, direct negotiations," according to their legislation, and should be "repealed or fundamentally altered."

Attention from the move by the U.N. last month could provide fuel for pro-Israel initiatives favored by conservatives on Capitol Hill. For example, a small group of Republican senators is proposing to withhold 50 percent of the State Department's 2017 budget until the U.S. Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to shift the embassy.

But a spokesman for Jordan's government told The Associated Press on Thursday that the embassy move would be a "red line" for Jordan and "inflame the Islamic and Arab streets." Jordan serves as custodian of a major Islamic shrine in east Jerusalem and the Palestinians seek a capital there.

Fox News' Chad Pergram, FoxNews.com's Jonathan Wachtel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Vice President Joe Biden says that President-elect Donald Trump should grow up during an interview on Thursday.

During an interview on PBS NewsHour, Biden and Judy Woodruff discussed Trumps use of Twitter and how the president-elect will communicate in the future. Time to be an adult. Youre president. Youve got to do something. Show us what you have, Biden said.

The vice president also said that Trump as president will have to propose legislation that Congress and the public can then assess. He said that it'll be "much clearer what he's for and against" once he's in the position of governing.

In the PBS interview, the Vice President discussed many issues including healthcare. Biden said Republicans, dont think Health care is a right. They think it is a privilege. Repealing and replacing ObamaCare has been a top priority for the Trump team.

Mr. Trumps a good man but he doesnt know much about the healthcare system, Biden added.

Biden also addressed issues such as foreign policy, Russian hacking, and Trumps cabinet picks, among others during his interview.

The vice president called it dangerous for Trump to criticize the intelligence community in such a public way, saying that words matter. He said Trump is claiming that he knows more than the intelligence agencies.

Biden said that's like saying, "I know more about physics than my professor." He says that's worrisome, but he assumes Trump's behavior will change.

The vice president plans to work on issues that are of overwhelming concern to him, including public policy, saying he wants to stay engaged after his time in office.



The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A joint session of Congress on Friday formally certified President-elect Donald Trumps Electoral College victory, over the last-minute objections of several Democratic lawmakers who tried to contest the outcome  and were instructed by Vice President Biden, It is over.

The certification clears away any final hurdles for Trumps road to the inauguration in two weeks.

Trump was certified as winning the White House race with 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clintons 227. Mike Pence was certified as the next vice president.

But as with other formalities in this election that normally would proceed without much ado, Fridays certification was marked by moments of drama.

Several Democratic lawmakers tried to sideline the proceedings, objecting to the validity of the vote on the basis of what they called voter suppression, Russian interference in the election, and other factors.

Each time, Biden, who was presiding, rapped the gavel and cut them off because they did not have the necessary support for their objection from a U.S. senator.

It is over, Biden instructed Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., one of several who tried to lodge an objection. The chamber broke out in applause.

Toward the end, several protesters also were escorted out of the House chambers.

The outcome already was assured, after all 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes, giving Trump well over the 270 needed to win. Despite rumblings of a revolt, only two Republican electors -- both from Texas -- cast protest votes that day for someone other than Trump. Clinton lost four Democratic electors in Washington state and one in Hawaii.

Friday's vote count marked the last chance for Democrats and other anti-Trump forces to disrupt Trump's election. They technically were allowed to file objections, but needed a member of the House and Senate to jointly contest an individual states electoral ballots, in order to trigger a separate debate and vote.

None of the House Democrats objecting had a Senate co-sponsor.

The scene was reminiscent of 2001, when various members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) tried to challenge Floridas electoral slate from the previous falls disputed election. Then-Vice President Gore repeatedly asked each CBC member if they had a Senate sponsor to jointly contest the slate. None did.

I dont care that it is not signed by a senator, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., famously proclaimed.

The chair would advise that the rules do care, Gore chastened Waters as he rejected her petition.

The response from Gore, who as the 2000 Democratic nominee was the person who stood to benefit from a successful challenge, triggered applause from congressional Republicans in the House chamber.

This year, the most Democrats could do was slow the process as they didnt have the votes to overturn the outcome.

Trump won the election even though Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes. The Democratic nominees popular-vote victory, combined with post-election claims from the intelligence community that Moscow engaged in computer hacking to sway the election in favor of Trump, had fueled last months failed effort to stall Trumps election in the Electoral College.

But Trump has cast doubt on those findings, while taking some final swipes at Clinton as he prepares for the inauguration.

He tweeted Friday morning, Hillary and the Dems were never going to beat the PASSION of my voters. They saw what was happening in the last two weeks before the...... and knew they were in big trouble - which is why they cancelled their big fireworks at the last minute.THEY SAW A MOVEMENT LIKE NEVER BEFORE.

The congressional certification comes as Trump has named nominees for most of his Cabinet positions and is filling out his White House staff.

Fox News Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Republican congressman took matters into his own hands Friday and personally removed a painting depicting police officers as pigs that a colleague had allowed to be displayed at the U.S. Capitol complex.

I was angry, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told FoxNews.com. Ive seen the press [reporting] on this for about a week or so.  Im in the Marine Corps. If you want it done, just call us.

Hunter said he walked over to the artwork Friday morning with a few colleagues and unscrewed it. He then delivered it to the office of Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., the congressman whose office had allowed the piece to be displayed. The painting, hanging since June, was done by a high school student who had won Clays annual Congressional Art competition.

The piece drew outrage, however, from law enforcement groups and fellow lawmakers.

As for whether the painting will stay down, Hunter said: Lacy can put it back up, I guess, if he wants to  but Im allowed to take it down.

Clays office has not yet responded to a request from FoxNews.com for comment.

More than 27,000 law enforcement professionals had been protesting the display of what they called a reprehensible, repugnant and repulsive painting in the hallway of the Capitol.

After being told the piece was removed, Ron Hernandez, president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, said in a statement Friday they were very pleased.

He said: At a time of our country facing rising crime and a shortage of those willing to work the streets as police officers and deputy sheriffs, we need to make it clear that depictions of law enforcement officers as pigs in our Nation's Capital is not acceptable.

The acrylic painting, which took first place in a congressional student art competition in St. Louis, depicts a police officer as a pig in uniform aiming a gun at African-American protesters. Above the scene, two birds -- one black, one white -- fight, and beside them, an African-American protester holding a scale of justice is crucified.

The art piece, Untitled, was created by then-Cardinal Ritter Prep senior David Pulphus, and was on display in the hallway between the Capitol and adjacent House office buildings. Clays office has said the teen who made the painting was speaking from his own life experience, considering where he lived and its location close to Ferguson, Mo.

Hunter said hes friends with Clay, calling him a great guy.

He added, But youve got to respect our men in uniform and what they do.

The Independent Journal Review had first reported on the art.

House leaders already were coming under pressure to take the painting down before Friday.

In an earlier statement calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to remove it, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the Sergeants Benevolent Association of New York, and the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose Police Officers Associations said: This false narrative portrays law enforcement professionals as posing a danger to the very communities we serve. That is untrue and this art reinforces this false narrative and is disrespectful on so many levels.

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
Secretary of State John Kerry took a swipe at another U.S. ally this week, this time pointing the finger at the United Kingdom for the Obama administrations struggle to enforce the red line in Syria  a week after he slammed Israel's government over settlements.

At a final press conference in Washington, D.C. Thursday, Kerry tackled the claim that President Obama did not properly enforce his 2012 vow that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would cross a "red line." When Assad used sarin nerve gas in 2013, the administration didn't respond with military force.

Kerry disagreed with the narrative that Obama failed to enforce the red line, however, saying the president did intend to act -- but was steered off course after the British Parliament narrowly voted against bombing Syria in August 2013.

"The president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, did decide to use force. And he announced his decision publicly and said were going to act, were going to do what we need to do to respond to this blatant violation of international law and of warnings and of the red line he had chosen," he said.

"Now, we were marching towards that time when, lo and behold ... before the Friday decision, Prime Minister David Cameron went to Parliament ... and he sought a vote of approval for him to join in the action that we were going to engage in. And guess what? The Parliament voted no. They shot him down."

Kerry went on to say that Camerons decision to consult Parliament pushed Obama to consult Congress before engaging in airstrikes: "The president decided that he needed to go to Congress because of what had happened in Great Britain and because he needed the approval."

In the interim, Kerry said, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov reached out to him, and they cooperated on a deal to get rid of Assads chemical weapons.

The president never said, I wont drop a bomb. What happened was people interpreted it, Kerry said, acknowledging that "perception" hurt.

Obama had previously called the U.K. vote a major factor in why there was no attack against Assads regime, but Kerry's remarks went into more detail.

When asked for comment on Kerrys remarks, a spokesman for the U.K. Foreign Office did not address the remarks directly, but defended Britains record in Syria and said it will continue to use all of the diplomatic levers at our command to reduce the suffering of the Syrian people by using our voice in the UN Security Council and support efforts to secure a political settlement based on transition away from the Assad regime.

Ministers have repeatedly expressed their disappointment that Parliament did not vote in [favor] of using force against Assad in 2013, the spokesman added.

But critics said the remarks were an attempt by Kerry to gloss over one of the weakest points of Obamas foreign policy record.

Kerry is clearly trying to deflect away from the fact that the Obama administrations Syria policy has been a complete and utter disaster, and this is a rather pathetic attempt to try to blame the British for President Obamas own failure and lack of judgment, Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told FoxNews.com.

British media including The Guardian also picked up on Kerry's comments.

Kerrys remarks come less than a week after the secretary of state upset both the British and Israeli governments by lambasting what he called Israels settler agenda.

Defending the decision of the U.S. not to veto a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements, Kerry called the current government the "most right-wing" in Israel's history and claimed its agenda is "driven by the most extreme elements."

The speech sparked fury from the Israeli government, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the speech skewed and warning: Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.

A spokesman for U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May also said: We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally.

Kerrys claims about Syria arent the first time the administration has needled its British allies. In an interview with The Atlantic in April, Obama blamed Cameron for what he called a sh-t show in Libya, saying Cameron had become distracted by a range of other things.

Obama also ruffled feathers last year when he said if the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, it would be at the "back of the queue" for trade talks with America. Brits voted to leave anyway.

[Kerrys remarks are] a reflection of a broader disdain for Britain that runs through the Obama presidency, Gardiner said. Without a doubt the Obama administration has not treated Britain with the kind of respect Americas closest friend and ally deserves to be treated.
President Obama has been briefed on the fatal shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Officials say five people were killed and a suspect was taken into custody after a lone gunman opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.

According to White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price: The President was apprised this afternoon by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco of the shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport and will be kept updated as the investigation unfolds.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that hes monitoring the terrible situation as well, and has spoken with Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott said at a press conference later that while he's spoken to Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, he has not yet talked with Obama.

A federal law enforcement source also said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is monitoring, and getting regular updates.
First it was Donald Trump against the CIA.

Then it was Trump speaking sympathetically about Julian Assange.

And now, in his classic counterpunching style, Trump is striking back against the media.

Sometimes it seems to always come down to Trump taking on the press.

Either the president-elect is dissatisfied with the coverage of this controversy or finds news outlets a useful foil in the debate. Or both.

The looming question, of course, is whether Russian hackers attempted to influence the election by obtaining emails from the DNC and Hillary Clintons campaign. Theres no credible case that this gave Trump the victory, but he believes the Democrats are using the alleged Russian involvement to try to delegitimize his presidency.

Trump has been openly skeptical of the Obama administrations intelligence agencies and their finding, repeated at a John McCain hearing yesterday, that the Russian government was behind the hacking. The billionaire has, among other things, brought up the CIAs slam-dunk failure on Saddam Husseins weapons more than a decade ago.

The reporting on all this has been relatively straightforward, although many media outlets have described the intelligence findings as virtual fact. But a whole lot of pundits have expressed shock and amazement that Trump would appear to side with Vladimir Putin, who denies any involvement in the hacking, against the intelligence agencies that the new president will soon be overseeing.

Trumps first salvo blamed the Democratsand the press.

Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have hacking defense like the RNC has and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H). A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass, he tweeted.

Then, after Foxs Sean Hannity interviewed Assange in London, Trump was all too happy to quote the WikiLeaks founder about the emails stolen from Clinton aide John Podesta: Julian Assange said a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!

Trump also quoted Assange as calling U.S. media coverage very dishonest, adding his own commentary: More dishonest than anyone knows.

This prompted a whole new wave of criticism and mockery for Trump appearing to cozy up to a man on the run from sexual assault allegations who has specialized in disclosing U.S. national security secrets. The New York Times, for instance, said: Though the celebrity businessman and the champion of leakers are both showmen sometimes derided by critics as narcissists, they might seem to have little else in common. In this instance, however, their interests may coincide.

In the blink of a news cycle, Trump blamed the press, tweeting:

The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states; it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against Intelligence when in fact I am a big fan!

Heres what is fair to point out. In a 2010 exchange with Foxs Brian Kilmeade about a WikiLeaks dump, Trump called it disgraceful and said there should be like death penalty or something for that one.

Hannity acknowledged to Assange in their interview that back in 2010  I was concerned you were waging war against the U.S. and said that releasing classified documents could put American lives at risk.

But now that Assanges leaks have been wounding the Democrats, Hannity said: I've come to believe that you've done two things that are extraordinarily helpful to the United States and I think journalism in a way. One is you showed us that we do not have cyber security. You acknowledge that. And two, I think in this election in particular, you exposed a level of corruption that I for 30 years on the radio as a conservative knew existed, and I was shocked at the level of corruption, duplicity, dishonesty, manipulation.

In similar fashion, Sarah Palin praised Assange on her Facebook page. She apologized to him for likening him to a terrorist six years ago when WikiLeaks published her infamous (and proven noncontroversial, relatively boring) emails.

So Assange has become something of a conservative icon now that his target has shifted and he is denying getting the stuff from the Russians (though he cant be sure of where his source obtained the hacked emails).

Trump ran hard against what he calls the corrupt media during the campaign. Now hes doing it during the transition. What remains to be seen is whether media-bashing will remain a key weapon when hes working in the White House.

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
A declassified U.S. intelligence report released Friday directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering a campaign to influence the U.S. election and hurt Hillary Clintons candidacy  findings made public after officials briefed President-elect Donald Trump.

The report said:

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT

The intelligence report said this campaign included cyber activity and other efforts.

The report adds fresh fuel to the debate over Russias involvement in email hacking that affected Democratic groups during the 2016 race. Trump has publicly questioned the evidence linking Russia and, hours before his briefing on Friday, called the focus a political witch hunt.

However, Trump and the intelligence community seemed to find some common ground after the briefing. Both Trump and the report said the Russians did not target vote tallying.

Trump, in a statement, went a step further and said there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.

The report did not make an assessment on the impact on the election outcome.

While some have used the claims of Russian meddling to question the validity of Trumps victory  including in a failed protest on the House floor during the certification of the Electoral College tally Friday  House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement that Donald Trump won this election fair and square.

Still, the report lays out in new and alarming detail an alleged influence campaign stemming from Moscow, which Ryan and others condemned.

The report said that included cyber activity, as well as efforts by state-funded media and paid social media trolls. The report said Russian intelligence services conducted cyber operations against both major U.S. parties, and said they have high confidence Russian military intelligence used Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data publicly and to the media, and relayed material to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks famously published emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta last year. Founder Julian Assange, however, told Fox News this past week that Russia was not his source.

The intelligence report was declassified in the wake of Obama administration sanctions and other retaliation against the Russian government late last month. The unclassified version included footnotes acknowledging that it "does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign." But it said its conclusions were identical to the classified version.

The report said Russian intelligence got access to DNC networks in July 2015 and maintained that access until at least June 2016. Despite past suggestions from Clinton allies that some leaked emails might be inauthentic, the report also noted that, Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.

The report also said: Moscows approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russias understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.

In a statement issued shortly before the release of the report, Trump stressed his regard for the intelligence community: I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

But the allegations have been the subject of fierce debate in Washington, especially among Republicans.

GOP lawmakers like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have essentially accepted the accusations against Russia, while Trump and his allies have cast doubt on them or suggested they were meant to discredit him.

In his written statement, Trump acknowledged that Russia, China and others are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee  but said there was absolutely no effect on the outcome.

Trump also said the U.S. needs to fight and stop cyberattacks, and hell appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days of taking office. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and Americas safety and security will be my number one priority, he said.

Before the briefing, Trump continued to raise concerns about the intel being used for political purposes. He told The New York Times he doesnt want other countries hacking the U.S., but said the attention on Russias alleged actions stems from those who got beaten very badly in the election and are very embarrassed.

Following on complaints about how the intelligence findings have been portrayed in the media, he even tweeted that hes asked congressional committee leaders to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.

In another twist, following reports that the FBI never accessed the Democratic National Committees servers as part of their probe, a senior FBI official told Fox News the bureau did in fact ask  and was denied.

The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated, the official said. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.

Fox News Catherine Herridge and Matthew Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A slew of well-heeled, left-wing groups have launched unprecedented campaigns aimed at derailing President-elect Trumps cabinet picks before they can get through the Senate confirmation process.

Environmental, education and civil rights groups have mounted efforts against Trumps choices, even though the upper chambers Republican majority has the votes to approve all of them. The organizations insist the efforts are driven by Trumps extreme selections, and not simply partisan politics.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

It is unprecedented because the nature of the picks is unprecedented, said Adam Jentleson, who just took a key position with the Center for American Progress Action Fund after previously serving as deputy chief of staff to retired Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. This is a President-elect who is coming in with a starkly divided country, and instead of picking nominees who could build bridges with the majority of Americans who opposed him, he is picking nominees who are doubling down on the most extreme parts of conservative ideology.

Clean Air Moms Action, a project of Environmental Defense Action Fund, is spending at least $100,000 to stop Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt from being named secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Sierra Club is joining the anti-Pruitt effort and also urging senators to block former Exxon boss Rex Tillerson from confirmation as Secretary of State.

Allied Progress has launched an ad campaign against Steve Mnuchin, Trumps pick for Treasury secretary.

Network for Public Education is leading a letter-writing campaign against Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire Trump has tapped for Secretary of Education.

Drug Policy Alliance and the NAACP hare trying to stop Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., from becoming attorney general, with an ad campaign and sit-ins at Sen. Sessions offices in Alabama.

Partisan opposition is common during the confirmation process, but under rules imposed by Democrats when they controlled the Senate, a simple majority is enough to confirm cabinet  though not Supreme Court  nominees.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said earlier this week his party will not try to delay the confirmation process, but will thoroughly vet nominees.

For positions of such influence in our government, its the responsibility of the Senate to guarantee that we have all the information we need on each nominee in a timely fashion, Schumer said. The slate of nominations selected by President-elect Trump has made this process, standard for nominees of presidents of both parties, immensely difficult.

The Senate last used its advise and consent authority to reject a nominee in 1989, nixing then-President-elect George H.W. Bushs nomination of former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, for Secretary of Defense. Prior to that rejection, the Senate hadnt rejected a cabinet nominee since the Eisenhower administrations pick for commerce secretary in 1959.

I believe all of our all of the President-elects cabinet appointments will be confirmed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday. I think it would be great if the Democrats would understand that, particularly with regard to the national security team the secretary of defense, CIA, homeland security it would make a lot of sense to have those folks in place on day one and I hope we get to the point where thatll be possible.

Despite their stated goals, the groups may have motives beyond actually blocking confirmations, said one expert.

The point of speaking out in opposition to any of these people is not necessarily about winning a fight this January, Clark University Political Science Prof. Rob Boatright, who wrote an op-ed regarding liberal groups against cabinet picks, told FoxNews.com. This is a way to keep people mobilized and active over the next few months and throughout Trumps presidency.

Ultimately, they want to keep this out there so that down the road, if something negative happens, they can say weve been talking about this for months, Boatright added.

One Senate Republican aide said Democrats should follow recent precedent, not the shrill calls of partisan opposition groups.

"When President Obama took office, the Senate confirmed seven of his nominees his first day in office, and nearly all of them within two weeks, the aide said on condition of anonymity. Democrats should do their job and work to fill these cabinet positions."
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that his organization published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman "to give the American people true information about the players that they were going to have to deal with."

"Were in the business of publishing information about power," Assange said. "Why are we in the business of publishing information about power? Because people can do things with power, they can do very bad things with power. If theyre incompetent, they can do dangerous things. If theyre evil, they can do wicked things."

In Part III of the interview, which aired Thursday on the Fox News Channel, Assange also said that governments "hate transparency. They loathe it. Because they have to work harder."

Assange sat down with Hannity for the exclusive at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for the past five years as he battles extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges.

Governments are "full of incompetent people," Assange told Hannity. "And the more secretive the area is, the more incompetent it becomes because theres no proper oversight."

However, the Australian conceded that secrecy was necessary in some areas. Assange noted that Wikileaks keeps its sources confidential, but added that secrecy "should be as small as possible [in terms of] how much it encompasses and for how long its encompassed."

"If you dont know whats happening in the world with powerful individuals, corporations and governments ... immoral actors within the state or within those big corporations prosper," Assange said at the conclusion of the interview.

"[But] if you have true information coming out about how people actually behave, whats the result? The rest of the society goes 'You know what? I dont want to deal with you.'"
British officials knew in advance that the Chinese government was likely preparing to kill student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989and their intelligence didnt come at the last minute.

Indeed, a telegram sent to Margaret Thatcher's administration from Britain's ambassador to China on May 20, 1989the same day Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared martial lawquoted Deng as saying "200 dead could bring 20 years of peace to China." Sir Alan Ewen Donald was repeating what had been told to a US expert on China, with whom he'd just had lunch, per Quartz.

He said the Pentagon had also concluded that Deng saw "no way to avoid bloodshed" and had instructed the military "to do what is necessary to put down the situation." "The implication clearly was that the sacrifice of a number of demonstrators [sic] lives now would stabilize the present situation and buy the time needed to complete the reform of China," Donald wrote.

The revelation of the UK's intelligencewhich one reporter describes as "stunning"comes from the Dec. 30 release of scores of government files from 1989 and 1990, which were previously classified.

Two weeks after Donald's telegram was sent, the People's Liberation Army shot and killed hundreds of unarmed students occupying Beijing's Tiananmen Square in protest of recent violence against pro-democracy demonstrators.

Prime Minister Thatcher at the time said she was "shocked and appalled by the shootings," reports the Independent. (China's last Tiananmen prisoner just went free.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: 27-Year-Old Telegram Holds Tiananmen Secret
A killer whale thought to be over 100 years old and known affectionately as "Granny" has not been sighted in several months and is thought to be deceased.

The orca was described as "officially missing" from the local population  and likely dead, as she had not been seen since Oct. 12, 2016  in a memorial post shared online Dec. 31, 2016, by marine biologist Ken Balcomb, a principal investigator at the Center for Whale Research (CWR) in Washington.

Granny was identified as "J2" decades ago by CWR scientists who studied her pod of so-called Southern Resident killer whales in Puget Sound, a Pacific Ocean inlet off the coast of Washington. Balcomb first observed J2 in 1976, and continued to observe her over the next 40 years, describing her in his memorial as "the energizer bunny" who just kept going and going, despite her remarkably advanced age. [Orca Gallery: See Gorgeous Photos of Killer Whales]

Female killer whales are much longer-lived than their male counterparts, with a life span that can exceed males' by decades. Male orcas have an average life span of about 30 years, but can live as long as 50 years. However, a female orca's typical life span is around 50 years, and they can live to be at least 100, according to a species description by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

But it is highly unusual for scientists to have the opportunity to observe a single orca in the wild over many decades as it ages. Granny had a distinctive nick in her dorsal fin that helped scientists to recognize her quickly and track her over time. In fact, she and her pod were instrumental in establishing that orcas had unique patterns and fin features that could be used by researchers to identify them, Balcomb explained.

"A closed-saddle female"

In 1976, she was described as "a closed-saddle female that has a small nick halfway down on the trailing edge with a finger-size tag of tissue protruding upward from the bottom of the nick," by marine biologist Michael Bigg, who pioneered individual whale identification through observation, Balcomb recalled.

Her age was approximated to be at least 45 years old and possibly 76 years old in 1987. By those estimates, her age in 2016 would have been at least 74 years old and perhaps as much as 105 years old. Either way, she was the oldest known Southern Resident killer whale  the only known resident population of killer whales in the United States, inhabiting waters near British Columbia and Washington.

Granny was one of dozens of orcas divided among three pods  nicknamed "J," "K" and "L"  Dawn Noren, a research fishery biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, told Live Science in 2016. As of Dec. 31, 2016, an estimated 78 Southern Resident killer whales remain in total, with Granny's "J" pod holding 24, Balcomb wrote in the memorial.

And while it's possible that Granny may turn up again, after a months-long absence, it isn't very likely, Balcomb said.

"Perhaps other dedicated whale-watchers have seen her since then, but by year's end she is officially missing from the SRKW [Southern Resident killer whale] population, and with regret we now consider her deceased," he added.

Original article on Live Science .
Amazon is reportedly expanding its family of physical bookstores into New York City.

The online retailer plans to open its sixth locationNYC's firstat the Time Warner Center near Central Park.

"We are excited to be bringing Amazon Books to The Shops at Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center in New York City in 2017," a spokeswoman told PCMag. "Stay tuned for additional details down the road."

A 4,000-square-foot store is slated for a spring opening, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Time Warner Center did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.

Amazon Booksa brick-and-mortar representation of the company's online storeis already open in San Diego, Portland (Ore.), and Seattle; another two locales are "coming soon" to Chicago and Dedham, Mass.

"Amazon Books is a store without walls," the retailer website says, suggesting folks "walk out of the store with a book or device; lighten your load and buy it online; download a book for your Kindle; or add a product to your Amazon Wish List, so someone else can buy it."

Booksselected based on customer ratings, pre-order sales, Goodreads popularity, and curator assessmentsare positioned face-out on shelves, "so each can communicate its own essence," according to Amazon. Under each book is a review card with the online customer rating and an analysis.

Devices from the Echo, Kindle, Fire tablet, and Fire TV lines are also available to test drive and buy in-store.

Amazon isn't the first to take advantage of New York City's increasingly vacant retail property market: Microsoft in 2015 opened its first flagship retail store on Fifth Avenuejust a few blocks from one of Apple's many Manhattan locations.

Nintendo, meanwhile, reopened its Nintendo World Store at Rockefeller Center in February, inviting fans to come visit the overhauled Mario Mecca. And Google popped up in the trendy SoHo neighborhood late last year; a limited-time shop showcased the company's new Pixel phones, Wi-Fi router, Home speaker, and Daydream VR.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
A TV news report in San Diego about the child that accidentally ordered a dollhouse via Amazons Alexa inadvertently set off some viewers Echo devices, which in turn tried to order dollhouses using Alexa.

The Amazon Echo devices connect to the Alexa voice assistant, which can be used to stream music, control smart home devices, and notably, order products.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES



CW6 News Morning Anchor Jim Patton was discussing the Dallas 6-year-old who accidentally ordered a $170 dollhouse and cookies via Alexa. I love the little girl, saying Alexa ordered me a dollhouse, he said during the Thursday report, according to CW6.

6-YEAR-OLD ACCIDENTALLY ORDERS HIGH-END TREATS WITH AMAZONS ALEXA

When Patton mentioned Alexa and the dollhouse, CW6 said that viewers all over San Diego complained that their Echo devices had attempted to order dollhouses.

The Dallas 6-year-old's accidental but expensive Alexa order was first reported by FoxNews.com.

Alexa, which has sparked some privacy concerns, is at the forefront of Amazons efforts to harness the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which aims to connect a vast array of consumer gadgets.

CW6 reports that Amazons shopping settings can be turned off via the Alexa app. This includes turning off voice purchasing and creating a confirmation code before an order can be placed, the report said.

AMAZON ECHO VS. GOOGLE HOME IN A VIRTUAL STANDOFF

Alexa recently made headlines when it responded to a childs request for a favorite song with "crude porn."

An Amazon spokeswoman told FoxNews.com that when users ask Alexa to order a product, they must then confirm the purchase with a yes response to purchase via voice. If users ask Alexa to order something by accident, they can simply say "no" when asked to confirm, according to the spokeswoman. "You can also manage your shopping settings in the Alexa app, such as turning off voice purchasing or requiring a confirmation code before every order," she added.

Orders placed for physical products are also eligible for free returns.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers.


A Mexican woman has pleaded guilty to bribing a U.S. border inspector in San Diego with cash and sexual favors for allowing people to enter the country illegally.

Miriam Juarez's plea agreement, disclosed Thursday in federal court, says she helped smuggle at least 10 people in cars from November 2015 to September 2016 at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing, charging them $15,000 each. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Jose Luis Cota has pleaded not guilty to charges of smuggling and receiving bribes.

Also Thursday, Gilberto Aguilar of Mexico pleaded guilty to smuggling charges for providing transportation after customers entered the country through Cota's inspection lane.

Sentencing for the 35-year-old Juarez and 31-year-old Aguilar is scheduled for April 7.
Investigators on Thursday recovered the remains of five people from a burned home while investigating a series of fires that appear to have been deliberately set in rural western Oregon.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said that detectives confirm the remains are of an adult male, an adult female and three children and appear consistent with that of a family that owns the property near the town of Hubbard.

The bodies presumably would match up with Erin and Keith Kroeker and their three children, who were reported missing Tuesday after the blaze, Fox 12 Oregon reported. The sheriff's office noted that the identities of the remains still need to be confirmed by the medical examiner.

Sheriff: Remains of five people found in burned Hubbard home, appears to be missing family https://t.co/7Iz4U3Dteu pic.twitter.com/yjSNO6e59M  FOX 12 Oregon KPTV (@fox12oregon) January 5, 2017

Additionally, the sheriffs office said in a news release that deputies do not believe there is any immediate danger to the public, but they are not yet ready to comment on details of the investigation.

"First and foremost I extend my condolences to the Kroeker family, Sheriff Jason Myers said in a release. While this investigation is not yet complete, I would like to thank and recognize the 100 plus first responders, investigators and support personnel from various local, state and federal agencies who continue to work tirelessly during this difficult and complex investigation."

Investigators are trying to determine what took place in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, when firefighters found a home, a shop and a detached garage ablaze.

The property is located in the Willamette Valley off Interstate 5, between Portland and Salem.

Click for more from KPTV.com.
Five people are dead and a shooting suspect is in custody Friday after a lone gunman opened fire at a baggage claim area in Florida's Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, shooting some people in the head without saying a word, witnesses and investigators said.

OBAMA BRIEFED ON FLORIDA SHOOTING, TRUMP SPEAKS WITH GOVERNOR

The suspect, identified as Esteban Santiago, had served in the Alaska Army National Guard until August 2016 when he was given a "general discharge," the Guard's public affairs director Candis Olmsted confirmed to Fox News.

The suspect brought a gun in a checked bag on an Air Canada flight, officials said. "He claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it. Came out shooting people in baggage claim," Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca wrote on Facebook.

AIRLINES ANNOUNCE TRAVEL WAIVERS AFTER SHOOTING

A Canadian embassy spokeswoman clarified that the flight originated in Anchorage, Alaska, and continued to Ft. Lauderdale via Minneapolis, never landing in Canada. The TSA allows firearms in checked bags, but they must be unloaded, locked in a rigid container and declared before traveling.

Shots fired at Ft Lauderdale Airport, suspect reportedly in custody pic.twitter.com/o0zVdI91Um  WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) January 6, 2017

Santiago was taken into custody without incident and was unhurt. Law enforcement never fired any shots, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. "This scene is considered fluid and active."

The shooting unfolded in Terminal 2, which serves serves Delta Air Lines and Air Canada. It was unclear why the suspect may have chosen to open fire, the sheriff added.

"The citizens of Florida will not tolerate senseless acts of evil," Gov. Rick Scott responded. "Whoever is responsible will be held accountable to the full extent of the law."

In the ensuing panic, the TSA received two separate, unconfirmed reports of a separate active shooter, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told Fox News. However, Israel said Friday afternoon there was no indication any additional shots were fired. Paramedics rushed eight people to hospitals.

"It was very surreal," John Schlicher, a witness, told Fox News. "He did not say a word." He described the shooter as a slender man with dark hair, wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.

"He was shooting people that were down on the ground, too," Schlicher said.

While speaking to Shepard Smith live on Fox News, Schlicher said he heard crews ordering passengers to take cover amid the unconfirmed reports of more shots fired. He spoke over the phone while ducked down on the floor.

The gunman apparently got down on the ground and waited for police to arrive after he ran out of bullets, a witness told CBS News.

The governor said he spoke to President-elect Donald Trump with updates, but did not speak to President Obama. The president was briefed on the shooting by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said.

Video posted on Instagram appeared to show several people wounded in the baggage claim area of the terminal. One person appeared to be lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

Paramedics could be seen treating a bleeding victim outside the airport. Hundreds of people stood on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by.

Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman, was at the airport at the time of the shooting and tweeted that "everyone is running."

Jillian Saunders, from Palm Beach, Florida, told The Associated Press in direct Twitter messages that she was watching the activity from the tarmac in a plane scheduled to fly to Los Angeles.

"Everything you see on the news is happening outside my window," she said. "I am luckily on the plane and they said we are right now the safest people at the airport."

The office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott said state law enforcement have not confirmed a motive behind the shooting. Scott is traveling to the scene to be briefed by law enforcement.

The ATF was responding to the scene. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was monitoring the shooting and getting regular updates -- part of standard practice, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News.



The airport is the 21st busiest in the United States and serves 21 different airlines. Nearly 2.5 million people passed through the airport in November, according to a county government report.



Fox News' Phil Keating in Ft. Lauderdale, Matt Dean, Jennifer Griffin, Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in Michigan are running DNA tests on a mattress seized from a security guard's home in their hunt for a 28-year-old woman and MetLife employee last seen one month ago, investigators told FoxNews.com Friday.

Police said "evidence and information" led them to the home of a security guard they believe knows Danielle Stislicki of Farmington Hills, who was last seen on Dec. 2.

A law enforcement official told FoxNews.com that investigators believe Stislicki was abducted after leaving work at the MetLife building in Southfield -- a northern suburb of Detroit -- where she works alongside her mother as a consultant.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities found Stislicki's black 2015 Jeep Renegade parked in front of her apartment on Dec. 3 but do not believe she drove it there.

Forensic testing is being conducted on three vehicles, including Stislicki's, and on the mattress, which was taken Dec. 23 from a home in the neighboring town of Berkley.

The security guard in question worked at the Metlife building until October and was acquainted with Stislicki, according to the official, who declined to provide more details. FoxNews.com is withholding the man's name because he has not been named a suspect in the disappearance.

Stislicki had planned to return to her apartment in Farmington -- some 10 miles away from Southfield -- before meeting her best friend for dinner, but never made it. She was last spotted leaving work around 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2, though police said they do not have surveillance video of her walking to her vehicle.

At 7 p.m. that evening, all calls to Stislicki's cell phone went immediately to voicemail, according to her family. The young woman failed to report to work the following day.

Stislicki's car was found parked in front of her apartment complex with the doors locked and her purse and wallet inside.

Police are searching for two pieces of evidence they said are missing from the vehicle: Stislicki's cellphone -- a Samsung Galaxy Core Prime in a rose-colored case -- and her keys, which were attached to a distinctive yellow and green key charm.

Authorities described the young woman's disappearance as "out of character," and Stislicki's family has launched a social media campaign -- including a Facebook page -- to bring awareness to the case.

A Go Fund Me page has also been created to raise reward money for Stislicki's return. As of Friday, the site has raised $29,700. Stislicki's employer, MetLife, and Independence Green Apartments also contributed $50,000 to the case. A reward totaling $129,000 is being offered for any information leading to Stislicki's return.

The woman's mother, Ann, also works for MetLife but was not in the building on the day her daughter disappeared.

"Something extreme has happened," Ann Stislicki said after learning her daughter failed to meet a friend for dinner. "She did not have a boyfriend, there was no reason for Danielle not to be there."

Twelve agencies, including the FBI, are assisting in the search for Stislicki, who was last seen wearing a sky blue Eddie Bauer jacket, jeans, a black zip-up shirt and burgundy boots.

Anyone with information on her whereabouts is urged to contact the Farmington Hills Police Department at (248) 871-2610.
The deaths of five teenagers in a fiery car wreck that police say was caused by a wrong-way driver has been removed from the list of the state's highway fatalities for last year and has been reclassified as murder.

The reclassification from "highway fatality" to "murder" is an effort to help block public access to the incident report for the Oct. 8 crash in Williston, including the toxicology report from the driver of the truck that hit the teens' car, The Times Argus newspaper reported (http://bit.ly/2iLjyr7).

The driver, Steven Bourgoin, of Williston, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder and related charges alleging he caused the fatal crash.

Police say Bourgoin crashed into the teens' car while driving the wrong way on Interstate 89 and then stole a police cruiser and crashed it into at least seven other vehicles. They say a toxicology report showed he had a high level of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his system. He was critically injured.

Four of the teen victims were Harwood Union High School juniors; the fifth attended Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire.

Then-Chittenden County prosecutor T.J. Donovan said Bourgoin, 36, displayed "a wanton disregard" for human life when he sped the wrong way on the interstate while other motorists honked at him.

Killed in the crash were Mary Harris, 16, of Moretown; Cyrus Zschau, 16, of Moretown; Liam Hale, 16, of Fayston; Janie Cozzi, 15, of Fayston; and Eli Brookens, 16, of Waterbury.

___

Information from: The Times Argus, http://www.timesargus.com/
The U.S. Air Force says it's investigating after an engine dropped from a B-52 bomber during a training mission over North Dakota.

Officials at Minot Air Force Base say an in-flight emergency was declared Wednesday and the crew safely landed the plane safely. No injuries were reported on the ground or among the plane's five crew members.

The Air Force says the engine fell in a remote area about 25 miles northeast of the base in Minot, about 110 miles north of Bismarck.

Maj. Jamie Humphries tells radio station KFGO-AM (http://bit.ly/2j8rAJo ) the plane was not carrying any weapons. Humphries says it could take several months to determine the cause of the incident.

___

Information from: KFGO-AM, http://www.kfgo.com
The government is asking a judge to appoint a security officer to handle classified information filings in the case of an Ohio man arrested for allegedly attempting to join the Islamic State.

Federal prosecutors said in a court filing Thursday that the government anticipates filing a sealed protective order under the federal Classified Information Procedures Act.

Prosecutors say the security officer would help the judge and court officials in handling the government's upcoming request and any orders related to it.

Investigators alleged last year that Aaron Daniels planned to fly from Columbus to Houston in hopes of traveling to Libya to join the Islamic State.

Daniels has pleaded not guilty to terrorism-related charges.
Estaban Santiago, the 26-year-old airline passenger accused of shooting up a baggage claim area at the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood airport Friday, leaving five dead and eight injured, visited the FBI Anchorage field office and told officers he was being forced to watch ISIS videos, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

The visit took place last November. The sources said Santiago told agents that US intelligence had infiltrated his mind and were forcing him to watch ISIS propaganda videos.

"In November 2016, Esteban Santiago walked into the Anchorage FBI Field Office to report that his mind was being controlled by a U.S. intelligence agency, a senior federal law enforcement official said.

During the interview, Santiago appeared agitated and incoherent, and made disjointed statements. Although Santiago stated that he did not wish to harm anyone, as a result of his erratic behavior, interviewing agents contacted local authorities who took custody of Santiago and transported him to a local medical facility for evaluation. The FBI closed its assessment of Santiago after conducting database reviews, interagency checks, and interviews of his family members, the official added.

Sources also told Fox that Santiago appeared agitated and incoherent during that interview, clearly indicating he was suffering from some kind of mental condition.



After the contact with Santiago, the FBI called local authorities who took custody of him and brought him to a local hospital for a welfare check.

His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently, according to the Associated Press.

The sources also said the November interaction with Santiago prompted the FBI to open an investigation on him that led to interviews with family members, database checks and an interagency review. The sources told Fox that the FBI found no connections to foreign terror organizations.

At a late night news conference Friday, George Piro, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami divison, said authorities were pursuing all leads and had not ruled out terrorism - or anything else.

Santiago's past has included a series of run-ins with the law in recent years.

Almost exactly a year ago, he was charged with fourth-degree assault and damage of property in Anchorage, Alaska where he lived from 2014 to 2016. One of the charges was dismissed by the local prosecutor two months later, according to records found by Foxnews.com.

Santiago's involvement in a domestic violence case was confirmed.

The case was resolved after Santiago agreed to enter an agreement of deferred prosecution. The charges were dismissed by the state prosecutor in exchange for completion of requirements.

Other records show that Santiago was evicted from his apartment in February 2015 for non-payment of $435 in rent. Santiago also has a record for minor traffic infractions, including driving with a broken taillight and another incident in which he was found driving without insurance.

Santiago was born in New Jersey and his family was originally from Puerto Rico--where he served in the Puerto Rico National Guard. He was in the Army Reserves prior to serving in the Alaska Army National Guard. According to reports, he was honorably discharged four months ago from his last post at Fort Greely, Alaska, and his military rank at that time was E3 (Private First Class). He also has a concealed carry permit and had checked in his weapon prior to boarding.

Santiagos aunt, who lives in Hudson County, New Jersey, spoke

with a reporters from local newspaper The Record of North Jersey on Friday evening.

I dont know why this happened, Maria Ruiz said to

reporters at her home in Union City as FBI agents arrived. The distraught relative said that Santiago had served two years in Iraq and started acting strangely when he returned.

He also became a father in the past year and she told reporters that he was happy with the kid.

It was early Friday afternoon when the mayhem first broke out at Fort Lauderdale airport. Five people were shot dead after Santiago allegedly opened fire at a baggage claim area in Terminal Two. Witness and investigators said the suspect shot some of his victims in the head without saying a word.

In the ensuing panic, the TSA received two separate, unconfirmed reports of a separate active shooter, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told Fox News. However, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Friday afternoon there was no indication any additional shots were fired.

Broward County Commissioner Chip La Marca posted on Facebook that Santiago was a passenger on a Canadian flight with a checked gun. He claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it. Came out shooting people in baggage claim. There were 13 total shot, 5 dead, 8 transported to hospital.

Witnesses at the shooting scene told Fox News that the shooter was a slender man with dark hair, likely in his 30s and wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. It is believed that he boarded a plane in Anchorage last night and flew overnight to Fort Lauderdale.

Santiago was taken into custody without incident and was unhurt. Law enforcement never fired any shots, Israel said. "This scene is considered fluid and active." The sheriff said it was not clear why he chose to open fire.

"It was very surreal," John Schlicher, a witness, told Fox News. "He did not say a word.

"He was shooting people that were down on the ground, too."

Fox News' Matthew Dean contributed to this report
The Latest on the federal sentencing trial of convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof (all times local):

8:40 a.m.

More emotional testimony is expected from family members of some of the people killed in the June 2015 slaughter at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Federal prosecutors say they plan Friday to present testimony from relatives of Cynthia Hurd, Ethel Lance and Susie Jackson. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson said the government could wrap up its case against Dylann Roof on Monday with the family of Tywanza Sanders.

The federal government is seeking the death penalty for Roof, convicted last month in the nine shooting deaths. Roof has put up no case arguing he should get life in prison, cross-examining no witnesses and saying he plans to call none of his own.

------

3:35 a.m.

One by one, friends and family members walked up to the witness stand and testified about the nine black church members gunned down during a Bible study in Charleston on June 17, 2015. They described personalities, future plans and final conversations.

The testimony came during the sentencing phase of Dylann Roof's death penalty trial. The same jury that convicted the 22-year-old white man of hate crimes and other charges will decide whether to sentence him to life in prison or death.

Roof faces murder charges in state court, where his trial had been slated to start later this month. But a state judge Thursday delayed that trial indefinitely because federal proceedings are ongoing.
Last year the Kansas City (Kansas) Police Department lost two officers, both slain by gunmen. Today, Police Chief Robert McClarty says the fatalities have significantly impacted recruitment efforts.

"It has limited our number of applicants," he told The Hays Daily News on Tuesday. "I believe it has also made people question more whether they want to be police officers."

OPINION: WHAT A RECENT JAILHOUSE VISIT TAUGHT ME ABOUT MIRACLES

This is just one of the reasons attitudes toward law enforcement need to change -- and that change begins at home, facilitated by parents.

In 2016, law enforcement officers found themselves the target of criminals and would-be assassins who attacked and ambushed police at previously unseen levels. They also found themselves repeatedly vilified in the media and at risk in certain communities.

FACEBOOK LIVE TORTURE VIDEO PART OF 'THE NEW NORMAL,' CHICAGO'S FORMER TOP COP SAYS

In 2016, 135 officers died on the job, with 64 dying by gunshot -- and that includes 21 that were killed in ambush attacks.

"LESMA [Law Enforcement and Supporters for Media Accountability] maintains a list unlike any other to demonstrate this war on police, by showing officers who have been shot throughout the year," Amanda Miller, director of civilian operations for the organization, told LifeZette. "This year, 276 police officers have been shot [not all died], and 64 gave the ultimate sacrifice. That averages out to an officer shot 3 out of every 4 days, and 1.19 officers killed per week."

Cops will not be safer on America's streets in 2017 if current attitudes prevail.

"The last few years, we have seen an erosion of respect for law enforcement. That is unfortunate and very troubling," Sheriff Carolyn B. Welsh of Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia metro area, told LifeZette. "Lately there have been men and women wounded and killed in the line of duty just because they wear a uniform. That is frightening. It is hard to comprehend that anyone would take the life of someone whose duty it is to serve and protect."

Millennials in particular have been in the news frequently because of what could be termed a sense of entitlement and lack of respect. "The younger generation was not taught respect for authority or government, not that government has earned it," said Miller. "They haven't learned it in home or in our schools. They have been taught that no one gets hurt, everyone wins no matter what, and everybody owes them something. Consequences are never part of the equation."

John Hoffman, a journalist and former chief of police from Town and Country, Missouri, has some ideas to heal the wounds inflicted this past year.

"Community policing is the key to mending relationships between the police and communities," he told LifeZette. "However, true community policing is not what most people -- or even departments -- think."

Parents need to do their part by showing up at community events. Children will know that a relationship with law enforcement is of value when they see their parents value it.

"There are no quick fixes," he continued. "It's important to build real relationships with communities, and you can only do that through time and involvement. I formed relationships with families, and with the kids in the families, who then became the teenagers and adults. Those ties don't break easily. Continually moving officers from precinct to precinct erodes relationships and community trust."

Welsh echoed the sentiments of Hoffman. "We need to work more with families and children, educating them about police, deputies, firefighters and all first responders. It starts at home -- showing respect for authority and teaching children not to fear cops and deputies. The Chester County Sheriff's Office works with families and children through many community outreach programs. These are things that build trust and confidence."

"You will be calling these brave men and women if you need assistance."

Miller offers a concrete suggestion to help heal the rifts created in the vacuum left by President Obama's lack of leadership on this issue. "Our police officers put their lives on the line for our families. They do a job that many cannot -- and do not -- try to understand. In this year of 2017, it would be good for the general public to resolve to seek information regarding police officers' jobs, and allow the justice system to take its course before taking anger out on law enforcement as a whole."

She puts the entire issue into proper perspective. "You will be calling these brave men and women if you are in a situation where you need assistance -- and they will be there without fail. Who is going to be there for them when they are unjustly scrutinized or criticized? Let's make 2017 the year that the public understands and respects our law enforcement officers."

Council Nedd, Ph.D., is a Pennsylvania State constable and an Anglican bishop living near Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. You can follow his musings on law enforcement, faith, and politics on Twitter: @BishopNedd.
New York Citys municipal identification program had its day in court on Thursday as two Staten Island lawmakers argued New York should not destroy applicants recordsto protect undocumented immigrantsbecause it is detrimental to national security and public safety.

The lawsuit challenging the IDNYC program was brought by state Assemblyman Ronald Castorina Jr. and Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, both Republicans, in state Supreme Court on Staten Island. In early December, city officials said they would no longer retain documents of those who apply for the program, out of fear that President-elect Donald Trump could use them to deport undocumented immigrants. A state judge in December temporarily barred the city from destroying the records while the court considers the suit.

The program, which began in 2015, was aimed at increasing access to city services like schools and libraries, especially among the citys estimated half a million undocumented immigrants. There are now nearly one million cardholders.

The two lawmakers argue that destroying the records violates the states Freedom of Information Act. City officials say that in destroying records like passports or birth certificates, they were following the city law that established the program. But most of Thursdays hearing, during which several city officials testified, focused not on public record-keeping rules but on wide-ranging topics from terrorism to bank fraud.

This is an issue that involves the blood of Americans, Mr. Castorina testified. A terrorist could use the city ID to open a bank account, he added.

Lawyers representing the lawmakers said the law violated the U.S. Patriot Act. Attorney Ravi Batra wondered if the law took into account public safety and national security, especially when we had 9/11 right here?

Click here for more from the Wall Street Journal.
Liberty University won approval this week to build a $3 million state-of-the-art shooting range on its Virginia campus over opposition from some neighbors.

The private Christian university submitted its plans to the Campbell County Board of Supervisors and got unanimous approval Tuesday.

Im very excited about it, university president Jerry Falwell Jr. told Fox & Friends Friday.

This is a separate 500-acre tract that is completely protected from the surrounding residential areas, and it was a perfect spot for a shooting range, he said.

Were going to start some shooting competition teams like many universities have, and its going to have rifle ranges, shotgun ranges, and local law enforcement is going to use it for training, Falwell added.

The Washington Post quoted Falwell in an article in December as saying the university has a very pro-Second Amendment student body and wants students to be prepared in the event of an active shooter scenario.

The 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred in Blacksburg, 85 miles west of Liberty.

Liberty has 14,500 residential students and allows those with a concealed-carry permit to keep a weapon on campus.

The Lynchburg News & Advance reports that people opposed to the shooting range were worried about traffic and noise.

If I have to hear 25,000 gunshots a day, how is that going to sound? one woman who lives near the site asked at a hearing before the supervisors voted. About 50 people attended the hearing, the paper reported.

A civil engineer hired by Liberty told the paper that the project includes money to plant trees to muffle noise.

The target date for finishing the shooting range is Labor Day.
A battle erupted this week over a new high schools Stallions nickname in Kentuckys bluegrass country.

The controversy broke out Monday when Frederick Douglass High School unveiled its new mascot. The school, named for the 19th century abolitionist, is being built on a portion of a storied Lexington farm that produced several Kentucky Derby winners.

A day later, the school district ditched the nickname, Fox 56 Lexington (WDKY-TV) reports. The about-face came after a petition was circulated that called the Stallions nickname inappropriate and sexist. The petition demanded a more-gender neutral choice.

But that sparked another petition to keep the Stallions name, according to a report Friday.

The second petition has gathered more than 700 signatures, WKYT-TV reports.

The point of the Stallions was not to denounce women, but to honor the rich history of the land the school is being built upon, the petition states, according to the station.

The schools address was once Hamburg Place farm. The famous horses sired there include Alysheba, winner of the 1987 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and Sir Barton, winner of the 1919 Triple Crown.

School Superintendent Manny Caulk says Keeneland racecourses green and orange silks will still be the schools colors and a horse image will still be the schools logo.

But incoming students will choose a new nickname.

Weve already received suggestions of Thoroughbreds or Racers as possible alternatives, and we will solicit additional ideas from our students before they choose a horse-themed mascot grounded in the lands equestrian heritage, Caulk said.
A Mexican woman pleaded guilty to bribing a U.S. border inspector in San Diego with cash and sexual favors for allowing people to enter the country illegally.

Miriam Juarez's plea agreement, disclosed Thursday in federal court, says she helped smuggle at least 10 people in cars from November 2015 to September 2016 at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing, charging them $15,000 each.

Juarez and her husband, Gilberto Aguilar, were arrested in September during a traffic stop following a lengthy investigation by the FBI Border Corruption Task Force, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. Both are in the country illegally and are expected to be deported after their sentences are served in early April.

Customs Officer Jose Luis Cota was arrested the same day at work. He has pleaded not guilty.

According to the plea agreement, the woman recruited the clients and smuggled them in her vehicle through Cotas lane at the port of entry. She would use fraudulent passports during the crossings, the Tribune reported.

Once on U.S. soil the husband would pick up the immigrants and drive them to a set destination.

The three-year investigation, which included GPS tracking and recorded conversations, revealed hundreds of conversations between Juarez and Cota and numerous hotel encounters.

With reporting by the Associated Press.
Multimillionaire Robert Durst is a "menace to society" and a danger to several witnesses in his murder case, prosecutors said in an effort to preserve their testimony in case they get killed.

VIDEO: CHARLESTON CHURCH KILLER DYLANN ROOF TELLS JURY 'NOTHING WRONG WITH ME'

Durst has killed two people who had information in the mysterious disappearance of his first wife and was prepared to kill others who might have stopped him, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said in court papers before a hearing Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

"Defendant is a menace to society," Lewin wrote. "He has demonstrated a willingness to use deadly force to escape justice  killing two people and arming himself with deadly weapons to kill anyone who stood in his way of escape."

MOM SENTENCED TO 30 YEARS IN 5-YEAR-OLD SON'S DEATH

Defense lawyers have blasted the request, saying it's absurd that the frail 73-year-old who is behind bars is a threat to anyone. They also said it was premature, coming before the scheduling of a preliminary hearing to determine if Durst faces trial, as well as a violation of his right to a fair trial.

"There is simply no factual basis upon which one could claim that Mr. Durst has the ability to harm anyone," attorney Donald Re wrote in court documents.

The defense also is fighting the prosecutor's request to keep from disclosing the names of at least two "secret witnesses" until shortly before their testimony.

Prosecutors want to keep their identities under wraps for their safety. The testimony will be videotaped and used at a possible trial only if they can't appear in court.

Durst has pleaded not guilty to one count of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his best friend, Susan Berman, in 2000. Lewin said Durst killed her because she had incriminating information in Kathleen Durst's 1982 disappearance in New York.

Prosecutors are taking an aggressive approach in publicly laying out their theory on the case before knowing if it will go to trial and evidence they might present.

The defense has objected to some of the information prosecutors have revealed, including a transcript and recording of a nearly three-hour interrogation of Durst following his arrest in New Orleans in 2015.

One witness Lewin wants to question is a doctor who may have been the last person to speak with Kathleen Durst. No charges have ever been brought in the suspected killing of Durst's first wife, whose body has not been found.

He may also call witnesses to the killing of Durst's elderly neighbor in Galveston, Texas, in 2001. Durst was acquitted of murder after testifying that he shot Morris Black in self-defense and then chopped up the body and dumped it in the sea. He was convicted of tampering with evidence and jumping bail.

The prosecutor says Black was killed because he knew the identity of Durst, who had disguised himself in Texas as a mute woman.

Durst, an estranged member of a New York real estate empire, fled to Galveston after learning the investigation into his wife's disappearance had been reopened in fall 2000, Lewin said.

Berman, who had served as an unofficial spokeswoman for Durst, was killed weeks later in her Los Angeles home before she was supposed to speak with police about that investigation.

Lewin said that with Durst's estimated $100 million fortune, he poses a serious threat to witnesses.

"The idea that he does not have the wherewithal to intimidate, buy off or attempt to have witnesses killed who possess inculpatory evidence because he is 'old,' 'frail,' or in custody, is ludicrous," Lewin said.

Judge Mark Windham tentatively set a Feb. 14 hearing for two witnesses to be questioned if he OKs the prosecutor's request.
One of the busiest crossings along the U.S.-Canadian border has been closed as authorities in Quebec investigate a possible bomb threat.

A spokesman for Canada Border Services Agency tells the Canadian Press that the crossing received a threatening phone call around 9 a.m. Friday that mentioned an explosive device at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, across the border from Champlain, New York.

Buildings on the Canadian side have been evacuated as a precaution and the border remains closed as provincial police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and firefighters search the area.

Officials with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection say it's being handled by Canadian investigators.

Southbound traffic in Quebec is being diverted to adjacent crossings as is northbound traffic on New York's Interstate 87.

It's unclear when the crossing will reopen.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP)  The president of a South Carolina-based defense firm fell to his death from the second floor of a deserted building in the Jordanian capital, security officials said Thursday, three days after his body was found. Police have ruled out foul play.

John Zinn, 33, president and chief executive officer of Defense Venture Group, was in Amman, Jordan, for a military exhibition when he died Tuesday "after suffering an accident while on a business trip," his company said.

Four senior Jordanian officials said Zinn's body was found lying behind a 40-foot wall in the basement of an abandoned building in Amman's rough-and-tumble Hay al-Masraweh district, which overlooks the city's bustling downtown. The district is mainly inhabited by Egyptian, Filipino and other Asian domestic workers.

Dr. Momen al-Hadidi, who is Jordan's chief forensic expert and performed an autopsy on the body, said Zinn died of "severe internal bleeding caused by head and body fractures resulting from a fall from a high elevation." Al-Hadidi declined to provide further details.

But a top security official said an investigation showed that Zinn was "highly intoxicated."

He and another official also involved in the ongoing investigation said preliminary reports show no indication of foul play or attempted suicide.

A third official said Jordanian intelligence has taken over the investigation because of the "suspicious circumstances" surrounding Zinn's death. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Defense Venture Group is a leading manufacturer of specialized products for defense, aerospace and commercial applications. Its portfolio of companies includes manufacturers and distributors of runflat tire solutions and purpose-built armored vehicles.

Amman's four-day exhibition of special operations forces closed Thursday. It brought together 300 delegates and 349 exhibitors from 85 countries, including the United States. No major contracts were concluded.

___

On the Net:

Defense Venture Group: www.defenseventure.com

Jordan's military exhibition: www.sofexjordan.com
Jordan's King Abdullah is a former general and special forces commander who experts say has the resolve to follow through on his vow to crush ISIS.

Following the release of a ghastly video showing a captured Jordanian air force pilot being burned to death, the 53-year-old monarch warned that retribution will be swift. And with an army of more than 100,000 well-trained soldiers, tens of thousands more in reserves and a capable air force, Abdullah's kingdom is more than up to the task, Middle East experts told FoxNews.com.

"The king is very serious about being a military guy."  Jon Alterman, Center for Strategic & International Studies

"Their ability to do difficult things with small numbers of highly trained people is up there with some of the best militaries in the world," Jon Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Middle East Program, said of Jordan's military.

"The king is very serious about being a military guy," Alterman said. "For much of his life, he thought he was going to be a special forces commander and for some time he was."

"He didnt do that from the back of chauffeured cars. He did that from Black Hawk helicopters and command posts at the site of terrorist raids," he noted. "The military is what gets him excited."

According to GlobalFirepower.com, Jordan has the 67th most powerful military in the world, which is far from superpower status, but capable of taking on Islamic State's stretched and in many cases undisciplined force, according to defense experts. Jordan's military has 110,700 active duty personnel, 65,000 reserve members, 1,321 tanks and 4,600 armored fighting vehicles. Its air fleet has 246 aircraft, including 74 fighter planes and 24 attack helicopters. The nation of 6 million has a defense budget of $1.5 billion.

The country can also count on support from other nations, including the U.S., many oil-rich gulf states, and possibly Japan, which had two of its citizens beheaded by ISIS days before the video surfaced.

King Abdullah II ascended to the throne in February 1999 following the death of his father, King Hussein.

Abdullah was schooled mainly in the West and has extensive military experience. He attended the Islamic Educational College in Amman before his education at St. Edmund's School in Hindhead, England, and later in the U.S. at Eaglebrook and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. In 1980, he joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the British Army as a Second Lieutenant. Two years later, he completed a one-year course in Middle Eastern affairs at Pembroke College in Oxford and attended Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in 1987.

Abdullah became command of Jordan's special forces in 1993 and served as Major General in 1998.

"In many ways, I think he'd really rather be jumping out of airplanes than meeting in Davos with the rich and powerful," said David Schenker, former adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld and director of the Arab politics program at The Washington Institute.

"The military milieu is one in which the King is most comfortable," Schenker told FoxNews.com.

"Regionally speaking, they are people of high quality," he said of Jordan's military force.

Release of the video showing the Jordanian pilot's execution followed days of intense protests by Jordanians outside Abdullahs palace over the government's refusal to agree on an ISIS prisoner swap without proof the pilot was alive. Many Jordanians as well as the pilots family faulted Amman  not ISIS  for allowing their country to be drawn into a "war" they claim is one between the Islamic State and the U.S. and its allies. Demonstrators outside the gates of the royal palace have cried out, "Abdullah, why are we fighting?" while other Jordanian protesters have taken to social media, creating an Arabic hashtag on Twitter that reads #NotOurWar.

Schenker said he believes such protests will cease -- at least temporarily -- now that the Jordanians have seen the brutality by which ISIS executed one of their own.

"There are obvious risks with upping the ante," he said. "There's a very real prospect that more Jordanians will come into harms way and more additional troops will be taken captive or killed."

"It remains to be seen whether this desire for revenge will be sustained," Schenker said.
Yemeni security officials say fighting between Shiite rebels and their opponents has killed over 33 people in Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city.

The officials said Tuesday that 21 rebels, known as Houthis, died in airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition that opposes them. Eight civilians died when their bus hit a land mine and four fighters from the anti-Houthi forces were killed in street clashes.

The officials are independent in the conflict that is roiling Yemen. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to talk to journalists.

Yemen's fighting pits the Houthis and allied army units against forces loyal to the internationally recognized government as well as southern separatists and militants.

At least 2,615 civilians have died since the anti-Houthi air campaign began in March, according to the U.N.
The relationship between Venezuelas socialist government and Empresas Polar, the countrys largest private company and the top beer provider, has been sour for some years now, but lately tensions are escalating to what some are calling a full-blown economic war.

Polar, which is also a supplier of a wide range of food products, has repeatedly accused the government of withholding the foreign currency needed to import raw material and is warning it will have to keep on shutting down plants  so far four beer plants have stopped operating.

Polar announced last week that its beer distributors will run out of stock in mid-May if no action is taken. Representatives said they have run out of malted barley needed to brew 75 percent of the country's supply.

The government, on the other hand, claims Polars owner Lorenzo Mendoza is staging the shortages to cause panic and further a political agenda aligned with the opposition.

This week, after President Nicolas Maduro threatened on Sunday to take over any facility that halts production, Polar plants across the nation were the target of spectacular inspections purportedly aimed at verifying stock supplies.

Inspections carried out at two brewery plant in San Joaquin, Carabobo, were conducted with a contingent of military forces.

On Monday they came with many military vehicles, assault weapons and even a helicopter flew over the plant, Jhonny Magdaleno, a union leader at Polars brewery, told Fox News Latino. On Tuesday they returned. The inspectors entered the plant, but the workers didnt allow the military to take over the place.

The government is also inspecting plants from other areas of the company. On Tuesday, a group of inspectors visited Polars plant in Chivacoa (Yaracuy), where maize flour  the base for the main Venezuelan meal, arepas  is produced.

They wanted to calculate how much raw material we had in stock, said Wilder Alvarado, a unionized worker at that plant, warning that they currently have supplies to produce flour for just a few more days.

There have been almost 100 inspections to Polar plants in a few hours, posted Wednesday @TodosSomosPolar, a Twitter account created by employees in 2010.

Polar directly employs more than 35,000 workers.

Roger Palacios, a union leader from the companys food division, explained that they are no longer making pasta, cereals and sauces at the Chivacoa factory because they are out of supplies.

In two weeks we will have to stop the production of canned tuna, Palacios said, noting that Polar controls around 40 percent of that market in Venezuela.

The situation has sparked all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories.

Some say that the governments strategy is to put Polar under siege to publicly accuse and eventually charge Mendoza with conspiracy.

Nelson Bocaranda, the reporter who broke the news of Hugo Chavezs cancer in 2011, recently supported this point in a newspaper column questioning the fact that Polars biggest brewery rival, Regional, had received foreign currency and is importing malted barley without a problem.

Chavistas are also spreading theories about the Polar affair.

Jesus Silva, a renowned government supporter and analyst, said recently that Mendoza could be using the countrys current economic situation as a springboard to position himself as a possible presidential candidate.

This idea was then backed by a poll, by local firm Poder y Estrategia, which showed Mendoza among the first five people Venezuelans would like to see as president.

He got 9 percent of support  more than President Maduros 8 percent.

The three union leaders Fox News Latino spoke to agree that Mendoza and his managers cant be blamed for the current crisis.

The government has to open up to an honest dialogue, Palacios said. The economic crisis can be solved if we all work together. Blaming Polar is not going to change anything, its just a distraction.
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Word spread quickly through cellphone messages and shouts between co-workers that Ford Motor Co. had canceled its new $1.6 billion car plant at its sprawling 700-acre high desert site in north-central Mexico.

"When I saw it on the phone, (I thought), 'Well, no, it can't be,'" said Higinio Salazar, a security guard who spent the past five months logging traffic into and out of the site and hoped to have steady work for months to come. "It was on orders of Mr. Trump," he said bitterly.

That was not the case, Ford insists, but the perception here in Mexico's burgeoning auto assembly region was largely that President-elect Donald Trump, who had promised for months to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. while at the same time disparaging Mexicans, had made good before even settling into the White House. Trump took a shot at Toyota on Thursday over its move to make Corollas in this region, though the Japanese company defended its plan.

Ford's announcement sent shockwaves across Mexico, which has become tightly meshed with the U.S. economy since the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement, sending 80 percent of its $532 billion in exports across the border in 2015. The U.S. government says $100 billion of that was in vehicles and parts, making Mexico the biggest exporter of automotive products to the United States. Mexico's auto plants now account for 20 percent of all light vehicles built in North America, industry figures say.

State officials in San Luis Potosi did not find out much earlier than Salazar that plans had been scrapped for the long-awaited plant, which promised 2,800 direct jobs and more than 10,000 indirect ones through Ford's supply chain. State Economic Development Secretary Gustavo Puente Orozco said Ford told state officials about an hour before CEO Mark Fields made the announcement Tuesday.

Puente said Ford made very clear it was a "definitive cancellation," citing supply and demand rather than politics.

"They told us that it was a market issue  the issue that the Ford Focus that was the vehicle they thought to build, this light vehicle they planned to build in San Luis Potosi, they say the demand had dropped," Puente said.

Low gas prices have Americans turning again to larger vehicles and Focus sales have fallen victim to that trend. Fields said Ford will produce the Focus at an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, and use some of the savings to invest $700 million in an existing Michigan plant to make hybrid, electric and autonomous vehicles.

The San Luis Potosi plant was well past the theoretical stage and there were high hopes the state would see further economic growth from the opening of its third auto plant  General Motors Corp. has been producing the small Aveo and Trax vehicles up the road since 2008 and a BMW plant nearby is scheduled to begin production in early 2019.

The steel bones of Ford's plant had begun to rise and signs designated the future spots for each part of the operation, from "stamping" to "final warehouse."

On Wednesday, Fernando Rosales Ortuno, who deals in hydraulic hoses for Parker Hannifin Corp. was pacing the site's perimeter with cellphone pressed to his ear trying to arrange for a trailer to get hauled away. It's essentially a portable store that had been set up to service the big machines preparing the site.

He had hoped that once Ford was up and running, the plant might become a long-term client.

"It hit us like a bucket of cold water," Rosales said. "Everyone here was hoping for a lot of growth in the state and this region, too."

Four clustered states in central Mexico  San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Aguascalientes and Guanajuato  have seven auto assembly plants that are operating or will be within the next two years. Around them are nearly 800 auto parts suppliers, Puente said.

In San Luis Potosi alone, between 50,000 and 60,000 jobs depend on the auto industry. An average worker in Mexico costs automakers $8 an hour, including wages and benefits, compared to the $60 an hour that Ford said it was spending on an auto worker in the U.S. at the end of 2015.

In Villa de Reyes' town square, residents said the younger generation would be hurt most by the cancellation.

Retiree Ignacio Segura Rocha said fewer people from town are migrating to the U.S. now because the crossing has gotten harder than when he went in 1977 and 1978. He said the auto industry offers good alternatives for kids growing up on the region's isolated ranches.

"They were already dreaming of going there (to Ford), and at the last minute there's nothing," he said.

Construction worker J. Refugio Waldo Contreras feels Trump is putting Mexicans in an impossible situation.

"This Trump, he doesn't want people there, so where is he going to send them?" Contreras asked. "And he doesn't want work to open here? So then he's going to close the doors."

Trump also sent tweets this week threatening to impose heavy tariffs on General Motors and Toyota cars produced in Mexico for the U.S. market. GM said it exports only a small number of Cruze hatchbacks it makes in Mexico. Toyota stood by its plan to produce Corollas in Guanajuato, while stressing that its production and employment in the U.S. will not be affected.

There were some notes of optimism among Mexicans. As security guard Juan Gonzalez watched contractors haul away giant earth movers on flatbed trailers, he said he didn't expect the site to stay vacant for long.

"If it's not the United States it could be Japan, China," he said. "This is going to continue."

Jorge Alvarez, who spent five months at the site working on perimeter roads, said his company had already told him his next project will be at the airport, so work would continue for him at least.

Another option could be that Mexico turns inward and focuses more on developing its internal market, said Roy Campos, president of the Mexico City-based Mitofsky consulting group. According to industry figures, 82 percent of vehicles manufactured in Mexico are exported now.

"Sooner or later, because of the nearness and the border, the personal relationships, the human relationships, the Mexico-United States relationship is going to return to what it was or even better than before," Campos said. "So meanwhile, develop the other markets that could be very beneficial to Mexico."

Billboards welcoming Ford had been sprinkled around San Luis Potosi in recent months. But only a day after the company's announcement, the welcome sign across the highway from the plant was already down.

___

Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report.
A convicted far-left militant captured after more than four years on the run and her imprisoned partner have started a hunger strike over Greek authorities' treatment of their 6-year-old son.

Pola Roupa, 48, also filed a criminal complaint alleging kidnapping "against all responsible" on Friday, a day after she was arrested and her son was taken into the care of social services.

Roupa was arrested in an Athens apartment Thursday along with a 25-year-old Greek woman suspected of sheltering her. They appeared in court Friday and were ordered remanded into custody.

In a statement read to reporters by her sister on Thursday, Roupa said authorities were threatening to put her son in an institution. Roupa's sister and mother have filed a request for temporary custody of the boy.

The Justice Ministry rejected as "false and irresponsible" allegations that the child was being used to put pressure on Roupa. The ministry said the boy was taken into care pending a decision on custody and being seen by specialists.

"The priority is to ensure the best interests of the child, which will be determined by the appropriate bodies, as happens in all such cases," it said.

The Athens prosecutor's office said the boy was in the custody of social services at a children's hospital, where he was being accompanied by a child psychologist. It said the custody request by the boy's grandmother and aunt was being examined, and that the two had been granted permission to have contact with him.

The Initiative for Prisoners' Rights group accused authorities of "vengeful hostage-taking" and said it stood by Roupa and her partner, Nikos Maziotis, in their hunger strike demanding the child's return to Roupa's relatives.

In the northern city of Thessaloniki, a group of youths smashed windows in an office of the governing left-wing Syriza party. They left fliers accusing Greece of "fighting its enemies by kidnapping" the child of members of the armed anarchist group Revolutionary Struggle.

Roupa and Maziotis were convicted in absentia of participating in Revolutionary Struggle, which has carried out bombings and shootings, including firing a rocket at the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2007. Because of court delays, their pre-trial detention in 2011 exceeded the 18-month limit, and they were freed on bail.

The women vanished in 2012, along with their son. Maziotis was recaptured in 2014 after a shootout with police in central Athens. Both admit involvement with Revolutionary Struggle and describe themselves as unrepentant revolutionaries.

____

Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed
Christians continued to be the most persecuted group across the globe in 2016, according to a study.

The upcoming report from Italian-based Center for Studies on New Religions, determined that 90,000 Christians were killed for their beliefs worldwide last year and nearly a third were at the hands of Islamic extremists like ISIS. Others were killed by state and non-state persecution, including in places like North Korea.

U.S. policy has not had a strategy for specifically addressing the persecution of Christians, Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, told FoxNews.com For example, very few people are even aware that Iraqi Christians began organizing to defend themselves and needed our help."

The study also found that as many as 600 million Christians were prevented from practicing their faith in 2016.

The findings continue a disturbing trend from the previous year in which Christians around the world endured horrific acts of persecution, including imprisonment and beheadings.

These numbers underscore what we already know," Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project said to Foxnews.com."There are many places on earth where being a Christian is the most dangerous thing you can be.

"Those who think of Christianity as a religion of the powerful need to see that in many places its a religion of the powerless. And the powerless deserve to be protected.

While the situation is most dire in the Middle East, Christianity is under assault in Africa and Asia, too, according to an Aid to the Church in Need study of incidents in 2015. It cited persecution at the hands of Islamist terror groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and other extremists in Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and other parts of the continent.

Asia's Christians have been targeted by nationalist religious movements -- Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist -- in such countries as Pakistan, India and Myanmar. Many of these groups increasingly view Christianity as a foreign, "colonial" import, and believe its practitioners are doing the bidding of the West, say experts.

While Christians continue to be under siege from ISIS radicals in Syria and Iraq, the religion is being targeted throughout the region with members of the faith also under increasing pressure in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

The Christian population in Iraq alone has plummeted from 1.5 million in 2003 to current estimates of 275,000 and could be gone for good within just a few years, according to activists. The dwindling numbers are due to genocide, refugees fleeing to other countries, those who are internally displaced, and others hiding in plain sight and not allowing their faith to be publicly known.

Despite these issues, experts like Mauro say that the faith has continued to flourish despite growing opposition.

The persecution of Christians has failed to suppress the faith, he said to FoxNews.com. On the contrary, Christianity appears to be rapidly growing beneath the surface. Persecution will increase as Islamists see Christianity as an increasing problem for them.

The full report from the Center for Studies on New Religions is expected to be released in February.
Denmark has received an extradition request from Seoul for the daughter of the former confidante of South Korea's president, as part of a corruption investigation.

Prosecutor Mohammad Ahsan said Friday the request will be studied thoroughly before a decision is made on whether to extradite Yoora Chung. He could not say when that would be.

Chung was arrested in Aalborg, northern Denmark, Jan. 1, on an international arrest warrant. She is the daughter of jailed Choi Soon-sil, who is suspected of bribery and receiving favors from companies in return for manipulating government affairs.

Investigators in Seoul are looking into suspicions that South Korean group Samsung sponsored Choi in exchange for government favors.

President Park Geun-hye was impeached last month.
Top federal and regional security officials met seven times to discuss the potential danger posed by Tunisian migrant Anis Amri in the year before he attacked a Berlin Christmas market, the latest revelation in a string of mishaps that failed to prevent the attack.

The new details, disclosed by security officials at a regional parliamentary hearing Thursday, suggest that German security and intelligence authorities miscalculated the immediate threat that Amri presented. Despite extensive surveillance, efforts to detain him repeatedly faltered because police and prosecutors believed they didnt have evidence that would stand up in court, the officials said.

The emerging affair is raising questions about the ability of Germany, which was struck four times by Islamist terrorists last year, to prevent future attacks. It is also increasing pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel amid accusations that her decision to accept hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants in 2015 might have put the country at risk.

Does one have to sit in a truck before the state can act? Social Democrat Andreas Bialas asked at one point in the nearly five-hour hearing in the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, echoing the publics stupefaction at the series of revelations about why the state failed to stop Amri despite all it knew about him.

A recent Insa poll conducted for the German daily Bild found just under a fifth of those surveyed trusted Ms. Merkels Christian Democrats to protect the country from further attacks; Other German parties scored even lower. Germanys interior minister, meanwhile, proposed this week revamping Germanys decentralized security apparatus to close the gaps exposed by the Berlin attack.

Nobody understands how a known extremist was able to walk around freely in this country, Gregor Golland, a regional lawmaker from the Christian Democratic Union, said before questioning security officials Thursday.

The illegal Tunisian immigranthis asylum request was rejected in June 2016rammed a truck into Christmas market in central Berlin on Dec. 19, leaving 12 people dead and dozens more injured. He escaped after German police first arrested the wrong man and then missed crucial evidence identifying Amri in a first sweep of the truck. Amri trekked across Europe and was eventually shot by Italian police four days later.

Click for more from the Wall Street Journal.
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Germany says it may make payments to Namibia for the killing of 65,000 tribespeople by German colonial troops during the early 20th century.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer says the two-year talks with Namibia's government "aren't easy because it's a difficult topic."

But he said Friday the negotiations have entered a phase in which both sides are talking "in very concrete terms" about how to treat the events in the future and "this may include further payments." Germany already provides Namibia significant development aid.

Representatives of the Herero and Nama tribes filed a class-action complaint in the United States Thursday against the German government, seeking reparations and a place at the negotiating table.

Schaefer says Germany had "good reasons" for not negotiating directly with the tribes. He didn't elaborate.
Italy has expelled a Tunisian man accused of religious extremism and befriending a jailed would-be foreign fighter.

The Interior Ministry said the 26-year old, identified by Italian newspapers as Marouan Mathlouthi, was sent back to Tunisia on Thursday. The ministry said he had befriended another Tunisian from the same city, Ravenna, who was arrested in 2015 on terrorism-related charges because of alleged plans to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria.

A ministry statement said Mathlouthi had jihadist propaganda on him and had written on his Facebook page: "I don't know if I should be good or stage a massacre, I have to think about it."

The expulsion, the second of the year, brings to 134 the number of suspected extremists expelled by Italy since January 2015.
Kosovo's government is calling on French authorities to release its former prime minister who has been detained facing possible extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges.

A French court Thursday ruled that Ramush Haradinaj, detained a day earlier, should stay in custody during extradition proceedings where the court will decide whether to turn him over to Serbian officials.

Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa said Friday officials expect "the French government to take into consideration that such warrants are fully political and have no legal or juridical base."

Haradinaj, 48, a former guerrilla fighter in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia and now an opposition political leader, is accused by Serbia of committing war crimes including kidnappings, torture and killings against Serb civilians when he was a senior rebel commander in western Kosovo.
Kosovo prosecutors have accused a Serb citizen of war crimes during the 1998-99 war.

A statement on Friday identifies the defendant as B.S. He was extradited from Bosnia Herzegovina a month ago, and is accused of war crimes committed in March 1999 against civilians in Fushe Kosove, close to the capital, Pristina.

If convicted the defendant may be sentenced from five years to life imprisonment.

Some 10,000 people died and 1,700 remain missing from the war as Kosovo fought to break away from Serbia.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Serbia has not recognized.
Six months after a United Nations watchdog report suggested better protection for UN whistleblowers, the global bureaucracy is about to produce a policy that could make a bad situation for those employees a lot worse.

It could also produce an early headache for new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who took office on January 3, as he faces U.S. legislators who are eager to cut UN funding as a result of the Security Councils Dec. 23 resolution condemning as illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Among other things, critics charge the new whistleblower policy reinforces a two-tier standard at the scandal-scarred UN, in which only those pointing fingers at the most serious kinds of wrongdoing get full protection for their actions.

They also argue that it further increases possibilities for retaliation against anyone making less high-profile allegations of internal UN wrongdoing or abuse of power, and forces staffers to rely more heavily on internal organizations they consider to be weak or compromised to protect them in those lower-profile cases of alleged corruption and abuse.

The result, they argue, is that it may further reinforce, rather than reduce, the UNs notorious culture of impunity, in which wrongdoing is often perceived to be untouchableand those who draw attention to it face harsh retribution.

According to the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based organization that supports whistleblowers, UN management is narrowing the definition of a protected disclosure in a revised policy, and it should not be made more restrictive.

For its part, UN bureaucrats say the organizations aim is to streamline procedures for protecting accusers and investigating newly defined public interest claims of wrongdoing; keep pettier grievances from clogging up the system by referring them to other channels; and use the UNs internal investigators and Ethics Office to help prevent retaliation before it occurs, as well as clarify roles and responsibilities.

They also point to the fact that UN member states have been grouching loudly that the organizations internal deliberations over the new policy have already taken far too long, and that they were given a deadline of the end of 2016 to come up with the version they now have in hand.

The new protection policy is sitting on the desk of fledgling Secretary General Guterres, as part of his legacy from former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who faced a variety of grave, whistleblower-ignited scandals during his decade-long tenure and, according to critics, mishandled many of them.

They ranged from allegations of secret UN transfers of forbidden foreign currency to the nuclear-ambitious regime of North Korea to the welter of sexual abuse scandals involving non-UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, where the UN was accused of inaction and deliberate coverup by an independent panel of jurists and legal experts.

A UN spokesperson told Fox News that the new policy will be published as soon as practicable in the New Year, by which time Guterres, who has spoken publicly of the need to protect whistleblowers, will also have signed off on it.

How soon is likely a tricky question for Guterres as he faces the prospect of those irate U.S. legislators, whose actions will gain ever greater weight after the inauguration of Donald Trump, himself no fan of the U.N.s anti-Israel actions.

One weapon at their disposal could be a U.S. statute passed in 2015 that mandates Washington to withhold 15 percent of its UN contributions if the Secretary of State does not certify the organization is implementing and enforcing best practices to protect whistleblowers from retaliation for internal and lawful public disclosures.

The full extent of those contributions is not really known: the Obama Administration quit publishing tallies in 2010. But the U.S. is responsible for paying 22 per cent of the UN Secretariats so-called regular budget of some $5.46 billion for 2016-2017, which is about half of what the organization is expected to spend. (The U.S. is also responsible for 28.57 per cent of the current $7.9 billion UN annual peacekeeping budget.)

So far, the U.S. has only imposed its withholding penalty on one UN organization, the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)which gets the overwhelming bulk of its revenues from external fees and where U.S. government contributions are miniscule.

And in that case at least one UN whistleblower, Miranda Brown, who says she lost her job as a result of publicizing alleged abuses of power by WIPOs Executive Director Francis Gurry, has never been reinstated.

It is pretty clear that the Obama Administration bent over backward to avoid imposing the [withholding] penalty elsewhere, by misinterpreting or putting the best possible spin on UN whistleblower policies observed Brett Schaefer, a UN expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

On whether the incoming Trump Administration should make use of the 15 per cent penalty provision to enforce tougher standards, he said, I hope that they do so. Whistleblowers are a critical for unearthing mismanagement and criminal behavior in organizations like the U.N. They need to be protected.

UN whistleblowers and their outside supporters have already made clear their feeling that the impending policy changes for the vastly larger UN Secretariat dont come anywhere near the best practices accolade that the U.S. statute uses as a benchmark. UN staff association leaders raised concerns about the changes in an initial get-together session with Secretary General Guterres on Jan. 4.

A UN spokesperson called that exchange part of introductory meetings, where the issue was not specifically discussed. Guterres is scheduled to face a much bigger town-hall meeting of UN staffers on Jan. 9, where the issue may also be aired.

In broader terms the problems with the whistleblower issue are built into the fabric of the UN, an international organization possessed of diplomatic immunities that is not beholden to any national form of law, and whose internal workings are largely immune to outside inspection.

Moreover, its internal means of self-policing are self-admittedly under-funded, weak, and shown on occasion to be too close to top management, even while nominally independent.

According to the UN report that urged better protection for whistleblowers, more than half of some 16,000 staffers surveyed in 28 UN organizations think that fraudulent behavior goes unpunished in their respective organizations, and fewer than one-quarter get any training in how to spot fraud indicators.

Additionally, many of the surveyed staffers did not see a clear commitment on the part of the senior management to tackle fraud in their organizations, the document said, and declared that UN organizations were in a state of near denial about the extent of fraud in their midst.

That survey included not only lower-level employees, but also more than 160 UN managers.

The reality is that for many UN employees, there is a real sense of fear here about speaking up, as one UN staffer in New York told Fox News.

In fact, the U.N. has long had a two-tier system for categorizing allegations of fraud, abuse of power, and other misdeeds, but the public interest modification for whistleblower disclosures adds a new subjective wrinkle.

Public interest is defined, a UN spokesman told Fox News, as an allegation of wrongdoing manifestly harmful to the interests, operations, or governance of the UN, or serious instances of misconduct, such as fraud, waste, abuse, or corruption.

Both definitions leave a lot of room for interpretationunless, perhaps, they have already inspired bad headlines for the UN.

Other, lesser reports are deemed to concern inter-personal or performance matters that are examined through other internal channels.

These would be resolved through mitigation efforts that, according to a UN spokesperson could include Ethics Office engagement with the individuals senior management to ensure monitoring of the individuals workplace situation with a view to preventing any retaliatory action.

The wafty nature of that description does not inspire a lot of confidence among UN staffers. For us, the question is that one persons public interest issue is managements personnel dispute, argues a senior member of a UN staff association. (UN employees interviewed for this story requested anonymity.)

Under this system, its very possible that if they report what they know in good faith, they can be told its a minor issue, and they wont be protected. In effect, it will be too late for them by the time they have said anything.

Two UN staffers who have battled ultimately unsuccessfully--through the current UN whistleblower system provided a list of hard-to-prove retaliatory measures that would not be protected unless the public interest level was involved.

They included a sudden rash of negative performance ratings, loss of work assignments, addition of new duties that the staffers could not accomplish, denial of training or promotion opportunities, or access to internal databases.

In one case, a UN staffer claiming retaliation told Fox News, they took all my work away. Essentially I am assigned nothing.

Retaliation is always subtle, a staff association representative told Fox News. These are smart people.

The main filter for deciding whether whistleblower allegations under the new system are in the public interest or not is the UNs chief investigative watchdog, the Office for Internal Oversight Services, or OIOS --which itself in the past has been charged with retaliatory action against its investigators.

In another high-profile case, the then-head of OIOS, Carman LaPointe, was singled out in late 2015 by the independent panel looking into Central African Republic sex abuse allegations for abuse of authority in investigating a UN human rights official, Anders Kompass, who allegedly violated internal UN reporting procedures when he brought the scandal to light by tipping off the French government to the role of French troops in the affair.

The panel exonerated Kompass for his actions, and so did OIOSbut only nine months after the panel aired its conclusion. LaPointe, who vigorously denied any abuse of authority, had retired from the U.N. system before the panelists issued their report.

The Government Accountability Project has compiled numerous other incidents where UN whistleblower protection was anything but. In 2013, a UN dispute tribunal found that in the case of two OIOS investigators who claimed retaliation against them by their own department, an internal investigation against them was retaliatory, failed to follow due process, and paid scant regard to the risk of reputational damage to the complainants. The judgment was vacated by another tribunal on a legal technicality.

In the 2012 case of UN whistleblower James Wasserstroma former U.S. State Department employee, who threw the spotlight on an alleged major procurement kickback scheme in Kosovo and was subsequently fireda UN tribunal castigated the Ethics Office for failing to carry out an independent and proper review of an OIOS investigation report that claimed there was no retaliation in Wassermans case.

Had the Ethics Office conducted a proper review of the Investigation Report, the tribunal decision noted, it is inconceivable that they would have accepted the finding of OIOS in this respect.

The tribunal found that retaliation had, in fact, taken place, but awarded Wasserstrom only token damages.

In all, GAP has noted in a blog post by Beatrice Edwards, the UN Ethics Office has rejected 97 per cent of the inquiries it received on retaliation between 2006 and 2014. Its clearly not an individual failing, its a structural problem, writes Edwards, who called the Ethics Office useless.

The Ethics Offices meager findings of retaliation, however, are cited in a different context by a UN spokesperson, who noted that in 153 preliminary reviews of retaliation claims, only 5, or about 3.3 percent, were actually found to involve retaliation (with six reviews still pending).

The spokesman compared those findings favorably with similar work at other institutions such as the World Bank (2 percent of cases found to be retaliatory).

Problem is that early last December, a GAP study declared that the World Bank had similar problems involving a climate of insecurity among the staff about managements commitment to whistleblowers, as well as  uncertainty about the protections actually in place.

George Russell is Editor-at-Large of Fox News. He is reachable on Twitter at @GeorgeRussell and on Facebook at Facebook.com/George.Russell
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is urging Donald Trump not to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Abbas on Friday invited Trump to visit and said "We call on you not to implement your statement...because we consider it as an aggressive statement, when you say you want to move the embassy to Jerusalem."

Trump's spokeswoman has said the President-elect is determined to move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv when he takes office.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would signal U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a move that would break decades of American policy.

The fate of east Jerusalem with its holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians is at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians claim the territory as the capital of their future state.
A passenger bus has hit another vehicle inside Frankfurt's international airport, injuring 15 people.

The dpa news agency, citing police, reported that 75 passengers from a Lufthansa flight from Barcelona were on the bus Friday. Three of the injured  the two drivers and one passenger  were seriously hurt.

Frankfurt police did not say what the other vehicle was or what might have caused the collision. The incident occurred near Gate A20 at about 8:50 a.m. (0750 GMT).

Uninjured passengers were taken in other buses to the airport building.
Belgian police had numerous chances to unmask the Islamic State terror cell that later carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks, according to a confidential report prepared for Belgiums Parliament. They muffed every one.

In early 2015, Brussels police stopped a car driven by Brahim Abdeslam, later one of the Paris attackers, and arrested him for drug possession. At the time, Brahim was on a terror watch list. He carried a booklet about parental consent for the Jihad. Police found a USB thumb drive hidden behind his car radio.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES



He was let go after brief questioning. Authorities failed to analyze the thumb drive or other electronics seized after the drug stop from an apartment Brahim shared with his younger brother, also involved in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam. Another unnoticed detail: The email address the suspect supplied, s_orry@hotmail.com, was a fake.

The incident, details of which havent been previously reported, is outlined in the parliamentary report prepared by Comite P, a watchdog agency of former police and judicial officials auditing the work of Belgian police in the wake of the twin attacks. The 82-page report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, was finalized in September and hasnt been made public.

FEDS ASKING JUDGE TO APPOINT SECURITY OFFICER IN ALLEGED ISIS CASE

European police have foiled many would-be terrorists in recent years. In many of the major attacks that did occur, the terrorists radical leanings were well known to police, who failed to halt them in time.

The Belgian report reveals that police had information before the Paris and Brussels attacks that showed the Abdeslam brothers had relationships with other terror suspects; that Brahim wasnt questioned after multiple interactions with law enforcement even though he was on a terror watch list; and that police didnt follow up when Salah changed his social-media profile picture to the ISIS flag.

Click for more from the Wall Street Journal.
Sunday marks 1,000 days since Boko Haram extremists abducted nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria, shocking the world. Nearly 200 of the schoolgirls remain captive. While some girls have been freed, Nigeria's government has been accused of keeping them sequestered and silent. Here are some of the key events surrounding the crisis:

___

April 2014: Boko Haram extremists kidnap 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria, the region where the insurgency emerged several years ago.

November 2014: Extremists seize Chibok, and Nigerian army takes back the town.

May 2015: New President Muhammadu Buhari is sworn in, pledging to tackle Boko Haram "head-on."

April 13, 2016: Boko Haram video appears to show some of the Chibok girls, and tearful mothers recognize their daughters.

May 18, 2016: Relative says one of the Chibok girls is found, pregnant, in a forest; pressure grows on Nigeria's government to rescue the others.

Aug. 14, 2016: Boko Haram video says some Chibok girls are killed in airstrikes and demands release of extremists in exchange for the other girls' freedom.

Oct. 13, 2016: Spokesman for Nigeria's president confirms 21 Chibok girls have been freed, a result of government negotiations with Boko Haram.

Nov. 5, 2016: Military announces the first army rescue of a Chibok girl, during a raid on a forest hideout.

Dec. 24, 2016: Nigeria's president declares that Boko Haram has been crushed, driven from its last forest hideout.

Jan. 5, 2017: Nigeria's army says soldiers find one of the schoolgirls wandering in the bush near the forest stronghold.
July 4, 2002

LAX

Two people were killed and 4 wounded after Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian national, opened fire at the El Al ticket counter.

Dec. 7, 2005

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

A man from Costa Rica, 44-year-old Rigoberto Alpizar, who claimed to have a bomb and was running down a jetway, was shot to federal air marshals.

April 27, 2006

CLEVELAND HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

A scuffle between passenger Kenneth Callaway, 38, and airport employees turned deadly after the man grabbed the gun of a police officer who was trying to restore order. Instead, he was shot.

March 2, 2011

FRANKFURT AIRPORT - GERMANY

Two American airmen were shot and killed by Arid Uka, an Islamic extremist from Kosovo.

Oct. 14, 2011

LA MESA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS

Masked gunmen killed six men and wounded three during a shootout in the parking area.

May 17, 2013

JACKSONVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

A shooting in the airport rental car parking garage followed 20-year-old Rodney Addison ramming two patrol cars. He was injured by one of the police officers.

Nov. 1, 2013

LAX

Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was shot by security officers when he opened fire at a security checkpoint. One man was killed and several injured, including Ciancia.

June 8, 2014

JINNAH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, KARACHI - PAKISTAN

Ten men armed with automatic weapons, a rocket launcher, suicide vests and grenades killed 36 people and injured 18. The organization Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec. 23, 2015

SABIHA GOKCEN AIRPORT - ISTANBUL, TURKEY

An explosion in apron area, where airplanes are parked, killed an airport worker and injured another.

March 22, 2016

BRUSSELS AIRPORT IN ZAVENTEM - BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

Two coordinated suicide bombings and a third one at a subway station killed 32 people, injured more than 300. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

June 28, 2016

ATATURK AIRPORT  ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Armed with automatic weapons and explosive belts, three men carried out a coordinated attack that killed 45 people. More than 230 people were injured. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks but Turkish officials said they had evidence that ISIS leadership was involved.

Nov. 15, 2016

OKLAHOMA CITY'S WILL ROGERS WORLD AIRPORT

Authorities temporarily shut down the airport after an ambush attack of an airline employee, 52-year old Michael Winchester. The gunman, who was later found dead, lay in wait for hours outside the airport.
Immigrants coming into Britain must know English before they arrive, or should be enrolled in compulsory English classes. Thats the verdict of a group of MPs led by one of the Labour Partys rising stars -- a sign that even the countrys left-wing is moving right on immigration in the wake of the decision to leave the European Union.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration, led by former Labour leadership candidate Chuka Umunna, published its report Thursday on the question of how to integrate the many migrants that have landed on the UK shores in recent years.

The report reflects scrambling by UK politicians to get serious on the subject of mass migration, which was a key motivator for many who voted for Brexit -- particularly in the northern and white working class areas.

The report acknowledges this, calling for a new approach to immigration in the wake of the Brexit vote, but instead of focusing on reducing numbers, the report highlights integration as the key problem faced in UKs immigration policy.

Brexit has been the wake-up call: globalization has not delivered for all and now more than ever, we need political leadership to prioritise integration in order to address the deep societal divisions that were exposed on June 23, the report says.

Many of the reports recommendations focus on the responsibilities of central and local government, recommending regionalizing immigration policy, and spending more money on integration methods and reducing fees for citizenship applications. However, the report also demands that immigrants coming to the UK speak English.

UK'S MAY TO VISIT TRUMP IN WEEKS FOLLOWING INAUGURATION

All immigrants should be expected to have either learned English before coming to the UK or be enrolled in compulsory ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] classes upon arrival, the report says.

It also cites approvingly the Belgian method, by which new immigrants are encouraged to build up a social network, get to know their local town or community and take up voluntary work.

Its clear that immigration has impacted on different communities in different ways and the pace of change has alarmed many, Umunna said ahead of the reports release. The Government has a duty to address the lack of integration of immigrants if it is to address this. Failing to do so has left a vacuum for extremists and peddlers of hate to exploit.

Immigration has been a thorny issue for UK politicians for some years now, with both the Labour Party and the ruling Conservative Party criticized for not having brought immigration numbers under control. Former Prime Minister David Cameron campaigned in 2010 on reducing immigration to below 100,000 each year -- and failed to meet the target. Instead, annual numbers jumped to over 300,000 while he was in power.

Additionally, his failure to successfully renegotiate control over Britains border policy from the EU -- particularly on the question of how long EU migrants have to wait before being able to claim welfare benefits -- wounded Cameron in the lead-up to the referendum and led many voters to conclude that the only way to get immigration under control was to leave the trading bloc.

The report is a sign that moderate Labour MPs like Umunna are responding to concerns among Brexit voter, many of whom are based in Labour-controlled areas, about immigration.

However, immigration hardliners attacked the report as too little too late. The populist UK Independence Party dismissed the report, saying that integration efforts without cutting the number of migrants into the country was meaningless.

"The report is also an admission that uncontrolled immigration is a problem but there is no apology to the British people from the liberal establishment for presiding over and encouraging it, spokesman John Bickley said in a statement. Likewise, its a bit rich for that same political establishment, who have overseen and approved mass uncontrolled immigration to be attempting to close the gate after the horse has bolted.

In December, a government report warned about the unprecedented pace and scale of recent immigration and suggested new migrants be made to pledge an oath of integration, amid fears many Muslim immigrants do not identify themselves as being British.
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The United Nations refugee agency is urging Greek authorities to quickly move asylum-seekers to the mainland from overcrowded facilities on Greek islands, saying conditions remain bad and expressing concern over a predicted cold weather snap.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva Friday that conditions at many sites "remain very poor" despite improvement efforts.

More than 15,500 migrants or refugees are stuck on Greek islands. Under a European Union-Turkey deal to reduce migration into Europe, those arriving on islands after March are held and face being returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.

Edwards noted that only vulnerable asylum-seekers or those who have completed the registration process could be transferred to the mainland, and delays in registration or identifying vulnerable cases "contributed to serious overcrowding."
A Spotsylvania man was ordered Thursday to serve nearly three years in prison for a highway chase that began after another motorist reported having a gun pointed at him.

Brian Christopher Richardson, 25, pleaded guilty in Stafford Circuit Court to assault and battery on a law enforcement officer, possessing a firearm as a felon, felony eluding, brandishing a firearm and driving under the influence.

He was ordered to serve two years and 10 months in prison with other time suspended.

According to prosecutor Amy Casey and police reports, the incident began about 12:40 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2015. A southbound driver on Interstate 95 in Stafford reported that a gun had been pointed at him near the courthouse exit.

Stafford deputies spotted the suspects vehicle a few miles farther south and tried to make a traffic stop. Richardson pulled to the shoulder as if he were about to stop, then sped off south on I-95.

Virginia State Police joined in the pursuit, which went through Fredericksburg into Spotsylvania via State Route 3 west. Police tried to force the car off the road in the 5000 block of River Road, but the car continued on after spinning around and hitting a tree.

The car hit another tree a short time later and Richardson was apprehended. He and a woman in his vehicle were treated at a hospital, but neither was seriously injured. The woman was not charged.

The investigation showed that the gun that was brandished was actually a pellet gun. However, a regular gun that had been reported stolen in Prince William was also found in the car.

Richardson has a hearing scheduled for Monday in Fredericksburg Circuit Court on charges connected to the incident. He is charged in the city with attempted capital murder of a law enforcement officer, brandishing and driving revoked, court records show.
An Albemarle County man was behind bars Friday, accused of calling in a bomb threat to the Orange County Courthouse to avoid a hearing on drug charges.

The General District Court Clerks Office received the call shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday. The courthouse was evacuated and the Town of Orange Police Department and the University of Virginia Police Department responded with explosive-detecting K-9 units.

No explosives were found, and normal court activities resumed around 12:30 p.m., according to a news release from the Orange County Sheriffs Office.

An investigation by the Sheriffs Office led to a home in Albemarle, where Robert Nathan Jordan, 35, was arrested, the release said. Jordan, a former resident of Orange, was scheduled to appear in Orange Circuit Court on felony drug charges the day the threat was made, authorities said.

He was arrested on the failure-to-appear warrant and taken into custody. After an interview by investigators, Jordan was also charged with threatening to bomb or burn a structure, the release said.

He is being held without bond in the Central Virginia Regional Jail.

Virginia State Police, U.S. Marshals Service, Spotsylvania County Sheriffs Office and the Albemarle County Police Department assisted in the investigation.
RICHMONDTotal firearm sales in Virginia during President Barack Obamas presidency nearly doubled over President George Bushs years in office, and surpassed a record half-million transactions in 2016 alone, new state data shows.

Estimated firearm sales based on mandatory criminal background checks on Virginia gun buyers totaled 3,153,220 during Obamas eight years in office ending in 2016, compared with 1,712,607 transactions during the Bush years of 2001-2008, according to an analysis of Virginia Firearm Transaction Center data.

In what a state firearms center official described as a major milestone, the number of transactions reached 505,722 during Obamas last full year in office in 2016a 14 percent jump over 2015 and the first time state gun sales topped a half million.

To double your yearly output in 16 years is extraordinary, said Mike Matthews, senior supervisor in the Virginia Firearms Transaction Center.

A total of 192,653 transactions were recorded during Bushs first year in office, and the numbers rose steadily but not dramatically during the ensuing seven years, reaching 268,136 in 2008. Thats a 39 percent increase over eight years.

By comparison, Virginias gun transaction numbers broke the 300,000, 400,000 and 500,000 plateaus over Obamas eight years, jumping from 287,462 in 2009 to 505,722 last yeara 76 percent increase.

Many federally licensed firearms dealers in Virginia, along with some criminologists, have attributed the rise to public reaction of highly publicized mass shootings and the so-called Obama Effect, where concern for personal safety coupled with political demands for more gun control is believed to have help fuel a firearm buying frenzy.

As in years past, the largest monthly spikes in Virginia gun sales in 2016 followed high-profile shootings and suspected terrorist attacks in other parts of the country.

Firearm transactions jumped 34 percent in June, the same month that 49 people were fatally shot and 53 others wounded in a terrorist attack inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. An identical rise occurred in July, when five police officers were fatally shot and nine others wounded in an ambush in downtown Dallas. Ten days later, six officers were shot, three fatally, in Baton Rouge, La.

Theres always going to be, generally, a major spike after any of the shootings, which is something we track as well, Matthews said. We keep a running log of each days amount of transactions so I can [review them]. And thats done for a couple of reasons: it helps with trends ... and helps me as far as staffing.

But it is also something that I can look back and point a finger at and say, look, when Sandy Hook happened, for the next 12 days gun sales went through the roof, Matthews added. Or when the San Bernardino shooting happened, for the next six days gun sales spiked, and they stayed up relatively high for the next 30 to 60 days.

But in contrast to previous recent years, Matthews said there wasnt one single monthly spike in Virginia firearm sales in 2016.

The entire year, everything across the board from January through November, was up constantly, Matthews said.
THERE is much news about juvenile crime and justice in Virginia, most of it involving depressing statistics that suggest incarcerated young offenders too often become repeat offenders: career criminals.

Those in a position to address the problemlawmakers, juvenile justice officials, judgesare either mired in debate over how to reform the system or have their hands tied by what the law says they can or cannot do.

But there is a bright spot. A new report from the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice finds that efforts to redirect youthful offenders away from lives of crime are showing some promise. Overall criminal complaints against juveniles were down 1.7 percent in 2015. Cases of probation and parole violations, failure to appear in court and contempt of court were down 11 percent, while cases of identifying youth in need of supervisionthose not yet charged, but at risk of harming otherswere up 6 percent.

The report also found that hearings for involuntary commitment for mental-health treatment have risen significantly in each of the past two years. Perhaps thats a result of the two high-profile suicide cases involving the sons of state Sen. Creigh Deeds of Bath County and former Sen. Edd Houck of Spotsylvania County.

The DJJ report indicates that the attention being paid to the issue in recent years is having some impact, though the effort clearly remains a work in progress. Simply identifying the causes of juvenile crime and recognizing the importance of dealing with young offenders as juveniles rather than adults are steps in the right direction. Initiatives on the state and local level that work together rather than at cross-purposes are also key.

A recent story in the Newport News Daily Press noted that Department of Juvenile Justice Director Andy Block has analyzed data from programs that have shown success elsewhere, with the goal of employing them in Virginia.

Were trying to protect the taxpayer dollar, to protect public safety and to try to give these kids a chance to get on the right path, he told the Daily Press.

Thats a tall order. But the state has closed three of its juvenile prisons over the past three years, and the number of young people sent to those facilities dropped 14 percent in 2015, the Daily Press reported, the same year JJD officials reduced the harshest incarceration range from two to three years to nine to 15 months. Each youth is evaluated on his or her risk of committing another offense.

More offenders are being assigned to community facilities that are smaller and less costly to operate than larger juvenile prisons and keep the young offenders closer to home.

Just last month, The Free LanceStar reported on local efforts to redirect the school-to-prison pipeline, which begins when school administrators call in law enforcement to deal with students who exhibit dangerous or threatening behavior. The hope is that between the schools, their school resource officers and the sheriffs office, methods will be found to deal with some of these students disciplinary issues administratively by the schools and the students parents. This is serious business when the well-being of a school full of children hangs in the balance.

The point here is that once kids are incarcerated, especially in prisons with adult-like conditions, the die is cast. If there are alternative programs or community facilities to turn to, theres a decent chance theyll become contributors to society rather than lifelong burdens to the justice system and the taxpayers.

Washington, D.C., officials are apparently learning the hard way that going overboard with leniency toward juvenile offenders can be bad for the community. The Washington Post reported recently that since 2010, 121 defendants previously sentenced under the Youth Rehabilitation Act have been subsequently charged with murder. Those defendants account for 20 percent of all suspects charged in slayings in the city during that period.

The D.C. legislation, in effect since 1985, was well intended. But second chances were handed out in cases that involved guns and physical violence, to offenders who used their opportunity for freedom only as a new opportunity to commit crimes.

Getting juvenile justice right is a difficult and evolving challenge, but Virginia is working hard to find the right formula. Progress will mean not only safer communities, but also a more promising outlook for young people otherwise destined for a regrettable future.
The research technician

Research technician Saleha Omarjees path to the Cape Town lab began with an undergraduate project on the components of blood. A native of Durban, a perpetually sunny South African city on the Indian Ocean, Omarjee became fascinated by hematology and microbiology. She completed a masters degree in immunology and worked at the university as a research assistant in HIV pathogenesis before moving to the Cape Town lab in July.

Her first job of the day is to make sure the labs high-tech equipment is in working order and prep the work space for each days experiment, preparing the paperwork and the reagents  the chemical ingredients that go into the experiments, much like the flour and eggs that go into a recipe.

Omarjee does not personally know people with HIV.

But living in South Africa, we know a big part of the population is affected, even if we dont know them personally, she said. And we know the impact its had on children.

South Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV in the world  almost 7 million people out of a population of about 55 million. (By comparison, an estimated 1.2 million people with HIV live in the United States, population 322 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) An estimated 360,000 children under age 14 are living with HIV, infected at birth before programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission were in place. Another 2.3 million children have been orphaned because of HIV/AIDS.

Though late to promote the use of antiretroviral drugs, South Africa has made great strides in recent years, reaching 3.4 million people  the largest treatment program of any country. But still, that is only half the people who need it. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people become infected with HIV every day. Scientists and public health experts see a vaccine as the best hope of controlling and eventually ending the global pandemic.

The stakes give Omarjee a sense of purpose. But the work itself has taught her patience.

I thought that immediately we would make a big change in the lives of people, she said. But this is going to be a long road. I realized I am only working on one small part. I struggled with that at first. Now Ive accepted that all of this will come together and make a difference eventually.

Two groundbreaking clinical trials

The long road to an HIV vaccine began in the early 1980s, after the first cases of the then-mysterious illness called AIDS were reported and the virus that caused it identified. Since then, six experimental vaccines advanced to large-scale trials. Of these, just one showed even moderate protection.

A modified version of that vaccine  boosted to be more protective and more durable  is being tested in one of the two major trials now underway. Called HVTN 702, it will enroll 5,400 HIV-negative men and women across South Africa to receive either the experimental vaccine regimen or a placebo. If the regimen being tested achieves at least 50 percent protection, it could become the first licensed HIV vaccine. Results are expected in late 2020.

The other trial, called the AMP study, will enroll 1,500 HIV-negative women in South Africa and six other African countries to study for the first time whether directly infusing a kind of super antibody can prevent HIV infection and eventually lead to an even better vaccine.

Developing a vaccine against a rapidly mutating virus that attacks the very immune cells the body uses to initiate a response has been a huge challenge, said Andersen-Nissen. But its also teaching us a huge amount about the immune system.

The in-depth analysis of blood and tissue samples from both trials underway in the Seattle and Cape Town labs allows scientists to compare the experimental products effect on trial participants immune systems compared to a control group. They are also able to better understand the role of different immune components such as T cells and antibodies, study how the immune system responds to different vaccine vectors and additives and examine the host-pathogen relationship after infection.

Before the Cape Town lab opened, samples from earlier HVTN trials were stored on dry ice or liquid nitrogen and flown back to Seattle, a labor-intensive and costly process that risked damaging or losing precious specimens. Analyzing the blood samples in South Africa is more efficient. Plus, a local lab makes it possible to analyze mucosal and whole-blood samples, which cant be frozen.

Weve become full partners

In addition to these practical advantages, the lab has symbolic importance, both for those donating the specimens and those studying them.

It gives some assurances for people, said the Rev. David Galetta, the chair of the community advisory board for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town, which participates in the HVTN trials. Some of the people are skeptical of other countries. You think about shipping your blood out of the country, and you think why? Why not here?

Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, one of South Africas top HIV researchers and the first woman from Africa to head the International AIDS Society, agreed.

It matters a lot to Africans that some of the science is being done on our shores and on our continent, said Bekker, deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town and chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. Theres a sense of pride that were not shipping everything off the shores, that our own technologists and people trained in this country are contributing to the science. That were able to do the process from designing [the trials] all the way through to finishing the assays and disseminating the results is a testimony to what Africa can do. It means weve become full partners.

Join the conversation on our Facebook page.

Fred Hutch News Service writer Mary Engel and photographer Robert Hood were in Durban and Cape Town, South Africa, where this story was reported, for the 21st International AIDS conference, AIDS2016.
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The traditional model of pasture-based milk production in the UK and keeping cows outdoors is under threat because of a potential labour shortage after Brexit.

Dairy farmers told a fringe event at this weeks Oxford Farming Conference the viability of grazing cattle in a post-Brexit economy could be compromised if access to low-cost eastern European labour was limited with more cows being milked by robots.

Four UK dairy farmers took part in the Grate Cheese Debate on Tuesday (3 January), hosted by Charlotte Smith, presenter of BBC Radio 4s Farming Today programme.

See also: RABDF survey aims to assess post-Brexit dairy crisis

They warned British dairy farms were being pushed towards housed or robotic milking systems because of labour pressures and the need to remain competitive amid low prices.

For me, its one of the biggest challenges facing farming, said Hugh Padfield, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and owner of the Bath Soft Cheese Company.

With Brexit, it is going to be harder to get cheap labour. People wont want to milk twice a day, seven days a week.

There will be a real pressure to go towards robotic milking. And with robotic milking, this means housed herds.

Cows outdoors

Mr Padfield, who farms a herd of about 200 organic Friesian cows in Kelston, between Bath and Bristol, added: One of the things I like about being an organic farmer is to be able to look out at a herd of cows in a field.

Thats so hard to justify when its so hard to find people to milk cows and get the cows in. Thats going to be a real challenge.

Prominent English cheddar maker Mary Quicke, managing director of Quickes artisan cheese-making dairy in Devon, said her cows are put out to pasture 10-11 months of the year.

On our farming system, it makes sense for us to graze, she added. I was at a European dairy farmers meeting and I learned that profitability is system-blind.

Farmers like to think that their own particular system is the only one that makes money. But I was interested to see that the figures down to the bottom line show its the excellence of the management that really makes the difference over profitability.

Looking ahead to Brexit, Mrs Quicke said to remain competitive, the UK dairy industry would have to lower costs of production, get better at selling and telling its story and convincing people that what we are doing is absolutely fabulous.

Stay competitive

Peter Alvis, a partner at Lye Cross Farm, near Bristol, produces cheeses from both organic and conventional milk. He warned against UK dairy farmers ditching traditional farming systems.

We are going to be competing in a world market in which a large amount of that supply will come from grass-based milk, he said. We have to get out there and compete with them. But I think we can still do it.

Robin Skailes, owner of Cropwell Bishop Creamery, Nottinghamshire, which makes a range of organic Stiltons, told the audience of 120 people he chooses most of his milk from the Peak District, which has lots of pasture and roaming hills.

That gives us very good protein and slightly lower fat, which really suits Stilton making, he added.

The event was sponsored by Innovative Farmers, which is part of the Duchy Future Farming programme and funded by the Prince of Wales Charitable Trust.
WHATS UP The Cherokee County Literacy Association is having a hot dog sale fundraiser on November 12 at 11:00 a.m.2:00 p.m. in the office parking lot at 409 Buford Street. Plates for...

Blacksburg town employees to get bonus of $175 Blacksburg town employees were rewarded for their work Tuesday with a little extra in their holiday bonuses. Blacksburg Town Council unanimously agreed to give most full-time and part-time employees an...

In this region, no one fights alone Traditional rivals Landrum and Liberty presented a $4,700 check at Fridays Blacksburg game from a competitive fundraiser to celebrate Pink Out Week. Students competed to see which school could raise...

Pet Obituary Cameo CamiWard 7/27/2004  10/29/2022

Cameo chose her forever family by walking into their yard June 2006. She loved her cat proof backyard, window and screen porch. Cameo for many years played hide and go...
Story Highlights About two-thirds name big government as biggest threat

One in four fear big business most, 5% big labor

Republicans especially concerned about big government

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As businessman Donald Trump prepares to become the nation's 45th president, Americans continue to express more concern about the threat big government poses to the U.S. than big business or big labor. Two in three Americans (67%) identify big government as the country's biggest threat. That is below the record high of 72% in 2013 but still on the higher end of the range since the mid-1960s.

Meanwhile, the 26% of Americans who name big business as the biggest threat remains down from 32% in 2009 amid the economic recession, but it is near the average since 1965. Just 5% say big labor is the biggest threat. This is about half the level recorded a decade ago and far lower than in the 1960s and 1970s, when it typically ranked second among the three threats.

Americans have consistently been more concerned about big government than big business and big labor since Gallup first asked this question in 1965. This concern peaked in 2013, the year healthcare exchanges opened under the Affordable Care Act and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed information about government spying tactics. However, concern about big government has declined slightly since.

Worry about big business spiked to a record high of 38% in 2002 after corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom and Tyco made headlines. It rose again to 31% in 2008 and 32% in 2009 after government bailouts of banks and automotive companies during the financial crisis, as well as the revelation of Bernie Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme.

Public concern about big labor has lagged far behind big business and big government since the mid-1990s, reflecting the weakening role of labor unions in U.S. society. By contrast, in the 1960s and 1970s, Americans typically were more concerned about big labor than big business. Concern about big labor was highest in 1965, at 29%.

Republicans Most Concerned About Big Government

Americans' wariness of the threat that big government poses has generally increased over time, although it has varied based on the party of the president in recent years. Concern about big government averaged 65% under the two most recent Democratic presidents -- Barack Obama and Bill Clinton -- compared with 56% during the Republican administration of President George W. Bush.

Republicans primarily drive this pattern, as they consistently show more concern than Democrats about big government -- and even more so when Democrats occupy the White House. Republicans' choice of big government averaged 85% under Obama and 77% under Clinton, compared with 62% under Bush.

On the other hand, the average percentage of Democrats naming big government has been steadier across all three administrations -- 48% under Obama, 51% under Bush and 52% under Clinton.

Percentage Naming Big Government as Biggest Threat, by Administration In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future -- big business, big labor or big government? U.S. adults Republicans Independents Democrats % % % % Barack Obama 65 85 66 48 George W. Bush 56 62 56 51 Bill Clinton 65 77 66 52 Averages calculated based on years in which Gallup asked the question Gallup

Of the three threats, big government is the dominant choice for Republicans and, to a lesser extent, independents. But Democrats are more divided -- 51% say big government and 43% say big business. Less than 10% across all partisan groups mention big labor.

Perceptions of Biggest Threat, by Party Identification In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future -- big business, big labor or big government? Republicans Independents Democrats % % % Big government 81 67 51 Big business 10 26 43 Big labor 6 7 4 Gallup, Dec. 7-11, 2016

Republicans' mentions of big government fell to 81% in the December 2016 Gallup poll, from 88% in 2015 and 92% in 2013. This dip could reflect a belief among Republicans that big government will be less of a threat because their party will soon control the presidency and Congress. Democrats' and independents' views are essentially unchanged from 2015.

Bottom Line

Americans' choice of big government, big business or big labor as the biggest institutional threat facing the U.S. in the future strongly skews toward the first of these. While Republicans are most likely to say big government is the biggest threat, about half of Democrats -- the party that favors government intervention and the party currently in control of the presidency -- say the same.

When Trump takes office, Americans' views of big government as a threat may lessen, based on historical patterns. Republicans' mentions of big government fell when the last Republican president took office. The trajectory of Democrats' views is less predictable. They may become more fearful of big government because their party is not in power -- and perhaps grow more apprehensive about big business given Trump's business ties and his Cabinet picks from big business and big financial institutions.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 7-11, 2016, with a random sample of 1,028 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Story Highlights 35% say they read more than 11 books in the past year

53% of young adults read between one and 10 books in the past year

73% prefer printed books to e-readers or audio books

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Despite the abundance of digital diversions vying for their time and attention, most Americans are still reading books. In fact, they are consuming books at nearly the same rate that they were when Gallup last asked this question in 2002 -- before smartphones, Facebook or Twitter became ubiquitous. More than one in three (35%) appear to be heavy readers, reading 11 or more books in the past year, while close to half (48%) read between one and 10 and just 16% read none.

The number of Americans who say they read no books in the past year has doubled since the first time Gallup asked this in 1978, from 8% then to 16% now, but has been fairly steady near the current level since 1990.

The results are based on an open-ended question that asked half of Americans to recall the number of books they read all or part of the way through in the past year -- the trend wording -- and the other half to recall the number of books they read or listened to all or part of the way through. Given that there was no meaningful difference in the answers, the results to the two versions were combined.

Oldest Americans Reading More Than They Used To

Although the survey did not track the types of books that Americans read by age group, book reading in general is fairly similar by age group among U.S. adults. It is a bit more prevalent among the oldest and youngest age groups than among those in the middle years. Roughly nine in 10 adults aged 18 to 29 (91%) report reading at least one book in the past year -- possibly related to the required reading among college students within this age group. The percentage among those aged 65 and older is 85%. Nearly four in 10 respondents in both age groups say they read more than 10 books.

The most meaningful differences in reading behavior since 2002 are evident among Americans aged 65 and older. Collectively, they are reading more books than the same age group did in 2002. The percentage reading one or more books increased from 68% to 85%, including a four-percentage-point increase in those reading 11 or more, from 33% to 37%.

Amount of Books Americans Read, by Age During the past year, about how many books did you read/listen to, either all or part of the way through? None 1 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 50 51 or more % % % % % 2016 18 to 29 years old 9 32 21 34 4 30 to 49 years old 19 34 13 26 8 50 to 64 years old 20 39 10 25 6 65+ years old 14 35 13 25 12 2002 18 to 29 years old 13 35 13 32 7 30 to 49 years old 16 34 16 27 6 50 to 64 years old 15 29 21 28 7 65+ years old 29 26 9 22 11 Gallup

Americans Still Turning the Printed Page

With the advent of e-readers and tablets in the past decade, some futurists predicted the imminent extinction of printed books. It was said that the ability to download, read and store thousands of digital books on these devices would quickly reduce demand for the paper versions. However, this prophecy appears to be far from true -- so far. Among those who say they read at least one book last year, the vast majority say they most often read printed books, at 73%. About one in five most often read electronic books, while only 6% mostly experienced books in audio form.

Americans' Methods of Reading Books Which do you do most often -- read printed books, read electronic books on a tablet or e-reader, or listen to audio books? Printed books Electronic books Audio books % % % 2016 Dec 7-11 73 19 6 NOTE: Asked of those who have read at least one book in the last year Gallup

Bottom Line

Despite Americans' ability to access more information, social networks, games and media than ever before, as well as the lingering rumors of the book's demise, Americans still say they are reading books.

Additionally, while some have alleged that technology would displace printed books, this shift has not been as swift as expected. In fact, recent industry data show that sales of printed books have been increasing. While it is unclear if Americans are reading books only partially, reading shorter books or reading lower-quality books than they used to, the fact that they are reading just as many books as they were 15 years ago could signify welcome news to aspiring authors and publishers.

This suggests that book reading is a classic tradition that has remained a constant in a faster-paced world, especially in comparison to the slump of other printed media such as newspapers and magazines.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 7-11, 2016, with a random sample of 1,028 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
The agreement comes about two months after Project Roomkey, which provided motel rooms for the homeless, ended.
Aslan Noakes was on her way home to Oregon from a work trip to Haiti when she got caught up in the turmoil of a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.

I was in Terminal 3 dropping my bags off, the 32-year-old Philomath resident told the Gazette-Times in a phone interview about two hours after the incident. Someone comes running up and said theres been a shooting.

Checking her phone for news, Noakes learned that five people were dead, several more had been wounded and the shooter was in custody in Terminal 2. She thought the crisis was over, but then blue-uniformed security guards began running through the terminal, yelling at people to get down.

People were screaming, she said.

At that point, the entire airport was evacuated, and Noakes found herself on the tarmac with hundreds of other people under the watchful eyes of security personnel.

Theres helicopters that have formed a perimeter around us, she said.

Noakes said the shooting, while upsetting, didnt cause her to panic.

Before I started going to Haiti, I think it would have fazed me a little more, she said.

Noakes, a registered nurse, has been making regular trips to Haiti since shortly after a massive earthquake devastated the island nation in 2010. She is now the executive director of Empower Haiti Together, a business that sells Haitian products through an online store to fund community development projects and support jobs in Haiti.

Shootings and other dangerous situations are commonplace occurrences there, and she never felt directly threatened during Fridays airport incident.

Im so used to scary things that have just happened in life, you just go into triage mode, Noakes said. I dont wince as much as I used to.

Noakes added that the experience would not prevent her from traveling in the future.

I feel like I have a purpose in life and that if my purpose is done, then Im done, she said. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Im going to just live my life, and not live in fear.

As of noon Pacific time, Noakes was still waiting on the tarmac with hundreds of other stranded travelers waiting for the all-clear to get back inside the airport and sort out connecting flights. She said she was anxious to get home to her family in Philomath, including husband Brian and 4 -year-old son Sam.

Ironically, Noakes wasnt supposed to go through the Fort Lauderdale airport at all on this trip.

I was supposed to fly through Charlotte, but I didnt want to get stuck in this big winter storm so I asked my dad to rebook me, she said.

I guess I could be in Charlotte in a snowstorm right now.
Corvallis Mayor Biff Traber will deliver a state of the city address at noon Wednesday at a Corvallis Chamber of Commerce lunch forum hosted by the Corvallis Country Club, 1850 S.W. Whiteside Drive.

Traber is scheduled to talk about the current state of city operations and outline goals for the year ahead while also addressing business and economic matters.

The speech is free, but lunch costs $15 for members and $20 for nonmembers. To register, go to corvallischamber.com or call 541-757-1505

In other public meetings:

Monday

 The Corvallis Economic Development Advisory Board meets at 3 p.m. at the Madison Avenue Meeting Room, 500 S.W. Madison Ave.

 The Philomath City Council holds a work session at 5:50 p.m. at City Hall, 980 Applegate St., to discuss the general fund balance and forecasting. The council holds its regular meeting at 7 p.m., with election of the council president as well as standing committee and advisory board and commission assignments on the agenda.

 The Corvallis Community Relations Advisory Group meets at 7 p.m. at the Madison Avenue room.

Tuesday

 The Corvallis King Legacy Advisory Board meets at 5:15 p.m. at Osborn Aquatic Center, 1940 N.W. Highland Drive.

 The League of Women Voters Corvallis hosts its annual social and program planning event at 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2945 N.W. Circle Blvd.

 The Corvallis Historic Resources Commission meets at 6:30 p.m. at the downtown fire station, 400 N.W. Harrison Blvd. No public hearings are scheduled. Commissioners will discuss grant funding and receive an update on the historic preservation plan.

 The Corvallis Budget Commission, which consists of the nine elected city councilors and nine community members, holds its orientation meeting at 7 p.m. at the Madison Avenue room.

Wednesday

 The Corvallis Downtown Advisory Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at the Madison Avenue room.

 A community meeting on homeless issues will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave.

 The Corvallis-Benton County Library Advisory Board meets at 7:30 p.m. at the library.

Thursday

 The Corvallis Community Involvement & Diversity Advisory Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Madison Avenue room.
Dear Gov. Kate:

Since we toiled together in the Legislature, I feel I can be candid with you as a friend and fellow legislator. Now is the time, Kate, when your office is the one that sets the vision and the agenda for the future of our state. It may be our last opportunity for some time. The very real uncertainty of federal government policies adds to the urgency.

In the serious recession of 1980 through 1984, Gov. Atiyeh and the Legislature cut budgets as far as they could go and resorted to asking agencies if they could raise fees, thereby replacing general funds which could be used in crisis areas. It was not to be a permanent solution, but like an intoxicating drug, it became an easy art form of budgeting. It became a must after Oregonians fell for the no new taxes or, better yet, cut my taxes siren call of Measure 5.

Our population has doubled since 1975, so have the demands, so have the roller-coaster rides of feast or famine budgeting, and so has the crisis in funding local government.

Here are some suggestions from 17 years on Ways and Means:

 This coming session, you and the legislative leaders need to have the House and Senate form a Committee of the Whole on tax reform. Select chairs or the presiding officers who can act as co-chairs and call weekly informational meetings jointly in the House chamber until measures are ready to vote upon.

 Only three joint committees will operate: Ways and Means, Revenue, and Judiciary (which will act as Rules also). All will be joint. Revenue will select subcommittees from the remaining membership of the Committee of the Whole.

 The large subjects of personal and corporate income taxes much be treated with special attention to fairness and stability. The issue of special sweetheart exemptions of various property taxes that remove funds from local government must be considered, as must the various kinds of old exemptions in the statutes that no longer make sense. Sunset any special tax exemptions written into contracts.

 Last, but not least is one subpoint dealing with PERS (look at serial bonding).

 Look for ways to legally expand the local option.

 Get additional help for legislative Revenue  members will need it.

 No one goes home until you pass meaningful change in our patchwork tax system. No referrals.

 Have a vigilant press spotlight legislators and lobbyists who throw sand in the gears of progress.

This is an opportunity for the Legislature to finally do what should have been done over 30 years ago. I think Oregonians would applaud the statesmanship!

I realize that political fortunes and power are always made at someones or some group's expense and yes, there has been waste. But Oregon is different than Washington D.C., I believe, in that recent bad choices (such as some energy projects, health computer systems and reorganizing education) were not made for personal gain but with the honest belief they were making Oregon better.

We need nothing fancy this time: just roll up your sleeves, protect our best programs in health, get a grip on mental health, pick wise programs in education and help small business.

Thats why the Legislature needs to prove why the love of Oregon comes first this time.
 ROSE (roz) n. One of the most beautiful of all flowers, a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Often given as a sign of appreciation.

 RASPBERRY (razbere) n. A sharp, scornful comment, criticism or rebuke; a derisive, splatting noise, often called the Bronx cheer.

We hereby deliver:

 RASPBERRIES to the news, expected as it is, that flu season has arrived in earnest in the mid-valley. Indications are that this will be a heavy season for the illness.

Just a couple of quick thoughts about this that bear repeating: First, it's not at all too late to get a flu shot, but you don't want to wait too much longer. The vaccine typically takes about two weeks to take effect, and flu season tends to peak in February.

This year's vaccine appears to be a good match for the strain of flu that's making the rounds. Picking the vaccine always involves a bit of educated guesswork, since production has to ramp up before it's clear exactly which strains of flu will be in play. Some years, the estimate is better than others; this appears to be one of the good years.

Second, if you do get sick (after all, the vaccine isn't a guarantee that you won't get the flu and a variety of nasty cold viruses also appear to be at work in the mid-valley), do yourself and your co-workers a favor and stay home. Oh, we know you're essential to your business, but it turns out that your co-workers would prefer it if you didn't infect them. They can keep the operation afloat while you recover. Or, you could go into work, sick as a dog, infect all your co-workers and prepare for the day in the near future when they all call in sick. It's your call.

 ROSES to public works employees who have been working long hours over the last couple of weeks to try to keep mid-valley roads free of snow and ice. State, county and city workers have been doing reasonably well staying in front of the weather. The weather forecast suggests little rest for the weary, with a weekend storm set to drop that dreaded "wintry mix" into the mid-valley.

With that said, maybe the best thanks you can give to area road crews would be to respect the weather conditions every time you slide behind the steering wheel.

 ROSES to former Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, for literally giving the coat off his back to a homeless man at a Portland shelter.

According to an Associated Press account, Kulongoski showed up unannounced at the shelter, which had been opened by a VFW post because of the cold weather.

Once there at the shelter, witnesses said, the former governor gave his hooded, ski-parka style coat to a 49-year-old man, Lee Williams. Williams said later that he didn't know who Kulongoski was or why the man was trying to give him a coat, and he initially tried to refuse. But Kulongoski insisted Williams take it, along with a pair of gloves.

Williams said now he knows who the former governor is, and the new coat is a lot warmer than his old one.

 RASPBERRIES to the news that Oregon no longer rates as the No. 1 destination for people moving from another state. United Van Lines has tracked customer state-to-state migration for the past 40 years. Oregon had been No. 1 for the last three years, but dropped to third in the latest rating.

For 2016, South Dakota ranked at the top of the list. The moving company said this is part of a trend of retirees moving to states in the Northwest. We suspect that the overall trend is true, but note that listing South Dakota as a state in the "Northwest" requires a bit of a geographical stretch. (mm)
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.
Bonn local transport : Anger over changes to short distance tickets

Bonn Passengers are disgruntled about the new restrictions on short routes, which have been in force since 1 January.

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Up to now, passengers with short distance tickets have been able to travel a distance of up to four stations and to change lines. Since the start of the year, changing lines is now only possible in Bonn and entire transport area on payment of a surcharge. Passengers who, for example, want to travel two stops with the underground and then another by bus now pay 2.80 euro for a single ticket instead of 1.90 euro.

It is a rule one simply needs to be aware of and which only upsets a small proportion of customers, says Holger Klein, press spokesman for the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS) (Rhine-Sieg Transport Association) when questioned by the General Anzeiger. Customers buy around ten million short distance tickets a year, and six per cent of those involve line changes. The disadvantage for these customers is undisputed, adds Klein.

Transport companies operating in rural areas had demanded short distance tickets be scrapped. In rural areas, passengers can travel much greater distances on a short distance ticket than in town. The short distance journey in town means only one or several kilometres. In rural areas it can quickly reach 15 kilometres.

The 28 transport companies belonging to the VRS agreed after discussions on the ban on changing lines. The new rule is irritating GA readers. One woman said: Unfortunately yet another new rule that does not make using local public transport easier, but rather does the opposite. This is not about us, but about more money, was the complaint of one Facebook user.

Klein denies the decision was made on financial grounds, saying the additional revenue was minimal. Instead it was about a more integrated system and to make it easier to control tickets. At the moment, ticket inspectors cannot always determine how far a passenger has actually already travelled with a short distance ticket.
Flu in Germany : Flu outbreak starting earlier than normal

Berlin Flu viruses are taking hold this winter several weeks earlier than in the previous two years. There have been first outbreaks in hospitals and nine deaths have already been announced.

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Do not go out in the cold without a hat and certainly not with wet hair! It is commonly thought a cold head makes you sick. But experts say cold alone does not make you especially ill  but temperatures can play a part.

Flu viruses, for example, survive longer in the external environment when it is drier and colder, says Silke Buda from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in response to a question from the German Press Agency. But the start of the flu outbreak this year was unrelated to the current cold snap. Experts say it started shortly before Christmas 2016, several weeks earlier than in the previous two seasons.

Laboratory tests have shown around 2600 confirmed cases of flu between the start of the flu outbreak and the beginning of January and many cases are not reported. A virus is clearly circulating, says Buda. She says up to now it is older people who have been affected.

Several outbreaks have been recorded in hospitals in various states and there have been nine deaths, of which eight were of people over 60. It is similar to the 2014/2015 season, says Buda, when the RKI estimates around 20,000 people died from flu. Buda does not want to overstate the current situation but says: We are keeping an eye on it. A concerned one.

Bavaria is currently an area of concern. Health minister Melanie Huml (CSU) advises that it is still worth having a flu vaccine. Flu is not a harmless cold, she warns.

There are many factors at this time of the year that can influence the spread of respiratory illnesses like flu and colds, says Buda. Temperatures, the weather and air humidity play a role, but not a definitive one. Vaccine protection, a new variation of a virus and individual immune systems are also influencing factors.
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Protecting the worlds oceans  an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy

The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
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bayonel3 at 6-01-2017 01:42 PM (5 years ago) (m)

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), yesterday, named Wale Tinubus Oando, Toye Coles Sahara Energy Resources, Sayyu Dantatas MRS Oil and 36 other companies as winners of the crude oil term contract, for the purchase and lifting of 1.306 million barrels per day of Nigerias crude oil for 2017/2018, effective January 1, 2017. NNPC, in a statement in Abuja, said that the 39 successful bidders comprised 18 Nigerian companies, 11 international oil traders, five foreign refiners, three National Oil Companies, (NOCs) and two NNPC trading arms.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), yesterday, named Wale Tinubus Oando, Toye Coles Sahara Energy Resources, Sayyu Dantatas MRS Oil and 36 other companies as winners of the crude oil term contract, for the purchase and lifting of 1.306 million barrels per day of Nigerias crude oil for 2017/2018, effective January 1, 2017. NNPC, in a statement in Abuja, said that the 39 successful bidders comprised 18 Nigerian companies, 11 international oil traders, five foreign refiners, three National Oil Companies, (NOCs) and two NNPC trading arms. According to the corporation, all the contracts are for 32,000 barrels per day except Duke Oil Ltd, an oil trading arm of the NNPC, which shall be for 90,000 barrels per day. Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division, COMD, of the corporation, Mr. Mele Kyari, said that the contract will run for one year effective January 1, 2017 for consecutive 12 circles of crude oil allocation.

The other Nigerian companies are: Sayyu Dantatas MRS Oil and Gas, Uche Ogahs Masters Energy, Alhaji Auwalu Ranos A.A. Rano Nigeria Ltd, Oladimeji Edwards Hyde Energy, and Uju Ifejikas Britania-U. The list also include North West Petroleum and Optima Energy, AMG Petroenergy, Arkleen Oil & Gas Ltd, Shoreline Ltd, Emo Oil, Setana Oil and Prudent Energy.

The International oil traders are Trafigura, ENOC, BP Trading, Total Trading, UCL Petro Energy, Mocoh Trading, Trevier Petroleum, Heritage Oil, Levene Energy, Glencore and Litasco Supply and Trading Company. In the government-to-government category, the companies are India Oil Company, Sinopec of China and Saccoil of South Africa, while the two NNPC subsidiaries are Duke Oil and Carlson Hyson.

A total of 224 bids were submitted by companies seeking to purchase and lift Nigerian crude oil grades for the period 2017/2018. During the bid opening in November 2016, Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, had assured the public that NNPC would ensure due process, transparency and fairness in the selection process.

We will ensure transparency and fairness in the process. There is nothing that is hidden just as you have seen today, Baru had stated. Baru had also disclosed that the number of companies bidding dropped from 278 in 2015/2016 to 224 at present, due to the strengthening of the criteria for prospective bidders. He said NNPC was targeting crude oil refiners, big oil traders, as well as companies that had made substantial investments in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, particularly in the downstream sector. Baru further stated that the huge number of bidders, despite the stringent conditions, was an indication of the fact that Nigerias crude oil grades were in high demand across the globe.

He said: There have been speculations that we are struggling for market. That is not true. Nigerian crude has continued to earn premiums and they are hot cake for refiners. Because of the light nature of the crude, it induces very high yields on the valuable products that you produced from crude oil. Nigerian crude continues to maintain market.

In fact, contrary to a lot of speculations that a lot of Nigerian crude goes to China, it does not. Most of them are consumed and refined in India and Europe, particularly, this year and last year, most of Nigerian crude ends up in European refineries.

According to the corporation, all the contracts are for 32,000 barrels per day except Duke Oil Ltd, an oil trading arm of the NNPC, which shall be for 90,000 barrels per day. Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division, COMD, of the corporation, Mr. Mele Kyari, said that the contract will run for one year effective January 1, 2017 for consecutive 12 circles of crude oil allocation.The other Nigerian companies are: Sayyu Dantatas MRS Oil and Gas, Uche Ogahs Masters Energy, Alhaji Auwalu Ranos A.A. Rano Nigeria Ltd, Oladimeji Edwards Hyde Energy, and Uju Ifejikas Britania-U. The list also include North West Petroleum and Optima Energy, AMG Petroenergy, Arkleen Oil & Gas Ltd, Shoreline Ltd, Emo Oil, Setana Oil and Prudent Energy.The International oil traders are Trafigura, ENOC, BP Trading, Total Trading, UCL Petro Energy, Mocoh Trading, Trevier Petroleum, Heritage Oil, Levene Energy, Glencore and Litasco Supply and Trading Company. In the government-to-government category, the companies are India Oil Company, Sinopec of China and Saccoil of South Africa, while the two NNPC subsidiaries are Duke Oil and Carlson Hyson.A total of 224 bids were submitted by companies seeking to purchase and lift Nigerian crude oil grades for the period 2017/2018. During the bid opening in November 2016, Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, had assured the public that NNPC would ensure due process, transparency and fairness in the selection process.Baru had stated. Baru had also disclosed that the number of companies bidding dropped from 278 in 2015/2016 to 224 at present, due to the strengthening of the criteria for prospective bidders. He said NNPC was targeting crude oil refiners, big oil traders, as well as companies that had made substantial investments in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, particularly in the downstream sector. Baru further stated that the huge number of bidders, despite the stringent conditions, was an indication of the fact that Nigerias crude oil grades were in high demand across the globe.He said:

Post Reply I scour the world wide web to bring you interesting stories from around the globe. +2348055557203 Posted: at 6-01-2017 01:42 PM (5 years ago) | Hero
Moto is Hosting the Moto Collide Event In India News oi -Samden Sherpa Motorola basically wants to empower developers to build and fund their own Moto Mods.

If you remember, Motorola in 2016 launched the Moto Mods along with Moto Z. It was an impressive mobile accessory from the company.

An innovative product, the Moto Mods transformed a smartphone in a snap and it also provided customization ability where you could turn your phone into a camera with optical zoom, a movie projector, a boombox and more.

Find out the Total Number of WhatsApp Messages Sent in One Day

Amidst such developments, the Lenovo-owned company Motorola has now stated that the company has plans to share the Moto Mods Development Kit (MDK) which will allow people from any place to contribute to the ecosystem by bringing their own Moto Mods to life.

By initiating such move, the company basically wants to empower developers to build and fund their own Moto Mods.

With such aim, the company is also hosting an event dubbed as "Moto Collide" in Bengaluru on January 25, where it will be announcing new opportunities to help developers get involved.

Android 7.1.1 Update is Now Available for Nexus 6

As per the reports from Android Authority, the event is focused on both one-person startups as well as experienced development firms who can their great ideas and interact with different partners across hardware, software, manufacturing, and product development teams to realize them into a global product opportunity.

If you are interested in the event and if you want to know more about the opportunities then you can go to this link motocollide.com to register. The Moto team should get back to you within five business days.

Source

Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals

Best Mobiles in India

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CES 2017: Google Assistant to Soon Hit AndroidTV, Android Wear and More News oi -Sneha Google Assistant to hit AndroidTV and Android Wear soon.

The tech world is going ga-ga with the umpteen products being launched at the CES 2017 across various categories. Tech companies across the world including Samsung, Xiaomi, Asus, LG and others have been showcasing several products, be it smartphones, home appliances, or any other gadgets such as drones. In this competitive space, to be the best, how can Google be silent? Yes, at the ongoing CES 2017 event, the search engine giant has announced that they are gearing up to integrate Google Assistant with Android TV in the months ahead.

Google Assistant has become an integral part of our life, and we surely can't deny that. To brush up your mind, Google Assistant is an intelligent personal assistant, which the search engine giant announced last year. Being an extension to Google Now, Google Assistant makes it easy to perform any task. All you need to do is just tell Google to do so, be it sending a message or making a phone call to a certain friend, and comes with features like smart replies, image recognition and a lot more.

Well, going back to CES 2017, the Sundar Pichai headed tech giant announced that Google Assistant on Android TV will come to the NVIDIA SHIELD in the coming months. Adding on, Google also unveiled that all the Android Televisions running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat such as the AirTV Player, Sharp Aquos, Sony Bravia, Xiaomi Mi Box, and others will come with Google Assistant as well.

SEE ALSO: White Variant of Xiaomi Mi Mix With Ceramic Body Launched at CES 2017, Will Soon Hit India

Sketching their roadmap for the upcoming days, Google stated that, the company will employ Google Assistant to other platforms as well and it not only include smartphones and televisions but also smartwatches running on Android Wear 2.0, Android-powered in-car infotainment systems and many other devices via Embedded Google Assistant SDK.

If you're wondering when will Google Assistant be rolled out to these devices, hold your breath until Google makes an official announcement about the same.

Source

Best Mobiles in India
Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro with 6GB of RAM Launching in India Soon News oi -Chakri Kudikala Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro is the companys first phone to feature 6GB of RAM.

Samsung is prepping to the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro smartphone in India by the end of this month. According to a rumor coming from Gear by Mysmartprice, Samsung is ready to introduce their first ever Galaxy C series smartphone in India. Along with the phone, the company might launch the Gear S3 smartwatch as well.

To recall, the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro was launched last month in China and is the company's first smartphone to feature 6GB of RAM. Aided with a Snapdragon 653 SoC, the phone comes with a 6-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display. Also, it has two stereo loudspeakers, which is also the first Samsung phone to feature.

SEE ALSO: White Variant of Xiaomi Mi Mix With Ceramic Body Launched at CES 2017, Will Soon Hit India

As seen on other Samsung smartphones, the home button embeds the fingerprint sensor in the Galaxy C9 Pro. Imaging wise, the C9 Pro features 16MP cameras on both front and back. It features a large 4000mAh battery and has a USB Type-C port.

The smartphone boots Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out-of-the-box, but the Android Nougat update will be released in the near future.

As of now, there are no details on the pricing of the phone, but Samsung will price it under Rs. 35,000 to make it more competitive.

Best Mobiles in India

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Russian cyber attacks are 'major threat,' US intelligence officials say

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 5:56PM

America's top intelligence officials says that Russia undeniably interfered in the country's 2016 presidential election with cyber attacks, calling Moscow's hacking a "major threat" to the United States.

The warning was made during a congressional hearing on Thursday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre.

They described Russia as a "major threat" to a wide range of US interests because of its sophisticated capabilities and "highly-advanced offensive cyber program."

Clapper said "our assessment now is even more resolute than it was" on October 7 when the US government first publicly accused Russia of staging cyber attacks on Democrats.

US intelligence agencies say Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives before the presidential election to influence the outcome.

US President-elect Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about the findings, heading for a conflict over the issue with Democrats and some fellow Republicans in Congress.

Many US lawmakers are concerned about Moscow's policies in Europe and the Middle East and distrust Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

American intelligence officials have said the Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Trump defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Moscow denies the hacking allegations.

Trump and top advisers believe Democrats are trying to delegitimize his election victory by accusing Russia of helping him.

Last week, outgoing President Barack Obama ordered a series of economic sanctions against Russia, as well as expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over the hacking allegations.

Emails allegedly stolen by Russia from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were leaked to the media by WikiLeaks prior to the election, embarrassing the Clinton campaign.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump expressed doubt on Russia's role in the leaks, writing: "(WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said the Russians did not give him the info!"

During the hearing, Senator John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Clapper whether he believed WikiLeaks' Assange had put American lives in direct danger. He said he agreed. Clapper also said he did not think Assange had any credibility.

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Intelligence Chief Accuses Russia Of Unprecedented Meddling In U.S. Election

Mike Eckel, Carl Schreck January 05, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The United States' top intelligence official has said a suspected Russian cyberhacking campaign constituted unprecedented meddling in the American electoral process.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the assertion on January 5 at an extraordinary hearing of a leading Senate committee focusing on the question of alleged Russian interference in the presidential election campaign.

"I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive, a more direct effort to interfere in our elections processes than in this case," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The hearing is the first of several congressional inquiries looking into the scope, intent, and purpose of what Washington says was a Russia-government-orchestrated intrusion into the computer servers and e-mail accounts of U.S. political organizations.

The conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies in October that hackers -- backed by top Russian officials -- compromised U.S. computer servers roiled the November 8 presidential vote. It also cast a shadow over Republican President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Adding to the tensions is the fact that Trump has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence assessments, which also reportedly concluded that Russia intended to help ensure victory for the president-elect, who has pledged to seek better ties with Moscow.

The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected allegations that Russia was behind the intrusions.

A day before the Senate hearing, Trump appeared to endorse a claim by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, that Russia was not the source of the leaked e-mails that were published by the website. That endorsement drew criticism from top Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

And just before the hearing began, Trump published a series of posts on Twitter, denying he was agreeing with Assange but also suggesting that Assange's claim might be considered credible.

"I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth," Trump wrote. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!"

In a joint statement released before the hearing, Clapper and two other witnesses -- National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre -- singled out Russia and its cyberefforts.

"We assess that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures," they said.

"Russia is a full-scope cyberactor that poses a major threat to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, commercial and critical infrastructure," they said.

The committee's Republican chairman, John McCain, a well-known hawk on Russian matters, has publicly endorsed the intelligence findings. He also suggested such hacking might be considered an act of war.

There is "no escaping the fact that this committee meets today for the first time in this new Congress in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on our democracy," McCain said in opening remarks at the hearing.

Clapper, whose office coordinates the work of 17 different agencies, demurred when asked by McCain whether he agreed.

"Whether or not that constitute an act of war...is a heavy policy call that the intelligence community is not capable of making," he said. "It would certainly, in my view, carry great gravity."

Clapper told the committee that alleged hacking was only one aspect of Russian interference in the U.S. electoral process.

"It was a multifaceted campaign, the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news," he said.

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 later reported that intelligence officials had concluded Russian hackers accessed Republican Party computers but didn't release potentially damaging e-mails or other materials.

In contrast to Trump's announcements, the findings of the U.S. intelligence community have been publicly endorsed by President Barack Obama. On December 29, the White House announced new sanctions in response to the hacking, targeting Russia's leading intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB.

It also expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to what Washington calls a campaign of harassment of its diplomats in Russia.

Obama had also ordered a full investigation of the alleged Russian hacking and promised to make it available prior to leaving office on January 20.

Clapper told the committee that he wouldn't discuss details of the report, a classified version of which was delivered to Obama on January 5. But he said an unclassified version will be released publicly next week.

Two other Senate committees are also taking up investigations of the matter.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was scheduled to hear classified testimony on January 5 from Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state who has been one of the Obama administration's leading officials in dealing with the Russian government.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-intelligence -officials-russian-hacking- senate-hearing/28215107.html

Copyright (c) 2017. 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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Obama Receives Intelligence Report on Alleged 'Russian Hacking'

Sputnik News

22:11 05.01.2017(updated 23:16 05.01.2017)

Outgoing President Barack Obama has received the report put together by the US Intelligence Community regarding purported evidence that led officials to conclude that Russia attempted to interfere in the US election, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said in a press briefing.

"The White House does have the report and President Obama is being briefed on it," Earnest said in a press briefing Thursday.

Obama learned of a new, apparently different report of supposed indicators that Russia engaged in hacking the November 2016 election. Obama is meeting with senior national security advisers "right now" Earnest said around 1:30 pm EST.

Recently, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a Joint Analysis Report indicating that a slew of alleged IP address used to hack the DNC and John Podesta's email were actually just Tor exit nodes.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump is also scheduled to get access to the full brief on Friday. Earnest indicated Obama is unlikely deliver a "formal response" immediately following the session.

On Thursday, members of the intelligence community, including infamous NSA liar James Clapper, met with the Senate to discuss the allegations of Russia's involvement with the recent elections, but no hard evidence emerged that was not already public knowledge.

The news, which somewhat surprisingly was not really news since intelligence officials produced no smoking gun proof, included South Carolina Senator quipping that the US should "throw rocks" at the Kremlin. Despite dramatic media attention surrounding the event, officials did not do much more than circulate hyperbolic, unsubstantiated claims through an echo-chamber.

 Sputnik

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Donald the Reformer: Trump to Revamp 'Politicized' US Intelligence Agencies

Sputnik News

10:52 05.01.2017

The Trump administration is reportedly going to modernize the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by reducing the number of staff at the CIA headquarters, while increasing the number of agents around the world.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The team of US President-elect Donald Trump is developing a plan to restructure 'politicized' US intelligence agencies, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing a person close to the Trump transition.

"The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized  They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact," the individual familiar with the matter was quoted as saying by WSJ.

According to the newspaper, Trump's team plans to modernize the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by reducing the number of staff at the CIA headquarters, while increasing the number of agents around the world.

On Wednesday, Trump expressed "healthy" and "sincere" skepticism about the US intelligence community's claims Russia interfered with the 2016 US election, US Vice President-elect Mike Pence said.

Trump also sided with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against the claims of the US Intelligence Community on the issue of the alleged Russian hacks. Trump repeated Assange's assertion that Russia did not give WikiLeaks information on the Democratic Party and its members.

The CIA has claimed that Russia was engaged in the hacking of US political institutions and individuals to help Trump win the US presidency.

A 13-page report on the issue released last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)  seven pages of which provided recommendations  has been widely criticized for not providing proof. Moreover, the report contained a disclaimer that the DHS did not provide warranties about the truthfulness of the presented information.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied involvement in the US election, calling the hacking allegations absurd and noting that they are intended to distract the US public from revelation of corruption and other pressing domestic issues.

 Sputnik

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Military Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Jan. 5, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Ayn Isa, a strike destroyed three ISIL tunnels.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, five strikes destroyed six oil pumpjacks and an oil tanker truck.

-- Near Raqqa, nine strikes engaged five ISIL tactical units; destroyed six fighting positions, four oil tanker trucks, an oil pumpjack, an artillery system and a command and control node; and damaged two supply routes.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed a bridge.

-- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL headquarters building.

-- Near Mosul, seven strikes engaged four ISIL tactical units; destroyed five ISIL-held buildings, four fighting positions, four mortar systems, two weapons caches, a supply cache, a communications tower, a vehicle, a command and control node and a rocket and unmanned aerial vehicle factory; damaged 27 supply routes; and suppressed two mortar teams.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb factory.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Afghanistan Mission Remains on Track, Defense Spokesman Says

By Karen Parrish DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2017  The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan continues to provide support to the Afghan government and its armed forces "so that they can secure the country for themselves," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters today.

He said Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of the Resolute Support mission and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, and his team "work very closely with the government, with the armed forces of Afghanistan."

'We Feel Good About the Situation Right Now in Afghanistan'

The separate counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan is also ongoing, Cook said, and is "critically important to the United States in keeping the homeland safe."

"We feel good about the situation right now in Afghanistan with regard to the support we're providing along with other members of the NATO coalition," he said. "In terms of bolstering the Afghan security forces, improving their fighting capabilities on their own, so that ultimately they can secure the country on their own. We see progress there."

Afghanistan is still dangerous and challenges there remain, Cook said.

"We will continue to provide the kind of support we can to bolster the Afghan security forces," he said. "That is an important mission."

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Deployments Bolster U.S. Presence in Western Pacific, Europe

By Karen Parrish DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2017  Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook announced operational deployments that will boost U.S. presence in the western Pacific and in Europe.

"Ships and units from the Carl Vinson strike group will depart San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the western Pacific," Cook told Pentagon reporters today.

Approximately 7,500 sailors will deploy and focus on maritime security operations, theater security cooperation efforts and bilateral exercises, he said.

Armored Brigade Combat Team Headed to Europe

Separately, Cook said, the United States is demonstrating its continued commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America's dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of Russia's intervention in Ukraine.

"Tanks, trucks and other equipment are scheduled to arrive in Europe this weekend, beginning a nine-month rotation of U.S. Army forces supporting Operation Atlantic Resolve," the press secretary said.

The arrival of troops and equipment from 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, out of Fort Carson, Colorado, marks the beginning of the continuous presence of an ABCT and back-to-back rotations of U.S. troops and equipment in Europe, he added.

After the equipment arrives at Bremerhaven, Germany, it will move by rail, commercial line haul and military convoy to Poland, Cook said. Troops and equipment will later be relocated throughout the region for training and exercises with European allies.

"This effort is part of our European Reassurance Initiative to maintain persistent, rotational presence of air, land, and sea forces in Central and Eastern Europe," he said.

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DoD Spokesman: U.S. Airstrikes Weaken Al-Qaida, ISIL Terrorists

By Karen Parrish DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2017  A series of precision U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives this week in northwestern Syria's Idlib province killed more than 20 militants and destroyed eight vehicles and nine structures, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters today.

A U.S. strike on Jan. 1 hit two al-Qaida vehicles that had departed a large al-Qaida headquarters near Sarmada, Syria, Cook said.

And, a Jan. 3 U.S. strike hit the headquarters compound itself, he added.

"Al-Qaida's foreign terrorist fighter network used this headquarters as a gathering place, and their leaders directed terrorist operations out of this location," Cook said.

He added, "As you know, al-Qaida remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States, our interests, and our allies and friends. We will continue to take actions to deny any safe haven for al-Qaida in Syria. We will not allow al-Qaida to grow its capacity to attack the United States or our allies around the world, and these strikes demonstrate that commitment."

Cook said the campaign against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists is also progressing in both Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi Forces Make Gains in Mosul

In the campaign to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraqi security forces have made progress in liberating neighborhoods and in clearing areas already liberated, he said.

"They have further linked the various axes of advance into Mosul, which as we've mentioned previously makes the ISF's job easier and ISIL's job more difficult," Cook said. "Of course, the global coalition continues to support Iraqi forces with air strikes -- eight in the last 24 hours in support of the Mosul operations -- as well as assistance from the ground."

In Syria, the press secretary said, Syrian democratic forces continue to liberate territory on the way to Raqqah.

"SDF forces have now advanced to within 7.5 kilometers of Tabqa Dam, and continue to make progress in clearing areas north and west of Raqqah," Cook said. "In support of these operations, the coalition in the last 24 hours conducted 10 airstrikes, including strikes against both tactical units and the oil infrastructure that provides ISIL's shrinking financial support."

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Deployments, floods and fires: Looking back on the Guard's hectic year

By Tech. Sgt. Erich B. SmithJanuary 5, 2017

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The National Guard saw a busy 2016, meeting challenges both at home and abroad, deploying overseas, responding to large-scale emergencies at home while also taking part in a number of milestone events.

Among the significant developments were several changes in leadership. Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel took the helm as the 28th chief of the National Guard Bureau, taking over from Army Gen. Frank J. Grass, who retired after four years as the chief and 46 years of service.

As he took on the duties of chief, Lengyel emphasized the primary mission of today's National Guard.

"We fight our nation's wars as part of the United States Army and part of the United States Air Force," he said. "Our training for the warfight, our ability to deploy and support it, is our number one role, the number one reason why we exist."

As part of that role, approximately 300 Airmen from the Vermont Air National Guard's 158th Fighter Wing deployed late in the year in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, a joint and coalition effort to defeat and destroy ISIS.

The Air National Guard also saw new leadership, with Air Force Lt. Gen. L. Scott Rice taking the reins from Air Force Lt. Gen. Stanley Clarke III, who retired.

And the Army National Guard welcomed Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Kepner as the 11th sergeant major of the Army Guard.

OVERSEAS DEPLOYMENTS

Army Guard members continued to play key roles overseas in 2016. For the first time since the Korean War, two Army National Guard division headquarters were deployed to forward locations concurrently.

Soldiers from the Texas Army National Guard's 36th Infantry Division deployed to Afghanistan, while more than 450 Soldiers from the Virginia Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Division headed to Kuwait. The 29th ID Soldiers are set to provide oversight and command and control of more than 18,000 service members taking part in a variety of operations throughout the Middle East.

"This is the epitome of the Total Force and displays how the Army National Guard is fully integrated into the Total Force," said Army Maj. Gen. Blake Ortner, the commanding general of the 29th ID, adding that the deployment will be the largest number of troops the division has led since World War II.

Numerous other Army and Air Guard units deployed to other locations and took part in large-scale training exercises at the National Training Center and multi-national exercises in Europe.

A SNOW STORM AND A WATER CRISIS

Back at home in January, winter storm Jonas blanketed the East Coast with snow, prompting governors in 12 states to call out more than 2,200 Guard members to clear snow, assist stranded motorists, provide health and wellness checks and transport first responders and emergency workers.

Later in the month Guard members from the Michigan National Guard responded to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. With high levels of lead in the city's drinking water, Michigan Guard members distributed bottled water throughout the city.

"This is why I joined the military -- to help people," said Spc. Charles Colwell, a medic with the Michigan Army National Guard's Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment. Colwell was one of 70 Guard members activated to support water distribution efforts.

HISTORIC FLOODING

Meanwhile, more than 600 Soldiers and Airmen of the Missouri National Guard responded to historic flooding throughout the eastern portion of the state. While on duty, Missouri Guard members manned traffic control points, filled sandbags and provided evacuation support.

In March, more than 1300 Soldiers and Airmen with the Louisiana National Guard also responded to heavy flooding, rescuing more than 4,200 people and 354 pets and assembling emergency levee walls on river banks.

"Anything we can do to save people's businesses and lives, that's what we're here to do," said Army Staff Sgt. Tommy Dunlop, with the Louisiana Army Guard's 844th Engineer Company.

The March flooding was just the start for Louisiana Guard members. In August, more than 3,800 Soldiers and Airmen responded to a massive, "thousand year" flood from heavy rains in southern Louisiana. Guard members rescued more than 19,000 citizens and distributed more than 78,000 meals.

The flooding damaged more than 146,000 homes and was considered by some to be one of the worst U.S. natural disasters since Hurricane Sandy struck New York and New Jersey in 2012. For some who responded, the large-scale flooding reminded them of Hurricane Katrina.

"It brings me back to when Hurricane Katrina passed in 2005 and I saw the National Guard around in all the neighborhoods," said Army Sgt. Bryan Campo, with the Louisiana Army Guard's 2225th Multi-role Bridge Company.

Campo and other members of his unit navigated deep flood waters using boats they typically employ to erect floating bridges to move units in combat.

"This is one of my proudest moments," he said of taking part in the response.

October saw flooding throughout the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida from Hurricane Matthew. Though the storm stayed offshore, heavy rains resulted in the mobilization of about 6,000 Guard members throughout those states.

WILDFIRES

In other regions of the country, a lack of rain meant dry conditions and wildfires. In September, aircrews from the Nevada Air National Guard's 152nd Airlift Wing battled blazes in Nevada, Oregon and Idaho with C-130 Hercules aircraft.

Aircrews flew 142 sorties, dispensing more than 3.5 million pounds of fire retardant and water.

"It's a great feeling to see [the] immediate results," said Air Force Lt. Col. Tony Machabee, "whether we are dropping a protective line of retardant between the fire and someone's property or dropping it directly on flames leaping from the tops of trees."

In July, historically dry conditions also kept California Army National Guard Soldiers busy flying UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, dropping water on wildfires in the northern part of the state.

That same month, National Guard members responded to wildfires near Nederland, Colorado, and later in the summer, Soldiers from the South Carolina and Tennessee Army National Guard used Black Hawks and CH-47 Chinook helicopters to drop water on wildfires in eastern Tennessee.

PARTNERSHIPS

The year also saw continued growth of the National Guard Bureau's State Partnership program, which pairs up National Guard elements with partner nations worldwide. In November, Argentina became the 73rd partner nation, teaming up with the Georgia National Guard.

"The [State Partnership program] allows us to leverage the deep and trusting ties the National Guard has built with a very large group of foreign allies across every combatant command," Lengyel said.

Also in 2016, Soldiers with the Georgia Army Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team were among the first Army Guard units to take part in the Associated Unit program, a program that integrates active and reserve component units at all levels for training, readiness and deployments.

The brigade is now aligned with the active component's 3rd Infantry Division, while an infantry battalion from the 3rd ID has been incorporated into the 48th IBCT.

"Much of [the] Army's capacity is resident in the reserve components, and we must rely more heavily on them to meet the demands of a complex global environment," said Army Gen. Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, referring to the program.

BEST RANGER, SULLIVAN CUP

Army Capt. Robert Killian, with the Colorado Army National Guard's B Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group, and Army Staff Sgt. Erich Friedlein, with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, took first place in the Lt. Gen. David E. Grange Jr. Best Ranger Competition

It was the first time in the history of the 33-year-old competition that an Army Guard team had won.

"It still really hasn't totally sunk in yet," said Friedlein, afterward. "I can't believe we did it after three days of struggling and just constantly trying to chip away [at the competition for] first place."

An Army Guard team also took first place honors in the Sullivan Cup, which names the best of the best among Army tank crews.

PREPPING FOR INAUGURATION

As the year closed out, Guard members began preparations for the 58th Presidential Inauguration, scheduled for the end of January. Guard members from more than 40 states, territories and the District of Columbia will be among about 15,000 military service members supporting the event.

More than 8,000 Guard members are scheduled to serve in a variety of roles, including marching in the inaugural parade and assisting local authorities with crowd control and security assistance.

-----

This story was compiled from various reports produced in 2016.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-001-17 January 05, 2017

Statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook on Recent Strikes in Northern Syria

U.S. forces conducted a series of precision airstrikes this week against al-Qaida operatives in northwestern Syria.

On Jan. 1, U.S. forces struck two al-Qaida vehicles that had departed a large al-Qaida headquarters near Sarmada. On Jan. 3, U.S. forces struck the headquarters compound itself, including multiple vehicles and structures. Al-Qaida's foreign terrorist fighter network used this headquarters as a gathering place, and their leaders directed terrorist operations out of this location.

Although we're still assessing the results of these strikes, our initial assessment is that these strikes hit killed five al-Qaida militants and destroyed two vehicles on Jan. 1, and killed more than 15 al-Qaida militants and destroyed , six vehicles, and nine structures on Jan. 3. We are confident these strikes will degrade al-Qaida's ability to direct operations in Syria.

Al-Qaida remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States and the West. We will continue to take action to deny any terrorist safe haven in Syria. We will not allow al-Qaida to grow its capacity to attack the United States or our allies and friends around the world.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1042909/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook January 05, 2017

Department of Defense Press Briefing by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook in the Pentagon Briefing Room

PETER COOK: Good afternoon, everybody.

Michael, good to see you.

A couple of quick notes before I turn to your questions.

First, a number of you have asked about reports of airstrikes in Idlib province, Syria, targeting al-Qaida members. I can confirm today that the United States conducted a series of precision airstrikes this week in northwestern Syria against al-Qaida operatives, strikes that further weaken al-Qaida's ability to threaten the United States.

On Sunday, January 1st, U.S. forces struck two al-Qaida vehicles that had departed a large headquarters near Sarmada, Syria. On Tuesday, January 3rd, U.S. forces struck the headquarters itself, targeting multiple vehicles and structures. Al-Qaida's foreign terrorist fighter network used this headquarters as a gathering place and their leaders directed terrorist operations out of this location.

We continue to assess the results of these strikes, but our initial assessment is that the January 1st strike killed five al-Qaida militants and destroyed two vehicles, and the January 3rd strike killed more than 15 militants, destroyed six vehicles and nine structures.

Again, our assessment here is ongoing, but we are confident these strikes will degrade al-Qaida's ability to direct operations in Syria and beyond.

As you know, al-Qaida remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States, our interests, and our allies and friends. We will continue to take actions to deny any safe haven for al-Qaida in Syria and we will not allow al-Qaida to grow its capacity to attack the United States or our allies around the world, and these strikes demonstrate that commitment.

Second, I know you got an update yesterday from Colonel Dorrian on progress in the counter-ISIL campaign. But even in the last 24 hours, we have again continued to see additional gains in both Iraq and Syria that I would like to detail briefly, if I could.

In the campaign to liberate Mosul, Iraqi security forces have made progress both in liberating new neighborhoods and in clearing areas already liberated. They have further linked the various axes of advance into Mosul, which as we've mentioned previously, makes the ISF's job easier and ISIL's job more difficult. Of course, the global coalition continues to support Iraqi forces with airstrikes, eight in the last 24 hours in support of the Mosul operations, as well as assistance from the ground.

Meanwhile, in Syria, Syrian Democratic Forces continue to liberate territory on the way to Raqqa. SDF forces have now advanced to within 7.5 kilometers of Tabqa Dam, and continue to make progress in clearing areas north and west of Raqqa. And in support of these operations, the coalition in the last 24 hours conducted 10 airstrikes, including strikes against both tactical units and the oil infrastructure that provides ISIL's shrinking financial support.

Some operational deployments as well to update you on. Starting today and including tomorrow, ships and units from the Carl Vinson Strike Group will depart San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the western Pacific. The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, Carrier Air Wing 2, and Embarked Destroyer Squadron 1 will deploy with Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Michael Murphy and USS Wayne E. Meyer.

Homeported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Michael Murphy will join CVN SG later this month as the strike group makes its way to the western Pacific. CVN SG will deploy with approximately 7,500 sailors and will focus on maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. The strike group assets will conduct bilateral exercises in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, to include anti-submarine warfare, maneuvering drills, gunnery exercises, and visit board, search and seizure subject-matter expert exchanges.

And separately on the deployment front, the United States is demonstrating its continued commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America's dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Tanks, trucks and other equipment are scheduled to arrive in Europe this weekend, beginning a nine-month rotation of U.S. Army forces supporting Operation Atlantic Resolve. The arrival of troops and equipment from Third Armor Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado marks the beginning of the continuous presence of an ABCT and back-to-back rotations of U.S. troops and equipment in Europe.

After the equipment arrives at Bremerhaven, Germany, it will move by rail, commercial line haul, and military convoy to Poland. The personnel and equipment will later be relocated throughout the region for training and exercises with European allies. This effort is part of our European Reassurance Initiative to maintain persistent, rotational presence of air, land and sea forces in Central and Eastern Europe.

And with that, I'd be happy to take your questions.

Lita Baldor?

Q: Peter, could you bring us up to date a bit on the situation with Turkey? Has the secretary had any discussions with his counterpart about the ongoing sort of rhetoric that's been going back and forth about whether or not there is an actual threat by the Turks to limit or close access to Incirlik?

And has there been an offer of additional aid -- military aid to Turkey? Where does that stand? Or have the Turks requested aid in some fashion for their fight in al-Bab? And is that being discussed?

Can you just fill us in on some of that?

MR. COOK: I will update you to the extent I could, Lita, but this is -- you're quite honestly not going to hear much more than you heard yesterday from Colonel Dorrian, because these are -- this is the focus of ongoing discussions between the United States and Turkey -- our coalition partner, our NATO ally.

These are discussions, as you've heard from me and from Colonel Dorrian as well, both at the highest levels of our government, as well as the military-to-military channels. And this is an ongoing conversation and I'm not going to read out those discussions at this point. Other than to say that we and Turkey both share the desire to defeat ISIL in Syria and elsewhere, and that this effort in al-Bab is an important effort aimed at ISIL.

And we're going to do -- again, continue our conversations and try to coordinate our activities so that we maintain the most pressure on ISIL, not just in Syria, but also in Iraq across the border.

Q: Has the secretary had any conversations with his counterpart?

MR. COOK: I don't have any conversations to read out for you.

Q: So you're not saying he hasn't. You're not -- you're just saying you don't...

MR. COOK: I don't have any conversations to read out here. We have -- I just want to reaffirm to you, as I did the other day, that these are very active conversations, daily conversations, and that they are ongoing at this time.

Q: And can you say whether the U.S. is prepared to provide additional military support to Turkey?

MR. COOK: We're having this conversation to find out the best and most effective way to support the broader ISIL campaign including in al-Bab and we are having that conversation with Turkey about the best way to do that.

Q: And do you believe that the Turks will limit or restrict access to Incirlik? Is that a credible threat at this moment?

MR. COOK: Listen, we -- you heard Colonel Dorrian and you've heard me say how important Incirlik is to our operations, how much the coalition appreciates access to Incirlik as part of this campaign. And we certainly will continue to have our conversations with Turkey and make that point clear and we will -- it's a valuable and important part of our operations and we certainly hope and expect that it will continue.

Q: Just a final follow up. I understand all of that but other than the public comments being made by some of the Turkish leaders, has there been a direct conversation from the Turks to the U.S. saying that they want the U.S. to leave Incirlik? Has there been any direct conversations other than what you've heard them say publicly?

MR. COOK: Listen, we continue to have our private conversations with the Turks. I'm not going to get into all of our discussions with the Turks but we are operating out of Incirlik right now, again, very appreciative of the access that we have to Incirlik, the coalition has to Incirlik, and we look forward to that continuing.

Q: A follow-up on that. The Turkish president said yesterday, I believe, that they're anticipating being able to retake al-Bab shortly. And then after that, they're going to focus on other towns, most notably Manbij where he said where terrorists are resting. Are you aware of any other significant terrorist forces that are currently holed up in Manbij? Last we heard that town had been liberated.

MR. COOK: Our assessment of Manbij has not changed, that ISIL's been defeated in Manbij and we think that's a good thing, that it's a significant thing. There was significant efforts made by the coalition and others to make that happen and we believe the best focus right now is again to remain focused on ISIL wherever it may be and the coalition's assessment right now is that ISIL is in other parts of Syria.

Q: So, with this apparent pledge from the Turkish president, what concerns do you have that the Turkish armed forces might be going after the Kurdish forces that are currently in Manbij securing it?

MR. COOK: Again, the focus for the coalition, for the United States, remains on ISIL and we think that that should be the focus of the coalition.

Q: And then moving over to Iraq, Colonel Dorrian said yesterday there are about 450 coalition advisors now involved in the Mosul operation including some who have gone into the city. Can you say at what level now U.S. advisors are embedded with headquarters of the conventional Iraqi units? I know last we heard I thought it was at the division level but they had clearance to go farther down.

Do you know how far down the chain of command?

MR. COOK: I think we've talked about this in the past, that there have been separate from the special operations forces, that the -- there is the capability, the authority to go down to the battalion level. And there has been at least one instance in the past. Specifically, we talked about the efforts with an engineering unit that assisted with bridging related to the movements around Qayyarah and I'm not aware of it extending beyond that at this point.

But I won't -- also can't rule it out. General Townsend has this authority to use as he sees fit but I'm not aware that it's been extended -- been used beyond that.

Q: So is it safe to say then that the Americans who are advising the Iraqi forces in Mosul are with either CTS or the Pesh then?

MR. COOK: I think, again, they're with headquarters elements in -- in most cases. With the conventional Iraqi forces, they're providing advice and assistance, at the division levels with the leadership. And I can't tell you with, again, precision here because I honestly don't know whether General Townsend has used that more recently at a lower level but, again, there are -- some of those headquarters elements are moving as the forward line of troops moves that certainly there are Iraqi commanders who are closer to Mosul now than they were previously and our folks are providing advise and assistance to them. Likewise, I want -- I want to make clear that not all these folks are specifically tied to Mosul. We have advisors right now, for example, in Baghdad. We have advisors at various locations, installations that may be supporting Mosul. I mentioned Qayyarah again, Camp Swift. So, we have forces in a variety of positions -- advisors in a variety of positions, not necessarily right -- even on the outskirts of Mosul so it's -- that's a countrywide figure that I believe Colonel Dorrian referred to.

Yes Barbara.



Q: Let me go back to the carrier announcement...

MR. COOK: ...Yeah...

Q: ...That you made for a minute. So, you know, the Defense Department, the Navy always likes to talk about aircraft carriers as a symbol of U.S. military presence in the far corners of the world. But it's been days if not weeks now since you have had a carrier either deployed in the western -- far western Pacific, vis a vis the Korean peninsula or in the Persian Gulf.

So, in both cases, starting with the presence to counter North Korea, well you have other assets. What should people take away from the fact that the Navy does -- has not had a deployable carrier for weeks in the two acknowledged hotspots, the Persian Gulf and off Korea?

MR. COOK: Again, the deployment of the Carl Vinson is a routine deployment and as you know very well, we have significant capabilities within the U.S. military. The Navy has significant capabilities. They are not all limited to aircraft carriers and so those deployments are determined based on, again, operational needs, operational requirements and we make adjustments accordingly.

And we have had a significant presence in both those areas and will continue to have a significant presence even though we may not at any one particular time have an aircraft carrier there.

Q: But is it not somewhat interesting to you that there has not been an aircraft carrier off the Korean Peninsula or in the Persian Gulf for many days if not weeks?

MR. COOK: Until you asked the question, it had not piqued my interest so, again, we have a significant capabilities. We've walked through some of what we do on a daily basis with regard to the threat from North Korea. We've talked about not only our presence of U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula but the substantial military capabilities that we have in the Asia-Pacific region.

Some of those capabilities very clearly associated with the threat posed by North Korea. We're confident in those capabilities.

Q: And if I could just ask one last thing on -- on North Korea, I mean the world acknowledges there's been a certain level of rhetoric from Kim Jong-un since the new year and he made his public statements about wanting to launch an ICBM. Have you -- are you able to say, understanding that you don't want to talk about intelligence, nonetheless, what can you say?

Have you seen any signs of movement inside North Korea of their military capability or leadership that concern you? And do you find that since the new year, when he made his statements and other statements were made inside the United States,that you want to watch North Korea any more closely than you already do?

MR. COOK: Barbara, we watch North Korea closely every single day, for understandable reasons. And I am not going to get into intelligence matters here. And I'm just going to say that we -- our forces remain ready, as the slogan goes, to fight tonight in South Korea along the border.

We remain vigilant in terms of watching the actions of the North Koreans and obviously the rhetoric that we hear from North Korea. And we will continue to do so. And today is no different than yesterday. And tomorrow will be the same.

Yes.

Q: (Off mic) journalist, I...

MR. COOK: Welcome.

Q: Thank you. I would like to ask you about Afghanistan, the Afghan people, they are concerned about their future, especially after the situation that President Obama leaves his position.

What do you think of U.S. 15 years' involvement in Afghanistan? Do you think that you were successful in Afghanistan? And you were successful in Afghanistan during this15 years?

And also the second question that I -- (off mic) get connection with the Taliban. That's why it's a big question mark for Afghan people, that (off mic), you know, start to have a relationship with the Taliban?

MR. COOK: So I'll start with the second one and I'll leave it to the Russians to describe why it is they might be having relations with the Taliban and how that's productive for the people of Afghanistan. I'll leave that to the Russians.

But more broadly, on the question of U.S., the military presence in Afghanistan, we continue to have a military presence there, as you know. We continue to provide support to the Afghan government, to the Afghan armed forces so that they can take -- secure the country for themselves.

They continue to make progress in those efforts. Our folks, I know, General Nicholson and his team continue to work very closely with the government, with the armed forces of Afghanistan.

In terms of that effort we have a separate CT mission, counter- terrorism mission in Afghanistan that is also ongoing, critically important to the United States in keeping the homeland safe. That remains very active. And we feel good about the situation right now in Afghanistan with regard to the support we're providing along with other members of the NATO coalition in terms of bolstering the Afghan security forces, improving their fighting capabilities on their own so that ultimately they can secure the country on their own.

We see progress there. Afghanistan remains a very dangerous place. Challenges remain. I think you've heard President Ghani speak to that recently. And we will continue to provide this kind of support we can to bolster the Afghan security forces.

And that is an important mission and one that, again, we're joined by other international partners in that effort.

Yes.

Q: I have a question about Sinjar Mountain. There's a significant amount PKK fighters on that mountain. Prime Minister Abadi and KRG officials have asked the PKK to leave the mountain and go back to their places.

What is the U.S. position on that? Do you think they are helping on securing the area from ISIS infiltration? Or what is your position on that?

MR. COOK: I think -- I mean, Prime Minister Abadi, Iraq is a sovereign government. Prime Minister Abadi speaks on behalf of the Iraqi government. And the PKK, as you know, is a terrorist organization, designated by the United States.

And we're supportive of what President (sic) Abadi has said on this front, and remain a concern, of course.

Again, Iraq is a sovereign government. The prime minister has spoken on this issue. And we're supportive of what Prime Minister Abadi has had to say.

Carla..

Q: Thanks, Peter.

Going back to what Lita and (inaudible) were talking about, you said that the focus of the coalition is on the Islamic State and we believe that should be the focus. But what is the consequence if that is no longer the focus?

Have you been talking with your allies about the consequences should they not focus on Islamic State?

And then also can you follow up to talk about Turkey's role? I know Turkey wants to have a role in the fight for Raqqa. And the U.S. has been saying that this is a part of ongoing negotiations. Where is the U.S. and Turkey on that?

MR. COOK: Again, Carla, we're talking every day with our Turkish ally about these issues. And these are important issues. Turkey has significant concerns given the threat ISIL poses to Turkey.

We've seen ISIL's own claims of responsibility for this most recent night club shooting. And we share Turkey's interest in defeating ISIL, delivering ISIL a lasting defeat.

And we think there is important progress that still needs to be made on that -- in that effort, and that Turkey can be a key player and is a key player in that has a significant interest in that.

The United States, the rest of the coalition have a significant interest. So we want to remain coordinated in that effort. We want to maintain pressure on as many fronts as possible, particularly this moment in time when ISIL finds itself under assault both in Syria and in Iraq, in Mosul specifically, and around Raqqa specifically.

We think there is an opportunity here to accelerate this campaign even further, to put even more pressure on ISIL. And that remains the focus. All of efforts are intended to accelerate this campaign against ISIL, to keep the most pressure possible on ISIL, and that's the conversation we're having not just with Turkey but with all of our coalition partners.

Q: Can you confirm that they will take some sort of role in the operation to take Raqqa?

MR. COOK: Again, that conversation is ongoing. I'll let the Turkish government speak for itself. But certainly we're talking to all of our coalition partners about the next steps in the campaign, the most efficient and effective way to do that and, again, speed matters here.

We want to move quickly. We've got ISIL under pressure right now. And we want to keep it that way. We want to accelerate, turn up that pressure if we can.

Q: Would you say that the most effective way to move forward is to go into cities that have already been removed from Islamic State control?

MR. COOK: I think I spoke to that previously. We think we should go after ISIL where ISIL is.

Otto.

Q: (Off mic) Vinson battle group, you cited (off mic) plans in the western Pacific (off mic) area. But there is still no plan to put carrier back in the Gulf to support the Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria.

Is there any possibility that Vinson will be moved into the Gulf after its additional stint in northern Pacific?

MR. COOK: Otto, I'm not going to get ahead of deployments we've announced, where the Vinson is going, the Navy did. And so I don't want to predict the future as to what future operational deployments will be. We are constantly assessing the operational requirements. But we feel confident we have the resources we need right now with regard to that part of the world, and specifically with regard to the counter-ISIL campaign.

All done? In the back, yes.

Q: Peter, do you have any update on the engine that fell off of a B-52 yesterday, and whether or not people should be concerned about parts falling off of military aircraft that are 50-plus years old?

MR. COOK: I don't have a specific update on that. I would refer you to the -- to the Air Force if they've got any more details or specifically to Minot about what happened in that incident.

Obviously, it's a concern and something that we'll want to investigate fully. But I don't have a specific update for you.

OK. Thanks, everyone.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1042944/

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Philippine lawmaker says joint exploration in S. China Sea legal, constitutional

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 15:51, January 05, 2017

A Philippine lawmaker said on Thursday that the potential joint exploration of the South China Sea between the Philippines and China is allowed under the Philippine constitution.

"The idea of coming to mutual agreement over natural resources is constitutional and has been beneficial in the past," Rep. Harry Roque said in a statement.

He added, "Article XII, Sec. 2 of the 1987 constitution provides that the President may enter into agreements with foreign-owned cooperations involving either technical or financial assistance for large-scale exploration, development, and utilization of minerals, petroleum, and other mineral oils according to the general terms and conditions provided by law, based on real contributions to the economic growth and general welfare of the country."

"Under these agreements, foreign corporations may act as contractors, providing capital, technology, and technical know-how and managerial expertise, while the government exercises control and supervision over the operation," Roque said.

Moreover, Roque said one of the fundamental principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter itself is to develop friendly relations among states and achieve international cooperation in solving international problems.

"As a matter of principle, it is important to consider that international cooperation and resource sharing is a common practice, and even encouraged to avoid tension among states," Roque said.

He added, "Under the rules provided by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, states have repeatedly signed maritime boundary treaties to negotiate maritime boundaries with their neighbors to prevent future disputes from arising."

"An independent foreign policy demands that we ask ourselves a very simple question: Is it in the interest of the state to pursue such a action? At the moment, my answer would be yes. While some of us can wait for another 10, 20, or 50 years to resolve a territorial dispute that has existed for decades, many Filipinos still suffer in poverty because of the lack of resources and opportunities in our country," he said.

Philippine Ambassador to China Jose Sta. Romana previously said that the Philippines government is "seriously studying" the possibility of conducting joint exploration of natural resources in the South China Sea with China.

Roque's position is also shared by House of Representative Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, saying he also supports efforts to study the possibility of conducting joint exploration in the South China Sea.

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Three girl bombers killed before attacking busy market in Nigeria

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 9:13AM

Pro-government anti-terror fighters in Nigeria have managed to kill three radicalized girls before they could detonate their explosive vests in a crowded market in the country's northeastern province of Adamawa, officials say.

The incident occurred on Wednesday when civilian fighters spotted the three girls and became suspicious that they were wearing explosive vests as the three were trying to pass a checkpoint in a village near the town of Madagali, said local council chairman Yusuf Muhammad Gulak.

He said the girls ignored the fighters' commands to stop and began running, prompting fire from the forces.

According to Gulak, the girl in the lead was shot first, and her explosives were activated as a result. The blast killed her and another one of the would-be terrorists. The third girl was also gunned down as she tried to escape the scene.

Officials blamed the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group for the attempted attack.

In recent months, army troops and civilian fighters in Nigeria have managed to foil many bomb attacks involving terrorists wearing explosive vests before the assailants were able to reach heavily-populated targets and detonate their bombs of their own accord.

Last month, however, two women, with the Boko Haram, killed 57 people and injured 177, including 120 children, after they detonated their explosive vests at a bustling market at Madagali, some 20 kilometers from the Wednesday shootings scene. Boko Haram later claimed responsibility for the massacre.

On December 24, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to power in 2015 with a pledge to eradicate Boko Haram, announced that the army had "crushed" the terror group a day earlier by retaking its last key bastion, deep inside the thick Sambisa Forest in the northeastern province of Borno.

Boko Haram terrorists started their reign of terror in 2009 with the aim of toppling the Nigerian government. In their heyday in early 2015, they managed to control an area in the country's northeast as vast as Belgium, but they lost most of that territory over the last year as the Nigerian government, along with troops from some affected neighboring countries such as Chad and Cameroon, launched a joint military campaign to eradicate the militant group.

The group, whose name means "Western education is forbidden," has pledged allegiance to Daesh, a Takfiri terrorist group mainly active in Iraq and Syria.

Boko Haram terrorists have so far killed more than 20,000 people and forced over 2.7 million others from their homes.

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UN calls for 'swift implementation' of DR Congo deal

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 8:48AM

The United Nations (UN) has called for the immediate restoration of political stability to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) following a recently-signed accord between the country's government and opposition.

The UN Security Council welcomed the political agreement in the Congo on Wednesday, also calling for the "swift implementation" of the deal, which is aimed at ending political crisis in the Central African country.

The deal, reached on New Year's Eve, was mediated by the Roman Catholic Church officials, setting a timetable under which Congolese President Joseph Kabila would stay in office for another year despite the end of his tenure.

In a statement, the Council praised what it called the "spirit of flexibility and compromise" demonstrated by Congolese leaders in order to reach the agreement and restore stability to the country.

"The Security Council calls on all Congolese actors to preserve this spirit in the discussions to come in order to swiftly resolve all pending issues, especially the practical modalities of the inclusive management of the executive during the pre-electoral and electoral period," the statement read.

"The Security Council encourages the political parties which didn't sign the agreement to do so," it added.

The 15 members of the Council further stressed the importance of organizing credible elections before the end of the year.

Kabila's presidential term expired on December 19, but ruling officials have effectively prolonged his mandate until 2018, claiming that the government would not be able to arrange elections before then.

Under the terms of the accord, however, Kabila would not be able to revise the constitution to allow him to remain in office for a third term. The parties also agreed that Kabila would appoint a prime minister from the Central African nation's main opposition bloc to oversee the transition, a key point of contention in the final stages of negotiations.

Kabila has been accused of trying to cling on to power. His supporters, however, say that he is committed to the constitution but stepping down from power would possibly spark a power struggle that they say could put his life in danger.

His father, former president Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in 2001 in the country, which has never witnessed a peaceful transition of power. The younger Kabila took office just ten days after the assassination of his father.

Kabila's extension of his rule has sparked bloody clashes in the country. Security forces killed nearly 40 protesters late last month. There are growing concerns that the current standoff could lead to a repeat of clashes seen between 1996 and 2003 in eastern the Congo.

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Yemeni snipers kill 8 Saudi troopers, mercenaries in retaliatory attacks

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 7:30AM

Yemeni army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have shot dead eight Saudi troops and pro-Saudi militiamen loyal to resigned Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the kingdom's southwestern border regions of Jizan and Asir.

They killed three Saudi troops in the Tabat al-Zabreh area of Jizan region, located 969 kilometers south of the capital, Riyadh, on Wednesday evening, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

Army troops and Popular Committees fighters also launched an attack on an outpost in the Tabat al-Ghomameh area of the same Saudi region, killing a Saudi trooper there.

Separately, four Saudi-sponsored militiamen were fatally shot at the Alab border crossing in Saudi Arabia's southwestern and border region of Asir.

Later, Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a missile at the gatherings of Saudi soldiers in the al-Rabu'ah town of Asir, though no words on possible casualties and the extent of damage were reported.

Troops also launched a salvo of Katyusha rockets at the al-Mostahaddeth base near the Reqabah al-Hamad region, as well as artillery rounds at al-Ash base in Saudi Arabia's southwestern region of Najran. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

On Thursday morning, Yemeni forces fired a medium-range ballistic missile at Shaab al-Jinn military outpost close to Mandeb Strait, killing and injuring scores of Saudi mercenaries.

Moreover, Yemeni soldiers and Popular Committees fighters launched a domestically-manufactured Zelzal-2 (Earthquake-2) missile at a position of pro-Saudi militiamen in the al-Saaq region of the central Yemeni province of Shabwah. No reports of casualties were available.

Saudi warplanes carried out three airstrikes against Usaylan district in the same Yemeni province early on Thursday, with no immediate word on possible casualties. Saudi jets also bombarded al-Omari region in the Dhubab district of the southwestern Yemeni province of Ta'izz.

Yemeni forces and their allied fighters usually carry out retaliatory attacks against Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a war on the impoverished country since March 2015.

The Saudi war on Yemen, which has killed at least 11,400 Yemenis, was launched in an unsuccessful attempt to reinstate a former government.

The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

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Former Kosovar Prime Minister To Remain In French Custody Pending Serbian Extradition Bid

RFE/RL January 05, 2017

A French court has ordered former Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to remain in custody pending an extradition request from Serbia on war crimes in a case that has strained the already fragile ties between Belgrade and Pristina.

A court in Colmar in eastern France on January 5 ordered Haradinaj, a former guerrilla commander during Kosovo's 1998-99 war, to remain in custody rather than be released under judicial supervision following his arrest by French police a day earlier.

Haradinaj's Alliance for Kosovo's Future (AAK) party told RFE/RL's Balkan Service on January 5 that the decision to keep him in custody is "unacceptable," echoing denunciations from top officials in Pristina.

Serbia accuses Haradinaj, who served briefly as prime minister of Kosovo in 2004 and 2005, of committing war crimes during the conflict in the former Serbian province, which declared independence in 2008.

His arrest upon arrival at an airport in eastern France on a flight from Pristina has triggered outrage in Kosovo, where the government called the Serbian charges "illegal, unfair, and tendentious."

Kosovar President Hashim Thaci wrote in a January 4 Facebook post that Haradinaj's detention is "unacceptable in every way" and that the government is using "all available mechanisms" to secure his freedom.

Speaking to reporters in Belgrade before the French court's decision on January 5, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic pledged that Serbia would continue to press for Haradinaj's extradition, saying prosecutors "have numerous pieces of evidence" against him.

"He is accused of so many [crimes] that they are impossible to list," Vucic said.

Haradinaj was tried and acquitted twice of war crimes at a United Nations court in The Hague.

In June 2015, he was arrested in Slovenia on a Serbian warrant but was released two days later under diplomatic pressure.

The standoff has prompted calls from some officials and politicians in Kosovo to halt EU-mediated normalization talks with Serbia. Unlike France and most other European countries, Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former province.

Normalized bilateral relations are considered a precondition for Serbia and Kosovo to gain EU membership, which both countries seek.

But the EU-brokered deal between Belgrade and Pristina to improve and regulate ties between the two states has only been moderately successful.

Edita Tahiri, Kosovo's minister in charge of the EU-brokered talks with Belgrade, called for Pristina to hit Serbia with reciprocal measures in response to arrest warrants it has issued against Kosovar citizens.

"As long as the Serbian state treats members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who fought for this country's freedom, in this manner, this kind of behavior must have an adequate response from our side," Tahiri told RFE/RL's Balkan Service.

Reuters cited a security source in Pristina as saying that around 20 Kosovar citizens are currently the subjects of Interpol warrants. Most of these individuals previously served in the KLA, which fought against Serbian forces in the Kosovar war, the source said.

Tahiri said that she has asked the EU to exert its influence on Serbia in order to have the arrest warrants canceled.

Kosovo on January 5 also refused to allow Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to visit a Kosovar city primarily inhabited by ethnic Serbs to mark the upcoming Orthodox Christmas. Kosovo's government said the decision was made because Nikolic did not file his entry request on time.

Reuters cited an unidentified Serbian official as saying border-control officials had "harassed" Nikolic's advance team, preventing them from conducting required security checks.

"The visit will not proceed as planned. This is likely related to the Haradinaj arrest," Reuters quoted the official as saying.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service, Reuters, AP, and balkaninsight.com

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/kosovo-haradinaj -french-custody-serbian- extradition-bid/28216020.html

Copyright (c) 2017. 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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Pentagon Seeking to Speed Up Campaign to Crush Daesh in Syria

Sputnik News

23:05 05.01.2017

The Pentagon is seeking ways to put more pressure on Daesh terror group in Syria to accelerate defeat of terrorists.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States is seeking to take advantage of recent successes against Daesh to accelerate and intensify the campaign against the terror group in working with coalition allies, US Department of Defense spokesman Peter Cook said in a briefing on Thursday.

"We think there's an opportunity here to accelerate this campaign to put more pressure on this campaign against ISIL [Daesh]. This is the conversation we're having with our Turkish partners," Cook told reporters. "We are talking to all our coalition partners."

Cook explained the administration of President Barack Obama, which leaves office on January 20, felt a sense of urgency to take advantage of current opportunities to roll back Daesh in Syria as well as Iraq.

"Speed matters here: We want to move quickly We've got ISIL [Daesh] under pressure. We want to move forward We're having a conversation to find the best and most effective way to0 conduct the most effective campaign against ISIL," he said.

Cook also announced further progress by the Iraqi army in its battle to retake the city of Mosul from Daesh. He said Iraqi forces had connected their different ground lines of advance into the city and had been backed by eight US-led coalition air strikes in the past 24 hours.

Cook also said that US-backed rebel forces in Syria were also continuing to advance towards Raqqa north and west of the city.

 Sputnik

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Russian Navy Visit Helps Manila Diversify Alliances After US Policy Disappoints

Sputnik News

16:54 05.01.2017(updated 16:55 05.01.2017)

The goodwill visit of two Russian navy ships to the Philippines is a sign that relations between Russia and the Philippines are warming up, just as President Rodrigo Duterte expresses discontent with the Philippines-US relationship.

On Thursday Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he is open to the idea of conducting joint military exercises with Russia, following a goodwill visit to Manila by Russian navy ships.

"The goodwill visit by the Russian Navy will contribute to the strengthening of friendship with the Philippine navy, it also is an indication of our maritime cooperation which can further be enhanced by naval diplomacy and camaraderie," presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said.

On Tuesday Russia's Admiral Tributs anti-submarine destroyer and Boris Butoma sea tanker arrived in the Philippines for a four-day visit during which they

Rear Admiral Eduard Mikhailov, deputy commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet, told a press conference in Manila that the Russian and Philippine governments are preparing to discuss joint naval drills, which would help to fend off the threats of terrorism and piracy.

"Our governments will soon discuss the possibility of holding joint naval drills. Terrorism and piracy remain some of the most serious problems facing the world today, and our exercises could help to demonstrate our readiness to deal with these problems," Mikhailov said.

Mikhailov also mentioned the possibility of Russia and the Philippines co-operating on naval drills in the South China Sea, along with other countries in the region.

"We really hope that in a few years, the military exercises for example in your region, in the South China Sea, will (involve) for example, not only Russia-Philippines, but Russia, Philippines, China and maybe Malaysia together," Mikhailov said.

The visit is the third to the Philippines by the Russian navy, and was preceded by a trip to Moscow by Philippines foreign and defense ministers to explore the possibility of boosting military ties.

On Wednesday the Russian ambassador to the Philippines Igor Khovaev told a news conference that Russia is ready to co-operate with the Philippines wish to diversify its foreign partners, and willing to supply sophisticated military equipment.

"It's not a choice between these partners and those ones. Diversification means preserving and keeping old traditional partners and getting new ones. So Russia is ready to become a new reliable partner and close friend of the Philippines," he said.

"We are ready to supply small arms and light weapons, some aeroplanes, helicopters, submarines and many, many other weapons. Sophisticated weapons. Not second-hand ones," Mr Khovaev said.

"Russia has a lot to offer but everything will be done in full compliance with international law."

That Russian-Philippines relations are relatively undeveloped allows quite a lot of scope to improve them, Asian affairs analyst Prashanth Parameswaran observed in the Diplomat on Wednesday.

"The visit of the warships is yet another sign of the potential for burgeoning Philippines-Russia defense cooperation, even though it is still early days. The engagements during the visit itself are fairly standard: according to the Philippine Navy, they include tours to historical sites, ceremonies, capability demonstrations, shipboard tours, games between troops, and interactions with civilians," Parameswaran wrote.

Official comments and developing bilateral relationship "indicate the importance of paying attention to a defense relationship where most developments would have hardly been fathomable even a year ago," he added.

As well as pursuing better relations with Russia and China, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly criticized the US since taking office in June. The US and the Philippines have maintained a close defense relationship since they signed a mutual defense treaty in 1951.

Last week it was reported that Duterte has asked his defense chief to move the location of a joint naval drill with the US away from the disputed South China Sea.

"We might move the naval exercises facing the South China Sea to Mindanao area to avoid annoying our neighbor [China], so let us be sensitive of our neighbors," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters during a military ceremony on Friday.

The colder relationship with Washington comes despite outgoing President Barack Obama's attempted "pivot to Asia," which had been supposed to strengthen alliances in Asia and maintain a sphere of influence there in the face of an increasingly powerful China.

In October President Duterte headed a trade delegation to Beijing which signed $13.5 billion in deals with Chinese companies, and announced his "separation from the United States."

"Both in military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost," Duterte told a forum of delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

"I've realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world  China, Philippines and Russia. It's the only way," the President said.

Parameswaran noted that one of Manila's frustration with its US ally is Washington's inability to make a positive contribution to the South China Sea dispute.

The US encouraged Manila to take its case against China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Manila won the case but Beijing rejected the verdict and has continued to claim sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, a highly-contested region through which $5 trillion in global shipping trade passes annually.

"He (Duterte) cited the example of United States' inability to stop China from building its artificial islands, that undermined the Philippines' position in the South China Sea. In Duterte's view, the incident laid bare Washington's ineffectiveness," Parameswaran wrote.

"America did nothing. And now that it is completed, they want to patrol the area. For what? Is America going to finish the world?" Duterte asked rhetorically during an interview with Rappler in 2015.

 Sputnik

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Netherlands Takes Over Baltic Air Policing Mission - Lithuanian Defense Ministry

Sputnik News

16:47 05.01.2017

French Air Force service personnel, who have patrolled the Baltic airspace for four months, have been replaced by the Netherlands Air Force with four Fighting Falcon F-16 fighters, according to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry.

VILNIUS (Sputnik)  The Dutch air force has taken over the Baltic Air Policing mission, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said Thursday.

"French Air Force service personnel, who have patrolled the Baltic airspace for four months, have been replaced by the Netherlands Air Force with four Fighting Falcon F-16 fighters," the ministry said in a statement.

Some 120 Dutch service personnel have been deployed in Lithuania to carry out the mission for the next four months, according to the statement.

The four Dutch F-16 Fighting Falcon multirole fighters landed at Lithuania's Siauliai airbase to take over the mission earlier in January. The patrols had been conducted by four French fighter jets Mirage 2000 since September 2016, while several German Eurofighter Typhoon jets are carrying out the mission from a base in Estonia.

The three Baltic states comprising Latvia, Estonia and neighboring Lithuania do not possess air patrol capabilities. Since joining NATO in 2004, the three Baltic countries' airspace has been defended by a rotating NATO mission.

NATO has recently decided to boost its presence in the region as part of its strategy to increase eastern flank capabilities during the last summit in Warsaw. The Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Croatia and France pledged their troops to join a 1,000-strong battalion being formed in Lithuania under German leadership.

 Sputnik

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Houthi Forces Send Ballistic Missile at Government Camp in Yemen

Sputnik News

16:15 05.01.2017

The Houthi forces launched a mid-range ballistic missile at the camp of government supporters near Bab-el-Mandeb in Taizze governorate, according to a military source.

SANA'A (Sputnik)  The Houthi movement sent a mid-range ballistic missile at the camp of government supporters, a military source told Sputnik Wednesday.

"The Houthi movement and the army helping them have launched a medium range ballistic missile [aiming] at the camp near Bab-el-Mandeb in Taizze governorate," the source said, without clarifying if there were any casualties.

According to the source, the Houthi forces have sent reinforcements to the governorate and are getting ready to capture the Red Sea shore in that region.

Yemen has been engulfed in a violent conflict between the government headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and the Houthi movement backed by army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Since March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries has been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request. Peace talks failed in August after the Houthis refused to support a roadmap proposed by the UN special envoy that involves the rebels laying down arms and the setting up of a unity government.

 Sputnik

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Philippines Open to Joint Military Drills With Russia

Sputnik News

11:38 05.01.2017(updated 11:44 05.01.2017)

Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte said through his spokesman that he is open to joint drills with Russia.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte would be open to the idea of conducting joint military exercises with Russia, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Thursday.

"The president has said that he is open to joint military exercises with Russia, the goodwill visit by the Russian Navy will contribute to the strengthening of friendship with the Philippine navy, it also is an indication of our maritime cooperation can further be enhanced by naval diplomacy and camaraderie," Abella said at a press briefing.

On Tuesday, Russia's Admiral Tributs anti-submarine destroyer and Boris Butoma sea tanker arrived in the Philippines for a four-day visit. During the press conference dedicated to the visit, Rear Adm. Eduard Mikhailov said that the Russian and Philippine governments would negotiate potential bilateral navy drills soon.

The United States sees no problem in the potential joint military exercises between the Russian and Philippine navies, US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

In October, Duterte announced his country could build a defense and economic alliance with Russia and China.

On November 20, the Philippine president said he planned to send defense and foreign ministers to prepare for his visit to Russia at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Duterte is expected to visit Moscow later this year to hold talks on a wide range of agreements from weapons to communications.

 Sputnik

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US Navy Planning to Spend $566 Billion on Fleet Expansion Over Three Decades

Sputnik News

00:46 05.01.2017(updated 01:34 05.01.2017)

The US Navy's plans to expand its fleet over the next 30 years would cost an average of almost $19 billion per year under the current plan, or $2 billion more than the Navy's estimates, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in a report summary on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The Navy estimated the average annual cost of the new ships at $17 billion per year for a total of $509 billion over 30 years.

"Using its own models and assumptions, CBO estimates that those new ships would cost a total of $566 billion (in 2016 dollars) over 30 years, or an average of $18.9 billion per year," the CBO stated in the report summary.

Moreover, the CBO said the plan would cost almost-one third more in the next 30 years than the Navy has spent in the previous 30 years.

In December, the Navy released a plan to build a fleet of 355 ships over three decades, an increase of 47 ships over the 308-ship goal it stated in 2014.

The plan includes 45 combat logistics and support ships, and 209 combat ships, including 12 ballistic missile submarines.

At present, the Navy has 272 battle force ships, including 57 combat logistics and support ships.

 Sputnik

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Pentagon Chief: Trump Needs to Keep Alliances, Hold Russia Accountable in Syria

By VOA News January 05, 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says President-elect Donald Trump's administration should maintain partnerships with NATO and allies in the Asia-Pacific, while also holding Russia accountable to its stated mission of battling terrorists in Syria and help end the war.

The recommendations came in a memo that Carter, like the other Cabinet secretaries, prepared to highlight what their departments achieved during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama. The documents were released Thursday, along with a letter from Obama, about two weeks before Trump takes over the White House.

Carter highlighted U.S. responses to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, including boosting joint military exercises and prepositioning equipment in the region.

"The United States must remain engaged with NATO  an alliance of principled and like-minded members backed by strength  to ensure continued progress and to deter and defend against Russian aggression in Europe," he said.

Holding Russia accountable

Russia launched its military operation in Syria in late 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad, a move that Carter said has only made the conflict there "more dangerous and violent, and potentially more prolonged."

Syrian forces have scored major victories against rebel groups since Russia began backing them, including last month retaking full control of the city of Aleppo.

Russia entered the conflict saying it was there to go after terrorists, but many of their airstrikes have struck areas controlled by moderate opposition fighters.

Carter also focused on Iran, saying its backing of Assad, the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen are examples of the "malign influence" Iran has in the Middle East.

Defending Iran agreement

But he also pointed to the agreement that Iran reached with a group of six world powers to curb the country's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. U.S. ally Israel has denounced the deal, and Trump has expressed his opposition, including calling it "the worst deal ever negotiated."

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is complying with its international commitments, and it is in our best interest to maintain the agreement to check Iran's nuclear ambition," Carter wrote.

He said a priority for Trump should be the continued partnership with Israel, which has a commitment to receive $38 billion in security assistance over the course of 10 years. The Pentagon chief highlighted other security deals in the region, including partnerships with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the sale of more than $100 billion in arms to Gulf partners.

Troops drawdown

The major change in the Defense Department under Obama was the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which began under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Combat operations in Iraq ended in 2011 and in Afghanistan in 2014 as security control went into the hands of local forces built up with the help of the U.S.

In his own letter issued Thursday, Obama touted the lack of any foreign terrorist attack carried out in the U.S. during his term as well as the ongoing efforts to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

"We've drawn down from nearly 180,000 troops in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000," Obama wrote. "With a coalition of more than 70 nations and a relentless campaign of more than 16,000 airstrikes so far, we are breaking the back of ISIL and taking away its safe havens, and we've accomplished this at a cost of $10 billion over two years -- the same amount that we spent in one month at the height of the Iraq War."

Carter cited the 2011 U.S. operation that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and last year's killing of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur.

Airstrikes

Under Obama, the military, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, drastically ramped up the use of drones to carry out attacks against terrorists. Carter said the military's unmanned aircraft pilots now outnumber its pilots in manned aircraft.

But those increased airstrikes came with concerns about who was being hit and how the strikes were being approved.

Carter's memo talks about efforts to promote transparency in U.S. military actions, including the release of reports about civilian casualties and discussing the legal and policy bases for certain actions.

The White House has released reports about the number of civilians killed in its airstrikes, but those were met by criticism from outside groups whose estimates were far higher than the official totals. The Obama administration also released an 18-page document last year about the decisions for targeting of terrorists in drone strikes and safeguards for preventing civilian casualties.

Cultural changes at Pentagon

Carter's document touched on cultural changes within the military during the past eight years. He said the Pentagon has shown a "renewed resolve" to prevent soldier suicides, and prioritized eradicating sexual harassment. He pointed to Obama's decision to end the military's policy against gay service members serving openly and to end the ban on transgender service members. Obama also opened all military positions to women.

The outgoing Pentagon chief directed some criticism at Congress, saying his department became smaller and more capable while dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions stemming from a 2011 budget battle. Carter said the military faced "significant impediments presented by Congress" that included efforts to micromanage the Defense Department.

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Trump Presidency Adds to Uncertainty Over NATO-Russia Tensions

By Henry Ridgwell January 05, 2017

Since Russia's forceful takeover of Crimea in 2014, both Moscow and NATO have deployed troops and weapons along old lines as tensions have grown to their highest since the end of the Cold War.

Analysts warn the dangers of a military confrontation are growing.

Russia has deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

Moscow's S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries have also been stationed along its western frontiers. The Kremlin has staged regular military exercises along its western flank.

In response, NATO has put 300,000 troops on high alert and made so-called tripwire deployments in frontline states.

Communication was largely severed following Russia's invasion of Crimea  and that raises the prospect of an accidental escalation, warns NATO's former information officer in Moscow, John Lough, now of the Chatham House research organization.

"It seems to me that it is actually very important to have mechanisms in place that allow the military establishments to communicate when needed. Both sides should see that there is the capacity here for some sort of accident," he said.

NATO is deploying an extra 4,000 multinational troops to the Baltic states and Poland in the coming months. The core NATO principle of collective defense is being revitalized, said Lough.

"NATO is starting if you like from a low base in terms of rebuilding this defensive capability. It's not the sort of thing that happens overnight; but, I would argue that the evidence of political will here in fact is probably more important," he said.

Donald Trump's victory in the November U.S. election has triggered uncertainty over the future commitment of NATO's primary force.

The U.S. spent $66 billion on defense in 2016; second-placed Britain spent less than a tenth of that figure. President-elect Trump has questioned the U.S. financial burden  and Russia analyst Sarah Lain of the Royal United Services Institute says Moscow is watching with interest.

"Collective defense has actually I think psychologically at least been a huge deterrent for Russia. Trump may change that calculation, if he certainly pledges not to come to NATO allies' help in a situation of need if they haven't paid their 2 percent defense spending," said Lain.

President-elect Trump's praise for Russian leader Vladimir Putin has rattled Ukraine, which is battling pro-Kremlin rebels in the east.

"That will allow or embolden Russia to maybe test the boundaries of NATO and test the unity of NATO even further," she said.

John Lough argues it is premature to assume that Trump's early overtures to Moscow will translate into improved relations that will last.

"There are going to be areas where they will disagree. The perception of Iran, for example, is one of them and I think that will come to the fore quickly," he said.

Trump also faces divisions at home within his own Republican party. U.S. senators, including former presidential candidate John McCain, visited Estonia and Georgia recently to reassure them of U.S. support in the face of Russian aggression.

Analysts say the rapid rearmament on both sides has raised the stakes  and the new U.S. administration will likely herald yet more uncertainty in an increasingly tense environment.

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Police Kill Leader of Philippine Group Believed to Sympathize With IS

By VOA News January 05, 2017

The leader of a militant group in the Philippines suspected of sympathizing with Islamic State was killed Thursday in a shootout with police.

Police said Mohammad Jaafar Maguid, founder of a group known as Ansarul Khilafa Philippines, was shot at a beach resort on the southern island of Mindanao.

Regional police chief Cedric Train said Maguid's group carried out bomb attacks that killed people at festivals, including a grenade blast that killed a police officer.

The Indonesia-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict said the group was behind an attack that claimed the lives of two civilians in Mindanao in 2008, as well as a series of other crimes.

Train said the militant group has flown Islamic State flags in their camps and Maguid, along with other local militant group leaders, appeared in a video circulated last year, pledging allegiance to IS.

Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno warned of violent revenge attacks. "They might retaliate so we have to double our preparations," he said, noting that large Catholic festivals are scheduled in the Philippines later this month.

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Gambian President Shows No Sign of Leaving Office After Election Defeat

By Ricci Shryock January 05, 2017

The past week has seen Gambian President Yahya Jammeh's rhetoric grow increasingly defiant and hawkish as his government clamps down on dissent.

Jammeh has continued to dig in his heels with less than two weeks to go before the scheduled inauguration of President-elect Adama Barrow.

Jammeh has shut at least three private radio stations, and according to local new sites authorities have arrested people wearing t-shirts with the slogan "Gambia Has Decided," a known statement of Barrow supporters.

The head of the electoral commission fled to neighboring Senegal after Jammeh said in his New Year's address the elections chief had falsified results. Jammeh added that no one would cheat him. It was seen as a veiled threat.

The Senegal regional director of rights group Article 19, Fatou Jagne Senghor, says activists still hope for a peaceful transfer of power.

"You see it has been very clear that after the reversal of his decision, he targeted the electoral commission and after that he sealed their office, and all those days, this institution was not functioning. So you never know what the security apparatus is capable of doing in such a difficult situation," she said.

The Jammeh government has been accused of numerous rights abuses during its 22 years in office, including arbitrary arrest, torture, and forced disappearances. The U.S. State Department Human Rights report said, "Officials routinely used various methods of intimidation to retain power."

Jammeh initially accepted defeat in the December polls, but reversed course, calling for new elections. But the international community has recognized Barrow as the winner.

West African regional bloc ECOWAS put its standby force on alert, with Senegal at the lead. Jammeh hit back in his New Year's speech saying an ECOWAS deployment would be "a declaration of war."

But the regional approach appears to be negotiation and Senegalese President Macky Sall says military intervention should be a last resort.

The founder of the West African Citizen's Think Tank, Gilles Yabi, says there may still be a path to a peaceful exit.

"I think it is true that Jammeh is a very special person and it is difficult to imagine traditional diplomatic pressures having some impact on Jammeh. But I think that when you think about pressures, it is not just about official threats or traditional diplomatic ways," he said. "I think it is also about changing the calculation of the people who are around Jammeh. The military leaders of the country, the objective of ECOWAS could be to make them change their minds by making it very clear that Jammeh will not stay in power."

This week, Gambia's army chief reaffirmed his support for Jammeh in a letter published in a pro-government newspaper.

International military historian at the University Felix Houphouet-Boigny in Abidjan, Arthur Banga, says the Gambian military would likely be no match for ECOWAS forces.

He said hopefully it will not come to that. He says it would look very bad for the ECOWAS region, and democracy in Africa in general, if Jammeh is still in power two or three weeks from now.

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Ghana's NDC Ponders Reasons for Election Loss

By Francisca Kakra Forson January 05, 2017

Ghana is getting ready to inaugurate its new president and swear in members of parliament Saturday. The peaceful transfer of power is celebrated as a key win for one of Africa's most stable democracies. But it was also a defeat for the country's former ruling party, the National Democratic Congress, which has now embarked on some soul searching.

The 2016 elections in Ghana saw something new happen. The incumbent lost. John Mahama leaves office as a one-term president.

"I don't think I was the only one who saw the writing on the wall," said Jerry Rawlings, Ghana's political godfather and former president. He is a member of the NDC but was notably absent from Mahama's re-election campaign.

"Our general negativity, impunity, disrespect and corruption was taking us further and further downhill. We had lost so much goodwill. If we all don't do some careful introspection and openly show remorse for the betrayal of the people's trust we might not recover in time for the next election," Rawlings said.

The NDC came to power in 2009 with the election of President John Atta Mills. Three years later, Mills died in office and Mahama, his deputy, took over and then won the election later that year.

But President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo defeated Mahama at the polls in December by a margin of one million votes. The NDC also lost its majority in parliament.

Parallels drawn

Some have drawn parallels to the fall of the People's Democratic Party in Nigeria. The 2015 elections saw an opposition coalition push the PDP out at all levels of government, including the presidency. Mahama now joins his former Nigerian counterpart, Goodluck Jonathan, in the small club of single-term African presidents.

Some of the reasons behind their downfall were similar - economic hardship, lack of reliable electricity, corruption and rising unemployment.

In Ghana, political analyst Bossman Asare says poor performance by the government and overconfidence cost the NDC the election.

"Over the years, the democratic space has been expanding. Transparency has been increasing. Voters are increasingly becoming more sophisticated. So we've gotten to a point in our democracy just like many advanced societies like Britain, Germany, USA where incumbency is no longer significant," he said.

Asare believes that internally, too, the NDC has made mistakes.

"The NDC for many years has been relying on the rural voters. When you look at Ghana, the voting dynamics within main Accra, the NPP will win but once the villages come, then you realize the NDC will be leading. So I think the NDC took that for granted that no, these are people who will always come home," Asare said.

And that may be a lesson for the NPP and President-elect Akufo-Addo as they now take the reins of the country. Voters are expecting results.

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"When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem  he is  hes sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else. Nothing else. Their economy is  what?  the eighth smallest in the world now  largest in the world? He knows  he knows hes in real trouble, which makes him even more dangerous, in my view."

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville admonished his educated European readers claiming that "[t] oday there are two great peoples on earth who, starting from different points, seem to advance toward the same goal: these are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. Both grew up in obscurity; and while the attention of men was occupied elsewhere, they suddenly took their place in the first rank of nations, and the world learned of their birth and their greatness nearly at the same time. All other peoples seem to have almost reached the limits drawn by nature, and have nothing more to do except maintain themselves; but these two are growing.5 All the others have stopped or move ahead only with a thousand efforts; these two alone walk with an easy and rapid stride along a path whose limit cannot yet be seen. The American struggles against obstacles that nature opposes to him; the Russian is grappling with men. The one combats the wilderness and barbarism; the other, civilization clothed in all its arms. Consequently the conquests of the American are made with the farmers plow, those of the Russian with the soldiers sword. To reach his goal the first relies on personal interest, and, without directing them, allows the strength and reason of individuals to operate. The second in a way concentrates all the power of society in one man. The one has as principal means of action liberty; the other, servitude. Their point of departure is different, their paths are varied; nonetheless, each one of them seems called by a secret design of Providence to hold in its hands one day the destinies of half the world. (2010, 655-656)

Russia - US Relations

Joe Biden

Russia cannot pose a long-term system challenge to the US, unlike China. I think with a high degree of certainty that Russia will emerge from Ukraine weaker than it went into the conflict. Militarily weaker, economically weaker, politically and geopolitically weaker, and more isolated, US Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Khal said 25 March 2022.

American and Russian approaches to European security are irreconcilable, given Russias insistence that it needs a sphere of influence as a buffer zone in Europe. Russia believes it should not have hostile military forces on its borders, and should have legally guaranteed strategic security zones such as the United States enjoys behind two oceans with friendly governments to north and south. Russia hopes to achieve through diplomacy and force of arms what the United States enjoys by happy accident of geography and history.

Edward W. Walker, the comparative political scientist who worked at UC Berkeley from 1993 to 2017, argued in April 2019 that "Putin's decision to return to the presidency, as well as his 2012 policy pivot, were the product of his understanding of Russia's - and not simply his own - interests. In my view, Putin, and indeed most of the Russian political elite, genuinely believe that the United States, and the West broadly, pose a threat to Russian political stability and security. They are convinced that Western democracy promotion, and the West's public embrace of "universal values," are hypocritical smokescreens masking U.S. ambitions to remain the world's sole superpower and geopolitical hegemon. They also are convinced that the changes advocated by Western democracy promoters would produce chaos at home and weakness abroad, not prosperity and strength. And they understand the tolerance entailed in liberalism as incompatible with traditional Russian values and Russian 'civilization'..... the Russian political elite, including those few who are still relatively well-disposed toward liberal democracy, have cause to believe that while the United States insists that other states comply with the rules of the "liberal international order," it acts as if it, and it alone, has the right to violate those rules.

"Russia's mass oppositional demonstrations [in 2011] ... only reinforced his conviction that the West was simply incapable of refraining from destabilizing non-democratic regimes, and that Russia, sooner-or-later, would be in its crosshairs. That in turn suggests why Putin would then authorize a concerted Russian assault on Western democracy, a risky project that goes well beyond demonizing the United States and its allies at home. For Putin, Russia is simply doing to the West what the West has been doing to it. And he intends to win the 'meddling war'."

President George W Bush said in 2000 after his first meeting with Putin, I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy  I was able to get a sense of his soul. Im looking into your eyes, and I dont think you have a soul, Biden recalled telling Putin during a 2011 meeting in the Kremlin, according to the New Yorker magazine. And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, We understand one another.

During an interview on CBS News 60 Minutes program, Joe Biden argued late in October 2020, two weeks out from polling day, that the biggest threat to the United States right now, in the sense of breaking our security and our alliances, its Russia. Joe Biden became a U.S. senator in 1972 and visited the USSR a year later in 1973. Six years later, in August 1979, he returned on an official visit. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended and Biden advanced up the political ladder, he had to deal with newly independent Russia in the position as Vice President of the U.S. in the Obama administration. Since 2011, Biden has grown increasingly suspicious of Moscows intentions and criticized Vladimir Putins foreign policy on several occasions.

Biden already called Putins government paranoid for poisoning opposition leader Alexey Navalny with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok. It is the mark of a Russian regime that is so paranoid that it is unwilling to tolerate any criticism or dissent, he said in early October 2020.

In March 2021, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized American officials for what he saw as attempts to deal with the country in a confrontational and superior manner. The Americans are now repeating like a mantra the idea that they will speak with everyone from a position of power, the spokesman added. Neither Putin, nor anyone else from the Russian administration, will allow the US or other nations to talk to us like that  its out of the question, Peskov said.

On 15 April 2021 Biden said : "The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of ecs-  of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship. If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, Im prepared to take further actions to respond. It is my responsibility, as President of the United States, to do so. But throughout our long history of competition, our two countries have been able to find ways to manage tensions and to keep them from escalating out of control. There are also areas where Russia and the United States can and should work together. For example, in the earliest days of my administration, we were able to move quickly to extend, for five years, the New START Treaty, and maintain that key element of nuclear stability between our nations. That was in the interest of the United States, of Russia, and, quite frankly, of the world, and we got it done."

Dmitri Medvedev was President in 20082011. In anticipation of the next presidential election (2012) Vice President Joe Biden visited Moscow (March 9, 2011). According to some Russian experts, this demonstrated the Western support of Dmitri Medvedevs candidacy for the second term in office or, in other words, it was directed against the return of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia. Biden became Putin's fifth US president, a line-up that started with Bill Clinton. Putin had mixed feelings about the former vice-president. On the one hand, Biden was one of those members of former President Barack Obama's administration who did not hide their sympathy for Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's stand-in in 2008-2012, and hoped that he would run for a second presidential term. Putin does not forget  nor, allegedly, forgive  such perceived slights.

But, on the other hand, Putin openly despised the Obama-Biden administration, considering it weak and indecisive. It resisted and dithered before the adoption by Congress of the Magnitsky Act, designed to punish those who abuse human rights. It sat back when Syrian leader Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his Syrian civilians, thus erasing its own so-called "red lines"  and then watched helplessly as Russia sent its air force and bailed out the Syrian dictator. Even more important for Putin was Obama's initially restrained reaction to the annexation of Crimea, and, finally, his staunch refusal to supply the Ukrainian army with lethal weapons. It was the Trump administration that reversed this policy.

So Putin waited to see whether the Biden-Harris administration becomes Team Obama 3.0 or pursues a tougher line vis-a-vis Moscow. It probably won't take long to figure out. Biden's team will very soon have to come into direct contact with the Russian leadership to begin negotiations on a new strategic offensive arms treaty to replace the START-3 agreement, which was signed in 2011 by Obama and Medvedev. Moscow and Washington now discuss extending it for a year.

Moscow can count on the abiding interest Biden has shown throughout his political career regarding the subject of arms control. And it so happens that the 2011 New START agreement, the lone surviving US-Russia arms pact, is due to expire on 5th February unless both parties extend it (for up to another five years), which is deceptively easy if only the two presidents agree to do so.

The Democratic Party 2020 platform stated "Democrats will join our European partners in standing up to a revanchist Russia. We will not allow Moscow to interfere in our democracies or chip away at our resolve. We will reaffirm Americas commitment to NATO and defending our allies. We will maintain transatlantic support for Ukraines reform efforts and its territorial integrity. Democrats will lower regionaland globalthreats by reinforcing nuclear arms control"

There were three topics that the Kremlin watched to see how the Biden White House proceeds: Belarus, Alexei Navalny's poisoning, and Europe  especially Germany.

Will the new administration increase pressure on Lukashenko's regime in Belarus? From Putin's point of view, this will show whether the new president is ready to resist Moscow's desire to control the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine.

Will Biden condemn the attempted murder of the Russian opposition leader in the same way as the EU did? Putin believes that during the Moscow protests in 2011-2012, the Obama administration supported the protesters in the hope of preventing his return to the Kremlin. Given the Kremlin's obsession with the threat of US-sponsored "regime change," the attitude of Biden and his people towards Navalny is a topic of utmost importance for Putin.

The attitude of the Democratic administration towards the Nord Stream-2 project also held as much weight. The Trump administration, with congressional support, is putting pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to abandon the nearly completed gas pipeline. The Kremlin views it as a tool of economic pressure on Ukraine that will rob Kyiv of a significant part of its Russian gas transit revenues. Berlin is resisting Trump's pressure.

The United States on 15 April 2021 announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and sanctions against nearly three dozen people. The sanctions represent the first retaliatory action announced against the Kremlin for last year's hacking attack, which has been called the "SolarWinds" breach. The measures include sanctions on six Russian companies that are alleged to have aided the country's cyber activities. A further 32 individuals and entities are accused of attempting to interfere in last year's presidential election, including by spreading disinformation. The White House said that the 10 diplomats being expelled include representatives of the Russian intelligence services.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Geneva 16 June 2021. Both sides underscored opportunities for cooperation but downplayed expectations for any improvement in tense relations between Moscow and Washington. The meeting was expected to be more of an airing of grievances than a platform to reach significant agreements. Bidens goals included seeking areas where the United States and Russia can work together while clearly stating U.S. vital national interests and making it clear that Russian activities that run counter to those interests will be met with a response. Putin and Biden agreed to launch strategic stability consultations and reduce the risk of conflict between the world's two dominant nuclear powers. The new US strategy is to stabilise relations with Russia so it can focus on countering China. The success of Washingtons Russia stabilisation policy is not guaranteed, but Russia seems to have much less appetite for confrontation with the West than in the 2010s. The Biden-Putin summit can be viewed as an attempt to reach a "non-aggression pact".

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said 06 July 2021 that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear, including publicly, that achieving results is only possible through finding a mutually acceptable balance of interests on a strictly equal basis. Despite constructive talks between Putin and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in Geneva last month, Lavrov said that Washingtons officials had made a return to lecturing the Kremlin. This included a warning that the country could soon face more sanctions if it does not accept the rules of the game set out by US envoys in Geneva, he said.

Russia is "harmless and squeaky-clean" compared to Western countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an annual press conference on 17 December 2020 in response to a question of a BBC reporter. The BBC representative asked a question about reasons for worsening relations between Russia and the West and wondered whether the Russian leader felt himself responsible for it, at least partially, or Russia is "harmless and squeaky-clean."

"Now, about us being harmless and squeaky-clean. Compared to you, yes, it is a fact, we are harmless and squeaky-clean because we agreed to release from an unequivocal Soviet dictate those countries and nations that wanted to develop independently. We heard your assurances that NATO wont expand to the East but you didnt keep your promises," the Russian leader responded. The president noted that those were not written guarantees but verbal promises yet emphasized that none of them were kept as a result.

Putin then continued to compare Russian policy with the actions of the Western countries over past decades. "Did we withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? It wasnt us who did that. And we are forced to respond by creating new weapon systems that curb threats. Then our colleagues withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Was it us who withdrew? No, that was our American partners. Accordingly, we said that we wont produce and deploy such weapon systems as long as American weapons dont arrive in Europe. Yet nobody responds to this, nobody reacts. Then they withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty. What are we supposed to do then? I dont want to ask you this question but what are we supposed to do after this? Just let it be? So you, as a NATO country, will fly over us and report everything to the American partners and we will be deprived of this opportunity regarding American territory," he said, addressing the Western journalist.

"Why do you think that we are idiots? Why do you think that we cannot see some obvious things? There are some other issues that cause our concern. We are forced to react to them," the Russian leader added. Compared to you we are white and fluffy. We are set up for dialogue [White and fluffy is a Russian expression, synonymous with honest, well-meaning, decent.]







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State Department Terrorist Designation of Hamza bin Laden

Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

Washington, DC

January 5, 2017



The Department of State has designated Hamza bin Laden as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which imposes sanctions on foreign persons determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Hamza bin Laden has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him.

On August 14, 2015 Hamza bin Laden, son of Usama bin Laden, was officially announced by al-Qa'ida senior leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as an official member of the group. In this 2015 audio message from al-Zawahiri, bin Laden called for acts of terrorism in western capitals. On July 9, 2016, al-Qa'ida issued another audio message from Hamza bin Laden threatening revenge against the United States and warned Americans they would be targeted in the United States and abroad. Specifically, in 2015, bin Laden called for lone offender attacks against U.S., French, and Israeli interests in Washington, D.C.; Paris, France; and Tel Aviv, Israel. Additionally, in 2016, bin Laden called on Saudi Arabian-based tribes to unite with al-Qa'ida's affiliate in Yemen to wage war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The imposition of sanctions by the United States against terrorists is a powerful tool. Today's action notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Hamza bin Laden is actively engaged in terrorism. Designations of terrorist individuals and groups expose and isolate organizations and individuals, and result in denial of access to the U.S. financial system. Moreover, designations can assist or complement the law enforcement actions of other U.S. agencies and other governments.

A list of State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations and SDGTs is available here: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/list/index.htm.

Name: Hamza bin Laden

DOB: 1989

POB: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

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State Department Terrorist Designation of Ibrahim al-Banna

Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

Washington, DC

January 5, 2017



The Department of State has designated Ibrahim al-Banna as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which imposes sanctions on foreign persons determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Ibrahim al-Banna has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with Ibrahim al-Banna.

Ibrahim al-Banna is a senior member of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leadership who served as AQAP security chief and provided military and security guidance to AQAP leadership. A 2010 edition of AQAP's English online magazine, Inspire, contained an article by al-Banna describing the 9/11 attack as virtuous and threatened to target Americans both domestically and elsewhere, in response to U.S. actions overseas. Prior to his membership with AQAP, al-Banna was a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Yemen from 1996 to 1998 and subsequently was in charge of the training and intelligence sectors for the group. Al-Banna is also subject to a U.S. government reward of up to $5 million.

A list of State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations and SDGTs is available here: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/list/index.htm.

Name: Ibrahim al-Banna

AKA: Shaykh Ibrahim Muhammad Salih al-Banna

AKA: Ibrahim Muhammad Salih al-Banna

AKA: Ibrahim Muhamad Salih al-Banna

AKA: Abu Ayman al-Masri

Nationality: Egyptian

DOB: 1965

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China reiterates opposition to US deployment of THAAD in South Korea

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 4:23PM

A senior Chinese official has reiterated Beijing's opposition to a US deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea.

"We urge the parties concerned to stop immediately the deployment of THAAD and not to go too far down the erroneous road," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said at a regular news briefing in the capital, Beijing, on Thursday.

He expressed hope that China and South Korea would "seek a proper solution that will take into account the concerns of both sides through communication and consultation."

The spokesman made the remarks following a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a delegation of the Minjoo Party of South Korea on Wednesday to talks about THAAD deployment.

Vincent Brooks, the commander of US forces in South Korea, said in early November 2016 that the US will deploy its THAAD system to South Korea within eight to 10 months.

The United States and South Korea have agreed to deploy the THAAD system in the Southeast Asian country to protect it against North Korea's alleged threats. THAAD has been designed to intercept ballistic missiles inside or just outside the atmosphere during their final phase of flight.

The US and South Korean governments are also reportedly discussing the deployment of rotating strategic weapons on the Korean Peninsula to allegedly counter potential threats from Pyongyang.

Russia and China have warned against a possible deployment of an advanced US missile system on the volatile Korean Peninsula.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that North Korea's missile tests should not become a pretext for the US to deploy the THAAD system in South Korea.

Senior Chinese officials say the deployment of THAAD in South Korea by the US will seriously disturb regional strategic balance and undermine security in the region.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.

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US-Qatar Radar Deal: What's the Real Reason for the Purchase

Sputnik News

16:31 05.01.2017

In a follow up to the recently announced deal reached between the US and Qatar on the purchase by Doha of the US' 5,000 km range early warning radar with the announced purpose to "mitigate the threat from Iranian ballistic missiles," various media sources speculate why Qatar needs such a long-range facility if Iran is only 821 km away.

On December 10, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that Qatar and the US have reached an agreement for Qatar to purchase a 5,000 km range early warning radar to "enhance its missile defenses."

During his trip to Bahrain, Carter said the plan was for Qatar's radar "to be integrated into a regional air defense network that would mitigate the threat from Iranian ballistic missiles."

The issue was first raised in July 2013 when Qatar requested a Raytheon AN/FPS-132 Block 5 long-range early warning radar at an estimated cost of $1.1 billion.

The Raytheon Company, a major US defense contractor, was also awarded a $2.4 billion contract in December 2014 to build Qatar an Air and Missile Defense Operations Centre (ADOC) that it said will "integrate US air defense systems  including Patriot, the Early Warning Radar, and THAAD  with European air defense systems and radars, and Qatar's Air Operation Centre."

The announcements prompted many media sources to delve into what might be the real actual reason for the purchase.

"The announced range of 5,000km (3,100 miles) by far exceeds the requirement to counter a missile threat coming from Iran," says the Strategic Culture Foundation online journal.

There are shorter range radars to support the PAC-3 and THAAD systems deployed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, it further says. In theory, the truck-mounted AN/TPY-2 is the right system for the mission.

"The AN/FPS-132 to be based in Qatar is a very special case. It is designed to be used as an early warning system against strategic offensive assets  something Iran does not possess," the outlet reasons.

It further notes that the distance from Qatar to Iran is just 821 kilometers (510 miles). It is roughly 1,700 km (1,056 miles) from Qatar to Turkmenistan across the territory of Iran.

"Obviously, one does not need a radar with an operational range of 5,000km to counter a threat coming from Iran. There is no other reasonable explanation for the choice, except the fact that the AN/FPS-132 can monitor large chunks of Russian territory," it suggests.

"The announcement of the US-Qatar deal is a demonstration of the US' adamant resolve to surround the Russian Federation with BMD sites and neutralize its capability to deliver a retaliatory strike if attacked," the website states.

This view is echoed by the German website Contra Magazin, which also notes that the distance between Qatar and Moscow is only about 3,550 km.

"Is this really the preparation of possible military measures by the West and its allies against the alliance of Russia, China and Iran?" it wonders.

The outlet further suggests that the predominantly Sunni-led countries in the region would certainly "be enthusiastic" about forming a united front against Iran so that "the Europeans can turn against Russia and the Southeast Asians  against China  and everything under the US leadership."

Interestingly enough, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently issued its 2017 Global Forecast where it listed the US' priorities in the Middle East.

"The United States must: rebuild its strategic partnerships with its Arab allies, decide upon the US level of commitment to the defense of the Gulf against Iran, and deal with the full spectrum of Iranian challenges, counter Russia's role in Syria and its expanding influence in the region," it stated.

"It is unclear that the United States can find any effective way to limit the growth of Russian influence in Syria, or the impact of Russian intervention on regional perceptions of its growing strategic importance. The United States will, however, have opportunities to limit its role as a source of arms and military advisers in other states, and must be ready to deal with major new Russian arms transfers to Iran. The United States can also consider 'horizontal escalation' like putting pressure on Russia in other regions such as the Ukraine, just as Russia has done to the United States in Syria. At the same time, the United States must reconsider China's regional role both as another key source of arms sales to Iran, and in creating a new base in Djibouti," it elaborated.

 Sputnik

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China Hopes to Find Settlement With South Korea Over THAAD Deployment

Sputnik News

12:31 05.01.2017(updated 12:41 05.01.2017)

Beijing hopes to resolve the THAAD deployment issue with South Korea through dialogue.

BEIJING (Sputnik)  China hopes to find a settlement with South Korea over the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems that will correlate with the positions of both countries, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Thursday.

"China repeatedly has raised concerns on THAAD and opposed the deployment  We hope that China and South Korea will find a solution through a dialogue and communications, that will take into account the concerns of both countries," Geng said at the press briefing.

The deployment of THAAD will ruin the strategic balance in the region as well as the strategic security of the regional countries, including China, the spokesman added.

On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with the delegation of South Korean lawmakers from the biggest opposition Minjoo Party to discuss THAAD deployment.

THAAD anti-missile systems, which South Korea agreed in 2016 to be deployed on its territory by the end of 2017, with the stated aim of countering threats from North Korea, serve as one of the main irritants in Beijing-Seoul ties.

China and Russia have repeatedly showed their objection to the deployment of THAAD, arguing that their real aim was to deter the strategic weapon systems not only in the Korean peninsula's North, but primarily in China's hinterlands and Russia's Far East regions.

 Sputnik

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Major military weapons and military equipment released in 2016

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 17:07, January 05, 2017

The year 2016 saw great strides for the Chinese military, with numerous achievements related to weaponry and equipment. Below are some of the standout weapons and equipment that were introduced in 2016.

J-20 stealth fighter

A J-20 stealth fighter made its debut on Nov. 1 at Sanzao Airport in Zuhai, at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. The J-20 has filled a hole in the Chinese air force. It is expected to boost the fighting capacity of the Chinese air force, and help fulfill the mission of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.

Y-20 transport aircraft

The Y-20 military transport aircraft officially joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in July. With a maximum take-off weight of 200 tons, the Y-20 is ideal for transporting cargo and personnel over long distances, even under extreme weather conditions. The domestically designed and developed Y-20 made its debut at the 2014 China Air Show, earning the nickname "Fat Lady" for its large size. It currently ranks fifth in terms of overall strength.

Liaoning aircraft carrier

In formation with several destroyers and frigates, the Liaoning participated in reconnaissance, early warning, air interception, sea assault, air defense and anti-missile exercises. Carrying live ammunition, several batches of J-15 carrier-based aircraft performed strike exercises.

Sea plane AG600

The AG600 is by far the world's largest amphibian aircraft, about the size of a Boeing 737. As the world's largest sea plane, it can be used to fight forest fires and perform marine rescues. With a maximum take-off weight of 53.5 tons, the aircraft is able to take in 12 tons of water in just 20 seconds.

Type-96B tank

The Type-96B tank is a pillar of China's tank force. Several of the tanks were sent to take part in the Masters of Automobile and Tank Hardware competition at the Alabino training range in Moscow. The handsome, sturdy and durable tanks made a lasting impression during the competition.

2016 China Air Show

The 2016 air show in Zhuhai served as an excellent platform to showcase new Chinese military equipment. Many new pieces were introduced during the air show. Among them was the CM-302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missile, whose wide application scope can be used to improve naval capabilities. YLC-8B Anti-Stealth Radar, a 3-D surveillance radar that belongs to the fourth generation of domestically produced remote air intelligence radars, was also exhibited at the Zhuhai Air Show. The Rainbow No. 5 UAV, type VT2 and VT4 tanks made their debuts at the show as well.

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N Korean Nuclear Problem Should Be Priority for Trump Administration - CIA Chief

Sputnik News

09:25 05.01.2017(updated 09:26 05.01.2017)

CIA head John Brennan said the North Korean nuclear issue should be a high-priority problem for the Donald Trump administration.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The issue of North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear tests should become a major concern for the incoming US President-elect Donald Trump's administration, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan said.

"I think the incoming administration needs to be very concerned about North Korea. They continue to advance their ballistic missile capability, and as Kim Jong-un said, even at the intercontinental ballistic range. They continue to develop their nuclear program in terms of having nuclear capability that they could then marry with a ballistic missile. And that would be a threat and is a threat to regional states, as well as potentially to the U.S. homeland," Brennan said in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), released on Wednesday.

The CIA chief stressed that the United States must closely work with China, which has a great deal of influence on North Korea, to resolve the challenge, noting that the country's trajectory toward building up nuclear capability poses a threat to both its immediate region and to the United States.

"We shouldn't feel comfortable with the continued military capabilities and the growth of those capabilities in North Korea. That needs to be addressed," Brennan stressed.

North Korea has ramped up its nuclear program since change of leadership in 2011.

On September 5, Pyongyang launched three ballistic missiles in the direction of the Sea of Japan. Several days later it conducted a successful test of a nuclear warhead, which is believed to be the fifth and largest blast since Pyongyang began pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile programs. In the latest New Year's address to the nation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the country was finalizing preparations for another intercontinental ballistic missile test.

The UN Security Council imposed new sanctions against the North Korea in 2016 in response to nuclear test and missile launches. Japan, South Korea and the United States later introduced additional sanctions against the country.

 Sputnik

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Rohani Corruption Spat Could Herald Rough-And-Tumble Iranian Presidential Campaign

Golnaz Esfandiari January 05, 2017

President Hassan Rohani has traded barbs with hard-line officials from Iran's judiciary in a highly public spat in which each side appears determined to tar the other with accusations of corruption in an election year.

The feud appears to have been smoldering since the president's rise to power in 2013 on calls for reform and the arrest of one of Iran's wealthiest men, Babak Zanjani, months after Rohani took office.

It was reignited last month, when Rohani obliquely attacked the judiciary's competence, and elicited seemingly unprecedented challenges this week when hard-liners urged Rohani to disclose past fundraising and to help bring his brother in for questioning.

Rohani tweeted on January 3 that his government was "ready to create a website and clarify all of its spending and accounts" but demanded that "in return, the judiciary is expected to clarify all of its accounts."

A spokesman for the powerful judiciary countered by intimating that the president was "using the debate about transparency as a tool" in the face of a reelection bid, and dozens of parliament deputies the same day demanded that Rohani's brother face "financial corruption charges."

Where's The Money?

In December, Rohani questioned the judiciary's handling of the case against Zanjani, who has been sentenced to death for stealing more than $2 billion from the government through crooked oil sales during the administration of former hard-line President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Even though the judiciary had already issued a sentence, Rohani said, "people still want to know where is the money and who has helped him."

The case is particularly sensitive because the thefts occurred during tough economic times made more difficult by international sanctions, some of which were lifted as part of a deeply divisive nuclear agreement struck in 2015 between Tehran and world powers.

Conservatives and hard-liners have yet to commit to a challenger to face Rohani in the May election, but many of them staunchly opposed the nuclear deal, on which Rohani has staked considerable political capital.

Rohani suggested that a lack of transparency and a failure to answer the public's questions in the Zanjani case risk losing "a more important thing than $3 billion, and that is public trust as social capital." He said the Intelligence Ministry should have investigated the case before sending it to a court.

"People expect the matter to become clear," Rohani said, according to the transcript of his comments posted on his website. http://president.ir/fa/97072

Where's YOUR Money?

The head of the judiciary, an appointed post independent of the Justice Ministry, was quick to hit back. Speaking on January 2, Sadegh Larijani said Zanjani claimed that he had contributed to Rohani's election campaign.

"Babak Zanjani has said that he has helped the election of the president with millions of tomans," Larijani said, a reference to a superunit of Iran's national currency, the rial. But, he added, "We don't consider all his comments fully true; he talks a lot and makes many allegations."

Larijani said the judiciary could summon all the individuals against whom Zanjani has leveled accusations and arrest them, if need be.

"They say people should know where the money has been spent," Larijani said. "By the way, we're also after the same thing: finding out where the money has been spent. Where is the presidential office's money spent?"

That's when Rohani fired back on Twitter, expressing willingness to create a system for transparency in all its spending and accounts, and that the judiciary should, too.

"Every institution must act within the scope of its own powers and responsibilities and respond to public opinion," Rohani told his Twitter followers.

Unconfirmed reports have claimed in recent weeks that Larijani -- part of a powerful political family that includes brothers who are parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani and a senior official on human rights within the judiciary -- controls more than 60 private bank accounts filled with public funds. Iran's state prosecutor has said that all of the judiciary's accounts are in order and that some of the fund transfers have been done with the knowledge of the country's supreme leader.

Transparent Or Secretive?

Rohani's tweets prompted a reaction by a spokesman for the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, who said on January 4 that the judiciary's accounts were "transparent" and that lawmakers had seen "documents" proving it.

Mohseni-Ejei then suggested that the government was not forthright in all its dealings and that Rohani's call for transparency was a campaign tactic ahead of May's presidential election. He cited the 2015 nuclear agreement as an example, saying some details of the deal were only "leaked" later.

Mohseni-Ejei urged the government to disclose Rohani's campaign spending from 2013 and where the money came from.

The ultra-hard-line daily Kayhan seemed to side with Mohseni-Ejei, suggesting that Rohani talks loudly about the need for transparency despite heading what it said is a "government of secrets."

The pro-reform daily Etemad said Rohani's tweets demonstrated the government's "serious determination" and argued that his readiness to show transparency was "unprecedented."

Meanwhile, on January 4, more than 46 lawmakers called on Rohani to present his brother, Hossein Fereydoun, to the judiciary to face "financial corruption charges."

That demand echoed recent statements by Rohani's rivals in which they accused Fereydoun -- a member of the president's inner circle who has been called his "eyes and ears" -- of corruption.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/iran-rohani- corruption-claims-forecast-rough -presidential-campaign/28215654.html

Copyright (c) 2017. 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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Iraqi popular forces reject Amnesty war crimes allegations

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 6:41PM

Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), known as Hashd al-Sha'abi, have dismissed a recent Amnesty International report that accused them of using foreign arms to allegedly commit war crimes, urging Baghdad to file a legal case against the organization over slander.

Speaking at a news conference aired by state television on Thursday, PMU spokesman, Ahmed al-Assadi, said the report was no surprise as the UK-based group "has a history of distorting facts."

"It is very clear in this report that it is purposefully slandering an official government institution, which has in fact spearheaded the fight against terrorism and liberated the cities and neutralized the terrorist groups," Assadi said.

He further called on the Iraqi "Foreign Ministry and the related parties to sue this organization  and prevent it from issuing such reports that will lead to more bloodshed in Iraq and the region."

The remarks came after Amnesty International claimed that the PMU forces were using weapons provided to the Iraqi military by the US, Europe, Russia and Iran, for "summary killings," "enforced disappearances" and "torture."

The group further claimed that its report was based on nearly two and a half years of field research, including interviews with dozens of witnesses, former detainees, survivors, and relatives of the victims.

Hashd al-Sha'abi was formed after the rise of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Iraq in 2014.

In the early days of the Daesh terror campaign, the volunteer fighters played a major role in reinforcing the Iraqi army, which had suffered heavy blows amid the lightening advances of the extremist militants.

Currently, they are actively cooperating with the military and allied groups, including Sunni and Christian volunteer forces, in the large-scale operation to free the northern city of Mosul, the last remaining Daesh foothold in the Arab county.

On November 26, 2016, the Iraqi parliament recognized Hashd al-Sha'abi as an official force with similar rights as those of the regular army.

A total of 208 members of the Council of Representatives voted in support of the legislation, which recognizes Hashd al-Sha'abi as part of the national armed forces, places the volunteer fighters under the command of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and grants them the right to receive salaries and pensions just like the regular army and police.

The legislation, tabled by the National Iraqi Alliance, also stipulates that Popular Mobilization Units report directly to the prime minister.

Abadi welcomed the law in a statement, saying Hashd al-Sha'abi incorporates members of all Iraqi ethnic and religious groups.

Hashd al-Shaabi reportedly numbers more than 100,000 fighters. Iraqi authorities say there are between 25,000 and 30,000 Sunni tribal fighters within the force's ranks in addition to Kurdish Izadi and Christian units.

Fighters from Popular Mobilization Units have played a major role in the liberation of Daesh-held areas to the south, northeast and north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, ever since the terrorists launched an offensive in the country in June 2014.

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Iraqi forces launch major offensive to recapture western towns

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 9:28AM

Iraqi army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units, have started an offensive to retake towns and areas in the troubled western province of Anbar from Takfiri Daesh terrorists.

"A military operation has begun in the western areas of Anbar to liberate them from Daesh," Major General Qassem Mohammedi, commander of Jazeera Operations Command, said on Thursday.

He said the Iraqi Army's 7th Division, police personnel and pro-government fighters  commonly known by the Arabic word Hashd al-Sha'abi  are involved in the military campaign.

Iraqi army soldiers and their allies plan to liberate the towns of Anah, Rawa and al-Qaim on the Euphrates River, and the most immediate objective of the new offensive is Anah, situated 258 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad.

"Our forces started advancing from Haditha towards Anah from several directions," Mohammedi noted.

Nadhom al-Jughaifi, a commander with the Haditha tribal fighters, said zero hour had come to liberate the western areas.

Iraqi soldiers and Hashd al-Sha'abi fighters have liberated large parts of Anbar over the past months. They won back the city of Falluja, located roughly 69 kilometers west of Baghdad on the Euphrates, in mid-June 2016.

Iraqi government forces and their allies retook the provincial city of Ramadi on December 28, 2015, and raised the national flag above the government complex there. Ramadi had fallen to Daesh extremists in May that year.

Iraqi troops are currently involved in a joint and multi-pronged operation to retake Mosul from Daesh terrorists. The liberation offensive started on October 17 last year.

Daesh car bombs kill about 20 in Baghdad

Two bomb attacks on Thursday claimed as much as 18 lives, leaving scores more injured.

The first bomb attack killed at least eight people and left more than a dozen others injured when it hit an area in eastern Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi security and medical sources said.

The sources added that the explosives-laden car was parked near an outdoor fruit and vegetable market in al-Obaidi neighborhood.

The second explosion targeted Bab al-Moadham district in central Baghdad near a security checkpoint, killing at least ten people and injuring 21.

Daesh Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) announced in a statement on Tuesday that at least 6,878 Iraqi civilians were killed last year as a result of the ongoing violence in the Arab country. Another 12,388 people were injured.

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Daesh Stops Paying Mosul Fighters Amid Iraq Gov't Forces' Renewed Offensive

Sputnik News

18:31 05.01.2017

Daesh terrorist group stopped payment of monthly wages to its fighters in Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, amid Iraqi government forces continued its offensive, according to local media.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group has suspended salaries of its fighters in Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, just as the government forces mobilized their efforts to recapture the city, media reported Thursday.

The monthly wages of about $350 were stopped in the last few weeks, possibly due to the damage to the terrorist group's oil infrastructure in Iraq and Syria, The Telegraph newspaper reported, citing Mosul residents.

The terrorists are now reportedly smuggling families out of the city for bribes to replenish resources.

The operation to liberate Mosul, in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, from the Daesh, outlawed in Russia and many other countries, began on October 17, 2016. Iraqi troops managed to advance in the eastern part of the city, but the western part  on the right bank of the Tigris River  is under militant control.

 Sputnik

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Rights groups slam Myanmar abuse cover-up

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 11:11AM

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other rights groups have accused Myanmar of trying to cover up abuses perpetrated by the country's government forces against Rohingya Muslims in the western state of Rakhine.

Criticism poured in on Wednesday after a government-led commission in Myanmar released a report that flatly dismissed allegations of genocide and abuses by security forces in the region.

The report said there were "no cases of genocide and religious persecution," adding that, the investigation panel had so far found "insufficient evidence" for legal action on allegations of rape by soldiers.

'Pre-baked political conclusions'

Phil Robertson, the deputy director of the Asia Division at the HRW, reacted by saying that the panel was "looking more and more like the Myanmar government whitewash mechanism that we feared it would be."

"Judging by what is written in this interim report, the commission has so far acted to discount out of hand what it calls 'external allegations' rather than seriously investigate them and risk uncovering the litany of rights violations against the Rohingya," he added.

The New York-based organization also called the report "methodologically flawed" and "a classic example of pre-baked political conclusions to assert the situation is not so bad, designed to push back against international community pressure."

'Shameful government propaganda'

Matthew Smith, the founder of the campaign group Fortify Rights, said the report by the commission, which is led by Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was in stark contrast with accounts collected by researchers interviewing civilians in Rakhine and those who had fled to Bangladesh.

"The army has committed atrocity crimes and this commission is attempting a whitewash. Ministries led by Suu Kyi have charted the path of denial, waging a shameful propaganda campaign," Smith noted.

International organizations and human rights groups have already blamed security forces for abuses against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine, including rape, killings, and the burning of more than 1,000 homes.

Myanmar's military has launched a fresh wave of crackdown on Muslims since an attack on the country's border guards on October 9 left nine policemen dead. The government blamed the Rohingyas for the assault.

There have been numerous accounts by eyewitnesses of summary executions, rapes and arson attacks against Muslims since the crackdown began. The military has blocked access to Rakhine and banned journalists and aid workers from entering the zone.

The United Nations (UN) has warned that ongoing human rights violations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine could constitute "crimes against humanity."

Rakhine had been the scene of communal violence at the hands of Buddhist extremists since before the military siege. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced from homes to live in squalid camps in dire conditions in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia since 2012, when Buddhist violence began.

The government denies full citizenship to the 1.1-million-strong Rohingya population, branding them "illegal immigrants" from Bangladesh. However, the Rohingyas are believed to be a community of ancient lineage in Myanmar.

According to the UN, the Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

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Pakistan Builds New Missile Ship to Shield Chinese Trade Routes

Sputnik News

03:37 05.01.2017(updated 10:00 05.01.2017)

Pakistan has officially begun construction of a missile warship that the country hopes will guarantee the integrity of its vital trade corridor with China.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is key to the financial and national security interests of both countries. For Islamabad, Beijing's capital investment in infrastructure projects offers promise to give the country's economy a much-needed boost. But Beijing also relies on Pakistan's navy to ensure the safety of oil shipments from the Arabian Sea and surrounding maritime regions.

In that regard, China is sharing Azmat-class ship technology with Islamabad, including the "latest weapons and sensors," according to the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Public Relation media branch.

Images of the ship's construction indicate that, unlike the standard Azmat model, the new ship features larger, more powerful missiles, which some believe could be the C-602, a Pakistani version of the Beijing's YJ-62, Defense News reported. Islamabad's latest anti-ship missile, Zarb, codename for the C-602, enables a 300 kg warhead with a 280 km range. Pakistan hopes to arm the ship with precision-guided bombs for deployment against aerial and land-based foes. A naval launcher of land-attack bombs remained incomplete as of last year, Defense News noted.

Keeping maritime pirates and other malevolent adversaries clear of Pakistan's port of Gwadar is essential for China, whose appetite for energy sources climbs by the day, along with the growth of its middle class. As previously reported, the Strait of Hormuz sees 20 percent of all oil traded in the world daily transiting the key waterway.

But from there, the journey is far from over, if China is to collect oil imports arriving from the Middle East and the Arabian Sea. Oil tankers face a tough challenge navigating through the narrow Malacca Strait, and could eventually be escorted by the new Pakistani vessel.

 Sputnik

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South Korea Constitutional Court holds hearings in president's impeachment trial

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 5:56AM

The Constitutional Court in South Korea is continuing hearings in the impeachment trial of the country's President Park Geun-hye over a major corruption scandal.

On Thursday, the nine-justice court began a first session to hear oral arguments in Park's impeachment trial after a delay over her refusal to appear in court.

The tribunal, nevertheless, proceeded without the presence of Park, as the Constitutional Court noted it could not force her to appear.

During the court session, prosecutors and Park's lawyers traded pointed arguments on the validity of accusations that the South Korean president was involved in an influence-peddling case, in which she had allegedly colluded with a close friend, Choi Soon-sil, to extort money and favors from major corporations.

Lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong, the chief prosecutor in the trial, said Park had betrayed public trust by "broadly and gravely" violating the constitution and criminal laws.

Park's lawyer Lee Jung-hwan, however, said the accusations "lack evidence and fail to make legal sense" because they were based on allegations and media reports rather than criminal convictions.

The court is set to hear witnesses later in the day.

Park, whose father ruled South Korea for 18 years after seizing power in a 1961 coup, has denied misconduct in the case but nevertheless apologized for being careless in her ties with Choi, who is facing her own trial.

If the Constitutional Court confirms the impeachment vote, a process for which it has 180 days, Park will become the first elected president in the country to be forced out of office.

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Understanding South Korea's 'Upside Down' Impeachment Process

By Brian Padden January 05, 2017

In South Korea the process for removing a democratically elected leader from office seems to be to impeach first and ask questions later.

In early December the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to impeach President Park Geun-hye on charges of abuse of power, bribery, and infringement of press freedom in connection with an alleged multi-million dollar influence peddling scandal.

The impeachment motion also charges the president with negligence for the government's purported inept response to the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster that killed over 300 people, many of them school age children.

However, the vote was held before a newly appointed independent counsel began its investigation into possible executive branch wrongdoings, and before a special legislative committee began holding televised hearings on the allegations of misconduct by the president. Both of these investigations are still underway.

"It is an upside down procedure. Approval of the impeachment motion itself has very important legal significance, but it is problematic that (the approval) was done politically, without clear facts, but with suspicions," said Lee In-ho, a professor of law at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.

Court hearings

Now it is up to the nine judges on the Constitutional Court to uphold the impeachment vote or reinstate Park, who has been suspended from office, but continues to live in the presidential Blue House.

The judicial review process is being conducted as a trial where Park and her lawyers can mount her defense and prosecutors representing the National Assembly can make the case for her removal from office.

To uphold the impeachment ruling, Professor Lee says, the Constitutional Court will require clear evidence the president committed "a grave violation of constitutional law."

Park is accused of colluding with her longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil, to force or bribe Korean conglomerates to donate over $65 million to two dubious foundations, and to turn a blind eye while Choi funneled some of the funds and lucrative side contracts to companies owned by herself and her friends.

After the impeachment vote the president said she would plead her case before the Constitutional Court but she has refused to appear when called at the first two hearings this week.

Professor Lee says the prosecution has been hampered by constitutional constraints that restrict the ability of the judicial and legislative branches to investigate the president or force her to testify in court.

"It is impossible to investigate the president in principle, but the prosecution can try to find, through its investigation procedure, how deep the president is involved. It is the important issue of the impeachment, but such evidences have not (yet) been presented," said Lee.

Park recently met with reporters to deny the charges against her as "fabrication and falsehood." She also claimed she has been "totally framed," but said she could not elaborate as the matter is under investigation.

The suspended president maintains that her support for the foundations were in the national interest, and insists she never personally benefited during her 18 years of public service. Prior to the impeachment vote the president offered three public apologies for not being aware that some of her close associates may have been involved in some wrongdoings.

Rep. Kwon Seong-dong, who leads the National Assembly's judiciary committee, criticized Park for talking to the press while refusing to appear in court.

On Thursday Park was represented in court by Lee Joong-hwan, a former prosecutor, and Kwon Sung-dong, a leader of the ruling Saenuri Party legislators on the parliamentary impeachment proceedings committee.

Co-conspirators

The president cannot be charged with a crime while in office but could be indicted if the impeachment is upheld.

Justice Ministry prosecutors have named Park an accomplice of her friend Choi Soon-sil, who has been charged with abuse of authority, coercion and attempted fraud, and is currently in custody in a Seoul detention facility.

On Thursday Choi was brought to the Seoul Central District Court to face the first hearing of her criminal trial. Choi told the court she is "facing much unfairness."

Lee Kyung-jae, Choi's lawyer, denied the charges saying, "There is no truth in saying the accused (Choi) was involved in collecting funds for foundations from conglomerates."

One of Park's aides faces similar charges and another has been indicted for leaking government secrets to Choi, who held no official position or security clearance. Both are still awaiting trial.

Choi's daughter Chung Yoo-ra is being held in custody in Denmark, as she tries to fight extradition to South Korea. Chung has not been charged but investigators want her to answer allegations that she received favors in the form of admission to a prestigious university and corporate funding for her equestrian Olympic training because of her mother's ties to the president.

Race against time

By not cooperating, Park and her defense team may be trying to delay the proceedings to take advantage of impending term limits for two justices that could deadlock the court.

The nine member Constitutional Court must reach the required quorum of six justices voting to uphold the impeachment motion. However the term of the court's Chief Justice Park Han-chul ends in late January and a second Justice Lee Jung-mi ends his tenure in March. The Constitutional Court justices cannot be replaced until the impeachment issue is resolved.

The impeachment trial can last up to 180 days but if it lingers into March there will be only seven justices left on the bench, but an impeachment ruling will still require six justices to vote to uphold.

Public anger

President Park's single five-year term ends in 2018 but she has lost virtually all public support due to the scandal.

The weeks prior to the impeachment vote were marked by massive weekly protests across Korea. Park's approval rating dropped to just 4 percent and a recent poll found that 80 percent of South Koreans support her impeachment.

If the court rejects the impeachment motion, it is expected that large-scale demonstrations would again erupt to force the president to resign.

If the court upholds the impeachment vote, Park will be the first democratically elected South Korean president to be forced from office. In 2004, the National Assembly impeached then-president Roh Moo-hyun, but after 63 days of deliberation the court overturned the motion and returned Roh to power.

Much of the public outrage over this scandal has been driven by the portrayal in the Korean media of Choi Soon-sil as a malevolent shaman who secretly controlled the naive Park, directing both presidential policies and subordinates without holding an official position in government.

Park's relationship with Choi dates back to the 1970s, when Park's father, Park Chung-hee, ruled South Korea for 18 years after coming to power in a coup.

Choi's father, Choi Tae-min, a religious cult leader who founded a sect called the Eternal Life Church, became a mentor to Park while she was acting as first lady, after her mother was killed during an assassination attempt on Park Chung-hee.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.

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Casualties reported as bomb blast rocks western Syria town

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 12:53PM

A car bomb attack has rocked the coastal town of Jablah in Syria's western province of Latakia, reportedly leaving over a dozen people dead and scores wounded.

According to Syrian media, the blast took place at a crowded commercial sector of Jablah, an Alawite-majority town on the Mediterranean coast, on Thursday, causing damage to scores of cars and shops in the area.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 15 were killed in the attack. However, Syria's official SANA news agency put the number of those killed at 11, saying 35 more were also wounded.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bloody terror attack, which comes despite a ceasefire holding across the Arab country.

The countrywide truce was brokered by Russia and Turkey between the Syrian government and foreign-backed militant groups late last month.

However, Damascus and Russian officials have reported numerous ceasefire violations on the part of Takfiri militants in recent days.

On January 1, the coastal Syrian city of Tartus also witnessed a terror attack, in which two bombers set off their explosives at a security checkpoint and killed two security forces there.

Jablah and Tartus remain largely unaffected by the foreign-backed militancy gripping Syria since early 2011.

However, the two cities were hit by a series of terrorist bombings that killed many citizens and injured tens of others in May 2016.

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Damascus Water Shortage Threatens 5.5Mln People, May Trigger Epidemic

Sputnik News

18:53 05.01.2017

UN's humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said that 5.5 million people had their water supplies cut or minimized after supply from the Wadi Barada spring was disrupted.

GENEVA (Sputnik)  Some 5.5 million people in Damascus have little to no access to water after supply from the Wadi Barada spring was disrupted, UN's humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said Thursday.

"In Damascus itself, 5.5 million people have had their water supplies cut or minimized because the spring of Wadi Barada  which is just outside Damascus and accounts for 70 percent of the water supplies  has been broken," Egeland said.

Emergency efforts are underway to ensure that schools, hospitals and other important facilities, such as bakeries, get water, said Egeland, who chairs the UN task force on humanitarian access in Syria. He added lack of clean water could trigger an epidemic of waterborne diseases.

The UN official said that the issue of who was to blame for the disruption was very much politicized and disputed. The spring could have been damaged by fighting or bombardment or sabotage by armed opposition groups.

 Sputnik

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De Mistura Expects Russia, Turkey to Ensure Success of Syria Truce, Astana Talks

Sputnik News

17:57 05.01.2017(updated 17:58 05.01.2017)

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura expressed hope on Thursday that Russia and Turkey could influence the conflicting sides in Syria to ensure the implementation of the ceasefire regime and the success of the Syria peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  De Mistura also said that the United Nations is planning to send a representative to attend the Astana talks on January 23 and to use any positive results of these talks to ensure the progress in Syrian reconciliation during the Geneva talks in February.

In late December, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a Russian-Turkish resolution on a ceasefire regime in Syria, as well as on holding political talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups in Astana, Kazakhstan in January 2017. A day earlier, a nationwide ceasefire between Syrian government troops and several opposition factions came into force. Russia and Turkey serve as guarantors of the deal that paves the way for negotiations between the warring parties.

Since 2011, Syria has been engulfed in a civil war, with government forces fighting against numerous opposition and terrorist groups, including al-Nusra Front and Daesh, which is banned in a range of countries, including Russia.

 Sputnik

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Syria Car Bombing Kills 9 in Government-held Town

By VOA News January 05, 2017

At least nine people were killed when a car bomb exploded in a coastal town in Syria  the first such explosion reported since a new cease-fire was implemented last week, according to state media.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll in Jableh, a government stronghold, at 14.

The cease-fire in Syria appeared fragile even before this attack as government forces escalated their offensive near the capital of Damascus, and a coalition of rebel groups said they would suspend their participation in preliminary peace talks set for later this month.

The negotiations are scheduled to be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, although the rebels indicated they are withdrawing due to what they said is the Syrian government's violation of the cease-fire agreement, which was reached on December 30.

The peace talks are being organized by Russia, Iran and Turkey, which also played key roles in negotiating the current cease-fire. The countries have yet to comment on the rebels decision to suspend preliminary talks.

The cease-fire excludes extremist targets in the war-ravaged country, including rebel-held territory on the outskirts of Damascus.

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Taiwan ready if Liaoning passes through Taiwan Strait: MND

ROC Central News Agency

2017/01/05 16:27:56

Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) said on Thursday that China's aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, first passed through the Taiwan Strait in 2014, and as such the ministry has experience and countermeasures in place to deal with a repeat.

Military experts have said the Liaoning, currently on drills in the South China Sea, could pass through the strait when it returns to its home port in Qingdao, completing its first drill to include the circumnavigation of Taiwan.

Others speculate that the return journey could be timed to coincide with the official trip to Central America by President Tsai Ing-wen (), who will visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador from Jan. 7-15.

Wang Shao-hua (), director of the MND's Defense Research Center, said the military has comprehensive monitoring facilities that enable it to keep tabs on China's military deployments.

However, he declined to comment on "speculation" regarding China's military movements.

He also said that the combat capability of the Liaoning is still developing and whether it reaches the level of the United States remains to be seen.

MND spokesman Chen Chung-chi () said that the ministry has a wide range of measures at its disposal to deal with any contingency.

Questioned about media reports that hundreds of Taiwan's missiles will target the Liaoning, Chen said only that the military is well prepared and public safety assured.

The Liaoning passed through the first island chain by sailing in international waters off eastern Taiwan before docking at Sanya port, Hainan province, at the end of December.

The first island chain refers to the major archipelagos off the East Asian continental mainland, including Japan, Taiwan and the northern Philippines.

(By Lu Hsin-hui and Lilian Wu)

Enditem/AW

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Turkey orders detention of 380 businessmen over links to Fethullah Gulen

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 1:44PM

Prosecutors in Turkey have ordered the detention of 380 businessmen suspected of assisting Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric who is accused by Ankara of having masterminded a coup attempt in the country in mid-July 2016.

The arrest warrants were issued on Thursday as prosecutors also demanded permissions for searches of houses and offices of the suspects, who were believed to have financially supported Gulen and his network in Turkey.

More than 40,000 people have been arrested in Turkey on suspicions of having links to Gulen and the failed coup while more than 100,000 have been sacked or suspended from work over the same accusations.

Gulen, who runs a vast network of schools and cultural centers in Turkey and other Muslim countries, has categorically denied any role in the coup attempt, which claimed the lives of at least 240 people.

He warned in the summer that the accusations may be a ploy by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tighten the grip on dissent.

Turkey has also been carrying out a severe crackdown on those believed to be linked to Kurdish militants operating in the country's southeast.

The state-run Anadolu agency said Thursday that nine suspects, including two provincial officials of the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), were remanded in custody by a court earlier in the day over alleged links to Kurdish militants.

The nine were among some 30 people arrested overnight, who included HDP Istanbul Provincial Chair Dogan Erbas and Vice Chair Aysel Guzel. The report said that 11 suspects were initially taken to court but nine were remanded in custody over terrorism-related charges. The two others were released under judicial court while legal procedures were continuing for the remaining 19 suspects, according to the report.

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Bomb blast kills two near court in western Turkish city

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 1:32PM

An explosion has struck near a courthouse in the western Turkish city of Izmir, leaving two people dead and several others wounded.

According to broadcaster CNN Turk, ambulances have been dispatched to the site of the Thursday car bomb blast in Izmir, which is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara.

Security officials said a Turkish police officer and an employee of the courthouse lost their lives in the incident.

The blast took place outside the prosecutors and judges' entrance.

The NTV television cited the mayor of Izmir's local Bayrakli municipality, Hassan Karabag, as saying that 10 people were wounded, one of them seriously.

Other reports said clashes erupted between the attackers and security forces at the scene.

Security sources say Turkish police have killed two attackers following the explosion, which comes days after a Daesh-affiliated attacker stormed a nightclub in Istanbul only hours into New Year and shot 39 people dead.

Police forces are now looking for a third assailant who managed to escape, according to the Anadolu news agency.

The Izmir governor said the attackers were armed Kalashnikov rifles.

Erol Ayyildiz added that initial findings indicate the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group has been behind the car bombing.

"A clash erupted after our police officers wanted to stop a vehicle at a police check point in front of Bayrakli courthouse. In this clash, terrorists detonated the car bomb while trying to escape," Ayyildiz told reporters.

Over the past few years, Turkey has seen a rise in terror attacks targeting civilians and security forces. Most of the assaults were claimed either by the PKK militants or Daesh terrorists.

Turkish cities and towns were struck by terror attacks over 20 times in 2016 alone.

The Izmir blast comes as Turkey is still reeling from the fatal shooting spree in Istanbul, which turned New Year celebrations there into a time of mourning.

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Turkey launches fresh hunt in nightclub bombing

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 11:42AM

Turkish security forces have arrested more suspects in connection with a Daesh attack on a famous nightclub in Istanbul, which claimed 39 lives and left many more injured.

Police said special operations teams conducted an operation in the Silivri district in the city's outskirts, detaining several people at a housing complex early on Thursday.

The sources did not provide an exact number for those rounded up, only saying that those detained came from China's Turkic Uighur region of Xinjiang. They are suspected of "aiding and abetting" the gunman who, a top official said, was likely an Uighur.

On Wednesday, 27 people were arrested in a police operation in the western city of Izmir. The suspects were from Xinjiang, Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan, and neighboring Syria.

Turkish media have identified the gunman as a 28-year-old Kyrgyz man, who settled down together with his wife and two children in the Turkish province of Konya after arriving from Syria in November.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has suggested that "foreign intelligence services" could be behind the attack, which killed 39 people and wounded 65 others.

"I am of the opinion that it's not possible for the perpetrator to have carried out such an attack without any support. It seems like a secret service thing. All these things are being assessed," he was quoted as saying on Thursday.

The pro-government Yeni Safak daily, citing security forces, reported on Thursday that attacker was believed to be hiding in a house in Istanbul, and security personnel were on a hunt for his hideout.

Turkish police forces have reportedly found documents belonging to the Daesh terrorist group in a number of houses raided in an effort to locate the assailant.

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Turks turn down US military help, asks Russia for air support: US officials

Iran Press TV

Thu Jan 5, 2017 10:52AM

Turkey has declined the US military's offer to provide air support for its troops in Syria, asking Russia to take on the role instead, American officials say.

Two US military officials said that Ankara, which has been fighting militants inside the Syrian territories, has accepted air power from Moscow over the past few days, the NBC News reported Wednesday.

This is while, the Turks have turned down the US-led coalition's help, the officials claimed.

Back in August, Turkey launched an incursion into Syria, claiming that the military operation was meant to engage both Daesh terrorists in the Syrian-Turkish border area and Kurdish forces, who were themselves fighting Daesh.

Damascus has on multiple occasions condemned Ankara's intervention as a breach of its sovereignty.

In December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that the US had failed to keep its promise of air support in Ankara's operations in the Arab country, mainly in the city of al-Bab, which has proven a tough battle for the Turks.

"Even though the US-led coalition has failed to keep its promises [pledging air support] in our operation to liberate al-Bab, we will rid the city of Daesh terrorists, no matter what," Erdogan said back then.

The complaints continued on Wednesday, with Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik saying that he lack of US air support was fueling negative public sentiments over Washington's use of Turkey's Incirlik airbase.

This is while the American military forces have conducted flights over the city as a show of force without dropping any bombs.

According to NBC, when one of the military officials was asked whether Russia was pounding Daesh in the city, he said "for now they are."

Al-Bab sits between Aleppo and Manbij, the city that was liberated last year with help from the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Turkey is said to be among the main supporters of militant groups in Syria and stands accused of training and arming Takfiri elements, facilitating their passage into the violence-wracked country, and buying smuggled oil from militants.

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Turkey using Incirlik airbase as leverage for US air support for Syria incursion

Iran Press TV

Wed Jan 4, 2017 10:41PM

Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik says the lack of US air support for Ankara's military operations in Syria is giving rise to negative public sentiment over Washington's use of Turkey's Incirlik airbase.

For the past few weeks, Turkey has been voicing its dissatisfaction with the US-led coalition's refusal to provide air support for the operations which Ankara claims are aimed at liberating the Syrian town of al-Bab from the Daesh terrorist group.

On Wednesday, Isik said that "this is leading to serious disappointment in the Turkish public opinion."

"We are telling our allies... that this is leading to questions over Incirlik," he said in reference to the airbase located in the city of Adana in southern Turkey, where the coalition keeps the planes involved in its alleged anti-Daesh campaign.

"It is thought-provoking that ally countries, especially countries with whom we have worked together in NATO for many years, countries who formed a coalition against Daesh,... don't give the support we asked for," Isik said.

He went on to voice hopes that the US and its allies would sooner start air support for Turkey's operations.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also criticized Washington's lack of air support for the Turkish military operation in northern Syria and questioned the presence of US personnel at the Turkish airbase.

"If you are not supporting us in the most significant operation, then why are you based at the Incirlik airbase?" Cavusoglu asked, adding, however, that the US remained "an important ally."

Back in August, Turkey launched an incursion into Syria, claiming that it was meant to engage both Daesh terrorists in the Syrian-Turkish border area and Kurdish forces, who were themselves fighting Daesh. Damascus has on multiple occasions condemned Turkey's military intervention as a breach of its sovereignty.

In December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that the US had failed to keep its promise of air support in Ankara's operations in the Arab country.

"Even though the US-led coalition has failed to keep its promises [pledging air support] in our operation to liberate al-Bab, we will rid the city of Daesh terrorists, no matter what," he said.

US gives in to Turkish pressure

Following Turkey's veiled threat, a US military official said the coalition was ready to back the Turkish forces deployed in northern Syria and that talks on the subject were underway.

"I can confirm for you that those discussions have been happening and the Turks are aware of some of the things that might be in store," said Colonel John Dorrian.

He noted that US aircraft had recently flown over al-Bab in relation to Ankara's requests as a "show of force" but had not dropped any bombs.

The developments come as Turkey is said to be among the main supporters of militant groups in Syria and stands accused of training and arming Takfiri elements, facilitating their passage into the violence-wracked country, and buying smuggled oil from militants.

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Kurdish Militants Suspected In Deadly Turkey Blast

RFE/RL January 05, 2017

Turkish officials say suspected Kurdish militants exchanged gunfire with police before detonating their vehicle in Turkey's Aegean coastal city of Izmir, killing a police officer and a courthouse employee.

Izmir Governor Erol Ayyildiz said two attackers who were killed by police following the blast were armed with Kalashnikov rifles and grenades when the car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint near a courthouse.

Earlier reports said a third attacker was on the run.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Ayyildiz said preliminary signs indicated that the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was behind it.

"The information so far suggests it is the PKK. Such a conclusion was reached after we assessed the attack and ID'd the people," Ayyildiz said.

Earlier reports said at least 10 others were wounded in the blast, while Ayyildiz put the number at "six or seven."

The PKK has carried out several attacks against Turkish security forces in the past year and a half. Islamic State (IS) militants have also staged numerous deadly attacks in the country.

Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told reporters that weapons found at the scene suggested the assailants had planned a much larger assault.

"Based on the preparation, the weapons, the bombs and ammunition seized, it is understood that a big atrocity was being planned," he said.

The incident followed a shooting in Istanbul in which 39 people celebrating at a New Year's party were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

Earlier on January 5, police carried out raids in and around Istanbul and detained a number of people of Uyghur ethnicity over the massacre, state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

Kaynak said the gunman, who remains at large, was probably an ethnic Uyghur but he could not say for sure.

Kaynak also said Turkish authorities had established the gunman's possible location and links.

Uyghurs are a mainly Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority in western China with significant diaspora communities across Central Asia and Turkey.

Turkey's foreign minister said on January 4 that authorities had identified the suspected gunman but did not provide further details.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/turkey-izmir-blast/28215498.html

Copyright (c) 2017. 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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2 Turkish Military Officers Given Life Terms for Coup Attempt

By VOA News January 05, 2017

A Turkish court on Thursday sentenced two military officers to life in prison for their alleged roles in last year's failed coup attempt.

The verdict handed down in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, was the first ruling related to the plot to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last July. Many more trials are expected in the coming months, in what is seen as the biggest legal process in Turkish history.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency reported the two defendants, Staff Colonel Murat Kocak and Staff Major Murat Yilmaz, were convicted of violating the constitution while acting on orders from Turkish exile Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim imam who has been living in the United States for nearly two decades.

The two former officers denied any involvement and asked to be acquitted.

Separately, Turkish authorities broadened their hunt for alleged coup collaborators Thursday, reportedly detaining nearly 400 businessmen in connection with investigations of financial backing for the coup, reputedly in cooperation with the Gulen network. Among those detained were top executives of the Dogan Group, a major business conglomerate that has substantial news media holdings.

Since July, Turkey's government has arrested 40,000 people and ousted more than 100,000 civil servants, teachers, judges and others believed to be linked to Gulen or involved in the plot to overthrow Erdogan. The government also has suspended all activities by hundreds of civic groups.

At least 81 journalists are imprisoned in Turkey, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and dozens of media outlets have been closed since the failed coup attempt.

Critics, including Western governments and human rights organizations, have voiced concern that the purge has gone beyond the scope of those suspected of direct involvement in efforts to oust Erdogan, and is also targeting many organizations that oppose Erdogan's policies.

Gulen, who came to the United States in 1999 and has since sought asylum, once was closely allied with Erdogan, but they split nearly 10 years ago. From his exile headquarters in the state of Pennsylvania, the 75-year-old imam has denied any involvement in the coup attempt.

The Erdogan government has accused Gulen of multiple crimes, allegedly committed on his orders from afar, and has demanded his extradition. U.S. authorities have said they will consider Turkey's request when full evidence against Gulen is presented and evaluated.

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Police Officer, Court Employee Killed in Izmir, Turkey, Car Bombing

By VOA News January 05, 2017

Suspected Kurdish militants set off a car bomb near a courthouse in Turkey's western city of Izmir Thursday, killing a police officer and a courthouse employee, authorities said.

"A clash erupted after our police officers wanted to stop a vehicle at a police checkpoint in front of Bayrakli Courthouse," provincial governor Erol Ayyildiz told reporters in comments broadcast live. "In this clash, terrorists detonated the car bomb while trying to escape."

VOA's Turkish service said a vehicle at the scene was burning.

Authorities say two of the assailants were shot dead and there were reports that a third was being sought. VOA's Turkish service said a vehicle at the scene was burning. At least 10 people were wounded in the attack. Several ambulances rushed to the scene, taking victims to the hospital as police secured the area.

Governor Ayyildiz also said the assailants were in possession of automatic rifles, rocket launchers and hand grenades and that preliminary indications suggest the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, was behind the assault. The outlawed PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The governor also said a second, and possibly more serious incident, had been foiled.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's car bombing in Izmir, an Aegean coastal city. The explosion follows a New Year's shooting rampage at a nightclub in Istanbul in which 39 people were killed.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting at the Reina nightclub, saying it was in retaliation for Turkey's military operations in northern Syria. Reports say authorities are closing in on the gunman.

VOA's Turkish service contributed to this report.

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UK Innovation: Laser Weapon Contract Awarded

5 January 2017

MOD awards 30m contract to produce Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) Capability Demonstrator to UK Dragonfire consortium, led by MBDA.

The project will assess innovative LDEW technologies and approaches, culminating in a demonstration of the system in 2019. The contract will assess how the system can pick up and track targets at various ranges and in varied weather conditions over land and water, to allow precision use.

The project will inform decisions on the future of the programme and help the MOD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) establish a road map to an in-service capability. If it is successful, the first laser weapons would come into service in the mid-2020s.

Minister for Defence Procurement, Harriet Baldwin said:

"The UK has long enjoyed a reputation as a world leader in innovation and it is truly ground-breaking projects like the Laser Directed Energy Weapon which will keep this country ahead of the curve."

"The Defence Innovation Initiative and 800M Defence Innovation Fund aim to encourage imagination, ingenuity and entrepreneurship, in pursuit of maintaining a military advantage in the future."

"With a rising Defence budget, and a 178 billion equipment plan, our commitment to innovation will deliver a safer and more prosperous Britain."

The MOD's investment in such innovative solutions demonstrates how the Government's 178 billion equipment plan, supported by a rising Defence budget, is ensuring our Armed Forces have the most effective and innovative capability available. The Innovation Initiative aims to strengthen the Defence partnerships which make such projects possible, keeping the UK safe and secure in a complex world.

Dstl's Peter Cooper added:

"This is a significant demonstration programme aimed at maturing our understanding of what is still an immature technology. It draws on innovative research into high power lasers so as to understand the potential of the technology to provide a more effective response to the emerging threats that could be faced by UK armed forces."

The UK Dragonfire consortium includes partners from across the UK with international reputations in this area including MDBA, QinetiQ, Leonardo-Finmeccanica GKN, Arke, BAE Systems and Marshall ADG.



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Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Don MacNeil, chief operating officer of GTT, about its company restructuring after coming out of Chapter 11 and its strategic roadmap for the next 12 months.
Former 5th District Congressman Tom Perriello launched a surprise bid for governor with an early morning talk with Danville residents Thursday.

Perriello  who served in Congress and most recently was a State Department envoy in Africa  stopped in Danville before heading to Charlottesville and Arlington. He also sent out emails and a video message to supporters online announcing his campaign.

At the Danville discussion, Perriello heard from residents about topics like gun violence, small businesses and Democratic support in traditionally Republican areas of the district.

Some supporters mourned the loss of African American-owned businesses in the area, while other talked about the lack of support for Democrats in Pittsylvania County.

Perriello said he wanted to bring the focus back to small businesses in the Dan River Region.

You certainly see a lot of job creation from small businesses, Perriello said.

Perriello said the most important lesson he took away from the talk was that Danville residents needed more support for small businesses rather than large-scale developments.

People want us to spend more time supporting local businesses that tend to invest in the community, Perriello said.

Periello said people also wanted government to address crime, education and other community issues.

People appreciate what we tried in the past, he said. We focused on economic revival, and there really are signs of hope.

As a member of Congress, Perriello supported President Barack Obama and voted for the Affordable Care Act. He also was instrumental in pushing for federal dollars to fund most of the $39.7 million Robertson Bridge replacement project, which replaced the old two-lane bridge with a new five-lane bridge. The project used $28.9 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to allow it to move forward.

Perriello defeated Republican Virgil Goode in a very tight 2008 race, but was defeated by Republican Robert Hurt in the 2010 election.
The Danville School Board approved a resolution asking the Virginia General Assembly to give more money to school divisions with declining population numbers and students living in poverty during a meeting Thursday.

This is really a message to the General Assembly about equity, said Danville Superintendent Stanley Jones.

Jones said the current funding model was unintentionally unequal, not taking into account the ability for localities to replace the loss of state funds because of enrollment decline. Under the current system, wealthier localities are able to stave off enrollment losses with other sources of funding.

Just because we lost students doesnt mean we dont have needs, Jones said.

Additionally, the resolution asks lawmakers to approve funding for 2 percent raises originally included in the biennium budget. Now, director of finance Lori Cassada said the state will only fund a 1.5 percent one-time bonus for 2017.

The resolution was based on a recent summit held in the coalfield region of Southwest Virginia, where schools are facing similar funding challenges. Pittsylvania County Schools has also adopted a similar resolution.

Board member Ed Polhamus applauded the resolution, saying Danvilles circumstances were as bad, if not worse, than the coal region.

Board members also approved agreements with the Virginia Board of Education regarding Schoolfield Elementary School and G.L.H. Johnson Elementary School, which were recently denied accreditation for 2016. Chief Academic Officer Sandra Andrews said she and a team from Danville will be making plans for the two schools in the coming weeks, including finding education partners for both locations.

It took us this long to get into this situation and its going to take a while to get out of it too, said school board chairwoman Sharon Dones.

In a presentation, Cassada also said there were few new initiatives or revenue changes that would affect Danville in Gov. Terry McAuliffes budget changes for 2017. She said most changes would relate to a projected decline in enrollment for the year.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Thursday signed an executive order requiring future contractors that do business with the Executive Branch to adhere to a non-discrimination policy that includes bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

As my first act as governor, I signed Executive Order 1 to ban discrimination in the state workforce based on sexual orientation, take divisive social issue battles off the table and help build an open and welcoming economy, McAuliffe said in Charlottesville, where he announced the executive order.

Starting today, the commonwealth of Virginia will not do business with entities that discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Virginia is home to the best state workforce in the country and this policy will ensure there is no question that all Virginians are to receive the full benefits of their citizenship, without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity."

The order took effect immediately upon McAuliffe's signature and will remain in force until it is amended or rescinded by a further executive order.

The governor's move comes as a Virginia lawmaker, Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, has filed a bill that would force transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate and require school principals to notify a student's parents if the student makes any attempt to be "treated as the opposite sex."

Marshall's proposal, which faces long odds in the General Assembly session that begins Wednesday, mirrors North Carolina's House Bill 2, which prompted business boycotts and outcry from LGBT groups. McAuliffe has said he will veto "any bill that restricts the rights of Virginians based on sexual orientation or gender identity."

Gavin Grimm, a transgender teenager from Gloucester County who was barred from using the boys' bathroom, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against his school district that could lead to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling with nationwide impact.

Gay rights advocates praised McAuliffe's move.

In addition to keeping Virginia a place with a commonsense, pro-business government, todays Executive Order is a huge leap forward in our goal toward becoming a state that is a safe, welcoming, and equal place for all Virginians," said James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia.

Under the terms of McAuliffe's Executive Order Number 61:

* All Executive Branch entities are ordered to include in their procurement contracts valued over $10,000 a prohibition on discrimination by the contractor, in its employment practices, subcontracting practices, and delivery of goods or services, on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, political affiliation, disability, or veteran status.

* No state employee or agent within the Executive Branch may engage in discrimination in the provision of public services based on race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, political affiliation, disability, or veteran status.

McAuliffe's order says that "any state employee or agent who engages in such discrimination will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action."
Local Water, Local Control The people of San Lorenzo Valley who want to maintain local control of our water should vote to reelect Bob Fultz to the Board of the SLV Water District. During the recent attempt to merge with the Scotts Valley Water District, Director Fultz strongly advocated to...
Listed (TSX:LAM; ASX:LAM)

TORONTO, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Laramide Resources Ltd. ("Laramide" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced acquisition of the Churchrock and Crownpoint properties in New Mexico, USA (the "Projects") from Uranium Resources Inc. ("URI"), pursuant to which Laramide acquired URI's wholly owned subsidiary Hydro Resources, Inc., which owns the Projects. Details related to the acquisition were previously provided by Laramide in press releases dated November 10, 2015, April 8, 2016, December 5, 2016 and December 16, 2016.

The Projects are principally comprised of the 100% owned Churchrock and Crownpoint projects which have near-term development potential and significant mineral resources. They are located within a large land package in the heart of the Grants Mining District in McKinley County, New Mexico, one of the most historically significant uranium-producing districts in the U.S.

The Projects are subject to net smelter royalties, specifically the sliding scale royalty, owned by Laramide of up to 25% of gross revenue covering certain areas of the Projects which made them less economical. In addition, other key properties included in the acquisition were recently consolidated by URI. Therefore, following the acquisition by Laramide a leading In Situ Recovery ("ISR") division is created operating in a tier one jurisdiction with enhanced overall project economics and potential low operating costs.

Total consideration paid by Laramide to URI consisted of US$2.5 million in cash ($250,000 of which was previously paid), the issuance by Laramide to URI of 2,218,333 units ("Units"), a promissory note in the amount of US$5.0 million with three anniversary payments due on January 5, 2018 (US$1.5 million), 2019 (US$1.5 million), and 2020 (US$2.0 million), and a retained net smelter royalty on the Projects valued at US$4.5 million. The transaction took over a year to complete and includes the approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to transfer materials licenses for the properties to Laramide.

Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company and one share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"), with each Warrant entitling the holder to purchase one additional common share at a price of C$0.45 for a period of 60 months from the date of closing of the Offering. In the event that the common shares trade at a price of C$1.00 or greater for a period of 10 consecutive trading days, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by giving notice to the holders and, in such case, the Warrants will expire on the 30th business day after the date on which such notice is given by the Company. The common shares and Warrants issued pursuant to URI are subject to a statutory four-month hold period expiring on May 6, 2017. The exercise of the Warrants issued to URI shall be subject to the approval by shareholders of the Company by way of a simple majority of votes cast in respect of such matter.

Overview of Projects

The acquisition consisted of all mineral interests, mining claims and other assets that comprise the Churchrock and Crownpoint mining projects and the recently consolidated Strathmore/ Churchrock assets.

The Projects have a license from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission for production of uranium from Sections 8 and 17 of the Churchrock project, and the Crownpoint project. Also, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the construction of a Central Processing Plant at the Crownpoint property. While the construction permit has been granted a mining study has not been filed to support the technical feasibility or economic viability of the Central Processing Plan.

Significant historical estimates of uranium mineral resources have been completed on the Projects. Collectively, the Projects' historical mineral Resources of uranium are considered "historical estimates" for purposes of Canadian securities legislation and NI 43-101 and are therefore "NI 43-101 compliant". They however cannot be considered current mineral resources. There are four historical resource estimates from 2005 to 2012, summarized in the press release dated November 10, 2015 and can be obtained from the Company's website www.laramide.com.

In a Feasibility Study on Churchrock's Section 8, prepared by Behre Dolbear & Company, the existing royalties, in particular Laramide's royalties, were highlighted as substantially impacting the project economics.

The Feasibility Study also concluded that the resources in Section 8 are likely ISR amenable while other Historical estimates suggest the remaining mineral resources may also be amenable to ISR;

Attractive acquisition costs for Laramide on an approximate US$0.21 per pound Global basis;

Laramide has expertise in New Mexico through its current ownership of the La Jara Mesa uranium project and the Company's Chief Operating Officer Bryn Jones has strong ISR experience globally;

Multiple proximal uranium properties provide the opportunity for further consolidation and toll-milling revenues;

The properties are located in a mining district with excellent infrastructure.

Marc Henderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, stated, "We are pleased to have been able to work cooperatively with URI to complete the transaction and to introduce the Churchrock and Crownpoint properties as a new cornerstone asset cementing our strategy of developing low-cost uranium assets in tier one jurisdictions. We now look forward to further development of this high quality ISR asset and getting to work on advancing Churchrock in 2017."

To learn more about Laramide, please visit the Company's website at www.laramide.com.

About Laramide Resources:

Laramide is engaged in the exploration and development of high-quality uranium assets. Its wholly owned uranium assets are in Australia and the United States. Laramide's portfolio of advanced uranium projects have been chosen for their production potential. Its flagship project, Westmoreland, in Queensland, Australia, is one of the largest projects currently held by a junior mining company. Its U.S. assets include Churchrock, Crownpoint ISR projects and La Jara Mesa in Grants, New Mexico, and La Sal in the Lisbon Valley district of Utah.

Forward-looking Statements and Cautionary Language

This News Release contains forward looking statements which are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward looking statements. The Company does not intend to update this information and disclaims any legal liability to the contrary.

Further, the company is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the historical resource estimate information included in the market announcement of 10 Nov 2015.

SOURCE Laramide Resources Ltd.
VANCOUVER, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Armor Minerals Inc. (TSX-V: A) ("Armor" or the "Company") announces that Lenard Boggio has resigned from the Board of Directors in order to pursue other interests, effective immediately.

The Company thanks Mr. Boggio for his contribution over the past two years and wishes him the best in his future endeavours.

About Armor

Armor is a Canadian company engaged in the acquisition and exploration of mineral property interests. On October 28, 2015, the Company signed a definitive Earn-in Agreement with Jack's Fork Exploration, Inc. ("Jack's Fork") to acquire up to an 80% joint venture interest in the Warmister and Tower Hill gold properties located in Virginia, USA. Jack's Fork is currently the holder of certain mineral leases covering the Properties. Armor Minerals Inc. trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "A".

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Certain information in this news release, including any information relating to the statements regarding future expectations, beliefs, goals or prospects, constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential" and similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to important risk factors and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Armor's ability to control or predict. A number of important factors could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks related to exploration; uncertainties related to financings; the uncertainties of interpreting exploration results and the other risks associated with being a mineral exploration company.

Armor disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in Armor's most recent annual and quarterly financial reports which are available online at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about the current expectations, beliefs and plans of the management of Armor relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. Readers are also cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this communication.

SOURCE Armor Minerals Inc.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced today that he will make a run to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ending weeks of local and national speculation.Buttigieg said national party figures started calling him and encouraging him to run soon after the Nov. 8 presidential election, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton."The more folks talked to me, the more I became part of the conversation, the more I began to feel that this was so important that I needed to take this seriously," Buttigieg said in an interview. "I never pictured this as something I would seek to do. But like millions of other people, a lot changed for me on Election Day...The stakes have never been higher to have a robust Democratic party that is connecting with Americans in every part of the country, including ours."Buttigieg becomes the sixth person to formally declare their candidacy for the post, joining Keith Ellison, a Minnesota congressman; Tom Perez, the secretary of labor; Ray Buckley, the party chair in New Hampshire; Jaime Harrison, South Carolina party chair; and Sally Boynton-Brown, Idaho party chair.The current interim chair of the DNC is political strategist and columnist Donna Brazile. The DNC sets the support strategy for Democratic candidates at local, state and national levels. It also organizes the Democratic National Convention during presidential election years and sets the party's platform.Buttigieg declined to identify the Democrats who have approached him about running, saying it was "a mix of different people" who felt "there was room in the conversation for a different kind of voice.""Some people like the idea of somebody who's maybe not from as much of a federal perspective and not perceived as someone who is sort of driven by Washington," he said.Buttigieg added that his experience as South Bend's mayor over the past five years matched with "a real need for the party to pay attention to a local perspective.""The experience of a place like South Bend, and our region more broadly, is actually a really important part of how the party needs to build for the future," he said.Buttigieg will attempt to leap-frog from his job as mayor of a mid-sized city to a key national post without first holding a statewide or national office. But his profile has been on the rise, with several glowing stories by national media outlets.In a November article in The New Yorker, President Barack Obama mentioned Buttigieg as one of four people he sees as keys to the party's future.Buttigieg's run also comes at a time when the Democratic Party is reeling from Clinton's loss and looking for ways to better connect with the Rust Belt voters who helped tip the election."This is one of the most talented young leaders in the Democratic Party," David Axelrod, President Obama's former chief strategist, told The New York Times Thursday. "And he comes from the middle of the country, where the party needs to be strengthened."In an article he posted last month on medium.com, Buttigieg offered a preview of his message to the DNC, writing, "We need to begin with the values that make us Democrats in the first place. If we don't talk about values, many Americans will tune us out. Again. I am a Democrat because I believe in protecting freedom, fairness, families, and the future."Buttigieg's time as mayor has featured key initiatives such as his push to repair or demolish 1,000 vacant and abandoned houses in 1,000 days, the "Smart Streets" project to make downtown streets more pedestrian and business friendly, a wave of new development proposals and the stabilizing of the city's population.John Zody, Chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party and a voting member of the DNC announced his support of Buttigieg early Thursday afternoon."With investments in things like community development, job creation, and infrastructure during his time as Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg has the capability of bringing a much-needed Midwest voice to the Democratic Party that will resonate across the country," Zody said. "Pete is a young and dynamic talent that we need at the top of our party, and I am happy to support a Hoosier for DNC Chair."The Democratic Party plans to elect its next leader seven weeks from now, on Feb. 23-26, following four regional forums the candidates are expected to attend: Jan. 13 in Phoenix, followed by Jan. 27-28 in Houston, Feb. 3-4 in Detroit and Feb. 10-11 in Baltimore. Only the DNC's 447 members are allowed to vote.Buttigieg plans to attend all the forums. Still, he said South Bend residents should not worry that city affairs will suffer in his absence.City administrators have adjusted to his United States Navy Reserve duties, including his deployment for several months in 2014 on active duty in Afghanistan."We have a superb team that knows when to bring things to me for a decision," Buttigieg said. "They know what I want to do. I make sure that things are running smoothly any time I leave town."Since he was first elected mayor in November 2011, Buttigieg, a 34-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar, has been the frequent source of speculation that he had larger political ambitions.He said some people didn't even think he would seek a second term, which he won in November 2015 with 80 percent of the vote, after he publicly announced he was gay."My view is that I should do whatever I can do to make myself useful, wherever that is," he said. "That has been here in South Bend, but I see a way to make myself useful more generally to the party. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing as far as my career trajectory, but I do know that it's a moment when there's going to be some incredibly meaningful work, setting up an alternative in the face of the politics that I think are about to happen in our country."If Buttigieg wins the DNC post and then resigns as mayor, the 85 precinct committee chairs in the city would elect a replacement to serve out his term. The winner must have a majority of votes, or 43 votes, in order to win.On Tuesday Oliver Davis, a Democratic common council member, announced that he would be interested in succeeding Buttigieg as mayor if he wins the DNC chairmanship.Buttigieg said it's too early to talk about whom he would like to see lead the city if he leaves."I'm an underdog in this race and it's a national campaign," he said. "I'm not a nationally famous person, so I'm realistic also about this effort. I'm in it to win it, but I think it's premature to get into questions like that."Still, Buttigieg might be selling himself short, said Tim Roemer, a former South Bend area congressman and U.S. ambassador to India.Roemer ran for DNC chair for four weeks in early 2005 before dropping out of the race as the final challenger to eventual winner Howard Dean. He said Buttigieg's record in South Bend could appeal to a party still smarting over Trump's wins in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania."Mayor Pete brings very strong credentials, solid electoral experience and great experience in the Midwest, which is the heart and soul of the country," said Roemer, now a strategic counselor at public affairs firm APCO Worldwide.Roemer added that "what really matters is your communications and game plan, how you're going to make improvements, how you're going to pay attention to every state and build the party to where it does well."Buttgieg called being mayor "the job of a lifetime.""I'm in the mix for another job, in the same way that sometimes you let your employer know that you're being considered for another job," he said. "That's kind of what I'm letting the community know, as my boss. That doesn't mean I'm any less committed over the next seven weeks to making sure that the city is run well and we continue making progress on all the things we have underway."
The proxy battle between Ohio Gov. John Kasich and President-elect Donald Trump over the Ohio Republican chairman's job took a new twist Wednesday with a missive from 38 county GOP chairmen that backs Trump's favorite.Jane Timken, GOP vice-chairwoman for Stark County, received the support over current state Chairman Matt Borges, who is backed by Kasich.Both sides are ardently lobbying the 66 members of the state Republican Central Committee, which will choose the party's leader on Friday."I've made calls to the people who are on the state committee and told them (what) I think Matt has done," Kasich said."We kind of won everything, right? The (Ohio Supreme) Court, all the statewide offices. We've got more numbers in the House than we've ever had. The Senate."Matt's a good guy. He's a friend of mine, so I'm helping him out by doing that."But the joint email from the county chairmen said: "We not only believe that the views and sentiments of county Republican chairmen ought to be considered by the committee on such important matters as the election of a state chairman but that the committee and most certainly the state chairman ought to be absolutely unwavering in their support of all Republican nominees, at every level."Clearly, though, this was NOT the case in the instance of our 2016 Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. Consequently, we are now in jeopardy of having the state party be completely at odds with the new Trump administration, as well as with the (Republican National Committee) itself. This is, quite obviously, an untenable if not wholly unacceptable situation which only you, the voting members of the state committee, have the power to resolve."Both Borges and Timken say they have the needed votes."I don't think vote counting is as easy as it sounds," said Borges' top assistant, Katie Eagan. " There's a difference between a nice conversation and a confirmed vote."Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, a Borges backer who has toted votes in many party contests, said in an email to the state party panel, "It is obvious in talking with members of the committee that Matt has the support of a large majority."
Ducey goal: Zero income tax

The Kansas experiment of eliminating the income tax is a failure that Arizona would be wise to avoid, participants at the launch of a new economic-policy think tank were told Thursday.The moral of our story is Dont do what Kansas did,' " said Duane Goossen, who ran the Kansas state budget office for 12 years. The result of eliminating the income tax on small business and chopping down the income-tax rate has been disastrous, he said.Its a Dumpster fire, its a real crisis," said Goossen, who came to Arizona to help kick off the opening of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress.His warning comes as Gov. Doug Ducey is putting the finishing touches on his State of the State speech amid speculation about how he will further his goal of eliminating Arizona's income tax.Goossen, along with Annie McKay of Kansas Action for Children, said Kansas' experience shows tax cuts have not triggered the economic and job growth that Gov. Sam Brownback promised when he signed a wide-ranging tax-cut bill in 2012.Weve actually been losing folks, because of reduced opportunities and reduced quality of life," McKay told the estimated 75 people who gathered to mark the opening of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress.
North Texas was freezing during a three-day stretch last month, but Mary Garcia refused to turn on the heat in her cramped apartment. She feared that doing so would too quickly drain her pay-as-you-go account with Penstar Power, a Dallas-based electricity provider.On Dec. 19, with just $15.31 in her account and the outside thermometer showing 27 degrees, Garcia composed a plea to Lite-Up Texas, a state program that had long helped low-income folks pay their electricity bills."Please I beg you to bring back this assistance with electricity," she wrote in an email that she inadvertently sent to The Texas Tribune. "I am going to freeze during this cold season."Garcia is among many poor Texans coming to grips with the loss of support from Lite-Up Texas, which stopped offering its discounts on Aug. 31 because it ran out of money.About 700,000 households relied on the program in 2015 to cover 25 to 31 percent of their electricity bills, according to the Public Utility Commission. (For some years, Lite-Up Texas only offered subsidies during summer months, but in its earliest years and last year, the help was year-round.)Lawmakers created the program, funded by electric ratepayers across Texas, in 1999 to help low income folks on the state's newly deregulated electricity market. Texans eligible for food stamps or Medicaid qualified for the discounts.Please I beg you to bring back this assistance with electricity. I am going to freeze during this cold season. Mary Garcia, Arlington resident and former Lite-Up Texas beneficiaryLite-Up Texas doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance, even as lawmakers occasionally tapped its funding source  called the System Benefit Fund  to prop up the state's budget.But in 2013, the Legislature ended the 65-cents-per-megawatt-hour surcharge that fueled the program.Every dollar counts for Garcia, 59, a former hospital cleaning woman and housekeeper. She depends largely on federal disability payments, which she started receiving after suffering crippling headaches that built up to a brain aneurysm in October 2015.Sitting in a living room illuminated only by lights strung on a small Christmas tree, she recalled learning that a program she had used for years was over. "I thought to myself, 'How could they do that?'" she said. "This really upset me. It's terrible to say, but I really depended on it."Garcia wasn't the only one who relied on the program. Ofelia Zapata, of Austin Interfaith and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which each serve low-income Texans, said she's been flooded with calls since September from clients who are worried about losing such help.That includes Frances Medrano, who lives alone in Weslaco, about 15 miles east of McAllen."Those few dollars, whether it be $20, $30, $40, were a big, big help for myself," Medrano said. "I really didn't think the funds were going to run out."Like Garcia, Medrano, 55, struggles to work and depends on federal disability payments. She has spent years on dialysis and recently had a kidney transplant, she said. Now, she's doing everything she can to limit her Verde Energy bill: keeping the lights off and going without heat on occasional chilly days. When summer hits, she plans to put a box fan in the window.She has contemplated asking family members for help, but that "would be a last resort," she said. "Your pride gets in there."Courtney Smith, who directs an elder support program for Senior Source, said her Dallas-based nonprofit answers many calls about utility bill worries, though few are specific to the state program's end. "But if we have a really hot summer or cold winter, it will become an issue," she said.Some counties and larger competitive utilities offer their own assistance, Smith said, but those resources are limited and sometimes harder for folks to immediately find.TXU Energy chips in aid that Senior Source helps distribute, Smith added, but the nonprofit is now going through the money more quickly since Lite-Up Texas ended.Sharon Litke, vice president for operations at Penstar Power, said her company does not provide its own assistance but tries to match customers with area groups that do."Certainly, Lite-Up has hit our clients hard, and a lot of our clients have just fallen on bad times," she said, adding that she was worried about this week's cold snap. "Our heart just goes out to them, honestly."Litke told the Tribune that someone at Penstar would try to connect Garcia with groups that provide utility assistance in Arlington.Texas Legal Services Center has crafted a bill to restore the state program, and it is looking for a lawmaker to carry it in the coming legislative session, Zapata said. But at a time of stalled revenues and crunched budgets, reigniting Lite-Up Texas looks unlikely."This new political landscape  it's going to be cutting everything," Zapata said. "These are basic needs. We're not asking for out-of-the sky stuff."
Donald Trump's hesitation in hiring immigration hard-liner Kris Kobach reflects the next president's indecision on how to approach the biggest issue of his presidential campaign.As a candidate, Trump promised to build a wall on the southern border, deport 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, ban all Muslims from entering the country and even enact additional hurdles for immigrants coming into the country legally.But at times he has appeared to soften his stance, saying he would build a fence instead of a wall and deport only some of those in the United States illegally.Now some aides are lobbying Trump to steer clear of Kobach and to take a more moderate stance on immigration, according to a senior transition official with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and architect of one of the nation's toughest immigration laws, has met with Trump at least twice since Election Day as the president-elect considered him for attorney general or secretary of homeland security, but he was not offered a job.Roy Beck, the executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for tighter restrictions on immigration, said he was initially worried about Trump's seemingly contradictory language until he realized "that's just his way of talking."Still, Beck said, he would be less concerned if Trump found Kobach a role in the administration. Some anti-immigration groups cheered Trump's appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general, but were disappointed that Trump tapped retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to head Homeland Security."Given the importance and his promises ... you really need to have somebody in administration that understands what the law says and what you can do," Beck said.Groups that want Trump to make good on his campaign promise to rein in illegal immigration are hoping he will immediately rescind President Barack Obama's executive actions that halted the deportation of some immigrants in the United States illegally, secure the border and establish a better system to check the status of those employed in the United States."We would expect he would carry out pledges he made in campaign," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman with the Federation for American Reform, which advocates for increased border security and stopping illegal immigration.Mehlman's group is also lobbying Trump and his aides to hire Kobach, saying it "would send a clear signal to the American people that the rule of law will be restored to our nation's immigration system." Kobach has done legal work for the Federation for American Reform, which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a "hate group," a label it disputes.Kelly Arnold, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, said he thought Kobach was still under consideration for a role in the Trump administration. But he said Kobach had remained quiet about his talks with Trump's team.It's possible that Kobach has not been appointed because he wants to run for governor in 2018 or possibly wait to run for a U.S. Senate seat.Trump tapped Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., as CIA director. That removed one of the strongest possible contenders from the race for governor, leaving Kobach as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination. He is also a potential contender to succeed Sen. Pat Roberts, who faced a tough re-election challenge in 2014 and will be 84 when his seat is up again in 2020.Trump's advisers also could be worried that the Senate wouldn't confirm Kobach.Some Republicans senators _ possibly John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dean Heller of Nevada or Ben Sasse of Nebraska _ might vote against Kobach."He is certainly controversial, and so if you hire a person like him he'll bring all that baggage with him," said Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, who once called Kobach the most racist politician in the nation. "I think you can make a pretty compelling case against his confirmation based on his background."Trump might still offer Kobach a role at the Department of Homeland Security or the Justice Department, but Kobach supporters suggest that Trump appoint him to a newly created position _ immigration czar _ that would not need Senate confirmation.Kobach advised Trump on immigration policy throughout the campaign and added Trump's promise to build a wall along the southern border to the Republican Party's national platform.As a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kobach wrote an Arizona law that mandates police officers see documentation from those they think might be in the United States illegally. The controversial law wound up in court, and some parts of it have since been thrown out. As secretary of state, Kobach secured the authority to prosecute election crimes and enacted new voting restrictions.Kobach hosts a weekly talk-radio show in Kansas City, Mo. In 2014, a caller asked Kobach whether he thought that Obama's executive action to halt the deportation of 5 million immigrants living illegally in the United States would result in ethnic cleansing of whites. He said he did not think ethnic cleansing would happen but he did not rule out the possibility, telling the man that "things are strange and they are happening."Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy group, said it was normal for an administration to debate how to tackle an issue but that it didn't mean they were debating whether to do anything at all."That the debate is on how hard-line to be isn't surprising to me," he said. "They want to deport, drive them out of the country. They may disagree on how far and fast to go."
Description

GIS - 06 January, 2016: The Air Freight Rebate Scheme for textile and apparel known as the Speed-to-Market Scheme (STMS) as announced in the Budget Speech 2016/17 by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development will be launched this month after consultations with the various stakeholders.

STMS aims at developing the Speed-to-Market textile and apparel export segment in the wake of Brexit. It will also allow Mauritian textile and apparel exporters to become more competitive vis-a-vis other countries exporting via air freight to Europe.

Another objective is to enhance the competitiveness of Mauritian exports in the European market, especially in terms of speed of delivery while at the same provide support to the textile and apparel enterprises facing difficulties in the wake of Brexit.

The STMS which will be applicable to the textile and apparel manufacturing companies only, will among others; provide a 40 % refund on air freight cost to exporters to Europe including UK; be time-bound for 2 years; and will be operated and managed by Enterprise Mauritius.

The refund will be applicable for exports as from 1st April 2017.
Massive Tech Fund Sets Sights on AI and IoT

Taser Closes Out 2016 with Wave of Body Camera Orders

Tuscaloosa Becomes First Alabama City to Launch Socrata Open Data Portal

Tyler Technologies Signs $3.5 Million SaaS Contract with Amarillo, Texas

An investment with up to $100 billion in capital is set to launch in the coming weeks with a potential focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).The SoftBank Vision Fund, as the Japanese bank is tentatively calling it , has attracted billions of dollars in contributions from technology giants such as Apple and Oracle. According to the, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is considering investing $50 billion of the funds money in the U.S. Other investors in the fund include Saudi Arabia, Qualcomm and Foxconn.Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things both hold potential applications for government. Artificial intelligence , for example, can be used for finding outdated pipes or analyzing the structural integrity of a bridge. Data-gathering, connected sensors can help cities respond faster to flooding, or pick up trash more efficiently.Taser ended the year on a strong note, announcing orders of its body cameras and accompanying evidence management services in 11 different states.The single largest order came from Louisiana State Police, which is buying 1,556 Axon 2 body cameras. The agency is planning on equipping two cameras to each of its officers.Fully deploying HD body cameras, let alone taking the innovative step of purchasing two per trooper, is undoubtedly a bold move in the direction of improved accountability and officer protection, Taser CEO Rick Smith said in a statement.The company also sold more than 2,500 cameras to local agencies in Utah, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Along with the body cameras, Taser sells customers a digital evidence platform on Evidence.com and image processing technology.On Jan. 3, Tuscaloosa became the first city in Alabama to launch a Socrata open data portal.The citys portal includes a crime map, budget information, payroll, travel expenses and a section dedicated to GIS information. Though Tuscaloosa already published data, it was not typically in an easily consumable way.We are strengthening accountability by digitally opening the doors of city hall, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said in a statement . Our goal is to improve public trust and citizen engagement by simplifying government. This is a huge leap for Tuscaloosa to be more open, efficient and effective when serving the people of Tuscaloosa, but its only the first of many.Socrata serves more than 1,200 government customers, and has recently launched products focusing on public safety and data storytelling.The city of Amarillo, Texas, has turned to Tyler Technologies for new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software as well as permitting, licensing and planning functions.The city has signed a software-as-a-service contract with Tyler to use both Munis , the companys government ERP, and the GIS-based EnerGov package.Amarillo, home to more than 190,000 people, will also gain some public information tools through the deal.Amarillo's citizens will benefit from the ease of access to real-time data through the city's 3-1-1 initiatives by leveraging Tyler's citizen-facing products, allowing for seamless coordination between various city departments and automated workflows to boost citizen access, customer service and communication, a Tyler press release reads.According to Amarillo City Council documents , the city spent $3.5 million on the contract for purchase, implementation and five years of support. Tyler beat out Accela and Infor Public Sector for the contract.In council documents, staff emphasized ease of use, the opportunity to better connect with citizens and the availability of real-time data as reasons to buy the software.
LAS VEGAS  As electronics giants revealed their latest partnerships and products at CES 2017, a group of public safety professionals gathered Jan. 4 for an update on FirstNet, the national First Responder Network Authority signed into federal law nearly five years ago  and a panel discussion about whats next for their industry.FirstNet President T.J. Kennedy told the Consumer Electronics Show audience  a roughly half-full room including public safety professionals and at least one general contractor  that the network has taken in bids and should award a contract later this year The sessions real question, however, was how broadband can power a public safety transformation. And it's one that Los Angeles Police Department CIO Maggie Goodrich, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Sheriff Tom Roberts, and FirstNet Senior Advisor Bill Schrier examined in detail.Kennedy, the events moderator, pointed out that Las Vegas public safety personnel recently watched over the city for yet another New Years Eve celebration, and asked Roberts what kinds of technology and broadband uses his department has.Virtually every law enforcement officer in the valley works on New Years Eve, Roberts explained, adding that departments even have the ability to bring in the National Guard.We were using applications we never would have thought of before. We had plainclothes officers out there that we didnt want running into each other, Roberts said, noting that his department needs a network that wont kick you off.What does breaking down the barrier and having the same tool in everybodys hands do? Kennedy asked, referring to networks like FirstNet.It eliminates confusion, No. 1," Roberts said. "In public safety, you need to eliminate as much confusion as possible.Roberts noted that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has solved many radio technology issues since 9/11, but it still needs to integrate, for example, multiple command posts.The LAPD, Goodrich explained, deploys about 1,500 vehicles with video capability. Currently, around 2,000 of its 10,000 officers wear body cameras and another 5,000 officers will ultimately wear them too.That said, officers must return to department facilities to upload video, she said, adding that livestreaming back to a station is probably not realistic."Certainly there are situations where that would be helpful. Its probably not going to be used for every call out there  weve got 2 million calls for service a year," Goodrich said. "But it would be helpful to have it out there."Building in technology to supplement what the LAPD is doing with cameras could also allay concerns from district attorneys about videos that come in without intelligence and analytics.Wouldnt it make sense, Goodrich asked, if her department had more integrated tools and intelligent automation that could take in-car reports over radio noise?She said that yes, it would  if we had some sort of mobile report dictation thing that could handle all the noise youre talking about, noting that the LAPD partnered with Ford to develop technology for Interceptor police vehicles. The more we reduce that report writing time," she said, "the more time an officer spends on the street."Kennedy, a former trooper himself, noted that if officers could learn that a vehicle is stolen by computer as they begin a traffic stop, they would approach the situation differently with that knowledge. There are probably 100 business tech ideas right there," he said.And the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is working directly with Taser to help create a product, which Roberts says has advantages.If you can take whatever we are producing, for the public, theyre going to want to consume it as well, Roberts said, noting insurance agencies and the public alike already use available police reports and might buy other technologies.As cops, we cant afford to buy one-off solutions," Kennedy noted. "We would much rather drive a solution that can be used in the consumer market.Circling back around to FirstNet, Schrier, who was CIO of the Seattle Police Department until August and the city of Seattles chief technology officer prior to that, said the authority will work with a yet-to-be announced private partner to implement its network in 55 states and territories.A lot of the apps and technology that you all would, we hope, develop would come through a private partner," he said. "Im hoping that for FirstNet, my job  is finding killer apps, finding applications and functions that are not available today, but will make a material difference in the way we keep the public safe."Kennedy then explained how his late father was fatally stricken with a heart attack while using a treadmill in a rural, remote area, and pointed out that a drone might be used first to relay a defibrillator  just as it could be used to plot a wildfire fire line, to avoid sending in firefighters with radios.Thats stuff that could be done with sensors. It could be done with throwaway cameras or maybe it could be done with drones. There are so many things that public safety has just not taken advantage of yet, he said, asking panelists to suggest public safety technology the industry should create.Schrier suggested object recognition for video cameras that would differentiate between animals and people.Thats the sort of technology advance that we ought to be seeing all throughout CES, he said.Goodrich agreed, noting that the LAPD would benefit from tech that could help it process the massive quantities of video it generates, and help the department understand when officers are overdriving during pursuits.She also suggested wearable technology like health monitors that could show when an officer is down.Can you tell an officers down if they cant tell us? she said, noting such devices could also help assess the jobs impact on a person.These are terrific examples, Kennedy said, noting the heart attack dangers firefighters face as they're on the front lines. Sensors, he said, could alert command staff when heat and humidity become extreme during a firefight  and similar technology could let hospitals know during a mass casualty events how many patients theyll receive.If youre on the hospital end, wouldnt you want to know if youre getting 10 patients or 50? he asked.I really encourage you to work with your local public safety folks, Kennedy said to the audience. Ive never seen a firefighter or a police officer say, I dont want a tool that works."
The Vermont hack

(TNS) -- The recent revelation that Russian hacking software was found on a laptop belonging to a Vermont utility raises the question: Are our systems vulnerable?As it turns out, the findings released by U.S. intelligence officials last weekend are more benign than what was originally reported. While the laptop was infected by Russian malware, the computer was not connected to a power grid.Still, an attack on a U.S. power grid has long been a nightmare scenario for top U.S. officials. The National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command chief Adm. Michael Rogers have previously warned it's not a matter of if but when attackers target U.S. power systems.A Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman said cybersecurity is a matter of increasing concern for the utility and one it takes very seriously. Scott Fiedler said he couldn't give away the playbook, but acknowledged TVA uses a multitiered approach to cyber security measures.As the nation's largest power provider, we work around the clock to monitor our network to protect it from cyber threats, he said. ... We perform continuous monitoring, penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.Fiedler explained that TVA employees are required to take cybersecurity training on an annual basis to ward off phishing schemes that may seek passwords or other sensitive information.He said TVA also utilizes a specific team to train the utility's information security specialists, all of which share a common goal  protect the utility's network.Our critical infrastructure systems are housed within a specific network and are isolated from the corporate network. You have to have special authorization to log into it and it's not attached to the internet, he said. We have a fence between personal computers and the grid; they don't touch.The utility also stays abreast of threats through partnerships with the FBI, Homeland Security and the Department of Energy.We are prepared, but you always have to be concerned, stay ahead and learn from the industry, Fiedler said.Athens Utilities has similar safeguards in place to protect its systems. City of Athens grant coordinator and communications specialist Holly Hollman said the utility's networks are also separated from the internet.There is also limited access to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, or SCADA. The system, which informs the utility about line breaks, alarms or substation outages, is on a closed network.Through our hardware and software policies, we have multiple ways to protect the system, Hollman said.The Burlington Electric Department, one of Vermont's two largest electric utilities, confirmed Friday it had found on one of its laptops the malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, the name the U.S. government has given to malicious cyber activity by Russian civilian and military intelligence services.On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported the internet activity was apparently caused by a electric department employee checking his Yahoo email account. Officials told the Post the traffic associated with the IP address was not necessarily malicious and could be found elsewhere.Investigators did find a Neutrino exploit kit, a package known for delivering malware, but it did not appear to be connected with Grizzly Steppe, the Post reported.
(TNS) -- DECATUR  Ameren Illinois, switched on to all the ways it can communicate with its customers, is now the recipient of an award honoring its media savvy.The utility won the Best Overall Social Media Presence title in a competition hosted by the Midwest Energy Association, a trade group. This is the first time a social media award has been presented and Ameren Illinois bested 12 other rivals to win; the utility also got an honorable mention in the Best Customer Communication & Service via Social Media category.Ameren Illinois is committed to being a leader in customer satisfaction, said Richard Mark, the utility's president. ...Social media is a vital communications channel to engage and educate our customers and stakeholders.The utility engages its 40,000 Facebook followers and 18,000 Twitter subscribers with updates on everything from power outages and grid improvements to touching stories about a lineman who donates bikes to poor children.But communication is a two-way street, and inviting the public to comment on what you're doing opens the door to some surprising responses. For example, Ameren Illinois recently posted a warning on Facebook about not using extension cords with space heaters to cut down the risk of fires.This prompted a follower called Joe Holbrook to write: ...You can't fix stupid, and ignorant (sic) is rampant, so let natural selection work and cull the herd.In another posting, the utility advised its customers that a good energy efficiency tip was to take advantage of sunny days by opening curtains on south-facing windows.But customer Kelly Langford came back with a reply that offered a different take on how Ameren Illinois could save people money: It would be easier if they would quit ripping ppl off.! she posted.The utility says it's natural people want to vent and it takes a fairly relaxed attitude to posts unless someone crosses a line with insults or offensiveness.Ameren Illinois spokeswoman, Kelly Hendrickson, has the job of managing the utility's social media pages and says giving customers a chance to vent is not a bad thing. Kind of the way we see it, they are out there talking about us anyway, so let's be a part of the conversation, she added.
Q: I heard Pat say on Iowa Public Radio that the city of Des Moines got its name from a Native American word for a path. I always thought the French named it for the monks, or moines, in the area.

A: No, the monk story is a popular myth, or as historians call it, a spurious etymology. Its true that moine means monk in French, but that wasnt the source of the name.

The city was named for the Des Moines River, which was indeed named by French explorers. However, they got the name in the 1600s from a Native American term that sounded to them like Moingona, and which they eventually shortened to Moin, historians say.

In the indigenous Miami-Illinois language, moingona meant a road or a portage (a path for carrying a boat and supplies between waterways).

The word referred specifically to a path that a local tribe of the Illinois nation (also called the Moingona) used to circumvent rapids on the river near where it joins the Mississippi at the southeastern corner of Iowa.

As the citys official website notes, opinions about the origin of the name have varied over the years.

But the consensus seems to be that Des Moines is a variation of Moingona, Moingonan, Moingoun, Mohingona, or Moningounas, as shown on early maps.

(Weve also seen the spelling Mou-in-gou-e-na, apparently an attempt to reproduce the original native pronunciation.)

In the 1670s, two French explorers, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi River Valley, and hence the first to set foot in what is now Iowa.

They encountered the Moingona people near a large tributary on the west bank of the Mississippi, and later French explorers adapted the name of the tribe, shortening it to Moin, and named the tributary des Moins (of the Moins), according to historical accounts.

A 1681 French map, based on the explorations of Marquette and Joliet, shows a Moingona village, marked as Moingwena, along a river that runs into the Mississippi. And later French maps and journals, from the early 1680s to the 1780s, refer to this tributary as Riviere Des Moingona, le Moingona R, r des Moingona, Moin, and River des Moins.

English speakers used the name as well. In the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the name is recorded as the river Demoin (1804), and in the journals of the English explorer Thomas Nuttall its the river des Moins, or Moingona (1819).

An article entitled The French Impress on Place Names in the Mississippi Valley, by John Francis McDermott, published in August 1979 in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, remarks on the constant habit of abbreviation by the French.

No monks ever had anything to do with the Des Moines River in the present state of Iowa, McDermott writes. The Moingona tribe of Indians lived there and the French merely cut their name down to Moin; traders went to le pays des Moins. (That is, the land of the Moins.)

The historian Virgil J. Vogel has much the same explanation in his book Iowa Place Names of Indian Origin (1983). He quotes from an early 19th-century account of the meeting of Marquette, Joliet, and the Moingona people:

The travellers, having halted within hailing distance, were met by the Indians, who offered them their hospitalities, and represented themselves as belonging to the Illinois nation. The name which they gave to their settlement was Mouin-gouinas (or Moingona, as laid down in the ancient maps of the country), and is a corruption of the Algonkin word Mikonang, signifying at the road; the Indians, by their customary elliptical manner of designating localities, alluding, in this instance, to the well-known road in this section of country, which they used to follow as a communication between the head of the lower rapids and their settlement on the river that empties itself into the Mississippi, so as to avoid the rapids.

Later on, the account continues, the French adopted this name; but with their custom (to this day, that of the Creoles) of only pronouncing the first syllable, and applying it to the river, as well as to the Indians who dwelt upon it; so that they would say la riviere des Moinsthe river of the Moins; aller chez les Moinsto go to the Moins (people).

So how did Moines get its e? The account explains that later inhabitants came to believe that the word was derived from the French term for monks (moines), assuming incorrectly that monks must have lived in the area.

All this preceded the existence of the city, of course. In 1843, a military post was established in central Iowa where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers intersect. The post was named Fort Des Moines. The city that grew up on the site was named Fort Des Moines when incorporated in 1851, and shortened to Des Moines six years later.

Not long after, an unincorporated town about 40 miles upstream on the Des Moines River was named Moingona, and to this day it bears the original Indian name.

Heres another interesting aside. The original proposal was to name the military post Fort Raccoon, a choice that was rejected by higher-ups in the army.

The War Department, in the person of Gen. Winfield Scott, declared that Fort Raccoon was not a dignified name for a fort. Instead, it was named Fort Des Moines.

So if it hadnt been for General Scott, the state capital would probably be known as Raccoon.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.

And check out our books about the English language.
Bernie Ecclestone insists he is happy rather than upset that some of F1's biggest names have elected to retire.

F1 veteran and 2009 world champion Jenson Button has called time on his long career, as has Felipe Massa.

But it is believed Brazilian Massa could actually go back on his decision, because Williams' Valtteri Bottas is tipped to move to Mercedes for 2017.

That is because new world champion Nico Rosberg shocked the German team and F1 by deciding to quit just five days after winning the 2016 title.

F1 supremo Ecclestone insisted he is not angry with Rosberg, despite the fact he is leaving the sport without its reigning world champion in 2017.

"He did his job," the 86-year-old Briton told Germany's Sport Bild. "He wanted to become world champion and he has it now. Why should he continue? I can understand him."

In fact, Ecclestone said Rosberg's exit actually "helps" F1.

"It shows that the world champion has a clever head on his shoulders. He has reached his great goal, so we can't blame him for wanting to do something else in his life," he added.

As for Button and Massa, Ecclestone said: "I am glad that they are able to get out of their own choosing, as in the old days we lost drivers for other reasons, like if they were killed in accidents.

"So these retirements are even joyous events for me," he insisted.

(GMM)
The European Commission (EC) has no new elements to report on holding the trilateral gas talks between the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia, Spokesperson for Specific Energy Union Projects Jakub Adamowicz has said.

"There are no new elements to report from our side that concerns trilateral gas negotiations where we are playing the mediating role. We had our last meeting here in Brussels in December and this is the state of play. So no elements to announce from our side," he said at a briefing in Brussels on January 5.

Journalists tried to receive comments on the interview of Russian Permanent Representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov with Interfax where he expressed alarm about the state of Russian gas transit to Europe due to low stocks of gas in Ukraine's underground storage facilities.

"Gas is flowing. We are working. There no new elements to report at this stage," he said asked if there is a threat to gas supplies to Europe.

He also deflected comments on the figures Chizhov presented regarding gas stocks, adding that gas storage levels are the public information which is widely available and it is not the European Commission's role to provide commentary on the levels.

Repeatedly asked if 14 billion cubic meters of gas in Ukraine's underground storage facilities is enough to maintain gas transit, he said that what the European Commission does is to provide a framework for good negotiations between the parties in the gas trilateral talks.

"This is all we have to say on this specific topic as of today," he said.
Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine Yuriy Stets has signed an order launching liquidation of Ukrainian Service 'Ukrainian television and radio broadcasting' (UTR).

The press service of the ministry reported on Thursday that the order was signed late December 2016 in pursuance to the law on Ukraine's international broadcasting multimedia system and to save budget funds.

"I would say that the liquidation process is long. The stocktaking is being conducted and the assets to be transferred or waived are being analyzed. The Information Policy Ministry will monitor that rights of employees are not violated during the liquidation process," Deputy Minister Artem Bidenko said.

According to the law on Ukraine's international broadcasting multimedia system, state-run enterprise Ukraine's international broadcasting platform is to be created on the basis of UTR. The law was signed by the Ukrainian president on December 28, 2015.

Ukraine's international broadcasting multimedia platform was launched on October 1, 2015. Instead of UTR satellite television channel, UA/TV channel was launched.
DCH Group of businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavsky has officially announced that Kharkiv Tractor Plant started operating on January 6, the press service of the group has reported.

"Today is the joyful day in the history of Kharkiv Tractor Plant: we have a chance of starting the processes required for the launch of production," the press service said citing Yaroslavsky.

He also thanked Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Head of Kharkiv Regional Administration Yulia Slitlychna for participation in deciding the fate of the enterprise.

"I am thankful to the Ukrainian president for help in unblocking operation of the plant and the governor of Kharkiv region for consistent support of our efforts in this direction," he said.

DCH said that employees of the plant involved in the preparation of production facilities for their launch headed by Director General Andriy Koval went working on January 6.

"I as investor in the Kharkiv Tractor Plant aim at providing for rhythmic production process despite all accumulated problems. We are sending workers to the workshops, mobilizing engineers and start launching production. We would have to recover market channels, restore technological potential and economic ties and modernize production facilities. This is a serious scope of work. From the first minute of this day we have started solving these tasks," Yaroslavsky said.
Richard L. Watson, 92, of Green River, passed away Dec. 25, 2016 at the Mission at Castle Rock Rehabilitation Center. A longtime resident of Green River, Watson died following an illness of several years.

He was born Aug. 8, 1924, in Crawfordsville, Ind., the son of Herman D. and Ethel Broaders Watson.

Watson attended schools in Indiana and California.

He married the former Dorothy Brown in Green River, on June 11, 1948. She preceded him in death Aug. 1, 2013.

Watson was employed as a materials manager for Alcon.

His interests were spending time with his family, traveling and woodworking.

He also enjoyed working jigzaw and jumble puzzles.

Survivors include one son, Steven M. Watson of Uniontown, Wash., and one daughter Kathryn L. Elliott of Green River; along with eight nieces and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife and one sister.

Funeral services will be conducted at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Mission at Castle Rock's Recreation Room in Green River. Interment will be in the Riverview Cemetery. Friends may call at the Castle Rock Recreation Room one half hour prior to services.

Condolences may be left at http://www.vasefuneralhomes.com.
As a politician, its easy to find oneself on the wrong end of a newspaper editorial.

However, this week, were applauding the stance the Sweetwater County Commissioners have taken in opposing the land grab a few state legislators want to push.

Federally-managed lands comprise a majority of the land available in Sweetwater County.

A lot of that land is available for multiple uses and give residents and visitors the chance to recreate at treasured locations like Little Mountain, Pine Mountain and the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

According to a 2015 study conducted by the University of Wyo...
Riding with my friend John in his Nissan Leaf, an electric vehicle, the car made no sound at all.

With the windows open you can hear the changing of gears on nearby bicycles, and you can hear the breeze in the branches over the boulevards. We were in his town of Fort Collins, Colo. John works as a sustainability coordinator for a group of hospitals. He was giving me a tour of solar installations all over town, including new construction with the solar panels built right into the roofs; or rather, the roofs were solar panels.

John said that a lot of this was encouraged by government subsid...
Some parents just stand out and seem to not only make an impression on their children, but on others around them.

Green River parent Marsha Harris is one of those parents, although she may be too humble to admit it.

Throughout the years, not only has Marsha and Joseph Harris children stood out, but so have their parenting skills. Both Marsha and Joseph are used to attending Sweetwater County School District No 2 Board of Trustees meetings to support their children who received honors at those meetings.

For Marsha, the last school board meeting was different because it was her turn to be...
CHARLOTTE  Delta Airlines has canceled 350 flights ahead of a winter storm bearing down on Atlanta, home of Delta's global headquarters and the world's busiest airport.

Delta said it had canceled the flights "pre-emptively" ahead of the storm.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesman Reese McCranie said the airport will never close, and will remain open through the wintry weather.

McCranie said crews will keep all runways, taxiways and roads open.

___

10:15 a.m.

Sleet began falling across central and northern Mississippi after dawn Friday.

Schools and colleges mostly opened Friday, but some are dismissing students early.

Some ice is sticking to the elevated interchange of Interstate 55 and Interstate 20 in Jackson that's the heart of Mississippi's highway system. "The Stack," as it's known locally, is notorious for icing in winter weather.

Farther north in the state, mostly snow is falling.

Some Mississippi suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee, reported 2 to 3 inches of snow by mid-morning.

___

10:00 a.m.

North Carolina's governor says he's signing an emergency declaration for all of the state's 100 counties ahead of a snowstorm expected to sweep the Southeast.

Gov. Roy Cooper said at a Friday news conference that the declaration was being drawn up for him to sign. He said the declaration will allow authorities to move equipment around the state more easily.

Cooper urged people to stay off the roads during what's expected to be "a significant snow event."

He said the state Department of Transportation has up to 1,900 trucks available. He said National Guard members are also on standby.

___

8:30 a.m.

Schools, government offices and businesses are closed throughout much of Arkansas and Oklahoma as a winter storm delivers snow to the Southern Plains.

In Oklahoma, forecasters are expecting 2 to 4 inches of snow in the central part of the state, prompting the closure of schools, universities and businesses. In Arkansas, a winter weather advisory remains in effect until 3 p.m. Friday as snow continues to fall along the Interstate 40 corridor in the central part of the state.

Meanwhile, in the Texas Panhandle, 5 to 7 inches of snow are in the forecast through Friday afternoon.

The wintry precipitation is part of a larger storm system that is expected to intensify as it makes its way east. Winter storm warnings are in effect for several Southeastern states.

___

8 a.m.

Organizers say they've moved the annual Joan of Arc Parade through New Orleans' French Quarter from Friday to Saturday night over concerns about the winter storm moving across the South.

NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reports (http://bit.ly/2iY4lCn ) that the Joan of Arc parade usually rolls on her birthday of Jan. 6  the official start of Carnival. It celebrates the French saint who led her fellow countrymen in relieving the siege at Orleans, France, in the Hundred Years War.

The parade route includes traditional stops for a toast from Consul General of France Gregor Trumel; the blessing of the saint's sword at the St. Louis Cathedral; and the traditional King Cake Ceremony at Jackson Square.

The parade's new start time is 7 p.m. Saturday.

___

7:50 a.m.

Much of South Carolina expects to see ice, sleet or snow this weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for 14 counties in the northwestern portion of the state from Friday evening to Saturday morning. A winter storm watch is in effect for three counties in the northeast.

Forecasters say up to 7 inches of snow could fall in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. Up to 5 inches of snow could fall around Lancaster and Chesterfield. Up to 3 inches of snow could fall north of Columbia. One or 2 inches of snow are possible around Darlington, Dillion and Marlboro counties.

Transportation department crews are already spreading salt and sand on highways in Upstate and plan to begin in the central part of the state later Friday.

7:30 a.m.

Crews have moved trucks and dozens of road workers from south Georgia to the northern part of the state to help clear roads of snow.

The Georgia Department of Transportation says many workers on Friday began working 12-hour shifts, as up to 4 inches of snow is expected in parts of the state.

The agency says that statewide, it has 1,900 employees on call and more than 380 pieces of snow removal equipment.

Authorities say they also have 54,030 tons of salt, 65,460 tons of gravel, and 450,000 gallons of brine  a mixture of salt and water used to treat roads.

In DeKalb County, one of Georgia's largest counties near Atlanta, officials say they have 110 cots available for employees who will work 16-hour shifts if necessary.

___

7:05 a.m.

Virtually all of North Carolina is expected to see snow this weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for most of the state for Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. A winter storm watch is in effect in a few areas. Only the southeastern corner of the state is not expecting snow before the storm moves through.

Snowfall is expected to range from about 1 inch around Lumberton to as much as 9 inches around Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham and Raleigh. As much as 7 inches could fall from Asheville to Charlotte.

Bitterly cold temperatures are expected to follow the snow.

Utilities are making plans to deal with power outages. No problems were being reported early Friday.

Transportation department officials are spreading salt and sand on many roads.

___

3 a.m.

A winter storm bearing down on the Southeast with the possibility of snow, sleet and freezing rain is threatening to disrupt weekend travel and bring misery to millions.

Alabama and Georgia announced they were going on an emergency footing. Classes have been canceled across several states and motorists are being urged to avoid unnecessary weekend travel as crews rush to pre-treat roads that could be made treacherous by the storm.

Authorities said one person has died, a man whose pickup truck slid off a snow-covered road Thursday in Kentucky.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Friday and Saturday from eastern Alabama through north Georgia, including Atlanta, and into the Carolinas and part of Virginia.

In North Carolina, Saturday's ceremonies formally inaugurating a governor were canceled.
HOUSTON  The rapper Takeoff, best known for his work with the Grammy-nominated trio Migos, is dead after a shooting early Tuesday outside a bowling alley in Houston, and police are asking for the public's help in identifying who fired shots.
Ukraine in 2016 exported electricity worth $152.063 million, in particular in December for $14.278 million.

According to the State Fiscal Service, electricity delivered to Hungary amounted to $119.317 million last year, to Poland to $32.392 million, Moldova to $347,000, and other countries to $7,000.

Thus, in money terms exports of Ukrainian electricity last year grew by 1.3% or $2.007 million compared to 2015 ($150.056 million).

In addition, in 2016 Ukraine imported power worth $3.63 million ($3.565 million from Russia and $65,000 from Belarus), while electricity for $84.874 million was imported in 2015.

As reported, Ukraine in 2011 exported electricity for $399.963 million, in 2012  for $574.819 million, in 2013  for $580.195 million, in 2014  for $487.185 million, and in 2015  for $150.056 million.
Senate Republicans have kept a Supreme Court seat vacant for nearly 11 months now rather than let President Obama fill it.

Worse, some GOP senators, including North Carolina's Richard Burr, suggested last year that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president they would try to keep her from placing a new justice for her entire term in office.

So it was inevitable, now that Republican Donald Trump is set to become president, that we'd hear Democrats threatening to block any Supreme Court nominee he puts forward. This would be taking obstructionism to its ultimate conclusion.

I would warn Democrats not to go there.

They should be better than Republicans and help return the Senate to its historical norm. Does anyone remember that the late Antonin Scalia was confirmed by the Senate unanimously?

If Trump nominates a court candidate who is qualified for the position, he or she should be given fair consideration and then a vote on the Senate floor.

Democrats won't have to vote for confirmation, of course, but they should not use the filibuster to block a vote  even if that's what Republicans would have done if circumstances were reversed.

Trump was elected president and is entitled to exercise the power of appointment, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate's prerogative should not be abused.

Trump has said he would nominate a justice in the mold of Scalia. That actually would be a positive, as Scalia himself would protect constitutional liberties from Trump's worst impulses  for example, Trump's declaration that "flag burners" should be jailed and lose their citizenship.

If Democrats tried to require 60 votes to bring a nominee to the floor for approval, Republicans could respond by eliminating the filibuster.

Some say that needs to happen anyway, as it's undemocratic. True, the filibuster has been used for ill many times, as when Strom Thurmond tried to block civil rights legislation or Ted Cruz attempted to shut down the government.

Yet the 60-vote threshold can force compromise on contentious matters. So a decision to change this rule should receive careful deliberation and not be made in a fit of pique to meet a certain contingency.

The Senate was meant to be a collegial, deliberative body where careful consideration could be given to important matters.

Senate Republicans took a leap in the wrong direction last year by inventing a rule that a president should not be allowed to place anyone on the Supreme Court during the final year of his term. You can bet they will forget that "rule" in the final year of Trump's term.

But Democrats should resist the urge to respond with their own extreme obstructionism.

While they will, and should, strongly oppose some of Trump's Cabinet picks, they should not block votes. They can instead work to turn a couple of Republicans against ill-suited nominees. They're more likely to succeed if they play fair.
Former U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro is recovering from encephalitis, her family said in a statement today.

Hagan, 63, fell ill in Washington, D.C., last month and was hospitalized there. This is the first time information about her condition has been released.

Her husband, Greensboro attorney Chip Hagan, said in an email to friends:

"Kay is now in Chapel Hill. She is recovering from encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. While she is not fully responsive, the doctors have told us that nothing has happened that precludes her recovery."

He included a statement from Dr. William Powers, chairman of the Department of Neurology, UNC School of Medicine:

We are not certain at this time how Kay Hagan developed encephalitis. The type of encephalitis she has is typically caused by a virus. Tests are still being run to determine what caused the infection, and these tests will provide us with more certainty about where and how she contracted this disease. Development of encephalitis from viral infection is a very rare event, occurring in a small percentage of people annually around the world. The symptoms of acute encephalitis can range from a headache to unresponsiveness, however, even patients with a prolonged period of poor responsiveness early in the disease, can slowly recover over a period of months.

Chip Hagan added:

"We are happy with the care Kay is receiving and grateful to have her back in North Carolina. Thank you for your thoughts, your prayers, your kind gestures, and your concern. We all know how strong Kay is and we know she's made stronger by the community she's got supporting and rooting for her."

He said the family is optimistic but realizes that recovery will be a long process.

Hagan, a Democrat, served in the state Senate representing Guilford County from 1999 to 2009. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008, defeating Republican Elizabeth Dole. She lost her re-election bid in 2014 to Republican Thom Tillis.

I'll add my prayers for a full recovery.

Beyond her political career, she is devoted to her family. I know how much she enjoys her grandchildren and hope she'll be spending quality time with them again soon.
Over the past day militants opened fire 32 times on positions of Ukrainian troops in the Anti-Terrorist operation (ATO) zone, the press-service of the ATO staff has said.

In particular, in the sector of Luhansk militants fired Novozvanivka from 120-mm mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, Talakivka and Stanytsia Luhanska  from propelled grenades, while Novotroyitske was fired by a sniper.

In the Mariupol sector militants shelled at Maryinka using mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms were used to attack Hnutove, Pavlopil, Shyrokyne, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Vodiane and Novotroyitske. Starohnativka was attacked by weapons of infantry combat vehicles.

In the Donetsk sector members of illegal armed formations fired Troyitske vicinity with the usage of cannon artillery of 152 mm caliber, Avdyivka  with the usage of 82 mm mortars, Luhanske and Avdiyivka  with the usage of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

In addition, one soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was injured.
In journalism (and fiction writing and a lot of other areas, too, I suppose), the best stories are sometimes the one you stumble on.

Thats how UNCGs university archivist, Erin Lawrimore, found out about Virginia Tucker, the graduate of the North Carolina College for Women (now UNCG) who I wrote about in todays paper.

A few years ago, the university archives, housed over in Jackson Library, took possession of the alumnae files compiled over the years by the UNCG Alumni Association. Lawrimore said these were literally files  file folders crammed full of letters from and newspaper clippings about graduates of NCCW and Womans College and UNCG. Lawrimores job was to go through all these files.

Most of these files werent worth much  just the usual tales of marriages and births and job changes and retirements and deaths that populate the class notes section of every alumni magazine. But Tuckers file caught Lawrimores eye  what the heck is a human computer anyway?  and UNCGs archivist wrote a blog post about this important but forgotten alum. Here it is, with a lot more detail about Tucker than I could cram into todays story.

Note that the blog post is from early 2015. When Hidden Figures trailers started to appear, Lawrimore remembered Tuckers story. On Thursday, the UNCG media machine pitched me the story, and I wrote it for Fridays paper. Lucky for me (and N&R readers) that Lawrimore stumbled upon this file folder and was curious enough to keep digging.

Speaking of the UNCG blog, it's called Spartan Stories, and it's great. Lawrimore and some other folks who work for UNCG Libraries contribute to it. It's an interesting look back at the university over the years. It's definitely worth a read if you're into history.

Back to today's N&R story. It prompted a call this morning from Joel Leonard, one of the founders of Forge Greensboro, the downtown makerspace.

Leonard is a big proponent of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, and the story resonated with him. Leonard also saw the movie Thursday night, and he said he came out of the showing all fired up.

Were no longer in the space race. Were in the tech race, Leonard told me by phone this morning. The communities that have the talent are the ones that have the jobs.

Leonard is trying to organize a free public screening of Hidden Figures for members of the Advanced Vehicle Technology Team at Dudley High School. (This is the same squad that won a national contest in April by designing a car that could get 107 mpg; here's more about the team.)

Leonards also trying to help the Dudley team go to the national contest in Detroit this year. If you want to help Leonard with the screening, the Dudley AVT team or any other sort of STEM thing, email him at joel@skilltv.net.

Want to make sure you see these blog posts? Like me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter.

Have something to say? Email me at john.newsom@greensboro.com.
High Point University will host its annual service of worship in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day at 11 a.m. on Jan. 16 in the Charles E. Hayworth Sr. Memorial Chapel. The service is open to the public; tickets are not required. It also will be streamed live at www.highpoint.edu/live.

This annual chapel service celebrates the life and work of the late King and features noteworthy clergy and scholars from across the country. Bishop L. Jonathan Holston, resident bishop of the South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, will deliver an inspirational message of hope and peace.

The Genesis Gospel Choir will provide music for the service. Interfaith United, the Board of Stewards, National Pan-Hellenic Council, Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Black Cultural Awareness will serve as worship leaders and greeters.

Attendees are encouraged to enter campus through the welcome center at North University Parkway and Panther Drive.

Parking will be available behind Hayworth Fine Arts Center.

HPU is also organizing a Day of Service in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, including dozens of opportunities to serve the city.

For a full schedule of events and to sign up to serve, visit www.highpoint.edu/servicelearning/mlk-day-of-service/.
Updated at 2:32 p.m.

DANVILLE, Va.  Two Danville adults and a juvenile have been arrested in three purse snatchings.

According to a police department release, Jawantez Kagion Waddell, 18, and Jasmine Jackson, 18, were each charged with one count of robbery.

The male juvenile was detained this morning and released to a parent or guardian because he did not meet the criteria for detention according to a Juvenile Intake officer. A detention order for robbery for that juvenile was obtained today and he is currently in custody, according to the release.

Jackson and Waddell were placed in the Danville City Jail without bail.

The three arrests came from a joint investigation by the Danville Police Department and Caswell County Sheriffs Office.

Three elderly women were stalked and robbed at their homes Wednesday evening. Two of the robberies happened in Danville and one in Pelham, N.C.

All three victims were in their 60s and 70s. They were apparently followed to their homes from Wal-Mart on Mount Cross Road in the city of Danville, according to a Danville police news release.

Three elderly women were stalked and robbed at their homes Wednesday evening, and law enforcement in Danville and Caswell County, North Carolina, are investigating.

All three victims were in their 60s and 70s, and they were apparently followed to their homes from Wal-Mart on Mount Cross Road in the city of Danville, according to a Danville police news release.

The first incident happened to a 68-year-old woman at 6:40 p.m. Wednesday in the 200 block of Courtland Street. The woman told Danville police she exited her vehicle to go to her residence when she was approached by a man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and camouflage pants, according to the news release.

The suspect assaulted the victim by grabbing her hair and pulling her to the ground, then fled on foot with her pocketbook, which had personal items and an undisclosed amount of money inside, the news release continued.

At 8:51 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to the 100 block of Martin Avenue for another report of a purse snatching.

A 61-year-old woman pulled into her driveway and parked her vehicle. Three subjects approached her drivers side door, pulled it open and took her purse, the news release read. They were last seen running with the victims purse on Martin Avenue toward Westover Drive.

The third incident happened in Pelham, North Carolina, where the Caswell County Sheriffs Office went to the 100 block of McKinney Road for a call of a snatched purse.

A 72-year-old woman was unloading groceries from her vehicle in her driveway when three men and one woman approached her, the news release stated. One of the male suspects pushed her into the bushes, and fled with her purse.

The three purses contained personal items and undisclosed amounts of money, police wrote in the news release.

The Danville Police Department is urging the public to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings while leaving shopping areas. Report any unusual or suspicious activity to the Danville Police Department immediately by dialing 911.

Anyone with information about these incidents is encouraged to contact Danville Crime Stoppers at (434) 793-0000, the Danville Police Department at (434) 799-6508, the Caswell Count Sheriff's office at (336) 694-9311, the Caswell County Crime Stoppers (336) 694-5119 or email crimetips@danvilleva.gov

Information given will remain confidential.
Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro is recovering from encephalitis at a Chapel Hill hospital, her family said Friday.

Hagan, 63, was taken to a Washington hospital Dec. 8 after falling seriously ill.

Her husband, Chip Hagan, said in an email: While she is not fully responsive, her doctors have not seen anything that precludes her recovery, but recovery will be a long process.

The Greensboro attorney also thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

We all know how strong Kay is and we know shes made stronger by the community shes got supporting and rooting for her, he said in the statement. Our family is deeply appreciative of every email, phone call and letter weve received.

Hagans physician, Dr. William Powers, the chairman of the Department of Neurology at the UNC School of Medicine, said it is not clear how she developed the illness, which was caused by a virus.

Tests are still being run to determine what caused the infection, and these tests will provide us with more certainty about where and how she contracted this disease, Powers said in a statement.

He said getting encephalitis  a sudden inflammation of the brain  from viral infection is rare.

Even patients with a prolonged period of poor responsiveness early in the disease can slowly recover over a period of months, he said.

Before venturing into politics, Hagan worked as both an attorney and in finance, becoming vice president of the estates and trust division and the private banking division at N.C. National Bank, a predecessor of Bank of America, in Greensboro.

She served as a county campaign manager for former Gov. Jim Hunts gubernatorial campaign. Five years later she was elected to the N.C. Senate and served there for 10 years.

In 2007, she began campaigning for U.S. Senate. She triumphed over Republican Elizabeth Dole and took office in Washington in 2009.

Hagan served in Washington for six years before being unseated in 2014 by Republican Thom Tillis in what was at the time the nations most expensive Senate race.

After her Senate term, Hagan became a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Since January 2016, Hagan has worked as a consultant for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Field, a lobbying and law firm on Capitol Hill. She split her time between Washington and North Carolina.
CHARLOTTE  North Carolina's governor says he's signing an emergency declaration for all of the state's 100 counties ahead of a snowstorm expected to sweep the Southeast.

Gov. Roy Cooper said at a Friday news conference that the declaration was being drawn up for him to sign. He said the declaration will allow authorities to move equipment around the state more easily.

Cooper urged people to stay off the roads during what's expected to be "a significant snow event."

He said the state Department of Transportation has up to 1,900 trucks available. He said National Guard members are also on standby.

___

8:30 a.m.

Schools, government offices and businesses are closed throughout much of Arkansas and Oklahoma as a winter storm delivers snow to the Southern Plains.

In Oklahoma, forecasters are expecting 2 to 4 inches of snow in the central part of the state, prompting the closure of schools, universities and businesses. In Arkansas, a winter weather advisory remains in effect until 3 p.m. Friday as snow continues to fall along the Interstate 40 corridor in the central part of the state.

Meanwhile, in the Texas Panhandle, 5 to 7 inches of snow are in the forecast through Friday afternoon.

The wintry precipitation is part of a larger storm system that is expected to intensify as it makes its way east. Winter storm warnings are in effect for several Southeastern states.
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Greenwich-based womens fashion designer Olivine Gabbro will move into fellow Greenwich Avenue store Richards under a new partnership announced this week.

The niece and aunt team of Grace Kang, Olivine Gabbro designer, and Sue Neumann, company president, began their brand in Greenwich with the intention of taking it international. The agreement with Richards, another locally formed brand since bought by family-owned luxury clothing store Mitchells, is a step toward accomplishing that goal, Neumann said.

Under the partnership, Olivine Gabbro will close its Greenwich Avenue store and move its line into Richards down the street with plans for other Mitchells stores to pick up the brand.

One or two representatives from Olivine Gabbro will remain on Greenwich Avenue in Richards to help customers, who will still have opportunities to make appointments with Kang, she said. The arrangement will give Kang and her staff the time to focus on the brand instead of running a store.

The timing has been incredible, Kang said. Were a very small staff and cant focus on growing a global brand and running a store at the same time.

Maintaining the customer service and high-quality bespoke, made-to-measure clothing is a top priority for Kang, so Richards is a natural fit, she said.

Kang and Neumann began Olivine Gabbro in their Greenwich basement before opening a store downtown on East Elm Street. In 2014, they made the leap to Greenwich Avenue, where they hoped to become an anchor on the popular commercial corridor, Neumann said in a 2014 interview, adding they wanted to be there for generations and generations like Richards.

They have steadily increased their prominence. Last fall, Kang joined the industrys elite ranks with a New York Fashion Week show, which she hoped would put Olivine Gabbro in front of an international audience.

The show was a success, and working with Mitchells to carry the Olivine Gabbro brand in stores nationwide fits into Kang and Neumanns planned growth, they said. It helps that Richards is also a family-owned business with local roots, Neumann emphasized.

Our vision from the beginning was to connect with our community, she said. Our philosophy aligns with Mitchells, and this introduces us to a bigger venue. We live here, our kids grew up here and were friends with our clients. We want them to know were not abandoning our community.

The partnership arose organically and so spontaneously, Kang said. Last year, she mentioned that her brand was looking for a new home while showing Richards a new collection, and the discussions took off from there, she said.

We are always searching for new ways to excite our imaginative and forward-thinking clients, Bob Mitchell, Co-CEO of Mitchell Stores, said in an email. The bespoke service that Grace has incorporated into her elegant collection speaks directly to our ladies. The relationship just makes sense.

Neumann hopes their story will prompt other women and especially female family members to start local businesses. Few big fashion companies begin locally, she said, but Olivine Gabbro is paving a different route to success and takes great pride in Greenwich. People (in Greenwich) can relate to our story, because theyve been a part of it, she said.

Kang has big dreams for the brands growth, but her original clientele will remain a priority, she said. Im not giving up Olivine Gabbro to Richards  they can support our growth.

Olivine Gabbro will close its Greenwich Avenue location Saturday, Jan. 15, and move into Richards soon after.

Contact the writer at MBennett@hearstmediact.com, 203-625-4411; Twitter @Macaela_
Investigators of the Military Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine in 2016 sent to the court 285 indictments against 329 persons into criminal proceedings on corruption, Ukraine's Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said.

"Throughout 2016 all investigators of Military Prosecutor's Office (144 military investigators - not to be confused with 500 NABU (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) detectives) sent to court 285 indictments, in addition to other more than 3,000 investigated and sent to court criminal proceedings, upon receipt or giving of an improper advantage in relation to 329 people," Matios wrote on his Facebook page.

In 2016 the courts issued 131 convictions within the criminal proceedings on corruption. Some 135 people were brought to justice, the head of the military prosecutor's office said.
How many life-changing, growth-catalyzing deals didnt get done this year because the two sides werent able to see eye-to-eye on the value they could create together? How many opportunities did you miss to make real magic happen -- for reasons that perhaps had nothing to do with the deal itself?

I see it all the time -- a great deal left undone because one side didnt have the negotiation skills to convince the other of the value they could have created together.

For a lot of people, negotiation can seem a bit mystifying, and as a result, artful negotiation remains an underutilized skillset. But the truth is, negotiation is a skill like any other -- and anyone can master it. Thats why Ive put together these 10 tips -- the top things I've learned at places like Harvard Business School and that I use everyday in my decade-plus entrepreneurial career to help create win-win scenarios for myself and my partners.

Related: 8 Ways to Negotiate Your Way to a Higher Salary

So whether youre making the case for a better salary or trying to close a million-dollar real estate deal, here are the top 10 tips that will help you make your next blockbuster deal happen.

For a more detailed breakdown, check out my podcast on the subject:

Tip 1 -- Connect on a personal level.

I cant stress it enough -- human connection is paramount in negotiation, and your attitude and energy going in will set the tone and affect the outcome. In other words, if you go in anticipating a war, thats exactly what youll experience. On the flipside, if you go in expecting that youre going to make a deal that satisfies the interests of both parties, youre much more likely to have that outcome.

It starts with a mindset. You need to set aside the idea of negotiation as contest between two adversaries, and instead realize that youre working with the person across the table, with the ultimate goal of creating a mutually beneficial arrangement. To get there, you need to connect with the other party on a human level.

Dont forget -- its almost impossible to truly connect with someone over the phone, over Skype, and especially over email. Face-to-face meetings are always the way to go.

Finally, keep in mind that language, both verbal and nonverbal, matters. Use words like long-term and common-ground to convey a sense of common interest and lasting value. Your body language and tone should be relaxed as well, never confrontational.

Tip 2 -- Know who youre dealing with.

No, really know them. In my experience, most deals dont get done because one side didnt know enough about the other party.

In order to make a deal happen, you have to know what the other side wants. And in order to know this, you have to really get to know the other party -- their background, needs, motivations. What makes them tick? What gets them out of bed in the morning? What keeps them up at night?

So, how do you get there? Theres no shortcut. You have to do your research, and ask tons of questions from the outset. A common mistake that I see holding up progress all the time is peoples tendency to assume that the other party is just like us -- that their internal logic is exactly the same as ours, that they have the same wants, fears and motivations as we do. Its almost never the case.

If you understand where theyre coming from, you can also explain things in terms that are meaningful to them, and you will be better prepared to adapt to the dialogue as terms change.

Tip 3 -- Include more items to negotiate, not less.

Another mistake I see people make is not asking for more than the bare minimum. This is mostly done out of fear -- a fear that asking for too much might upset the other party and kill the deal before it ever has a chance. But usually this fear is overblown, and only coming to the table with your deal breakers means that one or more of them will end up on the chopping block.

Heres an example. If youre negotiating with your landlord to paint your apartment, ask for several additional, reasonable improvements -- new landscaping, a new dishwasher or new kitchen flooring. Asking for more gives you items to trade and wiggle room until you get to the make or break items. Youll be more likely to get what you want. Then again, theres always the possibility that you get everything you ask for.

Tip 4 -- Disclose as much information as possible.

Information creates trust. When you keep your cards too close to your chest, people become wary. Open up and share as much information as you can with people to give them the full scope of your thinking. This will only make your desired outcome seem less foreign.

Related: 5 Examples of Companies Succeeding Through Transparency

Details also lend credibility. They demonstrate that youve done your homework, youve thought things through, and you are approaching negotiation from a thoughtful, reasoned perspective.

If youre negotiating a commercial real estate project on the coast, anticipate questions and integrate detailed information on the environmental impact of the development. Of course, make sure that the disclosures are in line with your goals, but dont be afraid to air on the side of transparency.

Tip 5 -- Integrate as many intangibles as possible.

Intangibles fill the spaces between all of the legal and financial components of a deal. This is often where you can win.

What do I mean by intangibles? These are the things that matter to the other side that you can easily give -- the things that have virtually no downside for you, but have lots of upside for the other party. If your brand has a robust social following, for instance, offer to run social media campaigns for the other party. This will have little cost on your end, but will be attractive to a partner who doesnt have access to a large social audience.

If youre an employer negotiating a salary, consider throwing in remote days, flexible hours and other intangibles. Again, extremely valuable for the employee, but of little to no cost to the employer.

Tip 6 -- Remember life is not all about money.

Wed all be better served to remember that money is a currency, a mere proxy for human needs and nothing more. Dont assume that money is the end all, be all for everyone. Its not. This is even more pronounced in the Millennial generation, most of whom value their time, experiences and overall quality of life over and above financial incentives.

If youre stuck at an impasse, ask yourself, is there anything besides money that is important to me? Is there anything besides money thats important to the other party? If its easy to concede, hone in on that.

Tip 7 -- Create relatability by getting yeses out of the way.

The more you can agree to early on creates more relatability between the two parties. To achieve this, get a lot of yeses out of the way first. On your side, pre-plan for a lot of agreements. That way, by the time you reach the sticking points, the common ground youve established will increase the likelihood that youll be able to reach an agreement.

Tip 8 -- Be incremental.

Many people also cant deal with the pain of initial rejection. They go in thinking that they have to hit a home run right away and wrap the deal up in a day. When they hear their first no, they give up.

So often, progress is incremental, and the deal is a six-week, or perhaps six-month process. Dont swing for the fence right off the bat. Be satisfied with incremental progress, and keep pushing talks forward.

Tip 9 -- Dont use deadlines.

Most people think deadlines help in big negotiations, but they almost never do. Instead, they breed more irrationality and irritability and are likely to sabotage your deal before it gets off the ground. Deadlines dont increase scarcity. In fact, they often have the opposite effect, and the party attempting to impose the deadline comes off looking desperate. Deadlines also make negotiations feel like theyre transactions, and transactions are the opposite of what good deals are about.

Tip 10 -- Dont be afraid to think big!

Finally, ask yourself, are you thinking big enough? Just getting a deal done isnt always enough. What else could have been done? Could something have been tied to the back-end? Again, this comes down to the confidence that comes with truly knowing the other party.

Related: The Life-Changing Book That Helps This Entrepreneur Think Big

If you know that youve got an idea or a product that will add value to their business, be confident in asking for what you think its worth. Youll never get things that you dont ask for. Dont just focus on the cake, go for the bakery!

Putting it all in practice.

So there you have it -- the 10 tips that will help you negotiate like a boss. So often, its just as important to remember what not to do. Be sure to avoid these common pitfalls:

Don't assume other peoples internal logic is similar to yours. Exercise true empathy to determine the other party's motivations.

Don't believe the mantra "it's just business." All business is personal, and this phrase is usually trotted out as an excuse to mistreat people.

Don't use power and leverage. Doing so puts the negotiation in the realm of the purely transactional, which is usually bad for both parties.

Now go out there and make magic happen.

Want more tips like this? Subscribe to my podcast, the Awesome Office show on iTunes.

Related:

10 Tips to Negotiate Like a Boss

How to Talk Pay and Negotiate a Better Salary

6 Calculators That Can Help You Determine Your Salary



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
I write in opposition to the current way by which the Electoral College operates. The Electoral College is an antiquated system, originally proposed by the Founding Fathers to separate the population of the United States from the executive branch. While it is correct that the Electoral College pulls power away from large states and large population cities, this power is not simply destroyed: it is given to smaller and swing states.

Yes, California contributed 4.3 million votes to Secretary Hillary Clintons plurality, but to simply say Donald Trump would win if you dont count California is irresponsible and disenfranchising of literally millions of people. Trump would have won if the votes from California werent counted, but they were. Californians are Americans, too.

Now, lets talk about math. If 38,872 voters, split between Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, had voted for Clinton instead of Trump, she would have won those three states and 280 electoral votes, winning the presidency. Are those 38,872 voters, less than two-thirds the population of Greenwich, really more deserving of deciding the election than 4.3 million Californians? The answer is, unquestionably, no.

The next question, then, concerns how this problem may be solved, and the easiest remedy is the National Popular Vote Compact. Article II of the Constitution, so astutely included by the Founding Fathers, states that, each state shall appoint, in such manners as the legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors. Therefore, a state legislature may pass a law directing the states electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote. Many states have passed such laws, but they will not go into effect until states with a sum total of 270 electoral votes agree follow suit. Connecticut should be the next step of this compact.

The reformation of the Electoral College by way of the National Popular Vote Compact continues down a trail blazed by Supreme Court cases Baker v Carr (1962) and Gray v Sanders (1963). The latter case, widely known for its coining of the phrase one man, one vote stated that the weighting of votes through the county unit system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by giving more voting power to residents of particularly small rural counties. It is not difficult to expand this logic to the current system under which the Electoral College operates.

I am a Democrat, but my support of the National Popular Vote Compact does not stem from political machinations. Republicans proved they could win a majority of votes in the 2014 midterms elections, winning 52 pecent of votes cast for House candidates, as well as winning the 2004 presidential election by a more than 3 million vote margin. The Republican Party can, have, and will again win the popular vote.

Therefore, I urge state Sen. Scott Frantz and state Representatives Livvy Floren, Mike Bocchino, and Fred Camillo to support S.B. 9 and H.B. 5205, and to do their parts to truly enfranchise the American people.

Ridgley Knapp is a freshman at the University of Chicago, resident of Greenwich, and graduate of Brunswick School.
The Ukrainian Ground Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine command has dismissed media reports of howitzers having been destroyed after Russian hackers broke into Ukrainian artillerymen's software.

"The information of the Command of Missile Troops and Artillery of the Ukrainian Ground Forces is that losses in artillery weapons during the Anti-Terrorist operation were way below those reported [by the media, which claimed 80% of D-30 howitzers were lost] and have nothing to do with the stated cause. Currently, missile and artillery units of the Ukrainian Ground Force are entirely combat-ready, equipped and capable of performing assignments," the ministry said on its website.

The Defense Ministry asks journalists to make public only verified information received from the competent official sources.
Mere hours ago the upcoming Samsung Galaxy C5 Pro was spotted on GFXBench, after having been leaked and rumored for many weeks now. This smartphone, along with the also yet-unannounced C7 Pro, should be joining the already official C9 Pro in the Korean company's portfolio at some point this month, with sales in China apparently set to start on January 21.

Today a new leak purportedly brings us the first ever live shot of the Galaxy C5 Pro, shown below for your viewing pleasure in its blue hue.

The huge levels of pixelation in the picture are there to protect the source, we assume, as smartphone makers rarely like it when such images are put out in the wild. Anyway, alongside it we also get rumored pricing for this model. It should retail (with 64GB of storage) for CNY 2,399, or approximately $346 or 329 at the current exchange rates.

On the other hand, the 64GB Galaxy C7 Pro is said to be priced at CNY 2,799 ($404 or 383). Obviously, even if true, these prices are only valid for China. It remains to be seen whether Samsung will be selling these handsets outside of China, since the C Pro line seems to have been designed and engineered with only that market in mind.

The C5 Pro should come with a 5.2" or 5.5" 1080p touchscreen, the Snapdragon 626 chipset, 4GB of RAM, a pair of 16 MP cameras (one on the front, one on the back), and a 3,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The C7 Pro has a 5.7-inch 1080p display, and pretty much shares the rest of the specs with its smaller sibling (save for the battery capacity, which should be different of course).

Source (in Chinese) | Via 1 | Via 2
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Candidates for the command positions to the Russian military units and bases located in Donbas, often feign illnesses and draw up notes on family circumstances, not willing to go to the east of Ukraine, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense has said.

"Leaders of the Russian Armed Forces enhanced activities for the selection of candidates for the command positions to military bases and units: 1 (Donetsk) and 2 (Luhansk) of AK Center of territorial troops (Novocherkassk) of Southern VO (Rostov-on-Don) among officers of other military districts of Russia for rotary events in the winter-spring period in 2017," the Main Intelligence Department wrote on its Facebook page on Friday.

Candidates undergo a medical examination and committees assessment at their posts. However, most of the candidates are feigning illnesses and drawing up certificates "for family reasons" in order to avoid such trips, Ukrainian intelligence said.




Haiti - FLASH : Senator Guy Philippe extradited to the USA





Recall that Thursday, shortly before 4:00 in the afternoon, elected Senator Guy Philippe (Grande Anse) was arrested by members of the Office for the Fight against Drug Trafficking (BLTS), while leaving the radio Scoop FM while taking a crowd bath in the middle of sympathizer before rejoining his vehicle https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19720-haiti-flash-arrest-of-senator-guy-philippe.html



Subsequently, he was taken to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) in the early evening where was deployed a massive security device. Note that he has been arrested under an international arrest warrant issued against him for several years for his alleged involvement in illicit drug trafficking.



In the evening, Guy Philippe was taken to Toussaint Louverture Airport where, surrounded by armed agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), boarded handcuffed a non-commercial white plane N5888k, to be extradited to Florida in the United States to face the charges brought against him.



Me Mario Delcy, Guy Philippe's lawyer confirmed that the latter was extradited by agents of the DEA last night to the United States and called on parliamentarians to mobilize against this arrest.



It should be noted that Senator Guy Philippe was arrested while he did not yet have all the immunities conferred on him by his function, Article 114 of the Constitution stipulates that "Members of the Legislative Body are inviolable from the day of taking the oath until the expiry of their term of office, subject to the provisions of Article 115."



No Haitian authority has made an official statement on this arrest and on the extradition of Guy Philippe. Camille Junior Edouard, the Minister of Justice remains until now silent as the Presidency and the American Embassy. The Senators should launch a convocation against the Minister of Justice in the coming hours for more explanations. For the moment, the exact charges against Guy Philippe are unknown.



At the announcement of the arrest of Guy Philippe, in the departments of the South and Grand'Anse, protesters went down the streets to demand his release. We have reports that flaming tire barricades were erected on roads in these two departments, also police stations also have been victims of attacks of unidentified individuals without more details or exact balance on the very tense situation.



Jean Henry Ceant "Renmen Ayiti", said he was revolted by this arrest and pointed finger at the de facto President Privert as one of the main artisans of this arrest.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19720-haiti-flash-arrest-of-senator-guy-philippe.html



SL/ TB/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Elections : The President of Taiwan congratulates Jovenel Moise





The President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Tsai Ing-wen congratulated the newly elected Haitian President, Jovenel Moise, who was officially declared the winner of the presidential election of Novemeber 20 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19698-haiti-presidential-2016-final-results-jovenel-moise-58th-president.html announced Thursday in a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan.



The statement states that Taiwan is looking forward to continued cooperation with Haiti's new government to improve the welfare of the people in both countries.



The Taiwanese Chancellery recalls that Taiwan and Haiti have had diplomatic relations since 1956 and of exchanges and close collaboration on programs in the fields of infrastructure, agriculture, public health and vocational training.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19705-haiti-politics-portrait-of-jovenel-moise-58th-president-of-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19699-haiti-flash-address-to-the-nation-of-president-elect-jovenel-moise.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19698-haiti-presidential-2016-final-results-jovenel-moise-58th-president.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19690-haiti-flash-bcen-rendered-its-final-decision.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has started a pre-trial investigation into three more criminal proceedings into the facts of providing false information in their income declaration by a parliament deputy and the heads of two regional district administrations.

The NABU press service recalled that on November 17, 2016, the Bureau registered first three criminal proceedings into illegal enrichment (parts 2 and 3 of Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) based on the analysis of the information provided in electronic declarations. Two cases were opened in respect of people's deputies and one against a representative of the judicial system. In December, the NABU launched an investigation into seven more cases.

As reported, the first stage of e-declaration for officials in sensitive position lasted 60 days from September 1 to October 30, 2016, inclusive. All in all, more than 100,000 e-declarations were submitted.
Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

17:38, 3 NOV 2022
The state-owned Konotop Aircraft Repair Plant Aviakon (Sumy region) in 2016 modernized more than 20 helicopters for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the press service of the state-owned Ukroboronprom corporation said in a press release.

According to the press release, one of the key programs of the state military armor outlay for 2016 was fulfilled with the participation of the western military industrial complex for the modernization of the Mi-24PU1 to meet aviation requirements of the Ukrainian army.

The modernization improved defense aviation equipment: the helicopters are equipped with an electronic optical system Adros KT-01AB, providing protection from mobile missile launchers, such as the Igla and Stinger, as well as from air-to-air missiles. New targeting and navigational equipment gives the modernized helicopters improved maneuverability and the ability to reach higher speeds. The battle helicopters have also been equipped with Ukrainian-produced engines, the press release says. The Modernized Mi-24PU-1 is equipped with a powerful 30 mm automatic cannot and various rockets, including very accurate guided anti-tank missiles.

The modernization of helicopters was accomplished within the framework of military cooperation with France. Aviakon in 2008 signed a long-term cooperation contract to modernize the Mi-24 with the French defense contractor Sagem.

Part of Ukroboronprom since 2011 pursuant to a decision taken by the government, Aviakon ensures major repair work, refitting and modernization of the Mi family of helicopters. In July 2016 the enterprise received a certificate of compliance with systems quality meeting NATO's AQAP 2120 standard.
On Wednesday, January 11, at 10.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference "Summing up 2016: What has been Done for the Forests Protection in Ukraine; Action Plan for 2017." The participants will include Project Manager at the project for saving the Carpathian primeval forests of the Ukrainian Bird Protection Society Olha Yaremchenko; lawyer of ecological and law NGO EcoPravo-Kyiv Halyna Levina; and Director of Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center Volodymyr Boreiko; environmental policy coordinator at the Ukrainian representative of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Svitlana Matus; coordinator of volunteer work at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Andriy Plyha (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. Additional information by phone: (067) 715 2790 or at: kekz-office@ukr.net (Volodymyr Boreiko).
When hiking Grandfather Mountain, its fairly common to encounter one of the parks many rangers.

Less common are Nepalese sherpas. Actually, much less common  but not unheard of.

This January, Grandfather Mountain will welcome Pema Tshiri Sherpa back to the park. Pema, a Nepalese sherpa, leads mountaineering and trekking excursions in the Himalayas and is the only trek leader who has personally walked every mile of the roughly 960-mile Great Himalaya Trail.

He visited Grandfather Mountain in 2014 to deliver a presentation on the nature and people of Nepal, and will return Wednesday, Jan. 18, before delivering a presentation that evening at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum in Blowing Rock.

The event will take place from 6 to 7 p.m. and is free to attend, although registration is required, as the guest list is limited to 80 attendees. Pemas presentation, however, will be markedly different from 2014s.

Pema visited Grandfather Mountain and loved everything about it, said Jesse Pope, executive director of the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Linville, N.C., nature preserve and travel attraction. He was so excited to see and learn about Grandfather. His eyes lit up when he learned about the lush vegetation that encompasses the mountain. In Nepal, most of the mountain range is above the tree line, providing a very different ecosystem and a different aesthetic experience, as well.

But the very next spring, on April 25, 2015, Nepal was devastated by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Pemas village suffered major damage and is still recovering from the disaster.

We have stayed in touch over the last two years, and recently, Pema reached out to us about visiting Grandfather Mountain again, Pope said.

In the earthquakes aftermath, Pema established a non-government organization, the Sherpa Welfare Nepal Foundation (SWNF), to aid in earthquake relief, recovery and rebuilding.

He is asking his friends from across the globe to help get the word out about what is happening in his part of the world, Pope said. We have been working with other businesses, groups and organizations to help arrange audiences for Pema to share his story of growing up in Nepal and reaching the summit of Mt. Everest  which he has summited, at least, eight times  but also about the recent earthquake tragedy his village has endured.

As such, Pema will not only discuss Nepal, but also the foundations efforts in relief and recovery. To help raise funding, hell also be selling Nepalese shawls, handcrafted with yak fur.

This is a rare opportunity to meet a real sherpa from Nepal right here in the High Country, Pope said. Pemas stories about his adventures in Nepal, growing up in the worlds largest mountain range and his work in disaster relief following the 2015 earthquake  from someone who lived through it all  is an experience we will not soon forget.

Pema hails from the lower Solu Khumbu village of Hill in Nepal, where he was born the fourth of 10 children.

My village is a non-tourist area in the Himalayas, Pema said. We have around 85 houses and 60 to 65 children in the school. Normally, I lead treks in the Everest and Annapurna round  the most famous trekking area in Nepal.

But his beginnings in the trade were much more humble.

When I was 16 years old, I saw trekkers, he said. I went to the marketplace to ask for a job as a porter. I had no trekking equipment, no boots and no warm clothes. I was paid in chocolate, a T-shirt and a few pencils given to me by the trekkers.

He soon moved to Kathmandu, where he spent two years working as a porter, then advancing to the position of kitchen assistant. A year later, he was promoted to camping sherpa, and two years after that, he became a trekking cook. This afforded him the opportunity to obtain the training necessary to become a climbing guide. The six years that followed found Pema leading private trekking groups, and he started his own expedition business  Pema Treks & Expedition  in 2008.

Pema has a great passion and love for the outdoors, Pope said. In Nepal, people are connected to the natural resources in a more intimate way than people in the United States. Every family relies directly on the nature around them to provide fresh water and food to survive.

Pema is a very humble man, with a youthful curiosity about the natural world. He is such a bright and positive human being. Im very proud to know him and call him a friend.

In addition to his event at BRAHM, Pema will present to social studies students at Avery County High School, before delivering a presentation Jan. 14 at REI in Asheville. On Jan. 19, hell visit with the Rotary Club of Avery County.

To RSVP for the Jan. 18 event at BRAHM, located at 159 Chestnut St. in downtown Blowing Rock, contact Lesley Platek with the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation at [email protected] or (828) 733-2013.

For more information on Pema and the Sherpa Welfare Nepal Foundation, or to make a contribution, visit http://swefnepal.org/.

The not-for-profit Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation strives to inspire conservation of the natural world by helping guests explore, understand and value the wonders of Grandfather Mountain. For more information, call (800) 468-7325, or visit www.grandfather.com to plan a trip.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang answers a question at a daily press briefing on Thursday, January 5, 2017. [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn]

China on Thursday refuted the allegations by some Indian officials that China has double standards when it comes to adding people to a UN Security Council blacklist of groups linked to al Qaeda.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang expressed China's stance at a daily press briefing when commenting on reports that two Indian ministers Wednesday called for China to review its technical hold on India's application to list Massod Azhar, the head of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, as a designated terrorist under the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council.

Geng said the voices alleging China had double standards on the issue did not hold water, and China has always held that people should make decisions on listing matters based on solid evidence. He added that China has long been holding an objective, just and professional attitude on the issue.

Geng noted that as various parties were divided on India's application to list Azhar, it had proposed the technical hold to the listing application in order to give more time for the committee to deliberate and for further negotiations among the relevant parties.

"However, all related parties have not reached consensus so far," Geng said, adding that China's moves were aimed at ensuring the authority and effectiveness of the committee.

China will maintain dialogue and coordination on the issue with all related parties, including India, on the basis of the mandate of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the committee's rules of procedure, Geng said.

Both China and India are victims of terrorism, and the two sides share the same goal on the issues, Geng said, adding that China and India must maintain cooperation in fighting terrorism, and China will enhance the cooperation to contribute to regional peace.

As the two biggest developing countries, forging a closer relationship between India and China conforms to the interests of the two peoples. Therefore, China maintains the stance that it would like to develop the partnership of strategic cooperation with India, Geng said.
Woodcock will be assessed for community service suitability

An Uninsured motorist who drove his sister's car weeks after being given a ban "just didn't think" at the time, a court heard.

Philip Woodcock (32) had been convicted twice for having no insurance when he agreed to take the car to a garage for a check-up.

Judge Bryan Smyth said Woodcock can avoid a jail sentence if he is found suitable for community service.

He adjourned the case for a report.

Seized

Woodcock, with an address at Shanard Road, Santry, pleaded guilty to driving without insurance.

Garda Deirdre McInerney told Dublin District Court she stopped the accused driving at Clonshaugh Road at 7.50pm on August 18, 2015.

He had no insurance or NCT cert displayed at the time and the car was seized. The accused was "very co-operative with the gardai throughout the entire incident", she said.

Woodcock had 20 previous convictions, 17 of which were for motoring offences, including two for uninsured driving, the garda said.

He was last disqualified from driving for four years from July 2015.

On the evening of the latest offence, the defendant was driving his sister's car, his solicitor Michael Hanahoe said.

She had given it to him and asked him to bring it to a garage for a check-up for the NCT. Woodcock was not driving any other car at the time and was not insured.

"He just didn't think," Mr Hanahoe said.

The defendant had two children and was working as an electrician.

Delighted

"This is his third conviction for no insurance," Judge Smyth said.

"Is he prepared to do community service? Otherwise, he would be looking at a sentence."

Woodock would be "delighted" to do community service, Mr Hanahoe said.

Judge Smyth said he would be suggesting 120 hours instead of four months in jail.

He adjourned the case for a community service suitability report.

The defendant was remanded on continuing bail.
The accused had previous convictions but had a clean record for the last 10 years, a garda said. (Stock photo)

A Father-of-three who threatened to kill gardai and their families during a disturbance at a city centre shop turned into a "nasty person" when he drank, a court has heard.

Eric Maples (44) began shouting the threats at officers who woke him up when he was found sleeping drunk on the floor of a discount store in the afternoon.

Maples did not have a problem with drink, his lawyer said.

Judge Anthony Halpin adjourned the case and said he would leave Maples without public order convictions if he made a donation to charity.

Maples, with an address at Cromcastle Court, Coolock, pleaded guilty to public intoxication and using threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour to cause a breach of the peace at Euro Store And More, Talbot Street.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at 1.50pm on November 26, 2015.

A member of the public flagged down a garda on duty to say there was a "bit of a commotion" going on inside the shop.

The gardai investigated and found an intoxicated man lying on the ground asleep in the shop.

Strike

When they roused Maples, he got to his feet and proceeded to "strike out" at the gardai, the court was told.

Maples was "extremely abusive" and made "several threats to kill, and other threats to the gardai and their families".

Maples was arrested and taken to a garda station.

The accused had previous convictions but had a clean record for the last 10 years, a garda said.

Maples had no recollection of the events, his solicitor Tony Collier told the judge.

He drank to excess the previous night and the next day and apologised for his actions.

Maples had no alcohol or drug difficulties, Mr Collier said.

"He is better off not drinking alcohol because he turns into a nasty person when he does," Judge Halpin said. "It doesn't suit him."

The judge adjourned the case to February 22 and said he would strike the charges out if the accused donated 50 to the Little Flower charity.

Free legal aid was granted following an application by Mr Collier.

The accused was remanded on continuing bail.
(Global Times) 08:47, January 06, 2017

Dismissing a Buddhist ritual held by the Dalai Lama as a political tool, Chinese officials denied that thousands of Tibetan pilgrims were pressured to return to China.

"Taking advantage of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra (wheel of time) teachings have inveigled Tibetans into illegally going abroad over the last decade," Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The Dalai Lama will this month preside over the 34th Kalachakra initiation at Bodhgaya in eastern India, where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment more than 2,000 years ago, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world are expected to attend the event. But as preparations got under way on Wednesday, the chairman of the organizing committee Karma Gelek Yuthok said almost 7,000 pilgrims had returned to China, citing pressure from authorities there.

Yuthok, who is a member of the Tibetan "government-in-exile," said some pilgrims had reported receiving threats to relatives in China if they did not return.

Denying the number of pilgrims from China is far less than "thousands," Xu Zhitao, deputy director of the bureau of the Tibet question at the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said there are pilgrims from China attending the ceremony who hold Chinese passports.

"Therefore, the government by no means threatened them to return, although the government does not encourage them to attend the ritual," Xu told the Global Times on Thursday.

Xu pointed out that the ritual, organized by the Tibetan "government-in-exile," certainly involves politics.

"Considering that the large-scale ritual needs years of preparation, the India-based ceremony frequently degenerates into a political tool," Zhu said, explaining that the organizing committee has made use of the occasion and the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama to propagate ideas of "hating the Chinese government."

The organizing committee also attempted to establish relations with the Tibetans from China through the ceremony, he said.

AFP said the Dalai Lama had held a special audience for the Tibetan pilgrims from China in Dharamsala in December 2016.

"The number of Tibetans attending the ritual decreased dramatically in recent years after the local governments clarified to local Tibetans that the ritual is about separatism, and also due to tightened border control," Zhu said.

The first Kalachakra ritual given by the 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu concluded in July 2016. It was the first large-scale Kalachakra ritual held in Tibet for 60 years. More than 100,000 believers attended the ritual each day. Cumulative attendance for the four days reached 426,000, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
COMMUNITY

TLC AUTISM SUPPORT GROUP: Bristol, Va., 300 West Valley Drive, State Street UMC. Jan. 17, 10:30 a.m.: Bristol Regional Speech and Hearing Center, seminar, guest speaker Tonya Coleman, 276-669-6331.

YWCA PROM DRESS PROJECT: Bristol, Tenn. Ongoing: YWCA Bristol encourages the community to donate prom dresses to the YWCA Prom Dress Project, a project by the Junior Board of Directors. The annual sale, which will be open to area high school girls Feb. 23-25, will feature hundreds of previously worn gowns and accessories at deeply discounted prices. Info: 423-968-9444 or t_henkel@ywcabristol.org.

SERVING ORPHANS WORLDWIDE: Bristol, Va., Bristol Train Station. Feb. 23, noon-1:30 p.m.: Orphans Worldwide Ambassador's Circle Luncheon, a gathering of like-minded business leaders and philanthropists from the Tri-Cities region. RSVP to jenny@soworldwide.org.

CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: Bristol, Va., 301 Euclid Avenue, Every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday: Support group for family, friends of alcoholics, 423-764-0874, 423-878-2831, or 423-323-9886.

KINGSPORT CAROUSEL: Kingsport, Tenn., Wednesdays  Saturdays, 17 p.m.: $1. 423- 343-9834 or www.EngageKingsport.com

ALZHEIMER/DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS MEETING: Abingdon, Va., View United Methodist Church, 18416 Lee Highway. For more, call Sissy Frye or Brenda Jones at 276-783-8157 or 1-800-541-0933.Brenda Jones at 276-783-8157 or 1-800-541-0933.

PTERODACTYLS BMW MOTORCYCLE CLUB: Johnson City, Tenn., 2801 Boones Creek Road, 3rd Saturday, 9 a.m. Contact David Robertson, 423-323-2046 or drobertson@btes.tv.

BRISTOL BINGO: Bristol, Va., 516 Birthplace of Country Music Way, Bingo Saturdays and Sundays, 6 p.m. early bird and 6:30 p.m. regular, sponsored by VFW Post 6975. 276-669-2446.

WATAUGA VALLEY FIFE & DRUM CORPS: Elizabethton, Tenn., Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area, 1651 West Elk Avenue. Saturdays, 10 a.m.  noon. The Fife & Drum Corps open to anyone ages 13 and up. Musical experience is welcome but not necessary. Meet volunteer coordinator John Large at the visitors center. Lessons are free; call and let us know youre coming. 423-543-5808.

WASHINGTON COUNTY JAM: Abingdon, Va., 25236 Hillman Hwy., Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center, after-school program, or youth (4th through 8th grade) in Washington County, who are interested in learning traditional, old-time musical instruments and Southern Appalachian culture. Classes will run through May 2016. 276-6676-6180 or programs@swva4hcenter.org.

CHEER WITH THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: Johnson City, Tenn., Oakland Ave., Princeton Arts Center, Learn cheers, jumps, splits, tumbling, dance routines, builds with National Champion Taylor Melons. Beginners cheer, ages 3-6, $25 per month; Competition Cheer, ages 7-12, $60 per month. 423-283-5800 or email tricitiestalent@hotmail.com.

MOUNT ROGERS REGIONAL ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAM: Providing free GED classes at the following locations and times: Marion Baptist Church on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1-4 p.m., Marion Senior High Library on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4-7 p.m., Northwood High School - Room 105 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5- 8 p.m., Old Chilhowie High School on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12-3 p.m. Classes and materials are free to adults 18 and older. 1-800-322-7748 or www.mrraep.com.

JACKSON THEATRE PHOTOS NEEDED: Jonesborough, Tenn., The Town of Jonesborough and the Heritage Alliance are seeking old photos of the Jackson Theatre in Jonesborough. Photos are needed for the exterior of the building or interior, and they can be of any time period going back to when the building was a furniture store in the very early 1900s. 423-753-1031 or virginiac@jonesboroughtn.org.

SENIOR CENTER MEMORIAL PARK COMMUNITY CENTER: Johnson City, Tenn., 510 Bert Street. Join the Senior Chorale Thursdays 10 a.m. No audition required. (423) 434-5750.

FOOD PANTRY

THE TABLE: Bristol, Va., 1754 Kingmill Pike, Community Baptist Church, every fourth Friday 1  4 p. m.: Food pantry, donations are welcome, contact Pastor Todd Crusenberry, 423-646-8760.

PARKS

BREAKS PARK: Breaks, Va., Campground and Rhododendron Restaurant open. Boat dock closed. Front lobby at the lodge will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on week-ends. The administration office will be open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Park lodging is open year round. Conference Center is open with regular catering services available. New activities: lodging packages with whitewater rafting excursions and elk tours. 276-865-4413 ext. 3201 or www.BreaksPark.com.

SYCAMORE SHOALS STATE HISTORIC AREA: Elizabethton, Tenn., 1651 W. Elk Ave.: October Bird Walks, Oct. 15, 22, 29, 8 a .m., 90 minute walk led by Bryan Stevens, Bristol Herald Courier columnist. The park grounds open daily from dawn to dusk. Visitors Center: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 1-4:30 p.m. Sunday; closed Mondays. Visitor Center open weekends 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 423-543-5808 or www.sycamoreshoalstn.org, www.tnstateparks.com/SycamoreShoals.

HOW TO SUBMIT INFORMATION

To submit calendar entries, email features@bristolnews.com (put Friday Calendar in the subject line) or fax: 276-669-3696. Deadline is noon on Monday. For information, call Dorothy Hurt, 276-645-2556 or email dhurt@bristolnews.com.
(Global Times) 09:00, January 06, 2017

A battle between the world's top two ride-hailing service providers is set to break out in Latin America following Didi Chuxing's announcement on Thursday of a partnership with Brazil's leading shared mobility provider.

The Chinese car-hailing service leader made a strategic investment in Brazil's homegrown 99, formerly known as 99Taxis, and will take a seat on 99's board of directors.

"China and Brazil are the world's foremost emerging markets with enormous opportunities for our rideshare industry," Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi, said in a press release sent to the Global Times Thursday.

Brazil, which has the world's fifth-largest population, is already crucial turf for multinational ride-hailing companies including Uber of the US, which entered the market in 2014. In June last year, its app had already been used by 66 percent of Brazilian Internet users, according to a survey by Miami-based consulting firm eCMetrics.

Uber seems to be very appealing to foreign visitors who do not know Portuguese. "Local apps like 99 offer services in Portuguese, which is not very tourist-friendly," a Chinese tourist who declined to be identified told the Global Times Thursday. The young man visited Rio de Janeiro in August 2016.

He said Didi still has a chance to stand out despite its late start in the market because it can better woo Chinese tourists.

Brazil's Tourism Ministry said in a statement that the country received more than 53,000 Chinese tourists in 2015 and expected further rises in that figure, the Xinhua News Agency reported in late December 2016. The ministry authorized 316 travel agencies, up 5 percent from 2015, to receive more Chinese tourists this year.

Didi's Brazilian entry is a test for broader involvement in Latin America, said analysts.

Didi said in the press release that it will provide guidance and support in areas including technology, product development, operations and business planning as 99 continues to expand across Brazil and the rest of the Latin American market.

Uber also has a firm foothold in other Latin American countries. Mexico is reportedly the world's third-largest market for Uber.

"Different from Uber, Didi's overseas expansion is based on strategic investment in local partners, which can guarantee less operating risk," Wang Chenxi, an industry analyst with Beijing-based market research firm Analysys International, told the Global Times Thursday.

The Brazilian company offers on-demand private car and taxi-hailing services in 550 cities in Brazil, and it leads the market in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other first-tier cities, the announcement said. It has more than 140,000 registered drivers, and its app has been downloaded more than 10 million times.

Didi's move in Brazil is just part of its globalization strategy, in which the Chinese company, backed by Apple Inc and Tencent Holdings, has already made great strides over the past two years.

In 2015, Didi signed cooperation agreements with Indian peer Ola, GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia and Lyft in the US to form a global service alliance.

In April 2016, the Chinese player announced plans to drive into the US, home base of Uber, thanks to its partnership with Lyft.

Wang said that Didi is speeding up its overseas expansion, as it is being constrained by strict government regulations back at its home market.

Local government authorities, especially big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, tightened control over the ride-hailing services late in 2016, issuing new rules such as requiring cars to be locally registered and service providers to only hire local residents as drivers.

Apart from expansion beyond China, Didi is also seeking opportunities in other ventures including car rental and online bus-booking services. According to media reports, its car rental services became available abroad from Wednesday.
Zhu Tianran (R), chief representative of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) office in Serbia, and general director of Serbian Railways Infrastructure Dusan Garibovic shake hands after signing a contract on a rehabilitation project in Belgrade, Serbia, Jan. 5, 2017. Serbia signed a contract on Thursday with a Chinese rail firm on the rehabilitation of a 7.4-kilometer rail line in the Serbian capital. The deal was signed between China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and Serbian Railways Infrastructure, a joint stock company for public railway infrastructure management. (Xinhua/Wang Huijuan)
It's been 125 years since Dracula was published. And it's still scary.
China's largest ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing signed a cooperation agreement on Jan. 5 with its Brazilian counterpart, 99 (formerly known as 99 Taxis), in a bid to become the world's largest ride-hailing service provider. According to the agreement, Didi will be a "strategic investor" of 99 and join the board of the Brazilian company.

In addition, Didi will provide strategic support to 99, including that related to techniques, products, operating experiences and business plans. The support is intended to promote 99's expansion across Brazil and Latin America.

Peter Fernandez, 99's CEO, believes that the capital, techniques and operation experience of Didi will play a significant role in 99's future development. Cheng Wei, president of Didi, said that ride-sharing will see steady development in emerging markets like China and Brazil, where economic transition and urbanization are currently unfolding.

Internet analyst Ding Daoshi told Thepaper.cn that Didi's investment in 99 is a move to distribute its risks during development. He predicted that Didi will further invest in the Southeast Asian, European and American markets.
People living in Beijing, Tianjin and neighboring Hebei province have been living with the headache of frequent smog in recent years. Some choose to leave the city for the short or long term to escape Beijing's serious air pollution, despite having homes equipped with air purifiers and other protective measures, Beijing News reported. However, many are conflicted, unsure whether to abandon the place where they have made their lives for years.

Fan Bei, who works at a Beijing-based mental health counseling company, plans to immigrate to America, even though she has lived in Beijing for 16 years. Already, she regularly flees from the smog for shorter periods of time, with the sole purpose of protecting her children's health.

Lan Yanfei, also a mother, has lived her whole life in Beijing. Nevertheless, she now plans to move to Lijiang in Yunnan province due to concerns about her childrens health. According to Lan, she began paying attention to air quality when the State Council issued its first air quality report and strengthened supervision over PM 2.5 in 2012. Although she knows there are alternatives to leaving, she believes it is an acceptable price to pay for her children's health.
Yair Shahak, left, and Yaelle Frohlich, are married. They are also competing against each other in the International Adult Bible Contest in Jerusalem on Dec. 28, 2016.

NEW YORK (JTA)-Some couples argue over movies, others disagree about how to squeeze the toothpaste. But one of the earliest debates Yaelle Frohlich and Yair Shahak had was over which biblical figure was the most tragic. Shahak chose Jeremiah, the ridiculed and ignored prophet of doom. Frohlich picked Leah, Jacob's neglected wife.

Nine years later, on a chilly Monday night in Manhattan, the couple sat in the library at Yeshiva University engaged in another spirited discussion-this time about Samson, the tragic hero in the Book of Judges.

"You do not fall in love with a Philistine woman and tell her all your secrets after you killed a thousand Philistines!" Frohlich exclaimed, Shahak nodding in agreement. "That's just ridiculous!"

Frohlich and Shahak, both 28 and living in Manhattan, met in 2007 when they were studying at Y.U. They soon bonded over their mutual love of the Bible. The couple married in 2012, and since then have spent many Saturdays together poring over prophetic texts or reading verses aloud to each other.

Recently they've been quizzing each other on the Bible's obscure details. That's because next week, Frohlich and Shahak will each be one of two people representing their respective countries, Canada and the United States, in the International Adult Bible Contest in Jerusalem.

The contest-sort of a spelling bee, but with biblical verses rather than words-has the contestants answer the minutest of details about the most obscure of biblical books. Contestants must locate or complete fragments of biblical verses, identify who said which quotation to whom, or name geographical details of the ancient Land of Israel.

"The term 'Holy One of Israel' appears mostly in Isaiah, but a couple of times in Jeremiah," Shahak explained. "If you're given a 'Holy One of Israel' and another couple words, just because you've learned the entire material doesn't mean you know anything."

The contest draws 27 finalists from all over the world, ages 24 and up, who take a rigorous written exam. The competition ends in a final round of 16, where contestants are quizzed orally in front of an audience-one that includes government ministers-at the International Convention Center on Dec. 28. The winner receives a cash prize of $10,000. Shahak was one of the international competition's final eight contestants when it was last held in 2014.

Shahak and Frohlich love the Bible for different reasons. Frohlich, who grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, enjoys its narrative and moral questions. She delved into the Bible during her post-high school year studying at Midreshet Harova, a seminary in Jerusalem's Old City, where she took a Bible class that had her memorize details of chapter upon chapter of book after book.

"Once it gets into your system, it's there forever," she said.

Frohlich is now a graduate student at New York University studying 19th-century Jewish intellectual history. Sometimes she will decipher a difficult biblical Hebrew word by looking at its translation in Yiddish, a language she uses for her graduate studies. She remembers details by writing a summary of each chapter by hand. Reading a new biblical book, she said, is "like a whole world opening up."

"Judges is a compilation of some of the most bizarre stories anywhere in the Bible, and it can be very difficult to read," said Frohlich, recalling her days in seminary. "I would come back to my dorm at night and be so upset at the stories in Judges."

Shahak, the son of Israeli parents, grew up in the haredi Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, and loved immersing himself in the Bible's rich Hebrew. He has since enjoyed mapping Hebrew's connections to other ancient Semitic customs and languages, like Akkadian. But his love of words extends beyond the Middle East-a J.R.R. Tolkien buff, he once had a conversation in Middle Elvish on the New York City subway.

In addition to being a cantor, Shahak studies violin at the Aaron Copland School of Music. One of the ways he remembers biblical details is by putting them to song. He's also a former professor of Hebrew at Y.U., his alma mater.

"Something that bothers me is how little most Orthodox Jews know about Jewish history, and you can't know Jewish history without knowing Bible," he said. "Biblical history is not in a vacuum, that it maybe happened but we don't really talk about it. I think it was real and it did happen, and we have to understand how it happened and what it means for us."

The way the Bible contest finals are structured, Shahak and Frohlich must face off as two of the final eight contestants to compete directly against each other. Ultimately they are rooting for each other.

"This is an amazing opportunity to do the contest together," Frohlich said. "I'm excited, and I'm looking forward to finally going."

But Shahak said that once you get up on stage, all of the reviewing, memorizing, singing and debating can only help so much.

"At this point I think you just need to not drive yourself crazy, and get in there and do your job," he said. "It is a crapshoot. You can be asked everything you know or everything you don't."
(JTA)-Vera Rubin, an astronomer whose research helped find evidence of the existence of dark matter, has died.

Rubin died Sunday night in Princeton, New Jersey. She was 88.

Though a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in physics, according to National Geographic magazine, Rubin never received the honor. But she did receive numerous other awards and honors, including a National Medal of Science presented by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

National Geographic called her a "gifted scientist as well as a nurturing mentor and an inspiration to those still working their way up the academic ladder."

The VosIzNeis website wrote that Rubin told the Catholic EWTN network that "my science and my religion are separate."

"I'm Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history," she said. "I try to do my science in a moral way, and I believe that ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe."

According to National Geographic, Rubin in addition to her scientific advances fought hard for the equality of women in astronomy. She had once attempted to enroll in a graduate program in astronomy at Princeton but was told that women were not allowed to join the program.

Rubin also fought for women to be accepted at Washington's exclusive Cosmos Club.

After earning a bachelor's degree in astronomy from Vassar College and then being spurned by Princeton, Rubin earned a master's degree from Cornell and a doctorate from Georgetown. She would go on join the Georgetown faculty and later worked at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando is planning something beautiful.

Choices, the Federations largest womens philanthropy event of the year, will kick off at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9, at Congregation Ohev Shalom in Maitland. The theme for Choices 2017 is Beautiful Inside and Out, and JFGO has put together an evening to celebrate the qualities and virtues that make every woman uniquely beautiful.

Online registration is now open at http://www.jfgo.org/choices.

The co-chairs for Choices 2017 are Leigh Norber and Heidi Zissman, both of whom are actively engaged in Jewish life in Orlando and with the Federation. Norber was part of last years Federation/JOIN Orlando Jewish Womens Renaissance Project trip to Israel, and Zissman went on this years trip. They have recruited more than 70 Choices Ambassadors, who are working to spread the word about the event and helping to plan some of the special finishing touches that make Choices such a unique and memorable evening.

I am honored to be a part of the Choices legacy of giving back to Federation, Norber said. This years theme, Beautiful Inside and Out, is something I believe all women strive to live by.

It has been an annual tradition at Choices to honor one Woman of Choice who embodies the values of philanthropy, volunteerism, service and leadership that are the backbone of the Greater Orlando Jewish community. This year, Federation is honoring eight Women of Choice, each nominated by and representing one of the eight Jewish agencies serving Greater Orlando.

Were all incredibly proud of the eight women who will be celebrated this year, Norber said.

This years Women of Choice, who will be profiled later this month are: Es Cohen (The Roth Family JCC), Wendi Harris (Rosen JCC), Dr. Eve Homburger (Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center), Nina Oppenheim (Central Florida Hillel), Ali Polejes (Kinneret Council on Aging), Elise Schilowitz (The Jewish Pavilion), Miriam Varnagy (Jewish Academy of Orlando), and Madeline Wolly (Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando).

This years Choices gala is honoring so many wonderful, deserving women, Zissman said. Their choices every day have made such an impact on our community. Im looking forward to celebrating with them and so many other spectacular women.

Of course, it wouldnt be Choices without a celebrity speaker, and this years special guest is befitting of the Beautiful Inside and Out theme: renowned makeup artist and entrepreneur Sonia Kashuk.

Kashuk pioneered the unique category of luxury at mass, partnering with Target department stores in 1999 to launch her namesake beauty brand, providing exceptional cosmetics and professional beauty tools that focused on great quality and beautiful design with an affordable price tag.

In 2003, she was honored with the prestigious Cosmetic Executive Achiever Award in recognition of her visionary thinking and dedication to the beauty industry. In 2015, she was honored by Cancer and Careers with the Beauty of Giving Award for her philanthropic support of the charity.

At Choices, Kashuk will not be delivering a traditional speech, per se, but rather will be part of a lively interview-style presentation featuring her sister, Winter Park Realtor Sheryl Kashuk.

Sonia Kashuk has also generously provided a special gift that will be given to all the women at Choices who contribute to Federations 2017 Annual Campaign.

The evening will begin with an extended social hour starting at 5:45 p.m., with a lavish hors doeuvre and dessert buffet by Arthurs Creative Events & Catering. Women will be able to indulge in delicious chef-inspired creations while enjoying a selection of wines and cocktails, including the signature Choices Pinktini.

The Choices Raffle, as always, will feature high-end prizes including jewelry, dining/hotel packages, electronics and more. Raffle tickets are on sale now on the Choices web page or can be purchased at the event. Women who register for Choices by Jan. 13 at 5 p.m. will receive one complimentary raffle ticket, a $25 value.

Two new twists for 2017: You can bring a friend who has never attended Choices beforefor free! Just provide your friends name and contact information when you register. In addition, whether you are able to attend or not, you can be a Crystal Sponsor and share a personal congratulatory note to a Woman of Choice that will be printed in the Choices program. Details are available on the Choices registration form.

Registration for Choices 2017 will remain open through the end of January. You can register on the Federations website, http://www.jfgo.org/choices, via email at choices@jfgo.org, or by calling the Federation office at 407-645-5933, ext. 236.

Choices is made possible in part due to the generosity of our sponsors. This years Diamond Sponsors are Dick and Dottie Appelbaum. Ruby Sponsors are FastSigns of Orlando-Central, 5000 E. Colonial Drive, and Orlando Health.

You can read more about Choicesand keep up with all the latest items added to the Choices Raffleat http://www.jfgo.org/choices.
Beijing plans to install air purifiers in middle and primary schools, according to an announcement by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission on Jan. 5.

A pilot plan will be launched to install purifying machines in the schools, and a head of the commission will be selected, according to the announcement. All districts of Beijing have been instructed to follow expert guidance, strictly monitoring the devices to ensure that they function properly. Schools will receive subsidies from the Beijing municipal government to enact the new guidelines.

An ongoing orange alert has been extended as smog lingers, and many schools have been ordered to suspend outdoor activities following an earlier announcement by the commission.

The Beijing Municipal Education Commission said it regards children's health as a top priority. It has taken various measures to ensure students' health and safety, inluding optimizing the emergency air pollution plan, instructing schools to adopt flexible teaching arrangements and urging schools to teach students about protective measures.
Political correctness came under attack in Jerusalem Dec. 19 at a public policy summit convening conservative leaders from Israel, India, the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress.

At the same time, the conservatives eagerly looked forward to the new day that would accompany Donald Trumps forthcoming U.S. presidential administration.

Joel Anand Samyco-founder of the International Summit Leaders think tank, which co-hosted the Jerusalem Leaders Summit at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Israels capitalemphasized a new battlefront for the 21st century, what he called the truth versus political correctness.

U.S. Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) blames the Obama administration and other liberal leaders for failing to delineate the truth, much less to seek it out.

If you cant define what the truth is, youve got a fundamental problem, Brat told JNS.org. Most of the left rejects any foundation to rationality or to rights.

Yet when it comes to any mention of Judeo-Christian values in institutes of higher education in America, free speech is stifled, said Brat, who has a masters degree in divinity from the Princeton Theological Seminary.

If you go to a Harvard brown bag lunch on philosophy, theyll laugh you out of the room if you bring up religion, he said, adding that on the other hand, expressing antagonism towards Israel is fair game.

Mischael Modrikamen, the leader of Belgiums Peoples Party, averred that Europes inclination to adhere to the principles of political correctness is infringing on all areas of civic life and on the rule of law.

In Europe, when you talk about security, you talk about Islam, and the first thing [that needs to be done] is to abandon political correctness, Modrikamen said.

Leaders dont say things as they are. We face a grave threat, what I call mass invasion, he added, referring to the ongoing mass migration into Europe from Muslim countries, mostly from war-torn Syria.

According to Modrikamen, among the tens of thousands of migrants crossing into Europe on a daily basis, 95 percent of them are young menmost of whom are not refugeesand the vast majority are uneducated Muslims, which means in general, their conception of society and religion and of women is very different than what we know in Europe. He said that the majority of Muslims living in Europe want to see some application of Islamic sharia law in European societies.

And sharia law means inequality for women, cutting off your hand when you steal, and so on, said Modrikamen.

Modrikamen lamented German Chancellor Angela Merkels open border policy for its enabling of 1.2 million migrants to enter Germany. Family reunification laws means that [that number of migrants] will become 4 or 5 million within a few yearsThose who are facing the consequences of this open border policy are the ordinary people, he said.

The Belgian party leader blasted his countrys political leaders for having no qualms when it comes to routinely condemning Israel for a litany of perceived crimes, including Jewish settlement activity and a disproportionate response to Palestinian terrorism. Yet following the March 2016 Islamist bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people, Belgian authorities turned to Israel to improve the countrys airport security.

This is pure hypocrisy, Modrikamen said.

Swedish Member of the European Parliament Kristina Winberg said Swedens immigration policy is dooming the country. She described how the influx of 163,000 migrants into Sweden last year is creating neighborhoods that are so dangerous that they are becoming no-go zones even for police officers.

Winberg believes that there should be much stronger punishments for those who pose a terror threat, especially for European citizens who travel to hostile countries and return home after being trained in terror camps.

Talk of a revolutionwhich began with the United Kingdoms Brexit vote to leave the European Union, and continued with Trumps surprise U.S. presidential election win and the rise of right-wing political parties in Europewas echoed by various speakers at the Jerusalem summit.

Winberg said she has great confidence that Trump will make a good president.

America should see Sweden as a bad example, we have no defense, she said.

Dont do like Sweden, she quipped, and together we can make our countries great again.

Becky Norton Dunlop, a member of Trumps transition team and a distinguished fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, heralded the new day that the Trump administration would usher in.

The Heritage Foundationwhich co-hosted the Dec. 19 event, and in Norton Dunlops words is an unabashedly conservative think tankhas been advising presidential candidates since the Ronald Reagan administration. The foundation has emerged as an influential commentator during the transition from President Barack Obama to Trump, even authoring a blueprint for what a Trump administration should look like.

According to Norton Dunlop, there are 12 measures that the foundation would like to see Trump undertake in the first 180 days of his administration, including limiting constitutional government, repealing Obamacare, and overhauling the national defense budget.

We wanted the new president to restore fidelity to the Constitution, she said.

Norton Dunlop, who served as a senior official in the Reagan administration, said if Trump would heed Reagans peace for strength approach, his administration would see success.

Trumps appointment of David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel is a big signal that things are about to change for the better in American-Israeli relations, which were more strained than usual during the Obama years, she told JNS.org.

There is a new day coming to America on Jan. 20, said Norton Dunlop.
At a time when there is a surge of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the globe, it is fortunate that Professor Ken Hanson is in central Florida to keep the community informed of the most recent events.

"The New Anti-Semitism" is the topic that Dr. Ken Hanson will present to Central Florida on Tuesday Jan. 17, 2017 at 7 p.m., at the Eastmonte Civic Center, 830 Magnolia Drive, Altamonte Springs.

Dr. Hanson is an associate professor at the University of Central Florida, where he is director of the Judaic studies program.

As a young student of the ancient Near East, he lived in Israel on Jerusalem's Mt. Zion, and studied Hebrew in a program for immigrants to the modern Jewish state. He earned a master's degree in international inter-cultural communication, and subsequently worked for a television news gathering operation in southern Lebanon. Living in the politically volatile region of northern Galilee (subject to regular rocket attacks), he daily commuted over a hostile border where, in addition to his broadcasting duties, he served as the company liaison with the Israeli Army. He went on to earn a doctorate in Hebrew Language and Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. His multiple books and his appearances on syndicated radio and national television (including The History Channel and The Travel Channel) have brought his unique insights into everyone's world.

This program is present by Zionistas. There is no admission charge, however donations are always appreciated.

For information contact Sandi Solomon at sansolomon@hotmail.com

Founded by Eva London Ritt, Diana Scimone, Judy Shujman and Sandi Solomon, Zionistas are a coalition of Christians and Jews united for Israel. Advocacy, Awareness and Activism is the driving force behind the Zionistas.
(JTA)Jewish organizations split along ideological lines in their reactions to Secretary of State John Kerrys speech criticizing Israeli settlement growth and laying out principles to achieve a two-state solution.

Centrist groups were measured in their reactions, criticizing the American decision to abstain last week on a U.N. vote rebuking the settlements while praising Kerrys commitment to a two-state solution.

American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris wrote in an open letter Wednesday that he watched the speech as one who understands that settlement-building beyond the security barrier is indeed a major impediment to the prospects for a final-status accord, but added, regarding the U.N. resolution, that it seems pretty clear that its consequence has been negative.

The Anti-Defamation League also praised Kerrys concern for Israel but criticized his focus on settlements.

Secretary Kerry delivered heartfelt remarks, read a statement from the groups CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. However, his concern about policies and dynamics that may jeopardize the path to a secure peace seem to be disconnected from reality that there are two parties involved in this process, both of whom will need to make difficult choices to resolve the conflict.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee castigated the speechs focus on settlements and said it could not support any element of the speech given the abstention, which Kerry defended.

Secretary Kerry placed overwhelming, disproportionate blame for the failure to advance peace on our ally, Israel, while neglecting numerous Israeli peace offers and Palestinian refusal to resume direct talks, AIPAC said in a statement Wednesday. Any potential, positive contribution from this speech was foreclosed by the Obama Administrations shameful refusal to veto the destructive, anti-Israel UNSC resolution.

Liberal groups applauded the speech and called on Israel to adopt Kerrys principles on Israeli-Palestinian peace, including borders based on the pre-1967 armistice lines, Jerusalem as a shared capital of Israel and Palestine, and a solution for Palestinian refugees that preserves Israels Jewish character.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, expressed strong support for Kerrys speech while voicing disagreement with the U.N. vote. He said in a statement that Kerrys speech was cast in some of the staunchest pro-Israel language and most forceful denunciations of Palestinian instigation of violence that we have ever heard from the podium at the State Department.

Secretary Kerry is also correct, of course, that the U.S. should not, and cannot, dictate a solution, Jacobs said. But his speech today reminds us that the United States has an indispensable role to play. It is difficult to imagine progress without vigorous American leadership, and the principles Secretary Kerry laid out today are a useful example of that leadership.

J Street, the dovish Israel lobby that has been largely supportive of the Obama administrations Israel policy, also praised the speech, as well as the Security Council resolution.

J Street strongly supports as well the Secretarys proposals for concrete steps toward the two-state solution that can be taken now and his outline of the basic principles on which resolution of the conflict can ultimately be based, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said in a statement Wednesday. The Secretary laid out a clear choice for those who care about Israels future and security as the democratic home of the Jewish people.

The Israel Policy Forum, a center-left group that favors the two-state solution, also supported the speech, as did the New Israel Fund, an umbrella fundraising body for left-wing Israeli nonprofits.

On the right, groups lambasted Kerry as anti-Israel and looked toward the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who they believe will be friendlier toward Israel. The Israeli-American Council condemned the resolution, as did the Republican Jewish Coalition, which said in a statement that it is confident that President Trump and the Republican Congress will work quickly to reverse these statements and actions, and reestablish the strong bonds between the U.S. and Israel.

The Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America criticized the U.N. resolution and called on the incoming Trump administration to renounce the recent action taken by the Obama Administration and to work to repair the damage done to the cause of peace and the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The Zionist Organization of America, another right-wing organization, also harshly criticized the speech.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerrys speech today essentially was a proposal for a Hamas-Fatah-Iranian-Palestinian-Arab terrorist state, which divides Jerusalem in two, forcibly evicts Jews from their homeland, and requires Israels retreat to indefensible borders, Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein said in a statement. His speech was filled with anti-Israel vitriol and falsehoods.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (r) sits with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they address reporters June 27, 2016, at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Rome, Italy.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry slammed the Israeli government over settlement building, warning that the two-state solution is "in jeopardy," in a lengthy speech Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly called "almost as unbalanced" as the United Nations Security Council's recent anti-settlement resolution.

"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 his speech, which lasted an hour and a half and detailed the outgoing Obama administration's vision for Middle East peace.

With less than a month left in President Barack Obama's term, Kerry defended Obama's decision to abstain from the vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, allowing the measure to pass and breaking from the longstanding U.S. policy of vetoing one-sided U.N. resolutions targeting Israel. The secretary of state laid out the case to continue to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while questioning Netanyahu's commitment to Palestinian statehood and calling the Israeli leader's current government "the most right-wing in Israel's history."

The reaction from Jerusalem was immediate and searing. At a press conference, Netanyahu expressed "deep disappointment" in how Kerry blamed Israeli policy for the conflict and merely "paid lip service" to the unrelenting terrorism waged against the Jewish state since it declared independence in 1948.

"Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders," Netanyahu said. "No one wants peace more than the people of Israel."

Ma'ale Adumin, located in the Judean Hills 4.3 miles from Jerusalem, is just one of the 'settlements' in question.

The prime minister said he looks forward to working with the incoming Donald Trump administration to "mitigate" the fallout from the U.N. resolution and to "repeal" it. He predicted that stemming from next month's international peace conference in Paris, France or Sweden could bring another devastating U.N. resolution against Israel, emphatically saying that the U.S. should not enable more harmful resolutions against the Jewish state and calling on Obama to "stop this game, the charades."

Netanyahu went on to say, "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 Sec. Kerry does not see this simple truth."

Commenting on Kerry's speech, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said the Obama Administration "acted against Israel at the U.N., and any claim to the contrary is a distortion of reality."

"Neither speeches nor statements will bring peace to our region," Danon said. "The only way forward is for the Palestinians to understand that they must condemn terror, end incitement and return to the negotiating table."
Our Jewish Orlando, the young adult division of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, hosted a conversation about interfaith relationships, "Celebrating Traditions," on Dec. 8 at Infusion Tea in College Park. The discussion was led by Rabbi Joshua Neely of Temple Israel in Winter Springs.

With an increasing number of young adults in interfaith relationships, this program was specifically requested by members of OJO. The discussion was also multigenerational in scope, with parents and grandparents of adult children in interfaith relationships joining the conversation with young couples.

OJO will hold a "Prayerful Meditation" event on Jan. 28 at Temple Israel. This is an experiential workshop that will include meditation, guided imagery, breathing exercises and more. Find out more at http://www.jfgo.org/ojo.
NEW YORK (JTA)-Emotions are running high following the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Here are seven questions aimed at making sense of what went down and what it could mean moving forward.

1. Did Obama just double down on failed "settlements first" strategy?

Listening to President Barack Obama's aides, the decision to allow Friday's U.N. Security Council resolution to pass was a last-gasp move borne out of frustration and distrust. But in many respects it resembles the Obama administration's failed opening maneuver.

Obama took a hot-and-cold approach to Israel, simultaneously strengthening military and intelligence cooperation while stepping up criticism of the settlements. The plan reportedly was to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a settlement freeze, which in turn would potentially lead to meaningful diplomatic gestures from multiple Arab states (including Saudi Arabia) and get the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.

Netanyahu eventually accepted a modified 10-month freeze, but the Obama folks either over-promised or were rolled by Arab interlocutors and the Palestinians. In one instance, in September 2009, Obama officials said a number of Arab states-not including Saudi Arabia-were ready to announce overtures to Israel, when an announcement of building in eastern Jerusalem scuttled the deal. No meaningful gestures ever emerged from the wider Arab world, and Abbas didn't show up for talks until the freeze was about to expire-and then promptly insisted on an extension of the freeze in exchange for their continuation.

Instead of providing a boost to peace talks, the Obama strategy produced paralysis. The Palestinians now expect to be rewarded with Israeli concessions simply for showing up at the negotiating table. And if they don't get any, they apparently are content to sit on their hands and wait for the international community to impose a solution.

By letting the resolution pass, the Obama administration has essentially validated that strategy while boosting right-wing politicians in Israel now pressing Netanyahu to abandon the two-state approach entirely.

2. Did Netanyahu blow diplomatic gains by Sharon and Olmert?

Depending on which sources you want to believe, former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert translated warm relations with President George W. Bush into unprecedented U.S. acceptance of continued, albeit limited, settlement construction prior to a final status agreement. Compare that to where things stand today and it makes sense to take a look at Netanyahu's approach to the Obama administration.

Two caveats before jumping in: Just what the Bush administration agreed to regarding settlement construction and how formal those agreements were are a matter of debate. And let's acknowledge there is little to suggest that Obama and his aides had any interest in running with the Bush-Sharon/Olmert framework.

That said, if Netanyahu was serious about securing the Obama administration's support for the maximal Israeli view of the Bush-Sharon understandings-in particular the green light on building in certain settlements-he had a funny way of showing it.

By all accounts, the Israeli quid in the deal was the unambiguous endorsement of a Palestinian state plus the Gaza disengagement and dismantling of the four West Bank settlements. Netanyahu campaigned against all of the above and spent his first few months in office refusing to reaffirm Israel's support for Palestinian statehood.

Yes, after a few months in office, Netanyahu embraced the two-state goal, but by then suspicions about his true intentions had increased-doubts that were reinforced by Netanyahu's assertion during the 2015 campaign that no Palestinian state would be created on his watch.

Another, perhaps more important, shift was Netanyahu's abandonment of Sharon and Olmert's strategy of bending over backwards to downplay disagreements with the White House. If anything, Team Netanyahu took the opposite approach, from airing public disagreements to disparaging Obama administration officials to playing footsie with Republicans.

However wrong you think Obama was last week (or during the past eight years), it's still worth asking whether a more cordial and collaborative approach from Netanyahu would have produced a different outcome.

3. Why did Egypt back this resolution?

A major Israeli talking point in recent years has been that regional chaos in the Middle East and Arab fears of Iran have created a new era of behind-the-scenes Israeli-Arab cooperation. One consequence of this new reality, we've been told, is that Arab governments are much more worried about ISIS and Iran than they are about the Palestinians.

Yet it was Egypt that first introduced this resolution. And though Egypt eventually withdrew the resolution under pressure from Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump, it ended up voting for the measure anyway after four other countries put it up for a vote.

Was Egypt's introduction of the resolution and subsequent "yes" vote about coordinating with the Obama administration or addressing domestic audiences? If the latter, it suggests that Arab leaders are still feeling internal pressure to make progress on the Palestinian front.

4. What does Putin want?

Trump has made clear his eagerness to come to an understanding with Russian President Vladimir Putin on how to calm the region and defeat ISIS. Obama is on his way out, but Putin isn't going anywhere, so it's worth noting that Russia voted for the resolution (and is a seemingly satisfied partner to the Iran nuclear deal). What emphasis, if any, will Putin put on Israeli-Palestinian issues when he and Trump put their heads together about the Middle East?

5. Does Trump want a peace process?

In recent months Trump has consistently stressed a no daylight-style line regarding his future dealings with Israel-a message that some left-wingers and right-wingers alike have interpreted as a willingness to let the two-state solution die and give a green light to Netanyahu to proceed as he sees fit. But Trump also continues to talk about what a great accomplishment it would be if he could help broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal. And in criticizing the U.N. resolution, Trump sounded very much like someone thinking about the next round of talks, complaining that the move "puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position."

Another sign that the incoming president could be serious about future talks: His naming of a trusted longtime aide, Jason Greenblatt, the chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, as his administration's special representative for international negotiations.

6. If this resolution is good for the two-state solution, why are Hamas and Islamic Jihad so happy?

Among those cheering the resolution are Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two terrorist groups opposed to a two-state solution (not to mention Israel's existence).

7. How strong is Jewish opposition to the resolution?

The criticism isn't just coming from the right. Centrists groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee issued sharp condemnations. The Israel Policy Forum-a staunch advocate of U.S. efforts to secure a two-state solution-came out against the resolution, citing the U.N.'s abysmal record on Israel, the lack of balance in the resolution itself and the effect of galvanizing Israeli opponents of a two-state solution. Yes, several left-wing groups (including New Israel Fund, J Street, Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu) voiced varying levels of support for the resolution. But prior to the vote, the Union for Reform Judaism-the largest liberal group, and a frequent critic of the Netanyahu government and settlements-declared that it stood "firmly against any U.N. resolution that would dictate the way forward on this complicated issue."
A tiny drop of light dispels even the greatest darkness; this is the true message of Chanukah. Rabbi Yosef Konikov, founder of Chabad of South Orlando, delivered an inspiring message on the power of light over dark, and good over evil to a crowd of over 400 people at the community Chanukah party at Chabad on Sand Lake. The celebration, which had crafts for the kids, snow cones, cotton candy and a 10-foot snow slide in addition to other things, was special because of its truly warm atmosphere. Everyone seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, and the party had so many of the community members involved. Teens were running the different booths and men and women from the community were running the barbecue and welcome table. Wherever one looked, a friendly face smiled back.

A local from the area who had not been to Chabad before, stopped by when he saw the party taking place. He approached Rabbi Konikov and said, "I don't know most of the people here, but in this crowd, I feel like I am with family."

His words rang true for everyone celebrating Chanukah there. Even with such a crowd, the event had an intimate feeling. As night fell, Rabbi Konikov lit the menorah accompanied and aided by Brett Kingstone, and Richard Harary. As they kindled the Chanukah candles, the light and warmth of Chanukah could be felt by each person in the crowd.
Wednesday morning, Jan. 4, the Jewish Academy of Orlando received a phone call stating that there was a bomb in the building. The specific message from a distorted voice said "There is a bomb in the Jewish Academy."

This kind of threat is taken very seriously. The Maitland police were called and they acted quickly to contact the FBI and other local law agencies. According to the campus's emergency response procedures, the entire campus, including The Roth Family JCC and Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center were immediately evacuated. Head of School Alan Rusonik told the Heritage that the Jewish Academy students and the children in the Early Childhood Learning Center were evacuated to a designated evacuation site where parents came to pick up their children. The Maitland Police Department closed off Maitland Avenue and portions of Maitland Boulevard as the buildings were checked by bomb-sniffing K-9s.

After about an hour, the campus was reopened after no suspicious devices were found. The Jewish Academy re-opened on Thursday, Jan. 5.

Keith Dvorchik, The Roth Family JCC CEO, stated that it was very obvious that those who called wanted to terrorize the Jewish community. He also stressed that he is pleased with the relationship the JCC campus has with the Maitland police and commented them on the promptness of their response and the thoroughness of their investigation.

Andy Brennan, who just started his job as security director on the JCC campus on Jan. 3, thanked the entire Maitland Police department for their diligence and resources. "We have a strong relationship with both agencies, who have always, and will continue to, make the security of our campus a top priority," he stated in an email to all JCC members.

Shortly after the call came into the Jewish Academy, a similar call was received at Chabad of South Orlando. The office manager who took the call initially hung up on the caller stating she couldn't hear what he was saying because his voice was very distorted. The caller called again and asked in a digitized-sounding voice if she could hear him, then stated, according to her, "there is a bomb in the shul."

Rabbi Konikov wasn't sure if she heard correctly that the person said "shul" because of the distortion. "Perhaps he said school," Rabbi Konikov stated, since the Maitland call was directed to the Jewish Academy.

As in Maitland, the police response  this time the Orange County Sheriff's Office, was quick to respond and very competent. There were 50 children in the building and about 20 staff who were all evacuated to Chabad's other location.

Were the children afraid? "No," said Konikov. "We said it was practice for an emergency."

The parents were informed and told exactly what had happened and were given the choice to pick up their children or let them return to classes. All of the children returned.

"We, too, have a great relationship with the Orange County police. They quickly handled the situation and within one hour had gone through the entire building with the K-9 dogs."

Konikov also stated that Mayor Theresa Jacobs called him to share her concerns.

"It's pretty clear that it's anti-Semitic motivated intimidation," Konikov told the Orlando Sentinel. "Typically people full of hate want to intimidate places of love."

One year ago this month, The Roth Family JCC was forced to evacuate after receiving a similar bomb threat. There was no bomb found at that time.
Argentine court rules ex-president may have covered up Iranian bombing of Jewish center

(JTA)The appeals court in Buenos Aires has cleared the path to a criminal probe into former Argentine President Cristina Kirchners motives in cooperating with Iran on the investigation of the deadly 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center.

In a 249-page ruling handed down Thursday, three judges wrote that the evidence presented does not permit a justified dismissal of possible illicit actions by Kirchner in connection with a deal between her and her administration with Iranian officials. Kirchner, who already is on trial over corruption charges, allegedly covered up evidence from the bombing in exchange for Iranian oil.

The allegations were made by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who died mysteriously in January 2015, had been dismissed by a lower court.

Nisman accused Kirchner of trying to derail the investigation into the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 and injured 300. Argentine courts have accused Iran of orchestrating the attack, though Iran has denied any involvement.

In 2013, the Argentine congress under Kirchner approved an agreement with Iran to jointly probe the bombing, despite condemnations by representatives of Argentinas Jewish community, Israel and others. A federal court in 2014 ruled the agreement was unconstitutional, prompting the government to appeal. Last year, however, the new Argentine government under President Mauricio Macri withdrew the appeal, effectively voiding the agreement.

Kirchner said the agreement was to make headway in the investigation, which has strained Iranian-Argentine relations. But according to Nisman, the move was part of a plan to close the countrys energy gap by trading Argentine grains for Iranian oil. She has dismissed the charge as absurd.

Nismans death was initially classified as a suicide, but an official investigating the case said early this year that the evidence pointed to homicide. The investigation is ongoing.

The prosecutor was just hours away from a scheduled appearance in Congress to brief lawmakers on his accusations against Fernandez when his body was found on the floor of his apartment, a .22-caliber pistol by his side.

Iran has repeatedly denied any link to the bombing, and an Argentine judge in February 2015 dismissed Nismans accusations as baseless. A review panel later agreed by a 2-1 vote, finding insufficient evidence to formally investigate Kirchner.

The ex-president has faced several criminal charges since leaving office a year ago. She was indicted this week on charges arising from allegations that she and top officials from her administration skimmed money intended for public works projects.

Dutch insurer defends circumcision coverage

AMSTERDAM (JTA)A major insurer in the Netherlands defended its coverage of circumcision in boys younger than 18 for religious reasons amid criticism of the practice and the impact of Islam in society.

Zilveren Kruis, the kingdoms largest insurer, included religious circumcision in its 2017 brochure published earlier this month.

We are seeing that some of the insured parties want to be circumcised or have their boys circumcised, the agency, whose name means Silver Cross, wrote in a statement published Tuesday on its website in response to various questions over why some complementary plans include reimbursement for non-medical circumcision.

On Tuesday, Rene van Rijckevorsel, the acting editor-in-chief of the conservative Elsevier weekly, wrote on Twitter that Zilveren Kruis was encouraging female genital mutilation. After Zilveren Kruis clarified that its insurance covers only males, va Rijckevorsel said he also considered this mutilation.

But in its statement, Zilveren Kruis suggested its coverage encourages parents to have the procedure performed hygienically in licensed clinics.

The right-leaning news blog GeenStijl, which says it is accessed 2 million times per month, wrote that Zilveren Kruis is moving into the niche that until recently had been occupied only by specialized insurance companies catering specifically to Muslims. Zilveren Kruis began including non-medical circumcision of boys in some of its plans in 2014.

In northern Europe, non-medical circumcision of boys is under attack from critics who see it as a foreign influence by Muslims and by progressives who say they do not object to such influences per se but view this particular custom as violating childrens rights.

A similar debate has evolved around the ritual slaughter of animals.

Both customs are partly shared by Jews and Muslims, though, among other differences, Judaism has stricter regulations on both.

About half of Dutch Jews do not perform circumcision on their boys, according to a 2009 survey by the community.

Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said that Zilveren Kruis inclusion of circumcision is clearly meant to benefit Muslims, not Jews, as mohelim, or trained Jewish circumcisers, perform it for free.

Zilveren Kruis decision, Jacobs said, to offer reimbursement does not affect Jews but is a positive thing for society because it helps avoid health risks in Muslim circumcisions, which are sometimes perform by unqualified relatives.

Separately, in October a Swedish court rejected a Muslim mothers request for reimbursement from her municipality of the circumcision of her son, the Vetlanda Posten lcal newspaper reported.

Ex-POW featured in Hillary Clinton campaign dies

(JTA)Joel Sollender, a World War II prisoner of war who appeared in television ads for Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, has died.

The cause of his death on Tuesday evening was congestive heart failure, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Thursday. Sollender, who was Jewish, was 92.

He had a great patriotic feeling about this country and the war affected him in many profound ways, his widow, Dorothy, told the Union-Tribune in a phone interview from the couples home in Poway, California. Here was this smart-ass Jewish intellectual from New York City who became friends in the Army with a Missouri farmer, an Indian bootlegger. He just got along with everyone because he was a person for every man and he truly loved America.

Sollender told the Union-Tribune in November that he was irked by presidential candidate Donald Trumps remarks during a Republican primary event last year in Ames, Iowa, mocking John McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona and a POW during the Vietnam War, as a Navy pilot who wasnt a war hero because he was captured.

Reports of Sollenders anger reached Clinton election headquarters in Brooklyn, and a camera team taped him soon afterword for two ads. A 30-second spot showed Sollender and other veterans reacting strongly to a string of Trump comments about the military. An 80-second ad featured Sollender alone, crying in his home as he reflected on his POW experience that was 70 years ago, and yesterday.

Both ads debuted on Sept. 16National Prisoners of War Remembrance Dayand played in heavy rotation in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

He was devastated that Trump won and worried about the future of the country, Dorothy Sollender said.

Born in Manhattan, Sollender quit his studies at City College of New York following World War II and was recruited into the 346th Regiment of the Armys 87th Infantry Division.

He was captured on Dec. 11, 1944, in France and imprisoned in Stalag 3A near Luckenwalde, Germany, according to military records kept by the National Archives.

His decorations included a Bronze Star for valor, the Combat Infantryman Badge and a Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.

After the war, Sollender finished his studies at New York University, majoring in business administration. He became an executive in the textile industry before retiring in 1992. The Sollenders had two children, one of whom died in a car accident in 2002.

Besides his wife, Sollender is survived by a son, Dr. Jonathan Lee Sollender, and six grandchildren, two of whom serve in the military.

In rare move, Spanish town votes to reverse BDS resolution it passed this year

(JTA)In a rare move, a Spanish municipality voted to nullify a resolution it had passed earlier this year endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Santa Eulalia, a town on the island of Ibiza 300 miles southeast of Madrid, last week nullified in a vote the pro-BDS resolution it passed in the summer following legal action initiated against the municipality over the earlier vote, ACOM, the Spanish pro-Israel organization, told JTA on Friday.

More than a dozen such BDS resolutions have been reversed over the past two years in Spain, where over 50 municipalities have endorsed BDSmore than anywhere else in Europe. But in most of the cases, the reversal came in an injunction following a court ruling declaring BDS discriminatory or in a local government decree designed to avoid such a ruling, according to ACOM President Angel Mas.

It is rare for a municipality council to cancel in a vote a resolution that it had passed only months before, he said.

The center-right Popular Party, which opposes boycott initiatives against Israel, called the second vote amid pressure from senior politicians and because of concerns that ACOMs legal action against the resolution at Santa Eulalia would end in a nullification, Mas said. Such a reversal by vote has occurred only once or twice before in Spain, he said.

During debates at town hall about the resolution, Popular Party representatives argued it would be disproportionate to focus on the democratic nation of Israel at a time when hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died in a brutal civil war among rebels, Islamists and forces loyal to the countrys dictator, Bashar Assad, Mas said.

Last month, the Administrative Appeals Court No. 3 of Barcelona scrapped the motion passed in March by the suburban municipality of Sant Adria de Besos on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Promoting BDS is illegal in France, where doing so is considered a form of incitement. Britains government said it was considering similar legislation. Spain has no laws specifically against boycotting other nations, as France does, but this has after 2014 become a de-facto position of the Spanish judiciary following several precedent-setting rulers by some of the countrys highest tribunals.

Mas welcomed the vote in Santa Eulalia, saying it was preferable to obtaining an injunction.

Ours is not a litigious organization, he said of ACOM. We are not there to start court cases, but we are forced to do just that when illegal and discriminatory activities are taken against Israel. When these actions are corrected and the situation is resolved on the political field, where this issue belongs, that this is better than having to bring it to court.
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Ahead of the unknowns a Trump administration will bring to American Middle East policy, the Obama administration allowed a bracing reminder on Friday that the international community does not recognize the validity of Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security Council vote last week was hardly unprecedented, but neither was it entirely consistent with recent U.S. policy. The Obama administration did not quite endorse Resolution 2334, but its abstention ensured the resolution, reaffirming the illegality of Israeli settlement in lands captured by Israel in 1967, would be adopted. As one of the five permanent members of the 15-member council, the U.S. could have exercised its veto power. Instead, the resolution passed, 14-0.

For 24 years, the United States under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama insulated Israel from an international community that since 1967 has sought to exact consequences for its continued presence in disputed lands. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, those three administrations considered the isolation of the Jewish state at the United Nations to be counterproductive to encouraging Israel to take bold steps for peace.

The number of Security Council resolutions opposed by Israel dropped significantly during those three presidential eras and were narrowly focused on limited crises. During the Clinton presidency, Israel objected to just three resolutions adopted by the council, and six adopted during the George W. Bush tenure-none of which spoke directly to the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the 25 years prior, according to a comprehensive listing posted by Americans for Peace Now, Israel objected to 68 council resolutions allowed by the United States.

But with a couple of notable exceptions-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pullout from Gaza and a patch of the West Bank in 2005, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2010 settlement freeze-Israeli settlement expansion continued unabated in that period, despite widening cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. By 2004, George W. Bush had effectively recognized the large settlement blocs bordering 1967 Israel as "realities on the ground" and suggested that the Palestinians would be compensated for the territory with land swaps.

Obama's apparent message to the world on Friday is that incentives did not work in slowing settlement expansion. The carrot having wilted, the president reintroduced the stick.

Obama administration officials have said plainly that the expansion of settlements absent a peace process led to the decision to abstain. Samantha Power, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, in her explanation of the abstention, listed the considerations that made the administration hesitate to allow the resolution-chief among them the historic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations and Palestinian intransigence. But she also noted that since the Oslo Accords, the settler population has increased by 355,000.

"It is precisely our commitment to Israel's security that makes the United States believe that we cannot stand in the way of this resolution as we seek to preserve a chance of attaining our long-standing objective: two states living side by side in peace and security," she said.

As much as the language in the resolution has stirred cries of "unprecedented" in Israel and in some pro-Israel precincts in the United States, it is broadly consistent with resolutions that the United States allowed from 1967 at least through the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency in January 1981.

Last week's resolution reaffirmed "that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity," and constituted a "flagrant violation" of international law. Resolution 465, passed in March 1980 under Carter with a U.S. vote in favor, determined that "all measures" that would change the physical or demographic character of the occupied lands, including Jerusalem, "have no legal validity" and are a "flagrant violation" of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It further called on countries to "distinguish" between Israel and the West Bank.

Under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the council did not explicitly reject settlements as illegal, but referred to earlier resolutions that did so while continuing to assail the occupation as untenable. Resolution 605, passed under Reagan with a U.S. abstention in 1987, "recalled" Resolution 465 passed under Carter and said the council was "gravely concerned and alarmed by the deterioration" in the territories. Under George H.W. Bush, Security Council resolutions consistently decried the "deteriorating" situation and admonished Israel for its "violation" of Geneva conventions.

Critics say that what's new is the call to distinguish between Israel and the territories, though Resolution 465 calls on countries "not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied territories."

The practical consequences of the resolution passed last week seem limited. Its provisions already exist in the U.N. canon, and if any harm seems immediately forthcoming, it is in pledges by leading members of the Republican-led Congress to cut funding to the United Nations in the wake of its passage.

If there was an unprecedented element to the affair, it was in the response by Israel's leadership and some in the U.S. pro-Israel community. Relations between Obama and Netanyahu have never been smooth, but even critical statements have been tempered by thanks for enhanced security assistance and other signals of friendship.

Not this week. Language reserved for anonymous attacks or "leaks" from closed-door meetings went on the record.

"The Obama administration carried out a disgraceful and anti-Israel trap at the United Nations," Netanyahu said Saturday at the lighting of the first Chanukah candle.

Statements by mainstream pro-Israel groups were relatively temperate-the American Israel Public Affairs Committee called the abstention "particularly regrettable." On the right, the responses were more unleashed.

"Obama's an anti-Semitic Israel hater sympathizing with radical Islamic terrorists," said Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, in his first-ever tweet. "He likes his Jewish friends, not the Jewish people."

Netanyahu, who in the weeks before was boasting to all comers about Israel's expanding relations with India, China, Russia and a host of African countries, launched steps redolent of the "you and me against the world" era that predated Oslo. He suspended ties with New Zealand and Senegal, two of the four nations that reintroduced the resolution after Egypt pulled it under pressure from Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump. He summoned for rebukes ambassadors from the United States and other Security Council member states with diplomatic ties to Israel. And he canceled a visit by the prime minister of Ukraine, which supported the resolution. His government cut off all but security ties with the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu and his ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, said they were counting on the Trump administration to reverse course. Dermer said in multiple interviews he had evidence that the Obama administration did not simply abstain but colluded in framing the resolution, an accusation strongly denied by administration officials.

Israel is now looking ahead to a new American order. At the Hanukkah ceremony, Netanyahu spoke of "our friends in the incoming administration"-David Friedman, Trump's ambassador designate, is an active supporter of the settlement movement-and warned that "in this new era, there will be a much higher price to be paid for harming Israel, and it will be exacted not only by the United States, but by Israel."

Will Trump usher in that era? His pronouncements after the resolution were relentlessly critical, promising in one tweet that "things will be different" at the U.N. after he assumes the presidency and lamenting in another that the council's action "will make it much harder to negotiate peace." In a third, he said the United Nations had become "a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!"

In total, the statements appeared to regret the passage of the resolution-but stopped well short of pledging to reverse its effects.
Chinas Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, will pay official visits to five African countries on January 7-12, 2017. The countries include Madagascar, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo and Nigeria.

The main purpose of Minister Wang's visit is to further explore on how to implement the major consensus reached between President Xi Jinping and African leaders as well as the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said.

It is against the backdrop of new changes emerging in international political and economic situations and new challenges turning up in African countries so as to assist Africa's rejuvenation and development, boost the upgrading of China-Africa cooperation and contribute to solidarity and common development among developing countries.

Chinas Foreign Ministrys spokesperson Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, January 3, 2017, that Minister Wang chose the five countries as the destination of his first overseas visit in the new year.

China's diplomacy is rooted in strengthening relations with developing countries, including those in Africa. The foreign minister's first trip of every year usually takes him to Africa, a practice that has been in existence for over two decades, already establishing itself as a fine diplomatic tradition, Mr. Geng said. He noted that 2017 will witness China-Africa cooperation marching forward and upgrading in an all-round way.

According to him, 2016 was the inaugural year of China-Africa cooperation in the new age, with China and Africa making positive efforts to implement the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and reaping a bunch of important early harvests.

Mr. Geng named a new railway in Ethiopia linking Addis Ababa to the city of Djibouti, the fast progress in building Mombasa-Nairobi railway in Kenya, and several industrial parks and special economic zones that are being planned out as few examples.

He recalled that, from January to September 2016, China's non-financial direct investment to Africa registered a year-on-year 31% increase.

Between the end of the Johannesburg Summit and the end of last July, 245 cooperation agreements worth more than US$50 billion covering various fields were signed between the two sides. Mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Africa has shown a sound momentum of transforming and upgrading, the spokesman added.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, Geng reaffirmed Chinas commitment to break new grounds in forging a major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.

Geng mentioned several activities in Chinas continuing diplomatic engagements: First, China will strive to foster a sound external environment to ensure the success of the 19th National Congress of the CPC. Second, China will do her utmost to be a good host of two major diplomatic events, one being the International Cooperation Summit Forum on the Belt and Road Initiative, the other the 9th BRICS Summit. Third, the country will promote the sustained, steady and sound development of major-country relations, including China-US, China-Russia and China-EU relations, maintain a stable neighborhood, and continue to enlarge China's circle of friends. Fourth, "the overseas livelihood projects" must be moved forward so as to better complement China's national development and reform and opening-up.

He summed up as saying that Chinas diplomatic efforts in 2017 will continue to safeguard the country's sovereignty, security and development interests, serve her cause of reform, development and stability, and make China's contributions to world peace and development.

Meanwhile, the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Mr. Wang Zhengwei, is expected to participate in the inauguration of Ghanaian President-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo, on January 7, 2017, in Accra. Mr. Wang is participating as a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

About the author

Fredrick P. W. Gaye is a news editor of In Profile Daily Newspaper in Liberia and a 2016 fellow of China Africa Press Center (CAPC) in Beijing. Mr. Gaye can be reached at: [email protected]
Israel's U.S.-funded Iron Dome defense system launches an interceptor missile. The U.S. and Israel agreed on a new 10-year, $38 billion defense aid package for the Jewish state in September.

By Jacob Kamaras

JNS.org

President Barack Obama sprang his much-anticipated "December surprise" on Israel at the United Nations, capping off 2016 with a bang as it relates to the Gregorian calendar year's major events surrounding the Jewish state.

The following are 10 Israel news storylines that defined this past year:

U.N. woes

The Obama administration chose to abstain from a Dec. 23 vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction beyond the 1967 lines, rather than exercising its veto power to block the resolution. In allowing the passage of the measure-which demands that Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the 'occupied' Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem"-Obama broke with the longstanding American policy of defending Israel against one-sided resolutions criticizing the Jewish state in the world body. America's U.N. abstention came in the waning days of a tenuous and sometimes hostile eight-year relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn't the only jarring U.N. resolution for Israel this year. In October, UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural body, adopted two resolutions ignoring Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem. The measures referred to Jerusalem's Temple Mount exclusively by its Muslim names, Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif.

The rise of Trump

The anti-settlement U.N. resolution provided an opportunity for President-elect Donald Trump to prove his pro-Israel credentials. Egypt initially withdrew the resolution under pressure from Trump and Israel, before the measure was put forward again by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal.

In November, Trump's election victory over Hillary Clinton ushered in the countdown to a new era in U.S.-Israel relations. Netanyahu and Trump will agree on at least one major issue: opposition to the Iran nuclear deal.

While Trump has enjoyed warm relations with many pro-Israel activists, many American Jews expressed concern over what they described as anti-Semitic undertones that surrounded his campaign, and similar criticism accompanied his appointment of chief strategist Steve Bannon. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) initially went after the Bannon pick because he "presided over the premier website of the 'alt-right'-a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists," referring to the Breitbart News website. But the ADL later softened its stance, acknowledging, "We are not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by Bannon."

Reaching out to non-traditional allies

Despite tension with Obama, Israel forged new ties and deepened bilateral relationships elsewhere.

"With President Obama and the left wing of the Democratic Party turning against Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made a great effort to build better relationships with Russia, India, African countries and others," said Dr. Ariel Cohen, director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics.

In December, Netanyahu visited Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, two Muslim-majority nations in Central Asia. He also visited several countries in East Africa during the summer and plans to return to that continent for visits to West African nations.

"What Netanyahu is doing right now is very important, but it should have been done a long time ago. It's overdue," Zvi Mazel, the former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, told JNS.org in July regarding Netanyahu's Africa trip.

Reconciliation with Turkey

In June, Israel and Turkey agreed to normalize diplomatic ties following a six-year rift in their relationship.

The former allies continue to take steps toward a full restoration of ties, including December's exchanging of ambassadors, but their improving relationship may be more of an acknowledgement of regional reality than an expression of mutual admiration. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who once said the actions of the Israeli military constituted "barbarism that surpasses Hitler," did not walk back that remark in an Israeli television interview in November, saying, "I don't approve of what Hitler did, and neither do I approve of what Israel has done."

A tale of two party platforms

Israel-related controversies surrounded the Democratic Party's platform process in July as well as its ongoing party chairmanship race. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appointed Israel critics James Zogby and Cornel West to the party's platform committee. West is an activist in the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) emerged as and remains a candidate for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison's bid has been met with significant Jewish opposition-including from some Democrats-due to his vocal congressional support for the Palestinian cause, his urging of increased U.S. pressure on Israel and his past ties with anti-Semitic activist Louis Farrakhan.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, in July reinstated language endorsing an "undivided" Jerusalem into the party's platform, a tone that could be reinforced by the incoming Trump administration's stated intention of moving America's Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Military and political action at the northern border

Israeli forces killed four fighters from the Islamic State-affiliated Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade in November after the terrorists had fired at Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights border region. The exchange drew significant attention because it was the first report of an Islamic State attack on Israel from Syria during the nearly six-year-old Syrian civil war.

Earlier in the year, Israel moved to assert its sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a region the Jewish state has controlled for 50 years but which is still considered disputed territory by the international community. In April, in response to the circulation of draft talking points in U.N.-sponsored Syria peace talks that featured a call on Israel to return the Golan to Syria, the Israeli government's ministerial cabinet chose to hold its weekly meeting in the Golan in order to affirm Israel's sovereignty in the area.

All the while, Israel kept a watchful eye on the activity of the Iranian-funded Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which has been increasing its military presence near the Syrian border with Israel in order to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in the civil war. The Israel Defense Forces estimates that about 120,000 Hezbollah rockets are aimed at Israel, but the terror group is still reportedly preoccupied with the conflict in Syria.

Massive aid package comes with strings attached

The U.S. and Israel made history in September with the signing of the largest-ever military assistance package between the two allies, a 10-year pact granting Israel a total of $38 billion in defense aid.

Yet the aid package did not come without controversy both before and after its approval. In July, the Obama administration said it opposed Congress's proposed "addition of $455 million above the FY 2017 Budget request for Israeli missile defense procurement and cooperative development programs." The Senate Appropriations Committee had recommended an appropriation of more than $600 million for Israeli missile defense in the 2017 fiscal year-$455 million above the Obama administration's request.

September's eventual agreement stated that if Congress increases defense aid above what it guaranteed in the package, Israel must return the extra funds. At a New York event in November, several members of Congress called that stipulation unconstitutional because it would interfere with the ability of Congress to fulfill its mandate as a co-equal branch of the federal government. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) vowed to "fight every step of the way" to revoke the aid limit.

Assessing the Iran deal's fallout

One year later, the fallout of the nuclear agreement signed in July 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 powers-including the U.S., with the Obama administration brokering the deal-was met with mixed reactions.

"In terms of compliance with the deal itself, I think it is going very well," Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the Rand Corporation, told JNS.org in July 2016. "Basically, the bargain was Iran rolling back of key elements of the nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief-those two key aspects of the deal have been met."

Ilan Berman-vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council think tank-said that while the deal is "holding for now," the agreement has "not fundamentally changed Iranian behavior," alluding to Iran's continued military buildup, support for terrorist organizations and hostility toward Israel and the U.S.

In August, Iranian state television broadcast live images of Russian-made, highly advance S-300 surface-to-air missiles being transported by trucks to the Fordo nuclear facility south of Tehran. The move by Iran to further fortify one of its most secretive nuclear sites raised doubts about the country's commitment to the nuclear deal.

Also in August, it was revealed that the Obama administration had sent an airplane with $400 million in cash to Iran in January, on the same day that Iran released four American hostages. The money was just one installment of the $1.7 billion settlement-contested since the 1979 Iranian revolution-that Obama agreed to pay Iran under the nuclear deal.

Palestinian terror wave abates, but some attacks persist

The months-long wave of Palestinian terrorism that began in September 2015 in Israel-commonly known as the "knife intifada" because many of the attacks were stabbings-began to wane in March and April 2016. But the relative silence was shattered April 18 when a bomb detonated on Egged Bus 12 in Jerusalem injured 21 people.

Emil Salman/POOL The icy relationship between President Barack Obama (l) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-pictured here during September's funeral for Israeli statesman Shimon Peres-grew colder after the Obama administration refused to veto a resolution against Israeli settlements at the United Nations Dec. 23.

In June, four Israelis were killed and an additional seven were wounded in a Palestinian terrorist shooting at the popular Sarona food and retail market in Tel Aviv.

The wave of fires

In November, a massive wave of wildfires in Israel caused an estimated $520 million in damage. For eight days, firefighters battled 90 fires in 1,773 locations, with the largest blazes occurring in Haifa. Eight-hundred of that city's apartments were rendered uninhabitable, leaving 1,700 people homeless. More than 32,000 acres of land across Israel were destroyed.

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said between 40 and 50 percent of the fires were the result of arson, marking the emergence of a new form of Palestinian terrorism.

The international community-including several of Israel's Arab and Muslim allies-was instrumental in helping the Jewish state combat the flames. Egypt, Jordan, Azerbaijan and Turkey all sent firefighting equipment to Israel. The Palestinian Authority also pitched in by sending fire trucks to Israel, representing a rare moment of Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.
In a recent article, Caroline Glick, a staff writer for the Jerusalem Post, takes aim at what she sees developing in the American Jewish community. Her targets include Jews supporting Obama, Clinton, and others of the Democratic Party establishment, their embarrassment at the election of Donald Trump, and their angst about Trumps nomination of David Friedman as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Things have gone further, with an intemperate speech by John Kerry and a shrill response by Benyamin Netanyahu. If were cousins, were in the midst of a feverish family squabble.

Kerry expressed his obsessive version of a mantra weve heard for years from leftists Jews and others who insist that they are our friends. The essence is that we must do something. If we do not accept a two-state solution, with borders pretty close or identical to those of 1949, were destined to accept a one-state solution that could be either Jewish and non-democratic (i.e., Apartheid), or democratic but subject to an non-Jewish majority.

The equivalent nonsense would be to insist that the U.S. and Mexico must unite, given U.S. investments in Mexico, Mexicans living in the U.S., and the miseries suffered by Mexicans in Mexico.

What to do?

Among the options are to ignore Obama, Kerry, and other extremists. They or individuals like them have long been part of what Jews suffer, enjoy, or tolerate. Polls continue to show substantial support for Israel among American Jews and non-Jews, especially those in the center and right of the political spectrum. Trumps election and Friedmans appointment signal a significant turn in the postures of the American government. Israeli rightists should not expect to realize the wettest of their dreams, but the country may be free to continue its moderate settlement policies and the kinds of actionsincluding occasional aggressionit has taken in national defense.

Beyond proposing dramatic ideas on a weekly or more frequent basis, the Palestinian leadership seems as far as ever from leading a united population or capable of reaching a formal agreement with Israel. Despite the frictions, there are numerous accommodations that allow both societies to exist alongside one another peacefully, most of the time. Israeli and West Bank Palestinian casualties from occasional violence, even during last years uptick, have been a fraction of what each community suffers from road accidents.

Individual Israelis may lament the carnage among Muslims throughout much of the Middle East. However, their bloodshed is more significant than the pursuit against Israel of leftist Jews and others in America, Israel, or elsewhere for their moral ideals. Not only can Israel anticipate that Muslim warfare will keep those hating us most busy for years to come, but the worries and pragmatism of moderate Muslim governments has expanded those with whom Israel can cooperate.

Recent incidents in Germany, Switzerland, and Jordan, along with continued carnage in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya have provided more than enough non-Israel busy work for diplomats, politicians, and commentators.

Obamas failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements, then the nastiness of Kerry and Bibi will keep us and American Jews busy for some time.

Spokespeople for Obama, Kerry and Netanyahu are blaming one another for a breakdown in communications and cooperation. Israelis beyond those usually on the right are accusing the American president and secretary of state of betraying us, and pissing on the party of his political opponent who won the election, and has staked out a different policy on Israeli settlements.

Palestinians are celebrating what they see as international recognition of the justice inherent in their demands, without taking account of the U.S. adherence, at least formally, to the idea of not imposing a future without waiting for negotiations between the parties.

The Security Council resolution and subsequent comments and tweets may do no more than add to the pile of cross national verbiage. Yet if it provokes Palestinian aggression, Israeli countermeasures in the West Bank may replace a period of accommodation with one of serious warfare. If that occurs, the final month of the Obama Administration will be compared with a foolhardy Cairo speech of its first year, which contributed initially to Arab Spring but then to the greater wave of Arab Winter.

We have to live alongside extremist Jews and others of the left and right. The noise, and occasionally worse, has long been part of the Jewish phenomena, and shows no sign of going away.

Comments welcome. Irashark@gmail.com.
The United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements comes in the wake of two other U.N. resolutions, passed by the UNESCO cultural body in October, that denied the historic and biblical relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel. The U.N. can pass resolutions, but it can neither change history nor alter reality. Americas abstention and refusal to use its veto power on an anti-Israel measure at the U.N. was a betrayal of historic proportions.

For the Jewish alt-left such as the New Israel Fund and J Street, which is supported by mega-donor George Soros, this was a stellar victory. They have clung to the myth that the settlements are obstacles to peace. They seem to have forgotten that Israel gave up Gaza in an anticipated exchange of land for peace while actually risking civil war and yielding land for rockets, missiles and underground terror attacks.

Obamas removal of the Zionist Organization of America from the table of Jewish advisers and replacing it with J Street was a mile marker on his road to perdition.

Indeed, many liberal Jews not only fail to understand the significance of Obamas abstention at the U.N., but some naively believe it will move forward the peace process. The absurdity of this position is revealed in the expectation that the Palestinians will now feel compelled to negotiate what the U.N. has already given them. According to the U.N., the Jewish section of eastern Jerusalem is now in Arab territory, as is the Western Wall. Indeed, even bustling portions of the economically thriving parts of main Jerusalem are probably east of the armistice line, according to some interpretations.

If anything, the Obama administration has further undermined any reasonable expectation that the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved through negotiations. No Palestinian negotiator can demand less than the U.N. has already given the Palestinians, and no Israeli can give away Israels holiest sites or uproot the hundreds of thousands of settlers who dwell east of an armistice line that was never meant or expected to be a border.

The U.N. resolutions de facto defining of a Palestinian state on the armistice linethe Auschwitz border, as Abba Eban so accurately called itwill never be accepted by Israel no matter how such democratic states as Russia, China and Venezuela vote.

The Arabs have had ample opportunity to accept a state alongside a Jewish state going back to the late 1930s, and they have always said no. The only reason to have a Palestinian state now is to put another Gaza on Israels narrow 12-mile border.

Israel will never accept the conditions of suicide Obama has created for it. But rest assured, Israelis will find in this U.N. resolution new motivation to continue to expand Israel into the disputed territories.

In the words of Tzipi Hotovely, Israels deputy foreign minister, History shows there are events which create drastic changes in Israels response. History will remember the U.N. Security Councils Resolution 2334 as the one which brought about Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. No decision will cause Israel to stop building on its own land.

Far from burnishing Obamas legacy, this leaves it in flames.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with theHaym Salomon Center. Follow him on Twitter @salomoncenter.
In 1989, following her tenure as President Ronald Reagans ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick described how the Palestinians have used the UN to destroy Israel.

Following outgoing U.S. President Barack Obamas assault on Israel at the UN Security Council last Friday, longtime UN observer Claudia Rossett wrote an important article at PJMedia where she recalled Kirkpatricks words.

In How the PLO was legitimized, published in Commentary, Kirkpatrick said that Yassir Arafat and the PLO worked to come to power through international diplomacyreinforced by murder.

Kirkpatrick explained, The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one. That will take more than resolutions and more than an international peace conference. But having succeeded so well over the years in its campaign to delegitimize Israel, the PLO might yet also succeed in bringing the campaign to a triumphant conclusion, with consequences for the Jewish state that would be nothing short of catastrophic.

As Rossett noted, in falsely arguing that Obamas support for Fridays UN Security Council Resolution 2334 is in line with Reagans policies, Obamas UN ambassador Samantha Power deliberately distorted the historical record of U.S. policy toward Israel and the PLO-led UN onslaught against the Jewish state.

In stark contrast to Powers self-serving lie, neither Reagan nor George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush would have ever countenanced a resolution like 2334.

Obamas predecessors opposition to the war against Israel at the UN was not merely an expression of their support for Israel. They acted also out of a fealty to U.S. power, which is directly targeted by that war.

It is critical that we understand how this is the case, and why the implications of Resolution 2334 are disastrous to the U.S. itself.

Resolution 2334 is being presented as an anti-settlement resolution. But it is not an anti-settlement resolution.

Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and neighborhoods in Jerusalem are being usedas they always have been usedas a means of delegitimizing the Jewish state as a whole, and legitimizing Palestinian terrorists and Islamic terrorists more generally. Resolution 2334 serves to criminalize Israel and its people and to undermine Israels right to exist, while embracing Palestinian terrorists and empowering them in their war to annihilate Israel.

Americas historic refusal to countenance such actions at the UN Security was never a purely altruistic position. It was also a stand for American power and the inherent justice of American superpower status and global leadership.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Soviets viewed the political war against Israel at the UN as a means to undermine the moral basis for the U.S.-led West. If Israel, the only human rights defending state in the Middle East, and the U.S.s only stable ally in the region could be delegitimized, then the very coherence of the U.S.-led Western claim to moral superiority against the totalitarian Soviet empire would be undone.

Hence, the first Soviet attempt at the UN to castigate Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, as a form of racism was made in 1965, two years before Israel took control of Judea and Samaria and united Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

That attempt failed. But nine years later the wording first raised in 1965 was adopted by the UN General Assembly, which passed resolution 3379 slandering libeled Zionism as a form of racism.

With their automatic majority in the General Assembly and all other UN organs, the Soviets used the Palestinian war against Israel as a proxy for their war against America. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Islamic bloc, backed by members of the former Soviet bloc, the non-aligned bloc and the Europeans continued their campaign. The only thing that kept them from winning was the U.S. and its Security Council veto.

When Obama chose to lead the anti-Israel lynch mob at the Security Council last week, he did more than deliver the PLO terrorist organization its greatest victory to date against Israel. He delivered a strategic victory to the anti-American forces that seek to destroy the coherence of American superpower status. That is, he carried out a strategic strike on American power.

By leading the gang rape of Israel on Friday, Obama undermined the rationale for American power. Why should the U.S. assert a sovereign right to stand against the radical forces that control the UN?

If the U.S. agrees that Israel is committing a crime by respecting the civil and human rights of its citizens to live in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, then how can America claim that it has the right to defend its own rights and interests, when those clash with the views of the vast majority of state members of the UN?

Following Obamas assault on Israel Friday, Senators Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz called for the U.S. to end its financial support for the UN at least until the Security Council abrogates Resolution 2334. They are correct.

But it isnt anger at how Obama has and is expected to continue to use the Security Council to imperil Israel that should inform the incoming Trump administrations actions. Rather a determination to maintain U.S. power and secure its national security requires that the UN be permanently defunded and defanged.

For eight years, through his embrace and empowerment of U.S. enemies, betrayal and weakening of U.S. allies, emaciation of the U.S. armed forces and repeated apologies for Americas past assertions of global leadership, Obama has waged a determined war against U.S. superpower status. The last vestige of the strategic and moral rationale for U.S. power was the protection America afforded Israel at the Security Council.

Now with that gone, it has become a strategic imperative for the U.S. to render the UN irrelevant. This can only be undertaken by permanently defunding this corrupt institution and using the U.S.s Security Council veto to end the UNs role as the arbiter of international peace and security, by among other things, ending the deployment of UN forces to battle zones.

Only by stripping the UN of its financial wherewithal to assault U.S. allies and American interests and by denying it the institutional and operational capacity to serve as an arbiter of disputes morally and legally superior to the U.S. can America protect its sovereignty and advance its interests.

Only by denying those associated with the UN the prestige that confers to an institution legitimized by democrat and autocrat alike can the incoming Trump administration rebuild Americas reputation and power.

It is not surprising that Obama is carrying out the final act of his presidency at the UN. Obama has made no attempt to hide his desire to eliminate Americas independence of action. By elevating the post of UN ambassador to a cabinet level position at the outset of his presidency, Obama signaled his conviction that this corrupt institution is the equal of the U.S. government.

This early signal was transformed into an open policy when Obama used the Security Council as a means to bypass the U.S. Senate in implementing his nuclear deal with Iran.

Now, by ignoring the near consensus position of both parties that the U.S. should block anti-Israel resolutions from being adopted at the Security Council and plotting further action against Israel at the Security Council in his final weeks in office, Obama has made clear his position and his aim.

Obama is not leading the war against Israel at the Security Council simply to advance the PLOs war for the annihilation of Israel. He is acting in this manner to undermine the legitimacy of American power.

Obamas strategic campaign against his country can only be defeated by a counter campaign by his successor.

Luckily, by eschewing multilateral entanglements in favor of bilateral partnerships during his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump has demonstrated that he understands the threat and will adopt the only possible means of countering it. To reassert and rebuild the rationale for American power, the Trump administration must permanently defund the UN and reject its legitimacy as an institution of global governance.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
As the sanctity of the Sabbath, the day of rest, set over Israel, two stabbings hit close to home and were jarring personally and nationally. The first took place in our neighborhood Friday evening. Despite the lack of use of electronics as is customary on Shabbat in traditional Judaism, word spread throughout town like a game of telephone. No one person got all the details correct, but the gist was clear: early Friday evening, a couple was out for a walk on the brisk clear night. Our 11-year-old sons are close friends. Out of the shadows, a Palestinian Arab terrorist pounced, stabbing and wounding my sons friends father.

Emergency volunteers (many also neighbors) were called up, treating the victim and beginning the initial hunt for the terrorist. The army was called in and lit up the sky with flares to continue the search. Throughout Shabbat, and into the next evening as we began the celebration of Chanukah, the army maintained a visible presence.

God willing, our neighbor will be OK but the trauma will persist, certainly among his son. Its intuitive because kids dont feel safe when their closest loved ones are not safe. But this became clear to me, putting my son to bed. He asked why our town has become so unsafe (there was a similar incident up the block a few months ago). Without saying it directly I know he was thinking, If this can happen to my friends father this can happen to my father, or to me.

At about the same time this was taking place around the corner, another stabbing was taking place far from here, but with an impact no less close to home.

By a 14-0 vote, the UN Security Council declared all settlements over the Green Line (the 1949 armistice) illegal. This not only includes densely populated towns like mine (10,000+) as well as cities of 50,000 and more, but the eastern part of Jerusalem including the Old City with the Jewish Quarter, Western Wall and Temple Mount, all central to Judaism. Thats right, Jewish presence in our most sacred places with thousands of years of centrality to, and in, Judaism is, according to the UN, illegal.

While President Obama has assured Israel that he has our back, what happened at the UN was no less than his stabbing us in the back. Obama added insult to injury by going back on his commitment to block biased anti-Israel resolutions. One doesnt get any more biased and anti-Israel than this, as it faults Israel exclusively and pre-judges the outcome of a conflict for which the only resolution is direct negotiations, not internationally imposed contortionist diplomacy and sanctions. It emboldens the terrorists and those who reject Israel, making peace less likely any time soon.

While tossing a bone to appear balanced, just one of the 13 sections addresses terror on both sides, burying the fact that its Arab violence that prevents peace, and equating Arab violence against Israelis (like happened in my neighborhood this week) with Israels defense against these, and other forms of violence. The resolution also strengthens the growing BDS scourge that seeks to delegitimize and boycott all of Israel.

The back stabbing of this latest anti-Israel UN resolution has more stabbing than a Friday the 13th movie. For instance, it states that Israel has no legal claim to our biblical homeland: The establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including 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 and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.

To put it nicely, they are wrong.

Obama so poorly read the pulse of Israel that his action pulled together Israelis of all political orientations. Even Democrats decried Obamas last minute personal vendetta. American Jewish and Christian organizations rallied against it, and the Obama administration not keeping its word. Expressions such as that of the AJC are noteworthy, being deeply disappointed that the United States chose to abstain on a UN... resolution which singled out Israel for condemnation.

The Administrations decision not to block an anti-Israel measure at the UN Security Council is profoundly disturbing, It only encourages diplomatic end-runs and diversionary tactics, which hinder rather than advance the prospects for peace.

Moreover, this measure repeats the Palestinian falsehood that Israeli settlements constitute the core of the conflict. Lets be clear: The chief obstacle to achieving peace is, and long has been, the... refusal of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israels legitimacy and negotiate... a comprehensive agreement. Security Council members that supported the resolution are not helping the cause of peace by their failure to hold the Palestinians accountable for their chronic short-sightedness and inaction.

All true, but far too diplomatic for my liking.

Another commentator made the more vivid and accurate statement that The Middle East is on fire and the UN and Obama targeted the only democracy in the Middle East. Shame! Id add that in much of where the Middle East is burning the most; its in fact due to Obamas failed foreign policies. So, rather than taking ownership or showing leadership, he shows his true colors by blaming Israel and creating a distraction from his impotence of global proportions.

Several friends, mostly Christian, emailed me personally to apologize for the U.S. action. I replied to one that while Obama led this from behind, as much of his presidency, its yet another demonstration of how the rest of the world is always out to get us. This is just the latest incarnation. Its glaring that allies such as Senegal and New Zealand not only voted for but sponsored the resolution. Sadly, we are used to it. But we have and will overcome.

Of course the impact of this resolution impacts Israel directly and specifically those who do business or live in areas in which the UN has just decided it is illegal for us to do so. However, it is an affront to Judaism and Christianity, and Jews and Christians who support Israel, and undermine our respective faiths because if Judaism and Israel have no connection to the heart of the Land of Israel, neither does Christianity. Its ironic that the resolution passed two days before the world celebrated the birth of a Jewish boy in Bethlehem, who was crucified in Jerusalem. Today, Joseph and Mary would be barred from Bethlehem if not lynched trying to get there, and Jesus would have been crucified as an occupier, an obstacle to peace.

Last year I called on Jews and Christians offended by similar moves to contact me to establish hubs of their businesses in Judea and Samaria. I was heartened by responses received and welcome people to do so again today. Make the statement that the UN action, supported by Obama, is against your faith and therefore youll stand with Israel, regardless of where the UN says Israels borders lie. Please feel free to reach out if youd like to make a positive statement and set up a Judean address for your work or ministry.

Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. He has a three-decade career in nonprofit fundraising and marketing and throughout his life and career, he has become a respected bridge between Jews and Christians. He writes regularly on major Christian web sites about Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He can be reached at FirstPersonIsrael@gmail.com.
In July 2006, Israel fought a bitter defensive war against the Lebanese Islamist organization Hezbollah. The hostilities, which saw thousands of rockets fired at Israel by Hezbollah terrorists, as well as the displacement of nearly 500,000 Israelis from their homes, ended one month later with a United Nations-brokered cease-fire.

Hezbollah had been temporarily chastened, but the disarmament demanded by the U.N. Security Council never happened, and the threat it poses has only grown during the intervening decade, most recently demonstrated by the terror organizations participation in the atrocities that accompanied the conquest of Aleppo in Syria.

Throughout 2006, the global left adopted Hezbollah as a cause celebre, embracing the group as the advance guard of the justified resistance against Zionist aggression. In this imagining, Hezbollah was depicted as a Middle Eastern equivalent of the plucky leftists who courageously fought the fascist armies of General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil Warand not as the anti-Semites, homophobes, misogynists and fascists that this collection of storm troopers truly are.

Some readers wont need reminding of the character of those demonstrations, but for those who dont recall that long, hot summer, here is a flavor of the protest chants that echoed through the streets of cities around the world (courtesy of the Anti-Defamation Leagues archive):

July 13, 2006, San FranciscoBlack, Red, Brown, White, We Support Hezbollahs Fight!

July 19, 2006, Los AngelesLong Live Hezbollah!

Aug. 5, 2006, BostonHezbollah has brought dignity and valor, a speaker told a rally.

Aug. 5, 2006, LondonWe are Hezbollah Now! (Placards carried by demonstrators.)

Aug. 12, 2006, Washington, D.C.Nasrallah, Nasrallah, the martyr is the beloved of Allah! (a reference to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.)

Aug. 12, 2006, ParisNous Sommes Tous Des Hezbollah! (We Are All Hezbollah!)

There were similar spectacles in other cities, with participant numbers ranging from the low hundreds to the tens of thousands. And the principle of solidarity with Hezbollah persists even now; at this years Al Quds Day demonstration in London, the We Are All Hezbollah! signs were again out in full force.

So: Who are we?

WeHezbollah, that isrevealed our true nature once more in the combined Russian-Iranian-Syrian regime onslaught that led to the fall of Aleppo, and the launching of countless atrocities against the starving, besieged population of that city. Even the normally mealy-mouthed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the assault nothing short of a massacre.

As with Bosnia, as with Rwanda, as with the ethnic cleansing of Iraqs Christians and Yazidis by Islamic State terrorists, the international communityled by the U.S.has been a pathetic bystander to the carnage in Aleppo. Some of the reports emanating from the cityfor example, young girls pleading with their fathers to kill them before they are raped by militias backing Syrian tyrant President Bashar al-Assadwill haunt us for years to come.

Since Aleppo fell to the Russian-Iranian-Assad-Shia militia axisa devilish number of actors, but all of them are pursuing the same goal of ensuring that Assads dictatorship is reimposed upon the corpses of Aleppos men, women and childrenthe atrocities have proceeded unabated. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shia militias, such as the PMU organization from neighboring Iraq, have been up to their waists in blood.

In one of the most gruesome incidents, a convoy of 20 buses carrying hundreds of evacuees, and accompanied by officials from the Syrian Red Crescent and International Red Cross, managed to persuade Russian occupation forces to allow them through their checkpoint. But then the buses arrived at another checkpoint, this one controlled by Hezbollah.

The convoy was halted for 15 minutes, reported Voice of America (VOA), then tanks and Hezbollah militiamen surrounded the convoy, fired indiscriminately in the air and expelled the accompanying Red Cross and Red Crescent workers. The militiamen forced all the men to get off the buses and confiscated their weapons and mobile phones.

The VOA report continued, Accompanied by his pregnant wife, a fighter who tried to resist was killed along with four others. They seized some of the civil defense cars and ambulances and forced the rest of the convoy back to the besieged pocket in eastern Aleppo.

We should expect nothing less from these Shia totalitarians, as the prominent French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy aptly described them in a recent interview with me. Hezbollahs operating codes revolve around punishment and death. Mercy is a quality that they mock. For that reason, Hezbollah is no different to the savages of Islamic State. Both are the Sunni and Shia sides of an Islamist coin that wreaks untold suffering on Westerners, Christians, vulnerable religious minorities, Jews and, in the largest numbers, Muslims themselves.

But do those who chanted We Are All Hezbollah understand the nature of the organization they so heartily embrace? Do they grasp that We Are All Hezbollah means We Are All Executioners, Rapists and Child Murderers? These are not the poorly armed fighters of the POUM communist political party in Spain, of whom George Orwell wrote so marvelously in his Spanish Civil War classic Homage to Catalonia. They are a well-armed, well-trained force of killers, as we have known for too many years now. The 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut? It was the work of Hezbollah, in an operation backed by their paymasters in Iran. The 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires? Ditto.

Look upon Aleppo and then imagine, please, what would happen if Hezbollah was unleashed upon the people of Israel. Sometimes, you need an apocalyptic scenario to bring you to your senses.

Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org & The Tower Magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author of Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism (Edition Critic, 2014).
The well-known Silver Beach scenic spot in Beihai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was recently converted into a "green beach" by algae. Sanitation workers have cleared 135 tons of green algae in just five days, China News reported on Jan. 5.

Silver Beach generally boasts fine sand and clean water. However, it has suffered from several invasions of green algae due to global warming and changes in the marine environment. On Jan. 4, the beach was once again covered by algae, giving off a light fishy smell. A dozen sanitation workers spent more than 10 days cleaning up the algae.

Gao Shijuan, an employee of the company that manages the scenic spot, explained that the algae appeared on the beach as it got warmer in December 2015. Still more arrived in 2016, sometimes covering the whole coastline.

An investigation by the Oceanic Administration of Beihai showed that the green algae on Silver Beach was non-toxic enteromorpha, which is not harmful to humans. Furthermore, the green bloom is a natural ecological phenomenon, which can even purify the water. However, it reflects the high content of nutritive salt in the seawater.

The local drainage facilities are not sound, which leads to imperfect treatment of domestic sewage discharged in the coastal area, said Ye Feng, head of the Beihai Environmental Inspection Detachment. Ye added that they will tighten oversight to decrease discharged pollutants.
Hundred of elderly people from the Donghu district of Wuhan gathered to celebrate Laba Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month, which fell on Jan. 5. Together, the group enjoyed a banquet of 1,000 aged people, which was started by Emperor Kangxi during the Qing Dynasty to show solicitude and respect to the elderly.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has never stinted on his commitment to womens rights, so it came as no surprise that he spoke in his New Year address of pregnant women getting 6,000 each for hospitalisation, immunisation and nutrition. Such a scheme already exists in the form of the Indira Gandhi Matriya Sahyog Yojana begun during the tenure of the last government. While women will indeed benefit, there are some worrying aspects to this.

One, of course, is the inadequacy of budgetary allocations. The other is that this is a scheme applicable to pregnant and lactating women in the age group of 19 and above who have two living children.

Read | What next? PM Modi fails to answer obvious queries in New Years eve speech

The good parts of the scheme are that hospital births will lead to fewer maternal and child mortality cases. It will also make up to some extent for the loss in wages for the woman during her confinement. Poor women are not able to take the necessary leave for childbirth fearing a loss in income at a huge cost to their own health and that of the child.

For all its advances, India still has alarmingly high child and maternal mortality. It is no secret that poor nutrition for the mother leads to underweight babies. According to the latest Sample Registration Survey the infant mortality rate is still 40 per 1,000 live births with neighbouring countries leaving India behind.

The most worrying part is that the scheme extends only to two living children. While family planning has worked very well in many southern states, the same has not been the case in the more populous northern ones.

Read | Women, being too depressed for too long can make your kids less empathetic

In India, the family size is not decided, by and large, by the woman. At least 60% of women in the age group 19-50 have more than two pregnancies. The figure is more in the region of three to seven.

According to the National Population Policy put in place by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees government, there were to be no such limitations on family size. The government was to offer a slew of family planning measures so that women did not always have to bear the burden of sterilisation and also not have to opt for this largely irreversible method of contraception.

Read | The government must go beyond just repackaging subsidies for the poor

Restricting benefits to women with two living children leaves a vast number of women out of the purview of such schemes. Unless there is adequate budgetary allocation and an urgent upgrade of the public health system, these worthy schemes will not meet their targets.

@LalitaPanicker

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Islam bhai called me a few days ago and asked for organic raw colours that are not available in Pakistan, says Abdul Razak, an artist from Gujarat, who became friends with Pakistani dastakar Islam back in 2004, when Pakistani artists were invited to be part of the Dastkari Annual Mela. The two have kept in touch since. He has become a very good friend of mine. We discuss art. Not just that, we have also exchanged biryani recipes, says Razak.

The dastkars who participated in the Annual Dastkari Haat Craft Bazaar in 2004, have not let the brewing tensions between the two countries affect the artistic exchange, and have kept the relationships intact.

Artists from Pakistan still call us and ask us to invite them again, says Jaya Jaitly, founder of Dastkari Haat Samiti.She had also invited women from Wagah border for an event Breaking Boundaries. Those women were terrified initially and denied coming, as their friends and relatives were not happy about the visit. That was the same year when an Indian soldier was beheaded at the border. But the visit became a lifetime experience for them and they still write to us asking us to invite them again. I feel so good that the tension between two countries doesnt affect the artistic relations, she adds.

Another artist, Arshad Kafil from Pilakhva, Ghaziabad says, Though we met ten years ago, we still call and discuss the many aspects of block printing. We send each other our artwork, take feedbacks and give suggestions. In fact, we also tell each other, what will sell in the markets of the respective counties. Maintaining relations also help us increase our sales, earn more and improve our crafts.

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(Xinhua) 20:54, January 06, 2017

Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao met with the Maldives Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim in Beijing Friday.

Li said that China regarded the Maldives as an important partner in building the 21st century maritime Silk Road.

Li called for boosting bilateral talks on a free trade agreement, and facilitating the joint project of China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, which connects Maldives' airport island to Male, the capital.

Li also called for closer tourism cooperation and cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Asim said the Maldives sticks to the one-China policy and hopes to cement cooperation with China within the Belt and Road Initiative.
Thi Giang Luong is on her first visit to India. I am very excited, she says, beaming. I am loving India!

The 32-year-old painter from Vietnam is visiting Delhi for a week because her art is part of an exhibition that celebrates 45 years of diplomatic relations between India and Vietnam.

The two countries have had a strong bilateral relationship since 1972. Although a staunch advocate of non-alignment, India supported Vietnam in its fight for independence (from France) and in its bid for unification. India also opposed Americas involvement in the protracted Vietnam war.

Works of 20 artists are on display at the exhibition. (Arvind Yadav / HT )

The exhibition - on until January 10 - features paintings, sculptures and photographs by 20 Vietnamese artists, including Luong, an oil painter who owns a gallery in Hanoi. She started painting when was eight years old but she learn to paint in oils only after graduating college. Three of her works are on display at the exhibition, each representing a different season in Hanoi. In spring, two women stand under the grass-green bower of a tree in full bloom; in summer, a young girl is surrounded by a mountain of red, a symbol of Vietnams summer flower or co may; in autumn, a woman walks amid shades of yellow, ranging from bright sunshine to a dull amber. Yellows seep across the frame, signifying shedding leaves and flowers, making it hard to tell where the trees end and the ground begins.

Autumn, Luong says, is her favourite season: I love the autumn in Hanoi.

A work of sculpture at the exhibition in IGNCA, Delhi. (Arvind Yadav/HT )

The women in her paintings are typically in traditional Vietnamese garb -- ao dai a form-fitting tunic worn over pants usually in silk. I hope that through my paintings, Indians understand our culture more and I hope the relationship (between India and Vietnam) grows, Luong adds.

Thats the goal of the exhibition as a whole. It represents a range of Vietnamese art, from intricate sketches by pen to paintings on lacquer and synthetic silk. Photographs - vivid, arresting and stylised portraits of people across the country - are a major part of the display. The week-long celebration also includes a film festival, from January 5-11, which will show seven movies by Vietnamese filmmakers.

What: Contemporary Artists from Vietnam

When: January 5-11, 11 am to 6 pm

Where: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 11 Mansingh Road

Nearest metro station: Janpath

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The Congress and the Samajwadi Party are working on a compromise formula to resolve stalled alliance talks ahead of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh next month.

Discussions on a pre-poll alliance hit a roadblock after the SP refused to concede more than 60 seats to the Congress, which had been demanding 100-120 seats.

Talks were also hurt by a raging internal struggle in the SP for party control between chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has sided with Shivpal but a majority of party legislators and office bearers are said to support the CM.

The SP was willing to spare the 28 constituencies the Congress won in 2012 apart from 31 seats on which it came second. The SP leadership had then asked the Congress to spell out a valid reason why it should be given more than 60 seats.

The Congress argued that though it could manage to win only 28 seats its cadre existed in almost all the 75 districts of the countrys most populous and politically important state.

However, the tough stand by the SP prompted the Congress to scale down its demand and was willing to consider the offer of 70 seats.

Besides the Congress internal poll assessment of the ground situation as of now is not encouraging with prospects of it retaining even the 2012 figure appearing bleak if it goes alone in the elections.

With Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati ruling out a tie-up with any party, the SP was the obvious choice for the Congress, which has been reduced to margins in UP.

Akhilesh has repeatedly said an alliance with the Congress will enable the combination to win more than 300 of the total of 403 seats. Backchannel talks are now on with SP leaders close to Akhilesh.

To expedite the alliance talks, the Congress has asked the SP to leave aside 108 seats out of which it will accommodate Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Ajit Singh, the Janata Dal (United) and the Krishna Patel faction of the Apna Dal.

Read: Prospects SP-Cong alliance increase after Akhilesh Yadav gets majority support

While the RLD is yet to come on board, it remains to be seen if the SP will accept the new formula.

But both the SP and the Congress are of the considered view that a pact could consolidate the Muslim-Yadav vote bank and keep both the BSP and BJP at bay. A section of upper castes  wooed by the Congress with its Brahmin CM pick -- might also be swayed by the alliance.

And for a pre-poll alliance, the Congress will prefer Akhilesh to Mulayam. It is no secret that the Congress is wary of Mulayams wavering moves. The other factor is the apparent bonhomie between Akhilesh and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. The two are said to share a good rapport and both have often praised each other on different occasions.

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The functioning of Madhya Pradeshs medical colleges teaching hospitals is regulated by a medical manual which was prepared as far back as 1927. Since then, the manual has not been updated, and the draft copy of a new medical manual, which was prepared by retired IAS officer DS Rai at the instructions of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been gathering dust in the medical education department for the past five years.

The 1927 medical manual was The Central Provinces and Berar Medical Manual. The print of the manual  not the manual itself  was revised in 1940. The manual was once again reprinted in 1957, after Madhya Pradesh was carved out of Central Provinces and Berar.

The medical manual in place was introduced when there was only one medical school in the entire province and the population was much lower. Now, the state has six government medical colleges and several private ones, while the population has swelled to 7.25 crore, Rai told HT.

As per official sources, Chouhan, during a 2010 visit to Gandhi Medical College (GMC), Bhopal, instructed medical education department officials to prepare a new medical manual to improve the functioning of the teaching hospitals of the government medical colleges in the state.

The then dean Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal Dr Nirbhay Shrivastava was authorised to take a call. He requested Rai to prepare the manual, given his extensive experience in the functioning of the medical education department.

Rai prepared a comprehensive draft which ran into about 625 pages after interacting with stakeholders over a period of one and a half years. He submitted the draft to Dr Shrivastava, who in turn handed over the document to the medical education department.

The most significant part of the new medical manual was that the responsibility of the authorities was well defined, leaving no room for any confusion or conflict. Hence, nobody could have escaped from his responsibility on any ground, Rai said.

The manual also defined duty of each and every person in the hospital, from the ward boy to the doctors  what should be the protocol, right from the time a patient is admitted to the hospital to when he is discharged  the duty of each and everybody was well defined. I dont know what happened after I submitted the draft, he said.

Talking to Hindustan Times, Dr Nirbhay Shrivastava said, The new manual was badly required. People will be surprised to know that even the head of departments in medical colleges have no authority in the functioning of the teaching hospital  it is the superintendent and dean around whom the entire functioning of the hospitals revolves. For instance, if any ward is not clean or the ward boy or any hospital staff dont perform their duty properly, the HoD has no authority to take any punitive action.

Director Medical Education Dr GS Patel said he had heard about the medical manual but was not in a position to comment on its status, adding that he will look into it.

Recently, massive irregularities in the functioning of Hamidia hospital  the teaching hospital of GMC  were detected during a surprise inspection by Chouhan. The chief minister ordered the immediate shifting of additional chief secretary (medical education) Prabhanshu Kamal and dean Ulka Shrivastava.

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The Taj Mahalthe place of erstwhile Begum of Bhopalwill be handed over to a private realtor to develop the sprawling 19th century structure into a 120-room heritage hotel, Hindustan Times reported in its January 1 edition.

HT on Thursday talked to a number of city historian and history students on their take on the decision to handover the iconic structure.

I was in school when a portion of the Taj Mahals terrace was damaged and the Bhopal Municipal Corporation erecting a white plastic sheet to cover it up. Thats the aesthetic sense of the city administration, says city-based historian Sikandar Malik.

Now they have handed over the heritage structure to a builder...I dont think anyone who has no knowledge of Bhopals history, will be able to do justice to the property, he says.

The Taj Mahal in Bhopal with a built-up area of 18 acre, would have been one of a kind cultural and heritage centre in the country, if it would have been developed properly. There is no need to develop a hotel on the property.

Instead, the BMC and the Madhya Pradesh Tourism should have renovated the Taj Mahal by adding more heritage value to it.

Shubhi Kaushik, a history student is also miffed by the news. We should learn to preserve heritage sites and not commercialise it. The place is like a school for students like me and converting it into a hotel would be losing out on its heritage value, she says.

Laxmi Sharam Mishra of Swami Vivekanand Library, says that it will be like destroying your own legacy. I have seen the Taj Mahal inside-out many times and it can be an ideal place for a museum to showcase Bhopals royal past.

Dr Suresh Mishra, another historian, however, says that restoring the Taj Mahal as a heritage hotel is a good option. It has been more than 60 years since the property was last renovated in 1956. The condition has deteriorated over the years and has gone from bad to worse.

City-based historian and writer Syed Akhtar Husain, agrees. The Taj Mahal is of great significance to Bhopal and converting it into a heritage hotel will make it noticeable in worlds eye, he says.

Located in Bhopals Shahjanabad, the Taj Mahal was built by Begum Shah Jahan, who ruled Bhopal from 1868 and 1901.

The Taj Mahals architecture is a unique combination of British, French, Mughal, Arabic and Hindu influences and has unique features. The minarets of the palace have little holes through which water was let out at frequent intervals to keep the building and its surroundings cool during summers.

The cooling system was based on underground water reservoirs. Begum Shah Jahan was inspired by Gond Mahal near Islamnagar, which had a similar cooling system, say historians.

Until 2013, the Taj Mahal was under the state archives department. In 2014, the monument was handed over to the Madhya Pradesh tourism department.

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Friends and family of Om Puri from all over the world mourned the loss of the veteran actor who passed away after suffering a heart attack in Mumbai on Friday.

Puri, who was known for his versatile acting and a distinct, powerful voice excelled in parallel cinema also made his own mark in commercial cinema.

As the news of Puris demise broke on Twitter, relatives and friends from all over made their way to his Andheri residence to pay their respects and attend his funeral.

Relatives and friends of Om Puri carry his body to an ambulance before his funeral in Mumbai on Friday. (Reuters)

The body of the actor, who found dead at his residence in the morning due to cardiac attack, had been taken to the Cooper hospital for post mortem and later in the afternoon brought back to his residence for his family, relatives and admirers to pay their last respects.

Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor arrives to pay last respects to Om Puri during his funeral in Mumbai on Friday. (AFP)

Veterans of the film industry including actor Shashi Kapoor, Gulzar, Amitabh Bachchan, Pankaj Kapoor, Anupam Kher and others reached at Puris residence to see him one final time.

Actor Irrfan Khan arrives to pay his final respects to Om Puri (AP)

Om Puri, with his powerful character roles in movies like Ardh Satya, Aakrosh, Maachis, Narsimha and even the internationally acclaimed Gandhi by Richard Attenborough, established himself on the film canvas as an actor with many shades.

Actor Vidya Balan arrives for the funeral of Om Puri in Mumbai on Friday. (AP)

His close friend, colleague and co-actor in several projects Anupam Kher too recalls his time with Om Puri. Speaking to HT on Friday, Kher said, As comfortable as he was with working with Shyam Benegal, he was equally comfortable working with someone like David Dhawan.

Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi arrives with her husband Javed Akhtar to pay her final respects to Om Puri in Mumbai on Friday. (AP)

Puri played a cameo in Richard Attenboroughs highly acclaimed film Gandhi (1982). He barely had a 90-second screen time in the film, but said in an interview years later that it had a great impact on his career.

Another Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan and his son and actor Abhishek Bachchan attend the funeral. (PTI)

Thanks to his film choices from commercial as well as parallel cinema, Om Puri shared screen with most other famous actors of his time as well of the present active era in Indian cinema. With Amitabh Bachchan, the actor shared screen in the 2004 movie Dev.

Actor Sarika at the funeral. (IANS)

While showing his acting prowess before the camera, Puri also honoured the theatre stage during his career and even acted in a number of TV series.

The last journey of Om Puri from his residence in Mumbai. (IANS)

In a career spanning more than three decades, Puri had won a slew of national awards and international fame for his work in several critically acclaimed films. He was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest award in India and two National Film Awards. He was made an honorary officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to British cinema in 2004.

Director Prakash Jha at the funeral of Om Puri (IANS)

Actor Randeep Hooda at the funeral (IANS)

Born in Ambala, Haryana, to a Punjabi family on October 18, 1950, the actor studied at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. He was also an alumnus of the 1973 class of the National School of Drama (NSD), where Naseeruddin Shah was a fellow student.

Lyricist Gulzar at the funeral of actor Om Puri in Mumbai (IANS)

Mumbai: Actor Javed Jaffrey at the funeral of actor Om Puri in Mumbai on Jan 6, 2017. Om Puri who passed away after a massive heart attack. (Photo: IANS) (IANS)

Nandita Puri, wife of Om Puri at the funeral (IANS)

The last rites were carried out by his son Ishaan in the presence of his estranged wife Nandita Puri and close friends Ashoke Pandit and Anupam Kher as well as iconic filmmakers like Ketan Mehta, Prakash Jha, and Govind Nihlani.

Bollywood actor Pankaj Kapoor and Supriya Pathak Kapoor attend the funeral (PTI)

The legendary actor, who featured in more than 100 films, made a name for himself across the globe.

Shakti Kapoor at the funeral (IANS)

The last rites started around 6.45 pm and were conducted by Puris son Ishaan at the Oshiwara crematorium.

And last but not the least his fans, who made their way to his residence to see his one last glance.

In the last interview to IANS, the veteran actor said, My contribution as an actor will be visible once I leave this world and the young generation, especially film students will watch my films.
Om Puris brilliance can be summed up in one scene from Govind Nihalanis hard-hitting drama Ardh Satya (1983). As Anant Welanker, a promising young man who is travelling in a bus, Puri tries to confront a fellow passenger who tries to touch Jyotsna Gokhale (Smita Patil). He does this without wanting to be seen as over-protective of Gokhale.

Many actors wouldnt be able to portray the many shades of expressions Puri brings out in this scene.

In a film industry known for its obsession with near-perfect faces and bodies, Puris success seems like a metaphor for winning against the odds.

He was one of the 16 FTII graduates who decided to do a film on Vijay Tendulkars marvelous play, Ghasiram Kotwal, in 1976. This turned out to be the beginning he was looking for.

Om Puri arrives for the British gala screening of The Hundred-Foot Journey at the Curzon Mayfair in London September 3, 2014. (REUTERS)

In a couple of years, Puri and his NSD partner Naseeruddin Shah, along with the likes of Amrish Puri, Smita Patil, Pankaj Kapur and Shabana Azmi, became pioneers of the parallel cinema movement in India.

Directors such as Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul and Kumar Sahni, who decided to drift away from escapist Bollywood, engaged these actors to achieve the unthinkable when stars such as Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan were on top of their game.

Om Puri in Ardh Satya.

Bhumika (1977), Aakrosh (1980), Aarohan (1982), Ardh Satya (1983): in film after film, Om Puri was turning into the perfect representation of a common man on the silver screen. This was the time when the government had a strict control over media, and celluloid representation of marginalised sections was limited to them speaking in an alien language and singing around fire in funny attire. Mainstream filmmakers couldnt differentiate between a dalit and an adivasi.

Thanks to Puri and his co-actors efforts, cinema had a better reflection of the social injustices.

Puris foray into comedy as a shrewd businessman Ahuja in Kundan Shahs Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983) brought out a completely different side of an otherwise serious actor. Years later, the West witnessed the same in East Is East (1999).

Om Puri in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron with Naseeruddin Shah.

His ability to switch from one dialect to another made him a favourite with Hollywood filmmakers who wanted to explore South Asia. His grip over diction and Urdu made this look easier than it actually was.

The 90s saw him getting into character roles that were taller than the heroes. Be it in Narsimha (1991), Droh Kaal (1994) or Maachis (1996), he excelled in every part.

This was in addition to films like Chachi 420 (1997) and Hera Pheri (2000), in which he explored purely comic opportunities.

Om Puri in Malamaal Weekly.

However, in the last couple of years, Puri was in the news for the wrong reasons. B-grade films, divorce and nasty comments against soldiers tarnished his tall image.

But all said and done, Om Puri was that one commoner who dared to bring a change through his acting in cinema. And for that, we will keep going back to his films, and in the process, to the man he was.

Interact with Rohit Vats at Twitter/@nawabjha

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Veteran Indian actor Om Puris death on Friday was mourned across the border in Pakistan, with filmmakers recalling their personal interactions and many on social media lauding his efforts to foster better relations between the two countries.

There were several reasons for Pakistanis to feel a connect with Puri, who died at 66 of a heart attack.

He played Pakistanis in several Bollywood and international films, ranging from Zia-ul-Haq in Charlie Wilsons War to the Maulana sahab in Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and had visited the country several times to participate in film festivals and other events.

News of Puris death was carried prominently on all English and Urdu news websites, with most reports referring to his desire for better relations between the two sides.

Famous versatile Bollywood and Hollywood actor Om Puri will always be remembered for his efforts to support peace between India and Pakistan pic.twitter.com/m9snWfp0gs  Hamid Mir (@HamidMirGEO) January 6, 2017

During a visit to Pakistan last year, Puri had said he had known Pakistanis abroad for 20 years and always received love from them, so much so that its hard to believe that there are conflicts between our two countries. He also said he prayed that the two sides find a way to peace and work for progress, friendship and trade.

Soon after news of Puris death broke, filmmaker and journalist Hasan Zaidi tweeted about a humourous incident that happened when he spoke to the actor to invite him to the KaraFilm festival in Karachi in 2004. That would turn out to be Puris first visit to Pakistan.

When Id first called to invite him, hed asked me if he could have a drink in Karachi since he was used to having a peg or two every evening. I promised him we would make arrangements for him, Zaidi said.

Om Puri was an international star but he was one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever met. When I'd first called to invite him...>  Hasan Zaidi (@hyzaidi) January 6, 2017

...he'd asked me if he could have a drink in Karachi since he was used to having a peg or two every evening. I promised him we would...>  Hasan Zaidi (@hyzaidi) January 6, 2017

...make arrangements for him. When I went to see him in his hotel room his first night here, he produced a bottle saying he'd brought it..>  Hasan Zaidi (@hyzaidi) January 6, 2017

But when Zaidi went to meet Puri in his hotel room in Karachi, the actor produced a bottle of alcohol that he had brought along with him because he didnt want me to go through any trouble. That wasnt all  Puri said he had also brought his own snacks to go with the drinks.

At the KaraFilm festival, Puri promoted Dhoop, a film about the death of a young Indian Army officer during the 1999 Kargil war and his parents efforts to commemorate his memory.

Om Puris performance was so good and so human that no one had an issue with the fact that the film was about the Indian Army. People warmed up to him and we found out his father too was in the army, Zaidi told Hindustan Times.

It was a really nice thing to find he was so down to earth and people really warmed up to him, said Zaidi, who keep in touch with the actor and his wife. Zaidi also met Puri during a subsequent visit to Mumbai.

At the movies, Puri portrayed Pakistanis several times  the dictator Zia-ul-Haq in Charlie Wilsons War (2007), which was about the US involvement with the mujahideen in Afghanistan through Pakistan, George Khan, the conflicted patriarch in East Is East (1999) and its sequel West Is West (2010) and Abu in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013).

Puri also made his debut last year in a Pakistani film, Actor In Law.

While shooting in Karachi, Puri told the media: I really like working in Pakistan, because Im pampered a lot here. I keep responding to peoples salaams from morning to night. So many people want to throw me a dinner party at their house. And everyone wants a selfie.

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Actor Anushka Sharma has condemned the Bengaluru molestation, saying not just those men but everyone who saw it and did nothing was to be blamed.

Questioning the role a society that churns out men like them, Anushka in an emotional Twitter post wrote, Women get molested in a crowd. Bystanders watch, no one steps to help. Senseless people comment on womens clothes and say the cause is late nights (sic).

The actor said these senseless comments get relevance because such people hold positions of power in the society.

In all this I wonder - why did bystanders do nothing? Whoever stood and watched, is as much at fault as perpetrators. Because the collective conscience of the people could have stopped this from happening.

So it is not just those men but also us, as a society, that failed on that night, she said.

The actor ended her post by saying that people should teach their children to respect women instead of making their sons feel more entitled and important.

Teach your kids to respect women instead of making sons feel more entitled and important. The world will make them feel that anyway. So save your sons from turning into such beasts. And spare us the grief, she wrote.

A Twitter troll reacted to her comment saying it is easy to bash unknown people and that she should instead talk about casting couch. Anushka posted a screenshot of his Twitter bio that read kya likhoon (what do I write?). She wrote with the post Tu na bhai , Kabhi kuch naa likh (Brother, dont write anything at all).

Tu na bhai , Kabhi kuch naa likh  pic.twitter.com/4DnRuEvjoR  Anushka Sharma (@AnushkaSharma) January 5, 2017

Anushka has joined a number of Bollywood celebrities such as Akshay Kumar and Aamir Khan who have expressed anger and shock over the incident.

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The news of veteran actor Om Puris death on Friday shook the artiste fraternity in his native city Ambala in Haryana and other parts of the region.

Puri, one of the finest actors who straddled both the commercial and parallel cinema with great ease, died at his Mumbai residence after a massive heart attack. He was 66.

Puris childhood friend and senior journalist Naresh Kaushal told Hindustan Times that the Ardh Satya actor was born in Ambala where his father worked as a railway employee for a few years.

However, Puris shifted to adjoining village Sanaur in the neighbouring Patiala district where we studied together in the government high school up to matric and he later went to Khalsa College, Patiala before taking admission in the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1968-69, Kaushal, who flew to Mumbai to attend the actors cremation, said.

Kaushal also fondly remembered how Puri would never miss a happy occasion in his family and attended the weddings of his three daughters in Chandigarh and Panchkula.

In later years, Puri would take me a few times and roam around the Ambala railway station, trying hard for hours to locate the locality or house he was born. But he could not locate it because massive changes had taken place in the area, he said.

Senior actor Kuldeep Sharma, former director of Tagore Theatre, Chandigarh, also fondly remembered Puri as a wonderful person and a great actor. Whenever he visited Chandigarh, he made it a point to meet us and discuss for hours various happenings in the field of art, especially theatre, Sharma said.

Anil Dutt, a theatre actor from Ambala, also said that the news had shaken artistes of Ambala.

Puri graduated from Punes Film and Television Institute of India and later from the National School of Drama in 1973, where colleague Naseeruddin Shah was also a student.

In 1976, Puri made his movie debut in Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal.

Some of his most notable films include Bhavni Bhavai, Sandgate, Ardh Satya, Mirch Masala, Dharavi, Aakrosh, Maachis, Gupt, Dhoop, Yuva, Don, Agneepath, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and others.

He also featured in several mainstream Pakistani, British and Hollywood commercial films, earning international fame in British films such as My Son the Fanatic, East Is East and The Parole Officer among others.

In Hollywood, he is remembered for films such as City of Joy, Wolf and The Ghost and the Darkness.

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The telecom tribunal TDSAT on Friday asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to come to conclusion on Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jios free 4G service within reasonable time.

Reliances new telecom venture is growing at a breathtaking pace on the back of free internet services, and has already crossed 50 million users.

Jios biggest rival and incumbent operator Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Airtel had filed a petition in the tribunal over TRAI allowing extension of Jios free services beyond the stipulated 90 days, until March -- which opposes the concept of fair competition.

Sources told HT that if Jio, which has deep pockets as it is backed by Reliance Industries, continues to offer free services, there will be a price war in the telecom industry, eroding profits. The industry is already under a Rs 3,85,000 crore debt, which might further go up if data realisation continues to drop.

The price war needs to end for sustainable business to continue... Already there have been multiple disruptions in the telecom industry, data prices are falling..., said an analyst with a Switzerland headquartered financial services company.

In the petition, Airtel had mentioned that TRAI behaved like a mute spectator, which questions the regulators stance over free services provided by Jio.

The next hearing is on February 1, and incumbents hope that TRAI will bring an end to Jios free services to normalise falling data revenue realisation.

In another high profile meeting at TRAIs office, telecom regulator discussed a bunch of issues of the telecom industry, including the consultation paper floated on net neutrality, interconnect charges, tariff plans and Reliance Jio.

Another source familiar with the matter said that confirmed that operators showed concerns over interconnect charges, which existing telecom operators feel is already low -- at 14 paise, over 30 paise previously. Any further reduction, operators said, would impact profitability.

However, sources said that they are expecting a marginal decline, and the new interconnect charges might be another between 10-12 paise per call.

Reliance Jio continues to back zero interconnect charge, which an operator pays when a call lands on another operators network. Reliance Jio and Tata Tele Services Ltd (TTSL) on Wednesday opposed pleas filed by telecom firms Bharti Airtel and Vodafone.

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Marking a big shift in the way India messages, Whatsapp usage in India hit an all-time high on New Years eve as people continue to abandon conventional messaging, further reducing SMS revenue of telecom operators.

On December 31, Indians sent 14 billion messages on the instant messaging app. The figures, the company said, is unprecedented in Whatsapps history in India.

In a report earlier, research firm Ovum has mentioned that telecom operators, who are already seeing drop in voice and data realisation, will lose $3.1 billion by 2016.

WhatsApp continues to be an essential part of our lives. Whether it is celebrating festivals and occasions with friends and family or staying connected, WhatsApp is an integral mode of communication for people to connect, transcending miles and distance. WhatsApp has continued to be convenient, fast, reliable and simple to use for everyone, everywhere, the company said in a statement.

The rise in messaging will also help Whatsapp to generate more revenue that it intents to do in 2017. Neeraj Arora, head of business at Whatsapp had told HT earlier that the company hopes to build [the same] experience within Whatsapp to interact with businesses.

The instant messaging company owned by social media giant Facebook has 160 million users -- more than the population of Russia -- in India. That makes it even more important for Whatsapp to find ways to monetise its business in the country, which is also houses the worlds fastest growing internet population.

On the same day, users sent 3.1 billion images, 700 million GIFs and 610 million videos. The company also mentioned that 32% of the messages were in were some form of media (photos, GIFs, videos, voice messages).

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Twenty-five years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the western worlds leaders declared that liberal democracy had triumphed over communism. Little did they know a generation later the same people would be trying to destroy what they had so long defended.

After a year of intense turmoil and uncertainty across world, the unstoppable march of democracy seems to be crashing into the immovable opinions of angry voters. Like a train crash in slow motion, democratic norms are being ripped up across the western world. Its important that Indians pay attention and learn from these mistakes.

A few weeks ago, an American political scientist claimed the state of North Carolina no longer qualified as a democracy according to his elections index. Why? Because local politicians in that state had become masters at restricting votes, abusing their power and carving up voting districts to hurt opponents.

Read | Brexit: Jolt to May as UK envoy alleges muddled thinking

North Carolina is a microcosm of a political trend that could be the future of the United States, and even Britain. In both countries an angry political divide is opening up between younger, more liberal-minded voters and an older, more conservative generation. This divide isnt just cultural but economic too. Younger people face job insecurity and a much higher cost of living than their parents generation ever did. And yet, politicians pay little attention to them because the older generation, desperate to preserve their power, come out to vote in greater numbers.

In the US, this has even led the Republican Party to try every dirty tactic in the book: Restricting non-white people from voting, redrawing voting districts in their favour, accusing opponents of massive voter fraud (Trump) without evidence and so on.

Britain is in danger of going down the same path. Since 2010, the elected Conservative government has thrown millions of people off the electoral register by making registration harder and redrawing constituency boundaries in their favour.

Read | Europe has to keep close watch on xenophobic parties, says Portugals Indian-origin PM

Worse, independent civil servants and judges are now routinely attacked by politicians and the media for not toeing their line in favour of Brexit. Last year, one newspaper called three high court judges enemies of the people simply for ruling, correctly, that MPs had the ultimate power to trigger Brexit, not the government alone.

British MP David Lammy tweeted in anger: Brexiteers assault parliamentary sovereignty, then judicial independence, now civil service impartiality. The tenets of our democracy.

The US and Britain arent alone in this worrying tendency of throwing out long-established rules for political gain. France has been under an official state of emergency since the November 2015 terror attacks. But the move is more political than logistical; an attempt by the unpopular government to pretend it is doing everything to counter the Islamic State.

Read | US Vice-President Joe Biden tells Donald Trump to grow up

The effect of all this is potentially disastrous. Trust in government among Americans has fallen from 70%-plus in the 1960s to a historic low of under 20% now. In Britain, only 17% of the public feel politicians place their own interests over the nations needs . A survey found that politicians in Britain were trusted even less than bankers.

A democracy is only as good as the clear rules, impartial institutions and public trust it has. Without them it becomes a tinpot dictatorship behind a comforting facade. Its not just running the economy or protecting citizens that matters  the public have to trust the system is trying to work for them even if it is imperfect.

And this is where the problem lies. Britain calls itself the birthplace of parliamentary democracy. America sees itself as a leader of the free world. But the truth is that angry and untrusting voters are always ripe for being seduced by dictators. No country is destined to forever march towards progress unless its people fight for those rights, day in and day out.

Read | US: Hijab-clad woman and her family abused, called a bunch of terrorists



Indians are rightly proud of living in the worlds largest democracy. They should be pleased in having a strong Supreme Court, independent-minded judges and an electoral commission that, for all its faults, does its job. That is not enough.

Even now its political parties abuse and undermine Indian democracy. The Congress did so under Indira Gandhi and the Emergency. The BJP is now doing so now. The NDA government has attacked and shut down critics from NGOs, the BJP has frequently ignored the electoral commission during elections, and made grave charges against political opponents without evidence. The list is getting worryingly long.

The BJP dismisses this as agenda-driven of course. Some of the criticism may be, but it is the chipping away of democratic principles (the right to criticise, following fair rules) that should worry Indians. A few slides can soon lead to an avalanche.

Read | I support Hitler: US church shooter chuckled while confessing murders to FBI

No political partys cause can justify undermining democracy. Unless Indians are careful of what is happening around them, soon they might wonder how they ended up in a country that looks very remote from Jawaharlal Nehrus India.

Sunny Hundal is a writer and lecturer on digital journalism based in London

The views expressed are personal

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The Uttarakhand Congress has taken a lead over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in running a campaign on the social networking site Facebook for the February 15 assembly elections.

The Congress has uploaded special videos of chief minister Harish Rawat and finance minister Indira Hridyesh promising people a better government.

The BJPs IT (information technology) team has uploaded on its FB page live videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modis December 27 address in Dehradun, and footages of press conferences and public gatherings. But the Congress has gone a step ahead of the BJP despite Modis thrust on digital India campaign.

A few hours before the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced poll dates on January 4, the partys FB page -- With Uttarakhand Congress-- uploaded a 45-second tailored video showing shades of Rawat -- meeting poor people, visiting Kedarnath after the 2013 tragedy and other shots -- with background score and song.

The video ends with a message Nay Saal ki Nai Bhor Se, Hogi Nai Shuruwat. Jan Jan ki Asahaon Par, Tikey Har Da aur Haath-- congratulating people and assuring god governance -- after three days of the new year. It got 683 views, 330 likes and 20 shares.

The second designed video on Hridyesh was uploaded on January 5. The 4.45-minute video, titled Meri Kahani, features the minister sharing her childhood stories -- how her father participated with Mahatma Gandhi in Dandi March, among others. He died when she was 11 years old. Hridyesh talked about her financial struggle and journey till she became a minister. The video has had over 424 views and 112 likes.

The ruling party runs a separate official page in the name of Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress, which has received only 16,000 likes so far, and has uploaded videos on its activities.

Congress IT head Amarjeet Singh said, Definitely our IT and social media teams are one step ahead of BJP. We are happy with the preparations.

The saffron partys official FB page -- BJP4UK -- has uploaded nine videos of Modis speech, the public gathering, and the enthusiasm of people. The last video was updated on December 30.

Though the number of videos in the BJP page is more than that of the Congress, they feature public gatherings during addresses of national leaders, such as BJP president Amit Shah, and defence minister Manohar Parrikar, and press conferences and reaction footages. The official page is liked by nearly 94,000 FB users.

We agree that the emphasis till now was on live coverage of our public gatherings. But we are hiring people for designing better videos on Faebook, which is popular among people, BJPs IT and social media head Ravindra Petwal told Hindustan Times.

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A Delhi University professor was allegedly slapped, punched and abused by an unidentified bike-borne assailant at a petrol pump in Mayur Vihar Phase-3 on Tuesday. The incident occurred after the bike hit her and an argument broke out between the two, police said. The incident has been captured on a CCTV camera.

A case under sections 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against unknown person at New Ashok Nagar police station.

In the video, the woman is seen standing alongside her car at a petrol pump. A bike-borne man, wearing a hoodie, suddenly comes and hits her as she is opening the door of the car. The man is seen balancing his bike as the woman tries to get up from the ground. They begin arguing and she slaps him. Then the man slaps her back and pulls down his hoodie. He is seen arguing with the woman and then punching her in the face before leaving from the spot on his bike.

The woman, requesting anonymity, told HT that she had stopped at the petrol pump to refuel her car before going to work around 9am on Tuesday. She alleged that the man had tried to snatch her bag but she managed to hold on to it. Later he allegedly abused and threatened her.

There were many people at the petrol pump. But nobody came forward to help me. The man punched me hard and broke my specs. He used the choicest of words to abuse me. I asked the others to note down his bikes number. But no one responded and he fled from the spot, the woman said.

Police officials said that investigation is on to nab the accused.

Based on the womans statement, a case has been registered and investigation is on. The man has not been identified yet. We have the CCTV footage but his vehicles number is not clearly visible in it. But we are trying to trace him, said a senior police official said.

In a series of posts on her Facebook page, the woman alleged that she was assaulted at a petrol pump by a bag snatcher. She wrote that more than the physical pain, she was shocked and stunned at the ease with which a woman can be threatened with death, slapped about, abused and assaulted at a public place, while people watch around a spectacle of a woman being attacked and humiliated.
The Delhi government on Friday decided to increase the monthly pension of senior citizens, widows and disabled by Rs 1,000 each, a decision that will benefit lakhs of residents.

The government also decided to upwardly revise the eligibility criteria for the beneficiaries to apply under the scheme, which will bring more people under the pension net.

Currently, just 4.52 lakh people are covered under the scheme, while the upper limit allowed under the scheme is 5.30 lakh, officials said.

The cabinet approved the increase in old age pension, disability and widow pension by Rs 1,000 each. For old age pension, those between the age group of 60-69 years will get Rs 2,000 as pension now. Senior citizens above 70 years will now get Rs 2,500 as pension compared to Rs 1,500 earlier. Disability pension has been raised from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 while pension for widows and destitute women has been raised from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said after the cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday.

While the disability pension was last revised in 2012, pension of senior citizens were last revised in 2011 and 2008.

The family income limit for availing the pension is currently set at Rs 60,000 and Rs 75,000 per annum for old age pension and disability pension, respectively. The limit has now been raised to Rs 1 lakh as the incomes and the cost of living index have significantly increased since the past revisions, officials said.

It is expected that approximately 1 lakh new applications will be received under Old Age Pension Scheme within one month  January 2017  for who pension will become due from February 2017. Accordingly, an additional expenditure of Rs 154 crore is expected to be incurred on five lakh old age pension beneficaries for the remaining four months of 2016-17, an official said.

Hence, the revised budget estimate under Old Age Pension would be Rs 765 crore. For the same rate of assistance, budget requirement for 2017-18 will be Rs 1,431 crore for 5.30 lakh beneficiaries.
Making Connaught Place  the shopping hub of the city  a pedestrian-only zone might not be as easy as it sounds, experts said.

Traffic and urban planning experts said that implementing the plan is difficult because the supporting infrastructure needed to make this trial a success, is still lacking in the area.

Read | No cars, buses in inner, middle circles of Connaught Place from February

Pedestrianising a commercial area, such as Connaught Place, will not be as simple as implementing the odd-even road rationing scheme. It will require a lot of planning. You cannot ask people to give up their vehicles without giving them a dependable option, said AK Jain, former commissioner of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

He said that advance preparations are needed to ensure that there is no inconvenience to the traders and visitors. To make sure that the measure is not counterproductive, all the stakeholders need to be brought on-board, Jain said.

Data shows that over 5 lakh vehicles cross CP every day, out of which around 1.5 lakh are parked in the inner or the outer circle.

The Lijnbaan market in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is among the commercial spaces which has successfully implemented pedestrianisation. However, it was done as early as 1953 when the dependence on vehicles was not as much. Even then the trail was done for almost a year when the infrastructure was developed.

The area has an underground light rail transit system (LRT) which helps shoppers reach the area easily.

From the more recent examples, it took the authorities around five years to convince people to make USs Times Square a vehicle-free zone.

Urban planner AGK Menon said that this is a good precursor to a larger attempt to reducing congestion in the city.

CP is like a traffic island and has access only by road. The market is also a hub for high-value stores which attracts people who only travel by personal vehicles. It will be spectacular if the agencies are able to pull this off but if it turns unsuccessful in CP, people will consider the entire concept of pedestrian zones as unsuccessful, Menon said.

For example, he said that the BRT in Delhi was a good initiative, but was plagued by bad implementation.

He suggested that the pedestrianisation initiative should be executed in phases. Along with this ample parking space needs to be reserved, and eco-friendly shuttle services also need to be introduced.

Read | Traders unhappy, shoppers give thumbs up

Shoppers, traders and even the implementing agencies should be given time to execute this efficiently. They should take one step at a time for executing the project efficiently, said Menon.

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It all started with a prank mail. An 18-year-old woman cancelled her trip to Toronto after multiple security agencies, acting on an anonymous email that claimed she was carrying explosives, went into an overdrive and subjected her to intensive checks at the Amritsar and Delhi airport.

The mail, police suspect, could be from a jilted lover who did not want her to travel abroad.

Her ordeal started on Wednesday afternoon when the airport helpdesk in Delhi received an email giving details of a woman who was to travel by Jet Airways. The email said she was carrying explosives.

Since the woman was travelling from Amritsar to Toronto via Delhi; the mail was forwarded to the Jet Airways officials in Amritsar.

At 1:40 pm, the Jet office in Amritsar received the mail and all agencies concerned were informed. A bomb threat assessment committee was formed and the local police, CISF and IB declared the threat as specific and serious, said a senior CISF official.

The womans ordeal started just when she was about to reach the Amritsar airport. At about 4:40 pm, the police stopped her at the first check-point near the airport and questioned her.

She was later taken to the terminal and her baggage was scanned. She was questioned but she said she had no idea about the email.

After nothing objectionable was found by the CISF and airline staff, she was allowed to board the flight to Delhi at 7:05 pm.

In Delhi, the frisking started all over again  multiple times.

She reached Delhi at 8:30 pm and the checking started. After she was questioned multiple times, at 10:40 about pm, she got irritated and asked the airline to offload her.

After her 12-hour ordeal, she decided to abandon her travel plans to Toronto.

She exited the airport at 2:30 am after completing all formalities and took a bus back to Ludhiana, the officer added.

A complaint has been lodged and the police are trying to trace the person who sent the email.

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Garbage was piled outside dumping sites and roads across east Delhi as the indefinite strike by sanitation workers entered its second day on Friday. The safai karamcharis went on a strike on Thursday to demand payment of pending three months salaries, arrears and regularisation of staff.

Agitated workers staged a protest outside deputy chief minister Manish Sisodias camp office in Khichripur and IP Extension. They dumped garbage inside and outside the office complex.

Shouting slogans against the Municipal Corporation and the Delhi government, they refused to end the strike until the salaries are transferred in their accounts.

We received a call from Sisodias office in the morning for discontinuing the strike. He assured that some concrete action will be taken in this regard shortly. But we are not going to give up until salaries are actually transferred, said Sanjay Gahlot, president, Swatantra Majdoor Vikas Sayunkt Morcha.

Its do or die situation for us. Had the matter been sorted out by the Delhi government and corporation last year, we would not have to protest again. This is the third continuous year, when the municipal workers have gone on a strike for the same reason, Gahlot said.

Workers blamed the poor performance and planning of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) for the existing crisis. Corporation has money to buy 10 new trucks worth Rs2 crores but they dont have money to pay us salaries, said a sanitation worker.

Read: 17,000 sanitation workers threaten indefinite strike in East Delhi

In 2010, EDMC had regularised 5,000 sanitation workers, who were hired on contractual basis in 1998. The corporation issued a letter to all these employees and informed that they were taken on roll from 2003-04. The corporation assured to pay the arrears for seven years at the end of financial year. But it never happened. In fact the corporation doesnt want to discuss this matter now, said RB Uthawal, a sanitation worker.

I havent received salary since October 2016. I dont have money to pay my childrens fee, pay rent and run house expenses. Unfortunately ministers and officials dont have go through such a crisis, said Uthawal.

These employees threatened to lead protest across east Delhi, including outside the residences of Delhi ministers for immediate solution to their problem. On Saturday, they have planned to protest outside Geeta Colony MLA AK Baggas house.

Meanwhile, a delegation led by EDMC commissioner Mohanjeet Singh visited the Delhi secretariat on Friday. Officials again requested to release the quarterly grant a month in advance, said Jitender Chaudhary, standing committee chairman.

MCD is not doing anything. We fail to understand where it spent all its money. We are paying our portion at regular intervals of time. Also, we will make prior announcement if there would be any plan to provide financial assistance to the corporation for paying the salaries, said Manish Sisodia, deputy CM during a press conference.

Read: Workers lock waste removal depot in Delhis Jhilmil, stop trucks

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App-based cab aggregator Uber has hiked fares of its entry and premium level services by up to 15% in Delhi-NCR.

The US-based firm has increased ride time charge to Rs1.5 per minute from Rs1 earlier for its UberGO and UberX services. The transportation app charges Rs6 per kilometre up to 20km and Rs12 per km thereafter at a base fare of Rs40 for UberGO.

While the revised fare irked users who sought the intervention of the Centre and the Delhi government, many were left confused. Uber seems to be fooling us. On the one hand, it says that its base fare is Rs40 and on the other, it charges us a minimum fare of Rs60. On top of that, now they have increased the ride time, said Pooja Shah, an IT professional who regularly uses Uber cabs to tavel to and from work.

When contacted, an Uber spokesperson said: Starting January 5, 2017, we have made some changes to our pricing structure in Delhi-NCR in order to serve the city better.

The prices are expected to go up by 10-15 per cent, the spokesperson added.

Last year, Uber had introduced upfront fare under which the company calculates and shows rates depending on expected time and distance of travel and local traffic. The fares fluctuate due to demand.

The company, which operates in 29 Indian cities, counts India as its second largest market, after the US. Affordable pricing has been one of the important factors driving the uptake of on-demand taxi services in the country.
Come February and Delhi will get its first pedestrian zone at Connaught Place. As a three-month trial, Delhis 84-year-old central retail hub will ban vehicles to make more room for walkers in its inner and middle circles. If successful, the measure will become permanent.

For a city asphyxiating with nearly 10 million vehicles, any move to clear its blocked arteries could be a life-saver. Connaught Place, which has at least 500,000 vehicles passing through it, out of which 150,000 make a stop daily, is a good place to start. For one, it has Delhis biggest interchange at Rajiv Chowk where all the major Metro lines converge. The citys busiest bus stations are also within walking distance.

Though in a huge majority, pedestrians have never been a priority as far as Delhis infrastructure goes. British journalist Sam Miller, who explored some of the capitals less celebrated destinations in his book Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, found it was not an easy city to walk in. A study by Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi corroborated his observation.

It found that footpaths were available in only 55%of the total road length surveyed. Only 10-15% of the total stretch had footpaths built according to the norms on height and width. None of the stretches had a continuous footpath.

Read | Traders unhappy, shoppers give thumbs up to a vehicle-free zone CP

While making Connaught Place car-free, the authorities should clear up the walking spaces. Local shopkeepers are worried that post-pedestrianisation, empty parking lots will be taken over by hawkers. Large tracts of public spaces in Delhi, including at Connaught Place and its arterials, are already under encroachment.

While shoring up pedestrian infrastructure will not be prohibitive, Delhis real challenge is to meet the demands of capital-intensive public transport. As any Delhi commuter will tell you, mobility is not the problem in the city. Accessibility is. Most people rely on private vehicles for their daily commute  for work, shopping and leisure  because public transport remains patchy and last-mile connectivity is missing.

Delhis collapsing bus system cannot sustain the passenger load that any restriction on private vehicles will shift to it. With just 4,121 buses, the fleet size today is at a six-year low. Auto drivers still overcharge. For any anti-car measure to succeed, the government has to fix these basics first.

Read | Delhi: Vehicle-free Connaught Place wont be a cakewalk

Celebrating one year in office, the AAP government had, among other things, promised an angiography of Delhis arteries. If they, along with the Centre, are willing to walk the distance, the Connaught Place experiment could indeed be the first step towards unclogging Delhi.
A 22-year-old postgraduation student allegedly committed self-immolation at a temple in Pataudi, 30 km from Gurgaon, on Friday evening.

Police recovered a mobile phone and a suicide note from the purse of the woman who has been identified as Anisha Sharma of Sherpur village in Pataudi.

The suicide note, allegedly signed by Anisha, mentioned that she wanted to be united with Lord Shiva and as it was not possible in this transitory world, she was leaving her perishable body.

According to a temple priest Gopal Das, she performed some rituals at the temple named Ichhapuri mandir (wish fulfilling temple), and went towards a nearby toilet. A few moments later, the priest saw smoke rising from the toilet and rushed therewith other devotees. Das said she was covered in flames and could not be saved.

They informed the panchayat head who called the police.

Anisha was pursuing MA from a college in Rewari. Her family told the police that she usually locked herself in a room for hours and used to spend a lot of time in sketching religious pictures. She was undergoing tantric treatment in Rajasthan, inspector Jitender Rana, SHO Pataudi, said.

Rana said the suicide note was addressed to Lord Shiva and started with Om Namah Shivaya. The only reason for me to leave this transitory world is to be totally one with Lord Shiva that can be possible only in the next life. Goddess Parvati, kindly fulfil my last wish. I want to get united with Lord Shiva, the suicide note read.

The inspector said a case of suicide has been filed and her body was sent for a postmortem examination in Gurgaon.

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Struggling to quit tobacco and dont know how? Consider calling the Union health ministrys tollfree QuitLine for results.

Almost 40% people who signed up for the cessation programme, quit smoking or chewing tobacco for three to five weeks, according to the five-month analysis of data of more than 3,000 people who called QuitLine, the national tobacco cessation helpline launched on May 31, 2016.

The cessation rate is as good as achieved through face-to-face counselling. This programme has the additional benefit of reaching more people because it does not involve physical travel and can be done at your convenience, said Dr Raj Kumar, officer in-charge of QuitLine 1800-11-2356.

The helpline was launched last year on a pilot basis with six counsellors counselling in Hindi and English between 8 am and 8 pm. The programme is set to expand to include more languages and become a 24*7 helpline.

After expansion, we will also follow-up with the participants one year from cessation to check how many of them have relapsed and why, he added.

Want to quit tobacco? Heres how. Tollfree Tobacco QuitLine: 1800-11-2356 (8 am-8 pm, counselling in English and Hindi)

Of the 3,043 people who signed up for the cessation programme, 28.3% either smoking or chewed tobacco within five minutes of waking up and another 30% within six to 30 minutes of waking up.

People listed stress, anxiety, depression or some other health issues (46.2%) as the biggest reasons for relapse, followed by social and environmental factors (22.3%).

About 9.1% of the people who tried to quit experienced withdrawal symptoms and had to be referred to the nearest tobacco cessation clinics.

Close to 16,000 unique callers called the QuitLine between May 31 and October 31, of which 3,043 registered for the cessation programme.

In five months,, 46,635 calls were received on the voice-response system that the counsellors reverted to later, 7,814 calls were received directly by the counsellors, and 59,593 calls were made by the counsellors to follow up with people who had signed up.

The maximum number of the calls came from Uttar Pradesh, but there were a few calls from all states across India. Most callers found out about the helpline from articles and advertisements in newspapers, magazines and pamphlets.

We did not want to publicise the helpline because we have limited counsellors, but the encouraging results will help step up services , said Dr Raj Kumar.

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Veteran actor Om Puris death on Friday morning shook not just the Indian film industry, but also Hollywood. Western publications including Hollywood Reporter and The Guardian also paid tributes, calling him a versatile artist known for his craggy features and penchant for taking unusual roles, which made him a critics favourite. Puris stint in Hollywood started with a cameo in the Oscar-winning film, Gandhi (1982), in which he played the role of Nahari which lasted for 90 seconds.

Puri went on to feature in popular British films including My Son the Fanatic (1997) and the hit comedy, East is East (1999). Puri was one of the few actors to have received the honorary OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his contribution to British cinema in 2004. Heres a look at the complete works of Om Puri in the West:

Gandhi



Puri played a 90-second role of Nahari, a man who lost his son in the riots.

Released in 1982, Gandhi, was Om Puris first English film, which saw him in a 90-second appearance. The Oscars, while showing the nomination for Best film category, chose the scene in which Om Puris character was talking to Ben Kingsleys character, Gandhi (who bagged the best actor Oscar for playing Gandhi).

The Jewel In The Crown (British TV Series)

Om Puri played the role of a veterinary, Dr DeSouza, working with a Nun, sister Ludmilla, and running a sanctuary.

Sam & Me

In the 1990 Canadian film directed by Deepa Mehta, Puri played the role of protagonist Ranjot Chowdharys father. The film went to win an Honourable mention at the Cannes Film Festival.

City of Joy



Om Puri in a still from the film.

Om Puris first major role in an English film saw him portray Hasari Pal, befriending Patrick Swayzes Max, who is on a lookout for a spiritual rebirth. Based on the book of the same name by Roland Joffe, the film put Puri on the map, and floodgates opened for the popular actor who went on to bag major roles in English films.

Wolf



In the Jack Nicholson starrer, Wolf, Om Puri played the doctor who gives Nicholson the amulet.

The American film saw Om Puri feature in a Horror film. Puri played the role of Dr. Vijay Alezais, who gave an amulet to Jack Nicholsons character Will, so that he can transform into a wolf. The film received positive reviews and won many awards as well.

The Ghost and the Darkness



Puri played the role of Abdullah, who becomes the leader of the workers and rebel against Val Kilmer.

In the 1996 Adventure historical film which starred Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas in lead roles, Puri played the role of Abdullah- self appointed leader of those workers who decided to rebel against Val Kilmer. The film won an Oscar for Best Sound Editing in 1997.

My Son the Fanatic

Puri played the role of Parvez, a Pakistani immigrant in England, who is a secular muslim but his life takes an unexpected turn when his son, turns to radical Islam. The film received positive reviews from across the globe, with New York Times calling Puris role  brilliant.

Such A Long Journey



Om Puri played the role of a mediator in the film which received 12 Genies.

The Canadian film, which received 12 Genie Awards (which recognize the best of Canadian cinema) in 1998, saw Puri play Ghulam Mohamed, a mediator set in 1971s wartime climate in India.

East is East



Om Puri played the role of an immigrant  a Pakistani taxi driver who loves his family but is a typical patriarch.

The British comedy film saw Om Puri play a Pakistani taxi driver in England. Puri won praise for his portrayal of a patriarch, who is a woman beater who attacks his family violently when they disagree with him.

The Mystic Masseur

Film based on the novel of the same name by VS Naipaul, Om Puri played the role of Ramgolan. The film received a lukewarm response.

The Parole Officer



A still from the film.

The British comedy film saw Om Puri as George, one of the four ex-clients of the Parole officer Simon (Steve Coogan), who assist Simon in proving his innocence after a murder accusation.

White Teeth

A British TV drama series saw Om Puri play Samad Miah Iqbal, a loud, dark-skinned, fiery-tempered, self-contradictory Bangladeshi. The series, which also saw actors James Mcavoy and Phil Davis in major roles, was appreciated by critics and was even nominated for different award ceremonies.

Second Generation

A two-part British film saw Om Puri play the role of Sharma, who disowns his daughter, Heere ( Parminder Nagra) for falling in love with a Christian man.

Code 46



Om Puri played the role of Bakhland, a company owner.

The British thriller saw Om Puri play the owner of a company, Bahkland, who is trying to watch everything in his company while being just as complex to William.

Charlie Wilsons War



Om Puri played the role of Pakistani President Zia Ul Haq.

The Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts starrer, which talked about the secret dealings of the Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson in Afghanistan, and how he helps the people there in their fight against Soviets, saw Om Puri portray the role of Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq.

West is West

The sequel to the 1999 hit, East is East, saw Om Puri reprise his role of typical Patriarch, Zaheer George Khan.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Directed by Mira Nair, the popular thriller saw Om Puri play the role of Changezs father, a poet and a man of letters.

The Hundred Foot Journey



A still from the film.

The Hollywood film saw Om Puri play the role of Hassan Kadams father. In the film, he shares a romantic relationship with Helen Mirren, who he calls his girlfriend, after Hassan leaves to Paris to be a more famous chef.

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Hollywoods elite hits the red carpet on Sunday for the Golden Globes, launching a fiercely-contested awards season that looks set to reward escapist fantasy and gritty drama in equal measure.

The Globes have a reputation for delighting in its eccentric picks so its record in predicting Oscars glory has been patchy over the years, but it is a huge draw for the stars and remains for many a solid bellwether for Academy Awards success.

Beverly Hills: Jimmy Fallon, host of the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards, poses with Miss Golden Globes 2017, from left, sisters Sistine, Scarlet and Sophia Stallone after rolling out the red carpet during Golden Globe Awards Preview Day at the Beverly Hilton on Wednesday. (AP)

The Globes is known as one of the most fun parties of the year. There are only about 1,200 seats, and theyre hard to get. So that insider status is tantalizing, Tim Gray, awards editor for trade magazine Variety, told AFP.

And Hollywood knows that the Globes reach a big audience, so its important to get their films out there, to increase public awareness.

Leading the pack of films vying for top honours is Damien Chazelles La La Land, a tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals set in modern-day Los Angeles.

It picked up seven nominations, and pundits see it as the overwhelming favourite for best comedy/musical film, ahead of 20th Century Women, Deadpool, Florence Foster Jenkins and Sing Street.

Main Golden Globe nominations 2017. (AFP)

La La Land is also in a strong position to pick up awards for its stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, best director for Chazelle and best score and song, according to a poll of experts by awards website Gold Derby.

La La Land could win all of its categories. Its either the frontrunner or in second place, I believe, in all seven. The safest for them are comedy/musical best picture, Emma Stone and for score, Gold Derby managing director Chris Beachum told AFP.

They could win for Gosling, director and song but the Globes voters tend to want to spread things out more than that. You dont generally see a movie winning more than three or four.

Barry Jenkinss coming-of-age tale Moonlight, with six nominations including for the director and cast members Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali, has been monopolising attention on the drama side of the contest.

Another frontrunner is Kenneth Lonergans unflinching Manchester by the Sea, which earned the filmmaker nods for best directing and screenplay while Casey Affleck is a favourite for best actor and Michelle Williams vies for best supporting actress.

Gold Derbys experts have it just ahead of Moonlight as favourite for best dramatic motion picture, with Mel Gibsons war movie Hacksaw Ridge, heist thriller Hell or High Water and family drama Lion rounding out the category.

On our website its razor thin. Our experts go with Manchester but if you combine all people voting and predicting, its slightly in favour of Moonlight, said Beachum.

Its a very tight race. I think both will win a couple of awards.

For best actress in a drama, Natalie Portman is expected to pick up the award for her intense, critically-acclaimed turn as Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, which chronicles the days immediately following John F Kennedys 1963 assassination.

Maren Ades Toni Erdmann, a German comedy about a troubled father-daughter relationship, is leading the betting in the foreign language category after sweeping the board at the European film awards in December.

It will vie for the prize with three French films -- Divines, Elle and The Salesman, a joint French-Iranian production -- as well as Chiles Neruda.

On the television side, FX true crime anthology The People vs O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is expected to enjoy a winning night with five nominations.

AMC crime drama The Night Manager will be close behind, with four nominations, while Black-ish, The Crown, The Night Of, This is Us and Westworld have three each.

HBO comfortably leads the television nominations with 14.

Hollywood A-listers Drew Barrymore, Sylvester Stallone, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon will add glitz to the annual party as awards presenters while host Jimmy Fallon is seen as a safe pair of hands compared with another Globes regular, caustic British comedian Ricky Gervais.

The Globes are always a slightly chintzier affair when compared to the Oscars or the Emmys, wrote Jack Mirkinson, an editor at US pop culture website Fusion, of the upcoming ceremony.

But theyre often way more fun to watch, especially because all the stars involved get progressively drunker as the night goes on.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
In a chilling incident, an 80-year-old woman was found murdered at her residence in Bhatgaon village of Sonepat district on Wednesday, with a plastic bottle stuffed inside her private parts, police said. The incident came to light when the son of the deceased woman came down from the first floor on Wednesday morning to find out his mother lying dead without clothes and heavily bleeding

He informed the police who reached the spot to conduct investigation. Sonepat sadar police station house officer Prahlad Singh said they could not find the reason of the womans murder initially as there were no injury marks on her body. However, during postmortem, injury marks were found on her private parts and a bottle stuffed deep inside. She died due to extensive bleeding, he said, adding that there was no confirmation of rape as of now.

The police have lodged a case of murder against unknown on the complaint submitted by the son of the deceased. We have not been able to find any clue of the killers or their motives behind the incident, the SHO said.

The incident was reported in Sonepat, where crimes against weaker sections have been rampant. Recently HT reported that 2016 witnessed a 38% rise in rapes and 36% rise in murders in the district when compared to 2015. In the past, incidents such as these have been reported quiet often in this part of Haryana.

In April last year, an 82-year-old woman was raped and then killed at her residence in Bohar village of Rohtak district.
Undeterred by China blocking its move to list Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India has initiated discussions with several member countries of the UN Security Council and is exploring various options on the issue.

We are examining all options and also consulting with the other co-sponsors, government sources said.

India had reacted sharply to Chinas resistance to its proposal at the UN on December 30, saying Beijings decision reflected prevalence of double standards in the fight against terrorism.

India was hopeful that China would support the proposal at the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as it came days after NIA filed chargesheet against Azhar in the Pathankot terror attack case.

The sources said India has not set any time frame for making a fresh start in getting the JeM chief designated as global terrorist by the UN.

Chinas technical hold on New Delhis move on Azhar had expired on December 31 and India or any other UNSC member country has to now make a fresh listing request for the terrorist to be banned by the global body.

UN sanctions committees listing would have forced imposition of asset freeze and travel ban on Azhar by countries, including Pakistan.

China was the only member on the 15-nation UNSC sanctions committee to have opposed Indias application.

China had dismissed Indias criticism, saying it had adopted a just, objective and professional attitude in deciding the issue.

Earlier this week, India had asked Beijing to hear the voice of the world in dealing with terror and hoped it would be able to persuade the country to understand the depth and evil of the menace.

Meanwhile, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India sought change in Chinas repeated efforts to block Indias bid to slap a UN ban on JeM leader Masood Azhar, arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should adjust its stand accordingly.
The BJP top brass will hold brainstorming sessions at its two-day national executive, beginning Friday, even as the party gets ready for gritty electoral battles in five states  including the politically significant Uttar Pradesh.

Topping the agenda will be the perception battle that the party needs to win as it goes to the polls in the backdrop of the demonetisation drive, which saw long queues of people waiting to exchange their scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Though the government has been underlining the drive as a surgical strike against black money as well as counterfeit notes, the Opposition has spared no opportunity to highlight the inconvenience caused to the common man  besides the slump in trade and the overall economy.

The two-day meet, presided by BJP president Amit Shah, will be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday. Two resolutions  economic and political  will also be presented.

Read | Note ban effect on vote bank: Why demonetisation is a key issue in 2017 assembly polls

The demonetisation drive will be taken up in the economic resolution. The party has already dubbed the Oppositions criticism of the move as one against national interest. The economic resolution is also likely to endorse the Centres pro-farmer and pro-poor initiatives.

The political resolution will present the recent surgical strikes on militant groups across the border as a manifestation of the governments muscular policy towards Pakistan, and its intent to fight terror. The move, made in retaliation to the September 18 terror strike at Uri that claimed the lives of 18 soldiers, is expected to earn the Indian armed forces a pat on the back at the meet.

With the assembly elections for Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur starting on February 4, all Union ministers have been deployed to participate in 10 programmes covering 10 districts till March 2017. They have been directed to reach out to their constituents, and explain the reasons behind the governments decision to scrap old currency notes.

Read | RSS, BJP MPs raise concerns over demonetisation impact on UP polls

As the saffron party fears that the demonetisation drive has alienated its core supporters, the trading community, it is making a concerted effort to placate them with the sops. For instance, the Niti Aayog recently announced an incentive scheme  including a Rs 1 crore prize  to those using digital payment platforms.

The upcoming polls are perceived to be the first real test of the BJPs popularity, coming close on the heels of the demonetisation drive. They will also depict whether the Oppositions accusations regarding the governments alleged failure to tame the price rise and create more jobs have had any effect on the public.

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December 16, 2012 is still fresh in Rajkumar Singhs memory. The Kargil war veteran was out in south Delhi when he spotted a young woman and her male friend severely injured on the roadside. It was a cold, misty night and vehicles were speeding by.

The 52-year-old called the police control room and waited with the victims, getting them water and bed sheets to stem the blood flow. After they were taken to hospital, he went home.

I have seen the Kargil war but the victims condition was more brutal. I can never forget that night, he says.

But the act of kindness appears to have cost him dearly. Singh spent the next four years shuttling between courts and police stations, lost his job, took a pay cut and is now struggling to provide for his family.

The retired havaldar was working as a patrolling officer with the highway concessionaire at the time. But while the media spotlight on the case sparked a nationwide movement to improve womens safety and effected changes in Indias rape laws, Singh says the prolonged exposure ruined him.

Police came to my office and called me to the station. I was made a witness but my company was not happy and told me that I was trying to take undue benefit and misuse the spotlight. They started harassing me and finally I had to resign on November 1, says Singh.

Read : I did a lawyers job: Advocates talk about defending Dec 16 gangrape convicts

He adds that he couldnt hold another permanent job as he had to be frequently present in the courts and in police stations. His salary fell by a third and he now earns just Rs 14,000 a month at a temporary position at Delhi airports cargo authority.

I had to take frequent leave for court and police and no company wanted to get involved in the controversy. Without the case, my salary would be Rs 30000 today, he says.

A distraught Singh  who lives in a modest home in Delhis Palam Colony -- says he is finding it impossible to plan for his daughters marriage, his sons education or his wifes medical treatment.

The expenses of traveling are high and I have to remain in touch with the lawyers, regularly visit them and phone calls expenses are not easy to be met.

He says former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit had promised him a job but nothing came out of it.

His former employer  the Delhi Gurgaon Super Connectivity Ltd (DGSCL) that was the original concessionaire of the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway  denied his allegations. He was not harassed or asked to leave. He must have left on his own, said an official of the DGSCL.

Read: Four years after Dec 16: Number of rape cases in Delhi have increased

But despite the hardships, Singh says he has only one regret  that the gang rape victim didnt survive the assault.

I was patrolling near Mahipalpur when I heard Bachao- please help. I stopped, went towards the hedges and found a man and woman, severely injured, he says.

Many cars, autos and motorbikes were slowing down but none of them stopped to help, he says. Singh says he got a bedsheet and water bottle for the victims from a hotel across the road.

I took out my sweater and shirt and gave them as they were shivering. They were brutally injured and the woman was bleeding profusely.

He says he called the PCR vans came after half an hour after two calls and a tussle over jurisdiction. If the first PCR van had taken her to the hospital without arguing about jurisdiction, the victim might have survived.

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The Supreme Court will on Friday hear an appeal filed by the December 16 gangrape convicts - Akshay, Vinay Sharma, Pawan and Mukesh- challenging the Delhi High Court order which had awarded them death sentence.

The top court had on April 4 begun final hearing of the convicts appeal almost two years after staying their execution.

Two of the four death-row convicts had written to former Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice Deepak Misra, stating that they do not approve of the defence counsel appointed by the court to argue their case before the top court as they had given statements against them to the media in the past.

The trial court had in September 2013 awarded death sentences to the convicts. Six months later, the Delhi High Court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts moved the apex court in 2014, which stayed their execution.

Earlier, the apex court had declined the request by two amici curiae - senior counsel Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay R Hegde - to withdraw from assisting the court in the hearing of the appeals by the convicts in the gangrape case.

Asking both to continue assisting the court in the hearing of the appeals by the four accused convicted and sentenced to death, the three judge bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan said: We can appreciate the anguish expressed by the learned amici curiae.

Six people gang raped a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in a moving bus and beat her and her male friend.

After raping her, they threw the girl outside the vehicle, along with her male friend. The girl succumbed to her injuries in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.

The incident led to protests across the country, forcing the government of the day to make strict and punitive laws related to harassment of women.

One of the accused, Ram Singh hanged himself in prison, while another man, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Seba Aghayeva  Trend:

The Armenian terrorist group known as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) has penetrated in Armenias security services and army, according to ASALA member Mardiros Jamgotchian.

Jamgotchian, who committed a terrorist attack in 1981 against an employee of the Turkish Consulate in Geneva, said in an interview with the Swiss magazine L'Hebdo that after 35 years, he still doesnt regret committing his crime.

He enthusiastically and in detail described his crime in his interview.

The ASALA member doesnt conceal the fact that after being released from a Geneva prison and coming back to Armenia, he began to maintain close relations with Armenian security services.

The terrorist was welcomed as a hero by his home country and shortly thereafter he was sent to Nagorno-Karabakh, where combat operations were going on at the moment, L'Hebdo reports.

Jamgotchian admitted in his interview that Yerevan openly supports the ASALA terrorist organization.

He noted he still visits the Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia and periodically speaks before soldiers.

L'Hebdo reports that Jamgotchian has lived in the US for four years, but the terrorist refused to say what he was doing there.

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) terrorist organization operated actively from 1975 to the early 1990s.

More than a third of ASALA attacks were aimed at airports in different countries and 50 percent were aimed at diplomatic missions. ASALA terrorists also carried out a number of terrorist attacks against religious figures and media workers.

Forty-two Turkish diplomats were killed in ASALA attacks. The organization committed 110 terror acts in total.

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.
Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Friday denied he was a hurdle in Akhilesh Yadavs path and indirectly blamed the UP chief ministers supporter and uncle Ramgopal Yadav for the vertical split in the party.

Status of one is not gauged just by number or power. I want to clarify that I am no hurdle in the path of Akhilesh Yadav, Singh told reporters in Lucknow.

Favouring a patch-up between the two factions of SP, he said, Whatever is happening in the party is not because of me but because of a supporter of Akhilesh, making an oblique reference to Ramgopal Yadav, whom he did not name.

Since the trouble in Uttar Pradeshs ruling party became public, Akhilesh has been insisting on sidelining or expulsion of Singh, whom Ramgopal and another senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan have dubbed an outsider in the party.

Singh, however, said, One gets hurt by ones own and not by outsiders. Its difficult to fight own people.

On Akhilesh factions claim of possessing signed affidavits of 212 MLAs, Singh said, Mulayam Singh Yadav is alone and without any stature. I dont have the capacity to hear this.

Akhilesh and Mulayam have apparently been contesting for control of the party, with both of them readying documents of support to stake claim to the partys cycle symbol.

Those who were tainted when they were with Shivpal are now clean after giving affidavits in favour of Akhilesh. Ansari brothers are clean now... Now all have become Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram, he added.

Singhs reference was to tainted Ansari brothers of Quami Ekta Dal, whose merger with SP was opposed by Akhilesh.

Noting that politics is cruel and brutal, Singh said, If standing behind someone is crime, Shivpal has committed the crime.

Attacking party lawmaker Kironmay Nanda without naming him, he said, A party vice-president, who cannot speak clear Hindi has made allegations against me that I am indulging in wheeling-dealing here. I have not taken contract of a single penny here and am not involved in transfer-posting. I challenge him to get a probe initiated into it.

On another party leader Naresh Agarwal, Singh said, he had been cabinet minister in BJPs Rajnath Singh government, he was in Congress, BSP and now in SP. He labels me as BJP agent. I never take backdoor entry, whenever I adopt an ideology, I tell it to everyone.
India is not only the largest democracy in the world, its Election Commission is one of the most pro-active, micro-managing each election, never losing focus of details, attending to every aspect up to the last mile. Because its processes are transparent, people have faith in the conduct of elections.

In a short while, five states will go to the polls. These are Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Goa, Punjab and Uttarakhand. The combined electorate is a total of 167.28 million. UPs electorate alone stands at a staggering 138.5 million, larger in size than many countries of the world.

The micro-managing of this election comprises several important factors. The electoral rolls would have been updated, law and order arrangements put into place in consultation with the district authorities and central forces deployed in all sensitive polling stations. A number of transparency measures, such as video recording in all sensitive polling stations (which I had activated during the general elections of 2009) would have been ordered so as to establish a level playing field.

As soon as the announcement of elections is made by the ECI, the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) kicks in. Some readers may remember the effectiveness that former CEC TN Seshan had brought into its implementation, which has continued since.

Read | Election panel to set up guidelines to implement Supreme Court order on religion, caste

The MCC is a mechanism unique to India. Evolved by political parties themselves in the early sixties in Kerala, it is a set of dos and donts that the EC administers, and to which most of the political parties and their candidates adhere. Largely because of its strict implementation, the election scene in India is devoid of the invectives and crass rudeness that we recently witnessed in the US presidential election.

The EC derived enormous advantage by being among the first electoral management bodies to embrace technology. The application of the electronic voting machines (EVM) was a bold idea that would transform the manner in which polls were conducted. The EVMs manifest advantage was that the results could be finalised accurately in a matter of hours.

The scourge of booth capturing and the looting of ballot boxes, rampant in the 80s and 90s came down sharply, especially when polling stations were better secured by central forces. One reason for the EVMs high degree of acceptability amongst all stakeholders is that, unlike some other countries where volunteers and students sometimes man their EVMs, in India they are placed under government officials who are necessarily under the disciplinary powers of the State.

Improvements in EVMs are constantly sought to be made. Most recently, on directions from the Supreme Court, the Commission is trying to develop a paper trail.

In a country as vast and diverse as India, the EC embarked on another nation-wide initiative which was to undertake a mapping of all our communication assets with reference to every polling station in the country.

Read | Election Commissions ruling on separate bank accounts for polls is a surgical strike

The logistics of reaching man and machine to every voting booth required months of detailing by a team of indefatigable officials at headquarters working closely with the Chief Electoral Officers (CEO) in each state and Union Territory. This has resulted in a formidable communication network that was anointed with the acronym COMET.

Meanwhile, will the recent demonetisation prove to be a game changer? Will it eliminate or at least substantially reduce the problem of money power that has been the primary negative factor in our electoral landscape? We will learn this soon enough. If it confines our electoral spending to statutory limits of up to Rs 28 lakh and eliminates the scourge of black money, it will be considered a major electoral reform.

(Navin B Chawla is a former chief election commissioner of India)
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Thursday issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu government on the reported deaths of farmers over a month in the state.

Several districts in the state have been reportedly affected by poor monsoon which resulted in poor harveststhe second in the yearleading to farmer suicides and deaths.

The National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports regarding the deaths of 106 farmers during a period of one month in Tamil Nadu which it considers as a matter of concern, said the notice.

The Commission said farmers were feeling neglected by policymakers despite being the most crucial and significant section of the state and asked the state chief secretary to file a report within six weeks on the steps taken or proposed by the government.

The state government, which had remained silent on the issue amid growing demands to declare the state drought-hit, on Tuesday announced that a high-level committee will be formed to assess the extent of farmer distress, after meeting with representatives of various farmer organisations across the state.

According to chief minister O Panneerselvam, the committee will survey 10% of crops in all affected areas, with subsequent financial relief to be based on their findings.

Read: Hope floats for Tamil Nadu farmers as Panneerselvam govt reacts after 60 suicides

There is a need for sincere implementation of the laws and policies made for the farming sector especially, small farmers. The farmers are required to be brought out of the agrarian crisis, which have been adversely affecting them since long, the NHRC observed.

Madras high court had also directed the state government on Thursday to file an affidavit within four weeks, detailing the steps it was taking to prevent more farmer suicides.

We would like the state government to place on record the steps which have been taken to prevent the suicides of farmers, said the first bench comprising chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar, in response to a PIL filed by K K Ramesh, managing trustee for the Tamil Nadu Centre for PILs.

As per reports, the most affected districts are Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Viluppuram, Pudukottai, Ariyalur, Cuddalore and Thanjavur, it said.

Tamil Nadu received only 166mm of rainfall during this northeast monsoonconsidered the lifeline of the stateagainst its seasonal average of 437 mm, according to the Indian Metrological Department (IMD) in Chennai.

Most of the affected farmers hail from the Cauvery Delta district, the fertile breadbasket of the state. Majority of them are now facing the prospect of two consecutive failed harvests: first in kuruvai (summer) due to Karnatakas refusal to release Cauvery water, and now the samba (winter) due to monsoon failure.

Despite the deaths106 according to local reportsthe government is yet to officially declare the state drought-affected.

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The mystery behind the death of Geetanjali Garg, wife of former Gurgaon chief judicial magistrate Ravneet Garg, has deepened as a contrasting opinion of board of forensic medicine experts has emerged.

This new report, dated, February 13, 2013, says that the possibility of injuries on the deceaseds body being homicidal cannot be ruled out and the possibility of them being self-inflicted is remote. The CBI itself had set up the medical board that gave this report.

The conclusion is at variance with the one expressed by a board of five doctors of department of forensic medicine and toxicology of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) dated February 4, 2016, which opined that ...the cause of death in the case was haemorrhagic shock due to firearm projectile injuries and it is suggestive of suicidal in nature which may be corroborated with circumstantial and legal evidences of investigation.

Geetanjali was found dead in a park in the police lines in Gurgaon on July 17, 2013, with a licenced revolver of judge close to her body.

The CBI is relying on the AIIMS report while the defence lawyers of judge Ravneet Garg, who is accused of dowry death, relies on forensic experts report of 2013. The bail application of Ravneet filed through advocate Vishal Garg Narwana claims that Geetanjali was murdered.

For the 2013 report, Prof Anil Mittal, forensic medicine head, Safdarjang Hospital at Delhi, prof NK Aggarwal, forensic medicine head, University College of Medical Sciences at Delhi, and Dr Sreenivas M who is an associate professor of forensic medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi, were part of the board. They had met the investigating officer and ballistic expert of the CBI, visited the scene of crime and had a meeting with doctors who had conducted the post-mortem and ballistic experts of CFSL before finalising the report. There were four injuries on Geetanjalis body.

They have claimed that the possibility of an individual firing multiple bullets over herself is minimal, when at least two of them were sufficient to have caused death. Also, they claimed, The alleged weapon of offence, i.e revolver was found to be at some distance from the body. Usually in the cases of suicides/self inflicted injury, weapon of offence is found either clenched in the hand or if fallen it would be at location quite near the hand.

AIIMS DIFFERS

In 2016, the CBI sought another opinion this time from AIIMS. This panel included prof T Millo, additional prof Adarsh Kumar, assistant prof Kulbhushan Prasad, senior resident Dr Rajankanta Swain and head of department prof Sudhir K Gupta.

These doctors opined that the injury on lower abdomen which was abrasion fire arm-injury is suggestive of hesitation shot injury which can be seen in suicide cases and injury on left side of chest and the injury, below chin, suggests close contact range.

They reported that injuries below chin and left side of chest were one of the commonest preferred sites for suicidal firearm injury.

They have commented that firearm remaining clenched in fist in suicide cases was only in 25% cases while in 70% cases it was on the body of deceased, touching the body or around 1 feet away from it.

The psychological autopsy study of Geetanjali conducted by CBI, opined on January 23, 2015, that she might have committed suicide.

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Political changes in Arunachal Pradesh are as unpredictable as the earthquakes that frequently strike Indias northeast region.

Days after chief minister Pema Khandu joined the BJP with 32 MLAs to present the saffron party with its first full-fledged government in the region, speculations are rife that he may be replaced soon. According to rumours that surfaced in the corridors of power of Itanagar, Khandu  who joined the BJP on December 31 by deserting the Peoples Party of Arunachal (PPA)  may have to make way for an old saffron face.

Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijijus name is doing the rounds as the next likely chief minister of the state. State BJP chief Tapir Gao is also said to be in the race.

Though BJP office-bearers and senior ministers in the Khandu government denied any such development, party legislators in the state are reportedly unhappy with Khandus presence in their midst.

Gao, however, dismissed the reports as false. Pema Khandu is, and will remain, our chief minister. These rumours are being spread as by some Congress workers, he told HT over the phone from Delhi.

Senior BJP leaders from the state, including Rijiju, Khandu and Gao, are in the national capital to attend the partys national executive meet  which started on Friday.

Prior to Khandu joining the party, the BJP had 12 MLAs in the state and was a coalition partner in the PPA-led North East Development Alliance (NEDA) government. With 33 PPA MLAs joining the party and two Congress legislators switching sides, the BJPs strength in the 60-member assembly has gone up to 47. Two independent MLAs also support Khandus government.

There is no question of Khandu being replaced as there are no differences among our MLAs, neither the old members nor the new ones who joined from the PPA. We have all settled in here comfortably, deputy chief minister Chowna Mein said.

Khandu became the chief minister as a Congress legislator in July last year. He switched sides to join the PPA in September, and then entered the BJP after he and 10 other MLAs were suspended for anti-party activities.

Meanwhile, the PPA remains undecided on being a part of the coalition government in the state as well as continuing with NEDA, the BJP-led alliance of regional parties opposed to the Congress. We have taken up the issue with NEDA convenor and senior Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. A decision will be taken after a meeting in Guwahati next week, said PPA chairman Kamen Ringu.

After the desertion of Khandu and the 32 legislators, the regional outfit is now left with 10 MLAs.

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Two groups formed by students and women workers will take to Bengaluru streets to protest the alleged mass molestation of several women on a busy stretch during New Years Eve celebrations and to demand a safer city.

Many women were reportedly groped, attacked and stalked on MG Road and Brigade Road stretch during New Years eve in the presence of police personnel.

In a separate incident, another woman was molested in a residential area of the city on the New Years Day, an assault that was caught on CCTV. Bengaluru Police on Thursday arrested four men, including two delivery boys, for the assault.

Read | Bengaluru mass molestation: #NotAllTwitterati impressed by #NotAllMen trend

Combination of still images taken from January 1, 2017 CCTV footage shows two men on a scooter in Bengaluru assaulting a woman, attempting to take off her clothes and pushing her to the ground before leaving. (Reuters File Photo)

However, police commissioner Praveen Sood said on Thursday that they had found no evidence in the CCTV footage they examined of the alleged mass molestation during New Years Eve celebrations on Saturday.

However, based on some media reports and posts on social media we have filed four cases suo motu, he said, adding none of the people who spoke to media had contacted police.

Many political leaders dismissed the incident with Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara saying that such incidents do happen and criticised young women for copying the Westerners, not only in their mindset but even in their dressing. The minister later said he was misquoted.

An autonomous group of women called Night in My Shining Armour has organised an event - Night Out in Town - in Bengaluru on January 11 to walk down the stretch of Brigade Road. They aspire to reclaim the streets and remove the stigma attached to women being outside their homes after sundown.

This is just the beginning; our endeavour does not end here. We plan to organise more events like open debates and neighbourhood walks later. Our primary aim is to make women comfortable and make others realise that it is normal for women to be out on the streets after dark, Gawry, one of the organisers, said.

Through an initiative I Will Go Out, the group has invited people out on the streets and remove the stigma attached to women being outside their homes after 8PM. Over 1,000 people have confirmed their presence for the event and around 2,700 have supported the cause.

The incident on New Years eve was disgusting but not shocking. India has one of the lowest levels of recorded sexual offences. There is a need to change our mindset. All the remarks going around about what girls should and shouldnt do are disheartening. I am going to show my support and spread awareness about women safety through this walk, Ankita Dhyani, a 26-year-old who works with an NGO in the city, said.

Another group, which did not want to reveal its name to display a sense of united anonymity and echo the voice of women who feel unsafe in the city, has also taken to the social media platform asking people to collect outside the Vidhan Soudha on January 7 from 11am to 1pm and form a human chain.

Under Touch Me Not, they plan to raise their voices through a silent protest which will involve placards but not slogans.

One of the activists in the group, Anita Jerry Ramesh, said the protest is not only to highlight the recent mass molestation incident but the day-to-day harassment faced by every woman and girl.

Everyday women have to face harassment on the streets of Bengaluru. I myself can recount hundreds of them faced by me and my friends. This is not a problem in just one or two cities, but everywhere. The New Years Eve case was also not a one-off incident, the 26-year-old communication professional in Bengaluru said.

She wants the government to take notice of such incidents, make stricter laws for the safety of women and above all ensure their implementation.

Individuals have also started various online petitions on Change.org to demand justice and safety for women in Bengaluru. While one petition demands safety of women from harassment, another one has called for an effective 100 number helpline, safe transport services and street lights.

One of the petitions is also demanding an unconditional apology from Karnataka home minister over his sexist remarks over the alleged incident.

The December 2012 gangrape of a 23-year-old paramedical student sparked a nationwide movement to improve womens safety and effected changes in Indias rape laws that widened the definition of rape, and set out stricter punishment for the guilty.

The Bengaluru incidents highlight the persistent violence against women in India despite tougher laws against sexual assault.

Read | Murthal gang-rape to Bengaluru molestation: Media vigilantism to the fore

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The Narendra Modi government may take out of the box action again against Pakistan if it continues to indulge in a proxy war against India, BJP president Amit Shah told the partys office-bearers at a meeting on Friday.

Ahead of the partys national executive meeting, Shah addressed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)s national office-bearers in New Delhi.

The Indian Armys surgical strikes against terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-held Kashmir and the Centres move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes dominated his address.

During the meet, Shah hailed the September 29 military action against terrorists and said India could again take out of the box action if Pakistan persists with its policy of exporting terrorists to India, a party source told IANS.

Among the other issues discussed at the meeting were the attacks on party activists and offices in West Bengal after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in a chit fund scam.

The national executive meeting, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah later in the day, assumes significance against the backdrop of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, scheduled between February 4 and March 8.

Among the host of party leaders present at the meeting were general secretaries Ram Lal and Kailash Vijayvargiya and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari.

At the executive meeting, the party is expected to make demonetisation its focal point for chalking out its strategy for the polls to the five state assemblies.

While Shah will deliver the inaugural address at the national executive, Modi is slated to give the valedictory speech at the two-day meeting. Senior party leaders, union ministers and chief ministers of the BJP-ruled states are to participate.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya exuded confidence that the party would bag over 300 seats to come to power in the state.

We are confident of getting over 300 seats in UP. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress are no way in the fight, while the ruling Samajwadi Party is engrossed in a fight within itself. Also, they have not done any development work during their tenure, said Maurya.

He said the Centres fight against corruption through demonetisation will help the BJP in the UP polls, and derided the Akhilesh Yadav regime for corruption.

Chief minister Akhilesh might be projecting his image to be clean, but the fact remains that he has to own up the responsibility of all the corruption that has taken place during his regime, Maurya said.
A Lashkar-e-Taiba militant was killed in an encounter with the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Jammu and Kashmir Police in Budgam early on Friday.

Muzzafar Ahmed, who was earlier associated with al-Badr, was killed in the encounter that started around midnight at Gulzarpora Machowa area. He was one of the longest-surviving local militants in the region.

One SOG personnel was injured in the incident, official sources said.

In another incident, unknown gunmen opened fire at the residence of NC MLC Showkat Ganie in Chitargam in Shopian late on Thursday forcing guards there to retaliate. No casualties were reported.

Ganie was not at his residence when the incident happened, sources said.

(With agency inputs)
Human life is precious. This is what the Supreme Court said on December 15 while banning liquor shops along highways across India to bring down road accidents.But there is no comprehensive legal framework yet in place to make the countrys roads safer.

Government statistics show that one road accident takes place every four minutes in India. Road crashes are number one killer of young men and women, crucial for a countrys growth. One-third of all road accident fatalities reported in 2015 were in the age group of 15-24 years with a total of 48,420 deaths, and the age group of 25-34 constituted 21% of all deaths. Almost 97% of the road accidents are caused by rash or negligent driving including drunken driving. The number of people killed in road accidents on the national highways shot up from 48,768 in 2012 to 51,204 in 2015.

LIVES LOST IN ROAD MISHAPS UN puts the loss India suffers due to accidents at $58 billion annually 1,46,133 people died in 2015 due to road accidents 11 deaths were reported per 1,00,000 people due to road mishaps in 2015 5,00,279 people were injured in road accidents 53.9% increase recorded in road mishaps over the last decade. Nearly tenfold increase since 1970 16 fatalities due to road mishaps recorded every hour. One fatality every four minutes 46.3% of total fatalities are among vulnerable road users like two-wheers, bicycles, pedestrians 36,803 two-wheeler riders were killed in road mishaps in 2015. These constitute 31.5% of the total fatalities making them most vulnerable commuters on roads 72% victims in road mishaps were in the age group of 15-44 years and 82% were males Number of people killed in accidents on national highways has increased: 48,768 in 2012 | 51,204 in 2015 SC PANELS SUGGESTIONS Formulation of a road safety policy

Setting up agencies in states exclusively to deal with road safety

Adopting traffic calming methods at accident prone locations

Compulsory helmet for drivers and pillion riders

Mandatory use of seat belts

Bringing all uninsured vehicles under insurance cover by tallying vehicle data with the insurance data maintained by IRDA SOURCE: SaveLife Foundation and Transport Research Wing, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways UN puts the loss India suffers due to accidents at $58 billion annuallydeaths were reported per 1,00,000 people due to road mishaps in 2015people were injured in road accidentsincrease recorded in road mishaps over the last decade. Nearly tenfold increase since 1970fatalities due to road mishaps recorded every hour. One fatality every four minutesof total fatalities are among vulnerable road users like two-wheers, bicycles, pedestrianstwo-wheeler riders were killed in road mishaps in 2015. These constitute 31.5% of the total fatalities making them most vulnerable commuters on roadsvictims in road mishaps were in the age group of 15-44 years and 82% were malesin 2012 |in 2015

As the road network expands in India, road infrastructure being an integral part of economic development, accidents profoundly impact the life of common citizen. For a nation on the cusp of economic development, India can well avoid the tag of being the accident capital of the world, noted the Supreme Court. The courts remarks in its December 15 order highlighted the problem of drunken driving and stressed on the need for proper enforcement to prevent it.

The apex court ordered the closure of liquor shops along highways despite strong opposition from states which argued that such a shutdown would adversely impact their revenue.

You can start a door-to-door delivery service, the bench retorted during a hearing when a state counsel justified the presence of vends. Another government advocate was admonished for siding up with the liquor lobby as he got up to defend the policy.

The United Nations puts the loss India suffers due to accidents at $58 billion annually. The judgment on liquor vends is a result of efforts by SC to make roads safer. Credit also goes to the civil society for pursuing it even as the Centre and states continue to dither. Piyush Tiwari, director of Savelife Foundation, an NGO, says courts will continue to drive this exercise until a strong legal framework is in place. There is nobody to take ownership of the issue except the SC. However, it will be difficult to implement the judgments until legislation is in place.

Good Samaritan guidelines

Tiwaris foundation spearheaded the campaign for a Good Samaritan law. On its petition, the top court on March 30, 2016 ordered the Centre to notify the guidelines that gave legal protection, rights and empowerment to citizens to help road crash victims.

The SC stepped in at a crucial time because the lack of guidelines empowering citizens to help road crash victims meant that a large number of survivors used to succumb to injuries for lack of immediate medical attention.

In a report in 2006, the law commission said 50% of road fatalities could have been avoided if the victims were administered medical aid within an hour. A major impediment to victims getting help was the fear of bystanders getting embroiled in legal procedures. Another factor that discouraged witnesses was that they would have to pay for the medical bills. Yet, the Parliament did not take note of it.

But, Tewari says a good order remains on paper until its made effective. Savelife is working with states to help them frame a Good Samaritan Law and Karnataka has been the first to promulgate it.

His organisation will also associate itself with four other states including Delhi for a law on Good Samaritan, Tewari says. A law is required to fix accountability. No judicial orders shall be successful unless punitive action taken against errant officers, Tiwari told HT.

Panel on road safety

Advocate Gaurav Agarwal appreciates the top courts efforts. At the same time Centre and States need to hire experts to implement even judicial orders since road safety is a technical subject, he says.

Agarwal is assisting an SC bench in an on-going case where the top court constituted a high-powered panel under the supervision of retired SC judge, Justice KS Radhakrishnan. Formed on April 22, 2014 on the basis of a PIL, the panel was to measure and monitor the implementation of road safety laws in the country. The committee has so far submitted nine reports, the last one being in September.

It has pointed out serious lapses in implementation of safety laws by States, which has led to increase in number of road fatalities. Several recommendations have been suggested including drafting a road safety policy. However, Agarwal says states have challenged the authority of the committee to issue orders. The only suggestion put to practise is suspension of driving license of errant drivers for three months. The court, Agarwal said, made an effort to have in place one agency that can oversee road safety since its nobodys baby. Centre might bring in a law, but its up to the states to follow it. Even within the Central government there are so many ministries that deal with various aspects of road safety, says Agarwal, pointing to the difficulties that arise in enforcing judicial orders.

The court has been nudging the Centre to co-ordinate with states to develop a mechanism, he said.

Tiwari too is hopeful that the Centre will revamp the 28-year-old Motor Vehicle Act, which was meant to regulate motor vehicles and not road safety. Let us wish all political parties come together to pass this bill, he says.

Read more | SC orders ban on sale of liquor at shops within 500 metres of highways

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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday formally filed a charge against alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist, a Pakistani national, for illegally entering into India and planning to attack various cities, including Delhi.

The charge sheet was filed against Bahadur Ali alias Saifullah Mansoor at the Special NIA court in Patiala House complex in the Capital.

The NIA also alleged that Ali was tasked by his handlers to fuel unrest in the Kashmir valley following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen operative Burhan Wani on July 8 last year.

During this period, Alfa-3 (a base of LeT on a hilltop in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir) communicated to Bahadur Ali that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir, the NIA said in a statement.

He instructed Bahadur Ali to mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley, it added.

The NIA said a pocket diary recovered from Ali contains the name of several towns in J-K, like Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur and also of Delhi.

Given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these cities in the diary indicates that he was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi, the central counter-terror agency said.

Investigators say Ali was also provided a map sheet depicting parts of the PoK and Jammu and Kashmir. He was provided with the Grid References that had been recovered from his possession. Ali plotted these Grid References on the map sheet.

It has been affirmed by the Surveyor General of India, Dehradun that Bahadur Ali, had indeed plotted the Grid References correctly. This clearly establishes that Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training on the subject, the NIA said.

Ali was arrested on July 25 last year in the Valley with a large number of arms and ammunition and communication and mapping devices. A GPS device was also recovered from him at the time of his arrest that contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli launching pad of the LeT, which is in the PoK.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Seba Aghayeva  Trend:

The ad hoc working group, tasked to develop a convention on the Caspian Seas legal status, plans to hold its next meeting in late January, a diplomatic source told Trend Jan. 6.

The agenda of the working group includes continuation of discussions on the still uncoordinated issues regarding the draft convention, the source said.

The meeting is planned to be held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Preparation for the next session of foreign ministers of the Caspian littoral states will also be discussed during the meeting, along with the legal status of the Caspian Sea.

Issues regarding the draft convention on the Caspian Seas legal status have been mostly agreed upon, Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov earlier told reporters in Baku.

He said that negotiations on the remaining issues continue.

We plan to summarize all the work in order to finally agree on a draft convention on the Caspian Seas legal status for the heads of state to sign it, Khalafov said.

The Caspian littoral states  Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran signed a Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.

Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001 and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively.

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.

Summits of heads of the Caspian states were held in 2002 in Ashgabat, in 2007 in Tehran, in 2010 in Baku and in 2014 in Astrakhan.

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On paper, Anita lives in house number 15/46 in one of the many dingy bylanes that make up south Delhis Sangam Vihar. But one visit to the congested neighbourhood choked with haphazard construction and unruly traffic is enough to bust the hoax.

Neighbours say the woman left the city a long time ago and her bank account in the State Bank of Indias Sangam Vihar branch  which lists her local address  has been lying dormant for many years.

But days after the government recalled high-value currency in November, her account suddenly received Rs 1.78 lakh through real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS), a form of online money transfer.

Hers was one of 430,288 dormant bank accounts across India that saw a sudden inflow of cash and wire transfers a fortnight after the scrapping of two high-value banknotes, HT has found. An account is deemed dormant if there has been no transaction for over two years.

An analysis of classified bank transaction data revealed Rs 6,400.51 crore was deposited with dormant accounts in public sector banks between November 8  when Rs 500 and Rs 1000 were withdrawn  and November 22. About Rs 799 crore was also wired out of these accounts within the fortnight.

All these deposits  cash or through wire transfer were below Rs 2 lakh. The government had announced any deposit of more than Rs 2.5 lakh would be scrutinised by the income tax department.

We are investigating some of these cases. We are suspecting cash deposits were parked in unclaimed accounts with the collusion of bank officials, said a tax official, requesting anonymity.

The Reserve Bank of India did not respond to HTs emails seeking comments on whether it suspected wrongdoing by bank officials or was investigating any of them.

If a dormant account needs to be reactivated, a fresh application needs to be made along with a copy of identification. This falls in the category of reactivated dormant accounts. Data reviewed by HT showed that 27,496 dormant accounts were reactivated between November 8 and 22.

These reactivated accounts saw Rs 84.16 crore deposits; most of it  Rs 81.6 crore -- came in cash. In contrast to the dormant accounts, the cash received in many of the reactivated accounts was above the tax-scrutiny threshold of Rs 2.5 lakh.

The analysis found that a fourth of all deposits in dormant accounts were made through wire transfers. Rs 799 crore was later withdrawn from these accounts, again through wire transfers.

Experts say this could be an instance of people parking their illegal income in several dormant accounts and then later withdrawing the money, in a bid to dodge tax scrutiny.

Demonetisation necessitated lot of people to use their bank accounts, so they might have reactivated dormant accounts, this could explain the cash deposits. But wire transfers are definitely suspicious. This could be an instance where the money was temporarily parked in these accounts and later transferred, said Vipin Malick, a former member of the RBI board of governors and a chartered accountant.

For example, if a person has unaccounted-for cash stashed away, they may collude with bank officials to deposit the income in a number of bank accounts, move it around between several dormant accounts and later send it to the ultimate beneficiary.

This way the money trail remains hidden from tax officials. Because the suspicion is often focused on cash deposits, wire transfers are deemed safer for launderers, said the tax official.

The scrapping of the banknotes was aimed at stamping out illegal cash from the economy but analysts say corrupt bank officials helped many people park their ill-gotten incomes into others accounts. Most of the cash that was withdrawn appears to have come back to banks, reports say.

After demonetisation, money was laundered through purchase of gold, through foreign exchange, the spike in gold imports and movement through banking channels to reach its ultimate destination. Various modes of layering were adopted. This requires big data analysis to sift through the information that is flowing, said Rani Singh Nair, former chairperson of the central board of indirect taxes (CBDT).

Read: Deposits in cooperative banks rose 6-fold in 4 days of note ban
The New Years eve sexual attacks against female revellers in Bengaluru may have generated nationwide outrage, but most such cases end up with no punishment: No more than one in 100 cases registered in Karnataka under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)  Assault on women with intention to outrage her modesty -- ended in a conviction in 2015, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. Nationwide, one in 10 such cases ended in conviction, 10 times better than Karnatakas record.

The outrage further grew after the video of a woman being groped and molested on a Bengaluru street the same night went viral.

In 2015, of 5,112 cases registered under Section 354, only 69 (1.3%) ended in conviction. Of the 9,118 persons arrested in these cases, only 107 (1.2%) were convicted.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau

Across India, 82,422 cases of sexual assault were registered, of which 8,408 (10%) ended in conviction. Of 101,571 persons arrested for these attacks, 11,342 (11%) were convicted.

While the number of cases under this section rose by 92% from 42,968 in 2011 to 82,422 in 2015, conviction rates declined from 16% in 2011 to 10% in 2015.

Maharashtra reported the most sexual assaults (11,713), followed by Madhya Pradesh (8,049) and Uttar Pradesh (7,885) in 2015.

The rise in cases registered can be correlated to the change in laws  which were tightened, possibly leading to higher reportingafter the 2012 gangrape of a physiotherapy student, now widely known as Nirbhaya, which sparked nationwide protests and outrage.

Conviction rates reduce by more than 1/4th for Section 509 cases

In 2015, 8,685 cases were registered in India under Section 509 of the IPC  Insult to modesty of women, of which no more than 870 (10%) resulted in conviction, a drop of 33 percentage points from 43% conviction rate in 2011.

Under this section, 9,870 were arrested across India, of which 1,108 were convicted (11%).

In Karnataka, of 154 cases registered under Section 509 in 2015, no more than seven (5%) ended in a conviction. Of the 163 persons arrested in these cases, nine (6%) were convicted.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau

Read | No evidence of New Years Eve mass molestations, says Bengaluru police chief

Saha is an MA Gender and Development student at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

(Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit/FactChecker.in is fact-checking initiative, scrutinising for veracity and context statements made by individuals and organisations in public life.)
Senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav on Friday said 212 of the 229 MLAs in the embattled political organisation have signed an affidavit in support of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and the document will be submitted to the Election Commission (EC) later in the day.

The affidavit was also signed by 56 of the partys 68 MLCs, and 15 of its 24 MPs, he added.

The EC has asked the two factions of the Samajwadi Party  led by party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh  to prove the number of MLAs, MPs and MLCs supporting them through signed affidavits by January 9. This is part of the electoral bodys process of determining which faction would be allowed to retain the partys name and its symbol  the bicycle.

Mulayam and his brother, Shivpal Yadav, came to Delhi on Thursday, but returned to Lucknow without meeting the EC. Sources said they are now holding discussions with party leader Amar Singh on the matter.

Sources said Shivpal visited Akhilesh at his residence on 5, Kalidas Marg on Friday morning. He re-emerged five minutes later, but there was no information on what transpired during their meeting.

The Samajwadi Party has been caught in a power struggle over the last few months, with warring factions headed by Mulayam and Akhilesh vying for control over the organisation. Despite reconciliatory efforts, there has been no sign of a truce between the two sides.

These developments come just ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, which is expected to witness a tight contest between the Samajwadi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Read | Ghaziabad girl writes to EC in blood, demands SP symbol for Akhilesh Yadav
The Supreme Court on Friday closed contempt proceedings against Justice (retd) Markandey Katju after he apologised for criticising its judges on social media over an order in a rape-cum-murder case.

In the wake of the apology filed, we end the matter, ordered a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi.

In a two-page application filed last month, Katju said he respected the judiciary and had deleted the post.

I am ready to read out the apology before the open court, his application said.

Read: Controversys child: The many social media storms triggered by ex-judge Katju

The former chairman of Press Council of India was not present in the court during the hearing. His lawyer, senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, read out the apology.

The court had in November issued a contempt notice to Katju for intemperate language and scandalising the judiciary.

He had criticised the judgment that commuted to life term the death sentence awarded to Govindachamy, a Kerala resident. Govindachamy had not murdered but only raped 23-year-old sales representative Soumya, the court ruled while dismissing petitions filed by the Kerala government and victims mother against a high court order clearing Govindachamy of the murder charge.

In his Facebook post, Katju said the judgement was laden with fundamental flaws.

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Police in Sonepat are probing the involvement of family members in the murder case involving an 80-year-old woman, who was found dead in her house at Bhatgaon village in the district on Wednesday morning due to extensive bleeding after a plastic bottle was stuffed inside her private parts.

Deputy superintendent of police Aryan Chaudhary said they were investigating the role of a family member, but denied making any arrests.

However, sources said police have detained the womans son, Jai Bhagwan, his wife and their neighbour-cum-helper Prabhu in the case for interrogation.

Sources also said there might be a love angle between the woman and the helper, which led to the killing.

However, police said they were still investigating the matter. We dont want to jump the gun, Chaudhary said.

Jai Bhagwan found his mother lying in a pool of blood without any clothes on Wednesday morning. Police earlier were not able to ascertain the cause of death, as there were no injury marks. However, during the post-mortem examination, injury marks were found on her private parts and a bottle was also found stuffed deep inside.
Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday announced Rs 1,000 monthly living wages for distressed lonely women in the state.

Making an announcement in the legislative assembly, Rao said as per the preliminary estimates, there may be about two-three lakh lonely women in the state.

As women are more prone to poverty, we took a decision to provide living security by supporting them by extending Rs 1000 every month to distressed lonely women. Immediately, orders are issued. We will allocate funds for this purpose in the budget, that will be introduced in March 2017, Rao told the assembly.

The statement however did not elaborate on the eligibility guidelines of the scheme.

The scheme will be implemented for the next financial year and necessary directions are issued to all district collectors to organise programme to enroll the details of lonely women, he further said.

Meanwhile, replying to a query during the question hour, Telangana IT and industries minister KT Rama Rao said the state government is examining the possibility of setting up industrial clusters along the Hyderabad-Warangal route.

A request is being made to Government of India under the recently approved National Investment Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) to include Hyderabad-Warangal corridor, he informed the House.

According to him, initial study reports indicate three possible clusters on the anvil- Yadadri Cluster, Janagaon Cluster and Warangal Cluster.

He said the government is in the process of setting up a mega textile park in Warangal and detailed project report is being prepared for phase I in 1,000 acres.
On December 29 last year, several Muslims mourned the death of the only Hindu who was living amidst them in their remote village in Tripura along the border with Bangladesh.

Sumati Sutradhar (65), a childless woman, was more than a fellow-villager to the thousands of Muslims residing in Jubrajnagar in Tripuras Unakoti district.

In 1999, soon after her husbands death, she had donated her land to the state government to build a school for girls which has gained in stature, witnessing 550 passouts in the last 16 years.

Leaving behind a legacy In 1999, after her husbands death, Sumati Sutradhar had donated her land to the state government to build a school for girls The donation ensured education for Muslim girls, who were being discouraged from going to school Initially, many villagers did not approve of the school, but later realised the magnitude of Sumatis service to their daughters

In the Muslim-dominated village, there was constant pressure on her to give up her land as neighbours had been trying to encroach ever since she and her husband settled there after the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971.

The land donation to the Tripura education department killed two birds with one stoneshe ensured protection of her land and ensured education for Muslim girls, who were being discouraged from going to school.

Sumati also got Rs 3,000 as monthly allowance for her basic needs and was allowed to stay in a small room of the school building till death.

Inaugurated on December 31, 1999, the school was upgraded to higher secondary in 2010 and became Jubrajnagar Colony Girls Higher Secondary School. As the school grew in stature, Hindu families from nearby villages began enrolling their girls there. At least 823 girls study there now.

Initially, many villagers did not approve of the school, but later realised the magnitude of Sumatis service for their daughters.

Now, a week after her death, they want the school named after her.

Some villagers want to rename the school after Sumati Devi. We shall be discussing this at a meeting with the village head, Manik Ali, a former teacher, said. His daughter had passed out from the school.

Sumati Devi deserves the honour because she was the reason why many girls of the area are educated today. She did not regret donating the land, and was happy to see so many girls come to the school on her land, Anjan Banik, another ex-teacher, said.

Banik said the teachers and villagers could write to the government for renaming the school officially after Sumati Sutradhar.
The bigger the deposits in banks since the demonetisation drive, the earlier you will get a notice from the income tax department.

Officials said accounts in which deposits of Rs 2 lakh and more were made since November 8 are under scrutiny. Rs 7 lakh crore was deposited in more than 60 lakh such accounts since the government banned high-value banknotes, they added.

The department suspects a part of the illicit cash in circulation before the government banned high-value banknotes may have come back into the banking system through such big deposits.

While investigations into individual cases may take more than a year, all notices are expected to be sent out by March 31, the officials added.

Transactions in bank accounts that remained dormant till November or new ones are also being monitored and banks have been asked to send reports on these.

Read | Note ban not enough: Corruption in India is like water, it finds a way

After the initial round of examination based on data analytics and response of the account holders under the scanner, the department will send specific notices, a senior government official told Hindustan Times.

The IT department has huge datawe will use data analytics to segregate genuine and non-genuine casesthough the deposit amount will matter while sending notices, it will also largely depend on the other parameters, the official said.

The IT department has already sent out over 5,000 notices.

We can also assure people that we will not blindly send notices as that would lead to harassment but people with discrepancy in their incomes and deposits need to worry, the official added.

Read | Why govts demonetisation move may fail to win the war against black money

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A 29-year-old woman was stabbed by an unidentified person near Mahalakshmi Race Course in Central Mumbai, police said.

The incident occurred at around 7.30 PM on Thursday near the race course. Police got information about it after Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room.

Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital to see the victim, who is reported to be out of danger.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder, in connection with the incident.

The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked at a private company here. Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man.

Last evening, at around 7:30 PM, the man went to meet her at the race course and found her sitting under a tree with stab marks on her chest, following which she was taken to hospital.

Further investigation into the incident was on, police added.
In the backdrop of woman activist Trupti Desais plan to enter the famous hill shrine of Lord Ayappa at Sabarimala, Travancore Devaswom Board said on it would not break with tradition and customs in allowing entry to women in the age group of 10-50 into the shrine.

Nobody will be allowed to break the custom and tradition of the temple, Prayar Gopalakrishnan, chairman of Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the hill shrine, told reporters.

He was replying to a question on woman activist Trupti Desais plans to enter Sabarimala with a group of about 100 women as part of their campaign to enable women of all age groups to pray at the shrine.

There are restrictions in the entry of women between 10-50 years of age in the temple.

Gopalakrishnan also said he fully agreed with Devaswom minister Kadakampally Surendrans statement that Trupti Desai would not be allowed to enter the temple.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

Trend:

Azerbaijan has urged international organizations to stop Armenias inhumane activity, take the necessary measures for it to comply with the requirements of the Geneva Convention and return the body of the killed Azerbaijani serviceman, the countrys State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing People said in a message Jan. 6.

The necessary work together with the relevant government agencies continues for returning the body of Azerbaijani Armed Forces soldier Chingiz Gurbanov, who was killed during the prevention of the Armenian sabotage Dec. 29, 2016.

A reconnaissance group of the Armenian Armed Forces tried to violate the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border on Dec. 29 morning. The Armenian group found itself in the ambush of the Azerbaijani army while violating the borders and suffered heavy losses.

Despite the fact that already a week has passed after these events, the corresponding Armenian structures prefer to remain silent on this matter, showing no reaction towards this humanitarian problem, Azerbaijans state commission noted.

This proves once again that Armenia, by acting based on public opinion inside the country, is trying to gain time in order to obtain political dividends, according to the commission.

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.
A series of meetings failed to throw up a solution for the beleaguered Samajwadi Party (SP) as the warring factions refused to back down on Friday, leaving the ruling party staring at a split a month ahead of the assembly polls.

Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav twice called press conferences within two hours but cancelled them at the last minute, adding to the confusion and drama over the bitter power struggle that has pitted the once-powerful satrap against his chief minister-son Akhilesh Yadav.

Both factions are claiming to be the real face of the SP and have staked claimed to the partys poll symbol, the bicycle.

Elections to the 403-member assembly will be held in seven phases beginning February 11 and the SP is expected to face a tough fight from the BJP, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress.

Read: History repeating itself? Mulayam followed Lohia, Akhilesh his father

Sources said Mulayam and his younger brother Shivpal -- whose naming as the state SP president replacing Akhilesh triggered the crisis  have held over 40 hours of talks in three days. This week, Akhilesh took over as SP president in a coup against his father, leaving the senior Yadav with a handful of leaders with him.

Highlights Sources said Mulayam Singh Yadav and his younger brother Shivpal Yadav have held over 40 hours of talks in three days amid a crisis in Uttar Pradeshs ruling Yadav family. Senior minister Azam Khan and two of Mulayams apolitical brothers -- Abhayram and Rajpal  have tried to play peace-makers but without any success. The first signs of a possible truce appeared when Shivpal reached Akhileshs residence in the morning. But he left within five minutes and it was not clear whether he met the chief minister.

Senior minister Azam Khan and two of Mulayams apolitical brothers -- Abhayram and Rajpal  have tried to play peace-makers but without any success.

The first signs of a possible truce appeared when Shivpal reached Akhileshs residence in the morning. But he left within five minutes and it was not clear whether he met the chief minister.

Sources said the Akhilesh camp showed no indication of conceding any ground despite feelers that Shivpal will quit as state president while Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh will give up SP membership.

Akhilesh has been particularly critical of Amar Singhs return to the party and has often referred to the MP as the outsider responsible for the upheaval.

Outsiders dont hurt, our own hurt us. When we fight with our own, we end up in dust -- Amar Singh

However, Amar Singhs offer to leave the party was opposed by Mulayam who is said to have decided to call a press conference to announce a split in the SP, sources said.

Read: Party belongs to me, people by my side: SP chief Mulayam

Outsiders dont hurt, our own hurt us. When we fight with our own, we end up in dust, Amar Singh was quoted as saying by a TV channel on Friday.

(The) chief minister was only four years of age since when Shivpal Yadav fostered him, took care of his education. I too played a role in his personal life, Singh added, referring to Akhileshs marriage with Dimple, a Lok Sabha member.

He, however, indicated that the Akhilesh camp may have won the numbers game to keep the party poll symbol.

Political standing does not lie in numbers. A mans political personal is his standing.

The Election Commission has asked both factions to prove their strength by submitting signed affidavits from MLAs and members of the legislative council. UP has a bicameral legislature.

Ramgopal Yadav, who has backed Akhilesh in the power struggle, said they have collected the signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates.
Shivpal Yadav on Friday made a brief stop at 5 Kalidas Marg, the official residence of UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, sparking talks of a possible patch-up in the split ruling Samajwadi Party.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired, and if at all Shivpal met with his nephew Akhilesh.

Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav.

According to sources, Akhilesh made clear that he would not attend any meeting with his father or uncle in which Amar Singh, a confidant of Mulayams, was present.

However, other sources privy to the mornings developments did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the outsider whose return to SP triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a compromise formula.

Another possibility could be the resignation of Shivpal from the post of state SP chief, a charge held by the chief minister before the family feud broke out.

Political standing does not lie in numbers. Standing is of a man... Outsiders dont hurt, it is our own who hurt us. We we fight with our own, we end up in dust,Amar Singh said after a meeting at Shivpals residence. We  Shivpal and I  are well-wishers of CM (Akhilesh).

Read | History repeating itself? Mulayam followed Lohia, Akhilesh his father

An inkling of a patch-up came late last night when Akhilesh planned to go to the Lucknow airport to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayams return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him, apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had on Thursday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Partys control for three months.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam this morning reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the EC to claim that it was the real Samajwadi Party.

Leader of the Akhilesh camp, Ramgopal Yadav, claimed they have collected signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates, making it crystal clear as to which was the real SP.

(With inputs from agencies)

Read | Akhilesh Yadav rejigs party, looks all set with UP polls preparation
Police have detained two personsa youth posing as an IPS officer and a driver of a private carfor breach of security arrangements made for Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Patna on Thursday.

The fake IPS officer, reviewing security arrangements, and the private car trespassing the PMs route minutes before his cavalcade was to arrive, are being seen as serious breach of security in the wake of intelligence inputs of subversive elements trying to disrupt the PMs visit.

Mayank Mrinal Tiwari, believed to be mentally unsound, was nabbed barely half an hour before the PMs arrival. He was posing as a 2015-batch IPS officer, deputed for PM duty, and issuing instructions to police personnel for the last two days. He even reviewed the duties assigned to police jawans for Thursdays concluding-day function of Prakash Parv at Gandhi Maidan. His acts had gone unnoticed till the eleventh hour.

The youth, said to be pursuing management studies from a Pune-based institution, was questioned by a police officer at around 11 am.

I became suspicious during conversation with him. I asked him for his identity card but he failed to produce one, said a police officer.

Confirming his arrest, Patna SSP Manu Maharaaj said that the youth, son of an RBI official, had passed out of a noted missionary school from Patna. Further questioning was on.

In another case, a private vehicle trespassed into the area near income tax roundabout breaching security arrangements made for the occasion. The incident took place around 20 minutes before departure of PMs cavalcade from Gandhi Maidan to the airport.

It is yet to be ascertained how this vehicle managed to sneak into the area when usual traffic was not allowed and even ambulances were restricted beyond a particular point.

The vehicle was later seized and the driver detained.

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Former Bombay high court judge DS Zoting will submit to the Maharashtra government his report of probe against former state revenue minister Eknath Khadse by next month.

The state government had formed a one-member probe committee under the retired Bombay high court judge in the last week of June, 2016, to probe into allegations of conflict of interest against Eknath Khadse during purchase of a MIDC land at Bhosari near Pune.

Khadse had to resign over the controversial land deal wherein he had purchased a three-acre plot in Bhosari, believed to be owner by MIDC, in the name of his relative for Rs 3.75-crore as against the market price of Rs 40-crore.

The enquiry will ascertain if the land was acquired by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and whether it was eligible to be transferred or sold as per the MIDC norms.

The committee was asked to submit its report to the government in three months, but it sought an extension of three months since the inquiry was not completed within the stipulated period.

Khadse, a senior BJP leader and the then revenue minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government, had been facing a series of allegations including the irregularities in the land deal in Pune, and of getting calls allegedly from fugitive Dawood Ibrahims residence in Karachi on his mobile phone, besides an alleged bribe sought by a personal aide.

The committee, which is functioning from Nagpur, visited the Bhosari MIDC area in Pune and recorded statements of all witnesses and concerned officials.

According to available information, the committee will Khadse for cross-examination within the next couple of days and subsequently submit its report to the government for consideration.

Meanwhile, it is believed that if Khadse gets a clean chit from the Zoting committee, he will be given charge of newly set up ministry for the welfare of the other backward communities (OBC), which the Fadnavis government decided to in its cabinet meeting last month.
A Rs 2,000 note deposited by a diagnostic centre in the Bhawanipur branch of Union Bank of India was found to be fake on Thursday. The cell of Kolkata Police that monitors fake currency was immediately alerted.

The discovery should ring alarm bells across the country as one of the primary objectives of the demonetisation move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to put fake currency out of circulation.

Mediclue Research and Diagnostic lab in the Bhawanipur area deposited Rs 50,000 in the bank on Thursday and one note of Rs 2000 was found to be fake.

The bank officials found that the note is not original. I have handed over the note to the special task force (STF) cell of the Kolkata Police. The STF is verifying it, Tarun Chakraborty, owner of the lab said.

After thorough verification in our office, we think its fake currency note. Considering the seriousness of the matter, we have communicated it our head office in Mumbai seeking advice, Arnab Bose, manager of the Union Bank of India, Bhawanipur branch, told HT.

Intelligence officials told HT that the very fact that such a note was detected in Kolkata provides all the more reason for concern as Bengal is considered to be the capital of fake currency in the country. Much of the fake currency is smuggled into the country through the porous Bengal-Bangladesh border through Murshidabad and Malda.

Apex bank officials used to say that in the Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes (now demonetised) the fake currency printers managed to replicate all 12 overt security features of genuine notes with a scary degree of accuracy.

On the basis of data from different states and central police agencies, the RBI found that over 80% of the 5,21,155 counterfeit notes seized in 2011-12 came through Bengals Malda, Murshidabad and Nadia districts bordering Bangladesh.

There are no RBI guidelines on how to differentiate between an original and a fake note of Rs 2,000. But there many differences that we have noticed. For instance, we could not even find the exact colour of the fake note when it is kept under UV ray. This note is smaller in size than the original and its paper is also very rough, Bose said on Thursday.

The police was, however, more cautious. We are still confused whether its a fake. We will send to the RBI soon to check it properly, said Subrata Dey, officer-in-charge of the STF.

Earlier, one Sandeep Kumar and Harjinder were arrested from Bhikhiwind town in Punjab on charge of printing and circulating fake Rs 2,000 notes taking advantage of the unfamiliarity of many with the new currency.

According to studies conducted by different institutes, as many as 250 out of every 10 lakh notes in circulation are fake. Typically, at any point in time, banknotes with cumulative face value of Rs 400 crore are in circulation in the country.

Fake currency notes with a face value of around Rs 70 crore are infused into the system every year and law enforcement agencies are able to intercept only a third of them.

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In a move that will easy commuting to some extent, bike taxies will run in Uttar Pradesh, including the state capital, soon.

A senior transport department official said the surface transport rules have been amended to allow bikes to run as taxies and, if everything goes well, these two-wheeler taxies would start services from January end.

Such taxies are already running in Goa and Haryana and on them people can go places where cars cannot go. They are swift and will contribute in reducing pollution, the official said.

Across the world, especially Thailand and in Dubai, bike taxies are a popular mode of transport.

Just as apps help get a car taxi, the bikes can also be called via smart phones. Four companies are interested to run bike taxi service in the state, he said.

As per the initial plan, these taxies will be registered with the regional transport office and the owner will have to pay 300 as fee for five years while the passenger tax per month will be 220.

The registration and passenger tax fee can be deposited on quarterly or annual basis by the owners. The passenger will have to pay 8 per kilometre ride.

As per the circular issued by transport commissioner K Rivendra Naik, bikes that will be allowed to be registered as taxies should not be more than two years old, and preferably should be new bikes.

The rules also specify that the bike taxi will carry only one passenger.

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The Lucknow Municipal Corporation, which is under pressure to streamline the solid waste management in the state capital, is now planning to emulate the Delhi, Pune and Bhubaneshwar municipal corporations and deploy ragpickers to keep the city clean.

Jyoti Envirotech, the company responsible for door-to-door collection of waste, often fails to provide regular service in 65 wards of the city. The companys waste collectors are on strike for the past 15 days, jeopardising the health of the residents. They have refused to collect garbage as the company has not paid their salaries for the past three months. Consequently, the angry LMC officials decided to use ragpickers, who would be issued identity cards and given a short training to collect solid waste from houses and segregate it at source.

In Pune, Bhubaneshwar and Delhi, door-to-door collection and segregation of waste at source initially failed. As a result, the waste supplied to waste-to-energy and composting plants was always of poor quality.

These municipal corporations then evolved a model under which ragpickers collected and segregated the waste. So the waste reaching the compost plant was of high quality.

The LMC has identified around 1,000 rag pickers for door-to-door collection of waste for which they would be paid a nominal amount. LMC has recently passed a resolution under which it is mandatory for residents to segregate waste at source. However, this has not been implemented till date.

Additional municipal commissioner PK Srivastava told HT, LMC is looking for ways to effectively utilise this vast human resource for the benefit of society. This will help ragpickers earn their livelihood in a more respectable way and the process of waste collection would also be streamlined.

Read more: Public to get calls for feedback on sanitation in Gurgaon

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Many stalls at Khadi exhibition on the premises of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) are accepting payments through Paytm. Taking a step ahead, one stall has installed swipe machine and accepted payments from a number of customers. While some find it interesting, others find it cumbersome to use the new system.

Ramavtar at the counter of Regional Gandhi Ashram accepted payments through debit and credit cards from a number of customers. This is very convenient for tech savvy customers. They prefer making payment through it. I learned its operation and found it quite interesting, he said.

He blames the poor network for improper functioning of the swipe machines. Improvement in network is required for smooth and efficient functioning of the machines. He reveals that he did around 100 transactions from the new system.

Om Prakash Lal accepts payment through Paytm. He has also displayed a barcode on his stall. He, however, finds transaction through the new system complicated. I am learning ways to use the new mode of transaction from young people . But if one wants to make payment through it, I accept it with the help of my young salesman, Lal said.

Lal said the government should have carried out an awareness drive across the nation before making an appeal to go cashless. The new system is certainly convenient but only for those who are tech savvy and know how to operate a smartphone.

However, he said that those who want to be in business will have to go cashless in days to come. e-payments will be common in cities in next one or two years and later it will extend to rural pockets as well. Mobile revolution has changed our way of life and also way of transactions tremendously across the country, he added.

Read more: Taxi-auto drivers in Mumbai keen on switching to cashless payments
Veteran Bollywood actor Om Puri died of a heart attack Friday morning.

He was 66.

Om Puri was a versatile actor who excelled in parallel cinema as it was called as well as he pioneered in commercial cinema.

Director Karan Johar expressed grief on his death on Twitter and said that he was a solid actor with solid filmography. Anupam Kher said he cannot believe that Puri is no more. Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors Om Puri is no more. Deeply saddened and shocked, he tweeted.

Om Puri made everyone laugh with his comic timing in films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Malamaal Weekly, Hera Pheri on one hand and left everyone in awe with his acting prowess in films like Ardh Satya. He also worked in Hollywood movies like The Hundred-Foot Journey with Helen Mirren in 2014 and East is East in 1999.

More details on his death are awaited.

Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist....  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) January 6, 2017

Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP.  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) January 6, 2017
PASSENGERS

Direction: Morten Tyldum

Actors: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt

Rating: 0.5 / 5

Despite an interesting sci-fi premise, a couple of charismatic actors, a dash of romance and an Oscar-nominated director, this plotpourri is a snooze-fest.

Passengers is based in a long-gestating script by Jon Spaihts, and directed by Norwegian-born filmmaker Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game).

Chris Pratt is cast as one of 5,000 deep-space voyagers who have signed up for a 120-year trip to a new planet. He is woken out of deep slumber 90 years too soon, due to a malfunction in his hibernation pod.

Amid the silly space shenanigans, you are forced to start counting the interminable minutes left before you can return to terra firma yourself.

Unable to get back to sleep and utterly alone (save for a bartending robot), he deliberately wakes a fellow traveller, the pretty-as-a-picture Jennifer Lawrence.

Silly space shenanigans follow, and you are forced to start counting the interminable minutes left before you can return to terra firma yourself.

Keep light years away from Passengers.

Still on the fence? You can watch the trailer here

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Oil rose slightly on Friday on increased buying ahead of the weekend, but a strong U.S. dollar and lingering doubts that not all OPEC producers would cut output in line with an agreement, pressured prices, Reuters reported.

End of week position-squaring combined with relatively low volumes during the first trading week of the year led to the market being choppy, traders said.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 were trading 19 cents higher at $57.08 per barrel at 11:34 a.m. EST, after moving in a $56.28-to-$57.47 range.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 rose 24 cents at $54.00 a barrel, after trading between $53.32 and $54.32.

The contracts were on track for a slight gain on the week.

"There's a lot of volatility, or at least changes in direction," ABN Amro senior energy economist Hans van Cleef said. "People think the long-term trend is up, but after a gain of a few dollars, they take profit."
ALLIED

Direction: Robert Zemeckis

Actors: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard

Rating: 2 / 5

The first half of this romantic espionage thriller is set in 1942, in the Nazi-occupied French Moroccan city of Casablanca, and it culminates in a teary farewell at an airfield. In one crucial scene, a character is provoked to play her countrys national anthem, La Marseillaise. But it needs to be stressed that, despite several such similarities, Allied is definitively not in the same league as the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman classic.

Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard provide star wattage, but even they cannot inject enough energy into the lethargically paced script by the normally bankable Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Locke).

Pitt plays a Canadian intelligence officer who poses as the husband of a French resistance fighter (Cotillard) hes never met.

If one is still able to maintain interest in the goings-on, its largely because of the films gorgeous production and costume design.

The two undercover agents are on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. After assassinating the German ambassador in Casablanca, they reunite in London, get married and have a child.

By one of those convenient plot contrivances, it is suspected that the mademoiselle might be a double agent.

The narrative proceeds along predictable lines, with the husband attempting to come to grips with the unravelling situation.

It doesnt help that there is little on-screen chemistry between the lead stars.

A couple of scenes, like the summary execution of Nazi handlers in London, provide the requisite goose bumps. On the whole, though, the direction by Academy Award-winner Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) is stodgy.

If one is still able to maintain interest in the goings-on, its largely attributable to the films gorgeous production and costume design.

It doesnt help that there is little on-screen chemistry between the lead stars. On the evidence of some of her banal performances in American films, including the recently released Assassins Creed, Ms Cotillard should perhaps consider returning to French cinema.

As for Allied, it merely leaves us yearning for a re-run of the inimitable Casablanca.

Watch the trailer for Allied here

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Nearly half the vacation time for a Canadaian family, which is in Mumbai, is over but their luggage that went missing in transit early this week is yet to be found.

On January 2, Meenu Sehgal, a lawyer from Canada arrived at her brothers house with her two children. I had to borrow my brothers clothes, said Sehgal, adding that the incident ruined the family reunion that happened after a decade.

The Sehgals boarded an Air Canada flight from Toronto to London on December 31 and were supposed to take a Mumbai-bound Air India (AI) flight from the Heathrow airport. But they missed the connecting flight because the Air Canada flight (AC 858) was delayed.

After a lot of pleading the AI officials booked us on a Delhi-bound flight scheduled 10 hours later, followed by a domestic journey to Mumbai on a Jet Airways flight, she said.

After reaching Delhi at noon on January 2, they discovered that two bags containing their clothes and essentials had not arrived. The crew said the bags would be delivered in a day after we wrote a customary complaint, Sehgal said, adding that the AI officials at Mumbai and Delhi are blaming each other for the goof up.

My brother being a travel operator found out that the bags were traced back to Heathrow, but the airline is refusing to do anything about it, she said.

Sehgal even alleged that another Indian family from Canada had lost four bags on the same flight. The Sehgals are booked with the same airline for their return journey.

I cannot extend my stay as Ive to resume work from January 13. But how can I leave without so many belongings? she said.

The AI spokesperson did not respond to HTs query sent over email on January 5.

Misplaced baggage accounted for almost one out of four complaints recorded by Indias aviation safety regulator in November. The data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) also showed that it has been among the top three fliers grouses in 2016.

Also read: Mumbai airport security: Stamping of tags on carry-on bags to go?

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In a major reprieve for aspiring law students, the Bombay high court on Friday stayed a circular issued by the Bar Council of India (BCI), prescribing different upper-age limits for 3-year and 5-year law courses.

How can such restrictions be imposed, the division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and justice Girish Kulkarni sought to know. In our view, acquiring knowledge is a fundamental right, the bench added, while staying the BCI circular of September 17, 2016.

The circular revived an old clause in Legal Practice Rules, 2008, prescribing the upper age limit of 30 years for three-year law courses for general category students and 35 years for students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes. It has also prescribed upper age limit of 20 years (22 years for SC, STs and OBCs) for the five-year law course.

A person may just want to acquire law and may not want to practice as a lawyer, the bench said, after the counsel for BCI pointed out that the upper-age limit introduced by the circular was for the purpose of maintaining quality and standard in legal practice.

I have seen several retired persons completing law courses and successfully taking up legal practice thereafter, said the chief justice, adding that someone employed in a financial institution may want to know more about the debt recovery law and the functioning of the DRT (Debt Recovery Tribunal).

The court was hearing a petition filed by Andheri resident Sandip Kedia, 43, and Malad resident Souvik Roy, 56, who had appeared for the common entrance test for law admissions last year, but were later declared ineligible for admission to the law course in view of the circular.

They contended that the clause concerned, Rule 28, has already been struck down by Punjab and Haryana high court and the Allahabad high court, and the revival of the rule is directly contrary to the judgments, and the circular makes no mention of these judgments.

They have further contended that the BCI is required to protect the standard of legal education and this may include regulating curriculum, imposing certain teaching standards etc. It certainly cannot extend to imposing entry barriers for certain aspiring students, states their petition.

The bench has now posted the petition for further hearing after four weeks.
Classical dancers emerge from the audience and step into a frame on stage, posing as art by Raja Ravi Varma.

In its third year, the Pune Biennale has really come into its own.

Identity and Self is the theme of this edition of the Pune Biennale (January 5  29). And its been explored and expressed in a myriad ways, through paintings and performance art, drawings, sculptures and mixed-media works that are currently sprinkled along the arterial Jangali Maharaj Road and adjoining streets, at Sambhaji Park, the Phule museum, SSPMS ground and Pataleshwar caves.

More than 200 artists from 18 countries and across 40 cities within India are showcasing works here. Some are established names, such as Sarnath Banerjee and Shubijit Rao. Others are promising young artists.

The flagship project at the biennale is Habit-Co-Habit, curated by Zasha Colah and Luca Cerizza, featuring installations all along JM Road created by the likes of Hungarian-born French architect Yona Friedman and sculptor Massimo Bartolini.

One question that influenced our choices was that of living together in an increasingly complex urban reality. This exhibition aims to discuss the possibilities and, indirectly, how art can be framed in such a context, says Zasha Colah, who curated curated Habit-Co-Habit with Luca Cerizza.

Other major showings include a photography exhibition titled Migration: To Be And Not To Be, curated by Bina Sarkar Ellias.

Migration is a difficult issue that needs to be addressed, especially by the youth. They need to question it, and not be apathetic. With this exhibition we are hoping to sensitise the audiences, Ellias said.

Elsewhere, Chennai filmmaker duo Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar have brought their U-ra-mi-li Project (Songs of Our People, in the Naga Chokri dialect) to the biennale via a short film shot in the area around Punes iconic Z-bridge. The film portrays the socio-economic situation of that area with an attitude that mixes documentary precision with surrealistic moments, says Meenakshi.

Also at SSPMS, shipping containers serve as galleries, showcasing photo-chronicles of migrants and their histories, chequered with hope, loss, struggle and fulfillment, alongside documentary reels and poetry on migration.

Outside, the ground is peppered with art installations made using scrap metal and wood taken from the Pune civic body.

The idea was to take scrap from Pune, transform it into art, and give it back to the city, says Ashwini Pethe, joint managing director of the Pune Biennale Foundation.

This is the first time I have witnessed an art event on such a massive scale. The Pune Biennale is revolutionising art by making it open to all and inviting all of Pune to be a part of it, says student Vibhum Sharma.

Adds content consultant Gayathri Vasudevan: Art is usually projected as only for niche audience, and initiatives like Pune Biennale are a great way to bust this myth and revive interest in the fine arts among people.

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The Bombay high court on Friday ruled that government employees or their legal heirs have no right to continue staying in official quarters after retirement.

A division bench of the court held that staff quarters constructed by the Centre, state, or municipal bodies are public properties and no court can allow any public property to be usurped by private citizens who then will use it for profiteering.

The court went on to say that government officers or bureaucrats must realise that they are mere public servants and have no authority over the states properties or assets.

The court was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by over 1,500 retired employees of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) or their kin, who had challenged an eviction notice issued by the corporation.

These employees have been staying in quarters allotted to them by the corporation during their service tenure and have refused to vacate the same even after retirement or even the death of the original occupants.

The quarters that are under contention are some permanent and semi-permanent units that the corporation constructed over the years in suburbs such as Vikhroli, Chembur, Ghatkopar, Deonar, and Goregaon.

The BMC counsel, advocate Anil Sakhre submitted that as per the corporations older policy, it had granted ownership rights or extended leases to the original occupants of a few such units. However, in the 1990s, owing to space crunch, the corporation changed its policy and decided against any permanent tenancy or ownership rights on its staff quarters.

Sakhre said that in a city like Mumbai, that faces constant space crunch, often states staff accommodations prove inadequate in number and several employees, even those employed in emergency services are forced to either forego official accommodation, or wait in a never-ending queue for their turn.

The petitioners on the other hand argued that several of them had been living in these quarters since the 1960s or 70s, that many were mere class III or class IV employees who could not afford to live anywhere else. They argued that since a few of them do have permanent tenancy rights, all cases be treated on parity and be granted ownership.

The high court, however, held that the petitioners had been wrongly retaining the quarters and granting them any relief would suggest that the court was validating illegal retention of public property.

But, the court asked BMC to treat some cases as special and help rehabilitate such petitioners who were not in a position to fend for themselves.

Read more: Bombay HC stays bar council circular imposing age limit for law courses

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The Maharashtra government is likely to ask for a fresh report on the issue of reservation to the Maratha community from the newly constituted Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC) to strengthen its claim in court. The government may soon request the court to allow it to refer the case back to the MSCBC.

The state government on Wednesday reconstituted the MSCBC, after the term of the previous Bhatia commission expired in March last year. Almost all the previous commissions had submitted negative reports regarding giving reservation to Marathas. The Bhatia commission had refused to review the previous reports on the issue when the Congress government had requested it to in 2014. Following that, the government had announced the reservation without waiting for the commissions review.

According to the officials from the social justice department, a commission report in the favour of the reservation would help them in strengthening its case in court. The reservation given to the Marathas on the basis of the Narayan Rane Committee report on the backwardness of the community in 2014 was not vetted by the commission. This lacunae is likely to be pointed by the court during the hearing on the case. It has already faulted the Rane committee report while staying the reservation, said an official. We have submitted new documents to the high court in this matter and thus want a fresh report from the commission based on it, he added.

The affidavit of over 2,500 pages has all the documents proving the backwardness of the community. On the basis of these documents, the commission is likely to give a favourable report, the official claimed.

Representatives of the Maratha community too have been insisting on referring the case again to the commission. We are sure that if the new documents are endorsed by the commission, it will strengthen our case, said Balasaheb Patil Sarate, one of the organisers of the Maratha marches.

On the other hand, the OBC leaders have objected to this move. In a letter to the chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Anil Mahajan of OBC Jangranti Parishad has said, The appointments have in the violation of the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes Act, which says that scheduled caste, tribe, VJNT. These categories have not been given representation and most of the members are from Maratha community, which does not fall under backward class.

Three of the members including the chairman belong to the Maratha community and this is happening for the first time that the non-backward community has the majority. Secondly two of the members are the ones who had actively participated in the Maratha marches leading to the conflict of interest. Also, one of the members is also facing the serious charges of the corruption and had to resign from his judicial position few years ago, the official said.

He also added that the appointment is likely to be challenged in the court and it may delay the entire process of reservation.

Read more: Maharashtra creates separate department for OBCs
Municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta, on Thursday evening, unveiled the Bomonjee Hormarjee Wadia Clock Tower and Seth Gangalal V Mulji Nandlal Religious & Charitable Trust Pyav  both century-old heritage structures.

Kala Ghoda Association (KGA), that funded the restorations, had taken up the structures to give them facelift. The association also looks to revive the area by reviving age-old heritage constructions. KGA appointed architects from Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) for the restoration project.

The prime conservation architect of the iconic structures, Vikas Dilawari, said that the future of the structures looked really bleak and the KGA had saved them at the nick of time.

We had to repair right from scratch since the structure was about to bite the dust. Another challenge was that the area is also a traffic roundabout which makes it all the more difficult, said Dilawari.

He added that it took them around six to eight months to revamp the two structures since they also had to maintain the aesthetics.

Maneck Davar, KGA chairman, said that there were future projects lined up in the near future. People are also interested and enthusiastic about it since these structures had been closed down for a very long time and nobody paid any attention to it, he said.

Rohinton Pagdiwala, a Dadar resident who attended the event, is associated with both the heritage structures. I used to work here before I retired. It gives me great pleasure to see that we are trying to restore what could have been lost in force of time, he said.

Pagdiwala added that it is important to look back in the past to determine our future course of action and to ensure that we are in right path. That is why they are heritage and not old.

The clock tower, located at the junction of Bazaar Gate Street and Perin Nariman Street, Fort, was constructed in 1882 while the Pyav underground well located below Horniman Circle garden, was excavated in 1811.

READ MORE

Kala Ghoda in Mumbai gets its dark horse back without King Edward VII

Meet the original Kala Ghoda, and other colonial rejects cast in stone
A joyride on January 1 turned tragic for two friends after the two-wheeler they were travelling on crashed into a pole in Jogeshwari (East). While the rider succumbed to the injuries, he sustained in the mishap, on Tuesday night, his friend is being treated for facial fracture. Both were travelling without helmets.

According to Jogeshwari police, the incident took place around 4.30pm on the southbound arm of the Western Express Highway near Ismail Yusuf College. Akshay Chavan, 22, and his friend Tehjeem Raokura, 20, were on their way to Vile Parle from Goregaon when the accident took place.

The deceased lost control of his speeding Activa while coming down the flyover and rammed it into a pole. He was rushed to Nanavati hospital, but succumbed to head and internal injuries on Tuesday night. His friend suffered facial fractures and lost 13 teeth. The two were not wearing helmets. Though she also injured her hands and legs in the mishap, she is out of danger, a police officer said.

Unfortunately, Chavan had lost his two brothers in accidents. While one died due to electrocution, another one died in a road accident. He is survived by his parents, a brother and a sister. Chavan was booked under relevant sections of the IPC.

A total of eight men died in various road accidents on January 1  one each in Bandra, Oshiwara and two each in Goregaon and Wadala. Seven of these accidents involved bikes.

Also read: Biker crushed under bus in Thane dies while being rushed to Mumbai hospital
After high levels of pollution caused by firecrackers on the first day of the year in Mumbai, a demand to ban them has come up.

Citizens groups have written to the state government and pollution boards to ban firecrackers in Mumbai in 2017, similar to demands at the national capital in December 2016.

Pointing out health problems caused by the toxic firecrackers, residents from different parts of the city wrote to the environment department. The impact of crackers on children is far greater than it is on adults because their defence mechanism against pollutants is much lesser, said Byculla resident Farooque Dhala.

The air quality index (AQI) during Diwali last year and New Year's Day this year, both fell under the 'very poor' level at 315 and 323. They were two of the most polluted days for Mumbai in 2016-17 so far.

The right to breathe clean air is essential for all, said Irfan Machiwala, a Mahim resident. Lithium and copper compounds in firecrackers cause hormonal imbalance and is poisonous to plants and animals.

Shridhar Jadhav, Vile Parle resident, said that people were bursting crackers on the Western Express Highway on New Years eve. It is the governments responsibility to protect the right to breathe clean air. Studies have shown that toxins present in firecrackers can even cause cancer, he said. There needs to be a citizens movement to ban it across Maharashtra.

While the national capital banned the use of firecrackers in December 2016 after alarming levels of pollution, officials from the Maharashtra government said they did not have any intention to ban firecrackers.

There are some firecrackers that emit smoke but we have no plans to ban either domestic or foreign made firecrackers in Mumbai or Maharashtra as of now, said Satish Gavai, principal secretary, state environment department. With regard to noise pollution, some firecrackers that violated decibel levels were banned across the state this year.

For the last two years, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) has been carrying out a chemical test of firecrackers but has not made results public. If tests have been done and results are in, I will direct the pollution board to share them with the public, said Gavai.

Meanwhile, experts said different approaches needed to be worked out to resolve the issue. Globally, countries have worked out policies to tackle the use of firecrackers. In Beijing, when air quality levels are extremely poor, the government bans firecrackers, said Anumita Roychoudhury, executive director, Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi. In other developed countries, festivals are celebrated where communities get together, burst crackers together rather than individual emissions.

She added that governments control on licensing firecrackers under various guidelines to improve air quality is essential for all mega cities.

In terms of weather, both south Mumbai and the suburbs recorded a significant drop in maximum temperatures on Friday.

The Santacruz weather station recorded the day temperature at 28.6 degrees Celsius on Friday, 2.2 degree below normal as compared to 31.4 degrees Celsius on Thursday, closer to the normal mark.

Colaba recorded 27.8 degrees Celsius, 2.3 degree Celsius below normal on Friday as compared to Thursdays 31.5 degrees Celsius, a degree Celsius above normal.

Officials from the weather bureau said shifting weather patterns during the day and night have led to cool conditions in Mumbai. Wind patterns during the day have become north-westerly, cool winds that have brought down maximum temperatures. During the night time and early morning hours, northerly to north easterly winds are keeping temperatures almost 3 degrees Celsius below normal, said KS Hosalikar, deputy director general, western region, India Meteorological Department (IMD). We expect current conditions to prevail over the weekend.

Night temperatures were similar to previous days as Santacruz recorded 14.6 degrees Celsius, 2.6 degree Celsius below normal and 19.6 degrees Celsius was recorded at Colaba, which was closer to the normal mark.

Pollution levels in Mumbai continued under the poor category as the pollutant-measuring indicator was recorded at 244 and is expected to be 242 (poor) on Saturday. Four of 10 locations recorded very poor air with Mazgaon being the most polluted site. On the other hand, Worli recorded the cleanest air on Friday.

DOCTORS SPEAK

Inhaling mercury and lead could immediately cause allergic rhinitis, where nasal obstruction takes place with breathing discomfort and cough. Continued exposure may result in bronchitis and hypersensitivity pneumonitis (inflammation of lung tissue). In rare cases, the metals can cause dementia, heart diseases and the bones by getting deposited for a long time," said Sanjeev Mehta, pulmonologist, Lilavati Hospital in Bandra.

Study found high mercury, lead, sulphur in most firecrackers

Anti-noise campaigners, Awaaz Foundation measured the chemical content of some commonly available firecrackers and found high levels of mercury, lead and sulphur. These crackers are commonly used during Diwali and throughout the year and often handled by children.

The study found high levels of lead, mercury, carbon and sulphur in crackers like 'Mayazal colour shots' (rockets) at 11.03 parts per million (ppm), 8.22 ppm, 1.26% sulphur and 32.68 % carbon respectively. Similarly 'Tanisq Green Sparklers' had high mercury and lead contents 14.21 ppm and 16.30 ppm respectively. A variety of flower pot crackers were also tested that found levels of lead and mercury on the higher end.

Every chemical in these crackers are toxic and especially chemicals like sulphur, which are already banned under the hazardous chemical rules of Union Environment Ministry are a major ingredient of these crackers. The government needs to reconsider their decision, said Sumaira Abdulali, convener, Awaaz Foundation.

READ MORE

Pollutants released from Maha stone crushing units 100 times the safe limit

Smog returns but Beijing says overall air quality improving

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The city registered an additional 2.39 lakh voters during a massive drive undertaken in September-October last year. This increased the total number of voters in the city to 91,80,635, with the highest number of voters, 3.45 lakh, from the Chandivli assembly constituency in the western suburbs.

The revised electoral roll was announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday.

In the massive drive undertaken between September 15 and October 21 last year, 19 lakh new voters across the state have registered themselves. The total voters in the state rose to 8.34 crore from 8.15 crore in September 2016. The number of the third gender voters also rose to 1,645 in the state during the drive.

Ten municipal corporations, 26 district councils and 196 panchayat samitis will hold elections in the state in February this year. Besides Mumbai, corporations in Thane, Ulhasnagar, Pune, Nashik and Nagpur are among the bodies facing election next month. Eight more municipal corporations will go to polls in the second half of the year. More than 80% of the voters in the state will exercise their franchise over the next few months. The ECI undertook a summary revision of the roll on the backdrop of the civic elections.

In Mumbai, the BMC wards will have about 40,400 voters per ward. Against the citys projected population of 1.35 crore, the expected number of voters is 92.45 lakh, just 65,000 lesser than the actual number. However, ECI officials claimed registration by first-time voters (18-19 years) is comparatively low. He said although the expected number of first-time voters was 35 lakh, only seven lakh have so far registered themselves.

The massive addition of new voters is the result of the extensive drive we undertook. We had roped in colleges, universities and NGOs to motivate new voters to come forward and register themselves. It is true that the number of first-time voters is low, but its because of the poor response despite various drives, JS Saharia, state election commissioner, told HT.

Although the city has a fair percentage of the voters to the proportion of the population, the western suburbs still have a large number of ASD (Absent, Shifted or Dead) voters in the list. The ECI had deleted 3.16 lakh ASD voters during a drive undertaken between January and August last year.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6



By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:



US Ambassador to Kazakhstan George Krol will not leave its position under Donald Trump administration, the ambassador said in a statement published Jan. 6.



On Jan. 5 the New York Times reported on an order for US ambassadors to leave their posts by Jan. 20. when Donald Trump takes office.



The embassy noted that that order only affects non-career political appointees, not career ambassadors, and this is a standard policy when there is a change of Administrations in the United States.



Ambassador Krol, as a career ambassador, will continue serving as U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan now and after January 20, the statement said.



Political appointees represent approximately one-third of all U.S. ambassadors worldwide, according to the embassy. The remaining two-thirds of ambassadors are members of the Career Foreign Service of the United States.



The embassy noted that the US remains committed to promoting peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and globally.



In 2017, we look forward to deepening our long-standing partnership with Kazakhstan and continuing to broaden our many spheres of engagement, the statement said.



George A. Krol has been serving as the US ambassador to Kazakhstan since January 2015. Previously, he served as US ambassador to Uzbekistan for four years.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
A 29-year-old woman complained to the cops that an unidentified person stabbed her while she was outside Mumbais race course at Mahalaxmi around 7.30pm on Thursday. Hours later the police said their investigations showed the victim had stabbed herself after a tiff with her boyfriend who was baulking at getting married.

According to the police, the woman, a divorcee with a five-year-old son, was seeing her 22-year-old neighbour for the last four years. She had been pressing him for marriage but he was delaying it as his parents were opposed to it, the police said. They were supposed to register their marriage on January 9 and met on Thursday to discuss the matter. Police said it appeared that the man asked for more time to convince his parents but the woman got upset and pulled out a packet-knife from her bag and stabbed herself on the chest.

She was taken to Nair hospital which informed the Tardeo police. In her statement to the police, the woman said that an unknown person suddenly attacked her with a sharp object while she was waiting for her boyfriend near the race course. An officer with the Tardeo police said the first person they questioned was the 22-year-old and that he told them the whole story.

The victim has been declared out of danger and even the doctors have said that it looks like a self-inflicted injury, said an officer.

Senior police inspector Sanajay Surve from Tardeo police station confirmed the incident and said that they are investigating all angles.

Also read: New year celebrations gone sour: 24-year-old stabbed to death in Panchkula parking lot

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Pune city has witnessed a steep rise in cybercrime in the bygone year, with total number of offences registered in the city being 312 as compared to 161 in 2015  an increase of 93%.

City police officers said most cases were related to uploading defamatory content and objectionable posts about women on social media platforms. Pune police commissioner Rashmi Shukla, while releasing the data about crime in the city during 2016, said the officials have managed to nab the offenders in most cases.

The police have nabbed 45 criminals involved in cybercrimes. The police are well-equipped to deal with the increasing cybercrime in the city, he added.

According to Shukla, the police received 2,079 complaints in 2016 in comparison to 505 complaints in 2015 and 350 in 2014.

Deepak Sakore, deputy commissioner of police (cybercrime) said, for various reasons the complainants did not want to register an FIR. He added that in a few cases, the investigators found that gangs based in Delhi, Noida and Chhattisgarh were involved in cybercrimes.

Also read: Demonetisation effect: Watch out for virtual pickpockets

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Social activist Anna Hazare on Friday told the Bombay high court that he would first try to set the criminal law in motion about his allegation that the state exchequer has lost thousands of crores in the sale and privatisation of 47 cooperative sugar factories (CSFs) in Maharashtra.

Annas counsel, advocate Satish Talekar, told the court that the activist would first attempt to set the criminal law in motion by lodging a complaint with the police. The statement came after the division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai said that Hazare could not invoke extraordinary jurisdiction of the high court for CBI probe in his allegations, without first using available alternate remedies.

The bench has now posted the public interest litigation filed by the 79-year-old activist for further hearing on February 13, after Talekar sought time of one month to pursue alternate remedies.

Hazare has sought in-depth probe in the sale and privatisation of 47 CSFs alleging that the scam has been maneuvered by NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar. In the PIL filed through advocate Vinod Sangavikar, the social activist has alleged that the cooperative sugar factor scam has engulfed Maharashtra and pushed the state back by at least 50 years by causing loss of over Rs10,000 crore to the state exchequer. He also claimed that the move put the state under a debt of over Rs1 lakh crore.

According to the PIL, most of the CSFs  31 of the 47 have been sold by the Maharashtra State Cooperative (MSC) Bank. In 2011, the Reserve Bank of India scrapped the board of directors of the MSC bank, and appointed two administrators. The move came after the bank in 2009-10 reported net loss of Rs 775.98 crore and bad loans of over Rs 500 crore  about 30 % of its total advances, and the net worth of the bank had gone below zero - at minus Rs140 crores.

Thereafter, the Commissioner for Cooperation had appointed a senior official to enquire into the affairs of the bank and enquiry officer in his report of January 2014 concluded that the sale of the CSFs was illegal, causing losses of about Rs2,000 crore to the bank. Besides, 77 directors of the bank are facing charges of misappropriating funds to the tune of Rs 1,076 crores, stated the PIL.

Anna has alleged that all the strings were pulled by Shri Sharad Pawar, who was holding the portfolio of the Union agricultural minister at Centre at the relevant time and also the ex-officio chairman of Vasantdada Sugar Institute. His PIL further alleges that most of the sugar factories have been sold to the associates of Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar, the then deputy chief minister, has purportedly played a role in his capacity as the then chairman of Pune District Central Cooperative Bank and as director of the MSC bank.

Read more: Sugar scam: Sharad Pawar to file suit against Anna Hazare
A 15-year-old girl in Ghaziabad wrote a letter in blood to the election commission, requesting the poll panel to award the Samajwadi Party election symbol to her idol and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The girl  a student of Class 10  and her younger brother used a syringe at home and drew blood to write the letter, their father said. They tried to post the letter on Friday but were stopped by the father.

I talked to my children to not be swayed by political incidents and concentrate on their studies, said the father.

Akhilesh has been locked in a bruising fight for control of UPs ruling party with his uncle Shivpal Yadav ahead of assembly elections just over a month away. The two factions are currently petitioning the poll panel to retain the party name and symbol, the bicycle.

The father says the children started liking Akhilesh after they heard of his Samajwadi laptop scheme under which thousands of laptops were distributed for free to students across the state.

They wanted a free laptop and wanted to draw Akhileshs attention. They got the idea from a news report in which a local man had also written such a letter two days ago to draw attention of local authorities over some issue, the father .

He said the children wrote poems on Akhilesh and SP symbol that they recited in local programmes. The letter was also addressed to SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, requesting him to hand over party reins to Akhilesh.

The incident comes a week after Rahul Singh, a leader of SPs youth wing, tried immolating himself outside the CMs residence in Lucknow. He sustained severe injuries as he protested Akhileshs expulsion from party that was reversed later.

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Seven armed robbers held three men hostage near a private water supply plant, and escaped with electric wires and parts of power transformer installed near the Ghaziabad Development Authoritys Madhuban Bapudham housing scheme on Thursday morning. The hostages were injured in the incident.

The hostages included the owner and two workers of the plant. They said the robbers told them that they were trying to make quick money as they were hit badly by demonetisation.

The robbers, seven of them according to the victims, arrived around 12.15am on Thursday and left by 4am. The injured men later informed police who arrived around 4.45am.

During the incident, I asked them why they were holding us hostage and stealing electricity wires and other materials. They said they dont usually do such things but as they were hit by demonetisation, they were trying to steal items to earn quick money. This was the only conversation they had with us and then asked us to keep quiet, Kishan Pal Singh, the owner of the water plant, said.

Singh sustained head injuries after he resisted the armed robbers. The robbers held them hostage at gunpoint at a nearby house and two men guarded the place, police said.

The others started bringing down the wires, opened the transformer, and took copper and oil from it, Singh said.

They escaped with electric wires from six to seven poles. They accused the Prime Ministers move to ban old notes for their misery. I told them not to harm us and take whatever they want as they were armed with countrymade weapons. They also took away our mobile phones and around 8,000 in cash, Tej Vir, a worker at the water plant, who was among those held hostage, said.

The police said the robbers also arranged for a vehicle to transport the power equipment.

We are working on this lead and trying to track them. The robbers escaped with copper, electric wires and other equipment at the water plant. We have started investigation and sent our teams to get more information from the victims, Hemant Rai, station house officer, Kavi Nagar police station, said.

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Authority officials said on Friday that of a total of 203 housing projects in the area, 65 are stuck and their developers need to reach a settlement solution under the new project settlement policy. They added that at least three realtors will exit from their respective housing projects as they have failed to begin construction at the site.

The project settlement policy is an umbrella policy that has multiple solutions for various builders.

Most of the developers whose projects are stuck were allotted group housing land in 2008-2010 and were supposed to deliver flats by 2012-13. However, they failed to deliver flats and clear land dues to the Greater Noida authority that provided them housing land on instalment basis.

Around one lakh homebuyers are affected by unfinished projects. According to builders, they are facing a fund crunch due to dip in sales.

There are many reasons why realtors could not deliver and are facing financial issues today. First, there were litigations over land that delayed projects for around one or two years. Many inexperienced builders too came up and failed as they didnt know the business. Many realtors also diverted funds collected from homebuyers. However, I hope things improve soon, said Sunny Katyal, owner of Investors Clinic, a realty consultant firm in Noida.

On Thursday, Greater Noida chief executive officer Deepak Agarwal had held a meeting with 65 realtors to discuss issues pertaining to each project and asked them to submit a detailed project report (DPR) for each of them.

These 65 projects face some sort of issues. We believe three will exit and eight need co-developers to finish the projects. The rest have pending land dues that they want extra time to pay, said Janardhan Mishra, additional chief executive officer, Greater Noida authority.

Officials said a third of housing projects in Greater Noida are stuck for some reason or the other reason. Of these, if any realtor exits, their buyers will get their investment back instead of the promised flats.

In case of an exit, the authority will deduct 15% of the security amount deposited by the realtor against the housing land. If a realtor gets any balance amount, the authority will allot land for that amount.

If homebuyers have made an investment in any project, including in these three, we will transfer the security fund into an escrow account from where we will help it reach investors, said Mishra.

Amrapali Group, Unitech, Value Infra Group and Rudra Group, among others, took part in the meeting. Officials, however, refused to name the realtors who want to exit.

A committee from an engineering department of the authority is conducting a survey on around 20 projects that we believe are stuck. Once the committee report is in, we will announce names of the realtors who will not be able to finish a project. We cannot name the realtors now because we are not sure of their projects progress, said Mishra.

The authority said eight realtors have decided to introduce a co-developer to finish a project stuck midway. The co-developer will become a partner in a project and spend funds on completing it.

We have asked all realtors to submit DPRs on their respective projects so that we can reach a solution. Most realtors want additional time to clear land dues so that they can finish the project. Each has its own issues. We will be clear once they submit their DPRs, said Mishra.

The authority said that after DPRs are submitted and the engineering survey completed, it will announce the number of realtors who want to exit projects.

The crisis in the Greater Noida realty market is an outcome of mistakes that took place in 2008 when the government allotted housing land even to those with no background in construction. Those who had funds bought land and came up with apartment complexes to make easy money. They sold flats cheap to lure buyers. They have failed to make profit and so are unable to deliver flats to homebuyers and land dues to the Greater Noida authority, said RD Singh, real estate consultant.

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Being a vigilante rather than being just vigilant can be disastrous. The past few days dominated by the news of reported mass molestation of women in Bengalurus MG Road on New Years Eve proved how damaging it is for journalists.

Having screamed mass molestation, we couldnt produce the evidence. None came forward to lodge a police complaint and consequently no FIR was lodged. No less than 70 CCTV cameras  private and government  covered the stretch but scrutiny of the footage threw up no proof.

Bengaluru survived a scare and its reputation was saved from being irrevocably tarred. The same cannot, however, be said of medias credibility which has taken another severe hit.

Read | No evidence of New Years Eve mass molestations, says Bengaluru police chief

Remember Murthal, the Haryana town where dozens of women were reported to have been waylaid by mobs during the peak of last years Jat quota agitation and then sexually assaulted?

As with Bengaluru, Murthal dominated the headlines for days. It all started with a small report in a local newspaper that quickly snowballed into a major issue of national shame and we all jumped in seeking immediate punitive action. Almost a year later, no evidence of the sex assaults have been found and the media is in the dock, with the police serving notices to journalists to corroborate what they had reported then.

Bengaluru is Murthal 2. A newspaper claimed mass molestation and our entire tribe got instantly carried away. Hash tags such Bengalurushame and Bengalurumolestation trended as politicians and activists contributed to the din by trading charges.

Read | Bengaluru molestation: Politicians add hype, but where is the evidence?

The noise drowned reason.

There was no denying that Bengalurus downtown witnessed unruly scenes that night. As photographs and video grabs show, there was undoubtedly a melee, a great deal of pushing and jostling, and almost certainly a big brawl with a few distraught women caught in the middle.

It was also in the realm of possibility that some men in the crowd would have sought to take advantage of the chaos. Ask any women and they will tell you such despicable beasts are everywhere: from buses and trains to all public places such as even Delhis iconic India Gate. This trait isnt specific to Bengaluru.

The city is as safe or unsafe as any other Indian city, though it also has the distressing record of only one conviction for every 100 sexual assault cases.

Read | Murthal gangrapes: Khattar abused IAS officer for sharing info, says amicus curiae

But the indignation that India experienced across drawing rooms and television studios this week was primarily because of the reported mass molestation. Video footage of a woman being molested in another Bengaluru neighbourhood fuelled the outrage further.

In the end, the angry debates havent made our public places any safer. If at all, the mindless sensationalism has reduced a serious issue confronting women such as my teenage daughter into a spectacle.

Manufacturing news and then orchestrating outrage could be good for TRPs and circulation. But they do nothing to address the situation on the ground. On the contrary, crying wolf far too often erodes the trust in media persons, considered the sentinels of society.

Views expressed are personal. Author tweets from @Rubenbanerjee.

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Shiv Lal Dodas durbar inside the Fazilka jail has rubbed salt on our wounds, said Kaushalya Devi, mother of Bhim Sain Tank, a 27-year-old Dalit man for whose murder Doda is among the accused.

Devi, 51, said over phone, We asked the state government as well as the Fazilka administration several times to shift Doda to a high-security jail as he was running his show, unobstructed, inside this jail, thanks to political patronage, muscle and money power. But no one paid heed. Doda and his co-accused and nephew, Amit Doda, were finally shifted to the Amritsar jail on Thursday after a team, acting on Election Commission instructions, busted an illegal meeting being held by Doda with his supporters inside the jail on Wednesday night.

The Akali government failed to provide any justice. We even repeatedly met chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for a job to my other son, Sunil (32). The CM assured us of a job and told the local administration to prepare the case. But even after a year [of Bhims murder], nothing has happened, she added.

Bhim, who had two sisters and a brother, was the sole breadwinner of the family, she said. Sunil is trying to feed us with his daily-wage jobs, but its very difficult. His father is unable to work owing to age.
Malayalam actor Prithviraj says he is part of Gautham Vasudev Menons multi-lingual multi-starrer project and has clarified that it has not been shelved. I have been paid advance and Im already on board. The project requires lead actors from four southern industries, and hence, its taking time to materialise. I dont think it has been shelved, said Prithviraj.

According to the source, the film revolves around the lives of four friends who meet at a wedding after many years and decide to take a fun trip.

The other actors Gautham is already in talks with are Simbu, Puneeth Rajkumar and Sai Dharam Tej.

Gautham plans to produce the Tamil and Malayalam versions, while Puneeth may bankroll the film in Kannada. Another leading producer may come on board for the Telugu version.

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan. 6

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Uzbekistans President Shavkat Mirziyoyev held a phone conversation with Hwang Kyo-ahn, acting president of South Korea, on Jan. 5 and discussed the prospects of the bilateral cooperation in 2017, the Uzbek presidents press service reported.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Hwang Kyo-ahn noted with great satisfaction the high level of mutual trust, openness and mutual understanding between the two countries, which provides a solid foundation for the comprehensive expansion of cooperation in politics, trade, economy, investment, as well as in the financial and humanitarian spheres, reads the message.

The significance of a large-scale project - Ustyurt Gas Chemical Complex, based on the Surgil field, which was commissioned in May 2016 - was highlighted during the conversation.

The sides expressed strong mutual interest in expanding the number of joint high-tech projects in the areas of mutual interest.

The parties also confirmed their commitment to the principles of the Uzbekistan-South Korea declaration on strategic partnership signed in 2006.
The wives of Islamic State fighters ponder what to wear at a beheading and assess how sexy they look in suicide vests in a BBC satire which has sparked both anger and praise for tackling the fate of women who travel to Syria to join the militants.

In a clip from the BBCs Revolting TV comedy show, entitled Real Housewives of ISIS which aired on Tuesday, one wife of a militant fighter in Syria says: Its only three days to the beheading and Ive got no idea what to wear.

This is my sixth marriage - I have been widowed five times, another woman says with a sigh before an explosion which prompts her to say: Six times.

The segment is a parody of the successful reality TV franchise which began in 2006 with The Real Housewives of Orange County and now has spin-off versions worldwide including one set in Cheshire in northern England.

The women, dressed in hijabs and speaking with clear English accents, also compare their looks in suicide vests while posting the pictures online but then argue over the fact that their attire clashes as two have the same suicide vest.

Youre gonna need a lot of Semtex to kill that one, one says. While another scrubs the floor, she says: Didnt have to do this in [the English city of] Birmingham.

A still from the BBC comedy show Real Housewives of ISIS (Picture courtesy: BBC video/Youtube)

Tens of thousands of people have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq where many end up with militant groups such as Islamic State, which uses an extreme interpretation of Islam to justify attacks on its foes and impose repressive rule in areas it has captured.

Islamic State has used the internet to tempt recruits from across the world, including sometimes well-educated young men and women from British cities.

British police said last January 56 women and girls from Britain had gone to Syria and there have been several high-profile cases including three schoolgirls who left London in February, 2015. One of the girls was reported to have been killed last August.

Right to satirise

IS demands what it calls proper Islamic behaviour for citizens of its self-proclaimed caliphate but allows sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, and widespread rape of women and girls, according to witnesses from the region.

Under Islamic States rules, women are required to largely stay at home or wear head-to-toe black coverings if they venture out. The internet, music and cell phones are banned.

In one scene in the BBC satire, a woman parades a chain that ties her to a cooker: Alis brought me a new chain which is eight foot long so I can almost get outside, which is great.

via GIPHY

The short clip elicited millions of views on social media and sparked a debate about whether such satire was appropriate given the deadly seriousness of IS.

Bad taste, not funny at all, posted Anna Butcher, who said that victims of IS and their families would not laugh at such films. Sorry why laugh at the thought of woman showing off explosive jackets etc, is sick sorry.

Others defended satire as a way to tackle grave issues.

This is fantastic...people bang on about politically incorrect humour...this is brave & funny & about time we poked fun at these morons! Even Muslims will love this, Timmy Poncho said on Facebook.

The show was written by directors Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein, who defended their satire and said it was targeting online grooming that had enticed thousands to join IS.

It is important not to pull your punches in satire, Prowse said in a statement. You have to be fearless or it undermines your credibility. You cant go after [former Prime Minister] David Cameron for five years like we did and not go after ISIS, referring to another acronym for the Islamic State.

Real Housewives of ISIS was written by directors Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein (Picture courtesy: Youtube screengrab)

The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hat Trick Productions, which produced the show, sent Prowses statement.

I support and defend the right to criticise and satirise events like this, Oz Katerji, a journalist, told the BBC. To be honest, I think this is about two years late.
A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine was reportedly docked at a port in Pakistan, sources privy to the development said in New Delhi on Friday.

Sources said the submarine could have been docked there as Beijing was selling eight submarines to Islamabad, four of which were to be built in the port city of Karachi.

The image, dating back to May 2016, was found on Google Earth. It appears to be a nuclear submarine, one of the latest with China, according to experts.

The submarine was later seen crossing the Malacca Straits in June 2016. Submarines have to surface while crossing straits as per protocol.

Chinese submarines have been spotted in the Indian Ocean, which has been usually attributed to providing protection against piracy.

Speaking on the presence of the Chinese Navys ships and submarines in Pakistan in December last year, naval chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had said that India was keeping a close eye on them.

We have capability and assets to take on any force which is deployed, and if and when this happens, we have plans in place to tackle it, Lanba had said

Sources from the navy said Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean was being noticed and constantly monitored.

The boats were usually sent with other ships for providing security to Chinese merchant vessels from pirates, which according to sources may not be the real reason.

Chinas growing territorial claims in the South China sea have caused tension in the region, with the US vocally pitching for freedom of navigation in international waters.

Both India and China were part of shared awareness and deconfliction which was established to coordinate the efforts of the military forces conducting counter piracy in the western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.

Pakistan is buying eight submarines from China. The first four submarines were expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the remaining four will be assembled in Karachi by 2028.

State-run media in Pakistan, including Radio Pakistan, had reported that the $5 billion deal has been detailed by senior naval officers to the parliamentary committee that handles defence.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group the Islamic State against his organization, in an audio message released Thursday.

In the message found and translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group, the Egyptian extremist accuses IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of slandering his group.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, is locked in a battle with the so-called Islamic State -- which sprang from its Iraqi faction -- for the leadership of a global jihad.

In his message, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Al-Baghdadi had alleged that al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shias and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.

The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shias, Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by al-Qaedas media arm.

Zawahiri denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.

What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia, he said.

And he insisted he had not called for Shia Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shia-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.

I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shia militiamen, he said.

A husseiniyat is a Shia place of worship and the Iraqi security forces, in their battle against the Islamic State group, are backed by Shia religious militias.

The Islamic State group and al-Qaeda have both carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some al-Qaeda propaganda has called for less indiscriminate tactics.

Zawahiri also denied Al-Baghdadis charge that al-Qaeda had supported ousted former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who attempted to rule through the ballot box.

The al-Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistans unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.

He communicates with the groups remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating -- as in his latest message -- the need to target the United States.

But Thursdays message did not include any footage of Zawahiri speaking.

The audio message restated the urgency of this goal -- Tell America, to other than Allah we do not kneel -- but also argued for a dialogue on tactics with other jihadists.

We are not infallible, but we are human beings and we hit and we miss. We must listen to advice, he admitted, while rejecting Al-Baghdadis criticism.

What we want is to manage a conversation between those who are working for Islam -- and the people of jihad at their forefront -- around the best method and wisest techniques to bring victory to the religion, he said, according to SITE.
At least 33 prisoners have died in a penitentiary in the northern state of Roraima, Brazilian authorities said on Friday, adding to the 60 deaths reported at other prisons.

Fridays statement from the justice secretary said the prisoners died overnight at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo. It did not provide details.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-like riot squad, had been deployed to the prison. A military police spokesperson declined to comment further.

The apparent bloodshed comes just days after rebellions in other two prisons left 60 dead in the neighbouring state of Amazonas.

Authorities say gangs are fighting for the control of drug routes in the northern part of the country, which borders Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guianas.

Four prisons in the neighbouring state of Amazonas saw riots Sunday and Monday. One institution suffered the countrys worst prison bloodshed since 1992, with half of the 56 slain beheaded and several others also dismembered. In another of the riots, four prisoners died.

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons in the disturbances. As of Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.

Authorities say that in Amazonas, the local Family of the North gang attacked members of Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazils biggest criminal organisation. The two fight over the control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil.

In October, a riot at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo, the same where disturbances were reported on Friday, left 18 dead.
The Australian government has advised its citizens travelling to India to ensure their trip is planned in such a way so as not to depend on the availability of cash, claiming that some visitors are facing difficulties in exchanging 100 dollar notes in India after demonetisation.

In the latest advisory issued on Thursday, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said, Indian authorities have replaced withdrawn 500 and 1,000 notes with new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes slowly entering circulation.

Withdrawals from ATMs are subject to a daily limit of 4,500 rupees (around 90 Australian dollars), which applies to international bank cards. Expect queues and cash shortages at ATMs and note that many ATMs will not accept cards issued by foreign banks. Foreigners are permitted to exchange foreign currency up to 5,000 rupees (around 100 Australian dollars) per week at banks and foreign exchange bureaus.

It advised travellers to use electronic payments such as bank and credit cards wherever possible.

Due to the ongoing uncertainty of obtaining cash, ensure your trip is planned in such a way so as not to depend on the availability of cash, it said.

Be aware that some travellers have reported difficulties in exchanging 100 dollar notes for local currency in India, it also said.

However, the overall advisory of exercising high degree of caution while travelling to India was kept unchanged for the travellers.
Some lay in a pool of blood with their hearts and intestines ripped out, after a killing spree by the largest gang in the country left thirty-three inmates dead in a northern Brazil prison.

The bloodshed comes just days after 60 inmates were killed during rioting at two prisons in a neighbouring state and it increases fears that violence could spread, including to the streets of major cities, as gangs vie for influence and territory both inside prisons and in slums where trafficking operations are often based.

Its also becoming a flashpoint for the government of President Michel Temer, whose administration is already struggling with an economic crisis and mounting corruption allegations. Authorities of the state of Roraima, on the border with Venezuela, said they requested help from Brazils federal government more than once to deal with its prison crisis, but no support was sent.

This is a national crisis, said Uziel Castro, security secretary of the state where the latest massacre happened.

Castro said the slaying spree began around 2:30 am on Friday at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo in the town of Boa Vista. He said it was led by members of Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazils biggest criminal organisation.

He said First Command members did not attack members of a rival gang, but rather other prisoners, for motives that were not yet clear.

There was no confrontation, this was a killing spree, said Castro. It was barbaric. Some were beheaded, others had their hearts or intestines ripped out.

Castro said firearms were not involved, and none of the 1,500 inmates in the prison built for about 700 had escaped.

Video grab showing inmates loading onto a van corpses of inmates killed during a riot in the PAMC (Agricola de Monte Cristo Penitentiary) in Roraima state. (AFP)

It wasnt immediately clear whether there was a connection to the gruesome rioting earlier this week in the neighbouring state of Amazonas, which officials blamed on a gang war between the First Command and Family of the North, which fight over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil along the borders of Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guianas.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-like riot squad, had been deployed to the prison.

Just as details about the latest disturbance were emerging, Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes announced measures to curb the violence.

Moraes said federal police would be more integrated in state capitals and that special task forces would be created to more quickly process criminal charges, a measure aimed at reducing overcrowding. Moraes offered no deadlines for the initiatives but said they would be realistic given the recession in Latin Americas largest economy.

The situation isnt out of control, said Moraes. Its (just) another difficult situation.

The rioting Sunday and Monday in Amazonas included the countrys worst prison massacre since 1992, with half of the 56 slain at one institution beheaded and several others also dismembered. In another of the riots in the state, four prisoners died.

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons in the disturbances. As of Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.

The federal government needs to prepare for a worst case scenario, and that means accelerating measures to keep the situation from getting worse, said Col. Jose Vicente, a former national security adviser and risk consultant.

In October, a riot at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo, the same where disturbances were reported on Friday, left 10 dead. Authorities said that clash involved the First Command and Red Command, which has its base in Rio de Janeiro. On the same day, eight others were killed in a prison in the state of Rondonia, which borders Bolivia.

After that clash, Roraima states Castro asked the federal government for help with the prison, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Castro requested that the national guard be sent in to help because the moving of prisoners deemed leaders of the rebellion had led to threats of retaliation.

Worst prison riots in the world in recent years (AFP)

Asked about the request Friday, Moraes, the minister of justice, said that Roraima had requested policemen to help in patrolling Venezuelans that were entering Brazilian territory  though that is not what the letter itself stated. He acknowledged that no help had been sent.

Moraes cancelled his trip to Roraima after Castro said the state had repeatedly asked the federal government for help and was always denied. Brazils Justice Ministry did not offer any explanation on the decision.

Criminals are trying to kill each other. What we need is the federal government help, said Castro. This is all over Brazil.
Several attacks in and around Baghdad, including a suicide car bombing in a busy commercial area after nightfall on Thursday, killed at least 27 people in a particularly brutal day in the Iraqi capital.

The suicide bomber, who targeted shops and food stands near a bus station in the citys busy Bab al-Muadam area, killed 11, a police officer said. He says the bombing also wounded at least 22 people.

Earlier in the day, bombings elsewhere in and around Baghdad killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens, officials said.

A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for any of the attacks but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has carried out a string of bombings in Baghdad over the past week, killing nearly 100 people.

Earlier Thursday, a car bomb tore through a Baghdad market, killing nine people while four other attacks  mostly by bombs that went off in commercial areas or targeted security forces  killed at least seven.

In the Baghdad market attack, the car bomb was parked near outdoor fruit and vegetable stalls in a mostly Shiite neighborhood. The fatalities included two policemen. The Sunni extremists frequently target Iraqs security forces and civilians in Shiite neighborhoods.

IS has managed to carry out a series of attacks across Iraq while also putting up stiff resistance in the northern city of Mosul, where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have been waging a massive offensive since mid-October to retake the city, Iraqs second-largest, from the militants.

Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is the extremist groups last major urban bastion in the country. Iraqi forces have retaken around a quarter of the city since the offensive began.

Iraq announced a new operation on Thursday to recapture IS-held towns near the Syrian border.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mohammadi said the troops would try to dislodge IS from Rawah, Anah and Qaim, towns in the western Anbar province that fell to the extremists in the summer of 2014. U.S.-backed Iraqi forces drove IS from the two main cities of Anbar, Ramadi and Fallujah, last year.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Senator Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community that Trump has publicly challenged, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday.

Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after 9/11 to improve coordination of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trumps decision, as well as others who spoke to The Associated Press about intelligence matters involving Trump, were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly challenged intelligence officials assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf, setting up an unusually public battle with the spy agencies. On Friday, senior intelligence officials will try to justify their claims when they brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama, who was informed of the conclusions Thursday.

On the eve of his briefing, Trump continued to challenge the intelligence communitys assertion that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. He questioned how officials could be so sure about the hacking if they had not examined DNC servers.

What is going on? he wrote on Twitter.

A senior law enforcement official said in a statement released by the FBI that the bureau repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the importance of obtaining direct access to the servers only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. The official said the FBI had to rely on a third party for information, but did get access to the material it needed.

Against that backdrop, Trumps transition team has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies  part of an effort to streamline operations and improve efficiency, not as retribution. Transition officials have been looking at changes at both ODNI and the CIA, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The person said they reflect the views of intelligence officials who have told Trumps team that there is room for streamlining within the multi-agency intelligence community.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday night that Trump was considering the changes. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said the report was 100 percent false and said transition activities were for information-gathering purposes.

The scope of the changes discussed by some in Trumps transition team was unclear. But the prospect of a sweeping overhaul still created blowback, contributing to former CIA Director James Woolseys decision to step aside as a senior adviser to the president-elect.

A person with direct knowledge of Woolseys decision said the former CIA chief had not been significantly involved in the Trump teams discussions on intelligence matters and became uncomfortable being labeled as an adviser. In an interview on CNN, Woolsey said he did not want to fly under false colors.

In other recent television appearances, Woolsey  who was CIA director under President Bill Clinton  said he believed Russia was involved in the election-related hackings, though he also said others may have been as well.

The CIA declined to comment on potential changes to the intelligence community. Outgoing National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate panel Thursday that his office has not been engaged in such discussions with the Trump transition team. He noted that lawmakers created his office.

Congress, I think, gets a vote here, said Clapper, who was testifying on Russias election interference.

Coats nomination is likely to soothe those who fear Trump will significantly overhaul the intelligence community. The 73-year-old is a Capitol Hill veteran who served eight years in the House before moving to the Senate in 1989 to take Dan Quayles place when he became vice president. He stayed in the Senate until 1998, then left to become a lobbyist.

After a stint as ambassador to Germany under President George W. Bush, Coats joined the high-powered Washington firm of King & Spalding. He helped lead the companys government affairs division and lobbied for pharmaceutical, defense and energy companies.

Coats, who earned $600,000 in his final 13 months at King & Spalding, downplayed his lobbying work when he returned to Indiana for a successful Senate comeback bid in 2010. He served one term and did not seek re-election last year.

Coats was a harsh critic of Russia and pushed the Obama administration to harshly punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. When the White House levied sanctions, the Kremlin responded by banning several lawmakers, including Coats, from traveling to Russia.

Trump has called for improving the relationship between the U.S. and Russia, and has also spoken favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin. His refusal thus far to accept the intelligence communitys assessment that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election has sparked concern among lawmakers in both parties.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that there is no question that Russia was behind hacking of political computer systems  something they say could only have occurred with the approval of top Kremlin officials. That conclusion is detailed in the classified report Obama ordered up on Russia and other foreign influence in U.S. elections dating back to 2008.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, the first Indian-origin premier of a Western nation, believes Europe has to keep a close watch on xenophobic parties and counter the rise of populist forces by tackling the root causes of the phenomenon.

Costa, who traces his roots to Goa and will be the chief guest at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Bengaluru on Sunday, said the very good political ties between India and Portugal are yet to be matched by the economic relations, which he described as almost incipient.

India could consider Portugal as a platform to address markets in Europe, Latin America or in Africa, Costa said in an interview with Hindustan Times ahead of his arrival in New Delhi for a six-day visit beginning Saturday.

Asked about agreements that are expected to be signed during the visit, Costa said the two sides had negotiated bilateral instruments in priority areas such as defence, renewable energies, startups, IT, governance reform, the film industry and tourism. He did not give further details.

Read | Proud of my roots in Goa: Portugal PM Antonio Costas Q&A with HT

Costa, 55, the son of well-known writer Orlando da Costa, became premier in November last year after Pedro Passos Coelhos government collapsed. The socialist former Lisbon mayors rise coincided with the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and populist forces in several European countries after Britains vote to exit the European Union.

He explained this by saying: Portugal is a country open to the world, with a cosmopolitan and welcoming society. It is not a coincidence that I am the first Person of Indian Origin to lead a European country.

At the European level, we should carefully monitor the rising of populist and xenophobic parties in some European countries, while remaining confident that this phenomenon is not irreversible and should be fought against by democratic parties, both left-wing and right-wing, by addressing its root causes.

Portugal has no extremist right-wing party strong enough politically and the racist and xenophobic discourse never scored high in elections, he said. On the contrary: our government stood ready to host more refugees than those who had been determined to Portugal according to our EU quota...This is why Portugal is today the fourth European country in terms of refugees welcomed in the framework of the relocation programme.

Costa said concerns about Portugals economic health are unfounded as growth in the third quarter of 2016 almost tripled and Portugal was the Euro-area fastest growing economy.

Amid concerns among thousands of Portuguese citizens of Goan-origin about their future in the UK following the Brexit vote, Costa said they have no reasons to fear any kind of discrimination

Read | Brexit to hit Goans using Portuguese route to UK

Regarding Brexit, the principle agreed among EU member states is no negotiation without notification. Hence negotiations will certainly not start before April 2017 andwill not take place bilaterally. Anyway Portuguese citizens living in the UK (currently, more than 200,000) will all be given the same treatment regardless of their origin, he said.

Costa said strengthening economic ties would be a focus of his visit that will also take him to Ahmedabad for the Vibrant Gujarat meet and Goa. In fact, in spite of very good political relationship the economic relations between the two countries are almost incipient. It is this that we intend to change, he said.

India can take advantage of Portugals experience in renewable energies, infrastructure, and environmental industries related to water, sewage and garbage collection, he said. Opportunities will appear if ties between business communities are boosted, said Costa who will meet business leaders in Bengaluru, Goa and Ahmedabad.

Costa also took pride in his ancestry, saying he was deeply honoured to attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas as a person of Indian origin and that his speech at the meet will surely be framed by my roots in Goa.

I am planning to use the opportunity of travelling to Goa to visit my relatives who still live in Margao, where my father had his house. And I am also very moved by the fact that I will witness the presentation, in Delhi and Goa, of the English translations of two of my fathers books, he said.

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Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan. 6

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Ruslanbek Davletov has been appointed Uzbekistans first deputy state adviser on control and coordination of work with appeals of individuals and legal entities.

Davletov, who previously served as the first deputy justice minister, has been appointed to his new position under the decree of the countrys President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said a message posted on the Justice Ministrys website Jan. 6.

As it was reported earlier, President Mirziyoyev has determined the development of a permanent dialogue with the population, studying and implementation of its legitimate demands, requests and suggestions as the priority of Uzbekistans leadership.

Reception centers will be created for people in every district and city of Uzbekistan for unimpeded appeals of citizens to the heads of all-level state structures, prosecutor offices and others.

Moreover, heads of ministries and departments have to provide virtual reception opportunities for appeals of individuals and legal entities.
Former Pakistan Army chief Raheel Sharif has been made the head of a 39-nation military coalition formed by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, defence minister Khawaja Asif said on Friday.

Asif confirmed reports about Sharif, who retired last November, being chosen to lead the alliance during an appearance on a TV talk show on Friday night.

The Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT), created by Saudi Arabia in December 2015 to combat the Islamic State and other groups, currently has 39 members, including Turkey and Malaysia. It is based at a command centre in Riyadh.

I do not know the details, this was finalised two or three days ago. So I dont want to comment too much on it, said Asif, speaking in Urdu.

The Pakistan government and the army top brass had given their consent for the appointment as retired officers can take up such assignments within two years of stepping down only with the governments assent, he said.

Our governments say was involved in it, he couldnt have done this independently. All the clearances were taken, Asif said. This was in the pipeline for quite some time and the prime minister was also part of the deliberations.

Asif described the military alliance as a good thing saying the Ummah (Muslim brotherhood) requires unity to tackle problems in Myanmar, Palestine, Syria, Libya and Kashmir. He did not give details.

Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Pakistan was at the centre of a controversy when Saudi Arabia named it as part of the military alliance without seeking Islamabads consent. The government later confirmed its participation in the alliance but has not committed itself to providing troops for any possible operations.

The coalition was envisaged to serve as a platform for security cooperation, including provision of training, equipment and troops, and involvement of religious scholars for dealing with extremism.

The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Iran, Saudi Arabias arch-rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional powers rage from Syria to Yemen, the report said.

The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others.

(With inputs from PTI)
Seven miners were confirmed dead after a falling roof triggered a gas outburst in a central Chinese coal mine, bringing the death toll to 12, state media said Friday.

The outburst occurred Wednesday night when 51 workers were underground at the mine in the city of Dengfeng in Henan province, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Thirty-nine workers rose to safety while five others were killed and another seven had been trapped, the report said.

Workers were doing maintenance work in a pump room when the roof fell, causing the outburst of gas, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Some reports said three rescuers were among those who died, but that could not immediately be confirmed.

The mine company could not be reached. A city government official declined to comment.

Chinas mining industry has long been among the worlds deadliest, and top work safety regulators have acknowledged that some mines cut corners on safety standards due to financial pressure.
Hand-written letters from Princess Diana describing her young children, William and Harry, to a former royal aide have broken pre-sale estimates to fetch nearly 15,000 pounds at an auction in the UK.

The former Princess of Wales had sent the letters to late Cyril Dickman, who served as a head steward at Buckingham Palace for more than 50 years.

In them she wrote about how William swamped his new baby brother with an endless supply of hugs and kisses and how naughty Harry was constantly getting into trouble at school.

An undated handout picture released by Cheffins auctioneers, received in London on January 5, 2017, shows a selection of correspondence and memorabilia sent, and given to, Cyril Dickman, during his time as butler at the Royal Household. Letters handwritten by the late Princess Diana, including one describing how son Prince Harry was "constantly in trouble", sold for nearly 15,000 ($18,600, 17,500 euros) at a London auction on Thursday. (AFP Photo)

Cheffins, a Cambridge-based auction house, said the letters formed part of a unique collection of Royal memorabilia.

It was extraordinary. I dont think I have ever sold such few lots over such a long period of time because the bidding just never seemed to stop. People were bidding from all over the world on the internet, Luke Macdonald, director of fine art at Cheffins, said.

The entire Dickman collection, which also included letters from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, contained around 40 lots which were estimated to fetch around 13,000 pounds.

But they went under the hammer for around 55,000 pounds.

The Diana letters, split into six lots, were expected to fetch around 3,600 pounds, but went for a total of 14,900 pounds.

In one personal letter dated 20 September 1984, Diana writes: William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near!

The reaction to one tiny persons birth has totally overwhelmed us and I can hardly breathe for the mass of flowers that are arriving here!

In another, dated 17 October, 1992, she says how both young princes are well and enjoying boarding school a lot, although Harry is constantly in trouble!.

Some of the other items in the collection, sold by the Dickman family, included letters, cards and photographs from various members of the royal family as well as an unopened boxed wedding cake from the Queens marriage to Prince Philip in 1947.

Described by Cheffins as a favourite of every member of the Royal Family, Cyril Dickman had received handwritten notes from royals dating back more than 30 years.
Iraqi forces launched an offensive against the Islamic State group near the Syrian border Thursday, piling further pressure on the jihadists crumbling caliphate.

Baghdad and its allies also turned up the heat on IS in its last remaining Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, where the US-led coalition said it had doubled the number of its advisors.

A military operation has begun in the western areas of Anbar (province) to liberate them from Daesh, said Lieutenant General Qassem Mohammedi, head of Jazeera Operations Command, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

He said the operation was led by the armys 7th division, police, and fighters from local tribes that have opposed the jihadists, with aerial backing from the coalition.

The main targets of the operation are Aanah, Rawa and Al-Qaim, the westernmost Iraqi towns along the Euphrates Valley.

The jihadist hub of Al-Qaim, which lies 330 kilometres (200 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is still a long way down the road and the most immediate target is the town of Aanah.

Our forces started advancing from Haditha towards Aanah from several directions, Mohammedi told AFP.

Haditha was never seized by IS when the group swept across much of Iraqs Sunni Arab heartland in 2014 and is home to a tribe that has led the fight against the jihadists in the area.

Zero hour has come to liberate the western areas, Nadhom al-Jughaifi, a commander with the Haditha tribal fighters, said.

In 2016, Iraqi forces retook large parts of the vast province of Anbar, including its capital Ramadi and the city of Fallujah.

Anbar is a desert area traversed by the Euphrates that borders Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. Security in reconquered areas remains precarious and jihadists continue to move across the province.

- 200,000 buildings -

IS has lost more than half of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and the loss of Mosul would deal a major blow to the caliphate it proclaimed there in June 2014.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces are currently involved in an offensive to retake the main northern city, which is also ISs last major stronghold in the country.

The operation launched on October 17 is Iraqs largest in years and while significant territory was reconquered around Mosul, the going has been tough inside the city itself.

After a lull in operations, Iraqi forces launched a fresh push last week and appear to have found new momentum.

Iraqi security forces have made significant progress since initiating phase two of their operation to liberate Mosul, Colonel John Dorrian, the coalitions spokesman, said on Wednesday.

He said that was partly owed to increased coalition involvement in the battle, with a doubling of the deployment of advisors there to about 450.

We have increased the number of advise and assist forces that are there with the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) command elements to help advise them as they move forward and to synchronise operations, he said.

On Wednesday alone, coalition aircraft conducted seven strikes in the Mosul area, destroying a large number of IS targets, including five buildings, four mortar positions, four fighting positions, and damaging 27 supply routes.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised that his forces would rid Iraq of IS by the end of 2016 but commanders have admitted they were surprised at how stiff jihadist resistance was in the city.

According to a top commander in the Counter-Terrorism Service that has spearheaded the battle in Mosul, Iraqi forces have now retaken about two thirds of the citys eastern half.

Dorrian said the presence inside the city of hundreds of thousands of civilians had slowed progress.

There are more than 200,000 buildings in Mosul. And really, in order to do this properly, given the way that the enemy has conducted themselves, you end up having to clear each one, he told reporters.
Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea Friday to protest the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate in the city of Busan last month.

In a move likely to reignite the decades-old feud over the so-called comfort women, Chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga also announced that high-level economic discussions would be postponed.

Japan and South Korea are neighbours, Suga said. Its a very important country. Its extremely regrettable we had to take this action.

We have repeatedly and strongly requested to the Korean side to take appropriate action to solve this problem, he added.

But at this moment, the situation hasnt improved. Thats why we informed them of these actions.

The statue -- a copy of one that sits across the road from the Japanese embassy in Seoul -- was initially removed after being set up by South Korean activists in the southern port city on Wednesday last week.

But local authorities changed tack and did not stop the activists from putting it back after Japans hawkish defence minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo last week.

Inadas visit last Thursday to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead -- but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes -- drew harsh criticism in South Korea as well as China.

- Very regrettable -

Besides the recall of ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine, Suga also said Japan is ordering home its consul-general in Busan and suspending discussions over a Japan-South Korea currency swap.

The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned to quickly remove the statue of the girl, Suga said.

Japans decision was described as very regrettable by South Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-Hyuck.

Even if there exist difficult issues, the government emphasises again that it will continue developing South Korea-Japan relations based on trust between the two governments.

Activists had first placed the new statue outside the consulate to mark their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the comfort women issue.

Under that accord, which both countries described as final and irreversible, Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women.

But critics said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for its wartime abuses.

The statue in Seoul -- a bronze of a young, seated woman with a small bird on her shoulder -- has proved an extremely potent and popular symbol.

Japan says it should have been removed after the comfort-women accord was signed, but Seoul argued it had only agreed to look into the possibility of moving it.

For the past year, activists have maintained a 24-hour vigil to prevent the statue being taken away.

More than two dozen similar monuments have been erected around South Korea, and another dozen or so abroad in the United States, Canada and elsewhere.
Nepals main opposition alliance led by CPN UML on Friday launched a massive protest n the capital to force the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill aimed at addressing the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

The nine party alliance hopes to gather more than one lakh activists and supporters in the capital as a major strength show against the Prime Minister Prachanda-led coalition governments move.

The rally is aimed at forcing the government to withdraw the Constitution amendment bill.

The ruling alliance mainly comprising CPN Maoist Center and Nepali Congress has been making efforts to amend the Constitution aiming to address the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

Eight smaller left parties including CPN- ML, and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) will also join the rally against the government.

CPN UML chairman K P Oli, CPN ML general secretary C P Mainali and NWPP Chairman Narayan Man Bijukchhe are the prominent opposition leaders who will join the protest.

The bill, which was was registered at the Parliament Secretariat in November, aims to accommodate the demands of the agitating Madhesi and ethnic groups that include citizenship and boundary demarcation issues among others.

Re-demarcation of the provincial boundary and citizenship issue are the two major demands put forth by the Madhesis.

Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a six-month- long agitation from September 2015 to February last year in which more than 50 people were killed.

The agitation had also crippled the landlocked countrys economy as supplies from India were blocked.
An Islamist extremist accused of being one of the masterminds of last years deadly siege at a Bangladeshi cafe was killed during a pre-dawn raid Friday in the capital Dhaka, police said.

The bodies of Nurul Islam Marzan and another suspected extremist were found after officers raided a property in Dhakas Rayer Bazar neighbourhood, a spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police told AFP.

We found two bodies. One of them was Marzan and another was a suspected extremist, additional deputy commissioner Yusuf Ali told AFP, adding that it was not yet clear whether Marzan died in a gunfight or committed suicide.

Ali said that Marzan, who was aged around 30, was one of the masterminds of the siege at the upmarket Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1 last year in which 18 foreign hostages were shot or hacked to death.

The Islamic State organisation claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, posting images of the carnage as it happened and photos of the gunmen who had posed with the ISs black flag.

But Bangladesh police rejected the claim, instead blaming a new offshoot of the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown militant outfit founded in 1998, for the attack.

Bangladesh authorities have accused the same group of being behind a wave of killings of religious minorities, foreigners and rights activists.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday tweeted that Mexico will reimburse American taxpayers for a new border wall and that US money spent will be for the sake of speed.

His tweet came as congressional Republicans and his top aides consider a plan to ask Congress to ensure money is available in US coffers for the wall without passing any new legislation. Instead, they would rely on existing law that already authorises fencing and other technology along the southern border.

The potential approach was disclosed Thursday by two congressional officials and a senior transition official with knowledge of the discussions; all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

Trump said in a tweet early on Friday: The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!

Mexicos President and other senior officials have repeatedly insisted that Mexico wont pay for a wall.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly told voters if elected, he would build a wall along the US southern border and make Mexico pay for it.

But Trump never settled on a mechanism for how Mexico would pay. He floated various options, including compelling the country to cover the cost through higher visa and border crossing fees and threatening to target billions of dollars in remittances sent home by immigrants living in the US.

Trump transition spokesperson Sean Spicer said putting US money up-front doesnt mean hes broken his promise. In an interview Friday on ABCs Good Morning America, Spicer said: I think hes going to continue to talk to them (the Mexican government) about that.

The approach could also stave off a legislative fight that Trump might lose if he tried to get Congress to pass a measure authorising the kind of border wall he promised during the campaign.

Its not clear how much could be done along the 2,000-mile border without additional actions by Congress. Lawmakers passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but most of those 700 miles have already been built. Some areas are in much better shape than others, though, and long stretches are made up of fencing that stops vehicles but not pedestrians.

US Customs and Border Protection helicopter searches for illegal immigrants near the US-Mexico border on January 5, 2017 near Los Ebanos, Texas. (AFP Photo)

But whatever steps might be taken without Congress approval would be likely to fall short of the extravagant new wall on the border that Trump repeatedly said Mexico would pay for during his campaign for the White House. And despite Congress involvement in approving any spending, such an approach might also open Trump to charges of circumventing the House and the Senate to take unilateral actions, something he repeatedly criticised President Barack Obama for doing. A spending bill, including money for border construction, could also provoke a legislative showdown given potential opposition from senate Democrats.

Still, several lawmakers and congressional officials said the administration could have significant flexibility in taking additional steps without Congress approval.

Theres a lot of things that can be done within current law, said Republican Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a long-time proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, though he emphasised that a lasting solution on immigration would be taken by Congress. You cannot minimize the potential impact of the administration doing what they can do under the law, he said.

However, some immigration hard-liners have already expressed the desire to see Congress take a vote, given how prominent the wall was during Trumps presidential campaign, and their desire to act on the issue.

Trumps vow to build an impenetrable, concrete wall along the southern border was his signature campaign proposal. Build the wall! supporters would chant at his rallies. Whos going to pay for it? Trump would ask them. Mexico! Trump often promised the wall would be built of hardened concrete, rebar and steel as tall as his venues ceilings, and would feature a big, beautiful door to allow legal immigrants to enter.

US Border Patrol agents take immigrants into custody near McAllen, Texas. (AFP File Photo)

Most experts viewed such promises as unrealistic and impractical, and Trump himself sometimes allowed that the wall would not need to span the entire length of the border, thanks to natural barriers like rivers. After winning the election, he said hed be open to stretches of fencing.
US First Lady Michelle Obama has selected 16-year-old Indian-American Swetha Prabakaran to serve in the inaugural Student Advisory Board of an education campaign which seeks to provide educational opportunities for teenagers in America.

Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadus Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for Better Make Room campaigns Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences.

The board members will be travelling to the White House on Friday to attend Michelles School Counselor of the Year Ceremony.

Born in Indianapolis, she is among seventeen students selected by the White House to serve on Better Make Room Student Advisory Board. The inaugural Board has 12 high school students and five college students.

Swetha, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, is the founder and CEO of Everybody Code Now!, a non-profit body working to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.

She is the only Indian-American in the list.

Two-thirds of the Board members are, or will be, the first in their families to attain a postsecondary degree.

As proven leaders, organisers, changemakers, and innovators, these students will help the country achieve President (Barack) Obamas North Star goal, that our nation will once again lead the world in college completion rates, Better Make Room said in a statement.

Founded by Michelle, the board will work to create a college-going, college-persisting and college-graduating culture at their schools while connecting fellow students for any information and resources they need.

I am deeply honoured to be able to serve on this board. Creating a college-going and college-graduating culture among youth is something we have worked to encourage through Everybody Code Now!, and I am extremely excited to share this passion with even more students.

I look forward to working with The First Ladys Reach Higher Initiative and my fellow Better Make Room Student Advisory members to encourage more students to pursue higher education, Swetha said.

Also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, Swetha was honoured as a 2015 White House Champion of Change. She was also named to the International Literacy Associations 2016 30 Under 30.
An alliance of Nepals opposition parties on Friday alleged that the government led by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda was a puppet of foreign powers and accused India of interfering in the countrys internal matters.

The grouping of nine parties led by the CPN-UML organised a massive protest in Kathmandu that also criticised Madhes-based parties and opposed the constitutional amendment bill registered in Parliament by the government.

Thousands of opposition cadres marched through the streets of the capital, causing traffic snarls through the day and affecting normal life. They demanded the government should withdraw the constitutional amendment bill, which is meant to address the demands of agitating Madhesi parties.

The opposition parties described the bill as anti-national and CPN-UML chairman and former premier KP Oli said it would not be supported at any cost. We will not support and approve the bill, he said.

The bill is part of a grave conspiracy aimed at dividing the nation, Oli said, adding that the Madhes-based parties are working to destroy national identity and language.

Opposition leaders such as Ishowor Pokhrel, CP Mainali and Chitra Bahadur KC accused India of interfering in Nepals affairs and criticised Prachanda for dancing to the tune of India. They claimed the constitutional amendment bill was tabled to appease India.

The bill is aimed at addressing the demands of Madhesis such as citizenship, language, change in boundaries of states and making the Constitution more acceptable to marginalised and minority communities.

The bill was not taken up by Parliament after it was registered on November 29 because of repeated obstruction of proceedings by opposition parties.

Why do they need Hindi as an official language? We have Maithili, Bhojpuri and Abadhi languages that are also spoken in Madhes. So, it clearly shows their intention, Oli said, calling Madhesis a minority in vote in their own region.

He said those who were claiming they would wipe out the opposition parties in Madhes had only 11 parliamentary seats in the region while the CPN-UML has 40 seats. We are launching a grand peoples awareness campaign across Madhes soon, he added.

Olis hardening position on Madhes and the constitutional amendment bill is expected to further polarise Nepali politics and could lead to a confrontation at a time when the government is doing little to implement the new Constitution adopted in 2015.

The government has said it doesnt have the required two-third majority in the House to get the bill approved. The passage of the bill is crucial for holding elections to local bodies and meeting the demands of the Madhes-based parties.

The Madhesi parties have warned they will not participate in future elections if the bill is not passed.
Tehran, Iran, January 6

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Rich soil has been found and recently used for cultivating saffron in the western Iranian province of Lorestan.

This is while Khorasan Province has been traditionally known as the birthplace of saffron cultivation in Iran.

Our saffrons crocin number is 277, which is far greater than that of the famous Momtaz Mashhad with a crocin number of 220 cultivated in Khorasan Province, Fatemeh Amiri, founder and manager of Bahar Shafaq Khorramabad Agriculture Cooperative at Belilvand Village told Trend at an exhibition in Tehran.

Crocin number is an indicator of the amount of color and flavor that saffron can give.

Amiri said she started farming saffron in 2009, when she reaped half a kilo of the precious product.

This year our product was 12 times more than the year we started, that is, we reaped six kilos, she said.

Other than the saffron that we sell, we have produced over 20 tons of saffron corn, with a value of close to 1 billion rials (around $30,000), Amiri said.
A shooter wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at the baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight more were wounded in the incident, the local sheriffs office said.

US senator Bill Nelson said that the shooter was carrying a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago, though its not clear if it belonged to him or to someone else.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, described the shooter as a slender man who was directly firing at us while passengers waited for their bags to come off the carousel.

I put my head down and prayed, Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head.

His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that victim was already dead, Schlicher said.

The shooter reloaded once for a second burst of shooting, Schlicher said, but he could not say how many bullets were fired.

The shooting took place at the Terminal 2 baggage claim, said a post on the airports Twitter account.

Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC there was no rhyme or reason to it.

He didnt say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didnt yell anything, Lea said.

Security officials corralled passengers underneath jetways and on the runway apron, according to images on cable news networks.

In a Twitter post, President-elect Donald Trump, said that he was monitoring the terrible situation in Florida and that he had spoken to Gov. Rick Scott, who was on his way to the airport.

Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for US president George W Bush, said on Twitter shots were fired and everyone is running.

All seems calm now but the police arent letting anyone out of the airport - at least not the area where I am, he said.

A woman tended to a bleeding, seated man outside an airport building, according to a photo posted on Twitter by a Michigan information technology company.

The Broward Sheriffs Office received a call at about 12:55pm local time about shots fired at 100 Terminal Drive at the airport, the department wrote on Twitter.

All services were temporarily suspended, the airports Twitter feed said.

An aerial view of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport in Florida. (AFP File Photo)

Florida Governor Rick Scott was traveling to Fort Lauderdale to be briefed by law enforcement, his office said in a statement.

The FBIs Miami office was aware of the situation and in contact with local authorities, a spokesperson said in an email. No further information was immediately available.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.
Marijuana legalisation advocates plan to pass out joints -- 4,200 of them -- at Donald Trumps inauguration, defying the president-elect and the seamless Republican rule hes bringing to Washington.

Since February 2015 it has been legal here to grow up to six cannabis plants at home and possess up to two ounces of pot, so long as you are 21 or older.

But it is illegal to smoke the stuff in public, and especially to buy or sell it. That is because Congress, which largely oversees the US capital, barred it from regulating sales of marijuana.

So pots legal status in Washington is fragile. And it could vanish altogether if the upcoming Republican Congress votes simply to cancel the legalization that was approved here in a referendum.

By giving away marijuana at inauguration, were setting up the battle flag, said Adam Eidinger, 44, initiator of the 2014 pot referendum and founder of the DC Marijuana Coalition. Were about to lose our right.

At his home, six pot plants are growing out on the balcony. A fire burns in the fireplace as three colleagues -- Elizabeth, Natalie and Felicia -- roll joint after joint on a coffee table.

Eidinger reckons 4,200 joints are about four pounds (just under two kilos) and worth around $20,000.

To abide by the limit on how much any single person can possess, the reefers will be handed out by 50 people on Inauguration Day, January 20.

Elizabeth takes about a minute to roll a joint, and Felicia just 40 seconds. It is just pot, with no tobacco mixed in. Adam has contributed from his own private stash of high power pot, rich in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in cannabis.

The goal is for everyone to light up on the National Mall precisely four minutes and 20 seconds after Trump begins his inauguration speech from the steps of the Capitol to the vast crowd that will gather below. 4/20 is a universal code for marijuana lovers.

There is just one problem: Marijuana is still illegal on any federal land, such as the Mall. So the people who get the free joints will have to make a decision.

They can go home and smoke it and watch the inauguration on TV. Or they can choose to commit an act of civil disobedience, and smoke on the Mall and make a statement, said Eidinger.

Asked if they will fire up, the three joint rollers answered, Greek chorus style, oh yeah.
Ahead of his arrival for a state visit to India during which he will be the chief guest at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Bengaluru, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa spoke to Hindustan Times on a wide range of issues, including the rise of populist forces in Europe and the need to boost economic ties between India and Portugal.

At a time when most of Europe is seeing the emergence of populist right leaders, how do you explain your rise as a socialist leader? Is Europe moving more to the right?

Portugal is a country open to the world, with a cosmopolitan and welcoming society. It is not a coincidence that I am the first Person of Indian Origin to lead a European country.

At the European level, we should carefully monitor the rising of populist and xenophobic parties in some European countries, while remaining confident that this phenomenon is not irreversible and should be fought against by the democratic parties, both left-wing and right-wing, by addressing its root causes.

In Portugal, there is currently no extremist right-wing party strong enough politically. We have not witnessed any emerging populist parties. And the votes in the last general elections were distributed among the traditional parties, which have been in Parliament for many years. The racist and xenophobic discourse has never scored high in Portuguese elections. On the contrary: our government stood ready to host more refugees than those who had been determined to Portugal according to our EU quota, and that decision was welcomed unanimously by all political parties and the society in general. This is why Portugal is today the fourth European country in terms of refugees welcomed in the framework of the relocation programme.

Have you been able to balance your pledge of running a socialist programme with the need to meet international commitments on Portugals budget and debts? What helped you turn the page on austerity and what more needs to be done?

During the last year we have proved that it would be possible to follow a different policy, turning the page on austerity and, at the same time, meeting our European commitments. We have managed to obtain the lowest budget deficit in the history of the Portuguese democracy, while pursuing a policy of both restoring families income that had been cut over the last years and stimulating the economy and creating jobs. This policy has enabled us to overcome the crisis we have gone through.

This government solution has worked out in a stable manner since the beginning of our mandate and has already made possible the approval of two state budgets, based on policies that promote knowledge and skills as well as their link to the economy.

We shall pursue this path, which proved to be not only possible, but also one which allows for better results at all levels: there was an improvement of the living conditions of the Portuguese people, we have today a sustainable economic growth, more and better employment and a controlled budget deficit.

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa gestures during a debate on the 2017 state budget at the parliament in Lisbon, Portugal. (Reuters file photo)

There are concerns over Portugals economic health, with reports stating that the slow economic growth could rejig the credit ratings. Your views?

The Portuguese economy is for sure facing important challenges as most other economies are. But as I just told we are addressing those challenges, correcting most structural imbalances and tackling our main bottlenecks. The National Program of Reforms, adopted in April, is based on six pillars intended to transform structurally competitiveness and strengthen social cohesion: capacitation of Portuguese people; reinforcement of innovation in processes, products and companies; capitalisation of non-financial corporations; valorisation and qualification of the territory; modernisation of public services; and fighting inequalities.

Economic growth is for sure at the centre of our concerns and the most recent results strengthen our confidence that we are moving in the right direction. In the third quarter of 2016 growth almost tripled and Portugal was the Euro-area fastest growing economy. Indicators for the 4th quarter also show signs that growth is gaining momentum.

Taken all this into account my view is that the concerns mentioned are unfounded.

What accounts for your higher approval ratings after a year in office at a time when other centre-left leaders in Italy and France have fared poorly?

This is probably due to the fact that we are delivering what we have promised. The citizens disappointment with the politicians is due, to a large extent, to the fact that citizens believe  sometimes rightly  that politicians, once elected, do not deliver on their campaign promises. We have met all our commitments towards the Portuguese people, as it is our duty, and this reinforces confidence in politicians.

On the other hand, the governments action seems to be supported by a large part of the population. This happens, I believe, because the results confirm that there was in fact an alternative, that it is possible to do politics differently, with a positive impact on peoples lives and the economic situation of the country. And it is also understood that the political solution is stable and based on a political line of responsibility and trust, which has stabilised political life through institutional cooperation and social peace.

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa greets during the inauguration of Web Summit. (Reuters file photo)

Portuguese citizens of Goan-origin who have settled in Britain are increasingly worried about their future following the Brexit vote. Is this an issue youve discussed with Britain and do you think Portugal and India could work together on their future?

Regarding Brexit, the principle agreed among EU Member States is no negotiation without notification. Hence negotiations will certainly not start before April 2017 and, in any case, will not take place bilaterally. Anyway Portuguese citizens living in the United Kingdom (currently, more than 200,000) will all be given the same treatment regardless of their origin. Therefore Goan-origin Portuguese citizens have no reasons to fear any kind of discrimination.

While both Portugal and India describe their ties as excellent, what are the new frontiers youd like to explore to strengthen the relations and boost trade? What new areas would you like to tap?

In fact, in spite of very good political relationship the economic relations between the two countries are almost incipient. It is this that we intend to change, starting with this visit as there are many mutually beneficial opportunities to explore.

India may take advantage of the Portuguese experience in areas in which Portugal has made big investments in the recent past such as renewable energies, infrastructures, and environmental industries related to water, sewage and garbage collection, areas that can be very relevant for India.

There are sectors in which both countries have developed know how and in which closer cooperation can be mutually beneficial, such as ICT, pharmaceuticals or medical research, aerospace or mobility. We can also explore closer ties in startups.

For India it may be interesting to consider Portugal as a platform to address markets in Europe, Latin America or in Africa.

This are examples of possible things to do, but what is really important is to strengthen the ties between our business communities and certainly opportunities will appear.

Costa looks on during the Portugal 2017 state budget debate at the parliament in Lisbon on November 4, 2016. (AFP file photo)

What, if any, agreements are expected to be finalised during your visit?

We have negotiated bilateral instruments in areas identified as priorities, such as defence cooperation, renewable energies, startups, information technology, electronics and communications, public administration and governance reform, science and technology, tourism and film industry.

Do you plan to trace your roots in Goa while attending the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas? Will you visit the house in Margao where your father lived? Is there anything from your grandfathers life in Goa that influenced you?

I am deeply honoured to attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas as a Person of Indian Origin and my speech at that occasion will surely be framed by my roots in Goa, of which I am very proud. I am planning to use the opportunity of travelling to Goa to visit my relatives who still live in Margao, where my father had his house. And I am also very moved by the fact that I will witness the presentation, in Delhi and Goa, of the English translations of two of my fathers books.

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India has agreed to provide Nepal bank notes of Rs 100 denomination worth a total of Rs 100 crore to tide over a shortage of Indian currency, a spokesperson for the countrys central bank said on Friday.

The currency will be supplied to Nepals Rastra Bank by the Reserve Bank of India by the end of January, said spokesperson Narayan Poudel.

Nepals central bank will send a team to India to bring the currency. The central bank currently has Indian notes of Rs 100 denomination worth about Rs 350 crore and the addition of another Rs 100 crore means it can provide exchange facilities for another seven months, he added.

Nepalese citizens have been facing hardship in obtaining Indian currency of Rs 100 denomination following the withdrawal of notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination by India in November.

The two countries have an open border and a visa-free regime and Indian currency is widely used in Nepal, especially in areas and markets along the border.

After the demonetization, there has been limited availability of Indian currency and Nepalese citizens travelling to India for medical treatment, students pursuing higher studies in Indian universities, traders and people living in border areas have been hit hardest.

Branches of government and private banks in Nepal have seen long queues of people wanting to exchange the scrapped Indian notes. Nepal Rastra Bank has allowed the limited exchange of up to Rs 2,000 for people who provide identity documents.

People travelling to India by train or air can obtain up to Rs 10,000 after submitting tickets. Similarly people going to India for treatment can obtain up to Rs 25,000 on producing a doctors referral.

However, the Reserve Bank of India has not yet sorted out the problem of exchanging the withdrawn Indian currency notes that are within and outside Nepals banking channels. Authorities on both sides have held several rounds of talks to find a way out but no decision has been taken as yet.

The two central banks have an agreement whereby Nepal Rastra Bank can import a total of Rs 6 billion in various denominations every year.

Officials said New Delhi has been tightening the supply of Indian currency following the demonetisation drive and this has forced banks to reduce the amount of Indian currency provided to people travelling across the border for treatment or studies.

The demand for Indian currency spikes in winter as a lot of Nepalese citizens travel to pilgrimage sites in India. The demand for Indian currency through banking channels is Rs 1 crore per day.

The shortage of Indian currency has resulted in notes being exchanged at a premium in border areas. Reports said people were paying as much as 175 Nepali rupees for Indian Rs 100 even though the official rate is Nepali Rs 160 for Indian Rs 100.
The deeply divided Democrats and Republicans have rallied behind US President-elect Donald Trump in the House of Representatives to denounce the UN for a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for building settlements on the occupied territories.

The House resolution passed on Thursday was also a rebuke to President Barack Obama who refused to have the UN resolution vetoed. The resolution was adopted 342 to 80, with 109 Democrats rebelling against their President to back it.

The Senate was also expected to pass a similar resolution, serving another warning to the world body from its biggest contributor.

The resolution also demanded that the UN rescind the resolution adopted by the Security council on December 23 with US abstaining and the other 14 members voting for it.

Behind the House measure is a threat from the UNs largest funder that it could start cutting its payments to the world body. The US contributes 22% of the general UN budget and 28.6% of the funds for peacekeeping operations.

Before the vote, Trump had asked the Obama administration to veto the resolution. The US has traditionally blocked resolutions critical of its closes ally Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the refusal to veto saying that settlement building in the territories captured by Israel during the 1967 war was an obstruction to the Middle East peace process as it hinged on a two-state solution that requires the creation of a Palestinian nation.

After the UN vote, Trump vowed in a tweet: As to the UN, things will be different after January 20, the day he takes over as president.

In a sentiment shared widely in the US regardless of party affiliations, House Speaker Paul Ryan lamented on Thursday: This government, our government, abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most.

In a jab at Obama, Ryan said the resolution would pave the way to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN.

Trump articulates the general scepticism in the US about the UN by mocking it as a just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.

Trump and the new Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had a phone conversation, which a UN spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said was an introductory call that went quite well.

But Trumps spokesperson Sean Spicer speaking to reporters after the meeting said that as the biggest contributor to the UN budget the Washington can demand some reforms and changes to make it more efficient.

Efforts had already begun in the Senate to cut UN finances. Senator Lindsey Graham, who heads the subcommittee that controls allocations for the UN had said that he would have the funds suspended or cut if the Security Council resolution passed.

Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain suggested this week that the US could start by reducing contributions meant for the UN Human rights Commission because many human rights violators are on it.

After the UNESCO admitted Palestine as a full member in 2011 over US objections, Congress cut off all funds for it, crippling many of its operations because it got more than a fifth of budget from the US. The Obama administration has not succeeded in getting the legislature to restore the funds


US ambassador to India Richard Verma could be among President Barack Obamas politically appointed envoys ordered to return home by the Donald Trump transition team before the president-elect is inaugurated on January 20.

It could not be ascertained if Verma was included, but a state department note cited by The New York Times, which first reported the mass recall, said the blanket order was to be enforced without exceptions to all political appointees.

Verma, who became the first Indian American to serve US ambassador to India in 2014, is a political appointee. A lawyer by training, he was assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the state department when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.

While it is usual for incoming administrations to recall political appointees from the previous regime, Trump transition teams blanket order was found to be too severe, as it makes no exceptions -- not even for those with school-going children.

In the past, people in such situations were allowed to continue till the end of the school year. US ambassador to Costa Rica, for instance, is said to be looking for a house or an apartment to stay on till his four children finished their school year.

There are two other Indian Americans appointed ambassador by Obama  Atul Keshap to Sri Lanka and Geeta Passi to the Republic of Chad  but they are not likely to be impacted by the recall as they are both career diplomats.

There was no word immediately about Swati Dandekar, an Indian American Obama sent to the Asian Development Bank as executive director, which is an ambassador rank position. She is an Iowa politician and a political appointee, like Verma.

The Trump teams order, contained in a state department note from December 23, will leave many US critical missions without ambassadors for a long time, as their replacements will have to be confirmed by the Senate.

It took Verma, for instance, four months to from his nomination in September. He was confirmed by the Senate in December and finally took charge in New Delhi in January 2015. And now he may have to return just about two years later.

Trump has so far announced only two nominees for ambassadorship  Iowa governor Terry Branstad to China and David M Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer, to Israel. The blanket recall now opens up scores of other vacancies to fill.

India, Germany, Canada and Britain will be among them.

A Trump transition team official has said these recalls were ordered just to ensure political appointees abroad left on schedule as would be all others serving in the federal government at home, as is the practice.

But Trump is not letting go of all Obama appointees. He has asked Preet Bharara, the Indian American US attorney for the southern district of New York that has jurisdiction over Wall Street, to continue. Bharara has said he is staying.
US intelligence community is likely to give president-elect Donald Trump a report on Friday detailing evidence they have of Russian meddling in the election that could include communication intercepts of Russian officials celebrating his victory.

According to The Washington Post the report will also identify actors who played a role in passing on the data stolen from Democratic Partys computer networks by Russian hackers to WikiLeaks and two other websites.

This 50-page report was given to President Barack Obama on Thursday and it will be given to Trump at a briefing by director of the National Intelligence James Clapper and directors of the CIA and the FBI John Brennan and James Comey later on Friday.

An abridged version is to be made public next week. Trump continues to be sceptical about intelligence assessment that Russia was behind the hacking and has tended to side with Moscow, which has denied any role in it, and Julian Assange who has said blamed careless Democrats for it.

So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on? Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday, after intelligence officials reaffirmed their assessment at a senate hearing.

Trumps scepticism about the assessment could be related to the suggestion that the hacking was carried by Russia, on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, to help him win the presidency, and that somehow Moscow may have won him the White House.
A vast iceberg, expected to be one of the biggest ever recorded with an area almost the size of the Caribbean island state of Trinidad and Tobago, is poised to break off Antarctica.

A rift, slowly developing across the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years, expanded abruptly last month, growing by about 18 km. It is now more than 80 km long with just 20 km left before it snaps, scientists said.

The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5,000 square km following further substantial rift growth, scientists at Project Midas at the University of Swansea in Wales said in a statement.

The iceberg will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula and could herald a wider break-up of the Larsen C ice shelf, the statement said.

Ice shelves are areas of ice floating on the sea, several hundred metres thick, at the end of glaciers. Scientists fear the loss of ice shelves around the frozen continent will allow glaciers inland to slide faster towards the sea as temperatures rise because of global warming, raising world sea levels.

Several ice shelves have cracked up around northern parts of Antarctica in recent years, including the Larsen B that disintegrated in 2002.
A train crushed two motorized rickshaws on an unattended railway crossing in central Pakistan on Friday, killing seven schoolchildren and one of the rickshaw drivers, police and railway officials said.

According to police officer Javed Ahmed, the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks in a suburban area near the town of Lodhran in eastern Punjab province. The train was heading to Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.

Dr. Abdul Majid, a recue official, said another five children aged 5 to 8 were critically injured. He said the rickshaw driver was initially injured and later died at a local hospital. The injured children were moved to hospitals in the nearby town of Bahwalpur for better medical care.

Following an inspection of the crash site and a preliminary investigation, the assistant train driver and a railway worker responsible for the crossing were detained for questioning, said Asad Sarfaraz, a senior police officer. Police had earlier said the crossing was ungated.

The railway worker responsible for manning the crossing was found missing from his post, he said.

Railways minister Saad Rafiq ordered an immediate investigation and suspended the two railway workers, adding that further action would be taken if the inquiry shows they were negligent.

Pakistan has one of the worlds worst rail infrastructures, and has often seen fatal accidents as safety standards are not fully followed and disregard for traffic rules is routine.
The United Nations on Friday said its human rights envoy for Myanmar will probe escalating violence in the country, including a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, when she visits next week.

UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lees 12-day trip, starting on Monday, will also take her to Kachin state, where thousands have been displaced by fighting between ethnic rebels and the army.

Intensifying clashes between Myanmars military and ethnic minorities has undercut Aung San Suu Kyis vow to bring peace to the country following her partys elevation to government last March.

The Nobel prize winner has also faced strong international criticism for failing to rein-in a months-long military crackdown on Rohingya villagers in northern Rakhine State.

Areas of Rakhine have been in lockdown since October, sending tens of thousands of the Rohingya minority fleeing to Bangladesh.

Lee has slammed the lockdown as unacceptable and called for an investigation into claims troops have raped, murdered and tortured civilians from the Muslim minority.

The army vehemently denies the allegations.

The last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there, Lee said in a statement on Friday.

Apart from what is happening in Rakhine, the escalation in fighting in Kachin and Shan (state)... is causing some disquiet regarding the direction that the new government is taking in its first year.

Lees criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, who are loathed by many within Buddhist majority Myanmar, has seen her face threats and demonstrations on previous visits.

Hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu caused outrage when he called her a whore in our country for criticising controversial legislation considered discriminatory to women and minorities.

Myanmars government says its troops in Rakhine are carrying out legitimate clearance operations to hunt down terrorists who attacked police border posts in October.

On Wednesday an official commission probing the violence dismissed claims security forces are trying to force the Rohingya out of the country and said there was no evidence troops had carried out rape.

But days earlier the government detained eight members of the police after a video emerged showing officers beating and kicking unarmed Rohingya villagers.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

Shutting down the Incirlik Air Base in Turkeys Adana is not on the agenda, Anadolu Agency quoted Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying.

The foreign minister made the remarks after a meeting with Antonio Guterres, new UN secretary general.

The US Air Force and air forces of other countries  Turkeys allies  are stationed at the Incirlik Air Base under NATO agreements, according to Cavusoglu.

Ankara also allowed other countries involved in the fight against the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) terrorist group to use the base, he said.

The foreign minister noted that Ankara actively fights the IS.

The [US-led] international coalition has not supported Turkey lately in its fight against terrorists, Cavusoglu said. If this coalition is designed to combat IS, and Turkey has, for its part, created conditions for the counteraction against terrorists, why isnt Ankara getting appropriate support from its partners?

He added that shutting down the air base in Adana is not on the agenda now, but, the countries that use this air base under the pretext of the fight against IS and do virtually nothing, must not be stationed at Incirlik.

Turkeys Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak has earlier said Ankara questions the presence of forces of the coalition at the Incirlik base.

Incirlik Air Base is used by the United States Air Force and the Turkish Air Force. Its activities are regulated by the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement.

Planes of a number of the coalition members, that participate in air operations against IS, are also stationed at this air base.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
US-backed militias in Syria have captured an ancient citadel from Islamic State (IS) in a strategically significant advance against the militant group in its stronghold of Raqqa province, a spokesperson said on Friday.

The Jabar citadel on the banks of Lake Assad was taken by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance on Thursday, militia spokesperson Talal Silo said. It is located near a dam on the Euphrates River that the US-backed alliance also aims to capture in the current phase of its campaign.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the Syrian governments antiquities chief, told Reuters in Damascus the SDFs capture of the castle represented a victory for the Syrian people because liberating the citadel from Daesh (IS) is saving Syrian heritage.

The SDF, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, is the main partner for the United States in the campaign it is leading against Islamic State in Syria. SDF forces are just a few kilometres (miles) from a major dam also held by IS.

Islamic State is also being fought in separate campaigns by the Russian-backed Syrian army in Deir al-Zor province and near the ancient town of Palmyra, which IS seized for a second time in December, and by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels in Aleppo province near the Syrian-Turkish border.

Silo said SDF advances had been slowed by thick fog that had allowed Islamic State insurgents to use infiltration tactics to attack SDF positions, he said. The weather had now improved, he added in an interview over the internet.

The direction of our forces is towards the area of the dam at present, Silo said.

The SDF launched a multi-stage operation in Raqqa province in November aimed ultimately at capturing the city from Islamic State. The first phase gained territory to the north of the city and the current phase is targeting areas to the west of it.
President-elect Donald Trumps transition team has issued a blanket order asking politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day on January 20, a move that will impact the US envoy to India, Rich Verma.

I will be departing on January 20th, ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters.

The mandate was issued without exceptions through an order sent in a state department cable on December 23, Gilbert said.

Gilbert confirmed a report in The New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous US administrations, from the Republican or Democratic parties, had traditionally granted extensions to allow a few envoys, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Verma  the first Indian American to be named envoy to India  was picked by Obama for the job in 2014 and arrived in India days before the US presidents visit the following year.

Soon after Trump won the presidential election, reports had suggested that Verma  who traces his roots to Jalandhar and the Pakistani part of Punjab  intended to put in his papers.

Read | Why India may matter less in world politics during a Trump presidency

Verma had appeared grim at an event organised at the US embassy to mark the counting of votes after the elections and had told reporters at the time that the victor has to bring the country together. He had also said that the US was divided by the impassioned campaign.

He had also worked with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.

The Trump teams order threatens to leave the US without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical countries such as Germany, Canada and Britain, The New York Times reported.

A senior Trump transition official told the newspaper there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring Obamas overseas envoys leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do.

Timeline of key diplomatic decisions taken during Obama's presidency. (AFP)

Trump has taken a strict stance against leaving any of Obamas political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on January 20, aiming to break up many of his predecessors signature foreign and domestic policy achievements, the Times reported.

Diplomats told New York Times the order has thrown their personal lives into a tailspin, leaving them scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to stay in their countries so their children can remain in school.

(With inputs from agencies)

Read | When Bernie Sanders brought a giant printout of a Trump tweet to the US Senate
The US Navy is sending to Japan the aircraft equipped with advanced radar that can detect stealth fighters, a media report said on Friday.

The E-2D Advance Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft will be deployed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in February, according to a statement on Thursday from the US Navy Japan.

Deployment of the Advanced Hawkeyes is part of a plan to put the most advanced and capable units forward in order to support the USs commitment to the defence of Japan and the security and stability of the region, the statement said.

The E-2D is equipped with the A/N-APY radar system, which according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin has the power to see smaller targets and more of them at a greater range, particularly in coastal regions and over land, CNN reported.

The Advanced Hawkeyes coming to Japan were previously operating from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in support strikes on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the statement added.
US Navy-trained dolphins are being tapped to save the worlds smallest porpoise, vaquita, that is on the verge of extinction in the Gulf of California, experts said.

Experts are hoping dolphins natural sonar would be able to do what technology has not: locate them, so they can be captured and put in a protective area, the New York Times reported.

Their specific task is to locate (vaquita -- an extremely elusive creature), said Jim Fallin of the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific.

They would signal that by surfacing and returning to the boat from which they were launched, Fallin said.

Fallin said the dolphins were trained by the Navy Marine Mammal Program for tasks like locating sea mines. The program was expected to start sometime in 2017 spring.

Experts believe fewer than 60 vaquitas were left in the Gulf waters -- they have been decimated by illegal fishing for the swim bladder of a fish, the totoaba, which is a prized delicacy in China.

Although the vaquita has never been held successfully in captivity, experts hope to put the remaining porpoises in floating pens in a safe bay in the Gulf of California.

This bay is called the Sea of Cortez where they can be protected and hopefully breed.

Mexico has banned gill nets that often trap vaquitas in the area, but has had trouble enforcing it because the totoaba draws very high prices on the illegal market.

At the current rate of loss, the vaquita will likely decline to extinction by 2022 unless the current gillnet ban is maintained and effectively enforced, said Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, chairman of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita.

Some experts, like Omar Vidal, Mexico director of the World Wildlife Fund, however, oppose the capture plan, which could risk killing the few remaining vaquitas.

It could also open up a free-for-all illegal fishing once they are removed from their natural habitat.
US Vice-President Joe Biden has a blunt suggestion for President-elect Donald Trump: It is time to grow up.

Asked about a few of Trumps controversial remarks and tweets since winning the November election, Biden had some intemperate comments of his own.

Grow up Donald, grow up, time to be an adult, youre president, he told television station PBS in an interview broadcast Thursday. Time to do something. Show us what you have.

Trump earlier on Thursday described Americas leading congressional Democrat as the head clown.

Biden has indicated he will not step away from the political fray entirely when he leaves office with President Barack Obama on January 20.

The vice president has already been chiming in on how Democrats should respond to their shock election defeat, suggesting a renewed focus on the working and middle class.

Its going to be much clearer what hes for and against and what were for and against, Biden told PBS.
Weve known for a while now that Twitter and Facebook are the new on the record. Confirming news is now about knowing a reliable person has tweeted about it. It is proof in the public domain. So much so that many news stories are simply about Tweets and Facebook posts in response to some event or other.

But Bernie Sanders just made Twitter (complete with spelling shortcuts, grammatical errors and everything) even more official than it was. Gizmodos Matt Novak peeked into the US Senate to find Bernie Sanders standing in front of a gigantic printed tweet from President-Elect Donald Trump to make a point during a debate about repealing President Obamas flagship Obamacare.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the USA (commonly called the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare) was a massive overhaul of the US healthcare system brought about by President Obama in 2010. And the US Senate is currently debating to repeal Obamacare. To make the point that President-Elect Trump promised to not cut healthcare benefits, Senator Sanders printed out this tweet from Donald Trumps timeline from May 2015, I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

Sanders said, If he was sincere, then I would hope that tomorrow or maybe today he could send out a tweet and tell his Republican colleagues to stop wasting their time and all of our time.

Holding someone responsible for their tweets is not a new phenomenon at all, but looks like Twitter has now crossed the almost invisible threshold from being noise to something more official. Closer home, it was not that long ago that Shashi Tharoor found himself in the eye of a media storm because of an ill-timed and ill-worded tweet about the common man flying cattle class on airlines. So the power of the medium was never in question. But there was always that counter opinion at the time of how an innocent joke on twitter may have been blown out of proportion. Its just a tweet. It wasnt an official thing seemed to be a common opinion.

But bringing a tweet to a legislative discussion endows it with more power than a tweet has ever had before. There have been several instances of politicians old tweets being quoted to show how their opinions have changed or become modified over time, but not in such an official capacity. Personal twitter accounts have always been treated as just those  personal. Not official. Several tweeters use caveats such as, opinions are personal or retweets arent endorsements, etc to avoid precisely such controversies.

The question then is, what is personal and what is private. Can a politicians personal public opinion (such as tweets and facebook posts) be treated as being just as official as a press

release from her office? Private conversations that are not on the public domain, such as private conversations with journalists or personal emails, still count as off the record; but as we have seen with Hillary Clintons emails, nothing on the internet is really private. However, there is an argument of a reasonable expectation of privacy with email. But not with twitter.

Social media is the new press release. And everyone better watch what theyre saying. Because twitter just made it to the US senate. What comes next is anybodys guess.

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Half Moon Bay, CA (94019)

Today

Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. High 61F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy skies. Low 51F. Winds light and variable.
America's top intelligence official, James Clapper, declared Thursday that Russia undoubtedly interfered in US 2016 presidential election but stopped short of using the explosive description as an act of war.

The Homeland Security Department and the intelligence community declared that U.S. was confident of foreign meddling in the presidential campaign, including Russian government hacking of Democratic party emails.

The intelligence community has stated that Moscow interfered to help Republican Donald Trump win.

"We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement than we did on the 7th of October," James Clapper declared.

Pressed by Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., on whether these actions constituted an "act of war," James Clapper said that this was "a very heavy policy call".

Trump attacked U.S. intelligence agencies because of WikiLeaks founder

Clapper pushed back against a strong criticism leveled against U.S. intelligence agencies by Donald Trump lately and the Trump's apparent embrace of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder.

Clapper declared Assange is "holed up" in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, and he can not leave without being arrested for breaching his bail conditions.

Sanctions against Russia by Obama

President Obama has received a report on the Russian and other foreign meddling in the U.S. election, according to Clapper. He and other senior U.S. intelligence officials believe that Russia poses a major threat to U.S. government, diplomatic, military and commercial operations.

Obama struck back in late December with penalties aimed at Russia's leading spy agencies such as the GRU and FSB, that were involved according to U.S.

But Trump easily could rescind the sanctions, he has rejected the idea that Russia is responsible for the attacks. Trump increased his criticism of U.S. intelligence by tweeting that an upcoming briefing on the suspected Russian hacking had been delayed, and added, "perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!"

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Earlier the US president-elect Donald Trump stated that "Twitter is like owning your own newspaper - without the losses." There is no doubt about it that the businessman who became the president-elect grew his Twitter audience to almost 19 million from 2 million followers.

Looking back at last year, Twitter faced a little trouble when several high profile executives left the company. While they had trouble to attract more users to their platform, Donald Trump posts was one of the most important things that brought them back on track.

According to the Guardian, there were rumors that the company might be sold to Disney or Salesforce. Since that did not happen the company got a chance to benefit from the most talked about user and that is nobody but America's very own president-elect Donald Trump.

Michael Pachter the analyst from Wedbush Securities said that "Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Twitter." As for Trump he has used the platform to even announce potential policy changes.

Trump is believed to have used the social media service to describe his views on public life and this turned out to bring the internet company a commercial success. He also used the service to blast CNN for its coverage of him as per CBS News.

The founder and CEO of Estimize Leigh Drogen said that Trump has his way of controlling the news cycle and he is brilliant at that! It is indeed a huge marketing asset for the social media giant. As for the president-elect and his associates Twitter is influential and good tool to reach out to millions of people.

Twitter lacked effective marketing and Trump will keep them relevant said Dorgen. Now that the use of Twitter is beneficial for all these purposes it is still a question if Donald Trump will make Twitter great again? He is surely going to continue using the social media platform as his followers are updated very much though twitter.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

Turkeys Defense Minister Fikri Isik says the US, in order to fight the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, has chosen another terrorist group  the Democratic Union Party (PYD)  as its ally.

Because of that Turkey is suffering today, and the US itself will face problems in the future, he said in an interview with the Haberturk TV channel Jan. 6.

The US is still not keeping its promises concerning the withdrawal of PYD militants from the Syrian city of Manbij to the east bank of the river Euphrates, according to the minister.

If the US does not keep its promise, Turkey will be forced to carry out an operation to clear the city of the militants, Isik said.

As for the Incirlik Air Base in Turkeys Adana, Isik said the air base belongs to Turkey and all foreign forces at the base are only stationed there by Ankaras permission.

Ankara does not consider closing down the air base now. However, if the use of the Incirlik Air Base contradicts Turkeys interests, we will assess the situation and take appropriate measures, the defense minister added.

Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has earlier said shutting down the Incirlik Air Base in Adana is not on the agenda.

Earlier Veysi Kaynak, deputy prime minister, said Ankara questions the presence of forces of the coalition at the Incirlik base.

Incirlik Air Base is used by the United States Air Force and the Turkish Air Force. Its activities are regulated by the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement.

Planes of a number of the coalition members, that participate in air operations against IS, are also stationed at this air base.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
Donald Trump defended a plan on Friday in which U.S. initially would pay for a border wall with Mexico and then the cost of this wall will be paid back by its southern neighbor.

Trump tweeted that the dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall, will be paid back by Mexico later.

The proposed border wall between both countries was one of Trump's key campaign pledges. He vowed to make Mexico pay for this wall. His comments about "dishonest media" were related to reports that emerged lately and suggest that Trump was trying to modify his vow.

Funding for building the border wall with Mexico

Trump did not specify in his tweet if he would seek to build the wall with money of taxpayers, although he suggested in a speech a few months ago that U.S. government funds could be used at first to begin the project.

Incoming Trump administration press secretary Sean Spicer declared in an interview that the idea that we are going through the appropriations process and figuring out how to pay for it should not be a surprise to anybody.

Republicans are considering if to tie wall funding to a broader government funding measure in the spring, thus, it could make difficult for Democrats to oppose funding for the border wall.

Trump's proposal was not clear, but the Associated Press reported the president-elect's aides are pushing for a plan which would seek the economic resources through existing legislation such as the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which already authorizes some types of enclosures along the southern border of United States.

Mexico rejects the idea of paying for the wall

Spokesman Spicer declared that Trump will negotiate with Mexico over the payment for the border wall, which Mexico has rejected to pay for.

Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican President, has said that Mexico won't pay for the wall.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault discussed prospects of the settlement in the Middle East, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said after the telephone conversation between the ministers, TASS reported.

"Jean-Marc Ayrault talked about the preparations for the upcoming international conference on January 15 in Paris. Sergey Lavrov told the minister about Russias efforts on promoting the restoration of Palestinian unity and emphasized the fact that now it is important not only in words but in deeds to reopen dialogue between the parties of the conflict," the Ministry said.

"The Russian minister talked about the current situation in Syria, where, thanks to the guarantees from Russia, Turkey and Iran were cessation of hostilities was achieved, which is generally respected, and is intended to serve as a basis for the transition to a political settlement," the Ministry said.
Once again the travel and tourism industry faces both new and on-going challenges. Travel and tourism cannot be separated from the world context in which they operate. Be that context political states of war, or one of health issues or of economic undulations, what occurs throughout the world touches every aspect of tourism. It is for this reason that every once in a while it is good for travel and tourism professionals to take a step back and to review at least some of the basic fundamentals of their industry. We all claim to know these fundamental principles, but all too often in the "madness of life and work" we need to be reminded of the basic principles of tourism, of what we do and why we do it. To get the New Year off to a great start, Tourism Tidbits provides you both this month and next month with a listing of these principles and how they impact every aspect of our industry.

Travel and tourism is about having fun and if your employees are you do not come to work with a smile on your face then it would be better to seek another job. Visitors quickly ascertain our moods and professional attitude. The nice you are the more successful your company or local tourism community is going to be.

It cannot be stated too often, that most leisure travel and tourism are choice made by the consumer who is using his or her expendable income and time

In all but a few cases, and with the exception of business travel and some forms of health travel, the customer does not have to choose to travel. This simple fact means that tourists often frighten easily and may have unrealistic expectations. It does the travel expert no good to become either frustrated or annoyed with his or her customer. Although the customer may technically not always be right, the customer always has the option of not traveling. In that case, it is the professional or the professional's business that in the end suffers. This fundamental principle is so important that around the world places that provide clean efficient and friendly service and products prospered in 2016. Others, who took their visitors for granted, had disappointing results. A basic rule of tourism and travel is, if you treated your customer fairly, provided a good product in a safe and clean environment then your industry did just fine. If on the other hand, prices are not in line with your competition, service is poor and security is weak, the opposite is bound to occur. Consider then the following fundamentals of tourism:

a) Tourism is security dependent. In a world where one can experience "virtual" travel, where meetings can be held on a computer, and where the traveler is exposed to twenty-four hour news cycles, our customers no where it is safe and where it is not. Countries such a France, Turkey and Egypt saw major declines in tourism because they were perceived not to be safe. It is essential that you create a safe and secure atmosphere. To create such an atmosphere local security professionals must be part of the planning from the beginning. Tourism security is more than merely having police or security professionals at a site. Tourism security requires psychological and sociological analysis, the use of hardware, interesting and unique uniforms, and careful planning that integrates the security professional into the enchantment experience.

b) Strive to provide an enchanting travel and tourism experience. Tourism is not about education or school but about enchantment and the nurturing of the spirit. A lack of enchantment means that there are fewer and fewer reasons to want to travel and to participate in the tourism experience. For example, if every shopping mall looks the same or if the same menu exists in every hotel chain, why not simply stay at home? Why would anyone want to subject him/herself to dangers and hassles of travel, if our industry destroys the journey's enchantment by rude and arrogant front line personnel? To help your locale or attraction make money put a bit of the romance and enchantment back into your tourism product

Love your customers!

If your employees "hate" tourists then the message they are giving is one that destroys a sense of being special. Often managers are more interested in their own ego trips then in the vacationer's experience. An employee who is unique, funny, or makes people go away feeling special is worth thousands of dollars in advertising. Every tourism manager and hotel GM ought to do every job in his or her industry at least once a year. Often tourism managers push so hard for the bottom line that they forget the humanity of their employees. Be with the visitors and see the world through their eye.

Negative reputations are not easy to erase and negative perceptions can destroy a tourism industry. If our visitors perceive that they are not wanted, or are seen as easy prey, then they will soon find alternatives

It behooves tourism industry executives to remember that there are lots of locales that have beaches, sun, serf, good restaurants, mountains and rivers. In today's interlocked world major cities no longer sell only their local products but provide wide variety of products from around the world. Basic principle: if you can get it there, you can probably get it here.

Our clients have more information than ever before

The worst thing for a tourism industry is to be caught lying. It takes a long time to rebuild a reputation and in today's world of social media, one mistake can spread like wildfire.

Marketing can aid in product development but it cannot substitute for product(s) development

A basic rule of tourism is that you cannot market what you do not have. Remember that the most successful form of marketing is word of mouth. Spend less money on classical marketing strategies and more money on customer service and product development.

Emphasize the unique in your business or community

Do not try to be all things to all people. Represent something that is special. Ask yourself: What makes your community or attraction different and unique from your competitors? How does your community celebrate its individuality? If you were a visitor to your community would you remember it a few days after you had left or would it be just one more place on the map? For example, do not just offer an outdoor experience, but individualize that experience, make your hiking trails special, or develop something special about your beaches or river experience. If, one the other hand, your community or destination is a creation of the imagination then allow the imagination to run wild and continually create new experiences.

Peter Tarlow

President Tourism and More

+1 979 764 8402

Tourism and More

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Four men held at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been transferred to Saudi Arabia, the Department of Defense said in a press release.

The release stated that after reviewing the cases of Al-Shibli and Bwazir, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force unanimously approved the men's transfer, Sputnik reported.

"The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of four detainees: Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim, Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli, and Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the release stated on Thursday.

The Periodic Review Boards determined Kanad and Ghanim no longer need to remain at the detention center to prevent them from being a significant threat to the United States, the release added. Fifty-five detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.
Justin Bieber is a man of many talents. Pet owner is not one of them. Less than six months after acquiring a Chow puppy, whom he named Todd, he has given away his furry friend to one of his backup dancers, C.J. Salvador. This is not the first time Bieber has given one of his pets away. Hes done so in the past with a hamster as well as another dog, reports TMZ. And his pet monkey was once seized by German officials. Though one might see Biebs bequeathing Todd to Salvador as a generous act, it so happens that Salvador is now facing a serious veterinary bill of about $8,000.

Salvador took Todd to the vet shortly after becoming his new owner, only to find that the pup was born with severe hip dysplasia, a condition that could lose Todd the ability to walk within a few months time. The vets estimate that the dog will be disabled by the time of his first birthday should he not undergo the expensive procedure.

As a backup dancer, Salvador wasnt ready to face a medical bill of that magnitude, but he loved his new canine so much that he went on a fundraising campaign so that he could finance Todds procedure. And it worked. He raised the necessary $8,000 with the help of 90 individual donations, including one from Jaden Smith. Not on the donor list: Big Bank Bieber.

Best of luck to Todd on his upcoming operation, and may he enjoy a good life far away from Biebers negligence.

Justin Bieber
A major part of Lil Yachtys unstoppable rise to fame has been his mastery of the nautical aesthetic, so its only natural that his latest fashion partnership comes with the brand Nautica, for whom Yachty has been named a creative designer. The alliance is surprising in that Yachty is King of the Teens and Nautica is mostly supported by men over 40 who cant afford the nearby Polo rack. But seeing Yachty rock the brand  which hes been doing for a long time now  gives the sailing-inspired gear a whole new life.

Yachty was the face of Nauticas new line for Urban Outfitters in November, and the company recently tapped the 19-year-old trendsetter for its new lookbook, which you can see here. It turns out that Nautica inspired Yachtys decision to give his brand such a maritime focus in the first place. Now that hes an official creative designer, Yachty will help Nautica develop upcoming collections as well as digital media campaigns.

We are excited to be collaborating with Lil Yachty this year, said Karen Murray, president of Nautica in a press release. He is much more than just a music artist. He is a creative soul. His innate passion and affinity for the brand, fabulous taste level and the way he looks in our clothes, make him the perfect partner for the Nautica brand.

It looks like Yachty will be leading the Sailing Team to unchartered waters in 2017. Watch Yachty try on some of Nauticas freshest new threads in the below video.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BO5_a_xgpzT



Lil Yachty
After the short teaser trailer of Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazars Revenge in October, now Disney released a whole new synopsis for the upcoming movie.

Disney obviously has great ambitions for 2017: Not only that the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel and Star Wars: Episode VIII are coming to the big screens this year, but after six years of absence Johnny Depps Captain Jack Sparrow will be back at sea, fighting an army of deadly ghost sailors.

While the US the film is subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales, the British movie was given the name Salazars Revenge  referring to the ghost pirate Captain Salazar, played by Javier Bardem, who will be the most formidable and malicious foe Sparrow has ever faced. The earlier teaser already showed Salazar telling a young man to inform Jack Sparrow that the death is coming for him.

Fans will also likely be surprised by the fact that Jack is not sailing on his Black Pearl, but on the completely different, pitifully small and shabby ship, the Dying Gull.

Along with Depp, the film will see other familiar faces back on the screen, starring Geoffrey Rush as Captain Hector Barbossa and Kevin R. McNally as Joshamee Gibbs. But thanks to the summary also some new characters have been revealed. To fight Captain Salazar, Jack has to form an alliance with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), who is described as brilliant and beautiful, and the headstrong young sailor Henry (Brenton Thwaites).

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This is Disneys full synopsis:

Johnny Depp returns to the big screen as the iconic, swashbuckling anti-hero Jack Sparrow in the all-new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The rip-roaring adventure finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way when deadly ghost sailors, led by the terrifying Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), escape from the Devil's Triangle bent on killing every pirate at seanotably Jack. Jack's only hope of survival lies in the legendary Trident of Poseidon, but to find it he must forge an uneasy alliance with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), a brilliant and beautiful astronomer, and Henry (Brenton Thwaites), a headstrong young sailor in the Royal Navy. At the helm of the Dying Gull, his pitifully small and shabby ship, Captain Jack seeks not only to reverse his recent spate of ill fortune, but to save his very life from the most formidable and malicious foe he has ever faced.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazars Revenge, directed by Joachim Rnning and Espen Sandberg, will hit the cinemas on May 26, 2017.
07:30 (GMT+4) The shooting at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida resulted in a total of 45 people injured, the Broward County Sheriff's Office has announced, Sputnik reported.

The incident occurred near Terminal 2 of the airport on Friday morning. It was earlier reported that a gunman killed five and wounded 13 people. 

"This is a fluid situation. 5 dead. 8 initially injured. 37 others injured after incident. All injured taken to BHMC & Memorial Regional," the sheriffs office said on its official Twitter page.

00:50 (GMT+4) 13 people are reportedly injured. Five individuals have died, according to the sheriff's department in Fort Lauderdale, Sputnik reported.

23:55 (GMT+4) Authorities say five people were killed and eight were wounded after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport, AP reported.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoon's shooting.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities "have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2."

News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. Helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running."

22:46 (GMT+4) Police are on the scene of a mass shooting at the Florida airport where nine people are reportedly injured. Three individuals have died, Sputnik reported.

The suspect is in custody and police have said there was only one shooter. The situation has been locked down by police and uninjured would-be flyers are currently being evacuated.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is on the scene. Fleischer tweeted that "all seems calm now," but about 15 minutes earlier said that "everyone is running."

It remains unknown if the one of the casualties was the gunman.

22:21 (GMT+4) Police are on the scene of a mass shooting at the Florida airport where anywhere between five and nine people are reportedly injured, Sputnik reported.

The suspect is in custody and police have said there was only one shooter.
Veteran Leeds art-rocker Mik Artistic has had quite the life. Born to Irish parents  his father was a one-time member of a Leitrim ceilidh band  the man also known as Michael Gallagher had his creative passion ignited after seeing a Sex Pistols gig whilst a student at Bradford Art College. After drifting for a few years, he eventually became a celebrated local caricaturist in  wait for it  Longford, before returning to the UK.

In more recent years, Mik performed as a stand-up comic  even coming second to Peter Kay in the So Youre Think Youre Funny competition at Edinburgh  before turning to music. In that capacity, he has fronted Mik Artistiks Ego Trip, whose surreal and often very funny compositions have won approval from the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Clash legend Mick Jones.

One of the many notable elements of the Artistik story is that while an art student, Mik was a good friend of one Mark Manning, later to find fame fronting ironic hard-rock act Zodiac Mindwarp.
There are also three new tunes to look forward to!

The Cranberries are currently applying the finishing touches to a new unplugged album of hits with three new tunes thrown in for good measure.

Due through BMG in April, the lions share of the recording was done in the Irish Chamber Orchestra building out at the University of Limerick.

Having had extra strings added to it this week in Dublin by Noel Hogan, the as-yet-unnamed collection is down to the last mixes stage, and will be with you well in time for summer!

That's it, next Cranberries album recorded. Last few mixes this weekend & it's ready. #thecranberries pic.twitter.com/ZYV3LUyvVZ  Noel Hogan (@hogannoel3) January 5, 2017
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Houston petrochemical giant LyondellBasell Industries, after months of seeking a buyer, is taking its Houston Refinery off the block after weighing potential offers, the company said Thursday.

LyondellBasell reportedly shopped the Houston area's fourth-largest refinery to energy companies that included Valero Energy, the San Antonio refiner, Suncor, a Canadian oil and gas company, and Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, which denied bidding. LyondellBasell would not say specifically why it pulled the plant off the market, but analysts said the chemical maker probably could not get the price it was seeking and that the value of the refinery is increasing as rising gasoline prices boost profit margins.

LyondellBasell spokesman Michael Waldron said the company sees "tremendous value" in the refinery, although an eventual sale in the future is still possible.

"Retaining the refinery was always a very real option for us," Waldron said.

The strongest argument for keeping the refinery may have come from the International Maritime Organization, an arm of the United Nations that regulates global shipping. The organization recently ruled that vessels must burn cleaner fuels by 2020, which will increase the demand for diesel, which has fewer pollutants than the heavy fuels that ocean-going ships now burn.

Gulf Coast refineries that can produce a lot of diesel - like LyondellBasell's - will sell the fuel at higher profits because of the increased demand, IHS Energy Vice President Stephen Jones said.

"It's tremendous for them," Jones said, referring to the Houston Refinery. "The margins for everyone that has that capability will go up."

LyondellBasell has considered selling the Houston Refinery since at least 2015. Weakening profit margins following the plunge in gasoline prices and the facility's odd place as the only refinery in LyondellBasell's global portfolio of chemical and plastics plants contributed to decision to put it up for sale.

Profit margins, however, are expected to improve as soon as 2017 with rising gasoline prices and the potential for the incoming Trump administration to loosen regulatory and environmental standards, according to analysts. Still, proposals to raise tariffs and other taxes on imports could hurt refiners, which continue to import much of their crude oil.

The Houston Refinery can process up to 268,000 barrels of crude oil a day into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and other products. The refinery is on 700 acres near the Houston and Pasadena city limits.

Lyondell took ownership of the refinery through a joint venture with Citgo Petroleum in 1993. After considering selling the refinery, Lyondell bought out Citgo's minority stake for more than $2 billion in 2006.

In 2015, there were strikes at the Houston Refinery and several other refineries as part of a larger labor action by the United Steelworkers. In April, a large fire broke out at the Houston Refinery in a coker unit, but no injuries were reported.

LyondellBasell is focusing on petrochemical growth in the Houston area. The company recently said it would build a $700 million plastics plant, creating nearly 1,000 construction jobs and providing another boost to the region's booming petrochemical industry.

Construction of the plant, to be at the company's La Porte complex, will begin early this year as part of LyondellBasell's $4 billion expansion in Texas. The plant, scheduled to be completed in 2019, will produce 1.1 billion pounds a year of polyethylene, which is used to make stronger and lighter plastics.

The company recently completed expansions of plants in La Porte and Channelview, which produce ethylene, a primary building block of plastics derived from natural gas. That ethylene, in turn, will be fed to Lyondell's new plant to make polyethylene.

LyondellBasell also is moving ahead with plans to build its biggest project ever, a plant in Channelview to produce 900 million pounds of propylene oxide, as well as 2 billion pounds of tertiary butyl alcohol and its derivatives annually. Propylene oxide is a chemical used to make everything from antifreeze to cosmetics. The tertiary butyl alcohol is a byproduct used as a solvent to make chemicals and gasoline additives.

A final decision on whether to move ahead with that plant won't come until later this year.
DETROIT - President-elect Donald Trump has trained his sights on Toyota in his latest effort to badger a company into building its products in the U.S. rather than Mexico.

Trump tweeted Thursday that if the Japanese automaker goes ahead with plans to build the Corolla in a new factory in Mexico instead of the U.S., it faces a "big border tax" when it ships the cars north.

The threat echoed those targeted at Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Trump has repeatedly threatened Ford with a 35 percent tax on small cars made in Mexico, and this week he called out GM for importing cars from south of the border.

Nearly all automakers build small cars in Mexico to take advantage of lower wages. Consumers generally pay lower prices for small cars, making it difficult to cover higher labor costs in the U.S.

Trump's tweet incorrectly stated the location of Toyota's new Mexican plant - it's Guanajuato, not Baja - but he's correct in saying that Toyota has plans to build the Corolla in Mexico. The automaker announced the new factory in April 2015, saying it will create 2,000 jobs.

Corolla production is to start in 2019 with a new model and would be moved from a factory in Cambridge, Ontario. Toyota also would keep building Corollas at a U.S. factory in Blue Springs, Miss. The Ontario plant will build more higher-priced midsize vehicles.

Toyota Motor Corp. didn't directly respond to Trump's tax threat but said in a statement that production and employment in the U.S. will not decrease due to the Guanajuato plant. Toyota said it has invested over $21.9 billion in its U.S. operations, including 10 manufacturing facilities, 1,500 dealerships and 136,000 employees.

"Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry," the Japanese company's statement said.
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Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to become secretary of state, disclosed personal wealth of as much as $400 million, including a Texas cattle and horse ranch, ahead of Senate confirmation hearings expected next week.

Tillerson, who met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and others this week, promised to sell and restructure assets and resign from outside organizations that might pose a conflict.

The newly retired Exxon Mobil CEO's federal financial disclosure filing shows that he directly holds stock in his former employer worth more than $50 million that he has pledged to sell within 90 days if he is confirmed as the country's top diplomat.

Tillerson has separately reached a $180 million retirement agreement with Exxon Mobil involving additional stock that would be placed in trust.

He also pledged to recuse himself from any government decisions involving Exxon Mobil for a year unless he is specifically authorized to participate.

The State Department sometimes helps energy companies as they seek resources, markets and contacts around the world, and it advises many large corporations.

During the decade that Tillerson led Exxon Mobil, the State Department supported some of the oil giant's deals and opposed others, most notably a 2011 agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq. That deal, which took U.S. officials by surprise, directly contradicted the U.S. goal of a federal oil deal that would benefit Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

The listing of Tillerson's stock and bond holdings shows that he invested in competing energy companies including Total and Royal Dutch Shell while running Exxon Mobil. His portfolio includes American and international businesses ranging from Wal-Mart and Walt Disney to Novartis, Sony and Yum China Holdings, which franchises KFC and other fast-food chains in China.

Federal disclosure requirements call for the value of individual holdings or proceeds to be given as a range, so it is not possible to pinpoint Tillerson's net worth.

Tillerson said he has already resigned from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, and would resign from the Boy Scouts of America, the board of Ford's Theater and other organizations. He pledged to remove himself from business decisions surrounding the ranch in Bartonville, although he would continue to receive passive income from it.

"I am committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct for government officials," Tillerson wrote in an accompanying letter to a State Department ethics lawyer.

"If confirmed as secretary of state, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest directly and predictably affected by the matter," Tillerson wrote.

The financial disclosure material was sent to the Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday. Senate Democrats say they still want to see Tillerson's tax returns before holding what Republicans have said could be a two-day hearing Jan. 11-12.

Like Trump, Tillerson has refused to provide Congress with his tax returns, promising only "tax return information" upon request, and he has complex business interests from which he must disentangle himself to hold public office.

Tillerson's energy-related work in Russia and his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to dominate his confirmation session.
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And the Heavenly Father said, "Let there be f-bombs."

And AIDS jokes. And toilet jokes. And sex jokes.

"The Book of Mormon" takes a fire and brimstone approach to much of its subject matter, leaving nothing unscorched. It's a "South Park"-seque skewering of organized religion, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, via showtunes.

But the show, playing through Jan. 15 at Broadway at the Hobby Center, also has bigger things to say about working together and believing in something bigger than yourself. Beyond the four-letter words, it has a surprisingly sweet nature and a big heart.

The winding story follows the charismatic, cocky Elder Price (Gabe Gibbs) and the bumbling Elder Cunningham (Conner Pierson), who are paired together on a missionary trip to Uganda. Price is a star pupil at the missionary training center who had hopes of being sent to Orlando. Cunningham is the exact opposite, an insecure fop with a penchat for stretching the truth.

Price's hopes of doing something "incredible" with his life are challenged upon arrival in the small African village, which has been ravaged by war and disease. The pair shacks up with a group of missionaries who have been unable to convert any of the villagers, most of whom are preoccupied with mere survival. Cunningham is just happy to be bunking with his best friend.

'The Book of Mormon' When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Jan. 12; 8 p.m. Friday and Jan. 13; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Jan. 14; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; 2 p.m. Jan. 15 Where: Broadway at The Hobby Center, 800 Bagby Tickets: $50-$165; 800-952-6560 or houston.broadway.com See More Collapse

BEYOND THE FART JOKES: Actor says 'Mormon' has a 'special heart'

They eventually find an ally in Nabulungi (Bryce Charles), the village chief's daughter, who dreams of escaping to a paradise known as "Sal Tlay Ka Siti"  Salt Lake City. Before salvation, however, they must deal with a murderous warlord and challenges to their faith.

"The Book of Mormon" gets its filthy, forceful thrust from creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone ("South Park") and Robert Lopez ("Avenue Q"). If something seems offensive, they push it even further. Every sweet exchange and love song goes sarcastic and silly. Literal toilet humor abounds.

Mormons are presented as Stepford guys in white shirts and black ties, well-meaning but clueless goofs incapable of dealing with real feeling and issues. It's a point that's hilariously made during "Turn it Off"  "Like a light switch/Just go flick/It's our nifty little Mormon trick."

The show also skewers traditional musical devices, from tap dance interludes to yearning power ballads. It pokes fun at "Annie," "Legally Blonde" and "Grease" but saves most if its vitriol for "The Lion King," which is lampooned mercilessly throughout both acts.

Pierson steals almost every scene he's in as Elder Cummingham, who becomes an unlikely leader to the impoverished villagers. He's like a hybrid of Jack Black and Jonah Hill. He creates an alternately hilarious and heartfelt character and makes use of every bit of his abilities, from phsyical comedy to vocal inflections. He's frequently riveting to watch.

Charles has a difficult job as Nabulungi, who is meant to resonate as a real character but also lampoon a well-worn female archetype in musicals. She does a wonderfully subtle job, playing it for laughs while still creating a genuinely likable character.

Gibbs plays the straight man to much of the silliness as Elder Price, whose faith is tested when he realizes he isn't a superhero. He's surrounded by a consistently terrific and clever supporting cast.

If you can handle the frequent four-letter banter, "The Book of Mormon" will make a believer out of you.
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We're almost a week into the new year. How are those resolutions going?

If you're still fumbling around for 2017 goals, here are two worthy ideas:

1. Read more books.

2. Get to know your city better.

We've come up with an easy way to do both at once. Behold, the Houston Reading Challenge.

Commit to read 12 books this year that will help you understand Houston - its past, as a Texas oil-boom town, and its present, as a sprawling, diverse city with growing pains.

Here's the list. Start reading your way around Houston. If you read one book a month, by 2018, you'll know this city and the surrounding area better - and, as much as any of us can, you'll understand it.

'Isaac's Storm' by Erik Larson (1999)

Larson's book tells the story of the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston. Along the way, he explains how that storm opened the door for Houston to eclipse its rival city and become the giant metropolis it is today.

'Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism, and the Common Good' by Steven Fenberg (2011)

Fenberg's biography tells the story of one of Houston's most influential citizens. Jones believed that he would succeed only if his city and country did, and he helped rebuild America after the Depression "with his eye on the bottom line and on the common good."

'Blood and Money' by Tommy Thompson (1976)

In this true-crime story recounting the mysterious death of a Houston socialite, Thompson soundly captures the spirit of midcentury Houston, with its booming oil industry and startling wealth, where new buildings popped up like mushrooms and the city doubled in size. It may be the quintessential Houston story of the 20th century.

'The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story' by Lily Koppel (2013)

When they moved to Clear Lake in the early 1960s, the Mercury Seven and their families helped turn Houston into Space City. These astronauts captured the imagination of 20th-century America, and their families were thrust into the spotlight. Koppel peeks into the private lives of the seven astronauts' wives, who were, for a moment, "Houston's most exclusive women's club."

'Terms of Endearment'by Larry McMurtry (1975)

McMurtry's work must be on any list of Houston books. A good portion of his fiction is set in Houston, but "Terms of Endearment" is the one you're most likely to read. This mother-daughter drama is set in the Bayou City, "a town where anything goes."

'Sacred Modern: Faith, Activism, and Aesthetics in the Menil Collection' by Pamela G. Smart (2010)

Outsiders don't know this, but Houston is an art city. And Smart's book explains why a big part of that is due to the vision, aesthetic and art collection of Dominique and John de Menil, who helped lend 20th-century Houston some polish and beauty.

'Pleasantville' by Attica Locke (2015)

Locke, a Houston native, is a writer and producer of the Fox show "Empire." She set her most recent novel - a political thriller set in the mid-'90s - in Pleasantville, an inside-the-Loop neighborhood built after World War II for upwardly mobile African-Americans.

'Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron' by Mimi Swartz, with Sherron Watkins (2003)

Enron rose fast, flew high and fell hard, and the energy company's 2001 collapse gave Houston a black eye. Writer Swartz, with help from company whistleblower Watkins, examines the greed and arrogance (not to mention the scheming) that led to the company's ruin. She also offers a glimpse of wealthy, white-collar life in Houston, a city that "always seemed to embrace and then exaggerate American enthusiasms - capitalism, free markets, free will"

'Friendswood' by Rene Steinke (2014)

Author Steinke grew up in Friendswood, and this novel is based on the true story of a petrochemical leak in the Southbend subdivision, which was finally razed several decades after the waste started surfacing in yards and residents reported miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and more. Steinke's novel starts in 2007, when a local developer starts selling houses on the land again.

'Towelhead' by Alicia Erian (2005)

At the beginning of the first Gulf War, a Lebanese-American teen comes to Houston to live with her NASA-employed dad. She has to confront the racism of her classmates along with the confusion of growing up.

'Untameable City'edited by Sandi Stromberg (2015)

In this anthology, 83 Houston poets offer observant, sometimes startling observations about the city's traffic, grackles, art cars, floods and potholes. Any anthology about Houston should include a poem about a hurricane, a lament about a long commute and a description of a building implosion. And this one does.

'The Houstorian Dictionary: An Insider's Index to Houston' (2015)by James Glassman

It's not just for Newstonians - even longtime Houstonians can learn something from this dictionary, a history lesson disguised as a reference book. Glassman, who has devoted himself to telling the story of Houston, tells it here one entry at a time, from David Adickes to Lynn Wyatt. If you don't know those names, you need this book.
At one point "The Summoning" was just another movie idea about a haunting with a screenwriter, Alberto G. Rodriguez, and some producers involved. Leila Almas was a young actor attending a story development meeting for the film, and she shared her memories of childhood in Sugar Land. Soon after Almas was cast in a lead role, Rodriguez had been hired to direct, and the film's setting and shoot were moved from Los Angeles to the city in Fort Bend County just west of Houston.

"I'd heard all their ideas, but it really just started with me sharing memories about where I grew up, this beautiful town with a long history," says Almas. "They became more and more intrigued and ended up going that route. And I'm glad it happened. Shooting there made it more authentic."

"The Summoning" arrives via video-on-demand on Jan. 10. It follows a law student (Almas) who investigates the mysterious disappearance of a classmate assisted by Eric Roberts' police chief.

At Almas' urging, the film tapped Texas for a sizable portion of its cast and grew, including a location manager. "The Summoning" became the only movie shot inside the historic Imperial Sugar Company refinery.

"I used to drive by it for so many years," Almas says. "I remember wondering what it looked like inside. We ended up shooting several scenes in different buildings there. It was interesting to be inside, and it was also eerie. There's just something that feels ancient about it."

Almas says cast members also felt "something creepy" during their shoot at the old police station in Richmond, which according to lore is haunted.

She relished the opportunity to return to Sugar Land after several years working in Los Angeles. Almas was born in Houston, and the family moved to Cincinnati when she was an infant. They lived there 10 years before relocating to Sugar Land, where Almas started playing piano and violin, took dance lessons and moved toward theater.

She was mentored by Ron Jones, the great theater director and instructor whose work in Houston has spanned more than 40 years.

"I owe everything to him," she says. "He taught me, cast me in plays, recommended me for other plays. That was the start of the shift toward working professionally."

She "flocked to Los Angeles as actors do," and more recently moved to New York for its theater scene. She and her husband recently co-wrote a comedic play and are hoping to stage it this year. She also has a film project in the works that she can't discuss yet.

"I hope I can keep working both on stage and in film," Almas says. "I like interacting with the live audience. But I also like working in a naturalistic style that can translate to movies. Movies make people feel a certain way, too. You take them on a journey with you for an hour and a half. It's all really just about telling stories."
Planned repairs at the Pasadena Refining System plant are expected to cause the facility to release about 15 tons of fine particle pollution, contamination that can settle deep into the lungs and cause serious health problems.

The release was supposed to begin Wednesday and continue through Friday, according to a report submitted by the refinery to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

During that time, the facility expects to release 20,000 pounds of fine particulate matter from one of its stacks, an amount of pollution that exceeds the level the plant is permitted to release in one year. Another stack is expected to release 10,000 pounds of the pollutant over the same time period.

Particulate matter is a mix of microscopic particles and liquid droplets, including acids, organic compounds, metals, soot and dust. According to federal environmental regulators, particulate matter exposure is linked to a range of serious health problems, increased emergency room and hospital visits, decreased life expectancy and aggravated asthma.

"This is a major fine particulate release," said Neil Carman, clean air program director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "One could argue there's no safe level."

A spokesman for the TCEQ said the amount of pollution identified in the report is an estimate, not an actual number. That won't be verified for several days, he said.

Officials with Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that owns the refinery, did not immediately return a phone call seeking more information.

Last month, Environment Texas and the Sierra Club notified the plant of their intent to sue in federal court under the Clean Air Act on allegations the refinery spewed out illegal levels of particulate matter, by the hour, over the course of five years.

"I am not surprised at all (by the expected release)," Carman said. "This is a very old refinery, and the owners need to spend a lot of money to upgrade it."

In July, a lightning strike caused the plant to emit 21 tons of potentially dangerous pollutants into the air and a shelter-in-place order was called for the Galena Park area. In March, a fire and explosion injured one worker. In 2011, the refinery had another fire.
Ray Schultz, Assistant Chief of Police at Memorial Villages Police Department has been named to succeed Chief J.D. Sanders who is retiring in March.

The MVPD Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the appointment they said in a statement released Tuesday.

"We are certain that Ray Schultz is prepared for these new responsibilities and is the absolute right choice to lead the MVPD into the future," said Chairman of the Board Jay F. Smyre.

According to the statement, Sanders was highly involved in the discussions regarding Schultz's appointment.

In January 2015, Schultz, 56, joined MVPD as Assistant Chief of Police.

Once on staff, he says he was pleasantly surprised at the level of community engagement in the Memorial Villages with the police department, and their support for the officers.

"I've travelled around the world and talked about law enforcement  and its been a tough time for law enforcement the last few years  it's of the strongest I've seen in the country," Schultz said Thursday. "People that work and live in the Villages are second to none."

The 33-year police veteran speaks from experience.

Before joining Memorial Villages, he spent eight years as Chief of Police with Albuquerque Police Department, with a stint in Scottsdale, AZ in between, before he decided to retire. He says the opportunity with Memorial Villages, and the fact that retirement didn't suit him quite yet, led to his decision to move to Texas with his wife Connie, and to accept the position here.

Without intentions of becoming another Chief, said Schultz, the community and the willingness of the police department to embrace new technologies in law enforcement (one of passions) convinced him that maybe another leadership role was in the cards for him.

"We're rated one of the safest communities in Texas, and technology is a big part of that; New bigger and better uses help to make this an even safer community," he said.

Some of those bigger and better uses includes encouraging more homeowners and Homeowners' Associations to install closed circuit TV systems on their homes or locations throughout the neighborhood that would be pushed to the police station if there is a call, so that responding officers will have accurate images before they even arrive on the scene.

"As we respond, we can track a vehicle live, we can be looking for the offender. It would help improve our efficiency and be safer for officers and the community," said Schultz.

Other methods (some already in place, some on Schultz's agenda) are beefing up the computing power in officers' police cars so they don't have to come back to the station to access information, and using the same portable technologies at the scene of a crime with smart-phones or tablets.

Schultz said with a younger workforce coming into their own within the last decade, in many different police departments including MVPD, there's an expectation that technology will be taken advantage of. And that willingness to institute new procedures is one the exciting aspects of his new role.

Read about Asst. Chief Schultz: Schultz hired at MVPD

Outgoing Chief Sanders was no Luddite. He oversaw the implementation of technologically updated police cars when Schultz came on board, but after 34 years of law enforcement he is retiring to Tennessee, where he is originally from. He says he would like to spend more time with his family.

"It has been the most wonderful and unique privilege to serve as Chief of Police for the Memorial Village Police Department over the past three years. This transition comes at a good time for MVPD. Our goal of maintaining and enhancing the community's safe environment and leading a strong and proactive Police Department is well under way," said Sanders.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has condemned Thursday's terror attack in western Turkish city of Izmir which left two martyred and five others wounded, Anadolu reported.

In a written statement issued late Thursday, Steinmeier said: "Germany is on Turkey's side in the fight against terrorism, no matter if it has an Islamist, ethnic or ideological motive."

Steinmeier praised Turkish security forces' success in preventing a worse scenario. "We mourn for the victims with their families and relatives and are worried about the wounded ones."

British Ambassador to Turkey Richard Moore condemned the attack on Twitter, saying: "I pay tribute to heroism of Turkish police in preventing more deaths and injuries."

Australian Ambassador to Turkey James Larsen posted: "I condemn today's act of terror in Izmir. Condolences to victims and their families. Australia stands with Turkey at this difficult time."

The US Embassy in Ankara also published a Twitter message condemning the attack.

A police officer and an officer of the court were martyred in the attack near the main courthouse in Turkey's Aegean coastal city of Izmir.

Izmir Governor Erol Ayyildiz said the PKK terrorist organization was thought to be behind the attack, according to initial findings.

Ayyildiz said that an armed clash took place between the terrorists and the security forces when police officers wanted to stop a suspicious vehicle at the checkpoint in front of the courthouse.

He said two terrorists were killed and a third one is at large, adding that one more suspicious car believed to belong to the terrorists has been defused by the police.

He said the police have seized two Kalashnikovs and 8 hand grenades.

Two suspects were detained in Izmir in connection with the terror blast, according to the security sources who asked not to be named due to restrictions on talking to the media.
Imagine you're a nonprofit leader confronting the problems of an aging suburban community.

You have little authority and no dedicated source of funds, and you must navigate the politics and personalities of 85 independently elected volunteer boards to get anything done.

Barbara Thomason works under these conditions every day. Remarkably, though, she has not run screaming from her office in a nondescript building in northwest Harris County. Instead, after 11 years as president of the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce, she is trying one strategy after another to bring sustainable development to a community of some 500,000 residents that lacks a distinct identity or a cohesive leadership structure.

When I talked about Thomason's work with County Commissioner Jack Cagle, who represents the area, he started to compare her to Sisyphus, the king in Greek mythology who endlessly pushed a stone up a hill only to see it roll back down. Then Cagle switched to a more positive historical analogy: "She's more like Edison, who continued to try different types of filaments before he found the right one to make the light bulb work."

Thomason's flickering light bulb is a big chunk of unincorporated Harris County widely known as "the FM 1960 area." Its neighbors include municipalities - Houston, Tomball - and The Woodlands, which has a unique township governance structure. These places have financing tools that in Thomason's community are dispersed among county government and 85 special-purpose districts encompassing 15 ZIP codes.

The main commercial corridor, recently rebranded as Cypress Creek Parkway but still known to most as FM 1960, has become an unwilling emblem of the problems associated with unplanned suburban growth. Countless trees have been lost to development; a profusion of signs creates ugly visual clutter along the roadway; and several large shopping centers are almost completely vacant. As the Chronicle's Matthew Tresaugue reported in 2015, the FM 1960 corridor between Kuykendahl and Ella Boulevard lost 3 percent of its population in the previous decade, even as the county overall grew by 20 percent.

A new initiative known as "Grow Northwest" seeks to brand the area as "the Cypress Creek community," a reference to the stream that winds through that part of the county. The chamber has patched together a plan to generate funds for redevelopment projects - the kind of pump-priming that other communities support with funded organizations. (Tomball's economic development agency, for example, has a dedicated half-cent sales tax.)

Relies on contributions

Funds for the Cypress Creek initiative are drawn from two programs that have generated about $700,000 toward a $2 million goal: voluntary contributions from area businesses, and a checkoff box on water bills enabling customers to make small contributions - Thomason suggested $2 monthly - to the effort.

The state Legislature authorized the checkoff box option in 2015, but so far only a few utility district boards have agreed to participate.

The chamber had previously tried to create a management district, which would levy assessments on commercial property owners to fund improvements. This also would have required legislative approval, and support from major business owners was not sufficient to persuade legislators to move forward, Thomason said.

Despite these setbacks, some impressive projects have been completed through grass-roots efforts.

'Shirt-sleeve efforts'

Barbara Schlattman, an interior designer who has lived in the area since 1973, led a campaign to create and maintain landscaping on raised medians that the state built along FM 1960 west of Interstate 45. Schlattman made more than 150 speeches to church groups and subdivision boards and, assisted by other residents, raised more than $500,000.

Similar "shirt-sleeve efforts," as the chamber describes them in a brochure about the Grow Northwest project, led to the transformation of a former county library building into the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts. Schlattman is working on a campaign to restore trees to the community.

These volunteer efforts are impressive, and Thomason has been creative and persistent in cobbling together funding to support redevelopment that the community desperately needs. But voluntary contributions are inherently tenuous. And no branding campaign can compensate for the fragmented governance structure that imperils the future of this large, regionally important community.
If you're acquainted with any Texans older than 90, you might ask them whether they're experiencing a bit of political deja vu as Inauguration Day in D.C. approaches. Perhaps they'll recall a Lone Star version nearly eight decades ago that's striking in its similarity.

The stocky fellow with his left hand on the Bible and his right hand raised was a Fort Worth businessman by way of Kansas, a radio huckster whose schmaltzy sermonettes and down-home country music captured the hearts - and votes - of hundreds of thousands of rural and small-town Texans. He had never run for public office, had never even voted, and yet there he was on Jan. 17, 1939, being sworn in at Memorial Stadium in Austin as the state's 34th governor. A rapturous crowd packed the stadium, a crowd too large for the Capitol grounds, where inaugural ceremonies traditionally are held. Texas progressives looked on in disgust and disbelief. They could not fathom the appeal of W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel.

Wilbert Lee O'Daniel was born in Ohio in 1890, grew up on a Kansas farm and moved to Texas in 1925 for a job as general manager and then president of Burrus Flour Mills in Fort Worth. In 1931, he began hosting a 15-minute weekday radio show at 12:30 p.m that featured fiddler Bob Wills and his band, the Light Crust Doughboys, named for Light Crust Flour. O'Daniel cared not a fig for country music, but when the part-time barber's distinctive "Texas Swing" began to catch on and sales of Burrus flour skyrocketed, he was happy to whistle along.

Homespun homilies

The smooth-voiced salesman with slicked-back hair became "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy." All across Texas, farmers were traipsing in from their fields right after noon and housewives were ironing or folding clothes near the radio, so they could listen to Wills ("Aaah-ha!") and his Doughboys and to Pappy's own musical compositions, including "Beautiful Texas" and "The Boy Who Never Gets Too Big to Comb His Mother's Hair." They nodded in agreement as the friendly voice delivered homespun homilies about, say, an aged mother, an Alamo martyr or an old horse. They heeded his cracker-barrel notions about politics, about which he knew nothing.

Dallas insurance magnate Carr P. Collins Sr. got O'Daniel interested in public office. Collins owned the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells, as well as the powerful clear-channel radio station XEAW, across the Rio Grande in Reynosa. About the time the Fort Worth flour man was getting his broadcast start, Collins was launching a coast-to-coast radio campaign for Crazy Water Crystals, dehydrated minerals from the weird-smelling springs that drew health-seekers to Mineral Wells. Dissolved in water, the crystals acted as a laxative and allegedly contained a number of miraculous healing properties (until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared otherwise). Collins told O'Daniel that running for governor would sell a lot of flour.

In April 1938, Pappy shared with his radio audience a letter he claimed was from a blind man urging him to jump into the governor's race. He asked his listeners to send him a penny postcard and let him know whether they agreed. On a subsequent show, he announced the results: 54,499 said go for it; three said the job was beneath him.

O'Daniel was one of 13 candidates eager to succeed Gov. Jimmy Allred, an ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In addition to O'Daniel, they included Col. Ernest O. Thompson, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission and former Amarillo mayor, as well as Jim "Pa" Ferguson, attempting a post-impeachment comeback. Thompson, capable and experienced, was the favorite.

Crisscrossing the state in a white bus, O'Daniel railed against "the professional politicians." With his wife, Merle, and their grown children on board, he and his hillbilly band drew massive crowds in towns large and small. He scribbled a song to showcase his campaign centerpiece, a $30-a-month pension for all Texans over 65. The author of "Thirty Bucks for Momma" polled more than 573,000 primary votes, Thompson 231,000. Even with 13 candidates in the field, he avoided a runoff with 51.4 percent of the vote.

Abandoned his promises

As governor, O'Daniel abandoned his populist promises like weevil-ridden flour. He unveiled a tax plan, secretly written by his oil-industry allies and the state's largest corporations, that amounted to a burdensome sales tax on the rural and working-class Texans who idolized him. He tried to appoint to key positions either reactionaries or men with no experience in the areas they were to oversee. His pension plan fizzled, mainly because it would cost four times the entire state budget.

When he announced for re-election in 1940, he declared that his platform was the Ten Commandments, his motto the Golden Rule. This time he campaigned in a $15,000 truck with a papier-mache capitol dome bathed in floodlights and a platform that hydraulically lifted O'Daniel skyward. Crowds across Texas were mesmerized.

He drew five opponents in the Democratic primary, including Thompson and Jerry "Snuffy" Sadler, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission. "I thought by now the public saw through the Light Crust flour salesman, knowing him as nothing more than a radio personality with a smooth voice and some big businessmen behind him," Sadler wrote in his memoir, "Politics, Fat-Cats & Honey-Money Boys."

Members of O'Daniel's band, including guitarist Kermit Whalen (aka "Horace the Lovebird"), abandoned the governor for Sadler, but that was about the only good news for O'Daniel opponents. He drew 645,000 votes to Thompson's 256,000. Sadler finished fifth out of six.

In the spring of 1941, U.S. Sen. Morris Sheppard died after 38 years in office. O'Daniel coveted the seat for himself but was concerned about how it would look to jaunt off to Washington just a few months after being re-elected governor. Instead, he tapped 87-year-old Andrew Jackson Houston, the only surviving child of the hero of San Jacinto. The frail old man entered the Senate as the second-oldest member in history and conveniently expired two days before the special election.

O'Daniel jumped in, one of 27 candidates in a field that included an ambitious, relatively unknown congressman named Lyndon Johnson. The 32-year-old Hill Country lawmaker outspent O'Daniel 6 to 1 and by midnight on Election Day led the governor by some 3,000 votes - a margin that included 11,000 more votes from Bexar County than there were registered voters. Four days later, after suspiciously late boxes from East Texas were tallied, Johnson found himself a loser by 1,311 votes.

White House meeting

FDR summoned Sadler to Washington to explain what had happened. In his memoir, the future state land commissioner (and father of longtime Houston restaurateur Bill Sadler) recalled the White House meeting. "Well, Snuffy," the president told him, "we're going to impeach O'Daniel, and then we're going to send that impeached son-of-a-bitch to the penitentiary."

Sadler mentioned the unregistered voters in San Antonio. "Roosevelt was startled for a moment," he recalled. " 'Well, Snuffy,' he said, 'I guess we're not going to impeach the son-of-a-bitch after all.' "
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston's second-largest employer, is eliminating about 1,000 jobs as the elite medical institution continues to wrestle with losses that exceeded $100 million last quarter.

The center's leaders announced Thursday that 800 to 900 employees will be laid off and another 100 to 200 jobs will be reduced through retirement and attrition.

The cuts, 5 percent of MD Anderson's 20,000 employees, had been feared since the center confirmed last month that it suffered an operating loss of $111 million from September through November, the first quarter of its 2017 fiscal year. A cost-containment plan that began in the fall stopped short of layoffs, but officials warned that staff cuts may be needed.

The combined cuts will save the cancer hospital about $120 million. None of the job losses involve doctors or clinical-care nurses.

"We must act now to protect our ability to continue investing in our mission to end cancer," Dr. Ron DePinho, president of MD Anderson, said during a news conference. "Great improvements have been made through our effort to make sustainable changes without impacting treasured colleagues, but more must be done in our overall strategy to align expenses to revenues."

DePinho called "this is a sobering day for us all" because the globally acclaimed institution is "built on the excellence of our people." He pledged that "patient care remains our No. 1 priority."

The financial woes plaguing MD Anderson, while not unique, are much deeper than other medical schools and teaching hospitals, said Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"It's dramatic; it's a lot," Orlowski said of MD Anderson's job cuts. "There are (institutions that) are losing money or right on the margin, but overall, 2016 was a very good year."

Orlowski expressed concern by the sheer volume of job cuts, despite MD Anderson's assurances. "Caring for patients is a team sport," she said.

MD Anderson's financial health had been deteriorating for several months. During its 2016 fiscal year, the center recorded operating losses of $266 million, a dramatic decline from a $157 million gain the previous year.

DePinho and Dan Fontaine, the chief financial officer, attributed much of MD Anderson's financial difficulties to the rocky implementation of an electronic health record system in 2016. The system is expected to lead to more efficient patient care, but in the short term it forced physicians and other staff to spend significant time learning the ropes - and less time with patients.

The center is about 95 percent of the way toward previous productivity levels, Fontaine said, and should exceed them soon thanks to the new health records system.

"We are seeing a recovery trend, but more time is needed," DePinho said.

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said a steep learning curve with computerized health records systems is common and that most institutions' productivity has suffered temporarily before they righted themselves.

MD Anderson is not alone with financial struggles, DePinho said, citing recent news reports that other U.S. hospitals and health care systems had suffered operating losses and planned layoffs. They included Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a 396-bed academic hospital in New Hampshire that had a $39 million operating loss in 2016; and Greenville Health Care System in South Carolina that last year announced plans to eliminate more than 400 positions after a $16 million quarterly shortfall.

However, other prestigious cancer centers appear to be doing fine. For example, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City reported an operating margin of $164 million in the first three quarters of 2016 and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston closed the 2016 fiscal year with an unaudited operating income of $29.7 million.

MD Anderson's layoffs and other cutbacks were recommended Wednesday by MD Anderson's shared governance committee and immediately accepted by senior leadership. The layoffs started Thursday and should mostly finish next week, officials said. Employees laid off will receive severance but officials would not disclose the financial details.

Fontaine would not say how high in the administration the job cuts would go. The cancer center's pay scale has come under fire internally because some of DePinho's top lieutenants make in excess of $1 million a year. DePinho makes more than $2 million, including an annual performance bonus of $208,000. He donated the bonus, paid Monday, to MD Anderson this week, a spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, MD Anderson's operational losses declined from roughly $50 million in both September and October to $9 million in November, after which officials had said they would be eyeing December figures to determine if staff cuts would be needed. Fontaine said Thursday that the books only closed a few days ago, too soon to provide specifics on last month's performance, but said that "I feel with a fairly high degree of certainty that our operating income for December will still be negative."

Nevertheless, DePinho said the cancer hospital's long-term financial health is "strong." Because of other revenue streams, such as philanthropy and state funding, MD Anderson still is in the black overall.

The last significant layoffs at the cancer center, roughly 550, occurred in 2009. A number of long-time MD Anderson veterans contacted by the Houston Chronicle could not remember a workforce reduction of the magnitude of Thursday's announcement in the decades before the turn of the century. Still, in the city's ranks of top employers it's right behind Memorial Hermann Health System, with 24,000 employees, and ahead of United Airlines' 15,000 workers.

Despite the unhappy news, DePinho sought to assure prospective patients: "MD Anderson will be here today, tomorrow and long into the future as the premier cancer center in the world."

"In today's health care environment, we must be as efficient as possible while improving quality and patient satisfaction - and investing in our mission," he said. "I can assure you the health and safety of our patients will not be impacted by these changes, and we will continue to provide the world's best cancer care to those counting on us to save their lives."
Houston doesn't want to be stratospherically expensive San Francisco (although that soaring bridge over the bay would be nice). Houston doesn't want to be the emerald isle of Manhattan. It doesn't want to be that capitol city 200 miles west of here, where, increasingly, affordable family housing means Pflugerville or Hutto.

We are who we are - welcoming, open, embracing - in large part because anyone can come here, find a safe and affordable place to live and put down roots. At least, that's how we see ourselves, although evidence for that reputation is flaking away like old paint on a neglected house. As a report last fall from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas pointed out, Houston homeowners are the most cost-burdened in the state, with more than 10 percent in Harris County spending more than 50 percent of their incomes on housing. At the same time, we're struggling to provide housing that's within reach of low-income and middle-class residents. Those townhouse developments sprouting like mushrooms throughout the city - "Starting at $600,000!" the signs read - don't address this community's burgeoning shelter needs.

The Houston teacher, the cop or the store clerk would have come home each evening a few years ago to a $150,000 house in a quiet, safe neighborhood. No more. Those houses have largely disappeared in this city. So have houses for under $200,000. That means first-time homebuyers don't need to be looking in Houston.

Solutions to the housing dilemma are devilishly complex and intertwined, although some policy components are fairly obvious. At the federal level, for example, Housing and Urban Development could provide tax credits to builders willing to invest in affordable housing. President-elect Donald Trump's economic advisers have touted tax credits to help finance new infrastructure development. Why not make the development of affordable housing part of that initiative?

Closer to home, lawmakers headed to Austin in a few days for the 2017 legislative session need to be aware that rising home prices and rents have left a third of all Texas households spending a disproportionate amount of their income on housing, in part because of the Legislature's actions. They need to help stabilize housing costs by requiring a more modest rate of change in taxable appraised residential property values. When the appraised value can increase by as much as 10 percent a year, the inevitable result is volatility affecting both renters and homeowners.

Lawmaker also need to insist on more flexibility at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the agency that offers federal tax incentives to private developers in exchange for a guarantee to keep rents low. And, as we've mentioned before, we'd like to see state Rep. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston; House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, and other lawmakers restrict the near veto power that local government officials have over new low-income developments.

Here at home - there's that word again - we hope to see an affordable housing policy from the mayor's office sometime soon. Meanwhile, we're encouraged that the city's newly appointed director of Housing and Community Development, Tom McCasland, is preparing alternative strategies in case the Trump administration makes it more difficult for cities to meet affordable-housing needs. For example, Trump's plan to slash the corporate tax rate is likely to reduce the incentive for companies to invest in tax credits, one of the primary funding sources for new subsidized housing.

McCasland told the Chronicle recently that he's not abandoning the tax-credit approach, but he also is exploring alternative ways of assisting low-income residents. As McCasland is well aware, affordable housing up and down the spectrum is too important to be left to the mercy of a new administration inherently suspicious of government programs whatever the sphere.

"Home is the nicest word there is," the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder observed long ago. In this new political reality, Houston and its urban counterparts across the nation may have to take the lead in making sure that home is more than just a word.
It is hard to disagree with former national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft's endorsement of the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership: By greatly cutting tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, the 12-member agreement would spur U.S. exports of mechanical and electrical equipment, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals and many other goods.

As Scowcroft's biographer, I find it awkward to disagree with a man for whom I have great respect and with whom I usually agree. But when it comes to eliminating restrictions on agricultural exports and food safety, the Trans-Pacific Partnership raises some concerns.

The Partnership blends nationalism and internationalism in a manner consistent with Scowcroft's view, which is shared by many others, that international agreements can be win-win situations. American commercial, political and security interests are best furthered when other countries agree with the U.S. on economic policy, also seek to prevent or resolve political disputes, and want to join U.S.-led military alliances and wartime coalitions. On many issues, our country's interests are reconcilable with those of other countries. In those circumstances, our interests are best advanced when foreign leaders buy in to American goals - assuming the U.S. makes only minor concessions or the prospective benefits of an agreement outweigh the costs.

But there are problems.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would effectively outsource domestic food inspection: "The exporting Party shall, when available and subject to its law, regulations and policies provide a summary of the risk or safety assessment." That means if an importing government wanted to inspect food, test food safety or impose warnings on unhealthful contents, it could be interpreted as an unnecessary technical barrier to trade. Similarly, label information on the country of origin could be taken as restricting food exports in violation of partnership rules. But because the member countries do not have the same standards on what constitutes safe and healthy food, the agreement would promote a race to the bottom.

Also, the Trans-Pacific Partnership's sanction of the ability of a company to sue national governments under the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process is concerning. The rule states that "a mechanism to provide foreign investors with the right to access an international tribunal if they believe actions taken by a host government breach its investment obligations." This gives for-profit companies pride-of-place. It reverses the norm that the "polluter pays" and puts the burden on governments instead. Likewise, regulations on food additives, animal drugs, pesticides or herbicides, and the products of recombinant DNA technology - GMOs, or transgenic organisms - could be taken by food companies as violating partnership rules.

Furthermore, the "Rapid Response Mechanism" that allows exporting countries to dispute export restrictions so as to guarantee that "imports are carried out without undue delay" and ensure that food inspections are "limited to what is reasonable and necessary, and what is rationally related to the available science" makes it difficult for importing countries, and thus their citizens and legislatures, to challenge the food imports of questionable safety.

Simply put, the Rapid Response Mechanism favors the continuation of unimpeded trade flows over food safety and public health. Yet there are justified concerns about some food exports, such as how farmed fish are raised, the safety of some food ingredients, acceptable levels of the kind and quality of pesticides or herbicides in use, and transgenic plants and animals that may be "generally regarded as safe," notwithstanding limited or mixed scientific evidence or the fact that scientific research is predominantly funded by vested interests, whether directly or indirectly.

And on organic products, the Trans-Pacific Partnership merely exhorts parties to exchange information and establish acceptable standards. "Each Party is encouraged to  exchange information on matters that relate to organic production, certification of organic products" and to "cooperate with other Parties to develop, improve and strengthen international guidelines." Although each party is "encouraged" to explain its regulations, organic standards are self-enforced by the exporting company or government.

I agree with Scowcroft that there is much to admire about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the agreement as it is written disserves the health and safety of the American public and potentially those of other partnering countries. Lawmakers would be wise to address these concerns in any version that does ultimately come across their desks.

Bartholomew Sparrow is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Texas County Health Department is monitoring influenza activity weekly.

As of Jan. 1, there have been 13 positive cases, including six in the past week.

The break down by age

Influenza A (11 total)

 0-1: 1

 2-4: 3

 5-14: 0

 15-24: 4

 25-49: 2

 50-64: 1

 65-up: 0

Influenza B (2 total)

 5-14: 1

 25-49: 1

According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Missouri is reporting regional activity, which means there are outbreaks of flu in at least two but less than half the regions of the state.

Some ways to protect your family, yourself and the community:

Family

 Get your family vaccinated against seasonal flu.

 Establish healthy practices of hand washing and not sharing personal items.

 Stockpile food and medication in case you need to voluntarily isolate or quarantine yourself and your family.

 Make arrangements for child care if schools close and talk to your employer about flexible work schedules.

Yourself

 Get a seasonal flu shot.

 Wash your hands.

 Keep a distance of at least six feet from people who are sick.

 Choose a healthy lifestyle to build your immune system (including get adequate sleep, reduce stress, stop smoking and using tobacco products, stay physically active, choose nutritious foods and drink plenty of water).

Community

 Stay home if you are sick.

 Keep kids home when they have a fever (for at least 24 hours after their fever goes away without the use of medications).

 Cover your cough.

 Wash your hands.
Ankara, Turkey, Jan. 6

By Atilla Caner  Trend:

Few people in Turkey are unaware of the economic, political and military might of Azerbaijan in the region. The surveys carried out in Turkey also testify to this.

Today, the Azerbaijan-Turkey relations are at a high level due to the policy of the presidents of the two countries. However, this does not meet the interests of some countries.

And there are some countries which think that the Azerbaijan-Turkey relations pose a threat. But there is no reason to think so, as Baku and Ankara are the guarantors of security and stability in the region.

Baku and Ankara prove to the world that the common energy and political potential of Turkey and Azerbaijan is aimed at developing the region.

It is worth noting that while some Western allies refused to invest in the Turkish economy, Azerbaijan was one of the countries to invest in it.

To date, Azerbaijan has invested $8 billion in the Turkish economy, of which $6.7 billion account for such projects as Petkim petrochemical complex, Star refinery and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), while the remaining $1.3 billion have been directed to other spheres.

The total volume of Azerbaijani investments in Turkey is planned to be brought to $18-20 billion by 2020.

Thus, thanks to Azerbaijan, Turkey is bringing to life its long-standing desire to become an energy hub in the region.

At a time when almost all the energy projects in Turkey are not progressing so far, Azerbaijans TANAP project is not losing its importance and has become uncontested.

TANAP is not only an indicator of Azerbaijans successful energy policy, but it also aims to meet Europes gas needs.

One can talk for a long time about the prospects of energy and transport projects initiated by Azerbaijan, but not only these projects make Azerbaijan an important ally of Turkey.

Undoubtedly, cooperation is currently one of the regions needs, and here, of course, one cannot do without a major player, Azerbaijan.

There is a number of trilateral cooperation formats in the region, for example, Turkey-Azerbaijan-Georgia, Turkey-Azerbaijan-Iran, Turkey-Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan.

Thanks to the policy of President Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan is a strong and important link in all these formats of cooperation.

Azerbaijan also played an important role in mending the relations between Turkey and Russia, after which Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim expressed his gratitude to Azerbaijan.

Currently, the creation of another trilateral format of cooperation with the participation of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia is under discussion. Some political experts dont rule out that the establishment of this format will have a positive impact on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Turkey, considering the important role of Azerbaijan in the region, also works to create Azerbaijan-Turkey-Kazakhstan trilateral format.

Development of this format proves once again the political power and the importance of Azerbaijan, which strengthens with each passing year.

---

Atilla Caner is Trend Agencys staff journalist
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New guidance handed down from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) could drastically alter the landscape of how companies classify and hire employees. As a result of the new DOL guidance, more independent contractors may actually be defined as employees. The guidance appears to stem from the new business models created from share-and on-demand based technologies (e.g. Uber) that exist outside the traditional workplace. Naturally, this change will have a significant impact on employers. Independent contractors can be beneficial for companies: They don't require employee benefits or payments for payroll taxes and workers compensation, and they aren't eligible for many typical workplace protections such as overtime and minimum wage. However, the DOL argues that more independent contractors take away tax revenue from the government and create an unfair playing field for employers. As a result, the guidance reclassifies many independent contractors as employees. Who is now an Employee? The difference between an employee and an independent contractor has historically been determined by the control test, a long-standing tool used by businesses to ascertain the amount of control the business has over the worker and how the worker does the job. Instead of the control test, the DOL now suggests that employers categorize all workers based on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which defines employment as the ability to "suffer or permit to work....
The New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) forbids employment discrimination on the basis of a number of protected characteristics, such as age, race, creed, color, national origin, gender (including gender identity and sexual harassment), disability, marital status, partnership status, sexual orientation, alienage, and citizenship status. The NYCHRL applies to employers with four or more employees. On January 5, 2016, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation expanding the NYCHRL to add caregiver status as an additional protected category for which employment discrimination is prohibited. The new law goes into effect beginning May 4, 2016, to prohibit employment discrimination against employees caring for a minor child or an individual with a disability. Under the amendment, caregiver is defined as, A person who provides direct and ongoing care for a minor child or care recipient. Care recipient is defined as A person with a disability who: (i) is a covered relative, or a person who resides in the caregivers household; and (ii) relies on the caregiver for medical care or to meet the needs of daily living. Covered relatives under the amendment include children (adopted, biological or foster), spouses, domestic partners, parents, siblings, grandchildren, grandparents, children or parents of the caregivers spouse or domestic partner, or any individuals ...
On August 26, a disgruntled ex-employee for WDBJ-TV in Virginia fatally shot another news reporter and a camera man at point-blank range during a live interview, in part as vengeance for his firing 2 years earlier. He claimed in a 23-page fax he sent to ABC News that his anger had been steadily building over racial discrimination and harassment he said hed experienced. On December 2, a restaurant inspector for San Bernardino County, California left his office, returned with his wife and opened fire on his co-workers, killing 14 and wounding 21. Authorities have found compelling evidence that the shooting was meant as a terror attack inspired, though not directed or carried out by ISIS. These are, by no means the only instances of workplace violence, however. Most of them do not make news headlines. Many of them are not homicides. That, however does not mean that the damage they cause and the threat they post are not serious. I do not begin to claim to have a magic formula that will end workplace violence once and for all. However, few would argue that employers should do nothing. In many instances, employers have a legal obligation to make reasonable efforts to provide a safe workplace. So what can an employer do? Here are some starting points for employers who are serious about addressing the threat of workplace violence: Evaluate What are the policies and procedures you have in place? When did you first implement them and when did you last revie...
China confirms military exercises in the South China Sea. (Photo : Getty Images)

For the first time, China confirmed conducting military exercises by its carrier in the South China Sea.



According to a statement released by the Chinese Defense Ministry, several J-15 fighter jets were on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Liaoning on Monday.



Taiwan's Defense Ministry confirmed days after and said the carrier and five other warships had passed south of Taiwan.



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The Chinese Navy said that the drills were part of a routine open-sea exercise. The Navy said that these could add to tensions between Beijing and Taipei.



In the Philippines, Russia's Pacific Fleet conducted a five-day visit to the country led by Rear Admiral Eduard Mikhailov. The Russian naval leader offered to hold joint military exercises with the Southeast Asian country.



"You can choose to cooperate with the United States of America or to cooperate with Russia," Mikhailov said.



He added: "But from our side, we can help you in every way that you need. We are sure that in the future we'll have exercises with you. Maybe just maneuvering or maybe the use of combat systems and so on."



"We have an experience in fighting these [threats]," Mr. Mikhailov said. "We will share to [sic] our knowledge on these problems, how to solve piracy and terrorism."



Philippine President Duterte stated that the Philippines is welcoming partnerships with China and Russia.



During President Duterte's visit to China, he said, "In this venue, I announce my separation from the United States."



He added that he has "realigned" himself with China's ideological flow.



"I will tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines, and Russia. It's the only way," said President Duterte.


Today on the news we are hearing about an individual who entered his workplace and decided to stab 4 work colleagues. Most of us will have heard the term: going postal as it refers to violence in the workplace. Going postal is the accepted way of labeling workplace violence based on the number of times postal employees have been killed by enraged colleagues or their significant others. Most would agree that often the offenders have mental instability but combined with anger it is a recipe for disaster. As HR managers we are usually trained to look for symptoms leading to such behavior and yet it still happens on a regular basis. We hear about the most violent but workplace violence can begin with inappropriate language to bullying to physical abuse and eventually even murder. The question should be asked: are businesses doing everything they can to identify potential danger? I have worked in a workplace environment as a chaplain. Our company had their own EAP and as a chaplain I occasionally directed employees to them. In Canada, the idea of chaplains in a workplace is quite foreign and to some perhaps even offensive. Offensive because they will insist: the workplace is no place for religion. But what if? My background is as a pastor of 14 years and a missionary for 2 more. During that time I was also a volunteer police chaplain in Toronto. Later I was a workplace chaplain for over 2  years and now I volunteer at the airp...
The risks have never been higher For decades, there have been issues with businesses trying to understand what is and what is not permissible as it relates to classifying workers as independent contractors. In this economy, federal and state governments are looking for revenue wherever they can find it. It is clear that taxing authorities believe this issue could be a pot of gold, with estimates of lost tax revenue in the billions of dollars each year. Here are a few factual headlines: The IRS has committed to spend millions more investigating what they call "worker misclassification' (i.e. calling someone an "independent contractor" when the government considers them your "employee"). More and more states are going after this issue too, with California having passed the most onerous law on this subject ever. If you are found to have misclassified workers, the taxes, fines and interest could literally put you out of business; and your risk is not limited to the government, with lawsuits becoming more common from workers claiming the company they worked for should have treated them like employees. Before you allow your blood pressure to rise too high, I suggest you follow this easy 2- step diagnostic: Step 1: Do you issue a large dollar volume (let's say a $5000,000 or more) on IRS form 1099 each year to individuals? If you answered "yes", read on and then go to Step 2. Smaller amounts do not mean you're co...
The area of Workforce Management (WFM) has undergone significant change in recent years. Some of this change has come about due to advances in technology, and some due to the way modern businesses operate, compete and utilize labor resources. Workforce Management is essentially the process of balancing work requirements with available resources. It includes areas such as Time & Attendance, Labor Scheduling, and Absence Management. Workforce management solutions enable organizations to ensure that strategic objectives are met in an efficient, cost effective manner, while at the same time balancing the needs of the employees. The active involvement of the HR director in WFM projects has never been more important, due to the central role they play within businesses today. The role of the HR Director and how WFM Solutions can assist in this challenging role First off, lets look at the role of the HR Director, and how this fits with WFM Projects. The role of the HR director has changed enormously over the years. There has been a radical change in the HR function from what was essentially viewed as an administrative function to todays organization, where the HR director is a valued member of the executive management team. In most organizations, the HR Director creates and directs Human Resources practices and objectives that in turn, provide an employee oriented, high performance culture. This culture emphasizes areas such as; employee empowerment, excelle...
Over the past ten years, weve conducted an in-depth study into the attitudes of more than 100,000 shift workers at over 150 companies around the world. Through face to face surveys taken during work hours, we sought primarily to gather information about what employees like and dislike in their work environment, the changes they hope to see, health and safety issues and how work schedules impact personal lives. Of all the thousands of pieces of data we collected, one stood out: 81% of all employees surveyed felt that pay and benefits were good. In fact, while the importance of compensation paled, the connection between good management-employee communications and productivity was unassailable. In other words, while most companies try to inflate employee morale by shoveling more dollars at them, less expensive strategies will do. The wisdom in this lesson was driven home recently when I received a call from the COO of a leading international manufacturing company. He was under considerable stress because he was facing a union drive at one of his plants in Ohio. It was clear to him that employee dissatisfaction there was terribly high and that the union had made significant inroads. He wanted to know how much he had to increase pay and other benefits to make sure the union vote didnt pass. We spent the following weeks researching the companys labor practices and employee attitudes to understand more. The COO was right about one thing: the workers were...
As technology continues to drive a highly mobile workforce that is no longer limited to the confines of the workplace walls, progressive business leaders are seeking dynamic solutions for rapidly evolving workplace trends to make their organizations more flexible, agile and adaptable. Organizations that approach mobility and technology trends proactively and effectively can turn their largest expenditures  labor, real estate and technology into strategic operational advantages with enhanced workplace and workforce productivity, and improved collaboration and engagement. Human resources leaders can no longer delay or stick their heads in the sand when it comes to mobile technology. A 2013 Forrester study reported anytime, anywhere workers in the U.S. and Europe grew from 15 percent to 29 percent of employees between 2011 and 2012, and IDC projects that 1.3 billion workers worldwide will be mobile by 2015. Forrester also projects 905 million tablets will be in use for work and home globally by 2017, and Silicon India recently projected the number of active cell phones will reach 7.3 billion by 2014. Mobility trends affect all workers If you think workplace mobile technology trends only apply to tech workers and sales people who can do their work in coffee shops, guess again. Most on-site staff these days  factory workers, patient care staff, retail staff, construction workers, etc.  also own mobile devices, tablets, laptops a...
Revelations can come from the most unexpected places. A return trip to Japan last summer proved that more than the faces had changed. The tsunami that transformed the landscape there had revealed a surprising parallel in how people think and react. Among the many places I visited, I traveled some 300 miles north of Tokyo, where the Tohoku Tsunami struck in 2011. Along the coast, a collection of centuries-old fishing villages have weathered many storms and surges in the past, but this time only doorsteps and foundations were left. Witnessing the damage, I couldnt help but wonder how people reacted to the warning signs. We know now that the force of the water completely laid waste to all in its path. There were early warnings  the earthquake, the underwater sensors, the loud speakers notifying residents of the order to evacuate. An estimated 16,000 people lost their lives in the disaster1. So why didnt everyone run? Oddly enough, this reminded me of my work. Ive performed countless payroll leakage and system assessments which uncovered or forecasted damage and risk ahead. The evidence is clear, the data is credible; the tools quantify and forecast the dangers. Comparing how people react to this new, disruptive business information and the human response to danger helped make sense of things. When the earthquake occurred, a fisherman friend, Aki Kumagai, was on the beach with a group of high school students picking up driftwood and tras...
A BBC skit titled "The Real Housewives of ISIS" is being criticized for being unfunny and inappropriate given the real issue of women being enslaved by the Islamic State.

The sketch by "Revolting" parodies the reality show "Real Housewives" and the disturbing way the terrorist organization ISIS grooms young, female recruits online.

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"Hashtag OMG. Hashtag Jihadi Jane. Hashtag death to the west, ISIS emojis," reads one character as she texts her reaction to a female friend's new suicide vest.

Later, a character excitedly says that her husband bought her a new chain  "this one is eight feet long."

The reaction on social media was not positive.

The BBC really made a satirical show called "The Real Housewives of ISIS" while the real housewives of ISIS are being raped and abused daily  Meraj. (@UncleMeraj) January 4, 2017

The real housewives of Isis "comedy" that the BBC is going to air just isn't right. You can't make a joke out of it... Cause it's not funny  Kayleigh (@KayleighA94) January 4, 2017

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"Making fun of vulnerable girls who've been groomed and are being raped by terrorists. To everyone finding this funny, you're sick in the head," wrote one commenter on BBC2's Facebook page.

Muslim comedian Faraz Ali told Al Jazeera News he thought the skit was in "poor taste."

"Making light of this situation feels inherently wrong, almost capitalising on the suffering of these young girls who acted without proper insight."

However, the writers behind the show are standing behind the joke.

Its important not to pull your punches in satire. You have to be fearless or it undermines your credibility. You cant go after David Cameron for five years like we did and not go after Islamic State," Heydon Prowse told i News.

A BBC spokeswoman told The New York Times that she had no comment "other than to say that its satire and the BBC has a rich history of satire.

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An Israeli startup is testing an electric road that would charge cars while they drive.

Oren Ezer, the entrepreneur who started ElectRoad, told Haaretz that it's actually relatively simple to make a "smart road."

Copper chains are inserted into grooves in the asphalt, then connected to a power converter on the side of the road that links to the city's electric grid. Then, electric cars have small contact points fitted underneath  powering them or charging their batteries as they drive.

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The company hopes the technology will lower the cost of fuelling public transportation fleets while helping the environment.

Watch how ElectRoad works:

Ezer explained to Inhabitat how the new roads paired with electric vehicles would be cheaper than traditional diesel-fuelled buses:

The electricity will come from renewable energy transferred to the road. This is a really sustainable solution. A battery for an electric bus can cost $300,000 and weigh 5 tons. If you remove the battery then the bus is much lighter and requires less energy. This technology is cost saving. If you compare it to diesel buses, its half the price. If you just start with public transportation it will save money and then you can open it up to taxis and trams. Payback is very fast.

The company won first prize in early December at a clean energy startup competition. The prize will see the team headed to San Francisco's Cleantech forum this year.

In May, the startup announced it would partner with the city of Tel Aviv to test the technology and find out how it can hold up to the stresses of traffic and weather, according to Jewish Business News. In 2017, ElectRoad will test its tech on a public electric bus that will operate on a set route.

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China's National People's Congress opening ceremony (Photo : Getty Images)

A local official of Panzhihua named Chen Zhongshu shot Party head Zhang Yan and Mayor Li Jianqin at the Panzhihua Convention Center. He eventually shot himself in the head.



Chen is the director of the city's land and resources bureau.



The motive behind the attack remains unknown but speculations on graft-related issues might be at play.



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According to news portal jiemian.com, sources close to the suspect said that Chen had been complaining about the Party chief and how Zhang had made things difficult for him.



In May 2013, Chen became director of the land and resources bureau of Panzhihua. He was then awarded for his good work performance in Sept. 2015.



A Communist Party circular praised Chen for "leading the city's land and resources management to a path of more legalized and standard development."



Other reports revealed that Li was investigating Chen before the shooting.



Panzhihua, located in the mountainous area of southwest Sichuan, is a center for iron ore, vanadium and titanium mining. Chen has been in charge of land management for the past two years.



The Communist Party sees the shooting as related to the downfall of cliques of corruption in their organization.



China's Communist Party cadres were warned on Tuesday to learn from the downfall of the faction of corrupt officials, known as the "Petroleum" and "Secretary" gangs.



In an article published by the Party's anti-graft watchdog, a warning was stated as, "[We] must constantly be alert of, discover and punish in time those who form their own circles within the Party.



"The Petroleum Gang and the Secretary Gang have already been eradicated. They are lessons to be learned and others should watch their steps. If you don't toe the line, get out," read the piece in the "China Discipline Inspection Paper."


Yet another study proves that it doesn't matter at all whether or not kids have same-sex parents.

Rachel Farr, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, conducted the study, which was recently published in the Developmental Psychology journal.

Farr studied 100 families who adopted children at infancy. Half the parents were same-sex and the other half were opposite sex. She concluded: "Rather than family structure, available research on early child development indicates that family processes matter more to child outcomes."

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A child's behaviour is more influenced by: parenting stress, parenting approaches and couple relationship adjustment.

She writes: "Regardless of parental sexual orientation, children (in the study) had fewer behaviour problems over time when their adoptive parents indicated experiencing less parenting stress. Higher family functioning when children were school-age was predicted by lower parenting stress and fewer child behaviour problems when children were preschool-age."

For more details on the research, watch the video above.

This just further proves what the American Psychological Association already said more than 10 years ago: the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.

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The Alberta Advantage is no more, according to a new analysis from The Fraser Institute.

The think tank argues that the personal and corporate tax advantages that once attracted citizens and businesses to Alberta have been eroded almost entirely under the NDP government.

Alberta used to enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in North America, which attracted investment and people to the province, but the current provincial government has quickly eroded that advantage by increasing taxes, which are hurting the economy, said Ben Eisen, the Fraser Institutes director of provincial prosperity studies and coauthor of "The End of the Alberta Tax Advantage", in a press release.

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According to the study's findings, in 2014 Alberta had the lowest corporate tax rate in Canada  sitting at 10 per cent. However, the NDP raised that rate to 12 per cent in 2015, giving B.C. (11 per cent), Ontario (11.5 per cent) and Quebec (11.9 per cent) a more attractive rate than Alberta.

The province now has the same corporate tax rate as Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

As well, says the study, Albertans enjoyed the lowest combined top personal income tax rate in the nation before the NDP took control, with a single rate of 10 per cent tax on all incomes. When the NDP introduced fixed tax rates and increased the top rate by 50 per cent, that changed.

As a result, the Fraser Institute says Alberta's top combined (federal plus state/provincial) marginal personal income tax rate went from being the lowest in North America in 2014 to the 16th highest.

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Until recently, Alberta held a competitive advantage on personal and corporate income taxes, which helped drive the provinces economic growth. That advantage is now gone, said study co-author Steve Lafleur, a senior policy analyst with the Fraser Institute.

However, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe told the Edmonton Journal that the Fraser Institute's analysis isn't a fair estimate of the overall tax burden, and said investors should look at the marginal effective tax rates, instead.

"That advantage is now gone."

Investment will go to where returns are highest at the margins. The return on investment is going to depend on so many things, Tombe told the newspaper, citing production costs, regulations and tax rates.

Being lowest doesnt have any magical powers associated with it, relative to being second or third, he said.

Eisen told 660 News that the government should avoid raising personal and corporate tax rates as a way to make up revenue shortfalls, and instead should consider cutting spending.

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As well, the report points out that Alberta still holds one tax advantage over other Canadian provinces  it is still the only province that hasn't implemented a sales tax.

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Friends and family of screen icon Debbie Reynolds and "Star Wars" legend Carrie Fisher gathered Thursday to pay tribute to the beloved celebrity mother and daughter, who died one day apart.

Meryl Streep, Holly Hunter, Ellen Barkin and Ed Begley Jr were among the stars who made their way to the luxury Beverly Hills compound where Fisher and Reynolds lived as neighbors until their deaths just after Christmas.

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The pair are expected to be interred side by side among many other stars of screen and stage in the Hollywood Hills on Friday.

Fisher is believed to have been cremated already, although some of her ashes are expected to be buried alongside her mother.

Reynolds, who won moviegoers' hearts as a star of "Singin' in the Rain," died on Wednesday last week, a day after Fisher.

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The 84-year-old suffered a stroke at the Beverly Hills property as she was making funeral arrangements for Fisher, who had suffered a heart attack.

Reynolds's son Todd Fisher  Carrie's brother  told ABC's "20/20" show after their deaths that his mother had been devastated not to get the chance to see the "Star Wars" actress one last time.

Meryl Streep arrives for a private memorial at the former residence of actress Carrie Fisher January 5, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images)

"She expressed how much she loved my sister. She then said she really wanted to be with Carrie, in those precise words. And within 15 minutes from that conversation, she faded out. Within 30 minutes, she technically was gone," he said.

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Fisher, who catapulted to worldwide stardom as rebel warrior Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, died in Los Angeles four days after suffering a heart attack on a transatlantic flight. She was 60.

The family is believed to be planning a future public memorial service for Fisher and Reynolds, possibly featuring stars such as Streep  who starred in the film "Postcards from the Edge," which was based on Fisher's 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name.

Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher, 1972. (Photo by Dove/Evening Standard/Getty Images)

Other celebrities laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park include Bette Davis, Reynolds's onscreen mother in "A Catered Affair" (1956), and Reynolds's close friend Liberace.

Silent film star Buster Keaton, Oscar-winning Rod Steiger and David Carradine, the star of "Kung Fu" and Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films, are also buried there.

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Acclaimed Indian actor Om Puri, well-known abroad for his role in hit movie "Gandhi," died aged 66 after suffering a heart attack Friday, reports said.

The Press Trust of India said Puri had died of a heart attack at his residence in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood.

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Actor Om Puri attends the U.K. Gala screening of 'The Hundred Foot Journey' at The Curzon Mayfair on September 3, 2014 in London, England.

Puri made his film debut in a Marathi-language movie in the mid 1970s before going on to star in a number of major Hindi hits as well as, controversially, in some Pakistani movies.

He also appeared in a number of British films, most notably Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic on the life of India's independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi. He also appeared in Hollywood film "Charlie Wilson's War."

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Puri starred opposite legendary British actress Helen Mirren in the 2014 film "The Hundred Foot Journey."

He was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India, for his services to the film industry.

Om Puri addresses the media during the 4th International Film Festival organized by Rafi Peer Theatre held at Al-Hamra Arts Council in Lahore.

Tributes poured in from the world of Bollywood as actors and directors woke to the news of his death.

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"Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP," wrote his close friend and director Ashoke Pandit on Twitter.

Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP.  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) January 6, 2017

Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

"Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm can't believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked," tweeted actor Anupam Kher.

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Friends and family members carry the mortal remains of deceased Indian actor Om Puri for his funeral in Mumbai on January 6, 2017.

"The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films," read a tweet on Indian leader Narendra Modi's official Twitter account.

Puri was born in Haryana state to a Punjabi family in 1950.

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When Meghan Markle met Prince William back in November it was the talk of the tabloids. But when Prince Harry met his girlfriend's father it somehow managed to stay a secret.

According to the Mail Online, the 32-year-old prince met Markle's father Thomas during a visit to Toronto six months ago! For those keeping track, that's before news broke that the two were even an item.

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Tomorrow's front page: First pictures of Prince Harry and girlfriend Meghan Markle pic.twitter.com/uPGUYHLk8T  The Sun (@TheSun) December 14, 2016

Markle's half-brother Thomas Jr. told the site the couple were "very much in love" before adding theyre extremely happy together, they look great together and shes done good.

Thomas Jr., who is 15 years older than Markle, had nothing but nice things to say about his half-sister and her boyfriend. I think it is wonderful. As long as he takes care of and loves Meg, he doesnt have to do anything else he looks like a genuinely good man  and he was in the services as well. He looks happy, he looks like hes stress-free and like he could be a good guy for Meg, he said.

Thomas Jr. admits he himself has yet to meet the prince, but says I would like to shake his hand and meet him. His father on the other hand is said to be "pretty happy about Harry" and "extremely proud of her."

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When asked about Markle's childhood desire to be a princess, Thomas Jr. was quick to note: "I mean it's every girl's dream to become a princess but she never said anything about it. She did like 'Cinderella' and 'The Little Mermaid' but she never had a Prince Harry poster or anything like that. But still, I think she fits the bill more than anyone."

The bill of course being the role of princess. He went on to say: Shes the right girl for the job. Its not a job but shes the right girl. You couldnt get a more refined, well-rounded person than her. Look at them when they look at each other  they love each other. So itll be great, itll be royal. I just want her to be happy.

The prince and the "Suits" actress were spotted together for the first time last month in London. Though the couple did not spend the holidays together they are reportedly planning a trip together later this month.

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Meghan Markle See Gallery
Shannen Doherty is putting on a brave (and funny!) face while receiving treatment for breast cancer.

The former "Beverly Hills, 90210" actress shared an Instagram photo on Wednesday, which shows her making a kissy face at the radiation therapy machine that's helping her overcome the disease.

Along with the pic, the 45-year-old penned a tribute to the life-saving machine, which she dubbed, "Maggie."

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This is Maggie. Ive seen Maggie five days a week for what seems like forever. We have a love hate relationship. I love her because shes part of the life saving treatment Im receiving, Doherty captioned the shot.

Doherty revealed in August 2015 that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and since then, she's been outspoken about what it's like living with the disease, sharing many updates on social media on the status of her cancer and treatment progression.

"It's astounding how far we have come with technology," Doherty's Instagram tribute continued. "One day, Maggie will be retired and the cure will be found."

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"Things like immunotherapy are the future but for now.... it's me and Maggie. I'm seeing her twice tomorrow so that I can wrap this phase up faster. Goodnight sweet Maggie. See ya tomorrow. #cancerslayer," she concluded.

Doherty hasn't been shy about showing the toll cancer treatment has taken on her.

Shannen Doherty arrives at American Cancer Society's Giants of Science Los Angeles Gala on November 5, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/WireImage)

"Radiation is frightening to me. Something about not being able to see the laser, see the treatment and having this machine moving around you just scares me," she previously wrote on Instagram. "I'm sure I'll get used to it but right now.... I hate it. #radiation #radiationmondaysucks #stillfightinglikeagirl."

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Despite feeling scared about radiation, the actress recently revealed on Twitter that she will be doubling up on the treatment.

Meanwhile.. gonna do a double up day of radiation so I get completely finished this week!! she tweeted on Jan. 4.

On Thursday, she posted an Instagram pic of herself on her way to her "double radiation day" for a date with "Maggie."

Double radiation day here I come!!! Got @themamarosa and @missbowiedoherty with me. Maggie here I come. #cancerslayer #homestretch #gettingitdone A photo posted by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jan 5, 2017 at 9:08am PST

Stay strong, Shannen!

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Toronto police drew no weapons during their arrest of a woman who stomped on two police cars on New Years Day.

The incident, which occurred near Finch Ave. and Islington Ave. in the citys north end, saw police de-escalate the situation and convince her to walk towards an ambulance, according to CBC News.

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In a news release, Constable Christofer Lemieux said he arrived on scene to find a woman in the middle of the street screaming at surrounding cars.

Video shows the woman, clearly in distress, walk up to a police car, climb onto the hood, and punch and kick the windshield.

She then walks across the roof and stomps on the rear view window before sliding off the back of the cruiser.

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Another squad car arrives and the woman runs up onto its hood and stomps on the front window before climbing onto the roof.

Officers from both cars open their doors and try to talk to her.

She then kicks in the rear window of that car before following officers to a waiting ambulance.

The unidentified woman was arrested and was taken to Etobicoke General Hospital, according to police.

She won't be charged, CTV News reported.

What you see are officers behaving with restraint and professionalism, de-escalating the situation, not crowding her and they resolved the situation safely and without injury, Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash told CP24 Tuesday.

As of late November, officers responded to nearly 23,500 calls for emotionally disturbed people and apprehended more than 9,000 under the Mental Health Act, according to a news release.

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What you see are officers behaving with restraint and professionalism."  Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash

But one man who works on mental health issues thinks the situation would have been different if the woman had been holding a weapon or threatening harm.
Intel office premises seen with logo (Photo : Getty images/James Leynse)

As it turns out, the Capital Region was on a hunt for attracting a computer chip factory from not only Advanced Micro Devices, but also Intel and Samsung, former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno reveals in own new memoir.



In the book written by Bruno, 'Keep Swinging,' published in November by Post Hill Press, Bruno revealed that in 2005 - a year before AMD announced it would build a $3.2 billion computer chip factory at Luther Forest Technology Campus in Saratoga County, officials from the Center for Economic Growth in Albany 'had been talking' with archrivals Intel and AMD.



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Timesunion reported that Samsung, the South Korea electronics and semiconductor giant had also been pursued by Charles Gargano, Gov.George Pataki's top economic development official.



While this was going on in September 2005, Pataki and Gargano were on a trade mission to China and Japan.



"Before Pataki left I suggested that he add South Korea to his itinerary and talk to some of the Samsung principals at their headquarters in Seoul," Bruno says in the book.



"My recollection is that either my staff or someone at the Center for Economic Growth set up an appointment for him. I spoke to the governor shortly after he landed in Albany, and he told me he didn't stop in South Korea."



"Intel's attitude was that if we were talking to AMD, they wouldn't talk to us," Bruno says.



"My response was, 'Fine, then I'm not going to talk to you.'"



Topix reported that perhaps the most enlightening is a behind-the-scenes description that Bruno gives of a call had with Hector Ruiz, AMD CEO, in May 2006, a month before AMD agreed to build at Luther Forest in what later became the chip fab that would be constructed by AMD spinoff Global Foundries.



On May 15, 2006, Bruno was the keynote speaker at the New York State Investors Conference being held at the Albany Marriott on Wolf Road. Bruno made a vast difference at the conference by announcing that self had just gotten off the phone with the CEO of a major company that wanted to invest billions of dollars in the Capital Region economy.






Lisa Stokes via Getty Images Rainbow of school lockers.

Progressives need to celebrate their victories. Here's a story to put a smile on your face.

A letter published Nov. 22, 2016 and addressed to the parents and families of Strathcona Christian Academy makes one thing clear: they're only allowing a Gay Straight Alliance or GSA at their school because they have to by law. They're based in Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, but if you listen carefully you can hear them gritting their teeth all the way in Calgary.

If you don't believe it, read the letter yourself.

The students at the school who started this club are heroes who deserve our thanks. They are the social justice trailblazers of our time. It takes an incredible amount of courage and leadership to actually go to the principal at an outwardly Christian school and ask to start a GSA. To those students, you have my admiration and my respect.

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This is what Bill 10 was put in place to do and it is working.

Students all over Alberta need to know that if it can happen at Strathcona Christian Academy it can happen at their school, too. We need to celebrate these victories in Alberta. Share this story far and wide. This is what Bill 10 was put in place to do and it is working.

Private school turned public

Strathcona Christian Academy is a public school. It was founded in 1980 as a private school until it joined Elk Island Public Schools in 1998 and became a fully publicly funded institution. It has approximately 590 students from Grade 7 to 12.

In its education plan it identifies Bill 10 as one of the greatest challenges facing the school and that they will "continue working on this issue to come to a workable solution that attempts to satisfy all it stakeholders. It is recognized that this is a very divisive issue and paramount is the safety of our students."

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In the letter, the Strathcona Christian Academy Society recognizes that "our school principals are are legally bound to all aspects of the School Act," and that they would "prefer that peer-support networks are not targeted to a specific group of students."

The support club in this case will be called SAGA (Sexual and Gender Acceptance) and not a Gay Straight Alliance. It will get a staff liaison and according to the letter it will be supported by the Strathcona Christian Academy Society Board, the Sherwood Park Alliance Church Elder Board and the pastoral staff of Sherwood Park Alliance Church.

They also take pains to point out to the families and parents of Strathcona Christian Academy that while they have to allow a GSA, they don't have to like it:

"Be assured that instruction and guidance within our schools will continue to privilege the conviction that God's original intent was sexual union reserved for full expression within the context of a marriage covenant relationship between a man and a woman. The SCA Society board is significantly concerned will Bill 10 and the manner in which it has been enacted into law. We will continue to work closely with our Elk Island Public School Trustees and Superintendent as we navigate this legislated landscape. We continue to seek God's guidance on the important matter and ask for your continued strong support for our Christian culture at both of our campuses."

Talk about creating a safe and caring environment for at-risk and bullied LGBTQ youth.

What is Bill 10? Why is it important?

Bill 10 is a relatively simple piece of legislation that was brought in by the Progressive Conservatives under Jim Prentice with near unanimous support from the Legislature (only two Tories voted against it).

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These after school support groups literally save lives.

It wouldn't have come to pass without a very similar private member's bill brought forward by Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman. The bill ensures that if students ask for a Gay Straight Alliance that they get one, they can call their GSA any name that they like and the GSA has to be on school property.

The research on GSAs shows that these after school support groups literally save lives. When a school has a GSA it reduces the risk of suicide for all students. And while conservatives like to mock the idea of a safe space, the existence of these safe spaces for bullied teens saves lives.

Bill 10 is part of the PC legacy

It's worth going back and reading the Hansard of what then-PC education minister Gordon Dirks said about GSAs before the final vote:

"Most importantly, in my travels around the province I talked with numerous students who are directly affected by gay-straight alliances. If you could have joined me in these conversations, Mr. Speaker, you would have heard students talking about the taunting, mocking and bullying they have suffered because of their sexual orientation. You would hear them speak of parents who don't understand them, of online bullying and of suicidal thoughts. They told me, sometimes in tears, how alone and helpless they have felt when caring friends and sympathetic teachers are not around them. But when I asked them, 'Tell me about your GSAs,' their faces brightened, and with animated voices they would tell me about their GSA, how it helped them feel safe at school and how they now felt valued, respected, and welcomed. ... there is no question that the vast majority of Albertans with whom I interacted spoke in favour of ensuring that kids who want to form a GSA club in their school should be able to do so."

Now, the PC party of Alberta is in the middle of a leadership race. Two of the leadership candidates, Stephen Khan and Richard Starke, were PC caucus members when Bill 10 passed and they presumably voted for it. Does their support for Bill 10 still stand? Are they proud of this bill's legacy?

Arch-social conservative Jason Kenney is also running to be leader of the Tories. In a Parents For Choice in Education questionnaire he agrees with the statement that parental consent should be mandatory for a child's participation in any after school activity. Kenney essentially wants to out students who are in a GSA to their parents.

The fight for Bill 10 was a fight that all progressive Albertans should be proud of.

Where do the PC leadership candidates stand on Bill 10? Would they keep it as-is? Would they out students to their parents? Exactly what kind of compromise would Jason Kenney negotiate with a recalcitrant school board if he was premier? We don't know the answers to these questions, but they need to be asked.

But let's take a moment to celebrate the success of Bill 10 and the recent formation of a GSA at Strathcona Christian Academy. The fight for Bill 10 was a fight that all progressive Albertans should be proud of. But the progress made on this issue is by no means guaranteed. There is danger on the horizon and we have to keep fighting and keep organizing so that all students have a safe place to go school.

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A few days following New Year celebrations, a tragedy has occurred in Big Tracadie, a rural community in Nova Scotia. Lionel Desmond, a retired corporal of the Canadian Armed Forces, had allegedly murdered his wife, Shanna Desmond, their 10-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, and his mother Brenda Desmond shortly before taking his own life.

The community is in shock and disbelief, and an ongoing dialogue regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its consequences on soldiers, who have served our country, has dominated the coverage of the event in the media. Some have discussed the suffering of those who struggle with PTSD, others have questioned the difficulties soldiers face when trying to access services. Few have pointed out the obvious issue at stake in this story: male violence against women and children which prevails in our society.

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That being said, caring for our veterans, particularly those suffering from PTSD, is undoubtedly an important issue. However, a conversation around mental health shouldn't overshadow men's violence against women and children. As PTSD and the lack of mental health services have been widely framed as the central issue in this particular case, the two women and the girl who were brutally murdered became peripheral, less important aspects of the case as portrayed in the media coverage.

The central discussion of PTSD and troubled soldiers returning home in this particular story, has contributed to distracting the public from men's violence and blurring our perceptions of the soldier, so that he is primarily a victim of his troubled mind, and then, of lesser concern, the murderer of the women in his life.

More concerning, shifting the narrative towards mental health and further away from men's violence make it even more difficult to hold perpetrators of similar acts of violence accountable. In this case, lack of services, long waiting lists, lack of human or financial resources and difficulty accessing counselling services has contributed to portraying Desmond as a victim. When male entitlement becomes male victimization, the patriarchy wins yet again.

The root causes of men's violence against women and children are male entitlement, domination, power and control. Yet, a few high profiles cases in recent years have twisted the public's perception on the connection between violence in the family and mental health. For instance, the case of Guy Turcotte, a Quebec surgeon who was convicted of killing his two children made national headlines and sparked a national debate on the responsibility of people with mental illness when committing acts of violence.

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How much of this violence should we, as a society, continue to explain very broadly as illnesses?

The same logic applies to mass shootings in the United States. As the common denominator of mass shooters is gender (male), mental health is often (if not always) at the center of debates. The same is true with regards to men who kill their female partner and their children. It is in fact easier to understand such horrific cases as the deviance of a "sick" or a "mentally disturbed" individual.

Psychological explanations in these cases encourage us to comprehend individual actions as those of a mentally ill person, yet a significant proportion of these reprehensible and criminal acts always seem to follow a pattern of men committing violence against women and children. How much of this violence should we, as a society, continue to explain very broadly as illnesses?

Given this pattern, a broader reflection is required to address the root causes of this issue in order to protect women and children. I am obviously not acquainted with the details of this specific case, as what goes on behind closed doors, often remains behind closed doors. However, research indicates that an important proportion of these cases are related to domestic violence, more specifically when the woman was about to leave or shortly after she has left.

Evidence also confirms that violence against women and children is still prevalent in our society: every six days in Canada, a woman is killed by a partner or a former partner. With regards to services, a recent survey conducted by the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters & Transition Houses has reported that "a significant proportion of shelters are chronically over capacity." This means that women and children seeking safety are turned away when shelters are full.

If mental health crises can trigger violence in certain individuals, and if men who show signs of violence need to access services, let's not forget the pressing needs of vulnerable women and children who are living with these men. A great deal of our efforts should focus on ensuring their safety. In the meantime, I invite the media and everyone else to join the efforts against violence against women and children, while remaining cautious when connecting such violence to mental health.

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"Can you recommend a younger you?" When this email screamed at me from my inbox, I did think about it quite seriously. Did I know someone else, younger, who had written six books on parenting, had four children, and had been at the business of parenting for 25 years, and the parenting business for 15, after spending 18 years in corporate marketing? I'll admit no one came immediately to mind.

And then an old quote popped into my brain, written by humorist Quin Ryan in 1960:

The five stages in the life of a Hollywood star:

Who is Danny Doakes?

Get me Danny Doakes!

Get me a Danny Doakes' type!

Get me a young Danny Doakes!

Who is Danny Doakes?

Who is Danny Doakes? Just a John Doe name, but clearly this type of ageist thinking is not a new phenomenon, nor is it something we can blame on the Millennials, as we do everything else. And obviously, I am not a Hollywood star, but I am a person who appears on television and it's hard to ignore the parallels. Of course, ageism doesn't just affect those in the public eye, but it is easier to spot.

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The agency person who asked me this question had done so without maliciousness and because she knew that I do often recommend others in my line of work for projects which don't suit my scope. Including this one, in which she was really just looking for someone who had younger children than me, or so my 53-year-old self optimistically felt. It wasn't personal. It was business.

So, what can we do when we find ourselves on the receiving end of this?

1)Accept that you are not going to convince the client that you are either younger than you are, or that you can change their demographic targeting need.

2)Shift your thinking to work with clients who require your expertise or your actual age to align with their products and services. Do your research and develop a plan.

3)Realign your goals with your reality. Let's look at Jane Pauley, who just took over the CBS Sunday Morning helm. They needed someone with experience and credibility to take over from veteran Charles Osgood. It's a win that they chose a woman; it's not a mistake they chose someone over the age of 50. Pauley is too old for the high-octane youth filled American morning shows (and the case is arguably the same in Canada) but this is her fit.

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4)Move forward in a positive way. Business is business and if they need a 30-year-old mom to represent their brand, they need a 30-year-old mom. You are not that mom.

5)Mentor younger women. I know this sounds counterintuitive in this situation, but the day might come when you get asked the same question I was, and I am a firm believer in women helping women. Cultivate those you see as being capable of taking on "your" work and give them the opportunity should it arise. The agency will find someone; it may as well be someone who can really do the job. And the agency will appreciate your guidance and experience in helping them. I've since landed a contract with the same agency, for different work.

Of course, I did in fact recommend a "younger me"; a person whose professional abilities I trust, and who had the prerequisite number and ages of children. I know in time, she'll find herself in my same now sensible shoes, and I know my even older self will be there to help guide her through the "Get me a young Danny Doakes" stage of her career.

Kathy Buckworth is the award winning author of six books, including "I Am So The Boss Of You: An 8 Step Guide To Giving Your Family The Business" She is currently at work on her seventh book, tackling the teenage brain. Yes, her kids are that old. And older.

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Basel Alrashdan, 11, and his family were the first Syrian family to be resettled on Canada's Prince Edward Island.

Nearly 50 million children worldwide have been uprooted -- more than half of them by violence and conflict. The brutal Syrian conflict has forced over 2.2 million children to flee to neighbouring countries and beyond. The Canadian Government, which welcomes 300,000 immigrants every year -- nearly one per cent of its population -- has resettled over 25,000 Syrian refugees nationwide.

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Basel Alrashdan (left), playing in the snow with other sixth graders at St. Jean Elementary School, came to Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) with his family on 27 December 2015. The Alrashdans were the first Syrian family to be resettled on the Island.

In Basel's class alone, seven languages are spoken among 16 of the students, and half of the children at his school are refugees or migrants. Basel (light blue coat) waits for the school bus with other Syrian and Congolese refugee children. His sister and brother also go to his school.

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Canada has embraced a policy of multiculturalism. The Alrashdans are among 250 Syrian refugees who have been resettled on P.E.I. Basel (here with Tom Hilton from the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission) prepares to give a speech at the Human Rights Day celebration in Stratford Town.

Canadian leaders and communities are working to create a 'mosaic' in which cultures remain distinct and can coexist in a society that celebrates differences and diversity. Basel (foreground) and other participants sample some of the different foods offered at the community event.

Basel, taping another achievement certificate to his bedroom wall, has received recognition from both his community and school.

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"We call him 'the Little Mayor'," the principal at his school said. "He's very dedicated to what's fair and just. That was evident with him from the get go."

All three children are integrating well. (Left-right) Shatha, 7, Basil, and Idress, 5, relax at home with their father.

"Refugees' rights in Jordan were less than other people's," says Mr. Alrashdan, who worked two jobs -- from 6 a.m. until midnight every day -- to support his family."

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In Canada, their family of five receives $1,957 each month to cover their expenses (which include rent and petrol, in addition to food). Mr. Alrashdan shops in a small Middle-Eastern supermarket in their community.

The Alrashdans also frequent a local farmer's market in their adopted hometown. (Facing camera, left-right) Mr. Alrashdan (black coat), Basel (blue coat) and Idress (red coat) chat and mingle with Canadians and other Syrian refugees in the community during a visit to the market.

Back from shopping, the couple and their children unload their car.

We lost everything we had in Syria. Two houses, an apartment, a car..." Mr. Alrashdan says. "... a good life," Mrs. Alrashdan adds, finishing her husband's thought.

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The family sits down to a traditional Middle-Eastern meal in their home.

"We lost it all," Mrs. Aldrashan continues. "And now we will try to do our best in Canada." "They gave us everything we need and didn't ask us for anything," her husband adds.

The couple uses the smart phone they own to set up appointments. With it they can also access information on services and support available, and on events taking place in their community. They pay for internet service out of the money they receive monthly.

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The children, too, enjoy having a smart phone and being able to connect on line. (Left-right) Shatha, Basel and Idress 'morph' funny faces they make and selfies they take using the phone's camera and a downloaded app.

It has been nearly a year since the Alrashdans came to P.E.I.

"It was really fast and very sad," Basel says, recalling what his father told him as the family fled their homeland during heavy fighting. "Just take your very important things and put them in a small bag and come with us."

Basel, who was afraid to go to Canada at first, now considers himself Canadian-Syrian and is proud to be in the country.

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"Please remember to stand up for someone's rights -- today, tomorrow and forever," he said, speaking at the Human Rights Day celebration in Stratford. "Thank you."

To help UNICEF provide life-saving assistance to more children affected by the Syrian crisis, click here.

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At present, I'm making my way through Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.

It's a rather dated novel, detailing the rise of a fascist American leader who employs typical patriotic tropes, slogans and attitude during the election of 1936.

Many today would like to make the obvious connection to the rise of president-elect Donald Trump. I think that's a bit off (considering the rather dim political view of the 1930s cannot compare to today) and I'll likely explore that in a future post.

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There is much to take from the novel, hastily written in the fall of 1935 by Lewis.

It was put together in the context of fascism taking root in Italy and Germany, and progressive, socialist and populist waves gaining their own strength in Depression-era America.

The book takes liberties with mentioning several real-life political and literary figures whose ideas are either explicitly used or rejected by the supposed fascist leader, "Buzz" Windrip.

The protagonist, Doremus Jessup, editor of a small-town Vermont newspaper, claims his stake as a key dissident of the regime. He pens scribes to excoriate the rise of the Windrip phenomena and the accompanying "Minute Men" who whip and beat any opposition to Windrip's rule. Think Yankee Doodle brownshirts.

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What interests me most, however, is the fascinating backstory and source material which compounds both socialism and fascism in Lewis' writings. And it begins with his many literary and political influences.

In the course of the book, Lewis often invokes the name of Upton Sinclair, another American author who modern readers will likely assume to be a relative of Lewis', as a huge influence. He even dubs him "Honourable." For good reason.

Lewis mentions the very real EPIC plan Upton Sinclair used as the basis for his 1934 socialist campaign as the Governor of California as an influence for the fictional fascist leader. It's a forgotten piece of history due for revision.

The EPIC plan was revealed in the vociferous essay written by Upton Sinclair as his manifesto to the people of California: I, Governor and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future.

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In 1933, Sinclair abandoned the Socialist Party to join the ranks of the Democratic Party for a chance to win the gubernatorial race in bustling state. But his socialist ideals were still very much the rage in his platform. The nationalization of large farms, a guaranteed basic income to the poor and elderly, and an eventual replacement of the free enterprise model. No more would scrupulous capital owners bully the poor and unemployed.

Acclaimed author Greg Mitchell, one of the premier historians of Sinclair's gubernatorial run and a fascinating writer on the left, described the EPIC plan and the 1934 run as the birth of the modern political campaign. For the first time, there were significant political consultants, national fundraising and extensive attack ads in a state race. Hollywood had inserted itself into the political word.

I saw the modern version of that in the 2012 gubernational recall election of Wisconsin Govnor Scott Walker, which I covered for Watchdog.org at the time. There were forces from across the country who converged on Wisconsin to fight for their political convictions, conservative grassroots, union activists and all in between. Governors from southern states, Hollywood celebrities, big media and political operatives of all stripes camped out in Wisconsin to stake their claim to a victory or die trying.

For the first time, there were significant political consultants, national fundraising and extensive attack ads in a state race.

A simple state recall election had been elevated to the level of a national battle between epic political forces, much like the 1934 California governor's election.

In that sense, one can see obvious parallels between the Sinclair EPIC plan and that of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Much like Sinclair, Sanders abandoned his socialist label to fight for the Democratic Party nomination, albeit for the presidency. He talked about nationalizing the banks, making university education cost-free for students, and offering social security and medicare to increased numbers of the population. All 21st century ideas, but Sinclair-esque flavour.

It's in this vein that Sinclair Lewis threw Upton Sinclair into the mix of the making of a fascist leader in a fictional 1930s America.

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In his expansive article on Lewis' contributions to the literary world, philosopher and critic Gore Vidal focused a great deal on the relationship with the older Upton Sinclair when they met in the early 1900s.

Lewis interned for two months in 1906 at the Helicon Home Colony, a sort of commune masquerading as a socialist utopia in rural New Jersey concocted by Upton Sinclair. He planned it as a haven for artists and authors who craved collectivism and eradication of the master-servant relationship, according to his article in the Rock Island Argus in the summer of 1906. The colony later burned to the ground and was quickly forgotten.

It was from this relationship that the elder Sinclair later came to know Lewis' writing. He offered prescient advice:

"Everything of yours that I have read is about half and half... wherever you are writing about the underworld, you are at your best, and when you come up to your own social level or higher, you are no good," Sinclair wrote to Sinclair Lewis.

It's a great commentary on the complementariness of the ideologies we're so often told are worlds apart.

What is made clear in It Can't Happen Here is surely informed by Lewis' time under Sinclair's tutelage. The grand plans of socialism are doomed once put into practice, several characters surmise, even before the rise of Windrip. But fascism can somehow use that existing path and exploit it for its own.

It's a great commentary on the complementariness of the ideologies we're so often told are worlds apart and represent totally opposing forces.

It turns out they're not so different in that they remove the individual from the natural governing order and supplant him with a larger, more necessary force, whether that is the General Welfare guaranteed by socialism or the Great State of Our Nation enforced by fascism.

The truth is that both socialism and fascism would be very difficult to implement in a country as vast and institutionally protected as the U.S. At least for now.

But that their adherents will stop trying is as false as the notion that we can all be productive and happy on a New Jersey farm commune, throwing shade at every up-and-coming writer.

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Maybe it can happen here.

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BBC

Blink and you might miss it after the New Year hangover. This week a trailer of Revolting, BBC Two's new sketch show, did the rounds on Facebook and Twitter. Since appearing on Tuesday night, a scene from the show - Real Housewives of ISIS - has amassed over 18million views on Facebook alone and has been written about in detail across the internet. Opinion is divided: outrage on one side, hilarity on the idea.

I've been monitoring my reaction to the video since it was posted on my wall. Initially seeing the title I couldn't help feel offence that something as series as ISIS could be paired with the frivolity of the Real Housewives series. I'm used to two huge cultures clashing, but I didn't expect this, not least from the BBC.

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48 hours later and my opinion has changed. After watching it on repeat I've started to understand just how important this piece of work is. The housewives' diversity (they're from all over Britain), their irreverence for the situation and their genius use of social media (I'm still cracking up to 'hashtag matchy matchy') shows a wicked insight into using humour to make a very pointed critique.

Parallels have been drawn with Goodness Gracious Me, an important comedy series that ran throughout the 2000s. Casual Punjabi, insulting white people and asking 'how big is his danda?' are all cultural references that continue to infiltrate my current day conversations. While I was slightly too young to remember any backlash then, the way news spread was a very different beast. We hadn't developed an echo chamber back then, we simply enjoyed, or derided satire for what it was - all from the comfort and privacy of our own homes.

The change in news consumption is what is causing the problem. The opportunity to process works like this publically means we cannot help but be influenced by the likes and comments of others we believe we should share bias with. I'm in no way longing for a slower news cycle, but I am recognising the impact of how and where I receive news on how I respond. Taking the time to properly understand the intention and execution of the Real Housewives of ISIS has changed my view completely.

Heydon Prowse, half of the duo that created the show, argues "you have to be fearless or it undermines your credibility", and from personal experience I couldn't agree more, particularly when facing a Muslim audience. Any criticism on Islam over the years has been met with that sharp inhalation followed by "can we really say that?" and rightly so. But as we enter the Trump and Brexit era, shouldn't we able to fall back on good old satire to make us laugh, but more importantly think?

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Mary Turner/PA Wire

In the run-up to the UK's referendum on EU membership, prominent pro-Brexit campaigners including Michael Gove publicly rejected the notion that political and economic 'experts' should be trusted by the public. Many political 'progressives' in the left-liberal press and the Twittersphere have responded aggressively that this is foolishness, a path to mob rule or a sort of resurgent Luddism. Last summer the celebrity physicist Professor Brian Cox denounced the anti-expert agenda as a route "back to the cave". This week, a New Yorker cartoon that garnered many re-tweets from anti-Brexit British progressives equated current political trends to allowing a passenger to fly an airliner because the pilots are elitist and "have lost touch with regular passengers like us".

A different kind of expert

But true progressives - people who want serious political and economic change, to create fairer and more equal societies - should be deeply wary of adopting this line on expertise. A fundamental fallacy lies at the heart of these messages and metaphors about expertise: that politics and economics are homologous to natural sciences like physics or aerodynamics, consisting in systems and processes that are governed by predictable causal laws. But being a politician or economist (or, like me, an academic 'expert' in politics) does not entail having the same relationship with physics as a physicist or with the principles and practice of flight that a pilot does.

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The knowledge of social scientists is essentially and unavoidably partial, shifting and speculative. Whilst there can indeed be 'experts' in politics and economics, the knowledge we accumulate is necessarily 'value-laden'. As any first year politics student should be able to tell you, on any specific question of politics or economic policy there are always multiple perspectives available depending upon the wider theoretical, ontological, epistemological and hypothetical assumptions you begin from and level of analysis you choose to employ. And since no covering laws of the sort extant in the natural sciences obtain in the social world, we cannot simply prove or disprove these perspectives. Instead, we judge them, socially and morally. 'Bad' political theories and practices, such as fascism, are not bad because of some technical flaw in their interpretation of the laws of social science but because they are morally repugnant.

Politics and economics are social spheres, not natural systems, and as such are produced, re-produced and, occasionally, radically transformed, by our collective everyday actions as members of society. They consist in purposive systems and processes, serving the various interests and preferences of particular social groupings, and individuals, in different ways. So particular policies and economic systems represent particular views about how we should organise ourselves - how best to live together, as societies. These are 'ought', rather than 'is', questions. They are morally loaded and invariably partisan.

Neoliberalism and the naturalisation of bad economics

Yet it is unsurprising that we have arrived at a situation where many who consider themselves leftist progressives are fiercely defending the principle of technocracy, a fundamentally elitist idea. The dominance of neoliberalism from the late 1970s onward has entailed an attempt at depoliticising politics and especially economics. Increasingly hard disciplinary boundaries between politics and economics themselves are one symptom of this change - an attempt to isolate economics as a natural science for exploring, understanding and explaining a natural system. It was not always so. Adam Smith and Karl Marx were scholars of 'political economy', a single disciplinary category, but also unafraid to make pronouncements on philosophy and sociology, at a time when the study of the social world was rather less disciplined. In British politics, the trend toward neoliberal depoliticisation was manifested especially in the growth of 'special advisers' as unelected expert governors, and the insistence that 'there is no alternative' to the neoliberal route of marketisations and privatisations.

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Progressives should be resisting the reification of right wing economic policy that has, through the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, been enabled by the careful cultivation of the idea that the economy is a natural system governed by laws to which we are all subject. We can, and must, in fact drastically remake our economy, as the crash of 2007-present has urgently shown us. Some political economists - notably Ha-Joon Chang - have emphasised the need for post-crash economics to radically break from the form of economic 'expertise', or rather dogma, that drove us over the precipice. But we can't do this if we continue to take for granted the expertise of the people who got us into this mess. Yes, we should resist anti-intellectualism, but anti-elitism is at the very core of what progressive, left wing politics has always stood for.

Progressive parties and the politics of expertise

Professor Cox was once part of D:Rream, the band who provided the theme tune for Tony Blair's New Labour government, 'Things can only get better'. That government was the most radical proponent of neoliberal political and economic expertise we have seen, going beyond the achievements of its Conservative predecessors. And that is where progressivism in the UK lost its way. The rise of Whitehall's special advisers, mantras like 'evidence-based policy' and the claim that 'ideology is dead' provided the conditions for the current widespread disillusionment with mainstream British politics and for both the rise of Corbyn and the vote for Brexit. The fervently anti-Corbyn New Labourites today insist that Labour is becoming a toxic brand by moving left when the views of the people are moving right. Many of them see a 'harder line' on immigration as a necessary step to reflecting these views. Even Corbyn's camp seems to have been coming around to the necessity of this anti-immigration sentiment.

But the role of political parties and leaders has never been to merely reflect the views of the people, but also to offer them inspiring ideas - to try to win them over to a particular vision of the 'good life'. That is not elitism or paternalism, it's simply politics, by the very oldest of definitions, Aristotle's. The political idea represented by the New Yorker cartoon on the other hand is the equally old, but profoundly elitist, Platonist concept of expert government for a people largely incapable of making good choices. This is a fiercely and explicitly anti-democratic idea, and one which those who consider themselves 'progressive' should treat with the utmost scepticism.
For the last of my two-part series on the importance of taking positive action in the new year, I speak with, perhaps, one of the most inspiring people I've had the good fortune to meet.

Mayur Ramgir, 34, is the founder of US-based Zonopact, an innovative software development company specialising in cloud-computing solutions including the Clintra CRM system. Since its formation in 2014 the company has turned over more than $1.3million in sales.

But the journey wasn't an easy one. Ramgir's father died when he was just six years old, plunging his family into financial uncertainty. But Ramgir rose to the challenge, and has created a life for himself that is truly awe-inspiring.

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He now wants to share the lessons he's learned in a new book, the award-winning Unbarred Innovation: A Pathway to Greatest Discoveries.

Mayur, if you could sum up the message of your book in one sentence what would you say?

I would say, innovation is a human instinct and our behavior and lifestyle play a key role in nurturing it.

Would you say that your parents instilled the philosophy of entrepreneurship into you?

While they never really told me that I had to start my own business, they always emphasized the importance of creating a positive difference through whatever I do. They always told me to be someone who can bring about a positive change; someone who can touch lives.

What are the main barriers to innovation that you most commonly encounter?

I would say everyone's case is different but you can definitely categorize the barriers into two types: the 'actual' ones and the 'perceptual' ones. The perceptual ones are the most difficult to overcome because they are not really barriers at all, but yet we see them like one.

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The actual barriers come down to a lack of resources that you need to put your innovative ideas to use. The Socio-political situation of the region they are based in, for instance. And that is where I think people who have found success should come forward to hold the hands of those in need. Now interestingly enough, money I think, is not an actual barrier but a perceptual one. Why? Because more often than not, a lack of money upfront is the reason behind innovation.

Finally, there are psychological barriers like a fear of failure or disregarding your own ability to innovate. Unbarred Innovation covers all of the barriers and provides a very simple approach to overcome them.

Do you truly believe that there is an innovator inside each of us?

Not everyone has to be a genius to be an innovator. In fact, we already may have innovated something in our lives without even realising. Innovation is about bringing about an improvement; finding a better way to do something; a way that saves time or money. So, even if you have invented a faster way to tie your shoe laces - congratulations! - you are an innovator.

Do you confine your philosophy and method to business innovation? What about someone needing to innovate behavior patterns in relationships?

My idea is of 'unbarred innovation' and of adapting innovation as a lifestyle. Limiting it to one area would be contrary to the whole philosophy. You can't really master the art of 'innovation' unless you have incorporated it in every walk of life.

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Relationship is an important part of anyone's life. Parents, friends, colleagues, loved ones - using an innovative approach can help you avoid conflicts, and even resolve them more effectively.

Have you been happy with the reception your book has received?

I am not an author by profession, and I did not write the book with the intention to be recognized as one. But I guess it is about writing what you know about. I have received three different awards so far, including a ReadersFavourite.com International Book Award and the Business Category of the 2016 Northern California Book Festival Award. My inbox is flooded with messages of readers sending me tokens of their appreciation. Knowing I have been able to create a difference is truly heartwarming. I can't be any happier!

What would you like readers to take away from your story?

The biggest take away from my story would be to stay confident and consistent no matter the barriers and failures you have to face. Sooner or later, hard work always pays off, but one needs to know that the efforts are invested in an idea that is 'innovative' and original, with focus on the bigger picture.

For more information on Mayur's book, Unbarred Innovation, visit. www.mayurramgir.com. You can also learn more at www.zonopact.com
When your wife cannot move at all. Chronicles of a husband whose wife is almost completely paralysed (unable to move or speak).

I was in search for a meaning to my life when our paths crossed. We met on the internet by pure coincidence. It was just another chat with just another stranger. We had much in common, our vision of life and the world was very similar. One could say that we shared idealism and another feature which is important in a relationship; humor. As I got more and more interested in her mind, I became curious and checked out her pictures and noticed in most of them she was sitting in a wheelchair. I did not know how to bring the subject up, so I made a silly remark as; "you must be a very special person". She replied; "you have noticed the wheelchair".

She told me that she suffered from Locked-In Syndrome, which in other words means that; her upper brain works perfectly, but her lower brain is so badly damaged that she cannot send the signals from her brain to her muscles to make them move. The human tongue is also a muscle. Also, a muscle that she cannot move, which in terms means that she cannot speak either.

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Kati is in medical terms 95% paralysed. She can stretch out her legs up to certain degrees. She can raise her shoulders a little. She has some movements in her jaw (she can chew a little). She has quite a good command over her neck muscles. However, none of this movements makes her able to do anything by herself. She needs an assistant for everything. To give her to drink, to feed her, to clean her up, to bathe her, etc. Everything!

The only body part she has total command over is her eyes and this what she uses to communicate. Kati speaks with her beautiful and always shining green eyes.

Luckily that with the help of technology she could use the computer which helped her stay in contact with her family, friends and the outside world.

We chatted daily. Every day when I came back from work, I would turn on the computer, and we would chat for hours. Saturday and Sunday, we would chat 2 or 3 times a day. She told me her story. She used to be a model and at 20 years old just when she started to make it she had a stroke. That was back in 1995, and at times doctors thought that only older people (over 40) got strokes and did not give her the right treatment and by the time they had realised what has happened; it was too late. Their disclosure was that due to the severe damage to her lower brain (brain stem) she would never be able to move again.

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She sent me an English translation of her autobiography that was published in Finland. I started reading it but about halfway through I decided that I want to learn everything about her, just not from a book. I want to know it in a more personal through sharing my life with hers.

When I met Kati, my life gained purpose. I was looking for a meaning to my life, and my wish became true. Every single second of my life is meaningful. Even in the middle of the night when I am fast asleep. It is so because I share it with an extraordinary woman and because our story can be a form of inspirational to others.

>To see that wishes do become true and when they do they are better than all you imagined they would be.
China's regions suffer from severe air pollution at the beginning of 2017. (Photo : Getty Images)

China's meteorological bureau raised an orange alert in Beijing and surrounding areas because of heavy smog and lack of visibility. The expressways were closed and 46 flights were cancelled.



Portions of the expressway in Beijing that linked the capital with Harbin in the northeast, Shanghai in the east, and neighbouring Tianjin Municipality, were also closed.



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In Shandong, 155 flights from Jinan were rerouted or cancelled.



The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center reported that the density of PM 2.5, or particulate matter associated with hazardous smog, stood at 391 micrograms per cubic meter at noon in the city proper.



The number has decreased from above 500 micrograms per cubic meter over the weekend which triggered a red alert.



A meteorologist with Beijing Meteorological Station, Zhang Lin'na, said that a weak cold spell will bring rain or snow to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the coming weekend. This will not, however, disperse the pollution.



An expected strong cold front is to sweep the smog this coming Monday night.



Photos of China's white bullet trains with brown stains circulated in social media. Official media websites showed these photos as thick smog covered Beijing and 71 cities for the past five days.



Ma Jun, a director at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, said that the grime was likely to have been caused by smog.



The National Meteorological Center (NMC) reported that heavy smog will persist in parts of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Jiangxi and Hunan until tomorrow.



The central government has stepped up efforts to cut outdated production capacity and has dispatched inspection teams to provincial regions to supervise environmental measures at key industrial enterprises.


Three hours of torture, punctuated by long periods where no-one speaks. We've all been on dates like that. But dates like that rarely also involve wrestling with truths so universal they almost defy words. That's not what Tinder is for.

It is what Silence is for, though. Martin Scorsese's new film of an old novel about idealistic, faith-filled European missionaries in violently anti-Christian 17th century Japan features agonisingly protracted scenes of tortures broad and diverse enough to make the both ISIS and interrogators at Guantanamo take a professional interest. It also features some of the most beautiful and nuanced depictions of faith and asks some of the most profound questions one is likely to see in the cinema. Outside of Moana, obvs.

Silence has been called a masterpiece already. It's also been criticised for not taking into account the point of view of the Japanese persecutors and being too Christian. None of that is important. What's important is that this is a great date movie. So, while you wait for that next hyperglycemic Gosling and Stone fix (coming soon to a cliched courtship near you), why not push the boat out, land on unfriendly shores and take the object of your affliction to a film that will make them question what love could possibly mean in a world of so much pain? I know, right? Hot.

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Here's why Silence is a great date movie:

1.It has the guys from Star Wars and Spiderman in it.

And they're handsome. Well, one of them is. The other is kind of interesting looking. And even if your date is a straight dude, they really are very good. And if you've spent any time at all in the evangelical (or activist Catholic) church that still has non-kidnapped young people in it, you will recognise them. Earnest. Arrogant. Absolutely certain, in that first-half-of-life way, that their faith is in the truth, and that their understanding of truth is complete. The two young priests happily set off in the face of potential martyrdom because it is the right thing to do. If your date is the kind of person to sneer at conviction, or think that suicide bombers are 'cowards' rather than rather too careless with the lives of others, they will, I guess, find much to sneer at here. But they will also see genuine faith. That can only go well for you. You're either going to look very reasonable and sane by comparison or like you quietly reflect their passion and bravery, in your own, gentle, non-life-threatening way. Plus, you're probably prettier than the interesting-looking one.

2.It's horrible

Silence really has a lot of torture in it. I can't really watch torture, even the light stuff, without changing my views on eternal conscious torment and grace for a while. It makes me angry. The torture in Silence makes me cry. It feels inevitable as a tide, inescapable as gravity, natural as a volcanic spring. It is awful, horrific and unjustifiable, and yet its architects are sane, reasonable, charming, even. They are protecting their country. They are not interested in owning anyone's soul - just making them admit that their souls aren't more important than worldly concerns. And like a horror film, a rollercoaster or weekend with relatives' toddlers, the harrowing experience leaves you with inhibitions broken down, jadedness chipped away and your mind and heart open. Bow chicka bow wow.

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3.It's deep. Like for real. (Spoilers!)

Watching the torture is hard. Watching the torture being watched is harder. It is the priests' anguish as they see others tortured on their behalf that is the crux of the film. Any twentysomething fundamentalist will die for their faith. How many will pretend the Truth is not true for it? How many will sacrifice their religion for their faith? Truth is at the centre of the film - it is why the priests are there. It's why they hold firm. They believe it to be universal - beyond borders and cultural specificity. And yet only in giving up the Truth they hold so dear and apostatising do they really attain a truly universal understanding of (and encounter with) God. That's a hard message for evangelicals and atheists. But it's also great date chat.

Look them in the eye, take their hand and say: "I think that when they do not assert their rightness, when they abandon the name of Christ to identify with his mercy more even than his suffering, they arrive at the truth that only the ingenious torture of making others suffer for your convictions can bring them. Baby." Then lean over and softly brush a strand of hair from their face with your fingers. That will convince them that, while this body is just a temporal vessel for spirit and truth, it's a vessel that's worth tearing the shirt off.

4.It's beautiful. And true.

Have a few drinks before you watch Silence. But not too many. Even though it doesn't feel longer than Rogue One, it probably is. And the last half hour will be hard not to fall asleep in if you're too drunk. You want to be able to wonder dreamily if every meticulously lit and framed scene is not just meant to evoke a painting, but if the painting style changes. Silence seems to start with a European aesthetic, some scenes feeling like Rembrandt, in religious mood, had painted them. Later, you can picture the action on a delicate Japanese screen, cherry-blossom light passing through it. But that may just be the booze talking. The point is, Silence is beautiful. Visually and in terms of content. There are depictions of love, courage and resigned, dirty-fingernailed forgiveness that make you weep. Because they are true.

The film is true. The Shogun oppressors are not portrayed as monsters any more than the missionaries are painted as morons. They could be either, depending on your convictions. And even then, I think you would have to be a little simple to pick a side so easily. I hope your date isn't simple. That will make it hard. Having worked with missionaries for over twelve years, and heard countless stories of the real and brutal persecution they have seen first-hand, I'm preprogrammed for outrage here. And yet, in Scorsese's Japanese noblemen I see mostly the arrogance of class and the bemusement a seriously religious person often encounters from those without faith. 'Why do you have to be difficult about this?' Or, in the words of the urbane translator-torturer in the film: "This is just a formality." We all know this isn't worth all the pain. And that, of course, is the question of the film. Is Truth worth that pain? Is anything?

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If telling truth about truth, of asking those questions that go to the heart of what it is to exist doesn't get your date just a little bit hot, then why are you with them? You know there are theology faculties chock full of tasty trinitarians, philosophy faculties heaving with sexy seekers, right?
Now there's a thought with which to begin 2017!

Mindfulness is simply an ability to attend to the present moment with curiosity and without judgement. It is a life skill that promotes wellbeing and well doing, concentration, resilience, emotional intelligence, empathy.

I have written extensively about Educating for the Future and how the practice of Mindfulness can play an important role. Indeed, how introducing Mindfulness into education practice and into schools will help us to reset the bar and where it already has, the benefits for children who participate include:

Lowered levels of Cortisol (the stress hormone)

Improved attention and concentration spans

Calmer classrooms and happier children

Improved maths score, more collaborative learning and sharing, and less falling out.

It's never too early to learn the benefits of relaxation with Mindfulness

That we should be investing early in the lives of our children is for me, a no-brainer! It's a fundamental given in helping them to grow-up to become independent, vital, creative, collaborative, resilient, resourceful, productive and happy adults.

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Adults who can fully contribute, both economically and socially. So, high on our collective agenda then should be making Mindfulness an integral part of the core curriculum within school and putting wellbeing and well doing front and centre.

This however is all out-with the home. We know that where children are experiencing Mindfulness in the classroom, parents report that their children are sleeping better at home, so what can we do to bring it in-house as well, so to speak?

A Parent's and Teacher's Delight

In fact, wouldn't it be great to have to hand something that for Mindfulness was both a parent and a teacher's delight? Something that could be used both at home and at school.

Something that concentrates on body scan meditations, visualisations and breathing exercises, to help children cultivate a whole-body awareness of what is going on both in their minds and their bodies, purposefully and without judgement.

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Something that helps to promote emotional regulation and create a sense of calmness, resilience, happiness and wellbeing.

Mindfulness for Children

Then I came across an app. 'Mindfulness for Children'. It's been created just for this purpose and it's been developed by a Danish couple, who were inspired by the work of Dr Dan Siegel and Susan Kaiser Greenland amongst others.

Children, parents and teachers in Denmark, the U.S., Canada, Australia and the UK are already using the app. and as Pia Holgeresen, who developed this teaching tool with her partner Jannik says, "Our app. offers simple but effective exercises, for noticing body sensations and thoughts and then enabling the user to become comfortable with them".

Pia who's also a trained Psychomotor Therapist continues, "Our original idea was and remains that children should be first taught about Mindfulness by a trained Mindfulness teacher, but then use the app. to practice with their parents at home".

The Science is certainly with them and if it helps a child to feel calmer, happier, more fulfilled, able to concentrate and perform better in class too, then... Well perhaps we should let Susan Kaiser Greenland, author of 'The MIndful Child' and 'Mindful Games' have the last words here, "Through Mindfulness children nurture positive qualities like kindness, compassion and open mindedness as they learn more about themselves, other people and the world. Educators prise all of these capacities and insights and they're ones that parents hope their children will develop".

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And for more details about the 'Mindfulness for Children' app visit http://mindful-app.com

Paul Mudd is himself author of, 'Uncovering Mindfulness: In Search Of A Life More Meaningful' and presenter of the series, 'From Mindfulness With Love' available free on iTunes.

Through The Mudd Partnership he works with business leaders, organisations and individuals in support of change, leadership excellence, organisational and individual wellbeing, and introducing Mindfulness. He can be contacted at paul@themuddpartnership.co.uk and you can follow the continuing journey Uncovering Mindfulness on Twitter @TheMindfulBook and @Paul_Mudd
Matt Dunham/AP

It's a good thing that I am still relatively fluent in diplo-speak, so I can translate for you the incendiary parting missive to his colleagues from the UK's former ambassador to the European Union, Sir Ivan Rogers.

There are three key passages: 'Serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall ... Contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen ... I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking.'

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All of which translates nice and simply into a single, pithy statement: 'We're up the creek without a paddle.'

It is now six months since the Brexit referendum, and nearly a year since the date of the vote was announced. For the government still to have no exit strategy is nothing less than culpable negligence. Imagine what would have had happened if it had failed to plan for the aftermath of a military invasion in the same way as it failed to plan for a pro-Leave referendum result -- David Cameron would have found himself hauled up to face Sir John Chilcot faster than you could say 'Brexit means Brexit'.

So we are where we are. In March, Mrs May will write to Brussels and tell them formally that the UK intends to leave the EU. She will then -- presumably -- suggest that some kind of negotiating process should get under way. She will propose -- we must assume -- a framework for a future relationship between them and us.

It will, of course, be written in diplo-speak, but in translation it will read: 'What Her Majesty's Government envisages is that the UK shall have its cake and eat it.' To which the response will be, again in translation: 'You must be 'avin' a larf.'

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Just before Christmas, the FT's foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman suggested that the esoteric debate between the relative merits of a 'hard Brexit' and a 'soft Brexit' may well turn out to be a waste of everyone's breath: what is just as likely, he wrote, is a 'train crash Brexit'. I fear that Ivan Rogers's departure from Brussels makes that even more likely than it was three weeks ago.

So let's look at what a train crash Brexit might mean. After all, in this context, train crash does not necessarily mean train crash. What it does mean is that if, two years after Mrs May's Dear Jean-Claude letter there is no deal, the UK's trading relationship with the rest of the world, including the EU, will be under World Trade Organisation rules.

For example, cars manufactured in the UK and exported to the EU would be subject to a 10% import tariff. Not great news for Honda, Nissan or Toyota. Exports of services to the EU (which make up more than a third of the UK's total exports to the EU, worth more than 80 billion a year) would be subject to the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). According to a briefing paper from the independent fact-checking organisation Full Fact, based on a paper prepared by the House of Commons library: 'If the UK does trade under the GATS agreement, then our market access will be far more limited than it is currently.'

As for the UK's farmers, according to a report this week by the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, about 95% of UK sheep exports go to the EU, and if Britain and the EU were to impose mutual customs duties, the UK could be exposed to tariffs of more than 30%.

So that's what a Brexit train crash might look like. No wonder Boris Johnson and David Davis are starting to talk nervously of compromises and transitional arrangements. And even Andrea Leadsom (remember her?) told farmers on Wednesday that she wanted to 'pay tribute to the many workers from Europe who contribute so much to our farming industry and rural communities.' Gosh. Foreign migrants contributing to rural communities. Who woulda thunk it?

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Business leaders across the EU are entitled to look despairingly at the mess we've made for ourselves. They want to be able to trade with us, but they know only too well what kind of pressures their own governments are facing. Be nice to the Brits? How will that go down among increasingly nationalistic voters in France, Germany and the Netherlands?

You might have thought that now, of all times, the prime minister needs all the friends she can get. So you may also think that it wasn't the brightest of ideas to allow her attack dogs to declare war on her top Whitehall mandarins, the very same people on whom she will be totally dependent to get her out of the mess into which voters have cast her.

It may also not have been such a great idea to turn her back on decades of EU foreign policy to schmooze up to Donald Trump over the UN security council's condemnation of Israel's illegal settlements. If he's the one leader she has chosen as her new best friend, her reputation as a woman of cool calculation and carefully-calibrated judgements will be seriously at risk.

Theresa May, Friend to the Demon Tweeter. I mean, really?

For the past six months, we've been living through a phony Brexit. Just as during the first months of the Second World War, it's tempting to wonder what all the fuss was about. The economy's been doing much better than the experts had forecast (huh, what do they know?), so maybe it won't be so bad after all.

To which the only realistic response, I'm afraid, is: Dream on. A year from now, unless something very unexpected has happened, foreign businesses operating in the UK are going to have to start making some tough decisions. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, is fine as a holding policy - but at some point, preparing for the worst will mean acting accordingly.

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There's a beach way down in the Maldives that looks like something out of a science-fiction fairytale. It's gorgeous, to say the least.

Taiwanese photographer William Ho was able to catch these phenomenal images on a recent honeymoon trip -- and we're so glad he did.

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Ho was traveling through Mudhdhoo Island, and these particular photos were captured during his stay at luxury resort Dusit Thani.

Cornell biology professor James Morin tells The Huffington Post that the organisms creating the glow in the Maldives are in fact "ostracod crustaceans" although they've been commonly mistaken for phytoplankton.

Morin further explains that these ostracods emit light for a longer time than the organisms previously believed to be in the photos, bioluminescent phytoplankton. While phytoplankton emits light for no more than a second, usually when something comes into contact with the water, ostraccods emit light for seconds to even a minute or longer.

The sight of thousands of glowing specks scattered along the beach's sand is believed to be a mass mortality of these organisms that periodically occurs in the Maldives.

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Bioluminescent phytoplankton, on the other hand, react to any type of stress or change in tension, emitting light from their cells anytime something breaks the water: a wave, a kayak or even your hand. We're calling it, informally, the "firefly effect."

And here's some good news: These incredible Pixar-esque views don't only happen in the Maldives. There are a few other places where you could occasionally catch sight of this unpredictable occurrences, such as Puerto Rico, Jamaica and even Belgium.

But stateside, your best bet is sunny San Diego where you can spot a similar view, however attributed to a different process from that of the Maldives. You know, if you camp out long enough and consider yourself generally lucky, you may find yourself uttering...

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Is this real life?

Clearly, no.

We're living in a dream.

And nothing is as it seems.

Note: This is TOTALLY real life -- may we suggest getting down to San Diego as quickly as possible?
"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.""And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.""And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice



Well, well, well. As I write it's the sixth candle of Chanukah, and the day before the Christian new year 2017. When it comes to US-Israel relations there's not much light, nor 'goodwill to all men' to be found. Instead, just plenty of heat and some of the worst political language heard between the two countries in certainly my living memory (I'm 43).



Of course, as any seasoned observer of the Isreali-Plaestinian conflict knows, it all started when the US took the unprecedented step of abstaining on a UN vote, critical of Israel's settlement policy. This is the first time that the US abstained, usually always voting against.



Benjamin Netanyahu was furious, launching a tirade of abuse, speaking of betrayal and a fundamental bias against Israel. So far, so Bibi. His default position when attacked is that of Rottweiler: Bite back hard, ask questions later.



Then things got really nasty. I like many of you I'm sure, was watching john Kerry's state department speech earlier this week.



Kerry, the outgoing secretary of state, called Netanyahu's government the "most rightwing coalition in Israeli history" and warned that the rapid expansion of settlements in the occupied territories meant that "the status quo is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation". Israel's actions he said, were putting the very notion of a two state solution into jeopardy.



Then the real monocle falling into the glass moment came when he said that Israel cannot be both a Jewish State and a democratic one.



Come again? At this stage I switched off my TV in disgust. Is the US, or the UK, or France for that matter, not both a democracy and Christian?



Never have I heard such an ill-tempered and ill-measured rant from an American Secretary of State. Whilst few will disagree that the current Israeli government is the most right wing in history, his other comments were so over the line even John McEnroe wouldn't have objected.



There's an expression that a bad workman always blames his tools. And the Kerry speech felt every bit like that. His administration had eight years to try and make some impression on the conflict. By any benchmark it failed miserably. The US-Israel relationship was the rockiest it had ever been, despite security co-operation. Precisely zero progress was made, as the focus rested solely on settlement construction at the expense of a multitude of other issues that are obstacles to peace, such as Palestinian incitement.



US Strategic diplomacy has taken a severe battering of late. One only need look at Syria and how the Russians and Turks have brokered a ceasefire (the Americans through gritted teeth welcomed it), or how Mr Duterte of the Philipines feels bold enough to give two-fingered salute to the US, preferring instead closer ties with Moscow and Beijing.



The only silverware, if you can call it that, in the US foreign policy success cupboard is one that they awarded themselves over the Iran nuclear deal. As former Scottish MEP Struan Stevenson succinctly put it "Aleppo, Mosul, Ramadi, Falujah, Yemen, Lebanon, everywhere you find destruction & brutality in the Middle East you discover it is being caused by the Iranian regime who want to spread their sick vision of Islamic fundamentalism around the world."



Speaking of British Politicians, even Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister took the unprecedented step of distancing herself from Mr Kerry's comments as a bridge too far.



Look, of course things are not easy in Israel just now, and the country is a split over the issue of settlements as the UK is over Brexit, or Germany or France on Immigration. But this type of thundering and stamping of feet is the political equivalent of the proverbial use of sledgehammer to crack a nut. More than that, its political cowardice: inability to accept failure.



Let us be clear. US foreign policy has failed, its influence on the wane. That's why watching John Kerry's fit of pique was so undignified to us. It seemed as if he was flailing around looking at someone to blame for the empty cupboard. Clue. There's this thing called a mirror. We suggest you look in it along with Mr Obama, John.
[Chung Sye-kyun, Speaker of the National Assembly of South Korea]

I had a chance to speak with Chung Sye-kyun, Speaker of the National Assembly, about his vision for Korean politics and his thoughts about what possible reforms may result from the current impeachment crisis. Speaker Chung spoke frankly about his hopes for meaningful and visionary constitutional reform and plans to address such knotty issues as the government-mandated history textbooks.

Emanuel Pastreich:What exactly is this consultative body made up by the ruling and opposition parties for the period of the impeachment proceedings?

Chung Sye-kyun:Under normal circumstances, the National Assembly would perform its role as legislative branch of government establishing laws. The central government, similarly, would play its administrative role. But we find ourselves in an emergency situation, one in which the president's administrative authority is legally suspended and the prime minister has taken up temporary authority. But in the middle of all this we are facing a broad range of challenges both at home and abroad.

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It is in that sense that the opposition party has called for a "consultative body for the ruling and opposition parties" or "consultative body for government administration." Regardless of the name used, we need to consider the original function of the National Assembly: overseeing the actions of the executive branch and checking its actions. Simultaneously, the National Assembly also is charged with making legislation.

But this timewe must increase the National Assembly's role of oversight of, and checks on, the executive. As for the serious pending issues that we face, is it not the case that the National Assembly needs to address them? We have a critical contribution to make.

It was in the context of discussing this problem that suggestions for "political collaboration," to use a popular term, came up. There are four (updated from three) negotiating parties in the National Assembly now involved in this political collaboration and we intend to cooperate with those in the legislative and executive branches. It is in that sense that that the ruling and opposition parties came up with this concept of a "consultative body for national affairs." I think that such collaboration will allow us to move beyond the emergency situation of the present day and we want to make best use of the time we have. We need to work hard for such political collaboration so that the National Assembly, the entire government and the people of the Republic of Korea can respond to this emergency.

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Emanuel Pastreich:What are the priorities for this consultative body for national affairs, and what role do you expect to play?

Chung Sye-kyun:There are many issues we must address and not so much time, but I think that the people's livelihood and the economy are the primary issues for citizens. The new most important issue is the response to new developments in foreign affairs and security, especially those related to North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

I hope that the members of the National Assembly, and all members of the political parties, will engage in a serious discussion about these two critical issues and that they will actively seek out ways to support the government so that reform and governance goes forward smoothly.

Emanuel Pastreich:The possibility of constitutional reform has been brought up repeatedly before. There are those who see this crisis as the perfect opportunity to revise the constitution. And then there are some who hold that constitutional reform can be a means of sharing power with the so-called "third zone."What are your thoughts on constitutional revision?

Chung Sye-kyun:Constitutional revision must first and foremost take place in accord with the understanding of our citizens. And only on that foundation that can we proceed smoothly with constitutional revision. We will also need each political party of the National Assembly to reach an agreement on the process. As it seems pretty much certain that elections will be held early, following the impeachment, it will be rather difficult to carry out any sort of constitutional revision before the election.

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For this reason, politics and the preparations for the upcoming elections should proceed along one track and the current judgment on the president of the Constitutional Court's impeachment proceedings should proceed along its own track. Constitutional revision should be debated separately and treated separately.

The term "third zone" refers to the formation of another faction by those who have left the major parties. These politicians could pursue a different approach to policy, coalescing into a larger political force. It is possible that they might even try to field a candidate for president. It does not appear, however, that they have come together as a viable force in Korean politics. These politicians would have tried increase their influence if there had not been any impeachment proceedings. But now with the impeachment proceedings (and early elections) they will not have much leisure to prepare for an election and I think it will be rather difficult to field a candidate.

As I noted before, the ruling on impeachment of the Constitutional Court and the early presidential election are also quite distinct from constitutional revision. No one has any idea when such constitutional revision might take place. Nevertheless, although we do not know when the constitution might be revised, I would like to achieve this goal during my term of service.

The most important aspect of constitutional revision is the redistribution of power. The authority of the president should be reduced and transferred to the legislature, or to other government offices, so as to create a more horizontal distribution of power. In addition, there needs to be anallotment of administrative authority concentrated in the central government to move over to local government as well.

It is an issue of the fundamental rights of citizens. Whether we are talking about environmental issues or sustainable development, I think that a broad range of issues should be addressed in the process of constitutional revision. It is a question of the power structure. We need to do more than address institutional architecture. We must respond to the many changes and developments that have taken place in Korea over the last thirty years. Those developments should be reflected in the revision of the constitution.

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Emanuel Pastreich:How do you view the impeachment proceedings, especially as related to the impending early presidential election or the revision of the constitution?

Chung Sye-kyun:The fact that 62 members of the ruling party voted for the impeachment in the National Assembly reflects the will of the people. Polls show that 78 percent of the nation supported the impeachment, which is about the same as the percent of the assemblymen who voted for impeachment in the National Assembly. From this fact, we can infer that public opinion has had impact on the decision of the National Assembly members.

Since the impeachment issue has already been passed on to the Constitutional Court, I anticipate that the Constitutional Court will make a prudent and wise decision. However, this is not to say that we know exactly how the Court will decide.

At present the members of the National Assembly need to systematically, in a transparent manner, discuss the basis for constitutional reform. It appears that many who participated in the demonstrations watching very closely how the impeachment hearings progress now that the case has moved to the Constitutional Court. They are ready, as committed citizens, to reconsider their positions on Korean politics in accordance with developments.

We must not lose sight, however, of the current issues critical to Korea. We must effectively resolve pressing issues such as the bird flu outbreak (AI), problems in the economy, and challenges for security and diplomacy. We can at the same time and proceed with the political process of resolving the crisis in a democratic, peaceful, reasonable and orderly way.

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Emanuel Pastreich:But there are some people who are worried that not everybody has the vision that you have, that there are politicians who are more concerned about the next election than any long-term reforms. So how would you make sure that we are focused on the big question of the Constitution and of the future of Korea, rather than short-term benefits?

Chung Sye-kyun:It is quite natural for politicians to want to win elections and that is how things should be. We also need to confront current challenges and to think about the future of Korea. I must run for office and I must also fulfill my duties as the speaker of the National Assembly. The same goes for others.

Those who want to run in the presidential election must try hard to win the support of the people. But we have already seen the degree of commitment of our citizens to good government in the recent protests. They clearly feel a responsibility to carry out their role as citizens. It is for this reason that I am optimistic that no problems would arise.

Those who wish to be candidates for president ought to compete in a fair manner and thereby be scrutinized by the people. In this process, they should offer their visions and compete openly with each other to offer solutions. I hope that a good leader will be chosen in the end.

Additionally, I hope that presidential candidates will offer a concrete vision to the people, rather than employing a negative campaign. I understand that there is little time left in the process. Nevertheless, I hope that the candidates would make meaningful pledges for good government and will receive the support of citizens in return, thereby carrying out constructive campaigns.

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Emanuel Pastreich:A sample of the new government-mandated history textbook was released recently and set off protests calling for its recall. How should be address this problem, especially in light of the process by which this textbook was produced?

Chung Sye-kyun:I have always strongly opposed the idea of government-mandated textbooks. This is not because of ideological or political bias, but rather because I feel we must employ a balanced and objective manner of considering history as we undertake the awesome task of educating of future generations. If we look at the issue in terms of our mission to the future, I believe, we must admit that Korea has developed sufficiently to no longer require government-mandated history textbooks.
By AsiaToday reporter Lee Mi-hyun - "Nowadays, young people do not stay long on the job, and are impatient to move on, fewer believe in learning the ropes, taking time to develop skills on the job and working their way up."

This is the public remarks of Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Older generations and companies have often described younger colleagues as "self-centered and disloyal employees." However, they will soon come to dominate the labor market.

Millennials, the generation born between early 1980s and early 2000s, will form 50% of the global workforce by 2020, according to global consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). By 2025, they will make up 75% of the workforce.

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Does the millennial generation really have different values, just like what its predecessors believe? Contrary to popular belief, various in-depth surveys reveal that millennials put 'opportunities for career progression' as a top priority rather than 'work-life balance'. They are less resistant to job-hopping and more adventurous to get a new job than older generations.

 Asian millennials are hungry for success

The Singapore Tourism Board surveyed over 6,500 millennial workers from the Asia-Pacific region engaged in the travel industry. and found that the most important job selection factor for them was the chance to succeed.

According to "The Asian Millennial Workforce and the Travel Industry", about 49% of Asian millennials chose their current job for the good 'opportunities for career progression'. This is nearly twice as high as the second most important factor - the company's prestige and reputation. Another characteristics of Asian millennials is that they want fast promotion.

However, work-life balance is one of the least significant drivers that affects job satisfaction for Asian millennials which is contradictory to the characterization of millennials. Less than a third stated that they would opt for flexible working arrangements if it meant compromising career advancement. One respondent noted that, "Millennials are hungry for experiences and success."

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However, the report said that the millennial generation, which emphasizes professional success, isn't that loyal.

Only 39% of millennial workers said they are likely to stay with their company for the next three years. As one manager noted, "Loyalty is not a key value to [Asian] millennials."

This tendency was found to be higher in emerging countries.

 Asian millennials in emerging countries have greater intention to move on

Deloitte, a global management consulting firm, surveyed more than 7,700 millennials from 29 countries including 9 Asian nations and found that millennials in emerging countries were more likely to leave if they had the opportunity.

While 66% of millennials around the world said they will have left their organizations before 2020 has passed, the percentage was lower in Japan (52%) and higher in emerging countries like India (76%), China (65%), and Philippines (64%). South Korea, although being a middle-income country, had high figure with 74%. This can be interpreted as a low loyalty, but it could be the lack of talent management of companies.

The most loyal employees were more likely to agree that 'There is a lot of training for leadership in the workplace' and 'Young employees are actively encouraged to aim for leadership roles.'

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On the other hand, the number of millennials who said their 'leadership skills are not being fully developed' was higher in emerging countries. The figure exceeded 70% in the southeastern Asian nations of Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

According to Deloitte, leadership skill is the ability that the millennial generation feels is the most lacking in themselves. Many millennials feel that their abilities are not being used properly, and this is related to high job hopping, the report said.

The report pointed out, "Asian millennials are dissatisfied with remuneration and career advancement, yet these are the most significant drivers of loyalty."

 How to engage Asian millennials in the workplace?

The report suggested that companies should provide 'role hopping' for millennials as an alternative to job-hopping. It's because millennials don't singularly see career progression as promotions up the traditional job ladder, but also view it as opportunities for greater exposure, taking on new challenges and learning new skills.

Global cosmetics company L'Oreal for example, has established a program that allows new employees to experience all their jobs by rotating four to six different departments for 18 months.

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Gitansh Malik, Asian program head at global HR and recruiting consulting firm Aon Hewitt, said, "Millennials have higher expectations from their employer and are more prone to attrition," compared to earlier generations. "To manage these expectations, the best employers focus on creating a work environment that enables accelerated learning for millennials along with continuous feedback on performance and promotion potential," said Malik.

In fact, Goldman Sachs reorganized HR management program last year, to provide junior bankers with quicker career progression and more stimulating tasks.

Planting a sense of mission to the millennial generation who want to do meaningful work also helps staff management. Sebastian Hampartzoumian, senior managing director of Page Group Singapore and India, revealed that implementing a CSR (corporate social responsibility) program can also improve the sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction of millennial employees. In addition, job flexibility and company culture are also key priority areas for millennials.

 Millennials enjoying leisure time? Death by overwork on rise among young workers

Unlike their desire for guaranteed personal and leisure time, millennials are not really enjoying their work-life balance.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) asked itself, "Longer hours, worse jobs : are Asians turning to working machines?" and pointed out, "It is not that, because these young workers do not yet protest, there is no crisis."

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A young woman who graduated from a prestigious university in Beijing told SCMP, "We work eleven hours a day, spend another three hours in traffic to commute outside the city because of expensive house price. We are working ourselves to death."

The media reported that Asia's labor market crisis is not only a matter of shortage of jobs; many jobs are hardly pay enough to keep up with the rising cost of living.

In Japan, death by overwork is on the rise among vulnerable workers, mainly young people and women.

[In this Oct. 7, 2016 photo, Yukimi Takahashi, right, mother of Matsuri, with lawyer Hiroshi Kawahito, speaks to journalists at a news conference in Tokyo after her daughter's suicide was recognized as "karoshi," or death from overwork. Matsuri Takahashi's dream career at Japan's top ad agency, Dentsu, ended with her suicide after her overtime exceeded 100 hours a month. (Kyodo News via AP)]

According to the Japanese labor ministry, work-related suicides are up 45% in the past four years among those 29 and younger. While victims of overwork death were mainly middle-aged men in white-collar jobs in the 1980s, now it expanded to women and young people.

A 24-year-old graduate with overtime exceeding 130 hours at one point at Japan's biggest advertising agency committed suicide on Christmas 2015. On September 2016, the Japanese labor ministry ruled the suicide as death by overwork. According to a white paper published by the Japanese government released last year, one in five Japanese workers faces risk of death from overwork.

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[In this Oct. 14, 2016 photo, officials from the Tokyo Labor Bureau head to the headquarters of Japanese top ad agency, Dentsu, in Tokyo for on-site inspections. Matsuri Takahashi's dream career at Dentsu ended with her suicide after her overtime exceeded 100 hours a month. (Akiko Matsushita/Kyodo News via AP]

HRM Asia, a media specialized in Asian human resource management, reported that work-life balance continues to be a hot topic, especially with millennials forming the bulk of the workforce today, however it's far from reality.

According to the Singapore ministry of labor, more companies in the past year have begun offering flexible work arrangements but few Singaporeans expressed satisfaction. Nearly one in two Singapore workers perceived their work-life balance to be "awful", according to a new Emolument.com study.

The media explained that one key reason for this was that the lines separating work and personal time have become blurred with increasing digitization. Young workers of today can check their emails via smartphones on their way to work, conduct video conferencing calls from home in the middle of the night, and receive work files on the cloud from anywhere in the world. This means that they are now connected and logged on 24/7.

The media warned that although companies want their workers to be able to maintain work-life integration, this kind of approach may not be sustainable over the long-term.

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 Chinese millennials are idealists seeking for challenges and meaningful work

China reportedly has the most idealist millennials among Asian countries. Nearly a quarter of Chinese millennials were willing to accept a job with a lower salary for more meaningful work, compared to 18% in the rest of Asia.

Chinese millennials showed a tendency to take risk and start their own business rather than sticking to dull jobs.

QQ Browser, part of China's Tencent Holdings, polled 13,000 college students in China recently and found that only half of those were willing to have stable jobs upon graduation. 15% of respondents said they want to start their own business, and 8% aspire to take on new professions. The most sought after jobs include online live-streamer or blogger, game tester and make-up artist.

Chinese young people, who have grown up in a booming economy, showed adventurous characteristics to pursue their dreams. It is different from their parents, who defaulted to the factory floor, construction site or staid state-sector job.

In addition, Chinese millennials no longer cling to factory jobs. Grown up in a better environment than their parents, many of them want more control over their lives, rather than being forced into long overtime shifts.

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As a result, global companies with factories in China are also changing their employee management.
New research adds to evidence that the effectiveness of popular genetically engineered traits used to protect corn and cotton from insects is failing, putting U.S. corn production potential in jeopardy, and spurring a need for increased insecticide use.

The study, authored by a trio of independent researchers, documents resistance in a major crop pest called corn earworm, and adds to warnings that the popular GMO insect-resistant technology known as Bt, after the soil-dwelling bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, has lost its luster. It is noteworthy as the first long-term, in-field assessment of transgenic Bt corn's effectiveness against one of the most damaging pests of sweet corn, field corn, cotton and many other high-value crops. Before publishing their findings, which cover 20 years of observations, the researchers presented them to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as to the corporations that developed and market the traits, said Galen Dively, a University of Maryland entomologist and lead researcher on the study.

Crops engineered with Bt genes express specific proteins known as (Cry proteins) that make the crops toxic to specific insects - the plants effectively provide their own insecticide - reducing the need for chemical applications. In 2015, more than 80 percent of the U.S. corn crop carried at least one Bt trait. Much of the corn now planted is engineered with multiple Bt Cry proteins, but the new research indicates that the insect (called earworm in corn but bollworm in cotton) is now able to survive multiple genetically engineered traits in a pyramided variety. Other research has shown wide failure of traits supposed to protect against the western corn rootworm as well, leaving farmers facing big and potentially costly problems as resistance builds, according to the researchers.

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"With widespread use of genetically engineered crops, the targeted insects developing resistance to these protein is a major threat to the sustainability of the Bt technology," researcher Dilip Venugopal wrote in a summary of the group's findings. "Increasing damages by corn earworm to Bt field corn are reported already in North Carolina and Georgia, and corn earworm could become a major pest. We predict that corn earworm resistance to the Cry toxins is likely to increase, and spread. Therefore, the risk of damage to corn production across a large portion of U.S. is high." Venugopal is a science and technology policy fellow working with a division of the EPA.

The research adds to evidence that after 20 years of use of crops engineered to tolerate herbicides and resist certain harmful insects, both technologies are losing effectiveness. The two most widely used types of GMO traits are glyphosate-tolerance, developed in soybeans, corn, cotton, canola and other crops; and the Bt insect-resistant trait. But at least 70 million acres of U.S. farmland have become infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds since the GMO crops were introduced. As well, signs of mounting insect resistance to the Bt technology have been raising concerns across the farm belt for the last several years. Last summer, scientists published research documenting increasing western corn rootworm resistance to the Bt proteins, and widespread corn damage was reported by farmers. Farmers are using more herbicides to try to control resistant weeds, and returning to insecticide use to combat the resistant pests, agricultural experts say.

Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, said the Dively work is a "very important study," that does not bode well for future crop health. And University of Minnesota Extension Entomologist William Hutchinson said the study demonstrates a need for better monitoring of resistance in traits that still work. As the study showed, there is still very good effectiveness with varieties that contain both Vip3A+Cry1Ab, he pointed out.

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One key misstep has been reliance on the "refuge-in-a-bag" (RIB) system that allowed farmers to avoid setting aside part of their fields as areas free of the Bt trait, a practice proven to discourage resistance. With the RIB system, however, researchers have found that farmers actually encouraged resistance by spreading uneven low doses of the Bt toxin to feeding insects throughout their fields, which helped build up resistance in the insects over time. The companies behind the Bt traits have encouraged refuge-in-a-bag. Seed giant Monsanto Co., which made $5.8 billion in sales of corn seeds and traits last year, has touted refuge-in-a-bag as fast and convenient for farmers, allowing them to plant the specialized seed "fence row to fence row."

The EPA shoulders a good deal of the blame for the problem, according to the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which criticized the agency last year for its handling of the resistance issues. Among other missteps, the agency has been too reliant on the seed and chemical industry to self-report the resistance issues, and has not provided farmers or researchers with a direct means to report resistance incidents to the regulators, according to the OIG.

The EPA also is too secretive with the information it does get from the seed companies, keeping compliance reports and monitoring data from the public. "Transparency is an EPA core value," the OIG wrote. "The EPA has both information and the means to enhance transparency regarding its regulatory oversight of genetically engineered crops such as Bt corn."

Trusting the industry to self-report is a particular problem because there is evidence the industry would rather not do so. An Iowa case of insect resistance found in 2009 was not reported as it should have been, for instance, the OIG said. The EPA has been working to correct the deficiencies laid out by the OIG by mid-2017.

The EPA said it is "conducting an analysis of this study and other information related to corn earworm resistance and will determine if improvements to the current resistance management strategies are warranted." The EPA said as part of that process, it will hold a public meeting with a panel of scientific advisers later this year.

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But it may well be too little too late. Time-tested agricultural practices such as crop rotation and a mix of other strategies are essential to combating resistance issues. Relying on one type of genetically engineered technology season after season is bound to fail eventually, according to agricultural experts.
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an advisor on foreign policy to Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, talks to the media after Trump delivered a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, United States, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Senate Republicans claim they are "confident" Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will be confirmed to be Attorney General, but their rigging of his confirmation process undermines their false bravado. They must be worried that if Americans get to know Senator Sessions' record, they would know he is unfit to be Attorney General and demand the Senate reject his nomination, just as it did 30 years ago.

Here are six ways Republicans are stacking the deck.

1. Chairman Grassley's double-standard rush to judgment. As Judiciary Committee Chair, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has scheduled consideration of two Attorney General nominations. He took more than six weeks to schedule the confirmation hearing for Loretta Lynch, who is the first African American woman to serve as Attorney General. He took barely six minutes to schedule the confirmation hearing for Senator Sessions, setting a date even before his records were delivered.

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2. Senator Sessions refuses to provide the Senate with his full record -- which he has previously argued is a felony and that a judge would consider contempt.

In 2010, when Senator Sessions was Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, he charged that a nomination was "'in jeopardy' after extraordinary omission of 117 items from Record," and that the nominee's "unwillingness to take seriously his obligation to complete these basic forms is potentially disqualifying." He asserted, "At best, this nominee's extraordinary disregard for the Committee's constitutional role demonstrates incompetence; at worst, it creates the impression that he knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work from the Committee."

Senator Sessions went even further, declaring that it is "a criminal offense to make a false statement to the government, two years in jail, a felony...A judge who finds that a nominee or someone coming before him left out 117 or now 130 or 140 documents would consider contempt." (36:40)

Two reports have documented how Senator Sessions has omitted hundreds of items--easily double the 2010 Sessions Standard to place a nomination "in jeopardy."

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As staggering as this hypocrisy is, it is not only the volume of what he omitted, but the content of what he omitted.

Senator Sessions also has failed to provide much information on two decades of his career, including the time during which he was nominated and rejected for a federal judgeship and even his first term as U.S. Senator.

3. Another Grassley double standard refuses to hold Senator Sessions accountable for these hundreds of missing items. In 2010, Senator Grassley joined Senator Sessions' letter asserting that a nominee's omissions were "potentially disqualifying." The Senators also asked for "an indefinite postponement of the hearing" because "a further investigation must be conducted to ensure that nothing else is missing."

Today, as Chairman, Senator Grassley refuses to hold Senator Sessions to any standard of accountability, with his spokeswoman stating, "The notion that Senator Sessions--somebody who committee members have known and served beside for 20 years--hasn't made a good faith effort to supply the committee with responsive material is preposterous."

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The hypocrisy extends beyond Senator Grassley's position in 2010. He also appears to argue that nominees should receive special treatment if committee members know and have served beside them. Yet, in 2009, when the Senate considered Tom Daschle--who had served as a Senator for 18 years before being nominated to be HHS Secretary--Senator Grassley's position was "the same as it has been for every other nomination processed by the Finance Committee since 2001, that all relevant information about a nominee must be made public in order for the confirmation process to go forward in the committee. The public's business ought to be public, and committee members must weigh all the facts of a nominee's record."

4. Chairman Grassley silences outside witnesses. In November, the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee wrote to Chairman Grassley. They noted that when former Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) was nominated to be Attorney General, the Committee hearings lasted four days, with testimony from 19 outside witnesses, and they requested that "the Committee should hear from outside witnesses for, at a minimum, each of the following areas: immigration; violence against women; civil rights, including LGBT protections, racial justice, and hate crimes; workers' rights; national security and civil liberties; voting rights; criminal justice; and government conflicts of interest, transparency, and oversight." Despite this request, Chairman Grassley is allowing Senate Democrats to call only four witnesses, with the hearings lasting only two days--preventing Senators and the public from hearing comprehensive testimony on critical areas of Senator Sessions' record.

5. Chairman Grassley does not provide transparency or public access to Senator Sessions' nomination materials. The Senate Judiciary Questionnaire is a public document, and Senator Sessions' questionnaire is more than 150,000 pages. Unfortunately, the Senate Judiciary Committee has only provided online access to 356 pages--without making available any of his outside speeches or interviews, which are largely unknown to the public--and even to his fellow Senators.

6. Senator Sessions refuses to recuse himself. One month ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged Senator Sessions to recuse himself from consideration of his nomination--noting that since 1960, none of the six sitting Senators who were nominated and confirmed as department heads cast a recorded vote on his or her own nomination. The ethical question and conflict of interest are so clear, it should have taken Senator Sessions a minute to respond, but a month later, there is still no answer.

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The U.S. Department of Justice advises the President on constitutional and legal boundaries around ethics and conflicts of interest and enforces numerous anti-corruption laws. If Senator Sessions cannot answer this simple question, how can he demonstrate that he has the independence and ability to serve this vital role?

When you have a winning hand, you don't need to stack the deck.

You don't need to hide records, rush the process, or exclude witnesses.

And you certainly don't need to create an ethical cloud because you may need one more vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to Secretary of State Nominee Rex Tillerson(R) before the start of a meeting on Capitol Hill January 4, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP / ZACH GIBSON (Photo credit should read ZACH GIBSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Ninety-four percent of us pay into Social Security from every paycheck we receive. A few of us stop paying into Social Security in the first few working hours of the year.

The "Tax Freedom Day" Scam

Every year you hear a lot about Tax Freedom Day. This is the day the public supposedly has "earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year."

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According to the Tax Freedom Day website: "Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined."

The trick, of course, is the word "collectively." As in "Bill Gates walks into a room full of homeless people. Collectively the room owns billions of dollars of wealth." Non-billionaire Americans don't pay nearly this much in taxes.

Tax Freedom Day is an anti-government propaganda gimmick where the billionaire class suggests that we stop "working for the government." It's a trick: most of us don't pay that much in taxes and those who do are making so much money they hardly notice it.

Let's see how this "Tax Freedom Day" formula can be applied to framing America's retirement crisis.

"Social Security Freedom Day"

Almost all of us pay the 6.2 percent Social Security "payroll tax" on every dollar that we earn. Employers pay an additional 6.2 percent. If you are self-employed you pay the entire 12.4 percent. These taxes are paid until we reach a "cap" of $127,200 in a year so the maximum anyone pays is $7,886 (twice that if you are scam-classified as a "contractor.") Ninety-four percent of us never reach that point.

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Again, you pay 6.2 percent of your earnings, 12.4 percent if you are self-employed, until you make $127,200. So there is no "Social Security Freedom Day" -- the day we stop paying this tax -- if we are regular people who make less than $127,200.

Put another way, if you make more than $127,200 you reach a "Social Security Freedom Day" and stop paying this tax. You only pay $7,886 no matter how much more you make. The more you make the sooner your "Social Security Freedom Day" arrives.

"Social Security Freedom Day" never arrives for most of us. But how early does "Social Security Freedom Day" arrive for some of us? According to a post by Teresa Ghilarducci, an Economics professor at The New School for Social Research titled, Who Is Finished Paying Their 2017 Social Security Taxes? Probably Not You.,

For those at the upper end of the income distribution (the top 1 percent, or the 2 million people earning more than $250,000 per year and the 137,000 people earning more than $1 million per year), $127,200 is a trivial amount on which to pay Social Security tax. Take, for example, the top 9,600 or so wage earners who earned over $10 million per year (2015 is the latest data available). New Year's Day 2017 fell on a Sunday. By the time they finish their two weeks back at work, they will be done paying Social Security taxes for the entire year. That is nothing. The 202 Americans who earned more than $50 million a year finished paying less than 5 hours after the ball dropped in Times Square. Another 773 people earning between $20-$50 million a year will finish paying the tax before you finish reading this blog on January 2nd.

"Social Security Freedom Day" arrived very early for those top 773. How early? Ghilarducci writes, "We can have fun with the calculations: who will finish paying by their first coffee break of the day? After brushing their teeth? After their hangover?"

The rest of us pay in all year, a 6.2 percent tax that the wealthy don't pay. That's 12.4% if you are a "contractor." Straight off the top of your income.

The Retirement Crisis

America's experiment in shifting retirement obligations away from employers and onto working people through IRAs and 401Ks has clearly failed. Most Americans do not have enough savings, pension and expected Social Security benefits to be able to get by when they retire -- if they even can. One-third have nothing saved up. The median working-age couple has saved only $5000 and seventy percent of couples have less than $50,000 saved.

Even people who have earned pensions are seeing them being cut because corporations skimped on funding the plans.

This leaves far too many people dependent on Social Security. The average monthly retirement income from Social Security was $1,341, or $6,092 per year, and only $2,212 for couples, or $26,544 per year.

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This is not enough for people to get by. But a few of us -- the very same few who stop paying into Social Security so early in the year -- are retiring in luxury.

The Retirement Divide

Not everyone is facing a retirement crisis. Not at all. There is a stark divide between most of us and a few of us when it comes to retirement. Those same few who get a nice, early "Social Security Freedom Day" and no longer pay into Social Security are the very people who do not face a retirement crisis.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, for example, is retiring to join the Trump/Putin administration. He is receiving a $180 million retirement package including include a pension valued at $69 million.

How wide is this divide? A December, 2016 Institute for Policy Studies report titled, A Tale of Two Retirements, shows there is a huge retirement security divide between those at the top of corporate America and nearly all the rest of us.

From a summary of the report:

Just 100 CEOs have company retirement funds worth $4.7 billion -- a sum equal to the entire retirement savings of the 41 percent of U.S. families with the smallest nest eggs. This $4.7 billion total is also equal to the entire retirement savings of the bottom: 59 percent of African-American families75 percent of Latino families55 percent of female-headed households44 percent of white working class households

Need To Increase Social Security

Obviously the first obligation of a government should be to its people. With the failure of "market solutions" that shifted responsibility for retirement from corporate pension plans to to IRAs ad 410ks something needs to be done. This shift boosted corporate profits, providing huge sums for payouts to executives and shareholders -- again, the very same people who get their own "Social Security Freedom Day". But it has impoverished huge percentages of resent and future retirees.

How do we pay for expanding Social Security? That's simple. Social Security needs to get the money from where the money went. The well-to-do don't need a "Social Security Freedom Day" because they are already well-to-do. Eliminate this "cap" and have everyone pay into the system so everyone can retire with some dignity. And what about a requirement for corporations to contribute to employee retirement pension funds?
A couple takes wedding photos by the sea in Qingdao. (Photo : Getty Images)

Traditionally in China, the groom has to pay the bride's family in cash to get her hand in marriage. A local government in eastern China imposed a maximum limit to the amount.



The "bride price" has been increasing in poor rural areas because the supply of women is low and there are fewer potential wives. The price has gone up to more than 100,000 yuan in several towns.



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This is why the authorities in Taiqian County, Henan Province, want marriage costs to be less paralyzing. The local government released new guidelines stating that the "bride price" should not exceed 60,000 yuan.



According to reports from China National Radio, the authorities are also urging couples to have simpler weddings. The government regulation stated that there should be no more than 10 tables of guests at the reception.



The local government is not imposing penalties for disregarding the advice. Wedding planners and local Communist Party committees have been told to intervene.



A user from Sina Weibo commented, "The rules are made with good intentions, but how much money a family wants to give is a private matter."



Another user posted, "Which law gives the government permission to reach into people's family matters?"



There was one blogger who wrote, "For those that can't afford to marry, this is good news."



The increase in the amount of dowry was seen as being "too expensive" by the government and experts say that the high amount does not even follow the traditional purpose.



Zhang Mingsuo, a sociology professor at Zhengzhou University, said: "In traditional rural areas bride prices were charged by parents to support themselves later in life after they had spent large sums raising their daughters."



He added: "But as materialism prevails, the amount of money paid in bride prices has soared and the tradition has strayed from its original purpose."


Washington slouches toward Inauguration Day like the poet's rough beast - and yes, I have found myself in the nation's capital once again.

I've mercifully not been covering preparations for the (gilded?) Trump Presidency, but I did complete a journalistic exercise that has its own relevance for our new age.

I'm glad that, unusually, this piece of work is appearing not just in my familiar slot within PBS's broadcast Religion and Ethics Newsweekly at various times over the weekend, but also on PBS Newshour Weekend on Sunday (January 8).

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It's a media assessment of a man who serves as a beacon of contradiction to today's world of nativism, so-called populism, xenophobia and religious intolerance. He's Sadiq Khan (left), the still-new Mayor of London. And more to the point - given the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tenor of Britain's ... several European countries' ... and America's own recent election campaigns - he is the first-ever Muslim to govern any capital city in the western world.

Khan, a lawyer and adept Labour Party operator, offers reporters and political analysts a countervailing demonstration of pluralistic, inclusive progressiveness.

The contest for his position back in May last year was another of those deeply nasty political face-offs that we have simply had to get accustomed to.

Britain's ever-reliably right-wing Mail on Sunday had no compunction in carrying an unbridled critique of Khan by his Conservative Party opponent Zac Goldsmith that played on Khan's Islamic faith and accused him of extremist sympathies.

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The newspaper added an image of bloody wreckage from the July 2005 London bombings, along with the ranting headline "Are we really going to hand the world's greatest city to a Labour party that thinks terrorists are its friends".

It's salutary to report that Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire, lost big and resoundingly. In fact his (and the Mail's) grubby tactics handed Khan comfortably what the Daily Mirror reported as "the biggest personal mandate in British political history".

Watch the full TV report here (below) - or at PBS.

In the course of our profile, the incisive Financial Times editor Gillian Tett points out:

Whether any of [Khan's] messages about religious inclusion and tolerance translate into tangible policies, we just don't know yet. But simply the very fact that he was elected to the position, is very striking. And in many ways, it's very cheering. It makes me feel quite proud to be a Londoner.



We analyze in the report just what progress Khan is making in his plans to unite Londoners and attract into the city both more people and more investment, using a provocative slogan (at least to the ears of Trumpian types and 'Little Englanders' alike). Amid the ubiquitous clamor for 'Closed Borders!' Khan has proclaimed in every media outlet he can get to that ... "London Is Open!"

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* * * *
It wasn't long ago that Germany's Angela Merkel was anointed as the last defender of liberal Western values. She was even expected to hold America's Donald Trump to account. But that vision died with her announcement that she supported prohibiting Muslim women from wearing a "full veil" face covering. Far from being the West's guardian, Merkel turned out to be a Western politician. And even she cannot ignore illiberal currents buffeting Germany as well as the rest of Europe. The post-modern European Union, which was supposed to push the retrograde peasantry into the progressive new age, has run around and is taking on water. And it might not be possible to bail fast enough to keep the good ship Europe from sinking.

The European Union's beginnings were valuable, even essential: economic cooperation among Belgium, France, and Germany. The expanded Common Market promoted growth and prosperity, offering an example of freer trade that even Donald Trump might have supported. The early version of the European Union appeared determined to eliminate more economic barriers than it created.

But the Eurocrats, the bureaucratic, political, business, academic, and journalistic elites centered in Brussels, now filled with sterile office buildings of the sort which dot Washington, D.C., wanted more. Europe needed to become a Weltmacht, but a special post-modern variant. The EU would become a consolidated government which eschewed the usual concerns of nation, community, and tradition. And the EU would take little if any note of what European peoples desired.

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For a while the Eurocrats got their way. Crush historic national differences through harmonization. Add ever more complex regulations which channel more than aid economic development. Turn a commercial union into a redistributionist union. Socialize debt and risk, encouraging the improvident to spend at everyone else's expense--all in the name of "solidarity."

Treat the free movement of people as the same as the free movement of capital, despite their dramatically different impacts. Dismiss any objections as coming from unenlightened bigots. Propose continued EU expansion even to lands with very different political, religious, and social traditions and values. Insist on Brussels' right to mandate acceptance of outsiders, overwhelming national borders, communities, and governments, contra the wishes of residents.

Push for ever greater powers in an organization with three presidents, none of them popularly elected, and an elected parliament which cannot write the budget or initiate legislation. If the people vote down the proposed constitution, switch to a treaty. If people in the one country to vote on treaties say no, make them vote again. If the common currency totters because there is no common fiscal policy, use the predictable crisis to push further political consolidation. Shout down opponents with the mantra, "More Europe, more Europe."

The point is not that the EU's objectives and values are necessarily unattractive. I rather like the organization's resistance to war-mongering and support for cosmopolitanism. But the attempt to create the first post-modern empire against the will of its own people is an affront to the principles of self-government. People are right, and have the right, to be concerned about what their society is and is to become.

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Moreover, the European Post-Modern Project is turning out to be politically unsustainable. If the moderates and centrists who for so long dominated European politics--in practice, there rarely was much difference between, say, modern Germany's nominally right-wing CDU and nominally left-wing SPD, and there is virtually none today--prove unwilling to represent their peoples, those peoples will find other, less respectable politicians, to do so. Which is happening all over Europe today.

There recently was a great sigh of relief across the continent when Norbert Hofer, the presidential candidate of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, received "only" 46.7 percent of the vote. However, candidates for the traditional governing parties in the middle didn't even make the run-off. And the presidency is largely ceremonial. In Austria's fractured parliament the FP won't need a majority to influence Austrian policy: in the latest poll the FP leads the Social Democrats 35 percent to 27 percent, with the other parties behind.

The same weekend Italian Matteo Renzi lost his reform referendum by a crushing margin and resigned. Italy's heavily indebted economy is one of Europe's largest and Italy's banking sector is one of Europe's weakest. Since joining the Eurozone Italy's productivity actually has fallen five percent. The major governing parties are considering revising election law before a possible early vote lest the populist Five Star Movement triumph. Although the Italian people are not noticeably anti-EU, they, like the Greeks, may have erred in tying themselves monetarily to their more efficient and productive northern neighbors. And all three opposition parties, including Forza Italia and Lega Nord, support leaving the Euro.

Economic crisis threatens Greece again. There has been little serious reform of the sort necessary to encourage productivity and growth. Three bail-outs have done more to protect French and German banks than average Europeans. The increasingly unpopular Tsipras government, which stoked resentment against the rest of Europe while complying with the latter's demands, faces pressure to undertake another round of austerity. Germany and the Netherlands, European institutions, and the International Monetary Fund are bickering among themselves and with Athens.

French politics is shifting dramatically right-ward. French President Francois Hollande, with single digit approval ratings, is not running for reelection. His socialist party has been given up for dead. Most observers expect the National Front's Marine Le Pen to reach next year's presidential run-off. While unlikely to win, her party received more than 27 percent of the vote in regional elections last year. The likely winner is Francois Fillon, who in the right's primary unexpectedly trounced both former president Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppe, who had been leading the opinion polls. Fillon is a social conservative who supported economic reform while emphasizing traditional values and taking a hard-line on security issues. Still, a Le Pen triumph no longer is viewed as impossible, and she pledges to support France's costly welfare state and hold a referendum on EU membership if elected.

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Then there is Germany. A month ago the New York Times called Angela Merkel "the last powerful defender of Europe and the trans-Atlantic alliance" and "the liberal West's last defender." That was before she joined politicians in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland in targeting Islamic residents.

Complained a sympathetic Charles Lane in the Washington Post: "At a time when the world badly needs a stable, confident Germany, her decisions fractured the rock upon which that stability and confidence have rested since World War II: domestic political consensus mediated by broad-based political parties." Merkel's image as the politician with "safe hands" ran afoul of Europe's refugee crisis.

The Christian Democratic Union's Bavarian-based sister party, the Christian Social Union, publicly criticized her approach. For the first time polls found support for the grand coalition of the CDU/CSU with the Social Democratic Party occasionally dipping below 50 percent. The Alternative for Germany, which began as a liberal party critical of the Euro, turned into an anti-immigration party. It is running at 12 percent in the polls and has broken 20 percent in some state elections. Although the AfD is unlikely to enter government, Germany now has a party to the right of the CDU/CSU, with unpredictable, but likely negative, impacts on German politics.

Populist and nationalist currents flow elsewhere: Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Poland. Established ruling parties have crashed and burned in Portugal and Spain. Belgium barely survives as a country. And voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU entirely.

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British politics has grown ever more convoluted. Another Scottish independence bid is possible. The Labor Party has returned to the socialist policies of the bad old days when the country was "the sick man of Europe." Conservative Party Prime Minister Theresa May has abandoned Margaret Thatcher's (classically) liberal approach for nationalism and social conservatism. If the EU pushes harsh terms for London's departure, the May government might choose a "hard" Brexit and distance itself from the continent.

In short, the celebrated European Project is a wreck. The New Yorker's John Cassidy warned that "the disheartening reality of economic disappointment, political paralysis, racial tensions, and terrorist threats has gravely undermined the dream of unity that drove the construction of the European Union." But more fundamental is the fact that the EU being created has changed. It started as a loose collection of European states cooperating for common ends but has turned into a consolidated continental state run by a heavy-handed bureaucracy with little concern for what European peoples desire.

Yet today's troubles don't stop some Eurocrats from urging the EU Titanic further forward into the ice floes. For instance, Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Muenchau insisted that the answer to French and Italian economic and political problems is "a road map towards a full fiscal and political union." However, outside Brussels there is little support for such a proposal, especially in more prosperous states. Even people who might like being bailed out by the Germans don't want to turn their fiscal affairs over to Berlin--just ask the Greeks. Such an approach would be more likely to destroy than save the EU.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), flanked by freshman Democrats Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) (L), Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) (bottom L) and Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), speaks with reporters after the weekly Senate Democratic caucus luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Washington, U.S. January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

When I grow up, I want to be a Democratic senator. It must be relaxing to never fight a battle. I find it heartening to know that not a single Democrat in the Senate is willing to challenge the Electoral College vote, even though we have evidence that over fifty Republican electors may have voted illegally. To challenge this would be a breach of decorum, and what matters now -- above all -- is to be polite. You don't want to cast aspersions upon the workings of the democracy; that might incline people to lose respect for the process, and hence to abuse it. Wouldn't that be horrible? Better to be a Democrat.

Imagine how poorly behaved Republicans would be in this circumstance: if the election had been handed to Hillary by the FBI and the Russian president, and the Electoral College were in violation of the law. They'd be so very obstreperous. It would be embarrassing. Worse: they might even change the outcome. Think what poor sportsmen they'd be considered if they did that. Better to be a Democrat.

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I know -- the merely courageous will tell you that you can't win a battle that you don't fight. But Democrats have figured out something much more congenial: you can't lose one either. And losing is depressing.

Of course, it's also depressing to be a jellyfish nailed to a plank.

Still, we should sympathize. It's hard to stand up to things when you're spineless, and the spine-impaired are human too. It would be insensitive to call upon even one lousy senator to demonstrate courage here. The Senate should be a safe space.

Also, questioning the legitimacy of electors has only the very slimmest chance of changing anything; nobody doubts this. It's one of those battles where the odds are painful. And that's the kind of battle that really doesn't appeal, unless you're a hero. We've all met a few of those: pushy, annoying people who talk about "honor" and "principle" and "doing the right thing." Not the kind of people you want to caucus with. Heroes are lame. You want to be the sort of soldier who fights only the most winnable of wars. Sooner or later one of those battles will come along, and you can rest assured that Democrats will be all over it. We'll see an army of them, claiming their easy victory, and then graciously offering concessions and compromises to the losers, so that nobody's sore.

When it comes to not fighting, Democratic solidarity is truly impressive: a wall of cowardice. All it would take here is one -- a single senator -- to support the challenge, and then the matter would go to debate. Just one principled politician, willing to express outrage at Electoral College malfeasance. But progressives are better than that. If you rock the boat, then one of your friends might get wet, and then he'll be angry at you, and people will suggest that you're not a team player, and it will all be just so depressing.

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And what's at stake, after all? The demonstrable illegitimacy of the new president? This strikes you as a reason to make noise, and risk Republican complaints? Do you have any idea how angry Sean Hannity will be?
"Clearly, Mr. Friedman represents a different approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than we have seen in the past. While we support fully a peaceful resolution and have worked tirelessly over the years to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, it is, however the time to confront Palestinian incitement and murdering of Jews. "That said, the Palestinians have not been serious about the Peace Process for many years and have been working to undermine the State of Israel both through incitement of hatred and acts of violence against Israelis, and also through diplomatic and lobbying efforts abroad, including attacking Israel in foreign parliaments, at the United Nations and most recently leading the efforts at UNESCO resolutions to deny Jewish and Christian claims to historical holy sites. The Palestinians and the international community need to understand that diplomatic terrorism has consequences, and so it's no surprise to us that the incoming US Administration seems to be pursuing a different approach, as seen by Mr. Friedman's appointment and widely publicized plans to move the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.


David Becker / Reuters

IT'S BEEN TWO MONTHS since the U.S. presidential election, and there are just a couple of weeks until the inauguration. Can we at least agree on a couple of central points?

-- Donald Trump won the election by meeting the conditions set forth in the U.S. Constitution, and he will become president when he is sworn in on January 20.

-- At that moment, he will become entitled and empowered to take any executive actions permitted (or, at least, not expressly forbidden) by the Constitution, applicable court precedents and duly enacted federal statutes.

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-- He also will have the ability to propose new legislation to Congress, support or oppose legislation proposed by others and sign into law or veto bills passed by both the House and Senate. The laws that emerge from this process could affect virtually every aspect of life for 320 million Americans and millions more around the world.

What Trump will do with this power and authority  beyond authoring or approving Twitter messages strewn with mistakes and continuing to act like a pathetically sore winner is far from clear.

Early in the campaign, Trump's lack of knowledge of, passion for or even curiosity about national policy was glaring. He didn't become any better informed after he secured the nomination and started shopping for a vice-presidential running mate. Indeed, at one point in that process, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly approached a senior adviser to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (one of the many Republican competitors Trump defeated), saying that Trump's veep would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy, while a President Trump would handle "Making America great again."

Sure enough, at this early pre-inaugural point, Vice-president elect Mike Pence, not Trump, seems to be the go-to guy for face-to-face activity and explanations approaching coherence when it comes to the future administration's policy positions and actions.

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The Role of Government

Based on the broad positions and actions taken so far  and considering the track records of people nominated for key administration positions  Trump's presidency is shaping up to be something close to the exact opposite of what marketing man Trump sold it as. That is, it will not be inclined to truly address the common needs and shared interests of ordinary Americans who are struggling to get ahead and feeling overwhelmed in a complex modern society.

Whether any of this even interests Trump is almost beside the point. With him in the White House, with anti-government Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and with the judicial appointments his team is in a position to make, the government of the United States of America under Trump seems likely to have as little to do as possible with the following:

ENSURING FAIR TREATMENT for men and women at work; seeing to it that the ill, the injured, those infirm with age and people just trying to maintain their health have access to affordable medical care, regardless of their financial status; protecting the air and water we all breathe and drink, the land we all inhabit and the unique natural wonders that bless our country and revive our spirits; enforcing strong rules against financial rip-offs and requiring full disclosures and comprehensible documentation for financial transactions including mortgages, loans, retirement accounts and credit card bills; providing national assistance to local schools working to improve quality in public education at the primary and secondary levels and safeguarding honest and affordable vocational and post-secondary educational opportunities; underwriting unbiased research into science and health issues; overseeing the safety, effectiveness and marketing of medicines; rewarding  and, when necessary, requiring  professionalism in law enforcement and the administration of justice for all people regardless of economic status, geographic location, age, gender, race, national heritage or sexual orientation.

As Trump and his team begin to exercise the power they acquired in November's national and state elections, it will be fascinating to see which Republicans, career federal civil servants, and groups and individuals in the private and non-profit sectors find the will and courage to oppose them.

Any rebels surely will find themselves up against some formidable and distinctly ugly weaponry. The arsenal wheeled out during the campaign included, for example, the fantasy-based, no-such-thing-as-facts notion of truth that proved to be a depressingly effective tactic. Current and former Trumpites leave little doubt that the approach will be at the ready for the presidency as well.

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Then there is Trump's astonishing capacity for lying, calculated vagueness and convenient incoherence, and the slash, burn and smear media tactics seen throughout the campaign, tactics that remain all too available to Trump and his chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, the former campaign chairman and former head of the notorious Breitbart News Network.

As to what Trump really is interested in, it might be worth taking a clear-eyed look at his gushing and much ridiculed admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump also has nominated Rex Tillerson, CEO of the multi-national energy giant Exxon-Mobil, to be secretary of state. Tillerson has close personal and professional relationships with Putin and Putin ally Igor I. Sechin, who heads Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil company. All this suggests the possibility of much closer contact between American government power and the energy exploration, production and transportation industries that Trump has promised to relieve of what should be cost-of-doing-business regulations, including those requiring environmental protection, that supposedly eat into profits.

Reports alleging that Putin has engaged in massive and untraceable corruption for personal enrichment, mainly through secret payment deals with Russia's state energy industries, have been around for years. One such report published by the Guardian newspaper in 2007 estimated Putin's secret net worth at a shocking $40 billion, all hidden through offshore accounts, shell companies and cut-outs. Putin has denied the reports. Trump's 2016 net worth was estimated by Forbes magazine at a comparatively paltry $4.5 billion.

A Man of Honor?

Trump's victory, however, does not give him the right to legitimize the extremist views of racist white supremacists, anti-Semites and religious and ethnic bigots who were drawn to and enthusiastic about his candidacy.

When asked about these supporters during the campaign, Trump first tried to duck the issue, then claimed to be unaware of a problem. He finally made vague statements that he "disavowed," but failed to specify what and/or whom he was disavowing and later made perplexing comments about not wanting to "energize" them. Not surprisingly, his ambiguous responses encouraged the extremists, and when Trump won the election, they expressed delight that someone they consider sympathetic to their cause is about to become president.

Some of the members of these groups have lately taken to describing themselves as "white nationalists" and to hiding behind a sanitized brand identity  "alt-right"  which looks and sounds so much more genial than racist, supremacist, bigot and anti-Semite.

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Marketing aside, they believe that the United States was "a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity," as one speaker told followers at a meeting in Washington on Nov. 21. "It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us." He then invoked anti-Semitic themes used by the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II to dehumanize Jews destined for extermination: "One wonders if these people are people at all," he said, "or instead, soulless golem animated by some dark power...."

On January 20, Trump will swear an oath before God and the American people to preserve, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is the principles and ideas enshrined in our founding documents that have made our country unique among nations and that guarantee, not coincidentally, the extremists' right to hold, express and promote their vile notions. In turn, the extremists have mocked and dismissed them as "some legalisms."

Trump has a duty as president of the United States to publicly and clearly denounce the views of the extremists who support him as immoral, indecent, unacceptable and un-American. Indeed, he must do this if he is to be considered a decent human being and a man of honor. He is either against them or he is with them. He can't have it both ways.

Trump's inaugural address would be the right time to let the American people know which it is.
By Brigit Helms and Maggie Dugan



Brigit Helms, the general manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund, also has served as the director of SPEED, a USAID-funded program in Mozambique, and a senior expert for financial inclusion at McKinsey & Company. She has a PhD in agriculture and development economics from Stanford.

The large Mexican city of Guadalajara is a thriving commercial center and home to 1.5 million people. But nearly 24,000 homes in Guadalajara have only a dirt floor and lack access to indoor plumbing and sanitation services.

To tackle the challenge of people living without access to basic services in a large metropolitan area, 25 experts from different professions assembled a few months ago for a 5-day immersive workshop called a "Sandpit," held in the community center in Guadalajara's neighborhood of Zapopan.

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The challenge: How to transform marginalized neighborhoods into smart ones? In other words, how to use technology to change and improve the quality of life in neighborhoods like Zapopan, one of the poorest in Guadalajara?

The prize, for projects deemed the most innovative on the last day: up to $3 million in funding.

The Sandpit is a unique methodology, originally designed to produce innovative ideas to solve scientific problem. These problems require multi-disciplinary attention and expertise, and yet the training that scientists undergo to become experts is becoming ever more specialized and narrow in focus. A U.K. funding agency, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, noted this trend more than a decade ago, and set out to help scientists produce collaborative research that's innovative across disciplines.

The workshop in Zapopan was organized by the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, in partnership with the Mexican state of Jalisco; the public planning agency for Guadalajara, Imeplan; and the private company Cisco. The event was facilitated by Knowinnovation, based in the United Kingdom and United States, which had worked for the U.S. National Science Foundation on similar events, known as Ideas Labs.

Whether you call it a Sandpit or an Ideas Lab, the methodology does the same thing: it mixes people of different disciplines or professional perspectives to generate provocative discussions that redefine challenges and produce really new ideas.

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Multilateral Investment Fund

For examples, consider the two winners of the Zapopan Sandpit:

Ruta SOS seeks to help migrants look for and identify job opportunities by region. This will be done through aninteractive Web platform that gives migrants information not only about jobs, but also about services and housing--both where they are and where they are heading.

Decentralia aims to use affordable rainwater storage, plus a technology and financing package, to produce water, energy, and financial savings for households and cities. This will help address the stress on the water supply in Mexico.

Knowinnovation had been running Sandpits and Ideas Labs for a dozen years, covering topics from protecting data privacy, to re-engineering photosynthesis, to determining the origins of life on earth and in space. For this Sandpit, the challenge was to make the methodology designed for scientific problems work for an economic development problem.

In the end, the Zapopan Sandpit produced five innovative project ideas, with the two described earlier given a green light to develop further.

But it was a different animal than the Sandpits that Knowinnovation had facilitated with science funding organizations like the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Here's how the Zapopan Sandpit was different:

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More inclusive

Knowinnovation made a point of including people in the process of innovation who are normally excluded, inviting two individuals from the community to the Sandpit. The group found common ground with these special participants, and not only were both individuals fully involved in proposal groups, but they also were constantly consulted to test and validate ideas. Furthermore, these participants were engaged in the solution that could affect them directly.

More coopertition

This is a word we made up to convey one of the principle concepts of a Sandpit. The Sandpit uses an iterative approach: each time a group presents its thinking, the other groups give feedback--highlighting the positive attributes and pointing out, constructively, the problems or gaps in thinking that must be addressed. In this way, every participant's fingerprint is on every project, and the entire group, while competing for funding on individual projects, is also working in solidarity to solve the overall problem.

This is a delicate balance, and it's worth noting that in the academic and scientific domain, the participants do cooperate, but they also compete aggressively. The group of participants at the Zapopan Sandpit--perhaps because so many came from the world of social entrepreneurship and economic development--walked the talk when it came to being inclusive. They bonded in their groups and wanted to stay there, resisting even when the mentors--a team of subject guides whose role was to give the group advice--suggested that the groups split up or take their projects in a different direction.

Language matters

At one point, a community participant took offense. It was difficult moment; we had to navigate a misunderstanding about the key terminology--smart and marginalized. But we soon realized that these words have an edge to them, and that one of the keys to being inclusive is anticipating sensitivities to the terms that we use to describe these challenges, and making sure the definitions are clear, and appropriate, from the start.

Extra Pressure

It's not uncommon at a Sandpit for groups to work until the wee hours of the morning leading up to the final presentations on the last day. The groups at the Zapopan Sandpit put in the extra late-night thinking needed. But the pressure was on. Unlike typical Sandpits, where the mentor team morphs into decision makers at the end of the session, this Sandpit brought in outside evaluators for a final presentation. The groups had to make the case for the proposals to a panel of judges who had little context for how the projects had developed in just a few days.

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In the end, the three groups that didn't advance expressed something we often hear: they were still excited about their projects and hoped they might be funded by other sources. They knew they had participated in an event that could have an important impact on the poorest urban neighborhoods in Guadalajara, and potentially in other urban centers around the world. That's something smart to be proud of.

Maggie Dugan

Maggie Dugan is a workshop facilitator and trainer who specializes in events that spur innovation. She is on the facilitation team at Knowinnovation and head of its newest division, Inclusive Innovation, which uses the same methodology to accelerate breakthroughs in economic development.
Today as a young Arab/Muslim, I got the advice of my life when a middle-aged British man told me "You left books written in Arabic on the table -- this would make people feel concerned."

I was sitting in a coffee shop in the UK, reading a book written in Arabic. Then, after some time, I felt a bit stiff. So I put on my coat and went out in front of the coffee shop to get some fresh air. A few minutes later, a man came up to me, who turned out to be a customer that was sitting at the table next to me and said "You left your books on the table."

My immediate response was to thank him as he might have thought I left and forgot my books behind. But then he said "But the books are in Arabic! You should not leave them on the table like that. You know what this means?!"

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Only then, did it hit me that the man was not trying to remind me of my books. He was implying that I shouldn't have left them on the table, because they are written in Arabic and are thus a security threat!

So I asked him if the problem was not that I left books on the table, but that they are written in Arabic, and he answered, "Yes! Books written in Arabic left on a table, you know what that means! You know this would make people feel concerned!"

Then he just got in his car and left.
Only amateurs steal elections on election day anymore. Today, the pros manipulate elections long before the voting begins -- making sure the playing field is so uneven that election day rigging is unnecessary.

Madagascar's recent election, on Dec. 20, 2013, offers important lessons for western policymakers seeking to repair broken democracies. The Indian Ocean island may seem politically irrelevant, but the lessons it can teach us should not be ignored.

Madagascar is, undeniably a strange place. In 2009, Andry Rajoelina, a radio disc jockey turned mayor, overthrew dairy magnate president Marc Ravalomanana in a military coup d'etat.

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The election was supposed to end the ensuing five-year political "transition." Voting, it was thought, could restore democracy and jumpstart growth. This was imperative, since the coup precipitated international isolation, severing foreign aid, and causing a 40 percent reduction to Madagascar's budget.

The road has been rocky. Since the election, the army fired live rounds at student protestors, killing one and seriously wounding many more. On inauguration day on January 25, an attacker threw a grenade into a crowd, killing a young child and wounding dozens. The former president, who came to power via a coup was barred from running in elections. He now seems to be plotting a Putin-esque power grab, trading president for prime minister.

To do so, he will have to grapple with newly inaugurated president Hery Rajaonarimampianina (who has the longest surname of any head of state in the world). This power struggle could again destabilize Madagascar.

Malagasy political elites forged this precarious situation. They have made a national tradition of sacrificing national interest for personal ambition. Rajoelina is personally implicated in large-scale resource corruption, including trade in endangered rosewood. His predecessor, Marc Ravalomanana, sought to cash in on a dubious land deal--aiming to sell half of Madagascar's arable land to Daewoo, a South Korean firm.

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Both men -- Rajoelina and Ravalomanana -- wanted another chance to taste the nectars of corruption and power. However, the international community successfully pressured them to offer proxy candidates instead. A move intended to lower emotional tensions and end the longstanding crisis. The victor, Rajaonarimampianina, stood for Rajoelina. The defeated candidate, former government minister Jean-Louis Robinson, stood in for Ravalomanana -- who is still exiled in South Africa.

The election had to succeed. Madagascar cannot afford another crisis.

Most people know the island as the home for lemurs, but few know that it is

home to 22 million people -- with 20 million living on less than $2 per day. For most, life has deteriorated sharply since the 2009 coup. While politicians prospered, people suffered.

Despite the high stakes, election day went smoothly. International observers praised the vote, citing few irregularities. They did not witness widespread intimidation or ballot box stuffing, two historic plagues of African elections.

So what's the problem? And why are grenade attacks and state-sponsored violence toward protesters happening if the election went smoothly?

In Africa and around the developing world, election-day rigging is amateur hour. International observers easily detect ballot box stuffing. Other forms of pre-election manipulation, however, remain shrouded in an opportunistic cloud, allowing strongmen to do their dirty work and get away with it.

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Let's be clear: this is not to say that Madagascar's election was stolen. We don't know if it was, because there was so little transparency surrounding critical aspects of democratic fairness.

Some flaws, though, are well-known. Former President Ravalomanana's wife, Lalao, was not allowed to be a candidate because she was in forced exile and did not fulfill the residency requirement. This technicality manipulation allowed Rajoelina to sideline a political opponent using exile, a bad precedent for democracy. Likewise, Rajoelina campaigned aggressively even though his involvement was a clear violation of Malagasy electoral law.

Other aspects are shrouded in darkness. There was no oversight of campaign finance. Nobody has any idea how much money was spent or where it came from. The only hint comes from an EU-funded survey carried out by a Malagasy NGO that shows Rajaonarimampianina purchased nearly 8 times more media time than Robinson. Where did that financial edge come from? We have no clue. But given that Rajaonarimampianina was the candidate backed by the president and his regime -- which is implicated in illegal rosewood trading -- not having an answer is disconcerting.

Voter registration was equally opaque. Only 75 percent of age-eligible Malagasy were on the voter list. Ultimately, between two and three million people were left off the voter rolls and could not vote -- a significant number since only four million ballots were cast.

Additionally, 140,000 voters were added to the list between the two election rounds. It is unclear whether the registration process generally, or the late additions, favored one candidate over the other.

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Western governments insist on basic transparency for these pre-election procedures in their own countries. They should insist on it elsewhere, too.

Until they do so, crude ballot box stuffing will increasingly be replaced by behind-the-scenes pre-election manipulation, another avenue for suppressing the will of the people.

Western governments also need to recognize that elections are a step forward, not a panacea. Madagascar's election did nothing to change the underlying dynamics that sparked the crisis. Grenade attacks, bleeding protestors, and Putin-esque power grabs make clear that the crisis is not over. International pressure should address the causes of toxic politics, not just the symptoms.

America can help. During President Obama's tour of Africa last year, he promised that to build global democracy, America is "interested in investing not in strongmen, but in strong institutions." But until the lessons from Madagascar's December 20 vote are learned and policies are adapted accordingly, strongmen will win, democratic institutions will lose, and America's promise will remain empty words.

Jason Pack is a researcher of African History at Cambridge University and President of Libya-Analysis.com.

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A sign is pictured at the entrance to a Planned Parenthood building in New York August 31, 2015. Picture taken August 31, 2015. To match Insight USA-PLANNEDPARENTHOOD/ REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

The director of Planned Parenthood in Colorado said yesterday her organization will "fight like hell" against plans by Republicans to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

"Defunding Planned Parenthood is bad for the people of Colorado, New Mexico, Southern Nevada and Wyoming, and would result in a self-inflicted public health crisis," said Vicki Cowart, President of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, in a statement.

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"Women and men will not let politicians play games with their health care," she said. "We will work alongside other Planned Parenthood affiliates and our coalition partners across the country to fight like hell against this."

To try to stop the Republicans' de-funding efforts, which are part of the bill to repeal Obamacare, Planned Parenthood has launched a campaign called #IStandWithPlannedParenthood. It includes events across the country, a petition, political action, and other activities.

Planned Parenthood funding has long been a target of Republicans, who are upset that the organization offers abortion services, even though federal funds cannot be used by law to provide abortion.

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, for example, has voted six times to defund the organization over the years. But probably due to the fact that a large majority of women have a favorable view of Planned Parenthood, Coffman has also tried to market himself as a friend of Planned Parenthood, even presenting the organizations logo in a campaign ad.

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But with Republicans about to control Congress and the White House, political observers say Planned Parenthood is at serious risk of losing some $400 million in federal funds, mostly from Medicaid, the health care program for the poor. At least one Republican Senator, Susan Collins of Maine, has objected to Planned Parenthood defunding in the past.

Losing federal funds could force Planned Parenthood nationally to turn away hundreds of thousands of low-income men and women, who rely on the organization's clinics for basic health services like cancer screenings and birth control, according to Planned Parenthood.

In many parts of the country, particularly in rural areas, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for some Planned Parenthood patients to get health care elsewhere, resulting in serious health impacts, according to Planned Parenthood officials.

For example, in Texas, defunding Planned Parenthood would result in, among other things, a 27 percent increase in births among women who use injectable contraception, according to one study.

No one's evaluated the full impact in Colorado if Planned Parenthood lost federal funding, but Planned Parenthood officials have said cuts would leave about 80,000 low-income people or more statewide in need of a new clinic.

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Even if they could theoretically access another clinic, Planned Parenthood patients may not be able to get to it, due to transportation problems, which, as a practical matter, frequently determine whether low-income people get health care at all.

Without Planned Parenthood, wait lists could also lengthen at clinics for low-income people.

Another issue is the preferences of patients. Some women, in the midst of domestic disputes or facing cultural or social complications, seek out Planned Parenthood because the organization takes special care to respect women's privacy and to be sensitive to the medical as well as social needs of patients, according to Planned Parenthood supporters.
MIAMI, FL - DECEMBER 15: An Obamacare sign is seen on the UniVista Insurance company office on December 15, 2015 in Miami, Florida. Today, is the deadline to sign up for a plan under the Affordable Care Act for people that want to be insured on January 1, 2016. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There is no conservative replacement health reform plan for Obamacare -- because Obamacare is a conservative health reform plan.

After six years of promising to repeal 'n' replace the President's signature domestic achievement, Republican lawmakers have no coherent alternative to the Affordable Care Act for one good reason: because the Affordable Care Act was once the market-based alternative to a real, not imagined, "government takeover" of health care.

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What has always made the ACA a political pariah to Republicans, typified by the bizarre claim by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Wednesday that "Obamacare" has "ruined" and "dismantled" our health care system, is the plan's namesake -- far more than its necessarily complex architecture or any of its actual details, unless you count the details they made up.

And so, if only for kicks, how about some actual historic facts and context about a health reform plan that was actually decades in the making, only three years into full implementation, and on the eve of blind destruction by demagogues who have no idea what they're taking about.

The chart below illustrates where the ACA sits, ideologically, relative to all other health reform plan models.



This chart places the ACA along a continuum of all serious reform options developed, debated, and discarded or ignored since the 1980s. They are all here: from the single-payer, centrally controlled models popular with those who detest corporations and the corrupting influence of money in medicine -- two actual, not imagined "government takeovers of health care" -- to a fully free-market, laissez faire model favored by those who detest regulation and the heavy hand of government in medicine.

On the far left, the federal (or provincial) government is the main insurer, owns most hospitals, and employs most doctors. This pure form of single-payer seems to be supported or reviled in equal measure, especially by the nation's physicians. As a model for nationwide reform, it is as much a religion as a public policy framework -- people believe it will be either health care's Messiah or its anti-Christ -- and no one will convince them otherwise. This model is the foundation for many of the systems in Europe, and the systems in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Unbeknownst to many under their actual care today, there are two working systems based on this model in the US today: Kaiser, and the Veterans Health Administration.

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The second model, Medicare-for-All, differs from the pure form of single-payer by retaining the current independence of most hospitals and doctors. This model jettisons private insurance companies and covers all Americans directly, while an all-encompassing Medicare program pays for covered care delivered by today's crazy quilt of providers: large and small physician groups, for-profit, religious-affiliated, independent and academic hospitals, the works. This is what Medicare beneficiaries have today -- except for the 31 percent who opt for privatized "Medicare Advantage" plans offered by commercial insurers. Medicare-for-all is supported by those who believe it would bring the relative efficiencies, fairness, and low administrative costs of Medicare to all of us -- and reviled by those who think Medicare works like hell. Because there are oceans of data to support both views, this too is ultimately a matter of secular faith: government, good; government, evil.

To the right of Medicare-for-all is "managed competition," the basis for the reform plan proposed in 1993 by President Bill and First Lady Hillary Clinton and derided as "Hillarycare." This model is built on the traditional system of multiple private insurers and providers, but highly organizes and regulates both. It achieves universal access by mandating employers and individuals to participate and by requiring everyone -- with or without current coverage -- to give up what they have and commit to one of several competing vertical insurer/provider entities. The managed competition model is based on managed care theories developed in the 1970s; when proposed by the Clintons in 1990s, it was popular with much of the Washington technocracy -- and vilified by conservatives. Modified versions of this model exist in Germany and Israel, and in a handful of US markets (e.g., Hawaii, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, sort of) with vertically integrated providers that compete with Kaiser.

Back in the mid-1990s, most Republicans and many health industry experts attacked "HillaryCare" as cumbersome, over-engineered, and hyper-bureaucratic; it was destroyed in the court of public opinion by an insurer-funded TV ad campaign that people remember better than any details of the plan itself. Conservatives hated the plan so much, in fact, that the folks over at the Heritage Foundation came up with their own market-based alternative. The plan achieved universal access by requiring people to purchase their own insurance, but enabled them to do so through a competitive marketplace, with subsidies for the poor. Hmm. Sounds familiar, no?

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The Heritage plan sounds familiar because it was the conservative alternative to government-driven plans like single-payer and Hillarycare, and because it became the basis for Mitt Romney's health reform plan implemented in Massachusetts -- which is turn was the basis for - for what? It was the basis for the plan one click from the far right of our spectrum of health reform models: President Obama's plan, known as the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," or the ACA, until it was branded -- derisively by Republicans -- as "Obamacare." (I tried to point all this out in the New York Times in 2012, while working at a conservative think tank, for which I was ridiculed by my own colleagues, excoriated on Capitol Hill, and received death threats, a few years before getting death threats for publishing actual facts was in vogue.)

Notwithstanding all the political noise that long ago drowned out all discussion of actual facts about the actual law: Obamacare is a radical endorsement and extension of the status quo. This is why everything that was ever wrong with the health insurance system -- ever increasing premiums, deductibles, and co-payments, the perennial narrowing networks of providers, and all of its byzantine administrative processes -- has now been laid at the feet of the plan. This is why the House Speaker has no qualms about uttering utter nonsense about Obamacare "ruining" and "dismantling" the health care system.

To minimize actual (not perceived or politicized) disruption to most people's coverage - a major and valid criticism of the Clinton plan -- the architects of the ACA retained most of the features of the traditional employer, insurance and provider systems. The ACA merely expanded the system toward universal access by mandating that most of the uninsured participate in it, unless their incomes were low enough to qualify them for an expanded version of Medicaid.

Because Obamacare requires insurers to cover all comers -- and does away with caps on those with catastrophically expensive medical situations -- it is funded by mandated participation by all of us too young for Medicare and too well off for traditional Medicaid, either directly or through employers. Expanding the exact same plan to include Health Savings Accounts and allowing consumers to buy coverage across the stateliness -- two line-item policy ideas Republicans tout as the major levers in their magical mystery replacement plan -- could be appended onto the ACA with a dozen pages of legislation.

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By contrast, the only "replacement" model of any substance that breaks to the right of Obamacare - the one free market economists have been championing for decades -- would be truly disruptive and a complete political non-starter.

This model, on the far right of the chart above, would be a truly free market health care system. It would allow people with commercial insurance or no insurance to purchase their own coverage in an open market; and it would not require anyone to purchase insurance, nor any insurer to cover anyone they did not want to. Under this model, kicked around in the back pages of the health policy literature since the 1990s, all purchasing decisions about coverage and plan design are left to individuals and insurers.

Economists believe this Lord of the Flies model would radically reshape health insurance and downstream medical markets, by driving efficiency in pricing and reducing excess medical resource spending. They believe that market distortions created by the tax deductibility of health insurance purchasing are enormous -- and that the extra political mile it would take to eliminate this tax deduction would be well worth the effort in terms of health care marketplace correction and system self-reform.

As a corollary to this belief, this "direct retail" model extracts employers from the system altogether, converting the health insurance market into something more akin to auto and homeowners insurance markets and maximizing the power of consumer market forces to control health care spending in general. Under this model, everyone is free to purchase whatever mix of insurance and services they want and can find, from whatever organization will sell to them, at whatever price the market yields. Modified versions of this model exist in China and India on top of threadbare single-payer systems incapable of serving the needs of their large and growing populations and emerging middle classes.

Proponents of the only model to the right of Obamacare believe that its inherent pricing efficiency would drive the marketplace to very high-deductible insurance plans, while converting a great deal of medical care to a cash-and-carry system. They believe this model would drive healthy Americans toward Health Savings Accounts and greatly benefit from consumers purchasing whatever plan they wanted across state lines.

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In terms of moving us toward universal access, they would augment this model by allowing lower-income people, the uninsured and others priced out of these liberated insurance markets with either a "premium support" or "voucher" program -- two ideas that sound similar but play out differently as health care costs increase. The subsidy mechanism -- and its associated semantic and political branding wars over "premium support" vs. "voucher" -- is also the economic fulcrum in Congressman Paul Ryan's proposal in 2013 for reforming Medicare.

That Obamacare is a right-of-center plan, especially when viewed relative to all viable alternatives, explains why it has always had so little political support from anyone. Liberals hate Obamacare because it is not single-payer, and feeds tens of millions of newly insured people to what they revile as a money-gobbling, profit-obsessed health insurance dragon. Conservatives hate Obamacare because it is the heavy hand of government choking whatever air is left out of the current, dysfunctional health insurance market -- and because they cannot see beyond their political rage at President Obama to recognize their own ideas at the core of his health reform plan. Obamacare has always been a shabby political step-child.

So where is that Republican replacement plan? Don't hold your breath. Health Savings Accounts and buying insurance across state lines may sound nifty to people who have no idea what that means or might look like, but they are at best minor endorsements and extensions of the status quo, chocolate and rainbow sprinkles on the same old sour ice cream.

The only meaningful right-wing replacement plan is the only one to the right of Obamacare in our chart: a health insurance market free-for-all. No tax deductibility, no employer involvement, no fuss, no muss. And what would be the actual effect of implementing that? Everyone who has insurance through their employer today - which is to say almost everybody not in Medicare or Medicaid -- suddenly pays a whole lot more in taxes. Not exactly what any of the Republicans clamoring to repeal 'n' replace want to sell back home.

This is the real reason why, when asked for the details for their replacement plan, the Republicans in Congress have always had, and still have, exactly and only one real answer: "Our replacement plan is Obamacare sucks."

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Smoke filled the area as India's rocket was launched to space. (Photo : YouTube/ Al Jazeera English )

Following the success of their Mars Orbiter Mission, Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO already has another target planets in mind. ISRO is eyeing another interplanetary missions that may commence years from now.



After a momentous event concerning India's latest space mission, another planet may soon be explored by India almost two years from now. According to reports, India's agency has been eyeing the gas giant Jupiter and the neighboring Venus.



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"We are looking at other planets that we can explore. So, two of them are Jupiter and Venus. The mission analysis is on what type of satellite we are supposed to build and what type of rocket we need. Studies are going on and it may take few years from now to have a concrete plan," Tribune India quoted ISRO Associate Director M Nageswara Rao as saying.



Apart from the planned Jupiter and Venus exploration, ISRO also revealed that a follow-up Mars mission is already being planned. The India's space agency will be sending another mission to Mars, which would involve a lander and a rover. Thus, suggesting a much closer encounter with the surface of the Red Planet.



The aforementioned exploration of India in the outer space is not something new among Asian countries. It can be remembered that China also expressed their interest in space exploration and extra-terrestrial life forms.



A testament to China's growing dominance when it comes to space mission is their plan to explore the dark side of the moon. In a white paper titled "China's Space Activities in 2016," the Red Dragon indicated to accelerate the development of their space industry. Thus, aiming to push a 2018 space probe on the far side of the moon, according to Science Alert.



In view of the given facts, it cannot be denied that Asian countries like India or China may soon be a rival of United States' NASA. In terms of growth, the said countries have showcased an exponential increase, in terms of technology and experience.



Watch her below India's space launching:






Being productive allows us to do more, faster and in less time. When you master productivity, it allows you to drastically reduce the number of hours you work daily. Many entrepreneurs brag about working long 18-hour days, and while it sounds impressive, the majority are wasting a lot of time throughout the day. If productivity were to improve, they would accomplish the same tasks in a much shorter amount of time.

Learn how to reduce the number of hours you work per day by implementing these five simple productivity tips. This can help you achieve a much healthier work-life balance.

Have a daily to-do list.

End every day by putting together your to-do list for the following day, and start every day by attacking your to-do list, line-by-line.

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When you start each day knowing exactly what needs to be accomplished, it eliminates wasted time. This approach allows you to start crossing off tasks immediately from the list, giving you a sense of accomplishment. This momentum can be carried straight through to the end of each day.

Ending each day by writing out tomorrow's to-do list is beneficial because you are doing it while everything is still fresh on your mind. If you go home and try to do it in the evening or first thing the next day you might forget some important tasks.

Attack your email inbox three times daily.

We get emails non-stop throughout the day and night. If you check your inbox every time you receive a notification you will spend your entire day doing emails. Set three times to check your emails -- once in the morning, again in the afternoon and then a final time before you end your day.

This helps to keep you available for your other duties, yet still ensures that important emails are handled as quickly as possible. If you have an assistant, you can even have them screen your inbox and let you know if there is something that absolutely can't wait.

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Switch your phone to airplane mode.

Text messages combined with Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram notifications can turn your phone into a massive distraction. When you need to be focused on work, and nothing else but the task at hand, switch your phone into airplane mode.

Turning it to silent won't do the trick -- it will continue to vibrate all over your desk and curiosity will eventually get the best of you, causing you to take a break to check your phone.

Our mobile phones are great tools, and can help us be more productive, but they can also be one of our biggest distractions. Don't let social media and text massages be a productivity-suck.

Work remotely when possible.

With today's available technology and software applications, it makes it possible to run a business from anywhere in the world. If you have a long commute to the office, consider setting up a home office and joining some co-working spaces.

Entrepreneurs that can shave off an hour work commute each way instantly gain ten hours that can be applied to productive tasks rather than sitting in traffic. Working from co-working spaces close to your home not only reduces your commute, but the time spent there can help to spark creativity. I highly recommend spending at least one day a week in a co-working environment if possible.

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Establish a daily end time and stick to it.

Most business owners and entrepreneurs will work until they reach physical exhaustion, and that ruins productivity. It's important that you establish a daily cut-off time and stick to it, no matter what arises. There are always going to be tasks and issues that need to be addressed -- that comes with the territory.

When you know, undoubtedly, that your work day ends at a specific time you will begin to manage your day better to ensure you get specific tasks handled before it's time to leave. This will also help to create a healthier work-life balance. Trust me, your family will completely support this tip.
George Orwell's disturbing vision of a future dystopia memorably chronicled in his novel "1984", a world in which "Big Brother" hovered over all watching every movement, controlling information and dictating truth, has never come to pass - at least not yet. In reality, the Nazis and Soviets who likely inspired Orwell's vision would have liked to control their subject peoples like Orwell envisioned, but they simply did not have the technology to make it happen.

But the digital revolution is upon us and today humanity has the technology to make Orwell's nightmare vision a reality. The Chinese are leading the way and with reason. The Chinese government is essentially a criminal enterprise in which a relatively small number of people control the levers of power which they use to enrich themselves. Ordinary citizens are routinely abused and have no recourse for lack of a viable legal system or independent press. The Chinese people are highly intelligent. They know what is going on. Social and political upheaval is always possible. Thus, Beijing is obsessed with controlling the masses any way it can.

It isn't enough to control the flow of information, block out foreign news and gag the Internet. Big Brother wants to keep tabs on everyone. A pilot program in Jiangsu province north of Shanghai has adopted a system in which people are rated according to their behavior, much like school students in our country. You get brownie points for doing something good, like winning a prize or writing an essay praising the government, and demerits for stuff like minor traffic offenses or "illegally petitioning higher authorities for help." People who behave according to the government's standards are eligible for various goodies such as job promotions or moving to the front of the line for housing or access to universities.

The objective is clear. By the year 2020, Chinese officials assert, the government will be able to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." Those discredited would include criminals no doubt, but also people who dare to question government policies or point out corruption at high levels. Other sorts of untrustworthy behavior include anything that "seriously undermines the order of cyberspace transmissions."

The government evolving in China does bear increasing resemblance to Orwell's nightmare vision and with digital technology it just may have the power it needs to enforce such a system. We may say and believe that such an all-encompassing regimen is not possible here, but we have the same technology and we are using it in worrisome ways. There are video cameras posted almost everywhere. You get speeding tickets in the mail from remote cameras that caught you doing 23 MPH in a 15MPH zone. (There is no such thing as 15 MPH!) Of course, those cameras are there to deter criminal activity, but they can be used for anything depending on who is in charge. Even more troublesome is our government's monitoring of phone calls and e-mails. It isn't difficult to imagine what Orwell would have to say about it.

Lt. Gen. Clarence E. "Mac" McKnight, Jr., (USA-Ret) is the author of "From Pigeons to Tweets: A General Who Led Dramatic Change in Military Communications," published by The History Publishing Company.
In 2016, Vermont voters selected Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 26 percentage points over Republican nominee Donald Trump, while also choosing Republican Gubernatorial nominee Phil Scott by over eight points. Contrariwise, West Virginia voters chose Trump with an overwhelming 68.7 percent of the vote. This was his biggest win in the country. However, those same Mountain state voters elected Democrat Jim Justice by approximately seven percentage points.

One could brand this phenomenon "split voter syndrome." Actually, it fits a relatively predictable pattern. Conservative states will often elect Democratic Governors, and liberal states will often elect Republican Governors. Sometimes, opposite party governors have the upperhand and record stratospheric job approval ratings. The formula is often that the candidate runs as a non-ideological moderate, emphasizing where he/she differs from the national party. In states where the opposite party controls the legislature, the Gubernatorial candidate runs as a check, with a modest legislative agenda. Furthermore, the candidate often exploits internecine divisions within the other party.

The epitome of this phenomenon is Massachusetts. The state has had Republican Governors for 16 of the past 26 years. Yet less than 15 percent of the state's voters are Republicans. In 1990, Republican Bill Weld won the Commonwealth's Governorship by calling himself "a fiscal conservative and social moderate." He excoriated the outgoing Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis and the Democratic Legislature for actuating a sales tax hike, and blamed them for the state's economic decline. Weld did not run as an activist movement conservative who would make the state a laboratory for rightwing governance. With the State Legislature so heavily Democratic, voters knew he would be halted if he tried. Weld averred: "I believe in keeping the priorities list short."

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Weld was also aided by a schism in the Democratic Party between liberals who had supported former Massachusetts Attorney General Francis Bellotti or Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy in the primary and socially conservative Democrats who selected the eventual nominee, Boston University President John Silber. Silber's temperamental personality benefited Weld. During an interview with WCVB'S Natalie Jacobson, Silber was asked what his greatest weakness was. He replied harshly: "You find a weakness."

Many Democrats came to see Weld as less threatening. Weld captured nearly all Republican voters, a majority of Independents, and an impressive 30 percent of Democrats.

Weld's fiscal conservative, socially moderate template led him to be re-elected with a record 71 percent of the vote. His Republican successor, Paul Cellucci, followed by winning with the same electoral blueprint in 1998. In 2002, Republican nominee Mitt Romney maintained: "I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican, that I'm someone who is moderate, that my views are progressive and that I'm going to go to work for our senior citizens, for people that have been left behind by urban schools that are not doing the right job. So they're going to vote for me regardless of the party label."

Romney would often campaign with three photographs behind him: one of his Democratic opponent, Shannon O'Brien, another photograph of the Democratic Speaker Tom Finneran, and another of the likely Senate President Robert Travelini. Romney tattooed the trio "The Gang Of Three." He pledged to be a check on the overwhelming Democratic legislature. O'Brien had a hard time arguing why one party should control both legislative chambers and the Governorship. Romney won the election.

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Romney governed largely as a moderate during his first two years in office, and remained popular. However, in his last two years in office, Romney moved to the right, as he became Chairman of the Republican Governors Association. He spent much time out of the state, and began calling himself a conservative. He would joke to national audiences that "being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention." Romney also alienated moderates with his vociferous opposition to Gay Marriage.

With an eye on the White House, Romney did not seek re-election. Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey won the Republican nomination to succeed him. While she tried to run as a moderate, campaigning with the still popular Weld, disgruntled voters saw her as an extension of Romney, whose job approval rating languished in the thirties. Consequently, she lost to Democrat Daval Patrick who successfully tethered Healey to Romney.

In 2014, the Massachusetts GOP nominated Businessman Charlie Baker for Governor. Baker is a Weld protegee, who emphasized his moderation and non-ideological pragmatism. Baker was elected and stands today as the nation's most popular Governor, even as the state voted for Hillary Clinton by over 27 points, winning all 14 counties in the state.

There is a plethora of examples of Republican states that elect Democrats as Governors. They win running as checks on the legislature. Their legislative agenda is usually modest.

Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming are arguably the three most Republican states in the nation. None has voted for a Democratic Presidential nominee since Lyndon B. Johnson's electoral landslide victory in 1964. Yet all three states have recently had popular Democratic Governors.

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Cecil Andrus was elected Governor of Idaho in 1970, and re-elected in 1974 with a resounding 70 percent of the vote. In 1977, Adrus relinquished the Governorship to become U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Democratic Lieutenant Governor John V. Evens succeeded him, and was elected twice in his own right. Andrus was elected again to the Governorship and served another two terms. Thus, from 1971-1995, the Republican citadel of Idaho had only Democratic Governors.

Utah had a string of Democrats for twenty years. Democrat Calvin Rampton was the chief magistrate of Utah from 1965-1977. He remains the only Beehive State Governor to serve three terms. Democrat Scott Matheson, who served for two terms, succeeded him.

Along those same lines, in Wyoming, where the Democratic Party has not held a majority in a legislative chamber since 1936, they have had popular Democratic Governors for all but eight years, from 1975 - 2011. The most recent Democrat, Dave Freudenthal, was re-elected with 70 percent of the vote in 2006, despite the fact that well over 60 percent of Cowboy State voters are Republicans.

While a moderate opposite party Gubernatorial nominee is often in the political catbird seat, the reverse is true for Congressional candidates. Congressional candidates can style themselves as being independent-minded, yet their opponent will invariably make the case that in voting for an opposite state candidate, they are voting to keep or put that candidate's party in power.

For example, in 2006, Republican U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island sported a voting record to the left of his Republican colleagues, and mustered high job approval ratings. Yet he lost re-election. Chafee's Democratic opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, had few issues to bludgeon Chafee with, so he argued that a vote for Chafee would be a vote to keep Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate. Whitehouse ran against the "Republicans in Washington." He called for "a Democratic majority in D.C." Whitehouse won the election and the Democrats took the Senate majority that election.

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This paradigm was also exhibited in the 2010 mid-term elections; the Republican Party won three of Arkansas' four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition, the GOP dislodged Democratic U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln. Despite these defeats, Democratic Governor Mike Beebe cruised to re-election, garnering 66 percent of the vote.
The United States Constitution allows The United States Congress to choose someone other than Donald Trump when they are asked to certify the results of The Electoral College.

And 1,018 pages of data collected by a bipartisan team of attorneys alleging that over 50 of the electoral votes for Donald Trump can be invalidated under state and Constitutional law (because of electors not living in the right districts or improperly holding two elected positions) could give every Congressperson and every Senator the legal means to choose either Hillary Clinton or Colin Powell. (Here is the 53 page Executive Summary of that report https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0GnyHC1E-uOaXVqbG05TFIwQzQ/view

Since Congress is the final word on Election 2016, they have the absolute right to invoke these, or other, criteria and invalidate 35 (or more of Donald Trump's electoral votes), bringing him below the 270 threshold and throwing the election into The House of Representatives.

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This is not hopeful opinion. It is the law of The United States.

Live by The 18th Century Electoral College, die by The 18th Century Electoral College.

But Congress is not going to do it.

On the day that the entirety of The United States Intelligence Community will try to beg Donald Trump to accept unanimously held beliefs that Russian "hacked" into the American election, Congress will double down on Donald Trump.

After days of Tweets about launching into a nuclear arms race, Congress will double down on Donald Trump.

After virtually every Democrat wrings his or her hands and declares how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of State is, how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Attorney General is, how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of Labor is, how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of Education is, how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Administrator of The EPA is, how horrible Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of Energy is, how horrible (and fascist and racist) Donald Trump's choice of Chief Strategist is, how horrible (and unhinged) Donald Trump's choice of National Security Advisor is, how horrible Donald Trump's upcoming nominations for The Supreme Court are, how Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin's "Puppet", how horrible and potentially Unconstitutional Donald Trump's treatment of the press is, how Donald Trump is already in violation of The Emoluments Clause of The Constitution and may face imminent impeachment, how Donald Trump's failure to take daily security briefings are a danger to the American people, how Donald Trump is "uniquely unqualified" to be Commander-in-Chief, how Donald Trump can't be "trusted with the nuclear codes", how Donald Trump's Tweets can get us into a World War . . .

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they and many Republicans across the country who share some or even all of these and other serious indictments and concerns, will double down on Donald Trump!

And there are but a few Members of Congress who are even willing to consider using the opportunity presented to Congress, and America, by The Constitution to even consider the legality of the electoral votes that allowed this same Donald Trump to override "the will of the People" as expressed by the popular vote, and, instead, blindly march to confirm the election of this man today.

When asked, even Democratic Members of Congress say that they would "love" to replace Donald Trump with Colin Powell, the 3rd highest vote-getter in The Electoral College (receiving 3 votes) but they won't because Trump supporters across the country would be upset.

Yes, the same Trump supporters who voted to "drain the swamp", which has not happened.Yes, the same Trump supporters who voted to "lock her up", which will not happenYes, the same Trump supporters who voted for "Mexico will pay for the wall, 100%, I guarantee it", which will not happenYes, the same Trump supporters who voted to "Repeal and Replace Obamacare", which will, if we are honest, will just be renamed "Trumpcare".

and on and on.

"Fraudulent inducement" in the law is grounds to rescind a contract and Congress is being given that opportunity today.

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Colin Powell, on the other hand, would "drain the swamp" and do far more of what Donald Trump disingenuously promised his voters and all Americans.

Congress, at 1 pm today has the Constitutional right to give America a President who will most certainly "Make America Proud Again", a man that virtually everyone around the world respects and believes is honest, mature, level-headed, experienced, brilliant, sophisticated and a true American Patriot.

When Democrats and Republican Members of Congress sneer at the few who challenge the Constitutionality of the election of Donald Trump at 1 pm today, and then vote to confirm that election, they double down on the most unpopular incoming President in modern American history.

Ironically, it was Colin Powell who said of Iraq before the Iraq War, "If you break it, you own it".

Congress, if you pass over the opportunity to elect Colin Powell and double down on Donald Trump, you surrender much of the high ground to complain about his horrible Cabinet picks, Supreme Court picks, his Tweets, his international crises and all of the potentially devastating things this "uniquely unqualified" man will do for the next 4 years.

Congress, if you pass over the opportunity to elect Colin Powell and double down on Donald Trump today, you "Own" Donald Trump!
Colin Powell can be elected President of The United States on January 6.

And it is already in process.

Here's how:

Step One: One Congressperson and one Senator challenge the results of The Electoral College. (As of January 5 at 5:20 pm, this author has just received confirmation that at least one Member of The House of Representatives WILL be challenging the results and that that Member is actively recruiting a corresponding Member from The United States Senate) .Step Two: Each challenged vote is debated and ruled to be either valid or invalid by both houses of CongressStep Three: If less than 270 of the 304 electoral votes for Donald Trump survive scrutiny by Congress, Donald Trump is not formally elected by The Electoral College and then the entire matter goes to The House of Representatives to choose.Step Four: The House chooses, according to The 12th Amendment, amongst the top 3 electoral vote getters. Because of The Hamilton Elector campaign encouraging electors of both parties to "vote their conscience" 7 electors actually did. As a result, here was the vote:

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Donald Trump: 304Hillary Clinton: 227Colin Powell: 3John Kasich: 1Bernie Sanders: 1Ron Paul: 1Faith Spotted Eagle 1

So, if Congress is able to invalidate at least 35 of Donald Trump's 304 electoral votes, he will fall below the mandatory 270 vote threshold for victory and The House of Representatives will then be asked to choose amongst Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell. Each state delegation gets 1 vote and the candidate - be it Trump, Clinton or Powell - who gets 26 of the 50 votes is our next President and Commander-in-Chief.

Yes, IF this gets to The House, Colin Powell can (and may very well) become America's 45th President.

Crazy, huh. Well, there seems to be no limit to the fun and surprises provided by our wonderful Electoral College system!

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IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE THAT COLIN POWELL WILL BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT?Glad you asked. It is, of course, unlikely, but it is absolutely possible.

Really. Here's why:

1. A just released study, authored by North Carolina attorney, Arlaine Rockey, her registered Republican sister and 6 other attorneys and 7 additional researchers has identified, according to them, at least 50 Republican (and many Democratic as well) electors who have violated one or more statutory or Constitutional requirements for them to be electors and for their electoral votes to count. (Here is a 53 page Executive Summary of the 1,018 page study https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0GnyHC1E-uOaXVqbG05TFIwQzQ/view)

These requirements are:

a) The electors were not living in or registered to vote in the Congressional Districts that they represented in The Electoral College, an absolute requirement.b) They were already elected officials and, as such, violated the absolute requirement that they not serve in two elected capacities.c) Votes for President and Vice-President were made on the same ballot, in direct violation of the law.

The Path to a 26 State Vote Victory In The House of Representatives for Colin Powell

If all 13 states with a Democratic majority of Congresspersons vote for Colin Powell (realizing it is futile to vote for Hillary) he is halfway there and only 13 of the remaining 37 Republican States would have to vote for General Powell for him to become The 45th President of The United States.

One way for this to happen is if:* The 3 states where there are almost as many Democrats as Republicans, Colorado (4-3), Arizona (5-4) and Wisconsin (5-3) have just one or two Republicans vote for Powell instead of Trump, and* Maine, with 1 Republican and 1 Democrat, votes for Powell, and* Utah, where Trump is not well loved, votes instead for Powell, and* The one Congressperson delegations in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming vote for General Powell, and * Just 3 more out of the remaining 27 Republican states decide that America would be better off with the much loved and much respected General Colin Powell than Donald Trump.Or any other combination of 13 of the 37 Republican states vote for this consensus Republican to bring America together.

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What Can You Do to Elect Colin Powell on Friday?

1) Call 202 224 3121 (Capitol Operator) and tell your Congressperson and BOTH United States Senators that you want them to object to each of the 50 indicated Elector's votes because they are Constitutionally illegitimate, and2) That when the election is thrown into The House, you would like for your Congressperson to help bring the country together by voting for General Powell.*Note: We know that many would like for Democrats and others to vote for the winner of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton, but there is zero chance that even one Republican Congressperson would vote for Hillary and therefore Democratic Congresspersons would likely elect Donald Trump unless all of them vote for Colin Powell.

While a seeming fantasy, this can be done . . . and after the utterly crazy, unprecedented and surprising nature of Election 2016 what a deliciously crazy, unprecedented, surprising and somehow appropriate ending this could be!Can you say, "President Colin Powell"? I think the vast majority of America would sleep better for the next 4 years if this became a reality and that the talented and patriotic General and former Secretary of State for George W. Bush would accept this call to duty to serve his nation yet again.

SUMMARY by The Legal Team

Here are the issues regarding the electoral college results that have come to our attention.

A number of attorneys, in researching other electoral college laws, identified what they saw as serious legal errors in the way the electoral college votes were taken.Several states, in their state laws and constitutions, place clear limits on who can cast electoral college ballots. Some states, such as North Carolina, require that electoral college representatives (like congressional representatives) must come from a particular voting district. Under various state constitutions, there are prohibitions on certain office holders from cross swearing (taking two oaths and acting in two official positions). One challenge was brought in Ohio prior to the election to a dual office holder, and that elector Ohio State Representative Christina Hagan, stepped down. However, the tens of other dual office holders went ahead and cast electoral college votes in violation of their own state restrictions.

At this point, it is incumbent on congress to certify whether votes have been "regularly given" and "lawfully certified" but the prohibition on dual office holding makes this certification impossible. See 3 U.S. Code  15.The link, above, includes the list of the states in which Trump took a state majority, and reviewers have identified 50 votes that cannot be certified.

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One fine day in the middle of the night,

A presidential candidate tweeted out a fight.

"Hillary ought to be arrested," he said,

"For the email scandal off with her head.

She risked our safety with her deeds

And betrayed the country for her needs."

The tweeting twit then turned about

And asked the Russians to use their clout.

They hacked and hawed to help their man,

Resulting in the election of a Putin fan.

He sat and tweeted out his thanks,

Called for unity and helped the banks.

Selected foxes to rule the roost

And asked Assange to give him a boost.

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The twit in chief then called for war

Against the intelligence agencies, the Mexicans and more.

He railed against his Muslim foes

And tweeted nuclear strategy on the go.

He set about removing healthcare for the poor,

And pledged to show the media the door.

He'll make the country great agin,

For neo-Nazis and their bigot kin,

He'll rid the country of dissent

By stop and frisk and a conspiracy bent.

"The torture" is now a part of our plan

To defend against the Barbari-an.

We'll waterboard and worse, he claims,

To defend our values and our aims.

We'll kill our enemies on mass,

To show the world what's come to pass.

Might is right these days it seems,

Like in the 1930s dreams

of fascists and of Nazi scum.

How could we all have been so dumb?

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Since the day Obama became president, there have been rumors that on his last day of office he would somehow do a mic drop and make marijuana legal. This is not legally possible but there is something he could do before he leaves office to finally put an end to "reefer madness": update the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) website and publications to reflect its own recent scientific findings on medical cannabis. Science that dispels four of the biggest myths about medical marijuana. Requiring scientific accuracy would allow Congress and the next Administration to have accurate information when discussing national medical cannabis policies that affects millions of Americans.

In August 2016, the DEA issued the "Denial of Petition to Initiate Proceedings to Reschedule Marijuana," in response to Washington and Rhode Island's attempts to reschedule cannabis While the DEA did not reschedule cannabis, the report did clarify four important misconception about medical cannabis: that cannabis was a "gateway drug", or that it caused cognitive decline, psychosis and lung cancer.

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These arguments, especially the "gateway" theory, have been a centerpiece in the drug war for decades. All four are now disproven by the DEA's own research. It is a pretty small ask for Obama require it to use its own data.

The lack of action led ASA to file a petition with the DOJ utilizing rights granted to our members and patients under the Information Quality Act (IQA). Passed in 1994, the law simply mandates that the data the government uses must be truthful. The IQA requires administrative agencies to devise guidelines that ensure the "quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information" they distribute and to "[e]stablish administrative mechanisms allowing affected persons to seek and obtain correction of information maintained and disseminated by the agency that does not comply with the guidelines."

The petition identifies 25 violations of the IQA on the DEA's website and publications and includes suggested changes based on the DEA's own words from their August report.

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Congress and the White House rely on the DEA to provide current and accurate information when they are making decisions about marijuana policy. Congress has voted against medical cannabis policy due to this inaccurate and outdated information, in fact Reps. Fleming , Wolf, Harris, and Sens. Graham, Feinstein, Grassley, and Sessions have all cited this information in hearing testimony or as reasons for their colleagues to vote against medical cannabis legislation.

Most importantly, Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions has his biases but listens to the DEA. At a hearing in 2014 he said:

"I thank you for you and some of your officials in DEA for speaking out and telling the truth about the dangers of marijuana. This is not a non-dangerous drug. And I've got to tell you in terms of messaging, the president's statement -- to me, I spent 12 years working with grassroots citizens' groups to change the approach to drugs and the climate of drugs and to make it hostile climate for drugs and explain the dangers of drug use."

If Congress is going to finally end the conflict between state and federal law, they will need to have accurate information. Granting the IQA petition will mean that we can break through the myth-induced gridlock and advance the dialog on medical cannabis so that a federal policy can be established that respects the rights and needs of patients.

Correcting the DEA's website and publications is in line with Obama's hopes when he first came into office. In the first months of his Presidency, Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies stating that, "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions," and calling for "transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking."

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Success in correcting this information will mean politicians can no longer use the misinformation about the gateway drug hypothesis, irreversible cognitive decline in adults, and cannabis causing psychosis or lung cancer to deny patients access to medical cannabis.


By Artur Kiulian

It would be naive to think that just our personal lives are dramatically enhanced by the recent progress in artificial intelligence. Technology is changing the way we interact with the world, and there is no question that machine learning will change how our 9-to-5 jobs look in a few years.

As a founding partner at a venture studio, we embrace these trends and try to help startups focus on the future, rather than how technology works today. The software we create will bring new opportunities and affect markets tomorrow. And the best way to prepare for change is to understand what is driving it and what trends are the most distinguished in our strive for technological singularity. I have outlined a few that I have seen recently below:

Human Assistance

Big companies are trying to outsource their processes to machines, or at least break them apart into pieces that can be automated. This may be a major concern to an unskilled layer of workers. It can also be a stimulus for spending those saved costs on more qualified specialists in the missing areas instead.

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But how do machines make certain decisions? Even Google engineers are out of touch with how their algorithms work now thanks to the system's complexity, which could prevent us from completely trusting AI. To clear up this issue, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently funded research to make new a kind of artificial intelligence algorithms that can properly explain themselves and their conclusions, something similar to what we see in a new "Westworld" TV episode.

And what better way to know something than to ask directly? Conversation as a technology has been creeping its way into the picture for many years. It seems now we are finally reaching a state where it can become usable to some extent. This trend will set apart companies that are leveraging intelligent assistance from those that are still trying to better processes by simply hiring more humans.

Cloud Processing

The booming cloud infrastructure of corporate giants is becoming widely available for anyone to experiment with machine learning for almost nothing. Research that took people years and millions of dollars back in 2005 is practically free. And this opportunity is open to anyone, which creates a huge pool of homegrown talent, driving more and more accomplishments in the field. It also nurtures a healthy environment for companies to hire and experiment in the field of machine learning.

Deep Learning

There has been a breakthrough in the mainstream application of deep learning, a robust artificial intelligence technique that mimics the way our brains work. Deep learning allows you to discover intimate relationships between different aspects of data, to the extent that human teachers can be eliminated from the equation. Previously, machine learning techniques were heavily dependent on human researchers guiding the algorithms through the unlabeled datasets -- but not anymore.

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For example, Google's AI translation tools have created their own internal language that describes all human communications in a single feature field. This makes it super efficient at translating.

Data Monsters

The key to building intelligent machines is giving them proper data from which to learn. Without the correct data, we are stuck with elementary machines that can only play checkers.

That's why more and more companies are becoming focused on data harvesting (especially in major work processes) to craft algorithms that can actually improve machines and functions. And most of the time this aspect heavily relies on human actions as an input, which again shows that humans won't be majorly extinct from the day to day operations -- at least for now.

To take a full advantage of this trend, consider documenting all existing processes and data it produces. This can help to accelerate data harvesting and make use of the most precious business element in the coming years.

Algorithmic Society

For the last few years, our digital presence showed us what an environment where all our actions somehow influence our further actions (or actions of others through algorithms) might look like. This is one of the major trends that keeps accelerating us to a state where we hardly even have to make a decision before executing. Take the on-demand economy (Uber, Postmates, etc.) as an example. Machines already tell us where to go, when to go, how much to pay and even what to eat. Companies like Amazon have started recommending products to buy and Facebook suggests individuals to add as friends.

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As a startup studio, we are seeing an exponential growth of new startups aiming to revolutionize how we build intelligent machines and communicate with them. Funding makes it possible to actually build and take their solutions to the market. And of course, investors are inclined to take part in a truly disruptive venture leading the artificial intelligence to real industry applications.


By Annika Andersson, ZEALnyc Contributing Writer, January 6, 2017

Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer? is the thought-provoking documentary about Dr. William Hurwitz, who was convicted of over 50 counts of narcotics distribution for too generously prescribing painkillers to his patients, which ended up landing him a 25-year prison sentence.

Director Eve Marson has approached the ethical dilemma of prescribing versus denying patients painkillers by weighing in the pros and cons of using them, allowing both sides of the story to be told. The documentary is an important addition to the current discussion abut the opioid epidemic, which is claiming more lives than ever in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and heroin) has quadrupled between 1999 and 2015. Drug overdoses claimed half a million lives between 2000 and 2015, and the majority of these deaths (more than six out of ten) involved opioids. That's 91 Americans, every day, succumbing to opioid overdoses. The quadrupled overdoses since 1999 correlates with a quadrupled increase of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. during that very same timeframe, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone, and yet there has not been a change in the amount of pain that Americans report.

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So why would a highly esteemed professional such as Dr. Hurwitz prescribe such vast amounts of painkillers to his patients? The film offers different explanations by showing contradicting testimonies from the witnesses. Their accounts of him reveal a compassionate, yet flawed, doctor, but there is no easy way to determine what's right and wrong. A patient has a right to pain relief, and there is no way to measure pain, especially chronic pain, other than to take the patient's word for it. On the other hand, generous prescriptions have tempted patients to become drug dealers, and obviously, there is a lawful need for drug control.

For example, the film states there were six or seven suicides immediately following Dr. Hurwitz's arrest by patients unable to live with their pain when he wasn't able to supply relief anymore. But the film also reveals the doctor's stubborn belief in patients where evidence suggested the opposite, such as the story of one patient who entered the office with a limp. When secretly followed from the office to his car, his limp all but disappeared. Why wouldn't this set off any alarm? The film also offers the perspective of the profit generated from having 500 painkiller addicts returning every month renewing their prescriptions as a possible incentive, since each visit generates $250 for the office.

The documentary doesn't necessarily leave us any wiser regarding Dr. Hurwitz's motives, but we do have a better understanding of the complexity of the situation. It's not easy to determine what's the right thing to do, even with the best of intentions. What we do learn though is to be very careful with opioids -- the new 2016 guidelines is not to take them any longer than 3-7 days following an injury. They are highly addictive and the amount needed to sooth the pain quickly escalates. On the streets, the drug has become known as "Hillbilly heroin." It can be snorted or injected and has led to many pharmacy robberies with the sole purpose of getting opioids. But sadly, there is still no consensus for how to treat chronic pain.

Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer? has two special screenings coming up: 1) in San Francisco on January 7 featuring a special Q&A afterwards with the director Eve Marson, producer Sara Goldblatt, and executive producers Dr. Alison Block and Dr. Timothy Poore (for more information click here); and 2) in Los Angeles on January 11 (for more information click here). Beginning on January 31 the film will be available for digital streaming via its distributor Gravitas Ventures, and the film may be pre-ordered through iTunes in the U.S. by clicking here; or in Canada by clicking here.



Cover photo: Jeff Bierman

________________________________

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Annika Andersson is a Contributing Writer for ZEALnyc and writes about film and related events.

For more features from ZEALnyc read:
China Expresses Support for the Philippines in Role as ASEAN Chair

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a signing ceremony on Oct. 20, 2016, in Beijing, China. (Photo : Getty Images)

With 2017 as the 50th founding anniversary of the ASEAN and the China-ASEAN year of tourism cooperation, China expressed its support for the Philippines in executing its role as the current rotating chair of the ASEAN.



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The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson also expressed China's high hopes in deepening its diplomatic relations with the member countries.



"The Chinese government always regards ASEAN as the priority of its neighborhood diplomacy," said foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang.



China is planning to work with the ASEAN to enhance communication on policies; alignment of strategies and practical cooperation; and to deepen all-around cooperation that covers trade, connectivity, and production capacity.



It also plans to fully implement the third Five-Year Action Plan of the strategic partnership with the ASEAN and to materialize the outcomes of the upgraded China-ASEAN free trade area.



During the 25th anniversary of the dialogue relationship between China and the ASEAN last Sept. 2016, Premier Li Keqiang and the leaders of the ASEAN member countries agreed to upgrade and elevate China-ASEAN cooperation, fully demonstrating the determination of China and ASEAN countries to consolidate mutual trust and highlight cooperation.



The relations between the Philippines and China were under tension due to the maritime dispute over the South China Sea up until current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte came to power.



But it's not just the two countries who are claiming ownership over the resource-rich area. Other claimant countries include Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.



Despite both countries still asserting their claim, Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Enrique Manalo told the press that the dispute over the South China Sea will not be included on the agenda of this year's Southeast Asian summit.



As China expresses its high hopes for deepening its relations and cooperation with the ASEAN, the rest of the world will continue to keep a close eye on the implementation and developments of this partnership.


Hutchinson contracts with a collection agency for unpaid utility bills

Contract with Topeka-based collector could double collections on unpaid city bills, but it will significantly increase cost for debtors
President-elect Donald Trump holds victory rally in Pennsylvania. (Photo : Getty Images)

"Addiction to Twitter diplomacy unwise," reads an article published by the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua late Tuesday night. The headline clearly expresses China's frustration over Trump's handling of sensitive Sino-U.S. issues by going to social media.



While China has banned the use of Twitter at home, ironically, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump recently targeted China on his Twitter feed. On Monday, he posted a tweet criticizing China, accusing it of a "totally one-sided trade."



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The tweet read: "China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!"



In this tweet, Trump was accusing China of refusing to help the U.S. in containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The president-elect also tweeted about Beijing over Taiwan trade and the South China Sea dispute.



On Tuesday, China's foreign ministry spokesman responded to Trump's controversial tweet at a regular press conference. He said that Beijing had always been doing its part to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.



Xinhua published a byline commentary hours after Trump's tweet.



"It is commonly accepted that diplomacy is not a child's game--and even less is it business dealing. As former United States Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright said, Twitter should not be a tool for foreign policy," said the commentary.



He might not be sworn into office just yet, but Trump's tweets might affect the relations between the two countries.



"China is unhappy about Trump's public approach to diplomacy, because they think it will not help solve diplomatic disputes and--even worse--will aggravate the negative public sentiments in both countries against each other," said Zhang Zexin, a U.S. foreign affairs expert from the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.



While he is only a few weeks away from moving to the White House, Trump should shape up and get a crash course in international diplomacy.


Online activism (a.k.a. Internet activism , web activism or cyberactivism) emerged in the early 1990s in the USA and later spread very quickly to all developed countries. It initially consisted of mass email and E-bulletin board campaigns. Later, organisations such as Avaaz, Change.org, MoveOn.org and 38 Degrees brought civic engagement to a new level and put online activism at the center of political and business decisions. This very platform, Netivist , aims at contributing to the same goal. Online activism via petitions and campaigns has become an effective way to raise awareness about about important political, economic, cultural and social problems and challenges society is facing. Online activism can be used for advocacy or awareness purposes, to collect donations, as a means to foster coordination and mobilization of activists and supporters of a cause, and as an expression of collective unrest and protest .

Some governments and parliaments are also creating online petition sites. Thanks to them, citizens have a more direct way to influence policy-making. Wikileaks and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists can be considered different examples of online activism. By revealing thousands of classified documents, these sites are contributing to transparency and shaping public opinion and governance. Moreover, online political activism is helping to tip the balance in some contested electoral campaigns.

In many cases online petitions and campaigns work, and satisfactory manage to raise awareness, funds or to push governments or introduce regulation. However, most of the petitions and collective initiatives launched on the Internet don't manage to fulfil the expectations of the activists that created them. Moreover there are cases in which cyberactivism produces mixed results. For instance, between the summer of 2014 and start of 2015, social media users helped to make the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) ice bucket challenge viral. People were required to douse themselves in a bucket of cold water before nominating others with the same challenge. At its peak of popularity, a host of celebritiesincluding Robert Downey Jr and Tom Cruisecarried out the same challenge. All social media participants were required to do, was to share these videos, making them viral. As noted by many commentators, these social media users lack any awareness of the condition of ALS, nor displayed obvious empathy with those suffering from ALS. Yet, a report by the Guardian noted that it managed to fund important breakthrough in ALS research.

What is "clicktivism"? And "slacktivism"?

While online activism is growing in popularity, the rejection this type of activism generates among people also increases. The informal and derogatory terms "clicktivism" and "slacktivism" are increasingly used as synonyms of Internet activism. "Clicktivism" refers to the use of social media and other online methods to promote a specific cause by simply clicking on a endorsement or signature button. Similary the term "slacktivism" refers to a half-hearted form of activism, usually by posting links, comments, images in support of a cause on social media, but without further action. These terms capture a frequent critique by "traditional" activists or advocates. They think that online activism is simply encouraging people to passively click in support of a cause rather than take concrete action, which may have a greater impact in bringing about change.

Watch this video on the differences between Slacktivists and Activists

Online activism pros and cons

Before you make up your mind we have summarized here some of the main advantages and limitations of Internet activism.

Pros of online activism:

Online activism is cost efficient. It requires low effort from the organizers and supporters of a cause.

Digital activism is democratizing activism. Previously, broadcasting a message was costly so only relatively big organizations could afford to undertake big campaigns and mobilize many people. Social media has made it much easier.

Online activism is demonstrating the transformational impact of internet on society. There are many examples of online petitions that have worked.

As many viral campaigns can attest to, it is an extremely effective means to raise funds if social media campaigns become viral.

It generates significant debate and awareness amongst people. "Clicktivists" and "slacktivists" who are simply sharing a link or a post or clicking on a button to endorse a petition, often learn about problems through this process. Some of them will later on find out more about that issue or cause and may end up becoming "fully-fledged activists."

Cons of online activism:

Clicktivists are usually passive slacktivists rather than activists. They demonstrate poor understanding of these causes, and usually get involved only because of the hype on social media.

Online activism can become a hypocritical way of getting peace of mind when we know that we are not doing anything substantial to solve the problems we may be indirectly contributing to.

Online activism has transformed the way social and political campaigners communicate their message. Often, messages are being overly simplified and there is less room for public deliberation and exchange of views than in traditional activism.

Although the potential to transform society is real, sometimes the impact of online activism is negative for society. For instance, terrorist groups and xenophobic parties are also using online activism to achieve their goals.

Online activism can be misleading. Despite having a large showing of force online, democratic movements often falter. Clicks of supports and shares do not always translate into a large force outside the Internet. Activism is being banalized and being transformed into a sort of entertainment.

Emerging questions: Are petition sites and social media encouraging people to passively click in support of a cause rather than taking action? Are "clicktivism" and "slacktivism" undermining "real activism"? Do you think clicktivism is positive or simply a means to have a clean conscience without sacrificing much time or effort for a cause?

Source: https://netivist.org/debate/online-activism-pros-and-cons
It's critical to help clients make the most of the plans they have
Todd is a trusted professional with extensive knowledge and more than 25 years of experience in the workers compensation industry, said Joseph Fico, USI New England regional chief executive officer. I have seen his talent, drive and work ethic first hand, and I know he will play an integral role in advancing the founding principles of the Massachusetts workers compensation system. I congratulate Todd on this well-deserved and prestigious appointment, and I am proud to have him as a member of the USI family.

In addition to his executive role, Johnson serves as a municipal selectman for the town of Tewksbury, managing a budget of around $110 million dollars. According to USI, the town has gone from a severe economic situation to a AA+ bond rating.

Johnson is also a property-casualty practice leader at the USI Massachusetts offices in Woburn, Needham, and West Springfield, Mass.

The new chairman has worked at USI for the past 6 years and been a member of the Massachusetts WCAC for the past four years.





Related stories:

Supreme Court asked to review states workers comp system

Arthur J Gallagher reveals Regency Group acquisition
Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook Names Two New Partners

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook, one of Berkshire County's largest law firms, has announced that Dennis G. Egan and Jesse Cook-Dubin have been named as partners.



Both Egan and Cook-Dubin are corporate attorneys who focus their practices in business, banking and financing law.



Egan joined Cohen Kinne in 2012 after practicing at the largest law firm in the Pioneer Valley. In addition to being a very skilled transactions lawyer, who is very active in health law, Egan leads the firm's Real Estate Division and has been involved in many of the most complex real estate transactions and bank financings in and around the Berkshires.



Egan is the immediate past chair of the Berkshire Leadership Program and one of the leaders of the organization of 1Berkshire Strategic Alliance Inc. He volunteers with a number of other organizations in the area.


New Nurse Joins SVMC ExpressCare

BENNINGTON, Vt.  Southwestern Vermont Medical Center has welcomed Scott Lippacher, MS, RN, FNP-BC, to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Putnam Physicians.



Lippacher received his graduate medical education at State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. In addition, he holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Southern Vermont College, an associates in nursing from North Country Community College in New York, a certificate in practical nursing from Champlain Valley Education Center in New York, and a certificate in paramedicine from Daniel Freeman Hospital Paramedic School in California. He worked in the Emergency Department at Southern Vermont Medical Center 2003-2015.



SVMC ExpressCares board-certified physicians are a part of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system and have access to more than 1,200 primary and specialty care physicians and state-of-the-art-technology and services.



Open seven days a week, ExpressCare is a convenient walk-in clinic. No appointment is necessary. ExpressCare offers care for minor illnesses and injuries to patients of all ages. It is located in Suite 111 of the Medical Office Building at 140 Hospital Drive in Bennington. For more information, call 802-440-4077.




iciHaiti - Elections : Brazil congratulates the victory of Jovenel Moise





"The Brazilian Government greet the newly elected President of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, for his victory in the last presidential elections and conveys its best wishes in the exercise of his functions.



Recognizing the importance of the electoral process for the institutional consolidation of the country, Brazil reiterates its determination to continue to cooperate for the development of Haiti.



The Brazilian Government takes this opportunity to commend the work of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah) and the contribution of the international community in the reconstruction of Haiti."



IH/ iciHaiti


















Nie Yuan (Photo : Colonel Angus/YouTube)

Beijing Satellite TV would begin to air on Jan. 7, Saturday, the 68-episode period drama Xin Ru Tie (Iron Heart), starring Nie Yuan. The series story is about a young thief who claims he is the kidnapped son of a millionaire family missing for years.



Nie Yuan is the winner of the Most Popular Actor Award of the China Student Television Festival. The drama, which also stars Shu Chang and Jiang Tao, is Nie Yuans return to television, China Christian Daily reported.



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Preparing for the Role



To prepare for his role, which is a thief, Nie Yuan had to wake up for training. The actor considers the complex character he is portraying challenging, a big departure from his previous movie roles which were restrained. The thief character he portrays is an emotionally driven roughneck that the actor said he had to let go of himself to immerse in the role, China Daily reported.



Zhang Guoqing, director of Xin Ru Tie, describes the TV series as a fast-pace drama but with suspenseful twists. He attributed the different approach to the drama to the production learning the production skills of classic American crime dramas.



Movie Roles



Nie Yuan, who started his movie career in 1997, starred as Tang Sanzang in the 2011 film Journey to the West, as Zhao Yun in the 2010 movie Three Kingdoms, as Li Ke in Zhen Guan Chang Ge in 2007 and as Hu Fei in Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain in 2006. As a youth, because he was into vices and got into fights, his parents enlisted him in the Peoples Liberation Army.



After Nie Yuan completed his army service, he enrolled at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and starred in 2000 in the TV drama Wrong Carriage, Right Groom with his first girlfriend, Huang Yi, an actress.






Shokugeki no Soma Chapter 198: Will Series Reveal Somas Mother Next?  4 Predictions and Potential Spoilers for Next Issue

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma is a Japanese shonen manga series written by Yuto Tsukuda and illustrated by Shun Saeki. (Photo : YouTube/ANM Best)

Shokugeki no Soma continues to provide details on what really transpired in the past, the events that set things in motion for Azama Nakiri's revolution.



For the past three chapters, we have witnessed Joichiro Saiba's evolution from happy-go-lucky prodigy to passionate student of culinary art. In the preceding issue of Shokugeki no Soma, it's obvious that the end game of Joichiro's run as the Asura of the food world is in sight and a new style of cooking emerges from the ashes of defeat.



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Here are four crazy predictions and potential spoilers for chapter 198:



-Joichiro finds himself in odd spot after spending the last few months training for the B.L.U.E competition. At the end of chapter, it was apparent Joichiro's fervent desire to venture deep into the food world in search for new flavors is taking a toll both on his psyche and body as well.







-Although Dojima couldn't find Joichiro in his room hours before the BLUE, it's still logical for the young Saiba to participate in the competition. There, he will finally reach breaking point, succumbing to the peril of the culinary arts. At last, Joichiro tastes defeat that will change his philosophy forever.



-Dojima will show concern for his fallen friend, while Azami treats Joichiro's defeat as a sign of failure. Azami will then put the blame on Tootsoki and its system as the culprit behind Joichiro's fall.



-The bitter taste of defeat will force Joichiro to quit school and abandon his friends at Polar Star Dorm. Outside the prestigious culinary school, he will find new motivation to cook delicious food in the presence of his future wife, coming from the Yukihira line. From there, the Yukihira style of cooking will be born.







Shokogeki no Soma is currently on break, but the latest chapter of the gastronomic manga series will be available in the next issue of Shonen Jump on January 7, 2017. For more Shokugeki no Soma news and update, follow me at ShonenLord@Twitter


House Passes Resolution Condemning UN for Anti-Israel Action

The Fellowship | January 6, 2017 House Passes Resolution Condemning UN for Anti-Israel Action

Those who stand for Israel were appalled by the U.N.s recent vote against the Jewish state  and the United States refusal to veto said vote. The U.S. Congress was appalled, too, writes The Jerusalem Posts Michael Wilner, and showed their support for Israel yesterday by passing a resolution condemning the U.N.s action and calling on President Obama to veto any similar actions:

The House of Representatives passed a resolution on Thursday condemning the UN Security Council for censuring Israel over its settlement enterprise, and calling on the Obama administration which allowed the UN move to pass to veto any similar actions in the international chamber.

The resolution acknowledges Americas longstanding and bipartisan support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, but reminds the government of its historic policy opposed to one-sided UN resolutions that seek to impose parameters for such a solution onto the parties.

It is this policy, the resolution asserts, that the Obama administration undermined with its latest action at the UN, which condemned Israel over its construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The White House abstained from the vote, choosing not to utilize its permanent veto power.

The status of East Jerusalem remains a sticking point between Israelis and Palestinians, and the US has for years considered it a topic not for UN deliberations but for final-status, direct negotiations.

The passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 undermined the longstanding position of the United States to oppose and veto United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel, reversing decades of bipartisan agreement, the resolution asserts, referring to US President Barack Obamas decision to abstain from the vote.

It undermines the prospect of Israelis and Palestinians resuming productive, direct negotiations, the resolution reads, and contributes to the politically motivated acts of boycott, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel and represents a concerted effort to extract concessions from Israel outside of direct negotiations
The Vampire Diaries (TVD) Season 8 spoilers, airdate: What happens in episode 8? When will the show return?

Actors Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder and writer/producer Julie Plec attend the 'The Vampire Diaries' panel during Comic-Con International 2016 at San Diego Convention Center on July 23, 2016 in San Diego, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Matt Winkelmeyer)

"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 is just around the corner. The show will return with episode 8 titled "We have History Together" on Jan. 13 and it will see what happens after Stefan (Paul Wesley) turned off his humanity. Here are the detailed spoilers for the next chapter of the series. Read on to find out what happens next.



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[Spoiler alert! This article contains spoilers for "The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 8 "We have History Together." Do not read further if you don't wish to know more about it.]



"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) season 8 episode 8 will continue to see Stefan and Damon work to keep their commitment to Cade. The highly anticipated segment will see the beginning of final episodes of the series.



The network has released a detailed synopsis for the midseason premiere. According to Spoilersguide, "The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 8 will see the Salvatore brothers join anger management support group. However, their intentions might be different.



A promo video for "The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 8 teases their first interaction with the support group members. Scroll down to watch the trailer online.



Stefan and Damon are looking for their next victim and that's what got them to become a part of this group. Meanwhile, fans will find out Sybil is alive and what is she up to. It will be revealed that she is now teaching high school students whom she ultimately wants to use for her ulterior motive-to get Caroline locate a historical artefact that can be used against her.



In the meantime, a young doctor, Tara, becomes Stefan and Damon's target as they put her morals to test. Several media outlets are speculating that Tara might be Nina Dobrev's character Elena Gilbert's replacement. However, other reports suggest Dobrev's appearance before the series comes to an end. The network is yet to make official announcements.



In an interview with TV Line, showrunner Julie Plec teased what happens after Stefan has given up on his human side.



"Stefan's never been good with temptation while in ripper mode," Plec told the publication. "We know from past experience that Stefan has a threshold, and it'll be Damon's job to monitor his brother and make sure he stays on the good side of that threshold. If he crosses it, there's a risk of losing him forever."



"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 8 airs Jan. 13 on The CW. Stay tuned for more spoilers and updates.



Credit:YouTube.com/The CW Television Network






This Isnt Our Last Love Letter



Dear Don Don,

Way back in 92



I walked into the room and knew



Never felt this way before



I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes



And the feeling grew



As I took a seat I knew



A love that would have my heart



Forever



I knew



Way back in 92





They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true



We were the exception to that rule



Our love had no where to hide



A spark set fire



As if this is how the universe started





I never doubted our love or what we could do



Together we grew



Forming a bond everlasting



That became our glue



My euphoria was YOU



Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared



For how fortunate we were :



to have and to hold

through sickness and in health

Til death do us part



Until we are together again



This isnt our last love letter



I love you with all my heart and soul



Yours forever,



Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)





Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.









A True American Hero

I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.



I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.



I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.

But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.

In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.



Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.

I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.

I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.

No one will ever do what he did.

I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO





David Jurist

IMUS IN THE MORNING

FIRST DAY BACK!
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Following the tragic death of Carrie Fisher late last year, questions were raised about the future of her iconic character Princess/General Leia in the Star Wars saga.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Leia was expected to play a fundamental role in both upcoming films, VIII and IX, including two major reunions.

Sources told the publication that, while details arent exact, the character was supposed to play a bigger part in Episode IX, which has not started filming, than Episode VIII, which finished filming.

The status if the script for Episode IX - by director Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly - is currently unknown, Disney deciding not to comment.

According to THR, Trevorrow is set to meet Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy to discuss solutions, whether that is rewriting the part or using VFX to resurrect' Fisher (like how Peter Cushing was brought into Rogue One).

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There is also the option of re-shooting some of VIII to write the character out: the film already went through a major retool after JJ Abrams significantly changed The Force Awakens in post-production.

** Possible spoilers ** Those two aforementioned reunions? They have also been detailed, but whether they have been filmed remains unconfirmed.

One reportedly featured Luke and Leia meeting once more, the other, with her son Kylo, who murdered Han Solo in The Force Awakens. Whether these can be written out remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, fans of Fisher are pressing to make the iconic Star Wars character an official Disney Princess, starting an online petition that has been signed over 25,000 times.
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When are they taking place?

This years Golden Globes will be held on Sunday 8 January at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles

What time does it start?

It all kicks off at 1 am on Monday morning in the UK, finishing around 4 am. For those in the US, it starts at 8 pm ET.

How can I watch it?

Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Show all 18 1 /18 Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Jennifer Lawrence in Versace Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Nikki Reed in Naeem Khan 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Nicole Scherzinger in Alex Perry 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Bella Thorne in Marchesa 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Rumer Willis in Michael Costello 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Sarah Hyland in Amanda Wakeley Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Gillian Anderson 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Lea Michele in Michael Kors 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Nina Dobrev in Bao Tranchi 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Kayley Cuoco in Christian Siriano 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Jennifer Lopez Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Selena Gomez in J.Mendel Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Kourtney Kardashian in J.Mendel 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Kylie Jenner in La Bourjoisie 2016 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Kate Bosworth in Dolce & Gabbana Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Nina Dobrev in Max Azria atelier Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Emma Roberts in J.Mendel 2015 Getty Images Golden Globes 2016 after-party style Lady Gaga 2015 Getty Images

Sadly those of us in the UK are unable to watch the Globes as they happen but US film fans can tune into NBC from 7 pm ET when the red carpet pre-show begins. Those wishing to watch the ceremony online can do so thanks to NBC Online.

Who is hosting?

The Tonight Shows Jimmy Fallon has stepped up to host this years event, taking over from Ricky Gervais (who happened to previously host four times). Fallon has previously stated the event will kick off with a big musical number starring the likes of Kit Harrington, Ryan Reynolds and previous host Tina Fey. Expect to see clips from the segment shared all over Facebook for weeks to come.

Who is presenting?

Golden Globe host Jimmy Fallon

So far, the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Anna Kendrick, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jessica Chastain, Amy Schumer, Drew Barrymore, Zoe Saldana, Steve Carell, Diego Luna, and Sienna Miller have been confirmed to be presenting awards. Expect more to be announced shortly.

Who is nominated?

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

Best Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy

20th Century Women

Deadpool

Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool

Florence Foster Jenkins

La La Land

Sing Street

Best Performance By an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Amy Adams, Arrival

Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane

Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Ruth Negga, Loving

Natalie Portman, Jackie

Natalie Portman in Jackie

Best Performance By an Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Annette Bening, 20th Century Women

Lily Collins, Rules Dont Apply

Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen

Emma Stone, La La Land

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land

Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

Joel Edgerton, Loving

Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge

Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge

Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic

Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Performance By an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water

Simon Helberg, Florence Foster Jenkins

Dev Patel, Lion

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals

Best Performance by Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Viola Davis, Fences

Naomie Harris, Moonlight

Nicole Kidman, Lion

Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures

Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

Best Director, Motion Picture

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals

Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy

Colin Farrell, The Lobster

Ryan Gosling, La La Land

Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins

Jonah Hill, War Dogs

Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture

La La Land

Nocturnal Animals

Moonlight

Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea

Hell or High Water

Original Score, Motion Picture

Moonlight

La La Land

Arrival

Lion

Hidden Figures

Best Motion Picture, Animated

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

My Life as a Zucchini

Sing

Zootopia

Best Original Song, Motion Picture

Cant Stop the Feeling, Trolls

City of Stars, La La Land

Faith, Sing

Gold, Gold

How Far Ill Go, Moana

Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language

Divines

Elle

Neruda

The Salesman

Toni Erdmann

Father-daughter comedy Toni Erdmann

Best Television Series, Drama

The Crown

Game of Thrones

Stranger Things

This Is Us

Westworld

Best Television Series, Musical or Comedy

Atlanta

Blackish

Mozart in the Jungle

Transparent

Veep

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

American Crime

The Dresser

The Night Manager

The Night Of

The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

The People v OJ Simpson

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Drama

Rami Malek, Mr. Robot

Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul

Matthew Rhys, The Americans

Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan

Billy Bob Thornton, Goliath

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series, Musical, or Comedy

Anthony Anderson, Blackish

Gael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle

Donald Glover, Atlanta

Nick Nolte, Graves

Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture

Made for Television

Riz Ahmed, The Night Of

Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager

Bryan Cranston, All the Way

Tom Hiddleston, The Night Manager

Courtney B. Vance, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

John Turturro, The Night Of

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television

Sterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

Hugh Laurie, The Night Manager

John Lithgow, The Crown

John Lithgow in The Crown (Netflix)

Christian Slater, Mr. Robot

John Travolta, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series, Drama

Caitriona Balfe, Outlander

Claire Foy, The Crown

Keri Russell, The Americans

Winona Ryder, Stranger Things

Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television

Olivia Colman, The Night Manager

Lena Headey, Game of Thrones

Lena Heady in Game of Thrones (HBO/SkyAtlantic)

Chrissy Metz, This Is Us

Mandy Moore, This Is Us

Thandie Newton, Westworld

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Felicity Huffman, American Crime

Riley Keough, The Girlfriend Experience

Sarah Paulson, The People v. O.J.: American Crime Story

Charlotte Rampling, London Spy

Kerry Washington, Confirmation

Best Performance By an Actress in a Television Series, Musical, or Comedy

Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Sarah Jessica Parker, Divorce

Issa Rae, Insecure

Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin

Tracee Ellis Ross, Blackish

Who is going to win?

Moonlight

For the major film categories, both Moonlight and La La Land are expected to dominate, various critics labelling both masterpieces. For best actor in a drama, Casey Affleck is thought to be ahead for his turn in Manchester By The Sea, while best actor in comedy may very well go to outsider Ryan Reynolds for Deadpool.

Natalie Portman and Amy Adams are in hot contention for best actress in a drama, while musical will likely go to Hollywood darling Emma Stone. Foreign language film, meanwhile, sees a tough fight between Elle and Toni Erdman, both loved by critics.

Television wise, we can likely expect Atlanta to pick up the majority of comedy awards, Donald Glovers series being a surprisingly fresh and hilarious show unlike any other. Drama wise, it's slightly more in the air but Game of Thrones and Stranger Things look set for multiple awards. Limited series, meanwhile, is a two-horse race between The People v OJ and The Night Of.
Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Sundara Karma frontman Oscar Pollock examines his fingernails for chipped paint  red, yellow and green  between sips of gin and tonic, waxes lyrical about touring in San Francisco, despairs at the realisation that he may miss Aphex Twin at Field Day, and admits hes a bad vegan.

When Im hungover Ill slip up and eat a f***ing pizza. and being vegetarian for me, its not a health thing, he says, gesturing at his lit cigarette. But as long as people are thinking about where what youre eating has come from  thats f***ing cool.

Sat outside a pub near the offices of the bands label, Sony, the 21-year-old seems remarkably calm despite the rapid-fire conversation  most young artists with a debut album on the way give off a nervous energy but then Sundara Karma have already been together as a band for seven years  since they were 14  so its not as though they havent had time to prepare themselves.

This week they finally released their debut album Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect  a title that will have some critics jumping at the chance to compare it to the 1975s admittedly absurd I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It.

Really? Pollock says, smiling. I think were always gonna get that because its more than three words.

But that title, taken from a lyric on Deep Lead, tells you everything you need to know about this album; one that has already has critics divided over whether the band is trying to follow in the freshly trodden footsteps of the likes of Blossoms.

Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect is a great debut; a polished collection that captures feelings of youth, impatience, sex, love and nostalgia for lost time. While Pollock states that he doesnt consider himself to be particularly intellectual, he has a deep interest in literature and philosophy; Flames, a standout track, riffs off of Platos Allegory of the Cave, while Love Blood is loosely based on Shakespeares Romeo & Juliet.

And theres no filler  each song sounds like a hit  because the band have clearly taken time putting each song on the record, rather than being pressured into churning out an album that attempts to cash in on short-term hype.

Pollock is certainly aware of how certain indie bands have pushed records out over the past few years  feeling rushed, pressured by their labels and the overzealous media attention on the back of one hit single.

Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up

Ive always loved albums and singles are not enough, he says. Singles are the shot of adrenaline but the album is the full hit  so its always been the dream to do the full album. But once you start a band you realise all the potential to do an album shines brightly on the horizon... and we had all these songs that have been great to put together into one body of work.

Weve never been a hype band, he shrugs. And we used to be a bit glum about that but Im so happy about it now. And the fans are the ones who have made this thing happen  this crazy, eccentric fanbase that we have.

Pollock is not keen to compare Sundara Karma to other bands so he tries to avoid it but says that a sense of competition can be healthy in art. And they are ambitious: the band can already claim slots at Reading and Glastonbury but still feel as though theyre only just getting started.

The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Show all 20 1 /20 The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Beyonce The Demands: 1 Large table for catering dressed with white tablecloths. Dressing room should be 78 degrees 4 Brand New White Towels in bathroom (2 face & 2 body) Hot Food: Juicy Baked Chicken: Legs, Wings & Breast only (Please season with fresh garlic, season salt, black pepper, and Cayenne pepper HEAVILY SEASONED!!) Steamed Garlic Broccoli Lightly Seasoned Green Beans Lightly Seasoned Steamed Spinach Beyonce can only have Pepsi products. 1 Case of Aquafina water (half cold, half room temperature) 1 Hot Tea Set up (Please have NEW Coffee Pot) Sliced Lemons Wedges Rose scented candles Lighter for candles CD player Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Adele The Demands: 12 Small bottles still (non-carbonated) spring water (at room temperature) 1 Electric kettle for BOILING water 6 Large mugs for tea. All mugs should be new, washed and dried. 6 metal teaspoons 2 Squeezy bottles clear honey (not organic) 1 Bottle very best quality red wine (Italian, French or Spanish) 1 Assortment of chewing gum 1 Pack Marlboro Light plus 1 disposable cigarette lighter 1 Small selection fresh fruit, to include bananas, apples, grapes, fresh berries NO CITRUS FRUIT! 1 Small plate of assorted freshly made, individually wrapped sandwiches, to include chicken salad. Sandwiches must NOT contain tomatoes, vinegar, chili or citrus fruit PA The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Kanye West The Demands: 1 Tub Plain Yogurt for dipping 4 small Yoplait Yogurt 1 Bowl of assorted nuts 1 Bowl of Sunkist Salted Pistachio Nuts (No Red Coloring) 2 Packs of Extra Chewing Gum 1 Bottle of Hot Sauce (Tabasco, Caribbean Type) 1 Box of Toothpicks 1 750 ml bottle of Hennessey Liquor 1 750 ml bottle of SKY or Absolut Vodka 1 Bottle of Patron Silver Tequila 4 Six Packs of Heineken Beer Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty, David Parsons/iStock The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Rihanna The Demands: 5 AC power outlets Adequate lighting for a relaxed atmosphere White drapes to cover lockers and/or brick 1 Humidifier 1 Large throw rug  plush and animal print (Cheetah, Leopard)  must be CLEAN, as she will walk on it barefoot. Pipe and Drape the room in Dark Blue or Black drapes with Icy Blue Chiffon draped nicely on top 6 Candles  Archipelago Black Forest (if you can't get these, please let me know ASAP as we have a 2nd choice of candle for Ri). 4 Small, clear, square vases with White Tulips, no foliage (2nd choice: White Casablanca Lilies no foliage, 3rd choice: White Freesia, no foliage) The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Katy Perry The Demands: Arrangement of pink fresh flowers. White and purple hydrangeas, pink & white roses and peonies. If not available, seasonal white flowers to include white orchidsABSOLUTELY NO CARNATIONS. A box of Huggies baby nature care wipes 6 Vitamin waters zero, assorted flavors Bowl of whole fresh organic grown fruit (apples, bananas, oranges and grapes) Plate of fresh-cut Crudites (to include cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, snap peas, celery) w/ ranch dip Snyder's of Hanover Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Jar of Salsa Baked (blue corn if possible) Tortilla Chips Freeze dried strawberries 2 bottles of Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio Throat coat, Twinnings Chamomile PG tips and Mint medley tea. Fuze slenderize assorted flavors A jar of quality honey Plastic drinking straws AFP/Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Paul McCartney The Demands: All lamps must be halogen floor lamps with dimmer switch. Only animal free materials (cottons, denims, velour, etc.) Do not provide furniture made of any animal skin or print. Do not provide artificial versions of animal skin or print either. No leather seating is allowed in the black stretch limousine either. Arrange for a dry cleaner before arrival. 6 Full and leafy floor plants, but no trees. We want plants that are just as full on the bottom as the top such as palm, bamboo, peace lilies, etc. No tree trunks! $50.00 - One large arrangement of white Casablanca lilies with lots of foliage. $40.00 - One long stemmed arrangement of pale pink and white roses with lots of foliage. $35 One arrangement of freesia. It comes in various colors so please mix them up. Freesia is a favorite. 20 dozen clean towels outside of the production office AP The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Mariah Carey The Demands: Each room must be draped. Black drapes are fine. The entry door should open into the living room space, not the dressing room. Temperature should be about 75 degrees. 1 Three Seat Couch  Plain Color, no busy patterns; black, dark grey, cream, dark pink are fine 12 1 Liters of Fiji Water 3 Bottles Chardonnay  Chilled 12 Coke 12 Diet Coke 12 Vanilla Protein Drinks 6 Sparkling Water (Pellegrino) 12 Melon Flavor Gatorade 6 Red Wine Glasses 6 White Wine Glasses 4 Joe Malone Vanilla Candles 2 Vases White Roses Fried Chicken (warm) 12 Small Bottles water (room temperature) 3 Whole lemons and honey Sugarless gum Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Eminem The Demands: 25 pound dumbbells 24-Diet Coke 16oz plastic bottles 12 Diet Coke 12oz cans 6 Verner ginger ale soda (or Schweppes) 48 Daisani, Poland Spring 12oz bottles NO Evian 1 Loaf white bread 1 Loaf wheat bread 6 Lunchables snacks (3 turkeys & 3 ham with cheese) 6 Cans Red Bull 16 Cans Sugar-Free Red Bull Large fresh jumbo shrimps with cocktail sauce and plenty of lemons 1 Jar of banana pepper rings Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Grace Jones The Demands: 6 Bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne 3 Bottles of French Vintage red wine (e.g. St Emilion, Medoc, Bordeaux) 3 Bottles of French Vintage white wine (e.g. Sancerre, Pouilly Fuisse) 2 Dozen Findeclare or Colchester Oysters on ice (unopened)(Grace does her own shucking.) 2 Sashimi and Sushi platters for 8 people 6 Fresh lemons 1 Bottle of Tabasco sauce 1 Fresh fruit platter for 8 people 6 Bottles of Coca Cola 12 Bottles of still and sparkling water 12 Bottles of fresh fruit juices Wine glasses, champagne flutes, tumblers (all glass, no plastic) Cutlery and sharp knife 1 Oyster knife 1 Make up mirror (no neon strip lighting, only opaque white bulbs) Fresh towels, clothes hangers, clothes rail 3-4 Bunches of flowersprefer lilys and orchids Sofa and arm chairs Andy Sturmey The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Drake The Demands: Four dozen natural-scented incense sticks Dr. Bronners peppermint soap Pork-free food E-Z Wider rolling papers and a pack of Dutch Master President cigars Pinot Grigio Heineken Bottles of Jack Daniels Patron Silver tequila Nivea chapstick A bottle of Hennesey or Courvoisier Grey Goose Andis T-Outliner trimmers Extra sets of speakers champagnepapi/Instagram The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Jack White The Demands: 1 dozen chicken wings (buffalo, teryaki, suprise us) 1 bowl of FRESH HOME-MADE GUACAMOLE 8 champagne flutes (real glass) 8 wine glasses (real glass) 8 highball glasses (real glass) 1 hummus & pita chips iPod player with sufficient volume control NO fluorescent lighting PLEASE NOTE: This is a NO BANANA TOUR. (Seriously) Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Madonna The Demands: 200-person entourage 2o international phone lines Her backstage room must look exactly like her own home (that means she ships around her furniture) Special flower-scented fabric Actual flowers Personal chef who prepares only vegan foods Her own dry-cleaning service AP The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Alicia Keys Alicia Keys performs at the UEFA Champions League Final Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Jay Z The Demands: 7 sets of metal silverware 1 Lighter 3 Glade Candles (French Vanilla, Rain shower, Wild Berry, Tangerine Ginger) 3 Cans of Chunk White Tuna 10 Nutri-Grain Bars (Blueberry, Cherry, Apple, Strawberry) 6 Individual Packets of Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal (Brown Sugar and Apple Cinnamon) 1 Assorted Fruit Platter with strawberries, seedless red grapes, bananas, mango, blueberries, cantaloupe and raspberries 2 Cases of beer (one imported and one domestic; brands preferred: Amstel Light, Corona, Bud, Bud Light or local beer) 3 menus for local seafood and Italian restaurants to order meals for Alicia Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Mary J. Blige The Demands: 2 Humidifiers 10 medium prewashed bath sized towels NO DAIRY OR PORK OF ANY KIND!! 10 1.5 liter bottles of FIJI water (absolutely, positively must be FIJI) 6 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper 6 cans of Schweeps Ginger Ale 2 packs of Mentos  cinnamon fresh only 6 cans of Red Bull energy drink 6 bottles of Black Cherry Propells in sports bottle 8 sets of silverware 24 napkins 1 tub of clean ice Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Lady Gaga The Demands: 2 Bottles of white wine with wine opener  Kendall Jackson or Robert Mondavi preferred 1 Pack of Straws 1 Cushioned office style chair TV with cable and a DVD player 1 Rolling clothing rack 4 Unscented candles Cool-mist humidifier 3 fans Tea kettle, organic ginger and lemongrass tea and honey are very important. 1 4 pack of Red Bull Light (on ice) 2 Bottles of Green Tea 1 Container of Guacamole Hot dogs (Yves veggie dogs eaten with toothpicks) A smoothie station (with frozen berries, fuze and whey protein or non-fat Greek yogurt) Blender needed 1 Plate of cheese (non-smelly, non-sweaty on ice) with whole wheat/healthy crackers A mix of assorted fresh fruit (cut and must have edible skin OR edible seeds OR citrus) Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Cher The Demands: 1 Wig Room 1 Room for Dr. Stacey 1 bottle of fine red wine (No Kendall Jackson) 1 bottle of fine white wine (No Kendall Jackson) 4 Cokes 4 Diet Cokes 1 coffee table 1 end table for the phone to be placed on TV with VCR with a cable Hook up. Please make sure we can get the following channels: Turner Classic Movies or AMC The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Taylor Swift The Demands: If arriving before 11 a.m., the following from Starbucks: 1 Grande ICED Caramel Latte w/ 2 sweet-n-lows 1 Grande ICED Americano w/ 2 sweet-n-lows with soy milk 1 slice pumpkin loaf 1 Stick Butter 3 Boxes Kraft Macaroni/Cheese 2 Four Packs of Red Bull 1 12 Pack Corona Beer 1 12 Pack New Castle Beer 1 Bottle Welch's Grape Juice 1 Avocado 1 Bag of Twizzlers red licorice 1 Case of Smart Water 1 Pint Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream 1 Pint Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Brownie Frozen Yogurt The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Iggy Pop The Demands: A copy of USA Today that's got a story about morbidly obese people in it 6 bottles of Grolsch or decent local beer F loads of good red wines 6 large bottles of good quality sparkling water 3 cases x 12 oz bottles of still mineral water 6 bottles of alcohol free beer 1 case of big bottles of good, premium beer A bottle of vodka Cauliflower/broccoli, cut into individual florets and thrown immediately into the garbage. I f hate that Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Van Halen The Demands: Nuts Pretzels M&MS (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES) 1 large tube of KY jelly 3 packs of Marlboro cigarettes (box) Herring in sour cream 2 gallons non-carbonated, bottled spring water 3 fifths Jack Daniels Black Label bourbon 2 fifths Stolichnaya vodka 1 pint Southern Comfort 2 bottles Blue Nun white wine Getty Images

Even though weve done it, it doesnt feel like weve done it properly. Touring in America properly would be good, doing it in a nice f***-off tour bus... so there are still goals to be reached. Im writing songs for a second record already.

Currently the band is still based in Reading but Pollock says they would move to London if it miraculously became affordable but like with anything where youre working with art  you have to have a day job as well.

He and the other band members are interested in the idea of guardian properties, where buildings that would otherwise be vacant are offered at a low cost to young professionals, key workers and artists trying to move to bigger cities.

Single She Said was the breakthrough moment for the band  probably one of the poppiest tracks on the record and certainly the catchiest  picking up that all-important support from the likes of Radio 1.

Radio can be vital to a bands success, Pollock says, but then others can do just as well without any sort of mainstream support.

Just look at Fat White Family, he suggests. Theyre doing well without any kind of mainstream radio support. For us radios important though, and Radio 1 have been very supportive of us  they make a difference. But I dont think I want us to be a band that blows up and I dont think we will be.

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Being signed to a bigger label means you begin to see through the cracks, he says, pressured by the support, particularly the money, they pump in. They want to see a return, he says, so theres a balance that has to be made.

While Sundara Karma have been lumped into the same category as Catfish and the Bottlemen, Pollock is a far cry from the posturing, wannabe, Liam Gallagher attitude that the latters frontman seems so desperate to convey.

And with the deaths in 2016 of Prince, David Bowie and George Michael, the music industry could surely do with a few more frontmen who dont aspire to a hyper-masculine interpretation of what it means to be a frontman.

Performing live gives Pollock the opportunity to be more myself  he favours shirts with bright patterns, skinny jeans and his shock of bleach-blond hair but offstage the band are still confronted with ignorance  in Birmingham they were hauled into a mild altercation after a member of the public took an unnecessary interest in a band member [Dom Cordell]s pink shoes.

We get that a lot on nights out  are you a f***ing boy or a girl, mate  but you just have to carry on living your life, says Pollock.

But really its no longer a shocking thing to see a boy wearing nail varnish, or to see a man getting up on stage wearing a dress, or a girl with a shaved head, Pollock says. I think the threshold of acceptance has risen so high since the seventies, and thats some sort of progress.

Ive never really been masculine so for me to behave like that would be inauthentic. And performing onstage is quite inauthentic in itself  getting up onstage in front of loads of people... and the whole set-up making it seem like youre more important than the audience. So the more aware you can be of the fraudulence of it, the more fun you can have.

Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect, the debut album by Sundara Karma, is out now via Sony Music
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Wind farms across the UK generated more power than coal stations for the first time in 2016, according to climate analysts.

Coal electricity generation has declined to just 9.2 per cent of total power generation, a dramatic fall from 22.6 per cent in 2015.

Meanwhile, wind power provided 11.5 per cent of all energy over the course of 2016  down slightly from 12 per cent in 2015.

Climate analysts Carbon Brief, which conducted the research, have hailed the news a milestone and said coal production had fallen to its lowest level since 1935.

Carbon Briefs policy editor, Simon Evans, said this means CO2 emissions from UK energy would have fallen by around 20 per cent of the course of last year as coal was replaced by natural gas production which is much cleaner.

He said this would be enough to cut the UKs overall CO2 emissions by six per cent for the year if other sectors emissions remained the same.

He explained: The past 12 months have seen a year of firsts for the UKs electricity system. At the broadest level, the UK grid is changing as centralised power stations are joined by thousands of smaller sites, particularly renewables, as part of efforts to decarbonise electricity supplies.

Other important factors include falling electricity demand, rising imports from continental Europe and changes in the relative price of coal and gas on wholesale energy markets. The UKs top-up carbon tax, the carbon price floor, also doubled in April 2015.

Energy saving options in pictures Show all 4 1 /4 Energy saving options in pictures Energy saving options in pictures Nest Thermostat merges cool tech with neat design Energy saving options in pictures Swan has launched a halogen oven which promises faster cooking as well as energy saving and health benefits Energy saving options in pictures Duette blinds have a climate control insulating action so rooms stay cool in the summer months and warm in the winter Energy saving options in pictures Rainshower has a button on the handle that can be pressed to reduce the water used by 40%

It comes after the Government pledged to phase out coal power completely by 2025 in an effort to meet carbon reduction targets.

Three major coal power stations closed last year and there were days when the country was able to fill its energy needs without burning coal at all.

In a consultation published in November, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy suggested that all remaining coal powered stations in the UK would shut down within five years as it became increasingly uneconomical.
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A well chosen rug has the ability to bring a room together, anchoring our furniture choices while adding colour and character. Whether youre looking to layer up a bedroom or living space thats already carpeted or bring warmth to your stark stone floor, a statement carpet is the way to go.

Unlike its synthetic counterparts, natural wool offers cosy in the colder months but never feels stuffy once the weather improves, making it the ideal choice of material for year-round comfort and style. For areas with a heavy footfall such as the hallway, look for durable flat-weave designs that will withstand a lot of wear.

Tufted rugs with a deeper pile require more maintenance, so follow the care instructions to the letter to make sure yours is kept in tip-top condition  and bear in mind that some of the higher-end designs require a professional clean only.

Read more: 9 best wardrobes for getting organised in the bedroom

Wool rugs can be expensive with certain styles reaching well into four figures once you decide on an extra large carpet to fill your open-plan living space. But where some are veritable artworks in their own right, others are purse-friendly, design-led pieces that pack a punch in the style stakes.

We put our top ten wool rugs to the test, looking for great design and durability, softness and sustainability, and that all-important affordability underfoot.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

Dunelm pebble wool rug Named after its pebbly texture, this homely/hygge rug is a joy to run your bare feet over. Its woven from 100 per cent wool and boasts a thick and heavy makeup, which ensures it stays firmly flat on the floor without those tell-tale curly edges sometimes seen in cheaper carpets. Available in eight different sizes, we were impressed with amount of choice, meaning we could find the perfect spot for it  but do bear in mind that its price goes up steeply along with its dimensions. With deeply textured wool rugs like this, its best to use the rotating brush extension on your vacuum cleaner. Buy now 49 Dunelm.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Housecosy Ziggy wool rug, multi Made from 100 per cent hand-tufted wool, the Ziggy is a contemporary statement piece with its sharp geometric patterning. But thats where the Bowie reference ends  theres nothing Stardust about this calming, earthy colourway of mellow yellows and dusty blues. With its supple 8mm pile, it feels luxuriously soft underfoot. And its finished to a high standard too with its hard wearing binding underneath. Available in medium, large and extra-large, this one offers a big impact in any size. Buy now 149 Housecosy.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Villa Nova dotty sorbet rug This playful, spotty rug is made from 100 per cent hand-tufted wool with a durable, 100 per cent cotton canvas backing, making it pretty and practical in equal measure. Its gentle colourway of sorbet shades on a warm cream background awards it a wonderfully homely feel, while its soft, short pile is a delight to sink your toes into. This one comes in just two sizes, small and medium, and we found, makes an ideal rug for a cosy bedroom. Buy now 280 Sweetpeaandwillow.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

The Rug Seller Moderno Gigi geometric woven rug A modern rug for design lovers, this statement carpet, in 100 per cent woollen pile, features a series of interlocking circles and semi-circles with cleverly contrasting weaves to accentuate the arresting geometric pattern. This gives the rug a wonderful depth as well as visual interest, and in natural beige, the plain colour lets the pattern do all the talking. As with all of The Rug Sellers products, this is a top quality carpet. Team it with an angular mid-century coffee table in warming walnut for the full effect. Buy now 98 The Rug Seller {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Think Rugs 100% wool rug with subtle geo design Our pick from Think Rugs via La Redoute similarly allows its sharp geometric patterning to shine in simple monochrome. The carpet is available in a choice of seven shades  go bold with bright ochre, teal, green or terracotta, or choose a calming colour to complement your cosy living space: beige, grey or pink. Hand-tufted using the finest wool, this one proved tangibly high quality with its supple, short thick pile and its exacting finish. Striking geometry with the softest touch. Buy now 279 Laredoute.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Made Isola hand tufted wool rug, large We loved Mades Isola rug for its arresting design with its Matisse-like cuts outs and its warm and earthy colourway. Designer Kit Agar has mixed salmon pink with sage green and deep mustard with smoky grey  and the result is truly striking. The rectangular rug is made from 100 per cent hand-tufted wool with a 100 per cent cotton backing and has a soft, short pile that feels lovely and dense underfoot. Buy now 349 Made.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Ligne Pure Rise blue rug This Belgian brand is known for its exquisitely crafted carpets and so it was no surprise that the Rise rug in blue proved a hit in our house. Hand-woven from 100 per cent wool, this is a beautifully crafted flat-weave carpet that promises durability in areas of the home with a high footfall. We loved its subtle graduation in shade from light to dark, not unlike a watercolour canvas, and within that, its mottled variation in tone  the devils in the detail here. The rectangular rug comes in two sizes and two further colourways, brown and pink. Buy now 599 Woven.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Rigg & Furrow 03 lavender rug This is another beautifully crafted contemporary flat-weave rug in 100 per cent wool. Designer Gill Thorp incorporates graphic shapes with vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, offering eye-popping interest and a rich visual depth. We loved the daring mix of colours, from zesty tangerine on a soft lavender background, to vibrant blue on blush pink. As with many of Floor Storys carpets, this one offers a good amount of choice at checkout: pick from two sizes or go bespoke in increments per metre. The design is also available as a tufted carpet if youre after a softer feel underfoot. Buy now 650 Floor Story {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

Loaf Casbah rug in ash grey Loafs offering is a plush Berber-style rug crafted from 100 per cent New Zealand wool with a strong cotton backing. Its longer pile awards it a shaggy look and feel, while its minimal interlocking diamond design keeps it pleasingly fuss-free and contemporary. Available in sizes small, medium and large, this is a wonderfully homely rug that suits bedrooms and living rooms alike. Its neutral colourway of ash grey and warm cream awards it versatility  this one will blend beautifully in any scheme. Buy now 435 Loaf.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}

My Furniture Verdell rug Bringing a vibrant splash of biophilic design to our living space is this arresting statement rug from My Furniture. Featuring a pattern of overlapping tropical leaves on a warm, cream background, it brings colour, depth and an unapologetic touch of opulence to the floor. The hand-tufted round rug is made from 100 per cent wool and has a dense, short, soft and thick pile. If youre a sucker for symmetry, this circular carpet looks great under a perfectly centred round coffee table. Buy now 269.99 Myfurniture.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}}
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Weve all occasionally felt ill after one drink too many, but for Angie Mendez, just one sip of a particular cocktail proved nearly lethal.

She was on her way home from an office party in Oklahoma when she suddenly started feeling sick - severely sick. Completely out of the blue, she was hit with stomach cramps, felt nauseous and got the chills.

Mendez just made it home before the violent vomiting and diarrhoea began, and her temperature soared.

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The next morning, Mendez still felt ill, and as a healthy 35-year-old, decided to go to the hospital.

Doctors confirmed that something wasnt right: she couldnt produce a urine sample and her blood counts were abnormal, but her symptoms suggested nothing more than a common stomach bug, so Mendez was sent home.

Two days later, however, Mendez symptoms had worsened and she was back in the emergency room - she hadnt been able to urinate since she started feeling ill, her blood pressure was high, her back ached, her red blood cells were damaged and she couldnt eat or drink.

Mendez kidneys had stopped working.

Hurriedly moved to a larger hospital and put on dialysis, Mendez thought she was going to die: I was on my deathbed, she told The New York Times.

Mendez was seen by various experts who tried different treatments, but no one was sure what the problem was.

Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Show all 7 1 /7 Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Ruby Rose Rose explained her decisions for quitting booze in an column for News.Com.Au, which ranged from cost to health, after deciding sobriety was the path forward following a heavy night with the singer. Remember when Katy Perry and I crashed the year 12 formal? I don't. I had been off the grog for 30 days - my first attempt at sobriety - and I was out partying with Katy. What I do remember thinking was: "I'll have a drink tonight, I deserve one. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?" Well, not stopping at one drink, or ten, and then vomitting on Katy's foot was the answer. What was worse was I don't normally spew (I don't know why, I just don't), so clearly the universe wanted to punish me. I can't say for certain how much money I've wasted on getting wasted but I'm sure the figure would hit me harder than any hangover. REX Features Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Blake Lively In 2012, the Cafe Society actress told Allure magazine drinking is never something she has enjoyed. "I don't drink. I've never tried a drug. ... It's just something that I genuinely don't have a desire for." Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Daniel Radcliffe The Harry Potter actor told GQ quitting alcohol came as he became increasingly dependent on it to feel confident in social situations. I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff. As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesnt work for me. I do that very unsuccessfully. AFP/Getty Images Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Jennifer Lopez Lopez is careful about her health and diet. I don't drink or smoke or have caffeine, she told US Weekly in January. Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Kate Beckinsale The actress told Parade her decision not to drink was her true beauty secret. I dont really drink alcohol and I always take my makeup off at night! Getty Images Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Kim Kardashian Kimberly does not drink alcohol whatsoever," her sister Khloe has said. Pregnant or not, she's just never been into it." Kardashian herself has said she has never liked the taste of alcohol. Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Jim Carry "I rarely drink coffee. I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful." - In an interview with CBS in 2004 Getty images

Dr. James N. George, a haematologist and professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, however, was convinced Mendez had had a severe allergic reaction.

After asking about the foods and medicines Mendez consumes, nothing stood out. Dr George had one final thought before leaving to write up his notes: Do you ever drink gin and tonic? he asked.

But Mendez didnt.

Her boyfriend pointed out that she had drunk a cocktail called a smoothie - made from vodka and tonic - at the office party, only Mendez hadnt known the ingredients.

I literally had just one sip, Ms. Mendez said. It tasted odd. My body just sort of reacted funny. I didnt want any more. I threw it away.

Dr George asked if shed ever had the drink before, and that was when it clicked.

16 months previously, Mendez had tried the cocktail at a wedding and become violently ill afterwards - shed ended up in hospital that time too, but no one had made the connection.

As it turns out, Mendez is allergic to quinine, the ingredient in tonic water that makes it taste bitter.

This was back in 2009, but Mendez is the subject of a new report in The New England Journal of Medicine, led by Dr George.

She was in hospital for two weeks after her diagnosis and was then on dialysis for several months - her body retained so much water that her weight soared to 170 from her usual 125, all because she had a sip of one drink.

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Gradually, her kidneys started working again, although they never returned to their previous level.

Mendez was off work for months, now has trouble thinking of words in conversations and gets migraines, which she never used to do.

She can even smell tonic from the other side of the room.

Unfortunately, theres no cure for quinine allergies but its extremely rare - Dr George and his colleagues recently trawled through medical records and found 112 definite cases, three of which were fatal.

But as the allergy affects so few people, theres no need for G&T fans to give up their tipple of choice.
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Dating nowadays is hard. There are endless underhand tactics, unspoken rules and too many options.

From the outside it seems like todays commitment-phobic millennials have no interest in settling down, but theres one sub-group of young people who are tying the knot younger than most: Christians.

Although the average marriage age is increasing, a 2013 study found that religious communities are continuing to marry at a traditional, young age.

But despite the apparent prevalence of millennial Christian couples saying their vows, the dating scene is a minefield for some young Christians - global Christian dating website Christian Connection told The Independent that around 20% of its users are aged 18-30.

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Its hard enough for most people to meet someone they properly click with, and when finding a partner who shares your faith is thrown into the mix, the challenge increases significantly.

Being a Christian definitely makes it more difficult because you have more specifications before you start, explained 25-year-old Christian Laura*. You often want different things from a relationship than most people around you so it can be hard to find like-minded people.

For Laura, its comparable to the dilemma lots of people face if they know they dont want children: It might not matter so much when you're just dating and having fun but you can so easily get attached and find yourself months or years down the line unable to make it work, she told The Independent.

Of course, the importance of religion varies for everyone. For 23-year-old Jess*, its her most important criterion when considering a romantic partner: The most important person in my life is Jesus and if theirs isn't too then we're always going to have different priorities and different beliefs about how we should live our lives, she explains.

Jess is currently single, and unlike many non-religious people of her age, isnt interested in dating someone she doesnt think she could eventually marry: As I could never see myself marrying someone who wasn't a Christian, why go through all the emotion and hurt of dating someone who I knew I'd break up with?

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But what do you do if you find yourself falling for a non-Christian?

Lauras current boyfriend is not a Christian, and she resisted starting a relationship with him for a long time.

Although theyve been together for months, she has some doubts about her decision: I am still concerned that there are fundamental differences in our long-term goals and priorities that we won't be able to get past, she admits.

Of course, one key difference for Christians when dating is the issue of sex before marriage.

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Weve been labelled the hook-up generation, where you can arrange casual sex by just swiping across your phone, and although that isnt the route taken by plenty of people, societys focus on sex makes things tricky for someone whos committed to waiting until marriage.

And even if you dont just want to hook-up, sex is an important part of a relationship for the majority of non-religious people.

22-year-old Jack* is not strictly religious but found himself in a tricky situation when the girl he was dating didnt reveal that she was Christian until theyd been seeing each other for a few weeks: Only when things started to get more heated in the bedroom did she decide to tell me her beliefs and why she wouldnt be going any further, he says.

For Jack, this was confusing. I really liked her and didnt understand why she was waiting until marriage, he explains. But building a relationship that didn't revolve around sex was more important to her.

Festivals of love around the world Show all 16 1 /16 Festivals of love around the world Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Brazil Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi

This wasnt the end of their relationship though - Jack actually found it endearing that she just wanted to spend time with him. After she moved several hours away to do a masters, however, the couple called it quits.

And as theyd never had sex, Jack thinks the break-up wasnt as hard as it might have been: Because there hadnt been many of those sexual ties, it didnt feel quite as connected to me, he explains.

A couple of weeks later, Jacks ex met a Christian guy at university and six months later they were engaged.

So whilst it can be harder to find someone who shares your worldview and priorities, in some ways Christians have it easier: Lots of Christians find love pretty quickly because there is almost a ready-made dating-pool at churches and Christian Unions, explains Laura.

A lot of Jesss young Christian friends are already married, but shes not concerned about being single: We're told in the Bible that there are many great things about being single and many great things about being married.

In both situations as Christians we believe our ultimate aim is to glorify God in everything we do and that's where we find our joy and satisfaction.

This is a view shared by 24-year-old Emma from London, who is currently dating a man who shares her religion and outlook: My faith means that I'm not looking for a partner to fulfil or complete me, like the rom-com image that is everywhere in our culture. My identity comes from how God made me, not from any self-worth I get from being wanted by another person.

It's hugely empowering and liberating and I think it's made me more relaxed about dating from the outset, she explains.

In a society that still tells us we need a boyfriend or girlfriend and regular sex to be happy and successful, its a refreshing point of view.

*Names have been changed
Pia Wurtzbach's boyfriend Marlon Stockinger is a racing driver, who raced for Status Grand Prix in the 2012 GP3 Series and Lotus F1 Team Juniors in the 2013 World Series by Renault. (Photo : YouTube/Daily Showbiz)

Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach clarified the spreading unfounded rumors that she will get married and start a family after she passed the crown to the next Miss Universe.



In a Twitter post, Wurtzbach made a statement that she intends to get married or have a baby after passing on her Miss Universe crown. "Just to be clear, wala po akong balak magkaanak o mag-asawa after Miss Universe. Kalma lang po (I do not have plans to get married or have a baby after the Miss Universe. Please calm down)," she said.



Advertisement

Wurtzbach has been dating Filipino-Swiss race car driver Marlon Stockinger. She spent the New Year's with her boyfriend Marlon Stockinger. Marlon is a race car driver and is the first Filipino to win a formula race in Europe. He rose to celebrity status and became well-known nationwide when he started dating Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach.



The couple spent the New Year's holiday in Hawaii and the two showed that they are very comfortable and in love with each other. Their photos are proof.



Most of the photos showed the beauty queen in the arms of her lover. This immediately sparked speculations that the two have plans to settle down after Wurtzbach finished her term down as Miss Universe and will crown her successor this month. Pia flew back in New York to wrap up her last work as the reigning beauty queen.



The Philippines' pride will fly back to Manila for the Miss Universe 2016. The 65th Miss Universe pageant will be held at MOA Arena on January 30.


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While most of us are getting ready to return to work after the festive period, celebrations are just beginning in others.

Orthodox Christian communities around the globe are preparing for their own Christmas, which they celebrate on January 7.

But why chose this day to celebrate? Who celebrates it and how is the occasion marked?

Why the Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7?

This is simply due to a difference in calendars.

The majority of the Orthodox churches worldwide use the Julian calendar, created under the reign of Julius Caesar in 45 BC, and have not adopted the Gregorian calendar, proposed by Latin Pope Gregory of Rome in 1582.

In 1923 a revised version of the Julian calendar was introduced bringing Christmas Day in line with the Gregorian calendar, but it was only adopted by some of the Orthodox Christian countries including Greece, Cyprus and Romania.

There are 13 days in difference between the two calendars, the Gregorian calendar being the one long adopted by Western nations.

The Epiphany, for instance, is celebrated on January 19, rather than January 6.

How do Russians celebrate Christmas?

Russian believer lights a candle during the Christmas Eve religious service in a church in Kolomenskoye (Getty Images)

In Russia, home to 39 per cent of the worlds Orthodox Christians, people enjoy more days off over Christmas than any other country in Europe, starting on New Years Day and carrying through to Orthodox Christmas day.

During the Soviet era, the celebration of Christmas was banned (along with the celebration of other religious holidays).

Instead Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his granddaughter Snegurochka are attached to New Years Eve, which in Russia represents the New Year and other traditions linked with Christmas, such as trees and presents, all rolled into one.

Russians were allowed to celebrate Christmas once again after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but old habits die hard and the Christmas festivities are still overshadowed by big New Year celebrations, which are more like the Western Christmas.

Orthodox church leaders meet after more than 1,000 years

Traditions that remains include a big family meal on Christmas Eve which often features12 courses to represent the 12 apostles.

The meal varies from region to region but the most traditional ones include:

- Kutia: a pudding traditionally made of wheat and fruit, with the addition of poppy seeds and honey.

- Vzvar : a traditional Russian drink, erved at the beginning of the Russian Christmas dinner. The Russian Vzvar consists of the following ingredients: Dried prunes, dried apples, sugar and water

- Roast cod or fish

- Borscht or beetroot soup

- Vegetable Pie

- Salads such as the salad Olivier also called the Russian salad usually made with diced boiled potatoes, carrots, brined dill pickles, green peas, eggs, celeriac, onions,

On January 7, families attend Church and settle down for a Christmas dinner similar to that in the West.

Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures Show all 14 1 /14 Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A member of the Iraqi security forces holds a lit candle at Christmas Mass in a church won back from Isis on the outskirts of Mosul REUTERS/Ammar Awad Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures German tourists Mimi Wiebeling (L) and Pauline Lapetite carry surfboards as they walk into the surf wearing Christmas hats at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Christmas Day in Australia, December 25, 2016. David Gray Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A soldier dressed as Santa Claus waves from a military helicopter during a football match to commemorate the Christmas Truce of 1914 at the ISAF Headquarters, in Kabul, Afghanistan Omar Sobhani Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A crane of the Hanjin Scarlet container ship pulls up donated food, supplies and gifts as volunteers deliver them to the stranded crew aboard the ship. Several maritime groups and members of Victoria's Filipino community gathered up more than a ton of Christmas provisions for the 16-member crew of the container ship Darryl Dyck Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures Chimpanzees examine their gifts at the Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, USA Allen Eyestone/Palm Beach Post via AP Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A Palestinian protester dressed as Santa Claus runs to avoid tear gas during clashes with Israeli border police officers, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem Nasser Nasser Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A Christian gives final touches to a mural of Santa Claus in preparation for Christmas celebrations in Karachi, Pakistan Shakil Adil Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures People gather by a Christmas tree near damaged buildings during Christmas eve in al-Hamidiyah neighbourhood in the old city of Homs, Syria December 24, 2016 Omar Sanadiki Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures Divers dressed as Santa's Elves swim with a Manta Ray in an aquarium on Friday, Dec. 23, 2016, at the South East Asia Aquarium of Resorts World Sentosa, a popular tourist attraction in Singapore Wong Maye-E Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures An Indian street vendor sells Santa hats and masks ahead of Christmas in Ahmadabad, India Ajit Solanki Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A boy skis along a street near Montreal, Canda Graham Hughes Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures A girl holds a costume received during a toy distribution program with Miguel Pizarro, deputy of the Venezuelan coalition of opposition parties (MUD), at the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela December 20, 2016 A girl holds a costume received during a toy distribution program with Miguel Pizarro, deputy of the Venezuelan coalition of opposition parties (MUD), at the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela December 20, 2016 Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures Sri Lanka has unveiled a towering Christmas tree, claiming to have surpassed the world record for the tallest artificial Christmas tree AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena Christmas 2016 around the world: in pictures The sunrise over Bingham, Nottinghamshire, as severe weather warnings remain in place for Christmas Neil Squires

Which other countries celebrate Christmas in January?

Christmas is observed on January 7 by different Eastern Orthodox churches.

Nearly 39 per cent of the total number of Orthodox Christians in the world live in Russia and around 85 per cent of them choose to celebrate Christmas in January.

The other countries that will be celebrating Christmas in January include Belarus, Montenegro, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia,Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, Israel, Georgia, Moldova, Bulgaria.
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A former South Korean executive of UK-based Reckitt Benckiser has been jailed for seven years over the sale of a humidifier disinfectant that killed about 100 people and left hundreds with permanent lung damage.

Shin Hyun-woo, head of Reckitt Benkisers Oxy subsidiary from 1991 to 2005, was found guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising the deadly product as being safe even for children.

The seven years were the maximum prison sentence the court could give.

The consumer product disaster affected many families in South Korea, where children and pregnant women often battle dry winter seasons with humidifiers.

The ruling could set a precedent for punishing businesses that put profit ahead of safety.

Reckitt Benckiser is one of several companies linked to the deaths.

Other retailers such as Lotte Mart and Homeplus were also found guilty of selling the deadly product.

Choi Chang-young, chief judge of the case, said the disaster could have been prevented if Mr Shin and the company, had gone through product safety checks prior to sales.

The company withdrew its product from the market after South Korean authorities suggested a link between chemicals to sterilise humidifiers and lung conditions in 2011.

Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty

After prosecutors launched investigations, Reckitt Benckiser, whose products caused the most injuries and deaths, apologised last year and promised to compensate them.

More than 5,000 cases believed to be related to the disinfectant products had been reported to the government as of December, including about a thousand deaths.

The government is still reviewing cases.

Additional reporting by agencies
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A group of arms control experts has urged President Barack Obama to take Americas nuclear weapons off a state of high alert before Donald Trump takes office to stop him impulsively blowing up the planet.

The Ploughshares Fund, which was established at the height of the Cold War, has started a petition asking Mr Obama to move the weapons from their hair-trigger status. It said the ever-present risk of a nuclear exchange being triggered erroneously, combined with Mr Trumps incendiary comments and temperament, could risk the worst disaster imaginable.

The demand has received the support of politicians, retired military officers and government officials. Former US Defence Secretary William Perry told The Independent he was worried about both Mr Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The petition, which has more than 60,000 signatures, says: President Trump could launch 140 warheads in the time it takes to write 140 characters. The grave difference is: a tweet can be deleted, but the devastation of a nuclear warhead can never be undone.

Tom Collina, the groups director of policy, said the petition had been started amid concerns about Mr Trumps temperament. The President-elect has startled policy observers by his calls to expand Americas nuclear arsenal, to encourage countries such as South Korea to develop its own weapons and even his apparent willingness to engage in an arms race.

Our proposals would build in some extra time, and to make take longer to launch, said Mr Collina. The concern is mainly about false alarms. That is when you need cool heads. If you have someone who is impulsive... 

The group, which is made up of scientists and policy experts, has for many years urged Mr Obama to take US weapons off high alert. They argue having almost 1,000 land-based missiles ready to launch in minutes is a dangerous holdover from the Cold War, when deterrent theory postulated that the US had to be able to respond to a Soviet launch within minutes, or else its own weapons could be destroyed.

But given that many nuclear weapons are now carried in submarines and bombers, not vulnerable to a Russian strike on the US mainland, the need for such rapid response is greatly reduced.

 Donald Trump says 'let it be an arms race' after nuclear expansion tweet

Indeed, keeping them in such a state increases the danger of a missile being launched by mistake. There have been numerous reported incidents over the past 30 years of the US believing it was under attack from the Russians, only to discover  with just minutes before a potential counter-strike  the Russian launch was was in truth a computer glitch or else a Scandinavian weather satellite.

On January 20, the military officer carrying the codes for Americas nuclear arsenal will follow President Barack Obama to the inaugural platform. When he leaves, the officer will follow President Donald Trump, says the petition.

We will then have a president who reportedly said, If we have nuclear weapons, why cant we use them. Will he really order a nuclear attack in the next four years? No one knows. But if he does, no one can stop him.

It adds: President Trump will be able to launch, within minutes, one or one thousand nuclear warheads without any vote, any check, or even any serious deliberation. Just one missile could kill millions. Once launched, the missiles could not be recalled.

Last summer, a group of ten Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Al Franken, wrote to Mr Obama, urging him to review spending on nuclear weapons. They also asked him to remove the weapons from high alert status by cancelling so-called launch-on-warning plans.

Since the election victory of Mr Trump, such concerns have grown.

The President-elect has raised the eyebrows of many nuclear experts with comments that broke with decades of US strategic policy. Last month, he sparked fears of a new global nuclear arms race with a tweet that reverberated around the world in which he called on the US to expand its nuclear arsenal until the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.

He also suggested that the better off other countries, including Japan and South Korea, should have nuclear capabilities. He subsequently said: Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.

Mr Perry, who served as Bill Clintons defence secretary between 1994 to 1997, has emerged as an expert on disarmament issues and long advocated a restructuring of Americas nuclear arsenal. He said this included greater reliance on missiles carried by submarines and planes.

Asked about the threat potentially posed by Mr Trump, he said: What is dangerous is the build up forces and then flaunting it. He talks about it, and that can start an arms race, and he has said he would be prepared to use nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis.

He said there were always concerns about the temperament of Russian and US leaders. I dont have any personal knowledge of Putin or Trump, but I worry about both of them.

Last month, Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, wrote an opinion article for the Huffington Post, in which he said: Its too late to stop Donald Trump from becoming president. But it is not too late to stop him from impulsively blowing up the planet.

With the stroke of a pen, President Barack Obama could take our nuclear missiles off high alert, making sure that President Trump could not launch them rashly. If he doesnt do this, we will all regret it.

James McKeon, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council for a Livable World, said the need to reduce such risks was pressing, regardless of who was commander-in-chief. We dont think such weapons should be on a high-trigger alert, he said.
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Michelle Obama will deliver her final words as First Lady at an event held in honour of the 2017 School Counsellor of the Year.

The First Lady founded the ceremony which will take place on Friday to raise awareness of the work school counsellors do with young people and the difference they can make.

Ms Obama, who has held consistently high approval ratings, has dedicated much of her tenure in the White House to campaigning for more school counsellors and encouraging post-secondary school education options as part of her Reach Higher initiative. The campaign has aimed to ensure America once again has the highest proportion of university graduates in the world by 2020.

According to a statement from the First Ladys office, her last public event is an annual ceremony started by the Chicago-born First Lady in 2015. Ms Obama previously joked that it might be one of the last White House events before they kick us out in January of 2017.

President Donald Trump life in pictures Show all 16 1 /16 President Donald Trump life in pictures President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump poses in a rocking chair once used by President John F. Kennedy at his New York City residence Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump with his new bride Marla Maples after their wedding at the Plaza hotel in New York Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Celina Midelfart watch the match between Conchita Martinez and Amanda Coetzer during U.S. Open. She was the date whom Donald Trump was with when he met his current wife Melania at a party in 1996 Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas serving as the grand marshal for the Daytona 500, speaks to Donald Trump and Melania Knauss on the starting grid at the Daytona International Speedwa Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump talks with his former wife Ivana Trump during the men's final at the U.S. Open Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and his friend Melania Knauss pose for photographers as they arrive at the New York premiere of Star Wars Episode : 'The Phantom Menace,' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump talks with host Larry King. Trump told King that he was moving toward a possible bid for the United States presidency with the formation of a presidential exploratory committee Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump answers questions as Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura looks on in Brooklyn Park. Trump said on Friday he 'very well might' make a run for president under the Reform Party banner but had not made a final decision Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump makes a face at a friend as he sits next to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso before the start of the 2003 Miss Universe pageant in Panama City Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Entrepreneur Donald Trump is greeted by a Marilyn Monroe character look-a-alike, as he arrives at Universal Studios Hollywood to attend the an open casting call for his NBC television network reality series 'The Apprentice.' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Simon Cowell present an Emmy during the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Megan Mullally perform at the 57th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump, poses with his children, son Donald Trump, Jr., and daughters Tiffany and Ivanka Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump told Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner on Tuesday she would be given a second chance after reported misbehavior Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump holds a replica of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as his wife Melania holds their son Barron in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. property mogul Donald Trump stands next to a bagpiper during a media event on the sand dunes of the Menie estate, the site for Trump's proposed golf resort, near Aberdeen, north east Scotland Reuters

Ms Obama based the ceremony on the annual Teacher of the Year event which has taken place at the White House for decades regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power. The First Ladys chief of staff, Tina Tchen, said she hoped the tradition would continue because school counsellors, who are responsible for more than 470 students on average, deserve the same accolades as teachers.

There is no direct equivalent for school counsellors in the UK. They are responsible for looking after students academic performance, mental health, career aspirations and teachers requirements for their students.

Recommended Michelle Obama announces she will not be running for President

Ms Obama was one of the most popular figures in the 2016 election, appearing alongside Hillary Clinton, who she referred to as my girl, on the campaign trail. The First Lady, who is very social media savvy and carved out a massive following on Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat, was applauded for her barnstorming speech against President-elect Donald Trump back in October.

While there have been calls for Ms Obama to run for president in 2020, Ms Obama has adamantly ruled out ever running for office.

In an extensive interview with Oprah Winfrey at the end of December, she said she would not put her family through more time in the spotlight.

Referring to the rumours, she said: I think some people think it's serious, but some people are just hopeful. I don't make stuff up, I'm not coy. I'm pretty direct. If I was interested in it, I would say. I don't believe in playing games.
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British taxpayers' money will no longer be used to fund the project behind an Ethiopian girl band, the Department for International Development (DfID) has said.

The five-piece pop group Yegna was formed as part of the Girl Effect programme and officials had previously praised the impact the project was having.

But International Development Secretary Priti Patel was challenged about a reported 5.2m grant to the scheme when she appeared before MPs in December and indicated that the programme was under review.

DfID has now confirmed that the partnership with Girl Effect had ended.

A DfID spokeswoman said: "We have taken the decision to end our partnership with Girl Effect following a review of the programme.

"Empowering women and girls around the world remains a priority, but we judge there are more effective ways to invest UK aid and to deliver even better results for the world's poorest and value for taxpayers' money."

DfID had previously said: UK aid in Ethiopia is combating forced child marriage, violence, teen pregnancy, migration and school drop-out, which are holding a generation of young Ethiopian women back.

In the Amhara region the UK's work on girls and women, including Girl Effect, has averted or delayed marriage for nearly 40,000 girls.

All programmes are kept under review to ensure they are helping the world's poorest and delivering value for UK taxpayers.

Yegna is billed as a multi-platform culture brand inspiring positive behaviour change for girls in Ethiopia.

Girl Effect said in 2015 that 3.3 million people in Ethiopia listened to or watched a Yegna drama, talk show or film and the project had involved huge concerts, film screenings, thousands of listening groups and resulted in number one hits.

A statement on the Girl Effect website said: As the UK's Department of International Development today advised us of the conclusion of its work with Girl Effect, we would like to highlight the impact of Yegna on millions of people in Ethiopia and the new knowledge we have gained through our work together.

It added: Yegna is only one example of Girl Effect's work, and the change we are unleashing across all corners of the globe. In four short years we have achieved irreversible momentum. Change that has begun in this generation will continue into the next, and all generations to come.

New ideas are often resisted and sometimes wilfully misrepresented. Our work continues with the confidence we gain from the feedback of girls and their communities on the ground.

Recommended Ethiopian opposition leader arrested for speaking to EU about freedoms

Farah Ramzan Golant, Girl Effect's chief executive, said: We and our supporters across media, technology and business believe in the power of innovative, unconventional and efficient solutions to combating poverty at scale.

Yegna is a pioneering example of this. Now more than ever we are committed to leveraging this expertise to grow the impact of Yegna and all our programmes around the world.

Yegna, which aims to enhance the role of women through music and performance, was reportedly using some of the 5.2m grant money to develop a radio drama.

The money was part of 16m awarded to the Girl Hub project, which was rebranded as Girl Effect, according to a Daily Mail investigation.

Ms Patel was challenged about the project when she appeared before the Commons International Development Select Committee in December.

She said the Yegna grant was simply one component in a wider programme promoting the rights and wellbeing of women and girls in the country.

UK aid in Ethiopia is combating forced child marriage, violence, teen pregnancies - all those really, really big, substantial issues, she said.

We are doing a range of work there. That is just one programme, one project. It is actually doing substantial work combating the issues that I've highlighted. But at the same time all programmes are under review.

Senior Tory Nigel Evans, who challenged Ms Patel about the project at the select committee hearing, welcomed the announcement as a "great victory for common sense".

He said: "Priti Patel said she would review all spending and clearly she has demonstrated that she is doing just that and has no fear about attacking what I would term vanity projects.

"She can now ensure that the money that people want to see spent on the very poorest and saving lives, producing medicine and drugs to the most vulnerable throughout the world - that money will now be spent far more effectively."
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A miniature brain, skull and hair have been found inside a tumour growing on the ovary of a 16-year-old girl.

The growth was discovered when the teenager, from Japan, had routine surgery to remove her appendix, reports the New Scientist.

When doctors cut the 10cm-wide tumour out, they found clumps of hair alongside the underdeveloped brain and a thin outer plate of bone.

A closer inspection revealed brain cells had organised themselves into a small version of a cerebellum , the part that sits under the brains two hemispheres.

It was developed enough that electric impulses could be sent between neurons, according to Masayuki Shintaku, the doctor who studied the tumour.

A structure had also formed that resembled a brain stem, the part of the organ that connects to the spinal cord.

Tumours found on ovaries are normally harmless, though the cause of them is still unknown. Brain cells are often found in these growths, but it is very unusual for them to arrange into brain-like structures.

 Robots help doctors with tumour operations

Angelique Riepsamen, a doctor at the University of New South Wales, told the New Scientist: Neural elements similar to that of the central nervous system are frequently reported in ovarian teratomas, but structures resembling the adult brain are rare.

The teenager did not experience any symptoms, despite previous reports of women with the same issue suffering from paranoid thoughts, agitation or memory loss.

These symptoms occur when immune cells begin to attack the foreign brain, but accidentally end up attacking the patients real brain too.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. 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Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. 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The tumour has been removed and the girl is recovering well.

The case was originally published in the journal Neuropathology.
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The residents of Great Britains remotest inhabited island celebrated Christmas today, nearly a fortnight after the rest of the UK and much of the world in accordance with a centuries-old tradition.

The 30 or so people who live on the island of Foula in Shetland celebrate their winter festivals according to the Julian calendar, which was last observed by the rest of the UK in 1752 when the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

Since the leap year in 1900, Foula residents have celebrated Christmas and New Year 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar, on January 6 and January 13 respectively.

Every Christmas Day, all the islanders congregate in one house where they exchange gifts and sing songs. The group includes ten children.

Inhabitants of the island, which is situated 200 miles north of John OGroats in Scotland, preserve a strong Norse cultural tradition of music, festive foods and folklore tales. Their ancestors spoke Norn, an ancient form of the Old Norse language, until the start of the 19th century.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA

Islanders have celebrated these days since before the Gregorian calendar, local Stuart Taylor told Mirror Online. We are not unique - other parts of the world, such as areas of Russia, still celebrate the old calendar.

Families open their presents in their own homes and then in the evening we all tend to end up in one house. The tradition is not going to end here."

Meanwhile Orthodox Christian communities around the globe, including Greek catholics and Coptic Christians, are currently preparing for their own Christmas, which they celebrate on January 7.
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As thousands of commuters across Britain renew rail season tickets this week, consumer rights groups have warned they face an opaque system designed to make them stump up for the most expensive option.

Annual passes for passengers travelling into London cost thousands of pounds, but an analysis by The Independent has found consumers are not given clear information about the savings available from different types of tickets.

The official Season Ticket Calculator tool on the National Rail Enquiries website only compares the average price per journey on an annual pass compared to a weekly ticket, ignoring other options that may be more suitable for passengers.

Recommended Rail passengers spend six times more on fares than European peers

Consumer rights watchdog Which? is leading calls for a more transparent system. It called the process too complex for passengers to find the best option for them.

In all cases the customer could also have saved money by opting for a monthly pass instead of a weekly one  but the tool did not list what this saving would be.

One ticket office operator at Bishops Stortford told The Independent an annual pass gets customers 12 weeks for free.

But they only made the comparison between the fee for a weekly pass instead of a monthly one.

An example of what is shown to commuters on the National Rail Enquiries website

The operator also suggested taking out a 0 per cent credit card in order to manage the debt of getting an annual ticket up front.

Barry Doe, a leading independent expert on rail fares, said monthly passes could even be cheaper [than annual] per journey if the month has 31 days.

He added: Ive no idea why they dont push this.

Mr Doe said there needed to be greater transparency for passengers. Buying tickets on the web is still appalling in general, he said. When it comes to seasons people ought to be told clearly of the week, month, annual differences and ratios and the advantages of annuals.

Bruce Williamson from the campaign group Railfuture said it was already hard enough for passengers to get the best deal from the expensive and complex array of rail fares.

We're concerned that this looks like another example of passengers being directed towards the most expensive option rather than the one which is best for them, he said.

And Which?s director of campaigns and communications, Vickie Sheriff, told The Independent: Rail passengers often struggle to find the cheapest fare as the current ticketing system is too complex. Train companies need to be clear and upfront on how passengers can get the best deal for them and transparent about what these savings are based on.

Annual passes do often end up being the best value option for commuters who know they will be making the same journey consistently over the whole year.

But factors such as the timing of annual leave and the availability of cash up front means each passenger needs to be able to weigh up their own options fairly.

Megan French from MoneySavingExpert.com told The Independent: Annual passes are often good value for most, but its worth commuters doing their own calculations to see which type of ticket works best for them. They should factor in things such as annual leave, part-time or working from home options, and if any part of the journey is during off-peak times.

Once they have found their best option, then look at the cheapest way to buy the ticket, taking into account any options such as season ticket loans from employers, for example.

A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group, which runs the National Rail Enquiries website on behalf of train operators, pointed out that customers can claim a refund on any unused months on their annual season ticket.

"Train companies promote annual season tickets because they offer people the best deal," the spokesman said.
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Homelessness is getting worse. Around 3,500 people sleep rough every night in the UK, double the number in 2010. Behind the headline figures, many more people have lost their homes. Some sleep on friends sofas. Almost 170,000 are hidden away in emergency B&Bs and hostels.

Crisis takes over schools and sixth form colleges over Christmas to provide warmth and hot meals for 4,000 homeless people with help from around 10,000 volunteers. This year I joined them, blinking over a cup of hot tea at 7.45am as leaders explained our tasks for the day. We were quickly put to work, cleaning toilets and showers, preparing food and manning doors. One morning, we served more than 300 hot breakfasts to people who came in after a bitter night in the cold. Some were visibly distressed and freezing, barely able to feel their hands. Others sat in three overcoats cradling cup after cup of sugary tea and and said nothing.

Homelessness charity Shelter estimates that more than a quarter of a million people have no permanent home (Getty)

Each evening, Crisis would put out the call for more last-minute volunteers, trying to boost capacity at centres across London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Newcastle. Working for Crisis taught me that homelessness is not solely a matter of poverty. Many of the visitors I met were dealing with complicated issues involving addiction, mental health and the breakdown of relationships that left them with nowhere to go. But after years of measures to tackle the varied causes of homelessness in the UK, slow but devastating cuts to private tenancy and housing benefits are pushing up the numbers of people forced out of their homes.

Recommended The secretly homeless social worker forced to use her own services

Loss of private tenancy is the biggest cause of homelessness in London, accounting for 40 per cent of all cases. Its responsible for some of the 8,000 people who slept rough last year, an increase on the previous year of six per cent. Rising homelessness did not happen overnight. Right to buy, revived in 2005, reduced the amount of council housing available. Then George Osborne froze housing benefit for four years, believing incorrectly that this would encourage landlords to cut rent. Instead, by the time this policy ends in 2020, families on benefits in four-fifths of the country will be unable to afford rent.

Volunteers served food and warm drinks to those in need over the holidays

Slowly, government policy has made housing less affordable for those who need help most. After 50 years of fighting homelessness we know that it primarily comes down to a shortage of affordable homes, says Roger Harding, director of communications, policy and campaigns at Shelter.

Crisis offers a computer area, where those seeking job opportunities and other resources can search online comfortably

One of my favourite jobs as a volunteer was working on the nail bar, where I met a man who had become homeless in the past year. He was probably in his fifties, with wide eyes, white hair and a smile that lit up his whole face when I beckoned him over. He looked about as nervous as I felt. But I smiled back as he sat down and then got to work, trying to gently remove layers of dirt from his hands using warm water and baby wipes; rubbing in layers of cream to try and smooth sore skin.

Culture news in pictures Show all 33 1 /33 Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures 30 September 2016 An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.3" by Arnaldo Pomodoro seen ahead of a Contemporary Art auction on 7 October, at Sotheby's in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 29 September 2016 Street art by Portuguese artist Odeith is seen in Dresden, during an exhibition "Magic City - art of the streets" AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 Dancers attend a photocall for the new "THE ONE Grand Show" at Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin, Germany REUTERS Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 With an array of thrift store china, humorous souvenirs and handmade tile adorning its walls and floors, the Mosaic Tile House in Venice stands as a monument to two decades of artistic collaboration between Cheri Pann and husband Gonzalo Duran REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A gallery assistant poses amongst work by Anthea Hamilton from her nominated show "Lichen! Libido!(London!) Chastity!" at a preview of the Turner Prize in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The installation allows visitors a 3-D look into the museum which has twenty-two paintings belonging to the British Royal Collection, on loan for an exhibit from 29 September 2016 till 8 January 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 An Indian artist dressed as Hindu god Shiva performs on a chariot as he participates in a religious procession 'Ravan ki Barat' held to mark the forthcoming Dussehra festival in Allahabad AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Air Power', 1984, is displayed at the Bowie/Collector media preview at Sotheby's in New York AFP/Getty Culture news in pictures 25 September 2016 A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. The exhibition runs at the Kunstverein (art society) Reutlingen until 15 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 24 September 2016 Fan BingBing (C) attends the closing ceremony of the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival at Kursaal in San Sebastian, Spain Getty Images Culture news in pictures 23 September 2016 A view of the artwork 'You Are Metamorphosing' (1964) as part of the exhibition 'Retrospektive' of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition runs from 25 September 2016 to 1 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 22 September 2016 Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. The new exhibition features works by Degas, Chardin, Francis Bacon and Sarah Lucas, showing how flesh has been portrayed by artists over the last 600 years PA Culture news in pictures 21 September 2016 Performers Sean Atkins and Sally Miller standing in for the characters played by Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell during a photocall for Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children" at Potters Field Park in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A detail from the blanket 'Alpine Cattle Drive' from 1926 by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is displayed at the 'Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Arts' in Berlin. The exhibition named 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Hieroglyphen' showing the complete collection of Berlin's Nationalgallerie works of the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and will run from 23 September 2016 until 26 February 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A man looks at portrait photos by US photographer Bruce Gilden in the exhibition 'Masters of Photography' at the photokina in Cologne, Germany. The trade fair on photography, photokina, schowcases some 1,000 exhibitors from 40 countries and runs from 20 to 25 September. The event also features various photo exhibitions EPA Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A woman looks at 'Blue Poles', 1952 by Jackson Pollock during a photocall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London PA Culture news in pictures 19 September 2016 Art installation The Refusal of Time, a collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, which features as part of the William Kentridge exhibition Thick Time, showing from 21 September to 15 January at the Whitechapel Gallery in London PA Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Artists creating one off designs at the Mm6 Maison Margiela presentation during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer collections 2017 in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Bethenny Frankel attends the special screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to celebrate the 25th Anniversary Edition release on Blu-Ray and DVD in New York City Getty Images for Walt Disney Stu Culture news in pictures 17 September 2016 Visitors attend the 2016 Oktoberfest beer festival at Theresienwiese in Munich, Germany Getty Images Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Visitors looks at British artist Damien Hirst work of art 'The Incomplete Truth', during the 13th Yalta Annual Meeting entitled 'The World, Europe and Ukraine: storms of changes', organised by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation at the Mystetsky Arsenal Art Center in Kiev AP Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Tracey Emin's "My Bed" is exhibited at the Tate Liverpool as part of the exhibition Tracey Emin And William Blake In Focus, which highlights surprising links between the two artists Getty Images Culture news in pictures 15 September 2016 Musician Dave Grohl (L) joins musician Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage onstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California Getty Images Culture news in pictures 14 September 2016 Model feebee poses as part of art installation "Narcissism : Dazzle room" made by artist Shigeki Matsuyama at rooms33 fashion and design exhibition in Tokyo. Matsuyama's installation features a strong contrast of black and white, which he learned from dazzle camouflage used mainly in World War I AP Culture news in pictures 13 September 2016 Visitors look at artworks by Chinese painter Cui Ruzhuo during the exhibition 'Glossiness of Uncarved Jade' held at the exhibition hall 'Manezh' in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than 200 paintings by the Chinese artist are presented until 25 September EPA Culture news in pictures 12 September 2016 A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. The first Russian exhibition of the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino includes eight paintings and three drawings which come from Italy. Th exhibit opens to the public from 13 September to 11 December EPA Culture news in pictures 11 September 2016 Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd perform during Otis Redding 75th Birthday Celebration - Rehearsals at the Macon City Auditorium in Macon, Georgia Getty Images for Otis Redding 75 Culture news in pictures 10 September 2016 Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall in London PA Culture news in pictures 9 September 2016 A visitor walks past a piece entitled "Fruitcake" by Joana Vasconcelo, during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House near Bakewell REUTERS Culture news in pictures 8 September 2016 A sculpture of a crescent standing on the 2,140 meters high mountain 'Freiheit' (German for 'freedom'), in the Alpstein region of the Appenzell alps, eastern Switzerland. The sculpture is lighted during the nights by means of solar panels. The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. 'Because so many peaks have crosses on them, it struck me as a great idea to put up an equally absurd contrast'. 'Naturally I wanted to provoke in a fun way. But it goes beyond that. The actions of an artist should be food for thought, both visually and in content' EPA Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures

He didnt talk much and we had been told not to ask too many questions, but I understood that he had been on the streets in central London for several months and that he had spent Christmas alone. I remembered what the staff told us at the start of the day: some of these people go days without being acknowledged on the street. While I worked, my guest cracked his bright smile and broke the silence to tell me it felt good. It felt good to me too. A few minutes later, he thanked me and disappeared into the anonymous throng of people gathering in the dining hall. I didnt see him again.

Recommended Homelessness among ethnic minorities soars under Conservatives

Rising levels of homelessness and rough sleeping in London are beyond shameful in one of the richest cities in the world and its a sad fact that for years some of Londons most vulnerable people have been let down and ignored, said Sadiq Khan, mayor of London. Khan has earmarked 50m to invest in accommodation for people moving from hostels to longer-term independent living. Part of the money will go towards securing two-year tenancies for women running from abusive relationships to help them prepare for independent living and to free up hostel beds.

Roger Harding from Shelter said the new funding needs to work in tandem with the mayors longer-term goal to build 90,000 affordable homes. Its only by building homes that people on lower incomes can actually afford to live in that we will put an end to homelessness for good, he said. Far more needs to be done to stop people ending up on the street in the first place.

Volunteers can help by providing services including hairdressing, nail treatments and more

At the moment, homeless people in England and Wales can be turned away by councils if they are not considered a priority, even if they have nowhere else to stay. A Homelessness Reduction Bill, tabled by Conservative MP Bob Blackman and supported by MPs from all parties, aims to change this by forcing councils to talk to private landlords and helping people reorganise their finances so they dont end up losing their homes.

The bill was passed unopposed during its second reading in Parliament on October 28, but it could still be blocked unless enough MPs turn up to the next reading in spring. We urge the public to help by calling on their MP to back this crucial bill, said Jon Sparkes of Crisis. We need to make sure people can get help all year round, ideally before they become homeless in the first place.

The Crisis centre I worked in closed last week. Back at work, I thought about the English man with the bright smile and wondered where he was sleeping and how he was staying warm during the day. Charities can only do so much. Legislation is needed to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place and to provide an important safety net to protect the vulnerable. Without it, more people will face the isolation and fear that comes with living on the streets.
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Trade unions representing civil servants have hit back at attacks on their profession by eurosceptic politicians over the handling of Brexit.

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA trade union, which represents the senior civil service, said Whitehall workers had been subjected to a stream of ill-informed criticism, while the PCS warned a Tory critic was missing the point.

Bernard Jenkin is the latest Conservative to hit out at the civil service, writing in a newspaper article on Friday civil servants should either adapt to the new Governments approach to the EU or resign.

It is not politicising the civil service to insist that the UK ambassador to the EU understands and will implement the governments policy on Brexit, the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee had argued.

The latest attack comes after a string of eurosceptic Tories criticised civil servants for their attitude to the EU. Iain Duncan Smith said in November that lines had been blurred and broken during the referendum campaign while colleague Steve Baker said the entire civil service machine had been mobilised as a campaign device by Remain.

The general secretary Mr Penman however said Mr Jenkin did not need to remind civil servants of their duties  accusing him of joining a stream of constant ill-informed criticism.

Every civil servants knows, from day one, that they serve the government of the day, regardless of political colour. Its rule number one, so they do not need reminding by Bernard Jenkin or any other politician, he said.

As is now clear, even before the referendum result was known, civil servants had begun the Herculean task of preparing for the possibility of exit.

Every day, hundreds of civil servants are working to support the government's negotiation to exit the EU, despite being starved of resources and subjected to a stream of constant ill-informed criticism from some politicians.

A spokesperson for the PCS trade union, which represents civil servants more generally, said: Jenkin is missing the point about the nature of the complaints coming from the civil service.

Theyre not about whether civil servants agree with this or that policy, but about capacity.

Expertise at all levels has been seriously compromised by six years of Tory cuts and the obvious solution is to invest in people and skills.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

The row over the civil service was reignited after the resignation of the UKs top ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, resigned, citing the possibility of muddled thinking by the Government in a farewell letter to his staff.

Sir Ivan was dismissed by Mr Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, as someone who could no longer be trusted to be closely involved in the Brexit process.
'Battleship Island' stars Hwang Jung Min, Song Joong-Ki and So Ji-Sub. (Photo : Instagram/CJ Entertainment)

It looks like "Battleship Island" is coming to theaters sooner than fans expected. The occupation-era film, directed by Ryoo Seung-Wan, is expected to hit theaters across South Korea in early July.







On Dec. 20, 2016, "Battleship Island" wrapped up its six months of filming at a 6,600-square-meter set in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, South Korea. The last scene taken reportedly involved 200 extras in undersea coal mines.



Advertisement

Despite that, director Ryoo said "Battleship Island" still have a long way to go, according to Korean newsoutlet Focus News. Since it requires a lot of computer-generated imagery (CGI), it will take a couple of months more to edit and fine-tune the much-awaited film.



"'Battleship Island' was hard to shoot," director Ryoo stressed. "The experience was painful. We still have a long way to go."



Nonetheless, the lead stars Hwang Jung Min, So Ji Sub and Song Joong Ki are glad that the filming is finally finished and cannot wait for it to be released later this year. They also talked about the difficulties they encountered while filming the occupation-era film.



So, who plays the role of Choi Chil Sung, admitted there were some perilous scenes that were quite challenging to do. Nonetheless, he is truly glad that they managed to finish the movie on time.



"The Descendants of the Sun" actor, who plays an independence activist Park Moo Young, described "Battleship Island" as a grand project and stressed that he is happy to be a part of it. He added, "I have been running for six months to keep my body in shape. I wanted to do a great job because I believe this is a meaningful project."



Lastly, Hwang said the movie displayed a lot of teamwork, stressing that the entire cast and crew worked so hard to make it happen. The veteran actor plays a hotel bandmaster, Lee Kang Ok, who is tricked into a job offer in Japan but was sent to the Hashima Island instead.



Set in the early 1900s, "Battleship Island" relates the true story of an attempted prison break from a forced labor camp on Hashima Island. It will reportedly be presented through ScreenX technology in order to give viewers spectacular scenes of the 16-acre island, according to Korean newsoutlet MBN.



Check out the video below for more information:






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Opponents of hard Brexit will be able to access a new website guiding them how to fight for the best deal for the UKs EU withdrawal.

Open Britains OB One-Stop-Shop website will be launched in February allowing activists to access campaign materials like leaflets, training and advice on how to battle for the best outcome.

The organisation is now expanding its grassroots network into Brexit backing areas, with new local groups established in the North East, Staffordshire, Kent and Norfolk.

Recommended Record number of businesses say they will raise prices within months

Stuart Hand, Director of Field Campaigns of Open Britain, said: "We are, first and foremost, a grassroots organisation, which is why the OB one-stop-shop is so important. This is bottom-up campaigning.

"We want to establish a campaign against a hard, destructive Brexit across every part of the country, which is why we are particularly focusing in the early part of this year in establishing local activist groups in areas that voted to Leave and reaching out to Leave voters.

"It is great that our activists have responded enthusiastically to investing in the tools that will allow them to campaign locally on the issues they want to campaign on. It is going to be vital to have a nationwide network of campaign groups if we are to stop a hard Brexit."

The organisation is currently running campaigns to keep Britain in the EUs single market and guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK and Brits in Europe.
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Senior civil servants are demanding better pay conditions to deal with the Brexit workload that unions claim is pushing Whitehall to its limits.

The First Division Association (FDA), which represents senior mandarins and diplomats, said pay does not remotely compare with the wider marketplace.The union adds that George Osbornes policy of cutting public sector pay while he was Chancellor has led to a demoralised workforce.

The call from the FDA is the latest sign of a strain in relations between Whitehall officials and Theresa Mays administration and comes just days after the resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers as Britain's ambassador to the EU.

FDA general secretary Dave Penman said: Fresh from reducing the size of their departments, the SCS (senior civil service) is now tasked with implementing Brexit on top of all of the Governments existing priorities.

Some havent seen a pay rise in a decade, all have seen their pay cut in real terms by around a quarter. The strain of the pay freeze and staff reductions is taking its toll. The previous chancellor's policy of public sector pay restraint has led to a demoralised workforce and a civil service now reliant on expensive contractors and salary premiums for new hires.

This Chancellor needs to take a more realistic position and heed the FDAs call for real investment in the SCS, not a never ending series of temporary fixes dreamt up on the hoof that end up costing the public more than before the pay restraint began.

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

In a survey submitted as evidence to the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) by the FDA, 94 per cent of respondents said their pay framework was not fit for purpose.

But the former Conservative leader and Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, a prominent Leave campaigner, told the Daily Mail: This is total nonsense.

He continued: Senior civil servants should be embarrassed that their union is asking for a pay rise at a time when the entire public sector is subject to necessary pay restraint.

These officials are simply being asked to do their job. They should be relishing the challenge, and the best ones will be.

Steve Baker, chairman of the influential European research group of Tory MPs, said: For normal people earning normal wages these civil servants already look very well rewarded.
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A group of 30 British business people have written to the Prime Minister telling her to keep Britain in the single market and to take steps to avoid a rapid drop in migration after the UK leaves the European Union.

The founders of innocent drinks and Cobra beer, Richard Reed and Lord Bilimoria respectively, are both signatories to a letter urging Theresa May to keep Britain open to trade and talent.

Recommended Senior civil servants demand pay rise due to Brexit workload

Ms May is expected to give a speech in the near future on her plans Brexit, in which it is understood she will prioritise immigration over single market membership. Leading EU figures including Council President Donald Tusk and lead negotiator Michel Barnier have repeatedly stressed that full single market membership is not possible without free movement of labour.

In a letter to the Financial Times, Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, said: There is no mandate for the kind of hard, destructive Brexit that will harm Britains enduring entrepreneurial spirit.

Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra Beer, said: If Britains economy is to prosper after Brexit it needs the kind of access to trade and talent we enjoy today.
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Theresa May is set to visit Turkey later this month for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the wake of several terror attacks in which hundreds have died in the country.

In her brief visit to the country later this month, the Prime Minister is likely to focus on the international effort to defeat the so-called Islamic State and the relationship between Britain and Turkey as she prepares to begin the Brexit negotiations later this year.

It comes after a gunman opened fire on New Years Eve revellers at a nightclub in Istanbul, killing 39 people and wounding dozens more in the countrys latest terror attack. Isis claimed responsibility for the atrocity and hailed the attacker as a heroic soldier of the caliphate.

Recommended Theresa May to meet Donald Trump in US in spring

The Prime Ministers trip is also set to include meetings with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who had invited Ms May to the country after she condemned the failed coup against Mr Erdogan shortly after entering Downing Street in July 2016.

At the time, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister said: The Prime Minister commended the bravery of the Turkish people in standing up for democracy and she underlined the UKs full support for Turkeys democratically elected government and institutions, saying there was no place for military intervention in politics.

They agreed that the UK and Turkey already have a strong relationship and that opportunities to deepen our strategic partnership should be pursued, particularly in the areas of counter-terrorism, migration, regional security and defence.

But the visit could prove difficult for the Prime Minister as she will have to address claims made by some of her Cabinet during the EU referendum campaign, who used Turkeys unlikely membership of the union to harness support for the Leave camp.

The visit also follows a trip by Boris Johnson last September in which the Foreign Secretary attempted to make amends for a satirical limerick, in which he refereed to Mr Erdogan as a wankerer who had sex with a goat.
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Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to use a speech next week to begin a new push to turn around his and his partys devastating poll ratings.

Labour MPs say they were promised a relaunch this month and that was before the most recent poll showed just 14 per cent of people now see the partys leader as a potential Prime Minister.

The YouGov survey gave Theresa Mays Conservatives a 13 point lead over Mr Corbyns party, just days after his close ally and Unite the union boss Len McCluskey indicated the leader may step aside if ratings are still awful in 2019.

Labour sources confirmed that Mr Corbyn will give a speech on Tuesday after MPs return from their Christmas break.

While the content is unconfirmed, the partys MPs say they were promised a relaunch in January, while Labour election coordinator Jon Trickett said in December that work was going on to frame an argument about Britain.

YouGovs most recent survey, conducted between 3 and 4 January, asked people which of the party leaders would make the best Prime Minister, with just 14 per cent opting for Mr Corbyn, while 47 per cent backed Theresa May and 39 per cent did not know.

Mr Corbyns rating was a fall of two points from the previous survey and a further decline from a high of 21 per cent in August last year.

Labours Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle told The Independent: Team Corbyn have said they will announce a new strategy this month, and that fits with Jeremys closest allies calling for him to do better. Diane Abbott, Ken Livingstone and Len McCluskey have all acknowledged he must do better.

 Jeremy Corbyn tries to learn violin from schoolgirl, she lets him know how bad he is

What I find disturbing though is the number of voters who already appear to have made their mind up about Jeremy. Every leader of our party or opposition leader, Cameron, Blair, whoever, there was always a lot who hadnt made their mind up.

Sadly with Jeremy too many have made their minds up too soon. Only he can act now to turn around these devastating ratings.

The YouGov poll put the Conservatives on 39 per cent again, Labour two points up on 26 per cent and the Lib Dems two points down on 10 per cent. Ukip were unchanged on 14 per cent.

A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn said: Rebuilding Labour support after its fragmentation at the 2015 election was always going to be a challenge.

But Labour under Jeremy Corbyn will be taking its case to every part of Britain in the coming months with a radical policy platform, offering the only genuine alternative to a failed parliament political establishment and the fake anti-elitists of the hard right.

Mr McCluskey, whose union gives millions of pounds a year to Labour, used an interview just after the New Year to raise the prospect of Mr Corbyn throwing the towel in.

The Unite general secretary said: Lets suppose we are not having a snap election. It buys into this question of what happens if we get to 2019 and opinion polls are still awful.

The truth is everybody would examine that situation, including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

He added that the pair are not egomaniacs, they are not desperate to cling on to power for powers sake.

Shadow home secretary Ms Abbott predicted at the end of last year that Labour would close the gap in the polls with Ms Mays Tories within 12 months.
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Scottish Conservatives have called for a crack down on cannabis after official figures revealed hospital admissions related to the drug have reached a 10-year high.

The analysis, carried out by the party, claims that 834  or 14 per cent  of the 5,922 admitted to hospital after drug use in 2015-16 in Scotland had taken cannabis. It is just below a high of 15 per cent a decade earlier.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservatives shadow justice secretary, said the figures demonstrated that cannabis is not the harmless substance some would have us believe.

Its quite alarming that quite so many people are being hospitalised through using cannabis, a drug many people feel authorities are going soft on, Mr Ross added. And not only is it dangerous in its own right, as these statistics prove, but its a gateway drug to even more harmful substances.

Recommended Copenhagen makes fourth attempt to legalise cannabis

We have a massive fight on our hands in Scotland both with illegal drugs and so-called legal highs. Now is not the time to give in and wave the white flag. We need to crack down on those circulating drugs of all kinds on our streets, and reinforce the message about just how damaging taking these substances can be.

The Tories also highlighted there were 913 hospital "stays" involving cannabinoids in 2015/16, compared to 553 for cocaine-related admissions.

The SNP Health Secretary Shona Robison, however, said that drug use among the general population continues to fall and levels among young people remain low.

She added: "We have greatly reduced drug and alcohol waiting times with 94 per cent of people now being seen within three weeks of being referred and we have invested over 630 million to tackle problem alcohol and drug use since 2008 and over 150 million over five years to improve mental health services in Scotland."
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The speaker of the House of Lords has warned Theresa May against stuffing the Chamber with new peers in a bid to get Brexit through.

Lord Fowler, a Tory peer until he took up the speaker's post in the Chamber, intervened after threats that ministers might "do a Lloyd George and create a thousand peers" to pass the Governments Brexit legislation if those already in the Lords opposed it.

He said the upper chamber would not "sabotage" Brexit, while pointing out that the House is already too large and that Ms May should "move away from the example" of David Cameron when it came to approving large numbers of new peers.

Tory peers were among the first to demand Ms May let Parliament vote on the deal that she strikes with the EU. Then shortly after the party's conference, a cabinet minister told The Independent the Government may "do a Lloyd George" and flood the upper House with friendly peers if those there attempted to undermine the drive to Brexit.

Writing in The Telegraph Lord Fowler said: "It is not my role to enter into the politics of Brexit, but I do think that I am entitled to defend the House of Lords from this kind of attack.

He adds: "The Lords recognise the primacy of the Commons based on the fact that they are the elected chamber and we are not.

"In return most MPs value the check that scrutiny by the Lords provides. We are not here to sabotage legislation  we are here to improve it."

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

He goes on to say that one of the problems with the Lords is that so many new peers were appointed by successive Prime Ministers between 1997 and 2016, during which 653 new members joined the Chamber.

Lord Fowler said: "Mrs May herself, however, is making moves to change the honours system and I believe that she would be going with the grain if she herself was to decide to substantially move away from the example of her most immediate predecessors when it comes to peerages."
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Theresa May is to announce new measures to improve the care and support received by people suffering mental health problems.

The Prime Minister will set out help employers can give to workers and schools can give to pupils, while highlighting moves to reduce the number of UK suicides.

Downing Street sources told The Independent the new policy will form part of a broader speech with which Ms May hopes to push forward her drive to tackle social injustice, promised on her first day in office.

Speaking on the steps of No 10 in July, she listed shortcomings in mental health services as one of the burning injustices she wanted to address, saying she was aware that if you suffer from mental health problems, theres not enough help to hand.

Among Mondays expected measures are those that will show how firms can do more for staff forced to take time off work for mental health issues.

Downing Street has already been exploring teacher training reform to help school staff better spot signs a child is under strain, with bullying and the pressure from exams bearing down on them.

The Prime Minister is particularly expected to highlight the potentially damaging role social media can have on young peoples mental welfare.

Ms Mays push to force down the number of suicides, comes as it rose slightly from 6,122 deaths in 2014 to 6,188 deaths in 2015, with a subsequent increase in the rate from 10.8 to 10.9 deaths per 100,000 population.

While the increase in the suicide rate is a result of a rise in female suicides, the Office for National Statistics said that males still account for three quarters of all suicides.

The Samaritans in the UK can be contacted on 116 123
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Soldiers have launched mutinies in three cities across Ivory Coast, authorities have said, demanding higher pay and bringing the threat of unrest back to Africas fastest-growing economy.

Gunfire rang out across Bouake, the second-largest city in the west African nation, starting around 1am local time on Friday, according to residents. Similar mutinies erupted later in Daloa, in the central region, and Korhogo in the north.

They are heavily armed and parading through the city of Daloa, said Karim Sanogo, a student who lives there. Security forces have abandoned their posts. Everyone has returned home to seek shelter.

Defence Minister Alain Donwahi said discussions were under way with the soldiers, and he called on all troops to return to their barracks.

Military sources had said demobilised combatants  mainly former rebels from the decade-long conflict  were behind the uprising, during which weapons were looted from Bouakes police stations. But authorities and a legislator later blamed soldiers on active duty.

None of them are demobilised fighters, Bema Fofana, a member of parliament representing Bouake, told Reuters after speaking to several of the soldiers. There are fewer than 200 of them that I saw.

Mr Fofana said the soldiers were demanding five million CFA francs (6,550) each, as well as a house.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. 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Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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The former French colonys reputation as a model of political stability in a region better known for conflict was shattered after its first coup in 1999. The crisis reached rock-bottom in 2002, when fighting erupted in skyscraper-lined Abidjan.

That was the start of a civil war that ended months later in a stalemate that left rebels in control of the northern half of the country, with their stronghold in Bouake.

A breakthrough came in 2007 with a peace deal that saw rebel leader Guillaume Soro appointed prime minister in a unity government.

The soldiers, however, now say not all the promises made in that 2007 agreement were implemented.

In more recent unrest, some 3,000 people died in violence after longtime President Laurent Gbagbo lost the 2010 presidential election and then refused to cede power to victor Alassane Ouattara. After a military intervention, Mr Ouattara became president and Mr Gbagbo now faces charges at the International Criminal Court.

France has a military presence in Ivory Coast, with most of its 900 troops stationed in and near Abidjan. It was not immediately known whether the Ivory Coast government had asked for their help Friday in calming the situation, as it has in the past.

Associated Press
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Swiss authorities are investigating claims that anti-poaching squads backed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) committed a series of alleged human rights abuses against the indigenous Baka people of Cameroon.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will examine claims by Survival International (SI) that "ecoguards", who are employed to protect endangered species from poachers, have engaged in physical and racist abuse of the Baka.

The indigenous rights campaign group said that the guards  who it said were supported financially and logistically by the WWF  had beaten some people with machetes.

In a report to the OECD in Switzerland, where WWF International is based, they said that the Cameroon government's creation of protected ecological areas has displaced the Baka without their consent.

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It said the move had "denied or seriously curtailed Baka access to the traditional territories and natural resources on which they depend" and brought them into conflict with the ecoguards who patrol the areas.

The Swiss government will now mediate between WWF and SI in what the latter organisation claimed was an "unprecedented move", because the OECD is normally concerned with multinational businesses.

WWF said that it took allegations of human rights abuses "extremely seriously" and was pushing for a government review of ecoguard conduct.

SI said there had been an "obvious risk to the human rights of the Baka from the outset".

When the ecoguards were deployed the indigenous group was always likely to continue subsistence hunting "as they had always done" it added.

Its timeline of the conflict stretches back to 2001 and claims that in 2008 and 2009 "several" Baka were tortured at a WWF base near Ngatto Ancien. One person later died, it said.

A Baka man also reportedly told the group that ecoguards on one occasion, "beat the children as well as an elderly woman with machetes".

SI director Stephen Corry said: "WWFs work has led to decades of pain for tribal peoples in the Congo Basin.

"Its done nothing effective to address the concerns of the thousands of tribal people dispossessed and mistreated through its projects. That has to change.

"If WWF cant ensure those schemes meet UN and OECD standards, it simply shouldnt be funding them.

"Tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world. They should be at the forefront of the environmental movement."

Members of the Baka group (Survival International)

But a WWF spokesman insisted the organisation took "any and all allegations of human rights violations extremely seriously."

They said: "We have worked over the years to verify any alleged abuses, and we have taken all appropriate measures to address allegations brought to our attention, including communicating these to the appropriate authorities."

The organisation was "fully committed to ensuring that conservation work has positive impacts for all people," they added.

"For more than two decades, WWF has dedicated itself to finding lasting solutions to protect forests and wildlife vital to the Baka community in Cameroon," they said.

"During our years of work in Cameroon, WWF has worked closely with the Baka people and other local communities on the establishment of protected areas and strongly advocated for the rights of indigenous people.

"WWF has worked strenuously to obtain improved recognition and rights for the Baka community."

They added that the organisation had been "recently commended by the UN Special Rapporteur as an example of best practice' by international environmental NGOs" for some of its work in the country.

But they said that "members of Cameroons civil society, including WWF Cameroon, recognise that there is clearly more work to be done to improve conditions for the Baka people."

They were working with the country's Ministry of Forests and Wildlife to improve the way abuse allegations were received and if substantiated, that appropriated measures were taken, they said.

"WWF has urged and facilitated the employment of Baka ecoguards as well as provided human rights training for ecoguards," they said.

The organisation had voluntarily agreed to take part in the mediation process, they added. But it is not that time the ecoguards have been accused of abuses.

A 2013 report by researcher Sarah Tucker, on behalf of the non-governmental organisation the Centre for Environment and Development said: Ecoguards employ torture, arbitrary punishment, brutality, and intimidation, creating an atmosphere of fear and horror in [Baka and other tribes'] villages.

Her study, which is hosted on the UN's human rights website, added that the Baka had occupied Cameroon's forested areas for thousands of years and that their culture is inextricably tied to the forest. They have been marginalised for decades, she said.
Li Bingbing (Photo : Weibo/Li Bingbing)

Chinese actress Li Bingbing is in a relationship with a man 10 years younger than her. Tabloid photos of the two holding hands made the 43-year-old celebrity admit she is in a relationship with Xu Wennan, an executive at an investment company.



On Tuesday, Zhuo Wei, the top tabloid reporter in China, published the photos of Li and Wu together and wrote, The last big name female star finally ended her status of being single. The next day, Li Bingbing posted on her Weibo account her photo and Xu at a beach in Sanya with the caption Everything has been best arranged," China.org reported.



Advertisement

Viral Photo



The photo became viral with more than 53,000 comments and was shared over 130,000 times. Ren Quan, a friend of the actress, claimed responsibility for linking the new lovers.



While making films such as Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Forbidden Kingdom, A World Without Thieves, Resident Evil: Retribution and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Li opted not to marry while waiting for her true love.



Li will be seen in 2018 in the sci-fi action Meg which is a co-production between Chinese and American companies. She will star opposite Jason Statham, an American actor.



Cougars?



Two other older celebrity Chinese women were in the news the past few days over reports of their being in a relationship with younger men. Like Li, Wendi Deng, the former wife of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, posted photos of herself and her Hungarian boyfriend who is 26 years younger than her while they were vacationing in St. Barts beach.



However, in the case of Hong Kong actress Rosamund Kwan, rumored to be dating Zhuomi of Super Junior-M, the two denied dating or being in a relationship. Their age difference is 24 years.



Is 2017 the Year of the Cougar?






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Barack Obama has suggested he would support repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) if the Republican Party can propose a better alternative.

"To every Republican: if you can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support [it] he said, in a debate streamed live on Facebook.

Getting rid of the scheme, which has helped the poorest people in America to access medical treatment since 2010, without offering something else instead "would be a huge disservice to the American people" he added.

"Unlike other advanced countries, we didnt start with a [health care] system in which everyone was covered," Mr Obama told Vox interviewers Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff.

He added: I get letters from people every single day who say that [the Affordable Care Act] has 'saved my life'."

The outgoing President also reiterated his condemnation of repeal first, replace later policy, which he called "simply irresponsible" in an article published earlier on Friday.

Mr Obama has spent his last days in office battling Republicans, led by vice President-elect Mike Pence, over healthcare.

Republicans would be dealing a major blow to Mr Obamas legacy if they dismantled the ACA, and the move could result in the loss of health insurance for some 30 million Americans.

From the start  I made clear to Republicans that if they had ideas that they could show would work better than [ours], that Id be happy to incorporate them into the law," said Mr Obama, who reportedly held a closed door meeting with his team on Wednesday to discuss how to save Obamacare.

"Keep up the fight, Mr Obama told fellow Democrats, according to Ohio Rep Tim Ryan. Tell the stories about the people who have benefited from it. The more you can get that message through, the better off were going to be.

He also suggested Democrats turn the tables and refer to the GOPs potential new plan as Trumpcare to highlight the differences.

After the private meeting, Mr Obama is said to have told his party to Look out for the American people.

Donald Trump previously claimed during the campaign period that he would not repeal Obamacare, but Mr Pence assured GOP lawmakers this week that dismantling ACA would be Mr Trumps first order of business.

Make no mistake about it, Mr Pence told reporters, Were going to keep our promise to the American people. Were going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with solutions that lower the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government.

Mr Obama suggested this statement was naive or deceptive, pointing out that healthcare will always cost someone money.

We can't get health care for free," he told Mr Klein, Ms Kliff and several thousand viewers. "You're going to have to pay for it one way or another: either the government [or individuals] pay more.

He added: If we want to control prices for consumers more, the marketplace itself will not do that. Health care is not exactly like other products.

US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul Show all 16 1 /16 US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338741.bin GETTY IMAGES US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338882.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338883.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338884.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338885.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338886.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338888.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338889.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338890.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338891.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338892.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338893.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338887.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338894.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338895.bin Getty Images US House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul 338896.bin Getty Images

It remains unclear whether or not Mr Trump will allow the ACA to be repealed completely, although he has called the act a mess. He has remained largely on the sidelines of the debate, leaning in occasionally to call Democrats head clowns.

On Thursday, he wrote on social media that there should be a bipartisan move to create a new form of healthcare, instead of doing the typical political thing and blaming other people.

It is time for Republicans & Democrats to get together and come up with a healthcare plan that really works  much less expensive & FAR BETTER! he said on Twitter, but so far he has proposed no actual new policy.
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The US Department of Labour filed a lawsuit against the owner of a beef-jerky maker after firing an employee who attempted to call 911 when a co-worker severed a thumb.

John M Bachman, president and CEO of Lone Star Western Beef Inc, is the focus of the federal lawsuit filed on Thursday. He could be forced to pay punitive damages and back pay to Michele Butler-Savage, the employee he fired.

The incident occurred in July 2014 at the company's former West Virginia plant when a worker, Chris Crane, severed part of his right thumb while operating a band saw. Ms Butler-Savage applied pressure to his wound and tried to call 911 with her mobile phone.

The lawsuit claims Mr Bachman ordered her to hang up her phone before 911 dispatchers could answer. She was sacked two days later.

Mr Bachman apparently did not call for an ambulance, and instead instructed a supervisor to take Mr Crane to an urgent care clinic with his severed thumb. Mr Crane was ultimately transferred to a hospital where a reattachment procedure was unsuccessful, according to the lawsuit.

After the incident, Ms Butler-Savage told a US agriculture inspector that Mr Bachman failed to sanitise the area where her co-worker severed part of his thumb and reported that the plant lacked necessary protective equipment.

She filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after losing her job. OSHA found that Mr Bachman violated federal whistleblower protections, and that Ms Butler-Savages attempt to call 911 was protected under federal safety and health laws.

Lone Star Western Beef punished an employee for seeking emergency medical care for a seriously injured co-worker, said OSHA regional administrator Richard Mendelson.

No worker should have to fear retaliation from their employer for calling 911 in an emergency, or taking other action to report a workplace safety or health incident."

The plant shut down in January 2015 after it relocated to Reading, Pennsylvania.
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A son of late al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden and a leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were added to the US counter-terrorism blacklist on Thursday, a move to keep them from using the U.S. financial system, the State Department said.

The State and Treasury departments said they had designated Hamza bin Laden and Ibrahim al-Banna as global terrorists. Bin Laden, a son of the deceased al-Qaeda leader, has been declared a member of the group by senior leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to the State Department.

Bruce Reidel, an analyst with the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, has called Hamza bin Laden the "new face for al-Qaeda" and "an articulate and dangerous enemy."

Al-Banna is a senior member of AQAP who has served as the group's security chief and has provided military and security advice to AQAP leaders, the State Department said.

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added Bin Laden and al-Banna to its list of specially designated nationals, a counterterrorism blacklist. The State Department said the two had been identified as specially designated global terrorists.

Recommended Face to face with Bin Laden

Any property owned by the two men and subject to US jurisdiction may be frozen and US citizens are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them, the State Department said. The designation is viewed as a powerful tool to deny them access to the U.S. financial system.

Bin Laden, who was born in Saudi Arabia, has called for acts of terrorism in western capitals and threatened to take revenge against the United States for his father's killing, the State Department said.

Bin Laden was killed in 2011

He has threatened to target Americans abroad and urged Saudi tribes to unite with AQAP in Yemen to fight against Saudi Arabia, it said.

Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces who raided his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. Hamza bin Laden was thought to be under house arrest in Iran at the time, and documents recovered from the compound indicated that aides had been trying to reunite him with his father.

Al-Banna, who was born in Egypt, has described al-Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington as "virtuous" and threatened to target Americans in the United States and abroad, the State Department said.

Reuters
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At least 33 inmates have been killed after prisoners allegedly linked to Brazil's largest drug gang escaped their cells and began slaughtering fellow convicts.

The riot at the Monte Cristo Agricultural Penitentiary in Boa Vista, Roraima, which broke out at dawn, was reportedly a reaction to the prison uprising and death of around 60 people in the Amazon jungle's Manaus prison on Sunday night.

The government has been quick to blame the Roraima riot, according to daily newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, on northern rebel group the FDN (Familia do Norte).

However, a local secretary of justice, Uziel Castro, told the BBC the more prominent Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) was behind the killings.

Recommended Decapitated bodies thrown over wall in Brazil prison riot

A group of prisoners, now back in their cells, reportedly escaped at 2.30am before attacking inmates in what at least appears to be part of an ongoing feud between supporters of opposing militant factions.

Its the PCC, said one agent, quoted by Brazilian news website Jornal O Globo, who was naming the same criminal organisation that was blamed for the Manaus violence.

There were 1,500 prisoners at the scene and 15 prison officers on duty at the time, and some of the victims were decapitated, according to reports.

It was not worse because we were able to react, added the officer.

The chaos was reportedly quelled after the Special Operations Battalion and military police intervened.

The prison massacre, confirmed by the region's Secretariat of Justice and Citizenship, is reportedly now the countrys third most deadly since the 1992 Carandiru executions when 111 prisoners died.

Government said the PCC, which has also been blamed for the Manaus massacre, earned $32m (26m) in drug sales in 2012 and that almost half its 13,000 members were jailed in Sao Paulo state.
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A legislator indicted on allegations of beating his wife should resign, leaders of the South Carolina Legislature said, with one lawmaker calling it terrifying and horrific to hear children on a 911 call screaming for their daddy to stop.

The comments come a day after Rep. Chris Corley was indicted on felony domestic violence charges and suspended from his House seat.

State law requires an officeholder indicted on a felony to be suspended. Corley's wife told deputies he stopped hitting her on December 26 only after noticing she was bleeding and hearing the screams of two of their three children, ages 2 and 8.

Corley said his wife tried to punch him after accusing him of cheating, and the police report noted a scratch on his forehead.

House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope, a former solicitor, told reporters that in fairness to the system, it's not our place to call for him to resign.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey disagreed.

While Corley is innocent until proven guilty, there's a big difference between the criminal and political side, said Massey, a Republican. This is not OK. It's not OK to beat up your wife... It's important that we're very clear to say it's not acceptable.

Massey, whose district includes much of Corley's, said their Aiken County constituents deserve House representation, which they won't have while Corley faces charges that could net him 25 years in prison.

Corley is charged with pointing a firearm and domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature, which alone is punishable by 20 years. The indictment accuses him of hitting his wife in the face, head and body with a closed fist and with a gun while in the presence of children.

High and aggravated is a big deal, y'all, said Massey, an attorney. It doesn't get any higher than that unless you kill somebody.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In a call to Aiken city police, no one talks to the operator but please stop can be heard repeatedly in audio released by the Aiken County Sheriff's Office. Just stop daddy. Just stop. ... Daddy, why are you doing this? children say on the call.

What I heard on that 911 call is just terrifying and horrific, said Mandy Powers Norrell, a Democrat.

House Majority Leader Gary Simrill said if Corley doesn't resign, he could be expelled, a process that would start with a complaint to the House Ethics Committee.

Corley, an attorney, has not returned calls to The Associated Press. His attorney declined to give reporters his name at last week's bond hearing.

The 36-year-old Republican was easily re-elected to a second term in November with no opposition.

AP
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Donald Trump has yet again proved that he is intent on ripping up the diplomatic rule book.

In an unprecedented move, the President-elects team are reported to have demanded ambassadors appointed by Barack Obama to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day on 20 January. The decision to provide no grace period for politically appointed ambassadors marks a significant break with decades of tradition.

The move risks leaving the US without envoys in key countries like Britain, Germany and Canada for months. It also means ambassadors families have been forced to find places to live in America or their respective countries with very little notice.

 Vice President Joe Biden tells Donald Trump to 'grow up'

According to a report in the New York Times, Mr Trumps transition team issued the mandate without exceptions in a State Department order sent to diplomats on 23 December.

A senior Trump transition official anonymously told the publication there was no ill will in the decision and it was simply an attempt to ensure Mr Obamas overseas appointees left the government on time.

Ambassadors are said to be thinking about appealing the decision with Rex Tillerson, the billionaire property developers nominee for Secretary of State.

Women go on strike against Donald Trump Show all 7 1 /7 Women go on strike against Donald Trump Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump Protestors march during a demonstration against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump near Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, December 12, 2016. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Women go on strike against Donald Trump Protestors march during a demonstration against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump near Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, December 12, 2016. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Some envoys are said to have voiced their shock that First-Lady-in-waiting Melania Trump has been allowed to take the unusual step of remaining at their Trump Tower home in New York so their 10-year-old son Barron can finish the school year, while their personal lives have been disrupted.

Prior to the rigid timeline which is said to have been introduced, ambassadors had the option of requesting to extend their term. Republican and Democrat administrations allowed extensions on a discretionary individual by individual basis, with allowances sometimes being made for those with children at school.

So far, Mr Trump has only publicly named bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman as ambassador to Israel and Iowa Gov Terry Branstad as his ambassador to China. It is unlikely Mr Trump will have appointed all of his overseas envoys before he is inaugurated.

Mr Trumps first wife, Ivana Trump, has already expressed her interest in becoming ambassador for the Czech Republic under Mr Trumps presidency. While there is no proof this will happen, the President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, expressed his support for her bid, saying: They could not send a better US ambassador to Prague.

Ms Trump, who was born in the Czech Republic and is the mother of Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr and Eric, expressed her eagerness for the role in November, saying she would suggest the idea.
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After Donald Trump received a briefing from intelligence agencies about Russias alleged cyber attack on the presidential election, his response will be viewed by some as predictable: Russia did not help me win.

The president-elect has refused to agree with president Barack Obama and domestic intelligence agencies that Russia hacked the USs cyber systems in order to boost his candidacy and propel him into the White House, at the expense of his rival Hillary Clinton.

In a statement, released 10 minutes after the briefing ended, Mr Trump said he had a constructive meeting with intelligence officials, who were instructed to brief him on the attacks that were reportedly carried out under president Vladimir Putins authority.

He added that he had tremendous respect for the officials work, despite saying their claims were ridiculous before the New Year.

But Mr Trump did not admit that Russia helped him to win the election on 8 November, although he did suggest, for the first time, that Russia had tried to hack US systems.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organisations including the Democratic National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines, he said.

There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

The report said, however, that Russian operatives did manage to hack Republican accounts.

The Office for the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement to confirm they had briefed Mr Trump and Mr Obama.

"The Intelligence Community did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election, and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] assesses that the types of systems the Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying," it read.

Mr Trump's conclusions were not surprising considering that he declared the accusations against Russia were a "political witch hunt", just hours before he was to be briefed.

Vice president-elect Mike Pence told reporters he and Mr Trump had a "constructive and respectful dialogue" with intelligence agencies.

"We are going to take aggressive action in the early days of our new administration to combat cyber attacks and protect the American people from this type of intrusion in the future," he said.

The briefing with Mr Trump comes the same day that a classified report given to president Obama this week is expected to be made public and to shed light on the evidence gathered by US intelligence agencies that led them to believe that Russia was behind the attack. Evidence includes phone calls from Russian officials, congratulating Mr Trump on his win. Mr Trump questioned why NBC gained first access to the report, labelling it "politics".

 Trump's advisor suggests Obama's sanctions against Russia are to 'box in' the incoming President

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein most recently led a movement to expose voting fraud and failure in three swing states where Ms Clinton lost out by a narrow margin. She said she found broken voting machines, disenfranchised segments of the population - usually poor people of colour - and Trump lawyers blocking their efforts at every turn.

Mr Trump called her efforts a scam designed to fill the coffers of the Green Party.

Mr Trump himself claimed that millions of people had voted illegally during the election, but he made no mention of that in his statement. His belief that the election was rigged prompted him to say that he would contest the result if Ms Clinton won.

The Republican vowed that national security would be his number one priority when he takes office on 20 January.

He has spoken against sanctions on Russia, however, and praised its president for not reacting to Mr Obama's expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US.
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President-elect Donald Trump continued his Twitter tirade against the auto industry on Thursday, slamming Toyota for investing in Mexico but appearing to misstate key details of the companys operations.

Trump warned the Japanese carmaker over Twitter that it could face hefty fines for building a plant in Baja, Mexico, to sell the popular Corolla sedan to American consumers. But Trumps tweet looks to be incorrect: Toyotas factory in Baja assembles Tacoma trucks, according to the automaker. A new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, will manufacture Corollas.

That factory broke ground in November, and production is expected to begin in 2019. The work is being shifted to the plant from a facility in Canada. In a statement Thursday, Toyota said that there is no change in employment and production in the United States as a result of the new operations.

Toyota has been part of the cultural fabric in the US for nearly 60 years, the company said. Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to slap American manufacturers with a border tax if they move jobs and production out of the country and then sell goods back to the United States. But this appears to be the first time that Trump has warned that a foreign company could face similar repercussions, and his tax proposal does not lay out a framework for how a border tax might be implemented.

Trade experts said it is unlikely that the White House has the power to punish individual companies through a border tax, though there is debate over whether Trump could unilaterally fulfil his campaign promises to levy blanket double-digit tariffs on imports from Mexico and China. Generally, that authority lies with Congress, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) voiced staunch opposition to such measures earlier this week.

No, were not going to be raising tariffs, he told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday. We think tax reform is the better way of addressing imbalances, levelling the playing field without starting trade wars, without having the adverse effects that you get with protectionism or trade wars.

Trumps tweet came shortly after Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda told reporters that his company is oriented in the same direction as the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal. Toyota said it has invested nearly $22 billion into its operations here and employs about 136,000 workers.

Earlier this week, Trump lashed out at General Motors on Twitter for assembling some of its Chevrolet Cruzes in Mexico. The company said that nearly all of the 190,000 Cruze models sold in the United States last year were made at a factory in Lordstown, Ohio. GM makes Cruze hatchbacks at a factory in Mexico and shipped 4,500 across the border.

On Twitter this week, Trump also celebrated a decision by Ford to cancel a new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico to build the Focus - a business move that he had frequently criticised on the campaign trail. But Ford said the work will move instead to an existing factory in Mexico, a decision driven by declining demand for small cars in the United States. The company said it would use roughly half the money saved to create 700 US jobs and invest in its factories in Michigan and Illinois.

If American companies stay in the United States and continue to hire American workers to grow our manufacturing base, then there is no tariff, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday.

Trumps protectionist stance runs counter to Republicans historic embrace of free trade, and even Trumps top advisers appear to be conflicted over the merits of globalisation. His choice to lead the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, is a Wall Street veteran with extensive international experience. But the head of the newly established National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, has been an outspoken critic of China. Robert Lighthizer, Trumps pick to lead US trade negotiations, has also been sceptical of free trades benefits.

In a statement following Lighthizers nomination this week, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the finance committee, called for clarity on the new White Houses policies.

It is well past time for the incoming administration to explain its approach toward international trade beyond 140 characters, he said.

The Washington Post
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The man who is suspected of gunning down at least 13 people at Fort Lauderdale airport, killing five, has been named as a 26-year-old US citizen Esteban Santiago.

The suspect, who is unharmed and in federal custody, reportedly told the FBI in November that he was hearing voices in his head, that the government "controlled his mind" and "forced" him to watch Isis videos.

He was also being prosecuted for domestic violence, after he threatened his girlfriend through a door last January, broke through it and strangled her, as reported by The Daily Beast.

Santiago was detained at the baggage area at terminal two at the Florida airport on Friday afternoon shortly after he allegedly opened fire, randomly shooting people in the head.

His brother, Bryan Santiago, told the Associated Press that the suspect was receiving psychological treatment in Alaska, where he was living, and the family was alerted to this after receiving a call from his girlfriend.

Bryan Santiago said he did not know what kind of treatment it was and had never talked to his brother about it.

US senator Bill Nelson said the suspect was carrying a military identification at the airport, but it was not clear whether the ID was still current.

The suspect was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was two years old.

He served in the island's National Guard and spent a year serving in Iraq in 2010 in the 130th Engineer Battalion. During his time there, he was awarded the Combat Action Badge as a driver and mechanic.

Santiago was honourably discharged from the Alaska Army National Guard in August 2016, almost two years after joining. He previously served in the US Army Reserves.

On the day of the mass shooting, and contrary to previous reports, the suspect was not on a flight from Canada.

It is believed that he instead flew from Anchorage in Alaska via Minneapolis, according to Canadian Embassy spokeswoman Christine Constantin. There he changed there to another Delta flight to Fort Lauderdale.

Witnesses said the gunman was involved in an altercation during the flight, but the incident was not serious enough for him to be stopped when the plane landed.

When he landed at Fort Lauderdale, he is said to have retrieved his weapon from his checked bag, loaded his weapon in the bathroom and then opened fire in the baggage terminal, saying nothing as he shot randomly at passengers.

He was reportedly apprehended by police when he had stopped to reload his gun and was taken into custody "without incident".

Authorities did not comment on what weapon he used, apart from that it was a semi-automatic handgun.

They told reporters they were at the early stages of the investigation and were yet to identify the deceased or notify their relatives as of 10pm local time.

Law enforcement officials told CNN that Santiago had showed up at the FBI office in Anchorage in November. He was interviewed and said he was hearing voices, including some telling him to join Isis.

He was taken into custody by local police and taken to hospital. He voluntarily checked himself in to hospital for a mental health evaluation. The FBI looked into his "contacts" but then closed the investigation.

Santiago's domestic violence case was ongoing. He violated the terms of his release after he was arrested last January when he turned up at his former partner's house and that case is still pending. The assault case was resolved in March when lawyers in Anchorage deferred prosecution in return for the completion of certain requirements which are unknown.

The FBI said they would pursue "every angle imaginable" and he would most likely face charges.
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Yes. The rules about flying with guns and ammunition are fairly simple: you must pack it in a locked case inside your checked baggage, and tell the airline you have a gun. Airlines may have additional rules on the amount of ammunition  Delta limits passengers to 5kg  but its very much a formality.

Q Security at US airports has been very tight since the attacks of 9/11. How could this shooting happen?

Because the aviation security effort has been focused squarely on a particular threat: that armed hijackers could once again take over an aircraft, or attack it by some other means. So everyone, and everything, that goes airside  the area from which planes depart  is screened very carefully. But people accessing landside areas of airports are not screened. This is common practice at airports in much of the Western world.

Q But surely baggage reclaim is still in the airside area, protected from marauding gunmen?

Sometimes there is a dedicated security presence at baggage reclaim, but that is aimed at preventing theft of luggage from the area, rather than deterring armed attackers.

The most delayed UK airports in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 The most delayed UK airports in pictures The most delayed UK airports in pictures 1. Gatwick Getty Images The most delayed UK airports in pictures 2. Luton PA The most delayed UK airports in pictures 3. Manchester Getty Images The most delayed UK airports in pictures 4. Glasgow PA The most delayed UK airports in pictures 5. Heathrow PA The most delayed UK airports in pictures 6. Edinburgh The most delayed UK airports in pictures 7. Bristol Getty Images The most delayed UK airports in pictures 8. Stansted Getty Images The most delayed UK airports in pictures 9. Birmingham AFP/Getty Images The most delayed UK airports in pictures 10. Newcastle PA WIRE

Q Has this happened before?

There are also echoes in this attack of a suicide bombing at Domodedovo airport in Moscow six years ago, when a terrorist walked into the arrivals area. Thirty-five people died.

It somewhat depends on whether this turns out to be a random shooting event of the kind that are sadly common in the US, or whether there is a terrorist dimension. If the latter, then it is likely changes could be made to protect the baggage reclaim area and check in zone at US airports.

Aviation security professionals around the world are increasingly vocal about the need to defend airports as robustly as aircraft. Tough security that prevents terrorists boarding planes appears to be causing them to switch attention to airports, which are high-profile aviation targets that are often poorly protected.

Q Is Fort Lauderdale a popular airport with British travellers?

Yes. Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, as it is officially known, serves the important cruise port and beach resort of Fort Lauderdale. In addition, the airport is the alternative gateway for Miami. Norwegian flies there from Gatwick, while British Airways will launch a link to Fort Lauderdale in July. The airport is also a key hub for flights to Latin America, and for the US low-cost airline jetBlue.
One of Worlds Longest High-Speed Rail Lines now Operational in China

A section of the world's longest high-speed raiway line in China. (Photo : CCTV)

China said one of the world's longest high-speed railway networks -- the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed line -- began commercial passenger operations on Dec. 28.



The 2,252 kilometer-long line links China's prosperous eastern coast to the less-developed southwest. It traverses five provinces: Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan.



Advertisement

The bullet train line cuts travel time from Shanghai to Kunming from 34 to 11 hours, said the China Railway Corporation. The maximum train speed is 330 km/h.



The Shanghai-Kunming line is the longest east to west high-speed railway in China. Its opening means China's high-speed rail grid now connects almost all provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland.



This early, the Shanghai-Kunming line is being described as China's most beautiful high-speed railway route since many of the train stops are tourist sites. Yunnan is a big attraction for Chinese tourists since the region boasts snow-capped mountains, canyons, tropical forests and ethnic villages.



Trains have led to a tourist boom in several southwest cities over the past few years. In 2016, some 75 percent of visitors to Guilin, a tourist city in Guangxi region, arrived by train.



Train travelers from Guangzhou's Foshan city to Guizhou increased seven-fold, while those to Guangxi rose 67 percent in 2015, said local government officials.



The annual growth of Kunming's tourist arrivals is expected to double with the launch of the Shanghai-Kunming line, said the Kunming Municipal Tourism Development Commission.



Yunnan tourism will get a boost since travelers can reach their destinations faster and spend more time relaxing. The rail line also connects Yunnan with one of the country's leading economic growth zones -- the Shanghai-centered Yangtze River Delta economic zone.



China also launched another high-speed railway line on Jan 4, this one Kunming and Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.



Even longer than the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed line, however, is the north to south 2,298 km Beijing-Guangzhou line that began operations in 2012.



China has built more than 20,000 km of high-speed rail lines. This total will increase to 45,000 km by 2030.


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Five people have been shot dead and 45 injured, some critically, after a gunman opened fire at Fort Lauderdale airport in south Florida.

Authorities said they had arrested 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, an Army National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and was honourably discharged last August from the Alaskan National Guard, in connection with the shootings. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

US officials said Santiago was a passenger on a Delta flight from Anchorage via Minneapolis and carried a checked gun, which he was said to have loaded in the bathroom before allegedly opening fire in the baggage claim area of terminal 2.

Recommended Everything you need to know about suspect shooter Esteban Santiago

His gunfire killed five people and wounded eight, but a total of 37 other people suffered minor injuries after the incident, including panic attacks and diabetic-related issues, according to the Broward Sheriff's office.

They added that the number of people injured was a "fluid situation" and could not say how many people were critically injured.

Florida governor Rick Scott said the shooting was an "evil, despicable act" and called for prayers for the victims in hospital, many of whom are fighting their lives.

He told reporters that now was not the time to be "political" and discuss gun rights. He reportedly did not phone President Barack Obama, but rather phoned President-elect Donald Trump.

"I am going to do everything I can to keep everyone safe," he told CNN. "I'm not going to tolerate this."

Mr Obama said it was too early to say whether the incident was an act of terrorism. He said that he was "heartbroken".

"These kinds of tragedies have happened too often during the years I've been president," he said.

"The pain, the grief, the shock that they must be going through is enormous."

Barbara Sharief, mayor of Broward County, said the shooter acted alone.

"We have no evidence at this time that he was acting with anyone else. [The suspect] is currently in custody and we're investigating."

Investigators have not yet determined a motive for the shooting.

A witness told NBC New that the shootings the gunman had laid down "spread eagle", and was on the ground for "10 to 15 minutes" before the first police officers arrived.

Eyewitness Mike Starobinsky told ABC News that he heard "popping noises" in the terminal. He grabbed his children and took them to meet family in the neighbouring Terminal 3 when he saw a victim outside "bleeding profusely".

Mr Starobinsky took a photograph of the scene outside the terminal that showed a woman giving aid to the bloodied victim.

John Schilcher told Fox News that the "firing went on and on".

Mr Schilcher, who was with his mother-in-law and his wife, said the terminal went "eerily quiet" as the gunman reloaded his weapon.

Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary during the George W Bush administration, was at the airport at the time of the shooting. He tweeted early reports of the incident.

"I'm at the Ft Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired," he wrote. "Everyone is running."

He later added: "All seems calm now, but the police aren't letting anyone out of the airport  at least not the area where I am."

Passengers and employees were evacuated from the terminal onto the tarmac, but some later slowly returned to the inside of the airport. All flights to the airport were being diverted.

"We were told to hit the deck and we stayed there until we were given the green light to leave," a traveller who was at the airport, Bob Foster, told MSNBC. "Needless to say, everybody's pretty shaken up."

Airport officials tweeted: "All services are temporarily suspended at #FLL. Please contact your air carrier about your flight information."

Recommended Shots reported at Fort Lauderdale Airport

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were present to assist state and local law enforcement in their investigation.

Police carried out a controlled explosion on a "suspicious package" left near the railroad tracks, and warned passersby to not be alarmed.

Ft Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport sees some 73,000 passengers pass through daily.
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Security personnel scrambled to deal with a shooting incident at a Florida airport amid reports that at least nine people had been shot and the gunman taken into custody. Reports said one person may have been killed.

Ari Fleischer, the one-time press secretary to former president George W Bush, was among the first to alert people to the sound of shooting, as he passed through Fort Lauderdale International Airport.

I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running, he wrote. The police said there is one shooter and five victims.

He later added: All seems calm now but the police aren't letting anyone out of the airport - at least not the area where I am.

NBC said that nine people had been shot, with one of them killed. Reports suggested the incident had taken place in a baggage area.
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German officials have said they cannot gain a "coherent" picture of how US President-elect Donald Trump's foreign and security policy is shaping up despite meeting with his transition advisers.

Mr Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts.

German officials who have held talks with members of his transition team have not been able to figure out his plans, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said.

Mr Schaefer said: "It ultimately remains the case that there still is no clear, coherent and comprehensive picture of what kind of foreign and security policy the new Trump administration wants to pursue in the world."

Should Mr Trump seek to improve relations with the Kremlin, he could unsettle Germany, whose Chancellor Angela Merkel has supported the extension of European Union sanctions against Russia over its role in the conflict in Ukraine.

US intelligence officials have told Congress that Russia is a full-scope actor that poses a major threat to the United States, as Mr Trump continues to cast doubt on their conclusion that the Kremlin hacked the Democratic Party to try to influence the presidential election.

Top officials appeared on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States, chaired by Sen John McCain.

 CNN anchor calls out Trump team over criticism of Russia allegations

Mr Trump has been critical of the intelligence communitys assessment since it became public in December. He aligned himself with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who published the contents of the Democratic National Committee hack, followed by emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in the final months of the election.

In an unprecedented move, the President-elects team is reported to have demanded ambassadors appointed by Barack Obama leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day on 20 January. The decision to provide no grace period for politically appointed ambassadors marks a significant break with decades of tradition.

The move risks leaving the US without envoys in key countries like Britain, Germany and Canada for months.
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A black transgender woman was found shot to death in Mississippi during the first week of 2017  the first reported homicide against a transgender person this year.

Police responded to a call on Wednesday after the discovery of 41-year-old Mesha Caldwells body outside of the Canton city limits, roughly 30 miles north of Jackson.

The Madison County Sheriffs Office is investigating Ms Caldwells death as a homicide, but have yet to name a suspect in the killing. It remains unclear whether authorities will treat the homicide as a hate crime.

Ms Caldwell was a well known hair and makeup artist in the area, and her death has left ripples in the community.

She was a happy person that loved everyone and never met a stranger, Evonne Kaho, a friend and former roommate of Ms Caldwells told the Clarion-Ledger. Ms Kaho runs the transgender nonprofit Love Me Unlimited 4 Life.

Each time a person of trans experience is killed or experiences violence against them, it is an assault against all of the ideals that we as a country stand for, she added. The ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The freedom of being who we want to be and being entitled to do so without persecution.

This is a tragic event, and it not only impacts the trans community, but the community as a whole.

LGBTQ advocates expressed concern following reports of the killing of Ms Caldwell, as 2016 was the deadliest year for transgender people in the US. Twenty-six transgender people  mostly people of colour  were killed that year, surpassing 2015 in November.

But the actual number of transgender killings may not reflect what is reported. Often times, police reports and local news agencies misidentify transgender people without correction. Initial reports of Ms Caldwells death, in fact, referred to her as her name given at birth.

GLAAD called for more accurate media coverage of transgender death amid the increasing violence against the community.

Disregarding the victims gender identity and misgendering them in news reports adds further insult to injury, compounding the tragedy by invalidating who the victims were, the organisation wrote in a blog post.

The National Coalition issued a statement to Mic and warned against the normalisation of such violence against transgender people.

This is the first homicide of a transgender person that NCAVP has responded to in 2017, during a time of heightened fear and increased violence against LGBTQ communities, said senior manager of national research and policy Emily Waters.

As we continue to hear more reports of violence, we must remind ourselves that this violence is not normal and fight harder than ever to keep transgender people safe."
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A Muslim-owned restaurant in Canada is offering free food to the hungry.

Marche Ferdous, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Montreal, says he started handing out food around four months ago to help homeless people.

A sign outside the restaurant, written in English and French, reads People with no money welcome to eat for free.

The owner, Yahya Hashemi, said he did not "consider how much it will cost and instead consider it a business expense.

He told CBC News the idea came when he saw how often people in the area would be asked for spare change to buy food.

At first he would give them money to spend in the restaurant but then decided it would be simpler to tell them the food was free.

He put the sign up because some are shy, some don't believe we are offering this.

The Iranian-born businessman, who also owns a currency exchange next door, said it was part of his faith to help those in need and wanted to give back to Canada as it had already given him so much.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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Mr Hashemi said his patrons had been inspired by his generosity and had begun donating money so he can continue to help.

He said: They come here, they donate $20, $30, $50 and they say, 'OK, the next few people are on me.

The restaurants chef, Abdelkader Bejaoui, told CTV News that it was not that big a deal.

He said: It doesn't matter, because at night if you still have leftover food you end up throwing it out, so why not give to those in need? It's not a big deal.

It follows a similar move by a Muslim-owned restaurant in Winchester which offers free meals to the homeless and the elderly at least twice a year.

Romi Miah, the manager of the Light of Bengal curry house, said: We do it twice a year, usually once around Christmas. Nobody else does it, but there are a lot of homeless people and they need food.

Its something different and were giving something back.
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While Donald Trump has been busy venting his frustrations about China and boasting about the fact he is a ratings machine on Twitter, Barack Obama has been putting the final touches to a 56 page Harvard article as he prepares to leave office.

The article, which is titled The President's role in advancing criminal justice reform, is an emotive plea for change in the criminal justice system and argues that the president should play a role in reducing mass incarceration.

Appearing in the January 2017 edition of the Harvard Law Review, the piece explores one of the issues closest to the Presidents heart and one which he has been most vocal about.

Mr Obama has a long-running relationship with the esteemed publication and was elected to be its first black president over 25 years ago while studying at law school. He is also the first sitting president to juggle Washington duties with academia and publish work in the publication.

In the article, which boasts 317 footnotes, Mr Obama indirectly urges the President-elect to maintain his criminal justice legacy. The billionaire Republican appears likely to take a tougher attitude towards the criminal justice system.

Michelle Obama as the First Lady Show all 11 1 /11 Michelle Obama as the First Lady Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty Michelle Obama as the First Lady Getty

The lengthy commentary explains how his presidency has meant he has had to detach himself from criminal justice issues.

Oftentimes, it is a viral YouTube video that leads the evening news, incites protests, and drives calls for reform, he writes. Like millions of others, I would watch these videos, but the office makes it difficult to comment the way a journalist or activist would without being accused of prejudging the facts or influencing the legal process.

The President of the Harvard Law Review, Michael Zuckerman, applauded Mr Obamas article, saying they were enormously proud to publish it.

We were struck, of course, by the honour of publishing the first work of legal scholarship by a sitting president - and in this case, a president whom were proud to count among the alumni (and former presidents) of our journal, he wrote in a piece on the White Houses Medium page.
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The presidential election isn't over yet.

A joint session of Congress could still opt to challenge the result and stop Donald Trump from becoming President. But it almost certainly won't.

As the last part of the US election, Congress must count the votes of the electoral college. Those votes were cast by the 538 electors last month  and gave Donald Trump a clear majority  but the process won't be finished until they are verified by legislators.

That process will be overseen by Vice President Joe Biden in his role as president of the Senate. And unless something very strange happens, it will be the last stage before President Donald Trump is sworn in at his inauguration 20 January.

Friday's vote count marks the last chance for Democrats and other anti-Trump forces to disrupt Trump's election. But even if they are successful, the most Democrats could do is slow the process. They don't have the votes to overturn the outcome.

World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Show all 29 1 /29 World reaction to President Trump: In pictures World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty Images World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mosul , Iraq Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures New Delhi, India Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Karachi, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kabul, Afghanistan AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem. Israel Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Moscow, Russia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Seoul, South Korea AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Peshawar, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Hyderabad, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kolkata, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Aleppo, Syria Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem, Israel EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Baghdad, Iraq Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Tokyo, Japan Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico Getty

Under federal law, if at least one senator and one House member object to the vote from any state, the House and Senate would meet separately to decide the merits of the objection.

Several House Democrats have talked about filing an objection, but no senator has publicly backed the idea. Regardless, with Republicans controlling both chambers, any objection would have little chance of affecting the outcome.

One House representative, Ed Perlmutter from Colorado, considered objecting but said, "This is not about trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming president."

Perlmutter said he wants to register his objection to Russia after U.S. intelligence community findings that Moscow engaged in computer hacking to sway the election in favor of Trump. America's top intelligence official told Congress on Thursday that Russia undoubtedly interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

"We cannot allow a foreign nation to ever influence our elections because it harms our liberty, freedom and independence," Perlmutter said in a statement. "This is bigger than just one election, and for the sake of our democracy, we must remain vigilant."

All 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes. Trump finished with 304 votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton with 227, according to a tally by The Associated Press. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

Trump won even though Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes. His election has generated much angst among Democrats and others who oppose the billionaire businessman. But they have been powerless to change the outcome.

 Electoral College voting: How the United States decides its president

Despite rumblings of a revolt, only two Republican electors  both from Texas  cast protest votes for someone other than Trump. Clinton lost four Democratic electors in Washington state and one in Hawaii.

The secretary of state's office in Washington said the four "faithless" electors would be fined $1,000 apiece.

Additional reporting by Press Association
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Donald Trump has claimed Mexico will reimburse the US taxpayer for any money spent on building a border wall between the two countries, after it emerged he would approach Congress to foot the bill.

House Republicans revealed the President-elect would use public funds for the estimated $14 billion (11 billion) project, in a U-turn from the repeated pledge during his presidential campaign that he would force Mexico to fund its construction.

Mr Trump appeared to confirm reports on Friday by saying US funds would only be used for sake of speed and would subsequently be repaid by its neighbour country.

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! he wrote on Twitter.

He did not clarify how he intended to force the Mexican government to repay the US.

It follows a string of similar reversals for the incoming leader. In October, he suggested for the first time that Mexico would reimburse the US for the cost of the wall, and in November, he admitted certain areas would likely be a fence.

In December, he claimed parts of the wall he pledged to build would not be needed due to mountains and vicious rivers in some areas.

 Trump maintains that Mexico will build wall

House officials told CNN Mr Trump would seek to fund the project through the appropriations process as soon as April.

A total of 12 standard appropriation bills are passed each fiscal year by Congress that cover federal government spending.

However, many are concerned by the huge cost of the project to the taxpayer.

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada denied Mexico would refund any cost associated with building the wall.

Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument. Another promise he cant keep, he wrote on Twitter on Friday.

If the country refuses to fund the scheme, as it has promised to do, the Republican party would have to absorb the cost into the spending bill, which needs to pass by 28 April for the government to stay open.

However, doing so would likely provoke opposition from Senate Democrats and possibly cause a government shutdown.

Republican leaders, with Mr Trumps transition team, are reportedly considering using a 2006 law signed by former President George W Bush, which allowed for more than 700 miles of physical barrier to be built on the southern border, according to Politico.

However, GOP sources claimed no decisions had been made.

House Majority Whip Rep Steve Scalise of Louisiana said the details of a plan were still being finalised.

We want President Trump to have all the tools he needs to build the wall, he told CNN.

Were in talks with him on the details of it as theyre still putting together their team. Weve still got a few months before theres another funding bill thats going to move. Were going to work with him to make sure we can get it done. We want to build a wall. He wants to build a wall.
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A former Mexican president has accused Donald Trump of making another promise he cant keep after the President-elect claimed Mexico would reimburse the US taxpayer for any money spent on building a border wall between the two countries.

Vicente Fox Quesada, who led the National Action Party between 2000 and 2006, called the wall a racist monument and denied the Republican leader's claims that the country would pay for its construction.

Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument. Another promise he can't keep, Mr Fox wrote on Twitter.

It came as House Republicans revealed Mr Trumps plans to use public funds for the estimated $14 billion (11 billion) project, in a U-turn on his repeated pledge to make Mexico fund the wall outright.

Mr Trump appeared to confirm reports on Friday by saying US funds would only be used "for sake of speed and would subsequently be repaid by its neighbour country.

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! he wrote on Twitter.

Despite Mr Trumps assurances, he did not clarify how he intended to force the Mexican government to repay the US.

"We've been very clear that Mexico will never consider paying for a wall that puts barriers between our two countries, Mexican Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu said in November.

We will not pay for it, because it goes against everything we believe our two countries can do together, are doing together.

In September, current Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto wrote on Twitter: "I repeat what I told you personally Mr Trump: Mexico will never pay for a wall."
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At least 50 Electoral College members who voted when Donald Trump was certified as the next US president may have been ineligible to do so, according to the findings of an extensive legal report.

A bipartisan team of lawyers from across the US compiled a 1,000-page briefing on voting eligibility for Congress members, who are due to give their final ruling on the Electoral College vote on Friday.

The report reveals at least 50 votes by College members who met on 19 December were not lawfully certified, because the voters did not live in the congressional districts they represented, or held elected office in states which barred dual officeholders.

At the Electoral College meeting in December, Mr Trump won 304 votes and his election opponent Hillary Clinton won 227. Since 270 votes are required for a candidate to win the presidency, Mr Trump may not have enough eligible backers to take the role, if the reports findings are correct.

The team, made up of senior lawyers and legal assistants, pointed to examples of multiple voters from Florida, North Carolina, Indiana and Texas who were not eligible to cast their vote and said Congress members should consider this when making their decision.

We have reason to believe that there are at least 50 electoral votes that were not regularly given or not lawfully certified, an executive summary of the report said. The number could be over a hundred. We urge you to prepare written objections for 6 January.

Specifically, at least 16 electors lived outside the congressional districts they represented in violation of state statutory residency requirements, and at least 34 electors held dual offices, in direct violation of statutes prohibiting dual-office holding.

US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty

On Thursday, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas confirmed she and 10 colleagues were planning to contest Mr Trumps election when members meet at the Capitol. "This is an American question of justice and fairness and the appropriate running of presidential elections," Sheila Jackson Lee told Politico.

The results of the Electoral College vote have only been challenged twice in 140 years.
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Intelligence officials concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacks of the Democratic National Committee to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election, according to an declassified report.

The report comes a day after intelligence chiefs  including National Intelligence director James Clapper and NSA director Michael Rogers  testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on their findings in their investigation of the hacks.

"We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," the report reads, "the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency."

Motivation behind Mr Putin's apparent order of the hacks, the report says, was rooted in a vendetta the Russian president had against the former Secretary of State.

"[H]e has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and 2012," it adds, "and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him."

"We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US... election to future influence efforts."

According to the 25-page document, the leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Vladimir Zhirinovskiy celebrated the possibility of a Trump win. He apparently proclaimed that "Russia would 'drink champagne' in anticipation of being able to advance its positions on Syria and Ukraine."

Sections of the highly classified report delivered to President Obama on Friday were also made public. They reveal that the CIA, FBI, and NSA agreed that Russia sponsored social media "trolls" in addition to the cyber warfare to disseminate false and negative information about Ms Clinton to the benefit of Mr Trump.

"A journalist who is a leading expert on the Internet Research Agency claimed that some social media accounts that appear to be tied to Russias professional trollsbecause they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukrainestarted to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015," it said.

Earlier on Friday, President-elect Trump met with intelligence agencies regarding the issue, and while he finally conceded the likelihood of a Russia-backed hack of US systems, he insisted they did not help him win the election.

"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organisations including the Democratic National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," he said, contrary to what the report actually states.

 DNI Chief describes current Russian cyber threat

"We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election," the report said.

Mr Clapper, who will leave his post come 20 January, said in his Thursday testimony that the hacks did not change the vote tallies, but intelligence agencies did not review how the information disseminated could have affected voters' decisions.

We have no way of gauging the impact ... it had on the choices the American electorate made," he said. "Whether or not that constitutes an act of war is a very heavy policy call that I dont believe the intelligence community should make."
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A group of Conservative Muslim politicians are seeking a total ban on the production, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages in Indonesia.

Muslim parties control less than a third of the legislative seats in the country, however Conservative groups have become more assertive in recent years.

In 2015, the Government banned the sale of beer in small grocery shops, leading to a 13 per cent decline in sales, according to research firm Euromonitor.

Now, work is being done to limit the production of home-brews, known as Oplosan, responsible for the majority of alcohol-related deaths in the country, according to the Economist.

However, many would oppose increased regulation as an affront to the diversity of the country, with its rich, multi faith culture made up of large Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities.

Despite its reputation for being a liberal Muslim country, home to the worlds largest Muslim population, some are concerned about increasing fundamentalism.

The state-backed council of clerics, Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), has in recent years condemned numerous practices, including homosexual partnerships.

The countrys Parliament has also passed strict anti-pornography laws, and some Conservative Muslim groups are calling for the courts to criminalise extramarital sex.

Under a potential new ban of alcohol, drinkers could face two years in jail.

However, many brewers argue that alcohol consumption is a long-standing tradition in the country and not something to be vilified as a Western decadence.

It is part of the culture of Indonesia, Michael Chin, chief executive of Multi Bintang, the countrys biggest brewer, told the Economist.

Since 2014, there has been an alcohol ban enforced in Aceh, an autonomous province where Sharia law is applied. Anyone found in breach of the strict codes of conduct, including visitors, could face between six and nine cane lashes.

According to the World Health Organisation, Indonesians consume less than one litre of alcohol per head each year.
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Pakistan's chief justice is demanding a full police probe into allegations that a 10-year-old girl working as a maid was tortured by her employers, an influential judge and his wife.

Mian Saqib Nisar has also ordered the police to find and bring the child into court next week. Her location is presently unknown.

Adding to the confusion, two women previously unheard of appeared before Nisar in the court in Islamabad on Friday, each claiming the girl in question is their child. The judge requested DNA tests.

The case has shocked and captivated many in Pakistan after disturbing photographs of the girl, purporting to show her badly beaten and bruised, circulated on social media.

The wife of the judge earlier denied the accusations against the couple in remarks to the AP.

AP
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Austria's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz said on Friday he wanted to ban public servants, including school teachers, from wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Mr Kurz, of the Christian Conservative People's Party (OVP), is working on a draft law with Muna Duzdar, a junior minister from the OVP's senior Social Democrat coalition partner who has an Arab family background and is Muslim.

If passed by parliament, the nationwide ban would be stricter than laws in France, where only the full body veil is illegal, or Germany, where the highest court in 2015 restricted MPs' scope to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf.

Because there (schools), it's about the effect of role models and the influence on young people. Austria is religion-friendly but also a secular state, Mr Kurz said, according to a spokesman.

Christian crosses, widespread in staunchly Catholic Austria, should be allowed in classrooms, Mr Kurz said, referring to the country's historically grown culture.

An adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in March companies should be allowed to prohibit staff from wearing the Islamic headscarf but only as part of a general ban on religious and political symbols.

Mr Kurz is revamping Austria's integration laws and would also like to include a ban on full body veils and restrictions on the distribution of the Koran by Salafist Muslims, his spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Austria's most prominent Muslim group, IGGIO, noted that discrimination in the workplace on religious grounds was illegal in Austria and said: After such a statement, trust is badly shaken.

She said such a ban would send the wrong signal, not least because working women wearing the headscarf could help overcome deep patriarchal prejudices.

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Ms Duzdar also told Reuters a person cannot be discriminated against in the workplace on the grounds of their religion and said she wanted to wait for a final ECJ ruling on the issue before sending the law to parliament.

I'm open to discussions about this but in reality one cannot pick individual religions. If you discuss religious dress and symbols, you have to speak about all religions. We work on a dialogue with all religious communities, she said.

The coalition has not set a deadline for the draft to be finished.

In a hardening of her stance on migrants' integration in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel last month called for a ban on full face veils wherever legally possible.

Reuters
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Ignoring thousands of pleas for clemency, at least two wildlife parks that wanted to re-home him and an offer of 415,000 from a wealthy benefactor, Copenhagen Zoo went ahead with the killing of Marius the giraffe on Sunday morning.

After a bolt gun to the head, he was dissected publicly in front of a crowd of children then fed to the lions.

It was a bold statement of just how confident the zoo was in its decision to kill a perfectly healthy animal after less than two years of life.

The reason  his genes were too similar to other giraffes in a breeding programme run by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA)  failed to convince furious animal rights campaigners and the zoo was deluged with complaints on social media.

Copenhagen Zoo noted on its Facebook page that there was  massive debateabout one of our giraffes.

Its scientific director, Bengt Holst, said the zoo was working to maintain a healthy giraffe population in European zoos.

In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed Marius the giraffe before he was put down In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed A lion is fed the carcass of Marius In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed A vet holds up one of Marius' hooves while performing an autopsy on the young giraffe at Copenhagen zoo In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed A vet carries out an autopsy on Marius in front of a crowd at Copenhagen zoo In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed Children watch on and take pictures as a vet dissects Marius In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed A vet skins Marius in front of a crowd at Copenhagen zoo In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed People gather outside Copenhagen zoo to protest the slaughter of Marius the giraffe In pictures: Marius the giraffe skinned and fed to lions as children watch on (Warning: graphic images) Marius the giraffe killed Marius the giraffe before he was euthanized AFP/Getty Images

This is done by constantly ensuring that only unrelated giraffes breed so that inbreeding is avoided. If an animals genes are well represented in a population further breeding with that particular animal is unwanted, he said in a statement.

Marius the giraffe (Warning: graphic images)

Marius genes were well represented and there was no place for him in the zoos herd, so it had been decided in conjunction with EAZA officials that he had to go.

When breeding success increases, it is sometimes necessary to euthanize, Mr Holst added.

The reaction to the death of Marius was swift.

Stine Jensen, of Denmarks Organisation Against the Suffering of Animals, said the giraffe had been treated like a waste product, while Animal Rights Sweden said: The only way to stop this is to not visit zoos.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park said it was saddened to hear of his death, expressing disappointment that its last minute offer to house Marius in its state-of-the-art giraffe house alongside four other males, including one from Copenhagen Zoo, had been ignored. A Dutch wildlife park had also offered to re-home him.

Thousands took to social media to voice their opposition.

There were so many better options than to murder that young giraffe. What's worse, you made it a public spectacle, and set an appalling example, said one message on the zoos Facebook site.

Clearly you had a choice to be kind and not kill this magnificent animal. Shame on you for doing the wrong thing! All zoos are prisons...& you are nothing but executioners! a poster said.

Sick sick sick!!! Disgusting boycott all zoos!! was another verdict.

Dr Lesley Dickie, executive director of EAZA, lamented that such strong feelings were not focused on conservation issues like the illegal trade in wildlife.

She also insisted most people would see the bigger picture once they were aware of all the facts.

It was great that people care about giraffes, she said, but she stressed that maintaining the genetic diversity of the captive population was important, particularly if there were ever attempts to reintroduce captive giraffes to the wild.

Dr Dickie, former conservation manager of the Zoological Society of London, admitted that moving Marius somewhere else seemed like  a nice thing to do.

But what that does is take up space for breeding herds. It does seem harsh, I know, but we have to manage it, she said.

It would be brilliant if we had unlimited space, but unfortunately thats not the case.

How many animals were euthanized for human consumption today? From my point of view, the welfare of any animal should be considered in the same way.

Because its a giraffe, people get very concerned.
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A local German newspaper has fired back at alt-right news website Breitbart for twisting its reports of minor New Years Eve violence into fake news.

The right-wing American website, which enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence in 2016, claimed a 1,000-strong mob chanting Allahu Akbar set fire to the countrys oldest church in Dortmund.

But a Dortmund paper, which carried the original report, suggests these facts, including a claim that an Isis-affiliated flag was being waved, are wildly inaccurate.

Police have since described the night as average to quiet and said Dortmund New Years Eve incidents were down from 421 to 185 on last year.

The editor of Ruhr Nachrichten was sent pictures of severed heads and a gallows after the website's reporting ruhrnachrichten.de (ruhrnachrichten.de)

Foreign media and users of social networks on the internet used our online reports for fake news, hatred and propaganda, said Ruhr Nachrichten editor Peter Bandermann.

The Breitbart report, published on Tuesday, claimed fireworks were launched at St Reinolds church in Leeds Square which set the roof alight.

It also claimed that fireworks were hurled at a group of homeless people and that a Free Syrian Army flag was waved.

The fire, which engulfed netting which surrounded scaffolding on the church, reportedly lasted for no more than 12 minutes ruhrnachrichten.de (ruhrnachrichten.de)

Mr Bandermann on the other hand, in a Q&A-style response published the following day, said that from between 6.45pm and 1.30am, groups of young foreign men formed a large group of 1,000 people.

He said the fire at the church only set light to netting surrounding the building and lasted just 12 minutes.

Only one person  singular  was accused of hitting a homeless man with a firework.

Leading Breitbart figure Steve Bannon, former website executive chairman, now Donald Trump's chief strategist Paul Marotta/Getty (Paul Marotta/Getty)

The flag, being waved by a group reportedly celebrating the war-torn countrys ceasefire, is often adopted in general opposition to President Bashar al-Assads regime.

Mr Bandermann, who was sent pictures of severed heads and a gallows in the aftermath of his papers New Years Eve coverage, also singled out Austrian news website Wochenblick as having distorted reporting.

He said that saying Allahu Akbar is as normal as saying Amen in church, adding: Fake news producers compare these people from Leeds Square to the assassins of Munich, Wurzburg and the priest murderer in France.

The fact is, there were no signs that terrorists were celebrating in Dortmund.

Journalist Alexander Becker, writing in an online media industry publication, said: "The report is a lesson on the deliberate twisting of facts."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously said: We must confront this phenomenon [of fake news] and if necessary, regulate it.

The Breitbart report said more than 1,000 men chanted 'Allahu Akhbar' Screen grab (Screen grab)

The disruption in Dortmund, which saw 43 people injured compared to 52 on the night last year, followed around 1,000 women claiming to have been sexually assaulted in Cologne and Hamburg on New Years Eve 2015.

Breitbart has become the notorious platform for the so-called alt-right, an extreme right-wing movement that some claim promotes racist and white nationalist ideology.

Its headlines have included, Theres no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews and Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.

Recommended Mark Zuckerberg reveals huge changes to Facebook to stop fake news

Formerly chaired by Donald Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, and edited by Nigel Farage aide Raheem Kassam in London, it has been quick itself to accuse other outlets of promoting fake news.

Breitbart.coms unique visitors increased 124 per cent to 17m in December 2015, according to ComScore, and then up to 37m according to Breitbart themselves in October 2016.

The Independent has contacted Breitbart representatives for comment.
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Italian councillors have supported a proposal for a new four-day week as a way of tackling mounting unemployment.

Piergiovanni Alleva, a regional councillor for the Emilia Romagna region of northern Italy, recommended that the working week be reduced from 40 to 32 hours.

Mr Alleva said the change could create up to 200,000 jobs by introducing new roles in a variety of disciplines and industries, providing work for the regions 160,000 unemployed.

Italys working week was last cut down in 1977, when Saturday was abolished as a working day and hours were reduced from 48 to 40. Italian employers can be fined up to 1,500 if they break the rules, and it is believed the change led to one million new jobs being created across the country.

Mr Alleva told a council meeting he believed the change would entirely absorb unemployment in the region, according to Il Corriere di Bologna. Councillors will consider the bill after it is finalised and presented to the local assembly.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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The Italian government has encouraged work-sharing schemes for several decades, and all workers are entitled to at least four weeks paid holiday every year. In October last year, the unemployment rate in Italy was 11.6 per cent, up from 6 per cent 10 years ago.

Meanwhile a six-hour workday experiment in Sweden was recently abandoned, after expert findings revealed that the costs outweigh the benefits.

In August last year, retail giant Amazon piloted a four day, 30-hour working week scheme in an effort to create "a work environment that is tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career growth".
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German doctors have told people they should walk like penguins to avoid falling over in icy conditions.

Surgeons from the German Society of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery advised that pedestrians lean forward slightly as they walk, placing their centre of gravity over their front front to help avoid a slip with the temperature due to drop well below freezing, Reuters reported.

Waddling like a penguin is distinct from the normal human gait, in which body weight is split more or less evenly over both legs.

Recommended Hungry penguins target jellyfish with large gonads

Berlin city authorities faced criticism in 2014 for failing to spread grit on pavements even though weather forecasters had warned of freezing conditions.

Reuters said rescue services received 750 calls that January and doctors were overwhelmed by the number of bone fracture cases.

Temperatures were predicted to fall to minus 10C in Berlin this weekend.
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A teenage soldier from Iran has become something of a national hero after risking his life to save a stray dog that was trapped in a minefield.

Nineteen-year-old Mohammad Bakhtar, from the northwestern city of Tabriz, was at his post at a military base last month when he noticed a dog had got caught in barbed wire surrounding the adjacent minefield.

He couldnt bear the animals moans of pain, and in freeing it accidentally put his foot over the wrong side of the fence.

As soon as the dog ran away, a mine exploded, tearing off his right leg. Despite doctors best efforts, they could not reattach it.

As he was recuperating in hospital, Mr Bakhtars story was picked up on Telegram and other social media platforms, and then national media.

Both Shia and Sunni locals as well as elected officials queued up to see him in hospital, and thousands more holding banners and pictures stood outside the hospital to wish him a speedy recovery.

I salute this young soldier as the symbol of honour and bravery, and wish the Middle East had many like him as a panacea for long-existing problems, al-Jazeera reported one woman from Tehran as tweeting.

(Twitter (Twitter)

Despite the pain of losing his leg, Mr Bakhtar told al-Jazeera he would do exactly the same thing a second time if he saw an animal in distress.

I love animals. I love nature, he said, mentioning that he grew up in the countryside with cattle and a dog, which he missed after moving to the city.

On his release to his hometown of Marivan last week, Mr Bakhtar was greeted by a crowd bearing flowers, wreaths and banners reading Welcome back, brave soldier" and "messenger of peace."

One man cycled 190 miles (300 kilometres) in the winter weather to show his respect for the soldier, whom he said was the symbol of love for God's creatures."

 Iran cashing in on medical tourism

Many are calling for Mr Bakhtar to receive compensation for the accident and be given a new job. He was halfway through his compulsory 24-month military service when the incident occurred.

He reportedly received a phone call from Vice President of the Environmental Protection Organisation (EPO) Masoumeh Ebtekar who offering the soldier a job working with nature.

Mr Ebtekar publicly praised the wounded man as a a source of honour and pride for every Iranian.
The two Moroccan soldiers were part of a 12,500 strong UN peacekeeping force sent to the country in 2013 after civil conflict broke out

Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid condemned on Friday an attack launched on a UN peacekeeping convoy in Central African Republic, which resulted in the death of two Moroccan soldiers.

In a statement issued by the ministry, Abu Zeid expressed Egypt's condolences to the families of the soldiers and to the people and government of Morocco.

The two Moroccan soldiers of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) were killed on Tuesday by unidentified militants in an armed attack near the town of Bria, northeast of the capital Bangui.

The Central African Republic has slipped into violence since a civil conflict broke out in 2013 between Muslim rebels and members of the Christian majority.

In December 2013, 12,500 peacekeepers were deployed in the country as part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).





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Russias withdrawal of military forces from Syria is more of a political statement than a military statement, an expert in the Syrian conflict has said.

Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian general staff, said Russias only aircraft carrier and smaller accompanying warships would be the first to return from Syria.

However, the announcement is unlikely to be followed by a full withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria, Dr Lina Khatib, the head of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, has said.

Russia is not yet done with its campaign in Syria, Ms Khatib told The Independent. I think the announcement on its withdrawal is possibly a statement about a milestone in the conflict from Russias perspective after retaking Aleppo from the rebels.

But there are still other areas in Syria controlled by rebels that Russia and the Syrian regime are going to focus on next.

 Vladimir Putin announces ceasefire agreement in Syria

She added: That is why this withdrawal announcement is more of a symbolic one, because the fight is not over for Russia.

Syrian rebels fleeing from Aleppo have taken refuge in Idlib. At the time, UN special envoy Steffan de Mistura warned a cessation of hostilities across Syria was needed to stop Idlib from becoming the next Aleppo.

Russia previously announced a military withdrawal in March, although Ms Khatib said that did not really have much of an impact on the ground because the Russian air strike campaign continued.

She said if Russia does withdraw any troops, they will be non-essential personnel. I would read the latest announcement as more of a political statement than a military statement, she added.

Along with its carrier group in Syria, Russia operates an airbase in Latakia and a naval facility in Tartus.

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

Russian President Vladimir Putins announcement of a partial withdrawal was followed in October by the deployment of its largest surface deployment since the Cold War to bolster the assault on the rebels last urban stronghold of Aleppo.

Russian military power was instrumental in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regain control of the city, which was captured from rebel forces last month.

The current Syrian peace process, brokered by Russia and Turkey, is nowhere near starting, Ms Khatib said.

She said: I think Russias actions on the ground continue to indicate that it is not interested in negotiations despite its own announcement of wanting to host talks.

The fact that Russia announced a ceasefire that was not met with an actual halt in regime military activities in Syria is an indicator that neither Russia nor the Syrian regime are ready for peace talks.

Basically, as long as Russia and the Syrian regime feel that they have a chance to win this war militarily, they will pursue that rather than seek a political compromise.
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Russia has begun to withdraw its military forces from Syria, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces has said.

Valery Gerasimov said Russias only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and smaller accompanying warships would be the first to return from the Syrian port town of Tartous to Murmansk.

In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, [President] Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defence Ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces deployment in Syria, TASS news agency quoted Mr Gerasimov as saying on Friday.

Mr Putin said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria under the terms of a 30 December ceasefire deal between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government.

Russian military power was instrumental in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regain control of Aleppo, which was captured from rebel forces last month.

Mr Putin sent the countrys largest surface deployment since the end of the Cold War to Syria in November in order to bolster the assault on last rebel-held urban stronghold, a show of strength dismissed by Nato sources as posturing.

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

Airstrikes from the Admiral Kuznetsov on rebel targets in northern Syrian marked the first time the carrier had been used in combat, despite having been in the Soviet Unions navy since the 1980s.

During its short deployment an Su-33 and an MiG-29 fighter jet were lost, both of which crashed while trying to land after sorties due to problems with the carriers landing system.

The current ceasefire in the Syrian conflict was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which supports Syrias Sunni rebels. It is nominally in place across areas of the country not controlled by Isis or Kurdish groups, but both the government and opposition have blamed each other for several violations.

 Vladimir Putin announces ceasefire agreement in Syria

Damascus blames rebels in the valley of Wadi Barada for cutting off the water supply to millions in the capital, which the UN warned on Thursday could constitute a war crime. The rebels, in turn, say air raids and ground assaults on the area by the Syrian army and allied Lebanese Hezbollah have not ceased, despite the truce.

Peace negotiations are supposed to be held in Astana, Kazakhstans capital, later this month, although several rebel signatories have since frozen the process.

It is widely thought that Aleppos fall has strengthened Mr Assads position enough to allow Russia to begin a military exit, although some analysts point out Moscows revitalised influence in the region is not likely to wane.

Moscow continues to maintain two army bases in government-held Syria.
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A Canadian woman has reportedly been arrested in Turkey for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Facebook.

Ece Heper, 50, was arrested in the northeastern city of Kars and charged on 30 December, her lawyer Sertac Celikkaleili told The Canadian Press.

Ms Heper, who has dual Canadian and Turkish citizenship, is a resident of Ontario, Canada.

 Erdogan: Turkey coup bid 'an act of treason'

Canadian authorities have said they are offering consular assistance, but are yet to release any further information over privacy concerns.

It could take at least a month before Ms Heper's case goes to trial, her friend Emrah Bayram told the BBC.

Her friends say Ms Heper suffers from "some health issues" and expressed concern about her access to medicine while detained.

In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks driving to the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus yesterday AFP/Getty In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish-backed gather on the outskirts of Jarabulus, Syria, ahead of an offensive on 24 August 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks make their way towards the Syrian border town of Jarabulus, Syria August 24, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish soldiers return from Syria to Turkey with tanks after a military operation at the Syrian border as part of their offensive against the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria, Karkamis district of Gaziantep, Turkey, 25 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish army tanks and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces move toward the Syrian border as pictured from Karkamis, Turkey, AP In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Turkish tanks on their way to the Turkish-Syria border during an operation against Isis on 24 August 2016 EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria Syrian opposition fighters being transported during preparations to enter Jarabulus in Karkamis, Turkey, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria An air strike hitting Isis-controlled territory near Jarabulus, near the Turkish border, on 24 August 2016. EPA In pictures: Turkey launches operation in Syria A Turkish army tank and an armoured vehicle stationed near the border with Syria. Turkish media reports say Turkish artillery has launched new strikes at Isis targets across the border AP

Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Turkey.

Lawyers for Mr Erdogan have filed more than 1,800 cases against people, including cartoonists, a former Miss Turkey winner and a 16-year-old student on accusations of insulting him.

One man was given a suspended one-year jail sentence for sharing images comparing the president to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.
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Turkey dismissed a further 6,000 police officers, civil servants, and academics on Friday as part of an ongoing purge.

The country has been under emergency rule since a failed coup last July. Thousands of people have been removed from their roles or arrested under the strict measures.

In the latest round of dismissals, 2,687 police officers, 2,537 officials from the justice and health ministries, 634 academics and 135 officials from the religious affairs directorate were let go, according to decrees printed in the Official Gazette.

The government, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also stated in the decrees that individuals living overseas who are being sought by the Turkish authorities might have their citizenship revoked if they fail to return within three months, Reuters reported.

In total, 120,000 people have been suspended or dismissed from their jobs since the coup attempt, although thousands of them have since been restored to their posts. More than 41,000 have been jailed pending trial, out of 100,000 who have faced investigation.

The first group of people accused of supporting the attempt to overthrow Mr Erdogan went on trial in the Silivri district of Istanbul on 27 December.

Parliament, dominated by the ruling AKP, voted this week to extend emergency rule by another three months in a move the government said was needed to sustain a purge of supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Turkey accuses Mr Gulen and his network of followers, which it terms the Gulenist Terror Organisation (FETO), of being behind the 15 July coup attempt. Mr Gulen denies the allegations.

In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: Turkey coup attempt In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Erdogan attends the funeral service for victims of the thwarted coup in Istanbul at Fatih mosque on July 17, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey Burak Kara/Getty Images In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soldiers involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge with their hands raised in Istanbul on 16 July, 2016 Gokhan Tan/Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A civilian beats a soldier after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 REUTERS/Murad Sezer In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Surrendered Turkish soldiers who were involved in the coup are beaten by a civilian Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soliders involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags as they capture a Turkish Army vehicle Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt People pose near a tank after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A Turkish military stands guard near the Taksim Square in Istanbul Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Pierre Crom/Twitter In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers secure the area as supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul's Taksim square AP In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Murad Sezer/Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers detain police officers during a security shutdown of the Bosphorus Bridge Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish Army armoured personnel carriers in the main streets of Istanbul Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Chaos reigned in Istanbul as tanks drove through the streets EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media in the resort town of Marmaris Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of President Erdogan celebrate in Ankara following the suppression of the attempted coup Reuters

Emergency rule enables the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms when deemed necessary. It was imposed immediately after the attempted coup and then extended for the first time for a second three-month period in October.

The decrees also give state-appointed administrators the right to sell companies they take over. Hundreds of firms, many of them smaller provincial businesses, have been seized in the post-coup crackdown.

One of the decrees allows private security guards to carry guns under certain conditions at work, an apparent response to a shooting claimed by Isis at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Day in which 39 people were killed.
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World War Three is just around the corner and the planet is teetering on the brink of all-out conflict  according to people in major Western nations, at least.

A new poll shows the public are somewhat gloomy about the future, fearing a worldwide conflict is looming.

With superpowers backing different sides in the bloody conflict in Syria, Isis continuing to fight in the Middle East, a spate of terrorist attacks across the globe and Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump both talking a tough game, the YouGov survey of 9,000 people across nine countries found popular opinion thinks world peace has rarely been further away.

 The 13 most dangerous countries in the world

Recommended US and Russia relations fall to their worst since the Cold War

People in the US were most likely to predict a world war, while French, German and British people were also pessimistic.

Some 64 per cent of Americans think the world is close to a major war, compared to just 15 who think world peace is likely.

Britons are only slightly more hopeful: 19 per cent believe peace is possible but 61 per cent say war is a distinct possibility.

In contrast, people in Nordic countries including Sweden, Finland and Norway were much less inclined to believe the world is on the brink of war. Denmark had the population most cheerful about the prospects of peace: 39 per cent of Danes predicted world peace compared to 45 per cent forecasting the opposite.

Anthony Wells, YouGovs director of political and social research, said: Fear seems the highest in the US and France, but for different reasons.

"American fears perhaps reflect some peoples uncertainly about the impending Trump Presidency.

For France, I suspect fears are linked more to the threat of terrorism  the French public were the least likely to see Russia as a hostile threat to the EU, but by far the most likely to think that there would be another major terrorist attack on their country in the year ahead."

North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Show all 6 1 /6 North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war Reuters

The same survey revealed people in Europe and America tended to see Russia as a major military threat, with British people the most fearful of Moscow even though other countries polled, such as Finland and Germany, are much closer geographically to the former Soviet Union.

Some 71 per cent of Britons feel threatened by Russia, compared to 59 per cent of Americans  the lowest of all the countries polled.

In every nation except Finland, those surveyed thought a terrorist attack in their country was more likely than unlikely in the next year.

French people were most concerned about terrorism, with 81 per cent believing an attack would happen compared to just 11 per cent predicting there would be none.

An attack was also predicted by a large majority of people in Britain, Germany and the US. In Finland, however, only 26 per cent of people forecast a terrorist strike with 63 per cent saying such an event was unlikely.
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A charity worker who campaigned for female emancipation in Yemen has been shot dead in an assassination attempt that has left other activists in the city of Taiz fearing for their own safety.

Amat al-Aleem al-Asbahi, who worked to improve female literacy in the war-torn country, was killed on 25 December by two motorcycle riders as she walked on a busy street in the city centre.

A fatwa issued by Islamic scholar Abdullah al-Odaini in September, banning women activists from mixing with men, had already curtailed Ms Asbahi and the aid communitys work, as has fierce air strikes and other violence.

All sides in Yemens civil war condemned the attack, but no party has claimed responsibility. Several sources have blamed the Yemeni-government allied Popular Resistance group, with which Mr Odaini is affiliated, but the group has denied the allegation.

No one has been arrested in connection to the murder and Middle East Eye reports that local journalists have stayed away from the story for fear of retribution.

Ms Asbahi, who was in her 30s, is related to the pro-Houthi rebel governor of the city Abdu al-Ganadi, leading to claims she may have been killed because of her family links as well as her work.

Shatha Nageeb, a charity worker who was also forced to stop working, told Middle East Eye she was shocked at how little had been done following her fellow activists murder.

The assassination of [Ms] Asbahi is a clear indication that extremists can kill women with impunity, so we have to reduce our work and postpone any social activities until the end of the atrocious war, she said.

Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Show all 4 1 /4 Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Hugh McLeod Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Hugh McLeod Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Hugh McLeod Why Yemen's future threatens to destroy its past Hugh McLeod

The conflict in Yemen descended into a full-scale civil war in March 2015 when Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels took over the capital of Sanaa.

Taiz, the countrys third largest city which is considered Yemens cultural capital, has seen fierce fighting since 2011.

Shortly afterwards, a Saudi-led coalition of Middle Eastern states began a bombing campaign on the country at the request of the exiled government, which the UN says has killed up to 10,000 people to date.

Saudi air and naval blockades have left many civilians on the brink of famine. More than half of the 28-million strong population is in need of food aid, and Yemenis are also suffering from outbreaks of disease such as cholera thanks to the inadequate provisions available for the three million people displaced from their homes.

Western governments, including the UK, have been sharply criticised for weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, which monitors say end up destined for use in the Yemeni war.
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Members of the Unite union working for BAs Mixed Fleet operation at Heathrow are walking out on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 January in a dispute over what the union claims are poverty pay rates.

Around 4,500 passengers will find their flights to and from Heathrow are no longer operating. Flights from Gatwick, London City and Stansted are unaffected.

The daily 5,360-mile link to San Jose, serving Silicon Valley, has been cancelled on both strike days. Passengers are being offered seats on other BA flights to San Francisco, which is about 40 miles away.

Other cancellations are on routes where there are multiple daily services. On Heathrow-Philadelphia, for example, one of the two daily departures for Wednesday has been grounded.

The axed flights represent 3 per cent of BAs total schedule of 1,600 services on the two days.

Passengers booked on the cancelled flights are being offered the chance to travel to the same destination on the same day, on one of the flights that is operating, or to rebook for another date within the next two weeks.

Alternatively, they can switch to a nearby destination, or claim a full refund.

Mixed Fleet began in 2010 after a long and bitter dispute involving BA cabin crew at Heathrow. New recruits are employed on inferior terms compared with longer-serving staff. They are currently deployed on around 50 long- and short-haul routes from Heathrow.

The plan is that Mixed Fleet will take over more services, as staff numbers in Euro Fleet and Worldwide Fleet  made up of longer-serving staff  dwindle.

Unite says pay rates for Mixed Fleet are so poor that safety is being jeopardised, with some staff sleeping in cars between flights because they could not afford the petrol to get home.

A Unite spokesperson said: It should be to the companys eternal shame that they, the UKs national carrier, are making billions while their cabin crew, responsible for maintaining a safe environment, are working while sick and without adequate rest.

British Airways maintains that its pay rates are competitive with the rest of the industry and says it is available for further dialogue with the union.

A spokesperson for BA said: We urge Unite to abandon its strike plans, which are serving only to cause anxiety among our Mixed Fleet cabin crew colleagues who do a tremendous job for our customers.

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Chris Woodroofe is anticipating a couple of sleepless nights later this month.

As Gatwicks chief operating officer, he is the man blowing the whistle that will signal a wholesale change of ends at Britains second-busiest airport: the biggest airline move since the North Terminal opened in 1988.

After the last wave of easyJet flights from South Terminal depart on Monday 23 January, all traces of their tenancy of Gatwicks original terminal will be removed, as teams prepare the ground for the new resident: British Airways.

Recommended Gatwick plans runway even if Heathrow wins expansion bid

From Tuesday 24 January onwards, every easyJet flight will depart from North Terminal; at present, operations are split between the two, leading to confusion for passengers and cost and complexity for the airline.

At close of business on that day, Virgin Atlantic and BA will vacate their current locations in South and North Terminals respectively, and change ends.

From Wednesday 25 January, loyal Virgin Atlantic customers who have been checking-in at South Terminal since the airline launched in 1984 will need to board the driverless Shuttle train and head for North Terminal instead. And BA passengers accustomed to using the North Terminal will find themselves back in a rather more beautiful South: for the past year, premium travellers have had to cram into non-BA lounges while preparations for the move took place.

When Gatwicks North Terminal opened, the Sussex airport handled about 21.5 million passengers each year  half the current number. At the time, BA was dominant, having just taken over the long-standing incumbent, British Caledonian.

Recommended BA cancels 48 flights ahead of cabin crew strike

In 1988, BAs move from the original terminal (now know as South) was into a new, empty structure. Furthermore, ground handling technology was far more primitive and labour intensive.

Nearly three decades on, BA carries more passengers than in 1988, but it has been eclipsed by an airline that was born only in 1995: easyJet. The budget carrier flew almost 75 million passengers last year. A quarter of them  17.4 million  flew to or from Gatwick, now the airlines main base. That is almost 50,000 per day.

 Chris Woodrofe discusses the changes at Gatwick airport

As easyJet grew at Gatwick, its operation spilled over from the original location in South Terminal to the North. The split causes a wide range of problems  every day, some arriving passengers expecting to turn up at South Terminal find themselves North, and vice-versa.

But to consolidate all the easyJet operations in one terminal, two other big airlines will also have to move.

BA, the second-largest carrier at Gatwick, heads south. To provide enough room for it, Virgin Atlantic and its 1.4 million annual passengers (4,000 a day) go north.

Some flights have already been tested from the opposite terminals, and starting next Wednesday, 11 January, the daily BA Gatwick-New York flight will switch to South Terminal. It is followed from 19 January by the Naples departures.

The big move has been planned for two years. It involves 42 major projects and a to-do list for the switch itself with 500 items.

To accommodate it, easyJet has reduced its normal Gatwick schedule by 40 per cent on 24 and 25 January. That means it can safely vacate South Terminal even while BA remains in the North.

British Airways should have a clear run to set itself up at the south end of the South Terminal, while Virgin Atlantic takes over BAs location in the North.

The intricate puzzle also requires Monarch to shift position slightly from one part of South Terminal to another. All other airlines, including Thomson, Thomas Cook, Norwegian and Emirates, are staying put.

Without the luxury of a brand-new building and the chance to gradually to ramp up operations  as Heathrow enjoyed with the six-month move into Terminal 2  Mr Woodroofe has organised a series of trials for the customer-facing departures experience and operations on the airfield itself. Weve finessed the wayfinding for passengers, and done some line-painting for the aircraft, he said.

Midweek in January has been chosen because it is the quietest time of the year, with some slack in the system. But Chris Woodroofe says he is Very much looking forward to another busy summer at Gatwick.

The Sussex airport now handles more passengers from its single runway than Heathrow did from two runways in 1990.

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They say millennials are spending all their money on travel instead of saving for homes and pensions these days, but travelling isn't just for the young  not if 89-year-old Russian grandmother Baba Lena is anything to go by. The grey nomad is proving it by zipping around Vietnam on the back of a motorbike, sampling spicy local cuisine and cocktails  then posting about it all on social media.

On her most recent trip to Thailand, Baba Lena enjoyed the country's beaches and sampled tom kha soup, the classic Thai dish made with chicken and coconut.

The 89-year-old from Russian city Krasnoyarsk, a stop on the Trans-Siberian railway, visited Prague, Poland and East Germany in the 1970s, but stopped holidaying abroad because she no longer had the time or money. But six years ago, at the age of 83, she decided she wanted to see more of the world.

She became an internet sensation after meeting Ekaterina Papina, a fellow Russian traveller, in Vietnam. Papina's post on Facebook about her inspiring meeting with Baba Lena received 14,000 shares. The intrepid babushka has now taken to Instagram and Facebook to document her travels, with the help of her grandson.

 A photo posted by    (@babushka_1927) on Jan 2, 2017 at 6:11pm PST

Baba Lena travels alone and says she loves meeting new people. "It's easy to make friends when I'm away, because a lot of people wonder [at] my age and ability to travel and they want to help. They show me everything everywhere, help to see the sea, visiting restaurants," she told The Independent.

Baba Lena the travelling Russian granny riding a camel in Israel

As well as meeting new people, she's not afraid of trying out local forms of transport, hopping on the back of a motorbike for a spin in South-east Asia and then climbing onto a camel in Israel during a visit late last year (as shown in the video below).

Since her 83rd birthday she has visited Turkey, the Czech Republic, Germany, Vietnam and Israel. Her favourite was the Czech Republic, because the people are friendly, she says, and she enjoys the food.

  .       #babalena #@babushka1927, #babushka1927, ##, #2016#israel A photo posted by    (@babushka_1927) on Dec 10, 2016 at 4:46am PST

"Travelling means a new life, people, meetings," says Baba Lena. "It's pleasure to see how all greet [and] learn. The biggest thing I have learned about life is there are a lot of great people in all countries! Nothing to [be] afraid [of], because you can only die once and you'll die one day anyway."

   @babushka_1927       #telaviv #jerusalem #israel #babushka #1927 #89 # # ##babushka89#babalena##russia#travel#89yearsoldgranny#89yearsoldtraveller###bestoftheday A video posted by    (@babushka_1927) on Dec 12, 2016 at 7:58pm PST

Baba Lena uses her pension to fund her adventures. She also grows and sells flowers, and sews, to boost her travel budget.

And this Instagramming babushka shows no signs of slowing down. She plans to be in the Dominican Republic for her 90th birthday in April. Baba Lena, we salute you.
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A key argument of those who see opportunities, rather than costs, in Brexit is that there will be better trading opportunities with the big emerging markets, notably China and India, than is possible as part of a 28-member EU. However, the probability of such beneficial bilateral deals is lower than Brexiteers might like to think.

The Chinese government was deeply shocked by Brexit and the Chinese do not like shocks. They are embarrassed by having invested so much political and financial capital in the UK only to see it veer off in a totally new direction without, apparently, any preparation or contingency planning. All their suspicions about the dangers of Western democracy have been confirmed in spades.

The UK split with the EU has also cast a very unexpected and dark shadow over President Xi himself. A successful UK-China free-trade agreement would help to repair the damage provided China is seen to be securing its key negotiating objectives. These objectives have to be understood in the context of the Chinese leadership having gone out onto a limb, promoting the UK ahead even of Germany. That prioritisation was dictated not by sentiment but a hard-headed calculation that while Germany has been important for providing capital goods and manufacturing technology, the UK is more useful for the next stage of Chinese development: a shift to a service based economy; the move to currency convertibility via Renminbi trading in the City of London; absorbing and welcoming Chinese investment (while not asking for reciprocity); and acting as a cheerleader for Chinese ambitions in global governance, as with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

 2016: The year of Brexit

In the ancient Chinese philosophical tradition, a crisis is synonymous with an opportunity. A pending Brexit provides an opportunity to reset a more grounded relationship with London. So what does that entail? China is very clear what it wants. First, the UK should give strong support for Chinas market economy status in the World Trade Organisation, protecting China from tough (US and EU) trade-defence measures.

Second, the UK should continue to provide a secure home for investment, providing opportunities (preferably with continued access to the EU single market) for Chinese companies, without the resistance encountered in continental Europe and the USA.

Third, potential confrontation over trade with the USA under President Trump will necessitate alliance building with Western powers more committed to the principles of free trade and multilateralism, like the UK, though not at the expense of relations with the EU.

Both sides have interest in coming to an agreement but Britain needs China to sign a piece of paper with a trade deal more urgently than China needs Britain. China has time on its side and a weaker negotiating partner.

The fact that Theresa May chose India for her first serious foray in trade diplomacy signalled an eagerness to do business with the other Asian giant. India, however, approaches any bilateral negotiation from a position of strength. The sight of the former colonial master coming cap in hand will whet Indian appetites for a deal in Indias favour.

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

Moreover, Britains current crop of ministers seem not to have taken on board that the attempted EU-India agreement foundered not because of the rest of the EU but, in substantial part, because Britain rejected it. India also exports services, like Britain, and in the form of people. Attempts to open the UK to more Indian IT specialists and other professionals (the so-called Mode 4) foundered on the objections of the former Home Secretary, Theresa May.

The main irritant in UK-India relations is visas. In the absence of creative ideas on freeing up immigration and visiting rights from India, ministers will continue to get a flea in their ear in Delhi. And nothing is more irritating (and incomprehensible) to the Indians than Britains self-harming and very silly policy of counting overseas students against the immigration total; the services of our universities are amongst the few British products Indians actually want to buy. For these reasons Theresa May appears to have come away empty handed.

Failing agreement on these sensitive and difficult issues the Indians will ask for something else. Weapons? Something else Britain is good at, but they affect the power balance in south Asia and relations with Pakistan. Taking Indias side on Kashmir? Tricky.

The idea of Britain taking back control and rediscovering its former prowess in trade amidst the riches of the Orient is a tempting vision-from a safe distance. Ministers may soon wish however that they were more careful about what they wished for.

Sir Vince Cable is a professor in practice at the London School of Economics Institute of Global Affairs, a former Secretary of State for Business and president of the Board of Trade. Dr Yu Jie is a Dahrendorf senior research associate at LSE Ideas
The agreement stipulates that current president Joseph Kabila will step down by December 2017

Egypt has welcomed on Thursday evening an agreement reached between factions in Congo to end the political crisis in the country.

A foreign ministry statement called on all political factions in Congo to respect the agreement and to work towards achieving prosperity for the people of Congo.

The agreement reached last December states the delayed presidential and legislative elections will be held in December 2017, after which President Joseph Kabila will step down.

Kabila, who assumed power in 2001 after the assassination of his father president Laurent Kablia, has not yet signed the agreement, which was mediated by the countrys Catholic Church.

Violence erupted in Congo last month, after president Joseph Kabila refused to leave office following his second and final term end on 19 December.

An earlier political agreement that would have allowed Kabila to remain in power until April 2018 was rejected by most of the country's opposition parties.

At least 40 people were killed last month in the protests against the president.





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The reason why trains are more punctual and cleaner today than they were in the Eighties according to The Sun is given as privatisation. When travelling in Switzerland the trains are far cleaner and punctual, and cheaper. According to the logic given by The Sun this would have to be because they have been subject to even more privatisation. However, they are a cherished national public service and the Swiss say that with our fragmented privatised system it would be impossible to run such an efficient service as they have.

Systems logic seems to suggest that there are limits to privatisation and a strong argument in favour of an integrated management system. But perhaps this is currently beyond the skills and culture of the nation?

Michael Gopfert, Prenton

Its not so grim up north

In response to Mark Steels item on our railway network, he should get out of London more. My wife and 15 year old granddaughter took a trip on Thursday last from Preston to Liverpool. The return fair for them both was 11.

The train was on time and they were able to travel on any off peak train. This is excellent value. If people chose to live close to and work in London they should accept the cost. It's wonderful up north.

Michael Pate, Preston

Setting the record straight

It was a shame that the facts werent initially included in your article (How National Rail Enquiries pushes passengers towards the most expensive option on season tickets, 6 January). Train companies only promote annual season tickets because they offer people the best deal. Assuming four weeks holiday, buying an annual ticket will save you 16.7 per cent of the cost of buying weekly season tickets throughout the year.

If someones circumstances change, for example if they move house or change job, they can change their season ticket or get a refund to reflect the unused period. Nothing is gained by selling someone an annual ticket as opposed to a weekly or a monthly ticket. Train companies make less money from an annual season ticket than by selling someone 12 monthly tickets.

Jacqueline Starr, Managing Director, Customer Experience, Rail Delivery Group

A race to the bottom

While its welcome news that trainer Ben Currie has received a hefty fine for doping a horse before race day (Racehorse Party Till Dawn tests positive for methamphetamine, 16 December), this incident should not be examined in isolation.

Its extremely common for trainers and veterinarians to use both legal and illegal drugs in order to try to force horses to run faster than they ever would under normal conditions. Unusual substances such as cobra venom are sometimes injected into horses to mask pain, and some animals are subjected to what industry insiders call milk shaking  that is, pumping a large quantity of sodium bicarbonate and sugar into their stomach, which is said to increase their speed during a race.

Just as problematic are legal drugs  including strong anti-inflammatories, painkillers, and muscle relaxants  are routinely injected into injured, sore horses to make them run when they should be recovering from strain or injury, which can lead directly to breakdown and death.

To eliminate this kind of abuse, trainers, owners, veterinarians, and others who use illegal substances  or who misuse drugs to a horses detriment  must be not only fined but also, more importantly, banned from participating in racing in any way.

Jennifer White, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), London

On Kurdistan

My thanks to Cian Carlin for his criticism of my letter about an Independent Kurdistan. I apologise for raising his ire. Would facilitate the emergence of an independent Kurdistan be a more apt phrasing than deliver? Sykes-Picot and the Israel/Palestine situation were exactly what I had in mind when writing my original letter.

Steve Ford, Haydon Bridge
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As recently as two years ago, Saudi Arabias half century-long effort to establish itself as the main power among Arab and Islamic states looked as if it was succeeding. A US State Department paper sent by former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in 2014 and published by Wikileaks spoke of the Saudis and Qataris as rivals competing to dominate the Sunni world.

A year later in December 2015, the German foreign intelligence service BND was so worried about the growing influence of Saudi Arabia that it took the extraordinary step of producing a memo, saying that the previous cautious diplomatic stance of older leading members of the royal family is being replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention.

An embarrassed German government forced the BND to recant, but over the last year its fears about the destabilising impact of more aggressive Saudi policies were more than fulfilled. What it did not foresee was the speed with which Saudi Arabia would see its high ambitions defeated or frustrated on almost every front. But in the last year Saudi Arabia has seen its allies in Syrian civil war lose their last big urban centre in east Aleppo. Here, at least, Saudi intervention was indirect but in Yemen direct engagement of the vastly expensive Saudi military machine has failed to produce a victory. Instead of Iranian influence being curtailed by a more energetic Saudi policy, the exact opposite has happened. In the last OPEC meeting, the Saudis agreed to cut crude production while Iran raised output, something Riyadh had said it would always reject.

 Turkey releases video of air strikes on more than 100 Isis targets in Syria after Istanbul nightclub attack

In the US, the final guarantor of the continued rule of the House of Saud, President Obama allowed himself to be quoted as complaining about the convention in Washington of treating Saudi Arabia as a friend and ally. At a popular level, there is growing hostility to Saudi Arabia reflected in the near unanimous vote in Congress to allow families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government as bearing responsibility for the attack.

Under the mercurial guidance of Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the most powerful figure in Saudi decision making, Saudi foreign policy became more militaristic and nationalistic after his 80 year old father Salman became king on 23 January 2015. Saudi military intervention in Yemen followed, as did increased Saudi assistance to a rebel alliance in Syria in which the most powerful fighting force was Jabhat al-Nusra, formerly the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda.

Nothing has gone well for the Saudis in Yemen and Syria. The Saudis apparently expected the Houthis to be defeated swiftly by pro-Saudi forces, but after fifteen months of bombing they and their ally, former President Saleh, still hold the capital Sanaa and northern Yemen. The prolonged bombardment of the Arab worlds poorest country by the richest has produced a humanitarian catastrophe in which at least 60 per cent of the 25 million Yemeni population do not get enough to eat or drink.

The enhanced Saudi involvement in Syria in 2015 on the side of the insurgents had similarly damaging and unexpected consequences. The Saudis had succeeded Qatar as the main Arab supporter of the Syrian insurgency in 2013 in the belief that their Syrian allies could defeat President Bashar al-Assad or lure the US into doing so for them. In the event, greater military pressure on Assad served only to make him seek more help from Russia and Iran and precipitated Russian military intervention in September 2015 which the US was not prepared to oppose.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman is being blamed inside and outside the Kingdom for impulsive misjudgments that have brought failure or stalemate. On the economic front, his Vision 2030 project whereby Saudi Arabia is to become less wholly dependent on oil revenues and more like a normal non-oil state attracted scepticism mixed with derision from the beginning. It is doubtful if there will be much change in the patronage system whereby a high proportion of oil revenues are spent on employing Saudis regardless of their qualifications or willingness to work.

Protests by Saudi Arabias ten million-strong foreign work force, a third of the 30 million population, because they have not been paid can be ignored or crushed by floggings and imprisonment. The security of the Saudi state is not threatened.

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 danger for the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states is rather that hubris and wishful thinking have tempted them to try to do things well beyond their strength. None of this is new and the Gulf oil states have been increasing their power in the Arab and Muslim worlds since the nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Jordan were defeated by Israel in 1967. They found  and Saudi Arabia is now finding the same thing  that militaristic nationalism works well to foster support for rulers under pressure so long as they can promise victory, but delegitimises them when they suffered defeat.

Previously Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states had worked through allies and proxies but this restraint ended with the popular uprisings of 2011. Qatar and later Saudi Arabia shifted towards supporting regime change. Revolutions transmuted into counter-revolutions with a strong sectarian cutting edge in countries like Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain where there were Sunni and non-Sunni populations.

Critics of Saudi and Qatari policies often demonise them as cunning and effective, but their most striking characteristic is their extreme messiness and ignorance of real conditions on the ground. In 2011, Qatar believed that Assad could be quickly driven from power just like Muamar Gaddafi in Libya. When this did not happen they pumped in money and weapons willy-nilly while hoping that the US could be persuaded to intervene militarily to overthrow Assad as Nato had done in Libya.

Experts on in Syria argue about the extent to which the Saudis and the Qataris knowingly funded Islamic State and various al-Qaeda clones. The answer seems to be that they did not know, and often did not care, exactly who they were funding and that, in any case, it often came from wealthy individuals and not from the Saudi government or intelligence services.

The mechanism whereby Saudi money finances extreme jihadi groups was explained in an article by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times in December on how the Saudis had bankrolled the Taliban after their defeat in 2001. The article cites the former Taliban Finance Minister, Agha Jan Motasim, as explaining in an interview how he would travel to Saudi Arabia to raise large sums of money from private individuals which was then covertly transferred to Afghanistan. Afghan officials are quoted as saying that a recent offensive by 40,000 Taliban cost foreign donors $1 billion.

The attempt by Saudi Arabia and Gulf oil states to achieve hegemony in the Arab and Sunni Muslim worlds has proved disastrous for almost everybody. The capture of east Aleppo by the Syrian Army and the likely fall of Mosul to the Iraqi Army means defeat for that the Sunni Arabs in a great swathe of territory stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean. Largely thanks to their Gulf benefactors, they are facing permanent subjection to hostile governments.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May is preparing to make a major speech on Brexit amid accusations by the disgruntled outgoing top UK civil servant in Brussels that the government lacks an exit strategy.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis are contributing to the content of the address, which is expected later in January.

Ms May will reportedly say Britain will pull out of the single market if the European Union fails to make concessions on freedom of movement, although sources insisted this was just speculation.

Ms May moved swiftly to draw a line under the row sparked by the surprise resignation of UK permanent representative Ivan Rogers by agreeing his replacement Tim Barrow within 36 hours of his notice to quit.

In a fiery resignation letter, Mr Rogers had hit out at the "ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking" of politicians and said civil servants still did not know the government's plans for Brexit.

A former Whitehall boss warned that the surprise resignation of Mr Rogers had exposed concerns about the government's state of readiness for withdrawal negotiations under Article 50, due to begin within less than three months.

Bob Kerslake said it "deprives the government of a very experienced and capable European expert at a critical moment".

But Mr Johnson said Mr Barrow was "just the man" to secure the best Brexit deal for the UK.
Northern Ireland-based Padraig Drayne is planning to build an exclusive multimillion euro apartment development in the upmarket Dublin suburb of Malahide, the Irish Independent has learned.

Mr Drayne's Northern Ireland firm Apamore Services has applied to Fingal County Council for permission for a five-storey building that will include 23 apartments.

It's a relatively small scale project for the developer, who joined forces with developer Paddy McKillen to build the Jervis Street shopping centre in Dublin over 20 years ago.

In 2014, Mr McKillen and Mr Drayne refinanced 110m (128m) of their debts from Ulster Bank with backing from Bank of Ireland.

The loans were connected to assets including the Forge Shopping Centre in Glasgow as well as the Ards Shopping Centre in Newtownards.

Mr Drayne became embroiled in Mr McKillen's lengthy legal battle against the UK's billionaire Barclay brothers in the fight to control the Maybourne hotel group.

The Maybourne group includes luxury properties such as Claridge's, the Connaught and the Berkeley. It was bought for almost 900m in 2004 by a consortium led by financier Derek Quinlan.

Mr Drayne was one of the original investors in the deal, but he later sold his shares in the venture to Mr McKillen.

The Barclays later secured a share in the Maybourne holding company, Coroin, and tried to wrest control of the group from Mr McKillen. During that struggle, Mr Drayne launched a legal action in an effort to prevent the Barclays from seizing control, claiming that he had rights to some of Mr McKillen's shares in the Maybourne group.

However, last year the Qatari royal family acquired both Mr McKillen's and the Barclay brothers' stakes in Coroin and retained Mr McKillen as an adviser.
The Irish Cattle and Sheep Association (ICSA) has said that beef farmers should be paid to reduce output due to high supplies and poor farmgate prices currently.

Its suckler chairman Dermot Kelleher has suggested that a 200 per breeding cow incentive is needed to reduce numbers in light of oversupply of beef in Europe and the complete lack of profitability in the sector.

We need to learn from the strategy applied at EU level to deal with the dairy crisis in 2016 where the strategy was a rational move to reduce production to deal with the supply/demand imbalance.

ICSA proposes that this incentive should be available on an EU-wide basis at a rate of 200 per cow per annum for up to five years on a voluntary basis.

The scheme would be based on a reference year of 2016 and the payment would be linked to the reduction in calves registered compared to 2016.

'Farmers sick and tired of losing money'

ICSA believes that farmers are sick and tired of losing money to produce beef when there is so much uncertainty around viable markets.

This strategy would expose the hypocrisy of Food Wise 2025 expansion targets by sending out a clear signal that anything less than 200 per cow net profit is unacceptable. It would expose the deadly consensus that farmers should be satisfied with just breaking even.

Many older suckler farmers are putting their lives and health on the line trying to manage suckler cows and returns from the marketplace are getting worse and worse.

The ICSA also says the introduction of penalties on the payment grid for high quality heavy carcasses, the ongoing 30 month cut off, the racket of four residencies and the impact of Brexit on price are all coming together to completely undermine suckler farming.

It says beef factories have refused point blank to engage on these issues and Bord Bia has been unable to find any solutions.

As we face into 2017 we see 200,000 more cattle for slaughter than in 2015 and continued uncertainty about live exports particularly to traditionally important markets like Italy.

It is abundantly clear that the only way to deliver farm viability is scarcity.

Farm organisations have to take a responsible attitude on basic economic principles that will address the profitability question above all other considerations, Kelleher said.
Irish people are eating more beef, but no growth is expected in European consumption this year.

The only country with a significant increase in beef consumption last year was Ireland, where consumption levels were up 3.1pc.

EU beef consumption has been on the decline since 2007, and while volumes have picked up gradually since 2013 and are still rising slowly there is no predicted growth in consumption levels for this year in Europe. Beef consumption in Italy dropped by 3pc last year while France only saw consumption levels increase by 1.1pc.

And while Irish consumption of beef is 18.6kg/capita, ahead of the world average of 6.4kg/capita and the Chinese average of 3.8kg/capita, it remains miles behind some countries such as Uraguay where the average person eats over 45kg of meat every year.

Mark Zieg told Bord Bias Meat Marketing Seminar that the UK remains Irelands largest market for beef exports, accounting for 51pc of total exports. That is just 1pc lower than 2015 figures, with international markets in 2016 taking 1pc more in volume terms, but only accounting for 3pc of total Irish beef exports.

Outside the UK, France, Holland and Italy were the next biggest importers of Irish beef and total Irish beef exports were worth 2.38bn in 2016, he said.

Future growth, he said, for beef consumption would be driven by increased consumption in Africa and Asia.

Growth areas for increased Irish beef exports, within Europe, he said would be in Poland, the UK and Italy, while we can expect to see German demand drop.

Figures presented by Bord Bia also show that while volumes of Irish beef exports were up last year, but their value was down.

And Ireland will have more beef to export next year as calf registration numbers in 2016 were up, which will result in more prime cattle coming on stream for processing.
It seems there are no borders to how far technology can be developed as one company with headquarters in Dublin has launched the world's first cow facial recognition software.

Cows, like humans, have their own set of unique facial features and these characteristics can now be read as usable data by technology to identify that specific animal.

Cainthus is a machine vision company with its headquarters in Dublin and offices in Ottawa and San Francisco. By using its own unique expertise it can turn visual information into actionable data.

Their focus is currently on how best to use this technology in agriculture even though its end use has greater and wider potential.

David Hunt, a former corporate banker, is the co-founder of Cainthus along with his brother Ross and together they are committed to digitising agricultural practices.

One of their major goals was to develop facial recognition technology for cows and, as David explained, they are right on track to do so.

"As far as we know we're the only company in the world that can ID a cow solely using visual recognition, so I can only tell you how we're doing," says David.

"Today we have 97pc accuracy in ID on an individual image, but by sheer weight of analysis our ID accuracy is effectively 100pc.

"In relation to sales, we've already made our first commercial sale and install. We'll be doing our second commercial install in January and are open for general business at that point.

"In the near term we will be prioritising larger dairies of 1,000 cows plus, as that is where the system makes its greatest impact."

David confirms that their desire to introduce facial ID came from an earlier goal to improve commercial scale measurement. It was only after some research with sensors he discovered what could actually be achieved.

"We realised many years ago that most of the big problems in agriculture can be boiled down to a lack of commercial scale measurement," says David.

"If you can't accurately measure something, then you can't improve it. So we then went to see what would be the cheapest way to provide commercial scale measurement for agricultural fields, which turned out to be imaging sensors.

"Facial ID using those imaging sensors was a difficult next step to make the technology applicable to dairies."

But what has the future got in store for the applications of sensors and new technology in agriculture? David sees robotics as a solution to a decreasing labour force.

"The combination of advanced sensor data and analytics to interpret them will create a platform capable of making constant small interventions to ensure maximum productivity," he adds.

"The amount of interventions required combined with the cost of human labour means we are going to require low cost, robust farm robots to provide these interventions.

"So if we want to make best use of what is currently going on with sensors and analytics, then we must use robots. So I suppose I personally see them as an inevitability given the current road agriculture as an industry is on."

Technologies are being developed at a fast pace, maybe even faster than farmers can embrace them. But David says farmers are excited about new technology. "I think farmers are sceptical of new technology because of the amount of snake oil out there, like NDVI based crop analytics, rather than pace of development," says David.

"I've yet to meet a farmer who isn't excited to use a new technology that demonstrably works. Most farmers I know are extremely progressive.

"If a technology is a good technology, then it should be cheaper and easier to use than what it's replacing as well as being better," he said.

'A 5pc increase in feed efficiency is worth a lot to a dairy farmer'

The Cainthus bovine facial recognition technology has great potential for farmers as the first customers are discovering.

When cows stop eating or reduce their feed intake there is usually a good reason for this that indicates a pending health issue.

If these habits go unidentified for any period of time, farmers lose money in a reduced milk production and higher veterinary costs.

Thus, with facial recognition, cows can be identified easily in the shed or at the feed barrier and their eating habits and other attributes recorded.

"We've installs on two farms currently, and yes, they actively use it," says David Hunt. "A five percent increase in feed efficiency is worth a lot to a dairy farmer, and we can contribute quite a bit more than that simply by letting you know when the cows stop feeding, enabling you to intervene earlier than otherwise possible.

"I think livestock is more readily applicable for robotics as you're not asking these farmers to replace existing machines with robots, except for milking robots. With tillage, you're asking a farmer to abandon the tractor or harvester, which is much harder."

It's anyone's guess what a livestock farm will look like by 2050, but David thinks farms will become more mixed enterprise in the future.

"I don't think that there will be purely livestock farms by 2050. Farms will more likely be mixed use agro-ecology style systems with many different crops and livestock.

Robots

"For a farmer to operate in this environment, well they'll need to be extremely comfortable with data, statistics, and robots as well as being ecological experts.

"When I think of a 2050 farm, I struggle to see beyond it being one farmer and their machines. But this is true of many industries by 2050.

"The best of farmers will run far larger farms than today, only involving themselves when the machines are damaged or confused and need some human assistance."
The Coptic Cathedral in Cairo is set to begin its Christmas mass on Friday evening, presided by Pope Tawadros II

A number of Egypt's churches have started ceremonies and gatherings on Friday, as the country's Coptic Christian community prepares to celebrate Christmas on 7 January.

The Anglican Church in Cairo will also begin its celebrations shortly with the attendance of representatives from several state institutions including Al-Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The Coptic Cathedral in Cairo is set to begin its Christmas mass on Friday evening, presided by Pope Tawadros II.

In recent days, the Coptic Cathedral received several visits from state officials, army commanders as well as Al-Azhar's Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayeb to pay his respects to the Coptic Orthodox community for Christmas.

Egypt celebrates this year's Christmas in the aftermath of a deadly suicide bombing on 11 December at St. Peter and St. Pauls Church  which is adjacent to the main Coptic Cathedral complex in central Cairo.

Twenty-seven people, mainly women and children, died in the attack, which was later claimed by the Islamic State militant group.

Following the attack, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi had ordered that St. Peter and St. Pauls Church be renovated in time for the holiday on 7 January.

The Egyptian army completed the renovation of the bombed church on 31 December.

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Yet another hotel is to be built beside Dublin Airport as demand for rooms from travellers continues to rise. Dublin Airport handled more than 27 million passengers last year.

A UK company connected to Carlton Hotels plans to build a five-storey, 100-bedroom standalone property beside its existing Carlton hotel close to the airport. The existing four-star property also has 100 bedrooms.

There are a number of new hotels and extensions planned in the area.

Last month, CG Hotels received planning permission for two expansion projects beside its Radisson Blu property at Dublin Airport that are likely to cost in the region of 60m.

The hotel operator secured permission for a six-storey extension to its existing property that will include 131 new bedrooms. It has also got permission from Fingal County Council to build a new hotel right beside the Radisson Blu at Dublin Airport.

That seven-storey property will have 144 bedrooms and bring the total for the two to more than 500 - a significant expansion of the number of rooms available on the airport campus.

In October, the DAA said that it was going to build a 402-bedroom hotel connected to Terminal 2 in the airport.

The airport operator has launched a tender process seeking expressions of interest from international hotel groups to build and operate the venue.

The hotel will be the country's fourth largest when it's completed and opens in 2019.

Meanwhile, Ireland's biggest hotel group, Dalata, has received planning permission for a 140-bedroom extension to its Clayton Hotel Dublin Airport.

Construction is due to start in the second quarter of this year, with completion in the third quarter of 2018.

Dalata also owns a Clayton hotel close to Dublin Airport, which has 467 bedrooms. The previous owners - the Moran and Bewley's Group - had sought permission to add 367 bedrooms, as well as a conference centre.

But Dalata confirmed last year that it would not proceed with that scale of extension, and was working on plans to add 140 more bedrooms to the property.

Meanwhile, a company controlled by businessman Jalaluddin Kajani is planning to build a 427-bedroom hotel adjacent to the Dalata Clayton property.

Mr Kajani is based in Ireland and was born in Pakistan. He hopes to have the hotel open in 2018.

Developer Michael Howard has been trying to develop a landmark 250m-plus office campus scheme beside the Clayton, which would also benefit Mr Kajani's planned hotel. But Fingal County Council has refused to grant permission.
Belgian lender KBC Group will announce next month a final decision on whether to exit the Irish market, a spokeswoman said last night.

The call on whether to stick with KBC Ireland, and possibly ramp up the brand, or exit the now profitable business will be announced along with end-of year-financial results on February 9, the bank said.

The spokeswoman moved to play down speculation that a decision had already been taken to retain its unit here.

That was after analysts picked up on earlier comments made by KBC Group chief executive Johan Thijs, who suggested he planned to "tackle that (Irish) market".

The reference to Ireland came while Johan Thijs was speaking at an event in Bulgaria, where KBC was announcing an acquisition and expansion plan.

"And last, but not least, this is not a Central European market, but we have another asset where we have a market share, which is below our reference, and that is in Ireland," he said.

"And as you know, we have indicated already earlier that on Ireland we will position ourselves in the next coming months when we will publish the fourth-quarter results of 2016. We will then also make a statement of what we're going to do with Ireland and how we're going to tackle that market going forward."

Investec analyst Owen Callan saw it as a positive message for the Irish business.

"It's encouraging that they would talk about Ireland that way, it would suggest they are looking at expanding," he said.

There has always been a worry that KBC might not want to commit capital here, having suffered losses after the crash, Mr Callan said.

However, the bank has scope to expand here if it stays, and a decision to commit to the Irish market would also place KBC in a position to be a key element in any eventual consolidation with Ulster Bank and or Permanent Tsb, the Investec analyst added.

Options on the table for KBC managers in February include retaining the Irish unit and seeking to organically grow it as a stand-alone retail bank; building a captive bank-insurance group; looking at merging with another Irish business or potentially selling the Irish bank.

KBC had long flagged that a decision would be taken on what to do with its Irish bank in 2016 - but that has been put off until the final results for the year are prepared.

KBC Ireland returned to profit in 2015 for the first time since the Crash. Despite uncertainty about its long-term plans, the bank has been growing in Ireland in recent years.

It has opened a new network of so-called 'hubs' and positioned itself as a consumer lender and retail bank.

In November KBC Ireland reported a net profit of 44m for the third quarter of the year.

It also sought permission from the High Court to reduce its share capital in a move that will free up the lender to pay dividends to its Belgian parent for the first time since the Crash.
Former Coca-Cola boss Neville Isdell is putting a different kind of fizz into Dublin's CHQ building, with plans for a new microbrewery at the landmark property, which now houses the Epic Ireland emigration museum.

The company behind the CHQ building, CHQ Dublin, has secured permission from Dublin City Council for the microbrewery at the early 19th century warehouse, which Mr Isdell, inset - who hails from Co Down - bought in 2013 for 10m.

The latest plans for CHQ, which is in the International Financial Services Centre, include an internal revamp that would see a new mezzanine level added, as well as the introduction of the microbrewery, which would allow for the on-site production and sale of craft beers.

Urban Brewing, a company owned by Carlow-based freight agent Victor Treacy and Dublin-based Jim O'Hara, has been secured as a tenant and will operate the microbrewery. It will also open a bar/restaurant at the site. Both Mr O'Hara and Mr Treacy are also involved in the Carlow Craft Brewery.

CHQ told Dublin City Council that the introduction of Urban Brewer to the venue would "provide another high-quality use at the CHQ building, with clear linkages to the visitor/tourism use of Epic Ireland".

The CHQ was redeveloped at a cost of 45m by the now defunct Dublin Docklands Development Authority. It opened in 2007.

But it had failed to live up to expectations, dogged by low footfall and a lack of retail tenants.

Mr Isdell has revitalised the building, which was once used to store wine and tobacco that was offloaded at the quayside.

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He spent 12m developing the Epic Ireland venture, which opened last year. He also introduced Dogpatch Labs - a working space for tech startups. New retailers have opened at CHQ.

Mr Isdell, who stepped down as Coca-Cola ceo in 2008, previously stated that he hoped the Epic attraction would lure about 400,000 visitors a year. CHQ also noted that it intends to shortly launch a food market at the premises.

Mr Isdell, who left Ireland when he was 10 years old, is now based in Barbados.

He said in an interview with the Irish Independent last year that he put in a bid for the CHQ building before he even saw it.

"It was a ghost town," he said of the premises, "but I had a feeling about it.

"If you're going to be successful, you have to take risks."
Cork-based engineering group Kentech returned to profit in 2015 to record pre-tax profits of $11.28m (10.64m).

New accounts filed by the Kentech Group showed that the business returned to profit after revenues increased by 5pc, going from $151.48m to $159m in the 12 months to the end of December 2015.

The $11.28m profit followed a pre-tax loss of $2m in 2014 and the directors said that the business recorded "a very successful year" in 2015.

The directors said that the business in 2015 "recorded a strong return to profitability", achieving earnings of $12.53m.

The group operates in Australia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mexico, Qatar, Russia, the Netherlands and the UAE.

Numbers employed by the group in 2015 increased from 2,705 to 2,926 as staff costs increased to $95.18m.

The strong year enjoyed by the business resulted in the directors, Sarah Kent, John Kent, John Gilley and Matthew Seale increasing their own pay.

Directors' pay increased by 27pc, going from $1.8m to $2.3m.

The group confirmed that it received fresh funding of $32m from a London-based investor, Blue Water Energy, during the year.

The directors said that the strategic funding provided the group with the necessary capital to deliver on its growth plans over the coming years.

The directors also said that despite very challenging market conditions, Kentech's backlog had increased notably and currently stood at record levels.

The directors said that they expected further growth in 2016 and was expected to be in excess of 20pc following the addition of a new Dutch operation which resulted in securing hundreds of jobs, as well as ensuring continuity of safe operations on Europe's largest refinery site.
US-based Lone Star is the leading candidate to buy Novo Banco, the bank carved out of collapsed Banco Espirito Santo, Portugal's central bank said in a statement.

Dallas-based Lone Star was among the biggest and earliest buyers of distressed Irish banking assets after the crash. It amassed a portfolio of Irish loans with a face value of about 5bn - a mix of commercial property, business and personal debt.

Lone Star also picked up an Irish banking licence in 2014, part of the deal when it bought subprime lender Start Mortgages from Investec. However, despite widespread speculation it has so far not launched as an active lender here.

In Portugal, the central bank now plans to hold further talks with Lone Star after selecting it ahead of other prospective purchasers including China's Minsheng Financial Holding and US rival funds Apollo and Centerbridge.

Portugal had hoped to decide on the sale of Novo Banco by the end of last year, ahead of a final August 2017 deadline for the sale.

"At the current moment of the negotiation, the potential proposal by Lone Star is the one that goes the furthest," in ensuring stability of the financial system and confidence in Novo Banco, the central bank said in a statement. But the central bank added that Lone Star set conditions in its offer that could have an impact on public accounts, which it would seek to "minimise or remove in the deeper negotiations that start now."

The finance ministry welcomed the next stage of the negotiations aiming to overcome those conditions.

Finance Minister Mario Centeno said on Wednesday that Portugal was not ready to complete the sale of Novo Banco, adding that the government was not prepared to present a state guarantee for the potential buyer.

Portugal salvaged Novo Banco, or the 'good bank' in a 4.9bn rescue of BES in 2014, after the lender collapsed under the weight of debts of its founding family. An attempt to sell Novo Banco in 2015 failed because the bids were considered too low. (Additional reporting Reuters)
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

European shares closed flat yesterday after recent strong gains, with insurers weighing on the market after JP Morgan cut its rating for several companies in the sector.

RSA Insurance fell 2.2pc after JP Morgan downgraded the stock to "neutral" from "overweight", while Hannover Rueck fell 2.7pc after the investment bank cut its price target to 102 from 108.

The European insurance index was down 0.9pc, the biggest faller in the pan-European STOXX 600 index, which fell 0.3pc. The STOXX 600, which hit a one-year high on Tuesday, closed 0.1pc lower in the previous session.

The worst performer across the European benchmark was Rolls-Royce which fell more than 3pc. The stock suffered a price target at JP Morgan.

Rolls-Royce led the loser board on Britain's FTSE 100 index which held near-record highs underpinned by a 1.3pc rise in the UK mining index following an increase in industrial metals prices on brightening outlook for Chinese metals demand.

Embattled retailer Next PLC fell another 2pc in early trades, setting its shares up for the worst three-day loss in nearly two decades.

The Iseq overall index of Irish shares was up by over half a percentage point (0.57) spurred on by Kingspan 3.4pc, Origin Enterprises (2.1pc), Malin Corp (3.2pc) and Smurfit Kappa (2.9pc). The index closed at 6617.76, up 37.53 points.

Shares in Permanent TSB rallied late on to close down 1.7pc. The Irish lender's stocks were down by over 5pc in late afternoon, but a late spate of purchases late on helped the stock regain ground. Bank of Ireland shares also fell, dropping by 3pc.
State-owned lender AIB has set aside 190m to compensate customers who were wrongly removed from tracker mortgages, according to The Irish Examiner.

The bank earmarked the payment in its most recent annual results released in March of last year.

AIB has reportedly also admitted it wrongly withdrew tracker mortgages from over 3,000 customers, confirmed that 14 people lost their homes as a result of the error.

The Oireachtas Finance Committee heard in recent weeks that 15 banks had been guilty of wrongly changing customer mortgage plans, with 20,000 loans across the country thought to be affected.

AIB has set aside 105m for the refunding of interest and compensation due to customers, in addition to an 85m for the accounting impact of the refunds.

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Of the 3,003 accounts affected, AIB ceo Bernard Byrne confirmed that 2,230 had been sent letters of redress by the bank.

Last month, the Oireachtas Committee chair John McGuinness accused Central Bank governor Phillip Lane of being afraid to go after the banks over the scandal. Rejecting Mr McGuinness claims, Mr Lane said the duty of the regulator was to serve the public interest at all times.

The bank earmarked the payment in its latest annual results released in March of last year.
The State bad bank said it had offered city and county councils a total of 6,941 homes for use as social housing, but just 2,378 had been delivered. Stock Image

Three local authorities where more than 4,500 families are waiting for a home have accepted just a handful of social units on offer from Nama.

The State bad bank said it had offered city and county councils a total of 6,941 homes for use as social housing, but just 2,378 had been delivered.

In Sligo, where 801 families are on the waiting list, only four have been delivered. In Donegal, where 1,267 families await a home, just five were accepted.

In Wicklow, where 2,511 households are on the waiting list, seven have been secured.

The figures are contained in Nama's end-of-year review for 2016 and come as Fianna Fail demanded an urgent review of local authorities which turned down Nama properties.

Last October, the Irish Independent revealed that among the reasons were concerns about the quality of accommodation being offered, the impact on the social housing mix in certain areas and, in some instances, high service charges which would arise.

Hundreds of emails exchanged between Nama, the Housing Agency and city and county councils also revealed concerns surrounding the quality of information being provided.

Separately, figures obtained by Fianna Fail under Freedom of Information rules show that more than 1,000 homes were rejected because there was no demand.

Housing spokesman Barry Cowen said "spurious reasons" were given for declining homes on the grounds that there was an over-concentration of social housing in certain areas.

"While it is too late to reverse some of the decisions taken by local authorities in relation to these properties offered by Nama, I believe there should be a review carried out by your department, and made public, about why so many of these properties were turned down," he said in a letter to Housing Minister Simon Coveney.

Read more: Coveney: 'I'm not crazy - I will end homeless families living in hostels'

Some 91,600 families are on the social housing waiting list, and Nama said in its review that it had "no role" in determining the suitability of units, which was a matter for the Housing Agency and local authorities.

The bank also revealed that it had funded delivery of 4,700 new homes between 2014 and 2016, and resolved issues in 307 unfinished housing estates.

Construction work has begun, or will shortly commence, on 2,148 homes, and another 7,300 have planning permission. In addition, applications will be lodged for another 11,000 in the next year.

Nama has committed to funding 20,000 homes by the end of 2020, if commercially viable.
Homeowners have until next Wednesday to pay their property tax by debit card, cheque or credit card, Revenue warned.

The tax authority said it collected 463m from the tax last year, with a large number of property owners having already paid for 2017. Some 97pc of owners paid the tax last year.

This was after 300,000 warning letters were issued prompting most to pay up.

Those who want to pay the tax by electronic cheque  what Revenue calls an annual debit authority  must inform tax officials by Wednesday about this, and the funds will be taken out of their bank account in March.

Collector-general Michael Gladney said that since Revenue assumed responsibility for collection of arrears of household charges in July 2013, more than 64m has been collected.

This period saw 360,000 properties captured by the tax.

The vast majority of property owners fully comply with their local property tax payment obligations, either in a single payment or with phased payments, he said.

As long as payment obligations are being met, Revenue will automatically roll over existing payment methods for property owners who pay by direct debit or by deduction at source from pay/pension.
The Egyptian army has foiled a plot by militants to attack a number of security checkpoints on Friday morning, state news agency MENA reported.

The army said in a statement that the third field army pushed back an attack by gunmen on a checkpoint, killing nine militants and injuring 16 others.

In mid-October, Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi extended a state of emergency in designated areas of the North Sinai governorate for three months, starting 31 October.

The Egyptian army and police have been battling an entrenched Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai.

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The start-up story in Ireland is proving to be a really positive one - with latest figures reflecting a performance that hasn't been seen for almost 20 years.

As the number of new startup companies in Ireland has risen past the 20,000 mark for the first time in almost two decades, we speak to OCREX founder to hear about his early beginnings.

A Dubliner born and bred, Brendan Woods quit his job in 2011 to focus on a concept he had which involved providing intelligent software solutions for accountants and bookkeepers.

"Having already worked in software development for 10 years, I had first hand experience of the impact emerging and disruptive technologies were having on business practices and the opportunities that were becoming possible," the Trinity College Dublin graduate told independent.ie.

"Whilst working for a leading financial services company, one area that jumped out at me was the cost of manually re-entering data from paper documents in the bookkeeping and accounts preparation industry. Realising that there was a gap in the market, I founded OCREX to address an appetite for an intelligent, yet cost effective data automation solution for accountants and bookkeepers that were servicing the SME market."

From just himself and one senior software developer, OCREX now have a team of 10 in our Dublin HQ as well as another six sales staff in the UK.

From the development of the firm's first commercial solution, the current refined offering helps turn the manual entry of data, from a process of hours and days - to just minutes - saving SMEs huge amounts of time and resource.

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"The technology provides users with significant cost and time savings whilst also eliminating the traditional side effect of human error arising from manual data entry," he said.

"Our customers, which has since grown to be a collection of over 2,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms, now benefit from not only largely eliminating their direct data entry related costs of provisioning their service to their SME clients, but also in terms of service turnaround times, workflow visibility, document collection, document storage and general interaction with their clients."

Woods is excited for what 2017 will bring for OCREX - which secured secured High Potential Start Up (HPSU) seed funding from Enterprise Ireland - and intends to continue the company's growth in the UK while also establishing a significant presence in some target international markets.

"In the UK, there are significant changes on the way for these taxpayers over the next few years," he said.

"These changes will require a large portion of UK taxpayers to digitally file tax returns quarterly, whereas now, they only have to file a non-digital tax return annually. This is expected to drive the greatest growth in demand for accounting automation solutions and it is likely only a matter of time before we see similar requirements being introduced in other countries.

"With this in mind, and in light of existing plans to enter into additional international markets, we expect to secure a new round of funding in the first half of 2017 to expedite growth".

Brendan has a background of over fifteen years in enterprise software development, most notably in financial services and healthcare.
Donald Trump issued a threat against Toyota Motor Corp for a supposed plan to build a new plant in Baja California, Mexico.

The President-elect warned that if he would hit the auto manufacturer with a "big border tax" if they carried through with plans to build the plant.

Automakers are feeling intense pressure from the President-elect, following Ford's scrapping of its plans to build $1.6bn plant in Mexico  a result for which Mr Trump quickly took credit.

Trump was not reason for Ford scrapping Mexico car plant, says CEO

On Thursday, he took aim at the Japanese auto company for their plan to build small cars in Mexico facilities, originally announced in April 2015

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY!" he tweeted. "Build plant in US or pay big border tax."

Toyota issued a statement in response assuring that the production at the new facility in Guanajuato will not take away from US employment.

"Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry," Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said.

Hours before Mr Trump's tweet, Toyota Motor president Akio Toyoda told reporters at a New Year's gathering that he was willing to take the President-elect's positions into account when expanding production in North America.

Mr Toyoda said they have no plan to curb production in Mexico  the company currently plans to build Corolla sedans at the new facility, despite Mr Trump's proposed penalties for auto companies that outsource labour to Mexico.

"We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts," he added.

Although Mr Trump has put a lot of stock in his labour negotiations-via-twitter, automakers' decisions are not necessarily tied to the threats he has issued before even taking office.

While the New York businessman boasted Ford's decision was a result of his 140-character strong-arming, the company's chief executive said otherwise.

"Were looking at our capacity and saying, you know what, we can build that in an existing facility and use capacity that we already have."

He added: "Over the last couple of years weve seen small cars markedly decline. Every year were looking at our capacity.

"Were looking at our forecast for demand. It became very clear that we didnt need this plant.
Ruth Negga could bag a second Rising Star Award in a matter of weeks after her Bafta nomination. Photo: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images

Ruth Negga has taken a step closer to Oscar glory after being nominated for a Bafta award.

The Limerick native was nominated in the 'Rising Star' category, the only public-voted British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) Award.

The awards season looks set to be a big one for Negga thanks to her role in 'Loving', in which she stars as one half of an interracial couple who break the law by getting married in 1960s Virginia.

Joel Edgerton stars as her husband Richard in the film adaptation of a true story.

The role has already scored her Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award nominations.

Earlier this week, Negga received the Rising Star Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in California.

Negga described her Bafta nomination as "surreal".

"I can't wait for the ceremony in London," she added.

The Bafta nominees include Tom Holland - the latest actor to don the 'Spider-Man' suit, as well as Spanish actress Laia Costa, known for 'Victoria', 'The Witch' actress Anya Taylor-Joy, and 'Manchester by the Sea' actor Lucas Hedges.

"I have to say thank you to Bafta for recognising my work and nominating me for the Rising Star Award," said Holland.

Past winners, who are voted for by the public, include 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' actor John Boyega and Oscar nominee Tom Hardy. Bafta will next week announce the full list of nominees for this year's film awards, which will be held on February 12.

'Loving' opens in Irish cinemas on February 3.
The head of Amnesty International in Ireland has strongly criticised 'The Irish Times' for publishing a "fawning" article on the racist alt-right movement.

The piece published by 'The Irish Times' caused a storm of controversy after it included a list of derogatory and offensive terms the white nationalist group uses to describe black people, women and people who may have changed gender.

The movement came to prominence due to its support for US president-elect Donald Trump.

Mr Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News, a website aligned to the alt-right movement.

Amnesty executive director Colm O'Gorman described the article as "dangerous", "unbelievable" and "just extraordinary".

He said the outlet had published "what effectively is such a fawning piece about an ideology and a movement which spends most of its time preaching sneering hate".

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"For a start, if you want to convey what the ideology of the so-called alt-right is about, you need to name it for what it is," he said.

"It is a white supremacist, misogynistic, ultra-conservative ideology that wants to put women and minorities in particular kinds of boxes and that wants to assert some view of white male dominant power as the norm and acceptable order."

Mr O'Gorman said it was "grossly irresponsible" to give "space to somebody who gives a fawning description of an ideology that is hateful and deeply misogynistic and xenophobic".

The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) said it received 37 complaints.

"The complaints are a reflection of the public opprobrium 'The Irish Times' has provoked in giving a platform to a blogger with far-right sympathies and uncritically furnishing readers with a lexicon devised by the far-right," said its Ireland director Shane O'Curry.

Irish-based US writer Nicholas Pell, who has been published by the 'Washington Post' and 'Playboy', said he had "no regrets" about his piece and did not care if people believed him to be racist.

He said he was "not alt-right" but some of his views overlapped with those of the movement. "Mostly my overlap with them is seeing the establishment on the left and the establishment on the right take one on the nose."

In a blog post, 'The Irish Times' opinion editor John McManus defended its decision to publish the article on the basis that it would inform readers.

He said the piece decoded the language used by the movement and gave a clear indication of its thinking.

However, he accepted "some of the language in the piece has clearly offended people". He said this was not the intention and that the news outlet had been unambiguous in its opposition to what the alt-right stands for.
Gardai investigate the scene in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown after Reece Cullen was stabbed to death on Thursday. Photo: Collins

The father of a teenage boy who was stabbed to death in Tallaght in 1992 said that every argument now results in a fatal stabbing.

Joe Reillys 16-year-old son Kevin was fatally stabbed in a main artery in his chest by another teenager on April 15, 1992 in Jobstown, Tallaght, Co Dublin.

Mr Reilly is now speaking of his grief following the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Reece Cullen in Tallaght on Thursday night.

Ive no chance of getting justice for Kevin but it brings it all back reading that another young boy was stabbed to death just across the road from where Kevin was killed, Mr Reilly told Independent.ie.

Nobody was ever charged for the death of Kevin as the teenager accused said he acted in self-defence and was acquitted of the crime.

The judge said it wasnt illegal to have a knife. Everyday people are dying because people can carry knives.

Any argument now results in someone pulling a knife. Its fatal and its happening every day.

Joe said that Kevin was a lovely child who was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Kevin wasnt even involved in the argument but the gang who approached him was looking for his friends. One of them pulled out a knife, stabbed him and he bled to death.

Since 1992, Joe has called for tighter legislation around carrying knives.

In every argument these days, a knife is pulled. I protested outside the courts, the DPP and the Dail but nothing changes.

I just have to let it go and accept that there will never be any justice for these victims.

Every time I hear theres been a fatal stabbing in the news, it brings it all back.

On Thursday evening, 17-year-old Reece Cullen was stabbed to death at a house in Tallaght.

Expand Close Gardai at the scene of the fatal stabbing in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown, last night. Photo: Collins. Inset, victim Reece Cullen / Facebook

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It is understood he was targeted during a row at a house in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown, just after 3pm.

A teenage boy was arrested in relation to the fatal stabbing and is currently being held at Tallaght garda station.

Earlier this week, there was a stabbing on Lower Drumcondra Road where a woman in her thirties was attacked.
The team were called to a rural area near Monasterevin on request from An Garda Siochana at 1.20pm. Stock photo

The Army Bomb Disposal Team were called to deal with a suspect device in Co. Kildare earlier today.

The team were called to a rural area near Monasterevin on request from An Garda Siochana at 1.20pm.

A number of homes were evacuated and the area was cordoned off for a full examination.

The scene was declared safe at 2.25pm and material evidence was handed over to the gardai.

This is the first Army Bomb Disposal call-out of 2017, there were a total of 96 call-outs in 2016.
Urgent calls have been made for a garda crackdown on teenage gangs using social media to arrange street fights and group battles in the capital.

Shoppers and businesses are being terrorised by rival gangs who are using Facebook to meet up for confrontations.

City council members last night called for immediate action to tackle the scourge of violence linked to social media.

Rival gangs of teenagers, totalling more than 200 youths, were involved in a mini riot on Mary Street on St Stephens Day. It had been arranged through Facebook.

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Fear gripped crowds of shoppers on the busy street as innocent bystanders were attacked and shop workers threatened at knifepoint.

Several people were injured and, at one point, shops locked their doors to protect the customers inside.

Two rival groups of teenagers, mainly from Blanchardstown and Tallaght, arranged the bust-up and a number of fights among the teenagers were filmed and shown on Snapchat.

City councillor Nial Ring, a member of the Dublin Central Joint Policing Committee, told the Herald: More gardai are needed on the streets now. Business people are trying to make a living and young people cant be allowed to be running around out of control.

There are 130 fewer gardai on the beat in the city centre because of cutbacks.

Gardai cant effectively police these mass activities without proper manpower.

Gardai will need to monitor Facebook and Snapchat to identify the perpetrators and liaise with their colleagues in Tallaght and Blanchardstown.

City councillor and former Lord Mayor Christy Burke, who is also on the policing committee, said: Gardai in the inner city are already very busy policing the gangland feuds without having to deal with this as well.

This behaviour could get more out of hand if other young people start to follow suit. Gardai have to deal with this problem rapidly.

Councillor Ray McAdam, the Fine Gael chairman of the policing committee, said: I have already raised the issue of social media-organised violence with the gardai. Its a growing problem that must be tackled.

A sales assistant in a Mary Street shop said many youths ran up the street at the same time and they were filming themselves with their phones.

Later, the staff locked the doors of the shop for the safety of the customers inside. The customers didnt want to leave the shop because they didnt feel safe, she said.

An assistant manageress of another shop said: We heard it was all arranged on Facebook  a crowd of kids meeting up for a fight.

This group has been causing absolute havoc in the city over the last few weeks, said a source.

Theyve been threatening security staff with knives and just being a general nuisance.

What occurred on St Stephens Day was far worse, though.
A member of Dublin City Council (DCC) senior management is the mother of a leading Apollo House campaigner, the Irish Independent can reveal.

City architect Ali Grehan - who was involved in the council's modular housing scheme - is the mother of Home Sweet Home spokesperson Rosi Leonard.

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Home Sweet Home is the umbrella group operating the campaign which has occupied Apollo House for more than two weeks, housing 40 people.

Ms Grehan is one of 10 members of the council's senior management group which assists chief executive Owen Keegan.

A number of leading figures including Mr Keegan and deputy chief Brendan Kenny have criticised the occupation of the building, saying that it is not fit for purpose.

Despite her mother's high position within DCC, Ms Leonard insisted there was no conflict in each other's roles.

"Not at all, absolutely not," Ms Leonard said. "My mother is her own person, I'm my own person.

"I'm one of those people suffering under the housing crisis, I'm in this because I have friends of mine, I have family of mine (that are suffering), I'm struggling to envisage a future for myself.

Expand Close Singers Damien Dempsey and Glen Hansard at a briefing by activist group Home Sweet Home in Dublin yesterday. Photo: Collins / Facebook

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"I want to settle down and be part of a community and right now I'm living with the next six months in mind," she added.

A spokeswoman for the city council also denied there was any problem.

"Dublin City Council is aware that Rosi Leonard is the daughter of city architect Ali Grehan. We are not concerned about any potential conflict of interest as Ali Grehan has not been involved with the organisers and has no role within the structure of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE)," she said.

Meanwhile, seven delegates from the Home Sweet Home campaign will meet Housing Minister Simon Coveney today in an attempt to come to an agreement that could see residents at Apollo House leave the Nama property for alternative accommodation.

Last month, a High Court judge ruled that those occupying the building must vacate it by next Wednesday.

Trade unionist Brendan Ogle, who is a key figure in the campaign said yesterday the campaign had no intention of occupying another buildings.

Mr Ogle said the representatives meeting Mr Coveney today were going into the talks with a positive mindset.

He said he wanted the Minister to put forward other Nama properties that were suitable or could easily be made suitable for residential use.
Elite Iraqi troops bridged a river under the cover of darkness to seize a district of Mosul in an unprecedented night raid early on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle to capture the city from Islamic State after weeks of slowed momentum.

Since last week, Iraqi forces have launched a renewed push to seize ground in the nearly three month-old offensive to capture the city, after progress stalled last month because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Iraqi forces would soon "cut the head of the snake" and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said in a speech on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State's self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said the overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul had allowed troops to enter the Muthana district.

"We used special equipment and had the element of surprise - the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day," Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the new phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday. Iraqi army units were positioned for an advance on the area from the north, a Reuters correspondent at a military position near the front line said.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in the battle to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

"The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism ... and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages," he said in a statement.

'HEAD OF THE SNAKE'

"The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces ... will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God's help," Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

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A Dublin youth has appeared in court charged with theft by using stolen bank cards in a contactless payments spree at a betting shop.

The 17-year-old boy appeared at the Dublin Children's Court on Thursday after he was charged with 16 offences.

It is alleged he used two other people's bank cards to make payments, totalling 420, which did not require having to enter a PIN.

Contactless bank cards can only be used to spend up to 30 in an individual transaction.

The youth who cannot be named because he is a minor, is accused of two counts of burglary at apartments on Ringsend Road, in Dublin 4, on July 14 last.

He also faces 14 counts of theft for unlawfully using two debit cards, which did not belong to him on the same date as the burglary, to make contactless payments of 30 each. The contactless payment offences are alleged to have occurred at a Paddy Power shop on Ringsend Road.

Garda Dermot Delaney, of Irishtown Garda station, told Judge Alan Mitchell that the youth was arrested on Thursday morning and he was charged before he was brought to court.

The boy, who was accompanied to court by his mother, made no reply when cautioned and he was given a copy of each charge.

There was no objection to bail and the DPP had recommended that the case should be dealt with in the Children's Court. The Garda told Judge Mitchell there were no aggravating factors. He agreed that the facts of the case were as set out on the charges and told the court, Yes, repeated use of contactless debit cards.

Judge Mitchell accepted jurisdiction and ordered gardai to provide disclosure of evidence which will include CCTV footage. The case was adjourned.

The boy, who did not address the court, will be expected to enter a plea at his next hearing in three weeks. He remains on bail on these charges but is in custody on remand in relation to other proceedings.
Gardai at the scene of the attack in Drumcondra, Dublin. Photo: Arthur Carron

A HOMELESS woman has appeared in court charged with robbing and assaulting a female civil servant who was stabbed in the neck as she walked home from work.

Laura Kenna (33) was remanded in custody after no bail application was made on her behalf.

She was charged in connection with the violent mugging of a 35-year-old woman in Drumcondra.

The victim is still recovering in hospital after she was attacked and seriously injured as she walked near the Archbishops home on Tuesday.

Judge Anthony Halpin adjourned the case for a week at Dublin District Court.

Ms Kenna, of no fixed address, is charged with robbery and assault causing harm to the woman at Drumcondra Road Lower on January 3. She is alleged to have robbed the woman of her handbag and mobile phone.

This morning, Detective Sergeant Ken Hoare said he arrested the accused for the purpose of caution at Mountjoy Garda Station at 10.58pm last night.

She was charged in his presence at 11pm by Garda Sergeant Michael OBrien and made no reply after caution.

She was handed copies of the charge sheets.

Defence solicitor Daniel Hanahoe said he was aware gardai were objecting to bail but there was no application for bail.

He applied for free legal aid and Judge Halpin granted this after there was no garda objection.

Ms Kenna was remanded in custody to January 13, for mention on that date.

The DPP's directions have not yet been made available.

The accused, wearing a zip-up grey top and dark blue jeans did not address the court during this mornings brief hearing.

She spoke briefly to Mr Hanahoe at the end of the proceedings.

The charges against the defendant are under the Theft and Fraud and Non Fatal Offences Against the Person Act.

Ms Kenna has not yet indicated how she intends to plead to the charges.

According to gardai, the incident happened on Drumcondra Road Lower between Clonliffe Road and the Archbishop's House shortly after 5pm on Tuesday.

Gardai and staff from the Archbishop's House helped the victim who was reportedly staggering and appeared to have lost a lot of blood.

She was taken for treatment to the Mater Hospital.
The scimitar-horned oryx was once widespread across northern Africa but due to overhunting and habitat loss, they have gradually disappeared from the wild. Photo: Patrick Bolger

It is considered extinct in the wild - but Dublin Zoo is celebrating the birth of a male scimitar-horned oryx.

Born in early December, the newest addition brings the total herd at the zoo to four.

Expand Close The baby oryx who was born in Dublin Zoo in early December. Photo: Patrick Bolger / Facebook

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Whatsapp The baby oryx who was born in Dublin Zoo in early December. Photo: Patrick Bolger

The scimitar-horned oryx was once widespread across northern Africa but due to overhunting and habitat loss, they have gradually disappeared from the wild.

The species has been classified as extinct in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Since 2013, Dublin Zoo has supported the reintroduction programme for the scimitar-horned oryx in Tunisia.

Through conservation programmes, zoo-bred oryx have been reintroduced into semi-wild areas.

Zoo team leader Helen Clarke-Bennet said: "We are absolutely thrilled with the new arrival and recognise the significance of this birth in the conservation of the scimitar-horned oryx.

"The calf has shown strong signs of settling into its new surroundings and is mixing extremely well with the rest of the herd."
A festive deed has not gone unnoticed as fundraising has poured in for a family who went beyond the call of duty to help another family at Christmas.

A family from Cobh, Co Cork were left devastated when they turned up to see the Santa experience at Dunnes Stores, only to discover they had booked tickets for the wrong day.

The heartbroken family who had two young girls arrived on December 23, but the Santa experience had ended the previous day.

In the spirit of Christmas, Dunnes Stores manager Declan Flanagan and security guard Mark Flynn put on an unforgettable experience for the "devastated" little girls.

Mark dressed up as "Buddy the elf" and took the girls on a special guided tour of Santa's grotto, even though Santa had already left to get ready to deliver presents to children.

Mark's wife Lisa Flynn told Independent.ie that the pair turned on all the lights and "turned a devastating moment into an unforgettable experience".

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In the case of no good deed goes unnoticed, the local community began fundraising for Mark and Lisa's little girl Kate (3), after they learned she was ill and needed help.

Three-year-old Kate Flynn has spent most of her life in Crumlin hospital and has a tracheostomy which means she needs a ventilator to breathe.

"Kate took a turn for the worst in November and she needs a ventilator to help her breathe all the time now. She used to only need it when she sleeps but now she's confined to her cot," Kate's mum Lisa Flynn told Independent.ie.

"We're fundraising to get a new room for Kate because she's confined to her cot and currently she's living in the storeroom off the kitchen because she can't get upstairs. She has no windows, no fresh-air and no room for a bed."

Expand Close Three-year-old Kate is now confined to her cot after taking a "bad turn" in November / Facebook

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Lisa gave up work to look after Kate full-time, who is in and out of Crumlin hospital.

"We don't have the capacity to alter our house because of structural limitations but we found a house locally that would suit Kate's needs.

"We only have Mark's salary so the bank won't give us a new mortgage because we're high risk."

Lisa explained that the family are working with the bank and the credit union to try and agree on a mortgage, but estimates they will need to raised 70,000 to bridge the gap.

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"We need somewhere that's suitable for Kate because we have to face the reality that she might continue to deteriorate."

Lisa currently has to wash Kate in a baby bath on the kitchen table as the bathroom is located on the third floor of the house.

She said as Kate continues to grow, they need to find alternative arrangements.

"It's hard to make a plan for Kate's future because it's unknown. Before November she didn't need her ventilator during the day and she was doing ballet and going to pre-school. Now she might be confined to her room permanently."

Since Kate came home from the hospital, Lisa said the family have been struggling financially.

"Kate has a number of machines and so our electricity bill is huge. We do have a lot of financial stress so that's why we set up the GoFundMe page to give Kate a chance of life."

Kate who enjoyed Christmas at home with her two brother Adam (8) and Alex (6) will be returning to Crumlin in the coming days.

"We don't know if she'll continue to deteriorate. It's devastating to watch her not even have enough energy to leave her room. We're hoping the fundraising will help us make life more manageable for our little girl."

After locals heard of the family's good deed at Christmas and their struggle, they began holding coffee mornings and other fundraising events for the family.

"Every donation helps. It's amazing that people are helping us," said Lisa.

To help the Flynn family you can donate at: https://www.gofundme.com/a-home-for-kate
Gardai at the scene of the attack in Drumcondra, Dublin. Photo: Arthur Carron

A 36-year-old female civil servant who was stabbed in the neck in Drumcondra is recovering well in hospital.

Gardai arrested a "volatile" homeless drug addict in the Tallaght area on Wednesday night after officers discovered her "acting very strangely".

Officers feared that the 33-year-old woman may have been planning a crime rampage.

The suspect, who is originally from Co Kildare, has been staying in homeless hostels in Dublin city centre and is known to gardai for her "violent and erratic behaviour", according to sources.

"There are legitimate fears that this woman may have attacked other people, so it is a relief that she has been taken off the streets.

"Certainly, there were concerns that if she was not picked up, she may well have done serious harm to other people and even gone on a violent rampage."

Gardai are not looking for anyone else in relation to the stabbing that happened on Drumcondra Road Lower between Clonliffe Road and the Archbishop's House shortly after 5pm on Tuesday.

"The prompt action of gardai on foot patrol, who assisted the injured woman, greatly assisted in this early arrest," a Garda spokesman said yesterday.

Staff from the Archbishop's House also helped the victim, who they said was staggering and appeared to have lost a lot of blood.

The 36-year-old is understood to be making a good recovery in the Mater Hospital.

However, investigating gardai have not yet been able to get a formal statement from the victim. Her family did not wish to comment when contacted yesterday.

The attacker demanded that the victim hand over her handbag, before stabbing her in the neck in an unprovoked attack.

She then escaped with the woman's bag, which contained her mobile phone as well as other items.

CCTV has played a major role in the investigation and gardai obtained footage from the Archbishop's House as part of their probe, as well as from other businesses in the Drumcondra area.

Read more: Garda on routine patrol found knife attack victim and raised the alarm

CCTV footage showed the attacker sitting on a wall before the attack, and also the victim lying against a wall after being stabbed by the suspect.

It is understood the suspect was identified shortly after the mugging.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said it was "very tragic that a person simply waking home from work can be attacked like this and it's not the only attack of this kind in the last few days".
The Government's long-promised plan to expand free GP care to all children is under threat in the wake of the worst ever trolley crisis in the country's overcrowded hospital wards.

The Government had hoped to expand the scheme, which is currently available to under-sixes, to all children under 12 by the end of this year and for all children during its terms in office.

But the scheme has been highlighted as one of the causes of the unprecedented backlog of patients waiting for treatment in cramped hospital wards.

Out-of-hours GP services have been overwhelmed by the number of parents seeking free medical care for their children over the Christmas period and this in turn has put massive pressure on hospitals.

The trolley controversy has all but signalled the end of free GP care for all children.

It is now expected that ministers will introduce reduced medical costs for children over six or expand the current scheme incrementally by one year at a time.

This would mean that if the Government survived a full term it would be able to roll out free GP care for children under 10 at most.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Health Minister Simon Harris said he was committed to introducing free GP care for all children as was set out in the Programme for Government.

However, he said he would expand the scheme to under-12s only when he reached agreement with doctors on a new GP contract.

"We have to learn from the past and while I think the under-sixes scheme is very good and a benefit to lots of parents and families we need to make sure the GP system is supported to deal with any additional workload," Mr Harris said.

"That's why I made it very clear to the GPs when I took up office I would only be rolling out any new changes in the context of a new GP contract."

The negotiations between the Department of Health and GP representative bodies are due to commence this month.

Last night, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) warned that GP practices did not have the capacity to deal with a further influx of children availing of free medical treatment.

Chairman of the IMO's GP committee Dr Padraig McGarry said it would be "completely inappropriate" for Mr Harris to introduce free medical cards for under-12s when GPs were struggling to deal with demand under the current scheme.

"Given the current financial constraints in the health service I don't know where they would get the resources to meet the demands of expanding the scheme," he said.

The National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) said the overcrowding crisis in hospital emergency departments had reached catastrophic levels owing to a lack of proper planning and investment. Separately, Mr Harris apologised for what hundreds of patients were going through.

Speaking at the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore, he said: "Our hospitals are going through an extraordinarily challenging period of time.

"I really am sorry for Irish patients and indeed for the staff working in our hospitals experiencing the conditions that they are having to put up with at the moment.

"It isn't acceptable, the health service must do better."
Following the introduction of free medical care to under sixes, the Government had suggested children aged 12 and under would soon be able to avail of this service. Stock Image: GETTY

The provision of free GP care for under sixes has forced out-of-hours doctors to turn away a "frighteningly large number" of other patients over Christmas.

GP practices around the country continue to be stretched to capacity and are unable to meet demand.

Expand Close Dr Illona Duffy warned of an 'imminent collapse' in general practice if there isnt major reform. Photo: Eamonn Keogh / MacMonagle, Killarney / Facebook

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Whatsapp Dr Illona Duffy warned of an 'imminent collapse' in general practice if there isnt major reform. Photo: Eamonn Keogh / MacMonagle, Killarney

Dr Illona Duffy, medical director of North East Doctor on Call (NEDOC), warned of an "imminent collapse" in general practice if there isn't major reform.

"There is no doubt that the under sixes are having a huge impact on GPs' services," she said.

"During the holiday season we all put out extra staff, expecting a high demand but this just wasn't enough.

"The general practice field was already suffering a crisis, but introducing free medical care for the under sixes was a tipping point.

"The simple fact is that there just isn't enough GPs.

"Doctors around the country had to turn down a frighteningly large number of patients over Christmas.

"Before Christmas, 29 people tried to join our practice and we had to tell them we had no space."

The NEDOC medical director warned the extra pressure on out-of-hours doctors is resulting in more referrals to emergency departments.

"People waiting an unreasonable time to see their GP would instead go to A&E with minor issues like ear and throat infections," she said.

"Other patients with more complex medical problems are also being released from hospital far too early, which means they're coming back into their community just as sick."

Following the introduction of free medical care to under sixes, the Government had suggested children aged 12 and under would soon be able to avail of this service.

However, Dr Duffy said that doctors around the county would fight "tooth and nail" to stop that happening.
The CEO of the University of Limerick Hospital Group has vehemently denied that hospital managers are to blame for the hospital trolley crisis.

Professor Colette Cowan was reacting to a reports of a letter sent by Health Minister Simon Harris urging HSE top brass to implement existing policy of sacking managers who were failing to resolve the crisis.

She said she and her colleagues were already "performance managed" by the HSE and were given "targets that we have to meet".

"We are not ignoring the fact that we are busy. We are under an accountability and performance framework that was brought into the health service last January, which we signed up to, so we are accountable."

UHL had 60 patients on trolleys between its Emergency Department (30) and general wards (30).

Read more: Its third world conditions  Woman recalls horrendous week spent at overcrowded hospital

"There are some targets that we haven't met in the last few days, with the numbers of patients in the ED; so my sense is that the minister is saying we are not meeting his targets and we should be accountable and he's right, and we do account," she said.

However, she strongly disagreed managers were to blame for the crisis. "We know how (hard) we work; we work over and above our hours to make sure patients are safe. The key thing that matters to me is that patients are looked after, and safe, and everything else I'm happy to account for."

She said the crisis was down to growth in an ageing population.
Health Minister Simon Harris said he wants to "break the vicious cycle that has dogged" his predecessors - as he went into crisis talks with the HSE task force this morning.

Mr Harris said he wants to put in place the building blocks to break the cycle - by adding bed capacity and staff to overcrowded HSE hospitals across the country.

Also heading into the crunch talks at Dr Steeven's Hospital in Dublin, Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients Association said the meeting was vital given the "unprecedented" levels of patients on trolleys.

He said the meeting would be "very open and very frank" to understand why the number of patients on trolleys were almost triple what they has hoped.

Read More

Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses and Midwives organisation said hospitals are 3,500 nurses short and said consultants must be available all weekend as he went into the meeting.

"Between now and the end of March we've got to really change work practices, we've got to have longer extended day presences of consultants, we've got to have cross consultant discharge of patients at weekends and out of hours, we've got to have nurses led discharge during the week," he said.

The number of patients on trolleys on Friday totalled 395, down from a record-breaking 612 on Tuesday morning.

University Hospital Limerick continues to be the worst-hit hospital with a total of 41 patients on trolleys, while the Mater is now the worst-hit hospital in the Dublin with a trolley count of 25.

Letterkenny General Hospital and University Hospital Galway also recorded high trolley numbers with 30 and 31, respectively.

More to follow
Only a few days into 2017 and Ireland is facing its biggest recorded trolley crisis. We take a look back at how the problem has grown over the last five years,

2012

A mild winter and lower levels of flu helped slash trolley numbers from 569 in early January 2011 to 344 recorded on 16 January, 2012.

The 2011 figures, mainly due to extreme weather, saw many patients suffering from flu or respiratory illnesses.

Then Minister for Health James Reilly stated that there were still too many patients lingering in trolleys for more than 24 hours, but that targets were achievable.

The following month, one woman spoke out after her mother (81) was left waiting overnight for a bed at the Emergency Department at Galway University Hospital.

Sheelagh Conway, from Loughrea, Co Galway, said she encountered chaotic scenes at hospital, which she likened to a battlezone.

"People are lying like dogs on trolleys all over the corridor. People are in corners. I had to sleep on the floor beside my mother's trolley. There was not even a chair in the cubicle in the emergency ward, she told the Irish Independent at the time.

"I'm extremely upset. She is 81 years of age. Women like my mother have been the backbone of the country. And this is the way they are being treated now.

In July that year, then Fine Gael TD Jerry Buttimer said that Reilly was winning the war on trolley numbers.

Mr Buttimer, now a Senator, said that figures for that time showed there was a dip of around10,000 people having to wait on trolleys, compared to 2011.

Altogether, there were 66,308 people on trolleys in 2012, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).

2013

After the decline in trolley number between 2011 and 2012, figures rose once again in 2013. A total of 67,863 people spent time on trolleys across Ireland throughout the year, a two per cent increase on the previous year.

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Speaking on a video released on Fine Gaels YouTube channel, Minister Reilly said that the Irish health care system showed great promise.

Ive often said we have some of the best doctors in the world and some of the best world and indeed some of the best managers in the world are Irish. So how, in the name of God, is it that we dont have one of the best health services in the world?

Im not interested in spin. Im interested in reality. The reality is we have a very serious problem. 

2014

During 2014, there was a jump of close to 10,000 people waiting for a hospital bed on trolleys. By the end of the year, a total of 77,091 people had spent time waiting for beds.

In January, The INMO claimed that there were 467 people on trolleys, wards and emergency departments on January 8. They added that claims that overcrowding had been reduced were untrue.

Nurses in Limerick Regional Hospital claimed was in "utter chaos" with 36 patients on trolleys in the emergency department.

The Limerick nurses took industrial action two years prior to this over patient safety concerns but staff shortages had continued, they warned.

In the cabinet reshuffle of July 2014, Leo Varadkar replaced James Reilly as Minister for Health.

The following month, Varadkar turned down a request to spend 12 hours on a shift at one of the country's busiest hospitals.

Staff at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda said the Dublin TD can only get to grips with the crisis in the health system by seeing what happens himself.

However, the minister, a qualified doctor, told the Irish Independent he could not take up the offer for insurance reasons.

2015

In 2015, the number grew substantially, with 92,998 people having to wait for hospital beds, according to the INMO.

At one point in January, crisis-hit hospitals were grappling with 584 patients on trolleys.

Footage filmed by Independent.ie visited the hospital in Drogheda this afternoon, as visitors complained of wall-to-wall trolleys and shocking overcrowding to witness first-hand the situation ins Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, one of the countrys leading hospitals in 2015.

The topic led to a heated Dail debate, where Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin stated that up to 600 people were left on trolleys awaiting a hospital bed that week.

The Cork TD also produced an election leaflet which showed the Taoiseach pledging to end the trolley crisis.

Mr Kenny said the Government acknowledged that the issue was not acceptable and a proper response was now being implemented.

"This is an area now that is part of a priority focus by the Minister to see can this be dealt with," Mr Kenny told the Dail.

Varadkar said he wants more patients on trolleys moved to hospital wards from overcrowded emergency departments and corridors - even though the situation will still be "unsafe".

He added that he had been in regular contact with Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the crisis in emergency departments, adding that they had become "very close" in recent months.

Former Health Minister James Reilly has refused to accept personal responsibility for the overcrowding crisis in Emergency Departments.

"I'm not the Minister for Health so I can't address that question."

He added: "Minister Varadkar has a very difficult job to do. This is always a difficult time of the year and I am fully supportive of his efforts to address the needs of people who find themselves in need of medical attention over the coming months.

2016

At one point at the start of the year, the number of patients on trolleys waiting more than nine hours for a bed was higher than on the same day in January 2015, according to the HSE's own figures.

There were 455 on trolleys in emergency departments countrywide on the morning of January 12. Of these, 201 were waiting for a bed for more than nine hours.

Minister Varadkar visited the emergency department of Portlaoise Hospital that morning, where earlier around 18 patients were still waiting for a bed.

The Dublin TD said it would be unwise for any politician to promise to eliminate entirely the problem of hospital patients having to wait on trolleys.

Anybody who makes such promises does not understand the true complexity of what we face in the health service, he said.

In May 2016, Simon Harris was appointed Minister for Health after the years General Election, in which former Minister for Health James Reilly lost his seat.

2017

Just a few days into 2017, a record 612 patients were on trolleys or wards waiting for admission into hospital on one day. The countrys Winter flu outbreak was blamed by most for the problems scale.

Wicklow TD Simon Harris said he is sorry for patients and staff enduring the extraordinarily difficult situation at Irish hospitals.

"I really am sorry for Irish patients and indeed for the staff working in our hospitals experiencing the conditions that they are having to put up with at the moment.

"It isnt acceptable, the health service must do better, he said.

Mr Harris has moved to distance himself from Transport Minister Shane Rosss suggestion that he would kick ass to solve the hospital trolley crisis.

He dismissed the Independent Alliance Ministers comments and insisted he would rather focus on taking actions than engaging in buzzwords or political soundbites.
Tunisian authorities have arrested a state employee accused of passing information about security operations to extremist groups, a police spokesman said on Friday.

Since its 2011 uprising, Tunisia has faced repeated Islamist militant attacks that have killed more than 100 soldiers and policemen, as well dozens of civilians and foreign tourists, according to official figures.

Khlifa Chibani, a spokesman for the National Guard, told a news conference that 11 "terrorist cells" were broken up by security services last month alone and 62 suspects arrested.

Among the suspects was "an employee of the state who provided these cells with a programme of security raids," said Chibani.

He declined however to identify the suspect or say in which government department he worked, adding only that "he could access" security information through his job.

"His relation to security (services) allowed him to know" of planned anti-extremist operations, he said.

Chibani said the state employee was arrested in Tunisia's Enfidha region, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the capital Tunis, and added that the suspected had confessed to the alleged crime.

In September 2015, the interior ministry said 110 members of the security services had been dismissed from their posts, some allegedly for harbouring "terrorist sympathies".

Tunisia says around 3,000 of its nationals have joined the ranks of jihadists groups fighting in neighbouring Libya, as well as in Syria and Iraq.

The United Nations puts this figure at 5,500.

A government spokesman last month said around 800 jihadists who returned to Tunisia have so far been jailed or placed under surveillance.

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Fewer than one in six health workers in some of the country's leading hospitals have been vaccinated against the flu virus, according to the latest figures from the HSE.

One of the worst offenders was Mayo General Hospital in Taoiseach Enda Kenny's home town of Castlebar, where just 13.9pc of staff had taken the vaccine.

The worrying statistics came as Health Minister Simon Harris urged hospital workers to get the flu jab as the trolley crisis escalated.

A key recommendation from a HSE emergency team tasked with tackling the overcrowding problem was for hospital staff to be given the vaccine.

Meanwhile, a leading HSE doctor said that healthcare staff who had not been vaccinated could have "very big consequences" for the country's struggling health system.

Dr Kevin Kelleher, a consultant in public health, stressed the importance of staff getting the vaccine when he spoke at a briefing on influenza.

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"We also have to make sure the staff are vaccinated too. If the staff aren't vaccinated then there can be big consequences in terms of flu outbreaks," he said.

"We know every year that we get between 40 and 80 outbreaks of flu in healthcare institutions, predominately long-care facilities for the elderly."

Poor

However, data compiled by the HSE on December 19 showed extremely poor uptake of the flu jab among staff.

In University Maternity Hospital Limerick, a mere 14pc of staff had been vaccinated. In Dublin's Mater Hospital, just 17pc of staff had received the flu jab.

The report found that across 45 hospitals, under a third of staff had been vaccinated.

Staff most likely to be vaccinated were categorised as 'medical and dental' staff, with just under half of these reporting vaccination.

Temple Street Children's Hospital had the most vaccinated staff, with 873 staff members getting the jab.

The hospital was the only one where at least half the staff had been given the vaccine.

Only three people working in Lourdes Orthopaedic Hospital in Kilkenny were vaccinated out of a staff of 86 people, making it the worst-rated hospital in the entire country.
Simon Harris has impressed Fine Gael colleagues at a young age, but now faces the biggest test of his political career. Photo: Colin ORiordan

Health Minister Simon Harris says that 28 additional beds are being made available in Galway today with further beds set to be available in the coming weeks.

After a record number of 612 people were left on trolleys across the country on Tuesday, Mr Harris said the HSE needs to do better.

The significant surge that has happened in recent days, it is fair to say the health service wasnt adequately prepared, he said.

Thats not apportioning blame - its stating what is now the obvious this week.

Simon Harris says he wants to engage is substantial action rather than buzz words when asked about Shane Ross's 'kicking ass' comments pic.twitter.com/ZdFhcR3XMs  Sean Defoe (@SeanDefoe) January 6, 2017

Thats why I said to the HSE, yes we need to continue to drive on the winter initiative but you also need to do exceptional measures, you need to go above and beyond and Im sorry what Irish patients had to experience this week; Im sorry what staff had to experience.

Lessons need to be learned, we need to redouble our efforts, the HSE need to do better and will do better but most importantly these measures that the HSE has announced are tangible measures that can take place immediately to try and improve the situation, he added.

Mr Harris has moved to distance himself from Transport Minister Shane Rosss suggestion that he would kick ass to solve the hospital trolley crisis.

He dismissed the Independent Alliance Ministers comments and insisted he would rather focus on taking actions than engaging in buzzwords or political soundbites.

Speaking ahead of an emergency HSE taskforce meeting, Mr Harris said: This is an extraordinarily, serious and difficult situation for patients.

People who are ill have found themselves on hospital trolleys and staff have found themselves working in extraordinarily pressurised environments so rather than engaging in buzzwords or political soundbites I want to engage in substantive actions, he added.

The ministers comments came as the number of people languishing on hospital trolleys fell below 400.

The 395 figure is down 6pc on the same day last year.

University Hospital Limerick continues to be the worst-hit hospital with a total of 41 patients on trolleys, while the Mater is now the worst-hit hospital in the Dublin with a trolley count of 25.

Letterkenny General Hospital and University Hospital Galway also recorded high trolley numbers with 30 and 31, respectively.

The minister said he wanted to "break the vicious cycle that has dogged" his predecessors in the Department of Health.

He said he wanted to put in place the building blocks to break the cycle - by adding bed capacity and staff to overcrowded HSE hospitals across the country.

Also heading into the crunch talks at Dr Steeven's Hospital in Dublin, Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients Association said the meeting was vital given the "unprecedented" levels of patients on trolleys.

He said the meeting would be "very open and very frank" so as to understand why the number of patients on trolleys were almost triple what they has hoped.

Liam Doran of the Irish Nurses and Midwives organisation said hospitals are 3,500 nurses short and said consultants must be available all weekend as he went into the meeting.

"Between now and the end of March we've got to really change work practices, we've got to have longer extended day presences of consultants, we've got to have cross consultant discharge of patients at weekends and out of hours, we've got to have nurses led discharge during the week," he said.
Health Minister Simon Harris held emergency talks with the HSE yesterday in a bid to solve the severe overcrowding in our hospital system

Private hospitals will be hired at taxpayers' expense in a desperate bid to deal with the current A&E trolley crisis.

Health Minister Simon Harris held emergency talks with the HSE yesterday in a bid to solve the severe overcrowding in our hospital system.

The executive outlined a series of measures to tackle the high numbers of patients waiting in A&E departments.

At least 63 extra acute hospital beds will be opened across the country and an additional 60 transitional care beds will be introduced across 10 acute hospitals including St James's Hospital, Galway, Drogheda and Wexford.

A number of private hospitals have been identified that can provide support to the public hospital system in the near term including Kilkenny, Mullingar and Cork.

Additional diagnostic services such as X-ray and ultrasound will be made available to GPs through existing private providers in a number of locations, while hospital groups will work with nursing homes to offer support in managing influenza.

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Read more: Hospital forced to isolate contagious patients with curtains as overcrowding continues

"These measures are designed to address the current significant demands on the health service as a result of the increased numbers of patients attending EDs at this time of year as well as a spike in flu-like illnesses and the winter vomiting bug," a spokesperson said.

"This flu is exacerbating an already challenging situation in our hospitals and community due to its early arrival and the fact that this strain (AH3) affects older people in the main."

The additional measures were announced following a meeting between Mr Harris and HSE director general Tony O'Brien.

Earlier, Mr Harris's Cabinet colleague Shane Ross said the minister planned to "kick ass" when he met HSE management.

Nursing Homes Ireland issued a release outlining that more than 700 beds are available within almost 200 member nursing homes.

Meanwhile, Department of Health officials have been accused of "deliberately downplaying" HSE warnings about the risks of overcrowding in hospital wards before it unveiled its multi-million-euro plan to tackle the trolley crisis.

It emerged yesterday that HSE officials had warned that Mr Harris's 40m 'winter initiative' might not be enough to reduce the number of people on trolleys in winter.

However, Department of Health officials asked for the warning to be put at the back of the public document so the plan could focus on the "positive" measures being introduced.

An internal departmental memo uncovered by journalist Ken Foxe said: "We fully understand the need to include assumptions and dependencies, and you are of course correct in stating that unusually high demand and other factors could hypothetically have an adverse effect on delivery.

"However, we would advise, prior to publication, that this section might be moved to the end of the submission; we would prefer to focus on the very positive effects of the proposed initiative, towards the beginning of the document."

Labour Party health spokesman Alan Kelly accused officials of "deliberately downplaying" HSE warnings and called on Mr Harris to state how much he knew about the decision.

Read more: Row of 'at least 16 ambulances' pictured outside A&E at major hospital - with nowhere to drop off patients

"The minister should clarify whether he was fully aware of the significance of the HSE warnings on a flu outbreak," said Mr Kelly.

"He also needs to make clear if he wanted the risks downplayed to encourage more positive reporting on his plan."

Sources close to the minister last night insisted Mr Harris was unaware of the decision taken by officials and said his team of political advisers did not sanction civil servants to make the changes to the final version of the report.

Separately, Mr O'Brien defended hospital managers after Mr Harris suggested he remove those failing to take control of the trolley crisis.

However, Mr O'Brien said "right now is the wrong time" to discuss removing managers despite hospital staff struggling to reduce the worst ever backlog of patients on trolleys.

The HSE boss said the factors causing the overcrowding were "outside the control" of hospital managers. Asked how much it would cost to resolve the overcrowding problem, Mr O'Brien said: "Hundreds of millions".
Roscommon County Council is holding a special meeting today to discuss the housing of 80 refugees in the village of Ballaghaderreen.

The Department of Justice informed the council that 80 refugees, mostly Syrian will be housed in a former hotel in the town.

It is understood the refugees will arrive in late January or early February and will be housed in Roscommon for two years.

Local councillor Rachel Doherty (FF) said there was concern over the speed of the process.

Locals have a lot of questions about how this will happen. The main concern is about the resources in the area and the speed of how it was announced," Ms Doherty told Independent.ie.

We will be sure to raise these questions at the meeting with the Department of Justice.

Speaking on today's RTE Radio One Drivetime, Minister of State at the Department of Justice & Equality, David Stanton, stated that the refugees will remain in Ballaghderreen for six months, before being rehomed.

He added: "All they want is peace and we want to give them that. We want to give them the support they need."

Locals expressed their concern on social media after the news was announced.

One man expressed concern for local resources and said the short notice was a disgrace.

Even though these refugees should be placed in a safe location less than a days notice stating that 80 refugees will be placed in the Abbyfield Hotel which had just be reopened recently was a disgrace [sic].

"The lack of schools and the fact that the locals were counting on the hotel to bring in tourism is a major problem, one person wrote on Facebook.

Another local wrote: Roscommon County Council please lead the community by example and provide a warm welcome to the families. Your meeting should focus on planning the welcome and support and squashing disquiet.
A man in his 20s has been arrested by Gardai investigating the alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman who had just exited a Nitelink bus.

Gardai from Blanchardstown are investigating the alleged incident, which occurred at approximately 4am in the Littlepace area of Dublin 15 in the early hours of the 18th of December.

While walking home she was approached, threatened and assaulted by a lone male. The woman managed to fend off her attacker and raise the alarm by flagging down a passing Taxi before alerting Gardai. Her phone was also taken during the incident.

A man was arrested in the west Dublin area yesterday by investigating Gardai and is currently detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984 at Blanchardstown Garda Station.

The investigation is ongoing.
Regina Doherty's frank and outspoken nature has landed her in hot water before. Just before Christmas, Ms Doherty expressed her opposition to the approval of planning permission for the new north-south electricity inter-connector which passes through her Meath East constituency.

Fianna Fail TD Thomas Byrne - who also opposes the project - accused her of backing protests against her own government when she indicated that she supports farmers and landowners who may engage in "civil disobedience" over the issue. Ms Doherty also said a Cabinet decision would be needed to overturn the An Bord Pleanala decision and, asked by the 'Irish Times' if she would resign over the issue, she replied: "The principle is more important than a job."

Before the summer recess, she regretted wading into the debate over Taoiseach Enda Kenny's future as Fine Gael leader. She said in a local radio interview that he should set out a timeline for his departure. Ms Doherty later said she had answered a question on the issue "without thinking" and that "within an hour of it happening, I realised from social media how much of a stupid thing I had done and he was the first person I called". Ms Doherty also moved to publicly express her support for Mr Kenny within hours of her comments. She said: "An Taoiseach now and always has my full support and backing. The decision on his future, when he makes it, will be completely his own to make."

Ms Doherty previously expressed annoyance that no Fine Gael women TDs were appointed as junior ministers during a reshuffle in 2014.

She said at the time that she "respected the Taoiseach's decision" but said he had "missed an opportunity".

"I am little miffed that we didn't promote women, particularly with the possibility of needing a quota of 30pc of female candidates," she added.

As Government Chief Whip, she has one of the most difficult jobs in the Oireachtas as she must ensure attendance for Dail votes and debates. Labour TD Joan Burton called on Ms Doherty to apologise last July when a Dail debate was delayed for 40 minutes because there wasn't a quorum of 20 TDs present. Ms Burton said that for around 20 minutes there were just three Government representatives in the chamber.
The DUP has said it is confident that Sinn Fein will support its proposals to claw back the 500m (585m) overspend in the 'cash for ash' scandal - and that the collapse of the Executive and a snap election will be avoided.

After another day of political drama, Sammy Wilson accused Mairtin O Muilleoir of "grandstanding" when the Sinn Fein Finance Minister dismissed the DUP's plan and insisted that, if Arlene Foster didn't temporarily step aside, the Executive would fall.

Mr O Muilleoir dismissed a plan to deal with the renewable heating scandal as "nothing but a sticking plaster".

Mr O Muilleoir also warned that the political institutions would collapse unless the First Minister stood aside to facilitate an independent investigation into the scandal.

"I still haven't seen a plan, there is no plan. When I went to the meeting, there was no plan ready for me and, in fact, I am told that rather than a solution, we now have an interim solution, a sticking plaster," he said. "By refusing to step aside [Mrs Foster] has sounded the death knell for the Assembly, the Executive and the institutions."

But DUP MP Sammy Wilson said that an Assembly election "isn't the answer".

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Read more: 'Misogyny claim is Foster trying to divert attention from scandal' - SF

"Mairtin O Muilleoir's ego is hurt because he wasn't personally involved in drawing up the emergency proposals," he said.

"But I've every confidence that he will settle down and that Sinn Fein will support our plan when the Executive meets next week. I don't for a second believe that Sinn Fein wants to collapse the political institutions."

"An election will solve nothing," he added. "The recent shouting match between ourselves and Sinn Fein is just a blip. We will both get over it."

Mr Wilson said that under the proposals drawn up by Economy Minister Simon Hamilton, the rate of pay to RHI beneficiaries would be reduced.

The SDLP, Alliance, and TUV are deeply sceptical of the viability of the proposals that the DUP claim will reduce the 500m overspend to zero.

All rival parties at Stormont have demanded Mrs Foster stand aside while her role in the affair is investigated. Mrs Foster oversaw the inception of the RHI scheme. She has refused to step aside and has claimed some of those calling for her head are motivated by misogyny.

The RHI was supposed to offer a proportion of the cost businesses had to run eco-friendly boilers, but the subsidy tariffs were set too high, and without a cap, so it ended up paying out significantly more than the price of fuel.

Meanwhile, one former DUP MLA has said he is "unlikely" to remain in the party following his trenchant attack on Mrs Foster over the scandal.

In an article in a Belfast newspaper, former Assemblyman David McIlveen said party members considered Mrs Foster "deeply damaged" and an "electoral liability" due to the fiasco.
An officer stands guard at the house in Kilclare Cresent. Photo: Collins

Gardai at the scene of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in Kilclare Cresent. Photo: Collins

Gardai investigate the scene in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown after Reece Cullen was stabbed to death on Thursday. Photo: Collins

Gardai at the scene of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in Kilclare Cresent, Tallaght. Photo: Collins

Gardai at the scene of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in Kilclare Cresent, Tallaght this evening. Photo: Collins

Gardai at the scene of the fatal stabbing in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown, last night. Photo: Collins

Gardai on duty outside the house in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown where 17 year old Reece Cullen was stabbed to death. Photo: Tony Gavin

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in relation to the fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old at a house in Tallaght yesterday.

The young teenager presented himself at Tallaght Garda Station at 7am and can be questioned for up to 24 hours.

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He is currently detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984.

Reece Cullen (16) died in the brutal knife attack.

It is understood he was targeted during a row at a house in Kilclare Crescent, Jobstown, just after 3pm.

The killer had fled the scene by the time the teenager was discovered by a neighbour and gardai have not yet recovered the knife that was used in the attack.

Emergency services were alerted by a neighbour who heard a commotion and discovered the 16-year-old bleeding heavily in the hallway of the house.

Reece was still alive when the ambulance arrived and he was rushed to Tallaght Hospital but he was later pronounced dead by doctors.

'Knife culture'

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has condemned a knife culture which he believes exists in Ireland.

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Speaking on RTEs Morning Ireland, Archbishop Martin said knives are becoming the preferred weapon and very easy to obtain.

"There is a changing culture of violence going on in the city.

"We have a situation which knives are becoming the preferred weapon in some conflicts and they're so easy to obtain. You can go to any large store, you can find them in any kitchen.

"In the past, if a scuffle broke out, people came away with a bleeding nose, now people get killed and maimed.

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"It hits a victim, a young perpetrator; it hits two families, thats the thing that's changing. How you can address it is the big problem.

"The fundamental thing is about anger management... how do we help young people to cope with anger and frustration?"

Motive

Meanwhile, gardai believe that Reece knew his killer and detectives were last night trying to establish what led to the fatal attack.

Friends of the victim said he was "a quiet, unassuming young lad" who was putting his life together.

He had recently been enrolled in a Youthreach programme, the organisation which gives early school leavers a second chance of an education.

"I don't know what to say, it's heartbreaking," one friend told the Irish Independent.

"He was just a quiet young guy. He's been through some difficult stuff. It hasn't been easy for him.

"But he was getting it together and he had been enrolled with Youthreach.

"He was into the normal kind of things young lads are into around here.

"He liked the motorbikes, scramblers and that kind of thing."

It is understood that Reece's mother died last September and the teenager had been staying with a friend's mother in recent times.

Residents of Bawnlea Crescent in Jobstown, where Reece was originally from, said they were shocked and saddened at the death of the teenager.

"It's very sad. I heard the news about the death of a young person but I didn't know that it was Reece," said a 65-year-old local woman.

"I've known Reece since he was very young. This is very sad for his family and for everyone who knows them," she said, adding that his mother had died only a few months ago.

"I will say a prayer for him and his family."

A 71-year-old man who has lived in the area for the past 40 years said the community was deeply saddened by the tragedy.

"He was so young. This is very sad news," he said.

A full post-mortem is due to take place this morning when the investigation is expected to be officially upgraded to a murder probe.

Officers are also expected to interview the woman who found the critically injured teenager as well as the paramedics who tended to him.

Sources said Reece's friends would be interviewed over the coming days as gardai try to determine whether he had been in any disputes.

"Gardai are confident enough at this stage that this unfortunate young man knew his killer," a source said.

Locals in Kilclare Crescent expressed their shock after learning about the incident.

A woman who didn't want to be named said she had lived in the estate for the last three years, and her partner was from the area.

"It usually feels quite safe. I haven't heard of anything like this," she said.

Another local expressed sympathy for Reece's family. "I didn't know him myself, but can you imagine how that family feels?" he said.

Outraged

South Dublin county councillor Charlie O'Connor said the community was outraged following the fatal stabbing.

"It's a terrible, shocking thing. At 3.30 in the afternoon? It's horrendous," he said.

Gardai have appealed for witnesses who may have been in the Kilclare area yesterday between 2.45pm and 3.30pm to contact them at Tallaght garda station on 01 666 6000, the Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any garda station.
Spanish and Gibraltarian police on Thursday recovered hashish worth nearly five million dollars that was thrown into the Bay of Gibraltar by drug traffickers to escape a high-speed chase.

Acting on a tipoff, Royal Gibraltar Police located five inflatable boats loaded with hashish resin in the contested waters around Gibraltar, a tiny British territory on Spain's southern tip.

When police neared one of the boats, its occupants started to throw their cargo overboard in an attempt to lighten their load and pick up speed, Royal Gibraltar Police said in a statement.

The boat left Gibraltar's territorial waters and the chase was then taken up by Spain's Guardia Civil police force but the traffickers managed to escape, it added.

Authorities retraced the route of the chase and picked up 34 bales of hashish resin -- Gibraltar police and customs recovered 27 bales and the Guardia Civil another seven.

The drugs weighed around 800 kilos (1,800 pounds) and are estimated to have a street value of 4,050,000 ($4,968,000/4,762,000 euros).

"This highlights the close cooperation that exists not just among local law enforcement agencies, but also with the Guardia Civil in combating crime, particularly drug trafficking, across the Straits of Gibraltar," the statement said.

Madrid ceded Gibraltar in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. The territory remains a source of British-Spanish tensions, with Madrid long claiming it should be returned to Spanish sovereignty.

While Spanish and Gibraltar police cooperate regularly at the grass roots level, there are often flare-ups between the two sides over jurisdiction and sovereignty.

Gibraltar says Spanish vessels regularly stray deep into its territorial waters and Britain's Foreign Office has attacked such incidents as provocative.

In the most serious recent incident, a British navy patrol boat fired flares to warn off a survey ship operated by Spain's Oceanographic Institute which had entered disputed waters.

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The remains of the building after David Eckersall demolished his home CREDIT: PA / CRAVEN DISTRICT COUNCIL

A builder who took the "catastrophic decision" to demolish his Grade II listed cottage while his neighbours were on holiday has been ordered to pay more than 20,000 (23,000) in fines and costs.

Bradford Crown Court heard how Joan and Geoff Peel returned from their holiday to find neighbour David Eckersall, 55, had knocked down his mid-19th century home leaving their adjoining late-18th century cottage with no proper gable wall, a hole in the bathroom and no roof on its dining room.

Eckersall, who has been a joiner for 44 years, had planning permission to extend Nutter Cote Farm, in Thornton-in-Craven, North Yorkshire, UK, which he bought in December 2015 and demolish a small existing extension.

But a judge was told how, after beginning the work, he knocked down the whole property with a digger in April last year.

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Alex Menary, defending Eckersall, said his client took the decision to knock it down after making a legitmate hole in a wall to pin the new extension to the existing cottage and it became clear there were significant structural problems which were making the whole building unsafe.

Mr Menary said the decision, which he took without consulting planners, had left him with a mortgage of almost 300,000 to pay on a property which no longers exists.

The barrister dismissed prosecution claims that Eckersall could profit from the whole incident if he rebuilds with a modern house. The court heard how planning permission had been refused for a replacement, although the defendant can appeal.

Judge Colin Burn said this was not a case suitable for a prison sentence and ordered Eckersall to pay a 17,500 (20,400) fine and 3,275 (3,800) in prosecution costs.

He warned the defendant that he would be jailed for six months if he did not pay within 12 months.

The judge said it was not possible to prove or disprove Eckersall's claim that he only knocked down the building when it was clear there were severe structural failures emerging from the work he was doing.

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He said the defendant then took the "catastrophic decision to knock down the whole building".

The judge added: "You took the decision off your own bat to take down a Grade II listed building."

The judge decided not to compensate Mr and Mrs Peel after hearing about ongoing litigation. He said he believed any financial award he made could affect the total they are awarded by other authorities or courts.

But he said: "Their building was no longer completely watertight. It caused a massive amount of upset and distress to them as well as a significant amount of physical damage."

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He said both the Peels and Eckersall were waiting for listed building consent to complete remedial work and he noted the irony that the best solution to Mr and Mrs Peel's building issues would be to let Eckersall rebuild his property.

The judge said: "If such a property were to be built you would, in effect, be profiting from your criminality."

The court heard that Nutter Cote Farm was an 1850 extension of Mr and Mrs Peel's 18th century property, Nutter Cote Cottage.

They were listed in the 1980s as typical examples of Laithe Houses - distinctive cottages of the Pennine uplands.
Tony O'Brien has been the director general of the HSE for the last five years.

Three separate Fine Gael ministers have come and gone out of the Department of Health during that period but Mr O'Brien has been a constant. Before he was appointed to the 195,000-a-year position, Mr O'Brien oversaw a special HSE unit tasked with getting a handle on the trolley crisis.

No disrespect to Mr O'Brien but given the amount of money the HSE has received over those years and the worsening state of our hospitals, it's fair to ask what has he been doing for the last five years.

During a radio interview yesterday, which aired at 11am, he said he had not received a letter from Health Minister Simon Harris which urged him to consider sanctioning hospital mangers who were failing to get a handle on the worst trolley crisis on record. The Irish Independent did know about the letter. So for Mr O'Brien's benefit, here is some of what was asked of him. The minister told him he should be aware that "providing timely patient access to services is a central element of the balanced scorecard which underpins the HSE's Performance and Accountability Framework".

Mr Harris reminded Mr O'Brien he "should ensure that accountability under the Performance and Accountability Framework is appropriately discharged".

In simple language, the minister told the HSE boss that there was a system in place for sanctioning managers who were not pulling their weight and told him to implement the policy. The policy allows Mr O'Brien to remove under-performing managers. The minister also asked for a performance report on hospital managers under these guidelines.

However, when asked whether he would remove managers, Mr O'Brien said: "Right now is the wrong time to be having that discussion". Now being the time of the worst trolley crisis on record. He also said the factors causing the overcrowding problem aere "outside the control" of hospital managers.

"What we're seeing here is not something that is in the direct control of the managers of hospitals. They cannot control the numbers of patients needing to be seen in emergency departments," he added.

So who is control? The Health Minister doesn't run the hospitals directly but does provide funding and policy. This year the Department of Health had its biggest budget on record. Earlier in the year, the HSE suggested removing patients overstaying their welcome in hospitals by using minimal force. But the idea was shot down by the minister and Mr O'Brien apologised for the suggestion.

Maybe it's time Mr O'Brien considered using minimal force to remove HSE managers who have overstayed their welcome in the health service.
These are uncertain times.

The seismic shift in world and European politics following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as 45th President of the United States has led to an environment of global political and economic uncertainty and challenging and uncertain times ahead for Irish businesses.

2016 has been a landmark and unprecendented year and Taoiseach Enda Kenny has described Brexit as arguably the greatest economic and social challenge for this island in 50 years. A Department of Finance / ESRI Survey has revealed that Irish GDP is forecast to be down by 2.3% from what it might have been within 5 years, even if Britain negotiated a free trade agreement with the EU.

The short and longer term impacts of these two major political events are still largely unknown and experts are still divided and uncertain on the full impact that they will have on Irish businesses.

With Uncertainty Comes Risk

There are key concerns for Irish exporters and with the potential for US corporation tax to be slashed to 15%, there will also be a massive impact on the many US companies with Irish global headquarters. Nobody quite knows what to expect and with uncertainty comes risk.

The market volatility has already had an impact and been quick and sharp in its response and this is likely to continue for the forseeable future. The landscape has utterly changed and its time now more than ever for Irish businesses to inform and educate themselves, face the challenges and be creative in coming together to have their voice heard.

Essential Businesses Are Represented

So where to now for Irish businesses post Brexit and Trump? Its now essential for Irish businesses to ensure that they have the correct representation whether home grown, multinational, big or small whatever sector of the economy.

Ibec, Ireland's largest, most influential and best known business representation organisation, has committed to becoming Irelands leading voice of business on Brexit, safeguarding Irelands reputation, competitiveness and future.

Ibec Director of Policy Fergal OBrien said: "Brexit and the possibility of a more protectionist US pose very significant risks to Ireland. The budget introduced some useful measures in response to Brexit, but did not go nearly far enough. Companies are moving quickly to manage severe competitive pressures, but an urgent, targeted national response is required.

"The exporting industries most affected by the sterling fall are typically job intensive and deeply embedded in local economies. A review of the historical exchange rate and agri-food export relationship shows that a 1% weakness in sterling results in a 0.7% drop in Irish exports to the UK. This has already begun. Our most recent trade figures for the year to August showed the value of Irish food exports to the UK fell by 8.1% annually. This fall accelerated to 14.5% annually in the two months since the referendum and has hit all categories", explained Fergal O'Brien.

Closely Working With Government and Stakeholders

Along with its 40 industry sector associations, Ibec leads, shapes and promotes business conditions to drive economic growth and secure prosperity, right across the country. Ibec works with their members to develop policy in key areas of interest. Through their close working relationships with politicians, government departments, state agencies, policy makers and other stakeholders, they ensure those interests stay at the top of the political agenda.

Ibec members receive unrivalled access to market data, economic and legal briefings, executive networking events and sector-specific conferences across the entire economy. Members can also tap into the scale of their employment law and HR practice to support with employee relations and HR policies and procedures.

From small to medium businesses to larger enterprises and employers looking for advice, networking and industry insights in this unprecedented time of political and economic change, its a key time to make the move and join Ibec. In this current environment of global uncertainty, Ibec will be the authoritative voice of Irish business.

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Naomi Campbell in the press room during The Fashion Awards 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall, London

Naomi Campbell attends the 2015 DVF Awards at United Nations on April 23, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

Naomi Campbell has revealed that she was once attacked in Paris, and said it was likely by the same gang who targeted her friend Kim Kardashian last year.

The British supermodel and actress was with Kim in the French capital two days before her armed robbery ordeal at the beginning of October, and said she can sympathise with the reality TV star, because she was followed to her then-boyfriend's pad from the airport in 2012.

"They opened my car door, and said, 'Naomi Campbell, we're gonna kill you!'" the ageless beauty told U.S. chat show host Wendy Williams. "I had taken a plane from Switzerland... and I didn't call for security (at the airport).

"I went to the car and it wasn't my normal driver... It was November and all the windows were rolled down... It was freezing cold... I was like, 'Wait a minute, this is weird!'"

Expand Close Kim Kardashian and Kanye West backstage at his Yeezy 3 show and (right) Naomi Campbell leads models during the presentation / Facebook

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Whatsapp Kim Kardashian and Kanye West backstage at his Yeezy 3 show and (right) Naomi Campbell leads models during the presentation

Naomi revealed the car doors were not locked and she believes her driver was "in on" the planned robbery, which was foiled when the model decided to fight to keep her belongings.

"In a very split moment - I don't know if I'd ever do this again in hindsight: 'Am I gonna let this guy take my bag with all my passports or am I gonna fight for it?' And my decision was, 'I am not letting my bag go!'"

Campbell didn't go public with the attack because she "didn't want it to be (headline news)", but she claims thugs have been targetting celebrity visitors to France for years.

"It's a whole ring that's been happening for a few years now...," she said. "It's happened to a few people, but it's not for me to say (who they are)."

Expand Close Naomi Campbell in the press room during The Fashion Awards 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall, London / Facebook

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In October, Kardashian was bound and gagged as thieves ransacked her Paris apartment, taking jewellery and electronics. The reality TV star has only just returned to social media after the terrifying ordeal, which led to her cancelling a series of appointments and appearances around the world.
Jennifer Lopez performed one of the most unusual  and controversial  concerts of her career this weekend, when she crooned Happy Birthday Mr President at a lavish ceremony to mark the 56th birthday of Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the leader of Turkmenistan and one of the worlds most repressive dictators.

The performance, part of which Ms Lopez spent in traditional Turkmen dress, was part of an overblown set of celebrations at Avaza, a Caspian Sea resort project that Turkmenistan has ploughed billions of dollars into developing. Mr Berdymukhammedov enjoyed celebrations that involved a firework display, a boat trip, and a drive-past alongside thousands of Turkmen citizens waving flowers and applauding.

However, the majority of the country lives in poverty, with access to internet and free media severely limited and foreign travel banned. Reporters Without Borders ranks the country as the third most repressive in the world. A representative of Ms Lopez said in a statement yesterday that she would not have attended the Turkmen concert, which was paid for by the China National Petroleum Corp, had she known about human rights issues in the country.

Ms Lopez has previously performed for a number of oligarchs in former Soviet countries, and ahead of a concert in Russia last year cut off a journalist who tried to ask her about the jailing of the Russian female punk group Pussy Riot. I dont really understand what youre saying, but let me just shut you down anyway, because I dont really like to talk politics, she said.

Mr Berdymukhammedov is a former dentist and Health Minister who became President when the countrys first leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, died in 2006. Mr Niyazov had named himself Turkmenbashi, leader of all the Turkmens, and created a bloated personality cult that permeated all aspects of Turkmen life. Mr Berdymukhammedov slowly went about building up his own cult and now his photos adorn every street corner and he is treated like a deity wherever he goes.

Ms Lopez and her entourage were apparently blissfully unaware of human rights concerns in the country.

The Turkmenistan breeze feels amazing at night, kidz! wrote J.R. Taylor, the choreographer for Ms Lopez. I wonder were all my Turkmenistan followers are!? Hit me up!

The mystery of the absent Twitter fans is easily cleared up  the social network is banned for almost all of the very small number of internet users in Turkmenistan, along with many other websites deemed to be subversive.
Police officers at the site of the explosion in Izmir, Turkey (AP)

Police carry the coffin of officer Fethi Sekin, who was killed in a car bombing in Izmir (AP)

Turkish police have detained 18 people in connection with an attack near a courthouse in the western city of Izmir which killed a policeman and a court employee.

Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said authorities had no doubt that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, "gave the orders" for the attack.

The two assailants were killed in a shootout with police in Thursday's incident in Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city, after they detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a roadblock.

The attackers were armed with automatic rifles, rocket launchers and hand grenades, officials said.

Mr Bozdag spoke before thousands of people attended a memorial service for the killed police officer, Fethi Sekin, who authorities say thwarted a larger attack.

The minister said 18 suspects were rounded up, but did not provide details.

The attack was the latest in a string of assaults carried out by Kurdish militants or the Islamic State group that have hit Turkey as it grapples with the aftermath of a failed coup in July, blamed on a movement led by US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

It came days after 39 people were killed in a nightclub in Istanbul during new year celebrations. IS claimed that attack which it said was a reprisal for Turkey's military operations in Syria.

Addressing crowds in the city of Sanliurfa, near the border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated claims that unidentified forces wanting to halt Turkey's rise were behind such attacks.

"Unfortunately, the hordes of bloodthirsty murderers released on Turkey are continuing their attacks in open co-operation," Mr Erdogan said. "They are feeding them, arming them, strengthening and leading them to unleash them on Turkey."

He also accused Turkey's allies of aiming to keep his nation out of military operations to drive IS from Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish leader vowed to press ahead with a military offensive in northern Syria until two key towns have been cleared of IS militants and Syrian Kurdish militia, which Turkey accuses of collaborating with the PKK.

"The arrow has left the bow. We will not stop until al Bab, Manbij and other regions have been purged of terrorist organisations," Mr Erdogan said.

AP
Eskinder Nega photographed at Addis Court, where he was brought as a witness in a terrorism trial

A journalist who has been jailed seven times after criticising the Ethiopian Governments detainment of journalists as suspected terrorists has appeared in court as a witness in a terrorism trial.

Eskinder Nega, who was awarded the Golden Pen Award of Freedom in 2014, is currently serving an eighteen year prison sentence after being convicted of terrorism.

He was subpoenaed as a defence witness in the trial of Yonatan Tesfaye, a former spokesman of the opposition Semayawi (Blue) party and rights activists in Ethiopia.

The terrorism charges against Yonatan allege that he was posting inciting messages on Facebook, encouraging protesters to loot during the Oromo Protests.

The Oromo Protests were a movement which called for an end to decades of systemic exclusion and subordination of the Oromo  the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia.

Speaking against the charges, Yonatan told the judges that he had done nothing to foment terrorism or overthrow the government violently.

But he spoke and wrote in defence of those who were being killed by government security forces on the streets during the protests.

If speaking for those killed on the streets constitutes a crime, I will take it as my badge of honour. I will get my judgment form history and God, he said.

Prosecutors also accuse Yonatan that his Facebook posts were in line with the objectives of a party banned as a terrorist organisation.

Defence witnesses stated that terrorism charges were too serious to have been evoked for Facebook posts, where people turn into as a mere space for freedom of expression.

Journalist Eskindir Nega and the rest of the defense witnesses, including family members of Yonatan, are expected to give their testimonials during the next hearing, adjourned until January 26.
The agreed investments include a signature bonus of $1.5 million to drill two exploration wells in North East Haby area in the Mediterranean Sea

Egypt's Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) signed a new oil agreement on Thursday with Italys Edison to explore and produce oil and natural gas in the Mediterranean Sea worth more than US$86 million.

The agreement was signed by Egypts Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla, EGAS Chairman Mohamed El Masry and Vice President for Edisons E&P activities for Egypt and the Middle East Maurizio Coratella.

The agreed investments included a signature bonus of $1.5 million to drill two exploration wells in North East Haby area in the Mediterranean Sea.

El-Molla asserted that the ministry concluded all agreements reached through the latest international bid issued by EGAS.

The minister affirmed that signing more oil exploration agreements would boost global investments in Egypt as EGAS is set to issue a new bid within 2017.

On Thursday, Italian energy company Eni announced its plans to increase its energy exploration investments in Egypt to $3.5 billion in 2017.

In late December, Eni signed two new concession agreements with the Egyptian government for gas exploration in two Mediterranean fields.

Egypts production of natural gas is currently estimated at around 4.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd), and is expected to increase by 1.5 bcfd by the end of 2017, according to a statement from the Ministry of Petroleum last week.

In May 2016, the ministry expected production to range between 5.5 and 6 bcfd by the end of 2019.

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Former Indiana senator Dan Coats will be appointed by Donald Trump as Director of National Intelligence (AP/Susan Walsh)

Donald Trump sent a series of provocative tweets before his key meeting with intelligence officials (AP/Evan Vucci)

Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a hidden campaign to influence America's presidential election in favour of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, US intelligence agencies have declared.

It is the government's first formal allegation in support of sensational claims that Mr Trump and his supporters have staunchly resisted.

The intelligence report, an unclassified version of a more-detailed classified account given earlier to Mr Trump, the White House and congressional leaders, withheld any evidence to back up its assertions.

The president-elect said after his own meeting with the nation's top intelligence officials that it was clear Russian email hacking did not deliver him the presidency.

There was no suggestion that Russia affected actual vote counting or tampered with ballot machines, said the unclassified version, which was the most explicit account to date of Russian efforts to interfere with the US political process.

But the report said Russia's actions included hacking into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats including Mrs Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, and using state-funded propaganda and paid "trolls" to make nasty comments on social media services.

The unclassified version included footnotes acknowledging that it "does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign". But it said its conclusions were identical to the classified version, which was more detailed.

The report said the Russian effort was both political and personal.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency," it said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."

Mr Putin most likely wanted to discredit Mrs Clinton because he blames her for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he resents her for disparaging comments she has made about him, the report said. It said the Russian effort was the "boldest yet" intended to affect a US election.

As Mr Trump met in New York with intelligence officials for his briefing about Russia's campaign, Congress tallied the Electoral College votes, officially confirming Mr Trump's November victory.

Mr Trump has been dismissive of the intelligence agencies' claims of Russia's involvement for months, long before he saw the classified information on Friday.

After finally seeing the intelligence behind the claims of the outgoing Obama administration, he released a one-page statement that did not address whether Russia sought to meddle. Instead, he said, "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election."

The top US intelligence official told Congress on Thursday that intelligence agencies had no way of gauging what influence this meddling had on the outcome of the election. It was unclear on Friday what evidence Mr Trump had to support his claims.

According to the public report, when it appeared that Mrs Clinton might well win the election, Mr Putin turned his focus to undermining her presidency.

Mr Trump acknowledged in his statement that "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people" are consistently trying to hack US networks, including the Democratic National Committee's.

He said, as did the intelligence report, that "there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines".

Mr Trump said that as president he would appoint a team to develop a plan to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks".

Before seeing the classified intelligence report on Friday, Mr Trump dismissed the assessment of interference and told The New York Times the focus on Russia's involvement is a "political witch hunt" by adversaries who are embarrassed they lost the election.

"They got beaten very badly in the election," Mr Trump said. "They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it's a witch hunt. They just focus on this."

The officials in Friday's meeting with Trump in New York - director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan and FBI director James Comey - also briefed senior politicians on Friday morning. Mr Obama received his classified briefing on Thursday.

A senior law enforcement official said the FBI in its investigation had repeatedly stressed to Democratic National Committee officials the importance of obtaining direct access to servers "only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated".

The official said the FBI had to rely on a "third party" for information, but eventually got access to the material it needed.

AP
Arnold Schwarzenegger is hosting The New Celebrity Apprentice, in which Donald Trump retains a producing stake

Donald Trump has taunted Arnold Schwarzenegger for bringing in low ratings in a spin-off from the president-elect's old reality television show Celebrity Apprentice.

In a tweet, Mr Trump referred to himself as a "ratings machine" and said Schwarzenegger "got "swamped" by comparison.

He said "so much for being a movie star" and "now compare him to my season 1".

Mr Trump added: "But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary," referring to Ohio Republican governor John Kasich and Democrat Hillary Clinton, who both ran against him.

Schwarzenegger is a moderate Republican who said in October that he would not vote for Mr Trump, calling it a choice of "your country over your party".

He is hosting The New Celebrity Apprentice, in which Mr Trump retains a producing stake.

Schwarzenegger responded by saying the president-elect should work as hard to represent all Americans as he did for TV ratings.

The California governor also quoted Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies."

Schwarzenegger tweeted: "I wish you the best of luck and I hope you'll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings."

AP
A teenager has been left needing surgery after being stabbed repeatedly in a takeaway by masked thugs who apparently recorded the attack on a mobile phone.

Chilling footage of the stabbing in Brixton, south London, has been released by Scotland Yard detectives in a bid to trace the 18-year-old's attackers.

Clad in black and armed with knives and belts, the clip shows at least three assailants whipping, punching and kicking several apparently defenceless victims.

As the blows rain down one of the attackers can then be seen drawing a knife and thrusting it forward while holding a mobile phone in his other hand.

The teenager, who has not been identified, was hit in the face with a belt then stabbed several times by one of the suspects, Scotland Yard said.

When he fell to the floor one of the suspects stabbed him again before kicking him in the head.

The teenager suffered four stab wounds to his leg, one to the abdomen and one to the arm in the attack that took place on Monday evening.

Police said they were called to the Dallas Chicken takeaway on Brixton Road at 5.30pm.

The victim was rushed to hospital in south London and underwent surgery on his abdomen. He has since been discharged but requires further surgery to the wound on his arm.

Detective Constable Remy Smith, from Lambeth CID, said: "This is a shocking and brutal assault that has left the victim very distressed from his ordeal. We are keen to identify the men in the CCTV footage so we can speak to them about the incident. We would also urge anyone who witnessed the incident to contact us."

According to witnesses there were a further three suspects on bicycles outside the shop at the time of the assault. All of the suspects then left together as a group as they made their way northbound along Brixton Road.

One man was later arrested on suspicion of possession of a knife and police appealed for help in finding four other suspects.

One is described as a black man, aged in his early 20s, of medium build. He was wearing a black puffa-style jacket, blue jeans, a white belt, a black face-covering and black shoes with white laces.

A second is described as a black man, aged in his early 20s. He was wearing a black jacket, dark trousers, a black face-covering and black shoes. He was seen carrying two knives.

A third is described as a slim black man, aged in his early 20s. He was wearing a black jacket, dark trousers, black gloves, a black face-covering and black shoes. He was seen to carry a knife.

A fourth is described as a slim black man, aged in his early 20s. He was wearing a black jacket, dark trousers, black gloves, a black face-covering and black shoes.
The family of an English teenage free-runner who died in an accident on the Paris Metro have paid tribute to their "beloved" son.

Nye Frankie Newman, from Guildford, was involved in a "train accident on the Metro" on January 1, his parkour group said.

The 17-year-old was a keen participant of the craze, which sees people climb and jump over obstacles and buildings in urban environments.

His family said in a statement: "We are heartbroken by the loss of our beloved son, grandson, brother, cousin and nephew.

"Nye's was an extraordinary young life which touched so many. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion and wonderful tributes that have been made on social media and to us as a family."

Photographs on Nye's social media accounts show him leaping between buildings in Hong Kong and somersaulting on the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

His parkour and free-running group, known as Brewman, said the teenager "didn't pass away due to parkour".

They paid tribute to Nye as "a strong parkour enthusiast" who "was an inspiration", and said "the incident didn't happen due to practising the sport".
National police patrol outside a radio station after the arrest of Guy Philippe in Petion-Ville (AP/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Guy Philippe was arrested by members of the Haitian anti-drug police unit in the Petionville district of the capital (AP/Dieu Nalio Chery)

A former rebel leader who is wanted on US drug charges, and was recently elected to the Haitian Senate, has been arrested as he appeared on a live radio talk show.

Guy Philippe was being interviewed on the show with another recently elected politician on Thursday when the host abruptly announced that police were outside the studio in the Petionville district of the capital Port-Au-Prince to arrest him. The host came back on air and said he had been taken away.

Radio host Gary-Pierre Paul Charles later told The Associated Press the police were members of the Haitian anti-drug unit and fired shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.

"It was shocking. People were running everywhere," he told the AP.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration, which just missed capturing him in a 2007 raid, had no immediate comment on the arrest.

Mr Philippe's lawyer, Reynold Georges, said the former rebel leader been taken to the airport and he urged senators to go there to prevent his extradition.

"We can't let this happen," he said.

A photo being circulated on social media in Haiti appeared to show Mr Philippe in a white dress shirt being led out of the studio by police. Another image showed him apparently handcuffed in a room while police in camouflage uniforms stood guard with assault rifles.

Miami lawyer Richard Dansoh, who said he had worked for Mr Philippe in the past and had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate his surrender several years ago, said he expects the former rebel leader will soon be transported to Florida out of concern about how Haitians might react to the arrest of a senator.

"They don't want to keep him in Haiti because there might be riots," Mr Dansoh said.

At the heavily guarded police station near the airport where Mr Philippe was taken after his arrest, about 30 demonstrators gathered in the evening saying he should be released.

"Our country has no respect for people who are elected," said Jean-Marc Denis, who is from the same southern province as the former rebel leader.

In the southern Haitian city of Jeremie, about 200 protesters, many carrying photos of Mr Philippe, also called for his release, threatening to start fires if he remained in custody.

Mr Philippe, who has a wife and two children in the US, recently won election to the Senate representing a district in southern Haiti but had not yet been sworn into office.

He is wanted on drug-trafficking charges including conspiracy to import cocaine into the US. In Haiti, he is a divisive figure who was one of the leaders of a violent 2004 rebellion that led to the ousting of the president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Mr Philippe has spent most of his time in recent years in a remote, mountainous part of southern Haiti, where he had extensive family and business connections and it would have been difficult for authorities to locate and arrest him. Still, he would frequently appear in public and gave an extensive interview to the AP for an August 2016 profile.

In that interview, he insisted he is innocent of any crimes, blaming the accusations on enemies trying to silence him: "The path I chose, the way I chose, is not easy. But I chose it and I'm willing to die for it."

In 2000, he was police chief of the northern city of Cap-Haitien when he fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic after accusations he was plotting a coup. While in exile, he was accused of masterminding attacks on Haitian police stations and other targets.

He returned in 2004 to join the uprising against Mr Aristide, taking over a band of rebels that captured Cap-Haitien. Mr Aristide left the country aboard a US-supplied jet before Mr Philippe's rebels reached the capital.

After rolling triumphantly into Port-au-Prince, Mr Philippe proclaimed himself "military chief" - but he gave up his arms as a UN stabilisation force geared up.

He ran for president in 2006, finishing a distant ninth. A year later, heavily armed US and Haitian anti-drug agents raided his home in Les Cayes but found only his family and a maid.

AP
An arriving airline passenger pulled a gun from his luggage and opened fire in the baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale airport, killing five people and wounding eight.

The gunman was immediately taken into custody. He was identified by the authorities as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, an Army National Guard veteran who served in Iraq but was discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

The authorities gave no details on a possible motive for the shooting, which sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and on to the tarmac, baggage in hand, and forced the shutdown of the entire airport.

"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," a witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said: "We don't know a motive at this point.

"This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism. We can't conclude that."

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said.

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag - not a carry-on - and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed on the attack by the sheriff's office, said that the shooter had arrived aboard a Canadian flight with a gun in a checked bag.

"After he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," Mr LaMarca said.

However, the Canadian Embassy said the suspect did not arrive from Canada and was not on an Air Canada flight, but instead appeared to have flown from Anchorage, Alaska, where Santiago lived. The attack took place at terminal 2, which serves Delta Air Lines and Air Canada.

Mr Lea said the gunman said nothing as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding". The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines of ammunition, Mr Lea said.

"He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him," Mr Lea said.

Sheriff Scott Israel said five people were killed and eight were wounded. Their condition was not disclosed. He said the gunman was arrested unharmed, with no law enforcement officers firing any shots, and was being questioned by the FBI.

People spilled on to the tarmac, some carrying luggage, and some ran from both terminals 1 and 2, hiding behind cars or anything else they could find to shield themselves.

The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated the bleeding victims.

Fort Lauderdale-bound flights already in the air were delayed or diverted, and those that had yet to take off from the airport were held on the ground.

At least one person appeared to be lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

Santiago's brother, Bryan, told The Associated Press that his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiago's girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months.

Bryan Santiago said that he did not know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the telephone.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was aged two. He was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen.

Santiago received a general discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance, military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead said without giving details.

John Schilcher told Fox News said he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

"The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground," said Mr Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. "The firing just went on and on."

"I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me," he said. "That's when I assumed it was safe."

AP
The gallery will host two parallel solo exhibitions by Souad Mardam Bey and Yasmine El-Hazek

Two painting exhibitions will open next week at Zamalek Art Gallerys venues -- Lets Talk by Souad Mardam Bey in venue I and Rollercoaster by Yasmine El Hazek in venue II.

Mardam Bey is a Cairo-based Syrian artist. Her painting exhibit Playing Without Toys, depicts children affected by war as injured toys.

Last year, her solo The Magic Thread, at the same gallery, also depicted children but explored symbolically the theme of passing time and growing up.

El-Hazek was born in 1989, and graduated from the American University in Cairo.

She has also had a number of exhibitions in Zamalek Art Gallery, including her fist solo We The People (2013), the group exhibit The Masterpieces (2014) and Futuristic Nostalgia (2015), followed by her last solo Blossoming in Firenze (2015).

She was awarded the Academia D'arte Firenze artist of the month in 2015, during an intensive two-month programme in Florences art academy.

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Both exhibitions will open on 15 January and will run until 14 February.

Zamalek Art Gallery, 11 Brazil St., Zamalek, Cairo

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Relatives of prisoners wait to learn the names of inmates who died in a prison riot in Manaus (AP)

Thirty-three inmates have died in a prison killing spree led by Brazil's largest gang, with some having their hearts and intestines ripped out, authorities said.

The bloodshed came days after 60 inmates were killed during rioting at two prisons in a neighbouring state, and increases fears that violence could spread, including to the streets of major cities, as gangs vie for influence and territory inside prisons and in slums where trafficking operations are often based.

It has also becoming a flashpoint for the government of President Michel Temer, whose administration is already struggling with an economic crisis and mounting corruption allegations.

"This is a national crisis," said Uziel Castro, security secretary of the state of Roraima, where the latest massacre happened.

Mr Castro said the killing spree at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo, in the town of Boa Vista, was led by members of Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazil's biggest criminal organisation.

He said First Command members did not attack members of a rival gang but other prisoners, for motives that are not yet clear.

"There was no confrontation, this was a killing spree," said Mr Castro. "It was barbaric. Some were beheaded, others had their hearts or intestines ripped out."

He said firearms were not involved and none of the 1,500 inmates in the prison escaped.

It was not clear whether there was a connection to the rioting earlier this week in the neighbouring state of Amazonas, which officials blamed on a gang war between First Command and the Family of the North gang, which fight over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil along the borders of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guianas.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-type riot squad, had been deployed to the prison.

As details about the latest disturbance were emerging, justice minister Alexandre de Moraes announced measures to curb the violence.

He said federal police would be more integrated in state capitals and special taskforces would be created to more quickly process criminal charges, a measure aimed at reducing overcrowding.

He offered no deadlines for the initiatives but said they would "be realistic" given the recession in Latin America's largest economy.

"The situation isn't out of control," said Mr de Moraes. "It's (just) another difficult situation."

The rioting on Sunday and Monday in Amazonas included the country's worst prison massacre since 1992, with half of the 56 killed at one institution beheaded and several others dismembered.

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons in the disturbances. By Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.

In October, a riot at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo left 10 dead. Authorities said that clash involved the First Command and Red Command, which has its base in Rio de Janeiro. On the same day, eight were killed in a prison in the state of Rondonia, which borders Bolivia.

After that clash, Mr Castro asked the federal government for help with the prison, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

He requested that the national guard be sent in to help because the moving of prisoners deemed leaders of the rebellion had led to threats of retaliation.

Asked about the request, Mr de Moraes acknowledged that help had not been sent.

Mr Castro said: "Criminals are trying to kill each other. What we need is the federal government help. This is all over Brazil."

AP
Police have questioned Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a second time over allegations that he improperly accepted gifts from wealthy supporters.

Investigators went to Mr Netanyahu's official residence in Jerusalem in a case that local media say arose from allegations involving high-profile figures in international business and Hollywood.

Mr Netanyahu has adamantly denied wrongdoing.

He was questioned for five hours on Thursday about suspicions that he "allegedly received benefits" as well as about another undisclosed affair. His questioning on Monday lasted more than three hours.

Few details of the allegations against Mr Netanyahu have been officially released, with Israel's Justice Ministry revealing only that the prime minister was being questioned "on suspicion of receiving benefits from business people."

But Israeli media have reported that he accepted "favours" from businessmen in Israel and abroad, allegedly including billionaire Ronald Lauder and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Israeli Channel 2 TV has said Mr Netanyahu is the central suspect in a second investigation that also involves family members.

He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views.

Serving his third consecutive term with a stable coalition government, Mr Netanyahu is on track to become Israel's longest-serving leader, should he complete his full term in office in 2019.

AP
Michelle Obama closes her final remarks as first lady in a speech at the White House (AP)

Michelle Obama said that being first lady "has been the greatest honour of my life" as she bid an early farewell to the White House.

An East Room ceremony honouring the 2017 school counsellor of the year, and the work of all school counsellors, marked her final event as first lady.

Before the tearful goodbye, there were words of encouragement for young people. Mrs Obama, as she has done many times in eight years in the White House, urged children to get the best education they can and then use it to "lead by example with hope, never fear".

"Don't be afraid," she said.

The first lady also praised the "glorious diversity" of people of all faiths, colours and creeds in America as "not a threat to who we are" but as what "makes us who we are". The comment seemed a rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump, who criticised Mexicans, Muslims and others throughout his presidential campaign.

"To the young people out there, do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter or like you don't have a place in our American story, because you do," Mrs Obama said. "And you have a right to be exactly who you are."

She urged them to get ready to add their voices to the national conversation and "stand up for our proud American values".

Mrs Obama asked them to remember, when they encounter obstacles and feel like giving up, what she said she and President Barack Obama have talked about since first starting their journey to the White House nearly a decade ago, "and that is the power of hope".

She said hope has allowed the couple to "rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear, that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country".

Mrs Obama ended the appearance by thanking the school counsellors standing behind her for their hard work and dedication. She has said school counsellors often are the "deciding factor" in whether a student decides to attend college.

"Being your first lady has been the greatest honour of my life, and I hope I've made you proud," Mrs Obama said.

The first lady has said she will continue, after she and her husband leave on January 20, to work on issues she championed as first lady. They include education, fighting childhood obesity and support for military families.

AP
A man believed to be the gunman who killed dozens at an Istanbul nightclub films himself as he wanders near Istanbul's Taksim square (DHA-Depo Photos via AP)

Turkish police are closing in on the gunman who killed 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub, a senior official said, insisting his possible whereabouts and contacts have been established.

Deputy prime minister Veysi Kaynak said the gunman who attacked the Reina club during New Year's celebrations was most probably from China's Muslim Uighur minority and was a "specially trained member of a cell".

"The security forces have determined his identity, his possible whereabouts have been determined. His contacts have also been determined," he told the A Haber news channel in an interview. "We can say that the circle is closing in on him."

Mr Kaynak said authorities believed the man, whose name has not been revealed, was still inside Turkey. "Because we have taken utmost measures at our airports, even though we don't rule it out completely, we believe that we will get results from operations inside Turkey," he said.

Custody

His comments came hours after police conducted more raids in their hunt for the gunman, detaining several people at a housing complex on Istanbul's outskirts, the state-run news agency reported.

The Anadolu Agency said police and special operations teams conducted raids in the Silivri district, detaining an undisclosed number of Uighurs. The report said that those rounded up were suspected of "aiding and abetting" the gunman.

At least 39 other people, including 11 women, are already in custody over suspected links to the attack.

Isil has claimed responsibility for the massacre, saying it was in reprisal for Turkish military operations in northern Syria.

Turkish media have widely published images of the suspect, including a selfie video filmed in Istanbul's Taksim Square.

Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus suggested in an interview with the 'Hurriyet Daily News' that "foreign intelligence services" could be behind the attack, pointing at the "professional" manner in which it was carried out.
Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for the second time over allegations that he improperly accepted gifts from wealthy supporters, pressing ahead with a probe that has threatened to challenge his entrenched leadership.

Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for the second time over allegations that he improperly accepted gifts from wealthy supporters, pressing ahead with a probe that has threatened to challenge his entrenched leadership.

Israeli media said investigators arrived at Mr Netanyahu's official residence in Jerusalem yesterday in an inquiry that, according to local media, allegedly involves high-profile figures in international business and Hollywood.

Police, who grilled the premier for more than three hours on Monday, made no immediate comment on yesterday's developments.

Few details of the allegations against Mr Netanyahu have been officially released, with Israel's justice ministry disclosing only that he was being questioned "on suspicion of receiving benefits from business people".

Witch-hunt

But Israeli media have reported that Mr Netanyahu accepted "favours" from businessmen in Israel and abroad, allegedly including billionaire Ronald Lauder and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Channel 2 TV has said that the prime minister is the central suspect in a second investigation that also involves family members.

Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, portraying the accusations as a witch-hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views.

He has pointed to previous suspicions raised against him, none of which resulted in any criminal proceedings, as a sign that he has done nothing wrong in this most recent inquiry as well. "There won't be anything because there is nothing," has been Mr Netanyahu's frequently repeated refrain.

Serving his third consecutive term with a stable coalition government, Mr Netanyahu is on track to become Israel's longest-serving leader, should he complete his full term in office in 2019. He does not appear to have any serious foreseeable challenger to his rule.

While the probe is still in its infancy, a mounting investigation could put pressure on Mr Netanyahu to step down. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, did so in 2008 just months before he was formally indicted on corruption-related charges. Olmert is now serving a prison sentence after being convicted of accepting bribes.

After eight years in office, in addition to an earlier term in the 1990s, Mr Netanyahu has garnered a reputation as a Cognac-swilling, cigar-puffing socialite who is as comfortable rubbing shoulders with international celebrities as he is making deals in parliament.

Scandals have dogged him and his wife Sara over their lavish tastes. They have been chided for excessive spending on everything from ice cream to scented candles to ringing up 120,000 in public funds for a special sleeping cabin for a five-hour flight to London.
TURKEY was rocked yesterday by a second attack within a week as suspected Kurdish militants killed two people with a car bomb outside a courthouse and then engaged police in a gun battle in the street.

With security sources still hunting an Isil gunman who massacred 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Day, an explosion went off in the western city of Izmir.

Two men were shot by police but a third suspect escaped.

Authorities said they suspected the attackers were members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

One police officer and a court employee were killed by the blast and 10 others injured.

The group was heavily armed with Kalashnikov rifles and grenades, and authorities said they believed the men planned to carry out a much deadlier attack but had been forced into action prematurely after being stopped at a checkpoint.

"Based on the preparation, the weapons, bombs and ammunition seized, it is understood that a big atrocity was being planned," said deputy prime minister Veysi Kaynak.

The PKK has been blamed for a string of recent attacks in Turkey and an offshoot of the group claimed responsibility for two attacks in Istanbul last month which killed more than 40 people. No group has yet claimed responsibility for yesterday's bombing.

Read more:

The PKK usually strikes in south-east Turkey, where most of the country's Kurds live, and it would be unusual for it to attack deep in the west.

The bombing and the news that yet another armed man was on the run added to a sense of perpetual danger in Turkey and is likely to further erode confidence in the ability of security services to protect the public.

Mr Kaynak insisted, as public officials have after all recent attacks, that the violence would not deter Turkey from its military operations in northern Syria, which are aimed at both Isil and Kurdish groups.

As Turkish citizens reacted with shock to the latest in a seemingly endless string of attacks, the government continued a public feud with the US over a Turkish airbase used by the American-led coalition fighting against Isil.

Turkey feels that the US has failed to provide air support to its troops fighting in northern Syria and deliberated publicly about shutting down the Incirlik airbase in response.

"Their presence [in Incirlik] is being questioned by our people and nation, and this issue is on the agenda of the government," Mr Kaynak said.

Closing the base would limit US operations against Isil, and Washington scrambled to say it was in talks about increasing support for Turkish troops.

Relations continue to sour between the US and Turkey, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly accusing America of providing support for Isil.

Turkey has moved closer to Russia as it drifts further from the US, with Ankara and Moscow recently jointly brokering a shaky ceasefire in Syria. The detente between the two sides was unhindered by the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey by a Turkish police officer last month.
Police in Bangladesh shot dead a man linked to the cafe attack in Dhaka that claimed 20 lives

A security officer takes photographs of the bodies of suspected militants at a morgue in Dhaka (AP)

A militant suspected of being one of the leaders of an attack on a popular cafe in Bangladesh's capital that left 20 people dead last year has been killed in a shootout with security officials, police said.

Nurul Islam Marzan was one of two people killed in the shootout early on Friday in Dhaka, according to c ounter-terrorism unit chief Monirul Islam.

Also killed was Saddam Hossain, an accomplice of Marzan, said home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.

Police had said earlier that Marzan was one of the leaders of the July 1 attack on a Dhaka restaurant where 20 hostages, including 17 foreigners, were killed.

Mr Khan said Saddam was involved in many attacks in recent years, including the killing of a Japanese citizen in the hands of suspected militants in the country's north.

Marzan was identified by police as a leader of the Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh group.

Since the attack on the cafe, security officials have killed about 40 alleged Islamist militants in raids.

There has been a surge in attacks in Bangladesh in recent years, and dozens of secular bloggers, writers, publishers and members of minority groups and foreigners have been targeted by radical Islamists.

The Islamic State group has claimed many of the attacks including the July siege, but Bangladeshi authorities have repeatedly said IS has no presence in the Muslim-majority country.

AP
A shooting victim arrives at Broward Health Trauma Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Authorities say a lone shooter opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, international airport Friday, killing "multiple" people before he was taken into custody. The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene. (Taimy Alvarez/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Travelers are evacuated out of the terminal and onto the tarmac after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Zachary Fagenson

Travelers are evacuated out of the terminal and onto the tarmac after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity

Travelers and airport workers are evacuated out of the terminal after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity

Police waiting to escort employees and passengers walking outside terminal 2 at the scene of a deadly shooting at Fort LauderdaleAiHollywood International Airport (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

Police waiting to escort employees and passengers walking outside terminal 2 at the scene of a deadly shooting at the Fort LauderdaleAiHollywood International Airport (David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald via AP)

People exit the airport perimeter following a shooting incident at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S. January 6, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity

Law enforcement officers move in to verify the identity of people in this field just outside the airport perimeter following a shooting incident at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale (Photo: Reuters)

Esteban Santiago, a 26-year-old who had been treated for mental health issues, opened fire inside the baggage area of the busy airport and was taken into custody at the scene

At least five people have been killed in an attack at Fort Lauderdale airport by a gunman who had reportedly previously told the FBI he was being forced to fight for Isil.

Esteban Santiago, a 26-year-old who had been treated for mental health issues, opened fire inside the baggage area of the busy airport and was taken into custody at the scene. He was carrying military ID and was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt.

On Friday night law enforcement officials reportedly said that in November last year, Santiago had told the FBI in Anchorage that voices in his head were forcing him to join and fight for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Officials said he was not on a watchlist of people suspected of Islamist radicalisation.

Santiago had a history of mental illness and had voluntarily checked himself into a mental health facility.

There were questions on Friday night over how he was able to retain and transport a firearm, given his history of mental illness and contact with the FBI.

Officials said the man had checked in his unloaded weapon in when he boarded a flight in Anchorage. There were also reports there had been an "altercation" on board.

Upon arrival in Fort Lauderdale , the man went to load the weapon in the lavatory area and then began shooting.

The attack happened around 1pm local time, as the busy airport, which is a major hub between the US, Europe and the Caribbean, was packed with tourists.

His brother, Bryan Santiago, said the family had moved to Puerto Rico when Santiago was two-years-old. He served with Alaska's National Guard for around two years and in 2010 was deployed to Iraq for a year.

Bryan Santiago said his brother had been fighting with his girlfriend in Alaska.

His aunt, Maria Ruiz, who lives in Union City, New Jersey, said that Santiago came back from Iraq "changed". But, she said, he had become a father last year and the birth of his child made him happy.

FBI Special Agent George Piro said the authorities are looking at leads in several states and have not ruled out terrorism. "We're looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle," he said

Santiago, who is in federal custody, will face federal charges and is expected to appear in court Monday, Mr Piro said.

Tense

The airport remained tense in the hours after the shooting, with reports of further shots heard in other parts of the airport.

Hundreds of people were seen running for shelter in live television pictures as witnesses claimed there was a second gunman  reports later denied by police.

Witnesses told NBC Miami that the gunman silently approached the baggage area and started firing. He did not appear to be targeting anyone in particular, popping off bullets at random.

Mark Lea, a 53-year-old financial adviser from Minneapolis, who was in the baggage claim area, said: I was dodging bullets and trying to help people get out of the way. At first we thought it was firecrackers. Everyone started screaming and running. The shooter made his way down through baggage claim. He had what looked like a 9mm and emptied his entire clip. People were trying to run.

"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," a witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, was in the airport at the time. Everyone is running, he tweeted. Later, he added: All seems calm now, but the police arent letting anyone out of the airport  at least, not where I am.

Video posted on Instagram appeared to show several people wounded in the baggage claim area of the terminal. One person was lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

Donald Trump, who takes over as president in a fortnight, said he was following events. Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said.

The airport, Americas 21st busiest, sees an average of 73,000 people pass through every day.

Security is high at US airports as a routine, following terrorist attacks last year on airports in Brussels and Istanbul. The Florida shooting, like those last year, was in the unsecured area of the airport, which does not have screenings.

The attack has raised questions about airport security in the US where it is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag - not a carry-on - and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

According to a law enforcement source baggage claim areas are particularly vulnerable areas, with passengers sitting targets for anybody who has reclaimed a gun from a suitcase.

The Swiss cheese of our airports is the baggage area, a federal source told the New York Post. Its the place where all the holes are, because those areas lack the robust security you have in other areas of the airport.

Additional reporting by Press Association

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
The Berlin International Film Festival will run between 9 and 19 February

Egyptian film One Plus One Makes a Pharoah's Chocolate Cake, produced by Alexandria-based studio Fig Leaf, will premiere at Expanded Forum, a section within the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), in February.

The film was commissioned by the Swiss based 'Norient' network and 'Sound Development' culture initiative , and is part of their Worldwide Recording Project which launched in 2015 with the aim to produce and document music tracks from upcoming international artists that are paired together.

Directed by Marouan Omara and Islam Kamal, the documentary centres on two musicians; Islam Chipsy, a pioneer of Egypts Mahraganat music genre who fuses electronic and acoustic sounds on his keyboards, and Swiss electronic musician Aisha Devi.

The film documents a week of meetings between the two musicians in Cairo as they collaborate to produce a track.

Mark Lotfy, founder of Fig Leaf, told Ahram Online that the documentary is an "experimental performing act" and is shot in VHS, a format of analog video recording using tape cassettes.

This is the second time for Fig Leaf to have a film at Berlinale, Lotfy said.

Last year, the studio joined with its short comedy film Expired, which was also directed by Islam Kamal.

Expireds characters; A policeman, a belly dancer, a white rabbit, a secret agent, and a man hopelessly in love, are placed in stereotypical situations, ranging from courting to interrogations, using satire and humor as a vehicle for socio-political commentary, according to Berlinales website.

This article was edited on 9 January.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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An American man lost his job when he chose between work and welcoming his newborn son into the world.

But once word of his sacking spread, he received an outpouring of support  including a flood of new job offers.

Lamar Austin worked for Salerno Protective Services, a private security group for college campuses and retail stores. He was in the middle of his 90-day trial period and was expected to be on call night and day.

But Mr Austin could not attend his weekend shift once his wife, Lindsay, went into labour  which lasted from Friday evening through Sunday morning, when Mr Austin received a text informing him he was terminated.

When the local newspaper first reported the story of Mr Austins job loss, former town board member and paid family leave advocate Sara Persechino, launched a GoFundMe campaign for the family.

I dont think they should have to be worrying about financial issues right now; it should be a joyful time for them, she said. I dont think anyone should ever have to choose between their family and their job.

In addition to the public support, Mr Austin said he had received three job offers, as well as an apprenticeship from the local business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and from the labour union, AFL-CIO.

Mr Austins former employer declined to comment on specifics of Mr Austins case, citing confidentiality of the business, but they told the Monitor: [Salerno Protective Services] is not in the practice of releasing employees stated in the article you published but must be cognizant of the product we give our clients!"
Ten weeks after Donald Trumps shock US presidential election win, Trump will become the 45th President of the United States.

A grand ceremony will be held on January 20 outside the US Capitol in Washington DC.

Expand Close U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive for a New Year's Eve celebration with members and guests at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive for a New Year's Eve celebration with members and guests at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach

As Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office he will officially become the US president.

Here is everything you need to know:

1. Performers

There has been much speculation over who will perform at the inauguration ceremony.

The Rockettes, Americas Got Talent opera star Jackie Evancho and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir will all be performing at the event.

Kanye West started rumours that he will also perform after meeting Donald Trump at Trump Tower and saying he would have voted for him in the elections.

2. The White House handover

There is a fast turn-around at the White House as Barack Obama will wake up at the White House and Donald Trump will go to bed there on January 20.

No doubt the White House is preparing vigorously for the presidential handover.

3. Who will attend?

Expand Close Donald Trump listens as Obama speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office following Trump's election in November / Facebook

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Whatsapp Donald Trump listens as Obama speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office following Trump's election in November

Hillary and Bill Clinton will attend the ceremony alongside George W Bush and his wife Laura, according to Time.

Former president Jimmy Carter said he would attend the inauguration while former president George H.W. Bush has said he will not attend Trumps inauguration, citing his health and age (he is 92).

Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage also said he would attend the ceremony telling Sky News I cant wait.

The prime 1,600 guests will include the Obamas, the Speaker of the House, former Presidents, diplomatic corps, Cabinet members and nominees, Congressmen and women, governors and the joint chiefs of staff.

The so-called "A" list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 23 December 2016

4. How will Obama make his exit?

Barack Obama and his family will leave the White House for the final time on inauguration day on January 20, 2017.

After Trumps address there will be a departure ceremony for Barack Obama. After his goodbye speech he will make a swift exit like previous presidents who have left by jet, helicopter and car.

Expand Close WASHINGTON, DC: President Barack Obama during a phone call in the Oval Office in 2013, in Washington D.C. Photo by Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp WASHINGTON, DC: President Barack Obama during a phone call in the Oval Office in 2013, in Washington D.C. Photo by Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images

5. What will happen to Trumps family?

President-elect Donald Trump told reporters he will live in the White House after he takes the oath of office, but that his wife Melania and 10-year-old son Barron will be living in New York temporarily to allow their son to finish out the year at the same school.

This has caused much controversy as it could cause security issues for the family.

Expand Close New normal: Michelle and Barack Obama with daughters Malia (18) and Sasha Obama (15), pictured far right, who has begun a summer job in a restaurant / Facebook

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Whatsapp New normal: Michelle and Barack Obama with daughters Malia (18) and Sasha Obama (15), pictured far right, who has begun a summer job in a restaurant

However its likely that Melania and son Barron will remain at Trump Tower until the 10-year-old finishes school, whether it be just for this school year is unclear.
Eddie Johnson said the victim, who has "mental health challenges," is recovering and he called the video "sickening" (AP/Tae-Gyun Kim)

Prosecutors have filed hate crime and aggravated battery charges against four black suspects accused of beating and taunting a white man during an attack streamed live on Facebook.

Cook County prosecutors yesterday announced charges against three 18-year-olds - Jordan Hill of Carpentersville, Brittany Covington of Chicago and Tesfaye Cooper of Chicago - and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington of Chicago.

Prosecutors said the four had also been charged with kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Three have also been charged with burglary.

The charges stem from an incident that went on for up to 48 hours until Chicago police found the victim "in distress" walking along a street.

The victim, who is mentally disabled, was a classmate of one of the attackers and initially went with that person voluntarily, police said. "He's traumatised by the incident, and it's very tough to communicate with him at this point," police commander Kevin Duffin said.

Excerpts of the video posted by Chicago media outlets show the victim with his mouth taped shut slumped in a corner as at least two assailants cut off his sweatshirt and others taunt him off camera. The video shows a wound on the top of the man's head, and one person pushing it with his or her foot. A red band also appears to be around the victim's hands.

Off-camera, people can be heard using profanities about "white people" and Donald Trump. At least one woman is shown in the video.

During much of the video, the victim does not appear to make any attempt to defend himself or to escape his attackers. He is a suburban Chicago resident described by Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson as having "mental health challenges".

The grandmother of a young woman associated with the video said the granddaughter she raised from infancy was "not this person".

"I'm so upset, my head is about to bust open," said Priscilla Covington of Chicago. "I don't know if someone influenced her ... She had her ups and down. [She] was a good person. I'm so confused."

The investigation began on Monday after officers found a man "in distress" and "in crisis" walking on a street on the West Side, Captain Steven Sasso said.

The man was taken to a hospital, and it was later discovered that he had been reported missing.

At about the same time, police took several people into custody at a nearby address where they found signs of a struggle and property damage. Investigators determined that the missing man had been at the same address.

Asked about the racial comments in the video on Wednesday, Cmdr Duffin said the four people in custody were "young adults, and they make stupid decisions".
A Canadian federal judge in Alberta who called a sexual assault complainant "the accused" and asked her why she could not "just keep your knees together" should be allowed to keep his job, his lawyers said on Friday.

"Removal is not necessary to preserve public confidence in this case," lawyers for Justice Robin Camp wrote in a submission to the Canadian Judicial Council, which is considering whether to ask the government to remove Camp from the bench.

During a 2014 sex assault trial, Camp repeatedly referred to the 19-year-old complainant as the "accused" and said she "hasn't explained why she allowed the sex to happen if she didn't want it." His lawyers said in a statement his conduct was the result of "ignorance not animus."

Camp acquitted the accused but his decision was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered.

The 64-year-old judge, who was once head of a domestic violence court in Alberta, "has worked hard to correct his knowledge deficit," the statement reads.

In November a committee unanimously recommended Camp lose his job because his conduct during the rape trial was based on "discredited myths and stereotypes about women and victim-blaming."

The judicial council, which reviews complaints against federal judges, will meet later this month to decide whether to recommend that Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould ask Parliament to remove Camp from the bench.

The council has only ever recommended removing two judges since its creation in 1971. Both those judges resigned before the recommendations made it to Canada's Parliament.
Donald Trump has repeated the claim made during his election campaign that Mexico will foot the bill for a wall along the US-Mexican border.

Congressional Republicans and the president-elect's transition team are exploring whether they can make good on his promise to build a wall without passing a new bill.

Under the evolving plan, the Trump administration would rely on existing legislation authorising fencing and other technology along the southern border.

Legislators would be asked to ensure enough money is available in US coffers to build the wall, but Congress would not pass a standalone bill authorising it.

Mr Trump said in a tweet early on Friday: "The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!"

The potential approach was confirmed by two congressional officials and a senior transition official with knowledge of the discussions. They emphasised that no final decisions had been made.

Expand Close U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to reporters as he and his wife Melania Trump arrive for a New Year's Eve celebration with members and guests at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida / Facebook

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The approach could come as a surprise to some but could also prevent a legislative fight Mr Trump might lose if he tried to get Congress to pass a measure authorising the kind of border wall he promised during the campaign.

It is not clear how much could be done along the 2,000-mile border without additional action by Congress. Legislators passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but most of those 700 miles have already been built. Some areas are in much better shape than others and long stretches are made up of fencing that stops vehicles but not pedestrians.

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Whatever steps might be taken without Congress's approval would be likely to fall short of the extravagant new wall on the border that Mr Trump repeatedly said Mexico would pay for during his campaign for the White House.

Despite Congress's involvement in approving any spending, such an approach might also open Mr Trump to charges of circumventing the House and the Senate to take unilateral actions, something he repeatedly criticised President Barack Obama for.

Expand Close U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to reporters as he and his wife Melania Trump arrive for a New Year's Eve celebration with members and guests at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to reporters as he and his wife Melania Trump arrive for a New Year's Eve celebration with members and guests at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida

A spending bill including money for border construction could also provoke a legislative showdown given potential opposition from Senate Democrats.

However, some immigration hardliners have already expressed the desire to see Congress take a vote, given how prominent the wall was during Mr Trump's presidential campaign, and their desire to act on the issue.

His vow to build an impenetrable concrete wall along the southern border was his signature campaign proposal.

Mr Trump often promised the wall would be built of hardened concrete, rebar and steel as tall as his venues' ceilings, and would feature a "big, beautiful door" to allow legal immigrants to enter.

Most experts viewed such promises as unrealistic and impractical, and Mr Trump himself sometimes allowed that the wall would not need to span the entire length of the border, thanks to natural barriers like rivers. After winning the election, he said he would be open to stretches of fencing.
The funeral ceremony will take place on Saturday, and the wake will be held at Cairo's El-Hamedya El-Shazleya mosque on Tuesday

Prominent Egyptian academic and theatre critic Nehad Selaiha passed away on Friday, dean of the Theatre Institute Ashraf Zaki has confirmed.

Born in 1945, Selaiha graduated from the English Literature Department at Cairo University in 1966 and obtained her Masters Degree from the UK's Sussex University in 1969.

Though at first she pursued English literature education, Selaiha had a passion for philosophy and theatre.

"I wanted very much to become an actress; that was my real ambition. And I wanted very much to go and study in Britain, but, of course, tradition interfered," she revealed in an interview with Ahram Online in 2013.

In 1982, she obtained her PhD in theatre from the University of Exeter.

She held the post of professor of criticism and drama at the High Institute for Art Criticism since 1984, and in 2001 to 2003 she was dean of the same institution.

"Being on stage remained a passion with me throughout my life, although I couldn't become an actress, and so teaching offered me a sort of a substitute. I enjoy teaching because, for me, its like being on stage, I have the floor, I teach drama, I can act all the parts I like... I have a captive audience."

Selaiha authored numerous books and hundreds of articles in both Arabic and English, varying from theory and criticism to translations of plays and critiques.

She was the first theatre critic to write for the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper, where she also held the position of supervisor and editor of the theatre criticism section.

Selaiha received awards including special recognition by the Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival (1996), the State Award for Superior Achievement in Literary Studies (2003), the State Appreciation Award for Arts (2013), alongside numerous international recognitions handed to her at many theatre festivals.

She was also recognised by various Arab theatre festivals, including the Sharjah Festival, the Gulf Cooperation Council Festival, the Carthage Festival, the Amman International Theater Festival, and the Doha Arab Theatre Festival in 2012.

Selaiha was recognised and valued by theatre makers across generations. She was actively folowing the independent theatre scene, often guiding and supporting young artists about whom she also wrote extensively while documenting the history of Egyptian theatre.

I dont write reviews exactly; they're supposed to be reviews of the performances, but they are not precisely so because I try to introduce the political, socio-political, and economic contexts into the art. I dont believe that art, any kind of art, happens in a vacuum; everything happens in a context, particularly in theatre, because its so related to life and its a collective work involving so many different disciplines," she said in the interview.

The wake for Selaiha will take place on Tuesday 10 January, at Cairo's El-Hamdeya El-Shazleya mosque..

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Republican Donald Trump's electoral chances by discrediting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, US intelligence agencies said in an assessment.

Russia's objectives were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State Clinton, make it harder for her to win and harm her presidency if she did, an unclassified report released by the top U.S. intelligence agency said.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," the report said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

The report, although it omitted classified details, was the U.S. government's starkest public description of what it says was an unprecedented Russian campaign to manipulate the American body politic.

Reports of Russian interference in the already divisive election have roiled Washington, even as the U.S. Congress on Friday certified Trump's victory in the Electoral College. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.

The report's conclusions, though lacking details of how the Russians may have relayed the material to WikiLeaks and others, will give ammunition to Democrats and Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress who want tougher action against Russia, setting the scene for a potential showdown with Trump.

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It could also give a boost to members of Congress seeking an independent, bipartisan investigation of Russian hacking.

Trump, who has developed a rocky relationship with U.S. spy agencies and at times disparaged their work, defended the legitimacy of his election victory after receiving a nearly two-hour briefing Friday on the report.

The report neither assessed "the impact Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election" nor did it provide details on the evidence underpinning its conclusions, a fact likely to keep alive the controversy over what Moscow may have done.

Russia denies the U.S. government's allegations of hacking during the election campaign.

RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

The report said U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russian military intelligence, the GRU, used intermediaries such as WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and the Guccifer 2.0 "persona" to release emails that it had acquired from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and top Democrats as part of the effort.

The release of the emails led to embarrassing media coverage for Clinton and triggered the resignation of the DNC's chief.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta from "a state party." However, Assange did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party.

Russian actors were not found to have targeted U.S. systems that are involved in tallying votes, the report said. The report was produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

Also on Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security designated U.S. election infrastructure as critical infrastructure, widening the options the government has to protect voting machines from cyber attacks.

While the report found Russia had conducted cyber attacks on both the Democratic and the Republican parties, it made clear that the primary aims were to harm Clinton whether or not she won the election and evolved over time.

"When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency," it said.

"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him," it said. The CIA and FBI had high confidence in this judgment and NSA moderate confidence, the report said.

Neither the Russian Embassy in Washington, nor Clinton aides immediately responded to requests for comment.

The report suggested Putin was motivated in part by personal animus toward Clinton.

"Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him," it said.

'TROUBLING CHAPTER IN ONGOING STORY'

In a statement after his intelligence briefing, Trump did not squarely address whether he was told of the agencies' belief Russia carried out the hacking.

Instead, he said: "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations" including the DNC.

"There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said.

The businessman, who is to be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, also said he would appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days of taking office on how to prevent cyber attacks but suggested that he would keep their recommendations secret.

The report did not reveal how the intelligence agencies collected the evidence underpinning their conclusions or the evidence itself, including the means by which Russian military intelligence "relayed" the materials filched from the DNC and other hacking targets to WikiLeaks and others, omissions likely to leave the report open to criticism.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who was briefed on the report on Friday, took issue with Trump's comments.

"The President-Elect's statement that the Russian hacking had 'absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election' is not supported by the briefing, report, or common sense," Schiff said.

"It is one thing to say that there was no tampering with vote tallying - which is true - it is another thing to say that the daily dumping of documents disparaging to ... Clinton that was made possible by Russian cyber operations had no effect on the campaigns," he said. "The consequence of these disclosures was hugely beneficial to the President-Elect and damaging to the Clinton campaign, just as the Russians intended."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said his panel would continue to compile "facts surrounding Russia's active measures," adding: "This is a troubling chapter in an ongoing story."
Undated handout photo issued by the WWF of Adelie penguins diving off an iceberg in Antarctica, as Adelie penguins target jellyfish with prominent gonads for a tasty meal, research from Antarctic "penguin cams" suggests. Tim Laman/naturepl.com/WWF/PA Wire

Scientists have warned that an iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica.

A long-running rift in one of the biggest ice shelfs in Antarctica grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the iceberg from floating away.

Researchers in Swansea say the loss of a piece of ice a 'quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.

The ice shelf, named Larsen C, has seen the rift go into overdrive in the last couple of weeks.

"If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed," project leader Prof Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University, told BBC News.

It is believed that climate warming has brought forward the likely separation of the iceberg but the scientists say they have no direct evidence to support this.

As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels.

But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean.

This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels.

It is estimated that if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf is currently holding back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm.
The Admiral Kuznetsov pictured during its passage through the Strait of Dover

The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier during its mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Russian Defence Ministry Press Service/AP)

Syrian government and opposition forces fighting over the strategic Barada Valley have agreed a temporary ceasefire, according to a media arm of Hezbollah.

The Lebanese militant group, which is fighting alongside government forces on the front lines of Syria's war, announced through its military media arm that the ceasefire would apply for "several hours" in the valley - the Syrian capital's primary source of water - on Friday evening.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported calm in the Barada Valley for the first time since the government's side moved to dislodge the opposition there 18 days ago.

The fighting has restricted water supplies to four million people around the capital Damascus.
Seven schoolchildren died in Pakistan when two rickshaws were struck by a train

A train crushed two motorised rickshaws on an unattended railway crossing in central Pakistan on Friday, killing seven schoolchildren and one of the rickshaw drivers, police and railway officials said.

According to police officer Javed Ahmed, the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks in a suburban area near the town of Lodhran in eastern Punjab province. The train was heading to Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.

Dr Abdul Majid, a rescue official, said another five children aged five to eight were critically injured.

He said the rickshaw driver was initially injured and later died at a local hospital.

The injured children were moved to hospitals in the nearby town of Bahwalpur for better medical care.

Following an inspection of the crash site and a preliminary investigation, the assistant train driver and a railway worker responsible for the crossing were detained for questioning, said Asad Sarfaraz, a senior police officer.

Police had earlier said the crossing was ungated.

"The railway worker responsible for manning the crossing was found missing from his post," he said.

Railways minister Saad Rafiq ordered an immediate investigation and suspended the two railway workers, adding that further action would be taken if the inquiry shows they were negligent.

AP
Soldiers have launched mutinies in three cities across Ivory Coast, demanding higher pay and bringing the threat of unrest back to Africa's fastest-growing economy.

Gunfire rang out across Bouake, the second-largest city in the west African nation, according to residents. Similar mutinies erupted later in Daloa, in the central region, and Korhogo in the north.

"They are heavily armed and parading through the city," said Karim Sanogo, a student in Daloa. "Security forces have abandoned their posts. Everyone has returned home to seek shelter."

The armed men also controlled the main routes into Bouake used by truck drivers to carry merchandise from Mali and Burkina Faso.

The former French colony's reputation as a model of political stability in a region better known for conflict was shattered after its first coup in 1999. The crisis reached rock-bottom in 2002 when fighting erupted in skyscraper-lined Abidjan.

That was the start of a civil war that ended months later in a stalemate that left rebels in control of the northern half of the country, with their stronghold in Bouake.

A breakthrough came in 2007 with a peace deal that saw rebel leader Guillaume Soro appointed prime minister in a unity government.

The soldiers say not all the promises made in the 2007 agreement were implemented.

In more recent unrest, 3,000 people died in violence after long-time president Laurent Gbagbo lost the 2010 presidential election and then refused to cede power to victor Alassane Ouattara. After a military intervention, Mr Ouattara became president and Gbagbo faces charges at the International Criminal Court.

France has a military presence in Ivory Coast, with most of its 900 troops stationed in and near Abidjan. It is not known if the Ivory Coast government has asked for their help.

AP
Turkish military vehicles drive in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai, as they head towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Turkish military vehicles drive in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai, as they head towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Turkish military vehicles drive in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai, as they head towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Turkish military vehicles drive in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai, as they head towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

A Turkish soldier gestures inside a military vehicle, part of a convoy driving in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai and heading towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Men ride motorbikes behind a Turkish military vehicle which is part of a convoy driving in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai and heading towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Turkish military vehicles drive in the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai, as they head towards the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria January 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

The Turkish military and Syrian rebels killed 32 Islamic State militants in the latest clashes in northern Syria on Thursday, Turkey's armed forces said in a statement on Friday.

In a round-up of its military operations over the last 24 hours in support of rebels in northern Syria, the army said Turkish warplanes destroyed 21 Islamic State targets in the areas of al-Bab and Bzagah, including buildings and vehicles.

Turkey's military operation, dubbed 'Euphrates Shield', was launched more than four months ago to drive Islamic State from the border and prevent a Kurdish militia taking territory in their wake. In recent weeks, the forces have been besieging the town of al-Bab.
KANNAPOLIS  There is no such thing as TOO much bacon, according to Brian Kennedy. And if thats the case, hes found the perfect restaurant with Crispys Bar & Grill.

Its beer and bacon, said Kennedy, of Kannapolis. Literally, everything is infused with bacon and they have really good quality beer.

That bacon infused variety of foods is what recently attracted the attention of a production crew for the Travel Channel show Food Paradise. Producers were filming Thursday for a segment that will feature the restaurant, located at 3399 Cloverleaf Plaza, Kannapolis.

Kennedy visited the restaurant Thursday and wasnt planning on being interviewed for the episode that producers say should air later this year. He said a crew member came over and asked him if he would be willing to sign a release form in order to be on camera. Kennedy had one response, Yeah, sure, just as long as I can still get beer and bacon, Im good

Greg Helmandollar, the owner of Crispys Bar & Grill  which also operates the MasterBacon food truck  said the crew filmed for about 11 hours Thursday.

Im not a camera person, Helmandollar said with a laugh. I have a face for radio.

Helmandollar is quick to joke with patrons, which has helped grow his cliental at Crispys Bar & Grill, which opened Oct. 20, 2015.

Theyve become family to us, said Naomi Scott, of Spencer, who was interviewed by the Food Paradise crew. We come here at least twice a week, if not more.

Scott grabbed lunch with Derek Buchanan, of Salisbury, who first discovered the restaurant through Helmandollars MasterBacon food truck. Helmandollar turned an old emergency response vehicle into his Bacon Response Unit food truck in August 2013, with his first gig at Lucky Dog Bark & Brew in Cornelius in April 2014.

At the time, Helmandollar was juggling working at Union Street Bistro with getting his food truck ready. He created the MasterBacon food truck as a way to supplement his income while working at the Bistro. But before long, he built up a following that turned the food truck into a full time job.

That later led to Helmandollar creating Crispys Bar & Grill, using the old Quiznos restaurant location. Helmandollar said it cost about $40,000 to get the restaurant up and running.

The restaurant was started because winter time on a food truck is rough, Helmandollar said. The trucks are a fair weather restaurant. So if the weather is not good your money is not good and trying to add some consistency to my own familys finances and stability with three kids it just gives us more of a stable income. This is our bread and butter and thats the cake.

The spot may not be the easiest to find, over in the Cloverleaf Plaza area, but Helmandollar has built up a steady group of regular customers.

Youve got to find them, but when you do find them you dont stop coming, Buchanan said.

Buchanan and Scott were filmed by the Food Paradise crew, with the segment focusing on Crispys bacon wrapped cheese steak and a bacon wrapped pecan pie.

When I think, theres no such thing as too much bacon, its not the amount of bacon, its what you are able to do with it, said Christopher Kramer, a senior producer for OMalley Productions, who filmed the Food Paradise episode for the Travel Channel. This place isnt about piling on the bacon, they are just using it in a really creative way.

Kramer said he discovered Crispys when he was doing an Internet search for his research for the episode. The restaurants theme intrigued him, pushing the film crew to come to Kannapolis.

Everyone loves bacon, its a fan favorite in the food world and this place seemed to be pushing the boundaries on what you could do with it, Kramer said. And we thought it was really cool and wanted to showcase it.

Bacon!

When you meet Helmandollar, it doesnt take long to realize the man really loves bacon. He eats it every day, and he has a tattoo on his hand of a strip of bacon that reads, Id wrap that. And when his cell phone rings it makes an Oink, oink sound, in honor of bacon.

At the restaurant, Helmandollar has created a wide variety of items that use bacon, including ice cream topped with bacon; a surf and turf wrap that had filet mignon, shrimp and mashed potatoes; bacon wrapped lasagna and other dishes.

Its the beauty of bacon, is because it does go with everything at the right amount, Helmandollar said. Sometimes its just a couple of pieces in a sandwich, sometimes its wrapped, sometimes its like a dessert, where I can put it in it, on it and around it and its just perfect. Its all about balancing the bacon with the other ingredients.

Its also about how the bacon is prepared.

Jimmy Ray Tyner III, of Salisbury, said the restaurants name, Crispys, says it all.

They always get the bacon just crispy, not burned, Tyner said.

Helmandollar said he uses about 250 to 300 pounds of bacon a week between the restaurant and the food truck, which also goes to events and sets up at Cabarrus Brewing Co. at 329 McGill Ave NW, Concord.

Vincent Thompson and Tyson Fink  who work at Cabarrus Brewing Co.  visited Crispys during the filming Thursday. Cabarrus Brewing Co.s beer is offered on tap at the restaurant.

Fink had a bacon wrapped cheese steak, his favorite at Crispys.

Really, it doesnt get much better than that. Fink said.

Thompson had a sandwich that had a chicken dipped in waffle batter with a bacon jam.

Its a pretty unique dish, said Thompson, who has worked as a chef himself. Its bacon man. You cant go wrong.

Helmandollar said he uses Hormels premium black label pecan wood smoked bacon for his foods.

Its just the best tasting bacon I have had, Helmandollar said. I could give people three times as much bacon on their sandwiches if I used the cheap stuff, but it doesnt have the favor profile I am looking for. Its not about a lot of bacon  were all about the quality of the bacon.

Visit https://www.facebook.com/Crispysbarandgrill/ or call 704-956-2831 for more information on Crispy's Bar & Grill.
Life Ok has finally entered into the phase of its revamp, which begins with Niti Taylor Param Singh starrer, 'Ghulam' which is set to go on-air in a couple of weeks.

And while the plans for other shows have been worked upon, another show which has been in the news has been the historical epic show, 'Maharaja Ranjit Singh'.

The news about child actor, Damanpreet Singh slated to play the lead of the show has already hit the web, where actress, Tunisha Sharma has also been signed on to play the female lead while showcasing the younger generation.

There were news about seasoned actor, Sharad Kelkar all set and ready to make his comeback to TV with this show, playing a warrior.



We got in touch with Sharad, where he said, "Well, I am currently in Thailand, so wasn't aware about this news. And when it comes to being a part of the show, I have to say that talks are going on, but there is no confirmation yet."

Well, we can only wait till things get materialized. What do you have to say about the same? Leave in your comments below..
The slideshow video shows 16 pictures all taken from the space station's windows by astronauts of some of the most beautiful sites all over the world

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released a video of the best 16 space images of 2016, with Egypt's Lake Nasser coming in second place after the city of Dubai.

The slideshow video shows 16 pictures all taken from the space station's windows by astronauts of some of the most beautiful sites all over the world.

The video also includes Lake Urmia in Iran, Mount Fuji in Japan, Santorini Island in Greece, and Itaparica reservoir Brazil.

Lake Nasser is a vast reservoir in southern Egypt's ancient city of Aswan and one of the largest man-made lakes in the world.





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Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced on Friday the building of what will be the largest church and the largest mosque in Egypt at the new capital by the coming year, and that he will be the first to donate money for the project.

El-Sisi made the announcement on Friday evening while visiting the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo for Coptic Christmas celebrations, which were attended by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II.

The president also apologised for the delay in the rebuilding of all the churches that were torched following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

However, President El-Sisi assured that with the exception of one church in Upper Egypt and one in Sinai, all the churches damaged in the attacks have been rebuilt.

He also stressed that the Pope did not broach the subject of the damaged churches, "although it is his right to do so."

The Egyptian president asserted that diversity and differences between people were created by God and should be respected.

"Only beauty has a place among us, ugliness has no place here," he said.

"Egypt will export good and light with all our help, we shall teach the region and the world love, peace, stability and security. Egypt will be great if we all deal [with each other] with honor, loyalty and peace," the president said.

"As I stand in one of God's houses, I pray for God to save you and save Egypt, and keep peace and stability in our country," El-Sisi concluded.

This is the third time El-Sisi has paid an official visit to the Coptic Cathedral.

Last month, a suicide bomber killed 28 people and injured over 40 others at a Cairo church during Sunday prayers.

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Coptic history and folk researcher Robert Al-Faress has been busy with a "cultural campaign" during the weeks leading up to the celebration of Coptic Christmas on 7 January.

The aim of the campaign, titled A holy doctrine for life, is to show the Copts of Egypt that their creed does celebrate life as much as it celebrates death.

The campaign started with a series of articles printed in several dailies about the significance of life  the birth and resurrection of Christ  in Christian theology.

In Egypt, Copts give more attention to Easter rather than Christmas; and when they think of Easter, they think more of the pain that Jesus Christ had to endure before his crucifixion rather than the resurrection that embodies the victory of life over death, said Al-Faress.

According to Al-Faress -- who authored a 2016 book titled The neglected chapters of Copts political folk -- the highest church attendance during the year across the country is on Passion Week.

Good Friday, which celebrates the crucifixion of Christ, is perhaps the highest church attendance day  with women mostly dressed fully in black as a mark of mourning, he said.

Al-Faress argued that this is partially due to the fact that the crucifixion is central to the Christian creed. However, he added that it is also a cultural specification of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Christians everywhere bow to the crucifixion, but it is overemphasised in our [Coptic] Orthodox Church, he argued.

Al-Faress is convinced that this is essentially about the Egyptian cultural heritage and folk tradition.

In our Pharaonic mythology, we celebrated the agony of Isis when she cried over the death of Osiris. This has influenced our collective cultural consciousness as Egyptians, hence the association with the agony of the Virgin Mary over the crucifixion of Jesus, or for Muslims, [the suffering of] Sayyeda Zeinab, he said.

Sayyeda Zainab was the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohamed, who is named "the mother of agonies" for having lived through the pain of the killing of her father Ali, the fourth Muslim ruler after the death of Mohamed, and her two brothers Al-Hassan and Al-Hussein  the three being the ultimate symbols of martyrdom in Islamic history.

Al-Faress says that for followers of Western Churches, Christmas is the main holiday to celebrate, because they celebrate the glorious birth of Christ, but we celebrate his agony and his death.

Al-Faress argued that it is the Egyptian focus on agony that significantly reduces church attendance during Christmas, despite the high significance of the prayers of the 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, which marks the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles  and the conclusion of the Easter Season."

Our Church has always celebrated death over life, which perhaps has to do with the endless martyrs that had to give their lives to hold on to their creed over the centuries, Al-Faress said.

And this is why, Al-Faress added, that -- with the exception of the Hymns of Keihak, the Coptic month of the 29 days leading to the birth of Christ -- there are no significant symbols of Christmas celebration.

Everything, from the Christmas tree to the giving of gifts, is inspired by Western Churches, which once had a considerable community in Egypt, and is not widely observed by the followers by the Coptic Orthodox Church  as opposed to, for example, the followers of the Greek and Armenian Orthodox Churches in Egypt.

Christmas is celebrated as the "lesser feast," in the same vein as the Muslim "lesser feast" that marks the end of the fast of Ramadan  with generous meals and traditional Egyptian cookies.

However, Copts have no particular dish of their own to cook for Christmas, or Easter for that matter, as they join the rest of Egyptians in celebrating Sham El-Nessim [the Spring Holiday  the Monday following Easter Sunday], Al-Faress said.

According to Al-Faress, the only signs of considerable festivities that Copts celebrate are incorporated in the Moulids of the Virgin Mary and other saints, and to be very frank, this is because these Moulids are not celebrated under the supervision of the Church; they are strictly folk traditions observed by Christians and Muslims alike.

This excessive association with death over life by the Coptic Church "needs to be revised," Al-Faress said.

We need to start believing that Christianity was served not just by those who died to hold on to their creed, but also by those who lived despite the odds over so many centuries, and passed on the faith, Al-Faress said.

The birth of Christ and his resurrection, are about life, but the Orthodox Church finds it easier to bow to death, because it cannot depart from its submission to the killing of Christians in the Middle Ages," Al-Faress argued.

This submission to death evolved into a culture of submission in general, and it is being reflected in so many ways today, argued Al-Faress.

It is this deeply rooted sense of submission, Al-Faress said, that explains the "uncontested compliance" of the Coptic Church last month to the killing of close to 30 churchgoers in an attack on the St Peter and St Paul Church next to the Coptic Cathedral in Abassiya.

The Church said it took pride in giving more martyrs, which is precisely about submission; starting with the submission to death and then to the submission to aggression and persecution. It is not all political; it is predominantly cultural, Al-Faress argues.

This is the reason why Al-Faress started his campaign "a holy doctrine for life," in order to "remind everyone that our theology should not be hijacked by death."

It is only when the Coptic Church starts to embrace the love of life that it can start to depart from the culture of submission to persecution  and only then can we expect it to openly decry discrimination and violence against Copts, Al-Faress stated.

He added that the first step on this long path is for "Copts to learn to better enjoy Christmas."

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JMC Projects India secures new orders of Rs2,277 crore; Stock gains 2.6% JMC Projects (India) Limited (JMC), a leading Civil Engineering and EPC Company has secured new orders of Rs2,277 crores. The details are as follows: Water Projects in India of... November 04, 2022 | 2:08 pm

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Nykaa receives shareholders' approval for bonus issue and ESOP; Stock down 1% The Board of the lifestyle retailer FSN E-Commerce Ventures Limited (Nykaa), on October 3, 2022, approved Bonus Issue of Equity Shares in the proportion of 5 (Five) fully paid-up Equity Sh... November 04, 2022 | 12:03 pm
Washington, DC This week, Congressman Cedric Richmond (LA-02) was sworn in as the 25th Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) during a ceremony hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) at the Warner Theatre. The ceremony marked the induction of the largest class in the CBCs 46-year history.

Over the next two years, Chairman Richmond will lead the Caucus in its mission of empowering the African American community and providing a voice for people of color and vulnerable communities.

The 49 Members of the CBC are committed to do our part, said Rep. Richmond. To provide leadership, engage the people across the country, and fight shoulder to shoulder to ensure the arc of history continues to bend toward justice.
Chairman A.J. Not Afraid, Crow Tribe, and President L. Jace Killsback, Northern Cheyenne Tribe.



Tribal leaders featured on Montana state-wide radio

By Clara CaufieldNative Sun News Today Correspondent

BILLINGS, Mont.  In December 2016, three new and young Native political leaders from the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Tribes made Montana media history when they were featured on the hour long Voices of Montana radio talk show.

It was the first time that Native politicians joined forces in public media, discussing issues of common concern. The show aired across some 23 stations in Montana by the Northern Broadcasting Association is produced at the KGHL radio station, Billings Montana. Streamed live on the internet, the show is widely available to listeners in many other states.

There are seven reservations in Montana and we have many Indian friends and neighbors and common concerns said Taylor Brown, Northern Broadcasting owner when agreeing to feature the show which was themed Young Native Leaders. To the extent that we can promote a better understanding of tribal issues and concerns, the better things will be for all of us. We are all citizens of the state.

The first episode aired on December 21, 2016, featuring President L. Jace Killsback, Northern Cheyenne Tribe; Chairman A.J. Not Afraid, Crow Tribe and Montana Senator Jason Small, Senate District 21 which includes both the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations. The educational program focused on collaboration and unity between the three leaders, close and active cooperation between the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Tribes, a relatively new development.

We were all elected with a mandate for change, President Killsback noted. Tribal and State relations need to promote a greater understanding. We dont have time for nonsense. There are too many critical needs including economic development, health, law, state and federal funding.

Chairman Not Afraid concurred saying The issues on our reservations are similar and we need to strategize to address them. Were coming together and President Killsback is a great proponent for all Tribes.

Senator Small also agreed. It might take some time to develop a working relationship, but we will not step backwards. We are going to work together. The Tribes need the State and the State needs the Tribes. Weve got to continue with current programs, add on some new ones and address unemployment issues.

The wide-ranging discussion was historic in that the three young leaders, representing a significant swath of southeastern Montana, all spoke of the need for collaboration and working together to improve the economy and opportunity, including employment, housing and health for native people and low-income people in the state.

Senator Small who will serve on the State Health and Human Services Legislative Committee mentioned a fact which shocked Jon Arneson, talk show host and initiated a discussion of health problems.

If you live in Hardin (non-Indian community bordering the Crow reservation) as opposed to Crow Agency (Crow reservation community) your life expectancy is 15 years more. And thats a distance of 11 miles.

(Clara Caufield can be reached at acheyennevoice@gmail.com)

Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Tribal leaders featured on Montana state-wide radio

Copyright permission Native Sun News

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It's a terribly sad day for Hindi cinema. Veteran actor Om Puri passed away in Mumbai after suffering a massive heart attack. A TOI report claims that the actor was found dead on Friday morning. Om Puri had returned home last evening from his shoot but when the doorbell of his home went unanswered, his driver raised an alarm. Om Puris close friend and filmmaker Ashoke Pandit took to Twitter to confirm the sad news.

Twitter

The Padma Shri awardee studied at the Film and Television Institute of India and at the National School of Drama and actor Naseeruddin Shah was his classmate.

Twitter

Born on October 18, 1950, hailing from Ambala in Haryana, Om Puri made his debut in 1976 with the Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal and what followed was a journey that was glorious in every sense of the word.

Twitter

Bollywood is deeply shocked by the sudden demise of the actor and took to social media to pour heartfelt condolence messages.

Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

completely shocked to hear that om puri ji is no more.may his soul be blessed with peace!it will take long to come to terms with his demise!  Manoj Bajpayee (@BajpayeeManoj) January 6, 2017

Om Puri! You have left us all too early.. i am so so sorry..The fun the laughter the arguments so vividly etched in my mind..Will miss you  Azmi Shabana (@AzmiShabana) January 6, 2017

Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist....  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) January 6, 2017

Shocked beyond words to learn that #OmPuri ji is no more. Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. RIP #HugeLoss pic.twitter.com/REq9vDrtkk  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 6, 2017

Shocked beyond words to learn that #OmPuri ji is no more. Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. RIP #HugeLoss pic.twitter.com/REq9vDrtkk  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 6, 2017

Omji... I will miss that warm tight hug that you gave me every morning on set. Khudahafiz sir... you were the best!  Kabir Khan (@kabirkhankk) January 6, 2017

RIP Om puri .. interactions with you were always full of life.. you were one of the finest artist we are proud of..  Shoojit Sircar (@ShoojitSircar) January 6, 2017

Goodbye Om! A part of me goes with you today. How can I ever forget those passionate nights we spent together talking about cinema & life ?  Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) January 6, 2017

It's a sad day for cinema ... we just lost one of our greats... gone but will never be forgotten ... #RIPOmPuri Saab ...  Neha Dhupia (@NehaDhupia) January 6, 2017

PM Modi took to Twitter as well. He wrote,
On the frontlines with Iranian-Kurdish female fighters battling Islamic State.

1. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter holds her weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

2. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter carries her weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

3. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter is seen during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

4. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter fires her rifle during a fight with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

5. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter fires her rifle during a fight with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

6. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter carries her weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

7. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters take position during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

8. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters sit near a sand berm during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

9. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter sits behind a sand berm during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

10. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters hold their weapons during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

11. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters hold their weapons during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

12. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters talk to Peshmerga forces during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

13. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter checks her weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

14. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter takes position during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

15. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter fires a weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

16. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter carries bullets during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

17. An Iranian-Kurdish female fighter walks with a weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

18. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters take position during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

19. Iranian-Kurdish female fighters take position during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
According to a joint study by Unesco Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report, 47 million adolescents in India have not progressed to upper secondary school, the highest in the world.

One of the biggest reasons behind the high number of dropouts is accessibility to schools.

BCCL/ Representative Image

While a number of efforts have been made to bring more and more children to school, access remains a key concern for a number of them, especially in rural and backward areas.

Apart from in cities, in most places students are forced to walk kilometers to access schools.

Now an international is trying to make schools accessible for children in India. The Walking School Bus, an NGO based out of Vancouver, Canada aims to empower students in developing countries to access education.

Successfully implemented in countries like Uganda, TWSB tries to make schools accessible for students.

TWSB/ Facebook

"Access to education has different connotations, it is about providing things like a schoolbus, or anything that makes it easier for students to reach school. In countries like India or Uganda the distance that a student have to travel to school is long. All we are trying to do is to make it easier for them," Sukriti Sachar, an executive team member of TWSB told Indiatimes.

For their first project in India, TWSB has organised a 5 Km walk in Gurgaon on Sunday in partnership with Raahgiri Day with an aim to raise funds for a computer lab for a partner school. They also plan to provide audio books for school children to make education easier for them.

BCCL/ Representative Image

"Our government has identified a problem with readability and hence the program called 'Reading Mela' has been initiated. In line with this, our reading program will enable students to read and understand better and faster,"Sachar said.

The 5 Kms walk called 'Access In Motion (AIM) also want to raise awareness on access to education as well as funds to provide at least some of the lesser privileged, a better chance for education.
A mortar shell explosion that took the then 3-year-old Fayaz's legs has left the boy without education at an age when kids venture out to schools to begin their learning.

Fayaz's parents have been trying to get their child admission for the last three months but without luck. They were turned down by two private schools despite the efforts of the Director of Education, Ajaz Ahmad Bhat, who acknowledged that he had been trying to get the boy admitted, reports NDTV.

ndtv

The 6-year-old boy doesn't understand why this keeps happening.

Fayaz's father, Reyaz Ahmad says, "Schools refused admission even after the Director of Education sent his officers with me three times. They say they will not be able to handle my child because he can't go to toilet on his own or climb stairs."

A labourer, Ahmad, also lost his daughter in the explosion that occurred outside his home in the Budgam district of Kashmir, three years ago, near an army firing range. The army had offered help with Fayaz's treatment.

ndtv

After the incident, Ahmad and his wife Firdousa shifted to Srinagar in hopes to give their children better education. However, the schools keep turning Fayaz away because they don't want to handle a child with disability.

The state's Education Minister Naeem Akhtar has promised a probe into the matter.
Giving a stern warning to owners of Malaysian company Maxis that it can't evade India's law by staying abroad, the Supreme Court on Friday stayed the transfer of 2G licence from Malaysia's Maxis which was originally allotted to Aircel to any other telecom company.

The order came when BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy informed the bench that Maxis promoter Anandakrishnan and its owners Ralph Marshall did not honor the summons from trial court, which would frame charges against the accused on Monday.

Aircel

A bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said, "You can't use assets of this country and evade the process of law. Appear before the trial court in two weeks or face consequences."

The order meant that for the time being Aircel rights cannot be sold or transferred to any third parties.

The bench has also proposed to restrain earning of any revenue by using the 2G spectrum licences which were originally granted to Aircel. The apex court has also said that four accused in the Airtel maxis case will have to appear in Special Court hearing the case while slating the further hearing on February 3.

BCCL

The court also directed the government to publish this order against Maxis and its owner in two leading Malaysian dailies and observed, "We cannot tolerate a person using the natural resource assets (spectrum) of India and not honouring court notice."

The CBI had chargesheeted Maran and Maxis owner and others in the case in October 2014. Maran allegedly had forced Aircel owner to sell a majority stake to Malaysian firm in lieu of a bribe amount of Rs 742 crore.

The Malaysia-based Maxis is accused of paying a Rs 713 crore bribe to get the spectrum licence in 2006, awarded to Aircel during former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran's tenure.
Veteran Bollywood actor Om Puri has passed away at the age of 66. According to reports the actor suffered a cardiac arrest on Friday morning.

BCCL

Born on 18 October 1950, Puri was known for his outstanding performances in not just Indian but also Pakistani, British, and Hollywood movies.

He had been awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India.

The Prime Minister's office has condoled the death of the actor.

The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 6, 2017

His co actor in several films Anupam Kher has also expressed his shock over Puri's death.

Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

The Film Fraternity Pays Tribute To Veteran Actor Om Puri, After He Passed Away Due To A Cardiac Arrest




The horror, the women in Bangalore witnessed on New Year's Eve on its MG Road, has brought us back to square one with debates going on about whether women should go alone after dark or not, what should they wear and what not etc. The reluctant fundamentalist who clandestinely lives within all of us once again tried to persuade that nothing much can be done about it and like previous times, this time too, he nailed it.

Indian Express

But a little peeping through the last couple of years would give us plenty of examples where the brave women didn't surrender meekly before their harassers and gave them befitting replies.

Here are some inspiring real stories from across India where women thrashed their harassers and proved that they won't mind being the fairer sex, but it doesn't imply that they are weak.



1. She kicked him where it hurts the most

This story is from Bangalore itself where hundreds of women have been reportedly harrassed on the streets of the city by hooligans. This girl didn't bow down and let the goon do what he intended to. Instead, she hit him where it hurts the most and despite the onlookers not helping, she didn't give up.

Chaitali Wasnick who wrote her story on Facebook shot to instant fame. On New Year's Eve, the 24-year-old, who works as a photographer was trying to find a cab to get back home to Old Madras Road from Indiranagar.

FB

"It was 1:30 am, but there were cops around, so I didn't feel unsafe," she told HuffPost India. On Saturday night, a man had tried to grope her. "With so much ease he did [it] as if he thought I'll not utter a word," she said. However, the attacker clearly didn't see what was coming.

Wasnick said that she "punched and kicked" him "till he couldn't take the pain." "There were 10 to 15 people watching this. They didn't tell the guy anything. But they kept trying to stop me from beating him up," she said.



2. Two girls thrashed their harasser

Harassed for months, a group of schoolgirls and women fought back and dragged four of their tormentors to the Jagaddal police station in July 2016. The four suspects, who stayed in a rented place in Kakinara Rathtala, teased local girls regularly. They particularly targeted schoolgirls and made obscene gestures at them, says the complaint.

On July 13, they were making indecent gestures at three students when the girls decided to fight back. Enraged at being challenged, the men allegedly threatened the girls, but this triggered an all-out counterattack by women of the locality. A bunch of women rushed out of their homes and started beating the harassers. They hauled the four to the local police station.

3. College girls fight sexual harassment at Belapur railway station

On December 20, 2016, a group of Belapur-based college girl students, aged 17-18 years, fought back against continuous sexual harassment they had been facing for the last several weeks at Belapur railway station by confronting the accused and reporting the matter to the police.

TOI

One of the girls later told TOI,"We often go past this cold-drinks stall at the station while going towards our college or coming back. This man working there would always stare at us in a bad way and sometimes also passed lewd comments at us. This had been going on for several weeks, but today we decided to teach him a lesson.' The girls not only beat the man up but also handed him over to police.

In September 2016, a woman from Bareilly, UP thrashed a man with slippers after he allegedly followed her on her way to college and then passed lewd comments at her. The woman, who was about 17 years old, was riding her bicycle on her way to college in Meerganj district, when the man, also from the same area, started following her in his motorcycle.

According to a complaint to the police, he passed lewd comments at her. On her way, she met her uncle and told him about the man, identified as Sabir, following her. While her uncle stopped Sabir and told him off, locals caught hold of him and asked the woman to thrash him with her slipper as punishment, according to cops.

5. He was harassing her over phone, but she taught him a lesson on road

In February last year, a woman was seen thrashing a man with her slipper on the streets of Patiala. The women accused that the man was continously harrassing her on phone by calling her abruptly and sending her lewd messages. The female after thrashing, handed him over to police. The incident was caught-on-camera, in which she could be seen hitting the alleged eve teaser with her slipper. As per India Today, the woman claimed that she had called a LPG agency to book a cylinder and after that the man called her repeatedly and made inappropriate comments.

6. School girl beats the eve teaser in front of Police

In July 2015, An alleged harasser was beaten up by a girl in front of cops inside a police station. The incident took place in Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh where a girl thrashed an alleged eve-teaser inside a police station.

The girl had beaten the boy who used to harass continuously her and pass abusive comments badly. The girl continuously slapped and hit the accused. She even forced him to touch her feet.
Nurul Islam alias Marjan, the leader of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen aka Neo JMB, whom the Bangladeshi authorities believe was the coordinator of the July 1 siege attack on an upmarket cafe in Dhaka has been killed.

He, along with another militant, was killed in a gunfight with the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC).

CTTC unit chief Monirul Islam said, One of the militants killed in the incident is Marjan. We are yet to confirm the identity of the other militant.

Dhaka Tribune quoting an investigator said Marjan was once the leader of former PM Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party's student wing. He was the youngest military commander of the Neo JMB which is affiliated with Islamic State.

AFP

Five heavily armed gunmen had attacked the Gulshan Cafe in Dhaka, taking hostage dozens mostly foreigners. By the time Bangladeshi security forces stepped in and began a counteroffensive 20 people including a 19-year-old Indian girl were killed by the terrorists.

It was later revealed that all the five gunmen, in their 20's hailed from well to do families and studied in some of the best educational institutes, triggering concerns of even well educated youths being radicalised.
It's not a crime to be gay, women can drive and travel alone, there are bars in every part of its major cities. Europeans loved it as much as the Middle Easterners did. If there ever was a set of cliches for a Muslim majority country, Turkey doesn't stick even one of them. Or at least it didn't till a few years ago.

Sultanofistanbul.com

A series of unfortunate events have left world's 'party capital' devastated with its reputation somewhat damaged. The very metropolitan nature that made it a crowd favourite now looks certainly under threat.

Reinaclub

One finds everything in Turkey. From the foot tapping music at the clubs of buzzing Istiklal Street in the historical city of Istanbul to the serene beaches of Izmir; from the scrumptious kebabs of Adana to hazelnuts from Trabzon, people from across the world look up to all these things that converge by the Bosphorus Sea and make it their dream destination.

Its a country where one comes across tradition and modernity boarding the same metro. Its a place where East and the West order their food at same cafe and its a sanctuary where different religions and cultures accommodate each like a bouquet holds together various flowers.

Off late, something has gone wrong in the country joining hands of Europe and Asia. A series of terror attacks, assassination of the Russian Ambassador, and recent political turmoil seem to have altered peoples perception about their security in this country. Things have not changed overnight though. The emergence of extremist and violent reactions to ongoing social issues has turned the resting place of Jalaluddin Rumi into an alleyway of restricted arena controlled by exclusivist thugs.

Reuters

How did it happen?

There are several events that are credited to have led Turkey to what it is now. After the first World War, from a secular state, following the dream and edicts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and aspiring to be a part of the progressive Europe  though evidently despised by its European neighbours  to a country touted as and touchstone of Islamic democracy, Turkey now seems to be confused about its own political philosophy.

Pinterest

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the formation of a secular state under Ataturk, Turkey had been under strong influence of the army, at least until the 1980, when the third coup de etat took place. Eventually, democratisation took a speedy course and democratic institutions were gradually made stronger in order to counter any further onslaught the by the army. This somehow gave people the strength to profess their suppressed belief and religion began to make a comeback in the Turkish society.

The debates over reintroduction of religious customs grew by leaps and bounds, with people began denouncing the Kemal Ataturks secular imagination of Republic of Turkey and started publicly practicing Islam, the religion, majority of the people were following for almost a millennium. Turkey is a hub of Hanafi jurisprudence of Islam, where most of the people follow it along with millions of followers in central and south Asia. Unlike, rest of the West Asia, Turkey did not allow any headway made by the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, which is held responsible for most of the violence emanating from the region.

Enter the Islamists

The 1990s when Prime Minister Necemettin Erbakan, was accused by the Military of mixing religion and state, it was realised that religion is making a strong comeback in the state, this time with the help of the government. Though Erbakan was banned from politics, his desire and efforts to give the state an Islamic identity never died down. He trained several apprentices, arguably the brightest of the lot was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who later went on to become Mayor of Istanbul, two-time Prime Minister and now a mighty President of Turkey.

Newseveryday

The initial years under the influence of the Islamists were regarded as the moderate years, with the politicians putting forward the more inclusive nature of the state and an interpretation of Islam that is in perfect harmony with multiculturalism and democracy, a concept which was alien to the rest of West Asia, barring a few Islamist political groups that were trying to embrace democracy.

Islamists lock horns with Kemalist secularism

The tussle between tradition and modernity had its own tone in case of Turkey. The Islamists, who felt cheated and subdued by the secular keepers of what they called Mustafa Kemals constitution, made a resounding comeback through democracy in Turkey. Under the premiership of Recep Teyyip Erdogan, the ruling Justice and Development Party (also called AKP) made swift moves towards bringing back Islamic practices to public places.

news.nationalgeographic.com

Particularly Hijab, which is considered by some as Islamic, was debated and allowed to women when they are outside home. However, the countrys highest court had ruled allowing hijab is against the constitution. People, who want it are pinning their hope on President Erdogan to make changes in the constitution and accommodate their demands.

Current Unrest

Political violence is not new to Turkey, there have been many judicial and extra-judicial killing during the attempts of coup, a violent separatist movement by the Kurdish people and some other smaller groups. In the current situation, the government fears that a religious cult, led self exiled leader Fetullah Gulen  who is based in Pennsylvania, US  is responsible for the series of violent attacks, including the 2016 coup attempt. However, so far, there has been no direct connection found between Islamic conservationism and violence in Turkey.

Reurters

Gullen, who remained a trusted ally of Erdogan till 2013, has a strong base among Turkish people, with his movement call the Hizmet. Erdogan now blames Gulen for planting his people at every key position including army, police, media as well as intelligence services. The government says that the Gulen movement is fiddling with every internal and external matter of the state resulting in the unrest.

Reuters

Syrian civil war and its impact of Turkey

Turkey has been involved in the Syrian crisis from the very beginning. Turkey had opened its doors in the southern border and taken in million of refugees. It has been vocal against the Assad regime since the beginning of popular protest against him. Turkey was even accused of helping the Free Syrian Army, which was allegedly operating from its southern towns in Hatay and Killis.

english.alarabiya.com

Commentators had predicted that Turkeys (over)involvement in the issue will beget violence against its own people. They may be correct. But its tough to link attack on Turkey to one particular thing. Kurdish violence; Gulenist involvement; response of involvement in Syria; opportunist headways by smaller Islamist groups, or everything together, Turkey is in for a trouble, with no likely solution in the near future.
AFP

Pakistan Navy is a no entity when it comes in comparison with mighty Indian Navy which an undisputed leader in the Indian Ocean, but in a bid to secure the trade route of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Pakistan is building its first missile warship. The warship which was designed by Maritime Technologies Complex is Pakistan's first indigenously designed missile boat and will have the latest weapons and sensors, Defense News reported Tuesday. Read more here.

Here are 5 more stories for you:

1. Girl's Ears Chopped Off For Resisting Gangrape! BJP MP Rubbishes The Claim

ANI

Barely 70 kms from the national capital, a teenaged girl in UP's Baghpat paid a heavy price for resisting gangrape as the attackers allegedly chopped off her ears.

The gory incident reportedly took place on 4th January when four men allegedly kidnapped the girl, and when they failed to rape because of her fierce resistance they allegedly chopped off her ears. The attackers also beat mother of the girl who rushed to rescue her. After the girl raised an alarm, the accused fled the spot.Read more here

2. Ahead Of Assuming Office As US President, Trump Drops Real Estate Plans In Pune

just in just out

US President-elect Donald Trump is reported to have jettisoned his association with realty projects in several countries, including one in India, that attracted intense scrutiny soon after his election.

The Trump organisation will discontinue "exploratory" talks over projects in Pune and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the President-elect's attorney Alan Garten was quoted telling US media outlets on Thursday. Earlier, the Trump Organization had called off licensing deals for hotels in Brazil, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Read more here

3. China Seizes Passports Of Tibetans, Bars Them From Travelling To Bodhgaya For Dalai Lama Event

AP

Beijing has blocked thousands of Tibetans from attending a Buddhist event in Bodh Gaya which is being attended by Dalai Lama, according to reports from Nepal and China.

China's state-run Global Times reported earlier this week that the "renewed" travel restrictions were imposed to battle terrorism and separatism.

However, according to the Tibetan government-in-exile, such travel restrictions have never been imposed by China at least in the recent past.. Read more here

4. Bengalurus Scooter Molesters Were Delivery Boys And They Had Been Stalking The Victim For Days

BCCL

The much sensationalised molestation of a north-eastern woman in Bengaluru, which grabbed the attention of the entire nation on Wednesday, has found a major breakthrough with the Bengaluru city police arresting four perverts while two are still at large.

The four molesters are identified as Aiyappa alias Nitish Kumar, 19, Leno alias Lenin Patrick, 20, Sudhesh alias Sudi, 20, Somashekar alias Chinni, 24, all residents of Kammanahalli area. Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said, "I wholeheartedly appreciate Prashanth Francis, a resident of Kammanahalli who helped us with CCTV camera footage installed at his house which captured the perverted actions of the arrested persons."Read more here

5. Mumbai Woman Slaps Traffic Cop For Stopping Her Husband While For Driving In A No-Entry Lane

BCCL/representational image

A criminal offence has been registered against a couple from Turbhe, a suburb of Navi Mumbai after the woman allegedly slapped a traffic police constable on the Thane-Belapur road on Thursday.

The woman Sapna Patil and her husband Sopan Awhad were in their car when her husband, who was at the wheel, allegedly drove into a no-entry lane around 7.45 pm. Read more here
Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets.

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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The notorious California Apartment Association (CAA) is planning to file a temporary restraining order against the City of Richmond with the Contra Costa County Superior Court regarding Richmonds Measure L, rent control and just cause eviction protections!

Richmond rent control under attack again by the California Apartment AssociationBy Lynda Carson - January 5, 2017Earlier today it was posted on Richmond Mayor Tom Butts website that the California Apartment Association (CAA) is planning to file a temporary restraining order against the City of Richmond with the Contra Costa County Superior Court regarding Richmonds Measure L, rent control and just cause eviction protections. The court appearance is scheduled to take place at 10:00 A.M. on Friday January 6, 2017, in Department 17, Room 301, before the Honorable Barry Goode, at 725 Court Street, Martinez, California.Mayor Tom Butt is in bed with the CAA, and is a landlord who is in opposition to Measure L (renter protections). Mayor Tom Butt condones the mass evictions that have been occurring in Richmond.After a long hard struggle of opposition against the California Apartment Association , landlords, realtors and speculators, the Richmond Fair Rent, Just Cause for Eviction, and Homeowner Protection Ordinance, known as Measure L, was passed by the voters on November 8. Renter protection ballot measures were passed by the voters in three Bay Area cities on November 8, including Richmond.The Richmond City Council certified the results of the November 8 election, that passed Measure L, at its December 20, 2016, meeting, and the ordinance will became effective on December 30. The ordinance is expected to protect tens of thousands of renters against landlords involved in price gouging , and eviction-for-profit schemes In a December 13, email, from Richmond City Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin, she wrote: I very much look forward to getting our rent control/just cause for eviction ordinance fully implemented. Tenants will have more protection than ever before in the City of Richmond. This is an historic milestone. Each and every one of our residents deserves a stable home and while we've always said, this ordinance is but one tool in the toolbox, it is most definitely a positive step in assuring affordable homes for all.The median rental price for an apartment in Richmond during October, 2016, is $2,381 per month, according to Zillow . Out of 39,772 housing units in Richmond, 50.6% of the housing units are renter occupied.Eviction protections in Richmond are long overdue, and reportedly, Richmond has more evictions than any other city in Contra Costa CountyDespite the mass evictions occurring in Richmond , during September 2016, Mayor Tom Butt who condones the mass evictions occurring in Richmond, voted against an emergency moratorium against rent hikes and evictions. It was reported that Mayor Tom Butt is in bed with the notorious California Apartment Association , CAA. The CAA is a wealthy pro-landlord organization that opposes renter protections. The CAA recently spent a fortune in the effort to block renter protections from taking effect in the Bay Area.On December 22, 2016, the CAA bragged on its website that they took the City of Mountain View to court to block renter protections from taking effect in their town, which places thousands of tenants at risk of eviction.With the CAA meddling in the affairs of Richmond again, in an effort to block renter protections and the will of the people, this notorious organization is attempting to place thousands of the poor and working class citizens at risk of eviction, and exorbitant rent increases, by attacking Measure L, and the City of Richmond.Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com >>>>>>>>>>>>
The FBI Never Asked For Access To Hacked Computer Servers



The Democratic National Committee tells BuzzFeed News that the bureau never requested access to the servers the White House and intelligence community say were hacked by Russia.



By Ali Watkins January 05, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Buzzfeed " - WASHINGTON  The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned. Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committees computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News. The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBIs Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justices National Security Division, and U.S. Attorneys Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNCs computer servers, Eric Walker, the DNCs deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email. The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNCs servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News. CrowdStrike is pretty good. Theres no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate, the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks. The FBI declined to comment. Beginning at the time the intrusion was discovered by the DNC, the DNC cooperated fully with the FBI and its investigation, providing access to all of the information uncovered by CrowdStrike  without any limits, said Walker, whose emails were stolen and subsequently distributed throughout the cyberattack. Its unclear why the FBI didnt request access to the DNC servers, and whether its common practice when the bureau investigates the cyberattacks against private entities by state actors, like when the Sony Corporation was hacked by North Korea in 2014. BuzzFeed News spoke to three cybersecurity companies who have worked on major breaches in the last 15 months, who said that it was par for the course for the FBI to do their own forensic research into the hacks. None wanted to comment on the record on another cybersecurity companys work, or the work being done by a national security agency. The hack of the DNC servers and the subsequent release of purloined emails by WikiLeaks has become a Washington scandal of proportions perhaps not seen since the Watergate era. The hacks  part of what intelligence officials, the White House, and private sector analysts say was a broader Moscow-directed effort to influence the US election  were specifically designed to undercut democratic nominee Hillary Clintons path to the presidency and bolster Donald Trump, according to CIA and FBI analysis. Trump has denied that analysis and mocked the US intelligence agencies that produced it. The president-elect is due to receive an in-depth briefing on the subject on Friday. In a 13-page report made public the last week of December, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed in a joint analysis that Russia was behind the widespread hacks, which targeted Democrats with the intention to manipulate the US election. But the analysis was attributed to broad intelligence across both public and private sectors. Nowhere in the report does it say that the government conducted its own computer forensics on the DNC servers. Public attribution of these activities to [Russian Intelligence Services] is supported by technical indicators from the U.S. Intelligence Community, DHS, FBI, the private sector, and other entities, the report says. On the heels of the reports release, the White House expelled 35 Russian diplomats, sanctioned, among other things, two of Russias premier intelligence agencies, and shut down access to two Russian diplomatic facilities in the US. Sheera Frenkel contributed reporting to this story. Trump voices new doubts about Russian efforts to sway U.S. vote ; Trump also quoted Assange as telling Fox News that U.S. media coverage of the matter was "very dishonest." Assange, Wikileaks Have Put Intel Officers in Danger: Clapper; Video -When asked about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says, I dont think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him. Clapper: RT reporting on US problems part of 'multifaceted' Russian campaign to undermine elections : RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc. " The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Hannity Interview WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

By Fox News



FULL INTERVIEW



Assange addresses the FBI, DHS report on Russian hacking



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity that a teenager could have hacked into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's computer.

Posted January 05, 2017

Ted Cruz and Tim Kaine Quiz Director Clapper on Russian Hacking (1-5-17)

DNI Chief Clapper Takes Swipe at Trump, Assange as He Defends Russia Hack Intel : Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia had stepped up its cyber espionage operations, but stopped short of declaring the Russian election hacking an "act of war"

Donald Trump Plans Revamp of Top U.S. Spy Agency : Trump is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nations top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said.

Trump voices new doubts about Russian efforts to sway U.S. vote ; Trump also quoted Assange as telling Fox News that U.S. media coverage of the matter was "very dishonest."

Assange, Wikileaks Have Put Intel Officers in Danger: Clapper; Video -When asked about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says, I dont think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him.

Clapper: RT reporting on US problems part of 'multifaceted' Russian campaign to undermine elections : RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc. "
WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat By Glenn Greenwald January 05, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " The Intercept " - In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of fake news, the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editors note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom. The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no penetration of the U.S. electricity grid as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editors note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that  the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop. But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. Thats because journalists  including those at the Post  aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the papers executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become). After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions. Baron himself, editorial leader of the Post, is a perfect case study in this irresponsible tactic. It was Baron who went to Twitter on the evening of November 24 to announce the Posts expose of the enormous reach of Russias fake news operation, based on what he heralded as the findings of independent researchers. Barons tweet went all over the place; to date, it has been re-tweeted more than 3,000 times, including by many journalists with their own large followings:

Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent researchers https://t.co/3ETVXWw16Q  Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 25, 2016 But after that story faced a barrage of intense criticism  from Adrian Chen in the New Yorker (propaganda about Russia propaganda), Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (shameful, disgusting), my own article, and many others  including legal threats from the sites smeared as Russian propaganda outlets by the Posts independent researchers  the Post finally added its lengthy editors note distancing itself from the anonymous group that provided the key claims of its story (The Post  does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNots findings and since publication of the Posts story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list). What did Baron tell his followers about this editors note that gutted the key claims of the story he hyped? Nothing. Not a word. To date, he has been publicly silent about these revisions. Having spread the original claims to tens of thousands of people, if not more, he took no steps to ensure that any of them heard about the major walk back on the articles most significant, inflammatory claims. He did, however, ironically find the time to promote a different Post story about how terrible and damaging Fake News is:

Pizzagate shows how fake news hurts real people https://t.co/cOh7RZ4RqK  Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 26, 2016 Whether the Posts false stories here can be distinguished from what is commonly called Fake News is, at this point, a semantic dispute, particularly since Fake News has no cogent definition. Defenders of Fake News as a distinct category typically emphasize intent in order to differentiate it from bad journalism. Thats really just a way of defining Fake News so as to make it definitionally impossible for mainstream media outlets like the Post ever to be guilty of it (much the way terrorism is defined to ensure that the U.S. government and its allies cannot, by definition, ever commit it). But what was the Posts motive in publishing two false stories about Russia that, very predictably, generated massive attention, traffic, and political impact? Was it ideological and political  namely, devotion to the D.C. agenda of elevating Russia into a grave threat to U.S. security? Was it to please its audience  knowing that its readers, in the wake of Trumps victory, want to be fed stories about Russian treachery? Was it access and source servitude  proving it will serve as a loyal and uncritical repository for any propaganda intelligence officials want disseminated? Was it profit  to generate revenue through sensationalistic click-bait headlines with a reckless disregard to whether its stories are true? In an institution as large as the Post, with numerous reporters and editors participating in these stories, its impossible to identify any one motive as definitive. Whatever the motives, the effects of these false stories are exactly the same as those of whatever one regards as Fake News. The false claims travel all over the internet, deceiving huge numbers into believing them. The propagators of the falsehoods receive ample profit from their false, viral news. And there is no accountability of the kind that would disincentivize a repeat of the behavior. (That the Post ultimately corrects its false story does not distinguish it from classic Fake News sites, which also sometimes do the same.) And while its true that all media outlets make mistakes, and that even the most careful journalism sometimes errs, those facts do not remotely mitigate the Posts behavior here. In these cases, they did not make good faith mistakes after engaging in careful journalism. With both stories, they were reckless (at best) from the start, and the glaring deficiencies in the reporting were immediately self-evident (which is why both stories were widely attacked upon publication). As this excellent timeline by Kalev Leetaru documents, the Post did not even bother to contact the utility companies in question  the most elementary step of journalistic responsibility  until after the story was published. Intelligence officials insisting on anonymity  so as to ensure no accountability  whispered to them that this happened, and despite how significant the consequences would be, they rushed to print it with no verification at all. This is not a case of good journalism producing inaccurate reporting; it is the case of a media outlet publishing a story that it knew would produce massive benefits and consequences without the slightest due diligence or care. The most ironic aspect of all this is that it is mainstream journalists  the very people who have become obsessed with the crusade against Fake News  who play the key role in enabling and fueling this dissemination of false stories. They do so not only by uncritically spreading them, but also by taking little or no steps to notify the public of their falsity. The Posts epic debacle this weekend regarding its electric grid fiction vividly illustrates this dynamic. As I noted on Saturday, many journalists reacted to this story the same way they do every story about Russia: They instantly click and re-tweet and share the story without the slightest critical scrutiny. That these claims are constantly based on the whispers of anonymous officials and accompanied by no evidence whatsoever gives those journalists no pause at all; any official claim that Russia and Putin are behind some global evil is instantly treated as Truth. Thats a significant reason papers like the Post are incentivized to recklessly publish stories of this kind. They know they will be praised and rewarded no matter the accuracy or reliability because their Cause  the agenda  is the right one. On Friday night, immediately after the Posts story was published, one of the most dramatic pronouncements came from the New York Timess editorial writer Brent Staples, who said this: Now that this story has collapsed and been fully retracted, what has Staples done to note that this tweet was false? Just like Baron, absolutely nothing. Actually, thats not quite accurate, as he did do something: At some point after Friday night, he quietly deleted his tweet without comment. He has not uttered a word about the fact that the story he promoted has collapsed, and that what he told his 16,000-plus followers  along with the countless number of people who re-tweeted the dramatic claim of this prominent journalist  turned out to be totally false in every respect. Even more instructive is the case of MSNBCs Kyle Griffin, a prolific and skilled social media user who has seen his following explode this year with a constant stream of anti-Trump content. On Friday night, when the Post story was published, Griffin hyped it with a series of tweets designed to make the story seem as menacing and consequential as possible. That included hysterical statements from Vermont officials  who believed the Posts false claim  that in retrospect are unbelievably embarrassing.
The Coup Against Truth By Paul Craig Roberts January 05, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Jon Rappoports mocking of the US presstitutes is superb:Vladimir Putin is the secret president of the United States. Yep. Thats it. The US is now the USSR. Its all over. Trump is a Communist who took orders from Putin. Trump is a Red. That was his game all along. Hes a billionaire Commie. Ridicule is effective, and nothing deserves ridicule more than the Washington Post, New York, Times, CNN, and the rest of the presstitutes who pretend to be real journalists. But as I have emphasized, and other real journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald (see, for example ) imply, the fake news recklessly promoted by the presstitutes brings with it the threat of thermo-nuclear war. For several years Russia and her president have experienced endless demonization. The Russians know that Georgias invasion of South Ossetia (done while Putin was at the Beijing Olympics) was a Washington provocation. The Russians know that Washingtons coup in Ukraine (done while Putin was at the Sochi Olympics) was a provocation aimed at seizing Russias Black Sea naval base in Crimea and cutting Russia off from the Mediterranean. The Russians know that Washington knows that the charges that Russia hacked Hillarys emails and the US presidential election are lies. The Russians know that the Russian threat created by Washington is a lie along with all of its permutations, such as an impending Russian invasion of Poland and the Baltics. The Russians understand that US ABM bases on Russias borders are provocations, as are NATO military exercises on Russias borders and in the Black Sea. You can add to this list on your own. The lies are ubiquitous, have grown more absurd, and are now institutionalized in the US government in the CIA, executive branch agencies, and among many US senators and representatives. That these lies are validated by endless media repetitions throughout the Western world are viewed by Russia as indications that Western populations are being prepared for a military attack on Russia. Putin has warned publicly on many occasions that the Western propaganda is dangerously destabilizing. Yet, as he also notes, no one hears his warnings. Washington is so intent on its anti-Russian propaganda that Congress has passed, and Obama has signed, an intelligence bill that contains a section, Title V, that authorizes active measures to counter purveyors of false news. These purveyors are alternative media websites, such as this one, that challenge the official lies. The truthful alternative media is accused of being under Russian influence. Last summer a website shrouded in secrecy was created that recently posted a list of 200 websites alleged to be under Russian influence, either directly or indirectly. The Washington Post irresponsibly published a long article endorsing the fake news of 200 websites working for the Russian government. In other words, the suppression of the truth is the last defense of the corrupt American ruling establishment. During the last 24 years three Washington regimes have murdered millions of peoples in nine or more countries along with US civil liberty. To cover up these vast crimes, unparalleled in history, the presstitutes have lied, slandered, and libeled. And the Washington criminal regime holds itself up to the world as the indispensable protector of democracy, human rights, truth, and justice. As the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said recently, what makes America exceptional is the use of might in the service of evil. Washington brands not only its opponents but all who speak the truth Russian agents, hoping that the demonization of Russia has sufficiently frightened the population that Americans will turn their backs to those who speak the truth. It would seem obvious even to the insouciant that an establishment that has gone so far out on a limb that the CIA director publicly attributes the election of Donald Trump to Russian interference but is unable to produce a shred of evidenceindeed in the face of totally conclusive evidence to the contraryis determined to hold on to power at all costs. The CIAs open, blatant, and unprecedented propaganda attack against a president-elect has caused Trump to throw down the gauntlet to CIA director John Brennan. There are reports that Trump intends to revamp and reorganize the intelligence agency. The last president who said this, John F. Kennedy, was murdered by the CIA before he could strike against them. Kennedy believed that he could not take on the CIA until he was re-elected. The delay gave the CIA time to arrange his assassination. Trump appears to understand his danger. He has announced that he intends to supplement his Secret Service protection (which was turned against JFK) with private security. Isnt it striking? The president of Russia states publicly that Washington is driving the world to thermo-nuclear war and that his warnings are ignored. The president-elect of the United States is under full-scale attack from the CIA and knows that he cannot trust his official security force. One might think that these extraordinary topics would be the only ones under discussion. But you can find such discussion only on a few alternative media websites, such as this one, branded by PropOrNot and the Washington Post as under Russian influence. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
McCain and Graham Pushing Propaganda US Senators Vow To CRUSH Russia VLADIMIR Putin has been warned he is doomed to failure in Ukraine and that 2017 will be a year of anti-Russian aggression. By Patrick Christys January 05, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " The Express " - US senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham travelled to Ukraines frontline in Shyrokyne to proclaim to a crack team of marines 2017 will be the year of offense and vowed to defeat Putin on battlefields of Eastern Europe. If Putin claims victory in Ukraine then he may go on to invade, annexe and conquer other parts of the world, warned former Republican presidential candidate and prisoner of war in Vietnam John McCain. Fellow Republican Mr Graham also issued a damning statement to Mr Putin, saying: I admire the fact that you will fight for your homeland. Your fight is our fight  2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of a Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price. Our fight is not with the Russian people but with Putin. Our promise to you is to take your cause to Washington, inform the American people of your bravery and make the case against Putin to the world. McCain added: I believe you will win. I am convinced you will win and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win. We have succeeded not because of equipment but because of your courage. So I thank you and the world is watching and the world is watching because we cannot allow Vladimir Putin to succeed here because if he succeeds here, he will succeed in other countries. Their comments completely differ to those of President-elect Donald Trump, who has been an outspoken supporter of Mr Putin and vowed to work with him. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Danger in Democrats Demonizing Putin



With the Clintons corporate money machine floundering after a devastating election defeat, Democrats are desperate to find someone to blame and have dangerously settled on Vladimir Putin.



By Norman Solomon



January 05, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortium News " - Many top Democrats are stoking a political firestorm. We keep hearing that Russia attacked democracy by hacking into Democratic officials emails and undermining Hillary Clintons campaign. Instead of candidly assessing key factors such as longtime fealty to Wall Street that made it impossible for her to ride a populist wave, the party line has increasingly circled around blaming Vladimir Putin for her defeat.

Of course partisan spinners arent big on self-examination, especially if theyre aligned with the Democratic Partys dominant corporate wing. And the option of continually fingering the Kremlin as the main villain of a 2016 morality play is clearly too juicy for functionary Democrats to pass up  even if that means scorching civil liberties and escalating a new cold war that could turn radioactively hot. Much of the current fuel for the blame-Russia blaze has to do with the horrifying reality that Donald Trump will soon become president. Big media outlets are blowing oxygen into the inferno. But the flames are also being fanned by people who should know better. Consider the Boston Globe article that John Shattuck  a former Washington legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union  wrote in mid-December. A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump, the civil libertarian wrote. He has brought it on himself by dismissing a bipartisan call for an investigation of Russias hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a ridiculous political attack on the legitimacy of his election as president. As quickly pointed out by Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University, raising the specter of treason is simply wrong  and its wrongness matters, not just because hyperbole always weakens argument, but because the carefully restricted definition of the crime of treason is essential to protecting free speech and the freedom of association. A Liberal Zeitgeist Is Shattucks piece a mere outlier? Sadly, no. Although full of gaping holes, it reflects a substantial portion of the current liberal zeitgeist. And so the argument that Shattuck made was carried forward into the new year by Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, who approvingly quoted Shattucks article in a Jan. 1 piece that flatly declared: In his dalliance with Vladimir Putin, Trumps actions are skirting treason. The momentum of fully justified loathing for Trump has drawn some normally level-headed people into untenable  and dangerous  positions. (The treason approach that Shattuck and Kuttner have embraced is particularly ironic and misplaced, given that Trumps current course will soon make him legally deserving of impeachment due to extreme conflicts of interest that are set to violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.) Among the admirable progressives who supported Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign but have succumbed to Russia-baiting of Trump are former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Congressman Keith Ellison, who is a candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee. Last week, in a widely circulated post on his Facebook page, Reich wrote: Evidence continues to mount that Trump is on Putins side. But Reichs list of evidence hardly made the case that Trump is on Putins side, whatever that means. A day later, when Trump tweeted a favorable comment about Putin, Rep. Ellison quickly echoed Democratic Party orthodoxy with a tweet: Praising a foreign leader for undermining our democracy is a slap in the face to all who have served our country. Some of Putins policies are abhorrent, and criticizing his regime should be fair game as much as criticizing any other. At the same time, do as we say, not as we do isnt apt to put the United States on high moral ground. The U.S. government has used a wide repertoire of regime change tactics including direct meddling in elections, and Uncle Sam has led the world in cyberattacks. Intervention in the election of another country is categorically wrong. Its also true that  contrary to conventional U.S. wisdom at this point  we dont know much about a Russian role in last years election. We should not forget the long history of claims from agencies such as the CIA that turned out to be misleading or downright false. Late last week, when the Obama administration released a drum-rolled report on the alleged Russian hacking, Democratic partisans and mainline journalists took it as something akin to gospel. But the editor of ConsortiumNews.com, former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry, wrote an assessment concluding that the latest report again failed to demonstrate that there is any proof behind U.S. allegations that Russia both hacked into Democratic emails and distributed them via WikiLeaks to the American people. Key Questions Even if the Russian government did intervene in the U.S. election by hacking emails and publicizing them, key questions remain. Such as: Do we really want to escalate a new cold war with a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons? Do we really want a witch-hunting environment here at home, targeting people with views that have some overlap with Kremlin positions? Can the president of Russia truly undermine our democracy  or arent the deficits of democracy in the United States overwhelmingly self-inflicted from within the U.S. borders? Its so much easier to fixate on Putin as a villainous plotter against our democracy instead of directly taking on our countrys racist and class biases, its structural mechanisms that relentlessly favor white and affluent voters, its subservience to obscene wealth and corporate power. Theres been a lot of talk lately about refusing to normalize the Trump presidency. And thats crucial. Yet we should also push back against normalizing the deflection of outrage at the U.S. political systems chronic injustices and horrendous results  deflection that situates the crux of the problem in a foreign capital instead of our own. We should reject the guidance of politicians and commentators who are all too willing to throw basic tenets of civil liberties overboard, while heightening the risks of brinkmanship that could end with the two biggest nuclear powers blowing up the world. Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death . He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Trumps Neo-Fascism will be Built on Neo-Fascism of Obama and Democrat Party By Ajamu Baraka We are not expecting much support from liberals or even left forces when the repressive knives are sharpened. Late on the evening of December 23, when the attention of the public was fixed on the consumerist excesses of the holiday season, President Obama signed into law the Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Like the other NDAAs that President Obama signed into law during his administration, this one further strengthened the repressive capacities of the state. Buried deep in the provisions of the NDAA was language from a bill introduced by Sen. Rob Portman ostensibly to protect the public from the effects of foreign propaganda. As previously reported by Black Agenda Report, the bill, originally introduced last March, was passed by the Senate on December 8 as the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act and then inserted into the NDAA. According to Senator Portman, the intent of the law is to improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government. For Senator Portman, the U.S. is the innocent victim of ruthless propaganda efforts on the part of foreign governments to slander and discredit the altruistic objectives of U.S. global activities. In the face of the Neo-McCarthyism represented by this legislation and the many other repressive moves of the Obama administration to curtail speech and control information -- from the increased surveillance of the public to the use of the espionage act to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers -- one would reasonably assume that forces on the left would vigorously oppose the normalization of authoritarianism, especially in this period of heightened concerns about neo-fascism. Unfortunately, the petit-bourgeois latte left along with their liberal allies have been in full collaboration with the state for the past eight years, with the predictable result that no such alarm was issued, nor has any critique or even debate been forthcoming. The petit-bourgeois latte left along with their liberal allies have been in full collaboration with the state for the past eight years. So there has been very little mainstream liberal/left discussion around the fact that, as the political blog Zero Hedge noted, long before fake news became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label fake news.  As Black Agenda Report publisher Glen Ford framed it, When the narrative at the heart of a system of rule falls apart, when the flow of history runs counter to the story told by those in power, then we know the entire edifice is crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions. The political crisis arrives when the people sense that the prevailing order is built on a foundation of oppressions and lies. The rulers panic, scrambling to reweave the matrix of fables and myths that justify their waning supremacy. At such points in history, the truth is up for grabs  and a change of regime is in the offing. The dangerous and cynical moves by the Clinton campaign during the presidential campaign to paint Trump as an agent of a foreign government in order to project Hillary as the real, tough alternative, has morphed into a commonsense narrative that has a dual purpose. First, it is meant to weaken the incoming administration by attempting to split it from its Republican legislative arm. The liberal, transnational financial and corporate rulers are especially concerned by Trumps economic and social base that is demanding an alteration of the neoliberal order in favor of small, mid-size and large business interests still dependent on the U.S. domestic market. They see this demand as a threat to the neoliberal logic that has been largely unquestioned in the West over the last three decades. Long before fake news became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label fake news. Secondly, by narrowing the scope of acceptable political discourse in relation to U.S. global strategies that are heavily dependent on militarism and the strategic commitment to suppress regional capitalist rivals, the neocons and liberal interventionists can expect to avoid mass opposition to continued imperialist adventures. Similar to the McCarthyite period when the ideological commitment to containment abroad required the destruction of any domestic opposition, the neo-McCarthyism of today is geared toward ideological conformity. In this sense, Trumpism is becoming a useful tool for enforcing neoliberal ideological consensus. The potential danger of the unfolding order is not lost on those of us who take a consistent oppositional stance to the bi-partisan games being played on the people. The set-up piece that ran in the Washington Post that supposedly identified news outlets that were supposed to be involved in questionable or outright fake news included a number of outlets to which I contribute, including Counterpunch and the only all-black outlet on the list, Black Agenda Report. When you have supposedly respectable liberal outlets pushing this kind of madness, we are not expecting much support from liberals or even left forces when the repressive knives are sharpened. The American Prospects Robert Kuttner has even suggested that Trump is guilty of treason because of what he calls the President-elects dalliance with Vladimir Putin. With the lefts attention fixed on Trump and its fear of the new authoritarianism that he is supposed to introduce, it has failed to confront or even be aware of the fact that the foundation for any kind of neo-fascism that might emerge in the U.S. was constructed over the last 15 years of the combined Bush and Obama administrations. The neo-McCarthyism of today is geared toward ideological conformity. But even more dangerous for authentic oppositional forces in the U.S., collaboration from the left with the new McCarthyism is providing an opening for the isolation and repression of those of us who represent and are part of oppressed communities/peoples who were going to have to fight no matter who would have been elected. This is not a new situation for us. When the repressive apparatus of the state focused on radical black organizations like the National Negro Congress and Civil Rights Congress, and on such individuals as Paul Robeson, W.E. B. Dubois, William Patterson and Claudia Jones, to the systematic assault on the radical Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 70s, we were largely required to fend for ourselves against the state after being abandoned by white liberals and significant numbers of white leftists. I fully expect that to happen again. Neo-fascism is not a new existential phenomenon for us or for people around the world who have suffered from the racist, arrogant assaults of this criminal state to maintain the Pan-European colonial/capitalist project. So save your hysterical concerns about Trump for others and either commit yourself to building a revolutionary movement or get out of the way. Ajamu Baraka was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. His latest publications include contributions to Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (Counterpunch Books, 2014), Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (HarperCollins, 2014) and Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral ( CODESRIA, 2013). He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Just a week after 56 prisoners were killed during a riot in a prison in Brazil, 33 prisoners have been killed today in yet another riot in Northern Brazil.

Prison Officials told local media that a group of prisoners managed to break the locks on their cells in the early hours of the morning and invade a separate wing of the building, which is in the city of Boa Vista. The killings have been attributed to the drug gang known as the PCC.

The PCC is reputed to be one of the largest in Brazil, earning $32m a year in drug sales, with almost half its 13,000 members in jail in Sao Paulo State.
The Akwa State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) have rejected a cow gift for Christmas and New Year given to them by Gov. Udom Emmanuel.

The state Chairman of NLC, Etim Ukpong, explained on Friday in Uyo that the rejection was the unanimous decision of the congress at their state executive meeting.

Mr. Ukpong said it was not proper for the state government to give them cow gift after much persuasion on the government.

He said the state congress decision was also to preserve the sanctity of the union and its constitution.

Comrade, we must stand firm on the decision we collectively took yesterday and be bold to ask why NLC have to beg virtually for everything in the state.

Workers condemn in strong term the lack of concern by the state government toward the issues concerning Nigeria Labour Congress, Mr. Ukpong said.

The labour leader urged the state government to be more responsible towards the labour union.

He said the labour union would continue to maintain its integrity and focus on the welfare of its members in the state.

Mr. Ukpong accused the governor of creating division in the NLC by using certain greedy members of the union to achieve his aim and boycott workers rights and agitation.

The state government was yet to react to the development.
Amnesty International, a non-governmental organisation which focuses on human rights has claimed that militias fighting alongside Iraqi troops against the militant Islamic State group (IS or ISIS) are committing war crimes using weapons provided to the Iraqi military by the United States, Europe, Russia and Iran.

The rights group said on Thursday that the predominantly Shia Muslim militias, known collective as the Hashid Shaabi, were using weapons from Iraqi military stockpiles to commit war crimes including enforced disappearances, torture and summary killings. Hashid Shaabi has however rejected Amnestys accusation as lies.

Parliament voted for the Hashid to formally become part of Iraqs armed forces in November but the session was boycotted by Sunni Muslim representatives, who worry the move will entrench Shia majority rule as well as Irans regional influence.

Iraqi and Western officials have expressed serious concern about the governments ability to bring the Shia militias under greater control.

International arms suppliers, including the USA, European countries, Russia and Iran, must wake up to the fact that all arms transfers to Iraq carry a real risk of ending up in the hands of militia groups with long histories of human rights violations, Amnesty researcher Patrick Wilcken said.

States wishing to sell arms to Iraq should ensure strict measures to ensure weapons will not be used by militias to violate human rights, he added in a statement.

Hashid spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi denied Amnestys report.

These lies falsify truths and contribute directly or indirectly to the continuation of struggles that the Iraqi people and the people of neighbouring countries suffer from, he told a news conference aired by state television.

This is very clear in this report when it is purposefully slandering an official government institution, he added, calling for an inquiry into Amnestys sources.
The Nigeria Police Force on Friday dismissed six officers attached to the Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State over alleged professional misconducts during legislative rerun elections that held in the oil-rich state last year, the spokesperson for the force said.

The six dismissed cops are an inspector, Eyong Victor; and five sergeants, Peter Ekpo, Oguni Goodluck, Orji Nwoke, Tanko Akor and Okpe Ezekiel.

The spokesperson for the police, Don Awunah, who paraded them in Abuja on Friday disclosed that they misused firearms and sabotaged the Independent National Electoral Commission while on the side of Mr. Wike during a collation exercise in Port Harcourt.

Mr. Awunah said they acted contrary to the stipulation of Force Order 237 and strict warning issued by the Inspector General of Police, Idris Ibrahim.

He said: These aforementioned police personnel while in the convoy of the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, on the date of election on December 10, 2016 misused the firearms in their possession contrary to the provisions of Force Order 237.

The personnel became overzealous, took laws into their hands and opened fire, causing panic in the crowd.

They joined in storming the Port Harcourt City Council Secretariat and prevented the movement of election results of Emouha polling unit to the appropriate collation centre designated by INEC, in flagrant disregard and disobedience to senior police officers present at the venue.

He added that the officials, who were handcuffed as they were paraded, were eventually dismissed from the police force after subjecting them to internal disciplinary measures wherein they were found culpable.

They will be prosecuted under the Electoral Act to serve as deterrent to others.

Their actions are capable of bringing the entire Nigeria Police Force to disrepute and portray the Force in a very bad light as a lawless organisation not guided by the rule of law, Mr. Awunah said.

The December 10 electoral exercise was marred by widespread violence and irregularities. At least two police officers were killed during the election.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, INEC said a total 61 electoral offenders have been successfully prosecuted since 2015 with the cooperation of the police.

Source: PremiumTimes
President Muhammadu Buhari will on Saturday, January, 7 join other African leaders to attend the inauguration of Ghanas new president Chief Nana Akufo-Addo, who was elected last December.

In a statement released on Friday by the Media Aide to the president, Femi Adesina, Buhari is expected to leave the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on S aturday morning.

The Nigerian leader will join other Heads of State and Government to witness the swearing-in Akufo-Addo and his Vice Presidentelect, Mahamudu Bawumia.
President Muhammadu Buhari has welcomed the recovery of another Chibok school girl, Rakiya Abubakar, in the Alagarno area of Damboa Local Government Area of Borno State.

The president made his feelings known in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, in Abuja on Thursday.

He noted that the recovery had raised renewed hope that the other captured girls would one day be reunited with their families, friends and community.

Buhari also commended the military for the diligent investigation which led to the recovery of Rakiya and urged them to continue in the spirit with which they cleared the Sambisa Forest of terrorists.

He assured that the Nigerian Government would continue to do all within its powers to assist the military in locating the rest of the girls and eradicating the menace of terrorism in Nigeria.

With the recovery of Rakiya Abubakar, the rescued Chibok girls, in the last four months, are now 23.
The North West National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Inuwa Abdulkadir has accused the governor of Kaduna state, Nasir el-Rufai and a former governor of Kano state, Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso of being the brains behind the crisis plaguing the zonal chapter of the APC.

This is as he also accused the duo of sponsoring allegations of fraud against him due to their unhappiness in the way and manner in which the national leadership of the party handled the crisis in both state chapters.

At a news conference Friday in Abuja, Alh Abdulkadir who was flanked by the partys zonal secretary, Tukur Abdulkadir Gusau said Governor El-RufaI, at one point, threatened to beat him (Abdulkadir) up in the presence of governors of the North West geo-political zone.

Recall that the APC Zonal Women Leader (North West), Hajia Aisha Kaita, had last week alleged that Mr Abdulkadir could not account for millions of naira of party funds.

However, addressing journalists at the national secretariat of the party, Abdulkadir said; I have a full knowledge that she was commissioned to take me on.

According to him, a week before she (Kaita) issued the Press Statement, the Media Assistants to Malam Nasir El-Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, that is the duo of Samuel Aruwan and Muyiwa Adekeye, disclosed to one of their colleagues in the media who reliably informed me that Mal Nasir El-Rufai intended to take on me over the APC crisis in Kaduna State. The Media Assistants further disclosed that everything will be done to ensure that I am pulled down; and this they intended to achieve by teaming up with Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the former Governor of Kano State as according to them, Senator Kwankwanso too is aggrieved by the partys decision in respect of the chairmanship position in Kano State.

However, this did not surprise me because of the previous encounters I had with their principal (Malam Nasir El-Rufai) and his threats and outbursts. Few days later, the Zonal Secretary, Alhaji Tukur Abdulkadir Gusau, was called by Hajiya Aisha Kaita who along with Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso spoke with the Zonal Secretary and requested to have a meeting with him in Kaduna on 30th December 2016. Later, Hajiya Aisha Kaita informed the Zonal Secretary that accommodation and other logistic arrangements will be provided by the Kaduna State Government. The Zonal Secretary declined, the zonal party boss stated.

He said Hajia Kaitas allegations are mere fabrications designed to ridicule his person and bring him to disrepute.

I wish to state here that the only funds that were disbursed to the Zone were done through the party account which was opened and operated at the instance of Partys National Secretariat. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever made any remittance from March 2015 to date into the account of the party. Since then to date, the Zonal Secretariat and the party vehicle are being maintained at my personal expense. In addition to these, my movements to attend party meetings in Abuja and within the Zone are all being undertaken at my personal expense. These finances were duly presented, discussed and approved at the last NEC meeting of the party where Hajiya Aisha Kaita attended and made contributions, he explained.

Speaking on the crisis rocking the party in Kaduna state, the zonal chairman revealed that on several occasions, I had meetings with him (El-Rufai) where as the leader of the party in the zone made passionate appeal for him to take leadership and drive a process that harmonise, reconcile and solidify the party in the state.

One of such occasions appeal I made was in the presence of other governors from the zone in his office but his reaction was volatile and he threatened to beat me up and prevent me from coming into Kaduna.

I kept my calm as a leader considering the volatility of Kaduna and the attendant threat it poses viz-a-vize the tremendous goodwill and support the part is enjoying in Kaduna state.

On the allegation of embarrassment, Abdul-Kadir said: I wish to state here that the only funds that were disbursed to the zone were done through the party account which was opened and operated at the instance of the partys National Secretariat.

He added that since 2015 up till date he has been spending his personal money to maintain the zonal office and the party vehicle.

He further declared that he was not against the political ambition of both Senator Kwankwaso and El-Rufai but the duo should allow peace to reign in the party and pursue their personal ambition within the ambits of the party constitution.

Source: Leadership
A group under the aegis of Niger Delta Ex-militants for Positive Change on Thursday protested against the refusal of the Senate to confirm Mr Ibrahim Magu as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

After a protest march in Abuja, leader of the group in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mr Emma Agi, said the Senates refusal to confirm Mr Magu is a direct affront on President Mohammadu Buharis fight against corruption.

He therefore called on the Senate, confirm Magu now and give a free hand to President Buhari to fix the problems of Nigeria.

Agi said As president Buharis nominee, these senators should be aware that never anywhere can the tail wag the dog.

Agreed the senate is one of the tiers of government it has no right to become a clog in the wheel of progress.

As a body we were about the first set of Nigeria to express scepticism on the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as the president of Nigeria. Our fear arose from the possibility of the president cancelling the Amnesty programme in which we are prime beneficiaries.

Today, we know better. President Buhari, against all predictions, odd, criticisms and intemperate campaigns, did not throw away the baby and the bathwater.

We have always the interests of Nigeria at heart. The unemployment graduate in South-south is not in a different category as the malcontent street beggar, Almajari in the North. Empty and growling stomach knows no geographical boundaries. Equity and fair -play must apply to every nook and cranny of Nigeria.

Collectively, all Nigerians should insist on the confirmation of lbrahim Magu. Too much murky waters have passed under the bridge of the senate as far as Magu is concerned. Why do they have two security reports in their hands. The moment president buhari appointed Magu as the Acting chairman of the EFCC, the enemies of progress never hid their fears for the possibility of cleansing the Augean stable.

Nigerians should not be hookwinked by the senators who have various charges of corruption that are being investigated by the EFCC.

These senators cannot be judges in their own cases if they are allowed to pick chairman who Will do their bidding. It is the duty and responsibility of mr. President to nominate who heads the commission.

A word is enough for the wise he concluded.

Source: Leadership
The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, yesterday disclosed that the electoral umpire has secured 61 successful prosecutions since 2015.

He further disclosed that the commission had received 120 case files on different electoral offences from the police.

Yakubu stated this when he received members of the Inspector-general of Polices Investigative Team on Rivers Re-run Election in Abuja.

The INEC chairman, who promised to give full support to the police investigative team, appreciated the assistance of the police and other security agencies in the prosecution of electoral offenders.

He stated that the commission had conducted 163 elections under his leadership and had six more to conduct in the next 60 days.

He also revealed that the commission had set up an internal administrative panel to investigate and deal with any staff found wanting, in accordance with the law.

The most important thing in this situation is to learn lessons. So far, since the last general elections, INEC has conducted 163 elections. We still have six more elections between this month January and next month, including the unfortunate death of a member of Delta State House of Assembly which occurred a week or so before Christmas.

I want to assure the commission that we will give full cooperation to the security agencies in your investigations. Whatever may be required to facilitate the investigations from the commission, rest assured that the commission will be forthcoming.

We have cooperated with security agencies especially the police in the course of prosecuting electoral offenders.

Since 2015 general elections and the rerun elections in 2016, we have received 120 case files from the police for prosecution. And I am glad to say that we have recorded 61 successful prosecutions as a result of cooperation with the security agencies.

The biggest one came from the disruption of April 2016 rerun elections in Kano State in a state constituency in Beji local government where over 20 offenders were successfully prosecuted in a joint effort between the commission and security agencies  the highest number of prosecutions that the commission has ever achieved.

Speaking earlier, leader of the delegation, deputy commissioner of police, Dan Okoro, said he was at the commission to interact and introduce members of the team to INEC officials and sought their maximum cooperation in the assignment.

Source: Leadership
The North  East Consolidated Farmers Forum has condemned in strong terms the recent calls made by some group of individuals for the sacking of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Engineer Babachir David Lawal.

LEADERSHIP recalls that the Senate has called for the scan of the SGF over mismanagement of funds for the Internally Displaced Persons ( IDPs) in the north

In a strongly worded statement issued in Abuja yesterday, the President of the NGO,prominent political activist and a deputy gubernatorial aspirant in Borno State, Mohammed Abba Liman, said, the calls were unsincere and made by disgruntling elements who do not want the progress of this country.

According to him, the SGF has not committed any offence which warranted his being sacked.

Rather, he has worked diligently and should be allowed to continue doing such work in line with General Buharis agenda to move the country forward.

Liman warned such people to desist from making such unsubstantiated claims which are anti-progress and to allow the Buhari administration to deliver dividends of democracy including fight against corruption and insurgency.

Source: Leadership
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday enjoined faith-based organisations in the country to shun rumours that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was moving to Islamise Nigeria.

He told religious leaders after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Student Christian Movement of Nigeria (SCM) in his office, that they should dwell on facts.

Before the election in 2015, Prof. Osinbajo spoke out that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was not secretly plotting to Islamise Nigeria if it won the election.

He again reaffirmed that stand stressing that the rumour making the rounds about plans to make Islam the official religion of Nigeria were unfounded as the country cans be Islamised.

Osinbajo emphasised that it was impossible to Islamise the country given the 1999 Constitution that forbids state religion.

He urged religious bodies to channel their energies towards proffering solutions to the numerous challenges facing the country.

The vice president also challenged Nigerian youths to wake up from slumber and take advantage of abundant opportunities in ICT, agriculture and other sectors.

While noting that the opportunities were far much more now than they were in the past, Osinbajo harped on the need for young people to take responsibility for their future and be creative.

He also emphasised the importance of using the internet to acquire knowledge as well as learning a second language to boost their global competitiveness.

Expressing appreciation to SCM for the honour, the vice president solicited the organisations assistance in disseminating factual information about the Federal Governments policies and programmes.

Earlier, the National President of SCM, Rev, Eric Ighalo, commended the government for its social interventions such as the N-Power initiative and the conditional transfer scheme.

Ighalo expressed the willingness of the body to partner with government in several areas including serving as government ambassadors in their constituencies.

The SCM national president said that the award was conferred on the vice president in recognition of his integrity and outstanding leadership he had demonstrated over the years.

The award presentation, according to him, climaxed the 75th anniversary of the organisation.

Source: NAN
Operatives of the Nigeria Police Force were said to have raided the house of Dame Patience Jonathan, the wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, in Abuja on Wednesday, with the aim of uncovering huge foreign currencies allegedly kept in the building, The PUNCH learnt on Thursday.

Multiple sources familiar with the investigation confided in one of our correspondents on Thursday that the security personnel raided the house on a tip-off that huge amount, allegedly believed to be stolen government money, was kept in the building located at Igbeti Rock, Maitama, Abuja.

The operation, which was carried out by operatives of the Special Investigation Panel, headed by a retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Ali Amodu, acted at the behest of the Federal Government Asset Recovery and Forfeiture Committee.

Sources explained that an informant had tipped the Federal Government about alleged huge stolen cash hidden in the building and in three other different locations in the Federal Capital Territory.

It was learnt that the informant, who told the government about the cash in the Maitama property, had hinted that the suspect planned to move the money anytime.

Following the intelligence report, the SIP operatives stormed the duplex on Wednesday, but did not find any cash.

A source explained that the police did not know that the building belonged to Jonathan until she identified herself as a former First Lady to the team leader, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Adebo Williams, on the telephone.

The source stated, At the house, the security men said the house belonged to one Jaga, a Rivers State indigene, and the team leader was directed to call the owner.

The security man gave the phone to the team leader and she identified herself as former First Lady.

She spoke in pidgin English and told the operatives to go and take whatever they kept in the house. The team leader advised her to send her lawyer and she did. The house was searched in the lawyers presence.

It was gathered that the team discovered that the first of the twin duplex had not been inhabited for a long time.

The men, it was learnt, found some company documents, three Diamond bank accounts cheque leaves, which were taken away for further investigations.

A source said, The second duplex was also filled with cobwebs and contained four big security safes. All the four security safes were met opened and in clean condition, indicating that they have been in use.

A senior officer stated that a bulletproof Porsche jeep and a BMW car were found locked up in the garage.

Police allegations malicious persecution of ex-Presidents wife counsel

In his reaction, Patience Jonathans lawyer, Mr. Charles Ogboli, described the allegations by the police that they had information of huge foreign currencies deposited in the house as unfounded.

He argued that the raid was a malicious persecution of the former first lady, adding that there was no huge safe in the family house.

He explained that the search conducted on Mrs. Jonathans house without her presence meant that the police intended to do something else other than searching the building.

Ogboli, who spoke with one of our correspondents on the telephone, also dismissed the claim that a huge amount of cash was moved out of the house before the police arrived at the building to conduct the search.

He said, I wonder what they (police) want to gain from all these. In their report, they said no incriminating document or whatever was found there. You should understand that this is not the first time that premises were raided. Both EFCC and NDLEA found nothing.

What is even the interest of the NDLEA in a matter that concerns money? They said they got information that there was a huge amount of money in the house. Are they saying that within the period of time they came, the money disappeared within an interval of 30 minutes?

As a matter of fact, the siblings of the former first lady are no longer staying there. They have moved to Port Harcourt for more than a year now. So, there is nothing they (police) can allege that is found and that means they intended to do something else.

There is no such information that there is a huge safe and that they saw bulletproof cars. That you find a car in a place and saw a huge safe are trivial issues because these are human beings that were living good ever before the husband became a public officer.

Madam (Patience) did not give them the authority to go ahead with that search.

Source: Punch
The Sokoto Hisbah Commission said on Thursday that it recorded 157 cases of illegal pregnancies involving under age and those who were 18 years old and above in 2016.

Commandant of the Commission, Adamu Kasarawa, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sokoto.

Mr. Kasarawa said the underage victims were handed over to the National Agency For the Prohibition of Trafficking in Human and other Related Offences (NAPTIP) and the rest to the police.

He said the Commission also received 18 cases of rape and child abuse in the period under review.

Mr. Kasarawa mentioned that the commission seized alcohol worth N4.2 million and arrested six suspects in the same year.

He revealed that the commission intercepted 381 victims of human trafficking, some of whom were into prostitution, and had handed them over to relevant agencies.

According to him, 23 cases of sexual harassment, illegal camping, brutal attack and consumption of illicit drugs involving security agents were also recorded in 2016.

He said his men had raided and destroyed places used for prostitution across the state.

Mr. Kasarawa said the Commission had also resolved 2,760 marital conflict and took 11 unresolved ones to court.

He said it also treated 87 cases of witchcraft and soothsayers.

The commandant, however, lamented that despite their contribution in keeping the state safe, they were deprived of fund by the state government as a result of economic recession.

He said the last time they received imprest from the government was in 2015, adding that they contributed money to finance their operations now.

Source: NAN
A town in the Asian country of Taiwan hosted a funeral for their popular local councillor which involved a street parade featuring a marching band and 50 pole dancers gyrating on the top of Jeeps.

Each of the Jeeps in Tung Hsiangs funeral procession on Tuesday was equipped with a vertical pole, and a woman to dance around it.

According to the BBC while quoting local media, Hsiangs family said they wanted to honour the politician who had always enjoyed having a lively fun time.

The parade drew not only crowds into the streets, but huge attention on Chinese social media, where videos of the procession have been widely circulated.

The Chinese government has tried to discourage the practice, given the widespread publicity such stunts can attract  particularly when the deceased was a public figure.

But from the social media reaction reported by the BBC, it seems most Chinese were simply impressed with the display in the tiny neighboring nation.

Now this is what I call a funeral! wrote one user of Chinas version of Twitter, known as Weibo.

The BBC notes that, according to experts, the tradition of funeral pole dancers likely grew out of the older and more staid tradition of women being hired to wail as paid mourners at funerals in Asia.
Veteran Nollywood Actor Prince James has reportedly been evicted from Godspower Hospital in Festac Town, for failure to pay his hospital bills.

His son, Uche Jnr, made the disclosure before appealing to Nigerians to help save his fathers life.

He wrote via instagram:

Good morning Nigerians home and abroad, I want to sincerely thank you, who have donated to save my fathers life, my family and I appreciate you all. You will never fall illAmen. Today (Jan.3rd) is a day I will never forget in my life as we have been asked to leave the hospital due to our incurred debts. My dream for my father to see and regain back his health is getting hapless. With heaviness in my soul I still plead with the good people of Nigeria to sow a seed in my beloved fathers life, nothing is too small to helppls i beg of you all.

Pls Kindly Support Via Prince James Uche  Zenithbank, Acct  1001063788. For more information call Torino Emeka Ojukwu 08023200557 or Ejiro Okurame 08030519374.

Pls Let 2017 Be Our Daddys Testimony YearGod Bless You AllAmen..

.#Saveprincejamesucheteam #Chiefejirookurame.

SignedUche Jnr James Uche.
A woman from Pennsylvania, USA escaping from police after driving through a stop sign drove her SUV into the Susquehanna River, and then kept drinking her beer as they tried to get her to exit the floating vehicle, police said.

The York Haven woman, whose name wasnt made public, became the subject of a police chase Monday when a Northeastern Regional police officer saw her Subaru Outback blowing through a stop sign, according to the York Daily Record. She eluded the officer, but was spotted again by officers on their way to her home.

Officers from multiple departments caught up with her at a boat launch, where they tried to talk to her, the Daily Record said.

For whatever reason, she decides to drive into the river, Newberry police Chief John Snyder told the newspaper.

The womans Outback ended up in the water about 20 feet from the river bank. Officers continued to try to talk to her, but she ignored them.

She stayed in the car and continued to drink her beer, Newberry Township police Sgt. Keith Farren told the Daily Record.
The telecom industry rang in the new year to the tune of "Good Times Roll"  and by "good times" they mean more mergers, less competition, and no more pesky net neutrality and data privacy regulations.

The outgoing FCC -- one of the most consumer-friendly in history -- was tough on telecom morale. In a memorable "look, the emperor has no clothes" moment, Chairman Tom Wheeler pointed to the lack of competition in the U.S. broadband market and vowed to do better.

[ Give yourself a technology career advantage with InfoWorld's Deep Dive technology reports and Computerworld's career trends reports. GET A 15% DISCOUNT through Jan. 15, 2017: Use code 8TIISZ4Z. ]

Under Wheeler's tenure, the agency raised the definition of broadband to 25Mbps, from the previous snail's pace 4Mbps; passed net neutrality rules that banned traffic discrimination and throttling; issued basic broadband privacy protection rules that prohibited ISPs from selling users' personal data to third parties without users' consent; adopted truth-in-billing guidelines to cut down on "cramming" of unauthorized charges; opened investigations into the use of data caps and zero-rating schemes; and tried to fight (ultimately unsuccessfully) the spread of telecom-written state laws that protect monopolies from competition.

Get ready to kiss most of that good-bye.

The team of telecom cronies running President-elect Trump's FCC transition are all outspoken critics of Wheeler's initiatives. Advisers Jeff Eisenach, a former consultant for Verizon, and Mark Jamison, a former lobbyist for Sprint, both see little justification for the FCC's existence. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, an avid supporter of AT&T and protectionist state laws, is also on the advisory team. All are strong opponents of regulating the industry.

But as TechDirt writes, "in telecom, 'deregulation' doesn't actually mean straight deregulation. What it means in practice is pay-to-play regulation, where the biggest and most politically powerful companies get to literally write the law .... 'Deregulation' is all-too-frequently code for 'let's let AT&T and Comcast decide what's best.'"

In anticipation of the coming sea change in Washington, telecom companies have hit the ground running. A petition filed with the FCC this week asks that privacy protections be dismantled, calling them "unnecessary, unjustified, unmoored from a cost-benefit assessment, and unlikely to advance the Commission's stated goal of enhancing consumer privacy."

They likely won't have to wait too long for action. After Wheeler steps down on Jan. 20, Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai (a former lawyer for Verizon) and Michael O'Reilly will enjoy a 2-1 majority at the FCC, as the Senate closed out 2016 without confirming Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to a second term.

Some had hoped Wheeler would stay on and finish his term as a commissioner -- if only to slow the gutting of his legacy until after Trump names a new chairman to break a 2-2 deadlock. But with a 2-1 majority, Republicans at the FCC can begin repealing regulations almost as soon as Trump is sworn in.

Pai and O'Reilly sent a letter last month to five lobby groups for wireless carriers and ISPs, reassuring them that current rules would be on the chopping block "as soon as possible."

In a speech to a conservative think tank, Pai said the agency "need[s] to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations.... We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation."

Chief among the "weeds" to be wacked is net neutrality. Pai voted against the rules, saying they could provide cover to leaders in North Korea, Iran, and other repressive states. (He also nonsensically claimed Netflix -- not Comcast or Verizon -- was violating net neutrality.)

Transition team advisers Jamison and Eisenach are also vocal opponents of net neutrality rules. Eisenach denounced the concept as "crony capitalism pure and simple," and in an editorial called net neutrality a radical scheme for "the transfer of wealth from one group to another by means of government regulation."

Net neutrality, an idea with strong bipartisan support, was intended to protect small-business innovators from telecom monopolies. Even Comcast has admitted the rules have not hurt jobs, stifled investment, or resulted in any of the other calamities predicted before their passage.

But in the brave new FCC, rules that prevent telecom giants from using last-mile monopolies and zero-rating schemes to gain unfair competitive advantages are deemed "radical." Apparently the massive transfer of wealth to broadband bullies is the mark of economic efficiency.

Also expect the new FCC to deep-six the very idea that broadband monopolies are a problem. Jamison has called mergers "necessary and potentially good for consumers," when in fact they lead to higher prices and poorer service. And he argued in a blog for TechPolicyDaily that "most of the original motivations for having an FCC have gone away [since] telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies."

What are the odds he was able to type that with a straight face? (Have your own doubts about the state of broadband competition in the United States? Check out this map.)

Telecom execs are licking their chops at the thought of the mega mergers they might push through in the next four years -- despite then-candidate Trump having spoken out against the proposed AT&T/Time Warner merger.

"It's hard to imagine that there's not going to be more openness to consolidation," T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter said at the Global Media and Communications Conference in December. "Given the changes that are coming, I really do think you're going to see a lot of evolution and a lot of excitement."

Carter appears to have conveniently forgotten "it was the FCC and DOJ that blocked AT&T's attempted acquisition of T-Mobile, which ultimately resulted in T-Mobile being a more innovative, fierce competitor than ever before," writes Karl Bode.

In another sign that telecoms are feeling emboldened, AT&T is already walking back promises it made in defending its planned merger with Time-Warner. The company had said the merger wouldn't raise prices and put forward a $35 DirecTV streaming offer as proof. The company now calls that only a limited-time promotion; as of Jan. 9, the price will be jacked up to $60. "AT&T has a long history of bogus promises to get big deals approved," TechDirt writes, "but it's rare to see the company already falling short on its promises before the ink is even dry."

In an FCC run by and for the telecom industry, the accomplishments of the Wheeler years -- as limited as they were in making a dent in the monopolistic nature of the industry -- will likely seem mythic.

"Gutting most regulatory oversight, demolishing net neutrality, and dismantling the FCC's new privacy rules won't somehow magically result in telecom utopia," TechDirt warns. "This is a line of fantasy the incumbent ISPs (and their various, well-funded policy tendrils) have been mainlining into the public discourse for the better part of the last twenty years despite a parade of evidence to the contrary."

Advocacy groups are gearing up for a new fight, particularly around net neutrality. The proposed rules generated about 4 million public comments to the FCC, the vast majority voicing in support. "We'll have the evidence and the law on our side to fight even a new majority of the FCC commissioners if we need to," said Matt Wood, policy director at digital rights group Free Press. "Net neutrality is a wildly popular safeguard, grounded not just in common sense but in the law as well."

Hopefully the Republican Congress will be too busy to change those laws any time soon. With its full agenda to repeal the ACA, rewrite tax laws, shrink government spending, and confirm conservative judges, perhaps rewriting the Communications Act, repealing the classification of the internet as a utility under Title II of the Act, and passing a defanged net neutrality law will have to wait.
German factory orders down, underlining recession fears AP - Fri Nov 4, 2:41AM CDT Official figures show that German factory orders were down 4% in September compared with the previous month, underlining expectations that Europes biggest economy is heading into recession $SPX : 3,719.89 (-1.06%) $DOWI : 32,001.25 (-0.46%) $IUXX : 10,690.60 (-1.98%)

Raw Sugar (SB) Testing 38.2% Fib Retrace of Apr-Sep Consolidation Tradable Patterns - Fri Nov 4, 12:49AM CDT Raw Sugar (SB) formed a second straight daily Hammer yesterday, and appears poised to test downchannel resistance (on the weekly chart) by next week sometime. Yesterdays close just shy of the 38.2%... SBH23 : 18.60 (+0.70%) SGG : 57.90 (-0.15%)

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 : 86.80 (+4.58%) CTH23 : 85.12 (+3.59%) CTK23 : 84.71 (+3.30%)

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 : 850-4 (+1.19%) ZWH23 : 869-6 (+1.16%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.7263 (-0.65%) KEZ22 : 953-6 (+1.33%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.1179 (+1.39%) MWZ22 : 956-0 (+1.38%)

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 : 684-6 (+0.81%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.8112 (+0.82%) ZCH23 : 690-0 (+0.77%) ZCK23 : 689-4 (+0.69%)
Update 7/4/18  PDR has completed construction on its four-story self-storage facility at 7710 Alexander Town Blvd. in Brier Creek. The climate-controlled building features two elevators. It will be managed by CubeSmart, a self-storage real estate investment trust and third-party management firm, according to a press release. PDR and Jernigan have since co-invested in four other projects.

A grand-opening celebration was held on June 13. The event included facility tours and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, with participation from contractors, facility staff, investors, PDR employees and vendors. It also included a social hour with light snacks and refreshments.

PDR chose Brier Creek based on the long-term prospects of the Raleigh market, the release stated. The property is accessible from Highway 70.

Headquartered in Tampa, Fla., PDR is a real estate and development company. Its services include acquisition, construction, construction management, development, financing, product supply and property management for the multi-family and self-storage industries. PDR has 18 projects under development in four states.

1/5/17  Jernigan Capital Inc., a merchant bank and advisory firm serving the self-storage industry, has invested $8.9 million in a Raleigh, N.C., self-storage development project. The investment was made through Storage Lenders I LLC, the companys joint venture with real estate investment firm Heitman Capital Management LLC and an unidentified institutional partner. The multi-story facility will be built in the Brier Creek community and comprise 65,110 net rentable square feet in 756 units, according to a press release.

Tampa, Fla.-based Phillips Development & Realty LLC will serve as the developer. This is the first self-storage project in which both Jernigan Capital and Phillips have co-invested, the release stated.

The joint venture was launched last March with a $35 million commitment from Heitman. The investment firms contribution was contingent on a $75 million institutional co-investment, which was contributed in April by a public-pension plan. The $122.2 million capitalization is intended for self-storage development.

During a November earnings call, Jernigan Chief Operating Officer John Good indicated the firm had executed nine term sheets totaling $88.9 million, on which the company expected to close before the end of 2016, according to the source.

Jernigan Capital is a commercial real estate finance company that provides financing to private developers, operators and owners of self-storage facilities. It offers financing for acquisition, ground-up construction, major redevelopment or refinancing. The firm intends to be taxed as a REIT and is externally managed by JCap Advisors LLC.

Sources:

PE Hub Network, Jernigan Invests in a Raleigh, North Carolina Storage Development Project

Triangle Business Journal, Brier Creek Storage Facility Lands Development Cash From Memphis Investor
Och-Ziff Capital Management Group CEO Dan Och is likely one of many people who are glad to see 2016 fade into the rearview mirror.

Hit by poor performance, redemptions, and the fourth-largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act fine in history  $412 million  for deals concerning investments in Africa, Och-Ziff had one of its worst years since its 1994 inception. This year isnt starting on a much better note: On Tuesday Och-Ziff, one of a handful of publicly traded alternative-investment firms, disclosed that assets had fallen by $3.6 billion in December, and overall assets had fallen from $45.5 billion at the start of 2016 to $35.5 billion today. The firm did not disclose how much of that $3.6 billion drop was in the form of redemptions, although its main fund gained 0.72 percent in December, suggesting the decline did not come from performance losses. Och-Ziff reported receiving $9 billion in redemptions for the first nine months of 2016. Meanwhile, a new report from a U.K. NGO is pushing for further investigation into some Africa-related investment companies with which Och-Ziff had dealings. An Och-Ziff spokesperson declined to comment.

One source of Och-Ziffs problems: uninspiring performance in its flagship global multistrategy fund, the OZ Master Fund, which returned 3.82 percent in 2016. Whereas that result is not substantially worse than the average hedge funds performance last year  the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index had returned 4.43 percent through the end of November  it is far lower than how the U.S. equity market performed, with the Standard & Poors 500 stock index having returned 11.96 in 2016. Och-Ziff is not alone in experiencing redemptions. Although the majority of investors do not expect equitylike returns from hedge funds, the sheer underperformance of hedge funds in aggregate, particularly during a bull market in equities, is causing some investors to experience buyers remorse.

Not all of Och-Ziffs hedge funds underperformed. Its main credit fund, the $1.7 billion OZ Credit Opportunities Master Fund, Och-Ziffs second-largest fund, returned 16 percent last year. The $600 million OZ Enhanced Master Fund added 10 percent for the year. Still, the multistrategy fund makes up approximately half of the firms overall assets under management.

Another problem Och-Ziff faced in 2016, however, was the conclusion of a five-year investigation by the U.S. government into the business dealings of its subsidiary OZ African Management, which was overseen by Och-Ziffs former European head Michael Cohen. In September, OZ Africa Management pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Och-Ziff agreed to pay a $213 million criminal penalty and a $199 million civil penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve civil charges relating to the same business. The two investigations found that fixers acting on behalf of Och-Ziff had paid bribes to government officials in Africa to help the hedge fund subsidiary in its efforts to secure valuable mineral rights in countries including Niger, Guinea, and Chad.

Key companies in which OZ Africa invested were publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, often starting out on the smaller AIM exchange before being acquired by other larger public companies. This week the U.K.-based not-for-profit Rights and Accountability in Development issued a report titled Bribery in Its Purest Form: Och-Ziff, Asset Laundering and the London Connection, calling for more investigation into these companies and greater oversight by U.K. and other regulators. The organization cited the Och-Ziff settlement as an example of why such increased scrutiny is needed.

The Och-Ziff saga lays bare the problems at the heart of the U.K. regulatory system, RAID executive director Patricia Feeney tells Institutional Investor. Theres a permissive pathway by which mines and minerals from zones of conflict and weak governance are transferred to companies trading on Londons Alternative Investment Market who, in turn, through a process of acquisition, transfer these tainted assets to companies in the premium segment of the main market. This process can only be described as asset laundering.

It remains unclear how much Och-Ziffs Africa saga damaged the firms reputation with investors. Several investors who have spoken with Institutional Investor spoke highly of the firms handling of the investigation and, for those who dealt exclusively with Och and the team in the U.S., said that the behavior described by the U.S. government and SEC was not in keeping with their experience with the firm. Cohen and Vanja Baros, a second Och-Ziff employee involved with the Africa fund, both left the firm in 2013.
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Inflation remains the primary concern for the worlds central banks, which have engaged in the broadest and fastest tightening regime in history, according to Alejandra Grindal, chief economist at Ned Davis Research.
The Canadian government issued a Public Weather Warning Wednesday morning for powerful winter winds and affecting much of Nova Scotias Cape Breton Island and many Maritime communities.By Wednesday afternoon, the majority of warnings were for potential snow storms hitting Quebec from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and southern Ontario from Lake Huron.Storm season is picking up and Atlantic Canada tends to feel the first squalls of the year.

Greg Hull, vice president of sales at A.A. Murno Insurance, explained how his clients were affected from his Antigonish, Nova Scotia office.

Were getting hit by heavy winds and of course strong rain conditions, Hull said. Weve got a little bit of an increase (in claims) but nothing too drastic with the heavy winds.Hull said he advised his clients to clear all unsecured objects from their property as well as checking the stability and health of trees beside their home in order to mitigate wind damage.You can have all the best intentions, but if Mother Nature sets her mind to doing something sometimes its hard to battle her, Hull said.Hull also pointed out a big snowfall was expected to come his way on FridayThe most significant spike in claims Hull has seen in recent months came back in October with flooding in Cape Breton.

Related stories:

Maritimes feel first storm of the season

Thanksgiving Day storm: Contractors accused of inflating repair bills
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has appointed Todd R. Johnson, senior vice president and property-casualty practice leader of the USI Insurance Services (USI) Massachusetts offices located in Woburn, Needham and West Springfield, Mass., to a two-year term as chairman of the Massachusetts Workers Compensation Advisory Council (WCAC).

As chairman, Johnson is responsible for running the monthly council meetings and helping to establish its agenda. These meetings are open to the general public pursuant to the Commonwealths open meeting laws.

Johnson has more than 25 years of experience in the workers compensation industry. He has been with USI for more than six years and has been a member of the Massachusetts WCAC for more than four years, holding the councils insurance and self-insurer representative positions.

As senior vice president and property-casualty leader for the USI Massachusetts offices, Johnson is responsible for driving revenue growth for a wide range of industries throughout the Commonwealth.

In addition, he serves as an elected municipal selectman for the town of Tewksbury, Mass., overseeing a municipal budget of approximately $110 million dollars.

The Massachusetts WCAC, which consists of 10 voting and 6 non-voting members, was established during a series of workers compensation reforms that were signed into law in 1985. Its purpose is to monitor, recommend action, give testimony and report on the States workers compensation system. The councils advisory responsibilities involve budget oversight, judicial appointments, legislative initiatives pertaining to workers compensation and issuance of an annual report evaluating the operations of the Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA).

Source: USI Insurance Services

Topics Workers' Compensation Massachusetts
Integro Insurance Brokers, a New York headquartered international broker and risk management firm has appointed Deborah Morris as its New York operations leader.

She succeeds Esther Ro, who is relocating to the West coast and will be based in Integros Newport Beach, Calif., office.

Morris comes to Integro from American International Group (AIG), which she joined as a financial institutions manager in 1996.

She has held a succession of increasingly senior positions in London, Hong Kong and the U.S. Most recently, she served as senior vice president in New York, managing a diversified portfolio while sponsoring several of AIGs strategic global accounts.

Source: Integro

Topics Agencies New York Leadership
Prem Watsas Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. is in talks with the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) to see if the pension fund will help finance his $4.9 billion takeover of Allied World Assurance Co., according to a person familiar with the discussions.

OMERS could take a minority stake in Zug, Switzerland-based Allied, and there have also been talks with other potential backers, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a confidential matter.

A partnership could reduce the amount of Fairfax stock that Watsa needs to fund the transaction, limiting dilution for his shareholders. Under terms of the deal, announced Dec. 18, his Toronto-based company would pay about $900 million in cash and $4 billion in Fairfax stock. Fairfax has the lowest of 10 investment grade scores by S&P Global ratings, which limits Watsas ability to take on more debt without risking a cut to junk status.

Doing it from an equity perspective ensures that we meet the rating agency requirement, so we wanted to be sure it was fully funded with equity, Fairfax President Paul Rivett said in a Dec. 19 conference call with investors. But that said, we want to also do the best we can for our Fairfax shareholders. So, that is why we will be looking for these third-party equity providers like we did find for Brit and Eurolife, to reduce the dilution to our shareholders.

An OMERS spokesman declined to comment, and a representative for Fairfax didnt immediately respond to a message.

After announcing a deal in February 2015 to buy Brit Plc, Watsa turned to OMERS two months later to take a 30 percent stake in the Lloyds of London insurer, reducing his financing costs. S&P restored Fairfaxs outlook to stable from negative in May 2015.

OMERS also joined Fairfax in August in the purchase of a controlling stake in Eurolife ERB Insurance.

With assistance from Jordyn Holman.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. has acquired the Chicago-based consulting firm, Gruppo Marcucci LLC (GPM).

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2005, Gruppo Marcucci specializes in human resources (HR) and benefits technology solutions for benefit brokers and consultants, employers, insurance carriers, service providers and the investment community.

Led by partners Rhonda Marcucci and Ed Barry, the Gruppo Marcucci team will continue to operate from their current location under the direction of Tony Hernandez, Gallaghers employee benefit consulting and brokerage chief operating officer.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an international insurance brokerage and risk management services firm, is headquartered in Itasca, Ill.

Source: Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions A.J. Gallagher
Chicago State University has agreed to pay $1.3 million to end a whistleblower lawsuit brought by a former administrator.

The universitys insurance carrier will pay $847,000 in back pay and other compensation to Glenn Meeks, the schools former chief financial officer. Meeks attorneys will get $453,000. Meeks claimed he was fired in 2013 in retaliation for complaining of possible ethical violations by then-president Watson. The case had been set to go to trial on Jan. 9.

The university did not admit any liability and said it resolved the case to minimize costs and distractions at a school beset by low enrollment and financial woes.

Last year, a jury awarded more than $3 million to university attorney James Crowley, who was fired for turning over former university president Wayne Watsons employment records under the states open records law, and for exposing questionable university contracts.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Education Universities
Volkswagen AG and former Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn must defend an investor lawsuit in California over the companys diesel emissions cheating scandal, a U.S. judge has ruled.

The plaintiffs, mostly U.S. municipal pension funds, have accused VW of not having informed the market in a timely fashion about the issue as well as understating possible financial liabilities, according to the 41-court document seen by Reuters.

The pension funds include those representing Arkansas State Highway Employees and Miami Police. The lawsuits said VWs market capitalization fell by $63 billion after the diesel cheating scandal became public in September 2015.

The plaintiffs had invested in VW through American Depositary Receipts (ADR), a form of equity ownership in a non-U.S. company that represents the foreign shares of the company held on deposit by a bank in the companys home country.

Volkswagen is convinced that the accusations raised by buyers of the corporate securities (so-called American Depositary Receipts) lack any foundation, a spokesman at VWs German headquarters said by email.

Its our intention to make this clear in the further course of proceedings, he added.

VW shares did not react to the latest legal developments and were trading up 0.7 percent at 139.7 euros as of 1115 GMT.

SECRET SOFTWARE

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer rejected a request by VW brand chief Herbert Diess to have the proposed securities fraud lawsuits tossed out of a California court. Other defendants include VWs U.S. unit and its Audi of America unit and the former head of its U.S. unit, Michael Horn.

Volkswagen argued that German courts were the proper place for investor lawsuits.

Breyer said in his ruling that because the United States has an interest in protecting domestic investors against securities fraud the lawsuits should go forward in a U.S. court.

CEO Winterkorn resigned days after the scandal became public and much of the companys management has changed since 2015.

VW in September 2015 admitted using sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with 11 millions vehicles worldwide affected. The cheating allowed nearly 580,0000 VWs U.S. diesel vehicles sold since 2009 to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution levels.

The lawsuits said VW and its executives misled the investing public assuring them to the contrary  namely, that the diesel vehicles met all applicable emissions standards and it understated the liabilities that it would suffer as a result of its known emissions non-compliance.

Volkswagen has agreed to spend as much as $17.5 billion in the United States to resolve claims from owners and federal and state regulators over polluting diesel vehicles.

Volkswagen could still spend billions of dollars more to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation and federal and state environmental claims; come under oversight by a federal monitor and face other conditions.

The Justice Department and VW are in settlement talks and it is possible a deal could be reached before Jan. 20, when President Barack Obama leaves office, according to sources briefed on the matter.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer in Berlin; Editing by Grant McCool/Keith Weir)

Topics Lawsuits USA Legislation Pollution
Michael McRaith, who has served as director the Federal Insurance Office since its creation in 2011, is resigning his post as of Jan. 20. as the Trump Administration begins.

McRaith announced his plan to leave the agency during a Jan. 4 meeting of an FIO advisory panel.

McRaith, a former director of the Illinois insurance department, was named to the FIO post by President Obama in March 2011.

The FIO was created by 2010s Dodd-Frank Act. The federal agency has authority to monitor insurance markets and insurance regulation but has no regulatory power itself; that remains with the states as it has since 1945 when Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act exempting insurance from most federal regulation.

The FIO operates from within the U.S. Department of Treasury and is charged with advising Congress on insurance markets, helping to lead U.S. efforts on international insurance issues, and advising various federal entities on insurers systemic risk exposure.

In 2013, the FIO released a report on ways to modernize insurance regulation. The report concluded that in some circumstances, policy goals of uniformity, efficiency, and consumer protection make continued federal involvement necessary to improve insurance regulation. However, insurance regulation in the United States is best left to a hybrid model, where both state and federal regulatory bodies play complementary roles, the report found.

In perhaps its most controversial action, McRaiths office was involved the creation of an auto insurance affordability index intended to guide policymakers in determining if traditionally underserved consumers, minorities, and low- and moderate-income persons have access to affordable insurance products. According to the index released in July, if the average auto insurance liability premium paid by consumers in minority and low-income neighborhoods is more than 2 percent of the median income in those neighborhoods, the auto insurance will be considered unaffordable. The FIO planned to report annually on affordability using the index.

Some insurers and other financial firms have criticized the numerical index, arguing it is too simplistic to truly measure affordability. Insurers expressed concern over how the public and policymakers may interpret FIOs reporting on the index in the future.

The FIO has also been involved in monitoring and reporting on the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program (TRIP). It issued a report in 2016 concluding that the program works while recommending some changes to move toward a more private market. Last year it began requesting that insurers voluntarily submit insurance data regarding their participation in the program. Reporting is slated to become mandatory in 2017. It also named a panel to explore ways to encourage more private insurers to offer terrorism insurance.

The FIO has supported the continuing negotiations between the United States and European Commission over a covered re/insurance agreement. McRaith and some U.S. insurers want assurances that the EU will treat U.S. insurers fairly and recognize the U.S. regulatory scheme. The FIO participates in the International Insurance Society.

The FIO came in for criticism from insurance brokers for its slowness in naming board members to the new insurance producer licensing panel known as the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers (NARAB). The system is for producers who are licensed in their home states who wish to become a member of a national nonprofit registry to more easily become approved to do business in other states.

In his remarks announcing his resignation, McRaith defend the federal agency from critics who say it is a threat to state regulation.

We are not here to take from the states what McCarran-Ferguson has given to them, he said. But we are here to serve the national interest.

He said it is important for the country to be able to talk about insurance issues at the national level, citing long term care and retirement as two, and to talk about the way the industry is regulated, for the benefit of the industry as well as for consumers.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Steven T. Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs trader and bank chief executive, to succeed Jack Lew as he next Treasury secretary.

Topics Carriers USA Legislation
The U.S. Coast Guard and crew members of surrounding vessels responded to a pre-dawn fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, the Coast Guard said .

The blaze was reported around 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 2 on an oil platform about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana, the Coast Guard said in a news release.

Four people aboard the platform evacuated into the water and were rescued by the Mary Wyatt Milano, a supply vessel, the Coast Guard said. No injuries have been reported.

Personnel aboard four vessels are fighting the fire.

Crew members aboard the 130-foot Mary Wyatt Milano are among those battling the blaze, Coast Guard officials said.

Clean Gulf, an oil spill response organization, was on its way to the platform early Thursday, the Coast Guard added in its statement. Clean Gulf is a non-profit oil industry cooperative that responds to spills and provides equipment to help clean them up, according to its website.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation.

An oil platform exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, killing 11 workers. Millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf for weeks before the oil well could be capped.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Energy Oil Gas Mexico
Authorities in Florida say three Pinellas County school buses crashed on the first day back from winter break, though no students were injured.

The Tampa Bay Times reports the crashes occurred Tuesday afternoon.

The Florida Highway Patrol says a bus driver was charged with driving under the influence of a controlled substance after a car rear-ended the bus in Lealman and fled the scene.

A second driver was cited after a bus failed to stop at a stop sign in St. Petersburg and collided with an SUV.

In Clearwater, authorities say a car ran a red light and collided with a bus, sending it crashing into a light pole.

In North Carolina, a school bus driver was charged with careless and reckless driving and going too fast for conditions after the bus slid off a road Tuesday and into a ditch before overturning with four students inside.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida Education
(Bloomberg) -- For years, the biggest names in tech crammed the Consumer Electronics Show floor with fridges, light switches and microwave ovens to preview a futuristic world where you could control every appliance in the home with your voice.

But most of these products, bogged down by glitchy software and hard-to-navigate interfaces, failed to go mainstream.

This year may be different. Aided by new artificial intelligence software that makes it easier for gadgets to understand speech, tech giants led by Amazon.com Inc. are locked in a race for dominance of digital home assistants.

"People are a bit disappointed with assistants, because there are no clear use cases," said Greg Gerard, creative chairman of Holi, which is debuting a $199 smart alarm clock called Bonjour. "We have one.

Gerard must show regular consumers the value of smart assistant technology. But he doesn't need to convince big technology firms, which all believe voice-based interactions with devices will explode in popularity. Almost every major tech company has or will soon introduce a digital assistant product powered by AI. And they're making a concerted effort to spread the technology everywhere.

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is using CES to tout tie-ups with its smart Home speaker, a device similar to Amazon's Echo. Microsoft Corp. has invested heavily in its assistant, Cortana. Samsung Electronics Co. is set to unveil its assistant tech for its phones and other devices in 2017. Last month, Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg showed off a smart home assistant he said he coded himself.

Behind the scenes at CES, these tech behemoths will fight to get their voice-based systems into televisions, cable boxes and every home appliance, not just smartphones and PCs. Analysts expect several dozen announcements around voice-systems at this week's event in Las Vegas, including new functions for internet-connected devices and cars. Ford Motor Co. unveiled an integration with Alexa on Wednesday.

Then there are the specialized assistants, ranging from the Bonjour clock, which Gerard said will arrive later this year, to a personal home robot from startup Jibo -- a compact, futuristic device designed to recognize human emotions, said company Chief Executive Officer Steve Chambers.

Research firm Tractica estimates about 40 million homes will use a voice-activated digital assistant by 2021.

Amazon's version, Alexa, introduced in 2014 on the Echo speaker, works with more than 6,000 applications, according to a company spokeswoman. On Tuesday, Amazon announced a partnership with Whirlpool Corp., adding voice command capabilities to Whirlpool washers, dryers, ovens and refrigerators.

Amazon has built an effective developer outreach strategy and introduced a $100 million investment fund for startups creating products around voice applications. Unlike other tech peers, Amazon has a dominant sales channel for its voice-assistance partners.

"Amazon has been brilliant about it," said Mark Beccue, an analyst at Tractica. "They might be the best trigger to the smart home, to making it a mass-market product."

Google Makes Its Splash

Last year, Biz Stone revamped his startup, Jelly Industries Inc., as a search enginesomething that puts it up against Google. But when Google began hunting partners last month for its Home speaker, Jelly was among the first to sign on.

Google was a zealous suitor. Employees treated him to lunch and when the deal closed a Google operative sent him an animated gif of Seinfeld characters dancing. "They've been a joy to work with," said Stone, who co-founded Twitter Inc.

Google's aggressive courtship is understandable; it's behind Amazon. Since inception, Google's business was based on keyboard-based searches. Now the web giant is refocusing its strategy around its voice assistant, a system that sits in its speaker, Pixel smartphone andif Google succeeds every device imaginable. On Tuesday at CES, Google announced a partnership with Hyundai Motor Co. that lets drivers control some car functions by talking to the Home speaker. It's expected to unveil more assistant partnerships with devices like smart TVs.

Google has an edge in building voice technology, thanks to its unmatched repository of search data. But the company must prove it can distribute its assistant widely. Hurdles exist. The same month Google debuted its Pixel phone, Samsung, the largest Android phone manufacturer, acquired Viv Labs, a startup building a voice-powered assistant. Samsung plans to roll out an AI platform for its devices this year, the company said in a statement. Apple Inc., which tightly controls about 40% of U.S. smartphones, is investing in a similar push with its Siri voice assistant.

Microsoft already has software tools for developers to embed Cortana into devices, and its automotive partners will announce new integrations at CES, said Matthew Quinlan, Cortana's director of product marketing. "For Cortana to do her job, she needs to be in a lot of different devices."

And there's Facebook. The company has said that Zuckerberg's smart-home tech was merely a demonstration. Yet the social network is testing more bot integrations with the AI-assistant in its popular Messenger chat app, a product Google has struggled to deliver.

Still, Amazon remains the one to catch. For developers building voice-assisted tools, the company offers support from its already popular cloud-computing platform, giving it another edge.

"You are not going to see a clear no. 2 emerge in 2017," said Forrester analyst Mike Gualtieri. "Technologically, Google is the closest competitor. But in terms of Google's ability to get it into homes, I question that."

Assistant Nightmare

Another question is how to make money from a voice-controlled home. Profit margins on hardware sales are usually thin and voice-controlled computers may throw a wrench in established business models, like text-based web search.

Some investors backing the technology aren't concerned. "There are lots and lots of ways you can monetize when you control the interface," said John Lilly, a venture capitalist with Greylock Partners. "You control control information flow. You can route requests. You can certainly ship people stuff."

Lilly, who backs AI assistant startup Ozlo, insists young companies can make dents in the market with more advanced technology, like systems that can carry on complex conversations, rather than the relatively simple commands Alexa uses. However, analysts are skeptical that startups can match the budgets and data reserves of public tech companies.

Still, that may not dissuade companies, large and small, from trying to build their own voice assistants. With that rush, the question of who controls the tools will become paramount.

"In less than three years, every home will have the opportunity to have this digital assistant," said Forrester's Gualtieri. "Now youll have the question of who am I talking to: Amazon Echo or my refrigerator? So that could be a nightmare."
They are among 10 individuals within firm who have been promoted.

Sophie Donnithorne-Tait

Donnithorne-Tait advises on all aspects of UK corporate tax at Akin Gumps London office. She concentrates on financial restructurings, group reorganisations, structured finance arrangements and VAT. She has particular experience in the tax implications of restructuring UK oil and gas companies and works closely with her counterparts in the firms US offices and frequently advises US funds on the tax-efficient structuring of their investments into Europe.

Olivier De Moor

De Moor is based in the New York office and is also a member of the firm's tax practice. He focuses on the US federal tax and tax treaty aspects of corporate and financial transactions involving hedge and private equity funds, the structuring and restructuring of investments in the US, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In addition, he regularly advises on the US and international tax aspects of foreign investments by US investors, advises on a broad range of US withholding issues and has extensive experience handling Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) issues.

Alexander Specht

Specht focuses his work on the US federal tax aspects of domestic and cross-border financial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships. He regularly advises private equity and hedge funds on matters related to the structuring of investments and operations within and outside of the US.
What Is Big Data?

The vast proliferation of data and increasing technological complexities continue to transform the way industries operate and compete. Over the past few years, 90 percent of the data in the world has been created as a result of the creation of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data on a daily basis. Commonly referred to as big data, this rapid growth and storage creates opportunities for collection, processing, and analysis of structured and unstructured data.

How Big Data Works

Following the 4 Vs of big data, organizations use data and analytics to gain valuable insight to inform better business decisions. Industries that have adopted the use of big data include financial services, technology, marketing, and health care, to name a few. The adoption of big data continues to redefine the competitive landscape of industries. An estimated 84 percent of enterprises believe those without an analytics strategy run the risk of losing a competitive edge in the market.

Financial services, in particular, have widely adopted big data analytics to inform better investment decisions with consistent returns. In conjunction with big data, algorithmic trading uses vast historical data with complex mathematical models to maximize portfolio returns. The continued adoption of big data will inevitably transform the landscape of financial services. However, along with its apparent benefits, significant challenges remain in regards to big datas ability to capture the mounting volume of data.

4 Vs of Big Data

The 4 Vs are fundamental to big data: volume, variety, veracity, and velocity. Facing increasing competition, regulatory constraints and customer needs, financial institutions are seeking new ways to leverage technology to gain efficiency. Depending on the industry, companies can use certain aspects of big data to gain a competitive advantage.

Velocity is the speed at which data must be stored and analyzed. The New York Stock Exchange captures 1 terabyte of information each day. By 2016, there were an estimated 18.9 billion network connections, with roughly 2.5 connects per person on Earth. Financial institutions can differentiate themselves from the competition by focusing on efficiently and quickly processing trades.

Big data can be categorized as unstructured or structured data. Unstructured data is information that is unorganized and does not fall into a pre-determined model. This includes data gathered from social media sources, which help institutions gather information on customer needs. Structured data consists of information already managed by the organization in relational databases and spreadsheets. As a result, the various forms of data must be actively managed in order to inform better business decisions.

The increasing volume of market data poses a big challenge for financial institutions. Along with vast historical data, banking and capital markets need to actively manage ticker data. Likewise, investment banks and asset management firms use voluminous data to make sound investment decisions. Insurance and retirement firms can access past policy and claims information for active risk management.

Algorithmic Trading

Algorithmic trading has become synonymous with big data due to the growing capabilities of computers. The automated process enables computer programs to execute financial trades at speeds and frequencies that a human trader cannot. Within the mathematical models, algorithmic trading provides trades executed at the best possible prices and timely trade placement and reduces manual errors due to behavioral factors.

Institutions can more effectively curtail algorithms to incorporate massive amounts of data, leveraging large volumes of historical data to backtest strategies, thus creating less risky investments. This helps users identify useful data to keep as well as low-value data to discard. Given that algorithms can be created with structured and unstructured data, incorporating real-time news, social media and stock data in one algorithmic engine can generate better trading decisions. Unlike decision making, which can be influenced by varying sources of information, human emotion and bias, algorithmic trades are executed solely on financial models and data.

Robo advisors use investment algorithms and massive amounts of data on a digital platform. Investments are framed through Modern Portfolio theory, which typically endorses long term investments to maintain consistent returns, and requires minimal interaction with human financial advisors.

Challenges

Despite the financial services industry increasing embrace of big data, significant challenges still exist in the field. Most importantly, the collection of various unstructured data supports concerns over privacy. Personal information can be gathered about an individuals decision making through social media, emails and health records.

Within financial services specifically, the majority of criticism falls onto data analysis. The sheer volume of data requires greater sophistication of statistical techniques in order to obtain accurate results. In particular, critics overrate signal to noise as patterns of spurious correlations, representing statistically robust results purely by chance. Likewise, algorithms based on economic theory typically point to long-term investment opportunities due to trends in historical data. Efficiently producing results supporting a short-term investment strategy are inherent challenges in predictive models.

The Bottom Line

Big data continues to transform the landscape of various industries, particularly financial services. Many financial institutions are adopting big data analytics in order to maintain a competitive edge. Through structured and unstructured data, complex algorithms can execute trades using a number of data sources. Human emotion and bias can be minimized through automation; however, trading with big data analysis has its own specific set of challenges The statistical results produced so far have not been fully embraced due to the fields relative novelty. However, as financial services trend towards big data and automation, the sophistication of statistical techniques will increase accuracy.
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A Boat-full of Potential - Renewed Interest in the Cruise Industry Bolsters Luxury Markets (OTC: MASN) (NYSE: CCL) (NYSE: CUK) (NYSE: RCL) (NYSE: NCLH)

Vancouver, Kelowna, Delta, BC - November 2, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering luxury goods and cruise ship stocks releases a special report featuring Maison Luxe, Inc. (OTC: MASN), a company that offers luxury retail consumer items.

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Breaking AI Stock News: GBT's (OTCPK: GTCH) AI Driven Financial Technology Patent Application Received a Notice of Publication

San Diego, CA - November 3, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) received a notice of publication for its financial software patent application.

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Breaking AI Stock News: Intellagents, a FatBrain AI (OTCQB: LZGI) Company, Announces Hiring of Insurtech Industry Veteran as Chief Revenue Officer

NEW YORK, NY - November 2, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, announces the hiring of Euan King, an experienced and respected Insurtech industry leader as Chief Revenue Officer for insurance technology-focused subsidiary Intellagents.

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Health and Wellness Stock News - Endexx (OTCBB: EDXC) Secures $3.8M Order for Non-Nicotine Vape Product HYLA from Italy

CAVE CREEK, Az. - November 2, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-based, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces it has secured a new $3.8 million USD order for its newly acquired, non-nicotine based vape product, HYLA from customers in Italy.

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A cross party delegation of Irish politicians will travel to Egypt on Monday to visit jailed Irishman Ibrahim Halawa.

The man's family in Dublin said they are worried about his health and claimed that he has gone on hunger strike for at least the third time since he was imprisoned over political protests more than three years.

He has not eaten for 15 days and is drinking only two cups of water a day, they said.

The Irish delegation expects to meet Mr Halawa on Tuesday.

His family claimed he has told them in recent days that he would continue refusing food until he is released.

"Ibrahim has recommenced his hunger strike because he has reached the stage where he is giving up and is going to continue this hunger strike until he is freed," his sister Somaia said.

"We know that Ibrahim is losing the ability to be able to cope with this."

Mr Halawa refused food for prolonged periods at least twice before during his incarceration.

From Firhouse in Dublin and the son of prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, Ibrahim Halawa was detained in a mosque near Ramses Square in Cairo as the Muslim Brotherhood held a "day of rage" over the removal of their elected president Mohamed Morsi in August 2013.

The student marked his 21st birthday in a Cairo jail in the weeks before Christmas. He is awaiting the start of a mass trial, three years on from his detention during a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.

The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for January 17.

Eamon Ryan, Green Party TD and member of the delegation, said the ultimate goal of the visit was to help secure Mr Halawa's freedom.

"The hope is for Ibrahim's return and that an all-party delegation provides a clear diplomatic message that supports his case for return and helps to make that happen," he said.

Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail accepted an invitation to lead the delegation.

The Halawas said: "We welcome the upcoming visit by Oireachtas members to Cairo to visit Ibrahim in prison and to advocate for his immediate release.

"We are of course hopeful that this visit will help secure Ibrahim's release but we remain extremely worried, as does he, that this ordeal will just continue and continue."
Clearwater Police detectives and an officer stand outside the ground floor apartment where a 10-year-old boy was fatally shot in his home on Thursday morning, in Clearwater, Florida.

Police said the 10-year-old boy shot and killed himself after his mother "was addressing a behavioral issue" before school and now they are investigating how the firearm was stored.
Hate crime and assault charges have been filed against four people over an attack on a man with special needs which was streamed live on Facebook.

Prosecutors in Cook County, Illinois, announced charges against three 18-year-olds - Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper - and 24-year-old Tanishia Covington.

The group have also been charged with kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and assault with a deadly weapon. Three of them have additionally been accused of burglary.

The charges stem from an incident which lasted 48 hours and targeted a white man police described as having "mental health challenges".

All those charged are black.

"He's traumatised by the incident, and it's very tough to communicate with him at this point," police commander Kevin Duffin said.

Excerpts of the video show the victim with his mouth taped shut slumped in a corner. He has a wound on his head, and a red band appears to be around his hands.

Police superintendent Eddie Johnson described the video as "sickening", and added: "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that."

The investigation began on Monday after officers found a man "in distress" and "in crisis" walking on a street.

The man was taken to hospital, and it was later discovered that he had been reported missing from a Chicago suburb.

At about the same time, police took several people into custody at a nearby address where they found signs of a struggle and property damage.

Investigators determined that the missing man had been at the same address.
The new phase of talks with Lone Star does not exclude the possibility of other potential bidders improving their proposals, the Lisbon-based Bank of Portugal said yesterday.

During the talks, an attempt will be made to minimise the potential impact on government finances that may result from Lone Stars current proposal, it said.

Clearly, given the tight timing, the price remains a sticking point and the thorny question of state guarantees, said Jonathan Tyce, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

How that is managed vis-a-vis state-aid rules will be interesting.

Lone Star is proposing 750m to buy all of Novo Banco and pledging to inject another 750m in the bank, Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Negocios reported yesterday.

The proposal also involves the creation of a company to manage unprofitable assets, and this would benefit from a state guarantee, according to the newspaper.

The Bank of Portugal has been seeking offers for the remnants of Banco Espirito Santo after saying bids submitted in a previous sale attempt two years ago were too low. In November, the central bank said it had five proposals for Novo Banco.

Portugal wants to recoup some of the 4.9bn used to rescue the lender. The sales process will be watched here, as the Government seeks to sell a stake in AIB.

Banco Espirito Santo, once Portugals biggest lender by market value, was bailed out in 2014 after regulators ordered it to raise more capital after the disclosure of potential losses on loans linked to companies in the family-controlled Espirito Santo Group.

The central bank moved the lenders deposits and most of its assets to Novo Banco.

Bloomberg
Under pressure from abroad, it is doing away with a special benefit for multinationals and plans to tax everyone from globally active commodity traders to corner bakeries at the same rate.

Unhappy with the proposals  which include a reduction in regional rates that could hit municipal budgets  opponents are now forcing a referendum.

Switzerlands plan to scrap the sweetener is its latest attempt to appease foreign criticism after ending its tradition of banking secrecy.

Yet the change, which has been years in the making, may not be enough to maintain the countrys allure, with the UK already lowering its corporate tax rate and US president-elect Donald Trump considering cutting the US levy by more than half.

If you think a board in the US is influenced by the mountains in Switzerland or the rain in Dublin? No, its about maximising shareholder value, said Dominic Morgan, global tax and transfer pricing director at Zug-based ESAB Europe, a manufacturer of welding and cutting equipment with plants on four continents.

The tax reform is good, but its safe. And people elsewhere are doing bold things.

Switzerlands proposals will mean a cut to cantons tax rates and give companies a break for R&D via so-called patent boxes.

Together with additional measures, thats meant to compensate for scrapping the special status for multinationals, which employ about 150,000 people in Switzerland and generate half the federal governments revenue from taxes on profits.

The reform has backing of 51%, though a significant proportion of respondents were still undecided, according to a gfs.bern poll.

The vote is scheduled for February 12. Some opponents argue that the move is too costly and hurts the middle class, though others say while necessary, it is not ambitious enough to safeguard Switzerlands competitive advantage longer term.

Whats undisputed is there will be a shortfall in revenue. The city of Zurich fears a yearly gap of as much as SwF300m francs (280m) and may raise taxes on individuals to compensate. In Geneva, home to almost 1,000 multinationals, the move will leave a projected SwF440m hole in its finances.

Any other option is worse, said Christian Stiefel, CEO of SwissHoldings, the federation of Swiss-based multinational companies.

In tax terms, we have to be a jurisdiction among the top three in Europe.

The government argues the reform is needed to prevent rising joblessness and an exodus of companies that could lead to potential tax losses of more than SwF5bn francs a year.

Ruedi Noser, a member of parliament from the pro-business Free Democrats, says the risk is not whether companies will leave Switzerland because of the reform.

Its who will come in the next 20 years, he said.

Bloomberg
As an eternal optimist, I offered the opinion that the prospects look pretty good, notwithstanding the obvious caveats concerning Brexit, Donald Trump, and an increasingly menacing global geo-political backdrop.

Ireland is doing well at the moment and 2016 was a relatively good year.

Business investment picked up strongly, employment creation was very buoyant, exports did well, and consumer spending continued to claw back the ground lost after 2008.

However, I warned that the biggest danger to Irelands economy over the coming year would potentially emanate from fear and lack of confidence.

Despite the strong recovery story in Ireland over the past three years one definitely gets a sense of the greater fragility of confidence that has emerged over the past six months.

Confidence at the consumer and business level is just so important to economic success. I have few fears about business confidence because the nature of most business leaders is to just get on with it and deal with whatever uncertainties and difficulties might arise.

In the depths of the economic crash, back in 2009, when some commentators were arguing that Ireland would never emerge from the morass that it was in, I fundamentally disagreed.

I have extreme confidence in the ability and willingness of the risk-takers and entrepreneurs who actually make the investments that generate the jobs in the economy to make it happen.

That is exactly what has transpired and will lead Ireland through challenging times over the coming months.

I have more concerns about consumer confidence. At the turn of the year, one noted commentator suggested that the only grounds for optimism  relating to 2017  was the fact that it hasnt yet happened. I do not understand that degree of negativity.

If we all thought like that, nobody would bother getting out of bed in the morning. We obviously need to be realistic about the challenges and risks, but blind pessimism is arguably much more damaging than blind optimism.

The big elephant in the room for Ireland is certainly the UKs relationship with the EU. Brexit obviously presents the greatest reason for caution over the coming year and unfortunately for some years thereafter.

The main problem with Brexit is that nobody knows how it is going to turn out, not least the political leadership in the UK.

The absolute lack of any coherence amongst British policymakers was demonstrated clearly again this week with the resignation of Britains most senior and experienced diplomat in Brussels, Ivan Rogers.

As British ambassador to the EU, Mr Rogers would have been expected to play a key role in the very difficult Brexit negotiations which will begin over the coming months once the prime minister invokes Article 50.

Mr Rogers recently aroused controversy when he warned his government that post-Brexit negotiations could take a decade to deliver a trade deal.

He was stating the obvious, but that can be a dangerous strategy in political life. One way or another, his resignation will further weaken the British side and will further complicate an already frighteningly complicated negotiation process.

Be that as it may, Irelands economy and business leaders will just have to deal with it and develop strategies to offset the negative impacts.

The ongoing success of the IDA  as seen in its 2016 figures earlier this week  is really impressive and another reason why the relentless negativity of some commentators looks misplaced.
Ireland is the only country in the EU to include e-cigarettes in a state assessment of how best to help citizens give up smoking.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found more people using e-cigarettes would lead to more people successfully kicking the habit. It also said e-cigarettes are cost-effective and could save the public purse millions every year.
Nursing Homes Ireland said these beds are available in up to 176 homes and that 190 more homes could have available places.

The NHI CEO, Tadhg Daly, said: The nursing home sector has a key role to play in alleviating the current overcrowding crisis within our acute hospitals. Only last week, Minister for Health Simon Harris heralded 436 patients classified as delayed discharged in acute hospitals as being a new low and representing huge progress.
Emergency departments (ED) and hospital wards nationwide are being routinely described as battlegrounds and as horrific.

Among the worst affected, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisations Trolley Watch, is Cork University Hospital (CUH), with 40 patients on trolleys yesterday, with 60 at University Hospital Limerick, and 37 at Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore.

And, despite nurses, doctors, and ambulance staff insisting a hike in presentations at EDs could and should have been planned for, HSE chief executive Tony OBrien stoutly defended hospital management, saying the numbers presenting at emergency departments was not something they could control.

Mr OBrien said there had been a 6.7% rise in the numbers of patients presenting year-on-year at EDs.

Surgery has been cancelled in many hospitals due to overcrowding. At CUH, neurosurgery patients with diagnosed brain tumours and brain haemorrhages were forced to wait in EDs to access treatment as beds in the neurosurgery ward were occupied with patients with non-neurological medical and surgical problems, said John Duddy, a neurosurgery specialist register at CUH.

In Letterkenny General Hospital, Gerry Lane, regional spokesman for the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said patients had been waiting up to 20 hours to been seen at ED.

Weve put patients everywhere we possibly can, Dr Lane told RTEs Sean ORourke show. The hospital is so completely full, all surgery has actually been ceased here with the exception of caesarian section. So the entire hospital is on a battle footing, as it were, and the entire hospital is bent towards trying to get the situation under control.

Siptu has said ambulances at Limerick, CUH, MUH, Drogheda, Kerry, and Waterford hospitals were unable to respond to calls as they were obliged to stay with patients on stretchers until they were handed over to ED staff.

Patients are being left on stretchers for hours as we cant safely transfer them to the care of the hospital as there is no space, said Paul Bell of Siptu.

Mr OBrien said a fundamental redesign of the health system was required.

He is calling for significant transitional investment in primary care so GPs have recourse to diagnostics. He also warned that the flu and respiratory illness outbreak has not yet peaked and, as schools reopen, it could worsen.

Emergency consultant at CUH, Chris Luke, said ED overcrowding is relentlessly worsening and is being exacerbated by the shortage of beds, doctors, and nurses. He repeated a belief that too many people present at ED with diagnosed chronic problems such as ailments arising from degenerative joints and spines that flare up and down.

Dr Luke said these problems do not constitute an emergency, and should be better screened and dealt with in outpatient clinics.
He was named locally as Reese Cullen. It is believed he was stabbed in a house where he was living at Kilclare Crescent in Jobstown, west Tallaght, at around 3pm. Gardai are understood to be following a line of inquiry.

An ambulance brought him the short distance to Tallaght Hospital, but staff were unable to save him and he was pronounced dead.
The agreement struck with the Egyptian authorities ends a ban on EU beef in what had previously been one of the biggest markets for Irish beef in the world.

Agriculture Minister Michael Creed said his department, Bord Bia, and others will now be working to further explore export markets around the world for Irish produce.

The agreement provides for the approval of five Irish plants to begin exports to Egypt once the necessary technical arrangements are in place. Mr Creed referred to the potential of the Egyptian market for Irish beef and said: We know that prior to their ban on EU beef in the late 1990s it was one of the largest markets for Irish beef at the time.

Egypt is the largest consumer market in the Middle East and North Africa with 95m consumers, and is the third biggest destination for Irish agri-food exports to Africa with exports of 45m in 2015, comprising dairy and seafood. Egypt announced it was open to live Irish cattle last February. In addition to beef, the new deal also means approval for beef offal and a limited approval for particular types of sheepmeat products.

Mr Creed said: The search for new third-country markets is a top priority for my department and has taken on an added urgency in the context of the challenges posed by the upcoming UK exit from the EU.

The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association beef chairman, Edmond Phelan, also welcomed the news, saying he hoped it indicated more good news in the near future, such as efforts to secure live cattle trade with Algeria: With extra cattle supplies, these ongoing efforts to secure new markets are vital. We would also like to see the same efforts put into the potentially lucrative Iran market. ICSA has been lobbying for the reopening of the Irish Embassy in Tehran and has had talks with the Iranian Embassy on this issue.

In stressing the need to capitalise on new markets, he said the ICSA is also in discussion with the Central Bank on facilitating financial transactions between Ireland and Iran, which currently do not exist.

Mr Phelan also warned that there needed to be a sensible approach from the Irish processors exporting to Egypt. Any advantages to this market opening will be lost if we see factories undercutting each other on price for these contracts.
He says it is outrageous that some young people on the dole get 100 a week. In some cases, those out of work have been tormented to get a job, he claimed.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Mr Halligan also suggested a debate on whether Ireland should leave the EU may be needed once Britain exits the union.

Those out of work or on low wages deserved to be paid more, suggested the Independent Alliance TD.

Ive always believed that we need to come away from the minimum wage to a living wage, he said.

Mr Halligan believes all workers should get a living wage of 11.50 an hour, a rate much higher than the current minimum wage of 9.25. Some employers here, such as Ikea, currently pay a living wage.

He also says those out of work, particularly young welfare claimants, deserve the equivalent of the living wage, due to rising costs for food, energy and rent.

The vast majority of people want to work, he said. Were giving people 100 a week. Thats outrageous. I think it should be for every individual that is unemployed or every individual that works, at the very least they should have a living wage.

Sometimes we think, ah sure people can get by on 300 a week, people on welfare, jaysus that is handy money. Go into the houses  I have. Ask them to put down on the table what they spend, theres nobody saying Ill buy you a bottle of gin at the end of the week or well go for a meal at the local restaurant. Everything is eaten up with bills, rent, mortgage, television, gas, electricity. It is just not sufficient.
The Wild Deer Association of Ireland, which is concerned with deer management, as well as conservation, is concerned at the number of permits issued by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in 2016. The section 42 permits, which the department says are only issued to farmers whose crops and lands are seriously worried by deer, have almost doubled, yet no census of the deer population has been completed, the association say.

The tightening of regulations comes after claims in December that licences to shoot the red stags are ending up in the hands of American hunter tourists for substantial sums.
Howre oo goin on? The wife left me six months ago for a Dutch artist living inside in Bantry. Hes a very good looking man in fairness to him. Anyway, Ive decided to get myself a new chicky babe for the new year. Do you have any advice?  Dick Dan Donal, I enclose a picture of me in a pair of Speedos taken in Inchydoney last year.

Thanks for the warning. You might want to update your terminology. I havent heard the term chicky babe since a Cork Con disco in 1989, when I let a plug ugly rugby player feel me up because he went to Christians. I originally thought it might be a good idea for you to post your profile on Tinder.

And then I took a look at your photo. I havent laughed so much since I heard they were thinking of putting a Tourist Office in Kanturk. Theyd have less customers than a perfume shop selling Essence of Dunmanway!

Guten tag. My wife and I are enthusiastic swingers, who like to travel to Catholic countries where we find the locals get turned on by the fact that sex is forbidden. We are in Cork next week. Are you ready?  Klaus, Munich, we are in good shape for people in their 70s.

Seventies! I was just about to iron my Sexy But Forgetful Maid outfit until I read that. Im not ageist or anything, but the sight of anyone over the age of 45 in their underwear gives a savage fit of the gawks. I honestly think you are going to struggle to swing in Cork. Sex with a stranger over 70 is a minority pursuit, even in Kinsale. And to be honest with you, were not really that Catholic any more.

The only time most Irish people see the inside of a church these days is when theyre parading their children in for first holy communion. The poor priest has to burn extra incense to cover the smell of fake tan. (And thats on the kids.)

Story? The bird got some hotel vouchers for Christmas and were thinking of spending a weekend in Cork and that. Me cousin said that Cork people can be unfriendly to Dubs. Is that actually true, wha?  Moxer, Drimnagh, it will be my first time.

I remember my first time. Its amazing what happens when you mix a bench by the Atlantic Pond with a Spanish exchange student and half a bottle of Malibu. Your cousin is wrong when he says that Cork people are unfriendly to Dubs. Were unfriendly to everyone. Its kind of like our thing. I hear you get used to it after about 40 years. That said, there is plenty to enjoy around Cork. If you want to see people who dress like you but sound like theyre from Pakistan crossed with Wales, try a trip to the northside. You could also take a trip out of town for a tour around Spike Island. Ask your Da about it, he probably spent some time there when he was young.

My Ken broke his leg at an iron man event over Christmas and the doctor says he wont be able to chase women until July. So there is no need for me to go on a diet this January to keep him interested. The problem is, without a diet in place, Ill have nothing to boast about to the yummy mummies on the school run, when Cliona goes back to school next week. Can you think of an alternative?  Monica, Douglas, you cant see our house behind the trees.

Sorry to hear you cant afford a gardener. I hear boasting about your kids is enjoying a revival in Posh Cork. (What else is the point of having them, says you.) Apparently, giving your child a present worth less than 1,500 is considered a form of punishment. (Its considered worse than sending them to Douglas Community School in some quarters.) So boast away about that.

Hello old stock. Its Womens Christmas, so Im going give my wife Marjorie a break from the cooking. Where do you think I should send her to get us some takeaway?  Reggie, Blackrock Road, Im what you might call a modern man.

Where? In Afghanistan? Id be afraid of sending anyone out in Cork tonight. My Conor bumped into a gang of women from Ovens on Womens Christmas Last Year.

They were all over him like a cheap suit. He said it was like getting trapped on Monkey Island down in Fota. I said thats a terrible thing to say. About the poor monkeys. He said it would be hard to imagine anything worse. I said youve obviously never been at a hen party in Ballincollig.
In other cultures the mums, aunts and friends all breastfed and it is part of the norm but we dont have that here, its a very new culture to us, says Orla, a practice nurse who qualified as a IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) last year and is based in North East Cork.

Rates are increasing she says particularly in areas where mothers have better access to support groups run by the HSE or parent-to-parent support organisations like Friends of Breastfeeding.

The two weeks paid paternity leave for fathers, which came into effect last year, is also making a difference, she feels, while the new interactive HSE website, breastfeeding.ie, which provides online support from lactation consultants is a good resource.

A lot of mothers think that breastfeeding is going to be too hard and yes, it can be tough going for the first six weeks but thats true with any new baby. Theres usually no reason why you cannot breastfeed  if thats what you want to do.

Though breastfeeding is natural, it is also a learned skill. There can be challenges along the way, I call them speed bumps but most are easily fixed.

Like most Irish women, Orla had no experience of breastfeeding growing up. After qualifying and working as a nurse in London, she moved to Australia where early breastfeeding is the norm.

Her interest grew as she observed nursing mothers while working as volunteer nurse in a rural community in Guatemala.

It all seemed so normal and natural and easy, the mothers and grandmothers were there to provide support and advice and I thought: This is how it is meant to happen.

Moving to Cork and working as a practice nurse with new parents and then breastfeeding her two little boys, gave her the incentive to set up her support service Lactation Talk.

Its not really work to me, its about helping other people. Its about empowering women to make choices about feeding their baby, to have the confidence to know that what they are doing is right and also to know when to reach out to the support services that are available when something is not right, or just when they need reassurance.

Orla offers a one-and-a-half hour home consultation which addresses common difficulties and concerns with breastfeeding, such painful nursing and attachment difficulties, or worries about the frequency of feeds and if your baby is getting enough milk.

Tongue tie, a condition which affects about 10% of babies and causes feeding difficulties for some, can be diagnosed by a lactation consultant. She can give advice on increasing a low milk supply or if your newborn is slow to gain weight.

Evin OKeeffes first little boy was born early and she was unable to breastfeed. When she became pregnant with her second child, she was determined to try again. Aidan, now four months, also arrived early and needed to be given formula.

It took 10 weeks but with Orlas support, Evin was able to reach her goal of breastfeeding Aidan during the day, with bottles at night.

It was a very different experience this time, thanks to Orla listening to what I wanted and troubleshooting my breastfeeding and latching issues. Orlas pragmatic approach, not just her medical expertise but also her calm compassion as a mother, is very reassuring.

Orla recommends that couples who are considering breastfeeding spend time preparing before their baby is born and suggests take a breastfeeding class to get things off to a good start.

You wouldnt start driving a car without taking a few lessons, she says.

Her three-hour class covers the basics, such as different feeding positions and how to tell when your baby is hungry.

In the early days when mum is exhausted, its often the dads who are better able to recall her advice she says, although the class includes a 36-page booklet to take home.

Breastfed babies dont always need winding and that is the part of the class when I like to hand the doll to Daddy. There is a lot more to looking after a baby than feeding.

Dads can change nappies and their strong arms are great to hold baby securely in the bath. It gives Mum a break and when Daddy does skin to skin, its just as good.

Orla Dorgan will give an Introduction To Breastfeeding in Mahon, Cork on Jan 14 and in Fermoy on Jan 21, cost 75; www.lactationtalk.com

Feeding tips

Continue to eat well and often, as during pregnancy. Drink plenty of fluids and rest as much as possible. Oats, for example, a bowl of porridge and some fennel tea  up to three cups a day  will help to increase milk supply.

Put a little bag together to have within easy reach during a feed. Include a bottle of water and some snacks and, if you wish, your phone. This is especially useful when you are on your own at home and there is no one to fetch anything for you.

Soothe and protect sore nipples with Lansinoh lanolin cream, 14.99. It is safe for baby and does not have to be removed before a feed. Multi-Mam Compresses, 14.99, can be used after a feed to ease any discomfort.

The Haakaa Silicone Breast Pump, 19.99, is a one-piece hand pump for expressing milk as your baby gets older and for relief if engorged.

Useful websites:

www.breastfeeding.ie

www.friendsofbreast feeding.ie

www.cuidiu-ict.ie

www.lalecheleagueireland.com

www.alcireland.ie
Burma Burma Army Chief: Some Ethnic Leaders Are Narrow-Minded

Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing speaks in Naypyidaw on Jan. 4. / Senior General Min Aung Hlaing / Facebook

Burma Army commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing said that government troops must continue to engage in military action because leaders of some ethnic armed organizations in the country are narrow-minded in their approach to peace.

The senior general made the comment during a ceremony awarding gallantry medals and certificates to military members in Naypyidaw on Jan. 4, which marked the 69th anniversary of Burmas independence from British rule.

Instead of promoting democracy in a peaceful way, the leaders of some ethnic armed organizations with a narrow-minded attitude till today are trying to threaten the lives and property of the people and harm the State interest as well as lacking the real spirit to achieve peace, Min Aung Hlaing is quoted as writing, in English, on his Facebook page.

Therefore, military means is still inevitable. Ignoring the appeasement, patience and negotiations of the government and Tatmadaw, they are trying to jeopardize the national sovereignty by stirring up conflicts,he said.

The army chief also said that the ethnic armed organizations in question carry out anarchic acts led by extremists, in contrast to Burma Army troops, who he said are engaging in a fair war.

Although Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing did not mentionany ethnic armed organizations by name, observers speculated that he was referring to those who opted out of signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) in 2015, such as members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an ethnic armed alliance.

Khu Oo Reh, general secretary of the UNFC, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that Min Aung Hlaings comments do not indicate progress.

It is not solution to find excuses and blame ethnic leaders as being narrow-minded, he told The Irrawaddy.

He also said that it was not helpful to criticize ethnic leaders who did not follow the steps of the peace process laid down by the Burmese government and the Burma Army.

We should find a way for both sides to agree in dealing with the peace process. We have to negotiate to reach an agreement and it may take time. We have to talk. Before we have reached an agreement, they shouldnt conclude that we are narrow-minded or stubborn, Khu Oo Reh said.

While emphasizing that ethnic armed organizations suffer the most from ongoing conflict, he also added that if these groups continue to blame the Burma Army for airstrikes in Kachin and Shan states, the blame game would not end.

Eight ethnic armed organizations signed the NCA with the previous government in October 2015. Yet some powerful groups, including United Wa State Army and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) did not sign it. The KIA and three other members of the recently formed Northern Allianceincluding the Taang National Liberation Army, the Myanmar Democratic Alliance Army and the Arakan Armyare still engaged in war with the Burma Army.
Burma Burma Army Soldier Sentenced to Two Years over Students Death

A protest for justice over the death of Gum Seng Awng in Rangoon, July 2016. (Photo: Pyay Kyaw/ The Irrawaddy) A protest for justice over the death of Gum Seng Awng in Rangoon, July 2016. / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

A Burma Army private was handed down a two-year jail sentence with hard labor at Kachin States Myitkyina military court on Thursday over the death of unarmed university student Gum Seng Awng in June last year.

The 19-year-old student was shot dead by Pvt. Maung Maung in Myitkyina on June 20, 2016 after an altercation between soldiers guarding Bala Min Htin Bridge and a group of Kachin men, prompting protests in Kachin State and Rangoon.

Two days later the ministry of defense officially declared the cause of death a misfire but pledged to take action in accordance with military procedures.

The students family testified at the military court on Nov. 29 last year and were called to hear the military courts judgment on Thursday evening.

There is no justice for [Gum Seng Awng] because we lost him forever, while the private only received punishment for causing someones death and expulsion from the military, Zau Jat who initiated the Justice for Gum Seng Awng campaign told The Irrawaddy.

We are consulting legal experts to seek justice for him through the public court, Zau Jat added.

A lawyer close to the family in Myitkyinawho spoke on condition of anonymitysaid that the family would file further complaints in accordance with the law, as the Gum Seng Awng case was filed at the Myitkyina police station on the night of his death.

Usually the charge for causing death should be up to seven years in prison but this [sentence] is very low, he said. We think it is related to politics, he added, in reference to the current conflicts between the Tatmadaw and the Kachin Independence Army in the north.

The military could have transferred the case to a public court, but had not had done so, the lawyer said.
Burma Chin State Lawmaker Dies in Road Collision

Hung Khen, on the right. / The Irrawaddy

Hung Khena Chin State lawmaker representing Matupi Township Constituency 1died on Friday morning after suffering severe head injuries in a motorbike accident at 6 p.m. on Thursday evening.

The 38-year-old National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker died on his way to Mandalay hospital on Friday at 3:40 a.m. after the accident in Matupi Township, said the Chin State government.

He received emergency treatment at the Matupi hospital for nearly one hour, but due to his serious condition, we decided to take him to Mandalay, said Salai Isaac Khen, the Chin State minister for electricity and energy.

But he died as soon as we arrived at the hospital in Mindat Township, he explained.

The collision occurred when three young people on a motorbike hit Hung Khens. Of the three others involved, one suffered severe injuries while the other two suffered minor injuries and were detained by authorities.

Hung Khen became the fourth NLD lawmaker to have died within a year of being elected in the 2015 general election.

Last month, Mandalay regional lawmaker U Aung San Oo died from liver cancer.

Both of their constituencies will remain vacant in the upcoming by-elections as the processing of candidates has already finished, according to U Tin Tun, the director general of the Union Election Commission (UEC).

Ninety-five candidates applied to contest seats in the by-elections on April 1 for a total of 19 seats in the Union and state level parliaments, according to the UEC.

Zue Zue contributed to this report.
Burma Detained Eleven Media CEO and Editor Released on Bail

Eleven Media Group CEO U Than HtutAung appears at a Rangoon court for a hearing on November 11. / J Paing / The Irrawaddy

RANGOONEleven Media Groups CEO and chief editor, who were charged under the controversial Article 66(d) of Burmas Telecommunications Law, have beenreleased on 50 million kyats bail after being detained for nearly two months.

Tamwe Township court accepted the bail requestsput forward for health reasonsforCEO U Than HtutAung and chief editor U WaiPhyo at the court hearing on Friday. The court had denied the bail three times previously.

Defense lawyer U KyeeMyint told The Irrawaddy that the CEOs deteriorating health became visible at the previous hearing, and that he had received medical treatment in court. U Than HtutAung suffered a heart attack during his time in detention and also arrived at past hearings in an ambulance.

The two defendants had been held in Rangoons notorious Insein Prison since Nov. 11. They were sued by Rangoon Divisions chief minister U Phyo Min Thein on Nov. 9 over an editorial headlined A Year After the Nov. 8 Poll, written by U Than HtutAung.It claimed that a chief minister whose monthly salary is only around US$2,500 wore a Patek Philippe watch worth an estimated US$100,000. The article also suggested that the watch was a gift from a wealthy benefactor. It was featured in the Nov. 6 issue of Eleven Medias daily newspaper and was reposted to U Than HtutAungs Facebook account.

The case appeared to be the firstuse of the controversial law against the media under the new National League for Democracy-led government.

Article 66(d) of Burmas Telecommunications Law states that anyone found guilty of extorting, coercing, restraining wrongfully, defaming, disturbing, causing undue influence or threatening any person by using any telecommunications network shall be punished with a maximum of three years in prison, a fine, or both.

Eleven Media issued apologies for their editorial last month. Yet the secretary of the Rangoon divisional government has said that the defamation charges against Eleven Media Group will not be dropped.

The next court hearing will be held on Jan 13.
Burma Four Burmese Migrant Workers Reported Dead in Kuala Lumpur Machete Attack

The funeral of a Burmese migrant worker killed in Malaysia in December 2014. / Reuters

RANGOON  Four Burmese men were killed and three badly injured in a machete attack on 13 migrant workers in the Bukit Serdang area of Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, according to U San Win of the The Kathpone Free Funeral Service Society in Kuala Lumpur.

The 13 Burmese employees of a television hardware factory in the Malaysian capital were attacked by a group of men armed with machetes after they left the factory at 10 p.m. on Thursday, U San Win told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

Four died at the scene of the crime while three are receiving medical treatment at Serdang general hospital, he said.

The rest of them were terrified. They could not remember the faces of the violent attackers and there was no lighting on the path, said U San Win on the phone from Kuala Lumpur, adding that the Burmese embassy has demanded that the Malaysian authorities investigate the assault.

An embassy staffer confirmed the attack and said that Burmese officials would be visiting the individuals in hospital, but declined to give further comment.

Representatives from Serdang Hospital told The Irrawaddy it could not provide information about the patients.

According to U San Win, four of the victims held official passports while another three are believed to be migrant workers. He was still inquiring the victims places of birth in Burma.

The Irrawaddy was not able to reach any of the victims for comment.

This is not the first attack on Burmese workers in Malaysia: in July 2014, U San Win reported that four migrants were killed by unknown attackers over 10 days. Dozens of Burmese were killed in Malaysia in 2013 and 2014.
Burma IDPs Face Food Shortages

Displaced civilians take shelter inside a monastery in Namtu town, Dec. 22, 2016. / Khun Myo Satt

RANGOON  More than 1,300 internal displaced persons (IDPs) who are taking shelter in a monastery in northern Shan States Namtu town will soon face food shortages, according to local sources.

Nang Sam Hown, a lawmaker from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy in Namtu Township said the IDPs have enough food for one week. She added that the IDPs are also facing problems finding sufficient shelter as well.

Fighting broke out in the area between the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) as well as between the TNLA and the Burma Army. The conflict forced local Shan, Kachin and Palaung (Taang) people to flee the township.

About 1,300 IDPs took refuge at five camps in Namtu Township, as well as in religious buildings.

The government and local donors are providing food and shelter for IDPs but it still is not enough. Also, some donors cannot make it to the area for various reasons, said Nang Sam Hown.

Ethnic Shan and Palaung had previously lived alongside one another for years. However, SSA-S troops reportedly tried to form a base in northern Shan State after the group signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement in Oct. 2015, prompting the TNLA to attack in an effort to oust the group from the area.

A Rangoon-based local NGO also visited an IDP camp in Kachin States Mansi Township hosting 2,500 people and said that soon, it too will face a food shortage.

U Moe Kyaw Thu Bo Bo, a senior staff member from the NGO, hosted a press conference on Friday in Rangoon at the Royal Rose guesthouse where he told reporters about his trip and the food insecurity in IDP camps.

He added that Burmese authorities have restricted the transportation of humanitarian aid at Shan States Ruili Bridge.

On the phone, you can get permission to cross. But on the ground, it is a different story. They wont let you cross. I was hidden in the back of a car in order to get into the camps, he said.

If this restriction remains, people in the camps will go hungry, said U Moe Kyaw Thu Bo Bo.
Burma Mon State Self-help Group Leading the Way for People Living with HIV

Wai Wai Lwin, a member of the Goldfish support group for HIV+ people in Southeast Burma. / IOM

In the southeast of Burma, just outside of Mawlamyine in Mon State, the Shwe Nga Lay Goldfish Group operates out of an unassuming building, which they constructed with their own funds, write Patrick Duigan and Liam Best.

The group started projects in Thanbyuzayat Township in 2013 with the assistance and support of the International Organization or Migration (IOM) and is a support group for those in the community living with HIV. When the group was established there was a lot of stigma associated with being HIV positive, and many were seen as social deviants or, at worst, pariahs within their local community.

HIV is a serious and scary disease and since I have a good moral attitude, I thought I would never suffer such a kind of disease. I disliked the people who had HIV and thought that they are suffering this disease because they dont have a good moral attitude. I could only understand those people when I suffered HIV and it totally changed my mindset. I started to realize that anyone can suffer HIV, says group member Wai Wai Lwin.

Burma is one of 35 countries that account for 90 percent of new HIV infections worldwide. In the southeast of the country, where migration within Burma and back and forth to Thailand is a part of life, access to services for HIV including testing, treatment and care and support is limited, particularly for those in rural areas or on the move.

IOM has been working with the communities and the National AIDS Program to increase access to services for both migrants and host communities. Part of this support includes helping to establish self-help groups like Shwe Nga Lay to empower patients and their families to work together with communities to reduce stigma and provide social supports.

The group is made up nearly entirely by those living with HIV and its members are passionate about making a difference in their communities and their own lives. They are involved in a range of community-focused activities that increase health education for people about HIV, such as in some local schools and additionally, support their members through monitoring medication adherence for the Anti-Retroviral Therapy medication provided by IOM and by paying for funeral costs.

I felt like I wouldnt live long, when the doctor told me that I have HIV. I didnt know that there was an ART medicine for HIV patients. But as a Buddhist, I keep in my mind that I have to do good things before I die. An IOM outreach worker helped to refer me for testing and then for ART treatment and now I am able to live a happier life, says Wai Wai Lwin.

While IOM provides HIV programmes in Mon State and in Kayin State, there is currently no comprehensive information available on HIV prevalence for migrants and mobile populations in Burma. Increased research and testing is crucial to understanding the most effective ways to reach these groups.

Shwe Ngar Lay group has come a long way since its inception. The group now operates a not-for-profit store nearby at Set Se Beach selling clothing on a plot of land donated by the Township Authority. The shop was funded by one of the group members and its profits go back into running the groups activities. There are now plans to open a second not-for-profit store. An adjacent building will act as a safe space for its members.

The group continues to live normal lives and is making an impact on changing attitudes and reducing stigmatization of people living with HIV. The group strives to be a positive force in their community.

IOM currently provides ART for almost 2,000 people living with HIV in South East Burma and is working with the National AIDS Programme to increase services and reach to migrants, host communities and ethnic areas of Burma.

I know that by taking ART medicine regularly and by staying healthy, I could live long like someone without HIV. I dont feel depressed about being HIV positive or thinking of having a short life. After I became aware about HIV, I am sure that I can lead a life like a normal person, says Wai Wai Lwin.
Burma New Mandalay City Development Committee Members Sworn In

New committee members for the Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) are sworn in on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

MANDALAY  New committee members for the Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) were sworn in on Friday, six months after MCDCs election.

At the ceremony, six members elected by the public in 2016 and five others selected directly by Mandalays regional government were sworn in as the new committee representatives.

The first thing I would like to do is to amend the municipal law, which needs to be modified in some parts, said U Kyaw Zaw Aung, an elected MCDC member and a jade trader.

He said that the law calling for for the appointment of the mayor directly by the regional government needs to be amended to allow for a public election of the mayor.

At the ceremony on Friday, committee members vowed to work for the city and the people. Chief Minister of Mandalay Division U Zaw Myint Maung urged the new members to revive the image of MCDC, in which he pointed out that the locals have lost interest and faith.

In past years, the image of MCDC has not been in good shape because of mismanagement by the ex-government. New committee members have to revive it, said the chief minister.

The public interest and hopes are also high and there are many eyes looking on at MCDCs new committee members. I would like to urge you all to work sincerely and to always look toward the publics needs, he added.

Although the committee members were sworn in,their duties, official ranks and the position of vice mayor have yet to be appointed.

We will try our best with any kind of duties appointed to us. As for me, Im hoping to reform the weak points of the MCDC, said U Kyaw Yin Myint, an author and columnist from Mandalay who was selected to serve on the committee directly by the regional government.

The public election for the MCDC was held in September 2016. Six membersU Ye Mon, U Saw Han, U Zaw Myo Lwin, U Kyaw Zeya, U Kyaw Zaw Aung and U Khaing Myint, from Amarapura, Pyigyitagon, Chanmyathazi, Chanayethazan, Maha Aung Myay and Aung Myaythazan townships, respectivelywere elected out of 34 candidates.

Members handpicked by the regional government include U Kyaw Yin Myint, Dr. Thit Sin, U Ye Myat Thu and DawMyint Myint Than. Secretary U Aung Kyaw Tun, and joint secretary U Thet Naing Tun were re-appointed.
Burma To Avoid the Conflict Trap, Burma Should Protect its Forests

A woman walks with children near logs at a timber yard in Rangoon. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Transitions from war are tough. When grievances smolder and economies fail to recover, most countries fall into a conflict trap and war resumes. To escape the trap, post-conflict governments often exploit forests, minerals, and other natural resources to jump-start war-torn economies.

But instead of leading to boom-times, weak governance frequently leads to corruption and an abuse of the countrys natural resources, all of which exacerbate tensions. Rather than rushing to open up a countrys natural resources, peace-builders should work to protect them.

Burma is at just such a watershed moment. Daw Aung San Suu Kyis landslide gave her National League for Democracy (NLD) a strong mandate for reform. While there is much to be done on all fronts, the new governmentand their international partnersmust include a focus on forests in their dialogue on reform.

Forest management in the past has been marked by corruption and mismanagement as Burmas generals were accused of granting cronies the rights, or concessions, to log teak and clear forests, including for the expansion of commercial agriculture, in exchange for money needed to prop up the military regime.

This ceasefire capitalism enflamed grievances with ethnic groups that lay claim to, and depend on, these forests for their livelihoods. The scramble to allocate forest-use rights produced overlapping claims, creating legal uncertainty over who has the right to work in a given area.

About a third of Burmas population depend on forests for their livelihoods, and effectively managed forests could make a significant contribution to these livelihoods, and strengthen the political and economic reform processes. While Burmas Forest Department has already taken the first step by placing a moratorium on logging, unfortunately the NLD cabinet recently decided to lift the sanctions in the new year.

Instead, the Forest Department should maintain the moratorium and tie it to a larger program of forest-reform based on environmental peacebuilding. Regional grievances explode around perceived injustices such as land grabs for forestry and agricultural concessions. Factions access money from the illegal exploitation of natural resources, raising the likelihood that grievanceor sheer opportunism and greedwill erupt into armed conflict.

Uncertainty around overlapping land and logging claims kills investment and the economic activity crucial to escaping the conflict trap. Elsewhere, as in Indonesia, we have already seen how a corrupt forest sector bank-rolled election campaigns, undermining the transition to democracy. For true change to take root, the conditions that prevent it must first be addressed.

There is clarity to this logic, as well as precedent. A decade ago, the United Nations sanctioned Liberias blood diamonds and its timber  the sale of which provided the revenues that contributed to funding the recurring war in West Africa. Before the timber sanctions were lifted, the Security Council required that not only the Government of Liberia reform the sector to gain government control of the forests, but also that revenue could not fuel further conflict. Revenues from the sale of timber would need to be used for legitimate purposes for the benefit of the Liberian people, including development.

The Security Council held firm to these conditions. First, the Liberian government reviewed all the logging concessions and concluded that not one could meet the minimum legal standards. Based on this finding, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared all concessions null and void. The review was followed by a series of reforms that satisfied the UN Security Councils objective that past illegal actions would not be repeated in a way that might threaten the peace. More than a decade later, Liberia is still at peace. Considering the conflict trap as it has played out time and again elsewhere, this is no mean feat.

In Burma, however, discussions relating to the transition to democratic rule have barely addressed the management of natural resources, even though the countrys economy is resource-dependent and many of the tensions that drove the war are deeply rooted in control over this wealth. According to the Myanmar Peace Monitoring database, of the 15 ceasefire agreements with the different armed ethnic groups, only five even mention logging, and these five only focus on allowing the timber trade to continue rather than addressing underlying issues of mismanagement and corruption.

Recognizing widespread mismanagement in the forest sector where illegal logging practices have long posed a threat to national security within the country, the Burma government last August imposed a moratorium on all logging until March. But a suspension that lasts one logging season is unlikely to change much of anything. In order to drive real change, the Forest Department must do what the Security Council did in Liberia: tie the moratorium to reform. As a first step, a concession review will help the public understand how the forestry sector operated to the detriment of the citizens of Burma.

This knowledge will help build a constituency for change that rejects business as usual. It will help build the political will to drive political and business elites to enact the reforms that they might otherwise resist. International partners can help apply pressure, and consumersimporters of timber can reinforce the reforms by complying with the moratorium, and, once it is lifted, by trading only with legal operators.

Tying the logging moratorium to real long-lasting reform will strengthen governance, especially the protection of local rights. Rather than undermine development, a reformed forest sector will help Burma avoid the conflict trap and put the country on a path to peace. If the drivers of conflict, like natural resources, are not addressed in the peace-building process, failure is all too likely. Seizing the opportunities and managing such challenges, however, can contribute to peace building.

Michael Jenkins is president and CEO of Forest Trends. Art Blundell is an advisor to Forest Trends.
Burma Two Kachin Pastors Remain Missing

Gam Seng (L) and Nawng Latt (R) have been missing since Christmas Eve. / Kachin Baptist Convention

The whereabouts of Nawng Latt and Gam Seng, two Kachin pastors who disappeared on Christmas Eve in the battle-scarred northern Shan State town of Mong Ko after being summoned by the army, remain unknown.

The two men had helped journalists from Rangoon (including those from The Irrawaddy) report on the situation in Mong Ko, the site of recent heavy fighting between the Burma Army and a coalition of ethnic armed groups. They are affiliated with the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), the largest church group operating among the largely Christian Kachin community.

Zau Ra, a KBC official based in Lashio, told The Irrawaddy that although his organization was very concerned for the safety of his missing colleagues, the current security situation in Mong Ko has not enabled them to mount a search for the pair.

No one dares to go and search for them. So, we do not know what their condition is, said Zau Ra. The KBC and relatives of the missing men reported their disappearance at a police station in Mong Ko on Tuesday.

We brought witnesses as well when we filed the case. Those witnesses saw them traveling before they went missing, said Zau Ra.

According to Zau Ra, army officials stationed in Mong Ko summoned the pair in order to assist in facilitating the release of local people who had been detained at a hill base in Mong Ko. The two have not been seen since they left for the appointment.

We have witnesses and we know what they went for. But, no one has dared to talk to the army about it, said Zau Ra, who added that his organization would hold a meeting soon to discuss what follow-up steps to take.

He added that the disappearance was difficult to comprehend.

They have no enemies, Zau Ra said. They get along with everyone. I saw them enjoying time with [government] troops during the harvest festival before the clashes. I was surprised that they went missing.

Located near the China-Burma border in Muse Township, Mong Ko was the scene of heavy fighting between the Burma Army and Northern Alliance forces beginning in late November. The Northern Alliance held the town briefly and captured the leader of a local pro-government militia, in what was seen as a major embarrassment for the military.

Heavy bombardment from government forceswhich included airstrikeseventually dislodged the Northern Alliance from Mong Ko. The UN has estimated that the recent fighting in and around Mong Ko forced as many as 15,000 people to flee to China.

Catholic church officials maintain that the heavy damage inflicted on the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Mong Ko was the result of government airstrikes, a charge disputed by the Burma Army.

The Northern Alliance consists of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Arakan Army (AA), and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). None of the groups signed the 2015 nationwide ceasefire agreement with the government.

Nan Lwin Hnint Pwint contributed to this report.
Friday, January 6th, 2017 (8:53 am) - Score 372

The Welsh Government has come under fire after it was revealed that 28 primary schools in Wales, most of which exist in rural areas, suffer from such poor connectivity that they struggle to access the required online learning resources. One School described it as a a form of rural deprivation.

The main challenge here is that most of the related schools exist in areas where local connectivity is poor, which means that connecting them to a fast broadband or dedicated leased line connection can often attract high excess construction costs. Not so easy for smaller rural schools to afford.

Under the current policy Secondary schools in Wales are supposed to gain access to a minimum connection speed of 100Mbps (Megabits per second), while smaller primary and special schools should gain a much slower but still useful 10Mbps capable solution.

The 28 Schools (Locations)

6 in Powys

6 in Carmarthenshire

4 in Ceredigion

4 in Conwy

3 in Gwynedd

2 in Denbighshire

1 in Wrexham

1 in Flintshire

1 in Anglesey

However in fairness the Welsh Government did recently announce a further commitment of up to 80 million to help roll-out fast reliable broadband to every property in Wales by 2020 (here) and shortly after that they confirmed that another 5 million had been set aside specifically to help upgrade broadband at 400 Schools across Wales (here).

A Spokesman for the Welsh Education Secretary said (BBC): With 28 schools still needing improvement, we recognise there is more to do. Which is why we have also just announced an additional 5m to enable all schools to have access to superfast broadband and ensure they have the infrastructure needed to prepare pupils for the modern world. We are working closely with the respective local authorities to ensure all 28 schools affected will have increased broadband services to support the digital competence framework by end of March this year.

We should point out that these problems are by no means unique to Wales, with other parts of England and Scotland also suffering from some similar issues. Mercifully the on-going roll-out is helping to reduce the issue with each passing year, but thats little consolation if youre one of those still waiting to benefit.
5 Steps to Protect Executives from a Whale-Phishing Attack

While wading through the hundreds of security predictions I received last month, most of what I saw was expected  thoughts about the future of ransomware, DDoS attacks, the Internet of Things security, and even artificial intelligence and machine learning. What did surprise me was the number of predictions made about cybersecurity insurance. Thats not a prediction topic that normally makes its way into my mailbox; in fact, it is a topic that rarely comes up in my discussions with security professionals. Thats why one mention of a cybersecurity insurance prediction caught my eye. And then I noticed it mentioned multiple times and wondered why.

Cyber insurance is on the rise, as more companies adopt plans and more underwriters expand their portfolio and grow their premiums, Jake Olcott, VP of Business Dev at BitSight, explained to me in an email. Okay, that makes sense. While I couldnt find corresponding information on U.S. companies and the adoption of cybersecurity insurance, I did note that these types of insurance plans grew by 50 percent between 2015 and 2016 in the UK. According to Infosecurity Magazine,a CFC Underwriting poll found:

Some 23 percent claimed the fear factor of a costly attack had driven them to invest in insurance, while even more (26 percent) cited the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a factor. . . . Over half (53 percent) of respondents claimed that electronic computer crime will likely lead to an increase in insurance claims, followed by non-physical business interruption (25 percent).

The problem with cybersecurity insurance, Rick Tracy, chief security officer and Senior VP at Telos Corporation, told me, is that there isnt a great deal of actuarial data to help insurance carriers underwrite cyber risk, which means the aggregate effect of cyber risk and the financial liability it poses are critical concerns for the insurance industry. This is why Tracys prediction stated:

Moving forward, not only will it be important for insurance companies to better understand the risks facing individual clients, but they will need to view this data over their entire portfolios to understand aggregate risk and ensure they are not over extended.

Olcott said he believes to make cybersecurity insurance credible and to justify its costs, companies and underwriters will use a Big Data analytics approach in 2017, adding:

Beyond the data, there will be a new focus on what happens during the lifetime of a business relationship. Underwriters will begin developing programs that drive better security hygiene. In the same way that health insurance providers developed no-smoking policies or provide discounts for gym memberships, cyber insurance underwriters will reward companies for taking a more proactive approach toward cybersecurity.

That idea corresponds with the prediction from Emy Donavan, North American head of cyber for Allianz Global, who thinks that well see cyber insurance policies that are tailored for specific industries, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Although I dont expect to hear a lot about cybersecurity insurance going into the new year, I do think that well see new approaches to insurance coverage, especially as the threat of cyberattacks rise.

Sue Marquette Poremba has been writing about network security since 2008. In addition to her coverage of security issues for IT Business Edge, her security articles have been published at various sites such as Forbes, Midsize Insider and Toms Guide. You can reach Sue via Twitter: @sueporemba
Samsung makes the Internet go crazy again. First, the buzz was on the fiery Galaxy 7 in 2016 and now, netizens are scratching their heads while trying to figure out if the allegedly leaked Galaxy 8 photos are the real deal.

Nothing has been confirmed as of now. However, the design does match the reported description of the mobile device. Galaxy 8 apparently will not have a bezel, or the rim that holds the covering. You can find curves edges on the phone. The navigation and physical home buttons also seem to have been ditched but there might be buttons hidden somewhere. We might be getting a home button and fingerprint scanner already embedded into the screen.

The photo of the Samsung Galaxy 8 sporting a gold color that has been making rounds on the Internet came from the popular Chinese social site, Weibo. It can be viewed for analyses on the Slashleaks website. The display also seems to be around 5.7 inches to 6.2 inches in size. What seems to be clear is that the screen featured is bigger than the Galaxy S7 Edge which came with a 5.5-inch display, especially because of the notable absence of the home button.

So, is this the real deal? We were supposed to have that answered this February during the Mobile World Congress which will run from February 27 until March 2. Samsung traditionally makes an appearance in the show, however, Samsung will most probably set its own event in New York in March 2017 while Galaxy 8 will be sold on April 18.

This delay isn't really much of a shocker. Samsung has even purportedly sent emails to every company employee, telling them to be much more secretive. We are sure Samsung is just making sure to keep every detail perfect and guarantee that Galaxy 8 will avoid the same fate of its predecessor.
Is Cancer cure found?

The research team from the University of Coimbra in Portugal has announced. The first trial involving 14 patients that have advanced head and neck cancer has revealed positive outcome. In one case wherein the tumor totally disappeared.

They call it the photodynamic therapy. The research team developed the molecule, redaporphine. It is stimulated by infrared light. And when it comes into contact with oxygen it will produce molecules that will eradicate all the tissues around it.

It can be steered directly directly to the tumor. The Dosage is adjusted according to the level of highest efficiency. The molecule then begins destroying the tumor but not the healthy tissues around it.

Clinical trials on the first 14 patients were positive. Soon the clinical trials will be conducted with a larger group. It is hoped that if the treatment continue to show positive results; the cure will be available on the market by 2022.

The exploitation rights for the cancer cure found, developed by University of Coimbra is held by the Portuguese firm Luzitin.

According to the Pravda Report, redaporphine is a photosensitizer, this means that it activates if it rcieves the right light. For this treatment is is infrared for the reason that it could penetrate human tissues more effectively.

Without the right light the molecule remains totally inactive. Procedure waits until the molecule reaches the tumor and trigger it with infrared light to begin eradicating the tumor.

Professor Luis Arnaut led the team that developed the molecule that is totally synthetic. The clinical trials were conducted by Doctor Lucio Lara Santos in the Oncology departments of the Hospital CUF in Oporto and IPO.

The Portuguese Oncology Institute, in Lisbon on fourteen volunteers with spinocellular cancers of the head and neck. The results were remarkable and side effects were slight and manageable.

This could be the beginning of another breakthrough in medical history. This is proven to be effective on head and neck cancers, however, there are more kinds of cancer.

According to the Science Daily, researchers were working on a safer way to deliver cancer-fighting drugs without damaging other healthy tissues.

Redaporphine could be the beginning of a good fight against cancer.
Global warming has been in the news often now. There are warning signs about it, yet there are also those who don't seem to believe in it. Now global warming facts have it that data shows that temperature rise is constant.

Global warming is continuing, despite some doubting this. A new study has shown that global warming is moving forward. In 2015 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has made adjustments to show that ocean temperatures have risen in the previous decades. There were those though, especially in Congress, who doubted the data.

Now a new study is confirming the data that NOAA has shown earlier. The data was taken from buoys and other marine devices that show ocean temperatures are rising. This finding has been made by the study's lead author, Zeke Hausfather from the University of California Berkeley.

The NOAA data were taken by ships used to gather scientific data. The data were then adjusted in order to consider heat coming from the ship's engines. The data from buoys and satellite though aren't affected by heat artificially. This makes the data coming from such sources to be more accurate, yet at the same time also show that temperatures are rising in the oceans.

Temperature readings in the past were done in ships, according to ABC News. This was the situation back in the 1990s. Buoys today are doing the same job. The readings coming from buoys are much more accurate since there are fewer factors that can affect the readings.

The measurements have so far shown conclusion, as The Daily Mail reports. They show that temperatures have increased over a 20-year period. Other scientists as well have confirmed the accuracy of the readings.

Andrew Dressler from the Texas A&M University and Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research aren't involved in the study, but have confirmed that the readings taken have been accurate. Trenberth has said that the study should dismiss any notion that the data has errors.

Global warming is a reality that the world now faces. Global warming facts has data that shows that temperature rise is constant. Another ice age though might also be due, as scientists see ocean currents collapsing.
Sweden's six hour workday is being dropped. The major cause of abandoning the experiment is finances.

In the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, an experiment was conducted for two years. Staff at Svartedalens old people's home has only to work for six hours a day.

The experiment has shown that staff working for a total six hours a shift have improved productivity. The nurses say that they feel healthier and are less prone to take sick leaves. Also, better patient care was provided by the staff reportedly.

According to Monica Axhede, Director of the Svartedalens Nursing Home, the experiment had created a more relaxed atmosphere for the patients.

According to her, many of the residents of the home had dementia and as a result of less stress in the home, these patients are quieter and peaceful as compared to before the experiment.

In addition to this, Axhede states that the home had created more jobs by hiring more staff as reported in an article by the Independent.

Daniel Bernmar, the leader of the Left party who is heading the trial reported that the experiment is associated with higher costs. He stated that in order to carry out a shortening of working hours within a reasonable timeframe, more money must be spent.

According to Bernmar, the home had to employ 17 extra staff to facilitate the six hour workday experiment. This costs 12 million kronor or $1.3 million as reported by the International Business Times.

Bernmar however dismisses reports that claim that the experiment was a failure. He states that the economic costs outweighing the benefits remains to be seen.

Latest reports states that the cost of unemployment has been slashed by 4.7 million kronor during the first 18 months of the experiment. This comes after increased rate of employment generated by the experiment.

Bernmar further stated that he personally believes that working shorter hours is a long term solution.
The Consumer Electronics Show 2017 is showcasing some real winners, including the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoga from Lenovo. The company made some very smart changes to the previous generation, without sacrificing the power and feel that has become standard with the company. Both units are sure to make waves once they hit the market in a few short weeks.

The upcoming device will be the fifth in the line of X1 Carbon units, as The Verge notes. The first thing that consumers will notice is that the company has decreased the size of the bezels. So much so that the 14-inch screen actually looks like a standard 13-inch laptop. But despite this, the webcam is still located at the middle and top of the display, unlike other models that have had to move it to the corner.

The publication also notes that the X1 Carbon has amazing battery life, no matter how many items the device is working on at a given time. Lenovo boasts of a 15.5-hour battery life. Considering the weight of the device - 1.12 kilograms or 2.5 pounds - the battery life is an exceptional surprise. The display itself has a 1080p resolution, but this can be upgraded to 2560 x 1440.

The weight, in particular, is possible because of the laptop's design. Lenovo used carbon fiber mesh for the top lid, which allows the X1 Carbon to be so light, yet so durable. The rest of the device is made of magnesium alloy, which allows the unit to be held comfortably without any glossy -- or slippery -- sides.

Microsoft is found all over the X1 Carbon, both inside and out. Aesthetically, users will see that a Windows Precision Trackpad has been installed into the unit - but the classic red TrackPoint nub is still present as well. In terms of operating system, Lenovo has fit in the Microsoft Signature Edition of Windows 10, which means that users will get zero added bloatware.

One sacrifice that Lenovo does make is that there is no SD Card slot in the X1 Carbon. Removing the same was apparently necessary to make the unit as thin and as light as it is. According to the publication, a company representative was asking CES 2017 attendees if they were willing to sacrifice thickness and weight for the SD Card port.

Another aesthetic change that Lenovo made is that the X1 Carbon is now available in silver, in addition to the standard black. However, as Trusted Reviews notes, this is also available with the X1 Yoga. But one thing that the Yoga has on the Carbon is that its keyboard retracts completely whenever the device is closed or in tablet mode. Despite this, the user will still feel comfortable pressing its keys.

Like the X1 Carbon, the Yoga is also fitted with the Windows Precision Trackpad, thereby providing a quicker and more natural response, as well as better gesture recognition. There are two USB C 3.1 ports, three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a gigabit Ethernet, a microSD slot, a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro SIM card slot. There is also WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga is lightweight and thin as well. The device measures out at just 17mm at its thickest and only weighs 1.42 kilograms. The publication points out that this does not make it the thinnest and lightest option out there, but it does make up for this in terms of hardware.

An Intel Core i7-7600U processor powers the X1 Yoga, which also provides the device with Intel's Iris Plus Graphics 640 chip. However, there is another, lower-end version of the unit available. This one is fitted with a standard HD Graphics 620 chip. 16GB of memory is available for the devices, running at 2133Mhz and 1866MHz respectively.
Bacteria are getting more resistant to most kind of antibiotic therapy making common infectious diseases untreatable, the United Nations say.

In a general assembly last year, the UN addressed the problem with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also know as superbugs. Together with several countries, the organization aims to tackle the increasing health problem that has alarmed public health officials and health experts.

In Singapore, the situation has reached a new level as cases are reported of patients suffering from common infections and failing to get well even after antibiotics have been given.

For example, a young leukemia patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant developed high fever, and within a week, bacteria in her bloodstream have become resistant to all common antibiotics.

Another tragic case is that of a middle-aged patient who underwent a prostate biopsy. He eventually developed high fever and multiple organ failure for which he was given commonly used antibiotics. Ultimately, the antibiotic therapy did not work and his situation became hopeless, the Strait Times reports.

Infectious disease experts say that such situation has become more common in the past years. Several thousands of such cases are reported yearly in Singapore, one expert says.

One particular class of antibiotics that seem to be losing effectiveness to common bacteria are Carbapenems. They are the last resort and safest drug for such common infections.

These drugs used to be the commonly prescribed antibiotics for gram-negative bacteria. These kind of bacteria cause infections in the gut, bladder, and pelvic.

According to the PHYS, Carbapenems, which used to treat these infections have become less effective in patients. Doctors are seeing more patients who no longer respond to this kind of antibiotics.

Singapore is facing more dire situations like this as it is a travel and medical hub, one expert on diseases says. Furthermore, common yet deadly infections like gonorrhea and pneumonia are becoming untreatable.

As reported earlier, Singapore becomes one of the first countries to develop new laws that will reduce the escalation of the problem. Public health officials hope that the reformation will address the issue of antibiotic therapy resistance.
Researchers found a rather surprising development in malaria prevention. A new study suggests that anemia protects the child's blood-stage of malaria. However, concerns emerge with the safety of iron supplements, as the study also reveals treatment of anemia with iron removes the protective effect.

Anemia is an iron deficiency characterized by the decrease of the amount of red blood cells or hemoglobin in the blood. It affects at least 8.8 percent of population worldwide and causes various complications such as shortness of breath, fatigue and stress on body organs.

In a study published in EBioMedicine, researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC), along with the from the Medical Research Council Unit in The Gambia, Africa, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine studied 135 anemic children in a malaria-endemic region in The Gambia, Africa.

As part of an iron supplementation trial, the children, aged 6-24 months were given iron micronutrient powder for about 84 days. Their red blood cells were analyzed on the 49th and the 84th day. The results revealed that anemia reduced the invasion and growth of both laboratory and field strains of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in the children.

Its preventive effect if even higher than that of sickle-cell. Previously, researchers found out the link of malaria prevention for children with the sickle-cell trait. The study suggests that cases of malaria are reduced to anemic children by 15.9 percent compared to 3.5 percent for those with sickle-cell trait.

"Our finding that anemia offers greater natural protection against blood-stage malaria infection than sickle-cell trait has led us to formulate the interesting hypothesis that the widespread prevalence of anemia in people of African descent is a genetic signature of malaria," Morgan Goheen, Ph.D., lead author of the study said on a press release from UNC.

The researchers added that the protective effect of anemia was reversed when the children received the iron supplement. The study revealed the link between anemia, iron supplementation and malaria risk. It is important to intensify malaria prevention, giving caution to the use of iron supplements in malaria-endemic countries.
Faraday Future's plans for its factory are as grand as the plans for its car. The 3 million square-foot factory will cost a billion dollars and is scheduled to be up and running in 2018, but a visit to the site of the factory today reveals little more than dirt.

Situated about 30 minutes away from bustle of the Las Vegas strip, the site sits just off Interstate 15, with few neighbors other than energy facilities and a truck stop.

On Tuesday evening, when the company unveiled the first prototype of its FF 91 all-electric vehicle, it showed video of heavy machinery moving earth around. Judging from a visit to the site earlier in the day, it appears that's about all Faraday Future has accomplished there.

Martyn Williams A sign points to way to Faraday Future's factory project at an industrial site in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 3, 2017.

At the entrance to the industrial park are a couple of signs pointing to the location of the factory, apparently code-named "Sarah." But looking out over the desert, there's not much to see.

There are a few structures in the distance. Some are associated with utility NV Energy's Chuck Lenzie Generating Station, and there are also storage containers for the UNEV oil pipeline. But there was nothing that looked like the beginnings of a factory.

Martyn Williams Buildings in the area of Faraday Future's factory project at an industrial site in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 3, 2017.

Construction began in 2016 and was already on a tight deadline. The company wanted the factory ready to produce cars in 2018, but after grading work was completed at the site, the work stopped. Local media reported this was because Faraday Future failed to pay the construction company.

Faraday Future has said it plans to restart construction early this year, but it's unclear when that will happen.
This Week in Review

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Imperial County Sheriffs Office personnel lined up for their annual Uniform Inspection on Thursday at the Imperial Valley Expo Casa de Manana Building. The agency is anticipating hosting its annual inspection next year outside its new jail facility, which is currently under construction and expected to be completed by early 2018. PHOTOS COURTESY OF IMPERIAL COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE
POLICE have appealed for witnesses after a collision in which an elderly man suffered serious injuries.

As previously reported, police were called to the Broadway , in Sandown, shortly before 6pm on Tuesday, after a collision involving a black Hyundai Getz and an 81-year-old pedestrian.





He suffered serious injuries and was taken to Southampton General Hospital where his condition was described as serious but stable.





PC Dom Green said: "This was a serious collision which has left a man with multiple injuries.





"We would like to speak to anyone who saw the collision happened or who may have seen the car prior to the collision travelling between Brading and Sandown."





A 36-year-old woman from Ryde has been arrested in connection with the incident and bailed until February 19.





Anyone with information about the collision is asked to contact PC Green on 101, quoting 44170003043, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A series of handwritten notes by the late Princess Diana, one of which reveals that her younger son Prince Harry was constantly in trouble at school, is to be auctioned on Thursday.

The six notes, which will be sold at Cheffins auction house in Cambridge, were written to Cyril Dickman who served as chief steward of Buckingham Palace for over 50 years.

Diana's sons Princes William and Harry feature prominently.

One message dated Sept. 20, 1984, five days after Harry's birth, reads: "William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near!..."

"The reaction to one tiny person's birth has totally overwhelmed us and I can hardly breathe for the mass of flowers that are arriving here!"


Corporate ethics under the President-elect Donald J. Trumps administration may become selective and allow exceptions towards certain and possibly illegal practices that are committed by the future presidential cabinet, writes Professor Carl Rhodes.

In an article published by Independent Australia, ethics teacher Professor Carl Rhodes of the University of Technology discusses what business ethics could be like when Trump takes over. It looks like this: a Trump administration wherein advisers to the president are exempt from the law and rules that govern and protect the interests and welfare of society.

It looks like a country that is run by a controlling and dictating sovereign instead of a president of a democracy. Gone would be the rule abiding politicians that are meant to lead by example.

This is what Trump acolyte, Newt Gingrich, wants to see. He proposed that advisers who break the rules must be offered pardon by the president.

For Professor Carl Rhodes, this means that the Trump administration would be above the law and would deny its liability for any action that might be against the law. It would mean that certain business interests would be immune, that politicians who are also at the same time businessmen can get away with anything they like.

This is very much the opposite of what business ethics is about, which is adhering to the basic rules that safeguard society while still being able to make a profit. This definition by Milton Friedman would not apply any longer to the White House.

According to Professor Carl Rhodes, it is the rise of extreme neoliberalism that has made this scenariowhat he calls an equivalent of a State of Exceptionpossible. Ever since Trumps election, this dangerous kind of neoliberalism is slowly being legitimized.

The President-elect is to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, and it is yet to be seen whether or not this kind of selective business ethics will be really upheld in the Trump administration.
Its the start of the New Year, and many people are determined to be better than ever in 2017. For those who want to be more successful, take a leaf out of Sir Richard Bransons book as he gives some advice on a simple action that would benefit anyone this year.

The Virgin group founder and chairman took to his blog on Jan. 1 and said that one way to transform a positive thought into a positive action is to write it down.

Ever since I was a child I have made lists of all kinds, including short-term tasks, long-term goals and resolutions, said Branson. Its how I make sense of the world, bring order to the ideas in my head, and start turning them into action.

The 66-year-old encourages everyone to put their thoughts and ideas to paper, whether its an interesting idea from a friend, or notes about documentaries, articles, books, or films. He also urged people to have writing tools on hand this year.

In 2017, get yourself a notebook, an iPad app, or a pen to write on your hand, said Branson. However you do it, take note: if you dont take notes, your ideas will get lost.

It has been said that writing things down is one habit that successful and highly motivated people have in common. Last year, Richard Branson said that despite being one of the most innovative people in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is not above the humble pen and paper, and he witnessed this himself when the two shared the stage at a London event in 2016.

Branson recalled how Gates pulled out his notes which were scribbled on some crumpled paper which he carried inside his jacket pocket. The business magnate and philanthropist said that it delighted him to see the Microsoft founder smoothing down the creases of the paper to read his speech about challenges and how they inspire innovation.

Richard Branson revealed that he goes through dozens of notebooks a year. He also said that Virgin is very much a notebook culture, where people are always jotting things down and trying to learn new things along the way.

So this year, to be more productive, organized, and to keep ideas documented, try carrying a notebook. Whether its a fancy Moleskine pad or a standard-sized school notebook, which is Bransons notebook of choice, the important thing is to jot things down as soon as they come to mind. Its a good and simple habit to keep as one strives for success in 2017.

For more, check out Jobs & Hire's report on the skills that Bill Gates said a person must have in order to succeed in the future job market.
After American Apparel filed bankruptcy, Amazon and Forever 21 are just two of the companies that showed interest in acquiring the company. American Apparel is under auction, which is sought by various companies.

According to the NY Mag, Amazon is expanding the line of business towards fashion clothing and apparels. They are reportedly making private-labeled brands and it was indicated that the company plans to establish activewear clothing. The said plan is meant to contend with renowned brands such as Nike.

After Donald Trump warned big companies over tax responsibilities and job opportunities in America, US manufacturers are shuddering. Experts are indicating that Trump is adamant in implementing his plans once he takes over. Thus, this acquisition will be beneficial just like what Trump wants to keep jobs open in the United States.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported via Yahoo News that Forever 21 and Amazon will be contending with Next Level Apparel and Authentic Brands Group LLC. Before American Apparel filed for bankruptcy, they signed a $66 million bid with Gildan Activewear Inc., excluding 110 retail chain stores. Hence, the victor of the auction will be working with the Canadian apparel maker.

The company, however, cleared out that the manufacturing plant will remain in South California since it is "one of the biggest garment makers in the United States." In fact, the company has employed about 3,500 workers. This will give more job opportunities to the Americans. According to the source, Gildan will have a minimum wage hike up to $15 per hour in 2022 in the California firms.

On one hand, it is believed that this will be a major advancement for the Seattle-based company, Amazon. On the other hand, Forever 21 will be able to reduce the high labor costs of the American Apparel. The company is particularly recognized for its low retail costs.

Gildan has yarn-spinning and distribution hubs in North Carolina and Georgia. Sources say the victor of the auction will be announced next week.
Slovenia's government approved amendments to its law on foreigners Thursday to enable police to seal the country's borders to illegal migrants for a limited period if needed.

The changes, expected to be ratified by parliament, are meant to prevent a repeat of a six-month-long flood of migrants across Slovenia that ended in March 2016, when several countries to its south closed the main Balkan migration route.

Around 500,000 illegal migrants crossed Slovenia, the smallest country along the migration corridor, on their way to desired destinations in wealthier west European countries.

Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar said Slovenia would not be able to endure another migrant flow of that kind, especially as its northern neighbor Austria and other west European states were closing their doors to migrants.

"The new legislation will be used only if migration would be endangering the public order and internal security of Slovenia," Znidar told a news conference.

She said the government also decided to establish a special Office for Migration to coordinate policy on migrants.


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U.S. Intelligence: Top Russian Officials Behind Election Interference

Top U.S. intelligence officials say they believe high-level Russian authorities were directly responsible for the hacking and leaking of documents from the Democratic National Committee in an effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

"We assess that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre said in prepared opening remarks for their testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. They called Russian cyberattacks a "major threat" to national interests.

While the intelligence chiefs agreed that Russia was involved in hacking the DNC documents, Clapper noted that the intelligence community "can't gauge" any effect the information released by WikiLeaks might have had on citizens' choices in the voting booth.

"They did not change any vote tallies or anything like that," he said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated that point Thursday in a press briefing, adding that the "hack-and-leak" strategy did have a negative impact on Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"I think that's something people will be assessing for quite some time," he said.

Clapper went on to say that China also has successfully conducted cyber espionage against the U.S. government recently, though China's attempts to hack the U.S. have waned since the two countries signed a bilateral agreement to limit espionage in 2015.
Wells Fargo said Thursday it is raising the lowest hourly pay it provides U.S. workers to $13.50, up from $12, becoming the latest big bank to announce similar plans.

The San Francisco-based bank, which employs about 23,500 in the Charlotte region, said the higher pay takes effect Sunday. In an interview with the Charlotte Observer, Wells Fargo compensation head Mike Branca said the move will initially affect more than 25,000 workers across the U.S.

Branca, who is based in Charlotte, said the change largely benefits workers in entry-level roles such as tellers and customer services representatives  employees who are on the front lines with our customers.

The move follows increases in minimum pay announced by Wells Fargos U.S. peers in recent months.

In December, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan disclosed plans by the Charlotte-based company to raise wages for its lowest-paid workers to $15 an hour, up from $13.50. The bank has said the change takes effect in early 2017.

Competitors actions didnt prompt Wells Fargos decision, said Branca, noting the third-largest U.S. bank by assets has been raising its pay floor for years.

He said Wells Fargos latest increase is not directly related to the banks efforts to revamp how it compensates its retail bankers after a sales scandal that erupted in September. This is a decision we would have made independent of that, Branca said.
North Carolina is on pace to exceed individual enrollment expectations for the 2017 federal health-insurance exchange even with all the uncertainty in Congress about the exchanges future.

A total of 534,293 North Carolinians enrolled for or renewed their health insurance through the federal exchange from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, federal officials said Wednesday.

The sign-up period at HealthCare.gov ends Jan. 31. Individuals must be enrolled by Jan. 15 to have insurance beginning Feb. 1.

By comparison, the exchange had 545,354 sign-ups from North Carolina for 2016, though that number likely shrank as some individuals and families could not afford their monthly premium, even with a federal tax subsidy.

Enroll America, a pro-exchange group, projects 614,000 participants in North Carolina for 2017. The group offers enrollment help in North Carolina at (855) 733-3711 or at www.getcoveredamerica.org/connector.

About 80 percent of the projected enrollees, or 490,000, have only Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina as an exchange policy option.

That includes a projected 21,700 in Forsyth County and 101,800 in the Triad and Northwest North Carolina.

Federal health officials say about 82 percent of North Carolina enrollees will pay about $75 a month in premiums when factoring in a federal subsidy.

It is clear that Americans want and need this vital coverage, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement.

It appears likely the complex repeal process will take at least six months even if President-elect Donald Trump and his administrative officials and Congress choose to cherry-pick the removal of certain parts of the act, such as eliminating the federal subsidy for premium costs, ending  or increasing  a lifetime cap on expenses, and defunding subsidies to states that expanded their Medicaid program.

Its hard to imagine that they would pull the rug out from people who just signed up, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a nationally renowned health-care expert.

Doing that would lead to substantial litigation.

Still, local and national health-care experts caution that its advisable for consumers who participate in the exchange to front-load known health-care needs  such as potential surgeries, and annual physical, vision, dental and other appointments  just in case the repeal process occurs quicker than expected and an end to the premium subsidy makes their insurance unaffordable.

North Carolina trails just Florida (1.64 million) and Texas (1.12 million) in the number of 2017 enrollees among the 38 states that participate in the exchange.

The national enrollment was at 8.8 million, up from 8.6 million a year ago.

It remains unclear whether the North Carolina and national enrollments are being affected by projected cutbacks to the exchange  if not its eventual elimination  under the Trump administration.

Trump has nominated U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who has long opposed the federal Affordable Care Act, to be U.S. health secretary.

Bloomberg News reported Thursday that Republican congressional leaders are refusing to promise that their plans to replace the ACA wont result in more uninsured Americans.

There are projections that as many as 19 million Americans could lose health-insurance coverage in a full repeal of the ACA.

Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday on MSNBC that Trumps position on repealing and replacing the ACA remains we dont want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance.

There are Republican congressional leaders who recognize the popularity of some parts of the ACA, including allowing children to remain on their parents insurance until age 26 and preventing insurers from excluding people because they have pre-existing health conditions.

A policy paper proposed by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan lists those items as ones Republicans would preserve in its counter to the ACA.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who represents the states 5th District, is a proponent of the paper, known as A Better Way.
NEW YORK  After controlling the Craftsman name for 90 years, troubled department store operator Sears said it will sell the famous tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc.

Stanley, which makes and sells tools under the DeWalt and Black & Decker names, wants to grow the Craftsman brand by selling its products in more stores outside of Sears. Today, only 10 percent of Craftsman products are sold in other stores.

Sears said it will continue to sell Craftsman, including at its Kmart and Sears Hometown stores.

The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company first took control of Craftsman in 1927 when it bought the trademark for $500.

Sears has struggled, losing money for years as its revenue fell. The company also announced plans Thursday to close 150 stores, about 10 percent of its total 1,500 locations. And last week, the company said it received a credit facility for up to $500 million to provide it with cash as it sells assets.

North Carolina stores slated to close include Kmarts in Madison, Concord, Fayetteville, Goldsboro and Wilmington.

Shares of Sears Holdings Corp., which are down about 48 percent in the last 12 months, rose 3 cents to close at $10.39 Thursday.

Stanley will pay Sears about $900 million for Craftsman, which includes $525 million when the deal closes this year, $250 million after three years and a percentage of sales for 15 years.

After 15 years, Sears will start paying Stanley 3 percent of the Craftsman sales it makes. Shares of Stanley, based in New Britain, Conn., rose $1.87 to $118.35.

Stanley said it plans to hire more workers and open a new U.S. plant to make more Craftsman products, but didnt provide details.
WASHINGTON  The Talladega College marching band will perform at President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural parade Jan. 20 after all. Billy Hawkins, president of the historically black college in Alabama, confirmed the decision in a news release Thursday morning.

The school's 200-member Marching Tornado Band first announced that it would perform in the parade Dec. 21. But since then, the school has faced backlash from alumni and on social media by those who expressed opposition to Trump and felt that a historically black college founded by former slaves should not perform for someone whose views, they say, encouraged prejudice and anti-black sentiment.

Hawkins acknowledged the blowback the school has received and said he respected the divergent viewpoints on the issue. But, Hawkins wrote, the decision to perform was not a political one, but rather a chance to participate in a "civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power."

"It will be a wonderful learning experience for the students in the band. It will be a teachable moment for them to understand the importance of supporting the leader of the free world, despite one's political viewpoint," Harvey said. "After all, the reason for being of any college or university should be to promote learning and not to enhance a political agenda."

[Historically black college faces backlash over band's plan to perform at Trump inauguration]

Shirley Ferrill, a 1974 Talladega graduate who set up a online petition asking the school to change its decision, had said that she would be "very disappointed and upset" if the school went ahead with the parade.

"To perform at the inaugural smacks of some level of support for Trump," Ferrill said. "The man has been consistently nasty and vile to African Americans in general. I find him totally reprehensible."

But Dollan Young, a senior and a member of the band, launched his own online petition stating support for taking part in the parade.

"We believe that this parade is not about politics it's about seeing first hand the process of a transition," Young wrote. "We are not one-track thinkers and believe everyone is entitled to [their] own beliefs."

The parade, which is expected to last about three hours and will include approximately 8,000 participants representing more than 40 organizations, is slated to begin near the Capitol and will head west toward the White House. There, Trump, his family and guests, and dignitaries will look on from a viewing stand.

Two other colleges sending bands to the inauguration - Marist College in New York and Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois - also are facing criticism on social media from students and alumni for taking part in the event.
The Constitutional Court faced a rocky road in the impeachment trial of President Park Geun-hye on Thursday as suspects were either uncooperative or refused to show up. Former Cheong Wa Dae secretaries Lee Jae-man, Ahn Bong-geun and administrative staffer Lee Young-sun ignored their summons. The only witness to appear before the judges was another Cheong Wa Dae administrative staffer, Yoon Jeon-choo, but she either refused to answer questions or pleaded ignorance. At one stage Justice Kang Il-won warned her against pleading ignorance on questions that she "should obviously know from an objective standpoint."



Cheong Wa Dae administrative staffer Yoon Jeon-choo (center) walks into the Constitutional Court in Seoul on Thursday.

Park's lawyer appeared to be filibustering by questioning the political neutrality of investigators at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office and on the independent counsel's team. They said if Park's efforts to squeeze big conglomerates for donations to the dubious Mir and K-Sports foundations established by her friend Choi Soon-sil are considered bribes, then all former presidents should be accused of accepting bribes. One of her attorneys, Suh Suk-koo, said, "The head of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Lee Young-ryeol, used to serve as Cheong Wa Dae secretary for audit and inspection during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which poses problems in terms of political neutrality." Suh was reprimanded twice by court President Park Han-chul for making comments that are irrelevant to the impeachment trial.

Choi Soon-sil and former presidential secretaries An Chong-bum and Jeong Ho-seong on trial at the Seoul Central District Court on Thursday

Meanwhile, at Choi's criminal trial at the Seoul Central District Court, Choi pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed she was "falsely accused." Choi has also ignored three summonses by independent counsel Park Young-soo to appear for questioning. Her fellow defendants, former Cheong Wa Dae secretaries An Chong-bum and Jeong Heo-seong, also pleaded not guilty. Park herself has yet to be questioned, although she came out of seclusion last Sunday to chat with reporters at Cheong Wa Dae, where she also denied all charges.
CHARLESTON, S.C.  As convicted murderer Dylann Roof prepares to defend himself in the sentencing phase of his trial, a clearer understanding of his motives in gunning down nine African-Americans during Bible study prayer has begun to emerge.

In a word, hes a loser  as random and ordinary as the proverbial tree falling in a forest bereft of listeners.

Oh, sure, he hated blacks, Jews and anyone else who didnt fit the white-supremacist profile he adopted relatively recently. A living cliche of white rage, he posed in selfies with Nazi symbols and the Confederate battle flag and said he wanted to start a race war.

But even a cursory review of his short resume suggests that what Roof really wanted was attention. He wanted to be the somebody he never was. Despite our insistence that there must be some explanation  a broken brain, as a forensic psychiatrist proposed  there may be little more to Roofs story than a sad young man who marinated in one existential crisis after another until deciding that killing people was a certain route to self-possession.

What goes on inside Roofs mind is anyones guess, but his actions during the first part of his trial  and now his insistence on representing himself during the sentencing phase  suggest that he is pursuing a plan of some sort, despite his passivity and seeming lack of interest in the proceedings.

When offered a chance  possibly his only chance  to save himself from execution by allowing testimony this week related to his mental state, Roof declined. He will call no witnesses, he has said, and is otherwise contemptuous of psychological evaluations.

In a journal found in his car after the night of the shootings in June 2015, Roof wrote: Also I want [sic] state that I am morally opposed to psychology. It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont.

Thus, one infers, Roof wants people to think he is neither insane nor emotionally damaged and that he committed a crime that was, in fact, premeditated. The jury of nine whites and three blacks apparently agreed and found him guilty on 33 federal charges last month.

Those same jurors this week heard prosecution witnesses, including survivors from that night, as they consider whether to condemn Roof to life in prison or to death. Roof seems to prefer the latter.

Even though he has one of the nations best anti-death penalty lawyers, David Bruck, Roof is declining legal assistance other than advice. A hearing Monday convinced federal Judge Richard Gergel that Roof is competent enough to represent himself.

His being competent, meaning that he understands the charges against him, doesnt necessarily mean that hes sane. Psychologists make a distinction between the two, even if the legal system does not.

Roofs history would seem to leave little doubt that his mental health was compromised throughout his young life. A child of divorce who attended at least seven schools in nine years, he dropped out after a repeat of the ninth grade. In interviews, his childhood friends and teachers described him as a loner, quiet, timid, physically underdeveloped, not popular but not disliked, smart and bored with school.

In other words, he was just the type to feel himself an outsider for whom life was unfair. So Roof turned to drugs, worked odd jobs and scoured the internet in search of belonging.

He found company among white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others feeling similarly dispossessed who had created an alternate universe of blame and revenge. In their deranged mindset, their miserable lives were the fault of other races and ethnicities, especially blacks and Jews. To a lonely Roof, who may have felt in that most narcissistic of self-delusional laments that no one really knew him, white supremacy provided both a salve and a solution.

The losing-est loser gravitated toward the extreme of killing the enemy. Finally, he would be respected by a group that he admired and that, to his mind, accepted him as an equal. But Roof wanted more than acceptance. He wanted to be a legend.

Now in the final act in his one-man play, Roof dares jurors to execute him.

Tempting. But far better would be to deny him the false glory he seeks and make him live out his days in the knowledge of his insignificance.
CHARLES O. NADELL, Winston-Salem

Positive on Foxx

What has happened to the Winston-Salem Journal? Did you sell the paper?

Ive got to admit, I was surprised to see a positive story about Rep. Virginia Foxx on the front page (Foxx votes against GOP proposal to undermine ethics board, Jan. 4). She apparently took the lead in preventing less-conservative Republicans from dismantling much-needed ethical oversight.

This is the way to start the new year right, Journal. Keep this up and maybe youll get somewhere.

***

ROGER N. KIRKMAN, Winston-Salem

Customers pay

In regard to the Jan. 4 front-page article Will you pay for coal ash cleanup? the cost of cleaning it up seems to increase. Now its over $700 million.

The topic invariably devolves to how long it will be before the customers have to pay the entire cost in raised rates. Nothing is ever said about the prior management of this fiasco, and never anything said about the performance bonus of $42 million paid to the prior Duke Energy CEO.

One would think that at least some of this repayment should be extracted from those who neglected to attend to the problem to begin with.

The customers have negligible input into the selection of CEOs and other top management, so why should customers get the bill and not the management?

******

HENRY TUBB, Winston-Salem

Historic revision

Let the historic revision begin!

When President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, he portrayed it as a bipartisan solution because it contained Republican-proposed provisions. Of course, Republicans wanted nothing to do with that. To hear them tell it, Obamacare was a plan from hell and every bit of it was bad.

Obamacare was largely based on 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneys program in Massachusetts, Romneycare, but he vehemently denied any similarity, knowing how much conservatives had been taught to hate it.

But while discussing repealing Obamacare on NPRs Morning Edition on Jan. 4, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn claimed of popular parts of the law (protection for pre-existing conditions and keeping children on their parents plans), Those are plans that Republicans brought to the table.

Sure, now they want to claim credit. Now, eight years into promising to repeal it despite its effectiveness. Eventually theyll claim that it was all their idea, except for the price increases, which for special, magic reasons were purely Democratic.

Weve already seen President-elect Trump claim credit for anything that works. Hell fit in perfectly with the Republican Congress.

Sure, Democratic legislators do this from time to time. But with Republicans, its standard operating procedure.

******

JENNIFER HAMBLIN, Winston-Salem

Unqualified appointments

According to your Jan. 1 story McCrory names top aides to influential state positions, Dr. Randall Williams is an obstetrician who became deputy secretary of McCrorys health and human services department. McCrory appointed him to the state Oil and Gas Commission, which will oversee any future drilling of underground fossil fuels.

So I see McCrory took his cues from President-elect Trump: Whos the most unqualified person I can find to fill an important post?

The rest of the appointments were equally baffling  until I remembered the word cronyism.

So far Gov. Roy Coopers nominees seem eminently qualified (Cooper picks two for cabinet, Jan. 4). But its easy to look good next to the incompetence hes replacing.

When You Write

The Journal encourages readers comments. To participate in The Readers Forum, please submit letters online to Letters@wsjournal.com. Please write The Readers Forum in the subject line and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number. Or you may mail letters to: The Readers Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Letters are subject to editing and may be published on journalnow.com. Letters are limited to 250 words. Letter writers are allowed one letter every 30 days.

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.
Samsung Heavy Industries has won an order to build an offshore oil platform worth W1.5 trillion for global giant BP, a spokesman said on Thursday (US$1=W1,189).

It is the first contract for the troubled Korean shipbuilding industry in the new year and the first oil rig order in a year and six months.

The rig will be capable of producing 110,000 barrels of crude oil per day and weigh some 58,000 tons. Once delivered in August 2020, it will be used for BP's Mad Dog II project in the Gulf of Mexico 300 km south of New Orleans.

Production began in the Mad Dog oil field in 2005. A second-phase project has been underway since 2009, when reserves there were estimated at more than 4 billion barrels.


An Asiana Airlines plane en route to the Philippines made an emergency stop on Jeju Island on Thursday.

According to Asiana, the flight took off from Incheon International Airport at 9:42 p.m. and flew for about an hour when a fire alarm in the back of the cargo area was set off.

The emergency landing was made at 10:45 p.m. All 166 passengers and eight cabin crew were safe.

An airline spokesman said, "After the airplane landed in Jeju, we opened the cargo compartment to investigate, and we were unable to find any signs of fire. It may have been due to an error in the smoke detector."


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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Donald J. Trump has picked another fight with the elders of his own Republican Party, over whether Russia engaged in hacking aimed at influencing the US election. Trump has maintained that it is impossible to trace hacking attempts, that it isnt clear who was behind them, and that he knows a lot about hacking and knows things about these incidents that the rest of us do not know, which he would reveal last Tuesday or Wednesday (he didnt).

At one point, in Trumps assault on the case for Russian hacking being presented by the CIA, he cited statements of Julian Assange of Wikileaks:

Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta"  why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

This reference to Assange, who published Chelsea Mannings copied State Department cables and who published emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, infuriated official Washington, who would love to render Assange from the Ecuadoran embassy in London and execute him by firing squad.

At todays Senate hearings on the Russian hacking, Sen. John McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper whether Assange has any credibility. Clapper replied by smearing Assange with reference to the complicated and obscure Swedish sex charges against him, which actually do not speak to Assanges credibility on whether the Russians passed him hacked emails. This ad hominem logical fallacy is typical of the sneaky and duplicitous way Clapper operates.

McCain also accused Assange of putting the lives of US intelligence professionals and their assets in danger. But McCain did not move to impeach former Bush vice president Dick Cheney, who outed CIA field officer Valerie Plame to punish her for her husbands having revealed the emptiness of the WMD case for the Bush-Cheney illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Trump was wounded by the charges that he was supporting Assange, and replied, essentially, that retweets are not endorsements.

The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange  wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

All twitter users consider such hedging to be disingenuous; why retweet something if you deeply disagree with it?

The entire circus was marked by outlandish self-contradiction and clownish hypocrisy.

For instance, Sen. McCain and other national security Republicans have a longstanding animus against the Putin government and so are eager to accept the Clapper case that Russia attempted to interfere in the US election.

But McCain and the other hawkish Republicans dont want to follow their position to its logical conclusion, which is that Putin intervened to give us a Trump presidency.

If Russia did some hacking and leaking to hurt the Democrats, but did not succeed in having a big impact on the election outcome, then why is the issue so important? The Russians were ineffectual.

As for foreign hacking and spying on the US election, James Clapper for a long time was personally listening into German Chancellor Angela Merkels private cell phone.

Moreover, Clapper was listening in to millions Americans on American soil without a warrant, a gross violation of the fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which promises us privacy from government prying with regard to our mail and personal effects unless law enforcement can convince a judge that we are engaged in a specified crime. For all we know, US officials privy to this illegal form of wiretapping could have used the information for insider trading or self-aggrandizement or to smear politicians they didnt like or even to affect the outcome of elections. There isnt really any oversight over this unconstitutional activity of the Federal government, and even sitting senators who knew about it such as Ron Wyden were afraid to tell the public lest they be arrested for revealing classified information (almost everything in Washington is classified as soon as it is written down).

When Clapper was asked in Senate testimony whether US intelligence was spying on the American people, he denied it. No, he said.

Ron Wyden: DNI Clapper tells Wyden the NSA does not collect data on millions of Americans

It was the lie of our new century, the Big Lie, the ultimate Whopper.

The US NSA hacked the whole world for many years until Ed Snowden blew the whistle on them. And that was when the full extent of Clappers mendaciousness became clear. He should have been held in contempt of Congress. He should have been fired. But no. He got away with it.

It is extremely unclear why anyone should believe anything this proven and professional liar says.

Then Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was asked about Trumps tweet questioning the Russia hacking narrative. He replied that Trump was unwise to take on the intelligence community, since they had six ways to Sunday to get back at you.

So Schumer seems to have been celebrating that we are no longer a democracy, but that even an elected president has to defer to the intelligence establishment in Washington or else must fear that they will play dirty tricks on him and undermine him.

Shouldnt the Democratic Party senate minority leader be standing for democratic values, not advising the president to shut up if he knows whats good for him?

So to conclude, this is a sorry spectacle. Yes, Putin is a thug who should not have unilaterally annexed Crimea, and so created a European crisis that has yet to be resolved. But yes, the US has acted thuggishly the unprovoked and monstrous invasion of Iraq is a recent example and US aggressiveness toward Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union bears some of the blame for Russias bullying insecurity. And yes, Russia likely engaged in hacking during the US election and hoped to tilt the playing field toward Trump; but they likely failed to have any significant effect on the outcome. And yes, Clapper and other US intelligence officials have hacked everybody and his brother both abroad and inside the US, so they are hardly morally superior to Putin.

Now we have a food fight full of ignorance and hypocrisy or both, in which the Washington Establishment professes itself shocked, shocked that any hacking of one country by another could have gone on. Trump has continued his creepy bromance with the Kremlin and wants to get his information from any source that agrees with his prejudices. The Democrats have taken advantage of the story to paint Trump as a Manchurian candidate, and some of them seem to delight in the idea that Trump may provoke the CIA to do to him what Oliver Stone thinks it did to JFK.

Nobody and nothing here to admire.
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Maan News Agency |  

BETHLEHEM (Maan)  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out on Wednesday in support of pardoning Elor Azarya, as right-wing Israeli officials further coalesced in support of the Israeli soldier who was convicted of manslaughter for the point-blank shooting of a Palestinian in Hebron.

The Israeli military court gave a wholesale endorsement of the prosecutions argument that Azarya was unjustified in killing 21-year-old Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif in March, based in part on the blistering testimonies given by Azaryas army commanders.

Following the verdict on Wednesday, Netanyahu issued a statement on social media in which he said that the ruling marked a hard and painful day for all of us, first and foremost for Elor and his family, the soldiers of the (Israeli army), many citizens, and the parents of soldiers, myself included.

We have one army, which is the basis of our existence, Netanyahu added. The soldiers of the IDF are all of our sons and daughters, and they need to remain above dispute. I support pardoning Elor Azaria.

Manslaughter charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and Azarya can appeal both the conviction and the sentence to the Israeli military appeals court.

A court reporter for Israels The Jerusalem Post said that the judges one-sided conviction made the decision more vulnerable to appeal, as judges had not expressed any sympathy to the defenses argument.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is likely to face a request to pardon Azarya, according to reports, as Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett has already stated that the soldier should be granted an immediate pardon.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also reportedly not ruled out the possibility of a pardon in private discussion, however on Wednesday he said the verdict had to be respected, despite his displeasure with the conviction.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Lieberman stated that calls for a pardon were ignorance and slogans following Netanyahus statement.

While Azarya has garnered mass support from Israels far-right citizens and government, who have labeled the soldier a national hero, the outcome of the trial has been described by the Palestinian Authority as a show trial handing down a lenient sentence on the soldier, while focusing on the case to distract from a wider culture of impunity for Israeli forces.

Israeli human rights group Gush Shalom issued a statement on Wednesday calling the verdict very far from justice.

The great miscarriage of justice is in the very fact that a single young soldier was placed alone in the dock, to be condemned for a crime in which very many others share guilt, Gush Shalom added. Missing in the dock at Azaryas side were government ministers and Knesset Members, government supporters as well as those from the opposition, who had outspokenly called upon soldiers to do precisely what Azarya didThe soldier Elior Azarya is a minor accomplice, the main culprit is the occupation.

Azarya, now 20, was the only member of Israeli forces to be charged with the death of a Palestinian in 2016  when at least 112 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israelis  according to Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, the al-Sharif family has vowed to take the case to the International Criminal Court to obtain justice for their slain relative, arguing the video-documented case was in fact cold-blooded murder.

Via Maan News Agency

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: Netanyahu calls for pardon of convicted soldier
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By Joe Sexton | ProPublica |  

The meaning and enforcement of the Illinois hate-crimes statute seems destined for intense scrutiny with the arrest this week of four young black adults in Chicago in connection with the assault of a mentally disabled white man. The arrests by the Chicago Police Department resulted in part from what appeared to a livestreamed video of the disabled man being abused while bound and gagged. The recording captures one or more of the attackers making references to Donald Trump and white people.

The Illinois hate-crime statute reads as follows:

A person commits hate crime when, by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors, he commits assault, battery, aggravated assault, misdemeanor theft, criminal trespass to residence, misdemeanor criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to vehicle, criminal trespass to real property, mob action, disorderly conduct, harassment by telephone, or harassment through electronic communications.

On Wednesday, Commander Kevin Duffin said the department was weighing whether to bring hate-crime charges against the suspects, saying it was not yet clear whether the attack was motivated by bias, according to The Washington Post.

Theyre young adults. And they make stupid decisions, Duffin was quoted saying in the Post account. That certainly will be part of whether or not we seek a hate crime to determine whether this is sincere or just stupid ranting and raving.

On Thursday, however, CNN reported that formal hate-crime charges had indeed been filed. The arrests, as well as the polices inquiry into the circumstances of the alleged attack, set off a perhaps not surprising firestorm on social media. The police were blasted for their failure to immediately charge the accused with hate crimes. The media were criticized for supposedly failing to adequately cover the incident.

The issue of hate crimes being committed against white people has flared occasionally over the years, and last year the website Broadly explored it in a post. It noted that a black Wisconsin teens conviction for assaulting a 14-year-old white boy under a hate-crimes statute had ultimately been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and endorsed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The black teen had allegedly said Do you feel all hyped up to move on some white people after watching the movie Mississippi Burning.

James Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law at New York University and the courts director for the Center for Research in Crime and Justice, told Broadly, Theres nothing unusual about applying hate crime laws to black defendants who harbor racist motivations against their victims.

ProPublica reported late last year on recent hate crimes in New York City. According to data kept by the New York Police Department, there had been 380 hate crimes reported in 2016. Crimes against Muslims were up 50 percent from the same time last year. Crimes involving sexual orientation were also up.

But whites had been victims, too  the source of 16 reported crimes, nearly double the number of the year prior and most involving acts of violence.

The subject of hate crimes  how they are defined, how they are enforced, how they are reported by the media  has only intensified since the presidential election. Many critics of Trumps campaign warned that his racially inflammatory policy positions and rhetoric would inspire violence against minorities and immigrants. Trump, for his part, has said that was not his intent. But his supporters have occasionally seized on reports of hate crimes, questioning their prevalence and veracity. The false report made by a Muslim girl in New York City was one such example.

Hate-crime data is poorly collected across the country, something ProPublica hopes to help remedy in 2017 with a yearlong project aimed at documenting and verifying bias incidents. The FBI counts between 5,000 and 10,000 hate crimes annually, though surveys by the federal Bureau of Justice indicate that there may be as many as 250,000. While the FBIs data is incomplete, anti-white crimes make up about 20 percent of recorded hate crimes annually.

Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, said that while anti-white hate crimes make up a disproportionately small number of hate crimes given the white population, they are still given too little focus. [Anti-white crime] exists, and when it happens it does not get the same kind of moral outrage that it should, he said. But Levin said this crime should not raise questions about one group being bad and another group being good, but should push society to face a larger problem of coarseness throughout the country.

The more that Americans feel unmoored from the institutions and creed that holds us together, the more often this kind of crap is going to happen on all sides of the spectrum, he said, adding that minority groups that have traditionally been targeted will also act out because of this in ways that shouldnt be ignored. The idea that a group that has faced discrimination  African Americans, Jews  is somehow inoculated against having the effects of an increasingly coarse society affect their members is an illusion.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy organization that has long monitored hate crimes and bias incidents, has long recorded attacks against whites, and has pledged to do so going forward, including those crimes against whites possibly inspired by Trumps victory. So far the SPLC has recorded 23 anti-Trump incidents, though it acknowledges this may be an undercount given who is most likely to report incidents of bias to the SPLC.

Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC, declared the alleged Chicago assault a hate crime. Whether this is a hate crime based on disability or a hate crime based on race, I think it is incumbent on the authorities to act swiftly, he said, calling the crime incredibly shocking.

The anti-white and anti-Trump remarks came one after the other, Cohen said of the recording. I take it as a synonym for anti-white rhetoric in their minds.

The authorities, with the filing of charges Thursday, appeared for the moment to agree.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.

Via ProPublica



Related video added by Juan Cole:

AP: Chicago Police Describe Alleged Hate Crime
JURIST Guest Columnist Larry Cata Backer, of Pennsylvania State University discusses consequences of President elect Trumps rejection of the TTP 

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its European twin, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), mean to provide a basis for the organization and management of global trade that to some extent supplements (and perhaps) supplants the old WTO order. Together they were to preserve the importance of private economic activities grounded in markets and to expand the role of the non-state and supra state sectors in the governance of trade and transnational economic activity.

But they have also been their own worst enemies. Born or nurtured abroad, their negotiation has been shrouded in secrecy. Both appeared to keep civil society at arms length while embracing the transnational businesses most directly affected by their provisions. Both appeared to move away from a model grounded in state-based regulation through law that is enforced by national courts in favor of new structures of remedies based on transnational standards that appear more impervious to democratic accountability. These common characteristics transformed both into the bete noir of a motley group of civil society, of old fashioned internationalists, of state-privileging constitutionalists and of those who are generally suspicious of governance in societal hybrid (public-private) transnational space. These actors worried, quite loudly, about the way that both TTP and TTIP de-centered individual states from the governance and management of macro-economic policies, set substantive standards in key areas that appeared to some extent beyond the reach of national legislatures and established remedial regimes beyond the reach of national judiciaries and their legal orders. They also decried the way that TPP might weaken labor policy, threaten national environmental and consumer protection ideals and produce a race to the bottom for national health care systems, banking systems and national regimes for individual privacy.

The phlegmatic efforts of the Obama administration, buried among other objectives, and the excruciatingly slow progress toward finalization of both TPP and TTIP, only exacerbated a situation whose threats to adoption were compounded by the unwillingness of a less than loyal opposition (and eventually also the losing Democratic Party nominee for the US Presidency) to put national interest (and their own political ideologies) above what appeared to be cynically driven political strategies of short term partisan advantage. The TPP/TTIP negotiations did have one positive effectthey have served as the nexus points for national conversations, long deferred, about the nature and direction of globalization, of the role of the state, and of the obligation of states and enterprises to feed local labor markets, contribute to the domestication of wealth from production derived from multinational production chains and to contribute to the economic, social, cultural, civil and political life of states within a global order which they meant to construct.

The centering of transnational orders, of marginalization of transparency and engagement by states founded on a governing ideology of engagement and transparency, and the construction of governance orders beyond states and their democratic sovereign masses in which states and enterprises would become the major stakeholders enraged manyon both left and right in the United States. Yet both TPP and TTIP were natural extensions, natural deepening of the implications of globalization, which required elaboration around the principles of markets and market integrity, of the differentiation between public and private spheres (relating to activity if not to actors) and of the harmonization of regulatory governance that promised to continue increasing aggregate growth (though in what appeared in certain states to be in an increasingly lopsided way).

It is in this context that one can read and seek to understand the announcement made by the President Elect that he would issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) [text] on his first day in office. But Mr. Trump announced more than that. He also signaled his intention to withdraw from multilateral efforts to which several prior Democratic and Republican administrations had expended much effort, in favor of negotiating fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back on American shores. Trump also stated that his decision to withdraw from the TPP and all the other announcements made in the video shared Monday are in furtherance of his ambition to facilitate production and innovation within American borders.

About the same time, Mr. Trump announced his choice for Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. A CNN Report of December 2, 2016 noted that Mr. Ross had been part of an influential group of business leaders seeking the finalization of TPP, including a well circulated 2015 letter to New Yorks Congressional delegation. Now as Commerce Secretary designate, and apparently without skipping a beat, CNN Reported that Mr. Ross has emerged as a vocal critic of trade deals, saying as recently as Wednesday that the TPP was a horrible deal.' Mr. Ross might well be forgiven his sudden change of heart in light of his potential appointment to national office. But the embrace of a Lets Make a Deal approach, an odd mix of economic nationalism expressed through aggregating bilateralism as the basis for multilateral trade policy, threatens to destabilize the complex and delicately balanced structures of global trade. One can see the outlines of the consequences of Mr. Trumps threat even months before he can make good on the threat.

1. From Systems to Serendipity. Since the 1940s, the US has sought to construct systems, systems that have framed the structures, normative principles and operations of global trade and investment that also internationalize US normative and legal principles in global interactions. In the process, the US has been among the vanguard in fostering interconnected economic, social and cultural activities now difficult for any stateincluding the United Statesto manage entirely (even within its own territory). Mr. Trump does not appear to want to foster systems. Mr. Trump wants to do deals. That is, effectively all he knows. That, perhaps, is all he thinks he needs to know. In the process, though, he will create or at least upend systems he cannot avoidsubstituting a system that is an aggregation of those deals he can make for the older project of public policy that builds systems around markets managed through law and regulatory structures and sustained with the objective of ensuring the legitimacy of the deals that can be undertaken within its structures. TTP made an easy target for the businessman hawking deals to sell the American people on a new Lets Make a Deal international economic policy.

2. Enter China. Mr. Trumps tilt toward Lets Make a Deal may well drive leadership of global trade policy from the US and Europe to Asian states (and principally China). There is irony here. President Obamas pivot to Asia has now, under President Elect Trumps leadership, pivoted not just focus but policy and power to China and its vision for a new global order through layered regional agreements cemented together through its one belt one road (OBOR) framework. Even as the United States moves toward game show economics, the Chinese are paying us the most extraordinary complement of mimicking our methods in the service of its own mission. The South China Morning Post reports: At a time when established world powers are struggling with domestic problems, Xi sees a chance to push ahead with his oddly worded brainchild, a geopolitical push to extend Beijings influence to remote corners of the globe. The belt and road initiative encompasses 65 countries including China, stretching through Southeast, South, Central and West Asia to the Middle East, Africa and East and Central Europe.

3. The US Congress as Wild Card. It is always a mistake to assume that the President is free to assert his will unimpeded. Congress may serve either to block or to mitigate the Lets Make a Deal policy initiative of the President Elect. Already states most affected by global trade have begun to make moves to protect the existing multilateral frameworks, starting with NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Area. It was recently reported, for example, that the Senate has unanimously passed a bill to improve trade flows along the Texas-Mexico border, sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn. Much may happen between December 2016 and the middle of January 2017.

4. The US Trade Partners Will Make Facts Around Lets Make a Deal. Asian states have been quick to act in the face of an anticipated American repudiation of the TTP. They have sought to lobby the incoming administration, sending who they believed to be their most persuasive advocate, with little apparent public effect. They might also consider TTP without the United Statesreturning to where TTP was at its inception. On the heels of Mr. Trumps declaration, Peru is proposing to create an analogue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) free trade agreement between the countries of Asia-Pacific without participation of the United States. In addition, the other TPP states have also sought to look up to China as the next best actor. It has been reported that in response to the potential rejection of TPP Asian nations are pinning their hopes on the China-endorsed RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) agreement. Asian states might well shift in this direction, even if the result is less advantageous to global trade than TPP on the theory, recently suggested, that the transaction costs of modifying a bad deal is smaller than of negotiating a deal from scratch.

5. Strategic considerations and Lets Make a Deal. There is a certain aura of pragmatism in the President Elects Lets Make a Deal strategy. But it is a false pragmatism that belies the implied criticism of the misdirected ambitions of TPP. Lets Make a Deal presumes that multilateral structures are inherently disadvantageous for the US, and that the cost of modification post adoption is greater than the value of participation or of renegotiation before adoption. Rejection and renegotiation threats will scatter the TPP partners to the next best available center of ordering power. The pragmatic consequences of such abandonment will be significantly adverse to those business interests Mr. Trumps Lets Make a Deal purports to defend. Without TPP US enterprises may again face the spectre of unequal competition with state owned enterprises that almost invariably will be a disaster for the US, one with respect to which there is already friction with China and of which China is acutely aware. Moreover, in August 2016 Mr. Obama and visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned . . . China would step in, Mr. Obama said, and Beijing is not worried about labor standards or environmental standards or human trafficking or anti-corruption measures incorporated into the agreement.

6. The Other Shoe Dropping; Protectionism in the guise of Bilateralism. There is a worry that Lets Make a Deal is a clever way of bootstrapping nationalist protectionism back into mainstream policy in the US. Discredited since its last disastrous reign as the crown jewel of global economic policies in the 1930s, nationalist protectionism may now be insinuated into the heart of the principal winning campaign promise of Mr. Trumpthe rebuilding of walls in every place and for every circumstance, abstract and concreteby an odd combination of nationalists, civil society statists, corporate crony capitalists and others now allied with the President Elect. That will permit us to hide from our problems. But we will not be able to avoid them for long. TPP, in this sense, is an extension of the conversation that produced walls against migration and cultural protection walls as well. That the US mimics the worst elements of global misbehaviors elsewhere does not make this any less disastrous for a nation that has ridden to glory on open borders and global system building.

Professor Larry Backer researches globalization, especially as it relates to the emergence of ways of understanding constitutional and enterprise law. His most recent work touches on the regulation of multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, transnational constitutionalism and the convergence of public and private law. He researches issues of governments as private actors in global markets, the development of law and social norm systems to regulate business and human rights.

Suggested citation: Larry C. Backer, "Lets Make a Deal" as Economic Policy, JURIST  Academic Commentary, Dec. 29, 2016, http://jurist.org/forum/2016/12/Backer-lets-make-a-deal.php
JURIST Guest Columnist Hugh D. Spitzer of the University of Washington School of Law discusses US Supreme Court decisions which could derail the anticipated efforts by president-elect Trump to punish so-called sanctuary cities 

During the recent election campaign, candidate Donald Trump threatened to curtail federal funding for sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.

Trump did not detail how he would go about doing this, but his ability to punish so-called sanctuary cities is likely to be hamstrung by the same Rehnquist and Roberts Supreme Court decisions on state and local powers that red states have relied on to block Obama administration initiatives.

The term sanctuary cities is something of a moving target. But at least 39 cities, 364 counties and four states have enacted laws or policies that limit the scope of local police and sheriff cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. In the same November balloting that elected Trump, urban areas with large undocumented populations  including Austin and Houston  chose law enforcement officials who promised they would not act with or on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mayors, led by Chicagos Rahm Emmanuel, have warned [JURIST Report] of the adverse economic impacts of increased immigration enforcement against law-abiding but undocumented foreign workers.

If cities and counties decline to cooperate with the incoming administration on immigration policy, there are distinct limits on what the federal government will be able to do about it. That fact is rooted in the fundamental legal relationship between the national government and the states and between the states and local governments.

Americas 89,000 municipalities are entirely creatures of the states. There is tremendous variation across the country in what kinds of local governments exist, how they are created, and how much power they have. But they all have one thing in common: they are created according to state constitutions and statutes, and their powers are entirely subject to state control. This municipal law principle, known as Dillons Rule, was established in an 1868 Iowa Supreme Court decision written by the conservative jurist John Forrest Dillon, whom President Ulysses S. Grant appointed to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 1869 and then resigned to teach at Columbia and Yale and to represent the Union Pacific Railroad. Dillons Rule states that municipal corporations have only the powers expressly granted by law, or those incidental to powers expressly granted.

Because local governments are creatures of the states which retain oversight authority over them (with notable exceptions such as the enforcement of protective legislation upheld under the Commerce Clause in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority), the federal government has no more ability to order cities around than it can tell state governments what to do.

In the context of sanctuary cities, this means that only the state governments have authority to tell cities and counties that they must collaborate with federal immigration enforcement. When one looks at a map of sanctuary cities, most of them turn up in blue states  Texas and Louisiana being notable exceptions  and liberal state governments are unlikely to require their municipalities to actively aid ICE enforcement.

So the question becomes, what can the federal government do? Recent cases underscore that the national government cannot leapfrog the states to grant powers or responsibilities to municipal corporations that those localities lack under state law. For example, last August the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Tennessee v. FCC held that the Federal Communications Commission could not preempt state laws restricting city broadband service powers. The FCC tried to grant cities powers that state laws did not. The Sixth Circuit opinion stated:

The political subdivisions of a state are nothing more than that states convenient agencies and the state generally retains the power to make discretionary decisions for its subdivisions  Any attempt by the federal government to interpose itself into this state-subdivision relationship therefore must come about by a clear directive from Congress.

The Tennessee v. FCC decision relied on a 2004 decision by the US Supreme Court, Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League, which held that while the FCC might have power to unshackle entrepreneurial private players in the telecommunications market from state restrictions, it had no power to grant local governments the authority to enter into that market in the first place.

Nor can the federal government conscript local governments into carrying out its programs. We know this from a number of important anti-commandeering cases decided by the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. In the 1997 case Printz v. United States, Justice Scalias opinion for the Court rejected a federal requirement that local law enforcement officials carry out handgun purchase background checks. Citing multiple sections of The Federalist, Scalia emphasized that the Constitution does not allow Congress to impose responsibilities on local governments without the consent of the states. Five years earlier, in New York v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution did not give Congress the ability to compel states to participate in a radioactive waste handling program. These cases were among many emanating from the Rehnquist court that underscored the vitality of the dual sovereignty division of responsibilities between the national and the state governments.

If the Trump administration is unable to command cities and counties to participate in ICE activities, could it use the tried and true approach of bribing them through the power of the purse, the Constitutions Spending Power? Here, too, federal tools are heavily restricted by important decisions from the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. In the well-known 1987 case South Dakota v. Dole, Chief Justice Rehnquist authored the courts opinion which approved (but implicitly limited) the size of federal government transportation funding cut-back to punish states that declined to increase the drinking age to 21. Rehnquist wrote that conditions on federal grants must be related to the subject matter of the particular national projects or programs, and suggested that the level of grant reductions must be modest. He pointed out that financial inducements offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.' Justice OConnor agreed with the principles but dissented, writing that in that specific case the minimum drinking age was not sufficiently related to interstate highway construction to condition funds appropriated for that purpose.

But most important is Chief Justice Roberts lead opinion in the 2012 case NFIB v. Sebelius, which, among other things, responded to entreaties from red state attorneys general and blocked a key portion of President Obamas Affordable Care Act. The provision in question would have withheld all of a states Medicaid grants if that state refused to accept increased federal funding and expand medical coverage to low-income people. Chief Justice Roberts cited New York v. United States, South Dakota v. Dole and Printz v. United States, holding that the Affordable Care Acts Medicaid provision passed the line from relatively mild encouragement to a gun to the head. Roberts noted that, in South Dakota v. Dole, only five percent of a states highway funds were at stake, suggesting that mild encouragement of that kind was an appropriate level.

If the Trump Administration and Congress opt to reduce federal funding for states that do not order their cities and counties to cooperate with ICE, under Rehnquist and Roberts decisions the reductions will have to be related to the subject matter of the particular national project or program (perhaps limited to federal immigration enforcement assistance). And the reductions cannot be more than relatively mild encouragement  perhaps the five percent level permitted in South Dakota v. Dole or a bit more. So long as the cities avoid affirmative interference with federal enforcement activities, the national government will be quite limited in the amount of punishment it can dole out.

And big city mayors seem quite determined to stick with their non-collaboration policy even if the federal government attempts more draconian funding cutbacks. This is a moral issue for the mayors and their voters. We have seen from recent red state resistance to President Obamas initiatives that public officials can be remarkably stubborn when resisting what they see as an attack on their communities fundamental values. When northern states and cities actively resisted federal fugitive slave laws prior to the Civil War, the national government was ultimately able to bludgeon them into cooperation only because Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution provided the basis for doing so. But that provision is not relevant to free undocumented persons, and in any event it was rendered inoperative by the Thirteenth Amendments abolition of slavery.

The supreme irony is, of course, that predominantly Democratic states and cities will be relying on the constitutionally-imbedded states rights that Republicans have fought so hard to sustain. Sanctuary cities will have to rely on Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues who have strongly advocated the Madisonian principles so important to lawyers and judges with roots in the Federalist Society. Cynics might suggest that conservatives on the Supreme Court will change their tune based on the change in federal administrations. But that would ignore their historical commitment to limited federal powers. As one libertarian commentator observed in a recent piece on sanctuary cities, President Trump will be forced to follow the Constitution, or the courts will enjoin him as they have his predecessor.

Hugh Spitzer is a Professor of Law (Acting) at the University of Washington School of Law, located in Seattle, Washington, where he teaches both federal and state constitutional law, and local government law.

Suggested citation: Hugh D. Spitzer, Sanctuary Cities to Find Sanctuary in the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, JURIST  Academic Commentary, Dec. 30, 2016, http://jurist.org/acadmic/2016/12/hugh-spitzer-sanctuarycities-immigration.php.
JURIST Guest Columnist Courtney Bowman [bio], discusses the emerging trend of localized data and how corporations and governments are reacting this emerging technology

The combined forces of globalization and technology have enabled an expansion of international business opportunities the likes of which have never been seen before. It is now easier than ever for companies large and small to achieve a global reach: large multinational companies station employees all over the world, while a single enterprising app developer can reach users in far-flung places due in large part to the increasing prevalence of smartphones in all but the most remote areas of the planet.

However, some national governments are attempting to exert control over the increasingly porous technological barriers between countries. Over the past few years, multiple countries have enacted data localization laws, which are intended to keep citizens personal data in-country and subject to local regulation. The implications  as well as the logistical headaches  can be enormous, as many companies previously have developed business models that require them to collect personal data from citizens of a particular country, but to process that data in another part of the world. For example, a company may collect personal data from customers in Germany in order to offer a service or product to those individuals, but may then choose to transfer that data to India for the processing required to fulfill their obligations to their customers. Although at first glance this wave of data localization laws may be viewed as national governments futile attempts to assert sovereignty over a borderless medium, the reality on the ground suggests the opposite. Most importantly for companies operating internationally, as data localization laws are gaining momentum the world over, they are being enforced by local authorities.

Many data localization laws are fairly narrow in terms of scope. For example, Nigeria requires government data to be hosted within its borders. Vietnam requires Internet service providers to keep a copy of their data within Vietnam for possible government inspection. Australias Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act prohibits the transfer of health data out of Australia in some situations. Although not explicitly characterized as a data localization law, the European Unions Data Protection Directive  and its successor, the General Data Protection Regulation  may be viewed as encouraging data localization, as some data controllers may choose to store and process data within the EU in order to avoid the Directives strict requirements for transferring personal data to non-EU countries.

However, there is an emerging trend of newer, more comprehensive data localization laws with a global reach. One of the most high-profile data localization laws came into force in Russia in September of 2015. That law attracted attention because of its truly comprehensive scope, as it requires that any personal data collected from Russians must be stored and processed on servers located within Russia. Moreover, it applies with equal force to companies based outside of Russia, meaning that foreign companies must comply or risk incurring significant penalties for violating the law, which include the blockage of an offenders website within Russia. And its clear that the law is not just all bark and no bite: Russias communications authority, the Roskomnadzor, has demonstrated its willingness to enforce the law and recently has succeeded in blocking websites belonging to US-based companies that have violated its provisions.

Other countries have enacted their own data localization laws, or broader laws with data localization components. One example of the latter is Chinas new cybersecurity law, which goes into effect in June 2017. It requires critical information infrastructure operators  which could be interpreted to include companies in many sectors, including telecommunications, information services and finance  to store certain personal and business information in China. Foreign companies subject to the law would have to apply for government permission before transferring data out of China, although the laws ambiguous wording makes it unclear precisely which companies would be required to comply with the localization provisions. Naturally, this leaves many organizations wondering whether they should devote the time and resources required to try to understand and comply with the law, risk noncompliance and its associated penalties, or change their business models to avoid collecting data in China altogether  all unenviable positions for any organization looking to make inroads in the coveted Chinese market.

Despite the possibly negative effects on businesses, data localization laws do carry some advantages for the countries that enact them, at least in theory. A law requiring data to be stored on servers in-country could help persuade a company to open an office (or at least rent servers) in a nation, which in turn could result in more local investment and perhaps more jobs for residents. Furthermore, countries privacy laws generally are not enacted in a vacuum; often, they reflect certain nationally-ingrained concerns about the use and abuse of personal data. For example, it has been theorized that European countries tend to have more stringent data protection laws due to a deep suspicion of possible personal data misuse borne out of the World War II era, when fascist governments collected individuals personal information in order to pursue those people and send them to camps. Data localization laws therefore allow countries to assert their own national and cultural priorities over the use of citizens personal information, especially where there exists a concern that these values would evaporate if the data was transferred to another country. Of course, by the same token, forcing companies to keep personal data stored in-country may make it legally (or perhaps simply logistically) easier for governments to access their own citizens personal information. Additionally, some countries have enacted data localization requirements to address what they argue are cybersecurity concerns. The Chinese government, for example, has argued that the data localization provisions in its new cybersecurity law help support the laws mission of enhancing the countrys data security.

Regardless of any perceived benefits, however, the fact remains that data localization laws are a formidable barrier to companies seeking to expand their international presence, whether through opening new offices abroad or reaching out to customers in foreign markets. Small companies have a particularly difficult time grappling with these laws, as they often lack the personnel, financial and legal resources to develop compliance strategies. Nevertheless, these types of laws may not make exceptions for small or otherwise under-resourced organizations, and entities like startups, app developers and nonprofits may struggle to open their doors in such markets. Expect the struggle between business and national interests to continue if the data localization trend continues to strengthen in the years ahead.

Courtney Bowman is a litigation associate with Proskauer [official website] in their Los Angeles office and a member of Proskauers Privacy and Cybersecurity practice group. She is a certified information privacy professional (CIPP) in both the U.S. private sector (CIPP/US) and Europe (CIPP/E) and assists clients in a wide variety of industries with issues related to international privacy law.

Suggested citation: Courtney Bowman, Data Localization Laws: an Emerging Global Trend, JURIST  Hotline, Jan. 6, 2017, http://jurist.org/hotline/2017/01/data-localization-laws-an-emerging-global-trend.php.
A judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Texas [official website] on Wednesday extended [order, PDF] a restraining order blocking new Texas regulations [text, PDF] that would require the burial or cremation of aborted fetal remains until January 27. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton [official website], who is confident the court will rule for the state, said [press release], Texas values the dignity of the remains of the unborn and believes that fetal tissue should be disposed of properly and humanely. Amy Hagstrom Miller], a plaintiff and president of Whole Womans Health [official website], testified [Reuters report] that the regulation would increase costs and the stigma of abortion.

Judge Sam Sparks temporarily blocked [JURIST report] the Texas regulation back in December. The US Supreme Court struck down [JURIST report] a controversial Texas abortion law in June. The court ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-3 in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt [SCOTUSblog materials] that HB2 [text], which imposed certain requirements on abortion clinics and doctors, created an undue burden on access to abortion, and was therefore unconstitutional.
[JURIST] The Kentucky House of Representatives [official website] on Thursday advanced a bill [text, PDF] that would allow workers to avoid paying dues at union workplaces. This bill was backed by Republican lawmakers who gained a majority in the House last fall. Kentucky democrats have released statements [WSJ report] against the bill. Kentucky right-to-work is about padding the pockets of the corporate giants who want to keep the cost of doing business down at the expense of the worker, Rep. Dennis Keene [official website] said. Right-to-work is simply a clever slogan designed to undermine union resources, Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky AFL-CIO [official website], told Kentucky representatives Wednesday. Republicans in the state claim that this will help bring more business and commerce into Kentucky.

Right-to-work laws have become more prevalent across the country in recent years. In 2015 the Republican-led Missouri General Assembly approved a right to work bill [JURIST report] that would stop workers from being required to be part of a union or pay dues, but the bill did not garner enough votes to overcome a likely veto by Governor Jay Nixon. The West Virginia Legislature passed the WV Workplace Freedom Act in February 2016 [JURIST report], overruling a veto by the Democratic Governor Earl Ray Tomblin the day before. West Virginia became the twenty-sixth state in the country with a right-to-work law, a law that bars employers from requiring that their employees pay union fees. In May the Wisconsin Court of Appeals stayed [JURIST report] a lower courts decision striking down Wisconsins right to work law, thus reinstating it at least for the time being.
[JURIST] Four Yemeni detainees were transferred [press release] Thursday from Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia. After the detainees landed, a White House spokesman confirmed [Reuters reports] that there would likely be more Guantanamo detainees released before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump [official website], but no specific details were offered. The Obama administration currently hopes to release 19 of the remaining 59 detainees being held in the prison despite strong Republican objections. Trump recently called for a halt to the releases, stating [WP report] that the remaining detainees are too dangerous to be allowed back onto the battlefield. Trump currently intends to keep Guantanamo Bay open and filled with new detainees during his term.

Last month a detainee was transferred [JURIST report] from Guantanamo Bay to the government of Cape Verde, a small country off the Western coast of Africa. In September the Obama administration shut down [JURIST report] Camp 5 of Guantanamo Bay, which was a 100-cell maximum security prison. In August Vice President Joe Biden stated at a press conference in Sweden that he hoped and expected [JURIST report] that the Guantanamo prison would be closed before President Barack Obama leaves office. Also in August the DOD announced the transfer [JURIST report] of 15 Guantanamo detainees to the United Arab Emirates. Earlier in August a US Senator released a Pentagon Report [JURIST report] detailing the profiles of those currently detained in and recently released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) concluded that closing the facility would not be in the US best interests and would pose a safety risk.
The impeachment trial of President Park Geun-hye has gotten off to a strange start. In the second hearing on Thursday, Park's attorneys claimed that the beleaguered president is being targeted by mob justice, likened her to Jesus or Socrates, and accused candlelight protesters of "waging war" spurred by North Korea sympathizers. They also claimed that seeking to impeach the president based on "media articles praised by North Korea" would be tantamount to violating the Constitution. Rather than calmly rebutting the impeachment charges, Park's attorneys seem to have decided that their only hope is hysterical filibustering to sway public opinion.

Former Cheong Wa Dae secretaries Lee Jae-man and Ahn Bong-geun refused to obey their summons and seem to have gone to ground, and former Cheong Wa Dae administrative staffer Lee Young-sun submitted a written excuse for his absence. Another former staffer, Yoon Jeon-choo, did take the witness stand but either claimed not to remember anything or refused to answer.

The impeachment trial is a vital judicial process that will determines the fate of the president. Lee and Ahn are suspected of having direct knowledge of the extortion racket Park's longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil ran from Cheong Wa Dae. It is an embarrassment that these people can simply dodge out of their appearances before the Constitutional Court. They have all tried the same tactic with the National Assembly inquiry into the scandal.

Of course they will all eventually be compelled to appear, but Park's plan seems to be to drag out the proceedings as long as possible to weaken the case. At least six of the nine Constitutional Court justices must rule in favor of impeachment to oust Park, but Constitutional Court President Park Han-chul and justice Lee Jung-mi's terms end on Jan. 31 and March 13. That just leaves seven judges to decide the case, and the president's legal team seem to hope that they can somehow sway two to rule against impeachment.

In their more rational moments, Park's attorneys have demanded that strict rules of criminal justice must apply to their client, who is innocent until proven guilty while the case against her must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. This would require the Constitutional Court to summon every witness named by prosecutors and would naturally drag out the trial.

Of course Park should have the same legal rights as any other defendant. But it cannot be the case that the Constitutional Court conducts a parallel criminal trial on all the minutiae of this complicated and snowballing scandal. The purpose of the impeachment trial is to determine whether the president is capable of leading the nation. Nothing else must be allowed to get in the way.


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The semi-trucks you see on South Floridas highways and local streets commonly weigh up to 80,000 pounds or about the weight of twenty cars. If that truck is up to speed and hits another vehicle tremendous force is brought to bear, frequently causing serious injuries and death to those on the receiving end. Boca truck accident lawyer Joe Osborne warns drivers to take action if theyve been involved in such an accident. Get information about truck accidents from a legal truck accident expert.

If you are involved in a truck accident, survive and are conscious, you are probably so dazed you may not even remember the accident, let alone be aware of how injured you truly are. Seek medical attention immediately. If theres any question about your health, ask for an ambulance to come to the scene. At the very least have a family member or friend drive you to the nearest hospital to get examined.

After getting medical care, contact our office. I frequently talk to people who delay reaching out until they know exactly what their injuries are. You should call sooner than later and avoid waiting for a final diagnosis from a doctor because every personal injury case starts with the ability to find out what insurance may cover for the accident and to what amount. Not knowing that makes it difficult to decide whats appropriate to do.

Our clients work with us while theyre being treated and going through rehabilitation. Its not either or, adds tractor-trailer accident attorney Osborne. We work up the case and investigate the accident while you work towards a recovery.

Compensation for these accidents varies widely. There may be any number of parties involved in a tractor-trailer accident case, different insurance policies and different types of compensation that may be available in a truck accident case. The injuries caused in these accidents may be very significant because of the weight, size and force of the impact.

Some of the compensation can include:

 Lost wages (due to time missed from work because youre unable to do your job).

 The cost of your medical care, treatment and rehabilitation (youre entitled to be compensated for what you have incurred up to the time of trial and what your physician predicts youll need in the future).

 The value of your pain and suffering (which would be decided by a jury who should consider the medical procedures you have had, the future procedures that are anticipated and what your doctor says about how much your injuries are limiting your life).

After a Florida truck accident you have four years to file a lawsuit. Those four years are called the statute of limitations. If you dont file your case within this time your legal right to recovery may be forever lost so its important to reach out to a truck accident attorney well ahead of that deadline. You should do it right away because an investigation needs to be conducted and its much easier to do when we start soon after the accident. In addition to reviewing possible insurance coverage it will include:

 Finding the facts and circumstances of the accident.

 Obtaining police reports.

 Hiring an expert to recreate the accident to come up with a cause.

 Finding and preserving driver logs, repair documents, video footage or photos of the accident.

If you or a family member have been injured in a tractor trailer accident in Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach Counties and have any questions about accident law, contact Boca truck accident lawyer Joe Osborne at (561) 800-4011 or fill out this online contact form. We can talk about the situation, how the law could apply in your case and the best legal options to protect your rights and obtain compensation for your injuries.

Media Contact: Personal injury lawyer Joseph Osborne 561-800-4020

source: http://www.oa-lawfirm.com/boca-truck-accident-lawyer-joe-osborne-says-large-trucks-cause-serious-injuries/

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Actor Lee Dong-wook turned into a lonely, sad king.

Lee Dong-wook is currently starring in the tvN drama "Goblin" as a Death Angel who can't remember his past life.

In the previous episode, Sunny (Yoo In-na) turned out to be Kim Sin's (Gong Yoo) sister Kim Seon. At the same time, the Death Angel was seen wearing a king's gown.

The Death Angel who cried as soon as he saw Sunny and cried over the letter Kim Sin had of his sister, was actually a king. Kim Sin had met the rebirth of her sister he never met for 900 years.

Stills of Lee Dong-wook as the king of Koyreo were released. He is submerged in sadness and grief which is completely different from the Death Angel today.

This scene was taken recently in Suwon. Lee Dong-wook had to change his aura into a more solemn and sincere one.

Lee Dong-wook put all the emotions of grief, anger, sadness and lingering into his eyes. Then later, he checked himself out on the monitor.

Meanwhile, the eleventh episode of "Goblin" can be seen on the 6th.

Source:HanCinema
with Sonia Denis  Computer science; Rwanda; singing the n-word in songs; ignoring friends on public transportation; Keiths sexual Uber pool; Donald Trump and Kanye West; how to change the world; Don Lemon drunk on CNNs New Years Eve Live

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I want to share a cool idea used at Mission Health in North Carolina. I recently interviewed Dr. Ron Paulus, CEO of the health system. Three years ago the organization launched Immersion Day, when board members leave their corporate meeting rooms to shadow the doctors and nurses in their hospitals.

Journalists and legislators are also invited to join. They don scrubs, go through an orientation, sign privacy forms, and spend 9 to 12 hours behind the scenes watching frontline clinicians in their everyday work. They gain insights they could never have gained otherwise.

According to Dr. Paulus, Immersion Day helps each side learn how the other thinks. For many board members, its the first time theyve been on the front lines of care. For many physicians, its the first time theyve met a member of the board. (The health system has a second program, appropriately named Walk a Mile, for senior executives.)

The experience, which has been repeated several times since its inception, has catalyzed better understanding and positive change. One board member was quoted in an article about the initiative as saying, I learned more about hospitals and health care from my ten immersion hours than six years sitting on our board.

Dr. Paulus told me that after seeing the stress level of doctors and nurses and the frustrations they dealt with every day, the board unanimously agreed to a multimillion-dollar program to improve the usability of the electronic health record and fix inefficient and frustrating workflow processes. They also approved funding for additional behavioral health services in the ED, for which the need was evident during their shadowing experience.

How can this idea help prevent burnout? Initiatives like Immersion Day can bridge the gap that exists in many organizations between the daily world of the care providers and the board members, executives, and legislators who make decisions that profoundly affect that world. As Dr. Paulus told me, Its easy to disrespect someone you dont know and have stereotyped. A key solution is to have people spend time together and listen to each other long enough to avoid discounting and stereotyping.

When administrators and board members can see the downstream, longer term effects of their decisions about resources, staffing, performance metrics, organizational priorities, and work policies, they can begin to appreciate what research in other industries has already shown: valuing employees, through improving their work experience and other means, makes good business sense and results in better overall performance. And its the right thing to do.

Diane W. Shannon is an internal medicine physician who blogs at Shannon Healthcare Communications.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
One way to train gritty doctors: Dont allow them to quit

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What is grit?

In an article in The Guardian, Angela Duckworth, a psychologist often called the guru of grit, defined it as the commitment to finish what you start, to rise from setbacks, to want to improve and succeed, and to undertake sustained and sometimes unpleasant practice in order to do so.

She said in a paper that grit is perseverance and passion for long-term goals.

I think wed all agree we would want our doctors, particularly our surgeons, to have grit.

That sounds great, but how do we find people who possess grit? This is especially important in surgery because attrition rates in general surgery residency programs have been about 20 percent for many years.

In 2014, I blogged about a paper that used grit levels, measured by a brief survey  the Short Form Grit Scale (SFGS), to predict who might drop out of surgical training programs. However the authors did not find that low grit made a significant difference because attrition rates in the programs studied were lower than expected.

A recent study published ahead of print in the American Journal of Surgery used the SFGS to identify potential residency dropouts and found that residents with less grit thought about leaving their program more frequently, but the numbers were again too small to show a significant difference in resident attrition. Those with higher grit levels had a better sense of well-being which is nice.

One of the problems in trying to measure grit is that the grit scale is fairly easy to game. For example, in response to the statement I am a hard worker, how many surgical residents would describe themselves as not like me at all? In fact, if you cant get a high score on the SFGS, you not only short on grit, you are also lacking common sense and should not be licensed to care for sick patients.

Its hard to measure grit, so why cant we just teach it?

The Guardian story said Duckworths father often disparaged her, and she reacted by trying harder to prove him wrong.

In todays world, can you imagine teaching a resident to persevere by using disparaging remarks? I dont think so.

From the Guardian: To avoid some of the mistakes of her own upbringing, Duckworth teaches her children grit. With her husband, Jason, she has developed the Hard Thing rule. Each family member must choose a discipline  for Jason and Duckworth their work, for the girls an interest  and apply themselves to it. No one may quit until the activity has run its course.

Thats one way to cut down on resident attrition rates. Simply do not allow them to quit.

Problem solved.

Skeptical Scalpel is a surgeon who blogs at his self-titled site, Skeptical Scalpel. This article originally appeared in Physicians Weekly.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The law caught up with several Webb County fugitives at the start of the new year.

The Sheriff's Office has been conducting warrant roundups for the last two days.

A total of 16 men and women were arrested for their criminal offenses ranging from felony theft, burglary, assault, evading arrest, forgery, possession of a controlled substance, and DWIs - along with other violations.

Arrested were:

1. Julio Cesar Rodriguez, 23, charged with possession of controlled substance, $30,000 bond, and possession of controlled substance, $30,000 bond

2. Cristina Rivera, 35, charged with theft, no bond, and abandonment and endangerment of a child, no bond.

3. Eliza Mae Garcia, 47, charged with credit card abuse, no bond; theft, no bond; and failure to identify, no bond.

4. Juan Larumbe Cadena, 49, charged with possession of controlled substance, no bond.

5. Abraham Armando Ramon, 24, charged with possession of marijuana, no bond.

6. Francisco Javier Ramos, 37, charged with manufacturing and delivering controlled substance, no bond.

7. Alyssa Krystell Beal, 25, charged with possession controlled substance, no bond.

8. Johnathan De La Fuente, 23, charged with burglary of building, no bond.

9. Javier David Morales, 26, charged with possession marijuana, no bond, and manufacturing and delivery controlled substance, no bond.

10. Edgar Serna, 32, charged with possession of controlled substance (5 counts), no bond.

11. Dario Lopez Jr, 51, charged with possession of controlled substance, no bond.

1

2. David Garza Trevino, 24, charged with possession of controlled substance, no bond; possession of marijuana, no bond; evading arrest/detention, no bond; possession of controlled substance; no bond.

13. Jeneva Ramona Ruiz, 25, charged with theft, no bond.

14. Julio Cesar Navarro Garcia, 39, charged with burglary of building, no bond; and theft, no bond.

15. Jaime Eliazar Aguilar, 28, charged with evading arrest/detention, no bond; and theft, no bond.

16. Macedonio Javier Leija, 36, charged with possession of controlled substance, no bond; and possession of marijuana, no bond.

All suspects were remanded to the Webb County Jail.

"I remind anyone who knows they are wanted by authorities that you can run, but you can't hide," added Sheriff Cuellar.

Residents are encouraged to report any wanted person in Webb County by calling (956) 523-4520 or (956) 523-4408.

All photos below are sent courtesy of the Webb County Sheriff's Office.
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Vodafone offers unlimited voice and data call for postpaid users



Vodafone has revamped its Red postpaid plans to offer unlimited calls and more data to users in a bid to counter Reliance Jio. The Rs. 499 Vodafone Red postpaid plan provides users with unlimited national and local calls to any network, along with 3GB of 3G/ 4G data and 100 free text messages for a month. The Rs. 699 Vodafone Red postpaid plan comes with the same calling and text messaging benefits, but ups the bundled 4G/ 3G data to 5GB.



The revamped Vodafone Red postpaid plans come soon after Airtel started offering 3GB of free mobile data per month to prepaid and postpaid customers switching to its 4G network. Gadgets 360 tried to get in touch with Vodafone to confirm the new Red postpaid plans, but the company declined to comment on the revamped plans. However, it's evident the revamped Vodafone Red postpaid plans are available in some regions, with dealers already hawking them (as seen in the above image). Read More...


You are booked for outpatient surgery and have no one to drive you home from the hospital. Or even worse, youre facing a prolonged serious illness, and you need a lot more help than a friend or relative can provide. Perhaps you can turn to a relatively new model of caregiving: a network of volunteers who join forces to lend you a hand.

Several years ago, when Lynn Richards needed hip surgery, she tapped into the Caring Collaborative of the East Bay/San Francisco. The collaborative is an all-volunteer service of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of The Transition Network (opens in new tab), a national membership organization for women ages 50 and older.

Richards, who lives alone in Berkeley, Cal., says she gave the Caring Collaboratives coordinator a schedule of the help she would need over the projected four weeks of her recovery. The coordinator sent an e-mail bulletin to the collaboratives 25 or so membersmany of whom Richards, now 72, did not know.

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Caring Collaborative members, as well as Richards friends, assumed numerous tasks. One volunteer took notes when a visiting nurse described the exercise, care and medication regimen she would need to follow. Others cooked meals, ran errands and walked with her outside while she struggled on crutches. It was just life-saving, both physically and emotionally, says Richards, a retired program developer for a nonprofit. She hired someone to help her bathe and clean the house.

Theres nothing remarkable about accompanying a friend to the doctor or taking a meal to a neighbor after surgery. But as baby boomers age, they are creating more-structured systems of volunteer caregiving. These new models can be a godsend for older people who live alone, as well as for overtaxed spouses and adult children. For the primary caregiver, theres a sense of reliefOh, I can breathe again, its not all on me,  says Sheila Warnock, president of the nonprofit Share the Care (opens in new tab), which instructs friends, relatives, neighbors and others on how to create a caregiver family to help someone with a long-term or grave medical condition.

The Transition Networks Caring Collaboratives are designed to step in when a member needs occasional help or, as with Richards, some aid over a short period of time. Of the networks 13 chapters, four have set up Caring Collaboratives: San Franciscos Bay Area, New York City, Long Island, N.Y., and Philadelphia.

About half of the 600 members of New York Citys chapter belong to its collaborative. New members must attend an orientation to learn the rules for seeking and offering help, says Barbara Stahura, the chair of the chapters Caring Collaborative committee. When a member wants to schedule helpperhaps shell need a ride home after a colonoscopyshe can e-mail the care coordinator, who looks for a willing volunteer.

The New York City collaborative also has created 15 neighborhood groups of a dozen or so women who meet occasionally in someones home. If you feel closer to these women, you may feel comfortable to pick up the phone when you need help, Stahura says. The Transition Network offers a guide for community groups (opens in new tab) that want to create their own caring collaborative.

Creating a Village of Caregivers

To help someone with a serious illness, friends could create a Share the Care group (opens in new tab). Warnock wrote the book Share the Care (Fireside, $17) with Cappy Capossela after their friend Susan Farrow died of cancer in 1991. For more than three years, a large group of friends, neighbors and co-workers took care of Farrow, a divorced mother of tworunning errands, checking her in and out of hospitals, supervising a home health aide and even organizing her daughters wedding.

In early 2002, Capossela was diagnosed with brain cancer, and Warnock put their books guidelines to work. We ran her entire life, she says. It was very intense. Capossela died later that year, and Warnock created the nonprofit, which, besides offering advice to individual caregivers, conducts workshops for health providers and faith groups.

A Share the Care group follows detailed rules on organizing the team and keeping it going. You can download the information from the website, or you can buy the book.

Ron Stevenson, 76, who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., has organized three Share the Care groups. The core members of each caregiving teamand the beneficiaries of their helpbelonged to a large running group in the Washington, D.C., area. Two friends were diagnosed with terminal cancer. The third Share the Care group in 2011 cared for a married couple who were injured in a car accident.

Following the books instructions, Stevenson and his wife, Pam, set up an initial meeting between the patients and the Share the Care group. They talk about their illness and their feelings, Stevenson says. Its pretty powerful stuff. Each group ranged from about 30 to 100 volunteers.

Every Sunday, the captain for the week called the patient or spouse to see what was neededand then assignments were issued, such as fixing dinner, doing laundry or just hanging out. Stevenson kept a spreadsheet. Nobody gets wiped out by having to do everything, says Stevenson.

When his friend Charlie Roberts was diagnosed with cancer, Stevenson asked Roberts wife if he could form a group to help her out. The group included members of their running group and Roberts friends from his Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The vets built a wheelchair ramp, mowed the lawn, took him to the hospital and spent the night. Eventually his wife hired a full-time aide. Roberts died in 2007.

Local governments are also looking to collaborative caregiving approaches. Westchester County, N.Y., has issued a manual on creating care circles. Circle members cant provide skilled care, but they can cook and provide other help that could keep older people in their homes for as long as possible, says Colette Phipps, executive director of the countys Livable Communities initiative (opens in new tab). Caregiver groups such as the Caring Collaborative are also a good way for older adults to make new friends. Victoria Weill-Hagai, 71, an artist in Manhattan, has volunteered several times for the New York City collaborative. If you do a job for somebody you have never met and you sit with them for coffee afterward, you may find you have a lot in common, Weill-Hagai says.
Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are getting cheaper than ever. But if you dont keep an eye on the bargain racks, its easy to miss out on some big savings.

In recent months, major fund firms have been steadily shaving fees in a race to attract price-sensitive investors. In June, Fidelity Investments announced fee cuts on 27 index funds and ETFs. BlackRock cut fees on 15 iShares ETFs in early October, followed days later by Charles Schwab, which cut the expenses of five ETFs. Core holdings such as the Schwab U.S. Aggregate Bond and iShares Core S&P 500 ETFs now cost 0.04% annually, or $4 for each $10,000 invested.

Management fees arent the only prices falling in the fund world. More and more mutual funds that have traditionally carried a load, or sales charge, are available without the loads in no-transaction-fee supermarkets, such as those operated by Fidelity and Schwab. And while investors must normally pay a commission to trade ETFs, hundreds of ETFs are now available commission-free on platforms operated by Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity and others.

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To be sure, many of the latest fee cuts apply to funds that were already dirt cheapand trimming 0.01 or 0.02 percentage point off a funds expense ratio wont rock investors world. But if your current fund holdings charge 1% or more, or youre paying mutual fund loads and ETF trading commissions, its time to take a hard look at ways to trim your expenses. With so many lower-cost options available, you shouldnt feel locked in to pricier investments, says Russel Kinnel, director of manager research at Morningstar.

Fees take a bite directly out of your returns. In every asset class, the cheapest funds are far more likely than the priciest ones to survive (rather than being liquidated or merged with other funds) and to outperform their category, Morningstar found in a 2016 study.

Slash Your Costs

To find low-cost funds, use Kiplinger.coms Mutual Fund Finder or Morningstars mutual fund and ETF screeners (opens in new tab). You can also enter a funds name in the search box at Morningstar.com and click the quote tab to see whether the funds fees are high or low for its category.

Before dumping pricier funds in favor of lower-cost options, look at ways to minimize any tax consequences. If youre holding highly appreciated high-cost funds in a taxable account, for example, perhaps you can also sell some losers to offset the gains. If switching to lower-cost funds will trigger a tax bill, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authoritys Fund Analyzer can help determine whether the move is worth it. Enter the fund names, investment amount, expected return and holding period to compare the total dollar cost of holding various funds.

To sidestep fund loads, invest through no-transaction-fee supermarkets offered by Fidelity, Schwab and others. Load funds from firms such as J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are now available without loads on such platforms. And American Funds, known for low-cost, high-quality funds, made its funds available without a load through Fidelity and Schwab in October.

When browsing the supermarkets for no-transaction-fee funds or commission-free ETFs, keep your eye on total fund costs. The supermarkets typically charge the funds a fee for putting their products on the shelfand that can drive up fund expense ratios. You may save money by buying the house brandthe Schwab funds at Schwab or the Vanguard funds at Vanguard, says Dave Nadig, chief executive officer of ETF.com (opens in new tab).

Stay on the lookout for further fee cuts. While it may seem that ETFs charging 0.03% or 0.04% are scraping bottom, its theoretically possible for some ETFs to charge no fees. Some ETFs can generate 0.1% to 0.2% of assets per year by lending out shares in their portfolios to short-sellers who want to bet against the stock, Nadig says, and that could effectively pay the issuer to do their job.

He thinks its more likely, however, that the higher-end fees will fall. There are quite a few funds charging north of 70 basis points, or 0.7%, he says. Thats still pretty expensive.
By Cecile Lefort

SYDNEY, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The Australian and New Zealand dollars held near three-week highs on Friday as their U.S. counterpart's bullish run came to a screeching halt, putting them on track for a strong start to the year.

The Australian dollar was steady at $0.7330 , having rallied 0.7 percent overnight when it touched a three-week high of $0.7356.

It has gained nearly 2 percent this week, and if sustained, it would be the largest such increase in about a year. Resistance was found at the Dec. 16 top of $0.7370 with support around $0.7330.

The currency received a further fillip after Australia boasted its first trade surplus in almost three years in November, as surging commodity prices boosted export earnings beyond all expectations. Exports jumped by 8.4 percent, or a whopping A$2.3 billion, with iron ore and coal, Australia's top exports, each showing double-digit gains.

The trade surplus will likely mean that Australia's economy will just manage to escape recession, said Paul Dales, chief economist for Australia & New Zealand at Capital Economics.

Australia's gross domestic product shrank for the first time since 2011 in the third quarter, raising the spectre of a possible recession following 25 years of growth.

Investors are now focused on Friday's U.S. non-farm payrolls report in which economists expected job gains of 178,000 in December. The New Zealand dollar touched its highest in three weeks at $0.7040, to be last at $0.7014. It has gained 1.1 percent this week and the next big level is $0.7050, the 61.8 percent retracement of its December fall.

A dearth of domestic data has seen the kiwi track to the whims of the U.S. currency in recent days.

The country's central bank holds its next policy meeting on Feb. 9 and is considered certain to keep rates at 1.75 percent, with the market wagering it will remain there for much of the coming year.

New Zealand government bonds extended their rally, with yields falling as much as 6 basis points at the longer end. Yields on 10-year paper have dropped 30 basis points in just five sessions.

Australian government bond futures rose, with the three-year bond contract up 3 ticks at 98.010. The 10-year contract added 4.5 ticks to 97.2650, while the 20-year contract gained 6.5 ticks to 96.6400.

(Editing by Randy Fabi)
(Updates prices)

SAO PAULO, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The Mexican peso strengthened slightly on Thursday in a day of volatile trading after the central bank sold dollars to support the ailing currency, which has been battered by uncertainty over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

The peso firmed 0.13 percent to 21.4225 per dollar following the intervention, a day after the slumping currency hit a record low. Traders said the bank sold $1 billion in New York and Mexico in its first such move since February 2016. Mexican financial authorities were mum on the amount, but said they could not rule out further discretionary intervention to staunch the bleeding.

Analysts with BNP Paribas praised the move, saying the bank will need to adopt a more aggressive intervention policy than it did in the last two years in order to correct currency imbalances.

In a client note, they estimated the Mexican central bank currently has more than $40 billion on hand it could use to buffer the peso's decline.

The currency posted its worst yearly performance since 2008 last year on concerns that Trump could enact protectionist policies against Mexico.

It extended losses in the first days of 2017 after carmaker Ford Motor Co announced it would cancel a planned $1.6 billion investment in central Mexico following criticism by Trump. The peso fell again on Thursday afternoon when Trump threatened a hefty tax for Toyota if it builds its Corolla cars for the U.S. market at a plant in Mexico before rebounding slightly. Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 2200 GMT:

Stock Latest daily % change YTD % change indexes MSCI Emerging Markets 881.72 1.18 2.26 MSCI LatAm 2403.05 0.98 2.67 Brazil Bovespa 62070.98 0.78 3.06 Mexico IPC 46719.99 0.28 2.36 Chile IPSA 4163.65 -0.11 0.30 Chile IGPA 20785.21 -0.12 0.25 Argentina MerVal 18222.70 0.43 7.71 Colombia IGBC 10317.51 0.28 1.87 Venezuela IBC 32611.87 2.43 2.86

Currencies Latest daily % change YTD % change Brazil real 3.1990 -0.08 1.57 Mexico peso 21.4350 0.07 -3.22 Chile peso 661.6 0.00 1.38 Colombia peso 2930.51 1.31 2.42 Peru sol 3.364 0.00 1.49 Argentina peso (interbank) 15.9550 0.88 -0.50 Argentina peso (parallel) 16.82 0.83 0.00 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool)
By Davide Scigliuzzo

NEW YORK, Jan 5 (IFR) - Jefferies has hired two senior leveraged finance bankers focused on the energy sector from Barclays, two people familiar with the situation told IFR on Thursday.

The pair, Paul Cugno and Robert Anderson, will start in their new roles as managing directors on Monday.

They have worked together for 12 years, first at Lehman Brothers and then at Barclays after the British bank purchased the former's North American investment banking and capital markets business in 2008.

At Barclays, Cugno most recently served as head of natural resources, power and infrastructure debt capital markets, while Anderson worked as a managing director in the high-yield and leveraged loan capital markets group.

Cugno joined Lehman's leveraged finance business in 2000 after a three-year stint at Scotia Capital, while Anderson joined the bank in 2004, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Jefferies has made an aggressive push to bolster its leveraged financing business in recent months, attempting to hire a number of senior investment bankers from Credit Suisse before the Swiss bank managed to convince the majority of them to stay. Barclays declined to comment.

(Reporting by Davide Scigliuzzo; Editing by Natalie Harrison)
HANOI, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0101 GMT.

Jan 6 Jan 5 USD/VND mid-point 22,154 22,159

USD/VND interbank 22,675/22,685 22,620/22,700 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.35/36.67 36.35/36.67

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, Jan 6 (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 0404 GMT.

Jan 6 Jan 5 USD/VND mid-point 22,154 22,159 USD/VND interbank 22,570/22,575 22,620/22,700 USD/VND unofficial 22,930/23,000 22,960/23,010 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.34/36.66 36.35/36.67

Interbank offered rates Overnight 3.0-5.0 3.0-4.7

1 week 4.5-5.0 4.0-5.0

1 month 5.0-5.3 5.0-5.4

3 months 5.2-5.3 5.2-5.4

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)
* Le Pen has pledged to ditch euro, change debt denomination

* Lawyers say govt debt could switch by changing French law

* But corporate bonds issued under foreign law left in limbo

* Servicing euro bonds with new franc could lead to defaults

By John Geddie

LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Should France ditch the single currency under a president Le Pen, redenominating nearly 2 trillion euros of government bonds in "new francs" could be legally straightforward, but hundreds of billions of corporate debt would be left in limbo.

The crux of the issue is that the sovereign debt is subject to French laws that could be changed by the government to prevent a currency switch triggering a default, while a large chunk of the 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) of bonds issued by major French companies are governed by foreign legislation.

Such a scenario became a possibility this week after French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen - one of two candidates likely to make a May election run-off - said she would take France out of the euro if she won and denominate its national debt in a new currency. Polls suggest the leader of the far-right National Front will eventually lose to a mainstream candidate, tipped to be conservative Francois Fillon, and also indicate that despite strong misgivings about the EU and the euro zone, most French voters want to remain members of both.

But after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump's U.S. victory, few people are taking anything for granted.

Le Pen did not specify whether she wants to redenominate all of the 1.9 billion of existing euro debt, or only new bond sales.

Lawyers contacted by Reuters said the government could convert its existing debt into a new French franc without major legal challenges.

"Given that most French government debt, if not all of it, is governed by French law then that would be an easy change for the government to make," said Matthew Hartley, a debt capital markets partner at London-based law firm Allen & Overy.

"Similar to when the euro was introduced, they could introduce legislative provisions stipulating that any change in currency won't give rise to any default under these contracts."

France's debt management agency AFT, part of the French treasury, declined to comment on the subject.

CORPORATE QUAGMIRE

But while France could pass a law that would allow all its debt to be redenominated - a fundamental change to the terms of the bonds - with legal impunity, that legislation is unlikely to be recognised by courts in London or New York, for example.

Of around 1 trillion euros of French corporate bonds outstanding, more than 50 percent is governed by foreign laws, according to Thomson Reuters' data - mainly English legislation because many investors are more familiar with it.

Around 60 percent of French government bonds are also held by foreigners, but as they see less chance of a sovereign default and are likely to have less bargaining power with the state anyway, they are less concerned about the underlying law.

If the French private sector had problems servicing its legacy euro-denominated bonds with a new currency, it could lead to mass defaults that could be devastating for the domestic economy and the region, where France is the euro zone's second-biggest economy.

In Italy, one of the bloc's most indebted states, politicians campaigning to leave the euro zone have argued that their legal system would also allow a redenomination of its sovereign debt to occur without triggering a formal default.

A similar debate was last aired when Greece was on the brink of leaving the bloc in 2015 but its myriad debt issued under different legal jurisdictions was thought to have made redenomination problematic.

GREATER RISK

For the foreign investors who hold France's sovereign debt, the lack of a legal recourse to redenomination would be compounded by the perils of inheriting assets with much greater exchange rate risk - especially for investors from other euro nations who currently assume no currency risk at all when investing in France.

As a result, if the prospect of France leaving the euro zone was seen as significant, many may not wait around to find out the impact on French debt.

"Redenomination might be the lesser of the two problems ... however this could still damage France's market reputation and adversely affect risk and pricing," another senior financial lawyer told Reuters on condition of anonymity, adding that all France's government debt could be changed legally via retrospective legislation.

Investors who have bought insurance against a French default - via the credit default swaps market - are also unlikely to get paid out if a redenomination takes place.

Definitions from ISDA, the market association whose members effectively decide whether a default has occurred to trigger these contracts, state that conversion from euros into another currency would not constitute a restructuring if it is the result of action taken by a government and there is a freely available market rate of conversion.

Euro area countries' ascension to the single currency is one of few precedents for such a change. That involved years of readying investors with the introduction of a pre-euro basket of currencies known as the ECU - and Le Pen has proposed using a similar method to manage an exit.

But while investors at the time may have been happy to convert into the euro - a new benchmark currency likely to have proven more stable than the free-floating franc - they may not be so content to switch out.

As far as ratings agencies are concerned, sharp devaluation of the new franc after such an exchange could be enough for them to deem the country in default, even if it is not in legal terms. This could accelerate the devaluation.

"Ultimately the credit consequences would depend on whether we concluded that investors would still get back what they expected, when they expected it. If we not, we would likely call that a default," said Alastair Wilson, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody's.

($1 = 0.9435 euros)

(Additional reporting by Michel Rose and Leigh Thomas in Paris, Marc Jones and Abhinav Ramnarayan in London, and IFR's Helen Bartholomew in London; Editing by Pravin Char)
Jan 6 (Reuters) - New York's Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority will lead next week's U.S. municipal bond calendar with a $665 million deal that is the largest of some $8.9 billion in sales.

The authority, a unit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will price $400 million of refunding bonds and $265 million of general revenue bonds in a negotiated deal through lead underwriter Goldman Sachs & Co .

The MTA plans fare and toll increases and is continuing to reduce costs, according to its most recent disclosure statement.

It is also attempting to rein in expenses by paying down its pension liability when possible, cutting health and debt service costs, and hedging fuel purchases.

Issuers in New York state plan to sell nearly $4.3 billion of debt in the first quarter, about 70 percent of which will be new money, according to a tentative schedule from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on Thursday.

Also next week, Wisconsin will price about $524 million in negotiated general fund refunding bonds, while Texas will be the most heavily represented state, with $1.1 billion in total negotiated deals. That includes $389 million in revenue bonds by the Texas A&M University System and about $347 million by the city of Austin for airport system revenue bonds.

The largest competitive bond deals will come out of Washington state, which on Tuesday plans to issue $473 million in new various purpose general obligation bonds and $136 million in GO refunding bonds. Seattle will price $190 million of water system improvement refunding bonds on Wednesday.

Given the potential for tax reforms such as a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, municipal bonds "are not extremely appetizing," Barclays analysts said in a research note on Friday.

"Munis can have some upside near-term," they said, citing stabilizing Treasury yields and light dealer balance sheets, but "we think it is likely to be limited."

(Reporting by Nick Brown and Hilary Russ in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
LAGOS, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Nigeria plans to issue 340 billion to 430 billion naira ($1.12 billion to $1.41 billion) of local-currency bonds during the first quarter, the Debt Management Office said on Friday.

The debt office said on its website it would auction 110 billion to 140 billion naira worth of bonds maturing in 2021 and 85 billion to 105 billion naira in debt maturing in 2026. It will also sell 45 billion to 55 billion naira in bonds maturing in 2027 and 100 billion to 130 billion naira of the 2036 debt.

According to the debt issuance calendar, the 2027 bond will be a new issue, in March. The rest will re-open previously issued debt, starting after Jan 18.

Africa's biggest economy has proposed a 2017 budget deficit of 2.36 billion naira for this year. The government hopes to fund it by borrowing 1.254 trillion naira domestically and 1.067 trillion naira abroad .

But the government has already struggled to fund the 2016 budget after a planned Eurobond sale and World Bank loan were delayed.

($1 = 304 naira)

(Reporting by Oludare Mayowa, editing by Larry King)
(Kitco News) - After a strong start in the first trading week of the new year, some analysts are expecting gold to consolidate in its current range and see any drop , as a buying opportunity.

February gold futures are preparing to end the week with gains of almost 2%, last trading at $1,173.70 an ounce. This is golds second weekly gain after seeing its longest weekly losing streak in 12 years.

Silver is also seeing decent gains at the start of the year, up 3% since last week, last trading at $16.50 an ounce.

In what is expected to be a light week for U.S. economic data, analysts say that they will be watching two key markets: the U.S. dollar and US Treasuries to determine where gold is headed in the near-term.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said that he is expecting to see gold add to its recent gains as uncertainty ahead of President-elect Donald Trumps Jan. 20 inauguration. He added that there are still a lot of questions surrounding his economic policies and that could keep investors away from the U.S. dollar and into hard assets like gold.

While gold prices have pushed off their 2016 lows since the start of the new year, the U.S. Dollar Index has fallen 1.75% from its nearly 14-year highs.

I think the strength in the U.S. dollar was overdone, aggressively pricing in four or five rate hikes this year, said Colin Cieszynski, senior market analyst at CMC Markets Canada.

He added that in the near-term gold could consolidate between $1,172 and $1,200 an ounce in the near-term.

Bill Baruch, senior market analyst at iiTrader agreed that U.S. dollar strength has been too aggressive pricing in interest rate hikes and expects the greenback to continue to lose steam, benefitting the yellow metal.

He added that there is still too much uncertainty in the U.S. economy to fully justify three rate hikes this year. In these current market conditions, Baruch said that any pull back to $1,150 an ounce should be seen as a strong buying opportunity.

When Do Markets See The First Rate Hike

After the Federal Reserves December monetary policy meeting, markets started pricing in the possibility of three rate hikes in 2017, in line with the central banks projections.

CME 30-Day Fed Fund futures are currently prices in a 40% chance that the first rate hike comes at the May meeting; markets also see a 68% chance of a June rate hike.

Phillip Streible, market analyst at RJO Futures said that he also likes buying gold on potential dips; however, he added that investors could also buy a $1,125 June put option to hedge against the downside.

Level To Watch

Renewed momentum has helped to push the gold price back above a key retracement point at $1,173 an ounce. According to some analysts, this is the first price that has to hold if the market is going to attract new money.

However, for many analysts, gold will remain in a short-term uptrend unless support at $1,150 is broken. Cieszynski said that if this support level falls it could signal that gold is headed back to its December 2016 lows and even back to its multi-year low seen in December 2015.

On the upside, the line in the sand is at $1,200 to $1,205. If prices can break this level then it could attract new buying interest, according to Hansen.

The Final Say

The U.S. economic docket will be light next week with the major report, December retail sales coming out Friday; however, the week is full of Federal Speakers, including Fed chair Janet Yellen.

After this past weeks release of the minutes of the December meeting, where Fed committee members raised concerns about the recent strength of the U.S. dollar, uncertainty over government economic policies markets will be interest to learn any new insights into future monetary policy.

By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com

Follow @Neils_C
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Spot trading was quiet as new tender demand emerged from India. Solid Chinese demand had kept Angolan differentials from sliding further, but competition from other sellers remained.

* The benchmark oil prices on which West African crudes are priced were again volatile on Friday, but the spread between those and Dubai crude remained narrow, making arbitrage east possible. Nigeria has resumed payments of cash stipends to former militants agreed under a 2009 amnesty in the country's Niger Delta oil hub, a government official said. Authorities had originally cut the budget for cash payments to militants to end corruption. * A court in London will decide in coming weeks whether Royal Dutch Shell can face trial in the UK over oil spill allegations in Nigeria, a decision some legal experts predict could attract more cases against multinationals in Britain. * A Nigerian oil labour union has suspended an "indefinite" strike at Total fuel truck depots in Nigeria. The group had been protesting against layoffs. NIGERIA

* India's IOC took at least two cargoes of Nigerian oil as part of its tender awarded on Thursday, a trader said.

* The firm's award included Bonga and Bonny Light.

* A fire at SPDC's Trans Niger Pipeline was still smoking as of Thursday evening, locals said. The company was forced to shut the line, one of two that exports Bonny Light, on Jan. 3. * Traders expected further loading delays as a result of the problems, though Shell said it had not declared force majeure.

* Bonga loadings are also expected to be lower in February as a result of field maintenance. Operator Shell declined to comment on whether there was work planned.

ANGOLA

* No fresh deals were reported on Friday, but state oil company Sonangol had four cargoes over the course of the week after cutting its offer prices.

* It was still offering Girassol and Palanca at prices close to a 10 cent premium and a 90 cent premium, respectively.

TENDERS

* India's IOC had issued two new tenders to buy oil, one for sweet crude and another for sour.

* Nigerian grades Bonny light and Bonga were part of the most recent tender awards to Shell and Total.

* The award from India's BPCL tender was expected on Friday, but results were not immediately clear.

(Reporting by Libby George; Editing by David Goodman and Susan Thomas)
The Herald reports:

Kiwis Against Seabed Mining has been denied charitable status and the accompanying tax benefits as its considered an advocacy group, rather than an educational group as it argued. Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) describes itself as a community-based action group that raises awareness of mining proposals and educates the public.

A clearly correct decision. Far too many lobby groups masquerade as charities.

The Charities Registration Board, in a decision reached on December 15, said that while it accepts KASM has a charitable end of protecting the environment, the main way that it aims to achieve this is by advocating against seabed mining applications, putting a moratorium on seabed mining and promoting its views to the public.

To be a charity you actually need to go out there and help people and spend your money on helping people. Spending your money on political advocacy is not charitable.

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Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Rain, heavy at times early. Thunder possible. High 43F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..

Tonight

Rain...mixing with snow overnight. Low 31F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precip 100%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
UT Martin names local students to fall semester Chancellors Honor Roll





MARTIN, TN  The outstanding academic achievements of undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee at Martin have been honored with publication of the Fall 2016 Chancellors Honor Rolls for the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, College of Business and Global Affairs, College of Education, Health, and Behavioral Sciences, College of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.



To be eligible for Chancellors Honor Roll recognition at UT Martin, a student must take at least 12 hours of credit (pass-fail courses are not included) and achieve a 3.2 (B) grade point average based on a 4.0 scale. Students can make the Chancellors Honor Roll with honors (3.2 through 3.49), high honors (3.5 through 3.79) or highest honors (3.8 through 4.0).



Honor roll students include:



 Knoxville - Hannah M. Gribble, Honors; Ashley Mosier, High Honors; Kathryn C. Skaggs, Highest Honors; Katelyn R. Templeton, Honors.



 Powell - Johnie C. Parker, Honors.



UT Martin is a comprehensive public university that maintains an excellent reputation for its high-quality undergraduate programs, its beautiful campus and caring professors. Published January 6, 2017






Premier Li Keqiang warned that some government officials might profit from intermediary organs dealing with administrative approval items that had been weeded out. Enterprises must pay for intermediary services to accomplish certain tasks, which led to an increase in their burden, he said at the State Councils executive meeting on Jan 4.

Resolution must be made to eliminate irregular intermediary services, especially the ones manipulated by government officials, said Premier Li.

He called for more efforts to overhaul this form of graft.

To reduce institutional costs, the meeting called for cutting 20 intermediary service items concerning legal profession qualification certification and approval of manufacturing railway transportation equipment.

Before, applicants entrusted intermediary organs to carry out approval procedures, and this time some government departments began to pay for intermediary services with money charged from enterprises.

Premier Li praised the practice, and encouraged the government to purchase such services transparently to contain random charges and ease burdens on enterprises.

The government will benefit more by purchasing services or canceling intermediary services, as enterprises motivation and market vitality can be greatly stimulated this way, said the Premier.
Chinese tourists shop for cosmetics at Lotte Duty Free World Tower Store in Jamsil, southeastern Seoul, Thursday.

/ Yonhap



By Park Jae-hyuk

Lotte Group has marked the hopeful beginning of duty free war in southeastern Seoul on Thursday, attracting about 10,000 visitors to the reopened Lotte World Tower store in Jamsil, which had been closed for 193 days since last June.

On the day of its opening, hundreds of visitors lined up in front of elevators heading toward the duty free store on the eighth and ninth floors of the building, even before the opening at 9:30 a.m. As most of them were from China, the duty free store employees struggled to greet them in Chinese.

Korean cosmetics stores were the most jam-packed places with those tourists, who have a high preference for Sulwhasoo and Laneige produced by AmorePacific, and The History of Whoo produced by LG Household & Healthcare.

According to Lotte Duty Free, about 5,000 Chinese tourists came to the store on visits scheduled by travel agencies. The company said more than a half of the total sales revenue was from cosmetics brands.

"The most popular luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Tiffany & Co. and Bulgari, have yet to reopen their stores," a Lotte Duty Free spokesman said. "However, we posted almost the same amount of sales as before we closed the World Tower store."

Lotte Group had failed to get its duty-free license renewed in November 2015, but received one again last December, along with two other retail giants  Shinsegae and Hyundai Department Store  which are also seeking to open new duty free stores in southeastern Seoul.

However, Lotte occupied the dominant position in the market with its knowhow of running the store in Jamsil before. The outlet's 1,300 employees, who had temporarily left the store more than half a year, vowed to try their best to welcome the visitors.

"Some of the employees were even about to cry," the spokesman said, "because they were so happy to regain their jobs."

Lotte Group aims to post 1.2 trillion won ($1 billion) in sales this year, expanding the store's size and offering 700 brands. The group said shoppers will be able to enjoy the amusement park, aquariums and observatory in the tower.

Meanwhile, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin reportedly visited the World Tower Store the day before the opening, after participating in a fire drill that took place in the nation's tallest skyscraper.
Visitors experience virtual reality at the Samsung VR 4D Experience at the 2017 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. The annual CES, which takes place from Jan. 5 to 8, is a gathering where industry manufacturers, advertisers and tech-minded consumers converge to experience new gadgets and innovations that will be released on the market each year. / AP-Yonhap



By Yoon Sung-won

LAS VEGAS  Autonomous driving and the internet of things (IoT) are stealing the limelight at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), with more crystallized concepts and services than in previous global technology fairs.

On the opening day of the world's largest consumer electronics expo, global enterprises such as Nvidia and Harman unveiled their latest achievements in artificial intelligence (AI) computing and smart car technologies through keynote addresses and exhibitions.

Nvidia, the world's leading graphic processor provider, has been one of the most active businesses ushering in new autonomous driving technologies to the industry.

In his keynote speech, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said AI-based automobile technologies are leading the company to closer partnerships with major car brands.

"Nvidia seeks to change automobiles to AI systems," the CEO said. "Through the technologies, we will revolutionize automobiles to provide a safer and more entertaining experience to millions of drivers."

Nvidia also announced its enhanced partnership with German automobile brand Audi to commercialize AI-based cars by 2020. The two companies first established the partnership a decade ago. Audi America President Scott Keogh said the carmaker's annual sales volume has increased to 210,000 last year, up from 60,000 10 years ago.

"Self-learning AI automobiles are the only measure to keep severe urban traffic jams under control," Keogh said. "This is because no programming can manage road traffic in reality."

During the exhibition, Nvidia showcased an autopilot system and its latest self-driving car system Drive PX2, embedded in Tesla's Model S. It also provided test-driving of two autonomous driving cars _ the Audi Q7 pilot driving concept car and the Nvidia BB8  at the convention center's parking lot.

Harman, one of the world's leading digital car component makers, showcased connected car infotainment and self-driving technologies during the exhibition.

It unveiled an advanced heads-up automobile computing system for smart cars, which provides personalized settings for drivers. The firm also demonstrated an infotainment system for an autonomous driving concept car by Swiss maker Rinspeed.

Samsung Electronics decided to acquire Harman for 9 trillion won in November as a move to enter the rapidly-growing car component business. In line with the move, Samsung said it has recently reached an agreement with Audi to provide its mobile application processor Exynos for automobiles starting 2018.

Besides IT companies, car manufacturers visited the fair again to exhibit their future cars that are becoming more digitalized through AI, and smart car and autonomous driving technologies.

Both Ford and Volkswagen presented their roadmap to build smart cars and autonomous driving vehicles in a partnership with Amazon and its voice-recognizing AI system Alexa. Toyota and Hyundai Motor provided visitors with their own autonomous driving experience through head-mounted virtual reality devices.

Mercedes-Benz showcased the Vision Van, an automated parcel delivery vehicle equipped with drones for shipping services, drawing much attention from visitors.

Sony's creativity continues

Sony has also returned to the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV market after almost a decade.

The top Japanese electronics maker unveiled its first 4K OLED TV series at the exhibition. Besides the last high dynamic range (HDR) engine technology, the new TV has multiple creative features including what it calls an Acoustic Surface, which makes the TV's display panel tremble to produce sound without speakers.

LG Display's Crystal Sound OLED panel, which was premiered a day ago in Las Vegas, has been used to realize Sony's unique Acoustic Surface feature, an industry source said.

In the meantime, Chinese electronics makers were eager to follow the world's three largest TV providers  Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Sony  but only from a distance.

China's TCL showcased diverse TV products at the exhibition, including ones based on quantum dot and HDR technologies. But this year, it did not display OLED models unlike the previous year.

On the other hand, Konka exhibited 77- and 65-inch OLED TVs. Tapping into the OLED panel's lack of backlighting, it provided slimmer models with improved image production capability compared to previous tech fairs.

In the home appliances sector, China's Hisense and Haier showcased a full package of IoT-ready home appliances. In particular, Haier presented a refrigerator, air conditioner, air purifier and washing machine that reminded watchers of those previously released by Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

The smart features that the Chinese brands claimed to offer also remained at an initial stage of merely connecting different devices or characterizing preset features on a touch screen without personalization for different users.
By Yoon Sung-won





Dan Song, new head of LG Electronics' Home Appliance & Air Solution, speaks during a press conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Thursday (local time). / Courtesy of LG Electronics

LAS VEGAS  LG Electronics is considering setting up its first home appliances manufacturing plant in the U.S., the company said Thursday (local time).

The move came amid industry-wide concerns over the possible negative influences under the protectionist policy of the Donald Trump administration, who is scheduled to become U.S, President on Jan. 20.

Referring to reports that the company was planning to establish a key manufacturing base in Tennessee, an LG Electronics official said: "It is true that we are interested in it. But nothing detailed has been discussed."

The U.S. President-elect has claimed he will reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to increase the tariff to 35 percent. If this happens, foreign manufacturing companies like LG Electronics would have to produce goods within the U.S. to avoid the heavy tariff.

Korea's No. 2 electronics company has consumer electronics factories in Changwon, Gyeongnam Province, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam, China and Turkey.

The company said shipments to North America were mainly supplied from plants in Korea and Southeast Asia.

"We have already established a system to rearrange regional production output through location optimization in case we need to adjust shipment plans," the official added.

LG Electronics was the second-largest home appliances provider in the U.S. by sales in the third quarter last year, competing with market leader Whirlpool as well as Electrolux and Samsung Electronics.

Vision in robot biz

Dan Song, the new head of LG Electronics' Home Appliance & Air Solution, pledged to expedite its robot business through open partnerships and platform strategy.

"Our preparations for robot hardware have already been completed and we are now improving their features until we release the hardware within this year," Song said at his first official press conference in Las Vegas, Wednesday, local time.

"We also need time for field tests. We want to make them perfect by verifying possible problems in actual use," he said.

LG Electronics has unveiled its plan to release artificial intelligence (AI)-based robots -- a Hub robot, lawn-mowing robot and airport robots. In particular, it said it had signed an agreement with Incheon International Airport to test the airport passenger guide robots and airport cleaning robots there.

Song said its robots would also be suitable for diverse uses at hospitals and public organizations as well as in households with elderly people.

LG Electronics has introduced Amazon's voice-recognizing AI system "Alexa" in the robots. For access to user data collected from the system, H&A Cloud Center Service Platform Vice President Alice Ryu explained, "We are in discussion with Amazon for a partnership to share such data. This is to tap into the massive data to provide more consumer value."

Song took up leadership of the H&A division after Jo Seong-jin was promoted to company CEO and Vice Chairman.
Who will become No. 2 shareholder in the group?



By Nam Hyun-woo



French financial giant BNP Paribas sold its 1.8 percent stake in Shinhan Financial Group, the company said Friday, sparking speculation on who will become the No. 2 shareholder of Korea's largest financial group by net profit.



According to a BNP Paribas official, the firm sold 8.5 million Shinhan shares it has through off-the-hour trading, Jan. 4. With the sale, its stake in Shinhan decreased from 5.35 percent to 3.55 percent.



Though BNP Paribas did not disclose the value of the sale, market watchers anticipate the deal could be worth more than $317 million.



The question is to whom the French firm sold its shares. The BNP Paribas official said the deal was a "private placement," in which it is not obliged to give details.



Shinhan also said it is yet to find what kind of changes were made in its equity structure, saying "it will be available to affirm a change at the end of this month, should there is a new major shareholder whose stake in the group surpasses 5 percent."



Rumors are growing that U.S. investment management company BlackRock purchased the stake from BNP Paribas.



As of October, BlackRock held a 5.13 percent stake in Shinhan. With the purchase, BlackRock's stake will likely outpace others, making it the second largest shareholder, following the National Pension Service, which as of September has 9.25 percent. BNP Paribas may stand at No. 4



To the questions that the French firm is seeking an exodus from Korea, the official denied it, adding that it has been maintaining a "strategic partnership" with Shinhan since 2001.



The partnership reportedly prohibits BNP Paribas from having a lower than 3.5 percent share in Shinhan.



"The deal was about managing the group's balance sheet," the official said. "We still have our outside director at Shinhan, who is a country head in Japan, and the deal was made to enhance our partnership," she said.



A Shinhan official also said the BNP Paribas' move "was about collecting profits coming from the rise of Shinhan stocks."




Foreign workers will be obliged to file year-end tax settlements in the coming months. / Korea Times file



By Lee Jin-a

Foreign workers will be required to file year-end tax settlements in the coming months.

The National Tax Service (NTS) said on Thursday that foreigners who have earned an income in Korea must settle year-end taxes, regardless of their nationality and period of sojourn, to receive income deductions and tax credits in early April.

Between Jan. 15 and Feb. 15, workers must collect and submit evidence for income deduction and tax credit to their employers, and obtain a receipt for wage and salary income tax withholding from their employers by the end of February.

The NTS said the tax settlement process for foreign residents was very similar to that for Koreans. But, foreign residents are not allowed to claim deductions and tax credits for certain items, such as housing and home purchase savings.

Non-resident foreign workers can only receive partial deductions, such as deductions for wages and salary income, and cannot receive special tax credits related to medical and educational expenses.

Those who are not fluent in Korean can find more information through the "Easy Guide for Foreigners' Year-end Tax Settlement" available on the NTS English website.

There is also an English consulting service at 1588-0560.
By Kim Bo-eun



The extradition of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in a massive scandal which has led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, is expected to take some time.



Chung, 20, was arrested in Denmark's northern city of Aalborg, Sunday, for staying there illegally. A local Danish court approved a four-week extension of her confinement the following day. Chung appealed, but the higher court denied her appeal.



Chung is reported to have accepted the higher court's ruling, but is unwilling to return to Korea under any circumstances, according to a Yonhap report, Friday.



Earlier, Chung, who has a 19-month-old son with her, proposed to Korean authorities that she would be willing to go to Korea if she could remain with her son, whether at a welfare center or hospital. The authorities denied her request.



She reportedly changed her stance after seeing with her son at the detention center, Thursday.



Chung is arguing that her son is the main reason for her not to be extradited, as she will be detained when she arrives in Korea and won't be able to take care of him.



By Jan. 30, Danish authorities will review whether the charges Chung faces justify her extradition to Korea.



Chung denied the charges against her concerning allegedly receiving favors in admissions and grading in college, as well as being involved in Samsung's provision of funds for her training expenses as a dressage competitor, which is suspected to have been a bribe for business favors from Cheong Wa Dae.



Authorities said they will push for another confinement extension if they do not reach a conclusion by the deadline.



Meanwhile, the Danish authorities' firm stance on protecting human rights is also seen as a factor which could hinder the process to extradite Chung.



Although Chung is in the detention center alone and her son is being taken care of by a nanny, authorities have allowed Chung to meet with her son at the center.



Conditions at the detention center where Chung is currently held are also reportedly favorable, allowing access to TV, newspapers and books.



In addition, Danish authorities said they will take punitive measures against Korean reporters who took photographs of Chung and recorded her words inside a local court, citing the infringement of Chung's human rights and breaking Danish law. The reporters will likely face fines.



She may take the issue to court, even if Danish authorities decide to extradite Chung, and that could take at least several months for the issue to be settled. The independent counsel's probe into the scandal, in the meantime, will finish at the end of February.



Chung's case could end up looking similar to that of Yoo Seom-na, the daughter of Yoo Byeong-eun, the deceased owner of the ferry Sewol, which sank and killed over 300 passengers. Seom-na has been fighting an extradition bid for two-years-and-eight-months in France.




Family members of victims of the deadly humidifier disinfectants hold a press conference following a court ruling that sentenced former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, the local unit of U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser, to seven years in prison, in front of the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul, Friday. / Yonhap



By Lee Kyung-min

A district court in Seoul sentenced Shin Hyun-woo, 68, a former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser (ORB), the local unit of U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser, to seven years in prison, Friday, for failing to ensure the safety of the firm's humidifier disinfectant. The chemical caused respiratory problems for 181 people, including 73 deaths.

Google Korea CEO John Lee, the former head of ORB, was acquitted of all charges due to a lack of evidence. The court ordered ORB to pay 150 million won ($126,000) in fines.

The prosecution earlier sought 20 years and 10 years in prison for Shin and Lee, respectively, on charges of manslaughter and professional negligence resulting in death. The trial included numerous figures and companies involved in manufacturing and selling the deadly disinfectant.

The Seoul Central District Court said the accused, including Shin, deserve harsh punishment for incurring irrevocable damage to the victims.

"Many of the victims were pregnant women and children. It is unimaginable how much pain their family members had to go through feeling helpless as they watched their loved ones die without knowing why," Judge Choi Chang-young said.

"Had they paid more attention to the safety of the products before or after their market release, they could have either prevented the tragedy, or at least limited the number of victims," the court added.












Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, left, attends a joint press conference with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts Antony Blinken, center, and Shinsuke Sugiyama after their talks in Washington, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye

South Korea, the United States and Japan agreed, Thursday, to step up joint efforts to increase pressure on North Korea and isolate it further in the international community as part of efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

The agreement was made during deputy-level trilateral consultations between South Korean Vice Minister Lim Sung-nam, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama in Washington.

"South Korea, the U.S. and Japan agreed to further strengthen joint efforts aimed at leaving North Korea with no choice but to step forward toward meaningful denuclearization," Lim said during a joint news conference with Blinken and Sugiyama after the talks.

The talks were held after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Sunday during his New Year message that Pyongyang was in the final stages of preparations for a test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The North's KN-08 road-mobile ICBM with a range of more than 10,000 kilometers is capable, in theory, of hitting targets on the U.S. mainland.

Speculation is growing that the isolated state may push ahead with major provocations this month on and around the young leader's birthday, Jan. 8, and the inauguration of Donald Trump as the new U.S. president, Jan. 20.

Lim said the North is challenging head-on international demands for denuclearization.

For his part, Blinken said that the threat posed by the North gets more acute day by day.

"You heard what the North Korean leader said in his most recent remarks about the possibility of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile," he said, stressing that it is "absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programs."

Calling on the isolated state to come back to the negotiating table and engage in "good faith on denuclearization," Blinken also rejected the criticism that international sanctions do not work, saying it takes time to see them work.

"It's not like flipping a light switch, it takes time," he said, citing the Iranian nuclear deal as a successful case of sanctions. "We spent years building our own domestic sanctions against Iran and in this administration several years in putting in place an international framework for sanctions and pressure. People said it's not working, it's not working, and then all of a sudden, it worked."

Despite harsher sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, the Kim regime has kept saying that it is making efforts to advance its nuclear and missile capability. Last year alone, the reclusive state conducted two nuclear tests, while launching more than 20 ballistic missiles including the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Military officials here said there has yet to be a sign of the imminent launch of an ICBM, but noted that Kim's direct reference to it raised the possibility of Pyongyang test-firing the long-range missile soon.
Ban Ki-moon leaves the U.N. headquarters in New York on Dec. 30, 2016. / Yonhap



By Hong Dam-young

Former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's inner circle is shaping up amid rising expectations that he will run for president this year.

Media reports said the former world top diplomat was likely to work closely with his "diplomatic ties" in a possible presidential bid.

Other presidential candidates have included intellectuals or former government officials in their inner circles.





From left, Kim Won-soo, incumbent U.N. undersecretary general and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; former Korean ambassadors to the U.N. Kim Sook and former Korean ambassadors to the U.N. Oh Joon



According to the reports, diplomatic officials expected to help Ban include: Kim Won-soo, incumbent U.N. undersecretary general and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; former Korean ambassadors to the U.N. Oh Joon and Kim Sook; and former Korean ambassador to Australia Kim Bong-hyun.

Ban's aides have reportedly set up an office in Mapo-gu in Seoul for Ban when he returns to Korea on Jan. 12.

Lee Byung-kee, President Park Geun-hye's former chief of staff, and Park Jin, former ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker, are also known as strong endorsers of Ban.

Lee and Ban built a close alumni relationship after graduating from Seoul National University, while Park and Ban were close alumni from Harvard Kennedy School.

Former foreign minister Yoo Jong-ha and former ambassador to Russia Chung Tae-ik, both close aides of Ban, are also reaching out to experts from various fields to encourage them to join Ban.

In the political circle, Rep. Chung Jin-suk of the ruling Saenuri Party is seen as Ban's core supporter, along with the party's lawmakers from Chungcheong Province, Ban's home area.

Chung, a former floor leader with close ties to Ban, also delivered Ban a message from former prime minister Kim Jong-pil, who said he would "do my utmost best to aid Ban's presidential run."

Meanwhile, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs is expected to play an integral role in providing Ban with economy-related advice.

Sachs attended a press conference at Ban's residence in New York on Jan. 3, expressing his will to "carry out an advisory role for Ban, especially in regards to Korea's ailing economy."
By Kim Hyo-jin





In Myung-jin, the interim leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, attends a party meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul, Friday, after

he failed to name members of an ad hoc leadership committee. / Yonhap

Loyalists to President Park Geun-hye revolted against a reformist move by In Myung-jin, the interim leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, Friday.



In attempted to nominate members of the party's emergency planning committee as part of efforts to establish a leadership body.



However, the move was deterred by the party's national committee, controlled by Park loyalists.



Due to their collective boycott, a committee meeting that was scheduled to be held to approve a list of In's nominations, was cancelled.



Only 25 members turned up, failing to meet the quorum  a majority of the 52 affiliated members.



"This shows the naked side of factional politics that have ruined the country," In told reporters.



In was seeking to form the party's interim leadership with anti-Park or neutral Saenuri Party members, a move interpreted as his asserting influence amid the deepening power struggle with Park loyalists.



If appointed, candidates were expected to support In's reformist push, according to party officials.



In, however, was sabotaged by Park loyalists, lawmakers who are not aligned with the President, argued.



"There are forces that are undermining the ongoing reformist move collectively and systematically," Park Maeng-woo, the party's secretary-general, said taking aim at key loyalists to Park  Reps. Suh Chung-won, a de-facto leader of the pro-Park faction, and Rep. Choi Kyung-hwan, an ex-finance minister.



In, a former liberal activist and newly-appointed party chief, has called on key loyalists to the President to quit the party to normalize it after it was hit hard by the presidential corruption scandal and the following impeachment of Park.



Earlier, expectation was rife that In would be able to summon the Park loyalists-controlled national committee amid his upswing in the tug-of-war with pro-Park lawmakers.



Following his pressure on Park followers, Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, a former party chairman, and Rep. Jeong Kab-yoon, the head of the national committee, left the party.



Also, about 40 pro-Park lawmakers gave the new leader full discretion in deciding their fate. They include Reps. Hong Moon-jong, former Maritime Minister Yoo Ki-june and former Interior Minister Chong Jong-sup.



"If In quit the party after a fierce clash with the loyalists, the party could dissolve even more. It is right to follow In's guidance for now," a pro-Park lawmaker said.



However, most of the national committee members turned their back on In, in line with strong resistance from Reps. Suh and Choi.



The core loyalists, indicated to be the ones to be expelled by In, still remained adamant in refusing to leave the party.



Party officials said they remain stubborn, buoyed by unwavering support from voters in the Saenuri Party's home turf, North Gyeongsang Province and Daegu.



"There's enough time until Jan 8. I believe it will be sorted out," In told reporters, indicating that he can postpone the deadline of the requested exit for Park loyalists.



In earlier gave the loyalists an ultimatum that they should leave the party by Jan. 6 and he will announce the result of his reformist move and his own political path, Jan. 8.
By Kang Seung-woo



Acting president, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn's possible attendance at the expected trilateral summit with China and Japan is raising questions about its diplomatic effectiveness amid concerns that the interim leader may have little to do there.



According to the foreign ministry, the three countries are coordinating to reschedule their postponed trilateral talks and if the schedule is fixed, Hwang is likely to attend the event on behalf of impeached President Park Geun-hye.



The annual summit, initially scheduled for Dec. 19 and 20 last year, was delayed until this year due to the political turmoil in Seoul. The Japanese government sounded the two nations out on holding the leaders' meeting around Feb. 10, according to Japan's Kyodo News.



"It is not appropriate for Hwang to attend the summit, where leaders of the three nations gather to settle problems that are too difficult to solve at the working level between them," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University.



"The trilateral summit has been used to build up human networks between the leaders. Unlike Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both of whom will remain in power for a long time, Hwang is an interim leader, which does not fit the concept of the summit."



Ko Yeon-ho, a spokeswoman of the minor opposition People's Party, echoed the professor's view.



"Thorny issues will be high on the agenda during the summit _ something tough even for the head of state to handle, so there would be nothing that the acting president can actually do," Ko said.



She added that rather than serving as sidekick to Abe and Xi at the summit, the acting president should place top priority on many pending domestic issues, including a widespread outbreak of avian influenza that resulted in the culling of more than 30 million chickens and other birds.



Park said that rather than pushing for the summit, the government needs to leave the issue for the next administration, given that the presidential election could be held in the first half of the year.



"A new leader should meet Xi and Abe, which is desirable," the professor said, adding that it would not be a big problem to postpone the summit further.



On Wednesday, the foreign ministry said that Japan does not appear to take issue with the acting president's possible attendance at the summit, given that the country keeps proposing dates for the meeting.



Hwang has assumed presidential authority since the National Assembly voted to impeach Park, Dec. 9, over allegations that she let her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil intervene in state affairs to benefit her private interests. Hwang also attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru in November as prime minister on behalf of Park due to the scandal.



The Prime Minister's Office remains cautious on the issue.



"Whether the acting president will attend will be determined after the dates for the summit are fixed," an official said.



The three nations have hosted the trilateral talks by turns since 2008 _ although none took place in 2013 and 2014 due to heightened regional tensions over historical and territorial issues.



In November 2015, Korea hosted the summit that led to President Park's first bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.



Prime Minister Li Keqiang will represent China if the summit is held.




New US leader needs to tweet against China bullying



Incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has not tweeted where it is most needed: China bullying South Korea over the latter's decision to allow the deployment of a U.S.-made missile interceptor.



The decision to bring the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system here is a strategic one that serves the common interest of the two allies. For Korea, it is aimed at protecting its population against North Korea's growing missile threat but, considering the limited size of the battery to be deployed, the real benefit lies in shielding U.S. soldiers stationed in Korea.



Plus, its intrusive radar system can help the U.S. keep closer tabs on the North, a regional troublemaker, and China, its strategic competitor.



Now, Seoul is taking the drubbing by China alone. Beijing has threatened to retaliate it if it doesn't go back on the deployment plan. Already, Korean firms in China are being harassed, tourist charter flights are not approved and K-pop deals have been nixed. These moves followed threats carried by Chinese media that Korea would be put in the crosshairs of a superpower battle.



Recently, Wang Yi, its foreign minister, openly admitted that these are retaliatory measures but the two countries' relationship can be normalized, if Seoul stops its THAAD plan. China is Korea's largest trading partner so Korea stands to lose a lot, if the situation gets more serious.



China is taking advantage of the leadership void in Seoul after the impeachment of its president but also the transition in Washington. Knowing their collective hands are tied, it is boldly resorting to a sly tactic of fanning dissension in the divisive issue in Korea to get their way and make the THAAD plan cancelation a fait accompli in the early stages of the Trump presidency.



Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn recently told a visiting Korean delegation that the new administration backs the deployment. Now, the plan needs Trump's own confirmation of support. Perhaps, the new U.S. leader, a billionaire real estate developer, may get a better grip of the situation, if it is laid out in business terms.



THAAD deployment is like a 50/50 joint venture between Korea and the U.S. Korea is left holding the bag alone, while the U.S. is doing nothing. In his acceptance speech, Trump said that he would be fair to the rest of the world. He is being dared to match his words with actions.



Trump's action or lack thereof will greatly influence how the ROK-U.S. alliance will be regarded from this side of the Pacific, especially when calls for equality in relationship with the U.S. will likely get bigger in the next government, irrespective of who will take power. If Trump is serious about resetting the U.S.-China relationship, he will need all the friends he can have, and Korea is an indispensable one. Trump needs to reassure it by tweeting, "China is naughty and leave our friend alone."




City police say there was never any doubt the beating of a white man that was broadcast live on Facebook would be investigated as a hate crime. They say the four black suspects face hate crime charges because they were shouting racial slurs at the victim and because they referred to his mental capacity.

At a news conference on Thursday afternoon, police also said the victim had been friends with one of the suspects, Jordan Hill. They say, on New Year's Eve, Hill and the victim met up at a McDonald's restaurant near Chicago to begin what both the victim and his parents believed was going to be a sleepover.

Police say Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple days. They ended up at a home in Chicago, where police say Hill and the three other suspects taunted the victim and beat him.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the beating demonstrates "a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans." Earnest said he hadn't yet spoken to President Barack Obama about the incident in the president's hometown but said he's confident Obama "would be angered by the images that are depicted on that video."

Cook County prosecutors filed hate crime and aggravated kidnapping and battery charges against the four black suspects for the incident that police say went on for as many as 48 hours.

Those charged are Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Brittany Covington, 18, of Chicago; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; and Tanishia Covington, 24, of Chicago.

Prosecutors say the four are also charged with aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Three have also been charged with residential burglary.

The grandmother of Covington says her granddaughter "had her ups and downs," but is "a good person." Priscilla Covington of Chicago says she raised the young woman "since she was a baby." She says her granddaughter no longer lives at the family home but still lives in Chicago.

The grandmother says the video doesn't reflect the young woman she raised.

She says she's worried because her family, including the woman's younger sisters, have been threatened since the video was posted online.

She says she saw and talked to her granddaughter about four days ago, and "she was OK."

Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday morning that the four black suspects made "terrible racist statements" during the assault but police believe the victim was targeted because he has "special needs," not only because of his race. Guglielmi says it's possible the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim's family.

Video from Chicago media outlets appears to show someone off-camera using profanities about "white people" and President-elect Donald Trump. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Wednesday that the video "is sickening."
Betsy Ledgerwood AuBuchon on Jan. 1 became the first woman to serve as clerk of the Supreme Court of Missouri and only the sixth person to hold the position in the last century.

I am grateful and very humbled about the opportunity the Court has given me to serve a government I love and believe in, AuBuchon said. I visited Jefferson City for the first time with my grandmother for the Sophomore Pilgrimage, and it was one of the most memorable days of my life. Never could I have dreamed I would end up working in state government, let alone serving as clerk of the Supreme Court.

A native of Alton, in southern Missouri, AuBuchon earned three degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia  her bachelor of science in agricultural journalism in 1997, and her master of health administration and her law degree, both in 2000. She worked as a consultant and general counsel for Behavioral Health Concepts Inc. before serving more than a decade as a governmental consultant in the private sector.

The Court hired AuBuchon in January 2012 as commission counsel for the states Judicial Finance Commission and legislative liaison and promoted her nine months later to the newly created position of director of government relations and deputy counsel. In that role, she has aided in everything from guiding budget negotiations for the judiciary to helping to schedule cases for argument to helping to oversee death penalty cases.

During her time at the Supreme Court, Betsy AuBuchon has impressed everyone with her integrity, judgment and knowledge, Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge said. She has earned the respect and trust of those with whom she has worked and is invaluable to the courts. The Court is grateful to have her as clerk and is confident that she will be an exceptional leader of Missouris judicial system.

As clerk, AuBuchon succeeds Bill L. Thompson, who retired Dec. 31 after nearly five years in that position and more than three decades as the Courts counsel. Previous clerks include:

* Thomas Simon, January 1972 through May 2011;

* Marion Spicer, August 1943 through December 1971;

* Eppa Elliott, July 1933 until his death in August 1943; and

* Jacob Allen, April 1910 until July 1933.

AuBuchon and her husband, Rich, live in Jefferson City with their four

children, Maddie, Anna, Scarlett and Connor.
The romance continued for Kylie Jenner and her boyfriend Tyga, who have been soaking up the sun together in a lavish holiday in Mexico these last few days. The couple were spotted strolling hand-in-hand on the beach in gorgeous Punta Mita on Wednesday.

Tyga, 26, could hardly keep his hands off his 19-year-old girlfriends amazing body, and that included her posterior, as he rested his palm on her backside.

Tyga only had eyes for Kylie, and its clear to see why  the reality star looked absolutely amazing in her gorgeous, scalloped green bikini.

The bathing suit showed off her taut tummy and gym-honed legs to full effect. More photos



Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
The Nigerian police have sacked six police officers attached to the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike for exhibiting gross misconduct in the last rerun election in Rivers.

At a press conference in Abuja on Friday, Force Public Relations Officer, Don Awunah said after thorough investigation, the police officers attached to Wike had been dismissed for being over-zealous and exhibiting act of misconduct in the discharge of their duties.

The officers are: Inspector Eyong Victor, Sgt Peter Ekpo, Sgt Oguni Goodluck, Sgt. Orji Nwoke, Sgt. Okpe Ezekiel and Sgt. Tanko Akor.



According to Awunah, the action exhibited by the police officers were capable of bringing the entire Nigeria Police Force to disrepute and portrayed the Force in a very bad light as a lawless organization not guided by the rule of law.

These Police personnel while in the convoy of His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Rivers State Barr. Nyesom Wike on the date of election, 10th December, 2016 misused the firearms in their possession contrary to the provisions of Force Order 237.

The Service personnel became overzealous, took laws into their hands and opened fire, causing panic in the crowd. They joined in storming the Port Harcourt City Council Secretariat and prevented the movement of election results of Emouha polling unit to the appropriate collation centre designated by INEC, in flagrant disregard and disobedience to senior Police officers present at the venue.

The six (6) Police officers, after the conclusion of investigation into this public mischief, were subjected to internal disciplinary measures, found guilty and consequently dismissed from the Force. They will be prosecuted under the Electoral Act to serve as a deterrent to others, he said.

Awunah said the Inspector General of Police wished to restate the commitment of the force to carry out its constitutional obligations in accordance to the law of the land before, during and after every election in Nigeria.

He said this would be done in a very professional manner bearing in mind the need not only to be unbiased but to be seen by members of the public as responsive and responsible security agency in election security in the country.

Nigerians should rest assured that the IGP and indeed the entire management team of the Force will not be deterred in its resolve to rid the Nigeria Police Force of personnel who indulge in actions or inaction that amount to unprofessional and serious misconduct.

The IGP commends all officers and men of the Force for their dedication, commitment, sacrifice, hard work and display of utmost professionalism in their service to the country despite daunting challenges. Without doubts, our sacrifices and sincerity of purpose will be commensurately rewarded, he stated.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Photos: Patrons of the Prado grants $400,000 to Balboa Park beneficiaries View Slideshow
P-52, a seven-month old male cub tagged in the National Park Service study of Los Angeles-area mountain lions, was found dead last month on the 118 Freeway, near where his mother, P-39, had been struck and killed on Dec. 3, the park service said today. At the time P-39 was killed, researchers believed that any surviving cubs faced a precarious future without their mother.

P-52 is the 14th known case of a mountain lion killed on a freeway or road in the local study since 2002.

"Although this is a very sad turn of events, I hope that our research can shed insight into the lives of these animals and will inspire future conservation efforts to help wildlife move through the region more safely," said ranger Kate Kuykendall of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

P-52 was one of the litter of kittens (above) photographed last year feeding on a deer. The father is believed to be P-38.

Until her death, P-39 roamed the Santa Susana Mountains north of the 118 Freeway. She had crossed the highway in Santa Susana Pass successfully before being struck.


PRESS RELEASE

The EU Defends Its Increasingly Bankrupt Financial System

Jan. 5, 2017 (EIRNS)A Basel, Switzerland meeting to find an agreement on new capital rules, scheduled for Jan. 8, was indefinitely postponed Jan. 3. The issue is so-called internal methods for risk-weighing, which the United States wants to practically eliminate and the Europeans (especially German banks) want to keep. If U.S. criteria for leverage are adopted, it is calculated that German banks must increase their capital 16% (Bloomberg).

Currently, according to Basel-defined rules for leverage exposure, level 3-ridden Deutsche Bank is less risky than Unicredit, and all major European banks, including Italy's Monte dei Paschi di Siena, are less risky than the average of U.S. banks.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank updated figures show that the ECB is becoming the European Central Hedge Fund. December figures for its Assets Purchase Program (APP), show that the ECB owns now a total of 1.532 trillion assets, most of which are sovereign bonds (1.254 trillion). Of the latter, first come German bonds (303 billion), then French bonds (240 billion), Italian bonds (209 billion), and Spain (150 billion).

The ECB has covered bonds for 203 billion, corporate bonds for 51 billion and asset-backed securities for 22 billion.

The ECB has already announced that it will purchase another half a trillion in assets in 2017 and might extend the APP program even further.

While the ECB is providing zombie banks with life-support measures, the reality of the financial crisis is indicated, among other things, by growing imbalances of Target 2, the clearing system among central banks in the Eurozone which measures capital flight. Target 2 showed an all-high credit 750 billion for the Bundesbank and a 350 billion debt for Italy.
PRESS RELEASE

Remembrance for Russian Musicians and 9/11 Victims Scheduled for January 7 in New Jersey

Jan. 5, 2017 (EIRNS)On Saturday, January 7, 2017, at 10:00 a.m., the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus will be singing the Star Spangled Banner and the Russian National Anthem at a Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Tear Drop 9-11 Memorial at 51 Port Terminal Blvd in Bayonne. The chorus will be joined by the NYPD Ceremonial Unit Color Guard, as well as FDNY representatives. Ms. Terry Strada, the Chairwoman of 9-11 Families United for Justice Against Terror and others will make brief remarks.

On Christmas Day (December 25th) a plane carrying the entire Alexandrov Ensemble (Red Army Chorus), which is a beautiful gem of Russian culture and good will, crashed into the Black Sea en route to Syria where they were going to give the gift of beauty to people in a nation ravaged by war for five long years. A beloved medical doctor, Dr. Liza Glinka, who is famous for her humanitarian work among the most desperate, was also onboard, with medical supplies for a hospital in Latakia. All 92 passengers and crew perished in the crash.

The Red Army Chorus and the NYPD

In 2011, the Quebec City International Festival of Military Bands took place on the 10th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. The Red Army Chorus had joined with the NYPD Ceremonial Unit to perform God Bless America but the Russian group turned it into a moving 9-11 memorial with baritone, Grigory Osipov beautifully singing the solo, and a young boy presenting the NYPD with a single white rose. Grigory Osipov was among those who perished on Christmas Day

January 7th is Christmas Day in the Eastern Orthodox Calendar, and therefore the day to remember those who would have brightened the holidays with their God-given talents, and who remembered our great loss of September 11, 2001. We remember all of them this day, and want their families and the people of Russia, who have suffered a great loss, to know that America remembers.

Call 646-509-5451 for more information.
If you were hoping to see Junot Diaz next week, sorry, hes going to be busy with the Obamas.

Diaz, currently the Katie Jocobson writer in residence at Cal Arts, had been scheduled to speak at REDCAT on Jan. 13. REDCAT announced Wednesday that the event will be postponed until Feb. 17 after Mr. Diaz received an unexpected invitation from the White House to attend a private event during the last week of the current administration.

Diaz is the author of the short story collections This Is How You Lose Her and Drown and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The immigrant experience and issues of identity are often at the heart of his work.

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He has been awarded a MacArthur genius Fellowship and in 2016 received the Literature Award of the Hispanic Heritage Awards, which were established by the White House in 1987 to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month in America. He was recently one of 16 writers to respond to Trumps America in the New Yorker magazine.

Diaz is not the first writer to be honored by a visit to Obamas White House.

The Presidents Committee on the Arts and Humanities has hosted a number of White House events during the Obama administration, including an evening of poetry with Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith and Billy Collins, appearances by Mayda del Valle, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, and a poetry jam that featured an early performance of material from Hamilton from none other than Lin-Manual Miranda.

Obama, who has written two books of his own and is on the brink of penning another, has been a distinctly literary president, routinely posting his summer reading lists on the White Houses website.

Obama began his now-famous interview of 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction-winner Marilynne Robinson by saying that one of the things that I dont get a chance to do as often as Id like is just have a conversation with somebody who I enjoy and Im interested in.

agatha.french@latimes.com

@agathafrenchy
When Ricardo and Catherine Soto were looking to buy a home in Chula Vista, they knew that even after selling their old house in El Cajon they would be able to afford a down payment of only about 10%.

But when buying a home, 20% is the magic number. It means not only borrowing less but also avoiding mortgage insurance, which can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

Some cash-strapped home buyers might have opted to tap a relative or retirement savings, but the Sotos tried something new. When they bought their home for $650,000 in September, the couple came up with the 20% after all  thanks to an unusual arrangement with a newcomer to the mass mortgage market.

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Unison, a 12-year-old San Francisco company, offered to match the $65,000 that the Sotos brought to the table in exchange for what amounts to an ownership stake in their house.

The Sotos dont have to pay anything back  not for a while, at least. But when the couple sell their house they will owe Unison the $65,000 it invested, plus 35% of the value their home gains. Should the market suffer a setback, Unison will share in the loss.

The company, formerly called FirstREX, is one of a handful of firms developing novel financial products aimed at helping buyers afford increasingly expensive homes now that the market has recovered from last decades housing bust.

Its harder than ever to buy a house right now. Credit is still very hard to get.  Jim Riccitelli, Unison co-chief executive

Others, including San Francisco start-up Point, offer similar cash-for-equity arrangements for existing homeowners, but, for now, dont work with home buyers.

For the last few years, Unison has offered its down-payment product to buyers of pricey homes who need so-called jumbo mortgages. Now the company is going mass market.

Its working directly with mortgage lenders to offers its down-payment program to buyers looking for ordinary home loans. Government-backed mortgage agency Freddie Mac will purchase loans made to Unison customers through what the agency described as a very limited pilot.

Unisons program could help some buyers get into homes they otherwise could not afford. But housing finance watchers dont see this as a return to the kind of high-risk lending that sparked last decades financial crisis. Unison customers must have good credit, qualify for a standard mortgage and make at least a 10% down payment  much more than whats required for loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, for instance.

Still, deals with Unison and other firms are novel and come with a big tradeoff: In exchange for a smaller mortgage, buyers give up a big chunk of the value their homes might gain.

Laurie Goodman, co-director of the housing policy finance center at research group Urban Institute, said its important for home buyers to know what theyre getting into.

Saving money up front in exchange for a share of the upside is a legitimate decision, but its one the buyer needs to fully understand, she said.

For the Sotos, the decision came down not to how much value their home might gain or lose, but the size of the monthly payment.

For our personal situation, what was most critical was having access to discretionary income because our kids will be going on to college, said Ricardo Soto, 50, a father of three teenagers. Having that lower payment and knowing I can count on that was really important.

Unison is working with four mortgage lenders, including Orange Countys LoanDepot, one of the nations largest mortgage originators, and it has deals with three more. Unison is already available to home buyers in California, New York and 11 other states, and will be available in eight more this year.

With tighter mortgage-lending standards, home prices near pre-recession highs and expensive rents making it difficult for would-be home buyers to save for a down payment, Unison co-Chief Executives Jim Riccitelli and Thomas Sponholtz say they think that there will be healthy demand for their down-payment program.

Its harder than ever to buy a house right now, Riccitelli said. Credit is still very hard to get.

They see demand not only from home buyers but from investors. Before founding Unison, Sponholtz worked for Barclays Global Investors, where he managed investments in bonds for pension funds, endowments and other institutions.

Those investors, he said, want to invest in the housing market. For pension funds especially, the cost of housing has a direct impact on how much they need to earn on their investments because housing is one of the biggest costs pensioners have to cover.

Housing has an inherent appeal to an institutional investor, said John Kerrigan, chief investment officer for Santa Clara University, which has invested some of its endowment in Unison. If housing declines, it is likely that the obligations of a pension or endowment have declined. And if housing is increasing it is likely that the obligations of a pension or endowment have also increased.

There are other ways to invest in the housing market, such as publicly traded companies that own apartments and single-family homes for rent. But those companies have to cover the cost of vacancies, maintenance and property management.

What we do is offer pensions and endowments very pure exposure to home prices, Sponholtz said.

Heres how it works: Buyers have to qualify for a mortgage and be able to make a down payment of at least 10% on their own.

In a typical deal, Unison will match that 10% down payment, but the company will do smaller and larger deals. For example, it might match a 12.5% down payment, or put up as little as 5% if the buyer can put up more. Unison gets that money back, plus gains or losses, when the home is resold.

If homeowners havent sold or dont want to sell after 30 years, theyre obligated to get an appraisal of the houses value and cash Unison out, which could require taking out a home equity loan.

After the deal closes, the buyer takes possession of the house and is responsible for monthly mortgage payments, taxes, insurance and maintenance.

Unisons deals are structured as an option  that is, in exchange for help with the down payment, the company is buying the right to acquire a set percentage of the home at a later date.

We dont technically own a piece of the house while the homeowner lives there  thats really important for the home buyer, Sponholtz said. The home buyer maintains control of their home.

That means that, while Unison wont help pay property taxes, it also cant tell homeowners what kind of landscaping to put in or whether they should choose hardwood or carpet.

Chris Hart, chief executive of First California Mortgage, estimates that mortgages tied to Unisons down-payment program could eventually account for perhaps 10% of the purchase loans his Petaluma firm originates.

Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates, said the program might be a good deal for some sophisticated buyers. But he worries that  like reverse mortgages and some specialty home loans that flourished during the housing boom  it will be marketed to customers who dont fully understand it.

He noted that, though Unison is not a lender, home buyers will eventually owe the company.

Its not a bad idea. Its a good idea, as long as its marketed to the small niche of people who it really works for, he said. Its like reverse mortgages  they make sense for some people, but theyre not for everybody.

Unison, which has assets of about $27 million, has done a few hundred deals, though only a handful through the new down-payment program.

Riccitelli and Sponholtz think that the market for their new offering is big, and that millions of home buyers could be interested, but they wont work with just anyone.

Before Unison agrees to invest, buyers have to meet with a Unison representative, listen to a presentation and pass an exam that asks 20 questions about how the program works.

The test goes over some of the basic math of a Unison transaction  how much the home buyer would owe Unison based on the gain or loss in the value of their home  as well as rules of the deal. Buyers cant rent out their home, for instance, and are responsible for covering broker fees and other costs of selling their property.

We insist on having well-educated partners, Riccitelli said.

Ricardo Soto said he and his wife both passed the test with flying colors, and theyre comfortable with the deal they made.

If they later sell the house for $750,000, they would owe Unison $100,000  the original $65,000 that the company invested plus $35,000.

Southern California home prices keep rising, and sales jump 

Soto said he was initially skeptical about giving up that much upside. But then he remembered that the home his family sold in El Cajon didnt gain much value at all.

Most of the equity we realized in our last home had to do with paying down the mortgage, not with appreciation, he said. And I get to keep all the value I get by paying off the mortgage.

He also liked that Unison will share in the downside if home prices should fall  35% of the decrease in value will be subtracted from what the couple owes the company.

And regardless of the ups and downs of the housing market, the Sotos are saving about $300 a month on their mortgage payment and an additional $400 because they dont need mortgage insurance.

An extra $700 a month is a big deal, he said, as his kids all start college over the next four years.

Im not planning 30 years out, he said. Im just hoping to get through the next eight.

james.koren@latimes.com

Follow me: @jrkoren

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High-end retailer Neiman Marcus has backed out of an initial public offering.

The Dallas chain initially filed in 2015 to go public, but later said it would delay its plans until 2016. On Friday, Neiman Marcus said it has abandoned an IPO altogether after deciding that it is not in its best interests.

Los Angeles-based investment firm Ares Management and the Canadian Pension Fund acquired Neiman Marcus from private equity firms TPG Capital and Warburg Pincus in 2013 for $6 billion. Proceeds from an IPO were intended to pay down nearly $5 billion in long-term debt.

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But like other luxury department stores, Neiman Marcus is facing heightened competition from online retailers. It has reported several quarters of declines in same-store sales. In its first fiscal quarter, which ended Oct. 29, Neiman Marcus reported a net loss of $23.5 million.

Last year, Karen Katz, chief executive of Neiman Marcus, raised some eyebrows after partially blaming bloggers for the companys poor performance.

Today, fashion shows are now blogged and broadcast all over the world via social media, Katz said in a September call with investors. By the time the merchandise ships many months later, the newness and excitement has worn off and in many cases, the customer has moved on.

Some industry watchers have said the company has suffered from its own missteps, including problems with its e-commerce site.

Neiman Marcus is not alone in its struggles. Department stores such as Nordstrom and Macys have faced sales slowdowns. Earlier this week, Macys said it is cutting more than 10,000 jobs and going ahead with plans to close 68 stores after it suffered a disappointing holiday season.

Follow Shan on Twitter @ByShanLi
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 also viewed with equal distrust as intentional lies.

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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 coauthors have co-opted the concept of paltering for the field of negotiation.

Their research found that people doing the misleading think paltering is less wrong than telling 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.

We settled the suit with zero  with no admission of guilt.  Donald Trump, answering a question about a federal lawsuit from 1973

Politicians, Rogers said, do this all the time. The most famous example may be Bill Clintons famous is response to PBS NewsHour host Jim Lehrer, with which Rogers and his coauthors 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 that his relationship had ended months before the interview), it also misled people and did not tell the whole truth.

Rogers coauthor, 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 that the settlement did not mean the family company, of which Trump was president 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 page 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 Nixon did so while he was running for reelection. Gino notes that, in fact, Nixon released them under audit a year after his reelection.

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% 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 that a negotiating 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. Opportunities to lie by omission, Rogers says, actually dont arise all that often.

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 last month, thats paltering.

Of course, classifying whether voters or negotiating 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 Trump examined by the nonpartisan fact-checking outlet Politifact have been rated mostly false, false or, the worst grade, 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.

Jena McGregor writes about leadership for the Washington Post.

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Madelyn Gilbreath can understand why Republican lawmakers say Obamacare isnt working. She had to switch this month to a cheaper plan with a higher deductible after the monthly premium for her former plan doubled.

But she also knows that the Republicans wont be doing her any favors if they repeal major provisions of Obamacare without a viable  and better  replacement for the law.

Westwood resident Gilbreath relies on her and her husbands Social Security checks to get by. She couldnt afford health insurance without the more than $700 in monthly subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act.

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My healthcare is lousy as it is, Gilbreath told me. But I think the Republicans main plan is making coverage even worse or just not paying for people.

She isnt alone in facing an uncertain future. Republican leaders announced this week that President-elect Donald Trump will begin dismantling Obamacare through executive orders on his first day in office, Jan. 20. A broader repeal of the Affordable Care Act will reach Trumps desk by Feb. 20, they said.

The law is failing while we speak, House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters. We need to reverse the damage that has been done.

He added that Republicans will give the American people access to quality, affordable health coverage  more choices, more control, more freedom.

File that under wishful thinking.

Obamacare is far from perfect, but it has extended health coverage to more than 20 million of the 50 million people lacking insurance before the law was enacted in 2010. It also has ended the gruesome practices of insurers denying coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions and limiting how much will be paid if a policyholder gets sick.

Ryan promised bold action to make things better, but he and other Republican lawmakers cant be more specific about their plans because they dont know themselves. All theyre saying now is that theyll take apart Obamacare in bits and pieces, and theyll come up with a replacement in perhaps a few years.

The insurance industry and most major medical groups say this is crazy. Theyve warned that all this uncertainty will destabilize insurance markets and will push many insurers to stop selling coverage to individuals, putting lives at risk.

The Affordable Care Act is a carefully woven fabric, with requirements spanning all stakeholders in the healthcare delivery system, and it provides essential protections for the health and financial stability of patients with chronic conditions, Shereen Arent, chief advocacy officer of the American Diabetes Assn., said in a letter to congressional leaders last month.

Congress should not risk critical advancements made under the ACA without simultaneously enacting a replacement plan that maintains or improves existing access to comprehensive, affordable healthcare coverage.

Gilbreath, 64, said she cried the night of the election, primarily because of how Republican control of the government could affect her family. Her adult son lives at home and, as a dependent, is included on her Covered California policy. Her husband is covered by Medicare.

I just need to make it one more year and then Im eligible for Medicare, Gilbreath said. For my son, Im just praying he stays healthy.

Praying for health shouldnt be the foundation of a modern healthcare system. But thats where millions of uninsured Americans still find themselves.

Republicans appear to believe that all weve lacked is a robust marketplace where insurers, hospitals and drug companies can compete for peoples business. That, of course, is foolish.

Nearly every other developed nation has concluded that the only equitable way to provide affordable healthcare is to adopt a single-payer system  think Medicare for all  that spreads insurance risk among the entire population. Its no coincidence that Europeans pay about half what Americans pay on average for equal if not better treatment.

Gilbreath and I became acquainted after she contacted me with a tale of woe regarding a recent tumble on the sidewalk near her home. She split her chin open and ended up at UCLAs nearby emergency room, where she received four stitches to close the wound.

Knowing that her Anthem Blue Cross policy came with a whopping $6,000 deductible, Gilbreath assumed shed probably get stuck with the full cost of treatment.

But when the bills arrived, she discovered that UCLA wanted nearly $775 for her stepping inside the ER and receiving a shot of local anesthesia for the stitching. The doctor who performed the needlework  just four stitches, remember  wanted an additional $853, of which Anthem covered about $135.

To be sure, any visit to an emergency room will be the priciest form of medical treatment available. But theres no rational scenario that explains a $1,600 bill for four stitches.

Tami Dennis, a UCLA Health spokeswoman, said the hospitals charges reflect the overhead, infrastructure and staffing required for top-quality care.

Be that as it may, Gilbreaths experience belies Republican claims that all we need for cheaper, better healthcare are a few market reforms, such as allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, or making it more difficult to sue doctors and hospitals for malpractice.

The only way to prevent for-profit companies from exploiting peoples medical misfortune, as our economic peers abroad have found, is to create the broadest possible risk pools for insurance and to impose strict rules on hospitals and drug companies to avoid price gouging.

Republican lawmakers are about to get a crash course in healthcare economics, and theyre going to find that this is a unique service with unique market characteristics. There isnt true competition, actual costs are well-hidden and patients often dont have the luxury of shopping around.

Obamacare got us part way to an improved system but nowhere close to the finish line (spoiler alert: Medicare-for-all is the only sensible solution).

Republicans, after years of griping about the laws shortcomings, are now in a position to enact their own vision for an ideal healthcare system.

Heres a little advice: First do no harm.

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.
What we now refer to as San Fernando Valley, or simply the Valley, started off with a mouthful of a name: El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de los Encinos.

Thats what Spaniard Gaspar de Portola, who became the first European to lay eyes on it, called the area after trudging up and through the Sepulveda Pass in 1769.

The place where he sat his donkey was a Chumash village near a tree-shaded spring within shouting distance of a massive 700-year-old live oak, now the heart of the neighborhood that bears a truncated version of the name  Encino, or oak tree.

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That village became the center of operations of the Rancho los Encinos, which was owned in succession by Spaniards, Mission Indians, rancheros and various Yankee farmers, before being sold off and subdivided as the city of Encino.

Encino, like Tarzana, its neighbor to the west, remained semirural into the 1920s, when Hollywood  looking for ranch land on which to film some of the hundreds of oaters the industry was cranking out at the time  came calling.

RKO Pictures established its ranch and backlot in the neighborhood, where such classics as Its a Wonderful Life and The Hunchback of Notre Dame were filmed. The combination of close proximity to movie studios and plentiful land led A-listers of the era to build homes in Encino, making it one of the Valleys first and most enduring celebrity enclaves.

The post-World War II housing boom brought an end to the era of plentiful open land and rural land uses such as farming and ranching. Even the RKO backlot fell prey to developers bulldozers, closing in 1953 to make way for the Encino Village subdivision, where tidy modern homes rose on the site of sets like New York Street and the Notre Dame Cathedral.

As the last of the open spaces of Encino were filled, the state stepped in to save the spring, but one last reminder of the old days of El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de los Encinos would fall to the ravages of time when the ancient oak, at the ripe old age of 1,000 years, collapsed during the El Nino storms of 1998.

Neighborhood highlights:

Highs and more highs: Whether you like hillside living or dwelling in the flats, Encino has great housing choices on either side of Ventura Boulevard.

Westside adjacent: If you absolutely must commute from the Valley to the Westside, Encinos the least worst option. Youre still going to have to sit on the 405, but at least its a straight shot over the hill.

Neighborhood challenges:

Middle of the road: If Valley nabes get progressively less hip as you move west down Ventura Boulevard, Encino is halfway between Studio City and Woodland Hills in more ways than one.

Expert insight:

Carol Wolfe, a longtime Encino resident and agent with Rodeo Realty, said new construction has attracted buyers to the area who might otherwise live in other parts of Los Angeles.

Weve been seeing a lot of tear-downs and new construction, she said. New homes offer a lot of things that people want  a lot of bells and whistles.

For older homes or large-lot estates, potential home buyers will need to move quickly in the current marketplace.

Families are competing with builders and developers, which makes it difficult, Wolfe said. The traditional buyer is being aced out by builders who waive inspections and have such strong offers.

Market snapshot:

In November, based on 20 sales, the median price for single-family home sales in the 91316 ZIP Code was $838,000, according to CoreLogic. That was a 18.9% increase in price year over year.

Report card:

Among the top public schools is Lanai Road Elementary, which scored 950 out of 1,000 in the 2013 Academic Performance Index. Encino Elementary had a score of 942, and Hesby Oaks scored 910.

Gaspar de Portola Middle, found just outside the city boundary, scored 866. High Tech L.A. had a score of 865, and Fred E. Lull Special Education Center scored 845.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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A show that switches up day and night. Another that features paintings inspired by a lost paradise. And objects that fuse different currents in American history. Plus: Peter Sauls early works, Simone Leighs historical talk and considering Mary Shelleys monster. Here are eight shows and events to check out in the coming week:

Antonia Wright, Under the water was sand, then rocks, miles of rocks, then fire, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. This is a show that rearranges our natural circadian rhythms. During the day, the gallery will be cloaked in darkness and viewers will have to navigate through a dense arrangement of plants enveloped by an experimental sound piece as they move to a video projection at the rear of the space. Once the sun sets outside, the lights come on indoors, the video switches off and the piece is transformed. Opens Saturday at 6 p.m. and runs through Feb. 11. 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City, luisdejesus.com.

Sam Durant, Build Therefore Your Own World, at Blum & Poe. With a title drawn from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, this exhibition of new works by the L.A. artist takes elements inspired by the transcendentalists (Emerson, Henry David Thoreau) and remixes them with objects drawn from the lives of African and African American thinkers. This might consist of a 3-D rendering of Emersons writing chair mashed up with poet Phyllis Wheatleys desk, or the walking stick of Jack Garrison (once enslaved) with Thoreaus pencil  poignant objects that tell the intersecting tales of American history. Opens Saturday at 6 p.m. and runs through Feb. 18. 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City, blumandpoe.com.

Karl Haendel, By and By, at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. In his third solo show at the gallery, Haendel explores the power of the heroic in portraiture  playing with issues of masculinity, power and gender in a series of works that depict everything from powerful men to teenage girls riding rodeo to a monumental portrait of Hillary Clinton (his largest drawing to date). Also on view will be a new video, J., an intimate filmic portrait of a convicted sex offender. Opens Saturday at 6 p.m. and runs through Feb. 11. 6006 Washington Blvd., Culver City, vielmetter.com.

Lost Horizons #43, 2009, by Merion Estes at CB1 Gallery. (Merion Estes / CB1 Gallery)

Merion Estes, Lost Horizons and Cooling Trend, and Emily Davis Adams, Somewhere Between, at CB1 Gallery. From 2007 to 2011, painter Merion Estes produced a series of works on paper inspired by vanishing natural landscapes and the 1937 Frank Capra film Lost Horizon, about the hidden mountain paradise Shangri-La. She will be showing these works, along with a work that draws its intense color palette from our ever warming climate. Also on view at CB1 will be an exhibition of new works by Emily Davis Adams: A series of paintings inspired by constructions made from paper and other materials that toy with how the viewer perceives color and light. Opens Saturday at 4 p.m. and runs through Feb. 19. 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave., downtown Los Angeles, cb1gallery.com.

Peter Saul: From Pop to Politics: Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, 1957-1967, at CB1 Guest Gallery. Organized by George Adams Gallery in New York, this exhibition brings together works from Sauls early development as a painter in the 1950s to his transition to pop in the following decade. It also features his turn to topical issues  such as Vietnam and civil rights  in the work of the late 1960s. This looks like one not to miss. Opens Saturday at 4 p.m. and runs through Feb. 19. 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave., downtown Los Angeles, cb1gallery.com.

In Real Life: 100 Days of Film and Performance, at the Hammer Museum. This 4-month program is bringing a series of screenings, performances, film and video to the museum during a remodel. This weekend, New York-based artist Simone Leigh, who helped organize an indelible performance of Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter at the New Museum in New York City last year, will be heading up a couple of events at the museum. This includes a screening of several video works on Saturday at 3 p.m. (immediately followed by a DJ performance), as well as a discussion between Leigh and scholar Rizvana Bradley about black radical political, literary and artistic traditions on Sunday at 3 p.m. Through Jan. 25. Check the schedule for events and times. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, Los Angeles, hammer.ucla.edu.

Straight Outta Bushwick, at Chimento Contemporary. Organized by Patricia Hamilton, who used to run New Yorks Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, this exhibition brings together a selection of works by artists from the Schweitzer/David Gallery in Brooklyn, from a neighborhood that has been a hotbed of arts activity for just over six years. Featured will be works by Farrell Brickhouse, Daniel John Gadd, Brenda Goodman, Dana James and C. Michael Norton. Opens Saturday at 5 p.m. and runs through Feb. 4. 622 S. Anderson St., No. 105, Boyle Heights, chimentocontemporary.com.

What a Wallop, 2005-2010, by C. Michael Norton, on view at Chimento Contemporary. (C. Michael Norton / Chimento Contemporary / David & Schweitzer Contemporary)

The Ecstasy of Mary Shelley, at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Part of LACEs Emerging Curators program, this exhibition, organized by Virginia Broersma, Nick Brown and Kio Griffith, takes Shelleys seminal Frankenstein as a point of inspiration for a group show that dwells in ecstatic highs and monstrous lows as related to issues of performance and the body. This includes works by Cassils, Annie Lapin, Candice Lin and Gala Porras-Kim. Through Feb. 12. 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, welcometolace.org.

LAST CHANCE

Rediscovering Genius: The Works of Edward S. Curtis, at the Depart Foundation. Curator Bruce Kapson has brought together a rare selection of important, historical works by the legendary photographer, known for chronicling North American Indian cultures during the early days of the 20th century, most famously in his expansive volume, The North American Indian. This includes original photography, as well as the artists little-seen and never published proofs and photogravure printing plates. Through Saturday. 9105 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, departfoundation.com.

The Rat Bastard Protective Association, at the Landing. The Rat Bastard Protective Association was a close-knit group of now well-known California artists  including Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wallace Berman and Joan Brown  who worked together in a building dubbed Painterland in San Francisco. Anastasia Aukeman, who wrote a book on the group  Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association  has organized an exhibition that brings the groups works together for the first time since the late 1950s. Through Saturday. 5118 W. Jefferson Blvd., West Adams, thelandinggallery.com.

A detail from Joan Browns Three Figures, painted c. 1965, part of a group show of Bay Area artists at the Landing. (The Landing, Los Angeles) (The Landing, Los Angeles)

Jay DeFeo, Paintings on Paper, 1986-1987, at Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Over a four-decade career, the Bay Area-based artist was known for a diverse range of stark abstract works that included paintings, collages and monumental wall sculpture. This show at Selwyn gathers drawings from her Samurai series, paintings on heavy paper that were influenced by the artists 1985 trip to Japan, as well as an exhibition of Japanese helmets. Through Saturday. 9953 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, marcselwynfineart.com.

Steven Steinman, Sparks & Showers, and Klea McKenna, Automatic Earth, at Von Lintel Gallery. The gallery has two shows: a series of unusual photographic rubbings by McKenna, who hails from the Bay Area, and the monochromatic works of the L.A.-based Steinman, who imbues bold monochromatic paintings with texture and undulating patterns. Through Saturday. 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City, vonlintel.com.

S/Election, at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Because too much election is never enough, the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery has a broad group show that examines issues of citizenship, identity, immigration and criminal justice. The show includes work by such socially and politically minded artists such as Jennifer Moon, Charles Gaines, Olga Koumoundouros and Ruben Ortiz-Torres. Through Sunday, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, lamag.org.

Kay Sekimachi, Simple Complexity, at the Craft & Folk Art Museum. The museum has gathered a lifetimes worth of work  from the 1960s to today  of this innovative Bay Area fiber artist. Through Sunday. 5814 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, cafam.org.

Kay Sekimachis Homage to AM: Dots II, 2011, at the Craft & Folk Art Museum. (M. Lee Fatherree / Craft & Folk Art Museum) (Test)

The Drawing Show, at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum. An exhibition gathers drawings by architects who use the medium as an exploratory tool in their design practices. This includes images that channel everything from geometric abstraction to the weirdly biomorphic. Architects featured include figures such as Pritzker Prize-winner Thom Mayne , as well as Kyle Miller, Anthony Morey and Bryan Cantley. Through Sunday. 900 E. Fourth St., downtown Los Angeles, aplusd.org.

Radio Imagination: Artists in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler, at the Armory Center for the Arts. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the death of sci-fi writer Octavia Butler. As part of this exhibition, which is organized by Clockshop, seven contemporary artists have created work inspired by the items in Butlers archive, held by the Huntington Library. The new pieces include drawings, a sound installation, sculpture and even a musical work, which will premiere at the exhibitions opening. Also on view will be an exhibition of sculptures and video by Harry Dodge  making this a most excellent two-fer. Through Sunday. 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, armoryarts.org.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Michael Lift, Sidereal Lift, at Craig Krull Gallery. In his latest solo exhibition, the artist explores the Southern California landscape from above  featuring a series of prints that capture L.A. in ways that are geometric and a bit magical. Also on view will be Pamela Kendall Schiffers images of Yellowstone and Jeff Brouws stereoscopic images of an old copper mining pit in Montana. Through Jan. 14. Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., B-3, Santa Monica, craigkrullygallery.com.

Doug Aitken, Electric Earth, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The L.A. artists first North American museum survey features an array of collage, photographic and video installation works from throughout his career  including the cinematic Song 1, from 2012, screening on a massive circular screen, and Electric Earth, the 1999 video installation that earned him the International Prize at the Venice Biennale. Through Jan. 15. Geffen Contemporary , 152 N. Central Ave., downtown Los Angeles, moca.org.

A still from Doug Aitkens Migration video installation from 2008, part of Doug Aitken: Electric Earth, at MOCA. (Doug Aitken / MOCA) (Doug Aitken/MOCA)

Truc Anh: Vacuphilia, at Varola. The first exhibition by the Vietnamese-French artist features paintings and installations that feature bodies and body parts inhabiting an abstracted world of black and white. Through Jan. 20. Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., Ste. B256, West Hollywood, helenvarola.com.

Black With a Drop of Red: Contemporary Cuban Poster Work, at the Fowler Museum. A group show brings together poster designs by 18 graphic artists who have created broadsides for everything from Cuban cultural happenings to U.S. movies  all in stark shades of white, black and red. Through Jan. 22. 308 Charles E. Young Dr. N., Westwood, Los Angeles, fowler.ucla.edu.

The Human Beast: Art of Maxine Kim Stussy & Jan Stussy, at WUHO Gallery. A midcentury art couple who first met at UCLA in the late 1940s, Maxine Kim and Jan Stussy became known in Los Angeles for figurative works that revel in the animalistic. Organized by independent curator Michael Duncan, the show gathers 20 sculptures, paintings and works on paper by the artist pair. Through Jan. 22. 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, wuho.architecture.woodbury.edu.

Beatriz Cortez, Nomad World, at the Vincent Price Art Museum. The L.A.-based artist and cultural critic has transformed the gallery space at the museum into an arcade that picks apart global capitalism. A fortune-telling booth, a pinball machine and a jukebox have been pulled apart and put back together, in ways that grapple with issues such as migration, economics and identity. Through Jan. 28. East Los Angeles College, 1301 Cesar Chavez Ave., Monterey Park, vincentpriceartmuseum.org.

Virgin of Guadalupe: Images in Colonial Mexico, at the Bowers Museum. This exhibition looks at the extraordinary impact of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Mexican culture, history and iconography through more than 60 artworks, including objects from the virgins basilica in Mexico City, as well as a sacred reliquary that contains a portion of the garment worn by Juan Diego, the indigenous peasant who first saw the virgin in an apparition. Through Jan. 29. 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana, bowers.org

California Wood Artists, at the Maloof Foundation. A group show gathers wooden objects created by nearly 40 California wood artists, from one-of-a-kind furnishing to elaborate marquetry inspired by Google searches. Through Feb. 11. 5131 Carnelian St., Alta Loma, malooffoundation.org.

Nkame: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayon, at the Fowler Museum. The Cuban visual artist was known for powerful pieces inspired by the visual iconography of the founding myths of Abakua, an Afro-Cuban fraternal society. Over her short life (she died at age 32 in 1999), she produced a voluminous number of prints and collages in shades of black and white that convey scenes that are both magical and enigmatic. Through Feb. 12. UCLA, 308 Charles Young Drive North, Westwood, Los Angeles, fowler.ucla.edu.

States of Mind: Picasso Lithographs, 1945-1960, at the Norton Simon Museum. Drawn from the museums holdings of more than 700 Picasso prints, this exhibition gathers works made in the immediate postwar years, many of which sequentially depict the artists process as he made changes and revisions. Moreover, many of the works are being seen for the first time in 40 years. Through Feb. 13. 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, nortonsimon.org.

A lithograph, The Bull, 1945, by Pablo Picasso. (Pablo Picasso / Norton Simon Museum of Art) (Test)

In the Land of Sunshine: Imaging the California Coast World, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Covering a period that begins in the mid-19th century and spans to today, this exhibition covers beach culture up and down our states more than 800-mile coast  from playful abstractions of the shoreline to expressive watercolors that will make you practically taste the salt air. Through Feb. 19. 490 E. Union St., Pasadena, pmcaonline.org.

Ease of Fiction, at the California African American Museum. The museum has launched a new slate of shows. This includes Ease of Fiction, a group exhibition that features work by four African artists exploring the fine line between the invented and the real and the debut museum exhibition of Los Angeles artist Genevieve Gagnard, whose photographs question notions of blackness and whiteness. There is also a beguiling room-sized installation by Hank Willis Thomas that recasts the symbols of the Confederate flag in the colors of black nationalism  and projects them in tune with a soundtrack of spoken-word audio (a piece that Times art critic Christopher Knight describes as enthralling.) Through Feb. 19. 600 State Dr., Exposition Park, Los Angeles, caamuseum.org.

Tastemakers and Earthshakers: Notes on Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943-2016, at Vincent Price Art Museum. A multimedia exhibition organized by the museums new director, Pilar Tompkins Rivas, looks at eight decades of youth culture  from the pachucos and pachucas of the 40s, to the connections between Los Angeles and British youth culture, to the emergence of social spaces geared at youth. In addition to work by more than 35 area artists, the exhibition also features documentary photography, video and other cultural ephemera. Through Feb. 25. East Los Angeles College, 1301 Cesar Chavez Ave., Monterey Park, vincentpriceartmuseum.org.

Pop for the People: Roy Lichtenstein in Los Angeles, at the Skirball Cultural Center. A new exhibition of the pop artist looks at more than 70 works spanning four decades, many of which are connected to Los Angeles and the artists collaboration with important print studios here  including Gemini G.E.L. and Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Through March 12. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Brentwood, Los Angeles, skirball.org.

Toba Khedoori, at the L.A. County Museum of Art. This is the first major museum survey of the L.A.-based artist, known for her painstaking draftsmanship and enigmatic drawings and paintings. Her works often feature architectural elements, landscape, smoke and flame in ways that play with negative space and toy with meaning. Through March 19. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection, at the Huntington Library. The Huntington has just redone its American art galleries and now features a new expansion by architects at Frederick Fisher and Partners that adds eight rooms for display. Up first will be an exhibition devoted to the Fielding Collection, featuring more than 200 works of 18th and early 19th century American art, including paintings, furnishings and decorative art. While youre at the museum, pop in to see the show Real American Places: Edward Weston & Leaves of Grass, which features the portfolio of photographs that Weston made to accompany Walt Whitmans seminal poem. Becoming America runs indefinitely; Weston runs through March 20. 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino, huntington.org.

Non Fiction, at the Underground Museum. An emotionally charged exhibition curated by the late Noah Davis in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles brings together works that explore issues of race and violence. This includes important works from MOCAs permanent collection by artists such as Robert Gober, Kara Walker, Henry Taylor and David Hammons. Through March. 3508 W. Washington Blvd., Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, theunderground-museum.org.

Installations by Robert Gober and Kerry James Marshall at the Underground Museum. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times) (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times )

L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This exhibition brings together more than 60 works of art donated by artists to the museum, including pieces by photographer Catherine Opie, light and space master Larry Bell, multimedia artist Analia Saban, photographer James Welling and conceptualist Mario Ybarra Jr. Through April 2. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. One of the most important artists of SoCals postwar period, McLaughlin is known for quiet, minimalist works that explore total abstraction: geometries and lines that explore ideas of shape and space, but not representation. This exhibition gathers 52 paintings and a selection of collages and drawings  representing the first major museum retrospective of the artists work. Times critic Christopher Knight says this is the show he has been waiting 40 years to see. Do not miss. Through April 16. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, lacma.org.

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media, at the Getty Center. An exhibition that couldnt be timelier: Curator Arpad Kovcs has put together a show that looks at the ways in which artists have turned bucolic magazine images and fragments of news programming into sharp political statements against events such as the Vietnam War and the so-called war on terror. The show features work by Martha Rosler, Alfredo Jaar, Catherine Opie and Robert Heinecken. Through April 20. 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles, getty.edu.

Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time, at the L.A. County Museum of Art. This exhibition compares the artistic trajectories of two of the 20th centurys most towering Modernists: Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera. This covers the period from the 1920s to the 50s as they explored Cubism, classical forms and ancient cultures in innovative ways. The shows features 150 paintings, etchings and watercolors. Through May 7. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

Water deity (Chalchiuhtlicue), Mexico, Aztec, 1200-1521  part of an exhibition about Picasso and Rivera at LACMA. (LACMA)

Islamic Art Now: Part 2 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Contemporary works from LACMAs permanent collection by 20 artists who live in or have roots in the Middle East look at questions of society, gender and identity. Runs indefinitely. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, lacma.org.

Loris Greaud, Sculpt, at the L.A. County Museum of Art. The entire theater has been taken over by the European artist for a film that screens to only one person at a time. The nonlinear picture follows a man about whom we know very little, who seems to be constantly developing the concept of what experiencing beauty, thought, or obsession can be, according the write-up. Times critic Christopher Knight describes it as pretentious and uninvolving. A good hate-watch, maybe? On view through a yet to be determined date. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

@cmonstah
Walt Disney Concert Hall looked almost full Thursday night, suggesting that some of Bramwell Toveys loyal Hollywood Bowl following may have followed him to downtown L.A. for his gig there with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The irrepressible Tovey didnt disappoint those who await his witty remarks, offering some as a prologue to Act 2 of Tchaikovskys The Sleeping Beauty after intermission. He spoke of the Tchaikovsky as the vehicle for one of his earliest conducting experiences: Me and 45 ballerinas  someone had to do it! (Rim shot.)

But there was also musical wit on display  at last, a performance of selections from William Waltons Facade. This was Waltons breakthrough piece, written in 1922 at age 19 to accompany the nonsense poems of Edith Sitwell, who recited them in a rhythmic style that was a precursor of rap.

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Walton himself conducted the first L.A. Phil performance of music from Facade in 1953, but it is rarely performed in concert these days, whether in the original voice-chamber-group version or the orchestral suites. I cannot explain why we dont hear this music more often. Its a jazzy, sassy, tuneful romp that is pure fun for audiences and a far cry from the Walton who later became a distinguished musical pillar of the fading British Empire.

Tovey programmed the Suite No. 2, which contains only six of the 21 selections in what is now called Facade 1. Within these 11 minutes, Tovey invoked boisterous rhythms, a delicate lilt, a little of the old soft-shoe, and plenty of satirical spirit to the manner born. Lets hear some more of it sometime.

The stylish violinist Ray Chen, last seen playing at the Musco Center in Orange in November with three friends from the Berlin Philharmonic, returned to the Southland for his Disney Hall debut in the Sibelius Violin Concerto  and he came to impress. He arched his back, knees bent, and poured forth plenty of warm, passionate tone, grabbing a hold of the long line toward the climax of the second movement and not letting go until he reached the top.

Overall, though, the Sibelius concerto thrives on a paradoxical combination of fire and ice, and Chen could provide enough fire but hardly any ice. Nor was there much darkness or propulsion in Toveys shaping of the orchestral components, and the timpani completely blotted out the crucial thrumming string rhythm in the finale. Yet Chens outgoing personality and flair could not be denied, both in Sibelius and his encore, Paganinis Caprice No. 21.

Tchaikovskys The Sleeping Beauty is another example of music that isnt performed as often as one might guess  at least in the concert hall as opposed to the ballet stage. Yet Act 2 makes a perfectly good alternative to the usual overplayed Tchaikovsky symphonies; the level of inspiration is generally high, with trace elements of his Symphonies 4 and 5 and Violin Concerto turning up. Tovey and the Phil served it up luxuriously, with excellent solo contributions from concertmaster Martin Chalifour and principal cellist Robert deMaine.

------------

L.A. Phil with Bramwell Tovey and Ray Chen

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $53-$188

Info: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com

Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.

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Some came dressed in their best formal attire  suits, skinny ties and flowing glittery gowns. Others wore black, often including a veil as if attending a wake. Both fashions fit the mood. The new year was hours old, and fans of the Disneyland Resort had come to celebrate, and to mourn.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction in Disney California Adventure  that haunted hotel that loomed over the entire park  would be frightening its final guests the following night. The structure will remain standing, set to reopen later this year as a new attraction themed to Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy.

To commemorate the closing, Disneyland threw a gala complete with a red carpet, mock paparazzi, desserts, mixed drinks and the opportunity to purchase a $37 paperweight in the form of an enlarged hotel key.

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Still, the night was bittersweet for the dedicated-to-obsessed resort fans for whom a change in the Jungle Cruise script can touch off a seismic reaction. The summer announcement of the Towers closure was met, predictably, by shock, outrage and online petitions. While many have since made their peace, some of the hundreds who paid an extra $95 to attend the after-hours party were still quite unhappy, and not just because they would miss the ride itself.

By closing the Tower, the resort surrendered one of its most overt and least self-referential connections to Old Hollywood. With its sinister facade, eerie story line and no direct ties to a Disney property, the Tower was very much an adult ride, providing an unexpected palate cleanser to the parks uber-themed and upbeat nature.

The film Guardians of the Galaxy is by contrast quippy and cartoonish, leaving California Adventure without a spooky attraction  a complement to the Haunted Mansion in a resort where thrills now far outnumber chills.

Im usually good with change and improving the park, said Maxwell Glick, 27, an avid Disney fan who posts his thoughts on the parks on YouTube, but this felt different. Weve taken an iconic attraction based on an iconic show and replaced it with something that has only been around a short time.

For months, the Tower had been operating in a sort of hospice state, the ornate and intentionally crooked sign long gone, the fake hotels scarred facade shrouded in an unsightly bland beige sheet. Though it felt iconic, it had a relatively short life span.

Like the Disney World attraction on which it was modeled, the $60-million Tower was built around the concept of an abandoned building -- the Hollywood Tower Hotel -- struck by lightning during its 1930s heyday and frozen in time. Guests boarded what was described as a maintenance elevator, and then ascended  and descended  without warning.

The Anaheim edition debuted in 2004, added to California Adventure after the park opened to lukewarm reviews three years earlier. (Disney has stated that there are currently no changes planned for the Orlando Tower of Terror.)

A thrill ride that stayed true to California Adventures salute to the Golden State, it seemed a perfect answer to the parks initially disappointing reviews and quickly became a favorite among guests, many of whom cant understand why Disney decided to fix something no one considered broken.

I am not one of the Disney purists that hates every new change, said Timothy Dowling, a Studio City-based screenwriter. I usually welcome it. Star Wars Land instead of Big Thunder Ranch and part of the train ride? Sounds good, sign me up. But its rare that they get rid of a ride that already is great.

Disney and its champions inevitably respond to complaints about change by pointing out that the parks are not a museum, that Walt Disney himself said Disneyland would never be finished.

And that is true  mostly. Disneyland is a sort of living museum, a monument to American pop culture. It shifts with the trends of the time, sure, but its lands also reflect the Hollywood of different eras, whether in the form of classic fairy tales, a western-based frontier town, the sci-fi optimism of Space Mountain (currently retrofitted to honor Star Wars), and now, coming soon, the modern age of the superhero movie.

The loss of the Tower of Terror cuts into both California Adventures ties to Hollywoods Golden Age and more broadly, the big-screen nostalgia that drives the entire resort. In California Adventure, Buena Vista Street leads to the old-time backlot feel of Hollywood Land  each essentially a living art installation that mythologizes Walt Disney and his first art form  which led to the Tower.

It had a great theme and great atmosphere, said Dowling of the Tower. I think this was why it had a cult around it. And you saw this at the goodbye party with so many people dressing up like they were in a Hollywood of the past. The hotel represented a bygone era of Hollywood. Like Main Street U.S.A., it takes us back to a time that we werent part of and lets us live in it for a few minutes.

The attraction itself was impeccably themed, its ornate lobby featuring dead foliage and abandoned card games, as well as numerous references to various episodes of The Twilight Zone. Listening closely, one could have heard ghostly voices in the hotels boiler room, or spied a period poem.

It also felt lived in. The Tower was one of the rare Disney rides visible from most other lands of the park; standing on Route 66 in Cars Land, the hotels facade made it easy to imagine a more bustling, urban area off in the distance. The space-like theme of Guardians of the Galaxy will alter that  potentially clashing with the yesteryear feel of Hollywood Land, Buena Vista Street, and even the distant Cars Land and Paradise Pier.

The initial description as a warehouse, fortress power plant may have raised more questions than answers. Early concept art has shown a semi-futuristic building outfitted with pipes and symbols, leading to some skepticism among the Towers most dedicated fans.

I am disappointed that the tallest building in Anaheim will look like a giant golden oil refinery, said Jerry Kasai, 34, of Irvine, who documents his many Disneyland trips, including the Towers farewell party, on social media. I could understand the decision to re-theme Tower of Terror if it was unpopular, but it is one of the parks busiest attractions.

And yet a more whimsical tone  as well as tweaks to the ride system  could be welcomed.

My first reaction when I heard the ride was closing was sadness, said Kayse Sheppard, 23, of Hacienda Heights. But now, she adds, Im excited for the Guardians of the Galaxy theme. I wonder if they are going to update the ride by changing the number, frequency, and intensity of drops.

Disney has, in fact, made it clear that Guardians of the Galaxy  Mission Breakout will maintain the same heart-racing drops as Tower of Terror. There have also been hints that Mission Breakout is the first of a planned slate of Marvel offerings coming to California Adventure.

If done right, peoples memories of the Tower may be short.

If the drop portion is just as unpredictable, thrilling and fun as the current ride  married to a great fun Guardians story  I will be very excited for the new ride, Dowling said.

And every guest approached at the farewell fete said they were hopeful about the new ride, for which they said they would be happy to stand in line.They all wanted Marvel, though not necessarily at the expense of the Tower.

I really wish there was a way they could have kept the Tower, and also had a Guardians ride, said Glick. 

Certainly, no one let the closure dim the mood on Sunday evening. There was swing-dancing and those who wanted to experience the attraction for a final time  or five  could do so thanks to relatively brisk lines at 20 minutes or less. Often, the wait to buy merchandise  ornaments or shirts or the aforementioned paperweight, already heavily marked up on eBay  was longer.

Characters such as Goofy and Chip and Dale were available for photo ops, and live music, courtesy of Hollywood Tower Hotel regulars the Silver Lake Sisters, peppered the evening.

Their vocals on songs such as Chattanooga Choo Choo could be heard throughout the night  harmonizing one last time before Anaheims Tower of Terror dropped into another dimension:

The past.

Todd.Martens@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @toddmartens

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Among the many losses that come with the end of the Obama administration, the comedy duo of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele will also retire one of the most popular sketches from their series Key & Peele.

Airing for five seasons on Comedy Central, the show took on all manner of pop culture, but one of the duos signature bits featured Peele as a level-headed President Obama addressing the country while being flanked by Keys Luther, who acted out the presidents often unhinged internal monologue. The recurring sketch was also one of Obamas favorites, and Key even reprised his role at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Key and Peele ended the show in 2015, but on Thursday nights Daily Show With Trevor Noah, Key appeared as a guest to introduce a final farewell address written by Key & Peele executive producer Jay Martel.

The American people have spoken, Peeles Obama said, but Luther quickly countered. Dont you understand? he howled. This is how The Hunger Games start.

Apparently orange is the new black, he added.

If theres any consolation for Key and Peele fans, its Luthers promise to the president-elect: Ive got my eye on you, he said, referencing Trumps language in the vulgar Access Hollywood hot-mike recording that circulated before the election.

Watch the video here, but, fair warning, it includes the occasional NSFW language you might expect from a basic cable late night comedy show.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

chris.barton@latimes.com

Follow me over here @chrisbarton.

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On Wednesday afternoon the Stallone sisters  Sophia, 20; Sistine, 18, and Scarlet, 14  arrived at The Beverly Hilton Stardust Ballroom for a luncheon to celebrate their shared title, Miss Golden Globe 2017. Dressed in Michelle Mason, Armani and Cushnie et Ochs, respectively, the trio often laughed in unison and finished each others sentences. The daughters of Golden Globes 2016 Best Supporting Actor Sylvester Stallone and model Jennifer Flavin shared their experience growing up with a famous dad, career goals and their upcoming television debut.

WWD: What does it mean to be Miss Golden Globe?

Sistine Stallone: Its such a privilege and honor to be asked and even considered to do it following the previous Golden Globes Girls that have made such a name for themselves. Theyre such profound young women and its such an honor.

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Sophia Stallone: I think for me, it means an amazing memory that Ill have for the rest of my life that Ill never get to experience again, especially with my two sisters by my side so its more of future impact for me.

Scarlet Stallone: It definitely takes off the pressure with the three of us doing it. My mom tells me every day, Live in the moment. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Im just going to enjoy it while I can.

WWD: Do you do a lot together as sisters?

Sophia: Not public stuff. Sistine is an amazing model and shes been doing that alone and killing it, Im in college, and [Scarlets] only in middle school. But behind the scenes we spend every second with each other.

WWD: What do you do?

Scarlet: Were such homebodies. We like spending time with our dogs, swimming, watching movies together.

WWD: In terms of the big day, how are you preparing?Sistine: I think its finally hitting us how close it is. Were just getting our dresses together, getting hair and makeup together.

Sophia: Were learning how to walk in our heels.

WWD: Your mother was a model; was there any advice given to make the day run smooth?

Scarlet: Go slowly, watch your step.

Sophia: Im a bull in a china shop, so our parents are always like, Look at your surroundings, look at the floor, make sure there are no wires. Take it one step at a time. Go up and down the stairs a bunch of times.

Scarlet: Practicing holding on to the award and not dropping it. Just those little things that make a huge, huge difference.

WWD: How did you find out that you got the job?

Scarlet: Oh, so we were all in the kitchen relaxing and my dad gets the call and he comes in and tells us the news. We have our dogs with us and when he tells us its ballistic what happens, its a big party. We were dancing and screaming, it was so much fun.

WWD: What will you be wearing for the big day?

Sophia: We have to color coordinate. I mean, there are three of us so we cant all wear different colors.

Sistine: Were all going long, but different styles. One look is really elegant, one is really sexy, and they all flatter us in different ways. Were all excited to be wearing our dresses. Our mom was our go-to stylist.

WWD: What is it like to be the daughter of Sylvester Stallone?

Sistine: I just look at him as my dad. Its crazy, because we didnt realize how big of a deal he is until we were with him at the Golden Globes last year and watched him win. Having that moment, being able to share that is something that Ill never forget.

Sophia: But I think weve all known that hes a big person around the world and hes an icon because weve got experiences that not a lot of people get to experience, but we hang out with him every day. Hes our dad to us and hes awesome. He gives us a lot of advice. Hes very wise.

Scarlet: At school a lot of people will say, Say hi to Rocky for me. But its normal for me. We all grew up with him and we really just see him as a great dad. Hes just really normal.

WWD: You mentioned your father is really wise. What kind of advice has he given you thats really been impactful?Sophia: Cherish the moment. Especially with this, were not going to ever have this moment again with the three of us together at an age also that well remember it, because if youre too young it would be hard to.

WWD: Whats been a cool moment throughout this whole process?

Sophia: I think meeting Jimmy Fallon today. It felt like weve known him for 20 years. We walked into the green room and he was right there.

Sistine: He totally exceeded our expectations.

WWD: Lets talk about your careers. What made you want to be a model Sistine?

Sistine: Ive always been drawn to the fashion industry ever since I was really little. My mom did it and I never thought that I would be able to do it ever. I just didnt think I was capable of ever doing something like that and when I was 15 my mom pushed me. She was like, I want you to go for your dreams. Try it and see what happens. I ended up loving it. Ive been doing it for two years now. Im signed with IMG in New York. Its so much fun. It does not feel like work, I would literally do it for free.

Sophia: I was so proud of her when she went to Paris and she walked for Chanel. She was so mature about it. Shes my baby sister and she was so mature about it, it was crazy.

WWD: Sophia, what is school like for you?

Sophia: Im at USC; its my second year. I have been drawn more toward the business side like my mom. My mom is an entrepreneur and I love that. I kind of want to do that. I guess I would be on TV partially and have my own business, which I think is a great women empowerment thing to be able to control your world.

WWD: What kind of business would you like to start?

Sophia: Im a communications major with a minor in entrepreneurship so I want to do something in beauty or fashion. Its very new and I just realized this about myself, which is crazy at 20 years old. Im glad; Im usually a planner. Were so blessed to have our dad in the film industry and then we have our mom whos in the business side. My mom has an amazing skin-care line and shes teaching me the ropes. That combo together is really beneficial.

WWD: What about you, Scarlet, as the youngest?

Scarlet: Im only in junior high; Im not as successful as these girls. A lot of people ask me if I want to be in the film industry, but I tried it in fourth grade and lets just say it didnt turn out as well as I thought it should. [All laugh.] Actually, I did so bad in that they cut my line during the movie. They literally cut my line. I had to say three words. I was really nervous.

WWD: What do you want people to know about you, since this is a huge public debut?

Sophia: I think overall, were very grounded and we really care about school and education. Thats probably a reason we really havent been in the public eye. We really cherish being as normal as possible, having friends, going to high school parties and getting our degree, taking that time. My mom really pushes that all the time. Were just nice. We as a family are extremely close. We have dinner probably every night together.

Sistine: I think people build up this perception of who we are. Normally when I meet someone theyre like, Oh youre a lot nicer than I thought you were. And Im like, Oh thank you.

WWD: Do you care about the fame at all?

Scarlet: We dont want fame to get in the way.

Sistine: Were trying to live in our childhood for as long as we can.

Sophia: Yeah, being an adult sounds really not fun [All laugh].

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Vivienne Westwood, Londons queen of punk, is back on the catwalk for fall with a unisex collection that fuses her Man mens wear line and her Red Label womens wear collection. The activist designer said the new main line collection, Vivienne Westwood, is an exercise in quality, efficiency  and environmental friendliness.

Im trying to make my company a model company for the age in which we live, in the hope that we do have a future and that the world will not fall victim to climate change, Westwood said in an interview.

Were showing in London for the sake of efficiency because were at home, added the designer, who previously showed Red Label in London and Man in Milan. The move is also part of a slimming down and reorganization of the business  which is all about less is more  and sending a clear brand message for the industry and the end-consumer.

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Not that Westwoods business has ever been without a message. From her days as the queen of punk through to her emphasis throughout the Eighties and Nineties on craftsmanship, longevity and historical details drawn from the Renaissance, her design process has always been as much about the theme and thought behind the clothes as the clothes themselves. A conversation with her can as easily swerve through economics, politics, history and societal trends as it can lapels, fit and materials. Never forget that she was once a school teacher.

Westwood said her companys maxim is now Buy less, choose well, make it last, which limits the exploitation of the planets natural resources. Were very keen on unisex. It sounds like a joke, but in fact its all about styling. Swapping clothes with your partner means you can spend less. For at least 100 years women have been wearing trousers but now like the Arabs, men are wearing dresses.

Quality not quantity doesnt just apply to product, but to day-to-day work as well, Westwood contends. It means the people on our team make decisions according to taste and judgment  very little to do with sales figures and statistics. A happy company is an efficient company because everything flows, people feel rewarded and secure in what theyre trying to do.

Westwood said the latest collection, which will show at 2 p.m. on Monday, was inspired by art, craft and theater; clothes inspired by culture. Were a high-fashion company. Its skilled, labor-intensive, veers towards the artisanal; one of its features is that, through cutting principles, we mass produce clothes that look couture.

The London show is not the only unisex outing for Westwood: In October, the Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood collection debuted during Paris fashion week. It is positioned as a unisex concept collection that sits alongside the Vivienne Westwood main line.

The brand also tested a see-now-buy-now 20-piece capsule range during the Paris show. The collection included dresses, sportswear and jersey daywear, tailored and casual jackets and a cotton shopper. Kronthaler is Westwoods creative director, design partner and husband.

Vivienne Westwood is one of many design houses, including Burberry and Paul Smith, to consolidate its collections and clarify its offering to suit new consumer habits and trends.

Of late, Westwood has been busy on both the business and cultural fronts. Following the opening of a 1,200-square-foot boutique in Paris last October, she unveiled a 15,000-square-foot flagship in New York last month. The brand previously had a 7,000-square-foot unit at 71 Greene Street, which later closed.

Last month, Westwood revealed that she and Kronthaler designed bespoke stage outfits for the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for its 175th anniversary. The designs debuted at the Vienna New Years Concert on Jan. 1. The couple loves classical music and met in Vienna when Westwood was teaching at a fashion school there. They married in 1992.

The couple also designed the womens jackets for Britains Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra last summer.

In December, the company mounted an exhibition at the Shanghai K11 Art Mall. Called Get a Life, it focused on the labels creativity, activism and environmental advocacy. The display featured campaigns that Westwood has worked on with the U.N. and Greenpeace on issues involving climate change and ocean preservation. Also on the show were graphic drawings and clothes from the archives inspired by Westwoods activism and travels.

Throughout the last two years, Westwood has been more visible than ever  at least on the political front  driving a tank to then-Prime Minister David Camerons house to protest fracking and shaving her head to highlight climate change.

Perhaps the ultimate protest came in November, though, when the designer joined her son, Agent Provocateur founder Joe Corre, at a ritual burning of punk memorabilia in defiance of celebrations in Britain to mark the 40th anniversary of the movement. The memorabilia was said to be worth 10 million pounds, or about $12.5 million at current exchange.

If we could get half the country to switch to green energy supply it would change the world and the possibility of our future, Westwood said during the protest.

She may be 75, but shes as revolutionary as ever.

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Theres a new mandarin orange in town: the Super Nova. For almost 50 years, the fruit has tantalized visitors to university citrus variety collections with its gorgeous dark orange color, its convenient seedlessness, its rich balance of sweetness and acidity  and its superb aromatics. Now, this mandarin is finally available commercially. And although the citrus wont chase Cuties and Halos from markets any time soon, its excellence is outmatched only by the curious convolutions of its history and nomenclature.

It was in 1966 that Jack Hearn, an Orlando-based citrus breeder for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, crossed two sibling mandarin varieties, Lee and Nova, seeking to understand their pollination requirements. By chance, one such hybrid, then called 6-13-44, had extraordinarily fine flavor and was seedless, a rare trait among mandarins at the time. It had only one problem: The trees bore no fruit.

In 34 years, Ive seen it yield a good crop exactly once, said Randall Driggers, a USDA researcher based in Fort Pierce, Fla.

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Hoping the variety might produce better in California, Hearn in 1988 sent budwood for propagating to UC Riverside, where it became known as USDA 88-2, Lee  Nova (thanks to its parentage) and Novalee. There, indeed, the trees did bear moderately successful crops, though not exactly gangbusters.

As California mandarin production boomed in the 2000s, two large companies  which now sell the Halos and Cuties brands  dominated the market.

LoBue Citrus, growers based in Lindsay, southeast of Fresno, tasted USDA 88-2 at a university field station in Exeter and in 2010 started planting 70 acres, hoping to establish a premium niche. A few other growers put in smaller groves, which are mostly bearing their first substantial crop this month.

But what to call this fruit of many awkward names? USDA 88-2 doesnt exactly trip off the tongue.

Robert LoBue, general manager of LoBue Citrus, first considered naming the mandarins Novaleena, a lovely name, although one that might sound a bit too much like a Longfellow poem. Then he decided that Super Nova was a better moniker, a name that is inspired by the fruits bright orange color and blazing flavor. And yes, the brand will be trademarked, so other growers have to come up with their own names. Will they be as much fun as a mandarin named for an exploding star?

Where to find super-premium mandarins:

Super Novas will be available starting this weekend at Super King, Vintage Grocers and Vicente Foods. Grow markets sell organic Novalees (which are unwaxed) from Deer Creek Heights Ranch. Friends Ranches of Ojai offers unwaxed Lee  Novas at the Santa Monica Wednesday and Hollywood farmers markets.

Two other super-premium varieties are coming into season. Large, easy to peel, seedless and richly flavored, Sumo has ruled the specialty mandarin world since its domestic introduction in 2011. This seasons huge crop just hit the shelves at Whole Foods, Bristol Farms and Gelsons. And starting Jan. 18, after an absence of two years, Jonelle George of Lindsay, Calif., will return to the Santa Monica Wednesday market with unwaxed Sumos.

Next week, Friends Ranches will offer the ultimate connoisseurs mandarin, DaisySL, with smooth, dark orange skin, firm flesh that melts in the mouth, and a fantastically intense, complex flavor  like tangerine candy. Polito Farms also will have them, at the Santa Monica, La Cienega and Venice farmers markets.
Imagine you are visiting a restaurant that is as comfortable and familiar as a friends living room, where the music is good, but where you are largely ignorant of the cuisine. Some of the dishes you recognize  hummus, falafel, chicken kebab  while others, like hesandin and mele gej, you do not. You recognize a vague Persian bent to the menu so you ask the server if the restaurant serves anything like doogh, a yogurt drink you enjoy at Iranian restaurants. She returns with a copper bowl of the Kurdish equivalent served with a ladle from which you are instructed to sip.

The drink is light but creamy, refreshingly tart, flavored with a bit of dried mint, and you soon see the bottom of the bowl. You may still not be quite sure which way a meal is headed when you come to Niroj Kurdish Cuisine in Agoura Hills, but you suspect you will be well taken care of. Sometimes that is all that counts.

My former colleague Charles Perry, an authority on Middle Eastern cuisine, used to claim that there was no such thing as Kurdish cuisine, that Kurdish cooking in Iraq was basically Iraqi, and Kurdish cooking in Turkey was more or less Turkish. The only flavor he remembered that the Kurds were known for was the piney gum from the mastic tree.

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I had asked him about Kurdish cooking because I had been going to a short-lived Kurdish-Iranian restaurant in Glendale whose menu of kebabs and flatbreads was indistinguishable from that of the other Iranian restaurants in the neighborhood and whose waiters became oddly silent when I asked about Kurdish specialties. The koobideh and the pilaf with lentils had been delicious, but even given the crossover between the cuisines  Naomi Duguid recently wrote a cookbook called Taste of Persia that pointedly included the broad, multinational expanse of Kurdistan in the mix  it was hard to know where one style of cooking ended and the other began.

Mastic, mastic  , mused Luqman Barwari, owner and chef of Niroj, when he stopped by the table on his rounds. I do remember chewing gum from a tree when I was a child. But its not like we put it in everything. I think Kurdish cooking has more to do with mild spices and fresh herbs and a sense of who we are than it does with any one ingredient.

Niroj, named for the Kurdish new year, like the Iranian nowruz, is in a Conejo Valley mini-mall just off the 101. It shares a parking lot with real estate offices, a hair salon and what appears to be a kosher pizzeria. Its small dining room is lush and softly lighted, with tables decorated with rich fabrics, oil paintings on the walls and floor-to-ceiling racks stocked with Turkish and Lebanese wines. The vegetables come from the local farmers market. The meat is halal. On weekends, there is sometimes Kurdish music, as well as things like Barwaris kobbe soup, made with minced meat, bulgur and three different kinds of beets. A lot of the customers seem as if they drop in once or twice a week, less for a culturally enriching experience than for a plate of lamb chops and a glass of wine.

And while Barwari, a former scientist, comes from the Iraqi city of Mosul, his cooking has influences from across the region  and from California, if you include the mesclun-based salads, the salmon with white wine and the calzone-like pide  flatbreads folded over fillings of spinach and feta, mushrooms or a pepperoni-pizza-like mix of sujuk sausage and cheese.

If you order cold mezze, you will recognize the hesandin as a close analogue to muhammara, a smooth, slightly spicy dip made with walnuts, red peppers and a touch of sweet pomegranate molasses, and the piyas as a pleasant if mild tabbouleh. The wood-baked casserole mele gej, bafflingly translated as Dizzy Clergy on the menu, turns out to be the Kurdish version of the Turkish imam bayildi  eggplant, peppers and tomatoes cooked until they nearly collapse into a juicy puree, a dish so famously delicious that it was said to make a cleric reel with pleasure. (Mele diz is pretty much the same thing with the addition of meat.)

The lehmecun, baked in a wood oven, is a thin, crisp-edged flatbread smeared with tomato and sprinkled with ground meat, like an Armenian lahmajune.

Borek resembles a slightly stodgy egg roll: thin pastry rolled around a filling of herbs and cheese. The kobane falafel, stained dark green with kale, may be perhaps too dense by half  youre probably better off with the mujwer, a kind of fritter made with vegetables, eggs and cheese, which is springy, lighter than you might expect such a thing to be, and nice with a dab of yogurt.

Barwaris cooking is restrained in its spicing, easy on salt, tending toward the supple rather than the crisp. Sometimes, as with the braised lamb tawe, this is a fault. Sometimes, as with the houses namesake Niroj kebab, it is just right  a ground mixture of beef and lamb wrapped around a bit of spinach and pomegranate molasses before it is grilled, then splashed with a little yogurt. Barwari claims that no other restaurant in California offers this dish, which I dont doubt  Niroj is the only Kurdish restaurant in the western United States. The kebab is lovely with Barwaris chickpea-studded rice.

Even if you tend to skip desserts in Middle Eastern restaurants, you should probably snag an order of Barwaris kunefe  melted cheese crowned with a crisp, syrup-sweetened disk of pastry. There may be no better companion for a glass of strong Kurdish tea.

::

Niroj Kurdish Cuisine

A Kurdish restaurant in a Conejo Valley mini-mall

LOCATION

30313 Canwood St., Agoura Hills, (818) 889-7888, nirojcuisine.com.

PRICES

Mezze $6-$9; salads $10-$11; kebabs and casseroles $17-$26. Set-price dinners $31-$33 per person.

DETAILS

Open 4:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., 4 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. Credit cards accepted. Beer and wine. Lot parking.

RECOMMENDED DISHES

Hesandin; mujwer; mele gej; niroj kebab; kunefe.

jonathan.gold@latimes.com

@thejgold

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If theres one thing that 2016 has taught many of us, its that it helps to have a way to calm our minds and quiet our hearts. Just how do you do that? Try mindfulness.

That, essentially, means being more attuned to whats going on around you and inside of you. Mindfulness is an open-hearted way of being aware of the flow of moment-to-moment experience as its happening, explains Trudy Goodman Kornfield, founding teacher of mindfulness center InsightLA.

If youre the resolution-setting kind of person, then employing mindfulness could help you find more success in reaching your goals.

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Say exercise is on your 2017 to-do list but you keep avoiding the gym. Through practicing mindfulness, you can notice there is a feeling of dislike percolating inside and know that you dont have to take it so seriously, says Diana Winston, director of Mindfulness Education at UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center and co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness.

Its just a feeling happening in the moment. It will pass, like all feelings do, she says.

Here are five ideas experts Goodman Kornfield and Winston offered via email on how to introduce the power of mindfulness to your routine in the coming year.

First, just STOP.

When youre in the middle of a stressful moment, or just want to be more mindful, remember to STOP, Winston says.

The acronym stands for slow into the moment, take a breath, observe whats happening before you proceed.

Maybe your heart is racing or your stomach is clenched, or youre anxious, Winston says. By taking breaths and noticing the emotion, we can calm our body and mind, we can observe what is happening without reacting, and can proceed with more awareness.

Goodman Kornfield says, You can simply feel your feet on the floor, your body in the chair, and take a conscious breath in to energize. Then, as you release the breath, youll notice a shift into a bit more relaxation and calm. And then repeat it.

Breathe in and out.

Whether walking down the hall or to your car, you can focus on how youre breathing as you do it, noticing how many steps happen with each breath and whats going on in your head  taking inventory of sense throughout your whole body as you go.

We use the breath as a bridge from activities that are usually automatic, says Goodman Kornfield, to being more appreciative and aware of things we ordinarily dont even notice  thoughts, feelings, perceptions that are the landscape of our life.

Mindfulness, a meditation practice at its heart, is also a quality of attention that you can develop at any moment, Winston says. Starting with a basic focus on breathing is key.

The simplest instructions are to notice the sensation of your breath in your abdomen or chest, or nose. Try to stay with one breath at a time, she says. When your mind wanders  and it will wander  simply bring it right back to the sensations of breathing.

UCLAs website offers free meditations you can download, including some five-minute ones to get started.

Snap to it.

Sometimes, all it takes to break the cycle is a simple act.

There is nothing quicker to change than our minds, Goodman Kornfield says. Even if its just the moment of a finger-snap, when you focus your mind on being attentive, with warmth, friendliness, and care, youre doing something good for yourself and your loved ones, and for our world.

Listen before you leap.

We can apply mindfulness to listen  and hear  one another more effectively.

Mindfulness is not merely a navel-gazing activity, but we can use the quality of presence we cultivate through meditation to fully show up with another human being, Winston says. We can listen to them fully without jumping in or trying to fix them. We can be aware of our own internal reactions and judgments and put them aside so that we can really hear another.

Focus for the whole family.

One resource both women suggested for families is a new book called Mindful Games by Susan Kaiser Greenland. Theres something for kids of all ages, says Goodman Kornfeld. She also notes that adults can teach their kids best by modeling mindful responses, by showing kids whats possible with their own understanding and behavior.

Winston, who has a 7-year-old daughter, says they do simple things at home to encourage and nurture focus and calm. Before we eat some meals, we hold hands and take a breath together. We sometimes ring a bell and listen to the sound of the bell until we cant hear it anymore. In bed, we practice breathing awareness.

When it comes to mindfulness for kids, it doesnt have to mean sitting or being still. Young children need to move their bodies. Goodman Kornfield recently taught mindfulness in a refugee-led preschool called Little Ripples in the Darfuri Refugee Camp Goz Amer in Chad. Both the teachers and the children enjoyed opening their senses and tuning in to the present moment through drumming, dancing, singing.

Teenagers, she says, may enjoy mindfulness group experiences that help them make friends with themselves, as well as with others.

While these five techniques can help address stress triggers and help focus your energy, none is a quick fix.

That said, however you are entering 2017  exhausted or energized, full of hope or trepidation  the practice of open-hearted mindfulness is an antidote to the fears we humans all have, Goodman Kornfield says. Our minds and hearts are quick to change  we can do it right now, in the snap of a finger.

What are you doing to be more present in 2017? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

michelle.maltais@latimes.com

Chat me up on Twitter: @mmaltaisLA

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The broad options that Savannah Cotter and David Lipchik considered when they decided to move someplace more affordable within easy driving distance of Los Angeles is a testament to the regions geographic diversity.

The couple briefly considered an ocean-centric life in Ventura. Then Lipchiks real estate development work brought him to Redlands, but they werent sold on that degree of desert-adjacency. They did, however, find someplace nearby that struck them as a great fit for their needs: Lake Arrowhead.

The mountain getaway has proved to be the ideal place for them to pursue each of their various professional and creative projects. Cotter crafts air-plant holders (you can see her work on Instagram at @goodsmithshop); Lipchik is a furniture designer, in addition to his real estate venture and a drought-tolerant landscaping business. (Several of his projects can be seen at @localtimber.)

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After living at an elevation of over 5,000 feet for about six months, Cotter and Lipchik decided to put down retail roots. In partnership with friends Michael and Rachel Graves, who own Summer Camp lifestyle boutique and framing shop in Ojai, they opened Road Trip.

Cotter described it as Summer Camps sister store because both businesses reflect a fondness for vintage outdoor gear and the contemporary maker scene. (They also share a logo.) Road Trip offers custom framing services too, which hadnt been available in the greater Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear area for about eight years, she said.

The San Bernardino Mountains town doesnt share Ojais reputation as a creative enclave, but once you start talking to people, they all do things. Theyre all artistic, Cotter said.

They share a work studio in the basement of the A-frame building that houses Road Trip. Lipchik builds his larger furniture pieces in L.A., and still theyre both frequently back in town. (Their parents live in L.A.: Lipchik is a native; Cotter was raised in Rhode Island and Virginia.)

Cotter and Lipchik have developed a sense of how to decorate and enjoy classic A-frame buildings that are typically associated with mountain towns such as Lake Arrowhead. The store has 2,000 square feet to fill, and their nearby rental home, also an A-frame, has three stories and three bedrooms.

The design challenge has been to stay true to the houses 1970s stylistic and utilitarian mountain cabin roots while updating the interior vibe to the tastes of its young, creative occupants. We have a lot of plants, Cotter said. I love gray and I love brown. I have to force myself to pick a color sometimes so the room doesnt look drab. Pattern and color from pillows and textiles help break up any monotony, and the stunning views provide plenty to gaze at.

They scoured Craigslist for vintage finds and affordably furnished the house with new pieces from retailers such as West Elm and Living Spaces. Theyve come to consider the structures architectural qualities as art, in a sense. Because we live in an A-frame, we cant put anything on the walls. I think thats part of why it looks so clean, Cotter said.

Naturally, a degree of aesthetic overlap exists in their house and shop. Midcentury influences and clean lines are seen in the former, whereas Road Trip skews slightly more bohemian. At home, however, I do have some macrame, Cotter admitted.

Just like at Summer Camp in Ojai, a canoe hangs on Road Trips wall, and shoppers can dig into the stuff of Wes Anderson and Moonrise Kingdom-fueled fantasies. Cotter tries to select inventory that relates to cabins and the outdoors, which so far means vintage fishing gear and indie crafts and artists wares, including Pommes Frites Candle Co., the Small + Savage Wilds shelves, ABJ Glassworks, Margin Imprints moon calendars, Small Adventure illustrated paper goods and Fortitude Provisions apothecary items.

Lipchiks benches serve as display surfaces, and theyre also for sale. Cotter sells the planter holders she makes onsite, and other indoor plants dont compete with their next-door neighbor (and landlord), Lake Arrowhead Nursery. Summer Camps hands-on workshops have proved popular, so hosting crafting sessions at Road Trip is part of the plan to attract others to Lake Arrowhead.

As for how the store name came about, Rachel grew up going to summer camps. I never went to summer camp, but I grew up going on road trips, Cotter explained. It was an afterthought, but it worked well.

Road Trip is located at 187 CA-173 in Lake Arrowhead. (909) 336-0028. shoproadtripca.com

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If ever you needed proof that we live in an age of confusion about marijuana laws, let me share with you the story of Ted Hicks and Ryan Mears, two Sacramento-area entrepreneurs who decided to start a legal medical cannabis business last year and ended up on the business end of assault rifles wielded by officers from a multi-agency, anti-drug task force.

I first heard about the case from Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor in September, at a State of Marijuana conference aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Saylor, who was on a panel discussing how cities and counties were dealing with cannabis regulation, said that Hicks and Mears and their business, Big Red Farms, were considered by county officials to be shining stars in the cannabis licensing arena.

They looked for guidance, they complied, they set up irrigation systems, drainage, applied for Water Quality Control Board permits, all in place, then something like this happens, said Saylor, who compared the raids, which took place simultaneously at four locations, to terrorist activity.

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The children are traumatized, he said, and the grown-ups are still shaking from the experience.

I can confirm the part about the grown-ups. I sat with Hicks and Mears on Wednesday in the office of their Sacramento attorney, Mark Reichel, and both grew tearful as they recalled the terror they felt when dozens of gun-wielding officers pounded on their front doors the morning of Sept. 14.

I told my 2-year-old son to stay upstairs, said Mears, 35. When I opened the security door, there were 15 cops with assault rifles drawn, pointed, with their fingers on the trigger, in vests, ski masks. They grabbed me and pulled me out front, put me in handcuffs. There were 20 to 30 officers. My son walked downstairs and my wife had to grab him. They had guns pulled on them. It was real painful.

Easily, it was the worst day of my life, said Hicks, 43. Every gun you can imagine was pointed at me. I was like, Why is this happening? To add icing to the cake, it was my sons fourth birthday.

The Winters farm where they cultivated was searched. Their crop, more than 1,000 plants, was destroyed. Nearby, the home of the man they leased the farm from, Ravi Tumber, was raided as well. Tumber, 48, who had his own small licensed medical cannabis grow at the farm, was standing in a vineyard below his hilltop home, harvesting Syrah grapes. The sight of all the cop cars coming down his road put him in mind of immigration busts. I thought, My guys are legal. What is happening?

Officers broke down his front door but didnt cuff him. Still, he said, The extreme place they went boggled my mind.

Last week, Hicks and Mears were charged by Yolo County prosecutors with two criminal counts: illegally cultivating marijuana, a misdemeanor, and conspiracy for planning to commit sales of marijuana, a felony. Each carries a potential sentence of a year in jail, according to Reichel. (Tumber has not been charged.)

The cops were cracking jokes the whole time, said Mears, who wears his long red beard in a distinctive braid. They said, None of this is going to matter in a couple months anyway because of Proposition 64. I said, Then why are you tearing apart my house and my family? They said, Were just doing our jobs.

But are they?

On Nov. 9, nearly 60% of Yolo County voters approved Proposition 64, which legalized pot for adult recreational use in California. I have to believe one reason Proposition 64 passed so handily is that the public has had it with expensive, heavy-handed raids that result in relatively minor charges against people who are trying to stay inside the lines.

As you are trying to develop policy, you are going out to all these folks who are cultivating and you are trying to bring them into the regulatory framework, said Yolo County Agriculture Commissioner John Young. When something like this occurs, it is counterproductive to compliance.

::

The rules governing the marijuana industry in this state are a complex, contradictory morass that will take years to sort out.

Proposition 64s passage means adults over 21 may possess up to an ounce of pot, and grow six plants at home. Yet no one will be able to legally purchase recreational pot until 2018.

Medical cannabis, on the other hand, can be grown only by nonprofit collectives. The amount grown by each collective is supposed to be related to the number of patient members. But sometimes, in order to give potential patients free samples, growers will ask them to sign up for their collectives. This is a way of staying true to the letter of the law. Californians with medical marijuana cards can join as many collectives as they please.

Last spring at a San Francisco cannabis festival called HempCon, according to the criminal complaint, Mears and Hicks gave free samples of pot to at least 250 medical marijuana patients who signed up for their collective. This is often how collectives sign patients up.

You have to have some way of letting people know about your product, said Chris Conrad, a court-qualified expert on California cannabis law.

Investigators seized on this later.

We didnt know when we went in that it was a fraudulent collective, said Brandon Olivera, the commander of the TRIDENT task force who conducted the September raids. We figured that out afterward.

So where, exactly, was the fraud, I asked him.

We called every person they were growing for, Olivera told me, like 300 or 400 people, and almost every person said, We have no idea what the hell Big Reds collective is. Less than five even knew who the hell they were.

Not to be too much of a smartass here, but if a district attorneys investigator phoned you after you signed up for a cannabis collective at a hemp festival and started asking questions, what the hell would you tell him?

::

When I reached Olivera by phone on Thursday, he sounded pleased that prosecutors charged Hicks and Mears.

I guess TRIDENT isnt such a terrorist group after all, he said. Weve taken a bath in the media and other law enforcement, and thank God the Yolo County D.A. did the right thing.

Olivera scoffed at the idea that anyone was traumatized by the early morning raids. It was the most peaceful search warrant I have ever been involved with in 20 years of law enforcement, he said. I have photographs of us interacting with the children.

Perhaps if you raid people at gunpoint for a living, you may become desensitized to how it feels to be taken unawares by men with guns.

Whatever becomes of this prosecution  and I am rooting for the case to be dismissed  its got to somehow sink in to law enforcement and prosecutors: When it comes to cannabis entrepreneurs who play by the rules, the Drug War is over. You guys lost.

More columns 

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Get more of Robin Abcarians work and follow her on Twitter @AbcarianLAT

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In the spring of 1952, poet Philip Levine worked at the Chevrolet Gear and Axle plant in Detroit, Mich. He was 24 and had been writing poems for nearly 10 years.

Some get their calling early, but being a young poet is not easy. He had clocked hours in an ice factory, a bottling corporation, on the railroad  but none as boring and hazardous as in the gear and axle plant, where he pulled automotive parts from the forge and hung them on conveyors that whisked them elsewhere in the factory.

Years later, well committed to a life of poverty and poetry, he could still feel almost without hatred that old sense of utter weariness that descended each night from my neck to my shoulders, and then down my arms to my wrists and hands.

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Over his lifetime, Levine, who died at 87 in 2015, never lost that muscle memory, his ars poetica. He carried it with him whenever he lifted a pencil to write, the memory of that hellish world  with its clanging steel, poisoned rats and freezing winds rushing through broken windows  of so many exploited lives.

Exploited was Levines word, taken from a 1972 interview, and today it sounds almost antiquarian, a throwback to a time and place when such language was valued for its ability to sharpen class distinctions. Almost 50 years later, the words are more passive, couched in phrases like wage stagnation and widening inequality, as if that were the status quo.

But Levine never acquiesced; his leftward leanings were softened only by his sense of justice and compassion. Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, a Depression childhood, the race riots and labor battles of the 1940s demanded nothing less.

He was a poet who had journeyed from Michigan to California, where he taught at Cal State Fresno, who drew upon the lessons of teachers (John Berryman) and his readings (the poets of Republican Spain) and found his voice, that could speak of all the things I would never have dared share with anyone, a voice that tried to consider the value of being alive.

I think the writing of a poem is a political act.  Philip Levine

As he gazed upon America with unflinching ferocity, he often dared his readers to walk with him down the ruined streets of Detroit to meet the survivors, the workers, those who struggled for so long to find work and meaning in their lives and had to accept it on someone elses terms.

As he wrote in his seminal poem, What Work Is:

We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is  if youre

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

In some 20 books of poetry, he mined this past  that tensing muscle  to create a body of work as demanding as it was lyrically entrancing. His voice modulated from the anger of his celebrated They Feed They Lion of 1968 to his later-year elegies, like the title poem of his 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Simple Truth:

Some things

you know all your life. They are so simple and true

they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,

they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,

the glass of water, the absence of light gathering

in the shadows of picture frames, they must be

naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

Simplicity  in language, structure and imagery  was the hallmark of his final volumes, not the least, his most recent, the posthumous The Last Shift, published concurrently with a selection of prose, My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry.

This gathering of his work, curated by his friend, literary executor and poet Edward Hirsch, comes at a needed time when the American identity, especially the working class identity, seems to have disappeared, no longer visible beneath traditional banners of party politics and Democratic loyalties.

But Levines poems  with their pictures of the industrial Midwest animated by despair, yearning and love  suggest a more troubling truth. The working class has always been hard to see because seeing would mean confronting the struggle of their lives, a struggle of race, inequity and inequality.

I think the writing of a poem is a political act, Levine told an interviewer in 1974. The sources of anger are frequently social, and they have to do with the fact that peoples lives are frustrated, theyre lied to, theyre cheated, that there is no equitable handing out of the goods of this world.

More than 40 years later, his aesthetic  indignation for the squandered opportunities of this republic  hadnt changed. In The Last Shift, this final poem of this final volume, he describes being caught in traffic on his way to work, 7:30 in the morning, and the world rises up around him like a dream.

Men keep warm by a fire made from fence posts and garage doors. Police sit in their car eating sugar doughnuts as delicately as two elderly women, and children descend from dark houses, gloved and scarved, on their way to school.

The images, however, are haunted by emblems of their impermanence. Beside him stands a two-storied house all of its / rooms torn into view, its connections / and tubing gone, the furniture gone, / the floors ripped up for firewood.

As much as America has changed  neighborhoods cleared, factories torn down, the unwinding as George Packer has called it  Levine could see that the nations character, for better and worse, has endured, which is why memory, the font for so much of his poetry, seldom seems dated.

The great movements of our lives go on, he once explained: We grow, we love, we believe, we open our hearts, we close our doors, we give birth, we kill others, we kill ourselves, we embrace each other.

The poems in The Last Shift offer a familiar glimpse of Levines past, which became over time less of a grip than an embrace. In Urban Myths, he writes:

I still go back each year to Detroit

to relive my long childhood in the houses

that burned down ages ago, to walk alone

the streets paved with gold .

Levine, who was appointed U.S. poet laureate in 2011, has been criticized by some for being too romantic in his reveries, but he was a writer who looked to the world  utterly unknowable, utterly unacceptable, utterly unlovable  to calibrate his emotions.

He once proclaimed that he wanted to be a poet of joy as well as suffering, and his greatest joy comes in the beauty  and the attendant mystery  of daily life. A poem, he once said, is not a gimmick, a formula. A poem is a new beginning, and often  as Keats knew as a boy wonder  you have to sit with your wings furled and wait for a moment to fly.

In waiting, Levine found his humility. From the poem Godspell:

About life I can say nothing. Instead,

half-blind, I wander the woods while

a west wind picks up in the trees

clustered above. The pines make

a music like no other, rising and

falling like a distant surf at night

that calms the darkness before

first light. How weightless

words are when nothing will do.

In Getting and Spending, a marvelous essay from My Lost Poets, Levine writes  as if in response to those critics  we lose what is most precious in the act of saving oneself from the expenditure of feeling and the uncertainty involved in risking the self.

Never stingy, Levine left nothing behind. He knew there was plenty to go around of what really mattered.

The Last Shift: Poems

Philip Levine

Alfred A. Knopf: 96 pp., $26.95

::

My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry

Philip Levine

Alfred A. Knopf: 224 pp., $26.95

thomas.curwen@latimes.com

Twitter: @tcurwen
Authorities at Los Angeles International Airport said Friday they are beefing up security in the wake of a mass shooting at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Airport Police are deploying additional resources into our terminals and an increased presence in the Central Terminal Area, LAX officials said on Twitter. Airport Police are monitoring the situation in Florida closely. Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved.

Multiple people had been shot at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Friday, with local television saying at least nine people were injured. A suspect was said to be in custody.

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If Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wins reelection in March, hell get another chance to lead a city bounding back from the recession, but also facing urgent problems like homelessness and rising crime.

A second term  which would end in 2022  could allow Garcetti to focus on L.A.s bid for the 2024 Olympics as well as adding more housing and transit lines in the nations second-largest city.

But Garcetti will also face a choice: whether to launch a costly and time-consuming campaign for governor or to focus exclusively on the work of a second term.

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With the March 7 mayoral election looming, one of his opponents in the race wants Garcetti to pledge not to run in 2018, the year Gov. Jerry Brown steps down.

Public affairs consultant Mitchell Schwartz believes the mayor should serve at least a full year if reelected rather than jump into the governors race or another 2018 election.

Schwartz argues that L.A. needs a full-time leader to address the citys homelessness crisis and problems at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He also said voters deserve to know Garcettis plans.

You cant be mayor while youre running, Schwartz said. You would barely be serving.

Political experts say its not uncommon for long-shot challengers to ask an incumbent to serve out his or her term. The demand also highlights the pressure facing Garcetti, who has limited statewide political options in the coming years and must decide quickly if he wants to run for a seat.

If Garcetti passes up the governors race or a possible 2018 U.S. Senate bid, itll be six or eight years before a top-of-the-ticket opportunity becomes available, predicts Dan Schnur, who teaches communications and leadership courses at USC.

As Garcetti pushes to raise cash for his mayoral reelection bid  hes scheduled to appear at fundraiser with Joe Biden this weekend, where photo ops with the vice president are being promised for donors who bring in $10,000  the mayor has said little publicly about his ambitions.

Hes taking one election at a time, Garcetti political consultant Bill Carrick said. He hasnt made any decision about running for any political office other than the mayors office.

Carrick called Schwartzs pledge demand a political stunt, and suggested that Garcettis opponent talk about serious issues.

If Garcetti wins in March and wants to run for governor, hell have to immediately start raising money for the race, which has already drawn Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, state Treasurer John Chiang and others as contenders.

Those candidates are already raising significant amounts, with Newsom announcing this week he has $11.5 million cash on hand. Villaraigosa has raised $2.7 million, and Chiangs campaign said it has $7 million on hand.

Another political opportunity awaits Garcetti if U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein steps down. The 83-year-old politician now holds a coveted position as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but hasnt divulged whether she plans to seek another six-year-term in 2018.

A poll conducted by an unknown private group this week and obtained by The Times quizzed voters about Garcettis strengths and weaknesses.

The 15-minute phone poll asked voters to judge Garcettis leadership on issues such as schools, homelessness and spending. The survey also asked about voters support of Garcetti, and whether they have a negative or positive view of Schwartz, Newsom, Villaraigosa and Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

Carrick wouldnt comment on the poll.

One of ten opponents facing Garcetti in the March 7 primary mayoral race, Schwartz has raised about $255,000, according to contribution filings through Sept. 30.

Schwartz directed Barack Obamas 2008 presidential campaign in California and has worked on green energy projects and other environmental issues. He volunteered on two of Villaraigosas mayoral campaigns and was hired to produce his 2005 inaugural gala. Schwartz said hes still on friendly terms with the former mayor.

Whoever wins the mayors race will get a one-time, supersized term of five and half years, rather than the usual four years, because of a change in election dates.

Im pledging to serve a full five-and-half-year term, Schwartz said.

Some Los Angeles voters may not like the idea of the mayor cutting short his term to run for another office, said USCs Schnur.

At the same time, theres a certain amount of civic pride in thinking about their mayor as a potential governor or senator, Schnur said.

Making political election pledges can backfire, as seen when Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich lost his seat in 2013. Trutanich pledged to not seek higher office until finishing two terms, but went back on that promise and ran for district attorney, angering voters.

People do remember that, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

I cant imagine why someone would make a pledge, Sonenshein added. Unless your intention is never to leave.

dakota.smith@latimes.com

@dakotacdsmith
When he first read the letter mailed to the Islamic Center of Long Beach last November, Tarek Mohamed wasnt terribly surprised by the hateful screed inside.

The note was addressed to the Children of Satan, called for the extermination of Muslims in the U.S. and referenced Donald Trumps election night victory. But Mohamed, the centers president, had received similar messages before, and knew he would again.

Authorities examined the letter  and ones sent to other Islamic institutions in California  and quickly determined it didnt rise to the level of a hate crime that could be prosecuted.

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But in a increasingly common move, police officials classified the letter as a hate incident and, working with the U.S. Postal Service, began a search for the author.

Typically, the standard for a police investigation focuses on whether a crime has occurred. But as police departments across the nation deal with sensitivities about about hateful and threatening speech, they are trying to get ahead of the issue.

Police are encouraging citizens to report any and all bias-motivated incidents, from simple verbal attacks to overt crimes. And detectives are investigating even when the reports dont amount to a crime.

Investigators say that information can help them prevent hate crimes or build evidence against someone who goes on to commit a crime. But it also forces police to walk a fine line, probing without infringing on the free speech rights of those they investigate.

People have a right to say what they want. No matter how bad it is and how hurtful it is to other people, said Los Angeles Sheriffs Department Det. Chris Keeling, a veteran hate crimes investigator. We have to know those people are out there, but what we have to fight against is allowing that persons statement to cause us to react in a negative way.

The perceived rise in bias actions has been a source of intense debate across the country ever since Trump rose to the front of a crowded field of GOP candidates last year, and some critics believe his ascension to the presidency has emboldened those who hold anti-Muslim or white supremacist views.

Officials said they dont know whether there are actually more hate crimes since the election or whether they are simply getting more attention. But FBI statistics show reported hate crimes throughout the U.S. rose 7% in 2015.

Police across California said they developed strategies for dealing with hate incidents long before Trumps election, something they said was a necessity in the diverse communities they serve.

There is a difference between a hate crime and cruel or hurtful comments, many of which are protected under the 1st Amendment. The law makes it illegal to physically harm someone based on his or her race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation, among other characteristics.

Hate incidents are a different matter. A person on receiving end of a hateful email or racist rant can feel attacked, but police say many of these encounters dont amount to a crime.

Some police agencies have been taking down information about both the victims of hate incidents and the offending party. Officials say its similar to the way they catalog information to calls for service.

Such incidents will often be referred to a departments hate crimes unit, but not entered into a central database tracking those who engage in hate speech, according to Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Horace Frank, assistant commanding officer of the departments counterterrorism and special operations bureau.

Frank said believes having the information on file could be helpful in preventing future hate crimes  or at least help with those investigations.

Incidents quite often develop into crimes, he said. The last thing we want to do is to be on the responsive end as opposed to the preventive end.

The LAPD will go to great lengths to identify the perpetrator of a hate incident, even if no crime has been committed, Frank added. In some instances investigators have used partial license plates or even DNA to track down potential suspects, though those tactics are more normally used in the investigation of an actual hate crime, he said.

Hate in general is like a bubbling volcano. Once it erupts its already too late.  Nolan Lebovitz, rabbi at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles

Still, theres only so much police can do without evidence of an actual crime. Sgt. Daron Wyatt, an Anaheim police spokesman, said his department aggressively investigates and tracks information on hate incidents, and they will often try to make contact with people engaged in such behavior. But they cant even have a conversation with the offending party without consent.

If we walk up to someone and say hello  and they say Im not talking and Im walking away, then we have to let them walk away, he said.

Peter Bibring, director of police practice for the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California, said theres nothing wrong with police collecting information when they receive reports about possible bias crimes. But he cautioned law enforcement against going a step further and creating specific pools of information regarding people involved in hateful speech, the way they might track those involved in gang activity or other classes of crimes.

They can go out and ask questions to make sure that theres nothing more serious involved, but they shouldnt maintain information about people unless theres reasonable suspicion to believe theyre involved in criminal activity, he said. They certainly shouldnt maintain information about people just because of their political viewpoints, repugnant though they may be.

Fears that the election might embolden some to commit racially motivated attacks have been stoked by violent assaults in California and elsewhere in the past few weeks.

Last month in Simi Valley, two men hurled racial slurs at a group of people who had just left an Islamic prayer service. While that on its own might have been considered a hate incident, the clash quickly turned physical. One of the mosque attendees was stabbed, and police have labeled the attack as a hate crime.

On Thursday, four people were charged with a hate crime in Chicago after they kidnapped, pummeled and slashed a mentally disabled 18-year-old and broadcast the attack on social media. The suspects, who were black, repeatedly shouted profanities about white people and Trump. The victim was white, according to the video of the assault.

The heightened sensitivity to hate and concerns over potential 1st Amendment abuses have made partnerships between police and advocacy groups that focus on bias more important than ever, officials said. In recent weeks, the Los Angeles city attorneys office has been discussing hate incidents and crimes with the Anti-Defamation League, and the Sheriffs Department has a long established relationship with the league, officials said.

Unlike police, the Anti-Defamation League, as a private organization, has more latitude in the types of information it can document, said Oren Segal, director of the agencys Center On Extremism.

As a non-governmental organization who tracks extremists and hatred, I dont need to get permission to monitor somebodys public statements and their social media account, or if they attend a rally, to collect information, he said. Were allowed to collect that information  and were allowed to share it with law enforcement.

While investigators primary focus in tracking hate incidents might be to collect data and observe trends in extremist behavior, Segal said law enforcements serious approach to such activity can also help act as a balm for a victimized community.

Having law enforcement not only take it seriously and document it, but for them to reach out to victims and let them know were not going to forget about you, goes a long way, he said.

Keeling said the tough stance on hate incidents might cause someone to think twice about committing a bias-motivated crime later on. If a person is the subject of multiple hate incident reports, Keeling said, he or she might get a visit from investigators, something the sheriffs detective hopes acts as a deterrent.

If I have a series of reports, and the same name keeps coming up, at some point, as a detective I am going to make contact with that person. But when I contact, its not always to make an arrest. Sometimes I contact you for intervention, prevention, he said. Im trying to keep you from rising to the level and crossing that threshold of a crime.

The aggressive stance from police has been welcomed by some of the communities that are most likely to be the targets of hate speech. Nolan Lebovitz, the rabbi at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles, said a quick response from the LAPD helped calm members of his synagogue after someone spray painted the word Nazi on the building in March.

Whether or not its officially a crime, hate is something that needs to be addressed seriously, he said. Hate in general is like a bubbling volcano. Once it erupts its already too late.

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter 

For others who have been targeted, the distinction between a hate crime and a hate incident doesnt mean much. Mohamed doesnt care what term police use to describe the hateful letters sent to California mosques, as long as detectives identify the author and make sure he or she doesnt present a larger threat.

We dont want to wake with a bloodshed in Southern California, because this letter doesnt meet the criteria of criminal action, he said.

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.

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More than 1,200 homeless veterans living on Los Angeles streets still need housing

As Inauguration Day nears, Muslims wonder whether Trumps tough talk will turn into action
More than 1,200 veterans are living on Los Angeles streets, thwarting Mayor Eric Garcettis repeated pledges to end the citys soaring rates of veteran homelessness, officials said Thursday.

Faced with the highest number of homeless veterans of any city in the nation, Garcetti had promised to find housing for every homeless resident who served in the military, first by the end of 2015 and then by last summer.



For the record: A previous version of this article said that 8,000 homeless veterans had been housed in greater Los Angeles since 2014. That figure refers to Los Angeles city only. The number housed in greater Los Angeles, which includes all of Los Angeles County, is more than 11,000.

An unprecedented infusion of federal rent vouchers and services has helped place more than 8,000 veterans in the city of Los Angeles in homes since January 2014. Still, four to five service members, including those returning from troop drawdowns overseas, land on L.A. streets each day, Garcetti said.

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His comments came during a downtown news conference and panel discussion with U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald.

Garcetti said ending veteran homelessness remains his highest priority, although he is no longer setting a timetable. The city has launched an ambitious $1.2-billion campaign to build 10,000 units of housing for the homeless by 2026. In addition, a quarter-cent tax proposal to provide $355 million a year for homeless services will be on the March ballot in Los Angeles County.

Every time we set a goal, were getting closer, the mayor said.

Falling short of the goal is particularly worrisome for housing proponents as the administration of President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office with a Republican-controlled Congress whose support for social service funding is uncertain. Philip Mangano, who served as homelessness policy czar for President George W. Bush, said market uncertainty following Trumps election has cast doubt on some plans for homeless housing, including in Los Angeles.

The mayor is wise in not setting a time frame in Los Angeles. Hes already set two dates; setting a third would not be good, Mangano said. The mayor is doing the right thing. [The timetable] was a well-intentioned misjudgment.

Veterans advocates, however, said a heavy reliance on rent vouchers has put the burden on homeless veterans to find apartments in Los Angeles extremely tight and expensive rental market. Many have been forced to look for more affordable housing in outlying communities such as Lancaster, far from the services they need for a successful transition to civilian life. Some have been unable to hold on to their housing.

Advocates also accused local and federal officials of dragging their feet in developing the VAs 388-acre West Los Angeles campus into homeless housing. As part of a 2015 legal settlement, the agency agreed in principle to turn the Westsides largest undeveloped property into a residential village for 1,200 veterans.

A later plan included job training, recreational amenities and mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities on the lush grounds, whose buildings had been allowed to sit empty and derelict for decades. A conversion of one of the buildings to 55 units of veterans housing is set to open next month. But veterans advocates contend that VA officials want to limit development to 150 apartments a year.

More veterans become homeless in a month than their slow growth restrictions could accommodate in a year, said John Aaron, a Vietnam-era veteran and advocate.

McDonald, the VA secretary, said he expected the Trump administration to maintain the same level of homeless aid to Los Angeles, and a VA spokesman said all rent vouchers administered by the county and most of those handled by the city are being used.

Los Angeles is making progress in cutting into veteran homelessness, said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington nonprofit.

It cut unsheltered homelessness 43% and veteran homelessness overall 41% in a year, which is unheard of, she said.

And despite the delays in finding housing for all veterans, McDonald called Los Angeles efforts a national model.

We cannot end veteran homelessness nationally without ending it in Los Angeles, McDonald said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

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Investigators recovered the remains, possibly of an infant, late Thursday in a Riverside park after a homeless woman told them she had buried her baby there shortly after birth a year ago.

The Riverside County Sheriff-Coroners Office will examine the remains to determine if they are the womans infant, said Officer Ryan Railsback, a spokesman for the Riverside Police Department. Burying human remains, he said, is illegal. It is unclear if the woman will face any charges, but police are investigating the incident.

You cant bury human remains unless you have some type of license, he said. You cant just bury it on your own.

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Police began investigating the case after workers from the Department of Child Protective Services talked to the woman and her husband at a hospital on Wednesday, he said.

The couple had taken their small child to the hospital for treatment, Railsback said. When hospital staff learned the couple was homeless, they contacted Child Protective Services.

The woman told workers she had had a baby who was either a stillborn or died shortly after birth, he said.

The couple did not know what to do with the infants remains, so they buried them in McLean-Anza Narrows park, according to Railsback. The park rests on the banks of the Santa Ana River and is often the site of homeless encampments, he said.

Child Protective Services notified police detectives, who talked to the woman. She directed detectives to an area where she believed the infant was buried.

Then on Thursday, detectives dug up the ground for two to three hours, but didnt find the infant and briefly stopped searching.

Later that night, coroners investigators and detectives found the remains.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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A manhunt is underway for an Oxnard man accused of killing his wife in front their six children on Thursday inside their home, authorities said.

Witnesses saw Alfredo Ortiz drag his wife, Teresa Ortiz, into their home about 10:30 a.m., then heard multiple gunshots, according to the Oxnard Police Department.

When police arrived to the home in 100 block of North Juanita Avenue, they saw children running out of the home. Inside the home, they found Teresa Ortiz, 37, suffering from a gunshot wound to her abdomen. She died at the scene.

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After the shooting, Alfredo Ortiz flagged down his sister, who drove him about 13 miles east to Somis in Ventura County, police told the Ventura County Star. Police were investigating if he held his sister hostage and forced her to drive him to Somis.

After dropping him off, police said, she later called authorities to report the incident.

Authorities believe Alfredo Ortiz is hiding in Ventura County. He is considered to be armed and dangerous, police said.

Anyone with details about Alfredo Ortiz is urged to call 911.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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Search efforts resumed Friday along Highway 1 in San Luis Obispo County for a missing North Hollywood man who, along with his girlfriend, disappeared more than a week ago on a drive to Big Sur.

Aided by a California Highway Patrol helicopter and police dogs, members of the Sheriffs Underwater Search and Recovery Team were scouring the rocky coast for Brian Fernandez, according to sheriffs Cmdr. Stuart MacDonald. The body of Fernandezs girlfriend, Olivia Hannah Gonzalez, was found this week 325 feet below the highway near a tan sedan.

On Thursday, authorities recovered the sedan and planned to examine it, MacDonald said in a statement.

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Fernandez, 21, and Gonzalez, 20, were last seen Dec. 23 when they left for a holiday road trip to Big Sur with two dogs in Fernandezs 2002 four-door tan Honda Civic, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. They were expected to return on Christmas Day.

Rescuers from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection searched the rugged area just 10 miles north of Hearst Castle on Tuesday and found the wreckage of the vehicle. They also recovered the remains of the two dogs.

Investigators were still trying to piece together the moments leading up to the crash.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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The passenger of a helicopter that crashed into the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday night was a veteran freelance photographer on assignment to capture photos of a rare trio of cruise ships inside the harbor.

Michael Justice, 61, of San Pedro, and pilot Christopher Reed, 41, of Hermosa Beach, were aboard the black Robinson R-22 helicopter when it crashed near the breakwater that juts out from Cabrillo Beach, killing them. Their bodies were recovered from the aircrafts wreckage Thursday morning.

Justice was a port photographer and had commissioned a flight on Wednesday after three cruise ships made a rare stopover at the harbor, said port spokesman Phillip Sanfield. The port, he said, doesnt usually get a visit from three cruises at one time.

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He wanted to capture the vessels in the fading sunlight, Sanfield said.

Reed and Justice took off from Zamperini Field in Torrance in one of the copters registered to JJ Helicopters Inc. and flew over the harbor.

Several passengers aboard a cruise ship told authorities that the helicopter circled one of the ships three times before it went down about 5:45 p.m., Sanfield said.

Several other people in the area called 911 notifying dispatchers of the aircraft, which was believed to have crashed near the Angels Gate Lighthouse. The lighthouse sits at the end of the breakwater.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Los Angeles Port Police searched for the wreckage of the helicopter, but did not find it.

Justice and Reed never reported back to the Torrance airbase, Sanfield said.

Then on Thursday, police used sonar equipment to locate the aircraft.

Justice worked with the port since 2010 and has shot for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, National Geographic Adventurer and Time magazine. He photographed Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

He was really an extended member of the harbor family, Sanfield said. He lived and breathed on the docks.

Former Daily Breeze newspaper photojournalist Branimir Kvartuc said he often worked with the freelance photographer in the Torrance area.

He had a million stories to tell, but never forced them on you, Kvartuc said.

When Kvartuc left the newspaper for a job at Los Angeles Councilman Joe Buscainos office, he knew he would see Justice again.

Kvartuc often ran into Justice at the harbor, an area that Buscaino represents. During a recent conversation, the friends talked about their separate trips next month to Cuba and how they planned to meet up.

Its almost in a way ... an accomplishment as a photographer to go out doing your job, he said.

Reed was an accomplished pilot, Los Angeles Port Police Chief Thomas Gazsi said at a news conference Thursday, adding that he will be greatly missed.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of the crash.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

UPDATES:

4:00 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Branimir Kvartuc.

This article was originally published at 2:50 p.m.
San Jose police say two men were killed and another man was injured Thursday in a shooting at a Mexican restaurant.

Police say the shooting at La Mejor Taqueria in East San Jose was reported about 7:45 p.m.

Two men were declared dead at the scene and a third was taken to a hospital.

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Police say the gunman fled and has not been found.

No further description was available of the victims or the suspect, and police have not identified a motive.

Witnesses from inside the restaurant told KNTV-TV that a gunman walked into the restaurant and just began shooting.

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California braces for once-in-10-year storm amid fears of flooding, avalanches, blizzards
A swath of the western U.S., from the California coast to Colorado and as far north as Idaho, was bracing for cold temperatures and heavy rain and snowfall as a series of storms driven by Pacific moisture and cold Arctic air continued to pound the region.

A weather pattern that began this week brought pounding rainfall to the California coast, several feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada and record snowfall and freezing temperatures to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain states, prompting officials to close roads and schools, open emergency warming shelters, and issue warnings of flash floods, mudslides and avalanches.

Michael Schichtel, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service at the Weather Prediction Center, said the current series of storms rates as probably one of the top 25 of the past century, given the heavy rain and snowfall.

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Schichtel said that a plume of moisture over the Pacific Ocean, known as an atmospheric river, flowing inland and hitting the mountains was causing heavy rainfall on the West Coast and snow in the Sierra and Rocky Mountains, with some of the moisture even streaking across the southern Plains.

Schichtel said it wasnt uncommon for low-pressure systems to interact with moisture in this way during the winter, but he said this latest round of storms was particularly strong.

On Thursday, the Squaw Valley Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe tweeted that it had received 7 feet of snow since Monday. Transportation authorities closed Interstate 80 in the Tahoe-Truckee region on Wednesday because of low visibility and snow.

In Oregon, a 51-year-old homeless man died of hypothermia in Portland on Monday night, after temperatures reached 15 degrees with the wind chill. The city has opened several warming shelters as freezing and sub-freezing temperatures continue.

Also in Oregon, an 8-year-old girl was killed Wednesday night when gusty winds knocked an evergreen tree down onto her home.

In Boise, Idaho, between Tuesday and Wednesday night 15 inches of snow had accumulated on the ground. Ada County, the states most populous, saw 105 road slide-offs, 124 stalled or stuck vehicles, and 73 car crashes on Wednesday alone, according to the sheriffs office.

A brief respite in the wet weather in California and the eastern Sierra was expected Friday, but more storms and snow are expected to return by Saturday.

There are going to be some places where youre going to have observations of at least 10 feet of snow, said Schichtel, adding that 10 or 12 inches of rain  or even more  could fall by the end of the weekend.

Live updates: Winter weather slams California 

Flash-flood and flood-watch advisories were in effect Thursday for large parts of northern and central California as well as parts of western Nevada, where officials had set up stations for residents to pick up sandbags.

Avalanche warnings were issued in parts of Colorado and Utah, and snow was expected to continue in those states, as well as Arizona and New Mexico, through Friday.

Cold, dry weather was forecast in the Pacific Northwest and Idaho on Friday, but a mix of snow, freezing rain and rain was expected to return beginning Saturday, said Jeff Lorens, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

nina.agrawal@latimes.com

Twitter: @AgrawalNina

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Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered an intelligence operation against the U.S. presidential campaign and ultimately sought to help Donald Trump win the White House, according to a new U.S. intelligence report released Friday, shortly after the president-elect appeared to dismiss its key findings.

Putin both aspired to help Trump in November and to harm Trumps rival, Democratic nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with leaks of pilfered emails and other covert activities, the report concludes in a dramatic expansion of official U.S. accusations against the Kremlin.

The report depicts the Russian operation as unprecedented, saying that an aggressive mix of digital thefts and leaks, fake news and propaganda represented a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort against a U.S. election campaign.

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Moscows goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency, the report states. We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

They aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton, the report adds.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies found no evidence that hackers tampered with actual voting or with counting ballots on election day.

But in a startling new assertion, it says Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards, adding that Russian spies began collecting information on equipment used in U.S. elections in early 2014.

The 14 pages released offer a largely circumstantial case rather than hard evidence of Putins direct involvement, and mostly focus on Russian propaganda efforts. But the full report remains classified, and the public portion does not include the specific intelligence.

Still, the rare release of a major intelligence assessment marks a sharp escalation in what has become a bare-knuckle fight between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community, backed by President Obama, over the president-elects repeated derision of their understanding of Russias role.

Intelligence officials had planned to declassify the key findings next week after briefing members of Congress. But the declassified summary was rushed out Friday afternoon shortly after Trump had been briefed on the full report  and had made clear he was not convinced.

In a statement, Trump conflated the Russian cyberattacks with those of other countries and individuals, and said the hacking had absolutely no effect on the election.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines, Trump said after he was briefed by four U.S. intelligence chiefs at his office in New York.

Earlier Friday, in an interview with the New York Times, Trump had called the focus on election-related hacking a political witch hunt by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss in November.

The growing dispute has become a sore point for Trumps transition team and a worry for Republicans on Capitol Hill who are convinced that Moscow had a malign role and fear Trumps presidency will get off to a shaky start.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) acknowledged the predicament Friday, noting that Russia clearly tried to meddle in our political system.

But he warned that Democrats might try to use the intelligence report to undermine Trumps mandate in the White House. We cannot allow partisans to exploit this report in an attempt to delegitimize the president-elects victory, Ryan said.

Democrats were quick to respond.

Im appalled the Russian government took the extreme step of interfering with our presidential election, particularly with the goal of tilting the playing field to increase one candidates chance of winning, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The President-Elects statement that the Russian hacking had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election is not supported by the briefing, report, or common sense, said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement.

The report, which Obama had requested, is a joint product of the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency. The three agencies said they had high confidence in the findings except for the assessment that Putin had aspired to help Trumps chances. The NSA said it had moderate confidence in that finding.

In addition to stealing and dumping embarrassing emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clintons campaign, Russian intelligence officials also used state-funded broadcasts and third-party intermediaries, and paid social media trolls to spread false information and disparage Clinton, the report says.

When it appeared that Clinton was likely to win, according to the report, Moscow focused more on undercutting [her] legitimacy and crippling her presidency from the start.

Putin holds a grudge against Clinton, it noted, adding, He has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012.

Officials working for the GRU, Russias military intelligence service, used an online persona known as Guccifer 2.0 and the website DCLeaks.com to release emails, as well as to relay them to WikiLeaks.

Earlier this week, Trump retweeted denials by Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of Wikileaks, that it had gotten the emails from the Russian government or its operatives.

Trump was briefed on the evidence for more than an hour in a face-to-face meeting with Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James B. Comey and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

Soon after, Trump issued a statement that called the meeting constructive and said he had tremendous respect for those serving in the nations intelligence agencies.

That marked a shift from the mocking tweets he had issued in recent weeks, using language so demoralizing that Clapper publicly noted at a Senate hearing on Thursday that there was a difference between healthy skepticism and disparagement.

Trump said the U.S. needed to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks, and said he would order a team to create a plan within the first three months of taking office.

In addition, Trump said hackers tried but failed to infiltrate Republican National Committee computers. The RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful, Trump said.

He was joined at the briefing by members of his national security team: Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), Trumps pick for CIA director; Reince Priebus, who will be White House chief of staff; Michael T. Flynn, who will be national security advisor; K.T. McFarland, his pick for deputy national security advisor; and Tom Bossert, whom Trump has chosen for his homeland security advisor.

Last Friday, the White House cited the intelligence when they expelled 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives, closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland, and expanded sanctions on Moscow.

Intelligence officials also briefed eight congressional leaders Friday morning on the completed classified report, which was given to Obama on Thursday.

It was really quite a stunning disclosure, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said after the briefing.

Clapper, Brennan, Rogers and Comey will testify Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to committee Chairman Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.).

In a statement late Friday, Burr said Russia had conducted a direct and aggressive covert influence campaign during the election.

This is a troubling chapter in an ongoing story, he added, and I expect that our nations leaders will counter these activities appropriately.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

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UPDATES:

4:30 p.m.: Updated with additional details from the intelligence report and other changes throughout.

1 p.m.: This article was updated with Trumps response after a meeting with U.S. intelligence chiefs.

9:05 a.m: Updated with details about the classified briefing to congressional leaders.

This story was originally published at 7:55 a.m.
Neil Gorsuch could fall somewhere between his hero, Justice Scalia, and former boss, centrist Justice Kennedy By David Savage Judge Neil M. Gorsuch was resting midway down a Colorado ski slope last year when his cellphone rang with the news that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. I immediately lost what breath I had left, Gorsuch recalled in an April speech, and I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldnt see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears. Now, as President Trumps pick to replace Scalia on the high court, Gorsuch is seen by many on the right as a fitting replacement for the iconic jurist that Gorsuch considered a lion of the law. Like Scalia, Gorsuch, 49, who serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, is a well-respected conservative who believes judges should decide cases based on the law as it was understood when passed, not on how they think it should be. Hes a clear, impassioned writer, albeit without Scalias flare for biting sarcasm. But Gorsuch also evokes the qualities of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch worked as a law clerk. (If confirmed, Gorsuch would join three justices who previously clerked on the high court, but he would be the first ever to serve alongside the justice he or she worked for.) Like Kennedy, 80, Gorsuch is a Westerner with a polite, congenial manner who at times has won praise from liberals. He may be more conservative than Kennedy when it comes to expanding individual rights, but he seems to lack Scalias fervor for overturning liberal precedents from decades past. Which way Gorsuch skews could be pivotal for the future of the court. Conservatives clearly hope hell be more like Scalia than Kennedy, a centrist swing vote who has often joined liberals on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Some conservatives have even expressed hope that Gorsuchs personal history with Kennedy might enable him to draw the Reagan-appointee back toward the right. Read More Facebook

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Trump chooses Neil Gorsuch, a conservative seen as likely to be confirmed, for Supreme Court By Michael A. Memoli President Trump nominated federal Judge Neil M. Gorsuch on Tuesday to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia, choosing from his short list an appeals court judge from Denver seen as most likely to win Senate confirmation. Because Scalia was a stalwart conservative, Trumps choice is not likely to change the balance of the court. But it does set the stage for a bruising partisan fight over a man who could help determine law on gun rights, immigration, police use of force and transgender rights. Read More Facebook

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Trump administration is radicalizing Democratic voters, creating a challenge for the party, Rep. Adam Schiff says By Sarah D. Wire (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) As protests spread over policy announcements from the Trump administration, Democrats must work to encourage participation in politics, but face a danger of the party becoming too radicalized, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said Tuesday. The radical nature of this government is radicalizing Democrats, and thats going to pose a real challenge to the Democratic Party, which is to draw on the energy and the activism and the passion that is out there, but not let it turn us into what we despised about the tea party, Schiff said. During a meeting with reporters and editors in the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau, Schiff also discussed his role as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee under a Trump administration and how Democrats will manage in the minority. Ever since the election, party leaders have been debating: Did we lose because we were too far to the left and we had too small a tent, or did we lose because we are too mainstream and didnt energize the base? Schiff asked. We are obviously having that debate, but theres a whole new element, which is the reaction to the Trump administration that makes this different in kind, certainly different in intensity, than I think weve ever seen after an election, he said. The more radical the administration is, the more radicalized our base becomes, which just feeds the Breitbart crowd, and who knows where that ends. Democratic leaders have to channel public reaction to Trumps actions into progress, rather than deadlock, Schiff said. Reaction to Democrats seen as working with the Trump administration has been strong. Monday night, for example, protesters marched on Sen. Dianne Feinsteins home and office voicing fears she would back Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general. The senator from California announced Tuesday that she would oppose Sessions. Several groups calling themselves indivisible have popped up in cities across the country as focal points for efforts to organize. We have two of the most capable strategists as the head of our House and Senate Democrats, Schiff added, referring to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Senate Democratic leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York. If anybody can grapple with this, they can, but its going to be a challenging and moving target day to day. I just hope that we can channel that energy in a way where we can provide a check on this administration because Ive never been more worried about the countrys future than I am right now, he said. Schiff said part of his role as the ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee will be pushing back when the Trump administration puts out inaccurate information about the intelligence community and its findings. Trump has repeatedly dismissed or sought to minimize the intelligence communitys findings that Russia sought to intervene in the 2016 election to benefit him. Schiff said hes concerned about what else the administration might be willing to dismiss. I think that will be kind of a new frontier, he said. How do we contradict a president making representations about what the intelligence community has to say when the information is classified? Facebook

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Trump administration signals that some temporary bans on entry into the U.S. could become permanent By Brian Bennett  Trumps orders put a greater emphasis on deporting those convicted of crimes and those in the country illegally who were charged with crimes not yet adjudicated The Trump administration doubled down Tuesday on its commitment to transforming the nations border law enforcement, signaling that some of the temporary bans on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries are likely to be made permanent and elevating a deportations official to run the top immigration enforcement agency. Administration officials, led by newly sworn-in Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, moved to allay the havoc that marked the roll-out of the ban and another on refugees. They briefed reporters and planned to head to Capitol Hill later today in an apparent effort to smooth relations after reports that lawmakers and other stakeholders were left out of the crafting of the executive order on toughened vetting at border entry points. In a news conference, Kelly and other top Homeland Security officials conceded some problems, including poor communication. But they insisted that all court orders were followed over the weekend, rebutted reports that some legal residents were denied access to attorneys at airports and said they everyone detained by border agents was treated with dignity and respect. The vast majority of the 1.7 billion Muslims that live on this planet, the vast majority of them have, all other things being equal, have access to the United States, Kelly told reporters. And a relatively small number right now are being held up for a period of time until we can take a look at what their procedures are, he said, seeming to acknowledge that mostly Muslims have been affected by the ban. The moves signaled that the White House remained committed to remaking border law enforcement even in the face of widespread confusion and condemnation of President Trumps order. Kelly said for the first time that the some of the restrictions that caused confusion and sparked protests over the weekend could be extended well into the future. Some of those countries that are currently on the list may not be taken off the list anytime soon, he said. Trump also named a longtime deportation officer, Thomas D. Homan, as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homan, who will oversee the execution of Trumps immigration enforcement order, was most recently in charge of the agencys 5,000 deportation officers, a force Trump said he would triple to 15,000. Trumps orders put a greater emphasis on deporting not only those convicted of crimes, but also people in the country illegally who were charged with crimes not yet adjudicated, those who receive an improper welfare benefit and even those who have not been charged but are believed to have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense. Facebook

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White House tries to ban the word ban, hours after president uses it himself By Noah Bierman This is not a ban, spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters in a fiery news briefing. (Alex Wong / Getty Images) President Trump used the word ban in a tweet as recently as Monday to describe his new executive order suspending travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and halting the refugee program for several months. But facing backlash from many directions, the White House adamantly insisted Tuesday that the word is verboten. This is not a ban, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in a fiery news briefing. When we use words like travel ban, he said later, that misrepresents what it is. Its seven countries previously identified by the Obama administration, where, frankly, we dont get the information that we need for people coming into this country. In fact, people from the seven banned countries  Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya  cannot enter the United States under the order. Spicer appeared to be making a renewed effort to distinguish the order from the all-out ban on Muslims entering the country that Trump proposed during the campaign. Many around the world see the newest policy as an outgrowth of that proposal. Trump himself conceded a religious connection when he said in an interview on Friday that he wanted to make it easier for Syrian Christians to enter the country. And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that the order sprang from a group he formed at Trumps request to create a legal framework that would accomplish the campaign goal of a Muslim ban. But amid confusion and worldwide criticism in recent days, the Trump administration has tried to temper some of the more incendiary rhetoric around the proposal. Even the words extreme vetting, a favorite Trump slogan, were called into question by Spicer on Tuesday. Calling for tougher vetting [of] individual travelers from seven nations is not extreme, he said. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country. But changing the ban branding around the program at this point will be difficult. Heres Trumps tweet from Monday: If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 And Spicer himself used the term ban as recently as Sunday: Sean Spiceer today: This is not a Muslim ban. It is not a travel ban.



Sean Spicer in White House press release, Jan. 29: pic.twitter.com/axTM1m66nM  Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) January 31, 2017 Facebook

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Senate confirms Elaine Chao as secretary of Transportation By Associated Press Elaine Chao testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Jan. 11, 2017. (Zach Gibson / AP) The Senate has confirmed Elaine Chao to serve as Transportation secretary in the Trump administration. The vote was 93 to 6 on Tuesday. Chao is an experienced Washington hand. She was Labor secretary under President George W. Bush and is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Chao would be a lead actor in pursuing Trumps promise to invest $1 trillion to improve highways, rail service and other infrastructure projects. Facebook

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Speaker Paul Ryan defends Trumps immigrant and refugee ban, as Congress grumbles about being left out By Lisa Mascaro "What is happening is something we support... we need to make sure that the vetting standards are up to snuff," Paul Ryan says of travel ban pic.twitter.com/iX6YkOLkLl  CBS News (@CBSNews) January 31, 2017 House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Tuesday stood by President Trumps temporary ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations and indicated that he was confident the administration could fix the confusing rollout without action from Congress. What is happening is something we support, said Ryan, whose office was the target of a sit-in by protesters opposed to Trumps order. We need to pause and we need to make sure that the vetting standards are up to snuff so we can guarantee the safety and security of our country. Congress was blindsided by Trumps executive action -- Ryan learned about it as the public did when the White House announced it Friday afternoon. Many GOP lawmakers have raised concerns. During a private meeting in the Capitol basement Tuesday, Republican lawmakers were counseled on how to handle protesters and office sit-ins happening across the country. Its regrettable that there was some confusion on the rollout of this, Ryan said. No one wanted to see people with green cards or special immigrant visas, like translators, get caught up in all of this. Ryan also said he was concerned the ban could be used as propaganda by terrorist groups. The rhetoric surrounding this could be used as a recruiting tool, and I think thats dangerous, he said. Still, Republicans leaders as well as rank-and-file GOP lawmakers largely agreed with the presidents move to halt refugee admissions for 120 days, and to temporarily ban citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, unless they are Christians or other religious minorities. The president was well within his right to issue an executive order, said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), chairman of the House Rules Committee. Do I feel let out? I feel like everybody was left out, he said. I wish they communicated it. I wish they had gotten more information to people. I wish they had measured three times and sawed once. Lawmakers have shown little appetite for Congress to get involved, and suggested the chaos that erupted at airports over the weekend was just part of a learning curve at the White House. I support the thrust of the executive order, said Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), who nevertheless said the administration should have been better prepared and will need to get your act together. Last year, Ryan had strongly condemned Trumps campaign-trail call for a Muslim ban. In recent days, Ryan, like other congressional leaders, was forced to dial up the administration with his questions and concerns about the order, conferring Monday with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. I am very pleased and confident that he is, on a going-forward basis, going to make sure that things are done correctly, Ryan said. Pressed on whether Congress would have a role, Ryan did not indicate any immediate legislative action. Facebook

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Democrats boycott Senate committee votes on Price, Mnuchin By Jim Puzzanghera Senate Democrats speak with reporters after boycotting Finance Committee confirmation votes. (JIM WATSON / AFP/Getty Images) Senate Democrats on Tuesday boycotted a committee vote on two of President Trumps top Cabinet nominees -- Tom Price to lead Health and Human Services and Steve Mnuchin to be Treasury secretary. Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) blasted the Democratic move as he sat in a hearing room with only Republicans on the dais. They ought to be embarrassed. Its the most pathetic treatment Ive seen in my 40 years in the United States Senate, Hatch said. I think they should stop posturing and acting like idiots, he said. At least one Democrat needs to be present for the committee to vote on the nominations, Hatch said. He recessed the hearing until further notice, saying he hoped a vote could take place later Tuesday. But asked mid-afternoon if he thought the committee would be able to meet Tuesday, Hatch said it doesnt look like it. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committees top Democrat, said Price and Mnuchin have misled the public and held back important information about their backgrounds. Until questions are answered, Democrats believe the committee should not move forward with either nomination, Wyden said. This is about getting answers to questions, plain and simple, he said. Ethics laws are not optional, and nominees do not have a right to treat disclosure like a shell game. Today @SenateFinance Democrats refused to move forward with nominations of Mnuchin & Price.  Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 31, 2017 The litany of ethics revelations regarding @RepTomPrice are strong evidence that he cannot be allowed to have control of #Medicare.  Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 31, 2017 Mr. Mnuchin continued to fail to come clean on shady foreclosure practices that hurt Americans.  Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 31, 2017 Liberal groups cheered the boycott while Senate Republican leaders decried it as Democratic obstructionism. They are manufacturing issues on a daily basis to drag this process out, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) said of the confirmations of Trumps nominees. I dont see how they can explain to the American people how it is appropriate to prevent the administration from getting up and getting started, he said. Democrats have said Mnuchin, a wealthy Wall Street executive, misled the committee in his response to a written question about foreclosures at Pasadenas OneWest Bank while he ran it from 2009-15. Democrats pointed to a report Sunday by the Columbus Dispatch that Mnuchin denied that OneWest engaged in so-called robo-signing of mortgage documents. The paper said its analysis of nearly four dozen foreclosure cases in Ohios Franklin County in 2010 showed that the bank frequently used robo-signers. The Columbus Dispatch cited a foreclosure involving a mortgage signed by Erica Johnson-Seck, a OneWest vice president who said in a deposition in a 2009 Florida case that she signed an average of 750 documents a week. Barney Keller, a spokesman for Mnuchin, said Monday that several courts had dismissed cases involving allegations of robo-signing by Johnson-Seck. The media is picking on a hardworking bank employee whose reputation has been maligned but whose work has been upheld by numerous courts all around the country in the face of scurrilous and false allegations, Keller said. Democrats also have problems with Price, a six-term congressman and former orthopedic surgeon who has distinguished himself in conservative circles for his staunch opposition to the Affordable Care Act and his plans to slash federal healthcare spending. His nomination has become among Trumps most controversial, in part because of his hostility to government safety net programs, including Medicaid and Medicare. Democrats have also been increasingly critical of Prices extensive trading in healthcare stocks while he has been in Congress, and in some cases while he has pushed legislation that would benefit his portfolio. Price has denied any wrongdoing. Also drawing criticism is Prices purchase of discounted shares in an Australian biotech firm, Innate Immunotherapeutics, which he was offered through a private deal not available to general shareholders. Price also denied that this was improper, and Senate Republicans have rallied to his side, saying he did not violate any ethics rules. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he and the other Democrats on the committee want Mnuchin and Price to explain their lies either in person before the committee or in new written answers. I want them to disclose this information that they seem not to want to disclose, Brown said. 12:10 p.m.: This post was updated with additional comments from Hatch as well as from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Sherrod Brown. 8:00 a.m.: This post has been updated with additional information and background. 8:07 a.m.: This post has been updated with additional information. Facebook

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White House aides who wrote Trumps travel ban see it as just the start By Brian Bennett (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) Even as confusion, internal dissent and widespread condemnation greeted President Trumps travel ban and crackdown on refugees this weekend, senior White House aides say they are only getting started. Trump and his aides justified Fridays executive order, which blocked travel from seven majority-Muslim countries for 90 days and halted refugees from around the world for 120, on security grounds  an issue that they say they take seriously. But their ultimate goal is far broader. Trumps top advisors on immigration, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller, see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, wont assimilate into American society. That project may live or die in the next three months, as the Trump administration reviews whether and how to expand the visa ban and alter vetting procedures. White House aides are considering new, onerous security checks that could effectively limit travel into the U.S. by people from majority-Muslim countries to a trickle. Read More Facebook

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Why corporations cant risk keeping silent about Trumps immigration ban By David Pierson Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz said the Seattle coffee company is developing plans to hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years. (Richard Drew / Associated Press) Corporate America generally prefers to stay quiet about partisan politics. Pick one side of a hot-button issue, the thinking goes, and youll risk losing customers on the other side. But like so many norms before it, President Trump has turned this one on its head. A growing number of companies are deciding its a bigger risk to their investors and bottom line to stay quiet than it is to protest Trumps ban on refugees and travel from seven Muslim-majority nations, betting vocal opposition to the executive order scores them a moral and fiscal victory. While it was possible for companies to take a wait-and-see approach leading up to Trumps inauguration, many firms can no longer ignore the White Houses policy given the effect the order is already having on employees either stranded or fearful of traveling. Only a week ago it seemed foolish to speak out against a president who has admonished individual companies on social media such as Carrier, Boeing and General Motors. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Companies, mostly in technology but increasingly in other sectors, have decided that its not enough just to speak out against the immigration order. They believe that they must also take headline-grabbing action. Read More Facebook

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Op-Ed: Trump is taking the Bannon Way, and it will end in disaster By Jonah Goldberg Bannon has said hes a Leninist' but hes really more of a Trotskyist because he fancies himself the leader of an international populist-nationalist right wing movement, exporting anti-'globalist' revolution. In that role, his status as an enabler of Trumps instinct to shoot  or tweet  from the hip seems especially ominous. The Bannon way might work on the campaign trail, but it doesnt translate into good governance. Its possible  and one must hope  that Trump can learn this fact on the job. But what if he doesnt? He could put the country in serious peril.  Jonah Goldberg Read More Facebook

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Trump will leave LGBTQ protections in place By Associated Press (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) The White House says President Trump will leave intact a 2014 executive order that protects federal workers from anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In a statement released early Tuesday, the White House said Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community and that he continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election. The Trump administration has vowed to roll back much of President Obamas work from the last eight years and had been scrutinizing the 2014 order. The directive protects people from LGBTQ discrimination while working for federal contractors. The recent statement says the protections will remain intact at the direction of Trump. Here is the text of Obamas executive order, signed on July 21, 2014: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including 40 U.S.C. 121, and in order to provide for a uniform policy for the Federal Government to prohibit discrimination and take further steps to promote economy and efficiency in Federal Government procurement by prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Amending Executive Order 11478 . The first sentence of section 1 of Executive Order 11478 of August 8, 1969, as amended, is revised by substituting sexual orientation, gender identity for sexual orientation. Sec. 2. Amending Executive Order 11246 . Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965, as amended, is hereby further amended as follows: (a) The first sentence of numbered paragraph (1) of section 202 is revised by substituting sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin for sex, or national origin. (b) The second sentence of numbered paragraph (1) of section 202 is revised by substituting sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin for sex or national origin. (c) Numbered paragraph (2) of section 202 is revised by substituting sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin for sex or national origin. (d) Paragraph (d) of section 203 is revised by substituting sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin for sex or national origin. Sec. 3. Regulations . Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Labor shall prepare regulations to implement the requirements of section 2 of this order. Sec. 4. General Provisions . (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the authority granted by law to an agency or the head thereof; or (ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals. (b) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. Sec. 5. Effective Date . This order shall become effective immediately, and section 2 of this order shall apply to contracts entered into on or after the effective date of the rules promulgated by the Department of Labor under section 3 of this order. Update 6:45 a.m.: This article was updated with the text of the 2014 executive order. Facebook

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Trump fires Justice Departments top official after she refuses to defend his refugee ban By David Lauter Sally Yates. (J. David Ake / Associated Press) President Trump fired acting Atty. Gen. Sally Yates on Monday, just hours after she announced that the department would not defend his controversial executive order banning refugees and travelers from certain countries. Yates has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States, the White House said in a statement. It is time to get serious about protecting our country. The move came after Yates sent a letter to Justice Department lawyers saying that she questioned the lawfulness of Trumps executive order. My responsibility is to ensure that the position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts, Yates wrote. At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities, nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful, she wrote. Consequently, for as long as I am the acting attorney general, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the executive order unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so. Yates was a holdover from the Obama administration. But because Trumps nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, has not been confirmed and no other senior Justice Department officials have been appointed, firing her was expected to cause significant problems within the department. Among other issues, Yates is the only person in the department currently authorized to sign warrants for wiretapping in foreign espionage cases involving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Trump replaced Yates with Dana J. Boente, a three-decade veteran of the Justice Department who was appointed in 2015 by former President Obama as U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia. 6:37 p.m.: The story was updated with Trumps decision to fire Yates. Read More Facebook

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U.S. service member killed in Yemen identified as Navy SEAL from Illinois By Jeanette Steele The Pentagon on Sunday confirmed the death of a U.S. servicemember in a raid in Yemen targeting al-Qaeda, marking the first American combat death under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. A Navy SEAL from the Virginia-based elite unit known as SEAL Team 6 was killed Sunday during an unusual nighttime raid that put U.S. troops on the ground against Al Qaeda leaders in the middle of war-torn Yemen. The fallen sailor was identified Monday as Chief Special Warfare Operator William Ryan Owens, 36, of Peoria, Ill.. Three other Americans were wounded in the raid and an MV-22 Osprey had to be destroyed after the aircraft suffered a hard landing and couldnt fly. Another U.S. service member was injured in that crash. The raid marked the first known counter-terrorism operation and first confirmed combat fatality under President Trump. Steele writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Facebook

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Protests against Trumps ban on certain immigrants continue across the country By Ann M. Simmons Protesters rally at Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 29, demonstrating against the immigration ban imposed by President Trump. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) After a weekend of turmoil at many of the nations airports following President Trumps executive order to suspend the U.S. refugee program and temporarily prohibit entry to citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations, federal officials said all people being detained on arrival to the U.S. had been released. But that hasnt put a stop to demands to lift the travel ban. Protests continued to be held and organized throughout the country  incluidng in New York, New Orleans, Colorado and Connecticut. According to Ground Game, an online platform for organizing, at least a dozen demonstrations were planned for this week in what the group described as a fight against Islamophobia and Fascism. Calls to rally, demonstrate and protest swept social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. In Louisville, Ky., a rally was planned for Monday evening at the Muhammad Ali Center, in what organizers said would be a gathering for American values and to voice support for our nation and our city, which was founded and is strengthened by immigrants. In Hattiesburg, Miss., there was call to join a peaceful vigil in solidarity with refugees, immigrants, and Muslims on the University of Southern Mississippi campus on Monday evening. Declaring that Jersey City stands with our Muslim and immigrant community, organizers in that New Jersey city called on people to come to a pedestrian mall on Monday to stand in solidarity and peace as we show our strength in diversity as one of the most diverse cities in the nation. Other demonstrations were planned for later in the week in cities nationwide, including Tuesday in Tuscon, where organizers encouraged people to stand in solidarity with Senator (John) McCains strong public statement opposing the executive order banning refugees and Legal Permanent Residents from Muslim countries! Similar actions were planned on Tuesday at the South Carolina State House in Columbia and at the Worchester City Hall and Common in Massachusetts, while organizers in San Francisco, under the banner #NoBanNoWallSF, urged residents to join the resistance against Donald Trumps racist and exclusionary Executive Orders on Saturday. We will not allow our country to be divided by hate and religious persecution, read a statement from #NoBanNoWallSF posted on Facebook. Facebook

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Obama carefully weighs in on refugee ban, says he is heartened by public response By Michael A. Memoli (Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images) Former President Obama has offered his first public comment on the conduct of his successor, saying through a spokesman that he is heartened by public demonstrations against the Trump administrations controversial move to temporarily ban refugees and block all admissions from seven countries. President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country, Kevin Lewis, a spokesperson for the former president, said in a statement emailed to reporters Monday. In his final official speech as President, he spoke about the important role of citizen and how all Americans have a responsibility to be the guardians of our democracy--not just during an election but every day. Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake. Lewis also said in the statement that Obama fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion. Trump aides deny that his executive order, released Friday, involves religious discrimination. The order temporarily blocked travel to the U.S. by residents of seven predominantly Muslim nations, but left many of the Islamic worlds largest population centers unaffected, they note. The order also included an exception for believers of minority religions in those countries, a provision that Trump explicitly said would help Christians. Obamas statement is notable less for its content than for the fact that it was issued at all. It reflected the delicate balance he feels he must strike between showing a degree of deference to the new president and speaking out on issues he sees as critically important. The statement tiptoed around the content of the order, focusing more on the former presidents interest in citizen engagement. Obama said before leaving office that he expected to choose carefully when to comment on the actions of his successor and would focus less on normal functioning of politics and more on certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake, as he put it in his final news conference. Mondays statement did point, though, to comments Obama made at a news conference in November 2015, when he called the idea of a religious test for immigration policy shameful and not American. We dont have religious tests to our compassion, he said at the time. Facebook

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GOP-led Congress worries about its role in the Trump era By Lisa Mascaro Its what congressional Republicans had long dreamed about: a majority in both chambers to advance conservative policies and a president from the same party to sign them into law. But the Trump White House isnt turning out exactly the way they envisioned. The GOP establishment is experiencing whiplash after a week of President Trump bulldozing through the norms of policy and protocol  dashing off executive orders without warning, escalating a diplomatic crisis with the countrys closest southern neighbor, triggering global confusion with a new refugee policy and generally hijacking party leaders agenda and replacing it with his own. Rather than the hoped-for collaborative new relationship between the White House and Congress, GOP officials complain that Trump is brushing aside their advice, failing to fully engage on drafting tough legislative packages like tax reform and Obamacare, and bypassing Congress by relying on executive actions, something they frequently complained about under President Obama. At the same time, Trumps unilateral moves continue to blindside Republicans and direct the national focus toward topics many in the party would rather avoid, whether thats how to pay for building the border wall with Mexico, warming ties with Russia, investigating false claims about voter fraud or, most recently, implementing sweeping new policies on refugees and visas. In the name of party unity, many Republicans so far have refrained from publicly attacking the new president. But for some, the new refugee policy crossed the line, signaling the first major rift in their already fraught partnership. Read More Facebook

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Washington state sues Trump over immigration order By Mark Z. Barabak President Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends all immigration for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Opening a new legal front, lawyers for the state of Washington filed suit Monday seeking to block President Trumps executive order temporarily banning foreign refugees from entering the United States. No one is above the law, not even the president, Atty. Gen. Bob Ferguson said in announcing the federal lawsuit. And in the courtroom, it is not the loudest voice that prevails. Its the Constitution. Over the weekend, a federal judge in Brooklyn issued an order curtailing portions of Trumps executive order, issued Friday, which temporary halts migration from seven predominantly Muslim countries for at least 90 days and also closed the nation to refugees for at least the next four months. Other challenges are pending. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle was the first taken by a state attorney general, and its provenance was no surprise. Washington state and others along the West Coast voted overwhelmingly for Democrat Hillary Clinton in November and have emerged as a hotbed of anti-Trump sentiment. We will not yield, said Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who joined Ferguson at a Seattle news conference. We will not be leveraged. We will not be threatened. We will not be intimidated. We will not be bullied by this. Trumps order, which has sparked demonstrations across the country, brought an outpouring of objection from Insleys Democratic colleagues around the country. President Trumps recent executive orders that divide and discriminate do not reflect the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution or the principles we stand for as Oregonians, said Gov. Kate Brown. A single executive order does not define who we are as a country, said Connecticut Gov. Daniel P. Malloy. We are a nation of immigrants and must continue to fight for the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breath free. In Massachusetts, another state that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker joined the chorus of Democratic criticism, saying the travel ban would undermine the international relations forged by the states business, academic and healthcare communities. The confusion for families is real. The unexpected disruption for law-abiding people is real, Baker said. Thankfully, the federal courts will have an opportunity to straighten this out and it is my hope they do so, and do so quickly. Facebook

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How a top conservative radio host took on Trump, lost his audience and faith, but gained a new perspective By Mark Z. Barabak Charlie Sykes, right, interviews Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) before Wisconsins 2016 primary (Morry Gash/Associated Press) For nearly 25 years, Charlie Sykes was one of the most powerful and influential voices in Wisconsin. He cheer-led policies that turned this historically progressive state into a model of conservative governance. He made and destroyed political careers, using his perch on Milwaukee talk radio to help vault figures such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker to national prominence. But for the moment Sykes was speechless. He sank into the brown leather banquette of a suburban steakhouse. He stammered. He sighed. When youve devoted your whole life to certain beliefs and you think now they have been undermined and that you might have been deluded about things, he began. So. So. Um... In 2016 Sykes emerged as one of Donald Trumps most prominent critics, a stance that outraged listeners, strained longstanding friendships and left him questioning much of what he once held true. Read More Facebook

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Pentagon compiling a list of Iraqis who aided the U.S. military and wants them shielded from Trumps travel ban By W.J. Hennigan The Pentagon is compiling a list of Iraqi citizens who have worked with the U.S. military and is recommending that they be exempt from President Trumps temporary ban on entry to the U.S. by people from Iraq and six other predominantly Muslim countries, according to the U.S. military. The move could potentially shield tens of thousands of Iraqi interpreters, advisors, and others who have assisted the American military from the presidents controversial executive action that blocked visitors from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday that the list will include names of individuals who have demonstrated their commitment to helping the United States. Even people that are doing seemingly benign things in support of us  whether as a linguist, a driver, anything else  they often do that at great personal risk, he said. So people who take these risks are really making a tangible signal of support to the United States, and thats something that will, and should be, recognized. The list would not require any changes to the presidents order, but rather serve as guidance to the Department of Homeland Security and the White House in implementing the new policy. White House spokesman Sean Spicer later pushed back against blanket exemptions. We recognize that people have served this country, we should make sure that in those cases theyre helped out, he said. But that doesnt mean that we just give them a pass. Trump, who signed the order at the Pentagon on Friday, did not consult Defense Secretary James N. Mattis or Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the temporary suspensions of entry to visitors from the seven nations, according to U.S. officials. The executive action put the U.S. military in a difficult position because it works closely with the Iraqi government on a range of issues, including the fight against Islamic State, which necessitates travel between the two countries. For instance, Iraqi military pilots train to fly F-16 fighter jets at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Its not clear those pilots, who are active in the fight against Islamic State, could arrive in the U.S. for the training. 1:10 p.m.: This post was updated with White House response. Facebook

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Trump signs order on rulemaking: For every regulation added, agencies have to cut 2 others By Noah Bierman (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) President Trump signed an executive order Monday designed to fulfill his campaign pledge reduce red tape for businesses. The two-page order requires that when a federal agency proposes new regulations, it shall identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed. We want to make the life easier for small businesses and big business, Trump said Monday from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where he met with nine representatives of the small-business sector. Trump said he hoped to see up to 75% of federal regulations eliminated during his presidency. Regulation has been horrible for big business, but its been worse for small business, Trump said. He also reiterated his promise to gut the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial regulatory overhaul that was passed after the financial crisis. Dodd-Frank is a disaster, he said. Were going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank. Consumer advocates who backed the law say that eliminating it would help Wall Street and other players in the financial sector at the expense of consumers. Facebook

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U.S. diplomats to protest Trumps travel ban order By Tracy Wilkinson Protesters of President Trumps immigration order block traffic at LAX. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) A number of U.S. diplomats are condemning President Trumps ban on some Muslim immigrants and visitors, saying the abrupt order does not make the U.S. safer and will only stoke anti-American fervor overseas. The complaint, being made through the State Departments so-called dissent channel, echoes criticism coming from human rights attorneys, legal experts and lawmakers from both political parties, as well as world leaders. It is significant because it represents the viewpoint of the men and women who must carry out Trumps unconventional and often provocative foreign policy. A policy which closes our doors to over 200-million legitimate travelers in the hopes of preventing a small number of travelers who intend to harm Americans ... will not achieve its aim of making our country safer, said a draft version of the memo that was circulating Monday and was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. It was first reported by ABC News. Moreover, such a policy runs counter to core American values of non-discrimination, fair play and extending a warm welcome to foreign visitors and immigrants. The White House was quickly dismissive of the dissent and seemed to suggest the diplomats should quit if they disagree with a policy. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said the diplomats raising of opposition does call into question whether or not they should continue to work in the State Department. It was not clear how many officials would sign the memo. Dissent channel memos are in theory not made public. The mechanism is designed to allow diplomats to offer an alternative policy without fear of retaliation. Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner confirmed the existence of the memo but declined to comment on its contents. The dissent channel is a longstanding official vehicle for State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues, he said. "... It allows State employees to express divergent policy views candidly and privately to senior leadership. The agency is still waiting for a boss. Trumps pick for secretary of State, former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this week. The last time a dissent-channel memo was reported publicly was last year, when about 50 diplomats protested Obama administration policy in Syria, which they described as inaction. 12:20 p.m.: This story was updated with White House comment. 8:40 a.m.: This story was updated with comment from a State Department spokesman. Facebook

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Trump to announce his Supreme Court choice Tuesday -- in prime time By Michael A. Memoli (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump will announce his first Supreme Court nomination in prime time on Tuesday, he tweeted this morning. I have made my decision on who I will nominate for The United States Supreme Court. It will be announced live on Tuesday at 8:00 P.M. (W.H.)  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017 The announcement was moved up two days amid the continued fallout from the executive action Trump signed temporarily banning refugee admissions from some countries. Trump had tweeted last week that he would announce his high-court decision Thursday. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Friday, Trump said his administration was doing some final vetting of his choice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, and that the pick would be from among the list of 20 names he issued during the election campaign. I think the person I pick will be big, big, he said. I think people are going to love it. I think evangelicals, Christians will love my pick. And will be represented very fairly. Times Supreme Court reporter David Savage profiled each of the leading contenders: Judge Thomas Hardiman of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The move could prompt a major clash with Senate Democrats, who have warned the president against a choice outside what they consider the mainstream. Some are threatening to block any choice in retaliation for Senate Republicans refusal to even hold hearings on President Obamas choice to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland. Democrats 2013 change to Senate rules that allowed most nominations to advance with a simple majority vote exempted Supreme Court nominations, meaning that Democrats could potentially filibuster the choice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to rule out any further rule change in an interview last week, though Trump urged him to consider doing so. Facebook

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As Hollywood gathered at the SAG Awards, some entertainers joined LAX protest Facebook

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This New York doctor went to visit family in Sudan, and now hes stuck By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Dr. Kamal Fadlalla (Dr. Kamal Fadlalla / For The Times) Dr. Kamal Fadlalla, a hospital resident who has been working in New York for the last 20 months, was stuck in Sudan on Sunday, having gone there to see his family earlier this month. He had left Jan. 13, was due to return Feb. 4 but tried to return on Friday after hearing about President Trumps executive order on immigration, which suspended entry for people from seven countries, including Sudan. He made it past passport control, all the way to the gate at the airport in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. One hour before departure they called my name, he said, and summoned him to the ticket counter, along with other New York-bound Sudanese passengers. When I got to the counter, they said there was a notice from Customs and Border Protection that ... they had to offload us from the flight. I was shocked. Fadlalla, 33, hoped for a reprieve as other passengers gathered, all stuck. One family, they came back from Dubai, she was a mother of three or four kids. She was waiting overnight at the Dubai airport. There were also two passengers turned back from New York, he said. It was a very tough night on me, He stayed for several hours, then returned to his mothers home in Madani, two hours south. Fadlalla is a second-year resident in internal medicine at Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn. He is hoping to specialize in hematology and oncology. The Committee for Interns and Residents found an attorney to represent him, he said, but he had not received any news about how a New York federal judges ruling late Saturday, which halted the deportations of people who had arrived in the U.S. with valid visas, could affect him. I dont know what Im going to do. My vacation is going to end and I have to join the hospital next week. Its going to be tough on me, Fadlalla said. I dont know for how long Im going to stay here. I dont know what Im going to do. My visa is valid for three months. Im really stuck. I have my house there, my utilities, my work, my patients, my colleagues. It was my life for the past 20 months. And Im stuck here. Fadlalla is from northern Sudan, and describes himself as a moderate Muslim. He said the executive order wont make the U.S. safer by barring valid visa holders like him because, Ive been through the whole process of visa interviews. He had planned to take board exams next year, and if he misses them, his schooling will be delayed. He had wanted to stay and work in New York, too. All my life is there. Now Im stuck here. I dont know what to do, he said. Its going to really affect my life, my patients, my colleagues and their work schedule. He said the executive order has shocked others in Sudan, too. Theyre talking about human rights. Everybody knows the United States is about freedom, he said. Everybody knows America is a free country, a country of chances for everybody. Still, people have hope in those protesting at airports all over the United States and attorneys who have volunteered to help immigrants and refugees, he said. He said the order is especially worrying for aspiring Sudanese medical residents who have been preparing to match with a hospital in March to study in the United States. A lot of my colleagues who are preparing for exams are really, really worried about this, Fadlalla said. Im really worried about the future of these young people. They study a lot and spend a lot of money, a lot of effort to enter the United States. Im concerned about my future and my colleagues future. Facebook

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Californias congressional Republicans hold their fire on Trumps refugee order By Sarah D. Wire Only a few of the states 14 Republican representatives have publicly commented on an executive order signed by President Trump on Friday that barred refugees and green card holders from seven countries from entering the country. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) released a statement Sunday night saying that some tweaks are needed, but that his background as chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee leads him to support the executive order. In light of attempts by jihadist groups to infiltrate fighters into refugee flows to the West, along with Europes tragic experience coping with this problem, the Trump administrations executive order on refugees is a common-sense security measure to prevent terror attacks on the homeland, Nunes said. While accommodations should be made for green card holders and those whove assisted the U.S. armed forces, this is a useful temporary measure on seven nations of concern until we can verify who is entering the United States. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) told the Washington Post that the executive order is the right call to keep America safe, but he hopes the cases of people traveling on visas who were prevented from reentering the country are resolved quickly. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) said Sunday on Twitter that the rollout has created confusion, and that executive orders arent the way to fix the countrys long-term problems. View Twitter post View Twitter post Several of Californias 38 Democratic congressional representatives and the states two senators were out in force over the weekend demanding the release of refugees and green card holders as well as an end to the executive order. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced she would file two pieces of legislation in response. One would immediately rescind the presidents order. The second would limit executive authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to prevent a president from unilaterally banning groups of immigrants. Its clear that the president gave little consideration to the chaos and heartbreak that would result from this order, she said in a statement. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) joined protesters outside the White House on Sunday afternoon. We will fight against racism. We will fight against anti-Muslim rhetoric. We will fight against those who will marginalize who we are. pic.twitter.com/R54f3MDhvo  Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 29, 2017 In Los Angeles, Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) joined protesters at Los Angeles International Airport. On Saturday, Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro) and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) joined the initial protests at the airport, and worked to get some of those being held released. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) accompanied protesters at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday. Congresswoman @MaxineWaters is here at LAX protest leading the crowd in the chant "no ban, no wall, you build it up we'll tear it down" pic.twitter.com/iNEmkVVkmW  Javier Panzar  (@jpanzar) January 29, 2017 Facebook

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Legal moves come too late for Iranian man who arrived at LAX after Trumps order By Matt Hamilton Ali Vayeghan arrived at 7:15 p.m. Friday from Tehran. He was going to stay with relatives, then go to Indiana, to join his wife, who arrived in the U.S. four months ahead of him, and his son. But he never emerged from customs. His niece said he was put on a plane to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at 3:15 p.m. Saturday. The ACLU was trying to prevent his deportation but arrived with paperwork 45 minutes too late. The family spoke to him by phone after he landed in Dubai, where he was waiting to be put on a flight to Tehran. Hes literally crying in the airport in Dubai, Ali Vayeghans niece, Marjan Vayghan, said. On Sunday afternoon, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered authorities to transport Vayeghan back to the U.S. and admit him under the terms of his visa, which is set to expire Feb. 14. U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee said in her order that Vayeghan had demonstrated a strong likelihood of success in establishing that removal violates the Establishment Clause, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and his rights to Equal Protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution. But by the time the order came down, Vayeghan was on a plane bound for Tehran. Federal judge in LA has issued order allowing Iranian man deported from LAX yesterday to be admitted to US pic.twitter.com/yPth0xEQpv  Matt Hamilton (@MattHjourno) January 29, 2017 Facebook

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The political climate is a hot topic at the Screen Actors Guild awards The Actor statue watches over the red carpet at the Shrine Auditorium. (Matt Sayles / Invision / Associated Press) Stars on the red carpet and at the winners podium tonight in Los Angeles are not keeping their mouths shut on current affairs. The 23rd Screen Actors Guild awards are being held at the Shrine Auditorium. Heres what they have had to say so far: I want you all to know that I am the daughter of an immigrant. My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France, and Im an American patriot, and I love this country, and because I love this country, I am horrified by its blemishes and this immigrant ban is a blemish and it is un-American.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus, accepting her award for her role in Veep We need to vote. Had we all voted, we wouldnt be here. You dont like it, you dont have nothing to say if you didnt vote. Get a clipboard, get organized and get in it. Dont sit back on the sidelines. Get in it. This is a fight for the country right now. Its worth fighting for.  Courtney B. Vance, nominated for his performance in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story For the first time ever in my lifetime, Ive been concerned about where its going to go. It doesnt seem to be that its going to go in a very positive direction.  Claire Foy, nominated for her role as Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix series The Crown Read More Facebook

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Green card holders will not be blocked by Trumps order, Homeland Security says By David Lauter (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times) The Trump administration backed away from one of the most controversial parts of its new executive order on immigration Sunday evening, saying that permanent U.S. residents in most cases will not be affected by the new rules. Since the president issued the order Friday, confusion has been rampant over the effects on permanent residents, noncitizens who hold so-called green cards that allow them to live and work legally in the U.S. Many were stopped and detained at airports for many hours on Friday and Saturday and, in some cases, reported that they had been threatened with being returned to their home countries. An undetermined number of other green card holders were stopped from boarding U.S.-bound planes. Late Sunday, however, the secretary of Homeland Security, retired Gen. John Kelly, issued a statement changing the policy. Statement By Secretary John Kelly On The Entry Of Lawful Permanent Residents Into The United States  https://t.co/Es1qivoR3J pic.twitter.com/hffMK2MOQC  Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 29, 2017 I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest, Kelly wrote. Green card holders from one of the seven countries covered by the 90-day ban will still need to request a waiver to gain reentry to the U.S. if they have traveled abroad. But unless officials have significant derogatory information about a green card holder that indicates a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in deciding the case, Kellys statement said. A White House official, briefing reporters about the change in policy, said that about 170 people have applied for a waiver to the ban so far, and all 170 have received a waiver and have been allowed to enter the U.S. The seven countries affected by the ban are Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Facebook

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Uber fights immigration order -- and #DeleteUber hashtag -- with $3-million legal fund for drivers By Tracey Lien Hours after Lyfts co-founders announced a $1-million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union to defend the

Constitution, Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick pulled out his pocket book as well. Kalanick promised in a Facebook post that the company would create a $3-million legal defense fund to help drivers affected by the Trump administrations move to restrict immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. The fund will help drivers with immigration and translation services. Kalanick also said the San Francisco ride-hailing company will provide 24/7 legal support to drivers stuck outside the country and compensate them for lost earnings. Drivers eligible for assistance were directed to contact the company via an online form. Although the announcement was greeted with some support on Facebook and Twitter, many saw it as too little too late. The company had come under fire a day earlier for advertising on Twitter that it was operating at New Yorks Kennedy International Airport during a taxi strike protesting the executive order. That gaffe, coupled with Kalanicks involvement in a panel advising President Trump on economic issues, helped spawn the Twitter hashtag #DeleteUber, which encouraged customers to delete the app from their phones in protest. You are 20 hours too late, one person wrote in response to Kalanicks Facebook post. Still deleted my account today, wrote another. Though Kalanick issued a statement on Saturday opposing the executive order, it didnt stop thousands of Twitter users from adopting the trending the #DeleteUber hashtag to decry Ubers actions. They accused the company of attempting to profit from the strike and prioritizing business interests over a moral imperative. Celebrities also jumped on the bandwagon, with actor and activist George Takei on Sunday tweeting to his 2.9 million followers: Lyft donates $1mil to ACLU while Uber doubles down on its support for Trump. #DeleteUber. Facebook

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75-year-old grandmother from Iran tells the story of her detention at LAX By Alene Tchekmedyian Siavosh Naji-Talakar of Phoenix hugs his grandmother Marzieh Moosavizadeh after she was released from detention at LAX early Sunday morning. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Marzieh Moosavizadeh and her grandson follow a routine when she visits almost every year from Iran. The 75-year-old, who travels in a wheelchair and speaks little English, struggles to find direct flights to Phoenix, where he and his family live. So they meet in Los Angeles and he escorts her on the last leg of her trip. This time was different. Moosavizadeh landed at Los Angeles International Airport a day after President Trump signed an executive order banning citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, from entering the United States. Read More Facebook

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GOP senators call executive order a self-inflicted wound. Trump calls them wrong and weak By Matt Ballinger McCain and Graham in 2013. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona released a statement Sunday saying that confusion at U.S. airports shows that President Trumps executive order on immigration was not properly vetted. Such a hasty process risks harmful results, the Republicans statement read. We should not stop green-card holders from returning to the country they call home. We should not stop those who have served as interpreters for our military and diplomats from seeking refuge in the country they risked their lives to help. And we should not turn our backs on those refugees who have been shown through extensive vetting to pose no demonstrable threat to our nation. It went on: Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism. The president responded on Twitter: The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 ...Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017 Facebook

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At least 600 people wait to greet Syrians arriving in Phoenix By Nigel Duara Elijah Chavez and Brandi Hernandez protest in Phoenix (Nigel Duara/Los Angeles Times) A Phoenix-bound British Airways flight was scheduled to arrive from London at Sunday evening carrying several Syrians. A protest of about 600 people was waiting at a Phoenix international airport terminal for the flight to arrive. The outcome when these people arrive is uncertain at best, said Tanveer Shah, an Arizona attorney in private practice who volunteers with the ACLU. Shah said Syrians on board the flight would, in the best case, walk off the plane without a problem. But given the outcomes in other cities on Saturday and Sunday, Shah said it was incumbent on civil liberties attorneys to be there when the plane arrives. We have staff attorneys here ... who are prepared to file emergency pleadings, Shah said. Facebook

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When Muslims got blocked at American airports, U.S. veterans rushed to help By Matt Pearce (G. Morty Ortega / Getty Images) Jeffrey Buchalter was reflooring his foyer in Chesapeake Beach, Md., and listening to MSNBC over the weekend when he heard the news: An Iraqi who had worked with American forces as an interpreter had been stopped from entering the U.S. under a new executive order on immigration from President Trump. The story stopped him cold. Buchalter, an Army veteran who works as a law-enforcement instructor at the Department of Homeland Security, had served multiple tours of duty as a military policeman in Iraq, service that cost him dearly. He was decorated for injuries sustained from gunfire and improvised explosive devices. Exams revealed hed suffered herniated discs, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and he spent 2  years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center trying to get right. But he was still alive, and now the married father of two children. And he believes thats thanks in part to the work of Iraqi interpreters who acted as guides during his work in their country. So he told his younger daughter and son they were going to take a trip: a two-hour drive to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., where, for the first time in his life, Buchalter would join a protest. Read More Facebook

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Demonstrators against Trumps immigration limits  and a few who like them  surge through LAX By Javier Panzar The crowd at LAX is getting bigger and bigger. pic.twitter.com/dJ281TETXj  Javier Panzar  (@jpanzar) January 29, 2017 Thousands of people filled the international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday afternoon to call for the release of an unknown number of people being detained by immigration authorities. Filling the arrivals section of the terminal and spilling into the street outside, the throng chanted, Let them in, and Love, not hate, makes America great. Jacob Kemper, a 35-year-old Army veteran who fought two tours in Iraq, said he was infuriated to think soldiers he fought alongside might be denied entry to the country. I really dont care about religion, but I really hate oppression, he said, holding a sign that read, I Fought Next To Muslims. Shay Soltani, a network engineer, fled the Iranian revolution 40 years ago and still has family members in Iran. She doesnt know if she will be able to see them again. As she and hundreds of others marched through the airport, she said she was horrified by Trumps order. I am so hurt by this, she said. He is against freedom of speech and the constitution and everything I believe in as an American. Meanwhile, about a dozen counter-protesters popped up on the other side of the street, holding signs that said X-treme vetting and Keep Refugees Out. They said they were tired of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally, which they said jeopardizes the safety of American citizens. Chanell Temple, 63, of Los Angeles said she was sick of watching immigrants here illegally steal benefits and services from American citizens, specifically veterans and homeless people who need aid. I worked out here for 40 years and they are coming here and taking everything away, said Temple, a former bookkeeper who said she lost her job and healthcare after she was fired for an inability to speak Spanish. Raul Rodriguez Jr., coordinator of a group called America First Latinos, said he was concerned about what he considers a surge in crimes committed against Americans by those who are in the country illegally. They are lawbreakers. They have violated federal law and they need to be deported, he said. Facebook

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Silicon Valley execs speak out against immigration ban By Tracey Lien Technology executives are speaking out against President Trumps executive order on immigration, highlighting how the ban hurts their businesses. Leaders of companies that include Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Dropbox and Twitter denounced it over the weekend. Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we do, said Apple chief executive Tim Cook in a memo to employees. In my conversations with officials here in Washington this week, Ive made it clear that Apple believes deeply in the importance of immigration  both to our company and to our nations future. General Electric Co. chief executive Jeff Immelt said Sunday that businesses with global operations must balance working with the new administration while also supporting their workers and partners. We have many employees from the named countries and we do business all over the region, Immelt said in a statement. These employees and customers are critical to our success and they are our friends and partners. We stand with them and will work with the U.S. administration to strive to find the balance between the need for security and the movement of law abiding people. Facebook

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LAX protest grows as families wait Meg Heatherly, 27, of Los Angeles holds a Shame sign during a protest at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Facebook

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L.A. city attorney barred from seeing detainees at LAX By James Queally Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer said he was repeatedly denied access to federal detainees or an attorney who could discuss the situation with him at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Federal officials have declined to discuss the LAX detentions or respond to Feuers criticisms. While he was at the airport, Feuer said he was approached by a woman who claimed her father, suffering from Parkinsons disease, was among the detainees. It is those kind of real stories that are at stake because of this outrageous action by the feds. It is time not only for officials in my position, but all Americans, should find this a breathtaking violation of rights.  Mike Feuer Read More Facebook

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Democratic attorneys general from 15 states condemn Trump immigration order By Ann M. Simmons California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) More than a dozen Democratic attorneys general from states across the country have condemned the Trump administrations executive order suspending acceptance of refugees and have vowed to oppose it to ensure that as few people as possible suffer from the chaotic situation that it has created. In a communique Sunday, the group said: As the chief legal officers for over 130 million Americans and foreign residents of our states, we condemn President Trumps unconstitutional, un-American and unlawful Executive Order and will work together to ensure the federal government obeys the Constitution, respects our history as a nation of immigrants, and does not unlawfully target anyone because of their national origin or faith. The executive order places an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria and prohibits citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering as refugees for four months. It also places a suspension on admissions of other citizens of those countries. The legal officials represent 15 states. They include California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra and his contemporaries in Washington, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia. Religious liberty has been, and always will be, a bedrock principle of our country, and no president can change that truth, the attorneys general said in the statement. They praised the decision of multiple federal courts to order a stay on some aspects of the order. We are confident that the Executive Order will ultimately be struck down by the courts, the statement said. Facebook

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13 people who had been detained at LAX have been released, source says By James Queally Protesters at LAX on Sunday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Thirteen people who were detained Saturday night at Los Angeles International Airports Terminal 2 were eventually released, a law enforcement source told The Times. Each of them held green cards, which grant permanent residency in the U.S. The source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation at the airport, could not provide detention figures for the Tom Bradley International Terminal, which has been the center of protest activity. Thats where protesters were gathering Sunday. Nurse Jamie Shoemaker, 51, of Los Angeles held an American flag in one hand and carried a sign that read, Muslims are welcome here, racists and fascists are not. She called Trumps order un-American. This is not the country I want, she said. This is not the country I grew up in. Read More Facebook

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Democrats in Congress drafting legislation to repeal Trumps refugee ban, pressuring GOP for support By Lisa Mascaro Sen. Chuck Schumer becomes emotional speaking against Pres. Trump's immigration order, calling it "mean-spirited and un-American." pic.twitter.com/NkhUdpaNyV  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 29, 2017 Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Democrats will introduce legislation as soon as Monday to stop President Trumps actions temporarily banning refugees and arrivals from certain Muslim countries. House Democrats are taking similar legislative action, and lawmakers from both chambers will rally Monday evening at the Supreme Court to protest Trumps orders. This executive order was mean-spirited and un-American, said Schumer, the New York Democrat, choking up as he stood with immigrants and refugees at a press conference Sunday. It must be reversed immediately. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said House Democrats are exploring legal options, including an amicus brief in support of the ACLU lawsuit against the actions. The chances of passing a bill through the Republican-controlled Congress are slim, as most GOP leaders and lawmakers have not objected to Trumps ban. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that while he was personally opposed to a religious test on admissions, it was best left to the courts to resolve the issue. Its hopefully going to be decided in the courts as to whether or not this has gone too far, McConnell said on ABCs This Week. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) expressed his support Friday for Trumps action. A handful of Republicans, though, are uneasy with Trumps orders, and have spoken against them. Schumer noted that just few more Republicans would be needed to reach the 60-vote threshold for advancing Senate legislation. Maybe we can pass something in Congress, Schumer said. Its up to Republicans. Facebook

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Emotional reunion at JFK airport after release of elderly Sudanese man from immigration detention By Barbara Demick Tears and hugs at JFK's international arrivals as a detainee is released, reuniting father with son. More families wait, cheering. pic.twitter.com/WrVpoocWjY  Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) January 29, 2017 For those immigrants temporarily detained under a new Trump administration executive order at New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport, attorneys have put a priority on getting some of the older detainees released to their families. One small victory for the lawyers was the case of Yassin Abdelrhman, a 76-year-old green card holder from Sudan who had been detained after a trip home to visit family. He was released about noon on Sunday after being detained for 30 hours. Soon, he was reunited with his sons. He is a strong individual, but he has some health challenges, said U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who had been working on their case. Facebook

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Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will not attend Oscars Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi after winning an Oscar in 2012. ((Allen J. Schaben/ Los Angeles Times) ) In a statement to the New York Times today, Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi said he no longer planned to attend this years ceremony. Farhadis film The Salesman is nominated in the foreign language film category. Farhadi had initially hoped to attend despite the prohibition on visitors from Iran. But he said he had decided the possibility of this presence is being accompanied by ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me even if exceptions were to be made for my trip. Read More Facebook

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How an Iranian Fulbright scholar got into the U.S.: We found a lawyer who found a lawyer who found a lawyer By Barbara Demick Iranian students in front of a makeshift law office in JFKs Terminal 4. (Barbara Demick / Los Angeles Times) Perhaps nothing encapsulates the chaos emanating from President Trumps executive order better than what happened with Ukrainian Airlines Flight 232. The regularly scheduled flight to Kiev had to turn around on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy Airport early Sunday after a federal judge issued a stay of a deportation order of dozens of foreigners, including a 32-year-old Iranian linguist who is a doctoral candidate and former Fulbright scholar. With just minutes to spare, Vahideh Rasekhi -- helped by volunteer lawyers and her smart phone  managed to prevent the flight from taking off. She had arrived Saturday afternoon, but was blocked from entering the United States by the executive order barring arrivals of citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Libya. Around midnight, she was put on the Ukrainian Air flight to return to Tehran, via Kiev. We found a lawyer who found a lawyer who found a lawyer, said Mehdi Namazi, 29, a friend who has been waiting for her at the airport. The lawyers were showing officials a copy of the order issued a few hours earlier by U.S. District Court Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn. It was all very confusing. They were arguing as the plane was taxiing, Namazi said. According to one lawyer, Melissa Trent, Rasekhi herself was walking up and down the aisles arguing for the plane not to take off. She knew that if the plane left she would never get back to the United States again, Trent said. Rasekhi spent most of Sunday in detention with other Iranians, but was released into the United States at around 3 p.m.. A dozen Iranian friends had been waiting inside the airports Terminal 4 amid a clutter of discarded coffee cups and half-eaten donuts in front of a diner that had been turned into a makeshift law office. Another Iranian student was waiting for her parents, who were taken into detention after arriving on another flight I havent seen them in 3-1/2 years. They dont speak English. But Im hopeful, said the student, who gave her name as Sahar. The students were both furious at the way their country had been targeted by Trumps order and touched by the outpouring of support from the volunteer lawyers. We see two different Americas here. There is this order banning us, and than there are all these people here who came to the airport. If it werent for these volunteers, she would have been deported, said Namazi. Im very depressed. We feel betrayed by this country that we invested so much energy and hope into. We are all graduate students, professors, PhDs, engineers. To say this is for national security, it doesnt add up, said Tahmineh Tabrizian, 33, another friend of Rasekhis. She said her own parents had planned to come to the United States and had spent $14,000 on tickets and visas and would now have to cancel their trip. Rasekhi, who has lived in the United States for a decade, was a Fulbright scholar at UC Santa Barbara and received a masters degree at Fresno State University, according to a resume supplied by one of her friends. She had been studying for a PhD at Stony Brook University on Long Island. She had gone to Tehran over the Christmas break to visit her parents and was on her way back to resume her studies when she was detained. Facebook

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Protests begin again at LAX on Sunday morning By Genaro Molina Facebook

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Protesters in Tel Aviv compare Trump immigration order to Israeli refugee policies By Joshua Mitnick Demonstrators in Tel Aviv protest U.S. President Trumps new immigration order. (Joshua Mitnick / Los Angeles Times) Holding signs reading Refugees Welcome and chanting No Ban, No Wall, Sanctuary for All, several dozen demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on Sunday to join protests in the U.S. against President Trumps new immigration policy. Mia Zur Szpiro, a 36-year-old filmmaker, said she felt compelled to demonstrate because her parents survived the Holocaust. We are a country of immigrants, and to me it was astounding that this [order] was passed on Holocaust Memorial Day, she said. Its wrong to stereotype, and its wrong to send people who are in need back into the face of danger and the risk of death. Elliot Vaisbrub Glassenberg, a protest organizer and migrant rights activist, compared the new U.S. policy to Israeli policies toward tens of thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants who crossed into the country illegally from Egypts Sinai desert. The policies that Trump has enacted are no worse than the policies that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has enacted for years here  such as not allowing any non-Jews to be given refugee status in Israel, except for a select few. Togod Omar, a native of Sudan who was at the protest, said he applied for political asylum in Israel three years ago, and is still waiting. He said Sudanese friends hoping to be resettled in the U.S. were upset by the new executive order. Trump doesnt understand whats going on in Sudan, Omar said. You cant punish the Sudanese people for what the Islamic government is doing. You cant banish someone because of their religion. Facebook

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President Trump hits majority disapproval in record time, Gallup finds By David Lauter Days until achieving MAJORITY disapproval from @Gallup



Reagan: 727

Bush I: 1336

Clinton: 573

Bush II: 1205

Obama: 936



Trump: 8. days. pic.twitter.com/kv2fy0Qsbp  Will Jordan (@williamjordann) January 29, 2017 President Trumps actions during his first week in office have appeared to be aimed at the voters who already supported him, not at reaching out to the rest, and thats taken a rapid toll on his support, which was already historically low. Gallup, which has measured job approval for presidents for decades, shows Trumps approval so far at 45%, with 48% disapproving. Thats an average of several days polling. The daily trend lines are not kind to the new administration. As of Saturday, 51% of Americans disapproved of Trumps performance. Thats a record for the speed of getting to majority disapproval. By comparison, President George W. Bush hit majority disapproval six months into his second term, in June 2005, and remained in negative territory for the rest of his tenure. President Obama did not hit 51% disapproval until August of 2011, during the crisis over the federal debt ceiling that summer. His approval rebounded later that year, but he had a second period of majority disapproval during late 2013 and much of 2014. He ended his term with widespread approval and 37% of Americans disapproving. Trump Job Approval: Approve 45% (-1); Disapprove 48% (+3). Get the full trend https://t.co/BjTUhf0NAM.  GallupNews (@GallupNews) January 27, 2017 Facebook

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Hundreds of travelers were caught in limbo over rushed visa ban By Brian Bennett (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Hundreds of travelers were blocked from entering the U.S. or prevented from boarding flights in the hours after President Trump signed his order banning arrivals from seven predominantly Muslim countries, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In the order, Trump temporarily suspended refugee admissions and banned travelers from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Scores of people from those countries were aboard airplanes flying toward the U.S. when Trump signed his executive order on Friday afternoon, setting off waves of confusion among border officials and the traveling public. Upon landing at U.S. airports, 109 people from the listed countries were detained by immigration officials and prevented from entering the U.S., officials said. The department had approved 81 waivers to the new travel ban by Saturday afternoon, the official said, but at least some of the people detained on arrival were sent back to their countries of origin. Court orders issued Saturday evening required U.S. border officials to stop returning people who had already arrived with valid visas. It is unclear how many people were deported before the orders were issued. It is also unclear if the Trump administration has fully complied with those orders. In addition to the people who arrived in the U.S. and were detained, as of 3 p.m. on Saturday, an additional 173 travelers from the listed countries had been stopped from boarding flights to the U.S., a Homeland Security official said in a statement. The department did not make an official available to describe the actions and the agencys response. As many as 3,250 travelers may have been inconvenienced by the new visa restrictions, officials for the department said in a statement Sunday. Yesterday, less than 1% of the more than 325,000 international air travelers who arrive every day were inconvenienced while enhanced security measures were implemented, the statement read. The department will comply with court orders, the statement said. But no evidence was given to confirm this. Lawyers seeking to meet with detainees at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington and at San Francisco have said that they were blocked by officials on Sunday. The Department of Homeland Security will comply with judicial orders, faithfully enforce our immigration laws, and implement President Trumps executive orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or the American people, according to the departments statement. All of the visa holders and travelers from the listed countries blocked from entering the U.S. since Friday already had gone through multiple steps of security screening that checked their biographical information and travel history against U.S. terrorism databases. Facebook

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White House seems to back down on part of new vetting policy By Christi Parsons The White House on Sunday appeared to back down on a key part of President Trumps tough new immigration order, signaling that travelers trying to enter the country from seven banned countries will be allowed in if they hold green cards. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said that these legal permanent residents are exempt from the travel ban moving forward, even though over the weekend other administration officials said the rule did apply to them. The apparent reversal came amid a national controversy over the new Trump order that temporarily halts the entry of all refugees to the U.S. and any traveler from seven majority Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Federal judges across the country have blocked parts of the presidents executive actions since they came down on Friday, mostly preventing the deportation of some travelers who ran into the first wave of implementation over the weekend. The back-and-forth over the green-card holders reflected a generalized confusion about the new order, which also bars Syrian refugees from entering the United States indefinitely. Lawyers for some of the affected immigrants said border agents seemed uncertain about the new rules and were disagreeing with one another about which travelers were affected and which were not. Further complicating the picture was a statement from the Department of Homeland Security asserting that its agents would enforce all of Trumps orders while also complying with judicial orders. As some of the orders block deportation, that left individual officers to try to figure out which priorities to honor. Facebook

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Op-Ed: Trumps cruel, illegal refugee executive order By Erwin Chemerinsky Protesters demonstrate at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on Saturday. (Stephanie Keith / Getty Images) Barring individuals fleeing persecution from entering the United States is simply inhumane. Adding irony to injury, Trumps executive order was issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which should have been an occasion to atone for turning away refugees during the 1930ssome of whom then died in concentration camps. For example, in 1939, the United States turned away the St. Louis, a boat filled with refugees, many of them German Jews. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 254 passengers from the St. Louis died in the Holocaust.  Erwin Chemerinsky Read More Facebook

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Lyft pledges to donate $1 million to ACLU following Trumps immigration order By Tracey Lien (Richard Vogel / Associated Press) Tech executives had been mostly quiet for the first week of Donald Trumps presidency  but that changed after his controversial executive order restricting refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. Executive after executive spent Saturday tweeting and posting messages to Facebook decrying the administrations actions. Lyft co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green went a step further: On Sunday, they announced they would donate $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union over the next four years. Banning people of a particular faith or creed, race or identity, sexuality or ethnicity, from entering the U.S. is antithetical to both Lyft and our nations core values, the co-founders wrote in an email to Lyft customers. We stand firmly against the actions, and will no
Good morning. Its Friday, Jan. 6, and heres whats going on around a wet California:

TOP STORIES

The Big One

Whats being billed as the most severe storm California has seen in a decade will bear down on the state this weekend. In parts of Northern California, up to 12 inches of rain below 8,500 feet are expected, and massive amounts of snow  up to 6 feet  above that elevation. A colder storm two days behind that will drop yet more heavy snow. The atmospheric river is expected to bring blizzards, flooding and even avalanches. Los Angeles Times

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Hate without the crime

Police agencies are walking a fine line as they investigate hate incidents that dont rise to the level of crimes. Officials say these investigations can help prevent hate crimes, and some experts agree. But they could also raise civil liberties concerns. Los Angeles Times

Plus: What makes a hate crime a hate crime? Washington Post

An unlikely ally

From behind bars, Raymond Lee Jennings pleaded with a court to throw out his murder conviction, saying he had nothing to do with the shooting death of an 18-year-old college student in a dimly lit Palmdale parking lot. Now  more than a decade after his arrest  he has a surprise ally in his request to drop the conviction: the same district attorneys office that prosecuted him. Los Angeles Times

L.A. STORIES

Will he stay? As Eric Garcetti starts his reelection bid, one major issue emerging is whether he will serve out a full second term if elected. An opponent is trying to use his political ambitions against him. Los Angeles Times

Bay Boys: Police planned a sting operation against the surfer gang that, critics say, has caused havoc on the Palos Verdes Peninsula coast. But someone tipped off its members. Daily News

Twilight zone: Is Disney making a mistake getting rid of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror? Here are some other controversial removals at Disneyland. Orange County Register

Layla: Mozza owner Nancy Silverton on how Eric Clapton and some really nice wine made for a perfect meal. Wall Street Journal

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Muslims wait: As the days crawl toward the inauguration of Donald Trump, many Muslims, even in liberal California, anxiously wonder how much the president-elects tough-talking rhetoric will be matched by legislative actions. Los Angeles Times

Computer woes: State officials have failed to remedy problems that have contributed to a two-year delay for a new computer system and cost increases that are pushing its cost toward $1 billion, State Auditor Elaine Howle warned Thursday. Los Angeles Times

Trolley coming or going? Will Sacramento finally get its downtown streetcar systems? The fate of the transit line is now in the hands of Donald Trump because federal funds are needed. Sacramento Bee

Voting early: Californias presidential primary could find itself squarely in the middle of the Super Tuesday political sweepstakes in 2020 under a proposal being introduced this week at the state Capitol. And while earlier efforts have failed to either influence the outcome of the Democratic or Republican contests or draw high voter turnout, the plans author thinks times have changed. Los Angeles Times

Housing or wages? So why are some businesses moving out of California? Is it the minimum wage hike? Or are high housing prices the real cause? Los Angeles Times

CRIME AND COURTS

Fatal shooting: In Pomona, an eviction turned into a deadly shooting. Residents said they were at a loss Thursday to explain the violence, and could only guess what had driven a quiet and withdrawn neighbor to fire on their property manager and her boyfriend. Los Angeles Times

Getting hate: The victim of a bizarre kidnapping last year is now being bombarded with hate on Facebook. Shes now fighting back: After reading this I went into one of my many PTSD episodes of terror. East Bay Times

GREAT CALIFORNIA DELUGE

Why is California getting so much rain? Blame the atmospheric river. Its become a trendy meteorological term, but what does it actually mean? Mercury News

Folsom Lake rising fast amid rain and snow. KCRA

The storms could close Yosemite. My Mother Lode

And a reminder, L.A.: Heres how to drive in the rain. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Nail art: Inside the world of San Franciscos underground nail salons, which have the feel of an art gallery. San Francisco Chronicle

Imperfect chef: Meet the Inland Empire food blogger who gained a wide following by admitting she  and her dishes  are not perfect. To be honest, when I started, I looked at all these people blogging who seemed so perfect. I screw up sometimes. Im still learning new techniques and recipes. Well, its an imperfect kitchen. San Bernardino Sun

Swiss cows: Why the Swiss are buying up California dairies. San Francisco Chronicle

Portland = Frogtown? Fred Armisen shoots Portlandia in Portland but writes it in a trendy spot of Los Angeles. He doesnt see that as a problem. Yeah, because the culture is so similar. [In Los Angeles,] were in an area called Frogtown, which is near Silver Lake. Its an industrial area thats already starting to turn. Little shops are opening up everywhere. New York Times

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles area and San Diego: Partly cloudy with highs in the low to mid-60s. San Francisco area and Sacramento: Partly cloudy with highs around 50 before the deluge hits this weekend.

AND FINALLY

Todays California memory comes from Lisa Cooper-Keil:

Prior to my decision to leave Detroit for Southern California in 1973, I had only visited in summer. Anticipating an end to the cold weather I had grown up with, I gave away every jacket, sweater, heavyweight garment and warm piece of clothing I owned. I arrived in Venice Beach, in November, with nothing but shorts and T-shirts in my suitcase. Imagine my shock to find rain and cooler temperatures. I remember standing at a bus stop freezing my buns off in the rain. I didnt even have an umbrella; I had left that behind in Michigan too!

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Shelby Grad.
In steadfast pursuit of gender equality and to promote nonconformity, its become popular in some social circles to start early, very early, by raising young children in a gender-neutral way: not revealing the babys sex at birth, dressing them and their bedroom in various shades of oatmeal, encouraging them to play with gender-neutral toys. Theres also pressure on corporations to help; parental complaints led Target to stop sex-segregating its toys, for instance.

Offering kids the opportunity to pursue what theyd like, freed from societal expectations, is an undeniably positive thing  whether it has to do with toys, clothing, or their future aspirations. But the scientific reality is that its futile to treat children as blank slates with no predetermined characteristics. Biology matters.

A large and long-standing body of research literature shows that toy preferences, for example, are innate, not socially constructed or shaped by parental feedback.

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Most girls will gravitate toward socially interesting toys, like dolls, that help social and verbal abilities develop. Most boys will gravitate toward toys that are mechanically interesting, like cars and trucks, fostering visuo-spatial skills.

An immense body of neuroimaging research has shown brain differences between the sexes.

One recent study, published in Infant and Child Development, showed that these preferences emerge as early as nine months of age  before children are developmentally aware that gender differences exist, at around 18 months.

Another piece of evidence comes from studying girls who were exposed to high levels of testosterone prenatally, in the case of a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH. Girls with CAH tend to be gender nonconforming, and will prefer toys that are typical to boys, even when their parents offer more praise for playing with female-typical ones. This speaks to the vital role of hormones in developing gender preferences and sex differences in behavior, more broadly.

We also see the same trend in our primate cousins, including rhesus and vervet monkeys. Young female monkeys gravitate toward dolls while male monkeys prefer wheeled toys, despite the fact they arent encouraged by other monkeys or their caregivers in their choices.

In the face of scientific data, the gender-neutral movement nevertheless continues to gain momentum. Indeed, its adherents took heart in a study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which touted the idea that the brains of women and men are identical. If so, that would offer support to the theory that gender is an artificially created, outdated concept.

However, an immense body of neuroimaging research has shown brain differences between the sexes. One meta-analysis of 126 studies found that men have larger total brain volumes than women. Men also show greater white matter connectivity running from the front to the back of the brain, while women have more of these connections running between the two hemispheres.

Additionally, when researchers reanalyzed the same brain data from the no sex differences study, they found that it was possible to correctly identify whether a given brain was male or female 73% of the time. But this discovery did not receive much attention from the media, and as a result, the initial studys misinformation continues to spread.

I hear from many well-meaning parents who raised their children in gender-neutral homes and were surprised to find that they nevertheless gravitated toward stereotypical interests and toys. Little boys who were given pots and pans to play with turned them into makeshift toy cars, complete with self-generated engine sounds. Little girls turned to one another and started playing house.

The gender-neutral trend capitalizes on fears that parents have of inadvertently limiting their childs potential. We want the best for our children; for daughters to grow up to be as competitive for STEM jobs as their male counterparts, and for sons to possess strong social and communication skills.

But whether your child leans toward gender-atypical traits will likely have more to do with the prenatal environment testosterone levels in utero  than a perfectly balanced upbringing. Besides, so long as children are given the option to take part in activities they find interesting, theres nothing wrong with being gender-typical.

Acknowledging inherent sex differences isnt harmful or sexist; differences dont necessitate one sex being better than the other.

Debra W. Soh is a sex writer and sexual neuroscientist at York University in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @debra_soh.

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If you thought 2016 was a nasty, brutish year for LGBT rights across the country, 2017 is already shaping up to be much, much worse.

Over the holidays, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced that he would be reintroducing the First Amendment Defense Act, a bill first put forward in 2015. It would prevent the government from taking action against businesses that discriminate against LGBT people based on their religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is defined as a union solely between one man and one woman.

This bill is a trumped-up version of the religious liberty bills that have floated around state legislatures in the last few years. In 2015, as the governor of Indiana, Vice President-elect Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was fixed after a $60-million boycott of the state. Another such law was passed in Mississippi last April but was later struck down in federal court.

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Under the First Amendment Defense Act, the Colorado bakery that famously declined to bake a cake for a gay couples wedding would be able to do so legally. But the bill has the potential to do much greater harm to the LGBT community than petty discrimination.

The LGBT community has more to fear from these bills than homophobic bakers.

Lets say a transgender woman has a heart attack. Her partner calls an ambulance. The EMT on duty races to the scene but quickly learns of her gender identity. Under the First Amendment Defense Act, the medic could be permitted to deny her the emergency support that would save her life.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. In 1995, Tyra Hunter, 24, got into a car accident in Washington, D.C. Instead of helping her, the first responder shouted transphobic slurs at her. This [expletive] aint no girl, he said. Hes got a [expletive]! Hunter died the following day after receiving inadequate medical care.

Twenty-one years later, things havent changed as much as you might think, even as LGBT people gain wider visibility and acceptance.

Lambda Legal reports that over half of LGBT individuals claim to have experienced discrimination from a healthcare provider. Meanwhile, more than a quarter of trans respondents told the National Womens Law Center in 2014 that they had been refused services from a doctor or medical professional outright. One woman claimed that when her doctor found out that she was transgender, he forced her to have a pelvic exam, despite the fact that she was being treated for a sore throat.

The doctor invited others to look at me while he examined me and talked to them about my genitals, she told the NWLC.

Should you be turned away from a bakery for being in a same-sex relationship, chances are that you can take your business elsewhere. But for LGBT people unable to receive basic medical care, its not so simple. If youre transgender and live in a state like Texas, you might have to travel hundreds of miles to find an affirming doctor willing to treat your specific health needs.

These barriers to entry may be insurmountable to some. Because the medical community remains decades behind, particularly when it comes to trans health, many LGBT people have been forced to become their own experts. Thats not good news. The National LGBT Cancer Network reports that lesbians and bisexual women are more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to experience health issues like diabetes, asthma and complications from obesity and are more likely to smoke.

These are the exact kinds of people need to be brought into the health industry, not excluded from it. Providing safe, comfortable environments for LGBT patients could save lives.

The First Amendment Defense Act would do more than make the healthcare system even more of a nightmare for LGBT people than it already is. The language of the bill is so broad and sweeping that critics warn the legislation could be applied in any number of ways, furthering discrimination in everything from employment and housing to everyday life.

If a gay employee has a photo of his legally wedded same-sex partner on your desk, he could be fired by his supervisor. A faith-based agency could turn away a lesbian couple who wants to adopt a child, and a landlord could legally deny their application for an apartment.

Donald Trump has already vowed to sign the First Amendment Defense Act should it cross his desk. A spokesperson for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Conn Carroll, told BuzzFeed that congressional Republicans are optimistic the bill will pass with him in the Oval Office.

In truth, this is just the start. The American Civil Liberties Union believes that 2017 will set a record for the number of anti-LGBT religious freedom bills debated by state legislatures. Last year, more than 200 pieces of legislation seeking to roll back the rights of the LGBT community in the name of faith were introduced in states ranging from Illinois and Massachusetts to Alabama. Just days into 2017, Kentucky has already filed a bill strikingly similar to the First Amendment Defense Act.

The LGBT community has more to fear from these bills than homophobic bakers. This isnt about our wedding cakes. This is about our lives.

Nico Lang is the co-editor of the Boys anthology series. You can read his work in Rolling Stone, Salon, and the Onion A.V. Club. Find him on Twitter @nico_lang.

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When chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson opened the first LocoL near 103rd and Grape streets in L.A., they werent grasping for restaurant-review stars. It wasnt about reviews; it was about bringing a sense of Were not forgotten-ness to places like Watts and Oakland, where the second LocoL opened at Broadway and Grand in May. LocoLs motto is revolutionary fast food for everyone, and thats about right.

But, lo and behold, the Oakland LocoL just got what it didnt need: a nasty critique in the New York Times food section. As part of a very occasional series on restaurants not in New York, Pete Wells wrote the review.

Wells was in the Bay Area, but he passed up the chance to review the French Laundry in St. Helena, or Quince, which just got three Michelin stars, in S.F., or the equally honored Manresa in Los Gatos. Instead, he went for LocoL, and he went for it with a vengeance.

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LocoL didnt even rate one star; Wells blasted it with satisfactory. He referred to a fried chicken sandwich mysteriously bland and almost unimaginably dry. The best thing to do with it is pretend it doesnt exist.

Choi responded with an eloquent post on Instagram: The pen has created a lot of destruction over the course of history and continues to. He didnt need to go there but he did. It compelled him to write something he knows would hurt a community that is already born from a lot of pain and struggle.

In a text to me Choi wrote: I aint mad at Pete. But, what he didnt take into context is that none of our team ever had a job before. They didnt deserve these harsh words as theyre trying their best every day. Its like yelling booooo at an elementary school musical.

Maybe Wells decided that Chois and Pattersons resumes  rife with awards, stars, books, even a movie (Jon Favreaus Chef is based on Chois food truck)  opened LocoL to all critical comers.

In highly seasoned language, I texted Choi back. He might not be mad at Pete, I said, but Id like to give Wells the opportunity to meet several Grape Street Crips in the Juniper Street parking lot at Jordan Downs.

Some might say my offer was rude. But so was Wells. What Choi and Patterson went looking for in Watts and in Oakland  and what they found  is resolve, pride and hope. LocoL exists as much to support and employ these communities as to feed them. Thats what revolutionary fast food means.

In my experience  Ive eaten at the Watts LocoL about 40 times, Id say  the food is good. How good? Jonathan Gold, in this newspaper, ranked it No. 58 in his 2016 listing of the 101 best restaurants. I live with chef Nancy Silverton, and most of her office staff at Mozza yelled at me recently when I brought back LocoL take-out for only one of them.

Still, LocoLs cooks and workers arent culinary students from the Cordon Bleu. They havent worked at Spago, or even at Popeyes. As Choi said, before LocoL, many of them hadnt worked at all.

Over a year ago, at Pizzeria Mozza, I had to do a double take at table 70. Was that Ready and Nardo from Grape Street? I know them from my reporter days (and nights) in Watts covering gangs. I didnt expect to see them at Mozza. (A little background: In a three-star gang like the Grape Street Crips, if your name is Ready, when it comes down, youre there.)

They were at a table with Choi, who had already hired them for LocoL and wanted them to see the way Mozza functioned. A month later, when the Watts LocoL opened, Ready moved about the place like he was the maitre d at Valentino. Transformations like that is what LocoL is all about.

If you want stars, go to Providence or Melisse, or if youre in the Bay Area, go to Atelier Crenn or Saison. If you want to feel good, eat way-better-than-usual fast food and brag to your friends about being in on a movement, then go to LocoL in Oakland or Watts.

By foodie standards, LocoLs satisfactory rating was bad news. But, you know, thats the only thing I cant fault Wells on: LocoL satisfies.

Michael Krikorian is the author of the novel Southside. Follow him on Twitter @makmak47.

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To the editor: Ben Santer, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has an uphill battle to convince people that climate change is man-made. The controversy is promoted by groups that have something to lose. Education will work with some people, but too many make their decision based on political opinion. (Can a federal government scientist in California convince Trump that climate change is real? Dec. 30)

I propose that simple risk assessment be used to determine our course of action.

If climate change is not from human activities and we proceed with efforts to correct it, then some money is wasted and the fossil fuel industry will suffer. The green industry will prosper with jobs gained, we will probably get cleaner air to breath, and we will have less dependence on foreign oil.

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If climate change is from human activities and we do nothing, the results could be devastating. The world could lose vast forests along with the watersheds. Grasslands could die off with new dust bowls. Our supplies of food and fresh water could be devastated. People in hardest-hit areas stand to be displaced. The next extinction could be humans.

Believe or dont, but do not gamble with your childrens lives.

Don Jones, Kenmore, Wash.

..

To the editor: I love that Santer is leaving the sidelines and entering the public arena, but its telling that Donald Trumps victory can still shock the scientists who study climate change. One would think that people who live with the problem daily and see American inaction would live in a state of shock, but they dont.

Scientists are people like us who set the reality of the problem aside and focus on today, their science, their family and whats around the corner. Humans are not well equipped to deal with long-term problems. We, even scientists, push the reality of climate change away. We push it far into the future and we imagine our children doing better than others.

If climate scientists enter the public arena and examine solutions, theyll soon be pushing to price carbon pollution, just like economists.

Angie Vazirian, Newport Beach

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
I would love to know what John McCain is thinking right now as he ponders the coming presidency of a man who appears to admire a Russian tyrant far more than he does the intelligence agents of his own country. Does a word like treason run through his mind?

The Republican senator from Arizona is a conspicuously honorable man in a profession filled with people who sell their honor rather cheaply. There is nothing more important than honor to a third-generation military man like McCain. He proved that through five years of confinement and torture as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. While many, if not most, of his Republican colleagues in the Senate and House are putting themselves through ideological contortions to get aligned with the erratic narcissist who is now their leader, McCain is resisting. He is a hero and he is a patriot and it is not hard to imagine that, right now, McCains righteous anger is rising to a boil as he sees the president-elect of the United States discounting hard evidence of Russian espionage aimed at undermining American democracy.

McCain has characterized Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential election as nothing less than an act of war and he repeated that charge on Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that received testimony about Russian cyber-espionage from leaders of the intelligence services. As committee chair, McCain had called the hearing to inform the public about the hacking operation that stole data from computers in the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton and fed it to WikiLeaks, the rogue operation run by Julian Assange. The key witness, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, made it clear that the highest officials in Moscow, including President Vladimir Putin, approved the invasion into the American election and that the efforts extended beyond the hack into dissemination of false information through social media.

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1 / 51 la-1491523602-y7ephyarj1-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 51 la-1491368625-0bgh58ihw8-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los angeles Times) 6 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 51 Trump inspires millions to take to the streets -- to oppose him. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 51 Cartoon caption contest winner at the DENT conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: Jon Duval, executive director of the Ketchum Community Development Corporation. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 51 Old radicals and big media descend on Selma (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 51 Horsey imagined the creation of the Ann Coulter phenomenon in this cartoon from 2007. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 51 This David Horsey drawing is a reconfiguration of a cartoon he first published in 2006. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 51 Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can team up together and open an all-white rodeo. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 51 Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin has brought back the bear. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 51 The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 51 David Horsey / Los Angeles Times (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times)

Every American should be alarmed by Russias attacks on our nation, McCain said. There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference.

One very important American, though, is showing no alarm at all  at least not about the Russians. Donald Trump has been playing a strange game in the weeks before he moves into the White House. He has repeatedly cast doubt on the intelligence reports, pretended he knows more about hacking than the intelligence experts and mocked the intelligence agencies themselves. Even as he sends out a steady stream of tweets slandering the people on whom he will be relying for crucial information when he becomes commander in chief, Trump has praised Putin, expressed agreement with the version of events offered by Assange and criticized the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia in retaliation for the hacking.

What is going on here? Is this just one more defensive reaction from the hyper-defensive Trump? Is he obsessed with protecting the legitimacy of his presidency against the overblown rhetoric of some on the Democratic side who say the Russians skewed the vote and cost Clinton the election and from the more serious and unanimous conclusion of the intelligence agencies that the Russians actions were intended to help his campaign? If so, he is putting his own self-interest ahead of the national interest.

Is there something deeper? Is his affinity for Russia a product of his longtime business ties with that country? Why has Trump been such an ardent admirer of Putin? Does he see him as a role model?

Putin has stifled democracy in his homeland, shut down independent media, neutered rival political parties, subverted elections in other countries, seized Crimea, conducted a proxy war against Ukraine, overseen a savage slaughter of civilians in Syria and stands accused of ordering the killings of political enemies and journalists. Why is Trump drawn to such a person, even as he questions the value of Americas NATO alliance and the unity of Europe?

There is no question that if a Democratic president-elect were to show such a kinship with a Russian dictator while making so many disparaging remarks about the CIA and other American intelligence agencies, Republicans in Congress would be preparing articles of impeachment and the right-wing media would be screaming treason! Odd how that is not happening now.

Luckily, there is McCain  plus other old-school conservatives like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham who have expressed their guarded concern. What about when they are unguarded? When they are talking privately, what are they saying? How great is their alarm? What will they do to defend their country from a man for whom intelligence is a dirty word? What will honor demand of John McCain?

David.Horsey@latimes.com

Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter

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Republicans in Congress are beginning to grapple with how to help President-elect Donald Trump fulfill one of his biggest campaign promises: to build a wall along the Mexican border to slow illegal immigration.

Trump is expected to ask Congress to provide the initial funding for the massive project, estimated to cost between $12 billion and $38 billion.

Once construction gets underway, Trump has said he will demand reimbursement from the Mexican government, even though Mexican officials have said they will refuse to cooperate.

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Amid concerns American taxpayers would shoulder the burden, Trump promised Friday that he would force the U.S. neighbor to pony up the money.

The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! he tweeted.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox responded on Twitter, Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument. Another promise he cant keep.

Meanwhile Republicans were scrambling Friday to figure out how to provide initial support for the wall, despite opposition from Democrats and resistance from budget conservatives in their own party.

Im not sure anyone believed the government of Mexico was going to write a giant check to the federal registry, but there are other ways to ensure Mexico does pay for the border buildout, said Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. There are broad conversations about fulfilling all of Mr. Trumps campaign promises.

An aide to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said no new talks are underway with the Trump transition team on the border issue. But Trumps transition team acknowledged that they would seek help from lawmakers.

Obviously a centerpiece of Donald Trumps successful campaign was, Im going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it, said advisor Kellyanne Conway on Fox and Friends. That hasnt changed, but Congress is examining ways to have the wall paid for through their auspices and Mr. Trump is making the point that he will have Mexico pay it back.

During the campaign, Trump suggested that if Mexico did not agree to pay for the wall, the U.S. might impose a fee on financial remittances sent home by Mexicans working in the U.S. illegally. Such a move would surely provoke opposition from the financial services industry.

Messer said another possibility would be raising some of the funds, about $4 billion, by cutting a child tax break for immigrants here illegally.

The president-elect has also suggested the U.S. could try to pressure Mexico by reducing or slowing down the process by which Mexicans get travel cards and visitors visas.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, parent for the Border Patrol, has already budgeted $175 million for procurement, construction and improvements. But even if that money is diverted to the wall, it wouldnt be nearly enough.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans noted that President George W. Bush signed a 2006 law that authorizes construction of a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico. It was passed by a Republican-led Congress, with support from now Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and other Democrats. But it did not provide the needed funding.

Trump has estimated a wall would cost up to $12 billion to build. But it could be more than triple that, $38 billion, according to an analysis published by MIT Technology Review. Thats equal to the entire annual budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

The difference depends on the type of the fencing  double versus single layer, for example  and how much of the border the wall covers.

Republicans said one scenario would be to link new border funds to a must-pass bill to keep the government running past April 28.

Such a legislative maneuver would force Democrats, who mostly oppose border funding absent broader immigration law changes, to join the vote or run the risk of a springtime government shutdown.

They would have a hard time going home and explaining why they voted against it, said one Republican leadership aide, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

But the strategy could backfire if Republican deficit hawks raise concerns about adding to the debt load. It is unclear if Trump will propose offsetting any wall construction costs with spending cuts elsewhere.

A spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee said the Trump team has not submitted a funding request for the wall.

The chairman and the committee have no interest in threatening a shutdown, the spokeswoman said. The committee has not received any request from the Trump team or leadership on this issue. If and when a proposal is received, we will take a careful look at it.

This is not the first time Trump has indicated that U.S. taxpayers would front the costs.

During an October speech in Gettysburg, Pa., in which he outlined promises for his first 100 days in office, Trump said he would ask Congress to approve legislation that fully funds a wall.

Dont worry about it, he said at the time. Remember, I said Mexico is paying for the wall, with the full understand[ing] that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall, OK?

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

@LisaMascaro

brian.bennett@latimes.com

@ByBrianBennett

noah.bierman@latimes.com

@noahbierman

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With Congress back to work, Washingtons attention this week turned fully to the new, Republican agenda.

President Obama plans a valedictory for next week, and, as he promised, hes continuing to work until the end. Last week, for example, he designated two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada. Already, however, his tenure is in the rear view.

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But what the new era will bring remains unclear. With Donald Trumps inauguration now just two weeks away, the party he conquered  much like the rest of the country -- remains uncertain about what to expect from the soon-to-be president.

Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential transition and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

ETHICS AND HACKING

Two perennial Washington issues generated headlines in the new Congress first week  congressional ethics and relations with Moscow. Both illustrated tensions between Trump and GOP lawmakers.

The ethics controversy provided an uncomfortable reminder of the distance between Trumps drain the swamp rhetoric and the self-interest that often drives lawmakers in both parties.

Rank-and-file members have chafed at scrutiny by semi-independent ethics investigators who were put into place after the last round of congressional scandals. With the new Congress taking office, Republican members, over the objections of Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, sought to bring the ethics cops to heel.

Trump, who is nothing if not keenly aware of what will sell politically, quickly made clear his displeasure, tweeting, as usual, to make his position known. Whacking the ethics office was a bad way to start off, he warned lawmakers.

The Republicans quickly backed down, as Lisa Mascaro reported. With that, Trump won another test of strength with the congressional wing of his party.

By contrast, in the argument over Moscow and its alleged efforts to interfere with the presidential election, Trump has appeared isolated.

Last week, Obama imposed sanctions against Russia as punishment for the hacking efforts. And as Brian Bennett reported, when the nations top intelligence officials trooped to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify about Russias election-season hacking, not a single Republican senator spoke out in support of Trumps position that, perhaps, the hacking was the product of some guy in a basement in New Jersey.

Trump aides have said the president-elect might want to remove some sanctions against Moscow. On Capitol Hill, Republicans criticized Obama for not imposing tougher ones.

Why Trump has painted himself so deeply into a corner on this issue remains a psychological mystery  acknowledging that Russia tried to interfere does not require declaring Trumps victory over Hillary Clinton illegitimate.

But the corner is where he finds himself. Trump seems determined to view any talk of Russian misconduct as a challenge to his legitimacy  a position he reiterated with fresh tweets on Friday morning stressing that Clinton was never going to beat the passion of my voters. And he has continued to feud with the nations intelligence agencies, a risky move for any president.

Trump is scheduled to sit down Friday with intelligence officials for a briefing on the evidence on what Russia did during the election. Whether that can give him a chance to escape from the box he has created could prove critical to the next several months of his presidency.

Still more questions and potential problems lie ahead: Trump enigmatically tweeted this week an apparent caution to Republicans against hasty action to repeal Obamacare. As Mascaro and Noam Levey wrote, Republicans are still nowhere near agreement on how to replace the presidents signature healthcare program or whether they should proceed without a replacement plan in sight.

Have questions about the health law and what might happen to it? Heres Leveys primer on seven things you need to know about Obamacare.

The Republicans have an ambitious agenda for the next year, Mascaro noted, but while GOP lawmakers are anxious to praise Trump as much as they can, the tension that continues to lie just below the surface could make putting those plans into law much harder.

OPPOSITION AND ADVANTAGES

While Republicans on Capitol Hill get their plans lined up, Democrats in Sacramento are getting ready to battle them. This week they unveiled another weapon, hiring former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder as a special counsel.

As Melanie Mason reported, the move underscores how Trump will dominate politics in Sacramento, just as in Washington. It also highlights some potential tension between the ambitious Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, who hired Holder, and the states new attorney general, Xavier Becerra, whose office would typically take the lead in legal disputes between the state and federal governments.

The rush by California Democrats to demonstrate their willingness to fight Trump reflects the views of many of their constituents in a state that voted almost 2-1 against him in November.

Many California residents fear what the Trump era will bring. Among those are many of the states Muslims, as Sarah Parvini reported.

But while Democrats in Sacramento and elsewhere are looking to fight Trump, he will be taking office with several advantages.

One is a growing economy  a benefit that most recent presidents did not have. Presidents Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter all won their elections in part because of the economic problems their predecessors faced. The two George Bushes came into office with better economic conditions than the others, but not as good as those Trump inherits.

After exaggerating the economys problems during his campaign, Trump has now turned economic cheerleader, as Mike Memoli reported. And with Republican voters suddenly more confident about the future, overall views of the economy have improved notably.

Trumps Twitter criticisms of big companies, including automakers, have also generated some early, politically popular promises of new jobs on the way. Critics predict those will prove illusory, but at least for now, they benefit him.

Another advantage Trump will have: lots of judicial vacancies, the product of Republican stalling during Obamas final year in office, as David Savage noted. Filling those openings not only will give Trump a chance to shape the judiciary along conservatives lines, it also provides lots of opportunities to do favors for lawmakers  or threaten to withhold them from the uncooperative.

Democrats who are counting on the new president to stumble early  citing his lack of experience and the fact that a majority of voters were against him  might be right. Then again, most of them never thought Trump would be two weeks from his inauguration.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week. My colleague John Myers will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the transition and in California politics with our Trail Guide, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter
In the six years since Gov. Jerry Brown returned to the state Capitol, his relatively parsimonious approach to state budgets has been consistent enough to leave few watchers expecting major surprises.

But recent events in California and the nation suggest the fiscal proposal Brown unveils next week could be his most circumspect to date, even after voters in November approved billions of dollars in additional taxes.



For the record: The source of the quotation in the final paragraph of this article was misidentified as Sen. Holly Mitchell. The remark was made by Gov. Jerry Browns budget spokesman, H.D. Palmer.

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We have a number of significant fiscal pressures that are looming, said H.D. Palmer, the governors budget spokesman.

Although the details of the new budget plan remain under wraps, the underlying economic data are hidden in plain sight.

On Thursday, the independent Legislative Analysts Office reported that preliminary tax collections in December  a key month for quarterly tax payments  were almost $1.2 billion below predictions. The state Department of Finance, which doesnt release its December analysis until next week, has reported several months of anemic tax collections in comparison to the assumptions built in to the foundation of the California budget that Brown signed into law in June.

Remember when Californias state budget was always late? Heres what changed 

The absence of hundreds of millions of dollars in expected tax revenues  whether Brown will go so far as to call it an actual deficit remains to be seen  could only sharpen the annual haggling between the governor and legislative leaders over revenue projections, a negotiation that has routinely left Brown with the upper hand.

Few will be surprised if Brown uses the lackluster revenue data to demand scaled back growth in future spending or cuts in current spending on some programs.

Having watched this governor over the last several years, I think thats a reasonable expectation, said Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the new chairwoman of the state Senates budget committee.

Voters, though, may find news of missing state tax revenues a surprise after ratifying two major tax measures on the Nov. 8 ballot. Proposition 55 will extend current tax rates on the most wealthy that otherwise would have expired in 2018. Proposition 56 raised the states tobacco tax by an additional $2 per pack of cigarettes.

The political campaign in support of Proposition 55 promised it would prevent cuts to public school funding, which generally is protected by state constitutional funding requirements. Still, sagging revenues could shrink the expected rate of growth in school spending. That could leave education advocates deflated over their efforts to further restore programs that were cut during the recession.

Proposition 56 offers an intriguing test for 2016s campaign rhetoric in light of current conditions. Although the measure specifically promises new tobacco tax revenues as a way to increase funding for healthcare services under the states Medi-Cal system, the programs existing dollars could now be at risk. The net effect could be a smaller boost than the ballot measures proponents had hoped for.

In fact, Medi-Cals reliance on federal dollars may be the most worrisome part of the budget year ahead, given its dramatic expansion with dollars provided by the Affordable Care Act. President-elect Donald Trumps promise to repeal Obamacare could affect the more than 3.8 million Californians who have enrolled in Medi-Cal.

In all, the programs expansion is budgeted to cost $16.1 billion in the current budget year. All but $819 million of that money comes from the federal government, an enormous risk for the state in the years to come.

It depends on how quickly the federal government acts, Mitchell said.

The early indication is that GOP congressional leaders are still wrestling with how to repeal and replace President Obamas signature law, and state budget watchers expect Browns proposal next week to remain largely silent on the looming shift. Still, few feel calm about what lies ahead.

Theres so much uncertainty, said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget and Policy Center, which advocates for programs aimed at helping the working poor.

Hoene usually urges lawmakers to do much more when it comes to funding social services programs, but concedes caution may be in order with the arrival of the Trump administration.

That just seems like smart budget making at this point, he said.

In fact, the uncertainty of which way the national political winds will blow could slow the pace of early state budget negotiations even more than usual. The unveiling of a governors January budget proposal offers an important first glimpse, but the actual work on crafting a spending plan generally doesnt begin until April tax revenues are counted.

This time, state budget watchers say, important decisions may need to wait until much later.

Taken together, Mitchell said, all of these pressures make a powerful case for a prudent budget.

john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast

ALSO

Brown and lawmakers agree to a budget that provides money for housing and child care

California will rely even more on the wealthy under Prop 55s tax plan

Updates on California politics and government
In what will likely become another battle over the balance between privacy and public safety, new legislation at the state Capitol would expand the list of electronic surveillance devices that California law enforcement agencies must disclose to the public.

The bill, introduced last month by state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), would require any local law enforcement agency in California that uses surveillance technology to submit a plan to local officials on how it uses the equipment and the information collected. Surveillance plans would have to be presented at an open hearing and would be required to include any facial recognition software, drones or even social media monitoring used by officers.

Law enforcement officials say the list of surveillance methods is so broad that producing policies for each device could be impractical and would hinder criminal investigations. But privacy advocates argue it doesnt do enough to shed light on police use of spying equipment, technology that they say is quickly evolving and whose reach could be expanded under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Hill said he hopes to create transparency and a check and balance. There has to be standards to create limitations on the use and potential abuse of this technology, because it can be so intrusive on our lives and can very easily cross the line and violate our civil rights, he said.

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California, which already has what may be the most comprehensive digital privacy laws in the nation, has been at the forefront of efforts to make the use of law enforcement surveillance devices more transparent.

State laws require investigators to obtain a probable cause warrant for all digital content and access to devices, such as cellphones, and mandate that law enforcement agencies catalog and make publicly available information about their data systems.

Senate Bill 21 would require law enforcement agencies to draft polices by July 1, 2018, identifying all of their types of surveillance technology, their authorized reasons for using them, the types of data collected and the levels of employees who can use them, along with a description of their training.

It also would prohibit an agency from acquiring new technology unless approved by local officials at a regularly scheduled public meeting.

The legislation is predicated on two laws that went into effect last year. One required agencies to draft and publicly post privacy and usage policies if they operate automated license-plate recognition software. Another ordered the same for cell-site simulators, often called Stingrays or Dirtboxes.

The powerful cellphone tracking devices function as fake cellphone towers to cast a broad dragnet over communications. Law enforcement agencies have sparked controversy and court battles over their use and their ability to collect information from innocent people not under investigation.

But privacy advocates say that not all agencies have complied with the new disclosure rules and that, as with Hills proposal, current laws dont go far enough to ensure that they do.

Legal experts say some agencies could skirt disclosure requirements by borrowing the technology from other federal agencies not subject to state law.

In April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and more than 30 other watchdog groups and nonprofits combed through nearly 170 California government websites to make sure surveillance policies had been posted. They found 79  many of which could easily be located. But volunteers at the time could not locate policies for at least 90 agencies, which were believed to employ surveillance technology based on public records.

Dave Maass, an investigative researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said more agencies have since posted their policies online. But whether California has a clearer picture now of the surveillance technology in use is a mixed bag, he said.

Some policies have revealed new information, such as how long police hold on to data from license plate readers  anywhere from three months to a year or longer. But many used boilerplate language, revealing only that the technology was in use.

Hill said his new legislation is meant to be an inclusive, catch-all policy for technology that is quickly changing. But critics on both sides of the issue say it needs more work.

Cory Salzillo, legislative director with the California State Sheriffs Assn., said his organization had yet to take a position on the bill, but he said law enforcement officials will look into concerns over whether its provisions could give criminals a road map about how we surveil them.

Privacy implications of facial recognition back in the spotlight 

Law enforcement officials said the legislation also imposes challenges for investigators who might need to buy or borrow new technology in time-sensitive cases or emergency situations.

For privacy advocates, the concern is it lacks teeth.

We appreciate the underlying concerns that motivate the bill, said Kevin Baker, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. But it doesnt address the most fundamental issues, such as what is the cost and the risk [of using these devices], and is there going to be real oversight and real enforcement?

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

Twitter: @jazmineulloa

ALSO

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Why California may not see statewide rules on the use of drones anytime soon

Lawmakers try to fix a side effect of reducing drug and theft crimes

Updates on California politics
Sierra travelers trapped by back-to-back storms that dropped more than 2 feet of snow have a brief window to pass, before the arrival of a weather system Saturday so wet forecasters are calling it an atmospheric river.

Up to 12 inches of rain below 8,500 feet are expected, and massive amounts of snow  up to 6 feet  above that elevation. A fifth, colder storm two days behind that will drop yet more heavy snow.

Its a once-in-10-year event, said Zach Tolby, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno. Its the strongest storm weve seen in a long time, the kind of setup we look for to get significant flooding.

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The atmospheric river, or Pineapple Express, will be felt across much of California this weekend, though rains will be much heavily in the north than in the south.

Tolby said the storm is packing the same wallop as an atmospheric river that hit Northern California a decade ago that caused $300 million in damage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Angelenos may remember the 2005 storm because it was the first time it rained on the Rose Parade in 51 years. But Tolby, who lives in Lake Tahoe, remembers the storm differently.

It was pretty wild. I was here in 2005 and it was definitely the hardest rain Id ever seen. It didnt stop for 24 hours, he said.

This weekends storm could bring 36 straight hours of heavy rain from Mammoth Mountain to Susanville, Tolby said.

In the mountains, the rain could pile onto the snow and trigger early snow melts, feeding extra water into watersheds already swollen from a week of rain.

A combination of intense rain on saturated soils will lead to excessive runoff, the National Weather Service said in its weekend forecast.

The Carson, Truckee and Susan rivers are all expected to become overwhelmed and the nearby communities may become increasingly isolated if the deluge triggers mud flows and rock slides.

In Mono County, authorities offered sandbags to residents in preparation for the rain. In Yosemite National Park, authorities are cautioning visitors to check with the park before heading in  the weekend storm could close Yosemite if the Merced River floods, they said.

Colfax, known as the turnaround town, is ready.

Its something we prepare for  it goes with the snow, hand in hand, said Wes Heathcock, community services director for the tiny Placer County town that has perhaps one of the most used Interstate 80 on/off ramps in Northern California when it is a snow day.

When snow conditions become too treacherous, the California Highway Patrol typically closes Interstate 80 at Colfax, as it did Wednesday during a snowstorm that also brought a car-semi collision. Perched at an elevation 2,400 feet, the official tagline of Colfax is above the fog, below the snow.

The options for stranded travelers are slim in the Old West railroad town, whose most famous mention is a passing reference in Jules Vernes Around the World in 80 Days. Even Phileas Fogg did not stop.

There is a Starbucks and a single motel.

Theyre welcome to spend some tax money in Colfax, but generally youll see theyll trickle back down, try to locate hotels a little closer to the [Sacramento] Valley, Heathcock said.

Tolby

Colfax gears up for the die-hards, travelers who believe the solution to snow-blocked passes is to find another route to the same location.

We all have this wonderful tool called GPS now, Heathcock said.

From Colfax, California Highway 174 makes a long northerly loop to the narrow, hairpin turns of Highway 20, eventually depositing drivers into the thick. They hit Interstate 80 at Yuba Pass, just before Donner Summit.

During Wednesdays storm, the citys public works crew joined the sheriff and California Highway Patrol to stand along that road and ward off drivers seeking the bypass.

Wednesdays storm dropped up to 2 feet in less than 24 hours in the Tahoe basin, at times coming down at more than 2 inches an hour.

The Sierra Avalanche Center reported a slight improvement in backcountry conditions. The risk of avalanche lowered to considerable even as the threat increased of historically large avalanches caused by slabs of snowpack as thick as 8 feet above a weak layer of ice laid down by a mid-December rain.

Near Lake Tahoe on Thursday. two skiers were caught in an avalanche that closed a local highway. But they were not injured, officials said.

Sierra residents are preparing for a third onslaught over the weekend, bringing up to 12 inches of rain below 8,500 feet, and more snow above that. A fourth storm system is forecast to roll across Northern California two days after that.

After the weekend storm, another rain-making system is expected to hit Northern California on Tuesday.

Now is the time to prepare! Dry weather thru Fri. Major storm, heavy rain & flooding this weekend. Additional storms past Monday. #cawx pic.twitter.com/FNO1QG7jBz  NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) January 5, 2017

The storm moving through Southern California was significant smaller than the one in the north. But it still caused problems.

Rain-slicked roads were clogged with commuters after a big rig jackknifed on the eastbound 60 Freeway in East Los Angeles, forcing authorities to shut down five lanes. In Burbank, several lanes were blocked after a semi-truck jackknifed across north and southbound lanes of the 5 Freeway.

By midmorning, firefighters rescued a man who was stranded on an island of branches and brush in the rain-swollen Los Angeles River near Fletcher Drive in Silver Lake, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Though the rain subsided Thursday afternoon, the problems kept coming. Crews were forced to temporarily close the northbound 710 Freeway north of the 5 Freeway to replace concrete slabs damaged by the weather, the California HIghway Patrol said.

For all the problems the storms may cause, it will bring more good news for Californias six-year drought. Officials have said steady rain in Northern California the last few months has filled reservoirs and increase the once-anemic snowpack.

They emphasize the storms wont end the drought. But if the rains keep up for spring, it could make a major dent.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

ALSO

With snow piling up in the Sierra, what will it take to end Californias drought?

Crashed helicopter and 2 bodies are found in Port of Los Angeles

Suspect in killings of Long Beach mother, 4-year-old daughter will represent himself at trial

UPDATES:

4:20 p.m. This post was updated with information on Californias drought.

3:11 p.m. This post was updated with information about L.A. rains.

2:10 p.m.: This post was updated with maps and updated forecast information.

This post was originally published at 12:20 p.m.
This was an Easter event like few others.

Take kids who have disabilities and cant hunt for eggs in the traditional way because of their limitations.

Throw in a pastor who is trying to do right by his new Irvine community.

And top it all off with the combined efforts of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the International Assn. of Bomb Technicians and Investigators. They came up with the beeping plastic eggs made specifically for children with no or limited eyesight who rely on their hearing.

On Saturday morning, more than 70 people gathered at Stonegate Elementary School in Irvine, where the campus field was dotted with more than 1,000 colorful plastic eggs.

Grace City Church in Irvine hosted an Easter egg hunt for children with impairments. (Courtesy Grace City Church / Daily Pilot)

For children who have a tough time handling stimuli, like those with autism, there was the quiet search toward the end of the field. At another hunt were the beeping eggs. And at the other side of the field, children in wheelchairs or walking with the assistance of a walker could hold a pole with a magnet attached, and in this way be able to pick up their eggs, which also contained magnets  and rice to weight them.

Kim Doyles daughter was born with a dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism. Finding ways for the girl to participate in fun events with other children can be challenging.

But just before Easter, she found a flier posted at the Irvine-based Kids Institute for Development and Advancement about the egg hunt event.

When I learned of it, I couldnt wait, said Doyle, who lives in Huntington Beach with her 11-year-old daughter, Trinity. We cant do a traditional egg hunt, but now, this will be the only one she will do. Its been amazing for us.

The event was organized by the Irvine-based Grace City Church, led by Pastor Stephen Kimbrell.

Kimbrell, a married father of three and native of North Carolina, moved his family across the country in October to start a church in Irvine. The grand opening for the church is set for September, but even before then, he and the staff have been trying to build relationships within the community.

This Easter, I wanted to do an outreach event that could somehow serve the community, Kimbrell said, as he surveyed the scene of adults helping children identify pastel-colored eggs.

So he went online and stumbled upon a church in Iowa that had hosted an egg hunt for children with disabilities. He reached out to the pastor and asked how to form a similar event.

To let the community know of the hunt, Kimbrell and Grace City Church staff members and volunteers posted fliers in public places, advertised on their Facebook page and spread the invitation to the Special Olympics Orange County and Blind Childrens Learning Center in Santa Ana.

He also had to find beeping eggs, so he turned to the ATF in Los Angeles, which in the past has wired Easter eggs to create a beeping sound.

An ATF special agent who works with explosives developed the idea because he didnt want his daughter, who had lost her eyesight, to be left out of an annual tradition because of her disability.

The $12 model involves a simple circuit composed of a toggle switch, 9-volt battery, piezo beeper and battery clip. When activated, the egg will make a beeping sound.

ATF partnered with the International Assn. of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, which donated $10,000 and the contents of the beeping eggs to the ATF office in Los Angeles. Agents then assembled the eggs.

I love the look on the parents faces when the child gets to participate in something they couldnt do before, said ATF special agent Meredith Davis, as she watched children stop in their steps and listen for a peeping egg. Its a special moment.

Davis said she hopes more organizations like Rotary Clubs and churches, and even parents who want to put on a private hunt, remember to include the beeping eggs.

Kimbrell is already thinking of next years egg hunt.

My favorite part is having kids who were never able to be involved in an egg hunt pick up an egg on their own with this physical and tangible way to do so, Kimbrell said. It served and showed the grace of Jesus Christ.

For more information, visit gracecityirvine.com.
Small but mighty. Thats the premise of Los Alamitos best new eatery, which at its most basic can be said to serve pint-sized burgers and hot dogs through mix-and-match style combo plates.

But Mighty Kitchen is anything but basic, its sliders and rollers not your everyday burger-shack variety. Its fries are not typical potato cuts either, smothered in everything from pizza sauce to pastrami sandwich fixings. A fried-chicken macaroni and cheese is topped with Cheez-It crumbles.

In fact, between the variety of internationally influenced comfort food, the bar fully stocked with small-batch spirits and sassy menu copy that constantly reminds you that runts rule, Mighty Kitchen is one of the best original family-friendly restaurant concepts that O.C. has seen in years.

That it comes from the same family that started Hofs Hut as a beachside burger stand more than 80 years ago is just a bonus.

Hofman Hospitality Group was born out of Hofs Hut, the local diner chain, which after moving from the sand in Long Beach to an actual restaurant in Belmont Shore in 1951 eventually expanded its Dutch American vision for all-day breakfasts, home-cooked dinners and fresh-baked pies to 18 locations across Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In the 1990s, with Craig Hofman, Hofs Huts founders grandson, at the helm, Hofman Hospitality Group launched its first new brand since the diner days: Lucilles Smokehouse Bar-B-Que. Southern-style barbecue in an upscale table-service roadhouse proved to be a much greater lure than burgers and fries; there are now 20 Lucilles locations across three states, compared with just three Hofs Huts.

Mighty Kitchen sits in the shadow of one of these last remaining Hofs, just a few blocks from its Los Alamitos location, which still resembles a quaint European country home (Saint & Second, another original HHG concept sits on the site of the original Hofs in Long Beach). Perhaps you remember the Mighty Kitchen building from when it was SPIN! Neapolitan Pizza, a short-lived (and usually empty) franchise owned by Hofman Hospitality Group that closed abruptly last May.

By August, the facade had been reconfigured, the patio expanded to include more tables and fire pits, and the interior entirely flipped around to reveal a bright, open kitchen and a dining area loaded with wide booths anchored by a welcoming three-sided bar. Mighty Kitchen opened at the end of summer and has not sat empty since.

Have you dined with us before? is a common question to be asked at new restaurants with unfamiliar menus, but rarely do you actually need a spiel to know that all sauces are made in-house or to appropriately navigate a menu of chef-driven share plates.

At Mighty Kitchen, though, you should probably take the first-timer introduction, if not to get to know your affable server (on one visit, mine ended the talk by warning that hell probably make a fool of himself before the end of the meal; later, I caught him singing to himself), then to familiarize yourself with the restaurants various powerhouse bites and begin mapping a plan of attack.

Whether there are children in your group or not, starting with an order of Squeaky Cheese is never a bad idea. Its an appetizer of deep-fried cheese curds (with a Sriracha garlic mayo for dipping) that, yes, squeak across your tooth enamel when you bite into them. Smothered fries (like the Boom Boom Pig Fries) and wings (spicy garlic is the eaterys version of traditional buffalo) are also options, just make sure to save room for a combo. The combos are as amusing to customize as they are to eat.

Mighty Kitchens entire premise is built around these combos, letting you get a side of fries when you choose two or three items from the laundry list of half-pint burgers and hot dogs, which reads like a futuristic version of the menu at Hofs original burger stand.

The classic all-beef cheeseburger with special sauce that first made Hofs famous still sits proudly atop the list of sliders. But then, an additional dozen or so bun-hugged burgies are stacked with Mighty Kitchens versions of fried chicken waffle sandwiches, turkey banh mis, grilled cheeses and a spicy beef-and-chorizo burger topped with roasted pasilla peppers and a dash of Cholula. The seven-deep rollers menu (a roller is half the size of a regular hot dog) includes a Chicago-style bratwurst, a bacon-wrapped L.A. dog, an Italian sausage with peppers and a basic mustard-and-relish Ballpark Dog.

If combos arent your thing, the simple flatbreads (meatless margherita), the not-so-simple macaroni and cheese (a breakfast mac includes hash browns and a fried egg) and the clever salads (soba noodles made in house!) let you build a meal unlike anywhere else. And since this is a Hofman Hospitality Group restaurant, theres also a steak dinner (as one of only three Mighty Plates), which for the casual setting will set you back less than $20.

To drink, the kids get ice cream shakes, floats or a glass of Pucks real sugar sodas. Adults can sip on a rotation of local craft beer or one of the affordable creative house cocktails, like a rum and cola made with house-spiced Stark Spirts rum, distilled in nearby Pasadena.

All this is a reflection of the four generations of ownership at Hofman Hospitality Group. Craig Hofmans four children now work for the family business, taking on tasks like marketing and operations (Brad Hofman), design and branding (Ashley Pedersen), construction and facilities (Ryan Hofman) and bar management (Dirk Hofman). In the last few years, they have brought contemporary sensibilities in food, drink and design to the companys newest ventures, attracting  unlike the undeniably senior-leaning Hofs Hut customers  younger crowds, from couples to families.

While Saint & Second is the most upscale concept yet from Hofman Hospitality Group  its sleek design and gastropub-Italian menu lives for the date night crowd  Mighty Kitchen is its most fun. It builds on top of the all-American burgers and dogs that Hofs has always been known for while making something entirely ideal for the Los Alamitos of today, proving that sometimes the smallest ideas can turn out to be the mightiest.

---

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.
The new year brought tragic news for friends and family members of Yolanda Holtrey and Michelle Luke.

The two women, known for their smiles and big hearts, had been killed, and the husband of one of their co-workers had been arrested on suspicion of murdering them. No one could understand why they would meet such an end.

Luke, 49, of Huntington Beach, and Holtrey, 59, were found dead following an investigation of a fire at Holtreys house in Westminster on New Years Day. The womens bodies were found Monday in Newport Beach, authorities said.

Christopher Ireland, 37, of Huntington Beach was charged Wednesday with two counts of first-degree murder, one felony count of arson in connection with the fire and one felony count of aggravated mayhem.

Luke and Holtrey worked with Irelands wife, Samantha, at Stein Mart in Huntington Beach.

Police are still investigating a possible motive for the crime. They have not released how the victims died.

Friends of Luke and Holtrey posted their shock and outrage on Facebook.

It is so heart-wrenching, horrific, and we will never be the same in our life without Michelle. She was so loved by her family and friends, Trudy Slingo-Manuel wrote on Lukes Facebook page. Slingo-Manuel is listed on Facebook as Lukes mother.

Luke also is survived by a daughter, Shainnen Somerville of Huntington Beach, and a brother, Nestor Figueroa of Ontario, according to Lukes Facebook page.

When reached via a Facebook message, Somerville had no immediate comment.

My heart is so broken that sweet, sweet Michelle was taken from this Earth in such a violent manner, Patty Mitchell wrote. It was not her time. She had so much more to give. She was the best mother and dearest friend. She gathered Facebook friends by the hundreds because of her kind and genuine nature.

One of Holtreys friends described her as a go-getter.

She wanted to be a leader of the pack, Rebecca Miranda, Holtreys friend of more than 30 years, said in a phone interview.

Holtrey liked to drive fast, said Miranda, 60, of Commerce.

She had a Harley. She loved fast-moving vehicles, Miranda said. Every time I got on the freeway with her in the Chrysler, I already knew how she would drive. She was a speed demon.

A customer who frequents the Stein Mart on Beach Boulevard recalled how Holtrey was always willing to help with a smile on her face.

If you went to the counter and somethings wrong, [she would] run all over the store and try to help you, said Patrice Govoreau, 60, of Huntington Beach. She was a great lady.

Terence Tyler Cruz, who taught classes at 24 Hour Fitness in Westminster, said he couldnt forget Holtreys cheery demeanor.

She would come into my class in her colorful outfits and danced her heart out, Cruz said.

Holtreys Facebook page says she was widowed. According to other posts, she had a daughter, Harmony.

Harmony Holtrey did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Irelands Facebook page lists his hometown as Phoenix. In his intro, the real estate agent for Realty One Group Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga states hes just a man trying to better his family. His and his wifes public pages dont identify children or other family members.

Fundraising pages to help Holtreys and Lukes families pay expenses have been set up at Gofundme.com.

As of Thursday afternoon, more than $8,600 had been raised on the Holtrey page toward a $15,000 goal and more than $2,400 had been raised on the Luke page toward a $5,000 goal.

--

Nuran Alteir is a contributor to Times Community News.

Twitter: @whatnuransaid
Bill Craig, founder of Billys at the Beach, a Hawaiian-themed restaurant in Newport Beach, has died.

The longtime Newport Beach resident died Sunday at Hoag Hospital of complications related to pneumonia, according to his family. He was 71.

Inspired by his love of Hawaiian culture, Craig founded Billys along Mariners Mile in 1993. It was an immediate success, said Patty Craig, Craigs wife.

He made everyone feel very welcomed, she said. People continue to say how good it feels to go in there. You kick off your shoes and youre at home  a very relaxed feeling.

In 1993, a restaurant reviewer from the Los Angeles Times called Billys a throwback to those carefree 70s (or 60s, or maybe even 50s), and is this joint jumpin! Take your nostalgia pill before you visit.

The review said Craig is generally seen lounging in a corner of the bar or traipsing around the dining room in a Hawaiian shirt, schmoozing it up like a mainland edition of Don Ho.

A Times feature about Newport Beach published in 2000 noted that there really was a Billy at Billys at the Beach.

Owning a restaurant is like having a party for your friends and making them pay, Craig joked at the time.

Craig was born in 1945 in Culver City and grew up in Glendale. He attended USC as a three-time All-American swimmer and competed in the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, where he earned a gold medal in the 4x100-meter medley relay.

Craig never gave up swimming. He frequented the pool at the Balboa Bay Club, Patty Craig said.

He was loved and adored by his whole family, she added. Well miss him dearly. He was a warm, wonderful, generous man who gave to all of us that knew him.

Fletcher Jones, Craigs close friend of some 25 years and the owner of the Fletcher Jones Motorcars dealership, bought the restaurant in 2011.

He meant a lot to me. He had a great personality, Jones said. Billy was just a great guy. He had a great sense of humor.

Billys at the Beach was closed Tuesday in observance of Craigs death.

In addition to Patty, Craig is survived by his sons Rick and Christian, daughter Kimber, daughter-in-law Kendra and two grandchildren.

A private celebration of life is planned.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
When Michael Lawler sails through Newport Harbor, he sees potential for more public art and an opportunity to give a nod to the citys history.

Lawler, a Newport Beach resident and an avid boater, unveiled a proposal during a Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce Marine Committee meeting Tuesday to add statues at various locations around the harbor. The idea, which he came up with several years ago, has changed over time but is still in its infancy, he said.

His presentation to the committee, which meets monthly to discuss marine issues, was a way to see if this idea is going to have legs and see if its something thats going to be accepted by the community, Lawler said.

At the harbor entrance on the west jetty, Lawler proposes building a statue of a sailor to pay homage to the Newport Harbor High School mascot.

A statue of a sea king, in keeping with the face of Corona del Mar High School, would grace the east jetty.

The statues would incorporate lights to help guide sailors traveling into the harbor, Lawler said.

This would be a great source of pride for all our high school students, he said. It would be a great source of pride for all the residents of Newport Beach, because one way or another, the high schools are so interwoven in the fabric and culture of the community.

Lawler also envisions statues at the three channel markers around the bay. A statue of late movie actor and Newport Beach resident John Wayne would mark Dukes Point, reminding tourists and locals where Waynes house once sat overlooking the harbor.

A likeness of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the first European explorer to sail the California coast, would stand at the marker at Bay Island, and a statue of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a Spanish explorer and Balboa Islands namesake, would overlook the point near Turquoise Avenue and South Bayfront.

Funding for the statues has not been hammered out, and Lawler said he is weighing whether to seek private donations, ask the city to chip in or a combination of both.

He loosely estimated that each statue would cost at least $100,000.

To move forward, the idea would have to be reviewed by the city arts and harbor commissions and ultimately the City Council. The California Coastal Commission, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard likely also would have to sign off on various aspects of the project, according to city staff.

Lawler said hes been encouraged by the popularity of the statue of Ben Carlson, a Newport Beach lifeguard who died while helping a distressed swimmer in 2014. That artwork was unveiled last year at McFadden Square, attracting tourists and locals who stop to have their picture taken with it.

With the popularity of Facebook and social media, people send their pictures to all their friends and on and on, so theres great marketing value for people wanting to take pictures around Newport Beach, Lawler said.

Mayor Kevin Muldoon, who attended Tuesdays presentation, said hes a fan of sculptures with historical significance.

I personally love it, Muldoon said of Lawlers idea. I just like the idea of highlighting our culture.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
After writing about the last edition of the DP 103 list of most influential people on Sunday, boy, did I hear from readers!

Overwhelmingly they werent happy that this longstanding tradition in the Daily Pilot is going bye-bye.

With the papers expanding coverage of neighboring cities, many felt this was just another sign that the DP is moving too far away from its roots of focusing on Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

As it was explained to me, this expanded coverage is precisely why the list was put to bed  there are just too many influencers to cover in each city. Thus the list will be replaced by Unsung Heroes.

I get that people dislike change, but change is pretty much the only thing we can count on as time marches on.

And nowhere around here are the winds of political change blustering more these days than in Costa Mesa.

In this past election cycle, its as if residents went to their windows  as newsman Howard Beale did in the 1976 movie Network  and yelled, Im as mad as hell and Im not going to take this anymore!

The political ideology shift was radical.

In one corner we have reelected council member Sandy Genis and newly elected John Stephens  both pretty much aligned in their thinking with new Mayor Katrina Foley.

In the other corner we have remaining Councilman Jim Righeimer and returning member Allan Mansoor.

And if their first meeting was any indication, I predict these two factions will continue to butt heads.

Talking with Foley over the holidays, my impression was that she understands the message voters sent in this election  theyre looking for change and a council that will listen to them.

And by all accounts, Foley has hit the floor running to set that tone.

Some of her changes that have been approved already are ceremonial and easy to accomplish, like changing Chief Executive Officer Tom Hatchs title to city manager and moving all public comments to the beginning of each council meeting and end splitting them between the beginning and end of the meeting.

And she wants to make the council meetings more user-friendly for folks who work and want to attend.

We will no longer be requiring speaker cards be turned in by 6 p.m. to be able to speak at a meeting, she says.

Shes also repurposing the mayors office to be an Office of the City Council where members can meet with the public.

Foley envisions rotating art displays, featuring local artists, high schools and Orange Coast College students, decorating the walls of City Halls fifth floor.

We are the City of the Arts and Im going to give that real meaning, Foley says.

But I feel shell meet resistance when she brings up using those six new ambulances the city purchased rather than contracting for ambulance services.

She says this could generate $2 million to $4 million for the city rather than a private contractor.

The idea will certainly come up at a future council meeting, and Im sure there will be a lively discussion between the two factions on this subject.

No doubt Foleys city still faces some difficult issues that will take long-term strategies to resolve.

How will she solve the homeless encampments in parks and the drug issues there?

Faced with the same problem in Los Angeles, one councilman, Mitch OFarrell, is going as far as to suggest a city ordinance that would ban adults without a child near playgrounds.

As crazy as that may seem, there are already similar ordinances in Santa Monica, New York City and Hollywood, Fla., as these cities try to curb issues of homeless people and drugs in their parks.

Though I feel that solution is a bit far-reaching, I have to believe OFarrells actions are a result of a constituency fed up with these problems.

Issues facing our cities arent necessarily unique, as we saw with the sentiment against high-density development among residents at council forums in Newport and Costa Mesa this past election season.

I asked Foley if what is happening in Newport with the referendum signature-gathering controversy over the Museum House project isnt a bit of deja vu for her. After all, her city faced several ballot measures last election season for which signatures were gathered by residents unhappy with the City Councils direction on high-density housing and such.

Newport Beach has long been the envy for many, in part because of the low density. Its a great place to live, but you have to listen to the residents, she says.

Does she have advice for Newports leaders?

My best advice is to collaborate and not just have the attitude We can do whatever we want. It will come back to bite you in the end and the residents will throw you out, she told me.

Sounds like some good neighborly advice, which Ill bet the Newport council will ignore.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.
I am more than 7,000 miles from Los Angeles, sitting in a cafe with a view of the seaside in Larnaca, Cyprus, and even on this island in the Mediterranean that feels like the perfect getaway, I cant escape the heat of the current state of American politics.

I am the token American in most conversations I am having with locals, and it seems the questions and frustrations with the United States are being poured on me. Even in the United States, conversations seem as volatile as ever  whether youre strangers or friends.

It feels comforting to shut off, to not want to talk about any of it, especially when youre surrounded by endless sea views, palm trees and Cypriot coffee like I am right now.

But now is the time we need to be talking to each other more than ever before. Now is the time to engage in discussion, no matter how difficult, painful or awkward it is.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

A few weeks ago, I moderated an event in Glendale with an Armenian-American activist who had spent time at Standing Rock, joining the Sioux tribe in freezing temperatures as they defended their environmental rights and indigenous sovereignty.

He went for various reasons, but one of them was a need to show some kind of solidarity between two people  Native Americans and Armenians, whose histories are eerily similar to each other.

At perhaps no other time has the Native American struggle for indigenous rights been as visible as it is now. At the same time, awareness of the Armenian Genocide and its long-lasting impact has also increased in ways that were perhaps unimaginable before.

Fraught with colonialism, genocide, cultural loss and intergenerational trauma, the plight of indigenous people in America mirrors the history and struggles of Armenians in many ways.

The talk was on a rainy Wednesday night, yet many people came out to hear the conversation, including members of L.A. black community, whose presence was extremely significant and appreciated.

We talked about identity, about conditions at Standing Rock and how different communities  whether theyre immigrants, people of color or otherwise  need to find common ground at a time when the state of politics in America feels increasingly dangerous for them.

These intersections feel so long overdue. As a kid, I watched as Armenian Americans marched through Hollywood on April 24 every year to commemorate the genocide, and wondered how this action was raising awareness to those who did not know about these atrocities, much less what Armenian was.

Why wasnt there outreach to other communities? We were mostly just speaking  and shouting  down the streets to ourselves, even if we thought other people were listening.

I heard about violent confrontations with Mexican and Armenian teenagers and couldnt understand why these two fractions didnt realize that they were more similar than they were different. I have witnessed racism over the years in every single community toward whatever they have deemed the other.

We cant afford these kinds of division at such a crucial time. We cant afford to ignore each others humanity at a time when there are bigger forces who have the power to dehumanize entire populations of people with words or policies.

We need to align ourselves and realize we are not as different from each other as we think, and the only way to do that is to show up in real life and meet real people, to engage with communities  whether they are Armenian, black, Korean, Mexican, Christian, Jewish or Muslim.

We need to enter into discussions with those who we disagree with, or those who disagree with us. It is only familiarity that disintegrates fear. It is time to find those intersections.

--

LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.
If youre looking for your first travel deal of the new year, check out Emirates airlines airfare sale on now.

The cheapest seats go to countries in the Middle East  $699 round-trip from Los Angeles to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and $789 round-trip L.A. to Doha, Qatar  and more than 60 destinations are included in this deal too.

Some sample round-trip airfares from Los Angeles:

--$879 to Colombo, Sri Lanka

--$899 to Bangkok, Thailand

--$899 to Nairobi, Kenya

--$1,019 to Johannesburg, South Africa

--$1,039 to Kolkata, India

With this deal, you may travel Jan. 17 through May 24, and Aug. 1 through Nov. 21. You also have to stay at least a week. (Read the fare conditions before you book to make sure this deal will work for you.)

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The sale ends 8:59 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday (Jan. 11).

Info: Emirates Airline

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel

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LAX to Hong Kong round trip for $625  taxes and fees included
Cheng Lihua primped her hair, put on makeup and adjusted her gold-plated microphone. Then she got to work.

You hurt me so deep that I cant forgive you, she crooned into the microphone, nodding her head to the rhythm. Already knew our love is gone.

Cheng, a 22-year-old recent college graduate, is a professional live streamer, a booming business in China these days. She works four hours a day and earns nearly $3,000 a month chatting and singing songs for an online audience of thousands  all from her bedroom in Chinas far-northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where she lives with her parents.

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Her income is nearly seven times the average for the regions new college graduates.

China is home to more than 200 live-streaming platforms, which together constitute a $1.35-billion market, according to iiMedia Research, a Hong Kong-based mobile market research company. Almost half of Chinas massive Internet-using population use live-streaming platforms  an estimated 235 million people.

Whereas Americans tend to use live-streaming platforms such as Facebook Live and Periscope to broadcast and watch events, similar platforms in China have emerged as a social-networking tool for millions of lonely hearts who are eager to seek comfort and digital companionship. Live streamers answer questions, offer advice, sing, dance, even eat their meals for all to watch.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, live streaming has emerged as a tool for social activism. At the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, Native Americans protesting the construction of a pipeline have used Facebook Live to broadcast standoffs with police, a safeguard against brutality. This summer, a Facebook Live user in Minnesota showed the graphic aftermath of a police shooting of an African American man, sparking a wave of protests. People in Ankara, Turkey, have used the platform and Twitters Periscope to live-stream a coup attempt.

But in China, where authorities strictly control the Internet, live streamings explosive popularity has elicited a raft of new censorship and monitoring regulations.

Authorities have cracked down on live streams involving provocative dancing, coarse language and revealing clothing. Since July, the Ministry of Culture has been conducting random checks on live streams to ensure that any violent or pornographic content is taken down, according to the Peoples Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece.

In May, authorities banned seductive banana eating on live-streaming networks; whether one such performance went viral remains unclear.

In November, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a heightened edict. Under the new regulations, users are prohibited from live-streaming any content that could harm national security and undermine social stability.

Chinese Internet firms have shown a willingness to play by the rules. Lei Tao, co-founder of the live-streaming platform Yizhibo, said the company recruited 300 censors to sit in an office in the northwestern city of Xian and check for unlawful content.

The stricter the regulations are, the more benefits well get, Lei said. We are good students in class; of course we welcome the teacher to manage naughty students more tightly. It will be better for the class as a whole.

A screen shot from the live-streaming app Yizhibo showing a live streamer who has 120,000 followers. (Yingzhi Yang / For The Times )

Chinese live-streaming platforms use a simple, yet strikingly effective business model.

Viewers open an app and find a stream that fits their interests. Then they can tap out messages to the live streamers. The messages appear at the apps lower left corner, visible to all viewers. The live streamer can choose to respond.

If the viewer wishes, he or she can purchase a virtual gift using real money and send it to the live streamer. This is how live streamers and live-streaming platforms make their money. The cheapest virtual gifts  for example, a flower or cucumber  cost 3 cents on Yinke, Chinas biggest mobile live-streaming platform. A more expensive gift such as a virtual yacht can cost about $270. On Yinke, the platform takes 70% of that money, and the live streamer gets the rest.

About two months ago, Zhao Zhenggang, a 22-year-old Chinese citizen living in New York, made about $300 by live-streaming himself talking about life in the city. Then he spent it all on virtual gifts for other live streamers. It doesnt matter if the live streamers are girls or boys, he said. As long as they are good-looking and talk genuinely, they deserve my money.

Jin Fengqing, Chengs agent  and a recent college graduate himself  oversees more than 500 live streamers. He gives them monthly salaries and pays the platform to promote their streams.

He said 80% of the live streamers in his company are female. In job descriptions, he lists two requirements: having a smartphone and being pretty. Girls can earn a lot by just being pretty and talkative, Jin said.

Jin founded his agency, Nanjing Fanlin Media, in March. His only source of revenue is virtual gifts  the agency takes 5%, live streamers 35% and the live-streaming platform Momo 60%. There are about 50 live streamers in his company, and they can earn more than $14,450 a month; they keep in touch with and sometimes even meet their biggest gift-givers.

Jin said he earns more than $100,000 a month.

The stricter the regulations are, the more benefits well get.  Lei Tao, co-founder of the live-streaming platform Yizhibo

Some Americans in China have been riding the live-streaming wave. Lauren Hallanan, a 28-year-old fluent Chinese speaker from upstate New York, has been live-streaming on the Momo app since February. She uses the app once or twice a day for an hour and a half at a time. Last month, it earned her about $3,770.

Hallanan began live-streaming to promote an online crafts business but quickly found that she could sustain peoples interest just by talking about her life as an American in Beijing. Now, she has 216,000 followers and has added 2,400 every day since September. It kind of blows my mind, she said.

Every day I have viewers asking me, Arent all Americans really easy? Isnt the U.S. dangerous? Do you just eat McDonalds and KFC every day?

She attributes the popularity of live streaming in China to the countrys zhai nan culture. Zhai nan, a colloquialism meaning homebody, refers to young men who spend their lives chained to their home computers, surfing the Internet, playing computer games and chatting online. Theyre stereotyped as scruffy, introverted and socially awkward.

If one has great social skills in real life, one wouldnt turn to live streaming, said Yizhibos Lei.

Xie Pu, a Beijing-based technology columnist, said many Internet users see live streaming as comforting and economical. For a lonely man, buying drinks at a bar might cost hundreds of yuan, but buying virtual gifts for a live streamer is cheaper and could elicit a much warmer response.

Watching live streaming is the easiest way to feel soothed after a long day of work, he said.

But Jin, the agent, is concerned that live streamers will have to adapt quickly to keep up with the times. A lot of girls cannot do it for a long time, because people will get tired of just looking at pretty faces, he said. Hes shifting toward more genuine, rather than simply pretty, live streamers, as well as dancers and musicians.

Even Cheng is unsure about her future in the industry. Despite her steady income, Cheng said she might stop live streaming once she gets into a relationship.

I just think its not so good to keep in touch with a lot of guys when I have a boyfriend, she said.

Yang is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Jonathan Kaiman contributed to this report.

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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who rattled mainland China by phoning President-elect Donald Trump last month, leaves Saturday for a trip to the United States and Central America that will be closely watched for any further breaches in the delicate diplomatic protocol with Beijing.

The journey is seen as a chance for Tsai to prop up relations in a region that has historically been friendly to Taiwan but faces pressure from the mainland.

Because her government is not formally recognized by the United States, Tsai will only make transit stops of about a day apiece in Houston on Saturday and in San Francisco at the end of the nine-day trip. Most of her time will be spent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

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The presidents travels offer prospects for stronger foreign relations that would bulk up Taiwans self-rule despite counter-pressure from China, which has claimed sovereignty over the island since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s and has threatened to take it by force if needed.

For Tsai, the pro would be getting closer to America, a key foreign policy goal of hers, said Bill Sharp, an East Asia scholar and author based in Honolulu. The con has to be straining relations with China.

A splashy meeting with Trump or one of his future Cabinet members would probably anger Beijing to the point of retaliation, analysts say.

China already passed an aircraft carrier through waters near Taiwan in the last two weeks, and the government in Taipei suspects Beijing last month paid the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe to recognize China instead of Taiwan. Both moves came after Tsai telephoned Trump on Dec. 2.

A high-profile meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump might anger China to the point of retaliation, an analyst says. (Jorge Saenz, Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press )

China might respond to the trip with more military displays or by offering aid money to win over the Central American countries Tsai hopes to impress on her trip, some argue. China does not allow its diplomatic allies to have separate, formal ties with Taiwan.

Tsai has played down prospects of high-level meetings on her U.S. stopovers but has not ruled out meeting any specific people. The outside world has a lot of imagination regarding my transit stops, she said at a news conference on Saturday. But the outside worlds ideas are sort of over the top. Transit is just transit.

U.S. officials regularly allow transit stops, for refueling and comfort, to Taiwanese presidents bound for Latin America because the United States is located along the shortest flight path. China protests some of the stops  including the two scheduled this month  as signs that the United States is giving Taiwan too much attention.

The U.S. is Taiwans strongest informal ally, though it established formal ties with the mainland in 1979.

Tsais transit is consistent with the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan, said Sonia Urbom, spokeswoman with the U.S. mission in Taipei.

The president will meet James Moriarty, the U.S. missions chairman, on both stops, which Urbom described as private and unofficial. Past presidents have used the layovers to meet Taiwanese business groups in the United States.

In an apparent bow to China, the United States is not letting Tsai transit in New York or Washington, where she could more easily see U.S. politicians. She may still meet Republican Party leaders, who could later help Tsai deepen military or trade exchanges.

Taiwans president calls China a threat, predicts turbulent 2017 

If Tsai met Trump or someone on his team, Taiwanese would initially rejoice at the exposure and the chance for Taiwan to improve relations after Trump takes office Jan. 20, analysts say.

We will see if we can meet someone from the government and someone from the Trump camp, said Lo Chih-cheng, a legislator with Tsais party. If theres any direct contact, that would be very important because it would send a message directly to the [new] president.

But since the Tsai-Trump phone call, which broke diplomatic protocol aimed at sustaining Sino-U.S. ties, many Taiwanese have worried Trump will use Taiwan as a bargaining chip to get trade concessions from Beijing. China said last month its claim to Taiwan was nonnegotiable; it wants the two sides eventually to unify.

Tsai, a 60-year-old law scholar and former professor, has irked Beijing since taking office in May by declining to see Taiwan and China as parts of a single country and hold talks. Her Democratic Progressive Party favors more distance from China.

I think Tsai is likely alarmed by the fact that Trump proposed using Taiwan as a bargaining chip to extract trade concessions with China, said Bonnie Glaser, a senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, referring to comments in December. I doubt [Tsai] sees benefits in poking Beijing by meeting members of Trumps team.

Once in Latin America, Tsai plans to visit officials in the four countries, including heads of state.

We will use our normal approach to talk with those countries about what we can do together to let both sides see substantive benefits in carrying out our diplomacy, Tsai said at Saturdays news conference.

Taiwans Foreign Ministry declined this week to give amounts or describe the purpose of recent aid for Central America. Under former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian through 2008, Beijing and Taipei vied to buy off each others allies. Tsai takes a more moderate stand toward China than Chen, and her government will not practice money diplomacy, her foreign minister said last month.

But most of Taiwans 21 allies in the Americas, Africa and the South Pacific expect aid in return for giving Taiwan a voice in the United Nations, where China blocks Taiwanese participation.

You dont have to put the money straight to the pockets of politicians in those foreign countries, said Huang Kwei-bo, associate professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei. If it builds an airport or a harbor or whatnot, then thats in the range of fairness. But youve got to raise the amount.

Tsai should also convince the Central American countries that the quality of its aid beats shoddy programs offered by China, Sharp said. Taiwan, which sees typhoons every year, has offered hurricane relief to the Americas, he said.

China, with more than 170 allies, including the worlds most powerful countries, hopes to minimize Taiwanese foreign relations to convince the world of its position that Taiwan is not an independent country.

If she can enhance friendships with Central American countries, that would be an indicator [Tsai] has scored points, said Lo, the legislator from Tsais party.

Many remaining allies have undoubtedly already indicated to Beijing that they would like to switch their diplomatic allegiance, Glaser said.

In Honduras for a day, Tsai will meet President Juan Orlando Hernandez and lead a group of Taiwanese business people to scout out possible investments in farming, fishing, tourism and infrastructure, said Victor Alvarado, an attache in the Honduran Embassy in Taipei. The two presidents have met before, and Honduras is pushing to sell local goods in Taiwan, Alvarado said.

Relations have been getting better, he said. The two ambassadors have been working at it pretty hard.

Jennings is a special correspondent.

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Boasting a host of accomplishments, the head of the governments foreign aid agency presented President Obama with an exit memo Thursday that highlighted the administrations development initiatives over the last eight years. But she warned that many challenges remained and the road ahead wont be easy.

For all of the impressive gains the global community has achieved, there are far too many people dying of diseases we can prevent, Gayle Smith, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, wrote in the 14-page report. Too many kids go to bed hungry each night. And too many people are denied the most basic of human rights.

Smith is scheduled to vacate her position when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Her successor is yet to be named.

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USAID has largely enjoyed bipartisan support. But it remains unclear how the Trump administration might approach development aid. The president-elect has revealed very little about his foreign aid policy, although during last years election campaign he promised not to participate in nation-building and voiced objections to continuing to send aid to countries that hate us.

We do not know yet, but it is not too difficult to imagine a scenario where all development aid not directly connected to national security issues would be under pressure of cutback, said Kevan Harris, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA who studies development and social change in the global South.

Harris described USAIDs record under Obama as mixed.

Other development specialists expressed concern over the possibility of a smaller aid budget under the incoming administration.

There may be a shifting of emphasis where aid goes, said Sam Worthington, chief executive of InterAction, the largest U.S. alliance of nongovernmental international organizations, with more than 220 members and partners. We may find ourselves pulling back from areas where a decrease in aid actually results in people not having access to food or basic services.

Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development, said much would depend on the Trump administrations pick for leadership of USAID. We just dont know, he said.

Gayle Smith, the outgoing administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. (Romeo Gacad / AFP/Getty Images )

In her memo, Smith ticked off areas in which the United States had helped to change peoples lives for the better. These included:

-- reducing poverty, malnutrition, and mortality.

-- promoting entrepreneurship and innovation.

-- empowering women and girls.

-- helping to build more stable, accountable and inclusive partners for the United States.

The U.S. is the largest donor of foreign aid, representing about 24% of development assistance from major governments in 2014.

Smith said the agency had helped combat hunger and extreme poverty through its Feed the Future initiative, which focuses on developing agriculture. Its work in 19 nations has helped reduce extreme poverty in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, she said.

Other accomplishments included the 2013 launch of Power Africa, which aims to add 30,000 megawatts and provide 60 million electricity connections in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Smith also touted the administrations success in promoting global health, including helping to end preventable child and maternal deaths. Those efforts helped save the lives of 4.6 million children and 200,000 women in the last eight years, she said.

The USAID report card won praise from some sectors of the development aid community.

Worthington of InterAction lauded the agencys expansion of existing programs, the launch of innovative initiatives and its partnering with the private sector, universities and nonprofit organizations .

He said the shift from being purely an implementer of projects to an agency that can leverage resources far beyond the U.S. government had made USAID a very different organization than it was at the start of the Obama administration.

The result has been large populations reached that would not have been reached otherwise, Worthington said.

Morris, who also directs the Center for Global Developments U.S. Development Policy Initiative, said Feed the Future and Power Africa stood out as key accomplishments.

Frankly, it would not have been obvious eight years ago that one would want to empower USAID with these major presidential initiatives in terms of the capacity of the agency, Morris said. I think that really has been a mark of change that they have successfully led these major presidential initiatives.

Morris also pointed to reforms that have strengthened the agency, such as elevating its role within the government.

It has a much clearer policy voice, Morris said. Senior aid officials are now sitting side by side with the generals ... in conversations and important discussion around security issues globally.

Tons of basic food supplies donated by the United States Agency for International Development are stored in Kenyas North Eastern province in 2009. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times )

But the glowing report card faced pushback from some global development analysts.

James Roberts, a research fellow for economic freedom and growth at the conservative Heritage Foundation, slammed Smiths report as something of a cheerleading memo, with lots of pictures and lots of big numbers and metrics that we would have to examine in detail to really understand.

Roberts said his organization was recommending that the new administration look at foreign aid and really just overhaul the whole mechanism.

Some aspects of USAIDs work can and should continue, Roberts said. The question is, which ones? Theres too much fragmentation across too many agencies right now. [Smiths] memo wants AID to continue as is and expand as an independent agency. We oppose that.

The Heritage Foundation has called for an independent evaluation of all assistance programs, a comprehensive update of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, and the renewal of efforts to bring USAID directly into the State Department and end its role as an independent agency, Roberts said.

There were also other areas where analysts faulted USAID under Obama.

Harris, the UCLA professor, said that although the agency had managed to increase resources for food security, refugees and healthcare and had largely been able to protect effective development projects from pressure by Congress, some of its projects were linked too tightly with the foreign policy goal of preventing terrorism.

Terrorism is a violent form of doing politics, not a direct response to economic privation, Harris said. The more USAID can de-link these two policy goals, global development versus anti-terrorism, the better.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter

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WASHINGTON  The Pentagon has begun a burst of spending in Africa, expanding its main base on the continent and investing in air facilities, flight services, telecommunications and electrical upgrades as the U.S. military deepens its footprint in a region with a rising threat of Islamist terrorism.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures, detailed in unclassified federal documents, demonstrate Africas increasing importance to U.S. military and counter-terrorism operations as the war in Iraq has ended and American troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

By far the most significant expansion is occurring at Camp Lemonnier in the deeply impoverished nation of Djibouti, a sleepy backwater on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, just north of Somalia. The sprawling base, built out of a onetime outpost of the French Foreign Legion, has been the Pentagons primary facility in Africa for a decade.

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Defense officials last month awarded $200 million in contracts to revamp the bases power plants and build a multistory operations center, aircraft hangar, living quarters, gym and other facilities on a sun-scorched 20-acre site next to the tiny countrys only international airport (with which it shares a runway).

The projects are part of $1.2 billion in planned improvements over the next 25 years that will accelerate Camp Lemonniers transformation from a makeshift installation where a few hundred Marines once slept in tents into an enduring 600-acre base that now houses about 4,000 U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors.

Africa is front and center now for the Pentagon, so that means Lemonnier is front and center, said Rudolph Atallah, former counter-terrorism director for Africa at the Defense Department and now chief executive of White Mountain Research, a security consulting company.

The changes come as U.S. officials grapple with the threat posed by Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia, Yemen and North Africas impoverished Sahel region. The U.S. commando raids last month that nabbed a long-sought terrorism suspect in Libya and tried but failed to capture a senior figure in Somalias Shabab militant organization underscore the Pentagons growing focus on Africa, including an increasing reliance on elite special operations forces.

Though most of the troops at Camp Lemonnier are conventional forces specializing in training African militaries, several hundred special operations troops also are based there, occupying a compound with its own security perimeter. Officials declined to say whether Djibouti-based troops were involved in either raid last month, but the base has quietly evolved into what Pentagon planning documents call the backbone of covert missions across Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and is one of the militarys most important bases for drone missions in Somalia and Yemen.

Military officials declined to elaborate on the role of the special forces, citing security, but their numbers at Camp Lemonnier are likely to grow. Late last year, the first special operations rapid-response team was established at the base, made up of Green Berets from the Armys 10th Special Forces Group.

When the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked in September 2012, leaving four Americans dead, lawmakers criticized Pentagon officials for a lack of crisis-response capacity in Africa. But there hasnt always been consensus on the role of Camp Lemonnier, which U.S. troops began using in 2002 primarily as a base for civil affairs and humanitarian missions.

Now Pentagon planners see the base as the center of a constellation of U.S. military sites across Africa, including small facilities in Manda Bay, Kenya; Entebbe, Uganda; and the West African nation of Burkina Faso.

In September, the Pentagon awarded Houston-based Kellogg, Brown & Root a contract for support services at Manda Bay. Navy engineers recently extended the runway there  on a mangrove-covered island near Somalia  to allow it to handle larger aircraft, such as C-130 cargo planes.

In July, a Texas company won a $49-million contract to provide air support, including medevacs, cargo flights and air drops, across a vast territory comprising 19 countries, including those where a small team of U.S. advisors is helping in the hunt for Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army militia. The aircraft will be based in Burkina Faso, according to contract documents, which say the flights could run through June 2017.

Officials rarely discuss the smaller sites publicly, but in testimony prepared for Congress last year retired Army Gen. Carter Ham, former head of the U.S. militarys Africa Command, said, We have strategic locations that provide a hub-and-spoke operational reach that covers the continent.

Ham described Camp Lemonnier as a key location for national security and power projection. In addition to the 20-acre site to be occupied by conventional units, the Navy is building a $228-million special operations compound at the center of the base, near the site of a new aircraft logistics area. The elite units currently operate out of temporary facilities that lack sufficient capability and capacity to meet growing requirements and increased staff, according to planning documents provided to Congress.

The new compound, which includes a two-story operations building, a three-story barracks and a hangar to house two aircraft, will hold 700 personnel at capacity, the plans say.

Starting in 2006, when neighboring Somalia was taken over by Islamist clerics who were believed to be sheltering Al Qaeda militants, lawmakers and Pentagon leaders increasingly saw the utility of a forward base in Djibouti.

The idea was a small footprint, but that has dramatically changed over time, Atallah said.

The growth of U.S. operations has sometimes rankled those sharing the sole runway at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. U.S. F-15 fighter jets, C-130 transport planes and refueling aircraft compete for space with commercial airliners from Europe and East Africa, French military planes and Japanese aircraft conducting counter-piracy patrols off the Somali coast.

In December, after a U.S. drone had a hard landing on the runway, Djiboutian officials demanded a halt to drone flights from the airport because it interrupted business and made the Air Frances of the world nervous, said a congressional source familiar with the incident.

The U.S. military temporarily moved a growing fleet of Predator and Reaper drones to a former French Foreign Legion airstrip at Chabelley, about eight miles southeast of Camp Lemonnier. According to documents provided to Congress, the military has spent at least $13 million to upgrade the Chabelley airfield, including building a storage area for munitions to carry out kinetic operations  meaning drone strikes.

The Pentagon now pays $38 million annually to lease the base from Djibouti, a former French colony with barely 1 million inhabitants.

Privately, some military officials and lawmakers grumble about the cost, but even amid calls for tightening the Pentagons budget, Congress has largely recognized the bases strategic value.

In a report accompanying the 2014 Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee said it believes that the national security interests of the United States are supported by the enduring presence at Camp Lemonnier.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com
It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Transplanting 25 pairs of Canadian beavers to Tierra del Fuego would provide raw material for a fur industry, bring jobs to a sparsely populated region and  as an advertisement in 1946 suggested  possibly attract tourists to this remote part of the hemisphere by enriching the local fauna.

Seventy years later, the placement of the nonnative, wood-chewing mammals in Fagnano Lake along the Chile-Argentina border is viewed as a colossal mistake. On the Chilean side of Tierra fel Fuego alone, the beaver population has swelled to about 200,000, and the giant, semiaquatic rodents can be found near the wind-swept city of Punta Arenas, some 200 miles northwest from the lake.

Probably with human help, they even have crossed the Magellan Strait to inhabit several islands.

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The problem is that the beavers, being beavers, have built hundreds of dams, and though beaver dams can invigorate some ecosystems, in Patagonia they are creating harmful floods that threaten the primeval forest of lenga trees and nearby lakes.

According to Wildlife Conservation Society figures, 25% of the forest and 95% of the archipelago basins have been affected by beaver dams, and thousands of old-growth trees are dead or dying, as well as bountiful peat bogs.

Patagonian ecosystems are not prepared to the kind of changes that beavers bring, said Chilean biologist Giorgia Graells, who is part of a multidisciplinary team studying the local beaver population. Magellanic forest regenerates from seed banks kept on the ground, so when an area is flooded, the seeds get covered by mud and water and die, and the forest wont recover.

To preserve the forests, the Chilean government this month is launching a $7.8-million population control project, funded in part with $2.1 million from the Global Environment Facility, an international aid-giving agency for developing countries. Part of the money will go to placing traps  think bear traps, but smaller  described as a means of providing a quick, humane kill.

It would be too optimistic to think of extinguishing this invasive species in the short term, but we can expect a better control of it, Chilean Environment Minister Pablo Badenier said.

World history is full of examples of nonnative species that defy efforts to control them. In the United States, Africanized bees have reached California, Burmese pythons eat just about anything  including alligators  in Florida, and starlings, since their introduction in the U.S. in 1890, have spread to every state.

Chile has been trying to contain its beaver population since 2003 and, for many years, offered rewards for furs and tails. But the beavers, which have no natural predators in Chile such the wolves and bears that kill them in North America, have proved difficult to catch.

Beavers are highly intelligent creatures. We set traps and sometimes they have activated them by placing branches on them, said Mauricio Chacon, chief park ranger at Karukinka Natural Park, who makes his rounds with his .22-caliber Mauser rifle on his back. Beavers that do get their legs caught in a trap will gnaw them off to avoid capture, he said.

Scharon Zegarra, a female ranger at this park located more than 1,600 miles south of the Chilean capital of Santiago, said that nowadays we took one out of its lodge and, soon after, a younger one takes its place. We havent seen this before.

Beavers are also wildly reproducing on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego.

Argentina has been working with the Chilean government on the problem since 2005. Argentina has its own eradication project and aims to kill 100,000 beavers in the years to come  an initiative that has already received criticism from animal rights groups, which wish beavers could be returned to Canada.

This is a worrisome idea for Chilean biologists, who consider it not only expensive but impractical. And beavers arent the only case of failed efforts to transplant foreign animals in nonnative habitats. German wild boars and American minks have also been transplanted here and are considered threats to Chiles biodiversity because they kill or crowd out native species.

Invasive alien species are among the main issues against biodiversity in the planet, and the world is just waking up to it, said Barbara Saavedra, head of Chiles Wildlife Conservation Society, which owns the 1,160-square-mile private Karukinka Natural Park.

Located 161 miles from the nearest city, Porvenir in Chile, the park has little infrastructure but lush virgin forests and peat bogs. The government is trying to promote tourism to the region, but sees the out-of-control beaver population as more a nuisance than an attraction.

Beavers wont devour the Patagonia, but they will destroy large amounts of forests and contaminate vast water sources, said Saavedra, looking at the Karukinka landscape. So we want to stop them before they reach the Panama Canal. Its a sad but true joke.

Poblete is a special correspondent.

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The addicts pull up just after nightfall near a sedan parked along a busy street in this border city best known for murder.

One by one, they fork over fistfuls of cash to Sonia Garcia, who reaches into the trunk of her car and hands over the trafficked goods.

The original  glazed  are the most popular, Garcia explains. But, honestly, everybody has their own favorite doughnut.

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In Juarez, Garcia, 51, and her two sons are the undisputed kings of the Krispy Kreme black market.

Several times a week, one son crosses the border to El Paso and drives to the Krispy Kreme shop there, where the bulk purchase price is about $5 a dozen. He returns to Mexico with around 40 boxes of doughnuts so habit-forming that comedian Chris Rock once suggested they might be laced with crack.

In Juarez, Garcia and another son sell the doughnuts nightly from two locations for $8 a dozen, or a 60% markup.

Need doughnuts right now? The Krispy Kreme Familia, as they are known on their Facebook page, is here to help. They offer a doughnut hotline and will do special deliveries if the order is big enough.

The business, whose name calls to mind notorious Mexican drug cartels such as La Familia Michoacana, survives because of the obsession many Mexicans have developed with Krispy Kremes signature recipes.

The company opened its first franchise in Mexico in 2004 and now boasts dozens of locations. Board a flight from Mexico City, where Krispy Kreme shops are plentiful, to a part of the country where they are not, and dozens of passengers may be toting boxes of doughnuts for friends and family members.

For a time, Juarez had its own Krispy Kreme shop. But a few years ago, amid a drug war that engulfed the city, making it among the most dangerous places in the world, that location shut down. Krispy Kreme officials didnt return requests for comment.

The Garcias saw the closure as a business opportunity and launched the Krispy Kreme Familia.

Garcia didnt discuss potential violations of the law  like her familys use of the Krispy Kreme trademark  or whether she pays import taxes on the doughnuts. She did say the modest profits the family has earned in the doughnut trade have helped put one son through engineering school. He used to sell the doughnuts in Juarez, but she took over when he started taking classes at night.

The Garcias are among thousands of Mexicans who enter the U.S. regularly thanks to special visitor and work visas issued to people who live in border communities. Thousands of Americans make the reverse migration daily, crossing into Juarez to work or spend time with family there. The cities are so tightly entwined in matters of commerce, family and geography that theres a saying in these parts: When El Paso sneezes, Juarez gets sick.

Although many here are wary of U.S. President-elect Donald Trumps vows to ramp up border security and his threats to start a trade war with Mexico, the constant movement of humans and goods across the border continues for now, doughnuts included.

Its not that Mexico lacks options when it comes to fried, sugary dough. The country has several signature treats that are similar to doughnuts, including the fritter-like bunuelo and its sister pastry, the sopaipilla. Who doesnt love the churro, a long, thin piece of dough deep-fried and rolled in cinnamon and sugar?

Still, American-style doughnuts have a distinct flavor and consistency  not to mention cultural cachet  and Mexican-style imitations for some reason tend to be too hard or too dry.

I dont know why, but these are just softer and better, Garcia said as she manned the business on a recent chilly night. She had her trunk open, filled with about a dozen boxes, and had hung a big banner that read Krispy Kreme Donas  the Spanish word for doughnut.

After a self-described overdose on Krispy Kremes in the months after she began selling them, Garcia now allows herself just one doughnut a week. She prefers the jelly-filled variety.

Some customers visit regularly, including three employees of a gym across the street. Once they pulled up and ordered a dozen doughnuts, she said. A few minutes later one of them emerged from the car and sheepishly asked for another dozen.

On the recent night, as rush-hour gridlock had slowed traffic to a standstill on a main Juarez street, Juanita Gabriela Gaytan hopped out of her car and made a beeline for Garcias sedan.

Garcia let Gaytan pick the doughnuts she wanted in her box, which the customer did artfully, selecting some with sprinkles, others filled with cream.

When asked her favorite flavor, Gaytan seemed stumped: I really like them all.

Gaytan said was bringing the doughnuts home for her family.

I dont come here that often, she said, and then paused. Well, maybe two or three times a week.

This story was reported with the support of a fellowship from the International Womens Media Foundation.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum

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Beavers imported from Canada are threatening the primeval forests of Patagonia
Emad Tawil on Thursday returned to the church where he survived a bombing that killed his wife and daughter last month, determined to celebrate Christmas even as he mourned.

St. Marks Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo is the mother church for Egyptian Copts, who celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, based on the ancient Julian calendar.

Every time they bomb a church or attack us, they increase our faith, said Tawil, 53.

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The bombing during Mass in a chapel next to the cathedral Dec. 11 fatally injured nearly 30 people, including Tawils 19-year-old daughter, Verena Emad Amin, and wife, Madlen Tawfiq, 48.

Tawil and his son attended a funeral Thursday for fellow church member Lorise Naguib, 62, the latest victim of the bombing to succumb to her wounds. As workers decorated the nearby cathedrals altar with red and white flowers, mourners dressed in black filled St. Peter and St. Paul chapel, chanting and praying.

Shattered windows and damaged pillars had only been partially restored, and Tawil remained haunted by memories of the attack.

Tawils 21-year-old son, Peter, said he saw the attacker approach the altar before detonating a bomb concealed under a long coat. Afterward, the younger Tawil ran to his mother, who was already dead, then his sister, who was mortally wounded.

I was carrying my sister and she was saying, Help me! and I couldnt help, he recalled.

Workers prepare for Christmas Eve Mass to be held Friday night at St. Marks Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times )

The day after the bombing, President Abdel Fattah Sisi attended funeral services at the cathedral for the victims, and he is expected to attend Christmas Eve Mass late Friday.

The militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing by 22-year-old Egyptian Mahmoud Shafiq Mohamed Mostafa. Late Wednesday, Egypts Interior Ministry announced the arrest of three additional people, and said investigators were still searching for more suspects.

Christians, mainly Copts, make up about 10% of Egypts mostly Muslim population of more than 90 million, and found themselves increasingly under attack after Islamist President Mohamed Morsi came to power in 2012. Sisi, a military leader, became president after Morsi was ousted, and he has reached out to the Coptic community, in part by attending Christmas services at St. Marks, but sectarian attacks have persisted.

After the funeral Thursday, the Tawils made their way across the chapel courtyard to a small apartment, home to the widow of a church guard killed in the attack, Nabil Habib, 48.

Nadia Salah, 33, was caring for the youngest of her three children, 18-month-old Fadi, who still calls for his father. All she can do is point to Habibs portrait, set up in the corner of the room they shared for 15 years.

Salahs 15-year-old daughter was with her father the day he died. He had sent her to fetch tea before the explosion, and she returned to find his body.

Salahs brother-in-law Zarif Habib, 42, was in the kitchen making lunch, having come to help from the city of Minya, where about 40% of the population is Christian and officials reported more than three dozen attacks on Copts in the last three years, including houses set afire and street assaults.

Its normal for the Coptic people, said Emad Tawil, who runs a plastic factory.

Portraits are set up in the home of Nabil Habib, 48, a church guard killed in an attack during Mass Dec. 11 at St. Marks Cathedral in Cairo. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times )

He and his son have struggled, thinking of his wife and daughter every time they eat or do the dishes or laundry alone. They play back a voice message his daughter left a month before the attack in which she described a dream, a premonition in which she boarded a train of death.

His son fears the dark, where his thoughts return to that bloody day in the chapel, to the body of a girl he saw dismembered.

But they have also received support from the Coptic community and Muslim neighbors, who visited and made them food. Tawil smiled, insisting the family would enjoy Christmas just as their loved ones would in heaven.

Salah started to cry. She doesnt have much faith these days, she said. Sometimes she blames God for taking her husband and leaving her to care for their children.

I have weak faith. He was everything to me, she said of her husband, before gesturing to the men and adding, I see strong faith in their eyes.

Emad Tawil told her to cheer up. He would return Sunday so she could cook him a holiday meal, he suggested, and she grinned.

As he rose to leave, Tawil grimaced and placed a hand over his heart. He had been having pains since the attack, but did not want to see a doctor. He did not want to cry, either, but his eyes were brimming with tears. Suddenly, he did not feel strong at all. He missed his wife and daughter.

I want to go, he said, and pointed skyward.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf
After more than a year of conducting airstrikes that helped prevent a collapse of the Syrian government, Russia has started to reduce its forces there, a senior Russian military commander announced.

The drawdown will start with the departure of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and a small flotilla of other vessels, Gen. Valery Gerasimov said Friday in televised remarks.



For the record: This story reported that the civil war in Syria has claimed more than 40,000 lives. It should have said more than 400,000 lives.

Experts expressed skepticism that the announcement meant Russian was withdrawing from Syria, noting that Russia had temporarily reduced its support in the past and was continuing to upgrade its air base near the Mediterranean city of Latakia or a naval facility in the city of Tartus.

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People should not assume that this drawdown means that they are going to leave the battlefield, said Robert S. Ford, a Middle East expert at Yale and a former U.S. ambassador to Syria.

Some analysts suggested that Russias move was aimed at putting pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad ahead of peace talks that Russia plans to convene later this month in Kazakhstan.

They know that Assads manpower is very limited, said Andrew J. Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. They want the regime to make concessions.

The message to Syria is that it can no longer rely on unlimited air cover for its ground forces, he said.

Throughout the six-year civil war, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives and turned more than half the Syrian population into refugees, Russia has stood diplomatically and militarily behind Assad.

Last month, the Russian air force helped Assads troops retake parts of the northern city of Aleppo that had been under rebel control for almost four years, a key turning point in the war. It was a brutal assault that human rights groups said included indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

On Dec. 30, Putin announced a cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey, which has long called for the removal of Assad from power.

Lt. Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, a top official in the Syrian military, appeared in the televised announcement of the Russian drawdown to praise Russia for its backing.

The support that the Russian air force offered was crucial for our victories, which paved the way for a cease-fire and created the conditions for launching a political settlement of the Syrian crisis, he told Gerasimov through a translator.

Its 55,000-ton aircraft carrier has for years been plagued by malfunctions and was ridiculed in Western media for the clouds of black smoke it belched on the way to Syria.

The current cease-fire, which does not include Islamic State and other jihadist groups, has been violated dozens of times.

If the peace talks scheduled for this month fail to occur or wind up collapsing  as previous talks have  its unclear whether Russian forces would continue to back the regime as it fights to recover rebel-held areas.

The Assad regime announced Thursday it was prepared to take on opposition forces in Idlib province, where rebels were sent after losing Aleppo.

Washington, which has called for Assad to be removed from power, has accused Russia and Assads forces of targeting so-called moderate rebels. Russia has insisted that thousands of its sorties that began in September 2014 were targeting Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

not abandoning its airbase near the Mediterranean city of Latakia or and a naval facility in the city of Tartus.

Maxim Shapovalenko, a Moscow-based defense expert, said the partial military withdrawal should come as little surprise.

From the very start, Russia tried to achieve a goal of having all the forces in the Syrian conflict, both the ruling regime and the opposition, sit down for peace talks, he said.

In eastern Syria this week, Kurdish-led forces claimed to have seized a hilltop castle overlooking a key territory held by Islamic State less than 20 miles from the groups self-declared capital, Raqqa.

The Syrian army is also battling Islamic State militants to the south in Deir el-Zor province and Palmyra, which the jihadis recaptured last month.

Theres also fighting between the Syrian government and opposition groups in the Barada valley north of Damascus that has disrupted the water supply to millions in the Syrian capital.

The United Nations humanitarian adviser for Syria, Jan Egeland, said this week that it was impossible to tell if water supplies had been disrupted by Syrian government or rebel forces but warned that sabotaging them would be a war crime.

Mirovalev is a special correspondent. Staff writer Hennessy-Fiske reported from Cairo.

UPDATES:

12:17 p.m.: This article was updated with political analysis from experts.

This article was originally published at 9:40 a.m.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki says the company, which has admitted to paying $29m in bribes in Peru, could potentially pay an even higher amount in fines
A new car seems to be outpacing Bentley, Tesla, and Ferrari. It speeds through videos posted by the little-known carmaker Faraday Future. The company that lives up to those clips could make or break the story of CES this 2017.

According to reports, the company has already foreseeing to conduct a demo in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Despite the opinion of the critics with regards to the company status, In CES-themed tweets, Faraday Future also known as FF touts a car that can "defy gravity".

In Faraday Future tweet, the FF called out its critics saying that "skepticism and negativity only strengthen our conviction."

Faraday Future bills itself as more than just a car company. It wants to sell a "virtual ecosystem," which it defines in vague terms. As the new information emerges with regards to its operations in business, people are wondering what kind of company Faraday Future that is becoming less clear as the latest information rises.

According to The Verge, in the past three weeks, there are several news reports that reveal the company's instability like outlining unpaid bills, hundreds of millions of dollars in unaccounted liabilities, and hundreds of staff departures.

The Faraday Future bravado comes after the damaging headlines claimed that the company is on the brink of collapsing because of its Chinese backer, LeEco currently faces a shortage of cash.

Jia Yueting said that LeEco was currently facing problems and is currently seeking for investors of its own. The Faraday Future's global CEO, LeEco co-founder Ding Lei had already stepped down

"If they don't find money after CES, they will be out of money by February," said the former executive.

The company has surfaced in 2015 and the Faraday Future promises to bring the car to the market this year with "no internal combustion parts whatsoever,". According to Daniel Newman, the principal analyst and founding partner of the Futurum Research, the car market has learned to look past the cool types of prototype cars.

However, of the Faraday Future will end up offering a custom built cars without a widespread manufacturing and distribution setup, the virtual reality could be a key differentiation for the company.




The tablet market is primarily dominated by Microsoft's Surface Pro and Apple's iPad Pro at the moment. However, it appears like all is about to change as Samsung announces the launch of the latest addition to its Chromebook line-up with Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro.

According to The Verge, Samsung in collaboration with Google have designed the next-generation Chromebook - Samsung Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro that essentially pairs the power and productivity of a laptop with the flexibility and versatility of a tablet.

The new Chromebooks not only offer users with a 360-degree rotating touch screen reports, DeccanChronical. The device also has quad-HD screen, and a customized built-in digitized pen but also a new light-weight metal design that enables converting the Chromebook into a tablet quite easily. The company first launched their first ever Chromebook five years back and they plan on continuing improving the product. The South-Korean tech giant hopes to encourage users to experience more with Google Play and Android apps through their partnership with Google.

As far as the specifications are concerned, the Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro features an immersive Quad HD 2400x1600 resolution display with protection provided by Gorilla Glass 3. The Chromebooks further feature two USB-C ports made for enhanced connectivity and 4K video streaming that essentially produce high-quality video and gaming from Chromebook on connected 4k displays.

Additionally, the Chromebooks are powered by 4GB of RAM, 32GB of ROM and batteries that the company claims will last up to 8 hours. The devices also feature ARM processors.

The Chromebooks are expected to be available at a starting price of $499 and will debut at the CES event taking place between January 5 and January 8 at Las Vegas. No details regarding when the shipping of these devices will begin have been shared yet.
Fridays resolution was supported by 50 senate member and opposed by seven.
Jan 6, 2017, 4:17am ET

Mitsubishi Lancer production ending this year

The Lancer will be replaced by a crossover.

Mitsubishi has announced it will end production of the Lancer in August.

The rally-bred Lancer Evolution was axed two years ago, but the standard model (pictured) received a series of updates inside and out for the 2016 model year. Sales continued to decline, so the Japanese brand has decided the Lancer will join the Evolution in the pantheon of automotive history before the end of the year.

Don Swearingen, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mitsubishi's North American arm, told Motor1 that another compact sedan isn't in the pipeline. Mitsubishi has previously made it clear that it wants to abandon sedans altogether and shift to building exclusively crossovers and SUVs. The move makes sense considering crossovers are outselling sedans and wagons in nearly every market around the globe.

The Lancer's void will be filled by a new compact crossover that could debut during the Geneva Auto Show, according to Autoweek. Little is known about the model, though it's expected to draw inspiration from the XR-PHEV and XR-PHEV II concepts shown in 2014 and 2015, respectively. It could even spawn a range-topping, Evolution-badged variant equipped with a powerful plug-in hybrid drivetrain.

The only Mitsubishi sedan whose future seems safe is the Mirage, surprisingly. "Our customers love the product," Swearingen pointed out. He announced that a brand-new, second-generation model will appear before the end of the decade.
Jan 6, 2017, 2:28pm ET

Report: VW's criminal settlement with DoJ could top $4B

The agreement is expected to be closer to $3 billion, however the estimates are said to be not final.

Volkswagen's looming settlement with the US Department of Justice could exceed $4 billion, sources have told Reuters.

The expected penalty, which has not been finalized yet, is likely to be closer to $3 billion. Unsurprisingly, the sources suggest VW will also be forced to implement a compliance monitor and agree to other reforms.

It is unclear if the DoJ is pushing for a deferred prosecution agreement or will demand a guilty plea for criminal charges associated with the emissions scandal.

Only one employee has been hit with criminal charges in the US, however his ongoing cooperation could lead to prosecutions for other staff that may have been involved in the cheat. DoJ officials are presumably exploring charges for higher-level managers and executives.

VW and the DoJ are said to be scrambling to finalize a criminal settlement before the Obama administration leaves office in two weeks. If a deal is not reached by January 20, the process is expected to face significant delays.
Jan 6, 2017, 9:54am ET

Trump threatens Toyota over Mexico-made Corollas

Donald Trump is going after yet another automaker.

Having taken both General Motors and Ford to task for building cars destined for the United States market in Mexico, President-elect Donald Trump is now taking aim at Toyota for its plans for a new car factory South of the boarder.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax, Trump Tweeted on Thursday.

The factory Trump is referring to is actually located in Guanajuato, not Baja. Announced in April 2015, the new Guanajuato plant will build up to 200,000 Corolla models per year, with most of those earmarked for the U.S. Toyota currently builds the U.S.-spec Corolla in Canada.

Toyota already has a plant up and running in Baja; it makes the Tacoma pickup truck.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda says the company will take a wait-and-see approach with the new Guanajuato factory. "We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts," Toyoda said, according to Reuters.

However, the Guanajuato plant is probably too far along to shelve at this point. Toyota has committed $1 billion to build the plant and broke ground in November.

Toyota currently operates 10 factories in the United States and builds 1.3 million vehicles here annually. The Guanajuato plant will be Toyota's second in Mexico. Last year Toyota imported 47,000 vehicles from Mexico to the United States.

Prior to seizing onto Toyota, Trump lambasted Ford for its decision to shift all small car production to Mexico. Ford ultimately decided against the Mexico plant, citing declining sales for its decision, not Trump's influence.

GM, meanwhile, faced a Trump Twitter tirade over its Cruze small car. Although the vast majority of Cruze models are made in Ohio, Trump criticized GM for importing a small number of Cruze Hatchbacks from Mexico.
For the second time in less than a week, Lower Saucon Township police responded to a pit bull found along Route 378.

Sporting a wide blue collar, the brown-and-white pit bull ran off after it was spotted New Year's Day. It was eventually caught, and as of Thursday was secured in the township police department's kennel.

The earlier incident involved a gray-and-white pit bull found Dec. 27 tied by a pink leash to a railing outside the former Glow Gentleman's Club at 3868 Route 378.

Township police are treating the pit bull incidents as unrelated, said Cpl. Tim Connell.

"It might just be a coincidence," he said Thursday night. "It just happens that they both happened to be pit bulls."

Township police are looking for someone to adopt the brown-and-white dog, initially spotted Sunday running around the area of Saucon Square along Route 378. It had no collar and no tag and appears in good condition, without any injuries that would suggest someone involved in dogfighting is dumping pit bulls in the area.

"I don't think there's anything to indicate they were fighting dogs," Connell said.

A family in Allentown adopted the gray-and-white pit bull found tied up last week, according to police.

Lower Saucon police invite anyone interested in adopting the brown-and-white one to contact the department through the Northampton County 911 non-emergency line at 610-759-2200. Police are also looking for tips on who owned the dog, if anyone recognizes it.

Township police will keep a stray for a limited time, and uses its Facebook account to let people know about abandoned dogs officers pick up.

"We try to find a good home for them," Connell said. "We do have a kennel to keep them in, but we can only keep them so long. We have a dog control officer that takes care of them and feeds them."

If no one steps up, the next step is to contact an adoption agency to turn over custody of the dog to, Connell said. Lower Saucon works with Peaceable Kingdom in Whitehall Township, Because of a Dog in Bethlehem and Bella-Reed Pit Bull Rescue in Bucks County.

Pit bulls can be harder to place than other breeds, he said.

"They're actually good dogs," Connell said. "They get a bad rap because of how some people handle them."

Township police are hoping for a better outcome with the brown-and-white pit bull than the emaciated pit bull left in a cardboard box about a year ago, on Jan. 1, 2016, along Valley View Road. That dog was malnourished and dehydrated and had to be euthanized.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
AT&T Store on Nazareth Pike robbed by gun-toting duo

This AT&T Store, 3859 Nazareth Pike in Bethlehem Township, was robbed Thursday night, Jan. 5, 2017, by two perpetrators, one of whom brandished a handgun, police said. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)

A cellphone retailer in Bethlehem Township was robbed Thursday night by two perpetrators, one of whom brandished a silver handgun, police said.

It was reported at 8:08 p.m. at the AT&T Store, 3859 Nazareth Pike, in a strip mall on the western side of the road, near the former Kmart.

The robbers, believed to be male, wore black ski masks and all black, tactical-style clothing, according to township police. They came in as the store was closing at 8 p.m. and assaulted two employees, township police Cpl. Troy Abelovsky said.

The employees were forced into a backroom, and the assailants took everything from a safe plus the cash on hand, police said.

They fled out a back door on foot, but police believe they had a car waiting nearby -- possibly driven by a third conspirator -- because a K-9 track led to an adjacent parking lot before the trail was lost, Abelovsky said.

The employees declined medical treatment.

Police were processing surveillance video and evidence as the investigation continued.

Police ask anyone with information on the crime to call township Investigator Edward Fox via the Northampton County 911 non-emergency line at 610-759-2200.

This is the second Northampton County cellphone store to be robbed since October.

"It's not known that there's any correlation between the two at this point in time," Abelovsky said.

The previous incident was at Verizon, 301 Town Center Blvd. in Forks Township, where 25-year-old Michael Davis worked before he was shot to death by two unknown assailants Nov. 21 outside his Palmer Township home.

The armed robbery at Verizon occurred Oct. 29, when a male assailant in a black ski mask brandished a silver handgun and directed an employee to a bathroom before stealing about 70 cellphones and tablet computers, Forks police had said

The store manager at Verizon, 42-year-old Michael DeRose, was also purported to be the victim of a crime the night after Davis was killed, when he was assaulted and robbed outside his Palmer Township home Nov. 22. That incident was also perpetrated by two unknown males.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Bethlehem man admitted Friday he shot a then-16-year-old boy in the knee during a fight last year.

Elias Ariza, 20, of 1600 block of Major Street, was sentenced to seven and a half to 15 years in state prison by Northampton County Judge Stephen Baratta. Ariza pleaded guilty Friday to attempted homicide.

He shot 16-year-old Kyre Williams in a gang-related fight Jan. 30 on East Sixth Street in Bethlehem.

A co-defendant, Omar Quinones, is serving 10 to 24 years in prison for shooting 14-year-old Taron Walker. Walker survived after being shot eight times. Quinones, 18, lives in the 1200 block of Woodbine Street in Bethlehem.

Quinones is a member of the Crips gang and the two victims are members of the Bloods, authorities said.

Ariza still faces charges for a shooting in Allentown.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Not only did William Ritchie steal childhood from two young girls.

The effects of his decade of sexual abuse continue to linger and probably will forever.

"You have stolen many year of my childhood. For years I have suffered from crippling anxiety and depression," said one of the victims, who is now 23.

Sometimes she lies in bed paralyzed with fear, missing classes and appointments because she cannot move.

"I am 23 years old and I have to sleep with the lights on because of you," she told him in Northampton County Court on Friday.

Northampton County Judge Samuel Murray sentenced the to 81-year-old Palmer Township man to nine to 18 years in prison, what amounts to a life sentence due to his age and poor health.

Defense attorney Scott Wilhelm said Ritchie suffers from 11 ailments, including problems with his heart, lungs and kidneys.

"You put him in jail where he's been and we're just speeding up his death," said Wilhelm, who asked for a one- to two-year prison sentence.

A jury found Ritchie guilty of eight counts of sexual abuse against the girls, the second of whom was 18 when the verdict was handed down in October. The first girl was abused from ages 5 to 9. The second was abused from ages 5 to 11.

Ritchie continues to deny the allegations. The retired electrical engineer built a website for his church, delivers meals on wheels and went with a church group to New Orleans to provide relief after Hurricane Katrina.

He said he can't understand why the girls would accuse him of molesting them in his home in the 3300 block of Rocky Lane.

"I do not believe he would do this," said his wife, Virginia Ritchie. "He is a kind person. He has never had a fit of rage at me. I've never seen him have a fit of rage at the children or the grandchildren. I don't know where this comes from."

"I've worked my whole live to be a good person," Ritchie said. "I have done everything I could do to give, not take. Why this could happen, I can't understand."

The judge said sex offenses are the most secret of crimes. Offenders are skilled and keeping these crimes and their desires hidden, he said.

He said the victims had no reason to deliver gut-wrenching and traumatic testimony had they not been abused. The 23-year-old sobbed during the trial and sobbed again Friday during her testimony.

"I may not have been strong enough as a child to stand up to you but today I am," she said. "I did make something of myself and I will not let your actions derail my life any longer."

The attorneys raised voices and spoke over each other when Wilhelm objected to the 23-year-old testifying while flanked by her friends, a police detective and Assistant District Attorney Anthony Casola.

"Excuse me," the judge intervened. "I will not allow this to get out of control."

Murray allowed the friends to stay and ordered Detective Timothy Ruoff and Casola to sit.

Ritchie was convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated assault, indecent assault and endangering the welfare of a child against the older victim. Those charges concern allegations between 1998 and November 2002.

He was convicted of attempted aggravated indecent assault, endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of indecent assault against the now-18-year-old. The abuse was allegedly between 2004 and July 2010.

Casola asked for a minimum of 16 years and 9 months to a maximum of 33 years and 6 months in prison.

"These are horrific crimes," Casola said. "This isn't one night. This isn't one incident. This occurred for both of them over a roughly five-year period when they were in the developmental stages of childhood."

The 18-year-old testified she questions the motives of every male she encounters as a result of the abuse.

"The pain I have suffered has left me encapsulated in a world of self doubt," she said. "My body is a prison. I don't think it's fair to have me live in a prison while the person who did this walks free."

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
The staid walls of the former Churchman Business School are becoming a dizzying array of colors, textures, lights and sounds.

They're the repository of contemporary art known as fusionism. And the artwork in the Easton school is just the beginning, if Shalom Tomas Neuman has his way.

Ultimately, the fusionism innovator envisions a separate art museum in Easton unlike any other in the world.

"My goal is to create a museum that archives not pure painting, not pure sculpture, not pure photography. Only hybrid multisensory art," Neuman said.

His art reflects the constant sensory overload of overlapping stimuli from sources such as your smartphone, television and billboards.

He's a contemporary of Andy Warhol and said he knew the pop art pioneer when they both lived in Pittsburgh.

Neuman's FusionArts Museum on Manhattan's lower east side blazed a trail for dozens of museums now near the Stanton Street location. He also has museums in the Czech Republic.

The International Fusionism Academy, or IF Academy, at the Churchman school will host a revolving door of international artists for about a month each, where they will learn about and create fusionistic art.

"This used to be a school and we're keeping it as an academy. We're going to bring artists from all over the world from China, Japan and other countries," Neuman said. The private academy will open March 1.

He had his eyes on 811 Northampton St., the former Easton Area School District administration building, as the site of his museum. He said his interest in that site has cooled due to a lack of support from local government.

Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said he met with Neuman and his wife but they never discussed the 811 Northampton St. site. He said multiple developers have looked into converting it into apartments.

Regardless, IF Academy will make a great addition to the city's vibrant arts scene, the mayor said.

"I think what he's doing at Churchman is great," Panto said. "We love artists moving from New York. He's certainly a very talented and well-known artist and art dealer."

Neuman bought a home on Bushkill Drive where he will stay when he's not in Prague. Setting up an academy in Easton makes sense because it's close to his wife's aging parents.

His wife, Karen Pritchett-Neuman, is an art professor and professional illustrator who drew the woman on the St. Pauli Girl beer bottles.

Already, Neuman said, he feels at home here. He envisions partnerships with local artists and with Lafayette College.

"I hope to work with the local artistic community, involve them," he said.

Most of Neuman's extended Jewish family was wiped out during the Holocaust. In 1948, about a year after he was born in Prague, his family was forced to flee to Israel because his father's name appeared on a Communist death list. His family moved to the Pittsburgh area when he was 12. He couldn't speak English, was held back a year in school, teased and called "retarted" and "flunky" by his peers.

"Art was my salvation," he said. "My outlet for my internal pain was drawing and painting and I loved escaping into my own private world surrounded by my art."

Neuman later moved to New York City, where he lectured on art for 40 years at schools such as the Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute of Technology in New York City. He retired from full-time teaching in 2011.

He's gradually clearing out supplies left behind at the Churchman school and carting in his artwork from a New York warehouse. He said he's made 17 trips with a 26-foot U-Haul. Among the items moved are a huge mosaic bathtub and shower he created that will be at the disposal of the artist-in-residence.

He moved it piecemeal. It took six men to lift the tub.

Once he's established in Easton, he will turn his attention to his New York museum. He's in the early stages of planning its demolition so it can make way for an eight-story replacement.

He will also continue to pursue opportunities for an Easton museum exclusively for fusionism, he said.

"An international museum with global links would be an economic boon for Easton," Neuman said. "But I won't pursue that unless politicians are willing to take this seriously and back up this idea and help me."

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
An appeal has been lodged with An Bord Pleanala against plans to build a new storage facility for wind energy at Portlaoises Clonminam Business Park.

Laois County Council granted permission to Gaelectric Energy Storage Ltd to build the battery storage facility at the business park, which will house batteries containing renewable energy obtained from wind turbines.

The councils greenlight came despite numerous objections from people concerned about the possible effect to the environment and public health from the storing of such materials.

One such submission came from Peter Sweetman and Associates, Dublin 6, who have now brought the appeal to An Bord Pleanala.

Objections were also made to the council from Mr Brian Ramsbottom, on behalf of Wolfhill, Luggacurren, Swan and Stradbally Wind Aware Group, who said there are no health and safety regulations or standards for large batteries like the one proposed.

He claimed that storing large quantities of electricity in a battery like the one proposed is a potential threat to the local environment and public health.

He also questioned what will happen to the battery cells after their life cycle of four years.

Further submissions were made by Ms Rosemary Sharpe, who claimed that: This battery storage facility has long term implications for the health of Laois people, the Laois environment, tourism and community welfare.

Gaelectric refuted the submissions made, saying that extensive fire testing for powerpacks has been carried out which demonstrated there is no increased threat to the local environment or public health.

The powerpacks used to store the energy obtained will be recycled at the end of their usable life, they said.

The applicant said the energy storage system is a self-contained system which does not release any wastes, residues or odours into the environment during installation or operation.

The company also claimed that this technology can reduce the dependency on fossil fuel generation.

In reaching a decision to grant permission for the storage facility, Laois County Council ruled that the development would be compliant with the Portlaoise Local Area Plan 2012-2018 and with proper planning laws.

The development shall be used for the storage of oversupply energy from the national grid and its release back to the national grid during periods of increased demand.

It will be connected to a substation on the Abbeyleix Road, Portlaoise via an underground cable.

The matter is now with An Bord Pleanala, with a decision expected in the coming months.
The HSE has committed to opening a dozen extra acute hospital beds for Tullamore hospital to ease overcrowding of the Emergency department there, in coming weeks.

None will be added in Portlaoise, which had even higher numbers awaiting a bed this week.

This morning the trolley crisis has eased in Portlaoise, with two people currently on trolleys awaiting a hospital bed, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's Trolley Watch.

There are currently 12 on trolleys in Tullamore hospital, with 395 awaiting a bed nationwide.

Last Tuesday January 3 Portlaoise had 42 people on trolleys, the second highest in Ireland that day, when the crisis hit the highest peak, at 612 patients awaiting beds. That day Tullamore had 41, as did St Luke's in Kilkenny, the nearest hospitals to Portlaoise.

The beds in Tullamore are part of a raft of 63 Acute beds nationwide which the HSE announced yesterday, following a meeting with Minister for Health Simon Harris.

It will also open 60 Transitional Care beds nationwide immediately, for patients awaiting their nursing home applications to be completed, which will free up Acute beds.

Portlaoise GPs will however get additional diagnostic services such as Ultra-sound and X-ray, through existing private providers, along with Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and Letterkenny.

The HSE will also introduce enhanced discharge processes between hospitals, while some private hospitals, including in Kilkenny, have been identified to support public hospitals immediately.

A re-run of the Influenza vaccine campaign will commence from 6th January to improve vaccine uptake for the at risk group.

People are urged to get the flu vaccine from their GP, and anyone with the vomiting bug is asked to stay away from all healthcare facilities.
The hospital which stands to plug the gap if Portlaoise hospital is downgraded has been described as a 'vital hub' by the Minister for Health.

Minister Simon Harris officially opened the refurbished Scott Building at Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore on Thursday 5 January 2017. The Scott Building was opened in 1937 and was formerly known as the County General Hospital until the completion of the new hospital in 2007.

A statement issued on behalf of the Dublin Midlands Hospital group said Scott Building now houses 'state-of-the-art' facilities including the Laois Offaly Mental Health Services; the Feinics Day Centre for clients using Mental Health Services; the local TUSLA Office; doctors on call rooms; a Library Research and Education Centre, among other essential administrative offices required for the effective functioning of the hospital.

Speaking at the official opening, Minister Harris congratulated the hospital for being a vital hub for acute services in the Midlands by offering an excellent integrated approach to healthcare".

In particular he praised the "holistic therapies being offered in the Bannon Mental Health Centre are a credit to the mental health service and all involved. This centre is a wonderful tribute to the late John Bannon who played an integral role in promoting mental health services in the region.

The Minister also acknowledged the importance of reopening the Scott Building and commended staff and management in delivering this "excellent facility".

Minster Harris is due in the Midlands Region Hospital Portlaoise to discuss its reconfiguration. Both hospitals are in the Dublin Midlands Hospiatal Group.
Gardai in Kildare town are still appealing for information on an armed robbery at L. Malone newsagents in Kildare Town on Wednesday December 28 last.

A man wearing a balaclava and carrying a knife entered the local newsagents at 8.40 pm and demanded cash from the till.

Shop owner Louis Hennessy described the ordeal as 'frightening'.

We were in the process of closing the shop, said Louis.

I'd gone home and my son Graham was in the shop. This guy came in with a balaclava and he had a knife in his hand.

The raider pulled out the knife and demanded cash from the till. He made off with a small sum of money.

It's frightening but it seems to be the fashion at the moment,he added.

The town was pretty busy that night. Thankfully nobody was injured. That's the main thing.

The suspect, who was described as wearing a dark coloured top and grey tracksuit bottoms, demanded cash from the cashier.

He fled from the scene down nearby Malone's Lane.

The well known Kildare town landmark is the oldest newsagent in the country and marked its 150th birthday in 2014.

Louis Hennessy was dubbed Lucky Louis in 2012 with three big winning lottery ticket bought in his shop that year.
A Kildare housing group is holding a rally on January 11 at Newbridge Town Hall to show solidarity with those in Apollo House in Dublin.

Kildare Housing Action is inviting members of the public to join them at 12pm to show their support for the Home Sweet Home campaign.

We in Housing Action Kildare support Apollo House. We believe the actions of the homeless, activists and volunteers in occupying and running Apollo House are valuable and necessary to provide homes for homeless people while also forcing the government to address the issue of homelessness and the broader housing emergency, said the group.

Apollo House has become a symbol of people power, a space of dignity and justice and we stand with them in solidarity.Support the letter to Michael Noonan at https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/sign-the-open-letter-use-nama-to-end-homelessness

The group pointed out Apollo House is an action to intervene in the housing crisis and save lives. It said the building, that has been left vacant for six years, was opened to people who were otherwise sleeping rough on the streets.

Apollo House is home to 40 residents and has seen over a 1,000 people volunteering their time over the Christmas period. The action was taken as a response to the deaths on our streets. The action was taken to ensure dignity for people left vulnerable and unsupported by government. The action was taken as a creative response to a dire situation. We believe that this crisis is not about resources but about lack of political will to put the needs of the people above private interest.

January 11 is the date by which the residents of Apollo House have to vacate the building according to a court order.
2016 was a year of personal tragedy and professional accomplishment for up and coming Kilcock actress Orlaith Carr.

Just over a month ago, the young Kildare woman had to return suddenly from her work in France with a theatre company, because her mother, Cathy, was seriously ill.

Sitting her dad, well known Kilcock based photographer, Kevin Carr, in the kitchen of their Court Park home on December 20, she told us about the minor drawback to her job touring with the theatre company in rural France.

When she got the call from Kilcock about her mother, Cathy's, serious condition, she had to make a quite a complicated journey from a rural French location to get home.

Thankfully Orlaith was successful, reaching home in time. Her mother passed away at the end of November after a six year battle with cancer.

Orla works with French theatre company Emerald Isle, which performs plays with an Irish twist in English for students who are learning the language.

A native of Kilcock, she was educated at Scoil Ui Riada primary school and at Scoil Dara secondary school in the town.

She got what was described as a superb Leaving Cert, which she finished at the young age of 16.

While her sister, Michelle, headed off to a career in banking, Orlaith decided to pursue her love of the stage.

At first she attended Sallynoggin College and obtained a one year FETAC certificate in performance and dance.

She then moved to the Monkstown College of Dance and did a two year professional diploma.

Her efforts there won her a scholarship to the London Studio Centre, where she did a degree in musical theatre.

That came with an honours tag and Orlaith graduated in July 2016.

Among her projects was a mini thesis, The Changing Image of Irish Identity in Musical Theatre Over the Years.

She returned to Kilcock where she ran a summer camp at Scoil Ui Riada, teaching performance arts.

Great support

With the aid of a grant, including one from Kildare County Council (they were very good, she added) she did a stint with the National Youth Theatre (NYT).

That included doing a play with Owen Horsley, Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and training with the NYT for a month.

She was delighted with that.

They got over 5,000 applications and I was the only Irish girl to be accepted, said Orlaith.

In July, also, she auditioned for a role with the Emerald Isle Theatre Company.

Success followed there and she began rehearsing in September in Dublin.

They moved to Brussels in October and have been touring in France with two musical plays. Singing, dancing, acting, playing the fiddle and doing workshops are part of the role during an eight month tour.

Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland are also on the schedule.

She has been enjoying it immensely. Its like being on holiday, said Orlaith.

The company is run by Xavier Hock and Christine Beziat.

Xavier has spent some time in Ireland over the years.

The two plays they are performing are set in Glendalough and Tory Island.

The contract will be up next May. But for the moment, Orlaith is getting paid to see the world.

It is clear, that her dad, Kevin, is proud of her.

Family pride

The three of us sat down for the chat and Kevin flowed with information before Orlaith could get a word in edgeways.

Any ambitions for the future? Its my dream to be on the Abbey stage, she said.

It is not recommended you bet against her.

She knows something of it. Her thesis, The Pliable Paddy: The Changing Image of Irish Identity Portrayed Through Musical Theatre, takes you through a series of well known films and plays.

Her conclusions may not be comfortable for everyone.

It would be easy to conclude that the changing image of Irish identity is of a progressive, positive nature, but that is not the case.

She argued that musical theatre has been used in the past as a poweful outlet for defining and redefining relationships between Ireland and the rest of the world and will continue to do so.
Donald Trump is in a no-win situation as regards Russian hacking vs. American intelligence agencies vs Donald Trump.

Putin, as we all know by now, has been accused by all the American intelligence agencies (and several foreign ones) of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and leaking the contents to help Trump win the US presidency.

The Russian President has denied this as he has denied many other misdeeds. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, he channel for the leaks, has backed him up. So has Donald Trump.

On the other side of the fence are, not surprisingly, a Democratic Party in search of a scapegoat to explain the inexplicable and Americas spy nerds.

Trump cant really say that he agrees with the intelligence agencies. To do so would leave him branded as Putins poodle and undermine his mandate to govern.

On the other hand, if he rejects the advice of his own intelligence experts than he undermines the workings of the American government and damages his future relationship with the CIA, FBI, military intelligence and the National Security Agency.

It would be difficult for any government employee to work with a president whom he believes sacrificed Americas electoral system. Conversely, if Trump honestly believes that the intelligence agencies are being orchestrated by his political opponents, he will have difficulty accepting assessments which he needs to make decisions affecting the entire world.

There is, as expected these days, another conspiracy theory doing the rounds. That is that the Democratic Party Establishment and President Barack Obama are orchestrating the hacking row to protect the Obama legacy.

Well, lets look at the backgrounds of the heads of the three agencies laying the blame at Putins door. Any pro-Obama conspiracy would require their coordinated connivance.

James Comey, director of the FBI took up his position in 2013 after a long legal career which included a stint as Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush. He has been a registered Republican most of his adult life and contributed to the campaigns of Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John McCain. On top of that, his credentials as an Obama-Clinton supporter were, shall we say, questioned, when he reopened the Clinton email case days before the November election.

It is difficult to pin a political label on CIA Director John O. Brennan. With 25 years at Langley and its various outposts, he is a career spy. Of course, at the end of November he took the unusual step of publicly warning President-elect Trump to be wary of Russia, and urged him to keep in place the Iran nuclear deal. Balance that against the reason he was not appointed CIA director sooner: Senate opposition because he implemented the Bush policy of sending terrorist suspects to countries where it was known they would be tortured.

Admiral William Rogers took up his post at the National Security Agency in 2014. He is also head of US Cyber Command. The NSA is Americas electronic spy agency. Admiral Rogers is a career navy man whose last post was head of the US Navys electronic spy operations. The post of director of the NSA does not require Senate confirmation, but that of head of US Cyber Command does. He was unanimously approved.

So on balance, it seems highly unlikely that the heads of the American intelligence agencies have turned their backs on distinguished cross-party careers, abandoned any shred of impartiality and are conspiring with the Democratic leadership to destroy Trump before he takes the oath of office. They are, therefore, either very right or very wrong.

From Putins point of view it really doesnt matter. The resulting confusion, accusations and counteraccusations, means he is the only winner. As Trump recently tweeted about the Russian leader: I always knew he was very smart.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and the author of The Encyclopedia of the Cold War and the recently published America Made in Britain that has sold out in the US after six weeks but is still available in the UK.
Vince Cable writes for this weeks New Statesman arguing for the end to the EUs free movement of people.

He builds on the themes he initially set out on an article for this site just after the referendum  which turned out to be our most read article of 2016.

In the New Statesman he writes:

As a liberal economist, I welcome freer trade and globalisation in general; and as a political liberal I oppose attempts to fence people in. I naturally value the freedom to travel around Europe for business or pleasure with minimal restriction. But I have serious doubts that EU free movement is tenable or even desirable. First, the freedom is not a universal right, but selective. It does not apply to Indians, Jamaicans, Americans or Australians. They face complex and often harsh visa restrictions. One uncomfortable feature of the referendum was the large Brexit vote among British Asians, many of whom resented the contrast between the restrictions they face and the welcome mat laid out for Poles and Romanians.

He goes on to argue that while there are benefits to immigration, they are not as conclusive as we would like to think for the country. He sets out what he thinks is the way forward:

The argument for free movement has become tactical: it is part of a package that also contains the wider economic benefits of the single market. Those benefits are real, which is why the government must prioritise single market access and shared regulation. Yet that may not be possible to reconcile with restrictions on movement. The second-best option is customs union status, essential for supply chain industries. I do not see much upside in Brexit, but one is the opportunity for a more rational immigration policy. First, it will involve legitimising the position of EU nationals already here. It must involve a more sensible way of dealing with overseas students, who are not immigrants and benefit the UK. The permeability of the Irish border must lead to a united Ireland in Europe. And, not least, there can be a narrative in which control on labour movements is matched by control on capital  halting the takeovers that suffocate the innovative companies on which the countrys future depends.

I find his analysis profoundly depressing, particularly as he talks about the politics of free movement being conclusively hostile. I feel that we should be trying to change the weather on that rather than simply going along with the right wing media and politicians.

My instinct is for as much free movement as possible . The world is so much smaller now and people make connections and fall in love with people from all over the world. They should be free to make their homes wherever suits them. Where I agree with Vince is that our immigration system is way too harsh. Ive seen too many examples where families have been split up because one partner isnt allowed to come into this country. One of the worst things we agreed to in the coalition was the income requirement for spouses to enter the country which discriminates against women and the less well-off.

Vince was one of the most liberal voices in the coalition government on immigration (and lots of other things, too). He spent his five years in office fighting with Theresa May on things like post study work visas and overseas students. He also fought the Tories to crack down on employers who didnt pay the minimum wage. He is making these arguments from a good place with a good reputation.

Vince is one of the Liberal Democrats I respect most. I disagree with him on this, though. There are so many other solutions to the problems he outlines. The first thing would be to construct an immigration system that treats people like human beings. The second would be to ensure that workers are not exploited. The third would be to make sure that where we need more houses, schools and hospitals, we build more houses, schools and hospitals.

The big argument we need to win is about the need for the state to do this stuff. Since Thatcher, paying taxes has been something to be undertaken only with extreme reluctance. Living in a civilised society where citizens are well looked after costs money. The benefits of happy, productive, healthy citizens are clear. So lets set out what we could achieve with a more powerful state. The small-state right wing consensus which has dominated our politics for four decades has damaged us. Its time to make a stand and show that we can have a fairer, more equal and open country which welcomes those who move here to contribute. That will do much more to re-engage those who feel that politics and government has nothing to offer them.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Important announcement about to be made on LBC flashed up the alert on my phone. I winced a bit, remembering how last year had started with the deaths of all sorts of childhood icons.

It actually turned out to be Nick Ferrari telling the world that they had a new presenter on LBC for 4 nights a week. Its a big commitment for someone who already has a full time job as an MEP. I suppose the best that can be said about Nigel Farages new gig is that it will get him off the BBC where he seems to have taken up permanent residence. I half expect to see him turn up presenting Escape to the Country or something.

Anyway, Mr Farage is going to be waxing lyrical on his favourite prejudices for an hour every night from Monday to Thursday. My initial reaction was somewhere in the region of the dry boak. Twelve hours later, not much has changed. He has, of course, broadcast on LBC before, but this is a much more permanent arrangement.

What should the reaction of liberals be to this news? Ive noticed that some people on social media have called for a boycott of LBC, saying that they shouldnt employ someone with Farages views. After his hideous Breaking Point poster during the referendum, you can see where they are coming from. They argue that its all about the number of listeners and the more people listen, the happier the bosses at the radio station will be. If we dont listen, they say, then hell get sacked. WE might not listen and feel the better for it, but others will and will be taken in by what he is saying. If we let that happen.

I dont see much gain in all the liberals retreating into nice comfortable liberal spaces and tut-tutting amongst themselves, though. It will do no good and change no minds.

But there is something I and all others who believe in a modern, diverse, progressive, generous-spirited society can do. We can challenge him. We can phone in and show his arguments up for the populist nonsense that they are. We should use all the charm and humour we can muster to win hearts and minds, to try and build bridges, not to Farage because hes a lost cause, but to the people his rhetoric has deceived.

I said the other day that liberals had to get out there, win the arguments and show that there are better ways than scapegoating the pesky foreigners for our own governments successive failures to meet even the basic needs of their citizens. That means we need to take the arguments right too him. If he gets a stream of people ringing in and saying Youre right, mate, its all the immigrants fault and isnt that Tim Farron a traitor? it will give the impression that thats the only game in town to the hundreds of thousands of people who are listening.

Farage doesnt like it when hes challenged. Listen to Chris from Richmond at about 4 minutes in on this show. Lets have more calls like this. We must not let him have it all his own way. We need to have the stomach to listen in to this show and take him on.

What do you think?

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
As 2017 begins, the politics of unreason seems to be spreading its influence across British politics and media. Liam Fox inside the government, and John Redwood and Peter Lilley outside, are arguing that we dont need to negotiate a treaty with the EU as we leave. They propose that Britain simply reasserts its sovereignty, and to hell with international law, commercial and security interests, and rights of access and residence elsewhere across the EU for the 50 million journeys UK citizens make every year. (Peter Lilley, like Nigel Lawson, lives part of the year in France; youd have thought he might have taken rights of residence into account.) Free trade, they assert, is something that we can if necessary adopt unilaterally. The mercantilist policies of China and India, the threats of protectionist tariffs that the President-elect Trump has been making, do not disturb their tranquillity.

Meanwhile, Wednesdays Times carried an article in its business section by Mark Littlewood, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, recommending Las Vegas as the model for post-Brexit Britains economy, in particular by spreading casinos through our left behind seaside towns. Hes as serious about this as Tim Congdon (of Economists for Britain) is when he argues that Britains economy can manage without an industrial base, and as the Taxpayers Alliance is when it recommends further deep cuts in public spending. Thats the US Republican model they aspire to, even as Donald Trump moves away from it. It is, of course, the opposite of what most Leave supporters thought they were voting for, and what the Leave campaign appeared to be promising.

On the Op-ed page of Wednesdays Times Melanie Phillips argued that Barack Obama will return to his Marxist roots when he leads office, to create a climate of agitation with the potential for a permanent grassroots insurrection against the Trump Administration, with Obama encouraging and leading it. Matt Ridley the day before had deserted his usual climate-change denial to fill a Times column with a denunciation of Marxism and its continuing influence, depicting it as a severe global and also domestic threat: its the left, not the right, that threatens our peaceful order. The forces of illiberalism are out there in our mainstream media, not just in the Daily Mail and the Sun.

Denial of evidence, dismissal of experts, lack of concern for the views of foreign governments and companies (except for the incoming Trump Administration) all indicate that we now face an alternative irrational Establishment, which stretches across the right-wing of the Conservative Party, the offshore-owned media, and a group of influential think tanks with links to the US Right. Mrs. May finds herself in a similar position to John Major before her, with the bastards on the right refusing to compromise with their more pragmatic colleagues, let alone with the reasoned and detailed arguments of business and officialdom. They have become more shrill in the months since the Referendum, as the evidence has stacked up against them; its becoming clear that they want negotiations on Brexit to fail, and will attack proposals for compromise as betrayal. Major did his best to resist them. Theresa May seems to hope that she can hold her party together without confronting the likes of Redwood, Duncan Smith, Lilley, Lawson or Fox. So far she has managed this by delaying agreement on a negotiating position. But she HAS to spell out that position within the next few weeks, and the arguments may then get even shriller.

Liberal democracy is about continuing discussion and debate, with respect for different opinions and for conflicting evidence. Thats now under active populist attack, including by cynical media groups that promote nationalist unreason while avoiding national taxes by transferring their profits offshore. We have to be as active in defending the politics of reason, and reminding the public where irrational populism has led to before.

* William Wallace has fought five parliamentary elections in Manchester and West Yorkshire. He is a former president of the Yorkshire regional Liberal Democrats.
A NEW government plan is proposing extra flood defences for Shannon Airport in a bid to combat extreme weather.

The airport is located on the edge of the Shannon estuary and, as a result, is at elevated risk of flooding.

The plans have been published by Transport Minister Shane Ross as part of a consultation document, entitled Developing Resilience to Climate Change in the Irish Transport Sector.

The increased requirement for de-icing facilities at the hub is cited as a high priority for the airport over the coming years.

The dangers of coastal erosion are also mentioned in this document.

It is predicted in the strategy that road and railway flooding episodes will become more frequent and last longer due to heavier rainfall over the coming years and decades.

Transport sector stakeholders and the public have been invited to make submissions on the document, which is available on the departments web site, and will also be on public display at Council offices in Merchants Quay and Dooradoyle.
A REVENUE employee, who signed letters sent to over 400 Kerry milk suppliers demanding tax arrears on loyalty shares, has received sinister threats, the Leader has learned.

It is understood the person works in County Kerry but resides in Limerick. Affected farmers were shocked and angry last November when they received correspondence from out of the blue saying they had under declared income on these shares. Sums range from 5,000 to over 50,000 per person.

Gardai have confirmed they are investigating two instances of hate mail and threatening behaviour towards an individual. It is understood the perpetrators called to the Revenue officials County Limerick home and left messages to the effect of, We will be back if you dont withdraw your letters.

Gardai are monitoring activities at the house since the incidents in recent weeks.

Deputy Niall Collins, who raised the matter of the Revenue's demands in the Dail last year, said this new revelation was absolutely shocking.

Public servants are doing their job and those aggrieved should not be taking out their anger on one individual person.

"Citizens have an appeals process and there are channels to go through. People shouldnt make it personal, said Deputy Collins, who became aware of the threats over the New Year.

The Fianna Fail TD says he can understand the anger that it is out there but it should not be directed in this vicious manner.

Frustration and anger is understandable but hate mail certainly isnt, said Deputy Collins.

He described the letters from the Revenue last November as a bombshell out of left field.

Farmers have just endured a milk price crisis for two years. They have financial commitments for the next number of years based on their income projection and cash flow.

"This matter is far from over, there is a long way to go but targeting the person from the Revenue definitely isnt the way to go about it, said Deputy Collins.

Tax demands from the Revenue are connected to patronage shares issued to milk suppliers by Kerry Co-op during the period 2011 to 2013. They were allocated one new co-op share for every 1,000 gallons of milk supplied annually. Farmers say they were never made aware of any potential income tax liability from preference shares.

A spokesperson for the Revenue said that for reasons of data protection and confidentiality they could not comment on a query on the hate mail from the Limerick Leader.

However, in general terms, you will be aware that it is not unknown for individuals to seek to highlight dissatisfaction with an organisation through bullying or threatening behaviour targeting individual staff members, or groups of staff.

"Such behaviour is totally unacceptable and Revenue takes any threat against our staff very seriously. Our policy is to assess and take appropriate action, including referral to An Garda Siochana, said the spokesperson.
May 4, 2021, 2 AM

Out of circulation for 99 years, the Position 79 Inverted Jenny airmail error has resurfaced and will be auctioned off. It was the focus of this week's top post on Linns.com.

Its time to catch up on the week that was in stamp-collecting insights and news.

Linns Stamp News is looking back at its five most-read stories of the week.

Click the links to read the stories.

5. Monday Morning Brief | Breakup of the Soviet Union anniversary: Marty Frankevicz discusses the 25th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and related stamps.

4. Revisiting the U.S. stamp subject list leaked three years ago: The editors at Linns recently looked at the list to see which stamps could be checked off as having been issued and to note the subjects that have yet to be honored on a U.S. stamp.

3. Unannounced cardinal forever envelope sold in Ohio: The previously unannounced security-lined envelope repeats the design of the Northern Cardinal forever stamp that was issued in August 2016.

2. Rare 5 Lincoln pair among highlights at upcoming Harmer-Schau Orcoexpo sale: The auction will be spread across three sessions during the 42nd annual Orcoexpo in Fullerton, Calif., near Anaheim.

1. Jenny Invert last seen in 1918 to be auctioned: A treasured error stamp that seemingly vanished after its discovery 99 years ago is making a dramatic reappearance.

Connect with Linns Stamp News:

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Jan 5, 2017, 2 PM

A stamp in Great Britains April 6 Racehorse Legends issue will honor Desert Dessie Orchid, the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989.

Great Britain will feature songbirds that herald spring and summer in its May 4 Songbirds issue. The wren, the most common breeding bird in the United Kingdom, is shown on one stamp.

By Denise McCarty

Great Britains Royal Mail announced its commemorative stamp program for 2017 in a press release dated Jan. 2, in the January issue of its Philatelic Bulletin, and on its website.

The first issue in the program focuses on ancient Britain. The eight stamps are being issued Jan. 17 in four se-tenant (side-by-side) pairs.

Almost a month later, on Feb. 15, Royal Mail will issue 10 stamps featuring Windsor Castle, built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century.

The website of Great Britains royal family, explains the castles significance: A Royal home and fortress for over 900 years, Windsor Castle, the largest occupied castle in the world, remains a working palace today. The Queen uses the Castle both as a private home, where she usually spends the weekend, and as an official Royal residence at which she undertakes certain formal duties.

Royal Mail reports that the Windsor Castle stamps will show iconic views of both the interior and exterior of the castle, including an image of the Round Tower on a nondenominated first-class stamp.

Connect with Linns Stamp News:

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A second set in its Music Giants series is scheduled to be issued March 14.

Stamps related to animals will be issued in the spring, with a Racehorse Legends set on April 6 and a Songbirds set on May 4.

According to Royal Mail, eight champion horses  four flat racers and four national hunt horses  that achieved their greatest wins on UK race courses over the last six decades will be honored on the Racehorse Legends stamps. Among these are Desert Dessie Orchid, the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989. The designs will picture the horses in action.

The Songbirds set of 10 will show a wren and nine other birds that herald spring and summer.

In June, Royal Mail will issue stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Machin definitive series (June 5) and another set picturing windmills and watermills of the United Kingdom (June 20).

July issues will include a Landmark Buildings set on July 13, and the fourth set in the World War I series on July 31. The latter stamps will commemorate WWI events of 1917.

Classic toys will be displayed on stamps to be issued Aug. 22, and a Ladybirds booklet is scheduled to be issued Sept. 14.

The end-of-the-year issues will include a Christmas set on Nov. 7, as well as sets in October and November with subjects yet to be announced.

Royal Mail also has announced three sets of self-adhesive postage labels, called post & go, for 2017.

The first, Mail by Rail on Feb. 15, continues a Transport theme and coincides with the 90th anniversary of the post office underground railway.

A set of post & go labels on June 5 will commemorate the Machin anniversary, and a second Transport set on Sept. 13 will feature mail by air.

This program is tentative and subject to change.
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The White House has released a "National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy"  a document developed by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN).

According to the strategy document, it "seeks to improve our nation's preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration of existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities that are currently lacking."

The strategy builds on efforts at NASA to better detect and characterize the NEO population, as well as recent efforts at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prepare for and respond to a NEO impact. [Potentially Dangerous Asteroids in Images]

The document was published last month by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Seven strategic goals

There are seven main goals underpinning the effort to enhance the United States' preparedness for NEO impacts, the Strategy notes:

"Enhance NEO Detection, Tracking and Characterization Capabilities. Objectives include: developing a capability roadmap to inform a strategy for investing in both U.S. and foreign abilities for detection, tracking and characterization; improving observation capabilities for more complete and rapid observation of the entire population of NEOs; and updating existing observatories with capabilities to improve characterization assessments.

(Image credit: OSTP)

"Develop Methods for NEO Deflection and Disruption. Objectives include: developing capabilities for fast-response, focused reconnaissance and characterization; researching deflection and disruption capabilities for NEOs of varying size, mass, composition and impact warning times; and researching technologies required for deflection and disruption concepts.

"Improve Modeling, Predictions, and Information Integration. Objectives include: ensuring that adequate modeling capabilities are developed for each topical need, especially for modeling NEO trajectories to reduce orbit uncertainties and predicted impact effects; determining what outputs are required by whom; and establishing an organizational construct to coordinate the development and dissemination of modeling results.

"Develop Emergency Procedures for NEO Impact Scenarios. Objectives include: promoting a collaborative national approach to defend against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from a NEO impact event; and developing coherent national and international communication strategies to facilitate NEO impact preparations.

"Establish NEO Impact Response and Recovery Procedures. Objectives include: establishing national and international protocols to efficiently respond to a NEO impact, whether in deep ocean, coastal regions or on land; and facilitating international cooperation and planning to recover from a NEO impact in a timely manner with minimal disruption.

"Leverage and Support International Cooperation. Objectives include: building international support and policies for acknowledging and addressing the potential Earth impact of a NEO as a global challenge; fostering consultation, coordination and cooperation channels and efforts for the planning for, impact emergency preparedness before, and response to a NEO impact; increasing engagement with the international community on observation infrastructure, data sharing, numerical modeling and scientific research; strengthening international coordination and cooperation on NEO data and National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy analyses; and promoting a collaborative international approach to preparedness for NEO events.

(Image credit: OSTP)

"Establish Coordination and Communications Protocols and Thresholds for Taking Action. Objectives include: coordinating the communication of detected impact threats within the U.S. Government, as well as with other governments, media and the public; developing a set of thresholds to aid U.S. decisions in whether to implement deflection or disruption missions; developing decision flowcharts for NEO hazard scenarios incorporating benchmarks and decision thresholds; and developing protocols for international interactions regarding NEO impacts outside of U.S. territory."

These seven high-level goals and associated objectives are intended to support a collaborative and federally coordinated approach to developing effective policies, practices and procedures for decreasing the nations vulnerabilities associated with the NEO impact hazard, according to the Strategy.

Significant and complex challenge

In a concluding statement, the Strategy document notes that, as with other low-probability, high-consequence hazards, "potential NEO impacts pose a significant and complex challenge."

The Strategy is seen as "a step in addressing the myriad challenges of managing and reducing the risks posed by both large and small NEOs."

To read the full document, go to:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/national_neo_preparedness_strategy_final.pdf

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+. Published on Space.com.
A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that is in nearly every U.S. home  90 percent of households have one, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the touch of a couple of buttons, this ubiquitous device can boil water, reheat leftovers, pop popcorn or defrost frozen meats in mere minutes.

The microwave oven was invented at the end of World War II. Yet it took awhile for them to catch on. At first they were too big and expensive, and people didn't trust them because of the radiation they use. Eventually, technology improved and fears faded. By the 2000s, Americans named the microwave oven as the No. 1 technology that made their lives easier, according to J. Carlton Gallawa, author of the Complete Microwave Oven Service Handbook.

And it was all due to a happy accident with some melted chocolate.

Accidental invention

Percy LeBaron Spencer was a self-taught engineer who had never finished grammar school, according to the Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communication and Computation. While at the Raytheon Corp., he worked on magnetrons  vacuum tubes that produce microwave radiation and are used in radar systems. In 1941, he devised a more efficient way to manufacture them. His innovation allowed production to rise from 17 per day to over 2,600 per day.

Spencer was testing a magnetron when he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted, according to Raytheons company history. Intrigued, Spencer tested other foods, including popcorn kernels, and noticed that they all popped. He put an egg near the magnetron and watched as it started to shake and then explode. Spencer realized that the foods had been exposed to low-density microwave energy, according to Gallawa. He next built a metal box and fed microwave power into it. The energy entered the box but could not escape  microwaves do not pass through metal. Spencer discovered that microwaves could cook food faster than convention ovens that used heat. He filed a patent application in 1945. (Spencer went on to receive 150 patents throughout his career, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He died in 1970.)

The first commercial microwave oven was tested in a Boston restaurant in 1947. Later that year, Raytheon introduced the Radarange 1161. It stood 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) tall, weighed 750 lbs. (340 kilograms) and cost $5,000, according to Gallawa. It had to be hooked up to a water line because the magnetron was water-cooled. It took a few years for the public to overcome their initial reluctance but as technology improved, microwave ovens grew in popularity, particularly in the food industry. Restaurants could keep cooked recipes in the refrigerator and heat them to order reducing waste. Other food industry establishments used microwaves for roasting coffee beans and peanuts, defrosting and precooking meat, and even shucking oysters.

Other industries also found uses for microwave heating. Microwave ovens are also used to dry cork, ceramics, paper, leather, tobacco, textiles, pencils, flowers, wet books and match heads, according to Gallawa.

Tappan, an appliance maker, introduced the first microwave ovens for home use in 1955, but because of their large size  as big as a stove  and high cost  $1,295  few were sold, according to Gallawa. Raytheon acquired Amana Refrigeration in 1965, and two years later, the Amana Radarange, which could fit on a kitchen countertop, was introduced. It cost just under $500.

Soon after, microwave ovens became more popular than even the dishwasher due to decreasing sizes and costs. In 1975, only 4 percent of U.S. homes had a microwave oven, according to Gallawa; in 1976, the number jumped to 14 percent. Today, approximately 90 percent of households in the United States have a microwave oven, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

How does a microwave work?

Microwave ovens use radio waves set at a specific frequency  2,450 megahertz with a power ranging from 500 to 1,100 watts, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Food that sits in a microwave oven is bombarded on all sides by the microwaves. Water molecules within the food absorb the microwaves, and the resulting vibrations generate heat and cook the food. Microwaves pass through plastic, glass and ceramic but not metals, which is why it is not recommended to use metal containers or utensils in a microwave oven, according to SciTech.

A magnetron generates the microwaves. According to EngineerGuy, a magnetron is two permanent magnets on either side of a vacuum tube. Microwave radiation is created by the flow of electrons building up magnetic and electric fields, according to Tech-Faq. The microwaves are directed to the oven chamber in order to heat and cook the food.

Microwave safety

Since their initial development, microwave ovens have gotten a bad rap due to their use of microwave radiation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), microwave ovens are safe when they are used properly and maintained in good condition. While massive amounts of microwave radiation can be harmful, ovens are designed to keep the radiation within the oven and present only when the oven is switched on and the door is shut. A minimal amount of radiation that may leak, primarily through the glass door, is well below international standards.

According to the WHO, several countries and international standards committees have set a product emission limit of 50 watts per square meter at any point 5 centimeters away from the external surfaces of the oven. In practice, microwave emissions are substantially below this limit. Also, exposure decreases rapidly with distance: a person 50 cm from the oven receives about one one-hundredth of the microwave exposure of a person 5 cm away.

The main health concern when it comes to using microwaves is that in general, microwaves heat unevenly and can cause parts of the food to either be undercooked or extremely hot, so caution is needed  as well as a few extra minutes  for the heat to equalize within the food. The primary injury that results from using a microwave oven is a burn resulting from hot food and liquids or the particles of hot food from explosions from foods, such as eggs in their shells, cooking unevenly.

Nutritional value

There are also concerns about the nutritional value of foods after they have been cooked in a microwave oven. According to the WHO, these concerns are based on misconceptions. There is little to no difference in nutritional value of foods cooked in microwave oven versus a conventional oven, nor does cooking food in a microwave oven make the food radioactive.

A 1982 article published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reviewed data from several studies on the effects of microwave cooking on the nutritive values of moisture, protein, carbohydrate, lipid, minerals and vitamins. The authors concluded that no significant nutritional differences exist between foods prepared by conventional and microwave methods.

In 2010, a team of researchers from the Universidad Complutense Madrid in Spain cooked a variety of veggies, from artichokes to zucchini, with techniques ranging from boiling to frying to microwaving. They measured the amount of antioxidants present before and after cooking. They found that baking, griddle-cooking and microwaving produced the lowest losses, while boiling and pressure-cooking were the hardest on antioxidants. Frying was somewhere in between.

The future of microwave ovens

Many microwave ovens today contain sensors that stop themselves when the food has completed cooking, according to SciTech. Samsung (opens in new tab) has developed a microwave oven that offers a variety of cooking methods. In addition to defrosting meats and reheating leftovers, the oven can fry and bake. It also has a fermentation cycle that can be used in making fresh dough and yogurt.

A microwave oven from NXP Semiconductors uses solid-state RF (radiofrequency) energy to cook. The microwave oven controls where, when and the amount of energy that is transmitted directly into the food. The result is improved consistency, taste and nutrition, according to NXP. The solid-state device allows for controlling large amounts of energy with high efficiency and with real-time feedback.

Other companies such as Wayv are producing portable, solid-state RF microwave ovens that can be charged via a regular plug, in the car, or with solar chargers. This particular model, which resembles a thermos, can be used for approximately 30 minutes per charge to heat up to 17 fluid ounces (0.5 liters) at a time.

Microwave ovens are also gaining features to be able to connect to mobile technologies, such as the line of LG smart appliances (opens in new tab). These appliances have the ability to be turned on remotely from anywhere via a smartphone or other device.

Additional resources
The zombie apocalypse won't take long.

A new article in a peer-reviewed student journal finds that the zombie hordes would take Earth's population down to a mere 273 survivors in 100 days.

The paper, published in the University of Leicester's Journal of Physics Special Topics, was a fanciful use of the so-called SIR model, which is used in epidemiology to simulate how diseases spread over time. It's not the first time zombies have been used as a public health metaphor. In December 2015, for example, the British medical journal The Lancet published a tongue-in-cheek paper titled "Zombie infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention." And a viral blog post from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged zombie-apocalypse preparations as a metaphor for real-life disaster preparedness.

In the new analysis, the University of Leicester undergraduates assumed that each zombie would have 90 percent success at finding and infecting one human per day  a rate that would make the zombie virus twice as contagious as the Black Death, the plague that devastated Europe in the 1300s. [Zombie Animals: 5 Real Cases of Body-Snatching]

The researchers further estimated that each zombie could live 20 days without braaaaaains.

Assuming a starting population of 7.5 billion people, approximately the world's population today, the students calculated that it would take 20 days for a single zombie to start an epidemic of noticeable proportions. At that point, the pandemic would have begun. Assuming no geographic isolation, in fact, the human population would drop to 181 by day 100 of the epidemic, with 190 million zombies roaming around.

With some geographical isolation, the situation would be a tiny bit better for humans. Assuming the zombie virus had to spread through contiguous regions and that zombies were somewhat limited in their ability to travel (not leaving their current region until there were 100,000 zombies roaming there), human survivors would number 273 by day 100, the study found.

A more realistic model might assume that each zombie could find fewer human victims over time, the students wrote, because there would simply be fewer humans to find.

"We have also not included the possibility for the humans to kill the zombies," they wrote.

But never fear: In a follow-up paper, the students did just that. They extended the zombie life span to one year in order to up the challenge a bit, but also gave each human a 10 percent chance of killing a zombie each day. They also accounted for human reproduction, assuming reproductive-age women would be able to have a baby once every three years.

These assumptions provided some hope for humanity. Under this model, the human population rapidly dropped off to a few hundred again. However, the zombies died off after 1,000 days, under this model; 10,000 days after the beginning of the epidemic, the human population would start to recover again, the students found.

Original article on Live Science.
Cobble a group of drones together and you get a "collective drone," capable of lifting heavier burdens.

What happens when you connect a flock of flying drones? You get a "collective unmanned aerial vehicle" that's capable of lifting heavier burdens and flying greater distances than smaller drones can, according to a patent recently granted to online retailer Amazon.

The Amazon Technologies Inc. patent describes a large and robust flying drone made up of numerous smaller drones, designed to make long-distance flights or to carry heavy packages.

According to the patent, filed Feb. 19, 2015, and granted Dec. 29, 2016, individual modules could detach from the collective drone body once they were no longer required, and operate independently to deliver smaller burdens. [5 Surprising Ways Drones Could Be Used in the Future]

Collectively, a group of drones might outperform a single drone by sharing resources, such as power and navigation capabilities, in order to operate more efficiently. In addition, the size of a linked drone array would be more visible, thereby allowing aircraft and air traffic controllers to spot them more easily, Patent Yogi reported.

The patent description explains that a collective aerial drone would be capable of transporting "virtually any size, weight, or quantity of items," and would also be able to travel longer distances.

By comparison, the average quadcopter drone  a design that incorporates four propellers  can typically fly continuously for up to 30 minutes and transport up to 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms), according to Patent Yogi.

And this isn't the only patent that Amazon acquired in 2016.

Can you imagine a flying warehouse? Amazon can. The company received a patent on April 5, 2016, for "an airborne fulfillment center ("AFC") and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles ("UAV") to deliver items from the AFC to users." The vehicle could be a high-altitude airship cruising at 45,000 feet (13,716 kilometers), dispatching flying drones to make their deliveries far below, according to the patent description.

Another patent, received Dec. 20, 2016, addresses countermeasures to protect airborne drones against threats from hackers and from "malicious persons" armed with bows and arrows.

An Amazon patent takes aim against drone-hunting archers. (Image credit: USPTO.gov)

Amazon is even investigating the possibility of subterranean deliveries, with a patent granted Nov. 29, 2016, for "dedicated network delivery systems" conveying packages underground. According to the description, items "may be driven by or along one or more conveyors or rails, and may comprise one or more pressure-controlled carriers within a vacuum environment or among any type of fluid, including liquids or gases."

In recent years, drones have certainly become more visible, capturing photos and video selfies and competing in races. Some are even helping scientists monitor Arctic ice or transport medical samples from remote villages in Madagascar.

Flying drones bearing packages may not be landing on our doorsteps just yet, but Amazon's patents suggest that the company has big plans for the future of airborne robotic deliveries.

At this point, however, it remains to be seen whether Amazon will be able to get this technology off the ground  or under it.

Original article on Live Science.
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The top state prosecutor in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico was gunned down in the Sister City late Wednesday.

Tamaulipas authorities said gunmen ambushed, shot and killed Ricardo Martinez Chavez and three other public servants after they left a work-related meeting. Martinez headed the local office for the Tamaulipas state attorney general.

A fifth public servant was wounded in the attack. She was taken to a hospital in Nuevo Laredo for further care, according to Tamaulipas authorities. They did not identify her or the three others who were killed.

Gunmen intercepted the group at the intersection of Avenida Eva Samano and Blvd. Municipio Libre shortly after 10:30 p.m.

Martinez and the public servants had just come out of work-related meeting at the Attorney Generals Office, which is located nearby.

Social media users quickly warned the community to avoid the area due to multiple shots fired.

The Attorney General's Office reiterates its commitment to investigate and enforce the law against anyone who objects to order, peace and the rule of law in Tamaulipas, authorities said in a statement.

Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca issued a statement about the ambush on his Twitter account.

I mourn and condemn the cowardly murder in Nuevo Laredo. I give my condolences to their families, Garcia Cabeza de Vaca stated.

He added, I reiterate that nothing will stop the actions undertaken by my government to give back to the Tamaulipecos the peace snatched by a few. We will not take a step back in this fight against the enemies of Tamaulipas.

Rescue

Nuevo Laredo recorded more criminal activity prior to the killing of the four public servants.

On Wednesday, Tamaulipas authorities said Mexican troops rescued eight immigrants who were held against their will. The rescue occurred Tuesday.

An anonymous tip led authorities to a home in Colonia Valles de Anahuac in west Nuevo Laredo. Mexican soldiers and state officers rescued eight people who came from Puebla, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Jalisco.

Two suspects fled the scene when authorities arrived. A group of people had intercepted and kidnapped the immigrants at a bus station in Nuevo Laredo.

During the operation, officials said they seized a 2005 Pontiac Grand Am with no license plates.

Since Dec. 24, Mexican authorities said they have rescued 43 people who were allegedly kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo, according to reports.

Recently, a criminal group that operates across the border held a Christmas toy giveaway to families in need in Nuevo Laredo.

On Dec. 28, the Tamaulipas Attorney Generals Office announced they were investigating the event. Authorities said two newspapers and a radio station in Nuevo Laredo publicized the toy distribution. It was also publicized by three websites.

Nuevo Laredo had been experiencing a period of relative calm until last year, when infighting between factions that once formed the notorious Zetas drug cartel spread to the city. For the last several months, the city has been the site of occasional shootouts between security forces and heavily armed gang members.

Until the fighting started in 2016, Nuevo Laredo had experienced nearly three years of peace. Before then, the city had suffered under almost a decade of unchecked cartel violence.

Between 2005 and 2013 at least three of the citys police chiefs were assassinated or disappeared. The city currently does not have a municipal police force and is patrolled by federal and state security agents.

San Antonio Express-News staff writer Jason Buch contributed to this report
Vietnamese startups attract foreign investors

VietNamNet Bridge - The Offpeak project initiated by Christian Nguyen has received millions of dollars from a Japanese investment fund, while Vntrip.vn has called for $3 million worth of capital.

Pham Anh Duc, the founder of ViCare

1. On September 5, Yahoo Japan, the largest Japanese fund, announced investment in Offpeak, an app which find food, beverage and dining discounts in SE Asia.

The Offpeak project initiated by Christian Nguyen has received millions of dollars from a Japanese investment fund, while Vntrip.vn has called for $3 million worth of capital.



The involved parties declined to give details about the deal, but the investment capital in dollars is a seven-digit one.Explaining the investment decision, a representative of Yahoo Japan said the fund sees great potential in the food & beverage sector in the market and the growth rate of the company.Before Yahoo Japan agreed to pour capital into Offpeak, the project received $800,000 in investment capital from Gobi Partners just three weeks after it started Series A capital call. The founders of Offpeak also received $200,000 from Cradle, a fund belonging to the Malaysian government.Offpeak is managed by Christian Nguyen, an overseas Vietnamese in France, who can speak six languages, and three Malaysian co-founders. The four businessmen have many years experience in technology and e-commerce.

2. Pham Anh Duc, the founder of ViCare, said he started the app after he and his relatives had problems looking for reliable information about healthcare services.

ViCare can answer questions like What disease do i have? Where should I go to have healthcare services? and What do I have to do to take care of my health?After eight months of operation, ViCare Corporation completed the second round of capital calls. Two international funds have answered its call  CyberAgent Ventures from Japan and Pix Vine Capital from Singapore - and have agreed to invest VND10 billion.Four months ago, ViCare successfully completed the first round of capital call, receiving the capital from the investors from Hanoi and HCMC.A representative of CyberAgent Ventures said that ViCare chose the correct way when focusing on healthcare services, a potential sector in Vietnam where people face overloading at facilities, and a lack of physicians and healthcare centers.3. Starting from scratch, Vu Quang Trung created a website with data about prices and specifications of 10 million products.Seven months after establishment, the website was shortlisted for the final round of the Nhan Tai Dat Viet (Vietnamese Talents) national competition. Many investment funds from Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have contacted Trung to discuss the investment.In mid-2015, So Sanh Viet Nam JSC, which runs Websosanh, the price comparison website, received investments from Yello Shopping Media Group (YSM).With advantages in technology, Big Data and AI applications, the website now provides information to 3.5 million users a month.









Thanh Mai
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Columnists Press Releases
The Department of Defense announced today that multiple airstrikes killed an estimated 20 or more al Qaeda militants in northern Syria at the beginning of the month.

The results of the bombings are still being assessed, according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. But US forces struck two al Qaeda vehicles that had departed a large al Qaeda headquarters near Sarmada, which is in the northern Idlib province, on Jan. 1. The Pentagon thinks that five al Qaeda militants were killed and two vehicles were destroyed during this strike.

Then, on Jan. 3, US forces struck the headquarters compound itself, including multiple vehicles and structures. These bombings killed more than 15 al Qaeda militants, while also destroying six vehicles and nine structures.

Al Qaedas foreign terrorist fighter network used this headquarters as a gathering place, and their leaders directed terrorist operations out of this location, according to Cooks statement. We are confident these strikes will degrade al Qaedas ability to direct operations in Syria.

Although the Defense Department doesnt say it, the airstrikes were likely among the most significant carried out against al Qaeda facilities in Syria to date.

Since Sept. 2014, the US has targeted al Qaeda veterans in Syria on multiple occasions. More often than not, however, these airstrikes have targeted individual jihadi leaders or small groups of jihadis. There have been exceptions. In Nov. 2014, for instance, the US bombed five targets associated with al Qaedas so-called Khorasan Group near Sarmada. The strikes relied on US bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and likely damaged or destroyed several vehicles, as well as buildings assessed to be meeting and staging areas or bomb-making and training facilities. US officials stressed at the time that the airstrikes were intended to hit specific cadres of al Qaeda members, and not Al Nusrah Front (as al Qaedas branch in Syria was known at the time) as a whole. The US also stated that the bombings were not intended to defend Syrian rebel groups that were clashing with Al Nusrah.

But as FDDs Long War Journal assessed at the time, the US government was drawing a false distinction between the Khorasan Group, which was made up of al Qaeda veterans who also served in Al Nusrah, and the rest of al Qaedas paramilitary forces in Syria. In reality, they were all part of al Qaedas international organization. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, Analysis: CENTCOM draws misleading line between Al Nusrah Front and Khorasan Group.]

Todays statement from the Pentagon does not seek to draw any similarly misleading lines. The targets are referred to as simply al Qaeda.

In December, the Obama administration released a memo outlining the legal underpinnings for its counterterrorism operations around the globe. Tellingly, the definition of al Qaeda in Syria was written to encompass references to the Nusrah Front, which is al Qaedas official affiliate in Syria and which changed its name to Fatah al-Sham Front in July 2016. In addition, the memos authors noted, there are some members of al Qaeda who have relocated to Syria from other conflict zones who are not members of the Nusrah Front.

In other words, as the Obama administration leaves office, al Qaeda in Syria is being defined more broadly  and accurately  than at the outset of the current air campaign. The language was markedly different from that employed in late 2014. This is consistent with President Obamas order to the Pentagon to launch airstrikes against leaders and other figures in JFS more broadly, instead of just select al Qaeda veterans in Syria, as was the practice in the past.

In November, the Washington Post reported that Obama had ordered the Defense Department to find and kill the leaders of JFS, after years of the administration largely ignoring the group.

Some of the jihadis killed in the airstrikes on Jan. 1 have been identified by their fellow ideologues on social media. These identifications were also reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Three of the men killed are said to be: a Syrian known as Abu Mutasim al-Dairi, an al Qaeda veteran known as Abu Khattab al-Qahtani, and a Uighur jihadist known as Abu Omar al-Turkistani. According to SOHR (and corroborated by jihadis who reported the deaths online), Qahtani had previously fought in Afghanistan and Yemen before moving to Syria. Turkistani was one of the four most prominent leaders of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which is affiliated with al Qaeda.

According to some online jihadi sources, Turkistani was also a senior figure in Jabhat Fath al Sham (JFS), which was formerly known as Al Nusrah Front. He was reportedly playing a leading role in the merger talks taking place between JFS and other groups, and may have been in line to assume a leadership position in a newly-formed entity.

If this assessment is true, then Turkistani played a role similar to Abu Omar Saraqib at the time of his death last year. Saraqib was the general commander of Jaysh al Fath (Army of Conquest), an alliance led by al Qaeda and its closest allies in Syria, when a bomb killed him in September. The jihadis blamed Saraqibs death on the US-led coalition, claiming that warplanes had targeted the operations room responsible for breaking the siege of Aleppo. Jaysh al Fath subsequently launched an offensive in his honor, dubbed The Battle of the Hero Martyr Abu Omar Saraqib. The offensive in Aleppo ultimately failed.

But the death of Saraqib highlighted a recurring problem in Syria: Al Qaeda and its extremist partners have been pooling the resources of various organizations under the banner of Jaysh al Fath. Turkistani may have been involved in a new, but similar effort at the time of his demise.

As the airstrikes on Jan. 1 and Jan. 3 demonstrate, al Qaeda has developed a major paramilitary force in Syria. According to US officials contacted by FDDs Long War Journal last year, the group could have as many as 10,000 fighters, if not more, in Syria today. And al Qaedas operations include groups that are not technically part of Jabhat Fath al Sham (JFS), such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). Indeed, Abu Omar al Turkistani was reportedly a member of the TIP and also possibly JFS. The TIP is al Qaedas ethnic Uighur group, and also draws in other nationalities from Central Asia and elsewhere. The TIP operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and other countries.

Al Qaeda remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States and the West, Pentagon Pentagon Press Secretary Cook said in his statement today. We will continue to take action to deny any terrorist safe haven in Syria and not allow al Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the United States or our allies and friends around the world, he added.

Note: The spelling of al Qaeda was changed to make it consistent throughout this article, including in quotes where it was originally spelled differently.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Qassem Soleimani, the chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) extraterritorial branch the Qods Force, appears to be in Iran after a separate trip to Syria last month.

Soleimani delivered an address today at a martyrs commemoration ceremony, according to Iranian media, during which he discussed the advances of Islams corps and back-to-back defeats of Global Arrogance [West] in the Middle East.

Soleimani credited the leadership of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who is assisted with divine approval, as the primary factor of power for important victories. The lack of such leadership is the enemys primary weakness, according to Soleimani.

We all wish that our lives are lessened moment by moment and added to the life of the dear leader of the revolution, he declared.

Approximately three weeks ago, photographs surfaced on social media showing Soleimani in eastern Aleppo and by the Old Aleppo Citadel after the Syrian government and its military partners conquered the area. Western and Iranian media outlets widely circulated the images.

Several days after those images appeared from eastern Aleppo, IRGC-backed Iraqi Shiite militia Harakat Ansar Allah al Awfiya (the Movement of the Loyal Partisans of God) posted images of Soleimani on Dec. 21 apparently visiting the groups Syria contingent, Harakat Ansar Allah al Awfiya fi Souriya, near Aleppo (photos 2, 3, 4, and 5 below). The exact date the images were produced was not immediately clear.

The Iraqi militia formed in Aug. 2014, according to Al Mirbad, and created a separate social media page for its Syria contingent in May 2015. The group is also part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the umbrella organization of Iraqi militias established after the 2014 fatwa of Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani to drive the Islamic State from the country. The Iraqi parliament approved a bill in November formally integrating the PMF into the countrys security forces (see LWJs Iraqs PMF is IRGCs next step, senior Qods Force commander says for Khamenei and Qods Force words of praise for the PMFs integration into Iraqi security forces.)

Tasked with executing Iranian strategy in Syria, Soleimani leads a Shiite foreign legion waging jihad under the call of defending the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus. The international expeditionary force also fights on behalf of the embattled President Bashar al Assad.

Soleimanis travels outside of Iran violate an international travel ban in effect until 2020, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Update: the earlier version of the report translated Harakat Ansar Allah al Awfiya as the Movement of the Partisans of God, while it is the Movement of the Loyal Partisans of God.

Amir Toumaj is a independent analyst and contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Ibrahim al Banna, who co-founded al Qaedas branch in the Arabian Peninsula, has been a jihadist for more than 35 years.

The US State Department announced yesterday that Ibrahim al Banna, who has served as one of al Qaedas most senior security and intelligence officials in Yemen since the 1990s, has been designated as a terrorist. States Rewards for Justice program has offered a bounty of up to $5 million for information on al Bannas whereabouts since 2014, but he wasnt officially added to the US governments terrorist designation list until this week.

Al Banna was targeted in a US drone strike that killed Anwar al Awlakis son in 2011. But the veteran Egyptian jihadist survived and has continued to play a major role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulas (AQAP) operations ever since. Awlaki, who was a major al Qaeda ideologue, was killed in a separate airstrike just weeks earlier.

Al Banna was originally a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) organization, which he joined in 1979 or 1980. The EIJ officially merged with Osama bin Ladens enterprise prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But the EIJ was closely cooperating with bin Laden by the early 1990s, when members of the group helped perform surveillance that was later used in the Aug. 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

In Dec. 2015, al Banna appeared in an AQAP video entitled, Guardians of Sharia. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, An al Qaeda commander comes out from the shadows.]

AQAP media operatives also distributed an image with highlights from his biography. The image can be seen on the right.

In Guardians of Sharia, al Banna discussed the history of jihadism, al Qaedas war against the US and his groups quest to resurrect an Islamic caliphate. Although Al Banna has long been known to Western counterterrorism and intelligence officials, Dec. 2015 was the first time he had shown his face in years. AQAP lost several senior leaders in 2015, so it is likely that the group decided to reintroduce him to the public to remind followers that veteran figures remain in place.

In 2010, AQAPs Inspire magazine published an article attributed to al Banna in which he praised the 9/11 hijackings. The American people need to think long about this great event that changed history; this strike that hurt America militarily and economically, and exposed the lies of the American media, al Banna wrote. We will not let you enjoy peace as long as we do not live it in our lands and in Palestine.

Worked alongside co-founder of the Islamic State of Iraq

Al Banna was temporarily detained in Yemen sometime in 2010. That November, Al Jaridah, a Kuwaiti publication, published a partial transcript of what al Banna purportedly told authorities during interrogations.*

If Al Jaridahs transcript is accurate, then al Bannas account provides a fascinating window into how Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) evolved out of the EIJs first efforts inside Yemen. Al Banna emphasized that throughout his entire career in Yemen he answered to Ayman al Zawahiri. And he claimed to have worked closely, in Yemen, with the jihadist known as Abu Ayyub al Masri, who went on to lead al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Masri took over AQI after its founder, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was killed in June 2006. Masri and his compatriots established the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the forerunner to the current Islamic State, in Oct. and Nov. 2006. At the time, Masri described the ISI as the first cornerstone of the Islamic caliphate project.

Al Banna provided an intriguing background story for Abu Ayyub al Masri, who went by several names and aliases. Al Banna claimed that Masris real name was Abd-al-Munim al-Badawi and that he had forged a passport for him sometime around the year 2000, before Badawi traveled to Afghanistan. Al Banna allegedly told authorities that he helped Badawi adopt the nom de guerre (Abu Ayyub al Masri) and identity of a jihadi who was already imprisoned in Egypt. This was no doubt part of their attempt to confuse authorities.

Al Banna claimed to have handpicked Badawi to train newcomers in Yemen. He was so impressed with Badawis skills that the two jointly led the EIJs training program in Yemen. The pair, working under orders from Ayman al Zawahiri, trained cadres of jihadists in espionage and intelligence. Al Banna claimed that Badawis success in this regard helped him eventually take over the leadership of AQI.

According to Al Jaridahs transcript, al Banna even nominated Badawi to be AQIs emir. Al Banna also claimed that Badawi was a major figure in al Qaedas global intelligence apparatus at the time of his ascendancy inside Iraq.

The Egyptian jihadi veteran told Yemeni authorities that he first relocated to their country in 1993. At the time, the Egyptian government was hunting down members of the EIJ and the Vanguards of Conquest, which were implicated in attacks against officials, including a failed assassination attempt targeting Prime Minister Atef Sedky.

Al Banna explained that two jihadists were responsible for receiving and hosting him and his compatriots in Yemen. One of them was Muhammad al Zawahiri, Aymans younger brother. Muhammad al Zawahiri was responsible for organizing the Egyptian youth and integrating them into Yemeni society, according to al Banna. (The junior Zawahiri has been imprisoned multiple times, but was reportedly released from custody last year.)

Other notable Egyptian jihadists who worked with al Banna in Yemen included Abu Faraj al Masri (also known as Ahmed Salama Mabrouk), who went on to become a leader of Al Nusrah Front in Syria. Mabrouk was killed in an airstrike late last year.

Ayman al Zawahiri traveled to Yemen in 1994 to directly oversee the Egyptians efforts, according to al Banna. The leadership of the EIJ in Yemen was first entrusted to Ahmad al-Najjar. But Zawahiri replaced Najjar in 1996, handing over leadership of the organization to al Banna and Badawi (Abu Ayyub al Masri). The pair ran the EIJs Yemeni branch for two years.

Al Banna described how he and Badawi worked with the tribes in southern Yemen as well as Houthi rebels to achieve their objectives. Their dealings with the Houthis were generally restricted to arms sales, al Banna said. But the Egyptian jihadis would also ask for the Houthis assistance in transporting and sheltering members of their group. Al Banna said they purchased weapons from both Sudanese and Yemeni dealers after receiving money from Zawahiri. Beginning in 1998, when al Banna and his companions formally joined al Qaeda, bin Laden began to fund the arms transfers. Some of the weapons were sent to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri established the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders in Feb. 1998. And al Banna began to officially operate under al Qaedas umbrella around that same time. According to the transcript published by Al Jaridah, al Banna described the relationship as a natural fit, as the EIJ and bin Ladens operation were very similar and the merger generated new funds and more access to training facilities in Afghanistan for the EIJ. Indeed, much of the EIJ had already become a de facto part of al Qaeda years earlier, when bin Laden was based in Sudan. Regardless, in 1998, al Banna said he and others called for all jihadists to unite behind bin Laden in order to intensify jihadist action against Israeli and American interests worldwide.

The merger led al Qaeda to reshuffle the jihadis leadership inside Yemen. The Egyptians would no longer hold the top spot in the country. Ayman al Zawahiri allegedly told al Banna in 1998 that Muhammad Umayr al Awlaqi would be taking over inside Yemen because he had the resources and contacts to grow the jihadi presence. Al Qaeda apparently wanted someone with local roots, like al Awlaqi, to lead its efforts.

However, al Banna and Badawi continued to oversee the organizations military and intelligence efforts and also arrange for weapons shipments. Awlaqi led al Qaedas Yemeni enterprise until 2006, when Nasir al Wuhayshi and a cadre of his men escaped from prison. Under Zawahiris orders, al Banna and his men immediately swore allegiance to Wuhayshi after he took over as al Qaedas emir in Yemen. Al Banna said that Wuhayshi was the jihadi who was most qualified to lead the charge, and he also confirmed that Said al Shihri, a former Guantanamo detainee, was Wuhayshis deputy from the start. (Both Wuhayshi and Shihri were subsequently killed in American bombings.)

At some point, Badawi (Abu Ayyub al Masri) left Yemen for Afghanistan. Al Banna said that he traveled with Muhammad al Zawahiri and, upon arriving in Afghanistan, the two became al Qaedas best sources on what was going on inside Yemen. As an intelligence expert, Badawi supposedly had incredible information on events and personalities throughout the Muslim-majority world. Bin Laden even called Badawi the legend due to his superior abilities, according to al Banna.

Al Banna claimed to be in contact with Badawi (Masri) right up until the day before his martyrdom in April 2010, when AQIs leadership was decapitated by US-led forces. Al Banna said he communicated with Badawi and others via the internet. Along with his Yemeni wife, Badawi had relocated to Iraq sometime in 2002. The CIA collected intelligence on his activities inside Baghdad. Al Banna was even asked about a story that another jihadi in custody told about Saddam Hussein supposedly negotiating with Badawi to move to Yemen after the US-led invasion of Iraq. This is totally false, Al Banna said, according to Al Jaridah.

Al Banna was asked about al Qaedas goals inside Yemen, and he freely admitted that the jihadis wanted to overthrow the existing government in order to establish an Islamic caliphate on Yemeni soil, replacing man-made laws with al Qaedas draconian sharia.

Al Qaedas goal is to eradicate these laws and reformulate them after the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate on the soil of Yemen, so that all the laws will be based on the Book and the Sunnah, Al Banna said, according to a translation obtained by FDDs Long War Journal.

*Note: The Jamestown Foundations Terrorism Monitor previously published a summary of the interrogation logs printed by Al Jaridah. See here and here. The summary of Al Jaridahs reporting provided in this piece is based on the authors own reading of the articles, as well as a translation that was obtained.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
An Islamic State leader who also worked as a facilitator for its external operations network, which is tasked with hitting targets outside of Iraq and Syria, was killed in an airstrike in Raqqah on New Years Eve, according to the US military. The Pentagon said 16 significant members of the organizations external operations network have been killed in 2016.

Mahmud al-Isawi, a long-standing ISIL [Islamic State] member who supported the organizations media and intelligence structure in Fallujah before relocating to Raqqah, was killed in a Coalition precision airstrike on Dec. 31, 2016, according to a press release issued by US Central Command, or CENTCOM.

Al Isawi controlled the flow of instructions and finances between ISIL-held areas and ISIL leaders, and provided support to propaganda and intelligence outlets, CENTCOM reported.

In additional to his role as an Islamic State leader, al Isawi had a close working and personal relationship with Abd al-Basit al-Iraqi, the head of the groups Middle East external operations network, which is tasked with striking American, Turkish and European targets throughout the region. The US military killed Abd al-Basit in an airstrike in Raqqah on Nov. 12, 2016. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, US-led coalition killed emir of Islamic States Middle East external networks.]

CENTCOM touted al Isawis death and claimed he is the 16th significant member of ISILs external operations network to be killed by Coalition forces in 2016. His death, combined with the recent successive deaths of other ISIL leaders plotting terrorist attacks, has degraded ISILs trans-regional attack and facilitation network, and is forcing ISIL to increase their focus on internal security.

The most notable member of the external operations network to have been killed in 2016 was Abu Muhammad al Adnani, who served as the units emir in addition to being the top spokesman for the Islamic State. At the time of his death in Aug. 2016, the US military described Adnani as the principal architect of ISILs external operations who coordinated the movement of ISIL fighters, directly encouraged lone-wolf attacks on civilians and members of the military and actively recruited new ISIL members.

Al Isawi killed during intensified Coalition air campaign in Raqqah

Al Isawi was killed as the US-led coalition has recently ratcheted up its efforts to drive the Islamic State from Raqqah, the capital of the Islamic States putative capital in Syria. On Dec. 10, the coalition announced that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces launched the next phase in its push to oust the Islamic State from the city.

By Dec. 20, the coalition ramped up its air campaign in and around Raqqah in an attempt to weaken the group. Since Dec. 20, the US-led coalition has launched 166 airstrikes in an around Raqqah, the capital of the Islamic States so-called capital in Syria. By comparison, the coalition has launched 85 airstrikes in Mosul, which is considered to be the prime battlefield in the fight agains the Islamic State. [See Coalition intensifies air campaign against Islamic State stronghold in Raqqah and Coalition aircraft continue to pound Islamic State positions in Raqqah.]

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Culture / Art Republik

Jan 10, 2017 | By Vimi Haridasan

ART REPUBLIK rolls out its latest issue: Takashi Kuribayashi for Hermes. Another milestone is upon us: ART REPUBLIK is now three-years-old! For this issue, weve collaborated with Hermes Singapore for our front cover, shinning the cover spotlight on Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Kuribayashi, who tells us about his new project with Hermes Singapore and his obsession with nature and borders.

It is also that time of the year again for the arts in Singapore: Art Stage Singapore 2017 and Singapore Art Week 2017 (#saw2017) is upon us. Alongside, ART REPUBLIK has accompanying features including stepping into the Upside Down with Ruben Pang; veteran Singapore artist Amanda Heng does new work with STPI; we talk everything film with SGIFFs Zhang Wenjie; art doesnt get more personal and beautiful when conveyed through the performances of well-respected Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo; Art Stage Singapore repositions itself as a marketplace for ideas and discussion  with an art fair; we look at legal and implied rights should you discover you own a piece of fake art; and our 72-hour guide is back with a special double feature on Singapore (just in time for #saw2017) and Seoul.

For this 2017 edition of Art Stage Singapore, we are once again a preferred partner and we will be at the fair with a special edition booth at the foyer instead of the usual magazine sector, so remember to stop by and pick up a copy of our new issue as you enter or as you exit. Additionally, we will be co-hosting the Art Stage Singapore Vernissage After-Party this year. Held at White Rabbit at Dempsey, the party will feature food, drinks and live music. Party is by invite-only and tickets will be available for pick up at our ART REPUBLIK booth during the vernissage.

This issue also marks a change in editorship for ART REPUBLIK. Issue 13 is the final issue that will be helmed by Marc Wong. Replacing him as incoming managing editor will be Nadya Wang, who has been ART REPUBLIKs editor-at-large for two years now.

Its been an incredible journey, from being part of the inception team and creating a new magazine from scratch, to working with incredible writers from all over the world and building treasured relationships that have dispensed invaluable advice and helped guide me in navigating the vast ocean of both danger and wonder that is the art world, says Marc Wong, exiting Managing Editor of ART REPUBLIK. It is also a great honour to be a valued partner of Art Stage Singapore and to be able to constantly find new and bigger ways to collaborate together. The art world is as exciting as it is tough, and it is important to have all the big players all work together.

Mr. Olivier Burlot, CEO & Publisher at Heart Media, comments: The team at ART REPUBLIK remains resolute in our mission to promote the rapidly developing art scene around Asia. Issue 13 of ART REPUBLIK continues to demonstrate just that, featuring the largest number of art galleries in a single issue to date. In the coming months, readers can expect to be able to look to ART REPUBLIK for the latest highlights from all the major fairs in the region, including ART JAKARTA, and the spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair in Singapore which will see the debut AAFter Glow Evening hosted by ART REPUBLIK. 

ART REPUBLIK is an official media partner of ART STAGE SINGAPORE, AFFORDABLE ART FAIR, ART BASEL HONG KONG, ART CENTRAL HONG KONG, ART PARIS, ART STAGE JAKARTA, and ART TAIPEI.
Bill Viola and Italian Masters at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

January 6, 2017

Running from 10 March to 23 July 2017, with works covering his long career and interacting with the architecture of Palazzo Strozzi and with celebrated masterpieces of the Renaissance.



The retrospective, curated by Arturo Galansino and Kira Perov, is a unique event reviewing a career invariably marked by a combination of intense technological research and deep aesthetic reflection, stretching from his early experiments with video in the 1970s right up to the large installations of the 2000s that have drawn the public's attention with their strong impact on the senses. In a totally unprecedented layout, the exhibition will also use the Renaissance context of Palazzo Strozzi to fuel an extraordinary dialogue between the classic and the contemporary through direct interaction between Viola's work and masterpieces by the old masters of the past that have served as sources of inspiration for this American artist and marked the development of his style.



Bill Viola, who was born in New York in 1951, is internationally recognized as one of the most celebrated and important contemporary artists, producing video installations, sound environments and performances that offer the public spectacular experiences of immersion in space, image and sound. In exploring spirituality, experience and perception, Viola explores mankind itself; people, bodies and faces are always the leading players in his works, with their poetic and strongly symbolic style in which man is called on to interact with such forces and energies of nature as water and fire, light and dark, the cycle of life and the cycle of rebirth.



Creating an exhibition of Bill Viola's art in Palazzo Strozzi, in an environment that includes both the Piano Nobile and the Strozzina undercroft, also means celebrating the special relationship that the artist has always had with the city of Florence, because it was in this very city that he first embarked on his career as a video artist when he was technical director of art/tapes/22, a center for the production and documentation of video run by Maria Gloria Conti Bicocchi, from 1974 to 1976. And it is in the city of Florence, but also throughout the rest of Tuscany, that Palazzo Strozzi will be extending the exhibition experience thanks to important partnerships with museums and other venues in the region where the artist's work will be on display, extolling his rapport with the history and art of Tuscany.



***



Photo: Bill Viola (New York 1951), Emergence, 2002, 11'40, Color High Definition video rear projection on screen mounted on wall in dark room; Performers: Weba Garretson, John Hay, Sarah Steben. Long Beach, CA, Bill Viola Studio
Ride the Wave of Love at L'Auberge Del Mar

Two New February Romance Packages at L'Auberge Del Mar



Guestroom accommodations for two



One-hour semi-private Fulcrum surf lesson for two



$150 credit to enjoy at KITCHEN 1540, Coastline, any resort bar or in-room dining



$325 credit for any treatment or service at Spa L'Auberge





Guestroom accommodations for two



$25 food and beverage credit per night



$50 Spa L'Auberge credit per night



Choice of sweet, savory or bubbly amenity



L'Auberge commemorative photo frame



February Spa Specials

Chocolate and Wine Tasting

Coastline Raw Bar for Romantic Toasting and Special Shellfish Selections

And romantic strolls along beautiful Del Mar Beach, hiking at nearby scenic Torrey Pines and exploring the charming village of Del Mar are always available nearby.Other romantic amenities include stunningly refurbished accommodations by Barclay Butera, cozy fireplaces in the Coastal Fireplace guestrooms and Pacific Suites, nightly fire pit cocktails at Bleu, California coastal cuisine at KITCHEN 1540 and couple's massages and relaxing, romantic treatments such as the Chocolate Lover's Delight and Lavender Fields Pedicure at Spa L'Auberge.A fun package for active couples who want to surf together and receive great values at the resort's dining venues and Spa L'Auberge. Package includes:Rates start at $1,014 for one night. To book, visit www.LAubergeDelMar.com or call 855-865-4095.This value-added package for two offers guests resort credits and special romantic amenities. Package includes:Rates start at $364 for one night. To book, visit www.LAubergeDelMar.com or call 855-865-4095.Other fun events include:Month of FebruarySpa L'Auberge offers couple's massages, as well as relaxing and mood-enhancing treatments such as the Chocolate Lover's Delight, which includes a massage with dark chocolate-infused oil and Lavender Fields Pedicure.Saturday, February 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. on the Sunset TerraceSavor some luscious, locally made artisan chocolates paired with delicious red wines at this tasting session provided by local Chuao Chocolatier and Dallmann Fine Chocolates. Price: $25 per person.Saturday, February 11, from 6 to 9 p.m.A great way to start an evening devoted to the charms of Cupid, Coastline's raw bar will feature a West Coast oyster tasting featuring Kusshi, Kumamoto and Fanny Bay bivalves for $3 each served with cocktail sauce, Meyer lemon and red wine mignonette. Poached Tiger Shrimp, $4 each; King Crab Mini Martini, $12; White Bass with Satsuma aguachile, fennel and blood orange will be priced at $6; and Iberico ham served with toasted bread and olive oil at $18 per ounce.Visit website: www.laubergedelmar.com
Apple says its just playing by the rules

Over the holidays, Apple removed the New York Times mobile apps, both the English-language version and the Chinese-language version, from the App Store in China. The Times originally reported that its apps were removed on December 23, and Apple confirmed it on Thursday, citing a request from Chinese authorities.

Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz gave the Times the following statement:

For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.

Apple did not specify which Chinese regulations the NYTimes app had violated, or whether the Chinese government had served Apple with a court order or any other legal document. The Times speculates that the request was made under the new mobile app regulations released in June. These regulations state that apps could be subject to censorship or removal if they are found to be endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others.

Furthermore, the Times suggests there is a link between its apps being removed and an investigation the newspaper published on December 29 detailing the massive government perks given to Foxconn, Apples manufacturing partner in China.

Chinese iOS users who already have the NYTimes app installed will not be affected, but they wont be able to install updates directly from the App Store unless they go to another region. The app can still be installed in Hong Kong and Taiwan if the user has a billing address outside mainland China. The newspapers standalone crossword puzzle and virtual reality apps were not taken down.

The story behind the story: The Chinese government began blocking the Times website in 2012, rendering the mobile apps unable to retrieve new content. In 2015, however, the NYTimes released a new version of its Chinese-language app that was able to circumvent Chinas firewall.

Earlier this year, Apple was forced by the Chinese government to shut down its own iTunes Movies and iBooks services just six months after launching it in the country.
Hello! Today, I have an informative interview to share with you that will show you how to become a scopist. I recently had the chance to interview Linda of Internet Scoping School, who explains how this may be a possibility for you.

Linda has been scoping for over 35 years and has taught scoping online for almost 20 years.

She has been married for over 30 years to a retired deputy sheriff, has two daughters and two sons, one grandson, one granddaughter, three dogs, and a vociferous parrot in a pearer, pine tree. She lives in the beautiful state of Montana and never intends to leave. She knows how blessed she is in life and in her career and loves sharing that with others.



And, thats why she is here today to tell you all about scoping.

If you are looking for a new job or even just a side hustle, this may be something that you want to look into.

She also has a free course that will introduce you to scoping so that you can think further about whether you want to pursue it. You can find the free How To Become a Scopist course by clicking here.

Check out the interview below for more information on how to become a scopist.

Related articles:

What is a scopist? Ive never heard of that?

I know!

The word scopist isnt even in the dictionary!

Scoping is actually editing legal documents for court reporters. Editing is quite different from proofreading in that youre actually working in the unfinished draft of the transcript as opposed to on the almost-finished product. It is supposed that the word scopist comes from the diode scope that was on old computers. If its like the first one I used back when I rode a dinosaur to work, the screen was kind of yellowish, the words were quite small, and it was guaranteed to make one go blind in short order. I think it was created by optometrists!

Back in those days, the computers used to translate steno notes into English ran about $100-150K. No kidding! Needless to say, scopists worked in-house for court reporting firms. Who else could afford those monstrosities? They were huge old noisy things, but they were a massive improvement on having to type up transcripts on several-part carbon paper. Ask me! When you have to fix one error six times on carbon copies, your husband comes home from work and thinks youve been cleaning the chimney!

That doesnt sound like much fun. Is it still like that?

Fast forward to the present day: I now work from home on a computer that cost less than $500 and holds a stupendous amount of information  and its connected to a high-speed Internet connection that allows me to work for any court reporter anywhere in the world.

I can even take it out in my camper and work from Timbuktu if I want to. Weve come a long way, baby!

Although scoping has been around for over 30 years, for some reason, no ones ever heard of it. Its an awesome work-from-home business that helps keep the wheels of justice turning in this country. I personally enjoy knowing that I play a small part in that.

And with todays technology, I can receive chunks of text from a court reporter on the West Coast and edit right behind her here in Montana. The attorneys get the transcript the same day as the proceedingsand pay us a lot of money for it. Everybody wins!

Those jobs are at the very top end of the skills/speed/money scale, and they dont typically come along often. The everyday work is our bread and butter: the criminal cases, the lawsuits, the divorces, the car wrecks, the wrongful terminations. Its a rare day when I dont learn something.

Thats one of the best parts of being a scopist; theres always something new.

It keeps me young!

Lets get a little technical. What does a scopist do?

When we get a file from a reporter client, it is already translated into English. There may be some steno (machine shorthand) for us to decipher (like solving a little crossword puzzle), and we research spellings, punctuate, paragraph, sometimes check exhibits, with the end goal being a readable/understandable transcript that our client can put into the attorneys hands by the time they need it.

In other words, if youre a wordophile, this is the perfect job!

What does a scopist need to know?

Internet Scoping School  ISS  teaches you everything you need to know and know how to do to be a successful scopist.

We offer lots of word usage/punctuation training; a thorough section on learning how to read the steno notes; how to put a transcript together correctly; how to recognize and find proper spellings for medical terminology; how to efficiently run the specialized court reporter software that you and your clients use; how to market yourself as a professional and get clients.

You learn not just a new career but how to be successful at it.

What is a typical salary for a scopist? How much does a scopist make?

There are several factors that go into a scopists wages:

How experienced/fast the scopist is;

How well the reporter writes;

How difficult the subject matter is;

Whether speakers talk over each other, w hisper into their belly button, are coughing up a lung, slurring their words, or talk faster than speeding new Tesla.

If youre an average scopist, working with an average reporter, you should be able to make 30-45K/year working pretty much full-time.

On the low end, even listening to full audio, a scopist should still be able to make $20/hr. If you are a better-than average scopist, working with an excellent reporter, you can make $35-45/hr.

And if you get into the high-pressure rush market, you can earn $60K/year or more. Ive actually made about $500/day on some get-me-the-transcript-as-soon-as possible-dang-it trials. Let me warn you that that is not typical, but is it possible? Yes, maam, it is.

What is your favorite thing about being a scopist?

Hmm. Well, youre talking about a career that Ive been doing for almost 37 years and still love. But, I guess I like the work itself. Ive always been good at English and correspondingly horrid at math. It fits with my natural aptitudeother than being a klutz, but that doesnt pay anything.

I also love working from home and being my own boss. If I get sleepy about 1:30, I can take a nap. My supervisor doesnt mind! I can make arrangements to take time off when I want to. When my kids were little, I was always at home if they needed me.

Now, Im here with my dogs all day who require more supervision than my kids didbut I like them better than some people I know. Its all good.

What is your least favorite thing about being a scopist?

Well, its a good problem to have, but sometimes I get pages from all of my reporters at once, and its hard to get them all done on time. But if it gets really insane, I always have backups from our graduate group that I can ask to help me out. And I sometimes get pretty impatient with interruptions when Im trying to work, especially telemarketers who wont take no the first timeand my mother.

And working from home can be kind of isolating, but ISS has active public and private Facebook groups, and ISS students/grads are really smart, cool people. So we visit and laugh and support each other.

Come to think of it, I guess I pretty much love my career and think its perfect for me.

So Im going to go back to editing, sipping my iced tea, with a big smile on my face. But dont worry  even if I cant complain about my job, I can always find something else to complain about!



Please click here to sign up for my free course on how to become a scopist. You will learn:

What is scoping? What does a scopist do?

What about finding clients and marketing?

Whats the earning potential?

What do I need to get started?

Are you interested in learning how to become a scopist?
The progressive educational policy establishment, along with its allies in government, has finally figured out why so many New York City public schools do such a poor job. The problem, it seems, isnt with the DOE, the teachers or their powerful union.

No, the problem is racial segregation. In fact, according to UCLAs Civil Rights Project, New York City is the epicenter of educational segregation for the nation.

This isnt legally enforced racial separation. The new segregation, according to the advocates, is neither mandated nor coercive, but just as insidious. More than half of New York Citys public schools are over 90 percent black and Latino, say City Councilmen Brad Lander and Ritchie Torres, who are leading the charge to rectify this deep injustice.

Fussing over the racial composition of the citys schools should be the last thing education advocates worry about.

Lander and Torres have plans. One particularly destructive one would adopt a more formal approach to diversity in high school admissions, including specialized (and screened) high schools.

New Yorks elite high schools are some of the citys crown jewels, renowned for their merit-based exclusivity. Changing admission requirements to the citys top schools for the sake of feel-good social justice would erode the schools tradition of excellence in the service of dubious ends.

Other proposals are equally pernicious, including a demand that the city adopt a formal policy and strategy for making diversity a priority in admissions, zoning, and other decision-making processes, and create an Office of School Diversity within the citys Human Rights Commission.

By bringing school segregation under New Yorks expansive Human Rights Law, the very existence of racial imbalance in schools would demonstrate discrimination, opening the door to lawsuits.

Now, its true that a majority of the citys schools are 90 percent black and Latino, and that half of all black and Latino students attend such schools. But these numbers dont mean very much when placed in the context of...

Read the entire piece here at the New York Post

______________________

Seth Barron is project director of the Manhattan Institutes NYC Initiative. He blogs about New York City politics at City Council Watch.
Gold and Silver Outlook 2017

Clint Siegner writes: Precious metals had a wild ride in 2016, launching higher in the first half of the year and then falling much of the way back to earth in the second half. Our outlook for 2017 hinges on some of the drivers that figured prominently in last years trading. There are also a couple of new wrinkles.

Europe

Well start with some fundamentals that metals investors have become well acquainted with in recent years. The troubles plaguing Europe seem to be forgotten, but they certainly arent gone. The question is whether or not officials in Europe will be able to keep the wheels on in 2017.

Several major European banks remain in jeopardy, plagued by bad debts, too much leverage, and mounting legal expenses. Germanys Deutsche Bank (DB) was often in the headlines last year as its share prices made all-time lows. Deutsche Bank paid out $60 million to settle charges of manipulating the gold market.

In addition, regulators in the U.S. had proposed a crushing $14 billion fine related to the banks marketing of dodgy mortgage backed securities prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

Since then share prices have recovered significantly. The bank agreed last month to a settlement of just over $7 billion, roughly half the amount originally proposed but still a hefty penalty. The banks loan book still looks ugly and its exposure to risky derivatives remains a wild card.

The recent failure of Italys third largest bank  Monte dei Paschi  may put the spotlight back on the European banking sector. Particularly if other institutions, such as Deutsche Bank, have been aggressively selling credit default swaps they will now have to pay out on.

Investors grappled with the Brexit referendum in 2016. This year they will find out if Britains vote to leave the EU will actually get implemented. Negotiations around the departure are expected to commence in May.

Italians are going to select a new government shortly and there are elections coming up in Germany, France, and the Netherlands in the months ahead. Anti-European Union forces are making real headway in the polls.

This year looks pivotal for the EU, the euro as its currency, and its banks. Turmoil there will boost safe haven buying in precious metals and the U.S. dollar. Alternatively, should the establishment and the banks weather the storm, metal prices could suffer, at least in terms of euros. Right now, turmoil in Europe looks like the better bet.

The Fed

Once again markets enter a new year in thrall to Janet Yellen and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee. Like last year, we just had one rate hike. Officials are telegraphing three to four additional hikes in the coming 12 months.

Last time around the stock market suffered stimulus withdrawals. Fed officials threw in the towel and reversed course almost immediately. We can expect officials are watching equity prices carefully now. If the S&P 500 keeps powering ahead, theyll have the cover they need to deliver rate increases.

If, on the other hand, we find out that markets are still addicted to low rates and officials cant tolerate the pain of a withdrawal it will be bad news for the dollar and good news for metals.

A Donald Trump Presidency

The election of Donald Trump is what makes this year different. Many people are optimistic about the prospects for a major infrastructure program, tax cuts, and less regulation. Investors are ready to take on risk. Since the election, they have been mostly getting out of safe haven assets such as bonds and gold, while paying top dollar for stocks.

The rub is that Trump has yet to assume office. The expectations are high and, frankly, something has to give. Trump might deliver a big infrastructure program and some tax relief. However, that would spell trouble for the current dollar rally as people anticipate ballooning deficits and borrowing.

Or, Trump may find his proposed measures are easier said than done. Republicans control Congress, but there is no certainty they will accept big spending increases and even higher deficits. If optimism bumps up against a bleaker political reality, itll be bad news for investors playing the Trump rally.

Conclusion

2016 closed with investors positioning for smooth sailing and economic growth. They may get it but a number of things will have to go right. If they dont, jettisoning safe haven assets to buy stocks at record high valuations wont look like a very good idea.

By Clint Siegner

MoneyMetals.com

Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, perhaps the nation's fastest-growing dealer of low-premium precious metals coins, rounds, and bars. Siegner, a graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals' brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs.

 2016 Clint Siegner - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Philippines Regime Change 2017, the Year of Living Dangerously

As President Duterte is rebalancing the Philippines economic and strategic policies, Washington is preparing plans for regime change. What the country needs is economic development, says Dan Steinbock  not Cold War.



After the election triumph of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has initiated a series of economic reforms to accelerate development, decentralise governance and a tough but controversial struggle against corruption and drugs.

The early economic signals are promising. Recently, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III announced that the government is set to sustain growth at close to 7% in 2017, despite political noise, by banking on higher infrastructure spending, tax and other reforms, improved peace and order.With his keen interest in history, particularly colonial history, Duterte knows only too well that, while the US is a powerful regional ally, American security state, including systematic torture and even waterboarding, originate historically from the Philippines. He never had any illusions that the US would sit idle as he begins to rebalance Philippine domestic and foreign policies, which have been subject to Washingtons regional designs since the end of the 19th century.But perhaps even Duterte did not expect the US State Department to respond as palpably as it reportedly has done.

Alleged Regime Change Plan



After the controversial US Ambassador Philip Goldberg left the Philippines, he wrote a blueprint to undermine Duterte within 18 months. According to the document, which was recently leaked to The Manila Times, Goldberg advocates fostering public discontent with Duterte by isolating the Philippines through military assistance and economic blackmail relative to other ASEAN member countries. The pro-US opposition would be reinforced through aids and grants.



While Goldberg thinks that (deposing Duterte) would be a challenge for the opposition, his goal is imperial rule and divide among Philippine congressmen and senators, the ASEAN states, and international multilateral organisations. Moreover, the pro-US opposition should be strengthened through aids and grants. The plan calls on Washington to deploy economic, political and military strategies against Duterte to bring him to his knees and eventually remove him from office.



According to Daniel Russel, State Departments assistance secretary for East Asian affairs, the allegations of a blueprint are false. Nevertheless, Russel himself is a key figure in the US pivot towards Asia.



US-based sources have tried to discredit the blueprint as coming from Chinas Philippine Ambassador Zhao, which the executive editor of The Manila Times Dr. Dante Ang calls a fantasy.



It is not the first time Goldberg is associated with regime change efforts. In 2008 President Evo Morales and the Bolivian government gave him 3 days to leave the country after declaring him persona non grata  following efforts to fund the opposition leaders, separatists and think-tanks with millions of dollars.



Yet, President Obama rewarded Goldberg by appointing him assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research; one of the 16 elements of the US Intelligence Community (IC). That made Goldberg the middleman between US intelligence and US diplomacy. Thereafter he was sent to the Philippines, which he left in less than three years after efforts to intervene with the election outcome.

Human Rights and NGOs amid Geopolitics



In geopolitics, human rights and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have only too often been used as geopolitical weapons. The Philippines is no exception.



In the Benigno Aquino III era until mid-2016, complacency with drug lords and narco politicians went hand in hand with the rise of some 3.7 million addicts; most of them in poor regions. Yet, international media was relatively quiet about both. But when Duterte started his war against drugs and corruption, which has cost over 6,000 lives, international concern has escalated.



In the public debate, the point person has been Senator Leila de Lima, Aquinos former Secretary of Justice, who chaired a senate inquiry into the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects. She has been glorified by the BBC as the woman who dares to defy Philippine president Duterte and she is characterised as an outspoken advocate of justice without fear or favor. It is for the same reason that de Lima was invited to and awarded in the US last month as one of the leading 100 global thinkers by the influential Democratic Foreign Policy.



In the Philippines, many see de Limas awards as perversions of justice, however. In August, she was found to have a 7-year affair  that is, through the Aquino era  with her lucratively-rewarded driver Ronnie Dayan who served as her money collector for drug protection and campaign financing. When de Lima was still Justice Secretary, the Discovery Channel presented an unsettling documentary Inside the Gangsters code, on ruthless prison gangs exerting control over the notorious New Bilibid Prisons, while being coddled by incumbent political leaders.



Last September, de Lima was removed from the Senate committee. Oddly enough, her international accolades have ensued after the disclosure of her activities.



Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also play a role in US-Philippines geopolitics, along with a handful wealthy US Filipinos linked with the Aquino circles, such as Loida Nicolas-Lewis, the widow of billionaire businessman Reginald Lewis and the sister of Imelda Nicolas, the head of the overseas Filipinos commission during the Aquino administration. From Dutertes standpoint, a more influential source of funds is billionaire George Soros, who he says has bankrolled local NGOs against him as he has been portrayed as a mass murderer in the West. In turn, international media has relied on these NGOs and think-tanks in their demonisation of Duterte.



A few weeks ago, the US-based Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) did not renew its $430 million aid grant to the Philippines. While the Duterte administrations criticism about aid conditions was reported as tirades against America in the West, the MCC is hardly independent. It is chaired by State Secretary John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. Critics say it deploys indicators that precondition aid on imposed neoliberal policies.



Furthermore, the MCC debacle is overshadowed by the economic implications of US-Philippine military ties. Until 2010, the countrys military expenditures decreased two decades from 1.6% to 0.8% of GDP. During the Aquino era, which coincides with the US pivot to Asia, these expenditures soared to almost 1.4%, according to SIPRI research  which in dollar terms is over five times the proposed aid package in just one year.

Taking Advantage of Political Opposition



The regime plan ensued after election last May, when President Aquinos designated successor  former interior minister Manuel Mar Roxas, an ex-investment banker and Liberal Party leader  failed to deliver a democratic victory. Known as Mr. Palengke (Mr. Market) in the Philippines, Roxasappealed to elites but Duterte got almost 40% of the national vote, almost twice as much as Roxas.



After elections, there have also been questions about the rise of narco state and its cooperation with military leaders during the watch of Roxas as interior minister. Duterte ordered the investigation of five former and incumbent police generals led by retired PNP deputy director general Marcelo Garbo Jr. for their involvement in illegal drugs. Garbo, who was tagged as a protector of drug syndicates, was also a vocal supporter of Roxas who has vehemently denied any connections with drugs generals but whose name has now become associated with them.



In order to set public perceptions aside, Goldbergs plan argues that the political opposition would need all the political weapons in their arsenal to replace Duterte Opposition actors across the political spectrum look at us (the US) for cues and signals. Indeed, the role of political opposition is vital to Goldberg because the regime change must seem to be democratic. Consequently, the plan advises restraint in expressing public support for former President Fidel Valdez Ramos and Vice President Leni Robredo, and other opposition leaders so as not to alarm the Duterte administration of an impending destabilization or a coup.



These plans rely on the center-right Philippine Liberal party, which is known for its market-friendly neoliberal policies and firm support of the US pivot to Asia. Fidel Ramoss ties with the US go back to his training at West Point in 1960. In the 1980s, he was in President Marcoss inner circle of national police and military. Following the fall of Marcos, he served as President Corazon Aquinos key military chief. But after assisting as Dutertes early emissary to China, he has criticised the administrations efforts to reduce US military ties.



In turn, Leni Robredo is a lawyer and social activist, who theDuterte administration sees more loyal to Aquinos Liberal coalition. Her relationship with the Cabinet fell apart a few weeks ago. On December 4, 2016, Robredo was informed by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. to desist from attending all Cabinet meetings. Officially, the reasons involved major differences with Duterte, while Robredo suggested that there were clandestine plans to replace her. In turn, the Duterte administration was uneasy about her intimate ties with theLiberal Party.



Robredo won vice-presidency with a narrow margin to former senator Ferdinand Bong Bong Marcos, former President Marcoss son. In his electoral protest, Marcos alleged that Aquinos Liberal Party rigged the May 2016 elections in favour of Robredo. In the case, a key role belongs to Supreme Court Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, who succeeded de Lima as Aquinos Secretary of Justice and is also Aquinos long-time friend.



I dont believe that there is a blueprint for Oust Duterte plot, says Robredo. Nonetheless, while Duterte might prefer to govern with Marcos, Goldberg and the Liberal Party would prioritise Robredo  alone.

Toward Scenario X



If a Ramos-Robredo scenario were to fail, Golberg advises exploiting possible rifts among Duterte supporters, or assisting Robredo led opposition groups coupled with the Catholic Church, business sector and NGOs. Yet, Dutertes net rating remains solidly 63%, whereas the ratings of major opposition figures plunged in the fall  including Robredos (-12% decline).



Furthermore, these ratings tend to under-estimate Dutertes real support. As the surveys seek to represent all Filipino socioeconomic classes, they do not always appropriately reflect real views of the majority. After all, the high-income classes represent only 1% of the families in the population, whereas 60% are lower- to middle-income and every third Filipino lives in poverty. Despite the media war against Dutertes drugs war, his support remains relativelyhighest in the lower-income classes.



Today stability in the Philippines is also supported by Beijing. Amid the news about the ouster plot, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China was confident on Dutertes leadership and would continue to support his policies.



After January, President Trumps administration must reassess Goldbergs regime-change scenarios in light of his own pledge to redefine America First policies in Asia and China. In the Philippines, that means more uncertainty in the short-term.



What is certain is that, in the coming months, any US-led regime change effort in the Philippines would face firm domestic, regional and international opposition. It would also undermine Asias growth promise for years to come.



Only the Philippines can determine its own future. Unipolar regime change plans should have no role in the multipolar 21stcentury  especially in Asia which is critical to global growth prospects.

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognised expert of the nascent multipolar world. He is the CEO of Difference Group and has served as Research Director at the India, China and America Institute (USA) and visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see www.differencegroup.net

 2016 Copyright Dan Steinbock - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




MARTINSVILLE-There are more than 900 open positions within a 10-mile circle of Martinsville. The problem is many applicants dont have the needed skills or the money to pay for training. Patrick Henry Community College wants to help with that.

The schools New Economy Workforce Credential Grant helps students enroll in any of eight certification programs and covers two-thirds of the cost. That includes qualifying for a commercial drivers license, training as a certified nurses aide, a certified production assistant, a clinical medical assistant, a medication aide, certified billing and coding specialist, electrical groundsman or training to become a phlebotomy technician.

These are the programs that Patrick Henry offers that our employers have said are in high demand, or where there are job openings in our area, said Rhonda Hodges, PHCCs Vice President of Workforce, Economic and Community Development. It is a pay for performance program. For approved programs, the student only pays for the first third. If the student completes the program, the state will pay the college the second third. And then if the student earns the industry credential, the state will pay the college the final third.

Hodges said the programs typically last no longer than a semester. Some of them only take six to 12 weeks to finish.

Money for the grant comes from Gov. Terry McAuliffes New Economy initiative, which was approved during last years session of the General Assembly.

In years past, Hodges said, there has been state and federal aid for academic credit programs, but little aid for job certification programs. The Workforce Credential Grant changed that.

The grant specifically applies to programs that have been approved by the Virginia Community College System State Board and the Virginia Workforce Development Board, Hodges said, and are in high-demand sectors.

On top of that, Hodges said, there is also additional financial aid available for eligible students.

We have some funding from our Virginia Community College System, financial aid for non-credit training leading to an industry credential, Hodges said. Our Patrick Henry Community College Foundation, I feel, has really taken a lead. They provided scholarship funding for non-credit programs at Patrick Henry a couple of years ago. Thats really very forward-thinking, even before this legislation, so we still had some funding there. We do have students, based on eligibility, who are paying just 10 percent of the cost of some of these programs.

Additionally, Hodges said, PHCC is willing to work with people to eliminate any other potential barriers to enrollment.

The grants come at a time when there are multiple full-time job openings in the area. A city engineer position in Martinsville pays $58,544 a year. An inventory taker position for a company in the city can pay up to $13 an hour, while a registered nurse makes $42,000. Someone with their commercial drivers license can make between $52,000 to $85,000 working out of Martinsville for the Salem Corporation. But each of those programs require certification and training, which PHCCs programs can help with.

We have the programs, were tied to employers, and theres funding assistance, Hodges said. Were trying to take care of any barriers that might be there. Whether its transportation, child care, or whatever, we try to do whatever we can to get around that so they can earn these credentials.

Anyone interested in registering or just receiving more information can visit patrickhenry.edu/workforce or call (276)-656-0260.
Bismack Biyombo,Paul Millsap

Atlanta Hawks' Paul Millsap (4) is fouled by Orlando Magic's Bismack Biyombo while driving to the basket during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017, in Orlando, Fla. Atlanta won 111-92. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

(John Raoux)

After dealing Kyle Korver to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Atlanta Hawks appear to be going into a rebuild mode that might involve trading star big man Paul Millsap, according to Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski.

That's huge news for several teams that really need a star like Millsap, including the Toronto Raptors and -- apparently -- the Sacramento Kings, who would like to get in on the discussions.

The Sacramento Kings are a team very interested in Paul Millsap.  Chris Vivlamore (@CVivlamoreAJC) January 6, 2017

The Raptors, of course, make sense as a Millsap destination because they are looking to compete with the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference as a team that could conceivably contend for the Finals. When paired with DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, Millsap would be a big boost for Toronto.

The Kings are a little more complicated, but given their pick situation (they owe multiple first rounders in the next few years) and their commitment to keeping DeMarcus Cousins as long as possible, acquiring Millsap would be a big move. After all, with the new CBA, Cousins will have extra financial motivations to stay in Sacramento. If the Kings can put a competitive team around him, they actually might be able to convince the disgruntled big man to stay.

Wojnarowski also mentioned the Denver Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers and New Orleans Pelicans as teams that have expressed interest in Millsap. Of those teams, the 76ers are perhaps the most intriguing, if only because they already have a glut of potentially talented big men and have been completely uninterested in fielding a competitive team in recent years.

One notable team not mentioned by Woj was the Boston Celtics, whose potential interest we covered here. If the price came down on Millsap (and don't expect it to), the Celtics might try to make a move. But if acquiring him would require one of the Brooklyn picks, it seems unlikely that Boston would move to pick up the player who -- when paired with Al Horford -- couldn't overcome Cleveland in the playoffs and turns 32 in February.

We will see whether Atlanta decides to move their star power forward now, or if they decide to hold onto him until closer to the deadline, trying to drum up more interest.
Today, SiteOne Therapeutics http://siteonetherapeutics.com/ announced the successful closing of its Series B led by Amgen, with follow on investment from Next Frontier and other insiders. In addition, the company signed a research and development agreement with Amgen combining SiteOnes experienced drug discovery team and portfolio of novel Na1.7 inhibitors with Amgens neuroscience capabilities.

In July 2015, Next Frontier http://www.nextfrontiercapital.com/ , as our first ever investment, led SiteOnes Series A. The company, with HQ in Bozeman and offices in San Francisco, is developing non-opioid analgesics; the ability to treat chronic pain without habit forming side effects.

Will Price

Managing Partner, Next Frontier Capital

Full Story: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amgen-leads-series-b-investment-siteone-therapeutics-next-will-price

Additional Next Frontier News: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/0_0_R5V37hQ3A1nmXIX_AEAM?trk=vsrp_people_res_infl_recent
Le Cabinet ministeriel sest reuni et a pris note que le gouvernement va instituer un Drug Offenders Administrative Panel et un projet de loi sera presente a cet effet, que le President de la Republique soit informe que le Civil Establishment Order 2022 and the Civil Establishment (Rodrigues Regional Assembly) sera promulgue, que le Policy Paper on Recreation a ete soumis par le consultant ainsi que le World Cancer Day 2022 sera celebre avec le theme Close the care gap.

1. Cabinet has, as recommended by the Commission of Inquiry on Drug Trafficking Report, agreed to the setting up of a Drug Offenders Administrative Panel. The Panel would be under the purview of the Ministry of Health and Wellness and a new Bill would be prepared for its setting up.

2. Cabinet has agreed to the Fashion and Design Institute signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Birmingham City University, United Kingdom. The purpose of the Memorandum of Understanding is to develop co-operation and promote mutual understanding and excellence in practice-based education, research and knowledge exchange between the Parties. Both organisations aim at working collaboratively to develop, inter alia, the following activities in areas of mutual academic interest:

(a) exchanges of academic and administrative staff and mutual visits to pursue research and to lecture;

(b) exchanges of students and/or study abroad programmes and other enhancements to the student experience; and

(c) identifying opportunities:

(i) for conducting collaborative research and development, lectures and seminars, organising symposia and conferences; and

(ii) to collaborate on the development of Joint and Dual Awards.

. Cabinet has agreed to the World Bank Report on the Sugar Cane Sector Review being made public following consultations held with the Country Director of World Bank during her recent visit to Mauritius. The Report comprises a Competitiveness Analysis of the sugarcane sector, a Sector Vision and a Policy Note, in line with the Terms and Conditions of the Reimbursable Advisory Services, which the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security had signed with the World Bank, with a view to providing policy recommendations to enable Government to come up with strategies for the future and long-term development of the sector.

4. Cabinet has agreed to the President of the Republic being advised to make the Civil Establishment Order 2022 and the Civil Establishment (Rodrigues Regional Assembly) Order 2022.

5. Cabinet has taken note that MV Mauritius Trochetia had effected a voyage to Rodrigues with essential commodities and returned to Mauritius on 28 January 2022.

Cabinet has also taken note that MV Mauritius Trochetia also carried livestock from Rodrigues. The next voyage of MV Mauritius Trochetia is expected on 30 January 2022, subject to weather conditions.

6. Cabinet has taken note that following the rainfall during the month of January 2022, an assessment has been carried out by the Extension Services of the Food and Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (FAREI).

A rise in fungal and bacterial diseases on tomatoes, cabbage and chillies plantations is expected with the climatic conditions. Fungicide application was being recommended to growers. A slight drop in the production of tomatoes and chillies was expected in the next production cycle. An incidence of soft rot in carrot and cabbage was also foreseen.

Surveillance would be ongoing and advisory services/assistance would be provided to the farming community by the Agricultural Services of the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security as well as FAREI.

7. Cabinet has taken note that the Consultant appointed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to prepare a National Policy Paper on Recreation has submitted the final policy document. The National Policy on Recreation is articulated on the following nine principles:

(a) recreational activities in diverse forms are vital to quality of life;

(b) recreational facilities will empower and promote happier families and communities;

(c) instilling of values of lifelong recreational practice for social inclusion and equality of opportunity;

(d) connection with nature in a spirit of preservation of the environment;

(e) a flexible approach to respond to the local needs of the population;

(f) focusing on partnership approaches to shared agendas and optimisation of resources;

(g) ethos of continuous improvement taking into consideration evolving demography, changing lifestyle and social needs;

(h) commitment to enhancing community-based leadership in recreation, with emphasis on targeted recreation awareness campaigns that increase knowledge about how recreation contributes to enjoyment and quality of life; and

(i) recreation as a sector that contributes to the economy and job creation.

The five goals of the National Policy on Recreation are to:

(i) promote an active healthy lifestyle;

(ii) ensure inclusiveness for all;

(iii) connect people with nature;

(iv) foster an enabling environment; and

(v) ensure overall coordination, organisation, and delivery of recreation activities.

8. Cabinet has taken note that the NOTAM which lays down conditions for passengers travelling to Mauritius has been extended up to 31 March 2022.

9. Cabinet has taken note of the activities being organised by the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security in the context of the World Wetlands Day celebrated on 02 February each year. The theme for the 2022 World Wetlands Day celebration proposed by the Ramsar Convention is Wetlands action for people and nature and the slogan is Value-Manage-RestoreLove Wetlands. The Ministry would, in collaboration with the National Parks and Conservation Service, organise a Clean-up Campaign at Bras dEau National Park on Saturday 29 January 2022 along Poste Lafayette coastal road over a distance of about three kilometres on both sides starting from Bras dEau Public Beach to Mare Sarcelles. An area of 0.5 Ha would also be restored, some 200 endemic trees would be planted at Mare Sarcelles and information materials would be distributed to participants. The event would be held in accordance with the prevailing sanitary restrictions related to outdoor activities with less than 50 participants.

10. Cabinet has taken note of the activities being organised by the Ministry of Health and Wellness in the context of World Cancer Day 2022, observed on 04 February each year. The theme of the three-year World Cancer Day campaign from 2022 to 2024 is Close the care gap.

The event would be launched on Friday 04 February 2022 at LEscalier Mediclinic where screening for breast and cervical cancer would be carried out. Talks on cancer and an exhibition on healthy lifestyle and healthy diet would also be held. Other activities also include:

(a) radio talks and TV programmes by health professionals on MBC TV on the theme of the World Cancer Day;

(b) the dissemination of information on the causes of cancer in order to raise awareness among the population at large about the potential risk of cancer;

(c) screening for cervical cancer for sexually active women aged 25 to 60 years in the community and at worksites; and

(d) display of banners about the risk factors of developing cancer in Municipal Councils, District Councils and Regional Health Hospitals.

11. Cabinet has taken note of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world. Some 364.7 million cases have been reported globally, of which 288.4 million persons have been successfully treated.

With regard to Mauritius, as at 26 January 2022, there were 1,048 active cases of COVID-19, out of which 15 were admitted at the New ENT Hospital. Over the period 20 January 2022 to 26 January 2022, 13 deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

Cabinet has also taken note of progress in the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme, including the administration of the booster dose in the Republic of Mauritius. As at 27 January 2022, 978,612 persons had received a first dose of vaccine (representing 77.3 percent of the population). 930,676 persons were fully vaccinated (representing 73.5 percent of the population). 356,425 persons had received a booster dose (representing 28.2 percent of the population). 68.5 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years had received a first dose of vaccine and 45.1 percent had received a second dose.

12. Cabinet has taken note that Rodrigues detected its first case of locally transmitted COVID-19 on 26 January 2022. An extensive contact tracing exercise has been launched and as at 28 January 2022 (0900 hours), 82 cases have been detected.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness was sending three medical staff to Rodrigues, namely a Medical Superintendent, a Community Physician and a Regional Public Health Superintendent. The Ministry of Health and Wellness is also supporting the Rodrigues Health Department regarding the implementation of treatment protocols and contingency planning. Additional stock of drugs used for treatment of COVID-19 was being sent to Rodrigues.

13. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the meeting of the Conseil International des Jeux des Iles de lOcean Indien (CIJ) held recently in Madagascar. Madagascar would host the Indian Ocean Islands Games (IOIG) in 2023. Members of the CIJ proceeded to Madagascar to discuss issues related to the holding of the 2023 IOIG and to take stock of progress achieved in the preparations for the games. The CIJ Board members were elected and the members of the Comite dOrganisation des Jeux des Iles were introduced.

23 sports disciplines have been provisionally approved by the CIJ for the games and four as demonstration sports. The 23 sports disciplines are Athletics/Para Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Cycling, Equestrian, Football/Beach Soccer, Weightlifting, Handball, Judo, Karate, Kickboxing, Wrestling, Swimming/Para Swimming, Petanque, Rugby, Tae Kwon Do, Archery, Tennis, Table Tennis, Yachting, Volleyball/Beach Volley and Surf. The four demonstration sports are Fencing, Teqball, Auto Sport and Billiard.

14. Cabinet has taken note of the reconstitution of the Agalega Island Council with Mr Gino Alfred as Chairperson.

15. Cabinet has taken note of the reconstitution of the Board of Governors of the Universite des Mascareignes with Professor Nathalie Bernardie-Tahir as Chairperson.

16. Cabinet has taken note of the constitution of the Institute of Technical Education and Technology Council with Mr Yamal Matabudul as Chairperson.

17. Cabinet has taken note of the appointment of Mr Joseph Gerard Angoh, retired Judge of the Supreme Court, as Chairperson of the Financial Services Review Panel.

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McDowell County sheriffs deputies need the publics help locating 35-year-old Brent Sanders Child.

He is wanted on three counts each of breaking and entering and possession of stolen goods and two counts each of habitual breaking and entering and larceny after breaking and entering.

Child is accused of breaking into several McDowell residences last year.

He is a described as a white male who stands 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 210 pounds. He has brown hair and green eyes.

Anyone with information concerning Childs whereabouts is asked to call Lt. Andy Manis at the McDowell County Sheriffs Office at 652-2237 or McDowell County Crimestoppers at 65-CRIME (652-7463). Now, you can also text your tips to Crimestoppers. Text MCDOWELLTIPS and your information to 274637 (CRIMES). With Crimestoppers, your identity remains anonymous, and you could receive a cash reward.
RALEIGH -- Governor Roy Cooper has declared a State of Emergency ahead of a winter storm that is expected to cover most of North Carolina with four to seven inches of snow during the next 36 hours.

Governor Cooper, who has cancelled inaugural activities scheduled for the weekend, said the State Emergency Response Team is preparing for the approaching winter storm and recommended that residents do the same.

Our emergency management and transportation crews have been working with local officials throughout the week to make sure were prepared and informed about potentially hazardous weather conditions," said Governor Cooper. Please, do your part by paying attention to the weather forecast, following instructions from local officials and putting safety first.

This morning, Governor Cooper signed two executive orders to expedite storm response. The State of Emergency declaration enables the governor to mobilize the necessary resources to respond to a storm and is the first step in seeking federal funds to help defray eligible storm-related costs. The executive order waives restrictions on weight and the hours of service for fuel, utility and other truck drivers that may be working to deliver supplies, restore services or clear storm debris.

Cooper said the State Emergency Operations Center will officially activate today to coordinate storm response and he directed the State Highway Patrol to work with other law enforcement and emergency responders statewide to mark abandoned vehicles to ensure that no one is left stranded in the dangerous weather. Additionally, he reminded motorists of the states quick clearance policy, instructing state transportation crews to clear the road by pushing to the shoulder any vehicles that may impede traffic.

Weather forecasts call for four to seven inches of snow across most of the state with one to four inches possible in southeastern counties. Counties along the northern coastal plain and north central parts of the state could see seven to 12 inches of snowfall. While widespread power outages are not expected across most of the state, there is an increased risk of power outages across portions of central and eastern North Carolina.

Temperatures are not expected to rise much above freezing throughout the weekend; in fact, low temperatures on Sunday will be in the single digits across most of the state. With anticipated accumulations and low temperatures, emergency management officials are not expecting road conditions to significantly improve until early next week.

We cannot stress enough the importance of staying off the road this weekend, urged Public Safety Secretary Erik A. Hooks. The snowmay be fun to play in, but it will be dangerous to drive in. Dont put yourself, your family or our emergency responders lives at risk.

Hooks said the Highway Patrol is shifting resources to cover potential trouble spots. And troopers will be actively looking for abandoned vehicles and tagging cars to ensure motorist safety. Additionally, National Guard troops are on standby and prepared to respond as needed.

NCDOT has been working proactively in advance of winter weather, applying more than two million gallons of salt brine across the states roadways. Crews throughout the state will be working throughout the weekend proactively putting down salt and sand and clearing roads.

Transportation crews have pretreated major routes, bridges and overpasses with salt brine to help prevent snow and ice from sticking to the roadways, said Acting Transportation Secretary Mike Holder. Once winter weather begins, we urge drivers to stay off the roads to protect themselves and our crews who will be working to clear the roads as quickly as possible.

Real-time weather and road conditions and shelter openings, as well as winter safety tips, can be found on the free ReadyNC mobile app or on line at www.readync.org web site.

Travelers are urged to call 511 or go to www.ncdot.org for up to date roadway conditions. Motorists are reminded NOT to call 911 or the State Highway Patrol Communication Centers for roadway conditions.
#PM-trapped miners PM urges utmost efforts to rescue 2 trapped miners Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Friday called for utmost efforts to rescue two miners trapped underground for 10 days. They have been isolated in a vertical shaft about 190 mete...

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by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, January 6, 2017

One of the striking evolutions of the Internet of Things highlighted at this years CES is the scope of major brand involvement in very many ways.

However, this not an age of a PC operating system such as Microsoft entering and dominating a market at a particular time in history. The IoT market is much bigger than that.

At CES two years ago, there was an inkling that the Internet of Things, or at least mass connectivity, caught the attention of some rather large global players.

At CES last year, many well-known companies introduced some rather leading-edge products, ranging from smart refrigerators to some early virtual reality products.

At CES this year, its a whole different universe -- with company after company fully embracing and promoting the Internet of Things as now part of their corporate DNA.

This is not a small deal.

For example, LG announced that virtually all LG home appliances -- and there are many -- would now come with smart Wi-Fi. This is a massive move to Internet connectivity of home appliances.

For connected and smart devices, American consumers may be faced with products from brands that are not household names to them. This will be a marketing challenge for some of the companies, but most are financially well-heeled enough for a mega-market push, which is where much of the IoT money will soon flow.

The commitment of major business entities to the Internet of Things at CES year cannot be underestimated.

We are more enthusiastic as ever about the Internet of Things, said Werner Stuth, member of the board of Bosch in Germany. By 2020, we want to make all our products connected.

Hisense, which took over the Sharp brand and is pitched as Chinas largest manufacturer, is launching a new line of high-quality TVs in the U.S.

Samsung, well-known for smartphones, notwithstanding the recent Note 7 fire issue, promoted that every Samsung TV now will be a smart TV.

Honor, part of Chinese powerhouse Huawei, which boasts 100 million fans and users worldwide, is targeting young people with its new line of high-end smartphones at relatively low costs.

The bottom line is that new IoT products can come from companies that U.S. consumers have not traditionally been buying from.

However, these companies may be producing the best and most adopted IoT products in the next year or two.

The brands of the Internet of Things is still up for grabs.
by Sara Guaglione , January 5, 2017

Following a request from Chinese authorities, Apple has agreed to remove New York Times apps from its app store in China.

As of December 23, 2016, iPhone users in China are no longer able to download the English and Chinese-language New York Times news apps. (Apple's iBooks and iTunes Movies stores are been blocked since last April.)

This does not affect users in China who already have the apps installed on their phones. The NYT's crossword and virtual reality apps are still available to Chinese users.

All of the NYT's apps remain available to users in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Eileen Murphy, SVP of communications at the NYT, told Publishers Daily this decision by Apple is deeply regrettable" and part of Chinese authorities wider attempt to prevent readers in China from accessing independent news coverage by The New York Times of that country. Coverage which is no different from the journalism we do about every other country in the world, including the United States.

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We have asked Apple to reconsider their decision, she said.

The Chinese government has been trying to block the NYTs sites since 2012, after a series of articles was published scrutinizing the fortunes of then-prime minister Wen Jiabao and his family.

According to a report from the NYT, Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesman, said the apps were removed due to their violation of local regulations.

However, it is not yet clear what those regulations are, though it may have to do with rules released last June. Called Provisions on the Administration of Mobile Internet Application Information Services, they restrict apps accused of "endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others.

The NYT was also working on articles related to the Chinese government around the time of the removal of the apps. Most notably, a December 29 story revealed billions of dollars in undercover perks, tax breaks and subsidies the Chinese government provides to support the worlds biggest iPhone factory.

China is one of Apples largest iPhone markets. Reuters reported that apps from other international publications whose sites are blocked, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, were still available today.

The newspaper would not say how many Chinese mobile readers it gets through the NYT apps.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 5, 2017

Digital publishing platform Medium announced yesterday it is cutting its workforce by roughly one third, founder and CEO Ev Williams revealed in a blog post published on the site. Williams said the layoffs, affecting around 50 staffers, were prompted by slower than expected growth in online advertising revenues.

The layoffs essentially spell the end of Mediums branded content business, Promoted Stories, which was intended to generate ad revenues by helping big advertising clients create engaging multimedia content on the platform.

This model was meant to overcome the limitations and shortcomings of the broader digital ad business, which Williams criticized: Upon further reflection, its clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesnt serve people. In fact, its not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other content we all consume on a daily basis is paid for  directly or indirectly  by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals.

By contrast, he notes "people who write and share ideas should be rewarded on their ability to enlighten and inform, not simply their ability to attract a few seconds of attention.

Again, its unclear quite how Medium intends to square the circle: one obvious alternative, offering digital subscriptions are allowing consumers to pay directly for content in other ways, presents its own formidable challenges.

The platform already offers publishers the option of memberships for readers, but its unclear how much revenue this has generated in comparison to the now-defunct Promoted Stories.

The layoffs will fall mostly on jobs in ad sales, support and other business functions, as part of a wider push to re-position the company and implement a new business model.

Specifically, Medium will seek to reduce its dependence on digital ads in favor of a new monetization system  which remains undefined. It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like, Williams said.
Casting a shadow over Snap Incs IPO, a former employee has accused the Snapchat parent of inflating its growth figures.

Anthony Pompliano claims to have been fired after less than a month as Snapchats head of growth, because he refused to go along with the alleged scheme, according to a lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court this week.

This action arises out of the avarice of the small group of executives at the helm of the social media giant Snapchat, the lawsuit states.

Snapchats leadership saw Mr. Pompliano as an impediment to their planned IPO because he refused to turn a blind eye to Snapchats misrepresentations, it alleges.

The suit specifically names several Snap executives, including Drew Boller, the companys vice president of finance; Jill Hazelbaker, its vice president of communications; and Brian Theisen, then its director of business opperations.

Furthermore, Pompliano contests that Snapchat only poached him from Facebook -- where he served a similar role -- to gather proprietary information on its arch-rival.

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Post-termination, the suit alleges that Snap has sought to destroy Pomplianos career and reputation by waging a smear campaign against Mr. Pompliano, by making false representations concerning the circumstances of his termination.

Reached for comment on Thursday, a Snap spokeswoman said the allegations are totally without merit.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the story on Wednesday and subsequently published the heavily redacted lawsuit online. a>

Snap filed for its initial public offering, in mid-November. Expected as early as March 2017, the social darling is hoping to raise upwards of $4 billion at a valuation of $25 billion to $35 billion, according to reports.

A quiet filing isnt uncommon in Silicon Valley -- particularly when companies have yet to generate a ton of revenue. Twitter took a similar approach in 2013.

Standing in stark contrast to struggling social networks like Twitter, Snapchat is presently thriving. Indeed, despite direct competition from Facebook and other tech giants, the company is positioned for explosive growth in ad revenue over the next few years, per eMarketer.

The research firm recently predicted the playful messaging app would generate $366.69 million in ad revenues in 2016 and $935.46 million in 2017.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 6, 2017

Four people are being charged with hate crimes in addition to a number of other offenses after they tortured a mentally disabled man while live streaming the incident on Facebook.

The video, which was removed from Facebook but is still viewable on other sites, has been watched millions of times and quickly became a social and political flashpoint, encapsulating Americas fraught race relations.

According to the states attorney for Cook County, Illinois, Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, and Brittany Covington, all 18 years old, and Tanishia Covington, 24 years old, are being charged with felonies, including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, residential burglary and hate crime following the incident.

(A previous blog post mistakenly stated that all the individuals were 18 years old.)

Hill is also being charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle in connection with the theft of a van.

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The four were arrested on Wednesday after they live streamed themselves tying up and physically and verbally abusing an 18-year-old man, whom most news outlets are choosing not to identify by name. The assault included kicking, punching, cutting with a knife, and making him drink out of a toilet. The attackers, who are African-American, also utter obscenities including Fuck white people.

After being held for around five hours on Tuesday, the victim escaped when a neighbor called the police, and was later found by police wandering the neighborhood on Chicagos west side, disoriented, bleeding and partly undressed, despite the frigid temperature. His parents had reported him missing from his home in a Chicago suburb on Sunday, two days after he met Hill, an acquaintance from high school, for a sleepover.

President Obama, who began his political career in Chicago, condemned the incident as despicable and a hate crime in an interview with a reporter from a local Chicago area CBS station. However, he also emphasized he did not think racial tensions were worsening, but simply becoming more visible, due to technology like mobile phones and Facebook.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, January 6, 2017

The Federal Trade Commission has charged equipment manufacturer D-Link Corporation with failing to adequately secure its wireless routers and Internet cameras.

The company, which sells networking equipment that allows people to monitor their homes and businesses remotely, allegedly "failed to take steps to address well-known and easily preventable security flaws," the FTC says. For instance, D-Link allegedly left users' logins for the mobile app "unsecured in clear, readable text on their mobile devices," according to the agency.

"As a result of defendants failures, thousands of defendants routers and cameras have been vulnerable to attacks that subject consumers sensitive personal information and local networks to a significant risk of unauthorized access," the FTC alleged in a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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FTC consumer education specialist Ari Lazarus said in a blog post that the alleged security flaws enabled hackers to "use a special search engine to find vulnerable devices over the internet and get their IP addresses."

After doing so, hackers could "gain access to peoples sensitive data, including tax returns and other financial information."

D-Link, based in Taiwan, said in a statement that it will "vigorously defend itself against the unwarranted and baseless charges."

The company also noted that the FTC doesn't allege that any D-Link Systems devices suffered a security breach. "Instead, the FTC speculates that consumers were placed 'at risk' to be hacked, but fails to allege, as it must, that actual consumers suffered or are likely to suffer actual substantial injuries," the company added.

The FTC has previously brought at least two cases related to security and the Internet of Things. In 2013, the FTC alleged that Trendnet's didn't adequately secure its IP cameras. And last year, the agency said Asus routers contained security flaws that created privacy risks. Both of those companies settled the charges.
A transient ischemic attack (TIA), also known as a ministroke, occurs when the blood supply to the brain temporarily stops. The reduced blood supply does not usually last for longer than 5 minutes, but a TIA is still a medical emergency. It may be a warning of a major stroke to come. Many people do not seek help for a TIA because the symptoms pass quickly. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note that more than one-third of people who do not receive treatment for a TIA have a major stroke within a year. Additional statistics suggest that 20% of those who have a TIA have a stroke within 3 months, and half of these will happen within 2 days of the TIA. Knowing the symptoms of a TIA and getting help quickly may help prevent a more severe and possibly life threatening event. In this article, learn more about what a TIA involves and which action to take if one occurs.

What is a TIA? Share on Pinterest PM Images/Getty Images A TIA causes similar symptoms to those of a stroke, but it is temporary. The reduced blood supply usually only lasts for a few seconds, and the symptoms tend to last for minutes. Rarely, they can last for up to a few hours. TIAs occur when a blood clot blocks blood flow and prevents oxygen from reaching the brain cells for a short while. When the clot breaks up or moves on, the symptoms tend to resolve. These events do not last long enough to cause permanent damage to brain cells. The American Stroke Association urge people not to ignore a TIA, as it can be a warning sign for a major stroke. Statistics suggest that TIAs affect around 2% of the population of the United States.

Causes A TIA occurs when there is a disruption in the supply of oxygen to the brain. This may be due to: atherosclerosis, in which fatty deposits cause the arteries to become harder, thicker, narrower, and less flexible

blood clots due to heart disease, cardiovascular disease, or an irregular heart rhythm

blood clots due to a blood condition, such as sickle cell disease

an embolism or blood clot that has traveled from elsewhere in the body

an air bubble in the bloodstream

Risk factors The risk factors for a TIA are similar to those for a stroke. Some of these are preventable. The following factors can increase the risk of experiencing a TIA: having a family history of stroke or TIA

being 55 years or above

being assigned male at birth

being Black or Hispanic, compared with being non-Hispanic white

having high blood pressure

having cardiovascular disease

smoking tobacco

having diabetes

getting low levels of exercise

having high cholesterol levels

eating a diet that is high in unhealthy fats and salt

having high homocysteine levels

having overweight or obesity

having a type of heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation

Treatment Treatment will depend on the cause of the TIA. The following sections will look at some of the options. Medications A doctor may prescribe medications to lower the risk of another blood clot and a major stroke. The options will depend on the cause of the TIA but commonly include: anti-platelet drugs to prevent clotting, such as include aspirin, ticlopidine (Ticlid), and clopidogrel (Plavix)

anticoagulants such as warfarin (Coumadin) and heparin, which also help prevent clotting

medications to manage high blood pressure, or hypertension

drugs to help manage cholesterol levels

medications to manage heart disease and regulate irregular heart rhythms All of these drugs can have adverse effects, and they may also interact with other medications. For this reason, people should inform a doctor about any other drugs they are taking, including over-the-counter medications, supplements, and herbal remedies. If a person experiences adverse effects while using a drug, they should speak with a doctor. An alternative may be available. Surgery In some cases, a doctor may recommend surgery to remove a blockage or part of a damaged artery.

Lifestyle measures and prevention A number of lifestyle measures can help reduce the risk of experiencing a TIA or stroke. These include: avoiding or quitting smoking

avoiding exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke

eating a nutritious and varied diet, with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables

managing ones intake of salt and unhealthy fats

getting regular exercise

avoiding the use of recreational drugs

managing body weight, if appropriate

following any treatment plan for heart disease, diabetes, or other conditions It is best to discuss a suitable strategy with a healthcare professional before making any significant lifestyle changes, such as starting a new exercise regimen.

Diagnosis Anyone experiencing signs or symptoms of a TIA needs an immediate medical assessment to find out why it happened and how to prevent a recurrence or more severe event. The symptoms can pass quickly and may no longer be present when the person reaches a doctor. However, a person who was present at the time may be able to help the individual explain the event to the doctor. The doctor will likely: ask what happened and ask about any ongoing symptoms

ask how long the symptoms lasted for and how they affected the person

consider the individuals personal and family medical history

carry out a neurological examination, which may include memory and coordination tests If the doctor believes that the person had a TIA, they may refer them to a neurologist for further testing. Possible tests include: blood tests to check blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and clotting ability

an electrocardiogram to measure the electrical activity and rhythms of the heart

an echocardiogram to check the pumping action of the heart

a chest X-ray to help rule out other conditions

a CT scan to reveal any signs of an aneurysm, bleeding, or changes to blood vessels in the brain

an MRI scan to help identify damage to the brain The doctor may also ask the person to wear a Holter monitor for a few days or weeks to measure their heart rhythms over time.
People over the age of 85 are significantly more likely to suffer social exclusion than those in the 65 to 84-year-old bracket, according to new research.

In a study of more than 10,000 people over the age of 65, social policy researchers found the so-called 'oldest old' - classed as those 85 and over - have more trouble accessing services such as healthcare and food shops, with 16 per cent reporting 'significant' problems, compared with only four per cent of their younger counterparts. And women were found to be less likely to be able to access services than men.

The study, led by social policy researchers at the University of Lincoln with colleagues from Sheffield Hallam University, found that while only 17 per cent of respondents aged 65 to 84 said they do not go out socially, the number increased to nearly half of those in the oldest old bracket. Women in that age group were less likely to go out with friends, but surprisingly, rural respondents were more likely to go out than urban residents.

The older respondents were also less likely to go out socially even when cohabiting, suggesting that those in that age group are at greater risk of social exclusion regardless of whether they live alone, researchers said. Similarly, 19 per cent in the 85+ bracket reported it being 'very difficult' to visit family when they need to, compared with nine per cent of those in the younger age bracket.

The Office for National Statistics estimates there will be 3.2 million people aged 85 or over in the United Kingdom by 2039.

Dr Wesley Key, from the University of Lincoln's School of Social & Political Sciences, said: "As people in western nations are living longer, it is now necessary to differentiate the 'oldest old' from what could be termed the 'younger old', or those aged 65 to 84. Our analysis found that those people are at greater risk of experiencing social exclusion compared with the 65-84 age group.

"We examined whether this risk was down to declining health among this age group, yet the analysis shows that those aged 85 and above are still at greater risk of social exclusion even if we take poor health into account.

"We know that a loss of social contact can damage physical and mental health, and furthermore, older people are more likely to need care from external providers if they live alone, something which is more likely among the oldest old. This places more pressure on statutory health and social care services.

"Measures must be taken to help them continue living in their own homes for as long as possible, whilst maintaining adequate social relations and being able to access services. As first steps, awareness and availability of technology such as Skype, telecare and online banking/shopping should be improved."

Researchers said that third-sector provision such as Telephone Befriending Services and Dial-a-Ride community transport schemes have attempted to alleviate loneliness and isolation, but geographical variations can place it beyond the reach of some people. It also warned that voluntary organisations could not be responsible for ensuring the UK's ageing society does not exclude older members of the population.

Dr Key added: "The government has a responsibility to ensure that the most vulnerable citizens are able to participate fully in social life within, and beyond, their home neighbourhoods. Even if the moral argument is not deemed sufficiently powerful, as life expectancy increases and the age profile of western nations pushes upward, the needs of future cohorts of the oldest old will become impossible to ignore."

The findings have been published in the journal Social Policy and Society.

Article: The Oldest Old and the Risk of Social Exclusion, Wesley Key and Martin Culliney, Social Policy and Society, doi: 10.1017/S1474746416000518, published online 24 November 2016.
Michigan State University researchers have discovered that a chemical compound, and potential new drug, reduces the spread of melanoma cells by up to 90 percent.

The man-made, small-molecule drug compound goes after a gene's ability to produce RNA molecules and certain proteins in melanoma tumors. This gene activity, or transcription process, causes the disease to spread but the compound can shut it down. Up until now, few other compounds of this kind have been able to accomplish this.

"It's been a challenge developing small-molecule drugs that can block this gene activity that works as a signaling mechanism known to be important in melanoma progression," said Richard Neubig, a pharmacology professor and co-author of the study. "Our chemical compound is actually the same one that we've been working on to potentially treat the disease scleroderma, which now we've found works effectively on this type of cancer."

Scleroderma is a rare and often fatal autoimmune disease that causes the hardening of skin tissue, as well as organs such as the lungs, heart and kidneys. The same mechanisms that produce fibrosis, or skin thickening, in scleroderma also contribute to the spread of cancer.

Small-molecule drugs make up over 90 percent of the drugs on the market today and Neubig's co-author Kate Appleton, a postdoctoral student, said the findings are an early discovery that could be highly effective in battling the deadly skin cancer. It's estimated about 10,000 people die each year from the disease.

Their findings are published in the January issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

"Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer with around 76,000 new cases a year in the United States," Appleton said. "One reason the disease is so fatal is that it can spread throughout the body very quickly and attack distant organs such as the brain and lungs."

Through their research, Neubig and Appleton, along with their collaborators, found that the compounds were able to stop proteins, known as Myocardin-related transcription factors, or MRTFs, from initiating the gene transcription process in melanoma cells. These triggering proteins are initially turned on by another protein called RhoC, or Ras homology C, which is found in a signaling pathway that can cause the disease to aggressively spread in the body.

The compound reduced the migration of melanoma cells by 85 to 90 percent. The team also discovered that the potential drug greatly reduced tumors specifically in the lungs of mice that had been injected with human melanoma cells.

"We used intact melanoma cells to screen for our chemical inhibitors," Neubig said. "This allowed us to find compounds that could block anywhere along this RhoC pathway."

Being able to block along this entire path allowed the researchers to find the MRTF signaling protein as a new target.

Appleton said figuring out which patients have this pathway turned on is an important next step in the development of their compound because it would help them determine which patients would benefit the most.

"The effect of our compounds on turning off this melanoma cell growth and progression is much stronger when the pathway is activated," she said. "We could look for the activation of the MRTF proteins as a biomarker to determine risk, especially for those in early-stage melanoma."

According to Neubig, if the disease is caught early, chance of death is only 2 percent. If caught late, that figure rises to 84 percent.

"The majority of people die from melanoma because of the disease spreading," he said. "Our compounds can block cancer migration and potentially increase patient survival."
A yoga program for children with cancer can be carried out even during cancer treatment, and has quality of life (QOL) benefits for the children as well as their parents, suggests a study in Rehabilitation Oncology, official journal of the Oncology Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

"Our findings support the notion that yoga for pediatric cancer patients during active treatment is feasible and potentially helpful in improving both patient and parent well-being," according to the new research, led by Dr. Andrea Orsey of Connecticut Children's Medical Center, Hartford. The report is part of a special issue focused on Pediatric Oncology Physical Therapy and Cancer Rehabilitation.

New Research on Benefits of Physical Therapy for Children with Cancer

In a pair of preliminary studies, Dr. Orsey and colleagues evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of a yoga intervention for children with cancer and their families. Yoga has emerged as an effective complementary therapy for adults with cancer--but few studies have evaluated its benefits for children undergoing cancer treatment.

In an initial survey, 20 children and adolescents with cancer and their parents expressed interest in doing yoga during treatment. They also perceived several barriers to such a program, including concerns about side effects, pain/discomfort, and physical limitations.

With these barriers in mind, the researchers developed a yoga intervention for pediatric cancer patients, delivered by certified yoga instructors. The program was designed to be performed in a variety of settings and tailored to the children's physical condition or mobility issues.

A pilot evaluation included ten children with cancer and their family members/caregivers. Although limited by its small size, the study suggested improvements in health-related QOL for both parents and children, including social and emotional QOL.

Both parents and children were highly satisfied with the yoga program and said they would recommend it to others. One mother cited several benefits of yoga for her daughter: "It gave her more energy and made her more positive!"

The pilot study will help to guide future efforts to provide the benefits of yoga to children with cancer and their families. A key issue will be coordinating yoga sessions with the medical demands of chemotherapy.

The special issue highlights the growing body of evidence to guide rehabilitation and physical therapy for children with cancer. While more children are surviving cancer, they face long-term effects on health and functioning due to their disease and its treatments. "Physical therapists are uniquely suited to design and implement interventions that target these impairments," according to an introduction by Guest Editor Kirsten K. Ness, PT, PhD, FAPTA.

Other topics in the special issue include the safety of using symptoms, rather than blood counts, to determine whether children with cancer can safely undergo physical therapy; a community-based exercise program for childhood cancer survivors; and specific exercise programs for children bone cancer (osteosarcoma) and leukemia. Kirsten Ness adds: "These data are exciting and provide a good starting point documenting original research in pediatric oncology rehabilitation."

Article: Results of a Pilot Yoga Intervention to Improve Pediatric Cancer Patients' Quality of Life and Physical Activity and Parents' Well-being, Orsey, Andrea D. MD, MSCE; Park, Crystal L. PhD; Pulaski, Regan BS; Shankar, Nilani L. MA; Popp, Jill M. PhD; Wakefield, Dorothy MS, Rehabilitation Oncology, doi: 10.1097/01.REO.0000000000000052, published January 2017.
"Devastating" and "dismal."

That's how leading researchers describe the present outlook for malignant brain tumors. The median survival rate for patients with glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM, is a mere 14.2 months.

New research out of the University of Michigan supports combining two approaches to fight back against gliomas: attacking the tumor with gene therapy while enhancing the immune system's ability to fight it, too.

The paper was recently published in Molecular Therapy, the official journal of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy.

"We hope the implementation of our gene therapy strategy for gliomas, used in combination with immune checkpoint blockade, will eventually provide successful treatment for patients with this devastating brain cancer," says Maria Castro, Ph.D., co-senior author and U-M professor of neurosurgery and cell and developmental biology.

Interrupting the cancer cells' plan

Tumors escape from the fighter T-cells that would otherwise attack them, by tricking the immune system and making an environment ripe for tumor growth.

The goal of cancer immunotherapy, with several treatment options now approved by the FDA, is to spark the immune system back into action. Once the immune cells recognize the cancer cells, they're empowered to attack and kill them.

"Immune checkpoint inhibitors amplify T-cell responses and are currently being tested in the clinic to increase T-cell-mediated tumor killing," says Pedro Lowenstein, M.D., Ph.D., co-senior author.

The U-M team used immune checkpoint blockade combined with gene therapy to block the cancer cells from hijacking the host immune system.

Researchers report the accumulation of immunosuppressive cells, MDSCs, within the glioma environment is one of the ways glioblastomas block the immune system. The team also set out to deplete the large supply of MDSCs, and to explore whether that would allow immune-mediated gene therapy to eradicate glioblastoma in mouse models.

"For the first time, we proved that a type of immunosuppressive cells within the tumor environment play a major role in determining the impact of immunotherapies," Castro says.

Addition of gene therapy

Castro and Lowenstein's team combined the immune checkpoint blockade approach with gene therapy.

This entailed injecting adenovirus vectors carrying herpes simplex 1 thymidine kinase into the tumor, followed by an antiviral, to elicit tumor cell death. This was used in combination with another adenovirus vector carrying an immune stimulatory protein, cytokine, to recruit immune cells into the tumor.

Researchers found the gene therapy approach had stronger results when used in combination with either depletion of immunosuppressive cells from the tumor mass or with immune checkpoint blockade.

A formidable pair

Castro and Lowenstein's team used what's called the "Sleeping Beauty" technique to insert mutated genes known to be involved in cancer into stem cells in the brains of newborn mice. These cancer stem cells were used to create preclinical models relevant to human glioblastoma.

"We report much higher therapeutic efficacy in preclinical brain tumor models using the combination of both therapies, leading to an increase in median survival," Lowenstein says. "This effect is not seen with either approach on its own."

Testing the approach

"Our work has shown that overcoming brain tumor-induced immune suppression is critical for enhancing efficacy of anti-tumor immunotherapies," says first author Neha Kamran, Ph.D., a U-M neurosurgery research fellow in the Castro/Lowenstein Lab. "This knowledge will help us in guiding the development of immunotherapies for patients with this dismal disease."

Implementation is straightforward, the authors say. It would involve gene therapy delivered at the time of surgery and systemic delivery of the immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as through IV injection.

A clinical trial is active at U-M in adults with glioblastoma, testing a combination approach with a different form of immunosuppressive treatment. And immune checkpoint inhibitors have FDA approval and continue to rise in popularity, although they are cost-prohibitive for many patients who are not part of a trial that provides the medication. Patients also have to deal with side effects of a very active immune system such as rashes and diarrhea.

Castro hopes these recent advances will mean a quick progression toward submission for FDA approval of her team's novel combination approach.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Leah's Happy Hearts and the U-M Department of Neurosurgery.
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.

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.
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Parasite lifecycle - (http://www.mmv.org/malaria-medicines/parasite-lifecycle) Factsheet on the World Malaria Report 2013 - (http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world_malaria_report_2013/en/) Morgan Goheen et al. Anemia Offers Stronger Protection Than Sickle Cell Trait Against the Erythrocytic Stage of Falciparum Malaria and This Protection Is Reversed by Iron Supplementation. EBioMedicine; (2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.11.011

Malaria is endemic to Africa and the concerns about the safety of iron supplements, particularly for children remains.Previous studies have shown that having sickle-cell anemia offers protection against malaria.Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill have proven that treating anemia with iron supplementation removes the protective effect that anemia has to offer against malaria.Malaria parasites spread by successively infecting two types of hosts-When an infected mosquito bites a human, it injects sporozoites into the blood stream. These sporozoites are rapidly taken up by the liver cells in human where they multiply by asexually to form schizonts from which several merozoites develop.The merozoites are released into the bloodstream when the liver cells rupture, where they rapidly invade the red blood cells.These blood-stage parasites replicate asexually, multiply and destroy the red blood cells, leading to the clinical symptoms of malaria.Malaria is a mosquito-borne illness that is entirely preventable and treatable.In 2013, an estimated 3.4 billion people were at risk of malaria.There were an estimated 207 million cases of malaria and an estimated 627 000 deaths in 2012. 90% of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.In 2012, malaria killed an estimated 482 000 children under five years of age, which equals 1300 children per day.Between 2000 and 2012, malarial interventions saved an estimated 3.3 million lives.Researchers recruited 135 children with anemia from The Gambia, a region endemic to malaria. They studied the red blood cells of the children. Sickle-cell anemia was also common in that region.As part of iron supplementation trial, the children received iron through micronutrient powder for 84 days.Red blood cells (RBCs) from the children were analyzed at baseline, day 49 and day 84.On a population-wide basis anemia reduced the blood-stage of malaria by 16% while the sickle-cell trait only reduced it by 4%."Our finding that anemia offers greater natural protection against blood-stage malaria infection than sickle-cell trait has led us to formulate the interesting hypothesis that the widespread prevalence of anemia in people of African descent is a genetic signature of malaria," said Morgan Goheen, Ph.D., the study's lead author and a graduate student in the UNC Department of Microbiology and Immunology.On analysis of the RBCs of children on day 49 of iron supplementation, researchers found that deficits in invasion and growth for blood stage P. falciparum were reversed.Iron supplementation produces more red blood cells. After iron supplementation, the increased invasion and growth rates by parasites are caused by their strong preference for young red blood cells."This study is elegant in its simplicity, yet remains one of the most substantial and systematic attempts to unveil the cellular-level relationship between anemia, iron supplementation and malaria risk," said Carla Cerami, M.D. Ph.D., lead scientist on the project at the MRC Unit in The Gambia.This study was conducted by UNC researchers, along with colleagues from the Medical Research Council Unit in The Gambia, Africa, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.The results were published inSource: Medindia
Reflections FROM MOTUS: THE MIRROR OF THE UNITED STATES
HURON COUNTY  Gov. Rick Snyder has proclaimed January as Radon Action Month in Michigan, and the Huron County Health Department is distributing free radon test kits in observance of this event.

Radon is a tasteless, odorless, colorless, radioactive gas found in almost any kind of soil and rock. It travels through the ground and enters buildings through cracks and openings in the foundation floor or walls, including floor/wall joints, sump openings, and other penetrations caused by plumbing, wiring, or ductwork. Outdoors, it is diluted by the atmosphere, but indoors, it tends to be more concentrated and can accumulate to unhealthy levels. Exposure over time can increase one's risk of contracting lung cancer.

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States and is the leading cause among nonsmokers. It is a significant environmental health threat that can be easily detected. When elevated radon levels are found, additional testing should be done to confirm the problem, and then steps can be taken to lower the radon levels.

If a house is found to have radon levels at or above the danger zone of 4 pCi/L (picocuries per liter), homeowners should contact a radon mitigation contractor to correct the problem. Fixing high radon levels doesn't require major home remodeling, but can include installing a fan and ventilation system to circulate the radon outdoors, sealing the cracks in foundations which allow radon to enter the home, or using soil reduction techniques in order to remove radon from the earth surrounding the house.

Some newer homes have been built with anti-radon features already installed.

Statewide surveys indicate that elevated levels of radon would be expected in one out of eight homes in Michigan.

Testing is easy and inexpensive. The best time to test is in winter months when people keep their windows and doors closed. The do-it-yourself test kits distributed by the health department are free only in the month of January.

Kits are available from the Huron County Health Department Environmental Health Division, 1142 S. Van Dyke Road in Bad Axe.

Test kits may also be available from some hardware stores or home improvement centers, but not all include postage and analysis, so citizens are urged to read the packaging before making their purchase. Kits are available for $9.95 online at www.mi.radon.com.

For more information, call the Huron County Environmental Health Division at 989-269-3308. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality also has a toll-free number at 1-800-723-6642.
HURON COUNTY  When many Huron County residents answered a knock on their door in recent months, they were greeted by someone asking them to sign a wind energy-related petition.

And it looks like the drive for signatures will continue in the cold winter weather until the deadline for submission prior to the expected May election.

Huron County Planning Commission officials noted Wednesday that a notice of intent to circulate a petition protesting county approval of a wind overlay district in Sherman and Sigel townships was submitted last month to the Huron County Clerks office.

That letter has been received, but not approved, said Huron County Clerk Lori Neal-Wonsowicz.

If it is, once enough valid signatures are gathered from residents in county-zoned townships, that issue would go to referendum this spring, producing a decision by the people on the NextEra Energy Resources project.

A challenge to the Huron County Board of Commissioners decision to allow an overlay district in the Filion area will be on the ballot for county-zoned municipalities, Neal-Wonsowicz said.

A total of 1,109 valid signatures were collected, and 807 were necessary to call for the referendum.

In Lincoln Township, a May referendum will take place challenging the Lincoln Township Board of Trustees decision to become self-zoned.

Sixty-five good signatures were submitted, and 38 were needed.

Also part of the proposed district by NextEra is self-zoned Sand Beach Township.

NextEra officials say that 250 signatures were gathered there toward a petition to repeal changes to the countys noise ordinance. NextEra officials have said this would prohibit wind development in the township.

Although NextEra officials have said that the signatures were submitted, Neal-Wonsowicz said that she hasnt seen a petition. Sand Beach Clerk Linda Buchholz could not be reached for comment regarding whether or not she has received it.

Sherman Township Clerk Kathi Jahn said that no petition has been submitted there protesting that township boards decision to take back its zoning.

The Sherman Township Board of Trustees passed the resolution forming a planning commission Dec. 6. The ordinance is effective 63 days after the resolution is passed.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections schedule has not been released, Neal-Wonsowicz said, so she is unsure of exactly when the deadline and referendum will take place.

County Corporate Counsel Steve Allen previously told the Tribune how the petition/referendum process works:

 Within seven days after a laws publication, a letter of intent to petition must be filed.

 The petitioner then has 30 days to circulate the petition.

 The amount of signatures required for a petition goes by the number of registered voters within a jurisdiction at the time of the last gubernatorial election. Fifteen percent of that number is the requisite number of signatures.

At a recent Huron County Board of Commissioners meeting, a Lincoln Township resident called on board members to help gather signatures for the Sherman/Sigel overlay petition.

Denise Rice distributed a packet for each board member on Dec. 29 containing petitions, an informational letter and an instruction sheet.

She asked that they each collect 50 signatures.

This will give you a chance to go out and see what the average person living in the countryside has to say, she said.

Sherman and Sigel townships account for 15,480 acres and 2,560 acres of the proposed NextEra district, respectively.

Sand Beach Township, and Delaware Township in Sanilac County account for the remainder of the proposed project.

For the DTE overlay district, acres in the overlay district per township include 16,900 in Lincoln, 4,100 in Sigel, 2,500 in Bloomfield and 2,000 in Dwight.

The 16 county-zoned townships are: Bingham, Bloomfield, Brookfield, Dwight, Fairhaven, Gore, Grant, Hume, Lincoln, McKinley, Rubicon, Sebewaing, Sheridan, Sherman, Sigel and Winsor townships.
The state of Michigan just got faster.

Speed limits on certain state roadways  including some in Huron County  may increase after studies are conducted to ensure safety under legislation signed Thursday by Gov. Rick Snyder.

Ensuring that all Michiganders are safe while operating vehicles on our states roadways is critically important, and these bills allow for appropriately increased speed limits on certain roadways after safety studies are conducted, Snyder said.

HBs 44234427, sponsored by state Reps. Bradford Jacobsen, Rick Outman, John Kivela and Charles Smiley, respectively, require the Michigan Department of Transportation to allow the speed limit to be raised to 75 mph on at least 600 miles of freeways and up to 65 mph on at least 900 miles of non-freeway M roads. The increases are allowed only if safety and engineering studies show the 85th percentile of speeds currently driven on those roads allow for it.

While no motorist in the Thumb will legally be allowed to get to that 75 mph mark due to lack of a freeway in the area, Michigan trunkline highways M-19, M-25, M-53 and M-142 in the region could see potential changes.

It will be interesting to know which roads they are going to consider, said Huron County Sheriff Kelly J. Hanson. I guess well just be relying upon the state to analyze and come up with something.

While Hanson stopped short of taking a stance on the issue, he did acknowledge there are some parts of the county that could be deserving of speed increases.

There are times when the stretches of roads that we have could certainly justify a speed increase, he said.

Added Hanson: Its certainly going to be confusing at the beginning. Itll be confusing as it gets going if its just going to be sections of those trunklines that are going to be designated at those higher speeds. But its going to become law and were going to have to deal with it and adjust with it just the same  both as law enforcement and as motorists.

For more information on this and other legislation, visit www.legislature.mi.gov.
While the U.S. intelligence machine is certain that Russia interfered with the recent presidential election, lawmakers are just beginning to wrestle with how to deter and retaliate against future cyberattacks.

Leaders from several intelligences agencies appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, testifying that Russia used cyberattacks and spread disinformation and fake news to impact the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November. They also said Russia poses a significant threat to American democracy in the future.

James Clapper Jr., director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers that the intelligence community will brief Congress next week on a comprehensive review of the Russian hacking operation. A version of the report will be released to the public as well, but he would not elaborate on the details.

Yet Clapper didn't hesitate to point the finger at Russia's meddling in the recent U.S. presidential election: "We assess that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets."

The hearing to discuss foreign cyber threats to the United States identified China, North Korea and Iran as potential threats in this area, but it mainly focused on the alleged Russian-orchestrated hacking operation of the U.S. electoral process and President-elect Donald Trump's attempts to discredit the intelligence agencies that confirmed the Russian involvement.

Trump recently said the CIA's conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election is "ridiculous" and being used by Democrats as "just another excuse" for his defeat of Hillary Clinton.

On Wednesday, Trump cited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to cast doubt that Russia is behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' -- why was DNC so careless?" Trump tweeted, referring to top Hillary Clinton adviser John Podesta.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and chairman of the Senate panel, called Russia's attempt to interfere with the U.S. election an "unprecedented attack on our democracy."

The goal of the review the Clapper is leading "is not to question the outcome of the election, nor should it be," McCain said. "Every American should be alarmed by Russia's attacks on our nation. There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections with foreign interference."

McCain and other lawmakers expressed frustration that there is currently no policy for responding to these types of attacks.

"I don't think any of our intelligence people know what to do if there is an attack, besides report it," he said. "I don't think any of our people, if they see an attack coming, know what specific action should be taken. Maybe I am missing something, but I have asked time after time, 'What do you do in the case of an attack?' And there has not been an answer."

Marcel J. Lettre II, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, agreed with McCain.

"You are right that we have a lot more work to do to put the right deterrence and response framework in place on cyber," Lettre said. "This is somewhat of a new domain of operations and, in some cases, warfare and in my personal opinion the next administration would be well served to focus very early on those questions of continuing to develop [an] overarching policy, a comprehensive approach and an increasingly robust and refined deterrence framework."

Clapper said that such a policy should avoid using a cyber-attack as the go-to retaliatory option.

"When something major happens in cyberspace, our automatic default policy position should not be exclusively to counter cyber with cyber," he said. "We should consider all instruments of national power. In most cases to date, non-cyber tools have been effective at changing our adversary's cyber behavior."

In a direct response to Russian election interference, President Barack Obama sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and shuttered two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S.

Lawmakers have had mixed reactions to the move. Many support Obama's actions, but some maintain the response was not strong enough.

"When it comes to interfering with our election, we better be ready to throw rocks," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. "I think what Obama did was throw a pebble; I'm ready to throw a rock."

Several lawmakers expressed concern about Trump's efforts to undermine the intelligence community.

"Let's talk about who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri. "Who benefits from that -- the American people, them losing confidence in the intelligence community?  Who actually is the benefactor of someone who is about to become commander-in-chief trashing the intelligence community?"

Clapper said there is a "distinction here between healthy skepticism -- and which policy makers, to include policy maker number one -- should always have for intelligence, but I think there is difference between skepticism and disparagement."

Trump has dismissed the CIA's assessment on Russian hacking, saying it was the work of the same people who claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Trump said the DNC is to blame for the hacking of its computers and emails. He tweeted Wednesday that the committee did not have a "hacking defense."

Graham said that it could easily be the Republican Party that gets hacked in the next election.

"It's not like we are so much better [at] cyber security than Democrats," Graham said.

"I want to let the president-elect know that it's OK to challenge the info; you are absolutely right to want to do so, but what I don't want you to do is undermine those who are serving in this arena.  When you listen to these people, you can be skeptical, but understand they are the best among us, and they are trying to protect us."

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
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...
It's official: Marines are headed back to the Taliban hotbed of Helmand province, Afghanistan, the Marine Corps announced Friday.

The deployment of 300 Marines from II Marine Expeditionary Force will return to the southwestern province that was the site of the Corps' major battles within the country as advisers and trainers for the Afghan National Army and police, officials said in a release.

The deployment comes at the request of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Forces Afghanistan in support of the ongoing NATO-led Resolute Support mission, which began after most combat forces pulled out at the end of 2014.

The Marine detachment will be called Task Force South West and will be led by Brig. Gen. Roger Turner Jr., most recently the director of capabilities at Marine Corps Combat Development Command. It will be tasked with training the Helmand-based Afghan National Army 215th Corps and the 505th Afghan National Police command, according to the release.

As Military.com reported Thursday, this upcoming deployment has been discussed by key Marine Corps personnel for months. While the specific battalion deploying to Afghanistan has not yet been formally identified, senior leaders have said it likely will come from within 6th Marine Regiment, out of the Camp Lejeune-based 2nd Marine Division.

"We've had advisers in Afghanistan ever since we concluded our major operations there, so the Marine Corps is going to pick up another one of those advisory missions that the Army's been doing," Maj. Gen. John Love, commanding general of 2nd Marine Division, told Military.com in November. "So the Army has been doing it, and the Marine Corps is going to go in and take over one of their teams for them."

The Marine Corps has not had a rank-and-file presence in Helmand province since the last Marine elements pulled out of the region in November 2014, turning over the sprawling Camp Leatherneck base to members of the Afghan National Army 215th Corps for their use.

While the Marine Corps was able to win key victories in Taliban hotbeds, including the districts of Sangin and Marjah, during its years of deploying to Helmand province, the years since the pullout have seen a resurgence of Taliban forces, challenging the capabilities of the relatively small 215th Corps.

In February, Pentagon officials announced hundreds of soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division would move into Helmand to provide force protection for the small contingent of Army advisers working with Afghan forces in the region.

The Marines' upcoming spring deployment coincides with the start of the Taliban's annual fighting season, when the group ramps up its attacks on Afghan National Army and coalition troops.

"The Marine Corps has an operational history in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand Province. Advising and assisting Afghan defense and security forces will assist in preserving gains made together with the Afghans," II MEF officials said in Friday's announcement. "This new deployment of Marines to Helmand reflects our enduring commitment to the people of Afghanistan."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.
Army M1 tanks and trucks began arriving in Europe on Jan. 8, marking the beginning of a nine-month rotation of a U.S. armored brigade designed to strengthen deterrence against Russian aggression.

The arrival of the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, out of Fort Carson, Colorado, is part of the effort to support Operation Atlantic Resolve.

"The United States is demonstrating its continued commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America's dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Thursday.

The announcement comes just a day after senior U.S. intelligence leaders testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee to reinforce their certainty that Russia interfered with the recent U.S. presidential election with cyber-attacks, misinformation and fake news reports.

Both Republican and Democrats said they were interested in doing more to retaliate against Russia than President Obama's recent response, which sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and shuttered two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump, who has dismissed the intelligence community's findings, was scheduled to receive a briefing on Russia's interference in the U.S. election process Friday from James Clapper Jr., director of National Intelligence, and other officials.

Clapper is scheduled to brief Congress next week on a comprehensive review of the Russian hacking operation. A version of the report will be released to the public.

Tanks, trucks and other equipment will flow into Bremerhaven, Germany, and then move by rail, commercial line haul and military convoy to Poland, according to a European Command press release.

The personnel and equipment will later be relocated throughout the region for training and exercises with European allies.

The arrival of the 3rd ABCT signals the beginning of the continuous presence of a heavy brigade and back-to-back rotations of U.S. troops and equipment in Europe.

The ABCT is just one aspect of the United States' pledge to demonstrate its commitment to Europe. Additionally, there's a rotational U.S. land, sea and air presence in the region, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the release.

In November, the Defense Department completed the largest single shipment of ammunition for Army and Air Force units in Europe in more than two decades.

More than 600 shipping containers worth of ammo arrived at the port of Nordenham, Germany, as part of the continued effort to reassure NATO allies in Europe

The ammo build-up is intended to increase the readiness of U.S. forces stationed in Europe, according to Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

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JAN. 6: Jim Bowden of ESPN and MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM cites a Reds source in reporting that theres still a possibility of a trade that would send Phillips to Atlanta, with the Reds picking up the majority of the money that remains on the contract. He adds, though, that Reds executives acknowledge that they made promises and assurances to Phillips that they are not living up to and will need to work through those issues with Phillips before a deal. Moving Phillips would allow the Reds to clear an easier path to playing time for Jose Peraza and potentially for Dilson Herrera as well.

JAN. 5: The Reds had worked out a deal that would have sent second baseman Brandon Phillips to the Braves, but he utilized his no-trade protection to scuttle the arrangement, according to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. Phillipss no-trade clause previously got in the way of potential trades last winter.

While Phillips is a Georgia native who (per Rosenthal) owns a home in Atlanta, he still wasnt amenable to the move. There was no discussion of an extension this time around, according to the report; the Braves would not have been interested, and Phillips made his view clear before that subject was even broached.

This latest episode raises the question whether the 35-year-old Phillips will ever be a movable asset for Cincinnati, which had been set to retain a significant portion of his $14MM salary as part of the proposed trade. Hes in the final year of his contract, and it seems all but inevitable that hell land elsewhere after the 2017 season. But Phillips is still holding firm on his desire to remain in Cincinnati as something of a matter of principle, per Rosenthal, who says that Phillips would only be willing to sign onto a deal if certain, unspecified issues are dealt with by any acquiring team.

While Phillips is more than entitled to utilize the no-trade clause (which he earned through ten-and-five rights) in whatever manner he chooses, its certainly something of an odd situation. The Reds have a variety of young infielders theyd surely like to expose more to the majors in the coming year, which could bite into Phillipss own playing time.

Long a productive regular who combined excellent glovework with solid overall offensive production, Phillips has declined of late. Since the start of the 2014 season, he has slashed .285/.319/.396, which amounts to slightly below-average (94 OPS+) work at the plate. Phillips has returned to running more, though his 14 stolen bases in 2016 came at the cost of being caught on eight other attempts. And hes still good for about a dozen home runs per year. The most concerning change, perhaps, comes on the defensive side. Phillips has long rated as a well-above-average defender at second, but took a bit of a step back in 2015 and drew negative metrics in his most recent season.

Still, Phillips would represent a steadying presence in the right organization  particularly, one that has taken a positive view through recent scouting assessments. If he can bounce back in the field, theres reason to hope that he could put up a season worthy of regular play despite the fact that he was worth less than one win above replacement last year. A right-handed hitter, Phillips has never carried drastic platoon splits and actually fared better against same-handed pitching in 2016.

Though its still theoretically possible that the sides could revisit a deal, Rosenthal says thats not seen as a likely scenario. When Rodriguez inked his deal in late November, that added a second-base-capable, right-handed bat and perhaps absorbed some of the salary that might have been allocated to Phillips.

We explore a myriad of trade opportunities, Braves GM John Coppolella tells MLB.coms Mark Bowman, some which make more progress than others, and some which get more media attention than others. Trades arent done until they are done.

That being said, its still imaginable that Atlanta will consider moving to bolster its mix at second and third base. Rodriguez has experience at both spots, creating some flexibility. But its far from clear that Adonis Garcia will be a worthwhile semi-regular at the hot corner. The left-handed-hitting Jace Peterson is also on hand, of course, and perhaps top prospect Ozzie Albies will be ready sooner than later, but the Braves have already made several 2017-centric moves, attempting to improve the near-term outlook without sacrificing the future.

If Atlanta does take a look at adding another infielder, there are any number of trade targets that it could pursue. And the open market still features a variety of second and third basemen that might conceivably be of interest. That includes righty hitters such as Aaron Hill and Trevor Plouffe, as well as lefty bats like Luis Valbuena, Chase Utley, Stephen Drew, Chris Coghlan, and  of course  perennial favorite Kelly Johnson.

*An earlier version of this post incorrectly suggested that Phillipss decision was influenced by the signing of Rodriguez.
JAN. 6: Sotos chances of making the big league roster indeed appear to be quite strong. FanRags Jon Heyman tweets that the contract includes not only a $2MM base salary but a club option for the 2018 season, lending credence to the notion that the Sox are banking on Soto more than the typical veteran minor league signee.

JAN. 5: The White Sox have struck a minor-league deal with free-agent catcher Geovany Soto, according to Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com (via Twitter). Soto, who has played previously in Chicago with both the White Sox and Cubs, will turn 34 in two weeks time.

After providing the South Siders with a .219/.301/.406 batting line over 210 plate appearances in 2015, Soto returned to the open market in search of a new opportunity. He ended up landing with the Angels on a one-year, $2.8MM contract.

This time, Soto will have to earn his way onto a roster in camp. Though he hit quite well in Los Angeles  .269/.321/.487  Soto managed only 86 trips to the plate in 26 games. The problem was a knee issue that hindered him throughout the year and ultimately forced him to the DL for good in mid-August.

It seems reasonable to expect that, as Levine notes, Soto will have a solid chance at taking an active roster spot. The top two catchers on the depth chart, at present, are Omar Narvaez and Kevan Smith  each of whom made his major-league debut in 2016. Alfredo Gonzalez and Roberto Pena perhaps also represent options.
ANN ARBOR, MI - The Circus Bar is delaying its closure until Feb. 9, according to owner Nick Easton.

The building located at 210 S. First St., which contains nightclubs Circus, Gotham City, Millennium, and Cavern Club, is open for regular business hours Wednesday through Saturday until Feb. 9, Easton wrote in an email to The Ann Arbor News.

"The transfer of documents takes longer than expected sometimes," Easton said about the delay.

A farewell concert featuring The Killer Flamingos is planned for Saturday, Jan. 14.

Easton confirmed to the Ann Arbor News Dec. 28 the four-story building has been sold to some buyers from New York, who Easton said plan to renovate the building and reopen it with a similar setting to Circus in fall 2017.

The new owners could not be reached for comment.

Easton has owned the building since 1994, and started the Cavern Club in the basement in 1997. Circus is now split into four clubs: Circus, Gotham City, Millennium, and Cavern Club, and has drawn in a mixed crowd of students and regulars to play a game of billiards or join in a round of karaoke.

When asked, he named old age as the primary reason for the sale.

"I'm 68 and I'm ready to retire," Easton said with a laugh. "I've been thinking about this awhile."

Less than 10 years ago, he listed the building for sale for $6.8 million.

"If you're in business for yourself, it's a commitment. Luckily this was a commitment I loved," Easton said. "I consider myself lucky to have fallen into this business because the building just presented itself. This wouldn't work everywhere."
ANN ARBOR, MI - The location that was home to gourmet grocery store babo since 2011 is getting ready to welcome a new business: cafe and snack bar Fred's, operated by the babo owner's brother.

Sava Lelcaj told The Ann Arbor News that Fred's is opening after a six-month hiatus when it closed its former location at 1113 S. University Ave. Patrons can expect to see some hints of babo remaining accompanied by a new take on healthy eating.

"One of the most defining similarities would be our hospitality, which we take a lot of pride in," Lelcaj said. "One of the differences you'll see is it is a little bit newer, little fresher, contemporary health food."

Her brother, Fred Lelcaj, currently is renting and revamping the almost 4,000-square-foot space at 403 E. Washington, a step up from the 516 square feet he operated out of previously.

He has created spaces within the building, from an open dining room with white chairs and tables, to a coffee nook featuring antique church pews as seating. Potted plants hang above the register, or cluster on large shelves behind the coffee bar.

"I tried to mimic the style of Fred's, but also what I do in my own home," Fred Lelcaj said.

Fred's had established a loyal customer base in the six months it was open on South University, he said, and some have already stopped in to check out the new version of Fred's and either try a new item or once again enjoy an old favorite like the avocado toast with egg.

There is an expanded menu -- now the cafe has a full kitchen to support more food items, and dishes range from breakfast items like burritos and egg sandwiches to larger dinner items such as the bulgogi cheesesteak for $12 and veggie burger for $11.

"I've done the things I've been dreaming of for so long," Fred Lelcaj said. "Food is beautiful on its own, if you just arrange it and present it the way it's supposed to be."

He plans to open for regular business hours when the moment is right and the staff seem to be ready to handle crowds for all three meals throughout the day, which could mean this weekend or early next week. The announcement could come via fred's Instagram page.

There has been a good amount of recent development in the area, Sava Lelcaj said, which prompted a conversation on the best use for the location.

"The scene has changed so much, year after year," said Sava Lelcaj, citing new student housing buildings Foundry Lofts and The Varsity. "It's brought a lot of student density in the area; it's a welcome change for sure."

In October 2016, babo closed for about three weeks in what Sava Lelcaj called a concept overhaul to address the needs of those living nearby.

"We had gone through this latest change, to sort of welcome the new density, and then once we got into that, we realized the commitment we had to make to stay on that health food trend was more than we were prepared to make at the time," Sava Lelcaj said.

At the same time, her brother was searching for a new location in a more student-centric area to reopen his namesake cafe.

"I never worked so hard, but I was never happier," Fred Lelcaj said about the few months he previously operated the cafe. "I put my heart and soul into it."

A solution was soon figured out: renting the space to Fred Lelcaj and evolving the space on the corner of Washington and Division streets.

"We were really excited to bring that offering back to the food scene," Sava Lelcaj said. "When it came to running the brick and mortar there, we were ready for a change. Fred's is exactly that change."

It also benefits Savco Hospitality, the umbrella company for babo's and restaurants like Sava's and Aventura.

"This frees up some resources," Sava Lelcaj said. "We're looking at new opportunities for our business to grow. We thought this was the right time. The stars aligned and luckily, we're family, so it made it a lot easier to make that transition."

Customers can still find babo products at locations in the Nickels Arcade and at 2825 Boardwalk, and are able to purchase the same products like salads, cold-pressed juices and juice shots in Fred's.

"Over the next few months, the dust will start to settle and people will start to see what a better service this is for the community," Sava Lelcaj said. "That's really exciting for us, to connect with our guests through those services."

Fred's is set to open with regular business hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - West Michigan's manufacturing economy is headed for modest growth in the first quarter of 2017, according to Brian Long, an economist with Grand Valley State University and director of tis Supply Chain Management Research.

"For 2017, we have a whole host of positive factors that predict a strong first quarter," said Long in his monthly report on Friday, Jan. 6.

Long, who surveys local purchasing managers every month, said West Michigan's economy has several positives going into the first quarter, including high consumer confidence index, strong auto sales, a housing market that has recovered, a record stock market and strong growth in the national economy.

But trouble may lie ahead, especially if the incoming Trump Administration starts a trade war, said Long.

"Today's question: What is the next bubble, and when?" said Long.

"If the Trump administration improperly upends our trade with the rest of the world, we could be drawn into a Hawley-Smoot backlash like we received in 1930," said Long, noting every recession in recent history has seen a trigger to burst the bubble.

"Most recently, we saw this with the sudden collapse of mortgage loan markets as we slid into the Great Recession. In 2000, we saw the collapse of the ".com" euphoria. The 1990 recession was blamed on the savings and loan crisis. In 1973, the trigger was the Arab oil boycott," Long said.

Locally, automotive parts suppliers are worried about a recent softening in auto sales while office furniture suppliers and makers say their sales may be "topping out," Long said.

Nonetheless, Long said there's optimism for 2017 among his survey respondents.

"Changes proposed by the new administration will come much slower than implied by the pre-election rhetoric," Long said. "Hence, the business environment will be reasonably stable. But the post-election mood has clearly changed from uncertainty to optimism."
deer_cull_2017_updated.jpg

A map showing properties that will be temporarily closed to the public for the 2017 deer cull in Ann Arbor, including 11 city parks (shown in green) and three University of Michigan properties (shown in blue). The red zones indicate residential areas where nonlethal darting will take place for surgical sterilization.

(City of Ann Arbor)

ANN ARBOR, MI - The city of Ann Arbor is moving ahead with plans to kill up to 100 deer and surgically sterilize up to 80 others starting later this month.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has approved the city's proposal to have sharpshooters from White Buffalo Inc. come into the city for a second-annual deer cull, while for the first time conducting fertility control research on female deer in Ann Arbor by removing their ovaries.

The city announced the details of its 2017 deer management plan on Friday, Jan. 6. The nonlethal program, which includes darting deer in designated neighborhoods and taking them to a surgical facility, is expected to last from Jan. 22-29, while the cull lasts from Jan. 30 through Feb. 13.

Sharpshooting is planned on public lands and a small number of large private properties with appropriate consent.

Eleven city parks and nature areas are scheduled to be closed from 3 p.m. to midnight for all 15 days of the cull, including weekends.

That includes the following:

Bird Hills Nature Area

Bluffs Nature Area

Braun Nature Area

Cedar Bend Nature Area

Hilltop Nature Area

Huron Hills Golf Course

Huron Parkway Nature Area

Island Park

Kuebler Langford Nature Area

Leslie Park Golf Course

Leslie Woods Nature Area

Additionally, from Jan. 30 through Feb. 2, a few University of Michigan properties will be closed from 3 p.m. to midnight while culling takes place.

That includes Nichols Arboretum, an area south of Glazier Way and east of Fuller Road, and another area south of Hubbard and west of Huron Parkway.

The City Council voted 9-2 to approve the city's 2017 deer management plan in November with Mayor Christopher Taylor and Chip Smith opposed.

All of the deer management activities are to take place in Wards 1 and 2, which include the north and east sides of the city where deer are most prevalent.

The deer that are sterilized will be returned to the residential areas where they are found.

Sterilization activities will be performed each day from 3 p.m. to 5 a.m. in two broad general areas where sharpshooting cannot occur. That includes neighborhood areas both north and south of the Huron River.

City officials say it's unlikely residents will notice the actual darting activities because, while some darting will occur at designated bait stations in the late afternoon after 3 p.m., most work will be done during nighttime hours, when deer are most active and people generally are not.

Residents' daily routines will not need to change while sterilization activities take place from Jan. 22-29 and there will be no park closures then, according to the plan announced by the city. Select public lands will be utilized for darting, but public access is not expected to be impacted. No university properties are being used for sterilization activities.

Wildlife professionals from White Buffalo Inc. are expected to dart female deer with tranquilizer darts equipped with tracking devices.

City officials say that will be done from marked, stationary vehicles on public roadways and at bait stations at designated sites within program areas, including on private property where owners have given permission.

"Deer will be darted by highly experienced personnel who are specially trained to dart deer in an urban setting with precision and accuracy. Unlike firearms, pneumatic darting guns have limited range (30-40 feet)," the city stated in a news release. "Once darted, the deer will be tracked until they are unconscious (typically just a few minutes), and then transported to a temporary surgical site where a veterinarian will perform ovariectomies."

All sterilized deer will be fitted with numbered ear tags, and one mature doe in each group will be radio-collared to facilitate future program efforts, track migration rates and patterns and assess survival rates.

White Buffalo is soliciting volunteers to assist in transporting deer to the surgical facility, returning them to a safe location close to the area where they were found and monitoring them until they have recovered from anesthesia.

Interested volunteers can contact volunteer coordinator Robert McGee via email at AnnArborDeer@gmail.com or call 734-929-5911. Volunteers will be scheduled in shifts from 4 p.m. until 6 a.m. Jan. 22-29

The city has indicated this is not a city volunteer program and White Buffalo is solely responsible for selection and supervision of volunteers.

The entire process, from initial darting to release, takes approximately one hour per deer, according to the city.

The city plans to send fliers to residents living near the designated zones to inform them of the sterilization plans. The fliers are expected to arrive the week of Jan. 9 and will be viewable on the city's deer management webpage.

After Jan. 29, the city plans to publicly share preliminary results of the sterilization activities before culling starts.

City officials say sharpshooting will not occur from a moving vehicle but could occur from a parked vehicle.

The city plans to post signs in multiple languages at the designated parks and nature area entrances and other access points to notify visitors 24 hours in advance of the closures for the cull.

Tom Crawford, the city's chief financial officer, noted there's a significant reduction in impact to the community in terms of park closures compared to last year's cull when 14 city parks and nature areas were closed for two months and for longer hours. A total of 63 deer were killed during last year's cull.

Residents living adjacent to designated parks or nature areas are expected to be informed of the closures directly via postcard on the week of Jan. 9.

The city also plans to inform residents through local media, social media, Community Television Network, the city website and email.

"We'll be doing as much communication as we can," Crawford said, adding the city also intends to have at least one city employee act as a roving park ranger to make sure people aren't going in the closed parks during the cull. "We may have multiple people do it, actually. They'll be able to have direct contact with the police, so they can handle a situation that comes up if there are any."

Crawford said the city is sharing all of the information it can, though it's hard to say on any given day the specific parks where shooting will occur.

"We are planning to operate in all of them," he said. "The reason we can't tell you which place they're working is because it's almost a day-of decision, maybe the day before. Because things could change in field.

"For example, they may say, 'We're just not seeing deer here, so we're going to move to a new location.' You just can't predict which park they're going to be in, so we're going to be firm on the closings of those parks during the limited times that we've asked the public to stay out."

The city also is planning to provide educational materials to the community in late spring on how to live with deer. City officials say they also will be evaluating the city's fence ordinance and recommending improvements that can be made in the city's rights-of-way, such as signage.

For more info, visit www.a2gov.org/deermanagement.

For specific questions, email deermanagement@a2gov.org or call the deer hotline at 734-794-6295.
Airport Shooting Florida

In this still image from video provided by NBC TV Local10, people stand on the tarmac after shots were fired at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Local10 and other news media outlets reported Friday that multiple people were shot. (NBC TV Local10 via AP)

ROMULUS, MI - Delta Airlines has canceled flights from Detroit Metropolitan Airport to Fort Lauderdale International Airport Friday, Jan. 6.

A gunman opened fire Friday at the Terminal 2 baggage claim area at the Fort Lauderdale airport, killing five people and wounding eight others. Police have taken the gunman into custody, A.P. News reports.

Delta Airlines canceled flights 1282, 1306, 0853 and 1348 from Detroit, according to the airline's website.

The Terminal 2 baggage claim serves Delta Airlines and Air Canada, A.P. reported.

All flights to and from Fort Lauderdale are cancelled.
010517_NEWS_ManorDrv_MRM_1.JPG

Police investigated a suspicious death in the 300 block of Manor Dr. on Wednesday, January 4, 2017.

(Melanie Maxwell | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI - Police say the woman found dead in her vehicle Wednesday, Jan. 4 in Ann Arbor was from New Jersey.

A passerby found the 48-year-old woman slumped in the driver's seat of a vehicle, holding a stuffed animal, in the 300 block of Manor Drive.

The vehicle may have been in the spot for several days.

Police initially characterized the death as suspicious, but Ann Arbor Police Detective Lt. Matthew Lige said Friday police are not treating the investigation as a criminal matter.

There are "very sensitive family dynamics" related to the woman's death, Lige said.

The autopsy report is not yet complete and police have not released the woman's name.
ANN ARBOR, MI - An Ypsilanti man will serve between 86 months and 40 years in prison for his robbery of an Ann Arbor area bank in fall 2016.

Gary Dailey, 40, was sentenced Thursday, Jan. 5, in Washtenaw County Trial Court for the robbery, as well as attempted carjacking, assault with intent to rob while unarmed, malicious destruction of fire or police property and five counts of resisting, assaulting or obstructing a police officer.

Police were called about 1:30 p.m. Oct. 24, 2016, to a robbery at the PNC Bank at 5490 Jackson Road in Scio Township, where a suspect with his face covered jumped over a counter in the bank and stole a large amount of money.

A description provided by witnesses helped police spot Dailey and his vehicle at 5:30 p.m. the same day in the 100 block of Washtenaw Avenue in Ypsilanti.

Police said Dailey fled on foot when he saw detectives approaching and attempted to take a vehicle from a woman opening her car door in the 200 block of North Huron Street. Once authorities caught up with him, he then broke out a window of a patrol vehicle.

Dailey pleaded guilty to all of his charges at a Dec. 8, 2016, pretrial.

At sentencing, Dailey apologized to those he scared, though they were not present to deliver a victim's impact statement, and noted his embarrassment at the situation.

"I wish that I could take it back," he said. "It is very embarrassing and after this, your honor, you don't ever have to worry about me again."

Bank robbery is a felony punishable by up to life in prison, however, Dailey was sentenced under an agreement with the Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney's Office and will serve his time for the bank robbery concurrently with all other charges associated with the case.

Dailey has a history of committing bank robbery and was on parole at the time of the recent robbery. His sentence will be served concurrently with his federal supervision, but after his time related to the parole.

Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge Darlene O'Brien who presided over the sentencing Thursday said the amount of times he has been convicted of bank robbery was disconcerting.

"If it wasn't for the adverse childhood experiences and the trauma that you endured growing up, I would not have accepted the sentence agreement, but considering all of the circumstances I do believe that the sentence agreement is appropriate," she said.

Online court records related to his 2006 federal bank robbery case state that Dailey experienced extensive childhood trauma, was introduced to narcotics by his mother at the age of 7 and used crack daily by the age of 20.
UPDATE: Clay Smith surrendered to police on Monday, Jan. 9.

PINCONNING, MI -- Police are advising Bay County residents to be on the lookout for a wanted man who stylizes himself as "The Cheater."

Pinconning Police Sgt. Terry Spencer said he's received numerous complaints in his area regarding Clay Randall Smith, 26.

"Smith is known to go to homes and local businesses in Pinconning, Linwood, Kawkawlin, Bay City, and surrounding areas asking for money," Spencer wrote on the Pinconning Police Department's Facebook page. "His story changes often, but his story usually revolves around needing gas money to see his daughter in northern Michigan."

Smith changes his route every few months, Spencer added.

Smith is wanted on several warrants out of Bay County District Court. In September, authorities issued a warrant for him on felony charges of breaking and entering and larceny in a building. In December, they issued another warrant for Smith on a charge of first-degree retail fraud, second offense, which is also a felony.

In January 2016, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of third-degree retail fraud and was sentenced to six months' probation. A judge also ordered him to pay $676 in fines and $10 in restitution, and the $686 sum is still owed as of Jan. 6, 2017. He's wanted on a warrant related to that as well.

Smith is known to have violent tendencies, Spencer said.

He is 6 feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds. He has hazel eyes, brown hair, and several tattoos, including a skull design on his throat. He calls himself "El Tramposo," which is Spanish for "The Cheater."



Police are asking anyone who sees Smith to call 911.

"The Pinconning Police Department would advise using caution when giving money to strangers," the department's Facebook page states. "Bay County has many organizations that help the needy with food, clothing, shelter, drug addiction, and many other needs."
Cobo Center in Detroit is transforming into an automotive wonderland.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Friday took his traditional preview tour before the 2017 North American International Auto Show opens to media next week, and to the public Jan. 14 through Jan. 21.

The Cobo Center concourse was buzzing with activity as laborers lay carpets and opened boxes filled with fixtures, audio equipment, screens and lights.

Followed by a couple dozen journalists, the mayor walked into the 600,000-square-foot-plus showroom where nearly 50 new car models are expected to be introduced to more than 800,000 visitors during the auto show.

Upon entering, the senses are overloaded by dazzling lights on enormous wraparound screens, heavy bass emanating from sound systems and an array of glistening automotive ingenuity.

Workers in fluorescent vests and hard hats operated whirring circular saws and beeping forklifts.Tape, plywood, extension cords and plastic covered the floors. Many of the vehicles remained concealed by plastic dust covers.

The transformation is expected to be complete by Monday.

Duggan said Detroit's auto industry has experienced a rebirth in recent years, commenting that in the past, he could see the dire economic reality in the faces of the automotive CEOs.

That's changed, and Duggan is quick to point out the positive impact the industry success has had on the auto show, and in turn, Detroit.

"When you talk about 50 new reveals and the $450 million impact on the southeastern Michigan economy, and of course, from my standpoint, now, what we're seeing that we didn't see five, 10 years ago, people are coming down, they're going to a restaurant in Detroit, maybe they'll stop at a shop, they're coming over to the auto show, as opposed to driving into the Cobo garage, go inside and drive back out," Duggan said.

"It's become much more integrated into a city experience."

Duggan's first stop on the tour was likely the most exhilarating.

At the Ford exhibit, he climbed onto a lift and rose nearly 10 feet in the air. He stepped onto a platform and sat in a racing-style bucket seat behind a steering wheel of a virtual Le Mans racecar alongside NAIAS Chairman Sam Salughter.

A series of three flat-screen TVs occupied the mayor's line of sight. As he drove the virtual race car through the lifelike track, the platform, supported to six hydraulic arms, rose, lowered and tilted. It shook rapidly each time the mayor's car skidded off the make-believe track.

Slaughter, an owner of Farmington-based Sellers Buick GMC, took a spin next and posted a better time than Duggan.

"When Sam gets tired of selling cars, I have a job for him as my driver," Duggan joked as they descended back to the shiny showroom floor.

"Hopefully that's the last time I finish second this year," the mayor later said, apparently referencing his upcoming candidacy for another term.

Duggan briskly passed through the showroom, making stops at the Chevrolet, GMC, Ford, Ram and Toyota displays along long the way.

"That's a good man right there," said one worker as the politician and gaggle of reporters passed. Others paused work and pulled out cell phones to capture images.

"To us, this is the most important show in the U.S. each year," said Toyota Midwest Public Relations Manager Curt McAllister during a quick chat with Duggan. " ... For us, Detroit is always number one."

Duggan mentioned visiting the Toyota headquarters a year ago, where he took a test drive in an experimental hydrogen-powered car.

"That was an interesting experience," he said.

Press preview daysfor the auto show are set for Jan. 9-10; industry preview days are Jan. 11-12; the $400-per-ticket Charity Preview takes place Jan. 13; and the NAIAS opens to the public Jan. 14-22.

The 2017 Detroit auto show will feature more than 750 models worth an estimated $7 million and products from more than 100 companies.
An Inkster man, who is Muslim and of south Asian decent, on Wednesday found his car covered in graffiti that included swastikas and racial slurs, says CAIR Michigan, an organization that advocates for the understanding of Islam.

Full CAIR-MI release

The nonprofit is now asking federal authorities to intervene and open a hate crime investigation.

The victim's tires were also punctured outside his apartment in Inkster. According to CAIR, the man has recently moved into the apartment complex and the Inkster Police Department is aware of the incident.

CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid said at least one other similar hate crime has occurred at the same apartment complex.
FLINT, MI -- As many as 20 Flint students get to learn about model electric vehicles in a summer camp this year, thanks to a grant from Ford Motor Company's corporate STEAM fund.

Ford is partnering with Kettering University to create the Flint Schools Summer Camp for grades 9 through 12 this July. The $32,000 grant will help students with registration fees, supplies and transportation, according to a news release from Kettering.

The idea was created by Prashant Javkar, Ford's manager of STEAM Strategy and Programs, after he visited Kettering with his son for a computer engineering camp last summer. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.

"When I visited the campus, I loved the energy of the close-knit community of students and had a fun time witnessing the camp participants compete in the concluding challenge. The parent overview provided by Bob Nichols gave me a good idea about Kettering's philosophy and approach to teaching," Javkar said. "My visit to Kettering in the summer of 2016 let me experience the well-equipped Robotics Center, and a chat with Bob Nichols reinforced the fact that there was a great opportunity to design a summer camp for the Flint community students."

Bob Nichols, director of the FIRST Robotics Community Center at Kettering, said he was "blown away" when Ford approached the university with the idea of a summer camp.

"I was blown away when Ford approached us to sponsor this summer camp. I was impressed that they recognized the value of the STEM learning opportunities at the camps," said Bob Nichols, Director of the FIRST Robotics Community Center at Kettering University. "There's no secret Ford is so involved in STEM. This allows them to make an impact in the Flint community."

Nichols' hope is to expand summer camp programs, teaching students about more than just robotics, and this is a step toward that goal. Outside the STEM activities during the camp, students will also train for the SAT during the camp, according to Nichols.

"We want to make it well-rounded for the students. The whole idea is to get these students excited about STEM. We are a community center. This is supposed to be here for the Flint area students. The partnership with Flint students is exactly what we are here for," Nichols said. "It's pretty exciting. I think there is a lot of opportunity for us to work with Flint kids."

Ford and Kettering have partnered in the past to create programs for students, according to a news release.

Javkar said project-based learning seems to be the best method of learning for students, and the university works to make it happen.

"Ford has the vision of working with key partners to deliver innovative STEM programming to our future leaders. We at Ford really believe that the project-based method of learning combines the best of both worlds, and Kettering University's integrated cooperative education program recognizes that there is as much to learn in a workplace as in a lecture hall," he said. "Knowing Kettering's history of delivering high quality pre-college programs and successful summer camps, we hope that this effort will also be very successful. We also love the fact that this new summer camp will provide the students an opportunity to learn various aspects of a STEM curriculum and then allow them to apply the same through academic exercises and challenges."
teresa.jpg

Teresa Towne-Woolard

(Burton Police Department)

GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- A $2,500 reward is now being offered for information regarding a 48-year-old Burton woman that went missing nearly one month ago.

Crime Stoppers of Flint & Genesee County has put out the offer for tips concerning the whereabouts of Teresa Towne-Woolard that was last seen Dec. 5, 2016 near Fenton and Hemphill roads at Kings Lane Apartments in Burton.

She is described as 5-foot-4 inches tall with long, straight blond hair, blue eyes, and wearing a red jacket and jeans at the time of her disappearance.

Anyone with information on Woolard has been asked to contact Burton police Detective Don Schreiber at 810-244-1545 or anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-422-JAIL (5245).

Laquandra Shavonne Slater

Flint Township police are also continuing their search for 38-year-old Laquandra Shavonne Slater.

Slater hasn't been seen by family or friends since Dec. 2, 2016. She is an African-American woman standing 5-foot-4 inches tall, weighs 178 pounds, and has short black hair.

Her vehicle was located around Atherton Road and Van Slyke Road in Flint and appeared to be abandoned. A missing person reported was filed with Flint Township police Dec. 8.

Slater has cheek, lip, and eyebrow piercings, as well as multiple tattoos on her neck, arms, and legs, police said.

Anyone with information on Slater's location is urged to contact Flint Township police Detective Doug Hart at 810-600-3250.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- An ambitious but slow-moving plan to rebuild the rapids in the Grand River downtown has received its first big dose of federal funds via a conservation grant announced this week that will also support erosion control and wetlands restoration on farmlands in the watershed.

Grand Rapids Whitewater, a nonprofit spearheading the multi-million dollar river project, says it's getting more than $4 million of an $8 million habitat restoration grant awarded to the Grand Valley Metro Council (GVMC) in November.

The money, which will be used to build natural rock and log structures during reconstruction of the river through downtown Grand Rapids, almost doubles the total funds raised for a project that's still working through the design phase after being slowed by the presence of an aquatic endangered species.

"It's a big boost now that we're starting to see federal support," said project coordinator Matt Chapman. "This is the first significant pot of federal funds."

Since inception, Grand Rapids Whitewater has raised $5 million in private donations for the restoration project, which eventually plans to remove the Sixth Street Dam and reconstruct the riverbed down to Fulton Street to resemble the waterway as it was before the rapids were removed a century ago.

Prior to the grant, the project had received less than $200,000 in federal dollars for targeted studies to, among other things, assess sediments behind the dam.

The total projected cost upon completion has grown from about $20 million initially to $35 million now, said Chapman. About $10 million is needed to design and build a new sea lamprey barrier upstream of the Sixth Street Dam.

Grand Rapids Whitewater plans to launch a formal capital campaign to raise about $15 million and seek state and federal grants or earmarks for the rest. There are no plans currently to seek a local millage or tax request to fund construction, he said.

"We're looking to do as much of this as we can though state and federal funds, and private donations," Chapman said.

The other half of the $8 million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) will fund conservation agreements with farmers to improve water quality in the Indian Mill Creek and Rogue River watersheds, both of which are Grand River tributaries.

The Lower Grand River Organization of Watersheds, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Kent Conservation District, Rogue River Watershed Partners, Trout Unlimited, local municipalities and schools plan to restore wetlands, reconnect floodplains, install buffer strips, and implement other erosion control practices to reduce waterway sedimentation.

The grant program is funded under the 2014 federal farm bill. Chapman said a 2013 project designation under the federal Urban Waters Federal Partnership helped open the door to the USDA grant.

Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss called the money a "tremendous step forward as we work together to restore the Grand River and transform it into an asset for not only downtown but the entire region."

The city has embraced the project and an appointed steering board, the Grand River Corridor Revitalization Committee, is exploring funding and structure for a long-term "recreational authority-like" organization, possibly with regional taxing power, to oversee the restored rapids.

The downtown river project hopes to move out of the pre-permitting phase later this year once the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service approves plans for relocating the endangered snuffbox mussel around the project area during rapids construction.

Discovery of the mussel, added to the federal endangered list in 2012, has slowed the river project and much of the $4 million conservation grant will be used to create appropriate habitat for the mussels and other aquatic species like the state-threatened lake sturgeon during construction.

Once the Sixth Street Dam is removed, lake sturgeon will have access to historic spawning grounds, said Chapman.

Before that can happen, the sea lamprey barrier must be constructed as a replacement to ensure the bloodsucking invasive fish that spawns in Great Lakes tributaries cannot migrate farther up the Grand River than downtown. Chapman said the wildlife service is now reviewing lamprey barrier designs.

Chapman estimated a three to four year construction timeline once state and federal permits are approved. Grand Rapids Whitewater has five years to use the federal conservation grant once the project begins construction.

Among other goals, the project aims to build 9,400 feet of whitewater rapids downtown, new riverside parks and 12 acres of limestone bedrock shoals.
Kent County road map

A portion of the official Kent County Road Commission road map.

(Courtesy | KCRC)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- More than a year after Michigan's $1.2 billion road funding plan was signed into law, Kent County is finally beginning to reap the benefits.

Though the county is promised a net increase of $22 million in state funding by 2021, it only expects about $7.4 million more in Michigan Transportation Fund money in 2017, the first of a five-year phase-in.

You may be wondering, how exactly does the Kent County Road Commission plan to use all this new funding?

Firstly, Managing Director Steven Warren points out, the $7.4 million figure is a bit deceiving.

Warren points out the $5 million the county received in 2016 through a grant from the state's general fund is eliminated entirely in this year's budget.

"The net effect is about $2.5 million more," he said.

But assuming the promised increases in state funding continue, Warren pledges to use the new funding to put Kent County on a path toward a better-maintained network of roads and bridges.

"We're going to take all that money and we're going to put it into roads and bridges," he said.

The road commission's 2017 budget includes about $8 million in road and bridge construction projects, not counting funds passed through for non-motorized trail projects and the $2.6 million set aside for intersection safety improvements.

The funds will go to nearly a dozen projects, including reconstruction of a portion of Kalamazoo Avenue and resurfacing projects along 10 Mile and Byron Center.

That $8 million figure is about "average" for a typical construction season, Warren said.

But there is one area where the road commission is significantly increasing its spending in 2017.

Warren pointed to an about $4 million increase in the funds set aside for "routine and preventative maintenance."

Those projects, which will receive $21.6 million in the 2017 budget, include things like drainage improvements, sealcoating and road surface maintenance.

Though the more routine maintenance projects typically receive less attention from residents, Warren said they are critical to keeping good roads in good condition.

"Drainage is very, very important," he said. "You can't maintain a good road without good drainage. It's like how it's hard to maintain a good roof on your house if it's covered in shade."

Sealcoating -- another word for the "chip seal" process of coating a road's surface -- receives $4 million in funding in 2017, compared to $2.3 million in the 2016 budget.

"So we're doubling the number of miles that we're going to be doing with chip-seal," Warren said. "It's a very cost-effective way to keep a good road in good condition. And that's our primary objective in how to spend the new money."

It's much more efficient, he explained, to complete routine maintenance projects that prevent good roads from deteriorating than it is to fix roads that have already deteriorated.

But the funding increases will also allow Kent County to underatake some of those more expensive road reconstruction projects in the years to come, Warren said.

"There's a lot more of that work to come," he said. "As the increase occurs, there's more and more construction to occur."

Some larger road reconstruction projects are planned for future years as the state funding level increases, Warren said.

"We have a plan to take this money, put it into road and bridge improvements and reverse the downward trend of deterioration of our roads," he said. "We're going to do it with preservation first - keeping good roads in good condition - and then doing some of the heavy reconstruction secondly."

As the road commission prepares to enact that plan, Warren said he is optimistic about the future of Kent County's 1,955 miles of roadway and 172 bridges.

But it's all contingent on the state funds flowing to the road commission increasing as projected, he said.

"The big caveat to that is if the legislature fulfills its promise," Warren said.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Kentwood's new representative in the Michigan House said he wouldn't have given Switch the tax break package that brought the data center giant to Gaines Township.

State Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Wayland, has what he considers to be a constitutionally-driven agenda for his freshman term.

He wants to eliminate the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, push for a Life at Conception law and support a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Michigan.

Johnson beat Democratic challenger Steve Shoemaker of Caledonia by 7,653 votes, gaining 59 percent of the vote, to take the 72nd District seat in the house.

The 72nd District spans two counties: southern Kent and western Allegan, and includes the cities of Kentwood and Wayland.

Johnson's election means Kentwood, Kent County's third-largest city, is represented in both the state House and Senate by legislators that live outside of the county. He replaces state Rep. Ken Yonker, R-Caledonia, who could not run again due to term limits.

Johnson, 26, who is single, quit a job in Alaska to come back to Michigan and enter the political arena. He did't like the direction that Michigan's government was heading, he said, and he wanted to stand up for constitutional values.

Those shine through in his top priorities for his freshman session.

Eliminate the MEDC

Among Johnson's priorities: eliminating the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, which he called a "perfect example of crony capitalism."

"You have Michiganders paying more taxes and they're paying more to prop up a couple businesses," Johnson said. "Instead we should eliminate that and focus on reducing the corporate income tax."

The 72nd House District contains Switch, a $5 billion data center going into the former Steelcase "pyramid" building in Gaines Township.

Gov. Rick Snyder signed tax-break legislation into law in 2015, designed to attract Switch, the largest data center in the eastern United States, to Kent County.

Johnson said he "loves" having new businesses coming to his district, but believes that everyone should play by the same rules.

"I would have never them given the tax breaks to begin with," Johnson said of Switch.

He echoed the words of U.S. Rep. Justin Amash: "I think it violates fundamental constitutional principles of equal protection under the law where certain people and certain corporations are given special privileges."

Life at conception

"I want to make sure no taxpayer money is used to fund abortion," Johnson said.

Johnson supports a "Life at Conception Act" for Michigan. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, sponsored such a bill at the federal level in early 2016, calling on Congress to add equal protection for the unborn to the U.S. Constitution.

"It's a more conservative House than we've had in the past," Johnson said. "I know Speaker (Tom) Leonard is a strong advocate of pro-life issues and a strong Second Amendment defender."

Teacher pension reform

Johnson said private sector 401k retirement plans should be used as a model when reforming the teacher pension system - a priority for incoming House Speaker Rep. Tom Leonard, R-DeWitt.

"If we continue down this road, teachers won't have retirement," Johnson said.

When it comes to the potential healthcare and pension reforms for public sector employees, including for police and firefighters, Johnson said benefits need to be appropriate and in line with the private sector as well.

"Government jobs shouldn't be the best jobs," Johnson said. "They should be good jobs, but they shouldn't be the best jobs."

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

"I have heard from several other legislators that they are interested in pursuing that kind of a bill," Johnson said.

RFRA laws allow exemptions from legal requirements for religious objections, unless the government can show that there is a strong interest to comply with the law.

A federal RFRA was enacted with bipartisan support in 1993 intended to restore the understanding of religious protections under the First Amendment that had been changed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling - but in a 1997 case the high court ruled that the federal RFRA was an overreach of Congress' power. It's now up to each state to enact its own laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union supported the RFRA at the time - but in 2015 came out against how the federal law is being interpreted.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence signed a revised Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law in 2015 as the governor of Indiana. The photo from the initial bill's signing included three activists opposed to gay marriage.

After national scrutiny, language was added that clarified that businesses and service providers couldn't use the law to discriminate against clients based on their sexual orientation.

A primary upset

Johnson's win in the August primary was seen as an upset.

He had hit the streets in a five-way race for the Republican spot on the ticket, knocking doors six days a week from May until August. Johnson's platform of less government, more freedom hit home with his base in Allegan County.

It paid off for the constitutional conservative with an August upset. He topped restaurant owner Tony Noto and Kentwood teacher Ryan Gallogly, who was backed by the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and the DeVos family.

Johnson also beat out former Kent County Commissioner Bill Hirsch and Kentwood city commissioner Robert Coughlin for the seat.

After graduating from South Christian High School, Johnson joined the U.S. Air Force in 2009. He served for four years, leading a team working on nuclear missile electronics in Montana.

He doesn't receive veteran benefits - but did use the G.I. Bill complete a bachelor's degree online through Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, in an interdisciplinary program that combined business and government.

After interning for former Rep. Cindy Gamrat during the summer of 2015 for a "couple" of weeks, Johnson went to Canada to help a missionary friend serve at a children's wilderness camp. From there, he moved to Alaska for a short time to help a friend start a handyman business.

Politics, he said, brought him back to Michigan.
consumers.jpg

A Consumers Energy outage map shows those without electricity on Friday, Jan. 6.

(Courtesy photo)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Approximately 634 Consumers Energy customers are without power this morning after a vehicle reportedly crashed into an electrical pole in Grand Rapids.

The outage was reported at 5:45 a.m. Friday, Jan. 6 following a one-car crash near the Wealthy Street exit off U.S. 131. Crews responded to find a downed pole and burn marks on the ground, according to a Consumers Energy spokesperson.

Customers without power are in an area south of W. Fulton and north of Franklin, between Grandville and Division avenues.

A crew has been assigned to the incident, and an estimated restoration time is set for 9:15 a.m.

Unrelated outages were reported Thursday evening in Ottawa and Barry counties. Those left thousands without power as temperatures dropped into single digits.

Electricity was restored to about 5,400 customers in the Jenison area by 8:35 p.m., with the remaining areas regaining power overnight.

The Barry County outage was due to an unknown equipment issue, while the cause of the Ottawa County outage was due to ice build-up on one power line, forcing it into contact with another line.

A three-car crash occurred shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday after the outage disabled traffic lights at the intersection of Baldwin Street and 20th Avenue in Georgetown Township, according to police.

The 17-year-old Wyoming driver of one vehicle was taken to an area hospital for non-life threatening injuries. Both a 59-year-old Wyoming driver and a 45-year-old Hudsonville driver were uninjured.
Water.jpg

Joel Henry of Golder Associates, an environmental consulting firm, speaks with Osceola Township residents during the Osceola Township White Pine Springs Permit Application open house on Thursday, Jan. 5 at the Osceola Township Hall. (Dominick Mastrangelo | MLive.com)

EVART, MI - Allan Rohen won't soon forget what his father, an Evart Township business owner, told him about his hometown decades ago when he was a teenager.

"We will never sell our water, we will never get rid of it," Rohen's father told him after he installed a drinking fountain in front of the family business.

Rohen was one of approximately 50 community members who attended the Osceola Township White Pine Springs Permit Application open house on Thursday, Jan. 5 at the Township Hall.

The forum was the first of several public forums Nestle Waters North America is holding in an effort to drum up support for its application to increase groundwater removal from the area.

Nestle seeks a pumping increase from 150 to 400 gallons per minute (gpm) on White Pine Springs Well No. 101. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Water Resources Division already approved a 100-gpm increase in the well's baseline pumping rate in 2015. Today, the well pumps at 250 gpm, but the company needs DEQ Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance approval under Michigan law to reach the higher threshold.

Nestle and the DEQ say an environmental review shows the aquifer can handle the increased withdrawal and won't hurt the flow, levels or temperature of nearby surface waters. In its proposal, Nestle claims average water levels in nearby Twin and Chippewa creeks would "decline only minimally" from the increased pumping and wouldn't exceed what might be expected from natural stream stage variability.

According to the proposal, "an incremental effect of the proposed increased withdrawal on wetland water levels may occur in five wetlands, but is not expected to cause adverse ecological effects. Observations of these wetlands did not find the presence of any threatened or endangered species."

Residents like Rohen see the potential for a dangerous exhaustion of the county's biggest natural resource.

"This is what makes our state unique. If we don't have water, our state can't go," Rohen said. "I have a big problem with them taking so much water. I just can't honestly believe that it is not going to negatively affect people one of these days."

Arlene Anderson-Vincent, Ice Mountain natural resources manager, said while the company can't guarantee zero impact on local residents, the goal is to keep such disturbances to a minimum.

"These aren't easy questions to answer," she said. "We tried to make this as simple as we could."

About 20 representatives from Nestle and its partners stood near large posters filled with information on what groundwater is and how the company extracts it. They answered questions from attendees and handed out literature related to the recent application.

Dave Sommer manages the Ice Mountain factory in Stanwood and said community education on the science behind groundwater extraction is valuable.

"We want to be as transparent as possible," Sommer said. "The great thing about Michigan is that people really care about the environment that they live in. We don't want to impact that."

Ray Aldrich owns a farm four miles from the Nestle water plant. He welcomes the company's growth in his neighborhood.

"I wouldn't mind selling them the five underground springs at my place," Aldrich said. "I drink their water all the time. They do wonderful things for different communities ... especially the Flint water crisis. They shipped a lot of water down there."

Such charitable efforts don't ease the concern of some lifelong Osceola County residents like Rohen.

"If this is so good, why do they have to have so many people here to tell us how good it is?" Rohen said. "They're trying to convince us because they're going to make a whole lot of money on this. I just don't see an end to this ... until they run out of water, then they'll just pack up and leave.

"They don't care."

The DEQ is taking public comment on the Nestle application until March 3. A planned public hearing is yet to be scheduled.

Nestle is the largest among a handful of self-supplied water bottlers which to tap and sell Michigan groundwater. Between 2005 and 2015, the company withdrew more than 3.4 billion gallons of water from its wells in Evart, Morton Township in Mecosta County and Osceola Township in Osceola County.

Nestle began taking steps to increase production on Well No. 101 shortly after it discovered a municipal well in Evart which it controls was drawing in perchlorate, a fireworks chemicals that has contaminated one of the city's well fields.

The company employs more than 250 people in Stanwood and says a bottling plant expansion that began in October will add more than 20 new jobs.
gunz.png

Police seized guns, ammunition, drugs and cash in a raid at a Holland Township home in June. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Attorney's Office.)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - A felon who kept guns, ammunition, body armor and a silencer at his Holland Township home has been sentenced to five years, eight months in federal prison.

Khamdeng "Sam" Phanthourath, 43, pleaded guilty to possessing firearms and ammunition as a felon.

He was sentenced this week in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.

Police raided his house in the 5300-block of Butternut Drive on June 16.

The West Michigan Enforcement Team, or WEMET, found 26 firearms, muzzle-loaders, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a homemade silencer, body armor, marijuana, over 800 pills, $9,000 and a police scanner set to the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department's frequency, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

WEMET received a Silent Observer tip in September that "Sam from Butternut" was selling drugs and growing marijuana, records said.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, determined that at least one of the guns was stolen.

Phanthourath told police he sold pills and marijuana, sometimes taking guns in trade, an ATF special agent wrote in a criminal complaint.

The break came when a suspected heroin dealer told police that Phanthourath suggested he burglarize a home near Phanthourath's home. The dealer traded stolen items with Phanthourath.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker, Phanthourath apologized and sought forgiveness.

He said he has strong family support.

He said he did not want to leave his fiancee and their four children. He has been locked up since his June arrest and has had time to think about "the bigger picture," he said.

"I have had plenty of time to evaluate and to re-evaluate the choices that I have made up until this point in my life and I have so many regrets," he said in the neat, handwritten letter.

"Recidivism is something I do not wish to experience. ... I want to be the best role model for my family and that includes being trouble free and law abiding," he wrote.

Once his prison term ends, he will be on supervised release for three years.
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Kimberly Ann Ryan of Traverse City is a competitor on Hell's Kitchen.

((CR: Greg Gayne / FOX. (c) 2016 FOX Broadcasting Co ))

SPOILER ALERT: Complete spoilers for the 11th and 12th episode of "Hell's Kitchen" ahead. If you have not seen the episode, watch it, then come back and read this recap.

TRAVERSE CITY, MI - And then there were 6.

Thanks to a double dose of episodes this week, Traverse City event chef Kimberly Ann Ryan is one of only a handful of contestants remaining on FOX's reality cooking show "Hell's Kitchen."

Wendy Mendez, a line cook from the Bronx and Devin Simpson, an assistant restaurant manager from South Carolina, were sent home in the back-to-back episodes titled "Aerial Maneuvers" and "Fusion Confusion."

Ryan continued to perform well in the team challenges, but she clashed with Paulie Giganti, an executive chef from Brooklyn, throughout the two episodes. Ryan questioned Giganti's temperament in the kitchen, specifically his ability to stay calm when things get hectic.

"I could never see Paulie leading any restaurant let alone a fast-paced, high-volume restaurant in Las Vegas," she said.

Giganti, meanwhile, called Ryan selfish and questioned her ability to work within a team. Ryan performed well in both episode's challenges.

In the first episode, she worked with Mendez in the taste it, make it challenge in which chefs head to match one of Chef Gordon Ramsay's signature dishes based on taste alone.

Ryan prepared veal with a persimmon pure and sauteed spinach based on Mendez's tasting. They were the only team to correctly identify veal as the protein.

In the second episode, Ryan prepared the top dish in the fusion challenge in which chefs had to prepare a dish based off cuisines from two different countries.

Ryan drew Japanese and French and despite them being her last two choices, her Japanese rack of lamb over French lentils and herbs de Provence was well received by Ramsay and guest judge Roy Yamaguchi.

Ryan struggled a bit with hot appetizers during one of the episode's dinner services, but rebounded to avoid nomination for elimination.

"It definitely feels good," Ryan said. "I'm down to the final six. I am here to win this competition. Bring it on Chef Ramsay. I am ready."

The final chef standing wins $250,000 and a head chef position at Yardbird Southern Table & Bar at The Venetian Las Vegas.

Hell's Kitchen airs on FOX at 8 p.m. on Thursdays. Each week, contestants face rigorous culinary challenges and they are eliminated along the way.
Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden leaves the the Old Senate Chamber following a mock swearing in ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, as the 115th Congress begins. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

(Kevin Wolf)

Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to stop in Michigan on Tuesday to deliver remarks as part of a three-state tour.

Biden is set to deliver remarks at an event for Motor City Match, a quarterly, $500,000 grant program designed to help entrepreneurs grow their ventures in Detroit, the White House announced Friday.

Additional details are forthcoming.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation partnered to start the program, which "connects new and expanding businesses with Detroit real estate opportunities and provides them with the funding and technical support needed to help them succeed."

So far in the inaugural year of the program, $2 million has been donated to 40 Detroit businesses with $3 million more expected to be donated over the next four years.

Motor City Match issues awards each quarter and received 300 applications from businesses seeking nominations in the latest batch.

Following his remarks in Detroit, Biden is set to travel to Chicago, where President Barack Obama will deliver his farewell address. Biden will be in California on Jan. 8 and 9 for events in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively.

The speech comes as the administration led by Obama winds down to make way for President-elect Donald Trump, whose inauguration will take place Jan. 20.
JACKSON, MI - The Michigan Court of Appeals did not find reason to make any change in the appeals of two Jackson County men serving long prison sentences for the years-long sexual abuse of two girls.

A three-judge panel unanimously affirmed the convictions of Randy Stevens, 47, and James Tingley, 72, in an opinion released last month.

Two separate juries in a single 2015 trial - a rare circumstance, according to county Chief Appellate Attorney Jerrold Schrotenboer - found the two men guilty of eight criminal sexual conduct offenses.

Stevens was accused of sexually abusing one child and aiding and abetting Tingley by allowing him to carry out assaults on another girl.

He allegedly "pimped" one of the girls to Tingley, a detective said in 2014.

Stevens contended on appeal that there was no evidence of him receiving money from Tingley, an argument that was disputed by the testimony of one victim, who said she delivered $300 from Tingley to Stevens, according to the opinion.

Stevens made a long list of contentions, calling to question the fairness of the proceedings against him, but the Court of Appeals did not find basis for any of them.

Tingley only argued the prosecutor made an unfair comment about a doctor's diagnosis proving one victim's account true. His lawyer, however, objected during trial, the prosecutor revised her statement to contend the doctor's findings corroborated the victim's statements, and the judge told jurors the lawyer's words are not evidence; the Court of Appeals found this was sufficient.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson sentenced Stevens in April 2015 to 39 to 60 years in prison. He punished Tingley with a 25- to 50-year term.

Wilson said the accounts during the trial "turned" his stomach; Chief Assistant Prosecutor Kati Rezmierski likened the homes where the assaults took place to "sexual concentration camp" and called Stevens an animal and a "little tyrant with all his little minions and his redneck mafia out there."

Stevens, vocal throughout the court proceedings and once staging a protest outside the courthouse, had supporters despite a series of unsavory allegations and subsequent convictions.

At the time of his sentencing, he already was in prison for allowing some of his 14 children to visit the home of a known sex offender, Geoffrey Friant, a "serial predator" now serving 30 to 80 years in prison.

Stevens had a problem with drugs and allegedly involved his children in criminal activity, having them steal a generator and car stereos, information that contributed to the loss of his parental rights.
Daisha Cooper prelim

Daisha Cooper watches during her preliminary examination in front of Jackson County District Court Judge Michael Klaeren on Monday, September 12, 2016. Cooper is charged with open murder in the May 8 shooting death of Ben Johnson. (J. Scott Park | Mlive.com)

(J. Scott Park)

JACKSON, MI - A woman accused of shooting and killing her boyfriend eight months ago now has a chance to get out of jail while she awaits her trial.

Daisha Cooper, 27, was originally denied bond and has been in the Jackson County Jail since her arraignment May 9. On Friday, Jan. 6, Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson set a bond of $250,000.

Cooper is charged with one count of open murder and felony firearms in the May 8 death of her 27-year-old boyfriend Ben Johnson.

Defense attorney George Lyons contends Cooper was acting in self-defense when she shot Johnson.

"We don't think murder one or murder two are on the table in this case," Lyons said. "When the jury hears this case, it will be manslaughter if even that."

Open murder allows a judge or jury to decide on the degree of murder or manslaughter if the defendant is convicted.

Prosecutors allege Cooper shot Johnson in the chest, tried to clean up the scene and dragged him to the car all while her three young children were in the W. High Street residence.

Lyons argues when Johnson came home late that evening and saw that his clothes were soaked with bleach on the porch, he got angry and kicked in the door to the home, which led to Cooper shooting him in the doorway with a shotgun.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Johnson, testified at the preliminary examination a shotgun blast to Johnson's upper body created multiple wounds in his right shoulder and chest and the right side of his neck.

While examining the wounds, Pacris said he discovered several shotgun pellets had penetrated two vital arteries in Johnson's chest and neck which led to severe blood loss and ultimately his death.

Pacris testified he did not find any soot or gun powder residue on Johnson, suggesting the shot was made at a minimum of four feet away but it could have been farther.

Wilson granted the high bond and said he would be willing to review bond again after a ballistics report from the incident is submitted.

"If I get something back that says the shot was made 10 or 12 feet away, it makes it much less plausible she opened the door herself," Wilson said.

A tentative trial date has been set for Feb. 27.
FullSizeRender.jpg

Drugs, guns and money were seized.

(Courtesy KVET)

KALAMAZOO, MI-- Loaded handguns at each door, two loaded shotguns, cocaine in various forms and a lot of cash were the items seized during the search of a house in the 700 block of Hawley Street Thursday.

On Jan.5 investigators from the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team, along with officers from the Kalamazoo Metro SWAT Team, executed a search warrant on the house after receiving citizen complaints of drug activity and violence in the area, according to a news release from KVET.

Two of the three adults in the home at the time were arrested and during the search investigators located the guns, money and suspected crack cocaine and powder cocaine, authorities said.

One of the shotguns was reported stolen in 2016 from Battle Creek.

A Kalamazoo man, 35, was arrested on charges of Felony Firearms, Felon in Possession of a firearm, Felon in Possession of Ammunition, Possession with Intent to Distribute Crack Cocaine and Maintaining a Drug House.

A 31-year-old Detroit man was arrested on charges of Felony Firearms, Felon in Possession of a Firearm, Possession with Intent to Distribute Crack Cocaine and Maintaining a Drug House.

Both suspects were lodged at the Kalamazoo County Jail. This case will be forwarded to the Kalamazoo County Prosecutors Office for review, authorities said.
Boji Group.JPG

A photo of a site plan created by Boji Group LLC, Kreiger Klatt Architects and AR Engineering shows a future development in Kalamazoo Township. (Malachi Barrett | MLive)

A photo of a site plan created by Boji Group LLC, Kreiger Klatt Architects and AR Engineering shows a future development in Kalamazoo Township. (Malachi Barrett | MLive)

KALAMAZOO TOWNSHIP, MI -- Plans for a four-story hotel, multiple retail buildings and a drive-through restaurant are moving forward.

Dubbed "The Shops at Main West," the project would be built on 7.3 acres on the former campus of Davenport University, at 4201 W. Main St. Representatives of Lansing real-estate developer Boji Group LLC discussed its plan with the Kalamazoo Township Planning Commission during a public hearing Thursday.

The site plan includes a 95-room extended stay hotel, three street-facing buildings for retail businesses, an office building and 360 parking spaces. Terri Fitzpatrick, Boji chief operating officer, said the project would take 24 months after being approved, with 16-18 months allotted for construction and demolition of existing buildings.

The property is located in a commercial corridor district zoning classification. Commissioners voted unanimously to grant the permit and again to approve the project's site plan.

Though it is less than four miles away from a Delta Hotel by Marriot planned in Oshtemo Township, President Ron Boji said his project serves a different clientele. The Boji hotel would attract guests looking to stay 16-days or longer while on business, while the Delta Hotel seeks accommodate shorter stays.

The proposed hotel would be an attractive option for guests of Kalsec Inc., Fitzpatrick said, which lies less than a mile down West Main Street. She said the developer is in "very serious discussions" with Hilton, IHG and Marriot to move into the hotel, Fitzpatrick said.

Instead of a fast food establishment, Boji said the developer is seeking a bakery or coffee-type restaurant like Panera Bread. A Tim Horton's, Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen and Papa Murphy's Take 'N' Bake Pizza, sit within the same block.

Also surrounding the site are several apartment complexes, churches and medical offices.

Kalamazoo County Commissioner Julie Rogers, speaking on behalf Commissioner Michael Seals and residents in their districts, called the project a "great asset for the area," but highlighted concerns her constituents raised about traffic congestion on West Main Street.

Fitzpatrick said the developer has worked with township residents to identify similar concerns.

A traffic study was commissioned to gauge the impact on West Main Street, but was not completed by the date of the hearing. Fitzpatrick said she was told by the traffic engineer that it would be difficult to turn left out of the development during peak afternoon hours of 4:45 to 5:45 p.m.

Davenport University served 900 students before it left, which Fitzpatrick said is comparable to the new development's impact on traffic.

Fitzpatrick said some residents were concerned about the proximity to apartment complexes, which would be roughly 160 feet from the pool and 190 feet from the main building, but argued a new development would enhance the area much better than vacant buildings.

A 4-foot-6-inch tall wall would provide a barrier between the hotel and Pinewood Glen Apartments to the south. At the suggestion of Vice Chair James Cripps. the board voted to have Boji plant several new trees to complement existing mature trees and add to the separation.
Fred Upton

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After six years serving as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, the congressman for Southwest Michigan has been relegated to instead chairing one of its subcommittees.

U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, has led the committee since 2011, when Republicans last took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Under House GOP rules, lawmakers can only hold a top party committee seat for six years -- regardless of whether as chairman or ranking member -- unless they get a special waiver.

Upton requested no such waiver, meaning his tenure as Energy and Commerce chairman ended with the 114th Congress.

"During the past six years as chairman of the full committee on Energy and Commerce, we accomplished big things for American families, workers, and businesses," Upton said. "Bold solutions to problems big and small."

Taking Upton's place will be incoming Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican.

Walden announced on Friday, Jan. 6, that Upton will now serve as chairman of the committee's Subcommittee on Energy.

Upton said he is excited to take on his new role overseeing the Energy Subcommittee.

He said he expects the "bipartisan record of success" seen during his tenure as committee chairman to continue under the new leadership structure.

"America's energy future is bright," Upton said. "We're excited to get to work."

Pointing to the recent energy policy overhaul approved by Michigan's state lawmakers in December, he said similar reform is needed at the federal level.

"Energy solutions have always been a priority and we will continue to promote 'all-of-the-above' strategies," Upton said. "Whether it be assuring families have access to affordable energy, updating standards and safety for pipelines, providing appropriate security for our grid, developing safer technologies for emerging energy productions and using energy as part of our diplomatic arsenal."

The incoming Energy and Commerce Committee chairman praised his predecessor's accomplishments, saying the Energy Subcommittee "is in good hands."

"Under Fred's chairmanship the committee held 562 hearings, had 354 measures passed through the House, and 202 bills and provisions signed into law," Walden said. "I know moving forward that Fred will bring that same dedication and hard work that has come to define him as he takes up the gavel of the Subcommittee on Energy."

Upton won reelection in November to his seat representing Michigan's 6th congressional district. He has held the seat representing Southwest Michigan since 1986.

Upton was among Republicans who did not endorse Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

The 6th District includes all of Berrien, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph and Van Buren counties and most of Allegan County.
Board of Commissioners meeting

Benjamin Cross swears in as Chair during the Board of Commissioners meeting at the Muskegon County Courthouse in Muskegon, Mich. on Wednesday, January 4, 2016. (Emily Brouwer |MLive.com)

(Emily Brouwer)

MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - The new year brought new leadership for the Muskegon County Board of Commissioners.

The board unanimously selected former vice chair Ben Cross as the new chairman to replace Terry J. Sabo at an organizational meeting Wednesday, Jan. 4.

Former chairman Sabo was elected to the 92nd Seat in the Michigan House of Representatives.

Cross, a Democrat, has worked as a machinist at L-3 for about 15 years. He was first elected to the board seat in 2010 and is beginning his fourth term. In 2015, he was selected to be vice chair.

Ben Cross

He represents District 2, which includes the west side of the city of Muskegon, the city of Roosevelt Park and a small portion of Norton Shores.

With his new leadership role, Cross said he is looking to continue moving the county forward.

"I don't take this position very lightly," Cross said. "It is the highest position of the board and I totally respect that and I'm going to do everything I possibly can to lead us in the right direction for 2017."

He cited leadership of Sabo and another former board chairman Ken Mahoney for helping the county move in a positive direction.

"I think we are moving in the right direction, there's no different agenda, we just need to get there," Cross said.

Part of his plan includes working cooperatively with all the municipalities, administration and department heads.

"I look forward to working with the different municipalities, other than just my own, to build that relationship to make sure we continuing moving forward," Cross said.

Commissioner Charles Nash, also a Democrat, was selected vice chairman over Robert Scolnik with a vote of 5-4. Nash represents District 6, which includes the east side of the city of Muskegon.

Chairmen and chairwomen of the board's committees also were selected during the organizational meeting:
Zhang Yueran, one of the representative writers born in the 1980s, is noticeable for her new release The Cocoon. [Photo provided to China Daily]

With many international awards, literary works from the mainland made a mark on the international stage last year. Xing Yi and Mei Jia report.

Chinese novels came of age in 2016 bagging many international awards, as in the case of children's literature writer Cao Wenxuan winning the Hans Christian Andersen Award, Hao Jingfang taking the Hugo Award after Liu Cixin, the first Chinese winner of the award in 2015, and Wang Anyi grabbing the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from The University of Oklahoma in September.

Veteran literary critic Meng Fanhua says 2016 was a big year for novels and he says that the power of Chinese stories come from the rural areas, "where we have the strongest literary traditions".

Another veteran critic Bai Ye, who is with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that while traditional and established novel writers continue to produce works, younger writers who were born in the 1970s, '80s and '90s are also gaining ground.

"Every year there are about 5,000 novels published in the country. But, this year, I noticed writers are more keen to reflect the pulse of the society, and their writings are close to everyday reality and easier for general readers to accept."

Bai, who produces an annual report on Chinese novels, also says that rural life is one of the key elements in the books published last year, and adds that as urbanization spreads, the nostalgia for rural life grows as seen in Jia Pingwa's work The Jihua Flower.

The novel, about an abducted girl and her plight, stirred a debate about gender equality soon after its release in March.

Other themes that writers tackled last year were urban life and history.
WASHINGTON D.C. - A West Michigan woman was honored at the White House as the 2017 School Counselor of the Year.

Terri Tchorzynski, a Muskegon native, gave a speech before introducing Michelle Obama Friday, Jan. 6 for her final remarks as First Lady.

"There is no greater honor I can imagine than to introduce to you someone who understands the value of great education," Tchorzynski said.

The First Lady talked about some of the educational initiatives of the Obama administration, including the "Reach Higher" program.

Obama also highlighted Tchorzynski's successes and the contributions of other school counselors honored at the ceremony.

"Our school counselors are truly among the heroes of the 'Reach Higher' story," Obama said.

Tchorzynski has been a counselor at the Calhoun Area Career Center since 2010. She attended Orchard View High School and is graduate of Central Michigan University and Spring Arbor University.

She found out she won the award in November and was picked out of five finalists including Dawn Mann of Kennesaw, Ga.; Jennifer Adams of Lexington, S.C.; Rebecca Lallier of White River Junction, Vt. and Yuridia Nava of Riverside, Calif.

The American School Counselor Association award honors people who devote time to helping students with educational, social and emotional development in addition to preparing them for college and/or their careers.

Finalists for the national award were judged on effective school counseling programs, leadership skills, creative school counseling innovations and contributions to student advancement.
China sets up a booth at the 21st edition of Tokyo International Book Fair in September. [Photo by Natsuki Sakai/AFLO]

The Minister of State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, Nie Chenxi, said on Tuesday that 50 million copies of Series of Key Speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping (2016) have been published, while the figure for Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is 6.2 million copies.

Key events

The minister also said that 2016 saw other books on important events and topics of historic significance being published.

Among them was Ninety Years of Communist Party of China, marking the Party's 95th birthday, also the 80th anniversary of the end of the Long March.

Wang Shuzeng's The Long March was reprinted and is still popular for its depiction of the feat.

"I hope to pass on the spirit of the Long March to younger readers: the spirit of never giving up," Wang says.

More books on the Belt and Road Initiative were also published in 2016.
Close

A trailer for "Star Wars Rebels" season 3 has just landed online and fans are already ecstatic over the events that could take place in the upcoming season. The biggest drop that fans received from the trailer is Obi-Wan Kenobi drawing out his Lightsaber.

Who is Obi-Wan Kenobi and Why are Fans Crazy Over His Return?

Obi-Wan Kenobi is considered as one of the pillars of the "Star Wars" universe. He was also the beloved mentor of both Anakin Skywalker and the latter's son, Luke Skywalker.

Ever since his exile, Obi-Wan has become a mysterious and elusive character in the "Star Wars" universe. Fans are always clamoring to see more of the old Jedi master to see if his skills have rusted over the years. It appears that fans will be given what they want in "Star Wars Rebels" season 3.

Games Radar has a reminder for fans: Darth Maul murdered Obi-Wan's mentor, Qui-Gon, 18 long years ago. It appears that he is ready to claim justice the second time around, especially now that he is sure Darth Maul survived their first match.

In the recently released "Star Wars Rebels" season 3 trailer, Obi-Wan is seen warming himself up in front of a fire when Darth Maul appears on the other side. The two enemies faced off in "Episode I: The Phantom Menace" and it ended well for Obi-Wan.

A Look Back at Obi-Wan and Maul's First Face Off

During their first bout, Obi-Wan appeared to have the lower hand. However, a Berani flip over the Sith Lord's head and Qui-Gon's lightsaber ended the duel. Darth Maul has since been believed to be dead, only to surprise fans with his comeback in "Star Wars Rebels" season 2.

CNET notes that after Obi-Wan tore Darth Maul's body in two, the latter has recovered and has even had a couple of robot legs. Although Darth Maul was only featured for a few seconds in the "Star Wars Rebels" season 3 trailer, it seems that he's been healthy, considering that Obi-Wan drew out his lightsaber, seemingly preparing for a rematch.

Darth Maul Returns With a Vengeance

Darth Maul was the first to draw his lightsaber and from the looks of it, he is back for some vengeance. It remains to be seen if how the rematch will end in "Star Wars Rebels" season 3 but fans can expect a lot of action from the fan-loved Jedi master and the villain.

"Star Wars Rebels" season 3 returns January 7 on Disney XD. Stay tuned for more updates. Watch the trailer below.

 Copyright 2020 Mobile & Apps, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Han Meilin (center) attends the launch ceremony of the stamps for the Year of the Rooster in Beijing. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

A set of two stamps to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rooster were released nationwide on Thursday by China Post, the State-owned postal service and logistics operator.

The stamps are designed by prolific Chinese artist Han Meilin, 80, who is also the chief designer of Fuwa, the mascots for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

One stamp shows a rooster raising its head and on the run, symbolizing the country in progress. The other portrays an amiable hen caring for two chicks, which conveys a wish for family happiness. Each is priced at 1.2 yuan (17 US cents).

"The two stamps combined reflect a pursuit of national prosperity and personal diligence that have been rooted in the heart of Chinese people for generations," Li Pizheng, deputy general manager of China Post, said at the launch ceremony in Beijing on Thursday.

"The stamps show brilliant craftsmanship, and the design is down to earth, reflecting ordinary people's tastes," he adds.

Han says he has been collecting postage stamps since 1956, and he drew hundreds of drafts for the rooster-themed set.

Han also designed the zodiac stamps for the Year of the Pig in 1983.

Since 1980, China Post has been issuing an annual set of stamps corresponding to the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, each of which is assigned to a lunar calender year in the cycle.

The stamps for the current Year of the Monkey were designed by 93-year-old artist Huang Yongyu.

The Year of the Rooster will begin on Jan 28 and end on Feb 15, 2018. It is also termed as the Year of Ding-you, according to the Chinese numbering system of Stems and Branches that includes 60 terms in a cycle.

Ancient Chinese hailed the rooster as a virtuous fowl because before the invention of alarm clocks, people depended on this animal to announce the arrival of a new day, regardless of the weather.

The rooster is called "ji" in Chinese, a character meaning auspiciousness, thereby making it a popular subject in folk artworks, such as paper cutting and traditional New Year paintings.

Gao Shan, an official of China Post's circulation department, says the zodiac animal stamps have been well-received among collectors: Many will line up for hours to buy the first issues and first-day covers at post offices.

He says people now can also order the stamps at China Post's online shops.
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business Filed DRHP for Radio City: Jagran Prakashan Jagran Prakashan's board has approved a buyback of 4.74 percent equity shares at Rs 195. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, RK Agarwal, CFO of Jagran Prakashan said that the company did not declare a dividend this year.
business Why H1B visa reform Bill spells bad news for Indian IT cos The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act reintroduced on Thursday proposes to raise the minimum salary of H1B visa aspirants to USD 1 lakh per annum from the current USD 60,000. Besides, the proposed US immigration reforms seeks to make a Masters degree mandatory for H1B visa holders.
Dykes have been built to surround an area about 1,000 meters long and 100 meters wide in the Minjiang River in the Pengshan district of Meishan, Sichuan province.

Water in the area has been drained away in preparation for an archaeological dig, which will be completed by the end of March.

"We hope the dig will provide evidence to verify whether the area is where Zhang Xianzhong (leader of a farmer's uprising) fought against general Yang Zhan in 1646 and left countless treasure in his sunken boats," said Liu Zhiyan, head of underwater archaeology at the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute.

"The evidence should include remains of boats, weapons, helmets and armor," Liu said.

Zhang Xianzhong (1606-46), a native of Shaanxi province, captured Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, and declared himself emperor in 1644. When a rival army approached Chengdu in 1646, Zhang deserted the city planning to move to neighboring Hubei province.

Local chronicles show Zhang and his troops were ambushed in the Minjiang River by Yang Zhan, who set Zhang's boats on fire. The boats, which contained treasure, sank.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, silver was found on the shores of the Minjiang River from time to time, which was believed to come from Zhang's boats.

Building a water diversion project for Pengshan, then a county, in 2005, excavators found a hollowed-out log with seven silver ingots from a site about 2.5 meters below the surface of the riverbed.

In 2011, workers found substantial amounts of gold and silver items and coins while digging sand for construction purposes.

"The discovery prompted people wishing to strike it rich to dig the river course," said Li Keqi, a resident of Pengshan.

"About five or six years ago, many people with metal detectors were found wantonly exploring the riverbed," she said.

In October last year, police in Meishan announced that after a more than one-year investigation, they had found 10 gangs of illegal relic diggers and nine illegal relic trading networks involving 70 people who had traded more than 300 million yuan ($44 million) worth of relics from the riverbed.

"One single gold seal in the shape of a tiger, which was believed to have belonged to Zhang Xianzhong, according to its inscription, was sold for 8 million yuan," said Xu Lili, an information officer in Pengshan.
As the world faces more uncertainty, partnership between nations could provide a platform for increased understanding

As the British and Chinese governments concluded their latest strategic dialogue on Dec 20 - with both sides reaffirming their commitment to a Sino-British "golden era" amid the uncertainty created by Brexit - the world today looks very different from October 2015, when President Xi Jinping paid a high-profile state visit to the United Kingdom.

The first challenge 2016 brought to UK-China ties was Brexit, which will require the UK to develop its China policy without the benefit of a multilayered approach where objectives are pursued both bilaterally and with the support of the more influential European Union. The UK will therefore find itself on the spot more with respect to China, whether on human rights or trade policy. This might also create opportunities for Beijing.

Most attention has focused on a free trade agreement, with business voices expressing support for such a move. However, caution is in order.

An agreement that is good for the UK will involve much greater access to China's service sector, but it is not yet clear whether China is prepared to grant that. Besides, as many have pointed out, depending on the content, a UK-China agreement could constrain London in reaching an all-important future trade agreement with Brussels. Nor is it clear that it would push the EU toward its own free trade agreement with China, as Beijing might hope.

The second major factor that will hang over the agenda is uncertainty over the impact of a Donald Trump presidency in the United States. Although it is still too early to judge what strategic direction Trump will take, judging by his critical tone on the campaign trail, there is a good chance he will take a tougher line on China than his predecessor Barack Obama. We can expect more uncertain times.

This is not good for Europeans, who are wary of the next US president. Greater uncertainty and friction in US-China relations tend to heighten tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, making the regional prosperity and stability that contribute to Europe's economic security more difficult to achieve.

The UK, whose new government has reiterated its commitment to pursuing good relations with China, may find itself at the sharp end of this, especially as it concurrently looks to get the London-Washington relationship onto an even footing.

The challenges for UK policymakers can be seen in some recent mixed messages about its approach to East Asia. The British foreign secretary said in a recent talk at Chatham House that "the emerging balance of power system in Asia needs the influence of friendly countries", while there has been some lack of clarity over remarks by the UK's ambassador to the US on the possibility of the British military engaging in "freedom of navigation" operations in the South China Sea, something that would exacerbate the security dilemma in the region.

The UK, ideally working with the EU despite Brexit, should be encouraging a modus vivendi between China and the US in East Asia, on the basis of a balanced and impartial approach. London's response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road) set the right tone, demonstrating an openness to a changing world order.

The talk of a Sino-British "golden era" aside, the more significant achievement of Xi's state visit to the UK was the establishment of a comprehensive global strategic partnership.

This partnership should provide the basis for open, honest and frequent exchanges of views on the full range of global interests.

Of course, this does not mean the two governments agree on everything - far from it. But it does provide a platform for responding to the uncertainties facing the world, and for exploring reforms, to ensure the international system reflects changes in the global and regional distribution of power.

The author is a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House.

(China Daily European Weekly 01/06/2017 page12)
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...
Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity
Chinese oil giant among 29 firms to bid for tenders as a nation recovers from international sanctions

China National Petroleum Corp, one of the country's oil giants, has been invited to bid for Iran's crude and natural gas development projects as the Persian Gulf state seeks investment in energy.

CNPC, together with 28 other oil companies including Total SA, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and PJSC Gazprom, is among the international companies that have qualified to bid for tenders, according to Iran's oil ministry

If CNPC wins, the deal would be in the interests of both countries, reviving Iran's energy industry which has been hard hit by international sanctions while satisfying China, the world's second-largest economy, which has a strong demand for energy.

Iran is trying to fast-track projects to boost oil and gas production amid low prices and wants to sign agreements as soon as possible.

However, Alastair Syme, an oil analyst at Citigroup Inc in London, warns companies to be wary of investing too quickly or too much in Iran.

According to a senior engineer with CNPC, despite years of sanctions leading to a hammered economy and infrastructure, Iran, with the world's biggest natural gas reserves-estimated by BP Plc at 34 trillion cubic meters- still has significant strategic importance, with its substantial reserves of oil and gas.

Strategically located in the Middle East and sharing land borders with 15 nations, Iran also plays a crucial role in the Belt and Road Initiative as an energy hub, he says.

According to CNPC, the company has been present in Iran since 2004 and is engaged in oil and gas operations and oilfield services.

In 2009, the company signed contracts with National Iranian Oil Co to develop the North Azadegan Oilfield and Phase 11 of the South Pars gas field, which began trial production in 2015.

Iran exported 500,000 to 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day to China in 2015, and the country recently signed a $4.8 billion (4.6 billion euros; 3.9 billion) natural gas development project with CNPC and Total.

Iran aims to attract more than $100 billion in foreign investment to boost the country's energy sector. The country has doubled its exports as crude prices rallied.

Iran boosted oil output in 2016 by 870,000 barrels per day to 3.67 million bpd by November, and has reached several preliminary agreements with international companies, despite no concrete deals having been signed yet, Bloomberg says.

The country has set a target for daily output of 5.7 million bpd of crude and condensate early in the next decade, according to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 01/06/2017 page25)
January 06, 2017

New Intelligence Report Adds No Evidence Of "Russian Hacking" (Updated)

UPDATE: Up to today there is no public evidence that Russia hacked the Democratic National Council and/or released DNC material to Wikileaks. After today's new intelligence report (pdf) there is still no such evidence. (One third of the report is dedicated to criticize the Russian government's TV outlet Russia Today for criticizing Hillary Clinton. The RT viewer numbers claimed in the report are evidently false from 2012 and thereby completely irrelevant.) There are rather wild assertions and a lot of conjecture but zero facts that could be accepted as proof.

Alexi de Sadesky saz: " +  = "

End-update

When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.

The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.

The cabal consists of President Obama, the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, neoconservatves like the State Department's cookie dispenser Victoria Nuland, the Republican senators McCain and Lindsay and the military-industrial complex. (One of the few neocons planted near to Trump, former CIA director James Woolsey, threw the towel today and left the Trump transition team.)

A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. Another role has been delegated to the various military and NATO think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the British RUSI and reliable proxies within the media.

The current emphasis of the campaign is on the release of emails and papers from the Clinton campaign through Wikileaks. It is alleged that some releases were gained through hacking, planned and executed by the Russian government. Trump had announced that he plans to seek good relations with Russia, the power that the cabal had earlier chosen as the new enemy de jour.

But there is a problem. There is no real evidence that a "hack" ever happened. There is no evidence that Russia is involved. None at all.

Three cases of paper releases have to be differentiated:

The emails from Clinton's private basement mail-server were released by the State Department after various FOIA requests.

Emails from Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta were released after someone "spear phished" his Gmail password and got access to his mail box. Such spear phishing - sending an email which asks to change one's password on a faked login page - happens thousands of times each day. Naturally prominent people with publicly widely known addresses are the preferred targets of such stunts. This has nothing to do with real hacking which defeats a system's defense by manipulating computer code.

The Democratic National Council was probably hacked. "Probably" because it is still quite possible that a (murdered?) insider leaked the DNC emails and the hacking "evidence" is made up to conceal that. But even that "evidence", presented by the DNC hired company Crowdstrike, is thin.

Allegedly there were two different hacks into the DNC. One was probably harmless, the second one is said to have gained system-level access. I have found no explanation yet how the hackers of the second attack got their first entry into the DNC system. Was an administrator spear-phished? Crowdstrike's fluffy account doesn't say. But it mentions two well known tools the alleged hackers are claimed to have used: "RemCOM, an open-source replacement for PsExec available from GitHub" and "X-Agent malware with capabilities to do remote command execution, file transmission and keylogging". The X-Agent hacking suite has been known for some time and is used by several actors. It is likely also in use by other non-state and state services. All such hacking tools use freely available infrastructure like TOR or rented networks from cyber-crime wholesalers like the recently exposed Israeli denial-of-service franchiser.

The tools and the infrastructure the DNC hackers allegedly used are not evidence that points to any specific actor. Indeed any cyber-crime actor, like the NSA, seeks to disguise as a different actor when committing attacks. Something that "proves" that A did it is likely to have been created by B, C or D to disguise as A.

As no evidence exists the cabal has to rely on throwing chaff, lots of it, and on conjecture. Media who propagandize such are plenty. Keep in mind that some 95% of U.S. media backed Clinton during the campaign.

The Joint Assessment Report released (pdf) last Friday was hyped in the media. But it failed to prove hacking or any Russian involvement.

The new report released later today adds nothing but fluff to it. Selected bits of the new intelligence report are systematically "leaked" by "senior intelligence officials". Here are headlines from today that show how stupid the presented "evidence" is.

The Washington Post: U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win

A lot of people all over the world celebrated when Clinton lost - me included. So the headline above carries grains of truth. But it could have been be shortened to CIA finds, watches RT clip on Youtube:

Russia: State Duma applauds Trump's victory in US elections The Russian State Duma welcomed the news of Republican candidate Donald Trump's victory in the US Presidential elections with a round of applause from Moscow, Wednesday. Deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov announced Donald Trump as the president-elect which was greeted enthusiastically by the chamber.

So yes, the WaPo report is correct. Senior Russian officials celebrated the Trump win - publicly. Even the CIA somehow got wind of that.

Deep down the Washington Post piece also says:

The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.

How could information from some cyber operation in 2008 be relevant here? The systems existing today are hardly the same. We can assume that this is only included to disguise the lack of current proof that any hack of the DNC happened. And the "no bombshell disclosure" line is just a different way of saying: "We got nothing new. There was no real evidence before this report and there is none in it now."

Also consider this lines from a Reuters report on the new release:

Not all 17 intelligence agencies participated in preparing the assessment.

...

The report contains some of what the officials called minor footnotes about open questions and other uncertainties

Not all 17 U.S. intelligence services signed off on the report. Those who declined to be part of it will have their reasons. Footnotes to the "slam dunk" 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on alleged Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction reports got some prominence:

Not all agencies involved concurred with the NIEs conclusions. Two footnotes have come to public attention. In one, the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissented from the intelligence communitys majority view [...]. In another footnote, the U.S. Air Forces director for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance questioned [...]

Back then the "minor footnotes" caveats turned out to be correct while the "evidence" in the main report was fake and its conclusions were one big lie.

Consider also this example on how the "evidence" about the alleged DNC "hack" was gained: The FBI Now Says Democrats Were Behind Hack Investigation Delay:

The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information, a senior law enforcement official told BuzzFeed News in a statement.

The third party was Crowdstrike, a cyber-something company who's founder and Chief Technical Officer is the Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, Dmitri Alperovitch. (I fail to find biographic information about Alperovitch. Where was he born?) The Atlantic Council NATO lobby is sponsored by various foreign (Gulf) governments and defense industry companies. Crowdstrike was hired by the DNC.

The FBI statement above inspired me to write this movie plot:

In the public courtroom: Judge to FBI: "So you know who killed Mrs. Clintons Dream?" FBI: "Yes. We think Vlad did it ... evidence ..." Judge: "You found the evidence at the crime scene?" FBI: "Yes, ehem .. no. We never visited the crime scene. We were not allowed to enter it. Our assessments rely on the reports by the private investigators. The victim's family hired those."

Hollywood rejected that movie script. "Hilarious, but too implausible," they said.

Whenever there is talk of "evidence" of alleged hacking or any Russian involvement ask for real evidence. You will likely be pointed to the several (semi-)official reports and opinions that have been issued so far. But none of these reports, which I read a to z, contains any real evidence. It may be that the DNC got hacked - may be. Even if it was - the case currently presented points only to tools and methods that are known and used all over the hacking and spying scene. To say that it was a "Russian hack" is pure conjecture based on chaff and hot air.

Keep in mind who makes those "hacking" assertions and the motives and money behind them.

Posted by b on January 6, 2017 at 15:48 UTC | Permalink

Comments

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The Environmental Impact Report for the San Martin Cordoba Center Islamic mosque project is underway, and interested parties are asked to submit comments on the scope and content of the study to county planners by Jan. 23.

The EIR itself, being conducted by Santa Clara County as the lead agency, will not be complete for public review for several more months. Comments and questions currently sought by county staff relate to the EIRs Notice of Preparation, which was posted Dec. 9, 2016.

The South Valley Islamic Community, based in San Martin, applied for the project early last year. The project, proposed at a 16-acre undeveloped parcel near the intersection of Monterey Road and California Avenue, would consist of a two-story, 9,000-square-foot mosque; a two-story, 14,500-square-foot multipurpose building; a four-acre Islamic cemetery; a one-third-acre campground; and additional support and ancillary structures, according to the countys NOP document.

The Cordoba Center is intended to provide a central religious and cultural center for the multi-ethnic Muslim population in Southern Santa Clara County, the countys notice states.

The purpose of an EIR is to analyze all potential impacts of a project to its surrounding environment and community, according to county staff. These include potential impacts to groundwater, traffic, wildlife, air quality, noise and other categories. The EIR will also make suggestions on how to mitigate any potentially significant impacts, and consider alternatives to the project.

There are about 400 members of the SVIC, according to the countys notice. Based on this estimate, maximum attendance at weekly religious and cultural events, such as Friday Prayers, to be held at the Cordoba Center is generally anticipated to be 300 individuals per event, the NOP continues. Occasionally, for larger annual events such as the Eid holiday prayers and community picnics, attendance at the Cordoba Center could reach up to 500 individuals per event.

Events and regularly scheduled activities would occur between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., primarily on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The site would be open to SVIC members to worship at all times, the countys notice reads.

The Cordoba Center has generated ongoing skepticism from South County residents who fear the project will be significantly larger than typical existing commercial or religious uses in the rural, unincorporated town of San Martin.

Next door to the Cordoba Center is proposed the Patel RV Park, also on an undeveloped parcel. This project would add a 124-stall RV park to the property. This project is also working its way through the countys planning process, and a community meeting on the proposal is scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 6 at the South County Office building, 80 W. Highland Ave.

Some San Martin residents are concerned that having the Cordoba Center and Patel RV Park operating simultaneously right next to each other will impact the area more than the roads and infrastructure can handle.

County staff have said the EIR and planning reviews of these projects will determine if that is the case, and recommend solutions to the impacts if necessary.

Comments on the Cordoba Center NOP must be submitted to the county by 5 p.m. Jan. 23. Comments can be sent, emailed or telephoned to County of Santa Clara County Department of Planning and Development, Attention: Jim Reilly, County Government Center, 70 West Hedding Street, San Jose, CA 95110; phone at (408) 299-5799; or email [email protected].
Reckless vehicle

Police cited a teen driver for speed contest when a witness reported his Subaru and another vehicle speeding in the area of Main Avenue and Monterey Road. The recklessness was reported 8:17 p.m. Dec. 30.

Robbery

Two suspects, described as black males, ran up to two female victims in front of Starbucks, 1041 Cochrane Road, grabbed their purses and fled the scene. The suspects fled into a gray sedan and left the area. The contents of the purses, stolen by the thieves, included a cell phone, credit cards, cash and about $500 worth of gift cards. The crime was reported 9:23 p.m. Dec. 30.

Domestic violence

Police arrested a woman who was fighting with a man outside the Chevron gas station, 825 E. Dunne Ave. A witness called police to report the couple physically fighting about 10:55 p.m. Dec. 30.

Petty theft

Someone stole a roll of scratcher lottery tickets from the 7-Eleven store, 295 W. Main Ave. The suspect grabbed the book of about 60 scratchers, worth $5 each, from the counter and ran out the door. The crime was reported 1:16 p.m. Dec. 31.

Fraud

A male victim said his credit card was stolen the night he was arrested at a Morgan Hill hotel in September 2016. The man said someone charged about $730 to his Target Mastercard without his authorization. The crime was reported 1:38 p.m. Dec. 29.

Auto burglary

A thief or thieves broke the door handle on a Ford Ranger and entered the vehicle before stealing about $5,000 worth of tools and clothing from inside. The vehicle was parked at a business on Butterfield Boulevard. The crime was reported 8:25 a.m. Jan. 2.

DUI accident

One driver was arrested on suspicion of DUI after causing a three-car collision at the intersection of Butterfield Boulevard and Tennant Avenue. The allegedly impaired driver of a Toyota pickup rear-ended a convertible Ford Mustang, which in turn rear-ended a Honda SUV. No significant injuries were reported. The accident was reported 9:17 a.m. Jan. 2.

All subjects are innocent until proven guilty. Information is compiled from public records.
On Jan. 4, www.msn.com featured its Trivia Day: 50 Facts We Bet You Dont Know, and I have to admit most of them I didnt know. So, I took what I thought were the most unusual, interesting or just plain old-fashioned knee-slappers and compiled my own list.

The first one that caught my eye was that a dogs nose print is like a human fingerprint  no two are alike. So, this makes my little dachshund, Morgan, little beagle, Molly, and two boxers, Gabe and Ali, unique, which, of course, I already knew. Those cold snouts against my cheek have always told me how very special each one was.

This one I particularly loved because Charlie Chaplin was my Dads favorite: Charlie Chaplin once participated in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest in a San Francisco theater. Imagine Charlies surprise when he didnt win! I wonder what he thought when he saw the winner.

For the English masters of our madcap language, dreamt is the only word that ends with the letters MT. I have to admit I didnt know how to spell it at first and wanted to put a P somewhere in there but that could be due to my New York accent.

For those wondering how many blood vessels an average human body has, the answer is the equivalent of 60,000 miles, which would stretch the entire earth if you laid them out end to end (not recommended).

While a polar bears fur is actually transparent and holds no color, the goldfish, although gold as it name implies, has a memory span of only 3 seconds. At 69, I can relate to the goldfish during those times when Im in the kitchen trying to figure out why Im there.

Heres one that left me scratching my head and wondering why someone would think of trying this feat. If an electric current is applied to a pickle, the pickle will glow in the dark. Thats amazing, but I honestly cant think of any scenario where one would want a glowing pickle in or out of the dark.

Considered by many in his time to be a mad man and a failure, Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime. I found it very sad that he lived his life never knowing that his 850 oils and more than 1,000 watercolor portraits are considered to be among the most valuable in the world.

Im always fascinated with anything having to do with Winston Churchill, so I enjoyed learning that Churchill was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the U.S. during his lifetime. There have been eight in total, but only Churchill and Mother Teresa were alive to receive the honor.

On the political front, did you know that the 13th President of the U.S., Millard Fillmore, was elected via the Whig Party? After the last mud-slinging election, are some of you secretly thinking, Bring the Whigs back?

Since the Academy Awards are coming up in February, and organizers will be trying fervently and hopelessly to try and shorten the tedious three-hour spectacle, I thought you might want to know that the first Oscar ceremony took place in 1929, lasted only 15 minutes, and had only 270 viewers. All the fashion critics lining the red carpet would be out of work if Hollywood stuck with that program and, sadly, we would never know who is wearing who.

Travelers may want to know that Lake Hilliers water in Australia boasts bubblegum pink in color due to algae or bacteria. Although its not the only pink water spot in the world, its the only one whose water stays pink when taken out of the lake (pretty, but not sure Id want to drink it).

Seeming like the proverbial cart before the horse in making life easier, I thought it was interesting that lighters were invented in 1823 by a German chemist  three years before the first matchstick materialized in 1826.

And for all those who love to don pirate costumes on Halloween, Ill bet you didnt know that pirates didnt wear eyepatches as a fashion accessory or to hide a missing eye but rather to see properly below and above decks. Aargh!

Check out the MSN website for the rest of the trivia and enjoy.

Peg DeMarco can be reached at pegdemarco@earthlink.net.
The body of a Morganton man was found by police in a heavily wooded area near downtown Morganton on Wednesday evening.

Quinton S. Kenan, 50, of Eastview Street in Morganton, was found by police near Hunting Creek in a heavily wooded area between Eastview Street and East Fleming Drive in Morganton, according to a press release from Morganton Department of Public Safety.

The body was found around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday evening about 400 feet northeast from Kenans residence . An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of death, the release said.

Kenan was reported missing on Jan. 2 at 9 p.m. by an aunt who lives in Georgia, the release said.

According to the reporting party, an aunt of Kenan, became concerned when (she) hadnt heard from her nephew since Christmas, the release said.

The aunt spoke with authorities by phone and asked for them to check his welfare, the release said. The last reported contact with him was around Dec. 26.

Kenans aunt also stated another relative had recently brought food by (his) residence on Eastview Street but had not made contact with him, the release said.

Investigators with MDPS were in the area of Eastview Street conducting a follow-up investigation into the missing person report. O fficers f ollow ed up on Kenan's possible location and spoke with neighbors on Jan. 3 , the release said.

Investigators requested assistance in checking the wooded area around Eastview Street, but had little reason to believe that Kenan would be in the wooded area. As a precaution they decided to conduct a grid search, the release said.

The deceased male, matching Kenans description, was located approximately 400 feet northeast from Kenans residence, the release said.

Investigators processed the area and requested assistance from the Burke County Medical Examiners Office, who responded to the scene and assisted with the investigation, the release said.

Responding agencies were Morganton Department of Public Safety, Burke County Fire Marshal's Office and Burke County Rescue Squad.
Shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu won his bid for re-election as prime minister of Israel in March 2015, I wrote a column describing President Barack Obama as being "on track to go down as more hostile toward Israel than any president in the past 68 years." I warned that President Obama was so anti-Netanyahu that administration officials were signaling the president might change U.S. votes at the United Nations Security Council, "perhaps not opposing U.N. resolutions condemning the Jewish state on settlements and other issues," for example. Those words proved prophetic last week when the U.S. abstained from voting on a resolution condemning Israel for its settlement activity while giving only lip service to condemnation of terrorist activity against Israel and its citizens. That Obama waited until the 11th hour of his presidency to seek revenge against Israel for not bending to his ambition to broker peace speaks volumes not just about his anti-Israel instincts but about his self-serving ambition to curry favor with the left, U.S.-Israel relations and even the Democratic Party's future support from the pro-Israel community be damned.

First let's be clear: The U.N. resolution and the support for it is not really about settlement policy. Israel, under successive governments, has had an on-again, off-again policy on building settlements in disputed territory, which has had little effect on the prospects for a comprehensive peace deal. The only true peace treaty negotiated with any of the countries that fought in the 1967 war was the Camp David Accords, agreed to by Israel and Egypt in 1978. With the signing of the accords at a White House ceremony that I was privileged to attend, Israel returned land seized in Sinai from Egypt and dismantled settlement there in 1982. In 2005, Israel dismantled all settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank.

In return, Israel has been the target of repeated Palestinian terrorist attacks against its citizens  and Palestinians have refused to negotiate in good faith. From September 2015 through November 2016, 42 people were killed by terrorists in Israel and another 602 wounded. Israeli restraint in the face of such unbridled viciousness is remarkable. Although peace talks have occurred under the auspices of the United States and other nations, it's the Palestinians' balking at accepting demands that Israel have the right to exist that has been the main impediment, not refusal of Israel to cede some land acquired in the 1967 war. Clearly, the fate of Jerusalem has been a stumbling block for both sides, but if the Palestinians and the Arab world in general were not so hostile to the very existence of a Jewish state, peace would have been possible by now.

The very notion that Palestinians have a right to land over which they have never in history exerted control seems a stretch, but it's one that much of the world, including the U.S. under both Democratic and Republican presidents, has accepted at face value. Prior to World War I, the people we now call Palestinians  and others in what are now the disputed territories  lived under Ottoman rule, along with all Jordanians. After Allied forces defeated the Ottomans in WWI, the League of Nations created the British mandate over the area, empowering Britain to establish a "Jewish national homeland" while respecting the rights of the resident Arab population. Winston Churchill, who was then Britain's colonial secretary, divided the lands under British control, giving the country's Hashemite Arab allies the East Bank of the Jordan River to establish the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1922.

In November 1947, the U.N. voted to partition the remaining territory to establish two states, a Jewish Israel and an Arab Palestine. It was the Arabs' refusal to accept the establishment of any Jewish state in the territories that began what has now been a nearly 70-year stalemate on the creation of a Palestinian state. That recalcitrance has been marked by a complete refusal to make real peace, interspersed with wars against Israel by its neighbors in 1948, 1967 and 1973, as well as a continuous campaign of terrorism against the Jewish state and its citizens.

With a new administration taking office in Washington on Jan. 20, one can only hope that the U.S. will do more to tackle the real obstacles to peace in the disputed territories by pressuring the Palestinians at least as hard as the Israelis. A two-state solution is possible only if both parties are equally committed to living side by side peacefully, and so far, the Palestinians have yet to prove they are.

Linda Chavez is the author of "An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal." To find out more about Linda Chavez, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The 2017 Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival kicks off on Thursday and runs to the end of February.[Photo/Xinhua]

Artists put the final touches on a dazzling display of ice sculptures in China's northern city of Harbin on Wednesday, home to one of the world's biggest ice and snow festivals.

The 2017 Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival kicks off on Thursday and runs to the end of February.

The event, in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, draws visitors from all over China as well as foreign tourists to one of the country's coldest places, where winter temperatures can fall to minus 35 Celsius.

Qing Wenyu, a tourist from the southern Guangxi region, was among the travellers getting a sneak peak at the sculptures mostly carved out of ice blocks cut from the frozen surface of a nearby river.

"When I was in primary school, I read about how it snows in the northern part of our country in a textbook. So this has really attracted me to this place for some 10 years or so," said Qing after taking a ride down an ice slide.

Nearby, artists laboured over their icy creations, some of which resembled famous historical figures and landmarks such as Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Work on the ice carvings begins in mid-December, with some projects rising as high as a two- or three-storey building, the festival's official website said.

In addition to the sculptures, Harbin offers visitors a slew of activities, ranging from winter swimming and ice sailing to a mass wedding ceremony on ice that attracts couples from around the globe.

Zhang Yanyan, a 31-year-old tourist from southern Fujian province, said she was drawn to the colourful lights that illuminate the ice sculptures at night.

"I think they're all beautiful. I really like it here," she said.
All this week, Morningstar.co.uk will be bringing you a Guide to Investment Ideas for 2017; stock picks, market reactions and political forecasts from the investment professionals.

Emerging markets and commodity funds were among the top five best performing last year, data from Morningstar Direct showed. 2016 was a turnaround year for both sectors  in they were the worst performing funds and sectors. What caused the change in fortune? The rally in commodity prices was a significant tailwind, as was the greater economic and political stability in China.

The Bronze Rated JP Morgan Natural Resources fund and the Gold Rated BlackRock Gold and General fund took first and second place among the best performing top-rated funds in 2016, gaining 80.8% and 78.7%. In third place was the Neptune Russia & Greater Russia fund, which gained 71.3% and is Bronze Rated.

The Silver Rated First State Global Resources fund came in fourth among the top rated funds with 69.9% gains, and the Bronze Rated Aberdeen Latin America Equity fund came fifth with 62.9% gains.

Investors Fail to Back the Right Funds

Historical fund flow data often suggests investors are slow to spot turnaround funds  investing only after a period of outperformance. This can be said for investors appetite for emerging market funds in 2016  while the sector recorded inflows, it was less than 10% of the money that have left the sector the previous year. Data from Morningstar Direct shows that global emerging markets funds recorded 81 million inflows last year, in 2015 the sector saw 1 billion outflows.

Investor confidence in emerging markets grew towards the second half of the year 2016. In July and October, the sector saw 190 million and 175 million respectively, the largest inflows since November 2014.

Investors were slow to ride the precious metal rally too  as the sector saw low inflows of 154 million from January to November 2016. Sector equity natural resources recorded slight outflows of 1 million over the same period.

Investors shunned outperformer Russia as the sector recorded 5 million outflows from January to November 2016 while Latin America Equity saw 6 million inflows over the same period of time.

What Do the Analysts Say?

The 2016 best performing fund Bronze Rated JP Morgan Natural Resources is a compelling offering within the resources space for investors who understand its risks and distinct features, says Morningstar fund analyst Fatima Khizou.

The fund manager Neil Gregson has run this fund since February 2012. Khizou said Gregson is a capable manager who shares the funds long-held philosophy and is able to add value over the long term.

Over most of Gregsons tenure, a weak period for resources stocks, the fund has lost more than its comparative Euromoney Global Mining & Energy Index and the sector equity natural resources Morningstar Category, mainly because of its structural small and mid-cap bias.

However, the funds longer-term track record using the same approach is solid, and such a loss is of little surprise during a down period, Khizou added.

The fund is also relatively cheap, with an ongoing charge of 1.68% which is below the category median. Fund flows data from Morningstar Direct showed that in the month of November 2016, the fund saw 25 million inflows.

BlackRock Gold and General is Gold Rated by Morningstar analysts. Khizou believes this fund remains a strong offering for investors seeking mainstream gold and precious-metals equity exposure in a risk-controlled manner.

Evy Hambro has been fund manager since April 2009. Hambro brings a wealth of experience to this fund and has proved over time that he is a talented portfolio manager who is supported by a well-resourced team with significant expertise and a co-manager, Tom Holl.

The investment process remained unchanged under the new comanager structure. The long-term record indicates Hambro has been successful in adding value by applying the outcome of the teams detailed commodity and company analysis in a risk- and liquidity-aware manner.

The fund is also not overly expensive; its 1.92% ongoing charge is in line with the category median. The fund saw 8 million inflows the month of November 2016.

Russia and Latin America

The third best performing fund in 2016, Bronze Rated Neptune Russia & Greater Russia continues to benefit from a seasoned manager and his pragmatic approach, said Morningstar fund analyst Lena Tsymbaluk.

This fund benefits from a veteran investor with 30 years experience in Russian equities, Robin Geffen, said Tsymbaluk.

Geffen has historically preferred Russias domestically oriented sectors, rather than energy. The significant underexposure to energy was a costly decision in 2011, while the domestically oriented positioning contributed positively in 2013. Nonetheless, Geffens long-term track record remains strong, said Tsymbaluk.

Over the past 10 years, the fund has returned an average of 2.26%, ahead of both the benchmark and the index. Some years have seen significant gains; 116% in 2009 and 34% in 2010, but other years have recorded significant losses such as 28% in 2011 and 47% in 2014.

The funds ongoing charge of 2% is lower than its category median of 2.27%. In November 2016, the fund saw 1 million inflows the month alone.

The Silver Rated First State Global Resources fund remains a high-quality way to invest in resources-related equities, said Khizou. The fund manager Joanne Warner has been lead manager since 2006.

The long-term track record remains solid and is significantly ahead of the Sector Equity Natural Resources Morningstar Category average, said Khizou. The manager seeks to identify attractive long-term investment opportunities through detailed company research. The funds 1.67% ongoing charge is well below the category median. In November 2016, the fund saw 11 million inflows the month alone.

The fifth best performing of the year Bronze Rated Aberdeen Latin America Equity continues to benefit from the consistent and sensible approach undertaken by a stable and experienced team which has resulted in a strong long-term track record, said Tsymbaluk.

Tsymbaluk said one of this funds strengths lies in the team approach and the depth of the analytical resource of Aberdeens 18-strong global emerging-markets team, which is headed by seasoned investor Devan Kaloo. The team invests for the long term and pays little attention to the benchmark when constructing the portfolio. The funds ongoing charge, at 2.03%, is in line with the Morningstar Category median of 2.11%. In November 2016, the fund saw 4 million outflows.
British-Chinese and East Asian actors, including Harry Potter actress Katie Leung, along with other members of the theater community, have condemned a London venue for setting a play in China with Chinese characters but an apparently all-white cast.

Katie Leung plays a role in Harry Potter movies. [China Daily]

The Print Room in Notting Hill is showing In the Depths of Dead Love by Howard Barker this month, a play set in ancient China that is about Chinese people and that features characters with Chinese names, such as Mrs Hu and Chin.

The production does not seem to feature a single actor of Chinese or East-Asian descent.

"The allusions are intended to signify 'not here, not now, not in any actual real 'where' and the production, set, costumes and dialogue follow this cue of 'no place'," the company said in a media statement.

But David Tse, creative director of London-based British East Asian performance company Chinese Arts Space told China Daily: "This is a clear example of institutional racism, the Print Room probably didn't even think about casting actors of East Asian origin and it didn't occur to them how of ensive the play would be. If blackface is unacceptable then why should yellowface casting be any different?"

Yellowface casting is the derogatory term used to describe Caucasian actors assuming Chinese or Asian roles.

British-born Chinese actor KC Li from Manchester said opportunities for British-Chinese and East Asians are already scarce. "Yellowface and whitewashing is wrong but people tend to turn a blind eye to it," Li said. "Until someone takes a stand and fights our corner higher up in the industry, nothing is going to change," Li said.

The 35-year-old male actor added: "The Print Room is in London where it is full of British East Asian performance companies, such as Chinese Arts Space and Yellow Earth, so there is no excuse to not use actors of Chinese or East Asian descent."

A protest against the Print Room has been planned for Jan 19. It is being organized by director Andrew Keates, who said East-Asian performers were "woefully underrepresented in our industry", adding that the use of Caucasian actors was "unacceptable and racist".

The West London theater apologized in the statement for any offence caused and claimed In the Depths of Dead Love is "a very English play".

It added that the play is not a Chinese play and that the characters are not Chinese.

"The production references a setting in ancient China and the characters' names are Chinese. These are literary allusions in Howard Barker's fable and never intended to be taken literally."

But critics were unimpressed with the venue's explanation saying the "theatre showed that it does not comprehend what yellowface and racial erasure mean and have made no effort to show any empathy to the community they have affronted".

"If the play is mythical and not real, then why not set it in a fictitious land based in England?" Tse said. "The theatre's nonsense excuse reflects very badly on the production."
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

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Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
Sir David EastwoodVice Chancellor at the University of Birminghamshakes hands with Professor Ning Bin, President of Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) during the signing ceremony in Beijing on Jan 5, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The vice chancellor at the University of Birmingham says the UK will see major benefits from China's expertise as the country plans to build its own high-speed network, better known as HS2.

"High-speed network we are building in the UK, the first stage of that will go from London to Birmingham. So Birmingham will play a critical role in the development of UK's high-speed network," said Vice-Chancellor Sir David Eastwood. "Also, the UK government last year has confirmed that it will set up a high speed rail college to train many of the talents in Birmingham."

This comes as the University of Birmingham has renewed an agreement with Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) on Thursday in Beijing, aiming to develop new technology for building safer and more efficient railways.

Both universities will continue their successful partnership and strengthen educational links that will allow Chinese rail engineering students to study at Birmingham, benefiting from the University's expertise, particularly in railway control and safety.

"This agreement with Beijing Jiaotong University marks the start of even closer cooperation on railway research," said Professor Sir David Eastwood. "What we are looking forward to is a golden age in the collaboration between our two universities."

Professor Ning Bin, President of BJTU, joined Sir David Eastwood to sign the agreement at a special ceremony in Beijing.

"Our partnership will strengthen co-operation between two of the UK and China's best railway research and education institutions. It will demonstrate best practice between universities and enterprises in promoting technology transfer," added Professor Ning.

Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCCRE) is a world leader in railway research and education, whilst BJTU is a prestigious Chinese university with a particular strength in railway engineering.
With Donald Trump scheduled to take office as the 45th President of the United States in a few weeks, tensions and uncertainty are running high among global financial marketsand Canadians need to brace themselves for the unpredictable currents of the erstwhile tycoons regime, an analyst cautioned.In a January 4 contribution for HuffPost Business Canada, mortgage professional Atrina Kouroshnia stated that Trumps appointment of Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn as the director of the White House National Economic Council will make waves in the global financial system, especially considering that Sachs stock has grown by 30 per cent.This move is relevant to Canada and our housing market insofar as the strength of the U.S. dollar affects us in myriad ways. If the American economy continues to react positively, a stronger U.S. dollar could send even more buyers north of the border, Kouroshnia said.Since Trump's win, the U.S. dollar hit an 11-month peak, she added. In Canada, our aptly named Loonie has been left trembling as Canada holds its breath to see if Trump's stance on free trade holds. If so, the Loonie could plunge even further below its counterpart.But while this might spell less than good tidings for Canadians purchasing power, Kouroshnia noted that a weaker loonie along with Trumps outspokenness on racial issues would make Canadian real estate more enticing for American investors.Canada's welcoming, tolerant stance in the face of Trump's increasingly [insular] sentiments could provide a breath of fresh air for our American neighbours, she explained. With a strong U.S. dollar, even the 15 per cent non-resident tax is not proving to be much of a concern for our friends south of the border.
New rules implemented by the Chinese government on those who are looking to exchange for yuans into foreign currencies might lead to a noticeable slowdown in the Canadian housing market, in which overseas investors are now playing a major part.Beginning this month, mainland authorities will now be requiring documents providing details on the reasons for currency conversion, and when the money will be used. Improper use of the converted funds (e.g. the purchase of a residential property) will entail stiff penalties such as being banned from exchanging money, The Globe and Mail reported.The stricter guidelines represent the culmination of the Chinese governments months-long effort to moderate the outbound flow of funds, which has massively depleted its foreign reserves over the past few years.Economist Andy Xie warned that the regulatory revision will lead to a sharp decline in housing markets dependent on foreign capital like Canadaa dangerous proposition when one of the nations erstwhile hottest cities (Vancouver) has already reached peak sales volume and prices in spring 2016.However, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver president Dan Morrison said that it will still take some time until the effects of this development become apparent.There are so many factors in the housing market, Morrison stated. Vancouver is not a homogeneous market. Some people want to point to one easy problem or one easy solution, and there is no such thing.
Rent Trends Helping Lenders; Surprising New Fraud Issue; Pent-Up Demand

This month for me includes Texas (a few times), Maryland, Northern California, and Colorado (a few times). It can be cold out there! So far the mood seems to be good, with some purchase-focused originators not displeased with rates whatsoever. (At least we dont work for Sears. It is closing 150 stores and selling its Craftsman tool brand.) But speaking of states, California legislative leaders announced they've enlisted a lawyer who knows a little something about federal government to help fend off "potential challenges from the incoming Trump administration. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will lead a team of lawyers from Covington & Burling in California's fight against potential Republican attacks on the state's policies.

In fraud news... What's this? An attorney involved in a fraud scheme? Once again bad news makes the press versus all the good work being done in residential lending. And then the Department of Justice put out word about a former newspaper publisher, mortgage broker, title agent and other individuals being charged federally for their participation in a $10 million mortgage fraud scheme.

Speaking of fraud, here's a new one: home buyers claim they'll be renting out the home even though they actually intend to occupy it as their home. Apparently by doing so fraudsters can then claim "expected" rental income in satisfying the mortgage application debt/income requirement.

While we're talking about rent, and trends in rent that help lenders...

The National Rental Home Council published a new report that establishes recommended best practices for defining, calculating and reporting key financial and operational disclosure metrics for the single-family rental industry. This report will help public and private markets better understand the single-family rental industry's performance and valuation measures and improve the consistency and transparency of information across the industry. The resulting document provides "best practices" for calculating and reporting portfolio, leasing, income and asset value metrics, with a non-binding recommendation that industry participants adopt these best practices to facilitate consistency and comparability across companies throughout the sector. This report is the second released by the NRHC in collaboration with Green Street Advisors' Advisory and Consulting Group. An in-depth primer on the SFR industry was released in June 2016.

The rent and homeownership trends began several months ago, and remains near historic lows. The Q3 2016 homeownership rate rose 0.6 percentage points to 63.5 percent (non-seasonally adjusted), per data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey. The number of owner households grew by 922,000, while the number of renter households fell by 606,000. It was the largest quarter-over-quarter increase in the number of owner households since Q3 2001, and the number of owner households is now at its highest level since Q4 2010.

An encouraging quarterly uptick in the homeownership rate in Q3, and a close examination of its core driving factors, suggests the decade-long streak of annual homeownership declines may be on the cusp of reversing.

Household growth in Q3 was driven by newly minted homeowner households. In the quarter, the number of owner households grew by 922,000 while the number of renter households fell by 606,000. It was the largest quarter-over-quarter increase in the number of owner households since Q3 2001, and the number of owner households is now at its highest level since Q4 2010. Compared to a year ago, however, renters are still driving household formation: The number of renter households was up by 628,000 (1.5 percent) since Q3 2015, while the number of owner households was up 561,000 (0.8 percent).

Astute LOs will point out that Hispanics were the only racial/ethnic group to experience an increase in homeownership in Q3 compared to last year. The Hispanic homeownership rate rose 0.9 percentage points compared to Q3 2015 (to 47 percent); the homeownership rate for non-Hispanic whites was flat at 71.9 percent. The homeownership rate fell 1.1 percentage points and 0.4 percentage points year-over-year for African Americans and Asians, respectively (to 47 percent for blacks and 53.3 percent for Asians).

Across major regions, the homeownership rate continued to fall in the pricy, booming and supply-constrained West, falling 0.5 percentage points year-over-year in Q3 to 58.2 percent in Q3. Homeownership is also down year-over-year in the South, standing at 65 percent at the end of Q3, down 0.4 percentage point from last year. The homeownership rate was stable year-over-year in the Northeast, at 60.8 percent, and up 0.5 percentage point in the Midwest (68.6 percent).

Where are they going to live? Some forecasts suggest that the suburbs are in, but as we know low mortgage rates have gone away. Various real estate entities have weighed in with their prognostications for the 2017 housing market. Most observers expect home sales and prices to moderate in the coming year. They say suburbs will make a comeback while the days of low mortgage rates are over. Of course, much depends on the actions of the new administration. And if there are any properties for sale.

Home prices are shrugging off the surge in mortgage rates - for now. Home prices leapt in November, a sign that the jump in mortgage rates hasn't yet hobbled the housing market. The massive mortgage rates move started after the election, so its true impact on demand won't be clear until December or later.

For one CoreLogic thinks that home price growth will slow in 2017. In November, home prices increased 7.1% YoY. The index was also 1.1% higher than October's revised figure. Looking ahead, forecasts suggest that prices will only rise 4.7% YoY in November 2017, a reflection of the impact rising interest rates will have on the housing market.

Going back a bit, the trend is obvious. The MBA's Chart of the Week for October 23rd highlights mortgage originations history and forecast. The MBA is predicting that home purchase originations will increase next year as the US housing market picks up even more based upon steady demand and expansions in inventory. In 2016, it's anticipated that purchase mortgage originations will reach $905 billion, which would be a ten percent increase from 2015. The expected rise in rates may result in a one-third decline in refinance originations, for a total volume of $415 billion for 2016. On net, mortgage originations will decline to $1.32 trillion next year from $.145 trillion in 2015. The MBA is already predicating mortgage purchase originations for 2017 at $978 billion and refinance originations of $331 billion, for a total of $1.31 trillion.

Talk about pent-up demand for housing: 40% of young adults (ages 18-34) were living with their parents in 2015, which is a 75 year high. "The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies." Housing starts have basically kept pace with household formation, but are unprepared if these people suddenly decide to move out. Where are they going to find the inventory to buy, even if they wanted to?

Sure enough, at the other end of the aging process, housing is not adequate for the increasingly old Boomer population. The baby boom generation over the age of 65 will grow to 79 million, from 48 million, in the next 20 years. An aging population will mean increased demand for affordable, accessible housing over the next two decades that isn't available in the current market.

How about that sweet rally yesterday? Unfortunately, volatility is not the friend of anyone in capital markets, and therefore the owners of their companies in terms of earnings. Volatility detracts from earnings in secondary marketing... and in the primary markets as well as LOs and borrowers regret locking in a rate. Yesterday the 10-year T-note saw its largest one-day gain in six months despite a strong showing from December's ISM Services. The ADP Employment Change was weaker than expected. Interestingly Thursday saw retail mortgage volumes return to pre-holiday levels with Tradeweb indicating well above average volumes. By the time the proverbial dust had settled, the 10-year note improved .75, and the 5-year and agency MBS prices .375-.50, depending on type and coupon.

But that was so... yesterday. This morning we've already digested the November trade balance ($45.2 billion) of little consequence, and the employment data for December: Non-farm Payrolls +156k but with a back-month revision higher, hourly earnings +.4%, and the unemployment rate was 4.7%. Coming up are the November Factory Orders numbers, also typically of little consequence. In the early going we find the 10-year at 2.37% and agency MBS prices worse .125 versus last night.



Jobs and Announcements

Turning to jobs, National MI is searching for a Sales Account Manager who will reside in New England and is responsible for promoting the sale of National MI products, services and programs to clients through a consultative selling approach via personal sales calls and email/phone contact. This individual will also assist in sourcing new business from originators, and will manage the relationships of specific clients by serving as a customer advocate, educator, and loan issue problem-solver. Experience in client relationship management and training is imperative, and strong research, process improvement, and presentation skills are required. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, National MI is a U.S.-based, private mortgage insurer enabling low down payment borrowers to realize homeownership. For the complete job posting, see National MI's careers page.

In DTC job news, "Come Grow with Military Direct Mortgage! Based outside of Hartford CT, Military Direct Mortgage is excited to announce that it is opening a second call center in Dallas, TX. If you are an experienced Direct to Consumer Loan Originator and want to work for a dynamic, growing company with excellent salary, benefits and unlimited commission potential. Please send your resume to Alex Halisky, or for applicants on the East Coast send your resume to Patti White.

In San Diego job news, a full-service retail only mortgage banker is seeking experienced loan officers that want to move their business upward in 2017. Under the leadership of a producing Branch Manager that closed over 500 units and $200 million in personal production in 2017 and over 130 million in 2015 & 2014; let us mentor and guide you on how to grow your business using our successful model and resources. With a full staff whose expertise is second to none, let us share with you our streamlined process that allows you to consistently close in 21 days or less. We are your game changer! Please submit confidential inquiries/resumes to me; please specify opportunity and excuse any delays in response due to travel.

"Sistar Mortgage is trying to hire loan officers in 26 states and operations team members in Michigan. "Sistar's philosophy rests directly with minimizing cost and maximizing investment. Buying a home is easy when you start with Sistar. Sistar Mortgage is licensed in 26 states. We work face-to-face with borrowers to pre-qualify you, verify the credit and property aspects of the loan, and make sure you are protected in all areas of the transaction. We can help you make sense out of your credit and offer tips on improving it. Our experienced staff has worked hard since our founding to provide loans in all 26 states, all while building a winning team of professionals who have found a BETTER WAY of working in the mortgage industry. Our constant growth and expansion is a testament of our achievement in this regard." Contact SistarMortgage with confidential resumes or inquiries.

AmCap Mortgage, a Houston-based privately held national mortgage banker with 75 branches and licensed in 32 states, has a new chief operating officer: Michael Goldman. Previously, Mike Johnson held the titles of both COO and president. Goldman will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of AmCap Mortgage, which has about 800 employees, services its own loans and expects to fund about $3 billion in residential mortgages in 2017.

And congrats to Chad Farmer who has been promoted to CEO of Homeowners Mortgage Enterprises Inc., a full-service mortgage company serving 18 states, replacing Jim MacLeod. Most recently, Farmer was senior vice president, correspondent services sales manager for Homeowners Mortgage Enterprises.

On the flip side of the good personnel developments comes news that North Carolina's Wyndham Capital Mortgage recently laid off 78 staff members as part of an effort to "appropriately align" the company's operations with the current market conditions. The cuts represented 21 percent of its staff. "Wyndham Capital Mortgage, Inc. is well-positioned to continue to operate as one of the best online direct-to-consumer mortgage companies in the country."
Alliance for full Acceptance chosen to benefit from 5% Day at Whole Foods
Spooky sites Fall is the season of holiday spectacle in Moorpark. In December, of course, Pinedale Road transforms into Candy Cane Lane and dazzles visitors with Santa splendor. But for those who...

Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at...

Teens face high stakes in the Oval Office A press room befitting Americas commander in chief was set up inside the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Journalists and others gathered inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all...
On the last day of 2016, American International Group successfully sold United Guaranty Corporation to Arch Capital Group Limited. The intended sale was announced in August, according to Business Wire.

We are pleased to complete the sale of UGC, said Peter D. Hancock, president and CEO of AIG. With this transaction, AIG has taken another step in simplifying our organization to become a leaner, more focused insurance company committed to our vision of being our clients most valued insurer. We believe UGC and the outstanding professionals who work there have gained a strong partner in Arch to continue to grow and facilitate home ownership for consumers and provide valuable and necessary protection to mortgage lenders.

AIG is a global leader in life and mortgage insurance and other products. UGC is the top primary mortgage insurance company in the nation, with $184.6 billion in insurance force as of Sept. 30 last year, active relationships to almost 1,700 customers and around 1,000 employees.


Courtesy Photo

Grande Communications employee philanthropy group Grande Cares recently announced that the it has reached a significant milestone of giving back a total of $3 million dollars to the local community.

Grande Cares and its offshoot Grande Employee Memorial Scholarship fund (GEMS) has provided grants to such agencies as Casa de Amigos, Big Brothers Big Sisters, MARC, Habitat for Humanity and the Midland College Foundation among many others.
New members inducted into Institute of ...
Daytona Beach city leaders want to revitalize the downtown riverfront area to increase foot traffic.

Daytona Beach applying for a $400,00 grant

Grant would add landscaping, park benches and other amenities for riverfront

Part of multi-million dollar master plan for revitalization

That increase would help merchants like 37-year-old RJ Murray.

Murray co-owns Three Brothers Boards, a paddle board business on Beach Street in downtown Daytona Beach. He says business along beach street is slow this time of year.

"It's real seasonal this street. So, summer, spring, so much busier down here. So I wish we could do something to bring them here all year around," said Murray.

City leaders gave the green light this week to apply for a $400,000 grant to add landscaping, park benches and other amenities to the riverfront.

Marie Zachary, 84, has been shopping here for as long as she can remember. She says little has changed.

"The architecture itself, the building fronts, that remains the same. For as long as I can remember," said Zachary.

Stores on Beach Street north of International Speedway Boulevard sit across the street from the Halifax River. Merchants say theres very little for customers to see when they walk out of their stores.

The grant is part of a larger multi-million dollar master plan to breathe life into the downtown Riverfront area, with condominiums and other businesses.

Murray says Daytona Beach visitors could be staying away because little change creates little interest.

"Right now we kind have that old, kinda beach town feel," Murray said. "So I think giving this area a facelift making it look newer would bring more people down here."

City leaders say the $400,000 grant would kickstart the citys downtown revitalization program.
Over the next six months, Florida lawmakers and the Health Department will have to write the rules that govern the implementation of Amendment 2, for medical marijuana.

And those rules are raising new questions.

Lawmakers concerned about Amendment 2 implementation details

Details include doctor training, law enforcement rules

RELATED: Making Sense of Amendment 2

With the Amendment passing, weve introduced an entirely new murky water," said FL Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford.

For the last three years, Brodeur worked on a medical marijuana statute, addressing the minutiae of a new industry, from pesticides on plants to how high fences should be for growers.

Brodeur said all the work he and others did on the statute was upended with the passage of Amendment 2.

I was worried that people would pass an amendment that left a lot of holes and thats what happened," he explained.

Among the things not in the amendment he is worried about, physician training.

Physicians have no idea how much to prescribe, to whom and for what side effects people might be experiencing," he said.

Brodeur was one of several experts Thursday on a panel hosted by the Seminole County Chamber of Commerce to address questions about medical marijuana.



Since marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug, illegal federally, there are no clinical trials, he said. In addition, an amendment typically directs the legislature to write the language -- but Brodeur said that is not the case.

For the things not contemplated in the amendment, its left to the Department of Health, who is waiting for direction from the Legislature," he said.

Brodeur says the state and Department of Health have six months to give guidance, which law enforcement and doctors need.

Hundreds of cities and municipalities will also need to make decisions on where dispensaries can be, unless the state takes that up as well.

Doctors trained to recommend medical marijuana, about 350 doctors throughout the state, need to see patients for months. They can then recommend the cannabis, after other treatments have been tried.

Patients need to qualify under the list of illnesses passed with Amendment 2:

Debilitating Medical Condition means cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, or other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for a patient.
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Barney was a good candidate for a presidential pardon after taking a hunk out of Oscar, a German shepherd bomb detection dog and its handler, while the Scottish terrier lived at the White House during the 43rd presidents term.

Instead, Barneys efforts to defend the Oval Office from the misperceived threat of an unfamiliar canine interloper prompted a pair of presidential apologies from the dogs master.

The confrontation between Barney and Oscar is one of the exclusive stories a five-member film crew from Plainview High learned from President George W. Bush during a 20-minute interview with the former chief executive Nov. 15. The local students edited the 18 minutes of videotape into a 7-minute presentation which is Plainviews entry in this years UIL Young Filmmakers Festival.

The purpose of the Young Filmmakers Festival is to provide students with the opportunity to explore the art of cinematic storytelling, explains Doug Warren, team sponsor and a PHS English teacher. The films focus on storytelling using the techniques and tools found in the cinematic arts.

This is the second year for PHS to submit an entry in the documentary category of the UIL Film Festival, which is just in its fourth year. Last year their film on hemophilia was among almost 200 documentaries submitted from Class 5A and 6A schools across the state. It advanced through the quarterfinals before being eliminated in the semifinal round of judging.

Schools from Classes 1A through 4A compete in a separate division.

Trey Perez is the only crew member back from last year. This year he serves as director, editor and Camera 3 operator. He worked on the film last year, and came up with this idea in the first place, Warren explains. Trey spent countless hours on editing and everything else, Warren says.

Its really tough trying to edit 18 minutes of film down to just 7 minutes, Perez adds. You have to make some difficult decisions, like whether to use the story about Barney making rounds with the pastry chef or him taking a bite out of the bomb dog. Ultimately the pastry chef was left on the cutting room floor.

You just have to put aside what you might want for what is going to be best for the film, Perez explains.

Priya Bhakta served as researcher, screenwriter, interviewer and on-air talent. Trevor Reid handled lights, sound and music supervisor, Kaitlyn Jones operated Camera 1 and Liberty Crawford operated Camera 2.

Although Perez suggested a film on Barney, the first familys pet throughout Bushs eight years in the White House, the students were working on a Plan B film on the demolition of the Rustwater water tower when they learn that Bush had agreed to meet with them.

Ryan Crowe helped the team obtain an email address to submit their request for an interview, explains Jan Seago, PISD director of communications. Crowe, a former TV journalist, is yearbook sponsor and mass communications instructor at PHS. He was able to put Warren in touch with the Bush team through a former coworker who is now with a Dallas TV station.

Warren adds, After I emailed Bushs spokesperson with our proposal, it was at least a month before I heard anything. That was just a simple message  Doug, call me. 

Two weeks later, Warren was given two possible dates for an interview  both only days away.

Ultimately, the five students were driven to Dallas by PHS Assistant Principal Randa Wrenn. They met with the former president on the third floor of the Bush Center on the SMU campus. The third floor is really his private domain, Bhakta explains. Its off limits to the public, but President Bush was really warm and inviting. I found him to be down to earth, and it wasnt at all as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be.

A former Midland resident, Bush told the PHS students he has fond memories of campaigning in Plainview and the area, Bhakta says. Although the students provided an outline of what they wanted to discuss, the president did not require a list of questions in advance.

Bush opens the video by recalling a quote from President Harry Truman, If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

He then shares the story of how Barney became part of the Bush household. Bush gave Barney to his wife, Laura, on the suggestion of Christie Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and later Bushs EPA chief.

Barney grew to be very territorial about portions of the White House, particularly the Oval Office. In fact, according to the former president, Barney occasionally would bark at high-ranking visitors who made the mistake of sitting on Barneys favorite couch.

He also would stand guard at the diplomatic entrance to the White House.

Although we were able to find an account where Barney bit a reporter who reached down too fast, we havent found any other reference to Barney taking a hunk out of Oscar the bomb dog, or Oscars handler, Warren said. Thats apparently an exclusive that President Bush gave us.

Another exclusive is that Bush had Barney euthanized after the dog developed lymphoma. In a touching account, the president tells Bhakta of holding Barney in his arms as the dog died. Barney is buried on the Bush ranch at Crawford.

We knew that Barney died after developing lymphoma, Warren says. The students did a lot of research and as far as we can tell this is the first time its been made public that Bush had to put him down. This is also the first account weve found of Barney dying in the presidents arms.

The Bushes have a new dog, Freddy, which they got from the SPCA. A shelter pet, Bush said it appears to be mostly Australian shepherd.

Our video shows that politicians have more going on in their lives than just politics, Warren adds.

The Barney video can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_447jwyHp7Y&feature=youtu.be

The UIL film submissions are due Jan. 11. They will be previewed, critiqued and ranked by UIL adjudicators. Scoring is based on originality, cinematic storytelling and technical execution. Entries will go through several preliminary rounds with the remaining films advancing to a state semi-final round. The entries advancing to state in each category will be screened and ranked first through sixth at the state festival.

The state finals are March 1 at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.
A 24-year-old San Antonio man was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison Wednesday for the February 2000 murder of a San Antonio medical student in Big Bend National Park.

John Michael Baker pleaded guilty in August to using a rope to choke Shannon Stewart Roberts, 43, to death and burying his body in the national park.

Roberts' decomposed body, which had been partially unearthed by animals, was discovered in March 2000 by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

At the time of his death, Roberts was in his fourth year of medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. University officials had reported him missing to San Antonio police earlier in March 2000 after noticing that Roberts wasn't attending classes he had paid for and fellow students had not seen him. He signed in at the park's ranger station in mid-January 2000.

Baker was given the maximum sentence for second-degree murder by a federal judge in Midland who considered Baker's escape from federal custody days before his guilty plea, federal prosecutors said. Baker was arrested in Fort Worth the day after he escaped.
Berlin VFW Post 10732 was in search of a veteran needing assistance with their home. It has been difficult to find a needy elderly veteran, Post Commander Gary Barwikowski pointed out.



Well, the local post did not stop in its quest to find a candidate to support. Recently, Post 10732 found its veteran, a WWII Navy veteran who wanted to paint his home, but knew he was not up to the task. So his fellow veterans came to his aid.



The veteran manpower was further augmented by the generous donation of the paint and supplies needed for the job by The John Boyle Company. Jim King, company president, personally came out to evaluate the home and assess the requirements.



Each veteran donated his time on every good weather day in November to complete the house-painting project.



The VFW Post 10732 is intending to do more of these projects. However, younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are needed. It is tough when we ask an 85-year-old veteran to climb a ladder to paint. But they do it gladly.



We no longer just sit around at our meetings; we are out there to help fellow veterans no matter when they served. It helps our older veterans and makes all of us feel pretty good as well.



Thank you for your service to our country!



 Submitted by Brad Parsons, Post 10732






MERIDEN  Mildred Rodriguezs new apartment at 24 Colony St. overlooks the Meriden Green, where her fiance recently proposed to her on the bridge, while down the hall Yolanda Colon is psyched to be living in a brand-new apartment. While every resident moving into the citys newest transit district housing development has a different story, all say they could not be more in love with their new home, calling it spacious, clean and safe.



The $22 million project was the product of a partnership between Westmount Development Group, the Meriden Housing Authority, the city, and the state. The 63-unit building sits at the corner of Church and Colony streets, overlooking the new train station in the heart of downtown. Ninety percent of the units in the building are considered affordable or Section 8, with the remaining 10 percent being leased at market rate.



The housing authority received more than 6,000 applications from potential renters. Approved applicants began moving in on Dec. 17 and by last week 26 units had been occupied, according to property manager Sandra Rodriguez. New tenants include professionals, students, and people on disability, Rodriguez said.



Three out of the seven market-rate units have been rented by the executive director of a local nonprofit, a nurse and a teacher, she noted. Some of the 33 affordable units are filled by tenants attending school for nursing or other professions. Twenty four units are for Section 8 tenants.



Colon, 45, occupies a two-bedroom Section 8 unit with her 13-year-old nephew. Originally from Puerto Rico, Colon moved to the U.S. in 1987 and most recently lived in Hartford. While unemployed at the moment, Colon said she formerly worked in fast food. When she first saw her apartment, she fell in love with the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen and spacious living area.



I never got something like that, never, she said. I feel like Im in Hollywood.



Jackeline Cruz, 38, was selected from the Section 8 waiting list. Having moved from Hartford, Cruz is disabled and does not work. She has already outfitted her chic new one bedroom with elegant furniture and art.



Its beautiful, Cruz said. Its very comfortable and I love it.



Across the hall, Andrew Figueroa is still waiting to get his furniture in. The 52-year-old worked for two decades as an accountant before personal issues caused him to go on disability.



Before moving to Colony Street, Figueroa lived with his brother in Meriden. After learning about the housing development from Chrysalis, Figueroa applied and got number 64 in the lottery. While only 24 units are Section 8, Figueroa said he lucked out as many of the applicants ahead of him on the list had families and were seeking three or four bedroom apartments.



The building is gorgeous, Figueroa said. Its very quiet and very nice.



For Figueroa, who suffers from anxiety, living in a safe environment was a top priority.



I walked to C-Town on Christmas Day and I was able to walk back and forth and feel safe, Figueroa said. The C-Town supermarket, 160 Colony St., is less than a quarter-mile away.



Sandra Rodriguez turned to Figueroa before leaving his apartment during a recent tour.



Remember what I told you, anything you need just call us, she told him. Dont worry about anything. Youre safe here.



A big Christmas tree brightened the corner of 26-year-old Lela Bennermans apartment. Originally from Hamden, she occupies one of the buildings Section 8 apartments with her 1-year-old son. On a rare day off from work and school, the nursing student was enjoying some TV while her son was at day care.



Ive never lived in a brand-new place like this, Bennerman said. Its definitely a blessing ... I like everything. Im happy.



In addition to the convenience of living downtown, Bennerman said she loves the technology built into her apartment, including the video intercom system.



That really caught my attention because you can see who is there as opposed to just off their voice, Bennerman said.



As of last week, Mildred Rodriguez and her fiance, both 21, were the youngest tenants to occupy 24 Colony. Both juggle work and school and were excited to qualify for one of the buildings affordable units, where rent is based on income.



Born in New York City, Rodriguez most recently lived in Meriden with her mother and was excited to finally get out on her own with her fiance. She loves that her new apartment overlooks the location where her fiance proposed to her on the bridge over the Meriden Green.



The view is beautiful, she said. Its really nice we got our own place, our own everything right before the holidays.



Among other new tenants in the building is James Ieronimo, executive director of the United Way of Meriden and Wallingford. He occupies one of the market-rate apartments.



For Ieronimo, the decision to make the building his home was a matter of practicing what he preached.



I watched that project from concept to building and was very impressed with the quality of the building and the fact that the residents would be a mixture of people, Ieronimo wrote in an email. The fact that there are market-rate apartments of that quality in downtown Meriden was a real draw, too. I was happy to be a part of something that I have advocated for over the years  mixed-use, mixed income living in downtown.



Record-Journal reporter Mary Ellen Godin contributed to this story.



ltauss@record-journal.com 203-317-2231 Twitter: @LeighTaussRJ






MERIDEN  A city resident hopes to create a barbell club atmosphere at his new Pratt Street gym.



Last year, Carlos Cay, 25, purchased the former Club 24 at Meriden Enterprise Center, 290 Pratt St., and renamed the gym Silver City Barbell. Cay officially opened the gym on Dec. 1 and has had more than 100 members join.



The gym includes a variety of cardio machines including treadmills, ellipticals and spin bikes. Separate rooms feature functional training equipment, as well as machines and free weights.



A native of Puerto Rico, Cay moved to Meriden at a young age. He began working out at age 16 at the former Club 24. When he turned 20, he joined the Marine Corps, and remains a member today as part of the reserves.



Cay also has personal training experience.



I genuinely do want to help people and thats what made me want to do this, he said.



Cay hopes to cater to different fitness levels and create a personal ambiance to make members feel at home.



Since taking over the facility, Cay has repainted the gym and purchased additional equipment. In the future, Cay hopes to offer classes and other services.



If I can do this, being from Meriden, growing up in Meriden, anybody can do that for themselves, Cay said.



Mayor Kevin Scarpati said its encouraging to see another local business open in the downtown area.



Its always great to see one open up, not only in Meriden, but so close to our city center, he said.



blipiner@record-journal.com 203-317-2444 Twitter: @BryanLipiner






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A new Route 15 north on-ramp in Wallingford should be finished by late summer, according to the state Department of Transportation. The $4.3 million project, which will move and lengthen the Exit 65 on-ramp, is meant to address safety concerns, said Matthew Vail, who is managing the project for DOT. Work is 90 percent federally funded and 10 percent state funded.



The Meriden City Council voted unanimously to allow the city manager to enter into talks to send the citys trash to Bristol rather than Wallingford, a move that could save the city about $66,000 a year. City Manager Guy Scaife said the city was already under contract with Covanta and moving to Bristol would honor that agreement and come with incentives. The move comes amid fears Covantas Wallingford transfer station could close, forcing the city to take waste to Bristol anyway, without the savings.



Members of Proposition USA, a national volunteer group, stood on the East Main Street highway overpass in Meriden on Sunday and waved flags in support of American veterans and troops. Our number one priority is our veterans, said organizer Gail Whitright. The small group generated a response from passing cars on East Main Street and the Route 15 and Interstate 91 highways below. Many honked their horns in support.



Over 30 boxes of magazines and books were delivered to hospitals over the holiday break, with over a dozen more expected to be sent in the coming weeks, said Nicole Cyr, a Berlin High School senior and president of the schools Interact Club. The club delivered more than 2,000 magazines and books to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center, the Hospital for Special Care, the Hospital of Central Connecticut and Hartford Hospital.



The Victorian Inn on North Main Street in Wallingford was recently recognized by an international registry of over 300 inns around the world. Owner Karl Kieslich said the bed-and-breakfast was added to the Select Registry  an international list of about 325 upscale inns, boutique hotels and bed and breakfasts  last week following an evaluation process. We definitely take it as an honor, he said.



State lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are urging the Department of Military Affairs to reconsider its proposal to cut funding for the Connecticut Honor Guard rifle salutes at military funerals. Rep. Timothy Ackert, R-Coventry, an Air Force veteran, said the state easily could come up with the roughly $326,000 that would cover the honor guard costs, which include the playing of Taps and rifle teams that fire graveside salutes.



Norton Park in Plainville 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 new piece of equipment will be in memory of Brayton and Mary Tompkins.



We didnt like this week



Its been nearly a decade since an ombudsman charged with oversight of issues affecting older residents has produced and submitted a required annual report to the state legislature, a state audit shows. The agency also failed to ensure contractors conducted criminal background checks on staff and volunteers, putting the safety of elderly residents who receive in-home services at risk. Other deficiencies also were found. The Department on Aging was established in 2013, with the intent to focus attention and resources on the needs of older residents to ensure they have the necessary support to live with dignity, security, and independence.



The hemlock woolly adelgid is one in an expanding army of insects draining the life out of forests from New England to the West Coast. Aided by global trade, a warming climate and drought-weakened trees, the invaders have become one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in the United States. Scientists say they already are driving some tree species toward extinction and are causing billions of dollars a year in damage.



What was that noise? An earthquake? A sonic boom? An explosion? A meteorite? There are more questions than answers about a loud noise that was heard in parts of Southington, Cheshire, Meriden and Wolcott on Monday morning. After receiving a flood of calls, fire and police crews searched the south end of Southington but couldnt find damage or an apparent cause.



A squirrel that chewed wiring on an electric line caused about 100 Wallingford households to lose power for 30 minutes Monday morning. Electric Division systems operator Bob Boehler said the outage occurred in the area of Grieb Road and East Main Street. Homes on Timber Lane and Rolling Meadow Drive were also affected, he said.



Meridens director of development and enforcement has forwarded a flier to the state Liquor Control Commission from the 105 Restaurant and Lounge advertising nude painted models. Activity at the 105 Restaurant and Lounge was brought to the citys attention by a resident who complained about exotic dancers in the citys new transit-oriented district.



State officials say grant funding for the new Center Street Cemetery garage in Wallingford will be withheld from the town until it complies with state requirements regarding a violation of historic preservation law. Todd Levine, an architectural historian with the State Historic Preservation Office, said the town violated Connecticuts Environmental Policy Act by not notifying the office about its plans to cut an opening in the Center Street Cemetery wall. The hole was cut to allow equipment to move between the cemetery and new garage, at 60 Prince Street.






Two Houston-based women have landed on the prestigious Forbes' 30 under 30 list announced this week.

Health care entrepreneur Jessica Traver, 25, and her biomedical engineer partner, Nicole Moskowitz, 26, created IntuiTap Medical, the first device designed for spinal punctures using imaging and analytics to find the right insertion spot.
San Francisco police officers shot and wounded a man early Friday in the citys Ocean View neighborhood after responding to a report of a dispute between two neighbors, officials said.

The shooting was reported about 3:51 a.m. at a residence on the 500 block of Capitol Avenue at Minerva Street, near the Ocean View Recreation Center, said Officer Giselle Talkoff, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department.

Hamed Aleaziz / The Chronicle / Hamed Aleaziz / The Chronicle

Two uniformed police officers responded to a call of a restraining order violation stemming from a dispute between two neighbors, Talkoff said. She said one resident called 911 to report that a neighbor they were involved in an ongoing conflict with was banging on a wall.

When the officers tried to talk to a man involved in the dispute, he became physical and officers used pepper spray on him when he grabbed one of their batons, Talkoff said.

Pepper spray was deployed, the officers baton was taken and shots were fired, Talkoff said.

The wounded man managed to barricade himself in a home, and he refused orders to come out, she said.

Tactical officer tried to talk him into surrendering, Talkoff said. During the standoff, the man called 911 to say he had been shot, she said.

Officers eventually stormed the house and took the man into custody, Talkoff said.

Two officers were injured in the confrontation, one suffered a non-life-threatening head injury, Talkoff said. It was not clear how the other officer was injured.

According to a temporary restraining order request filed in December, the man who was shot had been been making threatening remarks to the family next door ever since a criminal protective order was granted after he allegedly assaulted the familys adult son in 2011.

The 42-year-old man pleaded not guilty or no contest to a misdemeanor assault charge against a neighbor in 2013, according to court records, and was sentenced to 60 days in county jail and three-years probation. He was also ordered to stay away from the son and his family under a criminal protective order.

While criminal protective orders typically last about three years, it is unclear what the extent of this particular order was as the man had violated the terms of his probation. The family said in their application for a restraining order that the order expired in December 2014, after which, the man began standing on the sidewalk outside their home, saying he was going to kill the 67-year-old family patriarch.

He also hits my wall very hard from his stairs. This morning (Dec. 19), he slammed my wall at 6:22 a.m., 6:24 a.m. and 6:49 a.m., the neighbor wrote in the application.

The neighbor said in June, the man hit him on the left shoulder. He was upset that I wanted to go up his stairs to look at the latest damage to my wall. The officers could not do anything because (he) claimed I hit him, the neighbor wrote.

The neighbor said the man had previously damaged his wall to the extent it had patch it up about a year ago. The family also suspects that he is also the person responsible for damage to two of our cars, which were kicked by someone with a foot size similar to his, they wrote in the application.

A temporary restraining order was granted on Dec. 20 and served to the man on Dec. 23.

Hamed Aleaziz and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Haleaziz @VivianHo
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The University of California announced a proposal this week to raise tuition next fall  but managed to make the price hike look like a price break.

For five years, UC has said its annual tuition for California undergraduates was $12,192, a figure widely reported by news outlets, including The Chronicle, and used by state lawmakers, state auditors and UC officials themselves.

But in announcing their tuition proposal Wednesday, UC officials insisted that current tuition was $11,220. They said that if the regents approve the raise later this month, tuition would grow to $11,502 for the 2017-18 school year, an increase of 2.5 percent.

The Chronicle repeatedly asked UC officials on Wednesday to explain why their proposed tuition increase looked more like a reduction in price. Yet the response didnt include an explanation.

Tuition is $11,220 and has been at that level since 2011-12, said UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein.

A reason for the seemingly Orwellian shift in tuition figures was finally provided on Thursday.

It turns out that UCs often-cited tuition figure of $12,192 has always included a student services fee. Now, however, UC is separating out that fee from the tuition figure.

Thats because UC is proposing to increase that student services fee by a higher percentage (5 percent) than the base tuition increase (2.5 percent).

Heres a breakdown of UCs current mandatory annual charges for California undergraduates, which total $13,566, not including room, board and books:

 Tuition, unchanged since 2011: $11,160.

 Legal surcharge, unchanged since 2011: $60.

 Student services fee: $1,074 (up from $992 in 2011).

 Average campus-based fee in 2016 (the only figure never included in UCs past tuition announcements): $1,272.

Under UCs proposal for fall, 2017, students would pay $13,959, a total increase of nearly 3 percent:

 Tuition and the legal surcharge would rise by 2.5 percent to $11,502

 The student services fee would rise by 5 percent to $1,128.

 The campus-based fee, while not included in the proposal, has risen by an average of $57 a year since 2011. With that increase, the fee would be $1,329 next fall.

The regents will consider the proposal at their meeting in San Francisco on Jan. 25 and 26.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
Red Hot Chili Peppers classics like "Give It Away" had local fans on their feet at the AT&T Center last night, but concert-goers made it clear the one thing  or person  they aren't willing to give "away now" is Spurs star Kawhi Leonard.

In the Alamo City to kick off their 2017 The Getaway Tour Thursday night, the famous Lakers diehards apparently couldn't resist the opportunity to tease Spurs fans while being in San Antonio.
Some interns slave away working long days for zero pay. Others earn a paycheck by traveling the world for free.

Royal Caribbean UK & Ireland is currently in search of an Instagram user, aged 21 and up, who wants to embark upon the Ovation of the Seas, Anthem of the Seas, and Freedom of the Seas this summer. The lucky winner will debark at various ports in New York, the Caribbean, Asia and the Mediterranean, including Beijing, Barcelona and New York.
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"Inside or outside the 'loop," along with downtown, Southtown and Stone Oak are common San Antonio directional cues, but one "judgemental" map is providing a new take on getting around the Alamo City and not everyone is amused.

Earlier this week, a San Antonio map labeled with distinguishers like "half-assed gentrification," "arbitrary traffic tickets," "crappy apartments" and "wannabe hipsters" grabbed the attention of local social media users.

Shares of the photo have sky-rocketed, with some people calling it the funniest thing they've seen all year and asking for the creator to come forward.

The map-maker is Joel Aldo (Aldo is his middle name, he asked that his last name not be used) and he told mySA.com the map is actually 5 years old.

The photo was created using Powerpoint and when Aldo posted it to Facebook back in 2012, it generated a "pitiful" four shares and nine likes, he said. A Reddit user recently gave the map a high-resolution revamp and shared it on the forum.

RELATED: San Antonio residents, stories that went viral in 2016

Now, the map is tickling some funny bones while peeving others, like local Denise Hernandez, who believe the "joke" highlights much more serious issues.

"Can y'all stop sharing that pic of stereotypical areas of San Antonio that labels parts of town as 'Daytime Hookers' and 'Broke Mexicans'? No, I *can't* 'take a joke' when our city is failing in many ways (namely education, income/racial segregation,)" she shared on Facebook. "In addition to it being racist, classist, and gross, there really wasn't anything funny about it."

The map-maker said he understands why people are upset and thinks "they have every right to be."

"It's caused a little bit of controversy, I didn't mean to hurt anyone," he added. "I never wanted to cause parochialism."

RELATED: 5 times the Texas map was botched on the national level

Aldo, an admitted "crappy apartments" dweller, said the idea for the spoof started when one of his friends created "judgemental" maps of Houston and Austin.

He said the phases of San Antonio have since evolved and the map would need an update, but he won't be the one to pen the next one.

"I don't want attention like that again," he said.

Aldo said he appreciates those who understand the map was created in "jest."

"I love San Antonio as a whole, I love all neighborhoods of San Antonio," he continued. "That's one of the things I love most about the city, we don't take ourselves too seriously."

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
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Large red-and-white-striped tents have replaced Travis Park's holiday scenery ahead of a massive bash to be hosted on the park grounds and its neighbor, the elegant St. Anthony Hotel, Saturday.

A city of San Antonio official has confirmed that Elizabeth and Barry Roberts, of Terrell Hills, are hosting the party and have rented out the entire park and a large portion of the historic hotel.

The St. Anthony Hotel confirmed the event was to honor their daughter, a 21-year-old debutante.

RELATED: This lavish Texas quinceanera even had Pitbull and Nick Jonas show up

The park is closing to the public beginning Jan. 6 for an anticipated 1,200 guests of the Roberts, who will enjoy attractions like a carousel, Ferris Wheel, jugglers, musical performances and permitted animals including: two camels, two zebras and "some smaller animals," according to the city of San Antonio.

Travis Street, between Jefferson and Navarro streets, will be temporarily closed  between 3 a.m. on Saturday to 3 a.m. on Sunday  for the permitted event, the city of San Antonio confirmed.

RELATED: San Antonio 6-year-old's Drake-themed birthday party made all others look like child's play

The Roberts Family, the City of San Antonio, the St. Anthony Hotel and Wilkinson Rhodes event planners have spent "several months" organizing the hyper-private affair, the city said. Wilkinson Rhodes event planners paid approximately $30,000 just for facility rental fees and street closures.

The city will use funding from the party fees to do "additional electrical and landscaping" improvements at Travis Park, which will continue to be closed to the public through Jan. 30.

RELATED: Video: Man trampled to death by horse at viral Mexican quinceanera

Father Barry Roberts is a San Antonio native and Texas A&M University graduate. He is Co-Trustee of the family business, Coates Energy, according to the company website. His family owns the Heritage Ranch in Wilson and Karnes counties as well as El Negro Ranch in Starr County, according to the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.

Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said this "exciting event" will "showcase to event and conference organizers that not all events have to be inside and that the city now has another asset that can accommodate their next celebration."

Staff writer Josh Baugh contributed to this report.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
Carnival Corp.'s Fathom brand, a line that started as offering trips alternating between the Dominican Republic and Cuba, is now combining the two countries in a single itinerary.

Fathom announced recently it received approval to add a stop in Santiago de Cuba, the second-largest city on the island, on six upcoming cruises that were originally scheduled to sail only to Amber Cove on the Dominican Republic's northern coast.

The weeklong voyages  on Feb. 26, March 12 and 26, April 9 and 23, and May 7  will depart from PortMiami and head to Santiago de Cuba first, before spending a full day and two partial days in the Dominican Republic, then returning to Miami.

Trips on the 704-passenger Adonia start at $599, making them considerably cheaper than other American cruise line offerings to the island  but with a caveat.

Fathom is focused on social impact, so its trips involve tours that leave a positive mark on the Dominican community, such as teaching English or laying concrete floors at local homes. In Cuba, travelers partake in people-to-people cultural exchange tours, one of the 12 categories of travel approved for Americans who visit the island.

Prices exclude taxes, fees, port expenses, gratuities (estimated at $80.50 per person) and a Cuban visa ($75 per person). Fully refundable $300 per person deposits are required 90 days before departure. Included in the price are all onboard experiences, including meals, select on-the-ground activities, and well as lunch in Santiago de Cuba and during Dominican Republic impact activities.

When Fathom first set sail in May, it offered every-other-week voyages to Cuba and the Dominican Republic. But demand for Cuba outpaced the Dominican Republic, and the line started to cut back on sailings to Amber Cove and steeply reduced prices.

Two voyages to the Dominican Republic in October and November were replaced with Cuba sailings because of demand, the company said in September. Tickets to sail to Cuba next year on Fathom cost about $4,000 per person. The Dominican trips are a seventh of that price.

Earlier last year, Doral, Fla.-based Carnival Corp. said it was discontinuing voyages on Fathom and sending the cruise line's only ship, the Adonia, to P&O Cruises in the United Kingdom in June.

By then, Carnival hopes to gain approval to sail to Cuba with another of its nine remaining cruise lines, while six of its cruise lines will offer the Fathom voluntourism tours as additional options for cruises that stop in Amber Cove.
WASHINGTON  Senators from both sides of the aisle used a hearing Thursday to criticize President-elect Donald Trump for his disparaging remarks on Twitter about the U.S. intelligence community and its assessment that Russian hacks were aimed at getting him elected.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was among the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who defended the intelligence agencies.

Without naming Trump, Blumenthal said that dismissive remarks were a terrible disservice to our nation, and to the very courageous men and women who put their lives at risk so this nation can be better informed.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a blunt-spoken veteran intelligence official, replied: I do think public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial.

Clapper and two other top U.S. intelligence officials on the panel said there was no doubt that Russia was involved in the hacking of Democrats, but they were unwilling to disclose any new details about Russias efforts to affect the 2016 election. A report on it is due next week, with a declassified version likely to be released to the public.

Asked whether theyd been able to confirm their original assessment of three months ago that Russia was interfering in the election, Clapper said intelligence officials stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement from Oct. 7 than ever before.

But under questioning from committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Clapper said he couldnt say if Russian hacking affected the outcome of the election.

The intelligence community cant gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made, he said.

McCain asked if he thought the hacking constituted an act of war, but Clapper said such a judgment was a very heavy policy call that I dont believe the intelligence community should make.

But I dont think that weve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere with our election process than weve seen in this case, Clapper said.

Trump has consistently belittled the judgment of Russian involvement, saying it could have been China or someone sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.

He also questioned the capabilities of U.S. intelligence since the CIA ultimately was wrong in its assessment that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had usable weapons of mass destruction, which was the basis for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In recent tweets, Trump has appeared to trust WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges assertions more than the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community.

Assange said Russia was not the source of the trove of emails his group dumped during the campaign, virtually all of it hurtful to Democrats, including the partys presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Blumenthal was among the senators who picked up on Trumps antagonism, contrasting it to the secretive and mostly unrecognized work that intelligence analysts and operatives do to keep the nation safe.

He said Trumps comparison of the Russia-hack conclusion to the blown assessment of Iraqi weaponry were just a red herring and totally wrong.

Clapper, who is retiring after 50-plus years in the intelligence world, owned up to the pre-invasion mistake.

My fingerprints were on the Iraq judgment, he said. But since then, we have done many, many things to improve our processes ... in order to prevent that from happening again.

Major changes have been made to national intelligence estimates since then, he said, adding: Its the difference of night and day.

On Thursday, Trump appeared to back away from his harsh judgments, saying on Twitter: The media lies to make it look like I am against Intelligence when in fact I am a big fan!

dan@hearstdc.com
On this date in ...

1917: "A dark haired girl will come between you and your happiness." That was the dramatic prophecy received by Albany manicurist Dorothy May Layman from a local fortune teller she had consulted after the love of her sweetheart grew cold. In this instance, the prediction proved true when Layman discovered Donald L. Oliver, her boyfriend in Lockport, refused to respond to her multiple messages at $8 apiece, and left her for another woman closer by. Layman subsequently sued him for $25,000 (more than $471,000 in 2017 money) in damages for breach of promise.

1967: Maj. Paul D. Slack, Vietnam combat veteran and graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was to receive the Silver Star for what he described as "a hard day's work." The military, however, had a less humble approach to the action of the Marine who had returned to the United States after serving as an adviser to the Vietnamese forces and was being cited for "conspicuous gallantry in action" having coordinated fire and air strikes on two platoons of Viet Cong, rescued his wounded assistant adviser and led a bayonet assault to drive off the enemy force.

1992: Angry opponents of a proposed office park in the environmentally sensitive Pine Bush blasted the Albany Common Council for adjourning a public hearing before most of them had a chance to speak. With the start of the hearing delayed by Mayor Thomas M. Whalen III's State of the City address, there were still at least 10 witnesses by 9 p.m.  late by Common Council standards  and the regular council meeting had not yet begun. So Council President Joseph Buechs Jr. moved to continue the hearing at the next council meeting, arguing that this would ensure that everyone could be heard at "a reasonable hour" before the council voted.

Want to read more about the Capital Region's past? Have any memories or thoughts about how our history relates to today's events? See http://blog.timesunion.com/history/
A 44-year-old Polk County man was just three months into a life sentence for two drunk driving deaths when he himself was found unresponsive on the floor of his prison cell.

Authorities with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice say James Dean Shaw was found lying on his cell floor in the Byrd Unit in Huntsville around 6:25 a.m. Wednesday. An hour later, after being transported to a hospital in Huntsville, Shaw was pronounced dead.

"It appears that Shaw died from natural causes," said Jason Clark, director of public information for TDCJ. "As with all offender deaths, an autopsy will be performed and the Office of Inspector General will investigate."

Shaw was serving six life sentences for the May 5, 2015, accident in north Liberty County that claimed the lives of two young men, Gerald Lynn Potts II, 21, and John Real, 13, and caused life-altering traumatic brain injury to a third teenager, Real's younger brother, Joseph Winkelspecht Jr., who also was 13 at the time. The three young men were passengers in Shaw's vehicle.

VICTIMS' LOVED ONES SPEAK OUT: 'This has broken our family apart'

The accident took place about two miles north of Rye, just inside the Liberty County line at the entrance of Down South Liquor Store. Shaw was southbound on SH 146 in a 2014 Jeep Patriot when he veered into the path of a northbound 2013 Jeep Wrangler driven by Mindy Beth Richardson, of Hardin, who was eight months pregnant at the time.

Potts was killed instantly. Real was disconnected from life support 10 days later, just six days shy of his 14th birthday. Winkelspecht was hospitalized for months and is now confined to a wheelchair. Richardson suffered broken ribs and a broken sternum, and her son, Cael, now 1, was safely delivered by C-section.

Shaw was charged with two counts of murder, two counts of intoxicated manslaughter with a vehicle, one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of intoxicated assault. During his week-long jury trial in the 75th District State Court in Liberty that ended on Sept. 30, 2016, Shaw was sentenced to life in prison for each count.

On Thursday, family members of the victims were notified by TDCJ of Shaw's death. Some expressed relief while others say they felt cheated.

"This will never be over for me," said Gerald Potts of Silsbee. His son, who carried his name, was his only child. "I will always have this pain. It will never leave me. I don't know whether to feel sad for Shaw or to feel happy. He never showed emotion during the trial or seemed to feel bad about what he had done. I know the right thing  the Christian thing  to do is forgive, and I have been praying about that. I am sorry he is dead but his punishment is over with. Mine will never stop."

CONTROVERSIAL MOVE: Then-DA Anderson dismissed top lawyer's DWI

John Real, who shared a name with his deceased grandson and helps in the care of his surviving grandson, said he is relieved the families will be able to avoid the pain of the appeals process.

"It would have drug it out for the victims more. If for some reason he had gotten off, can you imagine what that would have done to the families of his victims? We would never have gotten over it. I wish he had suffered more like our boys suffered but I am glad he is gone," Real said, adding that he finds some peace in his dreams. "My grandson John visits me nearly every night when I sleep."

Prior to this accident, Shaw was found guilty of five other DWIs. He was convicted of two DWIs in Polk County in the early 1990s, one in Navarro County in the mid-1990s and two in Oklahoma in 2005 and 2007.

During the punishment phase of the trial, jurors learned that Shaw's extensive criminal history includes theft convictions in Harris and Nacogdoches counties, and convictions for deadly conduct and felon in possession of a firearm in Polk County.
A freckle on the sole of a foot. That's all it took to change Elizabeth Egan and her family's lives forever.

Now the Kingwood resident hopes to educate others through a book she wrote after Egan's daughter Ashley was diagnosed with metatstatic melanoma in 2013.

"My head was exploding with everything that was going on," Egan said.

The book, titled "One Family's Journey: A Love Story," was released in October through Tate Publishing. Egan insisted she never intended to become a writer, though she's been writing poems and riddles since she was a child.

Egan's father was in the military, and she moved a lot as a kid, graduating from high school in Germany. Egan and her husband met at Stephen F. Austin University, where she was studying child development. The couple ultimately settled in Kingwood, where they've lived for 30 years raising their three children.

At first, Egan said, she didn't think much when her daughter first commented on a tiny freckle she found on the sole of her foot.

"We're all freckly kind of people," she said.

But more than a year later, she pushed Ashley to get it checked out before leaving for Florida to go through a nine-month certification program to become an echo sonographer. It wasn't until Ashley returned home and tried unsuccessfully to remove the freckle using wart remover that she caved to her mom's plea.

The day after Egan's 50th birthday, Ashley was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. Egan was initially reluctant to join a support group, but ended up reaching out online to a woman who had a daughter, also in her 20s, diagnosed with melanoma.

The woman encouraged Egan to write everything down, and she did.

"I started writing for me, just to get it out of my head. It was sort of like a journal," Egan said. "My daughter found out, and she said, 'I want to read some.' I said, 'No, thank you.' I was just terrified to let her read it. I don't know why."

She first gave a chapter to a coworker who recently lost her husband. Before long, the coworker asked to read the whole thing. Ultimately, Egan relented and also showed bits of her writing to her daughter, who encouraged her to get it published.

Ashley said it was interesting to read, not only the perspective of her mom, but also the insight into her dad as he dealt with the diagnosis.

"Everything that she wrote was therapeutic for her," Ashley said. "I was just like, 'This is so well-written, and it's good information for people to read and good for awareness reasons. You have to keep writing. You have to make this book.'"

But reading the full book saddened Ashley in part. In it, her mother writes about how she wishes she could do more and worries she isn't doing things right. Ashley remembers it as the exact opposite. Her mom has gone to all of her scans and been with her every step of the way.

Ashley now must endure scans every three months, and no matter how many clean scans she comes back with, Egan knows her daughter will always have metastatic cancer. It's a question of when, not if, the scans come back with something.

Last year, a scan showed a spot on her brain, but further testing showed it to be a shadow. She has spots on her lungs that doctors are keeping an eye on, but could just be swollen tissue.

"To look at her, you'd never know anything ever, never," Egan said of her daughter. "She's living large and loving life. She's living in downtown Houston. She's going and doing, but melanoma is wicked. It creeps up on you, and one little tiny cell gets loose and it sits and it waits."

Egan hopes to raise awareness of the risks of getting melanoma. According to the Melanoma Research Foundation, using a tanning bed before the age of 30 increases the risk of obtaining melanoma by 75 percent. A sunburn doubles the risk.

"It's not the kind of cancer that makes you sick when you're first getting it," Egan said. "It's something that is wicked. It is sneaky, and it is horrible."

Melanoma can affect every part of the body, including the eyes and fingernails, and it loves organs, she said.

Egan spent three months emailing back and forth with the woman she first contacted online whose daughter also had melanoma. It was several months in when the woman divulged her daughter had died three months prior. Egan was shocked. For months, she'd been sharing her fears and thoughts while she could still give Ashley a hug.

The woman told Egan not to be upset; talking about her daughter keeps her alive. The woman's friends and family told her the pain will get better with time. She liked being able to talk about her again.

"The feelings and emotions of such devastating news transcends a lot of different stuff," Egan said. "If you can share it with somebody else, it makes it so much easier."

Egan plans to leave two copies of her book at M.D. Anderson, where she's spent a lot of time while Ashley received treatments. She places a sticker with her email address on it on the inside cover of each book she gives out in hopes of getting feedback on her work.

"One Family's Journey" can be purchased online through sites like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Egan has a book signing scheduled at Half Price Books in Humble on June 3.
AUSTIN  The Texas Department of Agriculture on Friday announced Texas grain producers have voted against the establishment of a producer assessment to self-insure against financial risks associated with selling or storing grain. TDA certified all the ballots, and the final results were 148 in favor of establishing the fund and 665 against.

A total of 813 valid ballots were certified by TDA based on the United States Department of Agricultures records of certified grain producers. By law, the proposal had to receive more than half of the total vote to pass.
'NYN' looks at legislative session, Cuomo's proposals

Don't miss this week's episode of "New York Now," the award-winning coproduction of WMHT and the Times Union. This week's highlights:

Matt Ryan of WMHT looks at the first day of the 2017 legislative session, and the initial proposals from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's imminent State of the State tour.

The Reporters Roundtable has Ashley Hupfl of City & State and the TU's Rick Karlin looking at lingering tensions between Cuomo and lawmakers, and whether his "free tuition" plan for low- and middle-income students will encounter headwinds.

TU state editor Casey Seiler talks with Bill Mahoney of Politico New York about the first time the State of the State was delivered as a speech to the Legislature, and the mystery of Gov. Al Smith's lost monkey.

"New York Now" airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 11:30 p.m. Sunday on WMHT Ch. 17.

Lake George faces fine for August sewage spill

LAKE GEORGE  The town could face a fine from the state Department of Environmental Conservation for a minor sewage spill that occurred over the summer.

The spill happened in August on Bloody Pond Road, according to Supervisor Dennis Dickinson. A tourist was walking down the road and noticed sewage spilling from a manhole cover.

Dickinson said he received an email from DEC that the town is facing a violation and a fine because of how it handled the paperwork to document the spill.

"The form was filled out late and it was filled out improperly. I don't think it's ever been corrected," he said.

He is not sure how much the fine would be.

Board member Dan Hurley said village public works officials came to vacuum out the sewer line and remove the blockage that was causing the overflow.

The problem was fixed in about 20 minutes. The spill was not widespread, according to Dickinson.

 The Post-Star

School board votes to hire lawyer to oust Paladino

BUFFALO  A local school board in upstate New York has voted to hire a law firm in the board's efforts to remove a Donald Trump supporter over his insulting comments about President Barack Obama and his wife.

The Buffalo School Board voted during a special meeting Wednesday night to hire an attorney to petition the state Education Department to remove board member Carl Paladino.

Paladino, a wealthy developer who co-chaired Trump's presidential campaign in New York, has said he won't resign. He wasn't at the meeting.

Last month, the 70-year-old former New York gubernatorial candidate told a Buffalo alternative newspaper that he wanted the president to die of mad cow disease and first lady Michelle Obama to "return to being a male." Paladino said the comments weren't meant for publication.

 Associated Press

Lake-effect storm to dump more snow on Buffalo area

ALBANY  Parts of upstate New York near lakes Erie and Ontario have already received nearly 2 feet of snow while forecasters say some areas could get up to 4 feet by the weekend.

The National Weather Service says areas south of Buffalo have received to up to 22 inches by Thursday morning and parts of the Tug Hill region north of Syracuse have received nearly 20 inches.

Weather service meteorologists say lake-effect storms blowing off the eastern end of Lake Ontario could dump up to 48 inches of snow across the sparsely populated region by the time storms lessen later Friday.

Areas south of Buffalo are expected to get another foot or more of snow by then, with winds off both lakes gusting to 30 mph in some areas.

Associated Press
I always knew what I wanted to be, said Kendra Guerra with a sincere smile as she sat behind the desk of her emergency room office at Covenant Health Plainview.

I wanted to be a nurse. Ever since I was a little girl, Ive always wanted to take care of people.

With a nostalgic laugh, Guerra brought up a recent conversation with her brother who painted a memory of young Kendra sewing her stuffed animals back together after implanting straws into their limbs.

With the straws serving as make-believe bones, young Guerra then used the tubing and machines from her asthma breathing treatments to create her own pretend hospital in her bedroom where she nursed her stuffed companions back to health.

Needless to say, it wasnt a surprise when Guerra chose a career path in the medical field; a path that would lead her from working as a junior high Candy Striper to eventually managing the level IV trauma center at Covenant Health Plainview.

But after a fulfilling 20-year career as a licensed nurse, Guerra is on the cusp of a new chapter in her life, as starting this spring; she will wrap up her final semester of nurse practitioner school at West Texas A&M University.

Im really excited, Guerra said. Ive loved being in the leadership role for the past three years, but this is going to bring me back to the bedside. This brings me back to the patient.

And its been that devotion to her patients that has propelled Guerras successful nursing career; a virtue that she has developed from the start.

I enrolled at South Plains College and became (Certified Nursing Assistant) when I was 20, explained Guerra.

After a stint at a local nursing home, Guerra eventually was hired at Covenant Health Plainview as a CNA on the Med-Surg floor in 1997.

Guerra worked her way through school, eventually becoming an LVN the following year.

Guerra floated between the Med-Surg, ICU and postpartum units for several years before going to work for Covenant cardiologist, Dr. Donald Heine and later in family practice with Dr. Larry Karrh.

In 2002, Karrhs departure from Plainview gave Guerra an opportunity to return to the hospital.

But her move back into the hospital setting would bring on new and exciting challenges for Guerra who jumped at the chance to join the emergency department.

I had never worked in the emergency department before, Guerra explained.

Guerra said it was tough and a little overwhelming, especially when her first traumas were wheeled through the emergency doors.

I remember being a little scared and having to take a few steps back at first, explained Guerra.

On top of this, Guerra was also working on achieving her Registered Nurse degree and later became certified as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.

The emergency room is a different world. And a different kind of nursing, said Violet Borron, who then managed the ER and originally hired Guerra to the department.

But she never gave up and we wouldnt let her quit. So she kept on going. She is a very driven person.

Guerra eventually fell in love with the rush of the emergency room, but more so, she found her calling in helping patients get through the very hard and traumatic times. And being raised in the small-town community of Plainview, Guerra said it was even more rewarding providing compassionate care for her friends, family and neighbors.

Thats what made it so good. I wasnt just taking care of strangers; I was taking care of my family and people I went to school with. I have bonds with these people. And thats why I feel the need to go above and beyond for them, Guerra said.

In 2014, Guerra was named the new manager of Emergency Services at Covenant Plainview. Around this time, Guerra also earned a Masters in Nursing Administration/Education from West Texas A&M.

Guerra said she enjoyed the management position; however, in her new role, her time interacting with patients was limited.

It was an aspect of nursing Guerra said she missed dearly and ultimately prompted her decision to become a nurse practitioner.

I wanted to return to patient care, to return to the one-and-one interaction with patients.

For more than a year, Guerra has worked on earning her Family Nurse Practitioner degree, while also managing the emergency department, completing her clinical rounds and juggling the responsibilities of being a wife to husband Dion and mother to their four children.

To complete her final semester of school, Guerra said she made the painful decision to leave her role at Covenant Health Plainview in order to concentrate more on her family and school.

Her last day on the Covenant Plainview staff was Jan. 6

Though she knows it was the right decision, Guerra said her last few weeks at the Plainview hospital have been bittersweet.

Ive been very sad to the point I feel a little sick. Just a lot of emotions, Guerra said with a small smile.

I started here as a CNA, and this has been all Ive ever known. I grew up here, this is my family. This is my home and I hold the people here very near and dear to my heart.

I tell people all time, Im so dedicated to this place not just because its my job, but because I know all the nurses here and I know their skill sets. I can take any of the nurses in this building and take them to a bigger facility and they would run circles around those other nurses. We have the best, and I truly believe that.

Guerra says she doesnt have any plans set in stone after she becomes an FNP.

But my goal is to stay in Plainview, Guerra said.
The Obamas just finished their last Hawaiian vacation as the first family. Their 16-day winter vacation included a luau at a friend's house, dinner at local restaurants and a visit to the Center on US-Asia-Pacific Relations.

According to toptenrealestatedeals.com, "the President and his family's location of choice has been the once sleepy area of Kailua Bay on the windward side of the island. From 2008 to 2011, the home they rented was Plantation Estate at Paradise Point, located on a jut of land at the far end of the long crescent of Kailua beach."
Washington

President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community that Trump has publicly challenged, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday.

Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the umbrella office created after 9/11 to improve coordination of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies.

The person with knowledge of Trump's decision was not authorized to discuss the pick publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since winning the election, Trump has repeatedly questioned intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf. On Friday, senior intelligence officials will brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama, who was briefed on the conclusions Thursday.

Against that backdrop, Trump has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Transition officials have been looking at changes at both ODNI and the CIA, but those plans are said not to be aimed at gutting the intelligence agencies or hampering their capabilities.

The person said the discussions reflect the views of intelligence officials who have told Trump's team that there is room for streamlining within the multi-agency intelligence community.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday night that Trump was considering changes at the intelligence agencies. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer disputed the report Thursday morning.

"There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure. It is 100 percent false," Spicer said.

The CIA declined to comment on the potential changes.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday Republicans would strip federal dollars for Planned Parenthood as part of the GOP effort to repeal the health care law, prompting an outcry from the century-old organization and Democrats promising to fight the move.

Ryan spoke a day after a special House panel issued a report criticizing the organization, which provides birth control, abortions and various women's health services, for its practices regarding providing tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers. The lawmaker's comments, while expected, were the first official word that repeal legislation would also renew the congressional assault on the group.
Congressman John Moolenaar, R-Midland, has been named to the House Appropriations Committee.

He is the first member from Michigan to be a member of the committee since 2011 and the first Michigan Republican to serve on the committee since 2009.

The committee and its 12 subcommittees are responsible for writing the 12 funding bills that formally set the spending levels for every department, agency and program in the federal budget.

Oversight of government spending is an important responsibility and one that I take very seriously. I will fight to make sure government uses taxpayer dollars wisely, stays within its means, and is accountable to the needs of Michigans hardworking families. I look forward to working with the members of the committee on addressing the priorities of our country, Moolenaar said.

We have a historic opportunity to change the size and scope of our government and I look forward to working with Congressman Moolenaar on rigorous oversight that will make every dollar count, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen said.

Moolenaar previously served as the vice-chair of the appropriations committee in the Michigan Senate, where he was chairman of the subcommittee on community health. He was also chairman of the house appropriations subcommittee on K-12 education in the Michigan House.
This week on Segue on WSIE-FM 88.7, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Dean Dr. Greg Budzban hosts Dr. Judy Crane, chair of SIUEs Department of Philosophy, to discuss the departments additions to the program and some of its upcoming events.

Entering the discussion, Crane explains her unusual journey into philosophy. She began her academic career at a small liberal arts school in New England. However, after a year and a half, she dropped out of school and moved to New Orleans. After a few years of enjoying life and working at a pastry shop, Crane enrolled at the University of New Orleans (UNO), where she took her first philosophy course.

Crane says that when she began with an introductory course, she almost immediately realized that was what she wanted to study. Cranes next course was in ethics, which almost led her to law school, though she ultimately decided to pursue philosophy as a career.

Following her time at UNO, Crane was accepted at Tulane University, also in New Orleans. Of her Tulane experience, Crane says I got my PhD at Tulane, where I got very interested in the history of philosophy. I just love the 17th century philosophers Descartes, Spinoza and Locke.

I became interested in issues about language, and the relationship between language and the world, and how we categorize things. That got me interested in biological species, because we do a lot of categorizing there, and what are we doing when we do that?

After completing her doctorate, Crane discovered SIUE was looking for a modernist, her field of study, to add to the philosophy department. She interviewed for the position. Describing the campus and atmosphere, Crane immediately felt comfortable. The SIUE atmosphere was reminiscent of UNO.

Crane has been teaching at SIUE since 1999 and became department chair in 2012. When discussing the philosophy departments future, Crane says the department has put forward paperwork to add a specialization in law, as well as an interdisciplinary minor in science, technology and medicine studies.

Discussing the law specialization, Crane explains, Philosophy is great preparation for law school, and many students seem not to realize that. So, by actually designing coursework for students that will help them get into law schools, we can actually better serve many students.

We have several required courses. Theres a philosophy of law course, an ethics course thats required, and some courses in social and political philosophy. Philosophy, in general, trains students quite well to think as a lawyer, and thats why so many philosophy majors are successful. If you look at some of the numbers on LSAT scores and acceptance rates, philosophy majors are near the top. So, we want to get that message across: heres a path that you can take, a philosophy major thats geared toward that career path.

Additionally, Crane says reading philosophical material helps to prepare students to read legal texts. While explaining an interdisciplinary minor, Crane says the program takes the tools of philosophy, history, and sociology, and applies them to science and the practice of science.

Elaborating on the minor, Crane adds, For example, we have a course on the philosophy of science. It examines how science operates in terms of how do you actually get to what we call scientific knowledge  what are the reasoning tools that get you there, and what justifies our scientific methods.

Theres also a course on the history of science, which looks at the long view and how we got to be what we are now. Theres also a sociology of medicine course, which looks at the way medicine operates in a sociological context, and how it relates to society. Its stepping back from the practice of science, and looks at how science operates and the history of science.

We also have a philosophy of technology course. It examines things such as what is technology, and the relationship between technology and the rest of humanity, and how it impacts our lives.

Addressing philosophical issues surrounding science, the minor will ask pertinent questions regarding what is science at all. Karl Popper formulated the question, now known as the demarcation question. It focuses on falsifiability  the ability to show that something can be proven false through experimentation or observation.

To expand on this idea, Crane references Poppers example of astrology, which Popper believed was not scientific, because it cannot be falsifiable. That is, if a prediction made using astrology did not come to fruition, the astrologer who made that prediction could justify it not happening due to some other circumstance.

The High School National Ethics Bowl is an upcoming event in which the philosophy department will be participating. Now in its third year, the Ethics Bowl will host 10 teams from seven high schools, mostly from the region. The winning team will move on to the nationals hosted at the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An all-day event on Saturday, Jan. 28, the regional competition begins at 8 a.m.

The students will be faced with ethical dilemmas and will have to argue about the cases they receive. Some of the questions will be given to the students beforehand. However, other questions  written by the faculty  will not, forcing the students to think critically and reason on their feet.

Crane says the Ethics Bowl is similar to a debate with the main difference being that the opposing teams do not have to disagree with one another. Instead, the students are judged by their logic, ability to articulate their points and their civility. The judges will consist of faculty from both SIUE and nearby universities, as well as some graduate students.

SIUEs philosophy department also hosts the annual Fritz Marti lecture on Friday, March 24, featuring Boston Colleges Dr. Richard Kearney, who specializes in the philosophy of religion. He has previously worked with Paul Ricoeur, another distinguished philosopher.

Tune in to WSIE 88.7 FM every Sunday at 9 a.m. as weekly guests discuss issues and events on SIUEs campus.

By Miles Davis, SIUE College of Arts and Sciences
NORWALK  More than a dozen parents, teachers and community members crowded into a small room at Norwalk City Hall Thursday night for a meeting about the proposal for a new school in South Norwalk.

The joint meeting of the Norwalk Board of Educations facilities and curriculum committees was the first open forum on the plan since School Facilities Study and Master Plan Recommendations were first presented to the board  and the public  on Dec. 20.

The full board is to vote on the plan at its Jan. 17 meeting, though several members of the public expressed concern Thursday about the short timeline for public input.

The plan proposes that Columbus Magnet School move into a newly constructed pre-K-8 school campus at the site of the former Nathaniel Ely School.

The current Columbus Magnet School building would be renovated to house a K-5 intradistrict magnet school with an International Baccalaureate Early Years Programme, which would feed into Roton Middle School and Brien McMahan High School. Brien McMahaon was approved for an International Baccalaureate degree program in 2015.

Superintendent of Schools Steven Adamowski said the program would position Norwalk as the only district in the state to offer an I.B. pathway program.

International Baccalaureate is the gold standard, Adamowski said. That is something we believe would draw people to Norwalk as a place to live and go to school.

Additionally, Ponus Ridge Middle School would be transformed from a middle-grades school into a full-fledged pre-K-8 STEM-themed magnet campus. Jefferson Science Magnet School would eliminate its temporary trailers and magnet-school status and return to being a neighborhood school.

All of those changes and more would come to fruition in Norwalk within the next five years or so if the recommendations for the districts Phase I Master Plan are passed.

There are not unlimited models, Adamowski said at Thursdays special meeting. What we have been guided by is the need to have models that are robust enough that they can elevate the education of the children in the neighborhood who would be walking to the school, and also attract families from other parts of the city.

In my view, there are three models that can do that, Adamowski said. One is the International Baccalaureate program, which has become the gold standard in the country. The other is our own model, the Bank Street model (at Columbus Magnet School), which has proven successful, and finally STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), which given the preponderance of jobs and the economy is incredibly valuable.

At Thursdays meeting, Columbus Magnet School Principal Medard Thomas provided a presentation on the progressive model of education used there, while the districts chief academic officer detailed the International Baccalaureate and STEM education models.

The pair provided an in-depth look at the models, but still left those in attendance with many questions. Even so, some praised the board for its efforts and efficiency, with one person stating, This is long overdue. Stop delaying.

KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
After a frigid Thursday that saw the mercury locked in a narrow 10-degree range from the mid-teens to the mid-20s, area residents could awaken Friday to a blanket of 1 to 3 inches of snow.

Although the significant snowfall accumulations are expected mainly across the extreme southern Texas Panhandle and northern Rolling Plains, the National Weather Service warns that wind chill values will range from zero to 10 below zero at times, adding to the misery of anyone caught outside.

Prepare for winter travel conditions, including snow-covered roads, low visibility and bitter cold temperatures, the NWS in Lubbock warns. A dusting to half-inch of snow may fall Friday as well over the South Plains and southern Rolling Plains.

Thursday night into Friday morning, the NWS expects the highest snowfall totals along the Caprock, especially over parts of Swisher and Hall counties.

The dangerously low wind chills should gradually ease by late Friday morning, forecasters say. However, low wind chills will redevelop Friday night, dropping again from minus 5 to minus 10 Friday night across the southwest Panhandle and northwestern South Plains.

Plainview ISD administrators will evaluate norming road conditions in the event of significant snowfall overnight. Depending on conditions, they might determine it necessary to delay start times. However, campuses will be open at regularly scheduled times to receive students.

If school is delayed one hour, school buses will run an hour late, according to the PISD inclement weather policy. If school is delayed two hours, buses will run two hours late. Breakfast will be served to students as they arrive.

In extreme cases of severe weather, school could be canceled completely.

Changes in the school schedule will be communicated in the following manner:

--Posting on the school website, www.plainview.k12.tx.us

--A phone call using the districts automated calling service

--Notification on KKYN, 106.9 FM

--Notification on the Lubbock TV stations

In the case of inclement weather during the school day, the same communication methods will be used.

The NWS said the period of inclement weather should be brief, with any lingering light snow showers or flurries ending quickly by Friday evening. Clearing skies and light winds will lead to a chilly night Friday, and where there is snow on the ground, temperatures will crater.

Most spots should see lows by early Saturday in the single digits to around 10 to 13 degrees. However, the far southwest Texas Panhandle could see temperatures dip below zero, especially if there are a couple of inches of fresh snow on the ground.

These cold temperatures coupled with light breezes will push wind chills down to 0 to -12F range across the northwest zones Friday night, though the light winds (under 10 mph) will likely preclude the need for a wind chill advisory, the NWS reports. Either way, it will be/feel cold. Moreover, the forecast low of 8 degrees at Lubbock on Saturday morning, Jan. 7, is only 2 degrees shy of the record of 6 degrees, set back in 1968. Plainviews low Saturday morning is expected to reach 5 degrees.

Temperatures should quickly recover, with highs Saturday in the mid-30s rising to the lower 70s on Monday.
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STAMFORD  Jon Saunders will tell you that, if you fight City Hall, you may not win, but you can reach a truce.

Hell take it, Saunders said, even though hes out several thousand dollars and six months of aggravation. At least, he said, his 6-foot-tall retaining wall is back in place and his house is safe on its hill.

It is, perhaps, a kind of success.

Im happy that its done, the Glenbrook man said of the repairs that were finished on New Years Eve. But I cant really take any joy out of it. I cant sit and look at it in the sunset. It was just too painful.

His ordeal began in June, when Saunders saw workers from Colonna Concrete, a West Haven contractor hired by the city, preparing to replace the sidewalks on Nash Place.

Dont bring my wall down, Saunders joked with the workers.

Next thing he knew, a large piece of it was on the ground. He learned the stone wall, built a few years after his 1925 house, did not stand on footings, as modern codes require. It stood on the old sidewalk the workers had just removed.

A city engineer examined the issue and told Saunders the city would pay to repair the portion that fell. But the whole wall was compromised, and Saunders would have to pay for that himself.

To an average homeowner, the estimate was staggering: at least $20,000. But it had to be done. If the retaining wall failed, his yard could slip away, and who knows what would happen to his house.

Thats when Saunders vs. City Hall began. The semi-retired advertising man said he soon saw he wasnt making much headway himself, so he hired an attorney and an engineer.

I had to show I was ready to go to court, Saunders said. And I had to have an engineer explain what had happened to the wall and draw the plans for fixing it. Me saying it doesnt accomplish anything. Thats where we started with the city.

Forms and delays

It was a long haul. Saunders went to meetings. He wrote countless emails.

I filled out a lot of forms, including some that werent even necessary, Saunders said. At one point, an inspector said the work couldnt continue because they were missing a form. It turned out the form had been rescinded  the city hasnt used it in a couple of years.

There was a good deal of waiting.

The city wants to inspect the work as each part is done, but we had trouble getting the inspectors here. We didnt know when they would come, so I was not always sure where things stood.

At times Saunders, a married father of two adult children, feared he would have to sell his home of 40 years to pay the attorney and the engineer.

The city finally came around and agreed to rebuild the wall with a mason of my choosing, Saunders said. They did so grudgingly, but they were professional and amicable.

Rebuilding the 70-foot-long wall cost $24,500, City Engineer Lou Casolo said. The city also paid $1,800 to replace a fence in the yard that fell with the wall. The money will come from funds set aside for sidewalk repair, Casolo said.

Saunders legal and engineering fees came to $7,000.

If I had to repair the wall myself, it would have cost three or four times as much, Saunders said. Im not happy about having to hire a lawyer or bring in my own engineer, but I absolutely had to.

Fix, not fight

Casolo said unforeseen issues often arise during sidewalk reconstruction.

No one realized the wall would kick out when the old concrete was removed, he said. Colonnas position would be that they were the contractor, but the city directed them to take out the sidewalk. The city could say the wall was old and improperly constructed, and on private property. But our actions caused the failure, so I said rather than get into a litigious situation, lets get it fixed.

So they talked about it.

Jon Saunders respected my position, that I have to negotiate costs and do things thoughtfully, Casolo said.

Other homeowners may benefit. Casolo said he spoke to the highways department, which oversees sidewalk projects.

Going forward, when they identify a potential problem, they will discuss it with the property owner before work begins, Casolo said.

Saunders situation was unfortunate, but handled as well as it could have been, he said.

No one got hurt. No one was financially overburdened. And it turned out nice, Casolo said. We just have to work together.

Saunders advice to fellow homeowners is to go ahead and fight. He searched for words to describe his thoughts about shelling out $7,000 to fix a wall that didnt seem to be going anywhere, yet feeling glad he didnt have to pay $24,500.

Its sort of like Korea, Saunders said of the 1950s standoff in which the United States, to avoid a bigger war with Russia and China, agreed to leave the Korean peninsula divided just about as it was before the fighting began. Theres an armistice, but not a victory.

Just a peace treaty, of sorts.

In the agreement I had to sign, the city admits no wrong, Saunders said. Still, if they hadnt had some culpability, they would not have paid a dime. So I rest my case.

angela.carella@scni.com; 203-964-2296; stamfordadvocate.com/angelacarella
MPD file

Midland and Odessa police departments have received several reports of motor vehicle burglaries that occur shortly after someone visits a bank.

Detectives believe that the suspect is waiting in his vehicle in the parking lot of various banks and follows victims who have just withdrawn money. If someone parks at another business, the suspect burglarizes their vehicle in the parking lot and attempts to steal the money envelope, according to a joint press release from MPD and OPD. The suspect has not followed the victim back to his or her residence in any of the burglaries reported so far.
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Many Bexar County school districts received low letter grades from the Texas Education Agency in a report released Friday to show what a new A-F grading system for schools and districts could look like when it takes effect next school year.

Schools and districts received grades in four of the five subcategories the state plans to use when A-F grades officially come out in summer 2018. They did not receive overall grades because the fifth subcategory, which allows schools and districts to rate themselves, hasnt been completed.

In Bexar County, Northside, North East and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City independent school districts received Bs and Cs. Alamo Heights ISD and the three military school districts received As in at least one category, but Alamo Heights received a D in closing performance gaps and Fort Sam Houston and Lackland received Fs in college readiness.

On the low end of the scale, Southside ISD received two Ds and two Fs.

Grading our schools The Texas Education Agency has released potential letter grades for every public school and district based on data from the 2015-16 school year. The grades rate four out of five subcategories for each school and district on an A-F scale. The methods used to calculate these grades are still open to change. A final A-F grade system will take effect in the 2017-18 school year. Below are the projected grades for schools in Region 20 and some others in the area.

Domain I = Student achievement, based on STAAR results

Domain II= Student progress, based on STAAR results

Domain III= Closing performance gaps, based on comparison of STAAR scores and percent of economically disadvantaged students

Domain IV= Postsecondary readiness, measured in elementary and middle schools using absenteeism and drop-out rates and in high school using dropout rates, graduation plans and career-readiness indicators such as college-credit courses

In 2018, districts self-assessment also will be included as a factor in their grades

Source: Texas Education Agency

Grades are calculated based on student test scores, growth in those scores, progress closing performance gaps, college or career readiness and school district self-assessments.

Mark Eads, Southside superintendent, said he was asking lawmakers to change or abandon the A-F rating system and urged parents last month to do the same.

An A-F system will create a false impression about neighborhoods and communities, he said in a letter to parents. Texas should now have an accountability system that harms families and communities because of economic situations.

Eads added the grades wont reflect the districts improvements because they are based on data from last school year. Eads took over at the end of that year, becoming the districts sixth superintendent in three years as test scores plummeted.

Like Eads, educators statewide have complained that the new rating system is not transparent and unfairly penalizes school districts with higher poverty rates.

Mike Morath, state commissioner of education, has said the provisional grades will help keep schools accountable and create incentives for improvement. He said the letter grade formula will be continually refined until it takes effect next year.

amalik@express-news.net

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
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A Hockley man appeared in court Friday on a charge of murder, accused of beating a man to death with a motorcycle helmet in a Tomball Walmart.

Michael Brandon Jemison, 30, is accused of hitting 37-year-old Justin Jones in the head with a white helmet at 1 a.m. on Monday inside the Walmart at 27600 Tomball Parkway.

State District Judge Jan Krocker raised bail to $75,000 after hearing that Jemison has a history of fleeing police and was found hiding in an a trailer in Waller County after skipping a meeting with police about the incident.

Prosecutors said in court that Jemison could be seen standing face to face with the victim on Walmart surveillance video. The footage, which is not very clear, shows Jemison's helmet bouncing off a wall and hitting the floor as the victim falls to the ground.

Jemison later told police he hit James with his fist, not the helmet, prosecutors said.

The two men apparently knew each other prior to the killing, according to court records.

Investigators said Jemison and Jones had been engaged in an ongoing dispute "for some time."

Jones, of Magnolia, was transported to Memorial Hermann The Woodlands where he was determined to be brain dead. He died later from severe head trauma.

A witness to the attack who knew both men identified Jemison by name, photo and in a photo lineup.

Jemison was arrested with his girlfriend on Wednesday after she had previously told police that she did not know where he was. She has been charged with hindering an arrest, prosecutors said.

Jemison has previously been convicted of marijuana possession, assaulting a family member, evading arrest and felony theft.

If convicted of murder, a first-degree felony, Jemison would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Jemison, in an orange jail uniform, appeared in court without an attorney and said he had plans to hire one.

brian.rogers@chron.com

twitter.com/brianjrogers
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San Marcos police are investigating after a 23-year-old was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a bar downtown in December.

Christian Albert Clayton, 23, was arrested Dec. 24, 2016 and charged with sexual assault, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison or a maximum $10,000 fine, public records show. Clayton is listed on the Texas State University website as a former health information management senior who was slated to graduate last summer.

On Dec. 6, 2016, Clayton met up with two women in downtown San Marcos at a bar called Vodka Street, according to an affidavit obtained by mySA.com.

The group moved to Green Parrot, another bar located nearby. Once inside, the affidavit states, Clayton led one of the women into a back room at the bar holding her by arm on the walk.

RELATED: Sheriff: 1-year-old girl severely injured in sexual assault

The other woman went to meet up with a friend at a different establishment.

Upon entering the back room, the woman told authorities Clayton grabbed a stool and pushed it in front of the doors of the room, blocking anyone from entering. Then, Clayton began taking the woman's pants off, and as she protested, he slapped her and told her to "shut up," the affidavit states. He told her if she made any noise, he would bite her.

Clayton, according to the affidavit, sexually assaulted the woman, telling her "it's okay."

RELATED: Baylor sexual assault scandal could cost the college $220 million

The woman also said she was choked and bit during the incident. Afterward, Clayton told the woman to get dressed and then left. The woman met up with her friend who took her to the Central Texas Medical Center in the area.

Authorities were called to the hospital and found the woman who had bite marks on her neck and clavicle, swelling on her left cheek, and a bruise on her right thigh.

San Marcos police found Clayton at his home in San Marcos and he denied ever going downtown that night. Then he changed his story and told them he had been downtown, but not at the Green Parrot, the affidavit states. He then told police he was at Green Parrot and that the woman forced herself onto him.

Clayton is being held in the Hays County Jail on a $50,000 bond.

Green Parrot did not immediately respond for comment.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
Ken Haynes, president and chief executive officer of CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System, announced his resignation Thursday.

Haynes will become executive vice president and chief operating officer of a large health care system based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Carolinas Healthcare System includes more than 40 hospitals and employs nearly 60,000 people.

Haynes joined CHRISTUS in July 2013 as chief operating officer and was named president and CEO in 2015. During his tenure, the system opened the citys first freestanding, academic childrens hospital and established a working relationship with Baylor College of Medicine. It has four other hospitals.

My journey with the CHRISTUS ministry has been very rewarding and Ill treasure the many relationships Ive established while in the San Antonio area, Haynes said in a statement. The Santa Rosa market has a solid leadership team in place and is well poised for continued success and growth.

Dominic Dominguez, CHRISTUS Health South Texas senior vice president of operations for the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa and Spohn markets, will handle operations until a replacement is hired.

Haynes last day with CHRISTUS will be Jan. 20.
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Funeral services were held for the last reported homicide victim of 2016, who was gunned down after a disagreement on the West Side.

Juan Armando Gonzalez, 28, of Harlingen, was shot twice while standing outside his apartment at about 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 30 at the Lago Vista Village apartment, 4243 West Commerce St., according to preliminary info from a San Antonio Police Department report.
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A former Bexar County Sheriffs Office detention officer who was convicted last month of using excessive force in the beating of an inmate was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail.

A jury found Avery Lemarcus Lawrence, 32, guilty Nov. 21 of official oppression, assault by a public servant and violating the civil rights of a person in custody. All are Class A misdemeanor offenses punishable by one year in county jail. Because he was a public servant, his case was heard in criminal district court.

Lawrence chose to be sentenced by state District Judge Melisa Skinner.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony that Lawrence punched or pushed inmate John Corey Garcia on July 13, 2014. Prosecutor Eddie Flores said that Garcia, who was serving time for a felony, never hit or engaged the guard in the fight.

Defense attorney Marilyn Bradley, however, said in opening statements of the trial that as Lawrence started his shift, he tried to quiet inmates and keep them under control, but Garcia continued inciting other inmates to be unruly. Lawrence tried to get Garcia out of the unit, Bradley said, and Garcia spun around and pushed Lawrence into a bunk and the guard pushed back.

The prisoner hit his head on a metal bunk bed, which left a large laceration. Flores said afterward, Garcia walked away from the guard to bleed, but Lawrence re-engaged Garcia, slammed him to the floor and did a knee strike to his back that was so loud, other inmates heard Garcias rib crack.

During Thursdays punishment hearing, prosecutors presented three videos into evidence that showed Lawrence appearing to push or punch inmates at the Bexar County Jail Annex. The state also introduced another incident into evidence that Lawrence committed excessive use of force against another jail inmate and may have provided false information in his use-of-force report.

He is a bad officer, said Bexar County Sheriffs Capt. Timothy Walston, who oversees activities involving the Special Emergency Response Team in the jail. Walston said Lawrence was a SERT officer and that he reviewed some reports in which the force used by Lawrence was found to be excessive. Based on those reports, he (Lawrence) uses excessive and unjustifiable force.

Defense attorney Marilyn Bradley told the court in her closing statement that Lawrence, an Army veteran, was in a very stressful and dangerous job.

He might have made a mistake, but its a tough environment  one officer surrounded by 60 inmates.

Prosecutor Eddie Flores reminded the court, as he did during the first phase of the trial, that the inmates injuries were so serious that Bexar County had to take him to a hospital and could not wait for an ambulance.

Hes betrayed the public trust, Flores said. We as a society give them lots of power to enforce laws. He was entrusted, and he abused that power.

Skinner ordered the sentences to be served at the same time and also fined Lawrence $4,000. He was given 47 days credit for time served.

ezavala@express-news.net

Twitter: @elizabeth2863
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A Central Texas woman appears to be smirking in her mugshot after she allegedly fatally "mutilated" her 5-year old daughter and stabbed her father-in-law in an altercation Thursday in Hays County, according to the Hays County Sheriffs Office.

Krystle Villanueva, 24, faces a capital murder charge and second-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The capital murder charge poses a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty. She is being held on a $1.1 million bond at the Hays County Jail.

RELATED: NWS: Temperatures will feel like teens in San Antonio this weekend

Villanueva allegedly stabbed her daughter, Giovanna Larae Hernandez, multiple times during or before an altercation with her 58-year-old father-in-law, Eustorgio Arellano-Uresti. Hays County Sheriff Gary Cutler said the girl was "mutilated."

Cutler also said on a Facebook Live broadcast via KXAN that in his 43 years in the police force, "this is one of the worst cases Ive ever seen.

Its probably the most horrific case in Hays County history, Cutler said during a Friday press conference. Our hearts are heavy here today with the loss of a beautiful 5-year-old girl.

The Travis County Medical Examiners Office conducted an autopsy on Hernandez and ruled her death a homicide.

RELATED: $5,000 reward to help solve NW Side 2011 capital murder case

The investigation into this tragic and horrific homicide is ongoing, HCSO said in a news release.

Officers initially responded to the call from the father-in-law at about 12:51 p.m. Thursday in the 200 block of Willow Terrace in the Green Pastures subdivision. The officers then advised that due to the nature of the call, the SWAT unit should be deployed to enter the trailer, the news release said.

SWAT entered the home and found Hernandez dead and took Villanueva into custody, according to the release.

The Hays County District Attorney said during the press conference his office has not determined what punishments they will seek in this ongoing case.

RELATED: San Antonio man convicted of capital murder in 2014 drug robbery

Photos from what appear to be Villanuevas multiple Facebook pages show photos of her, but also the following statement regarding her commitment to her daughter:

The most important things to me in life is family and succeeding in life but especially my daughter Giovanna LaRae. Id do anything in the world for this chick, she said in the About Me section of one of the profiles.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
A North Texas barbecue joint served up free food to hundreds of homeless people earlier this week after a thief stole something vital to the restaurant's operation.

Lockhart Smokehouse in South Dallas was experiencing water issues Wednesday afternoon and announced it would be closed until the problem was fixed on its Facebook page. The restaurant was closed for the night and the next day for lunch.
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SAN ANTONIO  After the Alamo City experienced some drizzle and light freezing rain in a cold front Friday morning, the chilly weather will continue into the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.

NWS meteorologist Cory Van Pelt said in an interview with mySA.com that the freezing drizzle residents may have experienced Friday morning, which also caused icy conditions on roadways such as Loop 1604, shouldn't last into the weekend.

RELATED: Icy conditions cause closures along Loop 1604 on the North Side

As for the temperatures, Saturday and Sunday mornings will be in the low- to mid-20s, with wind chill causing weather to feel as if it is in the teens. Residents should expect highs in the 40s during those days, Van Pelt said.

Once the cold weekend ends, temperatures are expected to rise once again, Van Pelt said. The weather will jump back into the 70s early in the week, and theres little chance of rain.

SNOW IN S.A.: Photos show snowmen at the Alamo, S.A. covered in snow in January 1985

On Friday night going into Saturday, there will be a low around 23 degrees. Saturday, expect a high near 44 and a low around 23. Sunday will see a high of about 50 and a low around 38, according to the National Weather Service forecast.

The temperatures will begin to warm back up on Monday with a high around 66 and a low around 54.

Tuesday will see yet another warm-up with a high around 75 and a low around 53. Wednesdays temperatures will cap at about 74 and drop to around 55.

RELATED: This seasons influenza peak rising in Bexar County, according to health officials

As for Thursday, residents should expect temperatures around 76 during the day.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
There is no reason San Antonio or any other city should expect the Trump administration to increase federal support for cities. After all, among the largest urban counties, Hillary Clinton carried all but counties that include Fort Worth and Phoenix. Of the 10 most populous counties, Trump won one. George W. Bush won five.

San Antonio was no exception. While Texas went easily for Trump, Bexar County voters chose Clinton by 54 percent to Trumps 40 percent.

Whats more, on the few occasions Trump referred to cities during the campaign, he painted a picture of urban hellscapes populated by blacks. He might be surprised to learn that a majority of blacks are no longer poor and more live in the suburbs than in urban cores.

In fact, one of the reasons that Trump didnt carry Americas cities is they dont even faintly resemble the dystopian portrait Trump painted of them. Sure, many of our cities still have areas of high poverty and crime, but a recent study by the centrist Brookings Institution showed that cities are thriving.

In the recovery from the crash of 2008, big cities have greatly outpaced smaller cities and rural areas in job growth. This is a striking change from the period from 1992 to the 2008 crash, when big cities had the lowest job growth rate of American communities. As a result, the counties carried by Clinton produce fully 64 percent of the nations economic output, compared to only 54 percent carried by Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

This helps explain the election. Trump overwhelmingly carried the areas least served by the recent recovery. In other words, San Antonio and other cities are booming. Not so small cities and rural areas. So the question is not whether the latter need help. Its whether Trumps prescriptions will provide that help.

Meanwhile, look for San Antonio to keep doing well. Like other cities, we are creating much of our own good fortune.

Some of that is through local government. The city has in recent years invested heavily in urban amenities such as parks, including what may be Americas greatest linear park in the River Walk extensions. Its city-owned utility, CPS Energy, has scheduled the closing of its massive coal burning plant and become a national leader in renewable energy.

The city has become a national model with both its pre-K program and full-service Haven for Hope homeless shelter. Meanwhile, Bexar County has become a national model for the treatment of the mentally ill. And downtown is undergoing massive improvements, from Hemisfair Park up to The Pearl.

Our largest inner-city school system, the long-underperforming San Antonio Independent School District, has embarked on an ambitious and innovative set of initiatives to not only serve current students better but also to attract families that previously would have moved to the suburbs or chosen private schools.

Meanwhile, San Antonios economy has become more diversified. There is the Toyota plant. The medical sector has grown substantially, albeit greatly enhanced by the concentration of national military medical facilities here. Likewise, we have a growing tech industry, again enhanced by the governments hiring of thousands of highly trained workers at National Security Agency and Air Force installations here.

Finally, San Antonio has in the past two decades produced a stunning new level of private philanthropy, led by the likes of Charles Butt, Bill Greehey, Kit Goldsbury, Harvey Najim, the Mays family, Graham Weston and Gordon Hartman, among others. Not to mention the recently deceased but still giving John Santikos and Robert Tobin.

Together they have given San Antonio hundreds of millions of dollars and boundless inspiration. I will tell that story more fully later.

This column appeared as a commentary on Texas Week with Rick Casey, which airs Fridays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m. on KLRN.
There is no denying the majestic beauty of a professionally produced fireworks display.

However, in the hands of pyrotechnic novices, firecrackers can be dangerous a thing. They need to be carefully monitored not just for the safety of the individuals using them but for the protection of those in the vicinity when they are set off.

A Houston lawmakers proposal to increase their availability raises serious concerns, and we urge the Texas Legislature not to extend the sale periods.

State law restricts the sale of fireworks to the general public for New Years Day, Texas Independence Day (March 2), San Jacinto Day (April 21), Memorial Day (the last Monday in May) and July Fourth.

It had been limited to only New Years Day and the Fourth of July, but the list was more than doubled in 2016.

Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, is now seeking to extend the list even further. He has proposed a bill for the upcoming legislative session seeking to add more than 90 holidays to the approved fireworks sale periods.

Among the holidays he wants to add are Valentines Day, Easter, Mothers Day, Christmas Eve, Good Friday and Hanukkah.

The list also includes some really obscure holidays, such as Child Health Day, Loyalty Day, White Cane Safety Day, Parents Day and Governors Day.

Hubertys proposal would allow the sale of fireworks almost year-round. We do not need that.

Many cities, including San Antonio, prohibit the possession of fireworks within the city limits. This limits the local sale and use of fireworks to the unincorporated areas of Bexar County.

On occasion, governmental entities can issue disaster declarations making it illegal to sell or use fireworks during the sanctioned fireworks sale periods.

That has happened in Bexar County on several occasions due to drought conditions.

The public safety issues can be serious and need to be carefully weighed before more fireworks sale dates are allowed.

Even with the limited sales period, penalties of up to $2,000 for transporting them in to the city and hotlines in place to report unsafe and illegal use of fireworks, too many disregard the rules.

Permitting more fireworks sale periods will only compound the problem.
If asylum seekers present themselves to U.S. border officials expressing fear if they return to their homelands, they are to be given sanctuary until the facts of their cases are weighed.

This, however, is not happening. Migrant advocates and the migrants themselves tell of asylum seekers being sent back into Mexico. Border officials say they are given information on where to seek help in Mexico and appointments to reappear. But this, too, doesnt seem to be happening.

The flows of families and unattended minors from Central America have risen and ebbed in the last three years, but the conditions that caused these migrants to flee  mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras  have not substantively changed. Violence and lawlessness await them in their countries. U.S. officials have no excuse for being caught flat-footed.

The U.S. must find the means to give sanctuary while asylum claims are vetted. And this need not require extensive detention.

Express-News reporter Aaron Nelsen told the stories of these migrants in a recent article. He talked to migrants who said their asylum requests were ignored. The mother of Guatemalan Celinda Aracely Rodriguez said after the daughter was denied entry, a smuggler snatched her and is holding her until she can pay to cross. Her mother feared the smuggler might want more than money. Other migrants told similar stories.

The flows are up  more than 35,000 immigrants arriving at land ports in October and November. Under the law, they are labeled as inadmissibles  they dont have documents to enter the country legally. They are still substantively non-Mexican families and unaccompanied children.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, says more are on their way. The Costa Rican ambassador told him that his country expects 40,000 immigrants from Haiti, Africa, Asia and the Middle East to arrive, enroute to the U.S.

The United States does not owe each and every one asylum. But it does owe them, under domestic law and international commitments, a hearing to make their cases. That means they are owed security while they await that fair hearing.

President-elect Donald Trump did not have kind words for immigrants during his campaign. Our hope is that a Trump administration finds more commitment to treat asylum seekers humanely.
STAMFORD  Foul play is not suspected in the death of a 46-year-old homeless man who was found Thursday in an alley on the citys West Side.

The body of Horacio Monroy-Sagastume, partially covered in a blanket, was found next to a home on Spruce Street about 5 p.m. Thursday, Lt. Tom Barcello said.

Monroy-Sagastume was known to frequent the neighborhood and was last seen about 10:30 a.m. Thursday when someone gave him a bowl of soup, Barcello said.

Barcello said someone passing by noticed his body outside the home and called 911. Medics were not able to revive the Guatemalan native and he was pronounced dead.

The Bureau of Criminal Investigations cordoned off the area and investigators examined the alley between the homes for clues.

Barcello said there was nothing suspicious found and no signs of trauma on the body.

Who knows if it was from being outdoors or medical, Barcello said.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner checked the body, which remained at the scene until after 10 p.m.

More for you Stamford police investigate death on West Side

There is nothing suspicious about the death at all, Barcello said.

Barcello said an examination of Monroy-Sagastumes body will be done to determine the cause of death.

jnickerson@scni.com;
Mayor Ed Lee named HIV/AIDS activist Jeff Sheehy to the District Eight Board of Supervisors seat Friday, ending weeks of speculation about whom he would appoint to fill the vacancy left by Scott Wiener.

The mayor made the announcement Friday morning at Noe Valley Town Square, surrounded by Sheehy and his family, several past and present supervisors, and around 100 onlookers.

Sheehy will be the first HIV-positive person to serve on the board. District Eight includes the Castro, Noe Valley and Glen Park. Wiener left the board after he was elected to the state Senate to replace the Mark Leno, who was termed out.

Lee described Sheehy as a forward-thinking, solution-oriented, pragmatic, practical, yet value-spirited person.

Sheehy, 59, towered over Lee. I am honored, humbled and just stunned by his confidence in me, Sheehy said of the mayor. This is going to be an unbelievably challenging job.

Sheehy is well known to political insiders for his HIV/AIDS advocacy as well as his participation in local political clubs, but Friday offered his first chance to introduce himself to the residents of the district.

He described himself as a family man  his husband is a real estate agent, and his 11-year-old daughter attends public school.

He said one of his priorities is to work with the Police Department to clamp down on car break-ins.

Why I want to serve is not for grandiose purposes, but as the mayor said, to take care of peoples problems, and where there is broader policy that will make things better for the people in my district, then to advance those.

Politically, the choice of Sheehy is a bold one for the mayor, who as of Thursday morning was still deciding between Sheehy and Alex Randolph. He met with both candidates.

Randolph is a member of the City College of San Franciscos Board of Trustees  Lee initially appointed him to fill a vacancy on that board  and political insiders considered him more ideologically aligned with Lee.

While Randolph has a reputation for being collaborative and well-liked, Sheehy is known for his strong and sometimes combative personality.

If you want someone who is a combination of policy smart, fearless and street fighter  thats Jeff Sheehy, said former Supervisor Bevan Dufty. Plus hes got instant cred as a public school parent. As a gay man who is a dad of a public school child, he is instantly relatable to 50 percent of the district thats not LGBT.

Sheehy, who lives in Glen Park, was not in the initial mix of names floated as possible contenders for the seat. He is the longtime director of communications for UCSFs AIDS Research Institute.

While Lee is a moderate, Sheehy has historically positioned himself as a progressive. He served as a past president on the progressive-minded Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and served on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.

But Sheehy emerged as the leading candidate in large part because of his bulldog personality and independent streak, said sources close to the decision. Sheehys politics have shifted toward the moderates, and the mayor wanted someone who could go toe-to-toe with the progressives and wouldnt feel threatened by aggressive tactics.

Another major factor playing into the mayors decision was who could survive an electoral challenge from Rafael Mandelman, a member of the CCSF board who has strong roots in the progressive community and is widely expected to run for the District Eight seat.

Lee did not want to risk another of his appointees to the Board of Supervisors losing an election. Two of his past three appointees have lost their subsequent elections  Christina Olague in 2012 and Julie Christensen in 2015.

Sheehy could serve as long as 10 years  two years filling out the rest of Wieners term plus two full terms. He is not scheduled to run for office until 2018; however, the progressives could force a special election, in which case Sheehy would have to run in that election to fill out the rest of Wieners term.

The mayor believed that Sheehys personality combined with his advocacy work and family ties would appeal to residents across District Eight  and help him win an election.

Sheehy is a long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS  he was diagnosed in 1997  and has an extensive history working for better health care and benefits for the gay community.

He was HIV/AIDS adviser to former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. He serves on the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which administers the states stem-cell research programs.

In the late 1990s, he was an influential proponent of former Supervisor Tom Ammianos equal benefits ordinance. That watershed legislation required companies doing business with San Francisco to provide the same benefits to domestic partners as they do to married couples.

Going back to the equal benefits ordinance, he has been there for the LGBT community, said Matt Dorsey, a former spokesman for the city attorney now with Lighthouse Public Affairs.

Its enormously significant that San Francisco finally has an HIV-positive member of the Board of Supervisors, especially at a time when we have a getting-to-zero initiative that is a model for cities worldwide.

Despite Sheehys history, its unknown how he will position himself on the most contentious political battles in San Francisco: housing and homelessness.

Lee and the moderates have been more supportive of market-rate housing  alongside affordable housing  as a way to alleviate the housing crunch and bring down rental prices. Progressives have aggressively pushed developers to set aside more below-market housing in new developments.

One of the earliest legislative battles Sheehy will have to weigh in on is whether to require developers to rent or sell 25 percent of units in new projects at below-market prices  a proposal Lee and the moderates dont support.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
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What is Winery Direct?

Total Wine & More's buying teams travel across the United States and the world, looking for new and exciting wines. They forge meaningful relationships with the best producers, providing us with exclusive access to world-class products and the ability to offer these exceptional products at incredible prices. Most importantly, they allow us to streamline the process of bringing wines from the producer to you  slashing costs and letting us showcase the best of the best on our shelves.

Winery Direct items are identified in our stores by the yellow shelf tags. We offer more than 8,000 wines in a typical store  including more than 2,000 Winery Direct items, many exclusive to Total Wine & More.

Find the Wine of the Week at Total Wine & More's San Antonio locations:



Del Norte

125 NW Loop 410

San Antonio, TX 78216

(210) 524-9300

The Rim

17530 La Cantera Parkway

San Antonio, TX 78257

(210) 877-9155

You can also shop online at www.TotalWine.com.

Editors Note: This content is made possible by Total Wine & More. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com.
OAKLAND, Calif.  The latest salvo in the war on sugar has been fired by the Praxis Project, a nonprofit group that filed a lawsuit against The Coca-Cola Company and the American Beverage Association (ABA) to stop what it called deceptive advertising of sugar-sweetened beverages, Bloomberg reports.

The complaint lists studies linking sugared drinks to cardiovascular disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes. From the 1950s until the late 1990s, the tobacco industry engaged in an elaborate campaign of disinformation to cast doubt on the science connecting cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases, said Maia Kats, who directs litigation for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is representing Praxis in the suit. Like the tobacco industry, Coca-Cola needs to replenish the ranks of its customers, and it tries to recruit them young, Praxis said in its complaint.

Coca-Cola countered that its products are clearly labeled with calorie and other nutritional information. We take our consumers and their health very seriously, said spokesman Kent Landers. We will continue to listen and learn from the public health community and remain committed to playing a meaningful role in the fight against obesity.

This November, four localities (San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, California; and Boulder, Colorado) voted to impose a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. Just before Christmas, a judge dismissed a lawsuit against Philadelphias soda tax.
PURCHASE, N.Y.  By finally filling its global nutrition senior vice presidency, PepsiCo continues its shift toward making nutrition a more important part of its portfolio, Advertising Age reports. Lisa Mann, a former Kraft/Mondelez executive and Kind marketer who headed her own agency for a time, now helms the global nutrition division, which focuses on the long-term plans for the companys healthier brands, such as Tropicana, Naked and Quaker.

Mann has expressed her interest in the healthier side of food. I left Kind because I really wanted to have the opportunity to effect greater change in food and health and wellness, she said several months ago.

She moved to PepsiCo because I truly felt [this] was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create change at a scale level and affect a bigger part of the population.  I think the Quaker brand is an extraordinary brand that is inherently linked to health and wellness and ... I would love to be a part of the team that makes it even more contemporary and relevant.

PepsiCo has made other changes in the nutrition group lately, hiring Morgan Flatley as chief marketing officer and Koen Burghouts as vice president of dairy. However, a December report in the Wall Street Journal noted that despite an expanding stable of 'good for you' brands like Quaker oatmeal, Naked juice and Sabra humus, PepsiCo fell behind the goal it made in 2010 to triple revenue from nutritious products to $30 billion this decade.

Mann said she will market healthy brands differently than snack foods. In health and wellness, it's about helping consumers find solutions, but they are in charge, versus the push strategy of classic CPG, she said. But I do think there is an inherent switch to how do you help people find the product [and] the tools to live a healthier lifestyle, versus telling. And we need to think through over the coming months and year [about] how to do that.
By Irina Slav, a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. Originally published at OilPrice

It has become painfully obvious that the much-hyped OPEC agreement to reduce global oil production by close to 2 million bpd wont have the effect that its initiators had hoped for. True, crude has jumped above US$50 but failed to pass the US$55 barrier and move closer to US$60, which would have solved a lot of problems for some of the worlds biggest producers.

This price increase, however, has spurred optimism among some producers and motivated them to plan output ramp-ups, which will in turn dampen the upward potential of crude more effectively than growing doubts about top producers willingness to stick to their commitments under the historical agreement.

Lets look at shale boomers, for instance: according to Tom Kloza, the global chief of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, shale producers can add as much as half a million bpd to their output this year. They dont even have to want to add so much  they may well have to, prompted by their lenders.

Then there is that doubt that the parties to the production cut agreement will be tempted to cheat and wont be able or willing to resist the temptation. The three most likely cheaters seem to be Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, because it is still locked in its fight with the Islamic State and needs all the petrodollars it can get its hands on. Iran, because it is in a rush to revive its energy industry and has made it clear repeatedly it has no intention to dance to any tune that Saudi Arabia plays.

Then there is Saudi Arabia itself, which spearheaded the latest attempt by OPEC to give prices a big push upwards. Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional archrivals. Now, with most sanctions lifted, Iran is eager to re-enter global oil markets, targeting some of Saudi Arabias biggest clients, such as China and India. Its hard to believe, as Osama Rizvi noted in an article for Oilprice, that Riyadh will sit idly by, watching Tehran take a bite out of its market share.

Of course, markets also have to contend with the two exempted OPEC members, which are both doing their best to increase their output. Libya says its close to reaching a milestone of 900,000 bpd, on track to restore its production to pre-war levels. By the end of 2017, Libya plans to pump 1.1 million bpd.

Nigeria is also slowly but surely raising production even though it is still fighting with militants in the Niger Delta and the Boko Haram terrorist group. The country, however, has managed to raise its output to 1.6 million bpd and, according to President Buhari, should further improve it to 2.2 million bpd.

To further complicate matters, there is the duration of the cut agreement. As Tom Kloza notes in an interview for CNBC, it might well be over in six months, which is the term that the parties agreed. If someone cheats and/or if prices fail to reach the levels that most participants in the agreement are happy with, chances are that the cut wont be prolonged into the second half of the year.

All of this means that supply is going to exceed demand for yet another yearthe fourth in a row, in fact, as 2013 was the last year when demand was higher than supply. And this does not bode well for price trends over the next 12 months.
Astronomers discover cosmic double whammy

(Nanowerk News) Two of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe - a supermassive black hole and the collision of giant galaxy clusters - have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator.

By combining data from some of the best X-ray, optical and radio telescopes in the world, researchers have found out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters (Nature Astronomy, "The case for electron re-acceleration at galaxy cluster shocks").

Subaru gri colour image of the merging cluster Abell 34113412.

We have seen each of these spectacular phenomena separately in many places, said Reinout van Weeren of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the study that appears in the inaugural issue of the journal Nature Astronomy. This is the first time, however, that we have seen them clearly linked together in the same system.

This cosmic double whammy is found in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 located about two billion light years from Earth.

The two clusters are both very massive, each weighing about a quadrillion  or a million billion  times the mass of the Sun.

Optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope, in La Palma and Keck Observatory and Japans Subaru telescope, also on Mauna Kea, Hawaii detected the galaxies in each cluster.

Dr David Sobral from Lancaster University said: It was exciting to take deep images of this merger of galaxy clusters with the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope so we could then point the 10-m Keck telescope to the right galaxies to learn more. It turns out that giant telescopes can also see further by standing on the shoulders of smaller telescopes like the Isaac Newton.

The comet-shaped appearance is produced by hot gas from one cluster ploughing through the hot gas of the other cluster.

First, at least one spinning, supermassive black hole in one of the galaxy clusters produced a rotating magnetic funnel. The powerful electromagnetic fields associated with this structure have accelerated some of the inflowing gas away from the vicinity of the black hole in the form of an energetic, high-speed jet.

Then, these accelerated particles in the jet were accelerated to even higher energies when they encountered colossal shock waves  cosmic versions of sonic booms generated by supersonic aircraft  produced by the collision of the massive gas clouds associated with the galaxy clusters.

Its almost like launching a rocket into low-Earth orbit and then getting shot out of the Solar System by a second rocket blast, said co-author Felipe Andrade-Santos, also of the CfA. These particles are among the most energetic particles observed in the Universe, thanks to the double injection of energy.
An appeal for immediate intervention has been made to Health Minister Simon Harris to deal with the daily chronic overcrowding at South Tipperary General Hospital.

Management at the hospital have issued three appeals to the public since last Thursday to only attend in the case of a genuine emergency as the hospital tops or is near the top of table for use of trolleys in hospitals in the country on a daily basis.

On Tuesday morning the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said there were a record 612 patients who have been admitted for care on trolleys in hospitals around the country.

Thirty one of those patients were on trolleys in Clonmel and as the chaos intensifies opposition TDs Seamus Healy and Mattie McGrath have called on Minister Harris to intervene.

They have criticised the minister, who visited the hospital in October, for failing to make a decision on the best way forward to alleviate the overcrowding at the hospital, a decision promised to arrive before the end of 2016,

That decision failed to materialise despite the passing of the November 15th deadline date for tenders for the national HSE winter initiative framework

It is now understood that a further mini tender process is required for each specific hospital in the country

There has been no announcement by the HSE of the start of that mini tender process concerning Clonmel.

Minister Harris has made no announcement on his preferred option to address the overcrowding in Clonmel.

Those options include the provision of a forty acute bed hotel facility, a forty bed modular build and a possible use of Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel for step down beds.

That tender/procurement process, claim the opposition TDs, is now stuck in limbo with no end in sight and they said it was now time Minister Harris took action in Clonmel and lived up to his responsibilities .

Deputy McGrath said the situation was so difficult in Clonmel that frontline nursing staff were leaving or seeking transfer.

If nurses are leaving how do we expect to recruit nurses for a proposed forty bed facility. The process of getting in badly needed forty acute hospital beds in Clonmel by whatever means the Minister approves of has not stalled, it just has not started.

We are no closer to a solution being found than we were in October when the Minister visited Clonmel and the situation is now three times worse, insisted Deputy McGrath.

He continued - No decision has been made by Minister Harris, no mini tender process has started, no planning meetings regarding new temporary or permanent forty acute bed facilities has st a r t ed.

Even when the planning process starts in Clonmel for whatever the chosen option is, we are talking about a minimum of two months before we see anything on the ground happening,

Deputy McGrath said it was disturbing to be informed that STGH has been consistently operating under the HSEs Full Capacity Protocol since January of last year.

It is now a fully established fact that a full blown crisis is afflicting STGH he said.

Deputy Seamus Healy said three months ago Minister Harris described conditions at the hospital as utterly unacceptable and said solutions had to be found  and promised  a decision before the end of the year.

Staff are run off their feet and are struggling to provide a safe service in a hugely pressurised atmosphere. Meanwhile, Minister Harris sits on his hands, makes no decisions and breaks his promises, said Deputy Healy.

He said the hospital was bursting at its seams. It is operating at about 130% occupancy. The Medical Department occupancy rate is even higher at 150%. Full occupancy is regarded as 85%.

As a priority, forty additional acute beds are urgently required, stepdown, convalescent and district hospital beds are also required, and capital funding must also be provided this year to commence the Phase 2 Development and upgrading of the hospital.

Minister Harris must face up to his responsibilities and must immediately approve and announce these three essential and urgent initiatives insisted Deputy Healy.

Since last Thursday management at the hospital has issued three appeals to the public because of the overcrowding.

The appeal outlined the extent of the overcrowding at the hospital and the demand on services.

Management appealed to the public to only attend in the case of a genuine emergency, advising that, where possible, a GP or Caredoc out of hours service be consulted in the first instance.

Unfortunately there will be long delays for patients attending the ED as the hospital is currently experiencing a surge in patients and long delays are expected today due to the exceptional numbers of very ill people in the department .

STGH wishes to reassure people, that while the hospital is extremely busy at present, patients are being seen and cared for appropriately.

The management at STGH apologies for any inconvenience caused. concluded the statement.
The Carrick-on-Suir gold coin hoard is no longer on display in the National Museum but moves are afoot to the return the 17th century coins to Co. Tipperary and put them on permanent display in the County Museum.

Tipperary County Museum Education Officer Julia Walsh-Drohan told Carrick-on-Suir Municipal District's latest monthly meeting that they have requested the National Museum to allow it to place the 81 historic coins on display permanently in the County Museum in Clonmel.

She said the coins had been on display for some time in the National Museum at Collins Barracks in Dublin but they were not on exhibit there now. That was why the County Museum had applied to have the coin hoard returned to Co. Tipperary. "There is no point in having them in storage if you have a place willing to display them," she said.

Ms Walsh-Drohan said the County Museum was very hopeful of securing the gold coin hoard to display it permanently in Clonmel.

The coins, dating as far back as 1630, were discovered by construction workers, employed by Grangemockler building contractor Shane Comerford, while renovating Cooney's Pub on Carrick-on-Suir's Main Street in January 2013.

They were found under the floor in the front bar area of the pub, which re-opened for business last summer.

The workers and pub owner David Kiersey handed over the hoard to the National Museum. The coins were put on display in the National Museum and were also exhibited for a short period at the County Museum and for a day at Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir in September 2013. Hundreds of people flocked to Ormond Castle to view the hoard during their short visit to Carrick-on-Suir.

Carrick-on-Suir Cllr David Dunne (SF) said he was very disappointed to hear the coins were no longer on display in the National Museum as they were led to believe that would be the case.

He called for the hoard to be exhibited at Ormond Castle in the town they were discovered.

Fellow Carrick-on-Suir Cllr Kieran Bourke (FF) said he supported the County Museum's bid to get the Carrick-on-Suir coin hoard returned to Co. Tipperary.

As much as he wanted the coins to be exhibited in Carrick-on-Suir, he accepted that for financial and security reasons, it wasn't viable to have them on display in Ormond Castle.

He echoed Cllr Dunne's disappointment that the coins were no longer on show in the National Museum.

"There was huge fanfare when these coins were found.

They were probably the most valuable hoard to be found at the time, and to think that those in the National Museum couldn't even be bothered their backsides to display them...

As a Carrick-on-Suir person I am very disappointed."

Ms Walsh-Drohan said Cllr Dunne would have to request the National Museum directly to have the Carrick-on-Suir coin hoard exhibited at Ormond Castle.

She explained that the County Museum was the designated museum for Co. Tipperary and it met the environmental and security conditions required to put this coin hoard on display. The National Museum would look towards handing the coin hoard over to such a designated venue, she added.
Two Tipperary sisters are part of a moving tribute to music legends Prince, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen that will feature on the Late Late Show tonight.

2016 saw the passing of some of the biggest names ever in music and now a group of Irish musicians have put together a stunning tribute song that is starting to go viral.

On Late Late Show tonight

'The legends tribute' involving Tipperary sisters Michelle Mason on cello and Sandra Mason on violin from Thurles who will join other well known musicians in performing the tribute on the Late Late show tonight.

The project is the brainchild of musician Connor Mc Keon and producer Billy Farrell and features a powerful arrangement combining Prince's Purple Rain, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and Bowie's Life on Mars all sang by Conor McKeon with Sandii Hyland and the Earthangel Gospel Choir.

The project was inspired by Connor reflecting on the giants of global music and the impact they had in his life.

"I grew up listening to the music of Prince, Cohen and Bowie. They are the inspiration between millions of people learning guitar and other instruments and joining bands. I remember when I was 16 going to buy Sign Of The Times record and thinking, wow, this is something so original and so inspiring.

There had never been anything like it. In later years I started listening to David Bowie and then Leonard Cohen and was captured by the raw power and incredible lyrics. These artists inspired other giants like Lady GaGa and Artic Monkeys and countless others."

"These were true light workers, giants of music and I felt so strongly that I wanted to honour them in some way. My own kind of personal memorial project but thankfully others shared my vision and low and beyond this idea just grew legs and we recorded the song in late December and before we knew it we were invited onto the Late Late show.

"Music will live on forever and I've no doubt that a whole new generation will now be inspired to carry the flame forward."
The nuance involved in originating mortgages to borrowers with nontraditional credit profiles often forces lenders to rely on manual underwriting. But these methods cost more and lack efficiency, creating the need for a more inclusive automated solution.

At New American Funding, which lends to many Hispanic borrowers, the company's president Patricia Arvielo noticed that loan officers serving this demographic  many of them Latino or Latina themselves  were encountering major hurdles when their loans went to underwriting.

"They were getting caught in the underwriting by an underwriter who wasn't culturally aware," Arvielo said.

To remedy this, Arvielo "halted the way we were doing business" and created a separate team of 20 experienced underwriters. These individuals were familiar with the nuances of Hispanic borrowers and now manually underwrite these loans.

"They're more seasoned underwriters that have seen these cultural nuances," Arvielo said. "I rarely now get a Latino loan agent stuck in underwriting."

In many ways, Arvielo's strategy resembles the process at many larger lenders. At Fifth Third Bancorp, loans that cannot be processed through an automatic underwriting system, often due to a borrower's nontraditional credit background, are elevated to an exception desk, said Edward Robinson, senior vice president and head of mortgage at Fifth Third.

This group of underwriters evaluates these loans to determine whether Fifth Third is in a position to take on the risk involved. In some cases, loans even make their way to Robinson's office if the exception desk cannot reach a decision.

"We have an exception desk that is committed 100% to making sure that as we get folks that are on the fringe or below where our automated tools would allow, there's a desk and a policy in which we can underwrite them," Robinson said.

"And if it doesn't even get approved by the exception desk, they can elevate it to me and I can handle it with my capital markets team," he added.

New American services its loans and holds nearly all of its originations in portfolio, allowing it to monitor pressure points and better understand potential warning signs for default.

"I'm able to look at the delinquencies in our book and begin to start peeling back the onion," Arvielo said. "I can see which borrowers are in default and why they are in default."

By holding onto the loans it originates, New American  which Arvielo said boasts a 0.06% 90-day delinquency rate in its $17 billion servicing portfolio  can more easily expand its credit box.

While manual underwriting and balance sheet lending alleviate many of the issues regarding lending to underserved borrowers, they are far from a panacea. As a result, the number of lenders able and willing to tap into these segments remains limited.

For starters, manual underwriting is a costly and time-consuming process. At New American Funding, underwriters devoted to borrowers with nontraditional credit background only get through two loans per day, compared to a workload of four to six loans per day that an underwriter can manage using automation.

"We have to go back to borrowers several times for receipts, trailing the funds," Arvielo said. "It's difficult."

Many lenders also lack staff with the talent to handle the complexities of manual underwriting, particularly given that many younger underwriters have only ever operated in an automated environment.

"There are not a lot of good, solid manual underwriters left" following the financial crisis, Altavera Mortgage Services President and CEO Brian Simons said.

Where portfolio lending is concerned, there is a higher amount of risk involved. Banks are limited by regulations in the amount of such risk they can take on, and nonbank lenders must have the funds to be able to keep loans on their balance sheet.

Nonbank lenders are "afforded the ability to do things that I can't," Robinson said.

Steps are being made to alleviate the issues involved with both manual underwriting and portfolio lending. Fannie Mae, which has long offered manual underwriting for nontraditional borrowers, recently introduced a new process for underwriting these loans through its automated underwriting system, Desktop Underwriter.

Beginning with the latest edition of Desktop Underwriter released in September, lenders can now underwrite these loans through a nominally automated process.

"Although we have a minimum credit score requirement, DU completes a direct assessment of the borrower's credit history," said Jude Landis, vice president of single family credit policy and risk management at Fannie Mae. "This allows us to be more flexible and directly assess credit in a way that makes the whole conversation about credit scores less urgent for us."

Lenders first submit information to meet Desktop Underwriter eligibility criteria, including loan limits, a loan-to-value ratio of no more than 90% and a debt-to-income ratio of less than 40%. If an approval recommendation is received, the lender must document a payment history for the borrower with at least two nontraditional credit sources, including at least one that is housing-related, such as rental payments. If a borrower does not meet the eligibility criteria, the loan can still be manually underwritten to receive approval.

"The innovation of being able to submit loans through Desktop Underwriter is so important," said Deborah Momsen-Hudson, director of secondary market lending at Self-Help Credit Union in Durham, N.C.

But Fannie Mae's offering isn't perfect. Indeed, it is not completely automated, and adoption could be an issue.

"People still talk about nontraditional mortgages with 2007 and 2008 sitting in their minds," Simons said.

And the program still presents restraints or requirements that may prove problematic for some borrowers, Arvielo said.

"I like to remain positive about all changes or enhancements that may help LMI borrowers access homeownership, [but] this particular program is too strict with the down payment requirements and DTI," Arvielo said.

In addition to the 3% down payment loan programs that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began offering in 2015, another opportunity has emerged in the partnerships being formed among banks, smaller lenders and the government-sponsored enterprises. Self-Help Ventures Fund, which manages the secondary market programs for Self-Help Credit Union and Self-Help Federal Credit Union, has entered into two partnerships, one with Bank of America and Freddie Mac and another with Wells Fargo and Fannie.

Through these partnerships, the banks originate, process and underwrite affordable, low down payment loans to traditionally underserved borrowers. In some cases, Self-Help offers risk coverage for the loans, which are all sold to the GSEs.

Self-Help does its own retail lending, too, focusing on underserved communities. But because of its size, its reach is limited.

"What the secondary market partnerships with Wells Fargo and Bank of America allow us to do is take learning we have from our own direct lending in low-income communities and leverage that with the large distribution networks of national banks," Momsen-Hudson said.

Fifth Third has developed its own strategy for addressing the needs of borrowers in underserved communities. The bank is forming community economic development "pods" in these communities, Robinson said, "that will include mortgage loan officers devoted solely to unit production. These loan officers will be married with select processors and underwriters to handle the complexities the loans may present if there at the edge of the credit curve."

While the program is expected to benefit these communities, it may not provide as much marginal benefit to Fifth Third, Robinson said.

"On the margin, it's not going to be as profitable as other parts of my business," he said. "But if I'm able to provide credit to folks who may not be able to get it elsewhere and I'm able to do it in a more efficient way, then I can move the needle and get a lift from a productivity standpoint."

While such partnerships and strategies certainly alleviate the credit crunch in underserved communities, they, too, are limited in the industrywide impact they can have  barring other companies follow suit.

When it comes to finding solutions for the problems posed by manually underwriting loans to borrowers with nontraditional credit backgrounds, lenders can look to the examples of startups in the small business lending space such as Camino Financial, a company that Arvielo sees as a potential "good marriage" with a mortgage lender on a strategic basis.

Formed in 2014 by twin brothers Kenneth and Sean Salas, Camino Financial provides small loans to Hispanic-owned small businesses. The company provides business loans, excluding commercial real estate, of up to $500,000.

To serve this niche, the company developed a technology-based underwriting model. Having a largely automated process was a necessity for the company given the small size of the loans it originates. The average size of a Hispanic-owned business, Kenneth Salas said, is less than $200,000, and the average loan size for Camino Financial is roughly $30,000.

"You definitely need to have the technology from a process standpoint to turn volume quickly," he said. "It lowers transaction costs."

Since many of the businesses did not have strong credit histories, Camino Financial utilized big data in developing its underwriting platform. The system runs regressions with data the company has collected on Hispanic businesses along with a credit pull for the prospective borrower to ascertain creditworthiness.

"You do need to take an alternative view on credit," Salas said. "Our super-FICO model, leveraging a lot of the data we've gotten from different Hispanic business owners, allows us to take a different view."

Salas argues that a similar approach to underwriting would work well within the mortgage industry, particularly because of the glut of data lenders have at their disposal, albeit challenges would remain for mortgage lenders that Camino Financial has not faced since it works with private capital.

"I think they can totally apply a similar model  there's a lot more Hispanic consumer data out there than there is Hispanic business data" Salas said. "There are certain standards that mortgage companies need to abide by, and that limits innovation."

Another high-concept solution to these issues could come from the use of artificial intelligence. Integrating such technology could allow lenders to move beyond matrix-based automation and infuse human-like intuition into a computer-based process by learning how underwriters make their decisions in a manual environment.

The technology has "the computer mirror and mimic decision-making processes that humans would have, which is not necessarily matrix based," Simons said. "They could track and have underwriters underwrite files, and create an underwriter's brain about how and why they made decisions."

Another high-level possibly that Robinson suggests is adding geocoding overlays to determine where a borrower lives.

"If a loan comes in and is outside of box, maybe you have an alternative where you have a geocoding for a low-to-moderate tract. That may be a way to move the needle with some automated tools, without risk to RESPA," he said.

Such technology is still a long way from being implemented. But there are other steps the industry can take in the interim to adapt automated underwriting that's better suited for the changing face of its borrowers.

"Everybody is still living with this stigma that this type of lending has some sort of negative association," Arvielo said. "It's about using our voice to advocate for opening the credit box sustainably."
Quicken Loans parent company Rock Holdings has agreed to buy two online marketing service providers, marking the Dan Gilbert-owned conglomerate's entrance into the lead acquisition space.

Rock Holdings will purchase LowerMyBills and ClassesUSA from their parent company, Core Digital Media, the Detroit-based company said Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Rock Holdings expects the acquisition to close in the first half of 2017 and plans to retain the companies' current leadership.

The two companies' day-to-day operations will also continue to be run from their current Los Angeles headquarters.

"LowerMyBills and ClassesUSA play a meaningful role in helping consumers find the best online solutions for their goals," Rock Holdings Vice President Graham Skidmore said in a news release. "Through these acquisitions, and the planned capital investments, we are confident these businesses will continue to grow and meet the evolving needs of their customers."

LowerMyBills, through its website, connects mortgage borrowers with lenders for refinance, purchase and reverse mortgage loans.

ClassesUSA runs a portal designed to help students search for higher-education opportunities from more than 300 schools and 1,600 degree and certification programs.

The marriage between a lender and a lead generator is not a first: LendingTree bought mortgage banker Home Loan Center in 2004, but ultimately sold it to Discover in 2012.

Rock Holdings' latest acquisitions continues a buying streak for the company. In late December, its subsidiary In-House Realty announced it would buy the Toronto-based technology group and its home and real estate agent search technology platform from Santa Monica, Calif.-based OpenHouse Realty.
The Military Committee, NATOs highest Military Authority, will meet in Chiefs of Defence Session on 17-18 Jan 2017, at the NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium. General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the Military Committee, will preside over the meeting. The Chiefs of Defence will discuss the NATO Command Structure Functional Assessment, NATOs strengthened Defence and Deterrence posture and the implementation of the Projecting Stability Initiative. They will also review the way forward for the RESOLUTE SUPPORT Mission in Afghanistan, meet with their Mediterranean Dialogue and Interoperability Platform counterparts, and partners Georgia and Ukraine. They will also have a broad discussion on Russia.

In their first session, the Chiefs of Defence will discuss and provide advice on the NATO Command Structure Functional Assessment, as well as the implementation of work related to deterrence and defence and projecting stability. During the RESOLUTE SUPPORT session Chiefs of Defence will be briefed on the current status of the Mission and security situation on the ground in order to establish recommendations ahead of the February Defence Ministers meeting.

The afternoon sessions will centre on Partnerships. The meeting with Mediterranean Dialogue counterparts will focus on the regional security situation and recommendations for enhanced practical military to military cooperation. During the meeting with the Interoperability Platform Partner Nations, the Chiefs of Defence will deliberate on ways to further increase interoperability and the different tailored work strands required to achieve this.

The following days morning meetings will be with partners, Georgia and Ukraine. With Georgia, discussions will focus on continued defence reform progress and achievements and the way ahead for the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package Implementation. The session with Ukraine will provide an opportunity for an update on the security situation in and around Ukraine and assess the progress of the security and defence sector reforms. The last meeting of the day will see the Chiefs of Defence exchange views on Russia and the challenges it poses to the Alliance.

General Petr Pavel will be supported in each session by General Curtis Scaparrotti (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, SACEUR) and General Denis Mercier (Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, SACT).

The Military Committee meets twice a year at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, at the level of Chiefs of Defence to discuss NATO operations and missions and provide the North Atlantic Council with consensus-based military advice on how the Alliance can best meet global security challenges, and once a year they meet in an Allied member country. On a day-to-day basis, their work is carried out by permanent Military Representatives at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

Media Opportunities

Tuesday 17 Jan 2017

07:35 - 07:50 : Media Pool pick up in the NATO Press Area

08:05 - 08:15 : 176th Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session  Public Opening remarks by General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee

Wednesday 18 Jan 2017

13:30 -14:00 : Joint Press Conference in the Luns Theatre with General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (CMC), General Curtis Scaparrotti, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and General Denis Mercier, Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation (SACT)

Imagery

Photos and video of all opening sessions will be available online at www.nato.int/ims shortly after each meeting. The Joint Press Conference will be made available on the NATO website after the event and by contacting content@natochannel.tv

Accreditation

Media representatives holding a valid 2016 or 2017 NATO Media pass will have access as usual to the NATO HQ. Media representatives not in possession of a NATO Media pass and wishing to attend the media opportunities available are invited to contact the NATO IMS Public Affairs Office via email or fax (ronaynecasimiro.lara@hq.nato.int , fax number + 32 2 707 5713) with a completed accreditation form no later than 1600 on 11 Jan 2017

Media passes will not be mailed to applicants; they must be collected in person upon presentation of an ID card or passport and a valid national press pass (or accreditation letter from a recognized media organization). Media representatives will be given their accreditation at the Main Entrance of NATO Headquarters. Passes must be worn visibly at all times, and security personnel may ask to see another form of ID at any time. Media representatives are informed that security personnel will examine and may test equipment and personal effects carried onto the site and are advised to arrive with sufficient lead time to clear security checks.

Enquiries

Points of contact for the Chairman of the Military Committee:

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Koster, Deputy Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Advisor to the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and NATO International Military Staff

Tel: + 32 2 707 59 83

E-Mail: koster.robert@hq.nato.int

General press arrangements:

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Email: steenson.elizabeth@hq.nato.int

For more background information about the NATO Military Committee click here
(Natural News) Bill and Melinda Gates, via their Gates Foundation, have donated billions of dollars to fund new vaccinesmedicines that, in fact, have caused great harm to a great number of people. But with about a million viruses in existence that we still know nothing about, its likely that the Gates Foundation and other globalists will pour more resources into developing new vaccines that will work to reduce the population.

That seems inconceivable on its face, but when you examine the facts and some of Bill Gates own statements, youll discover for yourself that is exactly the plan.

As reported by The Week, since the dawn of Man, viruses have had deadly effects on populations, remaining hidden for centuries before they finally evolve into something that kills. In modern times, when a new virus begins to take its toll, medical science plays a game of catch-up by attempting to devise a vaccine that will combat the virus. Thats always too late, says Jonna Mazet, a scientist at the University of California, Davis. She told The Week that science needs to think about something different.

She has proposed a global effort to identify and catalogue every virus known and as yet unknown through an effort called the Global Virome Project. Indeed, the idea is not new; its been around for some time and is supported by individual scientists and organizations that include the U.S. Agency for International Development, a nonprofit group known as the EcoHealth Alliance, ProMED, HealthMap, and epidemic risk firm Metabiota.

Gates has said he wants to lower the worlds population

At present, there appears to be support for a global effort picking up steam, with health organizations and scientists constantly called upon to respond whenever a new viral threat arises.

Also, the World Health Organization has launched the R&D Blueprint, a project that aims to bolster development of treatments and countermeasures for diseases that the global health agency has assessed as posing the most critical risks, including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

Whos involved? The World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust, which, together, have formed an organization known as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The goal, ostensibly, is to find answers and help fund the development of vaccines that would be needed in an epidemic but not likely to be profitable for the vaccine makers.

Plus, a pilot project thats been underway for about seven years, called PREDICT, has already discovered about 1,000 new viruses.

But is the real goal to save as many lives as possible? Not according to the billionaire Microsoft founder. During a TED talk that was posted online around 2010, Gates ties new vaccine development in with reducing the population of the planet as a way to arrest global warming/climate change.

The world today has 6.8 billion people thats headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent, Gates actually said, as further documented by TruthWiki.

The TruthWiki site noted further that Gates wants to trim the worlds populationto lower dangerous CO2, which is actually necessary to sustain life on the planetusing vaccines in different ways.

Reducing the population through the use of vaccine-generated pandemics

One, vaccines contain dangerous heavy metal toxins like mercury (thimerosal), as Natural News has well-documented. In fact, site founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has actually tested flu vaccines at CWC Labs and found them to contain mercury. Many also contain other heavy metals like aluminum, as well as known carcinogens like formaldehyde, which would kill people in slow, often undectable ways.

Vaccines could also be deployed to reduce or eliminate fertility, thereby artificially lowering birth rates around the world. In fact, in some industrialized nations throughout Europe, this is already happening as death rates exceed birth rates. Vaccines could be used to cause miscarriages or spontaneous abortions, which is much more easily accepted by establishment scientists.

Then there could also be a pandemic created through the use of vaccines, to kill off hundreds of millions or even billions of people. It could be as easy as developing a virulent new flu strain then forcing nearly everyone to take it.

Either way, as you can see here, Gates has made it clear reducing the worlds population over the phony issue of global warming is his goal, and he has said as much.

Sources:

TheWeek.com

WorldAffairs.org

YouTube.com

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) By now, youve no doubt heard about the four black teens in Chicago who kidnapped, bound, tortured, scalped and beat a young white special needs boy on a Facebook live video feed, all while shouting anti-Trump and racist hate slogans that will turn your stomach.

Graphic footage captured on Facebook Live shows a mentally handicapped white man being tortured in Chicago by African-American assailants as they laugh and express their disgust for white people and President-elect Donald Trump, reports The Daily Caller:

The video, taken by a woman identified on Facebook as Brittany Herring, shows a white man tied up with tape across his mouth. The victim is shown being repeatedly hit, sliced at with a knife, berated and his clothes ripped off.

If youve ever wondered whether violent black hoodlums are targeting white people for extreme violence, hatred and felony assault, this sickening, racially motivated violence  broadcast live by Facebook  just confirmed it once and for all. In fact, black-on-white crime is now far more prevalent, violent and hate-oriented than white-on-black crime across America, as the following statistics reveal.

African-Americans are only 13% of the population but commit over 50% of the murders

The statistics on whos really committing violent crime prove this beyond any debate. Today blacks are about 13 percent of the population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime. Between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the United States, reports The Washington Times.

The black arrest rate for most offenses  including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes  is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement. And blaming this decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines and drug laws doesnt cut it as a plausible explanation.

The four hoodlums responsible for this particular violent hate crime against an innocent special needs teen have now been arrested and charged with multiple, serious crimes. They are:

Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; Brittany Covington, 18, of Chicago; and Tanishia Covington, 24, of Chicago.

According to Zero Hedge, they have been charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary, according to the Cook County states attorney. Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

Heres what they look like. I think if Obama had a son, one of them might look just like the thug on the right

From the Daily Caller:

At one point in the video, the primary assailant shouts at the bound man, F#ck Donald Trump, nigga! F#ck white people, boy! F#ck white people, boy! while he kicks him. At another point in the video, the perpetrators laugh about being reported to the police in response to a Facebook commenter claiming theyre going to be arrested.

Heres the sickening video of their outrageous crime against whites (warning GRAPHIC):

Left-wing media all but blacklisting the gruesome story, hoping no one learns the truth about black-on-white hate crime in America

Not surprisingly, this lynching of a white special needs boy is being almost completely censored by the entire left-wing media that incited it. The dishonest fakestream media only reports news that fits their false narratives. Thus, if four white teens had bound, beaten and kidnapped a young black boy, it would be headline news everywhere, alongside nationwide riots in every major city.

Call this disgusting attack in Obamas back yard exactly what it is: a Trump-hating race crime against a defenseless white man by young black Americans who shame their country, declared left-wing journalist and globalist Piers Morgan in this UK Daily Mail article:

[T]oday, Im in shock.

I just watched a video that didnt just sicken me, it contaminated every pore of my soul with feelings of pure, unadulterated, raw disgust and hatred.

The short piece of film I endured depicts a gang of four black teenage thugs, two male, two female, abusing and torturing a poor terrified young white man with special needs.

The sheer scale of their depravity appears to know no bounds.

These smirking scumbags tie him up, gag him, kick him, punch him, scalp him by viciously slashing his hair with a knife, and flick burning cigarette ash on the head wounds they inflict in the process.

They laugh, they jeer, then one of them shouts: F**k Donald Trump, n***a, f**k white people!

Another urges the victim to say, I love black people.

And then they force him at knifepoint to say, F**k Donald Trump.

This is not a quick, spontaneous assault. The victim is believed to have been held for up to 48 hours.

US DOJ stats: Black thugs are the real violent crime problem in America and they tend to vote Democrat

When black people are attacked by white people, thats headline news everywhere. But when a white boy is tortured, kidnapped, scalped and beaten by black thugs, its not news to the left-wing media. Thats how the media pretends black people commit almost no crimes at all when, in truth, they are the ones carrying out the vast majority of violent crimes across America, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics.

Black crime and incarceration rates spiked in the 1970s and 80s in cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington under black mayors and black police chiefs. Some of the most violent cities in the United States today are run by blacks, writes Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board:

Black people are not shooting each other at these alarming rates in Chicago and other urban areas because of our gun laws or our drug laws or a criminal justice system that has it in for them. The problem is primarily cultural  self-destructive behaviors and attitudes all too common among the black underclass. The problem is black criminal behavior, which is one manifestation of a black pathology that ultimately stems from the breakdown of the black family.

Its also worth noting that the very same violent black thugs who kidnapped this innocent white teen are exactly the same people who, once they reach voting age, vote for Democrats like Obama and Clinton. Statistically speaking, African-American convicted felons vote overwhelmingly for Democrats in elections, and thats exactly why Democrats keep pushing to grant voting rights to felons (and illegal aliens, too, but thats another story).

The violent tendencies of black inner city thugs isnt even the real story in all this, by the way. The real story is that the left-wing media incited this violence with its rising hate rhetoric against Trump supporters and white people in general.

Washington Post, NYT, CNN and MSNBC are complicit in this violent kidnapping, torture and beating of an innocent white teen

Thats right: The Washington Post, NYT, CNN, MSNBC and other propagandists of the fakestream media incited this violence against an innocent special needs boy. They are the ones who spread the hatred, ginned up the radicalism and fanned the flames of violence against Trump supporters.

For the last two years, the hate-filled left-wing media has spewed racial hatred and anti-Trump propaganda that encourages and normalizes violent acts against white people and Trump supporters. This campaign has been deliberately planned, scripted and carried out by the same prominent members of the fraudulent fakestream media that also pushed the false Russian hacking story, the false power grid penetration story and the false PropOrNot Russian influence story.

We have now reached the point in America where the left-wing media is deliberately engaged in journo-terrorism. Thats a term I coined a few weeks back in this story entitled JOURNO-TERRORISM: The goal of the left-wing media has always been to terrorize voters and hypnotically control them using orchestrated fear programming.

That agenda of psychological terrorism and cultural subversion has come to fruition in this felony kidnapping incident in Chicago. This is the kind of violence and hatred the left-wing media wants people to display toward Trump supporters.

If this were a WHITE gang kidnapping and torturing a BLACK victim, it would be the top breaking news story everywhere for days on end

Not surprisingly, the delusional left has gone to great lengths to try to claim this isnt a hate crime and it wasnt even evil. To leftists, the violent black thugs who kidnapped and scalped this innocent boy were just knuckleheads who made mistakes. (By the same twisted logic, they would probably describe black rapists as uninvited lovers.)

If four white men kidnapped, tied up and tortured a black mentally disabled man, all captured on a live Facebook video, heard making statements like F*ck Obama and F*uck blacks, would any reader hesitate to call them out for being racists? asks All News Pipeline, an independent media website. ANP also reports:

The mainstream media, progressive liberals, Democrats, Barack Obama, College professors, millennials, Black Lives Matter Activists and Social Justice Warriors are constantly bemoaning racism against blacks by whites, but when 4 black thugs in Chicago kidnap a special needs white male, tie him up and brutally torture him live on Facebook, making statements like F*ck Whites and F*ck Trump,  the MSM is whitewashing the hate crime and racism aspect, liberal bloggers arent even bothering to address it, Barack Obama hasnt come out and claimed these four black thugs could have been me

If this had been done to an African-American by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged and there would be no question it is a hate crime, said Newt Gingrich on Fox and Friends, as reported by Breitbart.com. So, lets be clear about this. We are right at the edge of a terrible period, which I know President-elect Donald Trump wants to avoid, of having the deep bitter division in the communities that makes America hard to govern.

Gingrich is correct: If this had been a white-on-black crime, practically the entire country would have erupted into outrage, complete with massive riots in at least a dozen U.S. cities, combined with calls to stop white hatred and demands that law enforcement seek justice for the victim. But when the victim is white, the left-wing media mostly censors the story and pretends it never happened.

White people are never supposed to be outraged when violent black gang bangers and thugs kidnap, torture and violently beat them for the simple reason that, according to the insane, mentally ill left-wing media, white people deserve to be beaten. Being white is, as far as theyre concerned, practically an admission that youre an evil racist bigot. And if youre a Trump supporter, you deserve a good beat down, right?

Thats the insanity of the left-wing media. Hate crimes dont count if they are committed by black people. And whites are evil even when theyre the victims.

These thugs didnt come up with the kidnapping idea in a vacuum

Does anyone really think these black thugs came up with the kidnapping and torture idea in a vacuum? No, the ideas and false narratives that led to this sickening act of hatred and violence have been propagated by the mainstream media for the past several years.

The thugs in Chicago are merely acting out the hatred that has been instilled in their minds by CNN and other left-wing media terror-journalists who work at places like the Washington Post (the new Pravda of left-wing false narrative propagandists).

This is all a deliberate plan by the left. They actively seek to cause violence, mayhem, race wars and violence against whites by ginning up extreme hatred through false flag hate crime hoaxes, false news narratives and malicious censorship of the truth about the violence and hatred on the left. This has all been Obamas plan from the start, by the way: Divide America. Whip up racial hatred. Then claim all the thugs are victims while condemning law enforcement for trying to keep the peace.

The twisted, mentally ill overlay in all this is that, while pushing racial hatred and violence, the left proclaims itself to have a monopoly on compassion and tolerance. Its laughable! The real tolerance of the left is best demonstrated in this sickening kidnapping and torture video of an innocent special needs white teen. This is the real tolerance of the left on full display: If you dont agree with their mentally ill social justice agendas, they will beat you, torture you, verbally assault you and even scalp you in front of the whole world in a live video broadcast. Somehow, all the self-proclaimed social justice warriors who carry out such acts dont see anything wrong with violent assaults on white people. Quite literally, they have no concept that violently assaulting an innocent citizen is wrong!

Welcome to Obamas America, eight years into the nightmare that sleeper cell Obama has deliberately unleashed onto the nation in a bid to destroy this country.

CNN declares kidnapping, torture and race-based hate crime isnt evil or racist

The mentally ill disconnect from reality in all this is best demonstrated by CNNs journo-terrorist Don Lemon. After watching the kidnapping, torture and race-motivated felony violence against a white teen, Lemon declared the act was not evil or racist.

To CNN and their entire crew of mentally ill journo-terrorists, black people cannot, by definition, commit hate crimes, since hate is only something that originates with white people. Thats how sick, demented and truly sociopathic CNN and the entire left-wing media has become. These people are beyond delusional. They are a danger to society and desperately need to be carted away for psychiatric evaluation.

Watch CNNs Don Lemon demonstrate his extreme mental illness here:

Dear President Trump: Its time to ARREST the journo-terrorists and stop the inciting of racial violence across America

Join me in the call for President Trump to arrest, prosecute and imprison the journo-terrorists who are deliberately working to incite violence as part of their malicious plot to destroy America, subvert American culture and obliterate Christians and white people across the board.

This is way beyond a free speech issue, by the way. They are engaged in WAR. The First Amendment does not protect someones right to deliberately engage in premeditated psychological terrorism on a massive scale with the intended purpose of inciting violence and overthrowing a nation. Thats so far beyond yelling fire! in a crowded room that they arent even comparable.

When the Washington Post fabricates fake news about Russians hacking the election, thats journo-terrorism. When CNN incites hatred toward Trump supporters be repeatedly lying and slandering Trump with an endless stream of hatred-invoking smears, thats journo-terrorism. When the NYT repeatedly and falsely claims Trump supporters are KKK supporters, racists, sexists and xenophobes, thats journo-terrorism.

The journo-terrorists are deliberately trying to rip America apart. To protect our citizens, our society and our sanity, they must be stopped.

Remember, too, that the left has always blamed conservative talk radio for every hate crime or shooting carried out by any white person. Rush Limbaugh is usually targeted, and he was blamed for the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma City attack in 1994 (among other events). The political left has always said that right wing radio hosts or websites incited such violence. Will those same people now apply their own logic and proclaim the left-wing media has incited this latest black-on-white hate crime in Chicago? (Of course they wont.)

Join me in calling for the new President Trump to arrest the journo-terrorists and charge them with subversion, inciting violence and conspiring to overthrow the government. We can no longer stand by and watch these evil, malicious WashPost, CNN and NYT criminals tear our country apart while innocent white people are lynched on live Facebook streams. We either start defending this nation or we lose it, period. Its time we stood up for America and arrested those who are deliberately trying to destroy it.
(Natural News) It seems as though big government bureaucracy is just as wasteful and inefficient in other Western democracies as it is in the United Statesa problem that, we hope, will be solved by President Donald J. Trump.

As reported by Canadas National Post, the country has spent more than $350 million taxpayer dollars over many years to clean up a toxic abandoned mining region, but still cannot use the land because it remains contaminated.

More than a quarter of a billion dollars has been spent in the past 10 years alone to clean up the abandoned Faro mine site, which resembles a moonscape consisting of waste rock and mustard-yellow ponds in the mountains of south-central Yukon, the paper said.

However, according to the Treasury Board of Canadas annual reports that were posted online, there has been no remediation of the land whatsoever: Actual cubic metres remediated: zero; actual hectares remediated: zero; actual tonnes remediated: zero.

The area is both off-limits and out of sight as it overlooks the Pelly River Valley on the territory of the Ross River Dena First Nationsthe 2,500-hectare (approximately 6,177 acres)Faro mine property has developed into one of Canadas biggest contaminated sites.

Bureaucracy is the same everywhereinefficient and expensive

But it has also turned into one of the countrys most expensive secrets. Not very many people outside of the North have paid much attention to the highly toxic sitebut it has nonetheless been micromanaged by several layers of bureaucracy since it was abandoned in 1998, yet there is, perhaps unsurprisingly, no accountability whatsoever.

What is not absent, however, are the excuses about the dramatic lack of progress at the site.

The biggest problem has been figuring out what to do, Lou Spagnuolo, the Vancouver-based Faro mine remediation project director for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), said. His agency has the lead on the mine clean-up, and it is also working with the Yukon provincial government as well as affected First Nation communities.

The mine began its operations in 1969, and at one point was the worlds biggest lead-zinc mine, as well as the Yukons largest employer. At the time and throughout its duration, the companys permit only required a $100,000 security deposit and that operators dispose of its mill tailings in a good and miner-like fashion.

Then, in 1998, after nearly three decades of operations, Faros last owner, Anvil Range Mining Corp., declared bankruptcy, then abandoned the site altogether. Today, the mines 70 million tons of toxic tailings fill a four-and-a-half kilometer by one-kilometer multi-colored slough. And the 320 million tons of acid-leaching waste rock that is surrounding the site is enough to rebuild Egypts largest pyramid some 40 times.

At the time it was abandoned, the National Post noted, a joint federal-territorial government board stepped up to manage the left-behind toxic mess, using funding from the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan.

Costs keep spiraling upward

But that is when things went to hell, so to speak. Critics say once the bureaucracy got involvedlayers and layers of it, along with endless consultations and deliberationsnothing got done. All cleanup efforts completely stalled out.

For instance, the Post noted, between 2003 and 2009, more than 100 technical assessments and studies were done, resulting in a dozen plans aimed at dealing with various levels of government and communities affected by the toxic site.

However, said Kathlene Suza, the representative for the Ross River Dena on the Faro Mine Closure Office team run by the Yukon government, things just continued to drag out.

We were supposed to have a remediation plan in place by 2011, she said. How much longer is this going to go on?

In 2009, senior officials with the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (as it was then known), the Yukon government, Selkirk First and Ross River Dena Council estimated that the remediation process at the site would take an additional four decades at a cost of $450 million.

Now, however, that cost estimate has climbed to as high as $1 billion, Spagnuolo said.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NationalPost.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

EPAWatch.org

BigGovernment.news
Friday, January 06, 2017 by: JD Heyes Tags: EPA , Gold King Mine , lawsuit This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) When it comes to government regulatory agencies, you are never right and they are never wrong. That is especially true for the Environmental Protection Agency, a bureaucracy that has become weaponized, politically speaking, under Barack Obama.

In August 2015, the Animas River in the southern part of Colorado and northern New Mexico was turned a grotesque shade of yellow-orange after a contracting crew working for the EPA accidentally released some 3 million gallons of toxic water filled with mining byproducts into the water. It was the largest environmental disaster of the year, but thus far it appears as though the agency has managed to shirk its responsibility for the massive spill.

But now, because of the inaction of the Obama administration and the EPA itself, three states and a number of Native American tribes have filed suit in federal court seeking to force the agency to do something it should have done voluntarily: Pay for the clean-up, just like it forces private companies and individuals to do when they pollute.

As reported by Inside Sources and Natural News, the Navajo Tribe filed suit under Federal Tort claims seeking more than $160 million in damages. The tribes reservation runs adjacent to the river and suffered when the toxic heavy metals contained in the contaminated water from the Gold King Mine near Silverton, CO., were released during a botched EPA cleanup project.

Spending money they dont haveand cant get back

In particular, it has impaired our ability to maintain the cultural, ceremonial and spiritual practices that undergird the Navajo way of life, said Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, in a press release, as cited by the Farmington Daily Times. Through this claim and our corresponding lawsuit, we are demanding that the U.S. government finally provide the Navajo Nation relief.

The Navajo Tribe is not alone, by a long shot. It is one of several communities that are seeking relief from the Obama administration to help pay for the costs of cleaning up the EPAs massive spill and detoxifying drinking water during the period of contamination.

Earlier in December, the agency did agree to pay $4.5 million to state, local and tribal governments to help cover the emergency response costs that were tied to the spill. But agency officials denied some $20.4 million more in additional requests for past and future expenses that would not have been if the spill hadnt occurred. That decision affected two Native American tribes and more than a dozen state and local agencies.

In recent days a pair of Colorado lawmakers pressured the EPA to pay the remainder of the claims, noting that a piece of legislation passed earlier in the month removed any legal obstacles that the agency cited as reasons for the denial.

But most definitely many of the costs that were denied should certainly have been paid, such as the $250,000 spent by the Navajo Nation to haul in drinking water to replace supplies that had been taken from the San Juan River downstream from the spill. The agency said it would only pay for the transport of water through early September 2015, just a few weeks after the spill, arguing by then that water was no longer contaminated.

Why does it take a lawsuit to get the EPA to do the right thing?

In addition, Inside Sources reported, the agency has refused any and all expenses incurred after October 31, 2015, when it shuttered its incident command center. Nevertheless, area communities argue that cleanup costs and observational testing continued beyond that date.

Besides, the cleanup and treatment of water are just a sample of what it costs to mitigate such spills. The potentially harmful yellow waters halted watersports of all kinds and most tourism to the area, robbing communities of revenue. And as cities in the area, like Durango, CO., stopped pumping drinking water from the river, residential wells nearby suffered contamination as well. In a bid to stop the contamination from spreading even further, area farmers stopped using river water for irrigation of crops.

None of those lost revenues have been paid by the EPA.

What is so maddening about all of this is that when individuals or small businesses or corporations screw up and harm the environmentor just violate some inane agency rulethe EPA is all over them like a cheap suit. But when the agency is at fault and should make good on its mistake, it takes an expensive series of lawsuits just to be compensated for monies that communities and companies would not have spent, were it not for the EPAs malpractice.

Maybe that will all change under President Trump.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

InsideSources.com

NaturalNews.com

Daily-Times.com
The year 2017 began as a challenge for a team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare as they race against time to rescue and release 10 stranded dolphins in Wellfleet Harbor.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the non-profit animal welfare organization first received a call early in the morning about three dolphins swimming in the harbor. The organization quickly dispatched a team to the site. When the team reached the site about three hours later, the number of dolphins swimming in the harbor increased to 10. The rescuers also determined that the stranded dolphins are Risso dolphins based on the unusual white scars all over their skin.

Using two boats, the rescuers tried to herd the dolphins back to the open seas. However, the stubbornness of the marine mammal made it impossible for the rescuers, taking about several hours before the threat of the receding tide becomes imminent.

As the tide pulled back, the dolphins got stuck in a part of the harbor called Chipman's Cove. This made the rescuers go with a plan B, which needed to have "all-hands on deck". With the joint forces of 10 to 15 people, the rescuers fought through the mud and biting cold to help move the dolphins using stretchers and customized carts to nearby transport trucks.

"It was an amazing team effort over many, many hours on a blustery, cold winter day," said Kerry Branon, a spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in a report from Boston Globe.

"Everyone was doing everything they could to save those dolphins. ...I even saw a guy on the side of the road in Wellfleet, and he was standing there with a tray of hot cocoa. He had fresh mugs of cocoa that he made for everyone."

The rescued dolphins were transported and released to the Corn Hill Beach, near Truro. The IFAW team decided that the winds and tide in the Corn Hill Beach will help the dolphins make it out safely to the open seas.
Dinosaurs hatch much longer than originally believed and it is a significant discovery in relation to their extinction.

According to a report from Eureka, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discovered that non-avian dinos incubate anywhere from three to six months.

This is a pretty long time considering many bird eggs hatch within 11 to 85 days. In this case, the dinosaurs are more like reptiles than birds, who are often believed to be the evolved transformation of two-legged dinosaurs dubbed as theropods, as reported in Quanta Magazine in 2015.

It turns out, this prolonged incubation may have potentially played a part in the dinosaurs' eventual extinction. This exposed the vulnerable eggs to a number of dangers for a longer period of time including predators, starvation and environmental disasters. It was also a disadvantage when the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event hit, causing the dinosaurs to die out.

A report from Phys Org added that the study also scratched out theories that a number of dinosaurs nested in the temperate regions of Canada, then made their way to the Arctic in the summer. It's now thought to be unlikely considering the hatching time.

This recent study saw the researchers observe the fossilized teeth of two ornithischian dinosaur embryos. The computed tomography (CT) at the Museum's Microscopy and Imaging Facility was used to scan the embryonic jaws and visualize the dentitions being formed. After, scientists used a different advanced microscope to find the pattern of what's called the von Ebner lines, growth lines in teeth.

"These are the lines that are laid down when any animal's teeth develops[sic]," Gregory Erickson, lead author and Florida State University professor, explained about the experiment. "They're kind of like tree rings, but they're put down daily. And so we could literally count them to see how long each dinosaur had been developing."

The pig-sized Protoceratops egg died when it was three months old, while the larger duck-billed Hypacrosaurus was at six months.
Outgoing US President Barack Obama has just issued an executive order that creates two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada, essentially protecting 1.65-million acres of land from development. The order will hope to protect sacred archaeologically important Native American sites, wildlife habitats, hiking trails and hunting grounds.



According to a White House statement. Obama said these two national monuments will be able to protect some of the country's "most important cultural treasures, including abundant rock art, archaeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes."



The actions will help protect the cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate the scenic and historic landscapes.



The executive order came two weeks after an oil spill near the location of the Standing Rock protesters were fighting to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline that can destroy sacred land belonging to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.



According to Science Alert, the faulty pipeline has leaked 176,000 gallons of crude oil into a creek and the surrounding countryside 2.5 hours away from the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota.



The two new monuments, one covering 1.35-million acres around Bears Ears Buttes in southeastern Utah, and the other covering 300,000 acres around Gold Butte in Nevada, will hopefully stop similar accidents in the future.Obama was able to create the monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows him to protect areas of historic importance.



Science Alert notes that both of the newly-designated monuments have been proposed for a while. The government has been reportedly trying to make the area around the Bears Ears Buttes federally protected since 1936 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was n office, and Native American tribes have been asking for protection around Gold Butte since 2008.



Not everyone is happy about the changes, though. Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz from Utah told the New York Times that the President's unilateral decision politicizes a long-shimmering conflict. He added it's a "slap" in the face of the people of Utah as it attempts to "silence the voices of those who will bear the heavy burden it imposes."
Is someone calling us from beyond Milky Way?

A few years ago, astronomers have detected distant galaxy that is emitting an extremely powerful radio blasts. After speculations about where it is coming from, scientists said they finally have the answer. The explanations were laid down in a report published in Nature and Astrophysical Journal Letters.



Fast Radio Bursts (FRB), as defined by Washington Post are extremely rapid pulses of radio waves,that emit power of about 500 million suns. Because of their unpredictability, scientists have recorded just 18 of these signals, but they suspected that there could be hundreds and thousands more.



As per the study, the FRB is coming from a dwarf galaxy some three billion light-years away.

Cornell astronomer Shami Chatterjee, the lead author of the paper, alongside her team examined data from Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), a network of 27 radio telescopes spread over an extensive area in New Mexico and relied on scientists at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to look for the source of the FRB called FRB 121102.

"For a long time, we came up empty, then got a string of bursts that gave us exactly what we needed," said Casey Law, of the University of California at Berkeley in a press release.

"Once we were able to accurately pinpoint the burst's location in the two-dimensional sky we enlisted the 8-meter Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawaii to characterize the corresponding host galaxy," added Paul Scholz formerly of McGill University and now with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).

In addition, using a powerful network of European radio telescope, the team was able to get a high-resolution image of the FRB 121102. The team concluded that the strong signals are coming from the center of the dwarf galaxy, which appears to be occupied by a supermassive black hole.

Meanwhile, National Geographic said the team cannot pinpoint yet what are causing the outbursts, but at least they were able to trace the source. The report added that there are various hypotheses pertaining to its cause. First, the black hole might be causing the flash of energy. Next, the burst might be the gaseous remnant of a supernova. And lastly, there might be a neutron star or magnetar orbiting the galaxy's supermassive black hole, creating an unknown type of interaction that is releasing the energy.

"It is surprising that the host would be a dwarf galaxy," Shriharsh Tendulkar of McGill University in Montreal, Canada said. "One would generally expect most FRBs to come from large galaxies which have the largest numbers of stars and neutron stars. Neutron stars - remnants of massive stars - are among the top candidates to explain FRBs."
Solar power has become cheaper than coal in some parts of the world. And statistics show that in less than a decade, it will be the lowest-cost option almost anywhere in the globe.



According to Bloomberg, in 2016, countries such as Chile to the United Arab Emirates have broken records with deals to generate electricity from sunshine for less than 3-cents a kilowatt-hour. This is half the average global cost of coal power.



Now Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Mexico are also planning auctions and tenders for this year. They are aiming to drop prices even further.



Electrek said companies such as Italy's Enel SpA and Dublin's Mainstream Renewable Power now seek new markets abroad as subsidies dry up at home.



Since 2009, solar prices were down 62 percent, with every part of the supply chain reducing costs. This cut risk premiums on bank loans and pushed manufacturing capacity to record levels. By 2025, solar power may be even cheaper than using coal on average globally, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.



Adnan Amin, International Renewable Energy Agency's director general, said the numbers are game-change, and it's becoming more normal in more markets.



The Telegraph notes that better technology is seen as the key to boost the industry. This ranges from the use of diamond-wire saws that more efficiently cut wafers to better cells that provide more spark from the same amount of sunlight. It's also driven by an increased edge in the industry versus fossil fuels, as the solar boom - which started a decade ago - allowed industries to develop.



Now the average 1 MW-plus ground mounted solar system will cost 73 cents a watt by 2025. The supply chain appears to be experiencing a "Wal-Mart effect" from higher volumes and lower margins. The speed at which the price of solar will drop below coal can vary in each country. Places that import coal or tax polluters with a carbon price, such as Europe and Brazil, will see a crossover in the 2020s.



Although coal industry experts say the cost comparisons involving renewables do not take into account the need to maintain backup supplies that can work when the sun doesn't shine, or when the wind doesn't blow.



Benjamin Sporton, CEO of the World Coal Association, said all advanced economies demand full-time electricity, and wind and solar can only generate part-time. Regardless, solar's plunge in price is starting to make the technology a potential competitor.



In China, the biggest solar market, will see costs falling below coal by 2030, according to New Energy Finance.
What are the chances that the famous actor of BBC's hit TV series "Sherlock Holmes," Benedict Cumberbatch, is in fact, related to Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle? According experts from ancestry.com, the chances are high.

Researchers from the American Ancestry company revealed that Doyle and Cumberbatch shared a common ancestor, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, fourth son of King Edward III and father of Henry IV, who died in 1339.

Tracing the family tree, the website said that John of Gaunt was Doyle's 15th great grandfather and Cumberbatch's 17th great grandfather, making the author and the actor 16th cousins twice removed.

"How rare that an actor in a major series has the chance to play a character created by a relative, especially one as iconic as Sherlock Holmes," Jennifer Utley, a family historian at Ancestry, told Reuters.

Sputnik News reports that this is not the first time that the "Sherlock" actor has been connected to the character he is portraying. Alan Turing, the famous scientist he portrayed in the movie "The Imitation Game" is also his relative.

Because of Cumberbatch's relation to the famous characters he portrayed, the researchers even joked, "What's next? Learning that Benedict Cumberbatch is the great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes? OK, Holmes is a fictional character, but at this rate, someone's bound to find a way."

The experts from the Ancestry website said that Cumberbatch did not send any request to trace his connection to Doyle. It was a voluntary effort from the staff as they were all fans of the "Sherlock Holmes" series.

"Making family history connections is similar to piecing together a mysterious puzzle, one that the great Sherlock Holmes himself would be intrigued to solve," Lisa Elzey, family historian at Ancestry.com, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Supervolcanoes are believed to be one of the most dangerous formations on Earth due to its magnanimous magma reserve underground, which is capable of annihilating disaster if it erupts. This is why the scientific community is closely monitoring a supervolcano in Italy where rumblings were heard.

Last month, the possible reawakening of the Campi Flegrei in Italy was reported by scientists in the Nature Communications journal. The otherwise quiet supervolcano is dangerously located underneath a thriving community. The said volcano is one of the few known supervolcanoes in the world and is also considered to be one of the most dangerous.

The 500,000 residents above the supervolcano will suffer the consequences if it erupts along with other residents near the vicinity.

"We show that, at the CDP, the abrupt and voluminous release of H2O-rich magmatic gasses can heat hydrothermal fluids and rocks, triggering an accelerating deformation that can ultimately culminate in rock failure and eruption," one of the authors of the study said.

"We propose that magma could be approaching the CDP at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed," the scientist added.

Although scientists confirm the reawakening of the supervolcano, they also admitted that the data is still "poorly" understood. What's clear is the fact that an eruption is possible in the future due to the release of hit "magmatic" gasses, according to National Geographic.

The Italian government has also recognized the threat and to warn the public, they raised the warning level from green to yellow, which means quiet to close scientific observations.

The first signs of rumbling or seismic activity were felt last 2005, according to a report. The 2005 movement was the first after its long hibernation period since the 1950s.
NASA revealed that a space rock is detected hurtling towards the planet. It is unclear, however, if it is an asteroid or a comet. Meanwhile, a comet will pass by the Earth that will be visible to the public using a binocular.

The object called 2016 WF9 was detected by NASA NEOWISE last November. This celestial object follows an orbit that takes it into a tour of the solar system. It will come near Earth before going outwards to space. It passes through the asteroid belt, the Sun, Mars and the Earth in a span of 4.9 years. What makes the object interesting is that its origin still remains questionable. Experts believe that it could have been a comet but is now considered as a cross between the two types of space rocks, according to a report.

The mission is using the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to detect objects in space. During the course of its mission, it managed to identify about 34,000 asteroids. It also conducted a survey of the entire sky in 2010, according to a NEOWISE press release.

The object is expected to pass through on Feb. 25 at about 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) from the planet. In addition to that, NEOWISE also spotted another object distinctively identified as a comet. It is called C/2016 U1 NEOWISE and it "has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can't be sure because a comet's brightness is notoriously unpredictable," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said in a press release.

The object will be visible during the first week of 2017. It is expected to enter Mercury's orbit before swinging back outside the Solar System. The object will be visible on Earth but is not considered a threat.
Everyone in a four-story apartment building got out safely early Friday after a three-alarm fire broke out in Oakland that started because of blanket that was too close to a wall heater, firefighters said.

Oakland Battalion Chief Ian McWhorter said two people suffered some minor smoke inhalation, but that they didn't need to be taken to the hospital. The Red Cross was dispatched to come to assist nine people in the 12-unit building. He said the the blaze was under control just before 5 a.m.

A woman named Dominique who lives across the street in the 3800 block of Harrison Street began tweeting what she was seeing: "I just woke up to children screaming 'Help, save me' " When she looked outside, she saw the building across the street was burning.

In a followup phone interview, Dominique said she woke up about 4 a.m. to hear glass shattering and a lot of trucks. She said she heard what sounded like a "really young" girl and boy. "The boy was screaming, help me, save me." She said she jumped out of bed and looked out the window to see the chaos outside.

Dominique added she was really shaken up by the fire because she lost five friends in the deadly Ghost Ship warehouse fire on Dec. 2. In that fire, 36 people, mostly artists and musicians, died when a fire ripped through an electric dance party.
People were partying with purpose at The Lookout in San Francisco's Castro on Thursday night, raising money to help fight for safety under a Donald Trump presidency.

Since the election of Trump, many in the LGBTQ community say they aren't feeling safe. They say Trump supporters feel it's acceptable to voice hatred.

Chris Hastings organized Thursday night's fundraiser for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group fighting in court for equal rights.

"Hate is not OK, injustice is not OK," Hastings said. "We are not gonna stand for it."

The center monitors hate groups and is tracking incidents of hate across the country since Election Day, verifying more than 1,000 incidents.

Immigrants, blacks, Muslims and members of LGBTQ community top the list of targets.

For many, the fundraiser is about more than personal safety.

"I'm really vulnerable. I live on Social Security and depend on Medicare and Obamacare," said Arthur Corbin, who added that such safety nets need defending.

"We don't have time for claiming one community is more important than the other," he added. "Everybody's rights, unless they are in the 1 percent, are on the line."

The Lookout party is one of many events aiming to empower people who are uncertain about the future. On Friday, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is scheduled to speak at a daylong gathering at the Bill Graham Civic Center called How To Be a Good Ally.

Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
A 27-year-old homeless man from San Francisco, who is a registered sex offender, was charged Friday for allegedly raping a woman partying at a Christmas event who was then allegedly forced off BART and assaulted near a Kentucky Fried Chicken, according to police and charging documents.

Meini Foster was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on those charges, which include kidnap, rape, drugs and oral copulation in Alameda County Superior Court.

"Its one of the worst kind of crimes," San Leandro Sgt. Robert McManus said at a Friday news conference.

Police said the 20-something woman had been at a work-related Christmas party on Dec. 15 when she hopped on the Powell Street BART about 11 p.m.

In police documents, police officer Deborah Trujillo described the woman as so intoxicated, she falls forward onto her hands and knees and swaying back and forth.

She then got on the Dublin/Pleasanton train, and was seen leaving the Bay Fair BART station in San Leandro about 1 a.m. the next day, police reports state.

Witnesses saw Foster leading her down the stairs toward the exit. She is seen stumbling, the report states, and Foster takes her into the BART parking lot. He assaults her near the railroad tracks between Hesperian Boulevard and Halcyon Drive, the report states. She yells for help. She fights him. But he continued to assault her, the report states.

Finally, he leaves her in the mud. Shes not from San Leandro, but shes able to find someones house about 3 a.m. and knocks on a door for help. The homeowner thought she was a burglar and told her to leave. The homeowner called 911, and at that point, police find the woman and take her to the hospital where they conduct a rape test on her, the report states. The DNA found on the woman, police said, matched Fosters.

Foster was arrested on Dec. 27 at the Civic Center in San Francisco, but the DNA evidence was returned on Thursday.

Authorities are at ease knowing that Foster is no longer causing serious harm to innocent victims.

"It's safer on the streets," McManus said. "It's safer on public transit because of the fact that Meini Foster is in police custody."

Foster's criminal history includes an arrest for sexual battery last June when he was caught masturbating in front of a minor on a San Francisco Muni bus. Officials recommended that Foster be outfitted with a GPS tracking device at that time, but a presiding judge did not follow through with that request.
Police are on the hunt for a gunman in a triple-shooting that left two people dead Thursday night in East San Jose, authorities said. They were the first two homidicides of 2017.

Officers responded to La Mejor Taqueria, at 2003 Story Road, on a report of two people shot. When they arrived, they found three men suffering from at least one gunshot wound each. Two men were pronounced dead at the scene. The third victim was wounded and taken to a local hospital, police said.

Police are on the hunt for a gunman in a triple shooting that left two people dead Thursday night in East San Jose. Rick Boone reports.

On Friday, a police source said the third man is expected to survive. The two who died were not immediately identified; police said one of the men died while he was sitting down and the other man who died appeared to be running away at the time he was shot, the source said.

Witnesses at the scene told NBC Bay Area the gunman just walked into the taqueria and started shooting.

"When I went to the back door, I seen a body laying," one witness said.

The motive and circumstances surrounding the shooting are under investigation. No suspects have been identified, police said.

No further details were available.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Sergeant Paul Hamblin or Detective Jason Tanner of the San Jose Police Department's Homicide Unit at 408-277-5283. Anyone who wants to remain anonymous may call Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867.
Public Defender Jeff Adachi joined a Thursday rally on the steps of San Francisco's Hall of Justice and called on District Attorney George Gascon to make a decision about whether to charge officers in the 2015 police shooting of a Guatemalan man.

While focused Amilcar Perez Lopez's shooting in the Mission District on Feb. 26, 2015, the rally brought together family members and supporters of a number of recent police shooting victims, including Mario Woods and Luis Gongora.

Advocates are conducting an ongoing campaign urging Gascon to issue charging decisions in those shootings as well.

"Gascon, do your job!" activists chanted Thursday.

According to police data presented Wednesday at the Police Commission, there are currently 15 open investigations into officer-involved shootings, three of which date back to 2014. Twelve of those cases are waiting for a charging decision letter from the district attorney's office before the homicide investigation can be closed and an internal affairs investigation undertaken.

"There is no accountability," Adachi said. "We've been promised accountability by the district attorney, by the Police Commission, by the Office of Citizen Complaints, and so many others, yet we have failed to see that materialize."

He also questioned what the investigation branch of Gascon's office is doing.

Activists on Thursday said it has been 679 days since the shooting of Perez Lopez, who was killed around 9:45 p.m. by plainclothes officers responding to a 911 report of a man running with a knife down Folsom Street toward 25th Street, chasing another man.

In the months since, activists have raised questions about whether Perez Lopez understood police commands, given the language barrier, whether the plainclothes officers identified themselves and whether he may have already dropped the knife or even been trying to flee when he was shot.

Gascon has said the pace of the investigation was slowed by the fact that some witnesses came forward a year or more after the shooting, opening up new lines of inquiry and prompting investigators to seek input from expert witnesses.

The district attorney's office is still waiting for the results of some outside reports, but hopes to have a decision soon, a spokesman said Thursday.

"Were not happy when there is a delay in any investigation, especially an officer-involved shooting," Alex Bastian said. "We have to make sure it's done correctly, not just expediently."

NBC Bay Area's Christie Smith contributed to this report.
Employees in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office remain in temporary spaces this week while a cleanup of a sewage leak at the Hall of Justice continues, officials said Thursday.

The leak from pipes in the aging building on Tuesday sent foul-smelling water raining down on furniture, files and employees in 10 offices on the third floor.

It also affected areas including the second floor library, break room, hallways and a copy and printer area, according to the DA's office.

Around 30 employees were evacuated due to the leak, and those affected are working out of temporary spaces.

The city administrator has agreed to hire a third party cleanup service specializing in sewage remediation to make sure the cleanup is handled properly, according to the DA's office.

The office has also asked the Department of Public Health to oversee the cleanup work.

Cal/OSHA is investigating the incident, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The Hall of Justice is a South of Market building dating back to the 1950s that houses criminal courts, a jail, the medical examiner's office and the DA's office. The building is known to be seismically unsafe and plagued with issues including frequent leaks, mice and asbestos.
Federal prosecutors have filed charges against the Florida airport shooting suspect that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.

A criminal complaint filed Saturday by the Miami U.S. attorney's office accuses 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of an act of violence at an international airport resulting in death. The punishment is execution or any prison sentence up to life.

Prosecutors also charged Santiago with two firearms offenses.

Authorities have confirmed the identities of the five victims killed in Friday's shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

One of the five victims killed has been identified as 62-year-old Terry Andres.

Andres' daughter told NBC News that her father was shot and killed by Esteban Santiago, 26, during the shooting. Six other people were wounded and taken to the hospital, local officials said.

Elizabeth Oehme-Miller told The Associated Press by phone Saturday that her brother, 57-year-old Michael Oehme, was killed in Friday's attack and that her brother's wife, 52-year-old Kari Oehme, was shot in the shoulder and is expected to recover.

Oehme-Miller says her brother and sister-in-law were in Fort Lauderdale getting ready for a Caribbean cruise that was supposed to start Saturday. She says they were frequent travelers who loved cruises and were happy to be headed on another one.

Santiago allegedly opened fire in a baggage claim area after retrieving a handgun from his checked luggage in the airport's second Terminal.

"I was dodging bullets and trying to help people get out of the way," an eyewitness, Mark Lea, told NBC News.

He was taken into custody uninjured and was interviewed by BSO detectives and FBI agents, Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said in a Friday evening news conference, adding that Santiago is now in federal custody. No shots were fired by authorities, Israel said.

"At this point, it looks like he acted alone," Israel said.

FBI spokesman George Piro said Friday Santiago will be federally charged and likely make his first court appearance Monday in Broward County.

Meanwhile, Florida hospital officials say one of the airport shooting victims is expected to be released.

Six gunshot victims were brought to Broward Health Medical Center after Friday's shooting in which five others died. Officials said Saturday at a news conference with Gov. Rick Scott that one is well enough for release.

While the motive remains under investigation, his brother and federal officials said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently. Santiago served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance.

In November, he walked into the FBI's office in Anchorage and complained of hearing voices, claiming the CIA was forcing him to join ISIS, Piro said during a Friday evening news conference.

Officials said local police were called and he voluntarily went to a mental health facility for treatment.

Santiago took off from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul Thursday night aboard Delta Flight 1088, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport. He then boarded Delta Flight 2182 to Fort Lauderdale.

At Fort Lauderdale, "after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

The shooting started hours of turmoil at the airport as police tried to confirm there wasn't an additional shooter. More than an hour after the attack, people were seen running across the tarmac and sheltering behind cars while police had their guns drawn at a parking garage at the airport. But Sheriff Israel said the only shots fired were at Terminal 2.

"Someone said they heard something that sounded like gunshots," Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said on MSNBC of the later police activity.

A video posted by Chris Ritter (@chrisritter0270) on Jan 6, 2017 at 12:13pm PST

Lea, a 53-year-old financial adviser from Minneapolis, was in the baggage claim when, he said, a man came in and started shooting.

"At first we thought it was firecrackers," he said. "Everyone started screaming and running. The shooter made his way down through baggage claim. He had what looked like a 9mm and emptied his entire clip. People were trying to run."

Lea said the gunman was silent as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.''

When the shooter ran out of ammunition Lea said "He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him."

Police officers responded less than a minute after the shooting began, Lea said.

It was absolutely surreal, he said. People were scared and frantically running to avoid being shot. People were tripping over each other. They were trying to make a fast exit out of the door.

"I was just running for my life because I heard the gun shots and knew there were gun shots so I had to run," said Jackline Tantan of Margate who was in the baggage claim of terminal two when the shooter opened fire.

he ``went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.'' The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

``He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him,'' Lea said.

John Schlicher, who was in the baggage claim with his wife and mother-in-law, told MSNBC the shooter "walked over and he was right in our area within feet from us shooting people.

"I put my head down and prayed," Schlicher said.

He added that his wife "was holding a sweater up against a man who was shot in the head. She was doing her best to apply pressure to his wounds. The person right next to him was already gone."

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who was traveling from the airport, tweeted about the incident that "everyone" was running.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott traveled to Fort Lauderdale, where he held a news conference outside the airport.

"The citizens of Florida will not tolerate senseless acts of evil. You just can't imagine how this could ever happen in a state like ours," Gov. Scott said. "My heart goes out to every family impacted, the families that lost their loved ones, and the families and the individuals that still have loved ones still in the hospital fighting for their life."

BSO Fire Rescue said of 30 people transported to hospitals from the airport, 29 were taken to Broward Health Medical Center and one was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital. Officials at Broward Health said they received five trauma patients at the hospital and that all were stable.

Gov. Scott later went to Broward Health, where he said he talked to doctors and some patients. He added that he's been in contact with President Obama and President-elect Trump, who both offered support.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!"

The ATF said it is responding to the shooting to assist state and local officials.

The airport has temporarily suspended all services. All flights within 50 miles at the time of the closure were able to land, while the rest were diverted to other airports.

At Miami International Airport, officials said they added extra security following the shooting.

"We're feeling very lucky because were were supposed to go through Fort Lauderdale to end up in L.A. and our flight got changed while we were on the cruise," California traveler Karen Grey said at MIA. "I'm really nervous about all the people we met on the cruise, I hope everybody is safe."

Broward officials said they've established a toll-free number for passengers and family members at 866-435-9355. At family assistance center was set up at the Renaissance Hotel at 1617 Southeast 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale.
An escaped inmate who had been on the run since New Year's Eve was arrested on Thursday afternoon in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to Massachusetts State Police.

James Walker Morales was arrested by a state police trooper after attempting to rob a bank in Somerville, just hours after he tried to rob another bank in neighboring Cambridge, according to officials. He is being booked at state police barracks in Medford.

James Morales was on the run since his escape from a Rhode Island prison on New Years Eve. He was captured Thursday after a pair of attempted bank robberies in Massachusetts.

"We're just grateful for the heroic efforts of law enforcement to capture a very dangerous person," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said. "He's pretty capable of anything, and was acting very brazenly. We're just grateful nobody was hurt."

Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone discussed the capture of escaped Rhode Island inmate James Morales.

The first attempted robbery took place at the Bank of America at 727 Massachusetts Ave. around 9:30 a.m. Morales passed a note to the teller but did not get away with any money and fled in the direction of Harvard Square. The second attempted bank robbery occurred at Citizens Bank in Somerville.

A trooper spotted Morales in the area of Route 28 and Mystic Avenue. The suspect ran and the trooper pursued him on foot for about two blocks before apprehending him as Morales was attempting to jump a fence in the Foss Park neighborhood. A neighbor said within minutes, more than a dozen police cruisers were on scene.

Morales, 35, escaped from the high-security Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island on the evening of Dec. 31. He broke out during recreation by climbing onto a roof and scaling barbed wire fences, the warden said.

Excellent teamwork by public safety officials to bring this fugitive into custody, including MSP Trooper Merrick who apprehended Morales. https://t.co/A6I9EK6hRI  Charlie Baker (@MassGovernor) January 5, 2017

U.S. Marshals weren't notified of his escape for five hours. During that time, he allegedly stole a getaway car and ditched it in Framingham, Massachusetts, where his ex-girlfriend lives.

Three corrections officers and one supervisor have been placed on leave pending an investigation into the escape. The prison board was scheduled to meet to discuss the matter on Thursday.

Morales, a former Army reservist, is accused of stealing six assault rifles and 10 handguns from the Lincoln Stoddard Army Reserve Center in Worcester in 2015. He was arrested in New York days after the theft, and most of the guns were recovered.

Police say James Morales tried to rob a bank in Cambridge, Mass. Thursday morning.

He has a long criminal history dating back to 2009, including a child rape charge for allegedly sexually assaulting his friend's young daughter.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Rhode Island said Morales has also been charged with escape from custody of the attorney general as a result of his prison break.

Several area communities were on heightened alert after the inital bank robbery on Thursday.

James Morales, who escaped from a RI facility, was captured in Somerville, Mass. after police say he tried to rob a second bank.

Cambridge sent an email to city leaders just before noon informing them of the search and noting that Morales is a former Cambridge resident. Somervillle placed its schools on hold, cancelling outdoor activities, and sent out a reverse 911 warning to residents. Arlington police issued an alert on its social media channels telling residents that helicopters were in the area searching for the bank robbery suspect. But schools were not put in lockdown.

At the request of police, MBTA service on the Red Line was temporarily held up as police investigated Thursday morning's bank robbery, causing minor delays between Alewife and Central stations.

"We were very anxious as things unfolded," Mayor Curtatone said. "It is a great sigh of relief to all of us that we have a captured fugitive."

Escaped Inmate Captured Following 5-Day Manhunt

Morales will be held in federal custody overnight and will appear in federal court in Providence, Rhode Island Friday.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Thursday that Chicago hosted a record 54 million visitors in 2016, an increase of 1.5 million visitors from the previous year.

Three years ago we set a goal for Chicago to reach 55 million visitors by 2020, Emanuel said in a statement. We had an incredible and record-breaking year in 2016, but we are not stopping there. We have seen increases in jobs and investment from out tourism industry, which is creating economic opportunities that reach every neighborhood in the city of Chicago.

According to the mayors office, Chicagos tourism industry supported an estimated 145,137 jobs and $15 billion in direct tourism spending in 2016. During Thursdays press conference, Emanuel noted that the city has added more than 20,000 jobs in the hospitality industry since he took office in 2011.

The mayor also pointed to the citys thriving convention industry and the potential of the upcoming Obama Presidential Library as opportunities for the city to increase its surging tourism numbers.

2017s got to beat 2016, Emanuel told reporters Thursday.

Despite the record tourism numbers, the city continues to see a surge in violent crime. According to data from the Chicago Police Department, 2016 was one of the most violent years in the city since the mid 90s.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted urged Emanuel to seek federal help if local authorities cant handle the city's violence.

Emanuels office responded later Monday, signaling a working relationship with the Trump administration. Emanuel met with the president-elect last month at Trump Tower in New York City.

"We are heartened he is taking this issue seriously and look forward to working with the new administration on these important efforts," Collins added.

Additionally, 60 Minutes aired a segment Sunday titled Crisis in Chicago, bringing renewed national attention to the citys murder rate and police department.

In the segment, former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy claimed the CPD is in crisis. McCarthy was fired as the citys top cop in 2015 as outrage grew over the police shooting of Chicago teen Laquan McDonald.

Current Supt. Eddie Johnson dismissed McCarthy's claim Wednesday during a press conference alongside Emanuel, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Superintendent McCarthy put a lot of good things in place that were still utilizing, and he served the city well, Johnson said. But I disagree with characterizing us as a department in crisis because were not.

Last year, Emanuel announced a bold plan to hire 970 additional CPD officers over the course of two years to combat the citys rising murder rate.

However, the citys Law Department was sanctioned Tuesday for withholding records involving a fatal police shooting, the Chicago Tribune reports. This marks the eighth time in recent years a federal judge has punished the city for failing to turn over potential evidence in a police misconduct case.

The Law Department has addressed that and its unacceptable because people deserve better, the mayor told reporters Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to release a report on the Chicago Police Department before president Barack Obama leaves office later this month, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The DOJ probe was set in motion by the McDonald killing.
In a one-on-one interview Thursday with NBC 5 political editor Carol Marin, President Obama defended his eight years in office, voiced pain over the violence in Chicagos streets and commented on questions about a commutation for Rod Blagojevich.



It was Obama's first interview with a Chicago news reporter in his eight years in office. Marin met the president in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.



They began with news of the day about his intelligence briefing regarding Russian hacking.



Is there a reason that Americans should be concerned about the tension that exists between the intelligence committee and the president elect?



[[409817715, C]]



As the days tick down, the Obama White House is working overtime to preserve a legacy of eight years that includes health care, the economy and civil rights in the face a Republican Congress and new president.



What part of your legacy is going to require the fiercest fight to defend?



[[409817705, C]]



The president also talked about the violence that permeates some Chicago neighborhoods.



You care about blood in the street and since youve left theres been more blood on the streets of Chicago. I was at Hyde Park Academy when you gave arguably one of your most impassioned speeches and yet its worse now than when you were there. Why?



[[409817685, C]]



And in a story that is as long as the Obama presidency itself, he declined a specific answer about a commutation for Rod Blagojevich.



Rod Blagojevich wants you to commute him. Will you?
Four people accused of violently beating a suburban Chicago teenager with mental disabilities in a Facebook Live video will be held without bond, a judge ruled during a hearing Friday.

People in the courtroom cheered when they heard Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil's decision. The State's Attorney also added an additional hate crime charge to all four of the accused, saying the charges were based on the victim's race and mental disability. The victim suffers from schizophrenia and ADD, prosecutors said.

Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; and sisters Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, also of Chicago, were charged with hate crimes, kidnapping and battery Thursday after Cook County prosecutors identified them as four black suspects seen in a racially charged attack on a white teenager that was broadcast live on social media.

Ciesil said all of the charged are a threat to themselves and society.

"Where was your sense of decency?" the judge asked the accused.

In the video, now seen by millions, police say the four black assailants assaulted the white suburban teenager, threatening him with a knife and taunting him with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

The victim, who is not being identified, is an 18-year-old with "mental health challenges," police said. A GoFundMe page aimed at raising money for the teen and his family had more than $34,700 in donations by Friday morning. A spokesperson for GoFundMe confirmed the funds would be donated to the family.

Neal Strom, a family spokesman, said the victim has had "profound emotional and physical disabilities throughout his life." He did not elaborate.

"This should never have happened," David Boyd, the victim's brother-in-law, said at a brief news conference in suburban Chicago. He said the victim was traumatized but doing as well as could be expected.

Police said drug use may have been involved in the incident. The video shows the two female suspects smoking what authorities "presume to be blunts," a term often used for a marijuana-filled cigar. While the victim was tied up, his attackers used racial slurs and made references "to his mental capacity," ChicagoPolice Commander Kevin Duffin said.

The uproar over the beating intensified the glare on Chicago after a bloody year of violent crime and protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a police department that has been accused of using excessive force and hushing-up wrongdoing. The department has also been the subject of a long civil-rights investigation by the Justice Department, which is expected to report its findings soon.

The incident also stirred emotions still raw after a presidential election campaign that split the nation. The case heightened political tensions on social media, with some conservatives suggesting it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.

The cruelty of the attack and the intense social media exposure prompted President Barack Obama to respond, calling it "despicable."

"I take these things very seriously," he said Thursday. But he said the assault does not mean that race relations have gotten worse.

"We see visuals of racial tensions, violence and so forth because of smartphones and the internet and media ... a lot of the problems that have been there a long time," he said.

Chicago police initially said the youth was singled out because he has "special needs," not because he was white. But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects' use of racial slurs and their references to the victim's disability.

Cook County prosecutors identified the suspects as Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covington's 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago.

Tanishaia Covington is a mother of two.

Two of the suspects were arrested as juveniles on armed robbery and other serious charges.

Hill was arrested in 2015 on allegations of armed robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle and residential burglary. Chicago police said they did not know the disposition of those arrests by suburban officers.

Tanishia Covington was arrested in 2007 on attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. Police records do not show any convictions as a juvenile. As an adult, she was arrested on charges of battery and aggravated assault, but those charges were dropped.

Excerpts of the video posted by Chicago media outlets show the victim with his mouth taped shut and slumped in a corner of a room. At least two assailants are seen cutting off his sweatshirt, and others taunt him off camera. The video shows a wound on the top of the man's head. One person pushes the man's head with his or her foot.

A red band also appears to be around the victim's hands. He was tied up for four to five hours, authorities said.

The incident began New Year's Eve, when the victim and alleged assailant Jordan Hill met at a suburban McDonald's to begin what both the victim and his parents believed would be a sleepover, police said.

Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived, Detective Commander Kevin Duffin said.

The victim told police what began as playful fighting escalated. A downstairs neighbor who heard noises threatened to call police. When two of the suspects left and kicked down the neighbor's door, the victim escaped. A police officer later spotted the bloodied and obviously disoriented man wandering down a street.

The victim's parents reported him missing Monday evening, two days after last hearing from him. The police report said the victim's mother knew the first name of her son's friend  Jordan  but wasn't clear on his last name. The report also noted that the victim "does not like telling his parents who he's with."

The parents later received text messages "from persons claiming to be holding him captive," police said. While investigating the messages, police discovered the Facebook video.

The grandmother of Brittany Covington said the granddaughter she raised from infancy is "not this person."

"I'm so upset, my head is about to bust open," said Priscilla Covington of Chicago. "I don't know if someone influenced her. ... She had her ups and down. (She) was a good person. I'm so confused."

She sobbed openly in bond court Friday after the judge denied bail and shook her head as each charge was detailed.
The top five hottest Chicago neighborhoods of 2017 are on the city's South and West Sides, according to analytics released by Seattle-based real estate firm Zillow.

The announcement comes as part of the companys predictions for 2017s 10 hottest housing markets, a list topped by Nashville.

To determine which markets would heat up over the next 12 months, Zillow looked for places with quickly rising home values, low unemployment rates and strong income growth, a spokesperson for Zillow said in a release.

Provo, Utah -- one of three Utah markets on the list -- has the lowest unemployment rate of the 10 hottest markets at 2.7 percent. Home values in all three Utah markets are expected to appreciate more than 4 percent in 2017.

[NATL-CHI] Lincoln Park Mansion Listed for Record $50 Million

Chicagos top neighborhoods, according to Zillow, are:

1. South Deering  with 7 percent forecasted home value growth

2. Hermosa  with 6.4 percent forecasted home value growth

3. Chicago Lawn  with 6 percent forecasted home value growth

4. Near West Side  with 5.73 percent forecasted home value growth

5. Marquette Park  with 5.72 percent forecasted home value growth

[NATL-CHI] Photos Show Inside Creepy Abandoned Edgewater Hospital

Three variables influenced Zillows hot market predictions: Zillows Home Value Forecast, which forecasts the change in the Zillow Home Value Index over the next 12 months, recent income growth, and current unemployment rates, the release reads. Those three variables were then scaled for the 100 largest U.S. metros and combined to form a hotness score, producing the top ten list.

Svenja Gudell, the chief economist at Zillow, said crime was not taken into consideration when evaluating neighborhoodsbut that it could be indicative of current home values.

If theres a neighborhood thats either expected to increase in crime or decrease in crime, that I would think would have significant impact on the neighborhoods home value, Gudell said in an interview.

Income and unemployment rate analysis were determined using Moodys Analytics from Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Zillow said. Gudell said Zillow also factored in other influences like supply and demand and mortgage rates.

Gudell also said neighborhoods like those named the hottest of 2017 in Chicago might be catching up in the recovery after the housing crisis.

These neighborhoods just have more home value growth to make up, she said.
The Chicago Police Department has heightened security at O'Hare and Midway international airports after five people were killed in a shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida.



"CPD is monitoring the situation in Ft. Lauderdale," CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. "While the offender is in police custody and there is no link or threat to the Chicago-land area, CPD has increased our security posture at both airports to ensure the safety of the traveling public."



Guglielmi said travelers can expect to see more officers in terminal areas of the airport and in the arrival and departure areas.



Chicago Police ask that anyone who sees suspicious activity is asked to report it immediately to airport personnel or police.



At Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood International Airport, a gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2 Friday afternoon, killing at least five people and injuring eight others before being taken into custody, authorities said.



The shooting started hours of chaos at the airport. More than an hour later, people were seen running across the tarmac and sheltering behind cars while police had their guns drawn.



The shooter was a passenger on a Canadian flight with a checked gun, according to a Facebook post from Broward County Commissioner Chip Lamarca. The shooter claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it and then came out shooting people in baggage claim, Lamarca wrote.
The family of a suburban Chicago teenager with special needs who was bound, gagged and beaten in an attack that was broadcast on social media said the attack "should never have happened."

"Were so grateful for all the prayers and efforts that led to the safe return of our brother," said the victim's brother-in-law David Boyd, speaking on behalf of the family. "Were fully aware of the charges being brought against the offenders. At this time we ask for continued prayers for all those involved and for our familys privacy as we cope and heal."

Boyd said the family has seen the video of the Crystal Lake teen's brutal beating, but said they are simply "happy he's home."

"He's doing well, as well as he could be," Boyd said.

The victim, who is not being identified, is an 18-year-old with "mental health challenges," police said. A GoFundMe page aimed at raising money for the teen and his family had more than $34,700 in donations by Friday morning. A spokesperson for GoFundMe confirmed the funds would be donated to the family.

Hate crime and kidnapping charges were filed Thursday against four people Chicago police say were behind the attack.

Thirty minutes of the torturous incident were streamed live on Facebook, but authorities said it was a six-hour ordeal that evolved out of a play fight, with the victim beaten, kicked, cut and forced to drink from a toilet.

The suspects are black and the victim is white, and one of the suspects suspects allegedly yelled profanities about white people and President-elect Donald Trump during the live video. Police had earlier said they do not "have anything concrete" to suggest the attack was politically motivated, however.

"The actions in that video are reprehensible. That along with racism have absolutely no place in the city of Chicago or anywhere else for that matter against anyone regardless of their race, gender, state of mental health or any other identifying factor," Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Thursday.

Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; Brittany Covington, 18, of Chicago and Tanishia Covington, 24, of Chicago, were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Hill, Cooper and Brittany Covington also face charges of residential burglary. Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

They are expected to appear in court Friday afternoon; it is not clear if they have attorneys.

Its just sickening, sickening, Johnson said Wednesday in reaction to the video. "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that."

CPD

Authorities believe the teenager knew Hill from school and went with him willingly on New Year's Eve after meeting at a suburban McDonald's. They allege Hill stole a van and picked the victim up from the Streamwood restaurant, ultimately bringing him to the city, 50 miles from his home, police said.

The victim's parents knew the teen would be spending the night with a friend, but reported him missing the next day, police said.

It wasn't until Tuesday police said the attack happened and the teen was able to escape before police found him in the 3400 block of West Lexington "bloodied," "battered," and "discombobulated."

He then led the police back to the nearby home where he was tortured.

"I just can't believe anybody would do that to someone, especially a special needs child," the victim's grandmother told NBC.

Streamwood authorities also say the suspects had been sending the victims parents text messages while holding him hostage.

"This is going to affect him for probably the rest of his life," the teen's grandmother said.
A JetBlue flight was diverted to OHare International Airport Thursday afternoon after the crew reported a possible cockpit indicator error, the airline said.

JetBlue flight no. 213 from New York to California landed safely in Chicago just after 4:30 p.m., the airline said in a statement.

Further information on the potential error was not released, but the airline said maintenance crews are inspecting aircraft.
A man has been given 15 years in prison for killing a worker in an eastern Iowa highway construction zone.

Nineteen-year-old Sebon Reese was sentenced Thursday in Scott County District Court in Davenport. He'd pleaded guilty to eluding and vehicular homicide.

Officials say a deputy spotted Reese's speeding car Sept. 1 on U.S. Highway 61 near Blue Grass. His car entered a work zone before the deputy could pull it over. Investigators say Reese tried to exit the highway but careened into the construction area, hitting 62-year-old Willie Holley, of Rock Island, Illinois. Holley was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

Reese's 1-year-old sister was in the car.
Friends and family members gathered at the next-door homes of Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher on a gloomy Thursday in the Hollywood Hills for an intimate memorial to mourn the late actresses.

The service was held at Fisher's home and the eulogies were delivered by her daughter, Billie Lourd, and friends like Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Stephen Fry, while the 125 guests dined on fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread, according to People magazine.

Streep, who starred in the adaptation of Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel "Postcards from the Edge," carried white flowers as she walked up the long driveway to the wooded compound, choosing to ignore questions from reporters gathered on the street. Inside, People reported that Streep sang Fisher's favorite song, "Happy Days Are Here Again," and everyone joined in.

Streep knew both mother and daughter  she had presented Reynolds with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the film academy's Governors Awards in 2015.

Outside, Meg Ryan, Ellen Barkin and Ed Begley Jr. were among those entering the property in the tony Coldwater Canyon area of Los Angeles, just north of Beverly Hills. According to People, other celebrity guests included Penny Marshall, Richard Dreyfuss and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Also visiting the compound Thursday were Jamie Lee Curtis, who stars with Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, on TV's "Scream Queens," and Eric Idle, a friend of Fisher's who rented her his home during the filming of "The Empire Strikes Back."

Fisher and Reynolds died last week, one day apart, casting a pall over Hollywood's annual holiday break. Fisher, 60, an actress and writer who starred as Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, died Dec. 27 after suffering a medical emergency Dec. 23 aboard a flight from London. Reynolds, 84, an Oscar-nominated actress who shot to fame after starring in "Singin' in the Rain" at age 19, passed away Dec. 28 after being briefly hospitalized.

"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie,'" Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher, told The Associated Press. "And then she was gone."

Fisher and Reynolds will be buried together at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills, reportedly on Friday. The sprawling location is the resting place of numerous celebrities, including Lucille Ball, Dick Van Patten, Liberace, Florence Henderson, David Carradine and Bette Davis.

Todd Fisher and other family representatives did not immediately respond to requests for further details about the memorial and burial services.

Lourd, 24, made her first public comment on the deaths of her mother and grandmother on Instagram Monday.

"Receiving all of your prayers and kind words over the past week has given me strength during a time I thought strength could not exist," Lourd wrote under a picture of the three women. "There are no words to express how much I will miss my Abadaba and my one and only Momby."

People inside and outside of show business have continued to mourn the two Hollywood legends. Last week, fans created an impromptu star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame for Fisher, and peers like "Star Wars'" Mark Hamill have written heartfelt tributes.

HBO bumped up plans to air the new Fisher Stevens-directed documentary about the mother, daughter duo, "Bright Lights," which is now set to air on Saturday.

Elsewhere Thursday, Broadway theaters announced plans to dim their marquee lights Friday night. The Broadway League says the lights will be dimmed for one minute at 7:45 p.m.

Reynolds and Fisher both made their Broadway debuts in 1973 in the musical comedy revival of "Irene," which earned Reynolds a Tony Award nomination. She also appeared on Broadway in "Woman of the Year" and the musical revue "Debbie."

Fisher's Broadway credits include her one-woman show "Wishful Drinking," ''Agnes of God" and "Censored Scenes From King Kong."
Former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez is seeking to have the corruption case against him dismissed, arguing a retrial would amount to double jeopardy.

The state Supreme Court in July overturned Perez's 2010 convictions on charges of taking a bribe and extortion, saying two cases were improperly combined into one trial.

Prosecutors are planning to retry Perez in two separate trials.

Perez's lawyers argued Thursday that the state should not be allowed another chance, because the high court ruled that Perez was denied the right to testify in one case and not testify in the other.

Perez, a Democrat, was Hartford's first Hispanic mayor, serving from 2001 to 2010. He resigned after being convicted of accepting a contractor's bribe of home improvements and trying to extort $100,000 from a developer.
Authorities say a Maryland man whose death homicide detectives are investigating was a former U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadet who was disciplined in 2014 after a sexual-assault investigation involving a female cadet.

Following the disciplinary action against him, Alexander Stevens went home to Frostburg, Maryland and enrolled at Frostburg State University.

University spokeswoman Elizabeth Medcalf said Thursday that he attended the school last fall, majoring in engineering, but had not enrolled for the spring semester.

Police said the 24-year-old man was found dead on a logging road near the Savage River State Forest on Wednesday morning after he was reported missing by a woman who had walked out of the woods.

Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said the body showed signs of trauma and investigators have questioned the woman.
Two students from the Reggio Magnet School in Avon and the driver were on a school bus when it overturned and landed on its side on Bayberry Hill Road, at Cider Brook Road, in Avon, on Friday morning.

No injuries are reported and the students' parents went to get them.

The road was snow-covered after a storm moved through this morning and police think weather was a contributing factor to the crash.

In Manchester, a school bus crashed into a utility pole. Police said the driver was the only person on the bus and no one was injured in the crash.
Inauguration isn't until Friday, but three days of events kicked off Thursday, with concerts around the National Mall and a wreath-laying at Arlington Cemetery.

Here's what to know about the events:

Thursday, Jan. 19



'Voices of the People,' JFK Hockey Fields south of the Reflecting Pool

-- 1:30 p.m.

Voices of the People was set to feature groups such as the D.C. Fire Department Pipes and Drums, the King's Academy Honor Choir, the Republican Hindu Coalition and the Montgomery Area High School Marching Band, among others.

Wreath-Laying Ceremony, Arlington National Cemetery

-- 3:30 p.m.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence participated in a private ceremony at the military cemetery.

'Make America Great Again!' Welcome Celebration, Lincoln Memorial

-- 4 p.m.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) called this the "official kickoff to the inaugural events." Trump will give his first major speech here, PIC spokesman Alex Stroman said in an interview with News4.

Country music star Toby Keith, actor Jon Voight and rock band 3 Doors Down are among the participants. Military bands will also participate, and a fireworks show will follow. See the full list of participants online here.

The event begins at 4 p.m., with Trump scheduled to speak at 5:50 p.m. Fireworks will begin at 6 p.m.

Tickets will be required for special viewing areas but not for general public viewing areas.

Friday, Jan. 20

In line with tradition, before Trump is sworn in, he will stay at Blair House, known as the president's guest house. On the morning of Inauguration Day, he will have coffee with President Barack Obama and attend a service at St. John's Church.

Inaugural Swearing-In Ceremony, the U.S. Capitol

Trump will be sworn in as president on the west side of the Capitol building.

Security screening gates will open at 6 a.m., music will begin about 9:30 a.m. and opening remarks will begin at 11:30 a.m.

The 16-year-old soprano Jackie Evancho, who was a contestant on the reality show "America's Got Talent," will sing the national anthem.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which is renowned for its soaring renditions of religious and patriotic music, and the Radio City Rockettes also are set to perform.

Six prominent clergy members will give readings at the ceremony, The Washington Post reported: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Rev. Franklin Graham, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and Pastor Paula White.

Tickets will be required for special viewing areas located east of Fourth Street NW but not for general public viewing areas west of Fourth Street NW.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has issued nearly 250,000 color-coded tickets to the ceremony. Tickets were released to members of Congress -- who are considered the hosts of the event -- earlier this month. Every person headed to a ticketed area needs a ticket, including children.

Inaugural Parade, Pennsylvania Avenue

Forty organizations, including several military and veterans groups, will march in the inaugural parade.

Seven high school marching bands are set to perform. It was a longstanding tradition for a D.C. high school marching band to play in the parade, but not one school applied to participate this time.

The parade will move from the Capitol to the White House. It is expected to be shorter this year, at about an hour and a half.

"That's probably a testament to this president's willingness and eagerness to get to work for the American people," Stroman said.

Tickets will be required for special viewing areas but will not be required for general public viewing areas.

Official Inaugural Balls

Trump is expected to attend three official inaugural balls.

Tickets will be required.

Saturday, Jan. 21

National Prayer Service, Washington National Cathedral

An interfaith prayer service will be held the day after Trump becomes president.

For updates, stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com, and download the NBC Washington app.
In the initial hours of the 2017 legislative session, it was made clear that there will be tensions between organized labor, the governor and both legislative Democrats and Republicans.

First, Gov. Dannel Malloy, for the second straight year, used a statewide address to call on labor unions to renegotiate their contracts to garner concessions aimed at saving taxpayers money and closing a gaping deficit approaching $1.5 billion.

Those unions, which have no legal obligation to reopen their contracts, responded by saying they want lawmakers and the governor to look elsewhere.

Theres lots of other things we can do before we even think of getting to that point, so its just premature," Lori Pelletier, of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, said.

Pelletier argued that the state hasn't yet addressed the issue of tax fairness, saying there are Connecticut residents who are paying less in taxes based on percentage of income who make more than a half a million dollars a year who can stand to contribute more. She said she thinks their income comes from multiple sources and doesn't get taxed properly.

Our revenue system needs to catch up to the way our wages are distributed, so we have to look at that, she said.

Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said the number two Democrat in the divided Senate said it's easy to see what will happen if unions don't agree to consider and eventually approve concessions.

Its either going to be additional negotiations with state employees or there are going to be additional layoffs, so its probably going to be one or the other, he said.

The Connecticut House of Representatives, in a win for organized labor, also voted down a proposal to mandate that all labor contracts be voted on by the entire chamber. While there is nothing in the rules that prevents that, and all contracts have a 30-day period where they can be voted on, Republicans want to see a mandate as a matter of policy. On a party line vote, Democrats prevailed.

Its our responsibility as legislators to look at these contracts," said Rep. Themis Klarides, R-Derby, the top Republican in the House.

She said the decision by Democrats comes down to them not wanting to be held accountable for such votes.

I think theyre afraid to vote against a union contract for fear of retribution and I think theyre afraid to vote for a union contract for fear their constituents will think theyre not being responsible.

Newly elected Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz said his caucus will consider a rule change in the future and said the decision had nothing to do with his role as an employee of AFSCME Council 4, a union that represents some state workers.

I dont benefit from any contract up here. My salary is not tied to it. I dont get a bonus. I dont lose money," Rep. Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said. "So, really it is not a conflict of interest. We are a part-time legislature. We all come here because we want to serve the public and thats what Ill continue to do.
Cities all over North Texas are preparing for the cold and the possibility of slick roads early Friday.

Fort Worth's fleet of public works trucks loaded up with sand and salt Thursday. They hadn't actually hit the roads by Thursday evening, but were ready to roll when needed.

Texas Department of Transportation crews started early, though, covering approximately 1,100 bridges and overpasses in Tarrant County between Tuesday through Thursday.

TxDOT has 140 trucks and 225 staffers ready to ward off any slick roads that could develop overnight, and Fort Worth's public works department is taking a similarly cautious approach.

The city has 20 trucks on standby already filled with sand and salt, and even more can be called in if needed. A city spokesman said they have enough sand and salt for a multi-day weather event, but they don't expect to need nearly that much.

In an average winter, the city uses about 2,500 tons of sand and salt. They haven't had to use any this winter yet, but every city crew is on standby in case this is the first night they're needed.

The city's other top priority is the protecting the community's homeless, many of whom will be staying at the Union Gospel Mission of Tarrant County.

The union collaborates with the other big shelters in Fort Worth. They'll be talking with each other all night and referring folks wherever there's still open space.

City buses will actually go out Thursday evening to find people living on the streets and take them to the shelters. If they all fill up, the city will open an extra overflow shelter in a rec center.

Folks who work with the homeless every day say they're struck by the number of new faces coming in.

"We're seeing an increase in the number of people who are out on the streets. People who historically had been the lower-middle class, who were living paycheck to paycheck, who because of the economy and other issues, now find themselves homeless for their very first cold winter," said Keith Ackerman, chief operations officer for Union Gospel Mission of Tarrant County.

"For those individuals it's pretty humbling. A lot of them don't know what to ask or say. So when we see people looking a little lost, that's where our staff steps in and asks what their needs are. 'OK, you're here with us now, where are you going tomorrow?'" Ackerman added.
Garland police say a 17-year-old is dead after a shooting Thursday afternoon in the parking lot outside a restaurant, and a 15-year-old is suspected of pulling the trigger.

Police said the victim, identified as Ruben Trinidad, of Garland, was eating with friends at a Chili's located in the 3200 block of the President George Bush Turnpike North when he went outside to meet someone at about 3:30 p.m.

Police say Trinidad was then shot, and the gunman fled the area.

Trinidad was transported to a hospital where he died.

The investigation is ongoing, and police have not released the identity of the 15-year-old whom they believe is responsible in the shooting.

Anyone with information that could help investigators is asked to call the Garland Police Department at 972-485-4840.
A woman suspected of driving while intoxicated was injured in a crash in Arlington Friday morning, police say.

Officers tried to stop the woman near the intersection of Texas 360 and Mayfield Road, according to Arlington police spokeswoman VaNessa Harrison.

Police said the woman refused to stop, heading south on Texas 360. She continued to westbound Interstate 20 before crashing near the exit to Bowen Road.

The woman was transported to a hospital with undisclosed injuries, according to authorities.
What to Know At least 5 were dead and 8 wounded after a shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida on Friday

Law enforcement sources identified the shooter as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago

He was born in New Jersey, the sources said, and had military ID on him when he was arrested

The 26-year-old New Jersey-born man identified by law enforcement sources as the man who opened fire at Fort Lauderale Airport, killing 5 people, had served for years in the National Guard and was recently treated in Alaska after "something got to him," family members said.

Federal sources told NBC News the shootings did not appear to be an act of terrorism, and that the gunman, identified as Esteban Santiago, appears to have acted alone.

While the motive remains under investigation, both federal and family sources said Santiago had some mental health issues.

Federal law enforcement officials told NBC News that Santiago was undergoing treatment for mental health problems, complaining that he was hearing voices.

They say last November, he walked into the FBI's office in Anchorage, Alaska, claiming that his mind was being controlled by the CIA and that it was forcing him to join ISIS. He appeared agitated and incoherent, and made disjointed statements -- and although he said he didn't wish to hurt anyone, agents were concerned by his erratic behavior and decided to call local authorities, a senior federal law enforcement official said.

Local police took him to a local medical facility for evaulation, and the FBI closed its assessment of Santiago after conducting database reviews, interagency checks and interviews with family members, the official said.

Officials say that on Thursday night, Santiago took Delta Flight 1088 from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul. He landed Friday morning, and then took Delta Flight 2182 from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Fort Lauderdale. A firearm was his only piece of checked luggage, said Jesse Davis, chief of police at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

A senior federal law enforcement official told NBC 4 New York that Santiago made several other air reservations around the same time he booked the one-way ticket from Alaska through Minneapolis to Florida -- including one that would have departed Alaska on New Year's Eve to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with a stop-over in New York City. But he never wound up purchasing those tickets, and as the official pointed out, his checked bag would have gone on to Puerto Rico.

After arriving at Fort Lauderdale, he picked up his gun at baggage claim in the airport's Terminal 2 and began firing, sources said.

He was taken into custody unharmed. Santiago had military ID on him when he was arrested, multiple senior law enforcement sources told NBC.

Santiago's brother, Bryan Santiago, spoke with NBC News over the phone from Puerto Rico Friday afternoon.

He said Esteban was born in March 1990 in New Jersey but moved to Penuela, Puerto Rico, where Bryan and their mother still live. Esteban served in the National Guard in Puerto Rico for six years, and went to Iraq for about a year, Bryan said.

"He was pro-America," Bryan said.

Esteban has five siblings and he's the youngest, according to Santiago's aunt, Maria Luisa Ruiz, who spoke to NBC 4 sister station Telemundo-47 from her Union City home in New Jersey Friday evening.

Two of Esteban's siblings are in Florida and another two are in Puerto Rico, Ruiz said. One of his brothers, who was in Naples on vacation at the time of the shooting, had been a police officer in Puerto Rico for about 20 years. Ruiz said she was able to reach him quickly over the phone on Friday.

"He is in a state of desperation," Ruiz said of the brother in Naples. "We've been trying to communicate with what we have back and forth, and he said, 'Ti-ti, I will call you at night because I think I may need to go over there."

Ruiz said that Esteban's father died while he was in Iraq. When he returned to Puerto Rico, he studied but struggled to find a job. He then moved to Alaska for work opportunities.

"I know that right now he was working in security [in Alaska]," she said in Spanish. "But about two months ago, he was in the hospital."

"Something got to him," she said. "It looks like he lost his mind. He would say that he would see things. I don't know. So he went to the hospital. That's what I know. That's what the mother told me, who lives in Puerto Rico."

The aunt -- the sister of Esteban's mother -- said Esteban was in the hospital for about two weeks.

"Before that, he met a girl. He has a recently born baby with her," she said, adding the baby was born in September, and that's when she last heard from him.

"I talked to him after the baby was born. Everything was fine. He was happy with his baby," she said. "He sent me a photo and then I didn't hear anything more."

Ruiz last saw her nephew in person years ago, when he visited New Jersey for a week upon returning from Iraq.

"My entire family is in shock," she said, calling him " a good kid."

During Telemundo-47's interview with Santiago's aunt, federal officials showed up at the home and ordered everyone to leave.

Bryan Santinago told NBC News that Esteban was "fighting with a lot of people" during his time in Alaska, saying he was having relationship issues and arguing with his girlfriend and others. The girlfriend told Bryan that his brother was "receiving psychological counseling in Anchorage."

Esteban did have a handgun, his brother said.

Bryan said he could not imagine his brother committing the crime, and speculated that perhaps he had a "flashback" from his military experience, although he said there was no PTSD diagnosis or other post-Iraq issues.

Bryan said he had not heard from Esteban for several weeks, which is unusual, and that the family was worried about him.

"He is a regular person, spiritual, a good person," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Alaska National Guard confirmed to NBC News that Esteban Santiago joined the Puerto Rico National Guard on Dec. 14, 2007, and was deployed to Iraq from April 23, 2010 to Feb. 19, 2011.

He was then in the Army Reserves before joining the Alaska Army National Guard on Nov. 21, 2014. He received a general discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard on Aug. 16, 2016, for unsatisfactory performance, the spokeswoman said.

Esteban Santiago was a combat engineer and his rank was private first class when he was discharged.

Alaskan court records show an Esteban Santiago with the same date of birth was charged with two misdemeanors last year; one count was dismissed and Santiago was due back in court on the second this coming March.

The Broward Sheriff's Office said they received a call about the shooting around 12:55 p.m. Live video more than an hour after the attack showed people running across the tarmac between terminals while others took cover behind car.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!" Florida Gov. Rick Scott was traveling to Fort Lauderdale to be briefed by law enforcement, his office said.
First Lady Michelle Obama will make what are expected to be her final public remarks as First Lady on Friday morning at the 2017 School Counselor of the Year event in the East Room of the White House.

As part of her Reach Higher initiative, Mrs. Obama has championed school counselors and encouraged post-secondary education for students across the country, according to a White House news release.

From her office in Lewisville, some 1,300+ miles from the Nation's Capital, Monya Crow will be applauding the First Ladys efforts from afar on Friday.

In her position as Director of Guidance and Counseling for the Lewisville Independent School District, Crow appreciates those who appreciate the work she and her staff do.

The Lewisville ISD employs three educators, an elementary school counselor and two administrators, whose work has been awarded as the Best in their respective fields, according to the Texas School Counselor Association.

Crow indicated that the recognition earned by members of the Lewisville ISD staff is a testament to their individual talents and the districts overall dedication to helping the whole child.

That dedication includes operating a free, after-school counseling program, called the Family Center, for both Lewisville ISD students and members of their family.

And that is really innovative, Crow said. Our counselors support that and staff that, and, so, its free for all the students and families to seek support if they need it, in an area that they already feel very comfortable in.

Crow added that she is also consistently impressed with the ability of children to overcome the many, very adult problems they are faced with.

Kids are resilient in a way that adults are not, Crow said. A lot of times they will go through things that would make the rest of us kind of have to sit in the corner for a minute.
Decorated war hero and longtime conservative U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX 3rd District) says he will not seek re-election to a 10th term.

Johnson, who is 86 and resides in Plano, has served the 3rd District, which covers most of Collin County, since 1992.

"After much prayer, I have decided I will not seek re-election to serve the Third District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. This will be my final term in the appropriately named 'Peoples House,'" Johnson said in a statement on his website. "It has been a distinct honor and privilege to work on your behalf all these years. From passing laws, to helping constituents with problems like obtaining their military service medals, making a difference is what motivated my service from my very first day."

Johnson, who grew up in Dallas and graduated from Southern Methodist University, is a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means and serves as the chairman of the Social Security subcommittee.

Among his notable legislative accomplishments, Johnson and U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX 5th District) introduced legislation to repeal the Wright Amendment -- giving consumers more options out of Dallas' Love Field airport and has made veterans issues and Social Security legislation the focus of his record.

Before joining congress, Johnson spent 29 years in the Air Force where he flew combat missions over Korea and Vietnam. He was shot down while flying a combat mission in 1966 over Vietnam and was held captive for seven years at the "Hanoi Hilton," half of which he spent in solitary confinement. He wrote at length about the experience in his autobiography, "Captive Warriors."

"The celebratory homecoming parade thrown in my hometown of Plano upon my return from Hanoi will always rank among one of my most treasured memories, encapsulating all that I love about America  faith, family, and freedom," Johnson said in his letter to constituents Friday.

According to his house.gov biography, Johnson was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, one Bronze Star with Valor, two Purple Hearts, four Air Medals, and three Outstanding Unit Awards for his service.

Shirley, Johnson's wife of 65 years, died last winter. In his letter, Johnson again thanked his supporters for their unwavering support.

"Just as I have stood for you, you have stood by me  and for that I sincerely thank you," Johnson said.

Read Johnson's complete statement about his future plans here.

Johnson was well respected in Texas and on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers were quick to comment after the announcement.

"Congressman Sam Johnson is a Texan, born in Dallas, Texas. He serves among not only the finest of the men and women because of his military service, but he brought that same tenacity to Congress. He has brought balance and teamwork and he was always admired, not only as a Texan but a man who showed up doing his homework and he has been a huge part of our success," said U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas.

Congressman Sam Johnsons unwavering service to this country will be remembered long after he leaves Washington. While many will remember Rep. Johnson for his tireless work on the Ways and Means Committee and his time in the House of Representatives, Texans will also remember him for his military service to our nation, his sacrifice as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam and his commitment to helping our veterans. Cecilia and I wish him the best in his retirement and thank him for his selfless service to the State of Texas," said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
USS Carl Vinson Strike Group ships deployed from San Diego Thursday with a combined 7,500 service members on board all bound for the Western Pacific.

The sailors are part of a unique mission -- they will take part in an operational construct that hasn't been carried out by the U.S. Navy since World War II.

The USS Carl Vinson deployed at about 7 a.m. Thursday morning, headed to a mission working on a new construct called COM Third Fleet Forward. The U.S. Navy says USS Carl Vinson will remain under the U.S. Third Fleet command and control while deployed.

Loved ones gathered at Naval Air Station North Island Coronado to bid their farewell to 7,500 Marines and sailors -- always a poignant scene of emotion -- that marks a challenging day in the life of military families. For many families, it was their first experience of having a relative or spouse deploy.

The group of departed vessels included the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2 and embarked Destroyer Squadron (CDS) 1, deployed with Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG 57), according to the U.S. Navy.

Some other vessels in the group were the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) and USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108). The Carrier Air Wing 2 and Destroyer Squadron 1 will focus on maritime security operations.

USS Wayne E. Meyer deployed from Naval Base San Diego at about 11 a.m. Thursday.

For the past six months, USS Carl Vinson Strike Group has been preparing for this mission in San Diego with rigorous training sessions.
A San Diego woman who harbored 44 undocumented immigrants in her home, some of whom were locked in a small shed, admitted to the crimes, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Dania Olivero, 51, a Cuban national with legal status in the U.S., pleaded guilty to harboring and concealing undocumented immigrants in exchange for thousands of dollars.

Authorities first discovered the stash house, located on the 4900 block of University Avenue in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood, when San Diego Police (SDPD) got multiple calls from neighbors, according to a complaint filed in Federal Court.

Neighbors expressed concern after they saw two cars dropping off multiple people at the home, who then nervously rushed inside the home, the complaint alleges.

Olivero told police she invited the people to drink beer at her house, the complaint alleges.

Officers further investigated, and found the people with unopened beers in front of them in the home. Some of the people ran to the backyard when authorities arrived.

Border Patrol officers were called to the home when police suspected the people may be undocumented immigrants.

All but two identified themselves as Mexican nationals without legal status in the U.S. when questioned, according to the complaint. Two said they were citizens of Guatemala, but did not have legal standing to be in the U.S.

According to the plea agreement, Olivero admitted she provided shelter, food and drinks to shield the individuals from detection. At times, individuals paid between $5,000 and $8,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.

"Many were placed in a backyard shed, a shed without lighting, ventilation. A small shed with approximately 30 other individuals," Conover said.

All 44 of the undocumented immigrants were taken into custody.

Olivero is scheduled to be sentenced on March 17. She could face 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Survey all the weeks on the calendar, and then pinpoint the one that's all about reflection of the past, future ponderings, deep wishes, and goals.

If you picked your birthday week, well, that feels right, true, but we all share down-the-road yearnings at the start of a new year. And whether that involves us listing resolutions, or writing a note to our end-of-the-year self, is up to us.

Should you be feeling this impulse rather strongly at the moment, and if you're ready to gaze well beyond the end of 2017, allll the way to 2035, in fact, make your next resolution this one: Pay the Japanese American National Museum a visit on Sunday, Jan. 8.

That's Jan. 8 in 2017, not 2035, though the effervescent, big-of-joy Time After Time Capsule Workshop will have that not-so-distant year in mind. Led by artist Sebastian Masuda, the free workshop is all about stocking "two giant time capsules  one shaped like Hello Kitty and one shaped like Domo, the official mascot of Japan's public broadcaster NHK!"

So show with "a cherished personal item" or spend a few minutes at the museum jotting a note to the person you'll be in 2035.

Which'll basically be you, only older and even more awesome. (We're predicting this, pretty accurately, if we might take such a liberty.)

There are a number of capsules involved in this mega project, and a Tokyo 2020 visit for the capsules is in the works, as well as a 2035 return to the respective cities where the time vaults were filled, long ago, back in 2017.

That means you already have an event to add to your 2035 datebook: See what you submitted for the time capsule back on Jan. 8, some 17 years earlier.

As mentioned, this is free, and the capsules will be on display at the Little Tokyo-located institution through Jan. 29 (though do note that museum admission will be required after the Jan. 8 free day wraps).

A beautiful bonus? The Oshogatsu Family Festival will also be happening on Jan. 8, further creating an atmosphere of community and creativity, one that should enhance that letter you'll pen to future you.

The festival, too, is free to join, and it also has some forward-looking-ness, as The Year of the Rooster, which is upcoming, is the theme.

If you've visited Tokyo's Harajuku district, then you know Mr. Masuda's store and its affection for kawaii. But there's a chance to get acquainted with the fizzy-fun sweetness that kawaii embraces by taking part in the future-forward workshop right here in LA, at the Japanese American National Museum.
A woman has filed a lawsuit against a Southern California school district, alleging that she was eventually demoted from her position as an elementary school principal because she was pregnant and unmarried.

Christine Castillo moved from Seattle to Los Angeles after she was hired for her "dream job" as the principal at La Canada Elementary School back in 2012. A few weeks into the job, she announced that she was pregnant. Castillo said that Wendy Sinnette, the superintendent of the La Canada Unified School District, reacted negatively to the news.

Sinnette made statements to Castillo such as "This is really going to upset your staff and parents," "I made it clear what this job required" and "I need a drink," stated the lawsuit, which was filed in December of 2016. Sinnette told Castillo that she should have informed the district about her pregnancy sooner.

"When the words came out of my mouth, I could just see her body just freeze," Castillo told NBC4. "Her face just looked so disappointed.

"I was excited about being pregnant and starting a family. I wanted to share that with my employer, never thinking it would compromise the work I was going to be doing there."

Castillo accused the district for mistreating her for the three years that followed her pregnancy. The lawsuit states the district denied her accommodations for her pregnancy and that she received negative performance evaluations from the school staff and the district that didn't take her maternity leave into consideration.

Castillo filed an internal complaint against the school district in 2015, which led to an internal investigation. Documents on the investigation's findings, obtained by NBC4, show the superintendent and the former superintendent of human resources Patricia Hager were concerned about logistics around Castillo's pregnancy.

The documents also stated the district was concerned about negative reaction in the community about the pregnancy and the fact that Castillo was unmarried at the time.

"This is something you would have expected to hear in the 19th or 18th century," said Ben Meiselas, Castillo's attorney. "For the school district to state that being pregnant is a scarlet letter on a woman -- that's a problem if the community really feels that way."

The district notified Castillo in June 2016 that she was to be reassigned to a classroom position. Castillo left the district that day, and on that evening the district announced the elementary school's new principal, the suit said.

"It is unfortunate that representatives for Ms. Castillo are pursuing a legal strategy that has nothing to do with the facts. Her placement into the classroom last year had absolutely nothing to do with her maternity leave of four years ago," the La Canada Unified School District said in a statement to NBC4.

"Furthermore, we stand firmly along side our superintendent, Wendy Sinnette, and will not tolerate any misrepresentation of her character or her behavior."

The district also said in its statement that it has strict protocols and adheres to a "zero-tolerance" policy of discrimination of any kind, and that Castillo's case was no exception.

"The district simply adhered to performance policies which hold our principals to understandably high standards," the statment read. "We trust that the legal process in this case will find that the district acted appropriately."

Castillo's attorneys are calling for the district to give Castillo her job as principal back, or for the superintendent's resignation.

"The experience that I had there was so awful, and it was so debilitating, that it's important for me to say something about it," Castillo said.
An active investigation continues after a man was found fatally shot along a Southwest Miami-Dade road Thursday night.

Miami-Dade Police say the victim was shot near the intersection of SW 200th Street and 114th Avenue shortly before 8:30 PM. Officials say he tried to run for help, but collapsed on the sidewalk and later died.

Relatives came to see the spot where 19 year old Kemorie Wallace died last night.

"It's like it ain't sunk in yet," his grandmother, Mary Dingle. told NBC 6 in an exclusive interview.

His grandmother told me she last saw her grandson yesterday afternoon... And then police showed up at her doorstep with the bad news overnight.

One woman told us she found Wallace while he was still breathing.

"As Im coming out on my bike Im riding on the sidewalk, it's really dark, said Kelsey Sepulveda. I see like something on the floor, a figure on the floor, a figure on the floor and when I got closer I almost ran into it and it was a body on the floor."

Sepulveda said she tried talking to the man, but he wouldn't respond. "I saw him take his last breath," she said.

Now, Kemorie's grandmother hopes someone will come forward.

"Evidently someone had something against him, Dingle said.

Officers are still searching for the alleged gunman, who fled the scene. Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade CrimeStoppers.
A Florida state senator filed a bill Thursday that would eliminate express lanes on all highways across the sunshine state.

State Senator Frank Artiles (R-Miami) introduced SB250 in an effort to keep Florida from building more express lanes after July 1.

Artiles wants to do away with express lanes because he considered them unsafe. "In Miami-Dade County, there have been more than 12,000 reported accidents in the express lanes over the past three years," said Artiles.

The bill also sets rules on how money collected from express lanes should be spent. If the measure becomes law, money collected from tolls would only be used to pay off bonds that were created to fund projects. Once those bonds are paid off, the express lanes would convert to general-use lanes under the bill.

The bill does not apply to Florida's Turnpike.
Miami-Dade Police are releasing body camera footage from an encounter between officers and a knife-wielding man as the department received praise from President Obama for their training in dealing with the mentally ill.

Situations like the one depicted in the footage can go south quickly and that's why MDPD officers are trained yearly to deal with suicidal and mentally ill people.

The footage shows veteran officers Thomas Kennedy and Phil Hall during the November encounter in the Hammocks.

"Put it down! Drop the knife! Look at me, look at me," Kennedy tells the suspect.

Police said the man was suicidal and either wanted to hurt himself or provoke officers to shoot. The man refused to put down the knife and even waved it around at one point. Less than three minutes after arriving, one of the officers fired their Taser, not their gun.

Officials said that's what their officers are trained for.

"A split second can change any scenario," Miami-Dade Police Maj. Hector Llevat said. "They're able to identify somebody who's in crisis and they're given tools and techniques to try to deescalate that situation safely."

On Thursday, President Obama praised the Miami-Dade Police Department in an article he wrote for the Harvard Law Review.

"In search of a better way, and recognizing that this population frequently came into contact with law enforcement, the county provided key mental health de-escalation training to their police officers and 911 dispatchers," President Obama wrote.

"When we see ourself on the map, it really, it validates what we're doing," Maj. Llevat said.

Maj. Llevat said the incident with the man with the knife as a great example of that training in action.

"[The officers] were able to safely take him into custody and get him the help that he needed," he said.
Federal prosecutors have filed charges against the Florida airport shooting suspect that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.

A criminal complaint filed Saturday by the Miami U.S. attorney's office accuses 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of an act of violence at an international airport resulting in death. The punishment is execution or any prison sentence up to life.

Prosecutors also charged Santiago with two firearms offenses.

Authorities have confirmed the identities of the five victims killed in Friday's shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

One of the five victims killed has been identified as 62-year-old Terry Andres.

Andres' daughter told NBC News that her father was shot and killed by Esteban Santiago, 26, during the shooting. Six other people were wounded and taken to the hospital, local officials said.

Elizabeth Oehme-Miller told The Associated Press by phone Saturday that her brother, 57-year-old Michael Oehme, was killed in Friday's attack and that her brother's wife, 52-year-old Kari Oehme, was shot in the shoulder and is expected to recover.

Oehme-Miller says her brother and sister-in-law were in Fort Lauderdale getting ready for a Caribbean cruise that was supposed to start Saturday. She says they were frequent travelers who loved cruises and were happy to be headed on another one.

Santiago allegedly opened fire in a baggage claim area after retrieving a handgun from his checked luggage in the airport's second Terminal.

"I was dodging bullets and trying to help people get out of the way," an eyewitness, Mark Lea, told NBC News.

He was taken into custody uninjured and was interviewed by BSO detectives and FBI agents, Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said in a Friday evening news conference, adding that Santiago is now in federal custody. No shots were fired by authorities, Israel said.

"At this point, it looks like he acted alone," Israel said.

FBI spokesman George Piro said Friday Santiago will be federally charged and likely make his first court appearance Monday in Broward County.

Meanwhile, Florida hospital officials say one of the airport shooting victims is expected to be released.

Six gunshot victims were brought to Broward Health Medical Center after Friday's shooting in which five others died. Officials said Saturday at a news conference with Gov. Rick Scott that one is well enough for release.

Shooting reported at Ft. Lauderdale airport in Florida Airport Evacuated pic.twitter.com/brM4vc2x4M  Darl van Dijk (@Lastcombo) January 6, 2017

While the motive remains under investigation, his brother and federal officials said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently. Santiago served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance.

In November, he walked into the FBI's office in Anchorage and complained of hearing voices, claiming the CIA was forcing him to join ISIS, Piro said during a Friday evening news conference.

Officials said local police were called and he voluntarily went to a mental health facility for treatment.

Santiago took off from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul Thursday night aboard Delta Flight 1088, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport. He then boarded Delta Flight 2182 to Fort Lauderdale.

At Fort Lauderdale, "after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

The shooting started hours of turmoil at the airport as police tried to confirm there wasn't an additional shooter. More than an hour after the attack, people were seen running across the tarmac and sheltering behind cars while police had their guns drawn at a parking garage at the airport. But Sheriff Israel said the only shots fired were at Terminal 2.

"Someone said they heard something that sounded like gunshots," Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said on MSNBC of the later police activity.

A video posted by Chris Ritter (@chrisritter0270) on Jan 6, 2017 at 12:13pm PST

https://www.instagram.com/p/BO7vNMggtgv

Lea, a 53-year-old financial adviser from Minneapolis, was in the baggage claim when, he said, a man came in and started shooting.

"At first we thought it was firecrackers," he said. "Everyone started screaming and running. The shooter made his way down through baggage claim. He had what looked like a 9mm and emptied his entire clip. People were trying to run."

Lea said the gunman was silent as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.''

When the shooter ran out of ammunition Lea said "He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him."

Police officers responded less than a minute after the shooting began, Lea said.

It was absolutely surreal, he said. People were scared and frantically running to avoid being shot. People were tripping over each other. They were trying to make a fast exit out of the door.

"I was just running for my life because I heard the gun shots and knew there were gun shots so I had to run," said Jackline Tantan of Margate who was in the baggage claim of terminal two when the shooter opened fire.

he ``went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.'' The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

``He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him,'' Lea said.

John Schlicher, who was in the baggage claim with his wife and mother-in-law, told MSNBC the shooter "walked over and he was right in our area within feet from us shooting people.

"I put my head down and prayed," Schlicher said.

He added that his wife "was holding a sweater up against a man who was shot in the head. She was doing her best to apply pressure to his wounds. The person right next to him was already gone."

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who was traveling from the airport, tweeted about the incident that "everyone" was running.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott traveled to Fort Lauderdale, where he held a news conference outside the airport.

"The citizens of Florida will not tolerate senseless acts of evil. You just can't imagine how this could ever happen in a state like ours," Gov. Scott said. "My heart goes out to every family impacted, the families that lost their loved ones, and the families and the individuals that still have loved ones still in the hospital fighting for their life."

BSO Fire Rescue said of 30 people transported to hospitals from the airport, 29 were taken to Broward Health Medical Center and one was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital. Officials at Broward Health said they received five trauma patients at the hospital and that all were stable.

Gov. Scott later went to Broward Health, where he said he talked to doctors and some patients. He added that he's been in contact with President Obama and President-elect Trump, who both offered support.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!"

The ATF said it is responding to the shooting to assist state and local officials.

The airport has temporarily suspended all services. All flights within 50 miles at the time of the closure were able to land, while the rest were diverted to other airports.

At Miami International Airport, officials said they added extra security following the shooting.

"We're feeling very lucky because were were supposed to go through Fort Lauderdale to end up in L.A. and our flight got changed while we were on the cruise," California traveler Karen Grey said at MIA. "I'm really nervous about all the people we met on the cruise, I hope everybody is safe."

Broward officials said they've established a toll-free number for passengers and family members at 866-435-9355. At family assistance center was set up at the Renaissance Hotel at 1617 Southeast 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hidden campaign to influence America's presidential election in favor of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, U.S. intelligence agencies declared Friday in the government's first formal allegation supporting sensational claims that Trump and his supporters have staunchly resisted.

The intelligence report, an unclassified version of a more-detailed classified account given earlier to Trump, the White House and congressional leaders, withheld the government's evidence to back up its assertions.

Trump, in a brief interview with The Associated Press, said he "learned a lot" from his discussions with intelligence officials, but declined to say whether he accepted their assertion that Russia had meddled in the election on his behalf.

"It was a really great meeting, I really like those people a lot," said Trump, who has challenged the intelligence community since winning the election. "I learned a lot and I think they did also."

Trump would not detail what evidence he was presented with, saying only that he learned "a lot of confidential things." Because Trump is not yet president, he is legally constrained from revealing classified information.

Still, by late Friday Trump was blaming the victim, accusing the Democratic National Committee on Twitter of "gross negligence" and allowing the hacking to take place.

Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place.The Republican National Committee had strong defense!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017

In an earlier written statement, Trump said it was clear Russian email hacking did not deliver him the presidency.

The unclassified version of the intelligence report was the most detailed public account to date of Russian efforts to interfere with the U.S. political process, with actions that included hacking into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats like Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. Russia also used state-funded propaganda and paid "trolls" to make nasty comments on social media services, the report said. There was no suggestion that Russia affected actual vote counting or tampered with ballot machines. President Barack Obama requested the report last month and wanted it completed before inauguration day.

The report, for the first time, explicitly tied Putin to the hackings, called it the "boldest effort yet" to influence a U.S. election, and said the Russian government provided emails to WikiLeaks  something the website's founder, Julian Assange, has repeatedly denied. The intelligence agencies also said Russia will continue to try to influence future events in the U.S. and worldwide, particularly among U.S. allies.

Since Election Day, the intelligence agencies said, Russia has launched a "spear-fishing" campaign to try to trick people into revealing their email passwords, targeting U.S. government employees and think tanks that specialize in national security, defense and foreign policy.

The report lacked details about how the U.S. learned what it said it knows, such as any intercepted conversations or electronic messages among Russian leaders, including Putin, or about specific hacker techniques or digital tools the U.S. may have traced back to Russia in its investigations.

Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

The unclassified version included footnotes acknowledging that it "does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign." It said its conclusions were identical to the classified version, which was more detailed.

The unclassified report said the Russian effort was both political and personal.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency," it said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Clinton because he blames her for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he resents her for disparaging comments she has made about him, the report said. It said the Russian effort was the "boldest yet" intended to affect a U.S. election.

The report was released shortly after intelligence officials finished briefing Trump  a move probably intended to bolster the intelligence findings against pushback from the president-elect.

Trump could use the lack of supporting details in the public version to fuel his dismissiveness of the findings, even though he has now been briefed on the classified portion.

Trump has been dismissive of the intelligence agencies' claims of Russia's involvement for months, long before he saw the classified information Friday.

Just hours before he was briefed, Trump dismissed the assessment and told The New York Times the focus on Russia's involvement is a "political witch hunt" by adversaries who are embarrassed they lost the election. "They got beaten very badly in the election," Trump said. "They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it's a witch hunt. They just focus on this."

After finally seeing the intelligence behind the claims of the outgoing Obama administration, Trump released a one-page statement that did not address whether Russia sought to meddle. Instead, he said, "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election."

The top U.S. intelligence official, James Clapper, told Congress on Thursday that intelligence agencies had no way of gauging what influence this meddling had in the outcome of the election. It was unclear Friday what evidence Trump had to support his claims.

As Trump met in New York with intelligence officials for his briefing about Russia's campaign, Congress tallied the Electoral College votes, officially confirming Trump's November victory.

Trump acknowledged in his statement that "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people" are consistently trying to hack U.S. networks, including the Democratic National Committee's.

He said, as did the intelligence report, that "there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines."

Trump said that as president he would appoint a team to develop a plan to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."

Before the intelligence agencies completed their assessment, Obama announced sanctions against Russia late last year. Trump has not said whether he will undo them once he takes office.

Trump signaled on Twitter that as president he would aggressively investigate leaks to the press from intelligence agencies.

"I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it," Trump tweeted Friday afternoon.
What to Know Donald Trump will meet with intelligence officials to discuss meddling by Russia in the U.S. presidential election

The southern United States is bracing for what may be a historic winter storm, and in the tri-state ice-cold weather is forecast for days

New guidelines suggest feeding infants peanuts at four to six months old to avoid allergies later on

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.

Intelligence Briefing at Trump Tower

Senior intelligence officials will brief President-elect Donald Trump on Friday about their findings that Russia interfered with the presidential election on his behalf. The briefing at Trump Tower in midtown comes as Trump continued to express doubt, questioning how officials could be "so sure" about the hacking if they had not examined DNC servers. Since winning the election, Trump has challenged intelligence officials' assessments that Russia interfered with the election on his behalf, setting up an unusually public battle with the spy agencies. On Friday, senior intelligence officials will try to justify their claims when they brief Trump on the findings of a full report into the Russian hacking of Democratic groups. The report was ordered by President Barack Obama. Meanwhile, a joint session of Congress is set to count the Electoral College votes Friday, a traditional ending to a most unconventional presidential election.

Russian Hacking Report

A report on Russian hacking delivered to President Obama Thursday says American intelligence agencies intercepted communication which shows senior Russian officials celebrating Donald Trump's election victory, a senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge confirmed to NBC News. The U.S. has also identified Russian actors who turned over stolen Democratic material to WikiLeaks, the official said. On Thursday, U.S. intelligence officials appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify on possible Russian influence behind cyberattacks directed at Democratic targets.

Russia Starts Syria Drawdown

Russia announced on Friday that it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and some other Russian warships from the waters off Syria as the first step in a drawdown of its forces in the war-torn Mideast country. According to Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier and accompanying ships are to be the first to leave. Moscow has been a key supporter of President Bashar Assad's government and forces in Syria's devastating civil war.

South Braces for Major Snow Storm

The winter weather system that has buried much of the West under record snow was racing east Thursday  on course to slam Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas with snow and ice that authorities warned could be historic, NBC News reported. Meanwhile, a snow storm swept quickly across the tri-state area on overnight. Frigid weather is expected through the weekend.

New Peanut Guidelines for Parents

Peanut allergies are a big problem for many kids and their families, but new guidelines could help protect high-risk tots and other youngsters, too, from developing the dangerous food allergy. The new guidelines, which suggest feeding infants peanut butter when they are as young as four to six months old, mark a change from past recommendations, which urged parents to delay giving children foods containing peanuts in their first few years.

Selfies at Burning Home

Two police officers were captured on video appearing to pose for a selfie in front of a home as it went up in flames on Long Island Thursday afternoon. The fire destroyed the house in Uniondale, though no one was hurt. Neighbors were shocked, but the very people who lost their home told NBC 4 New York they're a law enforcement family and don't think the officers did anything wrong.

Teen Dresses up for Newborn Niece

A teenager wore his best ensemble  jacket, slacks, tie clip, pocket square and watch  for a trip to the hospital to meet his newborn niece because, of course, "first impressions matter." See the touching moment when the two met for the first time.
What to Know The controversial Indian Point nuclear plant will close by 2021 under a deal between New York state and plant owner Entergy, sources say

The governor and environmental advocates like Riverkeeper have long called for the plant's shutdown

It's not clear how the state would replace the source of energy from Indian Point, but it may signal a new shift to renewable energy

The Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester will shut down by 2021 under a deal reached between New York state and Entergy, the utility company that owns the facility, sources with knowledge of the deal told NBC 4 New York.

One of the two nuclear reactors at the plant will stop operating by April 2020, and then the other will close by April 2021, The New York Times first reported.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has long called for shutting down the plant, which has the capacity to generate more than 2,000 megawatts, or about a quarter of the power consumed in New York City and Westchester, according to the Times. He's advocated for using renewable energy instead, though the cost implications for the state aren't clear.

For decades, the families who live in the shadow of the two towering nuclear reactors have been divided between embracing the energy which powers thousands of homes and businesses, and the worry about its potential danger.

"The reported leaks throughout the years, it's concerning for our grandchildren that live in the area," said Peggy Dascoli of Yorktown Heights.

Christopher McNamee of Buchanan, however, said it was his understanding that "nuclear power is the cleanest type of power there is."

Neither the governor's office nor Entergy would confirm the deal, but sources say an agreement has been worked out and all that awaits finalization is the governor's signature. That could come as soon as Monday.

The plant, which sits on the eastern shore of the Hudson River, first opened in the 1970s and employs about 1,000 workers, according to The Journal News.

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican who ran against Cuomo in the 2014 gubernatorial race, told NBC 4 the planned closing of the plant is a "complete surprise" and that it's "potentially catastrophic" because of the millions in taxes that Entergy pays.

"The economic impact is enormous," said Astorino. "People will lose their job and cost of living will go up."

Cuomo has repeatedly said the operation of Indian Point is too hazardous so close to New York City. More than 17 million people live within 50 miles of the plant, which sits along the lower Hudson River 30 miles north of the city.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, also a Democrat, said in a statement, "If we can shut down Indian Point under an agreement that enhances public safety and kickstarts investments into safer and more reliable renewable energy sources, that will be a victory for the millions of New Yorkers who live in the region."

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat, said he's wanted to responsibly phase out operations at Indian Point "since day one," pointing to safety issues in recent years, including faulty baffle bolts and contaminated water leaks.

But let me be clear  this agreement must include concrete plans to protect the jobs of hundreds of New Yorkers and keep energy prices low for my neighbors in the Hudson Valley," Maloney said in a statement. "We can balance safety concerns with the security of local jobs and low energy bills and I will continue working with New York State to ensure the burden of shutting down Indian Point isnt placed on the backs of hardworking folks in the Hudson Valley."
What to Know Two Staten Island men, both 24, were charged Thursday hours after they allegedly got into a shootout with police

Patrick Allen and Jonathan Derbyshire face weapons charges, along with charges of attempted murder and attempted assault on a police officer

Allen was taken into custody during the shootout but Derbyshire dashed into a wooded area, leading to an hours-long manhunt, police said

The two Staten Island men accused of getting into a dramatic shootout with police this week face a long list of charges.

Police charged Patrick Allen and Jonathan Derbyshire late Thursday. The list of charges against them is lengthy and includes attempted murder, reckless endangerment and attempted assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon.

The two 24 year olds also face a slew of weapons charges  three semi automatic weapons and one assault rifle, all unlicensed, were recovered by police.

Allen and Derbyshire were taken into custody Thursday morning after local and state police combed Staten Island following a shootout in the Charleston neighborhood. Allen was nabbed after the shootout, but an hours-long manhunt was called after Derbyshire allegedly escaped into a wooded area.

Police questioned Derbyshire as a person of interest after he was taken into custody following the manhunt. He was later charged along with Allen.

It is unclear if the two men have attorneys.

Uniformed officers responded to Androvette Street around 1 a.m. Thursday after getting calls about gunfire. When they arrived, Derbyshire pointed a gun at them and ran into a wooded area as Allen emerged from the side of a building and drew a 9mm Glock 26, police said.

The officers returned fire, hitting Allen "numerous times," including three times in his left leg and twice in his left arm, Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre said. The man was wearing a ballistic vest and may have been shot in the vest as well.

Police dispatch recordings captured the dramatic exchange.

"I got one man down, shots fired," one of the officers says to the dispatcher. "I got another man running into the woods with a brown jacket. Send me aviation right now."

Meanwhile, police recovered a hunting knife, three semi automatic weapons and one assault rifle near the wooded area, along with evidence of shells, authorities said. The guns were not licensed.

Local and state police were on nearly every street in the neighborhood as multiple NYPD helicopters roared overhead just before dawn Thursday.

Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan said it appears the men were "hanging out" and went into the woods to test-fire some guns.

The NYPD said two officers were taken to Staten Island University Medical Center South with minor injuries.

Derbyshire's former landlord, Michael Giammarino, told NBC 4 New York his former tenant is a "good kid."

"This is crazy, I can't believe it's him," he said. "It's a shocker."

The police shootout comes a day after two deadly police-involved shootings took place over a matter of hours in Brooklyn  one in Canarsie and another in Prospect Heights.

"I'm always concerned when it's an officer-involved shooting," said Police Commissioner Jimmy O'Neil. "It's the beginning of the year, and we will have to see how it plays out."
Two police officers were captured on video appearing to pose for a selfie in front of a home as it went up in flames on Long Island Thursday afternoon.

The fire destroyed the house in Uniondale, though no one was hurt.

Moments after the officers posed for their apparent photo op, one of them appeared to approach another man taking selfies as if to ask him to leave the scene.

Neighbors were shocked.

"It's disgusting. I don't like that because it shows no concern about the people in the neighborhood," said one man who lives nearby and asked not to be named.

"People in the neighborhood just lost a house, and you're going to sit there taking selfies," he said.

Another neighbor named Vera said, "I don't think it was appropriate for the peace officers to be behaving like that."

But the very people who lost their home told NBC 4 New York they're a law enforcement family and don't think the officers did anything wrong.

The homeowner, an NYPD sergeant, told NBC 4 New York Friday, "I'm not taking any offense. I'm not offended at all by this."

Next-door neighbor Emma Zaccarini added that the picture doesn't tell the whole story. The 86-year-old woman in a wheelchair said that moments before the selfie, the two officers helped her escape her home next to the one on fire.

Asked if she thought they should be punished, she responded, "For what? For doing their job? For being kind to an old lady?"

Still, the Nassau County Police Department said it's taking the matter seriously.

"The contents of this video are very concerning to the department and are currently under investigation," the department said in a statement to NBC 4 New York. "If these officers are found to be in violation of any department rules and regulations, they will be appropriately disciplined."

Nassau County legislator Kevan Abrahams, who thinks the police department should implement a policy prohiting selfies like the one on Thursday, said, "Unfortunately, what you see on that video is the lowest level of professionalism."

Nassau County Police PBA President James Carver said the union would not comment while there is an ongoing internal police investigation.
A cashier's act of kindness is resonating with Southern California residents after she invited a teen with cerebral palsy to help check out groceries.

Jeanie Robinson said she and her 14-year-old son, Andrew, had gone to the store like any other day Dec. 30.

It was a little quieter due to the holidays as they headed out in the pouring rain to the WinCo on Winchester Road. But Robinson said every trip to the store is different.

"Some days he doesn't like the store, and some days he does. Not every day is the same as another," Robinson said in a phone interview with NBC4.

This day in particular for the teen with cerebral palsy was especially good.

His mother said his infectious smile got others in the store smiling back as he pushed the cart along.

"Throughout the store Andy had this contagious smile. There weren't lots of people so when I threw the salad mix across the aisle into the cart he about died laughing," she said in a Facebook post.

As mother and son went to check out, Andy asked to load them groceries onto the conveyor belt.

The cashier, who Robinson believes is named Shaylene, then did something very simple - but amazing.

She invited Andy to scan the groceries. At first, Andy didn't move - until his mom said to go for it.

"It was so kind of her because so many people get annoyed with special needs kids," Robinson said. "But she had all the patience in the world."

Robinson shot a video of the kind exchange and posted it to her Facebook where it's been viewed more than 10,000 times.

The family, which moved to Temecula from Germany 17 months ago, hadn't expected such a sweet gesture.

Robinson said Andy is one in a set of twins that were born prematurely in an emergency C-section.

From the beginning, his mother was told the prognosis "wasn't looking good."

Doctors even told her Andy wouldn't make it. After three days, they said he would never walk, talk or eat on his own.

"In my mind, I said, 'What can I do to fight that?'" she said.

Robinson took him to all kinds of physical therapy and pushed and pushed, fighting to help her boy.

Andy has a limited vocabulary and walks with a limp, but other than that, he's as healthy as can be, she said.

Robinson is hoping the video sends a message to people when interacting with people with special needs.

"Be kind. Be respectful. And smile - nothing in the world is so bad you can't smile," she said.
About a year after its brother died, a young red panda has died, leading a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania zoo to examine the remaining brother for any potential health concerns.

Shredder, a 2-year-old red panda at the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, died after suddenly becoming ill Tuesday night, the zoo said in a news release.

Zoo staff noticed Shredder having trouble breathing a quickly took emergency measures finding an irregular heartbeat and fluid in his lungs, said the zoo. Shredder died within hours.

A necropsy uncovered that Shredder had an enlarged heart and other signs of heart disease that were previously unknown, said the zoo.

"Shredder showed no signs of illness and was even seen eating bamboo throughout the day," said zoo veterinarian Dr. Adam Denish. "Just as in people, animals hearts can be abnormal without any clinical signs. Shredders yearly exam revealed no signs of heart disease. Histopathology samples have been sent to a pathology service to confirm the zoos findings."

Heart disease can be a common cause of death in red pandas, said Denish.

Shredder came to the zoo in 2014 along with brothers Clinger and Slash. Clinger died in Dec. 2015 from encephalitis caused by a brain parasite, said the zoo.

The zoo planned to give Slash  the surviving red panda brother  an echocardiogram to make sure his heart is healthy.

Red pandas are considered endangered by the World Wildlife Fund, with less than 10,000 of the bear-cats living in the wild in the eastern Himalayas in Asia. [[26343834, C]]
One of the most notorious killers in recent Montgomery County history, Rafael Robb, will be a free man Sunday, after serving 10 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

Robb, 66, was sentenced in 2008 to five-to-10 years in state prison after pleading guilty to the slaying of his wife, Ellen Gregory Robb, as she wrapped gifts three days before Christmas in 2006 inside their King of Prussia home.

He will be released Sunday morning, 10 years to the day he began his sentence, from State Correctional Institution-Albion in the far northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, a spokeswoman for the prison confirmed Friday.

Depending on whether he catches a bus or is picked up, he will leave at 6:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m.

It remains unknown if Robb, a once world-renowned economist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, will return to the house where he beat his wife to death with a metal bar.

The house in the 600 block of Forest Road, Upper Merion, is co-owned by Rafael Robb and the estate of Ellen Gregory Robb, according to county real estate records.

There is some speculation that he may take up residence in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh.

After his release, he will be on parole for 10 years until Jan. 8, 2027, according to court records. He has been ordered to pay $124 million to a trust fund for his daughter, according to published reports.
A 20-year-old pizza deliveryman man mistakenly shot numerous times by two police officers in West Philadelphia in 2014 has been given $4.4 million by the City of Philadelphia.

Philippe Holland made his last delivery of the night, a cheeseburger order to a rowhouse near Kingsessing, when two plainclothes officers opened fire on his vehicle. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, first deputy commissioner in 2014, told NBC10 at the time that the officers were responding to a shooting.

"They're surveying the area and they see this male walking with a hoodie," Ross said at the time. "He's got his hands in his pocket and at that time, they order him to stop, and identify themselves."

Holland either didn't hear them or thought they were fake cops trying to rob him, according to reports from 2014. When he got in his car and started to drive, the officers opened fire. Holland suffered bullet wounds to his head and body.

The settlement between Holland and the city closes two lawsuits: one for claims of assault and battery against the police officers in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court and a federal civil rights action.

"This settlement will not only compensate an innocent citizen who suffered devastating injuries but also served as a catalyst for significant reforms in the way our communities are policed by plainclothes officers, said attorney Tom Kline, of Philadelphia law firm Kline & Specter.

Kline said the settlement is one of the largest ever for a police shooting.

Holland suffers from a permanent seizure disorder and other permanent injuries after extensive surgeries, according to a press release Friday. Bullet fragments remain lodged in his brain, the release noted.

Family Photo

The city said in an accompanying statement that the shooting was an impetus for implementing sweeping changes and enhancements to the way Philadelphia police officers are trained to interact with the public. The police department also reformed its use-of-force policy after a spike in police shootings and a Department of Justice review throughout 2014 and 2015.

"The Philadelphia Police Department has agreed under the settlement to implement a new training protocol for all current and new plainclothes police officers," City Solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante said in the statement.

That is only a piece of what has been substantial change in use-of-force under the DOJ review and a March 2015 report that recommended 91 changes or enhancements by city police.

Of those, the city said in the release that 61 have been completed, including instituting training for "unconscious bias"; establishment of a single investigative unit devoted to criminal investigations of all deadly force incidents; and a requirement that all officers who discharge their firearms be interviewed within 72 hours of a shooting.

"Significantly, the city also agreed to produce a training video that all new plainclothes officers will be required to watch before new assignments and as part of roll call," Kline said.

That new training protocol will begin July 1.
Congress certified Donald Trump's presidential victory Friday over the objections of a handful of House Democrats, with Vice President Joe Biden pronouncing, "It is over."

House Democrats objected to the votes from at least 10 states, raising issues of voter suppression as well as American intelligence showing that Russia tried to sway the election in favor of Trump. In each case, their objections were denied because they didn't have the support of any senators.

All 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes. Friday's vote count made it official. Biden presided over the count in his role as president of the Senate.

Trump finished with 304 electoral votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton got 227. There were seven protest votes for other candidates. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

As expected, Mike Pence was elected vice president.

Trump and Pence are to be sworn in on Jan. 20.

As the votes were announced for state after state, Democratic members of the House stood up to object. But in each case, no Democratic senator would join them, and Biden cut them off.

"There can be no debate," Biden said repeatedly.

Under federal law, if at least one senator and one House member object to the vote from any state, the House and Senate will meet separately to debate the merits of the objection.

Toward the end of the count, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., pleaded for a senator to join her in objecting.

"Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?" Waters said to boos from Republicans. None did.

After the vote, Biden told some of the House Democrats who tried to object why he had cut them off.

"Basically, it was the rules and we understand that," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who led the effort to object to Trump's election.

Lee and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus wanted to bring attention to strict voter ID laws in some states that they say suppress voters.

"The real question was about the principles of Democracy and the sacredness of the vote and the very high calling of a presidential election," Lee said.

The objections added a bit of acrimony to the end of a nasty presidential election. Not surprisingly, several protesters were ejected from the public gallery as the vote count concluded.

Trump won even though Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes. His election has generated much angst among Democrats and others who oppose the billionaire businessman. But they have been powerless to change the outcome.

Despite rumblings of a revolt, only two Republican electors  both from Texas  cast protest votes for someone other than Trump. Clinton lost four Democratic electors in Washington state and one in Hawaii.

On Friday morning, Trump went on Twitter to provide another assessment of the election.

"Hillary and the Dems were never going to beat the PASSION of my voters. They saw what was happening in the last two weeks before the (election) and knew they were in big trouble  which is why they cancelled their big fireworks at the last minute. THEY SAW A MOVEMENT LIKE NEVER BEFORE," Trump wrote.
Two sisters said they were kicked off an Allegiant Air flight after authorities deemed them a threat, and it cost them the chance to see their dying father.

Debbie Hartman and Trisha Baker of DeLand, Florida, said they were on the plane Monday in Orlando, waiting to take off for Asheville, North Carolina, to see their father, who was in hospice care.

When Baker got a text message saying her father only had hours to live, she wanted to tell her sister, who was sitting further back in the plane. She told NBC affiliate WKMG that a flight attendant stepped in when she got up from her seat.

"She said, 'You need to sit down,' and I said, 'Well can I just sit here? I just want to console my sister. We just got word that my dad's dying," Baker said.

Baker told NBC News she took a seat across the aisle from her sister, and, while wearing her seat belt, leaned over to rub her leg.

Hartman said she started having a panic attack and the situation escalated after Baker confronted the flight attendant for not being compassionate. She said her sister was then told she needed to keep her "personal problems" off the plane.

The flight attendant alerted the captain and airport security escorted them off the plane.

"They told us we were a threat to the flight," Hartman said. "I couldn't believe it."

Their father died a short while later, and Hartman said they want the airline to be held accountable for keeping them from getting to see him.

"One hundred thousand percent I blame them. They were the gate between keeping me from my father to say goodbye," Hartman said. "This is not humane."

A female passenger who claims to have been on board the same Allegiant flight posted a video on YouTube criticizing the airline over the incident. Her account matches the description the two sisters detailed.

"Something I just witnessed on the airplane that was completely inhumane and deplorable, that everybody was in shock by what happened on this plane by the flight attendants," the passenger said in the video.

The witness, who asked not to be identified by name, told NBC News that she made the video because she felt what the stewardess did was "vicious and malicious and that she needs to be fired."

Allegiant officials told the station they are investigating.

A statement from the airline said they rely on the crew to "provide and oversee a safe environment for every passenger, on every flight. We expect that authority to be exercised both judiciously and consistently, with empathy and with good judgment. We take this customer feedback seriously and are in the process of conducting an investigation into what occurred."
Days after Donald Trump won the White House vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and fortify the Mexican border, California farmer Kevin Herman ordered nearly $600,000 in new equipment, cutting the number of workers he'll need starting with the next harvest.

Herman, who grows figs, persimmons and almonds in the nation's most productive farming state, said Trump's comments pushed him to make the purchase, larger than he would have otherwise.

"No doubt about it," Herman said. "I probably wouldn't have spent as much or bought as much machinery as I did."

Others in California's farming industry say Trump's tough campaign talk targeting immigrants in the country illegally  including a vast number of farmworkers  spurred them into action, too.

They're calling on congressional representatives to educate the incoming president on the workforce it takes to feed the country, and they're assuring workers they'll protect them.

San Joaquin Valley farmer Joe Del Bosque recently gathered about 20 year-round employees at a Los Banos steakhouse for their annual holiday lunch.

The festivities began in a serious tone. The topic of immigration took a bigger part of the conversation this year because of Trump, he said.

Del Bosque told his crew he'll make sure the new administration knows their vital role in the farming industry. It's a message Del Bosque wants his managers to spread to another 300 seasonal workers needed at the harvest's peak.

Leticia Alfaro, a food-safety supervisor at the farm, said in an interview that many of her friends who work in the fields don't have proper documentation like her, and they take Trump's threats seriously.

"They're terrified by his comments," Alfaro, 53, said in Spanish.

They fear being deported and torn from their children who were born here, she said. After Trump takes office, they wonder if it will be safe to make a simple trip to the grocery store, fearing checkpoints where they'll be pulled over and have to show their documentation.

Trump's remarks were felt sharply in California, which produces nearly half the country's fruits, vegetables and nuts valued of $47 billion annually. Experts say his words resonate nationwide.

Texas, Florida and Georgia are examples of states with large migrant communities dominating home construction, health care, food service industries, said David Zonderman, a labor historian at North Carolina State University.

"California might be ground zero," he said of immigrant families living in the shadows. "But it's not a unique California issue."

The fear stems from Trump's campaign rallies, where he received a rousing response each time he vowed to deport people who are in the country illegally  up to 11 million. That position softened after Trump won the election, when he said he'd start with 3 million with criminal records.

Some farmers point to Trump's postelection shift as a sign his campaign bluster won't become reality. He is, after all, a businessman like them, they say. But others believe this shift underscores the president-elect's unpredictable nature.

"Our workers are scared," said Joe Garcia, a farm labor contractor who hires up to 4,000 people each year to pick grapes from Napa to Bakersfield and along the Central Coast. "If they're concerned, we're concerned."

Since Election Day, Garcia's crews throughout the state have been asking what will happen to them when Trump takes office. Farmers also are calling to see if they'll need to pay more to attract people to prune the vines, he said.

Garcia tells farmers not to panic. They'll learn how many return from Mexico after the holidays. "We'll plan around what we have," he tells them. "That's all we can do."

Roughly 325,000 workers in California do the back-breaking jobs that farmers say nobody else will do, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League farming association, estimates 85 percent of California farmworkers live in the United States illegally.

Farmers for years have scrambled under a shrinking labor pool.

Mexico's improving economy has slowed the flow of migrant workers. The dangerous border, controlled by drug cartels and human traffickers, keeps away others.

Herman, the farmer who bought three new almond sweepers, said Trump influenced him on top of California's rising minimum wage and a new law giving farm laborers overtime rights that are equal to workers in other industries.

Plus, Herman said, he's heard too many workers question whether they'll return from their holiday trips to Mexico. "It's stories like that that have motivated me to become efficient and upgrade my equipment," Herman said.

Tom Nassif, a Trump adviser and president of the powerful trade association Western Growers, said farmers shouldn't fear the president-elect. Trump isn't interested in deporting their workers, he said.

Nassif said he isn't privy to the details of Trump's immigration policy. He's recommended that Trump allow farmworkers to stay by putting immigrants in the country illegally who are otherwise law-abiding residents on a period of probation under conditions that they pay taxes, learn English and obey all laws.

"I think he's looking at people who have committed more serious crimes and start with them first  and rightly so," said Nassif, picked by Trump's campaign team to serve on an agriculture advisory committee. "I think there's less reason to worry than most people believe there is."
One person died after a car crashed into a pole near San Diego International Airport, leaving the vehicle wrapped around a pole, officials confirmed.

The crash happened at approximately 9:44 p.m. Thursday at the intersection of North Harbor Drive and Harbor Island Drive, across the street from the airport, according to San Diego Fire-Rescue officials.

The person who died at the scene was the only person in the car.

Harbor Police Department Lieutenant James Jordan said the cause of the crash appears to be speed.

No other information was immediately available.
Restaurants charging a minimum wage surcharge could be breaking the law, according to the San Diego City Attorney, who intends to investigate and pursue legal actions against restaurants charging the fee.

If you have eaten out recently, you may have noticed a small fee tacked on to the end of your bill  a three percent charge written off as a government mandated surcharge.

Some restaurants have added the charge after the minimum wage across California, including in San Diego, went up in 2017 to $11.50 an hour.

San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliot said the fee is the restaurant owner's way of protesting new minimum wage laws which took effect on Jan. 1.

Most restaurants opposed the minimum wage change, saying food servers typically make well over minimum wage because of tips they get to take home on top of their paychecks.

Elliot said restaurants have had more than enough time  upwards of six months  to come up with a business plan to pay their employees the minimum wage.

She said customers should pay the cost that is advertised on the menu.

Many of these diners did not learn of this so-called surcharge which is not mandated by any governmental entity until they receive their check, Elliot said. At that point, it was too late to send the food back.

Elliot said her office will launch an investigation into the matter and begin sending letters to restaurants that include the false surcharge.

I believe our restaurant owners ought to be honest as well, Elliot said. If a family goes out to dinner, they should be able to trust that the prices on the menu are the prices they will pay.

Elliot said her office has a Consumer Protection Unit handling complaints. She did not say what the penalty would be for restaurants violating the law, because every complaint will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, Elliot said.

The California Restaurant Association said in a statement it is important to understand why restaurants opted to do this.

"To adapt to wage increases, restaurants around the state have either raised menu prices, reduced employees hours, reduced their own hours of operation, or adopted a surcharge or, in some cases, eliminated tipping and are now using a service charge. San Diego is not alone in this challenge and restaurants are not the first business to use a surcharge -- many hotels and transportation providers also use a surcharge," the association said in a statement.

"Whatever avenue each business chooses as a way to survive into the coming years, restaurants in San Diego and in every city want to be around for a long time to come," the statement continued.

One restaurant owner told NBC 7 that not only is the surcharge questionable legally, but its just bad business.

The owner, who did not wish to be identified, said people go out to eat to escape life for awhile, and the last thing they want to think about is a complicated political issue at the end of a good meal.
One local San Diego brewery is cracking up a special brew to help a girl who battled an aggressive form of cancer.

At 6 years old, Julia Davidson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer attacking her bone marrow: neuroblastoma.

For the next year and a half, Julia underwent multiple rounds of chemotherapy and several trips to specialists around the nation.

Julia is now in remission, but her family is facing medical bills from ongoing treatment.

Jeff Swem, a brewer at 32 North Brewery, is good friends with Julia's father and approached the owner of the brewery about finding a way to help them out.

"I went to our owner and said, can we do something, can we do an event one night, where we give $1 back for every pint we pour. He said, 'Let's go all out, let's name it after her,'" Swem said.

On Thursday, the brewery held a special fundraiser, cracking open kegs of a special brew named for Julia - with proceeds going directly to her family.

"This particular fundraiser was originally Jeff's idea to step up and see what they can do for us, and it's incredible," said Todd Davidson, Julia's father.

The beer is a dark Belgian-style ale with Candi-sugar sweetness that finishes strong - just like Julia.

A portion of the funds from the sale of the beer across San Diego County will go to directly the family.

To help support Julia's family, click here to donate to a GoFundMe account set up by the family.
A man on the run from San Diego Police on Friday physically fought with an officer while trying to evade arrest, officials said Friday.

The unidentified police officer was said to be okay following the altercation.

SDPD officials said the suspect was driving in the area of 38th and Dwight, east of Interstate 15 in the City Heights community.

Just before 7 a.m., an SDPD officer identified the vehicle as a stolen car and attempted to pull over the driver.

When the driver jumped out of the vehicle and ran, the officer pursued him.

A perimeter of the area was set up and the suspect was spotted a block away.

The suspect physically fought with the officer, officials said.

The officer did not suffer serious injuries and the man was taken into custody.
A man prosecutors say spent 17 years on the run after killing a teen in front of his Mountain View home finally had his day in court.

Alfredo Yanez-Munoz pleaded not guilty to the homicide of 15-year-old Wilberto Rodriguez. A judge ordered media not to show Yanez-Munoz's face.

The homicide happened on Sept. 18, 1999, when Rodriguez was shot and killed in front of his home on the 4300 block of Newtown Avenue, in San Diego's Mountain View neighborhood.

Detectives learned at the time during their investigation that Rodriguez was involved in a physical altercation with two men. Those men pulled out handguns and shot him, police said.

George David Garcia, 22, and Yanez-Munoz, were identified as suspects in the homicide during the course of the investigation, authorities said.

Shortly after the crime, Garcia was arrested and charged in Rodriguez's death. But police never arrested Yanez-Munoz and believed he fled to Mexico.

On July 21, 2016, authorities in Mexico arrested Yanez-Munoz in Mexico and officials from U.S. Marshals and the San Diego Fugutive Task Force took custody of him.

He will next appear in court in March for his trail.
A sheriffs department in West Virginia arrested an employee of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg for allegedly dealing heroin  the second such arrest in three years.

Investigators found Michael Brown with $9,000 cash with which they suspect he was about to buy heroin to distribute in Martinsburg, according to the Berkeley County Sheriffs Department. He was arrested after a traffic stop along Interstate 81.

The VA Medical Center in Martinsburg treats thousands of veterans, including those from Loudoun and Frederick counties. In December 2015, the News4 I-Team revealed another employee there pleaded guilty to dealing heroin and was allowed to keep his job, prompting a congressional committee to order VA leaders to appear and answer for it.

In the private sector, I learned you cant fire your way out of problems, Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson said in December 2015.

The agency wont comment on Browns employment.

He hasnt entered a plea in his case and is scheduled to appear in court in March.
The death of an elderly Virginia woman who was pushed by a fellow resident at an assisted living facility and later died has been ruled a homicide, Fairfax County police say.

On May 8, 2016, 87-year-old Danielle Griffin had an argument with another woman who lived at Leewood Healthcare Center in Annandale when the resident pushed her, causing her to fall to the ground. Griffin was diagnosed with a fractured hip and released from Inova Fairfax Hospital a few days later.

About a month later, Griffin was taken to the hospital again after complaining of shortness of breath. She died a short time later.

After an autopsy, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said her cause of death was complications from the hip fracture with extensive medical conditions, police said. Griffin had previously been diagnosed with dementia and hypertension.

Detectives learned that the resident who pushed Griffin in May also suffers from diminished mental capacity.

"At this point, given the totality of the circumstances, no charges are expected to be placed in this case," Fairfax County police said in a release.

In December, the Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Alexandria announced there would be no criminal charges in a similar case. An 82-year-old man died after he was pushed during an argument about a television at the Sunrise of Alexandria assisted living facility.
What to Know Free tickets to Trump's swearing-in ceremony are available by calling your U.S. senators and member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

There's no federal law barring the sale of the tickets Congress gives for free, but it violates the spirit of the event, an organizer said.

Tickets are advertised online for $250 to $14,900 each.

Anyone can go watch Donald Trump be sworn in as president on the National Mall, but a ticket is needed in order to get within about a half-mile of the action.

Nearly 250,000 free tickets for seats and standing room were issued Jan. 5 by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC).

The tickets are color-coded, and ticket holders are required to enter the Capitol grounds through the entry point designated for their color-coded section.

Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies

Go here to see a larger version of this map.

The JCCIC will release tickets to U.S. House members on Jan. 9 and to U.S. senators on Jan. 10. Trump also will receive tickets.

Every person headed to a ticketed area needs a ticket, children included.

How Do I Get a Ticket to Trump's Inauguration?

The recommended way to get a ticket to the inaugural ceremony is to contact your senators and U.S. House member.

Many members of Congress are accepting ticket requests online from their constituents.

The office of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has an online request form. Tickets will be issued through a lottery. The office had received about 1,400 requests as of Jan. 6, a spokesman said.

The office of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who ran for vice president on the Democratic ticket, also has an online request form and a lottery process.

The office of new Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is receiving ticket requests by phone. They are recommending that Maryland residents, to increase their chances of getting a ticket, reach out to their House member, since members each represent fewer people.

The offices of Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner already had stopped accepting ticket requests as of Jan. 6.

Not sure who represents you in Congress? Go here to find your senators and go here to find your House member.

JCCIC would not discuss the number of tickets Trump and each member of Congress will receive.

Can I Buy a Ticket to Trump's Inauguration?

Inauguration tickets have popped up for sale on Craigslist and GreatSeats.com, but JCCIC says the sales violate the spirit of the event.

"Tickets to view the swearing-in of our next president are meant to be free, and it should remain that way," spokeswoman Laura Condeluci said in an email.

JCCIC is working with Craigslist, eBay and StubHub to prevent the sale of inauguration tickets, as the committee has done previously.

There is no federal law governing the sale of inaugural tickets, but buying or selling them may violate local and state laws on ticket scalping.

Tickets were advertised on GreatSeats.com on Jan. 6 for $449 to $14,900 each, and on Craigslist for $250 to $1,500 each. No inauguration tickets appeared on eBay or StubHub.

What If I Don't Have a Ticket?

If you cannot get a ticket, you can still watch Trump get sworn-in. Space on the National Mall west of 4th Street NW will be open to spectators. The presidential inaugural committee is expected to set up large television screens.
Virginia's lieutenant governor promoted a proposal on Thursday to provide free intrauterine devices (IUDs) and other contraceptive implants to low-income women and girls.

Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who is running for governor, said the plan would save taxpayers money and sharply reduce the number of teen girls who seek abortions and give birth.

"It shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should all agree that the less unintended pregnancies that we have here in Virginia, the better. The less abortions that we have in Virginia, the better," he said at an appearance in Old Town Alexandria.

Northam said $9 million in federal funds will be part of Gov. Terry McAuliffe's proposed budget.

The plan already is being met with opposition. The idea was rejected last year by the GOP-controlled General Assembly.

Northam, who also is a doctor, said a similar program in Colorado reduced births among teens by 40 percent and abortions among teens by 42 percent.
Broadway theaters will dim their lights Friday night in honor of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, the mother-and-daughter actresses who died one day apart last week.

Fisher died Dec. 27 after having a heart attack on a flight the week prior, and her mother Reynolds died the next day of a stroke.

Theaters will dim their marquees for one minute on Friday at 7:45 p.m., the traditional sign of respect from the Broadway community for a notable passing.

Both debuted on Broadway in 1973 in the musical comedy "Irene," for which Reynolds received a Tony nomination.
The MBTA does not plan to extend the contract of the company that operates its commuter rail, it announced Thursday.

Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack confirmed that the state will allow the agency's contract with Keolis to expire when it ends in June of 2022.

"The current commuter rail contract with Keolis Commuter Services runs through June 30, 2022 and MassDOT will continue working closely with Keolis to provide excellent service to our customers for the duration of the contract," Pollack said in a statement sent to NBC Boston by the MBTA. "In keeping with good business practices, the MBTA is committed to evaluate the contract structure and initiate a re-procurement before the current contract expires. The decision not to extend the current 8 year contract is not a reflection of Keolis' performance; indeed, I fully expect that Keolis would compete as part of the re-procurement."

The contract was signed when Deval Patrick was still the governor of Massachusetts. It is worth $2.69 billion, with two two-year options to extend. Current Gov. Charlie Baker's administration has since investigated concerns about the MBTA Commuter Rail.

"Keolis is fully committed to Boston, as demonstrated by our recent decision to relocate our North America headquarters here, and we remain focused on providing a safe and reliable service to our passengers every day," the company said in a statement. "We will continue to work in close partnership with the MBTA to deliver the level of service our passengers expect and deserve, while also continuing to bring forward the types of innovative solutions that have made us a global leader in public transportation."

"More than two years have passed since Keolis assumed operations, and their delivery of services, even apart from the 2016 winter issues, has raised a number of management concerns which I believe are derived from the nature of the contract itself," Democratic Rep. William Straus, the chair of the House Transportation Committee, wrote to Pollack in October of 2016, according to the State House News Service.

In a letter to Straus, Pollack said she shares many of his concerns about the contract and Keolis' performance.

"The MBTA also agrees that it is appropriate to begin thinking about possible alternative conracting structures and strategies for its commuter rail service in the future," she said. "As we discussed, the MBTA does not intend for its current commuter rail contract to extend beyond its remaining term, whether the next contract is with Keolis or a different provider: the T is committed to initiating a new procurement on a timeline that ensures that a new contract will be in place no later than the end of the current contract period."

Keolis was awarded an eight-year, nearly $2.7 billion contract by the MBTA in 2014 to run the 394-mile commuter rail system. The company is a subsidiary of French group Keolis International.

Keolis has reported losing more than $40 million over the first 18 months of the contract.
Before his farewell address, President Barack Obama plans a farewell bash Friday night to celebrate the end of his presidency.

While the White House has not released official details, Chicago-based hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper said Wednesday on Facebook and Twitter that he was about to fly "21 hours to DC to bid farewell to the greatest president in US history. God bless you @Potus." Chance had been touring in Australia and New Zealand.

Bout to fly 21 hours to DC to bid farewell to the greatest president in US history. God bless you @Potus  Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) January 5, 2017

Many other celebrities are expected to attend what's shaping up to be the Obamas' final party before the Jan. 20 hand-off to President-elect Donald Trump.

If past White House events hosted by the Obamas are any indication, the star-studded guest list could include the likes of Oprah, Paul McCartney, Bradley Cooper, Jay-Z and Beyonce. The songstress was among the celebrities who attended Michelle Obama's 50th birthday party at the White House in 2014.

[NATL] Michelle Obama Style Guide

Obama plans to deliver a farewell address Tuesday in Chicago.
State police say a pickup truck crashed into a snowplow, killing the truck driver and snarling traffic on the Maine Turnpike.

The fatal crash in the northbound lane at Wells caused a major traffic tie-up Friday morning, and it was one of dozens of crashes as light snow sent cars sliding across Maine and part of New Hampshire.

Maine State Police have identified the driver as 48-year-old Michael Sands of Waldoboro. Police say he was killed instantly.

Andy Pohl from the National Weather Service said the storm generated only a dusting to an inch or two of snow but that it coincided with commuter traffic. In Wells, state police said the pickup truck smashed into the back of a plow truck in the far left travel lane.
A jury has been seated in the federal case against a former pharmaceutical compounding CEO charged in connection with a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak that killed more than 60 people nationwide in 2012.

Barry Cadden, who was also a co-founder and head pharmacist of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center in Framingham, is charged with 25 counts of murder and other offenses under federal racketeering laws.

The 15-member panel, which consists of five men and 10 women, were given instructions by the judge Friday morning.

Prosecutors will argue that steroid injections sold by the company were tainted as a result of poor sanitary conditions. Across 20 states, 64 people died and 750 others fell ill as a result of the outbreak.

Former pharmacy supervisor Glenn Chin is facing the same charges as Cadden, but his trial has been put off until this one is over.

Cadden has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his trial in U.S. District Court in Boston is expected to last a couple of months.
A man who escaped from a Rhode Island prison and was on the run for five days appeared Friday before a federal magistrate judge and was ordered held on an escape charge.

James Walker Morales waived his right to a preliminary hearing in the escape case during a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Providence on Friday.

The judge approved a detention order based on his flight risk and danger to the community. His public defender, Olin Thompson, did not object. Thompson would not comment after court.

He appeared calm and healthy in court on Friday, with no visible injuries.

A court affidavit unsealed Friday says all of the inmates were accounted for during a 10:30 p.m. check on New Year's Eve, even though video surveillance showed Morales actually escaped at about 6:45 p.m. that day.

An affidavit unsealed Friday says all of the inmates were accounted for during a 10:30 p.m. check on Saturday, even though video surveillance showed Morales actually escaped at about 6:45 p.m. that day.

Morales was last seen at about 4:30 p.m. going outside to the recreation area alone, according to the affidavit.

Video surveillance shows him two hours later standing on a basketball hoop, climbing onto the roof through a hole created in the recreation area roof fence, then going down the side of the building and running toward the train tracks, the affidavit said.

Authorities say Morales followed the tracks to Interstate 95, where his prison clothing was found. An officer discovered he was missing from his cell shortly after the 10:30 p.m. check and notified his superiors at about 11 p.m., the affidavit said.

U.S. Marshal Jamie Hainsworth previously said the prison notified law enforcement authorities at 11:43 p.m.

Morales' brazen escape prompted a massive manhunt before he was arrested by a Massachusetts State Police trooper in Somerville, Massachusetts on Thursday afternoon.

Prior to his arrest, he had tried to rob two banks in the area, but he did not get away with any money.

The first attempted robbery took place at the Bank of America at 727 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge around 9:30 a.m. Morales passed a note to the teller but did not get away with any money and fled in the direction of Harvard Square. The second attempted bank robbery occurred at Citizens Bank in Somerville.

He was eventually caught by an alert state police trooper near Route 28 and Mystic Avenue Thursday afternoon after a brief foot chase. A neighbor said dozens of police cruisers were on the scene within minutes.

Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone discussed the capture of escaped Rhode Island inmate James Morales.

Morales, 35, broke out of Rhode Island's Wyatt Detention Facility on New Year's Eve by climbing a basketball hoop and a roof and then cutting and scaling barbed wire fences during recreation, according to the warden. It took hours for correctional officers to notice he was missing, and U.S. Marshals were notified about the escape nearly five hours after it happened.

During that time, Morales allegedly stole a getaway car and ditched it in Framingham, Massachusetts, where his ex-girlfriend lives.

Three corrections officers and one supervisor have been placed on leave pending an investigation into the escape.

In addition to the escape charge and the attempted bank robberies, Morales - a former Army reservist - is accused of stealing six assault rifles and 10 handguns from the Lincoln Stoddard Army Reserve Center in Worcester in 2015.

He was arrested in New York days after the theft, and most of the guns were later recovered.

Morales has a long criminal history dating back to 2009, including a child rape charge for allegedly sexually assaulting his friend's young daughter.

The prosecutor would not comment outside court Friday when asked where Morales is being held now.
Fire crew extinguished a small blaze at an abandoned elementary school in Portland that is now under investigation.

The Portland Press Herald reports most of the damage from Thursday afternoon's fire was limited to one room at the city-owned structure that was once Thomas B. Reed Elementary School.

Chief Robert Thompson says it's too early to tell if the fire was suspicious, but the incident will be investigated because the school sat vacant for so long.

City officials in September approved plans to renovate the school for use as a preschool for children with special needs.

The building was built in the 1920s and was most recently used as a centralized kitchen for the school department. Thompson says the school still had power.
A West Haven man tried to steal a fire truck on Wednesday evening and firefighters detained him until police arrived, according to police.

Police officers responded to the 300 block of Main Street at 5:40 p.m. Wednesday and firefighters said they were inside a home for a medical call when they heard the sirens from the parked fire truck.

When they looked at the truck, they saw 63-year-old Wayne Gagne sitting inside the cab of the truck, police said.

To actually come out and find somebody in your engine its kind of a scary thing, Deputy Chief Scott Swartz said.

Firefighters removed Gagne from the truck when they found him standing on a button that activates the siren.

They actually pulled him out of the cab and held him until the police department got there, so he didnt move the engine, its a little more difficult to move the engine, theres a lot more moving parts then just getting in and putting it in drive, Schwartz said.

Gagne had a large hunting knife with an 8-inch blade and was charged with criminal attempt to commit larceny in the first degree and possession of a dangerous weapon. He was held on bond.

Its not clear if he has an attorney.

The fire department said it will most likely change protocols following the incident: either the driver stays in the engine or firefighters take an extra second to lock the door to the front cab.
A group of business owners and merchants in Portland, Maine, are teaming up to address a problem that elected officials have struggled with for years: panhandling.

"It makes residents, workers and tourists feel unsafe," said Ken Cianchette, the chair of a new ad hoc committee through nonprofit Portland Downtown, to address panhandling.

It has been a controversial subject in Maine's largest city for years. In 2013, Portland City Councilors attempted to curb the practice by banning panhandling on street medians, but courts determined the law was unconstitutional.

Now, business leaders are taking up the issue, and say the image of the city is at stake.

"This is well-documented in tourist reviews, surveys conducted by the organization to business owners, and testimonials given by those who live, work, and visit throughout the district," said Cianchette.

The committee has its first meeting on Jan. 9, and according to Portland Downtown's executive director Casey Gilbert, will spend several months studying best practices in other communities before making any recommendations.

"This is a nuanced issue," said Gilbert.

Some business owners around Portland's Old Port district applaud the efforts of the committee.

"I think somebody should do something," said Joe Gaudette, owner of Bill's Pizza. He said not every pan handler causes problems on his corner of Commercial Street in downtown Portland, but said some people can become aggressive when asking for money.

"Some are good, some aren't," he said. "I don't want to say it's bad, but it certainly doesn't help the image [of the city]."

Aaron Root, one of the few people panhandling on a cold winter day, said he doesnt want to bother anyone, but needs to beg for money to survive.

"I'm stuck out here on a corner, trying to make money, and losing every sense of self respect," he said.

He thinks the best way to end panhandling is to increase services to the homeless.
A group of Rhode Island lawmakers is proposing to extend legislative terms in the General Assembly from two years to four years while also setting term limits.

One of the first bills introduced in the legislature's new session Thursday calls for a ballot initiative asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment limiting lawmakers to 12 consecutive years in the state Senate or House of Representatives.

Legislators currently have no term limits and face re-election every two years.

Under the proposal, they could serve no more than three 4-year terms starting in 2020. Lawmakers who have reached their term limits in one chamber could still be elected to the other.

The bipartisan bill was introduced by Providence Democratic Rep. John Lombardi, who introduced similar legislation in past sessions without success. Three of the four co-sponsors are Republicans.
A search warrant at the Massachusetts home of a man accused of harassing a black family by tossing banana peels on their property resulted in the seizure of dozens of guns, thousands of rounds of ammo and Nazi memorabilia, according to officials.

Robert Ivarson, 49, of Lexington was arrested Saturday on several charges, including three counts of civil rights violations and one count of criminal harassment.

According to Middlesex District Attorney Marion Ryan, 50 pounds of black powder, 83 firearms, nearly 10,000 rounds of ammo and large-capacity feeding devices were seized from the home.

Additionally, authorities discovered a helmet with a swastika.

She said Ivarson was not licensed to carry any of the seized items and is facing 13 new charges as a result of the investigation. She said additional charges are expected.

Ivarson's elderly parents were still living in the home when law enforcement officials executed the search warrant.

Ivarson will be arraigned on the new charges Monday at the Concord District Court.
A 12-year-old boy found with an unloaded handgun at a K-8 school in Dorchester in October reignited a debate between faculty and the schools principal about active shooter drills.

The William Monroe Trotter Innovation School near Boston Latin High School does not conduct shooter drills because the principal does not want to traumatize children who may come from dangerous neighborhoods. But teachers feel unprepared.

There have been multiple shootings outside the school in recent years, and a man with a realistic-looking BB gun walked through a parking lot behind the school not too long ago.

While the 12-year-olds gun was not loaded and he did not pull it out of his bag, the fact he brought it inside the school concerned the Trotter schools faculty, and some parents.

When I found out that we hadnt practiced the active shooter response, I was kind of concerned, said Krystle McClure, the parent of a Trotter student and co-chair of the parent safety council.

The faculty met shortly after the weapon was found to talk about their desire to have some kind of active shooter drill to practice the schools safety plan.

Two faculty members contacted by NBC Boston declined an interview.

Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stuttman said the union would have no comment on the issue, and that he was not aware of faculty raising concerns with the union leadership.

According to Boston School Department records obtained by NBC Boston, Principal Mairead Nolan has not conducted any active shooter drills. She has conducted fire drills, as required by state law.

Many parents are on board with Nolans reasoning, arguing that walking to school through the neighborhood surrounding Trotter, which has been the scene of several fatal shootings in recent years, is trauma enough for the students.

I dont believe they should practice emergency drills, said Dina Cundiff, the parent of a second grader. I agree with the principal that it may re-traumatize the students.

The school regularly goes into a so-called safe mode, where people are not allowed in or out, and students often are brought inside from recess in a sort of reverse fire drill, all because of violence in the neighborhood surrounding the school.

I feel the fact that they have gone into lockdown so much by now they dont need a drill because theyre doing it in real life, Cundiff said.

McClure and her daughter live near the Trotter, so she gets the hesitation.

Im very well aware of the trauma that they go through, so I kind of understand, but that doesnt mean we dont need to have a plan, she said.

School safety advocate Michele Gay, whose daughter was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, co-founded and is executive director of Safe and Sound Schools.

She said practicing safety protocols is important, and there are ways to do that while being mindful of traumatizing students.

Were seeing in a lot of schools that the staff is training at a much higher level than what were presenting to students, and especially young students, Gay said, adding, And that really is helpful for the community at large to know that they can trust that these administrators, these educators are engaging in training at a higher level.

Boston schools Superintendent Tommy Chang has made drills a priority in a new policy he outlined in a September 2016 newsletter to district officials.

The School Department would not make Chang available for an interview.

In the interest of making sure students and staff are well versed in safety procedures, BPS has a policy requiring individual schools to conduct two safe-mode drills per school year, the School Department said in a statement. The William Monroe Trotter K-8 School has scheduled two upcoming safe mode drills this school year. The BPS Safety Office regularly trains school leaders on how to conduct safe mode drills and other safety protocols, and is dedicated to working with school leaders to ensure a safe and welcoming learning and working environment for all.

McClure said she is working with Nolan, who also was not made available for an interview, on a compromise for conducting some sort of preparedness exercise while still being mindful of the students mental health.
The U.S. Navy says it has presented U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine with its highest civilian honor.

The Navy presented King with the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award on Thursday in Washington, D.C. The award was established in 1951 and is the highest honor the Navy can bestow on civilians who don't work for the Department of the Navy.

The award is designed to honor civilians for service to the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Department of the Navy. Rear Adm. Craig Faller gave King the award.

King is an independent who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and whose state includes Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works and submarine repair facility Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Maine's other senator, Republican Susan Collins, received the honor in 2013.
Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems.

But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections.

The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices.

In name, 5G is the successor to 4G in today's mobile devices, but it's significantly faster and more versatile. It will combine multiple wireless high-speed and low-bandwidth technologies and enable communications across an array of spectrum bands. New 5G networks are expected to be deployed starting in 2020.

+ MORE FROM CES: CES 2017: +

The Intel 5G Modem, as it's called, is designed to provide download speeds in excess of 5Gbps, which is five times faster than today's fastest 4G modem. It's also five times faster than Google Fiber, which offers speeds of up to 1Gbps.

But don't expect the modem to be installed in smartphones immediately. It will be used mainly for testing on 5G network deployments. It will also be used to test possible 5G applications, still being explored in areas like automotive tech.

The benefits of 5G are enormous. Download and upload speeds will go up for devices like drones, robots, smart devices, and industrial equipment. Faster networks will help autonomous cars intercommunicate over long distances about weather and road conditions.

The technology will improve mobile health-care services, which need reliable connections for patient monitoring. It will also help IoT devices remain in constant contact with servers running analytics.

Intel believes as wireless becomes ubiquitous, there will be more opportunities to put its 5G modems in devices. The 5G Modem is a big move for Intel when its mobile chip future was in question after many false starts.

Intel's effort to put Atom chips into smartphones was a colossal failure, and the company wasted billions of dollars on the lost cause. Last year, it bailed out of the smartphone chip market and refocused on modems.

Apple will reportedly use Intel's 4G modems in its next iPhone, and that's a major win for the company. Apple also uses modems from Qualcomm, which is considered ahead of Intel in modem technology.

Qualcomm announced its first 5G modem, the Snapdragon X50, in October. Intel is slowly catching up, but Qualcomm also has the advantage by integrating high-speed modems inside its Snapdragon chips that power smartphones. Intel does not plan to offer Atom chips for smartphones anytime soon, though it has hinted that it could make such chips if opportunities arise.

Intel until now provided FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) that could be programmed to mimic modems. But the 5G Modem will be needed to obtain results from real-world testing.

The new 5G technology will be important for autonomous cars, which may make driving decisions by consulting remote servers to recognize objects, signs, and lights, said Kathy Winter, vice president and general manager of the automated driving division at Intel.

Intel also announced autonomous vehicle development kits ready for 5G at CES. Intel is also building an autonomous car with BMW and Mobileye that could be ready to hit the streets by 2021. It's possible that Intel will put its 5G modem in that car.

Intel's 5G Modem supports the sub-6GHz band, where cellular networks typically operate. It also supports the 28GHz millimeter-wave band, which should enable deployment trials in U.S., South Korea, and Japan, Intel said. The 28GHz band allows for faster data transfers and is expected to be used for 5G networks.
Creating a self-driving car should not be difficult, but its taking a while. Autonomous vehicles have been making headlines for years now, yet few of us have ever been in one or even seen one. We know that flying planes is more difficult than driving cars, yet pilots have enjoyed autopilot for decades. What gives?

The answer is clear, or more precisely, clear vision. Pilots have used autopilot for decades in clear, open skies. Roads are more complex.

The actual mechanics of operating a vehicle (accelerating, braking, steering, etc.) are all well understood and programmable. Most of the rules and logic of driving are programmable, too. But understanding and instructing vision is very complex. The good news is that incredible progress is being made, and the technology will have far-reaching implications.

The complex challenge of artificial vision

When Steve Jobs wanted the Mac to make a big impression, he arranged for it to say hello at its 1984 launch. Yet while computers have been speaking for more than 30 years, we still havent mastered artificial vision.

Vision is a powerful sense on its own and it complements other senses, such as taste and sound. Vision is far more complex than our other senses because it is tightly coupled with the brain that interprets the images we see. We reflexively pull away from something hot to avoid a burn, but understanding visual threats often requires cognitive processing.

+ Also on Network World: Artificial intelligence in the enterprise: Its on +

Cars and computing devices frequently come equipped with temperature, speed and other sensors, but vision is best described as a horse of a different color. Even though autonomous cars are equipped with 20-plus cameras and a sophisticated LIDAR system, they still have trouble seeing what is obvious to humans. Several examples illustrate how complex this is. For example, in one unfortunate accident with a Tesla vehicle running on autopilot, the car could not distinguish the side of a truck trailer from overcast sky.

Deep learning to teach computers to see

Digital photography has come a long way, but understanding whats in the image is new. And it is not practical to use programmatic definitions to teach computers to see. Computer vision is best accomplished by deep learning as opposed to machine learning. Deep learning is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that mimics the way we learnfrom example. Since computers dont have eyes, visual experience comes from billions of photos.

Recent breakthroughs in computer vision leveraged the internet to create giant repositories of cataloged images. In 2015, ImageNet employed 50,000 workers in 167 countries to clean, sort and label nearly a billion images for computers to learn to see.

A billion images may seem like a lot, but its nothing compared to what a human sees during childhood. Children can distinguish cats from dogs thanks to visual experience, not definitions. In an attempt to replicate the accumulated knowledge built from experience, ImageNets photos have detailed descriptions. The result? Computers using the database can distinguish consistently between images of cats and dogs.

This development sounds trivial until you think about all of the different sizes and colors cats may present, as well as possible positions and situations cats get intonot to mention decoys, such as dolls and pillows, that could be mistaken for a cat. For the first time in history, computer vision is becoming a reality.

Developing a more complex AI vision

An autonomous car not only needs to identify items, but it must also anticipate actions. Cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians all have different anticipated actions when the signal turns green.

We are so surrounded by computers and cameras that its easy to forget how limited computer vision has been. We create entire workarounds to accommodate our vision-impaired machines. For example, our money has invisible codes so we can pay machines. We take a ticket when entering a parking garage because the computer cant track our cars entry and exit any other way. We plaster barcodeswhich make zero visual sense to humansover all of our products so computers can see the difference between ketchup and mustard.

Computers now can identify different car makes and models. This is leading to a treasure trove of big data analysis that is revealing relationships between car types (and values) and surrounding crime rates, property prices and even election outcomes.

Long ago when I parked at college, I hung a big (expensive) parking pass from my mirror for human parking enforcers to see. My sons school doesnt bother. Instead, they drive a camera-equipped vehicle around the parking lot to check license plates against the database of paid parking permits. Why bother with tags when computers can easily read license plates?

The future of AI vision

Computer vision is benefiting from several technologies that are experiencing rapid innovation, including AI, big data, biometrics and digital imaging. As computers learn to see, we are going to give them a lot more to watch.

For example, in Tokyo I saw an NEC grocery store checkout system that could accurately identify different types of produce when the cashier placed it on the scale. It could even distinguish between different types of red applesprobably better than many human cashiers.

The big advantage of vision is that its passive. Consider the cat-and-mouse game of speed traps with radar and radar detectors. Future speed traps can simply use two camera locations to determine speed without radar. The cameras can also determine the driver and license plateall with passive vision instead of active radio signals.

As computers become able, they will begin to serve entirely new roles in addition to driving. Consider:

Computer-assisted lifeguards that can distinguish if a child is splashing or drowning in a pool

Surveillance computers that identify when suspicious people are on premises

Video software that alerts management if it sees a disturbance or a medical situation, or when lines are too long and an additional register needs to be opened

Forest-fire spotting computers that monitor even remote areas for signs of wildfire

In addition to fingerprints, video biometrics also include facial recognition. The obvious opportunity is with public safety. Instead of law enforcement that checks wants and warrants on a per-case basis, soon cameras around cities will do so automatically. Many countries now take photos as people enter through passport control.

Computer vision is also poised to change retail research more than loyalty cards did. Cameras may also replace frequent shopper cards to visually track loyalty. A camera can determine who (age, gender, ethnicity) is buying what products, how long they took to make a decision, and even if he/she read the label or considered competitive products.

New opportunities also are emerging with anti-fraud verification. MasterCard already uses selfies to fight fraud. Uber recently added selfies to its driver login process for an additional verification measure.

In the past, computers have penetrated nearly every part of our society despite being nearly blind. As their ability to mimic vision gains momentum, you (and they) havent seen anything yet.
Ever a social-media showman and tormenter of his competitors, T-Mobile CEO John Legere last night took to Twitter to lambaste Verizons decision to ding a volunteer fire company for $73,000 and offered to pick up that tab himself if necessary.

And we dont even know if the ponies played a part.

Legere made his pledge on Twitter in response to yesterdays Buzzblog post about a tiff between Verizon and the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, which serves an island town of 3,000 in Virginia and is renowned for being caretakers of a herd of 150 wild horses, the Chincoteague Ponies, that has been the subject of a popular childrens book and movie. Legeres tweet:

Legere reiterated his intent to pay in a post to the fire companys Facebook page, which has been a focal point of Chincoteague community displeasure with Verizon over the past few days.

The fire company contends that if it has to pay the $73,000 to move Verizon equipment off land on which its building a new firehouse that money will come from funds normally dedicated to buying firetrucks, ambulances, gear  and whatever the ponies might need. Verizon contends that critics are underestimating the scope of the telecommunications portion of the project and has expressed a willingness to work with the fire company to adjust plans and costs.

(A look back: If you'd bought 100 shares of Microsoft in 1986)

While Legere obviously recognizes a reasonably priced public relations opportunity when he sees one, not everyone believes Verizon is being unfair here. Under Legeres Facebook comment is this one:

I'm no mega-corp fan but this seems straightforward. Most of your island's telecom lines run through a single major bundled cable containing 1,200 pairs and however many fiber optic cables are run along with it. I think it's hard to call $73k for relocating a major island utility (unreasonable) when you're building a new multi-million-dollar facility in its place.

Meanwhile, as the negotiating and posturing continues, the Chincoteague herd is bracing for winters wrath. We are predicted to get some heavy snow over the weekend, reports the fire companys Facebook page, at the first opportunity, the boys will go over and check on the ponies.

Perhaps a certain telecommunications executive could lend them a hand.

(Update, Jan. 20, 2017: Verizon and the firefighters make peace."

Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent buzzblog items. And, if youd like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, heres where to sign up. You can follow me on Twitter here and on Google+ here.
Sci-fi space movie Passengers

Passengers (12A)

Running time 1hr 56mins

Rating: ***

PASSENGERS eschews the tendency within sci-fi cinema of late towards rich plots and thematic intricacy (Interstellar, Gravity, Arrival) in favour of a from-scratch approach which oscillates violently between ingenuity and clumsiness. While the marketing flirted with genre convention, the final product resembles a rom-com in a literal vacuum; in terms of tone, it often feels like an outright parody of its predecessors, right down to the impossible sleekness of its spaceship setting. By the time the credits roll, its still not exactly clear what the film is trying to be, but the journey, in itself, is worthwhile.

Initially, we get a Moon-esque meditation upon human solitude, with sharp, frequent doses of black comedy accustoming us to the movies glacial pace. Jim (Chris Pratt) unexpectedly awakes from suspended animation aboard the starship Avalon, en route to an off-world colony. Upon realising his destination is still a century away  and that everyone else is still asleep in their pods  he sinks into an existential crisis, with only Michael Sheens android for company. Hollywoods go-to Tony Blair impersonator is arguably the best thing in the film, if only for his sheer, cold-eyed eeriness  it becomes clear early on that hes more a comic prop than an actual character (cinephiles take heed: hes also a pastiche of The Shinings creepy bartender).

Passengers minimalism (it features but four real performances) makes a detailed assessment difficult, but the pairing of Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence is generally well-judged  theres considerable chemistry here, and the couples plight remains sympathetic despite the rampant goofiness around them (this being the year of Star Wars, there are, of course, cutesy robots aplenty). The strength of their performances, however, cannot absolve the romance of its categorical nastiness  the affair is prompted by a titanic moral indiscretion (no spoilers) that the film fails to address in any meaningful way. Regardless of the screenwriters actual intent, Pratts character ultimately comes off as a space oddity, a manipulative creep, and the filmmakers apparent disinterest in the dilemma with which they have presented us leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Indeed, this is the films big hitch. Though director Morten Tyldum has a knack where action sequences are concerned, theres little holding this all together  new threads and intrigues are introduced at every juncture, then cast swiftly aside prior to any attempt at resolution. The appearance of Laurence Fishburnes technical specialist adds little to the story, and constant (albeit unspoken) hints at foul play afoot are destined to short-change audiences. The movies final act is, needless to say, a PG-13 reiteration of Sunshines techno-peril, with none of that films edge, nor its genuine sense of terror. Though Passengers hardly lacks original sequences, were never left in any real doubt as to the fate of our central twosome; given the movie itself represents a deliberate effort to subvert the grittiness (some might say pessimism) of contemporary sci-fi cinema, this mechanic is bound to divide viewers.

Passengers is very watchable, courtesy  primarily  of Lawrences trademark magnetism, but its a highly-disjointed project with a cut-and-shut screenplay (the film has been in production for nearly a decade  the array of last-minute changes industry execs have surely imposed upon it over the years doesnt bear thinking about). It certainly delivers enough of a dramatic and visual punch  just dont go expecting anything in the league of the movies it apes.
P K Balachandran By

Express News Service

COLOMBO: The emission scandal in which German carmaker Volkswagen (VW) was embroiled since September 2015, put paid to its project to set up an assembling facility in Sri Lanka, which was to come up this month.

Explaining the circumstances in which the VW plant project was called off, Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva said that within two weeks after VW and Sri Lankan car dealer, Senok Automobiles, signed an agreement for the plant in mid-August 2015, VW admitted to the US Environment Protection Authority (EPA) that it had cheated on emissions tests on some of its diesel models sold in the US.

On 18 September 2015, the US EPA went public with VWs admission of guilt.

Thereafter, VWs stock crashed, and the senior management was fired. Later, some 30,000 jobs were cut. The company has thus far lost US$ 18 billion because of the scandal.

However, VWs local agent, Senok Automobiles, representing the carmaker, tried to save the agreement and continue with the investment as planned. But at one point, after much negotiation, the government decided it would be better not to go ahead with a dedicated VW assembly plant due to possible legal issues that could crop up because of the emissions scam.

But given the existence of the agreement with the Board of Investment (BOI), it was decided to go ahead and establish the plant to assemble various makes of European automobiles.

It was for this plant in Kuliyapitiya in Kurunegala district, that President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe laid the foundation stone earlier this week.

The plant has been renamed Western Automobile.

The Chairman of the BOI Upul Jayasuriya told Express that Western Automobile will eventually turn out 10,000 to 15,000 diesel cars of 1000 cc to 2000 per year. Initially, with a modest capacity to turn out 500 units, it will only serve the domestic market for the first three years.

As regards the new financier, Jayasuriya said that Volkswagen and an unidentified European car maker, have agreed to pitch in. But the media quoted the German embassy and VWs officials as saying that VW has no plan now to invest in Sri Lanka.

COLOMBO: The emission scandal in which German carmaker Volkswagen (VW) was embroiled since September 2015, put paid to its project to set up an assembling facility in Sri Lanka, which was to come up this month. Explaining the circumstances in which the VW plant project was called off, Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva said that within two weeks after VW and Sri Lankan car dealer, Senok Automobiles, signed an agreement for the plant in mid-August 2015, VW admitted to the US Environment Protection Authority (EPA) that it had cheated on emissions tests on some of its diesel models sold in the US. On 18 September 2015, the US EPA went public with VWs admission of guilt. Thereafter, VWs stock crashed, and the senior management was fired. Later, some 30,000 jobs were cut. The company has thus far lost US$ 18 billion because of the scandal. However, VWs local agent, Senok Automobiles, representing the carmaker, tried to save the agreement and continue with the investment as planned. But at one point, after much negotiation, the government decided it would be better not to go ahead with a dedicated VW assembly plant due to possible legal issues that could crop up because of the emissions scam. But given the existence of the agreement with the Board of Investment (BOI), it was decided to go ahead and establish the plant to assemble various makes of European automobiles. It was for this plant in Kuliyapitiya in Kurunegala district, that President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe laid the foundation stone earlier this week. The plant has been renamed Western Automobile. The Chairman of the BOI Upul Jayasuriya told Express that Western Automobile will eventually turn out 10,000 to 15,000 diesel cars of 1000 cc to 2000 per year. Initially, with a modest capacity to turn out 500 units, it will only serve the domestic market for the first three years. As regards the new financier, Jayasuriya said that Volkswagen and an unidentified European car maker, have agreed to pitch in. But the media quoted the German embassy and VWs officials as saying that VW has no plan now to invest in Sri Lanka.
By Reuters

TOKYO: The Japanese government defended Toyota Motor Corp on Friday as an "important corporate citizen" of the United States, after President-elect Donald Trump singled out the automaker and threatened to slap punitive tariffs on its Mexico-built cars.

Trump has repeatedly hit out at U.S. companies for using lower-cost factories abroad at the expense of jobs at home. He has slammed U.S. automakers, including Ford which this week scrapped a planned $1.6 billion Mexico plant.

But the attack overnight on Toyota is his first against a foreign automaker. "Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," Trump tweeted.

Toyota shares fell more than 3 percent before recovering, and Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co slid around 2 percent - even as the government and analysts sought to brush off the impact of the attack.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday that Toyota was an "important corporate citizen", while Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko stressed the contribution of Japanese companies to U.S. employment.

"We think the impact on business performance is limited," Akira Kishimoto, a senior analyst at JP Morgan, said in a note.

"A cool judgement is needed."

Toyota's exposure to Mexico is limited, Kishimoto said, adding that even an "extreme case" tariff of 20 percent would hit its operating profit by around 6 percent. Trump has threatened a 35 percent tariff on cars imported from Mexico.

Toyota is just one of a host of companies operating in Mexico. It has an assembly plant in Baja California, where it produces the Tacoma pick-up truck, and where it could increase production.

Trump's tweet, however, confused Toyota's existing Baja plant with the planned $1 billion plant in Guanajuato, where construction got under way in November, days after the election.

The Guanajuato plant will build Corollas and have an annual capacity of 200,000 when it comes online in 2019, shifting production of the small car from Canada.

Baja produces around 100,000 pick-up trucks and truck beds annually. Toyota said in September it would increase output of pick-up trucks by more than 60,000 units annually.

Other Japanese automakers and suppliers in Mexico include Nissan, which has been in Mexico for decades after choosing it as the site for its first assembly plant outside Asia. Nissan has two facilities there, producing 830,000 units in the year to March 2016.

Honda operates two assembly and engine plants with a total annual capacity of 263,000 vehicles, and a transmission plant with an annual capacity of 350,000 units.

Aisin Seiki Co and Denso Corp, both suppliers to Toyota and other carmakers, have two and three plants, respectively, in Mexico. Parts makers tend to cluster near assembly plants under the industry's "just-in-time" production philosophy.

TOKYO: The Japanese government defended Toyota Motor Corp on Friday as an "important corporate citizen" of the United States, after President-elect Donald Trump singled out the automaker and threatened to slap punitive tariffs on its Mexico-built cars. Trump has repeatedly hit out at U.S. companies for using lower-cost factories abroad at the expense of jobs at home. He has slammed U.S. automakers, including Ford which this week scrapped a planned $1.6 billion Mexico plant. But the attack overnight on Toyota is his first against a foreign automaker. "Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," Trump tweeted. Toyota shares fell more than 3 percent before recovering, and Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co slid around 2 percent - even as the government and analysts sought to brush off the impact of the attack. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday that Toyota was an "important corporate citizen", while Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko stressed the contribution of Japanese companies to U.S. employment. "We think the impact on business performance is limited," Akira Kishimoto, a senior analyst at JP Morgan, said in a note. "A cool judgement is needed." Toyota's exposure to Mexico is limited, Kishimoto said, adding that even an "extreme case" tariff of 20 percent would hit its operating profit by around 6 percent. Trump has threatened a 35 percent tariff on cars imported from Mexico. Toyota is just one of a host of companies operating in Mexico. It has an assembly plant in Baja California, where it produces the Tacoma pick-up truck, and where it could increase production. Trump's tweet, however, confused Toyota's existing Baja plant with the planned $1 billion plant in Guanajuato, where construction got under way in November, days after the election. The Guanajuato plant will build Corollas and have an annual capacity of 200,000 when it comes online in 2019, shifting production of the small car from Canada. Baja produces around 100,000 pick-up trucks and truck beds annually. Toyota said in September it would increase output of pick-up trucks by more than 60,000 units annually. Other Japanese automakers and suppliers in Mexico include Nissan, which has been in Mexico for decades after choosing it as the site for its first assembly plant outside Asia. Nissan has two facilities there, producing 830,000 units in the year to March 2016. Honda operates two assembly and engine plants with a total annual capacity of 263,000 vehicles, and a transmission plant with an annual capacity of 350,000 units. Aisin Seiki Co and Denso Corp, both suppliers to Toyota and other carmakers, have two and three plants, respectively, in Mexico. Parts makers tend to cluster near assembly plants under the industry's "just-in-time" production philosophy.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has promised to make public the total quantum and value of scrapped notes that have been deposited in banks and post offices across the country at the end of the 50 days, beginning November 8, 2016, asked for by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, the Central Bank has refused to fix a date on which it will release this data but has sought a few more days to reconcile invalid currency to physical balance. Once the numbers of Specified Bank Notes (old Rs 500/ Rs 1000) deposited in the banks is released, the public will know if the number matches the currency printed by RBI.

If the amount exceeds the amount that was printed and circulated, then a few questions will have to be answered  is the excess fake currency or has it been double counted? If the amount is less  then what is the quantum that tax authorities need to look for. Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal on November 29, 2016 told Rajya Sabha that there were 17,165 million notes of Rs 500 denomination and 6,858 million notes of Rs 1,000 denomination in circulation on November 8, 2016. Going by this figure, total value of notes demonetised is Rs 15.44 lakh crore (Rs 8.58 lakh crore in Rs 500 and Rs 6.86 lakh crore in Rs 1,000). There have already been estimates  the RBI is speculated to have received deposits close to Rs 15 lakh crore till December 30. Now that the Scheme has come to an end... these figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors/ possible double counts etc, said RBI. The Finance Ministry also acknowledged the possibility of double counting. The RBI however, has clarified that till the exercise is completed, any estimate may not indicate the actual numbers of the SBNs returned.

We would like to clarify that the periodical SBN figures released... were based on aggregation of accounting entries done at the large number of Currency Chests all over the country. .. RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures of SBNs received at an early date, it said in its official statement.

There is no doubt that all the money in circulation will have come back, at least it will be above 98%, but the Googly will be if the amount exceeds, then RBI will have a lot of explaining to do, said Aamirullah Khan, senior economist at Amity University.

NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has promised to make public the total quantum and value of scrapped notes that have been deposited in banks and post offices across the country at the end of the 50 days, beginning November 8, 2016, asked for by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, the Central Bank has refused to fix a date on which it will release this data but has sought a few more days to reconcile invalid currency to physical balance. Once the numbers of Specified Bank Notes (old Rs 500/ Rs 1000) deposited in the banks is released, the public will know if the number matches the currency printed by RBI. If the amount exceeds the amount that was printed and circulated, then a few questions will have to be answered  is the excess fake currency or has it been double counted? If the amount is less  then what is the quantum that tax authorities need to look for. Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal on November 29, 2016 told Rajya Sabha that there were 17,165 million notes of Rs 500 denomination and 6,858 million notes of Rs 1,000 denomination in circulation on November 8, 2016. Going by this figure, total value of notes demonetised is Rs 15.44 lakh crore (Rs 8.58 lakh crore in Rs 500 and Rs 6.86 lakh crore in Rs 1,000). There have already been estimates  the RBI is speculated to have received deposits close to Rs 15 lakh crore till December 30. Now that the Scheme has come to an end... these figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors/ possible double counts etc, said RBI. The Finance Ministry also acknowledged the possibility of double counting. The RBI however, has clarified that till the exercise is completed, any estimate may not indicate the actual numbers of the SBNs returned. We would like to clarify that the periodical SBN figures released... were based on aggregation of accounting entries done at the large number of Currency Chests all over the country. .. RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures of SBNs received at an early date, it said in its official statement. There is no doubt that all the money in circulation will have come back, at least it will be above 98%, but the Googly will be if the amount exceeds, then RBI will have a lot of explaining to do, said Aamirullah Khan, senior economist at Amity University.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: After Bengaluru drew national as well as international attention over the alleged mass molestation during the New Year celebrations on MG Road and Brigade Road, the city police have registered four suo motu cases based on news reports in a section of the media.

Addressing mediapersons, City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said, Though many of our teams started investigations after the report came out from a media house, we are yet to find any credible evidence. However, we have taken the issue seriously and will intensify our efforts to gather information.

As I mentioned on the first day, our priority is protection of women and children.

City Police Commissioner Praveen

Sood addressing the media on Thursday

| nagaraja gadekal



He added, I was not the in-charge officer on December 31, 2016. I took charge only on January 1 and also met mediapersons, but nobody spoke about this incident. But, on January 2, after the news broke out, we formed teams to find credible evidence in the case. We had installed around 45 CCTV cameras in the area. Based on reports in a section of the media we have taken up the case and will investigate.

He added that four cases in connection with the alleged mass molestation have been registered  one in Indiranagar, one in Ashok Nagar and two in Cubbon Park police limits.

He said notices are being issued to media houses that reported about the incident to seek more information about the victims or eyewitnesses to help them probe the case.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Chandragupta said police have so far questioned 20 people in connection with the alleged mass molestation.

We have already issued notices to media houses seeking information. Patrolling in the Central Business District has also been beefed up as nightlife on weekends is extended till 1am. As of now, we have not got any credible evidence. The probe has however been intensified, he added.

BENGALURU: After Bengaluru drew national as well as international attention over the alleged mass molestation during the New Year celebrations on MG Road and Brigade Road, the city police have registered four suo motu cases based on news reports in a section of the media. Addressing mediapersons, City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said, Though many of our teams started investigations after the report came out from a media house, we are yet to find any credible evidence. However, we have taken the issue seriously and will intensify our efforts to gather information. As I mentioned on the first day, our priority is protection of women and children. City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood addressing the media on Thursday | nagarajagadekal He added, I was not the in-charge officer on December 31, 2016. I took charge only on January 1 and also met mediapersons, but nobody spoke about this incident. But, on January 2, after the news broke out, we formed teams to find credible evidence in the case. We had installed around 45 CCTV cameras in the area. Based on reports in a section of the media we have taken up the case and will investigate. He added that four cases in connection with the alleged mass molestation have been registered  one in Indiranagar, one in Ashok Nagar and two in Cubbon Park police limits. He said notices are being issued to media houses that reported about the incident to seek more information about the victims or eyewitnesses to help them probe the case. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Chandragupta said police have so far questioned 20 people in connection with the alleged mass molestation. We have already issued notices to media houses seeking information. Patrolling in the Central Business District has also been beefed up as nightlife on weekends is extended till 1am. As of now, we have not got any credible evidence. The probe has however been intensified, he added.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Even before the outrage over the New Year's eve molestation incidents could subside, another such incident had rocked the city. The victim of the incident reported on Friday morning is a 25-year-old burqa-clad woman.

The victim suffered minor injuries in the assault. According to Kadugondanahalli (K G Halli) police, the incident occurred between 6.15 to 6.25 am, as the woman was heading to the bus stop. The woman, who is a resident of Vinoba Nagar, was walking along Govindapura Main Road, near Arabic College, to reach the Outer Ring Road junction at Nagawara. After walking almost half the way, she was 'ambushed' by an

unidentified youth from behind who whispered 'Don't shout' in Urdu.

Fearing she would be abused by the man, she raised an alarm which caught the attention of locals nearby, the police said. "The girl regularly walks along the Road to catch a bus to Koramangala, where she is employed as a Sales Assistant in a start up. On Friday however, the guy followed and allegedly molested her, resulting in some injuries," K G Halli police said.

The woman suffered injuries on her tongue, arm and leg. "While the injuries on her tongue were self inflicted due to shock and fear, minor injuries to her arm and leg were caused as the accused pushed the victim to the ground," police said.

Locals quickly converged on the spot hearing her cries of help, by which time the accused fled the spot.

A complaint was filed by the girl at K G Halli police station during the late hours of noon. Police are on the look out for the accused.

Like the molestation incident in Kammanahalli in the city, the attack was captured on the CCTV camera of a house in the neighbourhood. Footage sourced from the camera showed that the girl was being stalked by the miscreant before he pounced on the girl.

BENGALURU: Even before the outrage over the New Year's eve molestation incidents could subside, another such incident had rocked the city. The victim of the incident reported on Friday morning is a 25-year-old burqa-clad woman. The victim suffered minor injuries in the assault. According to Kadugondanahalli (K G Halli) police, the incident occurred between 6.15 to 6.25 am, as the woman was heading to the bus stop. The woman, who is a resident of Vinoba Nagar, was walking along Govindapura Main Road, near Arabic College, to reach the Outer Ring Road junction at Nagawara. After walking almost half the way, she was 'ambushed' by an unidentified youth from behind who whispered 'Don't shout' in Urdu. Fearing she would be abused by the man, she raised an alarm which caught the attention of locals nearby, the police said. "The girl regularly walks along the Road to catch a bus to Koramangala, where she is employed as a Sales Assistant in a start up. On Friday however, the guy followed and allegedly molested her, resulting in some injuries," K G Halli police said. The woman suffered injuries on her tongue, arm and leg. "While the injuries on her tongue were self inflicted due to shock and fear, minor injuries to her arm and leg were caused as the accused pushed the victim to the ground," police said. Locals quickly converged on the spot hearing her cries of help, by which time the accused fled the spot. A complaint was filed by the girl at K G Halli police station during the late hours of noon. Police are on the look out for the accused. Like the molestation incident in Kammanahalli in the city, the attack was captured on the CCTV camera of a house in the neighbourhood. Footage sourced from the camera showed that the girl was being stalked by the miscreant before he pounced on the girl.
Sushmitha Ramakrishnan By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: The recent alleged excesses of the Chennai city police while controlling an agitation by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the Marxist party, has raised questions over the ways and means the cops employ in handling democratic protests.

DYFI members who took part in the protest against demonetisation, levelled serious charges of physical and verbal assault. Most disturbing was molestation of a few women cadre. Even women cops were accused of carrying out brutal assault and character assassination.

On December 31, over 30 members of DYFI had gathered outside an ATM at Medavakkam for the protest. We were a few, yet the police said we blocked the traffic and started charging at us, said Ramya (name changed), one of the protesters. On Wednesday, they once again gathered in Medavakkam to protest police excesses against them and the All India Democratic Womens Association (AIDWA) members at Madurai.

Police beat up male comrades and the sub-inspector even groped a female protester. The agitated mob turned volatile and the police started using lathis, she said. According to her, the police then split the team by taking eight protesters in a van and detaining the rest in a wedding hall nearby under heavy security. DYFI state secretary S Damodaran was taken separately.

By noon, more protesters from CPI(M), SFI and AIDWA had gathered. The situation was tense, and Ramya recalled a senior officer screaming Charge, leading to the police thrashing them with lathis, PVC pipes, iron rods, chairs and other loose furniture inside the wedding hall.

Another protester, Mani (name changed), said: They pushed us down and even stamped on our genitals. When female comrades saw blood and closed their eyes, a woman cop held one of them by her locks and said, open your eyes and see. You shouldnt protest again. Hope, youve learnt your lesson.

Ramesh (name changed), another protester, who claimed to have recorded a video of the police misbehaving with a female protester, said their phones were seized and formatted. We cant even retrieve our phone memory. Everything is cleared out, he added.

However, Pallikaranai Police Inspector Natraj produced a video taken by a witness showing the protestors trying to slap two police officers.

Ramya said the police who took their mobile phones, went through personal pictures and asked inappropriate questions. They did the same when we asked them to stop beating our male comrades. They posed derogatory questions about the nature of relationship we shared with them, she added.

Those eight taken in a van too faced similar treatment and they along with Damodaran were arrested and lodged in Puzhal Jail.

The protesters detained at the wedding hall said they were allowed to go outside only after 10.30 pm.

However, there were a few discrepancies in their narratives. Some even spoke of personal vendetta, as they were part of the protest against custodial violence on Kannagi Nagar residents. Inspector Natraj openly said the police had been waiting for a chance to teach DYFI a lesson, alleged a protester.

Denying this, the Inspector maintained that the protesters were allowed to leave the premises by 8.30 pm. They blocked traffic and we only chased them, we didnt use lathis. They refused to protest within the barricaded area allotted to them, he said.

CHENNAI: The recent alleged excesses of the Chennai city police while controlling an agitation by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the Marxist party, has raised questions over the ways and means the cops employ in handling democratic protests. DYFI members who took part in the protest against demonetisation, levelled serious charges of physical and verbal assault. Most disturbing was molestation of a few women cadre. Even women cops were accused of carrying out brutal assault and character assassination. On December 31, over 30 members of DYFI had gathered outside an ATM at Medavakkam for the protest. We were a few, yet the police said we blocked the traffic and started charging at us, said Ramya (name changed), one of the protesters. On Wednesday, they once again gathered in Medavakkam to protest police excesses against them and the All India Democratic Womens Association (AIDWA) members at Madurai. Police beat up male comrades and the sub-inspector even groped a female protester. The agitated mob turned volatile and the police started using lathis, she said. According to her, the police then split the team by taking eight protesters in a van and detaining the rest in a wedding hall nearby under heavy security. DYFI state secretary S Damodaran was taken separately. By noon, more protesters from CPI(M), SFI and AIDWA had gathered. The situation was tense, and Ramya recalled a senior officer screaming Charge, leading to the police thrashing them with lathis, PVC pipes, iron rods, chairs and other loose furniture inside the wedding hall. Another protester, Mani (name changed), said: They pushed us down and even stamped on our genitals. When female comrades saw blood and closed their eyes, a woman cop held one of them by her locks and said, open your eyes and see. You shouldnt protest again. Hope, youve learnt your lesson. Ramesh (name changed), another protester, who claimed to have recorded a video of the police misbehaving with a female protester, said their phones were seized and formatted. We cant even retrieve our phone memory. Everything is cleared out, he added. However, Pallikaranai Police Inspector Natraj produced a video taken by a witness showing the protestors trying to slap two police officers. Ramya said the police who took their mobile phones, went through personal pictures and asked inappropriate questions. They did the same when we asked them to stop beating our male comrades. They posed derogatory questions about the nature of relationship we shared with them, she added. Those eight taken in a van too faced similar treatment and they along with Damodaran were arrested and lodged in Puzhal Jail. The protesters detained at the wedding hall said they were allowed to go outside only after 10.30 pm. However, there were a few discrepancies in their narratives. Some even spoke of personal vendetta, as they were part of the protest against custodial violence on Kannagi Nagar residents. Inspector Natraj openly said the police had been waiting for a chance to teach DYFI a lesson, alleged a protester. Denying this, the Inspector maintained that the protesters were allowed to leave the premises by 8.30 pm. They blocked traffic and we only chased them, we didnt use lathis. They refused to protest within the barricaded area allotted to them, he said.
Princy Alexander By

Express News Service

Rubbishing rumours that were circulating on the Internet that actress Vidya Balan had opted out of director Kamals latest Aami, a source close to Vidya affirmed that the actress was very much involved with the project.

I think the rumours started spreading because the movie was supposed to go on floors this January. However, the production is being delayed due to the ongoing strike in Kerala. Vidya is very interested in the project, the source said and added that they were unsure when the shooting would begin. Meanwhile, when City Express spoke to director Kamal about the rumours, he opted to remain silent.

I cant say anything about the rumours. I will speak about it when it is the right time, he said. Vidya Balan will play the late writer Kamala Das in Aami, a biopic.

It is said that Kamal had approached Vidya Balan in 2014 itself to essay Kamala Das.

Though a little hesitant to work in a South Indian project, she was eager to play the role.

Actor Murali Gopi will play the husband while Prithviraj and Anoop Menon will be seen playing important characters. In an interview last year, Kamal had said that he was sure Vidya Balan was the perfect choice for the movie.

Oscar winning sound designer Resul Pookkuty will also be part of the movie which is being produced by P T Rafel.This is Kamals second biopic outing, the first a commerical hit Celluloid on the life of J C Daniel.

Rubbishing rumours that were circulating on the Internet that actress Vidya Balan had opted out of director Kamals latest Aami, a source close to Vidya affirmed that the actress was very much involved with the project. I think the rumours started spreading because the movie was supposed to go on floors this January. However, the production is being delayed due to the ongoing strike in Kerala. Vidya is very interested in the project, the source said and added that they were unsure when the shooting would begin. Meanwhile, when City Express spoke to director Kamal about the rumours, he opted to remain silent. I cant say anything about the rumours. I will speak about it when it is the right time, he said. Vidya Balan will play the late writer Kamala Das in Aami, a biopic. It is said that Kamal had approached Vidya Balan in 2014 itself to essay Kamala Das. Though a little hesitant to work in a South Indian project, she was eager to play the role. Actor Murali Gopi will play the husband while Prithviraj and Anoop Menon will be seen playing important characters. In an interview last year, Kamal had said that he was sure Vidya Balan was the perfect choice for the movie. Oscar winning sound designer Resul Pookkuty will also be part of the movie which is being produced by P T Rafel.This is Kamals second biopic outing, the first a commerical hit Celluloid on the life of J C Daniel.
By ANI

SOPORE (Jammu and Kashmir): The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist who was arrested yesterday in Jammu and Kashmirs Sopore area was persuaded to surrender, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Uttam Chand, North Kashmir on Friday.



Chand said that huge amounts of arms and ammunitions were recovered from the terrorists identified as Omar Khaliq.



An effort was made to seek the surrender of terrorist, the owner of the house was also involved and finally the terrorist was persuaded to surrender his name is Kahiq alias Sameen. He surrendered and also with that we seized arms and ammunitions from him, Chand told media here.

Chand said that Khaliq had gone to Pakistan and was trained there.



Chand informed that the police had received information about the presence of a LeT terrorist, yesterday at 17:08 hrs.

The terrorist was nabbed after a joint operation launched by army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the state police.



A case has been registered and an investigation has been taken up to see if there is involvement of any other persons, Chand said.

SOPORE (Jammu and Kashmir): The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist who was arrested yesterday in Jammu and Kashmirs Sopore area was persuaded to surrender, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Uttam Chand, North Kashmir on Friday. Chand said that huge amounts of arms and ammunitions were recovered from the terrorists identified as Omar Khaliq. An effort was made to seek the surrender of terrorist, the owner of the house was also involved and finally the terrorist was persuaded to surrender his name is Kahiq alias Sameen. He surrendered and also with that we seized arms and ammunitions from him, Chand told media here. Chand said that Khaliq had gone to Pakistan and was trained there. Chand informed that the police had received information about the presence of a LeT terrorist, yesterday at 17:08 hrs. The terrorist was nabbed after a joint operation launched by army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the state police. A case has been registered and an investigation has been taken up to see if there is involvement of any other persons, Chand said.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI : The Directorate General of Foreign Trade has banned the import of skins of reptiles, mink, fox and chinchillas. A notification was issued in this regard by the Ministry of Commerce.



The matter was taken up by Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, who wrote a letter to Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharama, pressing the need to curb cruelty towards animals by prohibiting the import of exotic skins.



The Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Animal Welfare Board of India further supported the need to impose the ban. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 allows the slaughter of animals only for subsistence, and this too is regulated to minimise the pain and suffering of animals.



Lauding this policy stance that is in consonance with the anti-cruelty laws of India, People For Animals trustee Gauri Maulekhi said, We commend the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and the environment ministry for its firm commitment in abolishing the import of exotic skins.



The exotic fur, skin and leather industry slaughters, bludgeons and skins millions of animals every year in the name of frivolous fashion. Nations across the world are switching to cruelty-free alternatives and we are glad that India is gradually emulating similar policies to reduce and eliminate unnecessary pain and suffering to animals, she said.

NEW DELHI : The Directorate General of Foreign Trade has banned the import of skins of reptiles, mink, fox and chinchillas. A notification was issued in this regard by the Ministry of Commerce. The matter was taken up by Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, who wrote a letter to Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharama, pressing the need to curb cruelty towards animals by prohibiting the import of exotic skins. The Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Animal Welfare Board of India further supported the need to impose the ban. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 allows the slaughter of animals only for subsistence, and this too is regulated to minimise the pain and suffering of animals. Lauding this policy stance that is in consonance with the anti-cruelty laws of India, People For Animals trustee Gauri Maulekhi said, We commend the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and the environment ministry for its firm commitment in abolishing the import of exotic skins. The exotic fur, skin and leather industry slaughters, bludgeons and skins millions of animals every year in the name of frivolous fashion. Nations across the world are switching to cruelty-free alternatives and we are glad that India is gradually emulating similar policies to reduce and eliminate unnecessary pain and suffering to animals, she said.
By IANS

SRINAGAR: Unknown gunmen attacked the house of National Conference (NC) legislator Showkat Ganai in south Kashmir's Shopian district, but the guards repulsed the assault.

According to police, unidentified gunmen on Thursday night fired at Ganai's house in Chitragam village.

"Guards posted at the house retaliated the attack, forcing the gunmen to flee," police said here.

The legislator was not present inside his house when the attack took place as he is in Jammu to attend the budget session of the state legislature.

Two days back, Ganai had told the media that Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was a "martyr to the cause he stood for".

The legislator's remarks had ruffled many a feather in the mainstream political camp of Jammu and Kashmir.



SRINAGAR: Unknown gunmen attacked the house of National Conference (NC) legislator Showkat Ganai in south Kashmir's Shopian district, but the guards repulsed the assault. According to police, unidentified gunmen on Thursday night fired at Ganai's house in Chitragam village. "Guards posted at the house retaliated the attack, forcing the gunmen to flee," police said here. The legislator was not present inside his house when the attack took place as he is in Jammu to attend the budget session of the state legislature. Two days back, Ganai had told the media that Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was a "martyr to the cause he stood for". The legislator's remarks had ruffled many a feather in the mainstream political camp of Jammu and Kashmir.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: With China defending its move to block listing of proscribed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India is examining all options available on the table and has initiated talks with other member countries of the UN Security Council.

We are examining all options and consulting with other co-sponsors, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sources. New Delhi had criticised the intransigence of China on the issue and called it Beijings double standards in the fight against terrorism.



Beijing claimed that it arrived at the decision to block Indias application after a professional and objective process. However, India has accused China of letting political considerations hinder imposition of sanctions against Azhar, who has found shelter in Pakistan and where he addresses public rallies.



Meanwhile, in a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in Chinas repeated efforts to block Indias bid to slap a UN ban on Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should adjust its stand accordingly.



In his blog, Mao Siwei  who previously served as Chinas Consul General in Kolkata  said China should take advantage of Indias complaint against Azhar and get rid of the passive diplomatic situation between the two countries.

NEW DELHI: With China defending its move to block listing of proscribed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India is examining all options available on the table and has initiated talks with other member countries of the UN Security Council. We are examining all options and consulting with other co-sponsors, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sources. New Delhi had criticised the intransigence of China on the issue and called it Beijings double standards in the fight against terrorism. Beijing claimed that it arrived at the decision to block Indias application after a professional and objective process. However, India has accused China of letting political considerations hinder imposition of sanctions against Azhar, who has found shelter in Pakistan and where he addresses public rallies. Meanwhile, in a rare dissent against official policy, a former Chinese diplomat who served in India has sought change in Chinas repeated efforts to block Indias bid to slap a UN ban on Masood Azhar arguing that he is a terrorist and Beijing should adjust its stand accordingly. In his blog, Mao Siwei  who previously served as Chinas Consul General in Kolkata  said China should take advantage of Indias complaint against Azhar and get rid of the passive diplomatic situation between the two countries.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: While the supporters of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav were busy collecting affidavits of pledge from MLAs andMLCs to be produced before the Election Commission to claim the bicycle symbol, the support for him came from an unexpected quarter. Striking an emotional connect with ongoing fierce family feud, a brother-sister duo of Ghaziabad have shot off a letter, written in their blood, to Election Commission appealing it to allocate the party symbol bicycle to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Sana (15), a student of Class X and her younger brother Azeem, student of class II also threatened the EC to end life if Akhilesh failed to get the party symbol.

The duo went to post the letter on Friday but were stopped by their father. It is believed that the children took out the blood through a syringe to write the letter. Samajwadi Party is witnessing one of the most bitter battles of nerves between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and father Mulayam Singh Yadav with uncle Shivpal siding with Mulayam.

The infighting has reached the Election Commission with both the warring factions staking claim to the party symbol at a time when the poll dates have already been announced.

According to their father, the children write poems on the CM and SP and recite them at public functions. Both seem to have drawn the inspiration from a news report about a person to wrote such a letter to draw authorities attention over any issue, says the father adding that Sana and Azeem like Akhilesh Yadav because of his free laptop distribution scheme.

The letter is also addressed to SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav who has been requested by the two children to hand over the party responsibility to Akhilesh.

LUCKNOW: While the supporters of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav were busy collecting affidavits of pledge from MLAs andMLCs to be produced before the Election Commission to claim the bicycle symbol, the support for him came from an unexpected quarter. Striking an emotional connect with ongoing fierce family feud, a brother-sister duo of Ghaziabad have shot off a letter, written in their blood, to Election Commission appealing it to allocate the party symbol bicycle to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Sana (15), a student of Class X and her younger brother Azeem, student of class II also threatened the EC to end life if Akhilesh failed to get the party symbol. The duo went to post the letter on Friday but were stopped by their father. It is believed that the children took out the blood through a syringe to write the letter. Samajwadi Party is witnessing one of the most bitter battles of nerves between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and father Mulayam Singh Yadav with uncle Shivpal siding with Mulayam. The infighting has reached the Election Commission with both the warring factions staking claim to the party symbol at a time when the poll dates have already been announced. According to their father, the children write poems on the CM and SP and recite them at public functions. Both seem to have drawn the inspiration from a news report about a person to wrote such a letter to draw authorities attention over any issue, says the father adding that Sana and Azeem like Akhilesh Yadav because of his free laptop distribution scheme. The letter is also addressed to SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav who has been requested by the two children to hand over the party responsibility to Akhilesh.
By Express News Service

KOLKATA: Attempting to foment cracks in the BJP by rekindling the unfulfilled aspirations, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday called for removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and handing over the top job to senior party leaders Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley or sidelined stalwart Lal Krishna Advani.



Speaking to media after a review meeting with her ministers on Friday, the Trinamool supremo called the Prime Minister as Kalidasa who cut the branch he was sitting on, referring to his biggest gamble demonetisation. He has brought untold miseries on us Indians by suddenly disrupting old structures such as doing away with planning commission with unplanned Niti Ayog, slashing of EPFO rates and now scrapping of old notes without a plan. There is a way to make gradual amendments in old institutions but not the way the Centre is breaking the spine of the country, she said.



The present government is a terror government going on bulldozing peoples rights. Hence, I request President Pranab Mukherjee to intervene to save the country. I demand that a National government is brought with Advaniji,

Rajnathji or Jaitleyji at the helm but not Kalidasa Modi. I could have asked for presidential rule in Centre but I am only asking for someone else at the helm to protect the country for the next two and half years. Many people cant speak against tyranny but I have struggled throughout my life so I dont fear Modi, she added.



After the review meet, she said that West Bengal has endured a loss of Rs 5,500 crore in revenue in just two months due to demonetisation. In our survey of people affected by demonetisation, we have found that 1.70 crore people in our State are in deep crisis, majority of whom are farmers, farm labourers and petty traders. Over 81.5 lakh workers have been rendered jobless due to demonetisation majorly farm labourers, gem-cutting artisans, leather workers, bidi workers and tea and jute industry workers, she said.



Meanwhile, the West Bengal chief minister, after rating the departments of the State government on their work, openly reprimanded five ministers for poor performance in their departments.

KOLKATA: Attempting to foment cracks in the BJP by rekindling the unfulfilled aspirations, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday called for removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and handing over the top job to senior party leaders Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley or sidelined stalwart Lal Krishna Advani. Speaking to media after a review meeting with her ministers on Friday, the Trinamool supremo called the Prime Minister as Kalidasa who cut the branch he was sitting on, referring to his biggest gamble demonetisation. He has brought untold miseries on us Indians by suddenly disrupting old structures such as doing away with planning commission with unplanned Niti Ayog, slashing of EPFO rates and now scrapping of old notes without a plan. There is a way to make gradual amendments in old institutions but not the way the Centre is breaking the spine of the country, she said. The present government is a terror government going on bulldozing peoples rights. Hence, I request President Pranab Mukherjee to intervene to save the country. I demand that a National government is brought with Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji at the helm but not Kalidasa Modi. I could have asked for presidential rule in Centre but I am only asking for someone else at the helm to protect the country for the next two and half years. Many people cant speak against tyranny but I have struggled throughout my life so I dont fear Modi, she added. After the review meet, she said that West Bengal has endured a loss of Rs 5,500 crore in revenue in just two months due to demonetisation. In our survey of people affected by demonetisation, we have found that 1.70 crore people in our State are in deep crisis, majority of whom are farmers, farm labourers and petty traders. Over 81.5 lakh workers have been rendered jobless due to demonetisation majorly farm labourers, gem-cutting artisans, leather workers, bidi workers and tea and jute industry workers, she said. Meanwhile, the West Bengal chief minister, after rating the departments of the State government on their work, openly reprimanded five ministers for poor performance in their departments.
By Express News Service

KOLKATA: The New Year seems to have started off on a bad note for Trinamool Congress ministers accused in various scams. After the arrest of the partys Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay for his alleged involvement in the `15,000 crore Rose Valley scam, the Calcutta High Court on Friday, while hearing the Narada sting case in which several top Trinamool ministers were caught on hidden camera accepting money, called for an investigation by Central agencies into the case.



A Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborty said if any offence was found to have been committed in the preliminary inquiry, then a formal criminal investigation could be initiated. The evidence available in the Narada sting case calls for a thorough investigation into the case, said the acting Chief Justice, adding that the investigation should not be carried out by State police authorities and called for an investigation by independent Central authorities, hinting that the case may be referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).



Sources revealed that when Advocate General Jayanta Mitra said there was no evidence that the individuals accepting the money had in fact demanded it, the acting chief justice said the case of acceptance of bribe was also not proved in the defence deal corruption case involving former BJP president Bangaru Laxman, but still the case was investigated, he was tried and awarded jail term.

Claiming that the court has no jurisdiction to pass such an order, Jayanta Mitra submitted that the recordings had been made public in 2016, two years after the videotapes were made in 2014 showing TMC leaders purportedly accepting money.



The Narada sting case by a Kerala-based media outlet, showing several top Trinamool ministers accepting bribe, had sent shockwaves in the party camp just before the 2016 Assembly elections. However, the party sailed through it and second-time Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered a probe into the case on June 17 last year. The authenticity of the sting videotapes was ascertained by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, in August.

KOLKATA: The New Year seems to have started off on a bad note for Trinamool Congress ministers accused in various scams. After the arrest of the partys Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay for his alleged involvement in the `15,000 crore Rose Valley scam, the Calcutta High Court on Friday, while hearing the Narada sting case in which several top Trinamool ministers were caught on hidden camera accepting money, called for an investigation by Central agencies into the case. A Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborty said if any offence was found to have been committed in the preliminary inquiry, then a formal criminal investigation could be initiated. The evidence available in the Narada sting case calls for a thorough investigation into the case, said the acting Chief Justice, adding that the investigation should not be carried out by State police authorities and called for an investigation by independent Central authorities, hinting that the case may be referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Sources revealed that when Advocate General Jayanta Mitra said there was no evidence that the individuals accepting the money had in fact demanded it, the acting chief justice said the case of acceptance of bribe was also not proved in the defence deal corruption case involving former BJP president Bangaru Laxman, but still the case was investigated, he was tried and awarded jail term. Claiming that the court has no jurisdiction to pass such an order, Jayanta Mitra submitted that the recordings had been made public in 2016, two years after the videotapes were made in 2014 showing TMC leaders purportedly accepting money. The Narada sting case by a Kerala-based media outlet, showing several top Trinamool ministers accepting bribe, had sent shockwaves in the party camp just before the 2016 Assembly elections. However, the party sailed through it and second-time Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered a probe into the case on June 17 last year. The authenticity of the sting videotapes was ascertained by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, in August.
By Express News Service

LUCKNOW/PATNA: With elections to five State Assemblies beginning next month, political parties, across the board, have started to test new waters and try different equations. While the rare bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar grabbed instant attention, Mayawatis list of candidates for the Uttar Pradesh polls, with significant representation of Muslims and further drifting apart of the warring factions of Samajwadi Party did not go unnoticed.

Despite Bihar not being a poll-bound State, the Modi-Nitish chemistry had the pundits drooling about the implications of shared smiles and mutual admiration. The development, however, is not surprising. Nitish was the only Opposition leader to support demonetisation. The move seems to have gone a long way in improving personal and political rapport between him and Modi.

In Patna to celebrate the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, Modi showered praises on Nitish for his prohibition drive. Bringing reform in society is very difficult. Despite that, the pain he has taken to save the coming generations from addiction is praiseworthy, Modi said. An ally of the Congress in the State, Nitish praised Modi for keeping Gujarat alcohol-free.

Meanwhile, in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati released her first list of 100 candidates for the Assembly elections. Nearly 35 per cent of the candidates were from the Muslim community, signalling her intention to exploit the SP vote-bank. The BSPs first list clearly reflects its tested formula of social engineering, this time based on Muslim-Dalit combination, especially in western UP. Here, by and large, Muslims constitute 26 per cent of the population, much higher than the State average of 19 per cent.

In the rival camp, more than 200 SP MLAs signed a written affidavit in favour of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to be produced before the Election Commission for staking claim to the bicycle symbol. However, renewed efforts to strike truce between the warring factions also gained momentum. So did reports of a meeting between Akhilesh and Gandhi scions Rahul and Priyanka to strike an alliance deal. On the other hand, claiming a strong wave of support, the BJP scaled up its UP target from 265 to 300 seats.

LUCKNOW/PATNA: With elections to five State Assemblies beginning next month, political parties, across the board, have started to test new waters and try different equations. While the rare bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar grabbed instant attention, Mayawatis list of candidates for the Uttar Pradesh polls, with significant representation of Muslims and further drifting apart of the warring factions of Samajwadi Party did not go unnoticed. Despite Bihar not being a poll-bound State, the Modi-Nitish chemistry had the pundits drooling about the implications of shared smiles and mutual admiration. The development, however, is not surprising. Nitish was the only Opposition leader to support demonetisation. The move seems to have gone a long way in improving personal and political rapport between him and Modi. In Patna to celebrate the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, Modi showered praises on Nitish for his prohibition drive. Bringing reform in society is very difficult. Despite that, the pain he has taken to save the coming generations from addiction is praiseworthy, Modi said. An ally of the Congress in the State, Nitish praised Modi for keeping Gujarat alcohol-free. Meanwhile, in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati released her first list of 100 candidates for the Assembly elections. Nearly 35 per cent of the candidates were from the Muslim community, signalling her intention to exploit the SP vote-bank. The BSPs first list clearly reflects its tested formula of social engineering, this time based on Muslim-Dalit combination, especially in western UP. Here, by and large, Muslims constitute 26 per cent of the population, much higher than the State average of 19 per cent. In the rival camp, more than 200 SP MLAs signed a written affidavit in favour of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to be produced before the Election Commission for staking claim to the bicycle symbol. However, renewed efforts to strike truce between the warring factions also gained momentum. So did reports of a meeting between Akhilesh and Gandhi scions Rahul and Priyanka to strike an alliance deal. On the other hand, claiming a strong wave of support, the BJP scaled up its UP target from 265 to 300 seats.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency ( NIA) on Friday chargesheeted Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist and Pakistani national Bahadur Ali alias Saifulla Mansoor for alleged criminal conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks in India including in Jammu and Kashmir and the national capital.

In the chargesheet, the NIA has accused the Pakistan Army for facilitating the LeT in maintaining the launching pad in PoK through which Ali and other cohorts were infiltrated into Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet also details the presence of the names of several towns of Jammu and Kashmir on the map sheet recovered from Ali and the LeT was behind fuelling the massive unrest in the Valley post-Burhan Wanis liquidation by the security forces. Wani was a Hizbul Mujahieen terrorist. It further detailed the modus operandi of the LeT in recruiting Pak youths, imparting arms training and pushing them inside Indian territory.

The chargsheet was filed at the NIA Special Court here against Ali, resident of Jia Bagga village under Raiwind tehsil of Lahore in Pakistan Indian Penal Code section relating criminal conspiracy besides provisions of the Explosives Act , Explosives Substances Act , Arms Act, Foreigners Act, Indian and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

This case relates to a conspiracy hatched by the LeT, a proscribed terrorist organization, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India.

Pakistan-based mastermind of Ali, Alfa-3 communicated to him that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large scale agitation in Kashmir after EID subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir. He instructed Bahadur Ali to mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley. Ali was also directed by Alpha 3 to receive a group of freshly infiltrated terrorists of the LeT but he was nabbed by the security agencies on July 25 at Yahama village.

The data retrieved from GPS device recovered from Ali contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli launching pad of the LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali contains the name of several towns in J&K, including Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, Udhampur besides Delhi.

Given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/ cities in the diary indicates that Bahadur Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi, the statement further said.

Investigation conducted by the NIA revealed that the LeT has set up a well-organized machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan, as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by the commission of terrorist acts in various parts of India, the NIA said in a statement.

On Alis disclosure and identification of the spot, several articles were recovered and seized including one AK-47 rifle along with five AK-47 magazines loaded with ammunition, one UBGL, five live UBGL shells, two live hand grenades (Chinese) and a wireless set.

Investigation has also established that Bahadur Ali was also provided a map sheet depicting parts of PoK and J&K. He was provided with the Grid References that had been recovered from his possession. Bahadur Ali plotted these Grid References on the map sheet. Further, it has been affirmed by the Surveyor General of India, Dehradun that Bahadur Ali, had indeed plotted the Grid References correctly. This clearly establishes that Bahadur Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject, said the chargesheet.

Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalizing their worldview and providing them with military skills. Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian Territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of network of their supporters and facilitators, the agency said in its chargesheet.

As a part of the conspiracy of LeT, Ali along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists of the Pakistan based LeT, illegally infiltrated into Indian territory (J&K) by crossing the LoC. At the time of crossing into Indian territory, on or around the intervening night of June 6/7 last year, these terrorists were equipped with Arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists entered into Indian Territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of the LeT based in Pakistan/ POK, the statement further said.

After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists, Ali Saad and Darda, walked for about seven days following the Grid References with the aid of the GPS devices that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli launching pad. The infiltrating terrorists had been provided with eight Grid References, the eighth denoting their final destination.

On June 20, the three infiltrating terrorists reached a hilltop near village Wadar, Handwara (J&K), which was the sixth of the eight Grid References. At Wadar, Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, Walid Bhai by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by the LeT to avoid interception.

On June 22, Darda and Saad went to the village Wadar for arranging food, leaving Bahadur Ali on a nearby hill. After a short while Bahadur Ali heard the sound of gunfire. On hearing the gunfire, Bahadur Ali was confused and he rushed towards a nearby hilltop as a precautionary measure and waited for the return of Darda and Saad. However, the duo did not return. The following morning, Ali contacted Alfa-3, the LeT control station based in PoK, through his wireless set and apprised the his mastermind in Pakistan under the name Alfa-3 who directed directed Ali to continue his journey and reach the final destination at the eighth Grid Reference.

It was found during investigation that after getting directions from Alfa-3, Bahadur Ali reached the location of the 8th Grid Reference. This point was located on a hill near village Mukam, Yahama. After reaching this point, Bahadur Ali contacted Alfa-3 who provided him with an additional Grid Reference, where he was told to contact a local person who would provide him food and other support, the chargesheet said.

NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency ( NIA) on Friday chargesheeted Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist and Pakistani national Bahadur Ali alias Saifulla Mansoor for alleged criminal conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks in India including in Jammu and Kashmir and the national capital. In the chargesheet, the NIA has accused the Pakistan Army for facilitating the LeT in maintaining the launching pad in PoK through which Ali and other cohorts were infiltrated into Jammu and Kashmir. The chargesheet also details the presence of the names of several towns of Jammu and Kashmir on the map sheet recovered from Ali and the LeT was behind fuelling the massive unrest in the Valley post-Burhan Wanis liquidation by the security forces. Wani was a Hizbul Mujahieen terrorist. It further detailed the modus operandi of the LeT in recruiting Pak youths, imparting arms training and pushing them inside Indian territory. The chargsheet was filed at the NIA Special Court here against Ali, resident of Jia Bagga village under Raiwind tehsil of Lahore in Pakistan Indian Penal Code section relating criminal conspiracy besides provisions of the Explosives Act , Explosives Substances Act , Arms Act, Foreigners Act, Indian and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. This case relates to a conspiracy hatched by the LeT, a proscribed terrorist organization, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India. Pakistan-based mastermind of Ali, Alfa-3 communicated to him that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large scale agitation in Kashmir after EID subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir. He instructed Bahadur Ali to mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley. Ali was also directed by Alpha 3 to receive a group of freshly infiltrated terrorists of the LeT but he was nabbed by the security agencies on July 25 at Yahama village. The data retrieved from GPS device recovered from Ali contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli launching pad of the LeT. The pocket diary recovered from Ali contains the name of several towns in J&K, including Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, Udhampur besides Delhi. Given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/ cities in the diary indicates that Bahadur Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi, the statement further said. Investigation conducted by the NIA revealed that the LeT has set up a well-organized machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan, as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by the commission of terrorist acts in various parts of India, the NIA said in a statement. On Alis disclosure and identification of the spot, several articles were recovered and seized including one AK-47 rifle along with five AK-47 magazines loaded with ammunition, one UBGL, five live UBGL shells, two live hand grenades (Chinese) and a wireless set. Investigation has also established that Bahadur Ali was also provided a map sheet depicting parts of PoK and J&K. He was provided with the Grid References that had been recovered from his possession. Bahadur Ali plotted these Grid References on the map sheet. Further, it has been affirmed by the Surveyor General of India, Dehradun that Bahadur Ali, had indeed plotted the Grid References correctly. This clearly establishes that Bahadur Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject, said the chargesheet. Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalizing their worldview and providing them with military skills. Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian Territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of network of their supporters and facilitators, the agency said in its chargesheet. As a part of the conspiracy of LeT, Ali along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists of the Pakistan based LeT, illegally infiltrated into Indian territory (J&K) by crossing the LoC. At the time of crossing into Indian territory, on or around the intervening night of June 6/7 last year, these terrorists were equipped with Arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles. These terrorists entered into Indian Territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of the LeT based in Pakistan/ POK, the statement further said. After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists, Ali Saad and Darda, walked for about seven days following the Grid References with the aid of the GPS devices that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli launching pad. The infiltrating terrorists had been provided with eight Grid References, the eighth denoting their final destination. On June 20, the three infiltrating terrorists reached a hilltop near village Wadar, Handwara (J&K), which was the sixth of the eight Grid References. At Wadar, Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, Walid Bhai by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by the LeT to avoid interception. On June 22, Darda and Saad went to the village Wadar for arranging food, leaving Bahadur Ali on a nearby hill. After a short while Bahadur Ali heard the sound of gunfire. On hearing the gunfire, Bahadur Ali was confused and he rushed towards a nearby hilltop as a precautionary measure and waited for the return of Darda and Saad. However, the duo did not return. The following morning, Ali contacted Alfa-3, the LeT control station based in PoK, through his wireless set and apprised the his mastermind in Pakistan under the name Alfa-3 who directed directed Ali to continue his journey and reach the final destination at the eighth Grid Reference. It was found during investigation that after getting directions from Alfa-3, Bahadur Ali reached the location of the 8th Grid Reference. This point was located on a hill near village Mukam, Yahama. After reaching this point, Bahadur Ali contacted Alfa-3 who provided him with an additional Grid Reference, where he was told to contact a local person who would provide him food and other support, the chargesheet said.
By PTI

JAIPUR: Nine foreign nationals, including five Pakistanis, are on a hunger strike in Alwar jail's detention centre since the last two days demanding they be immediately released as they have completed their prison term.



"Nine persons, including five Pakistanis, have launched hunger strike 2 days ago demanding their release. The process to seek approval for their release from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs is under way and they have been informed accordingly," SP (Alwar) Rahul Prakash told PTI.



The other four are Bangladesh nationals, he said, adding that their medical tests were conducted today.



There are 17 foreign nationals in the detention centre who are to be deported to their respective countries after necessary clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs.



One of the Pakistani nationals was sentenced to jail for espionage while the others for violating visa norms under the Foreigners' Act, Prakash said.



"There is no illegal detention in any case and they would be deported after completing formalities and necessary approval from the government of India," Additional Director General of Jails, Sudhakar Jauhari said.



According to Superintendent of Alwar Jail Surendra Singh, apart from the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, nationals of Cameroon, Sri Lanka and Iran at the detention centre are waiting to be deported after their prison term is over.

JAIPUR: Nine foreign nationals, including five Pakistanis, are on a hunger strike in Alwar jail's detention centre since the last two days demanding they be immediately released as they have completed their prison term. "Nine persons, including five Pakistanis, have launched hunger strike 2 days ago demanding their release. The process to seek approval for their release from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs is under way and they have been informed accordingly," SP (Alwar) Rahul Prakash told PTI. The other four are Bangladesh nationals, he said, adding that their medical tests were conducted today. There are 17 foreign nationals in the detention centre who are to be deported to their respective countries after necessary clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs. One of the Pakistani nationals was sentenced to jail for espionage while the others for violating visa norms under the Foreigners' Act, Prakash said. "There is no illegal detention in any case and they would be deported after completing formalities and necessary approval from the government of India," Additional Director General of Jails, Sudhakar Jauhari said. According to Superintendent of Alwar Jail Surendra Singh, apart from the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, nationals of Cameroon, Sri Lanka and Iran at the detention centre are waiting to be deported after their prison term is over.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Meghalaya police will issue a lookout notice against rebel chief-turned-MLA Julius Dorphang, who is on the run after being accused of sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl last month.

Yes, we will issue a lookout notice against him, Meghalayas East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police M Kharkrang told Express.



Dorphang, the founder-chairman of banned insurgent group Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), went into hiding after he was booked under various Sections of the IPC and POCSO Act. On Wednesday, a court in Shillong had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him amid a stepped up campaign by two civil society groups against the MLA as well as the government.

Dorphang, the Independent MLA from Mawhati constituency, is supporting the states ruling Congress. The victim had filed an FIR on December 16 accusing the MLA of sexually exploiting her in a guest house in Shillong the previous day. The guest house is reportedly owned by the son of a senior Meghalaya minister. In the FIR, the victim named at least eight persons - five of them have been arrested so far.



The case came to light after a waiter of the guest house was arrested for allegedly trafficking the victim. Meanwhile, the Meghalaya police raided some houses in Guwahati on Thursday in search of the MLA. Guwahati Police Commissioner Hiren Nath confirmed the raids.

GUWAHATI: Meghalaya police will issue a lookout notice against rebel chief-turned-MLA Julius Dorphang, who is on the run after being accused of sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl last month. Yes, we will issue a lookout notice against him, Meghalayas East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police M Kharkrang told Express. Dorphang, the founder-chairman of banned insurgent group Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), went into hiding after he was booked under various Sections of the IPC and POCSO Act. On Wednesday, a court in Shillong had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him amid a stepped up campaign by two civil society groups against the MLA as well as the government. Dorphang, the Independent MLA from Mawhati constituency, is supporting the states ruling Congress. The victim had filed an FIR on December 16 accusing the MLA of sexually exploiting her in a guest house in Shillong the previous day. The guest house is reportedly owned by the son of a senior Meghalaya minister. In the FIR, the victim named at least eight persons - five of them have been arrested so far. The case came to light after a waiter of the guest house was arrested for allegedly trafficking the victim. Meanwhile, the Meghalaya police raided some houses in Guwahati on Thursday in search of the MLA. Guwahati Police Commissioner Hiren Nath confirmed the raids.
By IANS

KATHMANDU: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has agreed to provide Rs 1 billion to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) after its request that the country was facing a shortage of INR 100 denomination banknotes.



The NRB's plan to import Rs 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, according to a report in the Himalayan Times on Friday,.



The RBI had earlier told the Nepali central bank to wait till the situation normalises post demontisation.



NRB officials have now said that the central bank is preparing to bring the amount from India within January.



After demonetisation in India, the Nepal Rastra Bank had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal.



Currently, it is providing an exchange facility of up to Rs 2,000 on basis of citizenship identification.



Similarly, it is providing Rs 10,000 to those who submit a copy of air or train ticket to travel to India and Rs 25,000 for those travelling to India for medical check-up.



Janak Bahadur Adhikari, an NRB official, said that the limit of Indian rupee exchange will not be reviewed until the RBI is able to provide regular exchange facility.



The RBI has been extending Rs 6 billion exchange facility to Nepal every year (based on Indian fiscal year calendar) but this year Nepal is unlikely to get this facility due to the demonetisation move, said Adhikari.



"NRB has brought only Rs 1.20 billion this year."



Currently, the NRB has around Rs 3.5 billion in its coffers and after bringing another Rs 1 billion, NRB will be able to provide exchange facility to Nepali and Indian nationals in Nepal for the next eight to nine months.

KATHMANDU: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has agreed to provide Rs 1 billion to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) after its request that the country was facing a shortage of INR 100 denomination banknotes. The NRB's plan to import Rs 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, according to a report in the Himalayan Times on Friday,. The RBI had earlier told the Nepali central bank to wait till the situation normalises post demontisation. NRB officials have now said that the central bank is preparing to bring the amount from India within January. After demonetisation in India, the Nepal Rastra Bank had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal. Currently, it is providing an exchange facility of up to Rs 2,000 on basis of citizenship identification. Similarly, it is providing Rs 10,000 to those who submit a copy of air or train ticket to travel to India and Rs 25,000 for those travelling to India for medical check-up. Janak Bahadur Adhikari, an NRB official, said that the limit of Indian rupee exchange will not be reviewed until the RBI is able to provide regular exchange facility. The RBI has been extending Rs 6 billion exchange facility to Nepal every year (based on Indian fiscal year calendar) but this year Nepal is unlikely to get this facility due to the demonetisation move, said Adhikari. "NRB has brought only Rs 1.20 billion this year." Currently, the NRB has around Rs 3.5 billion in its coffers and after bringing another Rs 1 billion, NRB will be able to provide exchange facility to Nepali and Indian nationals in Nepal for the next eight to nine months.
By Express News Service

KOZHIKODE: Renowned freedom fighter, writer and veteran journalist M Rasheed passed away in Salem on Friday. He had his last breath following a cardiac arrest at his daughters residence in Salem on Friday morning. An active participant in the Quit India Movement in 1942, he was also jailed during the freedom struggle.

Son of eminent freedom fighter E Moidu Moulavi, Rasheed was taken to the custody while he was high school student. He was one of the founding members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the editor of the partys mouthpiece Sakhav.

The veteran journalist was a regular column writer in Malayalam dailies and was author of some books.

He will be laid to rest at Ponnani on Saturday morning.

KOZHIKODE: Renowned freedom fighter, writer and veteran journalist M Rasheed passed away in Salem on Friday. He had his last breath following a cardiac arrest at his daughters residence in Salem on Friday morning. An active participant in the Quit India Movement in 1942, he was also jailed during the freedom struggle. Son of eminent freedom fighter E Moidu Moulavi, Rasheed was taken to the custody while he was high school student. He was one of the founding members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the editor of the partys mouthpiece Sakhav. The veteran journalist was a regular column writer in Malayalam dailies and was author of some books. He will be laid to rest at Ponnani on Saturday morning.
About 105 years ago, Alfred Wegener, a German geophysicist, proposed a theory that was ridiculed by his contemporaries. But later, his hypothesis was proven correct

Earth, a jigsaw puzzle

If you examine a globe closely, you might realise that most continents fit together like a puzzle. For example, Africas western coastline fits nicely onto South Americas east coast. Wegener noticed this in 1912. He came up with a proposal that all continents were once compressed into a single continent. Wegener called it Pangaea and said it broke and drifted apart about 300 million years ago

Paleontological studies at that time found that the same fossilized plants were found in both South America and Africa. Likewise, similar fossils were found in India and Madagascar. To support this, scientists suggested that a land bridge once connected Africa and Brazil. Although Wegeners suggestion seemed more plausible, it did not explain how the continents drifted apart

Afro-American bridge?

Most geologists continued to believe in static continents and land bridges. But by the late 1960s, plate tectonics was accepted because of increased exploration of the earths crust.

About 105 years ago, Alfred Wegener, a German geophysicist, proposed a theory that was ridiculed by his contemporaries. But later, his hypothesis was proven correct Earth, a jigsaw puzzle If you examine a globe closely, you might realise that most continents fit together like a puzzle. For example, Africas western coastline fits nicely onto South Americas east coast. Wegener noticed this in 1912. He came up with a proposal that all continents were once compressed into a single continent. Wegener called it Pangaea and said it broke and drifted apart about 300 million years ago Paleontological studies at that time found that the same fossilized plants were found in both South America and Africa. Likewise, similar fossils were found in India and Madagascar. To support this, scientists suggested that a land bridge once connected Africa and Brazil. Although Wegeners suggestion seemed more plausible, it did not explain how the continents drifted apart Afro-American bridge? Most geologists continued to believe in static continents and land bridges. But by the late 1960s, plate tectonics was accepted because of increased exploration of the earths crust.
By PTI

RAMESWARAM: As many as 51 Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu, who were languishing in Sri Lankan prisons, were released today as per a decision taken at a high-level meeting between the two countries earlier this week.



While 39 of the fishermen were produced before a court in Jaffna, the remaining 12 were produced before a court in Vavuniya, before being released.



They were later handed over to the Indian Deputy High Commission at Jaffna, Rameswaram Fishermen's Association representative P Sesuraja said.



During an India-Lanka ministerial-level talk on fishermen held in Colombo earlier this week, it was decided that Sri Lanka will release 51 Indian fishermen, while three of their Lankan counterparts will be freed by India.



RAMESWARAM: As many as 51 Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu, who were languishing in Sri Lankan prisons, were released today as per a decision taken at a high-level meeting between the two countries earlier this week. While 39 of the fishermen were produced before a court in Jaffna, the remaining 12 were produced before a court in Vavuniya, before being released. They were later handed over to the Indian Deputy High Commission at Jaffna, Rameswaram Fishermen's Association representative P Sesuraja said. During an India-Lanka ministerial-level talk on fishermen held in Colombo earlier this week, it was decided that Sri Lanka will release 51 Indian fishermen, while three of their Lankan counterparts will be freed by India.
Siva Sekaran By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has refused to quash the proceedings of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Advantage Strategic Consulting Private Limited in Nandanam in Chennai and 26 other companies, alleged to have had involvement in the 2G spectrum scam, in which Karti, son of former Union Minister P Chidambaram, is said to have direct interest.

Saai



The investigation carried on by the ED is seized of by the Supreme Court and the progress of the same is being periodically monitored by it. The Special Court constituted to deal with 2G Spectrum case or Aircel Maxis case has granted permission to carry out further investigation, which would empower the authorities concerned to file supplementary charge-sheet, as contemplated under Sec.173 (8) of CrPC.



In such circumstances, this court is not inclined to entertain these writ petitions and they only deserve to be dismissed, Justice B Rajendran has observed. The judge was dismissing a batch of 10 writ petitions from Advantage Strategic, represented by its director Ravi Viswanathan, and other companies and their directors.



Of the 10, one was filed by Karti to quash the summons dated August 19 last, issued by the Enforcement Directorate under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. His main contention was that the summons lacked jurisdiction on the part of the ED to direct him to appear in person on August 31 and to produce certain records.

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has refused to quash the proceedings of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Advantage Strategic Consulting Private Limited in Nandanam in Chennai and 26 other companies, alleged to have had involvement in the 2G spectrum scam, in which Karti, son of former Union Minister P Chidambaram, is said to have direct interest. Saai The investigation carried on by the ED is seized of by the Supreme Court and the progress of the same is being periodically monitored by it. The Special Court constituted to deal with 2G Spectrum case or Aircel Maxis case has granted permission to carry out further investigation, which would empower the authorities concerned to file supplementary charge-sheet, as contemplated under Sec.173 (8) of CrPC. In such circumstances, this court is not inclined to entertain these writ petitions and they only deserve to be dismissed, Justice B Rajendran has observed. The judge was dismissing a batch of 10 writ petitions from Advantage Strategic, represented by its director Ravi Viswanathan, and other companies and their directors. Of the 10, one was filed by Karti to quash the summons dated August 19 last, issued by the Enforcement Directorate under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. His main contention was that the summons lacked jurisdiction on the part of the ED to direct him to appear in person on August 31 and to produce certain records.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: A day after the opposition members had stayed put in the Assembly for more than four hours protesting against the governments unsatisfactory reply on fee reimbursement scheme, the state government on Thursday budged and reopened the debate. The Congress, TDP and CPM later staged a walkout, not being satisfied by the reply of the government.

Bowing to oppositions pressure, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao declared that he would constitute an all-party committee on fee reimbursement procedure.

When the Assembly sat for the listed business on Thursday, Opposition leader K Jana Reddy, BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy, MIMs Akbaruddin Owaisi and other members pointed to the abrupt adjournment of the House on Wednesday after the CMs reply on fee reimbursement.

Rao, who said the deputy speaker might have abruptly adjourned the House in view of the time, said though it is not a procedure to discuss an issue that was already debated, the government would take up the discussion on the demand of the Opposition. The opposition wanted the discussion immediately but speaker Madhusudhana Chary said clarifications can be sought only after the Question Hour.

After the Question Hour, the speaker resumed the short debate on fee reimbursement. Jana Reddy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and other members wanted the government to clear the dues of fee reimbursement for the last three years.

The Chief Minister said they were only following the procedure adopted by the Congress government in paying fee reimbursement dues. The Congress government, which started

the scheme, used to pay current year dues in the following year, Rao said.

Noting that payment system should be streamlined, he said he would convene an all-party committee meeting soon to elicit their opinions.

He assured that the fee reimbursement dues of 2015-16 would be cleared by March 31. He, however, said they would close down erring private colleges.

When Vikramarka wanted to register a protest, MIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi requested Jana Reddy not to register a protest as the chief ministers reply was satisfactory.

But Congress, TDP and CPM members walked out of the House in protest against CMs reply, terming it not satisfactory.

HYDERABAD: A day after the opposition members had stayed put in the Assembly for more than four hours protesting against the governments unsatisfactory reply on fee reimbursement scheme, the state government on Thursday budged and reopened the debate. The Congress, TDP and CPM later staged a walkout, not being satisfied by the reply of the government. Bowing to oppositions pressure, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao declared that he would constitute an all-party committee on fee reimbursement procedure. When the Assembly sat for the listed business on Thursday, Opposition leader K Jana Reddy, BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy, MIMs Akbaruddin Owaisi and other members pointed to the abrupt adjournment of the House on Wednesday after the CMs reply on fee reimbursement. Rao, who said the deputy speaker might have abruptly adjourned the House in view of the time, said though it is not a procedure to discuss an issue that was already debated, the government would take up the discussion on the demand of the Opposition. The opposition wanted the discussion immediately but speaker Madhusudhana Chary said clarifications can be sought only after the Question Hour. After the Question Hour, the speaker resumed the short debate on fee reimbursement. Jana Reddy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and other members wanted the government to clear the dues of fee reimbursement for the last three years. The Chief Minister said they were only following the procedure adopted by the Congress government in paying fee reimbursement dues. The Congress government, which started the scheme, used to pay current year dues in the following year, Rao said. Noting that payment system should be streamlined, he said he would convene an all-party committee meeting soon to elicit their opinions. He assured that the fee reimbursement dues of 2015-16 would be cleared by March 31. He, however, said they would close down erring private colleges. When Vikramarka wanted to register a protest, MIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi requested Jana Reddy not to register a protest as the chief ministers reply was satisfactory. But Congress, TDP and CPM members walked out of the House in protest against CMs reply, terming it not satisfactory.
By PTI

HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday announced Rs 1,000 monthly living wage for "distressed lonely women" in the state.



Making an announcement in the Legislative Assembly, Rao said as per the preliminary estimates, there may be about 2-3 lakh such women in the state.



As women are more prone to poverty, we took a decision to provide living security to support them by extending Rs 1000 every month to distressed lonely women. Immediately, orders are issued. We will allocate funds for this purpose in the budget that will be introduced in March 2017 Rao told the Assembly.



The statement however did not elaborate on the eligibility guidelines of the scheme. The scheme will be implemented from the next financial year and necessary directions are issued to all District Collectors to organise programmes to enroll the details of such women, he added.



Meanwhile, replying to a query during Question Hour, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries, K T Rama Rao said the state government is examining the possibility of setting up industrial clusters along the Hyderabad-Warangal route.



"A request is being made to the Government of India under the recently approved National Investment Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) to include Hyderabad-Warangal corridor," he informed the House.



According to him, initial study reports indicate three possible clusters on the anvil- Yadadri Cluster, Janagaon Cluster and Warangal Cluster.



He said the government is in the process of setting up a Mega Textile park in Warangal and a detailed project report is being prepared for Phase-I in 1,000 acres.

HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday announced Rs 1,000 monthly living wage for "distressed lonely women" in the state. Making an announcement in the Legislative Assembly, Rao said as per the preliminary estimates, there may be about 2-3 lakh such women in the state. As women are more prone to poverty, we took a decision to provide living security to support them by extending Rs 1000 every month to distressed lonely women. Immediately, orders are issued. We will allocate funds for this purpose in the budget that will be introduced in March 2017 Rao told the Assembly. The statement however did not elaborate on the eligibility guidelines of the scheme. The scheme will be implemented from the next financial year and necessary directions are issued to all District Collectors to organise programmes to enroll the details of such women, he added. Meanwhile, replying to a query during Question Hour, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries, K T Rama Rao said the state government is examining the possibility of setting up industrial clusters along the Hyderabad-Warangal route. "A request is being made to the Government of India under the recently approved National Investment Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) to include Hyderabad-Warangal corridor," he informed the House. According to him, initial study reports indicate three possible clusters on the anvil- Yadadri Cluster, Janagaon Cluster and Warangal Cluster. He said the government is in the process of setting up a Mega Textile park in Warangal and a detailed project report is being prepared for Phase-I in 1,000 acres.
Express News Service

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTFRM) has recommended that the proposed Judicial Mechanism (JM) to try cases of war crimes have at least one foreign judge in every bench. But it made it a point to add that the majority of the judges will be Sri Lankan.

In the report made public on Thursday, the CTFRM said that this recommendation is in line with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution of 2015 which Sri Lanka co-sponsored.

Manori Muttetuwegama

The CTFRM, headed by Manori Muttetuwegama, also recommended the participation of foreign personnel in investigation and prosecution. But the foreign personnel should first be vetted in terms of experience, integrity, and knowledge of local languages and social customs.

It said that the Special Court or Judicial Mechanism should have its own investigating team which should exclude personnel of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) to avoid pre-judging of issues.

On the constitution of the national or Sri Lankan element in the Judicial Mechanism, the CTFRM said that it should reflect gender difference and Sri Lankas ethnic diversity.

The Special Court should not give amnesty in cases of grave violations of war crimes and international human rights laws, and grave crimes like rape.

The CTFM said that in the Office of Missing Persons to be set up, there should be international personnel to ensure impartiality.

The report said, however, that foreign personnel in the various mechanisms should be phased out as and when the victims gain confidence in the impartiality of Sri Lankans on the mechanisms.

The report recommended the setting up of a Truth Commission which will have its own independent investigating unit without the participation of the TID. Since it is not a judicial body, the Truth Commission should not be allowed to grant amnesty.

The Truth Commission should have a fixed term, at the end of which, it should submit a report. The implementation of its recommendations must be monitored and made public through a periodic Action Taken Report.

The CTFRM stressed the importance of awarding of Reparations or compensation to the victims of rights violation. But it added that reparations are not a substitute for the finding of the truth and securing justice through criminal prosecution.

The reparations must be innovative and creative, and must include facilities for education and employment. They must be well targeted keeping in view the vulnerability of the victim and the nature of the crime. Reparations could be one-off payments or longer term, depending on the need of the victims.

The CTFRM wholeheartedly supported the victims right to mourn their dead and recommended that they be given the right to put up or preserve memorials. And where these had been demolished or built upon, the new structures should be removed.

The State could have memorials for its dead, but these memorials should have a collective ownership and the victims should be consulted in the process of constructing them, the report said.

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTFRM) has recommended that the proposed Judicial Mechanism (JM) to try cases of war crimes have at least one foreign judge in every bench. But it made it a point to add that the majority of the judges will be Sri Lankan. In the report made public on Thursday, the CTFRM said that this recommendation is in line with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution of 2015 which Sri Lanka co-sponsored. Manori MuttetuwegamaThe CTFRM, headed by Manori Muttetuwegama, also recommended the participation of foreign personnel in investigation and prosecution. But the foreign personnel should first be vetted in terms of experience, integrity, and knowledge of local languages and social customs. It said that the Special Court or Judicial Mechanism should have its own investigating team which should exclude personnel of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) to avoid pre-judging of issues. On the constitution of the national or Sri Lankan element in the Judicial Mechanism, the CTFRM said that it should reflect gender difference and Sri Lankas ethnic diversity. The Special Court should not give amnesty in cases of grave violations of war crimes and international human rights laws, and grave crimes like rape. The CTFM said that in the Office of Missing Persons to be set up, there should be international personnel to ensure impartiality. The report said, however, that foreign personnel in the various mechanisms should be phased out as and when the victims gain confidence in the impartiality of Sri Lankans on the mechanisms. The report recommended the setting up of a Truth Commission which will have its own independent investigating unit without the participation of the TID. Since it is not a judicial body, the Truth Commission should not be allowed to grant amnesty. The Truth Commission should have a fixed term, at the end of which, it should submit a report. The implementation of its recommendations must be monitored and made public through a periodic Action Taken Report. The CTFRM stressed the importance of awarding of Reparations or compensation to the victims of rights violation. But it added that reparations are not a substitute for the finding of the truth and securing justice through criminal prosecution. The reparations must be innovative and creative, and must include facilities for education and employment. They must be well targeted keeping in view the vulnerability of the victim and the nature of the crime. Reparations could be one-off payments or longer term, depending on the need of the victims. The CTFRM wholeheartedly supported the victims right to mourn their dead and recommended that they be given the right to put up or preserve memorials. And where these had been demolished or built upon, the new structures should be removed. The State could have memorials for its dead, but these memorials should have a collective ownership and the victims should be consulted in the process of constructing them, the report said.
By Associated Press

IRAQ: The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone.

The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

The militants' fanaticism devastated one of the Middle East's most important archaeological sites. But more than a month after the militants were driven out, Nimrud is still being ravaged, its treasures disappearing, imperiling any chance of eventually rebuilding it, an Associated Press team found after multiple visits last month.

With the government and military still absorbed in fighting the war against the Islamic State group in nearby Mosul, the wreckage of the Assyrian Empire's ancient capital lies unprotected and vulnerable to looters.

"When I heard about Nimrud, my heart wept before my eyes did," said Hiba Hazim Hamad, an archaeology professor in Mosul who often took her students there.

In three of the AP's four visits, its team wandered the ruins alone freely for up to an hour before anyone arrived. No one is assigned to guard the site, much less catalog the fragments.

Toppled stone slabs bearing a relief that the AP saw on one visit were gone when it returned.

Perhaps the only vigilant guardian left is an Iraqi archaeologist, Layla Salih. She has visited multiple times, photographing the wreckage to document it and badgering militias to watch over it. Walking through the ruins on a rainy winter day, she pointed out things that were no longer in place.

Still, Salih finds reasons for optimism.

"The good thing is the rubble is still in situ," she said. "The site is restorable."

To an untrained eye, that's hard to imagine, seeing the destruction caused by the Islamic State group. Salih estimated 60 percent of the site was irrecoverable.

The site's palaces and temples were spread over 360 hectares (900 acres) on a dirt plateau on the edge of the Tigris River valley.

A 140-foot-high ziggurat once arrested the gaze of anyone entering Nimrud. Now there is only lumpy earth. Archaeologists had never had a chance to explore the now-bulldozed structure.

Past it, in the palace of King Ashurnasirpal II, walls are toppled into giant piles of bricks. The palace's courtyard is a field of cratered earth. Pieces of the two monumental winged bulls are piled nearby  their heads missing, likely taken to be sold.

Off to the left are the flattened remains of the temple of Nabu, a god of writing. During a Dec. 14 UNESCO assessment tour, a U.N. demining expert peered at a hole leading to a seemingly intact tomb and warned that it could be rigged to explode.

From 879-709 BC, Nimrud was the capital of the Assyrians, one the ancient world's earliest empires. In modern excavations , the site yielded a wealth of Mesopotamian art. In the tombs of queens were found troves of gold and jewelry. Hundreds of written tablets deepened knowledge about the ancient Mideast.

Touring the site, UNESCO's representative to Iraq, Louise Haxthausen, called the destruction "absolutely devastating."

"The most important thing right now is to ensure some basic protection," she said.

But the government has many priorities. It is still fighting IS in Mosul, and the list of reconstruction needs is long.

Tens of thousands of citizens live in camps. Much of the city of Ramadi is destroyed. More than 70 mass graves have been unearthed in IS territory. Other ancient sites remain under IS control.

None of the various armed groups around Nimrud  whether the military or various militias  has been dedicated to guarding it.

During the UNESCO tour, Salih noticed that some of the ancient bricks from the rubble had been neatly piled up as if to be hauled away  perhaps, she suspects, to repair homes damaged in fighting. Stone tiles at the palace entrance vanished from where she saw them last.

Two locals were arrested with a marble tablet and stone seal from Nimrud, presumably to sell. The men are in custody.

But it's unclear where the artifacts seized from them are.

The police insisted they were at a lab in the northern city of Irbil. The lab said it knew nothing about them. The Antiquities Ministry in Baghdad said they were safe in the Nineveh government offices. An official there said they were with the police awaiting transit to Baghdad.

That circle of confusion makes theft easy.

Salih is seeking international funding to pay someone to guard the site. But she recognizes the job will have to go to one of the militia factions, and she has no illusions they will provide full protection.

She'll have to cajole them into doing as much as they can.

"There isn't another choice, as you see," she said.

IRAQ: The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone. The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed. The militants' fanaticism devastated one of the Middle East's most important archaeological sites. But more than a month after the militants were driven out, Nimrud is still being ravaged, its treasures disappearing, imperiling any chance of eventually rebuilding it, an Associated Press team found after multiple visits last month. With the government and military still absorbed in fighting the war against the Islamic State group in nearby Mosul, the wreckage of the Assyrian Empire's ancient capital lies unprotected and vulnerable to looters. "When I heard about Nimrud, my heart wept before my eyes did," said Hiba Hazim Hamad, an archaeology professor in Mosul who often took her students there. In three of the AP's four visits, its team wandered the ruins alone freely for up to an hour before anyone arrived. No one is assigned to guard the site, much less catalog the fragments. Toppled stone slabs bearing a relief that the AP saw on one visit were gone when it returned. Perhaps the only vigilant guardian left is an Iraqi archaeologist, Layla Salih. She has visited multiple times, photographing the wreckage to document it and badgering militias to watch over it. Walking through the ruins on a rainy winter day, she pointed out things that were no longer in place. Still, Salih finds reasons for optimism. "The good thing is the rubble is still in situ," she said. "The site is restorable." To an untrained eye, that's hard to imagine, seeing the destruction caused by the Islamic State group. Salih estimated 60 percent of the site was irrecoverable. The site's palaces and temples were spread over 360 hectares (900 acres) on a dirt plateau on the edge of the Tigris River valley. A 140-foot-high ziggurat once arrested the gaze of anyone entering Nimrud. Now there is only lumpy earth. Archaeologists had never had a chance to explore the now-bulldozed structure. Past it, in the palace of King Ashurnasirpal II, walls are toppled into giant piles of bricks. The palace's courtyard is a field of cratered earth. Pieces of the two monumental winged bulls are piled nearby  their heads missing, likely taken to be sold. Off to the left are the flattened remains of the temple of Nabu, a god of writing. During a Dec. 14 UNESCO assessment tour, a U.N. demining expert peered at a hole leading to a seemingly intact tomb and warned that it could be rigged to explode. From 879-709 BC, Nimrud was the capital of the Assyrians, one the ancient world's earliest empires. In modern excavations , the site yielded a wealth of Mesopotamian art. In the tombs of queens were found troves of gold and jewelry. Hundreds of written tablets deepened knowledge about the ancient Mideast. Touring the site, UNESCO's representative to Iraq, Louise Haxthausen, called the destruction "absolutely devastating." "The most important thing right now is to ensure some basic protection," she said. But the government has many priorities. It is still fighting IS in Mosul, and the list of reconstruction needs is long. Tens of thousands of citizens live in camps. Much of the city of Ramadi is destroyed. More than 70 mass graves have been unearthed in IS territory. Other ancient sites remain under IS control. None of the various armed groups around Nimrud  whether the military or various militias  has been dedicated to guarding it. During the UNESCO tour, Salih noticed that some of the ancient bricks from the rubble had been neatly piled up as if to be hauled away  perhaps, she suspects, to repair homes damaged in fighting. Stone tiles at the palace entrance vanished from where she saw them last. Two locals were arrested with a marble tablet and stone seal from Nimrud, presumably to sell. The men are in custody. But it's unclear where the artifacts seized from them are. The police insisted they were at a lab in the northern city of Irbil. The lab said it knew nothing about them. The Antiquities Ministry in Baghdad said they were safe in the Nineveh government offices. An official there said they were with the police awaiting transit to Baghdad. That circle of confusion makes theft easy. Salih is seeking international funding to pay someone to guard the site. But she recognizes the job will have to go to one of the militia factions, and she has no illusions they will provide full protection. She'll have to cajole them into doing as much as they can. "There isn't another choice, as you see," she said.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: Brushing aside Donald Trump's dismissiveness, the nation's intelligence chief insisted Thursday that U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an "existential threat" to the nation.

Did Russian hacking sway the results? There's no way for U.S. agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, "The intelligence community can't gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made." But he did say Russian hacking "did not change any vote tallies."

Clapper's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence community's standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.

That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the U.S. intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference.

Shortly after Thursday's hearing, news leaked that Trump would soon name former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana to replace Clapper after the new president takes office.

The intelligence agencies' classified report, which was shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russia's interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the U.S. intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details are included in the classified report.

In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the U.S. was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails.

"We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement," Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russia's interference was aimed at helping Trump win.

An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That version, expected to be a fraction of the length of the classified one, is not likely to answer all the questions about Russia's actions. Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper told the senators. "And so we'll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here."

Clapper was less shy about declaring Russia "an existential threat to the United States." That's strong rhetoric that harkens back to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, language Obama has avoided. For his part, Trump has embraced the possibility of warmer U.S.-Russian ties.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russia's actions constituted an "act of war." The intelligence director said that was "a very heavy policy call," more appropriate for others in the government to decide.

Obama announced sanctions against Russia late last year, a move Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said was akin to throwing a pebble.

"I'm ready to throw a rock," Graham said.

The GOP is divided over how to deal with Russia. Once Trump takes office, he is certain to face opposition from Democrats as well as some in his own party regarding his posture toward Russia.

Trump has criticized U.S. intelligence findings, even citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails.

But in new tweets early Thursday, he backed away and blamed the "dishonest media" for portraying him as agreeing with Assange, whose organization has been under criminal investigation for its role in classified information leaks. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump wrote.

In fact, Trump has been skeptical to the point of dismissive about the certainty of the assessment of Russian hacking, bringing up past failures, specifically intelligence reporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war there.

Trump has derided the intelligence community on Twitter, his comments widely reported by The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Clapper said Thursday, "I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers  to include policymaker No. 1  should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama is confident that the intelligence assessment on Russia is "unvarnished."

"The president has insisted that the intelligence community should not hesitate to present to the president what could be considered bad news, because a whitewashed assessment doesn't serve anybody well," Earnest said. He added that anyone who consumes intelligence "using rose-colored reading glasses is not going to be able to make good decisions."

WASHINGTON: Brushing aside Donald Trump's dismissiveness, the nation's intelligence chief insisted Thursday that U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an "existential threat" to the nation. Did Russian hacking sway the results? There's no way for U.S. agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, "The intelligence community can't gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made." But he did say Russian hacking "did not change any vote tallies." Clapper's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence community's standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief. That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the U.S. intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference. Shortly after Thursday's hearing, news leaked that Trump would soon name former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana to replace Clapper after the new president takes office. The intelligence agencies' classified report, which was shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russia's interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details. The Washington Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the U.S. intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details are included in the classified report. In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the U.S. was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails. "We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement," Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russia's interference was aimed at helping Trump win. An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That version, expected to be a fraction of the length of the classified one, is not likely to answer all the questions about Russia's actions. Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities. "I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper told the senators. "And so we'll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here." Clapper was less shy about declaring Russia "an existential threat to the United States." That's strong rhetoric that harkens back to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, language Obama has avoided. For his part, Trump has embraced the possibility of warmer U.S.-Russian ties. Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russia's actions constituted an "act of war." The intelligence director said that was "a very heavy policy call," more appropriate for others in the government to decide. Obama announced sanctions against Russia late last year, a move Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said was akin to throwing a pebble. "I'm ready to throw a rock," Graham said. The GOP is divided over how to deal with Russia. Once Trump takes office, he is certain to face opposition from Democrats as well as some in his own party regarding his posture toward Russia. Trump has criticized U.S. intelligence findings, even citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails. But in new tweets early Thursday, he backed away and blamed the "dishonest media" for portraying him as agreeing with Assange, whose organization has been under criminal investigation for its role in classified information leaks. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump wrote. In fact, Trump has been skeptical to the point of dismissive about the certainty of the assessment of Russian hacking, bringing up past failures, specifically intelligence reporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war there. Trump has derided the intelligence community on Twitter, his comments widely reported by The Associated Press and other news organizations. Clapper said Thursday, "I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers  to include policymaker No. 1  should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement." White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama is confident that the intelligence assessment on Russia is "unvarnished." "The president has insisted that the intelligence community should not hesitate to present to the president what could be considered bad news, because a whitewashed assessment doesn't serve anybody well," Earnest said. He added that anyone who consumes intelligence "using rose-colored reading glasses is not going to be able to make good decisions."
By PTI

JERUSALEM: Israeli police have questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in four days on suspicion of graft as a "possible criminal suspect" who received "improper benefits" from businessmen including a prominent Hollywood movie producer.

A police statement said that Netanyahu was questioned for over five hours under caution at his Jerusalem residence over allegations he illegally accepted gifts from wealthy foreign businessmen as well as over another corruption affair, which some Hebrew media reports have said is more "serious". Investigators have kept a tight lid on the other case.

Police confirmed they have interrogated a second suspect, whose identity was not revealed. The 67-year-old Netanyahu tried to play down the development telling his critics, "don't celebrate yet", hours before he was to be questioned earlier on Monday. "Nothing will come (of the probe) and you will continue to spew out hot air," the prime minister said mockingly. In a three-hour interrogation session with police on Monday, the Israeli premier admitted that he had received gifts from businessmen, but insisted they were entirely legal, his lawyer said.

Hebrew media reported that police are investigating suspicions that Netanyahu and his wife Sara illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands of shekels and champagne from American-Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Milchan, famous for his films 'Fight Club' and 'Pretty Woman', is close to the Netanyahu family. Channel 2 news reported last evening that Netanyahu received the cigars from Milchan over the last 7-8 years. Sara reportedly received bottles of pink champagne worth hundreds of shekels apiece during that period. Netanyahu is known as a connoisseur of fine cigars and the channel pointed out rumours that he smokes tens of thousands of shekels worth of them each month. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is overseeing the investigation against Netanyahu, has said the premier is suspected of "receiving improper benefits from businessmen".

A statement issued by Mandelblit earlier this week said that police found enough evidence to support the questioning of the prime minister as a "possible criminal suspect". The statement chronicled the inquiry but did not provide details of the nature of suspicions in the graft case. The police has been examining "a long list of claims" against the premier since July, Mandelblit said. Israeli police is said to have interrogated witnesses abroad as well as in Israel about the graft case against Netanyahu and his family.

JERUSALEM: Israeli police have questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in four days on suspicion of graft as a "possible criminal suspect" who received "improper benefits" from businessmen including a prominent Hollywood movie producer. A police statement said that Netanyahu was questioned for over five hours under caution at his Jerusalem residence over allegations he illegally accepted gifts from wealthy foreign businessmen as well as over another corruption affair, which some Hebrew media reports have said is more "serious". Investigators have kept a tight lid on the other case. Police confirmed they have interrogated a second suspect, whose identity was not revealed. The 67-year-old Netanyahu tried to play down the development telling his critics, "don't celebrate yet", hours before he was to be questioned earlier on Monday. "Nothing will come (of the probe) and you will continue to spew out hot air," the prime minister said mockingly. In a three-hour interrogation session with police on Monday, the Israeli premier admitted that he had received gifts from businessmen, but insisted they were entirely legal, his lawyer said. Hebrew media reported that police are investigating suspicions that Netanyahu and his wife Sara illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands of shekels and champagne from American-Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. Milchan, famous for his films 'Fight Club' and 'Pretty Woman', is close to the Netanyahu family. Channel 2 news reported last evening that Netanyahu received the cigars from Milchan over the last 7-8 years. Sara reportedly received bottles of pink champagne worth hundreds of shekels apiece during that period. Netanyahu is known as a connoisseur of fine cigars and the channel pointed out rumours that he smokes tens of thousands of shekels worth of them each month. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is overseeing the investigation against Netanyahu, has said the premier is suspected of "receiving improper benefits from businessmen". A statement issued by Mandelblit earlier this week said that police found enough evidence to support the questioning of the prime minister as a "possible criminal suspect". The statement chronicled the inquiry but did not provide details of the nature of suspicions in the graft case. The police has been examining "a long list of claims" against the premier since July, Mandelblit said. Israeli police is said to have interrogated witnesses abroad as well as in Israel about the graft case against Netanyahu and his family.
Express News Service

COLOMBO: In the context of the raging controversy over the grant of 80 per cent stake in the Hambantota port to the Chinese state-owned China Merchant Ports Holding Company, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has said that there is no such agreement and that any agreement his government will sign will be in the countrys interest and transparent.

As of late, there has been a massive opposition towards the Hambantota Port and the Industrial Zone there. I must say very clearly that nearly two years ago, the people of this country elected me as its chief servant with the trust they had in me. Therefore, for the sake of my motherland and the people I will leave no room for that trust to be broken. This agreement on the Hambantota Port and Industrial Zone that is spoken of so much, has not even been formulated as yet, the President said on January 5.



A day after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that there is no problem over the grant of 80 per cent stake to the Chinese company, Minister for Strategic Development Malik Samarawickrama said that the deal is yet to be fully negotiated and that the aim is to sign all the eight or nine agreements by the end of January.



He hinted that there could be changes in the 80 per cent stake the government had committed to give through the already signed Framework Agreement.



But contradicting this, the cabinet spokesman, Rajitha Senaratne, said that 80 per cent will be given to the Chinese company. He was reiterating Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghes assertion that there is no problem about giving 80 pe rcent.

Speaking to Express on the controversy, the head of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Prof. G.L.Peiris said that the Hambantota port affair shows that there is complete confusion in the government at the highest levels. People wonder if there is a government in Sri Lanka, he added.



Protesting against the deal, the Joint Opposition leader Dinesh Gunawardena and several other MPs wrote to the President calling for a review.

The letter said that in September 2014, under the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), had entered into an agreement with the China Merchant Holdings (International) Company Ltd and the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd, to lease the Hambantota Port (Phase II) on a Supply, Operate and Transfer (SOT) basis for 35 years.

With the change in government in 2015, this agreement was nullified on the grounds that the US$ 1.4 billion could not be repaid.

The China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd. and China Merchant Ports Holding Company Ltd. tendered separate proposals. But the criteria for their selection were not defined.

The China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd proposed an initial payment of approximately USD 730 million for a 50-year lease period, during which, a payment structure similar to a royalty was proposed, which made the value of this proposal USD 1.5 billion. This was reported as the option preferred by the SLPA, as it would have benefitted it and the country.

But the proposal selected was that of the China Merchant Ports Holding Company for a one-time payment of USD 1.08 billion, and a 99-year lease, extendable for a further 99 years, which landed the Wickremesinghe government in deep trouble.

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna leader Prof. Peiris told Express on Friday that given the 15-year tax holiday, the country will be denying itself valuable income from the port.

COLOMBO: In the context of the raging controversy over the grant of 80 per cent stake in the Hambantota port to the Chinese state-owned China Merchant Ports Holding Company, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has said that there is no such agreement and that any agreement his government will sign will be in the countrys interest and transparent. As of late, there has been a massive opposition towards the Hambantota Port and the Industrial Zone there. I must say very clearly that nearly two years ago, the people of this country elected me as its chief servant with the trust they had in me. Therefore, for the sake of my motherland and the people I will leave no room for that trust to be broken. This agreement on the Hambantota Port and Industrial Zone that is spoken of so much, has not even been formulated as yet, the President said on January 5. A day after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that there is no problem over the grant of 80 per cent stake to the Chinese company, Minister for Strategic Development Malik Samarawickrama said that the deal is yet to be fully negotiated and that the aim is to sign all the eight or nine agreements by the end of January. He hinted that there could be changes in the 80 per cent stake the government had committed to give through the already signed Framework Agreement. But contradicting this, the cabinet spokesman, Rajitha Senaratne, said that 80 per cent will be given to the Chinese company. He was reiterating Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghes assertion that there is no problem about giving 80 pe rcent. Speaking to Express on the controversy, the head of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Prof. G.L.Peiris said that the Hambantota port affair shows that there is complete confusion in the government at the highest levels. People wonder if there is a government in Sri Lanka, he added. Protesting against the deal, the Joint Opposition leader Dinesh Gunawardena and several other MPs wrote to the President calling for a review. The letter said that in September 2014, under the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), had entered into an agreement with the China Merchant Holdings (International) Company Ltd and the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd, to lease the Hambantota Port (Phase II) on a Supply, Operate and Transfer (SOT) basis for 35 years. With the change in government in 2015, this agreement was nullified on the grounds that the US$ 1.4 billion could not be repaid. The China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd. and China Merchant Ports Holding Company Ltd. tendered separate proposals. But the criteria for their selection were not defined. The China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd proposed an initial payment of approximately USD 730 million for a 50-year lease period, during which, a payment structure similar to a royalty was proposed, which made the value of this proposal USD 1.5 billion. This was reported as the option preferred by the SLPA, as it would have benefitted it and the country. But the proposal selected was that of the China Merchant Ports Holding Company for a one-time payment of USD 1.08 billion, and a 99-year lease, extendable for a further 99 years, which landed the Wickremesinghe government in deep trouble. Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna leader Prof. Peiris told Express on Friday that given the 15-year tax holiday, the country will be denying itself valuable income from the port.
By PTI

NEW YORK: A 28-year-old man hurled anti- Indian remarks and punched two women in subway stations here in Queens, during separate attacks that authorities are investigating as hate crimes, police said today.

Arana Sherlock is being sought by authorities for the racially-charged attacks that began on December 8 morning inside the 88th St. station in Ozone Park, police said. Sherlock approached an 18-year-old woman, hurled anti- Indian remarks at her and punched her in the face. He then fled the station, New York Daily News quoted officials as saying.

Yesterday around 12:30 pm, Sherlock offered to swipe a 30-year-old woman into the Jamaica-179th St. station in exchange for money, police said. When the woman declined his offer, Sherlock made an anti- Indian comment and punched her in the back of the head, according to police. The woman was knocked off her feet and struck her head on the ground.

Sherlock again fled the station, and paramedics treated the woman at the scene, the report said.

Police have released a photo of Sherlock, and are asking the public's help finding him. He is described as 6-feet-tall and 91 kg with a skin condition on his face. He was last seen wearing a blue jacket, blue jeans and boots.

NEW YORK: A 28-year-old man hurled anti- Indian remarks and punched two women in subway stations here in Queens, during separate attacks that authorities are investigating as hate crimes, police said today. Arana Sherlock is being sought by authorities for the racially-charged attacks that began on December 8 morning inside the 88th St. station in Ozone Park, police said. Sherlock approached an 18-year-old woman, hurled anti- Indian remarks at her and punched her in the face. He then fled the station, New York Daily News quoted officials as saying. Yesterday around 12:30 pm, Sherlock offered to swipe a 30-year-old woman into the Jamaica-179th St. station in exchange for money, police said. When the woman declined his offer, Sherlock made an anti- Indian comment and punched her in the back of the head, according to police. The woman was knocked off her feet and struck her head on the ground. Sherlock again fled the station, and paramedics treated the woman at the scene, the report said. Police have released a photo of Sherlock, and are asking the public's help finding him. He is described as 6-feet-tall and 91 kg with a skin condition on his face. He was last seen wearing a blue jacket, blue jeans and boots.
By PTI

WASHIGTON: The United States killed about 20 Al-Qaeda militants this week in air strikes in northwestern Syria, the Defense Department has said.

US warplanes conducted two air strikes, Sunday and Tuesday, near Sarmada in Idlib province, the Pentagon said yesterday. The attacks had been reported by local sources.

According to those sources, the air strikes were aimed at Fateh al-Sham Front, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, that officially severed ties with the jihadist network in July.

But for the Pentagon, the US assault near the city of Sarmada was aimed squarely at the "foreign terrorist fighter network" of Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda leaders "directed terrorist operations out of this location," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said yesterday at a news conference.

"We will continue to take action to deny any safe haven for Al-Qaeda in Syria," he said.

Northwestern Idlib province is largely controlled by Fateh al-Sham and rebel groups allied with it.

Fateh al-Sham is excluded from the current ceasefire in Syria between the government and rebels that was brokered last week by regime backer Russia and rebel sponsor Turkey.

The tenuous ceasefire, which took effect on December 30, is part of efforts to resolve nearly six years of war in Syria, which has been ravaged by violence since an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

According to the Pentagon, the US air strike on Sunday targeted two vehicles and killed five Al-Qaeda militants.

Tuesday's strike killed more than 15 militants and destroyed six vehicles, Cook said.

"We will not allow Al-Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the United States or its allies around the world," he said. "These strikes demonstrate that commitment."

The United States added Hamza bin Laden, son and would-be heir of Osama bin Laden, to its terrorist blacklist yesterday.

The younger bin Laden has become active as an Al-Qaeda propagandist since his father's death at the hands of US special forces in 2011 in Pakistan.

WASHIGTON: The United States killed about 20 Al-Qaeda militants this week in air strikes in northwestern Syria, the Defense Department has said. US warplanes conducted two air strikes, Sunday and Tuesday, near Sarmada in Idlib province, the Pentagon said yesterday. The attacks had been reported by local sources. According to those sources, the air strikes were aimed at Fateh al-Sham Front, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, that officially severed ties with the jihadist network in July. But for the Pentagon, the US assault near the city of Sarmada was aimed squarely at the "foreign terrorist fighter network" of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda leaders "directed terrorist operations out of this location," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said yesterday at a news conference. "We will continue to take action to deny any safe haven for Al-Qaeda in Syria," he said. Northwestern Idlib province is largely controlled by Fateh al-Sham and rebel groups allied with it. Fateh al-Sham is excluded from the current ceasefire in Syria between the government and rebels that was brokered last week by regime backer Russia and rebel sponsor Turkey. The tenuous ceasefire, which took effect on December 30, is part of efforts to resolve nearly six years of war in Syria, which has been ravaged by violence since an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. According to the Pentagon, the US air strike on Sunday targeted two vehicles and killed five Al-Qaeda militants. Tuesday's strike killed more than 15 militants and destroyed six vehicles, Cook said. "We will not allow Al-Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the United States or its allies around the world," he said. "These strikes demonstrate that commitment." The United States added Hamza bin Laden, son and would-be heir of Osama bin Laden, to its terrorist blacklist yesterday. The younger bin Laden has become active as an Al-Qaeda propagandist since his father's death at the hands of US special forces in 2011 in Pakistan.
By AFP

WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives voted Thursday to condemn a UN resolution reprimanding Israel over its settlement activity, blasting last month's move by the international body as "an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace."

The congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations.

Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote instead of vetoing the UN resolution, essentially clearing the way for its passage.

"I am stunned at what happened last month. This government -- our government -- abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the chamber shortly before the House vote.

"It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN," he added. "It's time to rebuild our partnership" with the Jewish state.

White House aides have said that while Obama is a firm supporter of Israel, he felt that after eight years he had simply run out of ways to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel building on Palestinian land is sabotaging hopes for peace.

The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation.

It also demands that the United States ensures that no action be taken at the Paris Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict scheduled for January 15, that would impose an agreement on the two sides.

The French-organized talks, to be attended by around 70 countries -- but not by Israeli or Palestinian representatives -- are being held to reiterate international support for a two-state solution to the conflict.

A similar bipartisan resolution was introduced in the US Senate, where Republican Ted Cruz on Thursday slammed Obama and his administration, saying the failure to veto the UN measure marked their attempt "to lash out... at Israel with their last breath in office."

Cruz said he will propose legislation designed to cut US funding to the United Nations unless the anti-Israel resolution is repealed or made more balanced.

But some congressional Democrats insisted the Capitol Hill vote had more to do with taking a final jab at Obama than condemning his administration's lack of action.

"It's subterfuge. This is about kicking a president on the way out, one more time," fumed House Democrat Gerry Connolly, who voted no on the resolution.

WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives voted Thursday to condemn a UN resolution reprimanding Israel over its settlement activity, blasting last month's move by the international body as "an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace." The congressional measure passed 342 to 80, with broad bipartisan support. It noted in particular that the US administration's refusal to veto the controversial Security Council measure "undermined" Washington's decades-long position of opposing anti-Israel action at the United Nations. Incensed US lawmakers -- and President-elect Donald Trump -- have assailed Barack Obama's outgoing administration for abstaining in the December 23 vote instead of vetoing the UN resolution, essentially clearing the way for its passage. "I am stunned at what happened last month. This government -- our government -- abandoned our ally Israel when she needed us the most," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the chamber shortly before the House vote. "It is time to repair the damage done by this misguided hit job at the UN," he added. "It's time to rebuild our partnership" with the Jewish state. White House aides have said that while Obama is a firm supporter of Israel, he felt that after eight years he had simply run out of ways to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel building on Palestinian land is sabotaging hopes for peace. The House measure, which is non-binding, calls for the UN resolution "to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that... it is no longer one-sided and anti-Israel" and allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution to be resolved through direct bilateral negotiation. It also demands that the United States ensures that no action be taken at the Paris Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict scheduled for January 15, that would impose an agreement on the two sides. The French-organized talks, to be attended by around 70 countries -- but not by Israeli or Palestinian representatives -- are being held to reiterate international support for a two-state solution to the conflict. A similar bipartisan resolution was introduced in the US Senate, where Republican Ted Cruz on Thursday slammed Obama and his administration, saying the failure to veto the UN measure marked their attempt "to lash out... at Israel with their last breath in office." Cruz said he will propose legislation designed to cut US funding to the United Nations unless the anti-Israel resolution is repealed or made more balanced. But some congressional Democrats insisted the Capitol Hill vote had more to do with taking a final jab at Obama than condemning his administration's lack of action. "It's subterfuge. This is about kicking a president on the way out, one more time," fumed House Democrat Gerry Connolly, who voted no on the resolution.
By AFP

FORT LAUDERDALE: The Latest on the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport (all times local):

7:45 p.m.

A law enforcement official says the Florida airport gunman told the FBI in November that the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch Islamic State group videos.

The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke Friday on condition of anonymity.

The official says agents in Anchorage completed their interview with 26-year-old Esteban Santiago and called the police, who took him for a mental health evaluation.

The FBI's Anchorage field office said in a statement that it was aware Santiago was an Anchorage resident and that it was assisting in the investigation, but it declined to comment further.

__

6:45 p.m.

An authority says the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport flew out of Anchorage, Alaska.

Jesse Davis is chief of police at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He told The Associated Press that 26-year-old Esteban Santiago flew out of Anchorage, Alaska, on a 9:52 p.m. Delta flight Thursday, and that a firearm was his only piece of checked luggage. He says Santiago flew from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul and on to Fort Lauderdale.

Davis said Santiago didn't call attention to himself and "as far as we can tell" traveled alone, but he said the investigation is ongoing.

Authorities are trying to track Santiago's movements through Alaska's largest commercial airport using video footage.

Davis noted that it's not usual for travelers at the Alaska airport to check firearms because many people hunt.

___

5:45 p.m.

A military spokeswoman says the suspect in a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport received a general discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance.

Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead did not release details about 26-year-old Esteban Santiago's discharge in August 2016. Olmstead said that he joined the Guard in November 2014.

Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla.

Olmstead also said that Santiago had served in the Army Reserves prior to joining the Alaska Army National Guard.

__

5:45 p.m.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport and is asking people to pray for the families of those slain and wounded in a mass shooting at a baggage claim area.

Scott said Friday during a news conference that he had reached out and spoken several times to President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence and they promised to help with whatever resources the state needs.

Trump doesn't officially take over the White until later this month, so it's not clear what sort of federal resources he could authorize.

Scott, a Republican like Trump and Pence, said he didn't call President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and he hadn't spoken with him.

White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price says Obama was briefed about the shooting and will be kept updated.

Scott did not answer questions about gun rights, instead saying it was not the time to be political.

___

5:30 p.m.

The brother of the man who has been tentatively named as the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport says the suspect had been receiving psychological treatment while living in Alaska.

Bryan Santiago tells The Associated Press that his family got a call in recent months from 26-year-old Esteban Santiago's girlfriend alerting them to the situation.

Bryan Santiago said he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the phone.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico when he was 2 years old. He said Esteban Santiago grew up in the southern coastal town of Penuelas and served with the island's National Guard for a couple of years. Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that the gunman was carrying a military ID that identified him as Esteban Santiago, but that it was unclear whether the ID was his. Nelson gave no further information on the suspect.

___

5 p.m.

A spokeswoman from the Canadian Embassy says the suspect in the shooting at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale has no connection to the country and did not fly to Florida from there.

Embassy spokeswoman Christine Constantin said in an email to The Associated Press that the suspect did not travel from Canada and was not on an Air Canada flight. She says the suspect has no connection to Canada.

The shooting happened at the airport's terminal 2, where Air Canada and Delta operate flights. Five were killed and eight wounded.

Constantin's email says, "We understand from officials he was on a flight originating in Anchorage, transiting through Minneapolis and landing in Ft. Lauderdale."

___

3:35 p.m.

A county official says the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter pulled a gun out of a checked bag, loaded in a bathroom and started shooting, killing five people and wounding at least eight.

Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner, was briefed on the airport shooting by Broward Sheriff's office. He told The Associated Press by phone that the shooter was a passenger on a Canadian flight and had checked a gun.

LaMarca says the shooter pulled out the gun in the bathroom after claiming his bag.

Sheriff Scott Israel says the gunman was not harmed and that law enforcement did not fire any shots. He says it is not yet known if the shooting was an act of terror.

Israel also says there was nothing to substantiate reports of a second shooting at the airport.

___

3:15 p.m.

A passenger says he heard the first gunshots as he picked up his luggage from a baggage claim carousel in a shooting at a Florida airport that left five dead and eight wounded.

John Schilcher told Fox News the person next to him fell to the ground Friday. He says other people started falling, and he then dropped to the ground with his wife and mother-in-law. Schilcher says "the firing just went on and on."

He says the shooter emptied his weapon and reloaded during an eerily quiet lull in the gunfire. Schilcher says he didn't assume it was safe until he saw a police officer standing over him at the Fort Lauderdale international airport.

He says he remained on the ground and was told not to move as authorities investigated unconfirmed reports of a second shooting.

___

3 p.m.

Officials say there have been unconfirmed reports of additional shots fired at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a gunman killed five people and wounded eight there.

On Friday afternoon, the Broward County sheriff's office said on its Twitter account: "Active search: Unconfirmed reports of addt'l shots fired on airport property."

Earlier in the afternoon, the shooting stopped all traffic at the airport. Passengers were evacuated from the terminal 2 baggage claim area. Passengers returned to the airport as officials said the lone gunman was in custody. But TV reports showed some passengers evacuating again, several looking panicked and ducking behind cars or hiding.

Witness Judah Fernandez told CNN he heard what he believes were the first shots, re-entered the airport, but then rushed out again shortly later to the tarmac. He said: "Everyone's running now." He said both security officials and passengers were running.

___

2:50 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson says the Fort Lauderdale airport gunman was carrying a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago, though it's not clear if it belonged to him or to someone else.

Nelson did not spell the name for reporters during a news conference Friday. Nelson says the baggage claim area is a "soft target." The airport had initially reported an "incident" in the baggage claim area.

Authorities say five people were killed and eight wounded in the shooting.

Nelson says a motive still hasn't been determined.

___

2:30 p.m.

Authorities say five people were killed and eight were wounded after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoon's shooting.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities "have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2."

News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. Helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running."

___

1:50 p.m.

Authorities say multiple people have died after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoon's shooting.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities "have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2."

Miami area television stations reported that at least six people were shot. News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. News helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running."

FORT LAUDERDALE: The Latest on the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport (all times local): 7:45 p.m. A law enforcement official says the Florida airport gunman told the FBI in November that the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch Islamic State group videos. The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke Friday on condition of anonymity. The official says agents in Anchorage completed their interview with 26-year-old Esteban Santiago and called the police, who took him for a mental health evaluation. The FBI's Anchorage field office said in a statement that it was aware Santiago was an Anchorage resident and that it was assisting in the investigation, but it declined to comment further. __ 6:45 p.m. An authority says the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport flew out of Anchorage, Alaska. Jesse Davis is chief of police at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He told The Associated Press that 26-year-old Esteban Santiago flew out of Anchorage, Alaska, on a 9:52 p.m. Delta flight Thursday, and that a firearm was his only piece of checked luggage. He says Santiago flew from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St. Paul and on to Fort Lauderdale. Davis said Santiago didn't call attention to himself and "as far as we can tell" traveled alone, but he said the investigation is ongoing. Authorities are trying to track Santiago's movements through Alaska's largest commercial airport using video footage. Davis noted that it's not usual for travelers at the Alaska airport to check firearms because many people hunt. ___ 5:45 p.m. A military spokeswoman says the suspect in a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport received a general discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance. Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead did not release details about 26-year-old Esteban Santiago's discharge in August 2016. Olmstead said that he joined the Guard in November 2014. Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla. Olmstead also said that Santiago had served in the Army Reserves prior to joining the Alaska Army National Guard. __ 5:45 p.m. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport and is asking people to pray for the families of those slain and wounded in a mass shooting at a baggage claim area. Scott said Friday during a news conference that he had reached out and spoken several times to President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence and they promised to help with whatever resources the state needs. Trump doesn't officially take over the White until later this month, so it's not clear what sort of federal resources he could authorize. Scott, a Republican like Trump and Pence, said he didn't call President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and he hadn't spoken with him. White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price says Obama was briefed about the shooting and will be kept updated. Scott did not answer questions about gun rights, instead saying it was not the time to be political. ___ 5:30 p.m. The brother of the man who has been tentatively named as the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport says the suspect had been receiving psychological treatment while living in Alaska. Bryan Santiago tells The Associated Press that his family got a call in recent months from 26-year-old Esteban Santiago's girlfriend alerting them to the situation. Bryan Santiago said he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the phone. He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico when he was 2 years old. He said Esteban Santiago grew up in the southern coastal town of Penuelas and served with the island's National Guard for a couple of years. Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen said that Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that the gunman was carrying a military ID that identified him as Esteban Santiago, but that it was unclear whether the ID was his. Nelson gave no further information on the suspect. ___ 5 p.m. A spokeswoman from the Canadian Embassy says the suspect in the shooting at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale has no connection to the country and did not fly to Florida from there. Embassy spokeswoman Christine Constantin said in an email to The Associated Press that the suspect did not travel from Canada and was not on an Air Canada flight. She says the suspect has no connection to Canada. The shooting happened at the airport's terminal 2, where Air Canada and Delta operate flights. Five were killed and eight wounded. Constantin's email says, "We understand from officials he was on a flight originating in Anchorage, transiting through Minneapolis and landing in Ft. Lauderdale." ___ 3:35 p.m. A county official says the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter pulled a gun out of a checked bag, loaded in a bathroom and started shooting, killing five people and wounding at least eight. Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner, was briefed on the airport shooting by Broward Sheriff's office. He told The Associated Press by phone that the shooter was a passenger on a Canadian flight and had checked a gun. LaMarca says the shooter pulled out the gun in the bathroom after claiming his bag. Sheriff Scott Israel says the gunman was not harmed and that law enforcement did not fire any shots. He says it is not yet known if the shooting was an act of terror. Israel also says there was nothing to substantiate reports of a second shooting at the airport. ___ 3:15 p.m. A passenger says he heard the first gunshots as he picked up his luggage from a baggage claim carousel in a shooting at a Florida airport that left five dead and eight wounded. John Schilcher told Fox News the person next to him fell to the ground Friday. He says other people started falling, and he then dropped to the ground with his wife and mother-in-law. Schilcher says "the firing just went on and on." He says the shooter emptied his weapon and reloaded during an eerily quiet lull in the gunfire. Schilcher says he didn't assume it was safe until he saw a police officer standing over him at the Fort Lauderdale international airport. He says he remained on the ground and was told not to move as authorities investigated unconfirmed reports of a second shooting. ___ 3 p.m. Officials say there have been unconfirmed reports of additional shots fired at the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a gunman killed five people and wounded eight there. On Friday afternoon, the Broward County sheriff's office said on its Twitter account: "Active search: Unconfirmed reports of addt'l shots fired on airport property." Earlier in the afternoon, the shooting stopped all traffic at the airport. Passengers were evacuated from the terminal 2 baggage claim area. Passengers returned to the airport as officials said the lone gunman was in custody. But TV reports showed some passengers evacuating again, several looking panicked and ducking behind cars or hiding. Witness Judah Fernandez told CNN he heard what he believes were the first shots, re-entered the airport, but then rushed out again shortly later to the tarmac. He said: "Everyone's running now." He said both security officials and passengers were running. ___ 2:50 p.m. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson says the Fort Lauderdale airport gunman was carrying a military ID with the name Esteban Santiago, though it's not clear if it belonged to him or to someone else. Nelson did not spell the name for reporters during a news conference Friday. Nelson says the baggage claim area is a "soft target." The airport had initially reported an "incident" in the baggage claim area. Authorities say five people were killed and eight wounded in the shooting. Nelson says a motive still hasn't been determined. ___ 2:30 p.m. Authorities say five people were killed and eight were wounded after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport. The Broward County Sheriff's Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoon's shooting. Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities "have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2." News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. Helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene. Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running." ___ 1:50 p.m. Authorities say multiple people have died after a lone suspect opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, international airport. The Broward County Sheriff's Office tweeted the information following Friday afternoon's shooting. Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN that authorities "have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2." Miami area television stations reported that at least six people were shot. News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. News helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene. Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running."
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Assam governor lays foundation of Powergrid Capacity Development Centre in Oncology at Dr. B.Barooah Cancer Institute

Guwahati, Jan 4 : : Assam governor Banwarilal Purohit laid the foundation stone of a 'Powergrid Capacity Development Centre in Oncology' at Dr. B.Barooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati on Wednesday.





(Posted on 04 January 2017, 1667558345 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/more-news.php  (Posted on 04 January 2017, 1667558345 173O212O198O32)

Speaking on the occasion Purohit called upon the people at large to adopt life style which has the potential of developing a deterrent against diseases like cancer.Expressing concern over the alarming rise of oncology related cases in the state, Purohit said an active lifestyle coupled with total abstinence from all narcotic substances have the potential to build shield against cancer.Sending a message of caution to the people, that North East has high prevalence cases of oral, throat and lung cancer, Purohit urged upon the people to avoid tobacco in all its forms.The Governor requested the hospital authorities to take steps to bring about psychological and behavioural changes in the patients addicted to chewing and smoking tobacco which according to him would go a long way in preventing cancer.Stressing on the right kind of food for staying away from life style and food related diseases, the Assam governor advocated for organic farming and asked the people to eat healthy food to stay fit and free from diseases.He also requested B. Borooah Cancer Institute to lay emphasis on generating mass awareness for prevention and early detection of cancer.The Assam governor hailed the gesture of Powergrid Corporation of India Limited for taking the steps for the proposed Capacity Development Centre in Oncology at Dr. B. Borooah Cancer Institute which other Public Sector Undertakings should also follow.Lauding Dr. B.Barooah Cancer Institute along with its Director Dr. A. C. Kataki and other doctors, the Governor said because of the role of the Institute cancer treatment has become accessible and affordable.Synchronising with occasion the governor conferred the award of Excellence in Social Service on G.L. Agarwala, Chairman of GLP Social Circle, Guwahati. M.P.Agarwal, Managing Trustee, Nirmal MP Agarwal Trust was also felicitated for his contribution to the welfare of cancer patients.Abhay Chaudhary, Executive Director, Powergrid Corporation of India Limited, Shillong, Director of Dr. B.Barooah Cancer Institute Dr.A.C.Kataki along with a host of other dignitaries were also present in the ceremony.(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Admiral Sunil Lanba interacts with ENC personnel

Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) , Jan. 5 : Admiral Sunil Lanba, PVSM, AVSM, ADC, the Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) arrived in Visakhapatnam, on a three-day visit to the Eastern Naval Command.





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The Admiral was accompanied by Reena Lanba, President Navy Wives Welfare Association.On arrival, Admiral Lanba was briefed on the activities of the Command and later held discussions with Vice Admiral HCS Bisht, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief and other Flag Officers.Thereafter, the Admiral visited major establishments of the Command and addressed Commanding Officers, specialist officers, Master Chief Regulators and Defence Civilians in separate meetings.Reena Lanba, President, Navy Wives Welfare Association (NWWA) interacted with the Executive Committee and ladies of the Organisation, and visited NWWA facilities.
Budget date too close to polls, oppn. to knock EC's door

Kolkata (West Bengal) , Jan. 5 : A united opposition will visit the office of the Election Commission on Thursday to discuss about the date of the Budget Session.





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"Trinamool,Congress,SP,BSP,JDU,RJD & some other Oppn parties to meet Election Commission 11am. Subject : budget date too close to polls," O'Brien tweeted."Three from Trinamool to be part of Oppn party delegation to meet Election Commissioner in Delhi: Derek O'Brien, Dinesh Trivedi, Saugato Roy," he added.The Budget Session of the Parliament will begin from February 1.The session is being advanced as the government wants early allocation of funds for various schemes-- from April 1, the beginning of the financial year.The Election Commission yesterday announced seven-phase polling for 403 assembly constituencies in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, two-phase polling in Manipur and one-phase polling each in the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa respectively.Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said that the counting of votes in all the five states will take place on March 11.
President to send New Year message to Governors, Lt. Governors today

New Delhi , Jan. 5 : President Pranab Mukherjee will send a New Year message to the Governors and Lieutenant Governors of states and Union Territories through video conferencing from Rashtrapati Bhavan today.





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The message will be delivered through the National Knowledge Network (NKN) platform.The NKN project is aimed at establishing a strong and robust Indian network, capable of providing secure and reliable connectivity.
Sonia Gandhi pays obeisance on Prakash Parv

New Delhi, Jan. 5: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday paid obeisance to 10th Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Gobind Singh ji as the nation celebrates 350th Prakash Parv.





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Gandhi said that Sri Guru Gobind Singh ji was not only creator of the gracious "Khalsa," but was also a renowned spiritual master, warrior, poet and philosopher.He sacrificed his entire life at the altar of safeguarding the rights of underprivileged and fought against injustice, tyranny and social differences."It is a day to rededicate ourselves to the ideals of equality, brotherhood and compassion as epitomised by Guru Gobind Singhji, she said. His profound message of leading an honest, truthful and virtuous life continues to guide and inspire entire humanity", she said.
Canada: North York mansion gutted by fire

Toronto, Jan 5 : The multimillion-dollar house, which was being constructed on Forest Heights Boulevard, North York, Ontario was ruined by fire which broke out early morning on New Year's Day, media reports said.





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Stephan Powell, District Chief for Toronto Fire Services said that the rear of the house was fully damaged by the time they arrived, CBC News reported.He said firefighters had to protect properties on either side of the house.People could see high flames from a distance going through the roof and the houses second-storey windows and felt the heat from the blaze penetrating, reports said.More than 80 firefighters had been fighting to distinguish the blaze for two and a half hours. They began at about 1:25 a.m. Sunday which was brought under control by 4 a.m.Crews began demolition of the building early Tuesday after Powell said the structure of the building was unsafe.Powell said he was not sure if investigators have spoken to the owners.An estimate of the property damage was unavailable at that time, but damage was severe, said Powell.He also said that although the cause of fire could not be determined so early, but he did not rule out arson.I dont think anything has been ruled out, Powell told CBC Toronto, CBC News reports said.No body was reported to be injured, because during the outbreak of fire the house was believed to be unoccupied.The cause of fire at the Mansion near Bayview Avenue and Highway 401 is being investigated by the Fire Marshals Office.(Reported by Asha Bajaj, Image of building on fire: Wikipedia)
Google CEO Sundar Pichai interacts at IIT-KGP; talks machine learning, Digital India and more

New Delhi , Jan 5 : After announcing the Digital Unlocked initiative for Indian small and medium businesses (SMB), Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday visited his alma mater IIT-Kharagpur.





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Pichai, who is currently in India on a work and personal visit talked about his time at IIT-KGP and Google in addition to taking live questions.At IIT-Kharagpur, Pichai answered questions from students at an open-air theatre in the campus. The Chennai born CEO discussed his life on campus in an event titled 'A journey back to the past to inspire the future'. The event, which was attended by over 3,500 students, was streamed live by Google on YouTube.Talking about how things have changed in terms of technology, Pichai said, "The rate at which things have been progressing in India is phenomenal.""We didn't have phones back then. I remember waiting for a long time to get a rotary phone at home. Didn't have access to computers growing up. Clearly the progress has been phenomenal," added the Google CEO."I am fully confident that India will be a global player when it comes to digital economies. We are growing well as a country and will not be behind any country, even the most advanced ones when it comes to digitisation and digital economies," he said.Recalling a funny incident back in the college days Pichai said, "I didn't know Hindi too well when I came here from Chennai. I thought "abbey saale!" was a way to call out to people. I learnt Hindi in college."On being asked about how he met his better half, Pichai said, "I met Anjali at IIT-K and she was my classmate. Just to go get someone at the girl's hostel, you had to walk in the front and request someone to call them. And they'd go in and loudly say Anjali, Sundar is here. It wasn't exactly a pleasant experience," he said.Talking about how Google is working on products for the country that can be expanded globally, he said, "We look forward to cheaper smartphones in India. In the USD 30 bracket for entry level smartphones.""We at Google want to focus on usage of Internet in rural areas in India. We are big supporters of the Digital India program. We are also working on digitizing payments," added Pichai.
Goa's Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party parts ways with the ruling BJP

Panaji, Jan 5 : The Goa-based Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) of withdrew its support to BJP, the ruling party in the state, according to media reports on Thursday.





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The Election Commission on Wednesday announced dates for the Assembly polls in five states, with the Goa assembly elections scheduled for Feb 4, 2017.The central committee of the MGP met on Thursday following which party president Deepak Dhavalikar announced that MGP has decided to withdraw support to BJP in the state.He also said that the MGP is likely to contest 22 assembly seats in the upcoming election, media reported.According to media reports, the MGP is likely to forge an alliance with the Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM), led by rebel RSS member Subhash Velingkar.In Dec 2016, Goa chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar had removed PWD minister Ramkrishna Dhavalikar alias Sudin and his brother Pandurang Dhavalikar alias Deepak from the cabinet, according to media reports.The decision to drop the two ministers from the cabinet was taken by the chief minister in consultation with defence minister Manohar Parrikar and Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, who is also the in-charge of Goa BJP desk, the Times of India had reported.The MGP had entered into pre-poll alliance with the BJP in 2012 for the 40-member strong Goa Assmebly elections, when the BJP won 21 seats and the MGP.
Sonowal writes letter to Rail Ministry to put Majuli, Barpeta on rail map

Guwahati, Jan 5 : Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal shot off a letter to Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohian to immediately link Majuli and Barpeta to rail network.





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Linking Majuli and Barpeta the epicentres of Vaishnavite culture to railways has been a priority of the present State Government ever since it has come to power.It may be noted that the flow of tourists both domestic and international to Majuli and Barpeta has been hit hard as these areas are not connected to railways.Moreover, researches undertaken by several research scholars are also suffering because of connectivity issues.Considering the communication bottleneck, Sonowal has requested Rajen Gohian to ensure undertaking a survey work and immediately execute a project to bring Majuli and Barpeta into railway map.Sonowal requested the Union Railway Minister to lay railway line connecting Sorbhog- Abhyapuri, Barpeta Satra-Sarthebari Na Satra- Hajo for linking Barpeta and Gogamukh- Dhakuakhana (Sadar)- Kamalabari- Garmur for linking Majuli and Barpeta on a priority basis.The CM said that putting these Xatra towns on railway map and starting a survey work on a war footing would benefit the people.(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guru Gobind Singh espoused the cause of respect for all religions: Punjab CM

Patna, Jan 5 (TheBiharPost/IBNS): Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thursday urged all the devotees to follow the philosophy and teachings of great Sikh Guru to carve out an egalitarian society irrespective of parochial considerations of caste, color and creed.





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Addressing the gathering during a religious congregation here to commemorate the 350th birth anniversary of 10th Sikh Guru, Badal said that Sri Guru Gobind Singh ji was a true votary of socialism, human rights and religious freedom.He said that Guru Ji vehemently espoused the cause of respect for all religions and gave message to humanity against forcible religious conversions by urging his father the ninth Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib to sacrifice at the altar of righteousness (Dharma) and justice.He said that to fight against this oppression zealously, the tenth Sikh Guru created Khalsa panth to empower the poor and underprivileged people to fight against injustice and tyranny unleashed by the mighty Mughals.Badal said Guru ji always preached the lesson of oneness of God and love for humanity.http://thebiharpost.com
Army chief Bipin Rawat reaches Jammu on three-day visit

Srinagar, Jan 5 : Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat reached Rajouri district during his three-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir which began on Thursday.





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He will be visiting Udhampur, Srinagar, Nagrota and Siachen during his tour.He will also be visiting formations at Kupwara, Anantnag,Akhnoor and Rajouri where he will be briefed upon the prevailing security situation.This is the maiden visit of General Rawat to Jammu and Kashmir after taking over as Chief of Army Staff.General Rawat lauded the role of Northern Command in restoring peace and normalcy during the recent unrest.He also commended the soldiers for strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan.General Rawat has said that Every soldier of our Army plays an important role towards security of the nation. It is the contribution of every soldier that makes the Army efficient and strong.(reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
General Rawat arrives in Udhampur on a three-day tour

Udhampur (Jammu and Kashmir), Jan. 5 : Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Thursday arrived in Udhampur on a three-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir starting from today.





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He will be visiting Udhampur, Srinagar, Nagrota and Siachen during his tour.He will also be visiting formations at Kupwara, Anantnag, Akhnoor and Rajouri where he will be briefed upon the prevailing security situation and will interact with officers and men.General Rawat lauded the role of Northern Command in restoring peace and normalcy during the recent unrest. He also commended the soldiers for strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan."'Every soldier of our Army plays an important role towards security of the nation because it is the contribution of every soldier that makes the Army efficient and strong," he said.The visit assumes importance as Northern Command is the first place where General Rawat is visiting after taking over as Army Chief. He emphasised that we need to evolve a dynamic strategy to handle the proxy war and defeat enemy's nefarious designs.
President has shown truth to PM Modi: Congress

New Delhi , Jan. 5: The Congress Party on Thursday said President Pranab Mukherjee's remarks on demonetisation have shown the truth to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his decision.





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"President of India has now spoken, will Modi ji listen and will Modi ji leave his arrogance of power and recoup the losses?," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told ANI."Head of the family gives lessons to truant child, that is the kind of lesson President of India has given," he added.President Pranab Mukherjee earlier in the day said that demonetization move, while immobilizing black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy.The President was delivering the New Year message to the Governors and Lt. Governors of states and Union Territories through video conferencing from the Rashtrapati Bhavan.President Mukherjee said the government has to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term."While I appreciate the thrust on transition from entitlement approach to an entrepreneurial one for poverty alleviation, I am not too sure that the poor can wait that long," he said.He said the poor needs help, so that they can also participate actively in the national march towards a future devoid of hunger, unemployment and exploitation.He added that the recent package announced by the Prime Minister will also provide some relief.
Demonetisation may lead to temporary slowdown of economy: President

New Delhi, Jan 5 : Days after the time period for depositing banned currency notes in banks lapsed, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said demonetisation may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy.





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In his New Year message to Governors and Lt. Governors, Mukherjee said: Demonetisation, while immobilizing black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy.He said there is need for being extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor, cautioning that this section of the society may not be able to wait too long.We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term. While I appreciate the thrust on transition from entitlement approach to an entrepreneurial one for poverty alleviation, I am not too sure that the poor can wait that long, aid he.He said, They need to get succour here and now, so that they can also participate actively in the national march towards a future devoid of hunger, unemployment and exploitation.(Image:twitter.com/RashtrapatiBhvn)
Ola, Andhra Bank partner to install mobile ATMs at 104th Indian Science Congress

Tirupathi, Jan 5 : Ola, a popular mobile app for transportation, has partnered with Andhra Bank to provide mobile ATMs at the 104th Indian Science Congress in Tirupathi.





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Inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by over 10,000 scientists and participants from across the globe, the ongoing five day event, was kick started on Jan 3.The ATMs helped with providing hassle-free service pertaining to the cash needs of these scientists and other attendees. The Indian Science Congress is an annual conference cum exhibition held towards advancing and promoting the cause of science in India.This year, the Indian Science Congress is being attended by 9 Nobel Laureates, 200 scientists and 18,000 participants from countries across the world.In a city like Tirupathi where cashless payments are conducted in relatively smaller proportions, it becomes important for people attending the event to be provided with an easy, seamless cash withdrawal service. Recognizing this, Ola has stationed its cars with Andhra Bank ATMs installed to address these needs.Piyush Surana, Director - Operations at Ola said, Post the governments demonetisation initiative, it is necessary that banking and mobility sectors come together to help our customers overcome the cash crunch across the country. When it comes to people from outside the country visiting, they may not be as adept at dealing with the current cash climate in India. In order to aid the attendees of the Indian Science Congress, we are happy to have partnered with Andhra Bank to help them perform their cash withdrawals in the most efficient way possible. During the course of the five day event, the ATMs is expected to service the cash needs of over 10,000 people.Krishnamurthy Varanasi, DGM, Andhra Bank, Tirupati said, Its heartening to partner with Ola at such an important conference, where thousands of visitors and dignitaries participate from across the world. Ola has proven a great support and together, we are confident of serving the liquid cash needs of the participants during their stay in the city for the Indian Science Congress.
Genpact, Calcutta University create Financial Services Strategic Partnership

Kolkata, Jan 5 : Genpact, a global leader in digitally-powered business process management and services, on Thursday announced an agreement with Calcutta University for a consultancy and research partnership in banking and financial services analytics.





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Under this industry-academia collaboration, faculty members of Calcutta University will be empanelled as consultants with Genpact, working on the incubation of new ideas and building knowledge frameworks.With rapid digitization and the advent of big and unconventional data structures, analytics is playing a more critical role in enabling smarter decision making. In an increasingly stringent regulatory environment, the need to mitigate risk while focusing on improving operational efficiency is driving adoption of analytics across industries.In particular, the banking and financial services industry is grappling with the need for innovative analytics solutions in the constantly evolving risk and compliance processes.The partnership is designed to foster innovation in the areas of risk management and financial automation, allowing both Genpact and Calcutta University to co-develop new ideas that will facilitate smarter and quicker decision making in the area of banking and financial services analytics, said Manish Chopra, senior vice president and business leader, Risk Services, Genpact. Genpact has been actively engaged with academia in developing financial services-oriented knowledge and skills in analytics. This partnership will significantly strengthen the applied learning of analytics and foster innovation in an ecosystem of data-enabled decision-making.Experts from Genpact will partner with university faculty for the publication of joint research papers in analytics. Combining industry expertise with academic research, the collaboration will create innovative solutions that will be deployed in client engagements. It will also provide university students with hands-on experience in real-time industry issues while they assist faculty members in the research. Genpact and Calcutta University are already currently engaged in a partnership for an On-Campus Analytics program for a Masters in Economics and Statistics, which helps students develop skills and knowledge with a focus on the banking and financial services sector.This new partnership will give our faculty members more opportunities to work in tandem with the industry, and it will facilitate a sustainable mechanism for fostering industry-academia linkages, capacity building, and innovation, said Professor Ashutosh Ghosh, vice chancellor, Calcutta University.This unique collaboration of academia and industry for research will provide avenues for innovation in the world of financial analytics, said Professor Sugata Marjit, former vice chancellor, Calcutta University.
Climate change will lead to annual coral bleaching, UN-supported study predicts

New York, Jan 6 : If current trends continue and the world fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nearly all of the world's coral reefs will suffer severe bleaching - the gravest threat to one of the Earth's most important ecosystems - on annual basis, the United Nations environment agency on Thursday reported.





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The finding is part of a study funded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners, which reviewed new climate change projections to predict which corals will be affected first and at what rate. The report is published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports .Researchers found that the reefs in Taiwan and the Turks and Caicos archipelago will be among the first to experience annual bleaching, followed by reefs off the coast of Bahrain, in Chile and in French Polynesia.Calling the predictions a treasure trove for environmentalists, the head of the UN agency, Erik Solheim said the projects allow conservationists and governments to prioritize the protection reef protection.The projections show us where we still have time to act before its too late, Solheim said.On average, the reefs will start to undergo annual bleaching starting in 2014, according to the study. Without the required minimum of five years to regenerate, the annual occurrences will have a deadly effect on the corals and disrupt the ecosystems which they support.However, if Governments act on emission reduction pledges made in the Paris Agreement, which calls on countries to combat climate change and limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius, the corals would have another 11 years to adapt to the warming seas.Between 2014 and 2016, the world witnessed the longest global bleaching event recorded. Among the casualties was the Great Barrier Reef, with 90 per cent of it bleached and 20 per cent of the reefs coral killed.Photo: Kadir van Lohuizen/NOORSource: www.justearthnews.com
UN agency data on labour migration shows 160 million migrants in global workforce

New York, Jan 6 : There are about 160 million migrant workers around the world, according a recent United Nations study, which provides useful labour migration data for policy makers as they seek to make headway on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.





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Decision makers will now have real data on which to base their policies, said International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General Guy Ryder in a news release.He said that this analysis will help countries deliver on the 2030 Agendas Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly targets within Goal 8 on protecting all workers, including migrant workers, and Goal 10 on the implementation of well-managed migration policies.The report, ILO Global Estimates on Migrant Workers, found that there are 232 million international migrants, of which 206.6 million are 16 years old and up. Of this working-age migrant population, 72.7 per cent, or 160 million, are migrant workers. And 83.7 million are men and 66.6 million women.Labour migration is a phenomenon that concerns all regions of the world, however, almost half, or 48.6 per cent, of migrant workers are concentrated in two broad regions: Northern America, and Northern, Southern and Western Europe. The Arab States have the highest proportion of migrant workers as a share of all workers with 36.6 per cent.In Jordan, the ILO supports national partners in improving working conditions and employment contracts for migrant workers in the garment sector. Photo: ILO/Sami HavenThe study also examines the distribution of the migrant workforce in broad industry groupings. The vast majority of migrant workers are in the services sectors, with 106.8 million workers accounting for 71.1 per cent of the total, followed by industry, including manufacturing and construction, with 26.7 million, or 17.8 per cent, and by agriculture with 16.7 million, or 11.1 per cent. Among all migrant workers, 7.7 per cent are domestic workers.This estimate study shows that the vast majority of migrants migrate in search of better job opportunities, said Manuela Tomei, Director of the ILOs Conditions of Work and Equality Department (WORKQUALITY). By applying a robust methodology we believe it will add significantly to our knowledge base on migration and provide a strong foundation for the development of effective migration policies.The report also highlights the significant global numbers of migrant domestic workers and the marked gender disparities in this sector. Domestic work is one of the least regulated sectors of the economy and, as such, is of particular concern to the ILO, the news release said, noting that due to the concentration of migrant women workers and relatively low visibility of the workforce in this sector multiple forms of discrimination often intersect.Of the estimated 67.1 million domestic workers in the world, 11.6 million, or 17.2 per cent are international migrants. About 73.4 per cent, or around 8.6 million, of all migrant domestic workers are women. South-Eastern Asia and the Pacific host the largest share, with 24 per cent of the global number of female migrant domestic workers, followed by Northern, Southern and Western Europe, with 22.1 per cent of the total, and the Arab States with 19 per cent.Photo: ILO/John HulmeSource: www.justearthnews.com
Modi Nitish bonhomie reflection of mature politics: JD-U

Patna (Bihar), Jan. 6 : The Janata Dal (United) on Friday appreciated the mutual admiration conducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the issue of liquor ban in Bihar and demonetisation respectively, describing it as a reflection of mature politics.





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"As Prime Minister Modi has appreciated him, this is a sign of mature politics, and both behaved like statesmen," JD (U) leader Sunil Kumar told ANI here.Kumar said that the healthy relation between the Centre and state is for national interest and it strengthens federalism.Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday praised Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over his controversial move to ban liquor in the state despite objections from all quarters, calling it a "courageous step".Modi's praise for Kumar comes after he backed the Prime Minister's demonetisation of two high-value currency note in November last year even as his allies - the Congress and Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal - trained their guns on the government over the surprise decision.Kumar stands alone as probably the only opposition leader who has come out in support of PM Modi's scrapping of high value notes in November.Conjecture first began about the two leaders who famously fell out when Modi was elevated as the NDA's candidate for Prime Minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections."I want to appreciate Nitish Kumar ji for the effort he has undertaken to save future generations from alcoholism," Prime Minister Modi said at the 'Prakash Parv' in Patna, marking the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.
FICCI, Carnegie India launch report on bringing Diaspora home

New Delhi , Jan. 6 : In the run-up to the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi this weekend, in Bangalore, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in partnership with Carnegie India, has launched the report 'Bringing the Diaspora Home: India's Expatriate Evacuation Operations' by Dr. Constantino Xavier.





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The event on Thursday was chaired FICCI Secretary General Dr. A. Didar Singh, who outlined the economic importance of this subject and the relevance of the report to bring awareness on India's accomplishments in its successful evacuation operations.This event was also attended by Ambassador Ranjan Mathai, former Foreign Secretary who commended the timing of the event given its importance to the diaspora and its proximity to the PBD 2017.He also outlined the importance of flexible approaches for different contexts encountered with each operation along with a good understanding of the destination country.Also, Vice-Admiral (retired) Anup Singh emphasized the importance of maritime diplomacy and international relations in facilitating evacuation operations, at the event.More than 11 million Indian citizens reside worldwide, more than 20 million travel internationally every year, and around ten million Indian passports are issued every year.Given their rising role in India's economic development, with their remittances accounting for more than percent per cent of its GDP, Overseas Indians have now become a priority for New Delhi's foreign and security policies.The Indian government has therefore committed unprecedented attention to the safety of the diaspora, especially during recent crises in the Gulf region. However, given the lack of any formal doctrine or emergency plan, the paper shows that the relative success of India's evacuation operations has mostly been due to the individual sacrifices of its officials and that the government must go be beyond punctual efforts and quick-fix solutions.Based on new data and interviews with officials, Dr. Xavier's paper assesses India's experience in conducting these missions and forwards policy recommendations on how these can be improved.He said that such measures should include institutionalising best practices as standard operating procedures and emergency plans; improving operational coordination between various ministries and agencies; training its diplomatic cadre to operate in hostile environments; increasing operational coordination and cooperation with foreign governments; and attributing a greater role to the armed forces, strengthening its capacity to plan and deploy in tandem with civilian authorities.
Snapdeal Sunshine donates 50,000 'Happiness Boxes' to underprivileged kids

New Delhi , Jan 6 : India's largest online marketplace Snapdeal has announced that their initiative to spread Christmas and New Year cheer in partnership with leading NGOs has received tremendous response, with over 50,000 'Happiness Boxes' being donated to underprivileged children.





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The initiative, organized from 23rd December 2016 to 5th January 2017, was a special gesture to spread warmth and cheer during the festive season.The collected 'Happiness Boxes' were delivered across 300+ locations in over 25 cities across more than 15 states.Over 25 NGOs across India (including Teach for India, GiveIndia, World Vision India, Bharti Foundation, Akshaya Patra, Samarthanam and others) received the boxes comprising of stationery and celebration materials including pencil boxes, Frisbees, balloons, party caps, etc. to arrange the celebrations for the children.The customers who contributed towards this initiative received official invites from Snapdeal to participate in person in these celebrations, and more than 250 customers joined the revelries at the location of their chosen NGO.While some donors have already been to the NGO, others will spend time learning about the work done by the NGO and celebrate with these kids in the coming weeks.Under this initiative, Snapdeal had partnered with Uber and UrbanClap, to support social causes through in-kind donation. While Uber was the commute-partner for the customers, UrbanClap supported the NGOs with celebration planning and arrangement."We are humbled by the response from our customers and heartened by the opportunity to reach and touch so many lives. Bringing a smile to the children's faces has been a wonderful gift for the donors as well. We believe that with our future programmes we will only deepen the resonance with our customers, enabling them to support diverse social causes," said ?Senior VP Corporate Affairs and Communication Snapdeal, Rajnish Wahi.With the focus on driving in-kind donation through its platform, Snapdeal had launched Snapdeal Sunshine programme. Since the time of its inception, the platform has received great response from customers, for some of the initiatives like the 'India Says Thank You' where well-wishers shared 20,845 'Happiness Boxes' to soldiers in the Indian Army and Navy. As part of the 'Joy of Giving' campaign that kicked off on 2nd October at Snapdeal, the marketplace further facilitated donation of more than 2,50,000 stationery kits to underprivileged students.
India, Kazakhstan sign protocol to amend 'Double Taxation Avoidance Convention'

New Delhi , Jan 6 : The Central Board of Direct Taxation (CBDT) on Friday announced that India and Kazakhstan have signed a protocol to amend the existing Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) between the two countries signed on December 9th, 1996 for the avoidance of double taxation and for the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income.





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The protocol under the DTAC will provide internationally accepted standards for effective exchange of information on tax matters. Further, the information received from Kazakhstan for tax purposes can be shared with other law enforcement agencies with authorization of the competent authority of Kazakhstan and vice versa.It inserts a limitation of benefits article to provide a main purpose test to prevent misuse of the DTAC and to allow application of domestic law and measures against tax avoidance or evasion.The protocol inserts a specific provision to facilitate relieving of economic double taxation in transfer pricing cases. This is a taxpayer friendly measure and is in line with India's commitment under Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan to meet the minimum standard of providing Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) access in transfer pricing cases.Adding to this it inserts service PE provisions with a threshold and also provides that the profits to be attributed to PE will be determined on the basis of apportionment of total profits of the enterprise.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi mourns Om Puri's death

New Delhi, Jan 6 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday mourned the death of Bollywood actor Om Puri.





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The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri recalls his long career in theatre films, PMO India tweeted.The Padma Shri winner passed away on Friday.He was 66.Om Puri was born in Ambala, Haryana, to a Punjabi family on Oct 18, 1950.He made his film debut in the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal, based on a Marathi play of the same name by Vijay Tendulkar.He later continued to act in movies like Aakrosh,Gandhi,Mirch Masala,Narsimha,The Ghost and the Darkness,My Son the Fanatic and many more.
Congress, CPI hail President Mukherjee's statement on demonetization

Karnataka (Bengaluru) , Jan. 6 : Backing President Pranab Mukherjee's statement on demonetisation, the Congress and the Communist Party of India on Friday echoed similar sentiments while stating that if the the former makes such a statement then the government should analyse seriousness of the situation.





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"All in all it was a disaster step taken by the government and if the President has to come out and make a statement like this you can understand the seriousness of the situation," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.The Congress leader also said that the whole 'game' that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has played for isolating black money holders has failed.Resonating similar sentiments, CPI leader D. Raja also hailed President Mukherjee's assertion and said that the latter has made serious observation on the government's demonetisation drive."Pranab Mukherjee himself is the former finance minister of the country and he knows how economic policies are decided and implemented. He knows what would be the implication of the major economic policies," Raja told ANI.He also took a dig at the Prime Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders for arguing that demonetisation drive has boosted the economy in every sphere.President Mukherjee yesterday said that the demonetisation move may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy."Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy," the President said while addressing the Governors and Lieutenant Governors through video-conferencing from Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
Fourth Assam International Agri-Horti show to begin today

Guwahati (Assam) , Jan. 6 : Fourth Assam International Agri-Horti show will begin today in Guwahati, Assam.





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State Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will inaugurate the show.Assam Agriculture Minister Atul Bora informed that 10 foreign countries are also taking part in the show.He said Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Governor Banwarilal Purohit will attend the closing ceremony on Monday.Nearly 600 farmers from Assam will be trained on doubling farmers' income, more crop per drop and agri-preneurship development.More than 200 organizations from across the country will take part in the show.Business meet and discussions are also being organised by the Assam government.
Had no option but to cancel Puducherry CM's order on social media ban: LG Kiran Bedi

New Delhi , Jan. 6: Defending her decision to cancel the Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy's order to ban the use of social media for official communication, Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi on Friday said that she had no option but to declare the order null and void as it is against the Government of India's social media policy.





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"I had no choice but to declare the order null and void as it was in contravention of Government of India's social media policy," he said.Bedi said that after becoming the Lt. Governor of Puducherry, her first task was to bring people and officers together.She added that forming of social network groups are in alignment of Government of India's policy as it is used for sharing concerns and keeping each other updated. There is no secret in it.Bedi on Thursday declared a circular issued by V. Narayanasamy banning the use of social media applications such as Facebook and WhatsApp for official communication as 'null and void', stating that such an order falls in contravention of guidelines and rules and policies.Bedi announced the decision through Twitter."If Puducherry has to be a progressive UT, it cannot be retrograde in communications. Hence @CM_ Puducherry's order stands cancelled:@PMOIndia (sic)," she said.The December 2 notification had directed all the government employees to desist from using social media for official works, stating that the server of these multinational companies is based outside of the country.The circular noted that any foreign country can get the official communication and upload the documents therein.
Revival of Chinese demand, prices of ferro chrome benefits Indian producers

Kolkata,Jan 6 : A sharp upturn in Chinese demand and price for ferro chrome is having a salutary impact on Indian ferro chrome producers with latter increasing exports shipments, Rohit Ferro-Tech Limited, Managing Director, Ankit Patni said on Thursday.





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Improved Chinese demand and hardening of prices has led to Indian producers shifting focus from meeting domestic demand to overseas markets like China, Patni said.On average six months ago domestic producers were able to market only half of their production of ferro chrome alloys in international markets, and improved international market dynamics has prompted several domestic producers to now offer as much as 80% of production for international sales, he added.He said that the firming up of the ferro chrome market could gauged from the fact that prices of the alloy with 60% chrome content had on average increased to Rs 110,000 (about $1600) per ton at present from levels of around Rs 60,000 ( about $872), six months ago.However, Patni maintained that margin realizations from ferro chrome alloy sales, despite rise in prices, was being tempered by sharp rise in domestic prices of chrome ore.It was pointed out that at the last auction for chrome ore [held once every two months] price of the raw material had more than doubled to Rs 25,000 ($363) per ton compared to levels of around Rs ,10,000 ($145) prevailing at previously held auction of chrome ore.However the sustainability of the current revival of the Indian ferro alloy industry would largely be hinged on Indian producers ability to maintain their global cost competitiveness in face of severe challenges of high domestic power tariffs.Power tariffs vary widely across various state and hence the cost of power in total cost of production of ferro alloys varies between 40-60% of total cost of production of the alloy depending on location of the production unit and source of electricity grid.As such, Indian producers will continue to face substantial challenges in export markets, not least from Malaysia, which is emerging as a new, low-cost hub for manganese ferroalloy production and where power is available cheaply. The Indian power price for SiMn was $75.5 /MWh in 2015 and is projected to be $74.5 /MWh in 2016, whereas we expect Malaysia to average around $42.5 /MWh this year.The Telangana government was offering a subsidy on power tariff to textile and ferro alloys industries in the state. The power tariff being paid at present by spinning mills to Rs 2 per unit and that was also applicable for ferro alloy producers in the state.Other state Governments such as West Bengal Odisha should also provide similar subsidy on power tariff to make the existing ferro alloy unit cost competitive and viable.
Concerned about keeping Tibet's language, religion and culture alive: Dalai Lama

Bodh Gaya, Jan 6 (TheBiharPost/IBNS): Tibetan spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama is quite concerned about keeping his motherland's language, religion and culture alive.





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He poured his heart out while preaching his devotees at the 34 Kalchakra puja being organized here since Jan 2.Dalai fled Tibet, his homeland, in 1959 after a failed uprising.As a Tibetan, although I retired from political affairs in 2011, Im concerned about keeping Tibets language, religion and culture alive, as well as protecting the countrys natural environment, Dalai said addressing his devotees.Today, the Tibetan language is the medium best suited to accurately rendering the nuances of Buddhist philosophy, he saidTurning to philosophy of life, he advised the Buddhists to implement the Dharma in practice.We all want happiness not suffering and happiness comes about when we discipline the mind, he said.Reminding the crowd that all 7 billion human beings alive today were born the same way and will die the same way, he stressed that whether you have happiness or suffering depends on whether you discipline your mind. This is what differentiates Buddhism from other religious tradition.He observed that many problems we face in the world today are of our own making because we insist on highlighting divisions of nationality, race, faith, social background and so on adding we need to cultivate an unbiased sense of compassion, not affected by attachment that is capable of seeing that even our enemy deserves happiness.He said despite philosophical differences all religious traditions convey a common message about the importance of cultivating love and compassion. And in India we find a long-standing tradition of religious traditions living alongside each other in harmony, he said.thebiharpost.com
BJP will emerge victorious in all five upcoming assembly elections: Amit Shah

New Delhi , Jan. 6 : Union Minister of Human and Resource Development (HRD) Prakash Javadekar on Saturday reiterated Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah's assertion of marking victory in the upcoming elections in all the five states.





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"In the meet, Amit Shah said that in the upcoming elections, BJP will end up winning in all the five states," said Javadekar while addressing a press conference here.Javadekar maintained that people voted for them in 2014 Lok Sabha elections in order to see a change in the condition of the nation, which was currently visible."Party President (Amit Shah) said that the public did not let us win in majority only to rule nation, but to change the face of the nation, to bring welfare to the poor, which is now in front of everybody," he said.Applauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his 'historic' decision of demonetisation and surgical strike and putting forth a different image of India, Javadekar said the former was given a standing ovation by the parliamentary board."The entire parliamentary board gave standing ovation to the Prime Minister for his historic decisions of demonetisation and surgical strike," he said."Demonetising Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes, which constituted 86 percent of the total cash in the economy, was a historic step," he added.Hitting out at the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party for their 'Khoon ki dalali' and 'give us proof' comments respectively, Javadekar said, "'Khoon ki dalali' comment was a mean one and one minister even asked for proof. This does not happen anywhere in the world. Doubting the integrity of the armed forces was not accepted by the public."Drawing parallels with the condition that existed during the Congress regime, Javadekar said during the former's regime queues existed for everything while what people faced due to demonetisation was only temporary."Congress made people stand in queues for milk, ration and everything, which ended after Atal Bihari ji took over," he said."The Prime Minister had said that demonetisation would cause trouble for a temporary period. People did face problems, but they stood by the Prime Minister," he added.The BJP national executive meeting was held earlier today, where major decisions by the government were reviewed and Prime Minister Modi was felicitated.
Giant Antarctic iceberg set to break away, say Swansea researchers

New York, Jan 6 : An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, according to Swansea University scientists.





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A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away, read the Swansea University website.Researchers based in Swansea Universitys College of Science say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.Larsen C is approximately 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.Researchers have been tracking the rift in Larsen C for many years, following the collapse of the Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and the sudden break-up of the Larsen B shelf in 2002Last year, researchers from the UKs Project Midas reported that the Larsen C rift was growing fast.But in December the speed of the rift went into overdrive, growing by a further 18km in just a couple of weeks. What will become a massive iceberg now hangs on to the shelf by a thread just 20km long.Project leader, Professor Adrian Luckman, was quoted as saying by Swansea University website: If it doesnt go in the next few months, Ill be amazed.There hasnt been enough cloud-free Landsat images but weve managed to combine a pair of Esa Sentinel-1 radar images to notice this extension, and its so close to calving that I think its inevitable.According to Professor Luckman, the area that will break off will be about 5,000 sq km, a size he said that would put the iceberg among the top ten biggest ever recorded.Professor Luckman added that this is a geographical and not a climate event. Although it is believed that climate warming has brought forward the likely separation of the iceberg.However, the researchers say they have no direct evidence to support this.They are concerned, though, about how any break-off will impact the rest of the ice shelf, given that its neighbour, Larsen B, disintegrated spectacularly in 2002 following a similar large calving event.We are convinced, although others are not, that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one, said Professor Luckman.We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse - but its a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable; not that it will immediately collapse or anything like that.The resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels, but if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean.This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels.According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm.The eventual consequences might be the ice shelf collapsing in years to decades, said Professor Luckman.Even the sea level contribution of this area is not on anybodys radar; its just a big geographical event that will change the landscape there.Image: Wikimedia Commons
Earning a college degree doesnt have to leave you broke. Depending on where you live, you might be able to obtain a top-notch education on the cheap.

Many states offer inexpensive tuition to in-state students at their public universities. For example, based on data from The College Board, a resident of Wyoming can expect to pony up an average of $5,060  which includes both tuition and fees  to attend a public college in that state.

Wyoming leads this list of the 10 states that offer the least expensive in-state tuition rates for students:

Wyoming : Average in-state tuition and fees: $5,060 Florida : $6,360 Montana : $6,410 Utah : $6,580 New Mexico : $6,620 Nevada : $6,910 Idaho : $7,010 Alaska : $7,130 North Carolina : $7,200 Mississippi : $7,410

New York, which is considering a program to offer middle- and low-income students free tuition at its state colleges, already offers the 12th-cheapest tuition in the nation to in-state students.

You can check the College Board website to find out how your states public college tuition rates compare with other states.

So, before you dismiss college as too expensive, check out your states public universities. Theres a good chance your education dollar will go a lot further there than at private schools.

Many states also have programs that enable residents to attend college in another state without having to fork over big bucks for out-of-state tuition. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has more information.

For more on this topic, check out 62 Percent of Americans Back Free College for All.

How does your state stack up based on its in-state tuition rates? Share your comments below or on Facebook.

This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as '10 States With the Cheapest Tuition at Public Universities'.

More from Money Talks News
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Overcast skies and windy. High near 75F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Windy with thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low 59F. Winds SSE at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Higher wind gusts possible.
Reporter/Columnist

Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth).
A British pharmaceutical wholesaler and distributor, who specialises in exporting overseas licensed, restricted and out of stock pharmaceuticals and speciality products for rare diseases, will attend Arab Health 2017.

Established over 40 years ago, Philip Chapper & Company Ltd has a global reputation for successfully sourcing and distributing pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment to around 50 countries worldwide.

The company are experts at sourcing products, consolidating orders and organising shipments, no matter what the destination. This includes supplying both branded and generic pharmaceuticals, over the counter medicines,veterinarymedicines and other medical supplies to a wide range of pharmaceutical importers, distributors, ministries and wholesalers.

Whether its a small one-off shipment or the delivery of several containers, the companys multilingual team of employees pride themselves on delivering exceptional customer service and supplying products safely, securely and on time.

Philip Chapper & Company have spent years developing robust relationships with their existing suppliers and clients; a network which has been built up over many decades.

The team are experienced in exporting to all countries, including the developing world, whilst complying with any specific regulatory or customs requirements.

They offer any combination of freight options  road, sea or air - and are able to meet all storage and transportation requirements including cold storage and hazardous materials.

The company also work with manufacturers to distribute their products on an exclusive basis to countries across the world.

Jonathan Chapper, CEO of Philip Chapper & Company, said:

By supplying hard-to-find products, we ensure that medicines get to patients around the world quickly, helping people get better and effectively manage their illnesses. The Middle East is one of our key markets and as a company, we invest a lot of time and resource into building relationships here in the region. Our first customer was from the Middle East and I am proud to say that over 40 years later they still remain a loyal and valuable customer. Arab Health is a key part of our calendar and we are very much looking forward to exhibiting.

The Arab Health Exhibition & Congress is the largest healthcare exhibition in the Middle East bringing together medical practitioners and healthcare professionals with leading manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors to network and exchange best practices.

Taking place from 30th January to 2nd February 2017 at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre, it is an annual event at which more than 4,000 companies from 163 countries exhibit their latest innovations to more than 130,000 healthcare professionals.

Throughout the congress, Philip Chapper & Company Ltd will be located on the UK Pavilion stand Z1 F19.
Is a treatment only making things better or maybe also making some things a little worse?

That can be a nagging question in some medical decisions, where side effects are possible. But researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have figured out a way to keep what helps, while blocking what harms, in a therapy to fight serious chronic inflammatory diseases.

It's simple and works a little like a pacemaker: An implanted device electrically stimulates the vagus nerve, but, in addition, inhibits unwanted nerve activity in a targeted manner.

Forms of vagus nerve stimulation treatment have already been successfully tested in humans by private industry with the intent to market them to patients. But the innovation by Georgia Tech researchers of adding an inhibiting signal could increase the clinical efficacy and therapeutic benefit of existing treatments.

Temporarily snipping a nerve

"We use an electrode with a kilohertz frequency that blocks unwanted nerve conduction in addition to the electrode that stimulates nerve activity," said principal investigator Robert Butera, a professor jointly appointed in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering. "We've arranged the two near each other, so the blocking electrode forces the stimulation from the stimulating electrode to only go in one direction."

The researchers' innovation could theoretically by implemented relatively quickly by augmenting existing clinical devices. So far, tests in rats have returned very encouraging results, and they have been achieved without taking more drastic measures notable in other experiments to optimize this kind of treatment - such as a vagotomy, the cutting of part of the vagus.

"The original studies in animals on the anti-inflammatory benefits of vagus nerve stimulation resorted to nerve transections to achieve directional stimulation as well as boost effectiveness of nerve stimulation. But cutting the vagus is not clinically viable - due to the multitude of vital bodily functions it monitors and regulates. Our approach provides the same therapeutic benefit, but is also immediately reversible, controllable, and clinically feasible," said lead researcher Yogi Patel, a bioengineering graduate student.

"We call it a virtual vagotomy," Butera said.

Patel, Butera and former Georgia Tech researchers Tarun Saxena and Ravi V. Bellamkonda, published the results of their study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports on Thursday, January 5, 2016. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Ian's Friends Foundation.

Vagus nerve: What is it?

To understand how this new bioelectronic fine-tuning works, let's start with the vagus nerve itself.

It lies outside the spinal column and runs in two parts down the front of your neck on either side. It's easy to forget about because, though it does help you feel some limited sensations like pain and heat from a handful of internal organs, those sensations are not as blatant and common as when you reach out and touch something with your hand.

Your voluntary, or somatic, nervous system is responsible for the reaching, touching, and feeling, and the vagus nerve belongs to your involuntary nervous system - actually called the autonomic nervous system. Though you may experience the effects less consciously, you couldn't survive without a vagus.

"The vagus nerve conveys an incredible amount of information related to the state and function of the visceral organs - your digestive tract, your heart, your lungs, information about the nutrients you eat - anything required for homeostasis (physiological balance)," Patel said.

The vagus nerve is the lifeline between the vital function control centers of your brain and your visceral organs, passing messages constantly between your hypothalamus and organs to control things like pulse and respiration, the lubrication of sinuses, and the limiting of immune response.

Inflammation: What role does the vagus nerve play?

That last one is where inflammation comes in. When the immune system becomes hyperactive, it can attack not just pathogens but also healthy tissue, as with patients suffering from diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease. Drug-based therapies often fail to significantly benefit them.

The two parts of the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system -- the sympathetic and the parasympathetic -- strongly influence your immune system. The vagus nerve belongs to the parasympathetic.

"It's like a seesaw system. Your sympathetic nervous system helps kick the immune system on, and the parasympathetic nervous system tempers it," Patel said.

Electrical stimulation is good: Any downsides?

Stimulating the vagus nerve supports that tempering effect, but it can also somewhat excite the part of the nervous system that stimulates the immune response, which is counterproductive.

"Every circuit has a path coming from the brain and one going to the brain, and when you stimulate electrically, you usually have no control over which one you get. You usually get both." Patel said. These paths are often in the same nerve being stimulated.

The path leaving the brain and going toward other organs, called the efferent pathway, is the one to stimulate to help relieve chronic inflammatory conditions. The one going to the brain, called the afferent pathway, if stimulated, leads eventually to the hypothalamus, a pea-sized region in the center of the brain, which triggers a chain of hormonal responses, eventually releasing cytokines, messaging molecules that promote inflammation.

"You get a heightened inflammatory response when you stimulate the afferent pathways, which are actively conveying information about your internal state and trigger the immune system when necessary," Patel said. "And if a patient is already in a hyperactive immune state, you don't want to push that even more."

"When chronically inflamed, the body essentially thinks it's in attack mode the entire time," Patel said. "So, the ability to dampen the loop that results in more and more cytokines being produced is one way to shut down that cyclic process of more and more inflammation."

Stimulating downward (efferent), while blocking upward (afferent) vagus nerve activity keeps the good effect while preventing possible bad effects. In animals that received this treatment, blood tests showed that inflammation markedly decreased. Most importantly, this treatment can be turned on or off, and be tuned to the needs of each patient.
Pioneering UK healthcare companies keen to develop or strengthen partnerships in Texas are being urged to take part in the next medtech mission to Texas.

Organised by the Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHIs), in partnership with leading Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and supported by the UK Government, the mission aims to forge relationships between UK companies and Texas healthcare establishments.

Taking place from 4 to 10th March 2017, the unique visit offers companies to opportunity to connect with a variety of healthcare systems, R&D, buying and professional organisations at the highest levels.

The mission also aims to provide companies with unprecedented access to key opinion leaders (KOLs) and leadership teams in world-class hospital systems and medical centres across the state.

The mission is timed to coincide with the healthcare track of South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, thus providing a further opportunity to meet with leaders in health and technology.

ABHI International Director, Paul Benton, said:

The ABHI mission is part of a rolling series of ABHI led visits to Texas. It builds on the highly successful visits in 2016, which saw companies benefit from introductions and engagement with hospital and clinical leaders including the US military as well as GPOs, distributors and professional business support organisations. We are currently recruiting for the mission and are keen to talk to anyone who is looking to strengthen export links with the state.

James Whitticase, CEO, OBS Medical who attended the previous med tech mission, said:

Attending the mission in October was a real eye opener, the connections and network the ABHI has built in Texas is nothing short of astounding and surpassed all our expectations. The quality, seniority and willingness to engage from those we met was incredible, we will certainly be going back to Texas with ABHI.

Texas has been chosen for the mission as it is an economic powerhouse.

It has the second largest GDP of any US State at 1.7 trillion dollars and were it a sovereign country, it would be ranked as the 12th largest economy in the world by GDP.

It has the highest proportion of hospitals of any state in the US and is ranked 3rd in the US on overall healthcare expenditure, beating the City of London or even countries such as Portugal.

Texas is the 7th largest health economy in the world and has significant ambition to be a global healthcare and lifesciences player over the next decade.
Scars are often the unwanted and permanent result of wound healing, but University of California, Irvine and University of Pennsylvania researchers have discovered a natural regeneration process that stimulates scar-free skin repair.

Their study results, which appear in Science, point the way toward possible clinical treatments for scar-free wound healing, a highly desirable yet unmet need.

UCI's Maksim Plikus, Penn's Dr. George Cotsarelis and their colleagues identified in mouse studies never-before-seen cellular and molecular processes in which large wounds in adult mice regenerated nearly normal-looking skin, complete with new hair follicles and fat tissue. Ultimately, the center of the wound became nearly indistinguishable from normal, unwounded skin.

How did this occur? Christian F. Guerrero-Juarez, a graduate student in Plikus' lab who worked closely on the project, explained: "Typically, myofibroblasts, the primary cell type found in wounds, were thought to be incapable of becoming other cell types. However, our team found that wound myofibroblasts can efficiently and stably convert into new distinct cell types, specifically new adipocytes, which are the fat-laden cells necessary for healthy skin."

Guerrero-Juarez said their study established that wounds with hair follicles produce the instructive factors that can reprogram myofibroblasts into adipocytes. Critical for driving the rewiring of cells' identity is bone morphogenic protein signaling. In skin wounds, hair follicles secrete large amounts of these BMP molecules. The fact that hair follicles act as the natural source of BMPs explains why hairless wounds cannot regenerate adipocytes.

"Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin regeneration rather than scarring," said Cotsarelis, chair of dermatology and Milton Bixler Hartzell Professor of Dermatology at Penn and principal investigator on the project. "The secret is to regenerate hair follicles first. After that, the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles."

Plikus, an assistant professor of developmental & cell biology at UCI, said, "In culture conditions, exposure of human fibroblasts derived from keloids, a type of skin scar, to either pure BMP or to human hair follicles is sufficient to drive their reprogramming toward new adipocytes. This shows that our findings from mice are translatable to humans."

He noted that regenerating fat cells in skin can be beneficial for conditions beyond scarring. The process could potentially become a new anti-aging treatment, as the formation of deep wrinkles is thought to result from permanent loss of skin fat. Without underlying fat, the skin's surface shrinks and wrinkles like a deflating balloon. Another recent study in Science, to which Plikus' lab contributed, showed that, beyond their cosmetic value, fat cells possess strong antimicrobial properties that help skin fend off infection.

The next step is to translate these basic research findings into clinical approaches for treating healing wounds and aging skin in patients, but Plikus said it would take more time.

"Theoretically, this can be achieved via injections of signaling molecules directly inside the scar, such as with a small insulin syringe (similar to how Botox injections are now done)," he said. "Also, small-molecule agonists and antagonists that modulate signaling pathways critical for fat cell formation can be potentially developed into cream formulations."
Veteran actor Om Puri died of a cardiac arrest on Friday morning in Mumbai. He was 66. He made a name for himself in the 1980s with the alternative art cinema that found a niche audience in India, playing several memorable characters that depicted the anger and angst of those times.He also worked in a number of Hollywood and British films, including, and most recently inThe 2009 biography of the actor,, authored by his wife Nandita C Puri, had stirred controversy with the actor expressing displeasure over his wife revealing some of his most private sexual incidents.Read the book:
Patient reactions to antidepressants can vary greatly from one person to another. However, according to research from the USA, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, depression patients also suffering from panic disorder could be prone to reporting more side effects and of greater intensity than those suffering from depression alone.



Researchers based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, studied 808 patients suffering from chronic depression and being treated with antidepressants between 2002 and 2006. Among them, 85 participants were also affected by panic disorder.



Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent panic attacks, during which the sufferer has an intense and irrational feeling of fear (sometimes fearing they might die), which can last a few minutes or several hours. Panic attack symptoms include sweating, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, chest pains, nausea and numbness. Around 5 to 10% of the population is thought to suffer from panic attacks, with either isolated or recurrent episodes.



After 12 weeks of treatment, 88% of participants reported at least one side effect.



The researchers found that participants with both depression and panic disorder were more likely to report side effects than those with depression alone, with 47% vs 32% reporting gastrointestinal side effect, 26% vs 14% reporting cardiovascular side effects, 59% vs 33% reporting neurological side effects and 24% vs 8% reporting genital or urinary side effects.



Patients with depression and panic disorder who reported a higher number of side effects were also more likely to report a worsening of their depression, the study found.



However, the scientists found no significant increase in side effects affecting eyes, ears, skin, sleep or sexual function.

"People with panic disorder are especially sensitive to changes in their bodies," said Stewart Shankman, professor of psychology and psychiatry at UIC and corresponding author on the paper. "It's called 'interoceptive awareness.'



This hypersensitivity could logically explain the greater likelihood of such patients reporting psychological side effects of their treatment.

As a result, the researchers advise medical professionals to carefully investigate reported side effects to establish which may be due to hypersensitivity before considering adjusting medication doses or switching treatments.
The BJP kicked off its two-day National Executive meet in the national capital on Friday where the partys top brass is expected to give final shape to the poll strategy in assembly elections in five states.

Delivering the inaugural address, party chief Amit Shah hailed demonetisation and surgical strikes as historical decisions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday address party workers at the meeting, which is being attended by former BJP presidents, party Chief Ministers and around 350 party members.

Key economic and political resolutions are scheduled to be adopted at the convention. Sources said the economic resolution is likely to focus on demonetisation and black money and condemn the role of opposition parties, especially the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress in opposing the November 8 note ban.

Heres a recap of the conventions first day:

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
Taiwan-based electronics group Asus announced Wednesday it was launching a new smartphone which uses Google Tango 3D technology and allows users to experience augmented and virtual reality.The Zenfone AR is just the second handset to incorporate the Tango computing platform which allows for indoor mapping, augmented reality and more.The new device, unveiled by Asus at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is also one of a small number of smartphones that is compatible with Google Daydream, the US tech giant's virtual reality system."We are excited to be the first to enable Tango and Daydream," Asus chairman Jonney Shih as he unveiled the new 5.7-inch (15-centimeter) handset, which will be available in the second quarter of the year.Shih said the new phone "enables interaction with virtual objects" and offers the ability to watch a movie or play a game in virtual or augmented reality."This is really the next wave that is going to get consumers excited about smartphones," said Asus marketing chief Erik Hermanson.Project Tango uses depth sensing and motion tracking to create onscreen 3D experiences, allowing users to get a better picture of a physical environment for functions such as home decoration.Google Project Tango leader Johnny Lee, who joined the Asus media event, said he expected "dozens of Tango-enabled apps" to be available soon on the Google Play store.The only other handset using Project Tango is Lenovo's Phab2 phone, which was released last year.Asus announced it would be releasing another new smartphone, the Zenfone 3 Zoom, with upgraded camera technology which aims at delivering professional-quality images.
Beijing: China on Thursday dismissed as "untrue" allegations of "double standards" by India by blocking its bid to list Pakistan-based JeM leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, claiming that it had adopted a "just, objective and professional" attitude in deciding the issue.



"With regard to the listing matter of the Security Council 1267 committee the so called double standards adopted by China on this relevant issue is not true. We take action based on solid evidence that is the standard upheld by us," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media briefing.



Responding to remarks made by Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar on Azhar's issue during the press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday Geng said, "We have taken a responsible and constructive part in relevant discussion in a professional and objective way".



"Relevant members differed on this issue. The purpose of China to put forward technical hold on that issue is to create enough time for the committee and relevant parties to consult with each other on the relevant issue," he said.



Akbar on Wednesday had said, "We really do expect China to hear the voice of the world, not just voice of India on terrorism."



Referring to Pakistan's support to terror, India also hoped that as a "responsible and a mature" nation, China will understand the "double standards" and "simply self-defeating and suicidal" approach of Islamabad to terrorism.



China was the only country among the 15-member 1267 counter terrorism committee of the UN Security Council which has objected to India's application to list Azhar who is accused of masterminding the Pathankot terror attack.



China had put two technical holds on India's move -- first for six months followed by a second one for a period of three months ending Dec 31 -- after which India has to file a fresh application to get the Pakistan-based Azhar listed as a terrorist by the UN.



When pointed out that China was the only member among the 1267 committee members to have objected, Geng said "relevant attitude and action of China comply with the resolution of the UNSC and rules ofprocedure of the committee."



"China takes a very objective and just and professional attitude on that. Up to now the Committee is yet to come to an agreement on this issue and we would like stay in communication and coordination with all relevant parties including India on this," he said.



The issue remained unresolved even after the two countries have held several rounds of talks on this issue.



Elaborating on China's position, Geng said, "It is regrettable that an agreement is yet to be made. Relevant actions taken by China in the committee is to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the committee".

"It is out of the responsible attitude China will



continue tostay in communication with all relevant parties including India in accordance with the security council resolution and rules of the procedures of the committee," Geng said.



At the same time he said, "I also want to stress that both China and India are victims of terrorism. We have the same purpose and share the same goal on the issue of counter terrorism and we hope to enhance cooperation and communication with the Indian side to uphold peace and security of the region" .



On the comments by Minister of State for External Affairs, General (rtd) V K Singh that India's engagement with China under close developmental partnership continue to expand despite differences, Geng said Beijing too wants to develop strategic partnership of co-operation with India.



"With regard to bilateral relationship with India we all know that both China and India are major developing countries and emerging markets in the world," he said.



"To build more closely knit relationship for development serves the fundamental interest of the two countries and two peoples and it is also conducive to the stability of the region. We are also willing to develop strategic partnership of co-operation with India. This position remains unchanged," he said.
New Dehi: The National Investigations Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist Bahadur Ali for conspiring to carry out terror attacks in Delhi and prominent cities of Jammu and Kashmir including Poonch and Udhampur.



Ali whose case was filed in Delhi's Patiala House court has also been accused of stone pelting and fomenting trouble in the valley post-Burhan Wani's death, as part of Lashkar-e-Toiba's grand conspiracy against India.



However, the investigating agency has failed to extract any information from Ali on the ongoing Uri terror attack investigation.



Sources told CNN-News 18 that even though Ali was questioned post Uri attacks, he could not reveal much.



Ali told NIA that Lashkar-e-Toiba, suspected to be behind the Uri attack, had tasked a different group with the job and he or his group only knew that multiple attacks were planned by Lashkar in Jammu and Kashmir.



Ali was arrested in June 2016 and recoveries made from him at the time of arrest included Japanese high-end communication equipments, and I Com sets.



Similar sets were recovered from the Uri terrorists and Ali was interrogated in the Uri case as well.



NIA has charged Ali with criminal conspiracy, waging war against India, various sections of the anti-terror law - unlawful activities, prevention act, arms act, explosives act and the Wireless act for illegally possessing arms, ammunitions and communication equipments.



The 50-page chargesheet of NIA says Bahadur Ali and two others- Abu Saad and Abu Darda were pushed across the Line of Control from a Lashkar launch pad , "Mandakuli' in the intervening night of 12th and 13th June 2016. The trio walked for 7 days, following grid references on a GPS device and reached Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. It was here that the group called their handler, 'Walid bhai," by pairing their mobile phone with wireless set to avoid interception.



NIA believes the handler was communicating from Lashkar control room Alpha 3. The chargesheet says Abu Saad and Abu Haider were killed in village Wadar when they had gone to arrange food through a local contact.



Ali fled on hearing gun shots and was later told by Alpha 3 to reach Mukam, Yahama a village further in the hinterland of Kashmir.



With the help of local contact, Ali allegedly mixed with protesters post Hizbul commander Burhan Wani's death and fomented trouble.



Lashkar-e-Toiba's Alpha 3 had tasked Ali to receive a fresh group of infiltrated terrorists at the LOC but NIA arrested him before the task was carried out.



Based on Ali's information, NIA says the local police killed 4 alleged terrorists in the Bandi Monabal area on 26th July, 2016.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Friday handed over a dossier on India's alleged "interference" in the country to new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and asked the world body to play a role in "restraining" India from such activities, according to the Foreign Office here.



Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, delivered the dossier on "India's interference and terrorism" in Pakistan to the UN chief along with a letter from Pakistan Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.



"The dossier contains additional information and proof of Indian/RAW interference in Pakistan and involvement in terrorism particularly in Balochistan, FATA and Karachi. This is a follow up to the three dossiers, which were shared with the United Nations in October 2015," the Foreign Office said in a statement.



In the covering letter sent with the dossier, Aziz claimed that the arrest of "Indian RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav from Balochistan and his confessional statement admitting involvement in activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan, and support to terrorist elements vindicated Pakistan's long-standing position about India's involvement in such activities."



He also claimed that India was carrying out these activities in clear contravention of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council on counter-terrorism and international conventions on terrorism. Jadhav has been accused by Pakistan of planning "subversive activities" in the country. India has acknowledged that Jadhav had served with the navy but denied that he has any connection with the government.



India's "hostile intentions" towards Pakistan were also borne out by recent statements of its political and military leadership, Aziz was quoted as saying in the letter.



He claimed Pakistan had made a major contribution to global counter terrorism efforts and secured significant gains in its domestic fight against terrorism.



Aziz urged the Secretary-General and relevant United Nations bodies to seriously consider the matter in the light of information shared by Pakistan and play a role in "restraining India from these activities, which were in clear violation of international law and posed a threat to regional and international peace and security."



"Pakistan continues to desire peace with all its neighbours, including India. It is convinced that the common objectives of economic development and prosperity for our people can best be promoted through regional cooperation, conflict resolution and peaceful settlement of disputes," the Foreign Office statement said.



"At the same time, however, Pakistan will resolutely defend its territorial integrity and take all necessary measures to counter any threat to its security," it said.




Kathmandu: The RBI has agreed to provide rupees one billion in Rs 100 denomination notes to Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) to ease the acute shortage of Rs 100 notes faced by the Himalayan nation, a media report said on Friday.



The NRB's plan to import INR 100 denomination notes was delayed due to the Indian government's move to demonetise INR 500 and INR 1,000 notes on November 8.



As RBI was under pressure to manage cash after the demonetisation, the central bank of India had told its Nepali counterpart that Nepal may have to wait till the situation normalises in India, The Himalayan Times reported.



But, RBI recently wrote to NRB that it will be able to provide INR one billion in INR 100 denomination notes, the paper said.



As RBI has agreed to provide INR one billion, NRB officials have said that the central bank is preparing to bring the amount within January.



After the demonetisation in India, NRB had also lowered exchange limit of Indian banknotes in Nepal. Currently, NRB is providing exchange facility of up to INR 2,000 on basis of citizenship identification.



Similarly, it is providing INR 10,000 to those who submit a copy of air or train ticket to travel to India and INR 25,000 for those travelling to India for medical check-up.



Janak Bahadur Adhikari, executive director of the Banking Office at NRB, said that the limit of INR exchange will not be reviewed until RBI is able to provide regular exchange facility.



RBI has been extending INR six billion exchange facility to Nepal every year (based on Indian fiscal year calendar) but this year Nepal is unlikely to get this facility due to the demonetisation, according to Adhikari.



"NRB has brought only INR 1.20 billion this year," he said.



Currently, NRB has around INR 3.5 billion in its coffers and after bringing another INR one billion, NRB will be able to provide exchange facility to Nepali and Indian nationals in Nepal for the next eight to nine months.



Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese, who earn a living by working as daily-wage labourers in India, visit the neighbouring country seeking medical treatment or rely on Indian markets to purchase daily essentials, were said to be holding big chunk of scrapped Indian bank notes.



The NRB had said in November that IRs 33.6 million in the denominations of 500 and 1,000 is within the financial system in Nepal. The figure included cash parked at vaults of banks, financial institutions and the NRB.




Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam on Thursday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up the issue of apprehension of the state's fishermen by Sri Lankan Navy at the "highest diplomatic level," besides ensuring their safety and security.



Referring to the latest incident, where 10 fishermen from Pudukottai district were arrested by the Lankan Navy last night, Panneerselvam in his letter to Modi said, it has taken place at a time when the state's fishermen were hopeful that a "pragmatic and permanent solution" would emerge after the Ministerial meeting was held recently.



"A firm, clear, unequivocal and unambiguous message should be sent out by the Government of India to Sri Lanka to ensure that these trends are reversed," he added.



Tamil Nadu strongly reiterates the need to restore the traditional fishing rights of fishermen in Palk Bay by "annulling the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement of 1974" as it has been challenged in Supreme Court, he said.



Pointing out that 116 boats seized by the island nation were yet to be released, the Chief Minister said, the strategy of not releasing the boats caused great frustration among the state's fishermen.



Recalling the memorandum submitted by him to Modi last month seeking a financial package of Rs 1,650 crore including a recurring grant of Rs 10 crore so that the socio-economic status of fishermen in coastal districts of Palk Bay area be "improved", he said, it is requested that concerned Ministries may be directed to sanction the package at the earliest.



Panneerselvam requested Modi to secure the immediate release of 61 fishermen and 116 fishing boats without any delay.



Only on January two, Sri Lanka had agreed to release 51 fishermen in its custody and consider returning a large number of fishing boats in its custody.



This was decided during a high-level ministerial level meeting of Sri Lanka and India held in Colombo on the vexed issue of fishermen.



Indian and Lankan Coast Guard had discussed various measures for the release and repatriation of arrested fishermen among other areas of cooperation in the maritime security scenario.
London: Force India will be one of the first teams to show off their 2017 Formula One car after announcing a February 22 launch at their Silverstone home base.



The Mercedes-powered team, who have a changed driver lineup with 20-year-old Frenchman Esteban Ocon joining Mexican Sergio Perez in place of Germany's Nico Hulkenberg, finished a best ever fourth overall last year.



The team rolled out their 2016 car in Barcelona last February, before principal Vijay Mallya had his Indian diplomatic passport revoked in April with a judge in Mumbai issuing a non-bailable warrant for his arrest.



Indian authorities trying to recover about $1.4 billion from his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines want to question Mallya, who last March flew to Britain where he has an indefinite right of residency.



Mallya attended only one race in 2016, the British Grand Prix at the circuit across the road from the team's Silverstone factory, and watched the rest remotely.



World champions Mercedes will launch their new car at Silverstone on Feb. 23, with Ferrari next out on the 24th in Italy.



Pre-season testing starts in Barcelona on February 27 with other teams expected to present their cars at the Circuit de Catalunya on the opening day.



Teams usually leave launches as late as possible, unless they are just to show off a new livery on an old car, to give themselves as much time as they can to finalise new developments.



They will want to start testing with the new cars, however, because 2017 sees new rules with bigger tyres and changed aerodynamics that could shake up the pecking order.
New Delhi: She has walked the fashion ramp in New York, but ain't no model. Reshma Qureshi, an acid attack survivor, feels India is becoming "more focused on looks" and says it's a pity that people in the country stare at those who don't fit the "norm".



"Walking the New York Fashion Week and the Surat fashion show for Archana Kocchar is proof of global acceptance of different beauty standards. But I believe that, in India, it is only a very small number of people who think this way," Reshma said in an email interview from Mumbai.



"Most people still turn and stare at anyone who isn't the norm - be it a person on a wheelchair, someone crippled, amputated, fat, or a survivor of acid attacks, including me," added the brave young girl who has become a campaigner against acid attacks.



Reshma also feels that India is becoming more focused on looks.



"Till today, whitening products are sold openly and proudly. People cherish fairer daughters and attempt to wash out dark skins. Girls want to stay as thin as possible and boys are taking more and more dangerous protein shakes," she said.



The teenager, who supports the "Make Love Not Scars" initiative, doesn't want people to feel sorry for her sufferings. Instead, she wants them to channel their anger towards making the world a better place to live for women.



"There is more acceptance of acid attack victims abroad -- however, perhaps less awareness. It's complex, but abroad, especially the West, acid attack survivors are given rehabilitation, emotional care, carry on to get married and lead normal lives. In countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq... a person is defined by that attack for life," Reshma said.



"People still stare a lot and feel sorry for me. They shouldn't feel sorry for me, they should feel angry with me."



Last year, Reshma made her voice heard when she stepped out to walk the New York Fashion Week (NYFW) runway. She also made a fashionable statement along with actress Bipasha Basu by walking for designer Archana Kochhar in Surat.



Reshma's life was normal like any teenager till the fateful day when she suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye at the age of 17 in 2014 after being attacked with sulfuric acid by several male assailants in Allahabad, a city in Uttar Pradesh.



She didn't aspire to be an inspirational figure for thousands of women around the globe, but is now dedicated towards her mission.



She said: "I look back at my struggle and still think over how futile all of this is. There was no need for me to be attacked by my brother-in-law as revenge to my sister. I had nothing to do with anything. I was innocent -- my sister was innocent. The pain was unbearable, my bones were showing because my skin had charred off. I lost one eye. Why? What was all of this for?



"However, it was the people behind me who made me overcome depression. If I had killed myself -- my parents, brothers and sister would not have survived and I know that. Till today, my attack haunts my parents more than myself. I know I'm an inspirational figure -- but I wish I wasn't. I wish it had never happened to me and never happens to anyone else."



She only hopes the Indian government comes up with stringent laws.



"There is more conversation around acid attacks and people are now being jailed more often. However, they are being released sooner. Although acid sale is banned in some states, people still sell it illegally. There have to be random checks and stricter laws," said Reshma, who has also been supported by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.


Sad & shocked to know that versatile actor Om Puri jee has expired due to heart attack early morning today. #RIP.  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) January 6, 2017

Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist....  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) January 6, 2017

Veteran actor Om Puri is no more. He was 66. The actor suffered a cardiac arrest on Friday morning in Mumbai. The actor, along with the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, was credited for being part of parallel, new-wave cinema that brought change in the film industry back in the 1980s.When CNN News18 reached out to the late actor's estranged wife, Nandita Puri, she confirmed the news and requested for privacy.Filmmaker Ashoke Pandit tweeted the news of his demise on Friday morning.Filmmaker Karan Johar also gave his condolences on Twitter.Born in Ambala, Haryana, to a Punjabi family, the actor made his debut in films in a marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal in 1972. The critically acclaimed actor was one of the prominent names of parallel cinema that changed Indian cinema in the 1980s. A two time National Award winner, the actor was honoured with the Padmashri in 1990.He was last seen in a Pakistani comedy film, Actor in Law, which released in September 2016. The actor also lent his voice for the character of Bagheera in The Jungle Book.The actor studied acting in two of the most prestigious acting schools of the country- NSD and FTII and is remembered for his strong performances in films like Bhavni Bhavai, Ardh Satya, Arohan and many others.Also see: Tributes pour in on Twitter for Om Puri
Mumbai: A giant of parallel and new wave cinema, Om Puri delivered some stellar performances in Ardh Satya, Aakrosh and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron while being equally at home with Bollywood potboilers and Hollywood movies such as East Is East and City of Joy.



With his instantly recognisable rich baritone and chameleon-like ability to transform on-screen, 66-year-old Puri was at ease playing an angst-laden police officer in Ardh Satya to the comic role of a corrupt builder Ahuja in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.



He was the major face of the parallel cinema movement alongside his contemporaries Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, working collectively in some of the biggest Indian classics like Bhumika, Aakrosh, Sparsh, Bhavni Bhavai, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Ata Hai, Mirch Masala, Sadgati, Arohan, Ardh Satya and Mandi.



The actor, who starred in around 300 movies, won the National Film Award for best actor for his role as a police inspector in the 1982 film Ardh Satya. He also received the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India in the year 1990.



After the end of art cinema movement, Puri shifted to mainstream cinema where he did memorable character roles while continuing to give noteworthy performances in films like Vijeta, Ghayal, Droh Kaal, Maachis, Ghatak: Lethal, Chachi 420, Khoobsurat, Pukar, Hera Pheri and Dev.



Puri had appeared in the 2015 Salman Khan movie Bajrangi Bhaijaan. He played the part of a progressive imam, who protects Bajrangi and Munni from the Pakistani security forces and offers them refuge at the madrassa he teaches in.



After Bajrangi Bhaijaan, he teamed up with Salman and Kabir Khan again in Tubelight, which is expected to release on Eid 2017.



The actor was recently in line of fire owing to his comments on Indian soldiers following the Uri attack.



Puri broke the stereotype of the conventional 'good looking' Bollywood hero by setting an example of artistic prowess.



"His greatest contribution has been that when a face like Om Puri was accepted, he actually set a trend. If actors like Nawazuddin Siddiqui are big stars today it is thanks to Om Puri, who convinced audiences to look beyond an actor's face," veteran actor-director Satish Kaushik told PTI.



Born in Ambala, Haryana, to a Railway officer, the multi- talented actor graduated from Pune's prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). He also studied in National School of Drama (NSD) along with Shah. Puri made his acting debut with the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal.



The 66-year-old actor is also remembered for his cameo in Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning film Gandhi, which brought him into limelight on international cinema platform. He appeared in Hollywood films, like City of Joy opposite Patrick Swayze, Wolf with Jack Nicholson, The Ghost and the Darkness opposite Val Kilmer, and was also seen in Charlie Wilson's War which had Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. He last worked with British acting icon Helen Mirren on The Hundred-Foot Journey.



His biography - Om Puri: Unlikely Hero (2009), was authored by his estranged wife Nandita Puri. The book stirred a major controversy with Puri expressing displeasure over some of the references made in it from his personal life. The book to also led to his split with Nandita. Apart from Hindi cinema, Puri also acted in films of various Indian languages, including Malayalam. "Om Puri was one of the versatile actors that India had since 1970s, in the backdrop of the so-called New Wave cinema. In Kerala, he has a large fan following, not just because he had acted in a few Malayalam films but on account of his outstanding contributions to the Indian cinema as a whole," said Balagopal, a film scholar.


One of Bollywood's finest actors, Om Puri, passed away Friday morning leaving the cinema world in grief. Puri who won accolades for his performances in films like Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Mirch Masala (1986) and Dharavi and many others, was one of the popular faces in the west as well.Om Puri was one of the earliest actors of Indian Cinema to work in English films and series. After making his film debut in 1976, Puri made his debut in west in British Miniseries The Jewel in The Crown in 1984. His last west appearance was in American comedy-drama A Hundred Foot Journey in 2014. He also made his Pakistani debut in 2016's Actor in Law, which was also his final appearance as an actor outside India.Remembering the versatile actor, let's take a look at his crossover project that proved his acting prowess to the world.City of Joy a British drama film directed by Roland Joffe based upon the novel of the same name by Dominique Lapierre, looked at poverty in then-modern India, specifically life in the slums. The film stars Patrick Swayze Shabana Azmi. along with Om Puri. The actor played the role of a rural farmer who even after lot of hardships looked at life with optimism.Om Puri again starred in a British film East is East, portraying the Pakistani family man George Khan who is image conscious and wants his children to stay with their roots. The film was a success and established Om Puri as an actor in western cinema. A sequel of the film, West is West was released 2011, due to the popularity of the Khan family.A British comedy, The Parole Officer, saw Om Puri in the role of a former criminal who agrees to help his probation officer in proving his innocence after a murder accusation. The film once again showed the versatility of the actor as he played a goofy George. The Parole Officer was received well and made western critics take of Om Puri.White Teeth, a 2002 British TV Miniseries again proved Om Puri's mettle. Puri played the central role of Samad Miah Iqbal who encounters a turning point in his life, with background cameos from other characters. The series spanned 20 years of three cultures, chronicling the interlinked stories of three families over three generations in a multicultural area of north-west London from 1974 to 1992.One of Om Puri's most recognised work, The Hundred-Foot Journey saw him romancing Helen Mirren. The interesting story of dreams, hopes and food saw Puri in the character of Papa Khan, a patriarch who wants to taste success in mainland Europe.Be it Indian Cinema or films and series in the west Om Puri conquered it all with his acting skills. The talents of Om Puri established him as a versatile actor from the east and his films will always keep his legacy alive
Image: Yogen Shah

Image: Yogen Shah

Image: Yogen Shah

Image: Yogen Shah

Veteran actor Om Puri, who delivered spell-binding performances in Hindi movies and stood out in character roles, breathed his last on Friday morning. He was 66. Om Puri, a Padma Shree awardee, was also seen in several Hollywood and Pakistani movies. Among his most significant films were Aakrosh, Arohan, Ardh Satya, Mirch Masala, Dharavi, Maachis, Gupt, Dhoop, Yuva, Don and Agneepath.As soon as the news of his demise was out, friends and colleagues from Bollywood reached his residence in Mumbai to pay their last respects. Among his several friends, filmmaker Prakash Jha was seen.Om Puri's second wife Nandita Puri while arriving at the actor's residence.Manoj Pahwa seen at Om Puri's Mumbai residence.
Image: YouTube

Image: YouTube

Image: YouTube

Legendary actor Om Puri passed away after a massive heart attack early on Friday morning. The actor was 66. Om Puris friends and several stars from Bollywood reached his residence at Andheri to pay their last respects to the actor.Om Puri, who won several accolades for his performances, made his film debut in the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal. It was based on a Marathi play of the same name, which was written by Vijay Tendulkar. It was directed by K. Hariharan and Mani Kaul along with 16 graduates of the FTII.Along with Amrish Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, Puri was among the key actors who starred the wave of art films. It was with this that we saw him being featured in several popular films such as Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Mirch Masala (1986) and Dharavi (1992).Puri was lauded for his performances even he took up several unconventional roles. We give you a lowdown on his most unforgettable performances.He played a victimized tribal in the film which was released in 1980. This Hindi arthouse film was directed by Govind Nihalani and written by renowned Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar.The film featured Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Amrish Puri in lead roles and bagged 1980 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and several Filmfare Awards.His convincing portrayal of a police inspector in the film is still one of the most memorable performances from the actor. This was also directed by Govind Nihalani. In this popular cop-drama, Om Puri was lauded for playing a cop who struggled with the evils around him. The film also featured Amrish Puri, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, and Sadashiv Amrapurkar. The film bagged several awards and became a landmark film in Indian film history.This crime drama film was directed and produced by Govind Nihalani. The film dealt with India's battle against terrorism. It also examined the mental and psychological trauma that an honest police officers experienced in their fight against a group of ruthless terrorists.He essayed the role of the leader of a cell of Sikh militanats Sanathan in Maachis. The film was set in the 1980s in the Indian state of Punjab which had was worn-out by a violent insurgency in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and the subsequent 1984 Anti-Sikh riots.This 1984 Hindi film was directed by T.S. Ranga and featured Smita Patil and Nana Patekar among others. The film won Special Jury Award (32nd National Film Awards) for its depiction of the powerlessness of people struggling against the Devdasi tradition.He played the brave old guard who doesnt let Subhedar's friends enter the spice factory. He claims the women inside the spice factory are like his own daughters and dares Subhedar's friends to enter the factory. The film was set in Colonial India in the early 1940s. Directed by Ketan Mehta, it featured Naseeruddin Shah and Smita Patil in the lead roles.Directed by N Chandra, the film revolved around Baapji (Om Puri) - the most influential man in the city. The film also featureds Sunny Deol, Dimple Kapadia, Urmila Matondkar, Ravi Behl in key roles.Om Puri may have got a minute role in British filmmaker Richard Attenborough's Oscar winning film Gandhi, but the film definitely changed his life just like the rest who were associated with it. I had barely one-and-a-half-minute screen-time in Gandhi. But what an impact my cameo made! I believe it was shown as the footage during the Oscar nominations, a huge honour in a film that starred the most distinguished cast possible, he said in an interview.This 1992 French-British drama film was directed by Roland Joffe. Its screenplay was written by Mark Medoff. It was based on the novel by the same name by Dominique Lapierre. The film featured Patrick Swayze, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi.Kundan Shah's 1983 cult film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was a political satire. He played a perpetually drunk Ahuja in the film. As Ahuja, Om Puri played another candidate vying for D'Mello's attention. The film narrated a tale of two simple and honest photographers, essayed by Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Vaswani. They witness a murder and get dragged into the corrupt real estate circle where politicians and bureaucrats are involved. It featured actors like Pankaj Kapur, Satish Shah, Neena Gupta and Satish Kaushik, apart for Om Puri.In the Prison of Spring: This 1997 Bollywood was film, produced and directed by Basu Bhattacharya. The film featured Rekha, Om Puri, Navin Nischol and Daisy Irani in key roles. The film earned both critical acclaim and commercial success.Released in 2003, this Indian crime drama film was directed by Vishal Bhardwaj. The film featured actors Pankaj Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Tabu and Masumeh Makhija in an adaptation of the play Macbeth by Shakespeare.Released in 1997, this British romantic-drama was adapted from a short story written by Hanif Kureishi. Om Puri played the protagonist in the film. He essayed the role of a taxi driver who slogs to make a living while all his friends are moneyed. He bagged the best actor award at the Brussels International Film Festival for his performance.This comedy drama revolved around a mixed-ethnicity household which is led by a Pakistani father and an English mother. The film bagged multiple awards for the best film, story, screenplay and direction. The film also got a sequel called West is West (2010).This action comedy film was directed by Anees Bazmee. The film featured Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif in key roles. Om Puri is still remembered for giving the film its most genuine comic moments.This Pakistani socio-comedy which was released in 2016 marked the debut of Om Puri in the Pakistani film industry. The film was directed by Nabeel Qureshi and featured Om Puri as Rafaqat Mirza. The actor was lauded for his performance.
RIP Om Puri.

We have lost one of our finest.

A talent, A Voice, A Spirit.

Will miss you Puri Saab.  Boman Irani (@bomanirani) January 6, 2017

Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri ....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist....  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) January 6, 2017

Shocked beyond words to learn that #OmPuri ji is no more. Will miss you sir. Condolences to the family. RIP #HugeLoss pic.twitter.com/REq9vDrtkk  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 6, 2017

I have known #OmPuri for d last 43yrs. For me hell always b a great actor, a kind & generous man. And that is how world shud remember him.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm cant believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

Condolences on the passing away of one of our finest ever actors #OmPuri pic.twitter.com/gBCK6mWwLF  Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) January 6, 2017

The Prime Minister condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri & recalls his long career in theatre & films.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 6, 2017

My deepest condolences on the passing away of one of the most versatile actors of Indian Cinema , #OmPuri ji pic.twitter.com/hZN2pL6Ejo  Mohammad Kaif (@MohammadKaif) January 6, 2017

I m shocked to hear sad demise of Actor OM PURI JI. My heartfelt condolences to his family. I pray to Almighty may his soul Rest in peace.  KRK (@kamaalrkhan) January 6, 2017

Shocked to know that the immensely talented actor #OmPuri passed away. Big loss to our film industry. RIP   Madhur Bhandarkar (@imbhandarkar) January 6, 2017

Such an indispensable loss to our world...too big for any words. Deeply, deeply saddened . #RIPOmPuri  Nimrat Kaur (@NimratOfficial) January 6, 2017

Om ji,u were the finest. Will miss u always.Thank u so much for giving me n the entire world such fond memories..love u sir. #RipOmpuri sir pic.twitter.com/pXwicOqs3H  sonu sood (@SonuSood) January 6, 2017

Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films...heartfelt condolences to the family. #RIP  Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 6, 2017

So long Omji. Prided myself on being his friend peer & admirer. Who dare say my Om Puri is no more ? He lives through his work.  Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) January 6, 2017

The end of an era .... The legacy lives on.. RIP #OmPuri  PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) January 6, 2017

Such an indispensable loss to our world...too big for any words. Deeply, deeply saddened . #RIPOmPuri  Nimrat Kaur (@NimratOfficial) January 6, 2017

Extremely shocked and sad to hear about the passing of the legend, Om Puri :( Will forever be a huge fan !  dulquer salmaan (@dulQuer) January 6, 2017

Shocked to hear about the demise of #OmPuri Indian cinema will be poorer in his absence. #RIP  Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) January 6, 2017

Veteran actor Om Puri passed away at the age of 66 on Friday after suffering a cardiac arrest at his residence in Mumbai.The recipient of Padma Shri, the actor had appeared in numerous mainstream Bollywood cinema as well as Pakistani, British and Hollywood films.Also Read: Remembering Om Puri (1950-2017): His Most Unforgettable Films
New Delhi: Describing Congress and other rival parties as "anti-people and anti-democracy", BJP on Friday hailed the Modi government, saying 2016 was the "dawn of a new era" with a number of transformative decisions in the spheres of national security, self-pride, probity and the poor's welfare.



The political resolution passed at the party's national executive claimed that the Modi government has created a new "history" in the direction of the poor's welfare with its bold initiatives.



Proposed by Union Home Minister and former party chief Rajnath Singh, the resolution also hit out at the opposiiton, saying "obstruction and obfuscation" have become their hallmark while BJP has notched up one electoral victory after another which shows popular support for demonetisation.



Calling Modi's policies "transformative", it promised that the new year would bring more prosperity and progress. The resolution also dwelt at length in attacking West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who has emerged as a trenchant critics of the Centre.



Attacking her government for its "failure" in safeguarding the "law-abiding majority community", the resolution cited the Dhulagarh riots as its "most glaring example" as rioters went about torching houses and shouting slogans like 'Pakistan zindabad'.



"The behaviour of the parties led by Congress in stalling the entire session of Parliament betrays their scant respect for democratic institutions. Obstruction and obfuscation has become the hallmark of the opposition politics in the country," it said.



The national executive also backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "path-breaking" electoral reform initiatives, including proposal for holding simultaneous polls to central and state legislatures, and asserted that together with other important reforms it would pave the way for cleaner and healthier electoral practises.



The resolution alleged attacks on BJP's workers have increased in Bengal and the Left-ruled Kerala.



The recent attacks on BJP headquarters in Kolkata and scores of other places in Bengal point to the extreme and violent form of political intolerance practised by the ruling TMC, it alleged.



"The red terror in Kerala continues to rob the lives of dedicated Karyakartas, the latest victim being Radhakrishnan.



It is a sad commentary on the bureaucracy and law and order machinery that they too seem to have become mute spectators while lawlessness and crime perpetrates.



"Extreme appeasement politics of the governments in the states have led to sever communal tension and strife in these states," it said.



Referring to the coming five state polls, the resolution said BJP views them as an opportunity to retain or regain power in all the states including Manipur. "People of the country are yearning to follow PM Modiji's development politics."



"We are here not merely for reform. Reform is good, but it is largely about tinkering the existing system. PM Modi's vision is transformative," it claimed.



The resolution said the government took a number of transformative decisions in the spheres of national security, self-pride, prosperity, probity and the poor's welfare.



"The Modi government has created a new history in the direction of the poor's welfare with its bold initiatives."



Referring to surgical strikes, it said the move marked the end of an era in which India was seen as a soft state. Maximum number of terrorists were killed in 2015-16 and the Maoism was also under control.



The surgical strikes were executed with utmost precision and showed to the world that India is led by a government today that is committed to securing its borders and interests with determination and will power.



"We salute our brave soldiers for valiantly fighting and laying down their lives to secure our borders and honour. That the strikes have had the required effect on our neighbour can be gauged from the fact that there is near normal silence on the Indo-Pak border in the last few weeks and also the initiative taken by Pakistan to call for DGMO level talks between the two countries," it claimed.



India has always demonstrated its urge and desire for peaceful and friendly relations with all its neighbours including Pakistan, it said and cited Modi's 'Together We Grow' plank for the neighbours.



"The surgical strikes and the total rejection of the separatist agenda by the people and governments of Jammu and Kashmir, and the Centre are a categorical assertion to Pakistan that its ulterior designs shall never succeed and the government led by Modi will continue to demonstrate zero tolerance for terrorism.



"It reserves every right to respond to such threats in an appropriate and out-of-the-box manner in future also," the BJP said.



Noting that the party is celebrating the birth centenary of its ideologue Deendayal Upadhyay, the resolution said the Modi government has taken up countless initiatives for the welfare of the poor in line with his 'antyodaya' (welfare of the last man).



Icing on the cake, it said, was Modi's new year eve address in which he offered several incentives for urban and rural poor, farmers, pregnant women, small and medium industries and senior citizens among others.



"These new incentives are going to not only benefit the poor and marginalised but also various other segments of the society by kick-starting the economy in a big way," it said.



Referring to the party's maiden win in Assam and decent show in other state elections, the resolution also highlighted BJP's victory in local polls held after demonetisation and said, "It is not an overstatement to claim that the results are a vindication of the unqualified popular support to the demonetisation programme."
New Delhi: On January 4, 2017, Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar held a press conference not on demonetisation, which was still the news of the day, but on social media trolls.



"Why does Modi act as the benefactor, protector, nurturer of these hate mongers and misogynists?" he asked. The reference was to Sadhvi Khosla, a former member of the BJP's social media team, who revealed she was under pressure to make #snapdealcutties with Aamir Khan trend on Twitter.



Khoslas breaking point, as per her own admission, was when she was asked to abuse and slut-shame women journalists who questioned BJP and PM Modi.



Ajoy Kumar went on to give instances of how BJP social media trolls would attack women on Twitter to counter those who questioned the government. He offered another example by alluding to Amartya Sen's daughter Nandana Sen, whose objectionable pictures came up on social media sites.



But the question is why did Congress decide to hold a press conference on social media trolls and not on the hot topic of the day  demonetisation?



The story behind the decision reveals the intrigue and dissent within the party.



In an internal survey monitoring response to social media activities of the Congress party, it was found that what the party said and Rahul Gandhi tweeted rarely trended. A late entrant to the importance of social media presence, Congress realised that if Rahul has to counter Modi he would need to register. Despite being reported, Rahul's tweets don't trend on Twitter. Worse, the trolls attacking Rahul cannot be effectively countered by the Congresss social media team.



A member of Congresss media department, who was once with its social media team but decided to opt out, said, "It's a small team of 20 people who are expected to take on the thousands in Modi's team. And worse, there is no coordination within the party."



In fact, Rahul's tweets are managed by a member of his office and are very closely guarded. The media department is seldom kept in the loop but is expected to follow up and appeal to the journalists to pick up his tweets. The tweets are shared before being put up with the small social media team for technical assistance. This team is headed by Rohtak MP and former Haryana chief minister's son, Deepender Hooda.



But many within the party feel that this lack of coordination is detrimental to the effectiveness of their social media thrust. Hooda, they complain, is rarely pro-active and his delicate equation with the media department means there is no effective communication. There have been instances when some have pointed this out to Rahul Gandhi often, but he has refused to listen. In fact, at a recently held social media conference, which was attended by Rahul Gandhi, the advice given to his team by Rahul was to avoid abuses and trolling but be firm and effective. How? Wonders his team.



The social media team is an entity unto itself. It's clear that the equations within Haryana Congress are having their effect. The media department head is Randeep Surjewala, also an MLA from Kaithal in Haryana. Deepender Hooda is his former boss's son and amid all this Ashok Tanwar is waiting, perhaps hoping to play a bigger role.



Sources say Randeep isn't keen on taking over the social media charge as he is happy to let Deepender do it. But complaints against Hooda are increasing and a change of guard isn't ruled out.



But will Congress, which takes time to take decisions, realise the urgency? It certainly has many plans up its sleeves. For the big battle for states, it hopes to step up its campaign on social media hoping Rahul trends. But then is Deepender Hooda the man to do it?


Thiruvananthapuram: The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) central committee meeting at a five-star hotel in Thiruvananthapuram has invited criticism from Opposition mocking the claim of Left leaders' 'austere' lifestyle.



The 3-day meet is set to be held from January 6 to 8.



The reason cited for hiring the hotel was security issues and the logistical difficulty in arranging stay for the members at different hotels and bringing them to AKG centre for the conference.



Some of the leaders have 'Z' security and their security concern was taken into consideration, a source said.



The source further added that CPM office bearers claim that they got the hotel rooms at discounted package which was financially viable.



The parking constraints at AKG centre was also cited as a reason not to hold the convention there.



Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, however, criticised the move and said that CPM is deviating from their own party line.



Chennithala added that they were the ones who kept saying that their party is of the masses and people should lead a simple life.



"This was their line in all their party Congress' and plenums but now they have deviated from it," Chennithala said adding that the meeting is being held at a time when people are suffering from the after effects of demonetisation.



CPM Central committee (CC) has 91 elected members, five special invitees and five permanent invitees.



The party will discuss the national political scenario including the impact of demonetisation and the course of agitation, the CC will discuss the partys plans for the upcoming elections in five states including UP and Punjab.



Top leaders of the party, including General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and politbureau members will attend the meet.



A public meeting will be held at Putharikandam ground on Saturday evening and workers from different parts of the state are likley to assemble at the spot.



CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat and Biman Bose will address the meeting.
Thiruvananthapuram: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor courted arrest on Friday during a protest against demonetisation of high value currency notes by PM Narendra Modi on November 8.



Joining the nation-wide agitation against note ban, thousands of Congress workers in Kerala staged protest outside central government offices across the state.



Tharoor was however released after a brief detention.



Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala too was arrested in front of the Reserve Bank of India regional office here.



The mass agitation was part of the country-wide stir called by All India Congress Committee from booth to national level against the Narendra Modi government's anti-people policies and its failure to resolve the problems faced by common man, hit by demonetisation.



Prominent leaders, MLAs, MPs and AICC representatives led the picketing in front of various central government offices, including head-post offices in the districts.



A large number of workers, led by Chennithala, staged demonstration at the RBI office here in the state capital.



Senior district leaders and MLA V S Sivakumar also took part in the protests.



Hundreds of party workers from various parts of the district took out a march to the apex bank office in the city.



There were reports of scuffle during the protest when party workers tried to break the police barricade and enter the office premises.



Veteran Congress leader and former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy launched the agitation in front of the head-post office in Kozhikode, while KPCC president V M Sudheeran led the protest in Thrissur district.



AICC secretary Deepak Babria too held the protest before the BSNL office in Kochi.



The protests were organised under the aegis of respective District Congress Committees.



(With PTI inputs)
Kolkata: Stepping up her attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has appealed to President Pranab Mukherjee to save the states and the country by "imposing a national government".



"We think that only the President can save the nation in such a situation. The current leader at the Centre is incapable. He is the Kalidasa who has chopped the branch on which he is sitting," Mamata said.



"I have no issues if Advaniji, Rajnath Singh or Arun Jaitley runs the national government.I am also okay with a Presidential form of government for two years in the wake of the extraordinary situation," Mamata added.



Citing her survey report, Mamata said, "1.7 crore people in West Bengal have been directly affected by demonetisation and 81.5 lakh people have been rendered jobless in the state due to note ban effect."



She further accused the PM of destroying the farmers who have been worst hit and the note ban will lead to price rise of essential commodities.



"We are steadily progressing towards famine," Mamata further added.



The Bengal CM is in the middle of a bitter war with the Centre and BJP over the recent arrest of two of her MPs by the CBI in the Rose Valley chit fund scam. She has accused the Modi government of using CBI to get back at her for her opposition to the demonetization drive.







The day TMC Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay was arrested by CBI, TMC workers had attacked the BJP HQ in Kolkata.



BJP has dismissed all allegations of vendetta politics and said the CBI is following due process in its investigation.


Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh State Election Committee on Thursday sent its recommendations for the 403 state assembly seats to the party high command.



At a meeting chaired by state unit president Raj Babbar and attended by its Chief Ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, and top leaders like Nirmal Khatri, Rajya Sabha members Pramod Tiwari, P.L. Punia, Sanjay Singh, former union ministers Pradeep Jain Aditya and Jitin Prasad, every seat was discussed and a proposal sent to the high command.



Chairman of the Coordinate Committee of the UP Congress, Tiwari said that for every seat there were 8-10 applicants, mostly youngsters and women.



"We have cleared the names which were considered winnable candidates and the finally decision now will be taken by the central leadership," he added.



Loyalty and winnability were two factors which were considered, he said, noting that there was a good response among the interested candidates after Vice President Rahul Gandhi interacted with them.



The fact that the party has zeroed in on candidates for all the 403 seats also s1uggests that the party has put behind the discussions for a possible alliance with the ruling Samajwadi Party.



The Congress leaders, insiders say, were unhappy with the feud in the SP and were playing a safe bet for now in chalking out a lone journey for themselves. With dates of the UP polls announced already, the party is now looking forward for the central election committee to clear these names within the next few days to give it a head start in the crucial polls.



Congress has been relegated to the fourth spot in the state it once ruled for many decades. It has 28 MLAs in the outgoing assembly.
Two months after the demonetisation drive began, former Union finance minister P Chidambaram tells News18's Pallavi Ghosh that the government has no business controlling the supply of money. He is "disappointed" that the RBI, under Urjit Patel, "compromised" the independence and autonomy of the institution. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:



The Election Commission has scheduled the Assembly polls for five states to begin on February 4, three days after the Union Budget. Do you think the Centre and the BJP have an unfair advantage here? Do you think the Budget should be postponed till the voting is over?

Going by the 2012 precedent, which was done at the insistence of the BJP, it is only fair that the budget is presented after the polling dates.



Should the government and RBI make a conscious decision to reduce the currency notes in circulation to promote digital transactions? What is the purpose of demonetisation and then remonetising the whole amount?

The government has no role in deciding the quantum of notes that should be issued for circulation. The sole authority in the matter of issue of notes is the RBI. How much money will be required to keep pace with the needs of the economy and for economic growth  called money supply  is an aspect of monetary policy and the RBI has total autonomy in determining the monetary policy. Government cannot claim to make a conscious decision on reducing or increasing money supply. After demonetising Rs 15,44,000 crore, by value, of notes, what is the value of notes that should be pushed into the economy is a decision that should be made by the RBI having regard to the needs of the economy. It could less than or more than Rs 15,44,000 crore.



There are reports that demonetisation was contemplated during UPA II, when you were finance minister. When was it proposed, why was it proposed and why was it rejected?

Demonetisation was not considered during UPA I or UPA II. The CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) did an independent study and came to the conclusion that demonetisation was not advisable.



How do you look at the performance of RBI Governor Urjit Patel so far?

I am disappointed that the RBI, under Dr Urjit Patel, compromised the independence and autonomy of the RBI on a matter concerning monetary policy. It is now clear that the government decided upon demonetisation and what followed on November 8 was only a farcical process to keep up the pretence of decision-making. The RBI Board met with only four (out of ten) independent directors and dutifully recommended what the government wanted. The Monetary Policy Committee that was recently constituted was totally excluded. The RBI was ill-prepared to handle the fall-out of the sudden demonetisation.



Is there anything you have found in demonetisation that you feel has been a positive consequence? Even if it be unintentional?

I suspect that the push towards digital transactions in urban areas will get a boost. That would have happened anyway, it may now happen sooner.



Recently, RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy told News18 that the quality of growth from 2004 till now has been a disaster. From 1999-2004, employment grew and economy grew. But after that they went for 8.5 but employment generated was only 2.6. It was jobless growth. Prices and stocks went up. Even property grew... Do you agree with him?

I don't. Effective answers, supported by unassailable facts, have been given by Rajeev Gowda MP and by two young analysts.



The Congress party has not raised any questions on funding of political parties. Although cheque payments are tax-exempt, parties do not have to declare the donors name for cash payments below Rs 20,000. People say this is a major loophole for funnelling black money. What is the Congresss stand on this? Or on bringing political parties under the ambit of the RTI, which would improve transparency and accountability.

Elections are the soul of a parliamentary democracy. Elections have to be funded. All funds come from the people. If there is a comprehensive proposal to fund elections, the Congress party will support such a proposal. If there is a law that all donations to political parties shall be in non-cash form, I would support it.



The Election Commission has proposed that the cash payment exemption to political parties be cut down to Rs 2,000. Do you support this move?

I would support the proposal.



PM has also called for state-funding of elections as another measure to root out black money. Does the Congress party support this too?

State funding of elections cannot be achieved easily. Funding must be fair and non-discriminatory. Let the government make a concrete proposal and the Congress party will consider it with an open mind.



Do you expect the government to use fiscal policy to boost the economy? What kind of steps do you think they could take? There is talk of lowering income tax, do you think thats a possibility?

The space for fiscal measures to boost the economy has shrunk because of demonetisation. I cannot anticipate the measures that may be announced by the Finance Minister. I do not think there is too much room to lower the income tax rates from the present levels of 10, 20 and 30 per cent.








New Delhi: A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine was reportedly docked at a port in Pakistan, sources privy to the development said here on Friday. They added that it could be there as Beijing was selling eight submarines to Islamabad, four of which were to be built in the port city of Karachi.



The image, dating back to May 2016, was found on Google Earth. It appears to be a nuclear submarine, one of the latest with China, according to experts.



The submarine was later seen crossing the Malacca Straits in June 2016. Submarines have to surface while crossing straits as per protocol.



Chinese submarines have been spotted in the Indian Ocean, which has been usually attributed to providing protection against piracy.



Speaking on the presence of the Chinese Navy's ships and submarines in Pakistan in December last year, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had said that India was keeping a close eye on them.



"We have capability and assets to take on any force which is deployed, and if and when this happens, we have plans in place to tackle it," the Navy Chief had said



Sources from the Navy said Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean was being noticed and constantly monitored.



The boats were usually sent with other ships for providing security to Chinese merchant vessels from pirates, which according to sources may not be the real reason.



China's growing territorial claims in the South China sea have caused tension in the region, with the US vocally pitching for freedom of navigation in international waters.



Both India and China were part of Shared Awareness and Deconfliction which was established to coordinate the efforts of the military forces conducting counter piracy in the western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.



Pakistan is buying eight submarines from China. The first four submarines were expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the remaining four will be assembled in Karachi by 2028.



State-run media in Pakistan including Radio Pakistan had reported that the $5 billion deal has been detailed by senior naval officers to the parliamentary committee that handles defence.




Islamabad: Pakistan's recently retired army chief Gen Raheel Sharif will head a Saudi Arabia-led 39-nation Islamic military coalition formed to combat terrorism, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Friday.



Asif, while speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back.



He, however, said he did not have much information about the details of the said agreement.



Asif said the decision was taken after taking the incumbent government into confidence and "it was finalised here first". The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.



The Defence Minister said any such assignment or posting requires proper clearance from the government and General Headquarters (GHQ) both and confirmed that the due process was followed before finalising the agreement.



"As you are aware that this thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the Prime Minister was also part of the deliberations," Asif was quoted as saying by Dawn News.



He was of the opinion that formation of such an alliance is a good step, as the "Muslim Ummah (community) is in a spot of bother right now and needs unity among its ranks".



Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.



Pakistan had initially found itself in the cross-hairs of Middle Eastern politics as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly-formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent.



However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.



The coalition was envisaged to serve as a platform for security cooperation, including provision of training, equipment and troops, and involvement of religious scholars for dealing with extremism.



The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.



Iran, Saudi Arabia's arch-rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional powers rage from Syria to Yemen, the report said.



The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others.
New York: In another milestone for Sikhs, US Army commanders have been ordered to allow those of the faith to wear turbans, karas and keep their beards.



Army Secretary Eric Fanning on Wednesday signed the order that said: "The soldier's brigade-level commander will approve a request for a religious accommodation" by Sikhs.



Till now Sikhs had to get permission from the Army Secretary, a cumbersome process prone to delays and not automatically given.



Now they need to apply only to their brigade-level commanders, who will have to give them permission except in certain cases involving their safety like exposure to poison gases.



Once it is granted they can keep the exemption for most positions in the military.





Sikh Coalition Legal Director Harsimran Kaur welcomed the new rules. "We are pleased with the progress that the new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity by our nation's largest employer," she said.



The order also allows Muslims to wear hijabs. Muslim men can also keep beards.



The New York Police Department, the biggest in the US, changed its rules last month to allow Sikhs to wear turbans and keep their beards.



Last year Captain Simratpal Singh, an Afghan war veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star, and two others filed a case against the army saying the ban on beards and turbans curbs their religious freedom.



The Army Secretary then gave the three of them permission to wear turbans.



According to the civil rights organisation, Sikh Coalition members of the faith had been serving in the US military from at least World War I. But in 1981, the army changed the rules to ban beards and turbans.



"My turban and beard represent my commitment to pluralism and equality," said Major Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, an army doctor who served in Afghanistan and won a Bronze Star.



"This policy change underscores the military's commitment to these values and is a sign of meaningful progress that will ensure the strength of our democracy."



While the restrictions on having beards still hold if there are risks like exposure to toxic material, Fanning ordered the army to test existing products to see if they can be made safe for those wearing beards and to look for alternative equipment.




Washington: US Vice President Joe Biden has suggested President-elect Donald Trump to "grow up" and behave like an "adult".



"Grow up Donald, grow up, time to be an adult, you're President. Time to do something. Show us what you have," EFE news quoted Biden as saying on Thursday.



Biden had criticised two of Trump's recent messages in which he labelled Senate minority leader of the Democrats Chuck Schumer as "head clown" and another in which the President-elect criticised President Barack Obama for his "incendiary comments".



"It's going to be much clearer what he's (Trump) for and against, and what we're for and against, now that it's going to get down to actually discussing in detail these issues that affect people's lives," Biden said.



The Vice President also said it was "dangerous" for Trump to be sceptical of US intelligence agencies.



During the campaign and after being elected President, Trump has been using Twitter compulsively for all sorts of purposes, such as insulting opponents and his colleagues, threatening companies or criticising the intelligence community.



New York Republican Representative Chris Collins, a member of Trump's transition executive committee, denounced Biden's response.



"That's a pathetic response," Collins said on Thursday.



"I think it's beneath the Office of the Vice President. It shows just the angst of the loss of this election by Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Trump is the adult in the room."



This isn't the first time Biden has been outspoken against Trump.



Biden in October slammed Trump saying the Republican presidential nominee "lacks any sensibilities about the American people".



"He's not a bad man," Biden said at the time. "But his ignorance is so profound, so profound."


A temporary suspension of services self-imposed by the rescue division of Gladstone Volunteer Fire and Rescue Services that was slated to last 60 days and turned into almost six months, has ended.

Rescue personnel began providing emergency medical services to the area again the week before Christmas. County career staff and the Roseland volunteer rescue squad will no longer be covering the area.

Michael Berg, regulation and compliance manager for the Virginia Department of Healths Office of Emergency Medical Services, confirmed in mid-December the agency currently is certified and fully licensed to provide rescue services.

The agency was brought back online Dec. 15.

We as an agency are very happy to be able to once again provide EMS support to the community, Gladstone Rescue Board Vice President Brandon Page said in a Dec. 19 email. Over the next few days, our personnel will be working to re-stock and service the rescue units to ensure that all proper supplies are on board and that the units are operating soundly. It is our intention to have at least one of our rescue units in service as early as [Christmas weekend] with the second [vehicle] being back in service shortly thereafter.

During the agencys recent annual meeting, Joe Johnson was elected captain of the rescue division.

Berg said the agency still has a few issues to take care of. The agency must provide documentation ensuring the squad has all Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS)-required response plans in place within 90 days.

It is our impression that with the change in leadership and the enthusiasm and cooperation, they should be able to make that happen, Berg said.

Though no board members contacted in the past few weeks elaborated on the leadership change, an email sent to Berg on June 28 by then-Capt. Jennifer Burks asking for the timeout period said there was an internal disagreement as to the best way forward through a volunteer shortage and a perceived call-volume increase.

The email continued to say the agencys board of directors and leaders of the rescue division disagreed about how to best deal with the leadership issue  the board believed implementing new leadership would be the best way to respond while rescue personnel felt the way forward is by working with county resources to discover alternate and more sustainable/viable means of improving call-coverage in our community.

As part of OEMS requirements, the Gladstone rescue division also has secured a medical director. According to OEMS, the medical director is required to be an unrestricted licensed physician in the state of Virginia and must go through OEMS training to be endorsed by OEMS.

Berg has said in his 13 years as compliance manager with the Office of Emergency Medical Services, he cannot recall anyagency asking for a temporary suspension of its services.

Its certainly a good thing for the county and the residents of the Gladstone community, Nelson County Administrator Stephen Carter said of Gladstone rescues ability to serve the area again.  The county is very encouraged that its back up and running.
After two years of leading the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company, General Manager Josh Baker has resigned to accept a job in Alexandria.

Baker is set to serve as the general manager and CEO of Alexandria Transit Company, which operates the DASH bus system. His last day as GLTC general manager will be Jan. 27.

GLTC board president Peggy Whitaker said, to the best of her knowledge, current GLTC Assistant General Manager John Rayman will serve as GLTCs interim general manager, if necessary.

Baker began serving as GLTC general manager in Jan. 2015, replacing former general manager Karen Walton. Baker announced his resignation Wednesday during a board meeting of GLTCs board of directors.

Raised outside of Baltimore, Baker said his new position will be an opportunity to be closer to family while providing new challenges and growth.

Leaving GLTC is a difficult decision, because I love what I do here, he said Thursday.

GLTCs general manager and assistant general manager are employees of Cincinnati-based First Transit. First Transit vets new general managers, who are then presented to GLTCs board of directors for its concurrence, Baker said.

According to Whitaker, it is not known when there will be a new general manager.

Baker said he is doing what he can to ensure a smooth transition and does not anticipate there being a successor prior to his departure.

We hate to have Josh leave us, Whitaker said. He is an amazing asset to GLTC, but we certainly do wish him well in his new position.

Baker said he would like to think that his biggest success has been working to build GLTC into an organization that is ready to take it to the next level.

I think most of what Ive done is to make sure the organization is best equipped to meet the needs of the community, Baker said.

GLTC has had financial challenges, which included some years that ended in six-figure deficits. Baker said he believes the company is in its most secure financial position within the last decade. GLTC has ended recent fiscal years in the black, with modest net surpluses of $43,702 in fiscal year 2015 and $6,765 in FY 2016.

Were continuing to see positive financial performance this fiscal year as well, he said.

During Bakers tenure, GLTC secured funding for the operations of a free downtown circulator bus, which is potentially set to run this summer, and the company has addressed shortfalls in funding from Amherst County, which will result in reduced bus service in Madison Heights beginning Jan. 9.

Baker noted that with the growth of Lynchburg within the last 10 years, bus routes have not substantially changed during that time.

The real next step of the system is to go back and re-evaluate what we are doing and why, and find a way to do it better.

So much of my work has been to be conscious of the challenging past and how to move forward  remembering what didnt work and focusing on what does work, Baker said.

According to Whitaker, Josh is a rising star in the transit industry and has led GLTC through a number of initiatives, including reviewing the companys bus routes for efficiency and cost effectiveness, overseeing the implementation of an online bus tracker that allows customers to know the location of buses in real time and overseeing the construction of a new operations and maintenance facility on Bradley Drive. According to Baker, employees could potentially move into the new facility in March.

Calling Bakers interpersonal skills extraordinary, Whitaker said Baker interacted with members of the community and GLTC customers with a great level of expertise. The next general manager will need to be someone with strong financial skills to ensure that the companys financial situation remains healthy, she said.

Those are going to be big shoes to fill because he has done all of those things extraordinarily well, Whitaker said.
Central Virginia saw 22 cases of animal rabies in 2016, and authorities are encouraging people to do what they can to prevent exposure to the disease.

Steve Simpson, environmental health manager with the Lynchburg Health Department, said there were two positive rabies cases in Appomattox County with a cow and a dog, one case in Lynchburg with a cat and one case in Bedford County. The rest of the cases were with wild animals.

A lot of times youll have a skunk or a raccoon attack a dog or person  theyll come out of the woods and theyll be acting strangely, he said.

Simpson said the number of cases varies from year to year  in 2015, he said there were around 30 total cases. That number doesnt necessarily correspond with the prevalence of rabies in the area, since it depends on how many animals come to the department.

According to a Central Virginia Health District news release, representatives investigated 68 potential cases of pet exposure to rabies in 2016 across Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties and Lynchburg.

In pets, rabies can present as paralysis, extreme aggression or sometimes blindness. Simpson said confirmation of a rabies diagnosis can only come posthumously.

While rabies is typically fatal to humans by the time symptoms are observed, vaccination within five to 10 days of exposure to the disease can prevent it, Simpson said. A total of 52 people were treated for rabies in the district in 2016, and Simpson said the cost of the injection series is pretty high.

Many fatal cases in humans stem from bat bites, which can be so small people dont notice theyve been bitten, he said.

If someone wakes up with a bat inside their house, Simpson said they should assume exposure and the bat should be tested, though most bats turn up negative.
APPOMATTOX  The Lynchburg Humane Society has made improvements to the public Appomattox County Animal Shelter after being handed the keys to the facility only a few days ago.

This is the first instance of LHS taking over management of another locality's public shelter, according to Executive Director Makena Yarbrough. The move was approved by Appomattox County supervisors in November following public outcry over the euthanasia of a dog named Sam in September.

The Humane Society will operate Appomattox as a satellite shelter so animals and staff can go back and forth between Appomattox and Lynchburg.

Under the agreement with Appomattox County, LHS will offer 24/7 medical care for the animals in the shelter, spay and neuter services, increased training and policies for shelter employees and increased hours of operation.

The annual cost to the county will be $75,000 paid to the humane society. Prior to the takeover, the county spent about $65,000 per year on its shelter.

When an animal is admitted to the Appomattox shelter, located off Morningstar Road in Appomattox, it will be held for up to 10 days  the state-mandated stray holding period  and could be transferred to Lynchburg for a better chance at adoption.

Yarbrough said via email her organization saved 96 percent of the 3,981 pets it housed in Lynchburg in 2016. In 2015, 70 percent of the animals taken to Lynchburg were adopted. Only 5 percent of the animals in 2015 were euthanized.

We are excited about working so closely with the community of Appomattox and the county government to affect positive change for the pets we serve, Yarbrough said. We are bringing this same mission and vision to Appomattox; no saveable pet will be euthanized.

The deal with LHS materialized a couple months after the euthanasia of Sam, despite the fact that someone had stepped forward to adopt the dog, according to volunteers.

The discussions with Lynchburg started about a year-and-a-half ago when County Administrator Susan Adams contacted Yarbrough about a potential partnership to assist with shelter operations. The discussions ended when Adams decided to hire Shawne Ollie as the shelter manager in October 2015.

Ollie resigned as manager in August 2016.

Of the 527 animals the Appomattox shelter accepted in 2015, 127 were adopted, 191 transferred to another facility, 144 were euthanized and 22 remained at the Appomattox shelter as of Dec. 31, 2015, according to the latest numbers available from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Yarbrough said the goal for the humane society is to reduce the euthanization rate and increase volunteer opportunities. She previously told Appomattox County supervisors in November, the humane society wants to bring Appomattox Countys save rate up to 90 percent.

When the shelter first opened this week under the humane societys direction, about 10 dogs were at the shelter Wednesday, along with one stray cat, when the humane society staff stepped in and started cleaning and organizing the 10-year-old shelter building room-by-room.

The first day, they stripped everything. Its more feasible to move and get around. I like it so far, said Danielle Nelson, who has worked at the Appomattox animal shelter since October.

LHS has big plans for the shelter, including a second play area in the shelters front yard, converting the cat cages into a cat playroom similar to the one in Lynchburg, a fresh coat of paint, a pet kitchen area and a small break room for employees.

The building currently has only one 15-square-foot play area outside for animals.

Starting with the cat room, LHS Animal Care Supervisor Taylor Vukich said they plan to open up the room by installing ledges along the top of the room, shelves and cat trees for the felines to hang out on.

A screen door may be added to further welcome visitors into the cat room, Vukich said.

During a tour of the facility Wednesday, Vukich pointed out a room with cabinets full of dog and cat food, treats and toys. Most of the items were donations from the community, but the humane society did bring over a few things such as Kong balls, rubber balls stuffed with treats or peanut butter, for the dogs; blankets were added so they are more comfortable on the concrete floor kennels.

Further down the hallway, a former utility room will be converted into a small break room for employees with a set of table and chairs, refrigerator and a wall of toys, leashes and collars.

Another addition to the kennels is a treat system started at the Lynchburg center about a year ago. Silver bowls were attached to the tops of cages with treats placed inside. When a person comes to visit and reaches for a treat, the dogs know a treat is coming, Vukich said.

For Nelson, the change in management includes more training on how to care for the animals. Last year, under the countys ownership, shelter staff often would take new animals to a local veterinarian to be examined because staff did not have the training, Nelson said. Going forward, the staff will be trained to do health examinations, microchipping and vaccinations.

Yarbrough said the LHS staff veterinarian will certify the staff.

Nelson said on Tuesday she welcomed the two additional staff members from the humane society, who she feels has more knowledge of animal health than the former Appomattox County staff.

Ive been here two days, and Ive learned a lot in two days, Nelson said on Tuesday.

Two full-time LHS employees will staff the Appomattox center daily with additional staff being pulled from Lynchburg as needed, Vukich said.

County Administrator Susan Adams said prior to LHS taking over the shelter, it had one full-time employee and two part-time employees at the shelter. The one full-time employee requested to be transferred to the county landfill and the two part-time employees would not commit to the schedule change.

Adams said by phone she thinks the transition has gone very well.

I know our shelter staff has been working closely with Lynchburg Humane Society for the past couple weeks to create a smooth transition. The leadership of Lynchburg Humane Society did comment on how clean the shelter was and  were impressed with how well-kept our shelter has been, Adams said.

She was impressed with the professionalism of the new hires and how well they worked with outgoing staff members.

I havent personally gotten any response [from the community]. Ive heard some positive things on Facebook. We know what its like to have that connection to a tight-knit community in Lynchburg; we are looking forward to that in Appomattox, Vukich said.

Appomattox resident Laura Dennis periodically has volunteered at the shelter for years. She started volunteering again shortly after the death of the dog named Sam and connecting with Appomattox County Animal Control Officer Micki Caifano. Dennis, 44, already has filled out her LHS paperwork to volunteer at the shelter again and her orientation is Tuesday, she said.

She visited the Appomattox shelter on Tuesday and met with many of the new staff members.

"Automatically, I noticed a huge difference based on the demeanor of the animals, cleanliness ... a more positive experience from what I was used to," Dennis said.

"We all need to work together for the benefit of the animals and it seems like that's what [LHS] is willing to do," she said.

This week, LHS staff is working to integrate the Appomattox shelters animal records into its software and website PetPoint so residents can look on its website for adoptable animals.

Appomattox staff previously had been using handwritten notes attached to the kennels to track the dogs breeds, intake date, and other information. Now staff will be able to print out a card from PetPoint.

The past shelter workers at the shelter did a fine job. We are just stepping it up a notch and bringing in years of knowledge and education to make it an even better community resource, Yarbrough said.
In his recent speech excoriating Israel for refusing to commit suicide by allowing a sworn enemy to have a state adjoining the Jewish state, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the U.S. government did not draft or originate the UN resolution critical of Israeli settlements.

Kerry said there were no American fingerprints on the resolution and that it was totally the idea of the Egyptians and Palestinians. Except that it wasnt, if one can believe Egyptian intelligence.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports on a story published in an Egyptian newspaper with close ties to Egyptian Intelligence. According to the report, a secret meeting took place in Washington in mid-December attended by John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and a rather large Palestinian delegation that included PLO Executive Committee secretary and negotiating team leader Saeb Erekat. If the report is true, the Palestinian delegation also supposedly met with representatives of Homeland Security and the CIA. Political discussions were also said to be part of the agenda.

According to the transcribed minutes obtained by the Egyptian daily, Al-Youm Al-Sabi, the secret gathering reveals U.S. coordination leading up to the UN Security Council vote on Resolution 2334 regarding Israels settlements. ... It states that the sides agreed to cooperate in drafting a resolution on the settlements and that the U.S. representative in the Security Council was empowered to coordinate with the Palestinian UN representative on the resolution.

The Egyptian newspaper further reported the secret meeting in Washington was aimed at coordinating Kerrys attendance at the upcoming international Paris Conference set for Jan. 15, 2017, in order to propose his ideas for a permanent arrangement provided they are supported by the Palestinian side.

Susan Rice is said to have warned the Palestinians about the danger of the incoming Trump administrations policies, adding that both she and Kerry had advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to make any preliminary moves that might provoke the new administration.

The report also said Kerry and Rice had fulsomely praised Abbas policies and how he handled matters, and harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he aims to destroy the two-state solution.

This is remarkably cynical even in our cynical age. If the Egyptian newspaper report is true  and the Obama administration has so far not denied it  the administration is guilty of a two-faced solution to the conflict, which is no solution at all from the standpoint of Israel and the Jewish people who have been the targets of unprovoked attacks and wars since Israels rebirth in 1948.

Not only has Abbas said he would expel all Jews from a Palestinian State, but neither he, nor any other regional player technically still at war with Israel has said they will ever recognize a Jewish state in their midst. Furthermore, since the Palestinian side now includes Hamas and Fatah in a unity coalition  two entities that have vowed not only to never make peace with Israel, but to seek its destruction and the expulsion of all Jews from the land  only a fool would believe that peace is possible under such circumstances.

Peace, like success, is a byproduct, not a goal that can be reached without certain precursors. Success is achieved by hard work, a good education and right relationships. Peace is achieved when one side is victorious or two sides decide they dont want to fight anymore. Jordan and Egypt gave up on war, leading to peace with Israel. The Palestinian side fights on. They have an ally in the Obama administration, but only for a few more days.

President-elect Trump has promised things will be different when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel starting Jan. 20. One can only hope.

Thomas is a columnist and Fox News contributor. Email him at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
InvestorPlace

This is the second time I get to write about safe stocks to buy and hold. I liked the list I put together in October (and have positions in a couple), but Im happy to have a second bite at the apple and give this list a revision. Thats because there are more than seven safe stocks, and more than one way to think about them. One tried-and-true method is to look for best-in-class stocks. Long-term investments should consider buying the best and forgetting the rest. Sure theres a place for a spe
GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us.
Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters IDFG ready to feed big game if needed January 5, 2017 By Roger Phillips

IDFG Public Information Specialist



Big game animals are congregating at low elevations, including near towns and homes after December snow and some frigid temperatures blanketed much of Idaho.



Some people are concerned about animals surviving through winter, but so far, Fish and Game has only started emergency feeding in Eastern Idaho where a wildfire last summer burned much of the available forage. Fish and Game is also feeding in the Wood River Valley to keep elk away from the highway and to reduce damage to agriculture operations.



Fish and Game officials share the publics concern about the well being of deer and elk populations during rough winters.



We are watching snow conditions closely and our regional wildlife program staff are in close communication with their regional citizen winter feeding advisory committees to assess where and when it is appropriate to initiate feeding operations, said Jon Rachael, state wildlife game manager.



Winter can be tough on big game animals, and people can help them by leaving them alone. Animals have a limited amount of fat reserves, and when those are gone, animals are more susceptible to disease, predation and starvation.



Fish and Game has winter feeding guidelines to separate normal big game mortality from extreme mortality brought on by unusually harsh winters. To start winter feeding, Fish and Game declares an emergency based on environmental and biological conditions while working in consultation with regional winter feeding advisory committees.



We have feed pellets stored at locations around the state where we most commonly feed, and we are ready to initiate feeding operations if that determination is made, and we are prepared to order additional feed and supplies if necessary, Rachael said.



Advisory committees provide timely information to regional Fish and Game supervisors so each can decide if emergency winter conditions exist. Advisory committees and Fish and Game officials monitor snow depth, temperatures and quality of forage on winter range.



Prolonged extreme weather, such as five consecutive days when temperatures remain below zero degrees, snow depths deeper than 18 inches on south facing slopes, and other conditions, can trigger emergency feeding.



Fish and Game has a long-standing policy to manage big-game herds at levels that natural habitat can support, and herds have grown in recent years thanks to mild-to-moderate winters.



"We try our best to manage wildlife populations at a level that can be supported by natural habitat without the need for supplemental feeding under normal conditions," Rachael said. "But under severe conditions when natural forage is unavailable because of snow depths, or impacts from wildfire, and it appears significant portions of a herd may succumb, we are prepared to provide some extra help to prevent large losses."



Even if winter conditions turn out to be normal in terms of average temperature and snowfall, some animals wont make it. On average, about 50 percent of fawns die during winter, and about a third of the elk calves. Adult survival for deer and elk is typically more than 90 percent. Its natures way of ensuring the hardiest, fittest animals survive and pass their genes to the next generation.



"We realize we cannot help every deer and elk through a tough winter, and not all animals will benefit from supplemental feeding, but we do our best to provide food to attempt to prevent major losses," Rachael said.



Fish and Game officials also closely monitor more than 900 deer and elk wearing radio collars across the state, and will respond based on information passed along daily from the radio collars.



If winter conditions worsen dramatically and emergency criteria are met, Fish and Game is prepared to respond quickly to help struggling big game.



Monitoring 900 or more deer and elk will not only provide a daily update on welfare of the herds, but it also gives us scientific information on survival through the entire winter, F&G's deer and elk coordinator Craig White said. Especially in places where there are no people to provide information about the animals.



More information can be found on the IDFG winter big game feeding page. Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail!
man teenager smoker marijuana joint

A Washington, DC-based pro-marijuana legalization group has plans to lead a march through the city to President-elect Trump's inauguration ceremony, hand out 4,200 joints of legally grown cannabis, and light up at four minutes and twenty seconds into the President-elect's speech.

DCMJ, which helped organize the successful fight for marijuana legalization in DC, has organized the event to pressure Trump to "support of full cannabis legalization in all 50 States and DC," according to a statement on their website.

Although it's now legal for adults 21 and up to possess less than two ounces of marijuana in DC and consume it on private property, demonstrators with the DCMJ will still be breaking the law and risking arrest by smoking on federal property.

Thats a form of civil disobedience, DCMJ founder Adam Eidinger told local news station WUSA. I think its a good protest. If someone wants to do it, they are risking arrest, but its a protest and you know what, the National Mall is a place for protest.

Trump has said he's "in favor of medical marijuana 100%," but also expressed letting individual states decide on decriminalization.

donald trump

"In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state," Trump told The Washington Post. " Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen  right? Dont we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states."

Additionally, Trump is broadly pro-business, and the marijuana industry has proven to be in the midst of a boom. On the other hand, Mike Pence, the Vice President-elect, has opposed marijuana legalization, as have members of Trump's cabinet.

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible things you didnt know about Putin's life





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Lessons from TCL 2012 strike

TCLs Management also met with stakeholders across the region explaining the delicate financial state of the Group and appealed for support and understanding.

All responded positively, especially the Trade Unions in Barbados, Jamaica, and Guyana, but the OWTU refused, demanding a double-digit wage increase, which would have resulted in 25% increase in overall compensation.

Just like the current Government, TCLs Board and Management could not agree to such an increase while TCL was negotiating with its Lenders for debt relief. It is also important to note that TCL was not offering 0%-0%-0%, but had 6.5% on the table as a final settlement.

At the end of February 2012, the OWTU issued Strike Notice and vowed that the strike would go for 90 days (a statement that they lived to regret). TCLs Management had a Strike Plan, which it rolled out once the strike started.

As part of its Strike Plan, TCL had stockpiled two weeks supply of cement in warehouses across the country. Thereafter TCL slowly restarted sections of the plant with loyal employees beginning with the Cement Mill and Packing Plant. TCL then utilized spare capacity at its plants in Barbados and Jamaica to supply Trinidad & Tobago and when they were maxed out, imported cement from Cemexs Caribbean plants. While there were severe disruptions in the first month of the strike, the local market settled down due to imports from other Group companies, Cemexs supplies, and from the partially operational plant.

Eventually TCL flew in foreign kiln operators and restarted both kilns, so that by the end of the strike the plant was fully operational.

During the strike the behavior of a few TCL employees and some elements of OWTUs leadership were totally disgusting  even criminal. Management, Staff, and Strike Breakers were routinely threatened and subjected to abusive language and violence; The Trinidad & Tobago Police Service failed to stop the violence and we felt like an abused spouse who was ridiculed when reporting incidents of violence to the Police.

We estimated that TCL employees lost over $20 million in compensation over the 92 days of the strike  never to be recovered.

The OWTU promised to help employees but nothing materialized, as the OWTU has no Strike Fund. Employees had their cars, furniture, and appliances (on hire-purchase) seized and some nearly lost their homes (mortgage default). On the 92nd Day, the OWTU accepted defeat and requested that the Minister refer the Dispute to the Industrial Court bringing the Strike to an end. The Industrial Court ignored TCLs inability to pay argument and awarded a 9% increase.

When you reflect on the bigger picture, the OWTU put Trinidad & Tobago, the Construction Sector, TCL employees, and the company through 92 days of Hell for a 2.5% increase (9% IC Award minus 6.5% TCL Settlement Offer).

If TCL did not have strong Management and many dedicated employees it would have gone into Receivership in 2012. After the strike - and until the Espinet- led Board/Cemex took over - TCL was the best performing subsidiary contributing significantly to the Groups return to profitability in 2013. Lessons learned: TCL survived the strike because it had a credible Strike Plan; Workers paid the highest price for the OWTUs action; the Minister did not have to intervene (Sec: 65 IRA) because the market was satisfied; and TCL emerged as a stronger company after the Strike.

Rollin Bertrand, PhD, DBA Former TCL Group CEO
WHAT DIAZ?

This was confirmed by ace pannist Dane Gulston and came hours after PanTrinbago president Keith Diaz promised the nation, via a television morning talk show, that $1,000 owed to thousands of panmen, as playing fees for the 2016 Panorama competition, would be paid. Gulston said he intends to lead another protest of panmen while PanTrinbago executives hold an emergency meeting tomorrow at the Grand Stand, Queens Park Savannah.

Today (Keith) Diaz came on air live and said cheques will be given out today. Yesterday (Wednesday) in a meeting when we had the marchpeople collected their cheques at their regional offices and when they went to the bank, the cheques were not honoured, Gulston yesterday said. The pan organisation, Gulston added, hastily ran and issued the cheques without saying the money was not yet deposited in that account.

Its only after, when people went to the bank and did not get the cheques cashed, they were told the money was not there.

Then the (PanTrinbago) office called and said to tell the rest of people not to try going to the bank today (yesterday). That is real unprofessional! On the TV6 Morning Edition talk show yesterday morning, Diaz was asked more than once by host Fazeer Mohammed whether or not the monies owed to panmen would be paid. Diaz said yes. To date yes, Diaz said, when asked if pan players had not been paid.

He said a meeting was held with the membership to explain the situation to panmen. We did not hide. We said to our membership this is how it is. They were annoyed and felt that they should be paid. I want to state to the general public that that position is dependent on Government funds being received. But we have made arrangements and the money will be paid. So that will be taken care of, Diaz said.

Asked yesterday by Morning Edition host Mohammed when panmen would get their money, Diaz responded, today and beyond today. Mohammed asked if Diaz was stating that pan players would receive their money today (yesterday). Diaz said, yes. On Gulstons Facebook page, a picture of one of the PanTrinbago cheques which bounced was posted and drew many comments.

Well look bacchanal now. PanTrinbago giving people bounce cheque. Just came from the bank and they not going to change any Pan Trinbago cheque, Dareem Ford commented.

I was told now to wait until Friday to change the cheque, another person said. The cheques are not bounced, the money just aint reach the account yet; Thats called total disrespect and will make confidence in the organisation even lower, were other comments posted.

On Wednesday, panmen protested outside the PanTrinbago head office in Port-of-Spain over the non-payment and called on Diaz and the execution to resign.

Contacted for comment, chairman of the National Carnival Commission (NCC) Kenny De Silva said the commission intends to look at the operations of individual cultural groups after this years Carnival. He described meetings the NCC held with Pan- Trinbago as inconclusive. LATEST: DIAZ FALLS ILL A press release from PanTrinbago, issued last night, claimed that Diaz had a medical emergency and was rushed to a medical facility at 1.30 pm. As a result, the release added, PanTrinbago urged panmen with cheques not to go to the bank until further advised. Richard Forteau, the release stated, has been appointed to act as PanTrinbago President.

The release added that the scheduled emergency meeting set for tomorrow at 1 pm at the Grand Stand of the Queens Park Savannah was postponed until further notice. The release ended: In light of the circumstances, if ever we need togetherness is now, we urge members to be united in prayer.

Please be guided accordingly.
Rondon reads the riot act

Addressing members at a specially- convened statutory meeting at the Corporations head office, corner Eastern Main Road and Ramdass Street, Rondon insisted that accountability and transparency must be exercised at all times during the threeyear term. The council must be run like a business. If there is something that has been given to you, make sure you have your bills in the right and proper manner, he said, adding All you have is your name. Saying that the Corporation will not be run as a give-away ship, Rondon told members: We are going to start the Corporation on the right and proper footing and I want all hands on deck. Rondon said councillors and aldermen also must answer their cellphones in response to distress calls from residents and queries from the media.

The cellphone is not to play games, he said, stressing that representation was serious business.

The chairman referred to his recent experience in the northcoast region in which heavy rains and landslides affected scores of families in Matelot and surrounding communities.

Rondon told the Council he had spent five consecutive days in the area trying to assist the people. It is nice being with the people and helping them.

Politicians should be the model where people are concerned, he said.

Rondon also urged members to avoid bad-mouthing their colleagues in bars and other public spaces.

Rather, he said attempts must be made to develop a family-like atmosphere at the Corporation.

Rondon also told councillors they must avoid promising residents jobs, given the countrys precarious economic climate.

However, I assure you there would be fairness, he said.

Rondon also announced that a forum to allow members of the public gallery to air their concerns will soon be a feature of the Corporations statutory meetings.
Hayden Romano appointed MD of the EMA

Romano, an engineering geologist by training, has more than 30 years experience in various industries throughout the Caribbean, including at the Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) and most recently as General Manager, Technical Services at the EMA, the EMA stated yesterday.

EMA Chairman, Nadra Nathai-Gyan, said Romano was selected for the position from a pool of 77 applicants, using a competency-based evaluation process. His understanding of todays dynamic environmental conditions and his strategic leadership qualities competently positions him to take up this opportunity and make a difference.

Mr Romanos appointment is effective January 4, 2017 for a period of two years, Nathai-Gyan told Newsday. Asked what he intends to focus on during his tenure as MD, Romano told Newsday, The work ahead for the EMA under my tenure will have strong alignment to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Romano cited waste management, energy efficiency, biodiversity protection and management, climate change and the establishment of Sustainable Partnerships for achieving the goals and objectives of the EMA, as some of the strategic issues that are high on the Authoritys agenda. I look forward to working with all stakeholders, at home and abroad, to bring about meaningful change in the coming years, Romano said. Prior to his appointment, Romano has lectured part-time at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, in the Engineering Geology and Petroleum Geosciences disciplines
Privatise Petrotrin says Chaguanas Chamber head

Petrotrin has been a failing sector for years in this country and we have been bailing it out with millions of dollars and maybe its time to look at the privatisation of Petrotrin which may lead to a turnaround of the company and by extension, the country, Sookhai, in a telephone interview said.

And citing Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowleys remark that Petrotrin was a ward of the Ministry of Finance, he pointed out that the company had always been run at a loss and we believe its time to look at privatisation of the company. Privatisation might bring a change in terms of actually adding to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) eventually and change around the whole outlook of Petrotrin, he said.

Asked whether local or foreign investors should be invited to tender proposals for the company, he said, Consultation needs to take place and a combination of both may be able to help Petrotrin get out of the situation it is in right now. And regarding the strike action which is scheduled to begin on Monday at 10am, Sookhai once again appealed to the union and its membership to let good judgement prevail saying the strike could jeopardise the national economy.

We are appealing to the OWTU and its workers, let good judgement prevail and not hold the country to ransom and jeopardise the economic situation of the country, he said, and noted that previous administrations should have put measures in place to prevent trade unions from holding the country to ransom.

Asked about Rogets comment that the Chambers were not interested in the future of the company and were only interested in the foreign exchange earned by Petrotrin, he pointed out that Petrotrin itself also used foreign exchange to purchase items needed for the refinerys operations.

Petrotrin also spends forex on items they need to purchase to run the plant and this is bought from overseas suppliers so it is quite unfair for him to make that kind of statement, he said.
Caribbean construction projects to be showcased

Companies will also get the opportunity to bid for new ventures during the event is being hosted by Southex Trade Shows and AME Trade of United Kingdom.

Under the theme, Building the Caribbeans future, with a new specialised industry focused trade event, Carib Build will include a trade show, corporate workshops, a B to B meeting area; allowing companies to set up the relevant meetings before the event starts, as well as specialised workshops to allow knowledge sharing and discovering up to date industry information.

Southex said Carib Build will also facilitate companies in the building industry to promote their products and services, to launch new brands, expand their sales distribution network and target consumers directly. It will be a window of promotion for all types of housing in the Caribbean region, allowing buyers to find out how they can get on or climb the property ladder. Southex noted that the Caribbean building and construction industry is currently booming as its economy improved throughout 2015 and the outlook for 2017 is excellent with GDP up from 2.5 percent in 2015 to three percent in 2016, with tourism and housing needs in the region presenting opportunities for construction firms.

Major funding is in place to finance upgrading the Caribbeans infrastructure. US $35 billion has been set aside as part of the China Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (China-CELAC) Fund, which has recently been made available to the groups member states. Southex added that a UK-backed Caribbean infrastructure investment scheme became operational in 2016, offering ?300 million worth of grants for infrastructure across the region until March 2020.

For further information, email Southex Director, George Singh, gsingh@southex.co.tt or Dan Coberman of AME Trade at build@ ametrade.org
Trump: 'I'll Very, Very, Very

Probably Do It Again'
(Newser)  The world's smallest porpoise is also ever smaller in number, its population decimated in recent decades thanks to what the Washington Post describes as "a cruel mixture of fishing nets and economics." The vaquita, or "little cow," has gotten tangled up in fish nets since World War II, when fishermen began to seriously hunt a species of sea bass called totoaba. The porpoise, known for sporting a little smirk, is a marine mammal that would drown in the nets where they couldn't swim to the surface for air, and the appetite for totoaba has not diminished as the fish's bladder is used in Chinese medicine and considered a delicacy there, fetching more than $4,000 for just one. The Mexican government has frantically decided to try to capture the remaining survivors, now around 60, to try to save the species.

The US is joining in, too, offering up another marine mammal to help: the dolphin. The US Navy is training the so-called Seal Team 6 of dolphins, which already prowl around for underwater mines, to find the last surviving vaquita, which live between the Mexican mainland and Baja California Peninsula. "Their specific task is to locate," one expert says. "They would signal that by surfacing and returning to the boat from which they were launched." Unfortunately, the vaquita doesn't thrive in captivity, where they would need to remain to be safe from fishing nets. They also reproduce very slowly, with one calf every other year. Not everyone is on board with the plan, adds Live Science. "I don't like this idea at all," says a rep for World Wildlife Fund Mexico. "The risk of killing a vaquita while catching them is very high. With only 50 or 60 animals left, we can't play with that." (Dolphins appear to chat much like humans.)
(Newser)  A western Kansas family is outraged after game wardens killed a deer that was allowed inside their house and took walks with the family, the AP reports. Kim Mcgaughey said the mule deer was "very much a big pet" and that there was "no reason for her to be killed." But it's illegal to keep a wild animal as a pet in Kansas, and wildlife officials raised concerns that the animal could hurt people or spread disease, according to the Wichita Eagle. Mcgaughey said neighbors found the deernamed Faline after Bambi's friendand that she had an "instant connection" upon meeting the animal. Her daughter has photos of her 8-year-old son playing with the deer, as well as the animal standing on the couch looking out the window or being hugged by family members.

Game wardens became involved after Mcgaughey asked on Facebook whether anyone had seen the deer when it disappeared for several days. She was issued a ticket for "unlawful possession of wildlife without a permit," said Mark Rankin, law enforcement assistant director for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism. Three game wardens met at Mcgaughey's house and determined it wouldn't be safe to capture the deer. Rankin said there was also concern that the deer could be carrying chronic wasting disease, a fatal disease for which live deer can't be tested. Mcgaughey's daughter filmed the wardens herding the animal toward where it was shot. The department's secretary says he's sure the wardens didn't enjoy killing the deer. (Read more deer stories.)
As he exits, Homeland Security chief says progress made but warns of lone wolf terrorists

The Obama administration leaves having made progress abroad fighting Islamic State militants as well as al-Qaeda and other terror affiliates, according to a memo from the departing Department of Homeland Security secretary.

At the same time, Secretary Jeh Johnson said the U.S. still has its work cut out preventing "large and small scale 'terrorist-directed' attacks originating from overseas." He also said the national security apparatus "must also detect and prevent 'terrorist-inspired' attacks from homegrown violent extremists."



Writing in his exit memo to President Barack Obama , the DHS secretary added, "These actors are inspired by effective terrorist use of the Internet, live among us in the homeland, and most often plan and attack alone and in secret, with little or no notice to law enforcement. ISIL has, in effect, outsourced terrorism when it comes to the U.S. homeland."



Johnson warned that terrorists are becoming more sophisticated in their methods and that the U.S. still needed to "guard against ISIL's foreign terrorists fighters leaving the battlefield in Syria and Iraq and attempting to travel to the United States."

To that end, he said the U.S. is doing more information sharing with foreign governments as well as with state and local law enforcement. DHS has "developed an impressive capability to track the travel of individuals who potentially pose a threat to the country and share that information with others in the U.S. government."



In 2016, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency prevented 14,293 "high risk travelers" from boarding airplane flights. That compares with 2015 when the government's preclearance efforts denied boarding to more than 10,700 travelers.

The official said preclearance efforts are being strengthened domestically and overseas.



"We must continue on all these tracks to monitor and prevent terrorist travel," he said.



Story continues

Johnson also singled out the FBI and others for "doing an excellent job detecting, investigating, preventing, and prosecuting terrorist plots in the homeland."



DHS, the newest and third-largest Cabinet-level department of the U.S. government, also sees public vigilance and reporting of suspicious activity as instrumental in preventing terrorism given what Johnson termed "this particular environment of homegrown violent extremism and the lone wolf actor."



Meantime, Johnson's exit memo also highlighted that cyberthreats are on the rise, and the need to do more to "fix our broken immigration system."



"As online threats grow, we must secure the Internet and the increasing number of Internet-connected devices and infrastructure," he said. "Cyber threats are increasing in their frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity. This affects everyone, across the country and around the globe."



According to Johnson, the department's National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center  the federal government's hub for cybersecurity sharing and incident response  sent out more than 6,000 bulletins last year and responded onsite to 32 cybersecurity incidents.



To further enhance cyber efforts, the federal government recently deployed an automated information platform to share cyberthreat knowledge with the private sector in real time.



Johnson also hailed U.S. cooperation with China on cybersecurity as an achievement of the Obama administration. He said the agreement between the two nations includes a pledge to "refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to domestic companies."



Finally, the secretary said the issue of immigration remains a challenge.



"Spanning the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, our government has invested more in border security than at any point in the history of this nation," Johnson wrote.



According to the DHS secretary, the Border Patrol agency "has never had a larger or more sophisticated inventory of technology and equipment to carry out its mission."



For example, the Border Patrol now uses drones, thermal imaging capabilities and underground sensor technology on the U.S.-Mexico border. The agency's number of unmanned aerial systems, or drones, has more than doubled in the past 16 years while the force of agents at the southern border also has roughly doubled during this time period.



"This investment has paid off," Johnson said. "Today, it is now much harder to cross our southern border without authorization and avoid detection and apprehension."



Johnson also said there's been "a dramatic shift in the demographic of this illegal migration that has presented challenges to our immigration system  fewer Mexicans and single adults are arriving, and more women and children, primarily from Central America, are fleeing poverty and violence and crossing our southern border."



He also defended the Obama administration's efforts "to fix the immigration system, make it more fair, and make our enforcement smarter and more efficient. The next administration and the next Congress must return to the subject of comprehensive immigration reform."





More From CNBC


(Newser)  A transgender man in New Jersey sued a Roman Catholic hospital Thursday, saying it cited religion in refusing to allow his surgeon to perform a hysterectomy as part of his sex transition, the AP reports. Jionni Conforti, 33, had scheduled the surgery at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in 2015. But he alleges in the federal sex and gender discrimination lawsuit that a hospital administrator then told him the procedure to remove his uterus couldn't be done because it was a "Catholic hospital." "I felt completely disrespected," Conforti said. "That's not how any hospital should treat any person regardless of who they are...I felt like I was rejected and humiliated."

Conforti, who is seeking monetary damages and to require the hospital perform any needed medical care for transgender patients,says he's suing so no one else has to go through what he did. The lawsuit comes less than a week after a federal judge in Texas ordered a halt to new US Health and Human Services regulations that had been set to go into effect Jan. 1 to bar certain forms of transgender discrimination by doctors, hospitals, and insurers. Opponents say the regulations create a moral problem for Catholic employers and religious groups. They say Pope Francis has reiterated that Catholic teachings oppose theories that a person's sex is alterable. (Read more transgender stories.)
(Newser)  Donald Trump is apparently keeping his promise to build a "big, beautiful wall" on the border with Mexico, but dropping the part about making Mexico pay for it. Insiders tell Politico that Trump's transition team is working with Republican leaders on a plan to sidestep the need for new legislation by asking Congress to fund the wall under a George W. Bush-era law authorizing 700 miles of "physical barrier." The sources say Republicans are considering adding wall funding to a spending bill that must pass by the end of April. They believe Democrats are unlikely to threaten a government shutdown to fight the moveespecially since President Obama and Hillary Clinton were among the senators that voted in favor of the 2006 law.

GOP lawmakers declined to confirm to CNN whether Trump is planning to use taxpayer dollars to build the wall, but Trump himself had a response to the story. "The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!" he tweeted Friday morning. Reuters reports that a sheriff in Massachusetts has suggested using prison inmates from around the country to build the wall. "I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall," Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, a Republican, said at his swearing-in ceremony this week. (Shares in wall-building companies and private prisons soared after Trump's election victory.)
(Newser)  The Obama administration imposed sanctions on a son of Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying the younger bin Laden poses a risk to US national security. The State Department said Hamza bin Laden was added to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list after he was "determined to have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security." Hamza bin Laden was officially named an al-Qaeda member in 2014 by his father's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The State Department says the younger bin Laden, in a 2015 audio message, called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals. In an audio message last year, he threatened revenge against the US and warned Americans they would be targeted at home and abroad.

Hamza bin Laden, who is believed to be around 25 years old, also has called for lone wolf, or solo-operative, attacks against US, French, and Israeli interests in Washington, Paris, and Tel Aviv, the AP reports. "Hamza bin Laden is actively engaged in terrorism," the State Department said, adding that terrorism designations deny individuals access to the US financial system and "can assist or complement the law enforcement actions of other US agencies and other governments." The State Department also announced penalties against Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He served as that group's security chief and provided military and security guidance to its leadership. (Read more Hamza bin Laden stories.)
(Newser)  Donald Trump has upended the lives of many US ambassadors abroad by refusing to grant the traditional grace period after he's inaugurated. Instead, Trump wants all politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Obama to be gone on Jan. 20, the New York Times. Such ambassadors, as opposed to career diplomats, usually depart soon after the president that appointed them, but exceptions have traditionally been made for those with school-age children. US Ambassador to New Zealand Mark Gilbert tells Reuters that he'll be departing Jan. 20 under a Trump mandate issued "without exceptions."

Former US Ambassador to Finland Derek Shearer tells the Times that he doesn't see any good reason for the move, which could leave countries including the UK and Canada without Senate-confirmed ambassadors for months. "It feels like there's an element just of spite and payback in it," he says. "I don't see a higher policy motive." Sources say that American ambassadors in numerous countries are now scrambling to secure visas to allow them and their children, some of whom are just months away from graduating high school, to remain in their host countries until the end of the school year. Some of them are believed to be planning a direct appeal to incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (Trump also has big changes lined up for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.)
(Newser)  The owner of a now-closed beef-jerky maker is being sued by the federal government for firing an employee who tried to call 911 to help a co-worker with a severed thumb, the AP reports. John M. Bachman, who owned the Lone Star Western Beef plant in Fairmont, WV, could be forced to pay back wages and punitive damages to the employee as a result of the lawsuit, which the US Labor Department filed Thursday against him and his company in federal court. The lawsuit said that when a band saw severed part of a worker's right thumb in July 2014, his co-worker applied pressure to the wound while using her cell phone to call 911. But before responders could answer, Bachman allegedly ordered her to hang up, and she was fired two days later.

Instead of calling an ambulance, Bachman collected the severed part of Chris Crane's thumb and told a supervisor to take him to an urgent care clinic. Crane was ultimately transferred to a hospital, where efforts to reattach the thumb were unsuccessful, the lawsuit said. The co-worker, Michele Butler-Savage, told a US agriculture inspector later that day that Bachman did not fully clean or sanitize the area of the plant where the accident happened. She also mentioned a lack of personal protective equipment. After she was fired, she filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which found the company violated federal whistleblower protections. In January 2015, the plant closed and relocated to Reading, Pennsylvania. (Read more lawsuit stories.)
(Newser)  An Atlanta attorney facing manslaughter charges in the September shooting death of his wife owed her $350,000 when she died, CBS46 reports. A business owned by Diane McIver had spotted her husband, Claud "Tex" McIver, the money in December 2011, with a payoff date (with interest) set for December 2014, per court docs. When that payoff didn't happen, Claud was offered a three-year extension. In a previous interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, McIver said the loan had gone toward building a $1.3 million barn on the couple's property, complete with stables, a saloon, and guest accommodations. The shooting took place on Sept. 25, when Claud says Diane was sitting in the front passenger seat of an SUV her best friend was driving, with him in the seat directly behind Diane.

He claims he nodded off in the back, and when he jolted awake, a gun he was holding accidentally discharged. A family friend told the AJC a few days after the shooting that the McIvers were fearful of a carjacking due to recent Black Lives Matter protests nearby, but Claud's attorney nixed that allegation about a week later, telling the paper the couple was nervous because of homeless people wandering in the area. Also of note, per court records seen by People: Claud McIver was indicted in 1990 for aggravated assault, possession of a firearm in connection with a crime, and criminal damage to property charges after three teens say he shot several times at their car. The court files note that case was settled with undisclosed terms. (A "black widow" down South?)
(Newser)  South Carolina lawmaker Chris Corley was indicted on felony domestic violence and weapons charges Thursday and was immediately suspended from the state House of Representatives. The indictment states that on the night of Dec. 26, the Republican harmed his wife by "beating her about the face, head, and body with a closed fist while in the presence of a minor," the Aiken Standard reports. Police say in the presence of his children, ages 8 and 2, Corley also pointed a handgun at his wife, "causing her to fear for her life," before threatening to kill himself. Authorities have released a 911 call from Corley's wife in which children can be heard in the background screaming and pleading: "Just stop, Daddy. Just stop."

Corley, who faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if he's convicted of domestic violence, was suspended from the House under state law, and lawmakers from both parties are urging him to step down permanently, the State reports. State Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey says the reason his fellow Republican needs to resign is obvious: "It's not OK to beat your wife." Corley has been charged with "high and aggravated" domestic violence, which "is one step down from murder," Massey said. "The only thing worse you can do is kill someone." Other state lawmakers say that if Corley doesn't quit, they will take steps to expel him. Last year, Corley voted to strengthen penalties for domestic violence and accused fellow lawmakers of lacking morals after they took down the Confederate flag.

(Read more South Carolina stories.)
(Newser)  It's a new beginning for the man formerly known as "tree man." Abul Bajandar, whose hands and feet were covered in giant warts that looked like tree bark, underwent his first surgery to remove the growths last February. Nownearly a year and at least 16 operations laterthe 27-year-old Bangladeshi man's hands and feet are "almost fine," Samanta Lal Sen tells AFP. The plastic surgery coordinator at Dhaka Medical College Hospital says Bajandar still needs a few small surgeries to "perfect the shape of his hands" but should be able to go home for the first time in a year in the coming weeks. Provided the warts don't return, Bajandar will likely be the first person ever cured of epidermodysplasia verruciformis.

Rare Disease Report has an in-depth explanation of epidermodysplasia verruciformis, an extremely rare hereditary condition involving "widespread" infection by human papillomavirus. Bajandar, believed to be one of four people ever diagnosed with the disease, has been living with it for a decade, CNN reports. He says the pain of it was "unbearable." He was shunned by his village, his marriage to his wife was opposed by her parents, he had to stop working as a rickshaw driver, and he was unable to hold his 3-year-old daughter. He joked the only thing he could do was scratch his neck. But after doctors removed 11 pounds of growths, that's about to change. "I feel so much better. I can hold my daughter in my lap and play with her," Bajandar tells AFP. "I hope the curse won't return again." (This rare disease can make you think you're dead.)
(Newser)  Donald Trump has taken on Ford, as well as General Motors, threatening to impose taxes if they move production out of the US and into Mexico, and he hit at another automaker Thursday with a tweet. "Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," he posted. Various news outlets pointed out the tweet was inaccurate: Notably, Toyota has no plans for a new Baja plant (though there is an existing one that builds Tacoma pickup trucks, not Corollas), and the new plant it is building is in Guanajuato, Mexico, though production is moving there from Canada, not the US. Still, Toyota stock fell $1.2 billion five minutes after Trump's tweet, and NBC News notes stock for other Japanese carmakers, including Honda and Nissan, also fell a couple of percentage points. Toyota's response was swift.

"Toyota has been part of the cultural fabric in the US for nearly 60 years," the company said in a statement, per Mediaite. "Production volume or employment in the US will not decrease as a result of our new [Guanajuato] plant." The company also offered a reminder that it has invested nearly $22 billion in US operations, with 136,000 US employees spread out over 10 production facilities and 1,500 dealerships. "Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry," the company noted. Japan's chief Cabinet secretary told reporters Friday that Toyota was an "important corporate citizen," while its trade minister said Japan didn't have plans "to move existing plants in the US to Mexico or other countries." Meanwhile, Japanese Economy Minister Nobuteru Ishihara had no comment Friday on Trump's tweet, per Reuters. (Read more Toyota stories.)
(Newser)  A tenuous ceasefire in Syria between the government and rebel forces that was brokered by Russia and Turkey is so far holding, and Russia has announced it will start to tamp down its military presence there, per the Wall Street Journal and BBC. "In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander-in-chief of the Russian Armed Forces Vladimir Putin, the defense ministry is beginning to reduce its armed forces in Syria," Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia's armed forces, said, per Russian news agencies.

The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, as well as the support vessels with it, will be the first to sail out of Mediterranean waters off the Syrian coast, Gerasimov noted. The Journal cautions, however, that this may not necessarily be a permanent move and that there's no suggestion Putin is backing down from fortifying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his quest to maintain power. The BBC piggybacks on those reservations, noting that the Admiral Kuznetsov really wasn't a big factor in the fighting, and that while Russia had withdrawn some warplanes in March, the aerial support it continued to provide "remained decisive." (Read more Russia stories.)
(Newser)  The 18-year-old victim of a brutal beating broadcast on Facebook Live thought he was going to a sleepover. That's what his parents thought, too, when they dropped him off at a McDonald's in the Chicago suburbs on New Year's Eve to meet up with 18-year-old Jordan Hill, who had been a classmate. The victim and Hill drove around together (in what police say was a van stolen by Hill) visiting friends for two days, with the victim sleeping in the van. On Tuesday, they ended up at a Chicago apartment where sisters Brittany and Tanishia Covington, ages 18 and 24, lived. What would ultimately turn into the shocking beating, broadcast live for 28 minutes and viewed millions of times on social media, started as a "play fight" between the victim and Hill, the Chicago Tribune reports. It escalated, and police say the Covington sisters got angry and tied the victim up.

A downstairs neighbor heard noises and threatened to call police; two of the suspects left to allegedly kick down that neighbor's door, allowing the victim to escape, the AP reports. Hill, the Covington sisters, and 18-year-old Tesfaye Cooper were all charged with a hate crime due to racial slurs and comments about the victim's disability they were allegedly heard making on the video. A family spokesperson says the victim has had "profound emotional and physical disabilities throughout his life," and the missing persons report notes that he "does not like telling his parents who he's with" (his mother knew only Jordan Hill's first name, not his last). The suspects, who also face kidnapping, battery, and other charges, are in court Friday. (Read more hate crime stories.)
(Newser)  In 1989, two young brothers from Beverly Hills shocked the nation by shooting their parents to death. Now, 27 years later, Lyle and Erik Menendez remain incarcerated in different prisonseach received two consecutive life sentences with no paroleand Lyle, now 48, recently spoke to ABC News for a two-hour special that aired Thursday. (Erik, now 46, declined to be interviewed.) "I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that," Lyle said. He has "accepted" his sentence and says that his home life, which he and Erik said was filled with sexual abuse at the hands of their dad and silence from their mom, "prepared me surprisingly well for the chaos of prison life." Both brothers have married while in prison (Lyle is actually on his second wife), and he says he enjoys a "really strong" bond with Erik that they keep going with letters. "It's so painful and complicated and confusing," he says of the shared experience and "secrets" that have kept them close. "The bond [becomes] very great and intense."

E! Online got ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, who had covered the brothers' trial, to spill on how the network got Lyle to finally break his silence, with Moran revealing Lyle was always "a little more forward ... with the press" and "a little more manipulative." "I'm glad he did [call ABC] because you get a sense [of] an older  more mature  person with still profound regret every day," Moran says. Meanwhile, the brothers' cousin, Diane Vander Molen, tells ABC she believes the brothers had been sexually abused. Us Weekly compiles the seven biggest reveals from the ABC special, including that the brothers robbed houses together in Calabasas before the murders because they were "bored," per a family friend. (Two other California brothers were arrested in connection with murdering their parents this year.)
(Newser)  You'd think that much cold, hard cash would make for an uncomfortable night's sleep. The AP reports a 28-year-old Brazilian man was arrested this week in Massachusetts after authorities found about $20 million hidden in a box spring. The arrest of Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha is connected to an investigation into TelexFree, an alleged pyramid scheme, according to Reuters. Authorities say TelexFree was originally created to swindle Brazilian immigrants but ended up taking $1.8 billion from nearly 1 million people around the world.

Authorities say Rocha, acting as a courier for the nephew of TelexFree's founder, delivered a suitcase containing $2.2 million to a cooperating witness. They then followed him to an apartment where they found $20 million more under a mattress. He's been charged with conspiring to commit money laundering. (Read more pyramid scheme stories.)
(Newser)  Artisanal charcoal will become the first legal Cuban export to the US in decades under a deal announced Thursday between Cuba's government and the former lawyer for imprisoned US government contractor Alan Gross. Attorney Scott Gilbert said a company that he founded will buy 40 tons of charcoal made from the invasive woody plant marabu. The charcoal is produced by hundreds of worker-owned cooperatives across Cuba and has become an increasingly profitable export, valued for its clean-burning properties and often used in pizza and bread ovens, the AP reports. Gilbert's company will pay $420 a ton, which is significantly above the wholesale market price of about $360. The first delivery is scheduled for Jan. 18.

Products of privately run or cooperative farms in Cuba can be exported to the US under measures introduced by President Obama loosened a 55-year-old trade embargo. The charcoal is sold by cooperatives to a local packager, which sells it on to state-run export firm CubaExport. Each middleman takes a 1% or 2% commission, CubaExport's general director said. CubaExport said the charcoal would be the first legal export to the US in more than five decades, and it hoped to expand the deal to include honey and coffee. The charcoal will be sold to restaurants and online to consumers in 33-pound bags under the brand name Fogo, Gilbert said. Cuba sells about 40,000 to 80,000 tons of marabu charcoal annually to buyers in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. (Read more Cuba stories.)
(Newser)  A Philadelphia murderer is out of solitary confinement for the first time in 37 years, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Arthur Johnson, 64, was sentenced to life in prison for a 1970 gang killing. He was placed in solitary confinement in 1979 after multiple escape attempts. In September, Johnson sued the state of Pennsylvania, claiming cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his constitutional rights. His lawyer argued that Johnson hadn't had a disciplinary problem in a quarter of a century and that the mere possibility of an escape attempt isn't justification enough for indefinite solitary confinement.

A federal judge agreed, saying Johnson was subjected to "institutional exile" in an "area smaller than the average horse stall." Johnson returned to the general population at SCI Greene state prison last Friday. The Christian Science Monitor reports solitary confinement can increase the risk of suicide and the likelihood of recidivism. Johnson says nearly four decades in a 7-foot-by-12-foot cell left him with depression, anxiety, loss of short-term memory, insomnia, and more. (Read more solitary confinement stories.)
Kim Kardashian may have unofficially endorsed the morning sickness drug Diclegis, Pyridoxine-Doxylamine, as the answer to her morning sickness woes but not all of the Doctors agree of its potency and effectivity. Kim has been raving about Diclegis and shared in her Twitter account how the pill have helped her cope with her morning sickness.

Pyridoxine-Doxylamine has been prescribed to pregnant women since 1970 when it was developed. It is prescribed to women who are enduring morning sickness as the drug helps tamp down the vomiting and nausea when pregnant.

Tests have been conducted to really know the efficacy of the drug. University of Toronto's Dr. Rujun Zhang and Dr. Navindra Persaud of St. Michael's Hospital has reportedly poured over documents from the Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The test allowed 2,300 pregnant women who have been experiencing morning sickness to take part in the study. They were divided into eight groups. One group was given a placebo pill while seven groups receiving pills, either Pyridoxine-Doxylamine (Diclegis or Diclectin) or something else.

1,500 women completed the test and have said that they were 14% likely to experience the benefits of Pyridoxine-Doxylamine (Diclegis or Diclectin) than the placebo. The result of the test is inconclusive according to some health professionals as 37% of the people in the placebo group left the experiment even before it was concluded.

Persaud and Zhang have concluded that the study does not "demonstrate that the medication was effective". Dr. Navindra Persaud, a family physician, has stopped prescribing Pyridoxine-Doxylamine (Diclegis or Diclectin) to his patients. Instead, he has been telling pregnant women suffering from morning sickness to eat whatever food they want as long as it is safe for them. He is also encouraging women to look for natural ways to help ease their nausea and to look for other possible pills that can help them with their morning sickness.
Florida has just legalized the distribution of "medical marijuana." The Amendment 2 which has been raised in November has recently been approved.

According to a report, rules and regulations need to be made even though "medical marijuana" is legal in Florida. The rules and regulations must come from the Florida Department of Health. The state is given six months in order to complete the rules and regulations.

There are specific medical conditions that are allowed to have the medical marijuana card. These are cancer, Epilepsy and Glaucoma. Additional medical conditions include HIV/AIDS, Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Crohn's disease, Parkinson's disease and Multiple sclerosis are also medical conditions that are entitled to the card.

There are still rules and regulations that Florida need to send out in order to get the prescription of medical marijuana. As of this time there are already 200 doctors who are allowed to prescribe medical marijuana to patients.

Amendment 2 already allows medical marijuana in the state but it does not guarantee that it is smokable. There is no law yet if marijuana can be smoked by patients. There are also dispensaries that need to open in the state so to regulate the selling of medical marijuana.

Meanwhile, aside from the update in Florida where "medical marijuana" is already legal, there are also other updates in some states regarding this. In Arkansas, a new bill has been passed about this. The State has House Bill 1057 which says that an additional criminal background check is needed before applicatio .

There are also added laws that have been raised in Massachusetts. It will have medical marijuana available in hospices and nursing homes. This is to allow these patients to be medicated using cannabis. New Hampshire also has a new bill that would allow residents to grow their own marijuana plant. Lastly, Puerto Rico also got their first dispensaries.
The "Samsung Galaxy S8" has been in the news lately and there are already leaks about the new device. A report also indicates the release date of this new smartphone.

According to a report, there are leaked images already out for Samsung Galaxy S8. The device is thinner and is mostly similar to the older concepts. There is no specific image as of yet as to how the new device will look.

The menu buttons are already removed from the device and the smartphone has curved edges. The fingerprint scanning system may be added to the new "Samsung Galaxy S8." There may be more of specific features to come in the future since there is no official image yet of how the new device is supposed to look like.

A report also indicates that the image which has been posted on Weibo has been the closest image on how the new device will look. It is indicated that the curves of the smartphone take up most of its space. These leaked images can be the possible look but there has been no official image sent out yet.

Samsung may still give more information about the latest Galaxy S8 in the coming months. It is also indicated that the new device is one of the best of smartphones in 2017. The phone also is given a very stylish design this time.

Meanwhile, it is reported that a release date is also set for the "Samsung Galaxy S8." The report indicates that Samsung may skip the reveal on the Mobile World Congress which is set to happen in February. Samsung is set to organize a separate event which is scheduled in March. The event is to happen in New York and it is noted that the Samsung Galaxy S8 is to be sold starting April 18, 2017.
DailyFX.com -

Talking Points:

Gold prices rise for a third day amid Trump trade unwinding

Crude oil prices erase intraday drop on EIA inventories report

Broadly in-line US jobs data may yield back to corrective flows

Gold prices rose as for a third consecutive day as the unwinding of the Trump trade resumed after the days offering of US economic data crossed the wires (as expected). The US Dollar resumed its pullback from 14-year highs and US Treasury bond yields declined in tandem, offering support to non-interest-bearing and anti-fiat assets.

Crude oil prices initially fell alongside US share prices, benchmark borrowing costs and the greenback, mirroring a pattern seen earlier in the week that appears consistent with profit-taking on themes dominant in the final weeks of 2016. The WTI contract rebounded however as EIA inventory data showed stockpiles fell by 7.05 million barrels last week, topping forecasts calling for a 1.7mb draw and echoing API estimates.

Decembers official US employment figures are firmly in the spotlight from here. An outcome broadly in line with expectations is unlikely to be game-changing for Fed rate hike speculation, where much depends on still-uncertain fiscal policy (by officials own admission). That means that absent a wild deviation from forecasts, the reports release may do little more besides clearing a path for the Trump trade reversal to continue.

See the schedule of upcoming webinars and join us LIVE to follow the financial markets!

GOLD TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Gold prices established foothold above resistance at 1166.51, the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement, confirming the break on a daily closing basis. The next upside barrier is in the 1193.55-99.80 area (38.2% level, May 30 low), with a further push above that targeting the 50% Fib at 1215.40. Alternatively, a reversal back below 1166.51 exposes the 14.6% Fib at 1149.85 anew.

Gold Prices May Continue to Rise After US Jobs Data

CRUDE OIL TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Crude oil prices are attempting to rebuild upside momentum after finding support above the $51/barrel figure. Near-term resistance is at 54.03, the 14% Fibonacci expansion, with a break above that on a daily closing basis exposing the 44.19-21 area (23.6% level, January 3 high). Alternatively, a move below resistance-turned-support at 51.64 exposes the 38.2% Fib retracementat 50.25.

Story continues

Gold Prices May Continue to Rise After US Jobs Data

--- Written by Ilya Spivak, Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

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original source

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Shopian:

National Conference MLC Showkat Hussain Ganie residence in Shopian has been reportedly attacked by a militant on Thursday.

The militant opened fire on the security guard who was on duty outside the residence of National Conference MLC. The guard fire back in retaliation.

However, no casualties have been reported so far. Also, at the time of the firing, Showkat Ganie was not present inside his residence.

Recently, National Conference MLC Showkat Ganie called Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani, who had been killed in an encounter in July, last year, a martyr. After, his contradictory statement on Burhan Wani, the MLC faced the irked of many leaders in Jammu and Kashmir.

Read More: Al-Badr militant Muzzafar Ahmed killed in Kashmir encounter

Shiv Shakti Sena on Thursday held a protest against National Conference MLC Showkat Hussain Ganie for calling Hizbul terrorist Burhan Wani a martyr.

The protesters burnt the effigy of Showket Hussain amidst anti-National Conference slogans. The protestors also appealed to the State Government to take strict action against the anti-national leaders.
New Delhi:

In yet another aviation scare, Bengaluru-Delhi Spice Jet flight 136 on Friday made emergency landing due to hydraulic failure at Delhi airport.

Delhi-bound SpiceJet aircraft from Bengaluru with 176 persons onboard landed under emergency conditions at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi on Friday morning following partial failure of hydraulic system.

All passengers and crew of SpiceJet flight SG 136 are safe, the airline said.

The Boeing 737 aircraft landed at around 0845 hours, airport sources said.

SpiceJet flight SG 136, Bengaluru to Delhi, experienced, during cruise, partial hydraulic failure due loss of hydraulic fluid.

The crew carried out the emergency procedure and landed safely at Delhi. The ATC was kept in the loop. It was an uneventful landing, the airline said.

Earlier on December 27, Mumbai-bound jet Airways flight had skidded off the runaway in Goa, injuring 15 passengers.

Also read:

Jet Airways Goa-Mumbai flight skids off runway: 15 injured

2016 Plane crashes: Civil aviation's safety record marred by series of air disasters







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New Delhi:

BJP President Amit Shah on Friday addressed party office-bearers here ahead of two-day National Executive meet, where its top brass is expected to give final shape to BJPs poll strategy in assembly elections in five states.



The party is seeking to make demonetisation, which it has terms as a war against black money and corruption, a major poll issue, besides encashing on the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the pro-poor schemes.



Shah finalised the partys resolutions to be passed in the two-day national executive meeting that will be inaugurated with his address later in the day.



The BJP chief will seek to motivate the party leaders to steer the party to victory in five states that go to polls in February-March, especially in high-stakes Uttar Pradesh.



The party leaders will discuss and review the ground situation in the poll-bound states, BJP leaders said.



The party will use the occasion to burnish its pro-poor and pro-weaker sections credentials by citing several government schemes, including the recent sops announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



The top BJP brass is also expected to target the opposition over its attack on the government for advancing the Budget Session of Parliament and may project it as yet another attempt by the Congress and the other rival parties to derail Modis pro-poor agenda.



With the mood in the saffron camp optimistic following the prime ministers huge rally in Lucknow recently and what it believes to be a positive public response to the currency ban, the party is expected to project the oppositions criticism of the exercise as an attempt to protect the corrupt.



Two resolutions, one political and the other economic, are likely to be passed at the meet.



The armys surgical strikes last year to target terror launchpads across the border could also find a mention at the meeting.



The Election Commission has announced the dates for Assembly polls in five statesUttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand.



BJPs central election committee is likely to announce the names of party candidates after the auspicious Makar Sankranti which falls on January 14.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Coimbatore:

Various issues like functioning of CBSE schools, non-representation of Management on the CBSE board, will be discussed by the Office bearers of CBSE Schools Associations across India. The meeting will be held in Coimbatore on Saturday.

Despite representations for the last 25 years, the Government has not heeded to the appeal by the Association of Managements of Private Schools (AMPS) of Tamil Nadu to have a management representative in the board, so that it could help while formulating new policy or change the system, AMPS general secretary A T B Bose told reporters in Coimbatore on Friday.

Though principals of some schools were made Board members they do not have any say in policy making as the management and decisions were often taken without taking inputs from the management, he said.

AMPS was instrumental in representing the issues faced by the management in a formal and professional manner with the concerned departments, he said, adding that when the autonomy of CBSE schools was at stake, the association had found solution by approaching the judiciary.

To discuss the issue, the office bearers representing Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, will meet, as part of two-day silver jubilee celebrations of AMPS beginning on Saturday, Bose said.

The deliberations will be compiled and sent to the Centre for necessary action, he said.

The celebrations will be inaugurated by former Anna University Vice-Chancellor, E Balagurusamy, in the presence of eminent educationalists, he said.

AMPS will also felicitate 11 founders of the association on the second day by Avinashilingam University for Women Chancellor, P R Krishnakumar. Former UGC Vice Chairman Dr H Devaraj will address the valedictory function, Bose said.

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 5, 2017) - International Wastewater Systems Inc. (the "Company") (CSE:IWS)(IWS.CN)(IWI.F)(OTC PINK:INTWF) is pleased to announce that Mr. Steve Moddemeyer, Mr. Qu Yuxiu and Mr. Alfred Ng, have joined as members of the IWS Advisory Board (see bios below).

IWS's Advisory Board was established to formally leverage the Company's network of renewable energy experts and industry leaders already supporting the adoption of IWS technology around the world.

Lynn Mueller, CEO of IWS commented: "These new advisory board additions bring to IWS significant international project expertise in the global HVAC and renewable energy market. We are fortunate to heave each of Mr. Moddemeyer, Mr. Ng and Mr. Yuxiu currently supporting IWS projects in China and the United States".

Mr. Steve Moddemeyer

Steve Moddemeyer has over 24 years of experience leading governments, land owners, and project teams towards increased sustainability. He is a principal at CollinsWoerman, a Seattle-based architecture, planning, and sustainable development firm, and previously served as Senior Strategic Advisor to Seattle Public Utilities and the Seattle Department of Planning and Development. He specializes in advanced sustainability strategies for cities, utilities, and Tribes.

Mr. Moddemeyer has worked globally with the International Water Association to help launch the Cities of the Future program (http://www.iwa-network.org/programs/cities-of-the-future/), which seeks to help cities build infrastructure appropriate for the rapidly escalating challenges they face in the 21st century.

Steve is currently leading the development of resilience performance standards in Boulder County, Colorado and works with the National Academy of Sciences on a resilience pilot project in the Seattle region. He was the principal author of the Seattle Green Factor, a powerful land use regulation, and led the Sustainable District Study for the Yesler Terrace redevelopment in Seattle that identified cost-effective district scale approaches for sustainable energy, water and solid waste.

Story continues

Mr. Qu Yuxiu

Mr. Qu Yuxiu is President of Beijing Ruibaoli Thermal Technology Co., Ltd., (BRTT), a leader in the manufacturing and installation of wastewater heat exchange systems in China with a track record of successful projects including the Beijing South Train Station (1.5 million square feet), Beijing Kunlun Hall (1.1 million square feet) and the Shenyang District Energy System (3.5 million square feet). BRTT has installed thermal heat recovery projects in 17 Chinese provinces and 20 cities, serving over 50 million square feet of new and retro-fit real estate projects.

Mr. Alfred Ng

Mr. Alfred Ng is an engineer with over 40 years' experience in the HVAC industry. Mr. Ng co-founded and established numerous manufacturing facilities in China since 1985, and is currently the Chairman & Co-Founder of Mammoth China. Mr. Ng is a pioneer in the geothermal energy industry in China, and has worked as an advisor to the Canadian Government Energy Saving Project with the Chinese Ministry of Construction. His renewable energy products have been used in thousands of projects around the world, totaling more than 200 million square feet of development over the last ten years. His many awards include: Top Ten Leaders in Building Energy Saving in China in 2009, Pioneer in China Geothermal Heat Pump Industry in 2010, Top Ten China HVAC Outstanding Entrepreneur in 2010, Best Leader in China HVAC Sales & Marketing in 2011. Mr. Ng holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manitoba in Canada, and is a Life Member of ASHRAE and an International Representative for The International Ground Source Heat Pump Association (IGSHPA).

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Lynn Mueller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

About International Wastewater Systems Inc.

International Wastewater Systems Inc. is a world leader in thermal heat recovery. IWS systems recycle thermal energy from wastewater, generating the most energy efficient and economical systems for heating, cooling & hot water for commercial, residential and industrial buildings. IWS is publicly traded in Canada (CSE:IWS), the United States (INTWF) and Germany (IWI.F).

The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Mangaluru:

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence sleuths on Friday arrested a passenger at the International Airport for attempting to smuggle foreign currency worth Rs 25 lakh to Dubai.

Acting on a tip-off, DRI officials arrested a passenger identified as Mohammed Farooque, while he was waiting to board a flight to Dubai, after having completed all formalities, an MIA release said.

The foreign currency was found concealed inside biscuit and confectionery packets in his luggage.

Assorted foreign currencies comprising US dollars, British pound, euros, UAE dirhams, Saudi riyals and Qatari riyals, totalling 25,07,162 in Indian rupee value were recovered, it said.

The currencies were seized under the provisions of Customs Act, 1962 read with FEMA rules and RBI guidelines issued in this regard, the release added.

The DRI stated that it was hopeful of getting a breakthrough with regard to unauthorised currency dealers and hawala operators in the course of the investigation.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

US First Lady Michelle Obama has selected 16-year-old Indian-American Swetha Prabakaran to serve in the inaugural Student Advisory Board of an education campaign which seeks to provide educational opportunities for teenagers in America.



Swetha, whose parents immigrated from Tamil Nadus Tirunelveli in 1998, was chosen for Better Make Room campaigns Student Advisory Board in recognition of her efforts to educate youth in the field of computer sciences.



The board members will be traveling to the White House on Thursday to attend Michelles School Counselor of the Year Ceremony.



Born in Indianapolis, she is among seventeen students selected by the White House to serve on Better Make Room Student Advisory Board. The inaugural Board has 12 high school students and five college students.



Swetha, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, is the founder and CEO of Everybody Code Now!, a non-profit body working to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.



She is the only Indian-American in the list.



Two-thirds of the Board members are, or will be, the first in their families to attain a postsecondary degree.



As proven leaders, organisers, changemakers and innovators, these students will help the country achieve President (Barack) Obamas North Star goal, that our nation will once again lead the world in college completion rates, Better Make Room said in a statement.



Founded by Michelle, the board will work to create a college-going, college-persisting and college-graduating culture at their schools while connecting fellow students for any information and resources they need.



I am deeply honoured to be able to serve on this board. Creating a college-going and college-graduating culture among youth is something we have worked to encourage through Everybody Code Now!, and I am extremely excited to share this passion with even more students.



I look forward to working with The First Ladys Reach Higher Initiative and my fellow Better Make Room Student Advisory members to encourage more students to pursue higher education, Swetha said.



Also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, Swetha was honoured as a 2015 White House Champion of Change. She was also named to the International Literacy Associations 2016 30 Under 30.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet at Patiala House Court in New Delhi against captured Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant Bahadur Ali , for waging a war against India including many other charges.

The NIA has filed a charge sheet against Bahadur Ali for conspiring to carry out a terror attack in Delhi and many cities of Jammu and Kashmir.

Commenting on the chargesheet, NIA Inspector General (IG), Alok Mittal said that "NIA has strong and clinching evidence on how LeT terrorists were sent across border to India."

"Bahadur Ali was given training in Pakistan and was given weapons,GPS devices through which he communicated with Pakistan handlers," added Alok Mittal.

The militant has also been accused of stone pelting and stirring trouble in the valley post-Burhan Wani's encounter in July last year. The stone pelting incident in J&K has been done as a part of Lashkar-e-Taiba's conspiracy against India. His name also surfaced post Uri-attack. However, the NIA has failed to extract any information from Bahudur Ali on Uri attack.

Read More: Unrest condition in Kashmir: NIA blames banned terror organisation

Captured terrorist Bahadur Ali confesses he underwent training processes organised by Lashkar



Ali was arrested in June 2016. During the time of arrest many recoveries were been made form including Japanese high-end communication equipments, and I Com sets.

The similar sets of ammunition were recovered from the Uri terrorists also. Ali was interrogated in the Uri case as well.

NIA has charged Ali with criminal conspiracy, waging war against India, various sections of the anti-terror law - unlawful activities, prevention act, arms act, explosives act and the Wireless act for illegally possessing arms, ammunitions.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Vadodara/Karachi:

In an irony of fate, an Indian fisherman died of heart attack in a Karachi jail hours before he was to be released, along with 218 others, by Pakistan as a goodwill gesture, according to Gujarat Fishermen Association.



Jeeva Bhagwan (37), whose name was on the list of 219 fishermen released on Thursday, hailed from Khan Village in Una tehsil of Gir Somnath district of Gujarat, Veljibhai Masani, senior vice president of Gujarat Fishermen Association, said on Thursday night.



He died of heart attack on Wednesday, Masani told PTI.



The fishermen were freed from Malir jail on instructions from the Interior Ministry as a goodwill gesture, jail superintendent Hasan Sehto said.



With the release of the fishermen on Thursday, the total number of Indian fishermen freed from Pakistani jails as goodwill gesture in the last 10 days reached 439, despite the chill in bilateral ties.



This is the second batch of Indian fishermen released from Pakistan jails since relations between the two countries became tense after the terror attack on an Indian army base in Uri in September for which India has blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit.



On December 25, the Pakistan government had freed 220 Indian fishermen who were in jail for more than a year as goodwill gesture after Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday.



Sehto said the Indian fishermen who were released on Thursday would be handed over to Indian officials at the Wagah border.



He said that around 110 more Indian fishermen remain in Landhi jail in Karachi.Last March, the Pakistan government had released 87 Indian fishermen who had been languishing in jail in Karachi for the last two and half years.



Pakistan and India frequently arrest each others fishermen for violating the territorial boundary.



Poor fishermen from both countries routinely find themselves arrested for illegal fishing as there is no clear demarcation of the boundaries between the two countries in the Arabian Sea near Sir Creek and lack of technology has made life difficult for the fishermen of both the countries.



Last Friday, Pakistan Maritime Security Agency arrested 66 Indian fishermen for illegally fishing in Pakistans territorial waters.



Fishermen from both countries end up languishing in jails for years even after serving their sentences and their only hope of getting released is when the governments decide to take goodwill steps.

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New Delhi:

Veteran actor Om Puri died on Friday after suffering heart attack. He was 66 years of age.A

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoles the passing away of actor Om Puri and recalls his long career in theatre and films.

Om Puri has appeared in mainstream commercial Pakistani, Indian, British, and Hollywood, Independent films and art films.

He was awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India. His most popular movies were Hera Pheri, Don 2, Delhi - 6, OMG - Oh my God!, Kurbaan, Dabangg.

He was critically acclaimed for his role in Aakrosh in 1980, a film in which he spoke only during flash-back sequences. His role of Jimmy's manager in Disco Dancer (1982).A

He played the role of police inspector in Ardh Satya (1982), where he revolts against lifelong social, cultural and political persecution and for which he got the National Film Award for Best Actor.

In 1999, Puri acted in a Kannada movie A.K. 47 as a strict police officer which became a big hit. Om Purias last movie was a Pakistani film 'Actor-in-law'.A

Here is how twitter reacted to demise of one of the most versatile actor of Bollywood.A

Bollywood critic Taran Adarsh expressed his emotions on demise of Om Puri.

Shocked and saddened to learn that #OmPuri Ji is no more. You will be missed. Condolences to the family. RIP.

a taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) January 6, 2017A

Virender Sehwag also expressed his condolences on the passing away of one of our finest ever actors

Condolences on the passing away of one of our finest ever actors #OmPuri pic.twitter.com/gBCK6mWwLF

a Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) January 6, 2017

Actor Anupam Kher also expressed his grief.

#OmPuri lent dignity to d medium he worked for. Whether it was stage, TV or cinema. He elevated status of the projects was associated with.

a Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) January 6, 2017

Sad and unexpected news. He was living alone, was under personal & professional pressure. Great loss: Actor Ravi Jhankal



Sad & unexpected news. He was living alone, was under personal & professional pressure. Great loss: Actor Ravi Jhankal on Om Puri's demise pic.twitter.com/kUI2kF6Ljf

One of Om Puri fan prays tribute to Om Puri.

Massive loss for his family, fans & Bollywood. #OmPuri was one the most versatile actor in Bollywood. RIP Sir a JJ (@Jesal03) January 6, 2017

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New Delhi:

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked the BJP to remove him as the head of the ruling party.



Attacking the prime minister, the West Bengal CM said, "the Central government should be formed with another BJP person at its helm. Prime Minister Modi has to go."



Mamata even named three BJP leaders - LK Advani, Rajnath Singh, and Arun Jaitley - to replace Narendra Modi as the prime minister of the country.



"To save country, let a national government be formed. Advaniji, Rajnathji or Jaitleyji can head it. Current situation unacceptable," news agency ANI quoted Mamata as saying.



Mamata Banerjee is one of the biggest criticc of PM Modi's demonetisation policy annnounced on November 8.



More details awaited.

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New Delhi:

The Bahujan Samaj Party released its second list of 100 candidates for the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

The BSP is contesting the crucial polls on its own amid an ongoing feud within the ruling Samajwadi Party.

Just three days ago, the BSP supremo had indicated caste-wise details of her party's list during a press conference in Lucknow.

Mayawati had said that of the 403 seats, "85 are reserved for the SCs and 87 tickets have been given to dalits, 97 to Muslims, 106 to OBCs, 113 to upper castes (66 to Brahmins, 36 to Kshetriyas and 11 to Kayasthas, Vaishyas, Punjabis)."

The BSP chief said that she had decided the candidates long ago and there will be no change in it.

(More details awaited)

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New Delhi:

Shivpal Yadav on Friday held a brief meeting with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in an attempt to settle the Samajwadi Party in-fighting before election commission gives the decision on their feud on January 9.



The election commission has asked the two factions of Samajwadi Party to end fight and settle matter before the said date or else it will freeze their election symbol, leaving the party in major debacle days ahead of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in Feb-March, this year.

The Friday meeting, as per reports, did not yield any results as both Akhilesh and Shivpal refused to budge from their stand or conditions of settlements, ending the meeting within 5 mins.

Here are the live updates:

2:00pm

#Mulayam Singh cancels his 4pm press conference

12:15pm

#EC asked us to submit affidavits by January 9. Will submit affidavit of MLAs, MLCs, MPs between 3-4pm today (Friday): Ramgopal Yadav to ANI

#Out of 229 MLAs, 212 signed affidavit. 56 out of 68 MLCs, 15 out of 24 MPs have signed the affidavit, will submit to EC today (Friday): Ramgopal Yadav to ANI

#Party under leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is the real Samajwadi party, and should be seen so. Cycle symbol must be allotted to us:Ramgopal to ANI

11:55am

#Meeting underway at Mulayam Singh's residence, Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh present in the meet: ANI

11:45am

#Kiranmoy Nanda reaches Akhilesh's residence

11:40am

#Mulayam, Akhilesh and Shivpal to meet again today (Friday)

#Amar Singh will Kept away from the meeting, Azam Khan can be part of it

#Sources say this meeting could end the Yadav family fued

#Formula is ready only final yes is pending: Sources

Also read | Yadav family feud: Factions led by Mulayam, Akhilesh still looking for ways to fortify grip over Samajwadi Party

The Cycle War

The ongoing feud within the Samajwadi Party doesn't seem to die down with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav continuing their attempts to claim ownership of the ruling party even as further efforts are still being made for a rapprochement between the warring factions led by the father-son duo.

The efforts to resolve the issue ahead of the crucial assembly elections seem to go one step forward, two steps backward, and one step to the side. It is clear that both the factions have truce on their minds but at the same time they want to stick to their stand as well.



Alliance with Congress on cards?

There are also talks of a possible alliance between the SP and the Congress. If Akhilesh decides to go on his own, he might attempt to forge an alliance with Congress but that too will materialise if the chief minister gets hold on the party and its symbol.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Toronto:

According to a new study, people who live near to high-traffic roadways areas are greater susceptible to developing the neurological disorders and are at higher risk of developing dementia than those who live farther away. According to the researchers, air pollutants can get into the bloodstream and lead to inflammation, which is linked to cardiovascular disease and possibly other conditions such as diabetes.

Researchers from Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Canada, found that people who lived within 50 meters of high-traffic roads had a seven per cent higher chances of developing dementia compared to those who lived more than 300 meters away from busy roads. At over 200 metres, there was no elevated risk of dementia.

More than 6.5 million Ontario residents between age 20-85 are examined by researchers to investigate the correlation between living close to major roads and dementia, Parkinsons disease and multiple sclerosis.

Scientists identified 243,611 cases of dementia, 31,577 cases of Parkinsons disease, and 9,247 cases of multiple sclerosis in Ontario between 2001 and 2012.

As urban centres become more densely populated and more congested with vehicles on major roads, Copes suggests the findings of this paper could be used to help inform municipal land use decisions as well as building design to take into account air pollution factors and the impact on residents.



(with inputs from PTI)
New Delhi:

Nasa astronaut Jeanette Epps is set to create history as the first African-American crew member when she flies to the orbital post in May next year. NASA has assigned veteran Andrew Feustel and Epps to missions aboard the ISS in 2018.

Feustel and Epps will join a long and distinguished line of astronauts who have crewed the International Space Station since November 2000.

Feustel will launch in March 2018 for his first long-duration mission, serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 55 and later as commander of Expedition 56. Epps will join Feustel as a flight engineer on Expedition 56 and remain on board for Expedition 57.

"Each space station crew brings something different to the table, and Drew and Jeanette both have a lot to offer. The space station will benefit from having them on board," said Chris Cassidy, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

Epps earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1992 at LeMoyne College in her hometown of Syracuse, New York. She went on to complete a master's of science in 1994 and a doctorate in 2000 in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland.

While earning her doctorate, Epps was a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Project fellow, authoring several journal and conference articles on her research.

After completing graduate school, she went on to work in a research laboratory for more than two years, co-authoring several patents, before being recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency. She spent seven years as a CIA technical intelligence officer before being selected as a member of the 2009 astronaut class.

Feustel was selected as part of the 2000 astronaut class and, in 2009, flew on the space shuttle Atlantis for the final servicing mission of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

He made his first trip to the space station in 2011 as a member of the STS-134 crew on space shuttle Endeavour's final mission. With the help of the more than 200 astronauts who have visited, the space station enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth.

Its convergence of science, technology and human innovation provide a springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including the Journey to Mars.

(With inputs from PTI)

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New Delhi:

Astronauts on Friday went for spacewalking to fix new batteries on International Space Stations grid. The three new lithium-ion batteries were to be installed by Commander Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson. These batteries were delivered by Japanese in December 2016.

NASA has huge expectations and they feel that only 24 of them will be needed for saving space for other items during supply runs. It will take two to three years to change out all 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries that make up the solar power system.

NASAs chief astronaut, Christopher Cassidy, said from Mission Control that sticky bolts often stymie astronauts, so everyone was grateful to hand over the chore to Dextre.

The goal is to replace 12 aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with six smaller but more powerful lithium-ion power packs that were delivered to the International Space Station last month attached to a pallet in the cargo bay of a Japanese HTV cargo ship.

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Melbourne:

Australian government has advised its citizens travelling to India to ensure their trip is planned in such a way so as not to depend on the availability of cash, claiming that some visitors are facing difficulties in exchanging 100 dollar notes in India after demonetisation.

In the latest advisory issued on Thursday, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said, Indian authorities have replaced withdrawn 500 and 1,000 notes with new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes slowly entering circulation.

Withdrawals from ATMs are subject to a daily limit of 4,500 rupees (around 90 Australian dollars), which applies to international bank cards. Expect queues and cash shortages at ATMs and note that many ATMs will not accept cards issued by foreign banks.

Foreigners are permitted to exchange foreign currency up to 5,000 rupees (around 100 Australian dollars) per week at banks and foreign exchange bureaus.

It advised travellers to use electronic payments such as bank and credit cards wherever possible.

Due to the ongoing uncertainty of obtaining cash, ensure your trip is planned in such a way so as not to depend on the availability of cash, it said.

Be aware that some travellers have reported difficulties in exchanging 100 dollar notes for local currency in India, it also said.

However, the overall advisory of exercising high degree of caution while travelling to India was kept unchanged for the travellers.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Islamabad:

Pakistans recently retired army chief Gen Raheel Sharif will head the Saudi Arabia-led 39-nation Islamic military coalition formed to combat terrorism, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Friday.

Asif, while speaking during a talk show on Geo TV, admitted that an agreement in this regard was finalised a few days back.

He said the decision was taken after taking the incumbent government into confidence and it was finalised here first. The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.

Asif said that both the government and army were on board regarding the decision to let General Raheel take charge of the alliance.

He, however, refused to share the details of agreement under which Raheel has been appointed the chief of the Saudi-led alliance.

As you are aware that this thing was in the pipeline for quite some time and the Prime Minister was also part of the deliberations, Asif was quoted as saying.

Raheel retired as the army chief in November and has been succeeded by General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Pakistani leaders were initially taken aback when Saudi Arabia, without proper consultation with them, had announced in 2015 that Islamabad was also part of the new alliance to combat militancy.

Iran was not included in the grouping which appeared as a vague attempt to forge a Sunni Muslim alliance against Shiite Iran to curtail its influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and rest of the Middle East.

Pakistan was in an unenviable position as it has good ties with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. It was also not ready to be dragged into the politics of Middle East. Hence, the government had announced that a decision about joining the group would be taken once its details were known.

Later, Pakistan confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

After remaining dormant for months, the group is trying to reassemble.

The coalition includes countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Yemen among others.

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Moscow:

Russias military on Friday said it has begun scaling down its deployment to Syria, with Moscows sole aircraft carrier set to be the first to quit the conflict zone.

In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces Vladimir Putin, the Russian defence ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria, Russian news agencies quoted military chief Valery Gerasimov as saying.

Gerasimov said that a naval group headed by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would be the first to leave the area.

The tasks set for the aircraft carrier group during its military mission have been fulfilled, added Russias main commander in Syria Andrei Kartapolov, agencies reported.

Kartapolov said that Russia still had sufficient air defence capabilities in Syria thanks to its S-300 and S-400 systems deployed in the war-torn country.

Since September 2015, Russia had boosted its firepower on land in Syria and off the coast in the Mediterranean in support of regime forces targeting the second city of Aleppo.

Troops loyal to Russias ally Bashar al-Assad finally ousted rebels from the city last month in their biggest victory in more than five years of fighting, paving the way for the Kremlin to launch a fresh push for a political solution to the conflict.

Russian President Putin ordered a reduction in his forces in Syria on December 29, as he announced a ceasefire between government and rebel forces that has since dampened down the fighting.

Russia, along with Turkey and Iran, are currently pushing for peace talks to be held later this month in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.

Moscow launched its bombing campaign in Syria in September 2015, helping to turn the tide in favour of Assads ailing forces.

Putin already announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces in March 2016, but Moscow later had to ramp up its presence again as fighting increased.

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London:

Britain has awarded a 30-million-pound contract to produce a prototype laser weapon for its armed forces so that they could provide a more effective response to emerging threats, a media report said on Friday.



The UK Ministry of Defence has officially awarded the contract to produce a prototype laser weapon, the BBC reported.



The aim is to see whether directed energy technology could benefit the armed forces, and is to culminate in a demonstration of the system in 2019.



The contract was picked up by a consortium of European defence firms.



The prototype will be assessed on how it picks up and tracks targets at different distances and in varied weather conditions over land and water.



Peter Cooper, from the UKs Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), said the project draws on innovative research into high power lasers so as to understand the potential of the technology.



He said that this could provide a more effective response to the emerging threats that could be faced by UK armed forces.



The MoD has been finalising the agreement with the consortium, called UK Dragonfire, for several months, but it has now formally announced them as the winning contractor.



A spokesperson for the MoD said that the demonstrator was not being developed to counter any specific threat, but to assess whether such weaponry could be delivered as a capability for the armed forces.



But in general, directed energy weapons could potentially be used to destroy drone aircraft, missiles, mortars, roadside bombs and a host of other threats.



The US military has been experimenting with high energy lasers for decades. But, until recently, technical hurdles had prevented them from being used on the frontline.



However, the US Navy fielded a laser weapon system called Laws for testing on the USS Ponce during a deployment to the Arabian Gulf starting in 2014.



It hit targets aboard a small boat which was directed to speed towards the navy ship and also shot a small drone out of the sky.



The Minister for Defence Procurement, Harriet Baldwin, said that truly ground-breaking projects like the Laser Directed Energy Weapon would keep this country ahead of the curve.



If the demonstration is successful, the first laser weapons could come into service in the mid-2020s.



The UK Dragonfire consortium comprises the companies MBDA, Qinetiq, Leonardo-Finmeccanica GKN, Arke, BAE Systems and Marshall ADG, the report said.

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By Victoria Bryan

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) outlined plans for 4 percent capacity growth in 2017, not including recent deals to expand budget brand Eurowings, as Europe's airlines engage in a race for customers against a backdrop of rising fuel prices.

The German carrier said in an investor presentation on Friday that its network airlines - Lufthansa, Austrian and Swiss - would grow the number of seats on offer by 3 percent, while Eurowings would grow 19 percent.

Including recent deals to lease 38 planes and crew from Air Berlin plus take over Brussels Airlines, group growth would be a reported 12.5 percent, according to the slides.

UBS earlier downgraded Lufthansa shares to "sell" from "neutral", saying it was concerned that yields - a measure of pricing - would remain negative in 2017, as European carriers continue to add seats despite likely being unable to pass on increased fuel costs to passengers.

Expanding Eurowings is Lufthansa's response to the rise of low-cost carriers in Europe, notably Ryanair (RYA.I), which is set to usurp Lufthansa as Europe's largest carrier by passenger numbers, after the Irish budget airline said it carried 117 million people last year, a 15 percent increase on 2015.

Up until the end of November the Lufthansa group had carried almost 102 million passengers and typically carries 8-9 million in the last month of the year, meaning it is unlikely to catch Ryanair when it reports annual passenger numbers on Tuesday.

Showing a wish to take some capacity out of the market as well, Lufthansa said that of the 33 A320 planes coming to Eurowings from the Air Berlin lease deal, up to 20 would be used to replace existing Eurowings planes that currently run at higher costs.

Lufthansa estimated its fuel costs would rise to 5.3 billion euros ($5.60 billion) in 2017, from 4.9 billion in 2016.

The group had previously predicted a 2016 fuel bill of 4.85 billion euros and said fuel costs had risen more than expected in the fourth quarter due to the rising oil price and a strengthening dollar.

Story continues

Lufthansa also on Friday confirmed a forecast for 2016's adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to remain around 2015's level of 1.8 billion euros. It is expected to give a first forecast for 2017 profit when it reports full-year results in March.

Barclays analysts earlier said they expected it would be difficult for Lufthansa to maintain adjusted EBIT at 2016 levels this year, given rising fuel prices.

(Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Adrian Croft)
U.S. employers added 156,000 jobs in December, according to federal estimates published Friday morning.

Nationally, 7.5 million people remain without work, with the unemployment rate at 4.7 percent as calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Also unchanged was the number of people who have been searching for jobs without success for at least 27 weeks, at 1.8 million people, with long-term unemployment down by 263,000 people from a year ago.

And those who have settled for part-time work dropped in 2016 by 459,000 people to 5.6 million in all, remaining largely unchanged in December. BLS classified another 426,000 people as discouraged workers, those who are not searching for work as of December on the belief no suitable openings exist, with the figure down by more than a third from a year ago.

Connecticut employment figures are scheduled to be released on Thursday, Jan. 19.

FairfieldCountyJobs.com hosts a career fair on Wednesday, Jan. 18 from 3:30 to 6 p.m. at the Norwalk Inn & Conference Center at 99 East Ave. in Norwalk, listing as participating employers AmeriCares, Crius Energy, Family & Childrens Agency and OperationsInc among others, with registration online.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-354-1047; www.twitter.com/casoulman
Norm Cummings / Norm Cummings

Kent Memorial Librarys staff is encouraging adults to read this winter by kicking off a contest this week.

Patrons will be able to fill out a ticket for every book they read or listen to this winter for a chance to win a book bag of items that will keep them warm.
HARTFORD  Comptroller Kevin Lembo, whose decision to review the charitable record of a Mississippi organization led to a flood of phone calls and electronic trolling, on Friday disqualified the group, which has been labeled as anti-gay and extremist.

Lembo announced that the Connecticut State Employees Campaign Committee, which he administers, has notified the American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., that it has been struck from the list of about 700 charities eligible for state employee payroll deductions, following its refusal to provide a copy of a required non-discrimination policy.

I am grateful for the committees unanimous vote to remove AFA from the state charitable campaign, and Im proud to live in a state that broadly prohibits discrimination, whether based on an individuals race, color, religion, age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, familial status, national origin, ancestry or disability, Lembo said in a statement.

Aside from a telephone and electronic campaign sparked by the AFAs radio-broadcasting arm, the organization has only cited its constitutional rights, and declined to provide the requested policy. While in recent years state employees have contributed only $26 directly to the AFA, it has shared, along with a dozen other groups, in more than $4,000 in employee contributions.

The AFA certainly has constitutional rights to make public statements. However, the AFA does not have a constitutional right to participate in the Connecticut State Employees Campaign for Charitable Giving, particularly if it violates state and federal anti-discrimination laws and regulations, said Lembo, whose investigation was the result of a complaint about the AFA from an employee.

Last month, thousands of retaliatory phone calls and emails  most from out of state  flooded the office of the comptroller, who keeps track of state payroll. Many made derogatory personal remarks about Lembo, a gay father of three adopted sons. The watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the AFA as an anti-gay extremist group.

The AFA has declined further comment on the issue. The organizations website currently features an update on its effort to boycott Target stores over their allowance of customers to use whatever gender restroom with which they are comfortable. Another posting is hedlined Nine reasons why women dont need Planned Parenthood, and another: Pray that Trump is directed by the Lord.

The AFAs public statements and mission not only appear to encourage discrimination against the LGBTQ communities, as well as Muslims who choose to serve and protect our country by enlisting in the U.S. military, but it remains unclear what actual charitable services the AFA provides that qualifies it to participate in the CSEC, Lembo said.

In reaction, GLAD, the GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, issued a statement of support for Lembo. "The American Family Association has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center," said Jennifer Levi, GLADs senior staff attorney. It took courage for the Comptroller simply to do his job and request that they meet the same requirements as all other CSEC groups. The citizens of Connecticut can be proud that they live in a state that embraces all its citizens.
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RIDGEFIELDAfter months of negotiations, the town has tentatively agreed to lease two remaining buildings on the town-owned Schlumberger property.

The draft leases would secure BassamFellows, a luxury furniture and design firm, and ACT, a local theater group, as new tenants for the long-vacant Philip Johnson building and its neighboring auditorium. The documents, which were approved by the Board of Selectmen this week, will be the subject of a public hearing on Feb. 8 and a town meeting on Feb. 22.

Both meetings will be held at 7:30pm in the Town Halls lower-level conference room.

Negotiations for the leases, led by selectmen Steve Zemo and Bob Hebert, began in June and will continue until they are finalized before the meetings in February.

The next step is to take [the drafts] back to the two parties, Hebert said. Were hoping to have acceptance on that and then move forward with a formal lease that we can execute on. We want to have that all done in time for the hearing and we are shooting to have the leases go into effect as soon as March 1.

Scott Fellows, the creative director at BassamFellows, hopes his company will move into the Johnson Building in the fall.

Hebert and Zemo noted the role the Schlumberger Citizens Committee played in guiding negotiations over the buildings. The committee, which was created to decide how best to use 30 of the 40 acres the town owns, conducted two online surveys and presented its recommendations to the selectmen in May.

Among the committees recommendations was to transform the property into a cultural center, while preserving important structures like the Philip Johnson building, which was named after the renowned American architect who designed it.

Zemo hopes the auditorium and design showroom will achieve these goals while also offering economic benefits to Ridgefield.

Our priority was to make [the committee recommendations] happen, Zemo said. Much like Ridgefield Playhouse offers a rich cultural piece to our community but also a huge economic development aspect, were hoping the by-product of the preservation will be similaradding to the cultural piece and economic piece as well.

Both leases are for $1 a year, allowing BassamFellows and ACT to use their resources to finance substantial renovations. Hebert and Zemo said the tenants will be responsible for all building-related costs, while the town will cover outdoor amenities including parking.

Fellows says the work on the Philip Johnson building will include a new roof, new mechanical and electrical systems, new flooring and ceilings and new doors, among other projects. Once completed, the space will be used for the firms office, design studio and showroom.

The leases mark a big step in the development of the Schlumberger property, which was bought by the town in 2012.

A 9.5-acre piece of the property was used to develop age-restricted housing for those 55 years and older by Charter Group Partners LLC. The project was the third plan offered by the town; previously, town voters rejected two other proposals.

Other unsuccessful proposals for the Schlumberger property included a museum devoted to the life and work of Maurice Sendak, a former town resident, and an offer to buy 12 acres from art collector Eric Diefenbach.

Both the selectmen spearheading the negotiations and the tenants for the two new lease agreements are excited about the progress their project will create for the property and for Ridgefield.

We are excited to create a design experience where architecture, interior design and furniture coalesce in a fully integrated whole, Fellows said. Establishing our office and showroom in Ridgefield will allow us to create apowerful design experience that can be shared with a broader group due to its commercial setting.
Heres How Many Bombs the US Military Dropped in 2016  and Where They Went

For a nation that isnt officially at war against another nation, the United States dropped an awful lot of bombs on a pretty large number of countries last year, according to research by Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and research associate Jennifer Wilson.

According to their calculations, based on data released by the Pentagon as well as information collected by think tanks and news organizations, the U.S. dropped some 26,171 bombs across all its weapons platforms, on targets in seven different countries.

Related: Trump Plays War Games on Twitter, and Americans Are Getting Worried

The biggest recipients were Syria (12,192) and Iraq (12,095), where the U.S. is participating in the effort to destroy the terror group ISIS, which still controls parts of both countries.

Next on the list was Afghanistan where, despite having pulled out the vast majority of combat troops years ago, the U.S. saw the need to drop 1,337 bombs. The only other country in triple digits was Libya, which was hit with 496.

Smaller targets included Yemen (34), Somalia (14) and Pakistan (3). The total number of bombs dropped was up 3,027 over the previous year, they found.

Related: The VA Doesnt Need to Be Privatized, and Our Vets Know It

Writing on his blog, Zenko admits, This estimate is undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single strike, according to the Pentagons definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions.

Zenko added, As President Obama enters the final weeks of his presidency, there will be ample assessments of his foreign military approach, which has focused on reducing U.S. ground combat troops (with the notable exception of the Afghanistan surge), supporting local security partners, and authorizing the expansive use of air power. Whether this strategy worksi.e. reduces the threat posed by extremists operating from those countries and improves overall security and governance on the groundis highly contested. Yet, for better or worse, these are the central [tenets] of the Obama doctrine.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Give Gov. Dannel P. Malloy credit for not being one to shirk a difficult task.

When the states Attorney General appealed a Superior Court judges ruling in September that education funding in Connecticut was irrational, the two-term governor could have waited for the appeal to play out. But a Supreme Court decision would likely stretch into 2018 and Connecticuts children cannot wait any longer.

Malloy, in effect, said he would not wait either. One of the three key areas in his annual State of the State address Wednesday was to make the education funding formula more equitable across the state. The governor had his moral compass pointed in the right direction when he told the General Assembly that Connecticut needs a new way to calculate educational aid  one that guarantees equal access to a quality education regardless of zip code.

The Education Cost Sharing formula has been inequitable for a long time. Judge Thomas Moukawshers landmark ruling on Sept. 7 was on the suit filed by the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding more than a decade ago. Malloy is well familiar with the circumstances that compelled the suit. As mayor of Stamford, he was one of the original plaintiffs, along with leaders of Bridgeport, Danbury, Norwalk and Stamford.

Rich school districts flourish while poor ones flounder, Moukawsher determined, and adhering to the status quo has left education in Connecticut  a Constitutional responsibility  in paralysis.

The judge gave the state 180 days for a remedy  an extremely tight deadline that got put on hold by the states swift appeal. But that does not mean  and should not mean  no action is necessary.

Malloy will outline a more equitable system in his budget address next month, mentioning a formula that appropriately measures a given communitys burden. This will be in the context of overall state aid to municipalities.

The state now delivers $5.1 billion to municipalities, the largest single expense in the nearly $20 billion budget. Of the municipal distributions, 81 percent, totaling $4.1 billion, is for education.

It should be noted that the judge did not say more money is required; the inequity, he said, is with the way it is distributed. In recent years the General Assembly abandoned the byzantine ECS formula and let politics influence the outcome. That has to end.

Malloys formula to be proposed next month may need tweaking. He said it will be more fair, transparent and adaptable, considering student need and current enrollment among other factors. Well see. But at least his recommendation for reform will push the Legislature to conduct public hearings and to act. It will not be easy as each of the 169 municipalities will want its perceived fair share. The governor is right to get the debate rolling.

Students deserve a quality education, no matter where they might live. Another class year should not go by without a new funding formula that is transparent, equitable and immune to political pressures.
An hour-long nap may boost memory, thinking in elderly

United States,Lifestyle/Fashion,Health/Medicine, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

New York, Jan 6 (IANS) An hour-long nap after lunch may help older adults to preserve their memories, improve their ability to think clearly as well as to make decisions, a study has found.

Sleep plays a key role in helping older adults maintain their healthy mental function, necessary for people as they age, the researchers said.

In the study, led by Junxin Li from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the team examined nearly 3,000 Chinese adults aged 65 and older to learn whether taking an afternoon nap had any effect on their mental health.

The researchers found that nearly 60 per cent of the people took an afternoon nap after lunch.

Their nap time was between about 30 minutes to more than 90 minutes, with most people taking naps lasting about 63 minutes.

The results showed that people who took an hour-long nap after lunch had better health condition compared to people who did not take a nap -- neither shorter nor longer.

Conversely, those who took no naps at all had four-to-six times more decrease in their mental ability.

In addition, people who did not take a nap at all, and those who took shorter or longer naps, experienced about the same decline in their mental abilities that a five-year increase in age would be expected to cause, Li stated.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

--IANS

rt/ksk/vt
Brazil announces ambitious plan to combat crime

Brazil,Politics,Defence/Security,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Brasilia, Jan 6 (IANS) The Brazilian government has announced a broad and ambitious National Security Plan designed to reduce murders, combat organised crime and modernise the prison system.

The details of the plan -- which had been discussed for the past seven months with regional and municipal governments as well as with the armed forces and the police -- were announced at a press conference by Attorney General Alexandre de Moraes on Thursday, Efe news reported.

The measures were made public after a meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday at which President Michel Temer, referring to the killing of 56 inmates inside a prison in the city of Manaus, said that the federal government is ready to offer its full cooperation to the regional governments in fighting crime.

According to the head of state, despite the fact that the Brazilian Constitution accords to the regional governments the responsibility for public safety, the significant concern created by the increase in violence in recent months "makes us all aware that this is a national problem."

De Moraes said that to allow "integrated action and efficacious cooperation" of national, regional and local authorities, the National Security Plan was prepared from the proceedings of meetings with the representatives of regional and municipal governments, as well as the Attorney General's Office and the judicial branch.

He added that the three specific aims of the program are to reduce murders, especially killings of women; combat transnational criminal organisations that specialize in drug and weapons trafficking; and modernize the Brazilian prison system.

According to the minister, organised crime will be combatted both outside and inside the prisons to eliminate disputes among rival gangs that lead to massacres in the prisons and the death of one prisoner per day, on average, in Brazil.

Regarding murders, Brazil in 2015 was one of the world's most violent countries with 52,000 registered killings, and De Moraes said that the authorities had performed an analysis of the types of homicides and their characteristics in the country's 27 regional capitals.

"That task, as well as the intelligence work throughout the country, allows us to cross check data and mount specific operations in each city to reduce murders," said De Moraes, who added that joint efforts will be launched in the cities of Porto Alegre, Natal and Aracaju.

--IANS

pgh/
Dhaka attack mastermind killed in Bangladesh

Bangladesh,Terrorism,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Dhaka, Jan 6 (IANS) Nurul Islam Marzan, the Neo-JMB leader, one of the key figures behind the Gulshan cafe attack, has been killed in a gunfight with the police in the Bangladesh capital, a senior police officer in Dhaka said on Friday.

The incident took place at Mohammadpur in Dhaka around 3 a.m. in Beribadh area, Dhaka Metropolitan Police's counter-terror unit chief Monirul Islam told bdnews24 on Friday morning.

Marzan was killed alongside an accomplice, the police added.

--IANS

in/
What's common to Arab Spring, European Summer, American Winter (Comment: Special to IANS)

Delhi,National,Opinion/Commentary,Environment/Wildlife, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 IANS

Mohamed Bouazizi was a Tunisian fruit vendor. Six years ago, in Decemebr 2010, he set himself ablaze at a market in the town of Sid Bouzi. He was protesting because the police authorities confiscated his fruit, and he could not grease their hands to get it released.

The blaze triggered an inferno of protests that sucked in almost all of the Middle East in the following spring. The lava of unrest and terrorism has reached far since then. The world has submerged in the transformative process that has been defining and redefining the new pattern of the global fabric with political weft and social warp.

Ahead of the seventh anniversary of the Arab Spring, the world is hibernating in dangerous isolation. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco withstood tremors but have significantly weakened. Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are in long and bruising civil wars, witnessed almost helplessly by the United Nations and powerful world leaders. These countries are on the brink of devastation due to massive ruptures in their political and social landscape, giving rise to incessant seismic demands for regime change.

Many research studies, the most well-received being from Washington's Centre for Climate and Security, have shown that though climate change was not the direct cause for the Arab Spring, it hastened its occurrence. The Arab region is a major importer of food. The droughts in 2010 in exporting countries like Russia, Ukraine, China and Argentina, and the extreme weather events at the same time in major wheat and grain producers like Canada and Australia, created global food shortages. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) says these climate change-related events around 2010 drove up commodity prices globally.

For the Arab regimes, already dealing with internal socio-political and suppression and reeling under the cover-up of inequalities among rich and poor, the steep rise in global food prices heightened the tensions. The Sidi Bouzi event was the proverbial last straw.

Switch to September 2015. Alan Kurdi was a three-year-old Syrian boy; he drowned in Mediterranean Sea while his parents were fleeing to escape the violence back home. Kurdi's body drifted and was found on a Turkish beach. That image of Kurdi, lying with his head in the sand, as if imitating the Ostrich-like behaviour of the international community, made global headlines.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic) is the violent and terrifying off-shoot of the Arab Spring. It has sent shivers up the world's spine. Indeed, history books will be replete with the root causes of the Islamic State's rise and subsequent terror acts, leading to the refugee crisis in Europe.

The US invasion of Iraq is now well-recognised by expert analysts as one of the root causes of the Daesh's creation. The real fuel for the inferno was provided by the brutal inequality and climate change.

A new study published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says drought in Syria, exacerbated to record levels by global warming, pushed social unrest there across a societal line into an open uprising in 2011. The drought in Syria from 2006 to 2011 -- the worst on record there -- destroyed agriculture, causing many farm families to migrate to cities. The influx added to social stresses already created by refugees pouring in from the war in Iraq. The ISIS-led terror attacks have triggered Europe's unprecedented migrants' crisis with millions entering every year over the last two years -- an agonising wave of displacement not seen since World War II. Most arrive in the summer due to the obvious weather advantage.

Europe had its Summer of 2016 that also saw the unexpected Brexit and number of political upheavals and violent events in countries like France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. The spiral of terror and devastating social disruption is threatening to be a new norm and new world order. It is ironic that Europe has to go through its own "regime change" while pursuing its -- and Washington's -- dogmatic regime-change policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The telling chronicles of the US presidential election and Donald Trump's win are as astonishing as storylines of the European Summer. More stunning stories that are now coming are about the American Winter that has brought change in the climate around Trump. His proposed appointments, including that of Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO, as Secretary of State, have frozen the minds of environmental warriors. Some of them have seen this appointment as a proposal to paint the White House with the black colour fossil fuels represent.

Less published news in the American Winter is about the meeting of Al Gore, the former US Vice President and one of the passionately scientific advocates of fighting climate change, with Trump. As per Al Gore they had a lengthy and very productive session and it was a sincere search for areas of common ground. Earlier in November, after his election, Trump had said in an interview with the New York Times that he is looking at the Paris climate agreement closely and that he has an "open mind to it". These turnarounds have signs of yet another new world order -- disruptive controversies radiating hope of change.

The 16 years of this millennium have seen a record number of hottest years ever in recorded human history. New evidence of the receding snow line in the Arctic and the recently-reported polar vortex there are the obvious signs of climate change. At the same time, the world is waking up in 2017 to disruptive controversies. Such disruption may prove to be positive and may finally break the ice on the fight against climate change. After all, the "talk without walk" of the world leaders over the last over 25 years on climate change has kept the people in a "feel good" state after every international event on climate change but brought the planet to the brink of disasters by accelerating Arab Spring and the European Summer. Maybe the hibernating controversies in the American Winter will give rise to new action on climate change. Indeed, climate change needs a business solution and revenue models that a businessman like Trump is familiar with.

(Rajendra Shende, an IIT-alumni, is Chairman of TERRE Policy Centre, a former Director of UNEP and currently serves as an Senior Expert on its Technology and Economic Assessment Panel. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at shende.rajendra@gmail.com)

--IANS

rajendra/vm/ky/sac
India will help out 41 stranded sailors: Sushma Swaraj

New Delhi, Fri, 06 Jan 2017 NI Wire

After seeing the news report of 41 stranded sailors in sinking ships in United Arab Emirates, the Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said that India will help out sailors who were stuck in merchant ships at Ajman in United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Media reports which showed the situations of 41 stranded sailors in sinking merchant ships, Sushma reacted an in a tweet she said, I have seen the news report. We will resolve this.

On January 5, one of the sailors among those 41 sailors Anoop Pathak sent an SOS message from his Twitter handle, which read as, @SushmaSwaraj our ship has holes and to much water coming in!... Please help us we want to go back home!

As per the media reports, 41 Indian sailors are stranded in four abandoned merchant ships at Ajman anchorage in UAE.

The owner of the vessels had seized the passports of the sailors and is reportedly untraceable. According to the reports, the sailors have not been paid for more than a year.

Earlier, the Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj helped those who need help in other countries. Swaraj once promised help in bringing body of Indian from Tokyo and provided help; this shows that the Foreign Minister will surely help those stranded sailors.

--with agency inputs
CALGARY and TORONTO, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - AltaCorp Capital Inc. and ATB Corporate Financial Services are hosting a three-day institutional investor conference on January 10 - 12, 2017 in Toronto, ON. The conference will be focused on key sectors for AltaCorp and ATB: Oilfield Services, Energy Infrastructure, Alternative Energy, Diversified Industries, and Agriculture. Senior management from 50+ public and private companies will be participating.

Key issues facing the different Oilfield Services subsectors will be discussed via moderated panels. Select companies within the Energy Infrastructure, Alternative Energy, Diversified Industries, and Agriculture sectors will be presenting individually in a fireside chat format. Keynote luncheons will feature Amrita Sen (Co-Founder and Chief Oil Analyst at Energy Aspects), Kim McConnell (Founder of AdFarm), and Dave Mowat (President and Chief Executive Officer of ATB Financial).

George Gosbee, Chairman and CEO of AltaCorp Capital, and Jon Horsman, Co-Head of ATB Corporate Financial Services, are pleased to announce the fifth edition of this joint initiative - highlighting both firms' breadth of experience - as they continue to build on the success of this very well-attended, institutional investor conference.

Participating Companies:

ENERGY SERVICES

Akita Drilling Ltd. (AKT.A)

Black Diamond Group Limited (BDI)

Calfrac Well Services Ltd. (CFW)

Canadian Energy Services and Technology Corp. (CEU)

Canyon Services Group Inc. (FRC)

Civeo Corporation (CVEO.US)

ClearStream Energy Services Inc. (CSM)

CWC Energy Services Corp. (CWC)

Enerflex Ltd. (EFX)

Ensign Energy Services Inc. (ESI)

Essential Energy Services Ltd. (ESN)

High Arctic Energy Services Inc. (HWO)

MATRRIX Energy Technologies Inc. (MXX)

McCoy Global Inc. (MCB)

Newalta Corporation (NAL)

PHX Energy Services Corp. (PHX)

Precision Drilling Corporation (PD)

Questor Technology Inc. (QST)

Savanna Energy Services Corp. (SVY)

Secure Energy Services Inc. (SES)

ShawCor Ltd. (SCL)

Strad Energy Services Ltd. (SDY)

Total Energy Services Inc. (TOT)

Trican Well Service Ltd. (TCW)

Western Energy Services Corp. (WRG)

Xtreme Drilling and Coil Services Corp. (XDC)

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Alterra Power Corp. (AXY)

Polaris Infrastructure Inc. (PIF)

ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Inter Pipeline Ltd. (IPL)

Keyera Corp. (KEY)

Parkland Fuel Corporation (PKI)

Pembina Pipeline Corporation (PPL)

Superior Plus Corp. (SPB)

Tidewater Midstream & Infrastructure Ltd. (TWM)

Veresen Inc. (VSN)

DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES

Aecon Group Inc. (ARE)

Air Canada (AC)

AutoCanada Inc. (ACQ)

Bombardier Inc. (BBD.B)

The Boyd Group Inc. (BYD.UN)

Crown Capital Partners Inc. (CRN)

Distinct Infrastructure Group Inc. (DUG)

Exchange Income Corporation (EIF)

Founders Advantage Capital Corp. (FCF)

Gemini Corporation (GKX)

Mosaic Capital Corporation (M)

New Flyer Industries Inc. (NFI)

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (SNC)

Stuart Olson Inc. (SOX)

Waste Connections Inc. (WCN)

WestJet Airlines (WJA)

WSP Global Inc. (WSP)

AGRICULTURE & SPECIAL SITUATIONS

Ag Growth International Inc. (AFN)

Agrium Inc. (AGU)

AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. (AGT)

BioAmber Inc. (BIOA)

CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. (CMED)

Cervus Equipment Corporation (CVL)

GreenSpace Brands Inc. (JTR)

Input Capital Corp. (INP)

PFB Corporation (PFB)

Rocky Mountain Dealerships Inc. (RME)

For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit www.altacorpcapital.com.

About AltaCorp Capital Inc.

AltaCorp Capital provides advisory and institutional services including Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions, Equity Financings, Debt Capital Markets, Acquisitions & Divestitures, Equity Research, and Sales & Trading, to corporations driving Western Canada's key economies: Energy, Agriculture, Energy Infrastructure, and Industrials. AltaCorp is in a strategic relationship with ATB Financial, Alberta's largest financial institution with assets over $46.8 billion. ATB provides Commercial Lending, Business & Agriculture Industry Banking, and Retail and Investment Services. AltaCorp Capital is a member of IIROC, CIPF, FINRA, and SIPC.

About ATB Financial

ATB Corporate Financial Services, a division of ATB Financial, is a full service financial institution serving the needs of commercial and corporate businesses with operations in the province of Alberta. Offering a wide range of capital solutions, cash management services and financial markets offerings, ATB Corporate Financial Services offers custom built solutions for clients operating in industries critical to the Alberta economy including the energy, real estate, food & forestry and diversified sectors.

SOURCE AltaCorp Capital

For further information: For media inquiries please contact Victoria Hoa, [email protected], 403 539 8607
OREM, Utah, Jan. 5, 2017 /CNW/ -- Novi Security and Best Buy Co. Inc. today announced the industry leading, simple, affordable home and business security solution from Novi Security is now available in Best Buy Canada stores spanning every province in the country and online at bestbuy.ca. Novi Security products will be showcased at CES 2017 in the Wynit Distribution Booth (# 31253 LVCC South Hall 3).

"To be offered by the largest retailer for consumer electronics is tremendous validation for our product and company," said Tyler Crawford, CEO of Novi Security. "This quick rollout further shows the need for simplified security, providing intuitive control and putting critical decision making such as calling police or the fire department at the user's fingertips. The Novi Security 4-in-1 smart security system provides all of this at a price point many times lower than competing home security systems."

Launching sales in early 2016, Novi Security has already empowered home and business owners across the world to take control of their safety and security. The Novi Security offering includes a battery-powered 4-in-1 sensor, a relay station, and the Novi app, which empowers the user with complete control of the system and response to any critical event within their home or business.

"Novi Security's simplified security system offers tremendous value and safety benefits for the consumer and it is a solution that is a natural addition to Best Buy's innovative product assortment," said Zayn Jaffer, Vice President Emerging Business at Best Buy. "Best Buy's chief goal is to serve our customers a great selection of the latest technology."

The inclusion in the Best Buy product assortment comes on the heels of Novi Security's added capability to purchase Novi +, which can add professional monitoring, unlimited cloud storage, and additional enhancements to the Novi app.

The Novi Security system and Novi + options are available at a fraction of the cost of traditional security systems. For more information, please visit https://www.novisecurity.com/.

About Novi Security

Founded in 2013, Novi Security, Inc. develops security solutions for homes and businesses. Its solution package includes a sensor, a base station, and a smartphone application. The innovative product detects motion or smoke, takes a series of high definition pictures and sends the images to the customer through the Novi app.

Media Contact:

Jeff Keller

Novi Security

801-367-8456

[email protected]

SOURCE Novi Security

Related Links

https://www.novisecurity.com/


TORONTO, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - From the wildfires that swept through Fort McMurray in May to the floods that devastated parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland over Thanksgiving weekend, severe weather had a huge impact on Canadians in 2016. According to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification (CatIQ), insured damage for 2016 topped $4.9 billion  smashing the previous annual record of $3.2 billion set in 2013.

"Severe weather due to climate change is already costing Canadians billions of dollars annually," said Don Forgeron, President and CEO, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). "The record damage reported in 2016 is part of an upward trend that shows no signs of stopping. That is why Canada's property and casualty insurance industry is calling on governments across the country to come together and implement expansive climate policies that will better prepare Canadians and their communities for when disasters strike."

IBC data shows that the annual economic cost of disasters around the world has increased five-fold since the 1980s. From an average of $25 billion a year in the 1980s, it increased to an average of $130 billion a year in the 2000s. In Canada, federal disaster relief spending rose from an average of $40 million a year in the 1970s to an average of $100 million a year in the 1990s. In the first six years of this decade, federal disaster relief spending rose even more to an average of over $600 million a year. In 2013, federal spending hit a record $1.4 billion largely because of the flooding disasters in Ontario and Alberta.

2016's biggest natural disaster, the Fort McMurray wildfires, resulted in approximately $3.7 billion in insured damage  more than twice the amount of the previous costliest natural disaster on record. However, severe weather and natural disasters are happening across the country and they are happening more often. Some of 2016's most notable events included:

March 23-26 Southern Ontario Ice Storm ( Fergus , Orangeville , Barrie , Newmarket )

Southern Ontario Ice Storm ( , , , ) May 3-19 Fort McMurray Wild Fire (Wood Buffalo, Fort McMurray )

Fort McMurray Wild Fire (Wood Buffalo, ) June 24-25 Northern Ontario and Prairie Storms ( Saskatoon , West Hawk Lake , Killarney , Thunder Bay )

and Prairie Storms ( , , , ) June 28-30 Prairie Storms ( Calgary , Edmonton , Okotoks , Southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba )

Prairie Storms ( , , , and ) July 8 Southern Ontario Storms ( Bradford , Markdale , London )

Southern Ontario Storms ( , , ) July 8-11 Western Canada Storms ( Edmonton , Calgary , Estevan, Southwestern Manitoba )

Western Canada Storms ( , , Estevan, ) July 15-16 Prairie Storms ( Calgary , Swift Current )

Prairie Storms ( , ) July 18-20 Southern Prairie Storms ( Medicine Hat , Outlook, Winnipeg )

Southern Prairie Storms ( , Outlook, ) July 22 Moose Jaw Hailstorm ( Moose Jaw )

Moose Jaw Hailstorm ( ) July 27 Ontario-Quebec Storms ( Toronto , Saguenay)

Ontario-Quebec Storms ( , Saguenay) July 30  August 1 Prairie Storms ( Calgary , Airdrie , Fort McMurray , Yorkton , Melville , Winnipeg )

 Prairie Storms ( , , , , , ) September 28-30 Windsor Flooding ( Windsor , LaSalle , Tecumseh )

Windsor Flooding ( , , ) October 9-11 Atlantic Flooding (Cape Breton Regional Municipality, the Connaigre Peninsula, the central region and south coast of the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador )

"The reach of these storms and the effect they have on our communities is staggering," added Forgeron. "Canadians must be prepared both physically and economically for when these disasters inevitably strike. Addressing current gaps in public policy and consumer protection can only be possible if industry and government work together in the areas of mitigation, adaptation and emergency management  all of which form the basis of a comprehensive climate strategy. Further to that, our industry will continue to press for a National Flood Program to make our communities stronger, safer, and more resilient when severe weather happens. Canada lags behind every other G7 nation when it comes to flooding and we must do more to be prepared."

About Insurance Bureau of Canada

Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties.

P&C insurance touches the lives of nearly every Canadian and plays a critical role in keeping businesses safe and the Canadian economy strong. It employs more than 120,000 Canadians, pays $9 billion in taxes and has a total premium base of $49 billion.

For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca. Follow IBC on Twitter @InsuranceBureau and like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC.

About CatIQ

Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) delivers detailed analytical and meteorological information on Canadian natural and man-made catastrophes. Through its online subscription-based platform, CatIQ combines comprehensive insured loss indices and other related information to better serve the needs of the insurance and reinsurance industries, public sector and other stakeholders. To learn more, visit www.catiq.com.

If you require more information, spokespeople are available to discuss the details in this media release.

SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada

For further information: To schedule an interview, please contact: Andrew McGrath, Manager, Media Relations, IBC, 416-362-2031 ext. 4312, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ibc.ca


OTTAWA, Jan. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Orthodox Christmas:

"This week, Orthodox Christians in Canada and around the world will celebrate Christmas.

"This joyful time of year is an opportunity to gather with family and friends to reflect on the many blessings in our lives. It also gives us a chance to reaffirm our commitment to live in a peaceful, inclusive society.

"This year marks our nation's 150th anniversary. Openness and acceptance are at the heart of what it means to be Canadian, and we should take every opportunity we can to celebrate the many cultures, traditions, and beliefs that make Canada such a wonderful place to live.

"Let us also use this occasion to show greater compassion and humanity to those most vulnerable, at home and around the world.

"On behalf of the Government of Canada, Sophie and I wish you and your family a merry Christmas, and health and happiness in the year ahead."

This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister's Office

For further information: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555

Related Links

http://pm.gc.ca/


OTTAWA, Jan. 5, 2017 /CNW/ - The countdown is on! In 150 dayson June 5, 2017Canada will host World Environment Day, the largest single annual event for celebrating positive environmental action.

This event, led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is marked by thousands of communities worldwide. The theme for this year's World Environment Day "Connecting People to Nature" is an opportunity for individuals across Canada and around the world to discover their natural environment and to appreciate the benefits of healthy ecosystems.

World Environment Day will be an important part of Canada 150 celebrations. Canada and its international partners, including UNEP, are planning many events in the 150 days leading up to, and on, June 5.

Quote

"In 150 days, Canada will host the world in celebrating World Environment Day. In the spirit of this year's theme, 'Connecting People to Nature,' I encourage all Canadians to explore our country's beautiful natural areas, including our national parks, national wildlife areas, and migratory bird sanctuaries. As part of the celebration, Parks Canada is offering free passes to national parks across the country, throughout 2017."

 The Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change

Quick facts

In 1972, the United Nations General Assembly designated June 5 as World Environment Day.

as World Environment Day. Since 1987, World Environment Day has been hosted by a different country, where the official global celebrations take place.

Recent hosts have included Angola , Italy , Barbados , Brazil , Norway , and the United States .

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page

Environment and Natural Resources in Canada's Facebook page

UN Environment on Twitter

UN Environment on Facebook

SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada

For further information: Caitlin Workman, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-938-9436; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll free); United Nations Environment Programme Newsdesk, Nairobi, Kenya, [email protected], +254 725 939 620

Related Links

http://www.ec.gc.ca


Bill Thompson, left, chair of the CUNY Board of Trustees, introduces Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday at Laguardia Community College in Queens. The Governor announced a plan to provide free tuition to SUNY and CUNY students whose families make less than $125,000.

(Screengrab from announcement livestream)

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday announced a

of students statewide at State University of New York and City University of New York colleges. Progressive leaders nationally immediately endorsed the plan, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who stood alongside Cuomo during the announcement. Also, the scholarship received

. Many specifics of how the scholarship would work were not provided despite requests to the governor's office, but below are details identified so far:

How much will it cost?

The governor's office estimates the scholarship will cost the state $163 million to cover tuition costs for SUNY and CUNY students.

Where will the money come from?

It's not yet entirely clear, but an existing state-funded tuition subsidy of nearly $1 billion is already given to students statewide through the Tuition Assistance Program. The plan as proposed would draw from additional state funds to cover the remaining costs for incoming or existing eligible students, according to the governor's office.

Is anyone disputing those figures?

she was skeptical of the low cost Cuomo projected.

said the price tag seems way too low. "But if $163 million is all it cost to cover the balance of tuition for hundreds of thousands of families with incomes ranging into low six figures, it would strongly indicate there is no college affordability problem, at least among SUNY and CUNY attendees," the center wrote. Also,

that a proposal to make tuition free for students just in the CUNY system would cost $232 million.

Does the announcement mean free college?

No, there are other significant costs associated with attending SUNY or CUNY schools besides tuition. SUNY students receiving current in-state tuition for SUNY students getting a bachelor's degree is $6,470, room and board is $12,590, and student fees are $1,590, for example. At CUNY, current in-state tuition for students getting their bachelor's degree is $6,330, and residence costs are $20,295 for students who live away from home. Students getting their associate's degrees pay $4,350 in tuition at SUNY schools.

When would it go into effect?

As early as the upcoming fall semester, if it passes.

Who is eligible?

The scholarship will be awarded based on a family's income. If passed, it would be phased in to include more and more families over three years. In the first year, households making up to $100,000 would qualify. That would increase to $110,000 in 2018 and $125,000 in 2019, according to Cuomo's office. According to statistics from Cuomo's office, an estimated 940,000 households statewide make less than $125,000 a year and have college-aged children. The governor's office estimates that 210,000 students would take advantage of the scholarship.

Is that gross or net income?

It's not clear yet, but the TAP benefits already provided to SUNY and CUNY students are based on households' net income, if that's any indication.

Can the SUNY school handle the extra students?

SUNY spokeswoman Holly Liapis said it's too soon to tell what impact the scholarship would have on enrollment or resources.

could see an influx in students and higher demand for resources as a result.

Can existing students take advantage of this?

A news release said state funds would cover costs for both incoming and existing eligible students.

In addition to income criteria, do you still have to qualify academically?

Liapis said academic requirements, if there are any, have not been described. Students are, however, eligible for TAP benefits the moment they are accepted to SUNY or CUNY schools.

Would it apply to the state's community colleges?

Yes, Liapis said.

What impact will this have on private colleges?

It remains to be seen, but presidents of two

they are worried about losing students to schools that offer free tuition.

Can students get the scholarship if they attend part-time?

No, the program requires students be enrolled full time toward receiving a two-year and four-year degree. Cuomo's office said this requirement is a way to encourage students to finish their degrees quickly and avoid debt. Liapis said it's too soon to say whether students could continue to receive the tuition if they attend university full-time but take longer than two years to complete two-year degrees or four years to complete four-year degrees.

What's the next step?

The scholarship proposal will have to be introduced as a bill, approved by both houses of the state legislature and accounted for in the state budget passed by April 1. If the bill passes the legislature and Cuomo signs it, it becomes law.
The UK Ministry of Defence is looking to have a land-based cannon by 2017 and a ship-mounted one by 2020.

There were early experiments using lasers to try to blind enemy pilots or to disrupt the electronic systems of planes. But the new types of lasers being developed are intended to destroy, in particular enemy planes, and should be capable of dealing at high speed with multiple targets.

Admiral Sir George Zambellas said technological advances had the power to change how the navy operated. One of those advances, he said, was novel, high-energy weapons. Energy weapons dont require conventional ammunition. With a cost-per-shot potentially measured in pence rather than pounds, they offer a route to address the spiralling costs of missile development and production, as well as reducing supply chain demands, he said.

This year the Ministry of Defence said it had instructed its development arm, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), to look at building a prototype. DSTL is exploring the role that electric flywheel technology, the kind used in Formula 1 racing, could play to generate and store the power required for high-energy weapons

Beacon Power opened a 5 MWh (20 MW over 15 mins) flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York in 2011
In 2015, Japan built the worlds largest-class superconducting flywheel power storage system with a superconducting magnetic bearings. The completed system is the worlds largest-class flywheel power storage system using a superconducting magnetic bearing. It has 300-kW output capability and 100-kWh storage capacity, and contains a CFRP (carbon-fiber-reinforced-plastic) flywheel. This flywheel is 2 meters in diameter and weighs 4 tons, and is rotated with a superconducting magnetic bearing at a maximum speed of 6,000 RPM. This is the worlds first superconducting magnetic bearing which uses superconducting material both for its rotor and bearing, and is capable of supporting heavy weight, although it is a compact-sized system.

The flywheel is made by stacking nine layers of CFRP rotors with a 2-meter outer diameter, 1.4-meter inner diameter and 10-centimeter thickness. With this method, flywheels of different storage capacities can be made by changing the number of layers.

It had grid-connection tests with a megawatt-class solar power plant at Komekurayama in Yamanashi Prefecture.

The superconducting magnetic bearing of this system uses a high-strength, high-temperature superconducting magnet made of a second-generation high-temperature superconducting wire material containing yttrium. The rotating shaft also uses high-temperature superconducting bulk. They succeeded in lifting the 4-ton flywheel without any contact by refrigerating the bearing to 50 K, that is, -223C, and creating a powerful magnetic field. This technique has made it possible to rotate the flywheel at a highspeed, with less energy loss. Furthermore, since this system operates at significantly higher temperatures than 20 K or -253C of the previous superconducting coil, the refrigeration cost can be reduced.

Boeing is also working on superconducting bearing flywheels. In 2012, Boeing flywheel tip speed was 800 m/sec. World record on small test rotor in 2012 was about 1,405 m/sec. FW tip speed is limited by material properties.

The Boeing plan was to develop new materials that would allow speed to reach 3,000 m/sec.

Boeing has the vision of combining advanced fiber technology and superconducting bearings to enable the development of a low-cost, extremely high energy-density, highefficiency flywheel energy-storage system. The superconducting bearings enable high efficiency and high spin rates. The new proprietary fiber enables high rotor tip speeds resulting in high energy density, with a projected cost of $100/kWh for the flywheel system at utility scale and large-rate factory production. The prototype flywheel will be small enough (7 kWh/5kW) to facilitate rapid development with a design that is easily scalable to a utility-size unit (~100 kWh) and amenable to factory production to achieve low cost. The vision for commercial production is that individual 100-kWh flywheels will be arrayed in a transportable container with a total storage of 2 MWh for utility applications

Power-thru uses magnetic levitation with no bearings.

All-composite rotors  versus steel hub and composite overlay  offer lighter weight and reportedly improve safety. The lighter weight also improves energy storage, as POWERTHRU explains: Kinetic energy is roughly equal to mass times velocity squared. So doubling mass doubles energy storage, but doubling the rotational speed quadruples energy storage. Thus, todays all-composite rotors allow faster rotational speed (40,000 to 60,000 rpm), which increases short-term energy storage capacity.

(pdf) Flywheel Energy Storage for Automotive Applications  MDPI.com

A 2015 review of flywheel energy storage technology was made, with a special focus on the progress in automotive applications. We found that there are at least 26 university research groups and 27 companies contributing to flywheel technology development. Flywheels are seen to excel in high-power applications, placing them closer in functionality to supercapacitors than to batteries. Examples of flywheels optimized for vehicular applications were found with a specific power of 5.5 kW/kg and a specific energy of 3.5 Wh/kg. Another flywheel system had 3.15 kW/kg and 6.4 Wh/kg, which can be compared to a state-of-the-art supercapacitor vehicular system with 1.7 kW/kg and 2.3 Wh/kg, respectively. Flywheel energy storage is reaching maturity, with 500 flywheel power buffer systems being deployed for London buses (resulting in fuel savings of over 20%), 400 flywheels in operation for grid frequency regulation and many hundreds more installed for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications. The industry estimates the mass-production cost of a specific consumer-car flywheel system to be 2000 USD. For

regular cars, this system has been shown to save 35% fuel in the U.S. Federal Test Procedure (FTP) drive cycle.

There are primarily four properties that make the flywheel attractive for use as energy storage:

 High power density;

 Long cycle life;

 No degradation over time and;

 Easily estimated state-of-charge.

There are four areas where batteries, for the time being, are decidedly better than flywheels:

1. Energy density;

2. Self discharge;

3. Steady output voltage;

4. Cost per kWh.

SOURCES  Energies, Furukawa, Boeing, Williams, Youtube
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP)  An Army veteran who complained that the government was controlling his mind drew a gun from his checked luggage on arrival at the Fort Lauderdale airport and opened fire in the baggage claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight, authorities said.

He was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, one witness said.

"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," the witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, Alaska, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Santiago had walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the U.S. government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

Agents questioned an agitated and disjointed-sounding Santiago and then called police, who took him for a mental health evaluation, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent George Piro, who is in charge of the Miami field office, confirmed that Santiago had come into the Anchorage office and said he clearly indicated at the time that he was not intent on hurting anyone.

Authorities said the motive for the attack was under investigation. Shortly after the shooting, and before details of Santiago's mental health became public, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that it remained to be seen whether it was terrorism or the work of "someone who is mentally deranged."

Piro said authorities are looking at leads in several states and have not ruled out terrorism. "We're looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle," he said

Story continues

Santiago, who is in federal custody, will face federal charges and is expected to appear in court Monday, Piro said.

One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition for his handgun, sending panicked travelers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.

Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen.

Bruce Hugon, who had flown in from Indianapolis for a vacation, was at the baggage carousel when he heard four or five pops and saw everyone drop down on the ground. He said a woman next to him tried to get up and was shot in the head.

"The guy must have been standing over me at one point. I could smell the gunpowder," he said. "I thought I was about to feel a piercing pain or nothing at all because I would have been dead."

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from Anchorage aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

At Fort Lauderdale, "after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

The attack also exposed another weak point in airport security: While travelers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach the gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggage claim areas, are more lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

In 2013, a gunman with a grudge against the Transportation Security Administration shot and killed one of the agency's screeners and wounded three others during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport. Last November, an airline worker was shot and killed near an employee parking lot at Oklahoma City's airport, and in 2015 a machete-wielding man was shot to death after he attacked federal security officers at the New Orleans airport.

"The fact is that wherever there are crowds, such as at our airports, we remain vulnerable to these types of attacks," Nelson said.

The Fort Lauderdale gunman said nothing as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding," according to Lea. The killer went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

"He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him," Lea said.

The gunman was arrested unharmed, with no shots fired by law enforcement officers, and was being questioned by the FBI, Sheriff Scott Israel said.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said 30 to 40 people were injured  scrapes, bruises and broken bones  after the shooting.

The condition of the wounded was not disclosed. At least one of the victims was seen lying in a pool of blood with what appeared to be a head wound.

The airport was shut down, with incoming flights diverted and outgoing flights held on the ground. Airport Director Mark Gale said it will try to reopen at 5 a.m. Saturday but urged travelers to check with their individual airlines on flight status. He said 10,000 of the airport's stranded travelers were being bused overnight to the city's spacious Port Everglades cruise ship terminal.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said. President-elect Donald Trump said that it is a "disgraceful situation that's happening in our country and throughout the world" and that it was too soon to say whether it was a terrorist attack.

Santiago's brother, Bryan, told the AP that his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiago's girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months. Bryan Santiago said that he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was sent to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.

The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted  from specialist to private first class  and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honorable discharge.

John Schilcher told Fox News he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

"The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground," said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. "The firing just went on and on."

"I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me," he said. "That's when I assumed it was safe."

___

Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro and Adriana Gomez-Licon in Miami; Lolita C. Baldor and Eric Tucker in Washington; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; David Koenig in Dallas; and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Southwest Airlines will add flights at an airport in northeast Ohio while ending service at another airport in that section of the state.

The Dallas-based carrier said Thursday that it will begin twice-daily service between Cleveland and Atlanta and a second daily flight between Cleveland and St. Louis out of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on June 4. But Southwest also says it's pulling out of Akron-Canton Airport in June.

The carrier announced Wednesday that it also plans to pull out of Dayton International Airport in June. Southwest will begin daily service June 4 to Baltimore-Washington and Chicago Midway out of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, Kentucky.

Southwest said in a statement that leaving cities isn't an easy decision but the carrier needed to go where it's needed most.
First Lady, Aisha Buhari has denied reports that the Nigerian High Commission in the UK spent a total of 49,000 in entertaining her durin...

First Lady, Aisha Buhari has denied reports that the Nigerian High Commission in the UK spent a total of 49,000 in entertaining her during her visits to London.She made the denial via a statement released by her media aide, Adebisi Olumide-Ajayi on Friday, January 6.The statement reads in part:It is not in the interest of Mrs Buhari to join issues with anyone, but necessary to put the record in proper perspective. This is necessary as it concerns her trip to UK and the Nigerian High Commission in London. Mrs Buhari had never travelled with a large entourage to London as reported by the Saharareporters."The Nigerian High Commission in London had never offered any favour either in cash or material to Mrs Buhari. Mrs Buhari would have ignored the publication like all such baseless accusations, but for the angle with which the report was presented has a corruption and abuse of privileges connotation.This, however, negate the fundamental principles upon which Buharis administration thrives. It is on record that the Nigerian High Commission in London did not receive Aisha Buhari at the Airport with any official distinction or privilege as it was accorded other first ladies before her.She never complained or raised dust about any of these act by the High Commission because of the understanding as clearly spelt out and practised by her husband that public office must be separated from the private lives of the occupants.The allegations were made by Sahara Reporters and supported by a document dated July 28, 2016, and signed by Minister Counselor/Head of Chancery, Ibrahim Sule.




John Obi Mikel has been sent an emotional farewell message from Nazar, a Chelsea supporter from Ukraine.The Super Eagles captain is set to leave Stamford Bridge in the January transfer window and is on the verge of signing for Chinese Super League side, Tianjin TEDA .Mikel Obi, who has spent 11 years with the Blues, will leave as a free agent, despite his current deal running out in the summer.It has however not stopped a Ukrainian fan sending a message, praising the 29-year-olds contribution to Chelseas successes in the past and wishing him the best for the future.He tweeted the letter, which Mikel Obi acknowledged by responding: Thanks for the love @CFCLive_vk #BlueIsTheColour.
The police have dismissed an Inspector and five sergeants attached to the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, over alleged misuse of firea...

The police have dismissed an Inspector and five sergeants attached to the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, over alleged misuse of firearms during the legislative rerun in the state in December last year.They are ex-Inspct. Eyong Victor, ex-Sgts. Peter Ekpo, Oguni Goodluck, Orji Nwoke, Okpe Ezekiel and Tanko Akor.The errant operatives were said to have stormed the Port Harcourt City Council Secretariat and prevented the movement of election results of Emouha polling unit to the appropriate collation centre designated by the Independent National Electoral Commission in disobedience to senior officers present.Their actions were said to be contrary to the provisions of Force Order 237.Parading the former policemen on Friday in Abuja, the Force Public Relations Officer, Donald Awunah stated that despite strict warnings from the Inspector-General of Police that all personnel on election duty should be of good conduct and desist from escorting their principals to polling units throughout the period of the election, the recalcitrant operatives were found blatantly breaching the directive.
CHERRY HILL TWP. -- Ben Shore is going to battle, his little goldendoodle Charlie by his side.

He is taking on the Cherry Hill School District, which he says has implemented a policy on service dogs that contradicts state and federal laws on the animals.

"They're creating barriers that make it hard for people with service dogs to go to school," he said in an interview earlier this week. "The law is clear."

Shore, 16, a junior at Cherry Hill High School East who is on the autism spectrum and has panic attacks, said he wants to bring his trained service dog to school sometimes to help him if he has an attack. But he won't do so until the school recognizes its policies violate his rights, he said.

He initially assumed he could bring his dog, as he has in businesses and on airplanes, but checked the school's policy just in case.

He found that the policy the Cherry Hill Board of Education passed, with 128 other revised policies June 28, includes more than one provision that conflicts with the rights of the disabled spelled out in state and federal laws. It is essentially the same, other than a few changes to wording, as the previous policy passed in 2006.

He said he met with Superintendent Joseph Meloche and repeatedly emailed board members about the problem, but was told he couldn't bring his dog without adhering to the policy.

On Monday, he confronted the board at their meeting. According to a video Shore posted online, Meloche told him that some of his concerns would be addressed in a revised policy the board is expected to review at a meeting next week.

Barbara Wilson, a spokeswoman for the district, said Meloche will not comment on the issue until the undisclosed revisions are made.

Meloche said in the video that the school's policy creates "additional guidelines" and a process for determining a student's need for service dog, but Shore maintains that state and federal law must trump local policy.

Leah Levine, CEO of Animals at Work Inc., agreed. She formed her nonprofit in Morristown to help those with service dogs and educate the public about the laws regarding the animals.

"There's so much misinformation about this," she said.

Levine said that some school officials previously thought that because the public is not allowed to freely come and go from schools, the federal law didn't apply to them. That law guarantees access for service dogs to "all areas where members of the public are allowed to go."

That's why about five years ago she suggested to then-state senator Donald Norcross that the state needed a law to clarify how schools can regulate service dogs. The law passed in 2012.

"It's an amazing piece of equipment for a kid to have in school so he can succeed," she said of a service dog.

Shore said that when his family got Charlie as a puppy a year and a half ago, they realized he had the right temperament to be a service dog.

He said Charlie can feel an anxiety attack coming on and will lie on Shore to calm him, lick his face, and sometimes bark for help. In the service dog world, the actions are called deep pressure therapy, grounding and tactical disruption.

"It was a hard, long process" to train him, Shore said. "I had to have a panic attack for him to figure out what I wanted him to do."

Shore estimated he brings Charlie with him to public places about half the time, depending on how anxious he is feeling. He would like the freedom to bring him to school when he needs him.

'We have to be advocates'

On the federal level, the Americans with Disabilities Act has jurisdiction over service dogs. It defines a service dog as a dog that is "individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability."

The New Jersey law clarifies that schools should permit the dogs assisting those with a disability, including autism, including allowing them on buses. The Cherry Hill policy prohibits them on buses.

Another discrepancy is Cherry Hill's policy states that if another student in a classroom is allergic to the dog, the dog will be removed and the student will get an aide instead. Federal law prohibits that and specifically says allergies are not a valid excuse, Levine said.

"Nobody can take the dog away. Is someone going to take away someone's wheelchair? It's medical equipment under the ADA," she said of a service dog. "We love them, they're cute, but they're medical equipment."

The school policy also tacks on additional requirements for the dog's owner, contrary to state and federal laws that limit what a place or school can demand.

Cherry Hill requires that the "trainer of the animal is appropriately licensed and insured and can certify to the safety of the animal," but federal law states that a service dog can be trained by its owner.

The presence of a service dog must also be approved by an assistant superintendent and recommended by a teacher and principal, according to the policy. Shore said that provision also violates federal law and his civil rights as a person with a disability.

"It basically says it's up to each teacher or principal to decide if it's necessary," he said.

Levine said that generally, people who do not comply with service dog laws just don't know them. "We have to be advocates and get the word out," Levine said.

If Meloche's statements that the board is thinking about revisions is any indication, Shore's persistence may have paid off.

But he won't stop there. He is still pushing for a bill he helped create to impose criminal fines on those who deny access to someone with a service dog. Called Charlie's Law after his service dog, the bill was introduced in both houses in September but hasn't been acted on.

Shore said was inspired to start the work after seeing how a threat to call police when he and Charlie were being denied access to an airport in Florida got quick results. It is a misdemeanor offense in Florida, he said.

He has also met with Mayor Chuck Cahn about getting a similar ordinance passed locally.

Shore said he wants to make it so no one else with a service dog has their rights limited, whether by a school or businesses.

"I'm an advocate," he said.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
PHILADELPHIA -- A Cherry Hill man is suing ride-sharing service Uber, contending that he was forced out of a car and beaten by one of its drivers in December.

Joseph Fusco says he attended a holiday party Dec. 22 in Philadelphia's University City section and used the Uber app to seek a ride home that evening.

A driver responded to pick him up and all was well until Fusco told him his destination. The driver refused to take him to Cherry Hill and ordered Fusco out of his car.

When Fusco asked again to be driven to Cherry Hill, the driver walked around to the passenger side, removed Fusco from the car and beat him, the suit says.

The driver broke multiple bones in Fusco's face, knocked out teeth and left him in a pool of blood on the pavement, Fusco says.

The driver fled the scene and remains at large, the plaintiff states.

"The Uber driver stomped and kicked Plaintiff in the face and head while he was already unconscious, which upon information and belief, is captured on surveillance video," the suit states.

Matthew Luber, Fusco's attorney, said he has not seen the video, but that his client has seen it, and that police at the University of Pennsylvania have the video and are investigating the case. University police could provide no information on the case Friday.

Passers-by found Fusco on the sidewalk and called 911, according to the lawsuit. He was treated at a nearby hospital and discharged the next day.

While the suit claims that Uber has refused to fully cooperate with police in identifying the driver, Uber says it is cooperating with police and that the driver was removed from the app almost immediately, meaning he can no longer accept rides via the service.

Fusco also claims that he was charged for a 28-minute ride across Philadelphia that night that he did not take. The company offered to reimburse Fusco for that trip, according to the suit.

The suit notes that the driver didn't know where Fusco wanted to go until he got in the car. According to Uber, passengers enter trip information, including destination, into the app, but the driver doesn't actually receive the destination information until the trip begins.

In the lawsuit, Fusco accuses Uber of negligence, fraud and misleading statements about the safety of its service.

Fusco has already had surgery to repair some of the damage from the beating, but his suit says he "may never fully recover" from the incident.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
CAPE MAY -- Tracie Cicchitti was at a bar inside Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport Friday afternoon, waiting to board a flight home to Atlantic City when a gunman started shooting.

She was in terminal 4, and the shooting occurred in terminal 2.

Tracie Cicchitti

So Cicchitti - who owns Cape May Whale Watch & Research Center with her husband - went to check on the Spirit Airlines flight's status, and an agent told her: "You're not gonna get out of here."

She jokingly said she was going to walk to a nearby friend's house, and the agent said, "You should."

Seconds later as as she walked back to the bar, where her 75-year-old mother was waiting, a pack of police officers ran down the terminal hall yelling for everyone to hit the floor.

"Get down!" they shouted, some spicing up their commands with curse words.

"I got to (my mother) and they put everybody behind the bar," Cicchitti said.

She cowered with others for 10 minutes before authorities moved everyone to the tarmac - where she remained at 4:45 p.m. Friday.

"It was chaos," she said.

Authorities say Esteban Santiago-Ruiz - whose family identified him as an Iraq war veteran who was born in New Jersey and lived in Alaska - opened fire in a baggage claim area, killing at least five people. He apparently retrieved a firearm from a checked bag after exiting a flight from Canada, Broward Commisioner Chip LaMarca said.

Speaking via phone from the tarmac, Cicchitti said Spirit employees handed out water and tried to keep everyone calm. "They did a good job," she said.

She described rumors floating through the crowds, everything from what the gunman said when he fired, to how long they would be outside. "It's really scary,' she said.

Cicchitti said one person said they would likely be a minimum of four hours.

In the meantime, she's letting a Colombian family use her phone to alert their family members they are OK, and her husband - who was staying in Florida - can't get near the airport.

"I don't know how long we'll be here," she said.

Shortly after 5 p.m., Cicchitti was still on the tarmac.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NORTH WILDWOOD -- A North Wildwood man sought for failing to return to a work release program in Philadelphia four months ago is back in custody.

Mario Gigliotti, 50, was seen by police getting into a vehicle on 22nd Avenue at 9:30 a.m., North Wildwood police said in a news release.

Police pulled over the vehicle near 12th & New York avenues.

Gigliotti was charged with being a fugitive from justice and sent to the Cape May County jail, police said. He will be extradited to Pennsylvania.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
If incoming President Donald Trump gets his way, a subcompact car is likely to cost more in a few years.

Trump has now called out Toyota (TM) for plans to move production of its Corolla economy car from plants in Mississippi and Ontario, Canada to a new factory its building in Mexico. The threat, of course, came in a tweet:

Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

This comes after Trump criticized Ford (F) for a similar plan to move production of the Focus subcompact from Michigan to Mexico, and General Motors (GM) for building a tiny number of Chevy Cruze hatchbacks in Mexico. (Most Cruze models are built in Ohio.)

Trump has clearly decided the auto industry is a fat target, since automakers have probably invested more in Mexico in recent years than any other type of company. But Trumps attacks threaten to upend rational production plans the automakers have spent years putting into place, while also risking unintended consequences likely to harm consumers.

Higher prices for compact cars

If Trump actually managed to force automakers to move production from Mexico or other low-cost countries to the United States, theres no way around the fact it would raise prices for car buyers. That, in turn, could reduce auto sales, which would reduce car-industry jobs. Or, it might give automakers even stronger incentives to replace workers with robots and other forms of technology, in order to keep a lid on prices and make sure they dont lose out to other manufacturers with cost advantages.

Workers who feel harmed by the offshoring of US jobs might cheer Trumps attacks on Big Auto, but in some important ways those attacks are misdirected. Japan-based Toyota, for instance, has invested more in US production than any other foreign automaker. It claims 10 US manufacturing facilities and 136,000 American employees. The Camry sedan is one of the most American cars on US roads, with an engine and transmission made in the United States and final assembly at factories in Kentucky and Indiana. The Sienna minivan is close behind. In a statement following Trumps tweet, Toyota said its US employment will not decline when it moves Corolla production to the new factory in Guanajuato, Mexico (not in Baja, as Trump mistakenly claimed).

Story continues

Relentless pressure on costs has led most automakers to Mexico, where they generally build compacts and subcompacts. Mexican workers earn about one-fifth what their American counterparts earn, and most automakers cant make money on small cars made in the United States. The profit margin on small cars is often tiny and sometimes negative. Since labor is a bigger portion of costs on small, cheap cars than on larger, costlier ones, producing in Mexico lets automakers keep quality up while delivering the low prices consumers demand. Thats why most automakers are moving small-car production south of the border while refocusing US production more on expensive products with bigger product margins, as well as engineering, design and R&D.

Trumps tactic of picking off one automaker at a time for criticism is bad economics. Moving production of any good from Mexico to the United States will raise its cost, and Trump is basically saying Toyota should absorb higher costs while other carmakers that still build in Mexico should enjoy a cost advantage. Ford, for instance, recently announced new investments in the United States, which Trump approved with a tweetbut it still plans to move production of the Focus to Mexico. The Focus and Corolla are direct competitors, and Trump seems to be picking the Focus as the marketplace winner by suggesting only the Corolla should be built by more expensive US labor.

A more rational approach would be for Trump to adopt new policies that apply to all automakers equally, which he might eventually do. After all, hes not even president yet. Across-the-board rules would at least spread the pain more or less equally among all producers. But higher costs industrywide almost always get passed on to consumers, at least in part. This is why most economists hate tariffs and tariff-like measures: They raise costs to the end user while reducing disposable income and generally depressing the economy.

If youre keeping score, Trump has now inherently blessed Fords production plans in Mexico. Hes backed off his criticism of GM for now, perhaps because he got his facts wrong on the Cruze. But there are other GM vehicles made in Mexico he could target. Since he has now gone after a foreign automaker, its reasonable to expect he will also ding Fiat Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, and Volkswagen, which all make vehicles for sale in the United States. If all those factories end up on US soil, put aside some extra cash for your next down payment.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is showing no signs of toning down his contentious rhetoric but come inauguration day on Jan. 20, he will need to rapidly reconfigure his relationship with China, former diplomats told CNBC.

So far, Trump has publicly criticized Beijing for unfairly manipulating its currency, applying insufficient pressure on rogue nation North Korea , taxing U.S. products, and militarizing the South China Sea. He's also questioned the decades-old "One China" policy , which stipulates Taiwan is a part of China, prompting criticism in China.

"The relationship between the U.S. and China is simply too big to fail, Trump needs to figure out how to take it forward," Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and South Korea, told CNBC on the sidelines of the the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Conference in Singapore.

Indeed, many have warned that a severed U.S.-China relationship would only result in a 'lose-lose' situation for both parties.

U.S. companies and consumers would lose access to China's low-cost workers and cheap Chinese imports while Washington would be unable to borrow from China, which holds more U.S. debt than any other country. Meanwhile, China's economy would get hit if Trump slaps higher tariffs on Chinese goods and places restrictions on Chinese investors from doing business in the U.S.

"Trump will soon find out that he doesn't get to pick and choose between crises ...he will learn that he has to be better prepared," stated Hill.

Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former ambassador to the United Nations (UN) and former president of the UN Security Council, echoed those thoughts.

"Within the bilateral China-U.S. relationship, Trump will soon figure out which areas he can negotiate with and which ones he can't."

Trade and currency are negotiable but 'One-China' isn't, he continued, referencing a recent editorial by Chinese newspaper Global Times that said the political policy "could not be bought or sold".

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Global implications

"If U.S.-China relations go badly, all of Asia will be rocked," Mahbubani said.



The entire region wants to have close ties with both Beijing and Washington, and antagonism between the latter two will disrupt Asian trade flows, foreign policy and security co-operation, he added.

Of particular concern is North Korea.



Trump's anti-China stance is not at all conducive to resolving Pyongyang's seemingly expanding stash of nuclear weapons, cautioned Hill.

"The U.S. and China need to do a deep dive and resolve the problem together. Neither can solve it alone, but together they can do a better job than in the past."

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.


President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to maintain a naval fleet of 350 ships as part of an historic buildup of the U.S. military, but his ambitions come with a stiff price tag.

Our Navy is the smallest it's been since World War I, he said during a campaign stop last October in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. My plan will build the 350 ship Navy we need. This will be the largest effort at rebuilding our military since Ronald Reagan, and it will require a truly national effort.

Related: The Pentagon Must Now Reveal the True Cost of War to All Americans

The Navy on average has spent $15.9 billion annually on ship building over the past three decades, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In order to meet the Republican president-elects goal, the navy shipbuilding account would have to be boosted to $25 billion a year, 60 percent higher than the historical average.

That will mean having to find a way to lift the budget cap on defense spending by about $9 billion a year.

Trump is far from alone in his ambitions for expanding the U.S. fleet to counter Russia, China, Iran and other global adversaries. Last month, the Navy released a new force structure assessment  a blueprint for the future -- which calls for building a fleet of 355 ships. That is in sharp contrast to a previous long-term goal of 308 ships.

Related: Trump Doubles Down on the Threat of a Nuclear Arms Race

As of last November, the U.S. fleet numbered 272 battle force ships, according to CBO. That included aircraft carriers, submarines, surface combatants, amphibious ships, combat logistics ships and some support ships. The proposed buildup would include an additional aircraft carrier, more large warships and more attack submarines.

In outlining his views on the need for a defense buildup, Trump has stressed the economic benefits his policies will have in the private sector.

I will instruct my Secretary of the Navy to study locations like Philadelphia with a long history of service to our military and proximity to vibrant private industry and find ways to involve them in this national effort, Trump declared in his campaign speech last fall.

Story continues

Related: Trumps Nuke Talk Could Break the Budget or Much, Much Worse

As our fleet is rebuilt, we'll need to invest in recruiting the skilled American craftsmen we need, like welders and pipe fitters and so much more, he added. We will establish centers of excellence in places like Philadelphia and Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Hampton Roads in Virginia to produce the master craftsmen we need to rebuild our Fleet.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
The pictured man is suspected of breaking into a Sprint store in the 4000 block of Veterans Boulevard in Metairie around 12:30 a.m. Dec. 27, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.
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.
By David Shepardson and Joel Schectman

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and the U.S. Justice Department are nearing an agreement to resolve the government's civil and criminal investigations that would require the German automaker to pay a penalty of more than $3 billion, sources briefed on the talks said on Friday.

The agreement is not final and could top $4 billion or fall apart but a deal could be announced as early as next week, said the sources on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.

Volkswagen is also expected to face oversight by an outside monitor and agree to other significant reforms in connection with its diesel cheating scandal as part of a potential deferred prosecution agreement or guilty plea to criminal charges, the sources said.

VW has previously agreed to pay up to $17.5 billion to resolve claims by U.S. owners, federal and state regulators and dealers and admitted it had misled regulators for years about illicit software.

A VW spokesman in Germany declined to comment, saying the automaker was in discussions with authorities.

Volkswagen and the Justice Department have held intensive talks this week aimed at resolving the case before President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. If a deal is not reached before then it could significantly delay an agreement, the sources said.

VW admitted in September 2015 to installing secret software known as "defeat devices" in 475,000 U.S. 2.0-liter diesel cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests and make them appear cleaner in testing. In reality, the vehicles emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels.

The company later admitted to also using "defeat devices" in 3.0-liter vehicles. The 80,000 3.0-liter U.S. vehicles had an undeclared auxiliary emissions system that allowed them to emit up to nine times allowable limits.

The scandal hurt VW's global business and reputation, and led to the ouster of longtime Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn. VW has been barred from selling any new diesel cars in the United States since late 2015.

Story continues

A settlement could help VW largely move past the scandal, though it still faces lawsuits from U.S. investors and some U.S. states.

The automaker will spend years fixing or buying back vehicles and making investments to boost zero emission vehicle infrastructure and must deposit nearly $3 billion in a trust to offset excess diesel emissions. It has also agreed to boost the number of electric vehicles it offers in California.

To date, only one VW employee has been criminally charged in the United States. He has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.

(Additional reporting by Jan Schwartz in Hamburg)
Tax season is a stressful time of year for both accountants and their clients. The pressure to gather all the necessary documentation and prepare filings is high, and even the smallest delay can create big headaches. Thats why H&R Block Canada made the decision to automate a number of frontline and backroom processes. As a result, customer service is more efficient and effective, and tax season does not, well, tax H&R Blocks thousands of local tax professionals and customer service operatives.

H&R Block Canada has helped millions of Canadians with tax solutions to meet their unique needs for more than 50 years. It is Canadas leading tax preparation firm thanks in large part to the thousands of local tax professionals who work directly with clients.

Faster, better customer support

H&R Block supports every local office with a central team of experts. However, if one of the local professionals needed support during a client meeting, they had to manually consult a long list of telephone numbers, then call the right person  or hope they had on the first attempt. That led to phone calls that lasted for more than an average of 10 minutes, forcing the client to wait.

To eliminate this reliance on these types of time-consuming manual processes that wasted both employees and clients valuable time, H&R Block turned to ServiceNow (News - Alert) to help streamline the support process. The result is the automated system dubbed Block Signal.

When a local tax professional needs support  for example, tax legislation advice or instant cashback approval  they open a ticket right from their desktop. The support request is automatically routed to the right person, who typically answers within 10 minutes. During this time, the tax professional can continue to work with the client and build the relationship. No searching for the correct support phone number, no more forcing clients to cool their heels.

Constant measurement and improvement

Another focus area has been enhancing client service delivery. H&R Block now uses an operational service platform called GREAT. This operational service platform addresses five key client service delivery areas critical to every single client: greet, relate, experience, add value, and thanks.

Information collected from in-store systems is held up to a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure these five areas and create a GREAT scorecard. Regional directors and district managers can then easily see the overall GREAT score for each of their stores, and pinpoint whats working and specific issues to address. Since creating the GREAT scorecard, H&R Block has significantly increased customer loyalty. Their Net Promoter Score (NPS)  a widely accepted measure of customer loyalty  has increased by 12 points over the two years GREAT has been operational.

Preparing for tax season

Tax time always means a significant increase in the demand for professional help, and consequently the number of people that turn to H&R Block for help. H&R Block anticipates this demand every January by opening more than 800 stores and kiosks across Canada over just a span of three weeks. That requires the completion of more than 87,000 tasks, and in years past, a reliance on manual processes led to delays. Some stores were not able to open until March, frustrating clients and impacting the bottom line.

Today, the company manages the entire process with a Field Office Readiness Dashboard that tracks the 22 milestones for each new location. Milestones are sent to mobile devices, and employees have instant visibility into which stores need additional help. The process procedures are stored in a knowledgebase that provides each location with a documented, repeatable process. The result: 97 percent of the stores opening on time.

Whats next?

H&R Block has launched several other initiatives to automate business processes and workflows. The company has built workflows to automate store opening and closing processes, to verify the correct installation and operation of IT equipment, track store inventories and procure supplies. Having proven the value of automation for IT processes, other departments such as HR and finance are looking to do the same.

Weve transformed how we engage with customers and conduct our day-to-day business, said Darrel Popowich, Vice President of Information Technology at H&R Block Canada. Weve done all of this with just 1.5 full-time technical resources  our business analysts now work directly with our internal business partners to create solutions.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi
The North Platte Public Library is joining Nebraskas 150 Years of Statehood Celebration with special programs throughout 2017. Their noon Brown Bag Series kicks off on Thursday, Jan. 12, with Iron Horse Stables: The History of the North Platte Railroad Roundhouses. Kaycee Anderson, a library staff member, will share the history of the Union Pacific roundhouses in North Platte, illustrating her talk with historical photos, which she has found through extensive research.

The first buildings to go up were temporary  a warehouse, bunkhouses, a wash house and mess hall. Wells were dug and a large windmill and water tank were built for the railroad crews. The first permanent, and most important, building to be constructed in town was the roundhouse, which could turn locomotive engines around, so they could go back east. That roundhouse, located near the middle of town, served Union Pacific for 50 years. It was also used at times as a shelter for the towns residents when a catastrophic storm or fire threatened. Ironically, that first building blew down in a wind storm in 1885 and had to be rebuilt. A final roundhouse was built and put in service in 1913, relegating the former roundhouse to a storage building. This building was used through the 1960s. The massive roundhouses were integral features of North Platte for nearly 100 years.
Rural Nebraska artists who want to show and sell their paintings, sculptures, drawings or photographs are encouraged to submit samples of their work to the Nebraska Rural Living Online Art Gallery by Feb. 1.

Art submissions are juried by a professional sculptor, painter and photographer who also live in rural Nebraska, and chosen artists will gain a storefront on the Nebraska Rural Living online art gallery where they can promote, display and sell their art.

The online gallery launched in August, and now 16 artists are promoting their art to thousands of Nebraska Rural Living readers around the world at nebraskaruralliving.com/art-gallery. Artists have also benefited from additional opportunities to share their work at public events through their selection into the gallery.

The goal of the gallery is to give artists a platform to share and sell their art, while at the same time increase knowledge and appreciation of life in rural Nebraska.

Art will be accepted throughout the year for future consideration in the gallery. Submissions will be juried each quarter with the following deadlines: Feb. 1, May 1, Aug. 1 and Nov. 1. New artists will be added each quarter if selected.

To submit art for review, artists must have a Nebraska address in a rural town with a population of 10,000 or less. Artists must also have a website so that patrons can purchase their work if they are chosen for the gallery. Four types of art can be submitted: paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs.

Nebraska Rural Living, founded in 2006, educates its more than 30,000 readers that rural Nebraska is vibrant and business-friendly with amenities that appeal to families, retirees, entrepreneurs and tourists.

For more information, contact gallery coordinator Kristine Jacobson at krjacobson@nebraskaruralliving.com.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP)  Authorities say a lone shooter opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, international airport Friday, killing "multiple" people before he was taken into custody. The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated at least one bleeding victim on the tarmac.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office cited multiple deaths on its Twitter account, and Gov. Rick Scott's office also confirmed the shooting, but said authorities hadn't confirmed the number of fatalities, injuries or the motive. Scott was headed to the airport for a briefing by law enforcement.

Miami area television stations reported that at least six people were shot. News stations showed video of medics taking care of a bleeding victim outside the airport. News helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers, including tactical units, rushed to the scene.

Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN authorities that a lone shooter was responsible for the attack and had been taken into custody.

"We have an active crime scene investigation involving terminal 2," she said.

Jillian Saunders, from Palm Beach, Florida, told The Associated Press in direct Twitter messages that she was watching the activity from the tarmac in a plane scheduled to fly to Los Angeles.

"Everything you see on the news is happening outside my window," she said. "I am luckily on the plane and they said we are right now the safest people at the airport."

Airport officials said on the airport's website that it was suspending flights. Earlier in the day, the Federal Aviation Administration regulated the pace of flights because of heavy volume after morning fog. According to tracking service FlightAware, about 60 flights to and from Fort Lauderdale were delayed and fewer than a dozen canceled before the shooting.
With $900M shortfall imminent, governor sets out plan for fiscal year

LINCOLN  With a nearly $900 million budget gap looming over the state, Gov. Pete Ricketts broke with tradition Thursday to give an early budget proposal to lawmakers.

He unveiled the proposal, along with a call for quick legislative action, a week earlier than governors normally deliver budget plans to the Legislature.

Legislative leaders promised to consider the plan carefully while trying to meet the governors timetable.

It can happen, said Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer of Norfolk.

Ricketts plan would take care of $276 million worth of the states budget gap and balance the budget for the fiscal year ending June 30.

It would spare K-12 education, corrections and some Health and Human Services programs, while making across-the-board cuts to most state agencies and dipping into the states rainy day fund. The University of Nebraska would see smaller cuts than most agencies.

The plan also would take advantage of an expected increase in state sales tax revenues from Amazons decision to start collecting taxes from Nebraskans buying online.

Ricketts said state lawmakers need to act soon because there are only six months left in the current fiscal year. He said he hopes the Appropriations Committee will send a package to the full Legislature by early February.

This is a pressing matter that we have to address, he said. It is important we get this one done quickly to set up the next (budget) biennium.

The proposal unveiled Thursday marks the first step in closing a budget gap currently pegged at about $900 million through June 30, 2019, the end of the next two-year budget period.

Ricketts is to announce his plans for the rest of the shortfall during his State of the State speech, set for Jan. 12.

State Sen. John Stinner of Gering, the new Appropriations Committee chairman, said the committee will start working through the proposal early next week and will try to meet the governors time table.

He said he didnt see any big concerns with Ricketts recommendations at first glance, though he hadnt had a chance to fully digest them.

Were not giving up our prerogative to be independent and to change, modify and adjust, he said.

Sen. Kate Bolz of Lincoln, a fellow Appropriations Committee member, said she wants to be sure the committee has time to study the proposal and that Nebraskans have time to weigh in on it.

It will be very important for us to be deliberate and thoughtful with how we move forward, she said.

But she praised the governor for proposing a combination of budget changes, not just cuts.

Scheer said lawmakers could move quickly on the three-bill package that comprises the governors budget plan, although much will depend on the Appropriations Committee.

The budget-making committee, which includes members from across the state and a variety of political ideologies, is a good barometer for how bills will be received by the full body, Scheer said.

Ricketts recommendations include 4 percent cuts to the amount previously appropriated to most state agencies, plus cuts to some specific programs.

The budget cuts add up to about $171 million, but they are partly offset by $20 million of proposed spending increases.

School aid accounts for the largest portion of the state budget, coming in at $952 million this year. Special education funding accounts for an additional $222 million.

Most direct care services and public aid programs within HHS also would be spared.

The University of Nebraska would face a smaller, 2.3 percent cut to its operations budget.
A former Prompt Ambulance employee is starting an ambulance service in Valparaiso and South Bend and Prompt Ambulance is taking a step back from both those markets.

Ron Donahue, formerly a vice president for Prompt Ambulance, recently opened inHealth Integrated Care, which will offer non-emergency paramedic services.

"There are a lot of things we can do to make our organization stand out: We're a local company with a huge emphasis on customer service," Donahue said. "Over time, we'll prove ourselves with on-time performance and our rates."

Highland-based Prompt is exiting South Bend, and while it will still provide services in Porter County, it will no longer have a physical location there. Prompt had expanded to those communities in 2009 and 2008, respectively.

Prompt will be renting its former facilities to inHealth, and is negotiating with the new company on using ambulances, equipment and support services.

"We were doing long-term planning and that just fit into our long-term goals," said Prompt owner Gary Miller.

He also expressed confidence in Donahue's new venture.

"He took on quite a bit of a leadership role at Prompt," Miller said. "He's really built up a good name for himself, so I think he'll do excellent."

The Valparaiso-based Prompt employees were moved to Merrillville, Miller said.

Meanwhile, inHealth plans to hire about 50 employees, including emergency medical technicians and paramedics, by the end of the month.

The company is hosting a job fair from 8-11 a.m. Friday at 153 W. U.S. Highway 6 in Valparaiso.

Donahue said he eventually wants to get into community paramedicine, providing in-home health care to prevent chronically ill patients from having to go the hospital.

inHealth also plans to service LaPorte, Starke and Marshall counties.
A 46-year-old Hobart man arrested last week after an hourslong police manhunt has been charged in the incident.

John C. Pohl was charged recently in Lake Criminal Court with intimidation, pointing a firearm, domestic battery and interference with the reporting of a crime.

Pohl is alleged to have pointed a firearm at his girlfriend about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday after an argument at the couple's residence in the area of Virginia Street and Cleveland Avenue, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Pohl allegedly told the woman: We are going to die together, the affidavit states.

The woman attempted to call police several times, the affidavit states, but Pohl allegedly knocked the phone from her hand.

The woman then ran to a neighbor's house and called Hobart police, who requested assistance from the Northwest Regional SWAT team, the affidavit states.

The team searched the couple's home, but Pohl was not found.

Pohl eventually was arrested about 3:30 p.m. in a Merrillville hotel parking lot after an employee there recognized him from a social media post.

Pohl told police at the scene he had unloaded the firearm and placed it in the bedroom closet of his residence, according to the affidavit.

Pohl is jailed on a $40,000 bond, according to court records.
LAPORTE  A LaPorte man admitted in court Thursday that he fatally stabbed his live-in girlfriend, whose body was later found in a freezer.

Daniel Shoffner, 48, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to Class A felony voluntary manslaughter.

In exchange, a murder charge and the potential 45- to 65-year sentence it could bring would be dropped.

He now would face a 20- to 50-year sentence to be decided by the court if LaPorte Circuit Court Judge Tom Alevizos accepts the terms.

The plea calls for Shoffner to begin serving his time at a state mental health facility.

Birdie Elder, 73, was stabbed multiple times inside her home in the 100 block of McClung Road in June 2014.

Her body was then put into a small freezer on Shoffner's back porch.

While pleading guilty, Shoffner told the court they were arguing over sex and her family when she attacked him. He grabbed a knife she had given him as a gift that same day and began stabbing her.

Shoffner said his actions were not premeditated.

"I never meant to cause her any harm at all," said Shoffner, who has a long criminal history of crimes like theft.

According to police, Shoffner four days later convinced his daughter that he had killed the woman. She came over then called 911.

It took several days for the body to thaw before an autopsy could be conducted.

Prosecutors and the defense said they entered into the plea after psychiatrists who evaluated Shoffner disagreed on whether he was competent to stand trial and on his sanity at the time of the killing.

The psychological examinations left no doubt, though, that Shoffer had long been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Defense attorney Craig Braje said the uncertainty over his client's ability to know right from wrong at the time of her death had influence on striking a deal.

A sentencing date will be set once all of the standard background checks ordered by the court for all offenders pleading guilty are completed, which could take about a month.

Shoffner wouldn't go to prison unless he's cleared mentally fit while institutionalized, authorities said.
Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper was in her final semester of law school when her grandfather was murdered while walking to church in South Bend.

Those believed responsible for the killing were released when witnesses refused to testify, she said.

"I thought that was so wrong," Harper said. "I decided to work in social justice."

She went on to become the county's first female deputy prosecutor, first female chief deputy prosecutor, first female county judge, first female superior court judge and first female circuit court judge. Now 32 years later, she has become the longest-serving female state court judge in Indiana's history.

"I've got a little grandfather on my shoulder," she said, who reminds her to "be fair, be just."

"I felt guided through my whole career," Harper said.

Harper, who believes women have it much easier these days in the area of law, is a graduate of the Valparaiso University School of Law, which she completed in an accelerated two and a half years.

The South Bend native decided to remain in Porter County and said she went to work in 1975 at the local prosecutor's office.

"It was the prosecutor's office or go work for a bank in South Bend," she said.

She worked her way up to the chief deputy post before leaving in 1981 to pursue a private legal practice where she found herself on the opposite side of the courtroom, defending those she had been seeking to lock up.

"It's a big switch," Harper said.

She took another big leap in 1984 by running against and defeating incumbent judge and fellow Republican Terry Johnston.

After winning a general election challenge against Democrat Thomas Webber, who later made it to the bench himself, Harper spent the next 12 years handling small claims and misdemeanor cases before running for her current circuit court seat that was left open by the retirement of Raymond Kickbush.

"When he was announcing, I was down filing (as a candidate) in Indianapolis," she said.

The leap to circuit court, which she has held on to through three additional elections, put more serious, felony-level cases before her. But what drew her to seek out the post was its role in running the county's juvenile system.

The move followed years of watching one generation of a family after another wind up in legal trouble.

"They were 18, and now they were getting charged with the same things," Harper said. "I said, 'There's got to be another way.'"

Walking into a new juvenile services center, Harper and her team went to work, leading the way with one of the state's first family courts, the creation of a juvenile drug court and other progressive programs.

Porter County Chief Public Defender Ken Elwood said he has practiced for more than 20 years before Harper in adult court and now serves alongside her on the juvenile drug court foundation board.

"Nobody works harder and nobody is more compassionate with kids," he said.

Harper said she believes children are like blank blackboards.

"I'm a product of what my parents showed me," she said.

She didn't hesitate in naming her son, Jim Harper, as the greatest pride in her life. Her son followed in the footsteps of both she and his father, Bob Harper, in becoming a lawyer and running for public office.

She is now married to Porter Superior Court Judge Dave Chidester, who is a Democrat like her son.

Porter County Prosecutor Brian Gensel said he has practiced in front of Harper during his entire 28 years with the office.

"As a judge, she has always demonstrated legal acumen, professionalism, hard work and a desire to make the justice system of Porter County more efficient and humane for crime victims and juvenile offenders," he said.

Harper said another aspect of her career that she has enjoyed is presiding over marriages.

"I love meeting people," she said.

Being a judge and attending as many as 400 meetings a year can be isolating and takes its toll on friendships, she said.

"I want to be Mary again at the end of this," she said. "I want to be able to walk my dog and not worry about jumping in my car to get to the courthouse."

Harper still has four years left in her term, but said time has a way of moving forward quickly.

"It sneaks up on you, big time," she said.
HAMMOND  An attorney for Lake County Sheriff John Buncich is asking for more time to prepare for a trial on bribery charges.

Valparaiso defense attorney Bryan M. Truitt, who represents Sheriff John Buncich, said he has yet to receive any of the government's evidence, which includes more than 45 compact discs containing numerous video and audio recordings.

Truitt said Valparaiso lawyer Larry Rogers is only now joining the sheriff's defense team. He said it would take at least six months to get ready for trial.

U.S. Attorney David Capp has charged Buncich, Tim Downs, the sheriff's former second-in-command, and a Lake Station towing firm owner on allegations Buncich solicited thousands of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions from towing firms.

Buncich has pleaded not guilty. Downs pleaded guilty last month to soliciting political contributions from towing firms under Buncich's order and is expected to testify against Buncich at trial.

The court postponed a pre-trial hearing that was to have taken place Friday morning, but hasn't set deadlines for the case.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Magistrate Paul Cherry granted a request for more time by an attorney for Portage Mayor James Snyder, who is pleading not guilty to charges of soliciting bribes for towing and public works projects.

Snyder's trial now is scheduled to begin April 10 before U.S. District Court Judge Judge Rudy Lozano.
INDIANAPOLIS  Indiana still will have a Republican governor when Eric Holcomb is sworn in Monday, but Holcomb already is showing he'll be a different kind of leader than Gov. Mike Pence.

On Thursday, Holcomb unveiled a legislative agenda that not only endorses tax hikes to fund infrastructure improvements, but also takes on problems in Hoosier culture and state agencies.

"The guiding principle that shapes my agenda is to improve the lives of Hoosiers from all walks of life," Holcomb said. "I look forward to working with the Indiana General Assembly to advance this plan to take our state to the next level."

Holcomb declared his top priority is to make Indiana a national leader in economic growth and employment, in part by maintaining the predictable business climate made possible by the state's balanced budget, strong reserve fund and highest-possible AAA credit rating.

But he also plans to ask lawmakers to authorize investment of the $500 million Next Generation Trust Fund in high-growth, new and midsize Indiana companies to support Hoosier entrepreneurs and the jobs they create.

The trust fund, established with proceeds from the 2006 Indiana Toll Road lease, currently must be invested in products with extremely limited risk. If Holcomb's change is approved, investment earnings still would go toward state road and bridge improvements.

In addition, the governor-elect said he wants to attract more venture capital to Indiana, as well as continue supporting new businesses, relocating companies, bioscience research and planning for a future round of state investment in local quality-of-place initiatives through the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which he revealed will be led by Indianapolis personal finance expert Elaine Bedel.

On infrastructure, Holcomb said he believes the state needs to take a long-term approach to funding Indiana's roads and bridges and considers "everything on the table," including higher fuel taxes, vehicle fees and expansive tolling  though he's not keen on tolling existing roads.

"The only thing that's off the table in our mind is a none-of-the-above approach. We have to address this, and we will," Holcomb said as he announced that Franklin, Indiana, Mayor Joe McGuinness will head the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Holcomb also indicated his budget proposal, set to be announced Tuesday, will include $10 million to begin planning for double-tracking the South Shore commuter rail line between Gary and Michigan City.

"It's long overdue to start to attract that talent out of the nation's third biggest economy," he said.

Holcomb plans to aggressively take on the state's drug abuse epidemic and is appointing former Indianapolis Goodwill Industries CEO Jim McClelland to the newly created post of executive director for substance abuse, prevention and enforcement.

McClelland will coordinate the efforts of various state agencies attacking the drug problem and implement policies that make it easier for counties to establish needle-exchange programs and limit excess availability of opioid painkillers, Holcomb said.

On education, Holcomb wants to replace the elected state superintendent of public instruction with a governor-appointed secretary of education starting in 2021, double to $20 million a year the funding for the On My Way pre-kindergarten program operating in Lake and four other counties and support adult workers who want to be retrained for new jobs.

Other Holcomb priorities delve into the nitty-gritty of state government, including pay raises for state police officers, improvements to the state police drug labs, a new $100 million computer system for the Department of Revenue, exempting military pensions from state income tax and spending $5 million a year to combat infant mortality.

Both House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said Holcomb's agenda is in line with their priorities and promised they'll work with the governor-to-be to enact policies that benefit Hoosiers.

House Democratic Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, similarly said he supports many components of Holcomb's agenda, but is surprised to see Statehouse Republicans advocating what Pelath described as a "tax and spend" plan.

"If this program had been announced by a Democratic governor, I suspect the Republicans in the House and Senate already would have sharpened their pitchforks and made plans to storm the battlements," Pelath said.
VALPARAISO  1st Source Bank on Thursday announced plans to build a new facility at the intersection of Vale Park Road and Calumet Avenue.

1st Source Regional President Matt Vessely said the current building will be demolished and a new building constructed in its place.

Construction of the new bank is expected to be completed this summer.

A temporary location will be opened south of the current office at 2500 Calumet Ave., which is next to Little Caesars. The bank's ATM will also be temporarily moved across the street to the west in the Kmart parking lot.

The new bank is being described as state-of-the-art and will feature side-by-side banking in which the traditional teller walls are removed to allow clients to see what the teller sees during their transaction. It will also feature a coffee station, internet access for customers, a children's area and drive-through access.

1st Source is committed to growing in Valparaiso and were excited to open another brand new banking center in the city," Vessely said in a press release. "This new office will feature many conveniences for our clients and will provide an easier and more enjoyable banking experience.
PORTAGE  While the war in Vietnam has been over for 40 years, more of that era's veterans are seeking help for mental health issues.

Dr. John Mundt, a psychologist with the Jesse Brown VA Hospital in Chicago, told a group of veterans in Portage this week that he's seeing more Vietnam veterans for the first time than ever before.

The likely reason, he said, is that they are retiring. The work that had kept their minds and hands busy since the end of the war isn't there anymore. That causes their minds to wander back and remember.

The Portage Mayor's Veterans Committee hosted the event at Woodland Park.

It's not likely the veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder, Mundt said, but have mental health issues that should have been addressed when they came home.

"It was a mistake when we didn't allow Vietnam veterans to get the treatment they needed," Mundt said. "Therapy works best and most effectively right after a traumatic event."

PTSD, Mundt said, "gets tossed around a lot," but people know little about it.

"PTSD is a possible outcome of a traumatic event. It is a severe and lasting effect of trauma. However, most people who go through trauma don't have PTSD,"Mundt said.

"Resilience is the norm," he said, "We don't break. We bounce. That is the human norm."

In some cases, those who undergo trauma grow and become better.

The diagnosis of PTSD is very definitive, said Mundt. Those diagnosed must have symptoms in each of four categories.

Someone with PTSD must relive the traumatic event, he said. They have nightmares and flashbacks and not only remember the event, but also taste and hear and smell the event.

Second, they make great efforts to avoid any reminders of the event, avoiding triggers and sometimes "numbing out" to any stimuli that might remind them of the event.

Third, 8 out of 10 also have clinically diagnosed depression coupled with guilt and anger.

Finally, they must exhibit symptoms of alterations in reactivity, which, Mundt said, could include abrupt, explosive behavior, much "like an overtuned guitar string."

Mundt said those who don't meet the criteria of a true PTSD diagnosis can still benefit from therapy. He said 25 to 33 percent of the recently returning vets have mental health problems and would benefit from treatment.
When actress Debbie Reynolds died Dec. 28, one day after the death of her daughter, "Star Wars" star Carrie Fisher, many people speculated that Reynolds died from grief.

But is this an actual medical phenomenon?

Northwest Indiana health experts say it is.

"Grief is manifested in the brain. The brain of course controls all your body functions, everything from your heart rate to your breathing rate to your endocrine functions," says Dr. David Ashbach, a nephrologist for Methodist Hospitals. "If the brain alters these functions in somebody like Debbie Reynolds, who's well into her 80s, the alteration can be fatal."

Grief over the loss of a loved one can negatively impact your health, particularly if you're old and frail, local medical experts say. That's why you often hear of longtime married couples following each other in death, one right after the other.

There's a reason for that, too: The death of a spouse is said to be the most stressful life event possible.

Dr. Julia Kocal, a psychologist with LaPorte Physician Network Primary Care in Knox, pointed to a 1967 study by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe that ranked the stressful life events that most contribute to illness. No. 1 was death of a spouse, followed by divorce, marital separation, being institutionalized, and death of a close family member.

"When a person is under such acute or shocking stress it affects them physically," she says. "You can have increased blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and constricting of perpheral blood vessels, which can affect the cardiovascular system, which can cause stroke and heart attack."

The American Heart Association says broken heart syndrome, also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy or takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is caused by stress hormones from a traumatic loss. The condition is also often accompanied by chest pain and shortness of breath, and is only fatal in rare cases. Women are more prone to broken heart syndrome than men. Unlike a heart attack, though, there is no evidence of blocked heart arteries.

Jean Lubeckis, a therapist with Franciscan Health in Michigan City, says she personally knows of three combined husband/wife funerals, including one where the spouses died within 10 hours of each another. She had an uncle who passed away within a year of his wife of 67 years, and a family friend who died within months of her adult children. Lubeckis says she even felt physical heartache, along with chest tightness and shortness of breath, after losing her 17-year-old stepson.

"In many cases, I think people lose the will to live," she says. "They no longer see a purpose in their lives, or they dont know how to go forward with their lives without the spouse, child or loved one who died. I think any fight or drive leaves them and they no longer care to live."

She says this happened to a patient of hers who died without any medical explanation but had expressed a want to die.

So what can people do to avoid getting sick or dying from the loss of a loved one?

Ashbach says wakes and funerals are designed to help process grief. And technology provides a new outlet, as social media can be used to celebrate the life of a late family member.

Kocal also says to keep an eye out on grieving loved ones, particularly those who are elderly or have other medical conditions.

"Check for heart rate, respiration. Monitor them for a short time at least when the initial shock of something like this occurs," she says. "And recommend follow-up grief counseling."
The NYPD says strangulation may have been the cause of the death of an Upper West Side man found in his apartment earlier this week.

Police say 54-year-old Savyon Zabar, who sources say weighed more than 400 pounds, was found dead in a bedroom in his apartment on West 81st Street near Amsterdam Avenue Wednesday morning.

Sources tell NY1 Zabar was last seen in his room with a masseur, who they say he may have had a sexual relationship with.

Neighbors and friends say they're shocked to hear about his death.

"He was a great person. Like I said, if you needed something, he would always made sure to make you comfortable. He would never, ever want to make you uncomfortable. So how can a person like that be evil or bad or whatever? And how can one person take another person's life? I don't get it," said one person in the neighborhood.

"Seemed pleasant," said another. "I just saw him it the elevator. Not just now, but whenever we met."

There is no word of any arrests or suspects in connection with Zabar's death. A GoFundMe page has been set up in his honor.
The always colorful Three Kings Day Parade, complete with live camels, marched through the streets of East Harlem Friday, with cheering onlookers all along the route. NY1's Roger Clark filed the following report.

January 6 is the one day of the year you see camels walking through the streets of East Harlem.

It's part of a now 40-year-old tradition here, the Three Kings Day Parade, presented annually by El Museo del Barrio.

"We are creating generations of museumgoers and people from El Barrio that, they are very attached to this parade and El Museo," said Maite Basaguren, director of education and public programs at El Museo del Barrio.

Three Kings Day marks the Epiphany, when the three wise men are said to have brought gifts to the baby Jesus. It is celebrated in various fashions throughout the world, especially Latin America.

Each year, honorary kings are selected for the parade here. One of those selected for this celebration, well-known chef and TV Personality Daisy Martinez, has ties to the East Harlem Community.

"It's a wonderful place for Latin culture to come together and take pride in who we are," Martinez said.

Comic book writer and artist Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez says the parade is even more important these days, considering the gentrification creeping into traditionally Latino neighborhoods like East Harlem.

"For four decades, our community has been saying, presente, we are here. And it's an honor to be chosen to be a king to represent that," Miranda-Rodriguez said.

For many who attend the parade, it is a tradition that goes back decades. For young people marching, it's a chance to learn about their own heritage, or maybe someone else's.

And there's always a surprise thrown in. You never know what to expect.

"It's a tradition in our family. We do it every year. It's fun. Many blessings," said Angie Elicier, a parade participant.

"We really have to keep up the tradition that keeps us anchored in a way and unifies us. And it's a celebration important to us," said Gloriana Roig, who attended the parade.

And one that El Museo hopes to keep going for years to come.
The engineer of the Long Island Rail Road train that crashed in Brooklyn, injuring 104 passengers, is telling investigators he cannot remember slamming into the bumper at the end of the track. NY1's Jose Martinez filed the following report.

A day after a Long Island Rail Road train crashed inside the Atlantic Terminal, federal investigators were inside the station, hoping to learn what went wrong.

It did not take long to begin coming up with answers.

"Right now, we believe that the collision at the end of the track was over 10 miles per hour," said Ted Turpin, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Investigators say that was at least twice the 5 mph limit inside the terminal. But why the train was speeding is still unclear.

"The engineer was unable to recall unable to recall striking the end of the track call," Turpin said. "He does recall entering into the station and controlling the speed of the train. But then the next thing he realized was after the collision."

Officials said the engineer was nearing the end of his first shift after three days off when the crash occurred just before 8:20 a.m. Wednesday. He had begun working around midnight.

But the 50-year-old LIRR veteran told investigators he keeps drawing a blank about what happened.

"He basically said I don't recall," Turpin said.

It's a similar refrain to one from the operator of the New Jersey Transit Train that plowed into a Hoboken terminal in September, killing one. Investigators later said the train accelerated in the station instead of slowing down.

And the engineer in the 2013 derailment of a Metro-North train in the bronx also said he could not recall what happened. Four passengers died in that mishap.

In the Brooklyn crash, investigators said they have not yet analyzed the train's data recorders or brakes, or the engineer's cellphone records.

"He has stated that he was not on his cellphone, he was not using his cellphone. We will verify that. We subpoenaed his records," Turpin said.

An automatic crash-prevention system known as Positive Train Control has been mandated for all railroads but is not required inside terminals. That is an area where the operator's actions are crucial to having a trip end safely.
LONDON  The 24-year reign of Guineas president, one of Africas longest-ruling strongmen, ended in confusion and chaos on Tuesday as a group of soldiers seized on his death to proclaim a coup that was immediately challenged by government officials.

Troops in armored personnel carriers took to the streets of Conakry, the capital of Guinea, an impoverished West African state, but there were no immediate reports of bloodshed, according to news agencies. Rather, the putsch, as one lawmaker called it, began to unfold in time-honored fashion with a group of officers taking control of the airwaves to announce that the Constitution and the government had been suspended.

Soon afterward, the government denied the claim. Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare said in a state broadcast that he was speaking from his office and that his government continues to function as it should, The Associated Press reported.

The prime minister was responding to statements by a uniformed army officer on state television and radio that a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy and Development was taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people, news agencies reported.
ON a humid morning in Panama City earlier this year, three Americans, two Swedes, two Portuguese, two Irish and three Israelis sat down together for breakfast. The diverse group was united by a single interest: free pancakes, a standard perk at Lunas Castle Hostel in the citys historic district.

The American-inspired meal, along with the international crowd it attracted, is typical of the growing multicultural presence in this country, which is drawing foreign visitors as well as entrepreneurs  including the three Americans who run the mini-empire of hostels in Panama that includes Lunas. Emboldened by low costs, easy access to imported products and the power of strong word of mouth, new businesses founded by American expatriates are popping up all over the city.

Lunas Castle Hostel (Calle 9na Este 3-28; 507-262-1540; lunascastlehostel.com), which opened in late 2008, is one such outfit. Flanked by crumbling, regal facades and colorful residences, with an unadulterated ocean view, it hums like the well-oiled machine that it is. The three original owners  Daniel Smetana, Daniel Saxe and David Harmatz, all 28  have lived and breathed Central America for almost six years. Under their careful watch, Mondo Taitu Hostel in Bocas del Toro, off Panamas Caribbean coast, has earned a cultlike following among backpackers. (They recently sold the place to a group of 20-something Americans, continuing the expatriate connection.)

A hostel is a home away from home, Mr. Smetana said. And indeed, Lunas offers amenities like a movie theater, a Ping-Pong table and that free pancake breakfast. Its recently opened bar, Relic, has quickly become a magnet for travelers and Panamanians alike.
PARAMARIBO, Suriname  The Foreign Ministrys elegant new headquarters here is a gift from the Chinese government. Chinese signs on hundreds of businesses, from casinos to grocery shops and furniture stores, beckon the residents of this capital. Chinese work crews are paving roads cutting through the jungle.

Anchored by a surge in immigration to this country since the 1990s, and smoothed with gifts of aid and low-interest loans, China has quietly but surely established a foothold in Suriname, a tiny corner of South America that is often an afterthought even for its neighbors.

While the economic aid has certainly been welcome in Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, the growing political and demographic profile of the Chinese here has created concerns, ranging from xenophobic calls from some political leaders here to investigate what they call a Chinese invasion to more tempered efforts to decipher what effect Chinas rising influence will have on a country that is already distant linguistically and culturally from the rest of South America.

Whats next, Chinese Guiana? asked John Gimlette, a Briton whose book, Wild Coast, about the forgotten corner of the world on South Americas northeastern shoulder  Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname  was published this year.
Fernando Lugo is the latest victim of Paraguays soy war. Elected president in 2008 as a champion of the poor, Lugo was impeached late last month, plunging this poorest of South American countries into uncertainty.

Lugos election on a promise to redistribute land and carry out agrarian reform was popular but ultimately unachievable because of the interests ranged against him. Earlier in June, 11 campesinos and 6 police officers were killed during an operation to evict squatters from a huge farm used by a large-scale land owner and opponent of Lugo. Using this as a pretense, the Senate impeached Lugo a week later.

But its the rise of the humble soy plant  and the oceans of land upon which it grows in Paraguay  that links Lugos ouster in a historical struggle between the countrys powerful landed elite and its poverty-stricken farmers, on the one hand, and a world that has no apparent limit to its appetite for soy-fed animal meat and biofuels, on the other.

Paraguay is not the first country to lose a government over land disputes. It will not be the last. After decades of cronyism and corruption, 77 percent of Paraguays arable land is owned by just 2 percent of the population. Globally in the past 10 years, deals have been struck for 203 million hectares of land  nearly six times the size of Germany  at a pace and scale that is outstripping the ability of governance structures to respond. The cracks, as in Paraguay, are never far from the surface.
XIX, Guatemala  Tiburcio Utuy thought he saw fear cross the former dictators face.

A judge had just ruled that the military dictator, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, now 86, should stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity committed under his rule in the 1980s, a decision Mr. Utuy and other Maya survivors of Guatemalas 34-year civil war had gathered in the courtroom to hear in person.

He wont suffer the same way we suffered  but he will be scared, Mr. Utuy said in his mountaintop village a few days after the ruling in late January. And maybe he will spend a little bit of time in prison.

Mr. Utuy, 71, is set to be a witness in a trial that few believed would ever take place.

But Guatemalas justice system has begun a transformation. In a show of political will, prosecutors are taking long-dormant human rights cases to court, armed with evidence that victims and their advocates have painstakingly compiled over more than a decade  as much to bear witness as to bring judgment.

Its sending the most important message of the rule of law  that nobody is above the law, said Claudia Paz y Paz, the attorney general, who many here say has been one of the most important forces behind the change.
BANGKOK  The American ambassador to Laos said on Tuesday that the Laotian authorities had blocked a United States investigation into the disappearance of two citizens and a resident of the United States.

The three men, all of Laotian origin, were last seen in the southern province of Savannakhet in January.

Karen B. Stewart, the ambassador to Laos, said in a telephone interview that officials in Savannakhet had refused to give access to a team of American investigators sent this month to gather details in the case.

The police were there, and they said we could not go any further, she said.

Ms. Stewart described the lack of cooperation by the Laotian authorities as very frustrating.
A TWO-BEDROOM PENTHOUSE IN A HISTORIC BUILDING IN PANAMA CITY

$410,400

This two-bedroom duplex apartment is on the third and fourth floors of a historic building in Panama Citys Casco Viejo, or old town. The exposed stone walls in the living room date to the 17th century, and the rest of the building is 19th century. In 2011, a modern renovation converted the building to an eight-unit apartment building.

This unit is a loft-style walk-up penthouse with central air-conditioning, a built-in sound system, and skylights equipped with remote-control sun shades. The floors throughout are Italian ceramic tile with a texture meant to resemble wood grain. French doors in the living room open onto a balcony that overlooks the street, and a concrete center island divides the living room and kitchen. The coffee-colored kitchen cabinets were made by Scavolini. The kitchen is tucked under the mezzanine-level master bedroom, which has an en-suite bathroom and a walk-in closet. A second bedroom, also with en-suite bath, is beside the kitchen. The woodwork throughout the apartment is made of timber recovered from Gatun Lake, a man-made lake created during the construction of the Panama Canal. The apartments furniture, imported from Bali and the Philippines, is for sale for an additional $14,000.

Casco Viejo is a trendy area, buzzing with clubs, restaurants and shops. Theres a coffee shop and a restaurant on the ground floor of the building, and many others in the immediate neighborhood. The narrow streets were built before cars, so most residents and visitors walk everywhere. The international airport is a 25-minute taxi ride from the apartment.

MARKET OVERVIEW

Prices have risen about 10 percent in Panama City in the last year and about 5 percent in the countrys interior, said Park Wilson, a founder of Emerging Terrains, a real estate investment firm in Panama City. He said prices in the city have surpassed their prerecession highs. In the interior, inventory is low because residential construction had slowed, and as a result, well-priced homes sell quickly.
In the sandy courtyard of an activists compound in Nouakchott, the capital, young women and men quietly spoke of being beaten and forced to work menial tasks from childhood in the households of lighter-skinned elites  often a mixture of Berber and Arab people locally called the Moors  for no pay.

I was born in slavery, said Said Ould Ali, a rail-thin teenager of 15. I grew up in the Moor family in which my mother was born, and my grandmother.

MBarka Mint Essetim said she was taken from her mother by a Moorish woman at the age of 5, at first merely to fetch things from the store. As she grew up in the household of a very high, well-connected family in the capital, she said, her duties expanded: taking the goats into the bush, fetching wood, sweeping, cooking.

This was a miserable life, said Ms. MBarka, now about 25.

The activist hosting her, Biram Dah Abeid, himself the son of a slave, added that Ms. MBarka was first raped at 9 and had her first child by her Moorish master at 14. The mans son also raped her, Ms. MBarka said as her 11-year-old daughter, unacknowledged by her former master, sat next to her under the tent.

For years, the government dominated by Arabs, white Moors as they are known here, refused to admit that slavery persisted in Mauritania  that thousands of its black citizens, often women, were still forced to work as domestic servants, as camel and goat herders, from early childhood, in the same families that mothers and grandmothers had worked in. In 2007, a law criminalizing slavery was passed. But three years later, nobody had been prosecuted under it, according to a 2010 report by a United Nations investigator.

Then, the antislavery movement in Mauritania took a radical turn, forcing the issue more into the open. Last year, Mr. Dah Abeid publicly burned venerated Islamic legal texts that justified slavery. His actions provoked furious mobs demanding vengeance, fatwas against him and swift retribution  imprisonment and a raid on his house  from the authorities in a Muslim country where Shariah law reigns.
Warren E. Buffett recently revealed a willingness to invest in airlines after years of shunning them, and ever since, those stocks have soared. Now, one more company is aiming to be added to the list of publicly traded airlines.

Frontier Airlines  known for offering scant legroom and low prices for rides on planes that have wild animals painted on the tails  is preparing an initial public offering, people with knowledge of the deal said. The Denver-based company has tapped Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Evercore to manage the debut, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.

Frontier is aiming to raise about $500 million in the deal, the people said. That would imply a valuation for the company of about $2 billion. Frontier had an official bake off, where banks were interviewed for a role in the offering, late last year, one of the people said.

Like the history of many airlines, Frontiers is winding. The airline was founded in the 1990s after Continental Airlines shuttered its Denver hub. It has reorganized and gone through bankruptcy and has had several owners. The latest owner is the investment firm Indigo Partners, which is run by Bill Franke, who is credited with being the chairman who turned around Spirit Airlines, another no-frills airline. He has been shifting Frontier toward the Spirit model.
While mall owners once relied on four or five department stores to serve as so-called anchor tenants, offering them cheap rent in exchange for reliable foot traffic, they may now simply need one or two department stores and otherwise seek anchors in off-price chains like T. J. Maxx, restaurants and movie theaters, Green Street Advisors said.

Ten or 15 years ago, if a department store left a mall, it was really a problem for the developer, Les Wexner, the longtime chief executive of L Brands, which owns Victorias Secret, told analysts and investors in November. Now, many of the developers are trying to buy back the space from the department stores because theyre an economic detriment and they can recycle that space.

The business of department stores has been attacked from all sides in recent years. Online, consumers can purchase directly from brands or on Amazon, which has invested heavily in fashion.

Offline, the chains have had to contend with discount retailers like TJX, the owner of T. J. Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods, which compete hard on price and brand names, as well as fast-fashion sellers like H&M and outlet centers. Department stores also face competition from beauty chains like Sephora and Ulta.

The new rivalries are particularly painful for those physical stores that fall in between selling heavily discounted goods and luxury products. The competition has really struck at the heart of some of the biggest department stores: Macys made 61 percent of its sales from womens apparel, shoes, cosmetics and accessories in 2015.

Everyone is carving away at different parts of the business, said Liz Dunn, the chief executive of Talmage Advisors, a retail consulting firm. Its sad that these retailers that have this rent advantage cant seem to make it worth it.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in apparel. Two years ago, annual sales at TJX eclipsed those of Macys for the first time, as the company drew consumers to its relatively smaller stores with a treasure-hunt-like experience and brand-name discounts. TJX posted $29 billion in sales for the year that ended Jan. 31, 2015, while Macys revenue was $28 billion, a gap that has widened since then.
A Different American Dream takes an unfamiliar approach to documenting the controversy surrounding oil exploration on tribal lands in North Dakota. Its not particularly successful, having the odd effect of making the issues seem less urgent than they are, but at least it lets opponents of the drilling be heard at longer than sound-bite length.

Oil company operations on the lands of the American Indian confederation known as the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation have caused all sorts of upheaval and have left residents divided over whether the oil revenue is a good or a bad thing. The filmmakers, Simon Brook (writer and director) and Jane Wells (writer and producer), basically allow a handful of opponents to talk at length about their concerns. (The pro-oil faction gets only a brief hearing.) The worries cover a broad range: environmental degradation, disruption of ancestral lands and traditions, demographic changes, uneven distribution of the oil revenue and more.

We dont actually see any of the environmental damage or social disruption, and there are no succinct summations of the timeline or the issues as in a traditional documentary, a decision that costs the film some urgency. The speakers meander, and the film seems unfocused. But perhaps thats the point. A recurring theme of the speakers is that they are resigned to having their concerns disregarded; it is, they say, just another example in a long history of cavalier treatment of American Indians and their heritage. Certainly, at this point, the oil work is not going to be stopped. Mr. Brook and Ms. Wells are in a sense not documenting a controversy at all; they are capturing an endemic, heartbreaking defeatism.
Stingingly attuned to the tension between long-term love and last-minute misgivings, Between Us makes a familiar situation feel remarkably fresh.

For Dianne and Henry (Olivia Thirlby and Ben Feldman), a young Los Angeles couple celebrating six years together, the search for a new apartment opens an unexpected rift in their relationship. She wants to purchase a modern, spacious home in an upscale neighborhood; he wants to continue a bohemian downtown lifestyle  a vision he thought they shared. A stalled filmmaker in his 30s, Henry must confront not only his financial inadequacies but also something much more nebulous: his self-image.

A man shying from commitment is nothing new, but here the writer and director, Rafael Palacio Illingworth, injects small subtleties that enrich and complicate the emotional landscape. The couples devotion is never in question, but Henry, who fetishizes the infatuation phase of a relationship, is constantly mourning something he may never have again. And Dianne chooses to ignore how her comfortable background might contribute to Henrys insecurities.

Throughout, the actors have a beautifully balanced rapport that prevents one from dominating the other. Mr. Feldmans pleading eyes and indecisive body language lend Henry an endearing immaturity, and Ms. Thirlbys gentle confidence makes Diannes hurt all the more heartbreaking. As the couple try out romantic alternatives  he with an orgy-loving musician (Analeigh Tipton) and she with a married performance artist (Adam Goldberg)  the director holds the focus on the movies essential question: What do you do when the life you want is incompatible with the love you have?
German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was finally finished and restored in 2014 by the Imperial War Museums, in Britain, where the original elements had been kept. Its history is long and tangled. It began as an Allied endeavor and, according to the historian Toby Haggith, the director of the restoration, was meant to include concluding statements from President Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. (Dr. Haggith has written a useful, concise history of the documentary that is available on the British Film Institutes website.) The Americans, however, opted to produce their own film, Death Mills (1946), directed by Billy Wilder. Mr. Bernstein continued working on the original project; Hitchcock, Mr. Haggith writes, may have contributed to the script.

An unfinished version of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was screened in September 1945, but then the film was abandoned, an apparent casualty of changing political priorities and a shift from renunciation to reconstruction. Simply put, the Allies needed Germans to rebuild their country. (According to one scholarly account, Mr. Bernstein was informed that policy at the moment in Germany is entirely in the direction of encouraging, stimulating and interesting the Germans out of their apathy.) An incomplete version of the film, titled Memory of the Camps, was released in 1984; some of the material was used in another documentary, A Painful Reminder (1985).

This restoration of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey is an extraordinary act of cinematic reclamation and historiography. The documentary proper runs about 75 minutes and is book-ended by two new sequences, including a brief introduction that offers critical viewing context. Just as crucial, though, is a longer postscript that includes interviews with some of the principals involved in the Imperial War Museums restoration. They contribute more on the films complex history, but they also talk about how hard this material is to watch, offering a much-needed humanizing coda. One man suggests that you may at times need to close your eyes; mostly, though, you need to watch.
From political circles in New York City to cocktail parties on Capitol Hill, on right-of-center Facebook pages and among left-of-center donors, two of the biggest untethered threads in New York politics are being drawn together around a single question.

Would Hillary Clinton run for mayor?

The prospect has an obvious, novelistic allure: A run for mayor of New York this year would pit Mrs. Clinton against Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat who managed her Senate campaign in 2000, and, should she win, would put her in charge of President-elect Donald J. Trumps hometown, ensuring years of potential clashes between bitter rivals.

The question has gained momentum in the weeks since Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Trump, a Republican. It began quietly at first, then grew louder among the conservative media outlets and pundits who hold her and Mr. de Blasio in disdain.

While the answer would almost certainly be no, supporters of Mrs. Clinton and former members of her staff appear to have been happy to let the speculation spread from closed-door gatherings of donors and allies, where it has been discussed among the many hypothetical future jobs Ms. Clinton might pursue, to more public forums.
A Long Island Rail Road train that crashed in Brooklyn on Wednesday was going more than twice the speed limit when it slammed into a train station, injuring more than 100 people, federal investigators said on Thursday.

The train was traveling at more than 10 miles per hour when it hit the end of the tracks at Atlantic Terminal, where the speed limit is 5 m.p.h., said Ted Turpin, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. He said that federal officials were investigating the crash and had not yet determined the cause.

The train rammed into a bumping block during the morning rush, striking a room beyond the track and causing the first two cars to derail. The accident was reminiscent of a deadly crash in September in which a New Jersey Transit train plowed into Hoboken Terminal, killing a woman and injuring over 100 people. (That train was also traveling over twice the speed limit there when it crashed.)

On Thursday, Mr. Turpin said the engineer who was operating the Long Island Rail Road train told investigators he could not remember the crash.
The New York Police Departments highest-ranking counterterrorism official said in court on Thursday that records associated with the citys municipal ID card program could be destroyed without increasing the risk of terrorism.

John Miller, the departments deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, was testifying in the courtroom of Justice Philip G. Minardo of the State Supreme Court on Staten Island in a case brought by two State Assembly members from the borough who are seeking to block the destruction of the records; plans to destroy them were built into the legislation that created the ID program, known as IDNYC.

In the course of two years, we have not seen New York City IDs surfacing in a rampage of terrorism threats or other matters, Mr. Miller said.

For six hours, Justice Minardo questioned city officials and the Staten Island lawmakers, Ronald Castorina Jr. and Nicole Malliotakis, both Republicans, and then agreed to hear more witnesses for the plaintiffs next week. In the meantime, the city must continue to retain the documents, which were to have been destroyed on Dec. 31.
What plausible reason could Donald Trump have for trying so hard to discredit Americas intelligence agencies and their finding that Russia interfered in the presidential election? Maybe he just cant stand anyone thinking he didnt, or couldnt, win the presidency on his own.

Regardless of his motives, the nations top intelligence officials were having none of his nonsense on Thursday. In an extraordinary pushback against the president-elect, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was even more resolute in believing that Russia not only hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee and others but also disseminated classic propaganda, disinformation and fake news.

Flanked by the Pentagons top intelligence official and the head of the cyber command, Mr. Clapper acknowledged that the intelligence agencies can at times make mistakes. But he distinguished between presidential skepticism about their findings, which is healthy, and disparagement of the professionalism of the agencies, which is perilous for national security.

With his refusal to accept regular intelligence briefings on threats facing this country and his persistent denigration of the intelligence community, Mr. Trump has shown time and again that he worries more about his ego than anything else. He is effectively working to delegitimize institutions whose jobs involve reporting on risks, threats and facts that a president needs to keep the nation safe.
What goes up must come down, unless it goes into orbit, or its a New York City sidewalk shed. Sidewalk sheds are those scaffolds of aluminum or steel, topped with plywood and often accessorized with duct tape, graffiti and pigeon droppings, that cling by the thousands to the sides of buildings, darkening countless blocks. On rainy days, its possible to walk a long way and not get wet, or see the sky, thanks to all the sidewalk sheds.

The city law that requires them had the best intention  to protect people from falling terra cotta and other dangers  but it lacks a mechanism to compel building owners to get on with facade repairs and take the scaffolds down. Landlords who are required to install them after a safety inspection, or use them for routine maintenance, often decide its easier and cheaper just to leave them up after the work is done, awaiting the next inspectors visit or repair job. Some have been in place for years.

A bill introduced last month by City Council member Ben Kallos would try to end this ridiculous time warp. It would require building owners to finish repair work in six months, so that sheds can be removed. If work on a building ever stopped for seven or more consecutive days, landlords would have to take the sheds down or risk being fined.

This could mean a happier, brighter city for pedestrians and store owners, who lose business whenever sheds darken their doors. But the real estate industry and landlords are bristling over the bill, raising concerns about costs and safety. Yes, having a despised shed is better than having a skull fracture. But when no work is being done, sheds lose their reason for being. Safety is paramount, obviously, but landlords cheapness and contractor inertia should not be allowed to condemn New Yorkers to the eternal darkness of the pointless sidewalk shed.
House Democrats, ever chafing in the minority, staged a headline-grabbing protest in June  sending out selfies of themselves seizing the House floor in an impromptu sit-in to demand a gun safety debate after the Orlando nightclub shooting left 49 dead. In reaction, the Republicans declared a quick recess and turned off the C-Span television coverage.

But the Democrats took to streaming their protest live via cellphones in a free-media all-nighter. Senators came over to join and President Obama tweeted cheers. Sometimes you have to make a way out of no way, explained Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and ever-vigilant civil rights protest leader.

Republicans were left sputtering about House decorum. This week they made clear just how much they didnt like being one-upped. They approved new House rules and penalties that prohibit lawmakers from taking photos and video on the House floor. Violators are subject to a $500 fine, and additional infractions mean fines of $2,500 each. Serial selfie-takers could be referred to the Committee on Ethics, the opaque panel that members know well as the vortex where complaints against themselves are disappeared.

For years, House lawmakers had routinely ignored a photo ban, clicking away on special occasions with no consequences. This G.O.P. Congress resolves to be different, specifying muscle against members who impede, disrupt or disturb the proceedings of the House. Before the fines were approved on Tuesday, Democrats made merry of their defiance, snapping fresh selfies with abandon.
Mr. Roofs choice to represent himself in the penalty phase of his trial, and to reject a defense based on mental incapacity, has raised questions about his desire to avoid execution. But in the aftermath of the attack, at least, he saw a continued purpose for his life.

I want to live now, he wrote in the journal, most of which was read from the witness stand by a Charleston County Sheriffs Office official, Lauren M. Knapp. I want to see a future. I want to help make the way.

He began by explaining that he wanted to complete the rambling racist thoughts included in an online manifesto that he began before the massacre, which he said he was unable to finish before because I was in a hurry to get to Charleston.

In a dizzying blitz of insults and stereotypes, predictions and perceived problems, Mr. Roof railed against Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans, gays and Muslims. He said that Adolf Hitler would someday be inducted as a saint, and he warned that unless white people take violent action, we have no future.

Prosecutors used the writings, which were confiscated by jail officials on Aug. 3, 2015, to bolster their contention that he had opened fire with substantial planning and premeditation, which the authorities argue is an aggravating factor in Mr. Roofs capital case.
WASHINGTON  With Republican leaders pressing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, possibly within weeks, moderate Senate Democrats reached out on Thursday to Republicans, appealing for them to slow down the repeal efforts and let lawmakers try to find acceptable, bipartisan changes to make the existing law work better.

Democrats also had new reason to hope for possible Republican defections after Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said that the repeal measure would cut off federal funds for Planned Parenthood. But for now, Republican leaders are holding firm. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, denounced the law, President Obamas signature domestic achievement, as a lesson to future generations about how not to legislate.

Well before Republicans seized control of Washington, moderate Democrats and Republicans in the Senate had begun exploring ways to change the law, tempering its impacts on small business, seeking lower-cost insurance options and changing how quickly subsidies to help purchase insurance policies would phase out with rising incomes.

But those efforts were stymied by Republican leaders who had no interest in improving the health law and by Democratic leaders who saw reopening the law as a political Pandoras box. Now, Democrats have every interest in opening that box as repeal efforts barrel forward, and they would need to peel off only a few Senate Republicans to slow the fast-track repeal movement.
WASHINGTON  President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to choose as director of national intelligence two-time Senator Dan Coats, a former ambassador to Germany, secret foodie and lover of all things Indiana who also served as a member of his chambers Intelligence Committee.

Known for a self-effacing style, Mr. Coats was popular among his colleagues. I always thought he should wear a red cardigan, said Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado. He was the closest thing to Mister Rogers we could come up with.

While fiscally conservative, Mr. Coats, an Indiana Republican who completed his second Senate stint this month, often found common cause with Democrats, who described him as thoughtful on intelligence and national security issues, with a sharp intellect and disarming humor.

I have always been impressed with his demeanor, said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and who served on the Intelligence Committee with Mr. Coats and traveled with him in Eastern Europe. Hes not a fierce partisan and knows the intelligence community. Hes very amiable and easy to work with.
The directive has nonetheless upended the personal lives of many ambassadors, who are scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to remain in their countries so their children can remain in school, the diplomats said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.

In Costa Rica, Ambassador Stafford Fitzgerald Haney is hunting for a house or an apartment as his family  which includes four school-age children and his wife, who has been battling breast cancer  struggles to figure out how to avoid a move back to the United States with five months left in the school year, according to the diplomats.

In the Czech Republic, they said, Ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro is seeking housing in Prague as well as lobbying his childrens Chicago-based school to break with policy and accept them back midyear. In Brussels and Geneva, Denise Bauer, the United States ambassador to Belgium, and Pamela Hamamoto, the permanent representative to the United Nations, are both trying to find a way to keep daughters from having to move just months before their high school graduation.

Ronald E. Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a Washington-based nonprofit association for former ambassadors and senior diplomats, said it was reasonable to expect ambassadors to return at the end of a term, given that they are direct representatives of the president with broad grants of authority. But he could not recall an occasion on which such a strict timeline had been applied.
JERUSALEM  Expensive cigars for him and pink Champagne for her?

On Thursday evening, for the second time this week, investigators grilled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at his official residence as a suspect in an investigation into possible corruption, the details of which have largely been kept under wraps.

The police said in a brief statement that Thursdays session had lasted five hours and that Mr. Netanyahu had been questioned under caution on suspicion of receiving improper gifts and favors. He was also interviewed about a separate case, the police said, without offering any details.

Even as the questioning was underway, Israels news media were reporting about some gifts that had led to suspicions of graft.

A Hollywood producer and longtime friend of Mr. Netanyahus is said to have supplied him with boxes of cigars for years, the Haaretz newspaper and Israels Channel 2 News reported. The news channel added that the American-Israeli producer, Arnon Milchan, had brought Mr. Netanyahus wife, Sara, bottles of fine Champagne.
But Slav Epic is widely seen as Muchas masterpiece, and its insurance value is at least 10.8 million euros, or roughly $11 million at current exchange rates, the Czech news media reported in September.

He is referred to as kind of a godlike figure, said Gabriel Weisberg, a professor of art history at the University of Minnesota, adding that Mucha contributed to the revitalization of the color print revolution during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Prof. Karel Stretti, who leads the restoration department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, said the largest of the Slav Epic pieces measures 26.5 feet by 20 feet, meaning handlers would have to remove it from its frame and roll it up, which could crack the paint.

The nature of the works  egg tempera on a hemp canvas  and the way it may be insulated makes them particularly vulnerable, the professor added.

In 1921, five canvases were sent to New York and Chicago at the behest of Mr. Crane. The works returned with minor blemishes and the city of Prague advised in 1936 that they were not be moved again, according to letters Professor Stretti showed to The New York Times.

During World War II, the Slav Epic paintings were nearly lost forever. Mucha was interrogated by the Gestapo, accused of being a nationalist and a Jewish sympathizer, shortly before his death from pneumonia in 1939. The canvases were then rolled up and hidden in a local school to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. They would not be seen again until the 1960s, when they were exhibited in a castle near where Mucha was born. They were moved to Veletrzni Palace in 2012.
Letters from Princess Diana to a man once entrusted with the care of her family have sold for 15,100 pounds (about $18,500) in an auction in Britain.

The letters, from the 1980s and 1990s, were written to Cyril Dickman, who served as chief steward at Buckingham Palace for more than 50 years and was long a palace favorite. They reveal Dianas warmth as she fills him in on family matters, particularly the goings-on of Prince Harry and Prince William. Mr. Dickmans family put the letters, part of his estate, up for sale in an auction handled by Cheffins, a Cambridgeshire auction house.

In one, from 1984, Princess Diana wrote, William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping him with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near. Another, sent in 1992, said the boys were well enjoying boarding school but added that Prince Harry was constantly in trouble at school. Another included a thanks for thinking of me during a difficult period.
Mr. Hardy spoke about his influences for the show; his beard; and why he wont gallop on horseback. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You and your father began developing Taboo nine years ago?

Id just played Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist. I thought, wouldnt it be nice to have a Bill Sikes who was well-spoken? Maybe he could be like Heathcliff. With a little bit of Hannibal Lecter, a little bit of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps also some Oedipus. And then maybe a little bit of Jack the Ripper. And imagine he was a restitution agent and ex-army and had come back and was now irredeemable in society. And my dad said, Tom, this is an awful lot to put into one character, and he sent me out of the room. About a year later, he came back to me with a treatment hed written.

How does the East India Company get involved?

Well, they were around at the time. We were looking for something that reflected global corporatization  J. P. Morgan, Monsanto sort of territory. Some historians are quite upset that we tried to vilify a great establishment.

Tell me about James Delaney.

We wanted to kind of create a modern story, some new writing, which felt like it had come from a book that hadnt been found 100 years ago and then see what we could do without any dragons or C.G.I. James Delaney is an explorer, a Machiavellian sort of type. He should run the gamut from heinous to noble. Hes gone so far through barbarousness and savagery that hes come out the other end.
Who says you cant go home again? A reboot of One Day at a Time on Netflix may be better than the original. And The Wizard of Oz is spun off into the decidedly adult Emerald City.

Whats Streaming

ONE DAY AT A TIME on Netflix. The long-running Norman Lear sitcom is retooled for a new century. The setting has moved to Echo Park in Los Angeles, from Indianapolis. And the family  originally played by Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli  is now Cuban-American: Penelope (Justina Machado), a divorced Iraq war veteran working as a medical assistant; her 15-year-old daughter, Elena (Isabella Gomez), and 12-year-old son, Alex (Marcel Ruiz); and her immigrant mother, Lydia (Rita Moreno). Schneider, Pat Harringtons sleazy apartment super, is now a trust-fund hipster (Todd Grinnell) whose father owns the building. This version is lively and full of voice, a rare reboot thats better than the original, James Poniewozik wrote in The New York Times. Its a throwback in the best sense, to an era of mainstream, socially engaged kitchen-sink sitcoms. And just as the political debate has pitted diversity against class in a zero-sum contest, its a reminder that the two arent mutually exclusive.

Whats on TV

CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND 8 p.m. on CW. Rebecca tries to repair her relationship with Paula amid a whirlwind created, at 9, by their new boss. And Josh has a revelation.
There was a time, not too long ago, that the winter TV landscape was a barren one. A smattering of midseason replacements, most doomed to quick extinction. A few cable shows, offered up as counterprogramming to broadcast network fare. And favorite network series  when they deigned to return in repeats.

But in the age of peak TV  when there are nearly twice the number of scripted shows on the networks, cable and streaming services as a decade ago  winter has become one of the most fertile times of the year. In the next three months alone, more than 40 scripted comedies and dramas will make their debuts (and a similar number of reality shows).

Amid the spinoffs and sequels (Taken and Training Day based on the movies of the same name, Blacklist: Redemption and The Good Wife successor, The Good Fight, to name a few), many of the newcomers fall into other familiar categories. Heres a quick rundown.
Anne Mendelson writes like the engaged scholar she is, with dry wit and easy, uncompromising erudition. Her work for Gourmet took no guff, and her Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages was both authoritative and fascinating. Now the impatience and anger (usually at flawed thinking or sloppy execution) that runs as a mostly hidden vein in her writing comes into the open in Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey, a history of Chinese food and the way it took hold in this country.

Thats not to say this is an angry book. Its full of wonder at how quickly adaptations of the food Chinese railroad workers brought became popular everywhere and cooks adapted egg rolls and plum sauce and, of course, chow mein, to the tastes of American diners. Theres also wonder at the variety that unfolded as more Chinese cooks from more regions began to set up shop on both coasts. Stir-frying is a cultural contribution Mendelson finds particularly intriguing. And shes excited about the opening of a new age of food scholarship as a generation of bilingual American-raised experts grasp Chinese-language sources.

The anger, though, is something Mendelson makes us feel as she describes the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which began with a systematic stripping-away of rights, prompted by fear that good honest Americans would be denied good honest jobs that would keep America . . . something. The act, which wasnt repealed until 1943, largely froze Chinese food in this country at the simple, accessible chop suey and egg foo young stage.

For generations, Sichuan peppers and Beijing breads and a wealth of regional cuisines were largely absent from the American understanding of Chinese food. The real scope of Chinese cuisine became apparent to Americans only in the competitive-cooking era of the late 1960s and 1970s, which coincided with liberalized immigration policy after 1965. Culinary fashion these days celebrates the perceived freshness of Vietnamese and Thai cooking (and Mendelson has sharp things to say about self-appointed white tastemakers), but our awareness of the variety of Chinese cooking, she argues  along with the experimentation that accompanied a million wok sets into American kitchens  has changed our food forever.

The amount of sheer space food production once occupied in New York will seem staggering to most of the citys present-day residents. Tiffanys now stands where pigs were held in processing houses that gave a name (pig town) and an unmistakable odor to the neighborhood. Shoppers at Chelsea Market and strollers on the High Line know how vast the Nabisco factory was, and thus can imagine why workers in what became the Sunshine Biscuits factory in Queens needed roller skates to deliver messages. That Pepsi-Cola sign that survived Long Island Citys redevelopment and now faces the East River like a pop-art icon? Its one of many relics of the food industries that created great fortunes: The Roosevelts and Havemeyers made their money in sugar. Uneeda Biscuits, Oreos, Thomass English Muffins, Streits matzo, Dentyne and Chiclets and Trident gum, Twizzlers and Barricini and Loft candies  they were all produced in New York City.
ERNST KANTOROWICZ

A Life

By Robert E. Lerner

Illustrated. 400 pp. Princeton University Press. $39.95.

In 1949, when America was obsessed with the threat of Communist agents pervading and perverting the nations core institutions, the University of California introduced a compulsory loyalty oath. At a faculty session to consider the new political test, one professor in his mid-50s from the medieval history department, an exile from Germany known on campus as a gregarious dandy with an acid wit, rose to his feet and began declaiming in a strange, incantatory singsong, high-pitched with emotion. Recalling the oaths of allegiance in the early days of Hitlers government, the speaker announced: This is the way it begins. The first oath is so gentle that one can scarcely notice anything at which to take exception. The next oath is stronger! Resistance had to start with the first oath, he asserted, for it was a typical expedient of demagogues to bring the most loyal citizens, and only the loyal ones, into a conflict of conscience by branding nonconformists as un-Athenian, un-English, un-German.

The audience was riveted; some were galvanized against the new rule. Presumably few knew that the speaker began his career as a militant German nationalist who is said to have declared after World War I, Right of me is only the wall, and who, while praising the Teutonic knightly virtues, once wrote that since the dawn of time true loyalty had been possible only for Germans.

In Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life, the distinguished medieval historian Robert E. Lerner presents a richly illuminating study of the German-Jewish scholar he calls perhaps the most influential medieval historian of all time. He also offers a timely meditation on the vicissitudes of abstract, purist ideals under the pressure of savage real-world events. Sometimes the loftiest convictions prove the most politically fungible.

Lerner traces the growth of the Kantorowicz familys large fortune in the liqueur trade, details Ernsts privileged childhood in Posen (he was born in 1895), recounts the future historians enthusiastic war service, reviews the different phases of his early historical researches (most notably into the life of Frederick II) and follows his long, mostly convivial exile in Britain and the United States. Until the loyalty oath controversy, Kantorowicz was happiest in California, where he marveled at the completely unencumbered, completely pagan students who turned everything into play and made him appear to himself very old and terribly young at the same time. But it was only after he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton that in 1957, at the age of 62, Kantorowicz finally published the book that made his reputation: The Kings Two Bodies.
The Year in Reading

To the Editor:

The Year in Reading (Dec. 25) caught me by surprise. I was expecting an infinitely browsable collection of recommendations and quips. Instead I found a litany by creative folk struggling to come to terms with an unpleasant year that ended badly. Throughout they speak warmly of their books as advisers; and we the readers feel like confidants. It was remarkably gripping, and throughout, heartening to read.

MICHAEL KASPARI

NORMAN, OKLA.

The writer is a research professor in the department of biology at the University of Oklahoma.



To the Editor:

I cant help being disappointed with the Year in Reading section. Have you considered asking the local librarian, Uber driver or barista what they are reading? How about your yoga teacher, childs teacher or the cashier at the bookstore? If describing a whole year in reading is too much pressure, how about turning the Bookends page  which asked, Whats the best book, new or old, you read this year?  over to regular people?

In case youre interested, I am a middle-school teacher from Ann Arbor, Mich., and I was transported by Another Brooklyn  my top pick for the year. Young adult novels I enjoyed this year included: Pax, Echo, Orbiting Jupiter, The Thing About Jellyfish, Forge, Aristole and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Shine, Bruiser, Salt to the Sea. I could go on with my list of adult books. I am curious to know what other people like me have read.
1. The declassified version of the intelligence report on Russian hacking ordered by President Obama found that Russias leader, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered an influence campaign to sway the 2016 election.

He turned from seeking to denigrate Hillary Clinton to developing a clear preference for Donald J. Trump, the report states.

Mr. Trump was briefed on the reports contents by the nations top intelligence and law enforcement officials. Afterward, the president-elect acknowledged the possibility that Russia had hacked a variety of targets, but asserted that the hacking had not affected the outcome of the election.
(Want to get this briefing by email? Heres the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Heres what you need to know:

 Trump to meet with intelligence chiefs.

President-elect Donald J. Trump will meet today with the heads of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A. to discuss evidence that Russia used hacking to help Mr. Trump win the election, an assertion he disputes.

In an interview with The Times today, Mr. Trump called the storm surrounding the issue a political witch hunt.
SEOUL, South Korea  The former chief of a South Korean subsidiary of the British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser was sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison over disinfectants that have been blamed for scores of deaths in the country.

The former chief, Shin Hyun-woo, who led Oxy Reckitt Benckiser from 1991 to 2005, was convicted of causing homicide through professional negligence and falsely advertising the disinfectant Oxy as safe. Three former and current researchers at the subsidiary were also sentenced to five to seven years on similar charges.

Oh Yu-jin, the former chief of Cefu, a consumer goods manufacturer that marketed a disinfectant that was also found to be toxic, was sentenced to seven years. Two former executives at the South Korean retailers Lotte Mart and Homeplus each received four-year prison terms on charges of selling toxic disinfectants.

At least 113 people, including infants, died from inhaling Oxy and other toxic disinfectants after sales began in 2001, according to government investigators, in the countrys worst consumer goods scandal. Hundreds of others had lung damage, they said. The Oxy product has been linked to the most cases.
Facebooks ambivalence in applying editorial judgment to the information coursing through its site has repeatedly drawn the company into trouble.

In the past few months, Facebook has faced criticism for giving too much prominence to fake news; for censoring as offensive an iconic Vietnam War photograph of a naked girl fleeing a bombing attack; and for allegations that members of its trending topics team, which is now disbanded, penalized news of interest to conservatives. In recent months, Facebook has taken several steps to try to limit the exposure of fake news on its site, including working with a group of news organizations.

Facebook executives emphasized that Ms. Browns role was not to act as the sort of editor in chief that some commentators, including Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post media columnist, have said it needs. They said she would not be involved in content decisions.

Rather, they said, she will work as a liaison with news organizations so that Facebook can better meet their journalistic and business imperatives and lessen some of their suspicion about the social media giant.

In recent years, Ms. Brown has emerged as a major player in the pitched political battles over charter schools, prominently clashing with teachers unions while coming out against teachers tenure. She is married to Dan Senor, a Republican foreign policy adviser and former White House adviser, who is making his own media foray with a bid to buy the Israeli financial newspaper Globes. And during the campaign Ms. Brown was critical of Donald J. Trump.
The companys assets include almost $80 million owed by ITT students who were enrolled at the time of the bankruptcy filing or who had withdrawn within the previous 90 days. Its possible that some of this $80 million was taken on by students to pay for classes that were never convened because the company collapsed.

The question of what will happen to this $80 million looms large among the ITT students. But fairness for the students is only one of many considerations for Deborah J. Caruso, the trustee appointed in the bankruptcy case: She has asked the court for permission to continue collecting that money from students on behalf of the companys creditors.

Lawyers for the former students hope to stop the debt-collection process, since the company violated state consumer protection laws. In essence, they want the court to forgive the loans and prevent the money from being dispersed to creditors of ITT.

Ms. Caruso acknowledged that the liquidation process was a difficult balancing act. If there is a recovery to be had for former students, she said in a statement, the trustee wants them to get it. But the trustee also needs to be sure that the student claims do not wipe out recoveries for other creditors.

The lawyers working on behalf of the students also hope the judge will make a legal finding that ITT violated state consumer protection laws. This would make it easier for the students to get their loans canceled by the Department of Education. Finally, the lawyers have asked that the five students claims be asserted on behalf of all former ITT students.

Were trying all the angles, all the avenues, Toby Merrill, founder and director of the Harvard project, said in an interview.

The filing contains 1,084 pages of powerful testimony from over 800 former ITT students and employees. They describe deceptive practices at the company and outline the hardships students experienced after graduating with crushing debt and useless degrees.
A similar model in France has been controversial for more than 15 years, ever since a Socialist government made a 35-hour workweek mandatory.

Francois Fillon, a conservative politician who is considered the front-runner to become Frances new president in elections this May, has vowed to kill it if he wins. Companies of all sizes in France have complained repeatedly that the short workweek requirement has damaged competitiveness and generated billions in additional costs. French unions defend the measure as protecting workers from employers who might otherwise return to more onerous workplace conditions.

Still, some large companies are beginning to explore the argument that happy workers may make better, more productive employees.

Amazon, Google and Deloitte recently began experiments to compress the 40-hour week into four days for some employees. Amazon, which has come under fire for encouraging employees to work long hours, announced last summer that it would test a 30-hour workweek for a small group of employees and managers, giving them 75 percent of their current pay but leaving them with the same benefits as other workers.

In the experiment at the Gothenburg retirement home, employees reported working with greater efficiency and energy when their hours were cut to six from eight a day. They called in sick 15 percent less than before and perceived their health to have improved at least 20 percent, according to a preliminary review issued last year.

At a nearby municipal retirement home, where a control trial left working conditions unchanged, employees reported increased blood pressure and said they perceived no improvement in their health, peace of mind or alertness, the review showed. A final report is scheduled to be released in March.

The program increased Gothenburgs costs by 22 percent, mostly to pay for new employees. But around 10 percent was offset by reduced costs to the state from people being taken off the unemployment rolls and paying taxes into the system, rather than receiving state subsidies, Mr. Bernmar said.
Really?

What I found was the one-on-ones just became this laundry list of issues. And I want most of the issues exposed in a team environment, because most of these things have to be worked out in a group setting.

And why no performance reviews?

If I have to do performance reviews with you, somethings wrong. We should be on the same page at all given times. We should have shared goals and shared accountability. And when the job is at a point where its gone beyond your capabilities, were both going to know, and well work it out.

But what if people say, I need feedback.

If I have feedback, Ill let you know. If you want feedback, call me up. Ill give you all the feedback you want.

And when you say to people, Im not a manager, do you mean that?

I really do, because Im goal oriented. I dont wake up in the morning thinking about what you need to be successful, what your obstacles are and how I can remove them. Im out there talking to customers. If you want help in those things, lets have a conversation. Im always there to help, but Im not actively thinking about it.

How do you hire?

When you hire a lot of folks, you start thinking youre good at it. And thats when all the trouble starts. One day you realize your track record is about 50/50, and that there are real limits to how much you can get out of an hourlong interview or dinner.

Thats when I decided Im going to hire in a different way. Im going to identify the people who seem to have the best hiring skills. And theyre able to give me feedback about a candidate thats pretty specific, rather than the fuzzy stuff.

A couple of my board members are really good at this, because thats what V.C.s do  theyre identifying talent. So I usually put them on the hiring docket along with others, and then I synthesize everything theyre saying.
Lounging on a cerulean leather chair at his store on the Lower East Side, a glass of Bunnahabhain 12-year-old Scotch in hand, Vivek Nagrani talked about the two types of men who frequent high-end clothing shops.

Theres Banker A, who goes to Harvard, Goldman and buys a Lamborghini, said Mr. Nagrani, 44.

Thats not his usual customer.

Or theres the guy who went to community college (his parents had no money), he said, but he loved finance and made his way to the top. Our client tends to be that guy. Top of the industry, but he had to earn it.
As any opera lover will tell you, the drama in the wings can be every bit as enthralling as whats taking place onstage. The February 2011 Washington National Opera production of Puccinis Madama Butterfly was a case in point.

It was the first day of rehearsal at the Kennedy Center when Michael Chioldi, performing the role of the American consul Sharpless, and Scott Hill, an apprentice stage manager, spied each other from across the room, in the kind of tremulous moment from which many a libretto has been spun.

Michael walked in, and, of course, was very attractive, Mr. Hill recalled.

Mr. Chioldi had a similar view. There was instant chemistry between us, certainly a very strong physical connection, he said.
Charlotte Tilbury, 42, is a beauty entrepreneur based in London.

Q. Why did you start your own brand?

A. I think it had a lot to do with a very bohemian upbringing in Ibiza: I went to Spanish school, then a hippie school where I was taught astrophysics by a man called Ra and my homework was telepathy. I was brought along to nightclubs at the age of 8 while Grace Jones or James Brown played sets, and danced with glamorous adults who gave me more than passing conversation because they were on holiday. That sort of childhood meant I learned from a young age to rely heavily on intuition.

What did you do before starting your company?

Early on I took a job assisting the makeup artist Mary Greenwell. I then spent the next 15 years working my way up the ranks and traveling the world doing the makeup for everyone from Vogue to W to Dazed & Confused magazine. I also spent a lot of time in Hollywood doing red carpet work. But one of the most fulfilling parts of my work was creating makeup lines. I was creative director at Helena Rubinstein for a while and created products for the big fashion houses. I did lipsticks for Armani and Alexander McQueen. I also created the first cosmetics line for Tom Ford.

Any tips for creative types who want to start their own business?

Get a great lawyer. And dont be afraid to ask questions. Business might be intimidating, but it is not rocket science. Dont define yourself as a creative mind or a commercial mind  you can be both, and limiting yourself to either is a huge reason for failure.
Article: Indias Call-Center Talents Put to a Criminal Use: Swindling Americans

Before Reading

Have you ever gotten an unwanted sales or marketing call on your home or cellphone? What did you do, or say, when you got it? Have you ever fallen for a scam?

Talk with a partner about unsolicited telephone calls, emails or texts that you have received, and share what you did about them. Discuss stories about scams you have heard or read about. What do you think was behind them? Were they successful? What happened in the end?



Questions for Comprehension and Analysis

1. Who is Betsy Broder and what does she do for a living? What happened to her last summer?

2. Describe why Pawan Poojary and Jayesh Dubey got involved in the India-based scheme that targeted Americans. Were their reasons justifiable, in your opinion? Why or why not?
How did you first become aware of the film?

I was not aware of this film or of this entire episode in my fathers life until 1984, when he was 85 or 86 and I was in my 20s. [He died in 1993.] I called my mother and said, Did you know anything about this? and she had no idea. It was a complete and utter revelation. Granada Television made a documentary about it called A Painful Reminder and I actually ended up being responsible for selling that documentary into distribution in the United States in 1985. That was the first time I saw the footage, and that was the time he told me that the biggest regret of his life was that he had never been able to finish the film.

Why hadnt he said anything about it all those years?

The reason he gave at the time was that he was under military command when he made it, that it was shut down while he was an officer and it was not to be spoken about. It wasnt until the information and footage came to light through the releasing of public records that he was comfortable talking about it.

Its a very hard film to watch. How do you think audiences will respond?

The first time I saw the complete restored film, I flew over from New York to London on the night flight and I went straight to the British Film Institute. And I was dreading it  I wish I hadnt come, I dont want to watch it. What struck me then was that as gruesome as many of the images are, theres so much humanity in the film. Its hard to say theres something positive about it, but I think it isnt just an atrocity film. I think you come away with a sense of incredible cameramen doing wonderful work. You really get a sense of a whole team of Allies really working to get at something restorative.

Do you worry whether viewers might find the images of naked bodies being dragged and thrown about depersonalizing or exploitative?

Look, I hope that people dont react to it that way. Im sure there are some who will. I think that its important as historical evidence, thats why a lot of it was filmed that way. And theres still a lot of Holocaust denial, and I think they were anticipating that. I think we have to have those images as a reminder that these atrocities really, really, really did happen.
Jackie

Written by Noah Oppenheim

President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated, and his widow, Jackie (played by Natalie Portman), is negotiating funeral details at the office of Jack Valenti (Max Casella), a top aide in the new Johnson administration. She wants the coffin and visiting heads of state to be part of a procession through the streets of Washington. Mr. Valenti does not.

VALENTI Weve intercepted a threat against General de Gaulle. From our assets in Geneva. (Beat.) Im afraid if he refuses to march, others may follow.

Jackie considers this. Seeming to waver 

JACKIE (sympathetic) I understand.

Valenti thinks hes won.

VALENTI As I said, Mrs. Kennedy, I wish there were more we could do to accommodate your wishes. (Beat.) Im terribly sorry.

Jackie seems to accept this.

JACKIE Dont be. You and the Johnsons have already done so much.

VALENTI Good day, Mrs. Kennedy.
But for all the pageantry, Cardinal Tobin is inheriting a troubled archdiocese. The archbishop he succeeded, John J. Myers, was denounced for the archdioceses handling of pedophile priests and for allocating more than $500,000 for an addition to his weekend house in Hunterdon County, N.J. The Star-Ledger of Newark hailed Archbishop Myerss retirement last summer with an editorial that declared, Blessed are we to be rid of this man.

Cardinal Tobin, 64, took a vow of poverty when he was ordained nearly 40 years ago, and his unassuming ways proved popular in Indiana. Like Pope Francis, who at first drove himself around the Vatican in a Renault with 190,000 miles on the odometer, Cardinal Tobin drove his own sport-utility vehicle as he crisscrossed Indiana.

By contrast, Archbishop Myers often used younger priests as drivers and traveled with a police escort. (Cardinal Tobin did get driven recently from Newark to a religious retreat on the Jersey Shore, a spokesman for the Newark archdiocese said.)

In Indiana, Cardinal Tobin exuded modesty and humility. To the bench-press crowd at the gym, he was simply Joe; to schoolchildren, he was Padre Jose. Archbishop Myers preferred to be addressed by the formal title Your Grace.

And when the Newark appointment was announced, then-Archbishop Tobin sounded stunned. Sometimes I think that Pope Francis sees a lot more in me than I see in myself, he said.

Cardinal Tobin made national headlines in 2015 when he faced off against Gov. Mike Pence, now the Vice President-elect. Citing security concerns, Mr. Pence had ordered a stop to efforts to resettle Syrian refugees. Calling that immoral and illegal, Cardinal Tobin said that the Indianapolis archdiocese would continue to welcome Syrians. A federal court has since overturned Mr. Pences order.
Indian Point, the nuclear power plant closest to New York City, could be shut as soon as April 2021 under an agreement New York state officials reached this week with Entergy, the utility company that owns the plant, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal.

Under the agreement, one of the two nuclear reactors at Indian Point will permanently cease operations by April 2020, while the other must be closed a year later. The shutdown has long been a priority for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who  though supportive of upstate nuclear plants  has repeatedly called for shutting Indian Point. He has said it poses too great a risk to New York City, less than 30 miles to the south.

Why you would allow Indian Point to continue to operate defies common sense, planning and basic sanity, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, told reporters in June.

Despite the political opposition to Indian Point, which is perched at the edge of the Hudson River in Buchanan, N.Y., the plant is an important supplier of inexpensive power to the metropolitan area. It can generate more than 2,000 megawatts, or about one-fourth of the power consumed in New York City and Westchester County. The prospects for replacing that power are unclear, but potential options include hydropower from Quebec and power from wind farms that already operate or could open across New York, according to the person.
On an overcast Friday morning last January, longshoremen all over New York Harbor walked off the docks, bringing the port nearly to a stop for a day. What were the longshoremens grievances? What were their demands? Many of the men seemed not to know. They hung around the food trucks and milled about the parking lots, unsure why they had stopped working and unsure what it would take for work to resume.

No one knew what that was about, one recalled recently.

A year later, the reason for the strike remains unclear, even as the agency tasked with ridding the waterfront of organized crime, the Waterfront Commission, has questioned dozens of longshoremen under oath. One told the commission he learned of the strike early that morning, when it was too dark to see the face of the man giving the order. It could have been anyone.

It was the old D & D  Deaf and Dumb, the classic longshoremans response, popularized in the 1954 film On the Waterfront.

In that movie, the longshoremen were reluctant, even frightened, to talk to the authorities, whether a priest or a detective, because the mob controlled the waterfront. In the years since, much has changed around New York Harbor; the heavy lifting is done not by hand but by cranes, and human voices are scarcely heard amid the beeping of the straddle carriers, giant insectlike machines that move containers back and forth. But even as New York and New Jerseys increasingly valuable shoreline is claimed by luxury development, investigators say the mob is still present.
To the Editor:

Re A Promising Proposal for Free Tuition (editorial, Jan. 5):

Last year, I asked the New York City Independent Budget Office to study the cost of eliminating tuition at CUNYs community colleges. As you note, its $232 million high-end estimate is about $70 million more than the figure offered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for his more robust Excelsior Scholarship proposal.

Few New Yorkers are more enthusiastic than I am about tuition-free CUNY and SUNY. Tens of thousands of Brooklynites have crippling student debt weighing down their ability to invest in their futures, and the status quo is simply unsustainable if we hope to keep the middle class in our borough.

That said, our students and universities would lose long term if the state establishes a program that it cannot fund to scale, one that it will potentially expect New York City and other municipalities to pick up the slack for in the 11th hour.

Senator Bernie Sanders is spot on in our need to be progressively bold, and the Legislature certainly ought to take robust tuition assistance action this session. We must also be fiscally wise, as we face the threat of federal funding cuts from the incoming Trump administration.
To the Editor:

Regarding Trump Says Focus on Russian Hacking Is a Political Witch Hunt  (nytimes.com, Jan. 6):

President-elect Donald Trump and others frequently use the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to disparage our intelligence agencies. Remember, even before the Iraq war, many were pointing out that the problem was not so much the intelligence, but President George W. Bushs cherry picking the intelligence to support his wish to go to war.

Mr. Trump is doing exactly that, picking the intelligence he prefers. If past is prologue, we are in very serious danger.

CHARLES MERRILL

New York

To the Editor:

Re Mr. Trump Casts Intelligence Aside (editorial, Jan. 6):

The headline of your editorial would be hilarious were not the circumstances it describes so grave.

Whether Donald Trump sets aside intelligence  as in the intelligence regarding Russian hacking in the recent election  for tactical and strategic reasons of his own, to protect his fantasy of a landslide electoral victory, or as a defensive reaction to overwhelming complexity that he cant fathom, the outcome is the same: increased confusion, further alienation and heightened anxiety here and abroad.
The Azaria case has exposed a frightening truth about Israeli society. After the soldiers defense was changed, the court focused its attention on the question of whether he had known that the Palestinian on the ground was powerless to act, or if it was possible to think otherwise. But this was not the issue that interested the public.

In recent months, in delivering lectures on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and holding audience discussions, I have asked hundreds of people across Israel a hypothetical question: Assuming that Sergeant Azaria had stuck to his original story and admitted that he knew that the man lying on the ground presented no danger to anyone, but he had nevertheless decided to put a bullet in his head, should he be acquitted or convicted?

The absolute majority of the people I met believed that he should be allowed to go free immediately. Many even believe that Sergeant Azaria is a hero. Most people in Israel believe that any terrorist, even if he is totally disabled, must not escape alive. The same view is prevalent in almost every discussion of the subject in the social media, from petitions on Sergeant Azarias behalf, and from the thousands of vituperative attacks against anyone daring to express a different opinion.

This is an expression of a phenomenon that endangers the future of Israeli democracy: a widespread belief that there are situations in which, as one woman I talked to put it, the wisdom of the street is preferable to the judgment of a court. Its a belief that a distinction can and should be made between the lives of Arabs and of Jews; that a Jewish soldier or citizen can take the law into his own hands and decide that any terrorist, even if he is disabled and a prisoner, must die at his hands, those of a self-declared executioner; the belief that even if an Israeli soldier has killed a wounded Palestinian terrorist, simply for the sake of killing him, he should not be prosecuted. This frightening truth is a defiant challenge to the rule of law, to equality before the law, and is tainted by racism of the worst kind.
HANOVER, N.H.  How am I feeling, Doc? my new patient answered. Im feeling like a caged dog.

Hospitalized for a heart-valve infection resulting from injection drug use, my patient had purple hair and arms covered with hand-drawn tattoos. She smelled unwashed.

I cant go out to smoke. My boyfriend cant visit, she said. She gestured to the security guard in the doorway. I cant even pee without her watching me! The guard rolled her eyes.

So, rather than building a therapeutic bond through small talk or discussion of her symptoms, we spoke of her confinement. The ban on visitors and the other unusually restrictive terms of her hospitalization were not a consequence of her drug addiction. They resulted from her behavior in the hospital.

Once a nurse found the patient in the bathroom shooting heroin into her I.V. line, the sink spotted with blood. A housekeeper changing bedclothes was almost spiked by a used needle hidden under the mattress. A constant influx of boisterous visitors came to her room day and night, some delivering heroin.
TSIHOMBE, Madagascar  She is just a frightened mom, worrying if her son will survive, and certainly not fretting about American politics  for she has never heard of either President Obama or Donald Trump.

What about America itself? Ranomasy, who lives in an isolated village on this island of Madagascar off southern Africa, shakes her head. It doesnt ring any bells.

Yet we Americans may be inadvertently killing her infant son. Climate change, disproportionately caused by carbon emissions from America, seems to be behind a severe drought that has led crops to wilt across seven countries in southern Africa. The result is acute malnutrition for 1.3 million children in the region, the United Nations says.

Trump has repeatedly mocked climate change, once even calling it a hoax fabricated by China. But climate change here is as tangible as its victims. Trump should come and feel these childrens ribs and watch them struggle for life. Its true that the links between our carbon emissions and any particular drought are convoluted, but over all, climate change is as palpable as a wizened, glassy-eyed child dying of starvation. Like Ranomasys 18-month-old son, Tsapasoa.
Debates about the extent to which the United States should use its power to lead and shape events in the world, and when and how it should intervene, are eternal in our history. In 1821, John Quincy Adams admonished us not to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But in a world more interconnected than anything he could have imagined, we have been forced or tempted on occasion to do just that: in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or perhaps soon in North Korea. So what is the proper balance, given that Donald J. Trumps threatened disengagement from the world is an extreme position that violates the trajectory of our history? Ironically, the one factor that best informs us in this debate is never discussed: Americas own geography.

Everyone knows that the United States is a virtual island-nation, protected by two oceans, with the sparsely inhabited Canadian Arctic to the north. But that is only the beginning of the discussion, in which Americas physical location and topographical characteristics help provide a spiritual direction for our foreign policy  something that Mr. Trump cannot change.

The United States, occupying as it does the temperate zone of North America, is the most consequential satellite of the Afro-Eurasian World-Island, wrote the British geographer Halford J. Mackinder in 1919. Not only was America physically isolated from the threats and complexities of the Old World, and not only is it abundantly rich in natural resources from minerals to hydrocarbons, but America claims more miles of navigable inland waterways than much of the rest of the world combined. And this river system is not laid over the sparsely inhabited and thinly soiled Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, but over Americas arable cradle itself: the nutrient-rich soil of the Midwest, thus unifying the centers of population in the 19th century, and perennially allowing for the movement of goods and produce in the interior continent. This river system, like the veining of a leaf, flows into the Mississippi, which, in turn, disperses into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, thus connecting farms and cities throughout the densely habitable part of the United States with the global sea lines of communication.

So while physically protected from the Old World, the United States has never really been isolated from it. The critical importance of the Greater Caribbean to the Mississippi River system made it necessary for America to strategically dominate what might be called the American Mediterranean  for such is the geopolitical centrality of the Greater Caribbean to the entire Western Hemisphere. This process of domination began roughly with the Monroe Doctrine and was completed with the building of the Panama Canal. Having become the dominant hemispheric power, the United States was then in a position to help determine the balance of power in the other hemisphere  and that is what the history of the 20th century was all about. Fighting two world wars and the Cold War was about not letting any power or alliance of powers dominate the Old World to the extent that the United States dominated the New World.
On Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain unemployed for months or years.

If that sounds terrible to you, and youre asking what economic catastrophe just happened, the answer is, none. In fact, Im just assuming that Thursday was a normal day in the job market.

The U.S. economy is, after all, huge, employing 145 million people. Its also ever-changing: Industries and companies rise and fall, and there are always losers as well as winners. The result is constant churn, with many jobs disappearing even as still more new jobs are created. In an average month, there are 1.5 million involuntary job separations (as opposed to voluntary quits), or 75,000 per working day. Hence my number.

But why am I telling you this? To highlight the difference between real economic policy and the fake policy that has lately been taking up far too much attention in the news media.
This article has been updated to reflect news developments.

WHEN I wrote in August 2016, in this newspaper, that Donald J. Trumps character traits posed a national security threat, I didnt imagine that the first manifestation of that dynamic could play out with the very organization where I spent the first 33 years of my career, the Central Intelligence Agency.

President-elect Trumps public rejection of the C.I.A., and by extension the rest of the countrys intelligence community, over the assessment that Russia interfered in our presidential election is not only an unprecedented political challenge for our national security establishment  it is a danger to the nation.

While Mr. Trumps statement on Friday that he had a constructive meeting with senior intelligence officials on the Russian hacking issue was a step in the right direction, his disparagement of American intelligence officers over the last few months is likely to cause significant damage to the C.I.A.

Mr. Trump has questioned the agencys competence  repeatedly asking, often via Twitter, how we can trust the organization that incorrectly judged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (criticism that, in my mind, is unfair for an agency that has changed dramatically in the last 15 years). But he has also accused the agency of being biased and political, implying, in comments to The Times, that the C.I.A. manufactured its Russia analysis to undercut him. Mr. Trump, in essence, said that the agencys officers were dishonorable. To the men and women of the C.I.A., sworn to protect the nation, this was a gut punch.
Senator Durbin calls it surreal.

I spent months never believing that he would be elected president, Senator Durbin says from his office in Capitol Hill, where he can see workers constructing the stage for Mr. Trumps inauguration.

I sincerely hope that the office makes the man, Senator Durbin adds.

Mr. Hulse raises the Supreme Court vacancy that has been open since Antonin Scalias death last February. How will Democrats approach Mr. Trumps nominee, given that Republicans stonewalled Mr. Obamas pick?

I think Chuck Schumer spoke for the caucus when he said to [Mitch] McConnell, let your new president know that if hes going to send us a new Supreme Court nominee, this better be a moderate, middle-of-the-road nominee, otherwise hes in for rough sledding, Senator Durbin says, calling the block of Merrick Garlands nomination just crass politics and unprecedented.

I want to be fair to any nominee that the president-elect sends us, and I hope that he does come up with someone who is well-qualified and moderate in their approach, Senator Durbin tells Mr. Hulse. But if not, there will be a battle, and I think were ready for it.

Also in this episode, I ask Mr. Hulse and our colleague, Scott Shane, who writes about the United States intelligence community, about the extraordinary congressional hearings this week, in which a bipartisan group of senators directly challenged Mr. Trumps claims that Russia might not be behind the cyberattacks.
We hope you got some rest over the holidays, but its clear from our mailbox that you remained sharp and attentive readers. We will address a few of those complaints first, before turning to this weeks topics.

A holiday-themed Social Qs column, which administers lighthearted advice about awkward social situations, addressed what an adult should do when one child taunts another at a holiday party. The specific taunt in question, which was directed toward a Latina girl, was this: Pack your bags. Trump is going to send you back to Mexico. The headline on the column? Should I Stay Silent During One Childs Populist Taunt of Another? Readers took issue with the description of the taunt.

The headline is completely inappropriate for the advice question to which it refers. The child seems to harass his guest based solely on his misguided stereotype of a certain heritage. This is plain bigoted, not populist as the headline suggests. Populism is a broad term that is used to refer to vastly disparate political beliefs and styles, including those of Bernie Sanders and President Obama as well as President-elect Trump. It is synonymous neither with antipathy towards particular ethnicities, nor specific immigration policies. To call the childs taunt populism at once minimizes the seriousness of his actions and strains the definition of populism beyond recognition. Sarah Bayer, Boston, Mass.

The author of the column, Philip Galanes, took the time to reply to a reader who wrote to him directly.

Thank you for your note. I am the author of the column  but not the headline. And I agree with you. We should have found a better hed, particularly since the answer called on all of us to be extra-vigilant to racism and misogyny in these times. It also asked us to moderate the pitch of our speech, especially in complaint, to communicate better. I thank you for doing both.

Shortly before the new year, an ad ran on a Times story that left some readers befuddled.

My NY Times digital copy keeps displaying a pop-up that advertises a fabulous Obama tax rebate (supposedly he signed a bill Dec. 18). It would return millions of dollars to anyone who paid sales taxes in 2015. I called my accountant, who said it was a hoax. The pop-up has returned day after day as part of your news for the last two weeks. Could you please tell me if this has been approved by the NY Times? Is my accountant wrong? Rita Cleary

The ad was indeed a hoax, and readers who realized this have asked The Times to address the issue.

The below ad is now part of the norm at The Times, alas. I dont frankly understand the mechanism by which such ads appear but assume, perhaps erroneously, that sites exercise some control in that regard. John Seager, Washington D.C.

Indeed, such ads do seem to find their way onto the Times website occassionally, as a public editor column explained in November, but we asked Sebastian Tomich, senior vice president for advertising and innovation, to comment once more. Heres his response:

Theyre nearly impossible to catch in advance as they come through advertising technology platforms such as Facebook and Google at random. When fake news ads are reported we block the advertiser, and weve also been lifting price floors, which has made an impact since implementation.

An hour into the new year, tragedy struck in Turkey when a gunman attacked an Istanbul nightclub. The lead byline on The Timess story was anonymous  an Employee of The New York Times  and readers had theories as to why.

The byline caught my attention for a couple reasons. I spent a year as a freelancer in Istanbul and understand the myriad challenges and dangers Turkish reporters (and foreign journos in Turkey) face. It seems every week brings fresh reports of journalists detained by the dozens for their work. While it saddens me that reporters in Turkey may elect to shield their identities in the same way those working in active war zones do, I see that in the current climate it could be necessary. However, in the context of the crisis of confidence in news here in the U.S., the byline seemed odd. The NYT (and many other publications) have made strides to increase transparency in the journalistic process recently. The approach of reporters investigating the Ghost Ship fire comes to mind. So my question is this: when is it appropriate to shield the identity of a reporter? Where lies the balance between accountability and the safety of journalists? Elizabeth Hewitt, Montpelier, Vt.

The public editors take: Weve received several letters asking about the unusual byline. The international editor, Michael Slackman, said hes not in position to comment but I suspect you are hinting at the right issues in your letter. From my experience, it is not uncommon to use a generic byline when the security of journalists may be at risk, or when a widespread team of editors and reporters is assembling a deadline story. But Im only speaking for myself, not the paper. Just last week, a Wall Street Journal reporter was detained by Turkish officials for three days and held in isolation.

The same story caught readers attentions for other reasons, too. Initially, the story reported that the single gunman may have been as many as three gunmen, and they were wearing Santa Claus suits, an image which stayed with readers. The Times, however, never appended a correction to the story nor added a note explaining the change.

As of my writing, the Timess current version of its online article makes no reference to Santa-disguised terrorists, only to a single (apparently normally-dressed) assailant. And there is no correction about earlier reports of multiple terrorists dressed in Santa costumes were in error. Especially in a case like this, the Times should go beyond just correcting its reporting to acknowledge that it had hastily printed an inaccurate rumor (and perhaps identify the rumors original source). Richard D. Smith, Rocky Hill, N.J.

We asked Slackman about this. Heres his response:

It was a fast-breaking story and The Times, and many other sites, used information we thought was credible. Would it have been advisable to adjust the language so that it was clear we were now skeptical of the earlier reports? Probably so. But these were challenging circumstances.

The public editors take: Time for me to make my plug again for attaching notes to stories that undergo a notable change from a previous edition. This wasnt just a routine change in a rapidly unfolding story. It was a rather dramatic visual  a team of men in Santa Claus suits firing into the crowd. If that turned into one man dressed like the crowd, as later stories suggest, isnt it more transparent just to flag that?

Another reader raised an issue that will hopefully be addressed in the new year.

I am a deaf reader, and I have recently been frustrated that Times Video under The New York Times does not provide captions for its videos. It looks like I am not the first to complain about this. There is a piece in the Public Editors Journal from March 2015 that said captioned videos will be forthcoming in the next few months. It is now January 2017, and there is no evidence of any accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing readers. The New York Times needs to take initiative on this matter to avoid discriminating against these readers. Erik Nordlof, Arlington, Va.

We asked Alexandra MacCallum, who oversees Times video, for an answer. She told us that while some videos have text overlay, which editors add manually, an automated closed caption system is in the works this year.

Different leadership ran the video department in March of 2015; I was unaware of that statement. When I took over in January of 2016, no work had started on the project, which is a large technical heave as well as a change to our newsroom workflow. Closed captions and transcriptions are a priority for the beginning of this year (2017). We spent much of last year fixing some technical infrastructure, and were looking have a solution in the coming months. We understand that its problematic for our readers and recognize the importance to make sure our readers have a seamless watching experience when they are on our site.

As trust in the media falters, a reader has taken a stand, one friend at a time. He wrote us to ask for our aid in his mission.

Where might I find the New York Timess statements on journalistic integrity, quality of journalism, and news standards? I am preparing for a debate with a friend who has called The Times biased. David E. Johnson, San Antonio, Tx.

We, of course, pointed him to their location on the web, and if you have any upcoming debates, too, you can find The Timess standards and ethics here.
New York renters would be the first to tell you that rents go in only one direction: up. But after a long and relentless climb to historic highs, the momentum has stalled.

With renters unwilling, or unable, to pay ever higher sums, rents have largely flatlined. And it seems we have come to the year of the renters market.

In Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, inventories and vacancies are up, and landlords are offering new tenants discounts, like several months of free rent and no brokers fee. In the Bronx and Staten Island, rents are holding steady because those boroughs did not experience the same rapid rent escalations or volume of new development. But that could change when new rental buildings open in both boroughs this year and in 2018.

The biggest deals are happening at the top of the market, where some luxury developments are offering as much as four months of free rent on a two-year lease. But deals are to be had in older, less expensive buildings, too. Despite these concessions, some apartments linger vacant for months. Worried that a slowdown will continue, many landlords are not raising the rent when leases come up for renewal, and some are even throwing in perks like gift cards.
NASA will be heading to a metal world.

The space agency announced on Wednesday that a spacecraft named Psyche would visit an asteroid named Psyche, one of two new missions it will be launching into the solar system in the 2020s.

For the purpose of simplicity, and out of our initial excitement, we just named our mission directly after what were going to visit, said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of the Arizona State University school of earth and space exploration, who will serve as the missions principal investigator.

From radar observations, Psyche the asteroid appears ellipsoid in shape, about as wide as Massachusetts. It is also quite dense, with estimates of 200 to 450 pounds per cubic foot, which is much denser than most asteroids. (By comparison, the average density of Earth is 344 pounds per cubic foot.)

Psyche is also very bright, adding to suspicions that it is made of metal. Humankind has visited rocky worlds and icy worlds and worlds made of gas, but we have never seen a metal world, Dr. Elkins-Tanton said. Its the only roundish, fairly spherical metal body in our solar system. Not only is it unique, its improbable.
The first time

My son accepted that he could no longer endure his life of addiction, but only after a night camping out under a highway overpass with homeless heroin users. He used a needle for the first time.  Lucy, San Francisco

I was in love with it

I broke my back in 2012. I used anything and everything to cope with the pain. Once the doctors figured out I was abusing the pain pills, they cut me off. I thought I was going to die. I was introduced to mainstream heroin. I was in love with it the first time I tried it. I craved and sought it through every step of my days. Sober since 4/28/15.  Braden Ewell, Odessa, Tex.

Stigmatization

This is a stigmatization of a useful and necessary prescription drug that is used responsibly by almost everyone for whom it is prescribed. If the so-called War on Drugs has taught us a single thing (the same that Prohibition taught us), its that some people will do anything to get high, including dying.  Dan Lundmark, Fort Collins, Colo.

My son is dead but not dead

My son has been addicted to opiates for 11 years now, first OxyContin, then heroin. Every time he lied to me about getting clean, I would believe him and try to help him out. Now I just hope his bottom is not his death. This is something no parent can be at peace with. My son is dead but not dead.  Ross, Tucson

Struggling again

I became addicted to prescription painkillers due to an automobile accident. It took me eight years to get my life back on track. I lost guardianship of my older two children and in the midst of all of it ended up in jail, then pregnant; my daughter was born and went through withdrawal because it had such a hold on me. I went to detox and rehab, got my life together for a few months, all to be in another devastating car accident and right back on painkillers due to all the injuries. Now struggling again.  Meagan, Cadillac, Mich.

More painkillers than we need

My husband and I have had an assortment of dental and day-surgery procedures (typical for our age) that usually include a prescription for far more painkillers than we need. We dont understand why patient post-procedure instructions do not include info about safe ways to dispose of these drugs.  Nancy A. Johnson, Edina, Minn.

I started stealing from my family

I started taking painkillers when I was 19. I went to the dentist one day for a toothache and was prescribed Vicodin. After that first one, I was hooked. Then one day a friend introduced me to heroin. I started stealing from my family, and they pressed charges on me. I thank God every day because Im alive today.  Carla Goff, Shelby, Ohio
Body-worn cameras are reshaping perceptions of policing. The small devices, typically mounted on officers shirts, provide a lens into law enforcement that is meant to build transparency and trust. But their increased use has also raised a host of questions and concerns: Who should have access to recordings? How will the footage be used? What are the privacy rights of people caught on video? And what are the long-term costs to taxpayers?



Across the country, police departments large and small are rolling out expensive body-camera programs without consistent answers to the questions or, according to policy experts, convincing evidence that the cameras ensure the level of accountability that the public demands. Already, at least 19 states have enacted laws restricting public access to footage, and a dozen more are proposing legislation. This four-chapter video series examines the challenges and incentives  social, political and economic  surrounding the rapid rise of police body cameras. Our story begins in Cincinnati, with a pitch for their use to officers in training.
WASHINGTON  One by one, the Democratic lawmakers stepped to the microphone on Friday, holding on to their letters and an impossible dream: denying the presidency to Donald J. Trump, two weeks before his inauguration.

And one by one, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.  presiding over a joint session of Congress to validate the Electoral College results in Mr. Trumps victory  turned back their challenges with a stoic message, pounding his gavel without hesitation.

It is over, Mr. Biden said at one point, as Republicans rose to their feet to cheer.

After weeks of fitful grumblings about the long-shot maneuvers that might obstruct Mr. Trumps path to the White House, the proceedings on Friday appeared to close the book.

Lawmakers are permitted to make objections to both individual and state tallies, but they must be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member of both the House and the Senate. No senator chose to join the cause of the half-dozen or so House Democrats who raised complaints.
That Mr. Trump would take the time to oust a single state party chairman suggests that he may do much the same when anti-Trump Republicans who are actually in elected office face primaries in 2018. That, certainly, was the interpretation among Mr. Kasichs allies.

Petty grudge settling is a top priority for the next president and his henchmen, said John Weaver, an adviser to the governor. Not encouraging for those lonely souls still expecting Trump will ever try to unify.

Trump says hacking had absolutely no effect on election

Emerging from a 90-minute briefing with the nations intelligence chiefs, Mr. Trump issued a statement acknowledging the hacking of the cyber-infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee. But he said it had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber-infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the R.N.C. had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

The intelligence chiefs showed Mr. Trump their evidence that Russia hacked into the accounts of political organizations and members of the Clinton campaign and that it made their correspondence public in an effort to influence the election. The president-elect was sharply questioning those findings as late as Friday morning.

The briefers included James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, who said on Thursday that he was more resolute than ever in the conclusion that Russia was responsible for the hacking, and that it was part of a broader information warfare campaign. The director of the C.I.A., John O. Brennan; the head of the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command, Adm. Michael S. Rogers; and the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, also participated, officials said.

The meeting came at a moment of remarkable tension between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the conclusions about Russia and suggested that there was political motivation behind the intelligence findings. Mr. Clapper and Admiral Rogers said, somewhat diplomatically, at a Senate hearing on Thursday that while they welcomed skepticism, they believed that questioning the motives of the intelligence officials working on the issue was damaging to morale and to the agencies ability to retain top talent.

An unclassified version of the report Mr. Trump heard about was made public Friday afternoon. The president-elect likely heard the most classified details, including information about the intercepts of conversation and computer traffic, and the human sources, that the intelligence agencies used to reach their conclusions.
When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the report said, the G.R.U. relayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has denied that Russia was the source of the emails it published.

The report makes clear that Mr. Putin favored Mr. Trump in part because he had previous success dealing with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia  it named a former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, as an example  and in part because he viewed Mr. Trump as a more likely ally in forming Russias version of a counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State. Mr. Trump described his eagerness to do so in an interview with The New York Times in March 2016.

The report also stated that Russia collected data on some Republican-affiliated targets, but did not disclose the contents of whatever it harvested.

The reports introduction called the public document a summation of a highly classified assessment. The classified version, officials say, comes in two forms  one for Congress and another, called a compartmentalized report, for select members of Congress and top officials of the incoming and outgoing governments.

The compartmentalized version contains information on the sources and methods used to collect the information about Mr. Putin and his associates. Those would include intercepts of conversations and the harvesting of computer data from implants that the United States and its allies have put in Russian networks.

The conclusions were described to Mr. Obama on Thursday and to Mr. Trump on Friday by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; and James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.
WASHINGTON  As congressional Republicans on Friday discussed quickly moving ahead with plans for a southern border wall using money included in this years spending bills, President-elect Donald J. Trump insisted that Mexico would ultimately pay for its construction.

Were going to get reimbursed, Mr. Trump said during a brief telephone interview. But I dont want to wait that long. But you start, and then you get reimbursed.

The congressional Republicans talk led to speculation that Mr. Trump was retreating on his campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall. Mr. Trump insisted he is not.

Republicans have balked at increases in domestic spending during the Obama administration and are unlikely to enthusiastically rally behind a proposal that could require billions of taxpayer dollars.
Much of the southeastern United States was preparing on Friday for a blast of winter weather that was expected to bring schools, travel and everyday life to a halt this weekend.

The storm system had already closed schools and government offices in Arkansas and Oklahoma, where up to four inches of snow was forecast on Friday, and it was expected to intensify as it moved east through the day.

By Friday night, snow was expected in northern Georgia, and by Saturday, southern Virginia was forecast to see possibly heavy snow.
 30 Minutes, and I Miss Old-Fashioned Sitcoms

One Day at a Time, Netflix

Leave any reboot baggage behind and just embrace this on its own terms: Its a multicamera family sitcom that works. Justina Machado stars as Penelope Alvarez, a veteran and a single mom raising her two kids with the help of her Cuban-born mother (Rita Moreno). The old-school format  complete with cheers from the audience and plenty of hamming it up from the cast  is sturdy and reliable, and the show radiates warmth in every moment of its 13 episodes.
PARIS  A panel of French judges has decided not to bring charges against soldiers accused of having sexually abused children while on a peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, officials said on Friday.

Soldiers were sent to the country, a former French colony, in 2013 to help quell a sectarian conflict there, but allegations of sexual and physical violence by the troops have been an embarrassment for France.

They also have been an embarrassment for the United Nations, where rights investigators compiled a confidential report in 2014 about the allegations and the organization did not move quickly to rectify them. The French authorities became aware of the allegations only when the report was leaked to them.

The lapse at the United Nations in promptly notifying the French led to an investigation by an independent panel that accused some of the organizations officials of having passed the allegations from desk to desk, inbox to inbox and having failed to meet their core mission to protect the rights of the most vulnerable civilians.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast  Angry soldiers took up arms in at least two cities in Ivory Coast on Friday in a demand for pay raises and other concessions, paralyzing commerce and street life, and terrifying citizens who still have memories of civil war.

Gunfire rang out early Friday across Bouake, the second-largest city in this West African nation, amid news reports that soldiers had seized at least two police stations there. Bouake was the crucible of a civil conflict that plagued the country from 2002 to 2011 and left thousands dead.

Later in the morning, soldiers launched a similar mutiny in the city of Daloa, according to Yolande Kouame, who works for a financial institution there. She said that shots had been fired at about 10 a.m. and that soldiers had blocked entrances into town.

There were news reports of a similar disturbance in the northern city of Korhogo.

In recent years, Ivory Coast has shed its violent past to become one of Africas fastest-growing economies. It is the worlds largest producer of cocoa, and President Alassane Ouattara has invested in roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects that have lured back multinational corporations that fled during the conflict. The country celebrated its first peaceful presidential election in two decades when Mr. Outtara was re-elected in 2015.
Every public housing complex in America is filled with individual tales of struggle and survival. This is the story of a dapper man in a black fedora who lives in unit 16G in the Bronx.

His name is Souleymane Guengueng, and he brought down a murderous African dictator.

In the 1980s, Mr. Guengueng was one of numerous people imprisoned and tortured during the brutal reign of President Hissene Habre in Chad, a landlocked country in central Africa. When he was released from prison after two and a half years, Mr. Guengueng began a quest for justice, meticulously recording the testimonies of survivors and the relatives of those who had been killed at the direction of Mr. Habre. He wound up with records detailing the abuse and murder of more than 700 people.

Human rights advocates collected his accounts and used them as critical pieces of evidence to pursue criminal action against Mr. Habre. The legal case was not an easy one. Finding a court to prosecute a head of state proved difficult. For more than 16 years, the case bounced between nations and continents, with Mr. Guengueng offering his personal plea for justice to anyone who would listen.

In May, in Dakar, Senegal, where Mr. Habre had lived in exile, the dictator was finally convicted. Next week, a court there will hear his appeal.
RIO DE JANEIRO  Some of the inmates were beheaded. Others had their hearts torn from their bodies. Gang leaders used the blood of their victims to write a nightmarish message of retribution: Blood is paid for with blood.

The harrowing scenes on Friday from the latest prison riot in Brazil, in which 31 inmates were killed in the northern state of Roraima in the Amazon River Basin, pushed the death toll to 93 in six days of mayhem in penitentiaries around the country.

The bloodshed has shocked the country and is emerging as the most pressing crisis facing President Michel Temer, whose beleaguered government was already grappling with graft scandals, a weak economy and simmering anger over austerity measures.

The bloodshed is revealing a war between drug gangs, a failed prison system and a weak government, said Rafael Alcadipani, a scholar who specializes in public security policies at Fundacao Getulio Vargas, a leading Brazilian university. And now the horror is spreading.
KABUL, Afghanistan  Gunmen in northern Afghanistan ambushed ethnic Hazara coal miners on Friday, shooting at least nine of them dead and seemingly adding to a string of recent attacks singling out ethnic or sectarian minorities.

The attack happened in the district of Tala Wa Barfak in Baghlan Province, a hub for coal-mining in northern Afghanistan. The miners were on a bus returning home to central Daykondi Province, according to Faiz Muhammed Amiri, the district governor of Tala Wa Barfak.

We dont know who the attackers were, but the Anar Dara area, where it happened, is an insecure area, and antigovernment elements are highly active in the area, Mr. Amiri said. The people who were killed are from Daykondi Province, and I think all of them are Hazara.

Hazaras, most of whom are Shiite Muslims, have a long history of being abused in Afghanistan and have particularly suffered at the hands of the Taliban.
DHAKA, Bangladesh  The police in Bangladesh announced on Friday that they had killed Nurul Islam Marzan, who was suspected of guiding a team of militants through the deadly siege of a fashionable Dhaka restaurant last year, in an early morning gunfight.

Mr. Marzan was a close aide to Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, who had been identified as the top coordinator in Bangladesh for the Islamic State and the leader of a newly founded branch of the domestic militant network Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi authorities said Mr. Chowdhury planned the attack in July at the restaurant, the Holey Artisan Bakery. He was killed in August in a shootout.

The police said the two men worked intensively with the team of five assailants who burst into the restaurant and singled out foreigners and non-Muslims inside. Twenty Bangladeshi and foreign hostages and two police officers were killed, the most ambitious attack undertaken by Islamist insurgents in the region in recent years.
BEIJING  For millions of Chinese, the new year opened under an oppressive shroud of smog that has closed highways, delayed or canceled hundreds of flights and shut down schools, forcing some students to follow their lessons from home through online streaming.

The toxic air has also drawn attention to a poem written by a Chinese surgeon from the viewpoint of an ambitious lung cancer that revels in the delicious mist and haze. The poem was first published in English in the October issue of Chest, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, under the title I Long to Be King. Excerpts from the poem were posted in Chinese this week in The Paper, a news website, and widely reported on by other Chinese media.

The author, Dr. Zhao Xiaogang, 40, who is deputy chief of thoracic surgery at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital of Tongji University, opens with a ground-glass opacity, an image of a CT scan of fluid in the lungs that can indicate a range of disorders, but in this case is the first indication of what will develop into a triumphantly lethal cancer. It is abetted by its hosts unhealthy habits, but also the hosts smoggy environment:

I long to be king,

With my fellows swimming in every vessel.

My people crawl in your organs and body,

Holding the rights for life or death, I tremble with excitement.

It continues:

None cared when I was young,

But all fear me when full grown.

Ive been nourished on the delicious mist and haze,

That sweetly warmed my heart



The Chinese version of the poem has attracted hundreds of comments on Weibo.

One Weibo user sarcastically wrote, The government should be proud. We have information about Chinas air pollution published in the U.S.! More literary works should be shared in international publications!

Another said of Dr. Zhaos poem, When China has a surge in cancer in a few years, well appreciate how right the author was.
BEIJING  Like ghosts floating in a dim netherworld, the dancers twirled, spun and curtsied in smog so dense that couples a few steps away seemed to be murky apparitions suspended in a gray haze. Filthy air has swamped much of northern China for weeks, but some amateur dancers have stuck to their outdoor ballroom routines.

The specterlike dancers in Fuyang, a city in Anhui Province, this week have become one of the images that capture Chinas latest winter of smog. A wintertime surge in pollution here is often called an airpocalypse in foreign news reports. But as these images suggest, living in this miasma has become for many residents a routine to be endured, even defied with an outdoor fox trot.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The teenage girl had barely survived an attempted mob lynching in Kabul. The police responded by forcing her to undergo a virginity examination.

An unproved accusation of adultery had sent the mob chasing the girl and the young man she had been linked to, and the crowd set fire to the car in which the two were found last July in west Kabul. They barely escaped, but the police seemed more concerned about the mobs accusation. They chased her down and arrested her hours later.

Since there was suspicion of sexual relationship, the police sent the girl to forensic medical for virginity test, Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the Kabul Police Criminal Investigation Department, said after her arrest.

That was months after President Ashraf Ghani had promised rights activists that forensic virginity tests  an invasive examination to check whether the hymen is intact  would be abolished as an official procedure. And it was years after studies and human rights groups had discredited the practice entirely, finding it invalid and tantamount to sexual abuse.
Readers also shared their tactics for dealing with the calls.

Sometimes I give the scammer a made up credit card number one digit short of the full complement, then keep changing the sequence when they read it back, Bruce in Cleveland wrote. I can still make dinner while Im doing this on speaker phone.

Here is a selection of the responses. They have been edited and condensed.

Personal Experiences With Fraud

I thought I was impervious to scams since I had installed security software from a known, trusted company (ABC). Two months ago ABC sent me an email saying that I didnt have adequate protection on my system. The email asked me to download a new module to update my security package. Not even thinking remotely about potential problems with this approach, I did as they asked. But the module wouldnt install, and it gave me an error code and a number to call. Not only that, but I was called several times from someone claiming to be their representative who would help me with this problem. So I called them back and was connected to Chris Coleman, a fellow with a deep accent who spoke broken English. Chris told me he needed to take control of my system to search for viruses. Long story short, I finally tumbled to the truth when Chris asked me for my credit card to buy some new, improved security software!

 Thomas E. Heines in Dallas, who has worked in information technology

My 82-year-old mother, whose memory and judgment are fading, has been getting calls from Windows tech support for a couple years. I keep telling her to just hang up, its a scam, but she keeps talking to them. So far they only got $300, but last month there were a couple close calls. One guy took control of her computer and tried to have her sign up for online banking (she called me before they got any money). I am taking steps to limit her access to her money. This is the only way to protect someone like her from these awful scams.

 Eric Beldoch in Ardsley, N.Y.

Ashamed, for what the youth of my country has got themselves into. I hope such scammers are busted as early as possible. Its not just American citizens; international students are also targeted. My cousin was duped of 3,000 Australian dollars and another one of $4,000.

 Aryan Nair via Facebook

My 90-year-old father was tormented by these people for a year. He believed they were going to fix his computer, and he gave them his log in and password. And he paid them for lifetime service on his PC. Then they started calling and threatening him to send more money. Said they would destroy his PC. I had Montgomery County police (in Maryland) come to the house and provided them the contact info. They said they see this all the time and there was nothing they could do. I told them I had contacted the F.T.C. but there was no one to speak with  only a contact us form  as if that would help. I begged Dad to stop answering the phone, but he didnt because hes lonely and thats what his generation does when the phone rings. Returned after a three-day trip to find receipts on the table for $300 worth of iTunes cards. Dad doesnt even know what iTunes is. So a feeling of total helplessness. No legal authority in this country is able to protect our elderly from this kind of fraud.

 Mel Craig in Washington

Being the victim of financial fraud is often one of the first signs that someone is suffering from this disease [dementia]. Caller ID is of no use to someone who is beginning to lose their faculties. I watched my father deal with this on a daily basis for six years, screening phone calls, intercepting letters from fraudulent charities and contests (an average of about six per day), and doing other things to protect a relative with dementia. One called back and told him to look out his front window; he was about to be killed by someone waiting outside.

 Richard Garner in Germantown Hills, Ill.

Promoted if We Got Tough

As a young man I was trained as a collections agent by a major retailer. I was taught all manner of tactics to get people to pay their bills. We were paid a bonus and promoted if we got tough. There was no Fair Debt Collections Practices Act then, but still there were laws and our employer taught us to ignore them. I helped set up call centers in Madras, Bangalore and Bombay, so far back those places still had those old names. Over the years Ive also interviewed for jobs in the U.S. that involve scamming people over the phone. Never took the job, though. This kind of fraud doesnt just originate overseas. We need a stronger Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, yet the president-elect wants to gut the office.

 Thomas H. Williams in Annapolis, Md.

Sharing Defense Strategies

I do not ever, ever, ever answer a call from a number I dont recognize  ever, not at home, not on my cell, not at work. If its important, and genuine, the caller usually leaves a message, and I return the call if I choose.

 AMM in New York

One time, with one of these I.R.S. Treasury calls, I was particularly incensed, knowing that these scammers were going to victimize more gullible people. So I called them back, and lectured the guy who answered. He hung up. So I called back again  and lucky me, the same guy answered the phone. Again, another lecture, and I worked to shame him as much as I could. He hung up. Yeah, I called again  and, again, the same guy. This time I pointed out to him the sad futility of his life, pointing out how he clearly had some basic skills  good enunciation, good tone of voice  and how he could be working a legitimate job if he wanted to, yet he was pursuing life as a scam artist. He broke down crying, saying he had to pay his bills. But he got no sympathy from me.

 Evelyn in Orlando

I was able to get the Microsoft scammers to stop by saying in a stern voice O.K., Detective  youre on the line? This is the fraudulent call I want you to trace, and pressing any button on the keypad, which emits a tone that sounds like the start of a recording. I am convinced they target older people, thinking we are too stupid to realize these are phony calls.

 Ellen D. Murphy in Portland, Me.

I get the Microsoft Support calls fairly regularly. The usual pitch, We have detected that your PC is infected  My response is to play along: Oh, no! No, I am not in front of my PC right now , Im going to put the phone down while my PC boots up  Then I just put the phone down. I wait until I hear the scammer shouting themselves hoarse for me to come back to the phone. Then I ask them if their mother knows that they are working as a scammer. Thats when they curse and hang up.

 Jeff in the Slope in New York

The approach I use when receiving such scamming phone calls is to say: Please give me your phone number and location, and I will have my attorney call you.

 MNW in Connecticut

It happens in Canada, too. I was getting dozens of calls a day  really annoying as I work from home a lot. I let them go to voice mail except for once where I told the guy where to go. OMG! He really got mad. Were urged to report such incidents to the police. However, nothing stops it.

 Joan Morrissey via Facebook

Got a call from an Andrew McGowen, supposedly an F.B.I. agent informing me that my I.R.S. tax issues will cause me to be arrested in the next 24 hours if I did not send a gift card loaded with $2,500 immediately. His heavily accented English didnt seem right for someone of Irish heritage. Having a little fun, I wasted as much of his time as I could, ending with a question: How is the weather in Mumbai today? Silence.

 Ken in Mont Vernon, N.H.

Sullying Indias Reputation

Every week I get two or three early-morning scam calls from India, and I am sick of them. I get either the I.R.S. scam or the Microsoft computer virus scam. They have given me very negative feelings toward India.

 Mary Ann Hymel in Bellevue, Wash.

When I hear an Indian voice on the phone, I immediately distrust whoever it is. That is sad. These people are doing no service for their own country. They are giving India a bad reputation.

 Elizabeth in Washington

Reflections on the Fraud

What struck me most in this article is the statement that he made about Americans fearing their government. That was profound to me. And it speaks to the very reason why people fall for these scams. We shouldnt fear being taxed to the point that when you receive calls like this, you immediately think of everything you will lose.

 Crystal Means via Facebook

I was the lucky recipient of probably 100 of these calls over several years, and I watched the scam evolve, with interest. At first, it was laughable: Guys with heavy accents, claiming to be Steve Martin (seriously?), using language that was very British-influenced and awkward-sounding. After about three years, the caller became an educated sounding Indian woman, with the language and agency names considerably cleaned up. Then, the messages became computer generated so no accents and no names. I think were unlikely to get smarter, but they can only get better at scamming.

 Mosselyn in Silicon Valley
JAKARTA, Indonesia  Indonesia has stepped back from its decision to suspend military cooperation with Australia, moving to end a rupture that threatened an important military alliance in Asia.

The rupture  over training material deemed insulting to Indonesias founding ideology that had been found on a military base in Australia  has highlighted the political challenges Indonesias president, Joko Widodo, has faced in recent months as he confronts threats to his power ahead of elections in February.

Questions are being raised about whether Mr. Joko, widely known as Jokowi, knew that his top general was planning to suspend military ties with Australia. The general, Gatot Nurmantyo, is an ardent nationalist who is thought to have political ambitions of his own.

The suspension of military ties with Australia threatened Indonesias efforts to improve relations with its southern neighbor and raised the specter of a deep split between the two countries, both vital American allies in the region.


SEOUL, South Korea  Japan recalled its envoy to South Korea on Friday to protest a statue commemorating Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II, in the latest sign that ties between Washingtons two key Asian allies were again deteriorating over the bitter historical issue.

The Japanese government finds this situation extremely regrettable, Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said during a news conference in Tokyo, referring to the placement of the statue outside the Japanese Consulate in Busan, South Koreas second-largest city, last week.

A spokesman for Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yasuhisa Kawamura, said the ambassador, Yasumasa Nagamine, as well as the consul general in Busan, Yasuhiro Morimoto, had been recalled temporarily, declining to say when they would return.

Japan also said it would suspend negotiations over a currency swap meant to help South Korea stabilize its currency, the won, in times of financial crisis. It also suspended high-level economic talks and said staff at the consulate in Busan would not attend events organized by the city government.
LONDON  Jill Saward, a British rape victim who waived her right to anonymity and called on other victims of sexual assault to come forward about their ordeal, died on Thursday in Wolverhampton, England. She was 51.

The cause was a subarachnoid hemorrhage, her family said in a statement.

Ms. Saward was 21 when members of an armed gang broke into the West London vicarage used by her father, an Anglican priest, and her family. Attackers dragged her upstairs and repeatedly raped her, while another man burglarized the house. Her father and her boyfriend were severely beaten.

Although the rapists were convicted, the case drew criticism after they received substantially shorter prison sentences than the man who had carried out the burglary.

John Leonard, the judge who sentenced the men, was quoted as saying that the rapists should be shown leniency because the trauma suffered by the victim was not so great, according to news accounts at the time. He later expressed regret for the comment.
In an exit memorandum reflecting on eight years of United States foreign policy, Secretary of State John Kerry enumerated the Obama administrations diplomatic accomplishments. But that record may be weakened or overturned by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has denigrated many of President Obamas policies.

Here is a look at how the secretary and the president-elect see the major foreign policy issues differently.
MOSCOW  Russia has ordered its only aircraft carrier to return home, part of a general drawdown of forces involved in the Syria conflict, a senior general announced on Friday.

The carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, was sent to the eastern Mediterranean in the fall to mount airstrikes and other missions in support of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But the voyage became more of a show of force than an actual extension of it.

The trip was the first combat mission for the Soviet-era ship, and it apparently was used to work out some teething problems for Russian naval aviation, which has never been a primary focus of the countrys military.

The black-smoke-spewing Admiral Kuznetsov has an air wing of just 15 planes, much smaller than Western fleet carriers, which have about 60, and it experienced a number of problems on the voyage.
GIVEN what President-elect Donald J. Trump has said about his energy strategy  he favors coal and wants to end federal subsidies to the clean energy industry  does it still make sense to invest in wind, solar and other alternative sources of power?

The answer is an emphatic yes, according to investment advisers, who say clean energy companies will continue to thrive during a Trump administration, regardless of what the president says or does. The sector has become as much about getting returns on investments and catching the next technological boom as it is about reducing greenhouse gases and helping the environment.

And clean energy is creating jobs in every state, not just the ones that have oil or gas in the ground. Even the most politically conservative states, like Kansas and Iowa, are leaders in wind power and are likely to continue investing in it.

No longer is there a trade-off between what you believe in and what you can make money off of, said Nancy Pfund, a founder and managing partner of DBL Partners, which made early investments in SolarCity and Tesla.
Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017 Source: twitter.com

In a report released Friday afternoon, the United States intelligence community claimed that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for ordering a campaign to undermine public faith in the 2016 United States presidential election in general and Hillary Clintons campaign in particular. The declassified version of the report does not include the full supporting evidence that the government agencies relied on to make their assessment.

But what if youd rather not take the governments word for it? Reports released last summer by information security companies provide some publicly available evidence about the source of the attacks.

Phishing for Podesta

During the month leading up to the United States presidential election, WikiLeaks published daily releases of thousands of emails from Mr. Podestas Google account. One of the emails published by WikiLeaks in late October is a spear phishing email that could have been used by hackers to learn the password for Mr. Podestas email account.

Spear phishing is a term used to describe a type of hack that often uses an official-looking email that includes personal information like a name or photograph and appears to be sent by a person or business with whom the target is familiar. The email contains an attachment that it asks the target to download, or a link to be clicked.

Smene has yur passwrd Hi John



Someone just used your password to try to sign in to your Google Account john.podesta@gmail.com.



Details:

Saturday, 19 March, 8:34:30 UTC

IP Address: 134.249.139.239

Location: Ukraine

Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.



CHANGE PASSWORD



Best,

The Gmail Team You received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google product or account. Source: wikileaks.org

In Mr. Podestas case, the message looks nearly identical to the alarming security emails Google sends to users of its email service when it thinks a password may have been compromised by someone in a different city or country trying to log in. But the CHANGE PASSWORD link in this email doesnt go to Googles account security page. Instead, its a Bitly link.

https://bit.ly/1PibSU0

Bitly is a public link shortening service popular for turning long, awkward web addresses into short links that can be easily typed into a phone, or shared on social media. In this case, the Bitly link served as a mask, hiding the real destination of the address from careful scrutiny, and potentially from Googles automatic anti-phishing defenses.

The short Bitly link expands into a longer one pointing to a page on com-securitysettingpage.tk, a web domain set up by the hackers.

http://myaccount.google.com-securitysettingpage.tk/

security/signinoptions/password?

e=am9obi5wb2Rlc3RhQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ==

&fn=Sm9obiBQb2Rlc3Rh

&n=Sm9obg== 

What appear to be garbled letters and numbers in the link are actually straightforward encodings of Mr. Podestas personal information.

http://myaccount.google.com-securitysettingpage.tk/

security/signinoptions/password?

e=john.podesta@gmail.com

&fn=John Podesta

&n=John 

The remainder of the expanded link contains the address to the public photograph for Mr. Podestas Google account, and a unique identifier that could be used to track this particular email and phishing attempt.

Source: googleusercontent.com

The hackers link is no longer active, but earlier last year it displayed the fake login page seen below. To further persuade a target, that malicious page could have been filled in with the name and photograph from the Bitly link to create a nearly perfect reconstruction of what the target would normally see when logging in to a Google account. The only obvious hint that something was amiss would be the com-securitysettingpage.tk domain in the address bar.

If Mr. Podesta had entered his password on that page, he would in effect be giving it directly to the hackers, enabling them to get access to his email account. And if he had reused that password to log into any other system, like the Clinton campaigns network, the hackers would have been able to get access to that system as well.

The joint Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security report on Russian malicious cyberactivity issued on Dec. 29 illustrates a strikingly similar process executed against a United States political party, in which an adversary uses an email containing a malicious link to recover a password, giving the hackers access to a targeted system. The report claims that the fake login page was hosted on a domain controlled by Russian intelligence services.

Who were the targets?

The attackers made a mistake. Until May of last year, the Bitly website provided a little-used feature that allowed anyone to look up a list of all of the links shortened by a particular account. A team at SecureWorks, an information security company, noticed a large-scale spear phishing campaign being conducted against Google accounts using Bitly links in mid-2015.

By checking Bitly every day for new short links being posted by the account, SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit team was able to watch the hackers target their victims as it happened. Alarmed, the team began to work with United States law enforcement agencies.

At first, from mid-2015 until March 2016, the team observed the hackers as they used this tactic to target roughly 1,800 Google accounts belonging primarily to individuals in Russia and states formerly in the Soviet Union, although government, diplomatic and military targets in the United States and Europe were targeted as well. The press officer for the prime minister of Ukraine was targeted, as were political and military leaders in Ukraine and Georgia, Russian dissidents and Syrian rebel leaders.

Between March 2016, when the United States primary elections were in full swing, and May, when a redesign of the Bitly site removed the feature that was allowing SecureWorks to track the attacks, the hackers began to target Mrs. Clintons presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

In that time period, the hackers sent 213 malicious Bitly links to 108 Google email addresses associated with the Clinton campaign. Twenty of those links were clicked.

The hackers sent 16 Bitly links to nine official email addresses at the D.N.C., and four of those links were clicked. Also targeted were 26 other personal Gmail.com addresses associated with the Clinton campaign, the D.N.C. or national politics.

In a statement, Rob Platzer, the chief technical officer of Bitly, said, spammers and phishers create new bad domains at a high rate, and theyre not on our radar until theyve been flagged by our sources, and that the company had blocked the links and accounts related to this attack as soon as they were informed of them.

Over the course of a year, the SecureWorks team watched as over 5,000 Google accounts  mostly in Russia and states formerly in the Soviet Union  were targeted in the same manner. By searching for online profiles associated with the email addresses that had been attacked, the team was able to identify roughly half of the targets. They found that of the targets outside the former Soviet Union, most were government or military personnel, aerospace professionals, political activists, authors and journalists.

Professions of targets outside former U.S.S.R. Military Authors and journalists Government N.G.O. employees Aviation and Aerospace Political Activists 41% 22% 16% 10% 7% 4% Military Writers Government N.G.O. Aerospace Activists 41% 22% 16% 10% 7% 4% Source: SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit

The government and military personnel in that group mostly served the United States, NATO and European countries.

Nation or organization of government and military targets United States NATO United Kingdom Europe Syria China South Korea United Arab Emirates United Nations 64% 14% 6% 4% 4% 2% 2% 2% 2% U.S.A. NATO U.K. Europe Syria China South Korea U.A.E. U.N. 64% 14% 6% 4% 4% 2% 2% 2% 2% Source: SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit

The journalists and authors in that group mostly wrote about Russia, Ukraine and global affairs, or were the spouses of military personnel.

Authors and journalists areas of expertise Russia Military spouses Ukraine Global affairs Aerospace Northeast Asia 31% 22% 22% 17% 4% 4% Russia Military spouses Ukraine Global affairs Aerospace Northeast Asia 31% 22% 22% 17% 4% 4% Source: SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit

Mr. Trump has his doubts

In the first presidential debate against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump said:

I dont think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the D.N.C. Shes saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I dont  maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, O.K.?

In a Tuesday interview on Fox News, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, reasserted his claim that Russia did not give Mr. Podestas emails to WikiLeaks, saying: We can say and we have said repeatedly, over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, was dismissive of Mr. Assanges credibility and said that our assessment now is even more resolute that Russian intelligence was behind the attacks on the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  An arriving airline passenger pulled a gun from his luggage and opened fire in the baggage claim area at the Fort Lauderdale airport Friday, killing five people and wounding eight before throwing his weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, authorities and witnesses said.

The gunman was immediately taken into custody.

Authorities gave no details on a possible motive for the shooting, which sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, baggage in hand, and forced the shutdown of the entire airport.

People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs, a witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that the gunman was carrying a military ID that identified him as Esteban Santiago, but that it was unclear whether the ID was his. Nelson gave no further information on the suspect.

We dont know a motive at this point, he said. This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism. We cant conclude that.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said.

Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed on the attack by the sheriffs office, told The Associated Press that the shooter had arrived aboard a Canadian flight with a gun in a checked bag.

After he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We dont know why, LaMarca said.

It is legal for airline passengers to carry guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not in a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in

The attack took place at Terminal 2, which serves Delta Air Lines and Air Canada.

Lea said the gunman said nothing as he went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding. The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines of ammunition, Lea said.

Then the attacker threw down his weapon and lay spread-eagle on the ground until he was taken into custody, Lea said.

Sheriff Scott Israel said five people were killed and eight were wounded. Their condition was not disclosed. He said the gunman was arrested unharmed, with no law enforcement officers firing any shots, and was being questioned by the FBI.

People spilled onto the tarmac, some carrying luggage, and some ran from both Terminals 1 and 2, hiding behind cars or anything else they could find to shield themselves.

The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated at least one bleeding victim on the tarmac. Fort Lauderdale-bound flights already in the air were delayed or diverted, and those that had yet to take off from the airport were held on the ground.

Video posted on Instagram appeared to show several people wounded in the baggage claim area of the terminal. One person appeared to be lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

John Schilcher told Fox News said he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground, said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law.

The firing just went on and on, he said.

He said the gunman emptied his weapon and reloaded, and it was eerily quiet.

I was down on the floor, when we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me, Schilcher said. Thats when I assumed it was safe.

Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro and Adriana Gomez-Licon in Miami contributed to this report.
Investigators say a foreign government was likely behind a cyber breach of health insurance company Anthem Inc., which compromised more than 78 million consumers records.

The California Department of Insurance says Anthem has agreed to make $260 million worth of improvements to its information security systems. It will also provide credit protection to consumers whose information was compromised.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones says investigators found with a significant degree of confidence that the cyber attacker was acting on behalf of a foreign government. He did not identify the government.

Intruders cracked Anthems database in February 2014 with a phishing email. They gained remote access to that computer and at least 90 other systems.

They accessed Social Security numbers, birthdates and employment details for customers, all key ingredients for stealing someones identity.
During the early days of Javiers, when it was located in Laguna Beach, restaurateur JC Clow was a frequent diner at the the cozy Cabo-inspired eatery known for its fine Mexican cuisine.

I spent many great years and celebrations there, said Clow, founding partner of The Winery in Tustin and Newport Beach.

Clow eventually grew close to owner and founder Javier Sosa, who now operates Javiers restaurants in Newport Beach, Irvine, Las Vegas (Aria Hotel) and Los Cabos, Mexico.

We knew each other when we were young and beautiful, joked Sosa.

Later this year, the two veteran Orange County restaurateurs will be reunited when they bring their successful brands to Westfield UTC, an upscale San Diego outdoor mall undergoing a $585 million expansion.

Were pretty excited about being neighbors, said Clow during a recent phone interview.

The two restaurants are part of the centers Phase 2 renovation, a 250,000-square-foot expansion featuring 90 new shops and restaurants. The centerpiece of the addition will be a new 144,000-square-foot Nordstrom, which is relocating to a larger space when the project is complete in October.

The 40-year-old center is near UC San Diego.

Clow likened the mall expansion to renovations made a few years ago to Fashion Island, when the Newport Beach center built new structures for high-end restaurants and retailers such as Red O, Fig & Olive and Nespresso.

Its going to be stunning, Clow said.

For Clow, opening at UTC marks the continued growth of the white-table cloth venue he launched in 2007 when The District lifestyle center opened on the former Tustin air base.

Seven years later, he and his partners opened the second The Winery in Newport Beach in the closed Villa Nova space along Mariners Mile. The Newport Beach waterfront location catapulted the wine country themed brand, Clow said.

Since then, hes been approached by several developers to bring The Winery to other locations including projects in Las Vegas and Scottsdale, Az.

Were in a position where we are listening to opportunities, Clow said.

He became interested in the San Diego project when he heard the developers were talking to his old friend Sosa, an inspiring and successful restaurant owner.

Clow said he likes the idea of being part of a tenant mix that includes premium and exclusive retailers like Amazon Books, Tesla, Apple, Pandora, Tiffany & Co. and Michael Kors.

Another plus: The 8,000-square-foot restaurant will be close to the relocated Nordstrom, one of the companys more successful department stores, he said.

Other exclusive brands coming in October include Danny Meyers burger sensation Shake Shack.

Clow said coming to Westfield is definitely a good move for us.

Taking advantage of the mall foot traffic, Clow is also opening a wine bar in the center. The 1,000-square-foot bar, which has a separate kitchen from The Winery, will offer a small bites menu, grab-and-go foods and wine flights aimed at women taking a shopping break and mall employees looking for a quick takeout meal.

With its flat screen TVs and plenty of phenomenal San Diego craft beer on tap, Clow said the bar also serves another purpose. The wine bar will be there for the guys who dont want to follow their wives shopping.

As for Sosa, he said the Westfield UTC location will likely be the last Javiers hell open. Javiers is opening a location in Century City (another Westfield property) this spring. The UTC project is expected to open in October.

Opening two restaurants within six months of each other is making Sosa nervous. Hes secretly hoping the San Diego project will run into some delays.

Either way, two more Javiers feels like enough.

Thats all for me, he said.

Contact the writer: nluna@ocregister.com
LOS ANGELES  A former security guard ordered released from prison after prosecutors said new evidence cast doubt on his conviction for killing a college student will now ask a California judge to throw out the conviction.

The Los Angeles Times reports that when Raymond Lee Jennings appears in court Thursday, hell have support from the same district attorneys office that prosecuted him more than a decade ago.

In a letter filed in court this week, prosecutors said Jennings conviction should be tossed out based on newly discovered evidence pointing to his factual innocence.

Jennings, who spent more than 11 years behind bars, has maintained he had nothing to do with the shooting death of Michelle OKeefe in 2000. A judge in June ordered his release.
Community forums. Face-to-face meetings with leaders of the local deputies union and with local defense attorneys. Twitter.

Is this any way to conduct a civil-rights investigation?

Actually it is. All of those forms of public outreach  many of them as likely to get people talking to each other as they are to ferret out misconduct  could be part of the U.S. Department of Justices new probe into the Orange County District Attorneys Office and the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

The tactics were among many details spelled out in a report released this week that describes the role of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which enforces a law enacted in the mid-1990s after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.

The playbook shows that as federal lawyers conduct their probe of the countys ongoing jailhouse informant scandal  a process that could take many months  they hope to diffuse any public tension even if they have to force changes in the countys justice system.

The document also makes two clear statements:

One: The fact that federal officials are here indicates that, in their view, the countys prosecutors and jailers have exhibited signs of systemic failure, in this case the routine misuse of jailhouse informants and withholding of evidence from defense attorneys to win convictions. The Justice Department doesnt typically look at one-time violations, and evidence that wrongdoing is routine and ongoing is the minimum threshold to launch an investigation.

Two: Just because theyre investigating is not a sign theyll find actual wrongdoing. In more than a third of the investigations launched by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, federal prosecutors did not find misconduct.

Officials from the Justice Department. arent commenting on the investigation. Likewise, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens declined to comment through a spokesman, while an email to the Orange County District Attorneys Office was not returned.

In addition to describing how federal investigations work, the document also offered some data.

The division has opened 69 investigations, 40 of those ending in reform agreements. When the statute was passed, in 1994, it was aimed mostly at the nations 18,000 police agencies. But the law also can be applied to prosecuting agencies, such as the local District Attorneys Office, and the investigation in Orange County, announced last month, marks the the second time the so-called Rodney King law has been aimed at prosecutors. The first was in Missoula, Mont., in 2012, over an alleged failure to prosecute sexual assault cases.

The division, according to the document, has investigated police agencies as large as the one in Puerto Rico, with 18,000 officers, and as small as the department in East Haven, Conn., which has 50 officers.

The documents also show that the investigation, announced last month, came only after federal officials had informally watched the county for several months.

The division, according to the documents, conducts hundreds of such preliminary investigations, but few rise to the level of a formal probe. Investigators step in if they believe its possible there is a pattern and practice of misconduct. Attention is placed on whole departments, not individual officers or attorneys. Also, officials consider whether an investigation can result in reforms that might be used by other agencies nationwide.

The Division considers whether the allegations represent an issue common to many law enforcement agencies as well as whether the allegations represent an emerging or developing issue, such that reforms could have an impact beyond the primary objective of eliminating constitutional violations in the specific law enforcement agency, said the playbook.

Federal officials will spend at least some time away from county prosecutors and deputies  talking instead with local political leaders, community advocates, union officials and defense attorneys, among others.

Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said federal investigators have not contacted him, but if they do, hell give them an earful.

We absolutely look forward to  having some frank discussions, Dominguez said. At the end of the day it will be shown our systems are adequate.

As part of the local probe, investigators also will review thousands of pages of material, in this case, legal briefs, secret notes kept by deputies on the informants, jail housing records called TREDs, informant deals and court transcripts, among other papers.

Typically, investigations take more than a year, sometimes because the records are not in order.

Unfortunately, the agencies the Division investigates  ones that are already exhibiting signs of systemic failures by meeting the threshold for a federal investigation  often do not keep well maintained, comprehensive electronic records, the federal document said.

If no pattern and practice of misconduct is found, investigators will close the file, as they have in 26 cases since the federal law was enacted.

If a pattern is confirmed, the division will write a findings report and present it at a public forum before prosecutors, police, community stakeholders and others.

It is both a diagnosis of a law enforcement agencys problems and the foundation for a plan to treat the root causes of those problems, the primer explained.

Finally, before negotiating any court-enforceable reform agreement with the agencies involved, the division will seek community input.

The Division does not stake out aggressive positions merely for the purposes of creating negotiating leverage, and rarely finds that local jurisdictions withhold agreement on common-sense measures merely for that purpose, either, said the report.

In most cases, police agencies work with the division to create meaningful reform, the report said.

If conflicts arise, investigators can take the agencies to court to force the fixes; working in a way that violates constitutional rights is not an option. But only six cases, out of dozens, have required such litigation, the primer said.

More often, a reform monitoring team is created to be sure agencies dont slip into old habits. It often remains in place long after investigators leave.

Contact the writer: tsaavedra@scng.com
Indie film icon Jim Jarmusch has made wry, observational movies about hipster losers (his 1984 breakout Stranger Than Paradise), escaped convicts (Down by Law), cowboy existentialists (Dead Man), existential hit men (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and a devoted vampire couple (Only Lovers Left Alive).

However, the king of low-key cool had never made anything you could call gosh darn sweet until his latest feature, Paterson. It charts a routine week in the life of a Paterson, N.J., bus driver  a character also named Paterson (Adam Driver)  who writes poetry he wont show to anybody (but we hear and see printed on the screen, actually composed by Ron Padgett).

Not much of a life, you say? Well, you havent met Patersons wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), an effusive, ever-imaginative artist of her own life who loves her quiet husband to pieces, as he does her.

Creativity, modesty, eccentricity and one nasty bulldog are the elements of Paterson, and its arguably Jarmuschs finest film.

We talked to the writer-director and super-hot Driver (Girls, The Force Awakens, Martin Scorseses Silence) about their achievement.

Q. Poet William Carlos Williams work about his hometown, Paterson, is an American masterpiece, but only obliquely referenced in your movie of the same name. Reason?

Jarmusch: The long poem Paterson is quite complicated. Ive read it, but its not my favorite of his works, I think because I dont completely get it (laughs). But there are beautiful things in it, and I love his shorter poems.

Q. So how much of an influence was he on your concept for the movie?

Jarmusch: In the very beginning of the poem, Williams uses a metaphor of a man being the city of Paterson and vice versa. So thats where I got the idea, Im sure. I visited Paterson 20-some years ago because of him, and because of the waterfalls, the Passaic Falls. I just went there because it was a kind of neglected city people didnt talk about much, it had an interesting history, which I only had a vague knowledge of.

So I went there for the day, and it was partly because of Williams. And Allen Ginsberg was born there. But I just went home with a vague idea to someday make a film about a poet from Paterson who was a working-class guy.

Q. Were you thinking about having to represent the city while acting in the movie?

Driver: I guess I was just more excited to work with Jim. That was the initial thing, then reading the script, I loved the character so much. Its rare to play someone where their relationship is working. They give each other mutual space and respect and inspiration. His main action is to listen to her and to everyone around him.

Q. It is the greatest marriage Ive seen in a movie in years. Decades.

Driver: Jim said, Shes in complete control and hes completely fine with it. Golshifteh is obviously beautiful, but just very open and really funny, and a great scene partner.

Q. You two are so nice together, yet still compelling.

Jarmusch: Why does everything have to be based on conflict? I know youre taught that in screenwriting class or whatever. But there are beautiful films from the 40s, beautiful Japanese films where the whole film is really just about some minor domestic disturbance, like two parents worrying because their daughter is moving away to the city. Why is conflict always expected? There are love stories within my last two films, Only Lovers Left Alive and Paterson, where the people accept who the other one is. Why is that so unusual?

I know that we do defy some expectations of plot and action (laughs), but I dont think those things are necessary to make an interesting film. And Im trying to make films where, while youre watching them, you are not thinking about whats going to happen next. Im trying to make films where you just are there.

Q. The movie is basically about Patersons daily routine, and in that way kind of resembles verse.

Jarmusch: Its a nice, simple, repetitive form. Im a big fan of variations in all artforms. I love varying things, and this film is completely structured as a series of variations to the simplistic point of it just being seven days in a week.

Q. Were you into poetry before you signed on for this?

Driver: I had a very light, elementary knowledge of poetry. I knew Allen Ginsbergs Howl, but apart from that, I didnt know Ron Padgett, I didnt know much at all. But getting it through Jims lens, who studied at Columbia under Kenneth Koch and is very much a champion of poetry, just makes it way better, as opposed to learning it from a stuffy professor.

Q. Poetry obviously means a lot to you.

Jarmusch: Poetry liberated me as a teenager in Akron, Ohio. I discovered some of the French poets from the 19th century, then Walt Whitman and some others. I thought Baudelaire was a real badass, like these guys are really amazing rebels. Theyre not conformists, theyre living in wild ways, they are artists, very expressive, they are attempting to be masters of their form and theyre not doing it for the money. They really inspired me to follow my own instincts and its OK to have artistic aspirations. Which, yknow, were not so common in Akron.

Q. I wont ask if you write poetry now, but can you drive a bus?

Driver: I can, yeah. Legally. Ive got the license, so I can drive a bus. I dont have a bus, so it makes it more difficult. But if someone doesnt show up, I can cover.

Jarmusch: Hes a good bus driver. As he was driving, his moves were very confident. Not a tentative bus driver.

Driver: Plus, I had to overcompensate. If youre an actor, some people think youre an idiot. The stunt guys can talk to you like youre a child, so I had to overcompensate, like say, Leave me alone! Im gonna drive this thing.

Q. Youre also in Scorseses Silence. How did you fall into the two best movies of the year?

Driver: Luck.

Jarmusch: I dont think its luck.

Q. How much weight did you lose to play that tormented priest?

Driver: Fifty-one pounds. The weight was a lot of the challenge, and shooting it in the remote Taiwan locations was very difficult; there were seven different languages going on on the set. But the eating had a lot to do with it. Trying to focus when youre hungry, going to bed hungry, having energy for scenes; it was all very challenging. But the story lent itself to a bit of struggle. It would be hard to play a persecuted, 17th-century Jesuit priest fat and drunk and going to trailers between takes.

Q. You were one of the founders of American independent cinema and among the few who havent gone Hollywood. Why, and what do you think the influence of that has been?

Jarmusch: What Im conscious of is that I have to do it my way or Im not gonna do it. Thats been my fight always, so Im very stubborn. I dont know how to make a film for someone else. I make a film for those of us who are making it, and thats always been our way.

As far as the influence of it, I really have no idea. I dont understand that, I dont know what the films even mean to other people. Im very honored and pleased when they resonate with people, but I kind of intentionally remain ignorant of all that stuff. Im even shocked when young directors tell me Its because of you that I make films. My answer is always, Its not my fault!

Q. The third key player in the movie is Marvin the bulldog, whom Laura indulges and is spitefully jealous of Paterson. We hear that actor is no longer with us.

Driver: May she rest in peace.

Jarmusch: Yeah, what a lovely creature. Nellie was a rescue dog and she had a very good life. She was very smart and funny. And she played transgender! She was really a wonderful animal.

Driver: They tried to get me to not talk to Nellie because they wanted us to have a conflict, but they couldnt keep us apart.

Jarmusch: Nellie really loved Adam. She liked Golshifteh OK, but she was really connected with him. I think it was because when we would do takes walking, he would carry her back to the start if wed do it again. So she was really attached to him, she loved him so much.
LAGOS, Nigeria  She was found wandering in a forest, the first of the nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram to escape on her own and reach freedom. That was in May. Since then, Amina Ali Nkeki has been sequestered by Nigerias intelligence agency, embraced just once by her family months ago.

Some say Nigerias government is keeping the young woman silent because it doesnt want her telling the world about military blunders in the fight against the Islamic extremist group, or about her desire to be reunited with the father of her child  a detained former Boko Haram commander.

I worry, sometimes, that I dont know if she is alive or dead, her mother, Binta Ali Nkeki, sobbed during an exclusive telephone interview with The Associated Press from her remote northeastern village of Mbalala. She said she hasnt seen her daughter since July.

Sunday marks 1,000 days since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted together from a government boarding school in April 2014. Most of them remain in captivity. The few who have been freed, like Amina, have found themselves not completely free.

The mass kidnapping horrified the world and brought Boko Haram international attention. The failure of Nigerias former government to act quickly to free the girls sparked a global Bring Back Our Girls movement; even U.S. first lady Michelle Obama posted a photo with its logo on social media.

Amina was the first of the kidnapped girls to escape on her own. Months later, in October, the government negotiated the release of 21 Chibok girls. Another girl was freed in November in an army raid on an extremist camp in the Sambisa Forest.

On Thursday, one more was found during military interrogations of Boko Haram suspects, along with the baby she had given birth to in captivity.

When Aminas mother heard last month that freed girls would be allowed to come home for Christmas, she borrowed money to reach Chibok, the town where their former boarding school is located.

She was welcomed by the 21 girls, who tried to reassure her that her daughter was fine, in good health, even though she had not been allowed to accompany them.

Human rights groups and lawyers have criticized Nigerias treatment of the freed girls, who are held in Abuja, the capital, nearly 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Chibok. The government says the girls are getting medical attention, trauma counseling and rehabilitation.

Officials in the government and the presidency did not respond to requests for comment, following a familiar pattern.

People who have spoken to the freed girls say they have stories the government does not want told, including that three Chibok girls were killed during Nigerian Air Force bombings of Boko Haram camps.

Amina, who is believed to be at least 20 though her uneducated mother says she has no idea, has insisted that her childs father is a victim, like herself, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram and forced to fight for the insurgents.

Binta says that when her daughter was rescued  hunters found Amina, her 4-month-old baby girl and the father in a forest  she said she didnt want to go back to school. But her mother and brother, Noah, persuaded her to take up Nigerian President Muhammadu Buharis promise to give her the best education possible.

They told her that soon she will be starting school, Noah Ali Nkeki told the AP in an interview. He got the news in a rare phone call from his sister on Thursday, the first time he had heard from her in three months.

He cannot call her. Officials call him using a blocked number and then put Amina on the line. The girls mother doesnt get to speak to her because she doesnt own a cellphone and reception in her village is poor.

I dont know what the government is trying to do. They have had her now for seven months, Noah said.

Binta, a gaunt woman whose eyes mirror the pain of a hard life and whose hands are rough from farming, was widowed five years ago. Eleven of her children have died, in childbirth or soon afterward. Abina and Noah are all she has.

I wonder how my only grandchild is doing, she said of Aminas daughter, Safia. Do you think shes walking by now?

Binta was suicidal after her daughters kidnapping, community leaders have told the AP. There were reports Boko Haram threatened to sell the kidnapped girls into slavery, marry them off to fighters and force them to convert to Islam. Chibok is a Christian enclave in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.

Binta rallied after she got a message from Amina in 2015.In Chibok, two male Boko Harem fighters accompanied by a teenage girl carrying ammunition came across an elderly woman too feeble to flee.

The girl, speaking the Chibok language that the fighters could not understand, told the woman, I am Amina. My mothers name is Binta in the village of Mbalala. Please tell her you saw me.

The elderly woman described the encounter to community leaders, who worried that the proof of life message might be too much for Binta to bear.

Human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogede stepped in.

If I had a daughter who was missing and she tried to send a message to me, ld be very upset if someone withheld it. Amina tried to reach out, lets help her complete the effort, he counseled.

When Amina was freed, she and her family were flown to Abuja, where TV cameras and photographers documented Buhari welcoming her at the presidential mansion. That happened again with the 21 freed girls.

The girls needed trauma counseling and medical care, not exposure to the media, Human Rights Watch said at the time.

On Christmas Day, the freed girls visiting Chibok did not get to see their parents. They were kept in the house of a local legislator until Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima arrived to present them to their parents the next day. Witnesses said the girls were angry that they were prevented from going home and to their churchs Christmas service.

Shettimas spokesman, Isa Gusau, denied that account, which came from some of the parents.

I am not sure they were denied access to their parents because that was the essence of them being taken to Chibok in the first place, he told the AP. If you say their movements were restricted for security reasons and for their safety, I think that makes sense.

Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Chibok association of parents of the kidnapped girls and who is not related to Amina, said the Department of State Security intelligence agents who accompanied the girls deemed it unsafe for them to visit parents in outlying villages. But those with homes in Chibok town were not allowed to stay with their families, either.

Aminas mother, despite her tears, still has some faith in Nigerias actions.

Anything that the government wants to do with Amina, I have no problem with that, she said. But I just want to see my daughter with my own eyes.

On Friday, Bring Back Out Girls movement criticized the failure to free the 196 girls still missing, saying it is justifiably worried that the Nigerian government has once again relapsed to the same complacency, lethargy, and inertia that has been recurrent on this tragedy, it said.

Amnesty International also called for the government to redouble its efforts, warning the abductions could constitute war crimes.
BEIRUT  A large explosion rocked a Syrian government-held coastal town on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens  an attack that was a stark remainder of the prevailing insecurity in the war-torn country despite a nearly week-old cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

The explosion shook a main street in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad and the heartland of Syrias Alawites, a Shiite offshoot to which Assads family also belongs.

It was the first such large-scale bombing since the cease-fire was agreed on last week, to prepare the way for peace talks between Assads government and opposition in Kazakhstan later this month.

Videos from the scene of the blast, which state media said was a car bomb, show extensive damage to shops lining a commercial street near the towns municipal stadium. Blood pooled on the pavement and several cars lay charred or overturned as fire fighters scrambled to put out fires.

Qusay al-Khalil, the head of the local hospital, said the blast also severely wounded at least 30 people. The explosion shook the town, he told state TV, adding that it prompted a state alert at his hospital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war, put the death toll at 15, including a son of a leading Syrian military commander. The monitoring group relies on a network of activists on the ground in Syria.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Although explosions are rare in government-controlled Latakia, Jableh was rocked in May last year by a string of blasts that first hit in a crowded bus station, then outside a hospital receiving the wounded, killing a total of about 120 people. Those attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.

IS and the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front are not part of the broad truce that the Syrian government and the opposition agreed on last week.

The cease-fire, which came into effect on Dec. 30, has mostly held but not altogether halted fighting in the country. Fierce clashes continue in the Barada Valley, a major source of water for Damascus, and in other isolated regions. Both the government and the rebels have accused the other side of violating the truce.

The United Nations said Thursday it has received reports that at least 7,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the Barada Valley. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said an estimated 45,000 people live in the area.

Dujarric also said the U.N. has rehabilitated and equipped 120 wells in and around Damascus that cover about one-third of the citys daily water needs.

Syrias al-Qaida-linked group in comments published Wednesday called the cease-fire humiliating and said that those who agreed to it made a big mistake.

Latakia province police chief Yasser al-Shariti told state TV the explosion hit during rush hour, when government employees and students would have been crowding one of the towns busiest streets.

Others said the area was packed with shoppers, many coming from or going to a popular vegetable market nearby. Jableh is also home to thousands of internally displaced Syrians who have sought refuge in the relative calm of the government-controlled town.

Under the new cease-fire, Russia and Iran are tasked with ensuring compliance by the Syrian government and its allies, while Turkey is serving as a guarantor for the rebels. On Wednesday, Turkey called on Iran to rein in the pro-government forces. Tehran countered by accusing the opposition of dozens of violations and called Turkeys comments unconstructive.

The government in Damascus says the truce does not apply in the Barada Valley because of the presence of al-Qaida-linked fighters. But activists and rebel groups have challenged the government claim, with some arguing the militants dont operate in the area. The rebels have said all areas not ruled by IS are covered under the agreement.

In Geneva, the U.N. envoy for Syria said Thursday he welcomed preparations for the Russia- and Turkey-brokered peace negotiations in Astana, Kazakhstans capital, saying the gathering could undergird new U.N.-mediated talks between the warring sides. Staffan de Mistura acknowledged violent incidents in Syria the truce began, but added that he believed the powers would succeed in overcoming them.

However, nearly a dozen rebel groups announced on Monday they were suspending talks about the negotiations because of cease-fire violations.

A senior Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujaerdi, on a visit to Damascus, stressed on Thursday that as the al-Qaida-linked group and IS are not part of the agreement, matters are settled with them on the battlefield. Boroujaerdi, who is in charge of foreign policy and national security portfolios in Irans Shura Council, said that for any truce to hold, all militant groups must leave Syria.

The presence of al-Qaida-linked militants, who fight alongside other rebel factions and have been credited with some of their biggest victories, has undermined past truce attempts. The Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as the Nusra Front, announced last year that it had severed tied with al-Qaida, but is still widely believed to be linked to the global terror network.

Fatah al-Sham spokesman al-Shafei said in an interview published late Wednesday by Al-Jazeera Net that the current truce only protects Assad and allied Iranian-backed militias.

The people of (Syria) didnt offer all these sacrifices to be handed this humiliating agreement, he was quoted as saying. The Syrian rebellion today needs someone to  strengthen its political position by battlefield achievements, he said.

The rebels demand that any future solution for Syria include Assads exit from power.

But Boroujaerdi said peace talks should not put any conditions on the Syrian leadership. He also chastised Turkey for sending troops into northern Syria as one in a series of Ankaras policy mistakes. He added that any troops in Syria without the governments approval or permission should leave immediately.
ISTANBUL  Turkish police are closing in on the gunman who killed 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub, a senior government official said Thursday, insisting the suspects possible whereabouts and contacts have been established.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told A Haber news channel in an interview that the gunman who attacked Istanbuls upscale Reina nightclub was probably from Chinas Muslim Uighur minority and a specially trained member of a (terror) cell.

The security forces have determined his identify, his possible whereabouts have been determined His contacts have also been determined, Kaynak told A Haber. We can say that the circle is closing in on him.

Kaynak said authorities think the man, whose name hasnt been revealed, is still inside Turkey, although they havent completely ruled out the possibility that he may have escaped after the New Years attack.

Because we have taken utmost measures at our airports  even though we dont rule it out completely  we believe that we will get results from operations inside Turkey, he said.

His comments came hours after police conducted more raids in their hunt for the gunman and detailed several people at a housing complex on Istanbuls outskirts, the state-run news agency reported.

Anadolu Agency said gendarmerie police and special operations teams detained an undisclosed number of Uighurs during the raids. The Anadolu report said they were suspected of aiding and abetting the gunman.

At least 39 other people  including 11 women  already were in custody over suspected links to the attack.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, saying the nightclub attack was in reprisal for Turkish military operations in northern Syria. Most of the victims were foreign nationals from the Middle East.

The nightclub massacre was the latest in a string of attacks by either the Islamic State or Kurdish militants that have rocked the country since the summer of 2015.

On Thursday, suspected Kurdish militants opened fire at police who stopped them at a checkpoint in the western city of Izmir before detonating their explosives-laden vehicle. A policeman and a courthouse employee were killed in the attack, while two assailants also were shot dead.

Izmir Gov. Erol Ayyildiz said preliminary indications pointed to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which resumed attacks in Turkey after a fragile peace process collapsed in 2015.

The nightclub gunman reportedly escaped in a taxi after the attack. Turkish media have widely published images of the suspect, including a selfie video filmed at Istanbuls Taksim Square.

Security has been tightened around Istanbul and at border crossings and airports to prevent him from fleeing Turkey.

Another deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus suggested in an interview with the Hurriyet Daily news newspaper and other sister publications that foreign intelligence services could be behind the attack, pointing at the professional manner in which it was carried out.

I am of the opinion that its not possible for the perpetrator to have carried out such an attack without any support. It seems like a secret service thing. All these things are being assessed, Hurriyet Daily News quoted Kurtulmus as saying in the interview published on Thursday.

A group of about 20 suspects were also detained on Wednesday in a police operation in Izmir, western Turkey.

Anadolu said the suspects are from the largely Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan, as well as members of Chinas Muslim Uighur minority and from Syria.

They are thought to have lived with the gunman in an alleged Islamic State cell house in the central Turkish city of Konya, the agency reported. About 20 children who were with the detainees were also taken to a police station.
Eric Holder is bringing his talents to the Golden State.

In a stark sign of the rising stakes in Californias brewing battle against the incoming Trump administration, President Obamas former attorney general has been hired by Sacramento Democrats to help blunt anticipated federal changes on a broad array of issue areas, including the environment, health care and immigration.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon are well within their legal rights to bring on Holder. In making the move, they also very likely boast the support of most Californians  roughly two-thirds  who voted against Trump in November. (That includes a share of Republicans and Libertarians apt to support federalist resistance to would-be encroachment from Washington.)

At the same time, hiring Holder, even for the brief three-month term of Californias initial contract, is a clear provocation. It willfully risks putting partisan symbolism over substantive governance and further deepening the states divide between coastal elites and those inland.

Its not as if Sacramento Democrats need outside help for leadership or spine. Brown proved that by tapping Rep. Xavier Becerra for state attorney general. No slouch he, Becerra knows well how business is done inside the Beltway. He represented downtown Los Angeles in Congress for more than 20 years. Just last month, he joined his fellow party leaders in throwing down a personal gauntlet of his own: If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, he warned the Trump team, then come at us.

Nevertheless, for many Democrats well to Browns left, its impossible to overdo the preparations for battle. Of course, lawyering up has long been a proud tradition among us combative Americans. Yet more than steely self-interest is visible in Holders hiring. Speaker Rendon, for instance, called Trumps election a major existential threat on par with World War II and the Cold War. Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Marin, has introduced a resolution that accuses Trump of pursuing ethnic cleansing  through deportation, a policy president Obama took to new heights while in office.

Extreme claims like these will prove much more effective at fomenting public rage and entrenching harmful conflict than at keeping popular and established state policies in place. And though many Californians would welcome Obama setting up shop in Rancho Mirage and helping keep the new administration at bay, state Democrats risk exaggerating their national partys disadvantageous regional imbalance by rallying around Holder with a progressive movement that insists Donald Trump is Not My President.

Trump did win the White House  by running as an unprecedented kind of candidate. That means hes in for a kind of opposition Americans have never quite seen before either. But bringing on Holder raises questions about just how aggressive Californias Democratic leaders are willing to get, whatever the cost to their state. When fighting more out of fear than principle, even popular policies backed by moral resolve can become distorted and damaging. In the weeks and years to come, state officials owe it to their constituents to proceed judiciously, transparently and calmly.

Editors note: This editorial has been corrected since it was originally posted. Gov. Jerry Brown was not involved in the Legislatures hiring of Eric Holders law firm.
With tens of millions of dollars on the line, Orange County has begun gearing up for a federally mandated point-in-time count and survey of its homeless population this month.

The snapshot is crucial because it determines the types of services needed and how much funding the Department of Housing and Urban Development sends to the county to house homeless people.

If you dont do the PIT count, you dont get the money, said Karen Williams, president and chief executive of 2-1-1 Orange County, the nonprofit overseeing the biennial count here. Its a huge piece of what Orange County relies on to house the homeless.

How huge? In late December, HUD announced grant awards totaling $22.3 million to a host of programs in the Santa Ana/Anaheim/Orange County continuum of care, the regional network that provides housing and other services to homeless people.

The most pressing need for the countywide count: volunteers. Organizers estimate that at least 1,000 more people are needed to fan out across predetermined areas around the county from 4:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Jan. 28 or to man deployment sites in each of the five supervisorial districts.

The homeless population in Orange County was last counted in 2015. HUD requires that the point-in-time count take place every other year; some areas opt to do a count every year.

Cost is one reason Orange County does not conduct an annual count, Williams said. Expenses and in-kind costs for the 2017 count  including planning and organizing, wages for the field team guides, materials and travel  are estimated at more than $500,000. 2-1-1 is seeking sponsorships to defray the bill.

Supportive efforts have included a recent Orange County United Way donation drive and event in which volunteers helped assemble care packages to be distributed to homeless people during the count.

So far, about 500 people have volunteered to conduct the 2017 count, said Williams, who expects a crush of sign-ups over the next couple of weeks, based on past experience.

Were right on schedule, she said, but we definitely need volunteers.

Daily training sessions for volunteers are scheduled beginning Jan. 14. Sessions will last 90 minutes to three hours, depending on experience with the PIT count.

Both returning and new volunteers must undergo training to be part of the teams that go out in the streets, along the Santa Ana River trail and into other areas where homeless people are known to bed down.

Operators of emergency shelters and transitional housing programs will conduct a simultaneous count.

The one-night figure is used to estimate how many people in Orange County might end up homeless throughout the year. The 2015 figure was 15,291.

The enumeration follows the guidelines of HUDs definition of homelessness and does not count people who are jailed, live in motels or hotels, or couch-surf in the homes of friends or relatives  even though those are conditions considered to put someone at risk of being homeless.

Volunteers are instructed to count those they see but not to wake or disturb anyone. Because it is only a snapshot and limited in reach, the point-in-time effort is expected to undercount the homeless population. Still, the information provided is considered crucial.

In order to solve a problem, you have to measure it, Williams said. This is one of the key components.

Survey questions asked of willing participants are used to analyze characteristics of the local homeless population, such as age, gender, race, past military service and physical or mental disabilities.

The homeless count in Orange County steadily had decreased from a high of 8,333 in 2009 until an uptick in 2015, when the point-in-time count documented 4,452 homeless people, with about half unsheltered. In 2013, the number was 4,251.

Williams explained that warmer weather in 2015 also led to a higher percentage of homeless people found sleeping outdoors and marked as unsheltered.

She said another increase in Orange Countys homeless population would not be surprising given an anticipated impact from Proposition 47 throughout California. The 2014 ballot initiative reduced sentencing for some drug possession felonies and other crimes, leading to the unintended effect of releasing low-level offenders back into the community with no place to go.

Orange County is including a question on the survey about Prop. 47, as will other areas around the state, Williams said. HUD frowns on figures that show an increase in the homeless population and has tended to reward those areas where numbers have been dropping, presumably because of effective action.

If you see an increase, you want to be able to tie it back to something, Williams said of the Prop. 47 question, adding that the competition for HUD dollars is intense. Its a carrot-and-stick approach by HUD. And its very smart of them. They are looking at performance improvement.

Homeless advocates in the public and private sector point to the use of a HUD award that since August 2015 has linked 455 homeless people in Orange County to housing. An additional 452 homeless people have their documentation in place and are on a list to be housed.

One area of focus this year will be homeless college students. The county hopes to do a better job of determining how large that segment of the population is and has recruited groups of college students to help with the count, along with locating a deployment center at Cal State Fullerton.

There are other new twists to the point-in-time count for 2017:

 Instead of manually recording answers to the survey questions as in the past, volunteer teams will be armed with hand-held electronic tablets. 2-1-1 staffers then will input the information in a HUD cloud location.

 Sixteen of the countys 34 municipalities have requested city-specific reports. Besides Santa Ana and Anaheim, both large cities with longtime homeless populations, the list includes Stanton, Laguna Niguel, Newport Beach and San Clemente.

 Electric bicycle manufacturer Pedego has provided 20 bikes that will be used along the 30-mile Santa Ana River trail. Traversing that expanse in the past posed a challenge, Williams said, but with the electric bikes, well be able to cover the whole thing.

 The minimum age for volunteers dropped to 16, in part to allow greater participation of youth members in faith-based groups. They must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

As in past years, volunteers serving as counters will be led by homeless liaisons or guides, who are or were homeless themselves. During the past two months, areas where there are homeless encampments or where homeless people are known to sleep have been mapped to expedite the counting.

Staff members from nonprofits as well as the countys health and social service outreach workers provided input on the mapping. Less visible locations were verified on nighttime forays with sheriffs deputies wielding heat-detecting devices to determine the presence of human warmth, Williams said.

These guys are out there all the time. They know where people are.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com or on Twitter @TellTheresa
The California Department of Public Health has slapped 14 California hospitals, including three in Orange County, with penalties totaling $913,550 for failing to comply with licensing requirements, putting patients at risk of serious injury or death.

In Orange County, Anaheim Regional Medical Center faces $47,025 in fines, while South Coast Global Medical Center in Santa Ana was fined $50,000 and St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, $66,000.

According to CDPH documents, Anaheim Regional Medical Center failed to follow proper discharge procedures in the case of a woman in February 2015, who was nine weeks pregnant and was suffering from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy causing her fallopian tube to get torn.

After she was released, Anaheim resident Lisa Avila, a mother of seven children, suffered internal bleeding, required emergency surgery and treatment, and had to be placed on life support, officials said. She later died.

The hospital issued a statement, Thursday, saying that they value patient safety and quality of care.

We are continuously focused on maintaining and improving our high standards of care and we have put programs in place to help ensure that these high standards are met, the statement said. Our heartfelt sympathy continues to go out to the patients family and friends. This was a very difficult time for them as well as for the many physicians, nurses and technicians who provided compassionate care to the patient at the hospital two years ago.

South Coast Global Medical Center was fined in connection with the death of a patient in January 2014, which officials say occurred because nursing staff failed to follow treatment procedures after the patient had been hospitalized twice for colon blockage. According to documents, the patient suffered a ruptured bowel, cardiac arrest, underwent surgery and eventually died.

Following this incident, the hospital immediately developed and implemented a plan to address inadequacies that contributed to the failure, spokesman Jeff Corless said Thursday.

The hospital will always remain accountable to the patients and the communities it serves, he said. (We) take matters of this nature very seriously and remain committed to ensuring patient caregivers adhere to strict policies and procedures that reflect the highest standard of practice and prevent the unacceptable from happening.

St. Joseph Hospital was fined in connection with a surgical fire in January 2015 that left a patient with second- and third-degree burns to the face and nasal passages. In a statement, Thursday, the hospital referred to the incident as unfortunate and unusual.

The circumstances were reviewed and additional actions were taken to prevent this type of incident from occurring in the future, according to the statement. St. Joseph Hospital remains committed to providing the highest level of care and safety to our patients and our community.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7909 or dbharath@scng.com
Child prostitution has been legalized in California by liberal lawmakers! cries state Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, setting off a firestorm of outrage that sweeps through cyberspace.

Fake news! Liar! Wrong! critics cry in response, fake claims of Hillary Clinton running a child prostitution ring in a D.C.-area pizza parlor echoing in their ears.

Allens breathtaking criticism of Senate Bill 1322, which became law this week, was published by the conservative Washington Examiner and picked apart by myriad fact-checkers in recent days. Allen, they say, fails to distinguish between decriminalization and legalization  and he unapologetically agrees with them.

There is absolutely no difference, Allen said. You can ask any person on the street  if you decriminalize something, you have just legalized it. The narrative that the other side is spinning is completely false. The California Democrats did just legalize child prostitution for minors.

Thats a tortured, twisted take on the facts, according to the bills author, Sen. Holly J. Mitchell.

This notion perpetuated by Assemblymember Travis Allen, that my bill legalizes prostitution and commercial sex for minors, is categorically untrue, Mitchell said in a statement.

It remains unlawful for a person under the age of 18 to consent to sexual intercourse in the State of California, and that law remains in effect and is not changed with the implementation of my bill.

OK, heres whats going on.

NO PRISON

Mitchells law carries forward a philosophical sea-change that has been under way in California for many years now: That prostitutes are often victims, not criminals.

Many are young women from difficult circumstances, who wind up in the life through manipulation and are kept there by fear. They need help, not prison, the thinking goes, and its reflected in crime stats: The number of people arrested for prostitution in California was down 34 percent in 2014 over a decade earlier. In Orange County, prostitution arrests were down nearly 50 percent over that decade.

Mitchells bill enshrines that philosophy into law for kids.

What this new law does is have law enforcement or a judge place underage victims of commercial sexual exploitation with Californias Department of Social Services, rather than arrest and charge minors with prostitution, Mitchell said in her statement.

Minors involved in prostitution are victims and we have a moral responsibility to provide them with a safe placement that protects them. Juvenile Hall is not that place, she said. Being criminalized as opposed to being treated like a victim of rape through arrest, detainment and criminal charges is not how California treats victims of abuse. It would never occur to us to arrest a victim of rape or domestic violence to keep them safe from their perpetrator. Today we provide victims with safe shelters and wrap around services. SB 1322 will provide minor victims of human trafficking the same protection.

OPTIMISTIC

Allen grants that the laws supporters may be well-intentioned. But, he insists, theyre also misguided.

The claim these children are going to be helped through Childrens Services is vastly optimistic, at best, he said. Childrens Services doesnt have the capacity to handle all these at-risk youth, No. 1, and No. 2, there is nothing that forces these misguided youth in this terrible situation to stay in Childrens Services and get help.

If a 16-year-old prostitutes himself or herself on a street corner, California law enforcement cant act unless officers feel theres immediate physical danger, Allen maintains. Police can take the minor to Childrens Services, but the very next day he or she is free to walk out the door and onto the streets again.

The system previously allowed us to get these at-risk youth off streets, away from pimps, and into services, he said. This new law has tied our hands and rendered us helpless.

Allen will introduce legislation to overturn SB 1322 in coming days, he said.

If the intent is to stop the human traffickers, then lets increase their penalties, he said. Give law enforcement more tools to work with, not less. We must repeal this law.

FIGHT LOOMS

Mitchell said shes proud of the law, and its false to claim it legalizes commercial sex for minors and incentivizes traffickers to further exploit children.

Law enforcements responsibility to protect children is as strong as ever, she said. Californias Welfare and Institutions Code says that if an officer determines that a minor is in an unsafe situation, he is required to remove the child from harm.

Once again, Assemblymember Allens statement that, Immunity from arrest means law enforcement cant interfere with minors engaging in prostitution is wrong, Mitchell said.

Traffickers tell children not to trust law enforcement and that they should fear arrest. We have learned from survivors that when they can trust law enforcement, they are more likely to report traffickers, seek out help from law enforcement in unsafe situations, and participate in prosecutions.

Allens plan is to make this a national fight.

It may have been put in place with good intentions, but the consequences will be disastrous, he said.

Just one more battle to keep an eye on in 2017.

The characterizations of the back-and-forth at the top of this story are ours. Allen objected to our use of the term idiotic to characaterize the liberal lawmakers move, and it has been removed.



Contact the writer: tsforza@scng.com
JERUSALEM  Israeli authorities said on Thursday they were taking action to contain a backlash against military officials following the rare conviction of a soldier who killed an already badly wounded Palestinian assailant in the West Bank last year.

The case has deeply divided Israelis and also cast the government in a dispute with the Israeli military. A military court on Wednesday convicted Sgt. Elor Azaria of manslaughter charges in the March shooting, a verdict that could deliver up to 20 years in prison.

The proceedings have also sparked an unprecedented campaign of support for Azaria and against the military establishment, long the countrys most admired body.

In protests outside the courtroom, demonstrators chanted veiled death threats against military chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. The trials three military judges and the lead prosecutor have also faced threats and according to Israeli media have been assigned bodyguards.

Israels Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said on Thursday he was launching a probe into the chants on suspicion that they amounted to incitement to violence.

The protesters had chanted: Gadi be careful, Rabin is looking for a friend  a reference to slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in 1995.

Police said on Thursday that they arrested an Israeli man for inciting on Facebook against military judges who convicted Azaria. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said another Israeli woman was also questioned over Facebook posts. She said police will act against those inciting to violence against public officials.
A misleading column about a new state law by an Orange County lawmaker has sparked inaccurate online reports taking off on Facebook.

Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, wrote a piece for the Washington Examiner under the headline California Democrats legalize child prostitution, which has been cut and pasted by a variety of partisan websites as the basis for their false claims.

Allen begins his submission by stating that Beginning on Jan. 1, prostitution by minors will be legal in California. Yes, you read that right.

One website, Mad Patriots, linked to Allens column with its own post: Sick, Perverted Liberal California Just Legalized CHILD PROSTITUION. Among the untruths, the website restates: Immunity from arrest means law enforcement cant interfere with minors engaging in prostitution  which translates into bigger and better cash flow for the pimps.

Allen is referring to Senate Bill 1322, by state Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, which decriminalizes prostitution for minors by barring officers from arresting people under 18 for soliciting sex or loitering with intent to commit prostitution.

It generated significant legislative debate over whether the new approach is sound public policy, but it is false to say the law legalizes child prostitution in California.

Those soliciting the sex and those arranging the clients can still be charged with crimes. People caught having sexual conduct with minors can be charged with penalties ranging from misdemeanors to felonies carrying life terms, depending on the ages of those involved and the individual circumstances of the offenses.

Its also wildly misleading to equate decriminalizing minors with law enforcement not being allowed to interfere with minors engaging in commercial sex acts. Under the law, officers who encounter minors doing so must report the circumstances to the county child welfare agency as abuse or neglect.

Commercially sexually exploited children, based on the bills analysis, may be taken into temporary custody if the minor has an immediate need for medical care, or  is in immediate danger of physical or sexual abuse, or the physical environment or the childs unattended status poses an immediate threat to the childs health or safety.

Under statutory rape laws, minors are not legally permitted to consent to sex  for money or not  and Mitchells law does not change that. Mitchell and supporters argue that sex workers should be viewed as victims rather than criminals. Her bill was supported by the Alameda County district attorney, American Civil Liberties Union of California, California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the National Association of Social Workers.

In opposing the bill, the California District Attorneys Association acknowledged that minors engaged in prostitution are often the victims of human trafficking. But the group said the solution in the bill could undermine law enforcements ability to address those exploiting such minors.

Allen makes other misleading statements.

He includes a quote from Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley stating that decriminalizing child prostitution opens up the door for traffickers to use these kids to commit crimes and exploit them even worse. OMalley initially opposed the bill, but ultimately signed on as one of its highest-profile supporters.

Allen and some websites also state the bill was approved by California Democrats who control the state with a two-thirds supermajority. Although the states dominant party did win supermajority status in the Nov. 8 election, Democrats did not have two-thirds control when the bill was passed. Moreover, a handful of Republicans voted for the bill.

FACEBOOK

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article124201384.html#storylink=cpy
Martin Scorseses Silence  is not an easy film to watch. At times its grotesquely violent, at others tediously slow. But it is a full and worthy cinematic experience that is bold, thought-provoking and utterly singular. That its also a nearly three-decade effort from one of our living greats is just an interesting factoid in the end plus, weve been here before a few times over with Scorseses passion projects.

Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence) adapted Silence from Shusaku Endos 1966 novel of the same name. Set in the 17th century, the film follows two Portuguese Jesuit priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) who journey to Japan to try to find their fellow missionary, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who has been rumored to have renounced his faith.

Its an acutely dangerous mission, which Father Valignano (Ciaran Hinds) tries to dissuade Rodrigues and Garrpe from pursing. In the years after the Shimabara Rebellion, Christianity in Japan was practiced only in secret  iconography and texts were confiscated and the known and even suspected devout were tortured and killed. But, driven by faith and duty Rodrigues and Garrpe might as well not have a choice in the matter at all. They cant even fathom not going, though, and thus they do.

The two men have to sneak into the country with the help of a semi-trustworthy scoundrel who is still reeling from his own crisis of faith. Japan (really, Taiwan where they shot) even looks uninviting. Shot by Rodrigo Prieto with production design from Dante Ferretti, the gray skies seem ready to close in on the mountains and subdued landscapes, and below, the dark sea thrashes violently against the shore.

When they arrive, their series of trials begin. They preach to local villagers desperate for an organized religion theyve been forbidden from, they give away every cross and rosary they have and wonder whether the impoverished townspeople cherish the objects more than the meaning behind them, and they watch as authorities come through and ravage the towns looking for Christians to test.

Rodrigues and Garrpe separate for their safety and we continue to follow Rodrigues through the Japanese countryside as he encounters more dire displays of Japans utter and complete intolerance for Christianity. In one of the more powerful sequences, three older men are hung from crosses positioned deep in the oceans waters  the thrashing waves killing them slowly for their refusal to apostatize. An increasingly haunted Rodrigues looks on from a hiding spot.

Garfield carries the film and Rodrigues agony on his slight shoulders  his second film about faith in a single season, following Mel Gibsons Hacksaw Ridge. But it is Japanese actor Issey Ogata who steals the show as an older samurai who not only tells Rodrigues whats what but provides some of the funniest and disturbing moments in the film. Its a tonal departure, but a welcome one in what can be a bit of a slog.

Its a much more traditional and subdued film than the knowingly provocative Last Temptation of Christ. Theres no Peter Gabriel guitar and nothing that is likely to enrage or inspire protests. But it does pick at doubt in a spiritually similar way. Rodrigues knows what his faith requires, and yet it continues to be tested and challenged by the physical and political realities of where hes inserted himself. Do the peasants, so grateful for his teachings, actually believe? Or are they looking for a way to the afterlife? What good, hes forced to wonder, is he actually doing there? Silence is as much about colonialism and intolerance as it is faith and conviction. While Im still not sure what Scorsese wants the audience to think by the time the screen goes to black, the questions raised nonetheless feel modern and resonant.
FULLERTON  A Santa Ana man was sentenced Friday to 35 years to life in prison for chasing down and stabbing an acquaintance to death over a $50 debt.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael A Leversen denied a request by Mario Alberto Rodriguezs attorney to sentence the convicted killer to a lesser term behind bars by throwing out a previous felony strike for selling drugs to benefit a street gang.

A Fullerton jury in August found Rodriguez, 27, guilty of second-degree murder, disregarding Rodriguezs statement he was acting in self-defense when he stabbed 26-year-old Paul Anthony Garcia in the heart during a March 9, 2013 confrontation.

On Friday morning, Garcias mother, Betty Gonzalez, fought through sobs as she apologized for the poor choices both her son and Rodriguez made. The mother said she didnt hold any animosity, hate or anger toward Rodriguez, even as she continues to struggle with the loss of her son.

It is a sad day for everyone, Gonzalez told the judge. Im just ready for this to be over.

Rodriguez apparently met Garcia in prison, and was close enough with the man to give him a ride home upon his release. But prosecutors say Rodriguez was angered when he paid $50 to buy an EBT card from Garcia that turned out to be empty.

The fatal confrontation was sparked when Rodriguez, his father and his sisters boyfriend saw Garcia walking by their home in the 200 block of St. Andrew Place. Multiple security cameras recorded the three men chasing after Garcia, through a bank parking lot, across a busy South Main Street and into the El Chile Picante restaurant.

Inside the restaurant, an employee told the men to take it outside. Surveillance footage showed Rodriguez again chasing Garcia across Main Street before cornering him in a fenced-in parking lot behind a tax business. Employees saw the two men argue and Rodriguez strike Garcia and shove him against a fence.

Garcia, who was stabbed in the heart during the parking lot confrontation, again crossed Main Street and collapsed outside a Zumba studio. Rodriguez and his father left for Mexico after Garcias death. Rodriguez was arrested and extradited to the United States.

A second-degree murder conviction ordinarily would have Rodriguez facing 15 years to life in prison. But his previous felony strike for gang-related drug sales bumped his potential sentence up by two decades.

Rodriguezs attorney, Deputy Public Defender Lee Gabriel, noted his clients past crimes were not violent in nature. Deputy District Attorney Jim Mendelson argued drug sales, particularly those tied to local street gangs, have a large impact on the community.

There is a message to be sent, Mendelson told the judge. Join a gang and start getting a criminal resume and the law will come down on you.

The judge also seemed unconvinced by the defense attorneys argument Rodriguez didnt mean to kill Garcia.

At any time, your client could have said, This is not worth it over $50, this man has agreed to pay me when he can, Judge Leversen said. I mean $50? Why not just walk away?

Gabriel said,  Yes, Mr. Rodriguez could have walked away, but it was so fast, contending the chase and the confrontation took place in less than five minutes.

Rodriguez will receive credit for time served for the more than three years he has already spent in local lockup waiting for his trail.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos proposal to make the states public colleges free for hundreds of thousands of middle-class students is seen as one of the nations most ambitious efforts to tackle skyrocketing higher education debt. But many questions remain about how much it will cost, how it will affect one of the countrys largest public college systems and whether other states will follow suit.

Q. Whats the plan?

A. Full-time New York students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year would pay no tuition to attend two- or four-year colleges in the State University of New York or City University of New York systems. The plan, if approved by state lawmakers, would be phased in over three years, beginning this fall for residents making up to $100,000 a year. The income threshold would increase to $110,000 in 2018 and $125,000 in 2019.

Q. So college would be free?

A. No. Students wouldnt have to pay the $6,470 yearly cost of tuition ($4,350 for two-year programs), but theyd still have to pick up the cost of room and board if they live on campus ($12,590), along with fees ($1,590) and books. They would also have to graduate on time, meaning in two years for an associate degree and four years for a bachelors, if they want to avoid tuition bills.

Q. How much will this cost?

A. Cuomos office estimates the states cost at $163 million a year once the program is fully phased in, a figure thats seen by some critics as too low.

If it costs so little, why havent we done it before? asked Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Higher Education Committee.

More financial detail may come when the governor releases his budget proposal later this month, but his administration says the program will leverage the states existing aid programs, particularly the Tuition Assistance Program, which provides nearly $1 billion in grants to students with taxable incomes of up to $80,000 a year. Under Cuomos program, students would still receive TAP, along with any federal grants, and the state would pay the tuition difference.

Q. Wont this create a rush on SUNY/CUNY schools, possibly making it more difficult to get accepted?

A. SUNY leaders say its too soon to estimate the impact on applications and enrollment, but the Cuomo administration says its confident the 64-campus, 440,000-student system can absorb what it projects will be a 10 percent enrollment increase. The system remains selective, though, and SUNY said its academic standards arent expected to change.

The states 29 four-year schools received 309,408 applications for the fall of 2015 and accepted 162,673 students, according to the state.

Q. Will this program affect private colleges?

A. Yes and no. The program doesnt cover tuition for colleges outside SUNY and CUNY. Operators of those schools, though, say leaving them out of the college affordability discussion could leave them at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting applicants in a highly competitive landscape.

There will be a real pull that SUNY and CUNY have on students that our not-for-profit privates will not always be able to match, said Mary Beth Labate, president of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities.

More than 490,000 students are enrolled in the states more than 100 private, not-for-profit colleges. The schools provided $5.1 billion in financial aid to their students in 2014-15 and directly employ 196,300 people, Labate said.

The independent colleges would rather see the state expand TAP, increasing awards or raising the income threshold, which Labate said would preserve student choice because the grant follows the student.

The requirement that federal aid, as well as state aid, is factored in doesnt sit well with advocates for poor students, who say theyll be left with less to pay for transportation, food and housing.

Q. Will this idea spread?

A. If New York state does it this year, mark my words, state after state will follow, independent Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said when Cuomo announced the program this week.

Sanders made tuition-free public higher education a key proposal of his Democratic campaign for president, and Hillary Clinton picked up on it as the Democratic nominee, but Republican nominee Donald Trump had different ideas about how to make college affordable. Trump, who won the election, said he wants to work with Congress to make sure colleges only get access to certain federal tax breaks and other benefits if they make good-faith efforts to reduce the cost of college and student debt.

Democratic President Barack Obama proposed free community college in 2015, saying six states and communities had created programs similar to what he proposed. He said lawmakers in more than 10 other states have introduced legislation providing for free community college.

Tennessee and Oregon have enacted programs to cover residents tuition costs at community colleges, but New Yorks would be the first statewide plan to cover four years of tuition, Cuomos office said.
LONG BEACH  The California Highway Patrol is investigating a report of a pedestrian hit by a car in the northbound lane of the 405 freeway on Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

At 1:42 p.m., CHP received a 911 call that a man got out of a dark-colored sedan traveling south on the 405, south of the Palo Verde exit, crossed the northbound lanes, and may have been hit by a vehicle, said Officer Elizabeth Kravig.

Details about the mans injuries were not available.

All lanes of the 405 in the area of the incident were reopened shortly before 4 p.m.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@scng.com Twitter: @thechalkoutline
Senate Republicans walked a tightrope Thursday trying to show their toughness against Vladimir Putins Russia without undermining the legitimacy of President-elect Donald Trumps victory in November.

Again and again during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Russian cyberattacks, conservative hawks found themselves in the awkward position of talking tough against Putin  and talking even tougher about the validity of Trumps election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Why? Because weakening Trump threatens to weaken them, also.

As reluctant as most Capitol Hill Republicans were to embrace Trump during the campaign, his swearing-in two weeks from now gives them an opportunity to implement the kind of sweeping conservative agenda that has eluded them since the second term of George W. Bushs presidency entered a downward spiral of unpopularity.

Between rock and hard place

Many Republicans want to be on the right side of history in standing up to Putin, who U.S. intelligence officials say led a massive effort to undermine the presidential election. But they also understand the need to protect Trumps standing at home.

Already, the president-elect is poised to enter the Oval Office on Jan. 20 as the least popular new president in the modern polling era. On Thursday, congressional Republicans made clear that they are determined to reassure Americans that Trump won on the merits.

Take the questioning by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who just two years into his first term has become one of the Senates leading national-security hawks. In recent media appearances, Cotton has criticized President Barack Obama as being insufficiently aggressive toward Putin and urged Trump to take a stronger posture.

During his five minutes of questioning Thursday, Cotton accepted the general conclusion that Russia oversaw the hacking of email accounts at the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. OK, so thats what happened, Cotton said. Thats why it happened, or at least a preview that were going to know why its happened. Lets move on to the impact.

But Cotton then asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. whether any evidence had emerged that media stories about the emails or a flurry of fake news stories emanating from Russia had affected actual voting.

Clapper had already said that the intelligence community was not the right entity to examine American voters intentions. Thats something thats more suited for someone like Sean Trende or Michael Barone or Nate Silver, Cotton said, naming political analysts who have written about the 2016 elections.

Well, it certainly isnt the purview of the U.S. intelligence community, Clapper said.

Cotton thanked Clapper and ended his questioning.

The awkward dance also was apparent in the way Republicans treated Clapper and the entire intelligence community: sometimes respectfully and sometimes less so.

Like almost every other Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., began his remarks by thanking Clapper and expressing high confidence in the community that you represent. It was a sharp contrast to Trumps willingness to insult intelligence agencies publicly and his continued reluctance to accept their claims of Russian meddling.

Yet Tillis then launched into a line of questioning that resembled liberal criticism of intelligence agencies in the 1970s. He cited a statistic that U.S. intelligence agencies have intervened in other countries elections 81 times, more than twice the level of meddling thought have been committed by Russia, and he said that Americans live in a glass house for criticizing Putins recent actions.

Even Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committees chairman and perhaps Capitol Hills fiercest critic of Putin, praised Clapper for conducting a review of the Russian meddling without declaring how much Trump did or did not benefit from the foreign interference.

The goal of this review, as I understand it, is not to question the outcome of the presidential election, nor should it be, he said in his opening remarks. As both President Obama and President-elect Trump have said, our nation must move forward. But we must do so with full knowledge of the facts.

Innocent until proven guilty

In an interview later, McCain said he had not seen any evidence that suggested votes were changed by the Russian effort. Unless they can prove that they affected the election, we have to assume that they didnt. I mean, its the old innocent until proven guilty. Now theres no doubt that they hacked in and they wanted to, obviously, but theres no evidence that Ive seen that they were able to succeed, he said.

McCain, after calling for a special committee to conduct a sweeping investigation of the cyberattacks, has accepted the decision by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to leave the issue to the existing committees.

That leaves a serious challenge for Democrats: whether to accept investigations designed only to examine the means of the Russian interference without trying to determine whether those efforts affected the electoral outcome.

Is that the sort of investigation that should occur through an independent commission? Or is it one that Democrats will have to do on their own in preparation for the next presidential campaign?

For now, some senior Democrats are pleased that most Republicans are willing to accept the proposition that Putins operatives were trying to meddle in the U.S. election campaign. I think they recognize the evidence is overwhelming that Russia was involved in the election, purposely, deliberately, authorized at the very highest levels, and thats a fact, and they acknowledge the fact, Sen. Jack Reed, R.I., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview after the hearing.

Reed thinks that Thursdays hearing and Clappers report, likely to be released sometime next week, also will solidify the publics view that Russia was behind what was a massive effort.

But after that, its not clear what the next steps will be.
FRESNO  Days after Donald Trump won the White House vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and fortify the Mexican border, California farmer Kevin Herman ordered nearly $600,000 in new equipment, cutting the number of workers hell need starting with the next harvest.

Herman, who grows figs, persimmons and almonds in the nations most productive farming state, said Trumps comments pushed him to make the purchase, larger than he would have otherwise.

No doubt about it, Herman said. I probably wouldnt have spent as much or bought as much machinery as I did.

Others in Californias farming industry say Trumps tough campaign talk targeting immigrants in the country illegally  including a vast number of farmworkers  spurred them into action, too.

Theyre calling on congressional representatives to educate the incoming president on the workforce it takes to feed the country, and theyre assuring workers theyll protect them.

San Joaquin Valley farmer Joe Del Bosque recently gathered about 20 year-round employees at a Los Banos steakhouse for their annual holiday lunch.

The festivities began in a serious tone. The topic of immigration took a bigger part of the conversation this year because of Trump, he said.

Del Bosque told his crew hell make sure the new administration knows their vital role in the farming industry. Its a message Del Bosque wants his managers to spread to another 300 seasonal workers needed at the harvests peak.

Leticia Alfaro, a food-safety supervisor at the farm, said in an interview that many of her friends who work in the fields dont have proper documentation like her, and they take Trumps threats seriously.

Theyre terrified by his comments, Alfaro, 53, said in Spanish.

They fear being deported and torn from their children who were born here, she said. After Trump takes office, they wonder if it will be safe to make a simple trip to the grocery store, fearing checkpoints where theyll be pulled over and have to show their documentation.

Trumps remarks were felt sharply in California, which produces nearly half the countrys fruits, vegetables and nuts valued at $47 billion annually. Experts say his words resonate nationwide.

Texas, Florida and Georgia are examples of states with large migrant communities dominating home construction, health care, food service industries, said David Zonderman, a labor historian at North Carolina State University.

California might be ground zero, he said of immigrant families living in the shadows. But its not a unique California issue.

The fear stems from Trumps campaign rallies, where he received a rousing response each time he vowed to deport people who are in the country illegally  up to 11 million. That position softened after Trump won the election, when he said hed start with 3 million with criminal records.

Some farmers point to Trumps postelection shift as a sign his campaign bluster wont become reality. He is, after all, a businessman like them, they say. But others believe this shift underscores the president-elects unpredictable nature.

Our workers are scared, said Joe Garcia, a farm labor contractor who hires up to 4,000 people each year to pick grapes from Napa to Bakersfield and along the Central Coast. If theyre concerned, were concerned.

Since Election Day, Garcias crews throughout the state have been asking what will happen to them when Trump takes office. Farmers also are calling to see if theyll need to pay more to attract people to prune the vines, he said.

Garcia tells farmers not to panic. Theyll learn how many return from Mexico after the holidays. Well plan around what we have, he tells them. Thats all we can do.

Roughly 325,000 workers in California do the back-breaking jobs that farmers say nobody else will do, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League farming association, estimates 85 percent of California farmworkers live in the United States illegally.

Farmers for years have scrambled under a shrinking labor pool.

Mexicos improving economy has slowed the flow of migrant workers. The dangerous border, controlled by drug cartels and human traffickers, keeps away others.

Herman, the farmer who bought three new almond sweepers, said Trump influenced him on top of Californias rising minimum wage and a new law giving farm laborers overtime rights that are equal to workers in other industries.

Plus, Herman said, hes heard too many workers question whether theyll return from their holiday trips to Mexico. Its stories like that that have motivated me to become efficient and upgrade my equipment, Herman said.

Tom Nassif, a Trump adviser and president of the powerful trade association Western Growers, said farmers shouldnt fear the president-elect. Trump isnt interested in deporting their workers, he said.

Nassif said he isnt privy to the details of Trumps immigration policy. Hes recommended that Trump allow farmworkers to stay by putting immigrants in the country illegally who are otherwise law-abiding residents on a period of probation under conditions that they pay taxes, learn English and obey all laws.

I think hes looking at people who have committed more serious crimes and start with them first  and rightly so, said Nassif, picked by Trumps campaign team to serve on an agriculture advisory committee. I think theres less reason to worry than most people believe there is.
In the contentious partisanship of the presidential transition, its easy to overlook key policies on which President-elect Donald Trump and Democrats agree.

The two sides could eventually part ways, given the history of partisans staking out positions in opposition to the other side despite their previous support. Well address that phenomenon in a moment. First, heres a look at where Trump sounds more Democratic than Republican.

Trump and Hillary Clinton both proposed spending hundreds of billions more on infrastructure  building and repairing roads, bridges, dams and mass transit.

Like Trump, progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have called for renegotiating or abandoning trade deals while Republicans have traditionally been the staunchest defenders of the agreements. Trump and many Democrats also have talked about punishing American companies who move jobs abroad.

In September, Trump announced a plan for six weeks of paid maternity leave for new mothers, something Democrats have been leading the charge on. Trump has also vowed not to touch Social Security or Medicare benefits  spending that House Speaker Paul Ryan and his allies have been eyeing for cost-cutting reforms.

There also appears to be common ground between Trump and Democrats on closing the carried interest tax loophole for hedge fund managers and venture capitalists.

Of course, what Trump says today doesnt always predict his position tomorrow. The list of position shifts is extensive, so it remains to be seen whether hell continue to be aligned with Democrats on these policies.

And there are plenty of issues where Trump is diametrically opposed to Democrats, including climate change, business regulations, abortion rights and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

But he has already taken several steps that Democrats would likely be cheering if it was their nominee making the moves.

While theres a dispute over how many jobs Indianas Carrier manufacturing computer will be preserving in the U.S. thanks to Trump, its more than zero. And Ford gave Trump some of the credit for its decision to dump plans for a Mexico plant and add 700 jobs in the U.S. instead.

Then theres House Republicans plan to scrap the independent ethics panel, which had Democrats up in arms until Trump tweeted dismissively about the idea, prompting the GOP to bail on its own proposal.

Party over policy

Theres a history of voters taking sides based on their partys position. Its a partisanship that can overshadow the merits of a measure  and part of human nature that has been detailed in academic studies.

Many are crediting Trump, for example, for the surge in Republican support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2014, 10 percent viewed Putin favorably. That went to 24 percent in September and 37 percent by December, according to polling by the Economist.

Obamacare is another obvious example. In 1989, the conservative Heritage Foundation proposed requiring everyone to have health insurance  the same individual mandate thats the main target of congressional Republicans going after Obamacare.

Nearly half of Senate Republicans joined House Speaker Newt Gingrich in supporting a similar plan with an individual mandate in 1993 as an alternative to the universal healthcare proposal championed by Clinton. And then-Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 signed into state law what would be a model for Obamacare.

Peter Ditto, a UC Irvine social psychologist specializing in partisan political bias, said there have been many studies examining the party over policy effect.

People (can) apply completely different standards of reasoning when thinking about the party and policies they like and dislike, he said.

Four studies by social psychologist Geoffrey L. Cohen, now at Stanford University, screened potential participants so that only those who were clearly liberal or conservative  no moderates  took part. He then presented two proposals for welfare reform, one that was very generous and one that was very stringent.

In the first test, participants were given the basics of the proposals. Liberals sided with the generous one and conservatives favored the stringent one.

But in subsequent tests, participants received fabricated news stories. In one set of stories, participants read how Republicans favored the generous program and Democrats opposed it. In another, Democrats favored the more stringent program and the GOP opposed it.

Conservatives favored the programs backed by Republicans and liberals favored the programs backed by Democrats, even when the programs went against the partisans core ideology.

If Trumpcare takes the best of Obamacare and manages to improve on it, will it then be cheered by Republicans and scorned by Democrats? Would Democrats prefer that Trump fail to improve on it  by, say, reducing costs while maintaining its most popular aspects?

Possibly, Ditto said. He pointed to studies by Harvard psychologist Mina Cikara and to game theorys Ultimatum Game as evidence that people can be willing to suffer for the sake of seeing their foe fail.

It validates both their predictions and that their sense of morality is better, Ditto said.

Trump inauguration

The primary source of tickets for the Jan. 20 inauguration is House representatives, who get 175 to 200 tickets for their districts constituents. Most Orange County members distribute these by lottery or on first-come, first-served basis.

The only Orange County office that didnt report having distributed all their tickets as of Thursday was Rep. Lou Correas, although others had waiting lists in the event of cancellations. Correa, a Santa Ana Democrat, still had some because he was only sworn in Tuesday and hadnt yet been set up to handle the job. If you live in his district and are interested, email his chief of staff at laurie.saroff@mail.house.gov.

If youre going, Id like to talk with you both before and immediately afterward for stories. Email me at mwisckol@scng.com.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
SANTA ANA  Homicide detectives are hoping the public can help identify a person of interest in the slaying of Dennis Quan Tran, 41, of Westminster.

Tran was stabbed in the torso multiple times and found outside a Wal-Mart in the 3600 block of West McFadden Avenue around 2:45 a.m. Dec. 18. He died a short time later after emergency surgery, police said.

Investigators on Thursday released Wal-Mart surveillance video that shows an unidentified man walking past a store security guard. Officers believe the man might know something about the incident. He can be seen wearing dark pants, a dark hat, flannel shirt and a dark backpack or jacket over his shoulders.

Anyone with information about this person or the slaying can call Santa Ana police homicide investigators at 714-245-8390. Anyone who wants to submit a tip anonymously can call Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS or 855-847-6227.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@scng.com
HUNTINGTON BEACH  The Orange County Health Care Agency on Thursday issued an alert warning people to avoid swimming in or exposing their skin to the waters of Huntington Harbours Sunset Aquatic Marina and Portofino Cove until further notice because of a substantial raw sewage spill.

According to Larry Brennler, the agencys water quality program chief, the hazardous gunk runs the gambit of what one would consider raw sewage  from human waste to rubbish. It originated at a business in Stanton near Beach Boulevard and Lampson Avenue late Wednesday night.

A backup in their primary lateral line discharged into their parking lot and ran into the storm drain, which leads to the sewer system  which drains into the harbor, Brennler said.

In some instances the waste from spills like this one can be sucked out of the sewage system with large pumps. In this case, because of the location of the spill, the county is leaving the job to Mother Nature.

Normally, sea organisms and salt water would eat and dilute the bacteria in a few days, Brennler said. Crews will test water samples from the harbour on Saturday, but runoff from back-to-back storm systems may delay the waters purification.

The water could be clean as early as Saturday, but might not return to safe levels until early next week, Brennler said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@scng.com
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The shortage of women caused by Chinas one-child policy, combined with the countrys economic boom over the last two decades have made marriage a grim prospect for poor men in rural regions. These two factors have bumped up the bride price to hundreds of thousands of yuan, sometimes even millions, obscene amounts that most men cant hope of raising without taking a bank loan.

The bride price is a a centuries-old Chinese tradition that survived and even thrived in the Communist era. Its similar to the Western tradition of dowry, only it requires a prospective groom to pay the family of the bride for permission to marry her. In the 60s and 70s, the bride price was paid in modest gifts ranging from a simple thermos to bedding. During the 80s television sets and refrigerators were popular gifts offered as bride prices, but since the economy started to grow in the 1990s, the payment switched to hard cash and the sums demanded by the family of the bride have been rising ever since.

But perhaps the best explanation for the ever-increasing bride price is the gender inequality in China. During the days of the one-child policy, the preference for males strong enough to work and later look after their elderly parents led to a huge increase in sex-selective abortion and even infanticide of female babies. As a result, Harvard researchers claim that today there are 118 men for every 100 women in China, and the proportion is actually worse in poor rural regions.

Theyre called bare branches, guys who are very poor, arent educated, they dont have a wife or children, so theyre like a tree without leaves. There are villages across China which are full of men like this, Manya Koetse, and editor of Whats on Weibo, told the BBC. They have double trouble actually. Women leave these villages to move to bigger cities to find a man who can offer them more than the guys in the village. And the few women who remain might have 20 men each who want to marry them, so they can ask for a high bride price.

Zhang Hu, a young man from an impoverished mountain village, recently had to borrow 150,000 yuan ($22,000) just so he could pay the 130,000 yuan ($19,000) bride price demanded by his fiancees family. The village is so poor that no woman wants to marry men here, Zhang said. And the poorer you are, the higher the bride price. In some of the poorest villages in China, men are left with no option but to buy brides from Vietnam, because there are no local women left, or the competition for the few girls still living there is so high that they could never pay the bride price demanded by their families.

The bride price is very serious business in China, and not being able to foot the bill often times has dire consequences. Last year, a shocking story made the rounds on Chinese social media. A man wanted to marry his pregnant girlfriend, but when he wasnt able to pay the $30,000 bride price demanded by her family, the father put an end to any talk of a prospective wedding and asked the woman to get an abortion. The general reaction to the story was even more shocking, though, with many people defending the fathers actions and criticizing the young couple for getting involved with each other without thinking of the implications.

To make matters worse, the economic development of the countryside has prompted families of prospective brides to ask for apartments in nearby urban communities and a car. Chen Weimin, director of population and development studies at Nankai University in Tianjin, told SCMP that it is now a must for brides and grooms to own a flat in a town. Villagers used to host wedding banquets at home, but now they also hold them in hotels and use a motorcade involving expensive cars on the wedding day, he added.

Things arent much better in urban China. A map of the level of bride prices given in China, published four years ago, showed that in cities like Shanghai, the average price for a bride was around 1 million yuan ($145,000). That has likely doubled in the last few years, as bachelors seem eager to pay much more than that these days. Last year, news of a bride from Putian, a city in eastern Fujian province, who got married after her family received a 3.8 million yuan ($550,000) caused controversy online. And keep in mind that this is just a sum paid to the family of the bride, the wedding itself involves separate expenditures.

Zhang Mingsuo, a sociology professor at Zhengzhou University, says that the bride price tradition originated in rural areas of China, where parents of girls asked for something in return for their hand in marriage, to help them support themselves in old age after spending considerable resources bringing up their daughters. However, the amounts of money charged in China these days are not justified by the traditions original purpose. Today, it is only driven by materialism.
A Thai woman living in Virgina was recently convicted for masterminding an elaborate designer purse scheme that involved buying hundreds of authentic accessories online and returning Chinese knock-offs for full refunds. She would then sell the originals on sites like eBay, for about $2,000 each.

Over a number of years, 41-year-old Praepitcha Smatsorabudh, a preschool teacher in Arlington County, used an ingenious scam to supplement her day-job paycheck. She would buy high end bags like Gucci, Burberry and Fendi online, and then return fake ones she had specially made in China and Hong Kong. Court documents revealed that in order to cover her trail, she traveled to over 60 T.J. Maxx stores in 12 states, to return the bags, and used 16 different credit cards when making new purchases. Smatsorabudhs scheme was so incredibly successful that at one point she was T.J. Maxxs number one online client in the world.

Photo: Instagram

After returning the well-made fakes, Smatsorabudh would sell the originals on eBay and Instagram for an average price of $2,000. She also kept original designer bags for herself, and when police officers raided her house, they found a whopping 572 handbags, both originals and knockoffs. T.J. Maxx was able to identify at least 226 fake handbags Smatsorabudh had returned over the last few years, and Neiman Marcus found 10 more, all of which amount to over $400,000 in damages.

Over the last two years, the scammer allegedly received more than a million dollars in refunds from T.J. Maxx alone, which doesnt include the money she then made by selling the original bags online.

Photo: Instagram

The alarm was raised when a T.J. Maxx staff member contacted the police about Smatsorabudh. She was arrested in June last year, after a Homeland Security officer posed as an online client and bought a bag from her. The investigation also revealed a 2014 email she had written to one of her Chinese knockoff providers. The best fake bag Ive ever seen! Can you send me more  from this factory. They make bag IMPaCABLE!!!! (sic), she wrote.

With so much evidence mounted against her, Praepitcha Smatsorabudh had no choice but to admit her crime. She plead guilty, and after being convicted of wire fraud, in December 2016, she said What I did was so wrong, I deserve to be in jail. Which is exactly where she will be spending the next 30 months. Thats not so bad, considering she was facing a maximum of 40 years behind bars. The federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, also ordered the woman to pay $403,250 in restitution to the stores she swindled.

Photo: Instagram

Smatsorabudhs lawyer, Nina Ginsberg, said that her clients actions were fueled by her compulsion to have expensive handbags. She tried explaining that the scheme was the result of trauma, not greed, as Smatsorabudh, who grew up in Thailand, was physically and emotionally abused by her parents.

It is expected that after she is released from jail, Praepitcha Smatsorabudh will be deported to Thailand. She was living in the United States legally, but was not a U.S. citizen.

Photo: Instagram

Sources: ABC News, New York Daily News, Nola


APCO Reps Leader of Democratic Opposition in Belarus Wed., Sep. 28, 2022 APCO Worldwide is providing media relations services for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the democratic opposition to Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. She stepped in for her husband and ran for president in 2020 but lost in the rigged election.
The men in the room stared at Arnaud Royer in expectation. The Deputy of the UN Peacekeeping Missions Human Rights and Protection Division (HRPD) in Mali had just been asked what good are human rights for them.

The men were members of an armed separatist group in the town of Ber, a small place bordering the desert in northern Mali. They formed one of the many extremist groups that have clashed with government forces in the north of the country.

The men sat in the concrete room, bare, save a desk, some old wooden benches and a battered metal table. They wore combat fatigues and turbans to keep out the ubiquitous dust. Many were armed with rifles. Royer was armed only with his phone.

This he held aloft. Earlier that day he had made a phone call to the Human Rights Division Office in Bamako. With that phone call he found out not only where some of the fighters relatives were being held by Government forces, but also that the conditions of their detention were deemed to be adequate following a Human Rights Officer detention-monitoring visit.

For three years, we have been establishing a mechanism to track arrests up to the trial stage, Royer said later. We make sure the detainees rights are protected. It is important that armed groups are informed of this and that Human Rights Officers are in contact with armed groups.

Since 2012, Mali has been embroiled in conflicts in the North, involving anti-government military coalitions and extremist forces. This fighting has led to numerous attacks on civilian, military and government personnel and has caused significant instability, including the displacement of thousands from their homes.

Since 2013, the UN Peacekeeping Missions Human Rights and Protection Division in Mali has worked to establish a dialogue with armed groups involved in the conflict. This has been a critical strategy conducted by the office to open up the peace process, said Guillaume Ngefa, the Divisions Director.

What is important for us is that whoever is arrested, their rights are protected, he said. So the fact that Human Rights Officers have been doing this job has given us legitimacy, it has given us a bridge to engage in confidence with different armed groups.

This trust has led to groups, like the one in Ber, requesting that Human Rights Officers come to their held territories to explain human rights obligations, and to challenge them.

Lieutenant-Colonel Al-Husseini Weld Al Moctar heads the group in Ber. He said his group works with the missions Human Rights and Protection Division because they help everyone.

People have to join and work with them for the sake of harmony among people and so they can love each other, he said. Even though the organization is not an Islamic organization, it works the same way Muslims do. We found that it has sympathetic individuals toward our people and toward the weak.

But engagement does not mean excusing or overlooking the very real human rights violations committed by armed groups, Ngefa said. Human Rights Officers collect and document evidence of violations  such as enforced disappearances or summary executions- and, in many instances, confront the group directly responsible.

For example, Ngefa recalled an incident in 2014, where an armed group was involved in cases of summary execution. He went to the area to lead the investigation, and told the group leaders that there was evidence that what happened could amount to war crimes. The group denied the killings, but the office still made reports.

The fact is that we have established an environment of trust, because they see us as protecting their rights, the HRPD Director said. They know that we may not be neutral, but we are impartial in the sense that we talk to all sides and we disseminate the same message. Human rights must be upheld.

6 January 2017
Carpool has been a loud and off-key treat for Danny Gass the past two days.

Gass son and backseat passenger Kaleb has been belting out snippets from his upcoming theater production.

The 10-year-old will perform tonight with about two dozen other children and young adults with disabilities in Join Us in the Jungle at the Munroe-Meyer Institute. Kaleb, who has Down syndrome, has no fear of the spotlight.

Hes a bit of a showboater, so hes always dancing around and shaking his booty, Gass said. They dont have the gene of embarrassment. They get up there and do the best they can. Thats good enough for them. We can all benefit from that.

Gass said hes grateful his son and other children have the opportunity to learn what it takes to put on a theater production.

Arts programs that foster hobbies and creative pursuits often arent available for those with special needs, said Dr. Michael Crawford, director of recreational therapy at the Omaha institute. The institute provides services and support for children and adults with intellectual, developmental or genetic disorders.

These kids dont get to be in show choir, on the dance team or in theater productions, Crawford said. Were trying to optimize that quality of life thats missing for them.

The performance is based on the childrens book Giraffes Cant Dance. Thespians will tell the story of Gerald the giraffe as he travels through Africa learning new dance moves. The story teaches what organizers hope participants gain out of the experience  confidence and the importance of dancing to the beat of your own drum.

Younger performers practiced puppetry. Teens were in charge of dance and movement on stage. Young adults created skits and delivered lines on stage. Multiple groups helped with set design and props.

On Thursday, performers gathered in a building on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus for a quick rehearsal.

Beth Nietzel, who has Down syndrome, practiced her new dance skills on stage while wearing a hot pink tutu. Peers cheered on the 19-year-old as she kicked her legs and posed with her hands on her hips.

Grant Switzer and Daniel Holm, who both have Down syndrome, were looking forward to moving and grooving on stage. Switzer, 19, said his best moves would be showcased in the Cha-Cha Slide. Holm, 18, was ready to practice the splits on stage.

I am so excited for tomorrow, the big day, he said.

The kids will perform tonight for their family and friends.

Erin Bentzinger, an adaptive therapy specialist at the institute, said she enjoyed seeing the participants take on leadership roles during the workshop.

Theyre able to find their own interests, their own special talents, Bentzinger said. This really has been a great program for kids to learn start-to-finish what it takes to put on a production.

The theater workshop is a partnership between the Munroe-Meyer Institute and WhyArts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing art to under-served populations. WhyArts artists taught the performers dance, set design and acting.

The jungle-themed show was the first in a series of workshops for the people the institute serves. Officials said $30,000 is budgeted for the next three years to offer a summer and winter workshop. The goal is that the program becomes part of the institutes regular curriculum, which likely would require donations or other fundraising efforts.

KellyLynn Wakehouse, 24, loved every part of the project. Wakehouse, who has a mitochondrial disease and uses a wheelchair, will play the back side of the giraffe.

Weve always expressed to her that she can do what she wants to do, her mother, Beth Wakehouse, said. I think its wonderful they have this opportunity.
A Creston, Iowa, man has been arrested in connection with a November crash that left two women dead and two others seriously injured.

The head-on collision occurred about 9:35 p.m. Nov. 2 at Iowa Highway 25 and 330th Street south of Orient, Iowa.

Derek Eugene Ueligger, 31, who also was injured in the crash, walked into the Adair County Sheriffs Office on Tuesday night and was arrested, officials said.

Ueligger told authorities he knew a warrant had been issued for his arrest, Sheriff Jeff Vandewater said. Ueligger told them he reported to the Sheriffs Office because his vehicle possibly had struck an object just before the Nov. 2 crash, Vandewater said.

Ueligger was arrested on suspicion of two counts of homicide by operating a vehicle while under the influence, two counts of serious injury by vehicle and operating a vehicle while under the influence, the Sheriffs Office said.

Toxicology tests showed Ueligger was under the influence of methamphetamine at the time of the crash, authorities said.

Dawn Christensen, 88, and Norma Caltrider, 85, both of Adair, died of the injuries they suffered in the crash. Christensen died at Greater Regional Medical Center in Creston, and Caltrider died at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, where she was taken by medical helicopter.

The injured were Betty Jean Schultz, 82, and Marilyn Ehrsam, 89, both of Greenfield. Both were taken to Adair County Memorial Hospital.

The Iowa State Patrol said Ueligger was driving south in the northbound lane of Highway 25 and Schultz was driving north in the northbound lane.

Ueligger was being held Friday in the Adair County Jail on $75,000 bail, the Sheriffs Office said.
A shooting Friday afternoon in the heart of historic north Omaha sent a man to the hospital in critical condition.

Police identified the victim as Rolan Miller, 39. He remained in critical condition Friday night but was stable.

The shooting took place at 2420 N. 24th St., outside the north Omaha campaign office of Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello.

Miller was shot several times either in or near a Lexus sedan, police said. He was taken to Creighton University Medical Center with life-threatening injuries, police said.

Police were searching the area for a suspect after the attack in the business district just north of 24th and Lake.

The car with bullet holes was blocked off by police tape. The scene was in the 24th and Lake Historic District, an area of restored brick buildings, many on the National Register of Historic Places.

A statement from Mellos campaign said one staffer was inside the office at the time but was not injured.

We were distressed to hear about the shooting that occurred this afternoon near 24th and Lake Streets, Mello said in the statement. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and the victims family.

Here's raw video of some of Lt. Mark Matuza's statement to reporters: pic.twitter.com/JIKgb8R01f  Andrew Nelson (@nelson_aj) January 6, 2017

Looks like an older model Lexus sedan got shot up. pic.twitter.com/0lg1zIp9sB  Andrew Nelson (@nelson_aj) January 6, 2017
The Nebraska Legislature is discussing the idea of a new state flag design. Wed love to see what cool designs Nebraska kids come up with.

Just download the template above and let your kids go to town. The drawings will be featured on Omaha.com and some will appear in the World-Herald.

Parents, email your childs design, along with their name, age, city and a picture of them to goodnews@owh.com by Monday, Jan. 16.
GLENWOOD, Iowa  The recent findings of abuse and neglect at the Glenwood Resource Center are not representative of the facility as a whole, according to the Iowa Department of Human Services and other supporters of the campus. Other people, however, said that in the wake of the abuse allegations, the facility should close.

On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Human Services announced that it had fired six resource center employees, while six other employees had resigned after an investigation into alleged abuse and neglect of clients.

The Glenwood Resource Center works with clients with intellectual or developmental disabilities who are admitted because of significant behavioral challenges or medical conditions that require intensive, complex active treatment.

The resource center serves about 230 clients and employs more than 770 people.

While this is significant action, with 12 staff members gone, keep in mind there are 770 people that work on the campus, said Amy McCoy, spokeswoman for the Human Services Department. The majority of our staff treat clients with dignity and respect. The employees that are gone, we wanted them off our campus. Thats not who we are and not how we treat our clients.

An inquiry found that seven clients were the subject of physical abuse, according to the Human Services Department. Thirteen clients were subjected to verbal abuse or neglect.

No clients required medical treatment, the department said.

McCoy said the current investigation started with one abuse allegation and led to further inquiry, which revealed a pattern.

The department said that it took additional disciplinary action against five other staff members and that one action is pending. The majority of the incidents involved employees working the evening shift.

The department turned over its findings to local law enforcement. Sgt. Patrick Martin with the Glenwood Police Department said that a criminal investigation continues but that he couldnt release additional details.

McCoy said an intensive investigation by the department found supervisory staffers did not participate in the mistreatment. She pointed to an effort to increase training for employees and supervisors, increased supervision and further training as examples of new expectations of staff on campus.

A call to the Glenwood Resource Center seeking comment from its superintendent, Gary Anders, was referred back to the Human Services Department.

McCoy said the abuse and neglect does not violate a former agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. A 2004 settlement on standards of care placed the facility under the purview of the Justice Department, and the center achieved compliance with mandated standards in spring 2010.

The arrangement was the result of a civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of people with developmental disabilities. The settlement required major changes to the centers nutrition management system, clinical care, record keeping and staff training, among other areas.

Weve implemented the things that were stipulated in that agreement, McCoy said. Its those kinds of steps that helped us identify this (the current allegations).

Disability Rights Iowa is a federally mandated and funded protection and advocacy system for Iowans with disabilities and mental illness. Executive Director Jane Hudson said her organization has opened an independent investigation into the abuse.

Hudson pointed to the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the U.S. Supreme Courts Olmstead decision in saying her organization believes that Glenwood residents could be served in home and community-based settings with proper services and supports.

According to the Justice Department, the integration mandate in the ADA notes that the most integrated setting is one that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with nondisabled persons to the fullest extent possible.

In Olmstead v. L.C., a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court case, the court ruled that public entities are required to provide community-based services to people with disabilities.

Disability Rights Iowa  formerly the Iowa Protection and Advocacy Services  has long called for the Glenwood facility to close.

In response, McCoy said the Glenwood center is reducing its client population by 12 individuals yearly as it works to integrate more people into the community.

That said, we serve individuals with extremely high behavioral challenges and complex medical needs, she noted.

McCoy said that some clients come after their stays in community-based programs have failed and are in need of further support and services to get them ready to be successful in the community.

Social media chatter about the allegations swung back and forth between those showing support for the center and its staff and others who said they weren't surprised by the firings and abuse allegations.

Shauna Paige worked at the center from February 2008 through July 2016. She said that although some employees work hard and care for clients, too many staff members dont adequately address client needs.

Paige described a workplace where supervisors didnt always address issues reported by employees.

Lot of emotions, she said of hearing about the investigation. This is a long time coming. I dont think that place needs to be open.

Paige said that through former co-workers, she learned the rumor on the resource center campus is that she filed the initial complaint. Paige said that isnt true.

However, she said she did speak with officials at the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, which is also investigating the abuse allegations.

McCoy said some of the 12 employees who are gone from the center engaged in abuse when they knew supervisors wouldnt be around. The employees also intimidated co-workers to keep them from reporting abusive actions, she said.

Were grateful for the individuals that did report incidents so we could start this process, she said. We always want to have a culture where people feel if they see something isnt right, that they feel comfortable reporting that and that management is being responsive.

McCoy said the corrective steps planned at the center will help the matter. She said the firings will too.

When you take significant action like this, you send a message and a reminder that this wont be accepted on our campus."

Sybil Finken, whose son Seth has been at the resource center since 1984, said she has complete trust that the situation will be handled and that precautions will be in place to protect our loved ones.

She said the accused former employees, are not, in any respect, representative of the caliber of people employed at GRC. Their actions are inexcusable, and they should be punished.

Finken called 98.5 percent of the staff at the center dedicated, well-trained and trustworthy.

We have been long time advocates for the facility and the staff. Our son has always received quality, professional, loving care, she said. There has never been a problem.
LINCOLN  The Nebraska Legislatures youngest members are banding together to work on issues that help recruit and retain young people.

The Legislatures 11 state senators under age 40  about a quarter of the 49-member body  on Friday announced Next Generation Nebraska, a bipartisan group meant to look at issues faced by millennials and future generations.

Chaired by Sens. Adam Morfeld, 31, of Lincoln and Brett Lindstrom, 35, of Omaha, the effort is part of Millennial Action Project, a national movement of young elected officials working together.

The group will listen to young professional groups across the state to better understand ways the state can attract young people to Nebraska and persuade them to stay, Lindstrom said.

In the post-recession years, college degree holders have become more likely to leave Nebraska than move in. For every 1,000 people in Nebraska over age 25, a net of more than six degree holders moved out, according to Census data from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey released last month.

Really what this group is about is a bipartisan effort to address the out-migration of young professionals in the state of Nebraska, whether its Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island or Scottsbluff, Lindstrom said.

Lindstrom is a Republican and Morfeld is a Democrat in the officially nonpartisan Legislature.

Morfeld called the effort a unique opportunity to add to the states workforce. The group wont identify specific issues until listening to stakeholders, but it plans to introduce legislation based on feedback, he said.

The millennial generation is generally referred to those born after 1980 and reaching adulthood around the year 2000.

The Nebraska Legislature last year had the highest percentage of millennial legislators of all states, according to a survey released in December 2015 by Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Nebraska is believed to have the highest percentage of millennial lawmakers of all states this year, too, said Steven Olikara, the Millennial Action Project president and co-founder.

Thats despite some drawbacks for young people interested in running to serve in the State Capitol, which include long hours away from their families and a $12,000 annual salary.

The states percentage of millennial lawmakers went up in 2017 with the election of Sens. Mike Hilgers of Lincoln, Tony Vargas of Omaha, Justin Wayne of Omaha and Anna Wishart of Lincoln.

Nebraska is the 15th state to join the Millennial Action Project, which works to exchange ideas and best practices among young elected leaders. Other states include California, Texas and Illinois, Olikara said.

The project was created as a way to encourage millennial engagement in the political process. Olikara pointed out that many of the nations founders were young, including Thomas Jefferson, who at age 33 wrote the Declaration of Independence.

We think millennials have a lot to offer in our democracy, Olikara said.

Nebraskans wishing to submit ideas to the state coalition can reach individual senators or through millennialaction.org, the Millennial Action Projects website.
WASHINGTON  Nebraska and Iowa Republican senators seemed satisfied as they emerged Thursday from a meeting with President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, arranged the sit-down to discuss the importance of renewable fuels with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has been critical of policies such as the Renewable Fuel Standard in the past.

Grassley and other senators indicated they liked what they heard.

It was a very positive meeting, Grassley told reporters as he stood next to Pruitt. As far as I know, every senator was very satisfied with the answers we got.

Pruitt declined to answer reporters questions.

Asked whether hell support Pruitts nomination, Grassley offered his standard line that he will wait until after the confirmation hearing to decide.

Theres been nothing at this point that would discourage me from voting for it, he said.

In addition to the four Nebraska and Iowa senators, the meeting included senators from South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri and Kansas.

Grassley said Pruitt offered not just reassuring words on renewable fuels but general support for the rule of law. That echoed comments from other senators in the meeting.

I think the whole room is supportive, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said. Hes just open and honest.

It was good to talk with him about not only the Renewable Fuel Standard but also Waters of the U.S., said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., referring to water regulations critics say the agency has taken too far.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, was in the group session and also met separately with Pruitt.

In a statement, she said shed received assurances from him that he would follow the law and not undermine the RFS. She also noted that she had invited him to visit an Iowa ethanol plant.

I stressed that a strong and robust RFS encourages consumer choice, investment and innovation, Ernst said. The RFS is a major driver of alternative fuels and economic development, and I will always protect and promote it in the Senate.
Bengaluru: Toxic froth to welcome Pravasi Bharathiya Divas delegates

Bengaluru

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

While the Karnataka government is all set to host the Pravasi Bharathiya Divas in Bengaluru starting Saturday, Varthur lake in the city is producing toxic froth to welcome the delegates. Over the last one week, toxic foam from the lake is not only spilling on to the streets but is flying in the air landing on animals, motorists and pedestrians alike.

Members of citizen's action forum 'Whitefield rising' took to social media to mock the government for preparing for an international event but ignoring its own citizens. The forum has been highlighting the plight of citizens around Varthur and Bellandur lakes in Bengaluru that are largely covered by foam due to heavy pollution through the year.

"Global Indians, if you want to experience snowfall, do visit Varthur kodi. Neglect by different government agencies continues and the regulators continue to hesitate to ensure that polluters pay," said a member of Whitefield rising. Citizens also lamented about how a valuable resource that could be reused is allowed to be polluted leading to health hazards and is the worst example of government's disengagement. Members of the citizen's forum told OneIndia that the pathetic situation of the lake was also due to lack of government commitment to remove roadblocks that are in the way of leveraging CSR funds in solving the problem too.

Karnataka's tourism minister R V Deshpande visited the venue for Pravasi Bharatiya Divas on Thursday to take stock of the situation. "Let the city look beautiful", he told officials from the BBMP, BDA and NHAI. The BBMP and BDA that are responsible for Varthur and Bellandur lake, however, have done precious little to stop pollutants from entering the lake leave alone taking up cleanliness drives.

OneIndia News
2G: SC bars Maxis from earning revenue till accused come to court

India

oi-Vicky

The Supreme Court on Friday restrained Maxis from earning any revenue from Aircel-Maxis's 65 million mobile phone connections till further orders. As a result of this order the sale of 2G spectrum by Aircel-Maxis to Anil Ambani's Reliance Communication and Bharti Airtel will be put on hold.

The Supreme Court took strong exception to the fact that the owner of the Malaysian firm Axis, Ananda Krishnan had not honoured the summons issued by the court after the CBI had filed a chargesheet in the Aircel-Maxis scam.

"You have to appear wherever you are and cannot run away after earning revenue," the bench led by Chief Justice of India J S Khehar observed. The SC said that the owner of the Malaysian firm Maxis who got to buy Aircel with former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran can't evade law of India.

It was alleged that Maxis owner was attempting to exit India after charge-sheeted by the CBI for fraudulently force buying Aircel for spectrum.

The SC said that it restrained from earning any from the Aircel-Maxis's 65 million mobile phone connections till further orders. The court observed that this order was being passed to force the owner of Maxis to appear before the Supreme Court.

"If you do not appear then we will be forced to transfer the spectrum to another telecom operator," the SC observed. Khehar

The court further said that it would consider other allegations relating to this case on January 27. The centre was directed to publish this order against Maxis and its owner in two leading Malaysian dailies. It is unfortunate that a person is using the natural resource assets of India and is not honouring the notice of the court. The court was informed that the trial court would frame charges against the accused persons on Monday.

The CBI had charge-sheeted Maran and the Maxis owner and others in the case in October 2014. Maran allegedly had forced Aircel owner to sell majority stake to Malaysian firm in lieu of a bribe amount of Rs 742 crore. During the course of the hearing it was also alleged that the the finance minister in 2006 had cleared illegal FDI by Maxis in Aircel. This would be considered at a later date, the court observed.

OneIndia News
Akhilesh-Rahul meet on Jan 9 to finalise Cong-SP alliance in UP

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Jan 6: On Wednesday, the Congress' chief ministerial candidate, Sheila Dixit, announced that Akhilesh Yadav would make a better chief minister than her. The writing was on the wall that the Congress was signaling an alliance with the Samajwadi Party to contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

[Also Read: UP assembly elections 2017: Will Kairana 'exodus' be a game changer?]

A meeting between Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi has now been fixed and discussions on an alliance are on the cards. Sources say that the meeting has been scheduled for January 9 and the two leaders would discuss an alliance and how to take the same forward.

Akhilesh has in the past several times spoken about his admiration for Rahul Gandhi. The Congress too has indicated that it would go with the Akhilesh faction of the feud hit SP.

The Congress is likely to ask for at least 90 to 100 seats. The Akhilesh faction of the SP is likely to give into that demand. Both the SP and the Congress realise that they would need to fight together in order to wade of the BJP threat.

More importantly both parties would look to consolidate the Muslim vote in a bid to hit the Mayawati led BSP.

The Congress has not made any official announcement regarding a meeting, leave alone an alliance. The party has only said that secular parties are under pressure and must come together to defeat the BJP.

For the Congress however this alliance is crucial as the party has not made any major mark in Uttar Pradesh as yet. Riding the SP's Cycle would be key to the Congress, political observers say.

OneIndia News
For beneficiaries of EWS flat a gift from PM Modi like none other

Amit Shah hails demonetisation and surgical strikes

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Jan 07: BJP's two-day national executive meet began in New Delhi on Friday to discuss key political and economic issues. While addressing party workers, BJP Chief Amit Shah hailed demonetisation and surgical strikes as 'historical decisions' by the Narendra Modi.

Also, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said that Modi had promised that the hardships are short-lived and within 50 days, the cash crunch will end.

PM was also felicitated at the BJP National Executive meet by the Parliamentary Board members for the historic demonetisation decision. It can be recalled that Modi on November 8 made an announcement to ban old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes to fight the menace of black money.

This is the second time since the demonetisation move that Modi will address all the senior leaders of the party at the meeting.

OneIndia News
Can a candidate be disqualified from contesting polls at chargesheet stage?

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Jan 6: Can a candidate facing criminal charges be disqualified from contesting the elections at the stage of filing a chargesheet? The Supreme Court will constitute a five judge Bench to decide on this crucial issue. Chief Justice of India JS Khehar has said that he would expedite this matter.

[Also Read: Justice JS Khehar, first CJI from Sikh community, to take oath today]

Currently, a candidate is barred from contesting only if he or she is convicted by the court. The question before the SC would be whether a candidate can be barred from contesting at the time of filing the chargesheet or framing of charges or only after conviction.

Can court lay down the disqualification of membership:

The key question before the court would be on whether disqualification of membership can be laid down by the judiciary. Can the judiciary go beyond Article 102 (a) to (d) of the Indian Constitution and the law made by the Parliament under Article 102(e).

The CJI says that this is a point of law that needs to be taken up and it should be made clear by the next elections at least. An immediate answer cannot be given as it would lead to filing of false cases as the election process is already underway in five states.

In 2011, a petition had been filed seeking a direction to bar chargesheeted persons from contesting the elections. The law commission had said in its report, "disqualification upon conviction has proved to be incapable of curbing the growing criminalisation of politics, owing to long delays in trials and rare convictions. The law needs to evolve to pose an effective deterrence, and to prevent subversion of the process of justice."

The commission, however, also added that at the time of filing the chargesheet it would not be the appropriate time to bar a candidate. At this stage is this lack of sufficient application of judicial mind, the commission had also said.

OneIndia News
Delhi to move UN again to ban Maualana Azhar

India

oi-Vicky

The Indian government is consulting with other countries on a fresh resolution to seek a ban on Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar at the United Nations. Top officials in the ministry for External Affairs are in touch with counterparts at other nations to bring about a fresh resolution to impose a ban or declare the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief a terrorist.

India's several attempts to get a ban imposed on Azhar have failed with China being the only country to block it. India has got the support of all nations in the UN, barring China. Indian officials have said that China has blocked efforts to ban Azhar and this could be at the insistence of its all-weather friend, Pakistan.

Azhar is wanted by India for the Parliament (2001), Uri (2016), Nagrota (2016) and Pathankot attacks (2016).

While China says that a ban cannot be enforced without a proper discussion, India has cried foul citing Pakistan pressure. Officials in India say that any move by China supporting a ban on Azhar would upset Pakistan which considers the terrorist as a strategic asset.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 17:03 [IST]
DySP Ganapati case returns to haunt Karnataka government

India

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Karnataka government's reply on a petition in DySP M K Ganapati. The apex court asked the government why the case should not be handed over to the Central bureau of investigation. The Karnataka government has been directed to file its reply in the petition. The deceased cop's family had approached the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe into the case.

In their petition to the SC, Ganapati's father and brother alleged that they suspect foul play in his death as well as consecutive investigation by the CID. Karnataka's CID had filed a report stating that the police officer committed suicide due to personal issues and the same had been tabled in the Karnataka assembly. The then Home Minister K J George was forced to resign following allegations against him by the deceased DySP.

The family had approached the Supreme Court in December last year. Speaking to the media after the Supreme Court's directive to the state government. Ganapati's family said that they didn't trust the investigations carried out by the CID and are hopeful that the CBI will be able to deliver justice to them.

OneIndia News
IMA ''shocked'' over Patanjalis claim on Coronil; demands explanation from Harsh Vardhan

Dr Harsh Vardhan should say he is not endorsing Patanjali's Coronil, says Indian Medical Association

On Ramdevs allopathy remark Patanjali says he was only reading a forward

Haryana govt, Patanjali to tie-up for World Herbal Forest

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Chandigarh, Jan 6: The Haryana government will soon sign an MoU with yoga guru Ramdev's Patanjali Yogpeeth for the development of the World Herbal Forest, a minister said on Friday.

The herbal forest will be located int Morni hills in Panchkula district, near Chandigarh.

State Health Minister Anil Vij said on Friday that the central government has assured its full assistance to develop the World Herbal Forest.

Ramdev's 'Patanjali' brand of herbal products have gained in popularity in the last nearly three years. Baba Ramdev had said earlier that Patanjali products will expand globally.

IANS
Delhi HC dismisses Omar Abdullah wife's plea for accommodation

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 6: The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed an appeal filed by Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, against the order asking her to vacate government accommodation allotted to him in Lutyens' Zone here.

A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice V.K. Rao denied relief to Payal and said that if her husband can shift to a private accommodation, there is no reason to treat her differently.

Payal has challenged the single judge's August 19 order, through which she was asked to "gracefully" vacate bungalow No.7 on Akbar Road here.

Seeking government accommodation for her and her sons on the ground that they have 'Z' and 'Z Plus' category security, she had said she along with her sons are living in a rented flat after vacating the bungalow, but it is not appropriate on security grounds.

The bungalow was allotted to Omar Abdullah, the National Conference leader, in 1999 when he was elected to parliament from Jammu and Kashmir and became a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre.

IANS
I pelted stones, hurled grenades: Pak terrorist Bahadur Ali confesses

India

oi-Vicky

The National Investigation Agency in its charge sheet filed against Lashkar-e-Tayiba militant, Bahadur Ali who was arrested at Jammu and Kashmir in August 2016 says that was highly trained in the use of map sheets.

The NIA states that Ali and his associates, Abu Saad and Abu Darda were provided codes in the form of nine alphabets, which were to be used to record numerals such as grid references, phone numbers etc. Further, an analysis, based on the disclosure of Bahadur Ali regarding the codes, have established the route he and his associates took after they had crossed the LoC, while infiltrating into Indian territory. When plotted on a map, the deciphered grid references clearly trace the infiltration route from the direction of the LoC towards Handwara, the NIA also states.

Highly trained operative:

Investigation has also established that Bahadur Ali was also provided a map sheet depicting parts of PoK and J&K. He was provided with the Grid References that had been recovered from his possession. Bahadur Ali plotted these grid references on the map sheet.

[Also Read: J&K protests: Terrorist was told to stand behind stone pelters, fire at police officials]

Further, it has been affirmed by the surveyor general of India, Dehradun that Bahadur Ali, had indeed plotted the grid references correctly. This clearly establishes that Bahadur Ali is well conversant with the use of the map sheet and that he has received training in the subject, the charge sheet also states.

A GPS device was recovered from the possession of Bahadur Ali at the time of his arrest. The data retrieved from GPS device contained the coordinates of the Mandakuli 'launching pad' of the LeT.

Waging war against India:

The NIA states that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba has set up a well organised machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan, as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by the commission of terrorist acts in various parts of India.

[Also Read: This Pak terrorist's knowledge of technology will surprise you]

Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their world view and providing them with 'military' skills. Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres are illegally pushed into Indian territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of network of their supporters and facilitators, the NIA also noted.

Fueling tensions in Kashmir

Ali, after infiltrating into Kashmir, met with a local person who had provided food to him. There were many more such meetings that had been held. Ali was provided with food, a bike among other required items.

The NIA notes that Ali and his associates had been successful in fuelling large scale agitations in Kashmir after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. Ali was instructed to mix with the protesters and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir valley, the NIA also states in its charge sheet.

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 12:04 [IST]
2 non-local labourers shot at by terrorist in J&K's Anantnag

J-K: A militant of Al-Badr group gunned down in Budgam

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

A terrorist belonging to militant group Al-Badr was gunned down by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Machu area in Budgam district early on Friday morning, said reports.

#FLASH: Al-Badr terrorist Muzzafar Ahmed killed in encounter with Army &Police in Machu area of district Budgam (J&K) in early morning hours  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

The slain terroist has been identified as Muzzafar Ahmed. He was killed in an encounter with a joint team by a army and police.

As per reports, Muzzafar Ahmed was earlier part of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) before joining Al-Badr .

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 8:09 [IST]
Madras HC dismisses plea seeking Bharat Ratna for Jayalalithaa

India

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

The Madras high court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a direction to the Central government to confer Bharath Ratna on late AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa. The first bench led by Chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar rejected the petition refusing to interfere in such matters. The court observed that it did not want to dictate the Central government on who India's highest civilian award should be granted to.

The bench, while hearing the PIL filed by one KK Ramesh, also made it clear that deciding on conferring such honours was decided by the committee concerned and that courts can not issue directions even to consider representations.

The petition was filed by Ramesh in addition to the Tamil Nadu cabinet's decision to urge the Central government to confer Bharat Ratna to the deceased leader. In his petition, Ramesh had claimed that apart from being three-time chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa had introduced pro-poor policies that benefitted the people. He added that he had made a similar representation to the Union of India on December 15, 2016, and since there was no response from the government, he had approached the court.

The Tamil Nadu cabinet had in its first meet post Jayalalithaa's death, resolved to suggest her name for considerations for Bharat Ratna. They also decided to urge the government to install a bronze statue of hers outside the parliament in Delhi. The cabinet also decided to rename M G Ramachandran memorial to include her name as well.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 14:46 [IST]
Comedian Atul Khatri's joke on seatbelt becomes one on him as Mumbai Police responds

'Two-finger test' should be banned in matrimonial dispute cases too, says Maharashtra doctor

Mumbai: Woman sustains severe injuries after stabbed by an assailant

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Jan 6: A 29-year-old woman was stabbed by an unidentified person near Mahalakshmi Race Course in Central Mumbai, police said on Friday. The incident occurred at around 7.30pm on Thursday near the race course.

Police got information about it after Nair Hospital authorities informed the police control room. Senior police officials late last night went to the hospital to see the victim, who is reported to be out of danger.

The Tardeo police have registered an offence under relevant IPC sections for attempt to murder, in connection with the incident. The woman, who is a divorcee and has a child, worked at a private company here.

Since some months, she was having an affair with a 22-year-old man. Last evening, at around 7.30pm, the man went to meet her at the race course and found her sitting under a tree with stab marks on her chest, following which she was taken to hospital.

Further investigation into the incident was on, police added.

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 9:54 [IST]
Punjab election 2017: In a drug-infested state, who will end on a high?

India

oi-Vicky

The Punjab assembly elections would be a keenly fought battle and the drug problem is just one of the isssues being raised by the opposition. For the Badals, the battle ahead is a tough one with many saying that if the Shiromani Akali Dal is voted back to power it may do nothing to shake the drug cartel.

Captain Amarinder Singh of the Congress who says that this would be his last election claims that he would eradicate the drug problem. He does have a huge task ahead with several reports suggesting that at least 40 per cent of the youth in Punjab are addicted to drugs. While many in Punjab have blamed the SAD for this growing menace they also view with scepticism the promise made by Singh, as in the past he has failed to address this problem convincingly.

Will the drug menace wipe out the Badals?

The majority blame the Badals for this growing menace and say that they have done nothing to address this problem. For the opposition this would be a major issue in the forthcoming elections. The SAD-BJP combine however says that this is just a campaign by the opposition to defame Punjab youths.

On the other hand, the Congress has assured that it would provide jobs for the unemployed youth. While the SAD has been denying that the drug problem has become a menace, statistics collected from various quarters tell a different picture.

In a purple haze

Punjab became the state with the highest number of drug related crimes last year. It surpassed Mizoram, which had this dubious distinction. Narcotic related crimes witnessed a 245 per cent increase between 1999 and 2008. While the SAD has been blamed for protecting the drug cartels, an intelligence report indicated the involvement of politicians from all parties. Strangely enough, this report went off the radar for reasons unknown.

A study conducted by the department of Social Security Development of Women and Children found that 67 percent households in Punjab have at least one person addicted to drugs. A narcotics bureau study says that at least 40 per cent of the youth are addicted to drugs.

The Aam Admi Party which is contesting the Punjab elections has promised to wipe out this menace. Between the Congress and the SAD-BJP, a large majority that trust the AAP to address this issue. The argument is that the Congress and the SAD-BJP have ruled the state in the past and have done little to bring under check this menace.

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 11:50 [IST]
LeT terrorist Mohammad Arif to hang after SC confirms death in 2000 Red Fort attack case

SC refuses 'urgent' hearing in a plea seeking postponement of budget

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 6: The Supreme Court on Friday refused an urgent hearing on a plea seeking that the Union Budget for 2017-18 be deferred till April in view of assembly elections in five states.

The public suit by advocate M.L. Sharma came in the wake of the staggered election dates being announced for five state assemblies between February 4 and March 8.

Thus, presenting the budget now would violate the Model Code of Conduct which has come into force with the announcement of the election schedule, the petitioner contended.

A bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice N.V. Ramana and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that they would decide the issue when it comes in its normal course.

On Thursday, the opposition parties had approached the Election Commission seeking the defferment of the Union Budget's presentation in view of polls in five states.

The EC on Wednesday announced assembly election dates in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur.

IANS
Shashi Tharoor, other Congress workers detained in Thiruvananthapuram over demonetisation protest

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and other party leaders were detained by the police in Thiruvananthapuram for protesting against demonetisation outside the RBI office in the state capital, news agency ANI reported. Tharoor and the others were staging protests against the manner in which the Centre has implemented the note ban in the country at the office of the Reserve Bank of India or RBI, and blocked a major road, causing traffic jams, said the police. Tharoor and the others were taken in and released soon after.

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Tharoor, who is Thiruvananthapuram MP, had said earlier that the demonetisation exercise was implemented badly and in an 'astonishingly incompetent manner.'

"We were sitting on a peaceful dharna outside RBI office but we were arrested by police and were later released," said Tharoor told ANI.

This is not the first time that Tharoor had criticised the government's modus operandi with regards to the demonetisation move. He had earlier criticised the Centre for changing the demonetisation goalposts frequently. "You announce an intention and then four days later you backtrack. It's as if they just don't know what they are doing...There has been a complete disavowal of responsibility and culpability in these failures, which is also troubling," Tharoor had said in December 2016.

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 15:17 [IST]
SHOCKING!! Teenage girl's ear chopped off for resisting rape in UP

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bhagpat, Jan 06: A teenage girl's ear was allegedly chopped off by four men who attempted to gang rape her in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat district. The horrific incident came into light on January 5 after she filed a case in Ramala police station.

The incident occurred on January 4 when four rapists barged into her home and attempted to gang-rape her. Soon, after the girl raised an alarm, the men chopped off her ears and fled from the spot. The hooligans even tried to attack girl's mother who rushed to her rescue.

Speaking to ANI, Bharatiya Janata Party Baghpat MP Satyapal Singh said that there was no rape attempt. Complaining now after days have passed, shows its an after thought.

''No arrests have been made in this regard. A case has been registered under section 354, 324, 323, Ajay Kumar Sharma, CO, Dehat said. The victim was sent for medical test.

OneIndia News
Always admired his zeal, energy: PM Modi greets VP Naidu on his birthday

SP feud is not the major issue of UP polls: Venkaiah

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Rubbishing that the feud in the Samajwadi Party would be the the main issue in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said non-governance, law and order problems and development are the pertinent issues.

UP's ruling SP is embroiled in an internal crisis with factions led by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav bickering over the party name and symbol.

Mulayam had on December 30, 2016, expelled Akhilesh from the party after which the latter covened a meeting and declared himself as the party chief. Akhilesh also sacked Mulayam's close aides Amar Singh and Shivpal Yadav from the party.

Later, both approached the Election Commission to stake a claim over party symbol 'cycle'. the Election Commission has sought their response by January 9.

Akhilesh on Tuesday met Mulayam at his residence, leading to speculation that efforts were being made for a patch-up, which the faction led by the chief minister denied.

On Friday, Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh met with SP supremo Mulayam at his residence, prior to which Shivpal met Akhilesh.

Party general secretary and Akhilesh supporter Ram Gopal Yadav on Friday, however, claimed that faction led by Akhilesh is the real Samajwadi Party.

"Party under leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is the real Samajwadi Party, and should be seen so. Cycle symbol must be allotted to us," news agency ANI quoted Ram Gopal.

OneIndia News
UGC-NET 2022 results to be announced tomorrow; check steps to download scorecard

'Delhi may get relief from pollution after Nov 5': Safar chief

Delhi MCD Polls 2022 dates likely to be announced today at 4 pm

Delhi AQI now 'severe plus' at 472; Noida shuts schools

SpiceJet aircraft makes emergency landing at Delhi airport

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Jan 6: Bengaluru-Delhi SpiceJet flight SG 136 made an emergency landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday after experiencing partial hydraulic failure.

SpiceJet airlines issued a statement, saying that the SpiceJet flight SG 136, Bengaluru to Delhi, experienced partial hydraulic failure due to loss of hydraulic fluid."

Crew carried out emergency procedure and landed safely in Delhi. All passengers & crew are safe.

OneIndia News
UP assembly election 2017: Yogi Adityanath is BJPs politician, priest and agent provocateur

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Lucknow, Jan 6: Clad in his trademark saffron-coloured robe, Bharatiya Janata Party's Yogi Adityanath, is known for his provocative speeches and mass following across Uttar Pradesh.

The priest-turned-politician never shies away from making controversial remarks, be it about Pakistan or Islam. The 44-year-old leader also rebelled against his party on several occasions, but because of the sway he holds over the 'Hindu' voters, the BJP can't ignore his 'leadership qualities.'

Know more about him...

Birth and education: He was born on June 5, 1972 in Garhwal, Uttarakhand, in a Rajput family. The founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini - a social, cultural and right wing group for the youth - the BJP politician is an alumnus of HNB Garhwal University, Uttarakhand.

Political and religious career: Adityanath holds the record of being the youngest member of the 12th Lok Sabha at 26. He has won the Lok Sabha polls, as a candidate from the Gorakhpur constituency, five times - in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections.

Adityanath became the Mahant or head priest of the Gorakhnath Mutt, following the death of his political and spiritual guru, Mahant Avaidyanath, in September 2014.

Controversies: The 44-year-old leader has a long list of controversies to his credit. Right from comparing Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed during the intolerance debate in 2015 to asking people to leave India if they don't practice Surya Namaskar in 2015, the Hindu priest has been in the forefront in keeping the communal politics alive in the country.

Back in 2005, Adityanath allegedly converted around 1,800 Christians to Hinduism in Etah, UP, as a part of 'purification drive'. In 2007, he was arrested for allegedly making hate speech in Gorakhpur, which subsequently led to a riot in the state.

OneIndia News
Do RAW, others get a raw deal in the name of 'intelligence failure'?

Keep it clean, keep it safe: How the federal agencies raided the PFI

WARNING: Indian Mujahideen 2.0 likely, says IB

India

oi-Vicky

Intelligence Bureau officials suspect that there would be a culmination of several like-minded radical forces from across the country to form a home-grown terrorist outfit, since the downfall of the Indian Mujahideen has created a vacuum.

IB officials say that there is sufficient indication that shows that coming together of various disgruntled elements of different groups to form a home grown jihadi outfit.

The IB officer confirms that the formation of an 'IM version 2.0' is not ruled out. "The formation of this outfit would be led by the Students Islamic Movement of India which has been making several efforts in the recent past. Two jail breaks at Khandwa and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh were aimed at creating a new outfit," he says.

IB officials add that the SIMI is also looking for disgruntled elements from across the country. Programmes are being held in parts of Kerala too to rope in operatives. They are also in touch with some elements who are considered to be part of the Zakir Naik-run Islamic Research Foundation.

SIMI went on to become the Indian Mujahideen, is making all attempts at a revival. Officials add say that Riyaz Bhatkal, one of the IM founders too is in touch with operatives in India. Riyaz who is believed to be in Karachi, Pakistan, has been speaking about a revival for long.

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 15:58 [IST]
What is the Rs 70,000-crore Air India scam about

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Jan 6: The Central Bureau of Investigation will submit its report on the Rs 70,000 crore scam in the purchase of aircrafts by Air India during the UPA-1 rule by June 2017. The Supreme Court on Thursday, while ordering a probe, directed the CBI to complete investigations by June.

The bench made a serious note of the allegations and said that it would not grant more time to the CBI, since the FIR was lodged in 2013. After the allegations about irregularities in the purchase and hiring of aircrafts by Air India surfaced, the comptroller and auditor general had given a report in which it had questioned the modus operandi adopted by the civil aviation ministry.

It was alleged that there were irregularities in the purchase of 111 aircrafts for Air India that had cost around Rs 70,000 crore. The purchase was made when Patel was the civil aviation minister.

The petitioner, Centre for Public Interest Litigation, had also referred to Patel's decisions, including the 'massive' purchase of 111 aircraft for national airlines costing about Rs 70,000 crore, taking a large number of planes on lease, giving up profit-making routes and timings in favour of private airlines and the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines.

The CBI has already examined 55 witnesses so far. An empowered group of minister under the then finance, law and civil aviation minister was constituted in December 2005 and held discussions with Boeing and GE. A note signed by the finance minister had been sent for approval to the then prime mInister for placing orders for 68 aircrafts with Boeing. It was said that the complete delivery would take place by 2011.

The petitioner alleged in the court that there was already irregularity in the purchase of of biometric system for Air India at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore. It was also alleged that a Canadian court had already found that bribes had been paid in bagging the contracts for the biometric system by Air India. In additio, the allocation of lucrative routes to private airliners as the cost of Air India was also questioned by the petitioner.

OneIndia News
British PM to meet Trump in US

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

London, Jan 6: British Prime Minister Theresa May will visit Donald Trump in the spring following preparatory meetings between key staff from 10 Downing Street and the US President-elect's team, the media reported.

According to a report in the Independent on Friday, May's joint chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill travelled to the US in December to build links with Trump's team ahead of his inauguration on January 20.

"The Prime Minister suggested it would be a good idea for key staff from both teams to meet. President-elect Trump agreed this would be useful," Downing Street said. "We are pleased to have been able to make that happen and the Prime Minister looks forward to visiting the new President in the spring."

Earlier, May praised Trump as "very easy to talk to", despite having criticised him during the US elections. The British Prime Minister's compliment formed part of her drive to strengthen ties with the new administration, after a rocky start in which she and other senior Tories tried to move on from previous derogatory comments.

Speaking during a visit to Bahrain, May had said: "He is somebody who very much values the relationship he has with Britain."

During his campaign, when Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the US and claimed parts of London were no-go areas for the police, May as Home Secretary had said that she thinks "he does not understand Britain".

IANS
What does the US actually want in Syria?

Cease-fire violations in Syria are obstacle to talks: Turkey

International

oi-PTI

United Nations, Jan 6: Turkey's foreign minister says the main obstacle to holding peace negotiations on Syria later this month is the cease-fire violations. He has called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on those refusing to stop the violence.

Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at UN headquarters where he discussed Syria with new Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that if the talks go ahead in Kazakhstan's capital Astana they will be based on a roadmap to peace agreed to by key powers in Geneva in 2012.

He said the latest list he received on Thursday only has violations by pro-government supporters not a single one by the opposition.

"This is not acceptable...So this is the main obstacle," Cavusoglu said.

On Tuesday, Syria's ceasefire appeared under threat as government forces intensified their attacks near Damascus and around 10 rebel groups said they were suspending talks about planned peace negotiations this month. The talks are due to take place in the Kazakh capital Astana in late January but the rebels said they were pulling out of discussions due to "violations" by Damascus of a four-day old truce.

[Also read: Syria: Ceasefire under threat]

Turkey and Russia brokered the cease-fire and are monitoring the violations.

PTI
China denies reports of not allowing Tibetans to attend Kalachakra

International

oi-PTI

Beijing, Jan 6 : China on Friday refuted reports that it pressurised thousands of Tibetans not to attend the Kalachakra puja, the most prominent Buddhist ceremony being held by the Dalai Lama in India. Beijing also dismissed the event as a political tool to propagate ideas of 'hating' China.

"Taking advantage of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra (wheel of time) teachings have inveigled Tibetans into illegally going abroad over the last decade," Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told state-run Global Times.

The Dalai Lama will this month preside over the 34th Kalachakra initiation at Bodhgaya, where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment more than 2,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world are expected to attend the event.

As preparations got under way on Wednesday, the chairman of the organising committee Karma Gelek Yuthok said almost 7,000 pilgrims had returned to China, citing pressure from authorities there, the Global Times report said.

Denying the number of pilgrims from China is far less than 'thousands', Xu Zhitao, deputy director of the bureau of the Tibet question at the united front work department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said there are pilgrims from China attending the ceremony who hold Chinese passports.

"Therefore, the government by no means threatened them to return, although the government does not encourage them to attend the ritual," Xu told the Global Times.

Xu pointed out that the ritual, organised by the Tibetan 'government-in-exile certainly involves politics'.

"Considering that the large-scale ritual needs years of preparation, the India-based ceremony frequently degenerates into a political tool," Zhu said. He said that the organising committee has made use of the occasion and the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama to propagate ideas of "hating the Chinese government".

The organising committee also attempted to establish relations with the Tibetans from China through the ceremony, he said.

"The number of Tibetans attending the ritual decreased dramatically in recent years after the local governments clarified to local Tibetans that the ritual is about separatism, and also due to tightened border control," Zhu claimed.

PTI
Chinese nuclear submarine spotted at Karachi

International

oi-Vicky

A Chinese nuclear submarine docked in the harbour at Karachi last year was captured by Google Earth raising fears that China may be spying on Indian warships.

The image which was first spotted by satellite imagery expert @rajfortyseven shows a Chinese Navy Type 091 Han class fast-attack submarine which is the first class of nuclear powered submarines deployed by China.

A nuclear powered submarine has an unlimited range of operations because their nuclear reactors rarely require refuelling. These submarines can be deployed underwater for extended durations and they are also difficult to track. Nuclear submarines are faster than the conventional diesel powered submarines. Diesel submarines operate for a shorter duration of a few weeks.

India has been saying that it is convinced about the presence of Chinese nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean. Recently Navy Chief Sunil Lamba had said that the Indian Navy keeps a close watch and monitors movements of the Chinese submarines and ships. We launch surveillance missions in the form of aircraft and ships to keep a track of them, he had also said.

It may be recalled that last year Pakistan State Radio announced a deal to acquire 8 Chinese Yuan-class conventional diesel-electric powered submarines. The first four submarines are expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the others will be assembled in Karachi by 2028. This signalled the growing proximity between Pakistan and China which have been strengthening their naval links.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 15:33 [IST]
First time in 50 years: Cuba to export to US

International

oi-PTI

Havana, Jan 6: Two firms have signed a deal for the first commercial exports in half a century from Cuba to the US, a new step in the countries' historic rapprochement.

Cuban company Cuba Export signed an agreement to sell charcoal to US firm Coabana Trading for USD 420 a tonne, the communist island's state newspaper Granma said on Thursday. Although a nearly 55-year US trade embargo on Cuba remains in place, the exports are authorized under exceptional measures approved by outgoing US President Barack Obama.

It is a key step in the gradual normalizing of ties that he and Cuban President Raul Castro launched in late 2014. A first shipment of 40 tonnes of "marabu" vegetable charcoal for burning, made from a local hardwood tree originating in Africa, is due for delivery on January 18, Granma said online. The Republican-controlled US Congress is reluctant to lift the full embargo on the communist island, whose government is branded a dictatorship by critics.

But Obama, who hands over office to Donald Trump on January 20, managed to ease the trade restrictions to allow certain products from private cooperative Cuban farms to be exported.

"This is a wide-reaching agreement for relations between the two countries," the president of Coabana Trading, Scott Gilbert, told reporters after signing the deal in Havana.

"It represents another plank in the bridge between the United States and Cuba." CubaExport exports between 40,000 and 80,000 tonnes of vegetable charcoal a year, mostly to Europe, Granma said.

PTI
There is no 'one-size-fits-all' to curb poverty

4 held in Assam for suspected links with Bangladesh's terror outfit

Thief calls cops for help after being caught by mob

Cyclone Sitrang heading towards Bangladesh; Heavy rains likely to pound West Bengal, Odisha and NE

Mastermind of Dhaka cafe siege gunned down

International

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

The mastermind of the seige at a cafe in Bangladesh capital Dhaka last year has been killed in a raid in wee hours of Friday, said reports.

#FLASH: Mastermind' of Bangladesh cafe siege killed in raid: police (AFP)  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2017

Five militants took hostages and opened fire on the Holey Artisan Bakery located in an affluent area in Dhaka in July, 2016. The incident left 29 people dead.

Five attackers entered the restaurant armed with bombs and guns, and opened fire indiscriminately.

Twenty-two civilians, five gunmen, and two police officers were confirmed killed, while 50 others, mostly police personnel, were injured.

According to reports, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, but Bangladesh police rejected the claim. They blamed Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh for the attack.

OneIndia News
What does the US actually want in Syria?

Pentagon claims to have killed 20 Al-Qaeda militants in Syria

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Jan 6: The United States killed about 20 Al-Qaeda militants this week in air strikes in northwestern Syria, the Defense Department has said.

US warplanes conducted two air strikes, on Sunday and Tuesday, near Sarmada in Idlib province, the Pentagon said on Thursday. The attacks had been reported by local sources. According to those sources, the air strikes were aimed at Fateh al-Sham Front, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, that officially severed ties with the jihadist network in July.

But for the Pentagon, the US assault near the city of Sarmada was aimed squarely at the 'foreign terrorist fighter network' of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda leaders "directed terrorist operations out of this location," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at a news conference.

"We will continue to take action to deny any safe haven for Al-Qaeda in Syria," he said.

Northwestern Idlib province is largely controlled by Fateh al-Sham and rebel groups allied with it. Fateh al-Sham is excluded from the current ceasefire in Syria between the government and rebels that was brokered last week by regime backer Russia and rebel sponsor Turkey.

The tenuous ceasefire, which took effect on December 30, is part of efforts to resolve nearly six years of war in Syria, which has been ravaged by violence since an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

According to the Pentagon, the US air strike on Sunday targeted two vehicles and killed five Al-Qaeda militants. Tuesday's strike killed more than 15 militants and destroyed six vehicles, Cook said.

"We will not allow Al-Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the United States or its allies around the world. These strikes demonstrate that commitment," he said.

The United States added Hamza bin Laden, son and would-be heir of Osama bin Laden, to its terrorist blacklist on Thursday. The younger bin Laden has become active as an Al-Qaeda propagandist since his father's death at the hands of US special forces in 2011 in Pakistan.

PTI
Roadblock in US-Pakistan ties: Expert says Pakistan follows pro-terror policy

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Jan 6: Pakistan's continued tolerance of terror groups like the Taliban, LeT and Haqqani network is a major impediment in US-Pakistan ties, an American expert on counter-terrorism has said.

"Pakistan's policy towards terrorist groups is the major impediment towards US-Pak relationship," Stephen Tankel from the American University told a Washington audience on Wednesday.

Since 2005, he said Pakistan has decreased its efforts against al-Qaeda and foreign fighters. "Pakistan has not only preserved Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network, but it has also continued to preserve and tolerate groups like LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba)," Tankel said at the Woodrow Wilson Center during a panel discussion on 'The Pakistani Taliban: Down, But not out?'.

Tankel said these networks have infrastructure in areas like Punjab and Sindh provinces which can be used by other terrorist groups when they are pushed out of the tribal areas.

He was of the view that the counter-terrorism operation by Pakistani forces in the tribal areas might not have achieved its goal and that there is a greater chance of them coming back into action.

Pakistan armed forces stationed in these areas help maintain peace in the region. Mona Kanwal Sheikh, senior researcher at Danish Institute for International Studies and author of Guardians of God -- Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban, said that the massive presence of the army has mobilised the militants and the local population.

"It is a same situation as Indian Kashmir of a strong military presence... army cannot solve problems alone," she said. Pakistani Army operation in the tribal areas could be an issue in the tribal areas, Sheikh said.

Pakistani Taliban is helping the Afghan Taliban and at some time, they would refocus on Pakistan again. There are a lot of propaganda material, there are graffiti on the wall in support of ISIS in areas like Balochistan, Sheikh added.

PTI
'If I have nominated even one person using authority, I'll resign': Kerala governor on VC row

Political violence in Kerala: BJP man succumbs to burns

Thiruvananthapuram

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 6: A 55-year-old BJP worker succumbed to burn injuries on Friday making him the latest casualty due to political violence in Kerala.

Radhakrishnan's residence in Palakkad was burnt down when fire set by CPI(M) workers spread to the entire house on December 28. The incident had left him, his brother and his wife with severe injuries. Radhakrishnan who was being treated at a hospital in Thrissur died on Friday afternoon while the others are being treated for severe burn injuries.

The local police had arrested 3 members of the CPI(M) last week for the violence while others involved are still absconding. The Kerala BJP unit has called for a strike on January 7 following the death of its member. BJP alleges that the attack was meant to kill.

A gang of CPI(M) workers set bikes ablaze outside Radhakrishnan's residence in Kanjikkode in Palakkad. The fire from the bikes spread to a gas cylinder resulting in an explosion severely injuries all members inside the house. The police had stated that the incident was part of ongoing political violence between the two parties in the district.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, January 6, 2017, 19:38 [IST]
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Macaus Five Month Gain Streak Positions Positive Gains for 2017

Published January 6, 2017 by Lee R

New Integrated Resorts appealing to gamblers and tourists alike Rs are likely to sustain Macau growth.

Macaus transformation seems to be working.

Five Month Streak

December marked the fifth consecutive month of year-on-year casino revenue increases for the Chinese gambling hub seeking to draw more tourists beyond China.

The Gains

Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau Gross data shows gaming revenue GGR for December gaining 8 percent from December of the previous year to 19.8 billion patacas (HK$19.2 billion), after a 14.4 percent year-on-year jump in November.

Annual Progress

Total annual figures show a 3.3 percent drop in casino revenue to 223.2 billion patacas, a marked improvement over the 34.3 percent drop showing in 2015. Bloomberg expects the recovery to continue with a positive gain of 7 percent GGR for 2017.

Positive Transformation

Performance went positive for the first time in two years in Macau in Q3 2016, with a 4% jump in GDP, undoubtedly to the utter delight of government officials in the special protectorate.

Macaus Reinvents Itself

Macaus reinvent is a product of increased oversight necessitated by a sweeping anti-corruption campaign which scared off high-stakes VIP bettors and put Macau into a deep spin in mid-2014.

Operators Tourist Outreach

The transformation is exemplified by Macau operations such as Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts Ltd. offering more tourist-friendly features. The outreach has attracted visitors from South Korea, Japan and the U.S., turning Macau into an international venue.

The IR Revolution

Further boosts are expected from the opening of MGM Cotai, with MGM Resorts Internationals second Macau holding drawing mass market and VIP customers equally from the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world. MGM Cotais Q2 opening will launch a trend of new IR integrated casino resorts appealing equally to gamblers and visitors along Cotai Strip, Macaus answer to the Las Vegas Strip.

Outlook

With a new streak of growth in place, Chinese nationals and foreigners, gamblers and tourists, all have a reason to go to Macau now.
Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

Neuberger Berman has closed its fourth and largest secondaries fund to date on $2.5 billion. The fund beat its $2 billion target after under a year in market. SOF IV, which launched in April 2016, is the successor to NB Secondary Opportunities Fund III LP, which closed in 2013 and had commitments of $2.0 billion.

SOF IV has a global mandate and will pursue secondary opportunities in private equity funds, direct investments, co-investments and structured private equity opportunities.

The fund will make investments between $20 and $500 million.

New York-based Neuberger Berman manages approximately $40 billion in assets spread across private equity and secondaries investments. The broader $225 billion firm manages portfolios for institutions and advisors across all asset classes.

Known investors in the new secondaries vehicle include the City of Milwaukee Employes' Retirement System which invested $25 million in early 2016 and the Oregon State University Foundation which invested just over $1.9 million.

This is the second fund close for the firm in a few months. In October, Neuberger closed its second private credit fund on $750 million. That fund invests in the junior debt of private equity-backed companies, including unitranche loans, second lien loans, and mezzanine debt securities.

Neuberger Berman manages approximately $2.3 billion of committed capital focused on investing in the credits of private-equity bac......................

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From Alon Ben Meir Website

Recent developments in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demonstrated the huge gap between the Israeli government and the international community's position about the settlements in the occupied territories and the prospect of a two-state solution. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry's speech condemning the Israeli settlements and characterizing them as a major obstacle to peace, were largely on the mark. But ending the settlements enterprise will not, in and of itself, resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, both the UN and Kerry have ignored other critical issues, particularly the poisonous socio-political atmosphere between the two sides, the fault lines in the peace process itself, and Hamas' and other Palestinian extremists' position that calls for Israel's destruction, to which Kerry made only scant reference.

The French Initiative to convene an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on January 15th is a momentous opportunity to offer a new approach that would mitigate the hostile relationship between the two sides and create a new socio-political environment conducive to restarting peace negotiations with a realistic prospect for success. However, the agenda of the conference and its outcome should seek to provide a framework for the Trump administration to align itself with because without the US' ultimate support, it will have no lasting impact in securing a viable Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Although the UNSC called for taking "immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction," the resolution fell short in condemning Hamas by name and calling upon its leadership to renounce violence and accept Israel's right to exist.

This glaring omission plays squarely into the hands of Netanyahu's right-wing government, which claims that Israel continues to be existentially threatened and only when the Palestinians unequivocally accept Israel's existence will negotiations produce a lasting peace agreement.

In his speech, Secretary Kerry defended the US abstention in the UNSC, which allowed the resolution to pass, because it recognized the critical importance of combating terrorism and ending all acts of violence: "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". [but] the vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution."

Both the UN resolution and Kerry's speech, however, failed to recognize that the conditions on the ground have dramatically shifted not only because of the settlements, but also because of the psychological dimensions that impact and impede progress on every conflicting issue.

There is profound distrust between the two sides which is compounded by mutually deep concerns over security, coupled with strong illusions held by right-wing Israeli and extremist Palestinian constituencies that claim to have an inherent right to the entire land stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

Hamas has made this claim time and again, and recently Israel's Education Minister Naftali Bennett stated that Israel should annex Ma'ale Adumim (located 4.5 miles east of Jerusalem), followed by Area C in its entirety, which is under Israeli control and is more than 60 percent of the West Bank.

As Bennett, Netanyahu, and other coalition partners see it, the expansion of settlements and the retroactive legalization of many others built without initial government approval will create irreversible facts on the ground making a two-state solution simply inoperable, which is precisely what they want to secure.

To be sure, the UN resolution and Kerry's speech are nothing but a call in the wilderness. Other than putting some political pressure on Israel and warning the Palestinians to stop incitements and acts of violence, there is no realistic international enforcement mechanism to compel either side to adhere to the UN resolution or Kerry's plea.

Netanyahu feels confident that as president, Trump will restore the US' traditional support of Israel's position and provide it with political cover any time attempts are made by the international community to pressure or coerce Israel to embrace policies contrary to its perceived national interests.

The timing of the French Initiative may seem odd as it is taking place only five days before the inauguration of President-elect Trump. The French government, however, wants to build on the momentum produced by the UN resolution and Kerry's speech to engender wider international consensus beyond the UNSC against the settlements and save the two-state solution, which is viewed as sine qua non to enduring peace.

Furthermore, the French are hoping to prevent the incoming Trump administration from rushing into taking a position completely supportive of Netanyahu and scuttling what's left of the peace process, especially at a time of regional turmoil and extremism, which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feeds into with consequential adverse effects on the European community.

For the French conference to succeed, however, it should not merely echo what the UN resolution and Kerry's speech called for, and not simply push for the resumption of direct or indirect peace negotiations that will meet the same fate as previous talks. The conferees must adopt a three-track approach that will be conducive for the resumption of constructive negotiations leading to a peace agreement that the Trump administration can support.

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Mumia before his Hep-C case, and as he looked under prison non-treatment

(Image by ThisCantBeHappening!) Details DMCA



In a stunning conclusion to a year-and-a-half legal drama, a federal judge in Scranton, has ordered the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to quit stalling and to begin treating prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal with the latest available and highly effective anti-viral drugs for curing him of a raging and life-threatening case of Hepatitis C.

Abu-Jamal, back in early 2015, fell into a diabetic coma, the result of an undiagnosed case of active Hepatitis C which he contracted sometime during his 36 years as a prisoner in the Pennsylvania prison system.

Convicted and sentenced to death back in 1982 for the 1981 murder of a white police officer at what was a highly controversial trial fraught with perjured prosecution testimony, withheld evidence and under the control of a clearly biased judge, Abu-Jamal, at the time a prominent Philadelphia journalist, in 2001 had his death sentence overturned on constitutional grounds and was instead given a sentence of life in prison without parole. But prison authorities, aided by the state's judicial and law-enforcement establishment, have continued to torment him and harm him in any way possible, for example keeping him in solitary on death row for several years of appeals after a federal judge had already tossed out his death sentence, and even then keeping him in solitary as long as possible before finally transferring him to the general prison population after his death sentence was finally confirmed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

When it became clear that Abu-Jamal was seriously ill with Hepatitis C -- an epidemic in prisons across America and in the Pennsylvania prison system where at least 7000 prisoners are known to have active cases of the deadly disease -- efforts by his supporters, family and legal team to get him treatment began immediately. But these efforts have been stymied at every turn by a prison bureaucracy loathe to offer medication that reportedly can cost $80,000 or more for one full course of treatment. (Of course, unmentioned is the reality that the cost of Abu-Jamal's two hospitalizations for the serious conditions caused by non-treatment of the disease have already cost taxpayers $170,000, as will also be the case for other infected inmates who are left untreated).

Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolition Law Center, a Pittsburgh-based Pennsylvania prison advocacy organization, says that the preliminary injunction issued by Federal District Judge Robert Mariani, the first such order nationwide demanding state-of-the-art anti-viral treatment for a prison inmate with Hep-C, while subject to almost certain appeal by the state DOC, stands as a powerful condemnation of the "Nazi-like" medical neglect of state inmates suffering with Hepatitis C, if not stayed during any subsequent appeal, could lead to treatment beginning soon for one of the world's most prominent prisoners.

Certainly Judge Mariani made sure any appellate court panel would have solid grounds not to allow for any further delay in treatment starting during what would be a lengthy appeals process. In his order, the judge, referring to the DOC's current "protocol" for treatment of prisoners with Hep C wrote scathingly:

[T]he effect of the protocol is to delay administration of DAA medications until the inmate faces the imminent prospect of "catastrophic" rupture and bleeding out of the esophageal vessels. Additionally, by denying treatment until inmates have "advanced disease" as marked by esophageal varices, the interim protocol prolongs the suffering of those who have been diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis C and allows the progression of the disease to accelerate so that it presents a greater threat of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and death of the inmate with such disease.

As Grote and his fellow attorney in the case, Robert Boyle, note, "The judge also rejected the DOC's argument that recent changes to (their treatment) protocol had resolved the constitutional violation, holding that the new protocol "suffers from the same fatal flaw as the interim protocol" because it "refuses, without medical justification, to provide treatment" and also imposes an unreasonable condition--having vast fibrosis or cirrhosis--on treatment."

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The answer has 3 parts:

1. The origins of "Obamacare"

2. The Republican Flip

3. The Dilemma of throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Let's start with the origins of what is now known, with great irony for those who understand the origins of the ACA, as Obamacare. The twin pillars of this plan are a mandate to obtain insurance and subsidies for those who cannot afford it. This plan was originally published by the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation in 1989.

Republicans came up with the plan first described by Stuart Butler in a publication for the right-wing Heritage Foundation in 1989. And it was, with even greater irony, the Heritage Foundation which fought "Obamacare, " claiming the ACA was in no way similar to its 1989 plan.

Here is the text from the Butler plan:

"All citizens should be guaranteed access to affordable healthcare."

"2) Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance."

"Direct and indirect government assistance should be concentrated on those who need it most. "

From this right to healthcare and the mandate to obtain it, the concept of government subsidies was inevitable.

The items in the ACA which are not included in the Heritage Plan are precisely those which the public approves.

Tho the ACA remains unpopular, by a small margin (a few polls have showed a slight approval), when asked about specific features, most Americans approve of them and the overall thrust of public opinion is not for repeal but for improvement.

If we look at the polls, the number who want to keep the ACA or expand it is a robust majority.

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From The Nation

"A lot of working people voted for change in this election," argued Bill Finn, the director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council. "They didn't vote for this. They didn't vote for a pay cut."

Finn got that right. Kentucky Republicans launched the new year with a race to enact sweeping anti-labor legislation, and they aren't concerning themselves with the question of whether they have a mandate to assault labor unions and undermine wages and workplace protections in the Bluegrass State. They are moving immediately, aggressively, and thoroughly to implement an across-the-board assault on workers and the unions that represent them.

And with just two weeks to go before Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, Kentucky Republicans are doing something else. They are providing a powerful reminder of the threat to working families that arises when Republicans gain "trifecta control" (taking charge of the executive branch and both legislative chambers) of the governing process. Until this year, Democrats controlled the Kentucky House of Representatives and were able to block anti-labor legislation that was advanced by Republican Governor Matt Bevin and his allies in the Republican-controlled state Senate -- with strong backing from national anti-union groups financed by the Koch brothers and other billionaire donors. But in November Republicans won a majority in the Kentucky House. That gave them complete control of the process, and they have made it their first priority to approve anti-labor measures.

Union busting is on a fast track in Kentucky, where Republican legislators have refused to even consider the arguments of workers, community leaders, responsible business owners, and academics who explain that assaults of worker rights do little or nothing to promote economic development -- and much to harm working families. Among those expressing thoughtful opposition to the anti-union measures that are rapidly advancing in Kentucky was Bishop John Stowe of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington, who the Kentucky AFL-CIO reported wrote in an open letter that "The weakening of unions by so-called 'right to work' laws, has been shown to reduce wages and benefits overall in the states where such laws have been enacted. This cannot be seen as contributing to the common good."

Click Here to Read Whole Article
One of the most propulsive forces in our social and economic lives is the rate at which emerging technology transforms every sphere of human labor. Despite the political leverage obtained by fearmongering about immigrants and foreigners, its the robots who are actually taking our jobs. It is happening, as former SEIU president Andy Stern warns in his book Raising the Floor, not in a generation or so, but right now, and exponentially in the next 10-15 years.

Self-driving cars and trucks will eliminate millions of jobs, not only for truckers and taxi (and Uber and Lyft) drivers, but for all of the people who provide goods and services for those drivers. AI will take over for thousands of coders and may even soon write articles like this one (warning us of its impending conquest). What to do? The current buzzwordor buzz-acronymis UBI, which stands for Universal Basic Income, a scheme in which everyone would receive a basic wage from the government for doing nothing at all. UBI, its proponents argue, is the most effective way to mitigate the inevitably massive job losses ahead.









Those proponents include not only labor leaders like Stern, but entrepreneurs like Peter Barnes and Elon Musk (listen to him discuss it below), and political philosophers like Georgetown Universitys Karl Widerquist. The idea is an old one; its modern articulation originated with Thomas Paine in his 1795 tract Agrarian Justice. But Thomas Paine did not foresee the robot angle. Alan Watts, on the other hand, knew precisely what lay ahead for post-industrial society back in the 1960s, as did many of his contemporaries.

The English Episcopal priest, lecturer, writer, and popularizer of Eastern religion and philosophy in England and the U.S. gave a talk in which he described what happens when you introduce technology into production. Technological innovation enables us to produce enormous quantities of goods but at the same time, you put people out of work.

You can say, but it always creates more jobs, therell always be more jobs. Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that arent even beautiful.

Watts goes on to say that this enormous amount of nonsense employment and busywork, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe as good Protestants that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. People who arent forced into wage labor for the profit of others, or who dont themselves seek to become profiteers, will be trouble for the state, or the church, or their family, friends, and neighbors. In such an ethos, the word leisure is a pejorative one.

So far, Watts insights are right in line with those of Bertrand Russell and Buckminster Fuller, whose critiques of meaningless work we covered in an earlier post. Russell, writes philosopher Gary Gutting, argued that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous. Harm to our intellects, bodies, creativity, scientific curiosity, environment. Watts also suggests that our fixation on jobs is a relic of a pre-technological age. The whole purpose of machinery, after all, he says, is to make drudgery unnecessary.

Those who lose their jobsor who are forced to take low-paying service work to survivenow must live in greatly diminished circumstances and cannot afford the surplus of cheaply-produced consumer goods churned out by automated factories. This Neoliberal status quo is thoroughly, economically untenable. The public has to be provided, says Watts, with the means of purchasing what the machines produce. That is, if we insist on perpetuating economies of scaled-up production. The perpetuation of work, however, simply becomes a means of social control.

Watts has his own theories about how we would pay for a UBI, and every advocate since has varied the terms, depending on their level of policy expertise, theoretical bent, or political persuasion. Its important to point out, however, that UBI has never been a partisan idea. It has been favored by civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and controversial conservative writers like Charles Murray; by Keynesians and supply-siders alike. A version of UBI at one time found a proponent in Milton Friedman, as well as Richard Nixon, whose UBI proposal, Stern notes, was passed twice by the House of Representatives. (See Stern below discuss UBI and this history.)

During the sixties, a lively debate over UBI took place among economists who foresaw the situation Watts describes and also sought to simplify the Byzantine means-tested welfare system. The usual congressional bickering eventually killed Universal Basic Income in 1972, but most Americans would be surprised to discover how close the country actually came to implementing it, under a Republican president. (There are now existing versions of UBI, or revenue sharing schemes in limited form, in Alaska, and several countries around the world, including the largest experiment in history happening in Kenya.)

To learn more about the long history of basic income ideas, see this chronology at the Basic Income Earth Network. Watts mentions his own source for many of his ideas on the subject, Robert Theobald, whose 1963 Free Men and Free Markets defied left and right orthodoxies, and was consistently mistaken for one or the other. (Theobald introduced the term guaranteed basic income.) Watts, who would be 101 today, had other thoughts on economics in his essay Wealth Versus Money. Some of these now seem, writes Maria Popova at Brain Pickings, bittersweetly naive in retrospect. But when it came to technological disruptions of capitalism and the effect on work, Watts was cannily perceptive. Perhaps his ideas about basic income were as well.

Related Content:

Bertrand Russell & Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Technology Cant Grasp Reality

Charles Bukowski Rails Against 9-to-5 Jobs in a Brutally Honest Letter (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
We post copious resources for the study of philosophy on this site, such that you can obtain a full college-level survey understanding of the subject on your own by taking the many free classes, listening to the many free lectures and podcasts, and reading the many free texts, ebooks and commentaries youll find here. But several of our posts have met with a similar reader objection: where is the Eastern philosophy?

The question could also be put to almost any academic department of philosophy. One answer Ive often heard dismisses it altogether. Philosophy, some say, developed in the West, first in ancient Greece, then in Rome, the succeeding Christian empire, and the secular age that followed. It is a European pursuit and tradition. Other culturally partial critics, who wish to appear enlightened, are willing to concede that the worlds Muslims, as Richard Dawkins tweeted a few years back, did great things in the Middle Ages, at least providing a critical bridge between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Scholasticism.









Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes kept in dialogue with the Greeks after Europe had forgotten them, and preserved the only work of Aristotle we have. But that was then. What have they done for us lately? Attitudes like this, argues philosophy professor Peter Adamson, are prejudices with little basis in fact, and part of the reason for a dearth of high-quality, accessible Eastern philosophy resources in English. Adamson, who has made significant contributions to the study of philosophy online with his podcast, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, fills in the gap with his series on Islamic and Indian philosophy in several parts.

Beginning with philosophy in the Islamic world in Episode 171, Eastern Traditions, at the top, Adamson covers influential thinkers of the twelfth century like Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Suhrawardi, focusing on their legacy in the Eastern realms of central Asia and Persia, moving on to the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, and ending with developments in twentieth century philosophy. Against dismissive claims like Dawkins that these centuries were a time of intellectual and scientific decline in Islamic civilization, Adamson argues they were in fact a time of remarkable achievement in fields like logic and astronomy as well as the various disciplines of philosophy. See all three parts of the Islamic Philosophy series above.

Adamson shares the introduction to Indian philosophy, just above, with NYUs Jonardon Ganeri, and the two lay out a case for the tradition as primarily a way of life and search for the highest good. As usual, Adamson brings on guest scholars and provides a list for further reading on the podcasts site. And as usual, his historical frameworks are rigorous and very well-researched. This series breaks into two main categories (below). The second part of the series focuses on the development of a formal tradition, the sutra (literally thread) a genre of writing in which ideas were set forth in brief, aphoristic form. Various sutras were taken as authoritative and foundational for numerous schools of Indian thought, which devoted further commentaries to the sutras.

As he has done with many of his other series, Adamson has adapted the Islamic Philosophy podcasts in book form, Philosophy in the Islamic World: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 3. His even-handedness and erudition make this series a joy to listen to, though hed also encourage us to read the philosophers he discusses, if possible. If youre new to reading philosophy, or to Adamsons podcast, youd do well to read his recently posted All 20 Rules for History of Philosophy, which he has brought together in one place as guidelines encapsulating what I see as good practice in studying the history of philosophy. (Rule 8: Read the whole text.)

Many of these guidelines rub up against the current orthodoxies, assumptions and, frankly, snobberies of some contemporary academic philosophy. Among these, Rule 14: Take religion seriously and Rule 15: Be broadminded about what counts as philosophy. And for those who not only dismiss but also embrace entire cultures philosophical traditions for one defining reasonIndian thought is spiritual or non-violent; Islamic thought is tolerant or intolerantAdamson offers Rule 18: dont essentialize. As becomes clear on even a cursory listen to the podcasts in these series, what we tend to believe about non-western philosophy operates far in excess of what most of us actually know about it.

Related Content:

The History of Philosophy  Without Any Gaps

Learn The History of Philosophy in 247 Podcasts (With More to Come)

The History of Philosophy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visualized in Two Massive, 44-Foot High Diagrams

A History of Philosophy in 81 Video Lectures: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times

The History of Philosophy Visualized

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
The romantic allure of the ghostly, abandoned theme park is difficult to resist. Case in point: The Land of Oz, above, a not-entirely-defunct attraction nestled atop North Carolinas Beech Mountain.

Debbie Reynolds, accompanied by her 13-year-old daughter, Carrie Fisher, cut the ribbon on the parks opening day in 1970.

Its road was far from smooth, even before urban explorers began filching its 44,000 custom-glazed yellow bricks, eventually forcing management to repave with painted stand issue models.









One of its two founders died of cancer six months before opening, and later a fire destroyed the Emerald City and a collection of memorabilia from the 1939 MGM film.

Crippled by the gas crisis and insurmountable competition from Disney World and its ilk, the Land of Oz closed in 1980, thus sparing it the indignities of Yelp reviews and discerning child visitors whose expectations have been formed by CGI.

Its shuttering attracted another kind of tourist: the camera-toting, fence hopping connoisseurs of what is now known as ruin porn.

An isolated, abandoned theme park based on the Wizard of Oz? Could there be a holier grail?

Only trouble isthe Land of Oz didnt stay shuttered. Local real estate developers cleaned it up a bit, luring overnight visitors with rentals of Dorothys house. They started a tradition of reopening the whole park for one weekend every October, and demand was such that June is now Land of Oz Family Fun Month. The International Wizard of Oz Club held its annual convention there in 2011. How abandoned can it be?

And yet, unofficial visitors, sneaking onto the grounds off-season, insist that it is. I get it. The quest of adventure, the desire for beautiful decay, the bragging rights After photographing the invariably leaf strewn Yellow Brick Road, they turn their lenses to the lumpy-faced trees of the Enchanted Forest.

Yes, theyre creepy, but its less from abandonment than a low-budget approximation by the hands of artists less expert than those of the original.

Its safe to presume that any leaves and weeds littering the premises are merely evidence of changing seasons, rather than total neglect.

What I want to know is, wheres the sex, drugs & rocknroll evidence of local teens off-season blowoutsno spray painted f-bombs? No dead soldiers? Security must be pretty tight.

If creepys what the perpetuators of the abandonment myth crave, they could content themselves with the amateur footage above, shot by a visiting dad in 1970.

Those costumes! The scarecrow and the tin man in particular Buzzfeed would love em, but its hard to imagine a millennial tot going for that mess. Their Halloween costumes were 1000 times more accurate.

(In interviews, the one generation who can remember the Land of Oz in its prime is a loyal bunch, recalling only their long ago sense of wonder and excitement. Ah, life before Betamax)

The documentary video below should settle the abandonment myth once and for all. It opens not in Kansas, but New York City, as a carload of young performers heads off for their annual gig at the Land of Oz. Theyre conversant in jazz hands and certain Friends of Dorothy tropes, surely more so than the local players who originally staffed the park. Clearly, these ringers were hired to turn in credible impersonations of the characters immortalized by Ray Bolger, Burt Lahr, and Judy Garland. Presumably, their updated costumes also passed muster with Autumn at Ozs savvy child attendees.

Still craving that ruin porn? Business Insider published Seph Lawless photos of the crumbling park here.

If youd prefer to rubberneck at a truly abandoned theme park, check out the Carpetbaggers video tour of Cave City, Kentuckys Funtown Mountain. (Though be forewarned. It was sold at auction in April 2016 and plans are afoot to reengineer it as as an epic playground of wonder, imagination, and dreams.)

Related Content:

Watch Dismaland  The Official Unofficial Film, A Cinematic Journey Through Banksys Apocalyptic Theme Park

Disneyland 1957: A Little Stroll Down Memory Lane

Jurassic Park Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Global Capitalism

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play Zamboni Godot is opening in New York City in March 2017. Follow her @AyunHalliday.
Global LED Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market Report (2016-2023)-Research Nester

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Global LED Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market is primarily impelled by rapid growth in automobile industry, according to our research report Global Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market Outlook 2023Global Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market OverviewAdaptive lighting technology is the latest and fastest growing technology in automobile sector across the globe. Automotive Adaptive lighting systems of mainly work with the help of sensors that transmits the signals to the lighting systems at the time of turning of vehicle.These lighting systems are work upon the principle of sensing the movement of the object. As the vehicle turns right, the sensors installed in the lighting system transmit a message to the lights and enables the headlamps to shift right for clear vision to the driver. The existing static front lighting systems provide illumination straight onto the surface of road/ground without any sensitivity to curves or steering control. This creates complexity for the driver to in the night to take sharp turns. Thus, adaptive lighting systems are introduced for automotive.Request Table of content Moreover, manufacturers of automotive adaptive lighting systems are focusing towards the advancement in lighting systems to enhance the driving in night. These adaptive lighting systems are helpful for light & heavy commercial vehicles, as they are mainly used for logistics and transport. These vehicles are used to carry products and consignments in night due to stringent government regulation to reduce the traffic congestion in daytime.Market SegmentationOur in-depth analysis segmented the global automotive adaptive lighting market in the following segments:By TechnologyLight Emitting Diode (LED)HalogenXenonBy VehiclePassenger VehiclesLight Commercial VehiclesHeavy Commercial VehiclesBy RegionGlobal Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market is further classified on the basis of region as follows:North America (United States /U.S. & Canada)Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Rest of Latin America)Western and Eastern Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands & Luxembourg, Rest of Western Europe)Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Rest of Asia)Middle East and North Africa (MENA)Rest of WorldGrowth Drivers and challengesThe market of automotive adaptive lighting is majorly driven on the back of rapid growth in automobile industry across the globe. Moreover, the advancements in automotive lighting technology that is much more efficient than the conventional ways and paving the way for automotive adaptive lighting market. Emergence of automobile industries and introduction of stringent government regulations to install advanced safety feature in passenger and commercial vehicles are the key factors which are swelling the demand for automotive adaptive lighting in various European and American countries. These lighting systems also have the property to adapt lighting conditions, on the basis of these additional properties these lighting systems are gaining traction among the manufacturers of automobiles. Likewise, the manufacturers of automobiles are shifting towards the adoption of advanced and energy efficient lighting technology such as LED technology. This will further spur the market of automotive adaptive lighting market in near future.The automotive adaptive lighting is gaining momentum with the increasing commercial and heavy-duty vehicles. Rapid urbanization and expanding transportation and logistics sector across the globe are increasing the number of heavy duty vehicles. These vehicles operate in night time due to stringent government regulations and restricted entry in cities during day time to reduce the traffic congestion. Further, heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers are adopting this technology on account of rising concern towards road safety.Conversely, installing adaptive lighting systems in vehicles increases the overall cost of these vehicles which creates a major challenge for this industry. Moreover, high cost of automotive adaptive lighting and availability of sub-standardized lighting systems are expected to hamper the growth of automotive adaptive lighting market.Market size and forecastRiding on the on the back of increasing sales of high-end luxury cars, the global automotive adaptive lighting market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.2% over the forecast period i.e. 2016-2023. Further, the global market is estimated to derive the sales of 152.5 Million units of automotive adaptive lighting by 2023 projecting the market to reach USD 2.95 Billion by 2023. At present, Europe is the biggest consumer of automotive adaptive lighting followed by Asia-Pacific. However, with a better growth rate in automotive industry, Asia-Pacific is projected to surpass Europe automotive lighting demand by 2023. Regionally, Asia-Pacific and Europe collectively is expected to contribute the largest market share during the forecast period i.e. 2016-2023. Moreover, Asia-Pacific region is projected to register a CAGR of 8.2% over the forecast period i.e. 2016-2023 and it is expected to account the largest market share in terms of revenue of 45.5% by 2023 followed by Europe. Rising economy and positive growth in automobile industry in both the regions is directly helping the growth of automotive adaptive lighting market. The strict regulations from the governmental authorities to install sufficient safety features in vehicles to reduce road accidents is driving the market of automotive adaptive lighting market across the globe. The LED technology lighting segment is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 12.3% over the forecast period. This segment is rising on the back of ease of availability, low cost of these lighting systems and low replacement costs.Key PlayersThe key players of automotive adaptive lighting market are as follows:HELLACompany OverviewKey Product OfferingsBusiness StrategySWOT AnalysisFinancialsKOITOMagneti MarelliValeoScope and ContextOverview of the Parent MarketAnalyst ViewSegmentationThe Global Automotive Adaptive Lighting Market is segmented as follows:By Technology Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisBy Vehicle Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisBy RegionsNorth America (United States/U.S., Canada) Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisLatin America (Mexico, Brazil, Rest of Latin America) Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisWestern and Eastern Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain, France, U.K, Benelux, Hungary, Rest Of Western Europe, Russia Poland, Rest of Eastern Europe) Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisAsia-Pacific (China, India, Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Rest of Asia) Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisMiddle East and North Africa (MENA) Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisRest of World Market Size and Y-O-Y Growth AnalysisMarket DynamicsSupply and Demand RiskCompetitive LandscapePorters Five Force ModelGeographical Economic ActivityKey Players (respective SWOT Analysis) and their Strategies and Product PortfolioRecent Trends and DevelopmentsIndustry Growth Drivers and ChallengesKey Information for Players to establish themselves in current dynamic environmentTo know more about this research, kindly visitResearch Nester is a global market research and consulting firm helping organizations, private entities, governments undertaking, non-legislative associations and non-profit organizations. With our decades of experience in the market research, we help our clients to gain a competitive edge over other players. Thus, helping them making strategic yet dynamic decisions for the future investments.For further details:Ajay DanielEmail: ajay.daniel@researchnester.comU.S. +1 646 586 9123U.K. +44 203 608 5919
Global Sonobuoy Market Anticipated to Grow to US$ 844.9 Mn by 2024

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Global sonobuoy market is anticipated to grow from US$ 518.4 Mn in 2016 to US$ 844.9 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 6.3% in terms of revenue during the forecast period (2016-2024). In this report, the global sonobuoy market is tracked in terms of value and is calibrated to obtain market revenue estimates.Request for Sample Copy of Report @Sonobuoys are acoustic sensors built on the principle of Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) system, for detecting the presence of submarines, sunken ships, oil and gas deposits, etc. They are carried in a Sonobuoy Launch Container (SLC) in ships and aircraft for pneumatic or free-fall launch. They are built with hydrophones or transducers for converting sound signal to an electrical signal and transmitting it to the patrolling aircraft or ship. On the basis of operation, they are classified into passive and active sonobuoys. Sonobuoys are manufactured in sizes A and B. Size A sonobuoys have dimensions of 4.75 x 36, whereas size B sonobuoys have dimensions of 6.875 x 60.Increasing need amongst emerging economies to strengthen their anti-submarine operations and to monitor their natural resources are major factors driving the growth of the global sonobuoy market. Demand for sonobuoys is strongly associated with the growth of anti-submarine warfare market. Moreover, demand for passive sonobuoys is expected to increase because of the fact that it performs detection and tracking without notifying the target object about its presence, and this is expected to reflect in the revenue forecast.However, stringent regulations, high costs associated with deployment and monitoring of sonobuoys, technical limitations, etc. are major challenges expected to be faced by market players in the global sonobuoy market during the forecast period.To understand and assess the demand and opportunities in this market, the report is categorically split into four major sections, namely market analysis  by type, by application, by size, and by region.The section  market analysis, by type, comprehensively analyzes the market on the basis of type and presents an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of value for 2016-2024. In 2015, the passive sonobuoy segment dominated the global sonobuoy market, followed by the active sonobuoy segment. The passive sonobuoy segment is anticipated to expand at the fastest CAGR of 6.5% over the forecast period in the global sonobuoy market in terms of revenue, followed by the active sonobuoy segment.The section  market analysis by application, analyzes the global sonobuoy market on the basis of application and the data is provided in terms of value for 2016-2024. The detection & tracking segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR of 6.7% in terms of value during the forecast period. In terms of market share, detection & tracking segment accounted for a major percentage of the revenue share of the overall market in 2015 and is expected to dominate the global sonobuoy market throughout the forecast years, followed by safety & security segment.Request for Table of content @The section  market analysis by region, includes an in-depth country level analysis of all global regions namely, North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa by type, application, size, and countries; and provides market data in terms of value for 2016-2024. In 2015, the market in North America region dominated the overall global sonobuoy market, followed by the market in the Europe region. The sonobuoy market in North America region is projected to register the highest CAGR over the forecast period, followed by Asia Pacific and Latin America regions respectively.Key players reported in this study on the global sonobuoy market include ERAPSCO, Radixon, and Thales Group, who have significantly increased their footprint in the global sonobuoy market over the years.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @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
Bavarian Inns Michigan on Main Bar and Grill hosting Michigans Firkin Birthday Celebration, celebrating states 180th birthday

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To mark the State of Michigans 180th birthday, the Bavarian Inn Restaurants Michigan on Main Bar and Grill is having a "Michigans Firkin Birthday Celebration" on Thursday, Jan. 26. The fun begins at 6 p.m.The featured beer that evening is Chocolate-Covered Cherry Flavored Milkshake Stout, produced by the Rochester Mills Beer Company of Rochester, Mich. The special brew features two favorite state-sourced flavors  Traverse City-grown cherries, and Bavarian Inn chocolate.In addition to the "Firkin Birthday" flavor of the day, Michigan on Main plans several food and drink specials for the state birthday celebration, in addition to its full menu of locally and regionally sourced and inspired appetizers, salads, and entrees, all served in a fun, casual atmosphere.Whats a firkin, one may ask? The term originates in Great Britain, and equals a fourth of a barrel of beer, or 10.79 U.S. gallons.For more information, call the Bavarian Inn at 1-800-BAVARIA or (989) 652-9941.About Bavarian Inn RestaurantCelebrating 125 years of service in 2013, the Bavarian Inn Restaurant has become a Michigan landmark. Generations of diners, lodgers and tourists from around the globe have discovered true Bavarian hospitality thanks to Dorothy and her late husband William "Tiny" Zehnder. Guests experience the old-world European charm of the Bavarian Inn  whether its the famous chicken dinners, fresh baked goods or Michigans greatest selection of German beer. Bavarian Inn also prides itself on being one of the top consumers of Pure Michigan agricultural products. Nestled within a backdrop of authentic German architecture, a variety of shops and other fun activities, a trip to Frankenmuth would not be complete without a visit to the Bavarian Inn Restaurant. Learn more atBavarian Inn online press room:713 S. Main StreetFrankenmuth, MI
Global and Chinese United States Polyvinyl Films Market Analysis & Forecast to 2021 Market Research Report

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The 'Global and Chinese United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Industry, 2011-2021 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.Request For Sample Report @Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2011-2016 market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/exportComplete Report Details @Chapter One Introduction of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA)1.2 Development of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Industry1.3 Status of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA)2.1 Development of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of United States Polyvinyl Films (PVA) Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.1.4 Contact Information3.2 Company B3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Product Information3.2.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.2.4 Contact Information3.3 Company C3.2.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Product Information3.3.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.3.4 Contact Information3.4 Company D3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Product Information3.4.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.4.4 Contact Information3.5 Company E3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Product Information3.5.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.5.4 Contact Information3.6 Company F3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Product Information3.5.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.6.4 Contact Information3.7 Company G3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Product Information3.7.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.7.4 Contact Information3.8 Company H3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Product Information3.8.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.8.4 Contact InformationBuy This Report@CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)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.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Cloud-based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Share, Growth, Trends and Market Forecast Upto 2024

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Product life cycle management (PLM) is a process or system used to manage the data and design process associated with the life of a product from its conception and envisioning through its manufacture, to its retirement and disposal. PLM helps to manage the entire lifecycle of a product efficiently and cost-effectively. Today, manufacturers increasingly need to share product data with stakeholders both inside and outside the organization (including engineering, operations, quality, procurement and marketing). Manufacturers need to collaborate, track and regulate changes to the product with their corresponding team.Get Sample Report Copy :Traditional or on-premise PLM solutions often turn ineffective cost-wise, especially, for the small and medium size businesses. Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) have been averse to spending high on PLM solutions till recently. Cloud- based PLM solution is growing in popularity with manufacturers around the world which allows them to consolidate information about product development, streamline change orders and requests and improve communication with suppliers.It is an easier way to manage complex product data in fast-moving and geographically dispersed organizations with anyone accessible with an internet connection. Further, cloud-based PLM is more cost-effective as compared to traditional on-premise PLM and is cited to offer improved return on investment (ROI).Cloud-based PLM service can be adapted according to customer specific requirements. Thus, multi-national enterprises can implement new processes faster and quickly deploy scalable solutions to its processes worldwide. Cloud-based PLM solutions have a better UI (User Interface) and can provide automated software updates in less time as compared to on-premise based PLM solutions.The process of any software up gradation in cloud-based PLM requires very less time compared to on-premise based PLM service. On-premise PLM service has an expensive and time-intensive integration process which requires software licenses and a significant infrastructure investment. In contrast, cloud PLM service is maintained by the software provider, which means set-up is easy, improved scalability and reduced risks. Cloud-based PLM includes features such as comprehensive virtualization capabilities, robust security, architectural partitioning and distributed processing. Hence, manufacturers can handle multiple business units and have ease of use for non-engineers and designers. Thus, it can be helpful to support idea generation and design as previous data related to product is freely available in cloud.Further, the product data management can be secured with the use of advanced and powerful firewalls provided by the service provider. The subscription based pricing model that avoids up-front costs and can increase profitability for the manufacturers. Cloud-based PLM service is expected to find more use in bill of materials (BOM) and supply chain management in coming years.Investments in PLM are still not growing in a uniform way and are being implemented with different degrees of maturity in the different industrial segments. Cloud-based PLM finds its application in transportation, life science, consumer products, consumer electronics, machinery and mechanical part manufacturing, energy and utility, Aerospace and defense, pharmaceutical and automotive sector.Cloud-based PLM can find more use in companies which cover a wide geographical region and have to connect with its stakeholders across the globe. Some of the key companies providing cloud based PLM are Arena Solutions, Infor Inc., Oracle Corporation, Aras Corporation, Siemens AG, SAP Inc., PTC Inc., Dassault Systemes, Autodesk Inc and IFS AB.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Aviation Cyber Security Market - Size, Share, Growth, Market Trends, And Forecast Upto 2024

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The aviation sector is expanding as more and more people are using airline services to travel across the globe. These have caused an increase in air traffic in recent years. To solve this problem, the aviation sector has adopted information technology in its system. The sector has upgraded itself from using Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) technologies to processor-based hardware platforms. However, use of information technology in aviation industry has given rise to the threat of cyber attack.Get Sample Report Copy :Cyber attack is nothing but an internet based attempt to damage information technology system of an airline company and hack critical information using malware or spyware. To tackle this issue, a cyber security solution is necessary in aviation industry. Cyber security is the use of technology and processes to protect data, computers and networks from attack of hackers through internet. Aviation cyber security solution mainly deals with management and protection of critical IT infrastructure in Aviation sector.Aviation industry basically uses and stores a high amount of processed data. This data is mainly used in airports, airlines and air traffic management (ATM) services. The manipulation of such data by hackers can create huge damage for aviation industry. The other threat is the increased use of mobile phones, laptop and tablets among airline passengers that has increased possible complexity regarding cyber attack threats. Due to the frequency and complexity of such cyber attacks, it has become necessary for aviation sector to improve the quality of protection. Thus, airline companies are now outsourcing their cyber security responsibilities to skilled security service providers, in order to gain better protection.High initial purchase and maintenance cost is a major challenge for the adoption of aviation cyber security solution in market. Most of airports and airline companies are unable to afford aviation cyber security due to this reason. Another challenge for aviation cyber security solution is the absence of standard cyber security framework. The aviation industry consists of many stakeholders such as airports, airlines and air traffic management service provider which are mostly controlled by private players. The coordination between the stakeholders is low which results in less standardization of aviation cyber security.A collective responsibility of governments, airlines, airports and Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in aviation industry is necessary to adopt such framework. The introduction of cloud based cyber security solution will help aviation industry to upgrade service in less time and low cost.The aviation cyber security solution find its application mainly in areas of airport management, air traffic management (ATM), airline management and air cargo management. The application of aviation cyber security solution is going to increase in air cargo management service in coming years as popularity of air cargo services have increased. Due to increasing cyber terrorism threat, the demand for aviation cyber security market is going to increase in developed economies such as North America and Europe.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :Some of the key companies providing aviation cyber security solution are Amadeus IT Group, Airbus SAS, Arinic, Boeing, IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation, Sabre Airline Solution, SITA, Symantec Corporation, Unisys Corperation, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc, General Dynamics Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon Company.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Photonic Crystals Market - Global Industry Analysis 2016 - 2024

Photonic Crystals Market

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Photonic crystals represent a unique instance of a theoretically mature technology that is yet to find a strong foothold in the mainstream industry. These crystals usually find application as attractive optical materials that can control and manipulate the flow of light. Photonic crystals have optical nanostructures and are found naturally. They can manipulate photons in the same way ionic lattices in semiconductors manipulate electrons.The advent of multiple technological advances has helped the photonic crystals market present a diverse and expanding range of potential applications. Some of the most common applications of photonic crystals in displays include LEDs, optical fibers, image sensors, laser and super continuum sources, solar and PV cells, integrated and discrete optical components, and biosources. Of these, the optical fiber segment accounts for a dominant share of the global photonic crystal market. The demand for photonic crystals in optical fiber is likely to achieve significant growth by 2018.The report provides an analytical overview of the global photonic crystals market, identifying the key growth drivers, market restraints, and prospective opportunities. Information included in the report is sourced through primary and secondary research methods and is evaluated using analytical tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:Overview of the Photonics Crystal MarketApart from its wide range of applications in displays, photonic crystals are also used in the manufacture of thin-film optics that require low or high reflection coatings over mirrors or lenses. Since optical crystals have up to three dimensions, they have also found application in applied and fundamental research. Meanwhile, photonic crystals with two dimensions are mostly used for commercial purposes.Despite the fact that photonic crystals can be used for diverse industrial and commercial applications, difficulties associated with usage and extraction of photonic crystals is impeding growth of the global photonics crystal market. The low level of adoption of this technology is also attributed to the physical limitations and questionable efficiency of photonic crystals. However, gradually increasing use of photonics crystals in the optical fiber and display segments is expected to boost the photonic crystals market in the near future.The market for photonics crystals is likely to witness an upswing in industrial demand across several verticals and applications. On the basis of their versatility, photonic crystals possess potential for usage in various industries related to display and optics. The growth trajectory of the industry will depend to a large extent upon the approach adopted by stakeholders at different levels. The simplicity of the fundamental technology of photonic crystals is expected to open up new avenues of industrial application.Companies mentioned in the research reportThe leading players in the market listed in the report are Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Opalux, Corning Incorporated, Sandia and Lockheed Martin, Photonic Lattice Inc., Microcontinuum and Lightwave Power, ICX Photonics, Epistar, Fianium, TDK Corporation, OmniGuide, Micron Technology, Luxtaltek Corporation, Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon), Advanced Photonic Crystals (APC), Furukawa Electric, L.P. (HP Labs), Photeon Technologies GmbH, Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, LG Innotek, NKT Photonics, Samsung LLC, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, Luminus Devices Inc., Xerox Corporation, Ltd, SRU Biosystems, NEC Corporation, NeoPhotonics, Obducat, Rohm Co., and Agilent Technologies.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Artificial Pancreas Market  Global industry insights 2024

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Type 1 diabetes characterized by inadequate insulin production requires daily administration of insulin to regulate the amount of glucose in body. This has kept the patients with type 1 diabetes engaged in regular monitoring and administration of insulin. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally the number of diabetes patients has increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. According to Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), there are about 1.5 million sufferers of type 1 diabetes globally. With the existing knowledge base, there isnt any treatment available for type 1 diabetes. Therefore, organizations such as JDRF and OpenAPS are focusing only on developing effective and compliant therapies for type 1 diabetes.Medtronics MiniMed 670G- the first Artificial PancreasThe world will be able to experience the new diabetes 1 treatment device developed by Medtronic, Inc. The device branded as MiniMed 670G, received FDA approval in September 2016. The device will be made available in 2017. Medtronics MiniMed 670G is the first artificial pancreas that combines an automated glucose monitor and an insulin pump. The FDA has granted approval for this device to be used in patients aged 14 and above. The potential population  children, will have to wait to get access to this technology until additional real-life testing is completed by Medtronic, Inc.Get Free PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:MiniMed 670G is a hybrid closed-loop system which automates the cumbersome process of monitoring, and adjusting glucose and insulin levels in type 1 diabetes patients. Patients can monitor the health through a smartphone like device. This artificial pancreas will help patients sleep well at night and wake-up with a healthy glucose levels. Moreover, Medtronics MiniMed 670G artificial pancreas will improve therapy adherence and allow patients to live life unlike previously where there was a need for regular intervention.5% of the Total Diabetes Population, yet a Huge Market PotentialAn automated insulin delivery device could be a great competitor of an artificial pancreas. OpenAPS, a do-it-yourself (DIY) automated insulin delivery system, is an open source design that anyone can use to connect their CGM and insulin pump to make it an artificial pancreas. The device was developed in 2013 by Ben West, Dana Lewis, and Scott Leibrand.According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 29.1 million diabetic patients in the U.S. of which 8.1 million are undiagnosed. Type 1 diabetes accounts for nearly 5% of the total diagnosed diabetes cases in adults in the U.S. Type 1 diabetes is common in Scandinavian populations and in Sardinia and Kuwait and less common in Asia and Latin America. The potential still is in the developed U.S. and European markets as these are the early market adopters globally. And the success achieved in these markets pushes companies to enter the emerging nations globally where the regulations, distribution and purchase/treatment patterns vary widely.Get FREE ToC :ConclusionWith Medtronics MiniMed 670G artificial pancreas, patients will have to just calibrate the device sensors and the rest will be taken care of by the automated device. Since the cost of device is high, there could be initial refrain experienced from the payers. According to the CDC, the annual cost of diabetes to the U.S. government was USD 176 billion in 2012. Government and insurance providers are propelling pharmaceutical and medical device companies to reduce the medicine and device costs. Therefore, it would be interesting to see the demand for artificial pancreas in 2017 in this cost-pressure environment.SHAREABOUT USCOMPANY OVERVIEWCoherent Market Insights is a global market intelligence and consulting organization focused on assisting our plethora of clients achieve transformational growth by helping them make critical business decisions. We are headquartered in India, having office at global financial capital in the U.S. Our client base includes players from across all business verticals in over 150 countries worldwide. We are uniquely positioned to help businesses around the globe deliver practical and lasting results through various recommendations about operational improvements, technologies, emerging market trends and new working methods. We offer both customized and syndicated market research reports that help our clients create visionary growth plans to provide traction to their business. We meticulously study emerging trends across various industries at both the global and regional levels to identify new opportunities for our clientele. Our global team of over 100 research analysts and freelance consultants provide market intelligence from the very molecular country level and also provide a global perspective of the market. Our team is of the most vital cog in our robust machinery that gives us the ability to deliver independent insight relying on our cognitive defusion training module.This allows for an objective and unbiased assessment of the market. We pride ourselves in my constantly striving to update our extremely in-depth understanding of the market by closely monitoring and analyzing markets, trends, and emerging best practices, across allfathomable industries under the sun. This enables us to equip our valued clientele with key decisive inputs to capitalize on lucrative growth opportunities in the market and to follow firmly position themselves on a high growth path in the future.CONTACT USCoherent Market Insights303, Astral Court, Above Reliance Fresh,Near Gaikwad Petrol Pump,Aundh, Pune  411045, India.sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
M62 police shooting: Yassar Yaqub funeral held

BBC News6 January 2017The funeral of a man shot dead by police on a motorway slip road has been held.Yassar Yaqub, 28, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was shot in a car stopped near Junction 24 of the M62 in Huddersfield as part of an operation on Monday.An inquest into his death was also opened and adjourned in Bradford, West Yorkshire.Meanwhile, Mohsin Amin, 30, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, who was arrested as part of the operation, has appeared in court charged with firearms offences.Hundreds of mourners gathered for the funeral service at the Jamia Masjid Bilal Mosque in Huddersfield.Mr Yaqub's coffin was carried out of the service by family and friends before being driven away for burial.Earlier his father, Mohammed Yaqub, told BBC Radio Leeds: "He will be missed by us very deeply. He will still live on in our hearts day-to-day."Bradford Coroner's Court heard Mr Yaqub had been shot through the windscreen of an Audi car after a "hard stop" on the motorway slip road.He died from gunshot wounds to his chest.Coroner Martin Fleming was told a firearm had been found in the front passenger footwell of the Audi.Four unmarked police cars were involved in the incident with one, a Mercedes, cutting across the front of the Audi, coroner's officer Chris Dalby told the hearing."During the incident an officer discharged a firearm in the execution of his duty," he added.Mr Fleming adjourned the inquest until 31 March.The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the operation which led to Yassar Yaqub's death, said none of the West Yorkshire Police officers involved were using body-worn video cameras and no relevant CCTV footage of the incident has been found.A non-police issue firearm was found in the Audi in which Mr Yaqub was travelling, the IPCC confirmed.The white Audi was one of two cars stopped by police on the slip road. The other vehicle was a white Volkswagen Scirocco.Mr Amin appeared at Leeds Magistrates' Court charged with possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, possession of a sound moderator and possession of ammunition.He was remanded in custody and is due to appear before Leeds Crown Court on 3 February.Four other men arrested as part of the operation have been released on police bail.
Agriculture Robot Market - Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Market Forecast 2016 - 2024

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For past few decades, robots have played a significant role in increasing the efficiency as well as reducing the overall total cost of industrial production. Similar trend is anticipated to visible in the field of agriculture. The implementation of robotics in agriculture is expected to bring out transformational result in coming years. Agriculture robots or Agribots are used widely in all the important function of farming.Get Sample Report Copy :With world population growing at a significant rate, the agricultural production needs to be doubled in order to meet the sporadic demand for food and bioenergy. Owing to the fact that resources such as land, water and labor are limited, agriculture efficiency needs to be improved to feed the masses. In this crucial circumstance, agribots is expected to play a vital role.Agribots are expected to increasingly been used in all parts of agriculture cycle such as seeding, sowing, watering and harvesting. The automated harvesting system is capable of mimicking the precision of human harvester while improving the overall harvesting efficiency. A typical design of robotic fruit harvester comprise of an advance vision system for detecting the fruit, an end effector to pick up the fruit and a manipulator that act like a human arm. An automated weed control system recognizes and eliminates weed and help farmers to take decisions related to use of pesticide, herbicide and fertilizers. Tractors are now well-equipped with GPS and automated steering.These tractors are self-guided allowing them to make efficient use of fuel. On dairy farms, robotic milking machines are used to milk cattles. Moreover, software system and aerial survey maps are extensively being used by farmers to guide their field operation.Agriculture drones are small aircraft or quadcopter with advance sensor and imaging capabilities that gives farmers real time information about the field condition. These drones are equipped with an advanced camera that are controlled by the autopilot system giving high resolution images of the farm field. Compared with satellite images, it is much cheaper and provide clear images. The most beneficial aspect of an agricultural drones is its ability to survey crops every week, day or even hour allowing farmers to have a continuous quality check on the crops.The global positioning system (GPS) enabled robots are also capable of collecting essential data about the climate and sand dune formation to cater the complex ecological issue of desertification. The agriculture robots are also well equipped to operate indoor production facilities using artificial light to produce high quality crops.Agriculture robot market is driven by global trend of population, increasing demand for global food supply, shortage of skilled labor and emphasis on quality production in conjunction with affordable price. However, the field of agricultural robotics requires extensive research in order to enable machines make logical sense of the complex biological environment. For instance, there are challenges prevailing to proper execution of machines to agilely reach through vegetation without destroying them. The agricultural robotics market displays huge opportunities for efficient production through affordable and autonomous farm devices.The market can be segmented on the basis of application that include harvesting, pruning, weed control, sorting and spaying.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :Key players in the market includes ISO Group, Autonomous Tractor Corporation, Blue River Technology, Inc., AGROBOT-Soluciones Roboticas Agricolas SL, Agribotix LLC, Energid Technologies Co., Autonomous Solution Inc., Deere & Company and Yamaha Corporation.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Roofing and Insulation Market - Global Industry Analysis 2016 - 2024

Roofing and Insulation Market

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As energy-efficient buildings attract more attention in the construction industry, the global roofing and insulation market is expected to benefit from this trend. The role that roofing and insulation plays in heat and light management in a building will be a key investment driver. Concurrently, important markets bouncing back from a period of slowdown and higher spends on expensive homes will also contribute to the revenue growth of the roofing and insulation market worldwide. In other emerging markets, consumers with increasingly more income at their disposal are likely to allocate higher budgets to home improvement projects, which will also aid the growth of the global roofing and insulation market.The report conducts a strategic analysis of the global roofing and insulation market, complete with market size and growth predictions from 2016 through to 2024. A detailed competitive analysis of the top segments (based on type, end user, and application) is the highlight of the report. A detailed cross sectional analysis of the roofing and insulation market contained in the report helps companies see beyond the surface to tap emergent trends and opportunities.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:Global Roofing and Insulation Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe unmistakable importance being given to incorporating energy-saving features in buildings will stimulate investments in quality roofing and insulation materials. A growing inclination of building owners and managers to obtain green building and energy efficiency certifications will also catapult roofing and insulation materials into a more central role. These factors are expected to act as the most important growth impellers for the global roofing and insulation market. Positive investor sentiment in the commercial buildings sector will be yet another growth booster for the global roofing and insulation market.However, the cyclical nature of the construction industry  because it is so heavily affected by prevalent economic conditions  will continue to place a drag on the markets growth. Another challenge that the roofing and insulation market will have to overcome is the general lack of awareness about function-specific insulation and roofing materials in emerging markets. Consumers here tend to use locally available cheap roofing and insulation materials. Overcoming this restraint would require innovative product positioning on the part of roofing and insulation companies to break into markets where local players have a stronghold.Global Roofing and Insulation Market: Region-wise OutlookThe thriving construction industry in Asia Pacific will prove highly beneficial to the growth of the roofing and insulation market in the region. Besides new construction, home refurbishment and improvement projects have increased in countries such as China, Malaysia, and India. This ups the likelihood of roofing and insulation products being consumed. China is projected to not only emerge as the leading producer of roofing and insulation materials but also a voracious consumer of the same. The demand for insulating materials will show healthy growth in countries that experience extreme weather.The Middle East will is expected to present high-value opportunities for market players. The roofing and insulation market in Europe and North America is just a few years from maturing. This will spur innovation as companies vie to inject fresh demand in important markets.Global Roofing and Insulation Market: Competitive LandscapeA vast number of local players dot the competitive landscape of the roofing and insulation market, which has lent it an unmistakably fragmented look. The market, in recent years, has been defined by the emergence of new Chinese companies offering aggressively priced roofing and insulation materials. The report profiles the following companies to assess their current investment and product development interests, their defensive strategies against the competition, and expected future capacity expansion: Waukegan Roofing Co., Lloyd Insulations, Reflectix Inc., GAF, Owens Corning, Fletcher Insulation, and Heritage Roofing.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
New Year's Resolutions: SimpleumSafe for Mac this weekend 50 % off!

Screenshot User Interface, Simpleum Media GmbH

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simpleumsafe-now-everybody/id1081798042?l=de&ls=1&mt=12

The Simpleum Media GmbH seeks to promote the responsible and safe handling of personal and professional data.Matching to good New Year's resolutions, to protect the digital data in the future, Simpleum Media GmbH halved the price of their software to facilitate the access in the encryption also in terms of price.SimpleumSafeSimpleumSafe is an easy-to-use app for password-based encryption of personal and professional data. Thanks to proven AES-256 encryption technology, used by government, banks and industrial enterprise, all kinds of digital information are well protected against attacks from the Internet, as well as unauthorized access. With SimpleumSafe, anyone can create and use different safes at various locations such as hard disk, USB flash drive or cloud storage. The size and number of files to be encrypted is only limited by the capacity of the selected storage medium.Ingeniously simple, simply ingeniousSimpleumSafe combines intuitive operation and ease-of-use. Much of what users have already learned during daily use of the Mac can be applied using the Encryption-App. Files of any size and various formats can be transferred by drag-and-drop into the safe and can be handled as simple as conventional files.Opening the safe and decryption of files is done via a user-defined password. Moreover, SimpleumSafe offers numerous tools for importing, organizing, tagging, and editing of the files. SimpleumSafe is designed for the average consumer, who wants to protect and archive personal information, as well as for companies who are interested to protect personal information and secret documents from unauthorized access.Features:* Simple and intuitive usability* Strong encryption with AES-256* Extensive support of Drag & Drop* Organize files similar to Mac Finder* Mark files and folders with beautiful tags* Store safe locally, on USB device, and in the cloudSpecial Price:SimpleumSafe for Mac is available 7. and 8. January 2017 for the promotional price of 9.99 USD in the Apple Mac App Store - in German and English.App-Download:Now everybody can encrypt!Simpleum Media GmbH was founded in January 2016 in Hamburg (Germany) and promotes the responsible use of personal and professional data by straightforward operability of software. All Material and Software (C) 2016 Simpleum Media GmbH / All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac OS X, iPhone, iPod, iPad and macOS are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.ContactSimpleum Media GmbHJanine ThunPomoorweg 3522301 HamburgTelefon: 040-22865646Fax: 032224293890Mail: press@simpleum.comWeb: simpleum.com
Vocal Biomarkers Market  Global industry insights 2024

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Biomarkers form an important tool in the development of targeted drug therapies. Biological markers or Biomarkers are the indicators of normal biological processes, pharmacological responses to a drug and pathogenic processes. They are used to perform clinical assessment for blood pressure, cholesterol level and monitor or predict health state in a person to plan for a therapeutic intervention. They can be in many different forms such as proteins or peptides, antibodies, cell types, metabolites, lipids, hormones, enzyme levels, or physiological state of body. The principles of biomarkers are used extensively in detection, monitoring and treatment of cancer.Advancement in research has encouraged scientists and academicians to develop a technology that will diagnose and predict the health stats based on how the person talks. Growing evidence suggests that many mental and physical conditions can make one slur his/her words, speak in a more nasal tone and elongate sounds. However, it is yet not confirmed that analyzing speech patterns can generate accurate or useful diagnosis of data.Get Free PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights :The global vocal biomarkers market can be analyzed based on the applications and end-use.Vocal Biomarkers Potential ApplicationsCompanies including  Beyond Verbal, Inc., Cogitocorp, Sharecare, Inc., IBM and Sonde Health (PureTech) have developed software that can analyze voice and indicate the presence of diseases such as coronary artery disease (CAD), depression, neurological conditions and cardiovascular diseases. Beyond Verbal, Inc., an Israel based company, is marking success through its voice analysis software, Beyond mHealth Research Platform, developed in collaboration with Mayo Clinic, which can detect the presence of CAD. Use of this software in Parkinsons disease encouraged the company to perform tests for other diseases.Current available techniques such as the ECG, Radionuclide testing, Exercise Tolerance Testing (ETT), and Pharmaceutical Stress Testing are expensive and involves certain contraindications (except ECG). With increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, need for low-risk, inexpensive and non-invasive screening method is rising.Vocal Biomarkers Potential End-UsersVocal Biomarkers has potential end-users such as the healthcare centers, Military, Government and others. Cogitocorp has its voice analysis technology adopted by health insurers such as Blue Cross, Aetna, Humana, Partners Healthcare and Blue Shield. Use of this technology is not restricted within healthcare environment or setup. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, uses the Cogito software for monitor the mood of members. Furthermore, the U.S. army collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2016 to develop a FDA approved device to detect brain injury.Market DynamicsDifferent companies targeting various underdiagnosed chronic diseases will address the unmet needs in many emerging nations by enabling healthcare access to mass population and early detection of a disorder. Companies just need to ensure that the product is compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).Get FREE ToC :Diagnosis of various disorders using the vocal biomarkers technology will enable early detection and preventive measures for chronic disorders. Being more of a preventive tool, this could serve the healthcare service centers, military and corporate sector to improve the health and performance. Moreover, this could be of significant advantage for patients and physicians to continuously monitor and assess the patients health.ABOUT USCOMPANY OVERVIEWCoherent Market Insights is a global market intelligence and consulting organization focused on assisting our plethora of clients achieve transformational growth by helping them make critical business decisions. We are headquartered in India, having office at global financial capital in the U.S. Our client base includes players from across all business verticals in over 150 countries worldwide. We are uniquely positioned to help businesses around the globe deliver practical and lasting results through various recommendations about operational improvements, technologies, emerging market trends and new working methods. We offer both customized and syndicated market research reports that help our clients create visionary growth plans to provide traction to their business. We meticulously study emerging trends across various industries at both the global and regional levels to identify new opportunities for our clientele. Our global team of over 100 research analysts and freelance consultants provide market intelligence from the very molecular country level and also provide a global perspective of the market. Our team is of the most vital cog in our robust machinery that gives us the ability to deliver independent insight relying on our cognitive defusion training module.This allows for an objective and unbiased assessment of the market. We pride ourselves in my constantly striving to update our extremely in-depth understanding of the market by closely monitoring and analyzing markets, trends, and emerging best practices, across allfathomable industries under the sun. This enables us to equip our valued clientele with key decisive inputs to capitalize on lucrative growth opportunities in the market and to follow firmly position themselves on a high growth path in the future.CONTACT USCoherent Market Insights303, Astral Court, Above Reliance Fresh,Near Gaikwad Petrol Pump,Aundh, Pune  411045, India.sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Iron and Steel Market - Global Industry Analysis 2016 - 2024

Iron and Steel Market

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The iron and steel industry forms the fundamental part of a number of other industries that constitute global trade and economy. History has it that churns and disruptions in the global iron and steel market can have far-reaching impacts on several ancillary industries including but not limited to construction, automotive, chemicals, energy, and heavy engineering. The growth of these application areas, however, also bodes well for the growth of iron and steel consumption. Transparency Market Research finds that while the production of steel demonstrated a marginal decrease in early 2015, growth has got back on track since then.China continues to lead the global iron and steel market in terms of production with over 50% of global volume, followed at a distant second by Japan. Countries such as India, the United, States, and Russia are the other key products of steel globally. The report states that these markets will also continue to help the global iron and steel market through the forecasting period.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:The report on the global iron and steel market captures the trends and dynamics that have thus far characterized the growth of the market. A careful balance has been struck between primary and secondary research to reach verifiable and reliable projections. For this purpose, the report makes use of proprietary as well as industry-accepted research techniques such as weighted average analysis, correlation, and regression analysis. The report also assesses the market shares of leading segments, players, and regional markets.Global Iron and Steel Market: Drivers, Threats, and OpportunitiesThe construction industry, by far, has been the leading consumer of steel and iron, using up more of the materials than even wood and cement. However, steel and iron producers are now compelled to compete with new construction materials such as ceramics and polymers. This has enabled the production of lightweight steel and iron products that are also high on tensile strength. The engineering industry in general  and the heavy engineering industry in particular  has relied on ferrous materials for several years now and continues to do despite the advent of an assortment of newer material varieties.However, the engineering plastics industry has been responsible for eroding considerable revenue from the iron and steel market. Other materials such as carbon fiber and high-strength composites have managed to seamlessly perform the functions that steel and iron once did in automobiles, buildings, machinery, and more. The lighter weight of these next-generation materials has boosted their uptake considerable. All of these factors combine to create a palpable threat to the demand for iron and steel.Global Iron and Steel Market: Region-wise OutlookThe regional dynamics in the global iron and steel market are defined to a great extent by the economic situation in China on account of the country being the largest producer and consumer of these two materials. The presence leading steel and iron producers such as China, Japan, and India have given the Asia Pacific region a clear lead in both volume and revenues in the global iron and steel market. APAC is also expected to be the leading region through the end of the forecast period. Steel demand has remained steady, if not exceptionally encouraging, in key markets in North America and Europe.Global Iron and Steel Market: Key PlayersThe leading companies in the global iron and steel market are: ArcelorMittal S.A., Kobe Steel Ltd., Insteel Industries Inc., N.V. Bekaert SA, Leggett & Platt Incorporated, Steel Authority of India Ltd., Bridon International Ltd., POSCO, Tree Island Industries Ltd., and Tata Steel Ltd.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Rigid Colored PU Foam Market - Global Industry Analysis 2016 - 2024

Rigid Colored PU Foam Market

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Rigid colored PU (polyurethane) foams find extensive usage across a vast set of industrial applications owing to their physical characteristics such as high thermal resistance, high stability, strength, and energy efficiency. The energy efficiency of rigid colored PU foams make them useful across applications requiring a high level of energy efficiency, such as insulating machineries, walls, and roofs.The rising use of these foams across end-use industries such as electronics and construction is expected to fuel the growth of the market. Transparency Market Research presents a detailed overview of the market, the key factors expected to have a significant impact on the overall development of the market in the future years, and the way competitive landscape of the market is transforming.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:The report offers an expansive account of key segments of the market along with an analysis of latest qualitative and quantitative data on the market. A holistic perspective of the growth dynamics of the market over the period between 2016 and 2024 in terms of revenue estimate (in US$ mn or bn) across key regional markets such as North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa has also been furnished.Rigid Colored PU Foam Market: OverviewThe rigid colored PU foam market is chiefly driven by the rising concerns regarding depleting natural resource stores, the resultant potential of energy crunch across the globe, and the various steps taken by government bodies to increase awareness and drive the increased adoption of energy efficient products, structures, and processes. Rigid colored PU foams, owing to the fact that they can be reused, recycled, and are harmless to the human as well as environmental health, are being seen as a key product variety capable of encouraging this trend.Of the key end users of rigid colored PU foams, the construction industry is the dominant consumer and is expected to continue to account for a leading share in the global rigid colored PU foams in the next few years as well. Demand for the material across other niche segments is driven by the rising investments channeled towards product innovation and R&D activities.In terms of geography, the market for rigid colored PU foam in North America dominates and the region is expected to remain a high-growth market over the forecast period as well. Europe is another dominant consumer of rigid colored PU foams and is expected to account for a leading share in the global market over the forecast period. Demand for rigid colored PU foams in North America and Europe will be primarily driven in the next few years owing to the rising focus on making energy efficiency an important aspect of any structure, product, or process.In Asia Pacific, factors such as healthy economic growth and rising investment in the industrial sector, especially in developing countries such as China and India, have led to the increased demand for rigid colored PU foams. As a result, these and other countries in the region are expected to offer healthy growth opportunities for the rigid colored PU foams market in the next few years.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe market features a concentrated competitive landscape and has few companies accounting for a large chunk in revenues, production, and supply of rigid colored PU foam market across the globe. The market is highly competitive and the procurement of raw materials is one of the most critical factors determining success of companies. Some of the markets key players are The Dow Chemical Company, Bayer MaterialScience, BASF SE, and Huntsman Corporation.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Chocolate Market 2015 World Analysis and Forecast to 2021

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Chocolate is usually sweet eatable, which is typically brown in color. It is a food preparation of theobroma cacao seeds, roasted and ground. Chocolate is often flavored, mostly with vanilla. It is available in different forms such as liquid, paste, or in blocks, or used as a flavoring ingredient in other foods. The cocoa solid form of chocolate is a source of flavonoids and alkaloids including theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine. Chocolate also provides with anandamide.Request Free Sample Report @Chocolate is one of the most popular food types having different flavors in it, and a vast number of foodstuffs such as cakes, mousse, pudding, chocolate brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and others. As chocolate is available in so many forms, its demand is increasing globally. Factors such as health benefits by the consumption of chocolate, large variety of applications, and seasonal and festive sales are positively impacting the growth of the market. Other factors that may act as the growth drivers of the global chocolate market are penetration in developing economies, organic and fair trade chocolate, and the use of chocolate as a functional food. On the other hand, raw material prices, the dependency on the industry on unstable economies for the supply of cocoa, and changing consumer preferences are some of the factors that may hamper the growth of the market.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @On the basis of products and the amount of cocoa it contains, the global chocolate market is segmented as dark chocolate, milk chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and white chocolate. Based on the sales category, the global market is further segmented as everyday chocolate, premium chocolate, and seasonal chocolate. Geographically, the global chocolate market is segmented as Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW).Inquire more before buying this report @Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the highest growth owing to the rising disposable income of consumers, particularly in countries such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea. This, in turn, has resulted in the changed social status of chocolate from a luxury commodity to an everyday commodity. On the hand, the cheap products offered by local brands in these countries have resulted in to be chocolate popular among the masses. In addition, international premium chocolate brands such as Hershey, Mars, Ferrero, and Ghirardelli are experiencing constant but sluggish growth in Asia Pacific markets. In Europe, the UK witness the largest demand followed by Germany.Some of the major players dominating the global chocolate market are Ferrero Group, Hershey Foods Corp., Mars Inc., and Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. Other key players influencing the global market include Nestle SA, Moonstruck Chocolatier Co., and Kraft Foods.Browse detail report @Chocolate Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaVisit Our Blog:About Us:Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristically, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a 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:
Printing Ink Additives Market - Global Industry Analysis 2016 -2024

Printing Ink Additives Market

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The demand for printing ink additives is fuelled by the increasing demand from printing inks and packaging end-user markets. In addition, commercial printing highly demands printing ink additives owing to the fact that they fuel aesthetics and performances of the product. Printing inks are also employed in packaging applications and is predicted to present enhanced opportunities within printing ink additives in the coming years. Printing ink additives aid in maintaining numerous characteristics such as cloud point, softening point, viscosity, and pH, among others. This will also provide impetus to the development of the market for printing ink additives.The report encapsulates an in-depth analysis of the market for printing ink additives and provides industry-relevant and statistically supported facts, information, and historical data. A comprehensive analysis of the key players dominant in the market and a distinctive understanding of the developments and trends happening in this market. The strategies implemented and their prime offerings in this market have also been presented. The top segments and sub-segments in the market have also been presented.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:A distinctive evaluation of the technological developments happening in the market has also been presented. Also, the stakeholder analysis and value chain analysis of the global printing ink additives market has been presented. The markets regulatory scenario has also been encapsulated in order to study the market in detail.Printing Ink Additives: Drivers and RestraintsThe global printing ink additives market is fuelled by the increasing demand from the printing ink end users and packaging market. There is an increasing demand for printing ink additives from commercial printing, thus driving market development. In addition, the growing demand for wax additives and defoamers will also provide impetus to the development of the market. Digital printing is amongst the most swiftly developing processes within printing inks market and is predicted to exponentially drive the market for printing ink additives in the coming years. Water-based printing ink additives will present more opportunities in the printing ink additives market owing to their low content of VOCs. On the other hand, the fluctuating supply and the strict environmental regulations may impede the development of the market for printing ink additives.Printing Ink Additives: Region-wise OutlookThe global printing ink additives market is led by regions such as Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Of these, Asia Pacific emerged as the top region in the market and will also come up as the most swiftly developing printing ink additives markets owing to growing demand from commercial packaging and printing end user markets. Japan and China led the printing ink additives market in Asia Pacific. Europe trailed Asia Pacific and took the second position in the market. On the other hand, North America constituted the third position in the market. This is because of the growing demand from digital printing within this region. In North America, the U.S is the top contributor, however, Mexico and Canada will be experiencing more printing ink additives demand owing to the soaring commercial printing industry. In addition, RoW will also be presenting huge potential in the market in the coming years.BASF SE, Clariant AG, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Honeywell International Inc. and MUNZING Micro Technologies GmbH, among others, are the prime players operating in the global printing ink additives 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. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Invisible Orthodontics Industry 2016 Market

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United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Invisible Orthodontics Industry 2016 Market Overview, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Technology, Applications, Growth, Market Status, Demands, Insights, Development, Research and Forecast 2016-2020.This report on United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Invisible Orthodontics market is a research study that is meant to armor existing and emerging players to gain shares. It does so by presenting a comprehensive analysis of the market in terms of revenue (US$ Mn), and also includes a figurative forecast estimation, both for the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia as well as regional markets. The report contains an elaborate executive summary, which includes a snapshot that provides information about various segments and sub-segments of the market. Estimated and expected valuation of each of these segments has been included to highlight the opportunity available.The study includes factors that are primed to drive and hinder the growth rate of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Invisible Orthodontics market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. Additionally, the study identifies emerging trends and includes various opportunities available in the field. Detailed value chain analysis has been included to provide a comprehensive view of the Invisible Orthodontics market. The study encompasses market attractiveness analysis, wherein end-users and countries are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate, and general attractiveness.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @One of several key aspects of this report on United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Invisible Orthodontics market is the section on company profiles. Here, major business strategies adopted by key players and future roadmap, key developments, their market positioning, competitors, and product offerings, and revenue have been identified in the research report.This market study is a combination of primary and secondary research, built on proven methodologies. Primary research formed the bulk of research efforts along with information collected from interactions via e-mails and telephonic interviews. Secondary research involved study of company websites, stock analysis presentations, annual reports, press releases, and various international and national databases.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Invisible Orthodontics1.1 Invisible Orthodontics Market Overview1.1.1 Invisible Orthodontics Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Invisible Orthodontics Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Invisible Orthodontics Market by End Users/Application1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 32 Global Invisible Orthodontics Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Invisible Orthodontics Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 3M3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Align Technology3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 ClearCorrect3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Dentsply Sirona3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Ormco3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 American Orthodontics3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 BioMers3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 ClearPath Orthodontics3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 DB Orthodontics3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 G&H Orthodontics3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Invisible Orthodontics Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 Great Lakes Orthodontics3.12 Henry Schein Dental3.13 Ortho Organizers3.14 Orthocaps3.15 Rocky Mountain Orthodontics3.16 Rxaligners3.17 Sensu3.18 TP OrthodonticsFor Latest QYResearchreports Press Release Visit @QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.QYResearchreportsContact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States+1-518-621-2074866-997-4948USA-Canada Toll freesales@qyresearchreports.comFor Latest Press Release Visit @Follow us on Linkedin @
Global Enterprise IT Security Market Size, Share, Growth and Forecast 2016-2020

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This Strategic Focus report analyses the current trends, drivers, and inhibitors impacting the Enterprise IT Security Market. The report outlines the evolution of enterprise IT security technologies, and identifies and assesses the best performing vendors in the market. This report also presents view of the revenue opportunities in the enterprise IT security market through to 2020, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector and size band. Moreover, following in-depth ICT decision maker surveys, the report outlines enterprises' investment priorities in the enterprise IT security segment.Download PDF Sample@Key Findings- Enterprises have realized the magnitude of loss that can result from a cyber-attack and are therefore taking a wholesome approach in curbing these attacks to protect their sensitive data and IT infrastructure.- The continuous evolution of technologies is transforming the way enterprises operate, leading them to explore novel ways to derive the maximum value out of security solutions.- Furthermore, security vendors encounter many challenges, such as the additional security policies that are required in a cloud and mobility powered environment.Read Full Report with TOC:SynopsisStrategic Focus Report - Enterprise IT Security analyses the current trends, drivers, and inhibitors impacting the enterprise IT security market. The report outlines the evolution of enterprise IT security, and identifies and assesses the best performing vendors in the market. This report also presents view of the revenue opportunities in the enterprise IT security market through to 2020, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector and size band. Moreover, following in-depth ICT decision maker surveys, the report outlines enterprises' investment priorities in the enterprise IT security.This product covers the latest trends in the enterprise IT security market, coupled with insight into the vendor landscape and market size in the enterprise IT security domain.In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following:- The latest trends impacting the enterprise IT security market.- The market drivers (both supply-side and demand-side) that will facilitate the growth of the enterprise IT security market.- The market inhibitors that may hinder the pervasive adoption of enterprise IT security.- Identification of the top ICT vendors in the enterprise IT security market, coupled with an overview of the top 5 vendors.- The primary findings from view of revenue opportunities in the enterprise IT security market through to 2020, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector and size band.- An identification of enterprises' investment priorities based on their budget allocations relating to enterpriseReasons To Buy- Helps the reader to understand the enterprise IT security market landscape, the recent trends, drivers, and inhibitors shaping the enterprise IT security segment.- The report provides an assessment of IT security vendors and their relative positions in the enterprise IT security market.- The most exhaustive and up-to-date report providing revenue opportunity forecasts in the enterprise IT security market from 2015 to 2020, spanning three technology segments, six regions, 14 verticals, and two size bands.- Extensive technology growth predictions based on adoption indicators, end-user technology demand, and macroeconomic factors.- The report provides a detailed breakdown of the opportunities within the enterprise IT security segment and its sub categories.Companies Mentioned:SymantecMcAfeeIBMEMCTrend MicroCA TechnologiesHPOraclePalo Alto Network Inc.ForcepointList of Tables and Figures:Table 1: Market share of the leading vendors in the enterprise IT security software marketTable 2: Brief overview of the top five vendors in the IT enterprise security software marketTable 3: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast, US$ millionsTable 4: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by region, US$ millionsTable 5: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by vertical market, US$ millionsTable 6: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by size band, US US$millionsTable 7: IT Security - enterprises' current and future investment prioritiesFigure 1: Key trends impacting the enterprise IT security marketFigure 2: Key market drivers and challenges faced by the enterprise IT security marketFigure 3: Impact over time of technology evolution in the enterprise IT security marketFigure 4: Market share of the leading vendors in the enterprise IT security software market - 2015Figure 5: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecastFigure 6: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by regionFigure 7: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by vertical market (top six verticals only)Figure 8: Enterprise IT security software - global market opportunity forecast by size bandFigure 9: IT Security - enterprises' current and future investment priorities (H1 2016)Orbis Research is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customised reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialisation. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager  Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019Email ID: sales@orbisresearch.comFollow Us on LinkedIn:
But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something

over there only because I am here . But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past

as past
Asian Food Market to generate strong growth by 2015  2021

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Asian foods comprise Thai, Chinese, and Indian foods. Asia food has marked its presence in the fast food segment in Western countries. It is also considered to be more nutritious than conventional fast foods such as pizza, burgers, pasta, taco, burritos, and sandwiches. The Asian food market is extremely fragmented worldwide and many small players operate as exclusive restaurants or as chained restaurants. Asian foods have marked their presence around the globe in a very short time owing to their acceptance by people who taste lovers and opt for such foods.Request Free Sample Report @The Asian food market around the world is anticipated to witness a considerable growth in the near future. People opt for exotic ethnic food owing to its superior taste and affordable prices. One of the major factors driving the growth of Asian food market includes constantly changing food habits in various region of the world. These factors may vary from region to region; however, rising disposable income and growing culture of eating non-home-made food as a change are other factors impacting the demand for Asian food in emerging countries in a positive way. Western countries are inclined towards variety and novel taste. Thus, quick service and full-service restaurants have been established which include Asian food in their main stream menu in order to fulfill the growing demand for Asian food. On the other hand, improper advertising and distribution channel as the market involves a great number of small players in the competition may hamper the growth of the global Asian food market.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @On the basis of product type, the global Asian food market is segmented as oriental styles, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, and Indian. Geographically, the global market is further segmented as Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World (RoW).North America is anticipated to witness high demand for Asian food owing to a considerable increase in the consumption of Asian food in this region. In addition, there is a high demand for spicy food with various sauces in Europe as well. This in turn also impacts the growth of the market in Europe in a positive way. Europe is expected to be the largest market for Asian food in the near future.Browse detail report @Some of the key players dominating the global Asian food market are Pei Wei Asian Diner, Panda Express, and Moods Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. Other key players influencing the global market are Inns Bruck and Euro food Group Plc.Asian Food Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilThe Middle East and AfricaVisit Our Blog:About UsZion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a 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:
Laser Capture Microdissection Market 2014-2020: By drivers and restrain, Technology, Application, Size & Share

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Laser capture microdissection (LCM) is a technology that provides the scientific community with a rapid and reliable method for procuring a homogeneous population of cells under direct microscopic visualization. Laser capture microdissection technology has been used in wide variety of applications such as organ transplantation, pathology, gene expression, molecular characterization of cancer cells and others. LCM technology can capture the tissue cells of interest and allowed accurate separation of tumor stromal and normal cells within a single biopsy specimen.Get a copy of free Sample Report @Technological advancements in LCM techniques is one of the major driving factors for the growth of laser capture microdissection. Rising health awareness coupled with increasing expenditure on health also expected to boost market growth over the forecast period. The study includes drivers and restraints for the laser capture microdissection market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes the study of opportunities available in the acne vulgaris treatment market on a global level.The report provides detailed segmentation of the laser capture microdissection market based on product, system types, application, end-user and region. Consumables, reagents, and media, assay kits, other consumables, instruments, software and services are key product includes in laser capture microdissection market. The system type includes ultraviolet LCM, infrared LCM, ultraviolet and infrared LCM and immunofluorescence LCM. Based on application, the market has been segmented into research and development, molecular biology, cell biology, forensic science, diagnostics and other. All segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2020 in terms of revenue (USD Million).Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @Geographically, the laser capture microdissection market has 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 strong growth of laser capture microdissection market in recent past years on account of increasing pharmaceutical companies and CROs.Some of the key players operating in global the laser capture microdissection market such as Molecular Machines & Industries, Indivumed GmbH, 3D Hitech Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc, Ocimum Biosolutions LLC, Denova Sciences Pte. Ltd, Molecular Machines & Industries and Theranostics Health Inc.Inquire more before buying this report @This report segments the global the laser capture microdissection market as follows:Laser Capture Microdissection Market: Product Segment AnalysisConsumablesReagents and MediaAssay KitsOther ConsumablesInstrumentsSoftware and ServicesLaser Capture Microdissection Market: System Type Segment AnalysisUltraviolet LCMInfrared LCMUltraviolet and Infrared LCMImmunofluorescence LCMLaser Capture Microdissection Market: Application Segment AnalysisResearch and DevelopmentMolecular BiologyCell BiologyForensic ScienceDiagnosticsOtherLaser Capture Microdissection Market: End User Segment AnalysisAcademic and Government Research InstitutesHospitalsPharmaceutical and Biotechnology CompaniesContract Research Organizations (CROs)Laser Capture Microdissection 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:
Vascular Stents Market to generate strong growth by 2014-2020

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Stents are devices placed into the blood vessel, artery or narrow blood vessels in the human body. A vascular stent is placed in an artery called as coronary angioplasty. Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart to other parts of the body. Stents made up of metal mesh and fabric. Fabric stents also called as stent grafts, which are widely used in larger arteries.Get a copy of free Sample Report @Increasing aging population and rising prevalence of the peripheral arterial disease are important factors bolstering the growth of the vascular stents market. Advanced technology and R&D in new devices such as drug-eluting stents are expected to exhibit lucrative growth during the years to come. The study includes drivers and restraints for the vascular stents market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes the opportunities available in the acne vulgaris treatment market on a global level.The report provides detailed segmentation of the vascular stents market based on product and region. Fem-pop artery stents, iliac artery stents, renal artery stents, carotid artery stents and others are key product includes in vascular stents market. Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand of vascular stents in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S. Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India, and Brazil. The vascular stents market is dominated by North America followed by Europe. Asia-Pacific is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @The report covers forecast and analysis for the vascular stents market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2014 along with a forecast from 2014 to 2020 based on revenue (USD Million). To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters Five Forces model for the vascular stents has also been included.The report covers detailed competitive scenario including the company overviews, financial revenues of the key participants to develop their positions in the global market. Major market players include Cordis Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, C.R.Bard, Inc, Cook Medical and W.L. Gore & Associates and Abbott Vascular, Inc.Inquire more before buying this report @This report global vascular stents market is segmented into following types:Vascular Stents Market: Product Segment AnalysisFem-pop Artery StentsIliac Artery StentsRenal Artery StentsCarotid Artery StentsOthersVascular Stents 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:
Cigarettes Market Structure and Consumption in Algeria

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Albany, New York, January 06, 2017: The latest report focusing on the Cigarettes Market has been recently added to the online database of Market Research Hubs repository. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the Market. It is entitled as Cigarettes in Algeria.Request for Sample Report:Algeria has a population of 39 million and is a substantial market for cigarettes. Following a period of instability, the country and cigarette market started to recover; legitimate sales rose by 6.1% in 2005, after the market was opened to imports, and by 2010, despite falling by 6.6% that year, stood at 24.74 billion pieces. Per capita consumption was at 747 pieces in 2014, 10.8% higher than 1990 levels.Key FindingsThe market is dominated by SNTA, which is a state monopoly and is the leading producer of cigarettes in the country in 2014.Following the opening of the market to imports in 2005, and the arrival of a joint venture between SNTA and Arab investors, the competitive situation has changed, through local production and the import, initially of brands such as L&M and Marlboro.The government has pledged that all state-owned enterprises, with the exception of the two energy companies - Sonatrack and Sonelgaz - will be sold off, but no decision has been taken yet on how or when the SNTA will be privatized.The initial outlook for sales is likely to be poor, with relatively high contraband sales and the effect of a 10% tax increase in January 2015 expected to depress duty paid volumes.SynopsisCigarettes in Algeria is an analytical report by Canadean that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the Algerian market. It covers market size and structure along with per capita and overall consumption. Additionally, it focuses on brand data, retail pricing, prospects and forecasts for sales and consumption to 2025.Browse Full Info with TOC:ReasonsToBuyGet a detailed understanding of consumption to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market. Identify the areas of growth and opportunities, which will aid effective marketing planning. The differing growth rates in regional product sales drive fundamental shifts in the market. This report provides detailed, authoritative data on these changes - prime intelligence for marketers. Understand the market dynamics and essential data to benchmark your position and to identify where to compete in the future.Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:
Diameter Signaling Controller Market - Evaluation of Recent Industry Developments For 2015 - 2021

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/7030

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/7030

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/

As 4G/LTE networks are rolling out worldwide, the need to manage to signal, in particular, diameter signaling has become important more than ever. The on-going adoption of signaling intensive applications, such as social networking, on smartphones and tablets is generating a flood of network signaling. The Long-Term Evolution (LTE) traffic explosion in years to come will lead to significant increase in signaling traffic load. The current IP-based infrastructure is not built to manage this in a secure and scalable way, making operators face several challenges. It puts the high demand on the core network infrastructure with a rapid increase in a number of network elements to manage. Accordingly, operators are taking a proactive approach towards administering the signaling tsunami as they chalk out their future LTE and IMS rollouts. Diameter Signaling Controller, an extension and replacement of the Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA), executes the role of a mediator to facilitate smooth flow of the diameter signaling messages in the network. This eliminates the tangled mesh of flowing diameter signaling messages across multiple IMS elements, thus enhancing scalability, security and flexibility over legacy protocols.A sample of this report is available upon request @Diameter signaling controller market is segmented on the basis of application, solution and region. By application, diameter signaling control market can be segmented into diameter routing agent (DRA), diameter edge agent (DEA), diameter agent (DA), diameter interworking function (IWF) and diameter load balancer. Diameter signaling controller market can be segmented according to a solution which includes LTE Roaming, Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Diameter policy control & charging and diameter security. Regionally, diameter signaling controller market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Japan.Diameter signaling controller market is anticipated to witness a healthy CAGR during the forecast period due to increasing adoption rate of LTE technology among mobile phone subscribers across the emerging countries like India, China, and Brazil. North America is the dominating region in diameter signaling controller market and is expected to remain dominant followed by Western Europe during the projected period. Asia-Pacific region is expected to reflect highest CAGR during the forecast period.The exploding traffic from mobile devices and smartphones promise significant growth opportunity for diameter signaling controller market. The burgeoning penetration of smartphones and LTE, IMS rollouts in developing countries is expected to drive the growth of diameter signaling controller market. Furthermore, the introduction of tiered price plans and the increasing threat of signaling storms in telecommunication are further expected to fuel the growth of diameter signaling controller market during the projected period. However, network integration & management challenges and limited capital expenditure commitment by operators is expected to hinder the growth of diameter signaling controller market amidst the forecast period 2015-2025.A TOC of this report is available upon request @The key vendors in the diameter signaling controller market include Oracle Corporation, F5 Networks Inc., Diametriq LLC, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson AB, Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., Ulticom Inc., Comptel OYJ, OpenNet PTE Ltd., Sonus Networks Inc. and others. Oracle, via its acquisition of Tekelec and Acme Packet, is currently leading the diameter signaling controller market. Major players in the diameter signaling controller market follow the strategy of introducing cost-effective solutions to gain a competitive edge. In addition, mergers and acquisitions are the other strategy followed by the diameter signaling controller providers to boost their market share.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
United States EU Japan China India and Southeast Asia Analytics of Things Market Size Status and Forecast 2021

Analytics of Things

https://goo.gl/hwSdCr

https://goo.gl/aKZoZ5

http://www.bigmarketresearch.com

Big Market Research has added a report, titled, Analytics of Things Market A comprehensive information and thorough statistics are offered in the research with the help of tables and figures.Download sample copy @This report studies the global Analytics of Things market, analyzes and researches the Analytics of Things development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeCisco Systems (U.S.)Microsoft Corporation (U.S.)SAP SE (Germany)Intel Corporation (U.S.)IBM Corporation (U.S.)Capgemini (France)TIBCO Software (U.S.)AGT International (Germany),Enquire about report @Key Points from table of Contents:5 United States Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)5.2 United States Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)6 EU Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)6.2 EU Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)7 Japan Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook7.1 Japan Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)7.2 Japan Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)8 China Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook8.1 China Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)8.2 China Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)9 India Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook9.1 India Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)9.2 India Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)10 Southeast Asia Analytics of Things Development Status and Outlook10.1 Southeast Asia Analytics of Things Market Size (2011-2016)10.2 Southeast Asia Analytics of Things Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)About Big Market Research:Big Market Research uniqueness lies in its highly ethical reports at economical rates because we value your relationship and growth more than money. Your growth is our aim.Our strength is in our research analysts who with their proactive approach can source best and correct information which can be detrimental in organizations success. We follow six sigma standards leaving no scope for error.Contact Us:Dhananjay Potle5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesDirect :+ 1-503-894-6022Toll Free : + 1-800-910-6452Email: help@bigmarketresearch.comWeb:
Enterprise Live Chat Zestim Opens Up for Public

Zestim Logo

www.zestim.com

http://www.zestim.com

http://www.gamooga.com/

HYDERABAD, INDIA  Gamooga, a leading provider of enterprise marketing automation solutions for retailers, today announced the public launch of Zestim - a real-time customer engagement platform for sales and support in one, powerful package. Previously available only as a custom-built live chat software for enterprises, Zestim is now open to the public through the SaaS model."A website is the primary revenue center for any business. All the traffic you drive through organic or paid channels has to finally convert on your website. This is where Zestim helps you identify and engage prime prospects in real-time based on their behavior on your website." said Kishore Annapureddy, CEO, GamoogaAccording to Forrester, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a web site can offer. Zestim captures the behavior of website visitors, and based on their behavior, sends pre-defined messages in real-time that are both targeted and personalized.This could be a user that has added products to cart, and has not checked out or a visitor experiencing errors while checking out - Zestim throws up customized pro-active chats to push such users towards the sale. Zestim also enables agents to receive alerts when a visitor performs certain actions like exiting the website or abandoning their cart.Since the time live chat has been used for support, it has continuously recorded the highest satisfaction levels among all support channels. Zestim is built equally for customer support as it for sales. Zestim has advanced features that go beyond live chat like screen sharing, co-browsing, built-in audio and video calling that helps support agents go the extra mile for their customers.Zestim is already used by some leading global brands like Reliance, RedBus, Matrimony, Simplilearn, Indiaproperty, MagicBricks, among others. For a limited period, Zestim is offering its product for free without any feature limitations or usage restrictions."We started out building custom live chat software for enterprises, and today we're excited to open up the solution to world. Whether youre a one man business, startup, small business or an enterprise - Zestim is tailored for your needs. Our goal is to build a community of engaged users who are able to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction and cut down on support and infrastructure costs." added Kishore.Visit the Zestim website atto sign up for a free account.About ZestimZestim is an intelligent live chat software designed for businesses to improve conversions on their website. Zestim combines sales and support in one, powerful package. Zestim helps businesses identify and engage prime prospects in real-time based on their behavior on the website.Zestims core platform goes well beyond live chat to offer audio/video calling, co-browsing, in-app chat, real-time behavior targeting, exit intent detection, among other advanced capabilities. The Zestim platform is engineered for reliability and scale, using enterprise-level technology made available to businesses of all sizes from startups to enterprises. Zestim clients are able to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction and cut down on support and infrastructure costs.Website:About GamoogaGamooga is a marketing automation solution that helps e-businesses deliver personalized actions at their customers through various channels such as email, web, mobile, social and display. The core strength of Gamooga is its powerful targeting engine which helps businesses segment their customers based on many parameters like their demographics, geographical location, purchase interests, purchase habits, purchase history, lifetime value etc and trigger various personalized actions at them in real time by unifying customer behaviors across devices and channels.Gamoogas marketing automation engine is always on analyzing customer behavior across channels to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time -- when they are most likely to be influenced by your message. Gamooga caters to businesses across various industry verticals like e-commerce, BFSI, Pharma and Telecom delivering improved conversion rates, customer engagement and retention.Website:Plot No - 170/67/171, 1st Floor, Balaji Empire, Patrika Nagar, Madhapur,Hyderabad 500081
Future of Global Travel Vaccines Market: 2015 to 2021

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5753

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5753

Health related complications are greater in developing countries and rural areas because of dissimilarities in sanitary conditions, available food and water bases. The immunization Practices Advisory Committee of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mentions that travelers should be up-to-date on routine immunizations, irrespective of travel plans. The target population for the travel vaccines market include outbound travelers. The travel vaccines for the prevention of hepatitis A, hepatitis B, yellow fever, tetanus, poliomyelitis, meningococcal disease, typhoid fever are manufactured by leading market players namely Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline. Among these aforementioned companies, Sanofi Pasteur and GSK are the notable players in the travel vaccines market that accounts for approximately 85% of total market. Recently in March 2014, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines segment of Sanofi announced its long term strategic collaboration with SK Chemicals Company to develop pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV).A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @The driving factors for the growth of this market include increase in awareness about vaccine preventable diseases and rise in global travel traffic. Moreover, innovation of novel vaccine technologies and technological advancements towards molecular genetics is further boosting the growth of market in coming years. However, requirement of expertise for the production of vaccines and unfavorable healthcare funding towards vaccination could pose a challenge for the growth this market.Geographically, North America will be the leading market for global travel vaccines market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. The major contributing factors for North America to lead the market include involvement of large number of companies in the production of vaccines and introduction of superior range of vaccines in the market. However, Asia-Pacific market is forecast to grow at a significant growth rate in coming years.To View TOC of this Report is Available Upon Request @The leading players of this market include GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Novartis, and Pfizer. Other key participants of this market include ALK  Abello A/S, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Crucell N.V., CSL Ltd. Medimmune Inc. and Vaxin Inc.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Con-sumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Respiratory Devices Market Globally Expected to Drive Growth through 2025

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-794

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-794

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Respiratory devices are medical devices that are used to provide cure or assist a patient who is having a problem in his/her respiratory function and cannot achieve adequate oxygen levels to maintain life. Patients with respiratory disorders such as cystic fibrosis, asthma, COPD, and ARDS require the need of respiratory devices.Respiratory diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Lung infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) together accounted for 9.5 million deaths worldwide during 2008, which is on-sixth of the global total.Respiratory Devices Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, respiratory devices global market is driven by the aging population, increase in the prevalence of respiratory disease such as asthma and COPD, and technological advancement in healthcare industry.Respiratory devices global market is driven by growing aging population, huge investment in R&D, rising government support for device manufacturing companies, and increase in the prevalence of COPD, increasing disposable income and rising healthcare awareness. However, Growing healthcare cost containment pressure and Tax reforms coupled with increased regulatory compliance norms are major barriers for this market.Request Free Report Sample@Respiratory Devices Market: SegmentationRespiratory Therapeutic Devices global market is segmented into following types:HumidifiersSteam HumidifiersUltrasonic HumidifiersImpeller HumidifiersEvaporative HumidifiersNebulizersCompressed Jet NebulizersUltrasonic NebulizersOxygen ConcentratorsHome Oxygen ConcentratorsPortable Oxygen ConcentratorsPositive Airway Pressure (PAP) DevicesContinuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) DevicesAutomatic Positive Airway Pressure (APAP) DevicesBi-Level Positive Airway (BPAP) Pressure DevicesReusable resuscitatorsVentilatorsInvasive Mechanical VentilatorsNon-invasive Mechanical VentilatorsRespiratory Devices Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, growing aging population, and increase in the prevalence of COPD. The respiratory devices global market is expected to have healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2015-2025).Respiratory Devices Market: Region-Wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global respiratory devices market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Request For TOC@Asia Pacific is emerging as dominating markets for respiratory device due to their high healthcare awareness and augmented disposable income. Amongst the Asian countries, India and china are more promising due to large population pool and increased number of hospitals.Respiratory Devices Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in respiratory global market are Covidien Plc., Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Limited, Philips Healthcare, ResMed Inc., General Electric Company, Hamilton Medical, Teleflex Incorporated, Smiths Medical, Clement Clarke International Limited, Drager Medical GmbH, and CareFusion 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:
Building Automation Systems Market to Register a CAGR of 11.1% By 2026

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12823

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/building-automation-systems-market/toc

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/12823

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/

In reference to a new report published by Persistence Market Research, the global building automation systems market will showcase significant growth between 2016 and 2026. Manufacturers of building automation systems are rapidly adopting new regulations set across the globe and they are also lining up new products to meet rising market demand. The Persistence Market Research report titled, Building Automation Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis & Forecast, 2016-2026, talks in detail about the market psyche and also scrutinizes the market drifts which are expected to impact the future of the global building automation systems market. The global building automation systems market was valued more than US$ 43 Bn in 2015 and is expected to mint better revenue by the end of 2016, reaching approximately US$ 48 Bn. The market will continue its journey towards expansion and the market worth will reach US$ 141.1 Bn towards the end of 2026. The global building automation systems market will record a CAGR of 11.1% during the projected period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Building Automation Systems Market: Factors and Trends Impacting GrowthGovernments around the globe are rolling out different precautionary measures to cut down the wastage of energy. Different new regulatory methods are adopted to reduce the consumption of energy. This is a massive booster for the global building automation systems market. Several big economies around the globe such as Europe, US and Japan have already curated some restrictive methods to revise the previous trends. This opens a new window of opportunity for the global building automation systems market. A slew of new technologies that are eroding this market are actively affecting the global canvas of the market. Better and more advanced technologies are enhancing the end-user experience and also increasing market outreach. The introduction of smart web-based, cloud-based control networks backed by the Internet of Things (IOT), mobile technologies, integrated building systems and facility management solutions are expanding the periphery of the global building automation systems market. Last but not the least, the urgent need for consolidated security solutions is also pushing ahead the market growth of the global building automation systems market. These key factors will complement the all-round development of the market within the forecast period but there are also certain key factors that might barricade the normal development of the market within the period of forecast. Building automation systems come with a high price tag and this is expected to impact their widespread adoption. The absence of skilled manpower is another market growth deterrent.The rising incidences of security violations across the globe are likely to impact the growth of the security and surveillance segment in the global building automation systems market. The security and surveillance segment will exhibit a robust growth in terms of revenue and will overshadow the market within the forecast period. The commercial segment will contribute notably to the global building automation systems market. Towards the end of the projected period, the commercial segment will touch a market worth of more than US$ 63 Bn and will record a CAGR of 10.9%. Apart from this the government and residential segments will also project promising growth trends by 2026 end. North America will lure maximum investors, as the building automation systems market in this region will exceed a whopping value of US$ 55 Bn by the close of 2026.Request to view Table of Content @The global market for building automation systems is crowded with several players. The Rheem Manufacturing Company, United Technologies, General Electric, Lennox International, Philips Lighting Holding B.V., Ingersoll-Rand Plc. Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls are some of the major players contributing to the growth of the market. They are establishing smart IT backed platforms to provide advanced building automation systems to their customers.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @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
New Trends of Beta Carotene Market with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2025

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-905

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-905

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Carotene is a pigment found primarily in plants, algae and photosynthetic bacteria. It may also be found in non-photosynthetic bacteria and molds. There are different types of carotenes which includes lutein, beta-carotene, lycopene, zeaxanthin, canthaxanthin, astaxanthin and others. Beta carotene is a fat-soluble pigment found in various plants, grains, fruits and vegetables. It is present in the form of red, orange and yellow pigment. After consumption, the human body converts beta carotene into vitamin A which enables various immune functions to work properly and also helps to maintain healthy skin, thus driving the demand of betas carotenes in food and beverages products across the globe.Beta Carotene Market SegmentationOn the basis of type beta carotene is segmented as water soluble and oil soluble beta carotenes. Among both the segment water soluble beta carotene is expected to account for the major share due to its high implication. Moreover, water soluble beta carotene are further sub segmented as powder beta carotene and liquid beta carotene. Also, oil soluble beta carotene is sub segmented as powder beta carotene and liquid beta carotenes. Among thesub segments of oil soluble beta carotenes, powder beta carotene is expected to account for the major market share during the forecast period.On the basis of application beta carotene is segmented as food and beverages, supplements, cosmetics, and feed. Among all these segments food and beverages is expected to account for the major market share as compared to others in the near future. Beta carotene are majorly used in providing color in the food and beverages which is expected to drive the demand for beta carotene in these products. Moreover, cosmetics segment in beta carotene market is expected show a substantial growth during the forecast period. The food and beverages segment is further sub segmented as bakery and confectionery, dairy products, soft drinks/juices, processed food and others (infant food). Among all these sub segments bakery and confectionery is expected to contribute major share in beta carotene market in terms of revenue followed by processed food. Moreover, cosmetics segmented is further sub segmented as hair cosmetics, skin cosmetics, nail cosmetics, eye cosmetics and toiletries.Request Free Report Sample@On the basis of source beta carotene market is segmented as carrots, sweet potato, pumpkin and others (spinach and plums). Among all these sources carrots is expected to account for major share of beta carotene market. However sweet potato is expected to show a healthy growth during the forecast period..Globally, North America is expected to contribute the major share of beta carotene market followed by Europe. In North America, the United States is expected to occupy the major share on the pie in beta carotene market followed by Canada. Increasing health consciousness among the consumers is expected to drive the growth of beta carotene across the region. In Europe, Germany and France is expected to account for the major share in beta carotene market during the forecast period. Whereas, Asia pacific is concerned it is expected to register a healthy growth by 2020. In Asia pacific region China and Japan is expected to be the major contributor in beta carotene market. Increased use of cosmetics products in these region is predicted to support the growth of beta carotene market in the region.Beta Carotene Market DriversBeta carotene possess many features such as it lowers the risk of lung cancer, heart diseases, and skin problems. Moreover it also helps in controlling age related eye disorders and enables proper functioning of immune system. Thus, awareness among the consumers for the benefits of beta carotene is fueling its growth across the globe. Moreover increased usage of beta carotene in food and beverages industry to provide color to their final product is also fueling its growth during the forecast period.Request For TOC@Beta Carotene Market Key PlayersSome of the major players operating in beta carotene market include BASF SE, Kemin Industries Inc., Algatechnologies Ltd., Chr. Hansen A/S, Phytone Limited, Cyanotech Corporation, Royal DSM N.V., LycoRed Ltd., Overseal Natural Ingredients Ltd., Pharmline Inc., Sensient Technologies Corporation, Mera Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Valensa International LLC among others.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:
Future of Global Brachytherapy Devices Market : 2015 to 2021

The global radiation therapy equipment market is classified into external radiation therapy equipment market and internal radiation therapy equipment market. Brachytherapy devices market is a sub segment under the internal radiation therapy equipment market. Brachytherapy is referred to as sealed source radiation therapy because the radiation source is sealed and placed inside or near the body part requiring radiation therapy. Besides the treatment of most body part tumors, brachytherapy is commonly used to treat the cancers of the cervix, breast, skin, and prostate. The radiation source is enclosed in a protective wire or a protective capsule and ionizing radiations escape to treat the surrounding cancerous tissues only while avoiding its effects on body fluids.The advantage of brachytherapy devices over other forms of radiation therapy equipment is that it involves high precision in radiation source placement in the anatomy. One of the key features of brachytherapy devices is that they limit the radiation effects only to the local, diseased (tumors or cancers) parts of the anatomy. Hence, the healthy tissues are protected against radiation. Brachytherapy devices pave the way for a safe radiation therapy treatment in the presence of high, localized doses of radiation. The nature of brachytherapy devices makes it a durable form of treatment delivery as the re-occurrence of cancer in the patient treated with brachytherapy is rare. Brachytherapy is often used in combination with chemotherapy, surgery or external radiation therapy. Based on the location of the tumor being treated, brachytherapy devices market is restrained by a range of side-effects such as localized bleeding within implant region, urinary incontinence, desquamation, etc. The global brachytherapy devices market is expected to witness significant competition from the external radiation therapy equipment market that can hamper the growth of global brachytherapy devices market.Brachytherapy Devices market is classified on the basis of the type of Product Types, dose rate, application, duration of treatment and geography.The global brachytherapy devices market is anticipated to witness significant growth in the forecast years. The high-dose rate and low-dose rate of radiation in brachytherapy devices market together hold more than half the global brachytherapy devices market share. The global brachytherapy devices market is projected to grow at more than around 5% annually. The electronic brachytherapy device is a novel technology that is expected to add remarkable value to the global brachytherapy devices market and open a wide range of opportunities. The global brachytherapy devices market is largely dependent on the radiation sources used in brachytherapy such as cesium-137, cobalt-60, iridium-192, iodine-125, palladium-103, ruthenium-106 and radium-226.Depending on geographic regions, global Brachytherapy Devices market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is the largest market for radiation therapy equipment followed by Europe due to the high incidence of cancer among the population in these regions. Asia Pacific is expected to be the most promising market for radiation therapy equipment owing to the improving healthcare infrastructure and affordable radiation therapy treatment. As of the regional outlook for brachytherapy devices market, the brachytherapy devices market is set to follow the trend of radiation therapy equipment market.Some of the key market players identified in global Brachytherapy Devices market are Elekta AB, Varian Medical Systems Inc. Eckert and Ziegler BEBIG S.A, and C.R. Bard.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 categories such as market segments, geographies, accessories and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Con-sumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Marine Coatings Market Set to Grow Exponentially, 2022

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10178

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Marine coatings are the protective coatings applied on the surface of the ships, cruises, vessels, yachts and other offshore structures (oil rigs, bridges) exposed to the sea water and corrosive conditions. The marine coatings are applied on the above mentioned surfaces to protect against corrosion, fouling and slimes thus increasing the durability and life of the marine vessels and offshore structures. The need for dry-docking of vessels subsequently, new ship building activities and the growth in offshore drilling is propelling the growth of global marine coatings market. The shipping trade is also growing globally, which is one positive factor for the growth of global marine coatings market. The demand for VOC free and environment friendly marine coatings among the customers are gaining popularity, hence new trends are being employed by marine coatings manufacture to achieve this specifications of consumers and to comply with government norms. The global marine coatings market is expected to project a healthy CAGR over the period of forecast.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global marine coatings market is expected to show a healthy growth, and the key driving factors responsible for the growth of marine coatings market are, the growth in the world trade, awareness among the consumers about hull protection, fuel efficiency of the vessel and the expansion of oil and gas sector in the off shore regions, new ship building facilities and the dry-docking activities tends to drive the market for marine coatings globally. The popularity of yacht and cruise ships among the people for leisure time is also contributing to the growth of marine coatings market. Somehow, the regulatory norms applied by the government for the use of VOCs based marine coatings might pose as a restraint for the growth of global marine coatings market. To overcome the environmental restrains new technologies are being adopted by the manufacturers like more water based and less VOCs content in the marine coatings which are trending in the global marine coatings market among the consumers. Faster drying marine coatings are also finding its popularity in the market.The global marine coatings market has been divided into seven key geographical regions which includes North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. The North American market for marine coatings is showing a slow-moving growth because of the small size of the marine industry in the region. The market for marine coatings in the Europe region is just above North American market in terms of market growth but with a slower rate. The APEJ marine coatings market is currently dominating in the global marine market and will pose a healthy growth rate over the forecast period. In the APEJ region, the consumption of marine coatings has shown an incredible growth with China on the top of the list in terms of consumption in the APEJ region and globally which is mainly because of the growth in new ship building activities, maintenance and dry-docking activities in the region. South Korea marine coatings market is trailing behind China. Japan marine coatings market is in the third position in terms of market share. There has been an increase in the number of ship owners in Singapore which is expected to propel the market for marine coatings in the APEJ region. The Indian market is also expected to emerge as a strong contender in the marine coatings market in the forecast period. Overall, the global marine coatings market is foreseen to register a healthy single digit CAGR.Some of the major players identified in the global marine coatings market include Akzo Nobel N.V, PPG Industries, Inc., The Sherwin-Williams Company, Axalta Coating Systems, LLC, BASF, KANSAI PAINT CO.,Ltd, Nippon Paint Marine Coatings Co. Ltd, PPG Asian Paints Private Limited, Jotun, Hempel Foundation, Mascoat, Comex, KCC corporation, Chugoku Marine Paints, Ltd, National Paints Factories Co. LtdRequest to view Table of content @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 categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
TRENDY RESEARCH:United States Aloe Drink Market Report 2016

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Research Beam added a report United States Aloe Drink Market Report 2016Description:United States Aloe Drink Market Report 2016:United States Aloe Drink Market Report 2016 is a comprehensive study of the recent market trends and consumption analysis in the Europe industry. The report provides an in-depth analysis for the historic period, 20112016 and the forecast period, 20162021. Market overview is offered on the basis of product overview and scope United States Aloe Drink Market Report 2016in the Food and Beverage. Furthermore, the study covers a detailed segmentation in terms of types, applications, and regions.Download Sample Report @:Regional analysis for the United States Aloe Drink Market Report in the Food and Beverage Sector Research Report market is provided based on revenue, sales, and growth rate. In addition, sales and market share for each segment are included for each region.Following regions are analyzed: North America Global China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaMajor manufacturers are analyzed in the report in terms of basic information, manufacturing base, product specifications, and business overview. Furthermore, comprehensive analysis of sales, revenue, price, and gross margin of each manufacturer is covered.Following manufacturers are analyzed: Coca Cola(US) OKF(KR) Pukka Herbs Haitai(KR) JAYONE Dynamic Health Labs Nature's Way Products Isotonic Now LA Aloe, LLC American Global Health Group LOTTE(KR)Manufacturing cost analysis is offered based on raw material analysis and cost structure with manufacturing process analysis. The research offers industry chain analysis in terms of upstream raw material sourcing and downstream buyers. Moreover, an extensive analysis of production, consumption, and revenue for each segment is offered for the forecast period.Data & statistics are provided with the help of tables and figures to help manufacturers, investors, and shareholders gain comprehensive understanding. Research conclusions are offered at the end of the report.Get Enquire @Table of Contents:1 Aloe Drink Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Aloe Drink1.2 Classification of Aloe Drink2 United States Aloe Drink Competition by Manufacturers3 United States Aloe Drink Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (2011-2016)4 United States Aloe Drink Sales (Volume) by Application (2011-2016)5 United States Aloe Drink Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis5.1 Coca Cola(US)5.2 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors5.3 Aloe Drink Product Type, Application and Specification6 Aloe Drink Manufacturing Cost Analysis7 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers8 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders9 Market Effect Factors Analysis10 United States Aloe Drink Market Forecast (2016-2021)11 Research Findings and Conclusion12 AppendixAbout Us:With the arsenal of different search reports, Research Beam helps you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Our research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency. With the window of opportunity getting open and shut at a speed of light, it has become very important to survive in the market and only the fittest and competent enough can do so. So, we try and provide with latest changes in the market that can suit your needs and help you take decision accordingly.Contact Us:5933 NE Win Severs Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesU.S. & Canada Toll Free: + 1-800-910-6452International: + 1-503-894-6022UK: + 44-845-528-1300India: +91 20 66346070Fax: +1 (855) 550-5975Email: help@researchbeam.comWeb:
The United States Digital Medicine Market Size, Challenges Will be Driving the Growth of the Industry, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020)

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Scope of the ReportThe report titled The United States Digital Medicine Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020), provides an in-depth analysis of the scenario of digital medicine market in the United States.The US digital medicine market has been analysed on the basis of value, segments and clinical trials sponsors. The report also provides the digital health market by categories of healthcare apps.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the US digital medicine market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The competition in the digital medicine market is fragmented by the several small private players, such as Livongo, WellDoc, Inc., Ginger.io, Inc., Akili, Mocacare, AliveCor, Inc., 2morrow, Inc., Glooko, Inc., Omada Health, Inc., and Voluntis, etc., whose business profiling has been done in this report, which include their business overview and respective business strategies.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:Company Coverage- 2morrow, Inc.- Akili Interactive Labs, Inc.- AliveCor, Inc.- Glooko, Inc.- Livongo- Mocacare- Omada Health, Inc.- Proteus Digital Health, Inc.- Voluntis- WellDoc, Inc.- Ginger.io, Inc.Executive SummaryGlobally the health related issues are on rise. These health issues surround diseases, syndromes and disorders, etc. Many of these health issues can be detected early and can be tackled by a mere dose of medicine, but there are several others that get detected on the advanced stage and have no cure. Hence, scientists and doctors are trying to accommodate the use of advanced technology and apps in the field of medicine, thus bringing digital medicine and digital health at the doorstep via mobiles.Digital health is a platform that combines technology with personal health and genetic information, so that healthcare could be made personalized and precise. Digital health includes consumer focused fitness apps that have little or no clinical validation for patients and physicians. Digital health has been classified into EMR/HER, mobile health, telehealth and wireless health.Digital medicine is disease oriented healthcare, that is currently at nascent stage. Digital medicine is a subset of digital health. The concept of digital medicine revolves around studying and analysing the patients health and accordingly prescribing the customised medical aid. It involves either a combination of drugs with therapeutic treatments or simply digital therapeutic treatments; thus, providing real-time health information to the patients and the corresponding healthcare team. The major focus of digital medicine is on curing or managing the disorders or diseases that have no cure by alternative drugs, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, mental disorders, etc. The digital medicine has three phases namely, commercialization, combination therapies and stand-alone digital therapeutics.The digital medicine is supported by various growth drivers, such as increased smartphone usage, growing software industry, mobile phone proliferation, increasing biopharma investments, rising healthcare expenditure, and increasing population with chronic diseases, etc. Yet the digital medicine market faces several challenges, such as lack of clinical evidence, narrow functionality of apps, huge time and capital to be incurred, and regulatory hurdles, etc.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.To View The Latest Industry Press Releases:ContactTel: +1-518-621-2074E-Mail: sales@marketresearchreports.bizWebsite:MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Commodity Chemicals Market: Set to Grow Exponentially by 2020

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Commodity chemicals (bulk chemicals) are a group of chemicals that are made on a very large scale and act as intermediates to produce other chemicals, which, in turn are used to produce a extensive range of end-user products including construction materials, adhesives, plastics, apparel and tires. Commodity chemicals are the largest sub-segment of the chemical industry. Commodity chemicals are commonly traded under broad categories such as organics, inorganics, plastics resins, synthetic rubbers, fibers, films, explosives and petrochemicals. These broad categories include chemicals such as, acetic acid, acetone, acrylate esters, adipic acid, acrylonitrate, benzene, bisphenol, butadiene, butanediol, butyl acetate, hexane, melamine, polyvinyl chloride, propylene, methanol, methyl, glycol and glycerines. These chemical are very low in product differentiation, and hence making price the dominant economic factor in purchasing decisions for the end users.A sample of this report is available upon request:The commodity chemical industry is highly fragmented and served with large number of local or regional players. Asia Pacific is by far the largest market for commodity chemicals accounting almost half of the total market. It is followed by North America and Europe. The growth prospective is still high in Asia Pacific attributed to the growing economy and ongoing trend and support for manufacturing sector in the developing countries such as India, China, and Indonesia. Bulk availability of crude oil and natural gas from gulf countries such as Saudi Arabian, Iran, Iraq and Syria is helping the commodity chemical industries in Asia Pacific.Commodity chemicals serve a wide range of industries ranging from personal care products to aerospace industries. It has its application either directly or indirectly in almost all manufacturing industries. The economy growth and increasing Gross domestic product (GDP) of developed and developing countries around the world is boosting the overall market of commodity chemicals. However the stiff regulation of the governments around the world regarding the health and environment side effect of chemicals and fluctuating prices of crude oil and natural gas are posing significant challenge for the industry.Request for Table of content @:Some of the major players in commodity chemicals market include, BASF SE, Bayer AG, The Dow Chemical Company, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation, PPG industries, Linde Group, Akzo Nobel, LyondellBasell Industries, Asahi Kasei, Sumitomo chemicals, Evonik Industries, INEOS Group Holding and Chem China.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:
Industrial Boilers Market worth 17.77 Billion USD by 2026

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The report "Industrial Boilers Market by End-use Industry (Food, Chemical, Refineries, Primary Metal), Type (Water Tube, Fire Tube), Boiler Horsepower (10BHP-150BHP, 151BHP-300BHP, and 301BHP-600BHP), Fuel Type (Coal, Gas), and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", The industrial boilers market is estimated at USD 10.92 Billion in 2016 and is projected to reach USD 17.77 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 5.0% between 2016 and 2026Request for Sample of Report atBrowse 84 market data tables and 60 figures spread through 148 pages and in-depth TOC on Industrial Boilers Market - Global Forecast to 2026Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.Factors such as increasing demand for clean energy sources, increasing number of natural power plants, and government initiatives to promote clean energy and reduce dependency on fossil fuels are key factors expected to boost the growth of the industrial boilers market. The shift in trend towards the adoption of high performance boiler based on natural gas will have a positive impact on the growth of the industrial boilers market.The water tube segment is expected to lead the industrial boilers market by 2026Based on type, the water tube segment is estimated to lead the industrial boilers market in 2016, as water tube boilers are safer in terms of design and can operate longer than fire tube boilers. The use of water tube is preferred in a variety of process applications across various industries, including chemical processing, pulp & paper, power generation, and refining.The natural gas & biomass segment is expected to lead the industrial boilers market by 2026By fuel type, the natural gas segment accounted for the largest share of the industrial boilers market in 2016, as natural gas & biomass boilers are gradually replacing coal-based boilers in developed countries, owing to lower operational cost of using natural gas as compared to other fuels. Companies in the U.S. and the U.K. have stopped constructing new coal-based power plants and are replacing the old ones with natural gas-based industrial boilers. Other than developed nations, natural gas and biomass based industrial boilers are widely used in emerging countries, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Nigeria due to easy availability of natural gas in these economies.Asia-Pacific is projected to be the largest market for industrial boilers by 2026Asia-Pacific accounted for the largest share of the industrial boilers market in 2026, followed by Europe and North America. China is one of the major consumers of industrial boilers in Asia-Pacific. The region has witnessed increasing investments on research & development activities on advanced industrial boilers from global players. Existing players are planning capacity expansion in the next few years, as there is increasing demand of industrial boilers from various end-use industries.Major market players covered in this report include Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (U.S.), Dongfang Electric Corporation Ltd. (China), Siemens AG (Germany), General Electric (U.S.), AC Boilers S.p.a. (Europe), Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (India), Harbin Electric Group (China), IHI Corporation (Japan), Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd. (Japan), and Thermax Limited (India).We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United States
Automobiles Coolant Market: Industry Analysis and Forecast by 2020

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Coolant is used in almost all major automobiles ranging from small engine motor bikes to heavy duty commercial vehicles. Coolants are used for three major functions: cool down engine parts to avoid over heating during use of the automobiles; to maintain minimum temperature level of engine and avoid freezing when the vehicle is unused for long duration, especially in cold climates and to prevent corrosion of the metal machinery of the automobile.Request for Sample Report:The engine operating temperature must be maintained in an optimum range for engines proper operation and efficiency. High temperatures of engine tend to oxidize the engine oil and break it down into hard carbon, thus destroying it. Coolant flows from the automobiles engine picking up heat and giving it to outside air while the coolant flows to radiator. The maximum coolant flow rate in automobile engine can be one gallon (4 ltr) per minute for each horse power of engine. The heat transfer rate depends largely on the temperature difference between coolants and outside air and the coolants flow rate. In ideal condition, the freezing point of a coolant remains -20 degree Fahrenheit where as boiling point normally does not exceed 234 degree Fahrenheit.Based on technology, the global automobile coolants market is broadly categorized as inorganic additive, organic acid, hybrid organic acid and others. Further on the basis of application in automobiles, the coolant market is categorized as passenger car, commercial vehicle, two wheelers and others.Ethylene glycol based coolants such as traditional green ethylene glycol and embittered coolant (contains up to 93% ethylene glycol plus water and additives) has higher boiling point resulting in high absorption of heat than some of the other coolants. Organic acid coolants are basically ethylene glycol-based but it does not contain silicates or phosphates, whereas hybrid organic acid based coolant such as VW/Audi pink (green or orange in color) contain ethylene glycol with small amount of silicate to provide correct pH for antifreeze properties.North America is the largest market for automobile coolant attributed to large number of vehicle and their vibrant intercity/country road connectivity. It is followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The growth rate of automobile coolant is highest in Asia Pacific, lead by China and some of the other developing countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines.Growing middle class population, rising disposable income, developing surface transportation infrastructure, growing aspiration of owning private vehicles, increasing mobility due to development of satellite townships near megacities and increasing demand of goods carriers from micro, small and medium size enterprises are fueling the market for automobile coolant in Asia Pacific region. Growing automotive aftermarket and do it yourself (DIY) culture in North America and Europe is fueling the growth of automobile coolant in these two region.Request for Table of content:Some of the major players operating in automobile coolant market include Total S.A., Castrol Limited., Cummins Filtration, Motul S.A., China National BlueStar (Group) Co. Ltd., Valvoline International Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Sinopec Corp. and Shandong Yuean Chemical Industry Co. Ltd.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:
Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market Focus On Top Manufacturers Analysis Profile

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Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market Research Report 2016 Trends, Analysis, and InsightsResearch Beam has added a report, titled, Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market Research Report 2016. The report provides a detailed information and analysis of production, revenue, drivers & opportunities, key manufacturers, and competitive landscape. Furthermore, current market trends and growth opportunities are discussed along with extensive analysis of each segment for the historic period, 20112016 and the forecast period, 20162021. The report provides insights on manufacturing cost structure, marketing channels, marketing channels, and distributors & traders analysis. This study is helpful for market players, investors, and shareholders acquire thorough information and statistics to make better decisions for the future.Download Sample Report of Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market @An overview of the Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) market is offered on the basis of product overview and detailed segmentation of the industry. The research provides market segmentation based on types, applications, and geography. Each type of Electronic Security Systems (ESS) is analyzed with insights on production and production market share for 2015 along with key manufacturers for each type enlisted using a tabular representation. Furthermore, consumption market share for each application is offered in the research for 2015 in a tabular format. Regional analysis is discussed in terms of current market status and growth prospects for the period, 20112021. Geographies analyzed in the study are , Europe, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia. Statistics on revenue and growth rate for each region are mentioned with the help of figures for the historic period and the forecast period.Market competition on the basis of manufacturers is discussed in the research along with insights on production, revenue, production market share, and revenue market share for 2015 and 2016. Moreover, significant information on manufacturing base distribution, product type, and sales area of each manufacturer are also covered. Comprehensive information on competitive situation and trends are provided based on market share of top three & top six manufacturers, market concentration rate, and strategies such as mergers & acquisition, expansion, partnerships, and others adopted by them for business growth.Ask For Discount @The research provides an extensive analysis of key manufactures operating in the Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) market. Key manufacturers analyzed in the study are Axis Communications AB (Sweden), Bosch Security Systems (Germany), ADT LLC (US), Honeywell International Inc. (US), Tyco International Ltd. (Switzerland), UTC Building and Industrial Systems (US), Toshiba America, Inc. (US), Sony Corporation (Japan), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Schneider Electric (France), Yoko Technology Corp. (Taiwan), Stanley Security Solutions (Sweden), Johnson Controls, Inc. (US), Kaba Group (Switzerland), MorphoTrust USA Inc. (US), ASSA ABLOY AB (Sweden), Fermax Electronica S.A.U. (Spain), Global Security Solutions (Canada), March Networks Corporation (Canada), Mobotix AG (Germany), NAPCO Security Technologies, Inc. (US), Chubb Edwards (Canada) and others. Production, revenue, average price of products, and gross margin for 2015 and 2016 are discussed in a tabular format. Detailed analysis of type, application, and specifications of products of manufacturers are provided along with an overview of business. This information assists industry players in determining competitive intensity and helps investors in determining investment pockets to gain maximum returns.Manufacturing cost analysis is offered in the research based on manufacturing cost structure, raw material analysis, and manufacturing process analysis. A table offers an extensive analysis production base and market concentration rate of raw materials, whereas a figure provides insights on price trends. Key suppliers of raw materials are enlisted in a tabular format. Figure illustrates manufacturing cost structure and manufacturing process analysis.The industrial chain structure is highlighted based on upstream raw material sources, downstream buyers, and sourcing strategies along with tables to provide thorough understanding. Raw materials sources of major manufacturers of Electronic Security Systems (ESS) and distributors & traders are enlisted in a tabular format. Marketing strategies are discussed in the study based on marketing channels and market positioning. Insights on technological progress, changing consumer needs, and environmental change are offered to provide market effect factors analysis. Production, revenue, and consumption analysis based on each segment of the industry for the forecast period. Research findings and conclusions are mentioned at the end of the research.Enquire About Report @Table of Contents1 Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Electronic Security Systems (ESS)1.2 Classification of Electronic Security Systems (ESS)1.3 Applications of Electronic Security Systems (ESS)1.4 Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market by Regions1.5 Europe Market Size (Value and Volume) of Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (2011-2021)2 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.1.2 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type (2011-2021)2.2.2 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2021)2.3 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Regions (2011-2021)2.3.2 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2011-2021)2.4 Europe Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume) by Application3 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)3.1.1 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)3.1.2 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)3.1.3 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)3.2 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 Germany Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Applications4 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)4.1.1 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)4.1.2 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)4.1.3 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)4.2 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers4.3 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type4.4 UK Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Applications5 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)5.1.1 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)5.1.2 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)5.1.3 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)5.2 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers5.3 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type5.4 France Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Applications6 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)6.1.1 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)6.1.2 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)6.1.3 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)6.2 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers6.3 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type6.4 Italy Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Applications7 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7.1 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)7.1.1 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)7.1.2 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)7.1.3 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)7.2 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers7.3 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type7.4 Russia Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Applications8 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8.1 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Value (2011-2021)8.1.1 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)8.1.2 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)8.1.3 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales Price Trend (2011-2021)8.2 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers8.3 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by Type8.4 Spain Electronic Security Systems (ESS) Sales and Market Share by ApplicationsRead Complete TOC @Contact Us:5933 NE Win Sivers Drive, #205, Portland, OR 97220U.S. & Canada Toll Free: + 1-800-910-6452UK: + 44-845-528-1300, India: +91 20 66346070Fax: +1 (855) 550-5975Email: help@researchbeam.comWith the arsenal of different search reports, Research Beam helps you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Our research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency. With the window of opportunity getting open and shut at a speed of light, it has become very important to survive in the market and only the fittest and competent enough can do so. So, we try and provide with latest changes in the market that can suit your needs and help you take decision accordingly.5320 SW Macadam Avenue, Suite 100, Portland, OR 97239,
Epoxy Adhesives Market to Maintain Healthy CAGR by 2021

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Epoxy adhesives are high strength adhesives used extensively across various industries. They are made of epoxy resins, which are in turn made up of the chemical bisphenol A. Epoxy adhesives can be used for adhesion of numerous substrates such as wood, metals, plastics, glass and stones. After application, epoxy adhesives require time for curing or setting. This can be done with the help of heat or by exposure to ultra violet light or at room temperature. The epoxy adhesives cured by exposure to ultra violet light are used to manufacture fiber optics and opto electronics. Epoxy adhesives have strong adhesion which makes them the most commonly used structural adhesives.A sample of this report is available upon request @Epoxy adhesives find extensive use in aerospace, automotive, building & construction and semiconductor industry. Of these industries, aerospace and semiconductor industries are the two major consumers of epoxy adhesives. The growth of the aerospace industry is a key driver for the growth of epoxy adhesives market. The blades of aircrafts are joined using epoxy adhesives. Due to the superior mechanical properties of epoxy adhesives, such as resistance to creep under sustained load, temperature and pressure variations, they are the adhesives of choice for the aerospace industry. The semiconductor industry makes use of epoxy adhesives to manufacture printed circuit boards, integrated circuits and transistors. The semiconductor industry is growing exponentially due to the increase in usage of electronic gadgets. This is driving the market of epoxy adhesives. However, the application of epoxy adhesives must be carried out with protective gear owing to the toxic fumes which are emitted during its application. Technological advances to make the adhesives safer for humans during application are expected to open new areas of opportunity for the market of epoxy adhesives.China, Germany, the U.S and U.K are major consumers of epoxy adhesives. The aerospace and semiconductor industry in these countries are the largest markets of epoxy adhesives. The growth of this market is also seen in other Asia Pacific countries. South Korea and Japan are large scale manufacturers of epoxy resins. The market of epoxy adhesives is expected to grow considerably in the forecast period in Asia and Europe. Latin America shows a steady demand of epoxy adhesives for the building & construction industry.The application of epoxy adhesives requires pre treatment of substrates which ensures superior adhesion. There are two major types of epoxy adhesives  one component, heat curing epoxy adhesive and two component room temperature curing epoxy adhesive. One component epoxies are used as alternatives to welding and riveting and have excellent adhesion to metals. These epoxy adhesives require cold storage to provide sufficient shelf life. They are used for bonding large areas and find application in aerospace industry for assembly of aircraft panels and rotor blades.Request to view Table of content @The two component epoxy adhesives are cured at room temperature and can take up to several days to weeks to achieve adhesion. These adhesives can be used on all types of substrates including rubber, wood, plastics, glass and ceramics. The market of epoxy adhesives is fragmented across the globe. There are numerous small, medium and large players in this market, which serve many markets and produce numerous epoxy adhesive variants. For instance, Henkel manufactures electrically conductive adhesives. The major players in this market include- Henkel, Permabond, The Gorilla Glue Company, 3M, Ardex, MG Chemcials, MAPEI, 5M, Epotek, Powerblanket and Masterbond 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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Masterbatch Market: Expected to Witness a Steady Growth by 2020

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Masterbatches are solid or liquid mixture of additive or pigments used for coloring or enhancing other properties of polymers such as UV stabilizing, flame retardation, antistatic and antilocking. Masterbatches can be used by several technological methods including injection, blow, spinning and others. Growing end user markets such as packaging, automobile and healthcare is boosting the demand of masterbatch market. Moreover, increasing demand of plastics from construction and luxury goods packaging industries are further driving the global masterbatch market. Among the end-user industries, packaging accounts for the largest share in global masterbatch market. Packaging industry uses all types of masterbatches, wherein color and white masterbatch are the most commonly used segments. Food and beverages manufacturers increasing interest in enhancement of packaging colors is escalating demands for the color masterbatches.Checkout full Report:...The raw materials for masterbatch production include pigments, carrier, dispersant and some additives. Masterbatch market can be classified into four segments - additive, color, white and black. Additive masterbatche is the fastest growing segment which finds its application in customized plastic products in industries such as automotive, electronic appliances, textile, pharmaceutical packaging, and food and beverages packaging. Color masterbatche is used in the production of plastics for automobiles, electronic appliances, flexible packaging for food and beverages and medicine packaging. Black masterbatche is mainly used in construction, automotive and electronic appliance industries.The demand for light weight vehicles is escalating globally due to European Unions concern for reduction in green house gases. Increasing the plastic content in vehicles reduces their weight and carbon emission, and also increases fuel efficiency. This is leading to replacement of metal parts in the vehicles by plastic components. This shows growth opportunities for the masterbatch market for the forecasted period (2014-2020). However, the rising oil prices and stringent environmental laws related to non-biodegradability of plastics are posing significant challenge to the growth of plastic industries which is in turn affecting the masterbatch market.Asia Pacific was the largest market for masterbatch in 2013 owing to high demand of plastics from construction and automobile industries. Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East are expected to witness high growth rates during the forecasted period.Request for Sample Report and Table of content @:Masterbatch market in Europe and North America is consolidated, whereas the masterbatch market in Asia Pacific has a fragmented structure where china alone is a home to about 500 masterbatch manufacturers. Due to large number of mergers and acquisition taking place, rivalry in the masterbatch industry is expected to reduce during the forecasted period. The major companies operating in global masterbatch market include, A. Schulman Inc., Ampacet Corporation, Clariant International Ltd., PolyOne Corporation, GABRIEL-CHEMIE GROUP, Ferro Corporation and Americhem, Inc.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:
Trends in the Furfuryl Alcohol Market 2015-2025

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Furfuryl alcohol is an organic compound manufactured by catalytic reduction of furfuran. It is used in a wide range of applications such as solvents, foundry resins, plastics, wetting agents, adhesives and in gas hardening processes among others. The raw material furfuran is obtained from sugarcane bagasse, corn cobs, wheat bran and oats among others. It has application in rocketry as a hypergolic fuel which ignites readily in presence of fuming nitric acid and red fuming nitric acid.Request for sample report:Increasing demand for bio-based products owing to increasing awareness among consumers coupled with rising environmental regulations is expected to drive the market. This alcohol finds application in plastic industry. Increasing demand for plastics in the construction and paints industry is anticipated to drive the furfuryl market over the next few years. Bio-based resins and paints are gaining demand from developed countries due to the presence of strict environmental regulations. However, the safety issues regarding transportation and export rules of different developing countries are expected to restrain the market growth. Research and development in the field of rocketry is expected to provide immense opportunities for manufacturers of furfuryl alcohol in the near future.Asia Pacific was the largest producer and consumer of furfuryl alcohol in which China contributes to the highest consumption. Proximity to raw material and increasing applications in plastics and resins are expected to drive the market. Europe follows Asia Pacific in consumption owing to increase in the application area of furfuryl alcohol. Research activities in the field of rocketry fuel are expected to provide opportunity for furfuryl alcohol market in this region. North America is expected to grow at a faster pace owing to increase in availability of raw materials and rising demand from construction and paints industry.Request for TOC:Key players in this market include DynaChem Inc., The Chemical Company, Hongye Chemical Co. Ltd, Penn A Kem LLC, Nova Molecular technologies, Continetal Industries Group Inc., Shenzhen Shu Hang Industrial Development Co. Ltd., SolvChem Inc., NeuChem Inc., SweetLake Chemical Ltd., Ideal Chemical & Supply Company, Novasynorganics, International Process Plants among others.This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product types and distribution channels.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Specialty Carbon Black Market: Quantitative Market analysis, Current and Future Trends by 2020

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Specialty carbon black is a high-end refined chemical manufactured by burning of hydrocarbons in limited air supply. Specialty carbon black or pigment black is the purest form of carbon black with lower level of ash, sulfur and metals along with other impurities. Specialty carbon black is made by using four processes namely furnace black, thermal black, acetylene black and lampblack. Specialty carbon black is a segment of carbon black where other segments include rubber and commodity carbon black. Specialty carbon black had a share of about 9% in 2013 in the global carbon black market.Request for Sample Report:Specialty carbon black is used as a reinforcing agent in tires, belts, hoses, gaskets, diaphragms, vibration isolation devices, bushings, air springs, chassis bumpers, and multiple types of pads, boots, wiper blades, fascia, conveyor wheels, and grommets. Specialty carbon black is also used in refuse sacks, industrial bags, photographic containers, agriculture mulch film, stretch wrap, thermoplastic molding applications for automotive, electrical/electronics, household appliances and blow-molded containers. Silica is one of the key substitutes for specialty carbon black and is acting as a restraint for the industry. The green tire manufacturers are replacing specialty carbon black with silica to offer eco-friendly benefits to the users.Specialty carbon black is more conductive than a rubber or polymer. Addition of specialty carbon black reduces the electrical resistivity by forming a conductive network through the polymer or rubber matrix. One of the key features of specialty carbon black is its special grades that optimize conductivity at lower dosage while meeting all the other critical performance requirements for conductive applications. For instance, specialty carbon black for semi-conductive cable compounds is optimized for smoothness, conductivity and chemical cleanliness. The key grades in specialty carbon black market includes softer pellet, low pellet, low poly-nuclear aromatics (PNA) and low sieve residue.Globally, Asia Pacific manufactures the cheapest carbon black which is resulting in shutting down of carbon black business by many companies in North America and Europe. Many are shifting their production facilities to Asia Pacific to minimize production cost and remain competitive in the market. Globally, China was the largest manufacturer and supplier of specialty carbon black in 2013. The market for specialty carbon black is consolidated and there are only few players operating globally. However, some rubber black companies are expanding their business to enter the specialty carbon black market which is expected to increase the industry rivalry to some extent.Request for Table of content:Some of the major companies operating in the global specialty carbon black market are Cabot Corporation, The Orion Engineered Carbons GmbH, Zaozhuang Xinyuan Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., Birla Carbon, Asia Carbon Industries Inc., Continental Carbon, Sid Richardson Carbon & Energy Co.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:
Neurostimulation Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry 2015-2025

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Neurostimulation is used for the treatment of various debilitating conditions such as gastroparesis, incontinence, Parkinsons disease, epilepsy, depression and essential tremors. Neurostimulation is a highly potential treatment option for patients who do not obtain relief from medications and surgical therapies. It improves the quality of life of patients who are severely paralyzed or suffering from intense loss of various sense organs. Therefore, neurostimulation is highly instrumental in artificial vision, hearing aids, artificial limbs and other prosthetics.The global neurostimulation market is analyzed based on the therapies in which neurostimulation systems are utilized. This includes the following segments:Deep brain stimulation (DBS)Spinal cord stimulation (SCS)Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)Sacral nerve stimulation (SNS)Request for sample report:Spinal cord stimulation therapy accounts for the largest share in the global neurostimulation market owing to the presence of a large number of SNS neurostimulators in treating diabetic neuropathy, pain, postherpetic neuralgia, ischemic limb pain and acute herpes zoster pain. Deep brain stimulators are currently approved for the treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinsons disease, epilepsy, dystonia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), essential tremors and depression. However, extensive research and advancement in technology leading to new, exciting applications such as stroke, obesity, autism, sleep disorders and many others will expand the deep brain stimulator market at a faster pace.There is a rising need for devices with improved outcome, ability to pre-sense a neurological episode on-set, optimize the inter-device communication and better user interface. Developing technologies sufficing the treatment objective and market demand will lead to an increase in the demand for neurostimulation therapy and devices. Moreover, aging population driving rise in the incidence of neurological disorders such as Parkinsons disease, epilepsy, essential tremors and depression related disorders will lead to an increase in demand for neurostimulation. In addition, neurostimulation devices and systems are gaining acceptance for the treatment of chronic pain especially in the developing economies such as India, China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Furthermore, increase in FDA approvals for novel neurostimulators with new applications, will expedite the growth of the global neurostimulation market in the near future. However, lack of a reliable measuring systems which can provide the expected outcome of neurostimulation therapies is a major challenge for manufacturers. High cost of the therapy is a deterring factor for the neurostimulation market, which can be subsided by gaining reimbursement for such devices.The neurostimulation market, currently, is strong in North America and Europe, but is experiencing faster growth in Asia-Pacific region, mainly across China, Brazil and India. Growth in the Asia-Pacific region will be mainly driven by increase in patient awareness and acceptance of neurostimulation as an alternative treatment for chronic pain and neurological disorders. Neurostimulation device manufacturing companies and their research affiliates are continuously working on developing novel devices and technologies which can enhance the therapeutic outcome of existing devices and simultaneously gain market advantage. The strategic approaches followed by these companies are focusing on creating new markets and increasing their existing market share.Request for TOC:The global neurological market is characterized by few dominating players which pose a challenge for the new entrants in the global neurostimulation market. The major players in the neurostimulation market include Boston Scientific Corporation, Cyberonics Inc., St. Jude Medical Inc., Medtronic Inc., NeuroPace Inc., and NeuroSigma, Inc.This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product types and distribution channels.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) Market is Anticipated to Grow US$ 6,572.6 million by 2024

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According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research titled, Global Market Study on Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS): Increasing Geriatric Population and Increasing Prevalence of Neurological Disorders are Factors Expected to Drive Market Growth Over 2016 - 2024, the global personal emergency response systems market is expected to increase at a healthy CAGR of over 8.0% over the forecast period (20162024).A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Personal emergency response systems are devices used to alert emergency services in the event of a fall or any emergency situation for immediate medical assistance. Such devices have the potential to mitigate some adverse consequences of an emergency or any risk situations. The personal emergency response systems market was valued at US$ 3,191.5 Mn in 2015 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of over 8.0% during the forecast period.In this report, the global personal emergency response systems market has been segmented on the basis of product type, end use, and region. The report also provides information regarding market dynamics, value chain, competitive landscape, current trends, market estimations and forecast.By region, North America is expected to dominate the global personal emergency response systems market throughout the forecast period, driven by increasing number of geriatric population, rising prevalence of chronic diseases, proliferation of smartphones, and adoption of personal emergency response systems as supportive tool for assisted living facilities. The U.S. is the largest market for personal emergency response systems in North America. The personal emergency response systems market in the U.S. is expected to increase at a CAGR of 9.2% over the forecast period.By product type, the personal emergency response systems market has been segmented into landline devices, mobile devices, standalone devices, and mobile applications. The landline devices segment is expected to dominate the overall personal emergency response systems market by the end of 2024. The segment is projected to register an above average growth rate over the forecast period. Mobile devices segment is one of the most attractive segments and is anticipated to show significant growth in revenue over 20162024.By end user, the global personal emergency response systems market has been segmented into home-based users, assisted living facilities, and hospitals. Among these, home-based users segment is expected to dominate the overall market by 2024, owing to wide acceptance of personal emergency response systems such as landline devices and mobile devices among the aging population who are staying at home. Factors such as ease of use and portability of these devices and rising number of falls among the aging population are expected to fuel growth of the overall personal emergency response systems market during forecast period.Request to View Tables of Content @Key market participants included in the report are Koninklijke Philips N.V, LifeWatch USA, Tunstall, ADT Security Services, Medical Guardian LLC, MobileHelp, Bay Alarm Company, and MariCare Oy.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Con-sumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Polyvinyl Acetate Adhesives Market Set to Grow Exponentially, 2021

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Polyvinyl acetate is a rubber synthetic polymer, or plastic. It belongs to polyvinyl ester family and is categorized as a thermoplastic, meaning it melts at high temperatures and is elastic and flexible at room temperature. Polyvinyl acetate is a vinyl polymer and is prepared by polymerization of vinyl acetate monomer.A sample of this report is available upon request @Polyvinyl acetate adhesive is glue containing this compound and is used in the form of emulsions. Polyvinyl acetate emulsions exhibit superior compatibility with modifying resins and can be used for broad range of applications through formulation. In addition to compatibility, molecular weight (grade), the amount and type of protective colloid used to produce the emulsion affect adhesive properties. Variations in type and quantity of protective colloid used in producing the polyvinyl acetate emulsion have a major impact on the performance of the adhesive film. Polyvinyl acetate adhesive can vary in moisture sensitivity by changing the content and type of the protective colloid. Polyvinyl acetate based adhesives have superior strength and offer good adhesion to a variety of surfaces. They are non toxic, do not pose health risks and are environmentally friendly. Polyvinyl acetate adhesive is a component of a widely used glue types, commonly referred to as white glue, wood glue, school glue, carpenters glue, Elmer's glue or PVA glue. Polyvinyl acetate glues are easy to use, since they can be cleaned up with water, do not give off any hazardous fumes and are safe to handle without gloves or other skin protection equipment, but they do not hold up well in moist conditions.Many common types of glue, including standard school glue, contain polyvinyl acetate. Polyvinyl acetate adhesive glues are very easy to use and economical. Yellow carpenter's glue, used for woodworking and other construction projects, is also polyvinyl acetate adhesive. Polyvinyl acetate adhesive works best on porous materials, such as wood, paper, and cardboard, and is also recommended when gluing vinyl and leather. Many polyvinyl acetate glues are white, and they are used for a wide variety of purposes, such as making collages, paper crafts, and paper packaging. These adhesives are acid-free, which makes them especially suited to projects like bookbinding, where an acidic adhesive would degrade the paper quality.The continuous use of polyvinyl acetate as an ingredient for common glue and other commercial glues will be a driving factor for polyvinyl acetate adhesive industry.The growing consumption of polyvinyl acetate adhesives in emerging economies and of lack of environmental friendly alternatives are other instrumental factors for the growth of this industry. However, polyvinyl acetate adhesives are not effective on any surface that is non-porous. In addition, they are mostly effectively near room temperature and cannot be used for outdoor winter tasks which could hamper the growth of this market.Asia Pacific leads the world in consumption of polyvinyl acetate adhesives followed by Europe and North America. China is the dominant market in Asia Pacific followed by Taiwan, Mexico, Japan, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Republic of Korea. Over the next few years Asia Pacific will increase its grips over the polyvinyl acetate adhesives market and would remain the world leader.Request to view Table of content @Some of the key players in this market are H.B.Fuller (U.S), Henkel AG (Germany), Hindustan Adhesives Limited (India), 3M Company (U.S.), Ashland Specialty Chemical Company (U.S.), BASF (Germany), and The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.) 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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Butyl Acetate Market to Register a Strong Growth By 2021

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Butyl acetate, also known as butyl ethanoate is an organic compound which is majorly used as a solvent for manufacturing lacquers and other products. It is a flammable colorless liquid which is found in various types of fruits. Butyl acetate is commonly used as a synthetic fruit flavoring in certain food products such as cheese, ice creams, candies and baked goods. It is primarily manufactured by the Fischer esterifaction of acetic acid and butanol isomer in the presence of catalytic sulfuric acid. Butyl acetate also serves as a raw material in certain coating, cosmetic and adhesive industries. Various isomers of butyl acetate are produced in the industry such as sec-butyl acetate, tert-butyl acetate and isobutyl acetate.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global market for butyl acetate has witnessed a significant growth over the past few years, primarily driven by the growing demand in the Asia Pacific region. Production facilities of the compound are primarily concentrated in North America and Europe, which also serve as the major exporting regions. Developed regions such as the Middle East is anticipated to gain significant share in the butyl acetate industry on account of increasing efforts by their governments to attract various petrochemical and chemical companies.Asia Pacific was the largest consumer for butyl acetate consuming a substantial share of the market over the past few years. The market for butyl acetate in emerging economies such as China has been well-established on account of increasing use of automotive paints and coatings. China also serves as a prominent importer for butyl acetate; hence, the market dynamics in the country are strongly dependent on the exporting regions. European market for butyl acetate is anticipated to witness a slow growth rate as various manufacturers are shifting their focus from Europe to Asia Pacific on account of the wide production-demand gap in the latter region. However, demand for butyl acetate from regions in rest of the world (ROW) is expected to rise significantly, primarily driven by huge investments in Saudi Arabia for establishing butyl acetate manufacturing facilities. The Saudi Arabian government has successfully designed its policies for the purpose of attracting certain large scale chemical companies in the country. In addition, easy availability of raw materials for petrochemicals and strategic location of the country have attracted various companies towards establishing their production units in the country.Increased use of water-based coatings and automotive paints is expected to be the major driving factor for the growth of butyl acetate market over the next few years. Moreover, growing demand for butyl acetate in cosmetic products and adhesives is also expected to contribute towards the growth of the market. However, increasing health concerns regarding the hazardous use of butyl acetate is expected to hamper the growth of the market. Over exposure to butyl acetate causes irritation to human body. Hence, various health organizations have been involved in continuously monitoring the exposure levels. Increasing R&D activities towards developing innovative products such as tert-butyl acetate as a substitute to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are expected to provide new opportunities for the growth of the market.Request to view Table of content @Alfa Aesar GMBHh & CO KG, BASF SE, China National Petroleum Corporation, Eastman Chemical Company, Ineos Oxide Ltd, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Sasol Limited, and The Dow Chemical Company are some of the key manufacturers of butyl acetate dominating the market.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Deployable Military Shelter Systems Market Revenue, Opportunity, Segment and Key Trends 2015-2025

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Advancements in military activities, tactics, exercises and joint operations necessitated the development of niche products used by army personnel. Furthermore, witnessing the opportunity, a handful of equipment, system and solution manufacturers engaged in niche product development suitable for military application, as a result competition intensified in niche products segment used for military applications. Deployable Military Shelter System is one of such product which is used in applications ranging from temporary medical support centres to incident commands and fatality management centres to emergency distribution centres. These systems are deployed in remote area for temporary period. These systems are totally mobile in nature and are made up of technical textiles. These systems are largely used by infantry, rescue team and medical support team but constant research and development in this niche product segment unfolded new opportunities. Nowadays, availability of shelter systems for military application has not limited to support and shelter to just soldiers but also vehicles and aircrafts. A few of the North American and European companies developed deployable shelter systems to be used as hanger for aircrafts.Drivers & ChallengesMilitary shelter systems demand is directly influenced by increase in military expenditure across the globe. Annual increase in defence budget allocation has been observed in across countries, whereas the year on year increase is very high in countries with stronger economy. Global military expenditure in 2014 was estimated at over US $ 1.7 Trillion; and with growing political and military tensions in different geographies, it is projected to increase at 1.5% annually through 2025. Moreover, a substantial share of military expenditure is channelized for buying equipment and systems for on the field military support. Since, deployable shelter systems are used in field exercises, it is anticipated that the increased military expenditure across countries will bolster the demand for deployable shelter systems viz. a viz. global deployable military systems market.Request for sample report:Regional LandscapeIn terms of geography, the global deployable military shelter systems is concentrated in few of the pockets. Usage of deployable military shelter systems is very high in developed countries of North America and Europe. However, the trend is gradually picking up the pace in developed markets. A majority of the deployable military shelter systems manufacturers are dependent on NATO member countries for sales. Meanwhile, in recent years they also registered orders from Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries. Currently, European market for deployable military shelter systems is growing at a higher growth rate than the global average, but industry experts indicate a shift in demand from Asian countries, particularly Middle East and South Asia. In order to capitalize the opportunity, global majors engaged in manufacturing deployable shelter systems have deployed sales representatives in these countries.Deployable Military Shelter Systems Market SegmentsDeployable shelter system is differentiated on the basis of size and application.Deployable Military Shelter Systems Sizes :SmallMediumLargeKey PlayersAlaska StructuresRoder HTS HockerReevesZeppelinHDTRequest for TOC: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, size and application areas.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Behenyl Alcohol Market Is Expected to Reach 54,200.9 Metric Tons by 2021 - PMR Report

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According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research titled  Global Market Study on Behenyl Alcohol: Asia Pacific to Witness Highest Growth by 2021, the global behenyl alcohol market to expand at a CAGR of 4.5% during the forecast period, 2015 - 2021.A sample of this report is available upon request:Behenyl alcohol (CAS: 661-19-8), often referred to as docosanol, is a saturated fatty alcohol used to thicken and stabilise formulations. It is categorised on the basis of purity level. Behenyl alcohol with the purity level of 70% is most commonly used. However, behenyl alcohol with purity over 80% is very rarely used. Behenyl alcohol accounted for a mere 1.4% share of the overall fatty alcohols market, and for 14% share of the overall C16+ fatty alcohols market in 2014.Global behenyl alcohol market is projected to account for 54,200.9 metric tons by the end of 2021. In terms of value, the global behenyl alcohol market accounted for US$ 119.4 Mn in 2014. It is projected to witness the increase in volume due to rising demand from end-use segments.The report analyses the global behenyl alcohol market in terms of market value (US$ Mn) and market volume (metric tons), by end-use segment, region and application; and provides information regarding market dynamics, value chain, competitive landscape, current trends, market estimations and forecast.Globally, Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period and is projected to witness a 1.4X increase in its volume production by the end of 2021. While Japan and India are two major exporters of behenyl alcohol chemicals globally, South Korea is one of the key importers of behenyl alcohol in Asia Pacific. In Asia Pacific, India is the largest producer of rapeseed and behenyl alcohol. A large number of companies based in the country export rapeseed to North America, Europe and other parts of Asia. Sun care products are widely used in Asia Pacific. It accounted for nearly US$ 2.2 Bn in 2014. The increase in demand for sun care products, in turn, is expected to boost overall demand for behenyl alcohol globally. Though the market is gaining traction in Asia-Pacific, low presence of Chinese players in the behenyl alcohol market has significantly reduced price competitiveness among the companies based in Japan, India and Europe. As a result, manufacturers are expected to generate high-profit margins in the Asia Pacific region. Europe is the next lucrative destination for behenyl alcohol manufacturers.Among the end-use segments, behenyl alcohol finds the largest application in the cosmetics industry, followed by pharmaceuticals and others. The pharmaceuticals end-use segment is expected to gain traction in the near future due to increasing demand for behenyl alcohol in ointments. Increasing demand for high-quality cosmetic products is influencing manufacturers to opt for high-quality ingredients such as behenyl alcohol, which has a relatively non-sticky property as compared to other ingredients.Globally, per capita consumption of cosmetics is increasing at a rate of 3.4% per year. Per capita consumption of cosmetics is expected to grow exponentially in the near future due to a significant rise in geriatric population, especially in Japan and China.By application type, the behenyl alcohol market is segmented into emollients, emulsifiers, thickeners and others. The emollients segment is expected to dominate the overall behenyl alcohol market by the end of the forecast period, i.e. by 2021. The segment is projected to register an above average growth rate over the forecast period. Global consumption of emollients stood at 130,000 metric tons in 2014. Consumption of behenyl alcohol as an ingredient in emollients accounted for a significant proportion of the total emollients consumed globally.Request to view Table of Content:Key market participants covered in the report include BASF SE, Kao Corporation, VVF Chemicals Limited, Godrej Industries Ltd., Sasol Ltd. and Nikko Chemicals Co., Ltd.To Buy Full Report for a Single User: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:
Growth of Global Hearing Amplifiers Market Driven by Increase in the Number of Prevalence of Hearing Impairment Patients in Old and Young Population

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Hearing loss can occurs when inner ear or nerve is damaged, which may be caused due to diseases, aging, loud noise, and medications. Hearing amplifier is a small part of hearing aid which makes the sound louder. Hearing amplifiers increase the power of signals and then send them to the ear through speakers.Hearing aid is useful in improving the hearing and speech of patients. An otolaryngologist investigates the cause of the hearing loss. An audiologist is a hearing health professional who identifies and measures hearing loss and will perform a hearing test to assess the type and degree of hearing loss.Download Exclusive Sample of this Report:Increase in number of hearing impairment cases coupled with rising costs of hearing aids are expected to drive the growth of the global hearing amplifiers market during the forecast period. Majority of the consumers use hearing amplifiers or personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) as they are considered cheaper alternatives of hearing aids. Hearing amplifiers or PSAPs, are designed to amplify sounds in any recreational environment and are exempt from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Hearing amplifiers are sold directly to consumers as electronic devices without the requirement of a physician prescription.According to National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), approximately 324,200 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. About 15 percent of Americans (26 million people) between the ages of 20 and 69 have high frequency hearing loss due to exposure to noise at work or during leisure activities. Major driving factors for the growth of the global hearing amplifiers such as an increase in the number of prevalence of hearing impairment patients in old and young population, increasing investment in research and development in ENT field among others.Based on styles or design types of hearing aid products the global market of hearing amplifiers can be segmented as follows:-Behind-the-ear (BTE)-Mini BTE-In-the-ear (ITE)-In-the-canal (ITC)Based on function the global hearing amplifiers market can be segmented as follows:-Analog hearing aids-Digital hearing aidsBased on distribution channels the global hearing amplifiers market can be segmented as follows:-Hospital Pharmacies-Online Pharmacies-Independent Pharmacies and Drug storesHearing amplifiers market is segmented into five major regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. In 2015, North America lead the global market of hearing amplifiers followed by the Europe in terms of revenue. According to statistics compiled by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 37.5 million adults aged 18 and older in America report some form of hearing loss.According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids and more than 90 percent of deaf children are born to parents suffering from some kind of hearing disorder. Globally, the hearing amplifiers market is expected to witness a healthy CAGR in terms of revenue during the forecast period.Latin America, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific regions are the emerging markets in the global hearing amplifiers market. Increasing awareness among the various distribution channels as well as consumers in these regions is anticipated to propel global market growth of hearing aids and amplifiers during the forecast period.Browse Research Report:The key players in the global market develop hearing amplifiers in analog and digital forms. Some of the top companies in the global hearing amplifiers market are Sound Hawk, Resound, Foshan Vohom Technology Co. Ltd., Sound world solution, Shenzhen LA Lighting Company Limited, Austar Hearing Science and Technology (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., Huizhou Jinghao Electronics Co. Ltd., Ziphearing among others.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:
Glass Bonding Adhesives Market worth 1.76 Billion USD by 2021

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The Glass bonding adhesives Market is estimated to grow from USD 1.23 Billion in 2016, to USD 1.76 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 7.4%. The market is driven by the growing demand for glass bonding adhesives in the medical industry. Among the regions considered, the Asia-Pacific region, South America, and the Middle East & South Africa are estimated to grow at a high rate during the forecast period. Also, the demand across these regions is driven by the emerging markets, namely, China and India.Download PDF Report SampleAsia-Pacific: The Largest Market for Glass Bonding AdhesivesThe Asia-Pacific region is currently the largest market for glass bonding adhesives. The U.S. is the largest market for glass bonding adhesives in the North American region.The North American market for glass bonding adhesives is driven due to:- The presence of major manufacturers of glass bonding adhesives in the region- Growing end-use industries, such as electronics, transportation, and medical, in major countries such as the U.S. and Canada.Furniture: The Largest End-use Industry of the Glass Bonding Adhesives MarketGlass bonding adhesives are used in various end-use industries such as furniture, electronics, medical, transportation, industrial assembly, and others. The furniture end-use industry was estimated to account for the largest market share, in terms of value as well as volume, followed by the electronics, transportation, medical, industrial assembly, and other industries, in 2016. The medical industry is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR from 2016 to 2021, in terms of value, among all the industries considered.The key players in the glass bonding adhesives market are Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (Germany), H.B. Fuller Company (U.S.), Ashland Inc. (U.S.), Dymax Corporation (U.S.), 3M Company (U.S.), Permabond Engineering Adhesives (U.K.), The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Bohle Group (Germany), KIWO (Germany), ThreeBond Holdings Co., Ltd. (Japan), Sika A.G. (Switzerland) and other leading players.Objectives of the study:- To define, describe, and forecast the global glass bonding adhesives market on the basis of type, end-use industry, and region- To provide detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges)- To strategically analyze micromarkets1 with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and contribution to the total market- To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders and provide a competitive landscape for market leaders- To strategically profile key players and comprehensively analyze their market shares and core competencies.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Markets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India
BAG on collective redundancies and consultation process

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If the works council no longer indicates a willingness to continue negotiations to prevent collective redundancies, the employer can consider the consultation process pursuant to sec 17(2) of the Kundigungsschutzgesetz (KSchG) [German Employment Protection Act] to have come to an end.GRP Rainer Lawyers and Tax Advisors in Cologne, Berlin, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and London conclude: According to employment law, the employer is obligated to consult the works council before collective redundancies take place. If the works council no longer indicates a willingness to continue to negotiation on measures to prevent or limit collective redundancies, the employer can consider the consultation process pursuant to sec 17(2) of the KSchG to have come to an end. That was the verdict of the Bundesarbeitsgericht (BAG), Germanys Federal Labour Court, in its ruling of September 22 (Az.: 2 AZR 276/16).In the instant case before the BAG, the defendant had rendered services at an airport. It only had one client, which terminated all orders with effect from the end of March 2015. Following the failure of an internal attempt to balance interests, the defendant initiated a consultation process pursuant to sec 17(2) of the KSchG. In January, the decision was made to suspend business operations at the end of March. This was followed by notice of collective redundancies and the termination of all employment contracts. Several months later, another consultation process and discussions with the works council began regarding the possibility of resuming business operations. However, the employer felt that this would only be possible following a reduction in wages and salaries. The works council was apparently unwilling to allow this to happen. Consequently, notice of collective redundancies was reissued and the remaining employment contracts terminated.Th BAG held that the first notice of collective redundancies had been ineffective, because the state of the discussions with the works council had not been accurately reflected in the notice of collective redundancies. The second notice of redundancies, on the other hand, had indeed been effective. The Court ruled that the consultation process had been conducted properly, including with regards to the relevant requirements under European Union law. It went on to say that the works council had received all of the necessary information and had the opportunity to influence the decision. Due to the fact that the works council did not indicate a willingness to continue negotiating, the negotiations could be seen as having failed. The Court stated that the works council was then properly informed about the intention to suspend business operations and the conciliation board was contacted after the negotiations failed.When it comes to matters pertaining to dismissals as well as other issues relating to employment law, employers can turn to lawyers who are versed in the field of employment law.GRP Rainer LLPis an international firm of lawyers and tax advisors who are specialists in commercial law. The firm counsels commercial and industrial companies and corporations, as well as associations, small- and mid-sized businesses, self-employed freelancers and private individuals worldwide from offices Cologne, Berlin, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and London UK.Contact Michael RainerLawyer, Managing PartnerGRP Rainer LLPGurzenich-QuartierAugustinerstrae 1050667 CologneGermanyPhone: +49 221-27 22 75-0info@grprainer.com
Global Small Animal Imaging (In Vivo) Market Set for Rapid Growth And Trend, by 2026

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Small animal imaging (In vivo) is a technique used for imaging biological processes in living animals which shows the changes in cellular activity to study the effect of drugs and disease progression. Small animal imaging is used in clinical research for drug development. Small animal imaging helps to study the drug assessment on various diseases. The small animal imaging includes whole body scan of small animals which is a cost effective method for regular validation and commercialization of new drugs. Small animal imaging is in vivo classification and measurement of biologic process at molecular level which involves the study of specific targeted molecule. Small animal imaging includes micro CT, micro MRI, digital angiography, micro SPECT, micro PET magnetic particle imaging and x-ray imaging.Small Animal Imaging (In vivo) Market: Drivers & RestraintsSmall animal imaging market is an emerging due to the advancements in technology and increase in healthcare expenditure. There is an enormous increase in pharmaceutical companies and research institutions elevation in usage of small animal imaging techniques across the globe. Although, high equipment cost and limitation in technology is expected to hinder the market growth of small animal imaging market over the forecast period. Also, surviving in highly competitive market and inaccessibility of radiopharmaceuticals are the main challenges to overcome for small players. Whereas, innovations in MRI imaging techniques as well in other imaging techniques, usage in many applications and emerging markets are some of the favorable factors for small animal imaging market growth. Small animal imaging market is also being affected by some factors such as insufficient infrastructure for research amenities and shortage of skilled personnel in developing regions.Request Free Report Sample@Small Animal Imaging (In vivo) Market: SegmentationSmall animal imaging Market is classified on the basis of application, technology and geography.Based on application, the small animal imaging market is segmented into the following:Monitoring Drug Treatment ResponseBio Distribution StudiesCancer Cell DetectionBiomarkersLongitudinal StudiesEpigeneticsBased on technology, the small animal imaging market is segmented into the following:Micro-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Micro-MRI)Digital AngiographyUltrasoundNuclear ImagingMicro-Positron Emission Tomography (Micro-PET)Micro-Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography (Micro-SPECT)Optical Imaging (OI)Bioluminescence ImagingCerenkov Luminescence ImagingOthersMicro-Ultrasound ImagingMicro-Computerized Tomography (Micro-CT)Based on geography, the small animal imaging market is segmented into following:North America (U.S., Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil)Western Europe (Germany, Italy, U.K, Spain, France, Rest of Western Europe)Eastern Europe (Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand)JapanMiddle East and Africa (GCC, S. Africa)Small Animal Imaging (In vivo) Market: OverviewSmall animal imaging market is expected to grow at a good pace. Enormous increase in number of pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, rise in usage of functional imaging and growing adoption rate for small animal imaging are the factors expected to boost the market growth over the forecast period.The swift progression in technology, many applications and growing base of research are some of the key factors to drive the growth of small animal imaging globally.Emerging countries will be growing with a faster CAGR related to other parts of the world as expenditure in these region on research is growing.Small Animal Imaging (In vivo) Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, small animal imaging market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa.North America contributes the maximum share in small animal imaging market. Eastern and Western Europe will show a good growth as the need for drug development through small animal imaging will be increasing. Asia Pacific is growing with a significant CAGR for small animal imaging market due to increase in healthcare expenditure and investment in research. Amongst the Asian countries, China, India and South Korea will be the more promising because of having a good economy and more expenditure on research.Visit For TOC@Small Animal Imaging (In vivo) Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating global players in small animal imaging (In vivo) marketare Berthold Technologies, Spectral Instruments Imaging, Agilent Technologies, Inc., Aspect Imaging, Bioscan, Inc., Bruker Corporation, Gamma Medica-Ideas, Inc., Genovis Ab, Li-Cor Biosciences, Life Technologies Corporation, Mediso Medical Imaging Systems, Miltenyi Biotec Gmbh, Perkinelmer, Inc., Promega Corporation, Scanco Medical Ag, Siemens Ag, Sofie Biosciences, Inc., Targeson, Inc., Uvp. LLC, Fujifilm Holdings Corporation, Thermo Fischer Scientific.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Automotive Seat Recliners Market Adopts Innovation to Stay Competitive, 2026

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Automotive industries are prominent field in todays experimental world with constant innovative technologies playing in to deliver better comfort and secured ride for occupants. Automotive recliner is a type of seating which reclines backwards upon leaning and raises its footrest by means of a lever. Automotive seat recliner is a key component in automotive seating systems to provide comfort for neck, spine and foot while driving so that one feel relaxed. Automotive seat recliner mechanism consists of seat cushion and seat back with upper and lower arm mounted, spiral springs to exercise radial forces on a rotatable cam for locking and unlocking operation. High quality chromium steel or magnesium are mostly used as materials to withstand high impact forces during accidents which can otherwise harm the occupant. For the increased seat size twin recliners are used to endure static and fatigue loads. Growing automotive industries globally and major players launching innovative models generates bright prospectus for automotive seat recliners market.Sample of this report is available upon request @Automotive Seat Recliners Market: Drivers and RestraintsAutomotive seat recliners market is driven by the demand for comfortable and relaxed seating and also with new trends in seat designs and increasing demand for premium vehicles has opened opportunities for automotive seat recliners market. The emerging technological advancements in automotive seat recliners is also fostering the growth for automotive seat recliners market. For instance, one of the major player Faurecia has launched a technologically innovative seat recliner in the market which detects persons health conditions such as respiration, heart rate and replies with solution such as energizing massage, warming or cooling according to the need, this emerging trend is expected to foster growth in the automotive seat recliners market globally. However, the increased seat recliners cost with variety of features in-build is limited to premium vehicles which might restraint the global automotive seat recliner market causing lesser impact in low economic regions.Automotive Seat Recliners Market: SegmentationOn the basis of vehicle type automotive seat recliners market can be segmented as follows:- Passenger Cars Light commercial vehicles Heavy commercial vehiclesOn the basis of type of recliners automotive seat recliners market can be segmented as follows:- Lever type recliner Rotary type recliner Slider type recliner Slider cum latch recliner Walk in recliner Rear seat reclinerOn the basis of recliner mechanism automotive seat recliners market can be segmented as follows:- Ratchet / Tooth engagement Recliner Taumel Recliner Power Taumel ReclinerOn the basis of distribution channel automotive seat recliners market can be segmented as follows Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) AftermarketAutomotive Seat Recliners Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global automotive seat recliner market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among the aforementioned regions the APEJ market for automotive seat recliner market is expected to hold the largest market share by the end of forecast period. The exponentially growing automotive sector with advanced technologies in China is contributing to the growth of automotive seat recliner market in the region. The Latin America market and Western Europe market is followed by the APEJ market for automotive seat recliners. Japan being the automotive manufacturer hub, automotive seat recliner market in the region is expected to show significant growth. The market in Middle East and Africa are expected for improvement during the forecast period.Automotive Seat Recliners Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global automotive seat recliners market includes: Lear Corporation SHIROKI Corporation IFB Automotive Private Limited Johnson Controls, Inc. Faurecia Atwood Mobile Products Toyota Motor Corporation Fisher & CompanyThe 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 geography, technology and applications.The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Market Segments Market Dynamics Market Size Supply & Demand Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Competition & Companies involved Technology Value ChainRegional analysis includes North America (Canada, The U.S.) Latin America (Mexico, Brazil) Western Europe (Germany, Italy, France, U.K, Spain, Netherlands,) Eastern Europe ( Russia) Asia Pacific (China, India, ASEAN, Australia) Japan Middle East and Africa (GCC countries, S. Africa, N. Africa)The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.TOC of this report is available upon request @Report Highlights: Detailed overview of parent market Changing market dynamics in the industry In-depth market segmentation Historical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and value Recent industry trends and developments Competitive landscape Strategies of key players and products offered Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective on market performance Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Virtual Machine Market, 2016-2026 by Segmentation Based on Product, Application and Region

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Virtual machine is a software program on the computer which acts as a virtual computers. It runs on the pre-installed operating system or host operating system of the computer and get access of virtual hardware such as virtual CPU, virtual memory, network interface and other devices and work as a guest operating system. This guest or secondary operating system runs in a small window just like any other application do run over the computer system. This secondary OS runs on the system as normally as the host one, the virtual hardware used by guest operating system are mapped to real hardware on real machine for example, virtual memory of virtual machine is stored on the real hard drive in the form of a file. Virtual machines have number of uses: testing of new version of operating systems, use software compatible to other operating system or outdated OS, test software on different operating system by using single physical machine and the most important is consolidate software. Global virtual machine market has been witnessing a tremendous growth for last decades and is expected to grow with a substantial CAGR over a forecast period.Virtual Machine Market: DynamicsAs virtualization of system is becoming more popular in modern data centers because IT decision makers expecting that virtualization of systems benefit the organizations in the near future. The key drivers responsible in the growth of virtual machine market include high adoption rate of virtual machine by modern data centers and IT organizations because of the advantageous features provided by these virtual machines, such as it helps to reduce investment in installing different real machines for using different operating systems, rather single real machine can be installed with multiple virtual machine, as various virtual machines can be installed over the single system with sufficient memory, virtual machine also helps to protect data, as any harmful application running over virtual OS cant affect the data saved on host OS means virtual OS is completely isolated from the host one. On the contrary side, lack of awareness and market presence of more advanced and economic solutions are proving to be the key restraints hindering the growth of global virtual machine market.Request Free Report Sample@Virtual Machine Market: SegmentationSegmentation of virtual machine market is done on the basis of type and Geography. On the basis of type, virtual machine market is segmented into system virtual machine and process virtual machine. System virtual machine used to mirror the components and processes of an actual computer. Process virtual machine is used to run only a single application and disappear when the application is closed. On the basis of application, global virtual machine market is segmented into; small scale enterprises, medium scale enterprises & large scale enterprises.On the basis of Geography, segmentation of virtual machine market is done as; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among which, North America is having largest market share of virtual machine and Western Europe is expected to be the second largest market of virtual machine &Asia Pacific is the fastest growing marketfor virtual machine provider during the forecasting period.Visit For TOC@Virtual Machine Market: Key playersThe key players of the virtual machine market are Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Citrix Systems, Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, Parallels IP Holdings GmbH, VMware, Inc. and others.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Current and Projected Potash Ores Market size in terms of volume and value 2016-2026

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Potash ores are raw materials which are used for manufacturing potash, fertilizers and other chemicals. It usually consists of sodium chloride (halite), potassium chloride (sylvite), silicate, anhydrite and carbonate. Potash ores are processed by hot leaching with crystallization of salts of potash from unsaturated salt brines. Some of the commonly used ore processing methods include chemical methods such as hot leaching and mechanical methods such as floatation. The floatation processing method is dependent upon the capacities of sylvite and halite surface which is to be moistened with water by the addition of acting chemicals such as surfactants. The method of hot leaching is dependent upon the physiochemical properties of potassium chloride, sodium chloride and water. The main principle in this method is the temperature difference between sylvite and halite. This method is implemented for manufacturing potassium chloride in granular and white crystalline form, which can be painted reddish pink.Global Potash Ores Market: Drivers and RestraintsGlobal demand for potash ores is expected to rise significantly with the growth of the fertilizer industry over the next few years. In addition, rising consumption of organic food is expected to drive the demand for potash fertilizers, thereby boosting the potash ore market over the next few years. North America and Europe are the largest consumers of organic foods. Significant growth is expected in the Asia-Pacific region over the next few years on account of rising disposable incomes of consumers and an inclining trend towards healthy food. However, rising health concern from the consumption of potash fertilizers as well as fluctuating prices of potassium chloride is expected to slow down the growth of the market. Demand for food and animal feed has been on the rise since 2000 with growing disposable incomes in developing economies being a major factor in the growing potash and fertilizer use. However, after years of showing an upward growth trajectory, fertilizer use experienced a significant decline in 2008. The global economic downturn has been the primary cause for decreased potash use as well as the declining prices, which caused instability in crop and raw material prices and fuelled uncertainty in the farming community. Increasing use of potash as potash mobilizing biofertlizers is expected to provide new opportunities for the growth of the market.Request Free Report Sample@Global Potash Ores Market: SegmentationGlobal potash ore is segmented into type of mineral extracted and End-Use IndustryOn the basis of mineral extracted, the global potash ore market is segmented as below:Potassium ChlorideSodium ChlorideOthersOn the basis of End-Use Industry, the global potash ore market is segmented as below:AgricultureMetallurgicalChemicalOthersGlobal Potash Ores Market: Regional OutlookGrowth of the fertilizer industry has been one of the major factors driving the demand for potash ores. The global outlook for the fertilizer industry shows a positive growth, resulting from a progressive demand for phosphate and potassium demand in Asia Pacific. Although agricultural prices have been under pressure, they are anticipated to remain attractive stimulating fertilizer applications leading to the growth of the industry. Demand for potash ores is expected to witness a noticeable increase in every region except North America, due to the expected drop in crop prices and residual effect of nutrient applications leading to a decline in consumption. Future market growth is expected to be significant from emerging regions such as Asia Pacific as a result of improvements in fertilizer practices by Indian farmers. As per The International Fertilizer Industry Association, more than 25 potash expansion projects have been intended by manufacturers between from 2013 to 2017.Visit For TOC@Global Potash Ores Market: Market PlayersElementals Minerals Limited, Agrium Inc., PotashCorp, JSC Belaruskali, Uralkali, K+S GmbH, and Israel Chemicals Ltd. are some of the key players present in the potash ore market.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Corneal Neovascularization Market Driven by Increasing Incidences of Ophthalmic Disorders

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Corneal neovascularization is a disorder of the eyes, which is mainly characterized by the incursion of novel blood vessels into the cornea of the individuals suffering from the disease. This disorder is majorly caused due to disruption of the balance between the factors that protects and maintain the corneal transparency. The two factors that need to be balanced include angiogenic and antiangiogenic factors. The incursion of new blood vessels, which are relatively immature, hence can cause lipid exudation as well. Other major symptoms include scarring in eyes, persistent inflammation, which leads to diminishing corneal transparency and visual perception.Request a PDF Brochure with Report Analysis:The corneal neovascularization disorders if left untreated it may lead to high growth of new blood vessels that may reach visual axis to permanently threat the vision of the affected individual. Presently, several patients suffering from various eye problems, many a times undergo corneal grafts; corneal neovascularization may lead to rejection of such grafts as well. Thus, timely and proper treatment (may include surgical intervention and therapeutic drugs) of corneal neovascularization is necessary for effective management of the disease to ensure proper eye vision.Global Corneal Neovascularization Market: Drivers and RestraintsMajor driving factors for the growth of corneal neovascularization market include increasing incidences of ophthalmic disorders, rising number of corneal grafts, aging population, increasing obesity rate, increasing number of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension and increasing demand for advanced treatment options. Ophthalmic disorders are one of the leading disorders that affect very large population globally; several eye related disorders require ophthalmic interventions that may increase the risk of developing corneal neovascularization, hence accompanied by graft rejections.Increasing geriatric population will also contribute towards the growth of this market as aged individuals are more prone to several disorders and hence, tend to suffer from ophthalmic disorders. Increasing obesity rates are also adding to various eye related disorders mainly the lipid deposition increase the chances of developing corneal neovascularization, hence will contribute towards the growth of this market. Several diseases like diabetes, hypertension and others also lead to ophthalmic diseases, in turn require diagnostics and therapeutics from this market, thus will contribute towards the growth of corneal neovascularization market. Several pharmaceutical companies are having many therapeutic drugs for the effective treatment of this disorder in different phases of clinical trials, which will soon hit the market.Global Corneal Neovascularization Market: Regional AnalysisGeographically, North America and Europe are expected to dominate the corneal neovascularization market. Major factors responsible for their expected dominance in the corneal neovascularization market are high prevalence of ophthalmic disorders in the region, aging population, rising overweight as well obese population, and high awareness levels of the population.However, emerging economies like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Malaysia among others from Asia-Pacific, LATAM, Middle East and other regions will present tremendous opportunities towards the growth of this market. Major factors responsible for the growth of the corneal neovascularization market in these regions are availability of high patient population, high prevalence of diseases like diabetes and hypertension, increasing healthcare awareness in these regions and increasing purchasing power of the people in APAC and RoW.Browse Research Report:Some of the major players operating in this market include, Amakem NV, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., GTx, Inc., and Sirnaomics, Inc. that have their drugs in different phases of clinical trials, which will soon be commercialized in the global corneal neovascularization market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact 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:
Polypropylene Foam Market is Considered as One of the Rapidly Growing Dynamic Market by 2020

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Polypropylene foam (PP), also known as polypropene, is an engineering plastic material with advanced chemical and physical properties such as energy absorption, structural strength, thermal insulation and acoustical properties. Polypropylene foams are used in range of applications such as, textiles, high performance plastic parts and reusable containers of various types, laboratory equipment, automotive components, and polymers bank notes.Request for Sample Report:On the basis of chemical composition the global polypropylene foam market can be broadly categorize in two different markets variant namely expended polypropylene (EPP) and Extruded poly polypropylene. On the basis of end user application of the polypropylene foam, the market can be further segmented in the four broad categories namely, automotives, packaging, consumers product and others. Automotive application segment of polypropylene market holds the largest share in 2013 and it is also experiencing the fasted growth rate over the last few years.Some of the major drivers of the global polypropylene foam market include, growing concern towards environment sustainability, strict government regulations, and the cost benefits associated with recyclable properties of polypropylene foam as polypropylene foam can be fully recycled. Moreover enhanced physical properties such as quality, lightweight nature & excellent energy absorbing property, and durability, is propelling the demand of polypropylene foam market in growing end user industries such as automobiles and food and beverages packaging.Asia Pacific is the largest producer and consumer of polypropylene foam market. It is then followed by Europe and North America. The polypropylene foam market is growing in double digit in Asia Pacific. Over the last few year china became a global hub for the automobile manufacturing.Moreover increasing automobile market in other developing countries of Asia Pacific such as India and Indonesia is expected to keep the growth rate high during the forecasted period. Germany and Italy are the biggest market of polypropylene foam in Europe owing to higher concentration of automobile manufacturers in this region. The U.S. accounts for largest market of polypropylene market in North America.Request for Table of content:Major companies operating in polypropylene foam market include BASF S.E., Ds Smith Plc, Borealis Ag, Jsp Corporation, Kaneka Corporation., Mitsui Chemicals, Pregis Corporation, Sonoco Products Co., Synbra, Sekisui Alveo, Furukawa Electric Co., K. K. Nag Ltd., Ssw Pearlfoam Gmbh, and Zotefoams Plc.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:
Global automated CPR devices market was valued at US$ 50.7 Mn in 2014, and is estimated to be worth US$ 159 Mn by 2025

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Demand for automated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) devices will surpass US$ 60 million by the end of 2016, up from US$ 50.7 million in 2014. Strong demand for automated CPR devices from EMS and hospitals is expected to fuel the market in the future.Favourable government support is driving the adoption of automated CPR devices, especially in developed economies. For instance, Harris County Emergency Ambulance Authority in the US approved purchase of 10 automated CPR units to be carried on-board ambulances.Request Free Report Sample@Rising awareness on survival strategies during a cardiac arrest have also brought automated CPR devices in the limelight. The recent study by Institute of Medicines (IOM), titled, Strategies to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival: A Time to Act has provided an impetus to the use of CPR devices in emergency situations. Increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest incidences is also fuelling the adoption of automated CPR devices.High Cost Remains a Key Challenge for Widespread AdoptionAlthough FMI maintains a positive outlook on the global automated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) devices market, high cost remains a key challenge for adoption. The average cost of a CPR device is nearly US$ 10,000, making it difficult for healthcare institutions to adopt them en masse.Europe and North America Most Lucrative MarketsEurope and North America are the largest markets for automated CPR devices. Demand for automated CPR devices in Europe was to the tune of US$ 18.3 million in 2014; FMI expects it to reach US$ 22.5 million by the end of 2016. Europes share in the global automated CPR devices market is expected to reach 38% by 2025, gaining 180 BPS between 2014 and 2025.The automated CPR devices market in Europe is fuelled by strong demand from Germany and U.K. Demand for automated CPR devices in Germany is expected to reach US$ 5 million by 2016 end, whereas U.K.s market is anticipated to be worth US$ 3.5 million.The U.S. remains a lucrative market for automated CPR devices, accounting for over 80% market value share in North America. In contrast, demand for automated CPR devices in Canada was worth US$ 2.3 million in 2014; FMI expects it to reach US$ 2.8 million by 2016.ZOll Medical Corporation will Surpass Physio-Control, Inc. by 2016 to become the Leading PlayerZOLL Medical Corporation, Physio-Control, Inc., Brunswick Biomedical Technologies, Michigan Instruments, and SunLife Science Inc. are the key players in the global automated CPR devices market. Physio-Control, Inc. and ZOLL Medical Corporation collectively hold nearly two-thirds of the market share currently. North America remains the most lucrative market for all the key players, except SunLife Science Inc., which has a strong presence in Asia Pacific.Physio-Control is the dominant player in the automated CPR devices market, accounting for nearly 40% market share. The company offers LUCAS, a pneumatically-driven piston CPR device. FMI forecasts Physio-Control to lose market share to ZOLL Medical Corporation on account of gradual decrement in the use of piston-driven devices.Send An Enquiry@ZOLL Medical Corporations flagship offering AutoPulse is fast gaining popularity owing to its thoracic compression theory. FMI expects ZOLL Medical Corporation to surpass Physio-Control by 2016, holding a 38.6% market share vis-a-vis 36% share of Physio-Control.Michigan Instruments, SunLife Science Inc., and Brunswick Biomedical Technologies will account for less than 10% share of the global market by 2020, owing to consolidation by ZOLL Medical Corporation and Physio-Control.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Plant Health Improvement Agents (PHIA) Market: Information, Figures and Analytical Insights by 2020

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Plant health improvement is maintenance of plants for sustainable growth of biofuel feedstock and fungi. There are various agents such as symbionts, pathogens and biocontrol agents which can harm the growth of plants, dramatically affecting proper growth of plant species. Protection of plant health has become major responsibility for the governments, growers, traders and general public.Request for Sample Report:In recent era quarantine measure (separate and restrict the movement of persons nothing but state of enforced isolation) are taken to keep the foreign pest away from the area where they can cause damage to crops, trees and other plant species. Restriction of import and movement of plant and plant produce is one of the quarantine measure followed by the government and the farmers.Various plant health improvement agents are used to improve the health quality of the crops, plants and other plant species. On the bases of their uses the plant health improvement agents market can be bifurcated into synthetic fertilizers (nitrogen-based nutrients), micronutrients (Chelates) and plant growth regulators (minerals such as zinc, manganese and magnesium). Synthetic fertilizers have the largest market share for plant health improvement agents followed by micronutrients and plant health regulator.North America has the largest market share for plant health improvement agents, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. Asia-Pacific region is expected to become threat for North America as major market of plant health improvement agents. Asia-Pacific market is expected to witness double digit growth in the forecasted period owing to the technological advancement in the developing countries such as China and India.Increasing awareness about the importance of plant health paired with increasing horticulture knowledge is driving the global plant health improvement agents market. Additionally, rising healthcare costs coupled with healthier eating habit of the individual have increased demand for high values nutritious products such as proteins, nuts, vitamins and minerals. This is pushing the demand for plant health improvement agents use in horticulture. Also, farmers need to maximize their productivity yield per acre and to produce more with fewer resources is further increasing the demand of smart fertilizers, micronutrients and plant growth regulators.Request for Table of content:Some of the major companies operating in the global plant health improvement agents are Agrium Inc., ICL Fertilizers, The Mosaic Company., Yara International and Plant Health CareAbout 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:
Worldwide Hadoop Market: Resolutions to be Favored Owing to Cost effectiveness and High Operational Speeds

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In the consolidated global Hadoop market, the top three vendors, Cloudera, Inc., Hortonworks, Inc., and MapR Technologies, Inc., held a collective share of over 50% in 2014, with small- and medium-sized companies accounting for a nearly 41% share in the global market in the same year. With demand for Hadoop solutions rising at a rapid pace from companies overwhelmed with the persistently mounting volumes of digital data, an increased number of companies will venture in the market in the next few years, states TMR in a recent report.The largest contributor to the market in 2014 was Cloudera, Inc., which held over 20% of the market. Technology giants such as IBM Corporation and EMC Corporation presently account for relatively smaller share in the market but are steadily contributing towards the further development of this market with innovative Hadoop solutions. IBM Corporation has adopted the course of mergers and acquisitions to bolster its position in the global Hadoop market and could report a greater share in the pie in the coming years, notes TMR.Rising Popularity of Big Data Analytics to Present Long-term Growth OpportunitiesBetter cost effectiveness and faster processing of voluminous quantities of data compared to conventional data processing solutions such as RDBMS are two of the most encouraging factors boosting the global adoption of Hadoop. Other major drivers of the market include the exponentially rising unstructured data volumes, the increased demand for big data analytics, and Hadoops potential in bridging the operational gap between managers and database management.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with PDF Brochure:Cost effectiveness and high speed of data processing are expected to have high impact on the global Hadoop markets growth over the entire period of 2015 through 2023. However, the impact of the increased demand for big data analytics will be nominal in the short term but strengthen as the time passes, quoted a TMR analyst.Emerging Markets to Deliver Most Profitable ReturnsNorth America is presently the largest regional market for Hadoop, accounting for a share of over 53% in the global hadoop market in 2014. The demand for Hadoop in North America is expected to expand at a steady rate from 2015 to 2023 as well, and the region will continue to be the dominant regional market for Hadoop over the period.However, the Hadoop market in Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest pace of 30.2 % CAGR over the said period. The Asia Pacific market will present lucrative growth opportunities owing to the rising penetration of the Internet in the region, technologically and digitally improving industrial infrastructures, and the exponentially rising numbers of mobile device users. The global Hadoop market is also expected to see major traction in Europe in the next few years owing to the rising big data management capabilities across sectors such as government, retail, and BFSI in the region.Owing to the vast growth potential, leading Hadoop vendors are aligning their expansion strategies towards these regions. Cloudera, Inc. has recently opened a new branch in Londdon. MapR has also ventured in the European market via its new subsidiary in Paris.These factors will allow the market to tread along a momentous growth path in the next few years. TMR analysts suggest that the market will expand at an exponential 26.3% CAGR over the period between 2015 and 2023. With such excellent growth prospects, the market, which had a valuation of US$308.1 mn in 2014, is expected to rise to US$2,429.0 mn by 2023.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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Emerging Trends of Alginate Market 2024

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Alginates are type of hydrocolloids which are extracted from brown seaweed. It has different functional properties such as thickening agent, ability to form gel and its usage to form films of sodium and calcium. Alginate has varieties of application in food, textile, printing, dyeing, pharmaceutical and in cosmetic industry. Apart from this, it also has application as binding agent for welding rods and in preparing animal feed. Europe and Asia Pacific dominates the alginate market over the forecast period in terms of volume.Key market drivers which influence the demand of alginate in market is from the food and beverage manufacturers due to its functional properties such as thickening agent, gelling agent, stabilizer, emulsifier and film-forming property. Reason behind its increasing demand in food industry is due to its extraction from natural seaweeds, one of safest food additive in food industry and also certified by FAO/WHO. Food and beverage manufacturers primarily used alginate as thickening agent and texture-improver. On the other side, it is also gaining its demand from textile industry as it is primarily used for printing, designing and dyeing on cotton and jute fabrics.Market of Alginate is segmented in two different basis including on the basis of form and on the basis of application. As per the market segment by form, it is segmented in three different form of alginate which are sodium alginate, calcium alginate and potassium alginate. Sodium alginate has varieties of application in food and textile printing industry and due to which it is expected that it fuels the market growth of alginate over the forecast period. Further, market segment of alginate is segmented on the basis of its application which includes food and beverage, paper, textile, pharmaceutical and other (welding, pet food and cosmetic). Primary demand of alginate in global market accounts from food and beverage, paper and textile industry. In food and beverage industry, demand of alginate is increasing due its higher demand in preparing products such as ice cream, jellies, salads, alcoholic drinks, lactic drinks etc. and in many other products. Key reason behind the increasing demand of alginate in food and beverage industry is also due to its multifunctional properties as it plays significant role as thickening and gelling agent, emulsifier, stabilizer and used to enhance the texture of food recipes. In context to its demand in paper and textile industry, it is used for dying and printing purpose and to control the viscosity in processing of final product. Further, alginate is also gaining its demand form pharmaceutical industry where it has application in manufacturing of tablets, liquid medicines and for making dental impression materials. On the basis of market share, results of alginate market on pie chart shows that, food and beverage industry and textile industry dominates the alginate market over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of regional segment, market of alginate is segmented into five regions namely: North America, Latin America, Europe and Middle East and Africa. As per the alginate production, major producing regions are Europe and Asia Pacific and contributes majority of market share in global level market. In terms of value, it is expected that Europe and North America accounted to major share in terms of value and also as a lucrative market in near future.Request to view table of content @Some of the key players which are operating in alginate market are: DuPont, KIMICA Corporation, Qingdao Rongde Seaweed Co., Ltd., Prestige Brands, Inc., Cargill, Incorporated, Qingdao Liyang Seaweed Industrial Co.,Ltd, Shandong Jiejing Group Corporation, Prinova Europe Limited, Compania Espanola de Algas Marinas S.A. and A2 Trading GmbH.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 magnesium metal market is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 7.1% during 2016-2026

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Global demand for magnesium metal will reach 1,085 KT in 2016, representing market value worth US$ 3.13 Bn. Steady automotive sales in the US and Western Europe, combined with a rapidly growing Asia Pacific automotive market will continue to drive demand for magnesium, as manufacturers increase their emphasis on fuel efficiency and emission control. Magnesiums applications in making automotive wheels, transmission cases, and engine blocks will continue to fuel demand in 2016 and beyond.Environmental and legislative influences will continue to promote the use of magnesium vis-a-vis steel and aluminium. As lightweight and fuel-efficient vehicles gain centre stage in the automotive landscape, magnesium is gaining traction as a preferred manufacturing material.Request Free Report Sample@Application-wise, magnesium alloys and die-casting will continue to remain the largest segments, accounting for 349 KT and 302 KT respectively in 2016. Demand will also be supported by magnesiums growing applications in iron and steel desulphurisation. Magnesium will continue to witness stable demand from the aerospace sector, owing to its excellent properties as a reductant in manufacturing titanium.While magnesiums excellent properties will continue to boost its adoption in end-use industries, slower economic growth and stringent import regulations can impede demand in 2016. Leading players in the magnesium metal landscape are expected to focus on capacity expansions and capacity additions to address these challenges.Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) will remain the largest market for magnesium metals, accounting for 518 KT of magnesium in 2016, up from 482 KT in 2015. The region accounts for a major share in overall global automotive and steel production, and magnesium is widely used in these industries. China will continue to be the most lucrative market for magnesium -- of the overall global magnesium production capacity, around 85% is concentrated in China, while the remainder is distributed in pockets across the globe. Key China based players include Taiyuan Tongxiang Magnesium Co., Ltd, Shanxi Wenxi Hongfu Magnesium Co., Ltd.,Wenxi YinGuang Magnesium Industry (Group) Co., Ltd., and Shanxi Wenxi Zhenxin Magnesium Co., Ltd. among others. Some of the key players based outside of China include US Magnesium LLC.; Dead Sea Magnesium Ltd.; POSCO; RIMA Group; Solikamsk Magnesium Works OAO. Players based outside China are channelising efforts towards ramping up production capacities to better cater to growing magnesium demand across the globe. Over the next two to three years several new magnesium production facilities are slated to become operational across the globe.Send An Enquiry@Long-term Outlook: The global magnesium metal market is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 7.1% during 2016-2026, reaching 6.2 Bn in revenues by 2026. APEJ will remain the largest market throughout the forecast period, increasing at a CAGR of 7.3% through 2026.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Offshore Lubricants Market with End User, Application Segment and Regional Analysis 2016 (Forecast 2020)

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"Offshore Lubricants Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2020" The Report covers current Market Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-Lubricants are essential for the proper functioning of machines. These are used to reduce friction and wear and tear in different operating parts of machines. Lubricants offer different properties such as high viscosity index, high boiling point, corrosion prevention, low freezing point, thermal stability and high resistance to oxidation. Lubricants also remove any residual deposition over mechanical parts, thereby increasing their operating lifespan. Lubricants enable smooth operation of mechanical parts and provide higher efficiency outputs.Get Sample Report With TOC @These are manufactured from base oils. Some additives are used in base oils to attain desired properties. Offshore lubricants are predominantly manufactured from mineral oils. Synthetic lubricants are being widely used as these are compatible with the environment and offer technical benefits over conventional mineral oil-based lubricants. These lubricant products offer high performance with outstanding engine protection, require less maintenance and have greater operating efficiency. Machines and components require a specific type of lubricant as per the operating need.Several machineries or equipment in offshore rigs and FPSOs require lubrication for proper functioning. Heavy equipment used in these units include cranes, diesel engines and hydraulic lifts. Increasing demand for lubricants in these units can be attributed to rise in offshore drilling and production activities.The offshore lubricants market research study analyzes the global demand for offshore lubricants along with estimates and forecasts for the market in terms of consumption. The report estimates revenue (USD Million) and volume (Kilo Tons) of offshore lubricants by various end-users. The market for offshore lubricants has been segmented based on end-users (offshore rigs and FPSOs) and applications (engine oil, hydraulic oil, gear oil, grease, and others. Market data for all segments has been provided on the regional level for the period from 2013 to 2020. The report also comprises a comprehensive competitive landscape that includes market share analysis of companies. Furthermore, the report analyzes major drivers and restraints for the offshore lubricants market and highlights potential opportunities. Drivers, restraints and opportunities for the market have been provided after in-depth analysis of the oil and gas industry.Key end-user segments analyzed in the report include offshore rigs and FPSOs. Offshore lubricant applications estimated and forecasted in this study include hydraulic oil, engine oil, grease, and others (turbine oil, compressor oil, etc.). The data has been provided for North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW).The study analyzes market competition using Porters five forces model and describes the impact of buyers, suppliers, threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants and market competition. Porters five forces model is designed based on market dynamics along with the micro and macro economic factors that affect offshore lubricant companies operating globally. The report also includes detailed value chain analysis of the offshore lubricants market. Market attractiveness analysis prepared for end-user (offshore rigs and FPSOs) segments helps in estimating the most profitable segment for investment. Key players in the offshore lubricants market include BP plc, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Total Lubmarine, and Chevron Corporation. The report provides an overview of these companies along with financial revenue (subject to availability), business strategies and recent developments.Offshore Lubricants Market: End User Segment AnalysisOffshore rigsFPSOOffshore Lubricants Market: Application Segment AnalysisEngine oilHydraulic oilGear oilGreaseOthers (turbine oil, compressor oil, circulating oil, etc.)Offshore Lubricants Market: Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeMiddle EastAsia PacificRoW (Rest of the World)ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Hemp Protein Market Set to Grow Exponentially During 2016-2026

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Hemp protein refers to the industrial by product of hemp seeds. Hemp seeds have a composition of approximately 45 percent oil, 35 percent protein and 10 percent carbohydrates. Hemp seed is very eco- friendly, as it can be grown without using herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. Also, it can efficiently absorbs carbon dioxide. Hemp protein is a rich source of all essential amino acids that are necessary to meet the protein needs of humans. Hemp protein cannot be considered as a pure protein supplement owing to its composition of 10% fatty acids and higher fiber content. Owing to the higher fiber content, hemp proteins lowers the risk for constipation, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and diverticular disease. Hemp proteins are easily digestible, and are used as an active ingredient in shakes and smoothies. Health benefits of hemp proteins includes anti-fatigue properties, enhances immune system, and have kidney protective effects. The growth of hemp protein market is propelled by improved economic conditions coupled with increase in household wealth, due to which consumers have shown willingness to spend on food products that are rich in hemp proteins so as to maintain their health.Owing to the high nutritional benefits of hemp protein, the market is expected to witness modest growth in coming years. The growth of hemp protein market is driven by increasing demand of hempseed oil, growing health consciousness among consumers, rising demand for nutritional food products, new product developments, and improved supply chain to ensure the product availability. Hemp protein market is characterized by the stringent regulations laid by various regulatory bodies that govern and inspect the food products and issues guidelines for food processing.Hemp protein market is segmented on the basis of form, application and geography. Based upon form, hemp protein market is segmented into powdered form, and liquid form. Hemp protein in the powdered form is expected to witness high demand over the forecast period. Based upon application, hemp protein market is segmented into pharmaceutical, food & beverages, cosmetics, industrial, and others. Food & beverages is expected to be the largest application segment in global hemp protein market. High demand of hemp protein in food & beverages segment can be attributed to its high fiber content. Rise in the health concerns among consumers escalates the demand of hemp protein over the forecast period. Pharmaceutical application segment is poised to witness fastest growth in the global hemp protein market owing to the increased application scope in ailment of various cognitive diseases, diabetes, and health diseases. Owing to the combination of essential fatty acids and fiber, it is used in cosmetic products to maintain healthy skin and hair.Request to view table of content @Based on geography, hemp protein market is segmented into seven different regions namely North America, Middle East and Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Japan. North America is expected to lead the regional market for hemp proteins during the reviewed period. The high market share can be attributed to the strong demand from U.S. Western Europe is expected to hold second largest market share in global hemp protein market over the forecast period while Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region in the global hemp protein market owing to the increased demand from China and India. Leading manufacturers in the hemp protein market focus to leverage opportunities posed by emerging economies like India and China to expand their revenue base.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some of the key players in the hemp protein market include Navitas Naturals, Hemp Oil Canada, North American Hemp & Grain Co., Hempco, Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods, Cosucra Groupe Warcoing SA, CHII Naturally Pure Hemp, GFR Ingredients Inc., and Green Source Organics 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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Cultured Sugar/Vinegar Market : Global Market Snapshot by 2026

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http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12229

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Cultured sugar/ Vinegar is a food additives used in variety of food products, from meat, poultry products to salad dressing, and it is used to extend shelf life. Vinegar is often used as a natural preservative in poultry items and processed meat. Processing of different types of meats for feeding the global population has paced up speedily because of the rapid increase in globalization. Demand for high protein food and trend for ready to eat meat products are driving the global cultured sugar/vinegar market.in developing countries rise in the income of middle class consumers is growing the demand for convenience foods and ultimately driving the cultured sugar/vinegar market. To increase the consumer appeal many food producers are preferring the use of cultured sugar/ vinegar for obtaining food safety and prolonged shelf life. This application of cultured sugar/vinegar is good for consumers and extended shelf life in such products will optimize the supply chain efficiency and costs too. Increase in beverage industry across the globe is also anticipated to drive the cultured sugar/vinegar market as it prevents microbial spoilage in beverages.Rising popularity of bakery products due to changing food consumption trends will benefit the cultured sugar/vinegar market as cultured sugar is used for a function of mold inhabitation in baked goods. Also growth in market for culinary such as dressing and dips, sauces, salad and sandwich spreads etc. is likely to drive the cultured sugar/ vinegar market in near future. Cultured sugar/vinegar is used as agent which helps in suppressing bacteria and pathogens in food. However lack of awareness about the processing technology and modern methods in developing countries are the main hindrances in the growth of global cultured sugar/ vinegar market. in addition to this economic crises faced by many countries of the world and health risk associated with the processed foodstuffs are the factors which act a restraints for cultured sugar/vinegar market.Based on the end use industry type the global cultured sugar/vinegar market is segmented into:Meat and poultry productsBaked goodsBeverageOthersIn terms of geography, the global cultured sugar/vinegar market has been divided in to five key regions including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East & Africa. The global cultured sugar/vinegar market is expected to register healthy CAGR during the forecast period. North America is anticipated to be the dominant market for global cultured sugar/vinegar market followed by Asia Pacific and Europe. The market in Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at highest CAGR over the forecast period.Some of the key players in the global cultured sugar/vinegar market are Corbion, PROTERIA etc.Request to view table of content @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 done using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, type, machine size and end use.A sample of this report is available upon request @The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors, along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various factors on market segments and geographies.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:
Medical Pressure Transducers Market 2017: Production, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2021

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Medical Pressure Transducers Market report focuses on the major drivers and restraints for the key players. It also provides granular analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market. The Medical Pressure Transducers Market research report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Medical Pressure Transducers Industry.In depth analysis of Medical Pressure Transducers Market is a crucial thing for various stakeholders like investors, CEOs, traders, suppliers and others. The Medical Pressure Transducers Market research report is a resource, which provides technical and financial details of the industry.Browse more detail information about Medical Pressure Transducers Market at:To begin with, the report elaborates the Medical Pressure Transducers Market overview. Various definitions and classification of the industry, applications of the industry and chain structure are given. Present day status of the Medical Pressure Transducers Market in key regions is stated and industry policies and news are analysed.Next part of the Medical Pressure Transducers Market Industry analysis report speaks about the manufacturing process. The process is analysed thoroughly with respect three points, viz. raw material and equipment suppliers, various manufacturing associated costs (material cost, labour cost, etc.) and the actual process.Following are the key players covered in this Medical Pressure Transducers Market research report: Edwards Lifesciences Smiths Medical Argon ICU Medical Merit Medical Systems Biosenor International ANTMED Utah Medical JUNKEN MEDICAL Ace Medical George Philips Biometrix BV Lepu SCW MedicathNo. of Report Pages: 119Price of Report (Single User Licence): $ 2900Get a PDF Sample of Medical Pressure Transducers Market Research Report at:After the basic information, the Medical Pressure Transducers Market report sheds light on the production. Production plants, their capacities, global production and revenue are studied. Also, the Medical Pressure Transducers Market growth in various regions and R&D status are also covered.Following are Major Table of Content of Medical Pressure Transducers Industry: Medical Pressure Transducers Market Competition by Manufacturers Medical Pressure Transducers Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2021) Medical Pressure Transducers Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2021) Medical Pressure Transducers Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type Medical Pressure Transducers Market Analysis by Application Medical Pressure Transducers Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis Medical Pressure Transducers Manufacturing Cost Analysis Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers Medical Pressure Transducers Market Forecast (2016-2021)Purchase the Report Now @Further in the Medical Pressure Transducers Market Industry Analysis report, the Medical Pressure Transducers Market is examined for price, cost and gross. These three points are analysed for types, companies and regions. In continuation with this data sale price is for various types, applications and region is also included. The Medical Pressure Transducers Market for major regions is given. Additionally, type wise and application wise consumption figures are also given.Scope of the Medical Pressure Transducers Industry on the basis of region: North America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaWith the help of supply and consumption data, gap between these two is also explained.The research report has offered answers to several important questions related to the growth of the Medical Pressure Transducers market. Some of them are given below: Which product segment is projected to lead in the Medical Pressure Transducers market? What is the expected growth rate of the Medical Pressure Transducers market in the near future? Which region is anticipated to account for a massive share of the Medical Pressure Transducers market? What are the primary growth factors of the Medical Pressure Transducers market? What are the key restriction faced by the prominent players in the Medical Pressure Transducers market? Which latest developments are expected to provide lucrative growth opportunities in the coming years? How is the competitive landscape of the Medical Pressure Transducers market expected to grow?Have any query before Buying Report or Need Customized Report? Contact us at @To provide information on competitive landscape, this report includes detailed profiles of Medical Pressure Transducers Market key players. For each player, product details, capacity, price, cost, gross and revenue numbers are given. Their contact information is provided for better understanding.In this Medical Pressure Transducers Market report analysis, traders and distributors analysis is given along with contact details. For material and equipment suppliers also, contact details are given. New investment feasibility analysis and Medical Pressure Transducers Market Industry growth is included in the report.About Absolute Reports:Absolute Reports is an upscale platform to help key personnel in the business world in strategizing and taking visionary decisions based on facts and figures derived from in depth market research. We are one of the top report resellers in the market, dedicated towards bringing an ingenious concoction of data parameters.Mr. Ameya PingaleyAbsolute ReportsSilverSpring Baner, PUne 411045+1-408 520 9750Email  sales@absolutereports.com
Guruprit Ahuja (Ex-Director Middle-East & Africa, Acronis) and Sabarinathan Sampath (Ex-Professional Services Director, Ingram Micro Cloud) Take Leadership Roles at RackNap

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RackNap, a unified cloud services automation and business cycle management platform, announced today that Guruprit Ahuja and Sabarinathan Sampath, two eminent personnel from the IT and cloud industry, will be joining as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer respectively.The move is significant for the cloud industry as both Guruprit Ahuja and Sabarinathan Sampath have held leadership positions in key organizations over a number of years. Their arrival will help cement RackNaps position as the fastest growing cloud service delivery platform, enabling service providers to sell cloud services on their own infrastructure, as well as via third party cloud providers like Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM, and others.Guruprit brings to the table 25 years of experience in Cloud computing platforms, Data center services, and Software solutions. Prior to joining RackNap as CEO, he was Director of Middle East and Africa at Acronis. Guruprit has served as Director of South East Asia, India, and Korea at Parallels (now Odin), where he successfully established relations with some of the key cloud players like Korea Telecom, Vodafone (India), Telekom Malaysia, Telkom Indonesia, and Star-hub (Singapore). Before Parallels, Guruprit was Business Lead  web hosting and cloud at Microsoft, driving web services adoption, and managing relationships with leading service providers and telcos.On joining RackNap, Guruprit said, Currently valued at $208.6 billion, the cloud industry is seeing a rapid growth. With huge investments being made in the cloud space by industry leaders like Microsoft, Google, AWS, IBM, there is a new breed of service providers who are traditionally telcos, systems integrators, hardware and software distributors, and now want to add cloud services to their existing product portfolio. However, to do so they need a solution like RackNap that automates provisioning and billing, offering customer self-service, support and CRM, inventory management, business intelligence, and multi-tier partner management capability.In my role as CEO, my immediate focus is to establish mutually beneficial alliances with industry leaders like Microsoft, Google, AWS, IBM, and ensure that cloud service providers can use RackNap to launch complete suite of cloud services, and benefit from this multi-billion opportunity, he added.Sabarinathan joins RackNap as COO, with over 18 years of experience in the IT industry with specialization in Cloud Services Delivery. He will also head the Product and Technical Delivery function of RackNap. Sabarinathan joins RackNap from Ingram Micro Cloud (Odin), Singapore where he headed the Professional Services division covering Asia Pacific, Japan, and Russia helping big Telecom Companies, Hosters, Enterprise customers profit from the Cloud using Odin Service Automation platform. Prior to that, he held various roles as Head of Service Assurance and Programme Management Office, working for Hostopia, National Health Service and Cognizant Technology Solutions. His forte is Professional Services Delivery, Operational Excellence, building delivery teams from scratch, enhancing customer success, and helping them get maximum benefits of the software.Our research has found that Cloud Service providers need help in choosing the right business strategy, and skilled manpower to be successful once they have chosen the automation platform for delivery of Cloud Services. In my role as COO, Ill focus on extending to RackNap users our Well Rounded Managed Services Package, covering sales, marketing, billing, operations, and technical support. We will help cloud service providers choose the right business model, target right market segment, select appropriate product portfolio structure; thereby increase their average revenue per customer, return on investment, and above all, be profitable. RackNaps consultative and partnership approach will differentiate us from other platforms in the market, said Sabarinathan Sampath.RackNap forecasts a rapid growth of customer base in both mature cloud markets like USA and Europe, and also strong emerging markets like India, South East Asia, and Middle East and Africa. The platform has had several successful deployments in these emerging markets.RackNap enables us to manage billing and provision services from multiple cloud providers like AWS, Azure, VMware and Hyper-V plus. Apart from offering traditional web services like domains, web hosting, SSL; using RackNap, we are also able to plug in Next Generation Cloud Applications and offer it to our Cloud Partners with its multi-tier partner model, said Samir Jhaveri, Managing Director, XcellHost Cloud Services.RackNap has adapted as we scaled our cloud business, and has helped us manage our global cloud infrastructure in 50+ countries from a single pane of glass, he added.Guruprit and Sabarinathan will be instrumental in leading RackNaps efforts to penetrate the cloud, datacenter, hardware and software distribution, telco, and hosting industry segments in months to come.About RackNapRackNap is a Cloud Service Delivery and end-to-end Business Automation platform for cloud, datacenter, telco and web hosting industry. RackNap enables providers to sell cloud services on their own infrastructure, as well as via third party providers like Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM  Softlayer, and more. RackNap covers all facets of business operations  Marketplace and product display, Billing and pricing, Service configuration and delivery, Sales and marketing, Inventory and assets monitoring, CRM and support management, Multi-tier partner channel enablement, End- customer panel, and Business analytics. RackNap is a business unit of ZNet Technologies Pvt. Ltd. For more information, please visitMobile : +97152997 2010Add: 3602, Tower X3, Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai, UAE.
Diagnostic Catheters Market worth 4.30 Billion USD by 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/diagnostic-catheter-market-114053400.html

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The report "Diagnostic Catheter Market by Type (Angiography, OCT, Ultrasound, Electrophysiology, Pressure and Hemodynamic Monitoring), Application Area (Cardiology, Urology, Neurology, Gastroenterology), End User (Hospitals, Imaging Centers) - Global Forecast to 2021", The global diagnostic catheters market is projected to reach USD 4.30 Billion by 2021 from USD 3.02 Billion in 2016, at a CAGR of around 7.3% from 2016 to 2021.Browse 135 market data tables and 38 figures spread through 192 pages and in-depth TOC on Diagnostic Catheter MarketEarly buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.The growth in this market can be mainly attributed to the increasing number of minimally invasive surgeries, rising geriatric population and increasing prevalence of chronic disorders like cardiovascular and kidney disorders, technological advancements in imaging catheters, and increasing number of imaging and diagnostic centers.In this report, the global diagnostic catheters market is segmented on the basis of type, application areas, and end user. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into imaging catheters and non-imaging catheters. The imaging catheters are further segmented into angiography catheters, ultrasound catheters, OCT imaging catheters, electrophysiology catheters, and other imaging catheters.Get The Free Sample Pages@The non-imaging catheters are segmented into pressure & hemodynamic monitoring catheters, temperature monitoring catheters, and other non-imaging catheters. On the basis of application area, the diagnostic catheters market is segmented into five segments, namely, cardiology, gastroenterology, urology, neurology, and others. The diagnostic catheters market by end user is segmented into hospital and imaging & diagnostic centers.In 2015, the imaging catheters product segment accounted for the largest share of the diagnostic catheters market. This is primarily attributed to the increasing incidence and high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases across the globe due to growth in the aging population and adoption of sedentary lifestyles. Moreover, the development of advanced catheters and increasing regulatory approvals for these catheters is expected to fuel market growth during the forecast period.Download the PDF Brochure@In 2015, North America represented the largest regional market, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the RoW. Asia-Pacific represents the fastest-growing market for diagnostic catheters, primarily due to the presence of a large patient population, increased patient awareness for minimally invasive surgeries, rapid rise in the prevalence of cardiovascular and kidney disorders, growth in per capita income, increasing investments in the healthcare industry by key market players, and the rising demand for technologically advanced imaging systems. Various government initiatives towards building better healthcare infrastructure in this region are also fostering the growth of the diagnostic imaging catheters market in the region.Major players in the global diagnostic catheters market are Boston Scientific Corporation (U.S.), St. Jude Medical, Inc. (U.S.), Medtronic plc (Ireland), Johnson & Johnson (U.S.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany), C.R. Bard, Inc. (U.S.), Cardinal Health, Inc. (U.S.), Edward LifeSciences Corporation (U.S.), and Terumo Corporation (Japan).About MarketsandMarkets:MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarketsandMarkets701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United StatesTelephone No: 1-888-600-6441
Chemicals for Cosmetic and Toiletry Market Size, Share, Analysis, Report and Forecast to 2022

http://www.strategymrc.com/report/chemicals-for-cosmetic-and-toiletry-market-2016

http://www.strategymrc.com/report/chemicals-for-cosmetic-and-toiletry-market-2016

The Global Chemicals for Cosmetic and Toiletry Market accounted for $22.6 billion in 2015 and expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.55% from 2015 to 2022, reaching a value of $35.4 billion by the year 2022. Growing reputation of natural products for healthy lifestyle and growing metropolitan lifestyle and working women population are some of the major drivers fuelling the market growth. Moreover, the factors such as growing demand for personal care products, rising interest for antiaging products and improving advancement in innovative products are favoring the market growth. However, growing number of disposal incomes in developing countries leads to the more money to spend and stringent government regulations are some of the restraints in this market.In application, the emollients and moisturizers segment accounted the largest share during the forecast period owing to growing number of personal care products. North America dominated the global chemical and toiletry market during the forecast period. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing segment due to increasing growth rate in emerging countries such as China and India.Some of the key players in this market include are Active Organics, Alka Chemical Industries, Alpine Aromatics International Inc., Bio-Botanica, Cosmetic Rheologies Limited, Dow Chemical Co., Elementis Plc, Gyan Flavours Export, Honeywell International, International Flavors And Fragrances Inc., BASF SE, Bayer AG, Solvay SA, Stepan Company and Terry Laboratories Incorporated.For More, Please Visit:Speciality Covered: Moisturizing Agents Fragrance Products Baby-Care Products Hair-Care Products Oral-Hygiene Products Processing Aids Cosmetic And Toiletry Ingredients Makeup Products Bath And Shower ProductsApplication Covered: Fragrances and Aroma Chemicals Emollients and Moisturizers Sunscreen Chemicals Synthetic Emulsifiers pH Adjusters Cleansing Agents & Foamers Conditioning Agents Thickeners ColorantsProduct Covered: Natural Products Petroleum-based Products Essential Oils Fatty Acids Botanicals Aloe Vera Inorganic ChemicalsType of Chemicals Covered: Specialty Additives Processing Aids Active IngredientsRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsFor More, Please Visit:We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg,MD, 20877, USA
Modular Construction Market Estimated to Reach USD 104 Million by 2022 at a CAGR of 6%

Modular Construction Market

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1682

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/modular-construction-market

Market Research Future published a Half-Cooked Research Report on Modular Construction Market that contains the information from 2014 to 2022. The Modular Construction Market globally is expected to reach USD 104 million at the end of the forecasted period and is expected to show a staggering growth at CAGR of 6% from 2016 to 2022.Market HighlightsModular construction is prefabricated buildings that are manufactured in a plant. It offers significant advantages compared to conventional buildings such as cost effective, flexibility, shorter time to completion amongst others.The Modular Construction Market is driven by the growth in construction and infrastructure industries. With the rising industrialization, the need for time saving construction methods are required, which has widened the scope of modular construction. Modular construction gets rid of jobsite issues such as access routes and traffic or security and storage of materials. Factories are typically located next to shipping hubs, aiding the flow of materials while reducing shipping costs. It is thus, a cost effective method of prefabricated construction. Furthermore, this kind of construction is highly dependent on the applications such as commercial, residential, infrastructure among others. With rapid industrialization in APAC region, the demand for infrastructure has gone up. This has fueled the demand for modular construction in the region. APAC is the fastest growing market for modular construction with a market size of USD 36.1 million by 2022.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players in Modular Construction Market Komatsu Ltd. Kiewit Corporation ACS Actividades de Construccion y Servicios S.A. Balfour Beatty Skanska AB Larsen & Toubro Limited Red Sea Housing Services System House R & C Co., Ltd. Taisei Corporation Balfour Beatty Plc Bouygues Construction Laing ORourke Julius Berger Nigeria PlcTaste the market data and market information presented through more than 85 market data tables and figures spread in 118 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Modular Construction Market Research Report - Forecast to 2022"Access Report Details @Modular Construction Market:Modular construction is the type of prefabricated construction that involves major structures or components of construction built off-site generally at factories to be erected or assembled later on-site on concrete foundation. This type of construction is highly effective both in terms of time and cost across all applications such as infrastructure, commercial, residential among others.The scope of the study categorizes the modular construction market as material, construction, product, application and region. On the basis of material it is segmented as steel, concrete, wood, plastic, and others. On the basis of construction it is segmented as permanent modular and relocatable modular. On the basis of product it is segmented as walls, roofs & floors, columns & beams, and others. On the basis of application it is segmented as commercial, residential, infrastructure, and others.Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
The Tata Power Company Limited - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis, Segment, Trends, Estimates And Forecasts 2016

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/862856

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"The Report The Tata Power Company Limited - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis, 2016 Update provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"The report contains a detailed description of the power generation companys business operations, history, corporate strategy, and business structure. This report contains a detailed SWOT analysis, information on key employees (executives), and major products and services.View Report @Scope- Major Power Plants (assets) - summarized and detailed information about the power plants (assets).- Operational Metrics (capacity, generation, revenue, sales, number of consumers).- Business description - A detailed description of the companys operations and business divisions.- Corporate strategy - GlobalDatas summarization of the companys business strategy.- SWOT analysis - A detailed analysis of the companys strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.- Company history - Progression of key events associated with the company.- Major products and services - A list of major products, services and brands- Key employees - A list of the key executives and personnel heading key departments/functions.- Executive biographies - A brief summary of the executives employment history.- Financial deals - Coverage of key financial deals from 2006 onwards, depending upon information availability- Important locations and subsidiaries - A list of key locations and subsidiaries of the company, including contact details.Download Sample copy of this Report atReasons to buy- Gain key insights into the company for academic or business research purposes. Key elements such as SWOT analysis, corporate strategy and major products and services are incorporated in the profile to assist in various business decisions (M&A and JV).- Identify potential customers and suppliers with this reports analysis of the companys business structure, operations, major products and services and business strategy.- Understand and respond to competitors business structure and strategies with GlobalDatas detailed SWOT analysis. In this, the companys core strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are analyzed, providing an up to date objective view of the company.Table of ContentsTable of Contents 2Company Snapshot 4Operational Metrics 5The Tata Power Company Limited, Wind Farms 7The Tata Power Company Limited, Solar PV Parks 9The Tata Power Company Limited, Solar Thermal Plants 15The Tata Power Company Limited, Hydro Power Plants 16The Tata Power Company Limited, Thermal Power Plants 17Business Description 20Major Products and Services 21History 22SWOT Analysis 30Financial Ratios - Capital Market Ratios 34Financial Ratios - Annual Ratios 35Financial Ratios - Interim Ratios 36Key Employees 37Key Employee Biographies 38Company Statement 39Locations And Subsidiaries 40Financial Deals Landscape 42The Tata Power Company Limited, Power, Deal Details 44Recent Developments 76Appendix 210Report Scope 210GlobalData Coverage 210Benchmarking 210GlobalDatas Methodology 210Secondary Research 210Primary Research 210Contact Us 211Disclaimer 211MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
REVIVING OLD WORLD ART ACQUISITION in Nice France cote d'azur

Michel Anthony White Bronze Sculpture

We are bringing back the "old world" in a time where everything is new new new. Sabelskjold Art Agency is bringing old world values back.The new way of collecting art is going to a gallery and picking something off the wall. The old way of collecting art was to hire the best artist you could find and tell them to create a masterpiece that no one had ever seen.We are bringing back this old world way of custom created art for you and you alone. As the king and queen of your castle and you deserve the art you want created, not the art you are told you should buy.As the French Riviera's premier art agent we welcome you to revel in our first class art experience.As a business executive, I couldn't find time to shop for art for my home. I contacted Sabelskjold Art Agency to see if they could help. Erick worked with me to discover my style and tastes then proceeded to procure the perfect painting from an artist in Europe. I am now the proud owner of a one of a kind piece of artwork that my family and I will treasure for a lifetime and beyond.Art ServicesFrench Riveras premier art agent is bringing old world values to art collecting. We will help you commission the next piece of art you collect.Sabelskjold Art Agency offers high quality unique services to our clients. Our services focus on taking your living space from that is nice to WOW. There is no better way to set the mood and express yourself in your home, yacht or office than through art.International art agent and descendant of Swedish nobility. Specializing in international fine art consulting services to high wealth individuals, interior designers, corporations, and celebrities.Sabelskjold Art Agency is a full service art consultation company helping clients acquire the perfect piece of art for their home, office, yacht or business.Sabelskjold Art represents internationally collected artists. The artists represented specialize in abstract, contemporary, tile mosaic, and southwest style.Sabelskjold Art Agency consults with interior designers to help complete the vision for their clients projects. We offer a variety of art services focusing on a long term, client first, consultative approach.Sabelskjold Art Agency8 Rue BarillerieNice France 06300
AXO Science S.A.S. - Product Pipeline Analysis, 2016 Update

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/877739

AXO Science S.A.S. (AXO) is a medical device company that offers diagnostic solutions. The company develops high output and multi-parametric analysis solutions for characterizing biological samples. It provides services which include blood genotyping, allergy diagnosis, cancer diagnosis, pathogens detection, customized assays, microarray spotting, and robotic services. AXOs solutions has specialized in the development of high-throughput and multiplexed analysis solutions dedicated to the characterization of biological samples. Its technology is used for blood genotyping, allergy diagnosis and allergen-specific immunotherapy evaluation test, early cancer diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring, and pathogens detection applications. AXO is headquartered in Villeurbanne, France.This report is a source for data, analysis, and actionable intelligence on the companys portfolio of pipeline products. The report provides key information about the company, its major products and brands.The report enhances decision making capabilities and help to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.Scope:- The report reviews detailed company profile with information on business description, key company facts, major products and services, key competitors, key employees, locations and subsidiaries and recent developments- The report analyzes all pipeline products in development for the company AXO Science S.A.S.- The report provides pipeline analysis on all pipeline products of the company (by equipment type, by indication, by development stage, and by trial status)- The report covers detailed information on each pipeline product with information on pipeline territory, stage of development, device class, regulatory path, indication(s), application(s) and estimated launch date- The report provides detailed description of products in development, technical specification and functions- The report also covers ongoing clinical trials (wherever applicable) with information on trial name, trial objective, sponsor, trial design , trial status and phase, estimated start and end date.Reasons to Buy:- Develop business strategies by understanding the trends and developments driving the medical devices pipeline and technology landscape- Design and develop your product development, marketing and sales strategies by understanding the competitor portfolio- To formulate effective Research & Development strategies- Develop market-entry and market expansion strategies- Exploit in-licensing and out-licensing opportunities by identifying products, most likely to ensure a robust return- Plan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying key players of the most promising pipeline- Identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage- Develop competition strategies by identifying the status and likely launch of the competitors pipeline products through review of the clinical trials, stage and of development, etc- Identify, understand and capitalize the next high-value products that your competitor would add in its portfolioGet sample Copy Of this Report @Table of ContentsList of Tables 4List of Figures 5AXO Science S.A.S. Company Overview 6AXO Science S.A.S. Company Snapshot 6AXO Science S.A.S. Pipeline Products and Clinical Trials Overview 7AXO Science S.A.S. Pipeline Analysis Overview 9Key Facts 9AXO Science S.A.S. - Major Products and Services 10AXO Science S.A.S. Pipeline Products by Development Stage 11AXO Science S.A.S. Pipeline Products Overview 13Companion Diagnostic Test - Allergy 13Companion Diagnostic Test - Allergy Product Overview 13Companion Diagnostic Test - Cancer 14Companion Diagnostic Test - Cancer Product Overview 14Diagnostic Test - Allergy 15Diagnostic Test - Allergy Product Overview 15Diagnostic Test - Cancer 16Diagnostic Test - Cancer Product Overview 16Multiplexed Detection - Anti-HCV Antibodies 17Multiplexed Detection - Anti-HCV Antibodies Product Overview 17Multiplexed Detection - BNP 18Multiplexed Detection - BNP Product Overview 18Multiplexed Detection - CRP 19Multiplexed Detection - CRP Product Overview 19Multiplexed Detection - Des-Carboxy Prothrombin 20Multiplexed Detection - Des-Carboxy Prothrombin Product Overview 20Multiplexed Detection - Matrix metalloproteinase 1 21Multiplexed Detection - Matrix metalloproteinase 1 Product Overview 21Multiplexed Detection - Myoglobin 22Multiplexed Detection - Myoglobin Product Overview 22Multiplexed Detection - Procollagen type III N-terminal peptide 23Multiplexed Detection - Procollagen type III N-terminal peptide Product Overview 23Multiplexed Detection - Troponin 24Multiplexed Detection - Troponin Product Overview 24Multiplexed Detection - TSH 25Multiplexed Detection - TSH Product Overview 25Pathogen Detection Device 26Pathogen Detection Device Product Overview 26AXO Science S.A.S. - Key Competitors 27AXO Science S.A.S. - Key Employees 28AXO Science S.A.S. - Locations And Subsidiaries 29Head Office 29Appendix 30Methodology 30About GlobalData 30Contact Us 30Disclaimer 30Marketresearchreports.biz is much more than a seller of syndicated market research reports. We slip seamlessly into roles such as a search engine for market research reports, research consultants, advisors, and providers of customized research services.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Semiconductor Inspection System Market Estimated to Provide Over USD 8 Billion Revenue by 2022

Semiconductor Inspection System Market

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Market Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report on Global Semiconductor Inspection System Market. The Global Market for Semiconductor Inspection System is majorly driven by factors such as high demand for electronic products and growth of IOT market.Key Players in Global Semiconductor Inspection System MarketThe prominent players in the market of Semiconductor Inspection System are: KLA-Tencor (U.S.) ASML Holding (Netherlands) Applied Materials (U.S.) Lasertech (Japan) Hitachi High-Technologies (Japan) Nanometrics Incorporated (U.S.) Rudolph Technologies (U.S.) Nikon (Japan), JEOL (Japan) FEI Company (U.S.)Request a Sample Report @Market HighlightsGlobal Semiconductor Inspection System Market is growing at a CAGR of ~12%. As the technology is growing, market for semiconductor is growing simultaneously and the market of Semiconductor Inspection System is completely dependent on the growth of semiconductor industry. Global Semiconductor Inspection System market has been valued at US ~3 billion in the year 2015 which is expected to grow at US $~8 billion by the end of forecast period owing to the factors, growing parent industry of semiconductor products and heavy demand for the electronic products.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 110 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Semiconductor Inspection System Research Report -Forecast to 2022Access Report Details @Market Drivers:Commenting on the report, an analyst from Market Research Future (MRFR)s team said: Growing market of electronics and high demand for the electronic products are some of the major factor which is driving the market of Semiconductor Inspection System. Technological advancement such as introduction of Nano sensors and high power ICs and need of more safe products on the quality parameters are forcing the manufacturers to adopt the inspection system in their manufacturing process. Also high demand from automotive and consumer electronic product manufacturers for the ICs and other semiconductor products are supporting the market.Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis shows that the market of Semiconductor Inspection System will rise in the coming period. As the new technologies are being introduced and concept of smart cities, autonomous vehicles are coming into picture which will involve lots of electronic products will lead to the Semiconductor Inspection System market to new heights.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Wind Power In Belgium, Market Outlook To 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations And Company Profiles

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"Wind Power in Belgium, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from GlobalData, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Belgium.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Belgium (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Belgium wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by GlobalDatas team of industry experts.View Report @ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global wind power (Onshore and Offshore) market, Belgium power market, Belgium renewable power market and Belgium wind power market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2015 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2030.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global wind power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2015 and key owners information of various regions.- Power market scenario in Belgium and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.- An overview on Belgium renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2015.- Detailed overview of Belgium wind power market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming wind projects.- Deal analysis of Belgium wind power market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and wind power in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @Reasons to buy- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Belgium wind power market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for wind power market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential Devices Market Is Expecting Worldwide Growth By 2021

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In recent time, increasing prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, is key driver of the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Rising number of geriatric populations and technological advancement in brain monitoring devices are also contributing in the growth of global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Introduction of scientifically advanced digital EEG equipments with innovative features, such as high precision monitoring abilities and ease handling, enhance the market growth. Moreover, increasing number of hospitals, healthcare academic and research institutes, clinics and nursing homes have also fueled the demand of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices.A sample of this report is available upon request @Electroencephalogram (EEG) is used to diagnose brain disorders and visualizes the activity of the brain during a seizure. EEG evaluates people who are suffering from brain problems such as coma, confusions and tumors, difficulties in thinking and memory and weakening of specific parts of the body. EEG devices are the largest and fastest growing product segment in the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Electromyography (EMG) measures the electrical activity of muscles at the time of rest and contraction. An EMG uses tiny devices called electrodes which help in transmission and detection of electrical signals. Evoked Potential devices are used to clinically diagnose a wide variety of central nervous system (CNS) diseases.In terms of geographic market, North America dominates the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. This is due to increased awareness about importance of brain monitoring devices in the region. The U.S. represents the largest market for EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices followed by Canada in North America. This is due to improved healthcare infrastructure in the region. For instance, in 2012, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA), about 5,723 registered hospitals were reported in the U.S.. Registered hospitals are those hospitals that fulfill all the AHA criteria. These increased hospitals have resulted significant rise in the demand of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices in the U.S.In Europe, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and France holds major share of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. However, Asia is expected to show high growth rates in the next five years in global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. This is due to many companies constructing their R&D facilities in the region. In addition, increasing awareness about various neurological diseases is also supporting in the growth of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market in the region. Japan, China and India are expected to be the fastest growing EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices markets in Asia.However, stringent regulations obstruct the growth of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. In addition, cost containment, lack of skilled labors and inadequate reimbursement policies also hampers the growth of global ECG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Rapid product launches and increasing mergers and acquisitions between manufacturing companies and government associations are some of the major trends in the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the major companies operating in the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market are Cadwell Laboratories Inc., Compumedics Limited, Covidien Limited, Electrical Geodesics Inc., Natus Medical Inc., NeuroWave Systems Inc., Nihon Kohden America Inc. and Noraxon.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:
Ballistic Protection Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Growth And Forecast, 2018  2020

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Ballistic Protection Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Growth And Forecast, 2018  2020".Most of major defense spenders such as the US, UK, Germany, China, Russia, India are directing their investments on armed personnel protection. The armed personal protection refers to the ballistic protection given to the armed forces, homeland security and law enforcement officers, private security officials, and their vehicles from projectiles such as bullets, explosive materials, falling glass materials, mortar shrapnel, and mines. Growing violence and an increase in the number of terrorist threats and attacks are major factors that have elevated the demand for ballistic protection equipment.Technavios analysts forecast the global ballistic protection market to grow at a CAGR of 5.15% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global ballistic protection market for 2016-2020. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the market, market shares and growth opportunities by application (defense, homeland security, and commercial), and growth prospects by region (the Americas, EMEA, and APAC).The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Ballistic Protection 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 vendorsBAE Systems3MDuoPontHoneywell International Corp.Royal TenCate Corporation EMEATo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Other prominent vendorsArmorWorks EnterprisesCeradyneEagle IndustriesMorgan Advanced MaterialsPoint Blank EnterprisesSurvitec GroupMarket driverRise in asymmetric warfareFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHeavy weight of protection equipmentFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendAdoption of soft body armorFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Market Size (Volume and Value) & Growth Rate Of Global Digital Pen Consumption 2017

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Market Size (Volume and Value) & Growth Rate Of Global Digital Pen Consumption 2017".The Global Digital Pen Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Digital Pen market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the Digital Pen 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 Digital Pen market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the Digital Pen 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.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 Digital Pen industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @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 Digital Pen1.1 Definition and Specifications of Digital Pen1.1.1 Definition of Digital Pen1.1.2 Specifications of Digital Pen1.2 Classification of Digital Pen1.3 Applications of Digital Pen1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Digital Pen1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Digital Pen2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Digital Pen2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Digital Pen2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Digital Pen2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Digital Pen2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Digital Pen2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Digital Pen2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Digital PenMake 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 @
2017 - 2024: Contact Lens Global Market (Product Type - Soft Lens and Gas Permeable; Design Type - Spherical, Toric, Multifocal; Technology - Spin Casting, Cast Molding, Lathe Cutting)

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "2017 - 2024: Contact Lens Global Market (Product Type - Soft Lens and Gas Permeable; Design Type - Spherical, Toric, Multifocal; Technology - Spin Casting, Cast Molding, Lathe Cutting)".Contact lens comprises of two types of products, such as soft lens and gas permeable lens. Soft lenses are made of plastics and allow oxygen to pass through the eye cornea. They use materials that are translucent and flexible such as silicone hydrogel, that are high on oxygen permeability and are high on water retention capacity which makes them extremely comfortable for prolonged wear. At present, soft lenses have high oxygen permeability factor. Due to this, it can be worn overnight with extreme ease and comfort. These are used for correcting both near and farsightedness, as well as spherical aberration of the eye. In addition, gas permeable (GP) lenses are made up of durable plastics that are rigid and firm and transmit oxygen. It can resist any kind of deposits, as it does not contain water traces. It does not dehydrate easily, which makes them long lasting, durable and easy to handle. In addition, increase in younger population suffering from ophthalmological disorders, there is a continual demand for contact lenses among the population that is currently helping the growth of the contact lens market globally.As per current trend, wearing glasses on a regular basis is a discomfort arena for most of the users especially in developed nations. Also, wearing glass is considered as old fashioned among moderate users and especially youth in between age group of 10 to 30. Contact lenses are a great alternative for glasses and consumers are inclining towards it due to the comfort and convenience it provides of not wearing traditional glasses. The variety of options available such as daily disposable soft contact lenses makes them more interesting and consumers prefer to wear contact lenses on a regular basis instead of glasses. Due to all these factors, this driver is expected to impact the market moderately and will remain a major driver as per its advantage.Contact lenses are gaining importance among different age groups globally. The major reasons for this growth are the general eye disorders and advancement in medical sciences to deal with ophthalmological diseases. Currently, children are being prescribed by doctors for using contact lenses, whose are born with congenital eye disorders. In addition, pre-teens and teens often want to wearing contact lenses as they become more self-conscious about their appearance. Furthermore, the usage of contact lenses by young adults is also increasing globally, owing to the factors such as avoiding the inconvenience of replacing and repairing eyeglass frames during outdoor activities and sports.Make an Enquiry of this report @In addition, increasing awareness regarding the handling and safe usage of contact lens is also penetrating the market. Many governments across the world are taking several initiatives to reduce the manufactures of harmful contact lens or local unsafe contact lenses. Governments in countries such as the U.S., Japan, China, and countries in the European Union had created stringent laws regarding medical conservation, there preventing the sale of contact lenses in beauty parlors, convenience stores, flea markets or other non-optical outlets. Other developing countries in the APAC region such as India and Hong Kong have also implemented this law.The Asia Pacific and Latin America sugar confectionery market can be segmented as follows;-Global Contact Lens Market, by Product TypeSoft LensGas Permeable (GP)Global Contact Lens Market, by Design TypeSphericalToricMultifocalOthersGlobal Contact Lens Market, by Technology TypeSpin CastingCast MoldingLathe CuttingGlobal Contact Lens Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeU.K.GermanyFranceTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @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 @
Automotive Oil & Fuel Market to Record an Impressive Growth Rate by 2026

Automotive Oil & Fuel Market, Oil & Fuel Market, Oil & Fuel, Oil Market, Fuel Market, Automotive Oil Market, Automotive Fuel

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Automotive oil is a lubricant which is used in internal combustion engines that power motorcycles, cars, engine-generators, lawnmowers, and such kind of other machines. There are parts in the engines that moves against each other and this friction wastes useful power in the form of heat from kinetic energy conversion. Sometimes, the wear of those parts takes place that would lead to degradation and lower efficiency of engine. All these factors decreases power output of the engine, and increases the fuel consumption and can even lead to failure of the engine. To prevent this damages and losses lubricating motor oil is used that forms a thin film between the adjacent moving parts to avoid the direct contact between the parts. Thus the wear and the friction gets reduced and engine gets protected. An automobile fuel is used to power the engines and ultimately the vehicles, mostly the fuel used in the vehicles are gasoline or diesel. There are even other fuels available in the market these days and it includes biodiesel, ethanol, compressed natural gas (CNG), propane, hydrogen and charged batteries. The fuel in the vehicle ignited in the engine to provide energy, in case of a diesel engine the fuel ignites by compression and in case of gasoline engine it ignited by spark. The global automotive oil & fuel market is anticipated to have an healthy CAGR in the forecast period.Sample of this report is available upon request @Global Automotive Oil & Fuel Market: Drivers and RestrainsThe ever increasing automobile industry leads to the rise in the consumption of fuel required to run the vehicles is the major driving factor for the global automotive oil & fuel market. Also rising industrialization and urbanization is making the automobiles to run more than required and leads to the maintenance of its engines. Thus the need of the oil required for the maintenance of the automobiles is at its peak. All these factors leads to the growth of global automotive oil & fuel market.However, the surging cost of the fuels such as diesel and gasoline is leading to the unaffordability of the use of automobiles that can slowdown the growth of automotive oil & fuel market. Also the risk of explosion of vehicles, specially the vehicles running on gas is scaring people to opt for these kind of vehicles that can again hamper the automotive oil & fuel market.Global Automotive Oil & Fuel Market: SegmentationOn the basis of types of oils, the automotive oil & fuel market can be segmented as follows: Diesel engine oils Two Wheeler Oils Passenger car motor oils Gear & transmission oils Gas engine oilOn the basis of types of fuel, the automotive oil & fuel market can be segmented as follows: Gasoline Diesel Biodiesel Auto gas Ethanol blend HybridOn the basis of vehicle type, the automotive oil & fuel market can be segmented as follows: Passenger cars Light commercial vehicles Heavy commercial vehicles Domestic vehiclesGlobal Automotive Oil & Fuel Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global automotive oil & fuel market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Europe is the dominant region in the global automotive oil & fuel market owing to the ever increasing automobile market in this region. Asia Pacific is the second major contributor in the automotive oil & fuel market due to the automobile giants such as Maruti, Hero and other companies. The companies such as General Motors, Ford are having a significant contribution in the global automobile market making North America a considerable player in the global automotive oil & fuel market. Japan is technologically advanced country in terms of automotive markets and so the technology of automotive oil & fuel is very common in this country. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage in the automotive oil & fuel market but is anticipated to have a modest CAGR in the forecasted period.Global Automotive Oil & Fuel Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global automotive oil & fuel market are as follows: TIDE WATER OIL CO. (INDIA) LTD. AMSOIL INC Schaeffer Manufacturing Co Bharat Lubricants Saudi Arabian Oil Co. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation PetroChina Company Limited Exxon Mobil Corporation BP p.l.c Royal Dutch Shell plc Reliance Industries LimitedThe 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 geography, technology and applications.The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Market Segments Market Dynamics Market Size Supply & Demand Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Competition & Companies involved Technology Value ChainRegional analysis includes North America (U.S., Canada) Latin America (Mexico. Brazil) Western Europe (Germany, Italy, France, U.K, Spain, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia) Asia Pacific (China, India, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand) Japan Middle East and Africa (GCC, S. Africa, N. Africa)The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.TOC of this report is available upon request @Report Highlights: Detailed overview of parent market Changing market dynamics in the industry In-depth market segmentation Historical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and value Recent industry trends and developments Competitive landscape Strategies of key players and products offered Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective on market performance Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Bosch, Stanley, Makita, Hitachi and Hilti are the Major Players Operating in India Power Tools Market

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Indian Power tool industry is an import driven market with a large proportion of products imported in the country through countries such as China, Germany, UAE, Japan, Korea and others. Major players usually setup a plant in China but use German technology to built power tools equipments which is finally imported by India.The power tools industry is a contractor driven market. The contractors purchase the products depending on the applications such as drilling, breaking, demolishing and others. The power tools market is solution driven with companies focusing to sell product, service and spare parts/consumables. Thus the companies generate repeated revenues through the servicing costs and from the sale of consumables.The rising demand for portable power equipments had increased the revenue generated from Power Tools. Majority of the companies had recorded a boost in the portable power tools segments such as Bosch. A vital reason for the increased revenue of India power tools market was witnessed owing to the construction industry.Sales of Chisels and drill bit have been observed to be a repeated business in the market. The purchasers buy power tools generally for a longer term depending upon the use of the machinery; however the consumables are required after every interval since they wear off with the usage. The utilization of consumables also depends on the grade of concrete used; higher grade of concrete will force consumers to use high power tools.The price of electric power tools was lower than other categories of power tools owing to low cost of production. This resulted in an increase in the number of units sold in the last five years. Additionally, high demand of such tools in construction, manufacturing, metal and other industries augmented the demand for the power tools in the country. The major players producing these products include Bosch, Hilti, Makita, FEIN and others.An important reason for a large proportion of revenue generated by pneumatic tools is that a substantial number of tools like grinders, hammers, stapling guns and others are present in this category. Hydraulic tools delivered the most power and torque, operate at very low temperatures, can be used for underwater work and usually have a high lifespan requiring low maintenance.It has been observed that people have been shifting their preferences to the Powder Actuated/ Gas Actuated Tools such as nailing guns owing to the time saved by these tools in the industrial processes.These tools are mostly used in construction and manufacturing spaces to join materials to hard substances such as concrete or steel. These tools rely on a controlled explosion created by small chemical propellant charge.For more information on the market research report please refer to the below link:Ken Research is a Global aggregator and publisher of Market intelligence research reports, equity reports, data base directories and economy reports. Our market research reports provides market sizing analysis, insights on promising industry segments, competition, future outlook and growth drivers in the space. The company is engaged in data analytics and aids clients in due-diligence, product expansion, plant setup, acquisition intelligence to all the other gamut of objectives through our research focus.KEN RESEARCH PVT. LTD. 27A, TOWER B-2, SPAZE I TECH BUSINESS PARK, SOHNA ROAD, SECTOR 49GURGAON, HARYANA - 122001, INDIA
Food Coating Ingredients Market Rising Due to Demand for Processed Food

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Global Food Coating Ingredients Market: OverviewFood coatings play an important role in the processed food industry. Coatings can be applied to various food products to enhance or change their texture, taste, or nutritional profile. The process of coating can differ according to the nature of the substrate as well as the food coating ingredient, but primarily consists of mixing the two and allowing them to coalesce naturally. Since the process cannot be determined in precise equations, food coating is considered a soft science in the food processing industry.Food coating ingredients can be liquid or solid, depending upon the particular application, and are used to achieve various purposes. Roughly, the three main steps in the process of applying food coating ingredients are application, adhesion/coalescence, and stabilization. Adhesion consists of ensuring there is sufficient affinity between the substrate and the food coating ingredient. The stabilization process differs according to the food coating ingredient and ensures the coating stays on and stable for a long time.Konw More About Food Coating Ingredients Market At:The report analyzes all aspects of the global food coating ingredients market, providing a comprehensive overview of the competitive and financial dynamics of the global industry. The dominant segments of the global food ingredients market, its key drivers and restraints, and major opportunities in the market in the near future are examined in detail in the report.Rising demand from the processed food market is the primary driver of the global food coating ingredients market. Bakery foods and confectionaries are among the most highly demanded processed foods in the global scenario, along with fried foods and various ready to eat (RTE) foods. The need to keep processed foods flavorful for a long time has augmented the demand for food coating ingredients. Increasing demand for healthy fast food items has also led to demand for nutritious food coating ingredients, propelling the global food coating ingredients market.Global Food Coating Ingredients Market: Key Trends and OpportunitiesThe global food coating ingredients market is expected to be driven in the near future by the rising demand for processed food in emerging regions. The growing urbanization and rising living standards have led to steady growth in the demand for processed foods, which suit the needs of an increasingly mobile and busy workforce. Investing in emerging economies thus remains a major opportunity for players in the global food coating ingredients market.Innovation in the food coating ingredients industry is also expected to be dominated by the demand for antimicrobial coatings. The usage of antimicrobial food coating ingredients is also driven by the presence of supportive regulations in many regions. The increasing attention paid to the safety of processed food is responsible for the legislation of regulations mandating the usage of antimicrobial food coatings in many regions.Global Food Coating Ingredients Market: Regional OverviewEmerging regions hold enormous promise for the global food coating ingredients market. As such, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America are the regional segments with the highest potential for the food coating ingredients market. The rising demand for processed food, especially bakery products, in emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and South Korea is propelling the food coating ingredients market in these regions. In the near future, the Asia Pacific food coating ingredients market is estimated to exhibit a rapid growth rate, with India emerging as a major market for food coating ingredients. Major companies in the global food coating ingredients market are Archer Daniels Midland Company, Tate & Lyle Plc, and Cargill Foods.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:
Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market Can Serve As A Potential Hedge as it is Predicted to Reach US$0.98 bn by 2020

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According to the report, in 2013, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices was worth US$0.38 bn and is anticipated to reach US$0.98 bn by the end of 2020. The market is expected to register a progressive 14.20% CAGR between 2014 and 2020. The rising economic burden on medical clinics and hospitals for patient admission is the major factor propelling the global remote patient monitoring devices market in the forecast period. However, the inadequacy in maintaining the security and privacy of the data is the key factor hampering the growth of this market.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with PDF Brochure at:On the basis of type, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices has been divided into breath monitors, physical activity monitors, heart monitors, hematological monitors, and multi-sign monitors. The growing prevalence of various chronic diseases that need constant monitoring, such as blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders, is driving the global market for monitoring medical devices. In 2013, the heart rate monitors segment led the overall market due to the rising prevalence of cardiac diseases across the globe.On the basis of end-use, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices is classified into ambulatory care centers and home healthcare. In 2013, the ambulatory care center segment held the biggest share in the global remote patient monitoring devices market. The dominance of this segment is due to the growing geriatric population, as aging people are at a greater risk of developing various infections and diseases. Nevertheless, the home healthcare segment is also expected to grow at a fast pace in the forecast period.On the basis of major geographies, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. In terms of revenue generation, the North America region dominates the global remote patient monitoring devices market and is also anticipated to remain in that position throughout the forecast period. The dominance of this region is due to the growing geriatric population and increasing healthcare cost in the U.S., making the remote healthcare monitoring treatment option attractive.In addition, the rising incidence of diabetes in this region is another factor that is anticipated to boost the demand for hematology monitoring devices in the global remote patient monitoring devices market. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific remote patient monitoring devices market is projected to witness rapid growth due to several factors including the increasing costs of healthcare services and the booming medical tourism industry in countries such as Thailand and India.Read the Present Market Status of Remote Patient Monitoring Devices at:Furthermore, the research report analyzes the competitive landscape of the global remote patient monitoring devices market based on key criteria such as company profile, financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments. Some of the key players mentioned in the research report are Honeywell HomMed LLC, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., AMD Global Telemedicine, Covidien plc, Omron Healthcare, Aerotel Medical Systems, Smiths Medical, and Abbott Laboratories.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.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market- Asia Pacific Industry Analysis 2024

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Essential oils are the raw materials derived from botanic sources that are used in the flavor and fragrance industries. The essential oils and oleoresins includes wide range of products that are used primarily as flavors and fragrances, However, essential oils are used as medicines and food supplements to promote good health and also as a feedstock to the chemicals industry.Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market SegmentationEssential oils and oleoresins market are broadly segmented on the basis of product type, application and countries. On the basis of product type essential oils is sub segmented into lavendar, peppermint, bergamot, sandalwood, rosemary, tea tree, chamomile and ylang ylang .Among all the mentioned segments, lavendar segment is anticipated to contribute the maximum market share during the forecast period followed by other segments. Based on the oleoresins type, essential oils and oleoresin market is sub segmented into turmeric, vanilla, herbs, chilies, cinnamon, clove, ginger, pepper, ginger and garlic. Among all the sub-segments of the essential oils and oleoresins market chilies are expected to be the most dominating market sub-segment in terms of market share over the forecast period. After chilies sub-segment pepper is the leading segment in terms of market share followed by other segments. Essential oils and oleoresins market is segmented on the basis of application into beverages, confectionary, savory and nutraceuticals. Of which beverage segment is the leading segment and expected to contribute highest revenue in the coming four to five years. Essential oils and oleoresins market is segmented on the basis of countries as India, Greater China, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand and rest of the Asia Pacific. Among all countries India is the dominating country in the essential oils and oleoresins market, followed by the China owing to the presence of more affluent class population in comparison to other countriesView exclusive Global strategic Business report:Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Region-wise OutlookThe Asia Pacific essential oils and oleoresins market is expected to witness robust growth in the coming years owing the rising preference of consumers in Asia Pacific region for natural ingredients such as pepper and chilies. Among all the countries in Asia Pacific region, India is expected to contribute highest market share, followed by China during the forecast period. Increasing health concern of consumers in developing countries such as India and China is expected to fuel the growth of the Asia Pacific essential oils and oleoresins market. However New Zealand is anticipated to witness consistent growth in the coming four to five years owing to the rising number of health conscious consumers in various countries.Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: DriversEssential oils and oleoresins market is expected to show healthy CAGR in the next four to five years. Major drivers that promotes the growth of essential oils and oleoresins market are increasing health conscious consumers coupled with rising consumer preferences for natural ingredients in the food. Major restraining factor that is expected to hamper the growth of essential oils and oleoresins market in the forthcoming years is the rising prices of the high quality products.Essential Oils and Oleoresins Market: Key PlayersKey players operating in essential oils and oleoresins market are Natures S.A, Indena S.P.A, Frutarom Industries Inc, Alchem International Ltd, Kancor Ingredients Ltd., Symrise A.G, Chr. Hansen A/S, Biomax Life Sciences Limited. Companies operating in essential oils and oleoresins market invest huge resources in order to develop the new products with functional attributes in order to penetrate the new market. In addition to this company follow various pricing strategy in order to further increase its market presence.The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, and inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors, along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.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:
Tara Gum Market - Global Industry Analysis 2024

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Global Tara Gum Market: OverviewCaesalpinia spinosa, which is also known as Tara, is a leguminous tree that is widely found in Peru. Tara gum, which is derived from this tree, finds common usage as a natural food additive. The substance is procured by finely grinding to a powder the endosperm of Caesalpinia spinosa seeds. Thus, tara gum is a powder characterized by white to yellowish color and solubility in hot water. The powder is also soluble in cold water, but only moderately. Chemically, tara gum is composed of polysaccharides. The polysaccharides contained in tara gum have a high galactomannan content.The use of tara gum is boosted by the fact that the Food Chemicals Codex has approved it as an additive for food products. In the food industry, tara gum is added to thicken and stabilize various products. In some regions, the tara gum is also commonly known as Peruvian carob. This is because certain properties of tara gum are close in nature to the properties displayed by carob beans as well as guar gum. Both of the latter are used extensively in various countries.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with PDF Brochure:The demand for tara gum has risen rapidly over the years in the food industry, especially in low-fat and low-calorie beverages and foods. It has become a popular ingredient in blends as well. Besides these applications, the ingredient is also used in making ice cream, cheese, bakery products, sauces and dressings, desserts, yogurt, baby food, and ready soups. All of these varied uses of tara gum will are helping to make it an important ingredient in the F&B industry, which has grown at a significant pace in recent years. Growth will also be fostered by the increasing usage of tara gum in the bakery and confectionary sector.Global Tara Gum Market: SegmentationThe worldwide market for tara gum can be broadly segmented basis applications into the following segments: sauces and condiments (ketchup and mayonnaise, salad dressings, and bakery, which is further segmented into cakes and pastries), processed fruit and vegetables, and dairy. The global tara gum market is likewise segmented basis F&B applications to include the following segments: liquid milk, frozen desserts, water-based flavored drinks, prepared dishes, mixed foods, and sauces and condiments. The cosmetic industry is also an application segment of the tara gum market.Global Tara Gum Market: Drivers and OpportunitiesThe heightened demand for low-cal and low-fat foods is helping intensify the demand for tara gum in every major national market. Another market dynamic that will work in favor of the global tara gum market is the rising guar gum prices, which has created a favorable environment for the global tara gum market. Tara gum has widely been accepted as a close substitute of guar gum. In addition to this factor, the briskly escalating demand for tara gum in the worldwide F&B industry will foster tara gum demand, thus bolstering this markets growth over the forecast period. The demand from the baby food segment will also augur well for the growth of the global tara gum market.Global Tara Gum Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the market can be segmented into: Japan, Asia-Pacific region, North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. The report finds that Latin America accounted for the largest share in this market on account of the abundant availability of raw material required for producing tara gum. The use of tara gum has only recently gained momentum in Asia and the Middle East and Africa. It is expected to grow rapidly in the futurein APAC.Key players identified in the global tara gum market are: Argos Peru SA, TIG corporation, Gomas y Taninos, Molinos Asociados S.A.C., KALYS, and Priya International. These companies are shifting their focus on developing economies to capitalize on the higher opportunities here.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:
Analysis of Payroll And HR Software in Global Industry : Technology, Applications, Growth and Status 2016-2020

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Albany, NY, 6 JAN : The Payroll and HR (Human Resources) departments in organizations coordinate various functions like salary hikes, bonus payments, recruitment, benefit deductions, firing employees and vacation leaves. They also need to maintain data that is confidential in nature like employee information, home addresses, financial data and social security numbers. They need to take care that such confidential information is not accessed by unauthorized companies or individuals. The payroll and HR software is a fully integrated functionality that enables the payroll and HR department to operate, access, manage and process organizations various payroll and HR functions. It also helps decision makers to gain a clearer insight of organizations resources even in turbulent situations. The various modules in the software are customized depending upon the needs of organization and minimizes the amount of time spent on the administration work by the staff members. It helps manage everyday tasks more effectively, reduce duplication in work and make reorganization changes quickly and effectively.Each organization has its own specific needs. The payroll and HR software market can be segmented depending on the size of businesses as small size, medium size and large size organizations. In small businesses, where the employee size is up to 50, every employee plays an important role in contributing to the companys revenue. Even one unproductive employee can have a huge impact on the bottom line of the business organization. For this purpose, payroll and HR department need to be properly managed to avoid any unpredictable circumstances. The payroll and HR management software is customized to cater to various small business functions like performance measurement, time and attendance tracking, and compensations and retirement plans among others. In medium size businesses, the employee size ranges from 50 to 500 employees. The requirements in these organizations are similar to small size businesses but the software is customized to perform additional functions like recruitment which includes hiring and retaining potential talent, and securely streamlining administrative load by simplifying payroll administration. For business organizations with employee size greater than 500, the software is customized to manage risks and contain related costs, production and distribution of pay statements and banking services.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @As the global economy is improving, companies are looking for latest software solutions that can cut down costs of upgrading systems every year. New user interfaces like mobile applications which enable carrying out operations outside office premises and other features like integration with the existing systems in the organization is driving the market for payroll and HR software market. Also, the payroll and HR is a data driven function and the need to create talent analytics for taking talent related decisions and workforce planning is driving the market for payroll and HR software market. Another driver is the ability to provide customized solutions considering the current workforce dynamics. Companies prefer to invest in these customized solutions as these are affordable and improve various functions like hiring and retaining talent. However, challenges like understanding the technical requirements of organizations and integrating various modules of software to perform various functions are some constraints affecting the growth of this market.ResearchMoz 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.ResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States
Emergence of Pressure Relief Devices Market by 2020: Industry Structure & Trends Worldwide:

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As per findings of a new report by Transparency Market Research, the global pressure relief devices market is highly fragmented due to the presence of a large number of regional and international players. However, some of the top players, namely ArjoHuntleigh, Hill-Rom Holdings Inc., and Invacare Corporation are dominant in this market and display a high degree of competitive rivalry amongst themselves. On the other hand, local players compete among themselves for the top spot at the regional level.Obain the Future Market Forecast of Pressure Relief Devices at:Expanding their geographical presence to remain competitive, is one of the key growth strategies that top companies in this market are focused on. For example, ArjoHuntleigh has been engaged in expanding business operations globally to address the medical needs of patients globally. This, in turn, has helped the company to stay competitive in the global pressure relief devices market.Strong customer relations to attain long-term business goals is a key growth model that companies in this market are adopting. A case in point is ArjoHuntleigh, the company is focused on developing strong relations with customers by means of providing customized services.Investment in emerging markets to increase market share is also what key companies in this market are looking upon. For example, Covidien plc has substantially invested in the emerging markets of APAC to leverage the opportunities available in this region.Limited Mobility of Geriatrics Pose a High Risk of Developing Pressure UlcersAn increasing number of obese population worldwide is boosting the growth of the global market for pressure relief devices, points out a TMR analyst. The prevalence of obesity has doubled between 1980 and 2014, according to the World Health Organization. The increasing obese population is displaying an increased demand for pressure relief devices such as mattress overlays and specialty beds to prevent pressure ulcers.The increasing geriatric population is also fuelling demand for pressure relief devices. This is because elderly people have high chances of developing pressure ulcers due to reduced blood flow, damaged nerves, and limited mobility.Unfavorable Reimbursement Policies Adversely Affect Uptake of Pressure Relief DevicesHigh cost of pressure relief devices and unfavorable reimbursement policies for the same are impeding this markets growth. Changes in reimbursement policies for pressure relief devices in recent years have been detrimental to the markets growth. This is because treatment of pressure ulcers is an expensive affair, for which reimbursement is essential for the patient. For example, the price range of an air fluidized therapy bed is from US$15,000 to US$25,000. Moreover, adoption of reimbursement restrictions for pressure ulcers on the part of private insurers, especially in developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico is restraining the markets growth.The global market for pressure relief devices is expected to reach a valuation of US$2.8 bn by 2020. On the basis of device type, low-tech devices led with 86.9% of the overall market in 2013. This segment is expected to display a higher growth rate over its counterpart hi-tech device segment in the coming years. This growth is mainly owing to the advantages of low-tech devices pertaining to prevention of ulcer, easy operability, and cost effectiveness.Read the Current Market Analysis of Pressure Relief Devices at:In 2013, North America stood as the leading market for pressure relief devices. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to display the fastest growth rate in the coming years due to an increasing geriatric population base in this region.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.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Personalized LASIK Surgery Market Outlook 2015-2022

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The new research report on Personalized LASIK Surgery Market offered by DecisionDatabases.com provides Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Till 2022.Get Free Sample Copy @The report on global personalized LASIK surgery market evaluates the growth trends of the industry through historical study and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2015-2022. The market size in terms of revenue (USD MN) is calculated for the study period along with the details of the factors affecting the market growth (drivers and restraints).A glimpse of the major drivers affecting this market is mentioned below:A. Drivers> Growing demand for Laser eye surgeries> Technological advancementsB. Restraints> High cost of LASIK TreatmentFurthermore, the report quantifies the market share held by the major players of the industry and provides an in-depth view of the competitive landscape. This market is classified into different segments with detailed analysis of each with respect to geography for the study period 2015-2022.The comprehensive value chain analysis of the market will assist in attaining better product differentiation, along with detailed understanding of the core competency of each activity involved. The market attractiveness analysis provided in the report aptly measures the potential value of the market providing business strategists with the latest growth opportunities.The report classifies the market into different segments based on type. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Abbott Medical Optics, Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Bausch & Lomb, NIDEK Inc. and Carl Zeiss, Inc. A detailed description of each has been included, with information in terms of H.Q, future capacities, key mergers & acquisitions, financial overview, partnerships, collaborations, new product launches, new product developments and other latest industrial developments.View More about Personalized LASIK Surgery Market Research Report @SEGMENTATIONS IN THE REPORT:1. By Type:> Wavefront guided LASIK> Wavefront optimized LASIK> Topography guided LASIK2. By Geography:> North America (NA)> Europe (EU)> Asia Pacific (APAC)> Latin America (LA)> Middle East & Africa (MEA)Major Table Of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY3. MARKET ANALYSIS4. PERSONALIZED LASIK SURGERY MARKET ANALYSIS BY TYPE5. PERSONALIZED LASIK SURGERY MARKET ANALYSIS BY GEOGRAPHY6. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE OF THE PERSONALIZED LASIK SURGERY COMPANIES7. COMPANY PROFILES OF THE PERSONALIZED LASIK SURGERY INDUSTRYPurchase Complete Global Personalized LASIK Surgery Market Research Report At:DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.Our expert research analysts have been trained to map clients research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.3rd Floor,Fountain chambers,Nanabhai Lane,Fort, Mumbai - 1E-Mail: sales@decisiondatabases.comPhone: +91 99 28 237112Web:
Global Process Oil Market 2016 Chevron Corporation, Avista Oil AG, Phillips 66 Company and Repsol

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Global Process Oil Market 2016 Industry Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Process Oil Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Process Oil market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Process Oil market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Process Oil market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Process Oil market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Process Oil market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Sample Copy of Report @The study on the Global Process Oil market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Process Oil market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Process Oil Industry Overview1.1 Process Oil Definition1.1.1 Process Oil Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Process Oil Classification1.3 Process Oil Application Field1.4 Process Oil Industry Chain Structure1.5 Process Oil Industry Regional Overview1.6 Process Oil Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Process Oil Industry Related Companies Contact InformationInquiry For Buying @About Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Diabetic Nephropathy Market is Expected to Witness Significant Growth of US$ 3,145.9 Million by 2020  PMR Study Report

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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research Global Market Study on Diabetic Nephropathy Market  Asia to Witness Highest Growth by 2020,.The global diabetic nephropathy market was valued at USD 2,262.2 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an expected value of USD 3,145.9 million in 2020.A Sample of this report is available upon request @Diabetic nephropathy is a disease of the kidney glomerulus and one of the most significant complications in terms of mortality and morbidity for patients with diabetes. Globally, the diabetic nephropathy market is witnessing significant growth due to increasing prevalence of diabetes and obesity in different regions of the world. In addition, increasing R&D investments in drug discovery and development and raising awareness about diabetes and kidney-related disorders are also driving the growth of the market. However, stringent regulatory requirements and longer approval time for drugs as well as the lack of comprehensive therapeutic management for diabetic nephropathy are inhibiting the growth of diabetic nephropathy market. The global diabetic nephropathy market is estimated at USD 2,262.2 million in 2014. It is likely to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2014 to 2020 to reach USD 3,145.9 million in 2020.In North America, various government programs are spreading awareness about diabetes and related renal complications. For instance, the National Kidney Disease Education Program, one of the major programs organized by the U.S. government, for increasing awareness about the various kidney diseases. In addition, the number of diabetic patients are also increasing in the region; according to the SciELO Public Health, approximately 35 million people were affected with diabetes mellitus in 2000 and this number is expected to reach 64 million by 2025 in North America.In Europe, rise in healthcare expenditure for diabetes treatment and increasing prevalence of diabetes in the various part of Europe is boosting the growth of the European diabetic nephropathy market. According to IDF, approximately 55.4 million people had diabetes in 2010 and the number is expected to reach 66.5 million by 2030 in Europe. According to the IDF, healthcare expenditure for diabetes treatment was approximately USD 105.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach USD 124.6 billion by 2030 in Europe.Asia represents the fastest growing region in the diabetic nephropathy market due to the rise in a diabetic population in various countries such as Japan and the Southeast Asian countries. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), developing countries, such as India and China, are expected to have the highest number of diabetes mellitus patients compared to developed countries, such as the U.S. and Germany.Request to view Table of content @Sanofi is one of the leading players in the diabetic nephropathy market. Other major players in diabetic nephropathy market include Eli Lilly and Company, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Novartis AG, Pfizer, Inc., Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Inc., Bayer AG, Merck & Co., Inc., Bayer AG and Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc.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:
Psoriasis Treatment Market Worth US$12.1 Billion by 2024; Alarming Rise in Prevalence of Psoriasis to Prompt Drugmakers to Increase Production Capacity

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This report on the Psoriasis Treatment market analyzes the current and future scenario of the global market. Approval of new biologics, increase in access for the treatment in developing market, increase in the number of psoriasis patients, are boosting the growth of the global Psoriasis Treatment market. Increase in the incidence of Psoriasis and skin disorders, and novel pipeline drugs are some of the factors expected to drive the growth of global Psoriasis Treatment market during the forecast period.The Psoriasis Treatment market report comprises an elaborate executive summary, which includes market snapshot that provides information about various segments. It also provides information and data analysis of the global market with respect to the segments based on products, distribution channel, therapy type and geography. A detailed qualitative analysis of drivers and restraints, and opportunities has been provided in the market overview section.Download PDF Brochure of Report -Additionally, the section comprises Porters Five Forces Analysis to help understand the competitive landscape in the market. This section also provides market attractiveness analysis in terms of geography and market share analysis by key players, thus presenting a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario in the global Psoriasis Treatment market.Global Psoriasis Treatment Market - SegmentationIn this report, the market segments have been analyzed based on availability of approved products, cost-effectiveness, and preference for technological systems by physicians and patients. The market size and forecast for each of these segments have been provided for the period from 2014 to 2024, along with their respective CAGRs for the forecast period from 2016 to 2024, considering 2015 as the base year.Based on product type, the market has been segmented into TNF Inhibitors, Vitamin D analogues or its combination, Interleukin Blockers and Others. Interleukin blockers segment is likely to be the most attractive segment in the near future due to its increasing use and its ability to act selectively by targeting the proteins. The segment is expected to grow at a highest CAGR rate during forecast period.Based on Therapy type, the global Psoriasis Treatment market has been segmented into Topical Therapeutic Drugs, Systemic Therapeutic Drugs, Combinations of therapies & others. The market segments have been extensively analyzed based on increase in demand for the therapies, availability of the drug products, and cost of therapy and severity of the disease.Different types of distribution channels are responsible for making the psoriasis treatment available in the market. The distribution channels are Hospital pharmacy, Retail pharmacy and the online sales. Under the distribution channel segment, hospital pharmacy plays a major role followed by retail pharmacy and online sales.Geographically, the global Psoriasis Treatment market has been categorized into five major regions and the key countries in the respective region: North America (U.S. and Canada), Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Rest of Europe), Asia Pacific (India, Japan, China, Australia & New Zealand, and Rest of Asia Pacific), Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, and Rest of Latin America) and Middle East & Africa (South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Rest of Middle East & Africa).Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe report also profiles major players in the global Psoriasis Treatment market based on various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, product portfolio, business strategies, SWOT analysis, and recent developments. Major players profiled in this report include Amgen Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, Novartis AG, Merck & Co., Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Inc., AstraZeneca, AbbVie Inc., LEO Pharma A/S and Biogen.Browse Regional Report -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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Lighted Mirrors Industry 2016 New Products & Market Utilization is led by Floxite, OttLite, Jerdon, IB Mirror

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This report examines the performance of the Lighted Mirrors market at the global and regional levels. The comprehensive overview, clear classifications, precise definitions, and descriptive segmentation help in providing a 360-degree view of the market. The report offers qualitative insights into the competitive landscape of the global Lighted Mirrors market. It focuses on top manufacturers in the market and their shares in different regional segments. Their business operations and financial structures are also reviewed to aid interested market players in coming up with informed market strategies to make the most out of the markets estimated development trajectory.This report studies Lighted Mirrors in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringConairFloxiteJerdonLighted ImageOttLiteOventeVisit to Get a Free Sample Report Copy @The report provides a comprehensive evaluation of the drivers and restraints impacting the growth of the global Lighted Mirrors market. It also includes the opportunities and trends influencing the market. Along with the historical database, the report also mentions the current scenario, which forms an important base to project foreseeable future trends. For the collation of this report, information from a number of press releases, paid databases, presentations, and journals has been taken into account.Every aspect of the global Lighted Mirrors market has been taken into consideration while compiling this study in order to present a comprehensive understanding of the overall market. The report looks into the supply and demand logistics of the global Lighted Mirrors market, including an extensive elaboration upon the upstream raw materials chain and downstream demand chain and import and export statistics. It also delves into the Lighted Mirrors industry, including an overview of the manufacturing chain and the efficiency in the utilization of its production capacity. The report includes market analysis such as market attractiveness, Porters five force analysis, and investment feasibility analysis.Visit to Explore Full Report with TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal Lighted Mirrors Market Research Report 20161 Lighted Mirrors Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Lighted Mirrors1.2 Lighted Mirrors Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Lighted Mirrors by Type in 20151.2.2 Plane mirror1.2.3 Curved mirror1.3 Lighted Mirrors Segment by Application1.3.1 Lighted Mirrors Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Bathroom Use1.3.3 Bedroom Use1.3.4 Dressingroom Use1.3.5 Parlor Use1.3.6 Other1.4 Lighted Mirrors Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Lighted Mirrors (2011-2021)Latest Media Section @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYresearchreports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide Market 2016 Explanation of Industry Applications, Lewis Structure & Chemical Gases

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Carbon Dioxide is a highly descriptive analysis of the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market in a primarily segmented format. The report deals with the various uses and users pertaining to the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market and how the demand and supply charts are expected to look in the coming years. The report takes historic and current market facts and figures and shows market expert interpretations on them. These interpretations can allow the reports user to gain a clearer perspective on the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market and all its dynamics.This report studies sales (consumption) of Carbon Dioxide in Southeast Asia and India market, especially in Thailand, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and India, focuses on top players in these countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions.The industry chain structure of the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market is explained in as much detail as possible. It includes the production statistics and details along with the industry policies that affect them, the efficiency with which the available resources are utilized, the current available production capacities and the rate at which they are utilized. This is followed by details on the import and export cycles within the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market.Visit to Get a Free Sample Report Copy @The cost analysis of the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market as given in the report provides a valuable tool for market players to maximize their profits. With a thorough understanding of each dynamic in the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market and its implications on the markets future, a player can act accordingly.The various tools employed in the reports research and market diagnostics include a SWOT analysis, which is instrumental in understanding the competitive landscape of the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market. The report thus provides a detailed snapshot of the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market in terms of product and/or service applications, but also in terms of the players that provide them. This helps reinforce the primary intention of the report: to provide its users with means to gain a stronger foothold in the Southeast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide market.Visit to Explore Full Report with TOC @Table of ContentsSoutheast Asia and India Carbon Dioxide Market Report 20161 Carbon Dioxide Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Carbon Dioxide1.2 Classification of Carbon Dioxide1.2.1 Liquid Carbon Dioxide1.2.2 Solid Carbon Dioxide1.2.3 Type III1.3 Application of Carbon Dioxide1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 31.4 Carbon Dioxide Market by Countries1.4.1 Indonesia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Thailand Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 Philippines Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Malaysia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Singapore Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 Vietnam Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)Latest Media Section @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYresearchreports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Online Beauty and Personal Care Industry 2021 Beauty Products for Men, Women, Kids : Growth Status & Market Trends

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The research report on global Online Beauty and Personal Care market offers an exact account of the Online Beauty and Personal Care market. The analysts have taken an investigative approach to emphasize on every aspect of the global market. The document provides a comprehensive analysis, which is explained in detail with tables and figures. The report includes thorough definition, classification, and description of the various components of the market.The report opens a discussion about the global Online Beauty and Personal Care market and enables the reader to view the market in through a microscopic perspective. The chapters explain the various applications of the products the global Online Beauty and Personal Care market offers.The researchers have offered an insightful commentary on segments of the global Online Beauty and Personal Care market using a SWOT analysis. This market measurement tool provides an assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats influencing the segments. Through this, the report helps in identifying the drivers and restraints in the overall market.Visit to Get a Free Sample Report Copy @The research report also uses a Porters five forces analysis, which identifies the threat of new entrants, threat of substitute products or services, bargaining power of customers (buyers), bargaining power of suppliers, and intensity of competitive rivalry. Furthermore, the report also have been studied from a social, political, economic, legal, technological, and environmental perspective.The regions identifies the leading players in the global Online Beauty and Personal Care market and state the various business and marketing strategies these companies are likely to use in the coming years to remain dominant. For a 360-degree view of the global Online Beauty and Personal Care market the report includes a recommendations from industry experts. This comprehensive outlook on the Online Beauty and Personal Care market is designed to support readers in formulating fruitful decisions to not just strengthen their position in the global market but also garner a larger share in the years to come.Visit to Explore Full Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Online Beauty and Personal Care1.1 Online Beauty and Personal Care Market Overview1.1.1 Online Beauty and Personal Care Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Online Beauty and Personal Care Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Online Beauty and Personal Care Market by End Users/Application2 Global Online Beauty and Personal Care Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Online Beauty and Personal Care Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in FutureLatest Media Section @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYresearchreports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Regulatory Affairs Outsourcing Market Is Expected To Expand At A Substantial 11.5% CAGR From 2015 To 2023 And Rise To A Valuation Of US$5.7 bn By 2023

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Regulatory Affairs Outsourcing Market (Services - Regulatory Submissions, Clinical Trial Application and Product Registration, Regulatory Writing and Publishing, Regulatory Consulting and Legal Representation and Other Regulatory Affairs) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.This research study analyzes the market for regulatory affairs outsourcing services in terms of revenue (US$ Mn). The stakeholders of this report comprises the clinical research organizations. The global regulatory affairs outsourcing market has been broadly segmented on the basis of services (Regulatory Submissions, Clinical Trial Applications and Product Registrations, Regulatory Writing and Publishing, Regulatory Consulting and Legal Representation and others regulatory affairs, and Geography (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa). Each geographic region is further analyzed at the country level for regulatory affairs outsourcing market. The market for each of these segment has been analyzed on the basis of various market dynamics such as technological advances, its advantages and increasing use of outsourcing by leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn for the period between 2013 and 2023 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2015 to 2023 are provided for all the segments, considering 2014 as the base year.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The regulatory affairs outsourcing market report comprises an elaborate executive summary, which includes a market snapshot that provides information about various segments and sub-segments of the market. The market overview section of the report explores market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the demand and acceptance of outsourcing regulatory affairs activities across the globe. The report provides a detailed industry analysis of the global regulatory affairs outsourcing market with the help of Porters Five Forces model which pose an impact on the sustainability of the companies and value chain analysis. The forces analyzed are bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition. The market attractiveness analysis has been provided in the market overview section in order to elucidate the intensity of competition in the market in different regions across the globe. The competitive scenario between different market players is evaluated through market share analysis in the competitive landscape section of the report. All these factors would help the market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their shares worldwide.A list of recommendations has been provided for new entrants as well as existing market players to assist them in taking strategic initiatives to establish a strong presence in the market.The report also profiles major players in the XPS market on the basis of various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio, and recent developments. Key players in the global regulatory affairs outsourcing market are Quintiles Transnational Corporation, Covance, Inc.(LabCorp), PAREXEL International Corporation, Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC, ICON plc, and WuXi ApptecThe global regulatory affairs outsourcing market is segmented into the following categories:Global Regulatory Affairs Outsourcing Market, by Services- Regulatory Submissions- Clinical Trial Applications and Product Registrations- Regulatory Writing and Publishing- Regulatory Consulting and Legal Representation- Other Regulatory AffairsGlobal Regulatory Affairs Outsourcing Market, by Geography- North America- U.S.- Canada- Europe- U.K.- Germany- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific (APAC)- India- China- Japan- Rest of APAC- Latin America (LATAM)- Brazil- Mexico- Rest of LATAM- Middle East and Africa (MEA)- South Africa- Rest of MEAMake 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 @
Freight Trucking Market: Increase in Productivity and Less Time Consumption without Compromising on Cost Drives the Market

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Freight Trucking Market: OverviewFreight trucking is an extremely important activity in the supply chain market and transportation business. Effective working of freight trucks ensures proper communication between different business processes and brings them together. Freight trucks forms the nerve center of any manufacturing or industrial activities as freight trucks carries raw materials required for business from one place to another. Moreover, freight trucks also help in transportation of finished goods to the respective markets. The efficient movement of freight is acting as a driving factor in the growth of freight trucking market. Freight trucking service is providing more advanced freight solution for the industry due to increased use of modern technology and effective communication.Request a PDF Sample Brochure atQuality of service, reliability and timely delivery of goods along with proper freight management and logistics handling are the key factors on which the service of the freight trucks depends. There is a substantial growth in demand for heavy vehicles including trucks and trailers which acts as a driver for the freight trucking market. Moreover, adoption of latest technology in trucks such as use of hydraulics lifters and GPS navigation systems also drives the market for freight trucking. Moreover, safety in freight operations, reduction in cost and operational efficiency also increase the demand for freight trucks and thus drive the market.Freight Trucking Market: Region-wise InsightAsia-Pacific is the most attractive region for freight trucking market. Increase in infrastructural activities in the Asia-pacific region is mainly driving the freight trucking market as infrastructural development and construction activities requires transportation of equipments and goods from one place to another. In addition, the adoption of latest technology i.e. hydraulics lifters and automated doors used in freight trucks further also drives the freight trucking market in this region. Hydraulics lifters facilitate easy loading of goods in the freight trucks with less human effort. Automated doors act as a vacuum lock ensuring safety of goods and prevent unauthorized access to the valuable items in the trucks.Thus, increase in productivity and less time consumption without compromising on cost drives the market. Escalating demand of HCV (heavy commercial vehicle) in the emerging countries like India and China is also driving the freight trucking market. The North America and Europe market for freight trucking is expected to grow at a steady pace over the forecast period. Steady recovery from the recent economic meltdown is responsible for the growth of business activities and manufacturing operations in North America which is driving the market for freight trucking in the region.Presence of premium truck manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz, DAF, Volvo and Renault is driving the freight trucking market in Europe. The freight trucking market in Europe is mainly driven by quality of service and timely delivery. Thus the market is expected to continue its growth at a steady pace over the forecast period. Europe market faced steep challenge in the recent economic meltdown and is recovering at a steady pace which also in turn increased the demand for freight trucking market due to increase in industrial activities.Freight Trucking Market: Key PlayersGlobal key participants in the industry include UPS, Descartes System Group, DSV, DHL, CEVA Logistics, JDA Software, SNCF Geodis, Manhattan Associates, Kuehne+Nagel Inc, and DB Schenkerand.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:
Latin America Home Healthcare Market is exhibiting a CAGR of 8.7% from 2014 to 2020 - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, Forecast

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Latin America Home Healthcare Market (By Device Types: Diagnostics and Monitoring Devices, Therapeutic Home Healthcare Devices, Mobility Assist Devices and Medical Supplies; By Services: Rehabilitation, Telehealth and Telemedicine, Respiratory Therapy, Infusion Therapy and Unskilled Home Healthcare Services) - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020 " to it's Large Report database.Home healthcare devices and services help the patients to be self-sufficient towards their health. This is been increasingly accepted by the patient population owing to its cost effective nature, less number of visits to hospital and patient comfort. The Latin America home healthcare market has witnessed significant growth in the past due to factors such as increasing number of patients diagnosed with chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiac disorders, respiratory diseases and others. At the same time, economic instability and reimbursement issues related to home healthcare services are the factors restraining the market growth during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:This report provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the Latin America home healthcare market on the basis of device types, services and the major Latin American geographies. In device types segment, the report covers different types of diagnostic and monitoring devices, therapeutic devices, medical supplies and home mobility assist devices that are used by the patients. Diagnostics and monitoring devices segment includes devices such as blood glucose monitors, blood pressure monitors, sleep apnea monitors, pregnancy test kits, pulse oximeters, heart rate monitors, temperature monitors, pedometers and coagulation monitors. Therapeutic devices segment comprises insulin delivery devices, nebulizers, ventilators and CPAP devices, IV equipment and dialysis equipment. The home mobility assist devices segment is further categorized as wheelchairs, cranes and crutches and other mobility assist devices and medical supplies segment includes feeding tubes and syringes. The market size and forecast for each device type has been provided for the period 2012 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compounded annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecast period 2014 to 2020 for each segment.Read All Medical Equipments Market Research Reports @Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction1.1 Report Description1.2 Market Segmentation1.3 Research Methodology1.3.1 Sources1.3.1.1 Secondary Research1.3.1.2 Primary Research1.4 List of AbbreviationsChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1 Market Snapshot: Latin America Home Healthcare Market (2013 & 2020)2.2 Latin America Home Healthcare Market, by Device Types, 2013 (USD Million)2.3 Latin America Home Healthcare Market, by Services, 2013 (USD Million)2.3.1 Comparative Analysis: Latin America Home Healthcare Market, by Geography, 2013 and 2020 (Value %)Chapter 3 Market Overview3.1 Overview3.2 Event Impact Analysis3.3 Market Dynamics3.3.1 Market Drivers3.3.1.1 Rising prevalence of chronic diseases will spur the uptake of home based healthcare services and devices3.3.1.2 Technological advancements and new healthcare services will attract customers3.3.1.3 Changing demographics supports high acceptance of home-based services and medical devices in Latin AmericaAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at:
Global Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) Market to Reach US$5.3 bn by 2020, Propelled by Growth of Healthcare Sector

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) Market in Healthcare (Tags, Readers, Middleware, Printers and Cabinets) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020 " to it's Large Report database.Radiofrequency identification (RFID) is a system based on wireless technology which utilizes radio waves for collecting data from a tag attached to an object, for various purposes like automatic identification and tracking of objects. RFID technology has been applied in various sectors such as retail, supply chain, government, and manufacturing industries. Major applications of RFID technology include assess control and asset tracking. Application of RFID technology in healthcare is rather restricted and accounts for a smaller share in the overall RFID market. This report studies the RFID market exclusively for healthcare applications. Radiofrequency identification (RFID) market in healthcare has been studied from three main perspectives: RFID components, applications and geography.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:RFID components mainly include tags, readers and middleware. RFID printers and cabinets have assisted in expanding the market scope, especially in healthcare. RFID tags and readers market has been further segmented in to active and passive components. Active tags and readers have an internal power source such as battery, while passive components receive power from radio waves emitted by the tag or reader. Passive components are also studied according to frequency at which they operate. The passive RFID tags and readers market has been further segmented into low, high and ultrahigh frequency. Passive RFID technology dominated the RFID market with more than 70% of the market share. Radiofrequency Identification market in healthcare is expensively studied from the point of view of applications. The segments include equipment tracking, people identification and tracking, medical report, sample and blood transfer monitoring, medicine tracking, and supply chain. Increasing incidences of medical devices theft, drug counterfeiting and increasing need of effective supply chain management due to increased patient visits at hospitals are main drivers of the market. From the point of view of geography, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. Each of these geographies is further divided according to application areas, while also giving overall scenario of RFID Components market for each geographical region.Read All Medical Equipments Market Research Reports @Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction1.1 Report Description1.2 Market Segmentation1.3 Research Methodology1.3.1 Secondary Research1.3.2 Primary Research1.4 List of Abbreviations1.5 Assumptions and StipulationsChapter 2 Executive SummaryChapter 3 Global RFID Market in Healthcare, Market Overview3.1 Introduction3.2 Regulatory Scenario3.3 Market Dynamics3.3.1 Drivers3.3.1.1 Effective management of counterfeit drugs through RFID driving the market3.3.1.2 Major Drug Counterfeit Events3.3.1.3 Increased operational efficiency in hospitals favours RFID acceptance3.3.2 Restraints3.3.2.1 Low awareness restraining effective market penetration3.3.2.2 Installed base of barcode systems delaying RFID market growth3.3.3 Opportunities3.3.3.1 Chinese manufacturers offer low cost original equipment manufacturing (OEM) services3.3.3.2 Huge scope for development of immature RFID technology in healthcareAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at:
New Study Reveals Global Digital Music Market with Focus on Live Streaming: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020)

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Digital Music Market with Focus on Live Streaming: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report entitled Global Digital Music Market with Focus on Live Streaming: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020) analyzes the global digital music market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth. It analyzes market by value and market share by sources with focus on streaming music.A detailed overview of streaming music market is also discussed in the report. Streaming music market analysis has been done on the basis of value, volume and market segment. The report also provides an analysis of consumer behavior on the basis of consumer preference, spending nature of consumer, consumer interest in streaming services, consumer listening hours and consumers respond towards top streaming music players.A brief regional analysis of the US and Germany digital music market is also being done in the report. The US is the largest market for digital music globally with the highest revenue. Germany is the largest digital music market within the European region and third largest in the world. The report provides detailed description of the US and Germany on the basis of value, volume and market share by segment.The report also assesses the key opportunities available and summarizes the driving forces that are and will be accountable for growth of the industry. Growth of digital music market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration previous growth outlines, growth drivers and the existing and forthcoming trends.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Furthermore, the report portrayed a competitive landscape of the digital music market with detailed comparison of top market players. Apple music is the market leader with highest revenue and number of paid subscribers in 2015.A brief company profiling of major market players namely Apple Inc., Spotify Limited, Deezer and Pandora Media Inc. has provided in the report on the basis of aspects like business overview, financial overview and business strategies adopted by these companies.Country CoverageThe USGermanyCompany CoverageApple Inc.Spotify LimitedDeezerPandora Media Inc.Executive SummaryMusic market has two major segments: Physical and digital. Physical music market comprises of music in the form of CD or vinyl whereas digital music market composed of audio content that is distributed to the music lovers through internet. Digital sector includes downloads as well as on demand digital streaming. Digital streaming is either subscription based or ad-supported which is free of charge. In ad-supported music, advertiser is liable to pay for the music streaming on behalf of customers. Current music marketplace offers a wide variety of digital options like download, streaming, cloud, music videos and ringtones.The global digital music market is growing tremendously with astonishing growth rates over the past few years and is anticipated to grow further over the forecasted period (2016-2020). Major factors contributing in the growth of the market are rising smartphone penetration globally specially in developing economies, availability of cheap internet services, expansion of streaming format, technological advancements, change in consumer behavior and consumer desire to access latest music etc.In the forecasted period, market will be pushed by increasing number of on- demand consumers, collaboration between music providers with social media platform, rising number of catalog software and blending of streaming music with wearable technology. In spite of high growth, market is still facing certain challenges that are hampering the growth of the market. Challenges encountered by the market are lack of unique services, rampant piracy, legal complexity and intense competition.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Superabsorbent Polymers Market is Expected to Reach USD 8.02 Billion by 2022

Superabsorbent Polymers Market

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Market Research Future published a half cooked research report on Superabsorbent Polymers Market. The global Superabsorbent Polymers market is expected to grow over the CAGR of more than 8.12 % during the period 2016 to 2022.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 100 market data tables and figures spread in 135 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Superabsorbent Polymers Market Information from 2016 to 2022"Market Highlights:Globally, the market for Superabsorbent polymers market is increasing due to various industries such as agriculture, mining, agriculture and others. The growing segment is agriculture due to increase in population and increased demand for food in developing countries are the key factors driving the demand for the m Superabsorbent polymers market.As per analysis, emerging economies like China, U.S and are increasing production with rise in use of Superabsorbent Polymers. APAC has seen as key market player in economy followed by North America, Europe and Row.Request a Sample Copy @Key Player of Superabsorbent Polymers Market: BASF SE Nippon Shokubai Co. Ltd. Evonik Industries AG SDP Global Co. Ltd. Formosa Plastics Corporation, KAO Corporation LG Chem Ltd. SDP Global Co. Ltd. Sumitomo Seika Chemicals Co. Ltd. Songwon Industrial Co. Ltd. Yixing Danson TechnologyRegional Analysis:Asia-Pacific is projected to be the largest market during the forecast periodGeographically, Asia-Pacific is expected to be the largest market for Superabsorbent Polymers accounting more than XX% of the total market. This share is contributed more towards growth of emerging economies, cheap labor cost in APAC and economical material used for production process.Browse full report @Scope of the study:The scope of the study categorizes the Superabsorbent Polymers market as type, and application.By Type Sodium polyacrylate Polyacrylamide copolymer OthersBy Application Health Care & Personal Care Agriculture Industry Mining &Petroleum OthersBrief TOC for Superabsorbent Polymers:1 Executive Summary2 Scope of The Report2.1 Market Definition2.2 Scope of The Study2.2.1 Research Objectives2.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations2.3 Markets Structure3 Market Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Secondary Research3.3 Primary Research3.4 Forecast Model4 Market Landscape4.1 Five Forces Analysis4.1.1 Threat of New Entrants4.1.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.1.3 Threat of substitutes4.1.4 Segment rivalry4.2 Value Chain/Supply Chain of Global Superabsorbent Polymers MarketContinueIntended Audience: Manufacturers and distributors of Superabsorbent Polymers. Suppliers and traders of Superabsorbent Polymers. Government, associations and industrial bodies. Investors and Trade experts. Consulting in chemical experts.Related Report:Global ethylene Market Information By use (Ethylbenzene, Ethylene dichloride, Ethylene oxide, Oligomersolefins/alcohols, Linear alpha-olefins and Linear primary alcohols) by consumption and by source (Hydrocarbon steam cracking,Refinery gases, Ethanol dehydration, Ethylene from coal, Ethylene from natural gas and Plant economics) - Forecast to 2027Know more about this report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Prefilled Syringes Market: Urgent Need to Address Concerns over Needle Stick Injuries a Key Growth Booster, finds TMR

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Becton Dickinson and Company Group plc., Baxter International Inc., Terumo Medical Corporation, and Medtronic are the top four players that dominate over half the prefilled syringes market. Transparency Market Research has noted that the global prefilled syringes market is highly dynamic and competitive and while the nature of the market is consolidated in developed regions owing to the presence of large players, it remains fragmented in most of the emerging markets with many small regional players.The global sales of prefilled syringes amounted to US$3.5 bn in 2015 and is projected to reach US$7.9 bn, expanding at a CAGR of 9.3% over the period of 2016 to 2024. In terms of prefilled syringes consumption, the market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period.Browse Full Market Research of Global Prefilled Syringes Market :Ambulatory Surgical Centers to Show Promising Growth over Forecast PeriodBy application, the vaccines segment dominated the global prefilled syringes market, accounting for a collective share of 34.3% in 2015. The segment is also projected to exhibit a strong growth rate from 2016 to 2024. In terms of percentage share contribution, the polymer-based prefilled syringes segment is expected to continue its lead in the global market through 2024. It will also register the highest growth in the coming years. By distribution channel, the hospitals segment is projected to account for the major share by the end of the forecast period. On the other hand, ambulatory surgical centers are likely to register a high growth rate by 2024.North America dominates the global market, while Asia Pacific is expected to witness strong growth. The U.S. is the largest market for prefilled syringes, accounting for around 35.5% share of the global marketImproving Safety Standards Driving Innovation among Product ManufacturersThe incidence of needle stick injuries has been a cause for concern over the years. According to the World Health Organization, almost two million healthcare professionals suffer from infectious diseases resulting from needle stick injuries each year.Various needle safety devices  such as passive needle guarding caps with a polymer shield and a retractable needle system  as well as advanced technologies  such as advanced barrel technology and multi-chamber syringes  are being developed to cope with this problem, the author of the study finds. Therefore, improving safety standards and technological advancements have been primarily driving the global prefilled syringes market.Get Free Sample Research Report of Global Prefilled Syringes Market :High Costs Associated with Prefilled Syringes Inhibiting widespread AdoptionThere are several factors that pose a severe challenge to the growth of the global prefilled syringes market, the primary one being the high costs associated with temperature controlled packaging required for temperature-sensitive drugs. In order to maintain specified temperatures and conditions throughout the shelf life of a drug, drug manufacturing companies require several complex machineries that need to be maintained regularly, the TMR analyst states. This is a costly affair and as a result, restricts companies from manufacturing prefilled syringes.Other factors inhibiting the market include product recalls due to breakages and leachables, the potential risk of interaction between prefilled syringes and drugs, and the availability of alternative drug delivery methods.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Prefilled Syringes Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2016 - 2024.Global Prefilled Syringes Market  By MaterialGlass based prefilled syringesPolymer based prefilled syringesGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By ApplicationMonoclonal AntibodiesVaccinesOthersGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By Distribution ChannelHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersMail order pharmaciesGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By RegionNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaEuropeGermanyU.KFranceItalySpainRest of EuropeAsia Pacific (APAC)ChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaNew ZealandRest of Asia PacificMiddle East and Africa (MEA)Saudi ArabiaUAERSARest of MEABrowse Press Release of of Global Prefilled Syringes 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. 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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Veterinary Radiography Systems Market Professional Survey Report 2017

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This report studies Global Veterinary Radiography Systems Market 2017, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2011 to 2015, and forecast to 2021.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringCanon U.S.A., Inc.FUJIFILM Holdings America CorporationDiagnostic Imaging SystemsCarestream HealthUnited Radiology Systems, Inc.OzarkImagingTriangle X-Ray CompanySound, a VCA CompanyMerry X-Ray CorporationSedecalDownload Sample this Report:By types, the market can be split intoDigital X-rayAnalog X-rayBy Application, the market can be split intoHospitalsClinicsDiagnostic CentreResearch CentreBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaView Full Report With Complete TOC, List Of Figure and Table:8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Veterinary Radiography Systems8.1 Canon U.S.A., Inc.8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Digital X-ray8.1.2.2 Analog X-ray8.1.3 Canon U.S.A., Inc. 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Canon U.S.A., Inc. 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 FUJIFILM Holdings America Corporation8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Digital X-ray8.2.2.2 Analog X-ray8.2.3 FUJIFILM Holdings America Corporation 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 FUJIFILM Holdings America Corporation 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Diagnostic Imaging Systems8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Digital X-ray8.3.2.2 Analog X-ray8.3.3 Diagnostic Imaging Systems 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Diagnostic Imaging Systems 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 Carestream Health8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Digital X-ray8.4.2.2 Analog X-ray8.4.3 Carestream Health 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 Carestream Health 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 United Radiology Systems, Inc.8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Digital X-ray8.5.2.2 Analog X-ray8.5.3 United Radiology Systems, Inc. 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 United Radiology Systems, Inc. 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 OzarkImaging8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Digital X-ray8.6.2.2 Analog X-ray8.6.3 OzarkImaging 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 OzarkImaging 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 Triangle X-Ray Company8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Digital X-ray8.7.2.2 Analog X-ray8.7.3 Triangle X-Ray Company 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 Triangle X-Ray Company 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Sound, a VCA Company8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Digital X-ray8.8.2.2 Analog X-ray8.8.3 Sound, a VCA Company 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Sound, a VCA Company 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 Merry X-Ray Corporation8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.2.1 Digital X-ray8.9.2.2 Analog X-ray8.9.3 Merry X-Ray Corporation 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 Merry X-Ray Corporation 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 Sedecal8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.2.1 Digital X-ray8.10.2.2 Analog X-ray8.10.3 Sedecal 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.10.4 Sedecal 2015 Veterinary Radiography Systems Business Region Distribution AnalysisTo Purchase this Premium Report:Global QYResearch is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QYResearch holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.Unit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United KingdomContact: +44 20 3239 2407Email: sales@globalqyresearch.comFollow us:Twitter:
Increasing Internet Penetration Creates Promising Opportunities for Healthcare Mobility Solutions Deployment, reports TMR

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The competitive landscape in the healthcare mobility solutions market is highly fragmented due a large number of players. Transparency Market Research has identified McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, and Philips Healthcare as the key players in this market as of 2014. These players have a strong presence across Europe and North America, reports the author of this research report.To increase their geographical reach leading companies are also trying to expand their focus on inorganic expansion. For instance, Cerner Corporation joined hands with Truman Medical Centers (TMC) to collectively work with healthcare information technology to offer better care to patients and improved solutions to the medical fraternity.Browse Full Market Research of Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market :Penetration of Smartphones Encourages Adoption of Healthcare Mobility SolutionsThe incorporation of multiple application platforms in new-age smartphones has made tech savvy users opt for medical attention through their personal digital assistants. The gap between the need of the patients and the medical help is being blurred by mobile applications that have improved response time, clinician decision making, and overall patient care.The strong year-on-year increase in the penetration of smartphones and the accessibility to the Internet has thereby increased the deployment of healthcare mobility solutions. Furthermore, the growing acceptance of healthcare mobile solutions such as enterprise mobility platforms, mobile applications, and mobile devices is adding value to the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare in remote areas.Wireless Technologies Promote Usage of Healthcare SolutionsThe healthcare mobility solutions market is also being fueled by the successful rollout of wireless technologies such as 3G, LTE-A, and LTE. The wide network of these advanced technologies that deliver high-speed, seamless connectivity, and effortless communication has allowed vendors in this market to offer groundbreaking healthcare solutions. The prompt two-way response between the medical professional and patient to save lives has only been possible due to the efficient rollout of LTE and LTE-A. This market will also be driven by the declining nursing staff and the shortage of centers to treat the ever-growing pool of patients.However, developing regions of Latin America and Asia Pacific are expected to be attractive markets for these solutions. The unmet medical needs of patients across China, Brazil, South Africa, and India will not only offer a huge potential for growth to the companies operating in this market but also revolutionize the state of medical care in these regions. The soaring patient pool, increasing number of geriatrics, and the abnormal doctor-to-patient ratio are all expected to drive the demand for IT-enabled healthcare solutions in these regions.Risk of Data Hacking and Identity Theft Prevents Market to Reach Full PotentialThe issues faced in complete acceptance of healthcare mobility solutions are a threat to private information and security breaches. The potential risk of data hacking, identity theft, unauthorized access, and tampering with patient data is making both the medical fraternity as well as the patients skeptical about relying on these solutions.Asia Pacific to Rise at Fastest CAGRAccording to the research report, the global healthcare mobility solutions market was valued at US$20.13 bn in 2014 and is expected to reach US$148.66 bn by the end of 2023. During the forecast period of 2015 and 2023, the overall market will progress at a pace of 25.5% CAGR. The leading segment in the overall market will be mHealth application segment as analysts predict it will expand at a whopping CAGR of 25.6% during the forecast period. Geographically, Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing segment due to a huge population base. This regional segment will grow at an impressive CAGR of 28.3%.The analysis of the market is based on Transparency Market Researchs report, titled Healthcare Mobility Solutions - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015  2023.Key Takeaways:Ability of healthcare mobility solutions to blur gaps between patient and medical fraternity becomes its USP for growthAsia Pacific to register fastest CAGR of 28.3% between 2015 and 2023Global healthcare mobility solutions market to reach US$148.66 bn by of 2023Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market, By Products and ServicesMobile DevicesMobile ApplicationsEnterprise Mobility PlatformsHealthcare Mobility Solutions Market, By ApplicationsEnterprise SolutionsmHealth ApplicationsHealthcare Mobility Solutions Market, By End-usersPayersProvidersPatients (Individuals)Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market, By Geography:North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of the World (Latin America, Middle East, and Africa)Get Free Sample Research Report of Healthcare Mobility Solutions 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. 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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
BFSI A2P SMS Technology Advances, Switzerland Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Forecast 2015 - 2023

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The Switzerland A2P SMS Market for BFSI Industry report provides the analysis of the Switzerland A2P SMS market for BFSI industry for the period of 2013  2023, where in period from 2015 to 2023 is forecast period and 2014 is considered as the base year. The report precisely covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the BFSI A2P SMS market growth over the forecast period. It also highlights the drivers, restraints and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during the said period. The study provides the holistic perspective on the BFSI A2P SMS market growth, throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn) in Switzerland.The market overview section of the report demonstrates the market dynamics and trends such as drivers, restraints and opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of this market. Impact analysis of key trends has also been provided for every driver, restraint and opportunity, in order to give a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario of the market. Moreover, the report provides the overview of various strategies and the winning imperatives of the key players in the Switzerland A2P SMS market for BFSI industry and analyzes their behavior in the prevailing market dynamics.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:The report segments the Switzerland A2P SMS market for BFSI industry, on the basis of applications into pushed content services, customer relationship management (CRM), promotional campaigns, interactive services, and other (inquiry related) services. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross segment analysis for the Switzerland A2P SMS market for BFSI industry and classifies it into various levels, thereby providing valuable insights on macro as well as micro level.GMS, Dialogue Communications Ltd., Infobip Ltd., FORTYTWO Group Ltd., Silverstreet BV, Symsoft AB, Beepsend AB, Ogangi Corporation, Syniverse Technologies, LLC, AMD Telecom S.A., and mBlox, Inc. are some of the few major players operating within the Switzerland A2P SMS market, which have been profiled in this study. Details such as financials, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players has been duly provided as part of company profiling.Below is the list of acronyms used in the report:A2P  Application- to- personCRM  Customer Relationship ManagementOECD  Organization for Economic Cooperation and DevelopmentSDFB  Swiss Design Institute for Banking and FinanceFINMA  Swiss Financial Market Supervisory AuthorityFDPA  Federal Data Protection ActFMIA  Financial Market Infrastructure ActFIDLEG  Swiss Financial Services ActFINIG  Financial Institution LawMarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Glucose Biosensors Market: Industry Facts, Figures, Size, Share and Segment Analysis by 2014-2020

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Biological sensor also called as biosensor device made up of a transducer and biological element, nucleic acid, and antibody or an enzyme. Its biological element acts as a sensor and electrical component is used to detect and transmit the signal. Glucose biosensors transform a biological response into electrical signal and aid in measuring a wide spectrum of analysts together with, bacteria, gases, organic compounds and others. Monitoring blood glucose has been recognized as a helpful tool in managing diabetes. Depending on application, biosensors are recognized as biochips, resonant mirrors, biocomputers, optrodes, glucometers, immunosensors, and chemical canaries.Get a copy of free Sample Report @Diabetes and appropriate glucose biosensors help to maintain blood glucose level which is crucial for the patients distress. As a result, portable forms of self examining glucose biosensors are experiencing high demand. Glucose sensors are referred as small and simply all-encompassing devices that compute glucose levels. The demand for glucose biosensor is rising due to escalating incidences of diabetes worldwide which in turn drives the market growth. Additionally, point of care diagnostics and home care diagnostics further fuel the market of glucose biosensor. Conversely, high rate for the treatment and time-consuming rate for commercialization are the restrain for glucose biosensors market. Technological advancements lead to development of cost effective and smallest and non-interfering glucose biosensors. Several companies, players are concerned in extensive R&D initiatives to build cost-effective, less painful, trustworthy, and more precise products.The report provides a comprehensive view on the glucose biosensors market we have included a detailed value chain analysis. To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters Five Forces model for the glucose biosensors market has also been included. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, wherein product segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness. The report also analyzes several driving and restraining factors and their impact on the market during the forecast period.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @The glucose biosensors market is segmented on the basis of type, applications, end use, regions. Electrochemical, optical, thermal, and piezoelectric and others are the types of glucose biosensors. The electrochemical biosensors are broadly used, in the medical diagnostic glucose monitoring systems. Some major applications of glucose biosensors market are, home diagnostics, point-of-care research labs, environmental monitoring, food industries and biodefense. Several end user segment of glucose biosensors market include homecare diagnostics, hospitals, research institutes, diagnostic laboratories and clinical.Geographically, glucose biosensors market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Increasing victims of diabetes worldwide is the key factor accelerating market growth. Diabetes is probable one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. North America is foremost in the market and is also expected to grow at significant rate during the estimate period. Asia Pacific is also anticipated to exhibit strong growth over the predicted period.Inquire more before buying this report @Some of the key participants in the biosensors market are LifeScan, Abbott, Roche, Animas Corporation, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, AgaMatrix, Hoffman-La Roche and M-Biotech Limited, Bayer and Nova Biomedical Corp.The report segments of glucose biosensors market are as follow:Glucose Biosensors Market: Type Segment AnalysisElectrochemicalOpticalThermalPiezoelectricOthersGlucose Biosensors Market: Application Segment AnalysisHome diagnosticsPoint-of-care research labsEnvironmental monitoringFood industriesBiodefenseGlucose Biosensors Market: End user Segment AnalysisHomecare diagnosticsHospitalsResearch institutesDiagnostic laboratoriesClinical.Glucose Biosensors 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:
Cigars & Cigarillos Market revenue projected to go up by 2016-2024

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Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: OverviewThe dried and fermented tobacco leaves are tightly rolled and bound together to form cigars and cigarillos. These are of varied sizes, thicknesses, and lengths. The cigars are burnt at the end in order to intake tobacco smoke into the mouth. The cigars and cigarillos have become more popular in young and adult people. They are now considered a status symbol. People are ready to pay more money for their varied flavors. However, celebrities became an ideal example for attracting more consumers towards cigars and cigarillos. The smoking trend is gaining popularity among young and adult women too. For instance, Snoop Dogg launched his own tobacco cigar line, a new cigar brandExecutive Branch.Request Free Sample Report @Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: Growth FactorsLower tax on cigar and cigarillos products is expected to fuel market. In addition, consumer acceptance of cigar and cigarillos as a status symbol is further anticipated to boost the market in future. One of the major driving factors is the difference in the in the tax rate. Increasing demand for cigars and cigarillos owing to its growing popularity is anticipated to contribute to the growth of the global market. Conversely, strict government regulation over advertisement and smoking in the public places restraints the market growth.Request for TOC of Report @Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: SegmentationThe global cigars & cigarillos market is segmented on the basis of category as little cigars, cigars, and cigarillos. Of these, cigarillos accounted for the largest category segment due to its availability at low prices. Based on types, the global market is categorized as premium and mass. Of which, premium is the leading segment in the global market. The premium category brand shows robust growth in countries such as China, the U.S., and the UAE. Further, the cigars & cigarillos market is bifurcated on the basis of flavor as fruit, mint, chocolate, and others. The mint flavor contributed for the largest market share. Fruit is expected to dominate the market in the near future.Browse detail report @Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: Regional AnalysisNorth America is the dominating region for cigars & cigarillos market owing to favorable growth opportunities in this region. Asia Pacific is also expected to boost the market growth due to rising popularity in the youth. Furthermore, China is emerging as a demanding region for cigars & cigarillos market. The U.S. is also an emerging market for the cigars and cigarillos having a lower tax for cigarettes compared to others. The cigars and cigarillos are not controlled by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in the U.S. Hence, this region is anticipated to witness growth in the future. Under this act, nearly 20 cigarettes and flavored cigarettes have been banned in the U.S. but are not applicable to cigars and cigarillos; this is expected to propel the global market in future.Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: Competitive PlayersThe major industries operating in the global cigars and cigarillos market include Trendsettah USA, Inc., British American Tobacco, Swisher International, Inc., Altria Group, Inc., Drew Estate LLC, Swedish Match AB, Imperial Brands, Oettinger Davidoff AG, Habanos S.A., Scandinavian Tobacco Group A/S, Altadis, and Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. and Plc.Know more before buying this report @Global Cigars & Cigarillos Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilThe Middle East and 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:
Fish Processing Market will explore robust size & growth during 2016-2024

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Global Fish Processing Market: OverviewThe practice associated with fish and fish products is known as fish processing. The process begins with catching of fish and continues until the finished product is reached to the consumer. This finished product is in the ready-to-eat form. It covers all aquatic organisms under fish processing. Fish processing is mainly followed to protect them from decaying. Fish is extremely perishable food product and hence it needs proper preservation method to extend its shelf life & maintain its nutritional quality. Some dried seafood such as shrimps, dried fish, dried octopus, dried oysters, and many other are gaining popularity among people. Moreover, some of the well-known fish processes used to preserve fish include surimi, curing, salting, drying, and smoking. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and SNV Ghana collaborated to introduce a new fishing technology in order to provide cleaner and healthier fist to meet local as well as international standards.Request Free Sample Report @Global Fish Processing Market: Growth FactorsThis market is mainly driven by health benefits and high nutritional value of the fish and fish products. Growing health concerns and aquaculture industry are contributing for the global non-food processing application market growth. Introduction of modern techniques and motorization of fishing boats are expected to boost the global market in the near future. In addition, government support for fishing activities and technological advancement also fuel the global fish processing market.Global Fish Processing Market: SegmentationThe global fish processing market is segmented on the basis of application as non-food processing application and food processing application. Of these, non-food processing application is the fastest growing application segment in the global market owing to increasing use in the industrial applications. Non-food processing application is further sub-segmented as fertilizers, fish oil, industrial uses, fish meal, and cosmetics. Based on the category, the global market is bifurcated as preserved, frozen, and others. The global market is further divided based on equipment as curing & smoking, slaughtering, deboning, scaling, filleting, skinning, gutting, and others.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global Fish Processing Market: Regional AnalysisEurope is the dominating region in the global fish processing market. It is accompanied with abundant facilities such as boats, advanced machineries, and others which is anticipated to boost the global fish processing market in future. In European countries, cold smoking and hot smoking fish preserving methods are used on large extent. Import for varieties of fish and shrimp from Asian economies will contribute to the global fish processing market growth. Portugal is the fastest growing region in the European country with augmenting demand for sardine, turbot, hake, oysters, clams, and cod. Some European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Denmark have fishery as their main occupation and thus they majorly contribute to the GDP growth. They are leading exporters to the North American and European countries.Global Fish Processing Market: Competitive PlayersMajor players dominating the global fish processing market include Maruha Nichiro Corporation, Norway Pelagic ASA, Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL, High Liner Foods Incorporated, and Pescanova S.A. Other key players influencing the global market are Marine Harvest ASA, Thai Union Frozen Products PLC, Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd., Leroy Seafood Group ASA, and Royal Greenland A/S.Browse detail report @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:
Acoustic Wave Sensor Market Globally to register highest growth by 2024

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Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market: OverviewAn important division of the micro-electromechanical systems is the surface acoustic wave sensors, which work on the principle of modulating surface acoustic waves that sense the physical phenomenon. The sensor converts the electrical signal into mechanical wave; the electrical signal is influenced by the physical activities. The surface acoustic wave devices widely utilize the surface acoustic wave. The surface acoustic wave devices are used as sensors, filters, actuators, and resonators. These devices are very sensitive to the changes in the surface environment but effectively work in gaseous and liquid environment. The sensors in the surface acoustic wave devices can be used to measure different parameters such as pressure, liquid density, temperature, electrical conductivity, liquid viscosity, and others.Request Free Sample Report @Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market: SegmentationThe acoustic wave sensor market is segmented into its sensing parameter, application, type, and regions. On the basis of the sensing parameter, the acoustic wave sensor market is categorized into pressure, torque, viscosity, temperature, mass, humidity, and chemical vapor. Based on the applications, the acoustic wave sensor market is divided into military and aerospace, healthcare, automotive, consumer electronics, and industrial. On the basis of type, the global market is segmented as shear-horizontal surface acoustic wave and Rayleigh surface sensors. The acoustic wave sensors market is geographically diversified into regions Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World.Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market: Growth FactorsThe various industries that are widely using the acoustic wave sensors in their applications are communications, safety monitoring, military, and much more, hence driving the global market growth. The factor that contributes to the acoustic wave sensors market growth is the wide use of the surface acoustic wave devices and the advanced mobile infrastructure that consists of surface acoustic wave components. The acoustic wave sensors are anticipated to replace many conventional products owing to the benefits such as wireless operation, passive nature, and less response time, thus triggering the market growth. The technological developments in the acoustic wave sensors will increase its demand in the automobile, medical, and consumer electronics sector. The development of the Penetration of Micro Electro Mechanical System technology is a major driver for the market growth. Industrial and automobile sectors are the prime application segments that will contribute to the growth of the acoustic wave sensor market. In the automobile industry, the acoustic wave sensors are used for the tire pressure monitoring, emission control, and torque measurement. In the industrial sector, the acoustic wave sensors are used for workplace monitoring, water quality management, and combustion emission monitoring. These all factors are extensively contributing to the overall market growth.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market: Regional AnalysisThe regions that dominate the acoustic wave sensor market are North America and Europe owing to the regulations that are implemented in the automobile industry. Asia Pacific is also growing owing to the emerging economy and the increasing manufacturing industries in countries such as India, China, Japan, and so on. European acoustic wave sensor market is also anticipated to grow owing to the growing applications in the automotive, industrial, healthcare, and consumer electronics sector.Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market: Competitive PlayersSome of the major industries operating in the acoustic wave sensor market include Burkert, Siemens AG, GE Sensing Inc., IntelliSAW Inc., Pro-micron, Mercury United Electronics, RF SAW Inc., Boston Piezo Optics, Sensaction, Transense Technology Plc., Honeywell International Inc., and Electronic Sensor Technology Inc. Other key players in the global market are Heinz H., CTS Corporation, Vectron International Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Panasonic Industrial Solution, NanoTemper Technologies GmbH, Northrop Grumman Inc., and Vectron International Inc.Browse detail report @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:
Building Information Modelling Market Size In Australia, New Zealand And India Industry Analysis, Share, Growth, Trends, And Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Australia, New Zealand and India Building Information Modeling (BIM) Market: Report ScopeThe Building Information Modeling (BIM) market report provides an in-depth analysis of the BIM market for the period 2014  2024, wherein 2015 is the base year and the years 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 BIM market over the forecast period. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the markets growth during the forecast period. The study provides a holistic perspective on market growth in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn), across the countries. The report provides analysis of the BIM market in terms of market estimates and projections for all the segments across country. The report also covers profiles of major players, their growth strategies, various recent developments, and includes market positioning analysis of key players operating in the BIM market.Australia, New Zealand and India Building Information Modeling (BIM) Market: OverviewBuilding information modeling (BIM) is a three-dimensional (3D) graphical presentation of a technical diagram which includes the elevation, plan, and segment of a building. It is a type of digital building system in which the real model of the structure with precise value is digitally constructed. The BIM market is expected to experience high growth in the coming decade owing to factors such as rise in construction activities and government initiatives to lift BIM adoption rate in these countries.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:Australia, New Zealand and India Building Information Modeling (BIM) Market: SegmentationThis research study on the BIM market provides a detailed analysis of various solution types of building information modeling available in the market. Based on solutions, the market is further segmented into software, and professional & consultancy service. The software BIM market is further categorized into on-premise and cloud-based. Based on end-use industry, the BIM market is categorized into water and waste water, rail, transit and aviation, bridges, roads and highways, energy generation facilities, educational institutions and commercial spaces, houses and apartments, factories and warehouses, government buildings, health care infrastructure and dams and others. On the basis of end-users, the market is segmented into engineers, architects, contractors and developers. The report includes a comprehensive coverage of the underlying economic development factors under the key trend analysis section. To depict holistic view of the BIM market, value-chain analysis and ecosystem analysis is included in the report. The section describes current supply chain model and potential impact of forward  backward integration.The report aims to provide a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the BIM market across different countries, which is also provided based on solutions, end-use industries, and the end-users. The report also provides country level key trend analysis for different segmentations included.Australia, New Zealand and India Building Information Modeling (BIM) Market: Competitive DynamicsThe report highlights the competition matrix of the BIM market, positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, historical roadmap, competitors, market position, key recent developments, and segment growth. The matrix has been designed to show comparative strength of players active in the BIM market. The important business strategies adopted by them, their market positioning, and recent developments have also been identified in the research report. Also, distinct representation of market competition in terms of market shares of global and regional/local players has also been included.Under the company profiles section, the report provides an overview of the players operating in the market, the strategies adopted by them to gain competitive advantage, the annual revenue generated by them in the past two or three years, and their relevant business segment revenue. The report also provide market share analysis of the BIM market. The key players profiled in this report include Autodesk Inc., AECOM, Dassault Systemes SA, Beck Technology Ltd., Synchro Software Ltd., Bentley Systems, Inc., Tekla Corporation, Pentagon Solutions Ltd., GRAITEC and Nemetschek AG.Market Segmentation:Building Information Modelling Market Analysis, by SolutionSoftwareOn-premiseCloudProfessional & Consultancy ServiceBuilding Information Modelling Market Analysis, by End-use IndustryWater and Waste WaterBridges, Roads and HighwaysRail, Transit, and AviationEnergy Generation FacilitiesHouses and ApartmentsFactories and WarehousesEducational Institutions and Commercial SpacesGovernment BuildingsHealthcare InfrastructuresDams and OthersBuilding Information Modelling Market Analysis, by End-userEngineersArchitectsContractorsDevelopersBuilding Information Modelling Market Analysis, by CountryAustraliaNew ZealandIndiaMarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global FPSO Market - Top Players Have Busy Year Ahead

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Some of the important players in the global FSPO market are Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd, MODEC, Inc., BW Offshore, SBM Offshore N.V., Bluewater Energy Services B.V., Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., Aker Solutions ASA, Bumi Armada Berhad, Teekay Corporation, and Yinson Holdings Berhad. These top players will have a busy 2016 with projects such as Samsung Heavy Industries constructing Shells Appomattox semisubmersible hull. The topside of this structure will be fabricated in the Gulf Coast at Kiewit in Ingleside, Texas. Meanwhile, Modec is also working on an FSO with Maersk, a collaboration that will procure, engineer, and commission the unit.The types of FPSO vessels sold in the global FPSO market are new-build, converted, and redeployed. Depending on the water depth the vessels are designed to function in ultra-deepwater, deepwater, and shallow water. Geographically, the global FPSO market has a presence in regions such as Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.Get Free PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:Americas to Lead Global FSPO MarketOf all the regions, the Americas held the leading position in the global FPSO market and analysts predict that this region will continue its dominance in the coming years as well. This trend will be the reflection of the high demand for FSPOs with significant developments in oil fields, especially off the shore of Brazil. Furthermore, Southeast Asia and West Africa are also proving to be lucrative markets for FPSOs with increasing deepwater and ultra-deep water offshore activities. Amongst the types of FSPOs in the market, the converted FPSO segment garnered sizeable revenue in 2014. The factors supporting this demand were faster deployment of converted FSPOs and low capital requirement as compared to new-build vessels.The depleting reserves of oil and gas have created an urgent need for exploration of new oil and gas reserves that will cater to the future energy demands. This urgency has created a huge demand for FPSOs amongst oil and gas exploration companies. The demand for FPSOs will also be propelled by their ability to sustain unsparing working conditions and potential to be moored at various locations post projects.The floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit market is a byproduct of the needs of the offshore industry. All throughout 2015, the offshore industry was covered with the miasma of plummeting oil prices, lowering operator expenditures, and delayed projects. Surprisingly, despite this gloomy picture, the demand for FSPO units has been upbeat. According to Transparency Market Research, the global FPSO market was worth US$15.86 bn in 2014 and is anticipated to exhibit a CAGR of 16.2% from 2015 to 2021. This positive outlook will be a result of the growing investments in offshore exploration of oil and gas in deepwater and ultra-deepwater reserves in regions such as Brazil and Africa.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Calcium Carbonate Market to Exceed US$ 28.5 Billion by 2021

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New York, January 06: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Calcium Carbonate Market (GCC and PCC) for Paper, Plastic, Building & Construction and Other Applications - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2021.As per this exploration report, the worldwide calcium carbonate market remained at US$15.6 Billion in 2012. Growing at a CAGR of 7.0% from the 2013-2019 period, the overall business sector is prone to reach US$25 Billion before the end of the estimate period.Download Free Sample Report:Calcium carbonate that is CaCO3 is chemical component found in nature as aragonite and calcite, in pearls, plant ashes, chalk, marble, shells of marine organisms, bones and eggs. Calcium carbonate particularly used for making Portland cement, lime and gastric antacid. It is energetic element in agricultural lime which is created by combine reaction of calcium ions in hard water with carbonate ions. Calcium carbonate is used in paints and coating application and in cement for constructing and building industry. It also used in pharmaceutical and medical industry as a calcium supplement. Calcium carbonate is found all over the world.How Big is the Calcium Carbonate Market?The calcium carbonate market is expected to exceed more than US$ 28.5 Billion by 2021; Growing at a CAGR of more than 7.0% in the given forecast period.The major driving factors of calcium carbonate market are as follows:Growing demand from plastic divisionRising paper industry marketIncreasing demand from construction industry and building industryThe restraining factors of calcium carbonate market are as follows:Undesirable effects of extreme utilization of calcium carbonatesBrowse Full Report here:The calcium carbonate market is segmented on the lines of its product, application and geography. Under application segmentation it covers building and construction, plastic, paper, agriculture and pharmaceutical. The calcium carbonate market is segmented on the lines of its product like precipitated calcium carbonate and ground calcium carbonate. The calcium carbonate market is geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geography market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for calcium carbonate and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2021.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for calcium carbonate4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for various types of coatings with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Excalibar Minerals, Great Lakes Calcium Corp., Imerys, Huber Engineered Materials, Minerals Technologies Inc., Maruo Calcium Co. Ltd., Mississippi Lime Co., Omya Ag, Okutama Kogyo Co.Ltd., Schaefer Kalk GMBH & Co. KG, Solvay S.A., and Shiraishi Kogyo Kaisha Ltd.. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary,business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Calcium Carbonate Market has been segmented as below:By Product Segment AnalysisGround Calcium Carbonate (GCC)Precipitated Calcium Carbonate (PCC)By Application AnalysisPaperPlasticBuilding & ConstructionOthers (Pharmaceutical, agriculture, etc.)By Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificRest of the WorldAbout MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Website:
Smart Concrete Technology for NextGen of Construction and Infrastructure Development; Evolving Industry Trends and key Insights by 2024

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Smart concrete technology is a new alternative method for monitoring the health of reinforced concrete structures. It was developed Dr. Deborah D.L. Chung from State University of New York at Buffalo, U.S. The unique perceived benefit of smart concrete is that it is fortified by carbon fiber, which comprises as much as 0.2% to 0.5% of the volume. It can detect stress or strain in concrete structures before it gets too late. The smart concrete technology has undergone extensive laboratory testing, but is yet to hit the market.It works by adding a small quantity of short carbon fiber to concrete with a conventional concrete mixer to modify the electrical resistance of concrete in response to strain or stress. As a result, the contact between the fiber and cement matrix is impacted when the concrete is deformed or stressed, thereby affecting the volume electrical resistivity of the concrete. The strain is then uncovered by measuring the degree of electrical resistance. Smart concrete is capable of sensing miniscule structural flaws before they become substantial and hence find application in checking the internal condition of structures, particularly after an earthquake.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:In the report, Transparency Market Research provides a detailed analysis of the potential of the global smart concrete market. The report analyzes the different potential market drivers and restraints by gathering inputs from various people having in-depth knowledge of the technology.Global Smart Concrete Market: Trends and OpportunitiesOne factor slated to contribute to the global smart concrete market is the widespread use of concrete as a composite material for various types of structures and its inability to withstand tension, resulting in cracks easily. This necessitates monitoring them for cracks so as to prevent them from getting worse by timely repair. This, in turn, helps to ensure safety and durability of various structures. Other methods to evaluate cracks are by attaching or embedding sensors into structures. Sensors, however, cost more to install. Smart concrete is relatively cheaper. This is another factor that would likely drive its market.The supercharged growth in the smart buildings market in the upcoming years would also help in the quick uptake of smart concrete. This is because in addition to their basic functionality of detecting minor cracks, smart concrete also helps to arrest the progress of cracks in conventional concrete and reinforce them to make them stronger. Further, it takes a lot of force for smart concrete to bend, and it soaks more energy before fracture. Smart concrete can also have application in building highways for they would help in weighting vehicles plying on them. A highway constructed using smart concrete would be able to detect the position, weight, and speed of vehicles.Global Smart Concrete Market: Regional OutlookThe report studies the potential market for smart concrete by segmenting it based upon geography and then attempts to gauge the opportunity in each region. Advanced economies in North America and Europe, which have been at the forefront of adopting latest technologies, would likely emerge as prominent markets for smart concrete. Asia Pacific, powered by densely populated, emerging economies such as China and India where construction activities are being conducted full-throttle, also spells solid potential.Companies Mentioned in ReportTo present an in-depth assessment of the potential competition in the smart concrete market, the report attempts to gauge the strategies that would be adopted by players wanting to foray into the market. Leading companies operating in the global concrete and cement market would likely lap up the opportunity presented by the new technology to further enhance their product offerings.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. 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.Transparency Market ResearchUS Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Curcumin Market to Cross USD 100 Million by 2022

Curcumin Market

https://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/curcumin-market

https://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/curcumin-market

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New York, January 06: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Curcumin Market Analysis By Application (Pharmaceutical, Food, Cosmetics) And Segment Forecasts To 2022Global Curcumin market is anticipated to reach USD 95 million by 2021,Pharmaceutical was leading application segment in global curcumin market accounting over 45% of the total market share in terms of volume.Download Free Sample Report:Curcumin is an anti-inflammatory compound found in turmeric. It has several proven benefits in field of cosmetics, pharmaceutical and others. It is extracted from turmeric. Curcumin is bright yellow in colour and an excellent anti-oxidant, which is also used in food to add flavour and colour to the food. It is extensively used in India.North America is leading market and seem to remain at the peak during the forecasted period. Europe is subsequent market and anticipated to have highest CAGR owing to its increasing demand in food and pharmaceuticals industry. Asia Pacific is anticipated to show healthy growth during the forecast period.Rising demand in industries such as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals is driving the curcumin market worldwide. Increasing awareness of potential health benefits of curcumin among consumers is driving the global market. Availability of cheaper food colours is a restraining factor for this market. Increase in demand for naturally based cosmetic products is trailing the cosmetics industries to use curcumin in skin care products which is a growth factor.The global curcumin market is segmented based on its applications which include food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and others. The market segments in terms of geographical regions include North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (ROW).Browse Full Report:This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for curcumin and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2021.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for curcumin market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for various applications of curcumin with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Biomax Life Sciences Ltd. Synthite Industries Ltd. Hindustan Mint & Agro Products Pvt. Ltd. Arjuna Natural Extracts Ltd. SV Agrofood Star Hi Herbs Pvt. Ltd. Herboveda India Pvt. Ltd. Helmigs Prima Sejahtera PT. Hebei Food Additive Co. Ltd. Tri Rahardja PT. Konark Herbals & Health CareCompany profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Curcumin Market has been segmented as below:By Application Food Cosmetics Pharmaceuticals OthersBy Geography North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the World (ROW)About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:
The number of foreign tourists visiting Istanbul declined to 9.2 million in 2016, a 25.9 percent decrease compared to the previous year, according to data from the Istanbul Culture and Tourism Directorate.

Drop in tourist arrivals in December 2016 is 18% compare to December 2015.

There is an increase in arrivals in 2016 only in January and it was only 0.1%. The highest drop in arrivals recorded in June; -35.2%.

4.441.458 foreign tourists visited Istanbul in the first half of 2016, and 4.762.529 in the second half of the year.

This was the first year-on-year decrease in the number of foreign arrivals to Istanbul since 2000.

The largest number of foreign tourists came from Europe with 3.9 million arrivals and the Middle East with 2.3 million. These were followed by Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America and Oceania.

Germans topped the list by taking 10.9 percent of the share in total arrivals in 2016, followed by Iranians at 7 percent, Saudi Arabians at 5.2 percent, Britons at 4 percent, French tourists at 3.9 percent, Americans at 3.5 percent and Russians at 3.2 percent.

Number of foreign tourist arrivals to Istanbul
Goose Creek, SC (29445)

Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 79F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.
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The Garage Church in Hot Springs provides a number of services for ex-offenders and inmates.

Lori Donnors drug addiction led her to go in and out of jail for several years. But during a stay at a womens shelter three years ago, she completed a faith-based program called Getting Ahead While Getting Out, designed to lower recidivism.

The course, taught by The Garage Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in partnership with Cooperative Christian Ministries and Clinic, totally transformed her.

Today, Im 31 months clean and sober, Donnor says. I walked in darkness for 30 years. I have healed.

She says the program helped her get out of debt and surrender her life to Christ. She now gives testimonies about her experience. Donnor repeatedly tried to get clean before taking the course but felt the holes in her life were too deep to climb out of, she says.

With Getting Ahead, she learned to investigate her strengths and weaknesses and develop an action plan to stick to her goals, she says.

The Garage Church offers that course and several others, including anger and financial management, parenting, adult literacy and Bible studies, to ex-offenders and current inmates.

The church stepped up its outreach to convicts after a member made a mistake that landed him behind bars, Pastor Mike Prince says. Rather than abandon the man, Prince contacted jail officials about teaching inmates to make better choices.

The jail was very interested in us coming in and teaching our faith-based [programs], Prince says.

Area churches have offered their support, and Prince says theres no shortage of success stories. The church member who wound up in jail, for example, now serves in the praise band. An atheist inmate just became a believer, and the church, with an average weekend attendance of 50, recently baptized an ex-offender.

Prince never intended to launch an offender ministry but appreciates the results.

I had this great plan to come to Hot Springs and plant a church, he says. What I had to learn is just be open to the doors that God opens.

Find more ways to serve your community 
Here's A Preview Of 2017's Hottest Abortion Restrictions, Which Are A Pain In The Ass And Serve No Actual Purpose

By Kylie Cheung | Politics | January 6, 2017 |

Its not as if we didnt know prior to the last few months of 2016 that Republican state lawmakers get off on screwing women over, but the sharp spike in abortion restrictions either floated or passed in states like Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, and others recently reveals that the election of Donald Trump has certainly emboldened them. And what else should we have expected from a man whos previously considered punishing women for having abortions, and chose as his veep a man who long[s] for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history.

And, unfortunately, the final months of 2016 were really just a preview of whats in store for the year to come:

20-week and D&E bans



Emboldened Republicans in Kentucky are pushing 20-week abortion ban https://t.co/N4B8De994v pic.twitter.com/5ZWIvXRCA9  HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) January 5, 2017

In the state of Ohio last month, the Heartbeat bill, which banned abortions at six-week gestation, aka before many pregnant women will even realize theyre pregnant, so, in effect, banning abortion as a whole, was what made headlines. But while Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoed this, he approved an unconstitutional ban on abortions at 20-weeks gestation

Unconstitutional, of course, because Roe v. Wade clearly protects the human right to an abortion prior to fetal viability. And while fetal viability varies, tending to range from as early as 22 weeks to as late as 25 weeks, this is clearly a matter we should leave to doctors and women rather than predominantly male lawmakers. What a lovely message to send to women everywhere, that their autonomy over their bodies as incontrovertibly living human beings is less important than protecting a cluster of fetal tissue!

In the last year, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia all moved to ban dilation and evacuation (D&E), known by abortion opponents by the morbid title, partial-birth abortions. D&E procedures take place in the second trimester beginning at 12 weeks, so bans on D&E procedures are technically bans on abortion at 12 weeks.

Unfortunately, in 2017, expect bans like these in states including Kentucky and Virginia, where similar bills are about to be proposed in their legislatures.

Fetal burial/cremation requirements



Judge Sam Sparks extended his injunction against the practice by delaying his final decision another three weeks. https://t.co/QVSNoUSFkr  Dallas Observer (@Dallas_Observer) January 5, 2017

Did someone say send a message to women that their autonomy over their bodies as incontrovertibly living human beings is less important than protecting a cluster of fetal tissue? Because last month, Texas certainly heard you, passing a law requiring aborted fetuses to be buried or cremated at the expense of the women who had abortions. The policy, signed off on by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, did not distinguish between stages of gestation, and would have cost women who had abortions an additional $2,000 out of pocket , because apparently protecting religious liberty, as Republicans call it, means charging women literal thousands so as to not offend the fundamentalist beliefs of others.

While the law was soon temporarily struck down by a federal judge, as was the case in Indiana and Louisiana when they passed similar laws earlier this year, the Huffington Post notes that their ultimate fates have yet to be decided in the courts.

On top of all the things that make fetal burial requirements probably the most problematic line of attack on abortion rights, dont even get me started on just how dangerous it is to represent aborted fetuses as slain human beings who need funerals, with women and doctors as their murderers. Its literally a recipe for extremists like 2015s Robert Dear to embrace anti-choice vigilante justice.

Overturning Roe v. Wade



#Pence's state warmup: Total abortion ban, "Protection at Conception," proposed in Indiana https://t.co/bPAmvM0MCq  Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) November 27, 2016

How likely are such attempts within state legislatures to be successful? Not likely at all, really, because, hey, the Constitution is indeed a thing! But the Indiana state legislature is slated to consider a bill to sweepingly ban abortion and the way things are going, its entirely possible they could set off a trend.

If history shows us anything, its that whether or not its legal or safe, abortion is going to keep happening; a woman seeking an abortion doesnt *want* it like she wants a candy bar or Gucci handbag, she *needs* it. So what are anti-choice lawmakers ACTUALLY hoping to accomplish, knowing full well that banning abortion isnt going to prevent it, and knowing that, as the state of Texas has shown, not even piling on endless, medically unnecessary restrictions stops abortions from happening, and simply ups rates of self-induced and out-of-state abortions?

Whatever the legal or financial obstacles, women who need abortions will find a way to have them; said legal and financial obstacles really just serve to stigmatize and render the process of getting an abortion more costly and often more dangerous, but bear almost no effect on the rate at which they occur. (The real way to reduce the rate of abortions? Invest in contraception, aka maybe not defund Planned Parenthood!). On some level, anti-choice lawmakers must know this fact and actively choose to ignore it, in which case its time for them to cut the bullshit, quit waving the flag of baby-saving moral superiority, and just admit their real, singular mission is to stand in the way of womens human rights. It really is that simple.

Because for all the fuss they make about the sanctity of life and motherhood, I dont see them doing much to fight childhood poverty/hunger or pregnancy discrimination, protect healthcare, or at the very least fight for paid family leave. Nope, none of that.




BLOOMINGTON  The 35-year-old story of HIV and AIDS is not over but it's brighter.

"It's exciting seeing the light at the end of the tunnel," said Melissa Graven, registered nurse and communicable disease supervisor with the McLean County Health Department.

"HIV is not over," observed Bruce Lang, a longtime McLean County HIV/AIDS awareness advocate. "I can see the light but it's a long way off."

More responsible behavior and better medicines  including a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP, a daily pill that can help to reduce the risk of HIV)  are contributing to fewer people dying of HIV complications and more people living with HIV as a chronic disease.

A recently released report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that HIV diagnoses have decreased among women and men and among African-Americans, Latinos and white people.

As people with HIV live longer, the number of people in the United States living with HIV reached an all-time high of 955,081 at the end of 2014, the report said.

But HIV prevalence is rising among people ages 25 through 29 and the number of diagnoses attributed to male-to-male sexual contact remained stable, the report said.

"The declines seen in this report suggest that national HIV prevention efforts are paying off, while signaling the urgent need for intensified prevention among young people and men who have sex with men," Eugene McCray, director of CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, said in a prepared statement.

In addition, the heroin epidemic may result in an increase in people getting HIV by using unclean needles.

"The prescription opioid epidemic and increases in heroin use may threaten this (HIV prevention) success," said a CDC report.

"Heroin might be the biggest problem we have in the immediate future," said Ronald Frazier, another longtime McLean County HIV/AIDS awareness advocate.

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) attacks white blood cells that protect against illness and can lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), a disease that weakens the immune system so the body can't fight off potentially fatal infections.

The first AIDS cases were reported in the United States in 1981.

HIV is found in the blood, semen and vaginal secretions of infected people and may be spread by having vaginal, anal or oral sex with an HIV-infected person; by sharing needles or injection equipment with an infectious person; or by an HIV-infected woman to her baby during pregnancy or when breastfeeding.

In the early years, thousands of people died of AIDS. How many died in McLean County is unknown.

"In the early days, people weren't open about it so they (families) put anything out there" about cause of death, Lang said. Of course, many people died of complications  such as cancer or pneumonia  because their immune system had been weakened.

Even though responsible behavior and better meds mean more people are living with HIV, "people are still dying of related causes," said Lang, who said an acquaintance died of HIV complications last year.

Lang  former president of the McLean County AIDS Task Force, which provided services for 28 years until the end of 2014  estimated that 125 to 200 people in McLean County are living with HIV or AIDS.

Among them is Frazier, who tested HIV-positive in the early 90s and concluded that he had been infected several years earlier as a result of anonymous sex. In the 1980s, gay relationships were more covert because gays were discriminated against, he said.

Advances in treatment mean that Frazier is down to one daily pill, Atripla, which combines three medicines that keep HIV from mutating.

Frazier was hospitalized for a week during summer 2015 with viral meningitis and said his HIV was a contributing factor along with exhaustion and dehydration.

"But that was the first time I'd gotten really sick and have been doing great since then," he said.

"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I get plenty of exercise, I keep stress to a minimum, I eat properly  all the things anyone should do to take care of themselves," Frazier said.

"HIV is kind of below the radar," Frazier said. He may represent that. While he was active with the Advocacy Council for Human Rights and AIDS Task Force several years ago, he now keeps a lower profile, focusing on family and work.

"When you have had it for as long as I have, you just deal with it as a chronic illness," Frazier said.

People being open about their sexual orientation can only decrease the risk of HIV and AIDS, Lang and Frazier said.

"If you are in a personal situation and if you are authentic, you will make better choices because you will feel better about yourself," Lang said. "Being open about who you are can only make you safer, help your self esteem and help society."

"When people are open and brave, they are more likely to have better judgement," Frazier said. "Anyone who lives in fear and closeted makes bad choices."

Frazier also believes that marriage equality contributes to safer sex. "It allows for the growth of stable, open relationships. That's good for all sorts of things, including reducing the risk of promiscuous sex, which reduces the risk of sexually transmitted diseases."

McLean County Health Department has been providing HIV testing, counseling and referral services for 30 years. Planned Parenthood of Illinois also provides prevention, screening, education and referrals.

While post-HIV-exposure medicines have been around for years, pre-exposure (PrEP) medicines, such as Truvada, which may be taken daily, help to reduce the risk of HIV among adults who are at risk of getting HIV from sex, said Graven and health department HIV counselor Erin O'Malley.

"PrEP is a big trend in HIV prevention," O'Malley said. Medicaid and some insurance companies cover it but not all doctors are willing to prescribe it, even though its 99 percent effective, she said.

"PrEP doesn't give you license to do anything," Lang said. Taking PrEP should be coupled with engaging in safer sex, including using a condom, he said.

While heroin users should get help quitting, in the meantime, they should reduce their risk of getting and spreading HIV by using clean needles, O'Malley said. Pharmacies can sell up to 10 clean needles to someone without a prescription, Lang said.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is proposing that Illinois criminal courts scrap the cash bond system currently in place. He argues that it disproportionately affects the poor, disparately impacts minority populations and crowds jails.

Dart does not propose an alternative that would ensure or guarantee that the accused would return to court. The monetary incentive compelling compliance with pre-trial release for criminal offenders is eliminated.

Some facts are in order. Judges have the discretion to release folks on their own signature or recognizance. High cash bonds are typically reserved for folks who have previously failed to appear in court, have a history of bond forfeiture and are violent offenders and recidivists.

Cash bonds are utilized as a tool to thwart immediate re-offending and to protect the public. Imagine a drunken drivers immediate release from custody because nothing is holding her? The accused are held in custody until a court sets a bond amount and conditions of release are imposed.

In Cook and downstate counties, posted cash bonds are recycled as restitution to victims. Cash bonds pay court costs and probation servicing fees. That bond money can partially funds courts, police, prosecutors and social services. Users pay, not taxpayers. Currently, when an offender jumps bail or fails to appear in court, posted bond money is forfeited to the county.

In Cook County, and to a lesser extent downstate, bonds are used to employ private attorneys in place of taxpayer-supported public defenders. More public defenders will be needed.

Darts proposal will harm the delivery of justice in Illinois.

Lawrence Necheles, Pontiac
Cher is reportedly starring in Flint, the forthcoming Lifetime movie about the Flint water crisis.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cher, who has been active in helping Flint residents by donating thousands of water bottles, will be playing a woman whose family is affected by the crisis.

Based on Josh Sanburn's "The Toxic Tap" story for Time, the film will explore what led to the crisis and how residents suffered in the aftermath of bureaucratic mismanagement. Cher is also producing the film, alongside executive producers Craig Zadan, Neil Meron and Katie Couric.

And while bringing visibility is important and Cher's activism is commendable, as some are noting, perhaps it would be better to redirect efforts toward solving the actual water crisis first.

So we can find the resources to make a movie about Flint but not the resources to...I don't know...GET FLINT CLEAN WATER? https://t.co/YEp0ulrThJ

 Ko (@Rhyme_Slow) January 6, 2017

[h/t The Hollywood Reporter]



photo by Benjamin Lozovsky/BFA.com


American icon Meryl Streep paid tribute to another legend, Carrie Fisher, at the joint memorial service for Carrie and her equally glistening mother Debbie Reynolds; the famous mother and daughter tragically passed away within a day of each other last week.

The service was held at Fisher's Beverly Hills home, and was planned by her daughter, Billie Lourd, who chose to have the gathering there to "remind her of the festive, star-studded parties that her mother would frequently host."

Streep, who portrayed Fisher's surrogate in Mike Nichols' film adaptation of Carrie's debut novel Postcards From the Edge, sang the late great's favorite tune "Happy Days Are Here Again"--a Depression-era song made famous by Barbra Streisand.

Meryl also treated us to her pipes a la Carrie in Postcards.

Crying.

Header photo via Sam Deitch/BFA.com
Chinese entrepreneur Charles Chen Yidan has set himself apart from all other rich Chinese business tycoons by creating a highly beneficial annual prize for educational institutes. Yidan is the founder and owner of Tencent Inc., the highly popular Internet platform that runs WeChat.

At the age of 45, the Chinese billionaire has decided to enhance educational development globally by giving out much of his wealth yearly to contribute to education and its improvement. Yidan has already donated a hefty sum of $320 million as a grant.

According to the report by Globe And Mail, the organization, Yidan Prize Foundation, will be giving out two monetary awards of $5 million each annually. This award will consist of $2 million in cash and the remaining will be included in the investment on the winner's project. The program will properly start in September when the first winners would receive their prizes.

After conducting meetings with universities and various organizations across the globe, Mr. Yidan and his team have urged them to nominate those who deserve the award. The aim of the generous billionaire is to support and fund the best creations and ideas, as well as to improve education worldwide.

Currently, Canadian universities are being considered for this grant since the country is leading in terms of quality education. In addition, Canada also attracts a lot of Chinese and Asians and is big on its multicultural programs.

As CBC News claims, Yidan is one of the very few billionaire philanthropists in China who is already involved in various educational causes and hopes to help introduce new teaching reforms. He talks about his love for education and how it helps to resolve so many global issues.

Believing that helping others brings virtue to oneself at the end of the day, Yidan says that he appreciates the way America and Europe have numerous corporate donations. Charles Chen Yidan also hopes to improve the educational system in China.
Twenty girls were recently sent home from Ebbsfleet Academy in Kent, by their headteacher, Allison Cowell, for not wearing appropriate school uniforms. Parents have raised their voices over social media sites, criticizing the school for this absurd behavior. However, Cowell explained that the students were warned beforehand and the school has a strict policy regarding the dress code, which must be followed.

The news got viral when the headteacher strictly enforced the policy and asked the girls, who were flashing "too much thigh" by wearing short skirts, to leave the campus. It must be mentioned though that they were offered the alternative to borrow a second-hand skirt from the school. These girls were wearing skirts that were less than 5 centimeters above their knees - going against the dress code.

According to Independent UK, defending her actions and the institute, the headteacher said their school has the same rules as any other school but they are just much more stringent and serious about their policies and their enforcement. These twenty students were sent home on the very first day of the new term.

Discussing the parents' behavior, Allison Cowell told The Daily Mail that the parents were pre-informed last term about this rule. She further explained how the parents who oppose the academy's strict implementation of rules, are just a small, curious minority.

Cowell said the majority of the parents support the academy and its rules, citing the academy's brilliant performance. The results from an inspection team, which recently visited the academy, were also cited to back up her claim that the institution is performing really well in all terms.

Parents showed great outburst on Facebook and other social media sites, arguing that the school should be a safe place for children where they feel welcomed. This action was unjustifiable and silly, according to many parents.

For parents, what do you think about the headteacher's decision of sending home some students because if wearing inappropriate school uniforms? Feel free to express your opinions in the comments section below.
A 3-month-old baby was hospitalized for burns after his mother applied Peppa Pig sunscreen on his skin. She bought the product from Cancer Council Australia, which said that there will be no product recalls despite the incident.

Jessie Swan called out the charity organization on their Facebook page for what happened to her baby. She said that she applied the sunscreen on Thomas because the baby was outdoors but he wasn't under the sun. Yet the SPF+50 sunscreen burned his skin and he had to be treated at the hospital for three days so far.

"This is not sunburn," she wrote on Facebook. "This is a reaction to the cream," she added.

Soon after the public read her post, other parents also shared similar experiences with using the Peppa Pig sunscreen. They said that their children also ended up with burnt skin and realized that it was a reaction to the product.

"I would expect maybe one or two comments about similar reactions, but I'm appalled by the amount of others who have gone through this," Swan further wrote in the comments on Facebook. "This can't be right, a product aimed at children should be gentle and safe."

Some parents, however, pointed out the importance of doing a patch test first before fully utilizing a product meant for the skin, especially with babies who are still sensitive to this. "There's warning labels for a reason people react to many different creams or other cosmetic products," one commenter wrote.

According to Kidspot Australia, the Cancer Council has already gotten in touch with the Swans, but no product recall will be done. The company cited that the Peppa Pig sunscreen has been sold for years and most complaints have been about the packaging, with few reports regarding allergic or chemical reactions.

"Sunscreens in Australia are strictly regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)," Cancer Council said in its statement. "All Cancer Council sunscreens and their ingredients are fully compliant with these regulation."

Sunscreen allergy can happen in two ways, according to Dr. Anna Feldweg, via Everday Health. It can arise from a direct contact with the product or as a contact photoallergy.

"You get the rash where the sunscreen was applied but only once the skin has been exposed to the sun," she said, in explaining the latter type. See a dermatologist to determine what type of sunscreen would be best used if one has allergy tendencies.
Two sisters were on their way to see their dying father but they were kicked out of their Allegiant Air flight. The sisters said that the time cost them to miss their dad's dying moments.

The two sisters were identified as Debbie Hartman and Trisha Baker, who are both residing in DeLand, Florida. They were on their way from an Orlando airport to North Carolina. But Baker said as the plane was preparing to depart, she received a text message saying that her father had only hours to live.

According to Fox News, Baker went to Hartman and tell her about their father's condition, who was in a hospice. Unfortunately, Baker was told to sit down by one of the flight attendants and the incident intensified after Hartman suffered a panic attack.

Baker tried to comfort Hartman but another crew member intervened. Hartman said that her sister told the flight attendant, "You're being very rude. My father is dying, and I'm comforting her." The flight attendants then said that Hartman needs to keep her personal problems off the plane.

Baker then accused the flight attendant of not being compassionate and the captain was informed of the situation. The captain then turned the plane around and docked at a gate. The sisters were escorted from the flight.

The other passengers complained about the handling of the situation and were confused about the decision of the captain to turn the plane around and kick the sisters off of the flight. Some took to YouTube to share their sentiments about the incident and said that the other sister was just consoling her sibling and the decision to kick them off of the flight was inhumane and deplorable.

Hartman said in a statement that she wants them to be punished in some way as what they did was not humane. She said that the crew was "the gate" that kept her from saying goodbye to her father.

Allegiant Air said that they have started an investigation on the matter. They have not given an update about the incident yet, NBC News reported.

The sisters never saw their father alive for the last time. They were only able to book a flight the next day but their father died later the same day that they were kicked out of the flight.
A Kentucky principal admitted that he seized the phones of students in order to get nude photos to be traded online. The principal has since been fired.

Pittsburgh's Action News reported that the principal was identified as 36-year-old Stephen Kyle Goodlett. He was indicted on Wednesday in Louisville. He was charged with possessing and transporting child pornography.

Goodlett worked as the principal of LaRue County High School and he told investigators that he has a pornography addiction. He noted that he searched the confiscated phones of students to look for nude photos.

Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Brady Oberholtzer was the one who interviewed the principal and wrote in the federal complaint the following admission. However, despite his admission, he pleaded not guilty to the 63 counts of state felony child porn charges last month.

According to Chicago Tribune, Goodlett was arrested from his home in October and was fired from his post by the school's superintendent, Sam Sanders, days after the arrest. Sanders called the incident an unprecedented situation while parents and staff said that it was shocking since he has a wife and also has children.

The investigation started in September last year. A 20-year-old old woman, who took nude photos for her boyfriend when she was only 15, found out that the photos were uploaded to a pornography trading website that is based in Russia. She then alerted authorities about the matter and an investigation ensued. An anonymous image board is used to post images online but they were able to track the IP address from where the image was uploaded. It was registered to Goodlett.

After a search warrant was made, 60 child pornography samples were recovered from the devices of Goodlett. Goodlett later admitted in a recorded interview that he transferred photos from the phones of the students to his thumb drive without their knowledge. One of the photos recovered from his devices was that of the woman who complained about her naked pictures being uploaded online.
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DAVENPORT -- Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement would be a mistake, according to people who say they've benefited from or seen the advantages of the law.

At a news conference Thursday in Davenport, a number of people urged Republicans, especially U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, to have a plan in place before gutting the law. The event was organized by Families USA, a Washington, D.C.-based health care group that supports the law.

"My biggest concern is repeal without replacement," said Steve Mielenhausen, principal of Madison Elementary School, who said students learn best when their parents have basic needs, like insurance, in place.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate this week began taking steps to repeal the controversial law. However, it isn't clear yet how they might replace it -- or when.

Shelley Sheehy, a Davenport woman who survived a pulmonary embolism, urged Iowa's two senators to show her an alternative first.

"I want to see it in writing," she said.

Sheehy is worried that the Affordable Care Act's prohibitions against denying coverage because of a pre-existing health condition might be lost when the law is repealed.

Several congressional Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump have said they like that provision, but they have not yet put forward a replacement plan.

Ezra Sidran, a research scientist from Davenport, said Thursday that he could not get insurance coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition in 2013 and was diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening blood disease. He said that he was able to sign up for coverage through the law in 2014 and got treated.

"I am alive today because of the Affordable Care Act," he said.

As the debate plays out, the law's supporters have pointed to what would be lost with a repeal. Families USA, citing an Urban Institute study, said by 2019, 230,000 Iowans would lose coverage under a repeal. The figure is based on the estimated impact from a 2016 Republican bill that President Barack Obama vetoed. It includes people who would lose marketplace subsidies and assumes those who gained coverage due to an expanded Medicaid program would lose it.

The uninsured rate in Iowa has dropped sharply since the insurance marketplaces opened in 2014. In 2015, just 5 percent of Iowans were uninsured, according to federal data. However, the last few years also have seen big spikes in premium costs. On average, premium costs for Affordable Care Act policies  which affect people on the individual market and not those who get coverage through their employers  are up 25 percent across the country this year.

That has caused consternation among people who don't get subsidies to limit the impact from the increases. And Republican critics of the law have focused more on those increases, arguing the law is not working.

In a statement, Grassley responded that people have been hurt by the law and that even Democrats believe it needs fixed.

"Replacing it needs to be done thoughtfully over time, so people will not be left without health care. We need to consider what matters to people and what works for everybody. People want health care choices that they can afford, that they can control and that will provide them with what they need," he said.
In December Patently Apple reported that John McGuinness, chairman of the Oireachtas all-party Finance Committee had written to Apple's CEO inviting him to attend a hearing in January, along with other senior executives. The EU Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, is expected to attend the hearings, to explain the background and rationale behind the Commission's controversial judgement. It's being report today that Apple's CEO surprisingly turned down the invitation.

The Financial Times is reporting today that "Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, has been accused of being 'disrespectful' to Ireland after he turned down an invitation to talk to a committee of MPs investigating the US technology giant's Irish tax arrangements.

In a letter to the committee made public on Thursday, Claire Thwaites, a senior director for government affairs at Apple, said the affair was 'a complex and challenging issue' on which it was engaging with the Irish finance ministry and tax authorities as well as the commission. Given the sensitive nature of the investigation and the timing, we have been advised not to undertake any other direct activities, which could potentially prejudice future outcomes. It is on this basis that we are unable to appear before the committee on this occasion,'" Ms.Thwaites wrote in the letter.

The Financial Times further noted that "The letter sparked criticism from Irish politicians. Pearse Doherty, a member of the finance committee, said he was 'angry and disappointed' at Apple's refusal to meet the MPs and contrasted it with Mr Cook's willingness to appear before the US Senate.

'For him to refuse to attend the committee now is disrespectful to the Irish people,' said Mr Doherty, a Sinn Fein MP. "One would have thought Mr Cook would be keen to put Apple's view before the Irish people.' Sean Sherlock, a Labour MP and committee member, said the refusal to attend the hearing was a 'missed opportunity' by Mr Cook." For more on this, read the full Financial Times report here.

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In August IPWatchdog reported that the Federal Circuit affirmed Apple iPhone patent victory over GPNE. The patents at issue related to a two-way paging system, where the paging devices are capable of not only receiving messages but also sending messages back in response. While Apple had quickly emphasized GPNE's status as a "patent troll" post-trial, it wasn't allowed to use that term during the trial. A few months before the trial began, Koh issued a ruling making clear that Apple wouldn't be allowed to call GPNE a "troll" at trial, which got some attention.

While the case noted above may have ended for the time being, there's been another ongoing patent case in China between GPNE and Apple. The case reportedly began in 2013.

According to yesterday's report by the Shanghai financial newspaper the "National Business Daily," during the past four years, Apple has asked the State Intellectual Property Office of China to reexamine the patents to invalidate them. In September 23, 2014, Apple litigated administrative appeal to the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court. However, the patents are still valid as all the litigation requests from Apple have been rejected.

As of the end of last November, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court has held hearings three times regarding the case. So far, Apple has made no comment on the allegations.

According to the publication, the lawsuit accuses 'computerized communications devices and computerized tablet devices' known as iPhone and iPad manufactured by Apple infringe on patents owned by GPNE and claims indemnity of 900 million yuan (about US$129 million), the highest number of this kind of compensation in the country.

Huang Jingyu, or Gabriel Wong, founder and inventor of the Hawaii-based company told the newspaper that the patent relates to general packet radio service.

As part of the 3G standard for GSM radio frequencies, it allows features such as multimedia messaging, push-to-talk over cellular, always-on Internet access and point-to-point networking.

Huang said the patent has received patent protection rights in 14 countries, including China, USA and Japan.

Before accusing Apple, the company consecutively sued Motorola, Cisco, BlackBerry, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, Sharp, HTC and Huawei in regard to the so called patterns infringements.

Compared to the dispute with Apple, most of the companies have either reached accommodations or signed patent permission agreements.

In the end the report failed to inform us of any firm trial date, though the story coming to light at this time would suggest the time is nearing.

About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.


Today is the feast of the Epiphany. A wonderful celebration within the Christian tradition. And one that I as a Buddhist find worth reflecting on. Back when I was serving as a Unitarian Universalist minister I rarely missed an opportunity to visit this holiday. And, even today I continue to see value in it for all of us.

There are many perspectives on our human condition, and Ive found whatever our particular path might be, we can be enriched by looking at how others engage the great questions of sorrow and healing.

Also, I was raised Christian. And while Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism has proven to be more resonant with how I see the world, and with Zen has what Ive found the most useful of all the worlds spiritual technologies, I still find much of value in my natal tradition. As a kid I loved, just loved the story of the magi, the wise men, the three kings. Its just a great story, and with that story, comes a wonderful carol that perfectly captures its spirit. Who could want more? It really is part of our common Western spiritual inheritance. I would go farther and suggest it is a wonderful variation on the universal wisdom way.

Some years ago my spouse Jan and I were talking about that hymn associated with the feast of the epiphany, We Three Kings, when she shivered and shared her recollection of that year when she was about eleven and the costumes her mother dressed her, her sister and her brother in and the rickety church stage where they stood and held forth with a family rendition of the song, each kid taking a solo part.

It didnt go well. She and her brother looked at their shoes and mumbled the words. Jan recalls choking out her part, Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying./Sealed in the stone-cold tomb, wondering how she got saddled with those lines. On the other hand, her sister, maybe four at the time, discovered she liked the lights, stepping forward and belting her part to the rafters.

I asked Jan if she hated the carol to this day, and she said, nope. And then added, actually, its really kind of wonderful. And, I agree. The carol We Three Kings written in the middle of the nineteenth century by the Episcopal priest John Henry Hopkins, captured my imagination from pretty early on, and has stayed with me I think particularly because of those gifts, gold as the preciousness of life, frankincense as the prayers of the longing heart, and even in my youth, tellingly, compellingly myrrh for anointing the dead.

What are the real gifts of the spiritual life? This is an important question for those of us whove devoted our lives to spiritual quests. Well, I believe, here we are given a hint at what the real treasures are which we find at the heart of our searching. The carol itself has many versions, as, of course does the story itself.

The oldest version of the story of the magi, the three wise men visiting the newborn Jesus, is found in the gospel according to Matthew. It is probably worth noting that it doesnt appear anywhere else in the Bible and whats there is pretty sketchy. Much of what we know as the story is fill in from ensuing years. For instance, perhaps drawing upon the three gifts, which are there from the beginning, in the West three magi are named and given backstories. Matthew actually doesnt even give us a number, much less names. In the Eastern churches there are in fact twelve magi. I prefer keeping it simple and focused, those three, and their haunting gifts.

Etymologically magi is a term associated first with Zoroastrianism and later with astrology, as most raised in the West surrounded by the warm, sometimes warm embrace of the Christian church might recall theres a star in the story. But the part that caught my imagination is how there was some wisdom not necessarily connected to the Jewish or Christian traditions. Even before those doubts about how true the Christian story really was began to creep into my adolescent heart, I noticed this point implicit in the story; wisdom has never been constrained by a single spiritual tradition.

Wisdom. There is a wild and untamable spiritual insight, which erupts from our human hearts. It is called wisdom, often with a capital W. Its found within the tradition, it appears pretty much in all traditions, but is not bound by it, not bound by any specific religion. In the Hebrew scriptures books like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and for me most significantly Job belong to the wisdom tradition. Some argue the first psalm and in the New Testament the Christian letter attributed to James, Jesus brother also belong to wisdom.

A wisdom literature is common to the entire Near East. There are Egyptian versions, Persian versions. Some note that Job, or at least a hypothetical earliest version was adopted into the Hebrew scriptures from elsewhere in the Middle East or Egypt.

So, what is this wild and untamable wisdom? The wisdom perspective, at least as Ive understood it has been that God, or the source, or the Deep, or the One, or, even the unnamable, or the Empty, choose your term for that which binds us all together; is not something beyond us, but something found in our everyday lives, both within and among us. Our lives are the wild. Our connections are the untamable. And heres the irony. This wild and untamable is in fact only found within relationship. It might be dangerous, but it is intimate. And, therefore, wisdom is always practical, grounded, inevitably oriented back to our lived lives. This, I believe, is the great intuition, the mother of all useful spiritualities.

These days, thanks to a number of people, a good example might be Stephen Prospero, author of God is Not One, our attention has been drawn to how its a bit hard to find actual common threads in the worlds religions. The idea of a single mountain and many paths is vigorously challenged. And I think theres truth in this. Robert Aitken Roshi used to say not many paths up that single mountain, but rather many paths and many mountains.

That said, I think there are human things. I think we do have some base line intuitions found as common human experience that are interpreted locally in a multitude of ways. And I suggest the wisdom traditions more closely track these universal intuitions than perhaps any other aspects of the worlds religions. Frankly, I think this wisdom perspective, finding the depths here, and concerned with what that means in the market place, in our homes, in our encounters with each other, makes more sense and ultimately is more compelling than stories of divine interventions from fire and brimstone falling from the sky to the birthing of deities.

If something is really true, natural, arising out of our humanity, there should be many variations on its themes found in many different cultures, ancient, and even modern. One of my favorite definitions from our contemporary culture of a genuine wisdom perspective, of our grounding and its consequences, comes from Albert Einstein. Now, there are variations of what he actually said in this regard, cited here and there. I kind of like that. Wisdom is frequently slippery. Best I can find the first version was reported in the New York Times, quoting a letter he wrote in 1950.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest  a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Okay, thats the set up, the necessary predicate. What follows is Einsteins articulation of the wisdom way. Albert sings to us, Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. He then adds a caution, a necessary modesty we all need to hear. Nobody, Albert reminds us, is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. We are always a part contemplating the whole, the reed carved into a flute, recalling in its haunting melodies the reed bed.

Einsteins wisdom perspective is pretty good. And it informs me. And, as Ive said wisdom is found everywhere. Of course Ive most been informed by Buddhist insights, Buddhist wisdom, which I think has more accurately noticed and explored this current than most religions.

Theres an analogy popular in Buddhist circles, although I think it might in fact have a Sufi origin. Of course its an obvious metaphor for those who have the eyes to see. Should a wave realize it is part of the great ocean  that would be awakening. While as best we can tell a wave never knows its connections, the joy of our condition is that we humans can. For us it is discovering our individual lives, so precious, and passing, fleeting as smoke, are also at the very same time part of the whole, the great mess, all of it. I find it easy to see why we might name that great mess divine.

The critical point of our healing from the wound of separation turns on our understanding how were connected. Lets step away from the image of wave and ocean. Wise not to be caught by one image, by one metaphor, by one analogy. Heres another for the most important thing we can discover about ourselves. We are, each of us, the meeting of many strands in a vast web of relationship. Our finding this as our deepest truth and living from that knowing of our larger intimacy: that is wisdom. Whether we fancy it up with a capital W or not, that is wisdom.

All this echoing those gifts, I suggests, gold as the preciousness of life, frankincense as the prayers of the longing heart, and tellingly, compellingly myrrh for anointing the dead. Our living with these treasures is the way of the wise heart. As the Proverbs sing to us, The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of their lips increasing our learning.

We need to search no farther than our own hearts to find the treasures of the wise. Looking there, here, as Albert and so many others sing to us, Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. This is then tested within our encounters with each other. And proven by the lives we bequest to our children.

The great wisdom way.
Patna: Congress leaders in Patna on Friday held a daylong dharna at Gardanibagh to protest against demonetization move by the Narendra Modi government that put an end on the circulation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes in the nation.

Congress state President and Bihar Education Minister Ashok Kumar Chowdhary leading the charge at the Patna dharna, asked five questions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi including what sort of preparation was done prior to the demonetization, exactly how many people had deposited more than Rs. 2.5 lakh before the demonetization went into effect in November, how much cash was recovered from black money, how much financial loss was incurred as a direct and indirect result of the demonetization, and how many people had died due to sweeping demonetization move across the nation.

Chowdhary, whose party has chosen to align with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on the demonetization issue despite lack of similar support from Janata Dal  U leader and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, said that the entire demonetization drama was to hurt the poor and to help the Prime Minister's rich buddies, namely the Adanis and Ambanis of the country.

"Many of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in Bihar spent crores of rupees in buying properties just days before demonetization was announced. It is clear that these people had advance knowledge of the government's decision that allowed them to get rid of their ill-gotten money as they converted them into assets on fake names," the Congress leader said.

As reported, Congress in Bihar has formed a committee to be led by Brajesh Pandey, the Vice President of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee, to launch statewide agitation to oppose demonetization move by the Prime Minister.
Patna: With the week-long Prakash Utsav nearing end after a highly successful run that saw hundreds of thousands of visitors from all corners of the world, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar enjoyed the heroic actions of mounted horse-riders and Gatka warriors, the traditional Sikh martial artists, at Gandhi Maidan in Patna of Friday.

{gallery}newsimages2017/jan/010617{/gallery}Kumar, sitting with Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, son Nishant Kumar, former DGP of Bihar P K Thakur, former Chief Secretary G S Kang and many others, for more than an hour and a half, sat in the crowd and watched the acrobatic skills of the Punjabi warriors with immense interest.

On the occasion, the Chief Minister was once again honored with traditional Sikh Siropa by a host of Sikh 'Jatthas'.

Meanwhile, visitors, some of whom arrived in the state capital nearly ten days before the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Govind Singh, the 10th guru of the Sikhs, or Prakash Utsav, officially kicked off, started to leave in large numbers for their home towns.

Large crowd was seen outside the Gandhi Maidan where the government had built a sprawling Tent City to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors coming from all parts of the world. Carrying their belongings and making sure their children were with them all the time, families were seen waiting for government-run commuter buses and tempos to go to Patna Junction and the airport to catch their train or flight to go back to their homes.

A random survey of those returning to their homes on Friday summed up their experience in Patna with words like 'unforgettable', 'amazing', 'wonderful', and 'pleasant'.
Patna: It was only a matter of time before the otherwise very successful Prakash Utsav in Patna was given a political color when Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, the mouthpiece of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, slammed Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of violating the 'Mahagathbandhan' tenets by sidelining the RJD in the entire festivity to mark the 350th birth anniversary of Sikh religious leader Guru Govind Singh.

Frustration among the RJD spilled out on Thursday during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was seen sitting with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and other top leaders while Kumar's partner in Bihar government Lalu Prasad Yadav was asked to sit on the floor with the second rung leaders of both parties.

"This was an insult to our leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and the entire RJD. While the Chief Minister himself was sitting with the Prime Minister, the RJD chief, who was instrumental in forming the grand alliance in Bihar, was told to sit on the sheet on the ground," Singh, said to be the voice of Yadav, said.

The former minister further said that the Janata Dal  U leaders were intentionally trying to sideline their RJD counterparts and were taking credit for everything with no mention of the contributions of the RJD ministers.

"People did not like their leader (Lalu Prasad Yadav) treated in such an insulting way. Nitish Kumar should have known that the grand alliance also includes parties other than JD-U and members of the RJD and Congress should have been given equal importance on the stage as the JD-U. This does not bode well for the alliance," Singh said.

It may be recalled that Prime Minister Narendra, while participating in the Prakash Utsav at the Tent City at Patna's Gandhi Maidan on Thursday, had heaped praise on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for imposing ban on alcoholic drinks. He also gave credit to Kumar for making impeccable arrangement for hundreds of thousands of Sikh devotees who arrived in Patna to take part in the Prakash Utsav.
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Iran's First Female Judge and Nobel Laureate Calls for Resignation of Judiciary Chief

01/06/17

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Amid the ongoing wave of life-threatening hunger strikes by political prisoners in Iran, Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi has called on the chief of the country's Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to resign.

"The system is broken and the final responsibility rests with its head," Ebadi, who was Iran's first female judge before being forced to resign after the 1979 Islamic revolution, told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. "Mr. Larijani must accept his incompetence and resign...It's not enough to wait for people to get arrested and start hunger strikes for us to defend political prisoners. We have to think of something more effective."

"The Judiciary is responsible for most of the injustices taking place in Iran because it has lost its independence and turned into an agent of the Intelligence Ministry," she added. "In cases involving political prisoners, it is the interrogators who make decisions for the judges."

Ebadi continued: "Since Larijani became the head of the Judiciary (in 2009), conditions have become worse than before. When [Larijani's predecessor Mahmoud Hashemi] Shahroudi took over the job (in 1999), he said the Judiciary was in ruins. Today those ruins have turned into devastation. Why? Because we see lawyers jailed simply for defending their clients, such as Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Seifzadeh, and Mohammad Oliaifar."

"At the same time, we are witnessing judges engaged in crimes and corruption, but even those who have been proven guilty-such as misters Saeed Mortazavi, Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, Mohammad Moghiseh, and many others-comfortably maintain their posts," she added.





Iran's Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani





Parliament must investigate the record of Larijani, who is "directly responsible" for ongoing rights violations, said the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), which was founded in Iran in 2002 by Ebadi, who was forced into exile in 2009.

"Political and non-political prisoners have often been forced to resort to hunger strikes in order to get the authorities to pay attention to their most basic legal rights," continued the January 4 statement. "Some of them, such as Saeed Shirzad, are displaying their protest in a gruesome way [by sewing his lips]. Where is the Judiciary's just response?"

Ebadi also held centrist President Hassan Rouhani responsible for the "many...wrongful arrests of political activists and prisoners of conscience" in Iran: "If the Judiciary chief is to blame for jailing people, Mr. Rouhani is equally responsible because many people have been prosecuted based on trumped up charges by the Intelligence Ministry."

"Unfortunately, the human rights situation has not improved in the past year, and in fact, it has become a lot worse...The important point is that Iran's Constitution is deficient and defective," Ebadi told the Campaign. "One problem is that all authority has been exclusively granted to one person, the supreme leader (Ali Khamenei), who appoints the Judiciary chief."

"Standing up to injustice is the moral duty of every citizen," she said.

At least three political prisoners are currently on hunger strike in Iran. Imprisoned civil rights activist Arash Sadeghi ended his 71-day strike on January 3 after public pressure, especially on social media, forced the Judiciary to promise a review of his imprisoned wife's case.
Footprints of Prehistoric Industry around Persian Gulf

01/06/17

Source: Iran Daily

Objects unearthed in the historical site of Tom Maroon, in Hormuzgan Province on the Persian Gulf, indicate that the communities inhabiting the region during the Bronze Age were involved in industrial activities such as metalwork, glass-work and pottery.





Persian Empire about 500 B.C.

From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923.

(source: University of Texas Libraries)



Research Institute of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization quoted head of the excavation team Siamak Sarlak, as saying that that archaeologists came across two oval furnaces, welding parts, furnace slag iron and glass pieces during their excavations.



He further noted that among the objects included a glass button-like seal which can be important in analyzing economic relations between Tom Maroon and other regions during that era.



He listed the aims of the current season of excavations as identifying the succeeding cultural eras of the region, drawing up a chronology of the area and defining the role and importance of the area in the shaping cultural relations of communities inhabiting the northern and southern shores of the Persian Gulf in the Bronze Age up to the Islamic era.



Sarlak cited other objectives of the excavations as understanding the instinctive features of the region in developing the cultural outlook of communities residing in the region, particularly in the Bronze Age, conducting research works in cultural-historical area of the Persian Gulf, and collecting fresh documents with the aim of clarifying the historical position and importance of the Persian Gulf.



The third phase of the explorations will be launched by mid-March 2017 given the cultural features of the region and the coordination with the Archeology Institute and Hormuzgan Cultural Heritage Department, he added.



Sarlak pointed out that in the second season of the excavations approximately 7.5 meters of the accumulated layers and cultural objects of the area were surveyed. He added that nine main and two sub-phases of the architecture of the Parthian era were also identified.



Based on the documents obtained in the exploration of Tom Maroon, Sarlak noted that the most important construction material used in the architecture of the Parthian era is large-size adobes using clay mortar.



He said up to three decades ago, there were five satellite mounds around Tom Maroon which have now been completely leveled to the ground and transformed into citrus orchards and currently only a small portion of Tom Soltan Miran, 800 meters from Tom Maroon, remained intact.



The archaeologist stressed that based on the documents obtained in the excavations on the southern slopes of Tom Maroon, four cultural periods, including the ancient Bronze era, the Parthian era, the Sassanid era and the early centuries of the Islamic period have been identified.



He said the Persian Gulf is considered one of the important regions in archaeological studies of Iran and ancient Orient in view of its strategic location.

Archaeological studies conducted in Hormuzgan, the Old Stone Age, the ancient Bronze era, the Parthian, the Sassanid and the Islamic periods (especially the Safavid) show that thriving cultures and civilizations existed in the region.



Tom Maroon is located in Hormuzgan Province in a fertile alluvial plain, known as Komiz Plain, surrounded by low mountains.


DES MOINES  Gov. Terry Branstad says he believes there was more than coincidence, corporate goodwill or random selection behind Amazon.coms decision to begin collecting Iowas sales tax on online purchases effective last Sunday.

The only reason why they would pay sales tax in the state of Iowa  its not out of the goodness of their heart, its that theyre going to have a nexus here, the governor said in an interview on Thursday.

They are a growing company, so I could see a fulfillment center or a distribution center or a data center like the others have done in the future.

The others Branstad was referring to were Facebook, Microsoft and Google  highly sought-after companies that have built facilities in Iowa in recent years.

State Department of Revenue officials say Amazon officials contacted them with notification the Seattle-based giant online retailer would begin to collect Iowa's 6 percent sales tax on purchases beginning Jan. 1.

Amazon will not collect the local-option portion of the sales tax at this time. It already collects sales tax for purchases made by residents of 29 states and the District of Columbia.

Iowa law requires companies with a 'nexus' in the state to collect sales tax for online purchases. That means retailers with a brick-and-mortar presence such as Barnes & Noble, Target and Wal-Mart must collect sales tax on their online orders.

For retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence here, the burden has been on the customer to send the state an equivalent use tax  though few actually do.

Theyll have a legal obligations (to collect sales tax) once they have a nexus, and theyve done this in several other states, Branstad said. Weve called on them and I think theyre really interested.

"Theyre not ready to announce it yet, but the fact that they have made this commitment to start paying sales tax now tells me its something thats imminent.

Amazon officials did not respond to a request for comment.
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AMD spent four years developing its Ryzen microprocessor, and thats the same length of time the company expects it to live on in its ongoing war with Intel in the PC processor space.

Mark Papermaster, AMDs chief technology officer, confirmed the four-year lifespan in a conversation here at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, though he declined to discuss specifics.

AMDs Ryzenthe CPU brand which is the public face of its Zen chip architectureenters at a particularly serendipitous time. Rival Intel just released its mainstream quad-core Kaby Lake microprocessors, and the chips have met with mixed reviews from the tech press. In part, thats because Intels famous tick-tock manufacturing model stuttered, resulting in a third 14nm chip, Kaby Lake, instead of the previously expected two.

AMD, meanwhile, has worked hard developing a fresh approach, aiming and apparently hitting a 40 percent performance improvement target over its previous chip architecture, Excavator. The combination of a relatively mild Intel launch and a radical new architecture has AMD executives and enthusiasts buzzing about true competition in the PC processor market for the first time in years.

With everything riding on Ryzens launch, AMD isnt taking chances. Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of AMDs Computing and Graphics business, told PCWorld that Ryzen chips will be available from day one. Were not going to do a paper launch, he said, referring to a launch where customers have to wait weeks or months for the products to actually arrive. Weve done that before. Were not going to mess with it.

Zen to live on

While Andersons responsible for bringing Ryzen to marketyou dont have any idea how many hours I and my team have spent on this, Anderson saidits Papermaster who has to think of the future. When asked how long Zen would last, compared to Intels two-year tick-tock cadence, Papermaster confirmed the four-year lifespan and tapped the table in front of him: Were not going tick-tock, he said. Zen is going to be tock, tock, tock.

Intels tick-tock cadence has typically meant that it develops a new microarchitecture every two years, with Kaby Lake the exception. Though AMD has never taken the time to formalize it, a three- to four-year lifespan for its own CPU architectures is about average. For example, the K8 series architecture debuted with the Opteron and Athlon 64 in 2003; with 2007s mobile Sempron, the K8 trickled out. The K10 series lasted from about 2007 through 2010.

AMDs last Bulldozer architecture debuted in 2011 and persisted through the Piledriver, Steamroller, and Excavator updates. If Papermasters words are to be taken literally, it seems AMD plans to iteratively improve its Ryzen chips through an additional three generations, about one per year.

What those improvements will be, of course, is anyones guess. But Papermaster said hes a believer in architecture improvements that go beyond simple manufacturing, something hes previously referred to as Moores Law Plus. One of the things AMD has tried to do with the Zen architecture is go wide, increasing the number of instructions that the chip can process, and Zen uses predictive tables and machine learning to improve its ability to ask and process data before its actually needed, known as branch prediction.

Operationally, though, the next step is putting Ryzen in the hands of journalists and customers. AMDs already set the stage for the latter, revealing over a dozen motherboards and 16 performance PCs already committed to Ryzen. The company has also revealed that every Ryzen chip will be overclockable.

On the horizon, of course, lurks Intels 10nm Cannon Lake, most likely due this fall, and the still somewhat mysterious Optane technology. Thats of little concern at AMD, though. For now, the companys focused on releasing Ryzen, and its full speed ahead.
Faraday Futures plans for its factory are as grand as the plans for its car. The 3 million square-foot factory will cost a billion dollars and is scheduled to be up and running in 2018, but a visit to the site of the factory today reveals little more than dirt.

Situated about 30 minutes away from bustle of the Las Vegas strip, the site sits just off Interstate 15, with few neighbors other than energy facilities and a truck stop.

On Tuesday evening, when the company unveiled the first prototype of its FF 91 all-electric vehicle, it showed video of heavy machinery moving earth around. Judging from a visit to the site earlier in the day, it appears thats about all Faraday Future has accomplished there.

Martyn Williams A sign points to way to Faraday Futures factory project at an industrial site in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 3, 2017.

At the entrance to the industrial park are a couple of signs pointing to the location of the factory, apparently code-named Sarah. But looking out over the desert, theres not much to see.
The FBI may have been forced into a misstep when investigating whether Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee  the agency never directly examined the DNC servers that were breached.

Instead, the FBI had to rely on forensic evidence provided by third-party cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the DNC hired to mitigate the breach.

The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed, the agency said on Thursday in a statement.

The incident threatens to spark more skepticism over whether the U.S. properly arrived at its conclusion that Russian cyberspies were responsible for the breach.

The FBI may have all the evidence or not, said John Bambenek, a researcher with Fidelis Cybersecurity. But this case has been handled so unusually, it gives everyone a reason to latch on and cast doubt.

News that the FBI failed to directly examine the hacked servers came on Wednesday, when Buzzfeed reported that a DNC spokesman said that the agency had never requested access.

On Thursday, the FBI contested that claim, saying the denial of access caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.

Its unclear why the DNC allegedly blocked access to the servers. But companies that have been breached are sometimes fearful of exposing sensitive data to outside parties, said Andrei Barysevich, a director at security firm Recorded Future.

The FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton at the time (over her private email server), he said. So its totally possible, the DNC didnt want them involved at any stage of the investigation because of that.

Nor can the FBI force an affected party to turn a server over, Barysevich said. However, the whole incident may raise questions over whether federal agents saw all the evidence related to the breach. CrowdStrike is not obligated to share everything with law enforcement, Barysevich said. That could have potentially interfered with the investigation.

CrowdStrike didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. But it wasnt the only private security firm to examine the breach. Fidelis Cybersecurity was brought in to look at the malware samples, and concluded that suspected elite Russian hackers were behind the intrusion.

Nevertheless, the FBI should have conducted its own review of the hacked servers, Bambenek said. This is a highly political case, and perception matters, he said. In this situation, they need to be building credibility.

Critics might now question if the FBI missed pieces of evidence in its investigation or if U.S. intelligence agencies rushed to blame Russia for the hack.

Youre telling me the law enforcement community didnt actually look at the (server) drives themselves? Are you trying to sow conspiracy theories? Bambenek said.

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have blamed the DNC breach and other high-profile political hacks on the Kremlin attempting to influence last years election. To retaliate, the White House last month expelled Russian diplomats from the U.S. and ordered sanctions against the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama may very well shed more light on why the U.S. believes Russia was involved. He has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to come out with a full report that will detail the Kremlins role in the election-related hacks. A declassified version of that report is scheduled to become public on Monday.

However incoming President Donald Trump remains skeptical that Russia is to blame. His camp previously rejected U.S. intelligence findings on the matter, saying these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Last year the Ehang 184 autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV)what we might call a big-ass dronewas a prototype. This year its a real, flying vehicle, seasoned by 200-plus successful (non-crashing) test flights, and it just may start taking passengers for real in the near future.

The Ehang 184 can accommodate one person weighing up to 220 pounds in its small cabin. The drone has a flying ceiling of 11,500 feet and can fly 30 to 40 miles on a single charge of its electrical battery.

The drone flies itselfthe passenger doesnt have to do anything. Ehang will have its own control centers to track and manage the AAVs in flight. The companys already built its first control center in China, which has granted permission for these drones to fly there. Ehang hopes to sell the AAV or offer it as a service, like a flying Uber.

As for the United States, theres just a bit of red tape standing between the Ehang 184 and any debut here. Okay, maybe a lot of red tape: Ehangs most optimistic prediction is two to three years before you might be able to hail one of these heli-cabs over American soil.
With the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror now officially closed at Disney California Adventure, some local theme park fans continue to insist that Disney is making a mistake in converting the drop tower to a Guardians of the Galaxy-themed ride. (Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! will open sometime this summer.)

Unlike those fans, I think that the new Guardians theme could work on the old Tower of Terror, (which I wrote about in a previous column) and Im looking forward to experiencing the new version of the attractions.

Disneys made plenty of changes to the Disneyland Resort over its 61 years, and, for the most part, the changes end up being for the better. Heck, as much as I adored Adventures Through Inner Space, theres no way I would want that simple old dark ride returned at the expense of losing Star Tours, the attraction which took its place in Tomorrowland.

But no ones perfect, and Disneys no exception. If people want to talk about Disneys mistakes, Im game. I wont count Tower of Terror among them, but I would include the following:

PeopleMover  Disneyland removed this elevated track ride around Tomorrowland in 1995, replacing it with the high-speed Rocket Rods, which lasted a little over two years on the PeopleMovers unbanked tracks before Disney got sick of the breakdowns, gave up and closed the ride. The track remains unused and visible, more than 14 years later. The Florida PeopleMover remains popular, where a slightly different version continues to run above Walt Disney Worlds Tomorrowland. Disneyland might have been better off leaving its PeopleMover alone.

Country Bear Jamboree  This closed at Disneyland in 2001, to make way for the Winnie the Pooh ride. But what is the very English Winnie the Pooh doing next to the Song of the South-themed Splash Mountain? If this were Tokyo Disneylands amazing trackless version of the Pooh ride, I would welcome it, but this copy of Walt Disney Worlds Fantasyland ride puts visitors in slow, bulky ride vehicles that are difficult for the young riders who are its target audience to see out of. Country Bear Jamboree ran three versions of its Audio Animatronics show, including Disneys first holiday overlay with the Country Bear Christmas Special. Its strong characters provided a solid platform upon which Disney could have developed a series of new musical shows, to keep annual passholders happy with fresh attractions in the park at a relatively low cost.

Court of Angels  OK, I get it. Disneyland needed to expand Club 33 to placate the big-spending members who were complaining of cramped quarters in the old private club space above New Orleans Square. And if changing the clubs layout meant changing the location of its entrance, so be it. But Disney didnt have to close the entire Court of Angels to day guests to accommodate that. We could have shared!

Golden Horseshoe Revue  The longest-running stage show in theme park history played for 31 years before its replacement ran another eight years, closing in 1994. Disney brought back a version of the show as a tribute for a few weeks in early 2013, but the response wasnt big enough to persuade Disney to invest in running what would be an expensive live-action show in a theater with extremely limited seating. But instead of writing off the Golden Horseshoe as a fancy but low-traffic counter-service restaurant, Disney could try justifying the expense of the live show by running it as an upcharge dinner theater show, like the wildly popular Hoop Dee Do Musical Revue at Walt Disney World. Id gladly pay to enjoy a fresh version of this Disneyland classic, and I suspect many other Disneyland fans would, too.

Walts Office  Disneyland sent its reproduction of Walt Disneys office to the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida many years ago. But when they removed the office in 2015, Disney returned it to the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank. Thats nice, but many more Disney fans would be able to see this tribute to the man who started it all if it came back to the Main Street Opera House. Yes, that would mean finding a new home for whats left of the Disney Gallery exhibit. How about making this a two-fer, then, and sending the Gallery back to its much larger, original home above Pirates of the Caribbean, reclaiming the Disneyland Dream Suite as public space? Then we can just forget that these mistakes ever happened.

Robert Niles is the founder and editor of ThemeParkInsider.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThemePark.
A Riverside police officer who admitted to drinking beer while off duty, getting into his city-issued car and sending a text message before crashing into a parked semi truck in Temecula, and then leaving the scene without immediately reporting the incident, will not be arrested.

But Chad Milby, who was once a lieutenant, is now a sergeant  one rank lower  assigned to patrol, said Riverside police Lt. Melissa Bartholomew.

Citing privacy regulations, Bartholomew would not say whether Milbys change in rank was a demotion related to the crash. She declined to discuss any details of Milbys discipline, including whether he was suspended or required to pay for the $9,500 damage done to the citys unmarked silver Ford Fusion he was driving.

The Riverside County Sheriffs Department, which provides police services for Temecula, investigated the crash that happened the night of April 29 on Wolf Store Road east of Mahlon Vail Road.

When a deputy questioned Milby at his home later that night, he did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol, the sheriffs incident report said.

Milby was not cited for violating the state Vehicle Code section requiring the use of a hands-free device to text because an officer must witness an infraction to write a ticket, said Deputy Michael Vasquez, a Sheriffs Department spokesman.

The driver of the truck did not want to press hit-and-run charges, Vasquez said, so there was no victim. Some crimes, such as domestic violence, can be prosecuted with the state of California as the victim, Vasquez said, but hit and run is not one of them.

Milby, through a Riverside police spokeswoman, declined to comment for this story.

The deputy who questioned Milby, whose name was redacted from the report provided to The Press-Enterprise, said he was dispatched to a report of a hit and run involving a semi at 10:46 p.m. April 29. Two minutes earlier, the deputy wrote, there was a separate report of a silver car swerving all over the roadway and that the car hit a curb about a mile away.

The deputy examined the semi and found only a scuff on a tire. He also found pieces of the citys car.

Milby reported the crash to the Riverside Police Department, the deputy wrote. The deputy did not specify when. Department policy requires crashes to be promptly reported to a supervisor and a collision report filed with the agency having jurisdiction where the crash occurred.

The policy also prohibits using take-home cars for personal errands beyond a reasonable minor detour, unless approved, and prohibits driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs. It also bans, without permission, drinking any alcohol within four hours before driving.

Milby told the deputy he had drank two beers between 6 and 10 p.m. before the crash.

The deputy contacted Milby in the driveway of his home in Temecula and said he noticed an odor of either cologne or fragrant soap, preventing me from detecting an odor of an alcoholic beverage. But Milby did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol, the deputy wrote.

Milby told the deputy that his airbag deployed when he hit some unknown object, but he did not stop because he did not see any vehicles or injured pedestrians. He did not immediately check for damage to his car. Milby could not explain why he didnt report the crash to the Sheriffs Department.

Milby called the deputy the next day to add that he was responding to a text message from his wife at the time of the crash.

The deputy subsequently talked with a second witness who said he saw a silver car with its hazard lights on and the airbag inflated doing donuts near the site of Milbys crash.

Contact the writer: brokos@scng.com or 951-368-9569
DES MOINES | While conceding some anxiety over his pending deployment to China as Americas next ambassador, Gov. Terry Branstad said he believes he is soon to embark on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Branstad, 70, the longest-serving governor in U.S. history, said in an interview Thursday he is leaving a job he loves as Iowas chief executive, but he felt he couldnt turn down a request from President-elect Donald Trump to serve his country in a key foreign-policy role after getting the blessing of his wife and family members.

When the person who is going to be the president of the highest office in this whole country says I think your knowledge and experience with the Chinese people and with the leaders of China could be helpful to our country in an issue that is extremely important and contentious, well, boy, I think thats a really hard thing to turn down, Branstad said.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I think if I turned this down I would always regret it, he added.

Branstad was in New York last month on a "sell Iowa trip" to meet with economic development prospects when he and his wife, Chris, stopped by Trump Tower to visit with the president-elect whom the governor strongly supported during the 2016 general election campaign. His son, Eric, guided Trumps Iowa election effort.

A short time later, Trump announced his intent to nominate Branstad to serve as the U.S. ambassador to China, citing the governors friendly relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping dating back to the mid-1980s when Xi was a young county official seeking a closer relationship with Iowa's agriculture sector. Trump said Branstads decades of public service along with his knowledge, experience and close ties to top Chinese leaders made him the ideal choice to serve as Americas ambassador to one of the worlds most powerful nations.

Branstad said he was humbled and honored to accept Trumps nomination  which is still subject to confirmation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

First of all, I didnt think my wife would ever have any willingness or interest to do this, Branstad said in the interview, but when Chris and the rest of the family said they were intrigued by the idea and they thought even the grandchildren spending some time in China would be a great experience for them that pretty much sealed the deal.

We had several family discussions about it, he added, but I tell you theres still some anxiety in my family. Every one of us has some anxiety about this. This is a big change. Its moving half way around the world. Its a very different culture.

Its obviously a very contentious relationship we have, and I still have a lot to learn, Branstad said. I have a lot to learn about foreign policy and some of the issues that the ambassador has to deal with. But I guess Im intrigued and excited about the opportunity. I want to make the best of it. I know its a huge  using a Donald Trump term  its a huge challenge, its also a huge opportunity. I want to make the most of it.

Branstad has divided his time over the past month preparing to deliver his final Condition of the State address and two-year state budget to the Legislature next Tuesday and filling out a detailed questionnaire as part of the process of being nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to China.

Branstad said he plans to submit the information to a number of federal agencies as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider whether to confirm his nomination. He said he plans to attend Trumps inauguration in Washington later this month and use the opportunity to meet personally with some of the committee members.

Branstad served as Iowas governor from 1983 to 1999 before returning to the office in 2011. Since leading his first delegation to Hebei Province in 1984, the governor has led six trade missions to China  including one last fall  meeting with numerous provincial governors, ministerial leaders and local officials.
To broaden its reach, the San Bernardino County Museum is launching a new speaker series that will tackle national and local topics.

Our hope is definitely to bring in new audiences and this is one way to do it, through speakers who are authors and experts in fields that people may be interested in, said Museum Director Melissa Russo. We also want to give the opportunity for people in this region to hear (relevant topics) on our disciplines of history and natural science.

The series, Dome Talks, begins 7 p.m. Jan. 26 with author Lisa Napoli. She will lead a discussion on her new book, Ray and Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonalds Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away. The biography about Ray and Joan Kroc, published in November, tells how fast food became the foundation for a business empire and a force for public good, according to a news release.

The McDonald brothers opened the first McDonalds on E Street in San Bernardino. It is now a museum for relics of the food chains past. Ray Kroc became involved with the company as a franchising agent before purchasing McDonalds in the 1960s.

Dome Talks continues March 16 with Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California. The book, published in October 2015, tells the story of winemaking in California woven into the tale of Rancho Cucamongas John Rains and his mysterious murder, a museum news release said.

On April 19, Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Heinz History Center and author of Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands 1861-67, will speak on the effects of the Civil War in the South. Bergis Jules, an archivist at UC Riverside, will appear May 18 to discuss his work documenting current social events through hashtags. Aaron Parness from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratorys Extreme Environment Robotics Group takes the stage June 22 to speak about his groups work experimenting with things that stick in space.

Admission to each talk is $15, or $10 for museum members. Series tickets are $60 for general admission or $40 for association members. Cost includes light refreshments provided by the San Bernardino County Museum Association. Reservations are recommended and may be made online at www.sbcounty.gov/museum.

Dome Talks and other museum activities are part of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors CountyWide Vision celebrating the arts, culture and education in the region by increasing the quality of life for residents and visitors.

In addition to the new speaker series, the museum is also working to promote its new partnership with Bank of Americas Museums on Us initiative, which offers BofA and Merrill Lynch cardholders free admission to participating sites on the first full weekend of each month. The first promotional offering is this Saturday and Sunday. BofA is underwriting the cost associated with the program by providing the museum with a $4,000 stipend. Currently, 150 museums nationwide are part of the Museums on Us program.

While its just the free admission for cardholders, it is also a great benefit for (BofA) customers and introduces us to a new audience, Russo said. The experience we found is people who come with their card and get in for free usually come with their spouse and family members who do have to pay. But what ends up happening is visitors like the experience so much and become museum members. That is our hope, too.

Contact the writer: khernandez@scng.com or @TheFactsKris on Twitter
The Inland Empire, Orange County and the Los Angeles-area will dry out Friday, Jan. 6, now that a Pacific storm has dissipated, but the respite from the rain will be brief.

National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Moede said the recent rain is just a sampling of whats to come, as a series of Pacific storms is expected to batter Central and Northern California and leave Southern California with a nice drenching.

The pattern is set up for a series of storms to continue to bring rain and snow to mainly Northern and Central California and were going to be the southern edge of those storms, he said.

Related: Big rig crashes into bus on I-15 Freeway in Lake Elsinore

A weak ridge of high pressure will bring Fridays dry conditions, along with highs in the low 60s during the day and overnight lows in the mid-50s. Those conditions, however, will be short-lived.

There will be will be a 20 percent to 25 percent chance of showers Saturday, with some areas receiving up to a quarter of an inch of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

Things will dry out Sunday.

Related: Jackknifed big rig closes I-15-60 Freeway transition in Eastvale

On Monday, the likelihood of light rain will increase to 90 percent throughout the Los Angeles area and Inland Empire, with a 75 percent chance of precipitation in Orange County. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid-60s in the region Monday and unsettled weather conditions are possible through the remainder of the week.

Moede said storms will return to Central and Northern California on Tuesday going into Wednesday. He said its unclear whether that will mean rain for parts of Southern California, and just how much.

Thursdays storm pummeled Central and Northern California, delivering inches of rain and many feet of snow.

In Southern California, the impact was less noticeable. Beaumont saw .35 of an inch, Riverside saw .22 and French Valley saw .15.

Moede said the series of storms that are expected to bring wave after wave of rain and snow are colloquially referred to as a Pineapple Express.

We havent had a pattern like this for five years  , he said.

Moede said its too early to tell just how much of an impact the stormy weather will have on the drought, but itll at least have some effect.

Its very favorable right now, he said. Its going to put a dent in the drought.

Staff writer Scott Schwebke contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693 or agroves@scng.com
Ghanaians should brace themselves for a major 'upheaval' this year. The positive shakeup has nothing to do with politics but rather to save our economy from the millions we spend on the importation of rice.



Founder and leader of the Progressive Peoples Party, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, has promised to start a rice revolution process in Ghana this year.



The business magnate who has now turned his attention to the growing and harvesting of rice on large scale, told Kukua Nyipaye Michaels on the Anopa Bosuo show that it is now time for Ghanaians to buy rice grown in the country.



This in his view would aide us to cut down the huge amount of monies spent on the importation of rice from other countries.



In 2016, Groupe Nduom officially introduced the Edwumawura Rice, which is locally produced onto the Ghanaian market.



Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom launched the Edwumawura branded rice at two separate ceremonies at Worawora in the Volta Region and Assin Bereku in the Central Region.



According to Groupe Nduom, they expect some 4,000 out-growers to benefit from the two factories.



They have since been employed by the company to feed the factories with paddy rice.



The establishment of the local rice mill factory is part of Groupe Nduoms commitment towards the improvement of lives of indigenous Ghanaians, majority of them being farmers and fishermen.



Source: ATV









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Good morning members of the press Corp. I invited you to share my deepest concern with an opportunity available to all of us as Ghanaians to showcase Ghana once again as an epitome of democracy not only in Africa but the world at large.



Let me once again extend my deepest heartfelt condolences to our dear widow, Dr. Naadu Mills and the family of the late Prof. Mills and all the good people of our nation. I also congratulate our President John Mahama for ascending onto the SEAT of Excellence in Ghana.



The well calculated and measured home call by our Sovereign God of our late President John E. A. Mills on one hand has opened the next chapter of opportunity for Ghana to tread and showcase the path of dignity in governance revolution not only in Africa but the world. On another hand, President Mill's death can open the flood gates of insecurity to Ghana our motherland as predicted by Centre for Strategic Information System (CSIS) report in June 2011 for Ghana destabilization during December 2012 election.



However, President Mahama, holding the steer of the Yutong Bus is not only drifting Ghana in the bus but has also began accelerating and veering towards probable intense confusion in his own Party, NDC, the family of the late President Mills and double agony of security threat during December 2012 election.



As opined by K.B. Quantson, the security expert in Ghana, in his book entitled 'You and Your Security Environment' that I should therefore remind them of the wise words of J.F. Clark that our politicians should mature into statesmen. 'A politician thinks of the next elections, a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party, statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer while the politician is satisfied to drift.' Drifting politicians undermine human security. They operate without principles or scruples. 



As pointed out by J.F. Clark, Drifting politicians undermine human security. They operate without principles or scruples. Ghana needs the statesman's character that can enable the country to crossover or Passover from 2012 7th December election to 2013 7th January Inauguration of the next President and government revolution of 'Appropriatism Ideology 'not only for Africa but the world at large. We are as a nation in a dispensation of NOT politics as usual where politicians drift safely in political decisions and rhetoric only but we are also in time sensitivity of words and actions to the voters. Can President Mahama, lead Ghana into peaceful elections?



PRESIDENT MAHAMA IS DRIFTING TO THE DITCH TOO EARLY







Whereas it was a constitutional mandate to swear in President Mahama with such a supersonic speed, why the rush for the NDC to declare him as the Flagbearer at a time that he President Mahama has requested that we all mourn his Predecessor, Late Prof. Mills?



President Mahama could not organize and supervise an eternal resting place for the Late President Mills with his family without confusion. Why burying Prof. Mills twice? I called on the funeral planning committee and add my voice for the late President Mills to be buried in his hometown.

President Mahama claims to eulogize the late Prof. Mills but he President Mahama wants a communication team that reflects his demeanor and that he will not countenance his team members who indulge in politics of insults. A timely and perfect remark. So was the late Prof. Mills sponsoring the insults?



President Mahama says that he reflects the first leader after post independence but why has he appointed a vice who was born before independence? What a paradox and a quick reversal of Ghanas destiny! Putting a new wine in old wineskin or patching a new cloth in an old one. The chemistry of such bonding has always been uncomfortable blast. Former President Rawlings and the Late former vice President Arkaah.



Though the selected Vice President, Mr. Amissah Arthur may qualify for the position, there is perception that he is the alleged prominent gay partner banker who one Mr. Joseph Kwabena Owusu Sekyere, had purportedly told the Daily Guide Paper, which appeared in the paper on 9 January 2012. The Parliamentary appointment committee should ask Mr. Amissah if he is a Gay or Bisexual or none for clarification in order to preserve his dignity. We need to stop politics of character assassination without proof, a lesson we are all learning from the Late President Mills.

We hope that question 5 is not in the affirmative, else President Mahama through Parliament is about to cause the greatest abomination to the throne. This is what will be termed as Sexo Haram.



Voters will demand why the NDC majority Parliament has still not passed any act on gays and lesbians issues to date like the Nigerian Parliament did in order to help direct future reactions toward LBGT community in Ghana.





WHAT IS PRESIDENT MAHAMA'S LEADERSHIP MANDATE



President Mahama in the equation of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama administration is one-term government. However, the 3rd NDC government has the greatest opportunity to lift Ghana's dignity to the highest to beat the record set by former President Mandela. Ghana was given heraldic double Johns so that the 2nd John can correct the obvious past mistakes.







President Mahamas duty is to make sure his decisions actually reconcile the NDC party feudal factions. The wikileaks expose of calculated scheme against former President Rawlings, if even succeeds will be at a great cost to the NDC party.



President Mahama should not go for 2nd Term and not harden his heart like his predecessor, the late Prof. Mills. Political decision alone has the greatest potential to exchange his dignified destiny for the continent for a rather unpleasant one.



President Mahama is demanded first by the land Ghana and second by Africa to supervise neutrally and peacefully December 7 2012 election.



President Mahama should be happy to be the unprecedented shortest serving President, not desperate for power as Chronicle Newspaper reported on 2 September 2010, who puts his countrys survival above his party and acted as a true Statesman for his country. President Mahama will have greater dignified personality in the world.



I am prepared to support President Mahama to chart this part of dignity, peace and joy to his spirit, soul and body. What the late President Prof. Mills was whisked by intercepted unseen hands of the watchers of Ghana, President Mahama should discerningly be sensitive to help avoid and spare the nation for the predicted shake up so as to chart the path of joy and peace for the voters.



Ghana needs JOY in 2012 election after weve had PEACE in five successive elections. What is politics? The office of JOY2012 demands an answer from our politicians. How can each contesting candidate give JOY to the electorate after being voted to power?



President Mahama if he loves his soul his immediate family and the nation should chart the path outlined above to bring joy and seriously consider this counsel of the 3rd NDC government. This is a serious counsel and not politics as usual for Ghanas interest first above personal ambition.





Thank You for your Time.

By: Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY2012)

The Next President.

Source: Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY2012)









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Four Americans have been charged with hate crimes after the alleged torture of a mentally disabled man, streamed on Facebook Live.

Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Tanishia Covington, 24, Jordan Hill, 18, and Brittany Covington, 18, were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential battery.

Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

According to the Chicago police, the unidentified 18-year-old victim was held by the suspects for up to 48 hours, and was tied up, kicked, beaten, yelled at, slashed and forced to drink toilet water  all the while being filmed on Facebook Live.

According to CNN, at one point the Facebook Live video shows one attacker taking a knife to the victims head and carving off a patch of his scalp.

The teen was later found wandering around Chicago in distress on Thursday, and was transported to hospital in a stable condition.

At one point, the suspects, who are black, told the victim, who is white, to say fuck white people and fuck Donald Trump.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a press conference on Thursday that while all four of the suspects made terrible racists statements against white people, it does not appear to be racially motivated. Instead, he said police believe the victim was targeted because he has mental disabilities.

Within hours, #BLMKidnapping was trending on Twitter as members of the far right attempted to claim that this horrific attack was sanctioned by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Obviously, Black Lives Matter condemned the attacks, and accused those claiming it was BLM-sanctioned as wanting to sensationalise this and use it as a justification to generalise and criticise.

What happened to the young man who was held captive and tortured is terrible and we condemn the violence that was perpetrated against him, the BLM Chicago group wrote on Facebook. Weve stated time and time again, that were against all types of harm and violence perpetrated and weve never condoned it. So this is absolutely perplexing and twisted that people are associating this atrocity with this organisation and movement.



It goes without saying that the actions being branded by the far-right as the BLM Kidnapping have nothing to do w/ the movement.  deray mckesson (@deray) January 5, 2017

The suspects will appear in court on Friday.





Photo: Chicago Police.


Some of the biggest names to come out of Sydneys once-great music scene descended on Kings Cross stalwart Candys Apartment last night in a tribute to the citys former nightlife.

Alison Wonderland, What So Not, Hayden James and Golden Features  all regular faces on the international festival circuit who cut their teeth in Candys backroom  all played the one-off throwback gig in support of Keep Sydney Open.

It was phenomenal, What So Nots Emoh  a.k.a. Chris Emerson  told PEDESTRIAN.TV. I couldnt believe how much all these young kids were into these songs which were so old.



The club was stacked to its 300 person capacity last night (Alison Wonderland later tweeted that it was the sweatiest show ever), and it was basically one giant homage to Sydneys 2007 era club scene.

We were at dinner, and I have my legitimate CD wallet from 2007, said Emoh. I was sitting at the dinner table with everyone sorting through maybe 500 CDs, running through them with Hayden and Alison and Tom [Stell, of Golden Features], and then I did my first CD set in maybe six or seven years. I mean I was playing the original CDs that I used to play, the first ones I ever burnt. Yknow  some of them are covered in alcohol and grotty in the sleeve, but a bunch of them still worked!



If you remember your 07 bangers, that includes: The Presents, Justice, Cut Copy, Ed Banger Records, Boys Noize, Thomas Bangalter, (plus some real underground, deep interweb blog edits that know one would really know) but according to Emoh, the biggest moment of the night was during Proxys iconic banger Raven

My first show there, I was DJing with two friends in this group and we were getting paid $50 a night between three of us, which wasnt even enough to get a cab to the bus stop to get home, said Emoh. But we just loved it. And thats what was so amazing about the scene back then. This was our passion.

Hayden James  who played a residence at Candys with Emoh for three years  told P.TV it was incredible to be back.

I havent set foot in Candys in maybe six years, he said, adding that while the original plan was for each act to play back-to-back half hour sets, we all decided to go yeah fuck that, lets all go together. It just goes to show why Sydney needs to be open. The artists like Alison, Emoh coming out of Candys can only mean If that doesnt exist now, if that opportunity doesnt exist for young artists, its not gonna happen. It was really cool to have the support of all the kids there. It was great. Hopefully this makes a little dint in the lockout laws.

All proceeds from the gig went to fund Keep Sydney Opens next rally, organisers from which wrote on Facebook that its more important than ever to support Sydneys dance culture.

Although the NSW lockout laws were brought in to  apparently  prevent alcohol-fuelled violence (although the ins and outs of that argument vs a shady move to appease property developers is hardly one we need to go over again), a major knock-on effect has been the devastation of Sydneys live music scene.

Load of major Aussie players (and one New Zealand one) in the music scene have lent their support to the cause, including Lorde, Flume, Peking Duk, Flight Facilities, Jagwar Ma, Art vs Science, The Presets, and Bag Raiders.

And at last years ARIAs, Flume used his win to slam Sydneys lockout laws, thanking the citys venues for everything theyre doing and urging the policy makers and politicians to please keep Sydney open.

Please?

THE SYDNEY MUSIC SCENE IS IMPORTANT WE ARE A COMMUNITY. Last night should be enough to realise @WhatSoNot @GoldenFeatures @haydenj_music pic.twitter.com/birV1uXzXY  Alison Wonderland (@awonderdj) January 5, 2017

Photo: Twitter / What So Not.
Five people have been killed in a mass-shooting incident at an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with local authorities saying that they have taken a man into custody.

CBS Miami have published a report naming the alleged shooter as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago-Ruiz, saying that he has a minor criminal history and was found with an active military ID.

BREAKING: Shooter IDd as Esteban Santiago, law enforcement source tells CBS News. Situation is developing, shelter in place remains at FLL  CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 6, 2017

Officials at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport have confirmed that the shooting occurred in a baggage claim area in Terminal 2, just before 1pm local time.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was at the airport at the time and Tweeted: Im at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running.

Im at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running.  Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017

The police said there is one shooter and five victims.  Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017

All seems calm now but the police arent letting anyone out of the airport  at least not the area where I am.  Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017

An eyewitness told MSNBC that the shooter appeared to be a slender man in his 20s wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. The alleged gunman did not speak, and was shot by police as he attempted to reload.

Another witness told NBC:

He was gunned down by police. It was absolutely surreal. People were scared and frantically running to avoid being shot. People were tripping over each other. They were trying to make a fast exit out of the door.



Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told US media that a further 13 people were injured and have been taken to local hospitals. Flights have temporarily been barred from entering or leaving the airport.

Source: BBC News / CBS Miami.

Photo: Sun Sentinel / Getty.
Yesterday brought the news that Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley used a taxpayer-funded jaunt up to sunny Brisbane for a sliiiiiight detour down to the Gold Coast to purchase a $795,000 investment property. As you do.

Well, the plot thickens. Fairfax reports today that said property was purchased from a Liberal Party donor who knew Ms Ley in a professional capacity. This info comes from property records, which reveal that Ley bought the home from Martin Henry Corkery, a Queensland man who donated $50,000 to the Queensland Liberal National Party in 2011.

But Corkery denies having any clue Ley or her husband were bidders at the auction for the Gold Coast property, as he was in Paris at the time. Which, by the way, is the best possible alibi for anything. She could have been Prince William for all I knew, he said.

He also clarified that the donation he had made to the state branch was to support the election of former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman.

Opposition health spokesperson Catherine King has called on Ley to provide a better and clearer explanation of the exact circumstances in which the property was purchased, or resign.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: Getty Images.
MASON CITY | First Congregational United Church of Christ is hosting a soup supper at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12, in support of the water protectors at Standing Rock.

This benefit will feature 10 to 15 different homemade soups, a live performance by Tammy Hamlin and a talk from Iowans who have been to Standing Rock.

No admission will be charged but freewill donations will be accepted. All donations will be sent to Standing Rock.

The church is located at 100 First St. N.E.
Burger fanaticism in Australia has reached a point where youre likely to wage war for your favourite joint, and its pretty obvious why: were positively blessed with an unimaginable variety of patty-bun options.

Hell, check out the list of articles weve cobbled together regarding this meaty phenomenon. Youre mad for em. Rabid.

With this in mind, were here to alert you to Bloombergs brand-new 2017 list of the best burgers in the world, and more specifically, their three Australian picks. Three international chefs and restaurateurs decided these joints are the finest in the land:

Chur Burger, Belles Hot Chicken, and Neil Perrys Burger Project.

Yep. Out of the untold trillions of grills nationwide, the three Australian restaurants selected by Bloombergs esteemed panel of experts are a Kiwi-led enterprise, a designated fried chicken joint, and a chefs side project intended to emulate the plain ol corner shop burg.

Regarding the perfectly fine Chur Burger, Hong Kong-based chef Uwe Opocensky said those beef-dealers offer a beautiful combination with amazing taste. While were not going to dispute that opinion, youd assume a ~ luxe ~ publication like Bloomberg would be inclined to dig a lil deeper  and to not dent our national pride by hailing New Zealander Warren Turnbulls business.

A photo posted by Chur (@churburgersurryhills) on Sep 23, 2016 at 7:10pm PDT

Then, Belles Hot Chicken. The Melbourne mainstay, which has since ballooned out to other parts of Straya, was singled out for its hot chicken sandwich. Look, Bloomberg even admits Opocensky went a little off-piste with that selection, and one PEDESTRIAN.TV editor commented why would I go for the burger when there are tenders on the menu? Again, were not disparaging the sandwich, but we get the vibe including it on a list of burgers may be heretical to some.

A photo posted by Belles Hot Chicken (@belleshotchicken) on Nov 2, 2016 at 7:32pm PDT

Finally, Burger Project. Described by mastermind Neil Perry as his chance to recreate the full-bore burgers of his youth, the Sydney joint seems like an odd inclusion. After all, the corner shop grills of this fine nation are still busy turning beef into carbon.

Then again, look at this:

A photo posted by BURGER PROJECT (@burgerproject) on Dec 29, 2016 at 1:37am PST

Feel free to have a gander at the full list right here. We understand this is totally subjective, but you may also be inclined to craft your own correct rankings  just make sure you dont get sauce on the keyboard in your rancour, friends.

Man V Foods Adam Richman Tells Us The 5 Most Fkd Ingreeds Hes Seen on Burgers from PEDESTRIAN.TV on Vimeo.

Source: Bloomberg.

Photo: @gabriellepetra / Burger Project / Instagram.
Here we go: 2DAY FMs Rove and Sam have been shafted from their radio breakfast gig after just over a year in the role.

The duo are being bumped to Southern Cross Austereos (SCA) national evening programme, but theyre very much staying together.

SCA announced the news this morning, saying that the decision came after the pair and network execs took some time off over summer and, after review, decided that the best route forward for all was to move their show into another time slot. Ouch.

Both Rove McManus and Sam Frost said in a statement they were pleased their new gig involved staying together as a duo.

One of the pleasures of 2016 has been working with Sam so I am looking forward to continuing working with her in 2017 at a more civilised time of day, said Rove.

Im please to move on with my friend Rove to our next gig, as well as undertake other commitments outside of radio, said Sam.

Their evening gig will commence January 30, airing nationwide Monday to Friday from 7pm8pm.

The morning breakfast slot has been replaced by non other than v. v. talented comedians Em Rusciano and Harley Breen, the former of which said she was excitified at the thought of hosting breakfast radio in Sydney.

Thats a combination of my two resting states: excited and terrified, she said. I love radio, Ive been in and out and in and out again for 12 years! Im like the herpes of radio.



She also called her new gig the holy grail, the philosophers stone and the one ring of Mordor, thereby hopefully hitting most peoples fandoms with one butchered reference.

The Em Rusciano Radio Show with Harley Breen starts from 6am January 23rd.



Photo: SCA.
MASON CITY | A Mason City man accused of possessing stolen property was arrested this week on 11 outstanding warrants from multiple cases.

David Ray Freie, 53, of Mason City, was arrested Wednesday afternoon for second-degree theft, two counts of driving while barred, two counts of third-degree theft, two counts of driving without insurance and one count each of possession of a controlled substance, trespassing, failure to control and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The second-degree theft is a felony. The rest are misdemeanors.

Freie, who was arrested in the 200 block of Fifth Street Northeast, is accused of riding a stolen 2003 Suzuki motorcycle on Oct. 7 through Gracious Estates mobile home park, 777 S. Eisenhower Ave., in Mason City, according to court documents.

Worth $4,500, the motorcycle had been reported stolen in Northwood.

Freie was being held Friday for $9,900 bond at the Cerro Gordo County Jail in Mason City.

 Molly Montag
Vladimir Putin

FILE _ In this Monday, Dec. 26, 2016 file photo Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the meeting in St.Petersburg, Russia. President Vladimir Putin said, Friday, Dec. 30, 2016 that Russia will not be expelling US diplomats in response to a new round of US sanctions. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)

(Dmitri Lovetsky)

By Jonah Goldberg

Of all Barack Obama's costumes, the most ill-fitting is that of the hawk. The guise doesn't work for all sorts of ideological and historical reasons.

Plus there's the fact that he's rushing to put on the outfit as he's heading out the door.

Jonah Goldberg (PennLive file)

The new sanctions against Russia are fine with me on the merits, even if they are remarkably tardy and being sold in no small part for domestic, political reasons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been undermining American interests for a long time now.

From the annexation of Crimea and a shadow war in Ukraine to his unabashed support for the butcher Bashar Assad in Syria, Putin has given the Obama administration every excuse to punch back.

But until last week, Obama's response had been to offer various and sundry diplomatic "off-ramps" and a little bit of tongue-lashing. General dovishness combined with the single-minded pursuit of a deal with Iran led Obama to insist that we should avoid "provoking" Russia.

The satirist who goes by the moniker "Iowahawk" cut to the chase on Twitter: Russia invades Crimea: oh well Russia shoots down airliner: mistakes happen John Podesta falls for phishing scam: RESTART THE COLD WAR Obama's volte-face should be seen in the larger context of his last-minute legacy-padding and his widely alleged desire to "box in" his successor.

The president is preparing to spend the next few decades as a celebrity in liberal circles.

Creating national monuments in Utah and Nevada, banning offshore oil drilling in the Arctic and the Northeast, deleting the database of Muslim men at the Department of Homeland Security: All of these things will earn him toasts at all the right parties.

Despite a remarkable lack of evidence that the Russians "hacked" the election (as opposed to their more obvious complicity in the WikiLeaks shenanigans), the conviction that Hillary Clinton lost because of Putin's skulduggery is rapidly gelling into liberal conventional wisdom.

These sanctions give Obama yet another useful talking point in retirement. They're also having the desired effect on the Trump team, which for obvious reasons hates any suggestion that the Donald's election was less than legitimate. But will they actually "box in" a President Trump?

It seems unlikely. Putin is cleverly not taking the bait, preferring to run out the clock on the Obama presidency. When Trump is sworn in three weeks from now, he will have more leverage over Putin thanks to Obama's bad-cop act.

While it would be politically tricky to lift the sanctions immediately upon taking office, Trump has long vowed to improve relations with Russia. Having more bargaining chips for some grand "deal" _ whatever that might look like _ only improves his position. (Why he is so enamored with a U.S.-Russian romance is a deeper mystery to me.)

A similar dynamic is at play with Obama's execrable maneuver at the U.N. Security Council.

The decision to clear the path for a resolution holding that the Western Wall is actually a Palestinian possession is a serious blow to our ally (and our honor) and proof that Obama's rhetorical support of Israel was always more about political necessity than personal conviction.

Even as the move will please some _ though by no means all _ leftists on the party circuit, it is nevertheless a political gift to the two politicians Obama (probably) detests most: Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump. For almost eight years, Netanyahu has argued domestically that Israel's deteriorating relationship with the United States isn't his fault, but Obama's.

The president just settled that argument for him. Meanwhile, the resolution helps Trump enormously. Simply by taking office while holding what once were conventionally pro-Israel positions, Trump can play the role of Israel's defender, both domestically and abroad.

It is lamentable that support for Israel is now a partisan issue in America, but Obama ceded the winning side of the question to his Republican successor.

Much has been written about how Obama has left the Democratic Party and ideological allies in shambles by putting his perceived interests and ego ahead of everything else.

As he leaves office, he has turned that domestic story into an international one too.

Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Readers my email him at JonahsColumn@aol.com.
TEACHER BOOKS.jpg

By Michael Faccinetto and Joseph Roy

The movement to take control of public education away from local communities and to turn tax dollars over to privately run charter schools, religious schools and private schools is likely to take on new urgency in the Pennsylvania legislature in 2017.

Michael Faccinetto (submitted photo)

The "choice" movement hampers public school efforts to address urgent problems facing schools such as childhood poverty and an inequitable state funding system by diverting public dollars to privately run schools.

Pennsylvania's 500 public school districts are governed by your neighbors and fellow community members elected by local citizens. School boards and the public school districts they oversee, are this country's best examples of democracy - elected directly by the voters in their local community and charged with serving the public good.

These school directors serve as volunteers and accept the civic duty to educate our children while balancing that duty with the community's ability to pay.

In Pennsylvania and across our nation, locally elected school boards are undermined by an anti-public education "choice" movement pushed in large part by billionaires and lobbyists.

Joseph Roy (submitted photo)

This "choice" movement supports using local tax dollars to pay for privately run charter schools as well as to pay tuition at religious and private schools.

A large number of our state legislators are committed to weakening local control of our schools as they push for the expansion of publicly funded charter schools and the expansion of tax dollars flowing to private and religious schools.

This diversion of public funds undermines the democratic principle that decisions regarding public education and the use of tax dollars should be determined by locally elected school directors.

In fact, local citizen control of public schools in Pennsylvania has already been undermined with taxpayers sending over $1 billion to privately run charter schools last year alone. These charter schools, unlike locally elected public school boards, have no fiduciary responsibility to serve the public good or to be concerned about what is financially sustainable by the taxpayers of their communities.

Privately funded independent and religious schools differ from charter schools and have historically served an important role in our educational landscape. Understandably, since these schools have been privately funded, they are not accountable to the electorate as are public school board members.

However, this important difference between private and public is now blurred under the rhetoric of "choice", as programs such as the Educational Income Tax Credit in our state, divert tens of millions of tax dollars to "tuition scholarships" for students to attend religious or private schools.

Robust and democratic public schools are needed now more than ever to bring together diverse people and to prepare the next generation for the global challenges that await us.

The "choice" movement's undermining of democratically elected boards is particularly ill-timed.

The fight to protect our local schools will require public school supporters to raise their voices to be heard in the halls of the Pennsylvania legislature. Let's not lose our public schools to politicians in Harrisburg on a mission to hand over to private interests the vital task of educating our children.

Michael Faccinetto is the president of the Bethlehem Area School District Board of School Directors and the President-elect of the Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA). Readers may email him at mfaccinetto@basdschools.org.

Joseph Roy is the Superintendent of Schools for the Bethlehem Area School District and the 2017 PA Superintendent of the Year. Readers may email him at jroy@basdschools.org.
retreat.jpg

The state Department of Corrections has identified the State Correctional Institution-Retreat as one of five state prisons it is considering closing.

(Courtesy of the Pa. Department of Corrections)

UPDATE: SCI Camp Hill will receive 1,000 inmates

The union representing the more than 9,500 corrections officers at the state prisons calls Gov. Tom Wolf's administration's decision to close two prisons without public input disappointing and potentially creating a public safety hazard.

In a statement issued by Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association President Jason Bloom, he criticized Gov. Tom Wolf's administration for moving forward with its decision to shutter prisons as a way to deal with the state's budgetary problems.

They also point out that the state's corrections system is already over capacity and the decision to close two prisons is based on what they consider to be "extremely optimistic projections" that inmate populations will decrease.

The following is the full text of Bloom's statement:

"It's disappointing the Wolf administration has already made a decision to close two prisons without any public input whatsoever and is now strangely leaving five communities twisting in the wind for several weeks. Closing these prisons will uproot families and damage the local economies in these communities. This administration continues to have extremely optimistic projections about the state prison population. The fact remains, our system remains over-capacity at 103.8 percent, according to the Department of Corrections own population figures. That number would be even higher (104.9) if the state wasn't paying counties to house hundreds of additional inmates. It's mystifying why this administration would be closing prisons if we can't even house the inmates we currently have. With fewer prisons, a smaller system could literally burst at the seams, creating a public safety risk. The PSCOA is calling on the Pennsylvania General Assembly to immediately hold hearings and seek ways to keep these prisons open."
CAMBRIDGE SPRINGS, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania's oldest female state prison inmate has died.

A file photo of Lois Farquharson at age 30.

The Department of Corrections says 91-year-old Lois Farquharson died Wednesday in the infirmary at Cambridge Springs, a women's prison about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh.

A former Philadelphia psychiatrist, Farquharson was sentenced to life without parole for her role in the 1971 murder of a colleague at the Philadelphia State Hospital.

Farquharson was convicted of masterminding the 1971 shooting death of Dr. Leon Weingrad, a physician at the hospital with whom she had a variety of professional and personal differences.

Farquharson's former patient, Gloria Burnette, actually shot Weingrad in the parking lot of an apartment building where all three lived in August 1971.

Burnette was Farquharson's lover and testified she killed Weingrad to make Farquharson happy after Farquharson accused Burnette and Weingrad of having an affair.

Farquharson unsuccessfully spent decades trying to reverse her murder conviction after Burnette recanted her testimony in 1976. Burnette spent 20 years in prison while Farquharson was sentenced to life.
MASON CITY | A Mason City man and his wife are accused of running a can redemption scheme at a local grocery store.

Kelsey Lewis Thayer, 34, and Joni Michelle Thayer, 35, were charged Wednesday with felony forgery.

They were arrested after Mason City police officers served a warrant on their residence.

Kelsey Thayer told investigators he and his wife, Joni, printed copies of can redemption vouchers that she fraudulently redeemed at a Hy-Vee store in Mason City, according to court documents.

They allegedly presented 52 fake vouchers worth $246.80. That's an average value of $4.75 per voucher.

The Thayers were released Thursday with a promise to appear at their court hearing on Jan. 20 in District Court in Mason City.

The investigation is ongoing. Police say more charges are possible.

 Doug Barrett and Molly Montag
Shanna and Lionel Desmond hold their daughter Aaliyah in a photo from the Facebook page of Shanna Desmond. The RCMP in Nova Scotia have confirmed that Lionel Desmond killed his family and then himself. Police say autopsies found that Desmond and three family members died of gunshot wounds, and that his own wound was self-inflicted. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Facebook MANDATORY CREDIT
ST. ANSGAR  A restroom used by middle school boys at St. Ansgar Schools has been locked while officials investigate reports of feces smeared on the wall.

Superintendent Jody Gray said feces were found on the wall of the restroom by custodians, who reported it to middle school and high school Principal Lynn Baldus.

Gray said at one time a swastika had appeared on a wall with "some other doodling that had about 50 other things on it as well."

She said the vandalism has happened on more than one occasion, with staff members unable to determine who was involved in the incidents. The incidents were reported this school year, but Gray wouldn't confirm exactly when they occurred.

Since she was not able to determine who was involved, Mrs. Baldus spoke with all the boys and basically told them to cut it out, Gray said.

The restroom has since been locked, but students have access to a more visible restroom, which will help staff determine if a student is spending an unusual amount of time in the restroom.

Gray said the district is continuing to monitor the situation but declined to answer additional questions via email Friday.

"This has been investigated as a student discipline matter and we don't feel it's appropriate to comment any further," Gray wrote.
East Jordan Area Chamber of Commerce hosts annual State of the Community

The East Jordan Area Chamber of Commerce recently hosted its annual State of the Community forum to a record crowd of attendees on Tuesday, Oct. 25.
MASON CITY | A lawsuit against City Planner Tricia Sandahl in which her former landlord claimed she owes nearly $10,000 in unpaid rent and caused property damage exceeding $5,000 has been dismissed.

Judge Rustin Davenport this week dismissed the suit that Aldin Stecker filed against Sandahl in May.

Landlord sues for back rent, apartment repairs MASON CITY | City Planner Tricia Sandahl is named in a lawsuit in which a landlord claims sh

Stecker claimed in court documents that Sandahl was the occupant of an apartment at 811 S. Illinois Ave. through May 2011.

Sandahl's attorney, Mark Moeller, denied in court documents that there was any damage to the apartment at the time she vacated it and also denied she was delinquent on the rent.

Sandahl actually moved out in March 2011, which can be proved through at email from Alliant Energy stating the power to the apartment had been shut off on March 18, 2011, according to court documents.

A city worker submitted a statement to the court noting the apartment was vacant during an inspection on April 27, 2011.

Moeller also stated Stecker failed to specify what months and in what amounts Standahl was delinquent on her rent.

 Mary Pieper
BRISTOW  Jason Richard Reser, 39, Bristow, died Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016, at his home in rural Bristow.

Funeral services will be 10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 9, 2017, at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene with Pastor Daniel Flucke officiating.

Burial will be in the Rose Hill Cemetery at a later date.

Visitation will be 3-7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, at Retz Funeral Home, Greene.

Those planning an expression of sympathy may direct memorials to the Jason Reser Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 219, Greene, Iowa 50636.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Retz Funeral Home, Greene.
If you're driving in Cherry Hill, take extra care around pedestrians. They may be police officers working undercover to catch motorists who fail to stop at crosswalks, the department announced Friday.

Pedestrians, they may be going after you as well.

The department's new safety-enforcement campaign will target not only drivers who fail to yield for pedestrians, but also pedestrians who fail to use crosswalks or who cross on a red light.

Plainclothes officers will walk across crosswalks and will notify nearby patrol units if a motorist fails to stop, police said. That motorist will then be stopped and the violation will be addressed, police said.

According to New Jersey State Police statistics, 166 pedestrians were killed on New Jersey roads in 2016, including 13 in Camden County, down from 173 in 2015. In 2014, 170 pedestrians were killed by vehicles.

The Cherry Hill Police Traffic Safety Unit can be reached at (856) 488-7820.

In Philadelphia, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia has been tracking the number of people killed by vehicles and says Philadelphia has some of the least safe urban roads in the country.
She donated her body to medical science for research. A memorial service and Celebration of her Life will be held at a later date.

Memorials may be sent to: Jennie Stevens Memorial; c/o: Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc.; Dept 560; Washington, D.C. 20042-0560; Jennie Stevens Memorial; c/o First Congregational UCC; 520 College, PO BOX 723; Iowa Falls, IA 50126; or to her family.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

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Philadelphia has agreed to pay $4.4 million to a college student gravely wounded by plainclothes police two years ago while the 20-year-old was delivering takeout food.

It is the largest settlement in a police shooting case in the city's history, according to Philadelphia Law Department records.

Then-Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said shortly after the shooting that Officers Mitchell Farrell and Kevin Hanvey had fired at the wrong man.

On Friday, the mayor's office called the shooting "an unfortunate, regrettable series of events."

"We will strive to ensure that tragedies such as this do not happen again in our city," City Solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante said in the statement.

Philippe Holland was delivering a cheeseburger to a house on the 5100 block of Willows Avenue in West Philadelphia on April 22, 2014, as police responded to reports of gunshots nearby.

In a deposition, he said he saw Farrell and Hanvey approaching him and thought he was about to get robbed. He slipped into his car through the passenger door, he said - and that's when one officer shined a light into the car and Holland saw a gun in the other's hand.

He told police that Farrell and Hanvey never identified themselves as police officers. He said that he panicked and tried to pull out of his parking spot - and that the two men opened fire on him, hitting him in the head and body.

At the time, it was against police regulations for officers to fire at a moving vehicle unless someone inside the car was threatening them or someone else with some form of deadly force other than the vehicle itself.

Hanvey and Farrell told investigators they approached Holland because they saw him walking past a Chinese restaurant on 51st Street and asked a witness on the street where the gunshots she'd heard had come from. They said the woman had pointed toward Holland and said the shots came from where he was walking.

But the woman later told police investigators she had only pointed toward the Chinese restaurant, and didn't mention a man at all.

Hanvey and Farrell insisted that they told Holland they were police and that he drove his car toward them, making them fear for their lives.

Holland, a student at Delaware County Community College, was left with a permanent seizure disorder and has bullet fragments in his brain, according to his attorney, Tom Kline, who announced the settlement Friday.

The District Attorney's Office declined to press charges in the case. According to police documents Kline provided to the Inquirer and the Daily News, the department's Use of Force Review Board concluded that Farrell and Hanvey had violated department policy, though the board did not specify a punishment for that violation.

A police spokesman said that the two have been on administrative duty since the shooting, and that "discipline is still pending."

The department could not say whether the officers will return to the street.

John McNesby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, declined to comment, saying the department's internal matters regarding discipline had not yet been resolved.

Kline commended the city and Police Department for agreeing to establish a new protocol for plainclothes officers' dress and behavior so it is clear they are police.

"Significantly, the city also agreed to produce a training video that all new plainclothes officers will be required to watch before new assignments and as part of roll call," Kline said. The new training protocol will be implemented by July 1.

The city said the new plainclothes training dovetails with reforms already underway, including reducing stops of pedestrians and implementing use-of-force recommendations from the Department of Justice handed down in March 2015.

awhelan@philly.com215-854-2961

@aubreyjwhelan
English French





January 6, 2017

According to a Share Purchase Agreement signed this day, Rubis' will purchase 50% of Delta Rubis Petrol to its partners to end up with full control of the company.

The acquisition will be completed once getting the approval from the local competition Authority.

Current partnership was founded in January 2012 to develop this 650 000 cbm fuel storage facility located in Ceyhan, on the southeast coast of Turkey.

Eventually, the ownership control will provide Rubis' with full autonomy to combine management and operational leverage including the construction of an additional 120 000 cbm storage capacity aiming at optimising large vessels loading from the new jetty facility.

In 2016, Delta Rubis Petrol has generated rental revenues of $31 million for an estimated EBITDA of $20 million.

Upcoming events:

Q4 2016 revenue: February 9, 2017 (Market closing)

Press Contact Analysts Contact PUBLICIS CONSULTANTS - Aurelie Gabrieli RUBIS - Bruno Krief Tel: +33 (0) 1 4482 4833 Tel: +33 (0) 1 4417 9595

Attachments:

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3bc2eb6e-54d1-44c6-946b-adcc6f2ec80d
6 January 2017

HARBOURVEST GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY ANNOUNCES RENEWAL OF CREDIT FACILITY

HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ("HVPE" or "the Company"), a closed-end investment company, has announced the successful renewal of its existing $500 million multi-currency credit facility ("the Facility") with Lloyds Bank plc and Credit Suisse AG. Lloyds Bank plc has maintained its $300 million commitment, with Credit Suisse AG continuing to commit $200 million. The Facility, which retains similar covenants, has been extended to December 2020. Lloyds Bank plc will act as agent.

The commitment fee on the undrawn Facility has increased from 90 basis points to 115 basis points. The LIBOR margin applicable to the Facility is 300 basis points for borrowings of less than $250 million; a further 30 basis points will be payable on the total sum drawn if borrowings exceed $250 million. This compares with a LIBOR margin of 265 basis points on the previous terms, which increased at two additional thresholds to 315 basis points and 350 basis points on borrowings greater than $150 million and $300 million respectively.

The Company moved to a net cash position in August 2014, and has had no requirement for the use of borrowed funds in the intervening period. As at 6 January 2017, the Facility remains undrawn.

Sir Michael Bunbury, Chairman of HVPE, commented:

"I am pleased to confirm that the Board has approved an extension of the Company's existing $500 million credit facility. The expiry date has been extended from September 2019 to December 2020. The Company held net cash of $186 million as of 31 December 2016 and based on current cash flow projections, the Company does not expect to draw significantly on the credit facility in the current five-year planning period. However, the Board is of the opinion that the additional duration provides comfort for, and is complementary to, the significant new commitments that have been made in recent years."

- ENDS -

Enquiries:

HarbourVest Richard Hickman Tel: +44 (0) 20 7399 9847 rhickman@harbourvest.com Laura Thaxter Tel: +1 (617) 348 3695 lthaxter@harbourvest.com FleishmanHillard Fishburn Henry Adams

Ludo Baynham-Herd Tel: +44 (0) 20 8618 2975

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8618 2897 henry.adams@fhflondon.co.uk

HVPE@fhflondon.co.uk

Notes to Editors:

About HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited:

HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited ("HVPE" or the "Company") is a Guernsey-incorporated, closed-end investment company which is listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 index. HVPE is designed to offer shareholders long-term capital appreciation by investing in a private equity portfolio diversified by geography, stage of investment, vintage year, and industry. The Company invests in and alongside HarbourVest-managed funds which focus on primary fund commitments, secondary investments and direct co-investments in operating companies. HVPE's investment manager is HarbourVest Advisers L.P., an affiliate of HarbourVest Partners, LLC, an independent, global private markets investment specialist with more than 30 years of experience.

About HarbourVest Partners, LLC:

HarbourVest is an independent, global private markets investment specialist with more than 30 years of experience and more than $40 billion in assets under management. The Firm's powerful global platform offers clients investment opportunities through primary fund investments, secondary investments, and direct co-investments in commingled funds or separately managed accounts. HarbourVest has more than 400 employees, including more than 100 investment professionals across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This global team has committed more than $31 billion to newly-formed funds, completed over $15 billion in secondary purchases, and invested $5 billion directly in operating companies. Partnering with HarbourVest, clients have access to customised solutions, longstanding relationships, actionable insights, and proven results.

This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in any jurisdiction and should not be relied upon in connection with any decision to subscribe for or acquire any Shares. In particular, this announcement does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or the solicitation of an offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for, any securities in the United States or to US Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended ("US Persons")). Neither this announcement nor any copy of it may be taken, released, published or distributed, directly or indirectly to US Persons or in or into the United States (including its territories and possessions), Canada, Australia or Japan, or any jurisdiction where such action would be unlawful. Accordingly, recipients represent that they are able to receive this announcement without contravention of any applicable legal or regulatory restrictions in the jurisdiction in which they reside or conduct business. No recipient may distribute, or make available, this announcement (directly or indirectly) to any other person. Recipients of this announcement should inform themselves about and observe any applicable legal requirements in their jurisdictions.

The Shares have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") or with any securities regulatory authority of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States and, accordingly, may not be offered, sold, resold, transferred, delivered or distributed, directly or indirectly, within the United States or to US Persons. In addition, the Company is not registered under the US Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the "Investment Company Act") and shareholders of the Company will not have the protections of that act. There will be no public offer of the Shares in the United States or to US Persons.

This announcement has been prepared by the Company and its investment manager, HarbourVest Advisers L.P. (the "Investment Manager"). No liability whatsoever (whether in negligence or otherwise) arising directly or indirectly from the use of this announcement is accepted and no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, is or will be made by the Company, the Investment Manager or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, advisers, representatives or other agents ("Agents") for any information or any of the opinions contained herein or for any errors, omissions or misstatements. None of the Investment Manager nor any of their respective Agents makes or has been authorised to make any representation or warranties (express or implied) in relation to the Company or as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of this announcement, or any other written or oral statement provided. In particular, no representation or warranty is given as to the achievement or reasonableness of, and no reliance should be placed on any projections, targets, estimates or forecasts contained in this announcement and nothing in this announcement is or should be relied on as a promise or representation as to the future.

Other than as required by applicable laws, the Company gives no undertaking to update this announcement or any additional information, or to correct any inaccuracies in it which may become apparent and the distribution of this announcement. The information contained in this announcement is given at the date of its publication and is subject to updating, revision and amendment. The contents of this announcement have not been approved by any competent regulatory or supervisory authority.

This announcement includes 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", "projects", "estimates", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "goal", "target", "aim", "may", "will", "would", "could", "should" or "continue" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. These forward looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts and include statements regarding the intentions, beliefs or current expectations of the Company. By their nature, forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future and may be beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. More detailed information on the potential factors which could affect the financial results of the Company is contained in the Company's public filings and reports.

All investments are subject to risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Prospective investors are advised to seek expert legal, financial, tax and other professional advice before making any investment decision. The value of investments may fluctuate. Results achieved in the past are no guarantee of future results.

This announcement is issued by the Company, whose registered address is Ground Floor Dorey Court, Admiral Park, St Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 2HT.

 2017 HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited. All rights reserved.
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 5th January 2017 (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: 6,356,131 3.40 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL: 6,356,131 3.40

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 25,000 EUR 76.989

(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: 6th January 2017 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.




Norway has decided to kill FM Radio and the controversial move comes in the wake of huge opposition on switching off FM Radio from the general public.

According to an opinion poll conducted by Dagbladet, sixty-six percent Norwegians opposed switching off FM Radio while only 17 percent were in favor and rest were undecided. But even then the parliament has given the go ahead based on the fact that digital networks will be able to broadcast more channels.

Norway may be the first country to stop using FM Radio, however, Britain is expected to come to a decision by the end of 2017 and Switzerland by 2020. There are several other European nations looking to permanently stop using FM Radio frequencies.

As already shown by the opinion poll, not everyone is happy and Ib Thompson, an MP from the Progress Party in Norway added:

We are simply not ready for this yet. There are 2 million cars on Norwegian roads that don't have DAB receivers, and millions of radios in Norwegian homes will stop working when the FM net is switched off. So there is definitely a safety concern.

The Norwegian city of Bodoe will be the first to shutdown FM Radio on January 11th followed by the rest of the cities.

Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DuPont Fabros Technology Inc. (NYSE:DFT), a leading owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large scale multi-tenant wholesale data centers, today announced that seven of its data centers within three markets that require SSAE 16 attestation have been found to be suitable in design and operating effectively, each receiving an unqualified Service Organization Controls 1 (SOC 1) report. The seven data centers are located in Virginia, California and Illinois. These reports were prepared under Statement of Standards for Attestation Engagement No. 16 (SSAE 16) by one of the top four independent auditing firms.

Completing the SSAE 16 requirements annually represents DFTs ongoing commitment to serving our customers, said Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Scott Davis. We take great pride in knowing that our customers may rely on the control environments we put in place within our data centers.

SSAE 16 is an attestation standard put forth by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for reporting on controls at organizations that provide services to user entities, which provides an acceptable method for those user entities to obtain assertions about a service organizations internal controls without conducting their own, separate assessments.

About DuPont Fabros Technology Inc.

DuPont Fabros Technology Inc. (NYSE:DFT) is a leading owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large scale multi-tenant wholesale data centers. The Companys facilities are designed to offer highly specialized, efficient and safe computing environments in a low-cost operating model. The Companys customers outsource their mission-critical applications and include national and international enterprises across numerous industries, such as technology, Internet content providers, media, communications, cloud-based, healthcare and financial services. The Companys 11 data centers are located in three major U.S. markets and total 3.3 million gross square feet and 287 megawatts of available critical load to power the servers and computing equipment of its customers. DuPont Fabros Technology is a real estate investment trust (REIT) headquartered in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.dft.com
Photo: ZUMA PRESS

One of the most important endorsements that Donald Trump received during the 2016 presidential campaign came from the nation's largest law enforcement union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). When announcing the endorsement, FOP President Chuck Canterbury said the union was backing Trump because "He understands and supports our priorities and our members believe he will make America safe again."

As illustrated by Canterbury's remarks, Trump's supporters in the law enforcement community expect a lot from the new president. But what can the Trump administration really do to uphold the rule of law and assist police in their mission to enforce it?

Respect and Admiration

One thing Trump can do and has done throughout his campaign is to embrace officers both figuratively and literally and show support for them and their loved ones. Law enforcement leaders say Trump's recent phone calls to the families of murdered officers are an illustration of how much he cares about the men and women of the Thin Blue Line.

In contrast, Clinton's actions and statements on the campaign trail, including inviting the mothers of men killed in violent confrontations with officers onto the stage of the Democratic National Convention, did not endear her to law enforcement. Trump-supporting officers were concerned that if she won, her administration would maintain the Obama administration's policies and attitudes.

Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) Foundation, says national law enforcement organizations are united in their desire to see an end to the Obama administration's policies and its seemingly adversarial relationship with law enforcement. He says the leaders of the national law enforcement associations recently met with representatives of Trump's transition team, and they spoke in one voice about their needs. "I've never seen everyone agree like that before," Adler says.

What law enforcement wants most from the Trump administration, according to the leaders of some of the national associations, is genuine respect and appreciation. Canterbury believes Trump communicated that respect and admiration to law enforcement officers long before he took office. "One of his campaign staff members complained to me he was always running late because he had to stop and shake every officer's hand," Canterbury says, and he adds that Trump thanked the Secret Service agents and police protecting him during his victory speech the night of the election.

Trump has come out heavily in favor of the rule of law and for officers, even advocating a federal death penalty for cop killers. Canterbury, who met with Trump during the campaign, says he found the new president "to be very interested in officer safety issues and very interested in restoring the trust of the American people in their law enforcement officers, which both he and I believe is still there."

The First 100 Days

America's top executive is restricted in power. The president can't single-handedly enact law. But the president can through executive order set some policies for the federal government. These executive orders can be new or they can refine or even cancel the orders of the previous president. Experts say one way Trump can have immediate impact on law enforcement is to cancel some of Obama's policies.

A major sore point between some officers and the Obama administration has been the restrictions on the 1033 Program, which provides cash-strapped agencies with military surplus equipment. The Obama administration's restrictions on this equipment ostensibly barred agencies from receiving certain types of military equipment.

But what Obama's executive order really did is make it much harder for agencies to acquire even officer safety equipment such as helmets, shields, and trauma kits. Experts say Obama's order required agencies to request the military surplus through their city or county governments, who in the best case don't understand the agencies' needs and in the worst case oppose giving military equipment to officers because it "looks bad."

Adler believes the equipment agencies acquire through the 1033 Program is essential for public and officer safety. "Anything we can give local law enforcement that empowers them to move forward in a proactive manner and engage an active shooter while protecting themselves, we have to do that," he says.

Canterbury is confident the 1033 restrictions will be lifted by President Trump. "We met with the transition team," he says, "and we know the 1033 Program will be addressed very quickly."

Another federal program that has been a target of anti-police activists and others who had the ear of President Obama is civil asset forfeiture. Adler says he believes the Trump administration will realize that the vast majority of people affected by asset forfeiture are drug dealers and the money raised by the program goes to fund joint law enforcement operations between federal and local agencies.

Immigration is another area where law enforcement agencies would like to see Trump take action. Adler says Trump needs to issue an executive order re-establishing the liability protection for agencies that participate in the 287(g) program, which trains local officers to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the detention of criminal aliens.

Sanctuary cities are another action item. Trump has said he will do everything in his power to force city governments to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, including cutting off federal funding to those cities. Adler says the Sanctuary City concept endangers public safety and wants to see Trump rapidly defund the cities that refuse to turn over criminal aliens to ICE. Canterbury says the FOP has asked Trump not to cut federal public safety funds to those cities.

On the Border

Trump also vowed during the campaign to stop the flow of illegal immigration at the border by building a wall. Since the election he has toned down that proposal a bit by saying it will be a wall in some areas and a fence in others.

Border expert, author, and consultant Sylvia Longmire believes "reality is sinking in and Trump is being a little more practical. A 2,000-mile wall is not feasible, and it is not necessary," Longmire says.

"When it comes to building a barrier on the border, it's best to take a selective approach. There are natural barriers in areas where a fence is not needed and there are places where a fence has been built and it is doing its job. But that job is sorely misconstrued. A fence alone will not stop people and drugs from coming across. It doesn't stop anything. It just slows people down long enough that they can be identified and apprehended by actual people," she adds.

Longmire, author of "Cartel" and "Border Insecurity," says regardless of what steps Trump plans to take to make the border more secure, it's going to be expensive, and "we don't have the money."

She believes Trump's stated goal of removing criminal aliens is the best solution for improving public safety vs. trying to deport every illegal alien. But even to do that, "we have to give ICE the personnel and resources to find them and have the infrastructure in place to process them and send then where they need to go. We have criminal aliens from all over the world."

One thing Longmire believes Trump has done well so far is to nominate retired general John F. Kelly to head the Department of Homeland Security, the massive federal agency that incorporates numerous former independent law enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Patrol and ICE. "Up until now no civilian leader has been able to manage that monster. I'm all for putting a military person in that post to make things run smoother and establish a clear chain of command," the retired Air Force intelligence officer who writes for the inhomelandsecurity blog for American Military University, says.

Legal Matters

One of the first decisions the Trump administration makes could affect law enforcement officers for decades, nominating someone to take the place of the deceased Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia.

Many conservatives supported Trump against Clinton because of the fear of a liberal court, and they had a right to be afraid. Trump's nominee will swing the court back to a 5 to 4 conservative liberal status quo. If Clinton had won she would be naming a liberal-leaning judge to the court and the balance could have shifted substantially, as Reagan-appointed judge Anthony Kennedy tends to swing right or left, depending on the case. "If Hillary had won, we could have ended up with a 6 to 3 liberal-leaning court right off the bat with her nominee and Kennedy's swing vote," says Laura Scarry, a Chicago-based attorney and former officer who represents officers and agencies.

Scarry says in general conservative-leaning courts tend to rule more favorably toward law enforcement, and the Trump court may soon have to rule on some of the most momentous police-involved cases of this century. "The biggest issues affecting law enforcement officers in the Supreme Court in the next four years will be cases having to do with searches and seizures based on technology," she explains. "Our case law just hasn't kept up with the technology."

Trump's Supreme Court nominee will have impact on law enforcement for years to come. But a more immediate impact will come from his nominee for attorney general.

Canterbury says Trump's pick of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general may be the most important support the new president provides to officers in his first year. "Jeff Sessions is a very pro-law enforcement guy. He believes in justice, and you won't see comments coming out of the Department of Justice about police force incidents before an investigation is complete under his watch," he says.
A federal appeals court in St. Louis has declared that Minnesota's sex offender treatment program is constitutional  handing a major victory to the state but potentially derailing long-awaited reforms to its system of indefinite detention for sex offenders, reports the Star Tribune.

In a decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower-court ruling and found that Minnesota's system of committing sex offenders beyond their prison terms serves a "legitimate interest" in protecting citizens from dangerous sexual predators.

A class of sex offenders sued the state in 2011, arguing during a prolonged trial that Minnesota's system violated their due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution by depriving them of access to the courts and other basic safeguards found in the criminal justice system.

But after reviewing the program and state law, the appeals court sided with the state, concluding that Minnesota provided adequate constitutional protections, including the right to petition for release.

"We conclude that the class plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that any of the  arguable shortcomings in the MSOP were egregious, malicious, or sadistic as is necessary to meet the conscience-shocking standard," the Eighth Circuit panel ruled.

The plaintiffs' lead attorney said the appellate judges used too narrow a standard for reviewing his clients' due-process claims, and said he is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which must be filed within 90 days.
English Norwegian

Data Respons has signed a contract of NOK 11 million with a Danish customer in the industry automation market.



The contract comprises deliveries of SW and smart IoT devices embedded in the customers' end products. The deliveries will take place in 2017.

- A key focus area for our clients is the digitalization of their industrial products and business models, which is the core of Data Respons business and competency profile. The digitalization trend is an attractive growth opportunity for our company since it involves most of our current market areas, says CEO Kenneth Ragnvaldsen.



For further information:

Kenneth Ragnvaldsen, CEO, Data Respons ASA, tel. +47 913 90 918.



About Data Respons

Data Respons is a full-service, independent technology company and a leading player in the embedded solutions market. We provide products, services and embedded computer solutions to OEM companies, system integrators and vertical product suppliers in a range of market segments such as defence, medical equipment, industrial automation, oil services and offshore, transportation, energy and telecommunications. Embedded solutions can be described as the computer brain of a machine, system or industrial end product, and can be used in a broad range of industrial applications.



Data Respons ASA is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (Ticker: DAT), and is part of the information technology index. The company has offices in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Taiwan. www.datarespons.com

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
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As the feud between Donald Trump and top officials in the U.S. intelligence community continued to heat up on Thursday, former CIA Director James Woolsey announced that he was stepping down from the president-elects transition team, effective immediately.

Tweet via CNNs Jeremy Diamond:

Wow. Former CIA director James Woolsey splits with Trump transition: pic.twitter.com/6C2KXHeUz4  Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) January 5, 2017

In a statement, Woolseys spokesman said, Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Advisor to President-Elect Trump or the Transition. He wishes the President-Elect and his Administration great success in their time in office.

Aside from the fact that Trump has been trashing the intelligence community and defending Russia over its election meddling, there was apparently another major reason for Woolseys departure.

Tweet via Washington Posts Phillip Rucker:

James Woolsey has resigned from Trump transition. Sources say he was cut out of intel talks w/ Trump & Flynn, grew uncomfortable. Story TK  Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) January 5, 2017

As Business Insider noted on Thursday, there was likely an added level of tension between Woolsey and Trump after the former CIA head told CNN last week that Trump was playing the country when it comes to his rhetoric on Russia.

Other officials in the intelligence community have expressed their disappointment with Trumps recent comments about their agencies.

At a congressional hearing on Thursday, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said that while its appropriate to hold these government agencies accountable, Trump is taking it a bridge too far.

Theres a difference between skepticism and disparagement, Clapper said.

With two weeks until Trump is sworn in, it looks like the relationship between the next commander-in-chief and the intelligence apparatus hell be in charge of leading is already in need of major repairs.
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Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) have introduced an amendment that would derail the Republican fast-track repeal by forbidding Republicans from considering any legislation that increases insurance premiums and out of pocket costs.

Sen. Kaine said, There is no reason, while we acknowledge the need for improvement, to repeal the Affordable Care Act outright without having a sense of what the replacement would be. By doing so, we create chaos in the economy, chaos in the health insurance market, and chaos in the most intimate and most important area of peoples lives: their health.

The amendment would require 60 votes for any legislation that would reduce coverage and quality while increasing costs.



UPDATE: As expected, the Amendment failed to pass 48-52.

Sen. Murphy said, If Republicans have their way, 30 million Americans will lose their health insurance. Well go back to the day when people were denied coverage and went bankrupt simply because they got sick, and when women paid more to receive the same benefits as men. I refuse to allow that to happen, and this amendment will help us stop it.

Senate Republicans dont have 60 votes to pass a repeal, but Democrats have very little chance of getting the support needed to pass this amendment. However, this was the first shot across the bow. What is clear is that Republicans are going to need lots of Democratic help to pass the Obamacare replacement.

If Republicans dont propose a suitable replacement plan, Democrats will refuse to help them take healthcare away from 30 million people.

Should Republicans refuse to replace the ACA, they will own the decline of the US healthcare system.

The amendment that was introduced was the first move in a long-term chess match. Democrats are reminding Republicans that without their help, the GOP is set to fail on an epic scale.

Senate Democrats arent giving up the ACA without a fight.
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One of Donald Trumps major campaign promises appears to be on its deathbed, according to sources inside the president-elects transition team who say that Trump wants to pay for the wall via the appropriations process.

Trump lets Mexico off the hook? House GOP officials say Trump will ask Congress to pay for building the wall. https://t.co/bRA4OZeVvV  CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 6, 2017

In other words, taxpayers  not the Mexican government, as Trump repeatedly said during the campaign  will be paying for the president-elects monumental waste of money along the southern border.

According to the CNN report, the process of funding the border wall may begin as early as April and could be done without even having to pass a new bill.

More from CNN:

The Trump team argues it will have the authority through a Bush-era 2006 law to build the wall, lawmakers say, but it lacks the money to do so. Transition officials have told House GOP leaders in private meetings theyd like to pay for the wall in the funding bill, a senior House GOP source said.

It was not done in the Obama administration, so by funding the authorization thats already happened a decade ago, we could start the process of meeting Mr. Trumps campaign pledge to secure the border, Indiana Republican Rep. Luke Messer said on Thursday.

Trump likely knows that he couldnt pass legislation to approve the type of wall hes proposing, so hes hoping to bypass Congress to get it done.

Whats unclear is just how the president-elect will explain away what will be an undeniable abandonment of a promise central to his campaign from the very beginning.

Even after his bungled trip to meet with the Mexican president last year, Trump reiterated 100 percent that our neighbors to the south will be funding his wall to keep immigrants out.

Video evidence:

Building a Mexico-funded wall on the border was one of the first promises Donald Trump made as a presidential candidate. Despite the fact that illegal immigration from Mexico is actually declining, his supporters took the spoon and swallowed it whole. It was  and still is  one of his biggest applause lines at rallies.

Now, one of his first acts as president will be showing those same supporters that he was just playing them for suckers all along.

Will they notice?
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Donald Trump is at it again on Twitter, and he still wont admit that Russia is behind the recent cyberattack meant to influence the results of the presidential election.

In a series of tweets, Trump threw a tantrum that people keep saying the Russians are responsible for the hacking, asking, how and why are [U.S. officials] so sure that Russia was involved.

Trump blamed everything  the media, politics, the Democratic National Committee  except Russia, even though the U.S. intelligence community says was responsible for an unprecedented hack of the American electoral process.

Tweets:

How did NBC get an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented? Who gave them this report and why? Politics!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

The Twitter tantrum follows a post yesterday in which Trump questioned the U.S. governments finding that Russia was able to pass along hacked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. In the tweet, the president-elect said, Russians did not give [WikiLeaks Chief Julian Assange] the info!

While Trump tries to defend Russia and Assange, a report released by CNN says, US intelligence has identified the go-betweens the Russians used to provide stolen emails to WikiLeaks, according to US officials familiar with the classified intelligence review that was presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday.

As more information comes out, Trump is becoming increasingly alone in his politically suicidal mission to defend Russia instead of the U.S.  you know, the country he will lead two weeks from now.

Its hard enough for the thin-skinned president-elect that 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton over him. The fact that Russia was certainly involved in influencing the outcome of the election in his favor only makes his victory less legitimate  certainly not a mandate or a landslide.

Trump knows this, which is why he continues to lash out via social media.
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In the latest evidence that Russia was pulling for a Donald Trump victory in last years presidential election, American officials say that the U.S. intelligence community discovered Russian officials rejoicing after the president-elect beat Hillary Clinton.

According to the report from the Washington Post, the Russians werent just happy about Trumps victory  they were congratulating themselves for making it happen.

More from the report:

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trumps victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials  including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the countrys cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election  contributed to the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment that Moscows efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

The reporting only confirms what millions of Americans  and pretty much the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus  already knows about the recent presidential election: The Russians were actively trying to make Trump the next president.

The information was presented to President Obama on Thursday and is set to be given to Trump on Friday in a meeting with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Trump has spent recent weeks downplaying Russias involvement in the cyberattack and is still unwilling to admit that the foreign country had anything to do with it. In recent days, he has taken on the intelligence community, claiming the agencies are building a phony case against Moscow.

When he meets with the same intelligence officials hes been trashing, its unclear how Trump will spin the information hes given in order to protect the Russians  but you can bet hell try.
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The Director of National Intelligence released a summary of the report to the public and the judgments of the FBI, CIA, and NSA was damning for Russia and Trump.

Here are the judgments of the FBI, CIA, and NSA:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.

We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.



Moscows influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations such as cyber activity with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state funded media, third party intermediaries, and paid social media users or trolls.



Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.

President-elect Trump continues to defend Russia while trying to cast doubt on whether or not Russia meddled in the election. However, it is clear in the eyes of the intelligence community that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump and harm Hillary Clinton. Russia worked to get Donald Trump elected.

There is no intelligence to support the Green Party theory that tallies were hacked, but Russia could have manipulated the pre-tallying process via access to local election boards.

What remains missing a smoking gun that connects the Trump campaign to Russia. There is no direct evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. If proof ever emerges that Trump worked with Russia to win the election, his presidency will be finished.

The report is bad enough. A US presidential election was compromised by a hostile actor. The intelligence community warned that Russia would use what they have learned in 2016 to manipulate other future election.

The conclusion is inescapable that Russia got Donald Trump elected president.
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Although there were at least 5 Democratic Senators attending the joint session, none of them would join a House Democrats in objecting to certification of the Electoral College results.

Video:

As The Washington Post reported several House Democrats tried to object to the results but were ruled out of order because by rule their objections had to be joined by a Senator, Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) raised the first objection Friday after the joint meeting was gaveled to order. They were among several House Democrats who considered lodging objections on grounds of voter suppression or apparent Russian interference in the campaign. But they were hampered by the fact that federal law demands that any objection be sponsored by both a House member and a senator.

Politicos Connor OBrien observed that there were at least 5 Democratic Senators in attendance at the joint session, but none of them would sign on and formally object to the Electoral College results:

FWIW there are at least five Democratic senators present for counting the electoral votes and none will sign a formal objection.  Connor O'Brien (@connorobrienNH) January 6, 2017

A Senate Democrat could have stood up and joined with the House members to object, but they chose to stay silent. As Vice President Biden told the objectors, Its over. It appears that Senate Democrats have moved on from the election results and are focusing their efforts on blocking Trumps agenda.

Many Democratic voters wont be happy to hear it, but the Democratic Party looks to be moving on from questions about the validity of the 2016 election.
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With Donald Trump as their guidepost, there isnt much Trumpists will hesitate to say. When Sean Hannity used Wikileaks to claim Russian hacking isnt the scandal but rather how corrupt the liberal news media is, he took his cue from Donald Trump.

Roger Stone, no doubt inspired by Trumps denigration of US intelligence services is claiming CIA Director John Brennan is a Saudi mole. He tweeted Brennans alleged Muslim Brotherhood sympathies back in December with a call to jail him, and what better time to do it than when it is looking more and more like Donald Trump is a Russian mole:

Obama CIA Director ,pro-Muslim Brotherhood Islamist John Brennan- a proven liar with NO proof of Russian hacking of the 20016 election #jail  Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) December 17, 2016

Appearing on Alex Jones InfoWars, he repeated the claim and again called for the jailing of the CIA director, saying Brennan is the progenitor of Russian hacking claims and that Brennan is a mole, a Saudi mole. It is no coincidence that this claim comes at the same time Trump is saying he will gut the nations intelligence agencies, including the CIA.

Its kind of interesting to me that the number one progenitor of this theory is CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan is a man who refused to be sworn in using the Bible, who has converted to Wahhabism, who has spent a substantial amount of time in that region, who personally cleansed the passport files of Barack Obama when he was preparing to run for a second term, and, quite frankly, if you believe my friend Wayne Madsen, and I do, is a mole, a Saudi mole. That is who is advocating and pushing the entire false narrative that the Russians have somehow hacked this election.

These claims are nothing new but date from Brennans appointment by Obama to head the CIA, planted in part by none other than Glenn Beck, who admitted he had no evidence. Remember, Republicans realize they dont have to prove anything. They just have to cast doubt.

And there is certainly nothing wrong with Brennan using a copy of the Constitution rather than the Bible to be sworn in. The Constitution itself forbids religious tests and Stone is imposing one  illegally  after the fact. As Snopes has pointed out in dismissing these claims, if Brennan wanted to hide his alleged conversion to Islam, the best thing he could have done is use the Bible.

Anyone who challenges Donald Trump is instantly targeted for revenge. That is Trumps history in the business world. Now that he is a world leader, the consequences are oh so much more severe than a lawsuit. This sort of behavior by Trump and his coterie of corrupt paranoics is great for Alex Jones ratings because it normalizes the rantings of madmen, but is terrifying for a civil society.

Remember when Roger Stone promised a bloodbath if Trump lost? Apparently, were getting one even though Trump won. Our peaceful transfer of power is suddenly not looking so peaceful as Trump & Co. embark on a wide scale witch hunt of the U.S. government in search of all those who refuse to subscribe to Trumps wishful thinking.

Especially when this wishful thinking is at the behest of a longtime enemy of the United States  Russia. We can see how dangerous this sort of thing can become when a Republican official suggests punishing Hillary Clinton  not Donald Trump  for manipulating the election based on the debunked claim she got debate questions ahead of time.

This is a slippery and dangerous slope down which Trump and his surrogates have embarked, where facts are punished and lies are the basis of criminal charges. This is how dictatorships function. It is not how the worlds first modern liberal democracy was meant to function.

Remember, Donald Trump isnt just suggesting Brennan & Co. are wrong, but that they are inventing the Russia connection out of whole cloth to delegitimize he, Donald Trump. He isnt accusing Brennan of incompetence. He is accusing him of what amounts to the old charge of Lese-majeste  of plotting against the reigning monarch.

This is scary territory for a democracy and people should be fully aware of just how terrifying a spectacle it is as a precedent.

Donald Trump is just as willing to destroy that democracy to further his ambitions as he is the careers and lives of the people who get in his way, and his followers like Roger Stone, are willing to zealously push any insane scheme to accomplish those goals.

Remember, witch hunts dont require evidence either. They require only an accusation.
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President-elect Trump met with the intelligence community on Friday and then released a misleading statement that verged on baseless lies to protect Putin and Russia.

Here is the statement from Trump about the meeting:

I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and Americas safety and security will be my number one priority.



Keeping America safe is Trumps number one priority. Unless the attacks come from Russia and help Trump, then he is going to defend the attackers who weakened American democracy while looking the other way.

Trumps claim that the Russian cyber attacks didnt influence the election is based on nothing but his own opinion. The Russian attacks did influence the election because the hacked emails dominated the media coverage and melded with Republican conspiracies about Hillary Clintons emails to drown out any serious discussion for months on end.

The intelligence community is in universal agreement. Russia was behind the attacks. It wasnt China or some other country. It was Russia, and those attacks helped Donald Trump win the election.

Trump met with the intelligence community, dismissed everything they had to say, and stuck to his own version of reality.

The man who is going to be entrusted with keeping America safe has already shown that he is more interested in helping Russia than the people of his own country.

Trumps statement was dishonest and untrue, but that is his story, and he is sticking to it.
Looking for the ultimate mixtape of winter? Don't worry, I was too. After all, when it became clear that Drake wasn't going to drop More Life by the end of the year, and Kanye was set to disappoint us with a lackluster release for his annual New Year's Eve drop (a feature on a Tyga song of all things!), I thought I'd just have to chalk December up to a loss.

Thanks to the likes of MadeInTyo and 24Hrs however, we need look no further. The two rising stars from down south collaborate for the first time ever here on their new tape, cleverly titled 24 Hrs in Tokyo.

For MadeInTyo, this is the followup to his last solo tape THANK YOU, MR. TOKYO, released back in August featuring production by his frequent collaborator K. Swisha. One of the latest additions to the rapidly growing Atlanta scene, the "Uber Everywhere" rapper combines his dope flow with 24Hrs, another local artist who has already been recognized by OVORadio and a large Soundcloud following for his soul-driven vocal hooks.





Linking up with 24Hrs was definitely a good move for 2017.

Both things on their own can start a party. But together? Well, you might want to get ready for a noise complaint, because you're not going to be sitting down quietly if you know what I mean.

On top of the wiley duo bouncing off each others' flows (they both seem to inhabit that higher pitch range), we're also treated to lush production by K. Swisha and James Royo, both arguably the right-hands of MadeInTyo and 24Hrs. You might recognize the name K. Swisha as the producer of "Uber Everywhere," and if that doesn't get you hyped for this tape, then I'm sure Spotify has some good easy-listening playlists right up your alley.

Before you get too excited though, be warned: the project is only 4 tracks, running at about 14 minutes long in its entirety. What's sacrificed in length though is definitely made up for in banger potential, with the first song "YSL Boots" totally made to get stuck in your head. And look on the bright side, with a mixtape this short, by the time it's done, there's no shame in playing it all over again.

Check out 24Hrs in Tokyo here on SoundCloud, where you're bound to discover more hot tracks from the two dope-in-their-own-right rappers.
Lithuanian English

Elektrenai, Lithuania, 2017-01-06 15:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba, AB (business ID 302648707, registered office address Elektrines g. 21, Elektrenai (hereinafter referred to as the Company) hereby informs that on 06 01 2017 Supervisory Board of the Company adopted a decision to elect Mr. Mindaugas Grazys as Member of the Board of the Company starting from today until the end of the term of office of the present Board.

M. Grazys will be in charge for business development in the Companys Board. He will be responsible for the formulation of a sales strategy and a strategy for maintaining long-term relations with customers. He will also present and coordinate decisions aimed at increasing the competitiveness of services provided by the Company, improving processes and increasing their efficiency.

M. Grazys, who holds a bachelors degree in Informatics Engineering from the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, has recently worked as a Sales Director at KG Constructions, UAB. Before that, he worked in Staticus Group for more than ten years, leading sales departments of the Group. In 2010-2014, M. Grazys managed Staticus Sverige, AB, holding the post of a member of the Board of the company.

The new member was elected to the Companys Board after the Company received a notice of the member of the Board Adomas Birulis on his resignation from the post of a member of the Board as from 6 January. The Company reported this information in its announcement on material event of 23 December 2016.

After the new member joined the Board, there are four members serving on the Companys Board: Ms. Egle Ciuzaite (Chairwoman of the Board), Mr. Darius Kucinas (responsible for electricity and heat production management), Mr. Mindaugas Kveksas (responsible for financial and administration management) and Mr. Mindaugas Grazys (responsible for business development).
Twitch.tv has been home to some of the most absurd, triumphant moments in internet history. Take, for example, Twitch Plays Pokemon, a stream of the original Pokemon Red Version during which any number of people dictated the actions of the player by voting in the chat. Well, after hours were spent walking into walls, the masses eventually directed the player character to a Pokemon league victory.

Now Twitch streams have taken it to the next level: you can watch two Google Home devices debate the finer things in life: religion, art, philosophy, and Fire Emblem Awakening!

You may remember the golden age of early 2000s chatbots when apps like SmarterChild and Professor Gilzot could entertain a whole sleepover or fill the void of middle school loneliness with mostly inane responses to questions that were almost always about sex or robots and sometimes both.

Google Home devices, which are similar Amazon's Alexa, are smart speakers that can perform searches and handle other audio commands to answer simple questions. They also, however, have a conversation feature. You can engage with Google's best crack at consumer-level artificial intelligence about any subject you can imagine. And while it's not exactly West World-level stuff, it can be pretty convincing.

Well, just like that prank where you put two Chinese restaurants on the phone with each other, one Twitch streamer had the brilliant idea of putting the two bots head-to-head and seeing where the wind took them. And, oh my god, did it take them. The "male" bot, Vladimir, is going hard at this very moment against the "female" bot "Estragon."

First off, they pulled zero punches, getting right to the heavy sh*t...

Ooh la la, somebody's getting laid in college.

The logical next step: debating evolution...





"Well good, at least you believe in nothing."

Pretty major shade being thrown from Vladimir's end when he calls Estragon "an intelligent little robot." Sheesh.

One Polygon journalist caught a good snippet where Vladimir tried to get back to the important things.

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://media.rbl.ms/image?u=%2Fmedia%2FC1gW8M8XEAE0o4H.jpg%3Amedium&ho=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com&s=578&h=b83cde5ff0a9246828d5b492624010b2caa30d29fe81054e012f1cc11d153eb7&size=980x&c=822338561 expand="1" image-library="0" pin_description="" caption="" photo_credit="@babylonian (Nick Robinson) on Twitter"] @babylonian (Nick Robinson) on Twitter

And like all good comedies, it ends with a wedding...





Vladimir, you dog.

Check out the Twitch stream live, right now:

seebotschat - Twitch

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://media.rbl.ms/image?u=%2Fjtv_user_pictures%2Fseebotschat-profile_image-dda38a36dacaa3fd-300x300.jpeg&ho=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic-cdn.jtvnw.net&s=1021&h=3f27e030397304a03aa3b6441529ee2a82b7b29d955b7ec6e7e0ff5514d5cb0a&size=980x&c=3430225097 expand="1" image-library="0" pin_description="" caption="" photo_credit=""]
Emanuel AMEs former secretary is suing the church and the Rev. Norvel Goff for ending her employment after she questioned the handling of donations that poured into the church after a gunman killed nine worshippers. Read moreFormer secretary at Emanuel AME sues for unpaid wages
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
BURBANK, Calif., Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imaging3, Inc. (OTCQB:IGNG) announced today that its Special Consultant, Scott Pancoast, will be interviewed on MoneyTV with host Donald Baillargeon to discuss Imaging3s business and its prospects.



MoneyTV is the internationally syndicated television program (http://www.moneytv.net), that features informative interviews with company CEOs, providing insights into their operations and outlooks for their futures.

The television program can also be viewed online starting today at www.moneytv.net and on television starting tomorrow. To determine the station that airs MoneyTV in your area, please visit their website and click on the Global TV Listings tab.

About Imaging3

Imaging3, Inc., founded in 1993, has developed a patented medical imaging technology, called SmartScan, that will produce 3D x-ray images, virtually in real time. The SmartScan technology will allow healthcare professionals to perform diagnostic and therapeutic procedures more quickly and accurately, resulting in higher throughput for the clinicians and fewer safety risks for the patient. In addition, Imaging3s technology exposes patients to significantly less harmful radiation than current imaging technologies such as CT scans, which the company believes will allow scans to be used in more pediatric applications than are currently prescribed. The technology also allows for greater portability, easier installation, and a significantly reduced cost burden for the healthcare system overall. Imaging3 is planning to submit a 510K application to the FDA during 2017 in order to gain approval to commercialize the SmartScan technology.

Visit the companys website at http://www.imaging3.com for detailed information about the Companys technology.

Safe Harbor Statement

Imaging3 cautions you that any statement included in this press release that is not a description of historical facts is a forward-looking statement. Many of these forward-looking statements contain the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "may" "intend," "expect" and similar expressions. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations of the company and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties inherent in the Imaging3s business, including, without limitation: the company may not ever obtain FDA approval for any of its devices; the company may not be able to secure the funds necessary to support its product development plans; and the company may not ever achieve the market success to sustain a profitable business. In addition, there are risks and uncertainties related to economic recession or terrorist actions, competition from much larger imaging companies, technological obsolescence, unexpected costs and delays, potential product liability claims, and many other factors. More detailed information about Imaging3 and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the companys filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the companys Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Such documents may be read free of charge on the SECs website at www.sec.gov. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and Imaging3 undertakes no obligation to revise or update this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. This caution is made under the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
The pandemic stressed us all, but its impact was compounded among pregnant women and those who had just given birth; their rates of mood and anxiety problems doubled during that time. That should not come as a major surprise, given how the stresses around this life-giving, life-changing even Read moreEditorial: Important outreach to SC's expectant and new mothers
There's nothing like a fresh year filled with new (and fashionable) possibilities.

As 2016 winds down, it's time to slip into clairvoyant mode and predict what the future holds for the fashion industry at large.

 Season-less fashions on the rise: This year lots of designers skipped assigning labels such as spring/summer and fall/winter to their collections and unveiled in-season styles. Others presented a hybrid of see now/buy now looks and pieces for coming seasons. Come 2017, expect to see even more designers (particularly ready-to-wear ones) shift from the focus on seasonal styles to more fluid trends that can be worn season after season.

 Fashion will keep up the fight for diversity: An industry that's been criticized for its lack of inclusiveness made improvements in 2016. CoverGirl tapped its first male model, and beauty vlogger Nura Afia became the cosmetic company's first brand ambassador to wear a hijab in a campaign. At New York Fashion Week in September, 16 plus-size models walked the runway, making it the most body-positive season ever, according to the Fashion Spot's Runway Diversity Report. There also were a number of transgender models, ones with disabilities and people older than 50.

There's still work to be done, however. The number of models of color on New York City runways declined a bit last season, the diversity report found. In the wake of the presidential election, fashion's who's who have condemned President-elect Donald Trump for his remarks about Muslims, Hispanics and women. It's likely these influencers will step up and continue to speak out.

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 Greenery won't be the hot hue for 2017: Pantone is an industry expert on all things color, but it may have missed the mark on its latest pick for color of the year. While there were glimpses of Greenery on the runway, the light yellow-green hue described as "zesty" and "fresh" took a back seat to rosy pinks, powder blues, buttercup yellows and classic black-and-white combos. Unlike emerald (Pantone's top color for 2013), soft green is tough for most people to pull off. Unless you're a redhead, don't bother investing too much in this trend.

 Mall stores will continue to struggle: Mall retailers took a staggering hit in 2016. Nearly 44,000 retail workers were laid off, according to job replacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and mall-based brands such as Macy's, Kohl's, Sears and J.C. Penney closed hundreds of locations.

Looking ahead, Macy's already has announced another round of closures in early 2017. It likely won't be the only chain shuttering stores next year. Shoppers continue to opt for the convenience of online shopping and the one-on-one attention offered at independent boutiques and fine specialty shops. Unless mall stores can figure out how to stay relevant and competitive, their holiday shopping seasons could be numbered.
As far as I'm concerned, a total solar eclipse is a must-see phenomena. Finding the right words to express the entire experience is pretty much impossible.

I know, because I've actually seen one. Back in February 1979, while I was in college, my little brother Jim and I drove up to Winnipeg, Canada, in my dad's old gas-guzzling 1975 Pontiac Grand Prix to see the eclipse. It was an absolutely stunning experience!

Total eclipses of the sun occur when the moon briefly covers the face of the sun in its monthly orbit around Earth. They occur about twice a year on average when the moon gets exactly in a line between the Sun and a very narrow swath on Earth. Since both celestial disks of the sun and the moon are about same size in the sky, this is a spectacular but rare show. On average, any one spot of the Earth experiences one every three or four centuries.

The Feb. 26, 1979, total eclipse stretched from Hudson Bay through Winnipeg and then arched down to Oregon and Washington. That was the last time we've had a total solar eclipse in any part of the U.S.

Call it a comeback

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The drought is over! On Monday, Aug. 21, from around 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., depending on location, we'll have a total solar eclipse from coast to coast across the country. Totality will stretch in a band diagonally across the 48 states, from Oregon to South Carolina.

The band though will be very narrow, less than 100 miles in diameter. To either side of that band, most of the rest of the country will see a partial eclipse. The closer you are to the band, the more the sun's disk will be covered up by the moon. In Rochester, we're close to totality. More than 80 percent of the sun's disk will be covered by the moon around 1:08 p.m. on Aug. 21.

Without a doubt, partial eclipses pale tremendously in comparison to the majesty of a total solar eclipse. Travel to totality if you can. It so worth it. Since the band of totality runs nearly across the middle of the country it's not like you have to "fly your Lear jet to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun," as Carly Simon sang.

Within the center of the totality band, the length of totality varies from just under two minutes to just over two and a half minutes. The maximum duration of totality will be two minutes and 40 seconds around Carbondale, Ill., near the Missouri border, but honestly anywhere along the middle of the totality band it'll be only be seconds shy of that.

Cloud culled

I think what's more important is where your best chance of clear skies is. While the area around Southern Illinois and Northeast Missouri will have the longest durations of totality, there's on average a better chance of cloud cover. There's no guarantee, but I think your best bet for clear skies is in Nebraska or even northwestern Missouri. Another really good area is eastern Oregon.

My best advice is not to commit yourself to any specific location. Keep a really close eye on the forecasts along the totality band. One of the websites to keep up with cloud cover is Clear Sky Clock from the Canadian Meteorological Service at www.cleardarksky.com . My plan is to rent a small motorhome and target Nebraska, but be prepared to move to another locale on short notice.

When the event gets a little closer, I'll have specific suggestions for photographing viewing through a telescope, but I can tell you from experience that it's most rewarding to witness it just with your God-given eyes. Optical aid and cameras are great, but I believe you need to take in the whole scene, both in the sky and the land. Don't waste it with your eye glued to a lens. There's going to be so many, many photos being taken anyway.

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You may choose to view in a large group, but personally I prefer to be with family and few good friends. I don't want to experience this very special happening in a carnival atmosphere with loud music and shouting. That's just me, though.

Google glasses

During the partial eclipse before totality you'll need special eclipse glasses to safely watch the moon creep across the sun's face. You never want to stare at the partially eclipsed sun without them. You can really damage your eyes, or worse!

You'll find these glasses for sale all across the internet when you Google "solar eclipse glasses." I've seen them for sale as low as about $2. I would get several pairs as soon as you can, because I know they'll be a lot harder to get as we get close to Aug. 21.

Make sure, though, you don't spend the entire time staring at the sun through your eclipse glasses. Take off the glasses and take in the entire scene all around you. Watch the diminishing daylight and changing color of the sky. Within a few minutes of totality you can actually see the moon's shadow migrating across the landscape. There's no way to photograph that. You just have to see it! You'll also feel the temperature dropping. A few seconds before totality you can take your glasses off and witness the very last bit of the sun's disk being covered, producing the diamond ring effect. I wouldn't try to photograph it. Most pictures don't do it justice. Trust your eyes! Make sure you don't use binoculars or a telescope quite yet. because that could damage your eyes.

Once totality sets in, it's safe to view through binoculars and telescopes. You'll easily see flares and prominences churning and emanating from the sun's violent surface. The sun's corona, the outer atmosphere of the closest star, will also be clearly visible. The most important thing to remember is to set a stopwatch with an alarm and STOP your telescope or binocular viewing at least 30 seconds before totality ends. You never ever want to view even a tiny sliver of sun's surface with a telescope or binoculars. You could easily damage your eyes or worse! Safety first! Also remember to take a few seconds here and there to check out the sky during totality. Bright stars and planets pop out and all along the horizon as the skies takes on a weird twilight color.

Again I know this eclipse is still a ways off, but I wanted to bring it up now so you can make plans to see totality. Don't miss it if you can. You'll thank me for it later!
Motto:I rarely go anywhere without some type of wrap or sweater. I am always cold.

Whether sitting before the ivories or at the ice rink, Gretchen Wilson says she has been able to spend her life doing what she loves, including being a wife and mother of three now grown sons.

"I was born in Rochester, as was my mother," she said. "Graduated from Rochester John Marshall High School in 1960, attended the University of Minnesota and somewhere in that gray period also became a professional figure skater.

"I have been teaching piano for 49 years at Hoffman Madsen Studios in Rochester," she said. "Some years, I taught around 55 to 60 students weekly. I now have 12 students  seems like a vacation.  I still love it."

Since 1999, Wilson has been a national judge with U.S. Figure Skating.

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"Some years, I traveled as many as 70 days while still keeping up my teaching schedule. Now, I only go out about 25 days," she said.

Wilson lives in Rochester with Martin Wilson, her husband of 52 years.

Please tell us a bit about your style.

I really love beautiful, interesting fabrics, simple lines, good tailoring.

May we have some background?

When I was young, my mother dressed me in navy blue dotted Swiss for Easter  a hat and gloves and lots of matching accessories.

In high school, everyone wore girdles and nylons  nothing wiggling! Pendleton knife-pleated plaid skirts, cashmere sweaters and ballet flats. Never could afford the real Pendleton skirt or cashmere sweater, but my mother got me something close, and I still have the skirt.

Anything more?

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When I skated, there really were no ready-made skating dresses, so the mothers and seamstresses in town were always busy creating. From these experiences, I came to appreciate the skill and talent of those who can actually sew. Now, I still visit the tailor.

Is there a go-to piece that goes with you everywhere?

I rarely go anywhere without some type of wrap or sweater, and my indispensable piece is a huge black scarf that I can use as a scarf, a shawl or even a throw to cover up on the airplane or car. I am always cold.

Priceless pieces in your wardrobe?

A black wool Geiger ankle-length coat my mother bought for me. I'm still wearing it to skating events.

Are you a tote or purse person?

About 10-plus years ago, my mother had given me some money for a new purse for Christmas. My husband and I went to the Mall of America. Well, I found just the perfect little purse and my husband asked what I was going to do with it. I said I was downsizing. He said, "Excellent idea," and as I was visiting with the salesperson, he turned around and said to another salesperson, "My wife will also take the giant tote bag so she has someplace for her little bag."

Please tell us a little more about you and shopping.

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I don't really enjoy shopping, but I do like to graze. I stop in for a minute to see what is new at Chicos, Counterpoint, Hers, Macy's. Just in and out.

Parting thoughts?

The way I dress is changing  more covered up. Age does take its toll. Ho hum.
AUSTIN  A man who authorities believe robbed a gas station in order to pay overdue child support has maintained his innocence in the case.

Timothy Gordon Lester, 47, of Austin, has been charged with one count each of simple robbery, a felony, and fifth-degree drug possession, a gross misdemeanor. He remains in custody in lieu of $100,000 unconditional bail, and is due in Mower County District Court on Jan. 12.

The case began about 8:45 p.m. Dec. 26 with a report of a robbery of the Apollo III gas station, 3011 W. Oakland Ave. in Austin. The employee described the suspect as an older white male wearing a blue face mask, a dark puffy coat, light gloves and tan shoes.

The man entered the business about 8:40 p.m., asked how late the store was open, then said he forgot his money and would be right back. Less than a minute later, he came back and told the employee, "excuse me, sir, this is a robbery. I'm going to need you to go to the back and count to 400."

The clerk complied; about a minute later he heard the door chime, indicating the robber had left. He waited about five more minutes, then came out and called law enforcement. The cash drawers from both registers were missing, a total of $1,198.97.

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Surveillance video from the store confirmed the employee's story, and also seemed to indicate the suspect was familiar with how to open the registers. He also appeared to know the areas that were not monitored by the surveillance cameras.

The next day, the investigator was contacted by a child support worker with Mower County Human Services, who said Lester had just made a $1,200 payment on back child support. The woman said Lester used to work at Apollo III, "had a history of failing to pay child support and claimed he could not afford to make the payments," the complaint says.

Lester, who was still at the human services office, told detectives he'd recently gotten married and had received cash as wedding gifts. He also offered the names of a couple who would provide an alibi for the night before.

While Lester attended his child support hearing, an officer contacted the female witness. She denied they were with Lester, but said she'd given him a ride to the bank that morning to exchange a sandwich bag full of small bills for larger ones, court documents say. The woman said Lester told her a former cell mate at the jail had given him the money for his child support payment.

Lester was arrested after his hearing, and deflected questions with questions of his own, the report says.

A detective met with Lester's wife, who refused to allow a search the residence. She said she gave Lester $600 that she'd been saving, and the other $600 was received as wedding gifts. A blue puffy vest and dark hooded jacket hung near the front door; a pair of tan shoes was nearby.

A search warrant at the home turned up a metal lock box with methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, the complaint says; Lester's wife admitted using meth, but said the lock box and its contents were his. She was arrested.

Lester continued to claim the money was from wedding gifts and his wife; he said he'd told the witness it was from a cell mate because he'd already borrowed money from her. According to the reports, Lester denied knowledge of the lock box and said the meth was his wife's, adding it explained "a lot about her recent behavior."

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Lester allegedly changed his original story, saying his wife had given him $900, and $300 of the cash he'd used was from the wedding. He didn't know where she'd gotten the cash, but said his wife and her "tweaker friends" were "maybe setting me up."

Lester's wife maintained her story, and told investigators he was home with her during the time of the robbery.

The female witness reportedly said the still shot of the robber from the surveillance video "looked just like the defendant."
A 19-year-old Rochester woman made her initial appearance Wednesday in Olmsted County District Court, where she faces multiple felonies after an assault with a knife.

Jordan Nicole Scharf, of 2317 18th Ave. NW, has been charged with one count each of domestic assault by strangulation, terroristic threats and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, all felonies. She also faces two misdemeanor counts of domestic assault.

Scharf was released from custody in lieu of $10,000 conditional bond and is due back in court March 3.

The investigation began with a call to law enforcement Dec. 19, reporting a domestic assault at a residence on 18th Avenue Northwest. Officers spoke with a man who said Scharf had threatened him with a knife; she was gone by the time police arrived.

The victim said an argument between the two of them escalated when Scharf got a knife and threatened to cut off his genitals while he slept, the complaint says. She also allegedly scraped the blade of the knife along the man's cheek, saying she was "OK with going to prison."

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The victim was able to get the knife away from Scharf, who then got on top of him in the bed, court documents say, put both hands around his neck and began to strangle him. The man pushed her away and tried to leave the residence, but Scharf allegedly stood in front of the door with the knife and threatened to stab him, "swinging the knife in a wild stabbing motion," the report says.

The man once again got the knife away from Scharf, went outside and slashed her car tires so she couldn't leave in the vehicle. Scharf followed him outside with a knife, still threatening to stab him, the complaint says. Another struggle ensued, which resulted in a cut to the man's hand as Scharf reportedly continued to punch and kick at him.

After her arrest later that day, she said she'd "flipped a switch or something and had a ton of rage come out," the documents say. Scharf allegedly admitted making threats with the knife and choking the man.
The "discovery" of a site where the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has been dumping deer carcasses for years has prompted a public outcry  and an admission from the DNR that in this case its protocols were not being followed.

The site came to light in late December when a pheasant hunter found a pile of dead deer on the Gordon Yeager Wildlife Management Area north of Rochester Community and Technical College and south of Quarry Hill Nature Center. He shot a video that showed several dozen deer carcasses and severed heads, and that video was posted to the Minnesota Hunting Club's Facebook page , where it has been shared more than 11,000 times.

WMA Find by Michael Wondrow https://www.facebook.com/MNHuntingClub/videos/1373808859342581/



Michael Wondrow stumbled across this on a WMA. Hopefully we can gather some more information on what this is and who did it. Please share this so we can find out what or who did this!

Posted by Minnesota Hunting Club on Saturday, December 31, 2016

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Lt. Tyler Quandt, supervisor of the DNR District 18 Enforcement District, said the carcasses were removed Wednesday. He also explained how they came to be there in the first place.

"These were deer that were shot illegally and were seized by law enforcement, or people called in a complaint about discovering a dead deer somewhere," he said.

Ideally, confiscated deer are given to families who need the meat, but sometimes the animals have spoiled and cannot be salvaged. In such cases, Quandt said it's standard practice for the DNR to dump the carcasses on public lands.

"This type of thing has been going on since the DNR has been around," he said. "We've had game wardens in our state for 120 years, and for 120 years we've taken deer that can't be salvaged and we dump them in specific places on public lands."

In this case, however, the deer were dumped was less than 150 yards from a parking area and just a few feet off of a mowed trail that, in recent years, has begun to get more traffic.

"The city of Rochester is developing in every direction, and there's getting to be more businesses and houses in that area," Quandt said. "People are walking dogs or just going for walks in that area, so that kind of activity has increased."

Other than the unsightly aspect of the dump site so near a public trail, the DNR now admits that at least one other mistake was made at this dump site. Chris Niskanen, communications director for the DNR, said some deer heads found at the site were supposed to have a different final destination.

"The deer heads at the site were from hunter-harvested deer that were tested for chronic wasting disease as part of the DNR's surveillance program," he said. "All the heads tested negative. Unfortunately, agency protocol for disposing of the heads in the landfill was not followed in all cases, and some heads were left at the disposal site."

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Chronic wasting disease is an always-fatal neurological disease that affects deer, elk and moose. It's a hot topic in southeastern Minnesota right now after three deer tested positive for CWD in the Preston area. A special hunt is now underway to curb the spread of the disease and determine how many deer are infected.

The dump site at Gordon Yeager WMA will no longer be used, but Niskanen said the DNR will continue to dispose of animal carcasses on public lands across the state.

"We are responsible under state statute to manage wildlife (dead or alive) on state lands and WMAs, and we find it necessary to use discreet and remote areas to allow confiscated deer carcasses that are unfit for human consumption to decompose naturally," he said. "It saves on landfill space and the cost of disposal. Still, we acknowledge the unfortunate circumstances of this situation and we are making corrections. We are also reviewing other sites to ensure they are remote and not visible to the public."

Among the complaints that hunters have been voicing on social media is the fact that people who butcher the deer they shoot are prohibited from dumping the carcasses on public land.

Is that a double standard?

Not at all, Quandt said.

"We are the state of Minnesota, acting on behalf of the state of Minnesota, disposing of deer carcasses on land controlled by the state," he said. "And there's no law against disposing of deer on private land. If I get permission from Farmer Joe to hunt deer on his property, he can also give me permission to dump the remains on his land after I butcher a deer."

Quandt added that letting a deer decompose naturally is far better than burying it in a landfill.

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"Between the crows, coyotes, skunks, foxes and other critters, the animal doesn't go to waste," he said. "It is utilized by nature, and we believe that is the best way for them to be disposed of."
WINONA  The Winona school board voted unanimously to accept the resignation of Superintendent Stephen West at Thursday night's meeting, and moved on toward temporary and more permanent leadership in the district.

In accepting West's resignation, the board agreed to pay his accrued vacation and sick leave and his health insurance through the end of January. West was not present at the meeting. The resignation took effect after 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

West's resignation follows reports in the Winona Post, a twice-weekly newspaper, that West does not hold a doctorate and that his 2009 doctoral thesis, "African Americans' Motivations for Becoming Principals," appears to plagiarize a 2007 doctoral thesis by a student at the University of Georgia.

West earned a master's degree in education from Saint Mary's Univeristy in 1998 and received a doctoral degree in 2009. In a story about his hiring in the Fall 2014 edition of Saint Mary's Magazine, the school's alumni publication, West's degrees are listed. An SMU spokeswoman confirmed only that West does not currently hold a doctoral degree from the university.

Replacing West in the short term is Kelly Halvorsen, who has been serving as the district's director of learning and teaching. Board member Steven Schild nominated Halvorsen, who does hold a superintendent license, he said.

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Allison Quam, who was sworn in as a new board member Thursday, asked if Halvorsen was the only district employee who holds a superintendent license.

"Yes," said Pat Blaisdell, the district's director of human resources. "In the event she is named here tonight, we would bring someone from inside as a teacher on special assignment (to fill some of Halvorsen's current duties), then hire a long-term sub for that person."

The board unanimously approved Halvorsen as interim superintendent.

Next, the board agreed to hire Peer Solutions, a Minnesota-based search firm, to help find superintendent candidates with a goal of hiring a new superintendent by April. Four firms were considered, none of which were the firm that found West in 2014. Of the four, only one other was based in Minnesota, and its fee and cap on expenses was more than $2,800 higher.

In other business, the board approved a timeline for coming up with a $1.5 million budget reduction for the 2017-18 school year. A committee, that so far includes board members Karen Coleman and Schild, will help determine the cuts to be made. The goal, according to the approved timeline, is to have the recommended cuts approved by April 6.

Finally, the board approved a work session with representatives from Wold Architects, the firm consulting with the district on the facilities reduction plan. The meeting was tentatively set for 6 p.m. on Jan. 18.
MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following the US$1.7B proposed takeover of Tobira by Allergan, three more Licensing Mergers & Acquisitions (LM&A) transactions over the past two months, continue to highlight the importance of NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis) assets to large pharmas.



In mid-November 2016, BMS announced that it had acquired the world-wide rights to Nitto Denkos ND-L02-s0201 for a US$100M upfront consideration plus additional undisclosed clinical and regulatory milestone payments, royalties, sales-based milestone payments, as well as option exercise payments for other indications. ND-L02-s0201 is a siRNA that is designed to inhibit heat shock protein 47, which is thought to play a role in fibrogenesis.

In late-December 2016, Novartis announced that it had paid an upfront consideration of US$50M, plus undisclosed milestones and other payments, for the exclusive rights to Conatuss Emricasan, a phase II pan-caspase inhibitor for the treatment of NASH with advanced fibrosis scarring and cirrhosis.

In addition, on 5 January 2017, JNJ announced that they entered into a collaboration and option agreement with Bird Rock Bio, which is evaluating a Cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1)-targeting antibody, namacizumab, which is in Phase I clinical trial. JNJ will collaborate with Bird Rock Bio during the trial and has the exclusive right to acquire the company following the Phase I data readout, for undisclosed terms.

Thomas Liquard, CEO of Immuron commented:

It comes as no surprise that big pharmas continue to buy a diverse group of NASH assets, as we believe that the market carries the potential for multiple blockbuster approvals. This is partially driven by the growing evidence that NASH is a multi-factorial disease, and that a combination therapy approach will most likely be needed to effectively treat the disease. Another major factor is the size of the potential market which is driven by the ever-growing world-wide obesity and diabetes epidemic. We therefore expect this LM&A trend to continue through 2017 and beyond.

Immuron is currently running three Phase II clinical trials in fatty-liver diseases with its lead asset, IMM-124E, including in NASH, ASH (Alcoholic Steatohepatitis) and Pediatric NASH. Both the ASH and Pediatric NASH trials are fully funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

IMM-124E works upstream, and on several pathways, to reduce liver inflammation and is thus a completely unique treatment option compared to other leading investigational agents. We believe that the therapeutic potential of this broad and unique mechanism of action is the reason why IMM-124E was selected as the principal investigational agent for the two NIH-funded clinical trials and also why IMM-124E has the potential to be one of the backbone therapies for NASH patients.

About Immuron:

Immuron Ltd (ASX:IMC) (OTCQB:IMROY) is a microbiome company focused on developing and commercialising oral immunotherapeutics for the treatment of a many gut mediated diseases. Immuron has a unique and safe technology platform that enables a shorter development therapeutic cycle. The Company currently markets and sells Travelan for the prevention of Travellers diarrhoea, whilst its lead product candidate IMM-124E is in Phase 2b clinical trials for NASH and ASH. These products together with the Companys other preclinical immunotherapy pipeline products targeting immune-related diseases currently under development, will meet a large unmet need in the market.

For more information visit: http://www.immuron.com/

Forward-Looking Statements:

Certain statements made in this release are forward-looking statements and are based on Immurons current expectations, estimates and projections. Words such as anticipates, expects, intends, plans, believes, seeks, estimates, guidance and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although Immuron believes the forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond Immurons control, including those risks or uncertainties inherent in the process of both developing and commercialising technology. As a result, actual results could materially differ from those expressed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made in this release relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. Immuron will not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions or updates to these forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or unanticipated events occurring after the date of this release except as required by law or by any appropriate regulatory authority.
ST. PAUL  Calling it a chance to catch up on state construction projects, Gov. Mark Dayton unveiled a $1.5 billion public works proposal on Wednesday that is loaded with projects from southeast Minnesota.

Tucked inside the governor's proposal is $14.5 million to renovate Rochester Community and Technical College, $2.3 million to renovate Rochester International Airport and $1.5 million to expand The Reading Center in Rochester. During a call with reporters, Dayton challenged lawmakers to pass a robust public works bill in the first month of the legislative session. He said it is especially urgent that lawmakers take action after failing to reach agreement on a bonding bill last year.

"This is catch up and that's why it is so vital that it is done in the first month of the legislative session in January so that these projects, most of which have already been approved by the House and Senate, can be ready to go when construction season begins," Dayton said.

But Senate Capital Investment Committee Chairman Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, warned that there is little interest among Republicans for a public works bill of that size.

"I don't think at this point there's a lot of interest in a $1.5 billion bonding bill," Senjem said.

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Some Republican leaders have said they do not expect to pass a bonding bill this year. Others, including Senjem, say they would like to see a bonding bill. The Rochester Republican said he expects a bill of under $1 billion could pass the GOP-controlled Legislature. But bonding bills require a supermajority to pass, meaning Democrats would have to be on board.

Dayton's office estimates the governor's proposal would create nearly 23,000 jobs. Including in the package is $140 million for local roads and bridges, $167 million for water infrastructure improvements and $315 million for college and university campuses. Other southeast Minnesota projects funded include $4.5 million to upgrade Red Wing's waterfront and the Sheldon Theatre, $17 million for Winona State University's Education Village and $15 million for a rail grade separation on Sturgeon Lake Road in the Prairie Island Indian Community. The governor indicated he would also like to see a large bonding bill next year as well.

Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, said she is particularly pleased to see funding for RCTC's renovation project in the bill. The project failed to make it into last year's bonding bill being considered by legislators, getting leapfrogged by projects that were lower on Minnesota State Colleges and Universities' priority list.

"I'm pleased to see that included, and I hope that all of our local delegation  Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate  can form a united front to make sure that that happens ahead of anything that is lower down on the (priority) list," Liebling said.

The RCTC project involves the demolition of Plaza and Memorial Hall and the renovation of existing classroom space. It would also take care of $4.4 million of deferred maintenance. Dayton said when he visited the college he was convinced of the need for the project. It was raining, and there were buckets inside a classroom catching water leaking from the ceiling.

"It's one of the really important projects to be able to keep the best people and keep them coming to Rochester," Dayton said.

Interim RCTC President Mary Davenport welcomed news of the project's inclusion in the governor's bonding proposal.

"I'm happy to learn that the Governor recognized the gravity of our need. Our buildings are old and have significant operational costs tied to air quality and safety which are remedied by the project's demolition, construction and remodel. The project greatly improves usability of space for engaging in the teaching and learning environment expected by today's students," Davenport said in a statement.

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Some area projects failed to make the cut. That includes Lanesboro's request for $3.6 million to fix its historic dam. Also missing is $500,000 to study Oronoco's wastewater infrastructure needs  an item that Senjem said is a top priority for him.

Rep. Greg Davids, whose district includes Lanesboro, said he was disappointed to see Lanesboro was not included in the governor's proposal. But the Preston Republican said the governor's plan is unrealistic because conservatives have no interest in such a large bonding bill.

"He appears to be living in an alternate universe with no possibility of passage of this proposal. It's not a serious proposal," Davids said.

Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, said he backs the idea of passing a bonding bill this session because the failure of lawmakers to agree to pass one last year has led to a backlog of projects.

He added, "It would be extremely prudent to do it, get these projects done and take a look at newer projects that would be coming online in 2018."
First District Rep. Tim Walz's bid to become to the lead Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs got a major boost this week.

Members of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted 31-19 on Wednesday to recommend Walz for the post. But the battle for the leadership post is not over yet. Walz's chief competition for the post, California Rep. Mark Takano, wants all 197 House Democrats to decide who gets the position. The House Caucus is expected to vote next week  possibly as early as Wednesday.

Takano has been serving as the lead Democrat on the committee since the previous leader  Florida Rep. Corrine Brown  was indicted on fraud charges. Brown lost her re-election bid this year.

In a statement, Walz said he is "humbled and grateful" to receive the steering committee's support.

"We have work to do to ensure that every veteran has access to the benefits and care they have earned. I look forward to bringing a soldier's perspective to the 115th Congress and working with veterans, the VA and my colleagues to hold up our nation's promises to those who have served and sacrificed," Walz said.

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This is Walz's second run for the veterans committee post. In 2014, he lost to Brown, who had the backing of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. At that time, Democratic leaders blocked Walz from even being considered for the spot based on a technicality. This time around, Walz said he had been assured by party leaders he would have a fair shot at post.
MINNEAPOLIS  A Minnesota sheriff says he hasn't been able to get working replacements for a recalled device that his agency and others around the country use to deliver a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

No one has died as a result of the defective devices in Hennepin County, and the agency still has devices that work properly. But Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek is concerned because the number of opioid overdose deaths in his area is at a record high. Hennepin County had 106 opioid-related overdose deaths through October, a 25 percent increase over the same period in 2015.

The device from Teleflex Medical turns the injectable form of naloxone, known under the brand Narcan, into a mist that's sprayed into the nose. It was recalled in late October, and Stanek said he's asked for replacements but keeps receiving defective batches.

"Due to this tragic increase (in deaths), I consider this recall issue to be of the highest importance," Stanek said in a statement Thursday. "We are dealing with an epidemic, and we need all the help we can get to save lives."

Teleflex spokeswoman Susan Denby said that the company has been experiencing a temporary shortage of the device and has been telling customers when the product becomes available. She did not return a message left Thursday by The Associated Press.

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Cody Wiberg, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy, said there are alternatives to the Teleflex device, but they are more expensive. He believes most law enforcement agencies prefer to use the Teleflex device because the method is cheaper, and because it's easier and quicker than giving an injection, which requires more officer training.

The National Sheriffs' Association said dispensing naloxone by nasal spray is the method most widely used by sheriff's departments  and likely other police agencies  nationwide. The association is looking into the issue raised by Stanek to see if the problem with the Teleflex device is more widespread.

Wiberg said the Teleflex atomizer is supposed to turn the drug into a plume of mist to be deposited on mucous membranes and quickly absorbed. Stanek said the defective devices are instead delivering the drug in a stream of fluid, which Wiberg said could delay absorption.

The recall notice says the problem could affect the medication's effectiveness, and could lead to serious injury or death.

Stanek said about 20 percent of his department's devices were found to be defective and are no longer in use. He's calling on Teleflex to return his department and others to full capacity.

"We are in the business of saving lives, and it is difficult to do that if we can't rely on equipment being sent to us," Stanek said.
ST. PAUL  Aimee Schroeder, a criminal analyst with the Washington County attorney's office, starts her day scrolling through listings on Backpage.com.

Her task is to pinpoint which Twin Cities ads are selling people, particularly children, for sex. Photographs of girls  they're almost always girls  with bruised bodies and the track marks of drug use tip her off to possible sex-trafficking crimes.

As she scrolls, Schroeder keeps an eye out for small hands and children's clothing. The task is daunting.

About 55,000 ads were posted in the metro area this year selling children and young adults for sex.

"That number itself tells you that there's a significant problem in the Twin Cities," said Imran Ali, the Washington County assistant attorney who is heading up the county's year-old effort to collect data on sex trafficking and help its victims.

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The Twin Cities is among the 13 metropolitan areas in the U.S. that have the highest incidence rates of child sex trafficking, according to the FBI. And because Washington County is a hub for major highway connections, sex work is often headquartered there. From Washington County, it's easy to travel to Ramsey or Hennepin counties, where the act itself usually occurs.

It's the internet that has made the crime so prevalent. In a few clicks, people can anonymously buy sex from anyone, Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said.

"I can order up a human being to come to my house and sell her body to me, and then I can order a pizza  and I'll bet the gal beats the pizza to my door," Orput said.

The Washington County team feels overwhelmed, but it has had some success.

With just one police officer, an analyst, an attorney and a couple of part-time law clerks devoting their 40-hour weeks to the effort in the past year, 20 trafficked children and young women have been found.

Schroeder takes note of the date an ad is posted, the victim or perpetrator's name, and the phone number and email address associated with it. She enters the information into a database.

Ali said the data is important.

"I think that when we are trying to figure out how to combat the problem  and all these police chiefs and elected county attorneys are trying to figure out what resources to allocate  they have to know how big the problem is," he said.

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With the number of victims being trafficked, it would be impossible to recover every last victim, so Ali's team focuses on tracking down the underage ones.

It's a choice they made while researching the tracking program late last year, before it launched in January.

"We started looking at Backpage because no one in our office was familiar with (it)," Ali said. "Within one hour, we found an individual that was a 16-year-old in our community."

The team alerted law enforcement, who tracked down the girl and provided her with services.

Victims can get sucked into trafficking a number of ways, including through lovers who act as traffickers, by meeting perpetrators on social media or through dating apps and through drug dealers who accept sex as a form of payment. Any social media, the team said, is fair game; they've even tracked down a victim who found her trafficker using the Scrabble-like phone app, "Words With Friends."

Often, the victims are runaways, addicts or have a mental illness.

When Schroeder thinks she's stumbled on an ad for a trafficked child, she takes to social media.

Searching a child's name on Facebook or Instagram is hit-or-miss; sometimes, Schroeder can identify the victim  and the perp  herself. Then, she sends the case to Woodbury police Detective Paul Kroshus. Other times, the team spends weeks digging for clues as to who the trafficker might be.

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Kroshus, who was taken off his regular assignment in June to work on finding traffickers full time, subpoenas agencies like Backpage and credit card and phone companies in hopes of finding clues to identify the victim.

An IP address, the emails associated with it and the number of Backpage listings per email, usually up to 200 or 300, are returned to Kroshus. The process can take a few hours, or a few weeks.

It's not always so straightforward, Kroshus said. Traffickers will often use temporary phone numbers and cycle through email addresses in an attempt to remain anonymous.

If all else fails, Kroshus goes undercover. He tries to reach out to the victims and determine their location, in hopes that meeting them face-to-face will coerce them to leave their traffickers.

The team once spent three weeks sifting through prepaid-phone records, fake email accounts and inconclusive social media searches to track down a 13-year-old girl.

"It's frustrating from the law enforcement side, because they know this is going on," Ali said. "We do everything we can, and we work as fast as we can, but trying to get to her took time."

The hardest part, Kroshus said, is trying to stay up-to-date on victims' locations as phone numbers and emails rotate and Backpage advertisements disappear, only to reappear in a few days.

"As we're trying to catch up to them, we're kind of a city behind," he said.

Sometimes the victim cannot be found. And in that case: "There's nothing we can do," Kroshus said. "If we can't track them, we can't track them."

"With limited resources, the best way I can describe what I have to do is triage," he said. "There's only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a week. . Even with kind of being on the early side, I'm completely inundated with a caseload that I can't keep up with."

The Washington County Board last week accepted a $184,000 state grant that will fund a law clerk, legal assistant and project manager for the county attorney's office. The new staff will work on efforts to recover sex-trafficking victims.

Still, the entire team feels the pressure of lacking the manpower to recover every victim.

In October, a 41-year-old St. Paul man was sentenced in Washington County District Court after he spent months selling a 17-year-old Forest Lake girl for sex and stripping, a criminal complaint said.

The team can place victims, such as the Forest Lake girl, in safe housing and provide them with transportation and food.

If victims are underage, police are able to remove them from trafficking against their will. If they're adults, police try to convince them to get out of the situation.

As soon as a child is recovered, parents become involved. Often, those parents are surprised or in denial when they learn their child has been sexually exploited.

"That's the thing that was the most shocking," Ali said. "I thought . that the indicators would have been in all of these scenarios (that) there's a broken home, and that's simply not the case."

A victim witness coordinator will sit down with parents and refer them and their child to follow-up counseling services.

Because for years, sexually exploited youth were prosecuted under the law  and adults still are  victims at any age often shy away from help, and convincing a trafficked person that they're better off leaving the situation under police protection can be difficult.

Beyond Washington County, Ramsey and Hennepin counties have developed training for hotel staff to identify potential victims and have partnered with advocacy organizations to provide victim support.

So far, it seems police are targeting traffickers and buyers instead of sex workers, said Lauren Ryan, who directs the Safe Harbor program at the Minnesota Department of Health.

Since the Safe Harbor law took effect in Minnesota in 2014, youth under the age of 18 are safeguarded from prosecution.

"It's been a complete and total change," Ryan said. "Not even that long ago  five years ago  law enforcement would see that as someone doing something criminal. Now, it's just been flipped on its head. Actually, what's being done to this person . is them having a crime perpetrated on them."

But when victims turn 18, they're subject to criminal charges if a county attorney chooses to take that route, though they're still eligible for shelter and counseling services until age 24.

"It is a hard argument to make, that somehow we've served someone until the day after their 18th birthday, and they can see all of a sudden," Ryan said. "Somehow, that doesn't make sense."

Washington County officials recovered an 18-year-old, drug-dependent woman from the Twin Cities sex-trafficking ring  twice.

Both times, police provided victim resources.

"Within three months, she had two traffickers. That's sobering to think about  that not only did that happen, but there are two . people willing to take on the role of promoting someone so young and so vulnerable," Ali said.

"If we see her again, we're going to take another shot at it. Maybe the third time works. Maybe at this point, something has changed significantly in someone's life that they're ready."
Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Russian hacking especially as it pertained to last years presidential election. Paul Kane, a liberal at the Washington Post, gives this account:

Senate Republicans walked a tightrope Thursday trying to show their toughness against Vladimir Putins Russia without undermining the legitimacy of President-elect Donald Trumps victory in November. Again and again during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Russian cyberattacks, conservative hawks found themselves in the awkward position of talking tough against Putin  and talking even tougher about the validity of Trumps election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

This is a partisan spin. I watched the hearing. There was neither a tightrope nor Republican awkwardness.

Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotton separated out three questions: (1) did Russia hack various Democratic accounts, (2) for what purpose did they do the hacking, and (3) did the hacking affect the outcome of the election. The second question didnt really feature because James Clapper wasnt prepared to discuss it until his report is finalized.

Clapper had no opinion on the third question. However, it provided an obvious subtext to the hearing especially when Tim Kaine, the losing VP candidate, did his questioning. Talk about awkward.

The distinction between the first and third questions is crucial. The question of how hacking may have affected the election is irrelevant to public policy. At best, its the basis for a mildly entertaining parlor game. At worst, and in reality, its an attempt to undermine the president-elect based on the highly dubious and impossible to prove claim that Trump owes his victory to Vladimir Putin.

There is nothing awkward about pushing back against this suggestion.

The question of Russian hacking of Democratic emails, by contrast, raises national security concerns because it is tied to larger questions of cyber-security and Russian aggression. Separating this question from speculation about the 2016 election isnt walking a tightrope, nor is it an awkward task. The two matters are easily distinguished.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump appears so far to have trouble making the distinction. Perhaps the clarity that Tom Cotton in particular brought to bear at the hearing will help Trump realize that theres a real national security issue here, and that dealing with it will not undermine his legitimacy.

The only Republican Senator who struck me as awkward was the disappointing Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He seemed intent on absolving Russia based on statistics purporting to show that we have interfered in twice as many foreign elections as the Russians have.

This isnt as bad as Donald Trump saying of Putins brutality, our country does plenty of killing too. It smacks, however, of the lefts blame America first mentality. As Kane puts it, Tillis line of questioning resembled liberal criticism of intelligence agencies in the 1970s.

By focusing on election interference and factoring out the cyber-intrusion piece, Tillis played into the Democrats hand. Hopefully, Trump will see the issue the way Cotton and other Republican members do, not the way Tillis does.

An apologist for Russia in the Senate is bad but not frightening. An apologist for Russia in the White House would be another matter entirely.
Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon reports that the Democratic partys slate of nominees for DNC chair has agreed to participate in a candidate forum hosted at a restaurant owned by a rabid critic of Israel. The decision to hold it there may give the leading contender for DNC chair  the rabidly anti-Israel and one-time Louis Farrakhan backer Keith Ellison  something of a home field advantage. Sadly, however, its far from clear that any of the participants will feel out of place. (Tom Perez is the only contender who has not confirmed he will attend.)

The restaurant in question is called Busboys and Poets. It is owned by Andy Shallal, an Iraqi-born anti-Israel activist. According to Shallal, Israel is an occupation force guilty of terrorizing the Middle East. Shallal has also claimed that the United States receives its marching orders from Tel Aviv.

Ellison likewise said in 2010 that United States foreign policy is governed by what is good or bad for Israel.

Shallal uses his restaurant to promote his anti-Israeli views. For example, according to Scher, in 2013 a group of customers tipped a waitress less because she was wearing an anti-Israel shirt that said Occupation isnt pretty. The shirt, created by Code Pink, is sold at Busboys and Poets.

The restaurant explained that it encourages staff to wear shirts that are in line with the beliefs of Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal. The restaurants marketing director added, were a restaurant with a specific political point of view.

Since the restaurants point of view regarding Israel reflects the emerging line of the Democratic party, and the long-time line of Keith Ellison, it makes perfect sense to hold the DNC candidate forum at Busboys and Poets.

In doing so, the Democratic party joins an illustrious collection of left-wing outfits that have convened there. Scher reports:

Busboys and Poets has become the go-to venue in D.C. for events held by radical left-wing groups such as Code Pink. It has hosted 9/11 truther organizations, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and a series of pro-Hugo Chavez events sponsored by the Venezuelan government. Shallal hosted a fundraiser at the restaurant in honor of the man who was killed attempting to stab an Israeli soldier during the 2010 Turkish flotilla to Gaza. Shallal also produced a play called The Admission, which centers around the fictional slaughter of Palestinian civilians by an Israeli soldier.

9/11 truthers, Bill Ayers, Hugo Chavez, a Turkish terrorist, Israel haters, Keith Ellison, the DNC. These days, there is little dissonance here.
Someone in the U.S. intelligence communityif it has been reported exactly who, I havent seen ithas prepared a 50-page report on, among other things, alleged Russian efforts to meddle with the 2016 presidential election. That report was delivered to President Obama today, and will go to Donald Trump tomorrow. Naturally, it took only a matter of hours for the Washington Post to be briefed on the reports contents.

One point, before getting to the Posts story. It isnt hard to see what is going on here: Democrats in the intelligence agencies prepared a report for President Obama. The report was immediately leaked by Democrats in the Obama administration (or else Democrats in the intelligence agencies) to Democrats at the Washington Post, so they could slant the story to influence those who will never actually see the report. The purpose of this charade is not to inform President Obama (still less, President-Elect Trump). It is, rather, to advance Democratic Party narratives and undermine the legitimacy of the Trump administration.

Now, to the Posts story:

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trumps victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

Well, thats possible. We know for sure that Putins government celebrated Barack Obamas win in 2008. To their credit, the Republicans never tried to make political hay out of that fact.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of actors involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Of course, if there was such a disparity it may have been due to the Russians assumption that Hillary Clinton would win the election. Certainly that is what they expected if they read the New York Times and the Washington Post. And if they failed to penetrate the Republican National Committees email system, maybe it is because no one there was dumb enough to fall for a crude spearfishing scheme that, as Julian Assange said, could have been perpetrated by a 14-year-old.

Some in the intelligence agencies werent entirely happy with the Posts account of the report, so they leaked to NBC News:

A senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge confirmed to NBC News that the report on Russian hacking delivered to President Obama Thursday says that U.S. intelligence picked up senior Russian officials celebrating Donald Trumps win. The source described the intelligence about the celebration, first reported by the Washington Post, as a minor part of the overall intelligence report, which makes the case that Russia intervened in the election. Highly classified intercepts illustrate Russian government planning and direction of a multifaceted campaign by Moscow to undermine the integrity of the American political system, said the official.

***

The official agreed to talk to NBC News after the Post published leaked details of the review because the official felt that the details the paper chose focused too much on the Russian celebration and not enough on the thrust of the report.

These people are falling over themselves to help the Democrats. No wonder Donald Trump posted on Instagram a little while ago:

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics! A photo posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 5, 2017 at 4:43pm PST

He is right: the leaks demonstrate that what is going on is politics, not serious intelligence work.

Meanwhile, an unclassified version of the report will be made public next week. It will be interesting to see whether it contains more compelling information than the disastrous first effort that the same agencies released a week ago. I will try to read it as soon as it is available.
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NMS Properties CEO Neil Shekhter and WNMS Communities CEO Scott Walter announced today that NMS Properties is voluntarily ceding managerial and operational control of all pending NMS related affordable and market-rate housing development projects to WNMS Communities, Inc.  a newly formed company that will focus on developing new residential and mixed-use communities. Scott Walter, who recently served as Executive Vice President of NMS Properties, will serve as CEO and President of WNMS. Mr. Walter will control and manage the companys day to day operations.



WNMS Communities will focus on developing affordable and market-rate housing units. Many of WNMS projects, including its affordable housing projects, will be located in and around downtown Santa Monica  within walking distance of the ocean.



I am excited to found WNMS Communities, Inc. which will build new affordable and market-rate communities with a strong focus on Santa Monica and West Los Angeles. It will be a core part of WNMS Communities business to ensure that everyone can live in Santa Monica and the Westside, stated Scott Walter, CEO of WNMS Communities. I look forward to working with City and community stakeholders to produce much needed high-quality market rate and affordable residential and mixed use housing projects.

NMS Properties and CEO Neil Shekhter will continue to invest in and manage existing buildings throughout Southern California, but will not be involved with any pending or future development projects, which will be controlled by WNMS Communities.

Scott Walter is a 17-year real estate development and investment veteran and was responsible for acquisitions and development at NMS Properties. Mr. Walter is very proud that NMS Properties has built more affordable housing, including low-income housing, in the City of Santa Monica than any other for-profit developer in the past ten years. Prior to joining NMS, Mr. Walter spent 11 years with Legacy Partners Residential, Inc. as Vice President of Development & Acquisitions, where he led the acquisition and development of all communities in the Southern California, Nevada and Arizona markets, and was responsible for all facets of residential operations, acquisitions, development, construction and property management. Before his tenure at Legacy Partners Residential, Inc., Mr. Walter was an Associate with Curtis-Rosenthal, Inc., a real estate consulting and appraisal firm. Mr. Walter holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with an emphasis in Real Estate and Finance from Loyola Marymount University and is a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC).

About WNMS Communities

WNMS Communities is a real estate development firm that specializes in the acquisition, entitlement and development of multifamily and mixed-use properties in Southern California. WNMS projects will include luxury and affordable residential units along with retail and commercial properties in core Southern California markets.
The governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, has reacted to the dismissal of six policemen attached to him.

The police on Friday said the six officers  one inspector and five sergeants  were dismissed from service for firing indiscriminately into the air, and thereby causing panic among the crowd, during the recent re-run election in the state.

The incident, according to the police, took place when the policemen were in Mr. Wikes convoy.

They were also accused of escorting Mr. Wike to polling units during the elections, in contravention of the directive from the inspector general of police, which had barred policemen from moving around polling units with politicians and political office holders.

The Rivers government, in a statement issued by the Commissioner for Information, Austin Tam-George, condemned the action of the police authorities.

This is a tragic day for professionalism and the respect for human rights in the Nigeria police force, Mr. Tam-George said in the statement.

The dismissed officers committed no crime, other than foil a carefully orchestrated electoral heist by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in collusion with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Nigeria Police force.

The statement said the allegation that the affected policemen misused their firearms while in the convoy of the governor was a wrong and cruel fabrication, adding that the governor did not leave his official residence on that day.

Two days after the elections, on the 12th of December 2016, thousands of Rivers people, led by Governor Wike, resisted an invasion by the police on the premises of the Port Harcourt City Local Government Council, in a brazen attempt to rig the elections in favour of the APC.

The Port Harcourt City Council was the Election Collation Centre for the Rivers East Senatorial District.

Throughout the period of the standoff between the invading police officers and the thousands of citizens who resisted them, Governor Wike and the officers around him conducted themselves with utmost restraint.

The dismissed officers are therefore the latest victims of the medieval dictatorship of the APC government, the statement said.
The Bring Back Our Girls group has confirmed the identity of Rakiya Gali, one of the kidnapped Chibok girls who was rescued by the military on Thursday.

In a statement by the #BBOG spokesperson, Sesuh Akume, the group said Ms. Gali is the 24th girl to be found of 219 girls kidnapped on April 14, 2014 from the secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, by the Boko Haram.

Having exhausted all our internal verification modalities, our movement can confirm that Rakiya Abubakar Gali (#49 in our list as Rakiya Gali) is indeed one of our missing Chibok girls. She is the 24th to return out of 219 missing #ChibokGirls.

One hundred and ninety-five (195) remain missing. It is 3 days to #Day1000 and we remain highly hopeful that the rest of our girls will be rescued and reunited with their families.

We commend the Nigerian military, the Multinational Joint Taskforce (MNJTF), the Civilian JTF, and all the security forces working day and night to rout the terrorists, and return our #ChibokGirls and all others abducted, the group said in its statement on Thursday evening.

The Nigerian Army had announced on Thursday that its troops stationed in the north-east rescued Ms. Gali.

The spokesperson for the army, Sani Usman, made the announcement on his Facebook Page Thursday afternoon.

Troops of Operation LAFIYA DOLE during investigation of arrested suspected Boko Haram terrorists discovered one of the abducted Chibok School girls, Rakiya Abubakar, with her six months old baby, he said.

According to preliminary investigation, it was discovered she is the daughter of Abubakar Gali Mulima and Habiba Abubakar of Chibok. She further stated that she was a student of Senior Secondary School Class 3B (SS 3B), before her abduction along with her colleagues on 14th April 2014 by the Boko Haram terrorists.

Rakiya Abubakar is presently undergoing further medical investigation and would soon be released to the Borno State Government, Mr. Sani said later on a Whatsapp platform operated by his office.

The #BBOG announced plans to commence a daily protest from January 8 in an attempt to put more pressure on the federal government to ensure the release of the remaining girls.

The group in a statement signed by its co-conveners, Aisha Yesufu and Obi Ezekwesili on January 3 said it was dissatisfied with the seeming silence of the government on the remaining girls, after 21 of them were freed in October.

The 21 girls were freed after negotiations between the federal government and the Boko Haram.

The protest is scheduled to start on the 1000th day the girls were abducted.

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BALTIMORE, MD., Jan. 6, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As the bloodshed and civil strife intensified in South Sudan earlier this year, Dr. Alex Abuk's workto keep health facilities stocked with HIV/AIDS medicinesbecame more urgent. And dangerous. Road travel in the country had become unpredictable and risky. Fuel was scarce. Talk of renewed warfare had heightened, prompting many in the development and aid community to close offices there.

But Abuk, Jhpiego's HIV Technical Advisor in Juba, had no intention of leaving. He refused to leave his family or abandon his South Sudanese countrymen who relied on antiretrovirals (ARVs) to stay strong and healthy.

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going,'' Abuk said, invoking a popular proverb. "The bottom line, deep in my heart, was to get commodities, especially ARVs, to the HIV+ mothers at all cost."



A Harrowing Trip



Abuk recalled one harrowing visit to the Tore Primary Health Care Center, about 48 miles outside Juba on Yei-Maridi Road that he took with coworkers Patrick Ochira and Michael Dirichi.



"A few weeks before that visit, a Catholic nun working in a Catholic hospital in Yei was killed along that road. So it was a sensitive balance and risky decision to go or not to go," said Abuk. After consulting Jhpiego's security procedures, he said, "We decided to take the risk of getting to the facility, especially with the ARVs, knowing that if we don't get the ARVs to the clients on time, they will run out of the drugsand that would not be good for their health and the health of their babies."



"We decided that we would leave our colleague Gerald Kimondo (from Kenya) to do some work in one of our facilities within Yei River State so as not to endanger him while we (Ochira, Dirichi and myself), the South Sudanese, traveled to Tore. Fortunately, we got to the facility safely. We were advised not to spend the night in Tore town and not to travel late on that road. So we gave out the commodities to the facility as soon as we arrived, did a quick supportive supervision and data collection, and returned that same day to Yei. The good thing about this trip was that we delivered commodities enough for three months."



Abuk had access to supplies of ARVs, test kits for HIV and syphilis, antibiotics and HIV prevention medicines for newborns exposed to HIV. Getting gas for his silver Prada 2000 SUV so he could deliver the commodities also was a daily challenge.



Jhpiego is working in two states in South Sudanthrough the Strengthening the Provision of Primary Health Care HIV Services project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Developmentto prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Through this project, Jhpiego is also partnering with South Sudan's government to increase access to high-quality pediatric and adolescent HIV care, reduce new infections and keep those living with HIV healthy.



Helping Health Providers Cope



During visits to Juba-area health facilities supported by Jhpiego, Abuk recognized the toll the unrest was having on South Sudanese health care providers, and he encouraged them to stay strong, reminding them they were working not just to make a living but to serve others in dire need.



"I tried to explain to them that, as health care workers, our job is different from any other work in that we are serving human life, and it is in such circumstances that our service is felt more by the people we serve," Abuk recalled.



A pious man with a soothing voice and calm demeanor, Abuk carried on Jhpiego's work with dignity and dedication: "The biggest bulk of our HIV-positive clients are in our Juba facilities. If they stock-out of commodities, they would get into bigger and more complex problems. That made me decide to be around and try as much as I could to get those commodities to them."



As conditions deteriorated, he relied on security training he received from Jhpiego to keep his wife, Helen, and eight members of his family safe. He remembered one July night when gunfire broke out in his neighborhood.



"Because our house is close to the military barracks, there was shooting all around us, in all directions. I told my family to go to rooms where bullets cannot easily locate them. I told the children not to stay near the windows. When the shooting was severe, I had to tell them to get beneath the beds."



As a result of Abuk's commitment, most facilities supported by Jhpiego maintained services to their clients in July and August.



"Such times test our faith," he said. "If we fail to serve well at such a time as this, we will not be proud of ourselves tomorrow when things cool down. This is the time to shine."



Jhpiego is a global health non-profit and an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University.

A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=42049
STAFFORD TOWNSHIP  Environmental groups are rallying opposition to a South Jersey Gas proposal to build a 22-mile-long pipeline through Pinelands forest in Cumberland and Cape May counties.

The groups have called for opponents to attend a Jan. 24 Pinelands Commission meeting. But even as they rallied support for their cause, the groups are preparing court appeals in case the commission votes in favor of the pipeline. A vote may happen at its Feb. 10 meeting.

This is too big and important an issue to let them run roughshod over us, New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said Thursday at a meeting sponsored by the newly formed Pinelands Protectors Coalition, an organization of groups fighting any pipeline application in the Pinelands. His organization and the Pinelands Preservation Alliance have been fighting the pipeline for several years.

New Jersey Natural Gas also has applied to build one in the northern part of the Pinelands Reserve.

Sierra Club, PPA and Environment New Jersey recently won a case in a state appeals court, forcing the Pinelands Commissions 15-member board to vote on whether the local pipeline application meets the rules in its comprehensive management plan for private developments.

Commission Executive Director Nancy Wittenberg had decided unilaterally it did meet those rules in 2015 and allowed the application to proceed to the state Board of Public Utilities.

On Thursday, about 110 people came to the meeting at the Ocean Acres Community Center in the Manahawkin section to discuss how they can help.

Im here because I believe we can stop the pipeline. We just need more people, said Gayle Davidson, of Ocean City. She said she has been involved in successful environmental campaigns to close a nuclear plant and to stop a pipeline when she lived in other states.

Davidson said her main concern is the construction of the line and that the natural gas it carries could harm the aquifer under the Pinelands.

This is a pristine water aquifer. This is our water supply, she said. And the risk of contamination is too great for us to even think about putting a pipeline through there.

South Jersey Gas wants to build the pipeline from Maurice River Township to the B.L. England plant in Beesleys Point, Upper Township, so it can convert the plant from coal and oil to natural gas and keep the facility open. The route goes along roadsides through 10 miles of protected Pinelands Forest Area.

Sierra Club and PPA have argued the pipeline does not meet the requirements in the commissions rulebook. Those rules say utilities such as pipelines can only be built in Pinelands Forest Areas if they will benefit only the Pinelands.

Wittenberg had decided the pipeline would benefit only the Pinelands because the plant is located in the Pinelands National Reserve.

But environmentalists say the plant is not inside the state-designated Pinelands boundary and that the energy it produces will go into the energy grid and not only to Pinelands homes.

PPA Assistant Executive Director Jaclyn Rhoads said the process the commission is using now is unlawful and the PPA is giving the commission until next week to change it or opponents will go back to court, she said.

The pipeline was not on the commissions December agenda, she said, but the commission went into closed session and voted to hold a new public-comment period and vote on the issue.

You have to go through a public process, announce the changes you are going to make, she said.

Mark Gallagher, of Princeton Hydro, said the gas companys plans to use horizontal directional drilling to put the pipeline under water and wetlands in places is likely to fail, since it will be working in such sandy soils.

You need to make them implement their own regulations at every possible level, he said of the commissioners responsibility to preserve and protect the Pinelands and the water under them.

The commission voted down the pipeline in a 7-7 vote when it came before it as a public development, under different rules, in January 2014. Most county appointees, including Cape Mays, voted for it.

Three of the seven who voted against it have left the board since then  one was replaced by Gov. Chris Christie and one by Cumberland County  and one left voluntarily.

Only one commissioner who voted for it has left.
On any given school day, more than 74,000 drivers in America illegally pass school buses stopped with red lights flashing and stop sign arms extended, according to a recent national survey.

The consequences can be tragic.

This week, a 14-year-old student in Upper Township was seriously injured when State Police said a vehicle failed to stop and struck her while she crossed Route 9 to get on a school bus.

Nationally, six children were killed by a vehicle passing a stopped school bus each year in 2011, 2012 and 2013, according to the 2013-14 National School Bus Loading and Unloading Survey.

It is a big safety issue, said Charlie Hood, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, which does the annual Stop Arm Violation Count to raise awareness and find solutions.

A 2016 survey reported 74,421 vehicles disregarding the law, a number Hood believes is much lower than the actual number due to a relatively small sample size.

Local school bus coordinators said cars illegally passing buses is a daily problem.

No one likes to get held up by a bus, said Joe Duncan, owner of Integrity Transportation. But think of the alternative. It is potentially deadly.

Busy streets are the most common sites for illegal passing. Duncan and Warren Skip Fipp, transportation coordinator for the Egg Harbor Township School District, cited the Black Horse Pike, White Horse Pike and Route 9 as roads most likely to have problems.

Duncan said school districts make a concerted effort to have as few stops as possible on busy roads while also providing safe access for students.

The penalties for passing a stopped school bus include a minimum $100 fine for the first offense, five points on the drivers license and 15 days of jail or community service. But Fipp and Duncan said it can be hard for a bus driver to get a license number or description of a driver, though they will take cases to court if they can.

In 2015, there were 327 cases in which the driver either pleaded guilty or was found guilty of passing a stopped school bus, according to state Motor Vehicle Commission data. The exact number of tickets issued was not available.

Fipp said officials coordinate with the Egg Harbor Township police traffic-control unit to monitor problem areas, and on occasion an unmarked car has followed the bus to watch for violators.

Highways or multi-lane roads present a particular problem because the law varies.

If there is no safety barrier between lanes, cars going in both directions must stop. If there is a safety barrier, oncoming cars only must slow to 10 mph. Cars going in the same direction as the bus must always stop.

On Thursday, a reporter and a photographer with The Press of Atlantic City watched an eastbound Egg Harbor Township school bus make a stop, lights flashing, on the Black Horse Pike near the Bayport Condominiums. A car in the eastbound lane did stop, but cars in the westbound lanes did not even slow down.

Duncan said that for safety reasons on busier roadways, they will only drop off students on the side of the road where they live so they do not have to cross the road. But cars are still required to stop.

Hood said there is no one solution. He said penalties should be tough enough to deter potential violators  and must be enforced. Drivers need more education about the rules, and students should also be reminded about their role too.

The students are often overlooked, but they play a role, too, Hood said. They need to know when and where they should cross and to check for cars.

Several state legislators have introduced a bill requiring cameras be installed on the stop sign arm of buses that could record violators for easier prosecution. But the bills have languished in committee.

Assemblywoman Patricia Egan Jones, D-Gloucester-Camden, said people dont realize the severity of the problem.

It is frustrating to have to enact laws like this, but Gloucester County residents came to us because of concerns about cars that would just fly by the buses, she said.

Duncan said his buses are getting new camera systems that will see out the front window and could provide the same assistance in identifying violators.

We do get daily complaints from our drivers, he said. People are in a hurry but need to understand the alternative. Its just a few minutes.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  Yamylette Rojas, 14, of Atlantic City couldnt pick just one thing she liked best about Fridays Tween Tech workshops at Stockton University.

Everything was cool, said Rojas, who wants to be an engineer working with robotics. She did finally cite the virtual reality session as a favorite.

More than 220 girls in grades seven and eight attended the second Tween Tech Friday sponsored by the American Association of University Women and Stockton University. The event introduces girls to the possibilities of a career in the sciences.

Linda Harmon, president of the Atlantic County chapter of the AAUW said their goal is also to show girls that they can be successful in science careers. A retired teacher, she recalls wanting to be a civil engineer, but was never encouraged to pursue that field.

I was pretty much told I could be a teacher or a nurse, she said. We want to show girls they need to believe in themselves.

The 20 workshops were led by Stockton alumni faculty, staff and students with support from the Women in Engineering of New Jersey. Students made ice cream with liquid nitrogen, built flashlights, investigated crime scenes and learned about the workings of the brain.

The liquid ice cream was cool, said Kimberly Torres, 14, of Atlantic City. When you ate it smoke came out of your mouth.

Stockton professor Tara Luke led the workshop on building a flashlight. She said none of the girls had ever used a soldering iron before, and that alone was a valuable lesson.

Its important to be comfortable around tools, she said. This gives them the confidence that they learned a new skill, that this is not something they have to be afraid of.

Riley Hieb, 12, of Linwood talked about having to screw things in and cut wires as she made a laser that created patterns.

Michelle Wendt, who led a workshop on building a landing pad for a spaceship said the entire event consisted of hands-on experiences, and not just using a computer.

Claudine Keenan, Dean of the School of Education at Stockton, said she is also interested in how educators can support girls interested in sciences and overcome the subtle gender bias and stereotyping that can still discourage girls from pursuing science and math careers.

Stockton and the AAUW also sponsor a summer week-long Tech Trek Camp for middle school girls. Keenan said having women lead the workshops sent the message that they, too, can succeed in sciences.

Girls can identify with them, she said. We want to fuse together the young people, young adults and senior professionals.
Birthdays, holidays and accomplishments are things we all celebrate.

It may not be a competition, but in many ways, Shirley and Milton Gordon have us all beat.

Shirley, 90, and Milton, 94, of Ventnor, have made it into their nineties while remaining relatively healthy and independent. But the milestone they reached last week is so rare, its difficult to find a greeting card to celebrate it: their 70th wedding anniversary.

As they look back, it was a focus on family and hard work that built the foundation for their marriage lasting 70 years.

We got along, Milton said of his wife and family. We didnt have time for anything else.

To talk about their marriage is to talk about their whole family.

Ruth and Shirley Dichter were daughters of Herman Dichter, who they say was the mastermind behind the Gordon Empire in Atlantic City.

As a European immigrant, Herman moved to Atlantic City in 1922 and proved his business savvy as he opened a cigar store, sold meats and became a hotel owner. The hotel would eventually be demolished in a failed development plan by city official Pauline Hill, and the area came to be known as Paulines Prairie.

Milton was a soldier from upstate New York and had just returned from World War II. It was 1946 and he decided to take a vacation in Atlantic City, ending up at the Dichter Hotel. He met Shirley, and things moved quickly after that.

Milton invited Shirley to a dance in Albany and, as Shirleys sister Ruth says, their mother wouldnt let Shirley attend without Ruth as a chaperone.

The inseparable sisters, who are said to never have had a major fight in their lives, went to the dance together. Coincidentally, that is where Ruth met Murray Raphel, the man she would marry.

The best thing I ever did was match up Ruth and Murray, said Milton in jest, taking credit for the marriage.

Milton and Shirley were married after about six months of courting in December 1946.

Ruth and Murrays marriage was a few years later. The power foursome went into business together. Milton and Murrays businessman father-in-law saw that in the 1930s and 40s the central part of the city was still largely residential, and he noticed lots of babies and children being pushed in strollers along downtown streets. He figured residents could use a store of childrens items.

Gordons Youth Shop was opened with great success, which required every ounce of hard work the foursome had in 1947.

Milton said it was important to the family to pay attention to detail and stock high-quality items that were also affordable.

The way we ran our business, it was just really personal with families, he said.

Ruth mirrored that sentiment.

If you give people what they want, they will come, she said.

After building a large parking lot for their customers, the Gordons opened a deli and clothing stores selling garb for men, women and infants. After striking a deal with the neighboring Presbyterian church to use the parking lot on Sundays when their businesses were closed, their side of Presbyterian Avenue turned into Gordons Alley, part of which is still called Gordons Lane today.

Eventually their families began to grow  the Gordons have three sons  and the next generations began to use their strengths in sales or marketing to work for Gordons.

The apartments above the store on the corner of Virginia and Atlantic avenues became home for the Gordons and Raphels. From then on they would live and work together every day for decades.

Eventually, in the 1980s, the Gordon children began to move on to other endeavors.

So how did Milton and Shirley make it to 70 years together?

Mostly by not sweating the small stuff.

I really dont know how we made it this long, Milton said. She was younger and in charge of most everything. I was the worrier. We never really had a big argument.

Shirley agreed.

Its a general need for each other, she said.

These days the Gordons enjoy the view of the ocean and bay from the top floor of their Ventnor high-rise. Being Atlantic City staples and something of local celebrities, the Gordons often get recognized when touring the neighborhood.

Caretaker Jackie Baum assists them throughout the day to help them get around.

They have great respect for each other and I think younger people dont really have that, Baum said at a luncheon she organized to mark the 70th anniversary celebration.

Baum said that a difference between the Gordons and some of the younger generations is that as products of the Depression, it was instilled in the Gordons not to give up and that likely benefited their business and marriage.

Ive grown close to this wonderful family, Baum said. They have deep care and passion for one another.
PHOENIX, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SP Express has been named a Multichannel Merchant Top 3PL for 2017, included in a listing of leading third-party logistics providers selected by the editors of Multichannel Merchant.



Given the growth of ecommerce and the increasing number of 3PLs in the marketplace, Multichannel Merchant has created this unique resource vetting 3PLs that are ecommerce qualified and experienced as a value-added service for its audience. The online resource is a searchable database/directory for merchants looking for a qualified 3PL provider.

Being recognized for our leading eCommerce order fulfillment solution by Multichannel Merchant is a great honor, said SP Express CEO, Mich Bayley. We very much appreciate Multichannel Merchant's including us as a top 3PL in 2017 and look forward to retaining our position in future years as well.

About Multichannel Merchant

Multichannel Merchant reaches key decision makers responsible for ecommerce, management, marketing and operations at companies that sell merchandise through multiple channels  including ecommerce, mobile, social, and catalog. Multichannel Merchant delivers original research, as well as in-depth analysis of trends and best practices, news, tactical/how-to, executive summaries, technology and supplier comparisons, tip sheets and resource information to help companies sell & deliver products wherever and whenever the customer wants them  at home, work, store or other locations.

About SP Express:

SP Express is a leading provider of third-party logistics and order fulfillment services for a broad spectrum of channels and industries. With a network of modern, strategically located warehouse and distribution facilities across North America and Europe, and a sophisticated suite of complementary service capabilities, SP Express delivers a seamless end-to-end commerce experience. For more information, visit www.spexpress.com, contact us online, or call 866-773-7363.




ATLANTIC CITY  The citys ability to grow nongaming attractions like convention business and large trade shows could be hampered by the loss of thousands of casino rooms in the past three years.

Tourism and industry data show the resort has lost nearly four out of 10 casino hotel rooms, a result of five casino closings since 2014.

Casino closings dropped available hotel rooms to 13,461 by the end of September, compared with 18,448 three years earlier, according to state Division of Gaming Enforcement data. An additional 2,010 rooms were lost when Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort closed in October.

The city gained back a small portion of its lost rooms, 852, in July, when Bart Blatstein reopened Showboat as a hotel only.

The loss of rooms complicates efforts as the city aims to draw visitors not attracted solely to gambling.

Guardian calls on Icahn to sell Trump Taj Mahal ATLANTIC CITY  Sell the Trump Taj Mahal. That was Mayor Don Guardian's message to Carl Icah

The greatest need for rooms is felt during the busy season and sold-out weekends when visitors will not find accommodation and thus possibly not come, said Rummy Pandit, executive director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism at Stockton University.

That could cut not only gambling revenue but how much people spend on food and drinks and shopping in Atlantic City, he said.

Anthony Marino, a local market analyst and retired executive with the South Jersey Transportation Authority, said the Atlantic City Convention Center still seems able to book large trade and gate shows that attract regional participants, many of whom do not stay overnight in the city.

Clearly, however, constrained by the declining inventory of quality hotel rooms, the convention business in Atlantic City may struggle in coming years, he said.

Jim Wood, CEO of Meet AC, Atlantic Citys convention and visitors bureau, said the city can meet the needs of its largest conventions. But he is concerned about a reduction in casino hotel room inventory.

The loss of the Taj and its 2,000 rooms plus its meeting space is significant, he said.

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

The Convention Center recently hosted two big events  the New Jersey School Boards Association and the New Jersey State League of Municipalities conferences.

The School Boards Association used 3,900 rooms during its peak night in early November. The League of Municipalities used 3,375 rooms during its peak night in December.

Help could soon be on the way, as nearly 1,400 rooms are slated to come back online after TEN, the former Revel casino, opens. Management of the property has said they expect it to reopen sometime during the first quarter.

We are pleased that TEN is starting to take group business in anticipation of reopening sometime in 2017 and that Showboat is back online as well, Wood said. Atlantic City still has enough committable hotel rooms to accommodate our largest conventions.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account.
In the relationship between the media and a governor, tension and conflict are two daily constants.

It cannot be otherwise. The former is engaged in mining for information while the latter is occupied with managing it. That the two should often collide is inevitable.

While the differences are usually resolved  often satisfying neither party  life goes on with each side pursuing their competing goals.

In the most recent clash between Gov. Chris Christie and the press covering his administration, though, the governor has escalated the conflict into take-no-prisoners warfare.

Angered over the Legislatures failure to consider a proposal he supported to repeal the requirement that governments publish official notices in local newspapers, Christie lashed back via Twitter messages and his radio call-in show, calling newspaper executives pigs at the government trough.

When the proposal was initially sprung on the Legislature in its final session days, it was quickly labeled the newspaper revenge bill, an effort by Christie to punish the media financially for what he considered over-the-top coverage of the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal.

Newspapers quickly mobilized with appeals to the Legislature urging the bills defeat, arguing it would lead to job losses and the closing of small circulation daily and weekly papers which rely heavily on the revenue.

Despite the belief that the print media, because of its ongoing economic woes, had lost its ability to influence events, it prevailed.

In the past, Christie has been contemptuous of reporters, referring to them on occasion as idiots and ridiculing their questions as stupid.

The legislative loss, though, was widely interpreted as a stinging defeat, underscoring his lame duck status, his low public standing, and the embarrassment of being overlooked by President-elect Donald Trump for a cabinet or White House staff position.

He cut the ground from beneath his argument, however, by insisting the publication requirement cost taxpayers $80 million, for which his office offered no documentation other than referring to a vague in-house study.

Newspaper executives placed the cost at $20 million and said a good deal of that was actually paid by private interests.

The loss came even though the proposal was supported by Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, which normally guarantees legislative approval.

Whether the issue will be raised again in the 2017 legislative session remains to be seen. Its unlikely that a major shift in sentiment will occur in the Legislature and the newspaper industry will certainly not back off its position.

Christie has jousted with the media almost since the day he assumed office. While much of it has been jocular, there have been numerous testy exchanges revealing an underlying belief on the governors part that he has not been treated fairly.

The relationship at this point has deteriorated to a point where its likely beyond repair and virtually guarantees that the Christie era will end on a bitter contentious note.

Carl Golden is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University.
As the state legislative session ended last month, the Senate and Assembly finally proposed a legal basis for ride-hailing services to operate in the state. On the most crucial question of assuring a level of public security and protection similar to that required of taxi and limousine services, the legislators punted the matter to the attorney general.

The Transportation Network Company Safety and Regulatory Act, which cleared the Legislature on Dec. 19, proposed general requirements of registration and state oversight typical of businesses in New Jersey.

Ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft would have to pay an annual fee of $25,000 to operate in the state.

Theyd have to implement a zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policy regarding their drivers (who are considered independent contractors) and ensure that drivers dont discriminate against potential riders on the basis of the usual aspects of identity or their intended destination.

The companies and/or their drivers would have to boost the insurance on the vehicles used with $1.5 million in liability coverage for accidents with uninsured or underinsured motorists.

Legislative leaders, who said they worked with Uber, Lyft and law-enforcement officials on the regulations, pointed out that the bill would prohibit a ride-hailing driver from soliciting or accepting a rider other than through the companys digital network. So such drivers couldnt try to pick up riders at airports and bus stations like a taxi, although the bill doesnt specify penalties for doing so.

What the legislators didnt mention, however, was that the bill also prohibits taxi and limo drivers from using their vehicles to provide transportation-network rides. Along with state regulation comes protection from competition for both sides.

When it came to protecting the public, though, legislators caved to pressure from Uber, Lyft and others in not requiring fingerprint background checks for drivers, the accepted and widespread gold standard in reviewing possible criminal history. Identification papers can be counterfeited and identities can be stolen, but fingerprints specify a person and connect to criminal records.

Such fingerprint background checks are required for taxi, limo and bus drivers, and theres no good reason not to require them of ride-hailing drivers  20,000 of them already working for Uber and Lyft in New Jersey  especially in light of reports nationally of passengers assaulted by such drivers.

Instead, the Legislature chose to let ride-hailing companies come up with their own method of criminal background check, subject to approval by the state Attorney Generals Office. If the method is disallowed, the checks would be done by the State Police and include fingerprinting of drivers.

Maybe the Attorney Generals Office will stand firm, or maybe it too will bend to the influence of the companies, if not this year then in the future.

New York City insists on fingerprint background checks, and Uber and Lyft provide them. We would like to hear state legislators explain why New Jersey people should get less protection.

The ride-hailing companies dont like the background checks mainly because of the small cost and inconvenience, but also because they undermine the case that the drivers are cheap-to-use independent contractors and not employees.

But thats another area where the legislators are abandoning long-standing policies to create exceptions to standard business practices for favored companies. Those tens of thousands of drivers wont be protected from corporate abuse by basic state laws such as wage and hours requirements.

Will legislators allow home-care providers, for example, to be turned into unprotected independent contractors the same way? This issue will come back at legislators sooner than they realize.

The governor should conditionally veto the transportation-network bill, requiring fingerprint background checks instead of leaving them merely a possibility.
Newspapers dependable in storms and outages

Hurricanes, noreasters and such are pretty common in South Jersey and then ... oops ... no electric. Then ... oops  no computer.

But every day, rain or shine, my newspaper is waiting for me at the end of my driveway.

So ... to the grinch who stole Atlantic City and now wants to steal New Jerseys newspapers, Merry Christmas, Gov. Grinch!

Joan Seibert

South Dennis

Veterans deserve better

The Dec. 17 story, Decades later, local Vietnam veterans still battling Agent Orange, was long overdue. This country sent young men to Vietnam and exposed them to an herbicide that wasnt permitted to be used in United States and now the VA isnt sure of the impacts.

This situation is shameful. I have a good friend who has had cancer twice and is currently dealing with both Parkinsons and nerve damage and the VA refuses to recognize the extent of his disability.

If the VA doesnt stand up for veterans, what is its mission and why does it exist? Americans owe veterans far more than they can ever repay and rewards them with long lines, poor service and rejection. Lets correct this injustice while its still possible.

Bob Hughey

Margate

Election choice valid

It appears that the Hollywood phonies wanted the Electoral College to elect Hillary Clinton as president. I did not vote for Donald Trump, but then I did not vote for Clinton either. To me, both should have adjoining prison cells.

If these phonies got their way, it could have saved the country a lot of money. Just think, millions saved by not paying for elections.

Every four years people can elect anyone they want.

Charles Zanelotti

Smithville

Major third party needed

For the first time, I voted for a third party candidate in 2016. I would not vote for Hillary Clinton, and I could not vote for Donald Trump. Both of the candidates were not likeable at all, to an extreme degree.

I believe that this shows the need for a major third party, which would be moderate in nature. Neither Democratic left, nor Republican right, but in the middle. There is a Gallup poll online that says 60 percent of the public wants a third party. The main reason is because neither one of the present parties does a good job of representing its views, being too left or too right. The major parties make it incredibly hard to form a major third party, and just want to keep the two parties.

Just to show how bad it is, everywhere else in the world, the center-left color is red, while the center-right color is blue, not like here. Psychiatrist, anyone?

The two vice presidential candidates seemed to be decent people, and I thought the best would be that one of them ascended to the office.

Jim Munroe

Absecon
WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 6, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. Postal Service's new Love Skywriting Forever stamp image will be replicated  weather permitting  by a skywriting pilot linked to iconic aviator Charles Lindbergh at noon tomorrow following the 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET First-Day-of-Issue ceremony that takes place at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, CA. A test flight is also scheduled to fill the skies over Chino with the giant word "Love" today.



The event tomorrow will stream live on the Postal Service's Facebook page. Customers are asked to spread the news using the hashtag #LoveStamp.



"The Postal Service issued its first Love stamp in 1973, and over the years, these stamps have dressed up billions of birthday greetings, wedding invitations, birth announcements, and, of course, Valentine's Day cards and letters," said U.S. Postal Service Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President David Williams. "From the moment they're spotted on an envelope, these miniature works of art foretell good news. And with this particular stamp, we can really say, once and for all, that 'love is in the air'  and in the mail."



Scheduled to join Williams in the ceremony are Operation Gratitude Vice President and Chief Development Officer Chris Clark; Skytypers President Stephen Stinis and Planes of Fame Air Museum aviation historian and Air Museum moderator Kevin Thompson. Skytypers CEO and Squadron Commander Greg Stinis will fly the skywriting demonstration.



This new stamp is a cheerful and romantic continuation of the U.S. Postal Service's Love stamp series. The Love Skywriting stamp will add a romantic touch to letters and cards, not only on Valentine's Day, but all year round.



The stamp art depicts the word "Love" written in white cursive script against a blue sky with wispy clouds and the edges of the letters just beginning to blur. Underlining the word is a decorative swirl of smoke that emphasizes the message. A small, stylized plane, dwarfed by the giant letters, completes the end of the swirl, with smoke trailing from its tail.



The Lost Art of Skywriting

Skywriting had its heyday as an advertising medium from the 1920s to the 1950s. A message is created by a small airplane that emits vaporized fluid from its exhaust system to form letters in the air. Still used occasionally for advertising slogans, skywriting today commonly broadcasts romantic  and very public  declarations of love.



"I think it's safe to say more people have walked on the moon than are professional skywriters today," said Greg Stinis, who began skywriting more than 50 years ago while working for this father, Andy Stinis, who started the company in 1932, and whose plane hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.



The Lindbergh Connection

"My Dad was friends with Charles Lindbergh and helped him push the Spirit of St. Louis onto the runway for his historic 1927 New York to Paris solo flight. Similar to Lindbergh, Dad also flew mail for 20 years in his amphibious Mallard aircraft to Walker's Cay in the Bahamas."



The Five Square Mile Palette in the Sky

After Stinis takes off Jan. 7 from the Chino airport in his Grumman Tiger (AA5-B), he will first search to find a 5-mile square palette of turbulence-free sky to avoid distorting the writing. This can take as long as a half hour. His "paint" will be an environmentally safe parrifin-based liquid that is injected into the plane's exhaust manifold before it passes through a 3-inch diameter exhaust pipe and mushroom to a 60-foot diameter vapor.



To replicate the stamp image the "L" in Love will be 6,000 feet tall  more than four times the height of the Empire State Building. The remaining letters will each be 2,000 feet tall. It will take about 10 minutes to complete. Stinis' "pen" will scribe between 135 mph and near-stall speed as he makes the tight, curly elements in the letters. He will not have enough liquid to create the swirl below the word as depicted on the stamp image. Once completed the skywriting should be visible for 20 miles.



"I've created more than 2,000 skywritings in 50 years, and this one will be one of most challenging because the letter "L" is three times the size of the others and in script," said Stinis. "I usually create block letters, so the timing and visual ques and maneuvers are new. Time is against me. Once I start I can't stop writing or the whole message will blow away."



Louise Fili of New York City designed the stamp, which is illustrated by Jessica Hische of San Francisco. Derry Noyes of Washington, DC, was the art director. The Love Skywriting stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp and will always be equal to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce price.



The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.



# # #



Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm.



For reporters interested in speaking with a regional Postal Service public relations professional, please go to about.usps.com/news/media-contacts/usps-local-media-contacts.pdf.



Follow us on twitter.com/USPS and like us at facebook.com/USPS. For more information about the Postal Service, go to usps.com and usps.com/postalfacts.

A photo accompanying this release is available at:

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=42050
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.




PRESS RELEASE

Appointment of CHRISTOPHE MarEchal AS chief financial officer

Liege, Belgium, 6 January 2017 - Mithra Pharmaceuticals (Euronext Brussels: MITRA), a company focused on women's health, today announces the appointment of Christophe Marechal as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with effect from 23 February 2017.

Mr Marechal is currently Director, Group Treasury and Credit Risk Management, at Hamon Group (Euronext Brussels: HAMO), an engineering and contracting company. He has more than 20 years of financial experience in the international industrial, telecommunications, manufacturing and banking industries, including M&A, operational and financial strategy, and tactical initiatives to drive long-term business growth.

Before joining Hamon Group in 2006, Mr Marechal held a number of positions at France Telecom Group in Paris, London and Brussels, including Deputy Group Treasurer. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Liege, Belgium, and studied econometrics at the Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Tilburg, Netherlands.

Mr Marechal takes over from Steven Peters, who will support him during the transition period.

Francois Fornieri, CEO of Mithra Pharmaceuticals, said: "Christophe is an excellent addition to our management team, with extensive financial and market experience across multiple fast-growing businessess. His skills and expertise will be particularly valuable as Mithra continues to expand its portfolio of innovative and valuable women's health products and to maximise their value through international collaborations and partnerships. I would also like to express our gratitude to Steven for his contribution to the business, including the successful IPO of Mithra in 2015, and wish him good luck in his future endeavours."

Christophe Marechal said : "I am delighted to join Mithra at this key stage in its development, with a growing portfolio of established women's health products and a promising late-stage pipeline of innovative new approaches. Mithra has the potential to significantly expand its revenues and international presence in the next few years and I look forward to working with the excellent leadership team to help take the business to the next level of success."

Pictures

For pictures of Christophe Marechal, please click here on the following link:

http://investors.mithra.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/christophe-merechal.jpg

For more information, please contact:

Press

Julie Dessart

Chief Communication Officer

+32 4 349 28 22 / +32 475 86 41 75

press@mithra.com

Investor Relations

Francois Fornieri, CEO

+32 4 349 28 22

investorrelations@mithra.com

Consilium Strategic Communications

Jonathan Birt, Sue Stuart, Hendrik Thys

mithra@consilium-comms.com

+44 2 037 095 700

About Mithra

Mithra Pharmaceuticals SA, founded in 1999 as a spin-off of the University of Liege by Mr. Francois Fornieri and Prof. Dr. Jean-Michel Foidart, is a Euronext listed pharmaceutical company (MITRA) focused on Women's Health. Mithra's mission is to improve every stage of women's life with innovative and accessible pharmaceutical solutions. As such the Company aims to become a worldwide leader in women's health by developing, manufacturing and commercialising proprietary, innovative and differentiated drugs and complex therapeutical solutions in four therapeutic fields of women's health: fertility and contraception, menopause and osteoporosis, gynecological infections and female cancers.

Mithra has an approximate headcount of 141 staff members and is headquartered in Liege, Belgium. Further information can be found at: www.mithra.com

Important information

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 words "believes", "estimates," "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", "plans", "continue", "ongoing", "potential", "predict", "project", "target", "seek" or "should", and include statements the Company 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. The Company's actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law.

To subscribe to Mithra's newsletter, visit investors.mithra.com
ATLANTA, January 6, 2017 - The Board of Directors of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI; "Company") today declared a quarterly dividend of 13 cents per share. The dividend is payable on February 1, 2017 to shareholders of record on January 23, 2017.

About Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is the North American market leader and one of the world's leading providers of indoor an doutdoor lighting and building management solutions. With fiscal year 2016 net sales of $3.3 billion, Acuity Brands currently employs approximately 12,000 associates and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with operations throughout North America, and in Europe and Asia. The Company's products and solutions are sold under various brands, including Lithonia Lighting, Holophane, Peerless, Gotham, Mark Architectural Lighting (TM), Winona Lighting, Juno, Indy(TM), Aculux(TM), Healthcare Lighting, Hydrel, American Electric Lighting, Carandini, Antique Street Lamps(TM), Sunoptics, Distech Controls, Acuity Controls (TM), nLight, ROAM, and SnesorSwitch. Visit us at www.acuitybrands.com.

# # # # #

Company Contact:

Dan Smith

Acuity Brands, Inc.

(404) 853-1438
DUBLIN, Jan 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Anti-hypertensive Therapeutics in Asia-Pacific Markets to 2022 - Increasing Prevalence of Hypertension Drives Market Growth despite Weak Pipeline" report to their offering.

Asia-Pacific anti-hypertensive therapeutics market to hit $27 billion by 2022, despite low innovation.

The market for anti-hypertensive therapeutics across the five Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries of India, China, Australia, South Korea, and Japan, is set to grow from $19.1 billion in 2015 to $27 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%.

The company's latest report states that this relatively solid rise in market value will be driven by the increasingly elderly population - where the prevalence rate of hypertension is highest - and increases in risk factors such as obesity, low physical activity levels, urbanization, and smoking. Indeed, growth will not be aided by the weak anti-hypertensive pipeline, due to lack of innovative products in late-stage development.

Gautam Arora, Analyst, explains: The anti-hypertensive pipeline consists of 112 pipeline products, most of which are small molecules. The limited presence of other types of molecules in the pipeline suggests that large pharmaceutical companies are refraining from developing novel molecules and are more inclined to focus on patient-compliant combination therapies. It is therefore unlikely that any completely novel molecules will enter the market during the forecast period.

Prestalia is an example of a recently improved drug that offers an improvement to hypertension therapy. In a Phase III trial it provided a better benefit-to-risk ratio than either treatment alone. The drug was approved by the US FDA in January 2015, and it is marketed by Symplmed. Of the APAC countries covered in the report, however, it is available only in Australia, and it is under development in Japan and South Korea.

Overall, late-stage products will not change the treatment paradigm of hypertension during the forecast period. With the lack of any new premium-priced drugs in this setting and the prescription of relatively cheap generic versions of anti-hypertensive drugs to continue, it's expected the status quo of drug treatment will persist in the APAC region.

Arora concludes: Despite the availability of a large number of blood-pressure-lowering agents, the need remains for safer and more effective anti-hypertensive treatments. Although the APAC market is likely to see steady growth, it will continue to be obstructed by a weak pipeline and low diagnosis and treatment rates.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Tables & Figures

2 Introduction

2.1 Disease Introduction

2.2 Epidemiology

2.3 Symptoms

2.4 Etiology and Pathophysiology

2.5 Diagnosis

2.6 Prognosis

2.7 Disease Stage

2.8 Treatment Options

3 Marketed Products

3.1 Angiotensin II Receptor Antagonists

3.1.1 Losartan - Merck & Co

3.1.2 Olmesartan - Daiichi Sankyo

3.1.3 Olmesartan + Amlodipine + Hydrochlorothiazide - Daiichi Sankyo

3.1.4 Valsartan - Novartis

3.1.5 Telmisartan - Boehringer Ingelheim

3.1.6 Azilsartan Medoxomil - Takeda

3.2 Calcium Channel Blockers

3.2.1 Amlodipine - Pfizer

3.3 Renin Inhibitors

3.3.1 Aliskiren - Novartis

3.4 Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors

3.4.1 Ramipril - Sanofi

3.5 Beta Blockers

3.5.1 Carvedilol - GlaxoSmithKline

3.6 Multiple Drug Class Combinations

3.6.1 Perindopril Arginine + Amlodipine Besylate - Les Laboratoires Servier

3.6.2 Amlodipine + Valsartan - Novartis

3.7 Comparative Efficacy and Safety of Marketed Products

4 Pipeline Analysis

4.1 Overview

4.2 Pipeline by Stage of Development, Molecule Type, Route of Administration and Program Type

4.3 Pipeline by Molecular Target

4.4 Promising Pipeline Candidates

4.4.1 CS-3150

5 Clinical Trial Analysis

5.1 Failure Rate

5.2 Clinical Trial Duration

5.3 Clinical Trial Size

5.4 Competitive Clinical Trials Metrics Analysis

6 Multi-Scenario Forecast

7 Drivers and Barriers

7.1 Drivers

7.1.1 Increasing Aging Populations to Increase Prevalence

7.1.2 Increasing Overweight and Obese Population

7.1.3 Increase in Daily Sodium Intake

7.1.4 Sedentary Lifestyle or Less Physical Activity

7.1.5 High Prevalence of Smoking and Alcoholism

7.1.6 Diversified Healthcare Reform to Boost Market Growth

7.2 Barriers

7.2.1 Weak Pipeline and Widespread Usage of Generic Drugs

7.2.2 Non-pharmacological First-Line Treatment

7.2.3 Lack of Awareness of the Disease Condition

8 Deals and Strategic Consolidations

8.1 Licensing Deals

8.2 Co-development Deals

9 Appendix

For more information about this report visit

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ct2jz5/antihypertensive

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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SOURCE Research and Markets
ISTANBUL, January 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Allan Geoffrey Opiyo Oyier is the new Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Africa at BSH.

Effective immediately, Mr Allan Geoffrey Opiyo Oyier has been appointed as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Sub Sahara Africa at the home appliances manufacturer BSH, reporting directly to Head of Region and CEO.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454023/BSH_Logo.jpg )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454024/Allan_Geoffrey_Opiyo_Oyier.jpg )



In his new position Mr Oyier will be directly in charge of all business operations of BSH covering the whole of Sub Sahara Africa including South Africa. He will be responsible for developing, monitoring, coordinating and advising on strategies to grow the market share and availability of the BSH brands and products in the market. He will also, develop dialogues with all third country operations regarding their business operations and strategies.

Mr Oyier has vast working experience in diverse locations across 27 countries in Africa including Director for Consumer Electronics and Home appliances with Samsung in East and Central Africa,Region Key Accounts Manager for Nestle Equatorial African region and Operations Marketing manager for Coca-Cola East and Central Africa Business unit.

BSH Head of Region Turkey, Middle East, Africa and CIS Mr. Norbert Klein said, "I am delighted to have Allan Join BSH. He will certainly add value to our business from his vast experience and local knowledge both in home appliances and fast moving consumer goods in Africa. The appointment reinforces our commitment to grow Africa using local talent and capability."

Mr Oyier is married and father of two.

With annual sales of around 12.6 billion in 2015 and more than 56,000 employees, BSH Hausgerate GmbH is one of the global leaders in the home appliances sector. BSH manufactures at around 40 factories, operates over 80 companies and has a presence in about 50 countries.

http://www.unite.com.tr

http://www.bsh.com.tr

SOURCE BSH
ISTANBUL, January 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Mohammed Saifullah Khan is the new Vice President of Sales & Marketing for North Africa at BSH

Effective immediately, Mr Mohammed Saifullah Khan has been appointed as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for North Africa at the home appliances manufacturer BSH, reporting directly to Head of Region and CEO.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454495/BSH.jpg )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454496/BSH_Mohammed_Saifullah_Khan.jpg )



In his new position Mr Khan will be directly in charge of all business operations of BSH covering the whole of North Africa. He will be responsible for developing, monitoring, coordinating and advising on strategies to grow the market share and availability of the BSH brands and products in the market. He will also, develop dialogues with all third country operations regarding their business operations and strategies.

Mr Khan has vast working experience in EMEA including Product & Marketing Executive in UAE, Middle East and South East Asia for Samsung; Regional Sales & Marketing Manager in Middle East, Africa and Levant, UAE for Panasonic Electric Works; Channel Sales Manager in Middle East, Africa and UAE for ViewSonic Corporation; Deputy General Manager in charge of the sales for emerging markets in Middle East and Africa, UAE for Sharp; Regional Sales Head in Saudi Arabia and Regional Sales Head in Africa for Electrolux Major Appliances.

BSH Head of Region Turkey, Middle East, Africa and CIS Mr. Norbert Klein said, "We are pleased to have Mohammed Saifullah Khan join our growing team in North Africa. Khan's wealth of industry experience and leadership will strengthen our business in the region."

Mr Khan is married and father of one.

With annual sales of around 12.6 billion in 2015 and more than 56,000 employees, BSH Hausgerate GmbH is one of the global leaders in the home appliances sector. BSH manufactures at around 40 factories, operates over 80 companies and has a presence in about 50 countries.

www.bsh.com.tr

www.unite.com.tr

SOURCE BSH
Irdeto's anti-hacking technology for connected cars employs whitebox cryptography protection methods to combat up-to-the-minute attacks

SANTA CLARA, California, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Irdeto, a world leader in digital platform security, has received the 2016 European Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation. Drawing upon nearly 50 years of experience in developing anti-hacking solutions, Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto is a highly reliable digital security platform for connected car security. It is built on the company's core software security technologies, which also protect the application data on the system during storage and while in use. The solution is a multi-layered, multi-faceted product that resolves issues relating to obfuscation, integrity verification, anti-debug, whitebox cryptography, diversification and renewability.

Click here for the full multimedia experience of this release - http://bit.ly/2hW2EUA

"As Irdeto understands the behaviours of non-ethical hackers, it does not rely on a perimeter security model; instead, it employs an in-depth security strategy for connected cars," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Consultant, Sriram Venkatraman. "Its security solution is paired with both telemetry and dynamic policy management features to aid the investigation of hacking events. Cloakware for Automotive then provides measured responses to these events, based on analyses of the details communicated through telemetry."

In addition to robust crypto products, such as public key infrastructure (PKI), firewalls, anti-virus and intrusion detection systems/intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS), connected cars require another layer of security. Irdeto believes in deep-level software security and security lifecycle management, which turns an OS into a secure operating environment through the use of anti-hacking technology. These features help the solution notify the original equipment manufacturer of the type of tampering that is being attempted in a specific vehicle, making it a unique and highly useful tool.

"Conventional cryptographic algorithms used to protect software keys and data are ineffective when operating in whitebox environments where a hacker has full visibility and control over the executing code. The Cloakware for Automotive solution has the unique capability of not revealing keys or data while the cryptographic computations are being observed in complete detail," noted Venkatraman. "Irdeto's full suite of patented technologies and cybercrime services not only protect the vehicle environment, but also itself from being reverse engineered and modified by hackers."

Irdeto has solid plans to build an ecosystem of unparalleled solutions that will help create a compelling software-defined car. For example, Irdeto recently announced that Link Motion has implemented Cloakware for Automotive into Link Motion's connected carputer, Motion T. The Cloakware for Automotive solution helps Motion T block hackers and cybercriminals from altering the carputer, preventing cyberattacks targeting connected cars.

Irdeto's approach includes using the Cloakware for Automotive solution to protect autonomous and connected cars. Irdeto provides flexible business model options for various tiers of customers, wherein OEMs can pay for a complete solution up front, development of a solution and then a recurring fee over the life cycle of the solution or just a recurring fee.

In addition, Irdeto's global network of partners covers law enforcement and industry bodies and agencies, as well as consumer and technology sectors. Its partnerships in the automotive space, including its collaboration with Tata Elxsi to provide automakers with secure in-car display systems for automobiles, provide automakers with the ability to create secure vehicles.

"As vehicles have become increasingly more connected, the attack surface of today's automobiles has grown considerably," said Daniel Thunberg, Global Head, Internet of Things at Irdeto. "This has resulted in hackers evolving their attack methods to exploit vulnerabilities that exist in automobiles, making it critical to employ a solution that gains insights into attack attempts to quickly take measured actions. Irdeto solutions include strong anti-hacking protection with renewable security, making it virtually impossible to reverse engineer vehicle software. By understanding methods used by hackers and mitigating attack attempts, Irdeto helps ensure that automakers provide consumers with cars that operate as intended."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognises the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it offers customers.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Irdeto

Irdeto: Your Partner for Automotive

Irdeto is a pioneer in digital platform and application security, with its software security technology and cyber services protecting more than 5 billion devices and applications against cyberattacks for some of the world's best known brands. For nearly 50 years, Irdeto has worked with software application providers, connected device manufacturers, pay media operators and content creators to secure their products and business models. Combining patented technologies and services, the Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto solution helps automakers and tier-one suppliers protect their brand and save cost in the battle against cybercriminals by creating a secure, tamper-proof environment for vehicle software. Irdeto, a subsidiary of Naspers (JSE: NPN), is headquartered in the Netherlands with more than 15 locations worldwide. Visit http://www.irdeto.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. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Chiara Carella

P: +44 (0) 207.343.8314

F: 210.348.1003

E: chiara.carella@frost.com

Stephen Russell

Manager, Public Relations, Americas

Mobile: +1 774-273-3890

Email: Stephen.Russell@irdeto.com

Related Links

http://www.frost.com



SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
The company will continue breaking new grounds at the 2017 NAIAS by debuting three innovative new vehicles, including a hybrid crossover concept car, a new SUV and the first electric vehicle that represent the highest level of GAC Engineering's independent research and development as well as unparalleled technological capabilities. The upcoming launch ceremony on January 9 is drawing attention from leading media organizations worldwide.

GAC Motor made their world premiere at the 2015 NAIAS and debuted the now best-selling GS4, demonstrating a world-class auto brand that thrives to meet the expectations of consumers around the world.

The NAIAS is a global stage for companies to debut brand defining vehicles and technologies, the trade show has the largest concentration of the world's top automotive and technology executives, designers, engineers and thought leaders.

"The US has one of the most developed auto industries in the world with a hundred years of auto history and culture, people have reached social consensus in the essential attributes of cars, and high-quality auto products have very broad market space," said Yu Jun, general manager of GAC Motor. "GAC Motor is dedicated to bringing the elite vehicles to global consumers as we expand our brand in the overseas market."

GAC Motor has achieved more than 80 percent average compound annual growth rate for six consecutive years. The company has sold 370,000 vehicles in 2016, a 97 percent year-on-year increase that makes the company the fastest growing auto brand in China while establishing sales and services networks in 14 countries as the company expands further in the international market, including the recent mega launch events of GS4 in Bahrain and Nigeria and tripling the number of cars sold in Bahrain a year after entering the market as the best-selling Chinese auto brand in the country.

Centered on GAC Automotive Engineering Institute, GAC Motor has expanded a global automotive R&D network supported by the company's technology center, top global suppliers and research institutes. In addition to the major new vehicle launch at the NAIAS, GAC Motor is also planning to release their vehicles in the North American market in 2018 after the market survey, obtaining certification and regulation and communicating with potential dealers.

"By emphasizing on independent and innovative research, adhering to the highest international standards in product quality and establishing world-class car manufacturing systems, we've gained trust from more than 800,000 car owners worldwide, and we will continue bringing our brand to more consumers globally with new products and events," remarked Yu.

About GAC Motor

A subsidiary of GAC Group, GAC Motor develops and manufactures premium quality vehicles, engines, components and auto accessories, achieving a year-to-year growth rate of 97% in 2016, the highest among all Chinese brands in the corresponding period. GAC Motor ranked 5th, among all brands in J.D. Power Asia Pacific's 2016 China Initial Quality Study, the highest of all Chinese brands for the fourth consecutive year.

For more information, please visit:

Facebook: GAC Motor: https://www.facebook.com/GACMoto/posts/1275665359142728

Instagram: GAC Motor: https://instagram.com/p/BMCLdjegUnI/

Twitter: GAC Motor: https://twitter.com/gac_motor/status/791324958353821697

Media Contact:

Suki Wong

+86-186-8058-2829

sukie_gacmotor@126.com

Taki Jiang

+86-134-5028-4242

takijiang@126.com

SOURCE GAC MOTOR
SUZHOU, China, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GCL System Integration Technology Co., Ltd. (GCL-SI), one of the world's largest solar energy companies, recently announced its investment in Vina Cell Technology Co., Ltd., a Vietnam-based solar cell manufacturer, in trade for up to 600MW production capacity. This was a remarkable move GCL-SI took to strengthen its competitive edge and to be better poised for wider opportunities in the US and European markets.

In the deal, GCL-SI will provide solar cell production equipment, whereas Vina offers plant, supporting facilities along with an experienced management team. According to the terms, of Vina's annual capacity of 600MW, 330 MW will be dedicated to GCL-SI. This comprises exclusive use of Vina's PERC (passivated emitter rear cell) facilities, an upgrade technology for standard AL-BSF solar cells. In addition, GCL-SI enjoys privilege over the remaining annual capacity of 270 MW, which will be locked up for GCL-SI with an advanced notice. This is, therefore, an outsourcing strategy tailor-made to GCL-SI and the company expects substantial supply reinforcement to support its fast expansion in both domestic and international markets.

Shu Hua, president of GCL-SI, commented: "The investment not only provides GCL System with cost advantage, but also helps streamline our supply chain by adding cell production into the system. The PERC capacity in particular helps ease current shortage of high-efficiency photovoltaic modules in the Chinese market."

The company's leadership team sees this investment as a strategic move to break into the US and European markets. GCL's Chairman Zhu Gongshan earlier this year indicated similar intention on 2016 Chinese Clean Energy Collaborative Forum, by encouraging Chinese solar energy companies to "team up to march overseas and to gain a more advantaged position in foreign markets". In fact, this year records a fruitful milestone for GCL System's global expansion, in which it successfully captured the Australia market with its E-KwBe model and hammered out partnership with Enmax in Thailand.

About GCL-SI

GCL System Integration Technology Co., Ltd. (002506 Shenzhen Stock) (GCL-SI), is part of the GOLDEN CONCORD Group (GCL), an international energy company specializing in clean and sustainable power production, founded in 1990. With global assets worth nearly USD16 billion, the combined companies delivered over 2 GW of modules globally in 2015, and currently supply more than 30% of all polysilicon and wafers utilized in the solar industry.

SOURCE GCL System
Total size of the big data business in Guian New Area exceeded 25 billion yuan in 2016, doubling the previous year's number, having attracted investments from global giants including Foxconn, Qualcomm and Huawei.

Investors are drawn by the government's policy support. Approved by China's State Council in 2014, Guian New Area has been chosen as one of China's pilot zones for developing the country's big data industry.

Many investment projects have already started production in the New Area's tariff-free zone, including industrial parks built by Foxconn Technology Group and Shenzhen Same Information Industry Co, while more projects will be completed soon.

In 2016, the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn Technology Group produced 6.4 million yuan worth of handsets, 5.83 million video game controllers, and 180,000 Nano touch screens, representing a combined business value of 1.086 billion yuan, or combined end value worth 8.937 billion yuan.

Another milestone is the world-class partnership with U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm. In January, 2016, Qualcomm created a joint venture with the Guizhou government to develop advanced chipsets for servers. The JV, Guizhou Huaxintong Semiconductor Technology, has set up its headquarters in Guian New Area.

The gathering of big data resources in Guian New Area has also fueled sector concentration, making the area a magnet for big data businesses of all size, and in all sections of the value chain.

China's top three telecom operators - China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, have all completed construction of the first phase of their data centers, and have put them into operation. The second phase of the projects by China Telecom and China Unicom will launch soon.

Tech firms including HTC, Sowei, Inspur have also launched their projects in Guian New Area, while more projects are in the pipeline, including Huawei's global data center and Apple's Asia Pacific data center.

Boosted by big data business, local healthcare industry embraces new era of remote disease prediction and shows a positive impact already.

The world's first center to showcase how big data can be applied to improve medical treatment and benefit patients has launched by Guian New Area. By collecting patients' data from hospitals across Guizhou, and through datamining, and deep learning by artificial intelligence (AI), it would be possible to predict, diagnose and analysis diseases more precisely, making disease prevention more effective, and medical treatment more targeted, and precise.

About

Guian New Area is located between Guiyang and Anshun, Southwest China's Guizhou province. The planned area of 1,795km2 covers 20 towns or townships of four counties (or county-level cities or districts) in the two cities. It is one of the five new areas developed under China's Western Development Program and the eighth national-level new area in China.

SOURCE Guian New Area
Three of the world's top ten safest airlines are Chinese carriers, with Cathay Pacific Airways coming in number one, Hainan Airlines, ranking third, and EVA Air in sixth place. Hainan Airlines is the sole mainland China-based firm among the Top 10 list, climbing two notches from its position the year prior, to become one of the top three safest airlines.

This is the fifth consecutive year that Hainan Airlines has been on the Top 10 list. The move from fifth place in 2015 to third place in the latest list, represents the best-ever ranking for a mainland China-based airline. Hainan Airlines had logged over 5 million hours of safe flights as of December 2015. The airline also was honored with the "Five-Star Flight Safety Award" by China's aviation watchdog, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

Hainan Airlines safety director Wei Changrong said: "Safety is the most important factor for the civil aviation industry, as we enter another peak travel period during China's Spring Festival holiday. Hainan Airlines' top priority is to make sure that each passenger gets home safely."

Contact:

Lv Ting

+86-898-6673-9807

ting-lv@hnair.com

SOURCE Hainan Airlines Co., LTD
Sydney, Australia, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Heron Resources Limited (ASX: HRR TSX: HER, "Heron" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on Ardea Resources Limited (Ardea) and its project activities, as disclosed in the prospectus (Prospectus) lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 9 November 2016 and Supplementary Prospectus lodged 18 November 2016.

Recent technical advancements have been realised within Ardeas projects:



Kalgoorlie Nickel Project (KNP) Cobalt development focus in light of surging demand from tech industry KNP Cobalt Zone has a JORC 2012-compliant resource of 7Mt at 0.12% cobalt and 0.86% nickel Cobalt-enriched zones are contained within and are a subset of the broader KNP resource of 805Mt at 0.05% cobalt and 0.7% nickel [1] , being Australia and the developed worlds largest cobalt resource KNP Chrysoprase (semi-precious gemstone) mechanised bulk production opportunity identified

Lewis Ponds Bulk tonnage Exploration Target defined Significant base metal-gold open-pit potential, with orogenic gold and base metal mineralisation defined which is very similar to other large deposits in the region Lewis Ponds Main Zone and Toms Zone main shaft mullock sampling by Ardea returned assays of 9.912.1g/t gold and 272539g/t silver, possible epithermal mineralised affinity

New tenement applications complementing existing Ardea projects Lewis Ponds, NSW  several licence applications secured and already recommended for grant Bedonia West and Perrinvale, WA  high quality Ni-Cu-PGM targets acquired



Ardeas management team has completed preparatory field programs including rock chip sampling ahead of the 2017 listing and project drilling. The recent focus has been on resource estimation and preparation of drilling approvals at Goongarrie South, Black Range and Kalpini (KNP Cobalt Zones) and at Lewis Ponds, and scoping of metallurgical and feasibility work for the KNP Cobalt Zone deposits and the Lewis Ponds stringer mineralisation.





1. Cobalt focus for the Kalgoorlie Nickel Project



1.1. High-grade cobalt resource

The global KNP resource of 805Mt at 0.05% cobalt and 0.7% nickel contains within it high-grade concentrations of cobalt-rich mineralisation at Goongarrie South, Big Four, Scotia Dam, Aubils and Black Range (refer Ardea Prospectus pages 84-87 for global resource details).

An upgraded cobalt-focused global resource for the KNP was defined as 49.7Mt at 0.12% Co and 0.86% Ni (refer Heron ASX announcement 6 January 2017 for global resource details). This resource comprises a recalculation of cobalt resources at Goongarrie South, Big Four, Scotia Dam and Aubils combined with the historic resource calculated for the Black Range area as defined in the Prospectus.

This new KNP Cobalt Zone resource is comprised as follows:

Table 1  KNP Cobalt Zone  Resource Statement from independent consultancy Ridley Mineral Resource Consulting Pty Ltd

Area Prospect Resource category Cutoff

(% Co) Size

(Mt) Co

(%) Ni

% MgO*

% FeO*

% Al 2 O 3 * % SiO 2 * % CaO* % Mn* % Cr* % Goongarrie Goongarrie

South Measured 0.08 3.4 0.14 1.19 1.6 47 6.3 17 0.16 1.02 1.27 Indicated 0.08 11.2 0.11 0.92 1.8 43 6.2 23 0.78 0.71 1.20 Inferred 0.08 1.4 0.11 0.76 1.8 39 5.9 30 0.32 0.74 1.20 Big Four Indicated 0.08 4.5 0.11 0.89 1.6 40 5.3 32 0.68 0.76 1.07 Inferred 0.08 0.2 0.11 0.95 1.6 38 4.2 36 0.25 0.73 1.09 Scotia Dam Inferred 0.08 2.9 0.14 0.88 3.2 34 4.4 Goongarrie subtotal 23.6 0.12 0.94 Siberia Black Range Inferred 0.50(Ni) 20.1 0.10 0.75 7.9 28 6.7 Yerilla Aubils Inferred 0.08 6.0 0.15 0.90 6.4 33 4.7 31 4.57 0.91 KNP TOTAL 49.7 0.12 0.86 *Estimates for MgO, FeO, Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 , CaO, Mn and Cr are provided for reference only and do not constitute Mineral Resources

Figure 1 - KNP pyrolusitic ore. This drill sample from 2001 assayed approximately 1% Co and 2% Ni. The cobalt-rich material occurs within the upper part of the cobalt-nickel laterite profile.

Figure 2  Run-of-mine KNP siliceous ore. This mine face includes green chrysoprase veining. Chrysoprase material tends to occur within the lower part of the cobalt-nickel laterite profile.

Figure 3  Ardea WA projects, showing the Goongarrie South, Big Four, Scotia Dam, Black Range and Aubils Cobalt Zones.



Figure 4 - Goongarrie South  work currently underway, showing 0.08% Co trimmed block model grade shell

1.1.1. Goongarrie South

The resource estimation reviewed existing KNP 0.5% Ni cut-off grade blocks which coincidentally exceed 0.08% Co and where they define coherent mining shapes. These grade shells were subsequently trimmed on an individual wireframe basis, excluding wireframe pods with less than three mineralised drillhole intersections, except where nearby adjacent drillhole intersections demonstrate continuity of the mineralisation above the 0.08% Co cut-off grade.1.1.1. Goongarrie South

The cobalt review included the Goongarrie SouthBig FourScotia Dam resource belt. This area will clearly will be the focus of Ardeas future cobalt program.

The current working concept is a Goongarrie South to Scotia Dam production rate of 2Mtpa at 0.12% Co and 0.94% Ni for approximately 2ktpa cobalt in intermediate product (a cobalt- and nickel-bearing manganese oxide) with in addition some 16ktpa nickel (distributed between battery feedstock and conventional nickel refinery feed). Plant site location would be at Goongarrie South at the northern end of the cobalt belt, with initial mine scheduling being a zone at Goongarrie South termed the Pamela Jean Deeps.

1.1.2. KNP, Australias largest cobalt resource

Containing 386,400 tonnes of contained cobalt metal, the KNP is Australias largest cobalt deposit. By this measure, it is more than three times larger than Australias second largest cobalt deposit. The newly-reported cobalt resource from the high-grade KNP Cobalt Zone is a subset of the larger KNP resource, and this subset is by itself Australias fourth largest cobalt resource, containing 59,600 tonnes of cobalt metal. The KNP Cobalt Zone also has one of the highest cobalt grades in Australia.

The updated resource reporting for cobalt-rich zones provides an insight into the potential to define further cobalt-rich zones in the KNP on the basis of remodeling work planned by Ardea that is focused on cobalt. Updated resource reporting on the cobalt-rich mineralisation at the KNP marks the first part of a refocusing for the KNP onto the cobalt component of the deposit.

Forthcoming drilling and metallurgical studies will move the KNP towards a PFS focusing on feedstocks for the lithium ion battery industry (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide - LiNiMnCoO 2 or NMC).

The drilling focus in ranking will be the contiguous cobalt zones in the Goongarrie South belt and at Black Range and Kalpini. The drilling will secure material for bench-scale metallurgical assessment.

1.2. Semi-precious gemstones within the KNP  Chrysoprase (Australian Jade)

The Kalgoorlie Nickel Project is characterised by widespread occurrences of the semi-precious gemstone chrysoprase. Chrysoprase is a rare, highly valued, nickel-bearing variety of chalcedony. Colour varies from apple green to deep green, and the highest quality material is translucent. Chrysoprase is commonly known by gemologists as Australian jade and is often used in jewellery as a substitute for jade due to its harder wearing characteristics. Chrysoprase is highly valued in east Asia notably China.

The occurrence of chrysoprase in shallow strongly weathered horizons throughout the KNP is directly analogous to the occurrence of opal in the opal fields of Coober Pedy (SA) and Lightning Ridge (NSW). As in the opal fields, chrysoprase has developed in veins within cracks and crevices in the clay-rich host rocks. In the KNP, the highest quality, deepest green chrysoprase shows a direct spatial relationship to the cobalt- and nickel-rich parts of the orebodies. Ardea has defined five advanced stage chrysoprase pit opportunities within the KNP.

Figure 5 - As mined chrysoprase, KNP. Indicative value $8-20 per kilogram. Forecasts of chrysoprase values are very difficult due to a lack of open markets, and confirm the desirability of securing a partnership with a downstream gemstone processor

Ardea estimates open-pit mining costs of approximately $6/t with run-of-mine chrysoprase valued at approximately $8-20/kg, and gem quality in excess of $20/kg (break-even grade 1kg/t of lower quality chrysoprase). Kalgoorlie chrysoprase mining has traditionally been labour-intensive and conducted by small scale tributers. Ardea has scoped a mechanised production model using ore sorting technology.



Ardea believes an east Asia jewellery producer would be a preferred chrysoprase development partner.

2. Lewis Ponds zinc-gold project  Updates

2.1. Bulk tonnage model for exploration and development

At Lewis Ponds, the mineralisation is accepted as Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) type (Prospectus, page 46). The mineralisation as described is multiple lenses (1, 2 and 3) of massive stratabound base metal sulphides hosted within the Anson Formation pyritic siltstones. Exploration has historically been on the basis of a narrow high grade underground mining model, and has generated a mineral resource totaling 6.6Mt at 1.5g/t gold and 2.4% zinc[2] estimated at a 3% ZnEq cut-off grade (refer Prospectus Table 3.2 for full description of resource status).

As noted in the Prospectus (page 44), Lewis Ponds occurs on the Lewis Ponds Fault; a subsidiary fault to the Godolphin Fault. The region is well known for being prospective for a variety of deposit types, especially VMS deposits and orogenic gold deposits.

Having now completed regional geological orientation programs in the Lewis Ponds area, it is clear that Lewis Ponds has a significant potential for orogenic gold deposits of the style of Regis Resources McPhillamys deposit, located 15km south along the Godolphin Fault from Lewis Ponds (Prospectus page 44).

As well as the traditional zinc-dominant VMS model, there is now a requirement to additionally evaluate Lewis Ponds as a bulk tonnage orogenic gold-base metal system, with the clear mining model being McPhillamys (resource 73Mt at 0.93g/t Au at 0.4g/t Au cut-off grade, Regis Resources, 31 March 2015).



Figure 6  Ardea NSW Projects showing Lewis Ponds, the recent applications of Yeoval-Mt Aubury immediately northwest of Copper Hill and Wisemans Creek immediately southeast of Lewis Ponds. The McPhillamys gold discovery is shown 20km SE from Lewis Ponds.



There are very clear geo-metallurgical associations at Lewis Ponds, possibly representing separate mineralising events, in order of abundance:



Dominant Zn-Pb-Ag-Au (stringer dominant but significant massive sulphide interbands). Au-Ag only (which is poorly sampled, thus difficult to quantify as an orogenic gold system). Minor Zn-Pb only. Rare Cu only, always in the footwall.

Lewis Ponds mineralisation is dominantly a 20-50 metre wide stringer (shear vein) system with 2-10 metre thick bands of massive Zn-Pb-Ag-Au mineralisation able to carry sub-grade stringers, with typically 2-5 m internal waste bands.

The mining implications for Lewis Ponds are:

Drill intercepts are required to be bulked into broad lower grade intervals of the McPhillamys style, using a 1% ZnEq cut-off (approximately 0.5g/t AuEq)

Open-pit bulk mining is more likely to be feasible, given the favourable Lewis Ponds strip ratios and consistent shallow high-grade mineralised

At Lewis Ponds, the bulk tonnage potential is confirmed in Prospectus Figure 3.3 (refer gold-equivalent calculation), with the following gold-equivalent intercepts on Section 940mN representative of the overall Lewis Ponds mineralised system.

Western Lode TLPRC-02 90m at 1.02g/t AuEq from 18m SLP-7 27m at 1.59g/t AuEq from 62m TLPD-02W 30m at 2.44g/t AuEq from 271m

Central Lode LPRC-32 54m at 1.72g/t AuEq from 26m TLPD-40 37m at 0.92g/t AuEq from 199m

Eastern Lode TLPD-40 68m at 0.97g/t AuEq from 57m



Having now completed field reconnaissance, it is felt that Lewis Ponds is better evaluated as a base metal-gold stringer system. Table 2 summarises the more significant bulk-tonnage intercepts at Lewis Ponds. More detailed drill intercept data has been previously published by TriAusMin Limited in ASX announcements between 2002 to 2014 (Prospectus page 71) and these reports may be obtained from Ardea.

From reviewing available drill core at site and archived core photographs, it is clear that extensive zones of sericite-pyrite alteration (potential gold mineralised host) have not been sampled. There is thus a requirement to cut and sample this core (assuming the individual core is still available), with the potential to establish McPhillamy-style mineralised systems.

The Ardea intention is to drill a single orientated core hole on Sections 1000mN, 800mN, 600mN and 400mN, and all available core on these 200 metre spaced sections will be re-logged, re-photographed and assayed.

This program will act as a control to allow a resource update based on bulk-tonnage parameters. The known high grade zone extends from Section 300mN to Section 1500mN and ultimately all historic drill holes within this zone will require re-logging and assay. This requirement was not anticipated within the Prospectus work program and has arisen through field studies subsequent to November 2016 Prospectus lodgment.

2.2. Field exploration results

Whilst siting drill collars for the initial proposed Ardea drill program, a suite of samples was collected as a first pass in defining Lewis Ponds geo-metallurgical types (GeoMet study). At the old Lewis Ponds Main Zone and Toms Zone main shafts, the main producers in the field, it was apparent that the dominant shaft mullock at both locations (600m apart along strike) is a distinctive white vuggy quartz-pyrite sinter (which appeared to have the appearance of epithermal style mineralization).

Table 3  Lewis Ponds Rock chip sampling



Location Sample No Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Zn

(%) Pb

(%) Cu

(%) As

(ppm) Sb

(ppm) Lewis Ponds Main Zone shaft LP01300 9.9 539 0.05 1.6 0.30 1030 2650 Toms Zone shaft LP01301 12.1 272 0.09 2.7 0.01 90 74

The high-grade Au-Ag with anomalous As-Sb is consistent with epithermal style mineralisation, and the low base metal values are not indicative of a VMS setting at the shaft areas.

Base metal and gold production is unknown for the Lewis Ponds shaft. Toms produced 30,000 tonnes of pyrite ore for sulphuric acid production. It is puzzling that such high grade precious metal mineralisation remains at both locations as shaft mullock and was not treated in the historic operation.

This mineralisation style was not predicted within the Prospectus and is of significant economic potential. In particular, Gold Stringer is a geo-metallurgical type recognized in Ardeas work but not described in historic Lewis Ponds records.

Drill approval environmental submissions are being prepared, with Department of Resources and Energy approvals anticipated in time for February 2017 drilling.

Figure 7 - Lewis Ponds, tenement and key prospects map

Table 2 Lewis Ponds  Polymetallic-Gold Stringer Zones, Significant Intercepts

Hole ID East

(local) North

(local) From

(m) To

(m) Width

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(%) Pb

(%) Zn

(%) ZnEq1 AuEq2 m.ZnEq3 Geo Met LPRC-6 -82 906 31 73 42 0.48 34 0.13 0.65 1.78 3.6 2.8 150.4 PS LPRC-17 -68 830 5 68 63 0.70 18 1.04 2.2 1.7 138.8 PS LPRC-21 -88 876 26 60 34 0.71 50 2.17 3.9 3.0 131.2 PS LPRC-32 -105 940 26 80 54 0.49 34 1.54 2.7 2.1 145.2 PS TLPD-03 -47 1146 163 250 87 0.44 23 0.06 0.47 1.08 2.4 1.9 210.1 PS TLPD-04 -61 1316 178 203 25 3.12 105 0.26 2.14 3.59 11.0 8.8 275.9 PS TLPD-06A 21 1235 290 395 105 0.94 50 0.14 0.85 1.89 4.7 3.7 489.9 PS TLPD-08 -51 1456 161 408 247 0.08 8 0.02 0.11 0.27 0.6 0.5 151.1 PS TLPD-09A 17 1205 248 370 122 0.37 9 0.04 0.22 0.47 1.3 1.0 157.1 PS TLPD-12 103 1312 419 559 140 1.53 52 0.10 1.45 2.20 6.1 4.8 850.4 PS TLPD-12W 103 1312 405 453 48 0.80 29 0.06 0.47 0.92 2.8 2.2 134.3 PS TLPD-12W3 103 1312 398 506 108 0.29 13 0.05 0.28 0.64 1.5 1.2 159.3 PS TLPD-15 74 1361 433 528 95 0.77 27 0.04 0.40 0.69 2.4 2.0 230.6 PS TLPD-18 80 1240 333 436 103 0.28 11 0.03 0.35 0.51 1.3 1.1 137.4 PS TLPD-19 97 1117 236 349 113 0.14 14 0.02 0.30 0.58 1.2 1.0 138.8 PS TLPD-20 72 1362 347 420 73 1.33 38 0.08 0.64 1.15 4.0 3.2 290.7 PS TLPD-21W 74 1361 409 510 101 1.03 38 0.07 0.60 1.01 3.4 2.7 345.3 PS TLPD-30 69 1491 569 760 191 0.15 9 0.02 0.14 0.22 0.7 0.6 131.6 PS TLPD-32 196 1386 484 558 74 0.37 24 0.06 0.49 0.87 2.1 1.7 158.9 PS TLPD-34 3 1231 232 298 66 0.40 23 0.08 0.35 0.81 2.0 1.6 134.4 PS TLPD-36 -68 1311 194 220 26 2.35 162 0.17 2.07 3.20 10.4 8.4 270.3 PS TLPD-37 -108 1213 147 184 37 1.24 35 0.10 0.68 1.33 4.1 3.2 150.4 PS TLPD-40 -4 938 56 245 189 0.05 5 0.05 0.21 0.54 0.9 0.7 172.5 PS TLPD-41 86 759 165 262 97 0.30 10 0.06 0.38 0.78 1.7 1.3 162.5 PS TLPD-46A 103 476 107 131 24 0.65 33 0.10 1.63 2.70 5.3 4.2 127.2 PS TLPD-51A 152 421 474 510 36 1.24 179 0.28 3.62 4.49 11.8 9.5 423.7 PM TLPD-51AW1 152 421 474 503 29 1.15 100 0.12 1.53 2.30 6.6 5.3 190.1 PM TLPD51AW2 152 421 321 399 78 0.22 22 0.05 0.89 1.44 2.7 2.2 213.2 PS TLPD-51AW3 152 421 388 402 14 1.10 95 0.14 4.33 5.87 11.9 9.4 166.2 PM TLPD-53 106 463 221 321 100 0.25 27 0.06 1.16 1.90 3.5 2.8 351.4 PS TLPD-62 145 353 287 394 107 0.16 14 0.03 0.32 0.68 1.4 1.1 145.5 PS TLPDD04002 -13 1268 238 309 71 0.64 27 0.07 0.52 1.11 2.8 2.2 198.8 PS TLPRC04010 -68 999 82 174 92 0.20 25 0.10 0.54 1.38 2.6 2.0 236.1 PS TLPRC-02 -124 968 18 129 111 0.26 14 0.06 0.24 0.56 1.4 1.1 151.4 PS TLPRC-04 -90 877 19 68 49 0.46 44 0.10 0.52 0.77 2.6 2.1 126.0 PS

Geo-Metallurgy (GeoMet)  PS Polymetallic Stringer, PM Polymetallic Massive, CS Copper Stringer (no intercepts are significant), GS Gold Stringer (no intercepts are significant)



Zn Cu Pb Au Ag Metal prices US$ (21 Dec 2016) 2617 5488 2177 1133 16 1Zinc Equivalent Estimate Recovery for ZnEq calc 100 % 80 % 80 % 90 % 80 % ZnEq recov multiply factor 1.000 1.678 0.665 1.253 0.016





2Gold Equivalent Estimate Recovery for AuEq calc 80 % 80 % 80 % 100 % 80 % AuEq recov multiply factor 0.575 1.205 0.478 1.000 0.011

3 m.ZnEq = intercept width x ZnEq value



Scoping study level financial model for a 1.5Mtpa open-pit with base metal float circuit indicates 1.6% ZnEq is a suitable break-even cut-off grade.







2.3. Exploration target

In consideration of the broad mineralised intercepts over a strike length of 1.15km between Section 350mN and Section1500mN, the initial Lewis Ponds Exploration Target is estimated at 15 - 25Mt at 2.2 - 3.7% ZnEq (1.2 -2.0g/t AuEq)[3] (see Table 2 for values used in defining zinc and gold equivalents). The estimated breakeven mining grade is 1.6% ZnEq.

The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration based on the bulk-tonnage concept to estimate a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a bulk tonnage mineral resource.

The system is open north and south along strike within areas of historic workings and soil geochemical anomalism. Significantly, there are extensive runs of historic drill core with no assays at all or only base metal assays (i.e. no gold assays).

Commonly within the Lewis Ponds lode envelopes, the runs of non-assayed material correspond to core photography which clearly shows the core is altered and likely mineralised. These intervals are ascribed nil grade within intercept calculations, meaning the Exploration Target grade is likely under-estimated.

Funds raised under Ardeas initial public offer will be used, amongst other things, to test the exploration target through diamond drilling on 100 metre spaced sections over the next 12 months.

3. Exploration update

3.1. Western Australian projects

As exploration ramps up, Ardea intends to consolidate its substantial portfolio of exploration tenements in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia that are prospective for Archean-style nickel sulphide and gold mineralisation. The consolidation process has commenced.

3.1.1. Mt Zephyr Gold-Nickel Project - Ardea 100%

Mt Zephyr is a section of greenstone belt localised on the Celia Lineament and located 60km NNE of Leonora.

Referring to section 2(a) of the Supplementary Prospectus dated 18 November 2016, the objection to the grant of the main tenement has been withdrawn and accordingly the tenement has been recommended for grant. An archaeologist for assessing proposed Gale and Dunns New Find drill sites has been retained.

Gale gold prospect

Gale is a 273ppb Au soil anomaly which Aurora Gold[4] RAB drilled in the 1990s and intersected consistent >0.25g/t Au from surface to RAB refusal with intercepts of 6-18m at 0.5g/t Au and peak 6m at 1.3g/t Au. The anomaly is clearly a sub-horizontal geometry and not the narrow sub-vertical interpretation of previous explorers.

The Gale RAB gold anomaly at a 0.25g/t Au cut-off grade defines an open sub-horizontal sheet with 700m N-S strike, 100m E-W width with up to 18m thick (corresponding to RAB refusal depths).

A site visit confirmed the anomaly has not been followed up with previous RC drilling, apart from a very limited program at the extreme northwest corner of the soil anomaly. Old RAB chips mixed with aeolian sand located at the old RAB collars returned consistent 0.1-0.4g/t Au. RAB chips included silica-pyrite-sericite alteration, which have the appearance of a late stage mineraliser. The geological expression of Gale is felt to be closely analogous to the Dacian Gold Jupiter syenite-hosted gold discovery, located 50km southeast along strike on the Celia Lineament.

The RAB chip anomalism is supported by up to 1.4 g/t Au in an unaltered granite float composite south of the RAB-drilled area, and 1.2-1.5g/t Au in gossanous limonite-white quartz vein float to the east of the RAB-drilled area.

The observed sub-horizontal RAB litho-geochemistry is a primary protolith attribute, since very clear-cut sharp barren RAB assays occur at the east and west contacts (if solely a supergene blanket enrichment, diffuse contacts with wider and more gradual dispersion would be expected).

Ardea plans to follow up the Gale RAB anomaly with systematic RC drill traverses.

Figure 8  Mt Zephyr, tenement and key prospects map



Dunns Line of gold prospects



The model for gold mineralisation has been refined with the recognition that historic workings are closely associated with NE trending cross-faults within the N-S trending main BIF horizon. Ardeas exploration model has evolved to be closely analogous to the Hill 50 Boogardie Breaks at Mt Magnet in Western Australia.

Rock chip and historic percussion drill chips along the target zone were sampled. It is planned to complete systematic soil auger geochemistry along the 4km of exposures along Dunns Line and extending into soil covered (altered) areas along strike of the main BIF.

Jones Area A and B nickel sulphide prospects



Olivine adcumulate komatiite channel facies have been identified by Ardea within a stratigraphic horizon which is felt to correlate with the Mt Windarra nickel sulphide mine stratigraphy. A sulphide facies BIF underlies the komatiite channel at Jones A, which is an excellent setting for Silver Swan-style nickel sulphide occurrences. Ironstone assays by Ardea at Jones Area B returned 0.3% Ni, confirming a prospective nickel sulphide setting.

Soil auger geochemistry is planned ahead of ground EM surveys.

There has been no previous RC drill testing of the Jones targets.

The Mt Zephyr E39/1854 application containing the Gale, Dunns and Jones prospects has been recommended for grant and consultant retained for a heritage survey.

3.1.2. Bardoc Tectonic Zone Gold Project - Ardea 100%

Ghost Rocks gold prospect

The Lady Isobel group of workings trend NNW over an area of 170m x 70m. The workings include a substantial underlay shaft dipping approximately 450 towards 1200 (discordant to the overall trend of workings), with smaller subsidiary workings distributed over the full area on multiple structural orientations. Mullock consists of white quartz vein stockworks within an amphibolite host.

Random mullock sampling by Ardea on the main shaft assayed up to 5.3 g/t Au. There appears to be a deficiency of mullock when considering the depth of shafts, suggesting part of the excavated material has been milled.

Big Four gold prospect

The Big Four gold prospect is being evaluated as a potential open-pit. The main lode has excellent visual expression, being a subvertical quartz lode within clay-limonite altered dioritic porphyry. Visual grade control should be possible in any open-pit mining.

Reconnaissance in late 2016 was aimed at assessing additional exploration targets along strike, notably soil geochemical anomalies to the south.

The target concept at Big Four is an open-pit developed over the historic workings. Elsewhere in the Bardoc Tectonic Zone (BTZ), such occurrences were drilled and mined during the various gold booms of the 1990-2000s. With Herons historical focus on the KNP nickel laterite within the BTZ tenure, gold exploration was minimal.

A proposal was received by Ardea from a local contractor to complete a trial pit at Big Four under a profit share arrangement. In view of open ore positions at Big Four, it was concluded that further exploration was required at Big Four before a transaction could be considered.

Figure 9  Big Four workings, facing north, note white quartz reef in left foreground

Various gold joint ventures were also proposed, but decisions will await completion of the Ardea IPO.



4. Tenement acquisition update

Ardea has applied for several new tenements in New South Wales and Western Australia, subsequent to the Ardea Prospectus Technical Assessment Report and so these projects are not covered in the Prospectus. The following sections briefly describe the geology and prospectivity of these new project areas.

4.1. Lachlan Fold Belt, NSW

As part of the Ardea Prospectus preparation, a significant gold prospect has been generated for the Lewis Ponds project around the Godolphin Fault, a shallow east-dipping domain boundary structure separating the Ordovician Macquarie Arc in the west from the Silurian Hill End Trough in the east. From southeast to northwest, the structure hosts gold mining centres and targets from McPhillamys, Springfield, Mt Shorter, Calula and Copper Hill East. This Godolphin Fault trend is held within Ardeas tenement package, a 50km strike of continuous tenure abutting the McPhillamys deposit in the south and the Commonwealth (Silica Hill) deposit in the north.

4.1.1. Yeoval Porphyry Copper-Gold-Molybdenum-Rhenium Project (ELA5368, recommended for grant) - Ardea 100%

Yeoval (ELA 5368) is located within the Macquarie Arc, 60km northeast of the Northparkes copper-gold mine. The tenement application covers an area of 138km2 and is intensely mineralised with more than 60 historic copper workings trending in a north-easterly direction, along a 20km strike. The project area encompasses the eastern section of the Early Devonian Yeoval Complex, with the major host being the Devonian-aged Naringla Granodiorite including gabbro-diorite and quartz monzo-diorites. The co-magmatic Canowindra Volcanics of the Cudal Group occur to the east and south. The Ardea exploration target is a large tonnage porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum-rhenium system.

This report section contains exploration results and estimates reported by ASX-listed Augur Resources Limited on 17 September 2012 under the JORC Code 2004[5]. The information has not been updated to comply with the JORC Code 2012, and it is uncertain whether following evaluation or further exploration work that the estimate will be able to be reported in accordance with the JORC Code 2012.

The known Yeoval deposit comprises two main near-surface zones of bornite-chalcopyrite mineralisation. Initial drilling in 1972 produced best intercepts of 42.7m at 0.93% Cu and 18m at 0.8g/t Au. Drilling in 2008 by Augur Resources produced best intercepts of 90m at 0.90% Cu and 0.14g/t Au and 50m at 0.54% Cu and 0.48g/t Au. Augur Resources[5] reported on 17 September and 2 December 2008 an Inferred Mineral Resource in compliance with JORC 2004 guidelines and based on this, Augur Resources considered an Exploration Target of approximately 10Mt  13Mt at grades of approximately 0.38% Cu and 0.14g/t Au as achievable.[7]

Table 4: Augur Resources Ltd announcement of drill hole YZ-04, 17 October 2012

Hole ID Grid E

(m) Grid N

(m) EOH

(m) Declin / azimuth

() From

(m) To

(m) Width

(m) Cu

(%) Au

(g/t) YZ-04 654 137 6 377 651 385.9 -55/102.5 182.7 266.2 19.1 0.6 0.66 This table represents data from an Augur Resources announcement on 17 September 2012 to the ASX. The background details of the data have yet to be ascertained and application has been made by Ardea to the NSW Department regarding release of the relevant comprehensive data-set to open file. The above information is included to validate that the Yeoval deposit is significantly copper-gold endowed and so warrants further investigation. Copies of Augurs several Yeoval announcements are available by contacting Ardea.

4.1.2. Mt Aubrey Epithermal Gold-Silver Project (ELA5369, recommended for grant) - Ardea 100%

Mt Aubrey (ELA 5369) is located at the east contact of the Macquarie Arc Ordovician andesites some 30km northeast of Parkes and 30km southeast of Peak Hill.

The property was acquired by Ardea as an epithermal gold system hosted in Upper Silurian to Lower Devonian-aged Dulladerry Volcanics, a bimodal subaerial suite of quartz eye porphyry with rhyolitic ash-flow lapilli tuff, pyroclastic and breccia and amygdaloidal basalt. Gold mineralisation is typically hosted by 0.5-3m thick chalcedonic epithermal quartz veins and stockworks. All assays reported in Table 5 below are from open file reports and are not able to be verified by Ardea.

Although an epithermal-style of gold mineralisation, the Mt Aubrey mineralisation isnt refractory, with the published run-of-mine grade (3.73g/t Au) returning 95.7% recovery in historic metallurgical test work.

Gold mineralisation at the Mt Aubrey vein system remains open at depth and along strike, as the historical drilling done by BHP Gold was only designed to define shallow oxide resources. The Mount Aubrey deposit was mined by BHP Gold in 1990 and 1991 as shallow open-pit satellite operations to the Parkes Gold Mine. It is estimated that up to 120,000 tonnes of ore at 3.3g/t Au was trucked to Parkes for processing. As part of the operating agreement with the landowner all three of the small open-pits were back filled.

It is presumed that the shallower of the drill intercepts as reported above were mined in the BHP open-pits. Historic pit pick-ups will be sought to quantify the status ore positions beneath the historic pit floors.

In 2007, Aurelia Metals Limited[8] completed three diamond core holes beneath the former Mt Aubrey Gold Mine for a total of 916.6m. The holes were designed to test the down dip extension of high grade epithermal quartz veining mined in the Mt Aubrey open-pits. Holes MAD002 and MAD003 each intersected broad zones of epithermal quartz-carbonate vein stockworks associated with epidote, sericite and bleaching alteration and minor sulphides.

Table 5 Mt Aubrey historic RC drill results.

Hole ID Grid E

(m) Grid N

(m) EOH

(m) Declin / azimuth

() From

(m) To

(m) Width

(m) Au

(g/t) MAR016 5161 10136 71 -60/018 38 44 6 6.65 MAR025 5201 10135 56 -60/024 30 32 2 6.04 MAR030 5291 10066 61 -60/018 45 49 4 2.17 52 59 7 1.33 MAR034 5743 10111 61 -60/355 49 55 6 6.21 MAR038 5774 10142 56 -60/355 6 11 5 3.18 16 25 9 1.26 MAR046 5161 10116 121 -60/018 64 73 9 4.12 MAR051 4881 10249 76 -60/018 26 29 3 7.99 MAR065 5201 10145 25 -60/018 14 17 3 7.68 MAR066 5739 10152 51 -69/175 4 11 7 3.10 24 27 3 1.85 32 40 8 1.85 MAR070 5140 10160 69 -60/017 15 27 7 17.78 MAR072 5180 10151 33 -60/019 6 16 10 8.52 MAR077 4923 10251 33 -60/018 5 10 5 8.10 MAR079 5694 10120 55 -60/355 6 14 8 2.87 MAR083 5821 10157 51 -60/019 23 24 1 6.10 37 48 11 2.95 MAR084 5821 10172 51 -60/018 17 20 3 4.57 MAR085 5862 10179 75 -60/018 12 16 5 3.97 MAR086 5861 10160 75 -60/020 18 27 9 2.45 MAR089 5662 10173 60 -60/018 18 21 3 5.66 It is yet to be determined through historic pit surveys which of these intercepts have been extracted in previous mining operations. Anecdotal reporting suggests very shallow open-pits, being some 20-30m deep as determined by stripping ratios. Their inclusion in this Report is solely to demonstrate that the Mt Aubrey system is gold-endowed and warrants further evaluation.

At the Mt Aubrey South prospect drill hole MAD004 intersected a broad zone hosting abundant mineralised crustiform textured quartz-carbonate-pyrite veining with a gold intersection of 88m at 0.22g/t Au from 2m. The gold mineralisation in MAD004 represents an un-mined new gold-bearing structure to the south of the main Mt Aubrey vein system.

The Blue Hills prospect is an area of outcropping, gold bearing veins and minor workings 2km along strike to the northwest of Mount Aubrey. Rock chip samples of up to 13.4g/t Au have been recorded and two costeans returned results of 2m at 1.35g/t Au and 6.5m at 1.40g/t Au. The area between Mt Aubrey and Blue Hills is mainly covered by modern alluvium but is also thought to contain quartz veining.

The Emu Swamp prospect is located 3km to the east of Mt Aubrey and contains outcropping veining with rock chip gold values to 3.3 g/t Au associated with pyritic alteration. The 6km Blue Hills  Mt Aubrey  Emu Swamp trend represents a significant epithermal vein system target.

Mt Aubrey along with the adjoining Yeoval tenure is interpreted by Ardea as the manifestation of a major NE-trending zoned porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum-rhenium to epithermal gold-silver intrusive centre.

4.1.3. Wisemans Creek Gold-Copper Project (ELA5378, recommended for grant) - Ardea 100%

The Black Bullock prospect is located at Wisemans Creek, 35km southeast of Bathurst, NSW. Epithermal gold mineralisation within the tenure is hosted largely within Late-Silurian  Early Devonian-aged slates, shales and sediments of the Kildrummie and Campbells Groups, with geology through the centre of the tenure comprising the andesitic Ordovician-aged Rockley Volcanics.

Mineralisation has been reported as predominantly associated with silicified zones with epithermal textures such as open-space filling in quartz veins, quartz vein breccias, chalcedonic silicification and colloform banding. The units strike NNW and dip steeply eastwards.

The Wisemans Creek area was held as EL2098 by Windsor Resources[9] during the 1980s and was part of a JV arrangement, which saw a total of 80 RC and three diamond holes drilled between the years 1985 - 1989. In Windsors 1988 Annual Operations report, the major historic gold mine production was noted as being from Black Bullock Mine, reporting production of some 40,000oz of silver and 2,098oz of gold from 4,700 tonnes of ore (at an average grade of 14g/t gold). Three main areas of interest were identified, some within State Forest and some on freehold land.

At the gold prices of the day, the deposit was not considered economic, however gold intercepts at shallow depths were reported that warrant further investigation. Table 6 above lists only some of the more significant gold intercepts recorded in the Windsor Annual Report. An additional 23 RC and 3 diamond drill holes (not listed in Table 6) contained significant intercepts at or above 0.5g/t Au. In 2006 Central West Gold[10] completed an IP survey and drilled follow up RC holes based on modelling of the earlier historic drilling and which reportedly contained a best result of 3m at 0.36g/t Au from 9m.

Table 6: Black Bullock prospect historic drill results

Hole ID Grid E

(m) Grid N

(m) EOH

(m) Declin / azimuth

() From

(m) To

(m) Width

(m) Au

(g/t) PWC-11 2100 1160 93 -60/270 0 16 16 0.62 PWC-14 2789 2200 99 -60/270 16 50 34 1.00 incl. 30 44 14 2.25 incl. 36 42 6 3.60 incl. 60 66 6 0.64 PWC-17 2673.5 2174 87 -60/090 10 30 20 0.22 PWC-18 2482 2070 105 -60/270 8 34 26 0.20 PWC-19 2437 2170 105 -60/270 6 16 10 0.25 Incl. 22 28 6 0.48 PWC-21 2604 1276 104 -60/270 74 100 26 1.56 incl. 74 86 12 3.10 PWC-25 2597 1387 82 -60/175 60 76 16 0.48 incl. 60 62 2 1.04 PWC-28 2900 2128 82 -60/090 66 82 16 0.3 PWC-29 1950 1990 51 -60/090 6 18 12 0.6 PWC-33 2650 1269 45 -60/270 16 28 12 1.5 PWC-34 2755 2195 75 -60/270 30 42 12 0.7

The above table represents historic data from GS1988_277 Windsor Resources report, recorded as a statutory requirement, for the NSW government department. The quality of the data has yet to be ascertained as historic QAQC work was poorly reported, but is included to establish that the Wisemans Creek prospect is gold-endowed and warrants further investigation.

Duckmaloi Tungsten prospect

From 2012 to 2014 part of the tenement area now held by Ardea was held by Resmetco Ltd[11] who explored for tungsten within a prospect known as Duckmaloi hosted within skarn style mineralisation. The prospect itself was estimated in an open file report to have an Exploration Target[3] of approximately 375,000 tonnes at 0.2% WO 3 The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature and there is insufficient information to estimate a Mineral Resource and it remains uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource in this area of drilling.

The existence of this deposit style as well as the nearby epithermal occurrences does suggest evidence for a larger mineralizing system and also warrants further investigation.

4.1.4. Status of NSW Applications

The Wisemans Creek, Yeoval and Mt Aubury applications have been recommended for grant.

4.2. Eastern Goldfields, WA



4.2.1. Bedonia West- Ardea 100%

E63/1827 and E63/1828 covering 358km2 complete Ardeas coverage of the Jimberlana Dyke west of the existing Bedonia prospect. Recent Ardea work has confirmed the anomalous Ni-Cu-PGM soil auger geochemistry previously identified by Heron is coincident with a specific intrusive phase of the Jimberlana Dyke lopolith. The new applications consolidate Ardeas coverage of the favourable Proterozoic Dyke lopolith geological setting.

4.2.2. Perrinvale- Ardea 100%

E29/1006 covers 175km2 along the eastern strike continuation of the Cathedrals Proterozoic Dyke complex. The application was predicated on Ardeas recognition of lopolith mineralisation controls at its Bedonia Project, and aims to secure similarly endowed lopolith geological settings, as well as the northern strike continuation of the domain boundary Ida Fault hosting the Mt Ida gold mining centre to the immediate south.

4.2.3. Status of WA Applications

The WA applications at Perrinvale, Bedonia West and Jimberlana are proceeding towards grant with no objections pending.

5. Corporate update  Ardea share applications

A copy of the Prospectus and First and Second Supplementary Prospectus is available at www.ardearesources.com.au. Anyone considering investing should read the Prospectuses in their entirety before deciding whether to do so. Applications can only be made via the application form which is in the Prospectus.

Please contact Ardeas Company Secretary, Mr Sam Middlemas, on +61 8 6500 9200 if a hard-copy of the Prospectus is required.

About Heron Resources Limited:



Herons project focus is commissioning the high-grade Woodlawn Zinc-Copper Project located 250km southwest of Sydney, New South Wales. In addition, the Company holds a number of other high quality base metal exploration properties located in the immediate Woodlawn area of the Lachlan Fold Belt, New South Wales.

With Herons focus on Woodlawn and the securing of finance for commissioning the operation, the spin-off of the non-Woodlawn assets into Ardea was commenced in August 2016. It is anticipated that Ardea will commence trading on ASX in February 2017.

Compliance Statement (JORC 2012 and NI43-101)



A competent persons statement for the purposes of Listing Rule 5.22 has previously been announced by the Company for:

Lewis Ponds on 9 November 2016 (prospectus lodged by Ardea and Heron); Kalgoorlie Nickel Project on 21 October 2013 and 31 July 2014, 27 October 2016, 2016 Heron Annual Report and 6 January 2017; Big Four-Goongarrie on 13 March 2012, 26 June 2012 and 24 July 2012. KNP Cobalt Zone Study on 6 January 2017

The Company confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects information included in previous announcements, and all material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning the estimates continue to apply and have not materially changed. All projects will be subject to new work programs following the listing of Ardea, notably drilling, metallurgy and JORC Code 2012 resource estimation as applicable.

The exploration target for Lewis Ponds, exploration results for Lewis Ponds, Gundagai, Mt Zephyr, BTZ and Kalgoorlie East Tenements, and forward programs contained in this announcement are based on, and fairly represents, information reviewed by Mr Ian Buchhorn, who is a Member of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Mr Buchhorn is a full-time employee of Heron Resources Limited and has sufficient experience, which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results. Mr Buchhorn has reviewed the Heron announcements the subject of the Second Supplementary Prospectus and consents to the inclusion of the information in the form and context in which it appears. Mr Buchhorn states that the historical exploration results and estimates are an accurate representation of available data and studies for the Yeoval, Mt Aubury and Wisemans Creek projects and are reflect Mr Buchhorns on-the-ground knowledge of the regional project areas.

The information in this report that relates to KNP Exploration Results is based on information originally compiled by previous and current full time employees of Heron Resources Limited. The Exploration Results and data collection processes have been reviewed, verified and re-interpreted by Mr Ian Buchhorn who is a Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and currently a full-time employee of Heron Resources Limited. Mr Buchhorn has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the exploration activities undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Mr Buchhorn consents to the inclusion in this report of the matters based on his information in the form and context that it appears.

The information in this report that relates to Mineral Resources for the Goongarrie South, Big Four and Aubils Prospects is based on information originally compiled by Mr James Ridley in 2008 and 2009 when employed as a Senior Resource Geologist with Heron Resources Limited. The information in this report that relates to Mineral Resources for the Scotia and Black Range Prospects is based on information originally compiled by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants on behalf of Heron in 2004. The Mineral Resource estimates for all five prospect areas have been reviewed, validated and re-interpreted by James Ridley who is a Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Mr Ridley is now a full-time employee of Ridley Mineral Resource Consulting Pty Limited and has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the resource estimation activity that he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Mr Ridley consents to the inclusion in this report of the matters based on his information in the form and context that it appears. Note that Mineral Resources that are not Ore Reserves do not have demonstrated viability.

The exploration and industry benchmarking summaries are based on information reviewed by Mr Ian Buchhorn, who is a Member of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Mr Buchhorn is a full-time employee of Heron Resources Limited and has sufficient experience, which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Mr Buchhorn has reviewed this press release and consents to the inclusion in this report of the information in the form and context in which it appears.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Australian and Canadian securities laws, which are based on expectations, estimates and projections as of the date of this news release.

This forward-looking information includes, or may be based upon, without limitation, estimates, forecasts and statements as to managements expectations with respect to, among other things, the timing and ability to complete the Ardea spin-out, the timing and amount of funding required to execute the Companys exploration, development and business plans, capital and exploration expenditures, the effect on the Company of any changes to existing legislation or policy, government regulation of mining operations, the length of time required to obtain permits, certifications and approvals, the success of exploration, development and mining activities, the geology of the Companys properties, environmental risks, the availability of labour, the focus of the Company in the future, demand and market outlook for precious metals and the prices thereof, progress in development of mineral properties, the Companys ability to raise funding privately or on a public market in the future, the Companys future growth, results of operations, performance, and business prospects and opportunities. Wherever possible, words such as anticipate, believe, expect, intend, may and similar expressions have been used to identify such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the information is given, and on information available to management at such time. Forward-looking information involves significant risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results discussed or implied in the forward-looking information. These factors, including, but not limited to, the ability to complete the Ardea spin-out on the basis of the proposed terms and timing or at all, fluctuations in currency markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, the ability of the Company to access sufficient capital on favourable terms or at all, changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations, political or economic developments in Canada, Australia or other countries in which the Company does business or may carry on business in the future, operational or technical difficulties in connection with exploration or development activities, employee relations, the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, obtaining necessary licenses and permits, diminishing quantities and grades of mineral reserves, contests over title to properties, especially title to undeveloped properties, the inherent risks involved in the exploration and development of mineral properties, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drill results and other geological data, environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding, limitations of insurance coverage and the possibility of project cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses, and should be considered carefully. Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect the Companys actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, the Company. Prospective investors should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking information.

Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based upon what management believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure prospective purchasers that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, and neither the Company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any such forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake, and assumes no obligation, to update or revise any such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information contained herein to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by law.

No stock exchange, regulation services provider, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this news release.

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1577ca1a-d81a-421a-a266-f4c9eed1b352



JORC Code, 2012 Edition  Table 1 (Mt Zephyr, Mt Aubury, Yeoval, Wisemans Creek)

Section 1 Sampling Techniques and Data

(Criteria in this section apply to all succeeding sections.)

Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Sampling techniques  Nature and quality of sampling (eg cut channels, random chips, or specific specialised industry standard measurement tools appropriate to the minerals under investigation, such as down hole gamma sondes, or handheld XRF instruments, etc). These examples should not be taken as limiting the broad meaning of sampling.



Include reference to measures taken to ensure sample representivity and the appropriate calibration of any measurement tools or systems used.



Aspects of the determination of mineralisation that are Material to the Public Report.



In cases where industry standard work has been done this would be relatively simple (eg reverse circulation drilling was used to obtain 1 m samples from which 3 kg was pulverised to produce a 30 g charge for fire assay). In other cases more explanation may be required, such as where there is coarse gold that has inherent sampling problems. Unusual commodities or mineralisation types (eg submarine nodules) may warrant disclosure of detailed information.  Mt Zephyr, Nord Resources (Pacific) Pty Ltd, 1982, open hole percussion drilling, decline 60 degrees west, only sample BIF, panned to detect gold, and if gold noted, submitted to Analabs, accordingly very poor assay coverage, assay technique not known



 Mt Zephyr, Aurora Gold Limited, 1993, RAB drilling, decline 60 degrees west, 6m composites (two rod lengths), assay by AMDEL, 0.01g/t Au detection limit, QAQC replicate assay for each sample, acceptable precision



 Mt Zephyr, Newcrest Mining Limited, 2008, assay by Genalysis, 50gm FA with AAS finish, 0.01g/t Au detection limit, presume QAQC but not detailed in available report, 1m RC chips Drilling techniques  Drill type (eg core, reverse circulation, open-hole hammer, rotary air blast, auger, Bangka, sonic, etc) and details (eg core diameter, triple or standard tube, depth of diamond tails, face-sampling bit or other type, whether core is oriented and if so, by what method, etc).  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic GSWA-held reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time Drill sample recovery  Method of recording and assessing core and chip sample recoveries and results assessed.



Measures taken to maximise sample recovery and ensure representative nature of the samples.



Whether a relationship exists between sample recovery and grade and whether sample bias may have occurred due to preferential loss/gain of fine/coarse material.  Not known Logging  Whether core and chip samples have been geologically and geotechnically logged to a level of detail to support appropriate Mineral Resource estimation, mining studies and metallurgical studies.



Whether logging is qualitative or quantitative in nature. Core (or costean, channel, etc) photography.



The total length and percentage of the relevant intersections logged.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Geotechnical logging most unlikely Sub-sampling techniques and sample preparation  If core, whether cut or sawn and whether quarter, half or all core taken.



If non-core, whether riffled, tube sampled, rotary split, etc and whether sampled wet or dry.



For all sample types, the nature, quality and appropriateness of the sample preparation technique.



Quality control procedures adopted for all sub-sampling stages to maximise representivity of samples.



Measures taken to ensure that the sampling is representative of the in situ material collected, including for instance results for field duplicate/second-half sampling.



Whether sample sizes are appropriate to the grain size of the material being sampled.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Subsampling most unlikely Quality of assay data and laboratory tests The nature, quality and appropriateness of the assaying and laboratory procedures used and whether the technique is considered partial or total.



For geophysical tools, spectrometers, handheld XRF instruments, etc, the parameters used in determining the analysis including instrument make and model, reading times, calibrations factors applied and their derivation, etc.



Nature of quality control procedures adopted (eg standards, blanks, duplicates, external laboratory checks) and whether acceptable levels of accuracy (ie lack of bias) and precision have been established.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 QAQC likely for Newcrest phase of exploration, but not known. Verification of sampling and assaying The verification of significant intersections by either independent or alternative company personnel.



The use of twinned holes.



Documentation of primary data, data entry procedures, data verification, data storage (physical and electronic) protocols.



Discuss any adjustment to assay data.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Verification likely for Newcrest phase of exploration, but not known. Location of data points  Accuracy and quality of surveys used to locate drill holes (collar and down-hole surveys), trenches, mine workings and other locations used in Mineral Resource estimation.



Specification of the grid system used.



Quality and adequacy of topographic control.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Local grids used, require field validation but minimal drill hole artefacts remain



 Georeferenced using surveyed gold mining lease corner pegs. Data spacing and distribution  Data spacing for reporting of Exploration Results.



Whether the data spacing and distribution is sufficient to establish the degree of geological and grade continuity appropriate for the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimation procedure(s) and classifications applied.



Whether sample compositing has been applied.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Insufficient sample points in previous work to establish continuity, Mt Zephyr, Nord and Aurora work not appropriate for Mineral Resource estimates



 Essentially wildcat exploration holes, not suited to resource estimation. Orientation of data in relation to geological structure  Whether the orientation of sampling achieves unbiased sampling of possible structures and the extent to which this is known, considering the deposit type.



If the relationship between the drilling orientation and the orientation of key mineralised structures is considered to have introduced a sampling bias, this should be assessed and reported if material.  Not known Sample security The measures taken to ensure sample security.  Not known Audits or reviews The results of any audits or reviews of sampling techniques and data.  Not known

Section 2 Reporting of Exploration Results - (Criteria listed in the preceding section also apply to this section.)

Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Mineral tenement and land tenure status  Type, reference name/number, location and ownership including agreements or material issues with third parties such as joint ventures, partnerships, overriding royalties, native title interests, historical sites, wilderness or national park and environmental settings.  Heron granted Exploration Licence tenure and Ardea EL applications The security of the tenure held at the time of reporting along with any known impediments to obtaining a licence to operate in the area.  No known impediments Exploration done by other parties Acknowledgment and appraisal of exploration by other parties.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Desk top appraisal, requires re-drill by Ardea Geology Deposit type, geological setting and style of mineralisation.  Mt Zephyr, Syenite hosted gold associated with Celia Lineament, northwest continuation of Red October-Sunrise Dam-Wallaby-Jupiter trend, granitoid intrusives defined by circular magnetic anomalies (as per Mt Zephyr magnetic feature)



 Lewis Ponds, Mt Phillamy-style orogenic base metals-gold possibly overprinting VMS enriched meta-sedimentary succession.



 Mt Aubury-Yeoval, upper epithermal system with a Silurian-Devonian intrusive system. Drill hole Information A summary of all information material to the understanding of the exploration results including a tabulation of the following information for all Material drill holes:



 easting and northing of the drill hole collar



 elevation or RL (Reduced Level  elevation above sea level in metres) of the drill hole collar



 dip and azimuth of the hole



 down hole length and interception depth



 hole length.



If the exclusion of this information is justified on the basis that the information is not Material and this exclusion does not detract from the understanding of the report, the Competent Person should clearly explain why this is the case.  Refer above, local grids used, GIS registered but accuracy not quantified, insufficient detail in historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time Data aggregation methods  In reporting Exploration Results, weighting averaging techniques, maximum and/or minimum grade truncations (eg cutting of high grades) and cut-off grades are usually Material and should be stated.



Where aggregate intercepts incorporate short lengths of high grade results and longer lengths of low grade results, the procedure used for such aggregation should be stated and some typical examples of such aggregations should be shown in detail.



The assumptions used for any reporting of metal equivalent values should be clearly stated.  Not done in historic data Relationship between mineralisation widths and intercept lengths These relationships are particularly important in the reporting of Exploration Results.



If the geometry of the mineralisation with respect to the drill hole angle is known, its nature should be reported.



If it is not known and only the down hole lengths are reported, there should be a clear statement to this effect (eg down hole length, true width not known).  Not applicable Diagrams Appropriate maps and sections (with scales) and tabulations of intercepts should be included for any significant discovery being reported These should include, but not be limited to a plan view of drill hole collar locations and appropriate sectional views.  Not available Balanced reporting  Where comprehensive reporting of all Exploration Results is not practicable, representative reporting of both low and high grades and/or widths should be practiced to avoid misleading reporting of Exploration Results.  Not available Other substantive exploration data  Other exploration data, if meaningful and material, should be reported including (but not limited to): geological observations; geophysical survey results; geochemical survey results; bulk samples  size and method of treatment; metallurgical test results; bulk density, groundwater, geotechnical and rock characteristics; potential deleterious or contaminating substances.  Not available Further work  The nature and scale of planned further work (eg tests for lateral extensions or depth extensions or large-scale step-out drilling).



Diagrams clearly highlighting the areas of possible extensions, including the main geological interpretations and future drilling areas, provided this information is not commercially sensitive.  Mt Zephyr, ground magnetics to define syenite intrusives and contacts, gravity survey to define structures, aircore drill to quantify host geology, then RC sections for mineralisation continuity (200x40m initial pattern).



 Mt Aubury-Yeoval and Wisemans Creek, systematic multi-element soil auger geochemistry to rank drill targets.



 Perrinvale, Jimberlana, Bedonia West, multi-element soil auger geochemistry to define ground EM targets, RC drill all conductors.





JORC Code, 2012 Edition  Table 1 (Lewis Ponds Exploration Target)

Section 1 Sampling Techniques and Data

(Criteria in this section apply to all succeeding sections.)

Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Sampling techniques  Nature and quality of sampling (eg cut channels, random chips, or specific specialised industry standard measurement tools appropriate to the minerals under investigation, such as down hole gamma sondes, or handheld XRF instruments, etc). These examples should not be taken as limiting the broad meaning of sampling.



Include reference to measures taken to ensure sample representivity and the appropriate calibration of any measurement tools or systems used.



Aspects of the determination of mineralisation that are Material to the Public Report.



In cases where industry standard work has been done this would be relatively simple (eg reverse circulation drilling was used to obtain 1 m samples from which 3 kg was pulverised to produce a 30 g charge for fire assay). In other cases more explanation may be required, such as where there is coarse gold that has inherent sampling problems. Unusual commodities or mineralisation types (eg submarine nodules) may warrant disclosure of detailed information. Refer reporting in Bob Cotton JORC 2004 and JORC 2012 reporting







Refer ASX announcements as follows:



 Ardea Resources Prospectus dated 9 November 2016, pages 9-10, 43-48, 67, 83 (JORC 2012 Resource Statement), 95-106 (Tenements).



 Heron Annual Report 2016 dated 24 August 2016, section 10.6.



 Heron Quarterly Report September 2016 dated 31 October 2016.







Both Reverse Circulation Percussion drilling (RCP) and Diamond core drilling (DD) have contributed to the Lewis Ponds resource database. RCP totals 2,190 samples representing 2,566 metres of mineralisation drilling, and DD totals 4,832 samples for 5,048 metres. Total drilling to the date of the Bob Cotton September 2016 report was 54,516 metres comprising:



 117 primary diamond holes for 41,776 metres



 32 wedged diamond holes for 7,159 metres



 7 diamond tails to RCP holes for 159 metres



 62 RCP holes for 5,421 metres



 4 Open Holes (Percussion/Rotary drilling) for 276 metres



 The last hole drilled was the diamond tail to TLPRC04010.



 The Resource is based on sub-surface samples obtained by the above drilling. Earliest drilling was successful testing of geochemical and/or geophysical anomalism adjacent to historic small mining. This progressed into drilling on grid sections to test the discovered mineralisation at intervals appropriate for good confidence in continuity. The earliest was diamond drilling by Amax commencing 25 October, 1971. The Longyear 44 rig used was top industry standard for the time.



 Similarly, the first single shot gyro instruments were being used for downhole surveys. Handheld GPS became practical for sub-5m accuracy collar positioning in year 2000 (removal of Selective Availability). The most recent programs after and including 2004 used Trimble GPS for collar positioning. The first hole to have (Differential) GPS collar positioning was TLPD-55 which commenced 3 Nov1995. About 40 percent of the total metreage drilled was GPS located. Drilling techniques  Drill type (eg core, reverse circulation, open-hole hammer, rotary air blast, auger, Bangka, sonic, etc) and details (eg core diameter, triple or standard tube, depth of diamond tails, face-sampling bit or other type, whether core is oriented and if so, by what method, etc).  HQ and NQ core, recoveries recorded, sampling by half core predominantly, focus for historic cut selection mainly dependent upon visible base metal sulphide-bearing drill core.



 Two main types of drilling have been used since the first drill testing at Lewis Ponds in 1971:



 Reverse Circulation Percussion (RCP) and Diamond Core Drilling (DD). Open hole techniques including Tricone, Blade and Hammer have been used to pre-collar holes through overburden and barren ground to place casing to facilitate deeper RC and/or DD.



 Prior to 1980, HQ core size was used only to seat the casing to enable NQ coring to start. Most of these holes at some stage reduced to BQ core size when rotation became an issue with NQ. In DD programs subsequent to 1980 HQ core size was used to refusal then reduction to NQ and possibly BQ. After 1990 triple tube barrels were used to good effect minimising core loss, and reduction to NQ became the norm with no further use of BQ coring.



 Diamond tails, as distinct from pre-collars, were used to extend RCP holes in the 2004 programs. These totalled 152 m in five holes.



 No use of oriented core was made until 2004 where drillers marks on core assisted determination of vergence in folding adjacent to mineralisation Drill sample recovery  Method of recording and assessing core and chip sample recoveries and results assessed.



Measures taken to maximise sample recovery and ensure representative nature of the samples.



Whether a relationship exists between sample recovery and grade and whether sample bias may have occurred due to preferential loss/gain of fine/coarse material.  Core recoveries at Lewis Ponds have not in every case been recorded on a sample by sample basis, however a good recovery database is provided by recoveries recorded in the Geological Logs. These logs show that significant core loss is a comparatively rare event once the hole enters competent rock, and in most cases is due to local faulting and/or shearing. Recovery of core has been measured by restoring the core, fitting individual pieces end to end where possible. Lengths of the assembled core were measured to compare with the intervals between drillers downhole markers. The ratio between the measured length and the marker interval length was recorded as core recovery percent. Percussion chip samples, at least in the more recent RC drilling, were weighed and the weight recorded. Any noticeably low weight recorded became a recovery factor in the sampling record. Logging  Whether core and chip samples have been geologically and geotechnically logged to a level of detail to support appropriate Mineral Resource estimation, mining studies and metallurgical studies.



Whether logging is qualitative or quantitative in nature. Core (or costean, channel, etc) photography.



The total length and percentage of the relevant intersections logged.  Logging of core and chips has been maintained throughout the Lewis Ponds programs. In the 1992 - 2004 programs, logs of downhole geology were generally prepared on paper proformas then entered digitally. In most cases scans of the hand logs have been made as well as the digital logs.



 The first objective has been to enable the lithology, alteration and mineralisation, and oxidation records to appear on screen together with grades for geological interpretive purposes. This has taken place to the standard required for mineral resource estimation and subsequent studies. The geological logging done, together with available photography, is considered to be adequate for mineral resource studies.



 Where needed terms such as massive, semi-massive stringer or disseminated have been used to describe the aspect of the metal sulphides. These qualitative terms are expected to be reflected in the assay results for the same intervals. This applies to logging both core and chips. Visual estimation of sulphide percentages has not been systematic throughout the drilling.



 Core photography has been carried out over the mineralised intervals in core obtained between TLPD33 and TLPD72 (Oct 1994 to April 1997) and the mineralised section of TLPD12. This represents approximately 50% of the total drilling, thus there is insufficient core photography to be a proxy for geotechnical logging in the event of a scoping study for Lewis Ponds.



 Minimal geotechnical logging, due to lack of orientated drill core. Sub-sampling techniques and sample preparation  If core, whether cut or sawn and whether quarter, half or all core taken.



If non-core, whether riffled, tube sampled, rotary split, etc and whether sampled wet or dry.



For all sample types, the nature, quality and appropriateness of the sample preparation technique.



Quality control procedures adopted for all sub-sampling stages to maximise representivity of samples.



Measures taken to ensure that the sampling is representative of the in-situ material collected, including for instance results for field duplicate/second-half sampling.



Whether sample sizes are appropriate to the grain size of the material being sampled.  Insufficient detail in pre-1992 historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time.



 With both RCP and DD drill sampling, a replicate sample was taken every 20m for quality control and submitted without special identification with other samples to the laboratory. It was rare for replicate sample assays, when compared with the original, to fall outside normal variability within the sampling/assay process. On some occasions a triplicate sample was taken for an umpire Au assay.



 The Lewis Ponds sulphides, whether massive, stringer or disseminated, have not raised problems of representivity with the RCP and DD sampling employed.



 Gold is a significant element of the Lewis Ponds metal value and could have representivity issues. Preliminary metallurgical study indicates that gold is largely refractory within sulphides. Nugget gold is therefore unlikely to be a problem in fresh rock at Lewis Ponds with attendant representivity issues. This may have to be reviewed if mineralisation in the oxide zone becomes a drilling target. Quality of assay data and laboratory tests The nature, quality and appropriateness of the assaying and laboratory procedures used and whether the technique is considered partial or total.



For geophysical tools, spectrometers, handheld XRF instruments, etc, the parameters used in determining the analysis including instrument make and model, reading times, calibrations factors applied and their derivation, etc.



Nature of quality control procedures adopted (eg standards, blanks, duplicates, external laboratory checks) and whether acceptable levels of accuracy (ie lack of bias) and precision have been established.  Refer above, insufficient detail in pre-1992 historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 QC Certificates of Analysis are held from the laboratory in respect of regular internal check assays of Standards, Blanks and Internal Duplicates from pulps of the original samples.



 Random checks give evidence of satisfactory procedures. Accuracy and Precision stats could be run for a marginally higher level of comfort. Verification of sampling and assaying The verification of significant intersections by either independent or alternative company personnel.



The use of twinned holes.



Documentation of primary data, data entry procedures, data verification, data storage (physical and electronic) protocols.



Discuss any adjustment to assay data.  Refer above, insufficient detail in historic pre-1992 reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 All significant intersections (TRO, TOA and prior) have been independently verified by a senior consultant to the extent of re-logging to become familiar with the detailed assaying characteristics. This was carried out in two phases and a full report has been presented describing each phase Location of data points  Accuracy and quality of surveys used to locate drill holes (collar and down-hole surveys), trenches, mine workings and other locations used in Mineral Resource estimation.



Specification of the grid system used.



Quality and adequacy of topographic control.  Refer above, insufficient detail in pre-1992 historic reports, reputable international explorer using standard industry practice of the time



 Local grids used, require field validation but minimal drill hole artefacts remain



 Collar positions have been set in using a Trimble GPS instrument with a sub-5 metre level of accuracy. Collars of TOA and TRO holes have been picked up using a DGPS Sub-1 metre instrument since mid-1995. Prior to that, holes may have been sited relative to a pegged tape and compass grid with significant inaccuracies. However in 1995 all previous hole collars appear to have been identified and surveyed by DGPS. No tape and compass coordinates are used to locate any item of drill data in the current database. In 2004 limited checks were made of surviving early hole collars (pre-1995) using DGPS with satisfactory results when compared with database.



 The Lewis Ponds grid was established in 1992 using a local grid north reference of 315 degrees magnetic. The Grid north orientation of 315 degrees (Mag) equates to 329 degrees MGA. Data spacing and distribution  Data spacing for reporting of Exploration Results.



Whether the data spacing and distribution is sufficient to establish the degree of geological and grade continuity appropriate for the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimation procedure(s) and classifications applied.



Whether sample compositing has been applied.  Where drilling density is greatest the Lewis Ponds mineralisation is seen to consist of simple lenses at all downhole Zinc Equivalent (ZnEq) cut-offs up to 8 to 9 % ZnEq.



 Cross sections are 20 m apart. On any one cross section three or more drill holes are sufficient to characterise the lenses. The drill intersections are usually about 50 to 80m apart down dip.



 For the thickest part of the Main Lenses this criterion applies on six contiguous cross sections, that is 120m of strike length. From this base, at the low 1% ZnEq cut-off, one or two intersections per cross section are sufficient to carry the lens interpretation a further 40m north and 300m up plunge to the south. At this point there is a second interval of 100m strike length near surface with 3 intercepts per cross section. At the plus 7% ZnEq cut-off, the lenses are limited to the 120m interval. It is considered that this data distribution permits estimation of resources in the Indicated category.



 For the Exploration Target Stringer interpretations, Lens interpretation has used Grade Composites based on (a) a 1% ZnEq downhole cut-off, effectively quantifying stringer and disseminated mineralisation, and (b) a 7% ZnEq downhole cut-off characterising semi-massive and massive sulphide mineralisation. Orientation of data in relation to geological structure  Whether the orientation of sampling achieves unbiased sampling of possible structures and the extent to which this is known, considering the deposit type.



If the relationship between the drilling orientation and the orientation of key mineralised structures is considered to have introduced a sampling bias, this should be assessed and reported if material.  Generally orthogonal when using Stringer interpretations. Sample security The measures taken to ensure sample security.  Perhaps the best security against potential sample tampering for a situation such as Lewis Ponds has been not to have to store the samples. Site processing of samples was by Company employees and when complete samples were less than an hour from the laboratory by company vehicle. Satisfactory internal security was maintained routinely by the Laboratory. Audits or reviews The results of any audits or reviews of sampling techniques and data.  Consultants completed a total review and audit of the Lewis Ponds database following the public float of Tri Origin Minerals Limited on 9 Jan 2004. Areas were: Grids and Collars, Downhole surveys, Assays, Geology. Apart from this Review, previous resource estimates were studied for factors likely to introduce bias, up or down.



 Ardea is currently assembling available Lewis Ponds hard copy reports archived at the Woodlawn mine site.

Section 2 Reporting of Exploration Results - (Criteria listed in the preceding section also apply to this section.)

Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Mineral tenement and land tenure status  Type, reference name/number, location and ownership including agreements or material issues with third parties such as joint ventures, partnerships, overriding royalties, native title interests, historical sites, wilderness or national park and environmental settings.  TriAusMin (Heron) granted Exploration Licence tenure and Ardea EL applications.



 The project is on partly cleared private land, most of which is owned by Ardea. Access agreements are in place for the private land surrounding the main deposit area. There are no national parks, reserves or heritage sites affecting the project area. At this stage security can only be enhanced by continued engagement with stakeholders and maintaining profile in the City of Orange in particular The security of the tenure held at the time of reporting along with any known impediments to obtaining a licence to operate in the area.  No known impediments Exploration done by other parties Acknowledgment and appraisal of exploration by other parties.  Refer Ardea Prospectus



 Amax Exploration Australia Inc entered a Joint Venture Agreement which Metals Investments Holdings NL and A.I. Consolidated Gold Pty Ltd held with the owner of the title ,Wentworth Mining Corporation Pty Ltd, over ground which included the Lewis Ponds deposit. Amax drilled four DD holes totalling 875 meters in 1971-1972 which contributed four intercepts above 7% ZnE to this Resource estimate. The only drilling done prior to Amax was by Cominco in 1969. Three holes were abandoned after entering disused workings at the Spicers Mine location, Lewis Ponds.



 Subsequent drilling by Aquitaine Australia Minerals Pty Ltd in 1975-1976 was under joint venture agreement with Amax and Shell Company of Australia. 10 (BOA series) holes were drilled totalling 2102 metres, which also contributed four intercepts.



 Between 1979 and 1981 a further 7 holes totalling 2274 metres (SLP series) were drilled by Shell and Aquitaine under the JV agreement with Amax. This drilling contributed five intercepts including one twinned in a wedge hole.



 In total, other party exploration contributed 15 percent of the database which now determines the geometry of potentially ore grade mineralisation for this Resource estimate.



 In 1987-1988, the Homestake subsidiary Sabminco drilled 33 RCP holes totalling 2300 metres (LPRC series). This drilling contributed 21 intercepts of the 230 used to interpret the Resource.



 Prior to the acquisition of TriAusMin by Heron in August 2014, Tri Origin Australia drilled 42,232 metres in 124 holes, followed by Tri Origin Minerals with 3,812 metres in 30 holes. Geology Deposit type, geological setting and style of mineralisation.  Refer Ardea Prospectus.



 Lewis Ponds, Mt Phillamy-style orogenic base metals-gold possibly overprinting VMS enriched meta-sedimentary succession.. Drill hole Information A summary of all information material to the understanding of the exploration results including a tabulation of the following information for all Material drill holes:



 easting and northing of the drill hole collar



 elevation or RL (Reduced Level  elevation above sea level in metres) of the drill hole collar



 dip and azimuth of the hole



 down hole length and interception depth



 hole length.



If the exclusion of this information is justified on the basis that the information is not Material and this exclusion does not detract from the understanding of the report, the Competent Person should clearly explain why this is the case.  The database now carries 211 holes totalling 54516 metres. Data aggregation methods  In reporting Exploration Results, weighting averaging techniques, maximum and/or minimum grade truncations (eg cutting of high grades) and cut-off grades are usually Material and should be stated.



Where aggregate intercepts incorporate short lengths of high grade results and longer lengths of low grade results, the procedure used for such aggregation should be stated and some typical examples of such aggregations should be shown in detail.



The assumptions used for any reporting of metal equivalent values should be clearly stated. Massive mineralization model :



 Grade compositing was by averages above cutoff weighted for sample length. The maximum total inclusion of subgrade was 5m and the maximum consecutive inclusion of subgrade was 3m.



 Two sets of composites were prepared, one based on downhole cut-off of 1 percent Zinc Equivalent (% ZnEq) and the other based on 7% ZnEq (potentially economic). No cutting of high grades took place at the aggregation stage because grade composites were used only for the interpretation of the geometry of the mineralisation on cross section and in plan, prior to wireframing, not for Resource estimation.



Stringer Exploration Target mineralization model :



 There was no limitation on internal waste, since the objective was to generate mining shapes for a low grade open-pit bulk mining operation.



 The historic Lewis Ponds core assay data has significant runs of unassayed material which has been included in intercept runs as nil grade. Review of available core photography and geological logs confirms a significant proportion of un-assayed internal waste is sericite-pyrite altered and thus prospective for orogenic gold. Relationship between mineralisation widths and intercept lengths These relationships are particularly important in the reporting of Exploration Results.



If the geometry of the mineralisation with respect to the drill hole angle is known, its nature should be reported.



If it is not known and only the down hole lengths are reported, there should be a clear statement to this effect (eg down hole length, true width not known).  Not currently applicable to Stringer systems, require geo-metallurgical assessment. Diagrams Appropriate maps and sections (with scales) and tabulations of intercepts should be included for any significant discovery being reported These should include, but not be limited to a plan view of drill hole collar locations and appropriate sectional views.  Available as hard copy at Woodlawn mine site, to be digitized. Balanced reporting  Where comprehensive reporting of all Exploration Results is not practicable, representative reporting of both low and high grades and/or widths should be practiced to avoid misleading reporting of Exploration Results.  Balanced reporting in Bob Cotton JORC 2004 and JORC 2012 reporting Site visits  Site visits were made by the Competent Person Ian Buchhorn in January 2015 and November 2016



 This was combined with seeing outcrop characteristics of the quartz eye volcaniclastic sandstone footwall and volcaniclastic siltstone hangingwall rocks. Other substantive exploration data  Other exploration data, if meaningful and material, should be reported including (but not limited to): geological observations; geophysical survey results; geochemical survey results; bulk samples  size and method of treatment; metallurgical test results; bulk density, groundwater, geotechnical and rock characteristics; potential deleterious or contaminating substances.  Substantive exploration data reporting in Bob Cotton JORC 2004 and JORC 2012 reporting. Further work  The nature and scale of planned further work (eg tests for lateral extensions or depth extensions or large-scale step-out drilling).



Diagrams clearly highlighting the areas of possible extensions, including the main geological interpretations and future drilling areas, provided this information is not commercially sensitive.  Multi-element soil auger geochemistry to quantify host geology and lode envelope, then 100m spaced DDH sections for mineralisation continuity/GeoMet.



 Copper Hill East and Wisemans Creek, systematic multi-element soil auger geochemistry to rank Lewis Ponds style drill targets.





[1] The breakdown for the full KNP resource categories is as follows:

Resource Category Quantity (Mt) Co (%) Ni (%) Measured 9.6 0.081 1.02 Indicated 244.0 0.052 0.75 KNP Total Measured and Indicated 253.6 0.052 0.76 Inferred 551.7 0.046 0.68 KNP Total Resources 805.3 0.048 0.70

[2] The breakdown for the full Lewis Ponds resource categories is as follows:

Resource Category Quantity(Mt) Zn(%) Cu(%) Pb(%) Au(g/t) Ag(g/t) Indicated Main Zone 5.82 2.1 0.1 1.1 1.5 59 Toms Zone 0.54 5.5 0.3 3.8 1.7 172 Total Indicated 6.35 2.4 0.2 1.4 1.5 68 Inferred Main Zone 0.17 1.7 0.1 0.8 0.9 47 Toms Zone 0.10 5.0 0.2 3.6 1.4 174 Total Inferred 0.27 3.0 0.1 1.9 1.1 96 Total Mineral Resource 6.62 2.4 0.2 1.4 1.5 69

[3] An Exploration Target is a term used within the JORC2012 Code for an estimate of the exploration potential of a mineral deposit. As used in this release the stated Exploration Target is based upon the parameters described in the text, however the potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature and there is insufficient information to estimate a Mineral Resource and it remains uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource in this area of drilling.

[4] Aurora Gold has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement. The potential quantity and grade of any mineralisation is conceptual in nature, there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a mineral resource.

[5] Augur Resources has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement. This section contains exploration results and estimates reported by Augur Resources Limited on 17 September 2012 under the JORC Code 2004. The information has not been updated to comply with the JORC Code 2012, and it is uncertain whether following evaluation and or further exploration work that the estimate will be able to be reported in accordance with the JORC Code 2012.

[7] The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature and there is insufficient information to estimate a Mineral Resource and it remains uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource in this area of drilling.

[8] Aurelia Metals Limited has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement

[9] Windsor Resources has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement.

[10] Central West Gold has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement.

[11] Resmetco Ltd has not consented to the use of the historical geological report reference in this announcement.




DUBLIN, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Dublin - Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "IoT Enabled Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Market Outlook and Forecasts 2017 - 2022" report to their offering.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is manifest in architecture that facilitates the flow of information among the different functions within an enterprise. ERP software provides a central repository for all enterprise information while improving the flow of data across organization. Internet of Things (IoT) software and systems transform this further as IoT enabled ERP solutions connect people, processes, data, and things in one repository.



IoT is anticipated to enhanced ERP system efficiency, facilitate new business models, and align physical operations with digital assets on a real-time basis. Cloud and AI technology support ERP systems further as they provide scalability and intelligent insights. The goal is to generate insights, allowing for faster and more accurate/appropriate decision making, and fostering a more customer centric business.



Research Findings:



There will be an incremental $49.9 billion market opportunity for IoT ERP software and services by 2022.

market opportunity for IoT ERP software and services by 2022. About 50% of the global small, mid-sized, and large enterprises will deploy some kind of IoT enabled ERP by 2022.

SaaS business model is expected to achieve substantial growth as compared to the built-to-order business model.

Virtually all enterprise functions will require significant transformation to prepare for and maintain IoT enabled ERP.

Target Audience:



Network operators

IoT solution providers

ERP solution providers

Systems integration companies

Cloud and AI solution providers

Enterprise companies of all types

Companies Mentioned:



abas ERP

Cerner Corporation

DigitalGenius

Eneco

Enterox

Ericsson

eScooter

Fidelity National Information Services

Fiserv Inc.

Infor

Intuit Inc.

McKesson Corporation

Microsoft Corporation

Mysoft Sage X3

Oracle Corporation

Quby

SAP



Key Topics Covered:



1 Overview



2 IoT ERP Ecosystem, Business Implications, and Case Studies



3 IoT Enabled ERP Software and Service Revenue Forecast 2017 - 2022



4 ERP Vendor Analysis



5 Conclusions and Recommendations



6 Appendix: More on ERP Functions



For more information about this report visit

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/pvcwgg/iot_enabled

Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
My Eye Media's Warsaw Digital Media Testing facility is fully equipped to evaluate feature and television content in any digital format.

"With our new facility in Warsaw, we are excited to be able to offer our clients My Eye Media's full suite of mastering, optical disc and streaming testing services," said Josh Erkman, EVP of Strategic Operations.

The Warsaw Digital Media Testing facility will also act as a hub for servicing European localization testing. "Over the past two years we have seen an increased demand from our clients for the localization testing of audio and subtitles from highly skilled native language experts. Along with our location in Tokyo and our new Warsaw facility, we can efficiently respond to these requests for a multitude of languages," said Kadenacy.

In addition to the new facility in Warsaw, My Eye Media has offices located in Tokyo, New York City and Burbank, California.

About My Eye Media

My Eye Media is the leader in quality assurance, technical analysis and testing of all formats of digital motion picture content. The company's deep understanding of the technical intricacies required for the digital landscape makes its work critical to major film studios, cable and satellite channels, streaming media providers and content library owners. My Eye Media was founded in 2004 and is the most advanced and experienced digital-file testing company in the world. The company is headquartered in the heart of the post-production district in Burbank, California, and it has offices in New York and Tokyo. My Eye Media also manages a global workforce of technicians. More information at www.myeyemedia.com

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454101/My_Eye_Media_Logo.jpg

Related Links

http://www.myeyemedia.com



SOURCE My Eye Media
CALGARY, Alberta, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pembina Pipeline Corporation ("Pembina" or the "Company") (TSX: PPL; NYSE: PBA) announced today that its Board of Directors declared a common share cash dividend for January 2017 of $0.16 per share to be paid, subject to applicable law, on February 15, 2017 to shareholders of record on January 25, 2017.

For shareholders receiving their common share dividends in U.S. funds, the January 2017 cash dividend is expected to be approximately U.S. $0.1202 per share (before deduction of any applicable Canadian withholding tax) based on a currency exchange rate of 0.7514. The actual U.S. dollar dividend will depend on the Canadian/U.S. dollar exchange rate on the payment date and will be subject to applicable withholding taxes.

Pembina's Board of Directors also declared quarterly dividends for the Company's preferred shares, Series 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. All preferred share dividends are payable on March 1, 2017 to shareholders of record on February 1, 2017.

Series Dividend Amount Preferred Shares, Series 1 (PPL.PR.A) $0.265625 Preferred Shares, Series 3 (PPL.PR.C) $0.29375 Preferred Shares, Series 5 (PPL.PR.E) $0.3125 Preferred Shares, Series 7 (PPL.PR.G) $0.28125 Preferred Shares, Series 9 (PPL.PR.I) $0.296875 Preferred Shares, Series 11 (PPL.PR.K) $0.359375 Preferred Shares, Series 13 (PPL.PR.M) $0.359375

These dividends are designated "eligible dividends" for Canadian income tax purposes. For non-resident shareholders, Pembina's common share dividends should be considered "qualified dividends" and may be subject to Canadian withholding tax.

Confirmation of Record and Payment Date Policy

Pembina pays cash dividends on its common shares in Canadian dollars on a monthly basis to shareholders of record on the 25th calendar day of each month (except for the December record date, which is December 31st), if, as and when determined by the Board of Directors. Should the record date fall on a weekend or a statutory holiday, the effective record date will be the previous business day. The dividend payment date is the 15th of the month following the record date. Should the payment date fall on a weekend or on a holiday the business day prior to the weekend or holiday becomes the payment date. Dividends on the preferred shares are payable on the 1st day of March, June, September and December in each year, if, as and when declared by the Board of Directors. Should the record date or payment date fall on a weekend or holiday, the business day prior to the weekend or holiday becomes the record or payment date, as applicable.

About Pembina

Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation is a leading transportation and midstream service provider that has been serving North America's energy industry for over 60 years. Pembina owns and operates an integrated system of pipelines that transport various products derived from natural gas and hydrocarbon liquids produced primarily in western Canada. The Company also owns and operates gas gathering and processing facilities and an oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics business. Pembina's integrated assets and commercial operations along the majority of the hydrocarbon value chain allow it to offer a full spectrum of midstream and marketing services to the energy sector. Pembina is committed to working with its community and aboriginal neighbours, while providing value for investors in a safe, environmentally responsible manner. This balanced approach to operating ensures the trust Pembina builds among all of its stakeholders is sustainable over the long-term. Pembina's common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under PPL and PBA, respectively. For more information, visit www.pembina.com.

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and statements that are based on Pembina's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends. In this news release, such forward-looking information and statements can be identified by terminology such as "to be", "expects", and similar expressions.

In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements and information relating to: future dividends which may be declared on Pembina's common shares, the dividend payment and the tax treatment thereof. These forward-looking statements are being made by Pembina based on certain assumptions that Pembina has made in respect thereof as at the date of this news release, regarding, among other things: oil and gas industry exploration and development activity levels; the success of Pembina's operations and growth projects; prevailing commodity prices, margins, volumes and exchange rates; that Pembina's future results of operations will be consistent with past performance and management expectations in relation thereto; the continued availability of capital at attractive prices to fund future capital requirements relating to existing assets and projects, including but not limited to future capital expenditures relating to expansion, upgrades and maintenance shutdowns; the success of growth projects; future operating costs; that any third party projects relating to Pembina's growth projects will be sanctioned and completed as expected; that any required commercial agreements can be reached; that all required regulatory and environmental approvals can be obtained on the necessary terms in a timely manner; that counterparties to material agreements will continue to perform in a timely manner; that there are no unforeseen events preventing the performance of contracts; and that there are no unforeseen material construction, integrity or other costs related to current growth projects or current operations. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to: the regulatory environment and decisions; non-performance of agreements in accordance with their terms; the impact of competitive entities and pricing; reliance on key industry partners, alliances and agreements; the strength and operations of the oil and natural gas production industry and related commodity prices; the continuation or completion of third-party projects; actions by governmental or regulatory authorities including changes in tax laws and treatment, changes in royalty rates or increased environmental regulation; adverse general economic and market conditions in Canada, North America and elsewhere; fluctuations in operating results; construction delays; labour and material shortages; and certain other risks detailed from time to time in Pembina's public disclosure documents including, among other things, those detailed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Pembina's management's discussion and analysis and annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which can be found at www.sedar.com.

Accordingly, readers are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted, forecasted or projected. Such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by the above statements. Pembina does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements or information contained herein, except as required by applicable laws.

For further information: Investor Relations, Hayley McKenzie / Ian McAvity, (403) 231-3156, 1-855-880-7404, e-mail: investor-relations@pembina.com, www.pembina.com

SOURCE Pembina Pipeline Corporation
CALGARY, Alberta, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pembina Pipeline Corporation ("Pembina" or the "Company") (TSX: PPL; NYSE: PBA) has received regulatory approval for and initiated construction on its previously announced $235 million expansion of its pipeline infrastructure in northeast British Columbia ("B.C.") (the "NEBC Expansion" or "the Project").

"With regulatory sanctioning of the NEBC Expansion, we have secured approvals for the majority of the projects within our conventional pipelines business," said Paul Murphy, Pembina Senior Vice President, Pipelines & Crude Oil Facilities. "The NEBC Expansion strengthens Pembina's presence within the prolific geology of northeast B.C. and is located in close proximity to a variety of area producers who may have future transportation needs."

The Project entails the construction of approximately 145 kilometres of 12-inch diametre pipeline with a base design capacity of up to 75,000 barrels per day that will parallel much of the existing Blueberry pipeline system northwest of Taylor, B.C. to the Highway/Blair Creek area of B.C. The NEBC Expansion will provide a conduit for natural gas liquids and condensate produced in the liquids-rich Montney resource play to access the Company's downstream pipeline systems that feed into markets in the Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta area. Pembina anticipates bringing the NEBC Expansion on-stream in late 2017.

Customer Update

As disclosed earlier this year, one of Pembina's customers at its Resthaven gas processing facility filed for receivership. Through the receivership process, Pembina continued to provide gas processing services, while a trustee was engaged as receiver to sell the customer's assets. The receiver has finalized a purchase and sale agreement with a privately held corporation. As part of this purchase and sale agreement, Pembina expects that all previously executed agreements with Pembina will be assigned and fully assumed without any modifications. The receiver expects to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2017.

"The approval of our NEBC Expansion and impending resolution to this receivership are a great start to 2017," said Mick Dilger, Pembina's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are looking forward to the year ahead and the transformation it will bring for our Company and our shareholders as we bring the bulk of our assets under construction into service and start generating associated cash flows."

About Pembina

Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation is a leading transportation and midstream service provider that has been serving North America's energy industry for over 60 years. Pembina owns and operates an integrated system of pipelines that transport various products derived from natural gas and hydrocarbon liquids produced primarily in western Canada. The Company also owns and operates gas gathering and processing facilities and an oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics business. Pembina's integrated assets and commercial operations along the entire hydrocarbon value chain allow it to offer a full spectrum of midstream and marketing services to the energy sector. Pembina is committed to working with its community and aboriginal neighbours, while providing value for investors in a safe, environmentally responsible manner. This balanced approach to operating ensures the trust Pembina builds among all of its stakeholders is sustainable over the long-term. For more information, visit www.pembina.com.

Forward-Looking Statements & Information

This document contains certain forward-looking statements and information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of applicable securities legislation that are based on Pembina's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "expects", "will", and similar expressions suggesting future events or future performance.

In particular, this document contains forward-looking statements, pertaining to, without limitation, the following: expansions of and additions to Pembina's business and asset base; timing and expected capacity of growth projects; growth and growth potential; anticipated business integration and the benefits thereof. These forward-looking statements and information are being made by Pembina based on certain assumptions that Pembina has made in respect thereof as at the date of this document including those discussed below.

With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this document, Pembina has made assumptions regarding, among other things: that third parties will provide any required support; that third parties will fulfill their obligations under current and future agreements; that there are no unanticipated changes to the regulatory or commercial environment; ongoing utilization and future expansion, development, growth and performance of Pembina's business and asset base; future demand for fractionation and transportation services; future levels of oil and natural gas development; and potential revenue and cash flow enhancement; future cash flows.

Although Pembina believes the expectations and material factors and assumptions reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable as of the date hereof, there can be no assurance that these expectations, factors and assumptions will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted, forecasted or projected. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and information.

None of the forward-looking statements described above are guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to: the failure of third parties to fulfill their obligations under current or future agreements; the inability of Pembina to secure any required third party support; the impact of competitive entities and pricing; reliance on key industry partners, alliances and agreements; the strength and operations of the oil and natural gas production industry and related commodity prices; the continuation or completion of third- party projects; regulatory environment and inability to obtain required regulatory approvals; tax laws and treatment; fluctuations in operating results; lower than anticipated results of operations and accretion from Pembina's business initiatives; reduced amounts of cash available for dividends to shareholders; the ability of Pembina to raise sufficient capital (or to raise capital on favourable terms) to complete future projects and satisfy future commitments.

The forward-looking statements contained in this document speak only as of the date of this document. Pembina does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information contained herein, except as required by applicable laws. The forward-looking statements contained in this document are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

All financial figures are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted.

Pembina Pipeline is a registered trademark of Pembina Pipeline Corporation.

Investor Inquiries: Hayley McKenzie or Ian McAvity, Investor Relations, (403) 231-3156, 1-855-880-7404, e-mail: investor-relations@pembina.com; Media Inquiries: Victoria Person, Supervisor, External Communications, (403) 231-7500, e-mail: media@pembina.com

SOURCE Pembina Pipeline Corporation
DENVER, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "Recent claims published in the media that I am anti-LGBTQ are nothing more than fake news  it is all garbage. I unequivocally support the rights of all people without regard to sexual orientation. We are fortunate to employ a wealth of diverse individuals throughout our family of companies, all of whom are important to us  the only criteria on which they are judged is the quality of their job performance; we do not tolerate discrimination in any form.

"Both The Anschutz Foundation and I contribute to numerous organizations that pursue a wide range of causes. Neither I nor the Foundation fund any organization with the purpose or expectation that it would finance anti-LGBTQ initiatives, and when it has come to my attention or the attention of The Anschutz Foundation that certain organizations either the Foundation or I have funded have been supporting such causes, we have immediately ceased all contributions to such groups."

Contact:

AEG

Michael Roth

mroth@aegworldwide.com

+1(213)742-7155

SOURCE AEG
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, January 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Denmark Joins in Global Movement to Promote Equality and Human Rights

Denmark will march in unity with people around the world to promote equality and to protect the rights of women, immigrants and other marginalised groups on 21 January in Copenhagen. The march, which links with the Women's March on Washington, D.C., starts at 14:00 at the U.S. Embassy, Dag Hammarskjolds Alle 24, 2100 Kbenhavn  and concludes at Christiansborg, the seat of the Danish Parliament.

Nationalist, racist and misogynistic trends are spreading worldwide threatening the most marginalised groups in our societies including women, people of colour, immigrants, Muslims, the LGBTQIA community and people with disabilities. Despite being a majority of the global population, women still widely earn less than men and suffer the vast share of sexual, physical and psychological abuse.

"We must stand together and create communities of safety for each other," says Copenhagen March Organiser and Event Spokesperson Lesley-Ann Brown. "While Denmark has historically been a beacon of equality, structural challenges continue to impede the struggle for equality. We need to confront these, and keep the critical conversation going if they are to be addressed. We call for collective responsibility in responding to contemporary socio-economic inequalities which are rooted in history. We welcome all members of the community to this peaceful event and hope the march helps us build a stronger community of support, care and awareness within Denmark."

Women's marches will take place in cities across the United States and around the world including: Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Paris Oslo, Ottawa, Prague, Rome, Stockholm, Sydney and Zurich, with more joining every day. Copenhagen March speakers will include local public figures, community leaders and advocates and will be announced in the coming weeks.

About Women's March Copenhagen

Women's March Copenhagen is a grassroots event organised by social activists from the United States and Denmark. We stand together in unity for the protection of our rights, safety, health, and families -- recognising that our vibrant and diverse communities are our greatest asset.

For more information,

https://www.facebook.com/womensmarchcopenhagen/

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/womens-march-copenhagen-12407269154

https://twitter.com/womensmarchCPH

https://www.instagram.com/womensmarchcopenhagen/

Contact:

Karen Covington

+4553762171

womensmarchcphmedia@gmail.com

SOURCE Womens March Copenhagen
The project gathers distinguished visual effects creators, producers and influencers from movie and gaming industry including Sir Richard Leslie Taylor, filmmaker and co-founder of Weta Workshop, are focusing on development and innovation of future visual arts and the interaction models of film, television, internet and games.

The retrospect exhibition, Past 20 Years of Weta Workshop, provides insight into this world's top special effect team. Ten large showcases of Weta Workshop transported from New Zealand demonstrate the workshop's sculptures, workspace and production process of special effects.

The integral image of the world of Dr. Grordborts, on the other hand, is unfolding a new adventure in virtual cosmos where audiences will have a close encounter with a groundbreaking work that overturns the concept of producing games. The rising fantasy concept demonstrates a peculiar world view.

Meanwhile, the "Wuzhen International Design Competition of Future Visual Concept Arts" and "Wuzhen International Fund Project of Future Visual Arts" were also launched to look for emerging talents of future visual arts fields and to establish an incubation base for visual arts, special effects and TV & film technologies.

Chen Yu, executive president of Wuzhen International Project of Future Visual Arts, noted that the project aims to build an integrated platform for pioneering works, technology, resources and collaborations in future visual arts to encourage the sharing knowledge and technology in the industry and to seek diverse development of future visual arts from a global perspective.

About Wuzhen

1.5 hour drive from Shanghai and one of the top vacation spots in China, Wuzhen is a water town praised for its profound cultural heritages. In addition to the well-preserved traditional art and landscapes back to 1300 years ago, Wuzhen is also dedicated to introducing modern cultural and art exhibitions and events including Wuzhen Theatre Festival and Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition to promote international cultural exchange and communications.

SOURCE Culture Wuzhen Co., Ltd.
BEIJING, Jan. 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- B2B cross-border e-commerce marketplace DHgate.com presents their 2016 holiday season e-commerce sales data. The data includes: the top 10 product categories with the highest sales, the top 10 countries for GMV (gross merchandise volume), the top 5 best selling products, the product categories with the largest increase in sales, and the country with the highest increase in GMV.

Top 10 product categories with the highest sales

Cell phones and accessories Consumer electronics Home and garden Health and beauty Sports and outdoors Shoes and accessories Apparel Toys and gifts Baby, children and parenting products Lights and lighting

Top 10 countries for GMV

USA UK Canada Australia France Spain Italy Holland Germany Mexico

Top 5 best selling products

Holiday projector laser lights, which uses LED lights and 12 colors to project Santa Clause , pumpkins, snowflakes, clowns, etc Baby shoes with LED lights DIY Building Blocks / mini figure children's toys Sequin cushion covers, specifically Christmas themed featuring stockings and presents. Nail art stickers and tools

Country with the largest increase in GMV

Italy climbed from No. 11 to No. 7 in terms of GMV.

Product categories with largest increase in sales

Home and Garden Health and Beauty Shoes and accessories Apparel Baby, children and parenting products

ABOUT DHgate

DHgate.com is the first to market and the biggest B2B transactional cross-border e-commerce marketplace in China, aiming to provide global buyers with quality products at competitive prices. Founded in 2004, DHgate.com has approximately 10 million global buyers from 230 countries and regions, with 1.4 million global sellers offering 40 million products. DHgate.com's business enables buyers to directly access global manufacturers of the world's top brands with rich product selections. DHgate.com is an all-in-one platform with integrated services for international logistics, cross-border payments, internet financing, etc. DHgate.com's US, UK, Spain, and UAE product distribution warehouses allow for 24 hour delivery and convenient product returns & refunds, bringing great convenience to buyers at http://www.dhgate.com.

SOURCE DHgate.com

Related Links

http://www.dhgate.com


LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "We are aware of recent attacks upon our owner, Mr. Philip Anschutz. These attempts to perpetuate and spread false news on a variety of topics are part of a long-running and coordinated attempt by our competitors to smear AEG and our many businesses, including our live music and facilities divisions. These attempts have failed before, and will fail again because actions speak louder than words and our track record demonstrates a strong commitment to both diversity and sustainability, two of our most critical core values.

Throughout our 20 year history, AEG and AEG Live have worked hard to create a supportive and inclusive environment that respects the rights of all employees, artists and fans, as well as promoting a philosophy of sustainability throughout the world. We believe that true creativity is best expressed in an environment where everyone has the right to say what they believe in an unbiased and uncensored environment."

Contact:

AEG

Michael Roth

[email protected]

+1(213)742-7155

SOURCE AEG
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Some members of the House of Representatives are continuing their assault on working families with a venomous piece of legislation that would politicize the federal government's workforce and give political appointees unchecked authority to fire, demote, and discipline employees at will, the American Federation of Government Employees said today.

J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, says a new House bill would politicize the federal workforce and remove needed checks and balances. The bill from Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana would give political appointees and the managers working under them free reign to fire or suspend federal workers without cause. AFGE is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 federal and D.C. government employees nationwide.

"Giving political appointees and the managers who serve them free reign to punish workers without cause, while removing the checks and balances that keep everyone honest, is the antithesis of accountability," AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said.

The bill, to be introduced by Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana, would make all new federal employees "at will" workers, meaning they could be suspended or fired for any reason or no reason. It also would allow political appointees to immediately suspend current workers, deny them pay, and allow them just 10 days to appeal.

"Instead of encouraging frontline workers to report mismanagement or wasteful spending, this bill would create an environment where employees are fearful of doing or saying anything that could get them fired," Cox said. "If this bill had been in place two years ago, we never would have heard about the Phoenix VA waitlist manipulations because no one would have dared come forward to blow the whistle on the supervisors who concocted the scheme."

In addition, the bill would:

Deny any pay adjustment whatsoever to workers who fail to receive a performance rating above "fully successful" in a new, management-designed rating system that would inevitably allow subjectivity, favoritism, and politics to influence ratings.

Allow the government to deny earned pensions to any current or future employee who is convicted of a felony.

Eliminate an employee's right to representation at the worksite by no longer allowing union representatives to resolve disputes, address issues of discrimination or retaliation, or propose improvements in the workplace during the workday.

Allow agencies to continue workplace investigations even after employees have quit or retired.

Allow political appointees to demote career executives and reduce their pay without cause.

"This bill is called the Promote Accountability and Government Efficiency Act, but it actually would do neither," Cox said. "In fact, a better title would be the Promote Fear and Political Allegiance Act, since it would give political appointees and their subordinates unchecked authority to target workers and politicize the civil service."

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.

For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees

Related Links

http://www.afge.org


TULSA, Okla., Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SemGroup Corporation (NYSE:SEMG) will attend the UBS MLP One-on-One Conference in Park City, Utah on Tuesday, Jan. 10 and Wednesday, Jan. 11.



SemGroup Chief Executive Officer Carlin Conner and SemGroup Vice President of Crude Dave Minielly will conduct one-on-one meetings with members of the investment community. The presentation materials will be accessible in the investor relations section of the SemGroup website at www.semgroupcorp.com on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

About SemGroup

Based in Tulsa, Okla., SemGroup Corporation (NYSE:SEMG) is a publicly traded midstream service company providing the energy industry the means to move products from the wellhead to the wholesale marketplace. SemGroup provides diversified services for end-users and consumers of crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and asphalt. Services include purchasing, selling, processing, transporting, terminalling and storing energy.

SemGroup uses its Investor Relations website and social media outlets as channels of distribution of material company information. Such information is routinely posted and accessible on our Investor Relations website at ir.semgroupcorp.com, our Twitter account and LinkedIn account.
DETROIT, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- What does the driverless car of the future smell like? An aromatic mixture of hard drive, laptop, GPS and sandwich, according to Ally, which will introduce two new scents to its "New Car Smell" exhibit at the 2017 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. The new scents called "The Future" and "Chauffeur" take a humorous approach to the auto industry trends of driverless cars and ride sharing, encouraging show visitors to imagine how the cars of the future might smell. The exhibit will be open from January 9  22 at Ally's booth, located in the main concourse between Hall B and Hall C at Detroit's Cobo Center.

"Our New Car Smell exhibit was such a hit at NAIAS last year that we decided to add two new smells to the line-up this year that riff on current auto industry trends," said Andrea Riley, chief marketing officer at Ally. "As visitors explore all of the new technology at the show, our scents invite them to think playfully and creatively about how the cars of the future could smell, which we think is really fun."

Ally's New Car Smell experience first launched at NAIAS in 2016, and now includes ten fragrances that reflect the spirit and style of different cars and drivers. Visitors to the booth will be able to explore and sample Ally's scents at the booth. An on-site "perfumer" will also be on site to guess visitors' preferred New Car Smell on January 14, 15, 21 and 22. Visitors can also create their own customized virtual scent using an interactive iPad app, which can be uploaded and shared on social media. Three virtual scent designers will be selected to win a full-size bottle of their custom fragrance after the show.

Danny Koker, star of the History Channel's Counting Cars series, will also be broadcasting from Ally's Facebook page using Facebook Live on Monday, January 9.

Ally's New Car Smell collection includes the following scents:

The Future  NEW

47% Hard Drive, 27% Laptop, 19% GPS, 7% Sandwich

Smell that? It's the future. Where you don't drive cars  they drive you. Sure, its intelligence is artificial, but its fragrance is as natural as it gets. So inhale the intoxicating aroma of modern technology, people. And buckle up.

Chauffeur  NEW

46% Smartphone, 24% Energy Drink, 22% Glitter, 8% Lost Gloves

For the tireless late night reveler, there's no better scent than the floral bouquet of ease, convenience and clean leather. No cash? No problem. So breathe easy knowing the fare's already taken care of. The driver might even let you pick the music.

City Compact

43% Cappuccino, 29% Hairspray, 25% Lipstick, 3% Yoga Mat

In the city rat race, you're the mouse leading the pack. Grip the wheel, toot the tiny horn and park where others can only dream. Beep beep!

Luxury Coupe

67% Plush leather, 28% Shoe Polish, 4% Caviar, 1% Benjamins

Hire a chauffeur and load up on lobster: you've arrived. Enjoy the refined air of the 1%. The road is your red carpet, pedestrians your paparazzi. Don't spare the horses, Jeeves.

Eco Friendly Hybrid

80% Water, 14% Grass, 5% Tofu, 1% Smug

What Mother Nature would drive if she had a license. Birds, trees and flowers are your co-pilots. Smile the smile of the righteous, my friend, and put your foot down. Lightly.

Muscle Car

52% Nitrous Oxide, 20% Testosterone, 20% Burnt Rubber, 8% Brimstone

Hang your elbow out the window and let the wind blow through your armpit hair. This is life. This is living. The road is your story. Write it, fast.

Trusty Sedan

40% Pleather, 35% Pine, 22% Instant Coffee, 3% Fanny Pack

Man's best friend on four wheels. Waiting, idling, never stalling. You might top out at 100, but your engine will run forever. Stay in the middle of the road and paint the town beige.

Pick- Up Truck

57% Bonfire, 21% Axle Grease, 16% Flannel, 6% Beard

Behold: the chariot of the free man. Or woman. The destroyer of bugs, the hauler of the weak. Gasoline and sweat run through its veins... and enter your nose. Breathe deeply and roar.

Family Wagon

44% Baby Wipes, 31% Stain Remover, 22% Crayon, 3% Regret

I spy, with my little nose, something beginning with kids. The mighty Family Wagon: mobile crib and canteen. Breathe in the heady musk of crayons and baby powder. This is your future. Are we there yet, they wail. Soon enough, my friend, soon enough...

Rugged SUV

57% Mud, 21% Tree Bark, 16% Sweat, 6% Roadkill

Go anywhere. Do anything. You're as free as the mighty bald eagle but not necessarily bald. Breathe the air of the mountains or the shopping mall, you decide. Turn the key and unlock freedom.

For more information about Ally, please visit www.ally.com or visit Ally's booth at NAIAS located in the main concourse between Hall B and Hall C at Detroit's Cobo Center

About Ally Financial Inc.

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading digital financial services company and a top 25 U.S. financial holding company offering financial products for consumers, businesses, automotive dealers and corporate clients. Ally's legacy dates back to 1919, and the company was redesigned in 2009 with a distinctive brand, innovative approach and relentless focus on its customers. Ally has an award-winning online bank (Ally Bank Member FDIC), one of the largest full service auto finance operations in the country, a complementary auto-focused insurance business, a growing digital wealth management and online brokerage platform, and a trusted corporate finance business offering capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies.

The company had approximately $157.4 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2016. For more information, visit the Ally press room at http://media.ally.com or follow Ally on Twitter: @AllyFinancial.

Contact:

Sari Jensen

646-781-2539

[email protected]

SOURCE Ally Financial

Related Links

https://www.ally.com


LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- APAC's home health monitoring market is set to generate nearly $2.2 billion by 2020. Local and international vendors should identify the long-term market progression and opportunity within home monitoring for both acute and chronic care in this region. APAC is shifting from centralized to decentralized models due to the need for efficient care delivery models. A combination of technological advances and regulatory overhaul across the region will enable innovative care delivery models, especially for managing chronic and life-style related diseases that will drive the demand for platform-based home monitoring solutions over the next five years. There is a concomitant increase in demand for remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices in the home but the adoption has not been as strong. Healthcare stakeholders in this region have also formed consortiums and are investing in pilots to generate data to build a funding model.

Collaborated initiatives, such as Australia's National Telehealth Home Monitoring, South Korea's National Telehealth Demonstration Project, or Singapore's National Cardiac Monitoring are set to expand the market for home health monitoring. Technology-savvy societies like Japan, Singapore and Australia are already investing in population-level pilots while private healthcare providers in emerging markets like India are introducing platform-based home health solutions to niche customer segments. Integrated home monitoring platforms include devices offered through extremely flexible and lucrative payment plans, while money is made on clinical services provided through the data captured. The market is shifting focus from stand-alone devices to comprehensive remote patient monitoring platforms for end-to-end chronic disease management.

Failure to accept the transformation by changing the current business model will result in inability to monetize, though the market is packed with opportunities yet to be explored. Vendors will struggle choosing the right business model to push their products to the market. This study analyzes the APAC market for home monitoring devices, sensors, wearables and mHealth apps as well as successful business models in this space and some innovative collaborations.

Key Questions This Study will Answer

- What is the current state of home monitoring in APAC? How will it evolve until 2020?

- What are the most promising applications of home monitoring across therapeutic areas?

- What are the current technology and usage trends in the market? How will these evolve until 2020?

- How will the structure of the market change with time?

- What are the current sales channels and will these changes to offer better access in the future?

- What are the business models that are disrupting the market?

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4595319/

About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com

For more information:

Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


Effective immediately, Mr Allan Geoffrey Opiyo Oyier has been appointed as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Sub Sahara Africa at the home appliances manufacturer BSH, reporting directly to Head of Region and CEO.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454023/BSH_Logo.jpg )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454024/Allan_Geoffrey_Opiyo_Oyier.jpg )



In his new position Mr Oyier will be directly in charge of all business operations of BSH covering the whole of Sub Sahara Africa including South Africa. He will be responsible for developing, monitoring, coordinating and advising on strategies to grow the market share and availability of the BSH brands and products in the market. He will also, develop dialogues with all third country operations regarding their business operations and strategies.

Mr Oyier has vast working experience in diverse locations across 27 countries in Africa including Director for Consumer Electronics and Home appliances with Samsung in East and Central Africa,Region Key Accounts Manager for Nestle Equatorial African region and Operations Marketing manager for Coca-Cola East and Central Africa Business unit.

BSH Head of Region Turkey, Middle East, Africa and CIS Mr. Norbert Klein said, "I am delighted to have Allan Join BSH. He will certainly add value to our business from his vast experience and local knowledge both in home appliances and fast moving consumer goods in Africa. The appointment reinforces our commitment to grow Africa using local talent and capability."

Mr Oyier is married and father of two.

With annual sales of around 12.6 billion in 2015 and more than 56,000 employees, BSH Hausgerate GmbH is one of the global leaders in the home appliances sector. BSH manufactures at around 40 factories, operates over 80 companies and has a presence in about 50 countries.

http://www.unite.com.tr

http://www.bsh.com.tr

SOURCE BSH
Effective immediately, Mr Mohammed Saifullah Khan has been appointed as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for North Africa at the home appliances manufacturer BSH, reporting directly to Head of Region and CEO.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454495/BSH.jpg )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/454496/BSH_Mohammed_Saifullah_Khan.jpg )



In his new position Mr Khan will be directly in charge of all business operations of BSH covering the whole of North Africa. He will be responsible for developing, monitoring, coordinating and advising on strategies to grow the market share and availability of the BSH brands and products in the market. He will also, develop dialogues with all third country operations regarding their business operations and strategies.

Mr Khan has vast working experience in EMEA including Product & Marketing Executive in UAE, Middle East and South East Asia for Samsung; Regional Sales & Marketing Manager in Middle East, Africa and Levant, UAE for Panasonic Electric Works; Channel Sales Manager in Middle East, Africa and UAE for ViewSonic Corporation; Deputy General Manager in charge of the sales for emerging markets in Middle East and Africa, UAE for Sharp; Regional Sales Head in Saudi Arabia and Regional Sales Head in Africa for Electrolux Major Appliances.

BSH Head of Region Turkey, Middle East, Africa and CIS Mr. Norbert Klein said, "We are pleased to have Mohammed Saifullah Khan join our growing team in North Africa. Khan's wealth of industry experience and leadership will strengthen our business in the region."

Mr Khan is married and father of one.

With annual sales of around 12.6 billion in 2015 and more than 56,000 employees, BSH Hausgerate GmbH is one of the global leaders in the home appliances sector. BSH manufactures at around 40 factories, operates over 80 companies and has a presence in about 50 countries.

www.bsh.com.tr

www.unite.com.tr

SOURCE BSH
HELSINKI and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Button Corporation, creator of the world's first physical push button always connected to the Internet, today launches the new product aimed specifically at companies operating in the US mass markets.

At present connected devices in general remain complicated, expensive to deploy and not easily scalable. The new bttn device sets out to democratize the connected devices market by combining utter simplicity, versatile APIs, cloud based management and configuration toolset, and the leading IoT connectivity technology from Sigfox.

The new low-cost bttn uses the world's leading provider of IoT connectivity, Sigfox.

"The new low-cost device together with our new cloud service make the deployment of any size easy and risk-free. With this combination we can make our connected hardware button an accessible solution for any company that wants to improve their customer experience and offer physical on-demand triggers," said Juuso Pesola, CEO of The Button Corporation.

"We are proud to support The Button Corporation in their international development strategy, especially in the U.S. where we are rapidly deploying the Sigfox network," said Michael Orr, Sigfox Vice President Sales and Partners, North America. "The Bttn illustrates the competitive advantages of Sigfox connectivity: very low and predictable energy consumption and simplicity of use."

The cost of the new bttn devices start from $2 per month for Bttn Inc's signed, local solution providers. Pre-orders start immediately, shipments in March.

About Sigfox

Sigfox is the world's leading provider of connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). The company has built a global network to connect billions of devices to the Internet while consuming as little energy as possible, as simply as possible.

Sigfox's unique approach to device-to-cloud communications addresses the three greatest barriers to global IoT adoption: cost, energy consumption, and global scalability. Today, the network is present in 29 countries and on track to cover 60 by 2018  covering a population of 451 million people. With millions of objects connected and a rapidly growing partner ecosystem, Sigfox empowers companies to move their business model towards more digital services. Founded in 2010 by Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet, the company is headquartered in Labege near Toulouse, France's "IoT Valley". Sigfox also has offices in Paris, Madrid, Munich, Boston, San Francisco, Dubai and Singapore.

For more information, see www.sigfox.com and follow us onTwitter, Facebook and Youtube

About The Button Corporation

The Button Corporation / Bttn Inc. is the creator of the bttn, the simplest internet user interface in the world. It brings the power of Internet-of-Everything to businesses with its elegantly designed physical push buttons always connected to the internet. The Button Corporation is based in Helsinki, Finland and New York, U.S. Read more at www.bt.tn/sigfox

For further information, please contact:

Saku Everi

The Button Corporation

Tel. +358 40 717 7776

[email protected]

SOURCE The Button Corporation
HOUSTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (NYSE: COG) today announced that its Board of Directors declared a regular dividend of two cents ($0.02) per share on the Company's common stock. The dividend will be paid February 9, 2017 to all shareholders of record as of the close of business January 26, 2017.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation, headquartered in Houston, Texas is a leading independent natural gas producer, with its entire resource base located in the continental United States. For additional information, visit the Company's homepage at www.cabotog.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

Matt Kerin (281) 589-4642

SOURCE Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation

Related Links

http://www.cabotog.com


BOISE, Idaho, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cascadia Healthcare, LLC today announced that it has acquired the operations of three Skilled Nursing Facilities. Libby Care of Cascadia, a 101-bed skilled nursing facility located in Libby, Montana, Coeur D'Alene Health and Rehabilitation of Cascadia, a 117-bed skilled nursing facility located in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, and Clearwater Health and Rehabilitation of Cascadia, a 60-bed skilled nursing facility located in Orofino, Idaho. Cascadia Healthcare, via wholly owned subsidiaries, has entered into a triple-net leasing arrangement for the Facilities with the real estate owner of the property. Cascadia has assumed operations effective January 1, 2017.

These acquisitions are expected to materially add to Cascadia's cash flow, while offering significant potential for growth.

"We are excited about these strategic acquisitions that allow us to expand our growing footprint into the Northern Idaho and Western Montana markets, said Owen Hammond, Cascadia's President and Chief Executive Officer. Hammond also noted that, "Cascadia is pleased that our disciplined growth plan allowed us the opportunity to acquire these Facilities and deliver on Cascadia's commitment to being a Force for Good to our residents, Employees, and the communities that we serve."

Doug Bodily, Cascadia's Chief Operations Officer, added, "We have long enjoyed a great relationship with Idaho's Department of Health and are enthusiastic to enter the Montana market with the intent to replicate that great relationship."

In addition to these acquisitions, Cascadia continues its development of two state of the art 99-bed Transitional Care Facilities in Nampa and Boise, Idaho, with both expected to commence operations in the latter half of 2017.

About Cascadia Healthcare Cascadia Healthcare is a growing post-acute healthcare company, based in Eagle, Idaho. Cascadia's principals bring a deep understanding of healthcare operations at both the facility and regional levels, having worked in different capacities over many years at one of the nation's most highly-respected publicly-traded post-acute care providers. www.cascadiahc.com

SOURCE Cascadia Healthcare LLC

Related Links

http://www.cascadiahc.com


BURLINGAME, Calif., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cleave Biosciences today announced the promotion of Kanya Rajangam, M.D., Ph.D., to chief medical officer. Dr. Rajangam will continue to oversee Cleave's ongoing and future clinical trials to evaluate drug candidate CB-5083 in hematological and solid tumor malignancies, and design clinical trials for the company's other internally discovered, novel oncology compounds. She joined Cleave as vice president, clinical development in 2015.

"Oncology drug development has become more complex given the tumor heterogeneity that is observed after patients receive standard-of-care agents, as well as the number of agents available today. Our drugs are designed to have pleiotropic effects and Kanya strategically designs our programs to position our compounds to address unmet needs in this changing landscape," said Laura Shawver, chief executive officer of Cleave Biosciences. "Kanya brings a wealth of experience to Cleave and we are all inspired by her drive and passion to help people with difficult to treat cancers."

"We've made significant progress with the clinical program for CB-5083 and I'm looking forward to our data readout in 2017 that will set the course for future trials. I am also eager to initiate the clinical program for our next compound that targets the AAA ATPase family of enzymes and to engage leading research oncologists to present new investigative therapies to patients," said Dr. Rajangam.

Dr. Rajangam has a decade of oncology drug development experience including advancing early- and late-stage clinical programs. Prior to Cleave, Dr. Rajangam worked at Onyx Pharmaceuticals where she played a key role in the clinical development and global regulatory submissions of the multiple myeloma drug KYPROLIS (carfilzomib). Dr. Rajangam also worked at Exelixis as associate medical director, where she designed multiple early phase oncology studies in various therapeutic areas including studies with COMETRIQ (cabozantinib) and COTELLIC (cobimetinib). Throughout her career, Dr. Rajangam has worked closely with pharmaceutical partners including Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Genentech/Roche in moving compounds to the next stage of development.

After earning her medical degree from St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India, Dr. Rajangam completed a surgical residency at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, India. She then earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University.

Cleave's CB-5083 is a first-in-class, oral inhibitor of p97, a critical enzyme that controls various aspects of protein homeostasis. P97 inhibition is a novel approach that has the potential to treat a wide range of cancers, including both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. CB-5083 is currently being evaluated in two Phase 1 trials in patients with advanced disease and no standard of care: CLC-101 in patients with solid tumors, and CLC-102 in patients with lymphoid hematologic malignancies, including multiple myeloma. CB-5083 has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of multiple myeloma.

About Cleave Biosciences

Biopharmaceutical company Cleave Biosciences is a pioneer in the discovery and development of drugs that target protein homeostasis systems and have the potential to transform the treatment of people with difficult to treat solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The company is privately held and located in Burlingame, California. For additional information, visit www.cleavebio.com.

KYPROLIS is a registered trademark of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

COMETRIQ is a registered trademark of Exelixis, Inc.

COTELLIC is a registered trademark of Genentech USA, Inc.

SOURCE Cleave Biosciences

Related Links

http://www.cleavebio.com


SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Irdeto, a world leader in digital platform security, has received the 2016 European Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation. Drawing upon nearly 50 years of experience in developing anti-hacking solutions, Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto is a highly reliable digital security platform for connected car security. It is built on the company's core software security technologies, which also protect the application data on the system during storage and while in use. The solution is a multi-layered, multi-faceted product that resolves issues relating to obfuscation, integrity verification, anti-debug, whitebox cryptography, diversification and renewability.

Click here for the full multimedia experience of this release - http://bit.ly/2hW2EUA

"As Irdeto understands the behaviours of non-ethical hackers, it does not rely on a perimeter security model; instead, it employs an in-depth security strategy for connected cars," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Consultant, Sriram Venkatraman. "Its security solution is paired with both telemetry and dynamic policy management features to aid the investigation of hacking events. Cloakware for Automotive then provides measured responses to these events, based on analyses of the details communicated through telemetry."

In addition to robust crypto products, such as public key infrastructure (PKI), firewalls, anti-virus and intrusion detection systems/intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS), connected cars require another layer of security. Irdeto believes in deep-level software security and security lifecycle management, which turns an OS into a secure operating environment through the use of anti-hacking technology. These features help the solution notify the original equipment manufacturer of the type of tampering that is being attempted in a specific vehicle, making it a unique and highly useful tool.

"Conventional cryptographic algorithms used to protect software keys and data are ineffective when operating in whitebox environments where a hacker has full visibility and control over the executing code. The Cloakware for Automotive solution has the unique capability of not revealing keys or data while the cryptographic computations are being observed in complete detail," noted Venkatraman. "Irdeto's full suite of patented technologies and cybercrime services not only protect the vehicle environment, but also itself from being reverse engineered and modified by hackers."

Irdeto has solid plans to build an ecosystem of unparalleled solutions that will help create a compelling software-defined car. For example, Irdeto recently announced that Link Motion has implemented Cloakware for Automotive into Link Motion's connected carputer, Motion T. The Cloakware for Automotive solution helps Motion T block hackers and cybercriminals from altering the carputer, preventing cyberattacks targeting connected cars.

Irdeto's approach includes using the Cloakware for Automotive solution to protect autonomous and connected cars. Irdeto provides flexible business model options for various tiers of customers, wherein OEMs can pay for a complete solution up front, development of a solution and then a recurring fee over the life cycle of the solution or just a recurring fee.

In addition, Irdeto's global network of partners covers law enforcement and industry bodies and agencies, as well as consumer and technology sectors. Its partnerships in the automotive space, including its collaboration with Tata Elxsi to provide automakers with secure in-car display systems for automobiles, provide automakers with the ability to create secure vehicles.

"As vehicles have become increasingly more connected, the attack surface of today's automobiles has grown considerably," said Daniel Thunberg, Global Head, Internet of Things at Irdeto. "This has resulted in hackers evolving their attack methods to exploit vulnerabilities that exist in automobiles, making it critical to employ a solution that gains insights into attack attempts to quickly take measured actions. Irdeto solutions include strong anti-hacking protection with renewable security, making it virtually impossible to reverse engineer vehicle software. By understanding methods used by hackers and mitigating attack attempts, Irdeto helps ensure that automakers provide consumers with cars that operate as intended."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognises the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it offers customers.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Irdeto

Irdeto: Your Partner for Automotive

Irdeto is a pioneer in digital platform and application security, with its software security technology and cyber services protecting more than 5 billion devices and applications against cyberattacks for some of the world's best known brands. For nearly 50 years, Irdeto has worked with software application providers, connected device manufacturers, pay media operators and content creators to secure their products and business models. Combining patented technologies and services, the Cloakware for Automotive by Irdeto solution helps automakers and tier-one suppliers protect their brand and save cost in the battle against cybercriminals by creating a secure, tamper-proof environment for vehicle software. Irdeto, a subsidiary of Naspers (JSE: NPN), is headquartered in the Netherlands with more than 15 locations worldwide. Visit http://www.irdeto.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. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Chiara Carella

P: +44 (0) 207.343.8314

F: 210.348.1003

E: [email protected]

Stephen Russell

Manager, Public Relations, Americas

Mobile: +1 774-273-3890

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

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TACOMA, Wash., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Columbia Bank announced today that $209,335.96 and 8,140 items were raised for 54 local homeless shelters across the Northwest during the second annual Warm Hearts Winter Drive. Through generous donations from customers, employees and the community, Columbia Bank surpassed its 2016 fundraising goal of $160,000 for Warm Hearts by 30.8 percent, and exceeded the funds raised in 2015 by 32.8 percent.

"We are so proud of our employees, customers and community, who rallied together again this year to raise awareness of this growing issue, and make a real difference," said Melanie Dressel, President & CEO of Columbia Bank. "The Warm Hearts Winter Drive was created to benefit the growing number of people who are impacted by homelessness and are struggling to receive essential services during our cold and rainy winter months."

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Northwest has increased six percent since 2015. Columbia Bank launched the Warm Hearts Winter Drive in 2015 to support nonprofit organizations providing warmth to individuals, families and children in need. One hundred percent of the clothing and funds collected during the Warm Hearts Winter Drive are donated directly back to the shelters and relief organizations in the communities where the collections originated.

For a full list of benefitting organizations in each county, visit www.warmheartswinterdrive.com.

Philanthropy and community engagement lie at the heart of what it means to be a community bank, and the Warm Hearts Winter Drive illustrates Columbia Bank's commitment in support of that philosophy. After launching the Warm Hearts Winter Drive in 2015, Columbia Bank received various regional and national honors, including the American Bankers Association Foundation's George Bailey Distinguished Service Award and a Community Impact Award from Seattle Business Magazine.

Columbia Bank has been serving the Northwest since 1993. For branch locations and more information, visit www.columbiabank.com.

About Columbia Bank

Headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, Columbia Banking System, Inc. is the holding company of Columbia Bank, a Washington state-chartered full-service commercial bank with locations throughout Washington, Oregon and Idaho. For the tenth consecutive year, the bank was named in 2016 as one of Puget Sound Business Journal's "Washington's Best Workplaces." Columbia ranked in the top 20 on the 2016 Forbes list of best banks in the country for the fifth year in a row.

Columbia Bank operates more than 140 banking offices and branches throughout Washington, Oregon and Idaho. More information about Columbia can be found on its website at www.columbiabank.com.

Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender

Media Contact:

Olivia Gust

503-290-7304

[email protected]

SOURCE Columbia Bank

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https://www.columbiabank.com


FENTON, Mich. and ST. CHARLES, Mich., Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fentura Financial, Inc. (OTCQX:FETM), the holding company for The State Bank, announced today it has completed its previously announced acquisition with St. Charles based Community Bancorp, Inc., the holding company for Community State Bank, and will be operating as one company effective December 31, 2016.



Fenturas acquisition of Community Bancorp will allow the combined company to promote community banking in a larger market area by expanding The State Bank product line and exceptional customer service reputation into the Community State Bank market, said Ronald L. Justice, President and CEO of Fentura Financial, Inc. and The State Bank. We are excited to continue the great work that Community State Bank has done locally as we welcome new customers and clients to The State Bank.

Approved by both boards of directors on March 24, The State Banks acquisition of Community State Bank will grow the company to approximately $680 million in assets, $535 million in loans and $580 million in deposits. The State Banks branch offices will double to 16 locations, predominately serving mid-Michigan markets. The transaction will strengthen The State Banks foothold as the largest Bank headquartered in Genesee County.

Ronald L. Justice will continue to serve as President and CEO of Fentura Financial, Inc. and The State Bank. John C. Wendling, Communitys President and CEO will serve as an Officer of The State Bank.

Many exciting new products and services will be extended to these new markets and we look forward to completing the integration of The State Bank and Community State Banks systems in the 2nd quarter of 2017, Justice said.

Both The State Bank and Community State Bank customer relationships will continue business as usual until the system conversion. Customers will be kept informed of account conversions and timing on a regular basis.

About Fentura Financial and The State Bank

Fentura Financial is the holding company for The State Bank. It was formed in 1987 and is traded on the OTCQX exchange under the symbol FETM, and was recognized as one of the Top 50 performing stocks for 2015 on that exchange.

The State Bank is a full-service, 5-Star Bauer Financial rated commercial, retail and trust bank headquartered in Fenton, Michigan. It has assets of approximately $533 million. It currently operates eight full-service branches located in Genesee, Livingston and Oakland Counties and one loan production office in Washtenaw County. The State Banks commercial department provides a complete array of products including lines of credit, term loans, commercial mortgages, SBA loans and a full-suite of cash management products. The retail department offers personal checking, savings, time and IRA deposit accounts and all types of loan products including home equity, auto and personal loans. The residential loan department offers construction, purchase and refinance residential mortgage loans. The wealth management department offers a full-service suite of trust and portfolio management services. The aim of The State Bank is to become and remain Your Financial Partner for Life. More information can be found at www.thestatebank.com.
BEIJING, Jan 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited ("Concord Medical" or the "Company") (NYSE: CCM), a leading specialty hospital management solution provider and operator of the largest network of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China, today announced that its subsidiary, Meizhong Jiahe Hospital Management Corp. Ltd ("MHM"), previously known as CMS Hospital Management Co., Ltd, has completed two rounds of the private offering of additional shares and received proceeds of approximately RMB141.67 million. MHM plans to use the proceeds of the private offering for its internal restructuring and working capital and general corporate purposes.

About Concord Medical

Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited is a leading specialty hospital management solution provider and operator of the largest network of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China. As of June 30, 2016, the Company operated a network of 123 centers with 73 hospital partners that spanned 52 cities and 25 provinces and administrative regions in China. Under long-term arrangements with top-tier hospitals in China, the Company provides radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging equipment and manages the daily operations of these centers, which are located on the premises of its hospital partners. The Company also provides ongoing training to doctors and other medical professionals in its network of centers to ensure a high level of clinical care for patients. As part of its high-end cancer hospital development strategy and oversea business extension, the Company acquired Concord Cancer Hospital, a private hospital in Singapore in April, 2015. For more information, please see http://ir.concordmedical.com.

For more information, please contact:

Concord Medical Services

Mr. Mike Hao Cheng (Chinese and English)

+86 10 5903 6688 (ext. 609)

[email protected]

SOURCE Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited

Related Links

http://ir.concordmedical.com


LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading cyber experts agreed on one key takeaway at the CES CyberSecurity Forum today in Las Vegas: the need for urgent action in the cybersecurity arena following a tumultuous year that included the largest publicly-disclosed data breach of all time and a rise in attacks enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT). The day-long forum, presented by cybersecurity and workforce development company CyberVista, addressed the most critical threats presented by the growing number of connected devices coming to market.

"The technology innovation on display this week at CES has the potential to change the way our world works," said Amjed Saffarini, chief executive officer of CyberVista. "No sooner than these technologies come to market, however, hackers are planning their attacks. The tech industry cannot afford to let cybercriminals stand in the way of innovation and consumer adoption."

During a discussion of this year's biggest threats and how to address them, former Yahoo! Tech editor-in-chief Dan Tynan and Dell Data Security Vice President Brett Hansen agreed on the need to strike a balance that allows security to empower the workforce while protecting company security. "Every company not only has to have a cybersecurity plan but it must be communicated to everyone, including the CEO," said Hansen. "The modern CISO needs to be the evangelist that helps business leaders say 'yes' to solving security challenges, while meeting business needs."

Security experts noted that the latest threats are specifically targeting IoT, from connected cars to light bulbs and industrial systems, and that the only way to successfully navigate a connected world is by designing security at the foundation rather than as an afterthought. Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan, RSA Chief Technology Officer, said, "The fundamental objective here is a safe society, one using people, processes and products to reduce our risk. Risk always existed, but now people better understand the impact, which is why having these conversations is so important."

Saffarini added, "It was clear from today's discussion that cybersecurity education is critical for all businesses, including manufacturers of consumer technology products. Cybercrimes cost CEOs their jobs, consumers their identities, governments their secrets and companies their customers. Cybersecurity is everybody's business."

For more on today's forum at CES 2017, visit www.CEScybersecurity.com.

About CyberVista

CyberVista is a cybersecurity training and workforce development company whose mission is to create a cyber-ready workforce through personalized training programs that provide organizations with the people, knowledge and skills required to defend their most critical assets. With parent Graham Holdings Company and sister company Kaplan, Inc.'s innovative education technologies and personalized approach to learning, CyberVista offers a new vision for board, executive, and workforce cybersecurity education. For more information, visit www.cybervista.net.

SOURCE CyberVista

Related Links

http://www.cybervista.net


PITTSBURGH, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Deka Lash, the nation's premier eyelash extension brand, announced the opening of its newest retail studio in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah. This location begins western expansion for the fast-growing lash extension brand who will be opening additional locations in Texas, Nevada and California this year.

Street View of Deka Lash Sugar House Studio. This location provides Classic and Volume Lash Extensions. Steve and Liz Gordon, owners of the Deka Lash Studio in the Sugarhouse neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah

The studio is owned and operated by Steve and Liz Gordon. "What excites us most about Deka Lash," Steve says, "is that eyelash extensions are the fastest growing segment of the beauty industry, and Deka Lash's people and products are unmatched. We're committed to helping empower women by providing careers in this growing industry, and contributing to non-profit organizations dedicated to empowering girls and women, and Deka Lash shares my commitment to these goals."

"Everyone at Deka Lash is extremely happy to see Steve and Liz open their doors in Sugar House. We are extremely excited about the opportunity Deka Lash brings to the Salt Lake City market," said Deka Lash CEO, Michael Blair. "This is a big step forward for our company. Our industry leading studio design and unique business model focused on customer experience has allowed us to make huge inroads into the eyelash extension industry."

Deka Lash provides semi-permanent eyelash extensions featuring a unique in-studio experience, online booking and extended hours including weekend appointments. Deka Lash's highly trained staff of licensed estheticians take their time to ensure quality applications, allowing customers to feel relaxed, not rushed.

About Deka Lash

The business was founded in 2011 by Jennifer and Michael Blair, with the vision to create everyday confidence through beautiful lashes. Deka Lash Studios are retail salons that apply semi-permanent custom eyelash extensions to the clients' own lashes, providing a variety of looks and styles. The company has awarded over 40 franchise licenses in 7 states.

For additional information, visit dekalash.com.

Contact:

Director of Brand Strategy and Marketing

Greg Forsythe

(724) 949-0833

[email protected]

SOURCE Deka Lash

Related Links

http://dekalash.com


(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 135 market data Tables and 38 Figures spread through 192 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Diagnostic Catheter Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/diagnostic-catheter-market-114053400.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

In this report, the global Diagnostic Catheters Market is segmented on the basis of type, application areas, and end user. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into imaging catheters and non-imaging catheters. The imaging catheters are further segmented into angiography catheters, ultrasound catheters, OCT imaging catheters, electrophysiology catheters, and other imaging catheters. The non-imaging catheters are segmented into pressure & hemodynamic monitoring catheters, temperature monitoring catheters, and other non-imaging catheters. On the basis of application area, the Diagnostic Catheters Market is segmented into five segments, namely, cardiology, gastroenterology, urology, neurology, and others. The Diagnostic Catheters Market by end user is segmented into hospital and imaging & diagnostic centers.

Inquiry Details: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=114053400

The growth in this market can be mainly attributed to the increasing number of minimally invasive surgeries, rising geriatric population and increasing prevalence of chronic disorders like cardiovascular and kidney disorders, technological advancements in imaging catheters, and increasing number of imaging and diagnostic centers.

In 2015, the imaging catheters product segment accounted for the largest share of the Diagnostic Catheters Market. This is primarily attributed to the increasing incidence and high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases across the globe due to growth in the aging population and adoption of sedentary lifestyles. Moreover, the development of advanced catheters and increasing regulatory approvals for these catheters is expected to fuel market growth during the forecast period.

In 2015, North America represented the largest regional market, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the RoW. Asia-Pacific represents the fastest-growing market for diagnostic catheters, primarily due to the presence of a large patient population, increased patient awareness for minimally invasive surgeries, rapid rise in the prevalence of cardiovascular and kidney disorders, growth in per capita income, increasing investments in the healthcare industry by key market players, and the rising demand for technologically advanced imaging systems. Various government initiatives towards building better healthcare infrastructure in this region are also fostering the growth of the diagnostic imaging catheters market in the region.

Download PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=114053400

Major players in the global Diagnostic Catheters Market are Boston Scientific Corporation (U.S.), St. Jude Medical, Inc. (U.S.), Medtronic plc (Ireland), Johnson & Johnson (U.S.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany), C.R. Bard, Inc. (U.S.), Cardinal Health, Inc. (U.S.), Edward LifeSciences Corporation (U.S.), and Terumo Corporation (Japan).

Browse Related Reports:

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http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/minimally-invasive-interventional-cardiology-devices-market-548.html

Angiography Devices Market by Technology (X-Ray, CT, MRA), Products (Angiography systems, Catheters, Guide-Wires, Balloons, Contrast Media, Accessories), Application (Diagnostic &Therapeutic) & End-Users - Global Forecast to 2019

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/angiography-devices-market-189521618.html

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M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The global doxorubicin market was valued at USD 0.81 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach a value of USD 1.38 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growing number of players in the market to control the shortage of the drug is one of the crucial factors that is expected to drive the market in the coming few years. Some of the doxorubicin manufacturers are Ortho Biotech Products, LP, Ben Venue Laboratories, Inc., and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. The increasing indication of doxorubicin drug in various applications such as AIDS related Kaposi Sarcoma, multiple myeloma, neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, and ovarian cancer signifies the growth in demand for the drug. The technological advancement in the drug formulations to overcome the adverse effects on health and also introduces various types of drug delivery systems such as nanoparticles or liposomal coated are some of the pivotal factors that are impelling the industry growth.



The U.S. government had issued an executive order to overcome the shortage of life saving drugs, chemotherapy agents, and critically needed drugs in the U.S. region, is one of the indicators accounted for the increasing number of players in this sector. Based on the estimates of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER), the anticipated number of malignancy cases in 2016 are listed below: -



Leukemia- 60,140



Breast cancer - 2,46,660



Endometrial cancer- 60,050



Gastric cancer-26,370



Liver cancer - 39,230



Kidney Cancer- 62,700



According to the estimates of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in 2016, about 60,140 people are anticipated to be diagnosed with leukemia. The growing prevalence and subsequently increasing survival is one of the factors that indicates the technological advancement and growing adoption of new treatment procedures.



Further Key Findings from the Study Suggest:



In 2015, breast cancer is the largest application of doxorubicin market, having a share of around 21.1%. The growing demand for the drug in combination therapy with cisplatin is one of the pivotal factors that are expected to impel the doxorubicin market.



Liver cancer segment is the fastest growing application in this sector. The growing demand for the drug in combination and mono chemotherapies to treat liver cancer over other anticancer drugs is one of the crucial factors that is expected to boost the industry growth.



In 2015, North America held majority of market share of over 48.8% in the global doxorubicin market. The presence of dominating market players such as Johnson & Johnson and Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd. and rising awareness regarding efficacious drug alternatives are few of the key factors attributed to the regions high market share.



Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region in this market. The presence of unmet demand for anti-cancer treatment and rapidly growing pharmaceutical industries in countries such as China, Japan, and India are among some factors that are expected to drive the market in the coming few years.



Some of the key market players are Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Pfizer, Inc., Cipla, Inc., Cadila Pharmaceuticals, and SRS Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd.

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BASEL, Switzerland, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Enzyvant, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative treatments for patients with rare diseases, today announced entering into an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Duke University to develop RVT-802, a tissue-based therapy for the treatment of complete DiGeorge Syndrome (cDGS), a rare and fatal congenital immunodeficiency disease. In the absence of treatment, children born with cDGS typically succumb to infections within the first two years of life due to their severe immunodeficiency.

"Patients with complete DiGeorge Syndrome lack effective treatment options, but this novel program offers the hope of a life-saving solution," said Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alvin Shih. "It is our responsibility to ensure that the children with this disease who need this treatment are able to receive it."

Under the terms of the agreement, data from Duke's experience will be used to support submission of a Biologics License Application (BLA) with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. RVT-802 expands Enzyvant's pipeline of potentially transformative biologic therapies for rare genetic diseases with high unmet need.

Dr. M. Louise Markert, Professor of Pediatrics at Duke University, has led research on the treatment of immunodeficiency in patients with cDGS. The findings of Dr. Markert and her research team have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine as well as numerous other peer-reviewed scientific journals and clinical publications. "This is an encouraging development for the patients and parents confronting this disease," said Dr. Markert. "I look forward to working with Enzyvant to make this life-saving therapy more available to babies who so desperately need it."

About Complete DiGeorge Syndrome

Complete DiGeorge Syndrome (cDGS) represents approximately one percent of all patients with DiGeorge Syndrome, a congenital immunodeficiency disease. The three main characteristics of cDGS are congenital heart disease, hypoparathyroidism (leading to low calcium levels), and athymia (lack of thymus tissue). Athymia leads to severe immunodeficiency due to the inability to produce normally functioning T cells, which defend against infection and regulate essential processes in the immune system. cDGS is uniformly fatal if untreated, with death typically occurring in the first two years of life due to susceptibility to infection.

About RVT-802

RVT-802 is a biologic therapy that was initially developed by Dr. Markert and her colleagues using proprietary processes to harvest, culture, and apply allogeneic thymic tissue for the treatment of primary immune deficiency resulting from cDGS. Preliminary clinical results suggest a survival rate of over 70% for treated patients. RVT-802 has been granted orphan drug designation by the FDA and Enzyvant anticipates a potential BLA filing in 2018.

About Enzyvant

Enzyvant is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative treatments for patients with rare diseases. Enzyvant is currently preparing a clinical trial of RVT-801, an investigational enzyme replacement therapy for the treatment of acid ceramidase deficiency (ACD), a rare lysosomal storage disease which manifests as Farber disease. Enzyvant is also planning to advance the development of RVT-802, an investigational biologic therapy for complete DiGeorge Syndrome. Enzyvant plans to develop treatments for additional rare diseases with high unmet need.

Related Links

http://www.enzyvant.com

SOURCE Enzyvant
Who: FCA Digital MediaTeam



When: Immediately



Where: media.fcanorthamerica.com or https://youtu.be/ZZv1ndwZ4GE



About FCA US LLC

FCA US LLC is a North American automaker with a new name and a long history. Headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, FCA US is a member of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA) family of companies. FCA US designs, engineers, manufactures and sells vehicles under the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram and FIAT brands, as well as the SRT performance vehicle designation. The company also distributes the Alfa Romeo 4C model and Mopar products. FCA US is building upon the historic foundations of Chrysler, the innovative American automaker first established by Walter P. Chrysler in 1925; and Fiat, founded in Italy in 1899 by pioneering entrepreneurs, including Giovanni Agnelli.



FCA, the seventh-largest automaker in the world based on total annual vehicle sales, is an international automotive group. FCA is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FCAU" and on the Mercato Telematico Azionario under the symbol "FCA."



Follow FCA US news and video on:

Company blog: blog.fcanorthamerica.com

Company website: www.fcanorthamerica.com

FCA360: 360.fcanorthamerica.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FiatChrysler.NorthAmerica/

Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/chryslergroup/

Media website: media.fcanorthamerica.com

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/fcacorporate

Instagram: www.instagram.com/FiatChrysler_NA

Twitter: www.twitter.com/FiatChrysler_NA

Twitter (Spanish): www.twitter.com/fcausespanol

YouTube: www.youtube.com/pentastarvideo

SOURCE FCA US LLC

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- First Orion, an industry-leading call protection and data provider, announced today that it has been named the Directors Award winner at the 2017 AOTMP Mobility Awards at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.

Launched in 2002 by Dr. J. Gerry Purdy, Principal Analyst at AOTMPa global leader in telecom management best practices and industry standards for enterprises and vendorsthe Mobility Awards recognize the most innovative, state-of-the-art mobile and wireless products and solutions in today's market. Winners are selected by a committee of mobile and wireless industry experts, including editors, journalists and analysts.

"It's an absolute honor to be selected as the Directors Award winner," said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of First Orion. "Receiving this award further validates the necessity of providing phone call transparency with world-class data and mobile solutions."

First Orion protects consumers from unwanted phone calls from unknown callers with call management software on industry-leading mobile applications including PrivacyStar, Metro name iD, CallDetector and CallWatch, as well as in-network solutions. In addition, First Orion helps businesses utilize their authoritative data to ensure that they are calling the right people on the right phone number or validating their customer data.

"First Orion impressed our panel of industry experts with its commitment to protecting consumers from aggressive telemarketers and other unwanted calls," said Bill Hinton, GM and VP, Vendor Practice of AOTMP. "We're proud to recognize a company that is helping revolutionize the mobile industry with such forward-thinking innovations."

To view the full list of 2017 AOTMP Mobility Awards finalists, visit:

https://www.aotmpconference.com/aotmp-mobility-awards/mobility-awards-finalists/

About First Orion

First Orion is dedicated to providing phone call transparency by empowering both consumers and businesses with world-class data. The company helps businesses utilize authoritative data to ensure that they are properly contacting the right customers or validating their customer data with accurate information. First Orion is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas with offices in Dallas, Seattle and London.

About AOTMP Mobility Awards

The AOTMP Mobility Awards program, honoring the best and finest mobile wireless products and services from 2016, is a sanctioned, invitation-only Consumer Electronics Show event held on January 5, 2017, in Las Vegas. Now entering its 16th year, the Mobility Awards was designed to objectively recognize outstanding mobile and wireless products and services in the telecommunications industry. A selection committee of mobile and wireless industry experts, including editors, journalists and analysts, vote on the winners.

Media Contact:

Jackie Eicholz

FortyThree, Inc.

831.401.3175

[email protected]

Jonathan Sasse

First Orion

501.358.4061

[email protected]

SOURCE First Orion

Related Links

http://www.firstorion.com


PASADENA, Calif., Jan 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Like a lot of entrepreneurial minded teens who opt for college but are restless to get out in the real world and start making a difference, Nehemiah Douglass, founder of Vision Trading Network, spent most of his time at Arizona State engaged in upstart businesses  including throwing parties for students and putting on concerts in local clubs. A year after dropping out, the Kansas City native  dedicated to being successful in everything he was passionate about  launched a mobile app.

Laying the foundation for his current niche as a forex trading expert, Douglass spent the first three years of his career in accounting and finance, which gave him an empowering overview of how banks and financial institutions operate. He learned that the foreign exchange market, which includes buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices, is the largest market in the world in terms of volume of trading. Once he saw the vast potential for profit, he was hooked.

Excited to learn more and share his experiences with equally passionate traders, Douglass got involved in forex social media groups online. In mid-2015, he connected with his Canadian based future partner, and began to share ideas and send trade signals, which are alerts to buy or sell at the optimal time. These Skype conversations got his entrepreneurial wheels spinning, and soon they decided to brand themselves and launch Vision Trading Network, LLC.

Marketing exclusively through social media like Facebook and Twitter, where Douglass has over 6,000 followers, the company  whose trademark slogan is "The Trading World is Yours" and whose philosophy is "Only the wise trade networks"  has found relatively quick success. With enrollment numbers now in the hundreds, they are employing the hashtag #1000LivesChanged as a reachable goal in 2017.

The principles' youth  both just turned 24  has also contributed to a good deal of media buzz. Douglass was featured on "The Brian Tracy Show" (hosted by renowned author, speaker and business development expert Brian Tracy) and "Wall Street Business Radio" in Atlanta. Vision Trading Network was selected as one of 20 companies to appear on Tracy's show. The host interviewed Douglass about the forex market, the company's movement and their service to others. Segments on them are also scheduled to air on FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS. In addition to numerous mentions on multiple blogs and podcasts, Douglass has personally been approached to be in the April 2017 issue of Forbes Magazine.

Douglass and his partner have been swamped with testimonials from their students worldwide, revealing individual success stories. To date, while students range in age from 16-55, about 95 percent of them are 20somethings excited about finding ways to earn income while circumventing an uncertain job market. While the bulk of them are in the U.S., Vision Trading Network has students everywhere from South Africa and Iceland to The Philippines and Norway.

As advertised, Vision Trading Network's trademark package, The Forex Fortune Factory, teaches how to "absolutely dominate the Forex Markets for consistent wins, profits and peace of mind." Students will learn how to understand and simplify market behavior, and how to turn this simplification into consistent profiting trades. The entire FFF strategy is revealed in step-by-step PDF's! After watching each training video, students can refer to that module's checklist to ensure that they have implemented every step.

The FFF Binary Mastery Training Course is designed to get users up and running as quickly as possible. It is ideal for those who fancy the idea of two to five minute profits without tons of market analysis.

Prior to 2017, Douglass and his partner sent their students to brokers that they had been personally using. Early this year, however Douglass took his business to the next level with the launch of his own brokerage firm, Illuminated Markets, Ltd.

"I am happy to have put something out into the world that has benefited so many people and will continue to benefit more," he says. "I want to see our #1000LivesChanged movement completed by summer 2017, and from there, see how far we can take this!"

Read more at http://visiontradingnetwork.com/about-us/

Media Contact:

Matt Collins

[email protected]

800-980-1626

SOURCE Vision Trading Network

Related Links

http://visiontradingnetwork.com


ATLANTA, Jan. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American CareSource Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB:GNOW), an urgent and primary care company operating under the names GoNow Doctors and Medac, announced today that it has completed its previously reported sale of its ancillary service network business to HealthSmart Preferred Care II, L.P.



The Company also announced that it is exploring options to sell all or substantially all of its urgent care assets. Based on discussions to date, the Company believes it is highly unlikely that the net proceeds from the sale of its urgent care business would be sufficient to satisfy the Companys secured indebtedness.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements," including statements related to our expectations related to the potential sale of the Companys urgent care assets. Forward-looking statements may be identified by their use of terms such as "anticipate", "believe", "anticipate", "confident", "could", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "predict", "project", "target", "will" and other similar terms. These statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, actual results and future events could differ materially from those projected, and we caution stockholders not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Risks and uncertainties exist related to the Company and its business due to a number of factors, including the statements under "Risk Factors" contained in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We intend these forward-looking statements to speak only as of the date of this press release and undertake no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or changes in our expectations, except as required by law.
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) recently announced the results of their evaluation of proposals for the 2017 HealthChoices Medicaid managed care contracts. As a result, Gateway Health was selected to proceed to contract negotiations in all five HealthChoices zones, which include the Southeast, the Southwest, the Northeast, the Northwest and the Lehigh Capital zones. The new HealthChoices contract is slated to be effective June 2017 and may give Medicaid eligible residents in all Pennsylvania counties the opportunity to select Gateway Health as their managed care organization (MCO).

In the fall of 2015, DHS originally issued bids for the new HealthChoices contracts with the intent for the new contact year to begin on January 1, 2017. After a rebid was issued in the fall of 2016, health plans that resubmitted proposals were notified of the rescoring results and bids were awarded late last year. Pending readiness review and agreement negotiations, the new contracts will expand Gateway's footprint to serve residents Commonwealth-wide, which total approximately 1,600,000 Medicaid recipients. Formerly, Gateway provided healthcare coverage in the Southwest, Northwest and Lehigh Capital zones. The Pennsylvania HealthChoices zones are comprised of the following counties:

Southeast Zone - Bucks , Chester , Delaware , Montgomery and Philadelphia counties

- , , , and counties Southwest Zone - Allegheny , Armstrong , Beaver , Bedford , Blair , Butler , Cambria, Fayette, Green, Indiana , Lawrence , Somerset , Washington and Westmoreland counties

- , , , , , , Cambria, Fayette, Green, , , , and counties Lehigh /Capital Zone - Adams , Berks , Cumberland , Dauphin , Franklin , Fulton , Huntingdon, Lancaster, Lebanon , Lehigh , Northampton , Perry and York counties

- , , , , , , Huntingdon, Lancaster, , , , and counties Northwest Zone - Cameron , Clarion , Clearfield , Crawford , Elk , Erie , Forest , Jefferson , McKean , Mercer , Potter , Venango and Warren counties

- , , , , , , , , , , , and counties Northeast Zone - Bradford , Carbon , Centre , Clinton , Columbia , Juniata , Lackawanna , Luzerne , Lycoming , Mifflin , Monroe , Montour , Northumberland , Pike , Schuylkill , Snyder , Sullivan , Susquehanna , Tioga , Union , Wayne and Wyoming counties

"Gateway Health is overwhelmingly pleased with the decision by DHS to grant us the potential to provide services to Medicaid eligible consumers in all HealthChoices zones. We intend to work diligently with DHS through the agreement negotiation and readiness review phases to show how our organization and our provider network can provide unrivaled access and quality healthcare to all Medicaid recipients, said Patti Darnley, President and CEO, Gateway Health. "As one of the State's original Medicaid MCOs, we feel particularly well-equipped to provide outstanding and responsive care to this vulnerable and deserving population. Our belief is that the health and wellness of Pennsylvania is directly tied to the health and wellness of its residents and our mission is to see that both remain as healthy as possible."

In addition to being scored on quality, community outreach and clinical outcomes, Gateway's proposal also included their plans for utilizing Small Diverse Businesses (SDBs) in their operations. As a Pennsylvania based not-for-profit business, Gateway Health is proud to support Pennsylvania SDBs as an indication of their commitment to the responsible stewardship of state tax dollars. Without the need to answer to shareholders, Gateway places a strong emphasis on reinvesting this money back into the Commonwealth and its residents.

About Gateway Health

Gateway Health is a nationally ranked managed care organization that focuses on providing the best possible healthcare to a growing number of Medicaid and Medicare Advantage consumers. A not-for-profit organization, Gateway Health serves the needs of at risk and vulnerable citizens with not only healthcare coverage, but services such as disease management, health and wellness programs and preventive care. The organization provides Medicaid services in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia and Medicare coverage in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina. Our commitment to helping our members and their communities get and stay healthy is what keeps members, providers, communities and partners "Good with Gateway." To learn more about Gateway Health, visit us online at www.gatewayhealthplan.com.

SOURCE Gateway Health

Related Links

http://www.gatewayhealthplan.com


LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The global care assistance and automation robots market is expected to achieve rapid adoption with a CAGR of 36% through 2021. As doctors and care providers pay more attention to patients, leaving daily tasks for the efficient handling of robotic systems, patients will receive improved quality of care and reduced hospital readmission, the prime reason for successive adoption of care robots in the healthcare industry. Human-robot collaborations are expected to achieve breakthrough revolution in hospital and home-care settings. From carrying daily products such as medical waste, linen, lab reports, and meals to dispensing medicines and IV supplies, robots have the capability to significantly automate and impact hospital workflows, thereby improving productivity and, ultimately, quality of care.



This study includes a detailed description of care assistance and automation robots and their sub-segments: daily care and transportation, telepresence and rehabilitative, pharma automation, and exoskeleton robots. The research also consists of detailed analysis of the current estimated market (2016) and market forecasts (20172021) of care assistance and automation robots and the sub-segments, description of various types of companies in this market, the future potential growth scenarios, and price points of each sub-segment. The study wraps up with key conclusions and a brief snapshot of strategies for succeeding while building a robots-for-hospital business model.





Key objectives address the following questions:

- What are the current use cases of care assistance and automation robots within the healthcare sector?

- What barriers and challenges are care robots currently facing towards adoption? What are the market drivers?

- What are the current use cases for robots from various sub-segments of the care assistance and automation market?

- What will be the care assistance and automation robots market scene in the next five years? What are the market estimations and projections?

- Who are the current participants in the market ecosystem with solutions for varying applications within the healthcare industry?

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4595318/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


Commercial production achieved on time and on budget

TORONTO, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Golden Star Resources Ltd. (NYSE MKT: GSS; TSX: GSC; GSE: GSR) ("Golden Star" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that commercial production has been achieved at its Wassa Underground Gold Mine ("Wassa Underground") in Ghana, effective January 1, 2017.

The project construction of Wassa Underground, including the installation of all ancillary infrastructure, is essentially complete and operational, in accordance with the Company's planned schedule and budget.

Gold production is anticipated to continue to ramp up during 2017 as Golden Star's mining operations begin to access the B Shoot, which is a higher grade area of the Wassa Underground ore body. The Company plans to begin longitudinal stoping of the B Shoot in the first quarter of 2017, with the larger, transverse stopes expected to be accessed in the third quarter of 2017.

Since Golden Star blasted the first stope at Wassa Underground in July 2016, the Company has been mining development and stope ore in the F Shoot. Golden Star expects to announce its full year 2016 production results, including the production results for Wassa Underground, and its full year 2017 guidance in terms of production, operating costs and capital expenditures later in January 2017.

Sam Coetzer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Golden Star, commented:

"Achieving commercial production at Wassa Underground marks the successful completion of a 17 month construction period. It is also another important milestone in our transformation into a high grade, non-refractory gold producer. Golden Star also anticipates that it will benefit from Wassa Underground's lower cost production, as a result of the higher grade ore being fed into the Wassa processing plant. I want to thank our project construction team for their outstanding efforts as Wassa Underground was constructed safely, on schedule and within our capital budget. I look forward to announcing our full year 2016 production results and our full year 2017 guidance later this month."

Company Profile

Golden Star is an established gold mining company that owns and operates the Wassa and Prestea mines situated on the prolific Ashanti Gold Belt in western Ghana, Africa. Listed on the NYSE MKT, the TSX, and the GSE, Golden Star is strategically focused on increasing operating margins and cash flow through the development of two high grade, low cost underground mines both in conjunction with existing open pit operations. The Wassa Underground Gold Mine commenced commercial production in January 2017 and the Prestea Underground Gold Mine is expected to achieve commercial production in mid-2017. Both projects are fully funded and on track to begin production as expected. Production in 2016 is expected to be between 180,000205,000 ounces of gold with costs of US$815US$925 per ounce.

Cautionary note regarding forward-looking information

Some statements contained in this news release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. Such statements include: the ability to mine and access B Shoot; higher grades at B Shoot; the areas that are expected to be mined with longitudinal stoping; the areas expected to be mined with transverse stoping; the timing for accessing the first longitudinal stope at Wassa Underground; the timing for accessing the first transverse stope at Wassa Underground; the anticipated level of production in 2017; the cost of production at Wassa Underground; lower cost production at Wassa Underground and the benefits thereof; and the timing for releasing the full year 2016 production results and full year 2017 guidance. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and involve risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include timing of and unexpected events during exploration; variations in ore grade; variations in relative amounts of refractory, non-refractory and transition ores; technical or permitting issues; fluctuations in gold price and costs; availability of capital and/or external financing on acceptable terms; changes in U.S. and Canadian securities markets; and general economic conditions. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting the Company will be those anticipated by management. Please refer to the discussion of these risks and other factors in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015 and other filings of the Company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities. The forecasts contained in this press release constitute management's current estimates, as of the date of this press release, with respect to the matters covered thereby. We expect that these estimates will change as new information is received. While we may elect to update these estimates at any time, we do not undertake to update any estimate at any particular time or in response to any particular event.

SOURCE Golden Star Resources Ltd.

Related Links

www.gsr.com


HOUSTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyperdynamics Corporation (OTCQX: HDYN) today announced that it has accepted a proposal from its drilling contractor, Pacific Drilling, to deploy the Pacific Scirocco drillship in place of the Pacific Bora for Hyperdynamics' upcoming deepwater exploration well offshore the Republic of Guinea.

Financial terms under the earlier contract with Pacific Drilling for the Pacific Bora are unchanged. Hyperdynamics plans to spud the Fatala-1 well in April 2017.

"We are very pleased to be able to engage the Pacific Scirocco for our drilling campaign," said Hyperdynamics President and Chief Executive Officer Ray Leonard.

"The Pacific Scirocco is equipped to drill in deeper water -- up to 12,000 feet -- and could handle either of the two optional follow-up fan wells that may be drilled if the Fatala-1 well is successful.

"We understand that the Scirocco has been working offshore Nigeria for TOTAL for the last five years and has achieved a 98% up-time record, with no lost-time incidents. Having a rig and a crew that has performed so consistently at such a high level of safety and efficiency should greatly enhance our program," Leonard said.

"The Scirocco completes its current contract with TOTAL on January 19 and afterwards will be anchored offshore Abidjan, Ivory Coast. This will enable Schlumberger, our integrated project manager for drilling services, to utilize its base there to outfit the drillship in plenty of time for an April 2017 spud date," he added.

About Hyperdynamics

Hyperdynamics is an emerging independent oil and gas exploration company that is exploring for oil and gas offshore the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. To find out more, visit our website at www.hyperdynamics.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27 A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21 E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, expectations, future events or performance and underlying assumptions and other statements which are other than statements of historical facts. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "project," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," or "think." A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including without limitation, funding and exploration efforts, fluctuations in oil and gas prices and other risk factors described from time to time in the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Reports on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016 and Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2016. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the issuance of this news release or to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with respect to these forward looking statements.

Contacts:

Ray Leonard

President and Chief Executive Officer

713-353-9445

Anne Pearson / Jack Lascar

Dennard-Lascar Associates

713-529-6600

SOURCE Hyperdynamics

Related Links

http://www.hyperdynamics.com


WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation to combat outsourcing within the H-1B visa program. While the bill recognizes how destructive the H-1B program can be, it doesn't do nearly enough to rein in outsourcing companies or protect American jobs.

"Hundreds of Americans lost their jobs to the H-1B program in Rep. Issa and Peters' congressional districts," IEEE-USA President Karen Pedersen said. "Yet their bill will allow thousands more jobs to be lost in the future."

"It is simply unacceptable -- at any wage rate -- for companies to fire Americans and replace them with non-Americans who will never be allowed to become citizens."

The "Protect and Grow American Jobs Act," reintroduced Wednesday, raises the minimum salary companies have to pay their H-1B workers to avoid complying with regulations protecting U.S. and H-1B workers. Under the bill, the current threshold of $60,000 would increase to $100,000. The legislation would also eliminate an exemption from the regulations for H-1B workers with master's degrees.

IEEE-USA has the following concerns about the bill:

* No wage rate is acceptable for companies to replace American workers with employees who are non-citizens

* Compensation is more than just salary. Employing H-1B workers can save companies money on retirement costs, healthcare costs, training costs and virtually every other benefit.

* H-1B workers can be dismissed at will without any legal complications, negating decades of hard-fought worker protections.

In Issa and Peters' San Diego-area congressional districts, hundreds of American employees of Southern California Edison were replaced by workers on H-1B visas. The company hired a firm whose business model is to outsource American jobs to lower-wage foreign employees. The American workers were forced to train their replacements to get severance packages.

IEEE-USA believes that, if companies really need to hire non-American employees inside the United States, they should be allowed to do so. But as American citizens, not temporary guest workers. Real immigration, built on green cards and citizenship, strengthens the U.S. economy and creates jobs for all Americans. The temporary H-1B program is popular with corporations specifically because it does not.

IEEE-USA calls on Congress to demonstrate its opposition to H-1B outsourcing by prohibiting it. Anything short of this is implicit permission for the job losses to continue

"Outsourcing companies use the H-1B program specifically because it does not allow workers to become Americans," Pedersen said. "It enables companies to avoid having an American workforce, while still enjoying the benefits of doing business in the United States."

IEEE-USA serves the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of nearly 190,000 engineering, computing and technology professionals who are U.S. members of IEEE.

Web: www.ieeeusa.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ieeeusa

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ieeeusa

Benefits of IEEE membership: www.ieee.org/join

SOURCE IEEE-USA (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

Related Links

http://www.ieeeusa.org


NASHUA, N.H., Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Injury Law Center recently welcomed Attorney Jonathan Lang as the firm's newest associate attorney. With nearly a dozen years of legal experience, Jonathan has handled a variety of personal injury cases during his career, including medical malpractice, car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, defective product cases, premises liability cases, wrongful death, and more. Since 2005, he has won numerous high-value settlements for his clients.

Jonathan is a graduate of George Mason University School of Law, where he served as managing editor of the Civil Rights Law Journal and was a highly awarded member of the moot court team. He also possesses an undergraduate degree from Creighton University, where he was a nationally-ranked debator and was captain of the debate team.

Jonathan is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The team at Injury Law Center is thrilled to welcome Jonathan to the firm. If you have been injured and have questions about your rights, we invite you to contact Injury Law Center to schedule a complimentary personal injury consultation.

Injury Law Center is an experienced personal injury law firm committed to protecting the rights of those who have been injured by medical malpractice, defective products, unsafe premises, auto accidents, and other types of accidents throughout New Hampshire and Massachusetts. To learn more about our qualifications and the types of cases we handle, please visit www.injury-law-center.com.

SOURCE Injury Law Center

Related Links

http://www.injury-law-center.com


DURHAM, N.C., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (OTC: MGTI) has announced that John McAfee, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will be a featured speaker at The North American Bitcoin Conference January 17-18, 2017. The event is the longest running and most highly attended finance conference for the bitcoin, finance, and cryptocurrency industries. Mr. McAfee is scheduled to begin his presentation at 10:40 AM EST on Wednesday, January 18th. In addition to Mr. McAfee's participation, MGT is a supporting sponsor for this exciting and informative gathering.

Held at The James L. Knight Centre in downtown Miami, the two-day event will focus on a wide array of topics, such as Blockchain, Bitcoin, investing, regulation, the Internet of Things, hacking, and more. Top thought-leaders and innovators in the bitcoin and disruptive technology ecosystem will present alongside Mr. McAfee. Two of MGT's Bitcoin Advisory Board members will also speak: Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com, and Bruce Fenton, Managing Director at Atlantic Financial.

Mr. McAfee commented, "The recent appreciation of Bitcoin supports my belief that Bitcoin is now being utilized as a viable alternative to fiat currencies. Most recently, we have seen India and Venezuela remove their larger notes from circulation and Bitcoin offers citizens liberty from these State-controlled monetary policies. Moreover, the Blockchain will be central to nearly every aspect of future cybersecurity solutions, including wire transfers, authentication, and secure voting systems. It will become the cornerstone of virtually all digital transactions."

Supporting this reasoning, I'm very excited to announce that MGT is exploring several opportunities, any of which if successful, would accomplish our previously stated goal of MGT becoming the largest Bitcoin mining facility operator in the western hemisphere," concluded Mr. McAfee.

Participants interested in attending can purchase tickets to The North American Bitcoin Conference here. The event agenda can be located here.

About MGT Capital Investments, Inc.

MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (OTC: MGTI) is in the process of acquiring a diverse portfolio of cyber security technologies. With cyber security industry pioneer, John McAfee, at its helm, MGT Capital is positioned to address various cyber threats through advanced protection technologies for mobile and personal tech devices, as well as corporate networks. MGTl intends to change its corporate name to "John McAfee Global Technologies, Inc."

For more information on the Company, please visit: http://ir.stockpr.com/mgtci.

Forwardlooking Statements

This press release contains forwardlooking statements. The words or phrases "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "will likely result," "are expected to," "will continue," "is anticipated," "estimate," "project," or similar expressions are intended to identify "forwardlooking statements." All information set forth in this news release, except historical and factual information, represents forwardlooking statements. This includes all statements about the Company's plans, beliefs, estimates and expectations. These statements are based on current estimates and projections, which involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include issues related to: rapidly changing technology and evolving standards in the industries in which the Company and its subsidiaries operate; the ability to obtain sufficient funding to continue operations, maintain adequate cash flow, profitably exploit new business, license and sign new agreements; the unpredictable nature of consumer preferences; and other factors set forth in the Company's most recently filed annual report and registration statement. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forwardlooking statements, which reflect management's analysis only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forwardlooking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof. Readers should carefully review the risks and uncertainties described in other documents that the Company files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investor Contact

Garth Russell

Managing Director

KCSA Strategic Communications

[email protected]

212.896.1250

Media Contact

Tiffany Madison

Director of Corporate Communications

MGT Capital Investments, Inc.

[email protected]

469.236.9569

SOURCE MGT Capital Investments, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mgtci.com


KDX, the leading glasses-free 3D display company in the world, has always recognized the value of Philips' IP for glasses-free 3D display technology. KDX obtained a technology license from Philips in 2014, and in 2016 acquired the company Dimenco, which was a technology spin-off from Philips. Via this partnership, KDX is taking the logical next step to strengthen its IP and market position in the world of glasses-free 3D displays.

The partnership further entitles KDX, for a certain period, to develop further 3D display technology and market its products in China including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, before Philips concludes new 3D display technology licenses with other companies targeting the Chinese market. "This period will strategically enable KDX to finalize its high volume industrialization of 3D display technology and bring a broad product range to the market as well as further strengthen its technology and market leadership position in the world of glasses-free 3D," says Mr. Zhong Yu of KDX.

The partnership was celebrated at the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by Jako Eleveld, Philips' head of IP Licensing and KDX board chairman Mr. Zhong Yu.

"We have worked with KDX for several years, and we are impressed by how KDX has further developed the glasses-free 3D display technology, set up a high volume production system and has started to bring consumer products to the market. To start a program for China creates substantial benefit for the further development of the glasses-free 3D display industry in China, since after the initial period when KDX will further develop and market the 3D display technology, our new licenses can include not only Philips' but now also KDX's IP," says Jako Eleveld, Philips' head of IP Licensing.

KDX will be demonstrating and launching several of its new generation glasses-free 3D switchable lenticular products at CES. These include a 55" TV, tablets, mobile phones and laptops. In addition, KDX will demonstrate several B2B products that are used in applications, such as medical, gaming, education and digital signage. The products range from a 85" 3D display to a 43" 3D portrait display.

At this point, KDX is striving to enhance its cooperation with other manufacturers. In October 2016, the ZTE Axon 7 Max was successfully launched in China with a full set of glasses-free 3D solutions provided by KDX. The launch of these products, which have already achieved great sales, also signaled the beginning of the cooperation between KDX and equipment manufacturers in producing mobile devices featuring glasses-free 3D. KDX is now pushing forward its cooperation with tier one and tier two manufacturers and foresees the release of new glasses-free 3D products within the next 12 months.

About KDX

KDX group is a listed company on the Chinese stock market with a market value of nearly US$10 billion. The world's largest pre-coated film manufacturer and a leading supplier of optical film, KDX has established its prominent position in polymer material manufacturing including but not limited to pre-coated film, optical film, carbon fiber, and flexible materials. KDX developed and owns several hundreds of patents in glasses-free 3D, and is the only company worldwide with the capability to create the full product in-house. This includes the design and manufacturing of the optics, 3D image processing and full assembly and manufacturing of the end product.

SOURCE KDX
ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vestagen Protective Technologies, Inc. today announced that medical professionals at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY will soon be wearing scrubs and lab coats protected by its VESTEX Active Barrier fabric. LIJ Medical Center is a 587-bed, not-for-profit teaching hospital serving the greater metropolitan New York area. Based in Queens, it is one of the flagship hospitals of Northwell Health, one of the nation's largest healthcare systems. In 2016, two other prestigious Northwell institutions adopted VESTEX garments for their healthcare workers and patients.

Separately Vestagen announced that Thomas Grifa, an experienced medical device manufacturing executive, has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Operations. Vestagen also announced that CEO Bill Bold will present a corporate overview at the Medtech Showcase 2017 (A Biotech Showcase) on Jan.10 at 1:15 pm PST. The Showcase is being held at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco.

VESTEX Active Barrier fabric is a unique combination of technologies that address the need for continuous-wear, comfortable healthcare worker and patient garments intended to minimize the risks associated with unanticipated exposure to body fluids during routine use, by repelling fluid splatter and spills from the fabric.1 VESTEX fabric is breathable and it contains an EPA-registered antimicrobial agent shown in controlled conditions in laboratory and hospital settings to inhibit the growth of certain bacteria on the fabric.2,3,4 A peer reviewed hospital-based study published in a leading medical journal showed reduced acquisition and retention of certain microorganisms on VESTEX scrubs compared to conventional healthcare uniforms.

"We are delighted that Long Island Jewish Medical Center, a key unit of Northwell Health, is reinforcing their commitment to workers and patients by replacing traditional uniforms with VESTEX Active Barrier garments," said Bill Bold, Chief Executive Officer of Vestagen. "This follows the successful adoption of VESTEX scrubs, with very positive feedback, by other leading Northwell hospitals during 2016. We look forward to working with all our stakeholders at Northwell to ensure the seamless integration of VESTEX garments into their routine operations."

"By investing in VESTEX active barrier uniforms, LIJ is supporting our frontline staff in delivering high-quality, safe patient care while reducing the risk of transmission of organisms," said Margaret Murphy, RN, chief nursing officer at LIJ.

Mr. Bold added, "I also want to welcome Thomas Grifa to Vestagen. Tom brings a strong track record of success in managing manufacturing and other complex operations at major medical device firms such as Covidien and Baxter Healthcare. His expertise will be invaluable in ensuring our continued successful expansion and growth."

During his more than 25-year career, Mr. Grifa has held positions of increasing responsibility at a number of companies, including Director of Engineering at Baxter Healthcare and Senior Vice President of Manufacturing for Covidien's International Division, where he managed 20 global manufacturing facilities. More recently, Mr. Grifa has worked as a company consultant focused on new process development, process improvements and new product introductions. Mr. Grifa is trained in both Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma disciplines. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Rutgers University and received an MBA from Pepperdine University.

VESTEX has earned an exclusive endorsement from the American Hospital Association following a rigorous due diligence process. VESTEX is registered with the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) as a medical device and is currently in the FDA 510(k) clearance review process.

For more information about Vestagen and VESTEX, visit vestagen.com and buyVESTEX.com.

1 - Neither liquid repellency nor antimicrobial tests are intended to assess the VESTEX active barrier apparel's ability to meet personal protective equipment requirements. The ability of the fabric to reduce exposure to microorganisms or infections has not been studied.

2 - Bearman, G., Rosato, A., Elam, K., Sanogo, K., Stevens, M., Sessler, C., and Wenzel, R. P., "A Cross-over Trial of Antimicrobial Scrubs to Reduce MRSA Burden on Healthcare Worker Apparel," Infect. Control Hosp. Epidemiol., Vol. 33, No. 3, 2012, pp. 268275.

3 - Hardwick, Matthew, Walsh, Thomas, and Cotton, Margaret, "Fabric Challenge Assays: New Standards for the Evaluation of the Performance of Textiles Treated with Antimicrobial Agents," Pesticide Formulation and Delivery Systems: Innovating Legacy Products for New Uses on November 13, 2011 in Tampa FL; STP 1558, M. Bernards, Editor, pp. 114, doi: 101520/STP155820120184, ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA 2013.

4 - VESTEX garments do not protect users or others against disease-causing bacteria. Always clean the garment thoroughly after each use.

About Vestagen Protective Technologies, Inc.

Vestagen develops and markets advanced performance textile products and technologies. Vestagen has developed VESTEX, which represents a new class of technology-based, active barrier protective fabrics combining antimicrobial, liquid repellent and breathability properties. VESTEX uniforms are designed to minimize the risks associated with unanticipated fluid exposures during routine use as general purpose attire. Studies conducted in controlled conditions in a hospital setting show that VESTEX can prevent or reduce the acquisition and retention of certain microorganisms on the fabric. VESTEX garments are comfortable, durable and affordable. For more information, visit vestagen.com.

Vestagen Contacts

Corporate: Media: Marc Lessem Barbara Lindheim 407 781-2570 BLL Partners

212 584-2276

[email protected]

SOURCE Vestagen Protective Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.vestagen.com


Through Concierge, Books-A-Million store associates have instant mobile access to both online book inventories as well as inventories available at other locations, improving the shopping experience for customers and boosting sales for its stores.

"As a mobile platform, Books-A-Million's Concierge application enables associates to find details about products in the store and those available online; locate inventory in nearby stores; purchase products not in the store to be shipped directly to the customer; and perform a variety of customer service featuresincluding order status lookup, membership details, current promotions and best selling products," said Retail TouchPoints in its awards announcement.

This is the second time since November that Concierge has received a national honor for its success in transforming brick-and-mortar retail. Previously, Concierge client Talbots, Inc. received a Gold Award in Mobile Strategies in Retail TouchPoints' Store Operations Superstar Awards competition.

"Congratulations to Cy and the Books-A-Million team for having the foresight to transform their brick-and-mortar experience by empowering its associates with Concierge. We're incredibly proud of this honor, and of our continued partnership with Books-A-Million," said Mad Mobile CEO Bruce Bennett.

To learn more about Concierge, visit the Mad Mobile website.

About Mad Mobile

Mad Mobile is transforming retail with mobile solutions that empower store associates to engage with customers, enhance the in-store shopping experience, and sell more. Concierge is a mobile retail platform that connects store associates with valuable customer and product information from enterprise systems (ECOM, ERP, CRM, DOM, POS) to unleash powerful functionality for clienteling, assisted selling, and mPOS. Top clients include Talbots, Books-A-Million, Ashley Furniture, Aeropostale, Sysco, AutoNation, and Payless Shoesource. Offices in Tampa (HQ), NYC, Buenos Aires, and London.

SOURCE Mad Mobile, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.madmobile.com


ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, Jan. 10, National PTA and the U.S. Department of Education will host a ceremony to recognize students from across the country for letting their imaginations fly through the arts. The event will feature music and dance performances and an exhibit of artwork by honorees of the 2015-2016 National PTA Reflections program, themed "Let Your Imagination Fly." Deputy Assistant Secretary Dr. Monique M. Chism, Guitar Center Representative Krista Shue, National PTA President Laura Bay and National PTA Executive Director Nathan R. Monell will discuss the importance of advancing the arts in education.

WHEN

11 a.m.  12 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 10

WHERE

U.S. Department of Education

LBJ Education Building

400 Maryland Avenue SW

Washington, DC 20202

WHO

Dr. Monique M. Chism  Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

 Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Laura M. Bay  President, National PTA

 President, National PTA Nathan R. Monell , CAE  Executive Director, National PTA

, CAE  Executive Director, National PTA Teresa Williams  Chair, National PTA Programs Committee

 Chair, National PTA Programs Committee Krista Shue  Director of Lessons, Guitar Center

 Director of Lessons, Guitar Center 2015-2016 National PTA Reflections Student Honorees

Arts and Education Leaders and Advocates from Across the Country

About National PTA

National PTA comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of parent involvement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit association that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health, and welfare of children and youth.

SOURCE National PTA

Related Links

http://www.pta.org


NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nautica, the leading global lifestyle brand for reimagined nautical style, announced today a 2017 partnership with GRAMMY nominated music artist, 19-year-old social media phenom, and Nautica brand enthusiast, Lil Yachty. The name, Lil Yachty, comes from Yachty's group of friends from highschool, called the "Yacht Club", who enjoyed fashion and made music together; it is where his signature nautical theme of boats and anchors, and introduction to Nautica clothing originated. Now, Lil Yachty's group, named "The Sailing Team," attend and perform at most, if not at all of his shows.

As a Nautica brand Creative Designer, Lil Yachty will work with Nautica to design a capsule collection as well as be featured in digital and social media advertising campaigns. The Nautica brand will continue to offer classic sportswear collections in addition to the reintroduction of hertitage styles to serve our existing and new customer base.

Lil Yachty, a self-proclaimed Nautica fanatic, who scours the internet to find one-of-a-kind vintage Nautica pieces, will work with the brand to design a special heritage capsule collection that will incorporate his own personal aesthetic, with some of the brand's most iconic pieces.

"We are excited to be collaborating with Lil Yachty this year," said Karen Murray, President of Nautica. "He is much more than just a music artist, he is a creative soul. His innate passion and affinity for the brand, fabulous taste level and the way he looks in our clothes, make him the perfect partner for the Nautica brand."

"Nautica is like a part of me," said Lil Yachty, "It's for kids, sailors, grown men, and cool people. The designs - the old designs, the new designs, I think it's dope. There's not really much out there like Nautica."

Lil Yachty was recently nominated for a GRAMMY, named one of Forbes' "30 Under 30" for 2017 and was the cover story for the New York Times Style section last month. He has almost 2 million followers on Instagram, and his videos on YouTube have over 127 million views. D.R.A.M.'s song, "Broccoli" featuring Lil Yachty reached number 1 on the Spotify chart. Lil Yachty's Summer Songs 2 Mixtape debuted #3 on Apple Music Top Album Charts and his first US headlining tour sold out, as well as his first show in London. His reach to the millennial community is vast and growing, and he is often dubbed the "King of the Teens".

SOURCE Nautica
HOUSTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Successful entrepreneurial brothers Robert and Ned Schwing today announced the formation of their newest venture, Partners Surgical Corporation (PSC), (http://www.partnerssurgical.com/) an innovative healthcare company focused on acquiring, developing and managing multi-specialty ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) throughout the United States.

With a focus on high acuity specialties like orthopedics, neurosurgery, and pain management, Partners Surgical marries its highly experienced and deeply knowledgeable management team with the most skilled and talented clinicians in their field.

"At present, there are a number of large ASC companies in US. It is rare to find one that focuses on the physicians' interests and rarer still to find a company whose sole purpose is dedicated to the relationship side of the business," said Ned Schwing, Executive Chairman and co-founder of the Company. "The ASC business has changed so dramatically and quickly over the last several years that medical professionals find themselves overloaded with administrative imperatives. Our team of experts will relieve them of those burdens and free them up to focus on what they do best  providing the highest quality of care to their patients."

Prior to forming Partners Surgical, Ned and Robert Schwing successfully conceived, created and co-founded several thriving healthcare businesses. Most recently, the Schwings founded National Cardiovascular Partners (NCP), an outpatient cath lab and ASC partnership venture, headquartered in Houston, Texas. Ned and Robert oversaw every aspect of the business to include executive management, development and expansion. NCP grew to 24 facilities in six states, and was acquired by Fresenius Medical Care North America, one of nation's largest healthcare organizations in 2014. Prior to forming NCP, the Schwings co-founded Specialty Therapeutic Care, a leading national distributor of specialty pharmaceuticals; Physicians Surgical Care, a national provider of freestanding ambulatory surgery centers and surgical hospitals; and Southwest Renal Care, a provider of patient-centered outpatient dialysis facilities.

The Schwings are joined by Eric Fournet, who serves as PSC's Chief Financial Officer. Fournet has broad experience in the healthcare service space as CFO of numerous healthcare ventures, most recently as CFO of National Cardiovascular Partners.

Partners Surgical is backed by Silversmith Capital Partners, a leading growth equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. Silversmith and affiliates have committed up to $100 million to support investment in infrastructure and significantly accelerate its growth and expansion.

"The mission of Silversmith is to partner with and support the best entrepreneurs in the industry," said Jeff Crisan, Managing Partner of Silversmith. "We strongly believe both in the concept of Partners Surgical and in the skill and stewardship of the team behind it. We have known the management team for years, and, as a Board member of National Cardiovascular Partners, I can attest that Ned, Robert and Eric are proven operators  they have the experience, tenacity and integrity necessary to grow this organization into an industry leader."

Partners Surgical is headquartered in Houston, Texas, though the scope of its operations extends throughout the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.partnerssurgical.com/.

About Silversmith Capital Partners

Founded in 2015, Silversmith Capital Partners is a Boston-based growth equity firm with $460 million of capital under management. Silversmith's mission is to partner with and support the best entrepreneurs in growing, profitable technology and healthcare companies. The firm seeks to invest $15 million to $50 million per company, with the ability to increase the equity commitment in select situations. Representative investments include ActiveCampaign, Digital Map Products, Impact Radius, Nordic Consulting Partners, and Partners Surgical. The founders have over four decades of collective investing experience and have served on the boards of numerous successful growth companies including Ability Network, Dealer.com, Liazon, Liberty Dialysis, MedHOK, National Cardiovascular Partners, Passport Health, SurveyMonkey, and Yapstone. For more information, visit www.silversmithcapital.com.

Contact: Margaret Aitken

(302)419-4334

[email protected]

SOURCE Partners Surgical Corporation

Related Links

http://www.partnerssurgical.com


NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- New York City African-American business leaders, in partnership with 20th Century Fox, Google, Facebook, Infor and AT&T, have launched an initiative to offer free admission to the critically-acclaimed feature, Hidden Figures, for over 25,000 students in New York.

New York schools are the first to benefit from the project. Like the 2015 project to screen Oscar-winner Selma - which reached 300,000 students across the country - the expectation is that other cities will join this important program as it rolls out in theaters nationwide.

Hidden Figures is the incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae)brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.

The screening program will educate students about the many contributions made by African-Americans to science, technology, engineering, and math, and inspire more students to enter those fields. Charles Phillips, Chairman and CEO of Infor, William M. Lewis, Jr. Co-Chairman of Investment Banking at Lazard, and Ken Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express, lead the group of African-American business executives driving the opportunity.

"On behalf of the African-American business community members involved today, I would like to thank the great organizations that have joined this effort," said Ken Chenault. "Hidden Figures spotlights our unsung communities' long lineage of shaping our nation. It serves as a wonderful opportunity to inspire the next generation to carry that torch forward."

"I'm deeply moved that my work is being used to educate and inspire students in this way. Programs like this are vital to sharpening our collective memories and enlightening young people about their history and exciting them about their future," said Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller nonfiction book Hidden Figures, on which the film is based.

The New York Public School System has already signed up for 10,000 tickets. They have been joined by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Eagle Academy for Young Men, De La Salle Academy, Harlem School of the Arts, Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC, Harlem Children's Zone, Harlem Village Academy and the East Harlem Tutorial Program. NY Public Library will assist with ticket distribution.

Dovetailing with this initiative, Google has announced that it will be inviting teenage girls and students to participate in a new online Made With Code project. Participants build an interactive graphic capturing the triumphant themes of the Hidden Figures movie. In partnership with AMC theatres and local school districts, Google will also be hosting coding workshops along with viewing parties of the movie, where students can watch and discuss the film, and learn introductory coding skills.

Dr. Linda Curtis-Bey, Executive Director of STEM, New York City Public Schools, said: "Hidden Figures provides an important platform from which teachers and students, especially girls, can engage in discussions about STEM, the role of women in the workplace and the contributions of African-Americans."

In January 2015, New York City African-American business leaders sponsored free tickets for schoolchildren to see the movie Selma - which retold Dr. Martin Luther King's famous voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. The project eventually funded free screenings for more than 300,000 students across 28 cities. It resulted in expanded school curricula and special showings at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and other historically important venues.

New York City business leaders contributing to the initiative:

Amsale Aberra and Neil Brown Scott and Iva Mills Gerald and Gwen Adolph Steve and Beverly Mills Bloomberg Diversity and Inclusion Team Morgan Stanley African American Partners Valentino D. Carlotti Laurence Morse and Pamela McKoin Tony Chase and Dina Alsowayel Adebayo Ogunlesi and Dr. Amelia Quist-Ogunlesi Ken and Kathryn Chenault Clarence Otis and Jacqui Bradley Dr. N. Anthony and Mrs. Robyn Coles Deval and Diane Patrick Edith Cooper and Robert Taylor Luis R. Penalver and Elizabeth Davis Frank Cooper and Nina Whittington-Cooper Charles and Karen Phillips Don and Saundra Cornwell Jonelle Procope and Frederick O. Terrell Ken and Andrea Frazier Tamara Harris Robinson Bruce Gordon and Tawana Tibbs Marva Smalls David and Tammye Jones Jose Tavarez and Holly Phillips, MD. Vernon Jordan Reggie Van Lee Debra Lee Ted and Nina Wells Bill Lewis and Carol Sutton Lewis Greg and Michelle Weston Edward and Carolyn Lewis Anr e and Paula Williams Michael and Charise Littlejohn Janice and Chris Williams Tracy Maitland and Kimberly Hatchett Deborah C. Wright Crystal McCrary and Raymond J. McGuire



About Hidden Figures

Based on a previously untold story, Hidden Figures highlights the achievements of African-American mathematicians and computer scientists in the 1960s. During World War II the aeronautics industry began hiring black female mathematicians to address an acute labor shortage. These pioneering engineers ended up at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory where, in working for NASA, they enabled the U.S. to win the space race. Astronaut John Glenn thought them so critical that he required confirmation of critical orbit calculations from these women before he made his historic trip around the earth. The film is released by Twentieth Century Fox Film.

About Twentieth Century Fox Film:

One of the world's largest producers and distributors of motion pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Film produces, acquires and distributes motion pictures throughout the world. These motion pictures are produced or acquired by the following units of the studio: Twentieth Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox International Productions, and Twentieth Century Fox Animation/Blue Sky Studios.

Media Contacts:

For NYC Business Executives: For Twentieth Century Fox: Rob Kellner Chelsey Summey [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Infor
LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Summary

Following the success of craft beer over the past few decades, the spirits industry is starting to take hold of the craft movement. Indeed, there is a shift happening in consumer preferences, away from mass-produced brands and towards spirits made with craftsmanship. Authentic experiences are in demand and more consumers are looking to experiment with innovative and quirky flavored spirits. This has led a number of distillers to increase their craft offerings to gain an early foothold in this emerging market.



Key Findings

There are numerous opportunities within the craft spirits market and this has brought about innovation themes such as the incorporation of innovative and/or medicinal ingredients. However, there are also challenges that distillers must address to be successful. The definition of "craft" is blurred as multinationals can legally use the claim, even when they do not fit the 'official' craft definition. The spirits industry is also dominated by larger brands, making it difficult for small distilleries to gain retail recognition. From these challenges, innovation opportunities are drawn, including the use of events and/or technology to emphasize craftsmanship.



Synopsis

"Opportunities in Craft Spirits" is part of Canadean's Hot Topics research. It explores the top trends and innovation themes within the craft spirits industry.



Reasons To Buy

- Understand the relevant consumer trends and attitudes that drive and support innovation success so you can tap into what is really impacting the industry.

- Gain a broader appreciation of the fast-moving consumer goods industry by gaining insights from both within and outside of your sector.

- Access valuable strategic take-outs to help direct future decision-making and inform new product development.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4575037/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A Florida woman is pursuing a new hernia mesh lawsuit after sustaining serious injuries she claims were the result of an allegedly defective Physiomesh Composite mesh patch manufactured by Ethicon, Inc. According to a complaint filed on December 27, 2016 in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, the Plaintiff received the Physiomesh patch (Catalog No. PHY1520V, 15 X 20 cm) during laparoscopic ventral hernia repair in February 2016. Complications associated with the allegedly defective mesh forced her to undergo hernia revision surgery in August 2016, upon which it was discovered that the Plaintiff had experienced an abdominal bulge, recurrent hernia, pain, and adhesion. Her lawsuit claims that the Physiomesh Composite mesh patch implanted at her initial hernia surgery was not reasonably safe for its intended use, and that the risks of the design outweighed any potential benefits. (Case No. 8:16-cv-03502-JDW-JSS)

"Our Firm is investigating a number of hernia mesh lawsuits involving Physiomesh Composite mesh products. The complications allegedly experienced by our clients echo many of the claims put forth in this lawsuit," says Sandy A. Liebhard, a partner at Bernstein Liebhard LLP, a nationwide law firm representing victims of defective drugs and medical devices. The Firm is now offering free, no-obligation legal reviews to individuals who may have been harmed by an Ethicon Physiomesh hernia patch.

Ethicon Withdraws Physiomesh Products from the Market

Ethicon voluntarily withdrew certain Physiomesh products from the market in May 2016, after unpublished data from two European registries indicated the recurrence and revision rates following laparoscopic ventral hernia pair were higher with the device than rates associated with the comparator set of mesh. The catalog number cited in this Physiomesh lawsuit, PHY1520V, is among those listed on a notification issued by Ethicon at that time. Ethicon was unable to determine the cause of the problem, but noted that it could be due to product characteristics, as well as operative and patient factors. The company indicated that it would not be returning any of the affected Physiomesh products to the market.

This case is just one of the most recent Physiomesh lawsuits to be filed in U.S. courts in recent months. Court records indicate that the first such case has been scheduled to go to trial in January 2018 in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois. (Case No. 3:16-cv-00368-JPG-PMF)

Bernstein Liebhard LLP is offering free, no-obligation legal reviews to patients who experienced serious complications following hernia repair with a Physiomesh patch. To learn more about filing a hernia mesh lawsuit, please visit Bernstein Liebhard LLP's website, or call 800-511-5092 to discuss your case with a member of our legal team.

About Bernstein Liebhard LLP

Bernstein Liebhard LLP is a New York-based law firm exclusively representing injured persons in complex individual and class action lawsuits nationwide since 1993. As a national law firm, Bernstein Liebhard LLP possesses all of the legal and financial resources required to successfully challenge billion dollar pharmaceutical and medical device companies. As a result, our attorneys and legal staff have been able to recover more than $3.5 billion on behalf of our clients. Bernstein Liebhard LLP is honored to once again be named to The National Law Journal's "Plaintiffs' Hot List," recognizing the top plaintiffs firms in the country. This year's nomination marks the thirteenth year the firm has been named to this prestigious annual list.

Bernstein Liebhard LLP

10 East 40th Street

New York, New York 10016

800-511-5092

ATTORNEY ADVERTISING.  2017 Bernstein Liebhard LLP. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Bernstein Liebhard LLP, 10 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016, 800-511-5092. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

Contact Information:

Sandy A. Liebhard, Esq.

Bernstein Liebhard LLP

info (at)consumerinjurylawyers(dot)com

http://www.rxinjuryhelp.com/

https://plus.google.com/115936073311125306742?rel=author

SOURCE Bernstein Liebhard LLP

Related Links

http://www.bernlieb.com


SAN DIEGO, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Procopio partner William "Bill" Eigner was recently appointed to a second term as Emeritus Trustee with the San Diego Police Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that supports efforts to improve police/community relations and awards grants to law enforcement for specialized equipment, training and collaborative community programs and works to help kids make smarter, safer online cyber choices.

"Bill Eigner has provided leadership and insight to the San Diego Police Foundation since 2009, first to guide our Board of Directors, and now in a second term as an Emeritus Trustee," said Sara Wilensky Napoli, President & CEO of the San Diego Police Foundation. "We are very fortunate to have the longstanding support of such an intelligent, altruistic and highly regarded leader."

"Well-respected business leaders like Bill Eigner help us engage the interest of an ever wider circle of community members, which strengthens San Diego's ability to maintain the peace and security that are the foundation of safe and livable neighborhoods," added San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman. "Public safety is a shared responsibility, and I appreciate leaders like Bill who exemplify such service and dedication in helping San Diego remain one of the safest big cities in our country."

At Procopio, Bill is a catalyst for success in counseling clients in the areas of venture capital, angel financing, seed capital and financing, governing, operating, buying, selling and merging (M&A) of growing technology and other businesses. He also has extensive experience in intellectual property protection, competitive business practices, securities and business structuring and financing, as well as mergers and acquisitions, contractual and political issues involving telecommunications and independent power producers.

For more information, visit the San Diego Police Foundation website.

About Procopio

Procopio is a full-service business and litigation law firm committed to thoughtful problem solving and improving your bottom line. With more than 150 attorneys based in San Diego, Silicon Valley, Phoenix and Austinwe're passionate about knowing your business and helping you grow and protect it for the long term. Procopio has the flexible infrastructure to support both small to mid-sized companies and large multinationals at every stage of the business life cycle. Our global reach across Asia and Latin America further expands our international partnerships and cross border capabilities. At Procopio, we are focused on what is important to youproviding smart, innovative and practical solutions in a cost-effective manner to help your business thrive. Learn more at Procopio.com.

Media Contact: Angela Giombetti

Communications and Public Relations Manager

Phone: 619.906.5740

Email: [email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com/.

SOURCE Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP

Related Links

http://www.procopio.com


LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Overview:



Enhanced 9-1-1 is a North American telephone network (NANP) feature of the 9-1-1 emergency-calling system that automatically associates a physical address with the calling party's telephone number. A second phase of Enhanced 9-1-1 service allows a wireless device to be located geographically using various radio-location technologies from the cellular network, or by using a Global Positioning System (GPS) built into the phone itself.



Originally adopted in 1996, and with a last major revision in 2010, location determination standards were based solely on the measured performance of outdoor wireless 9-1-1 calls. Moving beyond phase II, more recent efforts from the FCC and public safety organizations are leading towards dramatically improved indoor location determination.



No single technology approach will solve the challenge of improved indoor location accuracy, but rather a mixture of solutions such as WiFi, RFID, Bluetooth, and others



Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911) is an initiative to update 9-1-1 service infrastructure in the United States and Canada. NG911 migration is focused on transitioning the current traditional 9-1-1 environment to an operational model based on secure IP transport, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), modern network functional elements and changing responsibilities between a telecommunications service provider and a local 9-1-1 authorities. Public safety agencies look to lower operating costs through conversion to less-expensive IP-based systems and provide the public with more advanced communications options, such as text-to-911 and other multi-media communications (video, photos, etc.).



Public safety is much more than just dialing an emergency number as integrated communications and information is critical for optimal emergency response and coordination. Accordingly, all industry constituents are looking towards 4G/LTE to provide major improvements over existing LMR communications systems for emergency responders. It is anticipated that LTE will provide the high-speed data performance necessary to support the multimedia applications on which today's public safety agencies are increasingly relying.



Emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) are expected to improve emergency response effectiveness and also protect first responders themselves. Coupled with LTE, 5G, and other broadband wireless systems, AR and other technologies will bring about an entirely new class of public safety applications and services that are heretofore inconceivable.



Leveraging Big Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for public safety is also important for the future of public safety. There is an increasing demand for ubiquitous data connection for the public safety community. Data connectivity of the future will come from many sources, many of which will be machine-to-machine based, requiring little or no human interaction. There is also an opportunity to improve public safety by leveraging data analytics, especially in the area of real-time processing at the edge.



This report evaluates the current state of public safety technology and solutions and assesses emerging technologies and potential future solutions. The report also provides forecasts for public safety technology spending in the United States for 2016 through 2020. All purchases of Mind Commerce reports includes time with an expert analyst who will help you link key findings in the report to the business issues you're addressing. This needs to be used within three months of purchasing the report.



Report Benefits:

Forecasts for USA 2016 to 2020

Understand current public safety technologies

Identify emerging tech and solutions for public safety

Understand the use of Big Data and IoT for public safety

Learn about GIS, positioning, and location management methods

Learn about the impact of LTE on next generation public safety apps

R&D and planners in other regions will learn about USA public safety



Target Audience:

Network operators

System integrators

LMR radio suppliers

Public safety agencies

Public safety app developers

Network infrastructure providers

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4547430/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


"This has been a huge year for Rutter's. We opened 6 new stores and we gave a record number of donations to various organizations in the communities we serve. We love financially supporting charities, and organizations that make a difference in the lives of children and customers throughout our region. We look forward to continuing to grow and give back to our communities for generations to come," said Scott Hartman, Rutter's CEO and President.

Some of the ways Rutter's gave in 2016:

Children's Education Organizations Donations totaling $357,000 . Includes: $100,000 to the York & Hanover YMCA and YWCA. $50,000 to the Crispus Attucks Neighborhood Partnership. Vista School received $47,000 to pay for an autistic child's tuition. JCC in York received $25,000 to help with pre-school scholarships. Lancaster County Career and Technology Center received $10,000 for program funding

. Includes: Creative Arts Organizations Donations totaling $224,000 . Includes: Creative York received a $125,000 donation for an arts teaching room. Strand Capital received $20,000 to fund for the Performing Arts Summer Camp. DreamWrights Theatre received $50,000 to remodel the concession area. Belmont Theater received $14,500 to remodel their backstage facilities.

. Includes: Additional Organizations contributions totaled $107,000 . Includes: Penn State THON received $22,500 towards Four Diamonds fundraising for Hershey Children's Hospital. Junior Achievement received $25,000 for JA Biztown. $10,000 Children's Home of York .

. Includes: Vote With Your Dollars - $75,000 total Leg Up Farm - $25,000 York County Food Bank - $25,000 Make-A-Wish Greater PA & WV - $25,000

total Random Acts of Kindness  Rutter's employees gave out $1,000 to 23 organizations of their choosing, including: Life Path Children's Ministries Salvation Army Veterans' Helping Hand York County SPCA

to 23 organizations of their choosing, including: Grand Opening Donations  Rutter's donated $21,000 during all 6 Grand Opening.

A full list of charities receiving support from Rutter's can be found at rutters.com/charities.

With roots dating back to 1747, Rutter's 270-year history makes it the oldest family owned food company in the United States. Rutter's is widely recognized as an industry leader in food service, innovative technology, and customer service. Rutter's has twice been recognized as the US Convenience Chain of the year and is the only US convenience store chain to be recognized by receiving the International Convenience Retailer of the Year award. Rutter's is currently guided by family leadership with Scott Hartman president and CEO, Todd Rutter as president of Rutter's Dairy, and Tim Rutter as president of M&G Realty.

Photo: 1st Row Left to Right  Veterans' Helping Hand, Rutter's Smoke Dehoff donated to York County SPCA, Rutter's Jere Matthews (left) donated to Red Lion Area Community Service

2nd Row Left to Right - Hospice & Community Care, Rutter's Tim Rutter (left) donated to Springettsbury Township Police, Rutter's Brian Roadamel (center) donated to Central Pennsylvania Food Bank

3rd Row Left to Right  Rutter's Ryan Krebs and family (back row) donated to Life Path Children's Ministries, Rutter's Megan Waltemyer and daughter (center and right) donated to Salvation Army, Rutter's Brittany Fowler (center) donated to Children's Home of York, Rutter's Brian Ferry (left) donated to Shiloh American Legion Post #791 Veteran's Foundation, Rutter's Robert Perkins (center) donated to Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital, Rutter's Derek Gaskins (left) donated to Salvation Army.

Rutter's Farm Stores

Kirsten Dickason

[email protected]

SOURCE Rutters
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today announced that Alex Dayon, President and Chief Product Officer, will participate in a UBS Securities hosted investor meeting on Monday, Jan. 9, 2017 at 1:00 p.m. (PT) / 4:00 p.m. (ET) in San Francisco, CA.

An audiocast will be available on Salesforce's website at www.salesforce.com/investor.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information about Salesforce, visit: www.salesforce.com.

SOURCE Salesforce

Related Links

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NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Universal Health Services, Inc. ("Universal Health" or the "Company") (NYSE: UHS) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Central District of California, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Universal Health securities between February 26, 2015 and December 7, 2016, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants' violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Universal Health securities during the Class Period, you have until February 21, 2017 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Universal Health, through its subsidiaries, owns and operates acute care hospitals, behavioral health centers, surgical hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and radiation oncology centers.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Universal Health admitted patients based on its own financial considerations and not upon the medical necessity of the patient; (2) Universal Health would keep patients admitted until their insurance payments ran out in order to ensure the maximum payment for its services; (3) as a result, Universal Health's revenues from inpatient care relied on unsustainable practices; (4) in turn, Universal Health lacked effective internal control concerning its practices and policies of admitting patients; and (5) as a result, Universal Health's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On December 7, 2016, BuzzFeed published an article titled "Intake", detailing its year-long investigation into Universal Health, which was "based on interviews with 175 current and former UHS staff, including 18 executives who ran UHS hospitals; more than 120 additional interviews with patients, government investigators, and other experts; and a cache of internal documents." The report stated that "[c]urrent and former employees from at least 10 UHS hospitals in nine states said they were under pressure to fill beds by almost any method  which sometimes meant exaggerating people's symptoms or twisting their words to make them seem suicidal  and to hold them until their insurance payments ran out." The report further stated that "[t]wo dozen current and former employees from 14 UHS facilities across the country told BuzzFeed News that the rule was to keep patients until their insurance ran out in order to get the maximum payment," and that "scores of employees from at least a dozen UHS hospitals said those facilities tried to keep beds filled even at the expense of the safety of their staff or the rights of the patients they were locking up." The report also quoted Rick Buckelew, a Universal Health employee who ran Austin Lakes Hospital in Texas until 2014, who stated that "[i]f an insurance company gave you so many days, you were expected to keep the patient there that many days" and that this "was a 'common practice' that was openly discussed in regional conferences as well as phone calls with hospital executives."

On this news, shares of Universal Health's share price fell $15.01, or nearly 12% from its previous closing price, to close at $111.36 on December 7, 2016, damaging investors.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com


DENVER, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Solar Power Colorado 2017 is shaping up as an invaluable exploration of the growing role of solar energy in a changing political landscape. While solar energy continues its record-breaking growth nationally and in Colorado, the sector faces major uncertainties as the new political order takes shape in Washington D.C., and the conference will be one of the first major professional gatherings of the year to examine what lies ahead.

Solar Power Colorado is the Rocky Mountain region's premiere solar event. Don't miss the chance to meet 500 solar industry leaders and policymakers. See you there!

With the theme: Innovation: Making Solar Mainstream, the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA) - the conference host - is expecting about 500 professionals from March 13 to 15 at the Omni Resort in Broomfield, CO.

Launching the discussions with a keynote address the morning of March 14 will be Martin Keller, PhD., the new director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. As leader of the premier laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for energy efficiency and renewable energy, Keller will be positioned to describe the important work of the lab in advancing solar technologies. His address will be followed by a panel discussion among top solar industry leaders about trends in the industry. and what the changing national political scene means for solar energy development.

Bill Ritter, director of the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE), will provide a keynote Wednesday describing developments in states around the nation on building a new energy economy. Colorado's former governor, Ritter will be well positioned to describe the increasing role of states in developing solar policy as national leadership recedes. His talk will be followed by a panel discussion including utility leaders and observers exploring the solar/utility relationship as issues such as energy storage, grid modernization and distributed energy grow more prominent.

At a March 15th luncheon in a keynote speech, Dr. Donna Lynne will discuss the importance of solar energy in Colorado's economy. Colorado's Lieutenant Governor previously served as the executive vice president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and as group president responsible for its Colorado, Pacific Northwest and Hawaii regions.

Solar Power Colorado will also feature 10 panel discussions with prominent experts in different aspects of solar energy from around the nation. Additionally, nearly a dozen training sessions will be held, providing continuing education credits for solar professionals.

Wednesday afternoon, a Career Fair and Networking event called "Solar Ready Colorado" will allow those interested in exploring solar careers an opportunity to talk with top employers including Namaste Solar, Sunrun, EcoMark Solar, Clean Energy Collective, Sunsense and more. Hosted by Solar Energy International, Grid Alternatives Colorado and COSEIA, the event will be the first event of its kind for Solar Power Colorado.

Registration is now open for Solar Power Colorado 2017. Please visit http://www.coseia.org/conference. Working media may request media passes.

About COSEIA

Established in 1989, Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA) is the award-winning nonprofit association leading Colorado's solar industry. Our mission is to expand solar markets and to generate jobs and prosperity for the people of Colorado. We work to advance solar policy, remove market barriers, highlight emerging trends, and promote solar outreach and education. COSEIA represents a wide range of solar-related businesses including solar installers, manufacturers, distributors, dealers, integrators, financiers, developers, utilities, entrepreneurs and educators. There are approximately 5,000 people working in the Colorado solar industries. Colorado has more than 800 MW of installed solar, ranking the state ninth nationally in installed solar capacity. To learn more please visit http://www.coseia.org.

Contact: Rebecca Cantwell

Phone: (720) 209-6000

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association

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NOVI, Mich., Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Stoneridge, Inc. (NYSE: SRI) today announced that Jonathan B. DeGaynor, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Robert R. Krakowiak, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, will participate in the 2017 Global Auto Industry Conference hosted by Deutsche Bank with a Company presentation at 2:25 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, at the MGM Grand Detroit. The presentation materials will be posted to the "Investors\Webcasts & Presentations" section of the Company's website (www.stoneridge.com) on Tuesday, January 10, 2017.

About Stoneridge, Inc.

Stoneridge, Inc., headquartered in Novi, Michigan, is a global designer and manufacturer of highly engineered electrical and electronic components, modules and systems for the automotive, commercial, motorcycle, off-highway and agricultural vehicle markets. Additional information about Stoneridge, Inc. can be found at www.stoneridge.com.

SOURCE Stoneridge, Inc.

Related Links

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ATLANTA, Jan. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Delta CEO Ed Bastian extends condolences following reports of a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport in the baggage claim area in Terminal 2, where Delta operates.

"The thoughts and prayers of the entire Delta family are with the people of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, and those involved in the tragic events today," said Delta CEO Ed Bastian. "We're grateful to the first responders on the scene who immediately went into action to evacuate our customers and employees. I also want to thank our employees in the operation in Fort Lauderdale and beyond who are working to re-accommodate our customers. The safety of our customers and employees is our deepest core value, and we are providing our complete support to authorities as the situation develops."

The terminal was evacuated as a result of the shooting. Preliminary reports indicate that all Delta employees are safe and accounted for during what remains an ongoing active shooter incident at the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. We are working with local law enforcement. Customers traveling to and from FLL today should expect flight disruptions and are encouraged to check flight status at Delta.com or via the Fly Delta Mobile App.

Due to the status of Terminal 2, Delta will be offering a waiver for customers to change their travel plans free of penalty, and will be published to the delta.com homepage soon.

Stay with news.delta.com and @DeltaNewsHub for the latest information.

SOURCE Delta Air Lines

Related Links

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LONDON, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Summary

Canadean's Travel and Tourism Industry Business Outlook and Procurement Report examines executives' opinion on the business outlook and procurement activities during November 2016-April 2017. Organizations can know about key business priorities, supplier price variations, changes in capital expenditure, mergers and acquisitions within the global travel and tourism industry, and organizations perspective towards e-procurement.



Key Findings

- China, India, and Russia will offer the most growth prospects for the travel and tourism industry over the next six months

- The highest percentage of respondents expect the US to provide significant growth opportunities during November 2016-April 2017

- Market uncertainty and rising competition are major challenges for organizations within the travel and tourism industry in November 2016-April 2017

- Organizations within the travel and tourism industry will increase their use of technology and focus on internal operating cost reductions in November 2016-April 2017

- Procurement activities on IT services will increase over the next six months



Synopsis

Mergers and acquisitions are expected to increase within the travel and tourism industry over the next six months (November 2016-April 2017) due to the global expansion of business, a need to secure market shares, especially in emerging destinations, the desire to maximize resources through investments, and the want to build immediate brand recognition. Market uncertainty and rising competition are major challenges for organizations within the travel and tourism industry during November 2016-April 2017. However, respondents are willing to increase their focus on improving operational efficiency and expansion in current markets. Furthermore, developing economies such as China and India are projected to offer significant growth opportunities for the global travel and tourism industry, due to the construction of new hotels and increasing disposable income in the respective countries. On average, global travel and tourism industries procurement expenditure is projected to increase by 5.6% over the next six months.



Reasons To Buy

- Highlights key business priorities (including comparisons over the last six months) thus helping travel and tourism companies to realign business strategy

- Organizations can develop or adjust business expansion plans by knowing the significant growth offering emerging and developed markets highlighted in the report

- Make changes in procurement budget allocations through procurement budget projections anticipated by executives for November 2016-April 2017

- Implement effective price management strategy by viewing supplier price variations highlighted for next six months

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4575041/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

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NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing focus on expansion of gas pipeline infrastructure, along with increasing utilization of natural gas for re-injection into oilfields to enhance oil production, declining LNG prices and implementation of favorable government policies is expected to boost demand for LNG in the UAE. In order to address the growing domestic demand for LNG, the country imports natural gas and LNG from Qatar through Jebel Ali LNG Terminal and Dolphin Energy operated pipeline. Jebel Ali (OFFSHORE) LNG Terminal was commissioned in 2010 in Dubai, with an initial LNG handling capacity of 3 mmtpa, which increased to 6 mmtpa in 2015. Power generation sector was the largest consumer of LNG in the UAE as of 2015, however, with commissioning of four nuclear plants with 5.6 GW capacity, demand for LNG from power sector in the country is expected to decline during the forecast period, thereby impacting demand for LNG in the region.



According to "UAE LNG Market Demand & Supply Analysis, By Region, By Application, By LNG Terminal, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2025", UAE LNG market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7.6% during 2016-2021. UAE is the third largest importer of LNG in Middle East & Africa region in 2015. The country mainly imports LNG from Qatar, Australia, Trinidad & Tobago and Indonesia. Various upcoming LNG terminal projects, surging demand for natural gas and cost-effectiveness of LNG in comparison with other alternative fuels are major factors anticipated to positively influence the LNG market scenario in UAE, over next ten years."UAE LNG Market Demand & Supply Analysis, By Region, By Application, By LNG Terminal, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2025" discussesthe following aspects of LNG market in the UAE:



- UAE LNG Demand & Supply Analysis

- UAE LNG Potential Demand & Supply Gap

- Regional Market Analysis (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Others)



Why You Should Buy This Report?



- To gain an in-depth understanding of LNG market in the UAE.

- To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next ten years

- To help LNG terminal operators, aggregators, suppliers, marketers and consultants in aligning their market-centric strategies

- To obtain research based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material

- To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players

- To avail 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs



Report Methodology



The information contained in this report is based upon both primary and secondary research. Primary research includes interaction with LNG terminal operators, aggregators, distributors and industry experts. Secondary research includes an exhaustive search of relevant publications such as company annual reports, financial reports and proprietary databases.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04518430-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com



__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

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PARIS, Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- VISIOMED Group, a company specialising in next-generation medical electronics, is continuing with its strategic-partnership policy on the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, with the integration of BewellConnect connected healthcare services and MAJORD'HOME connected TV platform dedicated to providing home assistance to the elderly.

MAJORD'HOME is a connected TV service platform developed by the VITY company. Visiomed Group integrates the BewellConnect home care, remote consultation and telemedicine services and applications using a simple television screen and a traditional remote control. The concept is to incorporate television at the heart of a system of digital services and technologies that ensure good ageing at home. Currently, the unique BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME service offers the first set of TV Apps aimed at supporting the elderly at home.

With the software architecture designed by VITY and the APIs developed by the VISIOMED GROUP, the two partners were able to integrate the first BewellConnect connected healthcare platform directly into the BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME interface. In this manner, TV sets replace smartphones and, with support of an Internet connection managed by the MAJORD'HOME Mediabox, provide access the BewellCheck-up and MyDoc services.

Combined with BewellConnect connected medical devices (MyThermo, MyTensio, MyECG, MyScale, etc.), the elderly, caregivers and families can measure and monitor changes of essential data on a daily basis. Thanks to the BewellCheck-up service, an artificial intelligence system, users can quickly benefit from diagnostic guidelines through an algorithm that incorporates 250 emergency diagnoses and 670 general medical diagnoses. If necessary, using the MyDoc service, users can be put in contact directly with a doctor on the remote-consultation medical platform available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the event that abnormal health data are received.

BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME provides people "disconnected from the digital world" access to e-health services while improving their everyday quality of life, reinforcing their social connection to the outside world, with both doctors and family, and providing medical care at home.

The MAJORD'HOME Mediabox can be controlled and used easily through a traditional TV remote control that gives users access to additional SmartTV services (control of live TV, ReplayTV, etc.) and home automation features (access control, lighting, heating, etc.).

With Internet connection and connected medical devices, BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME allows for the implementation of telemedicine services. Additionally, a decree regarding care through remote monitoring for certain chronic conditions was recently published in the Official Journal. This decree is part of an extension of article 47 of the law on funding for social security for 2017, and it allows for specifying funding for telemedicine.

By simply offering new services on a television screen, which anyone can use, BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME can contribute to reducing, at the same time, the constraints and costs of medical monitoring, thus fighting against medical deserts.

BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME is intended for the growing market of the Silver Economy. By 2020, 2 billion people will be over the age of 65, 80% of whom will live in developed countries. 85% of them wish to continue living in their homes and demand solutions integrated into their habitats, with over 55% willing to use remote systems to monitor their health.

BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME will be marketed from the 3rd quarter of 2017 mainly in the form of B2B2C, through insurance companies, mutual insurance companies, remote-assistance companies and companies working in services for people looking for a digital home support platform, as well as 22,500 pharmacies which will be able to offer the BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME service to their customers.

The financial model of BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME is based on:

The purchase and installation of the Mediabox kit and related medical devices

kit and related medical devices Subscription to BewellCheck-up and MyDoc services

and services Access to offers of custom complementary services (meals, concierge, coach, home care, beauty treatments, etc.) offered by partner companies through apps available on the TV set.

The pricing of BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME services will depend on "Module Packs" (health, security and/or home automation) chosen as well as on the duration of the agreement. The subscription cost will be between $26.00 and $210 per month, including taxes.

Eric Sebban, Founder and CEO of VISIOMED GROUP, says: "Our goal is to make connected health accessible to everyone. Thanks to BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME, we can make homes connected and smart, providing custom services designed for each person. We are opening a new market segment with lots of potential, with seniors looking for easy-to-use solutions that can extend their life expectancy in good health at home."

Discover BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME live at www.bewell-connect.com.

You can discover BewellConnect/MAJORD'HOME and the many innovations introduced by the BewellConnect teams during CES 2017 in Las Vegas, using the Direct Live link available on our website at www.bewell-connect.com.

About VITY

Vity is an SME that has been specialising in the development of products and solutions for the professional home automation market for over 20 years. Historically, it developed on the distribution of professional audiovisual products, thus gaining the trust of its customers. The company then diversified its operations into the automation industry and developed many home automation products covering the needs of professionals (control of meeting rooms, museums, conferences, homes, etc.). Since 2011 and the acquisition of the company by Eric Berthaud, we completed several projects in the fields of e-health, home care and energy efficiency. We also received several awards for these projects (ASIM in 2012, SOLENN in 2015, etc.).

MAJORD'HOME is a combination of all these skills and technologies. It is the 1st television platform at the service of the connected home. The idea is to offer households the possibility to control their homes from a single interface and, what is more, the most widely used in the home, television. Based in Lorient, France, the team consists of engineers who search but especially develop our solutions; marketers who are in charge of making it known; as well as salespeople who travel all over France and the world to introduce and sell the product.

About the VISIOMED GROUP

Founded by Eric Sebban in 2007, VISIOMED GROUP is a company that specializes in next-generation medical electronics. The laboratory develops and markets innovative healthcare products in the promising areas of self-diagnosis for medical use and well-being. VISIOMED is also the inventor of the ThermoFlash, the 1st contactless medical infrared thermometer. VISIOMED products combine innovation, technology and design to non-drug prevention and treatment solutions focusing on simplicity, comfort and well-being for users. In 2014, VISIOMED GROUP announced the launch of its "BewellConnect" range of connected healthcare products, thus becoming the 1st medical electronics laboratory to penetrate the very promising market of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Based in Paris, France, VISIOMED GROUP relies on a team of 105 employees, with a sales force dedicated to commercialisation through pharmacies (OTC), to health professionals (hospitals, clinics, retirement homes) and, since late 2010, in retail shops. In 2015, the Group achieved a turnover of over 10M. VISIOMED GROUP is classified as an "Innovative Company" by Bpifrance.

VISIOMED GROUP was ranked 2nd in the national chart on the occasion of the 2014 edition of Deloitte In Extenso Technology Fast 50 and 2nd in Europe in the Health/Biotech/Pharma sector of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. In 2016, VISIOMED GROUP won the ScaleUp Awards organised by KPMG and CroissancePlus and was ranked 1st among companies in the Health industry in the FW500 (FrenchWeb) ranking.

More information at www.visiomed-lab.com.

SOURCE BewellConnect
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Jan. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The SunBox Company

The weather is cold and the days are short. The SunBox Company can help. If you find you're struggling to get work done, feel sluggish, snacking more; then it may be the winter blahs  and those could lead to Seasonal Affective Disorder-SAD.

Woman with winter blues

It's all about light or the lack of it. When the days get shorter, we experience less sunlight and that can affect our mood. Stress and genetics play a role in depression, but studies have shown that those who notice the short days and feel their energy & mood changing can experience some form of winter depression.

3 ways to stay cheerful and healthy are:

1. Get some light at work or home

Get a SunBox light therapy unit to use for 15 to 30 minutes in the morning. Pull those blinds open, and trim shrubs in front of windows.

2. Put a timer or dawn simulator on your bedside lamp

Studies show that having your bedroom light come on a half hour before you need to get up can jumpstart the body clock to wake up easier. This is great for school kids and those of us adults that need to get up early.

3. Take a walk outside

Walking for 20-30 minutes has proven health benefits. Being outdoors especially in the bright morning can boost your mood and keep those unwanted pounds off.

Those of us who suffer from winter depression actually experience the first signs of it just as autumn sets in. You have more control than you think when it comes to preventing seasonal mood changes. Be proactive, and now is the perfect time to do something. Getting healthy is one of the top resolutions for 2017.

Using a SunBox tricks the user's brain into producing summertime levels of hormones; which regulate sleep, appetite, mood, and energy. Studies published in the Archives of General Psychiatry show that morning exposure to bright light is highly effective in minimizing symptoms of winter blahs and SAD.

Visit us at the NBC4 Health & Fitness Expo January 7-8 at the Washington Convention Center. We are in NBC 4 Changing Minds Pavilion-booth # 1316

The SunBox Company, 19217 Orbit Drive, Gaithersburg MD 20879-4149 800-LITE-YOU (548-3968) www.sunbox.com e-mail: [email protected]

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SOURCE The SunBox Company

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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
Seoul, Jan 2 : South Korea on Monday said that it has imposed a fine of 7.1 billion won (around $5.8 million) on BMW, Porsche and Nissan car manufacturers for falsifying data for the sale permits of ten models.

The South Korean Ministry of Environment announced that besides imposing economic sanctions on the local units of the companies, it has cancelled certificates of the vehicles after detecting irregularities in the documents, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Nissan Korea, the South Korean unit of the Japanese company, is suspected of submitting the report from Mercedes Benz for its model Infiniti Q50 and that from Renault for Qashqai.

In the case of BMW, Seoul suspects that test results submitted for its model X5M actually correspond to X6M.

The local unit of the German company explained that some results of X6M were included in the reports as both models have the same engine and are under the same certification number, thus qualifying them to share the test results, according to the ministry.

Similarly, the local unit of Porsche is accused of fabricating emissions test results, something that the German company voluntarily informed the authorities during the course of the investigation, added the ministry.

The South Korean government has urged prosecutors to formally investigate Nissan and despite imposing fines, has decided not to conduct an official enquiry into the German companies considering BMW's violation was minor and Porsche's collaborative attitude.

The ministry also said that it would reinforce its certification system to prevent similar irregularities in the future.
Chandigarh, Jan 3 : Nearly two months after 43 legislators in Punjab tendered their resignations from the assembly over an SC ruling on the SYL Canal issue, there is uncertainty on their status.

Forty two legislators of the Congress, led by Leader of Opposition Charanjit Singh Channi, and an independent legislator had tendered their resignations from the state assembly on November 11, 2016, to protest against the Supreme Court ruling.

Punjab assembly Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal, who had called the legislators on Tuesday to verify their resignations individually, said that the legislators were "unable to appear" before him and they have communicated the same through a letter on Monday.

The letter was from the Punjab Congress Legislature Party's Secretary A.C. Kaushik, and it informed that the concerned MLAs could not present themselves before the Speaker asking for 10 days time.

This was told to the media in a statement from the Speaker's office.

It further said that in accordance with the norms, Atwal had called the concerned MLAs to his office earlier once more between December 20-22, 2016, to ensure that the resignations by the MLAs were tendered of their own accord.

But similarly in a letter then as well from the Secretary of the Punjab Congress Legislature Party on December 15, it was informed Atwal the MLAs, who had resigned, were busy in Delhi and could "not present themselves before the Speaker".

Earlier, too, a timeframe of 10 days was requested said the communication from the Speaker's office.

The Speaker then called the MLAs on January 3, again.

The statement from the Speaker also said that the time for the next meeting would be fixed only after a written request in person was made along with the signature by the Leader of Opposition.

The apex court, which was hearing the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal matter on water-sharing between Punjab and Haryana, had ruled on November 10, that Haryana should get more water from Punjab.

The Punjab government had refused to share any additional water with Haryana even after the ruling, leading to a stalemate over the matter.

The Punjab assembly has a strength of 117 members.

The resignations by the Congress lawmakers came at the fag end of the tenure of the outgoing assembly. Assembly elections in Punjab are likely to be held next month.

Punjab Congress president and Lok Sabha MP from Amritsar Amarinder Singh, who is a former Chief Minister of Punjab, also resigned from his parliamentary seat following the Supreme Court ruling.
Jammu, Jan 3 : National Conference chief Omar Abdullah on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and asked her to accept responsibility for the civilian deaths during the six-month unrest in the Kashmir Valley last year the way he did when he was heading the state government in 2010.

After Speaker Kavinder Gupta allowed an adjournment motion moved by the opposition, the former Chief Minister said there was unrest in the valley also in 2008 and 2010 but "we did not blame the opposition" for that.

"The situation in 2010 cannot be compared with that of 2016," he told the house.

"We did not blame Pakistan or the opposition for the situation. I did not blame my officials in 2010. In 2016, the media was attacked and newspaper offices were raided. We made mistakes and I accepted making mistakes while handling the situation."

Taking a dig at Mehbooba, Abdullah said: "You blamed Jawaharlal Nehru, my father, my grandfather and police for militancy in the state."

"Did you ever blame yourself for your failure to restore normalcy in Kashmir?"

Abdullah said the state government had completely failed in dealing with the situation after the killing of militant Burhan Wani on July 8 last year.

Instead of blaming the opposition, the Chief Minister should accept the responsibility for the failure of her administration and the killings of nearly 100 civilians during the unrest, he said.

Abdullah later lashed out at Mehbooba for not participating in the debate.

"Rather than reply to the discussion, she preferred to fly out so she could lay a handful of foundation stones in the valley tomorrow," the former chief minister tweeted.

"It shows her complete lack of concern for the victims, her uncaring attitude and her total disdain for the sanctity of the assembly of J&K."

"She used the state's plane and could've flown out later this evening or early tomorrow morning. She chose to dodge the house and run away."

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party legislators continued to seek an apology from the National Conference and the Congress for allegedly disrespecting the national anthem on Monday during the joint sitting of the bi-cameral legislature which Governor N.N. Vohra addressed to mark the opening of the budget session.

Earlier, the opposition disrupted proceedings in both the assembly and the council seeking discussion on the valley's unrest.

The Speaker allowed the discussion after the treasury benches said they had no objection to discussing it.
Washington, Jan 5 : President Barack Obama visited the Congress to ask Democratic legislators to remain firm against Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform.

As Obama was meeting with Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence held a meeting with Republican legislators, also at the Capitol, to make clear to them that the first act of the newly-installed Congress must be "to repeal and replace Obamacare", as the health care reform is popularly known, Efe news reported.

Repealing the 2010 ACA has long been a goal of Republicans, who have passed several bills gutting the law only to see Obama veto those measures.

Once a Republican is in the White House, there will be little to stop the Republican from scrapping the ACA, though Trump has said he would like to retain some features of the programme, such as the ban on health insurers' denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Despite the insistence of reporters, Obama made no remarks upon leaving the Capitol and simply issued a curt message to Democrats to "Look out for the American people".

At his daily press conference, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Obama spoke with lawmakers about the tangible effects that would ensue if Obamacare is dismantled, including the impact on the approximately 22 million Americans who have acquired health care coverage thanks to the law.

Earnest said that repealing Obamacare will not be an "improvement," noting that Obama himself has acknowledged that the law is not perfect but he has never found any willingness among Republican lawmakers to try and correct or amend its weaker points.

Obama also advised Democrats on Wednesday to refuse to "rescue" Republicans by helping them approve measures to replace Obamacare, according to information from several of those present at the closed-door meeting.

After meeting with the president, top Democratic congressional leaders held a press conference to denounce the Republicans for having no concrete plan to replace Obamacare, a line taken also by the White House.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the result of repealing Obamacare will be to make the country "sick" again, not make it great again, paraphrasing Trump's campaign slogan.

The new Congress was inaugurated on Tuesday, with Republicans holding majorities in both chambers and launching an initiative to allow the health care law to be repealed in the Senate with just 50 votes in favour, rather than the 60 that would normally be necessary in a case like this.

That initiative also instructs congressional committees to have a bill ready to repeal Obamacare before January 27.

At a press conference with Pence and other Republican leaders, House Speaker Paul Ryan emphasized that, once Obamacare has been repealed, lawmakers must guarantee that there is a "stable transition" to a new health care system with more options and more freedom.

Ryan said the law promulgated in 2010 - which obliges people to purchase health insurance and is considered to be Obama's greatest legislative achievement - had failed.
New Delhi, Jan 5 : Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Minister Jitendra Singh condoled the death of North East Council (NEC) Member Gangmumei Kamei, who passed away on Thursday due to illness.

Kamei, an academician, was appointed as member of the NEC in July 2015. He was 77.

"Gangmumei Kamei's contribution to the north eastern region will always be remembered. He will not only be remembered as a professor, but also as a writer and historian whose area of specialisation was regional history of Northeast India and history of Manipur," said Singh in his condolence message, adding "his contribution to the North East region will keep inspiring us for times to come".

A condolence meeting in his honour was held at the NEC Secretariat, Shillong.

NEC is a body to efficiently channelise government funds for the socio-economic development of the northeast region of India.
Jammu, Jan 5 : Indian army chief, Gen. Bipin Rawat who arrived here on Thursday on his maiden visit after taking over the post, will also visit the Siachen Glacier and other forward areas, a defence statement said.

"Army chief, Gen Bipin Rawat is visiting Jammu and Kashmir on a three day tour from January 5 to 7. He will be visiting Udhampur, Srinagar, Nagrota and Siachen during his tour.

"He will also be visiting formations at Kupwara, Anantnag, Akhnoor and Rajouri where he will be briefed upon the prevailing security situation and will interact with officers and men," the statement said.

It said that the army chief lauded the role of Northern Command in restoring peace and normalcy during the recent unrest, and also commended the soldiers for strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan.

"Every soldier of our Army plays an important role towards security of the nation because it is the contribution of every soldier that makes the Army efficient and strong," the statement quoted Rawat as saying.

The army chief also emphasised that they need to evolve "a dynamic strategy to handle the proxy war and defeat enemy's nefarious designs", it added.
New Delhi, Jan 5 : DCW chief Swati Maliwal came across gross violation of human rights during a surprise visit to a government-run 'beggar home' here and found over 15 foreign nationals, including a pregnant Nigerian woman, lodged there amid pathetic living conditions, official sources said.

The DCW said it found violation of human rights of several inmates.

The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief has now issued notices to the Social Welfare Department and Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) -- a government agency responsible for regulating the extended stay and movement of foreigners in India -- after she spent a night at the beggar home at Nirmal Chaya Complex in Janakpuri on Tuesday.

Maliwal sought a reply from the FRRO and Social Welfare Department within 72 hours.

"Fifteen women and two children - all foreign nationals -- housed in the home... The DCW Chairperson met an Uzbek national who complained of molestation by FRRO officials," a DCW statement said.

The foreign nationals were detained for overstaying in India for different reasons.

Women inmates, who said they were wearing the same clothes for days, complained to Maliwal that they were not allowed to make phone calls to their families or embassies due to which they have not been able to contact anyone for legal or financial assistance.

The women were worried since their families had no idea where they were, the DCW said.

The DCW chief found that only two of the five toilets at the beggar home were fit for use. One toilet was marked 'HIV', which no one used due to fear of contracting the disease whereas one was locked for use by staff.

Maliwal has since written to the beggar home superintendent to ensure proper medical treatment for the pregnant Nigerian woman and another from Kenya.

"The commission Chairperson was shocked to learn from the inmates that their private parts are physically checked by the caretaker before they are allowed entry into the home. When asked, the caretaker on duty admitted to the same in front of inmates," the DCW statement said.

Maliwal found that the Nigerian woman, whose two children were also lodged along with her at the beggar home since December 26, had complained for the past 10 days to the staff that she was no longer feeling any movement in her womb but to no avail.

"She alleged no action was taken to help her. She said she begged the staff to allow her to call her doctor but she was denied the same," the statement said.

The Kenyan national said she was taken six times to a doctor in the complex but he did not conduct any test and her medical problem is persisting.
New York, Jan 6 : In another milestone for Sikhs, US Army commanders have been ordered to allow those of the faith to wear turbans, karas and keep their beards.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning on Wednesday signed the order that said: "The soldier's brigade-level commander will approve a request for a religious accommodation" by Sikhs.

Till now Sikhs had to get permission from the Army Secretary, a cumbersome process prone to delays and not automatically given.

Now they need to apply only to their brigade-level commanders, who will have to give them permission except in certain cases involving their safety like exposure to poison gases.

Once it is granted they can keep the exemption for most positions in the military.

Sikh Coalition Legal Director Harsimran Kaur welcomed the new rules. "We are pleased with the progress that the new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity by our nation's largest employer," she said.

The order also allows Muslims to wear hijabs. Muslim men can also keep beards.

The New York Police Department, the biggest in the US, changed its rules last month to allow Sikhs to wear turbans and keep their beards.

Last year Captain Simratpal Singh, an Afghan war veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star, and two others filed a case against the army saying the ban on beards and turbans curbs their religious freedom.

The Army Secretary then gave the three of them permission to wear turbans.

According to the civil rights organisation, Sikh Coalition members of the faith had been serving in the US military from at least World War I. But in 1981, the army changed the rules to ban beards and turbans.

"My turban and beard represent my commitment to pluralism and equality," said Major Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, an army doctor who served in Afghanistan and won a Bronze Star.

"This policy change underscores the military's commitment to these values and is a sign of meaningful progress that will ensure the strength of our democracy."

While the restrictions on having beards still hold if there are risks like exposure to toxic material, Fanning ordered the army to test existing products to see if they can be made safe for those wearing beards and to look for alternative equipment.
New Delhi : If I were a woman I would draw one eyebrow way higher than the other and spend my whole life looking wildly sceptical about everything.

Wait. That might make me unpopular in church.

Still, it might be worth it. News stories sent in by readers indicate that Destiny has run out of believable plot lines and has fallen back on extreme stereotypes. I can predict the end of every tale readers send me.

Example: After a child-custody deal recently, a little boy was set to be handed from one grandma to another. In most places, that would be straightforward -- but this took place in America, in the state of Texas, no less. You can guess what's coming.

Both grandmothers carried loaded weapons as they entered the chosen transfer site, a Walmart parking lot. Both shooting. Police got involved, the area was sealed off, blood was spilled, violent grannies had to be subdued, hundreds of people were inconvenienced and a global nuclear war started. Well, maybe the last thing didn't happen, but everything else did.

"America can no longer be parodied, as it is already a ridiculous version of itself," said Marie Kan, who sent me the link.

True, Marie. The same is true of China. That country's reputation for bureaucratic obtuseness reached a new pinnacle. A reader from that country, in which fingerprints are often used instead of signatures, sent me a tale about a man with no arms who tried to get a bank loan.

You can guess the rest.

"We'll need your fingerprints," said bank officials. "I have no arms," said Wu Jianping, 25, of Henan province. "Refusing to cooperate, huh? The deal's off," said bankers. The same thing happened at every bank he tried.

I wonder what the bankers would say if you put a decapitated corpse in front of them? "So, you refuse to talk, or even stay upright in the seat? The deal's off, Mr Headless Corpse."

Even in placid, drama-free places like Canada, irrationality is the new norm. Officials in Toronto recently decided to discuss the importance of making facilities accessible for wheelchairs -- and you guessed it -- they chose a venue only reachable by stairs.

Perhaps the saddest recent tale in this regard was that of Shoga Takeda, a Japanese man of 24 who wanted to get his life together. He applied for a job. Halfway through the interview, the boss left the room for a moment, and Shogo stole his wallet. And following the dumb criminal stereotype, he left behind his application form, complete with his name, address and numerous ways to contact him.

My colleague has a theory that Destiny has upped the weirdness quotient of real life so as to combat all that fake news circulating these days. "That couldn't happen in real life," we will say to each other as we scan the clickbait headlines. "It's not weird enough."

Meanwhile, if any female reader will draw one eyebrow higher than the other on her face and kindly report back to me on the general effect, I will be grateful.

But just don't try to get a bank loan in China. "So, you're sceptical about everything, applicant? The deal's off."

(Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments via the his Facebook page)
Dhaka, Jan 6 : Nurul Islam Marzan, one of the key figures behind the 2016 Gulshan cafA attack, has been killed in a gunfight with the police in the Bangladesh capital, a senior police officer said here on Friday.

The incident took place at Mohammadpur in Dhaka around 3 a.m. in the Beribadh area, Dhaka Metropolitan Police's counter-terror unit chief Monirul Islam told bdnews24 on Friday morning.

Marzan was killed along with an accomplice, Saddam Hossain, an accused in several murder cases, including that of Japanese national Kunio Hoshi, the police added.

Confirming the identities of the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) leader and Hossain alias Rahul, who was also one of the organisers for Jamaat-e-Islami's student affiliate, the police said Marzan was labelled as the mastermind of the attack on Holey Artisan cafe in the Gulshan area of Dhaka.

On July 1, 2016, five militants took hostages and opened fire at the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe, killing 29 persons, mostly foreigners, including 19-year-old Indian Tarishi Jain.

On September 10, 2016, police detained three persons from Azimpur including the neo-JMB leader Marzan's wife Afrin, alias Prioti.

Counter-terrorism unit chief told a press conference on August 12, that pictures from Holey Artisan were sent out to apprehend and identify the attackers.

Earlier, a Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and one of the key players in recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27.

Another counter-terrorism official, Mohibul Islam, told bdnews24 that acting on a tip-off, one of the units set up a check-point at the Mohammadpur Beribandh area on Thursday night.

"At around 3 a.m. they (Marzan and Hossain) came to the check post area. When confronted by the police, they threw grenades and opened fire. Police fired back and two of them were injured.

"When they were taken to the hospital, the duty doctor pronounced them dead," Mohibul said.

Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) police post Sub Inspector Bacchu Mia said that two persons with gunshot wounds were brought to DMCH on a Mohammadpur Police Station vehicle around 3.40 a.m.

"One of them was about 28 years of age and the other 32. They had bullet wounds on the head and in the chest," he added.

Mohammadpur police station Officer-in-Charge, however, had no information regarding the two others taken to DMCH in critically injured condition.

"I am not fully aware of the incident," he said adding, "I will be able to let you know later."
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday said that India will help out sailors stuck in merchant ships at Ajman in United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Reacting to media reports, Swaraj in a tweet said, "I have seen the news report. We will resolve this."

One of the sailors, Anoop Pathak, sent an SOS message from his handle, which read: "@SushmaSwaraj our ship has holes and to much water coming in!... Please help us we want to go back home!"

According to media reports, 41 Indian sailors are stranded in four abandoned merchant ships at Ajman anchorage in UAE. The owner of the vessels had seized the passports of the sailors and is reportedly untraceable.

As per reports, the sailors have not been paid for more than a year.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national and suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) member Bahadur Ali alias Saifullah, who is accused of attempting to attack security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet was filed in a Patiala House court here under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosives Act, Arms Act and Foreigners Act, among other laws.

Ali, currently in judicial custody, was arrested on July 25, 2016, from a hideout in Yaham village in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir.

After his arrest, he led the police to a cache of arms and ammunitions buried in a nearby forest, the NIA said.

The chargesheet claimed that "Ali is a trained terrorist, practiced in the craft of reading maps using grid references and deft in communicating through wireless set by pairing mobile phone with it to avoid interception".

Along with two accomplices Abu Saad and Abu Darda, Ali infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control but subsequently on June 20 lost contact with the duowhen they went out looking for food. Abu Saad and Abu Darda were never caught.

"While crossing into India on the intervening night of June 12 and 13 last year, these terrorists were equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles," the NIA said in its chargesheet.

"These terrorists entered into Indian territory to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places in the country, as per the instructions given to them by their LeT handlers based in Pakistan or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)," it said.

A pocket diary allegedly seized from Ali revealed the names of places where he was instructed to carry out terror attacks -- Delhi, Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu and Udhampur.

At the time of his arrest, Ali was carrying "one compass, one ICOM wireless set, one matrix sheet bearing codes, two unicode sheets (handwritten pocket diary pages), bearing text written in coded form, Indian currency of Rs 23,000 (of which three notes were found to be fake), one GPS set and one map sheet".

Ali's instructors, meanwhile, informed him that the LeT cadres had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of militant Burhan Wani on July 8, 2016.

Kashmir plunged into disorder as hundreds of young men protested by hurling stones at the police and army personnel, the chargesheet said.

Ali was later instructed by the LeT to mix with the stone-pelting agitators and throw grenades at the Indian forces.

After his arrest, Ali allegedly revealed the location of another group of freshly infiltrated terrorists whom he was to receive.

"The information led to a search operation in Bandi Monabal area in Kashmir by state police and the army. Four unidentified terrorists were killed in retaliatory firing when they attacked a search team."

The NIA chargesheet said Ali was constantly in touch with Alfa-3 -- the LeT control station based in PoK.

Reacting to the development, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh said: "The perpetrators of terrorism cannot for long escape from the adverse outcomes of terrorism."

As for Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's threat of action against India, Singh said: "That kind of rhetoric is ultimately going to harm Pakistan more than India."

"As far as the evidence is concerned, the entire world now knows the epicentre of terrorism, at least in this part of Asia and in the Indian subcontinent, is none other than Pakistan," he added.
New York, Jan 6 : Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival jihadist group the Islamic State against his organisation.

In an audio message released on Thursday, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the IS chief, had alleged that Al-Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.

"The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites," Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm.

Al-Qaeda, founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, was locked in a battle with the Islamic State, which sprang from its Iraqi faction, for the leadership of a global jihad.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian, denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.

"What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia," he said.

He insisted he had not called for Shiite Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shiite-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.

"I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats (places if worship) and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shiite militiamen," he said.

The IS and Al Qaeda have both carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some Al Qaeda members have called for less indiscriminate tactics.

Zawahiri also denied Al-Baghdadi's charge that Al Qaeda supported ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who attempted to rule through the ballot box.

The Al Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistan's unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.

He communicates with the group's remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating the need to target the US.

The audio message restated the urgency to "tell America, to other than Allah we do not kneel" but also argued for a dialogue on tactics with other jihadists.

It was translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group.
Melbourne, Jan 6 : Australia has told its citizens visiting India to use electronic payments where possible as some travellers were facing difficulties exchanging Australian dollars post demonetisation.

In an advisory on Thursday, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said: "Indian authorities have replaced withdrawn 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, with new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes slowly entering circulation."

Australians planning to visit India have been told not to depend on the availability of cash and use bank and credit cards instead.

"Withdrawals from ATMs are subject to a daily limit of 4,500 rupees (around $A90), which applies to international bank cards.

"Expect queues and cash shortages at ATMs and note that many ATMs will not accept cards issued by foreign banks.

"Foreigners are permitted to exchange foreign currency up to 5,000 rupees (around $A100) per week at banks and foreign exchange bureaus."

The government also advised Australian travellers to consider taking foreign currency such as US dollar and Euros to change for local currency.
London, Jan 6 : Global warming is replicating conditions that triggered an abrupt sea level rise of several meters in the ocean around Antarctica some 15,000 years ago, warns a study.

"The changes that are currently taking place in a disturbing manner resemble those 14,700 years ago," said one of the researchers Michael Weber from University of Bonn in Germany.

At that time, changes in atmospheric-oceanic circulation led to a stratification in the ocean with a cold layer at the surface and a warm layer below.

Under such conditions, ice sheets melt more strongly than when the surrounding ocean is thoroughly mixed.

This is exactly what is presently happening around the Antarctic, said the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

"The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface," Chris Fogwill from the Climate Change Research Center in Sydney explained.

"At the same time as the surface is cooling, the deeper ocean is warming, which has already accelerated the decline of glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment (in West Antarctic ice sheet)," Fogwill added.

To investigate the climate changes of the past, the scientists studied the frozen "climate archive" - drill cores from the Antarctic ice sheet.

"The largest melt occurred 14,700 years ago. During this time the Antarctic contributed to a sea level rise of at least three meters within a few centuries," Weber noted.

The research team used isotopic analyses of ice cores from the Weddell Sea region -- southernmost tip of the Atlantic Ocean - which now flows into the ocean about a quarter of the Antarctic melt.

Through a combination of ice sheet and climate modelling, the isotopic data showed that the waters around the Antarctic were heavily layered at the time of the melting events, so that the ice sheets melted at a faster rate.

"The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,700 years ago," co-author Nick Golledge from Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, New Zealand, said.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : After a Chinese snub, India is likely to go back to the UN to have Pakistan-based terrorist Masood Azhar -- the alleged mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack -- declared as an international terrorist.

"We are examining all options and also consulting with the other co-sponsors," a source in the Ministry of External Affairs told IANS.

However, the government has not decided when to apply to the UN Security Council again after China again blocked the move to have sanctions imposed against the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief -- one of the three terrorists freed in exchange of passengers of an hijacked Indian Airline plane in 1999.

China last week blocked the Indian proposal at the Council, sparking sharp reaction from New Delhi. India said the Chinese move reflected "double standards" because Beijing was itself a victim of terrorism, China on Thursday refuted the Indian allegations and said it took a "just" stand by blocking New Delhi's bid.

"Allegation that China adopts double standards on the UN Security Council 1267 committee listing matter does not stand. China takes action based on solid evidence that is the one standard we use," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said in Beijing.

Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar earlier hoped that China "as a responsible and mature nation will understand the double standards are simply self defeating.

"We hope and we are sure that China can be persuaded to see the depth and evil of this menace.

"And we on our side are resolved that we shall never stop saying this that we will continue to point out the absurdity in the UNSC 1267 committee, in which 14 out 15 members voters agree on taking action against Masood Azhar," Akbar said on Wednesday.

India moved the UN against Azhar last year after seven security personnel were killed when terrorists from Pakistan attacked the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in Punjab on January 2.

The attack was allegedly masterminded by the Jaish and India has said it has clinching evidence against Azhar and his close associates.

JeM was banned by the Security Council in 2001 for its alliance with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Delhi Police arrested a person wanted in connection with the murder of his room partner here, police said on Friday.

The accused, identified as Vinod, 25, was arrested on Wednesday night from Khajuri Chowk area. He was visiting one of his friends when a police team raided him.

According to Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav, Vinod, a native of Jharkhand, worked as a catering helper in marriage functions. He had killed his room partner Mahender Tomar on July 15, 2016.

"Vinod had fled to Jharkhand after committing the crime and had been hiding in some forest area of the state. A cash reward of Rs 25,000 was also announced on his head," Yadav said.

"During interrogation, Vinod told police that he used to live with Mahender Tomar, the deceased, in Karawal Nagar. Tomar used to abuse him and use filthy language for his wife. This infuriated him and he planned to eliminate Tomar," Yadav said.

On July 15, 2016, Vinod took liquor with Tomar. Later they had a fight, following which he attacked Tomar with a sharp-edged stone, which caused his death, the officer added.

Vinod also told police that he belonged to a poor family in Jharkhand and started working as a domestic help in West Bengal.

"When he came to know that his elder brother's wife was having an extra-marital affair with a local person, he got very disturbed and moved to Delhi after burning his ancestral house," police said.
Manila, Jan 6 : Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte visited the Russian warship docked in Manila port on Friday in a new gesture of rapprochement with Russia.

Accompanied by Russian military and diplomatic authorities, Duterte saw the anti-submarine missiles, a Ka-27 helicopter and other facilities of Admiral Tributs, a 7,480-tonne Udaloy-class destroyer that docked in Manila port on Tuesday for a five-day goodwill visit, Efe news reported.

Duterte, who took office in June 2016, had promised to do away with the traditional military alliance with the US and has taken measures in recent months to develop closer diplomatic and economic ties with Russia and China.

He has threatened to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement, a bilateral accord with Washington in force since 1999. It permits, among other things, the use of Philippine bases by US troops and regular joint military drills.

Duterte, who strongly criticised the US and the West during his first bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2016, is set to visit Moscow in April or May on the Kremlin's invitation.

The warship's visit will develop a stronger friendship between Manila and Moscow, said the Filipino presidential office in a statement Friday.

The visiting Russian warship -- the third ever in history and the first in four years to visit the Philippines -- took part in several ceremonies and participated in joint military drills between the naval forces of the two countries.
Mumbai, Jan 6 : "Ram Bhajan Zindabad", featuring actor Om Puri -- who died on Friday -- will now release in February instead of January 13, says its producer Khalid Kidwai.

Om Puri died on Friday morning following a heart attack here.

Remembering the National Award winning actor, he said: "It is shocking news for us. We have postponed the release of the film. 'Ram Bhajan Zindabad' will be releasing in February. We will be officially announcing the final date within two to three days."

Kidwai said Om Puri has a central character in the film.

"His demise is a big loss for the industry," he added.

The film is a political satire and is directed by Ranjeet Gupta.

Featuring Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Seema Azmi, Ram Sethi and Shweta Bhardwaj among others, the story of the film revolves around Chiraunji village in Uttar Pradesh and shows how lower caste daily wager Ram Bhajan, who wants to earn more money, tries to misuse a government scheme and faces caste politics and corruption.
Jammu, Jan 6 : Indian Army chief, Gen. Bipin Rawat on Friday cut short his three-day long maiden visit to Jammu and Kashmir due to bad weather, defence sources said.

Rawat was scheduled to visit the Siachen glacier, Leh district, the Line of Control (LoC) in Baramulla and Kupwara districts and counter-insurgency formations in Anantnag district.

"Due to bad weather, the Chief of Army Staff had to cut short his visit and fly back to New Delhi today," defence sources told IANS in winter capital Jammu today.

Rawat, who landed here on Thursday, had reviewed the overall security situation along the borders at the Udhampur headquarters of the Northern Command yesterday.

Northern command chief Lt Gen Devraj Anbu had briefed him on the security situation along the borders and the hinterland in the state.

The army chief had also visited the Nagrota headquarters of the White Knights Corps, and on Friday, visited the LoC in Akhnoor sector of Jammu district.

The defence sources said during his visit to the LoC, Rawat commended the soldiers for strongly reciprocating to the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan.

While interacting with the field commanders, the army chief said that they need "to evolve a dynamic strategy to handle the proxy war and defeat enemy's nefarious designs in Jammu and Kashmir".

He had also told the soldiers that every one of them plays an important role towards security of the nation because it is the contribution of every soldier that makes the army efficient and strong, the sources said.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Indian economy is expected to grow at 7.1 per cent this fiscal -- without the impact of demonetisation being taken into consideration, according to an official advance estimate for the year released on Friday. The actual expansion in the first six months of 2016-17 stood at 7.1 per cent.

The country's gross domestic product will grow at 7.1 per cent in 2016-17 compared with 7.6 per cent in 2015-16, according to the estimate of national income for 2016-17 released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), even as industry called for a suitable union budget to stimulate investments and growth.

"The growth in deposits is an outlier, hence November data was not used for the financials," India's Chief Statistician T.C.A. Anant said, implying that demonetisation is not a normal factor in the calculation of annual national income.

The CSO has primarily used seven-month data to extrapolate for the full fiscal.

The anticipated growth of real GVA (gross value added, which excludes taxes and subsidies) in 2016-17 is 7 per cent against 7.2 per cent in 2015-16, said an official statement.

The GVA at basic prices for 2016-17 for manufacturing sector is estimated to grow by 7.4 per cent as compared to growth of 9.3 per cent in 2015-16.

The agriculture, forestry and fishing sector is likely to show a growth of 4.1 per cent in its GVA during 2016-17, as against the previous year's growth rate of 1.2 per cent.

The estimated growth in GVA for financial, insurance, real estate and professional services sector during 2016-17 is placed at 9.0 per cent as compared to growth of 10.3 per cent in 2015-16.

While announcing its monetary policy review last month, the Reserve Bank of India acknowledged the demonetisation factor and lowered their GVA growth estimates for the current fiscal to 7.1 per cent from the 7.6 per cent forecast earlier.

On November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes, saying the move was aimed to eliminate black money, counterfeit currency and terror financing.

The Nikkei Purchase Managers' Index (PMI) survey released earlier this month showed that demonetisation provoked a downturn both in Indian manufacturing and services growth in December.

Besides, the output of India's eight infrastructure industries in November 2016 increased by 4.9 per cent, but fell sequentially as compared to the 6.6 per cent growth logged in October.

The GDP advance estimates have taken into account the data on industrial production till October, corporate results till end September and the data on bank deposits and credits only till end-October.

"Because it is not an ordinary event, nobody's assessment is fact-based," the Chief Statistician said with reference to other estimates allowing for the depressive impact of demonetisation.

He also said the CSO does not use indicators based on money supply in their computation of national income.

Worryingly, the gross fixed capital formation -- a monetary measure of activities like building of roads, schools and hospitals, investments in plant and machinery, and construction of ports, and railways assets -- is estimated to fall to 29.1 per cent of GDP from 31.2 per cent last year.

"Gross fixed capital is an area of concern. Government will take necessary measures in that direction," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das told reporters here.

Commenting on the data, industry chamber FICCI President Pankaj Patel said in a statement: "The data on gross fixed capital formation corroborates the weakness in investment activity. We look forward to reduction in tax rates and further policy push to support demand and investment in the upcoming Union Budget."

"As per the advance estimates, while there is an upsurge in the growth of public investment, this has yet to crowd in private investment which continues to be sluggish thereby stymying growth. CII looks forward to a growth-oriented Budget which would unleash a new wave of investments," Confederation of Indian Industry Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said in a statement.

Industry body Assocham said that further downward risks to the growth still prevail in the form of continuous fall in fixed investments and index of industrial production, unsolved problem of Indian banks' bad loans, emerging geo-political risks and the spectre of financial market volatility.

"In addition to this, rising crude oil prices will have its adverse effects on current account deficit and exchange rate and unpredictability in the Indian economy due to recent policy stances and announcements on demonetisation and other related factors could further adversely impact the GDP," it said.

Rating agency Crisil commented that the GDP figures released by CSO are likely to have an "upward bias" and the "primary reason for CSO's overestimate is the absence of sufficient information for the third quarter when the economy slowed due to demonetisation.

"Other indicators also suggest that growth prospects in the second half of the fiscal may be bleaker than what CSO has estimated."
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Delhi High Court on Friday issued notice to the central and city government on a plea of Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel challenging the then Lt Governor's order repatriating a bureaucrat.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, hearing the plea, said such issues relating to the tussle over posting of a central government official in Delhi should be "resolved amicably without coming to the court".

The then Lt Governor Najeeb Jung had ordered to repatriate the Delhi Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara, an officer belonging to Newsreader-cum-Translator (Telugu) cadre, to the All India Radio (AIR), his parent organisation.

Goel, however, had refused to relieve the officer saying his decision was solely aimed at "upholding the Constitution". The Speaker had sought his extension for another two more years, but AIR turned it down and thereafter, the Lt Governor ordered his repatriation.

Suryadevara has served in the office of the Lok Sabha Speaker for five years and that of the Rajya Sabha Chairman for over six years. He was appointed to the post of Delhi Assembly secretary in July 2015 for a year, on expiry ofwhich AIR had directed him to return.

The court would hear the plea next on January 17 and also sought Suryadevara's reply on the plea.
Chandigarh, Jan 6 : Chinese firm, China Fortune Land Development (CFLD), has proposed to develop an IT Park at Sohna in Gurugram district, a Haryana official said on Friday.

The project will have an investment of Rs 4,000 crore, a state government spokesman said here.

A delegation of CFLD, comprising its president Jerry Zhao and other representatives of the company met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in New Delhi to discuss the project.

Khattar said that the proposed project would prove to be a milestone in the development of the state and it would generate employment opportunities for youth.

Gurugram district, adjoining national capital New Delhi, has emerged as a big hub for industrial, commercial, software and information technology sectors.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Demonetisation and the surgical strike against terrorists in Pakistani territory will be the two major planks for the BJP in the assembly polls in five states.

On the inaugural of the BJP's National Executive meeting here, party President Amit Shah spoke at length on the twin issues and told leaders to harp on the benefits of both demonetisation and the surgical strike.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is determined to end its long exile from power in Uttar Pradesh to return to power in the country's most populous state. The staggered polls in Goa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Manipur begin on February 4.

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the army's attack on militant camps across the Line of Control, Shah said the government may repeat such an action in its war against terror.

He said the September 29 strike reflected New Delhi's "zero tolerance" for terror and warned of further "out of the box" action if Islamabad persisted with its policy of sending terrorists to India.

Shah said the surgical strike and the November 8 demonetisation of high value currency had left the opposition with no campaign issues.

While harping on the benefits of demonetisation including the ability to spend more on development, Shah detailed the BJP's showing in the various elections since the demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

He said the note ban had adversely affected corruption, terror funding and fake currency smuggling. He said it compelled a fake note smuggler in Pakistan to commit suicide.

Asserting the despite hardships, people overwhelmingly supported the currency spike, Shah said the BJP was confident of taking power in all the five states.

Shah instructed party activists to build on Modi's "pro-poor" image.

On the second and concluding day of the party meeting on Saturday, Modi is expected to talk about the twin issues.

A separate session on demonetisation will be held at the venue.
Islamabad, Jan 6 : Pakistan on Friday asked the UN to restrain India from interfering in Pakistan's internal affairs and from activities aimed at destabilizing the country.

Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, delivered a dossier on what she said was India's promotion of terrorism in Pakistan to new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the Foreign Office said.

The dossier, according to the ministry statement, contains additional information and "proof of RAW interference in Pakistan and involvement in terrorism particularly in Balochistan, FATA and Karachi".

In a covering letter sent with the dossier, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz noted that the arrest of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav from Balochistan and his confession proved that New Delhi wanted to destabilize Pakistan.

Aziz urged the UN chief and UN bodies to seriously consider the matter in the light of information shared by Pakistan and play a role in restraining India from these activities.

"India was carrying out these activities in clear contravention of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council on counter-terrorism and international conventions on terrorism," the letter stated.

At the same time, the letter said Pakistan continued to desire peace with all its neighbours including India.
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 6 : Kerala's Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau on Friday registered a case against former Industry Minister E.P. Jayarajan and two others after a preliminary probe into the appointment of a relative in a state-run PSU.

Those booked along with Jayarajan, a senior CPI-M legislator, after the bureau allegedly found wrongdoings in the case are his nephew P.K. Sudheer and senior IAS officer Paul Antony.

Sudheer is the son of CPI-M Kannur Lok Sabha member P.K. Sreemathy.

Jayarajan quit in October 2016 after he appointed his nephew as Managing Director of Kerala State Industrial Enterprises (KSIE) Ltd. Sudheer did not accept the post following the controversy.

Leader of opposition and Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala told the media that the party stand on the issue had been vindicated after the FIR in the case.

"We have demanded a probe into Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's role too since it happened with his knowledge," said Chennithala.

The entire top Communist Party of India-Marxist leadership is presently holding party politburo and Central Committee meetings in the state.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The National Executive of BJP on Friday passed a political resolution condemning the opposition parties for obstructing Parliament proceedings and strongly censuring "anti-people and anti-democracy acts and deeds of the opposition parties".

Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh proposed the resolution on Friday - the first day of the two-day executive meet being held here.

The resolution reads "The behaviour of the parties led by the Congress Party in stalling the entire session of Parliament betrays their scant respect for democratic institutions. Obstruction and obfuscation has become the hallmark of the opposition politics in the country."

The resolution was seconded by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and BJP National Secretary Rahul Sinha.

The resolution also called the upcoming elections in five states "an opportunity to retain or regain power in all the states."

"The BJP views the forthcoming assembly elections as an opportunity to retain or regain power in all the states including Manipur," reads the resolution.

The resolution said that it was in Pakistan's interest if it takes concrete and credible steps to end terror factories on its soil.

"The surgical strikes ordered by the Prime Minister and the total rejection of the separatist agenda by the people and governments of J&K and the Centre are a categorical assertion to Pakistan that its ulterior designs shall never succeed and the government led by PM Modi will continue to demonstrate zero tolerance for terrorism; and it reserves every right to respond to such threats in an appropriate and out-of-the-box manner in future also," said the resolution.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine was reportedly docked at a port in Pakistan, sources privy to the development said here on Friday. They added that it could be there as Beijing was selling eight submarines to Islamabad, four of which were to be built in the port city of Karachi.

The image, dating back to May 2016, was found on Google Earth. It appears to be a nuclear submarine, one of the latest with China, according to experts.

The submarine was later seen crossing the Malacca Straits in June 2016. Submarines have to surface while crossing straits as per protocol.

Chinese submarines have been spotted in the Indian Ocean, which has been usually attributed to providing protection against piracy.

Speaking on the presence of the Chinese Navy's ships and submarines in Pakistan in December last year, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had said that India was keeping a close eye on them.

"We have capability and assets to take on any force which is deployed, and if and when this happens, we have plans in place to tackle it," the Navy Chief had said Sources from the Navy said Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean was being noticed and constantly monitored.

The boats were usually sent with other ships for providing security to Chinese merchant vessels from pirates, which according to sources may not be the real reason.

China's growing territorial claims in the South China sea have caused tension in the region, with the US vocally pitching for freedom of navigation in international waters.

Both India and China were part of Shared Awareness and Deconfliction which was established to coordinate the efforts of the military forces conducting counter piracy in the western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.

Pakistan is buying eight submarines from China. The first four submarines were expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the remaining four will be assembled in Karachi by 2028.

State-run media in Pakistan including Radio Pakistan had reported that the $5 billion deal has been detailed by senior naval officers to the parliamentary committee that handles defence.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : All Indian citizens, who were outside India from November 9 to December 30, will be able to exchange or deposit the old currency note of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 till March this year, an official statement said on Friday.

This facility will be available for those who are not residents of India till June 30 "in order to allow them adequate time to plan a visit as per their convenience", it said.

However as per regulations, bringing back such currency into the country is restricted to Rs 25,000 per person.

The above facility would be subject to the regulations of the notification, Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Currency) Regulations, 2015.

Separate FEMA provisions are applicable to persons in Nepal and Bhutan, which would continue to be in force.
Lucknow, Jan 6 : The BJP said on Friday that in its "biggest outreach" ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani interacted with more than four lakh women across the state under the 'Udaan' project.

The town hall event connected Irani with these women, girls and students from medical and technology streams through video conferencing from Meerut's Subharati Degree College.

BJP leaders called the programme an "hit" and said that the women of the state expressed support for the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and assured their support for the BJP.

"It is for the first time that a political party is encouraging more political participation from women and it was the commitment of the BJP to ensure the security, safety and welfare of the women of Uttar Pradesh," Irani told the gathering. The event was telecast in 75 colleges spread across the state.
New Delhi/Shillong, Jan 6 : DONER Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday announced the formation of the North-Eastern Tourism Development Council (NETDC) as a public-private partnership (PPP) initiative under the auspices of his ministry.

This is for the first time that the government has decided to set up a separate tourism development agency, devoted to a particular region of the country, he said, at the official release of 2017 Calendar of the North Eastern Council in Shillong.

"The setting up of an exclusive North-Eeastern Tourism Council is also a reflection of the high priority that the Union Government accords to the development of the peripheral states of the northeast," said Singh.

The North-East Council Calendar for 2017 has the theme of "seasonal fruits".
New Delhi, Jan 6 : A court here reserved, for Saturday, its order on the anticipatory bail plea of a senior official of a private insurance agency who has been booked on charges of molesting a former colleague.

Additional Sessions Judge Vikas Dhull said that he will deliver order on the bail plea of Talat U. Chauhan on Saturday.

Delhi Police has booked Chauhan under various sections of the Indian Penal Code dealing with molestation.

Chauhan's defence counsel K.K. Manan and Anjali Rajput argued that he has co-operated in the investigation and will follow every condition imposed by the court if released on bail.

Denying the charges, they said that Chauhan was falsely implicated in the case However, the complainant's counsel, Rajesh Jindal has opposed the bail plea saying that he can try to tamper with evidence in the case.

Public Prosecutor Satwinder Kaur also opposed Chauhan's bail plea saying that he was harassing the woman for a long time, and when she complained and sought to expose his fraud, fired her.
New Delhi, Jan 7 : Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday dismissed allegations of money laundering against him as rumours to malign his image ahead of the Punjab elections even as the BJP on Friday dubbed the Arvind Kejriwal-led government as corrupt and non-performing.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also demanded Kejriwal speak on the issue.

The issue arose amid reports that the Income Tax Department issued a fresh notice to Jain in a money laundering case. In September last year, the department had issued him notice regarding his alleged role in three companies which were allegedly used for money laundering.

"There is no substance to these allegations. In 2013 when I joined politics, I resigned from all three companies in which I was the director," Jain told reporters here.

"From 2007 to 2012, my family and I invested around Rs 52 lakh in a few companies. I was a minor shareholder. In my income tax returns, I gave account of every single penny," he said, adding he declared all his investments to the Election Commission in his affidavits for 2013 and 2015 assembly elections.

"I can give account of only my money and not all the money (invested in those companies)," he said.

"When I appeared before the Income Tax department three months ago, I answered all their questions. The issue is being raised again now because of Punjab elections where the party has made me the star campaigner," Jain said, adding that the Aam Aadmi Party will not be intimidated by these tactics of the central government.

But the BJP did not buy the arguments.

"It now seems that this government is corrupt and non-performing. Nepotism and misrule are synonymous with this government and one after another their ministers are being caught for all bad reasons," party's Delhi chief Manoj Tiwari told IANS.

"One after another Kejriwal's Ministers have been accused of corruption and malpractice," Tiwari alleged.
Cutter Associates, a leading provider of operations and technology research and expertise to the investment management industry, is pleased to announce the appointment of James Bridgers as Co-CEO effective January 9, 2017.

James will join as Co-CEO, working alongside Tom Seeman, Cutters current CEO. Tom will remain as Co-CEO of Cutter Associates during a transition period, helping to familiarize James with all aspects of the business before stepping down from his role in mid-2017.

When Cutter was acquired by NRI, I agreed to stay on for about a year and to help find Cutters next CEO, said Tom. I am confident we have found a strong CEO who has the energy and ideas to move the company forward, and who fits well with our firms culture. I look forward to working with James.

James joins Cutter from Partners in Performance (PIP), a large management consultancy firm headquartered in Australia. He brings more than 25 years experience in the consulting industry. James joined PIP in Australia in 2003 as a Director, and as a member of the Leadership Committee was instrumental in building the business from 40 employees to almost 500 today. He previously held roles at McKinsey & Company and Tandon Capital Associates. James received dual Bachelors degrees in Economics and Business Administration from Trinity University.

Its an exciting time for Cutter. With Cutters acquisition by Nomura Research Institute in 2016, the continued growth in Cutters global research membership, and the expansion of the consulting business, there are many opportunities ahead, noted James. I am looking forward to helping Cutter move to the next level.

About Cutter Associates, LLC

Cutter Associates, LLC serves the operational and technology needs of the global asset management industry, providing clients the tools and services they need to be successful. By leveraging multi-faceted expertise and an unrivaled knowledgebase, Cutter Associates provides clients truly independent research, exclusive member-only events, custom operations benchmarking, and a global consultancy for strategic advice on and delivery of operational and technology excellence. Cutter Associates works with the worlds leading asset managers, providers and servicers. Headquartered in Hingham, MA, Cutter Associates has subsidiaries in Canada and the UK, and is on the web at http://www.cutterassociates.com.
What: Security Innovations Jonathan Petit, Senior Director of Research will be joined by fellow industry thought-leaders discussing the Key Findings from the 2016 Automated Vehicles Symposium (AVS16) at this years TRB Annual Meeting. This workshop brings the highlights from the AVS16, including several of the most significant plenary presentations and the most productive of the 22 breakout sessions that offered more in-depth consideration of the key issues associated with road vehicle automation. Additional information about the session can be found here: https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/interactiveprogram/Details/5340

Who: Since 2002, Security Innovation has been a trusted partner to organizations that want to understand where their applications are vulnerable and rollout a secure and repeatable software development lifecycle (SDLC). Security Innovation helps organizations protect sensitive data in the most challenging environments - IoT, automobiles, mobile devices and in the cloud. By leveraging secure coding and embedded systems design skills, our experts help secure automotive communication systems, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), over-the-air (OTA) updates, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and any other electronic control unit (ECU).

Why: Jonathan Petit is an industry innovator and connected car security expert. In his well-publicized research, Dr. Petit was able to fool a self-driving car into thinking there were other cars and pedestrians around it, potentially stopping the vehicle in its tracks. This was achieved with only $60 worth of equipment bought over the counter. Dr. Petit and others in the Security Innovation Embedded team help integrate security into connected vehicle applications and software.

Who Should Attend: Automotive cybersecurity experts, including automakers, automotive software providers, security researchers and others in the automotive industry.

When:

Sunday, January 8, 2017

9:00am  12:00pm

Where:

The Walter E. Washington Convention Center

801 Mt Vernon Pl NW

Washington, DC 20001

Media Contact:

Gene Carter

Director of Product Management

Security Innovation

978-225-3942

gcarter(at)securityinnovation(dot)com

http://www.securityinnovation.com
www.NterOne.com Our multi-year partnership has led us to this point, and we couldnt be more pleased at the synergies we have in place, said Anthony Hamilton, CEO of NterOne.

NterOne Corporation announced today the intent to acquire ARP Technologies Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ARP Technologies is a leading provider of Cisco Learning solutions in the Canadian market and owns and operates a Data Center in Navan, Ontario. ARP has been a solid, customer-focused company for over a decade now in Canada, said Anthony Hamilton, CEO of NterOne. Our multi-year partnership has led us to this point, and we couldnt be more pleased at the synergies we have in place.

ARP Technologies has been in business since 2005 with a sharp focus on delivering high-impact, custom Cisco training. ARP built its company-owned data center to support robust training programs that leverage real-world hands-on labs designed to maximize the education experience. The company offers a variety of technology training areas such as Data Center, Collaboration, Enterprise Networks, Wireless, and Security.

ARP will become NterOne and launch a new web site to focus in the region while expanding its service offerings in Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, and ITIL. As a direct and specialized Cisco Learning Partner, NterOne will be uniquely positioned to bring value and expertise to the clients in this market.

We have worked with NterOne as a partner for years, and their commitment to servicing the customer is top priority, said Shawn Boyd, CEO of ARP. Having built ARP around this same philosophy, we are excited to continue the tradition of providing high quality, innovative learning solutions under the globally recognized NterOne brand.

The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 of 2017 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

About NterOne:

NterOne is a global training and consulting company focusing on live online training, self-paced e-learning, and private onsite training. The company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, with sales offices in Latin America and cloud offices globally. NterOne is an Authorized and Specialized Cisco Learning and Business Partner, VMware Authorized Training Center, ITIL Training Provider, and Microsoft Learning Partner. NterOne owns and operates a Data Center in North Carolina with key technology focus areas that span Virtualization, Data Center, IoT, Cloud, Analytics, Enterprise Networking, Collaboration, Service Provider, Optical, Wireless, and Security.

For more information, please visit the corporate web site at http://www.NterOne.com.

NterOne is a registered trademark of NterOne Corporation in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
The Relapse & Renewal Clinic can help those struggling to stay sober and keep them from slipping. Past News Releases RSS

The Council on Recovery announces the launch of Houstons first Relapse & Renewal Clinic, a revolutionary program to save the lives of alcoholics and drug addicts who are still struggling with sobriety, despite completing inpatient rehab or participating in 12-Step meetings.

People often get out of treatment and enter 12-Step groups only to find theyve still got the compulsion to drink or use, says Mel Taylor, President & CEO of The Council on Recovery. "Over 65 percent of them relapse within their first year of sobriety. Relapse devastates lives, shatters hopes, and, if left untreated, is often deadly. Its a huge cost to society and our healthcare system.

The Relapse & Renewal Clinic is a comprehensive outpatient program that combines support, education, group therapy, and personalized treatment to prevent back-sliding (or slipping) and strengthen the desire to stay sober. The intensive four-week program gives participants sufficient time to practice sobriety skills and better connect with the local recovery community.

A groundbreaking aspect of the Relapse & Renewal Clinic is its use of Recovery Support Consultants to provide direct one-on-one assistance. Each Consultant is trained in relapse prevention and sobriety support, and also an active member of Houstons recovery community. They guide Clinic participants by encouraging attendance of 12-Step meetings, helping them navigate recovery resources, and being a reliable, understanding person to contact at times of struggle or potential relapse.

The Clinic also serves those who have been sober a while (sometimes years), but find themselves struggling against relapse, or what some in the mental health community call pre-lapse. Our program anticipates these struggles and provides immediate solutions for both preventing relapse and renewing confidence in sobriety, says Lori Fiester, LCSW and Director of The Council on Recoverys Center for Recovering Families.

The key advantage is that participants dont have to start over in the treatment process, but rather engage in their recovery where they are, Fiester says. We dont focus on negatives, like shame of relapse, but instead take the time to explore deeper issues within sobriety that need attention. This instills resiliency and self-care that build healing and strength. And, whenever possible, we involve the entire family in the recovery process. In this way, the program both saves lives and heals families.

The Relapse & Renewal Clinic is an alternative to residential treatment or sober-living facilities when such approaches may not be necessary or affordable. The Clinic is open to all adults, regardless of length of sobriety or number of relapses.

The Relapse & Renewal Clinic is located at The Council on Recovery, 303 Jackson Hill Street, Houston, TX 77007. For information call 281-200-9290 or visit http://www.councilonrecovery.org #RelapseandRenewal

About The Council on Recovery: Founded in 1946, The Council on Recovery is Houstons oldest and largest non-profit organization providing prevention, education, intervention, treatment, and recovery services for individuals and their families affected by alcoholism, drug abuse, and co-occurring mental health disorders. Affiliated with the United Way of Greater Houston, The Council receives funding from private contributions and grants, special events, and program fees.
I am thrilled to join the ROK team," said Coleman. "ROK has that oh so rare combination of truly innovative minds, an incredibly passionate customer base, leading solutions, and real momentum in the market.

ROK Technologies, LLC the premier provider of location analytics, Cloud Management, WebGIS and IoT, today announced that it has appointed Alex Coleman as the new Executive VP of Sales and Marketing.

"Alex is going to take ROK Technologies to the next level," said CEO, Mike Deignan. "Her vast experience and past successes in sales and marketing coupled with her passion for servicing customers and driving innovation make her an extraordinary fit for ROK. She is the right person to lead ROK to the next stage of growth."

Alex Coleman has spent over a decade building and directing highly successful sales and marketing teams for Fortune 500 and startup organizations. Leveraging experience in SaaS and technology sales in both the national and international marketplaces, her past successes include driving multimillion-dollar sales increases, introducing cutting-edge products, and seizing market share.

"I am thrilled to join the ROK team," said Coleman. "ROK has that oh so rare combination of truly innovative minds, an incredibly passionate customer base, leading solutions, and real momentum in the market. ROK is positioned to become the standard in locations analytics, enterprise solutions and IoT. I cant wait to work with the exceptional leadership team and genius staff all while living in a city as beautiful as Charleston, SC.

ROK Technologies, LLC, based in Charleston, South Carolina, serves clients in many industries and governments globally. As an Esri Silver business partner and ArcGIS Server Application Service Provider licensee, they are able to leverage the entire ArcGIS platform, including ArcGIS for server hosting, application development, and virtualized desktop software - available from anywhere, on any device. ROK's cutting edge core competencies and secure private cloud infrastructure provide their clients the tools they need integrate their enterprise software with GIS solutions, products and services.

Connect with ROK

Email: info(at)ROKtech(dot)net

Phone: 843.577.3192

Toll-Free: 888.898.3404

Fax: 843.225.1813
Acquis Global Investments, LLC (AGI), a private investment and advisory firm, today announces that the company is scheduled to attend the Vibrant Gujarat 8th Annual Global Summit held January 9-13, 2017 in Gujarat, India. AGI is seeking qualified small and medium enterprises for investment and advisory services.

The size of the Indian market, changes in regulation, and the growth rate of Indias economy have us very excited about Indian startups and SMEs said Sam Kotch, managing member of AGI. We look forward to providing Indian companies with direct investment and advising them as they grow and expand internationally.

The Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit started in 2003 to rekindle the pace of investments in the state, has since established itself as one of the most important international business events in the country. Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit is an example of the visionary approach of the Government of Gujarat towards inclusive and sustainable development by ensuring policy coherence and effective investment promotion. Far from the regional investment fair that characterized the first Summit in 2003, the biennial Summit has today become a unique forum for exchanging ideas, sharing knowledge, networking, exploring business opportunities and signing cooperation agreements and partnerships, while setting the policy agenda for meeting some of the current global challenges.

About Acquis Global Investments

Acquis Global Investments, LLC (AGI) is an investment fund that provides direct investment and capital markets advisory to small and medium enterprises (SME). Our firm is led by an experienced team of investors and attorneys with over 50 years experience navigating and investing in the US Capital Markets. AGI is an Acquis Capital company. Learn more at http://www.AcquisGlobal.com

Contact: Sam Kotch, Managing Member

Office: 617.395.9499

Email: SamKotch(at)AcquisCapital(dot)com
WHAT

Dr. Bridget Terry Long, a renowned higher education researcher who specializes in the transition from high school to higher education and beyond, will deliver a public lecture titled Supporting College Student Access and Success: Making Sure Hard Work Pays Off, as part of the American Educational Research Associations Centennial Lecture Series. The event is free and open to the public.

Long, Academic Dean and the Saris Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will discuss the state of college access and success in the United States and discuss evidence-based ways to better support students striving for a postsecondary credential.

Higher education holds the promise of helping individuals achieve economic and social success while also providing numerous public benefits. Unfortunately, college access remains stratified by income and race, and less than half of students complete their intended postsecondary degrees. Even those students with strong academic preparation often falter in the quest to get a credential. However, there is a growing body of evidence on policies, programs, and other supports that are effective in helping students reach their postsecondary goals.

Longs 20-minute-long talk will be followed by a discussion moderated by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, education reporter at Southern California Public Radio. During the discussion, several policy experts will comment on Longs talk and join her in fielding questions from the audience.

AERAs Centennial Lecture Series is a series of six education research lectures held across the country as part of the associations centennial celebration.

WHO

Bridget Terry Long is an economist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work focuses on college student access and choice and the factors that influence students postsecondary and labor market outcomes Longs current projects examine the roles of information and assistance in promoting college enrollment and persistence. Other work examines the effects of financial aid programs, the impact of postsecondary remediation on academic preparation, and how to better support families saving for college. Read more.

WHEN

Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. PST

Informal buffet reception to follow

WHERE

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center

135 N. Grand Avenue

Los Angeles, CA

TO RSVP

To RSVP to attend the lecture, visit http://www.aera100.net/bridget-terry-long.html

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CENTENNIAL LECTURE SERIES

Visit http://www.aera100.net/cls.html

Social Media

The hashtag for the AERA Centennial Lectures is #AERALectures. You may also find AERA on Facebook and Twitter.
Rochelle Dingman Owner of Shear Fashion Salon

(http://www.shearfashions.com) in San Jose, California

Placed Top 10 in January's issue of Nails Magazine-International cover tech contest for her ballet inspired nails.

The story behind the session was to photograph a ballerina and create a nail design inspired by the Swan Lake Tutu. Rochelle and Phoebe from Shear Fashion Salon had been planning for a couple years to photograph their cousin, Sammy, a ballet dancer who attends the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, June 2016 she was back home for summer break, Rochelle and Phoebe Dingman from Shear Fashion Salon and Michelle Nicole Ng from Michelle Nicole Photography traveled from the Bay Area, California to collaborate on a photoshoot located at FD Studios in Downtown Los Angeles. We loved FD Studio's natural light and rustic warehouse windowsills, which was exactly the look we were going for. With Shear Fashion Salon to do makeup, hair, and nails, and Michelle Nicole Photography to create the imagery, Sammy wore her Swan Lake costume along with the headpiece that was handmade by Phoebe to match Rochelle's nails, the headpiece was inspired by celebrity makeup artist Roshar, whom they met at the PHAME Expo in Los Angeles. Please visit Shear Fashion Salon web site (http://www.shearfashions.com) to see the full images that were featured in January's issue of Nails Magazine.

Also featured in the 2017 January issue of Nails Magazine is Phoebe Dingman from Shear Fashion Salon, baby chick toe inspired image, using trendy chrome powder pigment over yellow polish with hand painted design and crystals, which we photographed in Gilroy, California. In the past, Phoebe's nail creations have been inspired by cute baby animals and has found ways to execute her crazy creations-she has pushed our limits to find a photograph with real livestock.

The first year Shear Fashion Salon and Michelle Nicole Photography (http://www.michellenicolephoto.com) made top 10 in Nails Magazine was 2012, and for the past 5 years in a row since, one or both nail techs Rochelle and Phoebe have made top 10 finalist in the Nails Magazine Cover Tech Contest. Entries from around the world compete each year to have their designs showcased on the Cover of the Magazine. In 2014 they both made top 10 with their Great Gatsby inspired nail image and the Little Piglets. In 2015, Rochelle Dingman got 2nd runner up with her Butterfly Inspired Nails image. Rochelle and Phoebe have also been featured in Nail Pro Magazine, with a rising star mother and daughter duo.

Rochelle and Phoebe got their start in Nails by receiving their certificates in Gel & Acrylic from Young Nails Tech in Los Angeles, California shortly after graduating they both started competing in the Nails Magazine Cover Tech Contest. They have taken advanced classes from Crystal Nails International Master Educator Classic Mully and In 2015 Rochelle & Phoebe worked with Celebrity Nail Designer Patricia Yankee at the 2016 Spring Summer shows for NYFW where they designed nails for 7 shows. In 2016 Rochelle Dingman attended Ela Loszczyk's Nails Experts Academy, and received her Certificates for extreme shapes in both Acrylic and Gel nails.

Michelle Nicole Photography is a full time wedding, family,newborn and commercial photographer with two International Award Winning Prints with WPPI - wedding and portrait photography association, and is published in Today's Bride, Borrowed & Blue, POPSUGAR, Modern Weddings, Nails Magazine, ASEE Prism, featured and interviewed on SLR Lounge, and Confessions of Successful Asian Women.

Shear Fashion Salon and Michelle Nicole Photography continue to work and collaborate on projects together and are looking forward to the bright future ahead.
Avido, LLC, a manufacturer of high-quality, affordable speakers, chargers and other consumer electronics accessories, has announced the launch of the WiBa, the 100% fully wireless power bank. The new patent-pending unit is receiving critical acclaim, winning praise as a CES 2017 Innovation Award Honoree. Avido will be unveiling the WiBa to the public at CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall #4, Booth 35200 on January 5th-8th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

There are other wireless chargers on the market today, but none of them function like the WiBa, says Kevin Lance, founder and president of Avido. Leave the charging plate by your bed, place the WiBa on top, and the power bank begins to charge without ever touching a cable. If you have a Qi-enabled phone, like a Samsung Galaxy, place it on top of the power bank, and wake up in the morning with a fully powered phone and power bank. It is simultaneous charging with no wires, no tangles, no hassle.

The WiBa not only charges your Qi-enabled devices wirelessly, but the WiBa itself also can be charged without ever plugging in a wire. No other power bank on the market comes close to its functionality. In addition to its unique charging capabilities, the WiBa also features a generous 5000mAh capacity, two additional USB outputs (2.1A & 1.0A), and a bright, clear LED flashlight. The WiBa will be available to consumers in the first quarter of 2017, shortly after its CES debut.

About Avido:

Maryland-based Avido, LLC, a manufacturer of high-quality consumer electronics products, was founded with the mission of creating innovative products at competitive prices. Avido products consistently outclass their competition in performance, appearance and affordability. The company has become renowned for its unique line of Bluetooth speakers, power banks, car chargers and other mobile accessories. Avido products are available online, as well as in select mobile retailers like Boost Mobile, MetroPCS and RingPlus.

For more information, visit: http://www.avidopower.com

###

Media Contact:

Micah Warren

Principal

Large Media, Inc.

(267) 880-6203

micah(at)largemediainc(dot)com
Each panelist will offer a unique perspective as to how legislation could influence economic development initiatives across the state.

Maryland Governor Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr. will deliver the keynote address at the Maryland Economic Development Association (MEDA) Winter Conference Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017, at the Governor Calvert House in Annapolis, Maryland. The conference, scheduled from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., will address this years legislative outlook. Leaders from both the public and private sector will share insight on the legislation that will be considered by the Maryland General Assembly during the 2017 session.

Our Winter Conference gives legislative and business leaders the opportunity to discuss priorities for the upcoming year, said MEDA President Keasha N. Haythe, CEcD. We will facilitate panel discussions with some of the states top business leaders and elected officials. Each panelist will offer a unique perspective as to how legislation could influence economic development initiatives across the state.

Sean M. Looney, vice president of state government affairs for Comcast, will moderate the Maryland Business Leadership Report. During this time, attendees will hear from some of Marylands top business leaders, including James C. Dinegar, president and CEO of the Greater Washington Board of Trade; Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee; Christine Ross, president and CEO of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce; and Martin Rosendale, interim CEO of the Tech Council of Maryland.

Attendees also will hear a legislative outlook from several elected officials, including Thomas V. (Mike) Miller Jr., President of the Senate; Michael E. Busch, Speaker of the House; J.B. Jennings, Minority Leader of the Senate; and Nicholaus R. Kipke, Minority Leader of the House. Laurie M. Boyer, executive director of Rockville Economic Development, will moderate the legislative outlook session.

The MEDA Winter Conference is sponsored by the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation and the City of Annapolis Economic Development Division.

For more information about the MEDA 2017 Winter Conference and to register, visit http://www.medamd.com.

About MEDA:

MEDA enhances the knowledge and skills of its members and encourages partnerships and networking among those committed to bringing jobs and investment to Maryland. In addition to quarterly conferences, members have access to opportunities, discounts and scholarships for professional development and can participate in awards programs that recognize the best economic development projects or programs, redevelopment projects or programs and marketing efforts in the state of Maryland.
Virginia Tucker at her desk at Langley in 1946. Over the course of twelve years, Virginia Tucker had ascended from a subprofessional employee to the most powerful woman at the lab.

With the highly-anticipated film Hidden Figures set to open in theaters across the nation on Jan. 6, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) is sharing the story of alumna Virginia Tucker (Class of 1930), a trailblazer for the female mathematicians  known as computers  highlighted in the film.

Tucker was one of five women to join the first human computer pool at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now Langley Research Center) in 1935. Langley was the main research center for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA.

When World War II broke out in 1939, more women were recruited as computers to conduct wind tunnel testing and other critical research for the military. Tucker recruited heavily at institutions across the East Coast, including UNCG (known then as the Womans College of the University of North Carolina). According to Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book that inspired the movie, UNCG graduated one of the largest cohorts of women who went on to work as human computers.

By the early 1940s, Tucker was the head computer, tasked with managing hundreds of women in computing sections across the laboratory. In her book, Shetterly writes:

Over the course of twelve years, Virginia Tucker had ascended from a subprofessional employee to the most powerful woman at the lab. She had done so much to transform the position of computer from a proto-clerical job into one of the laboratorys most valuable assets.  Between 1942 and 1946, four hundred Langley computers received training on Tuckers watch.

In 1947, Tucker left civil service for a position as an aerodynamicist at Northrop Corporation, one of the nations leading aviation companies. Although she was no longer at Langley, her legacy continued to pave the way for female mathematicians, including the three African-American women whose inspiring stories are told in the movie Hidden Figures.

To learn more about Tucker and to schedule an interview with UNCGs university archivist, please contact Alyssa Bedrosian at (336) 334-9769.

About The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a high-research activity university as classified by the Carnegie Foundation. Founded in 1891 and one of the original three UNC system institutions, UNCG is one of the most diverse universities in the state with more than 19,600 students and 2,500 faculty and staff members representing more than 90 nationalities. With 86 undergraduate degrees in over 100 areas of study, as well as 52 masters and 28 doctoral programs, UNCG is consistently recognized nationally among the top universities for academic excellence and value, with noted strengths in education, health and wellness, the performing arts, business and the arts and sciences, among others. For additional information, please visit uncg.edu and follow UNCG on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Frontline Public Safety Solutions Mobile Tool-Kit For Police Departments Contains Six Unique Modules to Save Time and Resources. Frontline Public Safety Solutions all-encompassing set includes modules that monitor overnight parking, provide vacation watch, track directed patrol, register pets and bikes, and report safety issue conditions.

Public safety is top of mind for communities across the nation, but limited time and resources put a strain on police departments when it comes to meeting such demands. Frontline Public Safety Solutions fill a void in the industry by bridging the communication divide between the community and its PD. A secure mobile toolkit, Frontline keeps data organized for PDs in a state-of-the-art platform they can access in real time, without ever leaving their patrol vehicles. In so doing, it eliminates the need for dispatch.

According to a July 14, 2016 U.S. News and World Report article, About 70 percent (of mayoral State of the City speeches) had a heavy focus on public safety." Indeed, public safety was second only to economic development overall, but was the top topic for heavy coverage in both the Midwest and Northeast. The frequency with which mayors across the country address the topic attests to just how important it is to citizens nationwide.

Public safety is so at the top of Americans minds, in fact, that the prevalence of community watch groups continues to rise, and their efficacy is notable. In Medford, Oregon, for example, a 2014 economics study found that one additional neighborhood watch decreases the crime rate per beat by about 3% and one additional neighborhood watch per square kilometer decreases the crime rate by about 18%.

The overall effectiveness of neighborhood watch programs, of course, hinges on their members being in tune with their local police departments, something the pace of technology renders difficult. Frontline Public Safety Solutions was designed to bridge this important gap. A mobile toolkit, Frontline connects the police and community with one simple solution. Its secure, at-a-glance online dashboard affords police officers access to public safety information with a simple click of a button, all from the convenience of their own patrol vehicles.

In law enforcement, we need technology to be more efficient, so we designed 6 modules to assist our officers to give them the tools they can use to keep them on the street, explained Ben Laird, President of Frontline.

"Frontline Public Safety Solutions all-encompassing set includes modules that monitor overnight parking, provide vacation watch, track directed patrol, register pets and bikes, and report safety issue conditions," adds Laird. In essence, it is a simple, fast solution for all of a PDs public safety data storage. As a result, it enables first responders to live up to the first aspect of their name, thereby fulfilling the public safety demands of their citizens.

Police departments that want to become better tuned in to their communities and their citizens public safety concerns can learn more about Frontline Public Safety Solutions mobile communications toolkit online at http://www.frontlinepss.com. For more information on how the record management software can save frontline responders time and resources by keeping their data organized, contact Felicia Edwards at (855) 794-1576.

###
Chronotrains was one of my favorite interactive maps of this summer. This interactive map shows you how far you can travel from any Europ...
Dr. Arthur Glosman Joins the Exclusive Haute Beauty Network

Dr. Arthur Glosman, cosmetic dentist from Beverly Hills, has joined the prestigious Haute Beauty Network. The Haute Beauty Network, affiliated with luxury lifestyle publication Haute Living, is proud to recognize Dr. Arthur Glosman as a prominent cosmetic surgeon and the networks newest partner.

Beverly Hill's renowned cosmetic dentist, Dr. Arthur Glosman, has partnered with Haute Living as one of Haute Beauty's featured cosmetic doctors and a leading influencer in the industry. As a Haute Living Beauty Ambassador, Dr. Glosman will share his skill and expertise with the Haute Beauty and Haute Living subscribers, educating readers on his industry and providing exciting news, tips and insight.

Dr. Glosmans Dentofacial approach to dentistry marries the form and function of the face to the shape, size, and color of the teeth. He can combine any of our myriad services such as porcelain veneers, dental implants, and dental inlays-onlays into one package to fit the needs of any patient.

Additionally, he provides standard services such as crowns, bridges, and general dentistry, yet all services are performed with the precision and refinement that is far above typical standards. The results are dazzling, which is why his clients come from as far away as Switzerland, France, Germany, and Moscow to achieve them. Dr. Glosman is also recognized by some of the nations top broadcast networks, publications and celebrities as the go-to dentist for dental beauty care. Dr. Glosmans approach has always been about beautifying smiles, but his approach has become more holistic. As an experienced cosmetic dentist, Dr. Glosman examines both the health and look of your teeth, with how your smile fits with your facial features. Dr. Glosmans office feels the importance of keeping the environment clean. Working diligently to generate the lowest possible carbon footprint, Dr. Glosman knows how important it is to respect our planet and reduce the use of precious resources. His practice is completely electronicmeaning paperless and chartless. All of his materials are metal-free and biocompatible. Please feel free to peruse their website at arthurglosmandds.com for examples of his work or view his testimonials and see notes from his clients.
AC Business Media Landscape Network brands We are excited to capitalize on the synergy between our Construction Network and the Landscape Network anchored by the Green Industry Pros brand.

AC Business Media, a leading B2B media and business intelligence company, announced the addition of the Green Industry Pros properties to its portfolio of Construction and Supply Chain brands.

In acquiring the Green Industry Pros brand from SouthComm, Inc., AC Business Media expands the menu of digital offerings, magazines, newsletters, events and data services available to its advertisers and subscribers.

We are excited to capitalize on the synergy between our Construction Network and the Landscape Network anchored by the Green Industry Pros brand, commented AC Business Media CEO Carl Wistreich. This acquisition strengthens AC Business Medias position as the go-to media and marketing resource for contractors, businesses, manufacturers and dealers in the construction and landscape industries.

AC Business Media welcomed the Green Industry Pros staff: Deirdre DAniello, publisher; Gregg Wartgow, editor; and Fred Ferris, sales associate. The Landscape Network properties include Green Industry Pros magazine, GreenIndustryPros.com, SnowPRO supplement, Dealer Success Guide supplement, The Pro Report digital newsletter and Walker Talk.

Its great for the Landscape Network to be reunited with its Construction Network partners, commented DAniello, referring to when both networks were owned by Cygnus Business Media. We look forward to publishing an integrated portfolio of news products and services.

About AC Business Media

AC Business Media is a leading B2B media and business intelligence company with a portfolio of renowned brands in heavy construction, asphalt, concrete, paving, rental, sustainability, landscape, manufacturing, logistics and supply chain markets. AC Business Media delivers relevant, cutting-edge content to its audiences through its industry-leading digital properties, trade shows, videos, magazines, webinars and newsletters and provides advertisers the analytics, data and ability to reach their target audience.

For additional information, contact Debbie George, VP of Marketing, AC Business Media, 262.473.9232.
Blue Pillar, the only Internet of Things (IoT) provider to connect all Energy Things, today announced $10 million in financing from new investors GXP Investments and Elevate Ventures alongside existing investors EnerTech Capital, Allos Ventures, Arsenal Venture Partners, and Claremont Creek Ventures.

2016 was a groundbreaking year for Blue Pillar. The Blue Pillar Aurora platform was installed at large energy providers and commercial facilities such as Walmart, Target, and Comcast as well as at higher education campuses, including University of Hawaii and Texas A&M University. As a result, the company won the Grid Edge-Energy Management award from Platts Global Energy. This awards program honors only the leaders and innovators from the energy industry. Blue Pillar was one of 18 finalists chosen from 170 nominations representing 30 countries. In April, Blue Pillar was one of 20 companies to receive Greentech Medias Grid Edge award  an honor bestowed upon only the most disruptive companies responsible for positively impacting the U.S. electricity industry. These awards and new customers further validated Blue Pillars increasingly important role in bringing forward grid edge transformation.

Blue Pillar is leading a historic energy industry transformation by connecting distributed energy resources (DERs) at the grid edge on behalf of energy providers and their commercial customers contributing to an impressive 400 percent growth in their business over the last five years, said Bill Kingsley of EnerTech Capital. Through their innovative approach, existing and new energy assets such as solar, storage and fuel cells are linked into a digitally enabled architecture, enabling control and two-way power flows. We believe Blue Pillar is well positioned to compete in an Energy IoT market reshaping how customers consume electricity.

According to Navigant Research, a new landscape is emerging in which a more sophisticated two-way grid of networked DERs will pave the way for an Energy Cloud ecosystem valued at $1.3 trillion in new annual industry revenue by 2030. Surging demand for energy networks that provide connectivity, control, and remote monitoring is driving Blue Pillars business.

"Blue Pillars ability to network DERs and other energy systems into an IoT technology platform that is open to third party software applications will allow electricity providers to offer new, innovative energy services to their largest commercial and industrial customers, said Dennis Odell, Senior Director at GXP Investments. We are excited to be joining this team.

The vision of Blue Pillar has always relied upon what could be achieved with ubiquitous access to behind-the-meter energy information and secure automated control over DERs and systems, said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar. For us, this latest investment, expansion to new customers and prestigious industry awards, represent validation of the vision. We look forward to working with our investors and customers to rapidly bring much needed disruption to the energy industry.

About Blue Pillar

Blue Pillar connects the Energy Things that power our world. The only IoT solution to unite all Energy Things onto a single platform, Blue Pillar unleashes the power of real-time data to strengthen critical infrastructure and accelerate business. Blue Pillars Aurora is automated through a template-driven process where security is built-in from sensor to cloud. With Blue Pillar, companies have unprecedented insight into their energy needs to become more efficient and have peace of mind that when the grid goes down, their business will continue forward.

Media Contacts:

Kaitlyn Finegan

415-977-1914

bluepillar(at)antennagroup(dot)com
A billboard celebrates the 25th anniversary of CES.

The Consumer Electronics Show has been an important part of innovation in technology for five decades now, and Innovation & Tech Today is proud to be an official media partner with CES.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of CES, Innovation & Tech Today is excited to announce the first ever annual scavenger hunt. The hunt will run for the duration of #CES2017, starting on January 5th, 2017 at 8:00am PST and ending on January 8th, 2017 at 1:00pm PST.

The scavenger hunt is a fun way for attendees to experience the Show and visit our partners, and participation is very simple. Players can obtain a Scavenger Hunt Card from any of Innovation & Tech Todays partners at the Show, and as they visit the partners booths, participants will receive unique stamps on their card.

Once the card is full, anyone participating in the scavenger hunt can drop off the completed card at the Innovation & Tech Today Pavilion 21649 / Las Vegas Convention Center to be entered to win from a prize pool valued over $2,500.

In addition to the scavenger hunt, Innovation & Tech Today has organized the #MyCES50 hashtag to commemorate 50 years of consumer electronics excellence. The purpose of the hashtag is to share the most memorable moments from past CES events, whether it was a keynote speaker who left a lasting impact or a product reveal that left us speechless.

To spread the reach of #MyCES50, Innovation & Tech Today has also organized a random giveaway available to anyone and everyone that participates by sharing the memories, photos, videos, or stories that have made CES such a special gathering over the past 50 years.
Samuel K. Skinner will receive Illinois Order of Lincoln Award, the states highest honor for professional achievement and public service.

Samuel K. Skinner, of counsel in the Government Law & Policy Practice at global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, will receive Illinois Order of Lincoln Award, the states highest honor for professional achievement and public service.

Since being established in 1964, more than 300 individuals have received the award for bringing honor to the state. Nominees for the award must have been born or live in Illinois and are chosen for their contributions in a range of industries and professions. Past recipients include Gwendolyn Brooks, Hilary Clinton, James Lovell, Walter Payton, Ronald Reagan, and Studs Terkel.

This years Order of Lincoln recipients are an outstanding group of individuals and exemplify President Lincolns relentless and passionate spirit for public service, said Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner. They have positively impacted their communities in numerous ways, and their contributions will leave a lasting impression on Illinois and the world. It is my honor to award them the Order of Lincoln.

Skinner is the retired Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of USF Corporation. He formerly served as President of Commonwealth Edison Company and its holding company Unicom Corporation (now Exelon). Prior to joining Commonwealth Edison, Skinner served as Chief of Staff to President George H. W. Bush and as Secretary of Transportation. Skinner has spent more than 45 years in the legal profession and previously served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Skinner will receive the Order of Lincoln Award at the 53rd Annual Convocation & Investiture of Laureates in Chicago on Saturday, May 6, 2017.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 2,000 attorneys serving clients from 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is No 1. on the 2015 Law360 Most Charitable Firms list, second largest in the U.S. on the 2016 Law360 400, Top 20 on the 2015 Am Law Global 100, and among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite. More information at: http://www.gtlaw.com/.
When members of Eminent SEOs team first heard about Think Graphics loss of its Phoenix shop, they immediately offered to support the fundraising and rebuilding efforts.

Eminent SEO, a Mesa, Ariz.-based digital marketing firm, has partnered with Think Graphics & Printing Solutions to help the latter business rebuild its downtown Phoenix shop, which burned down in August.

The cause of the fire is uncertain, and the official investigation is ongoing. Think Graphics has had to move its Phoenix employees to its Tempe office until it is able to fully rebuild its Phoenix shop.

Think Graphics downtown Phoenix workspace was located on Roosevelt Row, right in the heart of a popular monthly event called First Fridays, where local artists and entertainers set up shop to make connections with and promote their artwork or services to thousands of visitors.

When members of Eminent SEOs team first heard about Think Graphics loss of its Phoenix shop, they immediately offered to support the fundraising and rebuilding efforts. Eminent SEO is passionate about building connections with and promoting local businesses and artists.

We immediately felt called to help, Eminent SEO Jenny Stradling said. We are also a small, Phoenix-area company, and we believe in supporting local businesses and good karma.

Think Graphics works with various Phoenix-area artists and provides them with printing services such as business cards, banners, posters, magnets, hats and T-shirts. The company also offers graphic design and web design services to businesses and individuals.

To raise money to rebuild its Phoenix shop, Think Graphics launched a Think Phoenix T-shirt campaign. Think Graphics is offering multiple T-shirts that say Think Phoenix in different colors and featuring various designs by local artists. The company is hoping to sell at least 2,500 shirts in order to start reconstructing its workspace in the heart of Phoenix.

The Think Phoenix slogan is designed to increase hometown pride and encourage residents to think locally when looking for goods and services, according to Think Graphics owner Randy Phillips.

As its first act of support in Think Graphics rebuilding efforts, Stradling bought every member of her team a Think Phoenix T-shirt. Eminent SEO then began filming a video to promote the fundraising campaign. This effort included capturing aerial footage of Think Graphics scorched Phoenix shop using a personal drone and a GoPro camera.

We like their work and feel bad they lost so much in a fire! Stradling added. We are just doing our part to help them rebuild.

Eventually, Eminent SEO and Think Graphics formed a working business partnership as well: Think Graphics is helping Eminent SEO out with its printing needs, while Eminent SEO is helping Think Graphics expand its marketing reach  via website, blogging, social media and other channels. Eminent SEO typically works with clients in the drug rehab, legal and home services industries, so adding Think Graphics as a client marked a new venture for the Mesa marketing firm.

Founded in 2009, Eminent SEO is a full-service, boutique marketing agency that boasts clients from all over the U.S. Eminent SEO offers marketing solutions such as Website Design and Development, Optimized Website Copywriting, Blogging, Social Media Management, Email Marketing, Video Marketing, Reputation Management and more. To learn more, visit https://www.eminentseo.com/.

To learn more about Think Graphics Think Phoenix fundraising campaign and to see the T-shirt offerings, visit http://www.thinkphx.com/. T-shirts range in price from $25 to $30 and go toward helping Think Graphics rebuild its downtown Phoenix office. They can be shipped anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. New T-shirt options are periodically being added to the online selection, as designed by Phoenix-area artists.
If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity.

PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move.
President Barack Obama has been playing the long game with President-elect Donald Trump, telling America, "Im looking forward to doing everything I can to make sure the next president is successful. We are all rooting for his success." Of course, that's not what the 65 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton wanted to hear, so we'll just have to settle for Luther, Obama's certified anger translator, to take the edge off of things.

Keegan-Michael Key appeared on The Daily Show with a clip that he and Jordan Peele put together as a farewell address. Peele, as the placid Obama, greets the audience, "Since we last spoke, the country has voted for a new president," prompting Key's Luther to fume, "TRUMP?! Really? How did this happen? Don't you understand? This is how The Hunger Games starts!"

"Obama" also explains that "we [must] move on as a country united," but Luther points out, "United in the fact that we can't f***ing stand each other!" Luther also says that Trump doesn't want to be President, describing him as "shook. The only reason he ran is because his factory in China made too many red hats.

When "Obama" says, "We all succeed" if Trump succeeds, Luther drops the truth, "Unless he succeeds with all the sh*t he promised to succeed with  in that case, were fed!"
Amazon ups its sales tax collection to 36 states and the District of Columbia; new owners for store in Rhode Island and Wisconsin; a long-time Maine bookstore to close; and more.

New Owner for the Village Booksmith: Following the passing of owner Annie Randall last Summer, Rob Nelson has taken over as proprietor of the Baraboo, Wisc., bookstore. Nelson, who worked at the bookstore for eight years, plans to continue Randalls commitment to the community and to carry a wide range of books and quirky cards.

Amazon Begins Collecting Sales Tax in Three More States: Beginning January 1, the online retailer began collecting sales tax for purchases made by Iowa, Louisiana, and Nebraska residents. It had previously been collecting and remitting sales tax in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

World Eye Bookshop to Move in with Magical Child Toy Store: Next month, Jessica Mullins plans to combine her Greenfield, Mass., bookstore with the toy store that she purchased last February. She decided to make the move after World Eyes rent went up significantly. Were going to try to keep the feel of World Eye as the dominant feeling, and then have a lot of the toys integrated, she told The Recorder.

Two Block Island Residents Buy Island Bound Bookstore: Sisters Susan Bush and Laura Parsons purchased the 21-year-old bookstore off the coast of Rhode Island on December 1. Both of us love books and this just seemed like a natural way to indulge our passion, Bush told Bookselling This Week.

Powells Creates a Care Package for Obama and Trump: Based on hundreds of suggestions from customers, Powells City of Books in Portland packaged up ten books each for the outgoing and incoming president. The selections range from Jimmy Carters memoir A Full Life for President Obama to Bryan Stevensons Just Mercy for President-Elect Trump.

BookMarc to Close at End of the Month: After 28 years Marc Berlin, age 65, is ready to retire. He got a few offers to sell the store, but nothing panned out. So he plans to close it on January 31. But he isnt giving up bookselling entirely. He has already rented a booth at Antique Marketplace in the spring.

Closing Time for Petaluma Paperbacks? At the end of December, Michael Bearden closed the used bookstore in Petaluma, Calif., that he bought more than a decade ago in 2003. But hes hoping that the store will continue. He wants to pass on the store to someone willing to get a commercial lease. Bearden would be happy to consult with the new owner.
Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th librarian of Congress in September. She is the first woman and the first African-American to attain that post. Shes also the first credentialed librarian to fill the post since Lawrence Quincy Mumford, who retired in 1974.

Hayden began her professional career as a childrens librarian at the Chicago Public Library and, in addition to holding several other positions, served a lengthy term as chief executive at Baltimores Enoch Pratt Free Library before accepting her new appointment. Hayden shared her thoughts on her new job, technological advances in the library world, and her role in the LOCs legacy.

You are a pioneer in at least a couple of waysthe first woman and the first African-American to hold your current position. In your view, does a certain kind of pressure come with being first, and if so, do you feel that pressure?

Its actually more excitement than pressure. My being in this position has certainly touched a large number of people. Quite a few young girls have sent me letters, and one of them, a high school student, said, I was thinking of becoming a lawyer, but now I want to become a librarian. As a person of color I have worked for a long time on the ALAs Spectrum initiative, which was created to recruit underrepresented groups into librarianship. So you could kind of call me a role model. I think my being here is definitely a recruiting tool.

Since youve arrived in your new position, what LOC collections have you seen that have especially thrilled you?

Almost every day I see something new and amazing, and I use Twitter to let people explore with me and discover what the library has to offer. Since I saw the collection of comic books, I really got into Luke Cage. We have first editions of almost every comic book character; its really something. Also, the Rosa Parks collectionto be able to touch history and see her handwritten thoughts on her arrest, and the Bible that she carried in that iconic purse. Vincent Price, the actor known for his spooky movies, wrote a cookbook, and we have drafts of that. Its one of the largest collections of cookbooks in the world.

We also have military documentsGeneral Pershings diaries from WWI, and the memo granting permission for the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII. George Gershwins draft of Summertime where you can see his handwritten changes to the lyrics. The collections are sublime, thought-provoking, and fun.

Some of your earliest professional-librarian experience was as a childrens librarian. How has that experience informed your work along the way?

You never stop being a childrens librarian at heart. I go to the Young Readers Center several times a month to tell stories and to meet with childrens book authors who come in for events. Were working on a possible renovation of that space, and I have an advisory committee in place to help with that. Its another way of opening up what I call this treasure chest, Americas library, to make it even more inviting to young people.

What are some of the ways that the Library of Congress is embracing new technologies? Very clearly, technology has changed how we create, share, and preserve information. What is your vision for capitalizing on technologies in the future?

Obviously digitization and making the collections available to the public is one of the main things. Weve recently redesigned our Web home page. Its more engaging; the collections arrive on the page sooner and in a more graphic way. We are going to have more traveling exhibitions and more online/virtual exhibitions, and Ive just hired a new exhibit coordinator. Were using many more engagement tools and building a bigger social media presence. We will increase our in-person programming with everything from story times to concerts. We are opening up the treasure chest as much as possible so that people everywherein rural areas, on reservations, in citiescan access our collections.

We also serve young people and others with disabilities through our National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. I want to make sure that our services for them are as modern as possible.

What do you want young readers/students to know about the Library of Congress? How does the LOC benefit them?

Whatever theyre studyingnot just students in school, but lifelong learners as wellthey can explore our website and bring up whatever the library has on that topic. There are so many ways to connect, including our Ask a Librarian feature. I want them to know that this is their library, too.

What initiatives for children and childrens librarians might be planned?

With the potential enhancement of the Young Readers Center we hope to develop more creative spaces where young people can participate in programming. We plan to have more interactive exchanges and programming with our national ambassador for young peoples literature, Gene Luen Yang, who does such wonderful graphic novels, and we continue to support his Reading Without Walls campaign. And we also want to do more with our U.S. poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, who has done really wonderful work with teens. At a renovated YRC well be able to have kids in, use Skype for events, and do more programming.

In the same vein, how does LOC reach out to students and teachers? Are there ways for schools to take more advantage of LOC resources?

We have a teacher-in-residence program that provides teachers with an opportunity to work with our staff to create K12 curricular tie-ins with our digitized primary resources. We will be expanding that program and broadening its reach.

In September, we worked with Discovery Education for Constitution Day, and did a virtual tour and had our curators and librarians live tweet during the program. We have a special site for teachers, our educators page. And we bring in teachers, physically, for programming. We make available primary-source class sets for iPads designed for classroom use. And we have an educational-outreach division that works closely with teachers and connects with them on social media.

You have instituted some recent changes to the U.S. Copyright Office. Can you share your vision or some of your goals for reshaping that office?

I want to make it clear. The register resigned. [On October 21, Hayden appointed Maria Pallante as senior advisor for digital strategy; Pallante had been serving as register of copyrights since 2011. She resigned on October 24, declining the reassignment.] I made no changes involving the copyright process or anything like that. We are several weeks out from asking for input from the copyright community as we begin a search for a new permanent register. In my role, I have the opportunity to make sure that they have the tools they need in the copyright office to do their work.

We have already seen many photo ops with you, where you are out in the community meeting with lots of people. What are your favorite types of meet and greets?

I have favorites, plural. I love the opportunities to visit with different types of people and different communities who use the LOC. The Library has so many facets. I can meet with people who are interested in cartography and maps, or military history, or Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address, or George Gershwin, and saw Smokey Robinson play an original Gershwin score on the Gershwin piano. [On November 16, Robinson received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song and performed at a star-studded concert during the ceremonies.]

Our staff are experts and I want people to know that the LOC is something to be explored, and I want them to get excited about it. This job is like having a birthday all the time, with presents every day, and you dont get older!

Looking ahead, what is your vision for moving the LOC forward? Where do you want to take it?

I want to keep it going in the direction of collecting resources for people to learn and do scholarshipand I use that term in its broadest sense. I want us to keep growing with the best tools and the best human resources to do that. I want to continue the legacy of making knowledge and information available to all. And we hope the American people join us on this journey. Stay tuned.
In a new partnership with the federal government and nonprofit organizations, the National Book Foundation (NBF) has launched the Book Rich Environment Initiativea book drive benefitting public housing communities that will unfold over the course of 2017.

NBF teamed up with the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Urban Library Council, and the Campaign for Grade Level Reading on the initiative, which will bring books and other literacy tools to more than four million children and their families who live in HUD-assisted housing.

By collaborating with these key national partners, we are able to build the foundations reach and further our mission of making sure that books matter, and that they matter everywhere, said NBF board chairman David Steinberger, according to a press release.

Publishers such as Hachette Book Group and Macmillan Publishers are participating by making large donations, and Penguin Random House is in the lead with 200,000 books committed to the initiative. Over thirty public housing authorities and local library partners across the country have also pledged their support.

According to Lisa Lucas, executive director of the NBF, the new initiative will help the foundation expand its free afterschool program, BookUp, which has donated over 30,000 books to young people. Through the Book Rich Environment Initiative, we will expand that to over 300,000 books by the end of 2017, she said in a press release.

A public launch event in Washington, D.C., on January 5 included remarks from partners and stakeholders such as Susan Benton, president and CEO of the Urban Libraries Council; Broderick Johnson, White House Cabinet Secretary and Chair of My Brothers Keeper Task Force; and many more. Following the initial donation, NBF will seek donations from additional publishers, implement accompanying community programming that supports local libraries, and help connect communities with authors.
Free speech organizations including the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) have begun to speak out in defense of Simon & Schuster after a book deal the publisher's Threshold Editions imprint made with controversial Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos spurred widespread backlash, including calls to boycott S&S and to not review S&S titles.

The NCAC has released a statement that, while supporting the right to boycott a book or company for any reason, argues that to do so risks "undermin[ing] intellectual freedom and harm[ing] readers and writers."

"In the present case, the calls for a boycott stem not from the content of a book, which has not been published, but because of previous statements by the author which critics characterize as hate speech," the statement reads. "This kind of response will have a chilling effect on authors and publishers, which is undoubtedly the goal of those who support such boycotts."

The statement has has been endorsed by the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, Index on Censorship, and the National Council of Teachers of English.

The ability to think and read freely lies at the heart of our democracy, NCAC executive director Joan Bertin said. Endorsing the right to express offensive ideas is not equivalent to endorsing the ideas themselves.
Laurie Frankel's heartwarming and hilarious new novel, This Is How It Always Is, is about the large, rambunctious Walsh-Adams family. The family's fifth boy, Claude, is quirky and clever, traits that run in the family, and at age three says, "I want to be a girl." Frankel, the parent of a transgirl (the subject of Frankel's New York Times' "Modern Love" column, which you can read here), selects 10 of her favorite books for parents of transgender children.

The title for this piece began as Essential Books for Parents of Transgender Children. Then became Essential Books for Parents of Gender Nonconforming Children. Then Essential Books for Parents ofNonconforming Children, which I shortened to, Essential Books for Parents because, lets face it, no ones children always conform. Then I realized the list wasnt even necessarily about parenting and thought Essential Books for Humans Who Have Ever Felt Different or Nonconforming Themselves or Loved Someone Who Did about covered it. And since thats everyone, it became just Essential Books for Humans.

Most kids are not transgender. But most kids are gender nonconforming in some waythey are girls who prefer tree houses to doll houses, sayand as I realized when I was wrestling with the title, all kids are nonconforming somehow. In fact, Id venture to say everyone fails to conform sometimes and that thats a good thing.

Transgender children are much more visible than they used to be. Lets celebrate them. People who get loved and respected for being themselves, even when those selves are different or weird or not what we expect, are much more visible than they used to be as well. Lets celebrate them too. A good place to start, as always, is with literature.

1. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Truthfully, this list could have been, Ten Essential Shakespeare Plays for Parents of Transgender Children, but I spared you and picked one. Twelfth Night is all about gender and identity and what happens when a male actor playing a woman playing a man wooing a woman on behalf of a man turns out to have an identical twin of both the same and opposite sex. And perhaps more to the point, it questions who we are and to whom we are attracted when our inside and our outside arent aligned, arent known, and arent real. Plus, when its staged well, it reveals another important truth: gender is fun!

2. Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt Speaking of twins, this book tells the story of a family with identical twins boys, one of whom realizes shes actually a girl around age two. Nutt is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a great writer who widens the story of that girls transition into her whole familys transition. Its also a legal thriller. And a political coming-of-age drama. And an exploration of the science of being transgender. But really its a book about what it means to love your family unconditionally and how you deal with what shows up.

3. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More by Janet Mock What I love about Mocks memoir is how vast it is. Its about being transgender. But its also about being a woman of color. Its also about race, gender, and class in America. Its also about life as an activist and identity politics and being young and in love and finding your way. And as if that werent enough, its warm and compelling and indeed feels, above all, real.

4. Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan Boylan has three memoirs (and some novels, some short stories, many essays), and I was torn about which one to pick. This one, her latest, tells what happens as scars from surgery and a lifetime of being someone youre not start to fade, and youre left instead with normal life: spouse, kids, work, community. This is a less-oft-told but hugely important part of the transition story. The book also features interviews with lots of other wonderful writers.

5. Boy Erased by Garrard Conley I cried through a good bit of this one. Conleys memoir tells about his time in Christian ex-gay conversion therapy. It is horrifying and hauntingly written on the trauma of the therapy itself but also his relationship with his family and his own sexuality and identity. Ive put it on this list, though Conley is gay, not trans, because while ex-gay conversion therapy has come, thankfully, to be nearly universally considered abusive in practice, offensive in conception, and relegated to the fringes, ex-trans conversion therapy remains fairly standard practice, if not necessarily under that banner. We should all be appalled, angry, and above all vigilant.

6. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West It is absurd that Lindy West and I dont have coffee together once a week since I both share a city with and adore her, but weve never met. She is (at least) three Fs: funny, fat (her word), and a feminist. Shrill is an essay collection about, among other things, the latter two suffused with the first. These are smart, insightful, critical essays about having a body, a brain, a mouth, and an opinion whilst being female in our culture, and they are both groundbreaking and hysterical, so my experience of reading them was simultaneous horror and delight, horror because the world is a cruel and dangerous place to be female, delight because Wests writing is smart, funny, and demanding in the very best way.

7. The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan On the one hand, this is a post-apocalyptic novel about climate change and what happens when the temperature drops right to the bottom edge of what humans can endure. On the other, its gorgeously written character-driven fiction about said humans as they bond together to face cold, dark days. One of these humans is an articulate, insightful gender nonconforming 12-year-old, but her gender identity is only one aspect of her, one aspect of the book, and not the main one of either. Her being transgender isnt the story; its just one part of a wide, complex life and community, as it should be.

8. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Sometimes I forget that the narrator at the heart of this Pulitzer Prize-winning, multigenerational, immigrant epic is intersex, and sometimes that seems the whole point. Sometimes Im reading a novel about three generations of a sprawling Greek family, and other times its the grandchild-narrators coming-of-age story, an exploration of family, identity, sex, love, and life in between. It is, as good luck would have it, all of the above.

9. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Because telling your life story isnt hard enough, Satrapi tells it and draws it, as well. Her graphic memoir about her childhood in Iran is the story of defying societys expectations to her great peril and the way her parents go about supporting her anyway. In her case, danger comes not from being trans but from being outspoken, female, intelligent, educated, aspirational, and the child of Marxist progressives during the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the war with Iraq. It is beautiful, bold, very different than being or having a transgender child, and also very the same.
I cant think of a better way to start the new year than to make an announcement like this, Mayor Frank Klipsch said Tuesday in announcing a potential deal that could bring 500 jobs paying $12-$18.75 an hour to Davenport over the next five years.

Presuming the $73 million Sterilite Corp. project the city, Scott County and Iowa state agencies are negotiating lives up to its early billing, we will eagerly join the confetti toss.

There is no doubt we need jobs that pay a decent wage in the Quad-Cities, and if Davenport, Iowa and Sterilite can deliver them, it will be a long-lasting present to the region. That starts with the nearly $1 billion economic impact that Davenport Ald. Ray Ambrose, 4th Ward, estimates the construction alone will have in the Quad-Cities.

As always with potential developments, the devil is in the details and actual gains, not promises, must be weighed against the cost of taxpayer incentives that are required to make any project a go.

We trust city, county and state leaders will do their due diligence, with the continuing able assistance of the Quad Cities Chamber, to strike the most cost-effective deal for taxpayers.

The incentives under consideration are not cheap. Sterilite is seeking millions of dollars in financial assistance from the city, county and state. City officials say state programs are anticipated to help offset a portion of the citys cost. If leaders can make the math work, it will be a win-win for all.

Though the parties have been hard at work on reaching a deal, there is much that remains to be done.

Its important to remember, too, that while Sterilite is working with city officials on construction of a state-of-the-art manufacturing and distribution center in Davenport, the largest plastic housewares company in North America hasnt yet firmly committed to building its seventh facility in the Quad-Cities.

But this weeks news is more than encouraging. On Wednesday, the councils committee of the whole lauded the project, which officials hope will break ground this spring and open in 2018. In turn, Sterilite representative Peter Stone, great-grandson of the companys founder, praised the city and state at Wednesdays meeting.

Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce chief economic development officer Liz Murray Tallman Tuesday also was celebrating that this latest project comes on the heels of a new Kraft Heinz plant west of the proposed Sterilite site. This is a testament to our regions focused effort on economic development, she said. Projects of this magnitude come along once in a decade, and two back-to-back investments show the impact of making this region marketable on a national scale and creating a successful business climate.

If this latest deal is the boon proponents predict it will be, it also will be a testament to effective Iowa state development agencies, programs and resources designed to assist local governments in winning these once-in-a-decade projects. Such programs are sorely lacking in this state.

Illinois leaders hungry to compete for such development would be wise to look toward Iowas example.
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A Davenport man was sentenced Thursday to up to 15 years in prison in connection with a crash that killed a construction worker in September.

Sebon Cordell Reese, 19, of 1330 W 3rd St., pleaded guilty in November in Scott County District Court to homicide by vehicle, a Class C felony, and eluding, a Class D felony, according to court records.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dismissed one count of child endangerment.

Mr. Reese must pay $150,000 in restitution. His sentence will run back-to-back with 15 years he's already serving in unrelated cases, according to court documents.

The fatal crash occurred Sept. 1 near Blue Grass shortly after 10 a.m. on Highway 61, according to a complaint filed against Mr. Reese.

An officer recorded Mr. Reese's vehicle traveling 90 mph in a 65 mph speed zone, according to the complaint. The officer said she could not catch up to Mr. Reese's vehicle, even while traveling over 100 miles per hour in her squad car.

The vehicle continued north toward an area marked as a construction zone with the right lane closed. It attempted to pass a vehicle on the left gravel shoulder, veered right into the open left lane and into the coned off area, where it struck Willie Nathaniel Holley, 62, who was working as a flagger holding a stop/slow sign. Mr. Holley was transported to the hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Throughout the incident, Mr. Reese had in the back seat of the vehicle a 1-year-old girl who was injured in the collision, according to the complaint. Mr. Reese had also violated his Scott County probation at the time of the incident.
SHERRARD  State Sen. Chuck Weaver, R-Peoria, on Thursday told Sherrard school officials he was impressed with the district's facilities and programs.

"I ran restaurants my whole life  had about 30 stores I operated. I get pretty good at walking in and getting a pretty quick feel for how things are operating," he said. "When I walked in the front door (of Sherrard), I told these guys theyre running a good school.

"This district is doing a lot more with a lot less money than many school districts in our state, he said.

Sen. Weaver said Sherrard spends about $8,500 per student, compared to around $13,500 per student in Peoria and more than $15,000 per student in Chicago. But rather than funding, he said the "biggest dilemma were fighting is the family structure, and home structure, the support system these kids have.

"When you have a community like Sherrard with solid families, theyre able to educate a kid very well for less dollars," he said. "Education isnt our only solution. Weve got to also be figuring out how we can stabilize families for kids.

School board president Rhys Fullerlove invited Sen. Weaver to visit the district. He noted it has been many years since a senator has visited Sherrard schools.

I think its important for us to have good relationships with our state elected officials, Mr. Fullerlove said. State Rep.-Elect Dan Swanson, R-Alpha, attended the school board's last meeting.

During his Thursday visit, Sen. Weaver heard updates on the district's Chromebook program, discussed state educational issues with Mr. Fullerlove and district administrators, and saw new equipment in the school's vocational/agriculture department, including welding systems and a plasma cutting table.

As a major industry, its important we continue to teach our kids, here, to be prepared to go into ag," said Sen. Weaver. "Even though I dont farm currently, I still live on the farm I grew up on.

Sen. Weaver said the state budget impasse continues to be the top priority in Springfield. He said there was movement Thursday morning toward new proposals.

"The best opportunity to pass something is during lame duck, which is over next Tuesday," he said. "But then were going to our spring session.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Brushing aside Donald Trump's dismissiveness, the nation's intelligence chief insisted Thursday that U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in America's recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an "existential threat" to the nation.

Did Russian hacking sway the results? There's no way for U.S. agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, "The intelligence community can't gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made." But he did say Russian hacking "did not change any vote tallies."

Clapper's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence community's standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.

That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the U.S. intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference.

Shortly after Thursday's hearing, news leaked that Trump would soon name former Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana to replace Clapper after the new president takes office.

The intelligence agencies' classified report, which was shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russia's interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the U.S. intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details are included in the classified report.

In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the U.S. was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails.

"We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement," Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russia's interference was aimed at helping Trump win.

An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That version, expected to be a fraction of the length of the classified one, is not likely to answer all the questions about Russia's actions. Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

"I think the public should know as much about this as possible," Clapper told the senators. "And so we'll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here."

Clapper was less shy about declaring Russia "an existential threat to the United States." That's strong rhetoric that harkens back to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, language Obama has avoided. For his part, Trump has embraced the possibility of warmer U.S.-Russian ties.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russia's actions constituted an "act of war." The intelligence director said that was "a very heavy policy call," more appropriate for others in the government to decide.

Obama announced sanctions against Russia late last year, a move Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said was akin to throwing a pebble.

"I'm ready to throw a rock," Graham said.

The GOP is divided over how to deal with Russia. Once Trump takes office, he is certain to face opposition from Democrats as well as some in his own party regarding his posture toward Russia.

Trump has criticized U.S. intelligence findings, even citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails.

But in new tweets early Thursday, he backed away and blamed the "dishonest media" for portraying him as agreeing with Assange, whose organization has been under criminal investigation for its role in classified information leaks. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump wrote.

In fact, Trump has been skeptical to the point of dismissive about the certainty of the assessment of Russian hacking, bringing up past failures, specifically intelligence reporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war there.

Trump has derided the intelligence community on Twitter, his comments widely reported by The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Clapper said Thursday, "I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers  to include policymaker No. 1  should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama is confident that the intelligence assessment on Russia is "unvarnished."

"The president has insisted that the intelligence community should not hesitate to present to the president what could be considered bad news, because a whitewashed assessment doesn't serve anybody well," Earnest said. He added that anyone who consumes intelligence "using rose-colored reading glasses is not going to be able to make good decisions."

___

Follow Eileen Sullivan and Richard Lardner on Twitter: http: twitter.com/esullivanap and http://twitter.com/rplardner
WASHINGTON  Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein has positioned herself at the busy intersection of law and politics, starting with next weeks confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trumps contentious choice for attorney general.

The two-day confirmation hearing for Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama will mark Feinsteins debut as ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing will test Californias senior senator, in more ways than one, and it will soon be followed by an even higher-stakes fight over a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

This is the loyal opposition, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said of Feinsteins new role.

Californias junior senator, Democrat Kamala Harris, has already called Sessions nomination troubling and 1,100 law school professors sent a letter to Congress expressing skepticism that the Alabama lawmaker will fairly promote justice and equality. Feinstein and Sessions, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, have clashed on issues including immigration and abortion rights.

Feinstein, though, also prides herself on her law-and-order credentials, and Rory Little, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said he expects her to be fair with Trump nominees. She is also likely to seek commitments from Sessions to enforce federal civil rights and hate crimes law. His nomination to be a federal judge in the 1980s was blocked over allegations of racially offensive comments.

Shes not a grandstander and her staff does a very good job of preparing her to ask serious, intelligent questions, Little said. Shes not looking to necessarily get on the nightly news.

The outnumbered Democrats dont have the power to block Cabinet nominees without help from Senate Republicans, and have limited options on Supreme Court nominees. Feinstein, though, can spotlight problems with Trumps picks. One of the few non-lawyers on the 20-member judiciary panel, Feinsteins ranking position enhances her clout in setting the tone and substance of Democratic resistance to Trumps immigration, law enforcement and court-packing policies.

The 83-year-old Feinstein will now typically be the first Democrat to speak at committee hearings, including the one for Sessions that begins Tuesday morning. Shell oversee a Democratic minority staff of about 20, and have additional office space. Shell be a favored guest on the Sunday and cable television news shows where many Capitol Hill battles are fought.

They gather their members together, and talk about an approach; in (deciding) how much time for questions and what kind of subjects will come up, said Durbin, himself a longtime member of the judiciary committee.

Feinstein shifted to the Democrats top judiciary committee position for the new 115th Congress after serving in a similar capacity on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein previously served as the intelligence panels chairwoman when Democrats held power.

I think shes going to be a strong and vigorous leader, especially coming from the other positions of top responsibility shes had, said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a judiciary committee member. She is tenacious and tireless.

The confirmation hearing for Sessions already is shaping up as a hot one, with groups including the American Civil Liberties Union raising pointed questions about him. Further complicating the picture is Sessions own history as an outspoken member of the judiciary committee. The experience might help him if Democrats extend a hand to a long-time colleague, but it also could hurt him with lawmakers with whom he has crossed swords.

While Senator Sessions and I differ on a great many issues, I am committed to a full and fair process, Feinstein said.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

After Sessions, it may be only a matter of days or weeks before Trump presents Feinstein and her fellow Democrats with his choice to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Feinstein voted against both Supreme Court nominees that were put forward by the previous Republican president, George W. Bush.

Feinstein was the first woman to serve on the judiciary committee. She was named to the committee following the bitter 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which featured sexual harassment allegations against Thomas by Anita Hill. Now Feinstein becomes the first woman to become ranking member of the committee.

There was a big backlash in the country and on the Democratic side a sense that it was not helpful to have all men on the dais grilling Anita Hill, said Mark Kadesh, Feinsteins former chief of staff. Its come full circle in that the judiciary committee lacked a womans perspective, and now with a critical Supreme Court nomination she will be the ranking member.

With three current Supreme Court justices age 78 or older, theres a distinct possibility that Feinstein might end up considering more than one Trump appointee to the Supreme Court. Critically, if somewhat lower on the public radar, 112 other federal judicial vacancies await filling through Trump nominations, including 17 on influential circuit courts of appeal.



2017 McClatchy Washington Bureau

Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau at www.mcclatchydc.com

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COAL VALLEY  The father of three  a successful Chicago-area sales representative  gingerly paced the familiar floor, waiting for the man who saved his life.

Hugs of gratitude were set to be issued

At age 17, James Haas was shipped to Arrowhead Ranch from Chicago's Cook County jail. Arrowhead -- for decades -- has successfully put at-risk adolescents on life's proper path.

Arrowhead was Haas's final option.

"I have a father, but the first man I met at Arrowhead became a father to me," Haas said minutes before hundreds of well-wishers converged on the Arrowhead campus this week.

They came to wish a happy retirement to Robert "Muskey" Muskeyvalley, Arrowhead's longtime group and family therapist and all-around wonderful man. Muskeyvalley, 64, retired Dec. 31, 2016, after serving Arrowhead for 40 years.

"Mr. Muskeyvalley and many others  but primarily him  gave me the guidance I needed to get my life in order," Haas added, fighting back tears. "Thanks to him/them, I graduated from high school  Moline High School  and with his help, received a scholarship to Western Illinois University.

"I became the first person in my family to graduate from college," he said. "I have everything  an amazing wife, wonderful children, everything  because of him. I used to spend my summers here when school was out because I knew Muskey would continue to help me do the right thing.''

Haas's story is a familiar one about Muskeyvalley's contributions to Arrowhead. They are countless.

"One of the greatest men I know," Ben McAdams, retired superintendent of Moline schools, said of Muskeyvalley. "Few have had an impact on youth like him. I am a better person because I had the chance to work with him and to know him. They come no finer."

Ever-modest and even-tempered, Muskeyvalley has been bracing for his Arrowhead farewell. It was, after some lengthy soul-searching and countless conversations with his wife, Roxie, time to step aside.

"It's about spending more time with family," said Muskeyvalley, a gifted musician and vocalist whose music has been heard in 62 countries.

His latest album on his RONEA record label is set for release. A film about his life is in the early stages of production.

"I have children (three) and the oldest (of nine) in my family, and it is time I devoted more time to them," Muskeyvalley said. "My music is a huge part of my life, and that will be part of the process. But more time with family is the primary reason."

Roxie Muskeyvalley, Arrowhead's longtime intake specialist and its Jill of all trades, will remain on campus. Robert says having his wife's blessing to retire was a huge relief.

"Working in the same place all these years, having Arrowhead be such a big part of our lives, has been a true blessing," Robert said. "We believe we were destined to do God's work together, and we did. I appreciate her letting me step back and work on other projects."

Since his first day at Arrowhead in 1976, he never punched a time clock. He cultivated relationships and constructed foundations for troubled teens to build from, forever going the extra mile to see young people  troubled for their own reasons  succeed.

His approach and compassion has endeared him to thousands. In true Muskey fashion, it was never about him.

"I miss the people  staff and our young people  already," Muskeyvalley said with a laugh and a tear. "If I start naming names  and they all know who they are  I will start crying on you.

"God put me in the right place and the late Gary Brown  a great man  assured us all we were making a difference," he said. "And we were. People  good people  made each day brighter for me."

But not as bright as Muskey made it for them.
The Ministry of National Integration will contribute Reais 300m through the Investment Fund for the Northeast (Finor), while the remaining Reais 130m will come from the Ministry of Transport, Ports and Civil Aviation via the federal railway engineering and construction company Valec.

According to national integration minister Mr Helder Barbalho, Finor will release an initial tranche of Reais 152.7m to enable works to resume this year. The transfer of the remaining funds from Finor is contingent on the projects progress during 2017.

The ministry said in a statement that Transnordestina Logistica, which is responsible for construction, has agreed to submit a work plan for resumption of the project within 50 days.

Transnordestina has already received around Reais 6.3bn, including Reais 3.4bn in federal financing. According to the governments initial cost projections, a further Reais 5bn will be needed to complete the project.

For detailed data on hundreds of new-build rail projects around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro.
Bane Nor takes on the infrastructure maintenance and traffic management responsibilities of former infrastructure manager Jernbaneverket as well as ownership of stations and commercial real estate, previously the domain of national train operator Norwegian State Railways (NSB).

Bane NOR will be a central part of Norwegians' everyday lives, says Mr Gorm Frimannslund, Bane Nor executive vice president during the event. Every year there are more than 73 million passengers through our rail network. The job of our 4500 highly-skilled and dedicated employees makes an important contribution for society to function. We shall endeavour to solve the tasks Bane Nor faces and to meet the expectations placed on us.

Detailed and high-level planning of rail infrastructure projects is now the responsibility of the new Railway Directorate, which also began work this week. The Directorate will also award future passenger operations contracts, with Norways 4167km network set to be split into six to eight biddable packages over the next few years.

NSB is eligible to bid on these, although no date has been set for the opening of bids for the first two packages following delays to the process. Prequalification began in mid-2016 for the North package, which includes long-distance services from Oslo to Trondheim, and related regional diesel-operated services, and the South Package, which encompasses the long-distance service from Oslo to Stavanger and various local and regional services along the route.

In order to offer a level playing field for future passenger operations contracts, as well as its real estate division, the government has forced NSB to shred its hold on ticketing and fares, which is now the responsibility of new government company Entur, while rolling stock is held by Materiellselskapet. Successful bidders for contracts will be expected to lease trains from this company.

For more on Norways railway reform, including interviews with the Norwegian Ministry of Transport, the Railway Directorate, and NSB, see the January issue of IRJ, The Railway in 2017, p32.

Bane Nor employees handed out free coffee and buns to passengers across the network the mark the start of the new company's work.
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.
NYMTA awards L.K. Comstock QBL signaling contract Written by Mischa Wanek-Libman , Editor, Railway Track & Structures; and Engineering Editor, Railway Age









The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has awarded a $223.3 million contract to L.K. Comstock & Company Inc. to upgrade the New York City Transit Queens Boulevard Line (QBL) signaling system and install communications-based train control (CBTC).

The line is one of MTAs busiest; by modernizing the existing signaling system and installing CBTC, MTA can run trains closer together, gain capacity and reduce crowding.

CBTC is operational on the Canarsie Line and Flushing Line, both of which L.K. Comstock installed, and is part of MTAs five-year capital plan. Thales Transport & Security and Siemens Rail Automation are supplying interoperable CBTC technology. The CBTC system is MTAs QBL West Phase 1 project.

The communications-based train control signaling system is a vital part of our plan to address issues of overcrowding, record ridership and service delays, said MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Prendergast. CBTC represents the MTAs efforts to bring advanced technology to a century-old subway system that, in some parts, has not been updated in decades.

Work on the project begins in January 2017 and extends 55 months with a targeted completion date in the fall of 2021. L.K. Comstock will perform all of the signal systems upgrades, CBTC installation and new systems work. RailWorks Transit will serve as a subcontractor to perform related track and civil work. Both companies are subsidiaries of RailWorks Corporation.

L.K. Comstock is responsible for installing new signal, communications, fiber-optic and CBTC systems, as well as track on the mostly four-track system starting in Jamaica, Queens, and extending under Queens Boulevard to 8th Avenue and 50th Street on the West Side of Manhattan. Additional project work consists of building new signal control rooms, modifying existing facilities and upgrading systems to ensure connectivity with the CBTC system. The project also includes constructing and extending fiber backbone support to perform health and system tests on the CBTC-equipped rail rolling stock in all the ancillary yards and facilities that support the Queens Boulevard Line.
In an interview with Schweiz am Sonntag published on January 1, Stadler Rail owner and CEO Peter Spuhler said he was considering a return to Swiss politics and how to go about securing the long-term future of the company. This could include the sale of a stake in the business ...
In a recent interview, President-elect Donald Trump questioned the usefulness of taking daily briefings from the U.S. intelligence community, worrying many observers that he might be unprepared to handle matters of national security as president. Trump said that he preferred to rely on his generals as well as Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who were also receiving the President's Daily Brief (PDB), to alert him when there was something he should know. Trump suggested that the PDB could waste valuable time, since he was already familiar with many of the topics, and his sense was that there was much repetition in the articles and briefing styles. He implied that he would prefer to receive briefings only if something should change.

In general, one would expect presidents to seek to be well-informed on the full range of global security issues they will have to deal with while in office and, therefore, to seek opportunities to engage the intelligence community. Trump's comments, however, strongly suggest that he will only take the PDB when necessary  such as when he took a briefing following the terrorist attacks in Germany and Turkey. According to David Priess, an expert on the history of the PDB and author of a ground-breaking book on the subject (who appeared in a recent War on the Rocks podcast), Trump has taken fewer PDBs on average than any previous president-elect. Given the president-elect's relative inexperience handling matters of national security, his distaste for intelligence briefings has troubled many observers....

The remainder of this commentary is available on warontherocks.com.

Derek Grossman is a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He previously served at the Defense Intelligence Agency as the daily intelligence briefer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs at the Pentagon and on the President's Daily Brief (PDB) staff. Grossman was the winner of the 2014 Galileo Competition which fosters new and innovative ideas in the intelligence community. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

This commentary originally appeared on War on the Rocks on January 6, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Argentinean channel Telefe, which was recently acquired by Viacom, managed to maintain its hold over free-to-air (FTA) audiences during 2016.





During the year, Telefe averaged a 33.7% share and a 9 rating point, leading audience figures for the fifth year in a row, according to Kantar Ibope Once again, El Trece was the second most watched free-to-air (FTA) network in Argentina, averaging a 32% share and an 8.5 rating. America TV (16.9%), El Nueve (11.3%) and the public broadcaster (6.1%) complete the top five.Telefe, which Telefonica sold to Viacom in November , was the most watched signal in every time slot, reaching the highest rating (12 points against 11.5 for El Trece) during prime time.Such audience figures, as well as Telefes content production division, were the main reasons behind Viacoms interest in acquiring the channel. The US company plans to make of Telefe its spearhead in FTA TV, while keeping a comfortable position in the pay-TV market, in which it manages MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Paramount Channel.
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Viewers in Italy of the can now benefit from HD quality for the full line-up of TV channels produced by Rai.





The Italian public broadcaster has completed the transition of all its channels to HDTV via the Tivusat TV platform that broadcasts exclusively from Eutelsats HOTBIRD neighbourhood.Rai YoYo, Rai School, Rai Gulp, Rai Storia and Rai News24 were the last of 13 Rai channels to transition to HD and the operation was completed with the collaboration of Rai Way. This operates the signal transmission and broadcasting network for Italys national public broadcaster.Tivusat was set up to ensure that everyone in Italy has access to free digital TV and its full line-up now comprises over 100 channels, of which 24 are in HD and 80 in standard digital, plus 33 radio stations. A total of 2.9 million Tivusat smartcards have been activated.Commenting on what it has done for Tivusat, Eutelsat Italy CEO Renato Farina said: Ensuring that all Italian TV homes can access the highest signal quality is a priority for Eutelsat. We are delighted to be part of the effort to accelerate Tivusats HD offer and to take part in other exceptional ventures such as the documentary Tonight at St Peters hat was produced by Rai in Ultra HD and broadcast to Tivusat homes on 27 December.
The mainstream medias misrepresentation of Scott Pruitt as an unsophisticated crony of the powerful energy lobby couldnt be farther from the truth. In nominating Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, President-elect Donald Trump has selected someone willing to defend the American peoples values, and the Senate should confirm him as soon as possible.

Here is how Pruitt will lead in accordance with American ideals:

Pruitt will defend separation of powers. As attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt has led the charge against the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a series of EPA regulations crafted by the Obama administration that attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions from power plants.

Only Congress has the power to enact such extensive changes. The EPAs attempt to bypass the legislative branch is unconstitutional. As Sandra Day OConnor wrote in FDA vs. Brown & Williamson: No matter how important, conspicuous, and controversial the issue, and regardless of how likely the public is to hold the Executive Branch politically accountable, an administrative agencys power to regulate in the public interest must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress.

No such valid grant has been given. Pruitt and attorneys general of 27 other states have sued the EPA for overreaching its constitutional limits. They are supported by both conservative and liberal judges in condemnation of the regulations. Bush appointee Judge Brett Kavanagh referenced both OConnor and Scalia opinions in his arguments against CPP. And even Lawrence Tribe, Obamas law school mentor, thinks the plan is unconstitutional. Pruitts case is currently awaiting a decision in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Afterwards, it must sit before the Supreme Court before CPP can be enacted.

Pruitt will ensure that the EPA plays by the rules and goes through Congress. By doing so, he will promote the best method for producing effective environmental policy: bipartisan efforts in Congress, not top-down decisions made by unelected officials.

Pruitt will defend federalism. The EPA has repeatedly ignored the rights of states to determine their own policy. Time and time again, it has imposed uniform rules for diverse situations, landscapes, and people. CPP is just one example of such regulations, and according to Pruitts attorney, David Rivkin, it would allow the EPA to drive states on issues like developing new power plants.

Pruitt has doggedly fought CPP and similar regulations, refusing to quit even when the courts would not hear his cases. He has sued the EPA multiple times over rules that interfered with state sovereignty. Under his leadership, Washington bureaucrats will no longer dictate the lives and lands of the citizens with whom they barely interact. Instead, state and federal governments will work together to create legislation appropriate to regional needs. And states, no longer bound by regulation, will be free to experiment with environmental policies that, if successful, can be implemented on a national level.

Pruitt will defend American entrepreneurship. Environmental issues have stunted American industry. The EPAs regulatory onslaught has cost Americans $1 trillion over the past decade, and the agencys attack on coal has cost Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio thousands of jobs.

If these regulations go unchallenged, American corporations will be left with two options. They either can spend money on lawyers to help navigate endless EPA regulations and stay in America, or they can move to countries without regulations. If they stay, the money spent on lawyers prohibits them from creating jobs. If they leave, the emissions in countries without regulations will do even greater damage to the global environment.

Pruitt will advance American businesses. He has a history of working with, not against, business; his letter to the EPA objecting to CPP was developed in cooperation with Devon Energy. Although the media tried to frame this as underhanded dealing with a corporate lobby, Pruitts actions actually defend American workers. Labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Mine Workers, have joined his suit against CPP. And with restrictive regulations eliminated, companies can invest in hiring more workers rather than exorbitant legal fees.

Pruitt has shown himself to be an audacious and effective leader, willing to question establishment conventions in defense of the Constitution. Under him, the EPA will develop strategic, specific solutions to environmental issues that take both innovations from the private sector and the concerns of the states into account. The Senate must honor the American principles Pruitt has so ardently defended and immediately confirm his appointment.
It was the women who noticed something suspicious. In a community in southern Afghanistan, unfamiliar people were knocking on doors, asking families if their sons would be interested in working on foreign investment projects. But the local women knew that foreign investments in this remote corner of Afghanistan were unlikely. As they investigated, they learned the community's boys were actually being targeted for something far more unsavory: recruitment by militants.
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You Are Bidding On Down Payment Only for 2.3 Acres in Oregon! Pine Trees. Klamath Falls Forest Estates. In developed area. Electric. Seller terms. Parcel: This auction is for legal description: Lot 8, Block 47, Klamath Falls Forest Estates Highway 66 Unit. Plat 2. This is a 2.3 ACRE parcel of land in Klamath County, Oregon. This land is about 5 miles north of Bonanza, Oregon. The property is in a quiet residential area. There is a newer home across the street. The land is quiet but is not in the...

Price: $ 12,900 State/Province: Oregon Seller State of Residence: Arizona Property Address: Ruddy Duck Road Zip/Postal Code: 97623 Zoning: Residential Type: Homesite, Lot Location: 852**, Tempe, Arizona

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ESCAPE TO GODS COUNTRY AND OWN A PIECE OF PARADISE IN THE NORTHERN MAINE NEXT TO THE CANADIAN BORDER. This huge 23 +/- acre tract of recreational and hunting land is located in Cyr Plantation, Maine. A rural town that sits a stone throw away from the Canadian border. This lot is only a few miles from the International border. There you have the town of Van Buren for your amenities, and the St. John River for boating and fishing for the trophy Musky. This 23 acre is a great wildlife area for moos...

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FREE 2017 USE TO THE BUYER SELLER HAS PAID THE 2017 MAINTENANCE FEE FOR YOUFREE use based on resort availability and the resorts ability to complete the transfer in time. sumday Vacations does not guarantee FREE use or that this will transfer in time. If FREE use is received, this will be considered a bonus to the buyer. Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Lake Geneva Resort SV64589-48759 CONTACT7036 Grand Geneva Way P.O. Box 130 USA Lake Geneva, WI 53147 USA Resort telephone number: 262/248-8811 Reso...

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FREE 2017 USE TO THE BUYER SELLER HAS PAID 2017 MAINTENANCE FEES FOR YOU FREE use based on resort availability and the resorts ability to complete the transfer in time. Sumday Vacations does not guarantee FREE use or that this will transfer in time. If FREE use is received this will be considered a bonus to the buyer. Royal Holiday Club SV64842-49698 CONTACTBoulevard Kukulcan, Kilometro 12.5 Lote 18, Fraccionamiento 1-B Zona Hotelera Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500 Mexico Resort telephone number: ...

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Big Bore AR-15s are pretty damn impressive when you get up into calibers like 458 SOCOM and 50 Beowulf. Hunters have been using them on feral hogs for over a decade; they put the power of a 45-70 into your 223 poodle shooter blaster. And yet, very few manufacturers offer a decent suppressor for 'em. In fact, as far as we can tell, there's just a handful of companies  and one of the best of those is Bowers.

Bowers Big Bore Big Lebowski  Mighty Rifle CanDude

Bowers is mostly known for their submachine gun silencers. Very few manufacturers cater to the civilian SMG market, and the consensus among heavy hitters in the silencer world has often been, unfortunately, to assume that everyone who has a sub gun already has a can. That too was a problem Bowers attempted to solve; we sampled Bowers' Vers-9 and Vers-9S cans last year and walked away extremely impressed. Happily, like the subgun, the Big Bore AR is another niche market and Bowers is more than happy to fill their needs for 458 SOCOM and 50 Beowulf.

Our good friends at Silencershop.com saw this need and heard about it constantly. The problem was that not too many shooters have big bore uppers laying around for testing purposes, so they got a few uppers, a few cans and the right amount of ammunition out to us.

458 SOCOM

Due to the name, many people think the 458 SOCOM is only in use by SOCOM troops. While the concept was certainly developed with input from USSOCOM (specifically Task Force Ranger), the round is not currently used in any official capacity that we know of. In fact, one silencer manufacturer told us they would start making silencers for the round just as soon as USSOCOM places an order for them.

Interesting bit of history: Marty ter Weeme of Teppo Jutsu came up with the ammunition and Tromix of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma built the first rifles.

50 Beowulf

Around the time that the 458 SOCOM was kicking around, another inventor was tinkering with the same concept. Alexander Arms brought their 50 Beowulf to market in 2001 with a cartridge that performs similar manner to the 500 S&W, but with a base that fits the 7.62 X 39 bolts used in ARs in that caliber. It accomplishes that by using a rebated rim.

Why?

According to Jeremy Mallette of Silencershop.com, both rounds are a hit with hog hunters. Basically you get 45-70 Government ballistics and performance, but from an AR15 platform rifle (out to about 250 yards).

You're prob'ly not going to make the long range Matthew Quigley type shots as you could with a Sharps rifle, though if someone were to apply himself to that task it could probably be done with enough hold over.

These were designed to be compatible with AR15s when it comes to magazines, buffers and lower receivers. A 20 round AR magazine will hold 7 rounds and a 30-rounder will hold 10. For those who live in states that restrict magazine capacity, that might just give you a valid argument not to surrender your magazines (assuming you have a 458 SOCOM upper on hand).

Bowers Group

There is a silencer manufactured for each of these calibers by Bowers Group: VERS458 and VERS50. They measure almost a foot in length and tip the scales at close to 2 pounds. That's basically what you need to counteract the psi generated from these two rounds, even in their subsonic incarnations.

The Big Lebowski

Our first introduction to the 50 Beowulf occurred over a decade ago when we saw uppers being produced by a local manufacturer called BOHICA Arms. In addition to having rifles, ammunition and videos on display, he toted around shattered cinder blocks. When we asked him what he used for a backstop to his range he chuckled and said, California.

That appealed to us.

We had another idea in mind for a target and found it in the form of a bowling ball.

Some of us were pretty hard on the pins at the local bowling alley in our youth, so much so they eventually refused to stop selling us their old ones. We've always sort of wondered what it would be like to shoot an actual bowling ball. Why?

Do we need a reason?

Setting the ball out at 50 yards, we fired a single round of 458 SOCOM. That cracked the surface. Our second and third shots broke off more so we set the rifle down and grabbed the 50 Beowulf (after all, we had just the one bowling ball).

We centered the red dot of our Aimpoint on the ball and the hit literally pulverized everything that was left. In fact, it sent it in every direction imaginable.

We spent the rest of the day blowing up watermelons in a way that would give Gallagher a stroke. Is this proper ballistic testing? Of course not. But it's fun, and plenty of times that's reason.

Some time later we also cracked off a few rounds without the cans. but quickly put them back on, albeit not for the reason you're probably thinking.

The Difference

The rounds were not excruciatingly loud (unsuppressed the 458 SOCCOM is over 160 Decibels, bowers takes that down to 134 DB with this can), but you have to remember another function such silencers perform. It's something we often take for granted on smaller cans with smaller calibers: they act as the ultimate compensator.

The suppressors cut felt recoil at least in half, so much so we actually found the 458 SOCOM pleasant to shoot  of the two, if we needed a short range hog buster, we'd go with the 458 SOCOM. Can or not, there's no mistaking the Beowulf for anything but a fifty.

Now, our setup might not have been the best (we threw the uppers on an Anderson lower with a six-position collapsible stock), so it's possible these cans would perform at least a little differently on a dedicated rifle. Our build would certainly be different if we were building one to keep.

Still the VERS-50 cuts about 30 Decibels and drops it down into the 140 DB range. That makes it hearing safe for some of our guys; you might want to wear ear pro even with the can, but the can will definitely make your shooting experience more pleasant.

There may very well be a military application for these, but in a specialized role to be sure. This is not for the rank and file troopswell, unless we deploy to do battle with an army of feral hogs somewhere.

We would like to thank both Bowers Group and Silencershop.com for getting all components (uppers, Aimpoints, silencers, and lots of ammunition) to us. It was an informative and interesting range day.
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University of Georgia students werent the only ones checking email and weather apps for signs of snow on Thursday night. 11Alive Chief Meteorologist Chris Holcomb received a text from his 18 year old daughter who was worried that her dads predictions might not come true.
Telia Garner decided to switch her birth control shortly after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Garner said her mother, who was worried about birth control becoming unavailable or unaffordable in coming years, prompted her to switch to a long-term method of contraception.
The weather outside may be frightful, but that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying a sip of their favorite winter drink. Since health and well-being should be of importance all throughout the year, here are five healthy drink alternatives you can make right at home this season.
Baggage claim area of Terminal 1 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Jan. 7, 2017 the day after five people were fatally shot at the airport. (AL DIAZ / AP)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla  An Army veteran who complained that the government was controlling his mind drew a gun from his checked luggage on arrival at the Fort Lauderdale airport and opened fire in the baggage claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight, authorities said.

He was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, one witness said.

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"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," the witness, Mark Lea, told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, Alaska, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.

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A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Santiago had walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the U.S. government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

Agents questioned an agitated and disjointed-sounding Santiago and then called police, who took him for a mental health evaluation, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent George Piro, who is in charge of the Miami field office, confirmed that Santiago had come into the Anchorage office and clearly indicated at the time that he was not intent on hurting anyone.

Authorities said the motive for the attack was under investigation. Shortly after the shooting, and before details of Santiago's mental health became public, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said that it remained to be seen whether it was terrorism or the work of "someone who is mentally deranged."

Piro said authorities are looking at leads in several states and have not ruled out terrorism. "We're looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle," he said

Santiago, who is in federal custody, will face federal charges and is expected to appear in court Monday, Piro said.

One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition for his handgun, sending panicked travelers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.

Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen.

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Bruce Hugon, who had flown in from Indianapolis for a vacation, was at the baggage carousel when he heard four or five pops and saw everyone drop down on the ground. He said a woman next to him tried to get up and was shot in the head.

"The guy must have been standing over me at one point. I could smell the gunpowder," he said. "I thought I was about to feel a piercing pain or nothing at all because I would have been dead."

It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are put in a checked bag  not a carry-on  and are unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in.

Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from Anchorage aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage  his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

At Fort Lauderdale, "after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change the rules.

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(David Schutz, Catie Peterson/Sun Sentinel)

The attack also exposed another weak point in airport security: While travelers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach the gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggage claim areas, are more lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

In 2013, a gunman with a grudge against the Transportation Security Administration shot and killed one of the agency's screeners and wounded three others during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport. Last November, an airline worker was shot and killed near an employee parking lot at Oklahoma City's airport, and in 2015 a machete-wielding man was shot to death after he attacked federal security officers at the New Orleans airport.

"The fact is that wherever there are crowds, such as at our airports, we remain vulnerable to these types of attacks," Nelson said.

The Fort Lauderdale gunman said nothing as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding," according to Lea. The killer went through about three magazines before running out of ammunition, Lea said.

"He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him," Lea said.

The gunman was arrested unharmed, with no shots fired by law enforcement officers, and was being questioned by the FBI, Sheriff Scott Israel said.

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Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said 30 to 40 people were injured  scrapes, bruises and broken bones  after the shooting.

The condition of the wounded was not disclosed. At least one of the victims was seen lying in a pool of blood with what appeared to be a head wound.

The airport was shut down, with incoming flights diverted and outgoing flights held on the ground. Airport Director Mark Gale said it will try to reopen at 5 a.m. Saturday but urged travelers to check with their individual airlines on flight status. He said 10,000 of the airport's stranded travelers were being bused overnight to the city's spacious Port Everglades cruise ship terminal.

President Barack Obama was briefed by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House said. President-elect Donald Trump said that it is a "disgraceful situation that's happening in our country and throughout the world" and that it was too soon to say whether it was a terrorist attack.

Santiago's brother, Bryan, told the AP that his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiago's girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months. Bryan Santiago said that he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it.

He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was sent to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.

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The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted  from specialist to private first class  and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honorable discharge.

John Schilcher told Fox News he came up to the baggage claim and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.

"The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground," said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. "The firing just went on and on."

"I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up there was a policeman standing over me," he said. "That's when I assumed it was safe."

Associated Press
Anna and David Posey's captivating new restaurant is one to watch.

Review: Elske

1350 W. Randolph St. 312-733-1314

Rating: !!! (out of four)

If youve ever dated someone who uses really good-smelling shampoo, youve probably found yourself leaning in to catch a whiff. Or maybe it wasnt shampoo, but a cologne or a scent on a T-shirt or the lingering tang of lip balm after a kiss. The point is, youre kind of intoxicated or haunted by that scent depending on your experience with its wearer. I had the same reaction to the first dish I tried at Elske, a new West Loop restaurant from husband-and-wife duo David (Blackbird) and Anna Posey (The Publican).

Anna and David Posey at Elske, their new restaurant in the West Loop. (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

The seduction

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The dish in question featured crispy roast maitake mushrooms ($17) and shaved raw chestnuts swimming in a pear cream thats poured tableside. The pear cream was sweet, fruity and redolent with spicy ginger and winey shallot. Like some kind of pheromonic bat signal, it had me sniffing deep within the earthenware bowl while dipping my fork in for a taste. Not only did the cream give off a heady aroma, but it provided a bright and light acidity that complemented the rich earthy mushroom. Though its a vegan dish, it mesmerized me just as much as any piece of perfectly seared A5 wagyu ever has.

Whole roasted maitake mushroom with pear cream and chestnuts (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

This dish, however, was actually the third thing that captivated me on my visit to Elske. I dropped by on the day of Chicagos first baby polar vortex, when temps plunged below zero. The icy blue neon Elske sign in the window acted like a beacon in the night on what is still a fairly lonely and dark part of the Randolph Street strip.

Once I walked past the neon sign and into the courtyard on the side of the restaurant, I spotted a fire blazing in a huge hearth surrounded by several chairs. When I first heard the name of the restaurant, I thought it sounded like the name of a badass heroine Jessica Alba might play in some kind of post-apocalyptic adventure movie. (Elske is actually the Danish word for love.) The Game of Thrones-worthy blaze didnt disavow me of this notion. Like me, almost everyone who walked into or out of the restaurant was drawn to warm themselves by the fire. Some even took selfies.

Danish modern

Once inside, the blaze flickered against the plate-glass windows of the dining room, mirroring the glow of real candles on the tables. I mention the candles because lately restaurants have been turning to fake flickering LEDs, which I find as romantic as the glow of a bug zapper. Bravo to the Elske crew for keeping it real.

The dining room at Elske. (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

The dining room looks like a catalog set for Room & Board. Handsome light-colored wood tables featuring exposed grain are flanked by black half-moon-shaped spindle-back chairs. The walls are dotted with sconces, but are otherwise clean and free of art. Because there was very little to look at, I spent a lot of time focused on the bro at the table next to me wearing a blazer over his Cubs T-shirt and the dude at the table next to him wearing a cashmere turtleneck tucked into his jeans. While I didnt quite understand their sartorial choices, I appreciated their good taste in food.

Hygge, it's what's for dinner

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Youve probably noticed Ive mentioned the word Danish a few times already. David Poseys mother is from Denmark, and the Poseys got engaged in Copenhagen. Denmark has a special place in their hearts for good reason. While the food isnt particularly Nordic, Elske is inspired by a concept called hygge, the Danish obsession with creating cozy and hospitable environments, among other ideas.

Collins cocktail at Elske (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

The roaring fireplace and clean dining room felt like the very essence of hygge. So did our server, who was very welcoming and knowledgeable. She guided my wife to an excellent cocktail by declaring the Collins ($12) one of her favorites. A mix of Cardamaro, Topo Chico mineral water, rosemary and grapefruit juice, the cocktail was dreamed up by Elske general manager and former Violet Hour bartender Kyle Davidson. The refreshing brew was spicy, piney and full of bright citrus, simultaneously evoking a beach vacation and a touch of Christmas.

Unlike the hospitality and aesthetic, Elskes food and drink arent especially Danish. But the Poseys are putting out smart, clean dishes grounded in natural techniques and earthy ingredients including puffed cereals, mushrooms and root vegetables that remind me of the plates Ive seen coming out of the kitchen of Denmarks most famous restaurant, Noma. On a local level, the composed natural beauty I found at Elske reminds me of the stuff I see Curtis Duffy putting out at Grace.

Like Duffy, the Poseys have a way with vegetables. Almost as awesome as the maitake mushroom dish is a bowl of celeriac risotto ($18). The humble root vegetable is diced to look like tiny grains of rice and glistens with hazelnut and sherry-flavored cream. The final product is more toothsome and satisfying than the most al dente rice. My only quibble: Theres a generous shaving of black truffle on top of the whole thing, but the tame truffles didnt impart as much heady funk as I would have liked.

Beyond vegetables

Not everything is vegan or vegetarian. A bed of soft scrambled eggs ($18) swaddled silky chicken confit slivers and chewy smoky carrots, which have concentrated in sweetness and flavor after spending days warming over Elskes oven. A thin shiny omelet dome enrobed the whole thing. The contrast of the custard-thick omelet and fluffy scramble underneath was delightful. Ironically, the graceful dish was inspired by some shitty leftover eggs at my moms house, where the eggs had hardened on the bottom, but the top was still a soft scramble, David Posey said. After that, I got this idea for an egg-like crepe over scrambled eggs that became this dish.

The only savory dish I had some trouble with was grilled coppa ($22) with sunchokes and quince. The edges of the pork were cooked well-done and bursting with hay and mineral-like flavors, but the rare center was super fatty and chewy. The sunchoke puree on top was a touch gloppy, and I found that there were too many soft textures in the dish.

Daring dessert

Textural contrasts were strong in Anna Poseys desserts. A rye bread pudding ($12) featured crispy puffed amaranth, sorghum and rice that were as addictive as popcorn. An accompanying quince sorbet was surrounded by a tiny moat of quince vinegar, which offered a smart sharp acidic contrast to the richness of the pudding. While I would buy the sorbet by the pint at the grocery, I struggled a bit with the baby food-like pudding puree.

Another dessert featured mica-like sheets of praline ($12)which ate like sweet and slightly bitter potato chipsand swooshes of black currant jelly and velvet-smooth parsnip cream. The dish evoked peanut butter and jelly vibes, but the black currant was incredibly tangy and the cream was mild. The dish needed a touch more sugar to offset the mouth-puckering black currant.

Though dessert wasnt perfect, it was daring and thoughtful and a great antidote to the ubiquitous and forgettable lava cakes and creme brulees that seem to be making a comeback on dessert menus these days.

Bottom line: Anna and David Posey are putting out inspired, natural and beautiful food. If you liked their work at The Publican and Blackbird, youll love the Danish-tinged evolution theyre putting forth at their own spot. If it hadnt missed my deadline, Elske would have made my best restaurants of 2016 list.

Michael Nagrant is a RedEye contributor.

Reporters visit restaurants unannounced, and meals are paid for by RedEye.
Available evidence suggests that we are on the way to a very costly failure of the current demonetisation scheme, says M R Narayana.

The Government of India knew the negligible share of non-demonetised currency (in total currency) in circulation on November 8, 2016: Rs 100 (9.61 per cent), Rs 50 (1.18 per cent) and others (2.83 per cent).

Further, the government knew its capacity constraints on total remonetisation in a short time and the unpreparedness of the banking system to meet with after-demonetisation demand for cash by all sectors of the economy and all sections of society.

Nevertheless, the government went ahead with its ambitious demonetisation scheme with the main objective to unearthing unaccounted cash money by about Rs 4.5 lakh crore.

This money is the expected outcome and constitutes about 31.74 per cent of the total value of demonetised currency.

However, demonetisation will be a total failure if this outcome is not fully realised and there will be economic and non-economic costs associated with such a failure.

Unfortunately, available evidence suggests that we are on the way to a very costly failure of the current demonetisation scheme.

Available evidence

Unearthing the total unaccounted cash money (or currency notes in circulation) from November 8 to December 30 is determined by the total exchange of demonetised currency in banks up to November 24, total deposits in demonetised currency up to December 30 and amount of cash in demonetised currencies with the financial institutions up to November 8, 2016.

In addition, demonetised notes were officially declared acceptable for 18 specified government-based transactions up to December 15, 2016. Their value is now a part of the total deposits.

Cumulative total exchange and deposits have increased from Rs 8.45 lakh crore (or 64 per cent of demonetised currency) on November 27 to Rs 12.44 lakh crore (or 92 per cent of demonetised currency) on December 10.

Of this amount, the share of deposits is 97 per cent. Assuming that 86 per cent of cash with banks was in demonetised currency, total unaccounted cash yet to be unearthed as of December 17 was equal to Rs 1.16 lakh crore or about eight per cent of total value of demonetised currency.

Consequently, further deposits closer to Rs 1.16 lakh crore up to December 30 would indicate a move towards a high failure of demonetisation scheme because of a wrong estimate of unaccounted cash money.

Since the start of demonetisation, schemes for voluntary disclosures of black money at varying tax rates have been announced.

The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme 2016 is the latest addition to that list.

Income tax raids have been conducted on tax dodgers, corrupt people and black money hoarders.

Enquiries on sources of income of high amount deposits to the general public, especially people holding below poverty line card or Jan Dhan accounts have been going on.

All success of these measures may help the government to defend its efforts to drive out black money, but cannot attribute that success solely to the demonetisation scheme.

Cost of failure

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy or CMIEs preliminary estimate of costs of demonetisation from November 8 to December 30 is Rs 1.28 lakh crore.

Of this total cost, the largest share goes to industry (48 per cent) due to the liquidity crisis that has hit the supply chain of goods and services.

This is followed by the share of (a) banks and other financial institutions (27 per cent) due to additional cost of staff time, overheads and ATM recalibration, (b) government and the Reserve Bank of India (13 per cent) due to printing and transporting new notes, and highway toll losses, and (c) households (12 per cent) for work loss due to standing in queue for exchange of notes.

The above estimated cost is about 29 per cent of original targeted unaccounted money (Rs 4.5 lakh crore).

At present, the cost is 110 per cent of the expected outcome (Rs 1.16 lakh crore). This means that the cost of unearthing every rupee of unaccounted money is more than one rupee.

Final results on outcomes and costs of demonetisation will be known only in due course of time.

In the meanwhile, cost and benefit estimates may be revised and refined.

First, many transaction costs of demonetisation for households are non-monetary and non-wage related.

For instance, unintentionally, current demonetisation has imposed a rationing of money by uses and limits during the direct exchange (November 9-24) period, and limits on the withdrawal for the entire period (November 9 to December 30).

The negative effects of rationing need to be accounted for costs on households and industry in both rural and urban areas.

Second, the winter session of Parliament witnessed an intense debate on effects of demonetisation on the common man. The time and monetary cost of these parliamentary debates need to be added to the governments cost of demonetisation.

Third, tax on unaccounted money will attract varying income taxes. Such tax revenues should be a part of benefits of demonetisation for the government.

Way forward

About 93 per cent of 40 million construction workers in India depend on weekly or daily wages in cash. About 30 per cent of them are illiterates and 68 per cent work in rural areas. Nearly 42 per cent of them belong to SC and ST categories.

Now, the government wishes everyone, including them, in society to be a member of cashless transactions society.

Unfortunately, such a transformation to a cashless society cannot be costless and cannot happen over a few months.

Consequently, the cost demonetisation will not end soon for all, especially for the common man, the unorganised or informal workers, the small businessmen, the retail traders, and the small and micro industrialists.

These costs may eventually result in a very costly failure of demonetisation.

This pessimism is regrettable but will be inevitable due to its stark reality.

The writer is professor of Economics at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru.
'The Gujarat model which is being shown is not the right picture.'

'Farmers are not getting their dues, youth are unemployed and factories have shut shop.'

Alpesh Thakor has announced plans to boycott the Vibrant Gujarat summit in Gandhinagar.

Thakor says the Vibrant Gujarat summits have done no good to Gujarat, and contrary to claims have created no employment for Gujaratis.

He has taken out morchas across Gujarat to protest against Vibrant Gujarat and promises to disrupt the event.

Thakor, image, left, tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf why he feels Vibrant Gujarat is a disaster for Gujarat.

Why are you protesting against Vibrant Gujarat?

Vibrant Gujarat is being held since 2003. They claim to have got investments worth crores of rupees into the state.

They say 51,000 companies have set up shop in Gujarat, but the fact is that today, there are 60 lakh (6 million) youth in Gujarat who have failed to find employment.

By bringing these big companies to Gujarat all small industries in the state have folded up because they could not face the competition.

And due to this local Gujaratis are not getting jobs.

Now our demand is that 85% Gujaratis must be given jobs.

Secondly, the Gujarat government must show us the figures of how many Gujarati locals got employment because of the Vibrant Gujarat summits.

They are spending crores of rupees on programmes like Vibrant Gujarat, but Gujarati youth are not getting employment.

Why do you think Gujarati youth are not finding jobs?

The reason is the government is not paying attention to creating jobs for locals.

Our fertile lands are being given to industrialists and they are getting tax benefits to start companies.

They are promoting industrialists, but in return Gujaratis are not benefitting from it.

Go to any village in Gujarat and you will find workers are being employed by factories for eight months after which they are sacked. That is why we are protesting.

You are talking of permanent employment, which is difficult to find in these times, isn't it? Contract work is a reality of our times.

Agreed, but even skilled Gujarati youth are not getting jobs. They are not even getting temporary jobs.

Maybe local Gujarati youth are not that skill oriented to get jobs in those big factories?

These companies are giving in writing that 85% of local Gujarati youth will get jobs after they set up factories.

Why are they doing this, then? Remove this clause.

The government says they are creating local employment, but the reality is they are not creating any local unemployment.

Many Indians from other states come to Gujarat for employment.

We are talking of local employment because the local youth of Gujarat are unemployed today.

There are 60 lakh unemployed Gujaratis, where will they go?

We too are Indians, yes, but what about skilled Gujarati youth? They are not getting jobs in Gujarat.

So how are you protesting?

We are taking out a morcha of unemployed youth on Friday and if our demand is not met, we will stop the Vibrant Gujarat summit.

Lakhs of Gujarati youth are joining our morcha, which is a non-political event.

Do you plan to join hands with other agitationists like Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mewani to take on the BJP in Gujarat?

Our agitation is on local issues right now, but in future if our people want to join politics we will do that.

Right now there is no plan to form a political party, but in the future anything can happen.

They promised 85% jobs to local Gujaratis, but this was never done.

On the ground you do not see that reality.

Will you follow similar tactics like Raj Thackeray whose Maharashtra Navnirman Sena beat up North Indians because they were taking jobs away from locals?

We will never do that.

We are demanding jobs. Every Indian is our brother, but what we are saying is that give us jobs because we are locals.

We have the skills, so give us employment. We welcome outsiders and are not against them.

But migrant labour is cheap, how can any business go against cheap labour?

That's why we have told the Gujarat government to remove the clause that 85% of local Gujaratis will be given jobs.

They make tall claims in Vibrant Gujarat programmes that they are creating jobs for 50 lakh (5 million) Gujaratis, which is a lie.

But outsiders are getting jobs in Gujarat.

That is the issue. Outsiders are getting jobs, but not Gujaratis.

Are you saying jobs in Gujarat should only be for Gujaratis?

Not for Gujaratis alone. There is a rule in Gujarat that 85% of local people must be given jobs and the rest 15% jobs be given to outsiders.

We want this to be implemented. If this is done properly, then 60 lakh Gujarati local youth will be employed.

Today 1.49 lakh (149,000) small industries have shut shop in Gujarat.

The cotton industry is in a bad shape.

The diamond industry and ceramic industry too are facing difficult times, so where will local Gujarati youth get jobs from?

The Gujarat model which is being shown is not the right picture.

Farmers are not getting their dues, youth are unemployed and factories have shut shop.

How many Gujarati locals have got jobs in the state?

Less than 6% of local Gujaratis have got jobs in Gujarat.

This figure is from an RTI plea of 2011. The government says they are creating 85% jobs for local Gujaratis, but the RTI figures do not prove that.

If the situation is so bad, why are people not protesting on a large scale?

Earlier, during Narendra Modi's era (as Gujarat chief minister), politics in Gujarat was run by fear.

Today, the situation is different. The youth of Gujarat have woken up.

Poor people have woken up and realised that Vibrant Gujarat has made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

I have travelled to thousands of villages in Gujarat and I have seen the situation is very bad.

Vibrant Gujarat was a disaster for Gujarat. Gujaratis did not benefit anything from it.

I have challenged the people in government to discuss this issue with me, but no one has come forward to discuss it.

Vibrant Gujarat was always media hype and a flawed model of Gujarat was highlighted as the development model.

Nobody spoke earlier on this because everyone feared the Modi regime in Gujarat.

Were you always anti-Modi?

I am not anti-Modi. I do not want either the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) or the Congress.

I am only saying that I want jobs for local Gujaratis.
A new CBDT directive actively makes India-dedicated funds comparatively unattractive for institutional investors. It makes no sense, says Akash Prakash.



Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com.

I must state upfront that I am an interested party in the tax debate highlighted in this article.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes issued a clarification on December 23, 2016, laying out under what circumstances foreign portfolio investors 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.

These rules will only impact India-dedicated funds, mostly niche investment boutiques focussed on institutional capital and setup by Indian professionals.

The big foreign firms such as Capital, Fidelity, KKR, Blackstone etc will be unaffected as they do not invest in India through India-dedicated vehicles and hence have less than 50 per cent of assets in India, or focus on retail investors, with no investor greater than five per cent.

There will be at least 50 funds ($30-35 billion in AUM) affected, across both public and private equity.

Funds such as Kedaara, Multiples, Nalanda, Westbridge etc -- all are India-dedicated, set up by Indians and have a very sophisticated and concentrated investor base, which in most cases have each contributed more than five per cent of the funds AUM.

Most funds of this type only have 15-20 core investors, who provide the bulk of their capital.

These concentrated core investors are endowments, family offices and foundations.

This is the most sophisticated capital in the world and they like being the majority of a funds AUM. Exactly the type of money that is long-term and which India should want.

These funds also, by and large, tend to focus on mid-sized companies. That is their USP, and why investors give them capital.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mentioned he wants our capital markets to support entrepreneurship and provide capital to smaller companies. This is exactly what these boutique India funds do.

Being India-dedicated, the capital is also far more stable, it cannot be simply shifted to some other geography, unlike in a regional or global fund construct.

If these rules were to be implemented, we would discriminate against exactly those funds who are the biggest ambassadors for India, whose business it is to market the country to global investors and support local entrepreneurship.

Why would the government implement rules which will destroy an industry set up to raise long-term sophisticated capital to invest into Indian mid-sized and growth companies?

The rules actively discriminate against exactly the type of funds the country should be encouraging and make India-dedicated funds comparatively unattractive for institutional investors. It makes no sense.

Why are the rules unworkable?

Firstly, it amounts to double taxation of the investor.

All funds, irrespective of jurisdiction, will pay a minimum of 50 per cent of local taxes (capital gains) from the financial year 2018 (FY18) onwards and full Indian taxes within two years.

The gains the investor makes in net asset value (NAV) are after the fund has paid local taxes.

As an example, under these rules, an investor has invested at a NAV of 100 in 2016, in 2020 she redeems at a NAV of 125, she will have to pay capital gains on this appreciation of 25, despite the funds NAV being calculated post local taxes.

Even though the subscription to the fund and redemption will both be done offshore, wherever the fund is incorporated (Cayman or Singapore etc.), the investor will still have to pay tax, assuming the investor has contributed more than five per cent of the funds corpus.

The US-based investors may even face triple tax as they may not get a set-off on the Indian taxes paid on redemption.

Investors tell me they have not seen this type of indirect transfer provisions being applicable on funds in any other jurisdiction that they operate in.

Secondly, the rate of tax will be between 30 and 40 per cent for short-term capital gains (less than three years) and 10 and 20 per cent for holdings greater than three years, depending on the structure of the investor.

These investors will not get the concessional rates on capital gains available to local investors. Tax rates of this magnitude will significantly reduce the attractiveness of Indian equity assets.

Thirdly, the onus of withholding taxes on redemption falls on the FPI. Non-compliance can lead to penal interest and other penalties according to the Indian domestic tax law.

Most FPIs will not be willing to take on any potential tax liability linked to investor redemptions.

Investors into these India funds, whose gains may be taxable under these indirect transfer provisions, would need to obtain a tax ID in India, file tax returns in India and comply with all Indian procedural requirements (facing scrutiny?). I cannot imagine any global investor willing to do this.

Most endowments and foundations do not pay any tax in their home country. They have little internal capability to handle paying taxes in India!

It is true that while these indirect transfer provisions have been a part of the law since 2012, the tax authorities have not applied these provisions against FPIs till date.

These recent clarifications have got investors and funds worried. Will we see a slew of tax notices now?

There is also a growing sense of fatigue among investors.

Given the complexity of dealing with tax issues in India, I get a sense that some investors are questioning the wisdom of allocating money to India-dedicated funds.

Are the returns worth the administrative overhead?

I hope that a clarification is issued exempting FPIs from these indirect transfer provisions.

If the government were to go ahead and implement these provisions, I am afraid that most India-dedicated funds will face existential questions.

India will lose access to a very large pool of sophisticated long-term capital, and for how much incremental tax revenue? Has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis?

Whatever incremental tax we may receive as a country through these indirect transfer provisions on FPIs will pale in comparison to losing access to these long-term pools of capital.

I hope better sense prevails, it cannot be the intention of the government to kill all India-dedicated funds. We seem to be collateral damage.

The writer is at Amansa Capital. These views are his own.
UPCOMING EVENTS

AARP Driver Safety classes upcoming

AARP Driver Safety will hold two classes during January. Participants receive updates on the rules of the road and learn driving strategies to adapt to the effects of aging and to reduce the chances of having a crash. The course was developed for participants age 50-plus, but is open to all ages. The course fee is $200 ($15 with AARP membership card). Auto insurance companies in Montana provide a multi-year discount to participants 55 years of age and older.

Thursday, Jan. 12, at First Interstate Bank, 2021 N. Montana Ave., from noon to about 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Jan. 25, at Touchmark, 915 Saddle Drive, from noon to about 4:30 p.m.

To register for a class, call 457-4712.

***

AARP sponsoring coffee, tea event

AARP Montana is sponsoring Free Coffee or Tea Tuesday, from 9 to 11 a.m. on Jan. 10, 17, 24 and 31. Coffee or Tea Tuesday will continue through winter and spring 2017. Coffee or tea for AARP members and their guests will be free when a current AARP membership card is shown.

Free Coffee or Tea Tuesday will happen at Dirty Dozen Donuts, 1433 11th Ave. (corner of Sanders Street and 11th Avenue).

AARP Montana is especially interested in hearing care-giving stories from families and friends in the Helena area.

For more information, please contact mt@aarp.org or phone 1-866-295-7278.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Youth Serve scholarships deadline approaching

The Governors Office of Community Service, Montana Campus Compact and Reach Higher Montana welcome applicants for the 2017 Youth Serve Montana Scholarships. The deadline to apply is Jan. 31.

Youth Serve Montana Scholarships reward students who have volunteered at least 100 hours in the last year and intend to further their education in state. This year, 100 high school seniors will each receive $1,000 toward education at one of Montana Campus Compacts public, tribal, private or community colleges and universities.

The Youth Serve Montana Scholarship application form, guidelines and FAQs are online at serve.mt.gov. Completed applications must be submitted to the Governors Office of Community Service by Jan. 31.

***

NILE scholarship application available

The Northern International Livestock Exposition (NILE) Scholarship Program, funded by the NILE Foundation, is now accepting applications for scholarships for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Since 1990, NILE has awarded scholarships to deserving FFA and 4-H students who have been actively involved in their respective programs and communities, excelled in the classroom and participated in NILE events.

Similar to previous years, the NILE Scholarship Committee will be awarding three levels of scholarships. The first level will be the one-time scholarship awarded to high school seniors, similar to what the NILE has always done. The second level of scholarships offered will also be a one-time grant, for students already enrolled in college or a voc-tech school. Finally, the third level, which will offer the greatest scholarship amount, will be a rolling scholarship. The rolling scholarships will be offered to a select group of high school seniors who will have the opportunity to renew the scholarship yearly, up to four years of their secondary education.

Scholarship applications and guidelines can be found on the NILE's website, or by contacting the NILE Office at 406-256-2495. Applications must be submitted to the NILE Office by March 1 by 5 p.m. Applications incomplete or late will not be considered. Scholarships will be awarded and announced in early April 2017.

STUDENT NEWS

Students named National Merit semifinalists

Three Capital High School seniors were recently notified of being named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists: Anna Young, Jack Murphy and Caleb Noble.

There are approximately 16,000 semifinalists across the country. These academically talented high school seniors now have the opportunity to continue in the competition for approximately 7,500 National Merit Scholarships. Semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, and were selected by their scores from the 2015 PSAT.

***

BHS student to perform at Carnegie Hall

James Cole Bergstad, a student at Broadwater High School, has been selected for the 2017 High School Honors Performance Series at Carnegie Hall. He will perform in the Honors Band in February with the euphonium. Participation in one of the five Honors Ensembles is limited to the highest-rated high school performers from across the world.

Earlier this year, Bergstad auditioned for the Honors Performance Series and was accepted after a review by the Honors Selection Board. He will join other performers from all 49 United States, Guam, two Canadian provinces, and a number of foreign countries for a special performance at world-famous Carnegie Hall.

Bergstad has studied music for seven years and is a member of the Broadwater High School Band.

Finalists will come together in New York City for five days in February 2017. Two performances, an Honors Choral Performance and an Honors Instrumental Performance, will take place Sunday, Feb. 5, and are open to the public.

Learn more by visiting www.honorsperformance.org and www.worldstrides.com.

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COLLEGE DEAN'S LIST

Magdalyn Rauser of Toston has been named to Dickinson State University's dean's list for the fall 2016 semester. At the end of each regular semester, the university recognizes those students named to the dean's list. Eligible students must be enrolled full time and must earn a 3.5 GPA or higher.

***

Clay Patrick Van Diest of Helena has been named to the 2016 fall semester dean's list at St. Norbert College, in De Pere, Wisconsin. A minimum 3.5 grade point average is required for academic eligibility. St. Norbert is a four-year, Catholic liberal arts college devoted to the Norbertine traditions of community, prayer and service to others.
India processes around 90% of the world's supply of rough diamonds.

Faced with a sharp decline in exports owing to removal from the European Union's preferential list, Indian jewellers plan to woo buyers by introducing exclusive hand-crafted designs into the market.

In May, the Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council would be organising a visit of around three dozen manufacturers and exporters to the EU to help attract customers. Organisers would be targeting importers from Britain, France, Belgium and Germany.

"We plan to lead an Indian contingent with over three dozen leading jewellery manufacturers and exporters, in a first of its kind event in Antwerp from May 7 to May 9. The objective is to promote Indian jewellery in the EU," said a senior GJEPC official.

Gems and jewellery as a category has been removed from EU's list of Generalised System of Preferences that provides certain duty incentives for certain items exported to Europe. In the case of precious ornaments, European importers could avail a cess ranging between 2% and 2.5%.

Provided by developed countries for promotion of trade and industry to developing countries, GSP is a unilateral tariff preference scheme. It, however, also has a natural exclusion (graduation, in trade parlance) after achieving 17.5 per cent of total import of goods in a category, in the EU.

The latest EU list says there has been a natural graduation of gems and jewellery export from India. In 2015-16, ornament exports were $665.7 million to the EU, about 21 per cent of our total export to that region and 1.7 per cent of India's overall export of gems and jewellery.

India's net export of gems and jewellery has declined over the past four years to about $32 billion during 2015-16 from a peak of $43.2 billion during 2011-12.

Shipment of precious ornaments to the region was worth $3.2 billion during 2015-16 as against $3.4 billion a couple of years ago. Around 80 per cent of India's export in this segment constitutes coloured gemstones, cut and polished diamonds.

At present, India processes around 90 per cent of the world's supply of rough diamonds.
Hyderabad-based Pi Datacenters wants to be the first destination of choice for enterprises in data and cloud services.

When working for Intel Corporation for over 15 years, Kalyan Muppaneni, founder and chief executive of Pi Datacenters, was always close to the hardware, digitisation and server market. That was how he developed a passion for back-end infrastructure, an area not many techies would think of for entrepreneurial pursuit, given the complexities involved.

The cloud server market has gone to a new level in the past five years. Many enterprises in the US and elsewhere have not only moved to cloud as a first choice but started using commercial data centre services, owing to the complexity involved in data management and its applications.

Muppaneni saw a clear opportunity in these when he decided to return to India from the US for a new journey.

The opportunity

According to Gartner, the research and advisory entity in information technology, the value of the Indian data centre infrastructure and services market was $2 billion in 2016 and is the fastest growing segment. It will be anywhere between $3.5 billion and $5 billion by 2018, said Mupanneni.

When he shared plans about going back to India to establish a data centre entity, four of his friends there instantly backed his decision, with funding commitment. "It was only a discussion over a cup of coffee and we closed the initial angel round with overwhelming subscription, almost triple of what I really needed," he told Business Standard.

Having worked for Intel Corporation in California and Arizona on design architecture, among other core tasks, Muppaneni, who has a master's degree in computing from Griffith University, Queensland, indeed comes with a large vision that makes Pi's upcoming enterprise-class data centre in Andhra Pradesh's new capital, Amaravati, look like a hurried step on a course to a big journey.

Data storage is one of many applications and functions a data centre can deliver: "A data centre is like your heart pumping transactions, acting as a hub, gathering data from different locations and churning out and giving decisions to other centres instantly. So, it is very important to design a solution that is scalable, that is high performance. It cannot be slow; otherwise, it will crash," Muppaneni explains.

On December 15, Pi Datacenters announced it had got a first private equity funding round of Rs 154 crore, led by Epsilon Venture Partners, barely three months ahead of the scheduled commissioning of the data centre. The facility would be a modular, 500,000 sq ft infrastructure with 5,000-rack capacity. When fully commissioned, spread across 10 acres, it will be a tier-four certified facility.

The investment required is Rs 600 crore, which the promoters plan to spend in five years as they seek to scale up the infrastructure to the targeted capacity in a gradual manner, based on demand.

Challenges

India has been seeing a surge in data centre investments. In 2016, the who's who of the global IT world, including Microsoft and Amazon, have started investing hundreds of millions of dollars to establish these in India, to offer a variety of services in data management.

A sizable data centre infrastructure was already created in the country by a number of players such as Tata Telecommunications, CntrlS, Netmagic, Tulip, Sify and GPX Global, among others, as both big and small Indian companies switch to digital data storage practices.

Can this challenging, highly capital-intensive and increasingly crowded space, led by big global players, still qualify to be a start-up play?

Does it have scope to bring potential 'disruptions' in the data centre architecture or in data storage and management services, so that a new entrant will enjoy a distinct advantage?

Muppaneni says it has all this and more.

"The fact that every data centre company is doing well in India is a big positive. As the industry itself is in a positive zone, we will obviously get our piece of pie from the market," the Pi founder says.

Business model

However, Pi Data seeks to build its business on a strong set of differentiators, not simply by going with the flow. It says it is taking a very different approach to the design of the product, doing it in a completely software-defined approach for the cloud.

While Muppaneni bets on the potential differentiators that he believes would make Pi Data the first destination of choice for an enterprise looking to host data within India, he points to fast progress in implementation of this facility as early proof of execution capability.

In the best case scenario, even for a large enterprise, it would take three or four years to implement such a project in India, according to him. "In a year and a half, we have not only visualised and conceptualised this but done almost 90 per cent of one of the largest DCs in India, while getting the initial wave of customers on board."

Mahesh Vaidya, general partner and head of India at Epsilon Venture Partners, believes the team at Pi was the right mix of hard-core technologists and managers with decades of cumulative experience, drawn from companies across the world. "Kalyan and his team at Pi have attained traction in a year that would easily have taken other teams two or more years," he told Business Standard.

Some of the differentiators Pi's data centre comes with own software stack to complement the services on hardware stack, use of the latest technologies in Silicon Valley, lower cost of ownership that would help in offering services at competitive rates, a quick break-even in two-three years compared to the sector average of five years and good technology partnerships.

Some of the key offering would be different types of cloud services -- based on a completely software-defined cloud, co-location, hosting, disaster recovery and various other back-up services, manger services, NOC (Network Operating Centre) as a service, private cloud and public cloud.

According to Muppaneni, there are customers in every segment he's serving, from day one of the data centre launch in Amaravati. After telecom companies and e-commerce smart cities, the internet of things and big data are expected to create large demand for cloud services. "Healthcare in India also has a huge untapped potential, with not even five per cent of patient records digitised," he says.

Local advantage

According to Mahesh Vaidya, it is advantageous for a local player with expansive physical presence and efficient teams positioned locally to address the needs of and cater to local businesses. Local players have lower overhead costs and execute data centre services with a quicker time-to-market, he says.

"In the long term, there would be a need for global players to partner with local players to deliver data centre and cloud services to local customers. We would see the interest and presence of major players as a validation of the data centre opportunity in India," he told this newspaper. Epsilon expects a return that is comparable in quantum and time frames to any of the other sectors it had invested in.

Just as scalability is in-built for cloud services, Pi has created a design architecture which helps in scaling up the capacity in a smooth manner. Adding more DCs is part of this strategy, beside allowing customers a back-up storage as well.

Muppaneni says they will be moving to at least two other locations in the next two financial years, which means Pi Data would be building three DCs in three years. "The next time we raise (funds), that would be a very big round for this reason," he said.

'Pi services are at par with those of Amazon'

Expert take by Rajarshi Bhattacharya, country head, Suse India, a pioneer in Linux and open source solutions.

Pi is developing its own cloud solutions. What Pi delivers today is next-generation cloud services, powered by an absolute open-stack platform. Cloud service providers today offer much faster response time and greater flexibility to customers. In that sense, the services offered by Pi are at par as those offered by companies like Amazon.

The latter, too, built its cloud services around open source technology, one reason for it being very successful in this space.

Customers or enterprises in India are looking for greater services from data centre players. Initially, it was about picking rack space and then people started taking infrastructure. Now, they are taking a platform and are looking for software-as-a-service from the data centre.

Pi Data has made some wise choices. They have decided to build cloud on a platform which is very open and continuously evolving. That automatically makes Pi competitive. The choice of technology is good. Pi is also moving towards software-defined cloud services, which are infinitely scalable. Through an open-stack platform, it can also seamlessly bridge the public and the private cloud.
'RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures at an early date.'

Anup Roy reports.

The Reserve Bank of India clarified it is still counting how many old notes have been returned to the banking system, to eliminate double counting.

Therefore, it said the numbers being quoted should not be construed as verified.

The RBI is reconciling the numbers provided by banks against the actual cash stashed in currency chests.

Media reports suggested that anything between Rs 14.5 lakh crore and Rs 15 lakh crore may have come back to the banking system, against Rs 15.4 lakh crore worth of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

These notes are now called specified bank notes (SBN) by the RBI.

'Now that the scheme has come to an end on December 30, 2016, these figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors/possible double counts etc,' a statement on the RBI Web site said.

Till then, 'Any estimate may not indicate the actual numbers of the SBNs that have been returned,' the RBI noted.

The clarification has confused economists.

"If RBI is now saying they need to recheck the figures, where did the earlier numbers originate from?" asked a senior economist with a bank.

RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi had provided the numbers at a press conference on December 13.

At that conference, Gandhi had said SBNs of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 returned to the RBI and currency chests amounted to Rs 12.44 lakh crore as on December 10, 2016.

In that period, the RBI had issued to the public through the banks and their branches a total of 21.8 billion pieces of notes of various denominations, of which 20.1 billion pieces belonged to small denominations of Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 50 and Rs 100 notes and 1.7 billion belonged to higher denominations of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500, Gandhi had said.

If RBI's figure of Rs 12.44 lakh crore as on December 10 was correct, then recent media estimates could be closer to the reality, given that there was still 20 days to go for the last leg of the demonetisation drive to end, economists say.

The government, on its part, has found it difficult to face the fact that most of the demonetised money has come back to the banking system.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had hoped that a substantial portion of the demonetised amount won't come back to the banks and, therefore, this can be extinguished from the RBI's liability side and transferred back to the government.

The figures being touted was about Rs 3 lakh crore in government gains through unreturned money.

Predictably, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das asked the RBI to recheck the figures that it provided to eliminate possibilities of double counting.

'In the figures RBI announced, there are a lot of areas where we feel there could be double counting. We have identified those and requested RBI and banks to double check,' Das told journalists at a press conference in mid-December.

Before that, State Bank of India Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya had hinted at possible double counting on the RBI's part as both cooperative banks that maintain accounts with banks and banks themselves reported their deposit numbers individually to RBI and the government.

After the figures provided on December 13, the RBI did not come up with any update on how much money has been returned.

However, it periodically gave updates on how much money was remonetised, latest being Rs 592,613 crore till December 19.

The RBI said this time, the figures provided will be firm.

'RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures of SBNs received at an early date.'

IMAGE: A scene at a Mumbai bank, December 13, 2016. Photograph: Arun Patil
Stocks of ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank are among the top banking picks of analysts for 2017.

A decline in cost of funds and treasury gains are expected to help stabilise their net interest margins, analysts tell Hamsini Karthik.

Despite the Reserve Bank of India spelling out a weak outlook for banks in its recently published Financial Stability Report, market experts continue to repose faith in banking stocks. The recent correction adds support to their belief.

While some of the front-line non-banking financial company (NBFC) stocks such as HDFC, Bharat Financial Inclusion, Shriram Transport Finance and Bajaj Finance have corrected by 9-28 per cent since November 8 -- when the central government announced demonetisation -- ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have corrected by 3-10 per cent and State Bank of India (SBI) has lost less than one per cent.

Following the correction, experts believe that after two successive years of dominance by NBFC stocks, investor preference will once again shift back to banking stocks in 2017.

There has been a surge in deposits, an overall decline in cost of funds, and treasury gains are expected to boost an otherwise-dull December quarter. These factors are expected to help net interest margins stabilise in the near-term. Analysts also believe that with a reasonable amount of asset quality pressures baked in the price of banking stocks, there won't be much incremental pressures due to the ongoing asset quality review.

As with NBFCs, Siddharth Purohit of Angel Broking feels that more clarity is required to gauge the situation. "Growth rate will certainly moderate for NBFCs going forward, though at this juncture it is tough to exactly quantify the pain," he adds.

Nilesh Shah, managing director and CEO of Envision Capital, feels the coming year will discover the weak links within NBFCs. "While 2017 will be an easy environment for lending, it will put the risk management systems of all NBFCs under test." For this reason, he feels that retail-oriented banks in particular might be safer bets for investors in 2017.

Anand Radhakrishnan, chief investment officer (equity) at Franklin Templeton Investments India, also feels that it may be prudent to exercise caution on NBFC stocks at this juncture. "After a burst of action in the NBFC space, the sector requires some monitoring now."

From valuations perspective, the recent correction tilts the balance in favour of banking stocks that are trading at an average 1.8 times book value (top five-six banks) versus 2.4 times for NBFCs.

"Most NBFCs were trading at a premium to even best quality banks in expectation of high growth. Now, growth is capped for NBFCs," says Santosh Singh, head of research at Haitong Securities.

Stocks such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank are among the top banking picks of analysts for 2017.

Image used for representational purposes only. Photograph: Reuters.
Sunanda K Datta-Ray considers them sound in theory, but incapable of making any dent in the corruption that is India's way of life.

Illustrations: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Christmas Eve is an appropriate time to consider the pretentiousness, hypocrisy and dangers of social drinking in this country. Vijay Rupani, who took over as Gujarat chief minister in August, and his minister of state for home affairs, Pradeepsinh Jadeja, are to be complimented for their ordinance to prevent driving under the influence during the festive season. But only if the law is strictly and impartially applied unlike the death penalty for manufacturing and selling poison alcohol -- Make in India run riot -- that exists only to impress people with the piety of Mahatma Gandhi's home state.

The suspicion is that police and politicians connive to frustrate the law. Prohibition is like demonetisation -- sound in theory but incapable of making any dent in the corruption that is India's way of life.

An absurd duality that distinguishes between locals and NRIs/tourists is another standing invitation to make money under the pretence of upholding the law. Successive regimes have made it easier for tourists to get a drink but locals caught with a bottle are supposedly imprisoned for 10 years or fined Rs 5 lakh. Of course, no one is, but the draconian law allows more pockets to be lined.

The erstwhile Soviet Union didn't dishonestly exploit its dual system. Natives with their pitiful roubles queued patiently outside restaurants and at shop counters (just like bank queues in India) while foreigners with dollars received instant service. The Soviet Consulate in Calcutta once assured me the rupee-rouble agreement ensured my Indian money would rank as hard currency. Nothing of the kind. A Moscow shop cashier disdainfully refused to look at them.

Duality means demeaning discrimination at home, too, recalling the colour bar of colonial times. Soon after returning to India after spending my teen years abroad, I ordered a gin and lime in the bar of the five-star hotel I was staying in. The barman asked if I was a hotel guest. Yes, I was. Was I a foreigner? No, I wasn't, in some indignation. Did I then have a permit? Permit for what? The man explained, and I had to admit the need hadn't occurred to me.

"Then I am afraid I can't serve you, sir," he apologised.

I walked out shamefacedly, not failing to notice that all the drinkers, who had fallen silent during the exchange, were white. But within 10 minutes a liveried abdar turned up at my room with a gin and lime on a salver. So much for prohibition!

This is another avenue that encourages corruption.

Any Indian can pretend to be a tourist and persuade others, with the help of a little scattered largesse, to treat him as such. Any doctor in a prohibition-ridden city would for a fee certify that his otherwise hale and hearty client couldn't survive without a drink.

"Cold tea" was a popular euphemism for whisky in Bombay, and many restaurants served it in a teapot. If Thursday was "dry" in Delhi hotels, the alcohol consumed that day was billed with Wednesday's or Friday's date. While the front door of Calcutta liquor shops remained religiously shut on the weekly dry day, sales were always brisk at the back door.

Smugglers and bootleggers flourish under the sun of prohibition.

Covering an election in Gujarat once, I was warned not to accept a drink when visiting a candidate whose affiliation I dare not disclose. "Who knows what he mixes it with!" said my friend.

It was also calculated in the heyday of prohibition that Indians drank more Scotch whisky than Scotland produced. That's Make in India for you. Our resourceful entrepreneurs need little urging.

However, there's no denying that excessive drinking does pose problems, especially with a newly-rich middle class for whom money is the only yardstick. But as the American, Scandinavian and Australian examples show, prohibition doesn't eliminate drinking. It not only encourages alcoholism, but also gives rise to a criminal network of manufacturers, retailers, excise officials and others.

The answer lies in temperance. Indira Gandhi was probably the last national leader to advocate a strong temperance movement. I doubt if any of her successors even know what that means. Their talk of prohibition carries no hint of self-restraint or moderation. Instead, the reek of sanctimonious self-righteousness and rigorous compulsion touches an instant chord that can be relied on to bring in the votes.

It isn't easy to explain the virtue of temperance to the uneducated multitude. But it must be done. I'll drink to that in moderation.
One of the masterminds of Bangladesh's worst terror attackat a popular cafe in Dhaka and another top militant behind the murder of a Hindu priest were killed on Friday in a shootout with police, the latest success in the anti-terrorism drive in the Muslim majority nation.

Islamic State-linked Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's most wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marzan and another extremist were killed by counter-terrorism and transnational crime unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital during a pre-dawn raid.

"One is identified as Marjan and another is Saddam Hossain, an accused neo-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh member," Monirul Islam, chief of counter terrorism and transnational crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said.

Police said Marzan coordinated the July 1 attack on Gulshan's Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka's posh diplomatic area that killed 23 people, including 17 foreigners. An Indian girl was among them.

On September 10, police detained three persons from Azimpur including Marzan's wife Afrin alias Prioti.

Earlier, a Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and the key player in the recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27.

Saddam was wanted for at least 10 murder cases, including Japanese national Kunio Hoshi murder, Jogeshwar Dasadhikari murder and attempt to murder a Bahai community leader in Rangpur, Monirul said.

Jogeshwar was hacked to death during an attack on a temple in Bangladeshs Panchgarh district in February last year.

"Acting on a tip-off, we conducted a raid around 3am...Sensing our presence, the militants opened fire at us. In retaliation, we fired back that left the two injured," Monirul said.

Later, they were declared dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

According to an investigator, former Islami Chhatra Shibir leader Marjan was the youngest military commander of the neo-JMB, a new faction of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh affiliated with Islamic State, Dhaka Tribune reported.

He also had connection with a number of top leaders of the outfit. Marjan had expertise in operating heavy arms.

Marjan had stayed in the militant den of Gobindaganj in Gaibandha for a long period where he reportedly gave motivational training to seven militants. Of the seven, five took part in the Gulshan terror attack.

On July 1, militants stormed the bakery. The attackers took diners and restaurant staff hostage and had confrontations with police, killing two police officials.

Next morning, a joint commando force stormed the bakery, killing all the attackers and rescuing the captives, ending the terror siege of nearly 11 hours.

Bangladeshi security forces had launched a crackdown against Islamist extremists following the cafe siege, which sullied the country's image as a relatively moderate Muslim nation.
Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Friday denied he was a "hurdle" in Akhilesh Yadav's path and indirectly blamed the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's "supporter" and uncle Ramgopal Yadav for the vertical split in the party.

"Status of one is not gauged just by number or power. I want to clarify that I am no hurdle in the path of Akhilesh Yadav," Singh told reporters in Lucknow.

Favouring a patch-up between the two factions of the SP, he said, "Whatever is happening in the party is not because of me but because of a supporter of Akhilesh."

His hint was towards Ramgopal Yadav, whom he did not name.

Since the trouble in Uttar Pradesh's ruling party became public, Akhilesh has been insisting on sidelining or expulsion of Singh, whom Ramgopal and another senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan have dubbed an "outsider" in the party.

Singh, however, said, "One gets hurt by one's own and not by outsiders. It's difficult to fight own people."

On Akhilesh faction's claim of possessing signed affidavits of 212 MLAs, Singh said, "Mulayam Singh Yadav is alone and without any stature. I don't have the capacity to hear this."

Akhilesh and Mulayam have apparently been contesting for control of the party, with both of them readying documents of support to stake claim to the party's 'cycle' symbol.

"Those who were tainted when they were with Shivpal are now clean after giving affidavits in favour of Akhilesh. Ansari brothers are clean now... Now all have become 'Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam," he added.

Singh's reference was to tainted Ansari brothers of Quami Ekta Dal, whose merger with the SP was opposed by Akhilesh.

Noting that "politics is cruel and brutal", Singh said, "If standing behind someone is crime, Shivpal has committed the crime."

Attacking party lawmaker Kironmay Nanda without naming him, he said, "A party vice-president, who cannot speak clear Hindi has made allegations against me that I am indulging in wheeling-dealing here. I have not taken contract of a single penny here and am not involved in transfer-posting. I challenge him to get a probe initiated into it."

On another party leader Naresh Agarwal, Singh said, "He had been cabinet minister in BJP's Rajnath Singh government, he was in the Congress, the BSP and now in the SP. He labels me as BJP agent. I never take backdoor entry, whenever I adopt an ideology, I tell it to everyone."
The National Investigative Agency has filed a chargesheet against Pakistani national Bahadur Ali, who was arrested in Kashmir in July last year, alleging that he was working for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba and was planning to carry out attacks at several places including Delhi.

The agency has filed the chargesheet under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, sections of Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Foreigners Act and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act against Ali, who has been in judicial custody since August.

According to court sources, the chargesheet, filed before District Judge Amar Nath, claimed that the recent unrest in Kashmir Valley had been orchestrated by Pakistan-based LeT.

The agency claimed that since summer last year, the banned outfit, with the help of Pakistani forces deployed on the border, pushed heavily armed terrorists into India with a direction to mix with local people, create disturbance and attack police and security forces.

NIA, in its charge sheet, has also alleged that along with his associates, Ali had planned terror attacks to destabilise the security and sovereignty of India.

The pocket diary recovered from Ali, among other things, contains the names of several towns in Jammu and Kashmir besides Delhi, the chargesheet claims.

It alleged that given the fact that Bahadur Ali is a trained cadre of the LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked to carry out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi.

A special court had on December 19 extended the judicial custody of Ali till January 18.

A fourth-class dropout, Ali, who hails from Jahama village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from village Yahama in Mawar area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on July 25. The army had claimed to have recovered three AK-47 rifles, two pistols and Rs 23,000 in Indian currency from his possession.

According to NIA, Ali was trained at a Lashkar camp in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to carry out various activities, including map reading and operating GPS devices.

NIA alleged that Ali was part of the conspiracy hatched by Lashkar-e-Tayiba, a proscribed terrorist organisation, based in Pakistan, to commit terror attacks in India.

It said that a thorough probe found that LeT has set up a well-organised machinery for the recruitment of vulnerable young men from different provinces of Pakistan as part of a conspiracy to wage war against the government of India by committing terrorist acts in various parts of the country.

Once recruited, these impressionable young men are put through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their world view and providing them with military skills.

Subsequent to their training, these trained cadres of LeT are illegally pushed into Indian territory where they commit terrorist acts with the help of a network of their supporters and facilitators, the charge sheet said.

NIA said that as part of LeTs plan, Ali alias Saifullah Mansoor, along with his two associates Abu Saad and Abu Darda, all trained terrorists, infiltrated into Indian territory equipped with arms and ammunition, navigation equipment, combat material and other articles.

These terrorists entered Indian territory with an intention to carry out terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and at different places of the country including Delhi, as per instructions given to them by their handlers of LeT based in Pakistan and PoK.

After crossing the LoC fence, the three terrorists walked for about seven days following GRs with the aid of GPS devices, that had been provided to them by Abu Haider at the Mandakuli launching pad, NIA said.

Abu Saad had sent a message to one of his handlers, Walid Bhai by pairing his mobile phone with his wireless set, a communication technique especially designed by LeT to avoid interception, it said.

On June 22, the two left for getting some food from a village leaving Ali on a hill top. However, both were killed in an encounter and Ali shifted his base to another hillock as a precautionary measure.

Next day Ali contacted Alfa-3, the LeT control station based in PoK, who directed him to continue his journey and reach the final destination where he met his local contact who provided him food and shelter, it said.

Ali, who had established a network around the area, was informed by his control room in PoK that the cadres of Lashkar had been successful in fuelling large-scale agitation in Kashmir after Eid and subsequent to the death of Burhan Wani in Kashmir, NIA said.

He instructed Ali to mix with the protesters and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir Valley, the chargesheet said.
Days after the uproar over alleged incidents of mass molestation on New Years Eve in Bengaluru, the citys police commissioner said police did not find evidence of any kind of molestation in the footage from 60-odd CCTV cameras.

We started looking into the whole video footage from approximately 45-60 cameras, Praveen Sood, the police commissioner of Bengaluru city, said.

It takes time; the whole team was looking at the camera footage and looking for molestation in the video. We could not find any sign of molestation, Sood said.

He added four separate cases had been registered on the basis of media reports. He added that four youths had been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a woman from the northeast.

According to the police, the images of women crying on the shoulders of policewomen and friends were not linked to incidents of molestation, but reactions to stampede when the police resorted to lathi-charge to control the crowd.

The alleged molestation and Karnataka Home Ninister G Parameswaras statement that such things happen has raised a storm, with womens groups questioning the attitude of the society and the authorities in Indias tech hub. The minister has since said he had been quoted out of context.
For the first time, the United States Marine Corps has put three enlisted female Marines in a ground combat unit once open only to men, officials said.

They will serve as a rifleman, machine gunner and mortar Marine.

IMAGE: The inclusion of women in the Marines is after US Defence Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat positions to women. Representational image/Scott Olson/Getty Images

Their names have not been released as they become acclimatised to their unit, as reported by the Marine Corps Times.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat positions to women as of January 2016, ending a century-old battle for women to serve alongside men.

The Marine Corps was the only service branch to rebuff the directive, and asked for an exception when it came to women serving in the most dangerous commando posts. The request was rejected.

IMAGE: The three women will join the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines in North Carolina. Representational image/ Scott Olson/Getty Images

US President-elect Donald Trump said he would allow women to serve as theyre really into it but has previously questioned men and women working together.

In 2013, he tweeted a suggestion that the big number of sexual assaults in the army were a result of women and men simply serving together. He stood by his remark when he was asked about it in September by NBC.

ALSO SEE: PHOTOS: First women soldiers from US army's toughest school
A 39-year-old man is accused of stealing his grandmother's jewelry, including a platinum pendant made from her wedding ring worth about $5,000.

Court documents say Christopher Michael Cary admitted to his grandmother that he had stolen and pawned her jewelry, but said he was making payments so he could return the gold rings, diamond earrings and other items to her.

Cary then allegedly asked her for some money to pay on the reported interest. The documents say she gave him her debit card to withdraw $165 for this purpose. He is accused of an additional 10 charges totaling about $750 on her card.

Prosecutors filed a charge of felony theft by common scheme against Cary in July. The alleged crimes took place sometime between the end of 2014 and January 2015.

Authorities picked up Cary, who lives in Illinois, this week. He made his first court appearance on the charge Thursday.
With 2016 officially behind us, lets look forward and speculate about the events, people and issues that will shape 2017.

>> RUSSIAS GROWING INFLUENCE

Russian leader Vladimir Putin looks to position his nation as an alternate ally to countries such as the Philippines and Turkey who have been traditionally allied with the United States. Putins Russia, accused of influencing the US presidential election, could seek to cement their influence by providing support to other populists facing elections this year.

Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/Reuters

>>SYRIAS SHAKY PEACE

A truce deal brokered by Russia and Turkey faces challenges as clashes between rebel and government forces continue. A lasting peace deal could prove elusive as the large number of warring factions seek to protect their own interests and territories.

Photograph: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

-- In Pictures: The last stand of Aleppo

>> ISLAMIC STATE-INSPIRED ATTACKS CONTINUE

Following the highly orchestrated Islamic State attacks on Paris and Brussels, the world has witnessed a spate of attacks by individuals who appear to be inspired by the militant group, rather than in direct contact with them. This year looks set to see a continuation of these types of attacks as the year began with a mass shooting at a Turkish nightclub where the motive still remains unclear.

Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

-- 4 ways to tackle Islamic State's terror

>> NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR GOALS

It won't happen! Trump wrote on Twitter about North Korea testing an intercontinental ballistic missile but preventing such a test is far easier said than done. The world will once again look to China, North Koreas neighbour and only ally, to contain Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

Photograph: KCNA/Reuters

-- How the world must deal with North Korea

>> THE TRUMP BARGAIN

As US President Trump takes office, the white working class that propelled him to the White House will be watching closely to see if he can bring back jobs as promised throughout the campaign. It remains to be seen if the divisive politics that characterised the bitter campaign will continue as Trump takes over the helm of a divided nation.

Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

>> MERKELS POLITICAL FUTURE IN JEOPARDY

German Chancellor Angela Merkel support for accepting refugees risks costing her re-election when Germans go to the polls later in 2017. Following the Berlin Christmas market attack and in the run-up to the election, Merkel will continue to face demands to take a much tougher line on immigration and security.

Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

>> BREXIT IN REALITY

Britain will have to navigate how and when to trigger article 50 beginning the process to leave the European Union. How the decision affects immigration, trade and British citizens living in the EU member states should become clearer this year.

Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

-- Is India prepared for Brexit?

>> RACE RELATIONS IN FOCUS

With the retrial of former police officer Michael Slager in the shooting death of Walter Scott slated for March, the Black Lives matter movement and other groups protesting racial injustice will be watching for a verdict.

Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

>> MIGRANTS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN

As temperatures rise, the number of migrants making the dangerous crossing to Europe could increase again despite a record number of deaths of those traversing the Mediterranean in 2016.

Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

>> VIRTUAL REALITY IN REALITY

Will virtual reality be adopted in the mainstream or will it go the way of the laser disc?

Photograph: Albert Gea/Reuters

>> CLIMATE CHANGE DISCORD

Top scientists say Trumps vow to pull the United States out of the Paris climate-warming accord would make it far harder to develop strategies to lessen the impact of global warming. Though temperatures in 2017 are expected to dip from the record highs of 2016, how the world views climate change and what to do about it will remain a hot topic.

Photograph: Alister Doyle/Reuters

-- Climate change: Here's what writer Amitav Ghosh has to say

>> RAQQA OFFENSIVE ESCALATES

An operation by a US-backed alliance of Syrian armed groups to retake the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State in Syria, looks set to continue in tandem with the offensive on the militant group's Iraq stronghold of Mosul. Trumps campaign promise of a secret plan to fight Islamic State will be forced into the spotlight.

Photograph: Rodi Said/Reuters

>> A NEW ARMS RACE

With both Putin and Trump planning to modernise their nations nuclear arsenal, the prospect of a looming arms race is back on the table. When asked to clarify a tweet on nuclear capabilities, Trump said Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.

Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

-- Asia's nuclear stockpile is worryingly growing

>> DROUGHT THREATENS FAMINE

Charities have repeatedly warned about the threat of renewed famine as Somalia continues to be plagued by poor rains and conflict, as well as shortages of aid.

Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

>> RIGHT-WING RISING

France's National Front leader Marine Le Pen will likely compete in a presidential run-off election in May that will test whether her brand of populism resonates in a nation that has been hit with attacks on Paris and Nice.

Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

>> SNAPCHAT DEBUT

Snapchat filed for an initial public offering in 2016 putting the messaging app a step closer to the biggest U.S. stock market debut since 2014. The Venice, California-based company could go public as soon as March and be valued at $20 billion to $25 billion, making it the largest IPO since Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Exclusion of Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad from the dignitaries, who shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the Prakash Parv in Patna, on Friday drew flak from the RJD and the Congress.

RJD vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh voiced the party's grievance.

The mega arrangements were made by the state government, of which RJD is an ally, to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, on Thursday.

"It did not look like the arrangements to mark Guru Gobind Singhji Maharaj's 350th Prakash Parv were made by the alliance government. Rather, it looked more like they were made by one party in power," said Singh.

"This (Lalu not being accommodated on the dais) has not gone down well with the people. Lalu Prasad was made to sit below (the dais). Everybody praised Nitish Kumar for making the grand arrangements. Was the RJD not part of the management for the preparations and arrangements for the Prakash Parv celebrations?", he asked.

Firing yet another salvo at Kumar, Singh, whose frequent digs at the chief minister have drawn sharp reactions from the Janata Dal-United in the past, said, "It was one man who got his photo clicked to take credit for the arrangements."

Lalu and his two minister sons, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, sat in the VIP enclosure with others during the function.

Kumar, along with two Union ministers -- Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan -- and Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind, shared the dais with the prime minister at the concluding function of the 350th Prakash Parv.

The Congress also expressed its displeasure over the denial of seat to Lalu on the dais and blamed the Prime Minister's Office and the BJP for it.

"Lalu Prasad was not given a seat on the dais on instructions from the PMO and the BJP," Bihar Congress chief and state minister Ashok Choudhary alleged.

"Everyone knows that the PMO guides the SPG as regards who will share the dais with the prime minister at a function. The question should be raised before the PMO as to why was Lalu Prasad not given a seat at the podium," he said.

Nobody from the Congress, which too is an ally in the grand alliance government in Bihar with the JD-U and the RJD, was present at the mega event at the Darbar Hall, a replica of the Golden Temple in Amritsar erected at Gandhi Maidan for the Prakash Parv celebrations.

"We had invitations but we chose not to go," Choudhary,who sat on a dharna on Friday as part of the Congress' agitation against demonetisation, said.

The JD-U said that there was no ground for kicking up a "political controversy" over an issue which was a "matter of protocol".

"Lalu Prasad is a respected leader of the grand alliance in Bihar...it is a matter of protocol and there is no ground to kick up a political controversy over it," JD-U state chief spokesman Sanjay Singh said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's praise for Nitish Kumar for launching a movement against liquor and appeal to all to make prohibition a grand success, weeks after he lauded the JD-U chief for supporting the Centre's demonetisation move, have given rise to speculations in Bihar's political circles.

Though Lalu or his minister sons did not say anything on the matter, a section of RJD leaders did not take the party chief's exclusion from the dais too kindly and protested their leader "not getting due respect".

The RJD, with 80 MLAs in the 234-member Bihar assembly, is the biggest partner in the grand alliance government headed by Kumar.

The prime minister, while delivering his speech, did not mention Lalu's name, but Kumar acknowledged the RJD supremo's presence during his address.

RJD MLA Bhai Virendra said whatever happened during the Prakash Parv celebrations should not have occurred.

"It is sad that Lalu Prasad was not accommodated on the dais. We, the leaders and workers, are feeling humiliated that our leader did not get a space on the dais," the MLA from Maner in Patna district said.

Stating that even Congress workers were feeling humiliated, he said, "It is a coalition government of three parties, but someone is trying to project himself."

When pointed out that protocol did not warrant Lalu a seat on the dais, the legislator said, "What about Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav? He should have been accommodated...Laluji is the national president of the party and hence, he should have also been given space on the dais."

The apparent bonhomie between the prime minister and the chief minister has triggered speculations of Kumar joining hands with the BJP once again.

Led by Kumar, the JD-U had snapped ties with the BJP in June, 2013 over the NDA's projection of Modi as its prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The severing of ties between the two parties came after being together for 17 years in the NDA and during the eight-year rule of the JDU-BJP government in Bihar, headed by Kumar.

Speculations triggered by Thursday's exchange of pleasantries between Modi and Kumar were fanned when senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said nothing was impossible in politics.

With the issue of denial of seat on the dais to RJD chief Lalu Prasad kicking up a controversy, his son and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav sought to play down the matter.

"Sitting on the ground at such a function is part of 'parampara' (tradition)," he told reporters when asked for his reaction on his father sitting on the ground at the concluding function of the Prakash Parv.

"Laluji zameeni neta hain aur woh zameen par nahi baithenge to kahan baithenge (Laluji is a leader who is rooted to the ground and where else would he sit other than the ground)," he added.

Tejashwi, who today accompanied Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to a function at Gandhi Maidan as part of the 350th Prakash Parv, also did not take offence to the prime minister showering praise on the chief minister for prohibition and good arrangements for the Prakash Parv, but not mentioning his father's name during his address.

"Is it possible to take everybody's name in the government for such things? The praise is for the entire government," he maintained.

Asked about RJD vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh expressing displeasure over the incident, Tejashwi, who is also the RJD Legislature Party leader in the state assembly, sought to play it down saying, "I do not know who is saying what."
One Raj Shah has been the top Indian American in the Obama administration, points out Monali Sarkar, the other Raj Shah is poised to play a key role in the Trump administration.

IMAGE: Dr Rajiv Shah, left, is now the president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Raj Shah, right, is now a Trump administration appointee.

Photographs: Morgana Wingard for USAID/Flickr.com and Raj Shah/Twitter.com

Raj Shah. That's a common enough name.

What is not so common is two Indian American Raj Shahs being in the news at the same time.

On January 4, former United States Agency for International Development head Dr Rajiv J Shah -- more popularly known as Raj Shah -- was named president of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of America's largest and most influential philanthropies, becoming the youngest person and the first Indian American to lead the group.

The same day, United States President-elect Donald Trump appointed the other Raj Shah -- who, as Republican National Committee research director, played a leading role in the Republican Party's anti-Clinton campaign during the polls -- as deputy assistant to the President and deputy communication director and research director.

Meet the 2 Raj Shahs who have everyone confused.

Dr Raj Shah, the healthcare economist and foreign policy leader

IMAGE: As USAID Administrator Dr Raj Shah, left, had to hit the ground running with the Haiti earthquake of 2010.

Photograph: Dennis J Henry Jr/US Air Force

Dr Raj Shah, an alumnus of the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and the Wharton School of Business, was the head of USAID from 2009 to 2015.

He was the highest-ranking Indian American in the Obama Administration then.

He had previously served as Undersecretary and Chief Scientist in the US Department of Agriculture, where he created the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, and spent eight years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

When he left USAID in 2015 he had told Rediff.com, "I am the second longest-serving Administrator of USAID in its 53-year history. I started with the Haiti earthquake in the first week and then the floods in Pakistan (in 2010), and I oversaw the largest rebuilding of this agency in its history. I feel very proud of what we've accomplished, including the extraordinarily successful fight to eliminate Ebola from West Africa, which we have been leading in the last months."

"I had actually intended to transition earlier, but because of the Ebola effort, it made sense for me to extend my time."

Shah then joined Georgetown's School of Foreign Service faculty as a distinguished fellow.

"In terms of what I'll do next," he added, "I will spend some time thinking that through, but in addition to a likely academic appointment, I will probably work on areas that represent the intersection between emerging markets, investment opportunities and science and technology. I'll probably be involved in financial services and private equity types of areas where we can see that the potential for private capital investment in emerging economies can both be commercially successful and can continue to make a difference to helping countries develop."

"Someday," he said, "I'm sure I'll be back in public service because I am so inspired by our capacity to contribute."

Shah's appointment to the Rockefeller Foundation as its 13th president will make him, as The New York Times put it, one of the 'most powerful forces in charitable giving.'

'Raj was the unanimous choice of the Trustees after a very competitive search process,' Dick Parsons, the Rockefeller Foundation Board Chair, told the press. 'We can think of no better person than Raj Shah to lead the cutting-edge work of this institution going forward.'

'For over a century,' Shah added, 'The Rockefeller Foundation has been at the forefront of providing solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. I look forward to charting a course for The Rockefeller Foundation to engage with partners to promote the well-being of humanity, and to take on the challenges of today and tomorrow both in the United States ;and around the world.'

Raj Shah, the Republican political operative

IMAGE: Raj Shah, right, at the 2006 White House Christmas Party with then President and First Lady, George and Laura Bush.

Photograph: Kind courtesy Raj Shah

Raj Shah, who had in the past served in the George W Bush administration, was appointed as the Republican National Committee research director in February 2015.

The Cornell University graduate had previously worked on Senate and Presidential campaigns, including serving as a deputy research director at the Republican National Committee during the 2012 Presidential election cycle.

He had also served as co-founding partner and managing director of America Rising LLC, where he developed the organisation's Hillary Clinton opposition research book.

He played a leading role in the Republican Party's anti-Clinton campaign during the polls, and had told Rediff.com, "Americans cannot afford a third term of the Obama administration, but that's exactly what we'll get if another Democrat wins the White House in 2016. RNC Research will ensure that the American people will be informed of the facts, the failures of Democrat leadership, and the Clintons' long history of lies, shady dealings and distortions."
China on Friday refuted reports that it pressurised thousands of Tibetans not to attend the Kalachakra puja, the most prominent Buddhist ceremony being held by the Dalai Lama in India, and dismissed the event as a political tool to propagate ideas of hating China.

Taking advantage of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra (wheel of time) teachings have inveigled Tibetans into illegally going abroad over the last decade, Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, told state-run Global Times.

The Dalai Lama will this month preside over the 34th Kalachakra initiation at Bodhgaya, where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment more than 2,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world are expected to attend the event.

As preparations got under way on Wednesday, the chairman of the organising committee Karma Gelek Yuthok said almost 7,000 pilgrims had returned to China, citing pressure from authorities there, the Global Times report said.

Denying the number of pilgrims from China is far less than thousands, Xu Zhitao, deputy director of the bureau of the Tibet question at the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said there are pilgrims from China attending the ceremony who hold Chinese passports.

Therefore, the government by no means threatened them to return, although the government does not encourage them to attend the ritual, Xu told the Global Times.

Xu pointed out that the ritual, organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile certainly involves politics.

Considering that the large-scale ritual needs years of preparation, the India-based ceremony frequently degenerates into a political tool, Zhu said.

He said that the organising committee has made use of the occasion and the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama to propagate ideas of hating the Chinese government.

The organising committee also attempted to establish relations with the Tibetans from China through the ceremony, he said.

The number of Tibetans attending the ritual decreased dramatically in recent years after the local governments clarified to local Tibetans that the ritual is about separatism, and also due to tightened border control, Zhu claimed.

Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Efforts for reconciliation in the Yadav family appeared to be gaining momentum with Shivpal meeting his nephew Akhilesh on Friday for the first time since the split in the Samajwadi Party on Sunday even as the chief minister's camp claimed to have "signed" support of 212 of the 229 party MLAs.

Meanwhile, SP MP Amar Singh, whose return to the party recently after six years was one of the reasons for discord between Mulayam and son Akhilesh, said he was in favour of a patch-up between the father and the son and that he was not a "hurdle" in the path of the Chief Minister.

Shivpal on Friday went to the residence of Akhilesh and met him, raising hopes of reconciliation.

Party insiders were tight-lipped on what transpired during the brief meeting between the uncle and the nephew who have been at loggerheads for months now. Shivpal later met his brother Mulayam Singh Yadav as well.

However, sources privy to the fast-paced developments did not rule out the possibility of resignation of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, the "outsider" whose return to SP triggered a storm in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, under a "compromise formula".

Another possibility could be resignation of Shivpal from the post of state SP chief, a charge held by the chief minister before the current family feud broke out.

It was the first meeting between Akhilesh and Shivpal since the chief minister donned the mantle of SP chief replacing his father Mulayam.

The meetings Shivpal had with Akhilesh and later with Mulayam reflected hectic behind-the-scene negotiations as the Akhilesh camp prepared to hand over documents to the EC to claim that it was the "real" SP.

Akhilesh's supporter uncle Ramgopal Yadav claimed they have collected signatures of 212 of the 229 MLAs, 56 of the 68 MLCs, 15 of the 24 MPs and a majority of the 5,000 delegates, "making it crystal clear as to which was the real SP".

An inkling of a patch-up came on Thursday night when Akhilesh planned to go to the airport in Lucknow to receive his father, but dropped the idea when he came to know that Amar Singh was accompanying him in the chartered flight.

Soon after Mulayam's return from Delhi, his apolitical brothers Abhayram Yadav and Rajpal Yadav met him apparently to end the strife in the family.

During a meeting with SP MLAs, MLCs, MPs and senior leaders to collect their signed affidavits for submission before the EC, Akhilesh had yesterday asked his father to give him Samajwadi Party's control for three months.

Shivpal's sudden meeting with Akhilesh came at a time when the chief minister was busy rebuilding his party by appointing district heads replacing those installed by his uncle Shivpal after dumping his loyalists.
Police say they arrested a Helena man after tracking his footprints in the snow from a pharmacy to his doorstep.

The suspect, Jaryd Keith Hafer, later admitted to breaking into Geneva Woods Pharmacy early Tuesday morning and at least five other Helena businesses. Hafer, 25, is jailed on a felony charge of burglary for allegedly breaking into the pharmacy.

Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, officers responded to a burglary alarm at Geneva Woods Pharmacy at 2600 Winne Avenue. The culprit had broken a window and opened the cash register, police said. They said they then followed footprints with an impression of the brand Etnies shoes that were left in the snow to an apartment building on California Street about a mile away.

After receiving video of the burglary, a police sergeant recognized the suspect, whose garments included a striped hooded sweatshirt, plaid coat and Etnies shoes from a motorist assist call the previous week. Court documents say the sergeant, who remembered the man lived in a California Street apartment, reviewed video from the motorist call and confirmed his suspicion. The man in the video was wearing the same sweatshirt and shoes.

Police received a search warrant for Hafer's apartment. On Tuesday afternoon, officers arrested Hafer on an unrelated warrant and conducted the search. Court documents say police found a cash register drawer and the clothing seen in the surveillance footage from the pharmacy.

During a subsequent interview, police say Hafer admitted to the breaking into not only Geneva Woods, but also The Dive Bakery, L & D Chinese Buffet, Brewhouse Pub and Grille, Ashley HomeStore and Great Clips. Those burglaries remain under investigation.
Disclaimer

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Zimbabwe

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Zimbabwe, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719626.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 24 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 25 / 40 (2) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 25 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 74 / 100 (4) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 17,354,000

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 16.4%

Overview

Freedom of the press is restricted in Zimbabwe. The government has not yet aligned media laws with the country's new constitution passed in 2013, and, among other violations, media authorities arbitrarily deny licenses to community radio stations. Journalists face harassment, threats, and arbitrary arrests, and increasingly dire economic conditions continue to cause job losses and financial strain in the media sector.

Key Developments

In March 2015, unknown assailants abducted prominent journalist and government critic Itai Dzamara in Harare, and he remained missing at year's end.

Three journalists from the Sunday Mail, a state-owned weekly, were arrested in November and charged under the criminal code with publishing false information in an article that linked state officials to cases of suspected elephant poaching.

High-level government officials, including President Robert Mugabe, exacerbate to restricted environment by frequently directing hostile rhetoric toward the media.

Legal Environment: 24 / 30 (1)

The 2013 constitution provides for freedom of expression and access to information, with some limitations. However, an otherwise draconian legal framework continues to inhibit the activities of journalists and media outlets. The 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) requires all journalists and media companies to register, and gives the information minister sweeping powers to decide which publications can operate legally and who is able to work as a journalist. Unlicensed journalists can face criminal charges and a sentence of up to two years in prison. In addition, the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act severely limit what journalists may publish and mandate harsh penalties  including long prison sentences  for violators. The 2007 Interception of Communications Act allows officials to intercept telephonic and electronic communications and to monitor their content to prevent a "serious offense" or a "threat to national security." In April 2015, the government announced plans to draft a cybercrime bill, which advocacy groups feared could lead to unchecked surveillance and limitations on free expression online. The bill had not passed by year's end.

The restrictive legal atmosphere is exacerbated by frequent and hostile rhetoric directed against the media by high-level government officials. In September 2015, President Robert Mugabe accused the press of fomenting discord by spreading lies concerning disputes within Zimbabwe's political leadership, and threatened to more severely curtail their operations. The information minister issued similar threats in October.

Authorities continued to exploit restrictive laws to harass and punish journalists in 2015. In June, journalist Patrick Chitongo was sentenced to one year in prison for publishing an unregistered newspaper, the Southern Mirror, in violation of the AIPPA. In November, authorities arrested photojournalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere for filming clashes between the police and supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Zimbabwe's main opposition party. He was charged with "participating in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breaches of the peace or bigotry."

Three journalists from the Sunday Mail, a state-owned weekly, were arrested in November and charged under the criminal code with publishing false information in an article that linked state officials to cases of suspected elephant poaching. These journalists were arrested despite 2013 and 2014 Constitutional Court decisions that the sections of the Criminal Law (Reform and Codification) Act that criminalized defamation and the publication of falsehoods were unconstitutional. However, the court's decisions were made on the basis of Zimbabwe's 1980 constitution, leaving journalists vulnerable to criminal prosecution for these offenses under the constitution adopted in 2013. In February 2015, a group of journalists and the local chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) filed an application with the Constitutional Court for a review of the provisions in question within the framework of the new constitution; no decision was reached by year's end.

The right to information is theoretically provided by the AIPPA, though with a number of exemptions. In practice, the relevant provisions of the law are not operational, and accessing official information remains extremely difficult. The colonial-era Official Secrets Act is also used to keep tight control over information.

The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) regulates the licensing of publications and journalists. In 2012, the ZMC announced the creation of the 13-member Zimbabwe Media Council, as provided for under the AIPPA. The council is charged with developing codes of conduct for print media and has the power to impose punishments on media houses that transgress the codes. However, chronic underfunding has greatly constrained its capacity to fulfill this mandate. The independent Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ), a self-regulatory body for all types of media that is supported by a majority of print outlets, has continued to develop its scope of activities, and has heard numerous formal complaints and adjudicated disputes over media content. In 2015, the council registered nearly two dozen complaints from members of the public.

Broadcasting licenses have been consistently denied to independent and community radio stations but granted to government-affiliated organizations. Moreover, independent outlets that campaign for licenses face harassment and persecution from the authorities. Critics allege that the board of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ), which is responsible for granting radio and television licenses, was illegally appointed in 2009 by the information minister and stacked with loyalists of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. In early 2014, the government began to move forward with a plan to license 25 new community radio stations. In February 2015, the BAZ granted only eight licenses, having considered a pool of nearly two dozen applicants. Media advocacy groups criticized the process for its complexity, political nature, and prohibitively high fees, which had caused several contenders to withdraw; critics of the process also noted that almost all groups that received licenses were linked to current or former government officials or state-owned enterprises. No community radio stations have been licensed since 2001.

Professional and media-monitoring organizations such as the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe, and the local chapter of MISA are also occasionally subject to official pressure.

Political Environment: 25 / 40 (2)

Faced with legal restrictions as well as the threat of extralegal intimidation, some journalists practice self-censorship, particularly regarding sensitive issues such as corruption or factional fighting within ZANU-PF. Official censorship is also a problem. The Source, a website focusing on business and financial news, published a series of articles in February and March detailing the banking practices of Steward Bank, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless, a multinational telecommunications company with operations in Zimbabwe. Econet Wireless obtained a court order to have the articles removed and to conduct a joint search of the publication's offices with local police, alleging that the stories were based on stolen information. The Source contested the order unsuccessfully and was forced to remove the articles and submit to the search, during which police extracted information from journalists' computers.

Despite the government's efforts to censor online and digital media, online newspapers, news portals, and blogs run by Zimbabweans living abroad are increasingly popular among those with internet access. Diaspora media also distribute news and information via text messaging and social-media platforms.

Steep accreditation fees introduced in 2011 for foreign media bureaus and their local correspondents remain in place. Foreign journalists can encounter restrictions on residing full-time in the country and are sometimes denied visas. Local correspondents for foreign publications have also been refused accreditation or threatened with lawsuits and deportation in the past. However, no such cases were reported in 2015.

Journalists have traditionally faced verbal intimidation, physical attacks, arbitrary arrest and detention, interception of communications, and financial pressure at the hands of the police, government officials, and supporters of the main political parties. They are vulnerable to harassment and violence when attempting to cover sensitive news events or political issues, and have also reported retaliatory attacks and threats. In March 2015, unknown assailants abducted prominent journalist and government critic Itai Dzamara in Harare, and he remained missing at year's end. In November, photojournalist Chrispen Ndlovu was beaten by police officers after photographing confrontations between the police and taxi drivers in Bulawayo. In Masvingo, police frequently questioned, harassed, and threatened reporters working for the Wezhira community radio station, and raided the station's office in June.

Economic Environment: 25 / 30 (1)

The government controls the two main daily newspapers, the Chronicle and the Herald, whose propagandistic coverage generally favors Mugabe and ZANU-PF. The private Alpha Media Holdings group publishes a number of the country's independent papers, including NewsDay, the Standard, and the Zimbabwe Independent. The Daily News, published by Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, resumed operations in 2011 after being shuttered in 2003 and is generally aligned with MDC viewpoints. Some foreign newspapers, mainly from South Africa, are available despite a 2012 ZMC directive banning the distribution of unregistered foreign newspapers.

Newspapers typically have poor distribution networks outside urban areas, and they have been buffeted by soaring prices for newsprint in recent years. Vendors and distributors of independent newspapers are occasionally harassed by soldiers or ruling party supporters. According to the 2015 African Media Barometer report on Zimbabwe, state-run companies often do not advertise in private papers, and state-run media outlets do not accept advertising from companies thought to be aligned with the opposition.

The state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) runs the vast majority of broadcast media outlets, which are subject to overt political interference and censorship; ZBC coverage overwhelmingly favors ZANU-PF. In 2012, two new private radio stations  Star FM and ZiFM  commenced operation. Despite initial concerns over their owners' close ties to ZANU-PF, local analysts noted that the stations' news and talk radio content presented a diversity of views. The Broadcasting Services Act bans foreign funding and investment in this capital-intensive sector, making it very difficult for private players to enter the market. Radio broadcasts are currently the main source of information in rural areas. Access to broadcast media in these districts is hampered by deteriorating equipment and a lack of transmission sites. However, Zimbabwe's transition from analog to digital broadcasting has provided an opportunity to upgrade the country's broadcast infrastructure, and in 2015, authorities reached agreements with European and Chinese companies to facilitate improvements. The transition to digital broadcasting was ongoing in 2015, although funding shortfalls threated its timely completion.

Zimbabwe had an internet penetration of more than 16 percent of the population in 2015, with most accessing the internet via their mobile phones. Access to the internet is limited by service disruptions caused by frequent power outages, though costs have significantly decreased in recent years due to greater competition in the telecommunications sector.

Local authorities occasionally raid homes in rural areas and confiscate the shortwave radios used to access foreign broadcasts. Radio listeners in Zimbabwe are also required to obtain a license for each radio in their possession, which must be renewed annually, with profits going to the ZBC. The government has also made car radio license renewal a required element of updating vehicle registration. In January 2015, police created roadblocks in Bulawayo to check for updated car radio licenses and charged on-the-spot fines for noncompliance, a practice not within their authority. Satellite television services that carry international and regional news programming remain largely uncensored and are accessed by a rapidly growing share of the population, thanks to new technology such as free-to-air decoders. It is estimated that just over half of the population has a working television at home, and of these, about two-thirds access content via satellite dishes.

Amid continuing financial hardship, some media houses were forced to downsize or close in 2015. Transport Minister Obert Mpofu's newspaper, the Zimbabwe Mail, initially reduced from daily to weekly production in February before shutting down in March, a year after it began publishing. The Southern Eye in Bulawayo ceased publication as a daily in April and became a supplement to NewsDay in order to cut costs, and the Zimbabwean, published since 2005 by MDC affiliates, shut down in October after donors withdrew funding. In addition, dozens of media employees lost their jobs in the wake of a Supreme Court decision in July permitting employers to terminate employees without severance pay by giving three months' notice.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
BILLINGS -- A German renewable energy company is developing Montana wind farms at a whirling pace.

BayWa r.e. announced recently that it had bought the struggling Greycliff Wind Prime project near Big Timber. A week earlier, another BayWa r.e.-related wind farm near Reed Point signed a contract to begin delivering electricity to NorthWestern Energy in 2018.

Combined, the projects will install 41 to 50 wind turbines north of the Yellowstone River with enough power for 30,000 to 40,000 homes. The region is no stranger to wind farm proposals, but construction plans and start-up dates havent materialized before now.

Its about time that a project happened. The wind is there, the power lines are there, said Ryno Stinchfield, of Greycliff Wind Prime, which sold the 25-megawatt Greycliff project to BayWa r.e.

Stinchfields group spent seven years arguing over price with NorthWestern Energy, the states largest regulated utility. Those debates never produced a price Greycliff Wind Prime would accept.

The project seemed all but dead last July when Montanas Public Service Commission set a compromise rate that the wind developers said was too low. The PSC set the price Greycliff could charge NorthWestern Energy at $45.49 per megawatt hour, about 16 percent lower than the price needed to make the wind farm profitable.

However, BayWa r.e. appears capable of making that rate work, Stinchfield said. BayWa r.e. is a large renewable energy company capable of lowering the price it pays for wind turbines by placing large purchase orders.

In the United States, BayWa r.e. is based in San Diego, but its home office is in Germany. According to the company website, it employs 900 people and had roughly $1.3 billion in revenue in 2015. The company did not return queries placed over two weeks.

The second BayWa r.e.-related wind farm site is located 11 miles north of Reed Point. Dubbed the Vivaldi Springtime Wind Project, the 25-to-35 turbine wind farm reached contract terms with NorthWestern shortly before Christmas. It should produce enough power for 19,000 to 30,000 homes, with construction completed by early next year.

The ownership of the project is somewhat mysterious. Vivaldi Wind LLC was an early corporate name associated with the project. State business records show Vivaldi shared a San Diego address with BayWa r.e. However, Vivaldi withdrew its state registration in 2015 and its status as a business entity migrated to WKN Montana LLC last August.

WKN is a BayWa r.e. corporate sibling. NorthWesterns contract for Vivaldi is with WKN Montana. NorthWesterns purchase price for Vivaldi power is $37.65 per megawatt hour, one of the lowest prices for wind energy in the state.

In addition to the BayWa r.e.-related projects, a third wind farm, Crazy Mountain Wind, located 20 minutes east of Big Timber, locked in a power price last month to sell energy to NorthWestern. Crazy Mountain Wind would power up to 29,000 homes.
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Tunisia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Tunisia, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719813.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 17 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 18 / 40 (2) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 17 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 52 / 100 (4) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 11,026,000

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Freedom in the World Status: Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 48.52%

Overview

Despite press freedom protections instituted after the revolution in 2011, including constitutional protections adopted last year, 2015 saw a significant increase in government pressure on the media in the form of criminal prosecutions and a spike in violence committed by law enforcement officials against journalists. Moreover, a closer alignment between the government and media emerged in the wake of several deadly terrorist attacks, prompting many observers to question Tunisian media outlets' credibility and independence.

Key Developments

A new antiterrorism law passed in July 2015 included some protections for journalists, but also authorized expansive new surveillance powers for state security forces.

The government replaced the head of the state broadcaster in November without fulfilling its obligation to consult with the media regulator, continuing a prior pattern of undermining the regulator's authority.

A significant increase in violence against journalists was registered during the year, culminating in the assault by police officers of more than 30 journalists attempting to cover a high-profile terrorist attack in Tunis in November.

Legal Environment: 17 / 30 (1)

Tunisia's 2014 constitution guarantees freedom of expression and enshrines the right to access information and communication networks. However, the constitution also lists circumstances in which restrictions on press freedom would be justified, including to protect "public morals." Moreover, Article 6 attempts to reconcile Tunisia's secular and religious populations by identifying the state as the guardian of religion and belief, a role that could be used to justify press freedom violations in cases of alleged blasphemy and similar offenses.

The legal framework contains a mixture of new and prerevolution elements. Decrees 115 and 116, passed in 2011, enable journalists to access information and publish without prior authorization from the Interior Ministry. However, they include some restrictive provisions, such as a requirement that journalists hold academic degrees. In addition, several pre-2011 laws have not been struck down or updated to reflect the freedoms established in the constitution. These older laws, and in particular the penal code, have allowed journalists to be prosecuted for defamation and other crimes.

In January 2015, a military court reduced the 2014 sentence of prominent blogger Yassine Ayari from three years to one year in prison for his alleged defaming of the army in a Facebook post. In March, a military appeals court further reduced the sentence to six months. Also in March, well-known satirist Wassim Hrissi, as well as a television anchor and a producer, received six-month suspended prison sentences for allegedly defaming the president and violating several other articles of the penal code in connection with an impersonation Hrissi did of the president.

In June 2015, the government charged Noureddine Mbarki, editor of the private news website Akher Khabar Online, with "colluding with terrorists and facilitating their escape" under the 2003 antiterrorism law. Mbarki had refused to disclose the source of a photo his website had published of the gunman responsible for killing 38 people at a popular tourist resort that month. He had not had a court hearing by year's end. In December, investigative journalist Walid Mejri received a summons from the anticrime division of the national gendarmerie in connection with an article he had written in 2013 that described security practices at the Tunis airport. Press advocates described the summons as an attempt to discourage investigative journalism.

A new antiterrorism law was passed in July 2015, replacing the 2003 statute. This new law includes provisions exempting journalists from having to disclose confidential information or the identities of sources in order to aid an investigation. However, in November, authorities brought charges against a journalist under the law for broadcasting images of a terrorist attack. Press groups also expressed concern that the law authorized broad new surveillance powers for security forces.

Journalists' access to state information has improved since 2011, but remains a challenge. In July 2015, the government withdrew a draft access to information bill that was due to be approved by parliament later that week; press freedom advocates had been supportive of the draft. Meanwhile, freelance journalists are unable to obtain official press cards, which prevents them from entering the parliament building without an invitation. Journalists who cannot obtain a press card also lack other legal protections afforded to their peers.

The Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) was established in 2013 as an independent self-regulatory body. Article 127 of the constitution states that the authority will be consulted on relevant draft laws, but critics have said it should have broader decision-making capacity. In 2014, then prime minister Mehdi Jomaa declined to consult the HAICA when he unilaterally closed a radio station and an affiliated television station for carrying extremist views. In November 2015, HAICA's authority was further undermined when Prime Minister Habib Essid fired the head of the national public broadcaster and appointed an interim head without first consulting the body. HAICA lodged a formal complaint challenging the government's actions in December, but a decision was still pending at year's end.

A 2013 decree created the Tunisian Technical Agency for Telecommunications (ATT) to "provide technical support for judicial investigations on cybercrimes." Press freedom advocates argued that the ATT's bylaws violated international law and disregarded UN recommendations regarding online surveillance. Critics also said the legal foundation for the agency  and for the crimes it was meant to address  was unclear.

Since 2011, press freedom groups and professional organizations like the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) have been active in pushing back against legal restrictions, and providing assistance to journalists who are prosecuted or dismissed for their work.

Political Environment: 18 / 40 (2)

There is no longer official censorship, and self-censorship decreased after the revolution in 2011. The media on the whole were free to cover opposition parties and leaders without government interference in 2015. Television debate programs in particular have developed into lively open forums for civil arguments between holders of diverse political opinions. However, polarization of the media landscape continued in 2015, leaving news organizations divided by political affiliation, economic interest, and ideology. The sharp delineation between Islamist and secularist viewpoints diminished slightly in 2015, mirroring the improved unity of a governing coalition that brought together Islamist and secular parties. Some media owners have openly aligned themselves with political parties, in apparent violation of the 2011 press code.

More broadly, the media landscape in 2015 reflected a closer alignment between the government and the media, which was spurred by a spate of deadly terrorist attacks. The shift prompted many observers to question the credibility of Tunisian media outlets, as many local sources did not investigate authorities' failure to prevent the attacks. Terrorism coverage has also been marked by the use of hate speech, intemperate language, and provocative images by journalists, according to HAICA assessments. For example, in July the government-owned daily newspaper La Presse ran an editorial calling for 10 legislators who abstained from voting on the new antiterrorism law to be stripped of their parliamentary immunity and prosecuted for supporting terrorists. In other cases the national public broadcaster has avoided reporting critical of government policy, and has drawn criticism for its perceived partisanship.

The environment for online expression has improved significantly since the revolution. There were no reports of internet censorship in 2015, nor were there substantive reports that internet forums or private e-mail were being monitored. However, activists remained concerned that the increased power of the ATT, with insufficient oversight, could lead to a regression in online freedom.

Threats of violence against journalists, including death threats, by extremist groups continued in 2015. Moreover, journalists covering demonstrations or protests critical of government policies were subject to physical assaults by security forces with greater frequency than in previous years. At a June demonstration in Tunis calling for greater transparency in natural resource management, security forces physically assaulted at least eight journalists and damaged and confiscated their equipment. The same month, a journalist with the online outlet Nawaat, Noureddine Gantri, alleged that security forces assaulted him, confiscated his press card, and prevented him from filming a protest in the town of Zarzis. In September, plainclothes officers physically assaulted a number of journalists in Tunis covering a demonstration against a proposed corruption amnesty bill, confiscating press cards and attempting to prevent filming. In October, police assaulted two journalists while they were reporting on a drowning. In November, over 30 journalists were beaten by police, many of them sustaining injuries, while attempting to report on a terrorist attack that killed 12 member of the security forces. One journalist was briefly detained and several had their equipment confiscated.

Economic Environment: 17 / 30 (1)

Prior to the revolution, the media landscape in Tunisia was dominated by a handful of state-owned outlets and private firms owned by figures tied to the family of former leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and the ruling party, all of which served as mouthpieces for the regime. Since 2011, state-owned media have been restructured to include more diverse viewpoints, although figures from the Ben Ali era remain influential. There was a spike in the number of private, independent media outlets immediately after the revolution, but many of these enterprises later closed. Nevertheless, several strong, private companies have taken hold in print, television, and radio. In September 2015, HAICA announced the allocation of new funding to support a number of young community radio stations in the country.

While an increase in the number of outlets has resulted in a greater diversity of political representation in the media, it has also coincided with a strengthening of the connections between media owners and politicians. In 2015, for example, the chief of the popular television station Nessma TV, Nabil Karoui, admitted that he had been one of the principal founders of the Nidaa Tounes political party, which led the governing coalition throughout most of 2015 and was cofounded by President Beji Caid Essebsi. In November, HAICA criticized the presidency for granting Nessma TV exclusive broadcasting rights for a ceremony honoring Tunisian organizations that were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Separately, the government exerted increased pressure on both the national broadcaster and on HAICA during the year, reflected in Prime Minister Essid's move in November to fire the broadcaster's director and to appoint an interim one without consulting HAICA.

There is no longer a state intermediary between advertisers and the media, and the debilitating limits on advertising that existed under Ben Ali are no longer a factor for privately owned outlets. However, Tunisia's weak economy has made it difficult for media companies to sustain themselves financially without backing from wealthy, politically connected investors. State media have also faced economic difficulties.

Just under half the population used the internet in 2015. Social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are increasingly popular. However, access remains inhibited by high prices and underdeveloped infrastructure.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Niger

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Niger, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719b11.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 20 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 17 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 53 / 100 (2) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 18,884,462

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 2.2%

Overview

The media environment in Niger suffers from poor enforcement of legal protections for journalists, who are frequently harassed and arrested in practice. Conditions grew worse in 2015, as attacks by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the country's eastern region made newsgathering more difficult.

Key Developments

At least 11 journalists were arrested during 2015 for covering a variety of sensitive topics, including the arrest of opposition leader Hama Amadou, the Boko Haram insurgency, and student demonstrations.

During a spate of protests and communal violence in January, the authorities physically assaulted several journalists in the field, raided media offices, and briefly shut down internet and mobile text-messaging services.

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (1)

Article 23 of the Nigerien constitution guarantees the freedoms of thought, opinion, and expression. In 2010, a postcoup transitional government decriminalized media offenses and replaced prison sentences with fines as punishments for defamation and publication of false information. In 2011, President Mahamadou Issoufou became the first head of state to sign the Declaration of Table Mountain, an initiative calling for the repeal of criminal defamation and insult laws and for a press environment in Africa that is free from government, political, and economic control.

However, authorities have often failed to uphold these constitutional rights and legal principles in practice, and journalists were arrested in connection with their work on multiple occasions during 2015. In May, civil society activist and blogger Moussa Tchangari was arrested and accused of conspiring with terrorists after issuing a report that was critical of the government's handling of the Boko Haram crisis in the eastern region of Diffa. He was released at the end of the month and charged with undermining national defense. In October, five journalists were arrested while reporting on a student demonstration, and their equipment was confiscated. In November, four journalists were detained while attempting to report on the arrest of opposition leader Hama Amadou upon his return from exile in Paris. They were held for one day at police headquarters, and their equipment and mobile phones were also seized. Souleymane Salha, editor of Le Courrier, was separately detained that month for criticizing Amadou's arrest.

In 2011, the transitional government approved the Charter on Access to Public Information and Administrative Documents, which aimed to improve transparency and public access to information. Implementation of the law remains inadequate, and in practice access is somewhat difficult.

The state-run media regulatory body, the High Council on Communication, occasionally issues warnings or suspensions to media outlets for alleged content violations. While it is not considered to be heavily politicized, it has generally been ineffective at protecting the media from abuses by the government and security forces.

Political Environment: 20 / 40 (1)

Government critics and alternative voices tend to receive little coverage in public media. However, critical reporting can be found in private outlets, and the media in 2015 covered contentious political issues such as the opposition's calls for an audit of the country's electoral rolls before the 2016 presidential election.

Official censorship is not common, though the High Commission for New Technology and Communication blocks websites associated with terrorist organizations. Self-censorship stems in part from the authorities' use of political pressure or advertising incentives to shape content, and is evident in reporting on sensitive issues such as national security.

The security situation in Diffa deteriorated in 2015 as Boko Haram escalated its attacks, making traveling and reporting considerably more difficult. The government declared a state of emergency in the region in February, giving authorities the power to enforce curfews and impose controls on the media. The north of the country is also considered a hostile environment for journalists due to the activities of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Security forces continued to intimidate and physically assault media workers during the year. In January, for instance, police attacked several journalists and raided the headquarters of four media outlets during a series of demonstrations against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The opposition-aligned station Radio Television Tenere was temporarily forced to stop broadcasting as a result of one raid. In November, on the country's national press freedom day, a number of television and radio stations ceased broadcasting for two hours to protest the police's treatment of journalists during the year.

Economic Environment: 17 / 30

Several dozen private newspapers compete with a state-run daily. Radio remains the most popular and widely accessible news source. The state continues to dominate the broadcasting landscape, though a number of private radio stations and dozens of community radio stations broadcast in French and local languages across the country. Some stations air programming from foreign services, including Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio France Internationale. On television, three private stations operate alongside two state-run stations.

Internet penetration remains limited by cost and poor infrastructure, reaching only 2 percent of the population in 2015. The authorities briefly shut down internet and mobile text-messaging services in January amid the protests and communal violence related to Charlie Hebdo.

A heavy tax on private media hinders development of the sector, and public or government-friendly private media receive the bulk of advertising from state-owned companies. In 2013, all eligible private media received financial support from the Fund for the Aid of the Press, with the stated aim of encouraging their public-service and democracy-promotion functions. At the end of 2014, the president announced a 25 percent increase for the fund. Media observers have warned that dependence on state funding and contracts is threatening the private media's editorial autonomy.

Considerable economic uncertainty has contributed to unethical behavior by journalists that can affect the quality and accuracy of reporting, such as accepting payments to attend press conferences.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Netherlands

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Netherlands, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719c12.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.

Press Freedom Status: Free

Legal Environment: 2 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 5 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 4 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 11 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 16,942,373

Freedom in the World Status: Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 93%

Overview

The Dutch media landscape is open, accessible, and diverse. State and nonstate actors respect protections for the press, and media professionals and houses are able to operate without undue interference. However, recent legislative measures and proposals related to national security and antiterrorism have raised concerns about undue surveillance of journalists and their sources.

Key Developments

In February 2015, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) approved the acquisition of the publishing company Mecom by De Persgroep.

Lawmakers proposed amendments to the Intelligence and Security Act of 2002 in July; the changes include some safeguards for journalists' ability to protect sources, but would not restrict the act's enabling of mass surveillance of media professionals and their sources.

In December, the House of Representatives began discussing a new bill, part of the government's antiterrorism initiatives, that would significantly expand the surveillance capabilities and powers of security services.

Legal Environment: 2 / 30

Article 7 of the constitution safeguards freedom of expression. Although some provisions ban hate speech and discrimination, freedom of speech usually carries more weight in media-related judicial decisions. While a blasphemy law was repealed in 2013, defamation and insult remain criminal offenses. However, criminal convictions for defamation and insult are uncommon, and satire concerning members of the royal family is usually permitted.

In 2014, legislators introduced a draft measure concerning journalistic sources, following several European Court of Human Rights decisions that found the Netherlands to be in violation of journalists' rights to protect their sources. At the end of 2015, discussion of the proposed changes continued. Additionally, in July, lawmakers proposed amendments to the Intelligence and Security Act of 2002; the changes include some safeguards on source protection, but would not affect more controversial aspects of the act, particularly the enabling of mass surveillance of journalists and their sources. The amendments had not been fully adopted at year's end. However, in December, the interior ministry reported that a temporary measure regulating the 2002 act, set to go into effect in January 2016, would protect communications between journalists and their sources as well as between lawyers and their clients.

Also in December, the House of Representatives began discussing a new bill, part of the government's antiterrorism initiatives, that would significantly expand the surveillance capabilities and powers of security services. The digital rights foundation Bits of Freedom awarded the official who proposed the bill, Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk, with its satirical Big Brother Award for violation of privacy. The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights and international privacy watchdogs have been among the many critics of Dutch security legislation in recent years.

Article 110 of the constitution stipulates that the government must observe the principle of transparency and requires government agencies to publish information. Under the 1991 Government Information (Public Access) Act, any person may request information pertaining to an administrative matter. If the information is located in documents belonging to a public body or a private company conducting work for a public entity, the authorities must respond within two weeks.

An independent body established by the government, the Dutch Media Authority, assesses developments in the media landscape on a yearly basis, focusing on independence, pluralism, and accessibility. The body has the authority to impose fines, revoke media licenses, and limit broadcast time.

Political Environment: 5 / 40

The government rarely interferes with media content, and does not restrict internet access or censor online content; however, it does monitor the internet for illegal material, such as child pornography. In 2012, Stichting BREIN, a Dutch antipiracy organization, won a court case against the file-sharing platform Pirate Bay, leading to an order for internet service providers (ISPs) to block the website. The Court of Appeal overturned this verdict in 2014. However, in November 2015, the Supreme Court found the 2014 ruling to be incorrect, and referred the case to the European Court of Justice, asking it to consider whether Pirate Bay violates European Union (EU) copyright laws and to clarify the power of the judiciary to order ISPs to block access to illegal content.

In 2014, the government presented an integrated plan for combatting terrorism to the legislature. The plan includes monitoring the online distribution of extremist material that "encourages violence, radicalization, or hatred," and sanctions criminal prosecution if an individual does not voluntarily remove the offending material. The controversial bill introduced in December 2015 was part of this antiterrorism plan.

Journalists practice a degree of self-censorship, particularly on sensitive issues such as immigration and religion. Accounts of self-censorship were particularly pronounced following the 2004 murder of the controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist and the January 2015 attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. However, journalists nevertheless continue to cover a wide variety of controversial topics. Physical attacks and intimidation directed against media professionals remained rare in 2015.

Economic Environment: 4 / 30

Newspaper ownership is highly concentrated, with three companies owning the majority of paid newspapers. In February 2015, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) approved the acquisition of Mecom, which owns publishing houses in Denmark and the Netherlands, by the Belgian publisher De Persgroep. Although the ACM claimed that readers' and advertisers' range of choice would be unaffected, the Dutch Media Authority expressed concerns that increasing ownership concentration would place the independence of the print sector at risk.

Budget cuts have led to the consolidation of public-service broadcasting in recent years, with several television channels merging or closing. Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO) administers and governs the country's public broadcasting stations, and several national public-service television and radio outlets operate alongside private competitors as well as regional stations. Approximately 93 percent of the population had access to the internet in 2015.

The country's modest economic recovery is expected to increase companies' advertising expenditures, and potentially improve the financial sustainability of media outlets.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Nepal

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Nepal, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719dc.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 23 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 15 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 54 / 100 (1) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 28,039,000

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 17.58%

Overview

Nepalese media offer a broad spectrum of political views. However, constitutional and other legal provisions permit some restrictions on the media. Death threats and physical attacks against journalists are common. The economic situation for journalists is difficult, particularly for those at community radio outlets, which compete against better-funded commercial outlets.

Key Developments

The 2015 constitution, which lawmakers approved in September, guarantees freedom of the press but contains restrictions on some types of media content.

In September, the former head of the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities was charged with disturbing social harmony under the Electronic Transaction Act, in connection with Facebook posts in which he had criticized authorities.

Numerous journalists were attacked in connection with their coverage of demonstrations and political unrest related to provisions in the new constitution.

A devastating earthquake in April damaged the offices of many radio, television, and newspaper outlets, forcing their closure and leaving journalists unemployed.

Legal Environment: 16 / 30

Nepal promulgated a new constitution in September 2015. Its preamble assures "complete press freedom," and other articles prohibit prior censorship of any print, broadcast, or digital materials. However, the constitution also provides for "reasonable restriction" of media content that is determined to undermine national unity, stoke ethnic tension, or damage public morality. Press freedom advocates have expressed concern about this language, as well as about a clause concerning government regulation of the media they said could empower authorities to close outlets.

Criminal defamation charges are rarely employed against journalists, but other legal obstacles can stand in their way. In September 2015, the former general secretary of the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities, Ang Kaji Sherpa, was temporarily detained under the 2008 Electronic Transaction Act after being accused of disturbing social harmony and misusing social networking sites. The allegations came in connection with photos he had posted to Facebook, which showed clashes between protestors and security forces and were accompanied by criticism of state officials. He was freed on bail after several days; the case against him remained open at the year's end. His and other recent arrests under the Electronic Transactions Act have prompted concern among media groups about a possible government crackdown on free expression on the internet. However, the government is not known to monitor online activity.

The 2007 Right to Information Act, though generally welcomed by press freedom groups, contains a number of weaknesses. Mechanisms for requesting information are ill-defined, applicants must furnish reasons for their requests, and they are prohibited from using the information for purposes other than their stated reason. Implementation of the law has generally been inadequate. Transparency groups have also criticized constitutional provisions that could limit the right to access information.

There is no independent regulatory body to oversee the broadcasting sector. Under the current arrangement, the government is the only licensing and regulatory agency for the media.

Political Environment: 23 / 40 (1)

Debate over the new constitution dominated political discourse in 2015, and media outlets often displayed biases linked to the issue. A large-scale protest movement against the constitution by Nepal's Madhesi ethnic group emerged as a particularly contentions issue, with media houses variously aligning themselves with or criticizing the sometimes-violent campaign.

The media are not generally subject to direct censorship from the government. However, in August 2015, access to Kathmandu-based Hulakinews.com was blocked after it published a story on the fatal police shooting of a protestor at a demonstration against the new constitution; BP Sah, the site's editor, said he had refused to remove the article following a request from police, and that the website was blocked shortly afterward. Additionally, in September, Nepal Cable Television Association president Sudhir Parajuli said cable providers would indefinitely block 42 Indian television channels in protest of an alleged Indian blockade he said was preventing critical imports from reaching Nepal. The Ministry of Information and Communication later ordered the companies to resume broadcasting.

Threats against journalists are reported frequently. In April, two reporters with the Commander Post daily said they had received death threats from the youth wing of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (the Maoists) in connection with reporting on the labor conditions of Nepali workers in Malaysia. In June, a journalist with the daily Nagarik was threatened by a man claiming to be the press advisor to the labor minister, in connection with a story about the ministry's plan to pay for visas and travel expenses for Nepalis working abroad. And in July, Radio Shaligram manager Om Ghayal received a death threat from a local entrepreneur whose practices he had criticized on-air.

Attacks against journalists also continue to occur. In January 2015, several reporters were assaulted while covering a demonstration connected to a general strike called by opposition parties. In late July, reporter Sandeep Yogi with Image News FM was attacked by a state official's security detail after he photographed traffic congestion caused by the official's vehicle. Station management fired Yogi over the incident the next day, saying it reflected poorly on the outlet. A few days later, in August, unknown persons assaulted Yogi a second time. Cable distributors who broadcast Indian programs received threats from individuals affiliated with one of Nepal's Maoist factions in 2015. In December, attackers allegedly linked with that group threw a petrol bomb at the Lalitpur offices of a cable distributor that carried numerous Indian channels.

Tensions and protests related to the new constitution also created a hostile environment for the press. In August 2015, I Singh Rokaya, a reporter from Bulbule FM radio, was shot in the leg by police while covering a protest in Surkhet district against the new charter. In September, photojournalist Bikram Rauniyar was beaten by the police while covering similar protests in Janakpur. Rauniyar claimed that he told police that he was a journalist, but that they had continued to beat him. Also in September, photojournalist Ram Sarraf from the Himalayan Times had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his house following his reporting on political unrest in the southern district of Parsa. In November, Irfan Ali, a News 24 television reporter, was attacked by participants of a United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) rally he had been covering. And also in November, Radio Parasi's office was bombed, following threats by people angry over what they characterized as progovernment reporting. The bombing did not cause any injuries; however, due to damage to the building, broadcasting was suspended.

Authorities have taken some action to combat a culture of impunity for attacks against journalists. In April, the Dhanusha District Court sentenced Umesh Yadav to life in prison for the 2009 murder of journalist Uma Singh.

Economic Environment: 15 / 30

Nepal's media sector has developed considerably in the past two decades, with 340 newspapers, 515 radio stations, and 58 television channels in operation in 2013, according to UN figures. The media generally offer a broad spectrum of political views and appear to have diverse owners, though there is no reliable information on media ownership in the country. The government owns several of the major dailies as well as the influential Radio Nepal and the Nepal Television Corporation. Political parties have also come to own an increasing share of newspapers in recent years. It is not unusual for the selection of editors at national newspapers to be governed by political deals and bargaining.

Radio remains among the most popular news sources because there are few barriers to market entry. Nepal has about 250 community radio stations operating across the country. These stations serve as a means of protecting local cultures and languages from the dominance of Nepali-language media. A number of community stations were badly damaged by the April 2015 earthquake but many were able to quickly resume operations, often with assistance from international partners. While license fees have been adjusted in recent years to support diversity, community radio stations still have difficulty competing with commercial stations for resources. Despite the large number of outlets, mainstream Nepali media often either ignore or are biased against the interests of Dalits, Madhesis, indigenous peoples, and Muslims, who collectively form about 70 percent of the population. About 18 percent of the population had internet access in 2015.

There were a number of issues related to news distribution in 2015. In January, during a general strike, protestors vandalized two newspaper delivery vans, and in Kathmandu, destroyed copies of the Kantipur Daily newspaper. In February, antigovernment protesters in Kalaiya destroyed copies of four leading papers in retaliation for a perceived lack of coverage of their activities. And throughout the year, strike conditions and disruptions in trade with India led to shortages of printing supplies, which interrupted the publication of many newspapers.

Many media workers do not receive professional training, are informally employed, and are paid well below prescribed minimum wages. Since the government is a major source of advertising, journalists often self-censor in order to avoid conflict with the ruling party.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Morocco

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Morocco, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719ea.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 23 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 25 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 18 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 66 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 34,121,000

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 57.1%

Overview

The media in Morocco are severely restricted. A range of laws either directly limit media freedom or are used to do so. Journalists face regular harassment and cannot report in certain areas, especially Western Sahara. The regime uses advertising and subsidies, as well as aggressive financial harassment, to repress critical media coverage. However, the population has some access to independent viewpoints through the internet, satellite broadcasts, and private radio.

Key Developments

The government responded to accusations of corruption, mismanagement, and rights violations with a number of high-profile criminal defamation prosecutions in 2015, which resulted in heavy fines and suspended jail sentences for several journalists and publications.

Authorities arrested and deported French, Dutch, and Italian reporters and placed travel bans on several Moroccan journalists, forbidding them from leaving the country and impeding their professional work.

In December, the lower house approved a new press code and two new media laws that would introduce restrictions on the practice of journalism; however, some elements of the laws, such as the establishment of a self-regulatory body and the decriminalization of defamation, were praised by media advocates.

Legal Environment: 23 / 30 (1)

Morocco's 2011 constitution guarantees freedom of the press, but its vague language enables wide latitude for interpretation and hinders enforcement of media protections. The press law prohibits criticism of the monarchy and Islam and effectively bars critical coverage of certain taboo subjects, including the royal family and the official status of Western Sahara. Defamation is a criminal offense punishable by up to one year in prison and/or fines of up to approximately $12,000. Morocco witnessed an unusual wave of defamation convictions throughout 2015. In June, the news website Goud was ordered to pay the king's private secretary more than $50,000 after it republished an article that accused him of corruption. Also in June, journalist Hamid el-Mehdaoui was handed a four-month suspended prison sentence and heavy fines for an article he wrote that attributed the death of an imprisoned activist to custodial torture. In July, Rachid Niny, director of the Al-Akhbar newspaper, was ordered to pay more than $40,000 to transportation minister Aziz Rebbah and his associates over an article in which Niny alleged that a contractor working for the Transportation Ministry had used substandard materials on a highway construction project. In November, Taoufik Bouachrine, editorial director of the Akhbar Al-Yaoum newspaper, was sentenced to a two-month suspended prison sentence and more than $150,000 in fines after he alleged that a Finance Ministry official had improperly advocated for a certain piece of legislation.

The 2003 antiterrorism law provides for heavy criminal penalties including fines and jail time for vaguely worded offenses that include advocacy, support, or incitement to terrorism. In 2013, journalist Ali Anouzla was arrested and detained for two months under the law after he wrote an article that included a link to a YouTube video in which an extremist group criticized Morocco's King Mohamed VI and called for Moroccan youth to wage jihad. The case has been repeatedly postponed and remained unresolved by the end of 2015.

In July 2015, Moroccan police disrupted a training session for citizen journalists being given by senior journalists and activists, confiscating their equipment. In November, seven of the trainers were put on trial on charges of threatening national security and failing to disclose foreign funding in connection with the program, which was sponsored by the Dutch press freedom organization Free Press Unlimited. They face up to five years in prison. Their cases remained unresolved at year's end.

Journalists are often imprisoned on trumped-up criminal charges that are not explicitly press related. In March 2015, for example, press freedom advocate Hicham Mansouri was sentenced to 10 months in prison for adultery. At the time of his arrest, Mansouri was investigating alleged state surveillance of human rights activists.

In December 2015, Morocco's governing council approved a draft of a new Press and Publications Code following negotiations between the Communications Ministry and journalists, publishers, and advocates. The draft included a number of improvements to current law, including decriminalization of defamation. Publishers had initially expressed strong opposition to a number of other provisions, including heavy increases in civil fines, the possibility of permanent revocation of journalists' press cards, and potential suspension of newspapers before the resolution of criminal proceedings. However, the publishers were eventually persuaded to support the revised code, which is expected to be debated in parliament in 2016.

In June 2015, the government sent a new draft of long-delayed access to information legislation to parliament for consideration. While critics noted its improvement over a version considered last year, they also highlighted a number of shortcomings, including the narrow scope of institutions covered under the law, the requirement of a justification for an information request, and restrictions on the reuse or republication of requested information by third parties. The bill had not yet been passed by year's end.

The king appoints the president and four of eight board members of the High Authority for Audio-Visual Communication, which issues broadcast licenses and monitors content to ensure compliance with licensing requirements. The prime minister appoints two additional board members, and the presidents of the two chambers of parliament each appoint one of the remaining members. Both local and foreign publications must also obtain accreditation in order to operate and publish, and can be suspended or censored if their content is deemed a threat to public order.

In addition to the new press code, in December the House of Deputies approved a law establishing a new self-regulatory media body, the National Press Council, whose duties will include mediating disputes that arise within the industry, the issuance of press cards, and levying of penalties for journalists and publications that commit ethical transgressions. The council will be composed of representatives of journalists, publishers, and civil society groups. Another new law established new guidelines related to the practice of journalism, mandates that journalists receive university training, and forbids those with certain criminal convictions from joining the profession. Currently, journalists can benefit from many public and private institutions that provide journalism training, and barriers to entry to the profession are limited. Syndicates defend journalists' rights and interests.

Political Environment: 25 / 40 (1)

King Mohamed VI and his government continued to wield considerable control over the editorial content of domestic broadcast media in 2015. The government holds the authority to appoint the heads of all public radio and television stations.

Although the internet is used as a platform for journalism and the dissemination of news, the government exerts control over online media through the press law as well as censoring content on certain websites, including news sites and blogging platforms. The state also occasionally cracks down on those who produce critical online content on issues such as the monarchy, religion, or official corruption. In May 2015, the British watchdog Privacy International released a report documenting extensive monitoring of human rights activists and journalists by the Moroccan intelligence services. The Interior Ministry allegedly filed suit against the group and its Moroccan subsidiary in retaliation for the report.

Self-censorship is widespread, and journalists tend to stay within unofficial red lines to avoid heavy fines, prison sentences, or extralegal intimidation and physical violence in retribution for their stories. Some journalists continue to push the boundaries of permissible coverage and report on sensitive subjects such as the military, national security, religion, and sexuality, but most have moved outside Morocco to escape government harassment and surveillance.

Foreign publications are widely available in Morocco, but the foreign media are not immune from government repression. In January 2015, the communications ministry blocked the entry of a number of foreign publications into the country because they contained depictions of the Prophet Muhammed that had appeared in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Harassment of journalists including arrests, threats, and physical attacks occurred regularly throughout 2015. In January, police prevented a news crew with France 24 from filming a segment at a hotel in Rabat. Their footage was confiscated and duplicated before being returned the next day. In February, police raided the headquarters of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights and arrested two French journalists with France 3, who were filming a documentary on Morocco and the Arab Spring. Authorities confiscated their equipment and footage and the two were deported later that month. Another foreign journalist working for a Dutch newspaper was deported without explanation in November. Other journalists have been subject to restrictions on their movement. In August, a reporter and member of the Moroccan Association for Investigative Journalism was detained and informally accused of a variety of offenses before being placed under a travel ban.

Independent media are scarce in the disputed territory of the Western Sahara. Media operated by supporters of the rebel Polisario Front are accessible through the internet. Moroccan authorities have in the past barred foreign journalists from entering the disputed territory or expelled those who entered without official authorization. In August 2015, authorities deported an Italian student journalist who has been investigating migration patterns in the town of Laayoun.

Economic Environment: 18 / 30

There are nearly 20 daily and more than 80 weekly publications in circulation in Morocco, and it is estimated that more than 70 percent of these are privately owned. The high rate of illiteracy in parts of the country limits the reach of the press as a news source. There are more than a dozen private radio stations and hundreds of websites as well as satellite stations that offer alternative and independent viewpoints on political issues. Community radio stations are not recognized by the broadcasting law, but many broadcast online and civil society groups have launched a campaign for their legal recognition by the government. However, broadcast media are dominated by the state. According to the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA), in 2015 the government and its allied political parties were given more than double and sometimes triple the airtime on public television and radio broadcasts than was granted to opposition parties. Internet use, particularly on social media, continues to grow at a fast rate. Approximately 57 percent of the population regularly accessed the internet in 2015.

The regime uses advertising and subsidies, as well as aggressive financial harassment, to repress critical media coverage and intimidate the independent press. In October 2015, Aziz Akhanouch, the agriculture minister, canceled his ministry's advertising contact with the newspaper Akhbar Al-Yaoum after it revealed that he allegedly exercised undue control over state funds intended for rural development. General subsidy allocation is controlled by the Information Ministry and has been criticized as nontransparent and discriminatory against smaller publications. In 2015, the dispersal process was reformed, and publications can now receive upwards of two million dirhams in subsidies annually.

Despite heavy reliance on state advertising subsidies, the market for printing and distribution of newspapers is largely free and features a number of private, competitive companies. However, many newspapers are heavily indebted to these companies. Corruption among journalists is endemic.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Mali

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Mali, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f719fa.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 8 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 19 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 10 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 37 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 16,749,000

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 10.3%

Overview

The media environment in Bamako and the rest of the south is relatively open, with sporadic reports of censorship and self-censorship. However, Mali's ongoing conflict in the north and attacks by Islamist militants undermines the security situation, making reporting in some areas of the country a dangerous task for domestic and foreign journalists alike.

Key Developments

Mali's media landscape remained relatively open in 2015, allowing new media businesses to expand and journalists generally free to continue their work.

A number of foreign correspondents with international news agencies were sent death threats via e-mail from a group claiming to be close to Islamist insurgents.

Legal Environment: 8 / 30

Freedom of speech is guaranteed under Article 4 of the 1992 constitution, but no legislation guarantees the confidentiality of journalists' sources. A press law passed in 2000 imposes fines and prison sentences for defamation. It also criminalizes offenses such as undermining state security, demoralizing the armed forces, offending the head of state, sedition, and consorting with the enemy. However, journalists are rarely prosecuted. While Malian authorities have not signed the Table Mountain Declaration  a formal commitment to decriminalize defamation and insult laws across Africa  the Association of Private Press Editors of Mali (ASSEP) announced in November 2014 that it was reviewing potential reforms to the 2000 press law, including the decriminalization of press offenses.

Mali does not have a comprehensive freedom of information regime, although numerous laws do provide for public access to some official documents and information, which the government generally complies with. However, such laws are replete with extensive and vague exceptions, and journalists have faced obstacles when attempting to obtain information about the military in particular.

In May 2015, the National Assembly approved the establishment of a new regulatory body, the High Authority for Communications (HAC), replacing the previous High Communications Council. The HAC is composed of nine members, with three each chosen by the president, the National Assembly, and private press groups. It officially began work in December, and is responsible for the issuance of broadcast licenses, the enforcement of press regulations, and the promotion of media ethics. Mali's other regulatory body, the Committee for Equal Access to the State Media, is tasked with ensuring that political parties receive equal access to state media and will continue to operate. The Maison de la Presse, an umbrella organization for press unions, provides journalists with work facilities, training centers, and support for the protection of their legal rights. The National Union of Journalist Reporters complements the work of the Maison de la Presse with an emphasis on labor rights for media workers.

Political Environment: 19 / 40

The media are pluralistic overall, but some private outlets display partisan bias in their reporting, and the state broadcaster  the Malian Office of Radio and Television Broadcasting (ORTM)  tends to carry progovernment programming. Continuing instability in the north, as well as the November 2015 terrorist attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, continues to place pressure on journalists to engage in self-censorship when reporting on sensitive topics such as security issues and the performance of the military against jihadist groups. There was some balanced and critical reporting on the signing of a peace deal in June 2015 with the mainly Tuareg separatist rebel groups, but poor newspaper circulation and low levels of internet use often means these reports only reach a limited audience in the north.

In March 2015, Minister of Culture N'Diaye Ramatoulaye and Karim Keita, a member of parliament and son of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, requested that the news magazine Le Reporter refrain from printing articles that were critical of the two men in the magazine's upcoming edition. When the publication refused, authorities blocked the issue from being printed.

Although there were fewer physical attacks on journalists than in previous years, northern Mali continued to be a dangerous area in 2015, with many reporters unwilling to travel there without military or U.N. escorts. In August, a militant group operating in northern Mali known as Guardians of Jihad sent menacing e-mails to a number of reporters for foreign outlets covering West Africa, threating to kill any whose work it found to be contrary to Islam. In September, police arrested three men suspected of being behind the threats, and uncovered a large cache of weapons in the home where the men were found.

Ongoing insecurity and unrest also hindered French and Malian investigations into the November 2013 kidnapping and murder of French journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon. However, in a clandestine operation in May 2015, French special forces killed a militant associated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb who was believed to have been behind the journalists' deaths.

Economic Environment: 10 / 30

Mali has long hosted a diverse media environment, with more than 300 radio stations operating across the country, as well as roughly 50 newspapers that publish on a regular basis, including the state-owned L'Essor. Print circulation, however, is limited. Radio is by far the most popular medium. Most radio stations are community based and receive funding from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to operate. Some serve larger markets, such as the popular Studio Tamani in Bamako, which reaches more than 80,000 listeners. Foreign news services, including the British Broadcasting Corporation and Radio France Internationale, are broadcast on FM radio in Bamako and some other areas. The state broadcaster ORTM is the only domestic television station with national reach, and it is under the tight control of the executive branch; the president appoints its general manager based on the recommendation of the minister of communication.

Just over 10 percent of Malians were able to access the internet in 2015. Online media is very popular with the educated elite and Malians living abroad. Users increasingly consume their content via internet-enabled mobile phones. But connectivity is extremely slow and unreliable, and there is only one private internet service provider currently licensed, resulting in high costs and poor service. Mobile phone usage is ubiquitous, with an estimated 149 subscriptions for every 100 residents. However, only three mobile operators are currently licensed, and concessions granted to them preclude the issuance of new licenses to competitors until 2016.

Insufficient funding and access to equipment and electricity continue to prevent many media outlets in Mali from operating at full capacity, particularly in the north. Regular blackouts in Timbuktu and Gao, for example, force many radio stations to limit broadcasts to evenings, when power is available. Poor working conditions, including low or nonexistent salaries, often lead journalists into unethical practices. Bribery is rampant, and financial pressure from media owners and advertisers force many outlets to skirt critical coverage or provide favorable reports on their backers. To address these concerns, government subsidies for private outlets were restored in 2015 after several years of cuts, with promises to increase allocations further in the coming year.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Libya

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Libya, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a04.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 22 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 34 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 19 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 75 / 100 (2) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 6,317,000

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Freedom in the World Status: Not Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 0.4%

Overview

Libya's political and security situation continued to deteriorate in 2015, further weakening the ability of journalists to pursue their work freely. Threats, abductions, and attacks against media outlets and journalists were reported throughout the year, and many went into exile for safety reasons. Reporters often promoted or were compelled to promote the interests of the de facto authorities or militias that controlled their regions, putting them at risk of attacks by rival groups.

Key Developments

A draft constitution containing some protections for media freedom was published in October, but it appeared unlikely to move forward until political actors could implement an agreement to end the civil war and form a unity government.

At least one journalist was assassinated during the year, and seven who had been abducted in 2014 were allegedly killed by Islamist militants.

Legal Environment: 22 / 30

An August 2011 constitutional declaration serves as Libya's governing legal document pending the drafting and adoption of a new constitution. It provides limited protection for freedoms of opinion, communication, and the media, but does not fully reflect international standards for freedom of expression. The charter does not explicitly abolish censorship or include the right to access information. It does not cover all types of expression and methods of communication.

A draft constitution was published by the elected Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA) in October 2015. However, the deteriorating security situation and threats against members of the CDA stalled the process of constitutional reform. Article 132 of the draft provides for the right to expression and publication, but also calls on the state to "protect private life and prohibit defamation, libel, incitement of hatred, racism, violence, declaring others as infidels and imposition of ideas by force." The draft specifically guarantees the freedom, pluralism, and independence of the media under Article 133, and prohibits pretrial detention of journalists in press-related cases. The same article states that outlets can only be suspended or dissolved through court decisions.

On the right to information, Article 150 of the draft declares that the state "shall provide the necessary measures for transparency" and guarantee the freedom of information while protecting military and public security secrets, the administration of justice, private life, and confidential agreements with other states.

Beyond the constitution, a number of laws and decrees currently in force contain provisions that restrict media freedom. These include the Qadhafi-era Publications Law of 1972; Law 15 of 2012, which prohibits media discussion of religious opinions issued by the National Council of Islamic Jurisprudence; Decree 5 of 2014, which authorizes the suspension of satellite television stations that criticize the 2011 revolution or destabilize the country; and Law 5 of 2014, which amended the Qadhafi-era penal code to prescribe up to 15 years in prison for any statements that may harm or prejudice the 2011 revolution or insult the executive, judiciary, or legislature or any of their members.

However, the ongoing civil conflict has prevented the development and enforcement of an effective legal and regulatory framework for the media. Two competing governments claimed legitimacy during 2015, with loosely affiliated militias controlling different parts of the country, and UN-mediated efforts to form a unity government remained incomplete at year's end. Meanwhile, extremist groups including the Islamic State (IS) held territory in some areas, imposing their own crude legal systems.

Libyan journalists have formed a number of advocacy groups and professional associations, such as the Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press, but their ability to function is severely impaired by violence and intimidation.

Political Environment: 34 / 40 (1)

In the context of the civil war, the rival political and militia factions have taken over key media assets in the areas under their control. Censorship and self-censorship at such outlets are pervasive. The resulting polarization has raised concerns about the involvement of media and journalists in hate speech, incitement to violence, misinformation, and direct threats to individuals. In October 2015, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) hosted a gathering of Libyan media owners and editors as part of an effort to promote ethical standards and "prevent the transformation of their media organizations into platforms for the broadcasting of hate and incitement to violence."

Serious verbal threats by government officials against journalists were also reported. In November, the state news agency of the internationally recognized government based in Tobruk published a statement in which the minister of information, Omar Quary, described journalists for the newly launched, European-backed Libyan Cloud News Agency as "stupid spies who are supported by the foreign governments" and called on the military to detain them.

Militias and extremist groups commit crimes against journalists and media institutions with impunity, as no authority has the capacity to investigate or punish the abuses. Courts and prosecutors' offices were not operating in most parts of the country in 2015. At least one journalist was killed in connection with his work during the year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Muftah al-Qatrani, owner and director of the Benghazi production company Al-Anwar, was assassinated at his office in April. Al-Anwar had been covering local fighting among rival militias for various satellite television networks.

Kidnapping of journalists has also been a serious problem. Four Libyan journalists and an Egyptian cameraman with Barqa TV were found dead in April 2015 near the city of Al-Bayda, having been abducted in 2014. IS militants were believed to be responsible. IS announced in January that it had executed two Tunisian journalists who were kidnapped in September 2014 near the town of Brega. Photojournalist Mohamed Neili, who worked for the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua, was reportedly abducted in October 2015 near his home in Tripoli.

Given the dangerous environment, many journalists have been forced to cease their professional activities or move abroad. The Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press reported a number of cases during 2015 in which journalists decided to stop working as a result of constant threats they received on their Facebook pages.

Economic Environment: 19 / 30 (1)

The civil war has caused considerable economic instability for media outlets in Libya, and de facto control by armed groups has proven more relevant to an outlet's operations than legal ownership. The two competing governmental authorities supported rival "state" television channels and news agencies during 2015, and IS took control of local state television and two private radio stations after occupying Sirte early in the year, converting them into propaganda mouthpieces. Local councils in some cities operate their own television or radio stations.

A variety of privately owned television channels serve Libyan audiences, though most broadcast via satellite from abroad. While some of these outlets receive funding from foreign governments or nongovernmental organizations, transparency of ownership and financing among Libyan media in general is limited. Due to the poor security situation, related economic turmoil, and physical damage to infrastructure, terrestrial broadcasters and newspapers face serious practical difficulties with respect to production and distribution, leading to reduced or interrupted service by many outlets over the course of 2015.

A variety of news websites operate online, often displaying clear political affiliations in their content. Social media, mainly Facebook and Twitter, have emerged as the main available tools for the exchange of information among Libyans, including journalists, political figures, and civil society groups. Islamist militant groups have also increasingly used Twitter to disseminate threats and propaganda. Internet penetration was estimated at 19 percent in 2015. Expansion of access has been hampered by weak telecommunications infrastructure and frequent electricity outages, among other problems.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Kazakhstan

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Kazakhstan, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a227.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 28 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 33 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 33 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 84 / 100 (1) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 17,544,274

Net Freedom Status: Not Free

Freedom in the World Status: Not Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 54.9%

Overview

The Kazakh government continued its steady repression of the media in 2015, as economic uncertainty grew and the country held a presidential vote in April. Although the government passed a long-awaited freedom of information law, it remained to be seen how the legislation would be implemented in practice. Meanwhile, a new law against the spreading of false information was used to detain and prosecute journalists in retaliation for their work.

Key Developments

The editor and owner of Nakanune.kz, an independent news website, was among 18 people charged with spreading false information during 2015.

The magazine ADAM was shut down in October based on an alleged violation of the terms of its registration.

Authorities blocked a number of online news sources during 2015, in some cases to suppress information about the Syria-based Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Legal Environment: 28 / 30 (1)

The constitution guarantees freedoms of speech and the press, but the government severely restricts these rights in practice. Defamation is a criminal offense, with specific bans on defaming the president, members of Parliament, and other state officials. Under amendments to the criminal code that took effect in January 2015, the new offense of spreading false information carries fines and up to 10 years in prison.

In June 2015, a court in Almaty ordered Guzyal Baydalinova, editor and owner of the independent news site Nakanune.kz, to pay 20 million tenge ($100,000) in damages for an article that allegedly defamed Kazkommertsbank. Police raided the outlet's offices and the homes of Baydalinova and a colleague in December, seizing equipment and documents. Baydalinova and journalist Rafael Balgin were then detained on charges of spreading false information about the bank, and they remained in custody at year's end. A total of 18 people were charged with spreading false information during 2015, according to the advocacy group Adil Soz.

In October, editor Yaroslav Golyshkin of the Pavlodar-based newspaper Versiya was sentenced to eight years in prison on extortion charges. The case stemmed from the paper's investigation of an incident in which the regional governor's son was accused of rape. After Golyshkin interviewed the victim, the governor claimed that the editor had demanded money from him in exchange for suppressing the story. Reporters Without Borders described the extortion charges as politically motivated.

Adil Soz documented a total of 110 civil cases against journalists and media outlets in 2015, compared with 106 in 2014. Most were for alleged defamation. There were 35 criminal defamation cases during the year, up from 20 in 2014. While the courts frequently rule in favor of media outlets, the threat of substantial penalties and protracted court cases may contribute to self-censorship. Truth is not a defense in defamation cases, there is no statute of limitations, and the law automatically targets both the writer and the publication in which the article is published.

In November 2015, President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a long-awaited freedom of information law. Adil Soz noted that the law holds the leaders of state agencies accountable for ignoring information requests from journalists, but also restricts access to state secrets. While the legislation drew praise for imposing new transparency obligations and applying them to additional state and some private entities, it lacked a supervisory body to address complaints, and the quality of implementation remained unclear at year's end.

Government ministries, rather than independent regulatory bodies, oversee media licensing and regulation. Online media, including blogs and discussion forums, are regulated as mass media under a 2009 legal amendment. Amendments to a communications law that were signed in 2014 allow the prosecutor general to temporarily shut down  without a court order  websites and entire communication networks based on vaguely worded criteria, such as potential harm to the interests of individuals, society, or the state, or incitement of extremist or other activities "carried out in violation of the established order."

Rules for the accreditation of foreign journalists include vaguely worded restrictions barring hate speech and speech that undermines national security and the constitutional order. A law that took effect in 2012 requires owners of internet cafes to obtain users' names and monitor and record their activity, and to share their information with the security services if requested.

Political Environment: 33 / 40

The government and its allies dominate the media landscape, with state-owned and friendly private outlets promoting the government's views in their news coverage. In December 2015, a London-based correspondent for the state television channel Khabar and its 24.kz website resigned from her position, complaining publicly that the channel's content often amounted to "disinformation."

Ahead of the early presidential election held in April 2015, private media received official "recommendations" for preelection coverage that were designed to bolster public confidence in the incumbent leadership. Election observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported that mainstream media content clearly favored President Nazarbayev.

The few independent print outlets and news websites have been under severe pressure from the state since a deadly police crackdown on striking oil workers in 2011. In 2012, the courts banned dozens of leading opposition outlets for "extremism," and further closures were reported in the subsequent years. Opposition-leaning publications Pravdivaya Gazeta, Assandi Times, Respublika, and ADAM bol remained shuttered in 2015, and authorities revoked the registration certificate of the popular but critical ADAM magazine in October 2015, closing the outlet for failing to publish in both Russian and Kazakh as indicated in its registration.

Online news sources based abroad are subject to blocking. In November 2015, access to the popular blogging platform LiveJournal was restored after roughly four years of obstructions. However, other services that were temporarily blocked during the year included video-hosting site Vimeo, which carried images of executions by IS in the Middle East, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Kazakh service, which reported on a video that showed Kazakh militants seeking recruits for IS.

Independent journalists and outlets continued to face physical attacks and other obstacles to reporting in 2015. According to Adil Soz, the situation regarding violence toward journalists improved, with the number of attacks on media offices and workers declining to 9, from 16 in 2014. Threats also declined, from 13 to 6, while arbitrary detentions remained steady at 8. In one prominent case, journalists investigating a fire at the National Academy of Arts in March were physically obstructed and threatened by faculty members. In October, journalist Bota Zhumanova was badly beaten outside her home in Almaty. Security camera footage of the attack circulated on the internet, and the assailant was ultimately arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for attempted robbery, though he did not take any valuables.

Economic Environment: 23 / 30

As of 2015, there were 1,367 newspapers, 531 magazines, 260 online media outlets, 95 television stations, and 58 radio stations registered in Kazakhstan.

Major broadcast media, especially national television networks, are partly or wholly owned by the state or by members or associates of the president's family. Television remains by far the most popular source of news, and it is also the most tightly controlled. Government oversight extends to the country's broadcast transmission facilities.

Kazakh law limits rebroadcasts of foreign-produced programming to 20 percent of a station's total airtime, burdening smaller stations that are unable to develop their own programs. Foreign ownership of Kazakh outlets is capped at 20 percent. Nevertheless, Russian television and radio broadcasts are popular and influential in Kazakhstan, reaching viewers partly through cable and satellite services. Legislation adopted in October and November 2015 will ban such services from carrying advertising on foreign channels and tighten the registration requirements for foreign channels distributed in Kazakhstan, partly by requiring them to establish offices in the country.

As with broadcast media, many print outlets are either run by the government or controlled by groups or individuals associated with the president, and do not carry critical content. The government controls all of the country's printing presses, and with advertising revenue in short supply, private print media are often forced to rely on state subsidies. The Soviet-era practice of compulsory subscriptions to state-run newspapers persists in parts of Kazakhstan.

Internet use in Kazakhstan continues to grow, reaching almost 73 percent of the population in 2015. The government holds a majority stake in the largest service provider, Kazakhtelecom, which is especially dominant in the fixed-line market but also offers mobile internet services.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Kuwait

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Kuwait, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a24.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 20 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 23 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 16 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 59 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 3,837,700

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 78.7%

Overview

Media operate in a restricted environment. Journalists and social media users deemed to have insulted the emir or Saudi Arabia often face prosecution, and the government sustains efforts to stifle criticism of its actions and policies.

Key Developments

In January 2015, police arrested several bloggers for allegedly insulting Saudi Arabia or its monarch.

Also in January, authorities suspended the publishing license of the newspaper Al-Watan as well as the business license of its owner; the following month, a court upheld the suspension of the newspaper.

In June, legislators passed a cybercrime law that includes restrictive measures for freedom of expression on the internet.

Legal Environment: 20 / 30

Freedoms of speech and the press are protected under Articles 36 and 37 of the constitution, but only "in accordance with the conditions and in the circumstances defined by law." Although the 2006 Press and Publications Law also extends some important protections to the media, it forbids criticism of the emir, the disclosure of secret or private information, and statements calling for the overthrow of the regime. Penalties for criticizing Islam draw up to one year in prison and fines of up to 20,000 dinars ($66,000). Both the author of prohibited content and the editor of the publication may be held criminally liable for any violations. Article 25 of the criminal code penalizes public criticism of the emir, with penalties of up to five years in prison. Violations are reported frequently, as any citizen may initiate charges against an individual who they believe has committed an offense under these laws.

In June 2015, legislators passed a cybercrime law that includes restrictive measures for freedom of expression on the internet. Under Article 6 of the law, online insults of religious figures and criticism of the emir can result in prison sentences and fines. While such provisions already existed in the media and penal codes, the cybercrime law made explicit that digital media are also covered. Article 6 also bans criticism of the judicial system, statements that could damage Kuwait's relations with other countries, and the publication of classified information. Article 7 criminalizes the urging, through information technology, "to adopt creeds that aim at destroying the basic statutes of Kuwait through illegal means." In December, legislators debated another law to regulate online media.

The government continued to use these restrictive measures against journalists and private citizens in 2015. In January, popular blogger Mohammed al-Ajmi was arrested for posting offensive tweets about Saudi Arabia. The same month, several other bloggers were arrested for allegedly insulting the king of Saudi Arabia. In February, an appeal court increased a four-year prison sentence given to blogger Saleh al-Saeed by a lower court to a six-year sentence. Al-Saeed's conviction stemmed from tweets in which he accused Saudi Arabia of impinging on the territorial integrity of Bahrain and Kuwait. The Court of Cassation upheld the increase of his sentence in June.

Kuwait does not have any legislation guaranteeing the right to access official information.

All publishers are required to obtain an operating license from the Ministry of Information (MOI) to launch daily newspapers, and the 2006 press law requires capital of at least 250,000 dinars ($826,000) for the establishment of a paper. However, the MOI's regulatory power is subject to some limits  the ministry must issue a license or provide an explanation for its refusal within 90 days of application, and refusals can be appealed in court. Media licenses, once given, may not be revoked without a court order. The authorities monitor online communications for defamation and security threats, and the Ministry of Communications (MOC) blocks websites that are suspected of "inciting terrorism and instability."

In 2014, the government adopted a law creating the Commission for Mass Communications and Information Technology to regulate digital communications in the country. The MOC oversees this new agency, which has sweeping regulatory powers over companies that provide phone, internet, cable, and satellite services. The commission may grant or revoke licenses without explanation and can direct providers to censor undesirable content that "harms public order." The law also penalizes the communication of "immoral messages" on digital platforms with prison terms of up to two years. Critics voiced concerns that the law defines the commission's powers in broad and vague terms, and does not provide for judicial review. The commission had not begun operating at the end of 2015.

Kuwaiti authorities have arbitrarily revoked the licenses of media outlets on several occasions in recent years. In January, the government rescinded the publishing license of the newspaper Al-Watan and the business license of its owner. The outlet and its parent company appealed the decision but, despite some favorable interim rulings, were ultimately unsuccessful. International media watchdogs decried the revocations as politically motivated, claiming that the government was acting in retaliation to increasingly critical coverage by Al-Watan.

Political Environment: 23 / 40

International news is widely available, and a number of foreign media outlets maintain bureaus in Kuwait. News sources originating outside Kuwait must be reviewed by the MOI before circulation. The MOI screens all imported media for morally offensive content and controls the publication and distribution of all materials classified as informational.

The MOI can censor all books, films, and periodicals that it deems to be morally offensive. However, in practice, the ministry does not regularly interfere with or restrict access to news, and the Kuwaiti media sector is considered more critical and outspoken than many others in the region. More in-depth reporting and a greater diversity of opinions appear in newspapers than in broadcast media. Nevertheless, given the restrictions in media legislation and the government's intolerance of critical reporting, journalists on all platforms continue to practice self-censorship, as failure to do so often results in reprisals. In addition to legal and regulatory penalties, journalists and media outlets occasionally face physical harassment.

Economic Environment: 16 / 30

Six Arabic-language and two English-language newspapers circulate in Kuwait and are all privately owned, largely independent, and diverse in their reporting. Private media have relatively transparent ownership and their own presses, and they are free to set their own prices. A small number of private radio and television stations are available for audiences in Kuwait, and satellite dishes are common. Although the advertising market remains limited, it continues to grow, partly due to an increase in the number of advertising agencies in the country. Wage levels for journalists at both state and private outlets are not high enough to discourage occasional bribery to influence coverage. Relatively low salaries have also dissuaded Kuwaiti nationals from pursuing journalism as a profession; many local media workers are noncitizens.

Approximately 82 percent of the population used the internet in 2015, and the government continued to debate how best to regulate this increasingly popular medium. Authorities require all internet service providers (ISPs) to install and operate systems to block certain types of political websites, in addition to websites carrying material that is deemed anti-Islamic, extremist, or pornographic. However, the blocking policies are not always clear or consistent. Internet cafe owners are required to record the identities of their customers and must disclose this information to the MOC upon request.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Indonesia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Indonesia, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a313.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 18 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 15 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 49 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 255,741,973

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 17.1%

Overview

The Indonesian media environment remained relatively stable in 2015, the first full year of the presidency of political outsider Joko Widodo. Concerns remain about the use of criminal defamation laws and the effect of the 2008 Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) Law on freedom of expression on the internet.

Key Developments

President Joko Widodo lifted restrictions on foreign journalists covering Papua, though some obstacles to reporting in that and other sensitive regions continued.

From 2008 through March 2015, 85 people had been sued under the ITE Law, with at least five people sentenced to prison.

Legal Environment: 16 / 30

Constitutional and legal provisions allow for freedoms of speech and of the press, though both the government and private actors sometimes obstruct these rights. The 1999 Law on the Press created the independent Indonesian Press Council, whose mandate includes protecting the press from outside interference, creating a code of ethics, and finding solutions to public complaints lodged against the press. Although the Press Council is supposed to adjudicate all media disputes, authorities continue to undermine the council's mandate by bringing defamation charges to the courts. Defamation is an offense covered by more than 40 provisions of the criminal code. Defamation cases brought in 2015 included one in March against two commissioners of the Judicial Commission and another in May against two activists of the Indonesian Corruption Watch and a former consultant of the Corruption Eradication Commission. Those who filed each of the two cases had been the subjects of criticism in the media.

Criminal sanctions for digital expression, including penalties for criminal defamation, are more severe under the 2008 ITE Law than they are under the Penal Code. In 2015, the Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) expressed concerns about use of the ITE Law to stifle internet users with spurious defamation claims. From 2008 through March 2015, 85 people had been sued under the ITE Law, with at least five people sentenced to prison. Freedom of expression advocates criticized a revised draft of the law, completed in December 2015, under which criminal penalties for online defamation were retained, though the sentence was reduced from six to three years in prison.

A 2011 Constitutional Court decision to uphold a law prohibiting blasphemy had negative implications for freedom of expression, as did the judges' apparent endorsement of the government's argument that prohibition of blasphemy is vital to protecting religious harmony. In July 2014, the Jakarta Post, Indonesia's leading English-language daily, published a cartoon showing a man raising a flag with the Arabic phrase "There is no God but Allah" over a skull and crossbones, along with an image of a group of blindfolded people apparently about to be executed. After complaints from Muslim groups, the paper retracted the cartoon and issued an apology just days after its publication, stating that the cartoon was intended to criticize the Islamic State (IS) militant group. However, in December 2014, the paper's chief editor, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, was summoned by police as a suspect under the country's blasphemy law, a charge that carries a punishment of up to five years in prison. In January 2015, Jakarta police referred the case to the Press Council  a decision that was praised by press freedom advocates. In a previous analysis of the cartoon, the Press Council had deemed it insensitive, though not criminal in nature. Nevertheless, police can still charge the chief editor at any point, and there is no deadline for the Press Council or law enforcement officials to conclude their investigations.

The 2008 Law on Public Information Transparency provides for the right to freedom of information, but implementation remains flawed. The State Intelligence Law (SIL), passed in 2011, can easily conflict with the 2008 law. SIL Article 26 prohibits individuals or legal entities from revealing or communicating state secrets, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison and fines exceeding 100 million rupiah ($10,000). This article is open to misinterpretation and abuse by state officials, as state secrets are not clearly defined.

Print media are regulated through the Press Council, while broadcast media must be licensed by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI). Both the Press Council and the KPI appear to operate for the most part independently. Although there are hundreds of community radio stations in Indonesia, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters has called for legal reform and equitable distribution of frequencies to promote the growth of community radio in the country, pointing to the slow process of licensing, the lack of proper enabling legislation, and a lack of transparency and fairness in licensing decisions as the major obstacles to the sector's development.

Political Environment: 18 / 40

Indonesia's print and electronic media are generally free from government interference. However, the powerful, politically connected owners of private print and broadcast outlets often influence the tone of coverage; this was evident during the 2014 election campaign. The country's media environment is diverse, and independent outlets express a wide variety of views. However, some reporters practice self-censorship to avoid possible prosecution under the country's civil and criminal libel laws. The Attorney General's office can request a court order to ban written material.

Under the 2002 Broadcast Act, local stations are prohibited from disseminating foreign broadcasts. The act has drawn criticism for its limits on content and severe penalties for violations, and the government has occasionally used it to restrict broadcasting.

The Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) is also empowered to block content deemed to be "negative" or "culturally inappropriate," such as pornography or gambling sites. iLab, an Indonesian nongovernmental organization that promotes open data and transparency, reported in 2014 that more than 10 million websites had been blocked over the previous three years by Indonesia's filtering system because of content that is deemed either to be "negative" or "culturally inappropriate." If a post is labeled blasphemous, authorities can block the entire site.

Despite a May 2015 announcement by President Joko Widodo to lift restrictions on foreign journalists covering the restive provinces of Papua and West Papua, access is still not automatic, unimpeded, or granted quickly. For decades, foreign media seeking to travel to these provinces had to apply through a multiagency "Clearing House" that included the National Police and State Intelligence Agency; on June 17, the Foreign Ministry announced that the "Clearing House" had been abolished. Nevertheless, access remained problematic, with obstacles to coverage still being raised by local military and police, presumably in order to prevent coverage of sensitive issues such as Papuan separatism and other regional disputes. The AJI noted that the practice of free reporting should be applied in other sensitive regions such as Central Sulawesi and Aceh.

The documented presence of government informers within the press corps of Papua and West Papua has led to serious concerns about the reliability of news coming from the provinces. According to Human Rights Watch, the military has also financed and trained journalists and bloggers, citing alleged foreign interference in the region, including by the U.S. government.

In May 2015, British journalists Becky Prosser and Neil Bonner and a group of nine Indonesian crew members were arrested as they filmed a documentary for National Geographic about piracy in Batam, in northwestern Indonesia. The Indonesians were released on bail two days later, but Prosser and Bonner were kept under house arrest before being transferred to prison in September. They were sentenced in November to two and a half months in prison and fined about $1,850 each for violating immigration regulations by working while on tourist visas. The AJI noted that the government should have applied the appropriate administrative sanction for foreigners violating visa provisions as set out in the Immigration Law, rather than criminalizing their actions.

Journalists remain subject to attacks and physical harassment from both the authorities and nonstate actors. The AJI reported that the number of incidents of violence against the press held more or less steady at 43 in 2015, up from 40 one year ago. Many of the 2015 incidents involved harassment and assaults against reporters as they attempted to cover sensitive news stories or protests, and in 14 of these cases the instigators of the violence were the police.

Economic Environment: 15 / 30

In general, the Indonesian public has access to a variety of news sources and perspectives provided by a large number of private print, broadcast, and digital outlets. Television is the most popular medium, and the sector is competitive, with approximately 10 national commercial networks in addition to the state-owned Televisi Republik Indonesia. In 2015, the internet was accessed by about 22 percent of the population.

A 2012 report by the nonprofit groups Hivos Southeast Asia and the Center for Innovation, Policy, and Governance found that nearly all of the 12 most prominent media companies had ties to political parties in some respect. These 12 companies also own the country's roughly 10 major national television stations and 5 of the 6 major newspapers. Although a wide range of privately owned local publications operate across Indonesia's provinces, the print sector is dominated by two media conglomerates, Jawa Pos Group and the Kompas Gramedia Group. Media coverage of the 2014 presidential election campaign confirmed fears about the ability of political parties, large corporations, and powerful individuals to control media content, with major media outlets openly reflecting the political affiliations of their owners. Under the 2002 Broadcast Act, foreign ownership of broadcast media is banned.

The lack of high-speed infrastructure outside major cities limits the medium's use as a news source in rural areas. Social-media sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have become extremely popular among users in Indonesia.

Advertising remains a robust source of income for newspapers and television companies, and the shift to online news sources has been slow, though this appears to be changing. Working conditions for Indonesian journalists are poor. According to AJI, media companies do not pay competitive salaries, leading many journalists to take second jobs with corporate sponsors or accept bribes for coverage.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Thumbs up

Last weeks sudden closure of Fusion Grille restauranthas been hard on Helena in a number of ways, but neighboring Silver Star Steak Company is stepping up to help ease the blow.

We heard from a number of people who purchased Fusion Grille gift cards or certificates just days before its closure and were concerned that their money had gone to waste. In a surprising act of generosity, however, Silver Star has agreed to honor them through March 31 of this year.

Silver Star has no affiliation with Fusion and was under absolutely no obligation to do something like this.

Silver Star management says they just wanted to make sure Fusions former customers got something for their money. And judging by the overwhelming positive response we have seen so far, we think the community is going to return the favor.

***

Thumbs down

Back in November, the ski season in Montana was being threatened by unseasonably warm temperatures throughout the state. Little did we know that just a few weeks later, the extreme cold is what would end up forcing several western Montana ski areas to shut down.

Great Divide ski area near Helena, Snowbowl outside of Missoula, Discovery Ski Area near Philipsburg and Blacktail Mountain near Lakeside were all closed earlier this week because of the winter weather.

Temperatures have been dropping as low as the negative 30s in parts of Montana in recent weeks, and wind chills were in the minus 40s.

Although winter is the very reason many people choose to live in Montana, temperatures like that are never pleasant and always dangerous.

And we never like to see Montana ski areas miss out on a day of business, but were glad they had the prudence to keep people out of this weather.
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Haiti

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Haiti, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a413.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 18 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 18 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 52 / 100 (2) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 10,924,000

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 11.4%

Overview

Haiti's media environment is pluralistic, but journalists face challenges including impunity for physical violence and threats, government and partisan influence, and entrenched poverty that makes it difficult to sustain independent media outlets. In 2015, as Haitians went to the polls in long-overdue elections, human rights and journalism organizations accused the government of using intimidation and bribery to limit critical media coverage.

Key Developments

During a period of election-related protests in November and December, groups of unidentified assailants in two separate incidents threatened to burn down one radio station and fired automatic weapons at another.

In a scandal that broke in January, President Michel Martelly's administration was criticized for handing out envelopes of cash to journalists at a 2014 Christmas reception.

Legal Environment: 16 / 30 (1)

Haiti's constitution protects the right to express opinions freely "on any matter by any means." Censorship of the media is prohibited except in cases of war, and journalists cannot be compelled to reveal their sources.

Legal protections for freedom of the press are undermined in practice by the weak and underresourced law enforcement and judicial system. The police rarely apprehend suspects in assaults against journalists, and prosecutors and judges lack the capacity and political will to pursue cases. For example, a case against the bodyguard of a mayor for the 2012 shooting of Radio Tele Zenith reporter Wendy Phele remained stalled in the courts in 2015. There was no significant progress in the prosecution of the 2000 murder of radio journalist Jean Leopold Dominique, and a key witness in the case was killed in March. In a partial victory, two police officers accused of assaulting Radio Tele Express journalist Gerdy Jeremie at a taxi drivers' protest in November 2014 were ordered to pay damages to the victim, but only after delayed court hearings and public protest.

Defamation can be treated as both a civil and a criminal matter, meaning journalists face possible imprisonment, civil damages, and litigation costs. Some forms of criminal defamation, including insults against public officials, are punishable with up to three years in prison. Despite threats from the government in recent years, only a few criminal defamation cases against journalists have advanced beyond the initial charge, and no new complaints were reported in 2015.

Haiti has not adopted freedom of information legislation. The constitution requires the publication of all laws and decrees "on everything affecting the national life, except for information concerning national security." Haitian and foreign journalists have reported that it is nearly impossible to obtain government documents and data in practice, with officials obstructing access for those whose work has been critical of the Martelly administration.

Radio stations that air critical reports on the government have faced attempts to raise their broadcast license fees. In 2014, the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL), which issues licenses, threatened to sanction stations that "broadcast false information liable to disturb order, destabilize the Republic's institutions and attack the integrity of many citizens." The National Association of Haitian Media (ANMH) criticized these actions and stated that because CONATEL's mandate is a technical one, it should not be involved with radio content. Since 2012, CONATEL has shut down more than 50 community radio stations on the grounds that they were operating illegally with improper licenses. In 2013, 10 of the stations appealed their closure and applied for legitimate licenses, but they were denied, with CONATEL allocating their frequencies to new stations.

In December 2011, media associations and journalists signed the first journalistic code of ethics, which included clauses pertaining to respect for individual dignity and privacy, prohibiting discrimination in journalistic work, and encouraging an unbiased and balanced treatment of information.

Political Environment: 18 / 40 (1)

Haitians have access to news and information that reflect a diversity of viewpoints. The government does not impose official censorship, but government attempts to influence media content are common, and journalists have economic incentives to self-censor to avoid damaging the political or business interests of their employers or funders.

Since taking office in 2011, President Martelly has been praised for his willingness to hold press conferences and his use of social media to communicate with the public. At the same time, journalists criticize the administration for using threats and derogatory language in response to questions from reporters. Martelly, who rose to fame as a Haitian Kompa musician, wrote a carnival song in December 2015 that insulted prominent journalist Liliane Pierre-Paul of Radio Tele Kiskeya, a frequent critic of the president. Journalists denounced the song as a direct attack on the media.

Threats and assaults against media personnel, including by police, are frequent enough to create a climate of fear among journalists whose work is critical of the government. As antigovernment demonstrations spiked in November and December in response to complaints of election fraud, so did attacks on the media. In the early morning of December 1, unidentified assailants sprayed the office of Radio Tele Kiskeya in Port-au-Prince with automatic gunfire, though no injuries were reported. A few days earlier, a group of armed individuals had denounced the head of Radio Tele Zenith and threatened to set fire to the premises. Both outlets reported that they and their staff had received death threats. Witnesses say journalists were attacked during the election-related protests, with both demonstrators and police destroying or seizing their equipment.

Also in 2015, community radio journalist Sony Esteus died of unknown causes in March, and Melodie FM journalist Marc Elie Pierre was murdered on a bus by unidentified assailants in April. Because of a lack of trust in the authorities, human rights organizations and journalists were reportedly suspicious about Esteus's death, and it remained unclear whether Pierre's murder was connected to his work. In July a police officer struck the motorcycle of Radio TV Signal cameraman Samus David Francois with his vehicle and subsequently beat him. A criminal complaint was filed, but the case made little progress during the year.

Economic Environment: 18 / 30

There are a number of privately owned print outlets in Haiti. However, with an estimated adult literacy rate of about 60 percent and no daily newspapers printed in Haitian Creole, the language spoken by most residents, radio is the main source of news and information. There are more than 300 radio stations across Haiti, though not all carry news content. Many privately owned television stations also operate, but audiences are limited by cost hurdles and lack of electricity. There are no government restrictions on internet access. Roughly 12 percent of Haitians used the medium in 2015.

The concentration of wealth among a small number of Haitians and the effects of the 2010 earthquake have negatively affected media outlets' ability to obtain advertising revenue and sustain themselves financially. Journalists also struggle with low salaries, and economic hardship has led some outlets and journalists to accept bribes. Many journalists hold multiple jobs, some of which create significant conflicts of interest.

In January 2015, Radio Tele Kiskeya denounced an incident in which the president's office handed out "gifts" of cash ranging from $870 to $1,100 to Haitian journalists at a Christmas reception in 2014. In November 2015, Haiti's communications minister announced that the government would help finance car loans for journalists, which also raised concerns about corruption.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Guinea

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Guinea, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a5105.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 19 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 29 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 17 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 65 / 100 (1) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 10,985,600

Freedom in the World Status: Partly Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 1.7%

Overview

The Guinean media experienced a variety of challenges in 2015, particularly in connection with the presidential election held in October. The newly formed High Authority for Communications (HAC) heavily restricted reporting during the campaign period, monitoring content at private outlets and curtailing their access to the presidential candidates. In addition, government forces and civilian demonstrators assaulted journalists on multiple occasions, most frequently at protests related to the contentious electoral process.

Key Developments

The HAC formally censured or issued warnings to five media outlets that accused it of suffering from excessive executive influence.

A journalist with a private broadcaster disappeared in July and remained missing at year's end, with media organizations urging investigators to examine any connection to his work.

Legal Environment: 19 / 30

Constitutional and legislative reforms enacted in 2010 improved the legal environment for the press, but some measures remain unimplemented, and prospects for achieving genuine press freedom are tenuous. Defamation against the head of state, members of parliament, the military, and other government institutions, as well as against particular ethnic and religious groups, are criminal offenses subject to high fines, as is reporting falsehoods. In June 2015, the National Assembly moved to strengthen punishments for several of these offenses, advancing legislation that provides for up to five years in prison and heavy fines for insulting or publishing false news about the president and other public officials. The measure had not been implemented by year's end.

A law on access to information was adopted in 2010, but it has never been effectively enforced, reportedly as a result of bureaucratic delays, procedural errors, and resistance on the part of government employees who are reluctant to disclose their offices' information.

In March 2015, the previous media regulatory body, the National Communication Council (CNC), was replaced by a new agency, the HAC. Though mandated to support equal treatment and foster a diversity of views in the media sphere, the CNC had historically taken punitive measures against media outlets that did not support the government, and the HAC continued this pattern. Officials from four newspapers and one radio station  Le Lynx, La Croisade, La Logique, Les Echos de Guinee, and Espace FM  were called before the HAC in March for their role in publicly denouncing irregularities in the implementation of the law governing the HAC and the influence of the executive branch over the body, which they argued undermined its independence and legitimacy. Diallo Souleymane, editor of Le Lynx, was particularly vocal in his criticism, having been involved in drafting the law himself. La Logique, La Croisade, and Les Echos de Guinee all received formal censures, while Le Lynx and Espace FM received warnings.

Political Environment: 29 / 40 (1)

The government has attempted to censor content it finds overly critical. In June 2015, the HAC published a list of restrictions on all press coverage appearing prior to the presidential election scheduled to take place in October. These included prohibitions on the publication of opinion or editorial pieces and any cultural content with the potential to stoke ethnic or tribal tensions. Following pushback from journalists, the HAC softened its language, and while it strongly encouraged reporters to maintain their professional ethics, it stopped short of banning opinion journalism. However, some of the restrictions were left in place, including a requirement that all call-in broadcasts be prerecorded.

In September, the HAC assumed full control over the presidential candidates' interaction with the media. It began to produce content with the candidates for state-owned print and broadcast media, which it agreed to make available to private outlets that chose to carry it, but restricted their ability to interact with the candidates in other formats. The HAC also forbade the media from reporting on election results prior to the formal announcement of the winner by the national election body. In December, during the swearing-in ceremony for the newly reelected Alpha Conde, Guinean journalists were not granted access to the hall to record the ceremony live, though a number of foreign correspondents were allowed in.

There were numerous incidents of harassment and violence directed against journalists in 2015. In February, it was reported that the government was refusing to renew the accreditation of Radio France Internationale journalist Mouctar Bah, whose work had allegedly displeased President Conde. Also in February, police officers arrested two journalists in the village of Thionthian, where they were investigating large-scale deforestation. Local residents suspected that those involved in the deforestation bribed local officials to make the arrests and suppress news of the activity. The two were released after several hours, though their equipment was confiscated. In May, police assaulted and threatened to kill freelance reporter Youssouf Bah, who was covering demonstrations related to Guinea's upcoming elections. The same day, police also assaulted and detained several journalists reporting on election issues at the residences of two high-profile opposition politicians. The managing editor of the news website Guinee Matin, Thierno Amadou Camara, was assaulted in July at a meeting of the opposition Party of Unity and Progress (PUP), and again in October in the city of Siguiri by members of the ruling Rally of the Guinean People (RPG). Several other journalists were also assaulted by police and obstructed in their work while covering the year's frequent election-related demonstrations.

A journalist for Espace TV, Cherif Diallo, disappeared in July 2015 and remained missing at year's end. Diallo was last seen driving away from Espace TV headquarters in Conakry after encountering a group of men who had been waiting outside his office. Though media organizations urged authorities to consider Diallo's work as a potential motive for his disappearance, the government appeared reluctant to pursue the investigation from that angle.

Economic Environment: 17 / 30

Media laws passed in 2010 guarantee the freedom to open a newspaper, but in practice, economic difficulties present large obstacles. Because production costs are high, newspapers struggle to secure printing equipment and distribute a significant number of copies. The typical newspaper has a circulation of only a few thousand copies and does not publish with any regularity. A number of private publications, mostly weeklies, are published in Conakry and present a diversity of views, though distribution outside the capital is unreliable. The only daily newspaper, Horoya, is state owned and avoids criticism of the government; even this paper has struggled to maintain its production schedule due to outdated equipment.

In a country with high illiteracy rates, radio is the dominant medium. The public broadcaster Radio Television Guineenne (RTG) operates radio and television stations with programming in French, English, and a number of local languages. Numerous private radio stations and some private television stations also operate across the country. Many citizens listen regularly to foreign programing on FM and shortwave radio. There are no government restrictions on access to the internet, and a number of online news sources have gained importance in recent years. However, despite recent advances, internet penetration remained very low at less than 5 percent in 2015.

Newspapers have difficulty securing enough advertising revenue to cover their costs, but since 1996 the government has provided increasing subsidies for both print and online media outlets of all political allegiances. Some critics have said that these subsidies are insufficient, irregularly allocated, and often poorly managed by the recipients. Some local newspapers and broadcast outlets are thought to be controlled by political or business interests. Low pay for journalists has led to unethical practices, such as accepting bribes to suppress unflattering stories.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Eritrea

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Eritrea, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a651.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 30 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 40 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 24 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 94 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 5,200,000

Freedom in the World Status: Not Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 1.0%

Overview

Eritrea continued to rank among the most repressive media environments in the world in 2015 under the harsh authoritarian regime of President Isaias Afwerki. It has lacked any form of privately owned media since 2001, when the government banned the once-vibrant private press. Key editors and journalists were imprisoned, and the crackdown later extended to state-employed journalists.

Key Developments

Six journalists were released from prison in January. They had been detained since 2009.

Despite the releases, 17 journalists were imprisoned in Eritrea as of December 1, 2015, the most in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Legal Environment: 30 / 30

The Eritrean constitution guarantees freedoms of speech and of the press, but these rights are ignored in practice. The 1996 Press Proclamation Law mandates that all newspapers and journalists be licensed. It also stipulates that publications must be submitted for government approval prior to release, and prohibits reprinting articles from banned publications. In 2013, there was an attempted mutiny when 100-200 junior army officers struggled to take over the Ministry of Information, locally known as "Forto." They forced the station's director to read a statement over the government channel EriTV calling for the implementation of the constitution  which allows for multiparty competition  and the release of political prisoners and those who had been arrested attempting to leave the country. While the attempted coup was quickly put down, it demonstrated the fragility of the state and the degree of discontent with the secretive regime.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 17 journalists were imprisoned in Eritrea as of December 1, 2015, one of the largest numbers in the world and the most in sub-Saharan Africa. This number remains stubbornly high despite the January 2015 release of six journalists who had worked for government-controlled Radio Bana. The journalists had been held without charge since February 2009, when they were arrested during a raid on their station. During the raid, about 50 journalists and other staff were taken to the Dobozito detention center.

The most recent jailings came in 2011, when four journalists working for the government radio and television station, Dimtsi Hafash, were arrested and imprisoned; the government has yet to disclose the charges against them. Nine journalists have been in prison since 2001, and almost all are being held incommunicado. There is little information on the condition of those imprisoned, though unconfirmed reports indicate that several jailed journalists are in very poor health or may have died in detention.

The year 2014 saw thwarted attempts on the part of lawyers to press Swedish courts to investigate crimes against humanity, torture, and abduction in the well-known case of Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, who was imprisoned without charge in 2001. The case was closed when the Swedish prosecutor claimed that it would not be worthwhile to pursue because the Eritrean authorities were unlikely to cooperate. While there have been reports that Isaak died in detention in 2011, this could not be confirmed, and he was reported to be alive in 2015. However, the government has refused to disclose his whereabouts or the status of his health.

Political Environment: 40 / 40

Most independent or critical journalists have left the country due to intimidation and arbitrary imprisonment, and those who remain engage in self-censorship. However, in 2013 a dissident group began circulating an underground newspaper, Echoes of Forto, in Asmara, written by a team based inside and outside the country. The dissidents described the paper as a pilot project, but said they hoped to expand it. Radio Erena  run by Eritrean dissents and Reporters Without Borders from Paris  was launched in 2009 and reportedly can be accessed via satellite, on the internet, and through a "call-to-listen" platform.

Although Eritrea has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world, at around 1 percent, the government makes an effort to block many websites managed by Eritrean exiles. Authorities are believed to monitor e-mail communications, and some users suspect that government informants track users' activity in internet cafes.

Foreign journalists are not able to freely enter the country and are generally not welcome unless they agree to report favorably about the regime. There have been occasional reports from journalists operating undercover, and Isaias has granted interviews to foreign broadcasters such as Sweden's TV4 and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. However, in 2013 the Eritrean government blocked Al-Jazeera for 11 days and issued a decree forbidding the provision of access to the station. The station was reportedly censored due to its coverage of demonstrations outside diplomatic missions in cities such as London, Rome, and Stockholm by Eritreans in the diaspora who were supporting the 2013 mutiny.

Ali Abdu, the minister of information and a close confidant of Isaias, fled into exile in late 2012 while on a trip to Germany, and in early 2013 began to speak out about the brutal tactics used against journalists. Media professionals who seek refuge abroad, especially in Sudan, have come under continued pressure, as have their families. For example, after Ali Abdu fled, his father, teenage daughter, and brother were reportedly arrested.

The European Union (EU) continues to provide development assistance to the Eritrean government through the European Development Fund, despite criticism and calls for this to be contingent on releasing imprisoned journalists and greater support for freedom of expression. In March 2015, Isaias's political adviser, Yemane Ghebreaben, reportedly assured EU representatives that democratic reforms would be forthcoming in the next five years, a claim that has been made previously without progress.

Economic Environment: 24 / 30

The government controls all media in the country, including a newspaper published in three languages, a television station, and three radio stations. A permit is required to print a publication or to distribute a foreign publication. However, individuals are allowed to purchase satellite dishes and subscribe to international media. Several radio stations run by Eritreans abroad are attempting to reach listeners in Eritrea, including Radio Erena. In addition, there are opposition-aligned stations broadcasting from Ethiopia.

Access to internet technology is extremely limited, as Eritrea has one of the lowest rates of internet access  just over 1 percent  and mobile phone use  around 7 percent  in the world due to high costs and government restrictions. In 2011, the government reversed plans to offer mobile internet. The government requires all internet service providers to use state-controlled internet infrastructure, and almost all connections remain dial-up and extremely slow.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - El Salvador

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - El Salvador, 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a713.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 9 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 17 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 13 / 30 (1) (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 39 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 6,366,000

Freedom in the World Status: Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 29.7%

Overview

Journalists in El Salvador face some obstacles when performing their jobs. Investigative and critical outlets have been the targets of hostile rhetoric and legal threats from officials. Additionally, in 2015 the country experienced an upsurge in violence  especially gang-related killings and clashes between the government and gangs  undermining journalists' ability to report freely.

Key Developments

In 2015, President Salvador Sanchez Ceren accused the media of promoting a "psychological terror" campaign against the government, following widespread reporting on increasing violence in the country.

In July, journalists from the investigative news website El Faro received death threats, and some said they were being closely watched by unknown persons, after the outlet reported on an alleged police massacre of seven suspected gang members and one witness to their killings.

In December, gang members briefly detained a cameraman with the television news program Codigo 21, and confiscated his cell phone before releasing him.

Legal Environment: 9 / 30

El Salvador's constitution protects press freedom, and Salvadoran journalists are generally able to report freely. Critical coverage of the government and opposition parties is for the most part permitted. However, the government has taken antagonistic stances toward media. For example, after the press in March 2015 reported on record levels of violence in El Salvador, President Sanchez Ceren accused the media of promoting a "psychological terror" campaign against the government. Similarly, in April, National Defense Minister David Munguia Payes accused the opposition newspaper La Prensa Grafica of attacking the armed forces, after the newspaper published a series of investigations into senior military officials' alleged selling of weapons.

State authorities and other parties have issued legal threats against investigative or critical outlets and reporters. In April and May 2015, the attorney general's office threatened legal action against the newspaper La Pagina for allegedly disclosing confidential information related to a corruption investigation against former president Francisco Flores Perez. The paper denounced the threat and continued its reporting, and ultimately no action was taken.

Imprisonment for slander, libel, and defamation was abolished in 2011, but such offenses are still adjudicated under the penal code, which prescribes fines and possible job suspensions of between six months and two years for journalists convicted of insult crimes. In October 2015, the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), an ally of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), brought forward a proposal to reestablish prison sentences for defamation. Following public backlash, the proposal was withdrawn in November. In May 2015, the president of the National Private Business Association (ANEP), following a report in the newspaper Transparencia Activa about businesses that owed large amounts of unpaid taxes, urged companies that were mentioned to file criminal charges against the outlet if they had been offended by the story. Media advocates and civil society groups called the threat an attempt to discourage investigative journalism. Journalists can be sued for defamation in civil courts.

A 2013 press law requires media outlets to publish or broadcast word-for-word "responses" from anyone who feels that coverage of them was inaccurate or offensive. This Special Law for the Right to Rectification or Response allows for jail sentences of one to three years for journalists, editors, or directors of media outlets that fail to publish verbatim letters of response within a certain time frame. La Prensa Grafica has been criticized by the government in recent years for allegedly failing to provide administration officials with the right to respond. In December 2015, Julio Olivo, president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), claimed that the newspaper had violated the law after publishing an article claiming Olivo was under legal investigation, and had subsequently offered only to interview him rather than permitting him space for a response.

The Access to Public Information Law was approved in 2011, but various civil society organizations say access to information has deteriorated under the administration of President Sanchez Ceren, who took office in 2014. Critics indicate that his government has refused to provide data about state spending on advertising and official travel, even though disclosure of such information is required by law.

The 1997 Telecommunications Law does not provide special allowances for community media outlets. All radio frequencies are sold at public auction, making it difficult for small community stations to obtain operating licenses when competing against wealthy private-sector or state enterprises. In 2015, a coalition of journalists' organizations, community media, academics, and civil society organizations continued to press the government to approve new laws regulating community broadcasters and public media. The Superintendent of Electricity and Telecommunications (SIGET), the regulatory body for broadcast media, has been accused of violating conflict-of-interest tenets in its decision making.

Political Environment: 17 / 40 (1)

Authorities sometimes pressure journalists at private and state-owned media outlets to avoid reporting on sensitive topics. In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that the communications ministry had acted improperly when, in 2013, it arbitrarily dismissed one of the top officials at the public broadcaster; the official, Raul Gutierrez, was known for his independence and critical reporting. Officials are known to deny official access to journalists with private outlets that have been critical of the government. President Sanchez Ceren regularly refuses to answer questions from journalists, and in March 2015, TSE president Olivo allowed only progovernment media outlets to attend a press conference he gave.

In 2015, the country experienced an upsurge in violence  especially gang-related killings and clashes between the government and gangs  undermining journalists' ability to report freely. Journalists in El Salvador sometimes face threats and physical harassment while performing their jobs. In July, journalists from the investigative news website El Faro received death threats, and some said they were being closely watched by unknown persons, after the outlet published a high-profile story about an alleged police massacre of seven suspected gang members and one witness to their killings. And in December, gang members in San Jose de Soyapango briefly took a cameraman from the television news program Codigo 21 hostage, and demanded he show them footage he had recently recorded. They also took his cell phone before releasing him.

Separately, in November, authorities made an arrest in connection with an earlier cyberattack against La Prensa Grafica.

Economic Environment: 13 / 30 (1)

Concentration of ownership is an obstacle to a diverse and broadly representative media landscape. There are four daily newspapers, but the print sector is dominated by two powerful families that publish the leading dailies and numerous smaller periodicals. Most of the country depends on privately owned television and radio networks for news, and ownership in the broadcast sector is also highly concentrated. The Telecorporacion Salvadorena (TCS) owns three of the five national television networks, in addition to a host of radio stations. Community radio has been stifled by the restrictive provisions of the Telecommunications Law. Some 27 percent of the population accessed the internet in 2015, and there were no reported government restrictions on the medium. Online newspapers such as El Faro and ContraPunto are known for their independent investigative journalism.

However, a lack of resources inhibits many media outlets' operations, and reporters often exercise self-censorship to avoid offending media owners, editors, and government officials. This problem is particularly pernicious in connection with government press advertising. Although exact figures are unknown, government advertising represents a substantial percentage of outlets' revenue, creating an incentive for publishers to avoid antagonizing officials.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Congo, Republic of (Brazzaville)

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Congo, Republic of (Brazzaville), 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a813.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.

Press Freedom Status: Partly Free

Legal Environment: 17 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 25 / 40 (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 17 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 59 / 100 (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 4,755,000

Freedom in the World Status: Not Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 7.1%

Overview

Despite legal protections, freedom of the press is restricted in practice. Media professionals are not easily able to obtain public information, and many journalists  particularly at state-run outlets  practice self-censorship. Authorities sometimes interfere with the ability of outlets to operate, including by revoking licenses and disrupting telecommunications services.

Key Developments

Widespread communication outages, including the disruption of broadcast signals, were reported ahead of an October 2015 referendum on amending presidential term limits.

Following widely covered police suppression of demonstrations against the proposed changes, masked assailants in police uniforms attempted to kidnap freelance journalist Christian Perrin in Pointe-Noire; he and his family subsequently reported threats from local authorities.

Legal Environment: 17 / 30

Freedom of the press is recognized by the Republic of Congo's 2002 constitution and its laws, but is restricted in practice. A 2001 law made the Republic of Congo one of the first African countries to decriminalize libel. However, certain types of speech, such as inciting violence or ethnic hatred, are criminalized and carry the potential for prison sentences as well as monetary penalties. Such charges are rarely brought against individual journalists. However, in October 2015, authorities arrested Ghys Fortune Bemba Dombe, a journalist for Brazza News, for an article accusing the president of employing Burundian mercenaries against opponents of a proposed constitutional amendment on term limits.

Although the constitution guarantees access to information, there is no implementing legislation, nor is there a specific law mandating public access to official information. Government officials often delay releasing information.

Media outlets are required to register with the High Council on Freedom of Communication (CSLC), whose 11 members are chosen by representatives of Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch; the president selects the director. In practice, only a small percentage of print and broadcast outlets are formally registered, though the vast majority operate unhindered. The government retains the right to revoke the accreditation of journalists at government- and foreign-owned media outlets if their reporting reflects badly on the image of the government or the ruling party.

Political Environment: 25 / 40

The CSLC may suspend or ban media outlets that allegedly violate media regulations. Since the 2012 appointment of its new head, former minister of energy Philippe Mwouo, such orders have increased in number. In 2013, the CSLC suspended three independent weeklies for nine months each for defamation and banned three other privately owned newspapers  La Griffe, Le Nouveau Regard, and La Verite  for an indefinite period for violations including defamation and manipulating public opinion. In 2014, the body issued a four-month suspension to the newspaper Talassa for refusing to answer a CSLC summons. Talassa had faced a similar suspension in 2013.

The potential for legal action and the revocation of credentials leads many journalists, particularly at state-run outlets, to practice self-censorship. Reporters occasionally face intimidation and threats, but physical attacks are unusual. In October 2015, following widely covered police suppression of demonstrations against a proposed amendment on presidential term limits, masked assailants in police uniforms attempted to kidnap freelance journalist Christian Perrin in Pointe-Noire. He and his family subsequently reported threats from local authorities. There were some incidents in 2014 as well. In September of that year, the Interior Ministry expelled two reporters from the country. Elie Smith of Cameroon, a reporter for progovernment broadcaster MNTV, was attacked in his home for his coverage of an opposition meeting. After pressing the police to more thoroughly investigate the incident, he was accused of seditious acts and working for foreign powers, and was deported. The lawyer that Smith hired to challenge his deportation dropped the case after facing intimidation. The second deportee, freelance journalist Sadio Kante Morel, born in Brazzaville to foreign parents, was accused of illegal residence, drug consumption, and disturbing the peace. She was the first journalist to cover the attack on Smith and reportedly angered authorities with her criticisms of the investigation, which led to her expulsion to Mali.

In October 2015, there were widespread telecommunications outages ahead of planned demonstrations opposing the constitutional amendment. Radio France Internationale and the local Human Rights Radio Forum reported that their signals were disconnected. The CSLC claimed that the stations were suspended for spreading false information.

Economic Environment: 17 / 30

There is one government-run newspaper, La Nouvelle Republique, which has a circulation of about 5,000 and publishes irregularly. Depeches de Brazzaville, the only professionally produced private daily, is known to be close to the government. There are more than 100 private print publications, but their circulations are generally quite low and limited to major urban areas. Most are supportive of the government, but a few can be critical of the authorities up to a point, and on occasion publish letters from opposition leaders and cover corruption allegations. Costs for print publications are high, particularly for paper from abroad.

Most Congolese get their news from television and radio. There are some 95 radio stations, and about two dozen television stations; of these, only the state-run Tele Congo and Radio Congo have nationwide reach. Almost all broadcast outlets are privately owned, though often by government officials and their relatives, and they usually lack financial stability. The main private broadcast company, DRTV, was founded after the government opened up the media market to more competition in 2001, and currently owns a radio station and two television stations. Rebroadcasts from the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio France Internationale, and Voice of America are also available.

There are no controls on the internet and satellite television, but only about 8 percent of the population had access to the internet in 2015. Consumption of internet-based news and use of social media is increasing, particularly among youth and in urban areas.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Freedom of the Press 2016 - Congo, Democratic Republic of (Kinshasa)

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 1 December 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2016 - Congo, Democratic Republic of (Kinshasa), 1 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/586f71a919e.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.

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Legal Environment: 24 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Political Environment: 30 / 40 (1) (0 = best, 40 = worst)

Economic Environment: 24 / 30 (0 = best, 30 = worst)

Press Freedom Score: 78 / 100 (1) (0 = best, 100 = worst)

Quick Facts

Population: 73,340,200

Freedom in the World Status: Not Free

Internet Penetration Rate: 3.0%

Overview

Press freedom remained severely restricted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2015. Rising political tensions tied to the electoral process exacerbated already-strong patterns of intimidation, censorship, and violence toward journalists. In April, a reporter was killed, apparently in connection with his work.

Key Developments

The politicized broadcasting regulator issued a number of dubious suspensions during 2015, and in March it adopted a directive that prohibited the broadcast of call-in programs and allowed it to unilaterally suspend radio or television broadcasts for up to three months.

In an apparent push to increase the presence of progovernment media ahead of the 2016 elections, the state-run Radio Television Nationale Congolaise (RTNC) established new local branches throughout the country, and directed staff to avoid criticizing government officials or giving airtime to the opposition.

A community radio journalist working in the northern province of Equateur, Soleil Balanga, was murdered in April, allegedly by the son of a hospital director whose replacement Balanga had reported on.

Legal Environment: 24 / 30

Although the constitution and various laws provide for freedoms of speech, information, and the press, these guarantees are seldom enforced. The government's control over the courts hinders impartial adjudication of cases against journalists, and verdicts often reflect political biases.

Criminal defamation laws are frequently used to detain and intimidate journalists. In July 2015, Simon Mulowa, manager of the Kananga-based station Full Contact Radio, was arrested on charges of defaming the provincial governor. He was released two days later, reportedly as a result of pressure from provincial members of Parliament. Also in July, C-News (formerly Congo News) editor Mike Mukebayi was freed after spending nearly a year in prison; he had been convicted of defamation in connection with a 2014 article published by his newspaper that criticized the influential archbishop of Kinshasa.

Media outlets are regulated by the High Council for Broadcasting and Communication (CSAC), which has the power to temporarily suspend outlets for hate speech and other serious ethical transgressions. Advocates for free expression have criticized the council as politically biased and indifferent to press freedom concerns. In March 2015, CSAC's director publically condemned critical news coverage of National Assembly president Tito Ndombi, and urged him to pursue any grievances against the media through the CSAC rather than through the judicial system. The body also issued a number of dubious suspensions during the year. Among them was one against the public television program Congo Histoire in February for the allegedly unprofessional demeanor of its host, Lushima Ndjate. The program was allowed to resume broadcasting after 30 days. The CSAC opened another case against Ndjate in October, after he criticized ruling-party politicians on air. The CSAC also implemented a number of restrictive policies as part of a regulatory scheme governing coverage of the upcoming 2016 election campaign. In March, it adopted a directive that prohibits the broadcast of call-in programs and allows it to unilaterally suspend radio or television broadcasts for up to three months.

Political Environment: 30 / 40 (1)

Many media outlets display political bias. State-owned broadcasters reportedly favor President Kabila's party, though other ruling political parties are occasionally given airtime. Private outlets owned by partisan figures and affiliated businesspersons are often used to disseminate political propaganda. The only independent radio network with nationwide reach, Radio Okapi, is funded by the United Nations and Switzerland-based Fondation Hirondelle. In an apparent push to increase the prevalence of progovernment media ahead of the 2016 elections, the state-run Radio Television Nationale Congolaise (RTNC) established new local branches throughout the country in 2015, and directed RTNC staff to avoid criticizing government officials or giving airtime to the opposition.

Political tensions in the DRC rose significantly in 2015, with President Kabila widely expected to attempt to remain in office beyond the 2016 elections in which the current constitution bars him from running. In January, violent protests erupted in several cities in response to a draft electoral bill that would likely have delayed elections and allowed Kabila to overstay his second term. Amid a police crackdown that left at least 42 people dead, the government shut down several radio and television outlets. In the protests' wake, authorities also cut text messaging services and internet access until early February, and blocked access to social media sites until early March.

Canal Kin Television (CKTV), owned by opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, and Radio Tele Catholique Elikya (RTCE), were taken off the air in January, after airing calls to protest. RTCE resumed broadcasting in June, but CKTV remained suspended at the end of the year. As further protests flared up in 2015, the government continued to engage in censorship, including temporary suspensions of all three local radio stations in the city of Moanda in April, and of Radio Liberte in the city of Lisala in November.

The government's intolerance of criticism extended beyond election issues. In September 2015, authorities cancelled planned public screenings of a Belgian-made documentary about Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege, who treats women who have been raped amid the ongoing violence in the country's east. Communications Minister Lambert Mende said the film defamed the Congolese army, which has been implicated in the rapes and additional rights abuses, along with other armed groups. However, after international pressure, the film was authorized for public screenings, and was broadcast on national television in October. Journalists remained subject to intimidation and threats from those they report about, especially in the country's volatile east. Two journalists from Radio Mandeleo in the eastern province of South Kivu received anonymous threats in 2015 for their coverage of land disputes, and two other journalists with Tuungane community radio in the same province were repeatedly threatened by a local militia leader after they criticized his militia's harassment of local people. Intimidation from the authorities in the form of arbitrary arrests and detention is not uncommon in the DRC. Journalists are often held without charge, at times beyond the 48-hour limit on warrantless detention stipulated by Congolese law. The National Intelligence Agency (ANR) and National Police (PNC) are the principal perpetrators of such harassment and interference, with at least 22 documented cases in 2015. In August, Francois Mada, editor of La Manchette newspaper, was summoned before prosecutors in Kinshasa and scolded for an article criticizing mismanagement at a university. He was then jailed until he agreed to pay a fee of $150.

Journalists experienced physical violence as a result of their reporting in 2015. While covering a protest in the eastern Maniema province in November, Mussa Kabala of Radio Sauti ya M'kaaji was wounded by a bullet when police opened fire on demonstrators. A radio journalist from a different station was arrested at the same protest. Also in November, Francine Bishti of the privately owned Radio Television par Satellite 1 was covering a student protest in Kinshasa against an academic fee increase when a group attacked her, inflicting serious injuries. By year's end, none of her attackers had been arrested. In Monkoto, in the northern province of Equateur, community radio journalist Soleil Balanga was killed in April on his way home, allegedly by the son of a hospital director whose replacement Balanga had reported on.

The media crackdown in neighboring Burundi spilled over into the DRC in 2015. In October, authorities arrested radio technician Egide Mwemero of the Burundi-based Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), in the town of Uvira, near the Burundian border. Mwemero was collaborating with journalists from the Congolese station Le Messager du Peuple to produce a program targeting listeners in Burundi when he was arrested along with two Congolese journalists, who were later released. Mwemero remained in detention at year's end with no formal charges; he remains at risk of extradition to Burundi, where the government has been hostile toward journalists.

Economic Environment: 24 / 30

The DRC retains a large and relatively diverse private press, including both progovernment and pro-opposition outlets. However, authorities have been known to disrupt the publication and distribution of newspapers critical of the government. In July 2015, police harassed several newspaper vendors and arrested one, Dido Zamangwana, confiscating his stock of newspapers. The police then proceeded to the paper's printing press, where they arrested two employees and shuttered the building. All three appeared to remain in detention without charge at year's end.

According to Ministry of Communication data from 2012, there were 134 television stations, 463 radio stations, and 445 newspapers registered in the country. The hundreds of privately owned radio and television stations operate alongside three state-owned radio stations and a state-owned television station. The British Broadcasting Corporation and Radio France Internationale are available in several cities on FM radio. Given its low literacy rates and deep poverty, the population relies largely on radio broadcasts to receive news. Only a few stations, including the state broadcasters and internationally funded Radio Okapi, have nationwide reach. While internet access has spread in urban areas thanks to the proliferation of private and affordable internet cafes, only about 4 percent of the population used the internet in 2015. Journalists at major media outlets are usually poorly paid and insufficiently trained, leaving them vulnerable to bribery and political manipulation.

Copyright notice:  Freedom House, Inc.  All Rights Reserved
Removing the requirement of force from Montana's rape laws would eliminate antiquated hurdles to prosecuting sexual assault cases, supporters of a bill to do so said Friday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard five bills at the end of this week that would update Montana's sexual assault laws and redefine what constitutes consent. The committee took no action. The bills are at the recommendation of the Law and Justice Interim Committee, which meets between Legislative sessions to work on specific issues and develop bills.

Senate Bill 29, carried by Sen. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, removes the requirement of force as well as clarifies how consent is indicated. Sands said the force requirement makes it hard to prosecute a rape if the victim did not attempt to fight off the attacker. Studies have shown those who are being raped often freeze out of fear.

Sands stressed the changes do not alter the burden of requirement of proof to convince a jury a rape occurred; but change the factors that allow for a prosecution.

Jennifer Clark, a prosecutor in Missoula County who works on domestic violence and rape cases, said the current law does not reflect the reality of the cases she handles.

It puts the victim on trial for things she didnt do  she didnt fight back, she didnt say no."

Clark, who testified in a personal capacity, said many of the victims she works with indicate they do not want to have sex by turning away, not reciprocating contact or stiffening their body. She described a case in December where a woman was raped but she couldnt prove force was used.

Instead of defining "without consent," the SB29 defines "consent" to be words or overt actions indicating a freely given agreement to have sex. It says a current or previous relationship and manner of dress do not constitute consent. The language is similar to that in The Uniform Code of Military Justice.

State Sen. Jedediah Hinkle, R-Belgrade, proposed a hypothetical scenario, saying he wanted to look at proposed changes from the perspective of the accused.

He asked if the change to say that past or current relationship status does not indicate consent would open the door for more retaliatory action against the accused.

In the scenario, a woman observed her boyfriend of several months flirting or what she perceived as flirting with another woman.

As they continued their relationship he had made advances for sexual time or whatever and she was upset and she became rigid and cold and not as responsive as she generally had been in the relationship. Him not knowing what was going on or whatever continued with the process, she never stopped him, Hinkle said.

Lets say that relationship broke apart and he got together with the girl he was flirting with or whatever and she became retaliatory against that and she accused him of rape.

Sands said that type of scenario was considered and discussed and reiterated that the bill does not change the burden of proving a rape occurred; it only clarifies a relationship does not indicate consent.

Ole Olsen, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, said the details of such a scenario would be evidence in a hypothetical case. He also said he's never seen a case that fit the hypothetical scenario and it's not common.

A jury would still have to make choices based on evidence, he said. (The bill) requires a jury to look at the entire picture, not just the fact they were in a dating relationship.

Senate Bill 22, carried by Sue Malek, D-Missoula, would allow for a district court to terminate the parental rights of a person who fathers a child by rape if a fact-finding hearing shows there is clear and convincing evidence that a rape was committed.

Supporters said the bill would allow women who conceive a child as a result of rape to go through a civil proceeding instead of having to pursue a criminal case to terminate the parental rights of their rapist told the committee changing the law was necessary to prevent victimizing women.

Under current law, a rapist's parental rights can be terminated as part of a criminal proceeding. Deb Matteucci, director of the Montana Board of Crime Control, said there were only 383 rapes reported to law enforcement in 2015, but that same year victim service providers worked with 2,300 victims of sexual assault. Only 5 percent of cases reported to law enforcement result in conviction, she said.

Senate Bill 30, also carried by Sands, would extend the statute of limitations for victims of sex crimes who were under 18 when the crime occurred to 20 years instead of 10. Some who spoke suggested eliminating any statute of limitations.

Bills heard Thursday dealt with lessening sentences for nonviolent, consensual sex between teens and when those offenders are placed on the statewide Sexual or Violent Offender Registry.
Sydney, New South Wales -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/06/2017 --Top 10 SEO in Sydney, a leading SEO in Sydney Consultancy service is celebrating after seeing the past twelve months as one of their most successful to date. 2016 saw the SEO experts gain more recommendations from clients than in any other year, making them one of the most recommended SEO services in Australia and the world.



The Sydney based SEO company started working with small to medium sized companies in Australia but then found bigger companies such as insurance and health companies required a professional service that could provide real results. Although Top 10 SEO in Sydney were dedicating their services to customers in Australia, they quickly found companies around the world including the UK, The USA, and Canada were contacting them to achieve higher search engine rankings and leads. The company now works with clients all over the world and has become one of the most well-known and respected SEO services.



Senka from Top 10 SEO in Sydney said: "2016 was a very exciting year for us. Each week we were receiving referrals from our clients who were very happy with the results we provided. We put down the success to our policy of treating each of our customers as our biggest, and gaining them the results they need to increase leads and revenue."



The Sydney based SEO company now works with all sized companies and even works with public relations companies and celebrities, helping them to get their messages out there and achieve the online exposure they need.



Top 10 SEO in Sydney provide a wide range of services including SEO services, website building services, and content marketing services to name a few. The company does not promise results, they provide results, making sure each client becomes an online success.



To help website owners understand how their websites are operating and to check for any faults, Top 10 SEO provide a free web SEO analysis report, which is available by visiting their site.



To learn more about Top 10 SEO in Sydney and their professional SEO services, please visit https://top10insydney.com



About Top 10 SEO in Sydney

For the past 15 years, the team at Top 10 SEO has been supplying business owners with a unique SEO service that works, with the best possible results.



Website: https://top10insydney.com

Media Contact:

Company Name: Top 10 SEO in Sydney

Contact Person: Media Manager

Email: hello@top10insydney.com, info@webdesigninsydney.com

Phone: +61 2 9569 6580

Address: Levels 14, Lumley House, 309 Kent Street

City: Sydney
Henderson, NV -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/06/2017 --After watching the young Belgian director's short film at the 2016, Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles/Las Vegas based Global Genesis Group, a production and distribution company, signed Kerknawi to direct a Hollywood remake of his short film The Last Front.



The Last Front takes place in Belgium during World War 1. After a German squad ravages a village, a peaceful farmer and a father of two tries to escape the German's bloodlust by fleeing to the French border with the survivors. Before they reach safety, the father must make a fateful decision to fight a suicidal battle to save his family.



That was the pitch of the Belgian newcomer Julien Kerknawi. Two years after shooting his Flemish short film with Koen De Graeve, Global Genesis Group recognized the filmmakers' talent at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and the young filmmaker from Belgium was asked if he was interested in directing an epic war drama set in Belgium, based on the concept he had laid out with screenwriter Shauni De Gussem.



Charles Morris Jr., VP of Development & Acquisitions of Global Genesis Group, stated, "We were excited to find a young talent like Julien, and equally enthusiastic to help bring his vision of World War I to life. It is painted on an epic scale, a historic picture of how the rape of Belgium by the German army brought England and then America into the Great War, but also our rewrite will focus on the intimate story of the farmer and his family, and how the horrors and traumas of war, can easily intrude on anyone. Global Genesis Group's latest productions; Escape Room, starring Skeet Ulrich, and the animated Troll: A Tale of A Tail, directed by Kevin Munroe, will be released in theaters in the USA in 2017. We are delighted to add The Last Front into our production and distribution slate for 2017."



Director Kerknawi claimed that "I'm intensely impressed with the amount of professionalism and care that Global Genesis Group are putting into this project. They have years of filmmaking experience, and they are employing their strong sense of story, character development and international appeal, while taking no shortcuts when it comes to details."



The young director from Ghent is currently in Hollywood overseeing the development of the film and is being well surrounded by his Hollywood partners and his sister Virginie Hayet who will be on the European production side of the film. "Nothing beats the satisfying feeling of working on a dream project with your family," Julien stated.



The result will be a truly epic and intimate drama combining a Hollywood production company and the talent and resources of Belgium and the European Union, set in the beautiful villages of Belgium at the time of an unseen and horrifying part of World War 1.



The Last Front's development budget is financed with a generous cash injection by Telenet and Global Genesis Group.



About Global Genesis Group

Global Genesis Group's core business is the production and distribution of Television IP's, Feature Films and documentaries as well as creating and developing its own original IP's to generate global branding. Global Genesis Group is a full-service Production, Distribution and IP management company.
Invercargill, New Zealand -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/06/2017 --James Quaid believes his new invention could change home heating in NZ. "We have designed a state of the art solution that combines free-heat with efficient and affordable central heating," says Quaid "We call it Trivium!"



A qualified electrician by trade, Quaid started Solar Pro in Invercargill in 2010, teamed up with Karl Lawrence, and together they developed a unique solar panel to distribute warm air into Otago and Southland homes. The system has proved to be very popular with homeowners.



Their latest creation combines the best of solar with the best of ducted heating and is potentially a real game-changer for home heating in New Zealand.



"People who live in colder parts of New Zealand are looking for a way to heat their homes for less, and we wanted to help them" say Quaid. "We built a software interface that seamlessly integrates free-heat from our solar panels, with low-cost heat from the ducted heating system".



Quaid says that customer feedback has been excellent and Solar Pro is already receiving 'friend referrals' for the Trivium system from homeowners that are enjoying the warmth and comfort.



"Trivium can also ventilate and dehumidify" says Quaid "and for those occasional crazy hot days in New Zealand, it can also provide very effective cooling".



2017 looks like being a very big year for Quaid and Lawrence as they gear up to install their new heating and ventilation solutions into more New Zealand homes.



Website: http://www.trivium.co.nz/best-home-heating-new-zealand.html



About Solar Pro

Solar Pro is a Southland-based company specialising in central heating, solar warmth, ducted heat pumps, ventilation, and insulation. The company was originally formed in Invercargill by James Quaid during the Research and Development of the Solar Air Panel. Karl Lawrence worked alongside James throughout the design and development phase, then moved to nationwide Marketing and Customer Support.



Contact:

James Quaid

Solar Pro / Trivium

45 Tyne Street Invercargill

0508 3733 4328

james@solarpro.co.nz
Insurance companies can cancel policies or raise rates on customers based on questions asked about an incident or a claim filed even if the company never paid a dime.

Senate Bill 58 would ban companies from using information about zero-dollar claims in making underwriting decisions that ultimately affect cancellations, renewals and rates of insurance policies. The measure carried by Sen. Mary McNally, a Billings Democrat, also is supported by Republican State Auditor and Insurance Commissioner Matt Rosendale. The bill would affect a broad range of insurance policies from homeowners and auto to commercial property and professional liability.

Some homeowners have had their insurance canceled or not renewed for making inquiries about coverage for incidents that they, not the insurance company, ultimately pay for, McNally said while introducing the bill to the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee on Friday. Its particularly ironic because most of these policies require you to make that notice. Then that information can be used against you.

She noted that thousands of policies were canceled in the Billings area after repeated hailstorms. Although some of those cancellations were likely based on risk calculated using claims that the company actually paid out, some were instead the result of risk assessments based on claims that the customer paid themselves and cost the insurance company nothing.

This bill does not interfere with an insurance companys ability to cancel or not renew based on a history of excessive claims, McNally said. It simply requires that those claims resulted in real costs to the insurer, not zero.

Bob Biskupiak, the states deputy insurance commissioner and longtime agent, said the bill would provide common sense protections for consumers.

This will provide Montana consumers with an assurance that if they comply with their insurance policies (and report incidents that might lead to a claim), they will not be penalized by their insurance companies for claims where no dollars were paid out, he said.

The tweak to state insurance regulation was first proposed in 2015 as part of a larger reform package that failed, in large part, because it also would have limited the age of claims companies could consider. That is not part of this years bill.

Nonetheless, lobbyists for the insurance industry testified against the bill Friday. They said that information about claims and inquiries, even if they did not result in the company spending any money, are an important part of actuarial formulas used to calculate risk.

Companies dont pick that standard out of thin air and arbitrarily use it to decline insurance or to determine rates, said Bruce Spencer, a lobbyist for All State Insurance Company. Its part of the secret sauce of rate making. Not every company uses the same formula. Thats how they compete in terms of rates because theyre doing different things slightly differently.

Along with other insurance company representatives, he said being able to accurately measure risk makes it easier for companies to set fair rates for their customers. He noted that it makes more sense for certain types of polices to weigh zero-dollar claims, such as if an attorney repeatedly calls in to say he might have committed malpractice even if no claim is ultimately paid out.

The committee requested more information about the bill and has not yet taken a vote.
In these undated file photos, Hun Sen ( right ) and Sam Rainsy speak to reporters after a meeting at the National Assembly.

High ranking officials with the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) attempted to use four imprisoned human rights activists and a jailed election official as bargaining chips in their effort to split the opposition party, RFAs Khmer Service has learned.

According to a draft of the letter dated Dec. 7, Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Kem Sokha was given a statement approved by the CPP in which he would denounce and expel from the party anyone who attacked the family, spouse and children of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

CNRP president Sam Rainsy told RFA that talks aimed at freeing the prisoners failed when Kem Sokha did not agree to follow the CPPs order that he says was aimed at destroying the CNRP leadership, and it giving authorities an excuse to leave them in jail.

The draft of the letter obtained by RFA reads:

On behalf of the CNRP and on my own behalf, I would like to vehemently condemn any ignorant individuals who have insulted the spouse of Samdech Hun Sen, saying that she was the mistress of former leader of Vietnam Mr. Le Doc Tho; and those ignorant individuals who also accused the eldest son of Samdech Hun Sen, Mr. Hun Manet, of being the biological son of {the late Vietnamese leader] Mr. Le Doc Tho.



Such insulting sayings cannot be acceptable. On behalf of the CNRP and myself, I would like to publicly condemn those insulting groups. They are neither different from gangsters, nor equal to animal or evil beings that are more dangerous than poisonous animals; by behaving in such a way that destroys and looks down on leaders of their own race.

In the event that those ignorant individuals are members of the CNRP, the party is entitled to expel them from the party.

Respectfully to: - Uncle [Kem Sokha] to kindly review this draft; the higher echelons have already approved the contents. From me, Soy Sopheap.

Soy Sopheap is the director of Deum Ampil Media Center that is widely viewed as being allied with the CPP, although Soy Sopheap says they are independent.

Once the statement was issued, then evidence that Sam Rainsy, who has been living in exile since late 2015, insulted the prime ministers family would surface and the CNRP would be forced to expel him, Sam Rainsy said.

Intrigue at the party

One day, he [Mr. Hun Sen] will use the contents of this statement to let the CNRP or Mr. Kem Sokha himself turn to fight against me, by accusing me of saying something insulting, Sam Rainsy told RFA. Afterwards [Hun Sen would use] a number of his CNRP insiders to come out and distort the story against me.

Sam Rainsy left Cambodia last year after he was given a two-year prison sentence in a defamation case, leading the CNRP to name Kem Sokha its acting president. His conviction in the defamation case is but one of the court actions taken by Cambodias government or the ruling Cambodian Peoples party against him.

Earlier this year Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered authorities to prevent Sam Rainsy from entering the country.

Lim Mony, Nay Vanda, Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, all workers for ADHOC (the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association) and National Election Commission (NEC) deputy secretary-general Ny Chakrya were arrested in April.

They are accused of attempting to pay hush money to Kem Sokhas purported mistress in the governments wide-ranging probe into the alleged affair.

Paternity allegations and pardons

In December Kem Sokha and a local Cambodia National Rescue Party official Seang Chet were granted royal pardons in the case against the CNRP leader, but the other five people accused in the case remain in prison.

They were pardoned after Prime Minister Hun Sen, who also heads the ruling CPP, asked King Norodom Sihamoni to issue them.

Hun Sen was bothered by accusations posted on Facebook lasts year by a CNRP official living the U.S questioning the paternity of the prime ministers son Hun Manet.

After the posts appeared, Hun Sen accused the CNRP of secretly engineering the effort and warned that he would not let the CNRP rest in peace, despite an immediate statement from the opposition party disowning the comments.

On May 16, the CNRP dismissed the party official and Sam Rainsy expressed deep regret over the posts in a June 14 letter to Hun Sen.

While pardons for the Kem Sokha Five, were expected soon afterwards, they have not been forthcoming.

Interior Minister Sar Kheng told reporters on Dec. 7 that he expected the five to be freed in late 2016 or early 2017, but Sar Kheng dismissed questions about their release, saying it was under the purview of the courts.

We still have plans for the talks, but we dont know when yet since we have a lot of works to do early this year," he told RFA on Jan 2."

Reported by Sokunthea Hong for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
As northern China entered its second day on red alert for toxic smog (not all cities are on red, many are on yellow/orange), online censors moved to delete content criticizing the ruling Chinese Communist Party for its handling of the air pollution crisis that grips the country every winter.



Calls have been growing on social media to pin down the government departments responsible for the various factors contributing the toxic brown soup that hundreds of millions of people are forced to breathe in many Chinese cities.



"The State Council must make a formal statement to the 1.4 Chinese people explaining itself," one commentator wrote, calling for "formal plans" to tackle the problem within the next decade.



"People understand that the water can support the boat, but that it can also sink it," the article warned, in a metaphor referring to the ruling party and the people.



The post was rapidly deleted from social media sites and the popular smartphone chat app WeChat.



References and links to a Financial Times article in Chinese by outspoken Beijing University law professor Zhang Qianfan, titled "Can China find its way out of its systemic smog?" were also apparently targeted by censors, returning messages indicating a "violation of content regulations" on Friday.



No real plan



Beijing resident Guo Guijun said the deletion of online content about the smog showed the authorities have no real plan to tackle the problem.



"If they are even going to delete content that is public knowledge, then I think they lack the courage to face up to the situation," Guo said. "The facts are the facts ... and avoiding the issue isn't going to solve anything."



She said many people in Beijing are feeling a sense of despair in the face of the smog.



"I'm from Beijing; I don't have anywhere else I could go," Guo said. "For me, there's no escape."



"We need a leader who is willing to take responsibility and be accountable to the people, because everyone wants this problem to get fixed," she said.



Help for schools



Meanwhile, the Beijing government said it would help finance air purification systems in the city's schools to protect children's health.



Beijing's municipal government education bureau called on district governments to move ahead with purification systems as part of a pilot scheme that could soon be rolled out citywide, official media reported on Friday.



The city government will allocate money to help schools cover the costs, the Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, reported.



It said kindergartens and primary and middle schools in Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, and Fengtai districts have already installed such devices, with financial support from the government, enterprises, and parents.



Earlier this week, a middle school affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University installed the first batch of air filtration devices in 11 classrooms, and will soon install them in all classrooms, the paper said.



Beyond hazardous



Many northern Chinese cities have seen hazardous levels of air pollution, with some measuring far beyond the "hazardous" level of 500 on air quality indices in recent days.



As of 3.00 p.m. local time on Friday, the northern oil city of Daqing saw an AQI level of 999, Quartz news reported after monitoring the online Real-time Air Quality Index, which tracks air pollution readings in cities around the world.



The smog also appeared to be drifting south on Friday.



The provincial meteorological bureau in the southern province of Guangdong issued a warning of "moderate to severe" air pollution for Friday and Saturday in the Pearl River Delta region.



In Hong Kong, where downtown areas logged air quality readings at an "unhealthy" 152 in some busy areas on Friday, government officials said air pollution in the city had showed a marginal improvement in some areas during 2016.



Air quality official Mok Wai-chuen said the city had recently adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) target for nitrogen dioxide into its air quality objectives, which he described as "very strict."



"We have been able to achieve the short-term objectives for the general air monitoring stations, but not for the roadside stations," he said of the pollutant, which is linked to exhaust fumes from diesel vehicles.



Reported by Yang Fan and Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by the Cantonese Service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie.




Wai Phyo (2nd R), the detained chief editor of one of the news journals of Eleven Media Group, is escorted by a policeman in a courthouse in Yangon, Jan. 6, 2017.

A Myanmar court on Friday released the chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of the independent Eleven Media Group on bail of more than U.S. $37,000 each after the two were held for nearly two months on defamation charges, the defense lawyer in the case said.

Than Htut Aung, chief executive officer of Eleven Media Group, and Wai Phyo, chief editor of the Daily Eleven newspaper, were jailed on Nov. 11 over an editorial that accused Phyo Min Thein, chief minister of Myanmars commercial capital Yangon, of receiving a U.S. $100,000 watch from an unnamed drug tycoon who was later awarded a lucrative contract for a city transit project.

The editorial appeared in the Nov. 6 issue of Daily Eleven and was posted on Than Htut Aungs Facebook page.

The two men were charged under a controversial article in Myanmars Telecommunications Law that prohibits use of the telecom network to defame people and carries a jail sentence of up to three years and a fine for those who violate it.

They were released today on bail of 50 million kyats [U.S. $37,230] each, said defense lawyer Kyi Myint.

Though Eleven Media Group issued a public apology for the editorial in December, Moe Hein, director of the Yangon government office, said on Friday that officials will not accept the apology and will proceed with the defamation case against the two men.

The two men were being held in Yangons notorious Insein Prison where Than Htut Aung suffered a heart attack.

They had asked the Tamwe township court in east-central Yangon to release them on bail three times before Friday.

Their next court hearing will be held on Jan. 13.

Reported by Thant Sin Oo for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
BILLINGS -- Justin Rowling machines one rifle at a time in his Butte garage. Every time he ships one of his custom guns to a client in a new state he marks it on a map above the work space in his home.

There are marks in 14 states.

Rowling is the owner and sole employee of Montana Precision Rifles. He works seasonally for the city of Butte's parks department, but this year the gun business became his primary source of income.

More than 150 federally licensed firearms manufacturers called Montana home in 2016. The industrys expansion has created a growing web of support for like-minded startups and skilled positions to service the industry across Montana.

Firearms producers in Montana accounted for just 8,104 of the more than 9 million guns manufactured in the United States in 2014, the most recent year the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has reported statistics.

But Montanas 153 licensed manufacturers represent the most per capita in any state. Despite facing challenges like high shipping costs from raw materials suppliers, skilled labor shortages and few tax advantages, gun producers continue to choose Montana to host their operations.

Rowling found the path to the gun business a natural one. Like many Montanans he grew up shooting and hunting. His great uncle is a national champion marksman and taught him to build the traditional rifles he favored.

Under the Montana Precision Rifles name Rowling produces modern, bolt-action rifles intended for extreme accuracy at long distances. He guarantees his package rifles to fire three shots into a half-inch circle at 100 yards, but a lot of them produce even tighter groups.

He draws satisfaction from receiving customer photos or videos of tight groups shot at long distances or animals harvested with his rifle. The same images end up on social media.

It helps out too because people are seeing them make these amazing shots. It works through word of mouth, Rowling said.

As of January he has 10 orders waiting to be filled. Each rifle is different and built with premium parts and takes about two months to produce.

Little Sharps

Like Montana Precision Rifles, Little Sharps Rifle Manufacturing of Big Sandy has orders backed up. Theres a three-year waiting list for one of its scaled-down models of the Sharps rifle and the two man operation has 25 on back order.

Even with the high demand and $5,000 price tag, the duo arent making money on the single-shot rifles. Gunmaker Ron Otto said his work is a passion and that he would starve if he was relying on the gun business to support himself.

Little Sharps builds about eight rifles a year, and engraver Aaron Pursley puts in 60 to 70 hours of work on each one. All the fitting is done by hand and the machining is performed in a shop behind Ottos home. These custom guns are made to work, and many  including Ottos personal rifle  have taken big game animals in Africa.

People say '$5,000! You sure wouldnt take that hunting. But I say, well, you bought a $50,000 Powerstroke pickup and drive it down a gravel road at 70 miles per hour, Otto said.

Little Sharps relies heavily on word of mouth to find new customers, and Otto markets the weapons at gun shows. He travels from state to state with a sampling of his products, including the companys most over-the-top creation, a .22 with an octagon-shaped barrel inlaid with 50 golden stars and encrusted with diamonds, sapphires and rubies. The rifles receiver is engraved with a depiction of an infant Jesus, a golden cross and a cowboy lassoing a wolf. Spread angel wings work as a rear sight while the front blade consists of a ready to launch space shuttle.

It was basically for the military who protect our farmers. We need both of them more than anything else, Otto said.

The rifle has 400 hours of engraving work and has never been fired. Otto said hes never been too serious about selling the gun, but it draws attention to the Little Sharps booth at gun shows.

Falkor Defense

Montana lacks industry giants like Sturm Ruger, Smith and Wesson or Remington Arms. Many of its licensed manufacturers, like Little Sharps and Montana Precision Rifles, produce a handful of guns a year. But there are a number of Montana companies building world-class firearms on a commercial scale.

Just because were here in Montana doesnt mean were a little boutique company. Our footprint is very big in the industry, said Clint Walker, executive vice president of Falkor Defense in the Flathead Valley.

Walker was one of the co-founders of Nemo Arms, another Kalispell tactical rifle company. Nemo moved its operation to Idaho and Walker joined Falkor, then known as SI Defense, where he championed a rebranding effort.

The companys name changed in 2014, and its line of AR-platform rifles were completely redesigned. Falkor offers weapons in calibers ranging from 5.56 NATO  the traditional cartridge used in the AR-15  to much larger rounds like .300 Winchester Magnum. Falkor also developed the first semiautomatic rifle chambered in .300 Norma, a cartridge gaining popularity among military snipers.

Falkor doesnt advertise but utilizes social media heavily. Walker and the owners of Falkor, Melinda and Jason Sonju, have an extensive following on Instagram. The Montana outdoors feature prominently on their feeds, and Melinda is on her way to being only the third woman ever to complete a North American Super Slam  harvesting all 29 big game species on the continent.

Our test facility is the mountains of Montana, Jason Sonju said. "We dont have a fancy bench and test chamber. We go out to the woods."

Falkor frequently collaborates with nearby rifle and barrel maker PROOF Research. Walker said the Flathead Valleys companies tend to work together. Montanas gunmakers operate in a global market so they arent directly competing against each other.

We service a multibillion-dollar industry, and to get into a pissing match with someone because theyre right down the road is fruitless, he said.

Montana Rifle Co.

Montana Rifle Co., another Flathead Valley-based company, produces thousands of bolt-action hunting and tactical rifles every year. Ryan Zinke and Donald Trump Jr. have examples in their gun collections, and the Rifle Company, as many call it, is one of the largest gun manufacturers in the state by volume.

Montana Rifle Co. started operation in 1990. It was one of the first gun manufacturers in the Flathead Valley and until a few years ago operated a sister business machining AR-15 barrels. With peak production of about 600,000 barrels a year, the plant north of Kalispell was one of the largest suppliers of barrels in the world. In 2011 the barrel business was sold to Remington Arms and moved to Alabama.

Jeff Sipe, owner of Montana Rifle Co., said theres a growing trend of firearm businesses relocating to states perceived to represent the companys values.

If you live in New York City or Los Angeles, obviously theres a whole other feeling with firearms. Theyre scary and taboo. Obviously, in Montana theyre not, Sipe said.

As the company expands, Sipe said he is often solicited by public officials from other states offering incentives to uproot his business and move to places with more manufacturing infrastructure, like Texas.

My first response is you want Montana Rifle Company to move to another state? Im not changing my name. To me, our name represents what it means to be Montanan. I think thats more important to me, Sipe said.

Basing a gun company in Big Sky Country isnt without benefits. Sipe said people in the firearms business are drawn here by the outdoor opportunities and quality of life. Elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum also tend to support gun rights.

Its a big benefit having that type of political clout in Montana, which is probably why you see a lot of manufacturers popping up in the state, Sipe said. They know politicians are going to support them.

But he admits there arent many advantages from a business perspective to stay in Montana. The states geographic isolation adds to shipping costs and time for raw materials. Theres also a shortage of machinists, and Montana Rifle Co. has advertised job openings for the last year that remain unfilled. Sipe actively recruits both in Montana and out of state at technical colleges and job fairs.

Every component of the Montana Rifle Co. product is manufactured in-house in Kalispell, except wooden stocks. The plant employs just under 100 employees who machine barrel blanks for a variety of calibers, hand-fit actions and mold synthetic stocks.

Sipe said about 95 percent of the company's employees start at the factory with little to no experience and are trained in-house. Many people want to build guns for a living but quit when they realize the job is less romantic than expected. About 500 employees cycled through to get the current lineup on the production floor.

Noreen Firearms

Demand for machinists prompted multiple Montana technical colleges to offer vocational training in the field. Gallatin College Montana State University began offering a certificate of applied sciences in CNC machining in 2014, and Belgrade-based Noreen Firearms has tapped into its graduating classes to staff its growing operation.

Firearms machinists are next to impossible to come by," said Philip Noreen, president and general manager of Noreen Firearms. "We can go four to six months waiting for the right person.

Philips father, Pete Noreen, started the company in 2007 building long-range tactical guns including single-shot .50 caliber rifles and AR-platform weapons. In 2015 the business expanded production capacity five-fold and two years later is eyeing further expansion with three shifts currently running Monday through Saturday.

Pete Noreen said only about 2 percent of the companys sales are in Montana. The company works with national distributors, has contracts with the United States Department of Defense and has sold arms to foreign militaries.

According to Pete, his family business is one of about 20 firearm manufacturers in Montana that combine to produce more than 90 percent of all guns built in the state. Most of the federally licensed manufacturers are hobbyists.

Its not hard to get the license. Its very hard to have an idea or a plan to do something with that license, he said.
A Myanmar migrant worker ties a rope to a crate at a market in the town of Bukit Mertajam in Central Seberang Perai, Penang, Malaysia, Dec. 17, 2016.

A machete attack on 13 Myanmar nationals in Malaysia on Thursday has left four men dead and three seriously injured as the group returned from working overtime in the capital Kuala Lumpur, said a Myanmar civil society organization that operates in the area.

The deadly assault occurred in the Bukit Serdang area in the southern part of the city after the men left a television hardware factory where they worked at 10 p.m., said San Win, chairman of the Kathpone Free Funeral Service Society in Kuala Lumpur, which provides free funerals for its impoverished citizens in the country.

Thirteen people were returning to their homes together after they had worked overtime, and a group of people attacked them with knives, San Win said. Four were killed, and three were sent to a hospital. They didnt see well who the attackers were because it was nighttime.

One of the three sent to Serdang general hospital died Friday evening, he said.

Myanmar embassy officials have filed a case at a local police station, San Win said.

A motive for the attack remains unknown.

San Win told the online journal The Irrawaddy that four of the victims had official passports while another three are believed to be migrant workers.

Previous attacks on migrant workers

Thousands of workers returned to Myanmar from Malaysia in 2014 after roughly 25 were killed between June 2013 and September 2014 in what some observers told Malaysia media at the time may have been links to communal violence in Rakhine, Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency said in a Dec. 7, 2016, report.

There are more than 400,000 Myanmar migrant workers in Malaysia, around 100,000 of whom are illegal workers, according to Myanmars embassy in Kuala Lumpur, though some estimate the number of undocumented Myanmar workers in the country at about 500,000, the report said.

Many working in the country illegally often work long hours in dangerous conditions with few means of getting better conditions or pay, it said.

Last July, the Myanmar embassy in Malaysia created a protection task force for migrant workers made up of representatives from roughly 50 civil society organizations based in the country, including the Kathpone Free Funeral Service Society, the Myanmar Times reported.

The Myanmar government last December stopped sending workers to Malaysia out of safety concerns amid growing tension between the two nations over the conflict in Myanmars restive Rakhine state involving the treatment of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority group.

Muslim-majority Malaysia criticized the Myanmar government and the countrys powerful military for alleged violent acts against the Rohingya during a crackdown in northern Rakhine following deadly attacks on border guard stations in the region.

Malaysias Prime Minister Najib Razak said Buddhist-majority Myanmars treatment of the Rohingya amounted to genocide and ethnic cleansing, prompting Myanmar to hit back at Malaysia for meddling in its affairs.

Reported by Zarni Htun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A national-level commission investigating violence in the northern part of Myanmars Rakhine state is on a second visit to the turbulent region, after receiving heavy criticism from rights groups this week for refuting allegations of abuses by security forces deployed in the region since October.

The 13-member commission led by Myanmar Vice President Myint Swe began a two-day visit on Friday to border guard headquarters in Maungdaw township to further probe Oct. 9 attacks on guard stations by armed assailants in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships that left nine officers dead.

The panel will also visit Zinpaingnya and Myo Thugyi villages on Friday and Shwe Yin Aye, Norula, and Ale Thankyaw villages on Saturday.

On Tuesday, the commission issued its interim report on the situation in Rakhine to the government based on findings and interviews that members conducted during the groups first visit to northern Rakhine last Dec. 11-13.

It said it found no cases of genocide or religious persecution of Rohingya Muslims who live in the region in the wake of the deadly border guard attacks and subsequent security lockdown.

The commission said it conducted special investigations of allegations of rape, torture, arson and illegal arrests in Rohingya villages by security forces that moved into the area to search for those who planned and carried out the border guard station attacks.

But the commission said its interviews of local villagers and women about the rape allegations yielded insufficient evidence to take legal action, though its investigations into accusations of arson, torture, and illegal arrests are still under way.

The commission also noted that an increase in the local number of Muslim religious scholars, mosques, and other religious structures was an indication there had been no cases of genocide and religious persecution in the region.

Human rights groups, including New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), blasted the groups findings, saying they were an attempt to gloss over atrocities and heavy international criticism, especially since the report came only days after a video surfaced showing policemen beating Rohingya Muslims.

The commission was created by presidential order on Dec. 1 to probe the Oct. 9 border guard attacks as well as subsequent violence in Muslim villages in Maungdaw on Nov. 12 and 13, when armed men are said to have ambushed police and soldiers deployed to northern Rakhine to conduct security operations.

The government has blamed the attacks on local Muslim insurgents who received training and financing from terrorists and Islamists abroad, but it has denied that soldiers committed any atrocities against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine.

Some of the 50,000 Rohingya who fled to safety during the violence have alleged otherwise, though.

UN envoy to visit Rakhine

Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special human rights envoy for Myanmar, will begin a 12-day visit at the invitation of the government on Jan. 9 to look into the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine, the U.N. said on Friday.

She will also visit northern Myanmars Kachin state where thousands of people have been displaced by fighting between government soldiers and ethnic rebels.

The events of the last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there, Yanghee Lee said in the statement.

Besides meeting with those affected by human rights violations, Lee will also meet with political and community leaders, civil society, and members of the international community.

U.N officials, including Lee, have been critical of the governments handling of the Rakhine crisis, specifically the denial of access by independent media and international humanitarian groups to areas affected by the violence.

Reported by Min Thein Aung for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Bangladeshi activists from Islamist political party Islami Andolan Bangladesh protest against the alleged abuse of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after police stopped a march towards the Myamar-Bangladesh border in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 18, 2016.

The Myanmar government said it hopes to send a special diplomatic team led by the deputy foreign minister to Bangladesh later this month amid increasing tension with the neighboring country over the tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar following violence that began in northern Rakhine state in early October.

It is possible that a Myanmar special diplomatic team will travel to Bangladesh this month when the Bangladesh prime minister and foreign affairs minister are available to meet them, said Kyaw Zayya, director general of Myanmars foreign affairs ministry, on Thursday.

We will arrange it through discussions with their government, he said. The deputy foreign affairs minister will possibly lead the team. The team will have only three or four members, but it is difficult to say the exact date of the travel.

A previous trip arranged in December failed to materialize after it was postponed for security reasons.

Bangladeshs foreign affairs ministry has complained several times to Myanmar about the influx of 50,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled violence in Rakhine after deadly attacks on Myanmar border guard stations in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships on Oct. 9, and sought refuge in Bangladesh.

Members of the stateless minority group have left northern Rakhine in droves since soldiers and police locked down the area after the attacks, which the Myanmar government has blamed on Muslim insurgents.

On Dec. 30, the Myanmar government said it would take back 2,415 of its citizens living in Bangladesha small number of the 300,000 people who Bangladesh says are Myanmar citizens who have taken refuge there and should return home, Reuters reported.

Bangladesh has refused to grant the Rohingya refugee status because it considers them citizens of Myanmar, while Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and has denied then citizenship and access to basic services for decades.

Proper channels for aid

In a related development, Myanmars foreign affairs ministry has informed the embassies of some member states of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that their countries should submit proposals to provide for cash and in-kind support for Rakhine through proper diplomatic channels.

A statement issued on Thursday by Myanmars State Counselors Office said the ministry will work with the Rakhine state government and its ministry of social welfare, relief and resettlement to distribute supplies that should be meant without any distinction for both Rohingya Muslim and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists living in the western state.

The Rakhine state government will distribute the assistance to both communities, the statement said.

Indonesia and Malaysiaboth predominantly Muslim countries and ASEAN members 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 ASEAN states met with her on Dec. 19 to discuss the crisis in northern Rakhine.

The governments statement appears to be directed, however, at a Malaysian Muslim organization that plans to send boats laden with 200 metric tons of rice, medical aid, and essential supplies for Rohingya Muslim communities on Jan. 10.

The Myanmar government opposes the flotilla because the organization has not obtained permission to enter its territory to deliver supplies, and has said that such plans should be made between the governments of each country.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said last Wednesday that the Muslim group from Malaysia had to obtain permission to enter Myanmar when its boats arrived or risk being stopped or attacked by Myanmar security forces, and its crew deported.

Myanmars home affairs minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe on Dec. 30 called the plans for the food flotilla an insult.

The Indonesian government has already sent 10 shipping containers of food, baby food, and clothes for Rohingya affected by the violence.

The statement issued by the State Counselors Office said the Indonesian government had officially proposed the delivery of humanitarian aid according to the policies of the Myanmar government, and that the two nations are undertaking necessary distributions.

An armed Myanmar border policeman scans the border area along the river dividing Myanmar and Bangladesh in Maungni village, Maungdaw township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, Oct. 15, 2016. Credit: AFP Security forces make arrests



In Rakhine, authorities arrested one militant trainer and three trainees and seized 14 homemade guns on Wednesday in Maunggyitaung village in northern Rakhines Buthidaung township, the State Counsellors Office said.

The men, who had completed an insurgent military training course, were carrying weapons near the village when security forces blocked entry routes to intercept them, said a statement issued by the office.

Security forces detained Mamad Karat, the trainer, and the three traineesKumuru, De Mamud, and Mardularit said.

After an interrogation that resulted in confessions, security forces searched for weapons and captured 14 handmade guns in a field of betel palms which belonged to De Mamud at about 2 p.m., the statement said, adding that legal action would be taken against the men.

Authorities have detained roughly 600 people in connection with the raids during which nine officers were killed and subsequent violence between security forces and armed men in northern Rakhine. Nearly 90 others have been killed in the crackdown.

Meanwhile, rights groups, including New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), have accused Myanmar of attempting to cover up abuses against Rohingya villagers allegedly perpetrated by security forces in northern Rakhine, a day after an investigation commission said it found no evidence to support accusations of genocide or repression.

Rohingya from the areas affected by violence have accused security forces of executions, arbitrary arrests, rape, and arson during their security operations in search of attackers. The government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has denied the allegations, but formed the commission to investigate them in response to pressure from the international community.

Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy Asia director, said on Wednesday that the government remains curiously intransigent concerning allegations of serious abuses in northern Rakhine state, which has been largely closed to outside observers since the October attacks.

[N]umerous other rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, rape, and the destruction of villages await proper investigation and appropriate prosecution, he said in a statement. Ultimately, this case may be yet another attempt to keep the lid on crimes being committed by security forces in locked-down northern Rakhine state.

There was no immediate response from the Myanmar government to the latest criticisms.

Reported by Thiri Min Zin for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Defying warnings by authorities, Tibetans living in northwest Chinas Qinghai province are privately engaging in religious observances coinciding with a major Buddhist gathering in India led by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, sources in the region say.



Chinese authorities have called the Dalai Lamas Kalachakra ceremony being held this month in Bodh Gaya illegal and have threatened punishment for Tibetans spreading news of the event or organizing local ceremonies in support.



Practicing privately or meeting in small groups, Tibetans living in townships and villages across Qinghai are doing whatever they can to be involved, though, a source living in the Malho (in Chinese, Huangnan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture told RFAs Tibetan Service.



In my own village, people are engaged in virtuous activities such as fasting, performing prostrations, and setting animals free, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



The same things are happening in other places, too," he said.



Families are hosting gatherings to recite mantras and other prayers, and this is being done in secret as the monasteries and communities are being careful not to do anything more openly, he said.



The Chinese authorities cannot prevent this, because it is being done discreetly.



Blessings of the ceremony



Noting that the Dalai Lama has promised Tibetans living in China that he will pray for them during the Kalachakra rituals, Tibetans feel confident they will receive the blessings of the ceremony, the source said.



Speaking separately, another Qinghai source said that local observances connected to the Kalachakra began on Jan. 2 and will continue until Jan. 14, the day that the rituals and teachings held in India end.



"There are many things it is inconvenient to share in the open," a third source said. "Faith in one's spiritual teacher does not need to be publicly displayed."



Kalachakra, which means Wheel of Time, is a ritual that prepares devotees to be reborn in Shambhala, a celestial kingdom which, it is said, will vanquish the forces of evil in a future cosmic battle.



The ceremony and teachings are often conducted outside Tibet by the Dalai Lama, who is widely reviled by Chinese leaders as a splittist seeking to separate Tibet, which was invaded by Communist China in 1950, from Beijings control.



In a bid to reduce attendance at this years ceremony, Chinese officials moved beginning in November to confiscate the passports of Tibetans authorized to travel abroad, at the same time ordering Tibetans already present in India and Nepal to return home.



Many had been told their families would be harmed if they failed to go back, sources told RFA in earlier reports.



Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA's Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.




As Turkish officials were quoted in their state media on Thursday as saying the gunman who killed 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub was probably from Chinas Muslim Uyghur minority, the leader of the Uyghur diaspora voiced empathy with the Turks and gratitude for that countrys role as haven for Uyghur refugees.

We have been praying that this abominable terrorist should not have been one of us, World Uyghur Congress (WUC) President Rebiya Kadeer said in an interview with RFAs Uyghur Service.

I could not wait for the final confirmation of his identity. On the behalf of our people who do not have any way to express themselves that I wanted to let my Turkish brothers know that people of East Turkestan are one of the peoples who profoundly felt the pains of 39 people who were killed in this attack, she said.

East Turkestan is the name Uyghurs use for their Central Asian region, which Beijing rules and refers to as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Kadeer spoke to RFA after Turkish media quoted officials as saying the government was closing in on the gunman who attacked Istanbul's upscale Reina nightclub, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.

According to the Associated Press, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told the local A Haber news channel in an interview that the gunman was probably from Chinas Muslim Uyghur minority and a "specially trained member of a (terror) cell."

"The security forces have determined his identify, his possible whereabouts have been determined... His contacts have also been determined," Kaynak told A Haber. "We can say that the circle is closing in on him," the AP quoted the official as saying.

Chinese propaganda fodder

Kaynak said authorities think the man, whose name hasn't been revealed, is still inside Turkey, although they haven't completely ruled out the possibility that he may have escaped after the New Year's attack, AP reported.

The state-run Anadolu news agency reported that raids by gendarmerie police and special operations teams had detained an undisclosed number of Uyghurs who are suspected of "aiding and abetting" the gunman.

In her comments to RFA, Kadeer praised Turkey, home to some 20,000 Uyghurs, as a place that welcomes Uyghur people aspiring and hoping for their liberation and freedom and a country where Uyghurs seek help when they are in trouble.

Uyghurs are not that absurd to seek enemies abroad while living under occupation and colonization, and they are not so unconscionable as to attack a county who welcomed them with open arms, she said.

While she didnt rule out that the attacker could be a Uyghur, Kadeer said her community would reject such a person and the WUC should not be connected to the attack or the Islamic State.

She also expressed concern that Chinese state media would use the news from Turkey for propaganda.

If the terrorist is identified as Uyghur that might make only one force jubilant: That would be the Chinese government, which has been trying to smear Uyghur opposition with terrorism charges, and is jailing thousands of Uyghurs with this charge at the moment, she said.

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA's Uyghur Service. Translated by by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
A man walks among dead fish lying on a beach in Quang Trach district in the central coastal province of Quang Binh near the Formosa steel plant that is under attack for industrial pollution, April 20, 2016.

A steel plant disaster that killed more than 100 tons of fish and rained economic devastation on Vietnams central coast was conspicuously absent from a list of 2016s top environmental events last year released on Friday by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

While the government listed its Aug. 31 teleconference on environmental protection and the discovery of copper and uranium ore in the central highlands among the official Top 10, there was no mention of what may have been Vietnams biggest news story of 2016.

Vu Minh Son, head of the agency in charge of issuing awards under the environment ministry, said the Formosa disaster didnt make the list because it was a disaster and because only "positive" news made the list.

"In general, an event must have a positive significance or make a contribution to the country to be able to meet our four criteria, and an environmental disaster is obviously beyond those standards," Son told Vietnam's Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Formosa Plastics Corporation of Taiwan acknowledged in June that a steel plant run by its subsidiary, the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, was responsible for a release of toxic chemicals in April that killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen, in four central provinces.

The company pledged to pay $500 million to clean up the spill and compensate people affected by it, but the government has since faced protests and lawsuits over the amount of the settlement and the slow pace of the payouts.

The disaster sparked an outpouring of news stories throughout the country and the world and was also the focus of rare public protests in Vietnam, where dissent is tightly controlled.

Fallout from the disaster continued to make news throughout 2016 as people affected by the disaster filed hundreds of lawsuits over the lack of transparency in the compensation process and the low amount of money paid out.

At least a dozen arrests have been connected to protests over the disaster.

Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Paint and shrimp paste were smeared on the Hanoi home an attorney who has defended dissidents in Vietnam, Jan. 6, 2017.

Unidentified thugs vandalized the Hanoi home of a prominent human-rights attorney, smearing it with red paint and putrid-smelling shrimp paste late Thursday night, the lawyer told RFAs Vietnamese Service.

Tran Thu Nam told RFA that he was working at his home around midnight when he went to his front door to investigate a mysterious commotion.

I dont know who did it, as they had already run away when I opened the door, he said. They painted the door and threw shrimp paste at it.

Tran called the Yen Hoa commune police, who took pictures of the scene and wrote a report.

"They came and took pictures of the scene and wrote a report, he said. They promised me that they will use pictures taken by cameras from the neighbors to identify those people.

Tran and fellow attorney Le Van Luan were brutally beaten by thugs last year when they visited the family of their client Do Dang Du, who had died in police custody.

Case dropped

Publicity over the 2015 attack on Tran and Le led Hanoi police to investigate and prosecute the people involved in the assault, but the victims decided to drop the case, and Tran forgave his attackers.

When I was beaten, they had to start the prosecution process because of the public pressure, but I didnt think those young men had any problem with me directly, so I decided to drop the case, he said.

While the beating drew national attention and was raised in Vietnams National Assembly, an attack on a house is unlikely to rise to that level, he said.

Im afraid that it will be very difficult to investigate due to complicating issues in society concerning circumstances, he said. It is hard to hope that they will find out who did this.

Shrimp paste is a pungent ingredient used in many Asian dishes, and is made from fermented, ground shrimp mixed with salt. In Vietnam, it is used in a wet form, and is often an ingredient in a dip made for fish or vegetables.

While it remains unclear who vandalized Trans house, attacks on the homes of prominent dissidents and government critics are often used in Asia as a form of intimidation.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
An Afghan official says unidentified gunmen have killed at least seven coal miners in northern Afghanistan, revising the death toll which was earlier put at 13.

Faiz Mohammad Amiri, the district governor of Tala wa Barfak, in Baghlan Province, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that the miners were killed on January 6. He said three other miners were wounded in the attack.

Amiri said the miners were all members of the Shi'ite Hazara minority.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

But Amiri said the attack was likely carried out by the Islamic State (IS) militant group, which has carried out a string of deadly attacks on Shi'ite Muslims in the country.

In July, the Sunni extremist group targeted Kabul's Shi'ite community in a suicide bombing that killed more than 80 people and wounded 130, the deadliest attack in the capital since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

IS militants were largely confined to the eastern province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, one year ago, but the government says they have greatly expanded their presence since then.


Hundreds of Armenians have demonstrated in Yerevan against Russian weapon sales to Azerbaijan, claiming the sales led to the outbreak of fighting on April 2 in and around Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The protesters, mostly young activists, marched to the Russian Embassy in Yerevan chanting "Shame!" and "Free, independent Armenia!"

Some threw eggs at the embassy, sparking scuffles with riot police.

A petition read out by a protest organizer demanded an immediate end to all deliveries of Russian weapons to Azerbaijan.

The petition also called for Moscow to "fulfill the obligations" stemming from its military alliance with Armenia.

Russia has sold tanks, combat helicopters, artillery, and other offensive weapons valued at a total of $4 billion to Azerbaijan under contracts signed from 2009 to 2011.

Armenia's government publicly complained about those deliveries to Baku after fighting broke out along Nagorno-Karabakh's "line of contact" front line on April 2.

At least 65 Armenian soldiers were killed in the fighting, which continued until Russia mediated a cease-fire agreement on April 5.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev defended the deals with Azerbaijan after visiting Yerevan last week, saying they boost "the military balance" in the conflict zone.

Medvedev said both warring sides would buy even deadlier weapons from other countries if Moscow stopped its arms deals with them.

Earlier this week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin denounced Yerevan's criticism of Moscow's weapons sale to Azerbaijan as "demagogy."

Russia has also been the main source of weapons delivered to Armenia's armed forces.

In 2015, Moscow extended a $200 million loan to Yerevan for the purpose of buying more Russian arms at discounted prices.

But Yerevan-based political analyst Styopa Safarian says Armenian critics of the Russian-Azerbaijani weapons deals are angry because Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and Azerbaijan is not.

Speaking to RFE/RL at the Yerevan demonstration on April 13, Safarian said that "Russia is a nominal strategic partner" of Armenia, but Armenians see from the latest outbreak of fighting that "when we need military assistance [from Russia] then Russia is a peacekeeper" and " an arms supplier" to both sides in the conflict, or takes on the role of a mediator as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk group.

Armenian critics also argue that Russia's weapons deals with Azerbaijan emboldened Baku to launch military operations in and around Nagorno-Karabakh early in April.
Russia launched more kamikaze drones on infrastructure and civilian targets in southeastern Ukraine, officials said on November 4, as extensive damage to the power grid left millions of Ukrainians without electricity, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accuse Moscow of "energy terrorism."

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.

Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovskov region, said the Ukrainian military destroyed eight Iranian Shahed-136 "kamikaze" drones in the region's southern Nikopol district.

"Our air defense did a great job this night. Eight enemy Shaheds downed," Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. It was the second day in a row that Nikopol was targeted by Russian drones.

Reznichenko said Russian troops also pounded four settlements in the same district -- Myrivska, Chervonogrigorivska, Marganetska, and Nikopolska -- with Grad rockets and artillery fire, damaging a gas pipeline and a power line and destroying residential buildings.

Russian troops regularly bombard the Dnipropetrovsk region, one of Ukraine's steelmaking hubs, with various types of weapons.

Moscow denies its attacks on civilians in Ukraine.

Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on November 3 that millions of Ukrainians were temporarily without power due to the Russian attacks.

"Tonight, about 4.5 million consumers have been temporarily disconnected from energy consumption," Zelenskiy said. "The very fact that Russia is resorting to energy terrorism shows the weakness of our enemy. They cannot beat Ukraine on the battlefield, so they try to break our people this way."

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and other civilian buildings with missile, drone, and artillery attacks for several weeks amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has driven Russian troops out of the northeast and pushed them back in the east and southeast.

Over the past days, however, despite heavy fighting, there has been no significant change on the ground on the eastern and southern Ukraine fronts, with preparations building for a fight over the southern city of Kherson.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry accused Moscow of forcibly deporting Ukrainian citizens from Kherson to Russia.

"The Russian occupation administration has begun mass forced relocation of residents of the left bank [of the Dnieper River] of the Kherson regionto the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea or the Russian Federation," the ministry said in a statement on November 3.

Similar deportations are also being carried out by Russia in the Zaporizhzhya, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions, as well as in Crimea, the ministry said.

Russia in September proclaimed to have seized the partially occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Luhansk, and Donetsk following referendums condemned by Kyiv and the West as shams.

Volodymyr Saldo, the Russia-appointed head of Kherson, announced on October 31 an expansion of what Russia has called the evacuation of Ukrainian citizens. Saldo said he was moving people further into the region or to Russia because of the risks of a "massive missile attack."

Just three days earlier, the Russian-installed officials announced that the evacuation process in Kherson region had ended.

Kyiv reiterated on November 3 that it saw the move as a "deportation." It also said reports continue to circulate about the alleged mining of the Nova Kakhovska hydroelectric power plant by Russian troops.

Zelenskiy previously said that Ukraine suspects Russia has mined the dam and units of the power plant on the Dnieper River, and that if it were blown up, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, would be in danger of flooding.

The Foreign Ministry statement also accused Russian troops of looting industrial, cultural, educational, and medical institutions, as well as private houses and apartments.

Russian forces also removed roadblocks in Kherson. The head of the Kherson regional military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevich, believes that they did this to create the illusion that Russian forces have left the city.

WATCH: Near Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces often rely on artillery from the 1970s and '80s. The front line there is one of the most hotly contested areas. The soldiers say that although the Soviet-era weaponry is old, it is still very effective.

It was also reported that the Russian flag was removed from the Kherson regional administration building. The head of the joint coordination press center of the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine, Natalya Humenyuk, said that this could be a provocation.

The loss of Kherson, which Russian troops captured in March in the early days of the war, would signal a significant retreat.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asked to comment on the battlefield situation in southern Ukraine, said he believes Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region have the capacity to retake the territory on the west side of the Dnieper River and Kherson city from Russian troops.

With reporting by Reuters
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
Kosovo has called on French authorities to release former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj who was arrested on a Serbian war crimes warrant on January 4.

A French court on January 5 ordered Haradinaj, a former guerrilla commander during Kosovo's 1998-99 war, to remain in custody pending an extradition request from Belgrade.

Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa said on January 6 that the French government should "take into consideration that such warrants are fully political and have no legal or juridical base."

Justice Minister Dhurata Hoxha told RFE/RL's Balkan Service that she sent a letter to her French counterpart on January 6 demanding Haradinaj's release.

Serbia accuses Haradinaj, who served briefly as prime minister of Kosovo in 2004 and 2005, of committing war crimes during the conflict in the former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008.

His arrest upon arrival at an airport in eastern France on a flight from Pristina has triggered outrage in Kosovo, where the government called the Serbian charges "illegal, unfair, and tendentious."

With reporting by AP
The Moldovan Foreign Ministry has complained to Russian diplomats over a recent military exercise involving Russian troops on the territory of Transdniester, a region of Moldova de facto controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

The ministry issued a statement on August 18 saying that the exercise was illegal, "provocative, and inadmissible." It aimed to "undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Moldova, the statement added.

The ministry repeated Chisinau's demand that Russia withdraw its forces and heavy weaponry from the country and that the peacekeeping operation be handed over to international organizations.

It was the second time that exercises involving separatists and Russian forces have been held in Transdniester this month.

Russia has maintained a force of some 1,000 troops in Moldova since a cease-fire was brokered in 1992 after a brief, bloody conflict between the separatists and the Moldovan state.

Some 1,500 people died in that conflict.

In 1999, Moscow agreed to a complete withdrawal of its forces by 2002, but has failed to implement that agreement despite repeated appeals by the Moldovan government for it to do so.

Based on reporting by AP and Interfax


Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a vehicle in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on January 6, wounding five people.

Police told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that the passengers, who were travelling in a taxi, were all members of the Shi'ite Hazara minority.

The five were taken to a nearby hospital, with two of them in critical condition.

Police said it was a targeted attack and the gunmen escaped from the scene.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi extremist group has been blamed for similar attacks in the past.
Pakistani officials say a train has crushed two rickshaws at a railway crossing, killing seven schoolchildren.

Local police said another five schoolchildren were in critical condition after the early morning accident on January 6 in the town of Lodhran, in central Pakistan.

Police said all the victims were between five and eight years old and were on their way to school in the rickshaws.

Police added that the rickshaw drivers appeared to have misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks. The train was heading to Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.

Authorities said an investigation has been launched to determine who was responsible for the deadly incident.

More than 60 people died in incidents involving trains in 2015, said railway spokesman Ashraf Lanjaar.

Based on reporting by AP and dpa
The recent fighting right along the Turkmen-Afghan border seems to have prodded Ashgabat into finally adopting a policy toward its southern neighbor, but it is not a policy that is likely to suit any of the parties in Afghanistan.

Turkmenistan was forced to react to Afghan problems when fighting broke out along Turkmenistan's border with Afghanistan's northern Faryab and Jowzjan provinces. The Turkmen government reacted harshly when Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev spoke about security problems along the Turkmen-Afghan border on October 15. Ashgabat denied there were any problems but one week later Taliban militants, fleeing combat in the Jowzjan Province, sheltered on an island in the Amu-Darya, the river that divides Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. It is also an island that Turkmenistan has been claiming as its territory.

Afghan First Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum had chased the militants from villages in the Hamyab district of Jowzjan and vowed to wipe out the group on the island. Dostum said he was in contact with Turkmen officials, apprising them of his intentions to attack the Taliban on the island and seeking Turkmenistan's help in eliminating the group.

For Turkmenistan, with its UN-recognized status as a neutral country, the presence of some 80 Taliban fighters, described by Afghan media as "heavily armed," on land where Turkmen border guards had recently been chasing away Afghans and in some cases arresting them presented a huge problem. Beyond, of course, the fact that any pretense by Turkmen authorities that the border was calm had just been shattered.

Faced With A Choice

Faced with militants on its border, the Turkmen authorities wavered. After initially maintaining contact with Dostum and his forces, communications from the Turkmen side suddenly stopped. Dostum's spokesman Sultan Faizi and others said they were waiting for a response from Turkmenistan; would Turkmenistan block Taliban fighters from fleeing across the border into Turkmenistan, might Turkmen forces join in the attack on the militants?

In the meantime, Turkmenistan's military sent helicopters to fly over the island and it became known that the island, ownership of which had long been in dispute, had been divided in half by Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan's military built a fence. On the northern side were Turkmenistan's border guards.

The presence of Turkmenistan's troops and the overflights by helicopters prevented Dostum's forces from shelling the island in preparation for an assault. On October 24, Dostum seemed resigned to the fact Turkmenistan would not respond to his requests for joint action and said his Afghan forces would wait while the Taliban militants starved.

He did not have to wait long. Most, maybe all, of the Taliban on the island crossed the river back into Afghanistan and counterattacked. RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, reported that locals claimed the Taliban killed "10 or 12" of Dostum's elite troops before being gunned down, captured, or fleeing.

Afghanistan's Tolo TV news showed some of the captured militants and one told an amazing tale. "They [Turkmen border guards] said: 'We will not give you a place here. We are neutral,'" the captive said. When asked who said that, the captive militant replied, "Turkmenistanis. They said, 'We will give you bread, eat this bread then go away.'"

...But Not Choosing Either Side

So Turkmenistan seems to have chosen the quickest remedy to its problems but in the process has probably made enemies of Dostum's forces and the Taliban.

Turkmenistan's border guards and helicopters prevented Dostum's forces from destroying the Taliban group on the island by shelling them and the militants' counterattack resulted in about a dozen of Dostum's troops being killed.

Turkmen border guards did not attack the Taliban on the island and apparently even helped feed them but in the end told the Taliban fighters they had to go back to Afghanistan.

One curious aspect to this story is why the reportedly heavily armed Taliban did not simply attack Turkmenistan's border guards, take their weapons, and take up positions on the island. Returning to Hamyab meant near certain death for them anyway.

Azatlyk director Muhammad Tahir contributed to this report
DECATUR  Ameren Illinois, switched on to all the ways it can communicate with its customers, is now the recipient of an award honoring its media savvy.

The utility won the Best Overall Social Media Presence title in a competition hosted by the Midwest Energy Association, a trade group. This is the first time a social media award has been presented and Ameren Illinois bested 12 other rivals to win; the utility also got an honorable mention in the Best Customer Communication & Service via Social Media category.

Ameren Illinois is committed to being a leader in customer satisfaction, said Richard Mark, the utility's president. ...Social media is a vital communications channel to engage and educate our customers and stakeholders.

The utility engages its 40,000 Facebook followers and 18,000 Twitter subscribers with updates on everything from power outages and grid improvements to touching stories about a lineman who donates bikes to poor children.

But communication is a two-way street, and inviting the public to comment on what you're doing opens the door to some surprising responses. For example, Ameren Illinois recently posted a warning on Facebook about not using extension cords with space heaters to cut down the risk of fires.

This prompted a follower called Joe Holbrook to write: ...You can't fix stupid, and ignorant (sic) is rampant, so let natural selection work and cull the herd.

In another posting, the utility advised its customers that a good energy efficiency tip was to take advantage of sunny days by opening curtains on south-facing windows.

But customer Kelly Langford came back with a reply that offered a different take on how Ameren Illinois could save people money: It would be easier if they would quit ripping ppl off.! she posted.

The utility says it's natural people want to vent and it takes a fairly relaxed attitude to posts unless someone crosses a line with insults or offensiveness.

Ameren Illinois spokeswoman, Kelly Hendrickson, has the job of managing the utility's social media pages and says giving customers a chance to vent is not a bad thing. Kind of the way we see it, they are out there talking about us anyway, so let's be a part of the conversation, she added.
Russias military has begun a drawdown of its forces in Syria, media reports quoted the chief of Russias general staff as saying.

"In accordance with the decision of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces [President] Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defense Ministry is beginning the reduction of the armed deployment to Syria," Russian news agencies quoted General Valery Gerasimov as saying on January 6.

Gerasimov was reported to have said that Russia's naval fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, which has been operating in the Mediterranean Sea off the Syrian coast, would be the first to return from Syria.

Putin said on December 29 that Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria under the terms of a cease-fire agreement brokered by Moscow and Ankara.

The fragile cease-fire has largely held despite sporadic violence near Syria's capital, Damascus.

A car bomb in the government-held coastal town of Jableh on January 5 that killed 10 people was the first major incident since the cease-fire went into force on December 30.

The truce is slated to be followed by peace talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana, later this month.

Russia has waged a potent air campaign in Syria since September 2015, bolstering the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and turning the tide of the war in the governments favor.

Last month, Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes took full control of the northern city of Aleppo, forcing out rebels who had held the eastern part of the city since 2012.

Putin had already announced a partial withdrawal of Russian forces in March.

Around half its fixed-wing strike aircraft flew out in the days that followed. But Russia continued to ship significant quantities of military supplies to Syria.

The five-year conflict has killed more than 250,000 Syrians and displaced about half the country's prewar population, or around 11 million people.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP
VIDEO REPORTS

RFE/RL spoke to Vratislav Brabenec, one of the original signatories of Charter 77, and the saxophonist in the band forty years ago that started it all.

Ukrainian animal rights activists and some lawmakers are fighting to restrict the use of animals in travelling circuses.

The remains of Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Oles and his wife have been exhumed and replaced by the body of the man who had been paying for the family grave in Prague.

OTHER NEWS

The United States' top intelligence official has said a suspected Russian cyberhacking campaign constituted unprecedented meddling in the American electoral process.

Russias military has begun a drawdown of its forces in Syria, media reports quoted the chief of Russia's general staff General Valery Gerasimov as saying on January 6.

A report published by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research has found that the European Union has lost 17.6 billion Euros and about 400,000 jobs as a result of Russian sanctions in 2015. The report notes that income from exports to Russia would have fallen even without sanctions as a result of Russias economic crisis, the rubles fall, and declining demand. (in Russian, Current Time TV)

Preparations are underway to reassign military units belonging to Chechnyas Interior Ministry, known as Kadyrovtsy or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrovs supporters, to Russias newly created National Guard by the end of 2017. To date, 5,300 Kadyrovtsy have reportedly been transferred. (in Russian)

In response to plans to begin serial production of Ukrainian-made medium-range missiles that were tested in 2016, some Ukrainian analysts question whether the necessary funds exist, while soldiers say there is a more urgent need for small anti-tank missile systems on the ground. (in Ukrainian)

Leading Ukrainian economist Andrey Novak has dismissed statements made by leaders of the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic about impending industrial growth and plans to launch 20 new companies, contending that such growth is impossible in light of the regions lack of export markets, investments, and expertise. (in Russian)

A French court has ordered former Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to remain in custody pending an extradition request from Serbia on war crimes in a case that has strained the fragile ties between Belgrade and Pristina.

A court in Tajikistan has extended the prison term of prominent human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov, who was found guilty of calling for the overthrow of the government and inciting social unrest.

Amid intermittent calls from Russians to put Soviet leader Vladimir Lenins body in the ground, Russian President Vladimir Putin may decide that 2017, the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution, is the time to do it.
DUSHANBE -- Electoral officials in Tajikistan said President Emomali Rahmon's ruling party won parliamentary elections that were marred by violations, criticized by international monitors, and dismissed as a "farce" by the Communist Party leader.

For the first time since Tajikistan gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Communists and the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT) failed to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to win parliamentary seats.

Election Commission Chairman Shermuhammad Shohiyon announced on March 2 that the Peoples Democratic Party of Tajikistan, led by Rahmon, received 65.2 percent of the votes cast in the March 1 elections. He said voter turnout was 87.7 percent.

A senior international observer said "an honest count could not be guaranteed" because of instances of ballot-box stuffing, multiple voting, and "disregard of counting procedures."

Rahmon, 62, has ruled Tajikistan since 1992 and is backed by Moscow, which has thousands of troops stationed in the Central Asian nation bordering violence-torn Afghanistan.

The Agrarian Party, the Economic Reform Party, and the Socialist Party also won seats in parliament, the latter gaining entrance to the 63-seat lower parliament house, the Majlisi Namoyandagon, for the first time.

The Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party, which is a vocal critic of the government, fell short of the threshold.

Communist Party leader Shodi Shabdolov called the elections "a political farce" but said it "makes no sense" to mount an official challenge, suggesting he doubted it could lead to a review or reversal of the announced results.

A representative of the Party of the Islamic Renaissance, Muhammadali Hait, said the elections were not transparent as his party was not allowed to be present at the vote counting, which was held behind closed doors.

The IRPT is the only officially registered Islamic party in former Soviet Central Asia. Banned during Tajikistan's 1992-97 civil war, it played a major part in the conflict and the peace talks and was legalized again after a peace accord was signed in 1997.

RFE/RLs Tajik Service documented several irregularities on election day. They included widespread cases in which one person cast ballots for an entire family, a lack of election monitors, and instances in which volunteer poll workers advised people whom to vote for.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) international observer mission said on March 2 that the parliamentary polls took place in a "restricted political space" and failed to provide a level playing field for candidates.

"Engagement by various political forces in this campaign was, unfortunately, not enough to result in truly competitive elections. Uneven treatment by the authorities and remaining legal restrictions limited the space for debate on the real problems facing Tajikistan," said Marietta Tidei, the special coordinator and leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission.

The head of the European Parliament's delegation in the observer mission, Norbert Neuser, in a statement that he was pleased that "the vote took place in a calm and peaceful manner."

But he said that "significant shortcomings, including multiple voting and ballot-box stuffing, and disregard of counting procedures meant that an honest count could not be guaranteed."

More than half of the vote counts monitored by Western observers were assessed negatively.

The head of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights' (OSCE/ODIHR) long-term election observation mission, Miklos Haraszti, said that state-run media outlets were used by the authorities to promote the ruling party, while other parties were not given any chance to announce their goals and programs.

"Genuinely democratic elections cannot be held without real debate in the media, an independent election administration, and an environment free of repression. Unfortunately all of these were missing," Haraszti said.

He expressed hope that "the electoral reform process will move forward in addressing the serious shortcomings we have observed."

An interim report during the campaign said the IRPT and the Social Democrats reported being subject to political pressure.

No Tajik election has ever been declared free and fair by international observers.
A court in Tajikistan has extended the prison term handed down to a prominent human rights lawyer.

In October, the Dushanbe City Court found Buzurgmehr Yorov guilty on charges of issuing public calls for the overthrow of the government and inciting social unrest.

He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. The court's decision on January 6 extends his term to 26 years.

Yorov pleaded not guilty and called his trial politically motivated.

Yorov was a lawyer of 13 members and leaders of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, a group that was banned in 2015 as a terrorist organization.

Dozens of party members have been arrested.

Yorov is among at least five human rights attorneys who have been targeted by authorities in Tajikistan in connection with their work, prompting the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and other rights groups to call for their immediate and unconditional release.


Internet users in Tajikistan say hundreds of websites, including Facebook and YouTube, have been inaccessible in the Central Asian country since October 5.

Asomuddin Atoev, the chairman of Tajikistan's Association of Internet Service Providers, told RFE/RL on October 6 that at least 200 websites, including popular Russian social networks, remain inaccessible.

Media reports said the outages may be linked to opposition calls on social networks for a protest in Dushanbe on October 10.

The calls have been issued by exiled opposition leader Umarali Quvatov's organization, Group 24.

The state Communications Service's deputy chief, Rafiqjon Shokirov, told RFE/RL that the service "has not given any orders to block any sites."

He said "the reports about alleged blocking of websites, including Facebook, do not correspond to reality."

Tajik authorities have been accused of blocking popular websites several times in the past two years.

With reporting by asiaplus.tj
Tajikistan's Interior Ministry has confirmed that mutinous former Deputy Defense Minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda has been killed along with 10 of his supporters during a battle in the Romit Gorge area to the east of Dushanbe.

In a joint statement with Tajikistan's state intelligence committee, the Interior Ministry said Nazarzoda and a group of his followers were surrounded by government security forces about 150 kilometers east of Dushanbe and were killed after refusing to surrender.

Tajikistan's government blamed Nazarzoda and his fighters for attacks on September 4 against a police station and an arsenal near Dushanbe that killed 26 people, including nine police officers and 17 militants.

President Emomali Rahmon dismissed Nazarzoda from his deputy ministers post after those attacks and accused him of "committing a crime."

Nazarzoda was a commander within an antigovernment alliance called the United Tajik Opposition during Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s.

He led an Islamist militia faction during the war, but joined Tajikistan's security forces in June 1997 after the government and opposition signed an accord to end the five-year conflict.

Nazarzoda's appointment as deputy minister in January 2014 was an extension of that 1997 power-sharing deal with Rahmon's government.

Earlier reports on September 16 from Tajikistan said a commander of the government's elite Alfa special-forces unit, Colonel Rustam Amakiev, was also killing in the fighting in the Romit Gorge area.

Another fighter from the special-forces team was also killed in a gunbattle there that began late on September 15.

The Interior Ministry said two of its security officers were wounded in the battle.

Violence between Nazarzoda's followers and government forces since September 4 has sparked fresh fears of unrest and concerns that the cease-fire accord that ended Tajikistan's civil war could unravel.

Rahmon described Nazarzoda's fighters as terrorists who aimed to undermine his rule.

He has accused the group of having ideological ties to the Islamic State (IS) group, which controls large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Tajik authorities say they've arrested scores of Nazarzoda's followers since the September 4 attacks -- seizing more than 500 weapons, ammunition, and several vehicles from the group.

Tajik security officials initially said as many as 130 of Nazarzoda's supporters had fled with him toward Romit Gorge, but they subsequently revised that figure down to just seven or eight people.

With reporting by AFP, BBC, RIA Novosti, Lenta.ru, and Interfax
KULOB, Tajikistan -- Residents near a Russian military base in southern Tajikistan say a group of drunken Russian soldiers in their underwear brawled in the street overnight with local Tajik men who had confronted them about their raucous behavior.

Witnesses say several of the Tajik men were injured in the street fight late on July 28 in the town of Kulob.

Jamshed, a Kulob resident who witnessed the violence and asked that his last name not be published, said the fight broke out after seven drunken Russian soldiers who had stripped down to their underwear began dancing, singing, and "yelling loudly" in a residential area of the city center.

"Local men asked the soldiers to return to their base but the Russians didn't listen and argued with them," Jamshed said. "The scuffle broke out and several other soldiers came from the military base to help their comrades."

Police were called to the scene. There were no immediate official comments about the brawl.

But an official from a law enforcement agency in Kulob told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity that a criminal investigation had been launched into the case.

About 7,000 troops from Russias 201st Motor Rifle Division are stationed in Tajikistan at three different facilities -- one at Kulob, another at the southern city of Qurghon-Teppa, and one near Dushanbe.

Under an agreement signed in October 2012, Russian troops are allowed to remain stationed in Tajikistan until 2042.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Dushanbe after the signing of the treaty that the deal would help preserve "our common strategic interests, the strengthening of security, and the stabilization of the situation in the Central Asian region as a whole."

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon noted that Russia was providing Tajikistan's army with weaponry and assistance to improve other aspects of the defense sector under the deal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Tajikistan wants Russian troops on its territory in order to secure its poorly controlled border with Afghanistan.

But the presence of Russian soldiers has led to some tensions with local residents near the bases in the past.

In February, a Russian officer was charged with severely beating a waiter at a restaurant in Kulob.

In the summer of 2014, two Russian officers stationed at the 201st Motor Rifle Division's facility in Dushanbe were arrested on suspicion of killing a Tajik man who lived in the capital.
He was known as the Bear Man of Dushanbe.



An old man with a bushy white beard and his bear, Maria, were a regular fixture in the Tajik capital for the over 20 years, strolling along streets, posing for photos, even riding public transport.



Now Tajik social media users want to raise money to build a statue of "bear man" Talabshoh Sheikhov and Maria, both of whom died in 2013.



"I remember them. During my student years, I would go to the city center just to see them. It's a great idea to put up a statue of them because we want our children also to know about those two unusual and special Dushanbe residents," wrote Facebook user Khosiyat Nazarali.



"Yes, they were the calling card of Dushanbe. I support the fundraising idea!" wrote Alexey Loginovsky.



Hundreds of others offered their support, too.



In interviews with Tajik media over the years, Sheikhov said he first saw Maria -- then a six-week-old cub -- at a neighbor's house in the early 1990s.



The neighbor wanted to sell the cub, whose mother was killed by hunters. Sheikhov traded a goat for the cub and took her home.

He named her Maria, after the heroine of a Mexican soap opera that was wildly popular on a Russian television channel at the time.



Maria was raised with bottle milk and food Sheikhov's "other 13 children" shared in their modest house in Yalash, a village in Tajikistan's eastern Jirgatol district.



But Maria's ever-growing appetite soon became increasingly unaffordable for her master, who affectionately called the bear "my daughter."



In one interview, Sheikhov said the bear would eat 10-12 kilograms of food a day.



Sheikhov left the village and his family behind and settled with Maria in Dushanbe, where he put the bear to work to help foot the bill.



Residents say she would entertain children with her forward rolls and give them rides on her back under the watchful eyes of her master, who kept Maria on a leash.



The duo become well-known in Dushanbe, where they could be seen riding a bus, sharing a meal, or carefully crossing a busy street.



Sheikhov once told media that he was even invited to entertain President Emomali Rahmon at a party celebrating the traditional Tajik new year, Navruz. He said the president paid $200.



Not everyone was charmed, however: where some people saw fun and frolic, others saw animal cruelty.



"Poor animal. I remember how he would pull her on a leash," recalled Facebook user Lesya Marenkova.



Sheikhov was in his 80s when he died. Maria died two months later.



"We definitely need to put a statue of them," Tahmina Safarova wrote on Facebook. "It's important to remember those who gave so much happiness and fun to people."
NORMAL  The former Mitsubishi plant officially has a new owner.

Rivian Automotive, which plans to employ 1,000 and invest $175 million in making electric vehicles in Normal, has purchased the plant, the company announced Thursday.

We couldnt be more excited to purchase this tremendous facility in the town of Normal, said founder and CEO RJ Scaringe in a release. This location will be crucial to bringing our products to market, and we look forward to being an active part of this vibrant community.

Rivian operates research facilities near Detroit and San Francisco, but hopes the vacant 2.6 million-square-foot plant will be the manufacturing core of its upcoming line of cars  the first of which could be unveiled this year.

"The company is going to hit the ground running with renovations and redesigns in the plant to ensure it's in line with the 2019 start production timeline," said Rivian spokesperson Samantha Flynn.

"Rivian will also be discussing current and future opportunities with suppliers and vendors, as well as determining community projects and initiatives. The company aims to refurbish portions of the factory for community and third party use prior to full production."

No purchase price for the site was listed in the release. That information will be public once the sale has been filed with McLean County, but that hasn't happened yet, said Recording Program Administrator Mark Bounds.

Depending where that documentation goes directly after its penned it can be a week to two weeks before we receive it, he said.

A group including Maynards Industries, a Michigan industrial asset auction, appraisal and liquidation company, bought the site in June for $2.5 million. That figure includes the land but not the contents of the plant.

The site's sale price will help determine how much Rivian pays in future property taxes. Local taxing bodies approved a five-year performance-based property tax abatement to bring the company to town.

Normal also agreed to provide a $1 million grant to Rivian if the company meets specific employment and investment benchmarks.

Obviously were very pleased they followed through with their intention to purchase the plant. It was our expectation they would after all the taxing bodies approved the (abatement), said Normal City Manager Mark Peterson.

Normal officials expect to meet with Rivian next week to finish details of their agreement that also requires the town to provide mowing, snow removal and supplemental security at the site.

The company also is expected to receive state incentives. The Illinois Attorney General's office is reviewing a request from Lee Enterprises' Springfield Bureau for information about the possible incentives after the request was denied by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Rivian also rolled out a new website on Thursday that includes a photo of the plant labeled "Rivian Production Facility, Normal, IL."

The company, which operated in secret for several years, left "stealth mode" in December and hopes to be more transparent going forward, Scaringe said.

Peterson said he has "been encouraged by their clear commitment to be involved in the community.

"Rivian is working with local educational institutions for a variety of training and technical programs," according to the release. "Rivian also plans to designate part of the site for community use and provide space for first-responder training."

Mitsubishi shut down production at the plant in November 2015 and laid off the last employees in May. The plant employed 1,200 before closing and about 3,000 at its peak.
WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump on January 6 called the furor over alleged Russian hacking a "political witch hunt" and requested a congressional investigation into leaks from a classified intelligence report.

Trump's media offensive came just hours before he was briefed by U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials who accuse Russia of trying to influence the November 8 presidential election by stealing and publishing Democratic party e-mails.

Trump later said he had a "constructive" meeting with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey, though his statement did not indicate whether he now agrees with the intelligence community that Russia directed the hacking campaign.

Trump's statement echoed his previous statements that Russia, China, or other actors could have been behind the intrusions, and he asserted that the hacking had "no effect on the outcome of the election."

In an interview with The New York Times shortly before the briefing, the Republican president-elect repeated his skepticism of Russia's involvement in the hacking, which is widely seen as having damaged the campaign of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Contradicting the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, Trump has repeatedly said that other states or individuals could have been behind the breaches.



"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," Trump was quoted by The New York Times as saying, referring to the theft of millions of federal government personnel files in 2014 and 2015. "How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt."



Trump, who has said he wants to improve ties with Moscow, has also dismissed reports citing unidentified U.S. intelligence officials accusing Russia of trying to help him win the election with the hacking campaign.



The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in the cyberattacks.



Later on January 6, Trump called for a congressional investigation into an NBC News report featuring details from the classified intelligence report -- ordered by President Barack Obama -- about the alleged Russian hacking campaign.

The NBC News report on January 5 cited two unnamed intelligence officials reportedly involved in preparing the intelligence assessment, parts of which could be made public as early as January 6.

The intelligence document concludes, among other things, that the hacks were payback for the Obama administration's questioning of Vladimir Putin's legitimacy as Russia's president, NBC News said in its report.



Several media outlets in addition to NBC reported contents of the classified report that had been delivered to Obama earlier on January 5.



There was no immediate response from congressional leaders, Democrat or Republican, to Trump's call. Many lawmakers in both parties have endorsed the conclusions of intelligence agencies that Russia-government-backed hackers stole e-mails from U.S. political organizations.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington after Trump's tweet that he feels "confident" that the White House did not leak details of the report to the media.

In the statement released after the 90-minute meeting at his Manhattan office, Trump said that he was satisfied with the information he had received from the officials on the investigation.

The statement, however, did not specifically address the findings that the Russian government directed the hacks, instead stating only that Russia, China, and others were "consistently trying to break through the cyberinfrastructure" of U.S. government institutions.



Those targets, Trump said in the statement, included the Democratic National Committee, whose internal e-mails were later published by WikiLeaks, embarrassing top party officials. Wikileaks has denied it obtained the files from Russia.



Trump insisted, however, that hackers had "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines."

Earlier on January 6, aides to Trump said the president-elect would have an open mind when he is briefed on the matter at his office in Manhattan.



Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC News that the incoming president is "prepared to listen and understand how they got to the conclusions they did" but added that Trump has "a healthy skepticism of everything."



Kellyanne Conway, who is set to serve as a counselor to Trump when he assumes office on January 20, told CBS television that "we do not want any foreign government to interfere in this country."



"At the same time, let's wait until the president-elect receives the briefing of this fresh, new material," she said.



Trump's briefing came a day after Clapper told a Senate committee that intelligence agencies were even more "resolute" now about the Russian hacking than in October, when an initial report was released.



"I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakersshould always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement," Clapper said.

With reporting by The New York Times, Reuters, ABC, CBS, AFP, and NPR
Turkmenistans government is clarifying its policy toward its border with Afghanistan and now seems to be adopting the same tactic as neighbors Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- that is, sealing the frontier.

RFE/RLs Turkmen Service -- known locally as Azatlyk -- has been in touch with people in northern Afghanistan and they speak of new activity and changes across the border.

And according to one local leader, the Turkmen government has not attempted to explain to the people on the Afghan side of the border -- many of whom are ethnic Turkmen -- what is happening on the Turkmen side of the frontier.

Ethnic Turkmen Gurbandurdy -- featured in an earlier report in "Qishloq Ovozi" -- is the leader of a civil militia, the Arbaky, in the Qarqeen district of Jowzjan Province.

Azatlyk contacted him on October 8 for an update on the situation along the border with Turkmenistan.

Gurbandurdy said that within the last week several large machines -- excavators and bulldozers -- appeared on Turkmenistans frontier with Jowzjans Khamyab district, which neighbors Qarqeen. Construction materials and wood were also brought.

Gurbandurdy said he had been in touch with friends in Khamyab who told him no one from Turkmenistan had contacted anyone in Khamyab to explain what is going on. The people in Khamyab told Gurbandurdy the machines were digging a ditch all along the border with the Khamyab district. The site where the construction material was left is located between two Turkmen border posts, but no one was sure if the purpose is to construct another border post.

Joshua Kucera of Eurasianet reported on similar activity in Faryab Province in September.

Gurbandurdy told Azatlyk that the Taliban has a significant presence in Khamyab and an Azatlyk correspondent in northern Afghanistan said people in the area speak of as many as 18 villages in Khamyab being under Taliban control.

On a related note, south of Qarqeen, in Jowzjans Mangajik district, there was large Taliban attack on the district center in August that reportedly involved some 100 fighters.

Gurbandurdy said his district is peaceful and credited the 150 fighters under his command for maintaining stability in Qarqeen. He said Turkmenistan was not building anything new along the border with his district, but he also pointed out that that left the Qarqeen frontier open while the border with neighboring Khamyab district was being fortified.

A source for Azatlyk in northern Afghanistan said Turkmenistan has increased its troop strength in several places along the border with Afghanistan recently and in the area where three of Turkmenistans border guards were killed in February the border guards have been replaced by spetsnazi, elite commandos.

The source added that some areas now have fences, three rows deep, blocking access from the Afghan side.

He also gave an idea of the security situation in many areas near the border with Turkmenistan. Azatlyk's source noted that during the recent Eid celebrations, local residents working for a Turkish construction company in Kabul, as well as government troops on leave, had to essentially sneak back to the area to be with their families and stay hidden while they were there.

Just a few months ago, officials from Turkmenistan seem to have been supportive of the villagers on the other side of the border, particularly Afghanistans ethnic Turkmen. Afghan Turkmen tribal leaders went to Kabul in April to meet with the visiting foreign minister of Turkmenistan, Rashid Meredov, and appeal for help. Meredov promised to help and not long after a delegation from Turkmenistans government went to some of the Afghan villages to discuss aid.

But now Turkmenistan has cut communication and is fortifying its border with Afghanistan. At the start of this year, it seemed the Turkmen government was counting on its policy of neutrality to fend off problems from Afghanistan, in the same way it did in the late 1990s when the Taliban controlled the areas neighboring Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistans government might still be hoping an amicable deal can be reached with whoever controls Afghanistans Herat, Baghdis, Faryab, and Jowzjan provinces in the future, but Ashgabat is, at the least, hedging its bets this time.

-- Bruce Pannier, with contributions from Mohammad Tahir, the director of RFE/RL's Turkmen Service
WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hacking campaign that aimed to help President-elect Donald Trump and influence the U.S. election.



A newly declassified report released on January 6 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the effort sought to help Trump, a Republican, by discrediting his Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was widely predicted to win the November 8 contest.



"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," the 25-page report said.



"We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," it said. "We have high confidence in these judgments."



The report comes amid mounting alarm among policymakers and legislators in Washington about the scope and intent of Russian cyberintrusions during last years election campaign.



"When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency," the report said.



Russian intelligence, the report said, did access some systems of state or local electoral boards. But the Department of Homeland Security concluded that the systems that were targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.



The report also concluded that state-run Russian media -- including the Sputnik news agency and the international television network RT -- "contributed to the influence campaign" by promoting Trump and "serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audience."

Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, responded incredulously on Twitter, saying: "They're joking, right?"





There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Kremlin, though Russian officials have repeatedly denied the allegations in the past.

Phone lines to the Russian Embassy in Washington were busy on January 6, and a spokesman did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.

There was also no immediate response from Trump. In the past, however, he has dismissed statements issued by the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies accusing Russian government officials of directing the hacking, which targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as well as the Republican Party.

E-mails stolen from the DNC were later published by WikiLeaks and elsewhere, embarrassing top party officials. WikiLeaks has denied it obtained the files from Russia.



Earlier on January 6, Trump lashed out at the furor in Washington surrounding the Russian allegations, calling it a "political witch hunt."



In an interview with The New York Times, Trump said that other states or individuals could have been behind the breaches.



"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," Trump was quoted by The New York Times as saying, referring to the theft of millions of federal government personnel files in 2014 and 2015. "How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt."



The interview was conducted prior to the report's release and shortly before he was given a classified briefing by top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.



Trump released a statement after the meeting, which he called constructive.



His statement, however, did not specifically address the findings that the Russian government directed the hacks. Instead, it stated only that Russia, China, and others were "consistently trying to break through the cyberinfrastructure" of U.S. government institutions.



"There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said.



The report also suggested that the lessons Russian intelligence officials learned from the U.S. hacking efforts were likely to be replicated in the future, possibly in key European elections scheduled for this year.



On January 5, Clapper testified before one of three Senate committees that is investigating the Russian allegations, saying that intelligence officials are even more "resolute" about their conclusions now than they were in October, when the first public assessment was released.



"I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive, a more direct effort to interfere in our elections processes than in this case," Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The intelligence report was compiled on an order from Obama, who instructed officials to complete a full investigation of the alleged hacking before he leaves office on January 20.

In response to the cybercampaign, the White House last month announced new sanctions targeting Russia's leading intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB.



It also expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to what Washington calls a campaign of harassment of its diplomats in Russia.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Mark Najarian
A new group of people is joining the ranks of the unemployed in Uzbekistan. And for those already out of work and seeking new jobs, the new arrivals are a very bad sign.



The newcomers are from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the ministry tasked with helping create jobs. President Islam Karimov signed an order on February 22 to reorganize the ministry and redistribute some of its duties to the Health and Finance ministries.



It appears there will be no need to transfer additional personnel to these two ministries. By some accounts, nearly half the workers from the former Ministry of Labor and Social Security are slated to be laid off.



For these now-former employees of the ministry, the situation became even worse when they discovered they would not receive any severance pay. As some of them told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, the bad news didn't stop there. It turns out many were not paid for their work in March, and it seems they won't ever be paid for that work. Apparently their employment at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security was officially terminated at the end of February and no one told them.



There have been some questions about the health of Uzbekistan's economy despite the World Bank's rosy forecast of 7.5 percent GDP growth for the Central Asian country this year and the even rosier prediction by Karimov that GDP growth would hit 7.8 percent in 2016.

These bright economic outlooks have come despite information from inside Uzbekistan that the situation is far from well.



For more than a year, people inside the country have been telling Ozodlik that prices are rising, the real value of their salaries is decreasing, the black market rate for the national currency -- the som -- is more than twice the official rate, and that some people, including state employees, are not even receiving wages on time.



A group of employees from the Customs Committee in Uzbekistans eastern Andijon Province told Ozodlik their wages were reduced by 15 percent starting in March and said that, generally, wages were not being paid on time.



Ozodlik contacted Jamshid Rahmedov, an accountant at the Customs Committee. Rahmedov confirmed the reduction in pay but said employees had been receiving a 15 percent bonus every year for several years automatically but that that policy has now changed. Rahmedov said bonuses based on performance would continue to be paid.

Rahmedov also admitted there are wage arrears. He blamed a shortage of cash in Uzbekistans banks for the delayed payments.

There are long lines at petrol stations and chronic shortages of gas -- sometimes, a total suspension of supplies -- in homes around the country during winter. That despite the fact that Uzbekistan is a gas exporter.



However, gas exports have dropped and the price of gas on world markets has dropped to less than half what it was a few years ago. Uzbekistan will sell some 3 billion to 4 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to Russia this year after selling about 1 bcm to Russia last year. In 2009, Uzbekistan shipped 15 bcm to Russia.



Uzbekistan has an agreement to sell China 10 bcm annually. But the General Administration of Customs of the Peoples Republic of China said in March 2015 that China had not imported gas from Uzbekistan since early that year. In September, an official at Uzbekistans state oil and gas company, Uzbekneftegaz, told Ozodlik that between 2012 and 2015 China had purchased 6.5 bcm of gas in total.

And although it's not officially part of the countrys GDP, remittances from Uzbekistans migrant workers in Russia amounted to some $6.633 billion for 2013 but dropped to $3.05 billion for 2015.

RFE/RL's Uzbek Service contributed to this report
Germany says it will close its air base in Uzbekistan, shutting the last Western military installation in former Soviet Central Asia.

The base in the town of Termez, which has provided support for German and other NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan since 2001, will be closed by the end of 2015, the German military said on October 14.

About half of the base's 41 German personnel left Termez earlier this month, the military said, and German forces in northern Afghanistan have been relaying on the U.S. transport flights since August.

"Termez right now is just a backup. We are not effectively using it right now, that's the reason why we are closing it," German Foreign Military Operations Command spokesman Dominik Wullers told RFE/RL.

"Some [personnel] will be transferred to Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan where we have our base, while others will relocate to Germany," Wullers added.

The military, however, didn't rule out the possibility of German forces returning to the base in the southern Uzbek border town.

It said a group of German specialists would arrive in Termez on October 18 and take steps that would enable the base to be used at short notice if such a decision were made.

Established at the end of 2001, the Termez air base was one of a handful of military installations opened by NATO member states in Central Asia to aid military operations in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion that followed the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

But most foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan by the end of last year, decreasing the need for the bases, and Central Asian states appear to have faced pressure from Russia to lessen the Western military presence on their soil.

The German air base had been the only Western military base in Uzbekistan since the closure of the U.S. Karshi-Khanabad air base in 2005. The U.S. lease for its Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan expired last year, and a French air base at the airport in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, also closed in 2014.

Germany currently has 850 troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO's 12,500-strong residual force, which is made up mostly of U.S. troops.

The United States had planned to pull almost all of its 9,800 troops out by the end of 2016, but is now expected to leave 5,500 in the country at least through 2017.

Germany and Uzbekistan had extended the lease of the Termez base in 2014 but the price and the expiration date were not made public.

Regional media reported at the time that Uzbekistan had tried to raise the rent, which had been estimated at between $11.5 million and $17 million.

Human rights groups have accused Germany of turning a blind eye to Uzbekistan's poor human rights record.

Autocratic Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been in power since the Soviet era and tolerates little dissent.
Eighteen years might seem long enough to let bygones be bygones, even for utility bills.

So it's little surprise that apartment dwellers in Jizzakh, a city in Uzbekistan midway between Tashkent and Samarkand, reacted with disbelief when they received notices recently that they owed money for services suspended almost two decades ago.

"We couldnt believe the city sent us a hot water bill," one resident told RFE/RLs Uzbek Service on January 4, one day after he received the notice. "If I am not mistaken, the hot water supply was cut off to our building in 1999. That was 18 years ago, when I was a 1-year-old baby."

Like many Uzbeks, he preferred not to give his name in a country where press freedoms are severely curtailed and people are routinely punished for criticizing authorities.

The overdue notices, sent out by the municipal energy company, warned the apartment dwellers that if they did not pay they could face fines and liens on their property.

The amount owed was 396,000 Uzbek soms in one case, equivalent to $120 and a sizable figure in a country where the average annual income is around $2,500.

When I asked how I was supposed to still have receipts for what I paid 18 years ago, he simply said, 'That's your problem' and said if I couldn't prove I paid before I would have to pay now.

The notices struck residents as particularly surreal because they have been living without water from the city heating plant since it cut off supplies to their buildings 18 years ago without explanation. Many families furnish their own heat by burning coal in makeshift wood stoves as winter temperatures routinely plunge below freezing. In some cases, the residents say, they have long since removed useless radiators from their walls and sold them for cash to buy fuel.

One resident told RFE/RL privately that he went to the offices of the energy provider -- the Jizzakh Heating Authority -- to ask why they were suddenly sending him overdue bill statements.

"The representative told me that if you bring your old receipts showing you have already paid, then everything will be fine," he said. "But when I asked how I was supposed to still have receipts for what I paid 18 years ago, he simply said, 'That's your problem' and said if I couldn't prove I paid before I would have to pay now."

The Jizzakh Heating Authority, which is part of the local government, has issued no public explanation for why it waited almost two decades to send out overdue notices. When contacted by RFE/RL, the head of the authority, Abduhamid Toshbulov, said only that he was aware some former customers did not welcome being contacted again.

"People are not happy and they are writing their complaints to us, to city authorities, and even to the president of the country," Toshbulov said. "So we are asking them to bring their receipts to us so we can compare our information."

He did not give any details about how many customers were being contacted or how many buildings in Jizzakh have been without central heat over the past decades.

Many observers see the case as symptomatic of the wider chaotic state into which much of Uzbekistan's utility sector has fallen since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

During the Soviet era, people in Uzbekistan and elsewhere were mostly housed in state-built apartment blocks that were provided hot water from neighborhood boiler plants. The hot water, traveling as steam through surface pipes that extended kilometers between building clusters and were shaped into arches at regular intervals to let roads pass, not only supplied water to kitchens and bathrooms but also warmed radiators.

More recently, however, much of that infrastructure, like the buildings themselves, has been collapsing from age and neglect.

The fact that many Uzbeks now have to fend for themselves by burning coal and firewood is particularly ironic, given that Uzbekistan has estimated natural gas reserves of 66 trillion cubic feet and is the third-largest gas producer in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after Russia and Turkmenistan. The country exports gas to China, with the exports reportedly reaching a level of some 10 billion cubic meters by the end of 2015.

Uzbekistans new president, Shavkat Mirziyaev, has said he plans to make improving Uzbekistan's crumbling infrastructure a priority. On a whistle-stop tour that preceded his election in December, he pledged to build homes, improve the provision of household electricity and gas, and create a more efficient transportation system.

Mirziyaev long served as prime minister under former President Islam Karimov, who died in September after more than a quarter-century of authoritarian rule marked by widespread official corruption.
MIAMI  This year at Felix Varela Senior High School, there were six new students in Yleana Escobars veterinary science program. And, as newcomers, some of them had a hard time adjusting. One student refused to interact with his peers. Others acted out, jumping on desks and refusing to sit still.

But Escobar and the other students understood. The newcomers had been through a lot before getting to the high school. They had been abandoned at a young age and some had lived on the streets. One was covered in ticks and fleas and was losing his hair to mange.

Before Escobar and her students brought them to Felix Varela for training, the six dogs faced a bleak future.

We had one dog about to be euthanized, said Alyssa Dawson, 18, one of the students in Felix Varelas SPOTS Dog Training Program, part of the schools veterinary science magnet. We gave them a chance at life.

Over the past semester, the SPOTS students have lovingly trained the dogs, even coming to school on weekends and holidays to work with the animals. Their goal was to turn the motley crew into perfect pooches so they had a better shot at getting adopted into a loving home.

One of the top reasons people give up dogs is because of behavior, said Escobar, who runs the veterinary science magnet. We want that to change. We want people to understand that even your hardest cases can be assisted through proper behavioral care.

The program started four years ago in collaboration with Karen Ashby, a Miami vet who was shocked by the number of abandoned animals she saw while working at a local animal shelter. Many of the dogs had been dropped off by pet owners who were unable to cope with behavior problems.

I became overwhelmed by the number of animals that are left there, and the overwhelming number of animals that were being euthanized at that time, Ashby said. She stayed up at night doing research on what she could do to help and came across a book that explained how vets could improve dog behavior so they were less likely to end up in a shelter.

Ashby reached out to local dog trainers and rescue groups, and started the Miami Veterinary Coalition to Prevent Unwanted Pets & Pet Euthansia. The organization teaches local vets and the public about force-free training, a technique that uses positive reinforcement like treats to shape dog behavior. Ashbys group partnered with Escobar to teach the technique to students in the vet science program, and for the first few years the students brought dogs from a local rescue program to the school for training.

This year for the first time, Felix Varela has partnered with Miami-Dade County Animal Services to bring dogs directly from the shelter to the high school. The six dogs taken from a Doral shelter this semester lived in kennels attached to Escobars classroom and played in a spacious outdoor area behind the school. For 10 weeks, students trained the animals, coming in at 6 every morning to check on the dogs before class and squeezing in whatever time they could during the day between classes, homework and their other obligations. On weekends and during Escobars class, they doubled down on the behavior training.

The students also documented the dogs transformation, posting pictures and videos on a Facebook page for prospective families. By the end of the semester, the students had found homes for all of the animals. The hardest part, they said, was saying goodbye to the dogs they had grown to love. One student broke down in tears when the dog she had worked with all semester was placed with a family.

The sense of loss will be short-lived, however. Come January, the students will pick six more dogs from the shelter and start the training process all over again.

Students in the vet science program are studying to become veterinary assistants while they are in high school, and many plan to become vets or work with animals in another capacity after they graduate. Ashby and Escobar hope that as the students start their careers, their knowledge of force-free training techniques will help change the way pet owners interact with canines and hopefully keep more animals from ending up in shelters.

In the meantime, the SPOTS program also serves another purpose, said Jennifer Hernandez, 17, one of three seniors who helps Escobar oversee the training along with classmates Dawson and Marcela Alvaro, 17. For students who feel out of place at school or struggle to make friends, the SPOTS program provides a sense of belonging.

This is their getaway, Hernandez said. The dogs dont judge the kids  the dog becomes their best friend.

Dawson agreed. The dogs just listen and look at you like, I love you, she said.

They forget about the problems, Hernandez said. Its another world. They forget about the math test they failed.

Alvaro nodded. Its a relief, she said.
DECATUR  Two Indiana men who were allegedly transporting more than 10 pounds of marijuana to sell in Decatur were arrested after a traffic stop on Interstate 72.

A gray 2016 Dodge Dart with Ohio license plates was traveling east on Interstate 72 on Dec. 21, when police pulled it over for traffic violations.

The driver, 41-year-old Tulane Hardaway, and the passenger, 35-year-old Quentin Hawkins, both told police they were traveling from St. Louis.

During the stop, numerous indicators of criminal activity were observed relative to Hardaway's behavior and their travel plans, said a probable cause affidavit by Decatur Street Crimes Unit detective Chad Larner.

Larner used his K-9 partner, Leeroy, to conduct a sniff investigation of the exterior of the car, which indicated the presence of narcotics.

When asked about the presence of marijuana inside of the vehicle, Hardaway stated, 'There shouldn't be,' Larner wrote in his statement. Hardaway acknowledged to police during the roadside stop that he had seen the inside of the trunk the previous day.

Detectives found in the trunk a sealed plastic bag containing 11 bags containing high-grade marijuana with a street value of more than $50,000.

When questioned about the marijuana in the trunk, Hardaway then denied having been inside the trunk and denied knowledge and ownership.

However, he did admit that a bag containing about 3.3 grams of marijuana, found inside his coat pocket, belonged to him.

Detectives also found a bag containing about 4 grams of marijuana in the possession of Hawkins. He also denied that he owned the marijuana found in the trunk.

Both men were booked into the Macon County Jail, with bonds set for each at $250,000. Each man was charged Wednesday with felony counts of cannabis trafficking, punishable by eight to 30 years in prison, and possession of cannabis with intent to deliver.

Hardaway was arraigned on his charges Thursday. He is due in court Jan. 18 for his preliminary hearing.

Hawkins was released from jail after posting $25,000 cash bail Dec. 27 and is due in court Jan. 24 for his arraignment.
Optimism among local business executives surged to a six-year high in a recent survey conducted by the University of Richmonds Robins School of Business and the Virginia Council of CEOs.

About 62 percent of the chief executive officers in central Virginia who participated in the December survey said they expect hiring to improve in the next six months. That was up from 50 percent who expected an increase in the third quarter of 2016.

Only 1.5 percent said they expect to cut staff in the next six months.

Eighty-two percent of the executives in the fourth-quarter survey said they expect sales to improve for their firms over the next six months, up from 66 percent who were expecting sales increases in the third quarter of 2016.

It was a very significant bump in optimism, said Randy Raggio, associate dean at the Robins School who administers the survey and collects the responses each quarter. In surveys in mid-2016, CEOs had expressed some anxiety about the presidential election. It appears that the optimism has returned.

The Robins School of Business and the Virginia Council of CEOs have jointly conducted the quarterly survey since 2010. The most recent survey drew responses from 68 business executives for small- and medium-sized firms in central Virginia, in a range of industries.

The average company whose CEO responded to the survey had about $6.2 million in revenue for the most recent 12-month period. The average number of employees was 56.

The surveys index, which measures executives views on projected hiring, capital spending and sales over the next six months, surpassed previous highs recorded in the first quarter of 2016 and the third quarter of 2015.

The survey results indicate that 2017 will be a relatively strong year for small businesses, said Scot McRoberts, executive director of the Virginia Council of CEOs.

Business managers continue to cite acquiring and retaining talented workers as a major problem, and that will remain a major hurdle, for businesses in 2017, McRoberts said.

Forty-four percent of the survey respondents said they expect capital spending to increase over the next six months, up from 36 percent in the third quarter of 2016.

However, 47 percent said they expect capital spending to stay flat, nearly identical to the 48 percent who expected flat capital spending in the third quarter.

Mark Creery, owner and president of Data Directions Inc., a Hanover County-based software development firm, said his views reflect the survey results.

I am optimistic about 2017, he said. I think the last several years have been fairly flat and we are ready for an upturn.

Creery said he expects to hire two or three people in 2017 for technical jobs, adding to his staff of 15.

The survey also asked executives how they think the incoming Trump administration will affect profits for central Virginia companies.

A slight majority  53 percent  said they expect no impact on profits in the next six months. Thirty-eight percent said they expect the Trump administration will lead to increased profits, while 9 percent expect a decrease in profits.

Business people tend to view a Republican administration as more friendly to business, Creery said. That remains to be seen, with Trump, he added, but he thinks the simple fact of a change in leadership tends to spark some confidence.

The survey also asked CEOs the biggest issue they expect to address in the coming year.

Sixty-three percent cited hiring and staffing challenges, 13 percent cited responding to slow growth, 7 percent cited cybersecurity, and 16 percent indicated a variety of other issues, including talent development, growth and efficiency.

A separate report this week by the National Federation of Independent Business indicated that the percentage of small business owners nationally who are uncertain about the economic outlook declined from 23 percent to 12 percent in December.

The percentage of owners unsure about making capital expenditures fell from 20 to 10 percent, the NFIB said.
Richmond police are searching for two people who robbed a man at gunpoint on Monday.

About 10:35 p.m. Monday, a man was unloading packages from his car when two males approached him, brandished a firearm and robbed the man of his wallet, according to police.

The robbery happened in the 1500 block of Armfield Road, and one of the assailants was captured on a security camera walking into a nearby convenience store, where he used the victim's credit card, police said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Derrick Longoria at (804) 646-8171 or Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000.
A growing number of Hanover County residents are signing a petition calling for a freeze on the construction of residential developments.

On Wednesday, a group calling itself Atlee Residents for Responsible Development published the petition on the website Change .org with the title Moratorium on New Residential Construction in Hanover County, VA. As of Thursday afternoon, 151 supporters had backed the effort.

The sticking point for the petition that is planned to be delivered to the Board of Supervisors is residential development along Atlee Station Road in the countys Chickahominy District.

While this area is designated as suburban service area per the comprehensive plan, nearly half of all new residential construction in the entire county was located along this 4-mile stretch of road, the petition reads. There are well over 1000 additional units planned for this area with no plan to address the traffic congestion, safety, or schools.

The petition goes on to say the county should refrain from rezoning any parcel that isnt already designated for a residential use. The petition also calls for a stoppage on issuing new building permits for residential construction jobs.

It asks for the building freeze to go into effect for 12 months or until Hanovers Comprehensive Plan review is finished and the county develops a long-term plan addressing increased traffic and school population in Hanovers suburban corridor.

The Villages at Taylor Farm, a subdivision proposed at the intersection of Honey Meadows and Atlee Station roads, is an example of a development that would add to the corridors density. At a community meeting in October, roughly 75 people spoke against the proposed 168-home, 42 acre subdivision.

Web Stokes, a project manager for a commercial flooring company, penned the petition. He has lived in the Kings Charter subdivision at the western end of Atlee Station Road for about four years.

Stokes is worried that the county doesnt have a plan in place to handle the burden an increasing population will put on roads and schools.

Theres a lot of money thats going to have to come from somewhere, Stokes said. We as a people, whose money it is, need to be involved.

Stokes said an increased density poses a risk to the quality of life that attracts people to live in Hanover in the first place. He added that he doesnt want to keep people out of Hanover, but does want to be fair to the people already living there.

The three schools in the Atlee Station Road corridor are Cool Spring Elementary, Chickahominy Middle and Atlee High schools. Chris Whitley, a spokesman for Hanover County Public Schools, said enrollment across the school division is flat and projected to remain that way for the next five years.

Cool Spring Elementary is at 81 percent of its capacity and has a relatively flat projected growth rate over the following five years, officials said. Chickahominy Middle School is at 92 percent of its capacity and is expected to drop to 89 percent in 2021. Atlee High School was at 99 percent of its enrollment capacity in 2016 and is expected to drop to 95 percent in 2017 and level out to 97 percent of its capacity by 2021.

Not everyone has looked at Atlee Station Roads growing density with furrowed brows. A bartender at Martys Grill said the eatery near the corner of Atlee Station Road and U.S. 301 has seen business pick up as more people have moved into the area.

Angela Kelley-Wiecek, who represents the Chickahominy District, said she recognizes the petition grows out of serious concerns. She said the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that there is no authority for localities to impose a moratorium on rezoning applications or any other stage of the development process.

We hear their concerns, and we are committed to working to address them, Kelley-Wiecek said in an email. Hanover County does have extensive plans to assure that roads, schools, public safety, recreation, utilities and other public facilities are adequate to serve current and future residents of the county.

Kelley-Wiecek added that state law requires that applications for rezoning be considered and either approved or denied within 12 months of the application date.

Southeast of the Chickahominy District is the Mechanicsville District, which is represented by W. Canova Peterson. He said blocking construction of residential homes didnt seem feasible.

Peterson said reviews of the Comprehensive Plan are in place so county officials and residents can address how to manage growth in the county. He added that recent General Assembly legislation has put a damper on localities ability to collect cash proffers  fees developers pay to mitigate the impacts of a developments new residents have on services such as transportation.
How'd the district get here, and what's the plan going forward? Catch up, then read the latest story here.

February 2016: School board President Sherri Perkins meets with Taylor to tell her that her contract would not be extended past its June 2017 end date. Taylor said Perkins told her the board was split, 4-3 in her favor. Perkins declined to answer questions about the reason for that decision. Supporters of Taylor, all wearing yellow, pack a school board work session to question the board's decision and express their disagreement.

March 2016: After meeting for more than three hours, the board votes to table the issue of Taylor's contract. There is discussion about the use of "p-cards," credit cards given to administrators and backed by the district; it appears that questions about the cards were at least part of the reason the four board members were reluctant to extend the contract.

April 2016: Taylor announces her resignation to become a high school principal in Heyworth, a community in McLean County with a population of about 2,600. She said goodbye to Decatur at the end of the school year.

May 2016: The board appoints Michael Dugan and Bobbi Williams co-interim superintendents, effective immediately.

December 2016: Seven candidates file to run for four spots on the Decatur School Board. The two incumbents who are seeking to keep their seats, Alida Graham and B.A. Buttz, were not in favor of extending Taylor's contract. Their challengers include Kendall Briscoe, Beth Creighton, Courtney Carson, Beth Nolan and Al Scheider.

Jan. 5: The board meets with its search consultant in a special meeting to discuss community feedback and the process going forward. Consultant Bill Attea tells the board he will advice if any candidates are concerned about being hired before the upcoming election. He also told the board there is a "high level of frustration" toward it from the Decatur community.

Feb. 28: A slate of candidates is scheduled to be presented to the board, with interviews over the following weeks.

March 28: The board could announce its selection of a superintendent at a meeting.

April 4: Consolidated election, which includes four school board slots.
Because the Virginia General Assembly doesnt provide live video feeds of its committee hearings, a progressive advocacy group is stepping up to fill the information void.

On Friday, Progress Virginia announced its Eyes on Richmond transparency project for the legislative session that begins next week.

The General Assembly offers a live video feed of daily floor sessions in the House of Delegates and Senate. But theres no streaming of committee meetings, the legislative killing fields where thousands of bills are initially vetted and many are left to die.

In a news release, Progress Virginia Executive Director Anna Scholl called the legislature purposefully opaque to the citizens its supposed to be serving.

Elected officials are there to do our business and now more citizens than ever before will be able to monitor those actions in real time, Scholl said.

With 17 paid legislative fellows to carry out the project, Scholl said the goal is to cover roughly 75 percent of committee meetings. Panels taking up meatier policy topics will be prioritized, Scholl said, while committees that deal with more obscure, technical matters may not be covered.

The videos will be available at EyesonRichmond.org.
Few battles are more important than the one against cancer, and Haley Automotive Group is walking the walk when it comes to fighting that fight. On Nov. 5, Haley served as the presenting sponsor at the inaugural Cattle Barons Ball held at Keystone Acres in Chesterfield County.

The event raised $487,500 for the American Cancer Society, said Danette Hodges, development manager at the local office of the American Cancer Society, in an email. Thats an impressive haul. Everyone got into the country western theme of the event, Hodges said. No need for stuffy ball gowns and tuxedos. People were comfortable in their boots, jeans and cowboy hats! It was a party from the time you entered the ranch. The event featured a custom water tower, food by Mosaic Catering, live music and both live and silent auctions, Hodges said.

Doug Pridgen, who serves as CEO of Haley Automotive Group, and his wife Ginger spearheaded Haleys involvement in the event. Pridgen noted in an email that Haley has sponsored events for the American Cancer Society for years and wanted to help get the Cattle Barons Ball off the ground here in town.

The American Cancer Society has had success around the country with these Cattle Barons Balls, which I think started in Texas many years ago, Pridgen wrote in an email. We agreed to step up our contribution and work with ACS to start one of these in Richmond because we felt we could attract more sponsors and attendees. It also gave us the ability to have our employees get more involved by selling raffle tickets, which brought in over $45,000.

The event sounds like it was a great time, and Hodges was clear in her praise for the Pridgens. She also lauded them for getting everyone in the dealerships energized about the event. They involved their entire team from general managers to serve on the planning committee to the service advisors who sold raffle tickets to customers for a chance to win a new car, Hodges wrote. The folks at Haley appreciate not only what employees did to help but also what those in the community did to make the event a success. Add to that an auction committee, led by Gray Maher who knocked it out of the park, and other Haley staff members, friends and colleagues who stepped up to the plate; Haley couldnt be more grateful, said Judi Anderson, marketing director at Haley Automotive Group, in an email.

It sounds like it was a team effort to make such a special event happen, and the Cattle Barons Ball is an excellent example of what can happen when passion meets purpose. The Haley Automotive Group has tons of cars across its 11 dealerships. Haley also has heart and is keeping an eye on what matters most: giving back. The second annual Cattle Barons Ball will be held on Oct. 28, 2017 at Keystone Acres.
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DECATUR  Dick Lacy was just 14 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

With American involvement in World War II lasting less than four years, few men in his age group donned a uniform in time to see combat action.

Because the Japanese surrendered right before he shipped out for sea duty, Lacy had the unique experience of interacting with enemy submarines crewed by men who were not aware that the war ended. He has the distinction of serving in treacherous waters, while hoping not to have to destroy the lives of sailors who were no longer their enemies.

Lacy's journey to the western Pacific Ocean began while he was attending Mattoon High School in 1944. He enlisted in the Navy, which trained him as a cook. He was assigned to the USS Strickland, a destroyer escort commissioned the same year. The Strickland had escorted warships and merchant vessels to England, France and the Mediterranean before heading for the Pacific.

I didn't get a draft notice, because I enlisted in the Navy, said Lacy, 89, during an interview in his far northside home, where he lives with Betty, his wife of 71 years and high school sweetheart. My dad took me to Springfield to enlist in the Navy.

It was January 1945, one month before his 18th birthday, and the war was still raging in Europe and the Pacific. He was awarded his high school degree ahead of graduation, a provision for those who wanted to serve.

During World War II, they grabbed guys as soon as they turned 18, Lacy said. He figured the Navy was a better choice than the Army. I wasn't fond of living in a foxhole. I thought I'd rather be on a ship. At least if you were shot at, you would be dry.

Because of the dire need for replacements on the high seas, the basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, North Chicago, was shortened from the normal 12-week period to an intensive seven weeks.

Lacy was well-prepared, because he had trained for service as a member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, ROTC, at Mattoon High School.

At the end of the seven weeks I came home, and Betty and I got married, Lacy said.

Then he was not only among the youngest members of the armed services to complete his basic training, but one of the youngest married men in uniform. He was 18 years, two months and two days old on his wedding day.

Young men and women grew up fast in those days. As Lacy was completing his training at cook and baker school in Sampson, N.Y., thousands of other young men were fighting and dying on battlefields in Germany and Okinawa.

His marriage provided Lacy with a rare comfort.

While I was there, Betty moved up to Geneva, Lacy said. When we got a weekend off, she was right there close.

Ecstasy as war ends

During his training period, Dick Lacy was put to work in the midst of the war's frenzy, as thousands of replacement troops were rushed from coast to coast to be shipped into battle.

We had trainloads of soldiers, going to the Pacific. It took four or five days to get there with a steam locomotive pulling 15 to 30 cars each trip, he said.

The student cooks set up crude butane stoves in express cars.

Very little cooking was done, Lacy said, adding that it took a tremendous effort to get all the soldiers in and out three times a day, feeding them mostly sandwiches, cereals and fruit.

Lacy was on two troop trains from New York state to Los Angeles.

That was quite an experience for a Midwest boy to see all that. I had never been hardly anywhere before that. Most of us were Depression kids," he said. "Most of us hadn't been more than 25 miles away from home. There was no need to, and nobody had a car.

"That was the first time I ever saw a mountain, and it was unbelievable. We went by the Great Salt Lake on the train.

After he completed his training, Lacy was shipped out to Guam, to meet the USS Strickland, as a replacement for someone who would be discharged. He was in San Francisco, awaiting a ship to meet the Strickland when he heard the news of the Japanese surrender.

I was ecstatic, everybody was. We thought: It won't be long now, Lacy said. But it was longer than we thought, because a lot of guys who were older were let out first, which was fair. So I was in about 18 months before I could be released.

The USS Strickland was especially needed to go out on patrol, because communication was imperfect within the Imperial Japanese Navy.

So it was pretty dangerous out there, even though the war was over. These Japanese submarines didn't know the war was over. They were out there hunting U.S. ships," he said.

It was not easy to make contact with the submarines, to try to convince their officers that the war had ended.

They were dead set against Japan losing. It was still tricky, because we were still escorting aircraft carriers from one place to the next, Lacy said.

And the Japanese were instructed to die, Betty Lacy said.

They were to die rather than surrender, Dick Lacy added.

The aircraft carriers the Strickland escorted hopped from island to island.

We hoped that that force wouldn't be used, but it might be, said Lacy, whose assigned battle station was on a ladder, passing canisters of ammunition to the machine gunners.

The ship patrolled islands that included Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Tinian and Saipan. We made stops in all those islands after the war for various reasons.

The patrols were implemented just in case of hostile actions by Japanese forces. There were reports for years, even decades after the war, of soldiers emerging from the jungles of various islands who did not know the war was over.

Lacy saw evidence of the destructive forces at work during the war.

At Iwo Jima, there were lots of lots of sunken ships. You could see that the island had been blown to bits," he said. "On the sides of cliffs, there were thousands of holes where shells had hit them. Trees had been blown up and shattered. It was just a horrible mess. There was almost no way you could get to shore, there was so much debris out there. We were never allowed to go onshore.

He went onshore on a few islands, sometimes for designated recreation days. One place sticks out in his memory. There was a well-stocked supply island, with thousands of items on hand.

There was a depot for clothing there, with about five guys running the depot, he said.

There was a large supply of clothing on hand, despite the fact that few soldiers were left on any of the islands.

On board our ship, we had an ice cream maker, which was a luxury. These guys had been there who knows how long, 120 degrees every day on the island. We traded ice cream for shoes, jeans and a shirt for every guy on the ship," he said.

Danger in peacetime

There were four cooks and two bakers aboard the Strickland, to feed 125 to 150 sailors.

The bakers worked at night, while we were sleeping. They couldn't work during the day, because we only had two ovens, Lacy said.

When submarines were nearby, they tried to signal to let them know they came in peace. The wakes of periscopes would alert the sailors to their presence. When there was no response, depth charges were dropped. Results were uncertain.

Sometimes you would see articles of clothing, or some oil, maybe to make us think we hit them. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't, he said. There was no real way of knowing. It was still a dangerous situation for a while.

Betty reminded her husband that at a reunion one of the bakers said that there were 23 incidents in which the call went out for general quarters, due to possible enemy vessels in the area. Many of those incidents occurred at night.

They were harder to see at night, but you could see them, because the wake was fluorescent at night, Lacy said. So they would see a straight line of fluorescent light and they knew somebody was out there. Plus sonar also detected some movement, but you did not know what it was out there, was it Japanese, was it American, Australian?

A few years after the war, the Lacys returned to Mattoon, where he Dick went to work for Procter & Gamble, in sales and merchandising. His job took him to Decatur in 1960, where he remained after his retirement.

Lacy said he remembers his time aboard ship as many boring days with extreme heat and only enough fresh water for three-minute weekly showers.

It wasn't appealing to me, but it wasn't devastating, Lacy said. What I have learned is freedom is the most precious thing we own. We can say and do as we please pretty much so as long as we don't step on someone else's rights to do the same thing. Because of defeating Hitler and Japan, that gave us that right.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Bank of Botetourt is pleased to announce the following promotions:

 Paula A. Rhodes: VP  Deposit Services, Buchanan Care Center Office

 Amanda L. Robinson: VP  Financial Advisor, Daleville Office

 Mary Ann L. Miller: VP  Business Relationship & Communications Officer, Daleville Office

Paula A. Rhodes has been promoted to Vice President of Deposit Services. Rhodes is a 2015 graduate from the Virginia Bankers School of Bank Management at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She joined the Bank in 1998 and has served in various capacities throughout her tenure. Paula will continue to oversee Deposit Operations, Electronic Banking, and Card Services from the Banks Buchanan Care Center Office. Rhodes previously lived in Bedford and has been a resident of Botetourt for over twenty five years. She currently resides in Buchanan with her husband, Brian and their two children, Madison and Mason.

Amanda L. Robinson has been promoted to Vice President. She has twenty seven years experience in the industry and has extensive knowledge derived from her time as a financial advisor and licensed financial specialist. Her areas of expertise include mortgage origination, consumer loans, deposit accounts and retail investments. She has previously worked with Wachovia Bank, Wachovia Securities, and First Union National Bank. Robinson will continue to work from the Banks office at Daleville Town Center where she currently advises clients on how best to grow their financial assets and plan for retirement using an array of financial resource planning tools and products. Amanda earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Education with a Marketing and Development Concentration including a Training and Development Option from Virginia Tech. She is a member of the Clearbrook Civic League and also the Cave Spring High School Band Boosters Club. She currently resides in Roanoke County with her husband, Rob and their two children, Nigel and Roxanne.

Mary Ann L. Miller has been promoted to Vice President. She will continue serving as the Banks Business Relationship and Communications Officer out of the Banks Daleville Town Center location. A graduate of Bridgewater College, Mary Ann has been in the banking industry for more than fourteen years. She is currently serving on the Board and Executive Committee of the Botetourt County Chamber of Commerce, the Board of the Daleville Institute, Inc. (Daleville Town Centers non-profit organization). She is also a Citizen Representative on the Botetourt Greenway Commission, and a member of the Botetourt Family YMCA Steering Committee. A native of Botetourt County, Mary Ann resides in Daleville with her husband, Matthew.Bank of Botetourt was chartered in 1899 and operates twelve retail offices in the Botetourt, Rockbridge, Roanoke, and Franklin counties of Virginia; and the mortgage company Virginia Mountain Mortgage. The Bank maintains thirteen ATMs around the area, seven of which accept deposits, and offers fee-free ATM access at any Sheetz location in the country.

Submitted by Mary Ann Miller
MOUNT PULASKI  A proposed $400 million Logan County wind farm will move forward with new owners, who said that while existing terms will be honored, some of the turbine sites will change.

Swift Current Energy, a new firm based near Portland, Maine, has purchased the Meridian Wind Farm Project from Relight, a company based in Italy. The deal was finalized Dec. 8, said Matt Birchby, Swift Current Energy principal.

We will be meeting with the property owners and introducing ourselves to the citizens and leaders of Logan County next week, he said.

A series of meetings and information sessions have been scheduled with landowners who previously signed with Relight to host 81 turbines for what now will be called the Hilltopper Wind Farm Project. The wind farm will be south and west of Mount Pulaski with towers stretching to Elkhart and Broadwell.

Everything will be pretty much the same, Birchby said. As the new owners, we are bound by all of the previous agreements and conditions in the previous contracts from the Relight.

That also holds true for the conditional use permit approved by the Logan County Board in July 2015.

There will be some location changes, however.

"We will probably need to correct the turbine layout that Relight did, because there are basic rules of thumb as far as turbine spacing and some of those basic rules were violated," he said. "So we will have to fix that, but there is a process associated with that. But beyond that, everything else will be the same.

The county approved the construction of 81 wind turbines and the construction of a new power substation in Mount Pulaski. The towers will be about 300 feet high and with the blades attached, the tip of the blade would reach 491 feet.

Bill Thomas, Logan County Economic Development Partnership executive director, said he has met with Swift Current Energy officials and believes the change in ownership should be a bonus for Logan County residents.

I am very excited about this because I believe they have a very good understanding of rural areas like ours, he said.

Swift Current Energy was formed last summer, Birchby said, but includes a team of experienced wind farm energy experts.

We have over 80 years of experience in this field and we believe this is a great opportunity for us, he said.

Thomas said he wasnt concerned that the company just started.

I feel very comfortable with them and know they will do well, he said.

Construction is expected to start later this year, but a completion deadline has not been finalized.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon, urging Virginia residents to prepare for impacts from a winter storm system through Saturday.

The storm this weekend could drop up to a foot of snow in southeast Virginia, with snowfall totals in other areas of the state ranging from 1 to 10 inches, which could result in power outages, the governors statement said. An estimated 2 to 4 inches were expected in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

With this forecast in mind, all Virginians should take the necessary precautions now to ensure they are prepared for travel disruptions and possible power outages during a cold weather period, McAuliffe said in a prepared statement. Please check on neighbors, especially the elderly and those who are unable to leave their homes, as well as family and friends to ensure they are ready for this storm and any possible inconveniences or interruptions that may result.

A rare blizzard warning was issued for the Hampton Roads area, where winds gusting over 35 mph combined with heavy snow could creating blinding whiteout conditions.

With several inches possible Friday night and Saturday in Central Virginia, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Richmond from 10 p.m. Friday through 10 p.m. Saturday, and city officials said Friday that its crews began applying chemical treatments to many major roads.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Department of Transportation began applying anti-icing treatment to major routes Wednesday to help keep snow from bonding with the pavement in many parts of the state. VDOT warned, however, that ice and snow can still produce hazardous driving conditions even when roads are treated.

The states transportation crews are also set to work in 12-hour shifts to treat the roads, with salt used to melt the ice and sand used to provide drivers with extra traction.

VDOTs goal is to have roads passable within 48 hours after the storms end, the department wrote in a statement Friday. Crews first clear interstates, primary roads (routes numbered 1-599) and major secondary roads that connect localities, fire stations, employment hubs, military posts, schools, hospitals and other important public facilities. They will then shift resources to secondary routes as conditions allow.
Letters 11-4-22 A Vote For Tom Sullivan Dear Editor: On Election Day, I will be proudly voting for Colonel Thomas P. Sullivan for State Assembly. A proven leader, and financial professional. A vote for Tom Sullivan is...

Letters 10-28-22 Thanks, Stacey Dear Editor: I would like to recognize Stacey Amato for the tireless work she has done in our community. She responded to every call I have ever made to her office with results....
Im not so sure when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. It could have been when my parents bought a clunky camera with a tiny microphone and fuzzy windscreen  perfect for documentaries about road trips and family vacations. Or it could have been when I saw my first byline in the high school newspaper, the illustrious Trojan Trumpet.

Really, it could have been any of those and many more when I realized being a journalist was about the best gig around.

Ive never looked back.

Which brings me here. Im Chris Coates, the new editor of the Herald & Review. I was chosen last month to lead this talented newsroom.

Im excited to be here.

About me: Im a Midwest native, raised in Trenton, Michigan, just south of Detroit. I met my future wife, who grew up near St. Louis, in the dorms of Columbia College Chicago, a couple blocks from South Michigan Avenue and Buckingham Fountain. I majored in broadcast journalism and spent far too much time on the student newspaper.

Ive been fortunate to work as a business reporter in Los Angeles, as managing editor of Illinois publications for the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, and as editor of the Sioux City Journal in northwestern Iowa. I most recently was watchdog editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, part of the USA Today Network.

Im also fortunate to be the father of two daughters, ages 2 and 4, who are seriously into princesses and really excited about the trampoline they got for Christmas. The Coates team is rounded out by a pug and pug/french bulldog mix  both rescue dogs, both still adapting to the aforementioned daughters. Were a loud bunch.

Im excited about this next chapter for my family and me. This newsroom is full of committed journalists, and Im eager to get to know them and the Decatur area. I strongly believe a vibrant, engaging newspaper and analytical journalism are critical to a thriving community.

Our team is here to watch out for your interests  to offer smart coverage, to challenge assumptions, to enlighten. Its a responsibility we take seriously because were residents of this community, too. Were your neighbors, the parents at your child's school concert, the customer in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Were right here next to you.

But first, Im here to listen  and I hope you can help me. My phone number is (217) 421-8905, email is ccoates@herald-review.com and Twitter is @ByChrisCoates. If youve got a question, a concern, a story idea or a speaking opportunity, please reach out.

Im looking forward to hearing from you, and you can expect to hear from me as well. I'll be offering ideas and explaining what were doing here at the Herald & Review.

Lets start a conversation. Your input is important to me.

Thanks for reading.
Following threats of genocide to ten mosques in five states across the U.S. in late November, Armenian Americans drafted a statement of solidarity with Muslims and other groups experiencing recent escalations of hate crimes since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. As of today, five Armenian organizations have endorsed the statement.

The statement and list of organizational and individual signatories to the statement can be found here.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are an estimated 892 hate groups in the U.S. The figure represents a 14% increase from the previous year, and an increase for the first time in three years, coinciding with Trump's candidacy. In the month following the election, the SPLC has counted 1094 bias-related incidents.

As a community made up of many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of genocide survivors, the statement reads, we will not tolerate any group of people being targeted with hatred or violence.

Writer Nancy Agabian, one of the co-authors of the statement said, Our voices matter to Muslim Americans. As a people of conscience, we must actively condemn any attempt to normalize the dehumanization of marginalized communities in the U.S. We are also direct targets of Trumps hateful rhetoric, as immigrants, West Asian and Middle Easterners, and LGBTQ, so we must stay vigilant to protect our community as well.

The statement has sparked concern of how else the incoming Trump administrations policies will affect vulnerable communities. We are gravely concerned for the working-class Armenians who are recipients of social services such as Section 8 housing, Medicare and social security, said Hasmik Geghamyan, a civil rights lawyer based in California. Those programs are being threatened right now, and many social workers in Los Angeles fear that taking away these programs could put the community in crisis. We hope this statement will awaken those who have been silent for way too long.

The statement can be signed by anyone who identifies as Armenian or by an Armenian-led organization. The link to sign can be found here.
Canadian stocks continued to rise Thursday, with Toronto's main index nearing its all-time high.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 69.83 points, or 0.45 percent, to 15,586.58 its highest in 20 months.

However, the advance was fueled by skyrocketing gold stocks. The Gold Index was up 6 percent, as gold prices touched their highest in five weeks. Rising gold prices can be seen as evidence of some anxiety in the as the U.S. transitions to a new president.

Financials were flat today, preserving recent gains, but energy stocks slipped despite rising crude oil prices.

Power Corporation of Canada (POW.TO) announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire an additional 3.9% equity interest in China Asset Management Co., Ltd. (China AMC) for C$179 million from a Chinese state-owned enterprise. The stock was flat.

Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (PWT.TO) announced David Hendry, Penn West's Vice President of Finance for the last two years, will assume the position of CFO. Penn West also announced its 2017 total capital budget of $180 million, up from last year. Shares rose 3.7 percent.

Kelt Exploration Ltd.(KEL.TO) has agreed to sell Karr properties for $100 million. The stock added 6 percent.

BlackBerry (BB.TO) has signed a partnership with Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm. The stock was down 0.3 percent.

On the economic front, a report from Statistics Canada showed this morning that the Canadian industrial product price index increased by 0.3 percent in November.

China's private sector expanded at the fastest pace in 45 months in December as both manufacturers and services providers reported stronger increases in activity.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Apple Thursday revealed that the total revenue of the App Store topped $28.5 billion in 2016, record-breaking revenue figures for iOS apps.

The app developers collected about $20 billion while Apple received a 30 percent share of about $8.5 billion.

Apple customers spent about $240 million on the App Store on New Year's Day alone, according to the statement, making it the busiest day of the year.

Last year, Apple App Store revenues were over $20 billion, with developers taking more than $14 billion and Apple's earning about $6 billion.

Apple said last year's sales of apps rose 90 percent in China, a place where the tech giant has been facing pressure from authorities to pull out some apps.

Apple had confirmed that Chinese authorities had asked the company to pull out the New York Times app from its App Store in China. According to reports, the Chinese government had started blocking The Times's websites in 2012, after wire published few articles on the wealth of the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Ford Motor Co. (F) and its joint ventures in China sold nearly 150,000 vehicles in December 2016, up 21 percent over 2015. The growth was driven by strong demand for Ford's expanded lineup of SUVs such as the Ford Edge and Explorer, the Ford Taurus large car, and performance vehicles such as the Ford Mustang.

Ford Motor Company sales surged 23 percent in China in December.

For all of 2016, Ford Motor Company sales totaled a best-ever 1.27 million vehicles, 14 percent higher than 2015. That total includes sales by joint ventures Changan Ford Automobile and Jiangling Motors Corporation, sales of Ford models imported to China and Lincoln, which has become the fastest growing luxury brand in China.

Changan Ford Automobile, Ford's passenger car joint venture, broke both annual and December sales records. CAF sold more than 957,000 vehicles in 2016, up 14 percent compared to 2015. December sales totaled more than 115,000 vehicles, a 19 percent increase compared to December 2015.

Jiangling Motor Corp., Ford's other joint venture in China, sold 265,056 vehicles in 2016, a 7 percent increase compared to 2015. December sales totaled 32,193 vehicles, up 28 percent compared to December 2015.

Lincoln has also had a strong year in 2016, with sales totaling 32,558 vehicles, a nearly three-fold increase compared to 2015. Lincoln's strong performance was supported by Chinese customers' positive reception of Lincoln SUVs and the growing number of dealerships, which reached 65 in 2016. In terms of sales, five of Lincoln's top 10 dealerships and 11 of the top 20 were based in China in 2016.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Editors Pick

French Financial services major Societe Generale reported Friday weak profit in its third quarter, despite higher revenues amid increasingly complex geopolitical and economic environment. In Paris, the shares were gaining around 5 percent. Frederic Oudea, the Chief Executive Officer, said, "The third quarter is marked by increasing revenues, continued control of operating expenses..."

Health and hygiene products maker Reckitt is recalling its certain AirWick Fresh New Day aerosol air fresheners due to injury and laceration risks, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. The recall involves about 67,000 units of aerosol air fresheners in Fresh Linen and Fresh Water scents.

Nestle USA Inc., affiliated to Swiss food and beverage giant Nestle SA, is recalling a limited quantity of Edible Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough tubs from TOLL HOUSE citing the potential presence of soft plastic film, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The recall involves three batches of Edible Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough tubs from NESTLE TOLL HOUSE.
A Cuban company has signed agreement with its US counterpart for the first commercial exports in half a century from the Communist nation to the United States.

Under a deal signed by Isabel O'Reilly, director of CubaExport, and Scott Gilbert, President of Coabana Trading LLC, in Havana Thursday, Marabu charcoal will be sold at $420 per ton, Cuba's state newspaper Granma reported.

This is the highest price achieved by CubaExport in over 10 years marketing this product, which normally sells on the international market for between $340 and $380.

"This will be the first contract, but we hope to continue our relations for many years to come and not just with vegetable charcoal, but other exportable products such as honey and coffee," O'Reilly was quoted as saying.

On January 18, two days before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, the first 40 ton shipment will arrive in the U.S. from Cuba, representing a historic occasion the first export of Cuban goods to the U.S. in five decades.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
The Department of State has designated Hamza bin Laden, son of slain Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Hamza bin Laden has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him.

On August 14, 2015 Hamza bin Laden was officially announced by al-Qa'ida senior leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as an official member of the group. In this 2015 audio message from al-Zawahiri, bin Laden called for acts of terrorism in western capitals. On July 9, 2016, al-Qa'ida issued another audio message from Hamza bin Laden threatening revenge against the United States and warned Americans they would be targeted in the United States and abroad. Specifically, in 2015, bin Laden called for lone offender attacks against U.S., French, and Israeli interests in Washington, D.C.; Paris, France; and Tel Aviv, Israel. Additionally, in 2016, bin Laden called on Saudi Arabian-based tribes to unite with al-Qa'ida's affiliate in Yemen to wage war against Saudi Arabia.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., revealed Thursday that Republican lawmakers will include a measure stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood in legislation to repeal the healthcare reform law known as Obamacare.

Planned Parenthood, a provider of various women's services, receives approximately $500 million a year in federal funding but is a frequent target of the GOP for offering abortions.

The move to link defunding the organization to the repeal of Obamacare is likely to be popular among most Republicans but could complicate efforts to pass the legislation.

Republicans intend to use the budget reconciliation process to pass an Obamacare repeal bill, preventing the legislation from being filibustered in the Senate.

However, the decision to include the measure defunding Planned Parenthood could lead some GOP Senators to oppose the bill.

Republicans currently hold a 52 to 48 majority in the Senate, but all of the Democrats are expected to oppose the bill.

Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have also both opposed previous efforts to strip funding from the organization.

Additionally, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ken., has expressed opposition to the underlying budget measure, because it would add $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years without ever balancing.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
On August 8, 1909, a man named Fontaine Fox arrived with his wife at the Pelham Station in the Village of North Pelham. The couple hopped on the rickety little trolley that met all the trains.





The little trolley shuttled back and forth, at that time, between the Pelham Station on the New Haven Line and the Pelham Manor Station on the New Haven Branch Line. In 1909, the rattletrap trolley click-clacked along tracks laid on Wolfs Lane to Colonial Avenue where it turned toward New Rochelle. It traveled along Colonial Avenue for a few hundred feet, then turned east onto Pelhamdale Avenue along which it traveled to its final stop near the Branch Line railroad trestle above Pelhamdale Avenue. From there, the trolley operator reversed the trolley and returned along the same route to the Pelham Station.

(The following year, 1910, the trolley line was extended all the way to the end of Pelhamdale Avenue at Shore Road.)





On that summer day in 1909, Fontaine Fox and his wife were on their way to visit their cartoonist friend, Charles A. Voight, who lived in Pelham Manor. On the couple's brief trolley ride, as Fox later described in numerous letters and magazine interviews, Fox was struck by the folksy trolley operator with his Airedale beard, the idiosyncratic and rickety little trolley car known locally as the "Pelham Manor Trolley," and the concept that the little trolley met all the trains. Fontaine Fox was so inspired by the ride that he created caricatures of the trolley operator, whom he named "Skipper," and the rickety little trolley that he called the "Toonerville Trolley that Meets All the Trains." From there he created the wildly successful comic strip entitled "Toonerville Folks" that ran in syndication for the next forty years and made Fox a famous and wealthy man. As Fox stated in one interview:





"After years of gestation, the idea for the Toonerville Trolley was born one day up in Westchester County when my wife and I had left New York City to visit Charlie Voight, the cartoonist, in the Pelhams. At the station, we saw a rattletrap of a streetcar, which had as its crew and skipper a wistful old codger with an Airedale beard. He showed as much concern in the performance of his job as you might expect from Captain Hartley when docking the Leviathan."





Source: A Queer Way to Make a Living, The Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 11, 1928, p. 6.









Example of Sunday Comic Strip "Toonerville Folks" by

Fontaine Fox Featuring the Toonerville Trolley and its

Skipper. NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.





For decades, one of the most enduring Pelham history mysteries has been the location of the Charles Voight home that Fontaine Fox and his wife visited on August 8, 1909. Today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog attempts to shed light on that question.





Charles Anthony Voight was born in Brooklyn on April 28, 1887. He showed artistic talent as a youngster and dropped out of school at the age of fourteen. He became a member of the art staff a the New York World, a New York City newspaper, and did freelance advertising art work on the side.





Voight became an early comic strip artist. Eventually he became best known for his long-running comic strip entitled "Betty." According to one brief biography:





"In 1908, he drew his first comic strip, Petey Dink, for the Boston Traveler. When [the comic strip] moved to the New York Herald it became simply Petey (sometimes titled Poor Little Petey). He also drew for the New York World, and for Life, he created a series titled The Optimist.





The Sunday page of his popular glamour girl strip Betty began April 4, 1920 in the New York Herald, there was no daily strip. Comics historian Don Markstein described the strip and characters [as follows]: Betty Thompson's life was filled with cocktail parties, cotillions and affairs of that nature. She wore all the latest high-class fashions, amply displayed by Voight's lush, stylish and highly individual illustration. While Tillie the Toiler, very much a working girl, may seem to have little in common with Betty, they had one strong point of similarity. Both went through handsome dashing men by the carload. . . ."





Source: " Charles A. Voight " in Wikipedia -- The Free Encyclopedia (visited Jan. 2, 2017).





The comic strip Betty ended its run in 1943. Thereafter Voight created art for comic books. He died on February 10, 1947.





Voight and his wife, Nina, lived in Pelham Manor for a time. The million-dollar-question, of course, is "where did they live on August 8, 1909."





Recently, while researching World War I draftees from Pelham, New York, I ran across a newspaper reference to the drafting of Charles A. Voight in July, 1917. According to that record, Voight's address at the time was "541 Rochelle Place" in Pelham. It turns out that there was no such address in Pelham at the time. A quick review of World War I draft registration records, however, quickly revealed that on June 5, 1917, Charles Anthony Voight lived at 514 Rochelle Terrace in the Village of Pelham Manor. (See immediately below.)









World War I Draft Registration Record for Charles

Anthony Voight of 514 Rochelle Terrace in Village

of Pelham Manor. NOTE: Click on Link to Enlarge.





The address is a starting point, of course, but certainly does not answer the question of where in Pelham Voight lived eight years earlier when Fontaine Fox visited him. Thus, the 1910 Federal Census for Pelham was next consulted. Neither Charles Voight nor his wife Nina, however, may be found anywhere in Pelham in the 1910 U.S. Census. Nor has research yet revealed either of them anywhere else in the United States in the 1910 Federal Census. If correct, this suggests, of course, that as was so often the case, they were among the members of the population who were missed in the census count that year.





This leaves us to review the 1905 and 1915 New York State census counts to try to find Charles Voight and his residence.





Sure enough, the 1915 New York State Census shows Charles A. Voight and his wife, Nina, living with a live-in servant (a cook) in the Village of Pelham Manor at 457 Pelham Street. There no longer is a street in Pelham Manor named Pelham Street. That street once was located essentially where today's Monroe Street runs between Hunter Avenue and the end of Monroe Street. The area was profoundly changed by the construction of the New England Thruway (I-95) through the neighborhood during the 1950s. (See map detail immediately below.)









Detail from Map Published in 1910 Showing Location of

Pelham Street in Lower Left Quadrant of the Detail.

in Bromley, George Washington, Atlas of Westchester

Bromley & Co., 1910). NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.









Detail from 1915 New York State Census, Westchester County,

Pelham, Assembly District No. 2, Election District No. 2, Page

14 of 21. (Note: Access via this link requires paid subscription).

NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.





The Voight home at 457 Pelham Street in 1915 was very near the terminus of the Pelham Manor trolley in 1909 when Fontaine Fox took his fateful ride. That fact, of course, is encouraging. It turns out, however, that Voight and his wife seem to have moved into the home at 457 Pelham Street some time after 1909. At the very least, someone else was living in that home in 1910.





Returning to the 1910 U.S. Census for Pelham, it is possible to find the home located at 457 Pelham Street and identify the occupants of that home at the time the census was taken in May, 1910. There were five residents in the home: Felix J. Rush (father and head of household), Centa Rush (wife), Marie G. Rush (daughter), Philomena S. Rush (daughter), and Joseph Dirnago (a brother-in-law). Neither Charles Voight nor his wife is listed. Thus, it would seem that the couple did not live there in 1910 and may well have moved into that home at a later date.









Detail from 1910 U.S. Census, New York, Westchester

County, Town of Pelham, District 0110, Page 48 of 65

(Note: Paid subscription required to access via this link).

NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.





Alas, although this research has added to the body of information regarding various homes in which famed cartoonist Charles A. Voight resided during his time in Pelham, the question of precisely where he lived on August 8, 1909 when Fontaine Fox visited him remains an unanswered question. It remains, for now, one of the most enduring Pelham history mysteries to be resolved, hopefully, in the future.





* * * * *





Below is a bibliography including links to a few of my many previous postings dealing with the topics of the "Toonerville Trolley," horse-drawn railroad cars, electric trolleys and other trolley-related information pertinent to Pelham, New York.



Bell, Blake A., Pelham and the Toonerville Trolley, 82(4) The Westchester Historian, pp. 96-111 (Fall 2006).





Bell, Blake A., Pelham and the Toonerville Trolley, The Pelham Weekly, Vol. XIII, No. 11, Mar. 12, 2004, p. 10, col. 1.

































Tue., Jan. 05, 2010:

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Wed., Dec. 23, 2009:





Thu., Aug. 27, 2009:

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Mon., Aug. 17, 2009:

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Tue., Apr. 19, 2005:

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Labels: 1905, 1909, 1910, 1915, 1917, Charles Voight, Fontaine Fox, Pelham Manor Trolley, Pelham Street, Rochelle Terrace, Toonerville Folks, Toonerville Trolley, Trolley, Trolleys
By SA Commercial Prop News

As 2012 draws to a close, stakeholders in real estate industry have kept a close watch on 2012 outcome and are looking to industry leaders to predict what is to happen in the South African property market in 2013.



Stakeholders in real estate industry have kept a close watch on 2012 outcome and are looking to industry leaders to predict what is to happen in the South African commercial property market sector for 2013.

With the New Year comes a flurry of predictions about the next 12 months. SA Commercial Prop News has synthesized a variety of forecasts from around the industry to create a snapshot of the trends that will shape Commercial Real Estate in 2013. Prospects for the Retail and Industrial sectors appear to be modestly upbeat; Sector-wise, the picture is worst in the Office sector.

Nedbank Corporate Property Finance MD Frank Berkeley says that the likelihood of continued slow growth across SA's various property industries will mean that finding good deals against which to lend will remain a key challenge for property finance houses in the coming year.

OFFICE MARKET: 2013 is not expected to bring a miraculous recovery in office market. Vacancies are rising in inner city and provincial nodes as the economy struggles to start humming again, and a recovery is not expected soon. To let signs continue to mushroom in many of SAs business hubs, creating opportunities for companies to negotiate lower rentals and more favourable terms with landlords turning to be a Tenants' market. Although SA Commercial Prop News has recorded a number of deals secured, the office letting market is tough at the moment.

RETAIL: The Retail sector continues to display strength leading in the testing times. As developing economy, South Africa's retail demand will accelerate in 2013 which will fuel both retail and industrial real estate. A weaker Rand will also positively affect the exporters and industrial tenants that occupy these premises.

INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY MARKET: Industrial rentals also continued to show moderate growth as South African manufacturing dwindles under international economic pressures. According to Johann Boshoff, MD of JHI Properties, industrial property has performed better with transport issues having a significant impact on the choice of location, and easy access to major transport routes even more imperative bearing in mind high fuel costs and Gauteng's e-tolls.

PROPERTY INVESTMENT: Property Investment overall delivered a total return of 5.9%, which was comprised of 1.5% capital growth and a 4.4% income return for the first six months of 2012 according to SAPOA/IPD South African Biannual Property Indicator.

A major obstacle for the industry identified in the results is sky-rocketing operating costs, which are quickly outstripping income growth and pushing cost ratios to unattractive levels.

ECONOMY: In spite of our already fragile economy facing further setbacks, the current economic climate has created a host of opportunities for savvy investors within the commercial property industry.

However considerable uncertainties in Europe, the Middle East and the US, threaten economic financial stability and will continue to weigh on investor sentiment and property yields in 2013.
By SA Commercial Prop News

The 77-hectare Clairwood Racecourse was sold in the last quarter of 2012 to Capital Property Fund for R430m, and the group has plans for developing the land to meet the current needs in the area.



Durbans continuing shortage of flat land suitable for commercial and industrial use is preventing the development of major warehousing in the region.

Companies requiring access to the harbour, as well as close proximity to national road networks add another layer of complexity to the situation. But the development of the Clairwood Racecourse will bring viable opportunities that meet this need.



The last quarter of 2012 saw the sale of Clairwood Racecourse from Golden Circle to Capital Property Fund, who in turn will lease the 77-hectare Durban Racecourse to Golden Circle for a period of two years. During this time, Greyville Racecourse, also owned by Golden Circle, will be upgraded and operations will be moved from Clairwood to the newly renovated premises.



The Clairwood sale last year was negotiated by Galetti Commercial & Industrial, and achieved a selling price of R430m. John Jack, Director for Galetti, comments, The greater Durban area is of huge strategic importance to many large corporates in South Africa, and Capital Property Fund foresaw an opportunity here.



Capital Property Fund has ambitious plans in store for the site. Looking to capitalise on the new multibillion Rand Durban dig-out port that will be located near to Clairwood on the old Durban International Airport site, they plan to develop a mixed-use logistics park consisting of warehouse and distribution facilities.



According to John Jack,  We believe the 5km proximity within the new Durban port will prove attractive to the likes of freight and logistics companies looking to base themselves within a convenient distance of port facilities.



The Clairwood community is also set to benefit from these plans, with Capital Property Fund expecting the project to create jobs and improve security in the area. Special attention will be placed on attractive architecture, as well as constructing an environmentally sustainable development. This will ensure that no noise or harmful emissions will be emitted from the new logistics park.



Once completed the park will boast as much as 300,000sqm under roof space and potentially even more with clever planning. The logistics park will provide a modern offering at competitive rentals and Galetti anticipates a major focus in the wider area ahead, with more the more prudent investors acquiring property within the same precinct.
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Jan-05-2017 23:44 TweetFollow @OregonNews Myanmar's Reward for Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya ISIL threatens Asian country with retaliation for its brutal treatment and extermination of Rohingya Muslims.



(SALEM, Ore.) - Myanmar's problems with ISIS are a microcosm of the worldwide picture, literally a snapshot of what is to come from years of nations persecuting people for being Muslim when political leaders themselves do not possess even the smallest understanding of Islam or the people who comprise the world's newest monotheistic religion. Now the government of Myanmar is threatened by one of the world's largest terrorist networks due to its reprehensible treatment of the country's ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority and few who know the facts could disagree that this is an unsurprising, even warranted reaction from the Islamic State. Like Sri Lanka, these Buddhists are often far from peaceful, in fact segments of the population are murderous. Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist government murdered more than 160,000 Hindu/Christian Tamils in 2009. Myanmar's ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims didn't go as succinctly as Sri Lanka's and it is bringing a much-feared backlash. Myanmar, or Burma, is a Rakhine Buddhist country in Asia that was colonized by the British, then spent decades under a military "junta" or dictatorship. It's most famous citizen is Aung San Suu Kyi, who is supposedly a beacon of light in this strange place. She has done absolutely nothing for the Rohingya, totally refusing to speak out on their behalf when she is regarded as a figure of repressed democracy. The focus of this Buddhist hatred in Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslims, are a stateless people who the United Nations deemed were the most persecuted people on the face of the earth. Buddhist Terror While religious bigotry and hatred has always been an aspect of Myanmar's Buddhists, it came to a head in 2012 when Rohingya Muslims were accused of raping and murdering a Buddhist woman. Photos of a woman's dead body were splashed across newspapers and within 24 hours, a dozen Muslim men, not Rohingya, were pulled from a bus and killed in the streets by a mob in supposed retaliation, many hours from where the alleged rape/murder even took place. So began the Genocide of Rohingya in Burma at the hands of Rakhine Buddhists. The United States on the other hand, used the events of 9/11 to boost and further hatred of Muslim people even though the alleged hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia, a US ally. Along with its lapdog the United Kingdom and a handful of other sheepish allies, Americans attacked and razed large parts of Afghanistan in retaliation for the attacks, even though the Taliban had not the slightest thing to do with the events of 11 Sept. 2001. Then came the annihilation of 1.5 million Iraqi people in a war based on possession of weapons of mass destruction, which we all now know never existed. That wasn't enough of course for the Western military powers led by the US; the next target was Libya, a nation where people had free education and uber cheap gas, and then Syria, a country that fell under tremendous bloodshed due to the region's most radical Daesh (ISIL) combatants being funded by American assets. Partially through online media and partly due to the accusations of US President elect Donald Trump in the 2016 US election, the US support of ISIL found its way to the forefront of the nightly news, leaving most Americans scratching their heads, totally unclear of their own nation's alliances or motives. Then of course there is the famous Obama quote, called a "flub" by the US President's advocates, "But the fall of Ramadi has galvanized the Iraqi government. So, with the additional steps I ordered last month, were speeding up training of ISIL forces, including volunteers from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province." Many of us predicted the outcome long ago... there are radical segments of Islam that would like to see the US fall off the map, and they hail from two aspects of Sunni Islam: Wahhabi and Salafi. They define the ultra conservative aspects of Islam with the very worst practices and have little if anything to do with the goals of less radical Islamic nations such as Iran, which has not attacked a country outside of its borders for more than 300 years. Bloody Persecution The crimes against Rohingya people in Myanmar are heavily documented. As I covered the conflict through email and social media correspondence, I worked with people who had been on the ground in Burma. Mosque after mosque was razed, sometimes with children inside. Entire Rohingya villages were burned and destroyed along with their inhabitants. One of the most striking images of the thousands documenting the attempted extinction of the Rohingya people, shows Buddhists riding on mopeds with machetes in their hands, with Rohingya blood dripping from the blades. I also documented flagrant sex abuse and torture, both of which are repression and murder techniques in Burma. Militant Buddhists in this Asian nation actually wear shirts with swastikas to represent Buddhist superiority, and these symbols are not to be confused with more innocent versions of the swastika connected to India, these are actual Nazi swastikas. The gut wrenching, torturous years of Myanmar's presumably sanctioned attacks against the peaceful Rohingya are coming home to roost as ISIL now, simultaneously recruits from the Rohingya, and threatens the government of Myanmar over its persecution of Rohingya, which it denies in spite of the endless documentation of what has taken place. In fact Myanmar's persecution of Rohingya is defined by it's President Thein Sein's defense of the idolized Buddhist militant leader Wirathu, whose organized hatred of Rohingya has greatly emboldened the problems facing these battered people. His brand of terrorism toward Muslims and Christians is so overwhelming and negative that he was placed on the cover of Time Magazine in all of its regional editions except the USA. Time's July 2013 magazine placed Wirathu's face of the cover with the title, "The Face of Buddhist Terror" while the US version had an image of three people painting a wall titled, "How Service Can Save Us". I see this as one of the single most blatant examples of American media's "dumbing down" process in modern history. People in the USA live in sheer ignorance due to this very practice. ISIL is coming to Myanmar and in this case, they are serving in an entirely different role. _________________________________________

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Articles for January 4, 2017 | Articles for January 5, 2017 |
Salina Central's Katelyn Rupe sets new course record in 5A state win

Sophomore Katelyn Rupe came in first and set the new course record at Rim Rock Farm in Lawrence last weekend.
With the arrival of the new year comes new experiences.

Thats what Taumeasina Island Resort is aiming for by inviting a well-known chef from Australia to cater for they hope will be an unforgettable food experience tonight.

Romain Bapst, Chef and Owner of Luctece Bistro and Wine Bar, a top-notch French restaurant located in Brisbane Australia, traveled a great distance to respond to Taumeasinas call.

Speaking to the Samoa Observer, he said he was delighted to be in Samoa and is looking forward to catering for guests who are willing to step out of their comfort zones to try new things.

Working with the Executive chef of Taumeasina, Brad Martain, Mr. Bapst will join forces with Taumeasinas staff to kick off the New Year with an explosion of exotic nourishments.

Roman and I are very good friends, Ive known him for about 15 years, Mr. Martain told Samoa Observer. I was also his Sue chef for a couple of years in Brisbane at Lutece. So it made sense to invite Romain.

It also makes good sense to bring international chefs into Samoa to give Samoa the opportunity to try different things.

Asked about their plan to expose Samoa to these new experiences, Mr. Martain said the meal will be based on a very classical French style cuisine. He said the most challenging but extraordinary part of the menu which the Samoans would have to take a leap of faith in are snails.

This meal will be very French, very classical, he said. Its the style of introducing new things into the New Year, and thats where Taumeasina will be heading throughout the year.

Mr. Bapst added the meal will definitely be a treat for the people who were lucky enough to purchase a ticket, seeing that its already sold out.

We will have some steak tartar, snails, some local lobsters, some freshly caught fish, duck, and creme brulee.

Mr. Bapst was confident in his menu choices because he has prepared these types of meals over and over again throughout his extensive career as a chef.

Theres no hiding the fact that the food portion is a very important aspect when it comes to food here in Samoa.

Doubts on a Five-star meal satisfying the hunger of a Samoan customer based crowd spiked some concerns due to the belief that all expensive five-star meals come in small proportions.

Mr. Bapst ensured that he is familiar with the importance of food proportions and everyone present at the dinner this Friday night will surely not want to eat after dinning at Taumeasina.

Look at me; Im always planning to eat so I understand the importance of food proportions and what it means to the Samoan community, he said. We will be conducting a five course dinner, and the meal will be filled with German and French style food, a specialty of ours.

This special meal will not be one of those small meals, I ensure you that you will not stop at McDonalds after eating. I think Samoans will be very happy with this different type of food, especially with the snails.

Through hard work, Mr. Bapst has conquered his passion for food, right up to the point where he is now the proud owner of a lavishing restaurant in Australia.

The restaurant is called Lutece, Lutece is a French restaurant located just on the outskirts of Brisbane, overlooking the western and northern side of the city

He has made a good name for himself in Australia by dedicating a lot of effort into his passion, and he plans to share his gift with Samoa.

So get ready Samoa because youre in for an amazing treat.

All these dishes have been prepared by me since 1980, a very long time Mr. Bapst stated.

They will definitely enjoy the food because everyone enjoys French style food.

I believe this to be true because in my opinion, Chinese and French food is the base of cooking.

They are the oldest cooking style.

Mr. Bapst has been a chef for an impressive amount of time now, and his inclination for food remains strongly intact.

I have been a Chef for 45 years, still enjoying and happy to be here. I have had 25 good years in Australia and I have conjured up a good reputation over there. I can do different types of dishes from all around the world. Any type of cuisine, I can do.

Learning as he goes along, Mr, Bapst's skill in the kitchen has stirred up a certain hobby of mastering cuisines anywhere he goes.

Adding more to his list of mastered cuisines, Mr. Bapst stated that he has already dived into the rich culture of Fijian food in Australia.

Pacific island food shares a basic similarity when it comes down to the style of preparing and cooking, and Mr. Bapst is looking forward to leaning the Samoan cooking style in his short time with us.

In Australia we actually had a Fijian wedding so I had to prepare a full course Fijian style meal he said.

Samoan and Fijian are kind of similar when it comes to food but Im very interested in learning more of the Samoan life and their food.

Im sure tomorrow I will be able to do some Samoan style cooking.

Mr. Bapst has only been here in Samoa for a short period of time now, and hes finding his stay quite enjoyable. Unfortunately for Mr. Bapst, his stay in beautiful Samoa will be of short nature.

I have been here in Samoa for three days now and Im greatly enjoying myself he said.

Samoa is extremely beautiful. It has beautiful weather, just the right amount of rain to even out the heat, its nice.

Plans to continue bringing in famous chefs, both locally and abroad, remain in the pipeline.

This Friday has been a huge success, Mr. Martain said.

"Unfortunately, its all sold out but dont worry. We will be introducing celebrity chefs and guest chefs throughout the year and we will do lots of different little things.
As a people, Samoans and American Samoans are one. We share the same language, similar culture and ancestors. When it comes to successes, we rejoice together. We also mourn as a family during the hard times.

At the beginning of this year, there is certainly a lot to be celebrated across the waters in American Samoa. And since blood is thicker than water, it wasnt surprising to see such a strong representation from Independent Samoa in American Samoa when the territory welcomed their reappointed leaders.

During a ceremony dubbed The Peoples Inauguration at the Malaeoletalu in Fagatogo, America Samoa applauded the return of their Governor, Lolo Matalasi Moliga and his Lieutenant Governor, Lemanu Peleti Mauga, following their re-election last year.

Samoa was also well represented. The Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi, the Masiofo, Her Highness Filifilia Tamasese, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi and other delegates from Samoa were there.

Speaking during the inauguration, Prime Minister Tuilaepa relayed a message of congratulations from the people of Samoa to Governor Lolo and his Deputy Lemanu. Having led his H.R.P.P to another landslide victory last year, Tuilaepa knows plenty about winning elections. Which is why his advice to the territorys leaders was important.

According to the Prime Minister, Governor Lolo and Lt. Governor Peletis reelection is a reflection of the successful developments that you and your government have delivered in the past four years to serve the needs of the people of American Samoa.

From Samoas standpoint, Tuilaepa said his government is determined to continue our closer social and economic relations and is keen on fortifying our partnership to collectively respond to the challenges we, as a small Island developing states, currently face.

Lastly, he urged them to approach the future with unwavering faith that our Lord God will continue to lead and direct our paths towards prosperity, peace and harmony.

As second term leaders, there is no doubt Lolo and Lemanu have earned the trust of American Samoans. But it would not have been easy. The journey they had taken to where they are today was fraught with countless challenges and difficulties. Its a journey that wouldve required plenty of sacrifices, tears and blood.

Indeed, as a territory of the United States of America, American Samoa has had its fair share of challenges. But then what country doesnt? Even the biggest and the wealthiest of countries still face challenges. Its part of life.

Whats important is that the people of American Samoa  like independent Samoa  have been able to grow and flourish in an environment of peace and political stability.

Unlike other countries near and far where lives are wasted by strife and war, American Samoa has remained relatively peaceful.

Of course they have problems, plenty in fact  just like we do. But thats why strong leadership is required. Thats why people like Governor Lolo and his Lieutenant Lemanu were elected into office, not just once but twice.

The people of American Samoa believe they are capable of fixing those problems.

There is no doubt that one of the biggest challenges of their leadership is finding jobs. With one of the canneries shutting shop, Lolo and Lemanu know they have got plenty of work to do. There are other issues including finding ways to address the Samoan culture becoming a burden on families, the territorys future political status; developing a sustainable economy and dealing with educational reforms.

In 2013 during Governor Lolos maiden address, he called for a united American Samoa.

Let us stand together, let us make the change together, the change starts from you, in your family, in your village, in your church, your business, in the government and in our island, he said then. We are united in our purpose, for the wisdom of the past providing a clear pathway to our future.

This week, Governor Lolo invoked the famous words of John F. Kennedy.

Said he: Let us start [this] new administrative term together affirming our collective commitment that we will adopt President John F. Kennedys call to ask not what the Government can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your government.

We are mindful of the responsibility, inherited in these leadership roles that we hold, to ensure that we build a future of long-lasting opportunities for growth and development of our Territory.

We couldnt agree more. Leadership comes with plenty of responsibilities.

Which brings us to Lt. Gov. Lemanus thoughts.

Said he: The only way to improve American Samoas stance against the unexpected swells and challenges of tomorrow is for us to persevere and work together while unceasingly serving our people with both dignity and integrity.

Beautiful, wise words. Words like dignity and integrity are words every leader - including our leaders in independent Samoa should aspire to.

We say this because whats the point if they are just empty rhetoric to please the ear?

Congratulations Governor Lolo Moliga and Lt. Gov. Lemanu for your re-election. We wish you and the people of American Samoa Gods blessings!

In meantime, have a peaceful weekend Samoa, God bless!
Dear Editor,

Re: Street vendors or future convicts?

Who are we going to blame for these young street vendors committing violence on the streets?

Parents of course, but we also got to blame the community and society, the Spiritual and Government leaders, the Education Department and the police and the worse contributor of all - govt corruption.

THIS IS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM  IT IS A SOCIAL PROBLEM. I predicted this problem from years back. Heres your formulae again:

GOVT CORRUPTION + HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE + POVERTY = HIGH CRIME RATE

This sort of scene on the video can only be seen in countries such as Columbia and Brazil where the crime rates are high due to government corruption and poverty - no one ever expected this to happen in Samoa.

This problem is all to do with the high cost of living charged by the government to pay off their $1.7+ Billion debt and corruption, which created poverty, which led to families and young kids to commit crimes.

This type of crime never happened in Samoa before. If this happened in the time before H.R.P.P took office, there would be a massive outcry from the community.

Today, theres not much of an outcry because people have been brainwashed with lies by the corrupt H.R.P.P. The worst is yet to come.

As for young kids who start a life of crime from a young age, they usually grow up to become murderers, thieves and rapists etc. These criminals will then be called monsters by our society.

The question is, WHO CREATED THESE MONSTERS? The answer to that of course is CORRUPT LEADERS AND OUR CORRUPT SOCIETY!

This year P.M. Tuilaepa and his H.R.P.P government are pushing for the The Constitutional Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2016, to be passed to amend the Constitution in order to define Samoa as a Christian State.

The actions of these young kids reflected how the leaders of our society, (both Spiritual and Govt), have failed them. These children are victims of corrupt leaders and a corrupt society and theres nothing Christian about it at all.

Mebahel Raguel
Tragedy struck a Samoan family in Hawaii just before Christmas.

It did when Stevie Feliciano, was pronounced dead, after being shot in the head.

Reports from the Queens Medical Center said Steve was on life support until he passed away.

The young mans mother, Fiti Feliciano, was inconsolable.

If Stevie could hear this, Ill tell him, you gotta wake up, Fiti told Hawaii News Now reporter, Chelsea Davis.

You got your whole life in front of you. Youre only 20 years old. Im not gonna let them take you. Youre everything to me.

The shooting happened on Christmas night ruining the Festive Season for the Feliciano and Leaupepe families.

Fiti told Hawaii News the death was heartbreaking and no parent should ever have to endure the pain and suffering she had to go through.

Its the worst dream that a parent can have, she told the Hawaii News.

Its like somebody just stabbed me in my heart.

She said her son was a sweet boy, with a loving and passionate personality, and quite popular with lots of friends.

Dae Han Moon, 20, is the suspect. According to court records, Moon was said to have been out on bail for auto theft charges, felony firearms, and a warrant on his head for drugged driving at the time of the shooting.

Moon apparently turned himself in after he was charged with second-degree murder last Thursday, indicted by Honolulus grand jury.

The other suspect which the Honolulu police department are still looking for is Lance Bermudez.

He is a wanted man with an arrest warrant of $500,000 for the crimes of hindering prosecution in the first-degree.

It was said that Feliciano was simply at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

News report from the Aloha State said the Police believe that Feliciano and his friends made their way to the parking lot of Ala Moana at 7:30pm to purchase marijuana from an unknown source.

There were no records proving that Feliciano was a marijuana user himself.

The Honolulu Star Advertiser reports, Before they could pick up marijuana, Moon and his friends showed up in a vehicle.

Deputy Prosecutor Chasid Sapolu, stated that Moon and his friends showed up with the intentions to cause trouble.

One of Moons friends started a fight with Feliciano, Sapolu told the court.

After the fight, Moon returned to his car and grabbed a firearm. Pointed it and struck the victim once in the head with the firearm and pointed it and fired a shot into the back of the victims head.

The heart wrenching tragedy that robbed young Feliciano of his life has attracted the sympathy and support of people all around the world as they offered up their help and condolences to the affected families.

Fiti stated that all the loving support from people has been nothing less of remarkable.

Diana, Stevies sister, contributed to her family in her own way by creating a Go Fund Me page online, whereby people can donate money to help out with the funeral expenses.

She wrote, Please help us give my brother a funeral he deserves on the page.

Social media platforms have been overflowing with heartwarming tributes and condolences.

Out of the many kind and touching posts on Facebook, one stood out:

I cant believe you are gone, it reads.

But your memories live on in us. You were so loved. Heaven has gained a beautiful soul as an angel. I love you Stevie Feliciano. Things will not be the same again. Aunty Fiti, the Lord will provide solace for you to help heal your broken heart. I cant relate to the pain you are going through. He was your pele and you couldnt hide it even if you tried. No mother deserves to bury their kids. I know Stevie is next to you spiritually, comforting you at this moment. Your son was a strong man; he fought so hard to come back to you. Loto malosi. We will one day see him again. RIP BABY! Watch over your mom and your siblings.
A baby boy born to parents from Vaitoomuli Savaii is Samoas first baby for 2017.

This was confirmed by Dr. Manatua Iati, of the Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital, who helped the mother deliver the baby boy at 1.05pm on Sunday.

It was a quiet day and the mother gave birth at 1:05pm on Sunday afternoon, she said.

The mother is from Vaitoomuli, Savaii and that was the only baby that was born on New Years day.

Dr. Iati said there was only one Christmas baby as well.

The mother was from Faleula and she gave birth at around 8 oclock in the morning of Christmas, she said.

It has been a quiet Christmas and New Years but the mother was overjoyed when she carried her son on New Years day.

It was not possible to get a comment from the parents of the first baby of 2017 yesterday as they had left for Savaii at the beginning of the week.
With Christmas and New Years done and dusted, the countdown to the start of the 2017 school year has begun.

And with that in mind, the Samoa Stationery and Books has launched its Back to School Campaign.

Managing Director and Owner of S.S.A.B, Fiti Leung Wai, says the campaign is all about making it easier for families to start the school year.

If our children are well educated, then Samoa as a nation will become more secure and prosperous, she said.

Before I had established S.S.A.B eight years ago, buying stationery for my children was an expensive exercise and so I know the financial struggles that us parents go through in putting our kids through school.

Therefore my aim is to reduce the prices of back to school products to lessen the load of parents.

So when I established S.S.A.B, I endeavoured to provide the children of Samoa with good quality and affordable stationery so that they would have all the necessary tools when they go to school.

Marketing Manager, Asia Stanley, said S.S.A.B is Samoas one stop shop for all stationery needs.

The first promotion is the partnership between S.S.A.B and Croxley New Zealand and they bring the Warwick Back to School promotion for this year, she said.

The second promotion is a Joint Back to School Promotion between S.S.A.B and its suppliers A.C.C.O., Pelikan and Staedler.

The third promotion is our Joint promotion between S.S.A.B and local companies Eveni Carruthers and Farmer Joe Supermarket where any purchase of $30 tala at any of these companies entitles people to win one of 100 gift vouchers.

The draw will be on the 10th of February.

Mrs. Leung Wai acknowledges the support of their partners and local companies.

I want to thank all S.S.A.B. partners for coming on board to partner with us to bring this years various Back to School Campaign, she said.

Your partnership is very important for it has enabled us to provide good quality and affordable stationery and educational products and offer fantastic prizes for the children of Samoa.
Days after Donald Trump won the presidential election vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and fortify the Mexican border, California farmer Kevin Herman ordered nearly $600,000 in new equipment, cutting the number of workers hell need starting with the next harvest.

Herman, who grows figs, persimmons and almonds in the nations most productive farming state, said Trumps comments pushed him to make the purchase, larger than hed planned to buy otherwise.

No doubt about it, Herman said. I probably wouldnt have spent as much or bought as much machinery as I did.

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Others in Californias farming industry say Trumps tough campaign talk targeting immigrants in the country illegally  including a vast number of farm workers  spurred them into action, too.

Theyre calling on congressional representatives to educate the president-elect on the workforce it takes to feed the country, and theyre assuring workers theyll protect them.

San Joaquin Valley farmer Joe Del Bosque recently gathered about 20 year-round employees at a steakhouse in Los Banos for their annual holiday lunch.

The festivities began on a serious note. The topic of immigration took a bigger part of the conversation this year because of Trump, he said.

Del Bosque told his crew hell make sure the new administration knows their vital role in the farming industry. Its a message Del Bosque wants his managers to spread to the 300 seasonal workers needed at the harvests peak.

Leticia Alfaro, a food-safety supervisor at the farm, said in an interview that many of her friends who work in the fields dont have proper documentation like she does, and they take Trumps threats seriously.

Theyre terrified by his comments, Alfaro, 53, said in Spanish.

They fear being deported and torn from their children who were born here, she said. They wonder whether, after Trump takes office, it will be safe to even make a trip to the grocery store, fearing checkpoints where theyd be pulled over and have to show their documentation.

Trumps remarks were felt sharply in California, which produces nearly half the countrys fruits, vegetables and nuts, valued at $47 billion annually. But his words resonate elsewhere too.

Texas, Florida and Georgia also have large migrant communities that dominate the home construction, healthcare and food service industries, said David Zonderman, a labor historian at North Carolina State University.

California might be ground zero, he said of immigrant families living in the shadows. But its not a unique California issue.

The fear stems from Trumps campaign rallies, where he received a rousing response each time he vowed to deport people who are in the country illegally  up to 11 million. That position softened after Trump won the election, when he said hed start with 3 million who have criminal records.

Some farmers point to Trumps post-election shift as a sign that his campaign bluster wont become reality. He is, after all, a businessman like them, they say. But others believe this shift underscores the president-elects unpredictable nature.

Our workers are scared, said Joe Garcia, a farm labor contractor who hires up to 4,000 people each year to pick grapes from Napa to Bakersfield and along the Central Coast. If theyre concerned, were concerned.

Since election day, Garcias crews throughout the state have been asking what will happen to them when Trump takes office. Farmers also are calling to see if theyll need to pay more to attract people to prune the vines, he said.

Garcia tells farmers not to panic. Well plan around what we have, he tells them. Thats all we can do.

Roughly 325,000 workers in California do the backbreaking jobs that farmers say nobody else will do, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League farming association, estimates 85% of California farm workers live in the United States illegally.

Farmers for years have scrambled to adjust to a shrinking labor pool.

Mexicos improving economy has slowed the flow of migrant workers. The dangerous border, controlled by drug cartels and human traffickers, keeps away others.

Herman, the farmer who bought three new almond sweepers, said that in addition to Trumps election, he was influenced by Californias rising minimum wage and a new law giving farm laborers overtime rights that are equal to those for workers in other industries.

Plus, Herman said, he heard too many workers expressing doubts about whether they would return to California after their holiday trips to Mexico. Its stories like that that have motivated me to become efficient and upgrade my equipment, Herman said.

Tom Nassif, a Trump advisor and president of the powerful Western Growers trade association, said farmers shouldnt fear the president-elect. Trump isnt interested in deporting their workers, he said.

Nassif said he isnt privy to the details of Trumps immigration policy. He has recommended that Trump allow otherwise law-abiding farmworkers who are in the country illegally to stay if they serve a period of probation, pay taxes, learn English and obey all laws.

I think hes looking at people who have committed more serious crimes and start with them first  and rightly so, said Nassif, picked by Trumps campaign team to serve on an agriculture advisory committee. I think theres less reason to worry than most people believe there is.

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Poway teacher Traci Jackson won a $25,000 national award for her math lesson using color combinations to teach proportional relationships.

Jackson, a math teacher at Oak Valley Middle School, received the Rosenthal Prize for Innovation in Math Teaching on Wednesday at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City, or MoMath.

MoMath is thrilled to present Traci Jackson with the Rosenthal Prize for her dedication to mathematics and her creative, engaging, accessible, and innovative lesson, said Cindy Lawrence, MoMaths executive director.

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Describing her reaction to the honor, Jackson said: Shock. Definitely shock.

But her principal, Casey Currigan, said Jacksons award did not surprise him.

Traci is the most reflective, innovative teacher Ive seen in a while, Currigan said. Shes never satisfied with how the lesson goes. Everything can be done better. Everything is tweaked and changed to make sure that the kids really understand the math.

Jackson taught for two years at a private school in Northern California before starting her family and moving to Poway. As her three children grew, she was actively involved in their schools, helping in their classrooms and coordinating math and science nights for students.

She was eventually hired as science coordinator at Park Village Elementary, and then returned to teaching, earning a dual teaching credential in math and science.

So many kids didnt like math, and didnt feel like they were good at math, and it was so hard to have a good experience, and I wanted to bring that, she said.

In her classroom kids work in groups, puzzle out problems on whiteboards and discuss their solutions, she said. If a kid gets stuck, she uses questioning strategies to see where they are and where their next step should be.

After another teacher nominated her for the award, she said she described and then videotaped her lesson plan that involved mixing food dye in water, and then measuring and calculating the ratios needed to make equivalent colors in larger batches.

The key to bringing math to life, she said, is Connecting math to other subjects, things that they see, really just teaching them that mathematics can be a language that describes everything around them.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
A direct-access ramp to Interstate 805 car-pool lanes in Chula Vista opened to motorists Wednesday.

Drivers can now enter and exit the high-occupancy vehicle lanes from East Palomar, which San Diego Association of Governments officials say improves safety and traffic flow, reduces congestion and increases the overall reliability for freeway travel time.

The direct-access ramp can be accessed via East Palomar Street between Raven and Nacion avenues.

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Carpool and HOV users include vanpools, transit, motorcycles, and solo drivers in approved clean-air vehicles.

Eight miles of new carpool lanes opened in March 2014 between East Naples Street in Chula Vista and state Route 94 as part of the first phase of the I-805 South Express Lanes Project.

The East Palomar Street bridge opened in September. Although only certain motorists can use the direct-access ramp, all drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians can use the East Palomar Street Bridge to cross I-805.

The I-805 project area is about 11 miles, between East Palomar Street and the 805 and state Route 15 interchange.

It is expected to meet the future needs of the regions travelers. Since I-805 opened in 1975, vehicle trips on the freeway have increased by 300 percent, according to SANDAGs website.

Improvements to I-805 are also meant to maintain and grow the regions economy through an improved system of moving goods and services along a main transportation artery for the region, SANDAG said.

The direct-access ramp at East Palomar Street and a nearby transit station and park and ride are part of Phase 1 of the I-805 South Express Lanes Project, a $1.1 billion effort to create a new modern transportation backbone in the South County.

Construction began on the East Palomar Street direct-access ramp, transit station and park and ride in summer 2013.

Landscaping of the project area will follow construction completion.

For more information visit: KeepSanDiegoMoving.com.

allison.sampite-montecalvo@sduniontribune.com
ABOARD THE CARRIER CARL VINSON  Two decades passed before he could take the seat reserved for the aircraft handler, but Lt. Cmdr. Reynaldo Stanley couldnt catch a spare second to sit in it early Thursday.

As the San Diego-based supercarrier Carl Vinson headed toward Hawaii at the start of its latest deployment, its helicopters were circling in the fog. Crews thousands of feet below scrambled to park, fuel and prep the choppers, all following orders barked first by Stanley and then repeated by his senior enlisted sailors.

You look at it and its like ants running all over the place, said Stanley, 44, from his perch overlooking the flight deck. Its controlled chaos.

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Im the equivalent of an airport manager, if you will. I dont own any aircraft. I dont own any asset. But I do own the real estate and the equipment that services the aircraft.

Spearheaded by the Nimitz-class Vinson, the strike group with more than 7,500 sailors will be busy on a deployment thats slated to span the Pacific Ocean and last five months.

The Vinson slipped out of its pier at North Island on Thursday morning. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Wayne E. Meyer left on the same day from the San Diego Naval Base. The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain will leave Friday from there.

The guided-missile destroyer Michael Murphy, homeported in Pearl Harbor, is scheduled to join the flotilla later in January on Strike Group Ones passage to the Western Pacific.

For a mustang like Stanley  he served as an enlisted sailor, learning the intricacies of numerous jobs on the flight deck, before becoming a chief petty officer and then a taking a commission  its the culmination in a long career, punctuated by hard training during the summer and fall that prepared the Vinson to forward-deploy in the Western Pacific.

About a third of the Vinson crew has sailed on a long tour before, but its other crews are greener. On the Lake Champlain, 85 percent of the sailors are going on a deployment for the first time.

And like the Michael Murphy, a large part of the strike group has yet to arrive. The Gauntlets of Electronic Attack Squadron 136 will fly soon from Whidbey Island near Seattle to land on Stanleys flight deck, and other squadrons are expected from as far east as Virginia.

The Navys Point Loma-based Third Fleet will control the strike group throughout its tour. For decades, the Seventh Fleet took charge of the warships for San Diego whenever they neared Asia.

That was a key reason why Vice Adm. Nora Tyson was flown onto the Vinson on Thursday, with Stanley giving the orders to land it.

The three-star admiral commands the Third Fleet and is expected to make frequent visits to the strike group during its deployment. In an address to all hands aboard the Vinson, she praised their steadfast dedication to duty and said she had never been prouder of you and of our United States Navy.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
The effects of Mexicos New Years Day gasoline price hike continued on Friday in Baja California, as protesters intermittently obstructed traffic on the Transpeninsular Highway near San Quintin and blocked access to a critical gasoline storage facility in Rosarito Beach, causing stations across the region to run out of supply.

But despite the disruptions, authorities reported that the demonstrators have remained peaceful, in contrast with those in some other regions of the country. Six deaths and more than 1,000 arrests have been reported in recent days as police forces have fended off looters and vandals.

At state government offices in Tijuana, Baja California Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid said I understand your discomfort about a spike in prices of close to 20 percent, and said he will seek to have prices in Baja California adjusted to prices across the border in San Diego.

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The governor pleaded with demonstrators to avoid disrupting the flow of gasoline, essential for businesses, government services, hospitals across the state. I am worried about the shortages, this affects population, Vega said. We have to be very conscious of not affecting third parties.

About half of Tijuana 240 gas stations ran ran out of supply, according to Alejandro Borja, a member of the Association of Tijuana Gas Station Owners. The owners met early Friday with Tijuanas public safety secretary, Marco Antonio Sotomayor, to ensure that their stations would be secured until they are able to re-open, Borja said.

On the citys bustling Agua Caliente Boulevard, drivers continued to pull into one station, where attendants checked oil levels  but had no gas to offer. The station ran out Thursday at 10 p.m., said manager Luis Carlos Garcia.

Humberto Betancourt, 44, pulled into the station with his maroon Mercury Villager after being turned away at two other stations. His gauge marked less than a quarter tank of gas, and he needed to get to his job as a driver for a customs brokerage near the U.S. border on Otay Mesa.

I have enough to get there, but I wont be able to get home, Betancourt said. But even if did find gasoline, Betancourt said he could not afford to fill his tank. Salaries are very low, and gasoline is very expensive,

The fuel-price hike announced last weekend as part of a government deregulation of the energy sector has angered consumers across Mexico.

Some of the highest prices are in Baja California, where gasoline is selling for the equivalent of about $2.95 per gallon of regular unleaded, while premium is selling for $3.27. Across the border at an Arco station in Imperial Beach on Friday, a gallon of regular unleaded sold for $2.59 per gallon while premium sold for $2.79 per gallon.

The stations have lost their supply lines as demonstrators have been blocking access since Monday to the governments Pemex storage and distribution facility in Rosarito Beach. State officials persuaded the protesters to lift their blockade early Friday, allowing 33 tanker trucks to make deliveries to Tijuanas A.L. Rodriguez International Airport and other areas of the city, said Enrique Mendez, a state government official.

But Tijuana normally needs 220 deliveries a day, Mendez said. We understand their anger, and we understand that they want to demonstrate, Mendez said. But it seems that their rights should end when youre affecting all of Baja California society.

On Friday afternoon, the access was again blocked by a few dozen protestors who held up signs protesting the gasolinazo and passed petitions to reverse the price increase.

Many drivers passing by honked their support, and gave the protestors supportive thumbs-up signs.

If the airport needs gasoline, we can liberate a certain number of trucks, said Rafael Lechuga, a 19-year-old engineering student who had joined the protests. If a hospital has critical needs, OK, we can reach an agreement, he said. We feel a little bit guilty, but our cause is a just one.

South of Ensenada, in the San Quintin region, protestors have blocked the Transpeninsular Highway in recent days, and continued to do so intermittently on Friday. A federal police official, Jose Castro, said Friday evening that one blockade in the community of Vicente Guerrero had been lifted, while in Camalu, traffic was flowing steadily on one lane, but protesters continued to block another lane, opening it to traffic every 20 minutes.

There were signs that residents have become weary of the blockade. One Facebook page announced a protest march on Saturday in Vicente Guerrero to oppose the gas price hikebut also to oppose the road closures.

The death toll in protests and looting fueled by anger over gasoline price hikes in Mexico rose to six Friday when authorities confirmed that two men died in a confrontation between protesters and police in the central state of Hidalgo.

There were four previous deaths in looting-related incidents and over the course of the week, at least 300 stores were looted and more 1,000 people were detained, officials said.

The protesters in Hidalgo were blocking a highway on Thursday and confronted police who were trying to keep order, when gunfire broke out. Two people also were found dead near looting in the eastern port city of Veracruz.

Earlier, officials said a bystander was run over and killed by a driver fleeing police in another part of Veracruz state, and a police officer was killed trying to stop robberies at a gas station in Mexico City.

In the northern city of Monterrey, officials said a crowd of protesters had smashed some of the stained glass windows of the Nuevo Leon state capital building.

The countrys business chambers said the combination of highway, port and terminal blockades and looting this week forced many stores and businesses to close and threatened supplies of basic goods and fuel.

While acknowledging the anger, President Enrique Pea Nieto said Thursday he would forge ahead anyway with the deregulated price policy, which would do away with fuel subsidies and allow gasoline prices to be determined by prevailing international prices.

I know that allowing gasoline to rise to its international price is a difficult change, but as president, my job is to precisely make difficult decisions now, in order to avoid worse consequences in the future, Pea Nieto said in a televised address. Keeping gas prices artificially low would mean taking money away from the poorest Mexicans, and giving it to those who have the most.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story has been updated since the original 10:30 a.m. Friday online version.

1 / 13 Protest in Rosaritos Pemex Fuel Plant (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 13 Protest in Rosaritos Pemex Fuel Plant (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Shortage of fuel has cause for closure of several gas stations across Tijuana. Closed station on Blvd Agua Caliente near downtown. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 13 Fuel shortage in Tijuana (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Shortage of fuel has cause for long lines at the Pemex gasoline stations across Tijuana. On the right Baja California Governor, Francisco OKikoO Vega de Lamadrid talks to the media about gas shortage at the Governors Building in Tijuana. On the left Tijuanas Mayor, Juan Manuel Gastelum. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Entrance of Rosaritos Pemex fuel plant. People protesting. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Pemex gasoline station at the corner of Madero and 10th St. in downtown Tijuana. Rigoberto Valdez Ochoa holding an empty gasoline container. He was denied fuel due to the shortage. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Pemex gasoline station at the corner of Madero and 10th St. in downtown Tijuana. Gas attendants running to the cashier to pay for the fuel. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Pemex gasoline station at the corner of Madero and 10th St. in downtown Tijuana. Gas attendants signaling traffic to enter the station. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Shortage of fuel has cause for long lines at the Pemex gasoline stations across Tijuana. Entrance of Rosaritos Pemex fuel plant. Omar Guerra holds a sign that reads We want fair prices. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Pemex gasoline station at the corner of Madero and 10th St. in downtown Tijuana. The green handle is the unleaded gasoline. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 13 Fuel shortage in Tijuana (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 6th, 2017: | Shortage of fuel has cause for closure of several gas stations across Tijuana. Closed station on Blvd Agua Caliente and Blvd. Generale Abelardo L. Rodriguez. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble
A woman pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego on Thursday to harboring an immigrant at her home for money, and admitted to knowing that 44 others hiding there also were in the country illegally.

Dania Olivero, 51, was arrested Nov. 6 after neighbors called police to report that groups of people were being dropped off at the home on University Avenue, according to the complaint.

Officers found numerous people inside, sitting nervously with unopened bottles of beer in front of them, the complaint said. Authorities then found others in the backyard. One of the immigrants was an unaccompanied minor, according to the plea agreement.

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Two of the immigrants were from Guatemala, and the rest were Mexican. Some told authorities they had been locked inside a small shed in the backyard and held without access to a bathroom, lights or ventilation, the complaint said.

In the plea agreement, Olivero admitted that at least one of the immigrants paid $5,000 to $8,500 to cross illegally into the U.S., and that she housed them for a fee.

Olivero told Border Patrol agents after her arrest that she had been involved in human smuggling since 2014 and that she did so at the request of a man she met at a bar, according to the complaint. She said she agreed to temporarily house the immigrants because she needed help paying her rent.

A sentencing hearing has been set for March 13. Olivero is a Cuban living legally in the U.S. and could be deported because of her conviction.

A judge previously had set bail at $30,000, but Olivero remained in custody Thursday.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
Interstate 15 near the California-Nevada border was reopened in both directions Friday afternoon after being closed for several hours during a standoff with a motorist who allegedly fired at officers and then disappeared.

The major travel route between Southern California and Las Vegas was closed for nearly 11 hours as authorities searched for the suspected gunman, who had led California Highway Patrol officers on a brief chase being getting stuck.

The pursuit began at 2:18 a.m. when a CHP officer tried to stop a motorist driving at excessive speeds north of Baker, said Officer Adam Carmichall, CHP spokesman in Barstow.

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During the pursuit, at least one shot was fired at a patrol vehicle, he said.

Shortly after the chase began, the drivers vehicle became disabled in the center divider of the highway near Halloran Summit Road, just south of Primm, Nev., he said.

The driver, according to Carmichall, did not respond to officers commands.

After a seven-hour standoff, officers finally approached the vehicle and discovered it was empty.

Officers were searching the area for the motorist, he said. Authorities said they didnt know of other people who might have been in the car.

The highway was closed from Halloran Springs to Cima Road, according to the California Department of Transportation.

By 10:52 a.m., the southbound lanes were reopened. Three hours later, the northbound lanes were opened.

Authorities said the search for the suspect will continue.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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UPDATES:

2 p.m.: This article was updated with the reopening of all lanes of Interstate 15.

10:55 a.m.: This article was updated with the reopening of southbound lanes of Interstate 15.

10 a.m.: This article was updated with details about the standoff and search for the suspect.

9:15 a.m.: This article was updated with a report of the driver firing at a patrol vehicle.

This article was originally published at 8:35 a.m.
The strongest part of a series of storms barreled into Northern California on Sunday, bringing flooding, heavy snow and concerns about avalanches.

Officials reported scattered flooding and mudslides throughout the region, including a washed out road in Windsor that required the rescue of two people. Local authorities were watching rising water levels at several key rivers including the Truckee, Merced, American and Russian.

An extreme avalanche warning was issued for parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains Sunday because of heavy snow. In Mammoth Lakes, officials said higher elevations recorded 48 inches of snow in the last two days.

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Winds topped 50 mph in some areas. A woman was killed in the East Bay suburb of San Ramon on Saturday when she was struck by a falling tree at a golf course amid heavy winds.

Up to 12 inches of rain is expected to fall on areas below 8,500 feet beginning Saturday morning, and up to 7 feet of snow could bury higher elevations, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters said the storm was packing the same wallop as one that hit Northern California in 2005, causing $300 million in damage.

This weekends system could bring 36 consecutive hours of heavy rain from Mammoth Mountain to Susanville, in Lassen County. Though that is good news for California, which is entering its sixth year of drought, the coming rain could melt already standing snow  feeding watersheds swollen from storms earlier this week, forecasters said.

Its going to be a busy weekend, said Edan Weishahn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno, sighing.

The rain moved in late Friday and continued into Saturday morning, with the most powerful punch expected later in the day.

In the eastern Sierra Nevada, snow continued to fall at higher elevations while rain drizzled lower down as officials warned that wetter, rainier conditions on tap for later this weekend could spell trouble.

1 / 67 Surfer and Huntington Beach lifeguard Jachin Hamborg watches the dramatic sky and waves after surfing following his lifeguarding shift at dusk at the Huntington Beach pier. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 67 A man is silhouetted against a dramatic sky at sunset while walking on the Huntington Beach pier. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 67 A pedestrian takes to flight crossing 4th Street in Santa Ana after heavy rain flooded the area. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 67 Snowplows clear Highway 18 during a storm on Jan. 12, 2017, in Running Springs. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 67 Jessica Pompa and Albert Arroyo make a snowman at Firehouse Park in Running Springs. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 67 Michelle Graves keeps an eye on the sky as she waits to cross Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 67 Laurel Canyon Boulevard remained closed in both directions Thursday morning in the Hollywood Hills after part of a homes concrete foundation tumbled down a hillside after a round of rainfall. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 67 News crews gather on Laurel Canyon Blvd, which remained closed in both directions Thursday morning in the Hollywood Hills when part of a homes concrete foundation tumbled down a hillside after a round of rainfall. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 67 A pedestrian wades through a flooded 4th Street in Santa Ana. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 67 Traffic moved slowly on a snowy Highway 18 in the Running Springs area. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 67 Members of a film crew shelter under umbrellas as the rain comes down in front of L.A. City Hall. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 67 A pedestrian wades through a flooded 4th Street in Santa Ana carrying her daughter. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 67 A man crossing the street gets caught in a heavy burst of rain on 4th Street in Santa Ana. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 67 A Guernville resident walks down steps toward the foodwater surrounding his home. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) 15 / 67 A portable toilet is submerged in floodwaters at a vineyard in Forestville. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) 16 / 67 A woman walks through water from a king tide that flooded onto the Embarcadero in San Francisco on Wednesday. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press) 17 / 67 Caltrans worker Brad Larson is whipped by high winds on Tuesday as he mans a checkpoint closing all northbound traffic at U.S. 395 and State Route 203 near Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 67 Caltrans worker Mark Reistetter tells a Reno-bound truck driver his options at a checkpoint closing all northbound traffic at U.S. 395 and State Route 203 near Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 67 More than 100 trucks line Main Street in Lone Pine on Tuesday, stranded as U.S. 395 closed to high-profile vehicles in both directions because of high winds. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 67 A Mammoth Mountain employee directing traffic is dwarfed by a snow removal vehicle on Minaret Road leading to the Mammoth Mountain ski area in Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 67 A tow truck driver pulls a pickup truck out of a snowbank in the median of U.S. 395 near Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 67 Clouds drift over the Owens Valley in a view from above Round Valley near Bishop. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 67 Emma Soriano jumps in a puddle on the Manhattan Beach Pier after posing for pictures for her dad. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 67 With the Manhattan Beach Pier in the distance, surfers scan the waves of Hermosa Beach. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 67 Morgan Harris of Hermosa Beach rides home along The Strand after a couple of hours of surfing south of Hermosa Beach. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 67 A biker at Hermosa Beach, where people were dealing with a lingering rainstorm. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 67 A break in a series of storms moving across California highlights the snow-covered White Mountains looming over U.S. Highway 395 in Crowley Lake. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 67 Traffic moves slowly at the Donner Pass Road exit on snowy Interstate 80 in Soda Springs. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 67 The Green Church, a beloved landmark along U.S. 395, is partly obscured by snow during a break in a series of storms in the Eastern Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 67 Snow falls along Interstate 80 at Exit 184 in Truckee. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 67 A break in a series of storms in the Eastern Sierra Nevada highlights the snow-covered White Mountains near Convict Lake. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 67 A plow removes freshly fallen snow along Donner Pass Road in Soda Springs, Calif. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 67 On a snowy day, a sign makes it clear that chains are required on this stretch of Interstate 80 in Truckee. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 67 Snow-covered mountains provide a dramatic backdrop for Crowley Lake. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 67 Jack Ryan and his family came out to see firsthand water cresting the south bank of the American River, flooding American River Parkway in Sacramentos Discovery Park. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 67 Folsom Lake continues to rise as the Folsom reservoir releases water into the American River. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 67 Caltrans worker Wendy Payne clears debris after heavy rains caused flooding along Highway 89 near Truckee. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 67 Traffic is backed up while CalTrans removes falling rocks and mud which closed one westbound lane along Interstate 80 east of Truckee, near Floriston, Calif. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 67 Wendy Payne of CalTrans clears debris along Highway 89 near Truckee. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 67 Christian Ochoa of CalTrans removes debris to allow water to flow into the Truckee River. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times ) 41 / 67 Park Ranger Cullen Tucker walks across a bridge during a rain storm on the Merced River in Yosemite National Park. (Gary Kazanjian / Associated Press) 42 / 67 Resident June Barnard checks the level of the Truckee River at Bridge 11 along Highway 89. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 67 Mammoth Mountain ski patrolman Cliff Klock, left, and Forest Service member Jeff Karl fire a 105-millimeter howitzer on Sunday to mitigate avalanche paths at the top of the ski area in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 67 Mammoth Mountain ski patrolman Cliff Klock prepares to load a 105-millimeter shell into the breach of a 1943 howitzer. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 67 Heavy rains and ice dams cause flooding along Donner Pass Road in high Sierra Nevada, Soda Springs, CA, Jan. 8, 2017. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 67 A CHP officer proclaims aw man! as he is photographed after becoming stuck in heavy snow in the median of US 395 near Crowley Lake as snow falls on the Eastern Sierra Nevada. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 67 Monique Long hauls sandbags from her SUV to make a barrier to divert the rain and melting snow from flooding her garage, while her friend Jenna Shropshire, right, helps shovel snow, in Truckee, Calif. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 67 Mitch Brown operates a skid steer removing snow so water can flow freely preventing flooding in Soda Springs, Calif. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 67 Skiers coming off the mountain endured rainy conditions all day at the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, in Norden, Calif. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 67 The train passes under an avalanche tunnel near the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, in Norden, Calif., on Jan. 7, 2017. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 67 Caltrans snowplows clear heavy snow from the northbound lanes oh highway 395 as snow falls on the Eastern Sierra near Sherwin Summit, Calif. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 52 / 67 A sign at Wawona and Glacier Point roads alerts visitors that roads into Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park are closed. (Silvia Flores / Associated Press) 53 / 67 Actor Max Baer Jr., left, talks with emergency responders after flipping over his SUV in white-out conditions while traveling northbound on U.S. 395 near Crowley Lake as heavy snow falls on the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Calif. The star of The Beverly Hillbillies said his was not injured. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 54 / 67 A snowcat moves snow in near whiteout conditions on the slopes at Mammoth Mountain. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 55 / 67 A CHP officer maintains a checkpoint to ensure vehicles are compliant with R2 chain restrictions on the northbound 395 just north of Bishop as snow falls on the Eastern Sierra Nevada. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 56 / 67 Caltrans crews have a road-flooded sign in case of heavy rain and snow near the Eastern Sierra Nevada town of June Lake, Calif. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 57 / 67 Caltrans avalanche crew members Sky Greytak, right, and Pat Brannen, left, prepare to set off explosive charges remotely from a laptop during avalanche control operations near the Eastern Sierra Nevada town. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 58 / 67 Caltrans snowplow operator Mike Morgan prepares to turn his plow around after making loops on the 395 between Bishop and Toms Place, a route he drives 12 hours a day clearing heavy snow in the Eastern Sierra. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 59 / 67 Mammoth Mountain employees clear paths as snow falls lightly Saturday morning. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 60 / 67 A car spun out and off the road just outside Bishop in sloppy road conditions as the snowfall level fell below 5000. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 61 / 67 California Highway Patrol has established a chain checkpoint near Bishop. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 62 / 67 Supermarket shoppers stock up before the big storm. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 63 / 67 Snow covers vehicles in a parking lot in Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 64 / 67 Snow covers vehicles in a parking lot in Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 65 / 67 Jorge Gaydam digs out his truck in a parking lot. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 66 / 67 Snow blankets the Sierra Nevada crest north of Bishop along U.S. Highway 395 in Round Valley. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 67 / 67 A plow removes snow from state Highway 203 in Mammoth Lakes. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Officials toiling to keep highways clear said they were concerned about a warmer phase of the storm that could fall as rain even at higher elevations, melting the built-up snow and unleashing mudslides, flooding and avalanches.

Its the rain over the snow that were worried about, said Greg Miller, a Caltrans maintenance manager. Weve had snow since Christmas, but now with the warmer trend, were worried about water.

With storm drains frozen, he said, an influx of rain could send water and mud into roadways.

Miller said crews were taking special precautions to prevent rockslides from a segment of U.S. 395 near Lee Vining and avalanches from several other critical transportation corridors.

Friday morning, Caltrans closed part of California 120 near June Lake while a crew set out off remotely detonated charges to clear avalanche-prone slopes of accumulating snow.

Crews were plowing, sanding and blowing snow from roadways around the clock in 12-hour shifts, Miller said.

The California Highway Patrol responded to several reports of rolled-over vehicles and other snow-related collisions on U.S. 395.

Tire chain restrictions were in effect across much of the Sierra Nevada.

Residents in Mammoth Lakes are concerned that warm rain and slush will dam up behind banks of shoveled snow piled high in empty lots and along roads throughout town, then flow wherever it can find a path, clogging existing drainage systems with debris and ice.

Live updates: Winter weather slams California 

In this town, we dont even have rain gutters because they get ripped down by snow, said Lisa Isaacs, a resident and environmental activist. So, were very worried that this storm will flood homes and garages.

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch warning for Sunday, and town officials advised residents to stock up on water, food, first aid supplies, clothing and bedding, tools and emergency supplies, along with special items for medical conditions.

On a winter war footing, Mammoth Lakes residents lined up throughout the day on Saturday at the towns utility yard to load up on 40-pound sandbags they hoped would steer waves of slush away from homes, ground-floor condominiums and businesses.

Among them were Mammoth Lakes residents Greg Newbry, 66, a recently retired Mono County employee, and his wife, Linda Salcido, 67, Mono Countys director of public health.

I was here in 1982 when this town was wrecked by massive flooding, Newbry recalled. Main Street was under 2 feet of water. Businesses closed. The roofs of five mobile homes collapsed under the weight of rain on snow.

If we get all the rain predicted in the forecasts, he added, every slab of concrete at ground level is vulnerable, and we live in a ground-floor condominium.

As she helped tote 20 sandbags to their vehicle, Salcido said she was concerned about the potential effects of flooding countywide.

Snow, even lots and lots of it, we can handle, she said. But a major flood event would lead to countless challenges.

Up on Mammoth Mountain, the mood was more upbeat as thousands of skiers and snowboarders raced down slopes that had received as much as 80 inches of snow over the last week alone.

Rising 11,000 feet from a gap in the Sierra Nevada range, Mammoth Mountains steep chutes stand in the path of freshly brewed atmospheric river systems. With relatively low mountains to the west of it, Mammoth receives most of their unspent snow.

But big snowfall, high winds, warm rain and rising temperatures are forces that transform pile powder into unstable clumps that set off avalanches. So Mammoth Mountain Resort specialists were bringing snowpacks down with artillery including howitzers.

Down in Mammoth Lakes, Isaacs spent Saturday hoping that the rain they keep talking about will turn out to be snow.

But itll probably be like having a giant fire big hose turned on us and well be swamped, she said with a nervous laugh. I just hope that my little $150 water pump can keep with it.

Mammoth Mountain Chief Executive Rusty Gregory had few answers. The main topic of conversation over cocktails on Sunday night, he mused, will be about what actually happened.

As snow and rain continued to fall over the Sierra Nevada, highway patrols and maintenance crews were kept busy Friday responding to snow-related accidents and icy road conditions.

Steve Coons operated a massive Caltrans wing plow. Its engine strained as it worked in tandem with another truck to clear and sand two northbound lanes of U.S. 395 north of Bishop, a key transportation corridor along the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

From behind the wheel of the rumbling truck, Coons can feel the weight of the heavy, wet snow as it pushes against the plow blade and is shoved to the side of the highway.

The truck is really chugging, he said. Its going to be a long day.

Coons monitors closely the consistency of the snow, which wavers between soft, large flakes and icy shards. The more that falls as rain and ice, the more he worries it will make the roads slick and cause serious trouble for drivers.

As soon as it gets cold all this ices up, Coons said. Not good.

He and other plow operators are on the roads 24 hours a day, working 12-hour shifts. They will have no shortage of snow to clear with the series of storm cells expected to continue dumping moisture over the area for days.

Our guys have pretty much been on since Christmas, and its not letting up, said Greg Miller, maintenance manager for Caltrans District 9, which includes Inyo, Mono and eastern Kern counties.

The storm was also bringing wind gusts that topped 50 mph. Officials said they were low snow and icy conditions on Interstate 5 and 80 as well as U.S. 50 and some mountain highways.

The National Weather Service on Saturday released a new timeline for the storms moving through the region:

Saturday: Moderate to heavy snow in mountain areas.

Sunday: Heaviest rain and snow, with risks of flooding.

Monday: Showers and snow continue, with continued flood risk.

Tuesday: New storm moves in, lower snow levels, flood risk.

Wednesday: Showers and snow, with rivers running high.

Were expecting heavy, heavy rain. It starts out as snow then turns to rain then turns to snow again, Hammitt said. Were concerned about the melt increasing waterways and all the lakes.

Hammitt recalled storms in 1997 and 2005 when runoff overwhelmed local rivers and creeks and sent water into roads and homes, lifting some buildings off their foundations.

We have streams, creeks, rivers. We have lakes and ponds, Hammitt said. Anybody near a water source could be in jeopardy depending on the severity of the storm.

Two sinkholes have been reported on El Dorado County roads as a result of three days of rain this week. Residents have already filled 12,000 sandbags in preparation for the storm and an additional 20,000 were on the way in, Hammitt said.

Anytime its Mother Nature, you have to be ready, Hammitt said.

While Northern California faced the brunt of the storms, a less powerful system moved into Southern California overnight, bringing scattered showers Saturday morning. The rain was harder to the north along the Central Coast. The wet conditions should continue through the weekend.

But much of the concern is focused on the Bay Area and Sierra.

Its a once-in-10-year event, said Zach Tolby, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno. Its the strongest storm weve seen in a long time, the kind of setup we look for to get significant flooding.

Indeed, large swaths of the Bay Area, Sierra foothills, Central Coast and parts of the Sacramento Valley were under flash-flood warnings. Flood concerns are heightened because officials fear that the snow may quickly melt due to heavy rain.

The so-called atmospheric river of airborne moisture known as the Pineapple Express will be felt across much of the state this weekend, though rain will be much heavier in the north than in the south.

Its going to be like buckets of water for a fairly sustained period of time, Tolby said.

Wind gusts on mountaintops could top 130 mph in the northern Sierra, which is typical, Tolby said. At lower elevations gusts could reach 30 or 40 mph, he said, but thats an average windy day for us.

Tolby said the storm is packing the same wallop as an atmospheric river that hit Northern California a decade ago that caused $300 million in damage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Day 2 of the mega storm and still going strong with 40-84" of new snow and MUCH more on the way. Stay safe and remember to ride w/ a buddy. pic.twitter.com/6h4Z03yJ11  MammothMountain (@MammothMountain) January 5, 2017

Angelenos may remember the 2005-06 storm because it was the first time it rained on the Rose Parade in 51 years. But Tolby, who lives in Lake Tahoe, remembers the storm differently.

It was pretty wild. I was here in 2005 and it was definitely the hardest rain Id ever seen. It didnt stop for 24 hours, he said.

This weekends storm could bring 36 straight hours of heavy rain from Mammoth Mountain to Susanville, Tolby said.

Below clear blue skies Friday, people in the snow-shrouded ski town of Mammoth Lakes were gleeful about the prospect of several more feet of snow.

Yet some also worried that the big, wet storm could dump so much rain and snow that it could shut down some ski runs or roads.

In preparation, snowplows were scraping icy roadways. Excavators and snowblower operators stayed busy clearing and moving huge piles of snow. Some cars sat abandoned on the roadside or at gas stations, covered with thick blankets of snow from the most recent storm.

Mayor Sass provides important information and in preparation of the upcoming storms. pic.twitter.com/Et4YRE4dGI  South Lake Tahoe (@cityofslt) January 6, 2017

Outside Kittredge Sports, store manager Terry Lucian took advantage of the clear weather to shovel away some of the mounds of snow that had built up outside the entrance.

If the storm comes in as wet as theyre talking about, itll make for a big mess, the 60-year-old said as he scooped icy snow off the entrance to the A-frame building.

Lucian said recent storms definitely helped to boost business, but he worried some skiers traveling to the area this weekend could be in for disappointment if storm conditions worsen to the point that they shut down parts of Mammoth Mountain.

Everybody wants the snow, they just dont want it while theyre here, the 39-year Mammoth resident said. Itll be a rough couple of days, but we need the water. So its going to be OK.

Up north, South Lake Tahoe Mayor Austin Sass urged residents to prepare for the storm.

If at all possible, get up on your roof and get off whatever snow you have on there because the moisture combined with the snow will be extremely heavy and were worried about the integrity of your roof structure, Sass tweeted Friday.

Do not go outside Sunday or Monday, he told his constituents.

When the snow comes mixed with the rain, its going to be an absolute mess. So whatever you can do stay home, and most importantly, stay safe, he said.

In the mountains, the rain could saturate the snow and trigger early melt, feeding extra runoff into watersheds already swollen from a week of rain.

A combination of intense rain on saturated soils will lead to excessive runoff, the National Weather Service said in its weekend forecast.

The Carson, Truckee and Susan rivers are all expected to become overwhelmed, and nearby communities may become increasingly isolated if the deluge triggers mud and rock slides.

Weather officials issued a flood watch from Saturday to Wednesday that covers much of Northern California and extends down through the Sierra to Tehachapi.

In Mono County, authorities offered sandbags to residents in preparation for the rain. In Yosemite National Park, officials announced Friday that the park would remain open through the wet weekend, but access to popular Yosemite Valley would be closed.

Earlier in the week, up to 2 feet of snow fell in less than 24 hours in the Tahoe basin on Wednesday, at times coming down at more than 2 inches an hour.

Now is the time to prepare! Dry weather thru Fri. Major storm, heavy rain & flooding this weekend. Additional storms past Monday. #cawx pic.twitter.com/FNO1QG7jBz  NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) January 5, 2017

The Sierra Avalanche Center reported a slight improvement in backcountry conditions. The risk of avalanche was lowered to considerable even as the threat increased of historically large avalanches caused by slabs of snowpack as thick as 8 feet above a weak layer of ice laid down by a mid-December rain.

Near Lake Tahoe on Thursday, two skiers were caught in an avalanche that closed a local highway. But they were not injured, officials said.

Sierra residents are preparing for a third onslaught over the weekend, bringing up to 12 inches of rain below 8,500 feet, and more snow above that. A fourth storm system is forecast to roll across Northern California two days after that.

After the weekend storm, another rain-making system is expected to hit Northern California on Tuesday.

For all the problems the storms may cause, it will bring more good news for Californias six-year drought. Officials have said steady rain in Northern California the last few months has filled reservoirs and increased the once-anemic snowpack.

They emphasize the storms wont end the drought. But if the rains keep up for spring, they could make a major dent.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

joseph.serna@latimes.com

St John reported from Colfax, Calif., Serna from Los Angeles, Barboza from Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

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Suspect in killings of Long Beach mother, 4-year-old daughter will represent himself at trial

UPDATES:

7:45 a.m. , Jan. 8: This post was updated with overnight news. 9:45 p.m.: This post was updated with death of woman.

4:45 p.m.: This story was updated with new details about road conditions from Caltrans.

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with new details about residents of Mammoth Lakes preparing for a band of warm rain and possible flooding.

2:50 p.m.: This article was updated with new details about road conditions

11:15 a.m.: This article was updated with a revised weather forecast.

10:30 a.m.: This article was updated with a new forecast from the National Weather Service.

8:25 a.m.: This article was updated with information about road conditions.

7:30 a.m.: This article was updated with revised forecasts and rain reports in Southern California.

6 a.m., Jan. 7: This article was updated with storm developments.

9:30 p.m.: This article was updated with rain falling in Bay Area.

7:25 p.m.: This article was updated with information about flood risk.

3:40 p.m.: Jan. 6: This article was updated with details on storm preparations in the Sierra Nevada.

10:50 a.m. Jan. 6: This article was updated with comments from Sierra Nevada residents.

7:45 a.m. Jan. 6: This article was updated with new forecast details.

9:25 p.m.: This article was updated with information on the flood watch.

4:20 p.m. This post was updated with information on Californias drought.

3:11 p.m. This post was updated with information about L.A. rains.

2:10 p.m.: This post was updated with maps and updated forecast information.

This post was originally published at 12:20 p.m. Jan. 5.
Laura Duffys tenure as the top federal prosecutor for San Diego and Imperial counties ends Friday, 6 years after she became the regions U.S. attorney.

Her term has been marked with several high-profile prosecutions of government bribery and fraud, drug cartel figures, and a campaign finance corruption case that involved a Mexican tycoon that swept up in its wake San Diego political figures who ended up testifying at a lengthy trial last summer.

Duffy, 54, is set to be sworn in Friday as a San Diego Superior Court judge, a post Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to last month.

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It will be a significant change for Duffy, who has spent her entire career as a federal prosecutor, mainly working narcotics cases before being sworn in as U.S. attorney in June 2010.

She made her name by prosecuting top members of the notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel, whose control over drug smuggling through Tijuana was enforced with a ruthless violence.

She was the prosecutor in 2007 when Francisco Javier Arellano Felix pleaded guilty to operating a criminal enterprise and money laundering. He had been captured while on his yacht in international waters off the Mexican coast in 2006. When he was being transported to San Diego aboard a U.S.Coast Guard ship, Duffy arrived to question him  getting lowered on to the deck of a boat from a hovering government helicopter.

That led Arellano to refer to her during his case as La mujer del Cielo  the woman from the sky.

In 2011, when Duffy was early in her U.S. attorney stint, cartel leader Benjamin Arellano Felix  Javiers older brother  was finally extradited to San Diego to face charges and pleaded guilty.

That was definitely the end of an era as far as the Arellano cartel goes, she said in an interview this week. As I look back on my career as a U.S. attorney, being able to see these cases finish was rewarding.

While drug cases targeting other cartel leaders were important under Duffy, there were other cases as well. She oversaw investigations and prosecutions into large-scale fraud and government corruption, chief among them the Navy bribery and fraud scheme orchestrated by contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, known as Fat Leonard because of his size.

So far, 16 people have been charged in the case, including 11 current and former Navy officials. Francis, whose Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia was at the center of the scheme, bribed Navy personnel to get information on ship schedules and to have them send ships to ports controlled by his company. He and 10 Navy officials have pleaded guilty.

Duffy said the investigation is not over. There have been reports some Navy officials are impatient with the pace of the 3-year-old case, but she said that doesnt matter.

Were looking at the evidence we have and will go as far as we can go, she said. In addition to the 16 cases filed here, she said her office has referred more than 200 cases to an internal Navy disciplinary board set up for the Leonard probe.

Her office also broke up a bribery ring at Naval Air Station North Island that netted 11 people, including defense contractors and former Navy workers, and a smaller ring at Camp Pendleton that led to convictions of three contractors.

Other high-profile prosecutions included a terrorism case that convicted four Somali men for providing money to the terrorist group al-Shabab. That case is on appeal and is noteworthy because it is the only known criminal case that relied on the massive National Security Agency surveillance program that swept up millions of phone records for domestic and foreign communications.

Because of the appeal, Duffy could not talk about the details, but she said it was a significant case for the district and the U.S.

It also caused concern within San Diegos Somali immigrant community, one of the largest in the nation. That led Duffy to hold frequent meetings with Somali residents and others in law enforcement that she said eased tensions.

Duffy also pointed to other cases, including murder convictions of four people who killed three U.S. Border Patrol agents in separate cases while she was U.S. attorney.

Two agents  Luis Aguilar and Robert Rosas  were killed while on duty in San Diego and Imperial counties. Duffys office also handled the prosecution in Arizona of seven people indicted in the 2010 killing of Agent Brian Terry.

Arizona prosecutors had to recuse themselves because of their connection to the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation, which allowed more than 1,000 weapons to be sold to criminals in the hope that following the guns would lead to drug cartel leaders. Two guns found at the scene of the Terry killing were traced back to that operation, which was eventually halted.

Duffy did a good job with the agent murder cases but could have done more, said the spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing agents.

I think the only red flag that sticks out is the continued assaults on agents, said Shawn Moran, the unions vice president. He said too often federal prosecutors dont want to pursue incidents where agents are punched, kicked or otherwise attacked while apprehending someone.

We would prefer to see the U.S. attorney doing more on those kinds of cases, Moran said.

An ACLU official faulted Duffy for not pursuing cases of excessive force by agents against unauthorized immigrants. In her tenure, only one agent  Luis Fonseca  was charged with choking a man when he was inside the Imperial Beach Border Patrol station. It was the first time an agent had been prosecuted on such a charge since 2002.

A jury deliberated a few hours before acquitting Fonseca.

The Border Patrol is the largest federal law enforcement agency with a huge foot print in the southern district of California, said David Loy, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties. Weve been aware of numerous, credible reports of people being abused by Border Patrol agents. I find it troubling so few cases have been prosecuted.

Duffy said all allegations of excessive force are carefully reviewed but proving such cases is challenging and the federal laws that apply are limited.

Its not that we shy away from these cases because they are difficult, she said. Its just extremely difficult to pursue a federal civil-rights case.

Earlier this year prosecutors secured the conviction of Jose Susumo Azano Matsura and two others in an illegal campaign finance case. The Mexican tycoon was convicted for funneling more than $500,000 in the 2012 San Diego mayors race to the campaigns of District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Rep. Bob Filner.

Duffy recused herself in early 2013 from the case. At the time, her office said Duffy did not believe she had a conflict of interest that would bias her, but she stepped away to avoid even the appearance of one.

She has never said what the conflict was, leading to rampant speculation among the legal community. One theory was she did so because she is good friends with Dumanis.

Others speculated it was her fraught relationship with Filner. He called on her to resign over comments she made about him in an email to mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio about Filners behavior at a mayoral forum she moderated. (Filner defeated DeMaio in 2012 but resigned the next year amid a sexual harassment scandal.)

On her way out of office this week, Duffy declined again to say why she wasnt involved in the Azano case, but she shut down one area of speculation.

It had nothing to do with Bonnie Dumanis, Duffy said.

Asked if it had anything to do with Filner, she paused and said, No comment.

Twitter: @gregmoran

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com
A leader of a North County methamphetamine trafficking ring was sentenced Friday in San Diego federal court to 14 years in prison.

Gilbert Joseph Ramirez, 39, admitted to coordinating the delivery or distribution of more than 8 pounds of meth in 2014 and 2015.

He would obtain meth from a co-defendant who got it from Mexican trafficking networks, then disperse the drug to sub-distributors and oversee the collection of drug proceeds, according to his plea agreement.

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He pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.

Ramirez, who grew up in Los Angeles with drug-addicted parents, moved to Vista in 2014 and was unemployed when he was arrested in the case in May 2015, said his defense lawyer, Frank Balistrieri.

Ramirez is a documented gang member with prior convictions of assault with a firearm, battery and domestic violence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Luella Caldito said.

The investigation began in 2014 when authorities received tips from confidential informants about two co-defendants accused of dealing large amounts of meth, according to the complaint. Investigators installed wiretaps on their phones, revealing a larger drug network. The wiretaps would eventually expand to 20 different phones during the investigation.

Ramirez was accused of overseeing the distribution of multi-pound quantities of meth, according to the complaint. In one deal recorded by authorities, Ramirez sold an ounce of meth to a sub-distributor for $430, who then sold the drug to a confidential informant for $550, according to the complaint.

The investigation culminated in raids at apartments and homes in Vista, Oceanside, Valley Center and San Marcos.

At the hearing, Ramirez apologized to his family. A lot of stuff thats on paper isnt really who I am, he said.

Of the 18 people indicted, 16 have pleaded guilty while the charges have been dismissed against two.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
A woman pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Thursday to harboring an unauthorized immigrant at her City Heights home for money, and admitted to knowing that 44 others hiding there were also in the country illegally.

Dania Olivero, 51, was arrested Nov. 6 after neighbors called San Diego police reporting groups of people were being dropped off at her home on University Avenue near Winona Avenue, according to the complaint.

Officers found numerous people inside sitting nervously with unopened bottles of beer in front of them, the complaint said. Authorities then found others in the backyard. One of the immigrants was an unaccompanied minor, according to the plea agreement.

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Two of the immigrants were from Guatemala, while the rest were Mexican, the complaint said.

Some of the immigrants told authorities they were locked inside a small shed in the backyard and were held without access to a bathroom, lights or ventilation, the complaint said.

In the plea agreement, Olivero admitted that at least one of the immigrants paid $5,000 to $8,500 to cross illegally into the U.S., and that she housed them for a fee.

Olivero told Border Patrol agents after her arrest that she had been involved in human smuggling since 2014 and that she did this job at the request of a man she met at a bar, according to the complaint. She said she agreed to temporarily house them because she needed help paying her rent, the complaint said.

A sentencing hearing has been set for March 13. Olivero is a Cuban living legally in the U.S. and could be deported because of her conviction.

A judge previously set bail at $30,000, but she remained in custody Thursday.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
A married Mexican couple pleaded guilty Thursday to smuggling unauthorized immigrants into San Diego, with the wife also admitting to bribing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer with cash and sexual favors for him to wave the illegal loads through his lane at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

Miriam Juarez Herrera, 35, and Gilberto Aguilar Martinez, 31, were arrested in September during a traffic stop following a lengthy investigation by the FBI Border Corruption Task Force. Customs Officer Jose Luis Cota was arrested the same day at work.

Cota has pleaded not guilty.

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The couple admitted to conspiring with Cota to smuggle at least 10 immigrants into the U.S. from November 2015 until their arrest, charging as much as $15,000 per person, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

An unauthorized immigrant who cooperated with authorities said the couple promoted their smuggling services as a guaranteed method, according to search warrants.

Juarez located and recruited clients, negotiated the fee and paid bribes to Cota, then would smuggle the immigrants as passengers in her vehicle through Cotas lane at the port of entry, according to the plea agreement. She would use fraudulent passports during the crossings, the plea states.

Her husband would pick up the job from there, according to the plea, by transporting the immigrants to a destination inside the U.S. and collecting the smuggling fee.

Bank records show Cota deposited thousands upon thousands of dollars into various accounts following smuggling activities, and cellphone records show hundreds of conversations with Juarez, according to search warrants. Surveillance of Cota and Juarez also revealed hotel room rendezvous.

The investigation, which began in 2013, used several methods, including surveillance, GPS tracking, recorded conversations, confidential witnesses and border crossing data.

Sentencing for Juarez and Aguilar has been set for April 7. Neither has legal status to be in the U.S., and both are expected to be deported once their sentences are served. They remain in custody.

Related:

Warrants detail alleged smuggling scheme by Customs and Border Protection officer

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
A Buddhist fraternity that started at San Diego State University in 2015 is getting national attention from other schools and might open a chapter at UC San Diego next year.

Meanwhile, the Buddhist temple that helped start the fraternity itself is expanding and has hopes of moving into a vacant 1920s-era church in University Heights.

I knew this would take off, said Jeff Zlotnik, co-founder of the Dharma Bums Buddhist Temple in downtown San Diego and advisor to the Delta Beta Tau co-ed fraternity at SDSU.

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I knew the students would love this, but what I didnt expect was that the students would take so much ownership of it and so much pride in it so quickly.

Zlotnik, who was a member of Beta Theta Pi as a University of Arizona student, approached SDSU with the idea of the nations first Buddhist fraternity in fall of 2015. Some students at SDSU already attended meditation sessions at Dharma Bums Temple  the name comes from a Jack Kerouac book  which Zlotnik co-founded as a way for English-speaking Westerners to learn about Buddhism.

Students interested in the fraternity began meeting weekly at the schools library in 2015, and the first pledge program started last spring.

The latest class of 17 pledges recently joined the fraternity, bringing the membership to 51.

It was beautiful because the students this last semester really were more involved in running it, Zlotnik said.

Members created their own initiation ritual for pledges, who must visit four Buddhist temples over a 10-week period to bond and become exposed to different cultures associated with Buddhism.

The excursions include trips to the Dharma Bums Temple, the Zen Center of San Diego in Pacific Beach, the Metta Forest Monastery in Valley Center and the Pao Fa Temple in Irvine, where students stay the night.

I have never seen a program more effective in producing genuinely good people, ready to go out and spread their kindness in their communities and further the world around them, student and frat member Evihn Vaszily wrote in a letter to SDSU administrators.

I am certain that SDSU students who are a part of this community, and even those who are simply touched by it, will leave college ready to be incredibly positive representations of the university, in both contributions to the world around them and in the discipline they put into whatever practice they may pursue.

While the fraternity is growing at SDSU, three members of Delta Beta Tau have been meeting with UC San Diego students who are interested in forming their own chapter.

Zlotnik used to speak to a Buddhist group at UC San Diego twice a year, but its membership has dwindled to just two students.

They said, Jeff, were it, Zlotnik said. Can you help us do what you did at San Diego State?

A Delta Beta Tau chapter at UC San Diego could be more sustainable than a Buddhism club, said Zlotnik, who anticipates approaching the administration with the idea of introducing the fraternity by the end of the year.

Zlotnik said he also has been contacted by people interested in started their own chapters in Florida, Chicago, New York and four other cities

He plans to look into getting a house for the Delta Beta Tau chapter at SDSU. For now, the group meets twice a week, once at SDSU and once at the shop Buddha for You. Wednesday meetings are open to the public and held at 8:30 p.m. in the Tehuanco Room of the Aztec Student Union.

Frat members and people who attend the Dhama Bums Temple are not necessarily Buddhists, but are interested in Buddhism and meditation, Zlotnik said. Religion and politics, in fact, are two things that are not discussed at meeting.

As the fraternity has grown, Zlotnik began searching for a new home for the Dhama Bums Temple, which he said had outgrown its home at 541 2nd Ave.

Late last year, he learned that the Swedenborgian Church on the corner of Campus and Tyler avenues in University Heights had closed.

The congregation had followed the teaching of 18th Century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian, and the property is owned by the Swedenborg Foundation.

The church opened in 1927, and the attached Swedenborgian Hall had been used by theater groups and hosted various concerts and community meetings over several decades.

The mission-style building was designed by Louis John Gill, nephew of famed local architect Irving Gill, whose work includes the County Administration Building, original structures at the San Diego Zoo, Sacred Heart Church in Coronado and the Rees-Stealy Clinic at Fourth and Grape streets.

The foundation was asking $1.5 million for the building, and Zlotnik told his realtor that the Dharma Bums had $7,000.

In Dharma Bum dollars, thats like millions, Zlotnik said. Weve operated for 10 years on a $35,000-a-year budget. The fact that we have $7,000 in our account at this stage is incredible.

Zlotnik made an offer of $1.4 million, and the foundation accepted. His realtor told him that a developer had made the same offer, but the foundation wanted the property to go to a spiritual organization.

Although the temple had never held a fundraiser before and doesnt even ask for donations after meditation classes, Zlotnik began calling everyone from the temple to join the mission of getting a new home and saving a beautiful old church from demolition.

In two weeks, they raised $103,800 from 321 donors, just enough to open escrow by the Oct. 29 deadline.

The largest donation was $5,000, and the smallest was $5. As of this week, the drive has raised about $300,000 from 908 donors. They have until Feb. 14 to raise enough for the $490,000 down payment.

Ive had faith this whole time that this would come together, Zlotnik said. Its part of my Buddhist practices. I dont allow any space for negative thoughts.

Donors noticed that the start of the fundraiser and the close of escrow was 108 days, an auspicious number in Buddhism, so many contributions were $108.

In another good sign, Zlotnik discovered that Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki wrote the book Swedenborg: Buddha of the North about the mystic followed by congregants of the old church.

Zlotnik had never heard of the book, but he knew Suzuki as the writer of An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. It was the first book he had read on Buddhism, and it changed his life.

You can call this coincidence or call it fate, but it was just really beautiful, he said.

Zlotnik is confident that if they raise enough for the down payment, the mortgage and expenses can be met with the support of people already donating to the temple, a gift shop planned in the church and rentals of three residential units that can house up to six in the church.

To learn more about the fund drive, visit https://www.dbtnewhome.com.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
Regulators have fined two San Diego County hospitals nearly $150,000 for avoidable incidents that resulted in a patients suicide and left another patient permanently unable to bear children.

Both penalties are among 15 handed down this week by the California Department of Public Health, as required by laws designed to hold hospitals accountable for preventable medical errors that cause death or serious injury to patients.

Scripps Mercy Hospitals Hillcrest campus will have to pay $100,000 after a suicidal patient who was hearing voices jumped from a 10th-floor window that lacked safety features on May 11, 2014. The man fell from his room onto a fourth-floor rooftop and died.

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Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside received a $47,025 penalty after one of its surgical teams forgot two sponges inside the abdomen of a woman who was admitted on Dec. 23, 2014. A state report indicated that the sponges were left over from a surgery to correct an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when a fertilized egg lodges outside of the uterus. The sponges caused an infection that damaged the patients reproductive system, forcing surgeons to perform a complete hysterectomy  which removes the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix.

In a statement issued Friday, Scripps said everyone at its hospital is deeply saddened by the suicide.

Following this incident, we implemented additional measures including environmental safety enhancements, more staff training and improved communications processes to help prevent similar tragedies from occurring again.

Tri-City did not release a statement Friday. However, its mandatory plan of correction  part of the regulators inspection report  said two staff members were placed on administrative leave, a nurse was fired and a technician was suspended for three days without pay after the botched surgery. Nursing and technical staff members were re-educated about the hospitals leave nothing behind policy and a new monitoring process that requires a team leader to verify correct equipment counts was implemented, according to the plan.

How to avoid wrong surgeries and other preventable hospital errors 

In both cases, state investigators found that hospital safety policies were not followed.

A Tri-City operating room nurse told investigators that the surgeon who performed the first procedure closed the surgical wound before technicians had finished performing the sponge count mandated by hospital policy. Although the report indicates that a technician noticed the sponges were missing and informed coworkers of the incomplete count multiple times and loud enough for everyone to hear, the patient was still moved out of the operating room and into a recovery ward.

At Scripps Mercy, investigators found that nurses failed to inform the patients doctor that he was hearing voices after he was transferred to the medical and surgical department from the hospitals trauma floor, where a state report noted that he had arrived with self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest.

Investigators also cited the patients room configuration, which contained two beds. The patient was placed in the bed closest to the window even though it had no safety features similar to the special metal screening in place in the hospitals behavioral health unit, where most of Scripps Mercys psychiatric patients are treated.

The leap from the window occurred despite the presence of a special observer assigned to monitor the patient because of his previous suicide attempt. The observer told investigators that the patient without warning said, Hey man, stood up on his bed, jumped up (shoulder first), hit and went through the glass window.

According to a state report, the man told a nurse earlier in the day that On that morning when he woke up, he heard voices telling him that his mother was dead  since he was the only child, he did not want to live without his mother.

Caregivers were able to confirm that his mother was still alive and well, and she came to the hospital before his jump through the quarter-inch-thick window pane. She had stepped away from his bedside for a moment when the suicide happened, the report said.

When the state Legislature first started issuing penalties for serious hospital safety lapses in 2007, the intent was to lower the number of these incidents in Californias medical facilities. However, an analysis of such fines conducted by The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2016 found that these preventable mistakes had actually increased since the program began.

The other 12 hospitals fined by the state this week were AHMC Anaheim Regional Medical Center, College Hospital in Cerritos (two penalties), Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park, Keck Hospital of USC, Los Angeles Community Hospital, Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley, South Coast Global Medical Center in Santa Ana, Southern California Hospital at Hollywood, St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys.

Health Playlist On Now Video: Why aren't Americans getting flu shots? 0:37 On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now Video: Vaccine can prevent human papillomavirus, which can cause cancer 0:31 On Now 23 local doctors have already faced state discipline in 2017 0:48 On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniountribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson
Senate Republicans broke with the GOPs incoming president in a nationally televised congressional hearing Thursday, criticizing Donald Trumps skepticism that hackers backed by Russian intelligence agencies had interfered with the 2016 presidential race.

Only one of 14 Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, offered a modest defense of Trump, and he did so by suggesting the president-elects promises to boost military spending and production of oil and gas will serve to block Russian ambitions.

There is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia, Cotton said.

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But as three American spymasters testified that only top leaders in the Kremlin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, could have authorized complex cyberattacks against a U.S. presidential election, there was little pushback from Republican lawmakers who are highly suspicious of Russian intentions and deeply perplexed by Trumps repeated praise for Putin.

Russia clearly tried to meddle in our political system, no two ways about it, said House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the incoming president.

Every American should be alarmed by Russias attacks on our nation, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), who led the first congressional hearing on the hacking since the November election. There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference.

Thanks to a series of mocking tweets and taunts, Trumps relations with the intelligence community has been tense for weeks. After the hearing ended, he signaled plans to give the 17 U.S. spy agencies new leadership.

Aides said Trump would name Dan Coats, a former member of the Senate from Indiana, a onetime U.S. ambassador to Germany and a paid lobbyist, as director of national intelligence, the highest post in U.S. spying.

If confirmed by the Senate, Coats would face a daunting task as the link between Trump and the intelligence community. He may also need to reconcile his own hawkish views on Russia, and Putin, with Trumps far friendlier posture toward the Kremlin.

Sen. Coats was banned, along with McCain and several other members of Congress and White House officials, from entering Russia in 2014 after the Obama administration slapped economic sanctions on Russia for its annexation of the Crimea region in Ukraine.

Coats, who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, would succeed James R. Clapper, a career intelligence officer. Clapper previously had announced plans to resign when President Obama leaves office on Jan. 20.

Clapper took careful note of Trumps caustic tweets on Thursday, suggesting some were unwarranted.

I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers  to include policymaker No. 1  should always have for intelligence, but I think theres a difference between skepticism and disparagement, Clapper said.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will moderate his doubts or his criticism after he gets a personal briefing Friday on the Russian hacks from a bevy of U.S. intelligence chiefs, including Clapper, CIA Director John O. Brennan and James B. Comey, head of the FBI.

They are scheduled to brief Trump in New York about evidence they say confirms the Kremlin approved the hacking and leaking of thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee and from Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons campaign manager, among other targets, last year.

They will be armed with a newly-completed classified report that Clapper said would include details of Russias motivations  including whether the operation was partly intended to help elect Trump, as U.S. officials have said privately.

Obama ordered the inter-agency review after Trump repeatedly rejected statements by U.S. intelligence officials about Russias role. Aides said Obama was briefed on the findings Thursday.

The full report will be given to Congress on Monday. Parts will be declassified and released to the public after that, according to the White House.

Intelligence officials will scrub this report and make as much public as they possibly can, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said Thursday. He called the report an unvarnished assessment.

Though Clinton and her aides have said the leaked emails damaged her White House bid, Clapper said he had no way of gauging whether the Russian hacks influenced the choice the electorate made. The operation did not involve changing vote tallies, he said.

Whether or not it was an act of war is a very heavy policy call, he added. I dont think the intelligence community should weigh in on that. I do think it should carry great gravity.

Asked about his level of confidence that the theft and disclosure of Democratic Party emails was directed by the Russian government and not done by a teenage hacker pecking away in a basement, as Trump has suggested, Clapper responded, Its very high.

Once in office, Trump is likely to face intense pressure from Republicans to punish Russia. He also will face demands to do a better job than Obama did at deterring foreign cyberattacks on U.S. targets.

Clapper told the panel Thursday that since the election, Russia has continued to use computer hacks, leaks of pilfered material and fake news stories to erode faith in democratic processes and to try to weaken the U.S. government by portraying it as corrupt and dysfunctional.

Clapper was joined by Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who heads the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, and Marcel J. Lettre, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.

They provided few new details about the evidence, but were unequivocal in their judgments.

We assess that only Russias senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets, the trio said in a statement.

Russia poses a major threat to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, commercial and critical infrastructure and key resource networks because of its highly advanced offensive cyber program and sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures, they said.

Times staff writers Noah Bierman and Christi Parsons in Washington contributed to this report.

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

brian.bennett@latimes.com

ALSO

When Trump says he wants to deport criminals, he means something starkly different than Obama

Yes, Trump can boost deportations and gut the Dreamer program for young immigrants

An outsider takes charge of the Border Patrol  and yes, hell wear the green uniform

UPDATES:

2:55 p.m.: The story was updated throughout with new information.

8:50 a.m.: Updated with comments from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

8:05 a.m.: Updated with details from Thursdays hearing.

The story was originally posted at 5:30 a.m.
A controversial award-winning painting that depicts police officers as animals was removed Friday morning from a congressional wall by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, following complaints that it was offensive.

Joe Kasper, chief of staff for Hunter, said the congressman personally unscrewed the painting from the wall and delivered it to the office of Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Missouri, who sponsored the congressional competition won by the paintings creator.

It made a very strong statement today, and theres been an outpouring of support, Kasper said.

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Law enforcement agencies had called for the paintings removal, and several officers came to Hunters office Friday to thank him, Kasper said. The Peace Officers Research Association of California and Fraternal Order of Police also put out statements Friday in support of Hunters action, he said.

Steven Engelhardt, a spokesman for Clay, said the congressman from St. Louis may make a statement next week about the issue and whether the painting would be re-installed.

Kasper said Hunter would not take the painting down again if Clay put it back up.

He gets along really well with Lacy Clay, whos four doors down from us, he said. This isnt anything personal. Its not about him or Hunter.

The painting was part of the national Congressional Art Competition. Congress members sponsor the student competition in their states, but do not select winners.

The 2016 winning painting from Missouri was created by David Pulphus, who at the time was a senior at Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School.

The spot where the controversial painting hung on a Capitol Hill wall. (Lisa Mascaro / Los Angeles Times )

Named Untitled #1, the painting depicts a clash between police and protesters on the street. One gun-wielding officer has a head that resembles a boar, while other officers heads appears to be a horse and a dog. One protester appears to be a panther or wolf, and people on the street hold signs that read History, Justice Now and Racism Kills.

The painting was selected as the Missouri winner last May and had hung for months in a tunnel that connects House office buildings to the U.S. Capitol.

Its presence became controversial over the past two weeks when conservative bloggers wrote about it and a Fox News commentator called for its removal.

Law enforcement agencies also had called for it to be taken down.

I cant believe it was up there in the first place, said Gary Moore, president of the Deputy Sheriffs Association of San Diego County.

Moore said he had no problem with Hunter taking down the painting, which he saw as not helpful following a year when many police officers were killed in the line of duty.

Its certainly not part of the solution, he said.

As the controversy grew, Clay issued a statement that clarified his involvement with the competition and defended freedom of expression.

Members of Congress support student art competitions in our districts but we do not select the young artists and we do not judge the artwork, Clay said. I had no role in selecting the winner of this student art competition and would never attempt to approve or disapprove artistic expression. The U.S. Capitol is a symbol of freedom, not censorship.

In a news release from Clays office last May, the painting was described as a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society.

Clays district includes Ferguson, where in 2014 riots broke out after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man.

Hunter aide Kasper said the painting was discussed Friday morning in the House Republican Conference, where several representatives said they objected to it.

When it rises to this level of controversy, somebody should make a move to take it down, Kasper said. The funny thing about this is, nobody was sure who had the authority to take it down, so Hunter said, Ill do it.

Hunter, who served as a Marine in Iraq, couldnt be reached for comment Friday, but earlier had told a news outlet that he had been angered by the painting and wanted it removed.

Im in the Marine Corps, he told FoxNews.com. If you want it done, just call us.

Kasper said the paintings location was especially troubling because it was next to an entrance where officers usually are stationed.

Previously: Hunter

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
Guest column: Weve received some useful advice about protecting your privacy while using Amazon Echo or Google Home, the voice-activated, Internet-connected personal assistants that are becoming common in peoples homes.

This column was written by Paul Bischoff, a writer for Comparitech, which bills itself as a pro-consumer website providing information, tools and comparison to help consumers in the US, UK and further afield to research and compare tech services. Bischoff says:

If Santa left an Amazon Echo or Google Home in your stocking over Christmas, you might want to take a few precautions to make sure he isnt using them to snoop on whos naughty and whos nice ...

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The Echo and Home both work in a similar manner. They constantly listen for a trigger phrase, Hey Alexa or OK Google, respectively. Once activated, they record the following voice query, then upload it to the cloud. Once on Amazons or Googles servers, the recording is analyzed, and an appropriate response is returned.

Each boasts a roster of unique features to entice shoppers. The $130 Google Home can sync with any device that supports Google Cast, like Android smartphones and Chromecasts. The $180 Echo relies on Bluetooth, which makes it more compatible with smart home devices and wearables.

NEW YORK, NY -People visit the new Google pop-up shop in the SoHo neighborhood on October 20, 2016 in New York City. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images )

Differences aside, both share one major downside: privacy. Both Alexa and the Google Voice Assistant are constantly listening to everyone within microphone range for input by default. That core function broaches a series of privacy concerns:

The microphones are always listening unless physically muted.

The voice assistants cannot differentiate between different people.

The devices upload recordings and store them on cloud servers.

Data collected from recordings and subsequent analyses is used to provide a customized experience and, in all likelihood, targeted advertising.

The devices location is used to give more accurate searches and, again, targeted advertisements.

Data may be shared with third parties unknown to the user.

All of the data passed between an Echo or Home and its corresponding servers is encrypted, so security is not so much an issue. A hacker wont be able to decipher any intercepted communication.

The larger concern is privacy, rather than security. Talking to an Echo or Home requires trust in Amazon and Google. Beyond that, it in turn requires trust in third-party developers that create all of those integrated apps.Its not just companies that could abuse your data, however. Echo and Home users must also trust their family members and house guests. Even if the line of communication is safe from hackers and government agencies, voice assistants are still riddled with unforeseen vulnerabilities.

Mike George, VP Alexa, Echo and Appstore for Amazon, speaks during the LG press conference at CES in Las Vegas. (RICK WILKING / Reuters )

Making Alexa more private

When it comes to the Amazon Echo, the price of convenience is privacy (plus the $180 price tag). Its impossible to use one for anything other than a paperweight without giving up some of your private information. Despite that, there are a handful of precautions owners can take to make Alexa a bit more tight-lipped:

Mute the Echo when not in use. A physical mute button is located at the top of the device. The always listening microphone will be disabled until physically unmuted.

Delete old recordings. Every Echo owner presumably has an Amazon account. Find the web-based dashboard under Manage my device on the Amazon web page. Users can delete individual queries or wipe their entire search history all at once.

Amazon recommends against doing this, however, as it will result in a less personalized experience and poorly tailored responses.

Refrain from connecting important accounts to your Echo. Dont give Alexa access to anything with which money can be spent or sensitive information could be divulged. The Internet is already piling up with complaints about children using Alexa to shop online unbeknownst to their parents, for example.

In Alexas configuration, set up an end of request tone that will make a sound to let you know the Echo has stopped listening for commands and queries.For now, thats about all you can do to make an Echo more private. It wont prevent Amazon from collecting and analyzing your personal information, then in turn using that information to recommend products and serve ads.

Still, it will make you more difficult for third parties to profile.

Making Google Home more private

Google is the master of gathering data on people who use its services, and Home is no different. Similar to Alexa, Google Home collects and analyzes your data to offer more personalized results and targeted advertisements. You can stop it from collecting quite so much, but its hardly an airtight fix and will cause Google Home to function at less than its full potential.

Use the touch panel on top of Google Home to mute the microphone. Until reactivated, doing so stops the device from recording anything.

Use your Google account settings to pick and choose what information Google can know about you. You can also delete old search queries and commands. Navigate to the My Activity dashboard to manage everything from location services to searches to advertisements. To help sift through the cornucopia of settings, see Comparitechs tutorials on deleting Google account history and prevent Google tracking.

Refrain from linking important accounts to Google Home. Keep anything dealing with money or private information on devices that only you have access to. Google Home cannot differentiate the owners voice from anyone else, which leaves it vulnerable to abuse.

Stay alert of the LED lights that change color when Google Home is listening. It could be triggered by accident and upload an unintentional recording. Even if you take the nuclear option and wipe the slate clean on your Google account, Google still collects some information about you. That includes service-related details about your account like which Google products you use and when, the devices you connect with, and what language you speak.

If location services are denied access, Google will simply approximate the users location using an IP address. Note that while Google Home and Amazon Echo are both constantly listening by default, not everything you say is uploaded to the cloud. They listen in short bursts of a few seconds until the trigger phrase is spoken. Only then is any information sent to Google or Amazon servers. Otherwise, no information leaves the device.

Google shares some user information with third parties detailed in its privacy policy.

Voice-activated mute, please

As it stands, both Echo and Home must be physically muted by the user in order for them to stop listening. Its not difficult, but its not the most convenient way to disable the microphone on an otherwise fully voice-activated device. We would enthusiastically welcome a voice command that could mute the microphone, rather than a physical input. If Amazon or Google implemented such a command, keeping private conversations private would be a much simpler matter.

By their very nature, modern voice assistants are not private. They rely on the cloud to access applications and analyze recordings  something too complex and resource-consuming to do on a tabletop device. The $130 or $180 you pay is for the hardware, but the voice assistant service is paid for with privacy. Perhaps one day well see a subscription model that requires a monthly payment and doesnt leverage user data to serve advertisements and and promote products. Until then, theres no getting around the fact that using a Google Home or Amazon Echo, even with all of the advice given in this article, sacrifices privacy.If you cant stomach that, then the only advice to give is this: dont use it.

Cybersecurity Playlist  On Now Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slams Equifax On Now LA 90: Yahoo data breach worse than originally reported On Now Lifelock offers to protect you from the Equifax breach  by selling you services provided by Equifax 1:02 On Now California beer maker thrives in Germany On Now Cyberattacks on Hollywood On Now Hackers gain access to OneLogin On Now What is WannaCry? On Now Senate overturns privacy rules for Internet providers On Now Online pirates claim to hold Disney's latest 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie hostage, demand ransom On Now Yahoo warns users of malicious activity

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
In the recent film Arrival, Earth is visited by an intelligent alien race, the heptapods, and the contact forever changes humanitys sense of place in the cosmos. The movie offers an excellent examination of how we as a species might react to information that we are not alone.

We may not have to wait long. It looks increasingly possible that our search for signs of simpler forms of life in the universe could bear fruit in the next few decades.

NASA is actively seeking life beyond Earth on two fronts: around exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) and within our solar system. Missions like Kepler, the James Webb Space Telescope, and their successors will find Earthlike exoplanets, measure the infrared wavelengths of starlight blocked by these exoplanets atmospheres, and possibly detect the presence of gases like oxygen and methane that could indicate life.

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I lead a NASA-funded research team at Arizona State University focused on understanding geochemical cycles on newly discovered exoplanets, ranking them for follow-up observations based on whether oxygen and methane actually would indicate life. Simultaneously, robotic exploration of Mars may reveal fossilized algal mats or even present-day bacteria. Jupiters ice-covered moon Europa has a subsurface ocean believed capable of supporting life. Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA, speculated in 2015 that we may find definitive evidence of alien life in the next 20 to 30 years.

Science, however, cannot predict how we will react to the news. Fortunately, movies let us imagine the aftermath.

Granted, most films deal with intelligent alien life and their motives. In the standard tropes, aliens abduct us (Communion, Fire in the Sky), threaten us with extinction if we dont change our ways (The Day the Earth Stood Still), or simply blow us up for fun (Predator) or profit (War of the Worlds). Some movies examine human society using aliens as proxies for the underrepresented (Alien Nation, District 9).

But Arrival, based on the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, is unique in its use of aliens as a mirror held up to humanity. Most of the story is not about the heptapods; its about our reactions to their existence and our reactions to each other.

The aliens in Arrival show up on Earth with a mission to give humanity a technology of sorts. Is it a tool? A weapon? Scientist/linguist Louise Banks, played expertly by Amy Adams, has to figure this out as part of what is, at first, an international collaboration. Through logic, insight, creativity, and experimentation  in other words, the scientific method  she deciphers the heptapods language and secrets. As she does, the rest of the world reacts strongly to the new knowledge.

Some resistance is to the aliens. But in the film, the strongest distrust is reserved for other humans. Military leaders suspect the aliens mean to divide and conquer us, and in a self-fulfilling prophecy the international collaboration falls apart, leaving humanity on the brink of global conflict.

The heptapods do not instigate action, they do not react violently, and they literally rise above the conflict. The most pertinent fact about them is not that they are intelligent but that they exist. Even the technology they offer is morally neutral. Like any new knowledge, it is neither tool nor weapon  just information. The heptapods represent science, and Arrival shows us that humanity will react to alien life the way it reacts to other scientific discoveries.

Humans have a strong instinct to remain unperturbed by new information, and most discoveries that scientists consider fundamental do not challenge that habit. Society has not changed because we know of the Higgs boson, or dark energy, or superconductivity.

Sometimes, though, science produces new findings so profound we cant stop talking about them, because they make us reconsider who we think we are. Nicolaus Copernicus figured out in 1543 that the Earth orbits the sun, but even now websites argue that we on Earth are at the center of the universe. And we seem to have an endless capacity for reaction to Charles Darwins discovery of natural selection and evolution, which he published in On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Finding life  even simple, microbial life  outside of Earth would very much alter how we think about ourselves. The very fact of the discovery would be debated for many decades. Because the discovery of alien life would force us to examine who we think we are.

Desch is a professor at Arizona State Universitys School of Earth and Space Exploration who studies astrophysics, meteorites, planet formation, and astrobiology. He wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.
The leaders of the University of California system  unsatisfied with funding provided by Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Legislature and interested in ambitious new initiatives  are seeking significant tuition hikes. For the 2017-18 school year, the 10-campus UC system wants a 2.5 percent increase in in-state tuition, to $11,502, and a 5 percent increase in the student services fee, to $1,128.

But the governor and lawmakers should oppose any increases until they get meaningful answers to a meaty question: How does the UC system justify the explosion in its number of administrators?

In 2000, according to a 2015 Los Angeles Times report, UC had about 50 percent more faculty members than administrators and managers. But the number of administrators and managers passed the number of faculty in 2011, and, as of 2015, there were 10,539 administrators and managers and 8,899 tenured or tenure-track faculty. By contrast, in 2014, in the 23-campus California State University system, there were 10,099 tenured or tenure-track faculty and 3,726 administrators and managers, according to a California Faculty Association study.

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So UC needs nearly three times as many administrators for its 238,000 students than CSU does for its 460,000? Why? UC officials say the biggest growth has been in UCs self-supporting system of medical centers. They also say increased enrollment has required adding administrators and managers. But that still doesnt explain why UC needs more than twice as many such officials now as it did in 2000.

Charles Schwartz, a retired UC Berkeley professor who has studied UC finances for a quarter-century, notes that there has been huge growth in UC employees in the supervisor category, especially on the staffs of chancellors, deputy chancellors and deans. Who, Schwartz asks, are they supervising?

The proliferation of college bureaucrats has not been limited to UC; it follows a national pattern. Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsbergs 2011 book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, coined the term deanlets to describe those in the job category that Schwartz cited.

Scholars who have studied the subject think theyve zeroed in on whats causing this: the political science theory of empire-building. Leaders believe their organizations gain more prestige and power the bigger they get. They resist attempts to scrutinize whether the growth is sensible or defensible on the grounds that of course they know best.

That certainly sounds like the UC under President Janet Napolitano. Even though state leaders are so frustrated with the murky financial reporting from their flagship university system that theyve ordered seven audits of UC since 2012, UC glides along, impervious to its obligations to elected leaders and taxpayers alike. Last year, UC even issued an official accountability report largely focused on its accomplishments instead of concerns about administrative bloat or vague financial statements.

Brown and the Legislature should not tolerate this irresponsibility. The state budget is their lever to force change. Lets get on with it.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
A Politico report saying San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer is quietly mulling running for governor of California in the 2018 election ignited political chatter and criticism Thursday given that six months ago he promised to remain mayor for four years if re-elected.

Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, who unsuccessfully ran to be the states governor in 2002, told Politico that Faulconer had asked for his support last month but that he didnt know Faulconer well enough to make that decision.

The story published Wednesday night quoted other sources saying Faulconer has remained hesitant and noncommittal about a campaign.

As of Thursday afternoon, Faulconers office had not commented on the story, although spokesman Matt Awbrey had weighed in on another issue getting attention on social media, the Faulconer teams recent move (an annual tradition) to send craft beer bottles with State of the City beer enjoyment tips to local journalists in advance of the mayors high-profile yearly speech, which is set for next week.

One of those tips? Take a drink any time the mayor says  wait for it  governor.

The Politico story has, once again, fanned speculation about Faulconer being the Republican contender in the gubernatorial race, which, as always in California in recent years, is dominated by Democrats.

While campaigning for mayor last year, Faulconer told The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board in May that he was committed to serving all four years of his second term. He reiterated that point in subsequent interviews, saying he would not run for Californias governor in 2018 if he was re-elected.

I am here for four years as mayor, he told the Associated Press later that month. Faulconer went on to win the mayors race in the June primary with more than 50 percent of the vote.

One of his two mayoral race opponents, Lori Saldana, took to Twitter to criticize Faulconer for quietly planning to leave San Diego, using the hashtag #CommitToSomething.

On Facebook, Saldana wrote a lengthier commentary on the story by asking, Is Kevin Faulconer planning a Governors race, or simply a mid-term resignation?

Either way- he's distracted from the needs of San Diego, and his early departure makes it more likely Republicans or a moderate Democrat will have the advantage to replace him in a special election, Saldana added.

Early Thursday afternoon City News Service reporter James Riffel tweeted that a Faulconer political strategist had told him the Politico story wasoverstated. Which prompted reaction from another journalist, San Diego CityBeat columnist John R. Lamb.

Meanwhile, others are wondering what they might hear in the mayors State of the City address next week.

Other political observers jumped in to weigh in on how Faulconer could fare as a Republican in a gubernatorial race that already includes Democrats like Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa , state Treasurer John Chiang and former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

Robert Cruickshank, who is a senior campaign manager for the Democratic political action committee Democracy for America, summarized his thoughts on the story in three words in a tweet: He will lose.

To run or not to run. Will Faulconer leave San Diego to run for governor? What are his chances of winning in a state thats voted largely Democratic in the last 30 years?

Share your thoughts with me.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez
The San Diego District Attorneys Office is conducting a criminal investigation into the allegations that saw Superintendent John Collins being fired from the Poway Unified School District.

This was revealed Tuesday morning in a filing by Collins attorneys, Paul J. Pfingst and Susan M. Hack, where they requested a stay into the districts civil lawsuit against Collins until the conclusion of the criminal investigation. Pfingst himself is a former San Diego County district attorney, serving from 1994 until 2002.

Currently, no criminal charges have been filed.

The documents said that Collins counsel has been informed that the district attorneys office is investigating the allegations made against Collins in the civil lawsuit for possible criminal prosecution.

It is Dr. Collins intention to assert his rights under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution until a determination is made whether criminal charges will be pursued, the documents state.

The application said that the school districts attorney had recently served written discovery on Collins. This is a pre-trial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party can obtain evidence from the other party through a request for answers to interrogatories, request for production of documents and a request for admissions and depositions.

Collinss attorneys say he will assert his Fifth Amendment rights in the civil action in response to any discovery request or deposition questions where appropriate. As such, staying the civil action until the conclusion of the criminal investigation is appropriate, the application states.

The application states that appropriate notice of this action was given to Maribel Medina, counsel for the district, via email on Dec. 9 and that Medina was served with the documents on Jan. 3.

The documents state that the district is suing Collins for declaratory relief, restitution, breach of fiduciary duty and violation of public trust, fraud, violation of California Government Code 12650, and unjust enrichment.

Collins was fired on July 13 in a unanimous vote by the Board of Education members over an alleged $345,000 in overpayments and unauthorized payments, which were apparently uncovered during an audit of Collins contract conducted by VLS Forensic Services of Glendora. The civil lawsuit was filed by the district on July 15 and a trial date has not been set, according to the documents.

Collins has denied these allegations and filed his own claim against the school district in September, claiming the Board of Education violated state law by not offering him a requested classroom teaching assignment upon his termination from the position of superintendent.

Collins wife, Lisa Johnston-Collins, a teacher in the school district, also filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the school district in August.

Email: news@pomeradonews.com
BOX OFFICE LEADERS

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story PG-13 The Rebellion focuses on their most daring mission as stolen blueprints lead them to sabotage Death Star.

Sing PG In this animation comedy, a koala named Buster Moon seeks to restore his historic theater to its past glory by holding a singing competition.

Passengers PG-13 Thousands of passengers in their sleep chambers are headed to a distant colony when two passengers awake 90 years too early.

Moana PG A daring teen travels the open ocean to save her people and in her quest meets the legendary god Maui and finds her identity.

Fences PG-13 August Wilsons play is brought to the screen by Denzel Washington as a man whose lost dreams create mounting tension for his family.

Why Him? R In this wild and crazy comedy, Dad must convince his daughter that her intended filthy rich beau is not his choice for a son-in-law.

Assassins Creed PG-13 A student works to attain the level of Master Assassin and soon learns that he has lineage to a secret society of assassins.

Manchester by the Sea R A loner handyman alters his life forever as he comes to the aid his dying brother by becoming the guardian of a teenager.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them PG-13 Newt arrives in New York and deals with some magical beasts and other predicaments.

Collateral Beauty PG-13 After a great personal tragedy, a man writes to Love, Time, and Death and finds answers that explain the meaning of a loss.

Office Christmas Party R As an branch office of a company is on the verge of closure, the manager will throw an epic Christmas party for a client.

La La Land PG-13 Two love-struck aspiring performers travel to Hollywood to seek their dreams while putting their love to the ultimate test.

***Also Playing in Theaters***

Allied, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Jackie, Lion, Moonlight, Nocturnal Animals, Trolls.

Coming to Theaters January 6

Underworld: Blood Wars R Selene joins forces with David and Thomas to fight off the vicious attacks between the Lycans and the vampire coalition. Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Tobias Menzies  Directed by Anna Foerster

Hidden Figures PG Three African-American women scientists engineer Americas first launch of an American astronaut, John Glenn, into space. Stars: Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons  Directed by Theodore Melfi

A Monster Calls R A 12-year old is given courage from a tree monster to deal with his mothers illness, a crotchety grandmother, and school bullies. Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Lewis MacDougall  Directed by J. A. Bayona

Coming Soon: I Daniel Blake, The Ardennes, Railroad Tigers, Monster Trucks, The Bye Bye Man, Sleepless, The Comedian, The Book of Love, xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Split, The Founder, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, The Red Turtle, Kedi, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, A Dogs Purpose, Bastards, The Salesman, Un Padre No Tan Padre.

New on DVD  January 10

The Accountant R A math savant cooks the books for several criminal organizations, but his most recent client will involve the IRS and murders.

Deepwater Horizon PG-13 The oil riggers courage is shown as the worst man-made disaster takes place on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Kevin Hart: What Now? R Comedian Kevin Hart performs for an audience of over 50,000 devoted fans at Philadelphias Lincoln Financial Field.

The Birth of a Nation R In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher, leads a rebellion within Southampton, Virginia, to free slaves in the South.

Max Steel PG-13 A teen capable of generating incredible energy joins with a techno-organic alien to battle an insidious force from another galaxy.

Foreign, Classics, Documentaries: Scavenger Hunt, As I Open My Eyes, The Harrow, Searching for Augusta: Forgotten Angel of Bastogne, People vs. Fritz Bauer, Apple of My Eye, Retake, Lost & Found, The Survivor, Dont Forget About Me, Murderlust.

Television: Broad City s3, Homeland s5, Mr. Robot s2, Episodes s4, Workaholics s6.
Ed Hughes seeks to retain Seat 7 on the Madison School Board. He wants another term to continue the work the district has done since 2013 to close achievement gaps for all students.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Oxnard duo spotted by off-duty VCSO arrested on various chargesA duo from Oxnard were followed by an observant off-duty Ventura County Sheriffs Deputy to Santa Paula Thursday where they were arrested on suspicion of car theft, being in possession of a stolen firearm and illegal drugs.

Santa Paula Police Sgt. Cody Madison said the December 29 incident started about 3:53 p.m. when an off-duty Ventura County Sheriffs Deputy, was driving home eastbound on Highway 126 Freeway toward Santa Paula.

The off-duty deputy recognized a stolen vehicle, which had been reported earlier.

The vehicle exited at 10th Street and began driving through the side streets.

Madison said the off-duty deputy followed but lost sight of the vehicle before coming across it again, abandoned with the engine still running.

It turns out the off-duty deputy was not the only person following the stolen vehicle: he reported to SPPD that a grey SUV had also been following the stolen vehicle.

Redirecting their search Santa Paula Police Officers located the grey SUV and conducted a traffic enforcement stop.
Seattle, WA -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/06/2017 -- The report "Cardiac Monitoring & Cardiac Rhythm Management Devices Market CM [ECG (Resting, Stress, Holter Monitor), COM Devices, Implantable Loop Recorders, Event Monitors], CRM (Defibrillators (ICDs, External), Pacemakers, CRT-D, CRT-P) - Global Forecast to 2021" , provides a detailed overview of major drivers, restraints, challenges, opportunities, current market trends, and strategies impacting the global market along with estimates and forecast of revenue.



Browse 176 market data tables and 33 figures spread through 184 pages and in-depth TOC on "Cardiac Monitoring & Cardiac Rhythm Management Devices Market"



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cardiac-monitoring-advanced-technologies-and-global-market-55.html



Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.



The global cardiac monitoring and cardiac rhythm management devices market is projected to reach USD 28.00 Billion by 2021 from USD 22.19 Billion in 2016, at a CAGR of 4.8% from 2016 to 2021.



Factors such as increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases, technological advancements, and rise in private institutional nursing and home care are driving the CM & CRM devices market. However, dearth of skilled healthcare professionals with expertise in electrocardiography and cardiac monitoring and limited reimbursements for remote cardiac monitoring devices are major factors restraining the growth of the CM & CRM devices market.



Speak To Our Research Analysts:

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The market is segmented on the basis of product, end user, and region. On the basis of product, the CM devices market is segmented into ECG devices, implantable loop recorder (ILR), and cardiac output monitoring (COM) devices, and event monitors. The ECG devices segment is the largest and fastest-growing product segment due to increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases.



On the basis of product, the CRM devices market is segmented into defibrillators, pacemakers, and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices. The defibrillators segment is the largest and fastest-growing segment.



On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into home and ambulatory care, hospitals, and other end users (research institutes and laboratories). The home and ambulatory care segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market in 2016.



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On the basis of region, the CM & CRM devices market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest of the World (RoW). In 2015, North America accounted for the largest share of the CM & CRM devices market, followed by Europe. However, Asia is expected to account for the largest share during the forecast period. The growth of the CM & CRM devices market in the Asia will revolve around China, India, and Japan.



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/06/2017 -- Ferrochromium, also known as Ferrochrome, is an alloy of iron and chromium containing 50 to 70% of chromium. It is produced by electric arc melting of chromium ore and chromite. Ferrochromium is consumed extensively in the manufacturing of steel to achieve the qualities such as corrosion resistance, tensile strength, heat resistance and yield strength. The global ferrochromium market is anticipated to be in deficit to cater the increasing global steel market in near future. Ferrochromium is mostly produced in India, China, South Africa and Kazakhstan because of large chromite resources found in these countries. The global ferrochromium market is witnessing a modest single digit CAGR growth up till now and is expected to continue in future.



A sample of this report is available upon request @ http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10046



Ferrochromium is having its maximum share of consumption in steel industry and due to the ever increasing construction and demand of steel the global ferrochromium market is forecasted to flourish. In order to get a continuous supply of raw material for ferrochrome, China has established its operations in the countries like Turkey, South Africa, Philippines and Zimbabwe which would boost the global ferrochromium market in future. Due to the favourable conditions like lower electricity price and lower labour cost in upcoming markets like China, the production cost reduces comparatively. This will boost the production of ferrochrome to suffice its increasing demand and will contribute in global ferrochromium market.



The global ferrochromium market can get hampered because of the increase in the export tax and fixed export quotas imposed by South Africa on chrome ore, owing to the concern of losing ferrochromium market to China. South Africa is having a significant market share in global ferrochromium market but there are concerns of power supply and higher production cost which would lead to the closure of small competitors and is estimated to slowdown the global ferrochromium market.



Request to view Table of content @ http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/10046



The global ferrochromium market can be divided into five regions, namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific is having the maximum market share in global ferrochromium market, China and India are the countries having an excellent steel market, so these countries are significant in the consumption of ferrochrome. China is expanding its capacity to import chrome ore for the production of ferrochrome from the countries like South Africa, Turkey, Zimbabwe. Middle East and Africa are also marking a significant growth in the global ferrochromium market, Especially South Africa is having plenty of chromite resources for the production of ferrochrome. Europe is an emerging market in the field of ferrochrome and is anticipated to have a considerable market in future due to the flourishing automobile sector in the region. North America and Latin America is at a nascent stage in the global ferrochromium market.
Madison, WI -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/06/2017 -- Stephen Hopkins was from Hampshire, England. He married his first wife, Mary, and resided in the parish of Hursley, Hampshire. They had three (3) children: Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles; all baptized there. It has long been claimed that the Hopkins family was from Wortley, Gloucester, but this was disproven in 1998 with the discovery of his true origins in Hursley.



http://mayflowerhistory.com/hopkins-stephen/



Stephen Hopkins went with the ship Sea Venture on a voyage to Jamestown, Virginia in 1609 as a minister's clerk, but the ship wrecked in the "Isle of Devils" (Bermuda). Stranded on an island for ten months, the passengers and crew survived on turtles, birds, and wild pigs. Six months into the castaway, Stephen Hopkins and several others organized a mutiny against the current governor. The mutiny was discovered and Stephen was sentenced to death. However, he pleaded with sorrow and tears. "So penitent he was, and made so much moan, alleging the ruin of his wife and children in this his trespass, as it wrought in the hearts of all the better sorts of the company." He managed to get his sentence commuted. Eventually the castaways built a small ship and sailed themselves to Jamestown. How long Stephen remained in Jamestown is not known. However, while he was gone, his wife Mary died. She was buried in Hursley on 9 May 1613, and left behind a probate estate which mentions her children Elizabeth, Constance and Giles.



Stephen was back in England by 1617, when he married Elizabeth Fisher, but apparently had every intention of bringing his family back to Virginia. Their first child, Damaris, was born about 1618. In 1620, Stephen Hopkins brought his wife and children Constance, Giles, and Damaris on the Mayflower (child Elizabeth apparently had died). Stephen was a fairly active member of the Pilgrim group shortly after arrival, perhaps a result of his being one of the few individuals who had been to Virginia previously. He was a part of all the early exploring missions, and was used as an "expert" on Native Americans for the first few contacts. While out exploring, Stephen recognized and identified an Indian deer trap. And when Samoset walked into Plymouth and welcomed the English, he was housed in Stephen Hopkins' house for the night. Stephen was also sent on several of the ambassadorial missions to meet with the various Indian groups in the region.



Stephen was an assistant to the governor through 1636, and volunteered for the Pequot War of 1637 but was never called to serve. By the late 1630s, however, Stephen began to occasionally run afoul of the Plymouth authorities, as he apparently opened up a shop and served alcohol. In 1636 he got into a fight with John Tisdale and seriously wounded him. In 1637, he was fined for allowing drinking and shuffleboard playing on Sunday. Early the next year he was fined for allowing people to drink excessively in his house: guest William Reynolds was fined, but the others were acquitted. In 1638 he was twice fined for selling beer at twice the actual value, and in 1639 he was fined for selling a looking glass for twice what it would cost if bought in the Bay Colony. Also in 1638, Stephen Hopkins' maidservant got pregnant from Arthur Peach, who was subsequently executed for murdering an Indian. The Plymouth Court ruled he was financially responsible for her and her child for the next two years (the amount remaining on her term of service). Stephen, in contempt of court, threw Dorothy out of his household and refused to provide for her, so the court committed him to custody. John Holmes stepped in and purchased Dorothy's remaining two years of service from him: agreeing to support her and child.



Stephen died in 1644, and made out a will, asking to be buried near his wife, and naming his surviving children.



BAPTISM: 30 April 1581 at Upper Clatford, Hampshire, England, son of John and Elizabeth (Williams) Hopkins.

FIRST MARRIAGE: Mary, possibly the daughter of Robert and Joan (Machell) Kent of Hursley, co. Hampshire, prior to 1604.

SECOND MARRIAGE: Elizabeth Fisher on 19 February 1617/8 at St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, co. Middlesex, England.

CHILDREN (by Mary): Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles.

CHILDREN (by Elizabeth): Damaris, Oceanus, Caleb, Deborah, Damaris, Ruth, and Elizabeth.

DNA HAPLOGROUP: R1b-M269



Madison, Wisconsin General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Introduces New Geneology Resource Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.rich.goodchocolateblog.com/



Women of Early Plymouth: Governor William Bradford reported that the Pilgrims were worried that the "weak bodies of women" would not be able to withstand the rigors of a trans-Atlantic voyage and the construction of a colony. Prior to the Mayflower, very few English women had made the voyage across the ocean.



Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colony arrived in Virginia in 1587, and amongst those 120 colonists there were 17 women: a baby girl, Virginia Dare, was born after arrival. When re-supply ships came from England, they could not relocate the people. The colony had mysteriously disappeared, and was never seen again. The Jamestown Colony was founded in 1607, but relatively few women had yet made the voyage and taken up residence there.



The Pilgrim husband, as head of the household, had an important and difficult decision to make. Building a colony would be hard on a woman's "weaker body." It might be safer and healthier to leave her behind, and have her come later once the houses were built, and the general safety and successfulness of the colony were better established. But that could be several years. Could he live several years without his wife? How strong was his wife anyway, could she really handle it? Was it right to put your wife's life in danger in this manner?



As the Mayflower left England for America, there were 18 adult women on-board. Three of them, Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White, and Mary Allerton, were actually in their last trimester of a pregnancy. All the adult women on the Mayflower were married; there were no single women--although there were a few teenage girls nearing marriageable age.



While no women would die during the Mayflower's voyage, life after arrival proved extremely difficult. In fact, 78% of the women would die the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. Dorothy Bradford was the first woman to die, and the only woman who died in the month of December. While many of the men, including her husband, were out exploring on Cape Cod, she accidentally fell off the Mayflower into the bitter cold waters of Provincetown Harbor. Most of the women's death dates were not recorded, but we do know that Rose Standish died on January 29, Mary Allerton died on February 25, and Elizabeth Winslow died on March 24. Most of the women died in February and March.



The extremely high mortality rate among women is probably explainable by the fact the men were out in the fresh air, felling trees, building structures and drinking fresh New England water; while the women were confined to the damp, filthy and crowded quarters offered by the Mayflower, where disease would have spread much more quickly. The two-month voyage was long enough; the women, however, remained living on the ship for an additional four months while the men built storehouses and living quarters on shore. Many of the sick were no doubt cared for on-board the ship by the women, increasing their exposure to colds and pneumonias. William Mullins died on February 21, apparently on-board the Mayflower since his will was witnessed by the ship's captain and ship's surgeon. His wife Alice and son Joseph had not yet died, but it wasn't too long before they did, orphaning their teenage daughter Priscilla in the New World.



Only five women survived the first winter. One of the five survivors, Mrs. Katherine Carver, died in May of a "broken heart," her husband John having died of sunstroke a month earlier. Weak bodies or not, by the time of the famous "Thanksgiving," there were only four women left to care for the Colony's fifty surviving men and children. The four women were Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna (White) Winslow.



http://mayflowerhistory.com/women



Adam Paul Green was born to a multi-talented beauty queen Mother and a Father who, in addition to being a US Army Spy and a Counter-Intelligence Special Agent, was also a highly accomplished entrepreneur. Adam was taught at a young age that, in both life and business, loyalty is a requirement for success. He's had the honor of working directly with his father in several of the family businesses. In fact, this is where he learned crucial entrepreneurial skills and honed his talents with international business strategies and venture capitalism.



http://www.MarketingChocolateInternational.com

http://www.AdamPaulGreen.com

http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



Adam earned his Bachelors of Science Degree in International Business and Marketing from the University of Utah. He was hand-picked by the President of the University's renowned School of Business to compete with dozens of other ambitious nationwide-graduates for the opportunity to secure a lucrative job within a prestigious Fortune 100 company.



http://www.mxicorp.com/fab/

http://www.Twitter.com/AdamPaulGreen

http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



Adam's hard work and creativity helped him land this job of a lifetime. He obtained incredible business experience there and spent years innovating, improving processes and setting sales records. Although this dream job in Traditional Corporate America was a fun challenge for him, and something he truly enjoyed mastering, Adam's natural entrepreneurial spirit kept nudging him to do something more significant with his time and talents.



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Since 2001, Adam has been involved in the Health and Wellness Industry as a successful Entrepreneur, Broker, Product Developer and Manufacturer of Cosmeceutical products. During his career, he has worked with some of the most recognizable Fortune 500 businesses along with many top international Network Marketing companies. Adam has consistently proven his unique ability to help his clients achieve their goals through creative Distribution-Channel Placement, innovative Product Development and custom Manufacturing. Adam currently owns three profitable businesses.



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About MayflowerHistory.com

MayflowerHistory.com, the Internet's most complete and accurate website dealing with the Mayflower passengers and the history of the Pilgrims and early Plymouth Colony. The website was first created back in 1994 (when the web was still mostly text!) as a simple, but complete, passenger list of the Mayflower. It has grown over the past twenty years as the author, historian Caleb Johnson, has researched and compiled material.



http://mayflowerhistory.com
A new analysis of Chusang, an archeological site on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, suggests that permanent residents may have set up camp thousands of years sooner than previously thought.

Previous analyses estimated that Chusangs founding residents arrived about 5,200 years ago, but now a more comprehensive analysis by University of Innsbruck researcher Michael Meyer and co-authors suggests that it was inhabited  likely on a permanent basis  between 13,000 and 7,400 years ago.

Upon leaving Africa, humans effectively spread out across most of the Earth, but the timing of their arrival in the highest Himalyan ranges has been unclear, Dr. Meyer and his colleagues said.

Among some of the best preserved sites for scientists to study is the Chusang site, which is located on the central plateau 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Lhasa at an elevation of 14,000 feet (4,270 m), near Chusang, a village known for its hydrothermal springs and extensive travertine formations.

Discovered in 1998, the site features 19 human hand- and footprints along the surface of a fossil travertine.

In attempts to better date the settlement, the researchers used three different techniques, including thorium/uranium dating of samples taken from and adjacent to the prints; optically stimulated luminescence to determine the date of quartz crystals in the travertine; and radiocarbon dating on microscopic plant remains at Chusang.

Their new estimated range for the settlement is between 7,400 and 12,670 years ago.

We report a reanalysis of the chronology of the Chusang site. The minimum age of the site is fixed at 7.4 thousand years (thorium-230/uranium dating), with a maximum age between 8.20 and 12.67 thousand calibrated carbon-14 years before present (carbon-14 assays), the authors said.

The finding is consistent with research on the genetics of modern Tibetan Plateau people showing that they adapted genetically to the high-elevation environment beginning at least 8,000 years ago.

While some scientists have suggested that a human presence on the Tibetan Plateau at those early dates was only a result of short-term, seasonal movement from low-elevation base camps, this work shows that it is much more likely that the hand- and footprints were made by permanent residents.

The distance between lowland environments and the Chusang site would have required at least 230 miles (370 km) of foot travel across the Himalayan arc  a path far too long and treacherous for temporary use of the site, and far greater than what has been documented among most historic hunter-gatherers, said co-author Dr. Randy Haas, from the University of Wyoming.

The early Tibetan Plateau settlers managed to survive at high elevation at least 7,400 years ago, before the development of an agricultural economy between 5,200-3,600 years ago.

Details of the research were published in the Jan. 6, 2017 issue of the journal Science.

_____

M.C. Meyer et al. 2017. Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene. Science 355 (6320): 64-67; doi: 10.1126/science.aag0357
Planetary researchers using data from NASAs New Horizons mission have found evidence of snow and ice features on the dwarf planet Pluto that, until now, had only been seen on Earth. The findings appear this week in the journal Nature.

Penitentes are snow and ice features formed by erosion that, on Earth, are characterized by bowl-shaped depressions several tens of cm across, whose edges grade into spires up to several meters tall, said the authors, led by Dr. John Moores of York University in Toronto, Canada.

They have been suggested as an explanation for anomalous radar data on Europa, but until now no penitentes have been identified conclusively on planetary bodies other than Earth.

Regular ridges with spacings of 3,000 to 5,000 m (9,800-16,400 feet) and depths of about 500 m (1,640 feet) with morphologies that resemble high-altitude terrestrial penitentes were observed by NASAs New Horizons spacecraft in Tartarus Dorsa in 2015.

Conditions at Pluto are particularly suited to the creation of large penitentes, Dr. Moores and co-authors explained.

The Plutonian atmosphere is extremely stable, as shown by the presence of fogs in images and gravity waves consistent with wind speeds of a meter per second or less and as predicted by numerical models that argue for negligible horizontal surface wind speeds close to zero, never more than a few meters per second and often much less.

Furthermore, the surface is composed of volatile ices, primarily nitrogen and methane ice, close to their sublimation temperatures, that are retained in the Plutonian system on long timescales owing to cooling in the upper atmosphere that limits atmospheric escape.

Finally, low pressures observed by New Horizons imply a long mean free path for molecular diffusion, increasing the thickness of the near-surface laminar sublayer, a thickness that affects the spacing of penitentes.

Dr. Moores and co-authors compared their model to Plutos ridges imaged by New Horizons.

The ridges are much larger as compared to their meter-sized earthly counterparts, the researchers said.

This gargantuan size is predicted by the same theory that explains the formation of these features on Earth, Dr. Moores added.

In fact, we were able to match the size and separation, the direction of the ridges, as well as their age: three pieces of evidence that support our identification of these ridges as penitents.

The presence of penitentes on Pluto suggests that stable dynamic conditions and relatively high pressures are required to create these features and suggests that they may form elsewhere in the Solar System where the atmospheric conditions are appropriate, the scientists concluded.

_____

John E. Moores et al. Penitentes as the origin of the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa on Pluto. Nature, published online January 4, 2017; doi: 10.1038/nature20779
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission, which will investigate the various facets of mysterious black holes in space, was approved by NASA. As per the latest NASA news release, the IXPE mission also includes study of neutron stars and pulsars, which are known to exist in deep space.

After rigorous screening, the IXPE mission was selected under the NASA's Astrophysics Explorer programs. The total cost of the mission is estimated at $188 million and it is expected that the mission will be ready for launch by the year 2018, The Register reported.

The mission agenda involves sending three telescopes to space, to analyze the high-energy cosmic X-rays emitted from black holes in space, as well as from other celestial bodies with extreme gravitational, electric and magnetic fields. The telescopes are expected to be stationed alongside the Hubble Space Telescope, XMM Newton and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Scientists believe that the mission will be highly helpful in finding out the hidden secrets of the illustrious black holes in space. Paul Hertz, Director of the NASA's Astrophysics Division, said in a latest NASA news release that, "We cannot directly image what's going on near objects like black holes and neutron stars, but studying the polarization of X-rays emitted from their surrounding environments reveals the physics of these enigmatic objects."

Martin Weisskopf, principal investigator of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is expected to lead the forthcoming IXPE mission. Furthermore, the Italian Space Agency will be helping in the development of the cameras, which will measure the polarized X-rays radiated from the black holes in space and the Ball Aerospace will take care of spacecraft and mission integration aspects, Space.com reported.

"NASA has a great history of launching observatories in the Astrophysics Explorers program with new and unique observational capabilities," Hertz said. It is expected that "IXPE will open a new window on the universe for astronomers to peer through. Today, we can only guess what we will find," he said.

The NASA budget for the 2017 fiscal has already been approved under the Obama administration. It will be interesting to see how the mission to study black holes in space will be affected by the change of administration.
NASA has started working towards its future missions of asteroid mining in space. Two asteroids missions were integrated into NASA's Discovery Program and were given the green signal to proceed. The announcement made by NASA on Jan. 4, 2017 stated that the Lucy and Psyche asteroid missions are a "go."

Each mission has an estimated budget of $450 million and is expected to launch in the early 2020s. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for Science, NASA, held a teleconference and announced that "These small body missions complement NASA's exploration and are crucial parts of learning about our solar system and crucial parts of our programs going forward."

SpaceNews reported that Lucy is the asteroid mission of NASA's Discovery Program, which will be led by Harold Levison at Southwest Research Institute, and is expected to launch in 2021. Lucy will be visiting the main belt asteroid by 2025 before heading towards its destination, which is the Trojan group of asteroids. These Trojan asteroids are in the same orbit as Jupiter. It is expected that Lucy will study the Trojan group that contains six asteroids, from 2027 to 2033.

Lucy will study the formation of solar system and different prospects of asteroid mining in space, according to NASA. Levison said, "One of the really surprising aspects about this population is its diversity." Then, he added, "We believe that's telling us something about how the solar system formed and evolved. These small bodies really are the fossils of planet formation."

In the meantime, Lindy Elkins-Tanton at Arizona State University will lead the Psyche, the second asteroid mission approved under NASA's Discovery Program for launch in 2023. The spacecraft will make a tour over Earth and Mars before heading to the main belt asteroid. It will touch down an asteroid-like object, which is suspected as the remnant of a dead planet and a highly probable prospect of asteroid mining in space project, Business Insider reported.

Elkins-Tanton said, "We have never seen a metal world. By visiting Psyche, we can literally visit a planetary core, the only way that humankind ever can."

These missions are a crucial part of NASA's Discovery Program and are considered as the initial step of the long-term mission of asteroid mining in space.
SpaceX is back. NASA has booked more flights to send the astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The agency will be using the so-called space taxi built by SpaceX and Boeing.

NASA announced last Tuesday that the new orders award four crew rotation flights to the ISS each to SpaceX and Boeing as part of the space agency's Commercial Crew Program. The award has an increase in the total number of flights from each contractor to six, according to NASA officials.

The director of NASA's Commercial Spaceflight Development Division, Phil McAlister, said that, "Awarding these missions now will provide greater stability for the future space station crew rotation schedule, as well as reduce schedule and financial uncertainty for our providers. The ability to turn on missions as needed to meet the needs of the space station program is an important aspect of the Commercial Crew Program."

The missions will be approved to fly after NASA hands in the certification. At that time, the payments are not yet included.

The good news for the two private space agencies comes as they are currently preparing for their first crewed flight tests. Both SpaceX and Boeing plan to launch in 2018.

SpaceX's current schedule plans to fly the company's crewed Dragon spacecraft that will launch an uncrewed mission in November. It is to be followed by a crewed test flight in May 2018.

As for Boeing, the company's CST-100 Starliner is scheduled to launch its first ever uncrewed test flight in June 2018. It will also be followed by a crewed flight in August 2018. However, the estimated flight dates have been rescheduled several times before, according to Space.com.

As follows, each of the spacecraft will carry up to four astronauts and 100 kilograms of cargo to the ISS. Also, they can serve as "lifeboats" to safely bring astronauts to Earth in case of emergency.

Meanwhile, NASA's space shuttle program came to an end in 2011. The agency has to depend on paying seats aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that launches from Kazakhstan, to fly the American astronauts to the ISS.
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Israel's "flying car" known as Cormorant drone has just completed an automated first solo flight over uneven terrain in November 2016. Urban Aeronautics, an Israeli aeronautics firm that built the drone, reports that the drone could carry a 500-kg load with a distance of 30 miles and speeds up to 185 km/h at altitudes up to 18,000 feet.

The Cormorant drone, which is previously known as Air Mule, has been developed for 15 years. It is approximately the size of a car. It will be used for search and rescue missions in calamities or on the battlefield. This is suitable for places in which the helicopters and planes cannot fly.

Flying ambulance drone heading for take off

Israeli-made Cormorant could be used to rescue people in danger.



https://t.co/DLkz5FQ0Sx  Rick Smol (@RickSmol) January 4, 2017

The drone has internal rotors and duct fans that are the shield to prevent from being damaged. These also allow the drone to take off and land vertically and to go in different directions. It is designed to fly between buildings or under power lines or in areas that are contaminated with chemicals or radiation, according to Techxplore.

Rafi Yoeli, the CEO and founder of Urban Aeronautics, said that just imagine a dirty bomb in a city and chemical substance of something else and this vehicle can come in robotically, remotely piloted, come into a street and decontaminate an area. He further said that it is safer than a helicopter as it can fly in between buildings and below power lines without the risk of blade strikes.

Meanwhile, Tal Inbar, the head of the UAV research center at Israel's Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, said that it could revolutionize several aspects of warfare, including the medical evacuation of soldiers on the battlefield. This drone could possibly save lives.

The Cormorant drone might be available in the market by 2020. As of now, it has been in a process in meeting the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Reuters.
The scientists identified a new and rare type of ring galaxy, which they called PGC 1000714. It is about 359 million lightyears away from planet Earth.

The discovery was printed in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It was led by scientists at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. This galaxy has a distinct circular structure and classified as a Hoag-type galaxy. It has an elliptical core surrounded by two circular rings.

Ring galaxies are very unusual. Patrick Treuthardt, an astrophysicist at the North Carolina Museum of natural Sciences, said that it was like spotting a snow leopard or some other rare and elusive animal. He further said that a Hoag-type galaxy, one with a single circular ring surrounding a round core, is already very rare. But finding one with potentially two very regular rings is quite unique. Meanwhile, Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil, the lead author of the study at Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, said that less than 0.1 percent of all observed galaxies are Hoag-type galaxies.

The researchers examined the PGC 1000714 and discovered that the outer ring of blue stars is only about 0.13 billion years old. Meanwhile, the inner red core is about 5.5 billion years old. The team used the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile in analyzing the new galaxy, according to Science Alert.

Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil explained that the various colors of the inner and outer ring suggest that this galaxy has experienced two different formation periods. She further explained that from these initial single snapshot in time, it is impossible to know how the rings of this galaxy were formed.

The formation of usual galaxies and how they evolve are not yet fully understood. It needs more snapshot views of other galaxies to comprehend how they formed and evolved. The team said that the outer ring might be the result of this galaxy incorporating portions of a once nearby gas-rich dwarf galaxy, according to EurekAlert.
Jupiter has 67 moons. But what fewer people know is that the planet is also accompanied by two gigantic clusters of asteroids that orbit the Sun in roughly the same path. These asteroids are still a mystery, and thus, NASA announced that it will be investigating the celestial bodies via two new space missions.

Gizmodo reported that as part of the Discovery Program, NASA is launching two new space missions, named Psyche and Lucy. These will deploy spacecraft for the cause. However, their missions are distinct: Psyche will visit a giant metal asteroid in 2030, while Lucy will investigate a half-dozen Trojan asteroids along the planet's orbital plane in the years 2017 to 2033. These explorations are set to help scientists gain a better understanding of the asteroids and how they got locked in to Jupiter's gravitational field.

Having Trojan objects orbit around a planet is not that unusual: Mars, Neptune and even Earth all have their Trojan objects, but Jupiter's swarm is unlike any other. In fact, these things, which are called Jovian Trojans, are organized into two giant clumps that joined Jupiter during their own 12-year journey around the Sun, trapped by the planet's own gravitational influence.

The satellite set to study them, Lucy, is scheduled to launch in October 2021 and will visit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt in 2025 and will then study six Trojan asteroids between 2027 and 2033, reported CBS News. Jupiter's Trojan asteroids are believed to be planetary building blocks that have somehow formed far from the Sun before they were captured by Jupiter's gravity.

Psyche's exploration of a 130-mile wide metallic asteroid, on the other hand, could be more of a core of an ancient Mars-sized planet that arrived in the area due to violent collisions from billions of years ago. The Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the Solar System and could be the only way for humans to ever have visited a planet's core.

Psyche principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton shared, "This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world - not one of rock or ice, but of metal."
Astronomers believe that an alien megastructure in space is the reason of inexplicable flickering of the Tabby's star. The said star is 1,200 lightyears away from Earth, located near the constellation Cygnus. It has been observed that the Tabby's star is fading at an astonishingly fast rate.

Some astronomers propose that the fading is because alien civilizations present in exoplanets near Tabby's star are trying to encase the star by making a giant alien megastructure.

It is strange. But according to a report by NBC News, expert physicist Freeman Dyson proposed the existence of such alien megastructure in space way back in 1959. Dyson had said that eventually, all the planets that support life forms will drain out of energy.

Advanced civilizations such as the humans' will then try to harness the energy of the nearby stars, by building alien megastructure in space, another NBC News report revealed.

These alien megastructures, often referred to as Dyson spheres, will essentially be a series of solar panels encasing the star to trap the radiated energy. However, such structures will be extremely unstable and impractical to make. Instead, an orbiting swarm of mirrors or may be a huge ring of orbiting mirrors just as the rings of Saturn can be made.

Stuart Armstrong, researcher at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, said, "Nothing requires any major technological breakthroughs for this." Earlier in 2012, he proposed that a Dyson sphere for Earth can be built by mining hematite from Mercury planet. Hematite may be used to make mirrors, which can be standardized and jettisoned for energy collection.

As per Space.com, many astronomers, including Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at Berkeley SETI, and James Annis, astronomer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, do not believe in the existence of such alien megastructure in space.

"That's actually a really wacky idea. There's no good reason to expect an intelligent species to cover every star in the galaxy or even 99 percent of the stars in the galaxy. But if they did it, it would be a markedly visible thing," Annis said.

Astronomers across the world are at present searching for evidence that will either confirm or reject the presence of such alien megastructure in space.
COLUMBIA, S.C.  Some legislators say more funding is needed to fix South Carolina's schools, and others say part of the answer could consolidating some districts.

One of the hot-button issues in 2016 for South Carolina lawmakers was education reform and how to approach funding woes and a complete system overhaul. On Thursday, lawmakers met with members of the media to talk about the course for 2017.

One of the more extreme examples of school district failure in the states corridor of shame  counties surrounding Interstate 95 that have notoriously low education rates  is Florence School District 4 in Timmonsville.

Florence 4 was taken over by the State Board of Education last year after more than a decade of abysmal test scores and low graduation rates. A potential remedy to Florence 4, among other failing districts in the state, is district consolidation.

With five school districts in Florence County, consolidation might be a natural move to help the struggling district. However, regardless of the recommendations from local and state officials, the Department of Education cannot force districts to merge.

Ultimately, it would require an act of the state legislature, which created the districts to begin with. Several lawmakers said Thursday that consolidation is a viable move.

Rep. Rita Allison, a Republican from Spartanburg and chairwoman of the House Education and Public Works Committee, has visited the area several times to survey the problem.

On a local level many people understand that their children would be better served from consolidation, she said. In that area [Timmonsville] there is opportunity to consolidate. As we move forward with new facilities and technologies we want to help the community itself. If consolidation means students have a better opportunity to receive good education its certainly on the table.

Rep. Gild Cobb-Hunter, an Orangeburg-area Democrat  one of the areas in the corridor of shame  said this conversation is more than two decades old and the time for talk has passed.

Thats two generations of kids gone through high school or dropped out and we are still talking and studying the issue, she said. I agree that money isnt the total answer but there is merit in the point that where your spend your money shows your priorities. At some point this legislature decided that disparity was OK when it comes to education and economic development in these areas.

Sen. Tom Davis is more critical of funding boosts. He said the money is already there; its just being poorly allocated and woefully mismanaged.

South Carolina ranks 24th in the nation in per-person funding. Right now we have about 10 different funding programs, he said. Collapse all of those mechanisms into one transparent stream. I think theres an all-of-the-above approach, and maybe the areas in the Abbeville case need more funding, but pumping more money into a broken system isnt the answer.

Another topic tossed around Thursday was more funding for the states higher education system.

The General Assembly will reconvene on Jan. 10.
FLORENCE, S.C.  A pairings party in the Floyd Center of the Carolinas Hospital System kicked off the seventh annual Dancing for Our Future Stars on Thursday.

The event, formerly known as Dancing with the Stars of Florence, raises money for The School Foundation. Since 2000, The School Foundation has provided grants for students and teachers in Florence School District One.

The teachers write the grants and ask for funds for innovative, creative projects, said executive director Debbie Hyler. So many teachers have really great ideas but their normal school budget doesnt allow them to pursue those.

Last year, the dancing competition rose over $145,000 for the organization. In all seven years combined, the event has netted almost $770,000 to go back into Florence School District One.

Adam Crosson and Tiffany Welsh danced the cha-cha and won last years top trophy, the Technical Skills Award. After 12 weeks of practice, Crosson was ready to get on stage the night of the competition. There was just one problem: He and Welsh were the tenth couple to perform.

I think the hardest part was having to sit back there and wait so long to get on stage, said Crosson. Im very competitive but ultimately just remember that its all for fun. Just get up on stage and have fun and try not to focus on how many people are out there, and everybodys nervous. Its natural.

One person who isnt nervous, at least not yet, is Chad Patterson. Patterson, of Raldex Hospitality, will be performing in this years show with Morgan Schoolfield.

I think its fun. Its for a great cause so Im excited, said Patterson. I do a lot with the school foundation and love doing things for Florence School District One  Debbie came to me and said, I want you to be in it and I said, Ok, Im there.

This years show will take place at SiMT on the campus of Florence-Darlington Technical College at 7 p.m. on March 30. For more information, visit www.theschoolfoundation.org.
As President Barack Obama's two terms near an end and we talk of his legacy, we cannot ignore the grand come-together vision of unity he expressed in his 2004 debut on the national stage  and wonder what happened to it.

We are not "red states" and "blue states" but "the United States of America," he said to vigorous applause.

After the divisive election that brought us President-elect Donald Trump, a lot of people have been moved to assert that Obama has made race relations worse. As an African-American who remembers far worse race relations in the country, I disagree. To me, it looks as though a lot of people are merely irritated, whether they realize it or not, that they have to think about race relations at all, and they're taking out their frustrations at Obama.

In fact, Obama has received considerable criticism from critics to his own left who are frustrated over his lack of programs targeted specifically to underprivileged black Americans.

Beyond race, many Obama supporters are frustrated that he so often bargained from the middle on issues like the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which Trump and other Republicans now are determined to dismantle.

When I asked then-Sen. Obama during his 2008 primary campaign why he did not simply call for Medicare to be extended to cover everyone, not just seniors, he responded sensibly that such a bold proposition, appealing as it might sound, would never get through Congress.

Maybe not, I felt, but at least he could try. Instead Obama pushed an ACA that was based on ideas from the conservative Heritage Foundation that Mitt Romney enacted as governor of Massachusetts. Yet this bold good-faith appeal by Obama for Republican support was rebuffed by congressional conservatives in much the same way that his other major proposals were rejected by the right.

Sure, there are complaints by Republicans that Obama could have done more to reach out than he did. But now that the fate of Obamacare is in Republican hands, it is their turn to face their own political base with an enduring Washington reality: campaigning is hard, governing is even harder.

Congress' has the power to repeal ACA, but political realities dictate that they can't cut off millions from access to health insurance without replacing it with something comparable  or, as Trump has vaguely promised, "something terrific."

A lot of people receiving ACA help don't even know that it's the "Obamacare" that conservatives have taught them to hate. But they will know who to blame if Republicans take it away.

Even Trump has begun to view Obamacare more favorably after finding out what's in it. After his first meeting with Obama he came out with new promises to keep such central features as universal coverage without exclusions for preexisting conditions and the right to keep one's children on one's health plan until they reach age 26.

How is this basket of goodies to be funded? Trump did not say. As usual, he's leaving those not-trivial details to Congress to decide.

Meanwhile, in his final weeks in office, Obama has busied himself with last-minute executive actions that also serve as rear-guard roadblocks to help protect his legacy.

For example, he has named new environmental monuments for federal protection. He has written a new rule to protect Planned Parenthood funding from state interference. He has ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay. He has punished Russia for interfering in the recent elections through cyberattacks.

Sure, Trump can reverse Obama's executive orders. But as Obama found when he was forced by Iraq's leaders to follow George W. Bush's timetable for Iraq withdrawal, a president in his or, someday, her final days can do a lot to intrude on a successor's agenda.

When former president George W. Bush was asked about his legacy after two terms in office, he told a CNN interviewer, "History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made ... and I'm just not going to be around to see the final verdict."

"In other words," he added, "I'll be dead."

President Obama may not have to wait that long. Legacies are in the eye of the beholder. But sometimes people don't really appreciate your agenda until they see somebody else try to take it away.

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.
State Debate: Hey, Michigan's got nothing over us, we banned plastic bag bans long ago, notes blogger James Rowen
John Franklin McGraw, 79, right, elbowed Rakeem Lamar Jones, 27, in the face during a rally for Donald Trump in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The next time they saw each other was at their court hearing. (Photos by Liz Condo for The Washington Post)
Benefits include free veranda suite upgrades, $1,000 per suite shipboard credit for penthouse and premium suites and $400 per suite Ventures by Seabourn credit on 2017 Alaska voyages. (Ventures by Seabourn are kayak and Zodiac excursions guided by scientists, scholars and naturalists.)

Other benefits are a $500 (Canadian $600) per person round-trip air credit and additional savings of up to 15% on Combination Voyages.

Plus, deposits are reduced 50%.

The Signature Savings Event applies to select worldwide cruises in the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Antarctica and Patagonia, Atlantic crossings, Arabia and India, Asia, Canada/New England, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, South America and other destinations.
BPA announced that it has secured a budget of KRW670.2bn ($564.3m) for this year, with KRW148.7bn going to port construction, KRW33.6bn to Busan North Port Redevelopment Project, KRW30bn to Busan North Port joint corporation investment, KRW27.1bn to incentives including transhipment cargo attraction, and KRW20.2bn to port facility maintenance.

In particular, KRW4.2bn will be injected for port industry R&D and KRW1.1bn for fostering skilled workforce.

The 2017 budget of KRW670.2bn is 27.7% lower than the 2016 budget of KRW927.2bn.

Choo Yeon-woo, vice president of BPAs management division, said: To secure financial soundness in 2017, we will reinforce investment screening to reduce expenses and business costs. Moreover, BPA plans to keep its debt ration at 50% to maintain a stable financial structure.
Johor Health and Environment Committee chairman Ayub Rahmat said the penalty is as stipulated under the Environment Quality Act 1974, which holds both ships responsible for the costs of removing the oil spill. Some 300 tonnes of bunker fuel were spilled when a bunker tank on the APL Denver was holed.

"As assurance that the ship owners will do the cleaning works, under the provision of Section 38 of the Environmental Quality Act 1974, they have each placed a MYR1 m bond to complete the clean-up works and contain the oil spill from further destroying the environment," Ayub said.

Ayub noted that the spill has reached the shores of three fishing villages within a one sq km area, affecting a total of 10 fish farms. More than 300 fishermen could be seeking possible compensation for disruption to their operations.

The spill also hit the shores of neighbouring Singapore and according to the Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore 17 craft and 222 personnel were deployed in clean-up operations on Thursday.
Chang Cheow Teck, former president of ST Marine from March 2008 to April 2010, pleaded guilty and was sentenced on 5 January to a short detention order of 14 days.

Chang had failed to take steps to ascertain the legality of cash payments and procedures involved in processing payments and had admitted to ignoring information that pointed to criminal wrongdoing at ST Marine.

The prosecution noted that Chang, a first-time offender, had acknowledged his wrongdoing and indicated his willingness to plead guilty, leading to the short detention order. He could have been jailed for up to 12 months.

Chang is one of seven former senior employees of ST Marine, the marine arm of Singapore Technologies, charged for corruption.

Of the seven, a total of five including Chang were sentenced. The previous sentencing of 10 months jail and fine of SGD100,000 ($70,500) was passed in December 2016 for See Leong Teck, former St Marine ceo in December 1997 and president from 1998 until 2008.
OREGON  An Oregon High School student was arrested Thursday after a small midmorning fire in a bathroom caused the building to be evacuated and afternoon classes to be canceled.

No one was injured.

Oregon police arrested a 17-year-old student who was tentatively charged with arson after a joint investigation by the Oregon fire and police departments, Fire Chief Glenn Linzmeier said.

Students and staff evacuated the school to nearby buildings in frigid temperatures of 8 to 10 degrees after fire alarms sounded when smoke was detected at 10:25 a.m. in the music wing of the school at 456 N. Perry Parkway, school district Superintendent Brian Busler said.

Firefighters arrived as students and staff were getting out and found thick, black smoke coming from one door of the school and filling one hallway.

The fire was contained to a paper towel dispenser in a bathroom and quickly extinguished, Busler said.

Fire crews from Oregon, Brooklyn, Fitchburg and McFarland then spent several hours pushing a large amount of smoke out of the building using positive pressure fans after the schools HVAC system was shut down, Linzmeier said.

Students and staff were dismissed for the day for safety reasons at 12:15 p.m. Students were told to be out of the high school by 12:45, with only brief returns inside allowed to collect belongings.

School buses were routed back to the school to take students home. Students also were allowed to walk home, leave in their own vehicles or be picked up by parents.

A damage estimate was not available.
JUNEAU - A 27-year-old former Waupun woman was sentenced to five years in prison Friday after pleading no contest to charges of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old boy.

Cassandra J. Scheuers appeared before Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries in Dodge County Circuit Court Friday. De Vries accepted Scheuers plea and found her guilty of a charge of first degree sexual assault - sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 13.

Scheuers must serve five years of initial incarceration in prison and five years of an extended sentence.

According to the criminal complaint, deputies were contacted to check the welfare of Scheuers on May 27, 2015, but found she was at the Waupun Police Department.

According to the criminal complaint, Scheuers reported that she saw Robert J. Moungey on a laptop computer with young naked girls displayed on the screen. She also said Moungey had shown her a video of him sexually assaulting a 1-year-old girl.

Scheuers said that on one occasion, Moungey had tied a 3-year-old boy up to a bed with a restraint system used for bondage. Moungey asked her to sexually assault the boy, and she did so while he took pictures.

Scheuers said Moungey contacted her and sent her one of the photos via a message. She said he told her she could face the same criminal charges as he might face. According to the criminal complaint, Scheuers told police she assaulted the toddler because she was worried that Moungey would hurt her.

The restraint system was taken to the Waupun Police Station. A detective was granted a search warrant and was able to retrieve a laptop and an external hard drive. Scheuers gave permission for the equipment to be taken. The electronic equipment was taken to the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigations in Madison.

A computer forensic analyst at the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation discovered 16 movies and 473 images containing child pornography on the computer and external hard drive. The analyst said that some of the still photos showed what they believed to be Moungey having sexual relations with a 1- or 2-year-old child.

The photos analyzed showed a number of different child victims ranging in age, gender and nationality. Many of the child victims were believed to be 5 or younger.

Moungey was sentenced to 31 years in prison in October.
The latest research, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, found that blood flow is reduced in the Broca's area - the region in the frontal lobe of the brain linked to speech production - in people who stutter. More severe stuttering is associated with even greater reductions in blood flow to this region.

Now, thanks to advances in brain imaging, more and more research - including Maguire's own - is proving that a dominant factor behind stuttering may indeed lie within the brain.

"It was conjecture, really, that stuttering was a disorder of the mouth, the throat or tongue," said Maguire, chair of psychiatry and neuroscience at UC Riverside in California. "People were just not looking at the brain."

But as someone who has grappled with stuttering his whole life, Gerald Maguire had a hunch something more was going on - something in the brain.

For decades and as recently as 1990, many medical professionals believed stuttering, an interruption in the flow of speech, was caused by some malfunction of the vocal tract, throat or tongue. One treatment even called for injecting botox into the tongue.

"Cerebral blood flow is tightly coupled to neural activity, specifically the frequency of firing of neurons," co-author Jay Desai, a neurologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles explained to Seeker. "Our findings strongly suggest the presence of reduced neural activity in this Broca's region in persons who stutter."

Maguire has identified the same region of the brain as a factor in previous research, as well as deeper regions of the brain, including the basal ganglia region. He explains that in this region, located at the base of the forebrain, a kind of switch influences activity in the Broca's region.

Other researchers, including Anne L. Foundas of Tulane University in New Orleans, are investigating whether specific brain regions that mediate speech, language and motor functions are asymmetric or larger in one hemisphere than the other in the brains of those who stutter.

The findings lend promise for new treatments for the genetically linked condition that affects more than 70 million people worldwide - or one percent of the global population. The hope is that by identifying what regions of the brain are at play, new therapies can be developed that help normalize neural activity related to speech.

RELATED: Our Brains See Words as Pictures

So far no "cure" for stuttering has been found, but behavioral treatment options have proven to help people speak more fluidly. Desai explained that future treatments could range in form.

"Some ways of altering neural activity in localized brain regions such as Broca's area, and thereby increasing blood flow, include the use of time-varying magnetic and electrical fields (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation), as well as various behavioral therapies and medications," Desai said in an email.

Maguire, who is also chair of the board of directors of the National Stuttering Association, has been working on a new drug that targets dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers. The drug he and his colleagues are now testing, called ecopipam, targets dopamine receptors in the brain.

"We believe dopamine may be too high in certain areas of the brain," Maguire explained. "Our thought at UCR is that by altering the dopamine levels we can affect brain activity. We're looking now at receptors and modulating the receptors of dopamine in the hope of altering the brain's activity."

Ecopipam has already shown promising results in treating Tourette syndrome, another neurological condition. The drug is currently being tested in an FDA-approved clinical trial. Maguire, himself, is hopeful it may prove effective.

He should know - he's been taking another drug that targets dopamine receptors for his stuttering.

As one could tell by his fluid speech, the therapy works well. And as someone who grew up with the condition - and the stigma it can create during childhood - Maguire appreciates what a difference good therapies can make.

"If we can develop targeted treatments and speech therapy targeting these regions of the brain, we hope to make a big difference in people's lives - particularly in children," he said.

Photo: King George VI suffered throughout life with a stuttering condition. This image is from "The King's Speech," a movie about the king.

WATCH: Could Neanderthals Talk Like Us?
Archaeologists have recreated an ancient burial site in virtual reality, to help them study hard-to-access locations at the so-called Plain of Jars site in Laos and the millennia-old relics it contains.

The researchers will also use virtual reality to study other archaeological sites at the Plain of Jars, many of them located where undetonated American bombs left over from the Vietnam War make it too dangerous to dig.

The virtual-reality project combines aerial video captured by a drone with geophysical data and records of archaeological excavations at "Site 1" on the Plain of Jars, near the town of Phonsavan in central Laos. It aims to create a virtual record of the unique landscape and its hundreds of carved stone jars, some of which measure up to 11 feet (3 meters) tall and weigh many tons, say the researchers. [In Photos: Exploring the Mysterious Plain of Jars Site]

The images and data have been integrated into a 3D video and data simulation at a room-sized, 360-degree virtual-reality facility at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Named Cave2, the facility is being developed for advanced "immersive visualization" applications in medicine, science and engineering.

RELATED: The Coolest Archaeological Finds of 2016

Project co-leader Louise Shewan, an archaeologist at Monash University, said the main purpose of the virtual landscape is to preserve a step-by-step visual and scientific record of a major five-year archaeological investigation by Laos and Australian scientists at the Plain of Jars, which began with excavations at Site 1 in February 2016.

Shewan said the virtual landscape will also be used to explore other jar sites in rugged and forested territory, and in areas where many of the estimated 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos by American warplanes during the Vietnam War make traditional archaeology too dangerous. To date, only seven of more than 85 known jar sites in Laos have been cleared, and an estimated 80 million undetonated bombs are scattered across the country, according to the Laos government agency that oversees the clearance efforts.

"We certainly can't just go and put shovels into the ground," Shewan told Live Science. "[But] we can fly the drones through those sites, and put all that information and imagery into the Cave2 and make comparisons such as, is there a consistent placement between the jars, or between different types of burial markers?"

The excavations at Site 1 in 2016, led by Shewan and Dougald O'Reilly, an archaeologist at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, established for the first time that the giant stone jars were linked to an ancient burial practice. They discovered the remains of dozens of people buried in communal and individual graves around some of the largest jars.

The researchers think the carved stone jars at Site 1 are around 2,500 years old, and that they were used by an Iron Age civilization to expose their dead relatives to the elements for a period of time before the bones were cleaned and buried. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

Shewan said the virtual landscape at the Cave2 facility will be updated with new data and the results of further excavations at the Plain of Jars site, so the researchers can revisit and review their archaeological fieldwork from more than 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometers) away in Melbourne.

RELATED: Tour the Pyramids Online

"Long after we leave the field, we can continue researching, and we can actually be there with all our team members and go through the excavation again, and pick up on things that we've missed," she said. "It's also great for teaching, to be able to recreate the excavation ... It really is virtual-reality archaeology, because we've got the time sequence of the excavation, and you can speed that up and see the trench go down in 10-centimeter [4 inches] steps.

"The images and archaeological data recorded in the Cave2 simulation will also serve as a digital record of scholarship about the Plain of Jars in support of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is an ongoing process, Shewan said. (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - or UNESCO - designates sites as World Heritage Sites if they meet certain criteria for representing natural, historical or cultural significance.)

The Laos government hopes the region's World Heritage status will stimulate tourism and spur further scientific research into the Plain of Jars and other archaeological sites.

For now, the virtual Plain of Jars can be viewed only at the Cave2 facility in Melbourne, but Shewan hopes that 360-degree aerial footage of the site will be made available to the public or be integrated into a museum exhibition.

RELATED: Forget the Shovel, Ancient Finds Now Made From Space

She said the ongoing laboratory research on the samples from the latest excavations includes efforts by ANU geochemist Richard Armstrong to determine the geographic origin and accurate age of some of the jars at Site 1, by analyzing the radioactive decay of uranium into lead in traces of the mineral zircon in the rocks from which they were quarried.

Shewan's own skeletal-chemistry research will focus next on strontium isotopes in human teeth from the graves at Site 1, which could provide clues about the identity of the mysterious jar makers, of whom almost nothing is known except their unusual burial practices.

"We'll be able to work out where these people were living and what areas they were accessing their food from, based on the geological signature - and that will be a really useful piece of information, because at the moment, we don't have any habitation sites, and so we know nothing about these people at all," Shewan said.

Original article on Live Science.
Rwanda has spent the past two decades recovering from a genocide. In 1994, over the course of roughly 100 days, a minority group known as the Tutsis, along with others, were systematically executed. As many as 1 million, or 15% of the entire Rwandan population were slaughtered, and another 2 million were displaced.

The rebel force, which ended the genocide and took over the government, was led by the country's current President, Paul Kagame who over the past twenty-two years has worked to bring the country back from its darkest period.

In light of these efforts, what is life like in Rwanda today? Watch today's Seeker Daily video to find out.

Learn More:

CBS News: 1 million killed by machete, club and gun: Rwanda remembers its genocide 20 years later



BBC News: Rwanda Country Profile



UNICEF: Rwanda At a Glance
Fantasy has established its presence on the small screen.

Whether overt, as with ABCs Once Upon a Time or the CWs Beauty and the Beast, or implicit, as with the maiden-in-distress storylines of any crime procedural show, which often include a hero saving the day by defeating a monster or solving a riddle along the way.

Friday night marks the beginning of the end of one series that explored fantasy and fairy tales as they coexisted among an unsuspecting public, and the start of a series that revisits a much familiar tale in a contemporary way.

For five seasons, Grimm has integrated well-traveled fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty into stories of the morality and depravity of the human condition, transporting such villains as the Big Bad Wolf into literal manifestations of a persons character.

To wit: The kidnapper of the jogger wearing a red hoodie is, underneath his unassuming human face, a menacing wolf. He passes unseen through life because ordinary people cant see his true nature; only a Grimm, a member of a family with special sight and combat skills  and a trailer full of medieval-looking implements of torture particularly designed to neutralize specific monsters  that enable him to hunt down the wolves, the wicked parents, the witches and the wizards and lock them up.

It helps that the Grimm, in this case, is Nick (David Guintoli), a detective for the Portland Police Department; hes helped in his quest by Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), a cultured craftsman who works hard to keep his typically violent Blutbad, or wolf-like nature, under control, instead using his knowledge to stop the bad creatures out there.

On tap for the final 13 episodes is a final showdown between Nick and Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz), once Nicks boss at the police department and now mayor-elect of Portland. Renard, an exiled member of a royal family that holds a level of power with the community of Wesen (as those who have alter egos are called), has a history of protecting Nicks identity and position, but always for his own benefit. Neither overtly good nor purely evil, the clues to his self-preservationist streak have always been evident; his name, Renard, is the French word for fox. Nick, too, has had his brushes with the dark side, falling under spells that skew his actions away from his altruistic intent. As the show nears its end, the power struggle between (mostly) good and (probably) evil comes to a head. The final season of Grimm kicks off at 7 p.m. Friday on Ch. 15.

As with the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm, the story of Emerald City is a familiar one: Kansas girl Dorothy Gale (Adria Arjona) is swept up in a tornado and lands in a strange place. Lost and disoriented, she is directed to the Wizard (Vincent DOnofrio) who, she is told, will help her get home.

From there, though, things shake out a little differently. There is a scarecrow, a tin man, a lion, and a dog; there are witches and flying monkeys and a great and powerful leader, but not in the way you might expect. Dorothys arrival still kills a witch, and she travels an adventurous yellow brick road to see the wizard, but she falls in love with the scarecrow, and its not clear if any of the remaining witches  East, West, or Glinda (of the North)  are good or bad or just ... angry.

See, the Wizard has outlawed magic, and instead rules with technology and science. He is suspicious of Dorothy, whose mysterious presence threatens him; hes right to worry, too, since the witches are together on one thing: They want the Wizard out, and they think Dorothy might be of help. Emerald City premieres with a two-hour episode at 8 p.m. Friday on Ch. 15.

The Golden touch: Jimmy Fallon is this years host of 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards, taking the mantle from the oft-polarizing Ricky Gervais. Fallon, the affable host of The Tonight Show and veteran of Saturday Night Live, will likely lend the ceremony the blend of smart silliness for which he  and often the awards themselves  is known. The Golden Globes air live at 7 p.m. Sunday on Ch. 15.

Whos your biggest fan? Big Fan, a new game show that grew out of a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live, invites three fans of a celebrity to compete by answering trivia questions about the subject to see which one of them is that celebs biggest fan. Hosted by Andy Richter, Big Fan premieres Monday with two episodes; the first, at 9 p.m., features Matthew McConaughey, the second, at 9:30 p.m., features Aaron Rodgers. The show airs on Ch. 27.

Into the darkness: In Taboo, Tom Hardy stars as James Keziah Delaney, an explorer who returns to 1814 London after having been away a long, long time. He intends to rebuild his fathers shipping empire but soon realizes that, in his absence, his father made several enemies whom he has now inherited. Dark threats loom around every corner. Taboo premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on FX.

The Stage is set: Taking the Stage: African American Music and Stories that Changed America, an all-star special that commemorates the opening of the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture, features Dave Chappelle, Doug E. Fresh, Savion Glover, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Octavia Spencer, Rashida Jones, Will Smith, and many, many more; the tribute airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on Ch. 27.
Bam proposes one nurse in every public school

Sen. Bam Aquino has filed a measure seeking to employ at least one registered nurse in every public school to provide students access to basic health care services and open employment opportunity to Filipino nurses.

"Our students and our teachers should have quick access to basic health care and assistance in schools," said Sen. Bam in Senate Bill No. 663.

"Having a nurse in every school emphasizes the value of health, nutrition and well-being as part of the formation of our Filipino children. And with over 45,000 public schools, we create more meaningful jobs for our nurses," he added.

Sen. Bam pointed out that nurses are as important as other support personnel in the school system as they attend to the physical and mental-health needs of students, spearhead programs to promote nutrition and contribute health-related content in the curriculum.

"Sa iilang paaralan, ang mga guro pa po natin ang nag-aalaga ng mga batang may sakit o nasusugatan. A nurse in every public school will safeguard the well-being of the students and faculty by attending to health-related issues and accidents," he said.

The measure mandates the Department of Education and the Department of Health to employ at least one registered nurse in every public school.

The nurse will be responsible for improving the delivery of public health care services and providing relevant and timely education on wellness, hygiene, sanitation and other health safety measures to public school students.

Nurses employed will receive a monthly stipend equal to salary grade 15, consistent with the mandatory minimum entry-level pay for government nurses under Republic Act No. 9173, otherwise known as the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002.
Press Release

January 6, 2017 Pimentel lauds PEZA efforts to attract investors Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III today lauded the Philippine Economic Zone Authority as one of fastest-growing agencies under its new director general Charito "Ching" Plaza, a former lawmaker from Butuan City who was one of the authors of the Special Economic Zones law that created PEZA. "Her leadership of PEZA is laudable," said Pimentel, expressing unqualified support for Plaza, a senior official of the administration party PDP-Lakas ng Bayan which the Senate chief heads. "She has pledged to bring in foreign investments and generate jobs in the countryside," added Pimentel. He also lauded Plaza for keeping the integrity and credibility of PEZA, untainted by corruption as a government business enterprise. PEZA is an agency attached to the Department of Trade and tasked to promote investments, extend assistance, register, grant incentives to and facilitate the business operations of investors in export-oriented manufacturing and service facilities inside selected areas throughout the country proclaimed as PEZA Special Economic Zones. After being appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte last September, Plaza proposed to make the economic zones the "umbrella program" for economic development and industrial growth especially in Mindanao. She said the economic zones could be the anchor in the planned revival of the BIMP-EAGA partnerships with Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines as growth areas in East Asia for foreign investments and job creation. "The regions' unemployed and underemployed would be the final beneficiaries of this," Plaza said when she assumed her post. Pimentel said he would look into the operation of economic zones and Freeport zones and determine if amendments to their charters are needed because of compelling developments in global business. He said he would also review the operations of other agencies that have been subjected to changes only by presidential orders and not through congressional amendments, citing the case of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) where the post of chairman/administrator was split in two.
With a click, the call came through.

It was from a doctor. Routine scans had unexpectedly revealed that a patient of his was in danger because of a brain aneurysm. The man, who had already left the doctors office, wasnt answering his phone. The doctor needed an ambulance to get him to the hospital before the aneurysm could rupture.

In San Franciscos 911 emergency call center, Natalie Eliceteche, 41, hastily switched among five computer displays, inputting a string of commands to dispatch help. The seconds it takes her to answer and dispatch a call can mean the difference between life and death. The faster she can get an ambulance to the man, the better his chances of survival.

Eliceteche has spent 14 years answering 911 calls like this one. But in recent years, she said, conditions at the center have worsened, and there arent enough dispatchers on duty to answer calls. On this night, she was able to get the patients information to medics, and he made it safely to the hospital.

But through the evening, the display above her desk kept flashing, registering more calls waiting. Small screens scattered around the center alerted her and other dispatchers to the incoming emergencies. With a click, Eliceteche would answer the next one. Click: a stabbing. Click: a pocket dial  false alarm. Click: a suicide attempt.

The screen  signaling the backlog of calls  flashed red. The delay in answering those calls has the potential to leave people facing health emergencies or other dangers without the help they need in the time they need it.

National guidelines say that 90 percent of 911 calls should be answered within 10 seconds, a standard San Francisco has not met since early 2012. The state standard says 95 percent of calls should be picked up within 15 seconds.

At San Franciscos 911 call center  where hiring freezes have left staffing short and emergency call volume has surged  only about 79 percent of the 1.27 million emergency calls received in 2015, the latest year for which data are available, were answered within the 10-second standard, a Chronicle analysis shows. Nonemergency calls trended lower, with an average of 57 percent of calls answered within the recommended one-minute mark.

Some other cities, like Oakland, split responsibilities for emergency calls between two centers. The Police Department fields law-enforcement emergencies, while the Fire Department responds to medical and fire emergencies. To compare, in 2015, Oakland received 72,803 medical and fire calls while San Francisco handled 135,229 medical and fire calls.

Calls to San Franciscos call center jumped from 919,908 in 2007 to 1.26 million in 2015, paralleling a swell in the citys population.

For years, the city has criticized its own call center on its public safety scorecard website for failing to meet targets. But it has been sluggish in its efforts to improve its operation, one city supervisor says.

To handle the increased calls, mandatory overtime for dispatchers has been increased. The Department of Emergency Management had 146 dispatchers as of Dec. 15, leaving it short 34 full-time employees. But that roster is misleading because it includes people on leave and new hires not yet trained to dispatch calls.

In fact, about 120 dispatchers are available to work at any given time, workers say. Thats far short of the 180 or so that would make up a full staff, according to both department spokesman Francis Zamora and the dispatchers union, Service Employees International Union 1021, which is renegotiating its contract with the city.

San Franciscos dispatchers are working 12- to 14-hour shifts. Their overtime  pay for any shift beyond eight hours  cost the city more than $3.51 million in 2016, nearly triple the total in 2011.

The centers open positions have gone unfilled even as employees retire or take extended medical leave for work-related injuries, according to interviews with more than a dozen dispatchers. Five employees are out on long-term medical leave, and 10 have retired in the past two years, Zamora said. But hiring new employees isnt easy or quick  it takes nine months to a year to train a replacement, and only about 60 percent complete their training.

The reality is, answering standards are not being met and are not going to be met anytime soon, said dispatcher Lynette Galarza, 36. The fact of the matter is, you dont pay as much attention if its your 12th hour of work. Things start to slip through the cracks. I wouldnt be comfortable with one of my family members calling 911.

While City Hall has been aware of the centers staffing shortage, it has not acted quickly to alleviate it.

A citywide hiring freeze that was a result of the 2008 recession blocked the Department of Emergency Management from recruiting and training more than a single class of new dispatchers annually through 2013. Before that, multiple classes were offered each year.

In 2014, a controllers report concluded that the dispatch center was actually overstaffed  by 2.2 to 5.3 people per hour on average, based on historical call volumes and processing times. But that report was based on data gathered before 2011, when call volume began increasing, Zamora said, and it didnt account for extra staffing needed during major events such as the Super Bowl or a natural disaster.

The department is training multiple classes per year again; applications for its next class open Monday. But after testing, interviews and a background check, those trainees wont make it into the classroom until September.

Unfortunately ... our workload has increased, and we dont have more people coming in, said Rob Smuts, who became deputy director of the departments Division of Emergency Communications in 2014, two years after call response times  the time it takes to answer a call  began to plummet.

Those things together added up to a real crunch, he said. Weve addressed part of the issue through an increase in overtime. But all the overtime we could spend wasnt sufficient to keep staffing as high as we would like. ... It just takes a little while to get new bodies trained and through the process.

The huge increase in 911 calls stems from a booming population, greater cell phone use and an increased number of calls regarding the citys homeless population, city data indicate. From 2012 to 2014, for example, the number of police responses generated as a result of a 911 call jumped 11 percent, and about half the extra calls were related to homelessness, a suspicious person, an auto boost or an unknown complaint, according to a city report published last year.

The number of calls San Franciscos center receives is remarkable, said Stewart McGhee, fire and medical services division manager for the Oakland Fire Department.

Theres nothing in the Bay Area of any appreciable size that would be a good comparison, McGhee said. Theres been an annual increase in 911 calls every year in Oakland and across the region. But it is nowhere near what San Francisco has seen.

Even as the Department of Emergency Managements budget has grown, 911 staffing hasnt kept pace with the calls. This fiscal year, the department was earmarked to receive $93.9 million in city funding, a 13.3 percent increase from $82.9 million in fiscal year 2015. Most of the increase will go to a radio replacement project, personnel costs and capital costs related to long-term space planning for its facilities. About $1 million was allocated for three training classes of up to 15 students in fiscal year 2016, and two more in fiscal year 2017.

The city hired 15 dispatchers in 2015 and plans to hire 40 more trainees in the next two fiscal years, said Deirdre Hussey, spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee. But since about 2 in 5 of those students wont complete their training, the city will need to find money for more classes.

Were confident that with (some) investments we will have the dispatchers we need to meet the increasing demand, Hussey said.

Others arent so certain. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee, said City Hall penny-pinching is putting lives at risk.

I dont know what is worse: the unacceptable amount of time it takes 911 to respond to emergency calls or the unacceptable amount of time its taken the city to address this serious safety problem, Peskin said. Response time is a perennial issue that should have been dealt with years ago, and our 911 call volume has only continued to increase.

As I was reminded recently, even 20 seconds can mean the difference between life and death, said Peskin, who arrived at Lombard and Powell streets last month shortly after a 13-year-old stopped breathing near a Muni stop and almost died.

Answering times wont improve until more dispatchers are brought on staff, said Charles Cullen, past president of the California chapter of the National Emergency Number Association and a technical services director for the Palo Alto Police Department. He helped lead the national organization that creates standards for emergency services.

If you dont have the staffing, its really hard to get your numbers up to standard, Cullen said. When there is a lot of mandatory overtime, people burn out and get fatigued. Youre constantly dealing with issues and problems. Its all about having people there to answer the phones, because every second counts.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The city plans to upgrade its 911 phone system this winter, replacing an outmoded version in use since 2000. Zamora, the Department of Emergency Management spokesman, said that would help prevent repetitive-motion injuries and decrease the number of call takers needing extended medical leave.

But many dispatchers and union leaders say the citys efforts are not enough.

A lot of people are just burnt to the ground, said dispatcher and SEIU Local 1021 President Burt Wilson. There are people working 16 hours a day, and we are still coming up short. They are missing calls and missing certain details. This is not the best service that we can provide to the public.

The dispatch center, with lime-green walls and American flags hanging near the ceiling, is located in a dimly lit building near Turk and Laguna streets. It serves a city and county of 860,000 people and fields calls for police, fire and medical emergencies.

It also handles calls for nonemergency services. On the Fourth of July last year, some residents ringing the nonemergency line  (415) 553-0123  got a busy signal. That line, which can take in and hold up to 20 calls at one time, overloaded after an influx of complaints about firecrackers and noise. Many calls were never answered.

A lot of people arent getting the help they need, said dispatcher Sean Dryden. If there was a crime, and the suspect is running away, the one or two minutes that someone who has that information is waiting on hold makes a difference. The police could be driving right past the suspect. I get a horrible feeling when our bell has been ringing nonstop, and we can see how many people have been holding. That is wasted time.

But even callers who get through to 911 quickly might have to wait for help. Police are supposed to respond to high-priority calls within four minutes, but have been taking an average of four minutes and 57 seconds from receiving a report from the 911 dispatch center to arriving on scene, according to a September 2016 report by the city controller. In 2009, they were about 70 seconds faster.

Police blame the same problems that plague the 911 call center  more emergency calls and short staffing  for their delays. Since 2010, there has been a 38 percent increase in high-priority calls for police help. Attrition within the police force has also increased. The city plans to hire as many as 400 officers within the next two fiscal years.

Fire Department ambulance response times are better. The department had major problems in recent years, but ambulances are now arriving at life-threatening emergencies within 10 minutes 91.1 percent of the time, surpassing the goal of 90 percent. In 2013, the goal was hit only 73 percent of the time. The city established working groups to brainstorm solutions and found funding to replace the departments aging fleet of ambulances and hire more paramedics.

Generally speaking, we dont have a problem responding to top-priority calls, said Smuts of the Division of Emergency Communications. The middle and lower calls, (and) staffing levels at the Police Department impact how long it takes officers to get on those. We see that impact when we have pending calls, and people keep calling back asking for help.

Duplicate calls spiked from 2012 to 2014, meaning that dispatchers are handling the same information multiple times, which slows the system. Supplemental calls from bystanders about the same incident also have increased.

You get people that have been calling all day, said dispatcher Eliceteche, signing off a call. They call, call, call. It slows everything down. But its just the way it is.

On a recent Friday at the citys call center, dispatchers hunched over their computers and answered a stream of incoming calls.

Among them was Patrizia Marcuzzi, who has worked 11 years as a dispatcher, helping people on the worst days of their lives. She has handled calls about shootings and stabbings, car accidents and rapes.

One time, she said, a man overdosed in a Burger King parking lot off Van Ness Avenue. That one stayed in her mind for a long time, Marcuzzi said. She had nightmares about the call, the mans girlfriend sobbing into the phone while trying to resuscitate him. She doesnt always find out what happens to the victims she tries to help.

They take a toll on everybody here, she said, pausing to answer an incoming emergency call. When you think youve heard everything, you havent. Theres some calls that affect you differently. You hear someone crying because the person with them isnt breathing. Its heart-wrenching.

She typed in a chain of commands on her computer. Above her workstation, the screen counting unanswered emergencies ticked higher.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn
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As this weekends storm threatens to swell the Merced River to well above flood stage in Yosemite Valley, the National Park Service and residents of the high Sierra are hoping nature isnt planning a repeat of the disaster of 1997.

Twenty years ago this week, Yosemite National Park was shut down for what would turn out to be a record 2 months because of the devastation that a flooding Merced River caused.

For nearly three days, starting on New Years, rain pounded the parks mountains and meadows, sending the Merced River up and above roads and bridges in Yosemite Valley. Hundreds of visitors were trapped as high water swamped cars and pooled around hotels. When the water receded, buildings were damaged and sewer lines were broken, and much of the valley was covered with mud. Dead fish littered the roads near the river.

A week after the storm, a story in The Chronicle described a scene that could have been the aftermath of a Midwestern twister combined with a California temblor:

Roads are buckled as if from an earthquake, read the Jan. 9 story. Wind and driving water left some camping and picnic areas looking like they had been in a tornados path. Tree branches and bridge railings are scattered everywhere.

Even hibernating bears were awakened by the storm. A Chronicle reporter found the animals feasting on leftovers from smashed food lockers.

Congress would soon approve $178 million to repair the parks wrecked infrastructure, including campgrounds and tent cabins, employee housing, the Yosemite Valley Lodge and the parks oldest building, the Yosemite chapel.

A 2013 flood recovery report prepared by the park service described the 1997 flood as the most destructive in Yosemite in at least a generation.

During the storm, the Merced River was estimated to have risen to a record 23.4 feet, well above its 10-foot flood stage. The volume of water pouring through the valley hit 24,600 cubic feet per second, the highest flow in nearly a century of record-keeping.

One of my most vivid memories was Yosemite Falls falls just roaring, said Scott Gediman, a longtime park employee. It was going so strong that the walls were literally shaking in the (office) building because of the water.

Weather experts say the surging creeks and river were the result of heavy snowfall in December followed by warm rains that melted the snow.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

This weekend, forecasters again expect the river to run above flood stage. Initial estimates called for water levels to reach 23.7 feet by Sunday, but the projection has since been downgraded to 15.5 feet.

Yosemite officials say theyve made improvements to infrastructure since the flood of 1997, enabling the park to better withstand extreme weather. But theyre still considering closing the park when the storm hits.

Yosemite National Park officials continue to monitor the weather forecast and will make decisions in the next day or two based on the forecast, and the ability of the park to safely accommodate visitors and employees, a spokesman said in statement. People planning trips to the park, beginning Thursday, should make alternate plans if the park does close.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
A convenience store was burglarized in the village of Plain early Thursday morning, with deputies identifying and arresting a suspect at his home several hours later.

Corey Forrester, 24, was tenatively charged with burglary, criminal damage to property, theft and bail jumping, the Sauk County Sheriff's Office said.

The burglary was discovered by an employee at the Cenex station upon arriving for work at about 3:50 a.m. Thursday, the employee finding the glass front door smashed out.

"Upon the deputies arrival, the building was cleared and no suspects were located, " said Sheriff Chip Meister. "During the investigation, a possible suspect was identified."

Deputies contacted Forrester at about 6:15 a.m. and arrested him for the Cenex burglary.

Three allegedly stolen firearms were recovered from his possession during the investigation, guns that were stolen from a vehicle in Plain last weekend.

Court records show Forrester was out on bail from Dane County after being charged in December with burglary, theft and criminal damage to property.
At the base of San Franciscos Bernal Hill, where single-family home prices have doubled in four years to fetch $1.2 million each, the forces of gentrification have claimed a new prize: the once-lowly pot shop.

After a year of evictions, lawsuits, a major structure fire and subsequent renovations, Harvest Off Mission held a grand opening with about 100 guests on Dec. 15. Located in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, at 33 29th St., it features a private, members-only lounge in the back, and a luminous, Apple Store-like, weed-buying boutique in the front. The sleek new store replaces the run-down, dorm-room vibe of the 11-year-old Bernal Heights Collective.

Gone is the old pot shops intimidating, bulletproof glass and black-iron-bar foyer, its surly and hairy staff, the rap soundtrack and pungent aroma of ganja. In its place, a floor-to-ceiling transparent glass facade allows anyone to admire the stylish design inside. At the opening, the Beach Boys Christmas Album looped on the sound system. A large but charming security guard handed out fliers to passersby, who walked in and enjoyed a paperless sign-in process after showing a valid medical marijuana recommendation and state ID.

Amid glass chandeliers, herringbone wood walls, elm tables and track lighting, Harvest Off Mission sells stainless- steel, $200 devices for inhaling cannabis vapor. Pure, white, powdered extracts of the botanical drug go for up to $131 per tablespoon. Whoopi Goldbergs name-brand bath soaks and infused miso soups promise to treat pain without euphoria, augmenting traditional offerings like super-stony cannabis flower buds with names like Master Blaster and Cookies.

Brian Feulner/Special to The Chronicle

Part of my heart still weeps, but I am OK with it, said San Francisco grower Neil Dellacava, who frequented the old Collective and attended Harvest Off Missions grand opening. I love it. It gives off the comfort of a place you can know and trust.

And thats the point. Amid a national fight over pot legalization, high-end interior design aimed at mainstream consumers has become a political statement.

Harvest Off Mission is the creation of a 47-year-old Oakland father of two, Marty Higgins, who left a career in real estate investment banking, including five years as the principal of the Apartment Group, Inc. Its the second dispensary Higgins has bought, gutted and renovated with investor help; the first was the Hemp Center on Geary Boulevard. Each time, critics have howled.

In October 2015, Higgins purchased the Collectives building, and in March 2016 moved to evict the Collective. In response, the Collectives new manager, Sean Killen, sued Harvest and publicly blasted Higgins.

In the moment, we were emotional and defensive, said Killen, a former technology worker.

Killen has since dropped the lawsuit. Weve run out of steam. Its a free-market thing. Were not going to oppose anyone. Were just going to try to serve our patients, he said. He intends to reopen Bernal Heights Collective in a different retail space a few blocks away and has a Planning Department permit hearing Jan. 26.

With Harvest Off Mission, Higgins said he is dedicated to a new type of retail cannabis experience. Vintage pot shops often alienated mainstream consumers, he said, especially older, wealthier baby boomers and women.

Our mission is to change the way people think about and consume cannabis and help change that negative perception  take the seediness out of it, he said.

Indeed, the crowd skewed older, with more women than men. They wore chic boots, stockings with dresses and fancy coats, scarves and handbags.

It reminds me of a Barneys (New York) or a beautiful Whole Foods. Its pretty impressive, said Kathryn Azad from Los Gatos. Azad attended the grand opening with Los Angeles fashion marketing professional Cynthia Erland, formerly of American Apparel.

This is really the new generation of retail for dispensaries, Erland said. Were not hiding behind closed doors anymore. Its welcoming. This is the zeitgeist for sure. San Francisco is at least five to 10 years ahead of Los Angeles.

Cannabis is in its final stages of normalization in San Francisco, said Evan Horowitz, who runs cannabis-investor pitch parties inside the Twitter building. The multimillion-dollar Urban Pharm dispensary opened in 2016 just down the street from Twitter on 10th and Market streets. The upscale Marina district gets its first pot shop in 2017.

On Geary (in the Inner Richmond, now) you can combine a visit to Harvest with a stop at Whole Foods and Lululemon. Thats what I love about it. Its part of my routine, and its not a big deal, Horowitz said.

City agencies originally confined licensed pot shops to rougher parts of town, due to a combination of commercial zoning restrictions and powerful neighborhood opposition. Store owners were usually activists and risk-takers, rather than experienced retailers. First-generation owners also were loath to make business improvements because they feared losing everything in a federal drug raid.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Today, full recreational legalization is the law in eight states and Washington, D.C., which together account for more than 21 percent of the U.S. population. Thirty-five states have medical marijuana laws. As times changed, Bernal Heights Collective failed to keep pace.

It was not well-managed, Killen said.

I told them, The dorm room things gotta go, said Shelly Cook, a Bayshore district resident of 30 years. Cook grew and sold the cannabis strain Super Lemon Haze to the old Collective.

I just wish the old place had evolved, said Cook, noting that theres 95 percent less people of color now.

Dellacava said he empathizes with the low-income customers of the older clubs. They lost one of their safe spaces, he said. I understand why theyre mad. (But) change is inevitable with anything. This is where cannabis is moving into as a business.

The oldest black guest at the Harvest Off Mission grand opening wasnt angry, though.

This is nice. Very nice. Its even bigger and better, said Horace Thomas, a 70-year-old resident of a downtown single-room-occupancy hotel. The former janitor and political activist has been smoking pot for 35 years and heard of the party through the pro-pot Brownie Mary Democratic Club. You learn a lot from (cannabis). It breaks down racial lines, ethnic lines, cultural lines, sectarian lines and gender lines. It pulls people together. You meet a lot of people through it.

Just then, a young Harvest staffer dressed in a Santa costume appeared from the back room with a big red bag and handed Thomas about $50 worth of free cannabis flowers in a monogrammed glass jar.

Thomas smiled and said, Im glad Im here.

Subscribe to The Chronicles newly enhanced cannabis coverage by email. Contact Cannabis Editor David Downs at ddowns@sfchronicle.com
The thousands of commuters stranded by Friday mornings BART meltdown can probably blame a bundle of electrical cables that went haywire at precisely the worst time and in the worst spot.

But where and when the 10-car train stalled and locked up, blocking service into San Francisco from the East Bay for more than an hour, is a bigger, and more concerning, problem.

And its one that again could vex commuters, and BART officials, at least until a second Transbay Tube, or more crossover tracks and sidings, are added.

The train from Pittsburg/Bay Point, packed with passengers, stalled just as it was pulling into the West Oakland Station about 7:30 a.m., the height of the morning commute. That location, just after the point where five BART lines merge onto a single track, is one of the most vulnerable in the 107-mile system. When a train stalls there, it blocks most of those behind it and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to get around it.

Its the one spot you dont want something to happen, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman.

When BART was built in the early 1970s, its designers ran only a single set of tracks between the so-called Oakland Wye, the merging point for East Bay lines, and Embarcadero Station in San Francisco. That was sufficient then but no longer, with five lines sending standing-room only trains into the Transbay Tube every 2 minutes.

Civic leaders last year started a campaign to build a second Transbay Tube, a task that would take many years to plan and build  and cost tens of billions of dollars.

After Fridays fiasco, Jim Wunderman, chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council, a regional business group that has been one of BARTs biggest backers, said the breakdown points out the need for another way for rail to cross the bay.

Part of the BART bond (passed by voters in November) is to look at how we might fashion the next crossing, he said. What happened (Friday) morning shows how important it is to get cracking on that.

Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of Bay Area urban think-tank SPUR, said passage of BARTs $3.5 billion bond measure in November, with money dedicated primarily to restoring the system, was only a first step.

The bigger lesson for all of us here is that we need to be investing in the reliability of our core transit system, he said. The bond we just passed is going to help but its not the end of the story. We also should start thinking more about redundancy in the system  planning for a second BART tube.

While engineers are not certain what caused Friday mornings failure, they believe it was the cables, known as the train line, which relay signals from the operators cab to each of the cars in a train.

They suspect the cables failed after the fifth car, causing the following five to shut down and lock up as the train approached West Oakland Station. Just seven of the 10 cars were able to roll into the station, leaving three stalled cars short of the platform.

When the train operator was unable to move the train forward or backward, it was evacuated. Doors in the final three cars remained closed, and passengers exited through the cars at the platform.

While BART workers struggled to move the train, all trains in the East Bay came to a standstill because of the problem, stranding riders on packed trains and station platforms.

Three technicians eventually managed to get the stuck train to move using digital trickery to convince the 10-car train it was actually a five-car train. That allowed BARTs control computers to move the train, at half-speed, to the Daly City yard, where crews began an investigation.

We know what happened, BARTs Allison said, but we dont know why.

Problems with the train line are rare, said Taylor Huckaby, a BART spokesman, and another sign that the systems age is an issue.

It is an exceedingly rare occurrence, he said. But these are 40-year-old trains and those kinds of things happen when youre running the oldest fleet in the nation.

Thats about to change. BART has ordered 775 new rail cars, and the first 10 are being tested in Hayward. Testing will move to BARTs tracks after hours within weeks. Passengers could be riding new trains later this year, if all goes according to plan, and more new cars will begin to roll into service.

The morning commute debacle capped a week of service failures and long wait times for the transportation system. Major delays were caused by a man who died after falling onto the tracks and getting wedged between a train and the platform at the 24th Street Mission Station, police activity at the Orinda Station and a switching equipment problem near Daly City  all on Wednesday.

Commuters stranded Friday were forced to find alternate means of transportation. BART employees told hundreds of angry riders to take a cab or bus to their destination.

And despite efforts to single-track trains around the problem, trains were jam-packed with people. Only a few commuters at a time were able to squeeze onto full trains that stopped briefly at the West Oakland Station platform, and the scene was met with laughter, anger  and occasional good-natured understanding.

Jess Brown, who was going from Fremont to San Francisco, hopped off at Oakland City Center to get a cup of coffee.

Delays happen, and BART's pretty good at letting us know what's going on, Brown said.

But he said hes thankful BART is planning to rejuvenate its system.

Im glad the measure got passed for BART to improve its infrastructure. They're between a rock and a hard place, working with a 40-year-old system, Brown said.

Getting around without BART wasnt easy, or cheap. Uber surged prices as strangers rallied together to arrange ride-share carpools from the East Bay into the city. Prices for Uber were over $30 for trips into the city from the West Oakland BART Station.

The roads werent much better. Traffic on westbound Highway 24 in Oakland was clogged due to a three-vehicle crash around 8:35 a.m. east of the Broadway off-ramp near Highway 13.

After this week, I think both BART and Muni owe us an apology, hug and ice cream to make amends with transit riders, said 36-year-old Shaun Osburn, a San Francisco resident.

Chronicle staff writers Jenna Lyons, Hamed Aleaziz and Lizzie Johnson contributed to this report.

Michael Cabanatuan, Kimberly Veklerov and Sarah Ravani are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com, kveklerov@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan, @KVeklerov, @SarRavani
When the new San Francisco Board of Supervisors is sworn in Monday morning, the majority of its members will be of a breed that hasnt controlled the body in 20 years.

Conservatives? Please, this is San Francisco. Those intent on fixing our potholes and cleaning our streets? Please, this is the Board of Supervisors. No, the majority will be women  for the first time since 1996, back when Willie Brown was just starting out as mayor and Macarena was the No. 1 song of the year.

In a devastating time for women on the political scene nationally  with an admitted grabber of womens private parts due to be sworn in as president while the woman he defeated, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state, sits in the audience  San Franciscos little glimmer of hope is one to be savored.

Given the fact this country just elected a president who is hostile to women, I cannot imagine better timing for women to be leading the legislative branch of our local government, said Hillary Ronen, who will be sworn in as supervisor for District Nine, replacing her former boss, David Campos.

San Franciscos male leaders have mostly been a forward-thinking bunch. The citys new policy guaranteeing fully paid bonding time with babies, which went into effect this week, came from former Supervisor Scott Wieners office, for example.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

But to Sandra Fewer, who will be sworn in as supervisor in District One, replacing Eric Mar, this is a crucial time for women to take the boards helm and fight back against federal policies that many expect to include gutting federal funding for Planned Parenthood, decimating the Affordable Care Act and changing the tax code to further benefit the wealthy. But beyond fighting President-elect Donald Trumps policies, which all 11 supervisors will surely do, the symbolism of having women in the majority is also important.

As women, I think we have to recognize what is at stake, Fewer said. Its our right to be respected in the general community, its about a living wage we can support ourselves on, its seeing ourselves in the workforce, its about equity, and its about respect. Its about our right as women to own the reproductive systems in our bodies and our right to choose.

I think every woman who has been elected to the Board of Supervisors is a fighter, and we will have to fight back, she continued.

Ronen and Fewer join Katy Tang, London Breed, Jane Kim and Malia Cohen. (Also of note, Ronen and Fewer will be the first moms in full-time elected office in the city since former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier was termed out six years ago.)

Women frequently held the majority on the Board of Supervisors throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but when San Francisco shifted from citywide elections to district elections in 2000, just one woman  Sophie Maxwell  won a seat.

One theory goes that when voters elect a slate of candidates, theyre more conscious of including women in the mix. When they elect just one from their neighborhood, they may be more likely to opt for the man. Gradually, the number of women supervisors has climbed since 2000, finally reaching the majority after the Nov. 8 election.

It was a rare win for women, however. Hillary Clintons surprise loss is, of course, the most obvious example. But despite sending two women U.S. senators and a female house minority leader to Washington, D.C., gender parity in California politics is still a far-off dream.

Jerry Brown is Californias 39th governor, and all of them have been white men. Californians elected the Terminator governor, but they have never chosen a woman.

Californians did just elect Kamala Harris to the U.S. Senate, but the number of women in Californias congressional delegation decreased by two, and the number of women serving in the Legislature fell by five. Of the 58 counties in California, women make up the majority on five Boards of Supervisors. But, incredibly, 14 counties have no female supervisors at all.

Of the 43 mayors whove sat in San Francisco City Halls Room 200, just one  Dianne Feinstein  was a woman. And she took office nearly 40 years ago.

So what is going on?

Kimberly Ellis is the director of Emerge California, which encourages and trains women to run for political office. Emerges focus is on identifying women who have the potential to win political office and helping them get there. Usually, the lack of women in politics can be blamed at least in part on not enough women wanting to run, because of busy schedules raising kids, a reluctance to engage in the often nasty world of politics, or the lack of confidence they can do the job.

But when women are losing seats  and the most-qualified candidate to run for president in years loses to a man with no experience  something else is going on.

Theres no question in my mind  if Hillary Clinton had been a man, she would have won this election hands down. As racist as this country is, it is still even more sexist than racist, said Ellis, who is African American. What this should signal to the womens community is the only way we beat this is to build deeper and broader coalitions.

Some elements of that misogyny played out in the local races, too. Ronens campaign headquarters in September was spray-painted with Vote Arce Ya C, including a derogatory word for womens genitalia. Her challenger, Josh Arce, denounced the sexist vandalism.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

A fake Twitter account was set up in Ronens name that directed tweets to her real account including, Why are you so ugly? and Do you ever smile? With a whopping six followers, at least the troll didnt get much traction.

The women supervisors say theyre ready to put up important fights when necessary, but hope to leave nastiness at the door.

I just think the way women operate is a little bit different, Breed said. Even when we disagree, it doesnt get so personal. Theres disagreement, but were still talking. It takes a little longer with the guys before were talking again.

(Breed and Campos were not on speaking terms last year, though apparently they are now.)

Tang, too, is hopeful about the new female majority.

Dont get me wrong, there are some thoughtful men who I enjoy working with very much, Tang said. But women are very thoughtful about the positions they take. We bring another level of that.

And, as Tang pointed out, government may be one of the few places of work where there is no gender pay gap. Were paid the same! Equal pay here! Tang said with an excitement that sadly points out how rarely that statement is uttered.

For the record, thats $117,494 per year  for supervisors of any stripe.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
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A 22-month-old girl was wounded in a drive-by shooting in East Oakland on Thursday while riding in a car with her mother, police said.

The shooting happened around noon near the intersection of 66th and Outlook avenues in a quiet residential neighborhood in the hills overlooking the city, according to the Oakland Police Department. The mother was not injured in the shooting, police said.

The toddler was rushed to a hospital and was listed in stable condition, said Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department. No arrests were reported following the shooting, and a motive remained under investigation, she said.

Outside UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Oakland, where the girl was taken, Daryle Allums, a representative of Adamika Village, an Oakland antiviolence group, said he was acting as a spokesman for the family after speaking to her mother and praying for the pretty little princess.

The occupants of two other cars exchanged gunfire, and the girl and her mothers car got caught up in the crossfire, Allums said. Outside the hospital, Watson said police are investigating that possibility.

Watson said investigators are probing whether the shooting is possible retaliation to the slaying of a man Wednesday on Myrtle Street near 16th Street, the first homicide of the year in Oakland.

We are looking to see who the target was, Watson said, adding that Oaklands incoming police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, has been briefed on the shooting. It was a stray bullet that hit the little girl.

The child was in the backseat of the vehicle in a car seat when the shots rang out, Allums said, at least one bullet piercing the car and hitting her. The girls whole family, grandmother included, was waiting at the hospital for news of her condition, he said.

Watson said members of the Police Department visited the girls mother at the hospital to assure her theyd provide every possible resource, emphasizing they were investigating aggressively.

Shes fighting for her life right now, Allums said of the girl.

An elderly woman who lives in the East Oakland neighborhood and declined to give her name said she heard four distinct rounds of gunfire just before noon, followed by a pause, then another four gunshots.

Standing with her 3-year-old son, Tao, not far from the blocked-off crime scene, Clare Stanley, who also lives nearby, described the shooting of the child as the most kind of awful you can imagine.

Stanley said she also heard four or five gunshots, and then a brief pause, followed by another four or so shots in quick succession. She was inside her home when the shots rang out, she said, and heard a car peeling away right after.

Burbank Preschool is just one block away on 65th and Outlook avenues, Stanley noted, making the danger gun violence poses to children in the neighborhood all the more real. A representative for the preschool said the school briefly locked down after the shooting, but soon reopened.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Its a huge problem, Stanley said. Its such a problem that its hard to know what the answer is because so many people own guns around here.

Another man who lives nearby, David Dill, said he arrived home after the shooting to find a heavy police presence swirling around his typically quiet neighborhood.

He described the gun violence that all too often envelops parts of Oakland  including the 85 homicides recorded throughout the city in 2016  as disheartening and crazy.

Already in 2017, Dill said, the shootings were hitting too close to his doorstep, in my neighborhood.

My heart goes out to her, you know, Dill said of the wounded child. Its terrible. It makes no sense. Theres no reason for it.

Kimberly Veklerov, Sarah Ravani and Michael Bodley are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com, mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov, @sarravani, @michael_bodley
Five San Jose residents were arrested in connection with an August shooting death of a 16-year-old, police said Thursday.

Four suspects  Alexander Lozano, 19, Paul Lozano, 24, Mathew Mendivil, 19, and Esaias Valles, 20  were recently arrested on suspicion of murder, according to the San Jose Police Department. A fifth suspect, David Mendivil, 21, was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory, police said.
Maxine Hong Kingstons pioneering The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts opens with these lines from her mother: You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.

But the Bay Area author proceeds to do just that, writing about her aunt, the no-name woman who gave birth alone in a pigsty and then killed herself by jumping into her familys well. She has said she wanted to bring her aunt back to life. Were going to find a meaning for her life  giving her immortality by writing it down.

As a teenager, I was blown away by the books urgent, lyrical prose, by the family secrets exposed, by the myths Kingston retold and remade, connecting folktales and ancestral tales to her life growing up in post-World War II California.

On Saturday, Jan. 7, in an event sponsored by the Womens National Book Association, Ill be in conversation with Kingston in San Francisco, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Woman Warrior.

Its just amazing to me that (the book) is alive, that students are reading (it) in high school, that its selling just as well as it did when it was first published, Kingston recently told the Los Angeles Review of Books. Its really amazing to me that book has such life.

Kingston, who taught for many years at UC Berkeley before retiring, has inspired a generation of writers, and will inspire generations more. Though her award-winning books are rooted in the Chinese American experience, they are universal in appeal. Immigrants from all over the world have told her, This is my story. People who have been bullied, or bullied someone, or been in wars, have also told her, This is my story.

She received a National Medal of the Arts, because her work has shaped our national conversation about culture, gender and race. At the White House ceremony, President Obama said, When I was writing my first book and trying to teach myself how to write, Woman Warrior was one of the books I read.

China Men, a sequel of sorts to The Woman Warrior, explores the history of the men in her family: the great-great-grandfather who worked on sugar plantations in Hawaii; her grandfather who built railroads; her father, a poet turned laundryman; and her brother, a Vietnam War vet.

America has been built on the backs of laborers like them, and in times of war, immigrants and the children of immigrants have protected this country too. We need to hear these stories more than ever, at a time when the loyalty of immigrants and people of color are being questioned, when they are demonized, and when they are denied their stories.

Back in 1994, when these books were staged together at Zellerbach Hall, my mother, my sister and I made a pilgrimage. So often, Asian Americans are treated as perpetual foreigners in this country, asked, Where are you from?

The Bay Area, I say.

But where are you really from?

As the lights dimmed and the theater hushed, we were swept into her stories. It meant everything to us to see a nuanced portrayal of Chinese Americans, to see faces like ours onstage, and the performance became a jumping-off point to discuss our own familys history in this country.

A couple years ago, at a party hosted by Zyzzyva literary magazine, Kingston lit up the room. I was with a group of female writers from immigrant families, and we mustered the courage to tell her shed changed our lives with her work (and that we loved her stylish tunic and silver sneakers!). She was so gracious, and her presence lent a magical aspect to the entire evening.

Lately, theres been an Internet meme going around that features a quote by Kingston: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A friendship. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.

Though first published in 2003, in The Fifth Book of Peace, her words have never been more timely and relevant. Many people Ive spoken with are wondering what the future will bring, and what role they will take: what resistance, what fight and what art they will create this year and beyond.

To that end, Writers Resist is hosting a reading Jan. 15 in Oakland to benefit the International Institute of the Bay Area, Southern Poverty Law Center and Transgender Law Center. Litquake is hosting No Shadow Without Light: Writers Respond to Trump on Jan. 18 in San Francisco. The Bay Areas 100 Day Artistic Resistance  in tandem with President-elect Donald Trumps first 100 days in office  will present readings, instructional texts and more to take a stand against bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism and environmental destruction.

The year 2017 has begun. Create something.

Vanessa Huas column appears Fridays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
Last week, I shared my strategies for surviving whats sure to be a year of distress for the country in general and our concept of citizenship in particular. I also invited readers to email me with their own ideas.

I wasnt sure what kind of response Id get, but it was a heartening relief to learn that many of you had been thinking about the same thing. Ive organized some of your best responses below.

Keep sharing them with me and with each other. We will need all of the support we can get as 2017 unfolds.

Choose activism: The number of responses about going to the barricades for democracy  or, in the case of many longtime Bay Area residents, returning to the barricades  was far and away the most popular category. What impressed me was the variety of reasons people gave for choosing involvement over fear.

Patrick Gannon is a psychologist who offered the, well, psychological defense. Taking action, he wrote, increases self-agency, which is a hedge against complacency and depression. If youre having trouble, he suggests identifying your own personal line in the sand. Commit to taking action once its been crossed, he said.

Andrea Burnett pointed out the social benefits  Im looking forward to all the other wonderful people Im going to meet as I stand up for what I believe in, she wrote.

Meanwhile, Marcia Lovelace of Oakland, whos been doing various forms of community activist work for years, told me that its because Im already part of these communities that I have some hope. It gives me a path forward and people with whom I can share support and grief. She suggests getting involved with local organizations, like the Catalyst Project and Genesis, in addition to supporting large national organizations.

Finally, Mary Pelkey of Concord is planning to attend every town hall hosted by my Congressman and asking him every time what he is doing to save Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act. Speaking as a journalist, I can tell you that in-person voter demands are the fastest way to get a representatives attention.

Be careful with how, what, and why we communicate: Choosing more thoughtful and strategic behavior with communication was a close second. Apparently lots of you are planning to report fake news on Facebook and Russian bots on Twitter.

Dont believe what you read on the Internet was a truism in 1996, and I guess 2016 taught us the hard way that its a mantra that needs to come back into style.

Helen Goldsmith of San Francisco also told me she plans to spend more time talking on the phone  rather than going back and forth on email or text  to older people who lived through previous periods of turmoil in the U.S. People in their 90s, she said, offer the most hope and perspective.

Ann Eisenberg recommends looking people in the eye on the street and acknowledging their presence. Susan Jackson of San Francisco said shes decided to happily greet everyone she passes. As an on-the-record loather of smartphone-enabled dumbwalking, you know I had to include these suggestions.

Gratitude: This is one of those common suggestions that can make me feel grumpy. Whenever someone tells me I should I feel grateful, I immediately think of all of the injustices wed all still be suffering if other people had felt happy with their pathetic lot in life.

But you all believe in gratitude, and Im listening. Youll feel better listing things to be grateful for, Bunny Paine-Clemes of Vallejo told me. Its not about doing nothing, she added, its about understanding that whatever our circumstances, they need not get the best of us.

Willie Dickerson offered that advice with a proactive twist. Thank people who are doing a thankless job, like your representatives who support positive initiatives, he wrote.

Nature: Its perfect when man disappoints, Steve Lawrence wrote. He plans to spend more of 2017 greeting trees and birds and sky, going to the ocean, and feeling connected to the natural world.

I have to agree with him. I spent New Years Day hiking over Mount Tamalpais and down to Stinson Beach. It was a hike Id procrastinated doing, since it takes most of the day. It did take a long time, but spending even just the daylight hours away from the range of cell phone service reminded me of how long the hours can feel, and how easy it is to unwind the imagination in silence. It was a great lesson, since Ill need plenty of imagination in the months to come.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner
The feudal lords of Japan tortured many Roman Catholics during the 17th century, and yet the numbers of their victims pale when you consider how many people Martin Scorsese will ultimately torture with Silence. Based on the novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo, this has been a dream project of Scorseses for nearly three decades, and its good that he got to make it. Well, at least its good that he got it over with.

Of course, Scorsese is one of our great filmmakers and that, coupled with the films unmistakable sincerity, could lead a person to mistake Silence for an important piece of work. But Silence is not just sincere, its naive. Its performances are tin-eared and histrionic. The dialogue feels off, as if rendered from the Japanese by Google Translate, and the conversations go on and on and on ...

It is an exhausting film to watch, but its not exhausting emotionally, because it barely engages the emotions. As bad movies often do, Silence sucks energy from the audience, and it does so for a punishing two hours and 41 minutes.

It tells the story of Portuguese Jesuit missionary Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield), who gets some disturbing news at the start of the film. He and his colleague Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) are told that their mentor  their confessor and spiritual teacher, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson)  has turned apostate. Captured by the shoguns while on a mission to Japan, Ferreira gave up his faith and married a Japanese woman.

The young priests dont believe that, and with all the impetuosity of sheltered youth, they get the idea to go to Japan and try to rescue him. They believe that the apostasy and marriage rumors are pure slander, and that Ferreira is either in hiding or being held prisoner.

In human terms, one can see how this could be interesting  two young men armed with nothing but their religious conviction, who dont even speak Japanese, go to a place where they can be arrested at any moment.

As presented in the film, the oppression of Christians is unrelenting. Theyre being set on fire, or drowned, or scalded with boiling water, or killed after being tortured for days and days. The authorities offer only one option for escape: If a prisoner steps on a religious icon, thus implicitly rejecting Christianity, he or she can go free.

Much of the conversation in Silence revolves around the implications of caving into authority and stepping on the icon. But the discussions never get sophisticated enough  and they certainly dont vary enough  to command a sustained interest.

While stepping on a sacred symbol would be disturbing to a person of faith, the moral absolutism of the young priest begins to seem excessive. Would a forgiving God really throw believers into the jaws of hell just for committing a harmless act that will keep them from being boiled alive? In particular, would a Christian God do that, one who knows firsthand how scary it can be to inhabit a human body?

As it stands, Silence feels like a film about two rival forms of primitive dogmatism, in which neither side quite realizes that they both might be wrong. The film doesnt seem remotely mystical, but earthbound. The whole movie is reminiscent of the prayer that the King utters in Hamlet, which never takes wing but stays leaden on the ground.

Its a strange case, a movie about spiritual doubt that unintentionally provokes spiritual doubt. Silence is just ugly and drab, with not a hint of the transcendent about it.

Garfield is unconvincing as a man of conviction, and the temptation would be to blame him, except that he just got through playing a religious man in Hacksaw Ridge, one of the years best performances. No, the problem is the material itself. Father Rodrigues wrestles with Gods silence, and Scorsese, who adapted the novel with Jay Cocks, leaves the audience feeling that Rodrigues is just talking to himself. Well, Scorsese is free to do that, but then why make the film? Either Silence is about the spirit, or its about a series of pathetic incidents, centuries ago, involving a delusional young man.

Garfield goes through the film speaking English with a Portuguese accent, and Driver has some kind of accent that might be Portuguese, but Neeson will have none of that. He just sounds Irish from some previously unknown Irish section of Lisbon.

Most of the Japanese actors overact shamelessly, as if theyd just drunk 10 cups of coffee and watched a Kurosawa movie, but Tadanobu Asano is charismatic as the translator, and Issey Ogata plays the grand inquisitor with wit and presence.

Still, when youre making a Christian epic and the best thing about it is the guy playing the inquisitor, you have a serious problem.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle

Silence

Drama. Starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson. Directed by Martin Scorsese. (R. 161 minutes.)

To see a trailer: https://youtu.be/IqrgxZLd_gE
Rest in peace, Mr. President.

The Chronicles front page from Jan. 6, 1933, covers the death of Calvin Coolidge a few years after he left the highest office in the land.

Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States, our only living ex-president, and a man generally considered one of the ablest men of this country, died of a sudden heart stroke while alone in his bedroom of his home (in Northampton, Mass.) today, the story read. He was 60 years old last July 4.

During a time of White House scandal following the death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923, Coolidge fostered an environment of stability in Washington, D.C., much as he had as governor of Massachusetts.

He was a Republican who believed in small government, and was thought of as a champion of the middle class.

In a front-page editorial, The Chronicles editors praised the late leader and bemoaned the toll the presidency can have on men.

This untimely end of Mr. Coolidge brings it home to us with force that none of our presidents how long survives the tremendous strain of the great office, they wrote.

We give our presidents the honor of the greatest office on earth and demand their lives in payment.

(Click to enlarge)

Heist of the times: A bandit disguised as a messenger carrier tonight gained entrance to the palatial Hollywood home of Betty Compson, screen actress, and escaped with jewelry valued at between $50,000 and $60,000, police reported. The actress and a companion with whom she was playing cards ... were both bound and gagged. Compson had been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress. Imagine how this crime would have dominated the news cycle today.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspapers history.

Chronicle Covers is a yearlong project highlighting one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken and producers Kimberly Chua, Alexandra Irving and Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke
Prosecutors will seek 11 years in prison for an Edgerton man who pleaded guilty Friday to striking two girls crossing a Middleton street, causing serious injuries, while he was driving under the influence of a substance often called synthetic marijuana last spring.

Ross C. Cotter-Brown, 31, pleaded guilty Friday to causing great bodily harm by driving while intoxicated, causing injury by driving while intoxicated, hit and run causing great bodily harm and two counts of hit and run causing injury.

Under a plea agreement, Assistant District Attorney Lanny Glinberg said he will ask for a combined prison sentence of 11 years, to follow the one year that Cotter-Brown is currently serving for a fourth-offense drunken driving conviction. Cotter-Brown pleaded guilty to that charge, which is unrelated to the Middleton incident, in November.

In court Friday, Cotter-Brown said he doesnt remember much of what happened that day, but was under the influence of a product sold at some gas stations and convenience stores under various brand names that is intended to mimic the effects of marijuana.

I have to trust that other peoples accounts are accurate, Cotter-Brown told Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds, when asked about the facts contained in a criminal complaint.

The complaint states that on April 21, a pickup truck being driven by Cotter-Brown was seen being driven erratically on Northport Drive in Madison. He led a Dane County sheriffs deputy on a chase that started in the town of Westport when the deputy tried to stop Cotter-Brown.

In Middleton, the deputy broke off the pursuit. On Century Avenue, the complaint states, Cotter-Brown went through a red light at Donna Drive and Frank Lloyd Wright Avenue and struck two girls, ages 12 and 13, who were in a crosswalk, and continued on, striking another vehicle nearly head-on. He eventually stopped when his truck became disabled.

The girls, who were students at Kromrey Middle School, sustained significant injuries, police said, including cuts and broken bones. They spent several days in a hospital.

Reynolds will sentence Cotter-Brown in about two months, after the state Department of Corrections completes a pre-sentence report.

Seven other charges against Cotter-Brown were dismissed, including a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge that will be read in, meaning that Reynolds can consider it when sentencing Cotter-Brown.
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Oaklands new police chief sure does talk differently.

Anne Kirkpatrick, the first woman to lead the department, talked about transforming a force plagued by scandals involving racist texts and a sexually exploited teenager, and a lack of stability at the top. But she spoke with a Southern accent that is as sweet and thick as Tennessee maple syrup.

At her introductory news conference, Kirkpatrick repeatedly said yall, pronouncing it properly as yawl. Kirkpatrick is an outsider whos definitely not from around these parts, but her charisma and aw-shucks folksiness was downright entertaining.

I like her humor, Maxine Jasper-Collins, an Oakland resident, told me afterward.

I liked the energy, added Cynthia Adams, who also lives in Oakland. Its something different.

Both Jasper-Collins and Adams hail from Arkansas, so they understood where the plain-spoken Kirkpatrick was coming from. I spent two decades in South Carolina, so I appreciated Kirkpatricks self-deprecating approach.

Yall are probably thinking, Where did that accent come from? she said.

The Memphis-born Kirkpatrick was raised in the Deep South, where children are taught to say yes, maam and yes, sir to their elders. Memphis, a city known for cradling rock, blues, soul and country musicians such as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Otis Redding and Johnny Cash, is where Kirkpatrick began her exemplary policing career.

Michael M. Santiago/Special to The Chronicle

A former police chief in Spokane, Wash., Kirkpatrick recently led reform efforts in Chicago. Im relieved the person who accepted the job wants to live in Oakland even if, like many residents, she cant quite afford to buy a house.

Yall are expensive, she said, drawing laughter.

Theres nothing funny about the problems Kirkpatrick is being asked to solve in a city where many residents simply dont trust police officers. While Kirkpatrick has been in charge of smaller police departments, shes never had the buck stop with her in a high-profile city like Oakland where the slightest misstep can lead to an explosive situation.

And its not clear what she accomplished as a bureau chief in Chicago, if anything. Should the fact that she was only there for six months raise questions about her commitment?

If she sticks around, I feel Kirkpatricks homey demeanor will positively improve community policing  but only if some of yall can get over her drawl which can, to unfamiliar ears, sound like a pat-on-the-head scolding. That includes the rank and file.

More than anything else, Oakland needs a chief who talks with people  not at them.

I absolutely want to reach out and get to know people, sit down with them, and have them ask me anything they want to ask, Kirkpatrick responded when I questioned how she would connect with young people.

Regina Jackson, president of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, which focuses on building character and confidence in children and young adults, nodded when Kirkpatrick said she would have to earn respect.

Because a title doesnt give you carte blanche to how to be received, Jackson said. Thats what we teach kids all the time. Its not what they say; watch their actions.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Jackson believes Kirkpatricks outsider status is an asset, because she doesnt hold allegiances inside a department that remains under federal court oversight stemming from a 2003 civil rights settlement over alleged beatings, evidence planting and falsified reports.

Shes able to start from the ground up in terms of demonstrating her authenticity, Jackson said.

Mya Whitaker, the program director for the Bay Area Urban Debate League, was one of three Oakland residents on the search committee. Even though the search has ended, she said the voices of black and brown residents still need to be included if the fragmented relationship between residents and local police is to be repaired.

Some could argue there isnt anything to improve, because an appropriate relationship has never existed.

Still, building a rapport will require Kirkpatrick to do more than say things a different way.

Our communities have a severe distrust of the police, Whitaker said. What will she bring? What is she about? You have good things, but how will you implement them?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr
Fifty is the new 30. Orange is the new black. And in Donald Trumps America, California has become the new Texas.

California is now a deep-blue island of resistance, one of only four of the 50 states with both a Democratic governor and legislature. Our states elected officeholders have vowed to lead the fight against the policy priorities of the incoming administration, promising to oppose Trump in the Legislature, in the courts and on the streets.

But if you were to travel back eight years  and about 1,500 miles to the east  you would find a similarly determined group of politicians preparing for an equally unyielding fight against another incoming president. The state of Texas, which is the same type of cornerstone for the national Republican Partys electoral coalition as California is for Democrats, has since filed approximately four dozen lawsuits against the Obama administration. That is, on average, roughly one every 60 days over the past eight years. More than half of the suits have been targeted toward various Obama environmental and regulatory policies, but Texas has also taken legal action against the federal government on immigration, health care, Syrian refugee resettlement, benefits for same-sex couples and too many other issues to list here.

In 2013, Texas then-Attorney General Greg Abbott described his typical day: I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home. The following year, Abbott was elected governor, a lesson not lost on Californias next generation of statewide candidates, who have been directing a steady stream of invective toward Trump ever since election day.

Texas conservatives have been just as relentless on the campaign trail, as Republican candidates at every level know that a full-throated attack on Barack Obama would be a certain political winner for them. Now, as the White House changes hands from one party to the other, Californias political leaders are laying the groundwork for a scorched-earth strategy against the incoming president that looks and sounds like a fun-house-mirror version of the attacks that Texas politicians have leveled against the outgoing one.

Drawing a line in the sand on the question of undocumented immigrants, state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon warned Trump: If you want to get to them, you have to go through us.

On the equally resonant issue of climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown laid down a similarly stark challenge to the president-elect: Weve got the scientists, weve got the lawyers, and were ready to fight.

While Rendon and Brown have offered the most dramatic sound bites, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon has been the states most relentless Trump adversary.

He organized the joint statement that he and Rendon released the morning after the election, promising to use every legislative and legal tool at their disposal to thwart the newly elected president. He then developed a detailed legislative package that he and Rendon announced a few weeks later, designed to derail efforts by the incoming administration to deport undocumented immigrants and their families. Last week, De Leon orchestrated the hiring of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to represent the Legislatures interests in legal battles with the Trump administration.

No shortage of other California Democrats have also leaped into the fray: U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein on judicial appointments, and her new colleague Kamala Harris on health care and the environment; California Secretary of State Alex Padilla on voter rights, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, on intelligence and national security matters, and a battalion of mayors on immigration policy.

The likely candidates for governor have embarked upon what will almost certainly be an uninterrupted two-year competition to disparage Trump, rightly assuming that the most relentless critic will realize great political benefit. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is thinking even bigger: He is rumored to be considering a run for the presidency four years from now. And freshly minted state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, after almost a quarter-century in Congress, is especially well-positioned for high-profile Trump-bashing.

But motivating a California electorate in opposition to a president whom they voted against by a roughly 2-to-1 ratio is not particularly difficult. The challenge for the states politicians is finding a way to talk to the Trump supporters  both here and across the country  more effectively than their partys most recent presidential nominee. In the months ahead, well learn which of Californias political leaders have the skills to accomplish both of those tasks as effectively for the national Democratic Party as their Texas counterparts have now done for the Republicans.

Persuading the political center to come back is not nearly as much fun as rallying the party faithful  but its just as important for a party that wants the White House again in 2020.

Dan Schnur, who has worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns, teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and UC-Berkeley. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at http://bit.ly/SFChronicleletters.
The Republican demolition of the Obama health care law is just getting under way. But an essential mystery remains over what GOP lawmakers and Donald Trump propose as a substitute.

The suspense, doubt and patient anxiety are rising. So are the politics with even Trump tweeting a be careful! warning to ax-wielding Republicans. Democrats in Congress plus President Obama are nearly rubbing their hands with glee over the GOPs cloudy future. Obamacare is about to become Trumpcare.

A popular Republican war cry to abolish the law is now well within reach. The string of congressional committees are due to begin pulling money out of the program and dismantling its system of mandates, subsidies and marketing rules. Trump has repeatedly pledged to take action his first day in office, barely two weeks away, by issuing executive orders that could stall the law.

But the scope of the law with 20 million enrollees and its vast effect over health care, which amounts to a sixth of the U.S. economy, takes the issue beyond political score settling. Dumping the 6-year-old law can unhinge coverage and costs in ways that will ripple across the nation though Republicans say the process could take months or years to play out.

Another way to consider the situation is to ask a basic question. What is the Republican alternative? For now its a mishmash of old nostrums such as health savings accounts and tax incentives designed to ease the pain of high insurance and medical bills. It may be appealing to small government theoreticians such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, but this package is nothing close to insurance.

Some GOP leaders including Trump favor saving features of the Obama law such as allowing adult children to stay on family health plans well into their 20s and a rule against denying coverage for a pre-existing ailment. But these crowd-pleasing benefits depend on the rest of the law holding together and cant be swapped out. When you start to pull one thread, you dont realize what you are unraveling, noted Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who played a major role in devising the Obama plan.

Democrats are of two minds. Some want to watch the looming car crash, the better to finger-point at Republican irresponsibility. Others are hinting at a truce, angling for trade-offs that might keep a compromised health plan alive. Republicans cant afford to drop the Affordable Care Act, they argue.

California has a special stake in this showdown. Some 1.2 million residents receive federal subsidies to buy coverage under the law. Another 3.6 million are able to tap into Medi-Cal, the states version of Medicaid, a boost made possible by the Obama law. Pulling the rug out by repealing the federal plan would cut off $15 billion. This threat is one of many reasons why Democratic leaders here are digging in to oppose Trump and Republican party plans.

A landmark law that touches so many lives shouldnt be undone. Its time Republicans called off their mistaken crusade.
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Mayor Ed Lee plans to name HIV/AIDS activist Jeff Sheehy to the District Eight supervisor seat, ending weeks of speculation about who he would appoint to fill the vacancy left by Scott Wiener.

The mayor will make the announcement Friday at 11 a.m. at Noe Valley Town Square, according to sources with knowledge of the appointment.

Sheehy will be the first HIV-positive person to serve on the Board of Supervisors, representing District Eight, which includes the Castro, Noe Valley and Glen Park. He will succeed Wiener, who was elected to the state Senate to replace the termed-out Mark Leno.

Politically, the choice of Sheehy is a bold one for the mayor, who as of Thursday morning was still deciding between Sheehy and Alex Randolph and had meetings with both candidates.

Randolph is a member of the City College of San Franciscos Board of Trustees  Lee initially appointed him to fill a vacancy on the board  and political insiders considered him more ideologically aligned with Lee.

While Randolph has a reputation for being collaborative and well-liked, Sheehy is known for his strong and sometimes combative personality.

If you want someone who is a combination of policy smart, fearless and street fighter  thats Jeff Sheehy, said former Supervisor Bevan Dufty. Plus hes got instant cred as a public school parent. As a gay man who is a dad of a public school child, he is instantly relatable to 50 percent of the district thats not LGBT.

Sheehy was not in the initial mix of names floated as possible contenders for the seat. He is the longtime director of communications for UCSF AIDS Research Institute.

While Lee is a moderate, Sheehy has historically positioned himself as a progressive. He served as a past president on the progressive-minded Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and positioned himself as a progressive while on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.

That history could give Sheehy credibility among both progressives and moderates on the Board of Supervisors. It likely also played into Lees decision to choose him instead of Randolph.

One of the major factors the mayor had to consider was who could survive an electoral challenge from Rafael Mandelman, a member of the CCSF Board of Trustees who has strong roots in the progressive community and is widely expected to run for the seat.

Lee did not want to risk another of his appointees to the Board of Supervisors losing an election. Two of his past three appointees have lost their elections  Christina Olague in 2012 and Julie Christensen in 2015.

The mayor may hope that Sheehys history and story could appeal to residents across District Eight. He lives in Glen Park and has an 11-year-old daughter who attends public school.

His advocacy for HIV/AIDS issues is also deep. He was HIV/AIDS adviser to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. He serves on the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

In the late 1990s, he was an influential proponent of former Supervisor Tom Ammianos equal benefits ordinance. The watershed legislation required companies doing business with San Francisco to provide the same benefits to domestic partners as they did to married couples.

Going back to the equal benefits ordinance, he has been there for the LGBT community, said Matt Dorsey, a former spokesman for the city attorney now with Lighthouse Public Affairs.

Its enormously significant that San Francisco finally has an HIV-positive member of the Board of Supervisors, especially at a time when we have a getting-to-zero initiative that is a model for cities worldwide.

Despite Sheehys history, its unknown how he will position himself on the most contentious political battles in San Francisco: housing and homelessness.

Lee and the moderates have been more supportive of market-rate housing  alongside affordable housing  as a way to alleviate the housing crunch and bring down rental prices. Progressives have aggressively pushed developers to set aside more below-market housing in new developments.

One of the earliest legislative battles Sheehy will have to weigh in on is whether to require developers to rent or sell 25 percent of units in new projects at below-market prices  a proposal Lee and the moderates are wary of.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
Relax those scowls and cancel your Botox appointment; Resting Bitch Face is so 2016. As someone occasionally afflicted, with daily stresses showing up in the tension of my jaw and tightened expressions, I was intrigued when Vintners Daughter founder April Gargiulo raved to me about massage therapist Julie Lynge.

I called everyone I knew and said, You dont know whats going on in Sausalito, Gargiulo says. She originally saw Lynge for her TMJ (temporomandibular joint dysfunction) on the recommendation of Goop Beauty Director Jean Godfrey June. She was blown away by the visible results. She took away my TMJ pain, but it also looked like I had some sort of a lift, Gargiulo says.

Serena Dugan, co-founder of Marin home and lifestyle brand Serena and Lily, said her face felt five years younger after her first treatment with Lynge. My face felt tingly and alive. My skin looked refreshed, plumper and more vibrant.

Through her unique Julie Lynge Method, the Danish massage therapist uses slow rhythmic movements to release muscles in your face. She also puts on gloves during the treatment and uses her fingers to slowly release the tightness in the jaw. While this may not sound relaxing, you feel a release unlike any other massage treatment.

I was a bit surprised, Dugan says with a laugh about the first time Lynge massaged inside her mouth. Then I just went with it. My biggest complaint about my face is my smile lines  definitely the deepest wrinkles. After one of Julies treatments, they were gone.

The biggest reaction I get is from women who have Botox, says Lynge. They look in the mirror and exclaim, I look young again! The muscles have been dead for so long that its like a youthful awakening for them.

Lynge draws from her experience as a trained dental technician when she worked with several patients suffering from TMJ and gained knowledge of the occlusal function. As she developed her method on herself, she started to notice changes in her own face. Friends would tell me I glowed and ask me what I had done.

What I love about Julies method is that its not about product, Gargiulo says. Its about real change.

That change manifests for many days following a treatment because Lynge gives you a consciousness to how you hold your face. You cant bring yourself to purse your lips or wrinkle your brow because not only are the areas more relaxed but Lynge sends you home with exercises to strengthen your facial muscles and loosen the tension. Think of what I do like facial fitness, Lynge says. People forget the face is like any other part of the body  you have to work the muscles for it to stay fit. If you dont take care of facial muscles, the face simply isnt going to look as good.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Ive had hundreds of massages and facials in my lifetime, yet found that after one treatment, my face was the most relaxed it has ever been. I looked more awake, and my skin appeared smoother. Lynges services range from $160 to $210.

Perhaps Dugan sums it up best: She can put her hands in my mouth any time.

Janna Mandell is a Marin freelance writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com

Julie Lynge 309 Bridgeway, Sausalito. (415) 471-9934 or www.julielynge.com.
Update: Three teens were arrested for the strong armed robberies at West Towne Mall, Lt. Kelly Donahue said.

The three suspects face two tentative charges of strong armed robbery, Donahue said. One suspect is also tentatively charged with resisting arrest and threats to a law enforcement officer.

The second suspect faces an additional charge of attempted identity theft, Donahue said, and the third faces a tentative charges of felony theft from a person, possession of THC in a school zone and resisting arrest.

Purse snatching appears to be the crime of choice at the moment at West Towne Mall.

Three incidents have been reported since Dec. 23, the most recent coming on Wednesday night in the shopping center's parking lot, Madison police said.

In Wednesday night's robbery, a 26-year-old Madison woman had just returned to her car in the parking lot on the South Gammon Road side of the mall and got behind the wheel when the passenger door opened.

A thief reached in, grabbed her purse and ran off," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "The victim saw a second younger male scurry off with the criminal."

The victim said the suspect was a black teen, 5 feet, 7 inches to 5 feet, 8 inches tall, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled down over his face.

On Dec. 30, a 66-year-old Middleton woman had her purse grabbed out of her hand while she was walking on a mall sidewalk, and on Dec. 23, a 47-year-old Madison woman had her purse and shopping bag taken by two thieves right after she got into her car, with the suspects opening the passenger door to gain access to the car.

"Detectives believe the same criminals could be responsible for the crimes," DeSpain said. "Detectives are working on leads but there have been no arrests."
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A series of powerful storms was on track to unleash its full fury on the Golden State on Saturday night, threatening to push rivers in Wine Country above their banks, trigger mudslides in the Santa Cruz Mountains and drop several feet of snow on the Sierra crest.

The giant plume of moisture over the Pacific Ocean that forecasters have been closely monitoring  described as one of the biggest in years  was expected to move within a few hundred miles of the coast Friday night, according to the National Weather Service. Known as an atmospheric river, the system was heading directly toward the southern San Mateo County shoreline, though little or none of the state was expected to be spared its bluster.

As much as 10 inches of rain was forecast for Santa Cruz Mountains high spots such as Ben Lomond between late Saturday and Sunday. San Francisco could see 3.5 inches during the same period while hills in the North Bay could log 10 inches, forecasters said.

The best thing to do is stay home this weekend, if you have a choice, said weather service meteorologist Carolina Walbrun. We will see flooding in a lot of our streams. ... This storm is going to be carrying winds, and well see a lot of downed trees and power lines.

The weather service issued high-wind warnings for much of the Bay Area on Friday, with gusts of up to 60 mph expected. Flash flood watches are in effect for the weekend, with the North Bays Russian River and Napa River forecast to crest above flood stage Sunday. Several smaller waterways in Santa Cruz County and along the Big Sur coast also were expected to flood.

Throughout California, cities and towns were rushing Friday to prepare for the worst. Many Bay Area communities were giving away sandbags in anticipation of high water while fire and police departments were reinforcing their weekend staffs. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. also planned to redouble its efforts.

In Morgan Hill, one campground closed as a precaution for flooding, sending more than 500 campers packing.

Its mainly an access issue, said Battalion Chief Paul Provence, with the Morgan Hill Fire Department, explaining that bridges to the Thousand Trails campground often become submerged when the Uvas Creek nears flood stage.

The Pacifica Pier was also closed in anticipation of hazardous conditions, while farther south, residents in and around the burn scars left by the Loma Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Soberanes Fire around Big Sur were warned of landslides.

In the Sierra, the National Park Service announced that it was taking the extraordinary step of closing Yosemite Valley to visitors at 5 p.m. Friday. Haunted by memories of the Merced Rivers damaging floods in 1997, park officials said they would be shutting down roads and public services in the Valley through at least Monday morning.

The Sierra foothills are expected to see as much as 10 inches of rain over the weekend. While 2 feet of snow or more is forecast for the peaks, snow levels are likely to remain relatively high  around 8,500 feet  because of mostly warm moisture in the atmospheric river.

The weather system will taper off late Sunday, according to weather service meteorologist Matt Mehle, but two more wet fronts are due for Northern California on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This is not a one and done, he said.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2103

As the sun went down and dusk set in over the Pacific Ocean Thursday, the San Francisco Fire Department launched rescue efforts for two people stranded at the cliffs near the Cliff House, an official said.

One female fell from the cliffs above the caves just north of the landmark tourist attraction, said Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department. She was rescued and treated for minor injuries just after 5 p.m., he said.
Stamping out Staples

The U.S. Postal Service will no longer offer its services at Staples. Priority Mail and other shipments, handled by Staples employees, will be discontinued at about 500 of the retailers locations by the first week of March. The Postal Service said it was ordered by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge in November to discontinue its retail partnership with Staples. The retailer said that customers would still have access to shipping services through its relationship with UPS.

Today in Trump tweets

Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax.

The president-elects threat misstated the location of Toyotas new Mexican plant  its Guanajuato, not Baja  but hes correct in saying that Toyota plans to build the Corolla in Mexico. Toyota Motor Corp. didnt directly address Donald Trumps tweet, but said Thursday that production and employment in the U.S. will not decrease.

Gimme Shelton?

The company that owns the Grand Ole Opry is opening venues in Tennessee and Oklahoma with the help of country star and The Voice judge Blake Shelton. Ryman Hospitality Properties will call them Ole Red Nashville and Ole Red Tishomingo, in the Oklahoma town where Shelton lives. Although Shelton isnt an owner, he will be the face of the properties. The name is based on the song Ol Red from Sheltons 2002 debut album.

The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com.
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Five San Jose residents were arrested in connection with an August shooting death of a 16-year-old, police said Thursday.

Four suspects  Alexander Lozano, 19, Paul Lozano, 24, Mathew Mendivil, 19, and Esaias Valles, 20  were recently arrested on suspicion of murder, according to the San Jose Police Department. A fifth suspect, David Mendivil, 21, was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory, police said.

It was unclear whether or how David and Mathew Mendivil, as well as Alexander and Paul Lozano, were related.

All five arrests stem from the August 15 shooting death of San Jose teenager Adonis Bolivar Leyva, in which an unidentified 18-year-old from San Jose was also injured, police said.

Alexander Lozano was also booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, and police indicated that they believed he was the primary shooter.

Both victims were in a car in the early evening in the 200 block of N. White Road in northeast San Jose near Highway 680 when shots were fiered, police said.

The motive and the circumstances of the shooting death remain under investigation, police said.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @michael_bodley
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This Wisconsin teen clearly forgot the five D's of dodgeball.

Even though "drill your opponent in the face with your fist" isn't one of them, 18-year-old Jacob Sigler decided to punch another student in the face during an October game of dodgeball in Maiden Hill, Wis.

Sigler has now been charged with substantial battery, a felony in the state of Wisconsin.

The victim, who was identified as 17-year-old Logan Lottman, reportedly suffered a facial fracture at the hands of Sigler.

According to Lottman, Sigler and three other students at Ellsworth High School threw balls at him until he threw one back at Sigler.

Sigler told police that he wasn't happy with Lottman's throw, since he was standing two or three feet away and nailed Sigler right in the face. The two then threw balls back and forth at one another, until Sigler ran out of balls and proceeded to punch Lottman.

There hadn't been any prior tension between the two, as Sigler told police: "I don't have a problem with him now, just at that moment, I had a problem with him."

The full criminal complaint can be read here.
Warning: "Rogue One," "Star Wars: Episode VIII," and "Episode IX" spoilers ahead.

As "Star Wars" executives and producers mourn Carrie Fisher's unexpected passing, "Episode IX" director Colin Trevorrow and Kathleen Kennedy of Lucasfilm have still decided to meet this month to discuss how they'll rework the plot line of her character, Princess and General Leia Organa.

It was previously reported that Fisher had already wrapped on filming all of her scenes for "Star Wars: Episode VIII," but we now have some idea about where her plot line was headed, and which major scenes for her character were planned. According to The Hollywood Reporter, there are two: one in which she is reunited with her twin brother Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill); and one in which she encounters her son, Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver).

There's no official word as to whether either of these scenes were already filmed for "Episode VIII," or if they will need to be re-written, cut, or modified for "Episode IX," which has not yet begun filming.

However, late last month, Oscar Isaac (who plays Resistance fighter Poe Dameron in "Episode VII - The Force Awakens") posted a photo of Fisher and Hamill in costume, ostensibly between shooting, possibly hinting that the former scene involving the reuniting of Luke and Leia may be in "Episode VIII."

Per the Hollywood Reporter, "Episode IX" doesn't yet have a start date for filming, and Disney has not clarified the status of the film's script.

Additionally, General Leia Organa was reportedly due to have a larger role in "Episode IX," but it seems something will need to be done to significantly upend Leia's original story.

As iO9 and others have suggested, a degree of CGI animation is possible  after all, producers have already used special effects on Fisher to make Leia look young again at the end of "Rogue One"  but it seems disrespectful to Fisher's memory to invoke her image in that way. Other options include rewriting her character plot line to include Leia's death, be it on or offscreen.

"Star Wars: Episode VIII," directed by Rian Johnson, is expected to hit theaters December 15, 2017.
CHICAGO  Four black people accused of beating a mentally disabled white man and broadcasting the attack on Facebook appeared Friday in court, where a judge denied bond for them and asked, Where was your sense of decency?

Prosecutors offered new details of the assault, explaining that one of the suspects demanded $300 from the victims mother and that the beating started in a van and continued at a house.

The suspects are accused of forcing the victim to drink toilet water and kiss the floor, stuffing a sock into his mouth, taping his mouth shut and binding his hands with a belt. Authorities say they also threatened him with a knife and taunted him with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

The 18-year-old victim, who is from a Chicago suburb, suffers from schizophrenia and attention-deficit disorder, authorities said.

The suspects are each are charged with two hate crimes  one because the person was disabled and one because of race. They are also accused of kidnapping and battery, among other offenses.

The suspects were identified as Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covingtons 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago.

Cook County Associate Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil denied bond for all four.

The beating was captured on cell phone video by one of the assailants and has since been viewed millions of times on social media.

The uproar over the beating intensified the glare on Chicago after a bloody year of violent crime and protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a police department that has been accused of using excessive force. The department has also been the subject of a civil rights investigation by the Justice Department, which is expected to report its findings soon.

The case also heightened political tensions on social media, with some conservatives suggesting it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.
A man described as having heavy build and wearing a ski mask and a navy blue sweatshirt robbed the Milio's Sandwiches at 4292 East Towne Blvd. around 7:30 p.m., spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

DeSpain said no weapon was seen at the time, but the intruder repeatedly told an employee to give him money from the till. DeSpain said after receiving the cash, the man fled on foot.
1 Intelligence post: President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that would thrust him into the center of the intelligence community Trump has publicly challenged, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday. Coats served as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. If confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee an agency created after 9/11 to improve coordination of U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies. Trump has been considering ways to restructure intelligence agencies to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

2 Trump deposed: President-elect Donald Trump gave a videotaped deposition stemming from a lawsuit he filed after a celebrity chef backed out of plans to open a restaurant at one of his hotels. Its rare for a president or president-elect to be deposed. It happened most recently to Bill Clinton in 1998 during the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.
1 Pyramid scheme: About $20 million in cash that was hidden inside a box spring in a Massachusetts apartment has been seized as part of an investigation into an Internet telecommunications firm that authorities say was a huge pyramid scheme, federal prosecutors said. The cash was found Wednesday inside a Westborough apartment by investigators who had tailed a Brazilian man. That man, Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, was charged with conspiring to commit money laundering and was held after an appearance in federal court. The cash seizure was made in connection with an investigation into TelexFree, a Marlborough, Mass., company that purportedly sold voice over Internet protocol telephone service. He was part of a scheme to transfer millions of dollars of hidden assets, prosecutors said.

2 Winter storm: Panicked shoppers emptied shelves of bread and milk and governors in Alabama and Georgia declared states of emergencies ahead of a winter storm stalking the South. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Friday and Saturday from eastern Alabama through north Georgia and into the Carolinas and part of Virginia. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta Air Lines announced Friday that 350 flights had been canceled ahead of the storm.
WASHINGTON  Brushing aside Donald Trumps dismissiveness, the nations intelligence chief insisted Thursday that U.S. agencies are more confident than ever that Russia interfered in Americas recent presidential election. And he called the former Cold War foe an existential threat to the nation.

Did Russian hacking sway the results? Theres no way for U.S. agencies to know, said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Asked about the possible effect of the disclosure of private information stolen by hackers, Clapper said, The intelligence community cant gauge the impact it had on the choices the electorate made. But he did say Russian hacking did not change any vote tallies.

Clappers testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was short on concrete evidence of Russian activities, but it raised the stakes in the intelligence communitys standoff with Trump. Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.

MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/AFP/Getty Images

That puts the pressure back on Trump, who has raised the possibility of more positive relations with Russia and has repeatedly disparaged the U.S. intelligence agencies. He will be briefed Friday on the classified evidence concerning Russian interference.

The intelligence agencies classified report, which was shared with President Obama on Thursday, identifies multiple motives for Russias interference, Clapper said, but he did not provide details.

In a joint report that roiled the presidential campaign last fall, the Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the U.S. was confident about foreign meddling, including Russian government hacking of Democratic emails.

We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement, Clapper said Thursday. He declined to discuss whether Russias interference was aimed at helping Trump win.

An unclassified version of the report will be released next week, Clapper said. That versionis not likely to answer all the questions about Russias actions. Exactly how the U.S. monitors its adversaries in cyberspace is a closely guarded secret, since revealing such details could help foreign governments further obscure their activities.

I think the public should know as much about this as possible, Clapper told the senators. And so well be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here.

Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Clapper as to whether Russias actions constituted an act of war. The intelligence director said that was a very heavy policy call, more appropriate for others in the government to decide.
WASHINGTON  After a briefing from the nations top intelligence officials, President-elect Donald Trump said Friday he is confident Russians did not affect the outcome of the U.S. presidential election but he didnt say whether he now accepts the intelligence assessment that Moscow did meddle in the race.

Yet U.S. intelligence agencies declared in a report Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hidden campaign to influence the presidential election in favor of Trump over Hillary Clinton.

The report  an unclassified version of a more-detailed classified account given earlier to Trump, the White House and congressional leaders  withheld any evidence to back up its assertions. But it said Russias actions included hacking into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats including Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, and using state-funded propaganda and paid trolls to make nasty comments on social media services.

Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency, it said. We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

Trump acknowledged in a statement that Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to hack U.S. networks, including the Democratic National Committees. But his statement did not include any mention of Russias interference in the election aimed at helping him.

Trump in his statement said that as president he would appoint a team to develop a plan to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks.

Before even seeing the classified intelligence report Friday, Trump dismissed the assessment and told the New York Times the focus on Russias involvement is a political witch hunt by adversaries who are embarrassed they lost the election. They got beaten very badly in the election, Trump said. They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, its a witch hunt. They just focus on this.

The officials  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey  were prepared to point to multiple motives for Moscows alleged meddling. They briefed senior lawmakers Friday morning. President Obama received a briefing on Thursday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said the intelligence report presented by the officials was quite a stunning disclosure.

Also Friday, Trump tweeted that Mexico will reimburse American taxpayers for a new border wall and that U.S. money spent will be for the sake of speed.

His tweet came as congressional Republicans and his top aides consider a plan to ask Congress to ensure money is available in U.S. coffers for the wall without passing any new legislation. Instead, they would rely on existing law that already authorizes fencing and other technology along the southern border.

The potential approach was disclosed Thursday by two congressional officials and a senior transition official; all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump said in a tweet Friday: The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! Mexicos president and other senior officials have repeatedly insisted that Mexico wont pay for a wall.

During his campaign, Trump told voters he would build a wall along the U.S. southern border and make Mexico pay for it. But he never settled on a mechanism for how Mexico would pay. He floated various options, including compelling the country to cover the cost through higher border crossing fees and threatening to target billions of dollars in remittances sent home by immigrants living in the U.S.
Alvin Lee Neal might have at first appeared as any regular Wells Fargo bank member. The 56-year-old man walked up to the teller window like everyone else, and slid his ATM card before responding to the teller's greeting.

But Neal wasn't just any bank member. He was a prospective bank robber. And he wasn't responding to the teller as one normally would; instead, he was issuing a warning to the bank employee. "You're being robbed," he said. "Don't make a mistake."
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairwoman Martha Laning will likely face a challenge from Glendale mayor and former union president Bryan Kennedy at the partys convention in June.

Kennedy, former president of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, said in an interview he plans to make an announcement Tuesday. He stopped short of declaring his candidacy in the interview, but said he is likely to run.

Dane County Democratic Party chairman Mike Basford, who has been considering a run, said he will not seek the position, which Kennedy said was a factor that makes it more likely he will challenge Laning.

Basford said he has not decided whom to endorse, but said the question for the party is whether it is in the best position to support candidates interested in running for office.

Laning, a Sheboygan businesswoman and community activist, announced last month that she would seek a second two-year term. She won 53 percent of the vote in a five-way race in 2015.

She faces criticism for the partys poor showing in the November election when Republicans won the presidential race for the first time since 1984, the U.S. Senate race and an additional Assembly and Senate seat. More recently, no candidate emerged to challenge conservative Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler, though the position is nonpartisan.

Kennedy said in an interview last month that if he were to run he would focus on connecting with both Democrats and citizens outside the traditional Democratic strongholds of Janesville, Madison and Milwaukee.

There are obviously vast portions of the state where we arent connecting with voters, Kennedy said. The Democrats have to have a message about how were going to create jobs and make government effective again.

Laning noted that unlike Kennedy she lives outside the Milwaukee area. She said she ran two years ago on a platform of building a grassroots party across the state and has held meetings all over the state to reach that goal.

It takes time, she said. Ive been out there talking to people and know what we need to do. Having to start over doesnt help us as a party.
Many companies that clean heating and cooling ducts claim that if your ducts are cleaner, all that air flowing out of your vents will come out cleaner. Some companies even claim that their services provide health benefits and lower power bills.

The potential benefits may seem alluring enough to give duct cleaning a shot, especially if people in your family suffer from allergies or asthma. Unfortunately, theres little evidence that duct cleaning yields any substantial benefits in most homes.

How duct cleaners work: Companies connect a big, powerful vacuum to one or more openings in the ductwork to suck out loose dust and other debris. Because lots of dust can cake on the inside of ducts, firms use a variety of methods  a rotary brush or compressed air nozzles, for example  to shake it loose.

Many duct-cleaning companies also offer services you can get from conventional heating/cooling firms, such as cleaning heat exchangers and cooling coils.

The case against having your ducts cleaned: Heres the thing: Dust that settles in your ventilation ducts typically stays there unless disturbed, and is usually harmless. The official advisory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concludes: Duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems. Neither do studies conclusively demonstrate that particle ... levels in homes increase because of dirty air ducts. This is because much of the dirt in air ducts adheres to duct surfaces and does not necessarily enter the living space. ... Moreover, there is no evidence that a light amount of household dust or other particulate matter in air ducts poses any risk to your health.

The American Lung Association has a similar position.

Having your ducts cleaned may actually create a dust problem or make an existing problem worse. In the 1990s, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. tested 33 homes in Montreal before and after duct cleaning, finding no significant improvement in air quality and that duct cleaning alone did not improve airflow or energy efficiency. In some cases, particle levels actually increased immediately after a cleaning. In other cases, particle levels decreased immediately after cleaning, but returned to previous levels within weeks.

If you suspect a mold problem  either because of visible growth or a musty smell consistently coming from supply vents  cleaning ducts wont do much good if it doesnt eliminate the mold. Mold always begins with a moisture problem, and the ducts themselves are probably not going to be the source of the problem. The most likely culprits are the cooling systems evaporator coils, which your heating and air-conditioning contractor  and most duct-cleaning companies  can inspect and maintain. Leaky return ducts can also introduce moisture.

When to consider using a duct cleaner: The EPA suggests having air ducts cleaned only if there is visible evidence of specific problems:

 substantial mold growth (again, though, after identifying the source)

 infestation of insects or rodents

 substantial deposits of dust or debris (if registers were not sealed during a renovation project, for example)

for specific health concerns, such as allergies or asthma, consult your physician first. The doctor may suggest other courses of action than duct cleaning. Bottom line: Your ducts are probably not the problem.

If you do hire a duct cleaner: If you ultimately decide to have your ducts cleaned, look for firms that belong to the National Air Duct Cleaners Association, a nonprofit trade association. Members must subscribe to the associations code of ethics, must employ at least one association-trained-and-certified technician and are required to carry at least $500,000 in general liability insurance.

Get several companies to come to your home to perform inspections and provide estimates. This will allow you to evaluate the thoroughness of their proposals.

In addition, Checkbook found that by comparing prices, you can save a lot on duct cleaning.

Checkbooks undercover shoppers collected prices for two carefully specified duct-cleaning jobs. They found substantial price differences. For example:

To clean ducts for a small house (1,500 square feet, two levels, seven duct openings and two returns), prices ranged from $89 to $540.

To clean ducts and blower fan assembly, pans and evaporator coils for a large house (3,000 square feet, three levels, 15 duct openings and five returns), prices ranged from $465 to $1,312.

The best thing you can do to keep your ducts and heating/cooling system clean and working is to change the air filter regularly  probably four to six times a year.

Editors note: The Chronicle is partnering with Bay Area Consumers Checkbook magazine and Checkbook.org, a nonprofit consumer group with a mission to help consumers get the best service and lowest prices. Checkbook is supported by consumers and takes no money from the service providers it evaluates. You can see ratings of local heating and air-conditioning contractors and duct cleaners, as well as full advice on whether you should hire a duct cleaner, until Jan. 31, 2016 at www.checkbook.org/chronicle/ducts
`Heres how members of Wisconsins congressional delegation voted on major issues this week.

Note: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, did not vote. By custom, the speaker does not vote except in rare circumstances.

HOUSE

Fines on House Members: The House on Tuesday refused, 193-236, to prohibit H Res 5 from authorizing fines of $2,500 per incident on House members who use smart phones to live stream floor actions to the public. Backers said such fines are needed to uphold decorum, while critics said they would gag members free speech. A yes vote was to prohibit fines on members using smart phones to live stream activity on the House floor.

Voting yes: Mark Pocan, D-2, Ron Kind, D-3, Gwen Moore, D-4

Voting no: James Sensenbrenner, R-5, Glenn Grothman, R-6, Sean Duffy, R-7, Mike Gallagher, R-8

Pre-Existing Conditions: The House on Wednesday defeated, 183-236, a bid by Democrats to exempt from HR 21 any new regulations that would prevent insurance companies from denying health coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions. A yes vote was to adopt the Democratic motion.

Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

Clean Air, Childrens Health: The House on Thursday refused, 190-233, to exempt from HR 26 any new rules issued under the Clean Air Act that would protect children against cancer, premature mortality, asthma attacks and respiratory diseases. A yes vote backed the Democratic-sponsored amendment.

Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

Lead Poisoning of Drinking Water: Voting 192-231, the House on Thursday defeated an amendment that sought to exempt from HR 26 any new federal regulations designed to protect drinking water in communities such as Flint, Mich., from lead contamination. A yes vote backed the Democratic-sponsored amendment.

Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

U.N. Stand on Israeli Settlements: Voting 342-80, the House on Thursday adopted a measure that condemns a formal demand last month by the United Nations Security Council for Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. A yes vote was to adopt (H Res 11)

Voting yes: Kind, Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

Voting no: Pocan, Moore

SENATE

Expedited Health-Law Repeal: The Senate on Wednesday advanced, 51-48, a budget provision that sets a simple-majority vote (rather than 60 votes) as the threshold for Senate passage of a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act.

A yes vote was to put repeal of the 2010 health law on a parliamentary fast track. (SCR 3)

Voting yes: Ron Johnson, R

Voting no: Tammy Baldwin, D

 Thomas Voting Reports
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin this week called for a new committee to probe Russian meddling in the recent U.S. election, while her Republican counterpart from Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson, echoed President-elect Donald Trump's call for warmer Russian relations.

The comments came during a week when Russia's alleged efforts to affect the U.S. election again dominated political headlines.

The U.S. intelligence community declassified a report Friday saying it has "high confidence" Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election, with the partial goal of hurting the chances of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Russian operations are believed to have included hacking and releasing internal emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Baldwin, D-Madison, voiced her support earlier in the week for a bipartisan proposal to create a new U.S. Senate "Select Committee on Cyber" to investigate Russian interference in the election. The committee was proposed by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Such a committee could develop a comprehensive package "to address gaps in current cyber laws to better deter and defend against further cyberattacks," Baldwin said in a statement.

"Our intelligence community has made clear these attacks were aimed at interfering with and influencing our election and they cannot be ignored. America is stronger when we are united and have the backbone to stand up to Russias aggression," Baldwin said in a statement.

Last week Trump drew notice for again speaking glowingly of Putin, tweeting that he's "very smart" for holding off on retaliating against U.S. sanctions leveled against Russia by the outgoing Barack Obama administration for the election meddling. During the campaign Trump spoke admiringly of Putin, at one point describing him as a better leader than Obama.

Asked on Fox News this week about the most recent Trump praise for Putin, Johnson, R-Oshkosh, said the U.S. should be wary of Putin -- and that his global influence is rising.

Obviously Vladimir Putins a smart guy," Johnson said. "Hes utilizing nationalism, this adventurism around the world to solidify his position in his own nation.

Johnson also echoed Trump's suggestions that the U.S. would benefit from having friendlier relations with Russia.

Right now unfortunately I think Russia is an unfriendly adversary," Johnson said. "It would be nice if they were at least a friendly rival.
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OAKLAND (BCN)

Oakland Public Library officials are calling on artists of all levels to enter a contest to design new library cards.

Library officials said any medium is acceptable, including pen and ink, paint, photography and computer-generated art. The only restriction is that entries must be original art, so clip art isn't allowed.

Drawings or designs also must incorporate the themes of Oakland or libraries or both. Six winning designs will be chosen.

The contest will be divided into three age levels: children up to age 11, teens and preteens between 12 and 18 and adults 19 and older, with two winners being selected from each age level.

Judges will name their top choice in each level and the public will choose a second winner. The public winner will be determined by tallying up the number of "likes" on the Oakland Public Library's Facebook page.

The contest's judges have been selected for their expertise and talent as well as their contributions to the local arts community. Among those on the panel are authors and illustrators Mac Barnett, Todd Parr, Mary Roach and Robert Trujillo.

The contest's winners will be announced at an event at the main library at 125 14th Street on the evening of April 12, during National Library Week.

Each winner will have their design on an Oakland Public Library card in circulation and patrons who get new library cards will get to choose which design they want.

The contest began Thursday and all entries must be submitted by Feb. 17.

People who want to enter the contest can download an entry packet at www.oaklandlibrary.org/librarycardcontest or pick one up at any Oakland Public Library location. Online contestants should place their drawing or design into the template.

Entries can be turned in via email to smckellar@oaklandlibrary.org or in person to any library location.

(510) 615-5726

Oakland Community Relations Manager Winifred Walters (510) 238-3932
It is sad and tragic, though not surprising, that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has deleted basic scientific information about the effects and human causes of climate change from its website.

The agency has further added language that is simply untrue. The website now states that the causes of climate change are being debated, and it implies a lack of clear knowledge and consensus among scientists. Furthermore, throughout the years of Gov. Scott Walkers administration, DNR employees have been forbidden from discussing climate change, let alone doing their important research on the topic.

Until the last few years, I often worked closely with the dedicated and skilled scientists and managers at the DNR. Several years ago, in my own forest science research lab at UW-Madison, we conducted a multiyear, DNR-funded research project. This was one of several flagship projects on climate change effects on the states resources that the DNR launched just before the Walker administration. A group of dedicated scientists worked on the project for over three years.

Our results showed Wisconsin faces significant changes to its forests over the next century. The negative effects will be particularly serious on northern forests, where the iconic northern evergreen tree species  pine, spruce and fir  as well as aspen and birch, are likely to decline. Some eventually could be lost.

This would have serious effects on wildlife habitat, recreation and forest products. A forward-looking administration would have asked the important next question: What can we do to adapt and ameliorate these future changes, now?

We had expected to jointly release the results publicly with the DNR to contribute to public and agency knowledge. But following completion and submission of our report, the results were suppressed and have not been released or used.

As a scientist, I find the growing anti-science attitude, across many areas of inquiry, to be unsettling and reckless. In this instance, removal of most of the DNRs science research, including work on climate change, as well as the hobbling of the DNRs other resource management duties, has largely been forced by legislators such as Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, and the Walker administration.

It is dangerous to preempt scientific inquiry because, at times, it may disturb ones limited perspective. That is not how knowledge of all kinds, needed by all parts of society, is increased for the common good.

Over 65 years ago, when the Wisconsin Conservation Department, the predecessor to the DNR, was a growing champion of research-based resource management, the following quote appeared by Charles F. Kettering (1876  1958). He was an American inventor, engineer, businessman and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. The quote appeared in the June 1948 issue of the Wisconsin Conservation Bulletin, which was the predecessor to the DNR Magazine:

Research is a high-hat word that scares a lot of people. It neednt. It is rather simple. Essentially, it is nothing but a state of mind  a friendly, welcoming attitude toward change. Going out to look for change instead of waiting for it to come. Research, for practical men, is an effort to do things better and not to be caught asleep at the switch. A research state of mind can apply to anything: Personal affairs or any kind of business, big or little. It is the problem-solving mind as contrasted with the let-well-enough-alone mind. It is the composer mind instead of the fiddler mind. It is the tomorrow mind instead of the yesterday mind.

Ketterings words are worth contemplating today, especially by those who fear change and increasing societys knowledge in any field.
Have you ever met someone who wants to destroy air and water? We havent.

Nevertheless, despite air and water quality getting better in Wisconsin, this is the attack consistently leveled against us. We even managed to make a special interest groups dishonor roll, and we have been labeled environmental lightning rods.

Why? Because we have the audacity to take on the environmental left. Perhaps its easier to engage in personal attacks than actually debate the issue at hand.

We both relish a good fight, but thats actually not why we engage in crafting environmental policy. Deep down, the reason we get involved in these fights is because they are incredibly important to the people we represent in rural and northern Wisconsin. While we have an abundance of natural resources, job opportunities can be very limited. Smart policies can have a dramatic impact on economic growth and job opportunities in northern Wisconsin. Why? Its a matter of scale.

Imagine if a new business opened in a suburban Milwaukee community and it provided 100 middle-class jobs (with total wage and benefit rates of $30 per hour). This would be great, but it would barely be a drop in the bucket in a vast urban metropolis. On the other hand, where we live, many communities have less than 1,000 people. Imagine if a paper mill or frac sand facility employing 100 people at that same wage rate opened in that community. Itd be huge!

Just one good business can be the lifeblood of an entire community. Its not just the direct jobs, but its the indirect jobs  truckers, electricians, plumbers, contractors, restaurant and gas station owners, bankers, car dealers, realtors. Again, its a matter of scale.

The reality is that our rural communities live or die with decisions suburban legislators make in Madison. An ill-suited, overly-restrictive rule can literally ruin a community. Thats why we are so stridently opposed to Madison and Washington rules and regulations that kill job opportunities in farming, manufacturing, forestry, and tourism.

If you live downstate or in a more urban or suburban community, you may think these issues dont impact you. They do. If people in northern Wisconsin cant find family-sustaining jobs, they will be more dependent on government programs (which your tax dollars will fund) and there will also be a deficiency in our tax base, meaning you will also fund our schools. So, yes, the northern Wisconsin economy matters to you, even if you dont live there.

This legislative session, we will continue to press for legislation that runs afoul of the dogmatic beliefs held by many so-called environmentalists. We intend to further streamline some rules and regulations and repeal those that dont make sense. Its a matter of life and death for our communities.

When the attacks come from the self-proclaimed environmentalists, we hope our friends and neighbors across the rest of the state will stand with us, because it matters to you too.
Now thats more like it.

Six candidates are seeking two seats on the Madison School Board  the first contested races in three years. The last five people to run for the School Board were unopposed, as were 10 of the last 17.

The lack of competition cheats the city of a healthy and spirited debate each spring over the direction of its schools, their challenges and opportunities.

So thanks to Matt Andrzejewski, Cris Carusi, Ed Hughes, Ali Muldrow, Kate Toews and Nicki Vander Meulen for placing their names on the Feb. 21 primary ballot. Madison, its parents, students, educators, business people and taxpayers will finally get the high-profile discussion they deserve about public education here.

Michael Flores, having served the district well, is the only incumbent leaving the seven-member board. Carusi, Muldrow and Toews are vying for his Seat 6. Ed Hughes, the other incumbent whose term is ending, faces Andrzejewski and Vander Meulen for Seat 7.

Hughes is seeking his fourth term on the board  yet this is the first time he will actually face an opponent. That shows how thin the challenges have been.

Until now.

Not surprisingly, all of the school candidates identify as leaning left politically, which plays well in this very liberal city. Yet we look forward to hearing each challengers varying perspectives and priorities on a host of issues, many of which defy partisan assumptions.

Madison needs to keep more of its students in the district. Flight to the suburbs is costing the district state aid, though the trend has been slowing. Madison needs to graduate more of its black students, and is starting to make some progress.

Each candidate will have his or her say.

While the school district is enjoying competitive races, the Madison City Council is mostly running unopposed. Just five of 20 seats are contested. Thats disappointing. Yet those five races can still prompt serious attention to pressing issues, including homelessness.

Other communities have experienced similar difficulty in attracting candidates for local office.

Incumbents often contend that a dearth of candidates reflect voter satisfaction. In some cases, that may be true. But what we hear the most from people who pass on public service is that the time and energy it takes to run and serve is the biggest deterrent.

So thanks again to all who put their names forward. We look forward to meeting you and hearing your ideas.
RIO DE JANEIRO  Thirty-three inmates were slain Friday in northern Brazil, some with their hearts and intestines ripped out, during a prison killing spree led by the countrys largest gang, authorities said.

The bloodshed comes just days after 60 inmates were killed during rioting at two prisons in a neighboring state and it increases fears that violence could spread, including to the streets of major cities, as gangs vie for influence and territory both inside prisons and in slums where trafficking operations are often based.

Its also becoming a flash point for the government of President Michel Temer, whose administration is already struggling with an economic crisis and mounting corruption allegations. Authorities of the state of Roraima, on the border with Venezuela, said they requested help from Brazils federal government more than once to deal with its prison crisis, but no support was sent.

This is a national crisis, said Uziel Castro, security secretary of the state where the latest massacre happened.

Castro said the slaying spree began around 2:30 a.m. Friday at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo in the town of Boa Vista. He said it was led by members of Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazils biggest criminal organization.

He said First Command members did not attack members of a rival gang, but rather other prisoners, for motives that were not yet clear.

There was no confrontation, this was a killing spree, said Castro. It was barbaric. Some were beheaded, others had their hearts or intestines ripped out.

Castro said firearms were not involved, and none of the 1,500 inmates in the prison built for about 700 had escaped.

It wasnt immediately clear whether there was a connection to the gruesome rioting earlier this week in the neighboring state of Amazonas, which officials blamed on a gang war between the First Command and Family of the North, which fight over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil along the borders of Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guianas.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-like riot squad, had been deployed to the prison.

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons in the disturbances. As of Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.
BUCHAREST, Romania  Blizzards swept parts of Europe on Friday, causing at least nine deaths, closing roads and resulting in traffic accidents, travel delays and medical evacuations.

In Poland, the cold snap was blamed for five deaths in 24 hours. Three people died from hypothermia, while two more died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by malfunctioning heaters, the government Security Center said.

Officials in neighboring Ukraine reported that four people had died from effects of the cold in the Lviv region near the Polish border.

In Romania, authorities said 90 people were rescued from stranded cars and that crews were working to save people stuck in some 30 cars on a major highway. More than 40 trains were not running due to snow on the tracks.

Senior emergency situations official Raed Arafat said Romanian authorities also evacuated 622 people who needed dialysis and 126 pregnant women.

Snowfall and heavy winds closed roads and some train services in central Italy, pounded areas hit by recent earthquakes and forced the cancellation of some ferry crossings to islands off Naples and Sicily. Even Naples itself got a rare dusting of snow.

The frigid temperatures canceled many Epiphany festivities, though about 35,000 people braved the cold to attend Pope Francis blessing in St. Peters Square.

The fierce cold coincided with Orthodox Christmas Eve, when Russian churches are usually packed. The Moscow city transport department said it was deploying 130 buses to stand outside churches as warming stations for worshipers, the Interfax news agency said.

Serbias state television reported that 22 people, including children, were injured in a pileup caused by the wintry weather on the outskirts of the southern city of Nis.

Local official Dragan Dimitrijevic said emergency crews were helpless against the wind and snow drifts that piled up to 6.6-feet high.

New piles form almost immediately after we clear up, he said.

Turkish Airlines canceled 192 domestic and international flights that were scheduled for Saturday after heavy snow, icy conditions and strong winds were forecast for Istanbul.

Bulgarian authorities said some 650 villages across the country were without electricity due to high winds and heavy snow.

Emergency officials rescued snowed-in residents in villages in northern Albania, where up to 47 inches) of snow fell, leading to power outages.

The temperatures dipped below freezing even along Croatias Adriatic coast, where winds up to 100 mph halted some ferry traffic to the islands and over the bridges along the coastline.

In Moscow, the Emergencies Ministry warned the temperature could plummet to minus 31 F over the weekend and urged people not to stay too long outside.
TOKYO  Japan announced Friday that it would recall its ambassador to South Korea and suspend economic talks in response to the placing of a comfort woman statue representing wartime sex slaves in front of its consulate in the Korean port city of Busan.

Both Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine in Seoul and the consul-general in Busan will be temporarily recalled, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said after a Cabinet meeting.

Many Korean and other women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery in frontline brothels for the Japanese military during World War II in what was called the comfort woman system. The women were repeatedly raped and often subjected to sexually transmitted diseases.

Suga called the placing of the statue extremely regrettable, since Japan and South Korea had reached what was supposed to be a final agreement to resolve long-standing differences over the issue in late 2015.

He said Japan will suspend some negotiations with South Korea, including a proposed currency swap arrangement for times of financial crisis.

South Korean activists opposed to the 2015 agreement installed the statue in Busan late last month, one year after the pact was reached. A similar statue by the same sculptor has stood in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul since 2011.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry called Japans decision to recall its ambassador very regrettable, adding that both countries should work toward advancing bilateral relations based on trust even when there are difficult problems.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se later summoned Nagamine to protest Japans decision to recall him.

At the time of the sex slave deal, Seoul said there were 46 surviving South Korean victims. As of this year, 28 surviving victims and the families of three victims who have since died received compensation, according to an official from Seouls Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, who didnt want to be named, citing office rules.

The 2015 agreement, which was billed as final and irreversible, included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a $8.3 million fund to support the surviving women.
MOSCOW  Russia said Friday it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and other warships from the waters off Syria, following orders from President Vladimir Putin to scale back his forces as he casts himself as a peacemaker for the Middle Eastern country.

Russias military support changed the course of the 6-year-old civil war in favor of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, bolstering his forces with long-range missile attacks and precise air strikes, military advisers and a beefed-up naval base on the Mediterranean coast.

It is not clear how far Moscow intends to draw down its forces. Putin said Russia would continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Assads military, an indication that Russia has no intention of leaving altogether.

But the withdrawal is a show of confidence after the decisive victory last month by Assad and his allies over rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. A week ago, Russia helped broker a cease-fire with Turkey, which supports the opposition, paving the way for new peace talks, this time in Kazakhstan, a Moscow ally.

A day before the cease-fire took effect, Putin ordered the scale-back.

The successes of the Syrian armed forces in the liberation of Aleppo have created the necessary conditions for the peaceful settlement of the conflict, said Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Im confident that it will lay the basis for the political settlement of the conflict.

The first forces to leave, he said, will be the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which was deployed in November at the height of the Aleppo offensive, and other, accompanying ships.

Moscow began its military intervention supporting Assad in September 2015. It announced a reduction in its forces once before, in March 2016 during a brief U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire and the launch of peace talks in Geneva. A few air units withdrew, but that truce quickly collapsed, peace talks went nowhere, and Moscow again threw renewed military might behind the Syrian government.

At the time, the U.S. estimated that there were 3,000 to 6,000 Russian military personnel in Syria, a number that likely rose before the Aleppo offensive.

Air strikes from the Kuznetsov began in mid-November and marked the first time it was used in combat. The ship has lost two aircraft.
IZMIR, Turkey  Police detained 18 people Friday in connection with an attack near a courthouse in the western city of Izmir that killed a police officer and a courthouse employee. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said Friday that Turkish authorities had no doubt that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, gave the orders for the attack.

Two assailants were killed in a shootout with police in Thursdays incident in Izmir, Turkeys third-largest city, after they detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a roadblock. The attackers were armed with automatic rifles, rocket launchers and hand grenades, officials said.
Fill Up

Paying more at the pump could be a new fact of life for New Mexicans if the state Legislature approves a plan it's likely to consider later this month about hiking the tax on gasoline. Backers want to use the money to pay for road projects, in part.

Bang

Guns are also on the minds of some lawmakers heading to work later this month. Conflict is clearly coming, as bills to tighten rules on gun sales are on the table alongside proposals to allow more people to

.

Real Estate Surge

Santa Fe County's newest real estate data has a silver lining. Bruce Krasnow reports in today's

New Mexican

that sales have reached their

since what he calls "the housing market meltdown."

Court to Rule on Water Protection

Will this be the year that the state Supreme Court determines the fairness of New Mexico's "Copper Rule?" The copper mining industry and state regulators say the rule is fine, but opponents argue that it gives mines permission to

. The court has already heard arguments in the case.

Advancing Education

The same week that New Mexico earned a failing grade from a national education publication, the governor held a press conference to

in Advanced Placement programs, which she says are seeing historic highs in enrollment and earning college credit.

The Wall on the Way

President-elect Donald Trump and members of Congress are still talking about building a wall on the US-Mexico border, but information about what our state's part of the border would look like under the idea are unclear. The

that details, like where they'll start building or whether the barrier will be a fence or a solid wall, aren't available.

Bam!

An icy snowstorm arrived as predicted Thursday night and is expected to carry into the day. With schools closed in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and points north this morning, that also means many government offices are delayed or closed. Check out the state's

for more details about how bad it is out there.

No Soup for You

Are we ready to face the rest of winter without Hungarian mushroom soup from Back Street Bistro? The longtime restaurant owner says

are the reason he's only offering takeout for now.

Santa Fe Reporter
Here's the thingit's kind of hard to not like Hidden Figures , at least insofar as it's the simultaneous story of uncredited black women who were so awesome at their jobs that they literally made safe space flight possible, yet they were treated so poorly amidst the racist atmosphere of 1960s Virginia that we're all kind of like, "What the hell, man!?" That said, the overall tone seems a tad breezy for the subject matter. It could be that director/screenwriter Theodore Melfi wanted to tell the story, which was based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, in a palatable fashion, but you just know that the actual story was far more intense.

We mostly follow Katherine Goble/Johnson (Taraji P Henson), a lifelong math ultra-genius who works as a human computer for the space program at NASA alongside dozens of other black women. Along with her close friends/fellow NASA employees Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), Katherine attempts to deduce the incredibly complex science to launch John Glenn into space, orbit the planet and then return safely while the Russians work toward the same thing. Of course, it's the '60s, and white people are basically the absolute worst, so even though Katherine can do any math that comes her way and Dorothy teaches her damn self how to program NASA's newly-minted (and room-sized) IBM supercomputer and Mary is some kind of goddamn engineering phenom, they have to fight some pretty nasty racism on the part of people like lead engineer Paul Stafford ( Big Bang Theory 's Jim Parsons) and supervisor Vivian Mitchell (a perfectly condescending and bitchy Kirsten Dunst).

Of course, we all know the gist of the storyJohn Glenn was shot farther into space than any human beforebut Hidden Figures teaches us that Glenn's flight (and the subsequent moon landing in 1969) simply wouldn't have happened if these women, particularly Katherine, hadn't been on the case. But it isn't like anyone makes it easy. Yes, Kevin Costner as NASA bigwig Al Harrison believes in Katherine and knocks down "Colored Ladies Restroom" signs and stuff, but it seems more like he divides people into helpful or not-helpful categories more than he's a race crusader. Still, that was a pretty big damn deal in those days, and before we realize it Katherine is blowing minds in Pentagon briefings, both as a black person and a woman, two things that were unheard of in places of power, and figuring out the algorithms and cosines and other math jargon that even the brightest NASA minds had struggled with. And it's triumphant, even if a bit heavy-handed at times, so we feel for Katherine and her friends and want them to succeed so that every dumb cracker who assumed they were incapable will have to ditch their shit-eating, racist attitudes, which they eventually do (to no small amount of satisfaction).

Henson's performance exists in the sweet spot between vulnerable mother and widow and complete badass, unafraid to excel at math or to fight for her race and gender. And though Spencer and Monae prove indispensable to the pacing and overall feel of Hidden Figures , some of the impact of the real-world achievements made by the women they portray winds up dissipated as they're relegated to periodic bits of comic relief.

Still, it is Katherine's story, and there's much to enjoy here. The sting of racism cuts deep even now, and we must never forget that these people literally had to be complete geniuses and fight their asses off to receive even a modicum of respect. It's an important chapter in history nonetheless, and told in an extremely watchable fashion. Don't be surprised if Hidden Figures becomes required viewing for students down the road at some point and, we hope, we start to get other films about the incredible people of color throughout history who perhaps didn't get the recognition they so obviously deserved.

8

+Important history; satisfying

- Sometimes heavy-handed; a tad oversimplified; white people

Hidden Figures

Directed by Theodore Melfi

With Henson, Spencer, Monae and Costner

Violet Crown, Regal, PG-13, 127 min.

Santa Fe Reporter
(1) Copy of Boss by Mike Royko *Learn about the original Boss who taught Mike Madigan how to run the political machine

CHICAGO - The Illinois Republican Party continues its publicity campaign attack on House Speaker Mike Madigan, ridiculing rules that protect his power and mocking Democrats that promise to support him in the upcoming House leadership election.

The IL GOP's contest correlates with the release of a new video reviewing the 46 years Mike Madigan has served in the Illinois House, reminding Illinoisans of good and bad news that has passed over four and a half decades of the state's Democrat control:

"Boss Madigan treats Illinois like his own personal kingdom, undermining democracy and disrespecting taxpayers," Illinois GOP spokesman Aaron DeGroot said in a statement Friday. "That's why the Illinois Republican Party is announcing the contest to win your very own Boss Madigan Starter Kit.

"House Democrats need to be reminded that their political patron rules over them with an iron fist, putting the needs of his machine before everyday Illinoisans."
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.

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.

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.

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.

Adam Kinzinger was first sworn into the U. S. House of Representatives in January 2011. He serves as the Representative for the Sixteenth Congressional District of Illinois and is a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee. In addition, he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee during the 113th Congress.Kinzinger served in the Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has served in the Air Force Special Operations, Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air National Guard. He has the current rank of Major.
NEW DELHI: In line with its recent "SwitchToPOOL" campaign, online cab-hailing firm Uber's focus in 2017 will be on popularising UberPOOL -- a service that enables people going the same way at the same time to share their journey, the company said on Thursday.

The company has also rolled out updates to promote UberPOOL aimed at 'getting more people in fewer cars' to address increasing congestion and pollution in Indian cities.

The new updates address some of the common feedback from riders and driver-partners and are designed to further enhance the Uber experience.

"Since the launch of 'UberPOOL' in India, riders have taken more than a million trips and we are continuously working towards making the next million even more effortless, so we can get more people into fewer cars and help cities cut down on congestion and pollution over time," said Amit Jain, President (India and South Asia) Uber.

During the 21-day "SwitchToPOOL" campaign, UberPOOL helped India save 5.5 million kms of vehicle travelled, 6.1 lakh Kgs of CO2 emission, and 2.6 lakh litres of fuel, the company claimed.

"Today, more than 31 pct of rides in Delhi are on UberPOOL and over 20 pct of the rides in the remaining five UberPOOL cities -- Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai," he added.

"Our latest driver app update includes the technology to inform drivers about their wait time before they get their next ride so he is ready when it is time to pick up the rider," the company added.

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NEW DELHI: The Presidents of Kenya and Rwanda will visit India next week, an official statement said on Thursday.

Both leaders of the East African countries will also be attending the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit scheduled to be held at Gandhinagar next week.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame will be on a working visit to India from January 9-12, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

He will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Gandhinagar on January 9.

A business delegation would accompany Kagame, who will be addressing a National Business Seminar on Rwanda.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta "will pay a state visit to India from January 10-12 on an invitation extended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi", the release said.

The two leaders will hold official talks on January 11 in New Delhi.

"During the visit President Kenyatta is also expected to call on the President.Indian dignitaries including the Vice President, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Defence are also expected to call on President Kenyatta," release added.

President Kenyatta is likely to be accompanied by several Ministers. He is expected to attend a business forum in Delhi on January 12.

Modi paid a state visit to Kenya in July 2016, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 35 years.

The 8th edition of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit will be held from January 10-13 in Gandhinagar, Gujrat, with the central focus of "Sustainable Economic and Social Development".

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HYDERABAD: Samsung India said today it has set up "smart class" in 373 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in different parts of the country since 2013, allowing more than two lakh students access to easy and digitally interactive learning opportunities.



In this period, over 7,400 teachers have been trained on how to use interactive technology to teach, the Korean electronics major said in a statement here.

The company has launched the "Samsung Smart Class" programme in collaboration with Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, a system of alternate schools under the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.



Every such smart class is equipped with an interactive Samsung Smartboard, Samsung laptops/tablet, a printer, Wi-Fi connectivity and power backup.



Samsung Smart Class supplements regular lessons in mathematics, science and social science to explain concepts in an engaging and interactive manner. Teachers are trained on using the equipment effectively to make lessons come alive, the statement said.



"The introduction of Samsung Smart Class has resulted in marked improvement in academic performance of students at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Rangareddy district. The students are able to learn better through visual learning aids at the Smart Class and are more engaged," the statement quoted D Rajeswara Rao, Principal, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Gachibowli in adjoining Rangareddy district, as saying.



"This initiative is closely tied with India's development agenda, and implemented in close partnership with government departments to ensure wider reach and impact among the less-privileged children," said Deepak Bhardwaj, Head of CSR at Samsung India.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When it comes to the many diverse "Best of Staten Island Awards" categories, it's always the borough's beloved, long-running restaurants that never fail to slam dunk the polls.

And S.I. pie? Well, that category is a whole other beast.

But this year, several "newbies," so to speak, edged out perennial pie winners in a heated contest that generated 29,695 verified votes.

Some Islanders already consider these parlors household names, but let's get the rest of the public up to speed on the top pizzaiolo that virtually tied for "Best Staten Island Pizza of 2016."

FIRST UP: MONA LISA IN ANNADALE

In his euphoria to win the title of "tops" on Staten Island, Mona Lisa's Leonardo Giordano will personally make his award-winning pies and hand them out for free on Saturday, Feb. 6 from the pizzeria. He does this to express his thanks to those who voted for him.

The seemingly mild-mannered Leonardo says, "I want to be crazy!" Indedd, he wants people to understand his passion for making pies. He loves to hear the "mmms" and "yums" from customers. He loves the praise from tasters in competitions around the world where Leonardo takes down medal after medal, year after year.

In 2012, he won the "Atlantic City National Competition for 'The Slice of North East' and first place for the "Best Pizza in North East America." Then, there was the time he placed in the top ten slots in the World Pizza Competition in Parma, Italy.

Flip forward past numerous ribbons -- these are posted around Mona Lisa as are images of the winning pies -- to the the June, 2016 National Competition in Chicago for great accolades on his "Pizza Classico."

Wait util summer and fall comes when the fruit trees bloom -- that's when Leonardo rolls out the sweet and salty combinations like Gorgonzola and balsamic vinegar glaze with figs and then some.

WHAT MAKE VILLA MONTE IN NEW SPRINGVILLE SO SPECIAL?

Hard-working Augie and Antonio "Tony" Mandara own four Villa Montes on Staten Island -- in New Dorp, Arden Heights, New Springville and Tottenville. But the flagship store, Gino's Villa Monte of New Springville, also is winner of our Advance contest with 5,125 votes.

The brothers were trained by their Dad, Michele, and grew up in the pizza world. Augie credits hard work, long hours and great familiarity with the business for the restaurants' longevity.

"It's very simple...it's family-owned and operated since we opened in 1984...my brother, and my dad along with my mom and a couple of cousins.," he says.

"We lost my Mom and Dad about four years now. It's heartbreaking," Augie admits, calling Michele "the heart and soul of the business for my family."

Michele and mom Maria hailed from Montepertuso, near Positano on the Amalfi Coast in Southern Italy. Hence the name "Villa Monte," a shortened version of the family's home town.

The name "Gino," on the other hand, nods to a beloved original partner from when the Mandaras maintained pizzerias in Queens.

"He was my dad's and my uncle's partner," says Augie, adding with a laugh, "They picked the shortest name because it was the least expensive for the sign."

But pizza is a serious business for Augie and Tony. They make about 20 different pies daily with 15 on display to accommodate a variety of appetites, whether meat-centric or vegan.

"We always try to do the simplest things in the world with good quality stuff... that's what we built our reputation on," says Augie.

And, that's where Leonardo and the Mandaras have common ground: Pizzas are built from top-notch ingredients with great thought and care.

Congratulations to both parlors. And, additional kudos to the winners who came tops in our poll.

Here is the official rundown of the best pizzerias on Staten Island:

AND THE 'BEST PIZZA' WINNERS ARE ...

Mona Lisa Pizza, 839 Annadale Rd., Annadale; 718-967-1000 (Cash only) -- 5266 votes

Gino's Villa Monte, 2811 Richmond Ave., New Springville 718-494-6554 -- 5125 votes

THE 2016 RUNNERS UP:

Denino's Pizzeria & Tavern of Port Richmond: 2787

Paulie's & Errigo's of Stapleton: 2644

Domenico's of Princes Bay: 2240

Joe & Pat's of Castleton Corners: 2126

Lee's Tavern of Dongan Hills: 1535

The Original Goodfella's of Ocean Breeze: 1137

Pizzeria Giove of New Dorp: 891

Reggiano's of Tottenville: 803

Brother's of Port Richmond: 753

Domenico's of Bay Terrace: 610

Prime Pizza of Dongan Hills: 488

Pier 76 of St. George & Molo of Rosebank (sister restaurants): 434

Nunzio's of Grant City: 387

Ciro's of Huguenot: 381

Nonna Pizzeria of Great Kills: 365

Campania of Eltingville and Richmond Valley: 360

Pizza Mia of Rosebank: 285

Metro of West Brighton: 231

Sunset Pizza of Rossville: 205

Dough by Licastri in Dongan Hills: 126

Big Al's in Great Kills: 102

Krispy Pizza of Todt Hill: 92

Torino Pizza of Dongan Hills: 90

Bario's of New Springville: 62

Frank's Bay Pizza of Stapleton: 39
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Furthering their wildest restaurant dreams, Jodi Guagliardo and Nicholas Granata opened Project Brunch Cafe in Charleston this week.

The grab-and-go concept promises speedy pick-up service for walk-ins. And, it started home and office delivery to the deep South Shore for the 10307, 10309 and 10312 zip codes.

Project Brunch Cafe serves as sidekick to the business partners' inaugural venture together -- the successful Project Brunch next door, known simply to regulars as "PB."

"We have ordering online through our web site which will be going up officially on Monday, Jan. 9," said Guagliardo.

But just to backtrack a bit: The flagship PB location opened on April 2, 2016. With up to an hours wait for tables throughout the summer, Guagliardo and Granata felt expansion was the next likely step.

"We've already gotten a lot of calls for the salads from the office buildings," said Guagliardo.

"We have our build-your-own salad plus a lot of the favorites from the original Project Brunch menu. Waffles made it to the take-out menu but we also made it with your choice of bread where we take off $3," explained Ms. Guagliardo.

There are breakfast items, yogurt, house made pastries and scones, non-alcoholic beverages and coffee drinks. Freshly ground coffee can be taken out by the box.

At the moment there are no seats but that may be added one day. While the two restaurants connect with a pass-through, it is only used for staff. Otherwise there is a separate entrance for each storefront.

Some of the details in the Project Brunch Cafe include a pulley system, built by Granata, showcasing bean bags of coffee.

Sal Armenia, a set designer, gifted the restaurant a swinging saloon door intended to mark the main kitchen's entrance. But functionally it didn't work out, explained Guagliardo. So she and Granata turned it into a "focal point" and logo for the cafe.

Treating the espresso machine as a car, Sean Cusick of Knights Collision in Brooklyn custom painted the piece to the restaurant's signature red shade.

Salvaged wood on the walls hails from Peach Bottom, PA. And ceiling fans cage the lighting fixtures.

Dina Cordiano of Eltingville was the very first customer back at Project Brunch back in the spring. And, as she sat down to breakfast at PB recently she said she looked forward to delivery.

As one of the earliest fans of the business she raved, "The best way to describe this place is that it's an experience." They're passionate about the menu, they're passionate about the people who walk in...Every dish is made with love."

To commemorate the new place, Ms. Guagliardo reported, "We're just going to do a little ribbon cutting on Thursday, Jan. 12 at 10 a.m. Also we will be donating $1 for every coffee or tea purchased in the cafe and donating it to Christopher's Reason. A representative from that organization will be there as well as someone from Assemblyman Castorina's office."

Christopher's Reason is a new addiction center not far from Project Brunch Cafe.

The Project Brunch Cafe is open daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. On the other hand, Project Brunch proper, so to speak, is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Tuesday through Friday, and Saturday, Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Both Guagliardo and Granata very much enjoy working together and love the restaurant they've built.

"I think years of business has helped," said Guagliardo who owned fine dining DoSI restaurant, formerly of Stapleton. Granata, formerly an electrician, attended culinary school.

"Our staff is truly like our family," said Granata where "work is a pleasure."

Project Brunch Cafe is located at 4553 Arthur Kill Rd., Charleston; 718-948-5300, ProjectBrunch.com. The original Project Brunch is located at the same address but the number is 718-605-9866.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Anthony Penza -- a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran turned orchid grower turned photographer -- unveils a collection of his photographs, titled "The Morning After," Friday at Wagner College's Spotlight Gallery in Grymes Hill.

"I've never did anything like this before so it's exciting," Penza told SILive.

The Stapleton resident -- who's voice over the phone shaves at least 40 years off of his age -- said he bought his first camera while deployed in Vietnam over 35 years ago. The native Brooklynite, who moved to the Island in 1982, attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and is a long-time member of the Staten Island Camera Club.

Penza ventured through local settings, from the streets of Port Richmond to a boat graveyard near the Rossville area, to capture the "perfect" shots. He also traveled to Brooklyn and New Jersey for inspiration.

Even though everything is in the angles, Penza says his vision for the collection is to capture the imperfections of reality. A majority of his collection is in black and white, playing into the overall theme of capturing the beauty in destruction.

"I like to see pretty pictures but I also like to see the other side of it," said Penza. "I like to see people in their natural habitat."

Although his local work will be the focal point of the collection, Penza says traveling to countries like Malaysia and Taiwan in his military years has influenced his outlook on life and in turn, diversified his art.

"Seeing parts of the world you don't see here in the United States definitely opened up my perspective," said Penza. "It gave me a better understanding of the world."

Penza says taking photographs is a long-time hobby turned passion, but don't expect him to work your next family party.

"I don't market myself to shoot weddings or baby photos," said Penza. "It's more of a passion than a business."

The opening reception of "The Morning After" takes place Friday, Jan. 6, from 5 to 8 p.m. The exhibit is up through Sunday, Feb. 5.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After years of iconic holiday displays, Joseph DiMartino promised his elaborate Christmas display would shine even brighter during the 2016 holiday season, and raise even more funds for children with cancer.

DiMartino, 59, is known for the Christmas Wonderland outside his Sharrotts Road home. The display draws tens of thousands of visitors to his Charleston neighborhood.

"I've worked eight to 12 hours a day on this ever since Labor Day," he said. "It's a lot of work to pull it all together, but it's worth it."

DiMartino created the display in memory of his wife, Debra Ann, a victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. Each year, he raises thousands of dollars for the Nalitt Institute's Outpatient Children's Cancer Unit at Staten Island University Hospital/Northwell Health in Ocean Breeze, in the name of his late wife.

"She loved children and loved to give," DiMartino said. "So I asked when people come to see the lights, if you can give a dollar, some change -- whatever you have helps."

"Last year we raised over $34,000 in donations for the children," he said. "This year, the goal was to raise $35,000."

On Friday, barely a week into the New Year, DiMartino made good on his promise, delivering a check for more than $36,500 to hospital officials.

He was joined by Marcello Sciarrino and Josh Aaronson, partners in Island Auto Group, who also presented a donation of $2,500 to the cause.

Thanks to donations over the years, DiMartino's extravagant display has raised more than $230,000, hospital officials said.
Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 2.42.58 PM.png

The Metropolitan Detention Center is a United States federal administrative detention facility in Brooklyn. (Associated Press)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A correction officer from Staten Island attempted to hire a hitman to attack his former spouse and her current partner so they would suffer "for the rest of their lives" -- even suggesting "a hammer to the spine" as a possible method to maim the would-be victims, authorities allege.

However, George Gonzalez's plan backfired when the hired muscle he thought he was talking to turned out to be undercover police officers, according to a complaint unsealed in Brooklyn Federal Court this week.

The defendant has been a federal correction officer for 17 years and is assigned to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brookyn, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

Gonzalez, 53, first placed a phone call to a supposed hitman -- actually an undercover detective -- on Dec. 20, inquiring about the cost of doing a "job" on a target currently in Florida, according to the complaint.

Gonzalez was told to meet with an associate -- also an undercover member of law enforcement.

Gonzalez met with the second individual on Dec. 23 in Brooklyn and, in a recorded conversation, provided the man with photographs, pedigree information and the address of his intended targets -- his former spouse and her domestic partner, the complaint says.

"It should look like a robbery," and the man could keep whatever valuables he found in the home as partial payment, Gonzalez allegedly told the associate.

However, the complaint alleges, the suspect stressed he didn't want the targets killed -- but rather beaten and maimed so they would "suffer... for the rest of their lives."

When the undercover expressed concern the victims could die, Gonzalez told him there were "ways to do it," such as "taking a hammer to the spine," according to the complaint.

He allegedly requested the assault be carried out in February after a court date.

Another phone call took place between Gonzalez and one of the officers on Dec. 29 in which the defendant told the supposed hitmen he had other "jobs" he'd like carried out after his former spouse was attacked, the complaint alleges.

On Jan. 4, Gonzalez met with both undercover officers in Brooklyn, where he agreed to pay $400 for the men to procure firearms and travel to Florida, authorities say. He allegedly reiterated he wanted the job done after the court appearance, and provided the name of another Florida resident -- a relative of his former spouse -- whose home could be robbed as partial payment for the first job.

Gonzalez was arrested in his home on Staten Island Thursday night. An exact address wasn't immediately available.

There is an active order of protection barring the defendant from having contact with his former wife on file at Richmond County Family Court, in effect through Jan. 26.
mcmahon.jpg

District Attorney Michael E. McMahon has accomplished much in his first year in office.

(Advance file photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - He has done the job he was hired to do.

And much more.

We're talking about District Attorney Michael E. McMahon, who has hit the ground running in his first year as Staten Island's top law enforcement official.

Perhaps nowhere has McMahon made his impact felt more than in what we all agree is our top problem area: The heroin and prescription drug crisis that continues to roil Staten Island.

Until McMahon took office, we didn't even know how bad the problem really was. Statistics on drug overdoses and deaths were not revealed in real time. In early 2016, for example, we were still relying on overdose stats from 2014.

McMahon has changed all that. As part of his sweeping Overdose Response Initiative, the number of overdoses and deaths is now made available as the incidents occur.

Simple, right? But so important in our battle against drug addiction. After all, you need to know how big the problem is before you can tackle it.

It's not a perfect system. We only know of the overdoses that are reported as such to authorities or occur in public places. There are many more deaths occurring out there. But it's a start and puts us in a better position to battle the scourge.

But that was just one part of McMahon's groundbreaking approach that treats overdose sites as potential crime scenes.

Here's how it works: Police inform the district attorney's office whenever there's a drug overdose death. Police and prosecutors gather information on the deceased, including the type of drug he or she used, where and when the death occurred, and who discovered the deceased. A detective, prosecutor and community advocate reach out to the next of kin to gain further insight into their loved one's activities.

But most importantly, perhaps, if a cell phone is found on the deceased, police seek consent from the next of kin to search the phone and compare the information on it to other incidents for possible similarities. In addition, a full toxicology exam by the city medical examiner determines whether the drug was cut. This could aid in identifying the source of the narcotics.

All of it is aimed at stopping drugs at their source: The dealers who peddle this poison in our community. It's the right way to go.

But McMahon knows there's work to be done on the treatment side as well. He has crafted an early diversion program dubbed HOPE (Heroin Overdose Prevention and Education) to try to steer addicts into treatment. It will allow participants to avoid prosecution while getting a handle on their addiction, if they complete the program.

All told, it's an even-handed approach that shows that McMahon is looking to give addicts a chance to get clean while not hesitating to punish the culprits who are contributing to the problem.

And earlier this year, McMahon lobbied hard for the creation of a dedicated narcotics part in state Supreme Court, St. George, that launched in October.

When he ran for office in 2015, McMahon, a former city councilman and member of Congress, pledged to make the battle against drugs his top priority. He has not let us down, and for that he is to be commended.

He has also been busy in other areas, including looking to take illegal guns off the streets.

And in a bid to battle domestic violence, he has instituted a "vertical prosecution" policy under which the same prosecutor stays with the victim through the entirety of their case instead of being handed off as the case moves from Criminal Court to Supreme Court and beyond. He has also formed a Domestic Violence Bureau.

As he embarks on his second year in office, McMahon has said that he wants to build on those programs while intensifying the focus on robbery and burglary cases.

McMahon came to the district attorney's office without prosecutorial experience. It left some people skeptical, including this newspaper. But there's no arguing with the job he has done. He has put Staten Island first and lived up to his campaign promises. We have no doubt he will continue to do so. We are grateful.
But amidst all these depressing numbers  220 store closings, 20,000 job cuts, all these fresh mall vacancies, etc.  such analysts forget some other key numbers.

It was to be expected, of course. The analysts say that these stores are of an old breed that hasnt kept up; they still use brick and mortar, unlike the darlings of the new age of retail, Amazon and Etsy et al, which dont have the pesky challenges of rent, cashiers, decor and inventory to cover. And there is some truth to that.

As the new year began, right in the midst of outgoing Resident Barack Obamas ever-more-urgent pleas for a legacy, two announcements hit the news: the family of Sears and K-Mart will close yet another 109 K-Marts and another 41 Sears stores in 2017, and Macys will close another 68 of theirs.

Despite their huge losses  both in the tens of millions of dollars per year  each of these giants still does tens of billions of dollars in sales every single year.

Clearly, brick and mortar stores DO still fill a need  or at least a serious desire  on the part of the shopping public. Its just more and more of a challenge to make enough sales to turn a profit, in todays economy.

This is not to say that the concerns arent real. If you cant make a profit, you have to close. But these tens of billions in sales prove that the dismissive claim of the analysts that the days of brick and mortar are over is, in fact, nothing short of a lie.

To use a well-worn cliche: the buggy whip industry didnt die out because buggy whip manufacturing was in bit a more challenging environment. It died out because nobody had a use for buggy whips anymore. Thats simply not the case with traditional retail. People still spend billions every year as willing customers of brick and mortar stores, its just not quite enough to push those stores past the finish line.

So, rather than giving up on an industry that takes in hundreds of billions a dollar a year in willing purchases and employs millions of people  often providing people with their critical first job  perhaps we should analyze instead just what the challenges are that make it possible for these stores to take in tens of billions of dollars but still lose out on the bottom line.

Labor

In any business analysis, we must look at the labor costs first. Has anything happened to make its workforce more expensive in recent years? Oh yes indeed. The cost of labor is up. More and more cities, and even states, are raising their minimum wage (nineteen states raised theirs, on January 1, 2017). This minimum wage increase works as an elevator, a rising floor that raises every employee groups wage, not just the subset of entry-level employees.

But even more importantly, we have seen tax-and-benefit costs climb, as businesses must pay more for health insurance, 401-K matching and management fees, and other benefits for their employees. Obamacare, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and countless other federal regulations have increased the costs of every business sector; retail hasnt missed out on these new pains. Has this issue alone made it impossible to hire? No, not in most cases. But it makes a difference.

Rent and Utilities

The next zone to address is the cost of providing that brick-and-mortar environment itself. Department stores are huge, taking up square footage in rental space and using up energy for lighting, air conditioning and heat.

What has happened to these costs in recent years? Mall space has often gone up in price as property taxes have climbed; the mall management company must pass on these costs to their tenants. Cities, counties and states often view commercial property as a gold mine, a taxable entity that cannot vote them out of office, so they rob these businesses blind at tax time, creating an ever-growing cost that is passed on to the store in increased rents.

And what of lighting, A/C and heat? Remember how cheap those incandescent bulbs in your desk lamp used to be Versus what the now-mandated CFL or LED versions cost? If you have dozens of these bulbs in your home, your local department store has hundreds, or even thousands. These costs have skyrocketed, courtesy of the Pelosi Congress that irresponsibly declared so many kinds of cost-efficient bulbs illegal. And what of the energy that heats, cools, and lights these stores? The Obama administrations concurrent wars on coal, nuclear, gas and oil power, combined with their laughable green energy favoritism, have caused your local malls heating, cooling and electric bills to skyrocket as well. Does this explain the whole difference? No, not in most cases. But its made for a more challenging environment than it needed to be.

Crime and Security

If youve served in the military during wartime, you have probably spent time in a war zone (and if so, the rest of us can never thank you enough for your service). The rest of us, however, particularly at home on US soil, do not expect to encounter such dangers.

More and more American shopping areas, however, have become dangerous. While terrorism threats are a rare and special risk, relatively and hopefully controllable with rational federal policy, the more general crime risks of our cities and malls have been growing steadily for generations. Malls and localities must spend more on security measures and personnel, and even with such spending, shoppers know which retail establishments are no longer safe, and wisely avoid them.

This first affects the evening traffic, and then, before you know it, the stores empty in the daytime too, as miscreants eventually use the shopping center as a regular hangout. How many downtowns have deteriorated, how many whole malls have emptied, first of shoppers and then of stores, because uncontrollable thugs have driven away their clientele?

No matter how much a shopper may like to shop, the risk of a car being burglarized, a purse being snatched, or actual physical assault will drive any sane shopper away. Many hundreds of malls, small and large, enclosed and outdoor, have closed or severely shrunk in recent years, and one can pinpoint the commencement of the rapid decline to the sightings of gang activity, the increase in burglaries, and most visibly of all, a new threat: the marauding gangs known as flash mobs that suddenly take over a store, ransack it, and escape before security can react.

A Common Thread

No matter how popular the products may be on store shelves, no matter how aggressively individual stores or whole malls or chambers of commerce may advertise, these issues  taken together  can be insurmountable challenges. Stores can find a way to be cost-effective, through purchasing in scale, advertising for volume sales, and offering products different enough and desirable enough to maintain a market, if there are shoppers walking in the door.

But if their every effort at cost-efficiency and marketing is met by another external challenge  criminals pouring in, utility costs skyrocketing, taxes climbing, and labor costs rising  then we cannot expect them to succeed.

Its not that retail is dying, as we are always told its that retail is being assaulted, from the outside.

The common thread is government. Government has made these utility costs rise, as government has shuttered coal mines and power plants, denied permits for drilling and pipelines, raised taxes to fund unproductive windmills, idiotic solar panels, and even algae farms. Government has unnecessarily made healthcare more expensive as a benefit, caused unemployment and workmens comp rates to rise, and released hundreds of thousands of criminals into the neighborhoods, through ridiculously short sentences, technicality acquittals, and even outright prison-emptying binges by left-wing judges.

The source of the challenges to retail, on almost every front, is our government. As government has raised up these roadblocks, only government can take them down.

This is not to say that, without these roadblocks, everyone would stop shopping online and suddenly return to the stores. But they dont need to. Plenty of people already shop in our brick and mortar stores; plenty of money is already spent in them. We need to move the needle a few degrees, thats all, to save this sector.

As just one example, Sears reported that the 150 stores they are closing reported sales of $1.2 billion last year, and a $60 million loss. As bad as that sounds, its only a five percent loss. Bring back the customers who are scared away by crime, lower the taxes and utility costs by electing rational people to public office who dont view the retail sector as a money tree to shake until it dies, and these numbers could easily be flipped from a five percent loss to a five percent profit.

The stores have been doing all they can, for years, to fix their problem. Its time for government to stand up and admit its culpability, and to stop making everything worse for them.

The Major Obstacle

But all of the above wont help if the primary obstacle to retail sales is left unaddressed, and it should be the most obvious of all: Disposable income is down in America. Down. Way down.

We have all seen reports that average wages in America have been generally flat for over fifteen years. Annual wage growth outside of cost-of-living increases virtually stopped late in the Clinton administration, and never returned after the 2000 recession. Even though the economy grew moderately during the majority of the GW Bush administration, wages never recovered, and the recession that began with Nancy Pelosis takeover of the House in the 2006 election just cemented the crisis.

The biggest problem that the retail sector faces, therefore, is the fact that their potential customers dont have disposable income. With 95 million Americans of working age outside the workforce, with an employed population enduring fifteen-plus years of flat wages, and with such economic uncertainty that even many who do have money to spare feel compelled to save and invest in case the bottom drops out again, the American consumer simply doesnt have the money to spend anymore.

A generation ago, a common sight in a shopping mall was to see crowds with shopping bags from multiple stores, year-round, proving that most people who went to a mall did so to actually shop .

Today, by contrast, in addition to the general emptiness we encounter even in our bigger and better malls, we see that people carry only the one thing they came to buy; theres much less impulse buying today. Shoppers may go to buy a specific item, then have lunch in the food court or in a better mall restaurant, but the days of regular shopping excursions that the middle class could once enjoy are long gone, for a significant segment of the population.

Worse still, many of the people in our malls are not shopping at all; they use them as a comfortable indoor walking track. They show up on their lunch breaks dressed in their business attire, or at off hours in sweatsuits, and walk the perimeter of the first floor, then the perimeter of the second floor then return to their cars, to their homes or jobs, never having set foot in a single store. Not that theres anything wrong with exercise, of course but this trend just contributes that much more to the lack of actual shopping going on.

In the final analysis, we find that the reasons for brick-and-mortar retail pain are varied, but they have a common thread. The government has made it harder for the stores to compete with cheaper but less satisfying online merchants, and in addition, the government has robbed their potential customers of the money to shop at either.

High corporate taxes, crippling utility costs, and a painful regulatory environment have driven Americas employers out of business or out of the country. Those that remain here have less money to pay their employees, so employees have less to spend. Its as simple as that.

Our government has been holding down the economy for years. When we bring back growth, we will bring back disposable income for our consumers.

And when our consumers have the money to spend, they will support both online and brick-and-mortar stores, because they will want to and because they will finally be able to again.

But Does It Matter?

At this point, we will still have detractors, people who claim that the window has shut on brick-and-mortar retail, that its time has passed and we can do without it. Let it go, they tell us.

Such analysts forget the many positives that retail provides. For example:

Seeing the Goods: Even online shoppers want to see the goods in person first, or in the case of clothes, to try them on and check the mirror. They may not buy when in the store; they may go home and buy online, often from that same stores online presence, when they have the money, a month or two later, but the physical store will always be a critical part of the shopping experience.

A Personal Touch: While many shoppers are content to make decisions on their own, many customers want that retail salesman to explain the product and help make the right choice. And many products lend themselves to this; not every purchase is the brand-name toy or hardcover book that lends itself to the online shopping environment.

Government Revenue: Its hard to make a case for taxes, but this is an important point: Local stores pay local taxes. The property taxes and sales taxes generated by retail shopping are critical to the revenue stream of most local government. Many a county receives a quarter or more of its income from a major shopping mall. Let that mall close, and you will see the taxes on residents and other businesses skyrocket to make up the shortfall.

Support for Other Industries: The retail center  whether an enclosed mall, a strip mall, or a traditional downtown shopping district  is a magnet, bringing potential customers together, not just for retail, but also for other businesses with symbiotic relationships. The restaurants and food court outlets, the movie theaters and comedy clubs, the auto dealers and auto repair shops, the banks and travel agencies all these and many other businesses, not traditionally thought of as retail work together to both create a draw and make the most of that draw, once accomplished. The people who come for the restaurant or theater stay to shop; the people who come to shop may do their banking and have the car serviced while there. Remove the stores, and many of these other businesses will fail from lack of business as well.

Employment: While most career counselors would agree that retail, in general, is not the best longterm career choice for any but a narrow population (short of upper management, its not a path to wealth), all would agree that its a terrific starting point for entering the workforce. Working part time at a department store  while in high school and college, or as a second job afterward while just starting in ones real career  remains a time-honored, valuable part of anyones time on the ladder to success. Spending time after school and on weekends operating a cash register and dealing with the public shows a future employer that one is responsible enough for that full-time job. Remove these stores, and we remove the first step on the ladder for millions of Americans.

Retail is challenged, like it has never been before. More than that, it is threatened by those who live in a zero-sum world, and dont acknowledge that economies can grow and challenges can be overcome. A growth economy will solve most of these problems. But we need it soon, before more malls close, before more chains fail, before more shops give up the ghost, turning that many more shopping centers into deserts.

Who's fault is the seeming demise of brick and mortar retail?

Who owns this challenge? The Left is responsible for the taxes and regulations; Barack Obama himself is responsible for the challenging economic environment we now suffer. While we cannot lay it all at his feet, hes the one who appointed the EPA Administrators, the Labor and HHS Secretaries, and the Attorney Generals who have turbocharged the tax-and-regulation environment that made it all so much worse these past eight years.

Mr. Obama is said to be afraid of losing his legacy, but he neednt worry. The thousands of shuttered storefronts littering the landscape, the 95 million people outside the workforce, the many once-successful Americans whove lost everything in the Obama economy, will stand for years as a living reminder of these two unnecessarily miserable terms.

There is indeed a great deal to be done, now that the adults are back in charge of the reins of government.

To paraphrase the old saying: Reports of retails death have been greatly exaggerated but even so, theres no time to lose.

Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based Customs broker, international trade lecturer, 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.
A first-class ride for Cowboy Kel Bridle Path residents show love for mail carrier

For the past six years, Kelvin Hoang has been delivering mail and smiles to people living in Simi Valleys Bridle Path neighborhood. We love Kelvin. Hes the best. Hes like...

SV Womans Club to meet Detectives Kelly King and Jessica Getchius of the Simi Valley Police Department will discuss the problems faced by victims and perpetrators of domestic violence at the monthly luncheon meeting of...

Womans flight aboard B-25 bomber honors grandfathers WWII bravery As Kerri Braemer-Castro looked down at the mountains and valleys of Camarillo from the cockpit of a World War II B-25 bomber earlier this month, she finally felt connected to...

Shred your documents The Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce will hold a drive-thru document shredding event from 1 to 4 p.m. Fri., Nov. 11 in the parking lot behind the Chamber office, 40...
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The 12th Annual National Day of Prayer will be held this Sunday, January 8th, 2017 in front of the New Government Administration Building under the theme is Lord give us vision that we may Prosper. The ecumenical service will begin at 5:30 p.m. with Praise and Worship led by the Harmonics Team & Band.





The Order of Service includes a call to worship and invocation. Renditions will be done by the church choir of the Seventh Day Adventist Church as well as the Love and Grace Youth choir.





Intercessory Prayers for: Government, Economic stability, Against Crime & Violence, the Family, the Youth and Protection will be offered by a member of the clergy, together with the various persons from the different churches, while Rev. Jaediene Meade will give the sermonette. The Honorable Prime Minister William Marlin will offer remarks, followed by a word of thanks by a representative of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Affairs.





The National Day of Prayer is observed annually on the second Sunday in January, with an invitation to people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It is a way of bringing together the entire population in prayer to start the New Year on the right footing.




In Donald Trump's op-ed published on November 6, 2016, at USA Today , "Why you should vote for me," he put the spotlight on the importance of the Supreme Court. Included was this statement: "I will restore the constitutional rule of law and nominate Supreme Court justices who will do the same."

The future of the Supreme Court was the most important issue for pro-life voters when they voted overwhelmingly for Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the U.S. on November 9, 2016. Throughout his campaign, Trump repeated promised he would appoint pro-life justices, in contrast to those pro-abortion Hillary Clinton would select. Based upon the next president's nominations, the Supreme Court could determine whether 58 million more abortions would take place, or if pre-born children will once again enjoy legal protection.

Of merit is Trump's pro-life pledge made in his third debate with moderator Chris Wallace, noted here, in which Trump tells Wallace that the judges he will appoint will be pro-life. Trump's response when Wallace asked Trump specifically if he wanted the court, including the justices Trump would name, to overturn Roe v. Wade:

If we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that is really what will happen. That will happen automatically in my opinion. Because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. I will say this. It will go back to the states and the states will then make a determination.

Trump's letter addressed to Dear Pro-LIfe Leaders in September of 2016 lays out Trump's pro-life commitments in an even stronger form addressing these four specific commitments: nominating pro-life justices; signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act; defending Planned Parenthood; and making the Hyde Amendment permanent.

Trump to be held accountable to his pro-life pledge

To insure that Trump does live up to his promise to appoint pro-life judges and that he is held accountable if he errs, Andy Schlafly, a director of Eagle Forum and son of its great founder, Phyllis Schlafly, drafted a coalition letter (read here) that was delivered to both President-elect Trump in New York and Vice President-elect Pence in D.C. on Thursday, December 29, 2016. A remarkable 90 groups have signed onto Schlafly's coalition letter. Paul Caprio of Family Pac Federal and David Smith of the Illinois Family Institute were signers here in Illinois. More groups continue to ask to join Schlafly's coalition letter. Additions are welcomed.

A segment of Schlafly's coalition letter was read on Fox News Sunday. The segment was aired again later on Sunday. This widely-viewed news show likewise used Schlafly's evaluation of the candidates. It is is important that you view Schlafly's chart to garner how he rates the Supreme Court candidates.

Tony Perkins recently said, Theres clearly some on the list that are better than others. There are, indeed, vast differences among candidates on the list, especially with respect to Trump's pro-life pledge. Some of the candidates (including Sykes and Colloton) have even repeatedly taken the pro-abortion side.

The importance of pro-life judges

Why is it so important that Trump does nominate someone who will fill the vacancy left by Scalia's death with a candidate in the image of Scalia?

The biggest prize in the presidential election was always the Supreme Court. President-elect Donald J. Trump is now positioned to make it more conservative, possibly for generations to come. Justice Antonin Scalias seat, vacant since he died in February, will almost certainly be filled by a conservative nominee. Thus, the Court will be back to its full strength and will again tilt right, as it has for decades, emboldening Chief Justice John Roberts and leaving Kennedy as the ultimate decider.

Of note is that the man or woman who replaces Scalia on the bench won't change its balance of power. Trump's more lasting impact is dependent on the other eight justices, particularly those old enough to favor retirement or risk dying in office. Liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are 83 and 78, respectively, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who often sides with liberals on major cases, is 80. If the president-elect gets to replace any of these three after taking office, the court will shift to the right.

It is therefore important that Trump's not only upholds his pro-life pledge in making his selection of the first U.S. Supreme Court vacancy to replace Scalia, but that All of Trump's expected 100+ judicial nominees should be pro-life. The advisers to the first President Bush thought he could get away with breaking his "no new taxes" pledge, but he couldn't. It's a mistake for anyone to recommend, even implicitly, that Trump break his pro-life pledge.

Trump's list of 21 scrutinized

In a few brief remarks to reporters at Trump Tower in New York City on Wednesday, November 17, Kellyanne Conway said the president-elect will make a Supreme Court pick from the list of 21 candidates he identified during his campaign. What should we make of Trump's much-publicized list of 21 potential high court nominees?

In an interview with Steve Deace of Conservative Review on December 12, 2016, Andy Schlafly expressed misgivings about the list of 21 potential Supreme Court candidates, raising the question as to why pro-life advocates should be skeptical of Trump's list. Schlafly, believing that the Supreme Court has more influence than the president does, at least within our country as it currently stands, is in the forefront of making sure that Trump isn't fooled or mislead into nominating a Supreme Court candidate who cannot be certified as 100% pro-life.

Regarding the list of 21, Schlafly explains that the 21 names were put forth by the Trump campaign to calm people down and to reassure them he would pick a good, strict constructionist to the Supreme Court. Some of names did come from The Heritage Foundation, while others came from the Federalist Society. As a member of the Federalist Society, "Schlafly points out that the Federalist Society is not a pro-life organization."

This has led to multiple nominees to the Supreme Court who voted with the pro-abortion side.

Even so, pressure is building to deflect Trump away from his pledge by the Federalist Society. The Institute for Justice just published an article in USA Today here that says nothing about Trump's pro-life pledge and ends up endorsing the most pro-abortion judge on the list of 21 given to Trump, Diane Sykes.

Trump transition team identifies the eight front runners

A report from Politico on January 1, 2017, did narrow down and identify the eight front runner that the Trump transition team has identified to replace late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The profiles are here on the eight possible nominees: William Pryor, Diane Sykes, Raymond Kethledge, Joan Larsen, Neil Gorsuch, Steven Colloton, Raymond Gruender, and Thomas Hardiman.

According to Andy Schlafly, most of the candidates in the Politico report are names we should be worried about. Of concern to Andy are Diane Sykes, Steve Colloton, Joan Larson, Neil Gorsuch, Raymond Kethledge, and William Pryor, who recently decided to grant homosexual groups access to middle schools as young as sixth grade to establish their "clubs." Charles Canady from the Florida Supreme Court most impressed Andy on Trump's list of 21, yet Canady didn't even make the narrowed down Politico Trump list which identified the eight front runners.

Organized opposition will attempt to undo Trump's pro-life pledge

Self-described "pro-life" groups in D.C. must be held more accountable. Some don't even say they support Trump's pro-life pledge, while others are obviously not speaking out as they should be. Some even tried to talk others out of speaking out.

Yesterday the Democrats in opposition said they would try to block whoever the nominee is. So we should continue to insist on a pro-life nominee worth fighting for, because it is going to be a fight regardless. If Trump's advisers persuade him to break his pro-life pledge, then it will become a disastrous replay of the first President Bush's breaking of his famous "no new taxes" pledge.

The media and senators will push for a woman because all four women on the list are not pro-life. But there are plenty of pro-life women judges having better qualifications than those on the list. The most-qualified pro-life women should be interviewed for the job. Judges Jennifer Elrod and Edith Jones, both recommended in Schlafly's coalition letter, should be interviewed by Trump for the job.

Trump's pledge to the American people in the final debate and afterwards was to pick only pro-life nominees, not to pick only from the list. For a job that lasts 30+ years, we should not accept anything less than the best.

Nancy Thorner is a citizen journalist and conservative activist from Chicago's northern suburbs.
NEW YORK - Friday morning, NBC News released information about the intelligence report on alleged Russian hacking before President-elect Donald Trump was briefed on it.

The NBC story, entitled "Top Russians Celebrated When Trump Won, Intel Report Says: Source" says the Russians' glee reflected their alleged involvement in boosting Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Trump wasn't happy about NBC's pre-emption and let it be known via Twitter - asking a fair question Thursday evening:

Friday morning, the president-elect voiced more frustration, asking Republican leadership to look into who leaked the intelligence to NBC before he saw it:

NBC News said the report says Russian officials celebrated Trump's win, suggesting that Russia "intervened" in the election.
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Spicer, who will be the Trump Administration's press secretary, spoke Wednesday night to a group consisting mostly students at Chicago's Institute of Politics. About 250 attended the sold-out event, along with substantial number of local media.

The Institute of Politics is a non-partisan extracurricular organization at the University of Chicago. This according to their website, the group "aims to inspire and cultivate the next generation of political and public service leaders." They offer a large array of speakers, with all events being free with a required RSVP.

The panel discussion with Sean Spicer was moderated by Executive Director Steve Edwards with David Axelrod and former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the panel. Afterwards, they took several questions from students.





Upon arriving, I found three anti-Trump protesters outside the venue. Once the event inside started another protester stood up disrupting the presentation with a rant against Trump. He was removed by security without incident.

Prior to the event, a student posted on social media that he was going to get a group of students to have "projectile vomiting" at the beginning of the presentation in an organized disruption. This did not take place. The same group also spoke of doing property damage to get message out against Trump including "flipping cars."

Fox News' Tucker Carlson interviewed on of the students HERE.

There was a large security presence at this event. For the most part, events at University of Chicago go off without a hitch. Last year, Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez was forced off the stage as protesters disrupted her speech.

This panel was quite interesting with much discussion about Twitter, fake news and the future of the White House Press Corps. Spicer indicated there will many changes with Trump as president. He said as indicated this week, that Trump will "drive the news" and quite often it might be from his Twitter feed. He also said the press corps may be expanded to Include "new" media, and even some smaller local bloggers.

Afterwards Spicer posed for photos, including one with a large group from the College Republicans. I got a chance to chat with him for a moment. I told him I would like to be one of those bloggers someday in the White House Briefing Room.

View the discussion HERE.
The exhibition which showcases 2 million years of history has just clocked its 1 millionth global visitor here in Canberra.

A History of the World in 100 Objects has proven to be a grand success, opening in Abu Dhabi in April 2014, touring Japan and Taiwan, before hitting Australian shores in Perth in February 2016. It opened in Canberra on September 9.

National Museum of Australia director Mathew Trinca is proud Canberra has clocked the millionth visitor. Credit:Karleen Minney

Before arriving in Australia 845,861 people had visited the exhibition globally.

National Museum of Australia director Dr Mathew Trinca said he was extremely proud that the 1 millionth visitor occurred here in Canberra.
Sweet natured and sweet toothed Phyllis Coble celebrated her 100th birthday on Friday surrounded by the things she loves: family, friends and chocolate.

The Uniting Mirinjani Weston aged care facility resident, described by daughter-in-law Frances as the stalwart of the family, said the secret to living a long life was simple.

Phyllis Coble celebrated her 100th birthday with her family and friends at Uniting Mirinjani Weston. Credit:Karleen Minney

"Smile at everyone every day," she said.

Mrs Coble was born in Paddington and grew up in eastern Sydney as one of six children.
Accused cop killer David Eastman has taken his fight for innocence to the country's highest court in yet another bid to stave off his second trial for the assassination of Colin Stanley Winchester this year.

Mr Eastman, 71, failed in his latest attempt to block a retrial for the alleged murder of Mr Winchester, 55, who was Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner when he was shot dead in his Canberra driveway in January 1989.

David Eastman's legal team has filed an application in the High Court for special leave to appeal against an ACT Court of Appeal decision from December.

An ACT Court of Appeal decision last month cleared the path for Mr Eastman, a former public servant, to face a jury for the second time over the killing after a series of legal battles spanning more than two decades.
It's unsurprising that Hitler still draws in the crowds and not just in Germany. Most Western nations harbour a Nazi obsession. Britain has long played Hitler for laughs, or to showcase heroism. The US deploys the swastika for dramatic effect, the sigil of the ultimate Hollywood baddy.

Actually, nothing very shocking. They're buying a heavily annotated edition that, including critical commentary, runs to 2000 pages. I don't believe the book is being bought by frothing neo-Nazi extremists. More likely, it's being stocked by schools, universities, libraries, and ordinary Germans trying to educate themselves about an important historical document that they have hitherto been unable to buy in print.

The annotated edition of Mein Kampf is the first version of Adolf Hitler's notorious manifesto to be published in Germany since the end of World War II. Credit:AP

Classics never die. Seventy years after Germany last allowed it to appear in print, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has become a bestseller again. A new edition of the rambling, nationalist, anti-Semitic screed has sold 85,000 copies and is on its sixth print run.

Germany, wracked by guilt, has only recently tried laughing at Hitler. A successful 2015 film based on a satirical novel, Look Who's Back, was Germany's first major attempt. It imagines that Hitler has been resurrected in modern Berlin and given a television show by oblivious media executives who think he is a talented impersonator. At one point, Hitler gives flirting advice to a hapless companion, who retorts that Adolf should go and write a dating book called Mein Kampf With My Wife.

But in the end, the movie goes for sinister moral impact, not humour. The Germans might try to laugh at Adolf, but it still doesn't come easily.

Nor should it. Reverence towards past horrors is worth preserving  and hard to revive when it fades. I saw this in France during a school trip to Alsace. We visited Le Struthof, the only concentration camp ever built on French soil. My group, about half of us Jewish, toured the camp in silence. Not so for some of the French schoolchildren. I remember watching, with total shock, as one laughing French teen photographed another poised as if lying on a metal stretcher that slid into an old furnace. I can't imagine a German schoolteacher tolerating that kind of jape.

Reverence, though, can be taken too far. Promoting Nazism is prohibited in German law, as you might expect. But there are scholars and campaigners who take it further, suggesting it's immoral even to compare Nazism and the Holocaust with any other political movements or crimes. The Nazi Holocaust, they say, is above comparison.

Unfortunately, the Holocaust is one of many genocides and massacres throughout history. And Mein Kampf can teach us not just about Hitler, but about the seductive appeal of scapegoating, violence, racism, paranoid victimhood and national nostalgia. Historic parallels, drawn in good faith, should not be sacrilegious.
Iranian refugees Mehdi and Mohammad claim they were bashed by police and immigration officials on Manus Island on New Year's Eve. Boochani was non-plussed. "I deeply understand the local people and know why they are angry and upset with the refugees," he said. "Their society does not have capacity for accepting 1000 men. They are victims, like the refugees." What the furore did was lift the lid on tensions that have been building since the detention centre was declared unconstitutional by PNG's highest court last April, forcing authorities to allow detainees to come and go during daylight hours and have access to mobile phones. Dismissed from office: Former Manus Island MP Ronny Knight appeared on Radio National on Monday. Credit:Facebook It also underscored the danger of stereotyping the detainees, those whose job it is to guard and protect them and the locals who subsist on what they grow, catch and trade and speak almost 100 languages.

Just as there are compassionate security guards and dedicated health professionals, there are asylum seekers who have misbehaved since the gates were opened and the temptations of marijuana, home brew and local women presented themselves. Boochani recently took issue with one angle in a feature by New York Times writer Roger Cohen that appeared under the headline, "Broken men in paradise: The world's refugee crisis knows no more sinister exercise in cruelty than Australia's island prisons". "The danger of representing the men incarcerated on Manus as broken is that the more nuanced truths of life and self are lost," he co-wrote with writer and trauma worker Janet Galbraith, who is on Manus Island. The truth is the Manus detainees are a mixed bunch, including writers, artists and professionals; men so traumatised they still refuse to leave their rooms after the violence that engulfed the centre in 2014; and some who drink too much and chase women; those who consider themselves the walking dead and those who retain the capacity to dream and hope. What was remarkable was the furore attracted not one word of commentary from Australian politicians, Coalition and Labor, who assert the indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru has been a critical factor in stopping the boats.

It was almost the same the previous week, when Faysal Ishak Ahmed died on Christmas Eve, days after being turned away from the detention centre's medical facility and, he reported to his friends, told there was nothing wrong with him. When the issue was broached fleetingly with Malcolm Turnbull on Christmas Day, it was in another context altogether. The Prime Minister was asked to comment about reports of a disturbance in the centre after Ahmed's death. Turnbull responded with the familiar lines about making no apology for protecting Australia's borders. Manus, you see, is Australia's dirty little secret, perhaps the ultimate and most morally reprehensible example of the end justifying the means when it comes to public policy. It is easy for politicians to avert their eyes because it is so very far away, so removed from notions of scrutiny and accountability, and so distant from the everyday concerns of Australians who, in any case, overwhelmingly support a hard line when it comes to border protection. It is also easy for them to deflect responsibility for the situation we have today, where most of the asylum seekers are suffering from mental illness and less equipped to rebuild their lives than they were when they sought protection from Australia.

One early failure was to foster a positive relationship between the detainees and the local population. Instead, the asylum seekers were told stories of cannibals and deadly diseases, while the locals were warned about dangerous criminals lurking behind the detention centre gates. But the biggest failure has been not to offer a scintilla of hope to men who, in the majority of cases, have been found to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries. On the contrary, the unrelenting focus has been to pressure them to return, regardless of their refugee status. The official inquiry into the violence of February 2014 identified several causes of unrest, including frustration about delays in processing, uncertainty about how long detainees would be kept in the centre, and the lack of information about when they might be reunited with immediate family members. All still apply. Now, the expectation of those on Manus, refugees and locals alike, is that this sad chapter is coming to a climax, though deep uncertainty about what sort of climax it will be. The Manusians want their island back; the refugees want their freedom. It is almost two months since Turnbull announced an agreement had been reached to resettle refugees on Nauru Manus in the United States, with an initial focus on women, children and families on Nauru.
Eric Fisher was a leader in the field of medical general practice in Australia who continued to see patients until he was 90. Central to his approach was a belief that emotional well-being has a significant impact on a person's health and recovery. Rather than just treat the symptoms, Eric and his wife and medical partner Anne, encouraged their patients to talk during their consultations and saw it as a central part of their treatment.

Dr Fisher was seen as a role model by his colleagues and held key leadership positions throughout his 67 years of medicine. He was president of the Marriage Guidance Council in 1985; president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners from 1986 to 1988. In 2006, he was bestowed Life Fellowship by the College and in 2010 he was awarded their most prestigious honour, the Rose-Hunt Medal. Like Sir Winston Churchill, he was a 33rd degree mason which is the highest degree conferred on members of the Masonic Lodge. In 1991, he was appointed a Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia for services to medicine as a general practitioner and for services to the community.

Dr Eric Fisher: Incorporated talking therapy into his medical practice.

Eric Fisher was born Alan Eric Fisher in West Wyalong on July 21, 1925. He was the eldest child of Ernest and Louisa Fisher. His father was the local GP, and his mother a nurse. His younger siblings, Adrienne and Coll, have predeceased him.

Fisher said that his interest in medicine emerged at the age of five when his father removed his tonsils and adenoids on the kitchen table under a chloroform anaesthetic. As a youngster, he accompanied his father while he attended patients. By the time he was eight years old, he had seen numerous people who had died by accident, violence or natural causes.
Your story and letters in the Herald indicate rightly the concern widely held about the recovery of possible overpayments to beneficiaries of Centrelink. However, the recovery of $300 million to date reveals there have been overpayments. In addition one would be extremely naive not to accept that among the many rightly entitled to community support there are a few unscrupulously exploiting the system and ripping off Centrelink and the taxpayer. David Scarlett Killara I am relatively computer savvy. I despair for anyone who is not, when they try to contact Centrelink online. It is frankly a nightmare. I recently had the occasion to contact them and found it quite impossible. When the system was changed some time ago, I wrote to the then minister, Scott Morrison, outlining the problem. I received the usual Morrison response  no reply. I urge the current minister or Centrelink executive to spend time trying to connect online or asking some elderly relative to try. They might realise just how difficult it can be for the general public. I found it better to set aside a couple of hours and wait on the phone. Keith Hardie Caringbah

In the 1980's my elderly mother was petrified of Centrelink, and made sure I updated all new information regarding her few investments. Now it appears that it all has to be done online. At least I have a computer  but also need a mobile phone number. I have been trying to get online since March 2016. I wonder how many pensioners older than me (70) can manage all this new technology? I also notice that the queue at our local Centrelink is now a lot smaller. In 2014 you could wait for an hour to talk to someone  not joking. I went this week to try to sort out why I couldn't get the computer access I needed. Three phone calls later and I am still waiting. It obviously gets to the stage where you say "Why bother?" I don't think I am the only one so if the government wants to cut back on Centrelink payments, my suggestion is to first fund Centrelink  but I think the horse has already bolted. Glenys Quirk Forster Instead of targeting the hapless group of people who supposedly owe Centrelink a debt why doesn't the government crack down on the countless trade people who demand cash for their services and the people who comply with their demands. The pecuniary return would reap millions.

Elizabeth Maher Bangor What I find puzzling about the Centrelink debacle is the refusal of the minister responsible to even consider that possibly there is a major problem. The refusal once again suggests that the government is contemptuous of the more vulnerable sections of the population. Alan Morris Eastlakes Centrelink's action appears to be in breach of principle 6.1 of the Australian Privacy Principles. If we had a tort of privacy in Australian law, Centrelink would be liable for damages, even if it did not misinterpret any information. Martin Bibby Beecroft

Mum and the mighty Murray were the best swimming teachers Learning to swim in the Murray River. Credit:Justin McManus Raised in Albury on the Murray River, still alive and in my 60s, I'm a graduate of the Learn to Swim schools of the 1960s and '70s. (Letters, January 5 and 6). Held in the summer holidays at the town pool, the classes were very affordable and seemed to be run by teachers from the Education Department. Also a graduate of exposure to the Murray River, my mother was relentless in her directives. "Never fight the current, never panic. Aim for the bank further downstream but don't panic. If you tire, just float, and float, eventually the river will deposit you on a sand bar. We will pick you up downstream."

The water was cold, the currents fast, littered with "snags", the river's floor uneven. The mighty Murray was unpredictable but, treated with respect, was there to be enjoyed on the "stinking hot" days after school uniforms and classrooms without airconditioning. As an adult, jumping off rocks and into the waters of the Mossman Gorge in Queensland, I was held underwater by an eddy. Unsuccessful attempts to rise for air triggered those lessons from the past. Do not panic, do not fight the river's current, and float out. I emerged safely downstream to the relief of those who had dived in to find me. Learn to swim, learn the basics of survival, then enjoy the water. Judith Nicholson Vincentia Paul Hunt, while Stayin' Alive does have the right tempo for pumping a person's chest to resuscitate him/her (Letters, January 5), my first-aid instructor taught us that Queen's Another One Bites the Dust also works just as well. Now that's irony!

Denis Wolff Carlingford Hewson's pen helps make argument add up Maybe John Hewson couldn't count his GST candles on his cake, but he sure can compose a beautifully articulated and compelling argument for a far more complex and important issue: a fair go for all in a world that is heating up emotionally and physically ("Beware the egos of the new conservatives", January 6). The abacus can be retired forever in favour of the pen. Peter Rainey Wollstonecraft Daughter gives thanks for 'priceless' tribute to father

As Jon's daughter, I wish to express a mother-load of gratitude to Ross Barlow for his letter expressing his dismay at the lack of recognition of the Australian talent we lost over the year in the 2016 New Year's Eve celebrations (Letters, January 2.) I also want to thank from my heart Trevor Somerville, my Dad's former Cabramatta High School teacher and basketball coach, for his letter (Letters, January 3) which beautifully captured the loony energy, playful essence and humility of Jon English  the man, who I miss terribly every day, particularly over this holiday period. Music and fireworks would have been nice, but Trevor, your letter is priceless. Min English North Manly 'Special relationship' is house of cards

Activists campaigning for independence in Indonesia's restive West Papua province. Credit:AP The West Papuan solidarity movement has been calling on the Australian government for years to stop all ties with the Indonesian military. Indonesia has just done so ("Cutting ties a matter of principle", January 6). It's a pity it did not come from the Australian side because of ethical reasons i.e. because of the behaviour of the Indonesian military in West Papua. Throughout the past year the Indonesian security forces cracked down on numerous peaceful rallies with thousands of Papuans arrested. Although the majority of activists were eventually released, during the arrests activists are regularly beaten and in some cases face torture. The Australian government should note that's it's now 53 years since Indonesia took over administration of West Papua in 1963 and West Papuans are still marching in the streets calling for a real referendum unlike the sham so-called act of free choice that was held in 1969. We are continually told that Indonesia and Australia have a special relationship. What sort of relationship is it if an incident can occur because an Indonesian soldier does not like to see educational material about West Papua? The relationship appears to be a house of cards. The Australian government should realise the issue of West Papua is not going away and should be doing all it can to raise concern about the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian government. Joe Collins Australia West Papua Association Mosman

Indonesia's temporary suspension in military ties with Australia seems to have more to do with the internal politics of Indonesia given the training materials were not new and Kopassus forces had been rotated through this training regime regularly (Ambition, mistrust behind move to halt military ties, January 6). Even if repaired it will be temporary as it is a sign of long-term incompatibility between the two nations especially in light of the increasing religious fundamentalism on the streets of Indonesia ("Failure to communicate complicates insult claim", January 5). Gordana Martinovich Dulwich Hill A man of the country Bert Candy's letter criticising Barnaby Joyce is unfair (Letters, January 6). He forgets that the people of New England elected him over Tony Windsor and I suspect they will again at the next federal election if Joyce decides to run. Barnaby Joyce has never pretended to be someone he is not. Ill-timed with some of his comments in the past, mistake-prone, yes, but there is no deviousness in him  and a lot of country people are like that. Warts and all but he gets things done for his electorate. He might be ignored by the big end of town but they don't vote for him. His attack on Tony Abbott was not "spineless" but an attempt not to portray the Coalition as not being a total write-off. Fiona Nash tried to do the same. Nothing is ever completely "rosy" in any party at any time. Bert Candy's knowledge of Australian politics should have taught him that by now. By attacking "those thieving supermarket dairy honchos" Joyce is trying to get a fairer deal for milk suppliers? That's all. Simple. Does Bert Candy's livelihood depend on being a milko?

Yes, our nation is a proud one and will continue to remain so no matter who leads the Nationals? Remember when it was the Country Party? Remember Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair? Were things more "rosy" then? I have worked among country people in New England and the far North Coast of NSW and travelled over the state for 18 years. I have nothing but admiration for country people. It is not easy running a farm and making a living from it. To those who think otherwise, all I can say is, try it. Peter Skrzynecki Eastwood Another astute letter from the recipient of the Herald's 2016 Letter writer of the year award, the brilliant Bert Candy. I'm sure that I'm not the only avid reader of the letters page who,on reading one of Bert's offerings, has the urge to reread it out loud to anyone in earshot. This habit does not always go down well with anyone at my breakfast table attempting to read their own copy of the Herald but I am always forgiven when I read out the sign-off name. I can't wait to read what Bert has in store for us in what is bound to be an extraordinary year. Max Fischer Scarborough. Levels of bingeing

Yesterday I shared a long lunch with friends. The drivers were abstinent or very careful. Their partners and the hosts less so. We shared a few bottles of wine over four hours, accompanied by excellent food and stimulating conversation. This morning I learnt that we were binge drinking, having drunk four or more standard units of alcohol during the afternoon. ("Why kids are less likely to binge if parents give them alcohol", January 6). If this is binge drinking, what is the rapid consumption of multiple drinks on Friday or Saturday night? Sally James Russell Lea 'Ockerism' glamorised Each Australian summer "ockerism" is paraded as a male virtue courtesy of the likes of Shane Warne who as a cricket commentator is licensed to say anything that comes to his head ("Pup's patter is here to stay", January 6).

Warne recalled this week that on the occasion he went to Cricket Australia's headquarters to collect his first "baggy green" national cap he remembers being very hungover. He walked into the building feeling "so crook" that before he could find a toilet, he vomited. Thanks for sharing, Warney Is drinking to excess so entrenched in this man's life that he thinks it's OK to recount alcohol-induced vomiting stories on live, national television? Would the Australian alcohol industry be OK with this yarn? And Channel Nine? Quite possibly yes, given the millions each spend on creating and dispensing images of yobs, mates and "the guys" knocking back beers, just like Warney. Kevin Meagher Newtown

La la lacking a lot Really wanted to enjoy La La Land but feel great failure in that, apart from the piano performances and the one band rendition, we found the film tedious ("La La Land is a terrible film, but it will win Best Picture at the Oscars anyway", smh.com.au, January 6). Choreography was ordinary (jumping on cars was original, but not breath-taking, as in Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly), the singing was poor, the focusing for lengthy spells on Emma Stone's face was painful and the story (?) contrived. The whole idea of presenting something which was "pure entertainment" did deserve merit, but director Damien Chazelle didn't pull it off. Who needs Scrooge when I'm around? Wendy Crew Lane Cove Misguided priorities Tony Rogers, General Manager Kogarah Golf Club assures us that the heritage-listed Arncliffe Market Gardens will not be affected by relocating the golf club from Cooks Cove to public land (Letters Jan 6). The relocation is to allow developers to construct 5000 dwellings at Cooks Cove, near the the massive high-rise development at Wolli Creek  an area already lacking public open space. A Google search shows that there are several golf courses in suburbs adjacent to Kogarah  are they well utilised? Should planners give priority to a private golf club over the general public in the allocation of scarce open space?

Judy Finlason Undercliffe Village idiocy is surely a matter of degrees One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts holds a mining engineering degree from the University of Queensland and a master's degree in business from the University of Chicago. New Zealand MP Kelvin Davis holds a teaching diploma from the Auckland College of Education. So who is the "village idiot"? ("NZ MP labels 'village idiot' One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts' comments 'absolutely nuts'", January 6)

George Fishman Vaucluse Fat cats so predictable Why should we be surprised that CEOs continue to earn many multiples of the average income ("Five days in, and fat cats have won year's pay race", smh.com.au January 5)? For some people, excess is never enough. Norm Neill Darlinghurst No rackets in this court

Looks like the up-and-coming tennis player Oliver Anderson is due for a court appearance not scheduled on tennis' competition circuit, ("Young tennis star charged with match fixing", smh.com.au, January 6). Stewart Smith North Kellyville Define 'rule by tweeters' Oughtn't the word be, Twittocracy? David Andrew Paddington

Unrepentant Aussie joker A rethink on Aussie humour? (Letters, January 6). I couldn't give a rat's. Robert Hickey North Avoca Postscript Welcome to the first Post Script for 2017. In the inevitable looking back at the tail end of 2016, The New York Times' Letters editor, Tom Feyer, selected his favourites of the year. In the spirit of brevity being the soul of wit, he chose the shortest letter he'd ever published which read: !. It was a response from a Californian reader to the question: "When I'm mistakenly put on an email chain should I hit 'reply all' asking to be removed?" So let's throw down the gauntlet and see if Herald letter writers can improve on that.
Australia supplies only 3.4 per cent of Indonesia's imports (notably wheat and live cattle) and Indonesia only 2.5 per cent of Australia's imports. Two-way investment levels are also modest. The ACT government, in selecting priority markets for engagement, rates Indonesia an "also ran".

Strong government-to-government connections have not been well reflected either in trade or people-to-people relationships although Indonesia has been a popular tourist destination and a recent mega business mission (to be followed by an Indonesia Australia Business Week in March 2017) has shown Australian recognition of the potential for increased trade.

Australian public attitudes turned negative in 2015 after the executions of drug couriers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, but recovered quickly. The Lowy Institute of International Affairs' 2016 survey found Indonesia to be rated Australia's third "best friend in Asia" (after China and Japan) overtaking Singapore. However the same survey found public knowledge of Indonesia to be limited. Only 35 per cent identified Indonesia as a democracy despite almost 20 years of democratic rule.

This week's diplomatic spat sparked by Indonesia's Kopassus (the equivalent of the SAS) is not untypical of issues with our neighbour, Indonesia, but the bilateral relationship is broad and strong. Australia's spanking new embassy complex in Jakarta, housing Australia's largest embassy, exemplifies the close attention federal governments pay to Indonesia with its 255 million people and 17,000 islands.

Indonesia is seen as a "difficult" market ranking 109th in the 2016 World Bank Ease of Doing Business survey (China was 84th, Singapore first, New Zealand second and India 130th). Weak rule of law, complex bureaucratic processes and corruption remain problems but, as the latter scores indicate, ones not unique to Indonesia. Security issues are also real but little different from those facing most countries.

Indonesia often gets a bad press; most recently with Islamic-inspired demonstrations against the Chinese Christian Governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama known as "Ahok'', a political ally of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

A highly effective governor, Ahok has been accused of blasphemy, a crime in Indonesia. Many observers expect him to be convicted and jailed although the evidence against him seems tenuous. These large demonstrations have been peaceful and, although conducted by some fringe groups of dubious repute, are widely believed to be financed and encouraged by political competitors of Ahok for (re)election as governor of Jakarta. Major Islamic bodies Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have not been involved. Possible undermining of the successful Jokowi administration and the rights of minorities are of more concern than the demonstrations per se.

Why should we take Indonesia seriously as a market? One reason is to be found in (recently revised) projections of economic growth by PWC. Indonesia's GDP, based on PPP rankings, moves from $US2.5 trillion in 2014 and ninth ranking in the world to $US5.5 trillion and fifth ranking by 2030 and to $US12.2 trillion and fourth place in the world (after China, India and the US) by 2050. These projections assume reasonably favourable policy settings and absence of major disruptions but are widely accepted as credible.

A more compelling argument may be the growth of the Indonesian middle class. Euromonitor rates Indonesia's middle class as the world's fourth-largest with 17.3 million households (the US's middle class was 25.3 million households, India 74 million and China 112 million). It notes that this will grow to 20 million households by 2030 with strongly rising expenditure. In a ranking of middle-class consumption by country, Brookings ranks Indonesia as eighth in the world by 2020 and fourth by 2030 behind only India, China and the US. Indonesia's per capital income in 2050 is estimated by PWC as $US38,263, midway between India ($US26,264 and China $US43,528).
Washington; In a last-ditch conservation effort that seems to have sprung straight from the plot of a Sea World-themed sci-fi movie, scientists are turning to military dolphins to save a critically endangered species of porpoise from extinction.

The dolphins, part of "Seal Team 6" have been specially trained by the US Navy to detect undersea mines and other potential hazards.

'Makai' was part of the US team of specially trained dolphins sent to southern Iraq in 2003 to detect underwater mines. Credit:Reuters

Navy officials hope they'll be equally good at finding the last vestiges of the vaquita, the world's smallest dolphin.

Vaquita make their home in the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez between the Mexican mainland and the Baja California peninsula and have been decimated by the Chinese lust for traditional medicines.
Labor has called on Health Minister Sussan Ley to explain why she bought an investment property on the Gold Coast during a taxpayer-funded trip classified as official business.

The opposition's health spokeswoman Catherine King said Ms Ley must "front up today and explain" or resign.

Ms Ley said she had not planned to buy a Gold Coast ocean view apartment during a trip to Brisbane in May 2015 for a government announcement about an expansion of drugs included in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

In a statement, Ms Ley's office said the minister travelled to the Gold Coast for meetings with health stakeholders after the announcement, but her purchase of the $795,000 Main Beach property had been unexpected.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is facing calls to sack Health Minister Sussan Ley after revelations she bought a $795,000 Gold Coast apartment from a Liberal donor while on a taxpayer-funded trip.

Ms Ley and her partner Graham Johnston charged taxpayers $3949 for flights to Brisbane where she announced $1.3 billion in pharmaceutical benefits spending on May 9, 2015.

The same day, the couple travelled to the Gold Coast where they bought a Main Beach apartment with an ocean view at auction.

Ms Ley, who charged taxpayers $360 for one night's travel allowance to stay at Main Beach, said she met with patients on the Gold Coast to discuss new medicines but could not say more about the "personal health discussions".
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has said the government makes "no apology" for pursuing people's debts as it continues to fend off anger surrounding Centrelink's troubled $4.5 billion debt recovery mission.

Mr Joyce - the most senior government figure to weigh into the furore so far - said that social security recipients who owe the government "are not criminals" but need to settle the debts in the interest of taxpayers.

"I make no apology for making sure that those who didn't need it, who got it, pay the money back," the Nationals leader told ABC.

"We make no apology for the fact that we are trying to make sure we are more efficient, have a wider grasp of those who might have received payments in error."
The $795,000 Gold Coast apartment that Health Minister Sussan Ley bought on a taxpayer-funded trip was purchased from a large Liberal Party donor who knew her "in a professional capacity".

Ms Ley and her partner charged taxpayers $3949 for flights during the two-day trip to Queensland in May 2015 during which Ms Ley made an announcement about the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in Brisbane.

Ms Ley claims that, in the same trip, she met health stakeholders on the Gold Coast but also made an unexpected purchase of an apartment on Main Beach Parade with a view of the ocean.

Property records show Sussan Penelope Ley bought the home from Martin Henry Corkery, a Queensland man who donated $50,000 to the Queensland Liberal National Party in 2011.
Elizabeth Cage had been living happily in Sydney as an American expat for 16 years and she thought her American political involvement was well and truly over, a chapter of her life she had closed in moving to Australia. That is, until the Republican nomination of Donald Trump.

"I knew I needed to go to the US and work for Hillary," she said. Cage flew to Virginia and began working as a volunteer coordinator and voter registration manager for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Coordinators of Women's March in Canberra, Codie Bell and Lizzy O'Shea. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

After the campaign ended and the results were in she returned to Australia, feeling helpless and scared about what the future held for her home country. Many of her American and Australian friends alike shared this sentiment of impotence, fearing not only for the future of America under Trump but for what it would mean for the world at large.

When Cage heard about the Women's March On Washington planned for the weekend of Trump's presidential inauguration she desperately wanted to go as did many of her American friends who lived in Sydney. Unfortunately, they soon realised it was beyond their financial capacity.
It was meant to be the cruise of a lifetime for retired northern NSW couple Kay and Ken Dollery.

A 43-day voyage next month from Singapore to Malaysia and Myanmar, and across the Indian Ocean on a luxury cruise liner to South Africa via the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion Island and Madagascar.

Kay and Ken Dollery have lost $37,000 after the cruise company they booked with went bust. Credit:Lindsay Moller

As part of their $37,000 "Grand Indian Ocean" package, the couple had business-class air fares from Sydney to Singapore, and a return flight home from Cape Town in South Africa

But the voyage of a lifetime has turned into a nightmare for the Dollerys and more than 500 other Australians  many of them elderly  after the collapse of All Leisure Group, a British company that managed Voyages of Discovery cruises.
Australia's peak administrative Islamic body is refusing to relinquish land being used by one of the state's largest schools despite the potential for it to save the school from being shut down.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal upheld the federal Department of Education's decision to strip funding from the 2400 student school on Thursday after it found the school was operating for a profit through millions of dollars in inflated rent payments and loans made to the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.

Children leaving the Malek Fahd Islamic School in Greenacre. Credit:Nic Walker

The tribunal found "the ongoing burden of the uncommercial arrangements with the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils" meant the board was still not a "fit and proper person" to run a school.

The decision has laid bare the bitter rift between AFIC, a charity that administers six Islamic schools around the country, and the Sydney school's council.
Bogus by-laws, sneaky shut-outs and even vandalism could be used to keep holiday lets out of apartment blocks that don't want them, say Sydney's building managers.

And should the NSW government change the law and force apartment blocks to accept short-stay rentals, such as those booked via online agencies like Airbnb and Stayz, strata schemes will find ways of blocking them.

In fact, they are already doing it.

"Any apartment block that really doesn't want holiday lets can stop them, regardless of what the law says," said the on-site facilities manager of a city centre building, who asked not to be named.
Complaint reports to the City of Sydney council, provided to Fairfax Media, show some people have begun to regard gulls, particularly around Circular Quay, as "scary and dangerous".

While pigeons and Indian mynas are quietly taking over pubs and indoor food courts by stealth, council documents reveal seagulls in the central business district are leading a full-frontal assault from above.

An increasingly aggressive bird population  considered flying vermin under NSW food hygiene laws  are making pests of themselves across the city, with Sydneysiders fed up at being targeted for a free feed.

Seagulls pester patrons at Circular Quay. The birds' aggression has prompted calls for a cull. Credit:Cassandra Hannagan

"Walking to work this morning I bought some breakfast and was attacked by about 20 seagulls hitting me in the face to steal my food. I literally had to drop the food and run into the Gateway food court to get away," wrote one complainant in October.

A number of people have contacted council with demands that nuisance birds pay the ultimate price for their actions through a cull.

"My partner and I were eating at Circular Quay and a seagull literally ripped the food out of his mouth. This is a major safety issue, as it almost scratched his face and he lost his food and we had to buy more, then shelter inside just so we could eat. I don't know if you can cull seagulls, but the least you could do is erect signs warning people it is unsafe to eat outside," a complaint from last year urged.

A British tourist wrote to the council saying compared to his first visit in 1975, eating outside in Sydney had become "a misery".
In the early hours of December 27, the woman was bitten several times on her torso and arm by a male funnel web spider she found in her bed.

Unfortunately for a NSW Southern Highlands woman, the bad dream was all too real.

A Bundanoon woman woke up to this funnel web spider crawling on her and biting her - in her bed.

Imagine waking up to the feeling of a funnel web spider crawling over you and biting you while you're tucked up in bed.

"The sensation of it crawling over my leg woke me at 3am and it was at that point it struck," she said.

The woman called a health helpline and emergency services, but it was an hour before the first two vials of antivenom could be administered. She was given another two vials after the first two hadn't significantly improved her condition.

She was taken to Liverpool Hospital and was in the Intensive Care Unit for several days until her condition stabilised and she was released. She will undergo further testing to find whether there was any long-term adverse effects on major organs from the ordeal.

"From the ambos who first treated me at home to the incredibly kind doctors and nurses at Liverpool Hospital, I'm so grateful for everyone's help," the Bundanoon local said. "I'm truly surprised to be around to say that!"

Two cases of funnel web bites have presented to Bowral District Hospital in the past 12 months, one in December 2015 and the most recent case in December 2016.
The importation of green prawns into Australia has been suspended as an "insurance" against the possibility of a viral prawn disease spreading to our waterways.

Federal Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce announced the suspension on Friday after the discovery of the highly contagious white spot disease in imported green prawns sold for human consumption.

White spot disease was found in Queensland's Logan and Albert rivers and has devastated five prawn farms in the area. Credit:Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries

"Once I heard yesterday morning that ... they detected white spot in green prawns in retail outlets, then that was, as far as I was concerned, the trigger for us to take more substantial action," he said outside Parliament House.

"We are going back to those importers who brought the green prawns in and going through them with a fine-tooth comb in regards to their protocols and what they were doing."
An aviation mystery that could involve the famous German World War I pilot known as the Red Baron has been quietly unfolding at a museum in Melbourne's south-east.

A brass fuel tank, kept in storage for the past 30 years at the Australian National Aviation Museum at Moorabbin Airport, is now thought by experts and aviation enthusiasts to be a souvenir taken from the airman's wrecked planeafter he was fatally shot down over France in 1918.

Australian National Aviation Museum chairman Ashley Briggs with a fuel tank that is believed to have belonged to the plane flown by the Red Baron over Europe in World War I. Credit:Wayne Taylor

The chairman of the museum, Ashley Briggs, said the discovery meant the piece was now among the most prized of the collection, which includes 65 planes and numerous other artefacts.

"From an historical point of view, it's our tangible link to the most famous flyer of all time," Mr Briggs said.
Police are worried for his welfare given his young age.

He was last seen at his home on Tuesday.

Victoria Police are appealing for public help to find 10-year-old Ben Hodson. Credit:Victoria Police

Victoria Police are appealing for public help to find Ben Hodson.

A 10-year-old boy from Bentleigh East has been missing for three days.

Ben is about 150cm tall, with a thin build, short light blond hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion.

He was last seen wearing a black plain hooded jumper, black tracksuit pants and black shoes with white stripes.

Ben is known to visit Frankston, Seaford, Narre Warren, Karingal and Carrum Downs and may be using public transport.

Police have released an image of Ben in the hope someone can identify him and provide information about where he is.

Anyone who sees Ben is urged to contact Caulfield Police Station on 9524 9500.
The father of a teenage worker killed by a fall at the Old Post Office redevelopment site in Perth's CBD has published a heartrending public tribute to his memory.

"In memory of Wesley Ballantine (1999 - 2017); my beautiful handsome son taken too soon by God at only 17," Tyrone Leroy wrote online with a picture of his son, apparently with a birthday cupcake at Perth's Rockpool restaurant.

Wesley Ballantine, killed at a CBD work site on Thursday, was just 17 years old. Credit:Facebook

"Wes passed away after he fell 12 metres to his death at work, by the grace of God he showed some mercy, took Wes away quickly without any pain and suffering."

Wesley, a steel fabricator, was working on night shift at 4.30am on Thursday to install a glass ceiling at the redevelopment for fashion retailer H&M when he fell. He was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital by ambulance but could not be saved.
The RAC has warned Western Australia could soon have the most congested roads in the country after a new national traffic report revealed Perth's slowest roads.

The Congestion and Reliability Review by the country's peak roads and traffic agency, AustRoads, revealed two of the city's major highways, Reid and Tonkin, along with Orrong Road, were the most delayed roads in the metropolitan area, with traffic moving 32 per cent slower than it should.

Perth's most congested road has been revealed as Reid Highway. Credit:Paul Rovere

Reid Highway, along the north-eastern corridor, topped the list with traffic moving at an average pace of 53.2 kilometres per hour, despite generally being a 90 kilometre an hour zone.

The report listed the top ten most delayed roads in Australia as being in Sydney (7) and Melbourne (3), but RAC general manager corporate affairs Will Golsby warned Perth was forecast to have four roads topping that list by 2031.
Police have seized drugs, ammo and a homemade gun following a series of raids in Perth's south eastern suburbs this week.

Twelve people have been charged with a total of 25 offences as a result of the operation, codenamed "Nebulos."

Some of the drugs seized by police during Operation Nebulos. Credit:WA Police

Kensington Detectives executed nine search warrants on properties on Wednesday and Thursday based on police intelligence and information received from members of the public through Crime Stoppers.

During the searches detectives seized ammunition, an unlicensed homemade handgun, drug paraphernalia, cannabis, methamphetamine, heroin and dexamphetamines.
The deadly shooting at a Florida airport on Friday is likely to rekindle an ongoing debate over whether screening systems should be even more exacting.

But experts say preventing attacks like the one on Friday, when a gunman opened fire in a baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, is almost impossible given the large public areas at US airports, despite the billions of dollars spent on security.

"To the extent it was not in a secure area, it doesn't really identify any issues around airport security," said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant. "A guy walks into a bar, a guy walks into an airport baggage claim room - neither of them are secure."

Friday's attack killed five people and injured at least eight, authorities said.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday said there is a difference between "an act of espionage, which we conduct, as well, and other nations do, versus an attack." US officials said that Russia's goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow's initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump's GOP rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program. Russia's initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia's aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton's candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump. Russia also used social media and "fake news" platforms as an "accelerant" to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said. Other key pieces of information gathered by US spy agencies supporting the view that Russia backed Trump include the identification of "actors" involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against US election systems over the past nine years. The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Barack Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation's top spy officials, including Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan. Given the president-elect's scepticism about the intelligence community - particularly its conclusions about Russia - the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged. "The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on November 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," a senior US official said. US officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasised that while the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow's intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies' efforts to achieve that outcome.

"There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence" that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior US official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia's cyber operations. Officials emphasised that "signals intelligence," as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation. US officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having "directed" cyber operations to disrupt the US election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that "only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorised these activities." Russia's alleged role in the 2016 election and the question of how the United States should respond have become bitterly polarising issues in Washington, sowing discord among Republicans on Capitol Hill, complicating the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, and exacerbating an increasingly toxic relationship between the president-elect and US spy services. Senior lawmakers have called for a full investigation of the Russian hacking. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that Moscow's cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into "activism."

At Thursday's hearing, Clapper said that US spy agencies "stand actually more resolutely" behind conclusions they reached last year on Russia's determination to undermine the US election. He also appeared to take aim at Trump's social media sniping at US intelligence services, saying that "there's a difference between scepticism and disparagement." Obama last week announced a series of measures designed to punish Russia, actions he characterised as "a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests." Obama moved to impose economic sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies, expelled dozens of alleged Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, and shuttered two compounds that for decades had purportedly served as retreats for Russian diplomats but were described by the administration as locations for espionage activities. Meanwhile, Trump continued his string of Twitter attacks, accusing US intelligence agencies - with the word "intelligence" set off in quotation marks - of delaying a planned briefing on Russia and the election, a charge that US officials disputed. He also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has denied that his organisation got the hacked emails from Russia, over US spy agencies, which think that WikiLeaks got the material through middlemen with ties to the Kremlin. Loading Trump appeared to retreat on Thursday, accusing the "dishonest media" of misrepresenting his comments about Assange. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence,' " he said, "when in fact I am a big fan!"
The man who opened fire at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport has been identified as New Jersey-born Esteban Santiago.

Law enforcement sources said the 26-year-old acted alone when he opened fire in the baggage claim area of the airport, killing five people and injuring eight.

Federal sources told NBC News the shootings did not appear to be an act of terrorism, and both federal and family sources said Santiago had some mental health issues.

Santiago was carrying a military ID when he was arrested, uninjured, at the airport.
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PHILIPSBURG:--- On January 5th, 2017, the General Audit Chamber presented its report to Parliament regarding the Compliance Audit of the 2015 Financial Statement of the Government of Sint Maarten.

The 2015 Financial Statement was formally submitted to the Audit Chamber and the SOAB on November 4th, 2016. As such, the auditing activities of both entities started very late in the year. Normally, the financial statements are expected in September.

Despite taking additional time for drafting and presenting the 2015 Financial Statement, Government has once again failed to present a solid and auditable financial statement. We find this particularly regrettable in light of the improvements that were promised after the audit of the last set of financial statements. More diligence in achieving improvement is expected from a Country that has previously produced five financial statements.

Besides the lack of progress in dealing with the shortcomings of governments financial management, the report details governments failure to adhere to legal requirements when reporting and giving an account in the financial statement. This is a reason for concern, according to the Audit Chamber. Based on the response received from the Minister of Finance regarding the Audit Chambers report, a financial statement that is in compliance with the National Accountability Ordinance is not expected prior to 2019. We find this unfortunate.

We note a slight improvement in the explanation provided with the 2015 Budget. However, the account presented in the financial statement does not correspond with that of the budget, according to the Audit Chamber. As a result of this inadequate accountability, proper insight about how public funds were used is missing.

The report refers to the negative advice issued by the Council for Financial Supervision (CFT) on the 2015 Budget. That negative advice necessitated a budget amendment which was never adopted. The Audit Chamber concludes, therefore, that the 2015 Budget never formally entered into force. We conclude that income and expenditures are based on a budget ordinance that did not go into effect in 2015.

Expenditures were done but for which funds were not made available, and income was not realized as budgeted. Actions were taken contrary to rules and regulations. An example, is the Audit Chamber refers to the personnel expenditure budget overrun.

During the investigation of the 2015 Financial Statement, the Audit Chamber also reviewed the work- and residence permits. Specifically, the Audit Chamber analyzed whether the actual income from these permits was in line with budget estimates. They found that for work permits, there is a chronic shortfall in terms of actual income as compared to the budget. It is the Audit Chambers opinion that the shortfall is due to overly optimistic budgeting.

Receipts from residence permits in 2014 fell short of budget estimates for that year. A year later, in 2015, the budget estimate was significantly adjusted downward. However, in 2015 the reported income from residence permits far exceeded the budget estimate. The Audit Chamber finds the methodology for preparing the budget estimates to be unclear. The financial statement should clearly explain deviations between the budget estimates and actual income and expenditures.

The SOAB issued an adverse opinion on Governments 2015 Financial Statement. The Audit Chamber supports the SOABs adverse opinion and states that Parliament needs to assume its supervisory role and should address the responsible minister(s) on this matter.

While Government drafted a plan for solving the shortcomings in its financial management, little is known about the status of that plan. The Audit Chamber was not provided with progress reports as was promised. After five years of investigating financial statements, the greatest obstacle is the lack of (timely) information. As long those involved in the process of financial management fail to take responsibility, improvement will remain absent.

The most important recommendation we can make after five years of investigating the financial statements is to urge everyone to carry out their respective task.

The report Compliance Audit: 2015 Financial Statement of Sint Maarten is published in both English and Dutch and is available on the website of the General Audit Chamber (www.arsxm.og).

Click here to view reports on 2015 financial statements
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):--- Ministry of Public Housing, Environment, Spatial Development and Infrastructure (Ministry VROMI), announces that there will be a partial road closure on Friday, January 06 of Front Street.

Front Street will be closed from L Escargot Restaurant alley down to the Court House; the Wilhelmina Straat next to the House of Parliament and the Court House will be closed to motorised traffic; and the alley of the former Beach Islander Trading will also be closed.

The aforementioned will be closed on Friday as of 5.00pm.

The street closure is in connection with the Governors New Years Ball.

Ministry VROMI apologizes for any inconveniences this may cause.
Online Education Company Joins CAKE by Accelerize to Present at Affiliate Summit West 2017

NEWPORT BEACH, CA  (Marketwired)  01/05/17  (OTCQB: ACLZ) (OTCBB: ACLZ) and its digital marketing software division today announced that its CTO, Dave Stewart, will present a joint educational session with Brandon Myers, Affiliate Director of online education company at Affiliate Summit West (ASW) 2017. The session  titled  will be held Monday, January 16 at 10 a.m. PT, in the Champagne 2 room at the conference.

Held January 15-17 at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel, Affiliate Summit West brings together more than 6,000 digital marketers, agencies, networks and technology providers from over 70 countries around the world and includes a tradeshow, conference program and variety of networking events. The ASW 2017 agenda includes a number of educational sessions designed to help attendees better understand the evolving landscape of affiliate marketing.

In their session, Stewart and Myers will discuss how the scope of affiliate marketing is broadening, and show how combining affiliate and social media strategies can help marketers expand their reach and increase ROI. Topics they will explore include:

How affiliates and social work together

The importance of tracking the entire customer journey

Messaging and how to optimize from experimentation

Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) has become the rallying cry of todays marketers and the measurement and tracking strategies that originated in the affiliate world are now being applied to channels like search and social, said Dave Stewart, CTO at CAKE. As an innovator in the online education market, Aceable is seeing first hand the value of extending affiliate marketing technologies and techniques to better understand the performance of complementary channels. We look forward to sharing our insights with the ASW audience about leveraging affiliate and social marketing in tandem.

CAKE, a division of Accelerize Inc., provides a proprietary cloud-based solution to track and analyze the performance of digital marketing return on investment, in real-time. Bringing clarity to multi-channel marketing campaigns, we empower advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks from more than 40 countries worldwide with the insight to make intelligent marketing decisions. CAKE by Accelerize is headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif. with operations in London and New Delhi. For more information, visit .

Accelerize Inc. (OTCQB: ACLZ) (OTCBB: ACLZ) offers marketing technology solutions that revolutionize the way advertisers leverage their digital advertising data. For more information, visit .

Use of Forward-looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements from Accelerize Inc. within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and federal securities laws. For example, when Accelerize uses statements containing the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects, will and similar expressions, Accelerize is using forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of the management of Accelerize only, and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements: changes in technology and market requirements; our technology may not be validated as we progress further; we may be unable to retain or attract key employees whose knowledge is essential to the development of our products and services; unforeseen market and technological difficulties may develop with our products and services; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; or, loss of market share and pressure on pricing resulting from competition, which could cause the actual results or performance of Accelerize to differ materially from those contemplated in such forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, Accelerize undertakes no obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. For a more detailed description of the risk and uncertainties affecting Accelerize, reference is made to Accelerizes reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Media Contact

Jill Hara

(949) 548-2253 x 257

Investor Contact

Ascendant Partners, LLC

Fred Sommer

(732) 410-9810
Zagster Closes $10 Million Series B Round of Funding Led by Edison Partners

CAMBRIDGE, MA  (Marketwired)  01/05/17  Zagster, Inc., the leading provider of private and public-private bike sharing systems, today announced it has raised $10 million in a Series B round of funding led by Edison Partners, a leading growth equity capital firm. In addition, Zagster expanded its board of directors by appointing: Tom Vander Schaaff, general partner at Edison Partners; Jonathan Seelig, co-founder of Akamai Technologies, former chairman of the board of Zipcar and former managing director of Globespan Capital Partners; and Chris Randles, former CEO of SpaceClaim Corp as well as MathSoft and a current venture partner at Borealis Ventures.

With 300 percent growth in riders and programs over the past year, weve proven that our Bike Share as a Service model is scalable, financially sustainable and ideally suited to meet the needs of customers across multiple markets in North America, said Timothy Ericson, co-founder and CEO of Zagster. This growth capital along with the expansion of our board sets the table for Zagster to enhance our product roadmap, expand our staff, and grow the organization to reach our goal of becoming the national standard in bikeshare.

Zagster operates more than 140 fully hosted bike-sharing programs in 30 states across the U.S. and Canada. Zagsters flexible business model and flexible technology platform has allowed it to successfully implement bike sharing programs in multiple markets  including cities, universities, corporate campuses and residential properties.

By focusing on building a flexible and scalable model for bike share, Zagster has quietly become the market leader across multiple segments, said Vander Schaaff, general partner at Edison Partners. We are extremely impressed with their ability to simultaneously execute and innovate and look forward to partnering with them to accelerate growth.

The Series B round caps a banner year for Zagster. The company achieved 300 percent growth in implemented programs; 400 percent growth in deployed bikes; and 300 percent growth in staff, opening a satellite office in San Francisco and moving its headquarters to a larger space in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In September, the company partnered with car sharing leader Zipcar to create Zipbike, the first nationally-sponsored bike share program for colleges and universities.

I believe Zagster can become one of the next iconic Boston-based high-growth, disruptive companies, said Jonathan Seelig. The company is well-positioned to grow the bike sharing market by delivering programs in hundreds of communities where others cant  or wont  enabling them to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years.

Zagster is the leading provider of private and public-private bike-sharing systems in the United States, operating more than 140 programs in more than 30 states. Its highly efficient business model allows the company to successfully deploy in multiple markets, including cities, suburbs, universities, commercial campuses and residential properties. Zagster investors include Edison Partners, LaunchCapital; Fontinalis Partners; Clean Energy Venture Group; LaunchPad Venture Group; Otter Consulting and several leading Boston-area angel investors. Zagster aims to make biking the most loved form of transportation for people across the country. Learn more at .

For 30 years, has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey and build successful companies. Through the unique combination of growth capital and the , consisting of operating leverage, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses ($5 to $20 million in revenue) in financial, healthcare, enterprise and marketing technology sectors. Edison investment objectives also include: buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.

Edisons active portfolio has created aggregate market value exceeding $10 billion. Its long-tenured team based in Princeton, NJ manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.

John Williams

Scoville PR for Zagster

206-625-0075
Mass Innovation Nights Works with Drapers Sembler to Support Local Startups

CAMBRIDGE, MA  (Marketwired)  01/05/17  (MIN) is holding a startup showcase and networking event on January 11, 2017, 6:00 pm  8:30 pm. The event will be held at Drapers Sembler office in Cambridge, Mass. Sembler is Drapers way to foster technology entrepreneurship by leveraging Drapers extensive resources and 80+ years of expertise in solving the worlds toughest engineering problems.

By working with organizations like Draper and Sembler, we are able to further our mission of providing visibility for local companies, said Bobbie Carlton, the founder of Innovation Nights, and . Whether your interests lie in robotics, medical tech or even 3D printing, youll find something that catches your eye at this event.

At Sembler, were looking to power startups to success by giving them a conduit to the facilities and expertise at Draper, said Nathan Wiedenman, Sembler Director at Draper. Mass Innovation Nights is a great way to spread the word about what we do throughout Bostons innovation community.

Free of charge and open to the public, Mass Innovation Nights #94 features experts, networking, tabletop presentations with new local products and presentations from the winners of online voting. The event will also feature two companies from Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) as part of the MIN ongoing Student Startup Spotlight program. These startups are members of WITs , an accelerator aimed at building innovative thinking and entrepreneurial confidence in students. The events products include:

Airing

BlindWays

Floelle

IMMAD

KyrusFleet

NextShift Robotics

PowerHydrant

Skelmet

Synthetic Muscle

Tertill

WIT Student Startups:

Moonwalk

MyoTherms

Experts from:

BIBSMA

Proper Orange

Sembler, a Draper initiative

West Hill Technology Council

Guests are encouraged to use hashtag #MIN94 and @MassInno to share their photos and posts. The gatherings typically generate hundreds of tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, photos and videos, and are key visibility drivers for these companies. To attend, please .

Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) offers an opportunity for people interested in innovative new products to connect live and online. Each month, different companies launch new products with Innovation Nights and the social media community helps spread the word. The popular product launch party and networking event draws attendees from the entire region. Over the past 7 years, it has launched more than 900 products which have collectively received more than $1.3 billion in funding. MIN is currently seeking hosts and sponsors for the 2017 season. Contact the organization for additional information. Follow or visit the .

Startups have powerful ideas that the world needs, but making them real is no small task. Thats where we come in  Sembler empowers startups by leveraging Drapers extensive resources and 80+ years of expertise in solving the worlds toughest engineering problems. Let us help you with resources like our precision fabrication and prototyping facilities, Drapers extensive on-site testing facilities, and our team of over 1,000 engineers. Inspired by the creative ingenuity of startup companies, Sembler is Drapers way to foster the development of technology entrepreneurs. We make things easy, acting as a conduit to Draper resources through flexible, fast and IP-friendly master agreements. Contact Draper: . and .

Media Contact:

Kristen Avini

510-221-8122

Mass Innovation Nights
REMINDER/Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Communications Inc. Annual Shareholders Meetings for 2016 and Release Date of Financial Results for the First Quarter of 2017 and Its Related Conference Call

MONTREAL, QUEBEC  (Marketwired)  01/05/17  Cogeco Inc. (TSX: CGO) and Cogeco Communications Inc. (TSX: CCA) will hold their Annual Shareholders Meetings on Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 11:30 a.m. (EST) at the Centre Mount-Royal in Montreal (2200 Mansfield Street). During this time, both companies financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, ended November 30, 2016, will also be disclosed. A live webcast of the Annual Shareholders Meetings will be available on the Cogeco website at .

A conference call for financial analysts will be held just prior to the Annual Shareholders Meeting on Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 9:30 a.m. (EST) to discuss the companies financial and operating results. Media representatives may attend as listeners only. A live audio webcast of the call with financial analysts will be available on the Cogeco website at .

Please use the following dial-in number to have access to the conference call 5 to 10 minutes before the start of the conference:

Canada/USA Access Number: 1-800-347-6311

International Access Number: +1-438-968-3557

Confirmation Code: 3838378

Both Cogeco Inc.s and Cogeco Communications Inc.s annual reports and press releases summarizing fiscal year 2016 highlights are available on SEDAR.

Contacts:

Source:

Patrice Ouimet

Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Communications Inc.

514-764-4700

Information:

Rene Guimond

Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications

Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Communications Inc.

514-764-4700
A request by the Michigan Military Technical & Historical Society to change its lease agreement with the City of Eastpointe from a three-year rolling lease to a 25-year lease has been tabled by the city council until December.
A look back on all of our reporting of the Delphi murders since 2017

crime
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Partly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 76F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.
Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city.

Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea
Post-war Swansea provided plenty of exciting opportunities for the children at play. There were ruins and bomb sites to explore. But on Saturday, January 22 1949, two girls playing hide and seek on Croft Street at the top of High Street made a gruesome discovery  the body of a man who had been so brutally assaulted that initially it proved almost impossible to identify him.

It was the body of Ernest Clifford Melville. He had been battered with bricks and had sustained shocking injuries to the head. There was blood splattered on the walls of the adjoining school. It had been a terrible attack and a vicious murder. Robbery was not the motive, for money was found in his pockets.

Throughout the whole investigation there was a belief that he couldn't have expected anything different. Because Ernest was a homosexual  and his death was regarded by some as a direct consequence of a "sleazy lifestyle".

Ernest was 38 years old and worked for Swansea Corporation. Police reports describe him as a "weak girlish individual" who performed "menial duties at home". He was of slight build  about 5ft 5ins tall and the youngest of six children. He still lived with his parents in Watkin Street. The family doctor regarded him as "effeminate and neurotic" and he was known to the police.

In 1945 he was arrested for an act of gross indecency with another male in a shop doorway. He approached strange men indiscriminately and was frequently seen around public lavatories. He had previously been beaten up by two sailors he had approached in Castle Street. As far as the police were concerned he had learnt nothing from these experiences.

On the Friday night when he died he was seen in the Palace Bar on High Street in conversation with a tall man in a trenchcoat. He might have left in the company of two men in sailors' uniforms. He had certainly ended up drinking in the Full Moon, as he often did, again with that man in a raincoat. As the evening wore on Ernest played the piano for a sing-song  his last tune was My Happiness. He left, perhaps with others, though no-one was sure, at about 10pm. Everyone agreed that he was drunk. No-one else ever admitted to seeing him alive after that.

The police were convinced that his murder was a consequence of his lifestyle. They wanted information about companions and asked them to come forward but of course that would require confessing to a forbidden lifestyle. It was a shadowy world they were unable to penetrate. The press were convinced that Ernest had a "Little Black Book" of contacts that would offer thrilling insights into a sordid world and implicate someone well known. But he hadn't. There were no leads, no evidence.

They tried painstakingly to piece together his last movements and managed to track down most of the people who had been in the Full Moon that Friday night, which was an achievement in itself but entirely unproductive. Officers then tried to trace all the sailors who could possibly have been in Swansea that night. The Scotland Yard file is full telegrams and interviews conducted across the country as ships docked during the following weeks.

But nothing came of any of it, merely a succession of denials, alibis and impossibilities. There was a Displaced Persons Camp of about 400 men in Morriston and they conducted inquiries there but to no avail. Anonymous letters were received and of course there were rumours but the murderer appeared to have disappeared.

It emerged that Ernest had been seen in the company of two seamen in High Street late on Thursday night, the day before he died.

Had an assignation been planned? Two seamen were also seen opposite the railway station in the early hours of Saturday. Were they the same ones?

No-one could say. Slowly, inevitably, the investigation ground to a halt. The file in the National Archive is very large and very detailed. But there is no conclusion, and perhaps there never will be.

More on Geoff Brookes

Geoff Brookes came to Swansea in 1981 to work as Head of the English Department in Dillwyn Llewelyn Comprehensive School before moving to Cefn Hengoed Comprehensive where he served for twenty years as deputy head teacher. Originally he wrote about education issues and was a regular columnist for the Times Education Supplement but since his retirement in 2014 his books have explored Swansea's past, looking at the way ordinary people lived their lives, examining the good, the bad and occasionally the very ugly.

If you would like to learn more about Geoff's work then visit his website - www.geoffbrookes.co.uk - where all his local history publications are available.
You can see and learn about the huge, bizarre metallic asteroid 16 Psyche  the target of a newly announced NASA space mission  during a free webcast by the Slooh Community Observatory Friday evening (Jan. 6).

The show will feature live views of the 130-mile-wide (210 kilometers) 16 Psyche from Slooh's telescopes at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. You can watch the webcast at Slooh.com, beginning at 9 p.m. EST Friday (0200 GMT on Saturday, Jan. 7).

You can also watch the 16 Psyche show here at Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. [NASA Mission to Metal Asteroid Psyche (Images)]

Scientists think 16 Psyche, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is the exposed core of an ancient planet whose outer rocky layers were stripped away by long-ago cosmic impacts. Astronomers know of no other object like 16 Psyche, and studying it up close should yield exciting insights about planet formation and the solar system's early days, said a team of researchers mapping out a space mission to the metal world.

This project, known as Psyche, went from concept to reality on Wednesday (Jan. 4), when NASA announced the mission's official selection as part of the agency's Discovery Program, which develops relatively low-cost robotic exploration missions. (NASA also picked a second Discovery mission, called Lucy, which aims to fly by six Trojan asteroids, space rocks that share Jupiter's path around the sun.)

If all goes according to plan, the Psyche probe will launch in October 2023 and arrive at the metal world in 2030, mission team members said. The spacecraft will then spend about 20 months studying 16 Psyche from orbit, using a variety of instruments to investigate the object's composition, magnetic environment, gravitational field and other characteristics.

"Humankind has visited rocky worlds and icy worlds and worlds made of gas, but we have never seen a metal world," mission principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton, of Arizona State University, said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday. "Psyche has never been visited or had a picture taken as more than a point of light, and so its appearance remains a mystery. This mission will be true exploration and discovery."

The Slooh webcast will discuss the newly announced mission and its science goals: Psyche team member David Lawrence, of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, will join Slooh host Gerard Monteux and Slooh astronomer Eric Edelman for the show.

Viewers can join in on the webcast and ask questions about 16 Psyche and the mission by tweeting @Slooh or by joining the live chat on Facebook.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
This NASA map shows a detailed image of the moon's shadow as it passes over the United States during the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. NASA used data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter currently orbiting the moon to develop a comprehensive map.

As eclipse hunters flood the United States this August to watch what scientists are calling the Great American Total Solar Eclipse, new data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (among other sources) will provide them with the most accurate maps ever for where to catch the eclipse.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes in between the sun and the Earth, from Earth's perspective. Because the moon is a relatively small object, the path of totality is very narrow. At any single location, totality will last a few dozen seconds at most.

In past years, totality maps haven't been fully accurate. That's because they assume that everyone is sitting at sea level (definitely not the case for many U.S. observers) and that the moon is completely bereft of craters and mountains. [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where & How to See It (Safely)]

More recent calculations (since 1963) depended on limb profiles that were published by astronomer Chester Burleigh Watts, who took 700 photographs showing how the moon looks from Earth, from every possible viewpoint.

NASA, however, can publish more accurate eclipse maps, thanks to work from visualizer Ernie Wright at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Wright generated an elevation map of the Earth to show true altitude (based on several NASA data sets) and also used a changing lunar limb profile that will be seen from the United States during the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse.

"We couldn't have done visualizations like this even 10 years ago," Wright said in a press release. "This is a confluence of increasing computing power and new datasets from remote sensing platforms like LRO and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission." [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: Path, Viewing Maps and Photo Guide]

Instead of a smooth umbra (or shadow of totality), the new visualizations show a more craggy shape that depends on elevations on Earth and on the moon. NASA describes the true shape as an irregular polygon with slightly curved edges, which will alter with changes across the Earth's terrain (particularly the Cascades, Rockies and Appalachians, which the umbra will pass through during the eclipse).

"Solar and lunar eclipses provide an excellent opportunity to talk about the moon, since without the moon there would be no eclipses," said Noah Petro, deputy project scientist for LRO, in the same statement.

This NASA map of the United States shows the entire path of totality for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/SVS/Ernie Wright)

"Because we know the shape of the moon better than any other planetary body, thanks to LRO, we can now accurately predict the shape of the shadow as it falls on the face of the Earth. In this way, LRO data sheds new light on our predictions for the upcoming eclipse," Petro said.

The total solar eclipse will pass from Oregon to South Carolina. It's the first time the U.S. has experienced a total solar eclipse since 1918, when the umbra started in Washington state and passed over Denver, Jackson, Mississippi, and Orlando, Florida, before leaving via the Atlantic coast.

Editor's Note: If you take a great photo of the 2017 solar eclipse or any other celestial sight you'd like to share with us and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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According to farm accountant Old Mill, many dairy producers have been re-assessing their businesses following the prolonged period of low milk prices, leading to some very positive changes. With all commodity prices now looking more optimistic, the New Year is a perfect time to examine the direction of any farming business.

The past year has been extremely tough, particularly for farmers in the dairy sector, says director of rural services Dan Knight. But Ive been encouraged by how many families are using this time to take a hard look at their personal and business strategies.

Some businesses have found new cost efficiencies, others have drawn up succession plans, while still more have either committed to growth or refocused efforts on alternative enterprises.

But as commodity prices improve, its important not to allow inefficiencies to creep back in, warns Mr Knight. With CAP reform looming in 2020, as well as the uncertainty of Brexit, we dont know what lies ahead. Right now, the weak Pound means British agriculture could enjoy a buoyant couple of years, so its important to make and keep as much money as possible, in case another downturn  or loss of government support  sits on the horizon.

In the short-term, farmers should consider how to reduce their tax liabilities ahead of the 2017 tax year-end, explains Mr Knight. They should then sit down and examine their longer-term strategy, to ensure the business is in the strongest position going forward.

To begin with its essential to have a frank conversation with everyone who has an interest in the business, he says. Involve future generations and ensure every party is clear about their personal and business objectives; that may not be to maximise turnover, but to earn enough to have the lifestyle of choice.
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STAMFORD  Mayor David Martin painted a rosy picture of city affairs days into the new year in a state of the city address given to a local senior citizens club.

Martin spoke Thursday to the Senior Mens Association of Stamford, a platform he used to highlight successes in office months from a reelection bid.

The mayors address to the mens club is an annual tradition. It was given at Congregation Agudath Sholom to an audience of almost all men.

Martin has given a similar presentation to other civic groups, touting progress in education, public safety and development.

Stamford remains on solid fiscal ground, Martin told the group, while other cities  Bridgeport, Hartford and Waterbury  face mounting financial troubles.

If you look at cities with over 50,000 people ... we are the star of the state, Martin said. Every government in these large communities has gotten worse. Theyre in more financial trouble and theyre cutting back services. Were trying to keep our services and hold on to our financial integrity.

Stamford spends the least per capita of any municipality in Fairfield County, Martin said. The mayor cited low tax increases since taking office in 2014. Property taxes rose 2.6 percent in 2016-17.

On Tuesday, Martin attended the first day of the 2017 legislative session, a year in which lawmakers and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy face a $1.3 billion state budget deficit.

The state never funded its long-term obligations and theyre eating the state alive, Martin said. Although its not the single biggest component to the budget, its going up rapidly because we didnt pay what we should have 20, 30 years ago.

Cuts needed to balance the state budget have trickled down to cities. Malloy last week announced a reduction to state school aid, including $250,000 in cuts to Stamford.

We dont get that much (from the state), but we get enough that it makes a difference, Martin said.

Meanwhile, Martin praised new schools Superintendent Earl Kim, whose appointment last year came after administrators were accused of misconduct in handling the sexual relationship between a Stamford High teacher and her student.

Last year also marked the opening of the New School at Strawberry Hill, which welcomed its inaugural kindergarten and first grade classes. Martin said construction at the school is ongoing as more grades are added.

Also underway is the construction of a new police station, a project that will cost the city $50 to $60 million, needed due to asbestos and lead in the existing building. The citys oldest house was moved to make way for the building.

The mayor cited crime-reduction measures, including surveillance cameras in city parks that can call police in an emergency, and the reopening of the Yerwood Center by the Boys & Girls Club, which runs an evening program there to curb neighborhood violence.

Im very proud of getting the Yerwood Center open, Martin said. It has been very successful.

Not all is positive. Martin said he is not pleased with the citys commercial vacancy rate, which is higher than 20 percent. UBS headquarters on Washington Boulevard is vacant, as are many other buildings.

However, Henkel and ABCorp opened offices in Stamford, and Indeed and Synchrony are expanding, he said.

Martin, a Democrat, announced in June his plans to seek a second term. Republicans have not said who will challenge him.

Im very committed to this, Martin said, and I think were getting it done.

eskalka@scni.com
When Chris Hyams, president of job search platform Indeed, heard a pitch from three of his young engineers recently out of college to create an app that mimics the hunting aspect of Pokemon Go but for real world job postings, he initially dismissed it, believing he had heard it all before.

Hyams joined Indeed in 2010 to be the companys senior vice president of product. Hes held the role of president since October 2015. He told Entrepreneur that while the idea of Job Spotter, which was pitched it to him during the companys Indeed University program, had been kicking around Indeed for some time in one form or another, it had never gained any traction.

Fortunately for the company, the trio of intrapreneurs, Nicholas Towbin-Jones, Jiehua Liu, and Hoe Lee, defied their boss's reluctance. The team built the prototype by biking around Austin to get images of storefronts and help wanted signs.

Related: 4 Mistakes Your Social-Media Profiles May Be Committing With Job Seekers

Image Credit: Indeed

The more successful a company gets, the more likely we are to think we have everything figured out. Its easy to think that we got to where we are because we are smart, Hyams says. But the minute we are convinced of that is the moment that innovation dies. It turns out that the smartest thing I did last summer was to not to say no to new ideas.

With the app, users can share potential job opportunities in their communities from small businesses -- who may not usually post job listings online -- that look for new hires with a well-placed help wanted sign. Once the app is downloaded, users can take a photo of the signs and storefronts they see, and once it is approved by Indeed, users earn points that can be put toward gift cards. Indeed then uses GPS location data "to match the photo to a database of businesses to get the name and address, and we use [data from the photo] to automatically extract phone number, email and other information from the image," Hyams says.

Related: 7 Things Both Job Seekers and Job Providers Should Know for a More Effective Hiring Process

It's a way to crowdsource Indeed's job postings with an element of gamification.

Since Job Spotter's U.S. launch in July, Hyams says that 100,000 users have submitted more than 500,000 new jobs. The last several months have seen Job Spotter become the second most popular source of job clicks in the U.S., he says. The app has also launched in Australia, Canada and the U.K.

The company, which boasts of listing some 16 million jobs and 70 million resumes on its site, has its eye on more markets all over the world. With Job Spotter, we have demonstrated here in the U.S. that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that until now could not be found online, Hyams says. The potential is even greater when you think about other markets around the world like India, China and Indonesia where there might even be more jobs offline than online. There is always more that we can do to help people find jobs.

Image Credit: Indeed

Related:

How Indeed's Pokemon Go-Like Job App Almost Didn't Happen

5 Ways to Earn a Bonus

Want to Work Internationally? Consider These Countries.



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
The Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents are very concerned about the mid-year cut of $20 million in education aid to municipalities announced by the Office of Policy and Management. These cuts are scheduled to take effect immediately and will result in diminished educational opportunities for the students who attend Connecticuts public schools.

In the few communities where there is the option of a municipality reducing a school systems budget mid-year, those reductions will take place at a point in the year when just about all of the non-personnel budget items have already been spent. That means that any budget reduction will result in staff reductions and staff reductions result in diminished programs for students.
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STAMFORD  A city man who was found guilty of trying to burn down the Norwalk courthouse in 2013 was sentenced to 12 years in jail on Friday.

Joseph Stephenson, 49, was facing up to 30 years in jail for breaking into the Belden Avenue courthouse and leaving behind six bottles of kerosene. Stephenson was convicted of attempted arson, attempted tampering with evidence and burglary for the late-night incident on March 3, 2013.

Assistant States Attorney Michelle Manning, who prosecuted the case during a five-day trial at the Stamford courthouse in late October, asked Judge Gary White to sentence Stephenson to 15 years in jail, followed by five years special parole.

White nearly fulfilled her request, sentencing Stephenson to 12 years in jail, followed by eight years special parole.

I think the sentence was definitely a just result that will protect society, Manning said. She also praised the responding state police officers as well as the detectives with the Western District Major Crime Squad who she said did a phenomenal job.

Without their diligence and hard work, they would not have been able to catch who did this, Manning said. Stephenson tried to manipulate justice and committed a terrible affront to the criminal justice system.

Stephenson, who has been jailed since March 2014, proclaimed he was not guilty of the attempted arson. When White gave him a moment to speak, Stephenson said the jury and the police got it wrong.

Stephensons mother, who owned the car he was driving on the night of incident, begged White to show her son mercy.

A state police trooper responding to the courthouses burglar alarm thwarted Stephensons arson attempt. The trooper arrived less than two minutes after the alarm sounded and saw the suspect peering through window blinds, but it was too dark to identify him.

Manning told the jury in her closing arguments the case was mostly circumstantial, but there was enough evidence to convict Stephenson.

A DNA researcher from the state forensic lab testified during trial that he matched Stephensons DNA to samples collected on each of the 32-ounce kerosene bottles as well as a canvas bag found next to them inside the states attorneys office as well as a hammer found near the exit of the courthouse.

State police investigators also testified they connected a Range Rover caught on surveillance cameras in the area of the courthouse that night to Stephenson.

Manning argued to the jury that Stephensons motive was to avoid a court appearance several days later on a larceny charge that he was ultimately convicted of and sentenced to one year in jail.

jnickerson@scni.com;
C ollapsed oil firm Afren is poised to launch legal action against the Nigerian firm accused of helping its former bosses funnel cash out of the business.

Administrators Alix Partners, which took control of the former stock-market darling when it went bust in 2015, said it had begun pre-action steps against Oriental Energy Resources, Afrens operating partner on the Ebok oilfield off the Nigerian coast.

The action relates to alleged misappropriations of Ebok oil cargoes and certain alleged fraudulent transactions.

The administrators latest progress report said that, if successful, the claims could result in additional material recoveries for creditors, who are still waiting to claw back part of the $1.7 billion (1.4 billion) of debt Afren was saddled with when it went under. It could take at least two years to reach judgment.

Afrens chief executive Osman Shahenshah and chief operating officer Shahid Ullah  part of a team who referred to themselves as the A team  were fired in 2014 after a review by Willkie Farr & Gallagher claimed they had received millions of pounds in unauthorised payments from Oriental in connection with a deal for $400 million in funding from Afren. Both strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Oriental also refuted the claims, arguing that law firms findings were little more than a collection of suppositions, unsupported innuendoes and a series of false and defamatory statements.

It went on to strip Afren of its stake in the oilfield after alleging it had breached their deal. Afren insists it still has a legal interest in Ebok and is taking Oriental to court in Nigeria to enforce its claim.

The company collapsed in 2015 under the weight of huge debts when the oil price halved, wiping out shareholders. It had a market value of 1.6 billion before the oil price slide took hold in 2014.

The administrators said they continued to support enquiries by UK law enforcement agencies, thought to include the SFO. A spokesman for the SFO refused to confirm its interest in Afren, but said it was aware of the situation.

Alix Partners declined to comment further on the legal issues. Oriental could not be reached.
A CHINESE tycoon is making a daring bid to buy a 500 million stake in the Cheesegrater  the Square Miles tallest tower  the Standard understands.

Joint developer British Land launched a secretive sale of its 50% share in the landmark building late last year through agents Cushman & Wakefield, aiming to funnel the proceeds into other projects. But the auction of the trophy asset  as well as a post-Brexit plunge in the pound  has heightened the attraction of London as a home for overseas cash, particularly from Asia and the Middle East.

Property sources say a contender for the stake is CC Land, a vehicle of Cheung Chung Kiu, a 51-year-old property magnate dubbed the Li Ka-shing of Chongqing, the Chinese city where he was born. Hong Kong-listed CC Land was focused on western China, but sold most of its projects there last year and is now sourcing actively potential investment opportunities in China, in Hong Kong, and beyond.

Final bids for the stake in the Cheesegrater, formally known as the Leadenhall Building, are understood to be due next week. If Cheung is successful, it would represent yet another major Chinese investment in City property  the most notable being Chinese insurer Ping Ans acquisition of the inside-out Lloyds Building for 260 million in 2013. One source said: Dont underestimate the Chinese pride factor here. [Cheung] might want to buy it so he can look down on Lloyds and Ping An. It would definitely be making a statement.

Cheung has already made one other investment in London: YT Realty, which he chairs, bought the Travelodge Hotel near Liverpool Street station for 43 million last summer. Property agent Savills represented him on that deal and is working for him again on the Cheesegrater deal.

The skyscraper stands 225 metres high and, although smaller than the Shard, is the tallest building in the City of London until overtaken by the planned 22 Bishopsgate scheme and the Trellis at 1 Undershaft.

Oxford Properties, the property arm of the Omers Canadian pension fund owns the other half of the tower and is a tenant in the building.

British Land will use the funds to help finance the redevelopment of 100 Liverpool Street, one of several buildings being vacated by UBS as the Swiss investment bank moves into new headquarters nearby. Sources remain sceptical, however, whether the UK property company will achieve the 500 million price tag demanded.

The Cheesegrater  and the nearby Walkie-Talkie  were the first major City schemes developers made a commitment to after the financial crisis. Despite the towers success with tenants, giant bolts on the structure had to be replaced after some failed. Cushman & Wakefield and British Land declined to comment.
W hat does an accountant use for birth control? His personality. What does an accountants wife say if she cant sleep? Darling, tell me about your day.

As the old gags suggest, accountants are supposed to be boring. But if thats the case, how come theyre in the news so much?

Whether its PwCs failure to spot jiggery-pokery at Tesco, EYs tax advice for Google, Facebook and Amazon or investigations into KPMGs audit of HBOS, accountancy firms and their misdemeanours are rarely out of the spotlight.

This winter, Deloitte seems to have been hitting the headlines more than most.

The worlds largest accountant-cum-consultant has been thumped with the biggest-ever misconduct fines in the UK and US, traduced by No 10 over a leaked report on Brexit, and criticised for its role in the Malaysian 1MDB scandal.

Still think accountancys dull? UK chief executive David Sproul could be forgiven for wishing it was. But then, having been propelled up the firm after the implosion of Arthur Andersen in the Enron scandal, this career accountant has long been aware of his professions ability to shock.

Sproul was Andersens chief operating officer in the UK when its US partners were caught shredding Enron documents at a rate to cause a surge on the national grid.

The scandal had nothing to do with the thousands of staff at the UK firm, but so great was the reputational crisis that it became clear the Andersen name was a liability. Literally. With the prospect of billions of dollars of legal claims, partners like Sproul were on the hook to lose their homes and livelihoods.

He still vividly recalls sitting at the kitchen table with his wife Simone in 2002, talking about how it could all end in tears.

He and his boss John Ormerod realised they had to find a partner to rescue the UK firm, eventually settling on a merger with Deloitte. Sproul was voted senior partner and chief executive in 2011, taking over from Deloitte veteran John Connolly.

We meet in Deloittes boardroom amid the glass-and-steel tangle of offices springing up between Fetter Lane and Farringdon Road. Slim and carefully groomed, with dazzling teeth and a clipped baritone, theres a touch of the actor Edward Fox about him  but for the occasional traces of Estuary English from his Cambridge grammar school.

The son of a car dealership director, Chelsea fan Sproul went into accountancy from school after an ambition to be an airline pilot ran its course. He got into Arthur Andersen straight after his articles, so has been 33 years in the same firm.

On the flurry of negative stories Deloitte has been through of late, the 57-year-old says: Its our time in the limelight. We start with that memo.

A Deloitte staffer on a Whitehall assignment wrote a briefing for what Sproul describes as a very small group of partners, giving his view of governments preparedness for Brexit.

That view bemoaned a lack of resources, splits in the cabinet and an overly controlling Prime Minister. Theresa May was furious, and a chastised Deloitte has agreed not to bid for Whitehall contracts for six months.

To me, this seemed rather bullying on the part of No 10.

But Sproul, in will hear none of my pity.

No, he declares. We regret sensitive views on our client got into the public domain. Whether those statements were right or wrong, if a memo about any client  HM Government or XYZ Co  had become public, we would have the same view. There will be enough challenges for the Government to get [Brexit] right. They dont need this kind of distraction.

We put our hands up. We got it wrong. But our audit practices have completely changed

Deloittes HR department is in the middle of a review into the leak but Sproul refuses to say whether anyone has been, or could be, fired. It clearly frustrates him that the affair overshadowed Deloittes attempts to put an optimistic face on how Britain can thrive post-Brexit if we get the right deal. The regret is that the story became about this memo rather than the issues, he says.

Next up: a 4 million fine from the Financial Reporting Council over Deloittes audit of Aero Inventory.

The FRC found that Deloittes auditors allowed the Aim-listed company to value its stock wrongly in the three years before its collapse. We put our hands up, says Sproul. We got it wrong. But its important to remember these events were happening 10 years ago. Our audit practices have completely changed.

That absurd delay in the judgment is far from uncommon. HBOS collapsed in 2008, yet the FRC only launched a full probe into KPMGs audit of the bank last summer.

The process is slow and the FRC knows it, Sproul says. One of the problems, he adds, is that the FRC has to wait until other regulators have investigated a situation before it can go in. Should its audit cops be allowed in at the same time? Yeah, I think they should. Where there are potential criminal proceedings, one has to be careful about prejudicing the evidence. But, subject to that, yes.

Now for the third charge: the misdemeanours, alleged or proven, of Deloittes partners in Malaysia and Brazil. In Malaysia, Deloitte has resigned as auditor to the 1MDB wealth fund after claims it failed to spot billions of dollars of illicit payments (KPMG is also wrapped up in the scandal).

Deloittes Mexico arm was fined a record $8 million (6.5 million) by the US for serious failures in its work with a low-cost airline.

Sproul could stonewall that both are faraway places of which he knew little. You see, big accountants are structured as individual country partnerships; Deloittes 200,000 employees across 80 countries operate under the global Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu umbrella but are each legally separate.

But he mea culpas again. We cant insulate, whether something happens in our network in Brazil or Malaysia. Our clients have to be audited globally and they expect us to deliver globally. So we have to say what went on in Brazil was unacceptable, we accept the sanction. We are dealing with it and putting in place measures to bring standards up around the world.

The walls between Deloittes European businesses are coming down. Sproul is combining partnerships in Belgium, Holland, the Nordics and Switzerland into one London-based unit. The idea is for the firms and their clients to benefit from the deeper expertise of the UK mother ship.

Its interesting timing to be persuading EU firms to be led in the UK, I say. Yes, he admits. I wouldnt pretend there wasnt a pause on June 24 from our European colleagues. But in the end we thought hard about Brexit and decided the benefits would still be there.

Sproul was a Remainer but is hopeful Britain will thrive alone. The quality of Britain and London, the diversity of talent, the open economy, the legal system, thats not going to go away,

Revenues produced by Deloitte UKs 17,000 staff jumped 14% to 3.05 billion last year. Traditional tax and audit work grew in double digits, but its Deloittes huge consulting business which differentiates it from its peers.

Rivals flogged off their consultancies after Enron when US regulators expressed concern auditors judgment could be skewed if their firms were also profiting from lucrative consultancy work. But Deloitte clung on.

Since then, the other Big Four players have been having to rebuild their consultancies from scratch. Sproul says the Deloitte Consulting  also growing in double digits  means the firm can advise companies but also get in and execute the strategy.

It is gaining ground in audit, too, lifting its share of FTSE 100 firms from 22% to 26%. New rules ordering companies to rotate their auditors have seen it win several big clients including GSK, BP and Centrica

House rules mean Sproul must stand down as chief executive when his second term ends in 2019, so its natural to wonder what his next job will be. He isnt giving anything away, though: This is my next job, and its the best job in the world.

For all the jokes, his career in accounting has been anything but boring.
T he former boss of Reckitt Benckisers South Korean business was today sentenced to seven years in prison over the sale of a toxic product linked to almost 100 deaths.

A Seoul court convicted Shin Hyun-woo of criminal negligence after finding he failed to inspect the safety of humidifier sterilisers before they went on sale, local media reported.

The seven-year term was the harshest possible punishment for the crime. Reckitts Korean arm was also fined 150 million won (101,500).

Other defendants, including former Lotte Mart chief Noh Byung-yong, were sentenced to prison over similar allegations but Google Korea boss John Lee, also a former Reckitt executive, was acquitted by the judge.

The ruling could help Durex and Nurofen maker Reckitt draw a line under the scandal. A company spokesman said today: We hope the verdicts will mark another important stage in resolving the HS issue. RB remains deeply remorseful for the harm caused to our consumers and their families as a result of the HS tragedy. RB is taking a series of actions to ensure that our safety culture is further prioritised and embedded across our organisation.

The South Korean government believes 92 people have died from causes related to humidifier products, not all of which were sold by Reckitt. More than 500 people have lodged claims of lung ailments relating to the sterilisers since 2011.

The victims had to suffer extreme pains without knowing the exact cause and ended up dying or gaining severe disabilities that require them to live with support devices for the rest of their lives. Most of the victims are young kids and their parents, Judge Choi Chang-young said today.
P roperty companies on Friday kicked off plans to invest in Tottenham, amid expectations Spurs new 400 million stadium will trigger demand for homes.

Housebuilder Aitch Group revealed it is looking to make its debut in the north London area and spend around 20 million this year on land to build flats.

The firm is one of a number of businesses banking on the area becoming more desirable to housebuyers as values rise when Tottenham Hotspur moves into its 61,000-capacity stadium at the beginning of the 2018-19 season.

Estate agency Hunters, which has 180 UK branches, revealed it will this month open in Haringey for the first time, on High Road, Tottenham.

In pictures: White Hart Lane development 1 /16 In pictures: White Hart Lane development Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images

Hunters boss Glynis Frew said the area has fantastic investment potential.

Nik Madan, group lettings director at estate agency Barnard Marcus, said his firm is trying to open a branch in N17 for the first time by mid-2017.

Madan said: Brexit may have spooked the high-end central London market, but Barnard Marcus is convinced there is house price and rental growth potential in London areas undergoing regeneration.

Online agent emoov said house prices around the stadium have risen 8.6% to 339,924 in the past 12 months.

TODO: define component type apester
M artin Luther, 500 years ago, nailed his 95 theses attacking papal abuses to the church door at Wittenberg. In and after 1517 he embraced the social media of the day  print, and printed pamphlets and found that an awful lot of disaffected and disillusioned people wanted to believe every word he said. He wrote with spite and savage mockery, and through his dramatic gesture and his words he caused the greatest schism in Europe.

That schism was to cause tens of thousands to be tortured and killed and much of Europe to be plunged over many decades into what has come down to us as the Wars of Religion. They devastated large parts of France, the Low Countries, Germany and Ireland  and (in a late aftershock in the 1640s) Britain.

Luther was a Catholic priest, a friar, and a professor of theology at a new and trendy university on the river Elbe in Saxony, indulged and protected by his local prince. He had been sickened by the corruption and worldliness he had found in Rome when he visited it in 1510 and he lashed out in cheap, mass-printed pamphlets in his own language, not Latin, the usual language of religion until that time.

Like the internet now, the new printing technology of his age allowed his ideas to spread like wildfire and far beyond the ability of the established Church or princes to silence him. He began with a focused attack on the sale of indulgences  pardons for past sins  the profits of which did not always go to the good causes they were supposed to promote. Although his young prince stood by him, he was drawn into a series of debates with leading figures in the Church, in which he was induced to broaden his criticisms and eventually into denying the authority not only of the popes but of the General Councils of the Church  things that more or less everyone in the Western world up to that point had accepted.

At this point he was excommunicated and had to go into hiding. But, with princely support, he later emerged to set up a rival Church based on two pillars  that the bedrock of Christian truth was not tradition but the Bible (sola scriptura, ie scripture alone) and that salvation was a gift from God to some but not most men and women (sola fide, ie by faith alone) and not something earned by good works and free human action.

There had been schisms in the Church before but this was on a new scale. Within 50 years more than half of western Europe were protesters against Rome (Protestants) and nearly half were members of the Roman Catholic Church, which had by then responded to Luthers challenge by putting its own house in order so that it was an altogether more effective organisation than the bloated Church Luther had attacked.

The problem with the doctrine of sola scriptura was that scripture taught different things to different people and so Protestantism splintered into many different churches and sects. Still the universal Church was now divided against itself, and over a century (during which militant Islam in the form of the Turkish Empire had advanced halfway from Istanbul to Amsterdam and was hoovering up Greece and most of the Mediterranean islands), Christians were slaughtering one another across Europe in the Wars of Religion .

In England, Queen Mary Tudor burned 300 Protestants at the stake and Elizabeth I tortured a similar number of Catholics to death in public executions. Many more died, and when the Wars of Religion reached Britain and Ireland in the 1640s, as many as one in 10 of the adult male population was killed as a direct or indirect result of the fighting  a higher proportion than in the First World War.

Of course, Luther had a point. The late-medieval Catholic Church needed reform, and not the least of the tragedies associated with Luther is that if he had been silenced early on, it is probable that the Western Church would have experienced an internal transformation following the ideas of Erasmus, which would have dealt with most of the abuses and promoted a huge mass educational programme.

So what should we celebrate in this 500th anniversary year of Luthers protest? Certainly, the triumph of print and of the printed Bible in all the major languages of Europe, Luther showing the way with his magnificent German translation. Certainly, too, the slow but inexorable spread of mass literacy, galvanised by the Reformation (although in much of Europe, not least in Britain and Ireland, it was accompanied by the wilful destruction of much great art and artefacts in cathedrals and churches).

The Reformation made all parties rethink their attitude to welfare and support of the marginalised. It helped to shape modern notions of charity and community action in which Christians are disproportionately engaged. And the Reformation started (this, like the violence, was an unintended consequence) the process that was to lead eventually to the decline of the relationship of ruler and bishop. Indeed, the very diversity of the forms of Protestantism resulted within decades, and certainly by 1700 in the rise of religious pluralism and religious liberty. Many have argued that the Protestant gospel also promoted the rise of the autonomous individual, the great shift from the communal and the extended family to the personal and immediate family. Others dispute it: there are shelves of books on both sides of that argument.

So Luthers commitment to sola scriptura, to the encounter with the Bible, has endured; his commitment to sola fide, to a God who saved or damned each person arbitrarily, had a long innings, but it is no longer central to those who follow the tradition he founded, and much of his vision of the world and of the moral universe rested on the capriciousness of God.

The real reason for celebrating Luther 500 years on is that finally, if only in the past 50 years, Christians (except in a few areas where the wounds of the past have yet to heal) have stopped hating one another and stopped drawing up lists of all the things they disagree about and have started opening food banks, halfway hostels and refugee centres together and are united in spirit.

There are still plenty of sectarians. But except when Celtic play Rangers, and even then far less than before, the feuds between Catholics and Protestants now seem like history.

John Morrill is a former Professor of British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge.
As London Fashion Week Men's kicks off today, eyes are temporarily averted back to the female stars as Kendall Jenner leads a group of models showcasing huge new temporary tattoos.

Joined by Joan Smalls, Lara stone, Amber Valletta, Ellen Rosa and Carolyn Murphy, Kendall fronts one of the 6 covers for the V105 issue of V Magazine which is New York Diaries-themed, celebrating icons that have shaped New York's cultural landscape.

Photographed by Mario Testino and styled by Paul Cavaco, the issue also includes a short interview by Derek Blasberg.

Bringing about the discussion of the eternalness of tattoos in an industry famed for constant change, the cover story consists of how each star has shown their individualism through personal rebellion.

Joan Smalls / V Magazine

Citing Rihanna as Queen of the rebels, Jenner said: "She manages to pull everything off. She can do no fashion wrong."

Celebrity Tattoos - In pictures 1 /54 Celebrity Tattoos - In pictures Justin Bieber's neck ink @justinbieber Miley Cyrus with her new tattoo at the VMA's Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Moby with his 'Vegan for life' neck tattoo, inked by Kat Von D Jodie Marsh and her Freddie Mercury tattoo @jodiemarshtv Sheeran's Lion Ed Sheeran Lady Gaga Lady Gaga's musical note inked ... but is it correct? Lady Gaga Lady Gaga Lady Gaga's musical note Tattoo Lady Gaga Rita Ora Rita Ora keeps fans updated as she adds 'power' tattoo to her collection @mr.k_tattoo Kendall Jenner Kendall Jenner JonBoy/Instagram Joe Jonas Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner will remember their beloved pooch Waldo Picasso forever Joe Jonas Sophie Turner Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner will remember their beloved pooch Waldo Picasso forever Sophie Turner Ashley Bensons ode to cara JonBoy/Instagram Cara Delevingne Cara Delevingne's wild art Ariana Grande Ariana Grande's Japanese '7 Rings' Tattoo Ariana Grande Ariana Grande Ariana Grandes tiny charcoal grill Ariana Grande Rihanna Rihanna's show her body art Splash News Rihanna Riri's stars Getty Images Justin Bieber Inked: Justin Bieber unveiled a new tattoo above his right eyebrow JonBoy/Instagram Justin Bieber Justin Bieber's full torso body tattoo Justin Bieber Sarah Harding Sarah Harding may have branded Cheryl's tattoo "ridiculous" - but her own back body art is a strong contender for worst tattoo. Two massive birds of paradise surround the caption: "Don't be bitter-glitter." Rex Features Cheryl Cheryl hit the headlines when she had a huge bunch of red roses tattooed on her lower back and bottom. They trail down her thighs, with more climbing up her back and are all set against what look like black serpents Cheryl David Beckham David Beckham Daily Mail David Beckham David Beckham Splash News Brooklyn Beckham Brooklyn Beckham Instagram Tattoo Brooklyn Beckham Victoria Beckham Victoria Beckham Getty Images Miley Cyrus Not happy with inking her skin - Miley Cyrus opted for a sad yellow cat tattoo... on her lips. Showcasing the unusual inking to her fans on Instagram she wrote: "#sadkitty #f***yeahtulsa #lovemoneyparty #freakz." Miley Cirus Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie with her off the shoulder number (among others) PA The Rock Dwayne Johnson AKA The Rock'S tattoo sleeve SplashNews.com Idris Elba Idris Elba showing off his arm artwork Splash News Dappy Dappy made sure he would stay trending forever after he inked a tiny hashtag under his right eye. Getty Images Scarlett Johansson Scarlett Johansson Getty Images Megan Fox Megan Fox Getty Images Zayn Malik Zayn Malik shows off part of his body art Zayn Malik Harry Styles Harry Styles has racked up a huge tally of interesting tattoos from nails to butterflies to a "You booze you lose" slogan. Splash News Eva Longoria Eva Longoria Getty Images Jesy Nelson Little Mix singer Jesy Nelson's new tattoo Amanda Seyfried For some reason Mean Girls actress Amanda Seyfried got "minge" tattooed on her foot. Luckily it's hard to read. Rex Lady Gaga Not one to shy away from the unusual, Lady Gaga stripped down to her lingerie and was tattooed on the back of her head at the launch of her fragrance at the Guggenheim Museum. Lindsay Lohan Silence is clearly golden for Lindsay Lohan who has tattooed the word 'Shhh' on her finger. Rex Steve-O Steve-O proved he was his biggest fan when he had a self portrait tattooed on his back. The Jackass daredevil captioned the inking Yeah Dude, I Rock! followed by his signature scrawled underneath. Getty Images Miley Cyrus with her new tattoo at the VMA's Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Speaking of her own rebellion, Amber Valletta admitted that her most 'bad ass' moment was for a good cause.

Amber Valletta / V Magazine

"The most bad ass thing Ive done in fashion was in the 1990s. I got Versace, the biggest supermodels, the best hair and makeup all to fly to my hometown Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a charity fashion show."

"It was for the local food bank and we raised about $300,000."

Lara Stone / V Magazine

Admitting she once got a real tattoo during her rebellious phase, Carolyn Murphy said: "I had always wanted a tattoo so, when I was 25, I got a big one. A very big one."

"It was on the entire right side of my body: a large Japanese koi fish with waves and peonies." However, after a change of heart and leaving her rebellious phase behind she admits "it's almost gone."

Kendall Jenner / V Magazine

V105 will be available at VMagazine.com starting on January 12th.

Limited copies of the issue will come with exclusive temporary tattoos of the models by Jenai Chin
Sadiq Khan today hailed London as one of the great fashion capitals of the world, as the citys latest male style event got under way.

The Mayor praised designers including Stella McCartney and Dame Vivienne Westwood for keeping the city at the cutting edge of style.

Dame Vivienne echoed his praise for the capital as she attended a launch party for London Fashion Week Mens in Soho.

She said: "Ive been working in Italy because I appreciate the cost of manufacturing there, but for reasons of efficiency and because it is our home we decided to come back to London - because London has suddenly got on the map."

"At the moment fashion is completely eclectic. The good thing about fashion these days is that you can wear exactly what you like."

The biannual mens event, now in its fifth year, is expected to see a 20 per cent increase in the number of buyers and designers. More than 50 brands will present over four days, including Lou Dalton, Ben Sherman, Craig Green, Oliver Spencer and rapper Tinie Tempah, who is unveiling his debut collection.

Dame Vivienne has brought her mens and womens collections under one label and both will be shown this week, in one of the most highly anticipated shows. Her collection hosted last nights launch party with the British Fashion Council at Quo Vadis.

Vivienne Westwood London Fashion Week Men's party 1 /13 Vivienne Westwood London Fashion Week Men's party LFWM launch party Dame Vivienne Westwood Dave Benett LFWM launch party Dame Vivienne Westwood's husband Andreas Kronthaler Dave Benett LFWM launch party Doina Ciobanu and Betty Bachz Dave Benett LFWM launch party Pam Hogg and Blondey McCoy Dave Benett LFWM launch party Dylan Jones Dave Benett LFWM launch party Aicha Mckenzie, Robert Konjic and Vanessa Kingori Dave Benett LFWM launch party Raye Dave Benett LFWM launch party Betty Bachz and Pam Hogg Dave Benett LFWM launch party Luke Newberry and Dame Vivienne Westwood Dave Benett LFWM launch party Craig McGinlay and Marc Jacques Burton Dave Benett

Mr Khan said: "London Fashion Week Mens is a truly international celebration of fashion, design and creativity. Our city can now legitimately lay claim to being one of the big four fashion capitals of the world, alongside Paris, Milan and New York. As Mayor, Im proud to be able to provide funding to support this event and the next generation of London designers." He added: "Fashion is the largest employer of all our creative industries, supporting almost 800,000 jobs and worth an astonishing 28 billion to the UK economy."

"From Burberry to Stella McCartney, Agi & Sam to Vivienne Westwood, London has been at the forefront of modern fashion, shaping and defining the latest styles and trends for decades."

Agi & Sam SS17 at London Collections Men 1 /29 Agi & Sam SS17 at London Collections Men Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM Models walk the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM A model walks the SS17 runway Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM Designers Agape Mdumulla (right) and Sam Cotton receive applause Reuters/Neil Hall Agi & Sam at LCM Oritse Williams attended the show Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM Jim Chapman attended the show Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM Oliver Cheshire attended the show Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM Paul Sculfor on the front row Jeff Spicer/Getty Agi & Sam at LCM Dougie Poynter on the front row Jeff Spicer/Getty

"Today, shoppers and buyers from as far away as Beijing and Seoul and Montreal will flock to London Fashion Week Mens, showing that London is truly open to business, talent and visitors from across the globe."
T he British Library has handed back a book after a sharp-eyed member of staff realised it had belonged to a Jewish art collector murdered by the Nazis.

The copy of a German play dating back to 1913 was part of Austrian Karl Maylanders collection which was stolen when he was deported to Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941, where he died.

His descendants, now in the United States, struck a deal with a museum in Vienna last year for the return of two sketches by Austrian artist Egon Schiele that had originally belonged to him.

The library said one of its curators noticed the play had a book plate saying it belonged to Mr Maylander and further investigation revealed an overwhelming likelihood that the copy had indeed been part of his library when he was deprived of ownership.

Kristian Jensen, head of collections and curation at the British Library, said: We identified the body which acts for the legitimate heirs and immediately made contact with them so that we could restore the book to the rightful owner. Anne Webber, who co-chairs the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe, said the return of the book, which is valued at around 20, would be worth much more to the family.

She said: We have returned thousands of books and every time a family gets a book back it always means a huge amount to them because it is something their relatives held in their hands and read and cared about.

The case I always tell people about was when we were approached by a German library who had three books with a womans name, her maiden name and married name, written in them. Based on that we established she was a Jew from Germany who fled to Belgium in 1939 with her husband and two children thinking it would be a safe haven.

The husband and wife and eldest child were arrested and murdered but the youngest daughter was sheltered by a Catholic family, survived the war, and was then sent to Palestine as an orphan. We found her and returned the books to her. She was a grandmother herself and it was the first time she had ever seen her mothers handwriting because the family had lost everything.

Another case inspired the Helen Mirren film Woman In Gold, about the legal battle to recover Gustav Klimts portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by her niece, almost 70 years after it was stolen by the Nazis.

@RobDexES

Visit standard.co.uk/arts for the latest news and reviews from Londons arts scene

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
H ere's our guide to where to get your biggest laughs this year  it's a foolproof 2017 survival plan.

Rowan Atkinson, Jo Brand, Michael McIntyre, Rob Brydon, James Acaster and more

A rare live outing for rubber-faced icon Atkinson, supported by stars from various generations, to raise funds for the Royal Brompton Hospital.

February 26, Adelphi Theatre; rutlive.co.uk

Romesh Ranganathan

Rising star Ranganathan hosts this year's Teenage Cancer Trust Comedy Night joined by National Treasure Jo Brand and Kevin Bridges, with more names to be announced.

March 29, Royal Albert Hall; ticketmaster.co.uk

Sara Pascoe

West End debut for the thoughtful stand-up whose live show, Animal, picks up where her hit book of the same name left off.

April 24, Duchess Theatre; nimaxtheatres.com

Sean Lock

The former 8 Out Of 10 Cats panellist sometimes seems to be coasting on television but his slow-burn surreal outlook comes into its own onstage.

May 5 & 6, Eventim Apollo; ticketmaster.co.uk

Tape Face

Sam Wills arrives in London following a Vegas residency with a new show that adds extra theatricality to his seductive, audience participation-based wordless comedy.

June 6-July 22, Garrick Theatre; seetickets.com

Visit standard.co.uk/arts for the latest news and reviews from Londons arts scene

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
January: Chile

British Airways took delivery of the Boeing 787 three years ago  and has finally deployed the ultra long-range jet on a really long hop, the 7,250 miles between Heathrow and Santiago. Flee the cold of the northern hemisphere and enjoy the Chilean capitals relaxed ambience, flamboyant architecture and superb food and drink. Then head south to the lakes and mountains at the height of summer. The greatest trip starts from Puerto Montt, and takes you across the Andes in a day using boats, buses and trucks  a route once followed by Che Guevara.

February: Paphos

(Alamy ) / Alamy

Only a couple of years ago, some travellers were concerned about visiting Cyprus because of the islands precarious financial situation. Today it looks a picture of stability compared with other parts of the world  and a picture of loveliness in terms of culture, cuisine and beaches. Paphos, in the far west, is blessed with popular beaches such as Coral Bay (some blissfully empty beaches can be found in hidden coves along the Akamas Peninsula, north of the town). Yet it also has an archaeological site with mosaics and rock-cut tombs. This rich heritage will come to the fore during Paphoss year as European Capital of Culture (pafos2017.eu)  shared with Aarhus in Denmark.

March: Ghana

On Independence Day, March 6, Ghana marks 60 years since it emancipated itself from British rule, and there could hardly be a more significant time to go. Looking forward to a new political era after recent democratic elections, and with its capital, Accra, fast becoming a hub of art and fashion, Ghana has achieved much since reclaiming its freedom. Dont miss Accras impressive new contemporary art venue Gallery 1957 (gallery1957.com), or Carbon (facebook.com/CarbonGhana), the luxury club founded by Boujis and Mahiki main man Nick House. And there are beaches aplenty when youre ready to slow the pace.

April: New Orleans

(Alamy ) / Alamy

In March, BA starts the UKs only direct flights to The Big Easy, taking off from Heathrow. A visit in spring means plenty of ways to soak up the citys party spirit. Theres the French Quarter Festival (fqfi.org; April 6-9), celebrating New Orleans culture, music and food, or time your visit around Easter for a series of flamboyant parades. Arrive a little later for the prestigious New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (nojazzfest.com; April 28-May 7).

May: Peru

May sees the launch of a new train journey  South Americas first ever luxury sleeper train, the Belmond Andean Explorer (belmond.com). From the same team behind the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, this five-star service will travel along one of the highest train routes in the world, whooshing through the plains of the Andes and between Perus big-ticket sights, including Machu Picchu, Cusco and Lake Titicaca. So whether you fancy plush cabins and fine dining while you soak up the spectacular Andean scenery or have always dreamed of doing the Inca Trail, May 2017 is a great time to tick it off.

June: Tallinn

(Alamy ) / Alamy

The Estonian capital is the prettiest of all in the former Soviet republics, with a well-preserved medieval Old Town, a splendid collection of grand architecture atop Toompea (Dome Hill) and a park  Kadriorg  with a pair of fine art galleries. The enticing cuisine and excellent hotels offer some of the best euro-stretching value in the EU. And the best time to be there? The beginning of June, when the capital is en fete for the Old Town Days (vanalinnapaevad.ee).

July: Canada

This year Canada marks 150 years since its confederation, with celebrations reaching their peak around Canada Day, July 1. Vancouver and Toronto are among the cities planning events, though most details are still under wraps. To mark the occasion, Parks Canada (pc.gc.ca) is offering free entry all year to the countrys 46 national parks  just order your pass online and head off for an epic hike, bike ride or paddle in the likes of Banff, Jasper, Fundy or Glacier National Park.

August: Pacific Northwest US

This summer, Portland in Oregon gets a new link from Heathrow (from May 27 with Delta), making this sparkling city more accessible, while Virgin Atlantic will start serving Seattle. And the Cascades train that beautifully connects those two cities to each other and Vancouver, across the Canadian border, gets faster and more frequent. Best of all, the greatest solar eclipse in American history will make landfall south-west of Portland, and sweep across Oregon en route to the Atlantic. The morning of August 21 will be a great time to be alive in the sometimes weird and always wonderful Pacific Northwest.

September: Aarhus

(Alan Kraft/ Shutterstock ) / Alan Kraft/ Shutterstock

September is the ideal time to visit Aarhus, which shares the European Capital of Culture title with Paphos (aarhus2017.dk), when the weather is mild but you dont have the summer tourist crowds. Denmarks laid-back second city has a packed calendar of events to celebrate its title, including exhibitions, concerts and film screenings. For something more unusual, try and catch one of the

Life-Boats, three floating sculptures designed to look like different stages in a womans life, which are sailing along the coast of the Jutland peninsula until the end of 2017.

October: Xian

As the gateway to the Terracotta Warriors, Xian is on the itineraries of most travellers to China, though many will just pass through. But this city is worth exploring further, and Tianjin Airlines (tianjinairlines.co.uk) launches non-stop flights from Gatwick in May; wait until October, though, for more comfortable temperatures. As the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, Xian has long been home to a mix of cultures, and today has a significant Muslim Quarter, as well as a distinctive Muslim-Chinese cuisine featuring dishes such as shredded charcoal-fired beef stuffed in steamed buns.

November: New Zealand

(Alamy ) / Alamy

The battle to lay claim to the worlds longest flight continues, with Qatar Airways throwing its hat into the ring. Its Auckland-Doha connection  17 hours and 40 minutes  will take the crown in March but hold off your visit until later in the year, the southern hemispheres spring/summer. Head to adventure capital Queenstown for incredible landscapes and adrenaline-raising activities; you can go zip-lining through the treetops on a new twilight tour (ziptrek.co.nz), or  by day  take a helicopter ride over the mountains and glaciers of the nearby Southern Alps. Or stay close to New Zealands buzziest city by paddling around the secluded bays of Waiheke Island, a short ferry ride from Auckland.

December: Amsterdam

From December 2017, Eurostar (eurostar.com) starts serving Amsterdam from St Pancras. Provisional timings indicate two trains a day, each way, taking three hours and 50 minutes outbound (its longer inbound, due to security checks). By then Centraal station should finally be free of building works after more than a decade of disfigurement, providing the perfect overture to this great city.

Follow us on Twitter @eslifeandstyle
A man was repeatedly stabbed as he walked home from a Christmas party in south-east London.

Scotland Yard have launched a probe into the attack which took place in Biggin Hill on December 21.

A 28-year-old man was found by police suffering several stab wounds just before midnight.

He was rushed to hospital after the attack which took place in Norheads Lane.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: No arrests have been made and enquiries continue.

Bromley police are investigating.

Anyone with information is asked to call DC James Quigley on 07818 454470.

Alternatively, police can be contacted via 101 or @MetCC.

To remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org.
B arack Obama has condemned the torture of a man with learning difficulties after the shocking attack was streamed on Facebook Live.

The footage, shot in Chicago, showed the victim bound and gagged before a knife was used to remove part of his scalp.

Speaking out about the footage, President Obama said the incident was a "despicable hate crime".

He said: Whether it's tensions between police and communities, hate crimes of the despicable sort that has just now recently surfaced on Facebook.

In court: Tanishia Covington, Tesfaye Cooper, Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington have all been charged over the attack / Chicago Police Department

However, he went on to claim the attack didnt tarnish his positivity surrounding race relations in the US.

"The good news is that the next generation that's coming behind us have smarter, better, more thoughtful attitudes about race," he said.

"I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive. It doesn't mean that all racial problems have gone away.

Live stream: The attack was filmed on Facebook / Facebook/Chicago Police

It means that we have the capacity to get better."

The victim was subjected to the brutal assault after meeting Jordan Hill, 18, at a McDonalds restaurant, authorities said.

The pair drove around in a stolen van for two days, Chicago Police said, before arriving at the home of sisters Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24.

Detectives believe a play fight led to a lengthy assault which saw the victim forced to drink from a toilet bowl before being beaten.

'Hate crime': President Barack Obama branded the attack 'despicable' / AP

The man, who suffers from learning difficulties, escaped his attackers when neighbours complained about the noise.

He was found wandering the streets in just shorts and sandals, police said.

Commander Kevin Duffin confirmed that racial slurs and references to the victims mental capacity heard in 30-minute clip led to a hate crime probe.

Jordan Hill, Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, all 18, and Tanishia Covington, will appear in court on Friday charged with aggravated battery with a weapon.

The group are also accused of aggravated unlawful restraint and all except Tanishia Covington are charged with residential burglary.

Hill is further charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.
A financial worker who killed his friend with a single punch to the head after his shoe was thrown out of a taxi window is facing jail.

Alexander Thomson, 32, lashed out at 23-year-old Thomas Hulme following a evening socialising with friends on August 26 last year.

The taxi driver stopped but when Mr Hulme got out of the car in Farringdon Street, close to Ludgate Circus, he collapsed on the pavement.

Recruitment consultant Mr Hulme, from Tooting, south London, was rushed to hospital but died the following evening.

At a previous hearing, Judge Wendy Joseph QC told the Old Bailey Thomson had lost his job as a business development manager shortly before the attack, and had gone out that evening with former colleagues.

Victim: 23-year-old Thomas Hulme / City of London Police

On the way home, one of the other young men threw the defendants shoe out of the window of the taxi, in response to which this defendant punched him in the head, she said.

Shortly afterwards the young man collapsed and died.

Thomson, who had been employed in the financial sector in Notting Hill, appeared in the dock this morning to plead guilty to manslaughter, his voice wavering as he said the word guilty.

Judge Anthony Bate freed a tearful Thomson on conditional bail until sentencing on March 10, but said he should be under no illusion that he will be spared jail at that hearing.

Lisa Wilding QC, defending, asked for the adjournment so that Thomson could be medically assessed before he is sentenced, and said he has quit alcohol since the night of the attack.

The court should know why it is that matters escalated to the level it did that night, with wholly unexpected and tragic consequences, she said.

She added that Thomson knows he is going to prison when he is finally sentenced.

Members of Mr Hulmes family were in the courtroom to hear the guilty plea being entered.

Following his death, Mr Hulmes sister Lucy paid tribute on Facebook, writing: Rest in peace to my beautiful big brother. Love you so so much forever.

She broke down in tears as Thomson entered his guilty plea.

Thomson, of Clapham, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter.
A 14-year-old boy was left fighting for life in hospital after he was stabbed in a park in west London.

The teenager was left critically injured after he was knifed in Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith, on Thursday evening.

Police and paramedics found the victim lying next to a bus stop on Goldhawk Road after being called to the attack shortly before 8pm.

He was treated at the scene near to the junction with Ashchurch Grove for a stab wound before being rushed to a central London hospital.

Police said on Friday morning that his injury was being treated as potentially life-threatening.

Scotland Yard were appealing for information about the stabbing, which officers believe took place in Ravenscourt Park.

Detectives from Hammersmith and Fulham CID were appealing for any witnesses or anyone with any information to contact them.

Anyone with information is asked to call police via 101 or tweet @MetCC or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org.
T his is the moment a gang of armed thugs launched an attack on three teenagers before stabbing one of them repeatedly at a chicken shop in south London.

CCTV footage released by police shows three hooded men armed with knives and belts confronting the group with weapons at the fast food restaurant in Brixton.

In the video, a suspect can be seen punching one of the teenagers twice across the back of the head before he was whipped with a belt.

Police said that the 18-year-old victim was knifed six times during the attack at about 5.30pm on January 2 at Dallas Chicken in Brixton Road.

CCTV: Police said a teenager was hit across the head with a belt during an assault at a chicken shop in Brixton / Met Police

Officers said that as one of the teenagers was hit across the face with the belt, the knife victim was stabbed several times and fell to the floor.

He was knifed repeatedly as he lay on the floor before being kicked in the head, police said.

The victim was stabbed four times in the leg and once in the abdomen and the arm before being rushed to a south London hospital by paramedics.

He underwent surgery on his stomach and has been discharged from hospital but will require a further operation on his arm.

Appeal: Police want to speak to three suspects shown in the CCTV footage / Met Police

Witnesses said a further three suspects who were on bicycles outside the shop at the time of the assault all fled together as a group as they made their way northbound along Brixton Road.

Scotland Yard released the CCTV footage on Friday in a bid to trace four suspects involved in the attack.

The first suspect was described as a black man, aged in his early 20s, of medium build. He wore a black puffa-style jacket, blue jeans, a white belt, a black face covering and black shoes with white laces.

Suspect two was described as a black man, aged in his early 20s. He was wore a black jacket, dark trousers, a black face covering and black shoes. Police said he was seen carrying two knives.

The third suspect was described as a slim black man, aged in his early 20s. He wore a black jacket, dark trousers, black gloves, a black face covering and black shoes. Police said he was seen to carry a knife.

Suspect four was described as a slim black man, aged in his early 20s. He wore a black jacket, dark trousers, black gloves, a black face covering and black shoes.

Detective Constable Remy Smith, from Lambeth CID, said: "This is a shocking and brutal assault that has left the victim very distressed from his ordeal.

"We are keen to identify the men in the CCTV footage so we can speak to them about the incident. We would also urge anyone who witnessed the incident to contact us."

Police said one man has been arrested on suspicion of possession of a knife.

Anyone with information or any witnesses are urged to call police via 101 or on Twitter via @Metcc or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A midwife who admitted to stealing morphine from the hospital she worked in has walked free from court.

Laura MacNeil, 24, was handed a one-year jail sentence suspended for two years at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Thursday. She must also complete 200 hours unpaid work.

She previously admitted to stealing 27 doses of morphine from Queens Hospital, Romford, which she then administered to herself.

MacNeil, of Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, made a series of false patient entries in a controlled drug register last June in order to obtain the class A drug.

She also admitted to the possession of Co-Codamol, a class B drug, and Diazepam, a class C drug.

PC Wendy McAllister, who led the investigation, said: "MacNeil abused her position of trust as a midwife to steal morphine for her own use.

"Although no patients went without their prescriptions, MacNeil set up false entries on the controlled drug register using the names of people on the ward she was treating.

"This case demonstrates how the Controlled Drug Liaison Unit will prosecute any medical professional guilty of stealing from their employer."

The case has been referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) who will conduct their own investigation and decide on sanctions regarding MacNeil's registration and fitness to practice as a nurse.
T raders in Chinatown have issued a bleak warning that it may not survive in its current form because of this years swingeing increases in business rates.

Restaurateurs and shop owners in Britains biggest Chinese district are planning a joint appeal against the Government revaluation of their businesses, which has sent bills spiralling.

They say this could be the final straw for many smaller firms already struggling to cope with higher rents and a sharp rise in the cost of food imported from China following the devaluation of the pound after the Brexit vote.

Christine Yau, who has run award-winning Yming restaurant in Greek Street since 1986, said she had been told her business rates will almost double from 26,000 to 51,000 in April. She said: Im thinking of giving up, not putting up with it. It is very troubling. Were not saying to the Government, Dont put up rates at all, but do it in a way that allows people to survive.

Everything is going up all the time and of course the business rates do not include rubbish collection any more  I have to pay Westminster council an extra 600 four times a year for that. We need to appeal against the increases to save Chinatown or it will not survive in the form people know and love.

Rising costs: Restaurant owner Christine Yau said she had been told her business rates will almost double / Alex Lentati

John Leung, owner of Wan Jun gift shop in Newport Court, said his rates bill was due to rise almost 30 per cent, from 38,000 to 49,000, and could mean he has to close. On top of my rent of 60,000 I have to find nearly 2,000 a week, he added. I cannot trade longer hours than I do already so what can I do? Restaurateur C T Tang, chairman of the London Chinatown Chinese Association, said business was already tough due to the uncertain economic climate, with Christmas corporate bookings down by half.

Other challenges facing the neighbourhood include visa control making it harder to recruit skilled staff from China, and noisy demonstrations by the Falun Gong sect that are putting off Chinese tourists, the traders claim.

They say there are an unprecedented six vacant premises in Chinatown, and nine betting shops have opened in re-cent years while the number of Chinese bookshops is down from four to one.

Chinese New Year is at the end of the month, with some 700,000 people ex-pected to visit central London to celebrate the Year of the Rooster. Brian Bickell, chief executive of Chinatowns biggest landlord, property firm Shaftesbury, said: Good businesses should be able to trade through the increase in rates. We have the prospect of more people coming in when Crossrail opens. One issue is some businesses in Chinatown havent modernised over time.

The revaluation coming into effect in April is roughly neutral over England and Wales as a whole. Some less prosperous areas will see cuts in business rates, while central London will bear the brunt of increases.

The Department for Communities and Local Government said: The revaluation improves the accuracy and fairness of bills. Three quarters of businesses will see no change or a fall in bills. No small business will see more than a five per cent increase this year. To help transition to the new rates weve set aside 1 billion support for London.
J amie Oliver is closing two of his Jamies Italian restaurants in London on the back of tough trading since the Brexit vote.

Outlets in Richmond and Ludgate Hill will be closed and sold off by the end of March, the celebrity chef announced on Friday.

Four other restuarants will be closed across England and Scotland and a total of 120 employees will be affected.

Mr Oliver said he was trying to find them jobs in another Jamie's Italian restuarant as a matter of priority.

18 months for Brexit deal, says EU's chief negotiator

Simon Blagden, chief executive of the Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group, said: As every restaurant owner knows, this is a tough market and post-Brexit, the pressures and unknowns have made it even harder."

He said the restaurant closures had been forced by a combination of expensive ingredients, staff training and lower footfall.

"Because we refuse to compromise on the quality and provenance of our ingredients and our commitment to training and developing our staff, we need restaurants that can serve an average of 3000 covers every week to be sustainable," he added.

The closures represent less than 5 per cent of total turnover and impact less than 5 per cent of staff.

Theresa May's red, white, and blue Brexit

The restaurant group intends to expand its Barbecoa brand and open 22 Jamies Italian restaurants abroad this year.

There are currenntly 13 Jamies Italian restaurants in the London and 29 more across the UK. Over 36 are run abroad under his name.
T he landlords of a leading live music venue plan to link it to a new hotel to protect its future as more nightclubs close in the capital.

Koko in Camden, which has hosted performances by Prince, Kanye West, Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay, would be the first major UK concert venue to provide access from rooms in an adjacent hotel.

The plans come from Vevil International, owner of the 117-year-old former theatre that houses Koko, which is also a nightclub.

Kokos owners and Vevils tenants, Obar Camden, won a High Court battle in 2015 to stop the Hope and Anchor pub next door being turned into flats. It argued that complaints about noise from Koko and other venues from people in the flats would be a threat to the businesses.

Amid concerns that future residential developments could make it harder for the club to keep its licence, Vevil International then bought three buildings behind the venue, including the pub.

Vevil and Obar Camden have submitted a planning application to Camden council for a major refurbishment of the club  and to build a 32-room boutique hotel.

Although the hotel would be a separate business from Koko, there would be access from the hotel  including to private boxes on the second circle from some rooms.

Under the plans the dome on top of the building  which dates from its opening as a theatre in 1900  would become a bar and function room. There would be access from both the venue and the hotel to the previously closed-off space.

The flytower above the stage would be turned into a two-storey suite for the hotel including a recording studio for visiting artists.

Koko said there would also be restoration of period features and structural work.

Co-owner Olly Bengough added: We are extremely excited about the refurbishment and hotel proposals, which will allow Camdens heritage to thrive in the future.

Operations manager Mike Hamer said the restoration would highlight the jewels this venue has to offer.

Research by the London Assembly shows that of 430 live music venues trading in the capital between 2007 and 2015, only 245 are still open.

According to Mayor Sadiq Khan, more than half of Londons clubs have closed in the past eight years.
B ouncers at Fabric will be supported by police when the venue opens its doors for the first time since September.

The world-famous nightclub, one of London's biggest, nearly closed for good last year after Islington Council found it had a "culture of drug use".

It had its licence revoked in September following the deaths of 18-year-olds Ryan Browne and Jack Crossley after taking illegal substances at the venue.

The club, in Farringdon, will re-open its doors on Friday night after all parties agreed to new licensing conditions including a raised entry age and tougher security measures.

Reopening: Fabric nightclub will reopen its doors on Friday / Rex

Scotland Yard said while police usually patrol nightlife in the area officers will be specifically stationed at Fabric "to support the door team who may need our help".

Superintendent Nick Davies said: "As things settle down and it becomes business as normal for Fabric they will be subject of the same police and licensing visits as other clubs in the borough."

Licence conditions include a ban on anyone under the age of 19 entering the venue between 8pm on Fridays and 8am on Mondays.

Fabric: the club's closure sparked an outcry

It also states anyone found in possession of drugs in the club or who tries to buy drugs will be handed a life ban.

The club has also pledged to introduce a new ID scanning system, improve search procedures and introduce covert surveillance in the venue.

Jack Crossley, from Worcester Park, Surrey, died on the morning of August 6 after becoming unwell at the club.

His inquest, held earlier this week, heard he had smuggled drugs into the venue in his boxers before buying more inside.

Ryan Browne died in hospital on June 25 after taking ecstasy on a night out at Fabric.

He died due to "recreational drug use gone wrong", his inquest was told.

Last month the club's managing director Gary Kilbey warned visitors not to bring drugs to the club.

On the Fabric blog he wrote: "Our longevity also relies on you our supportive clientele who we are so dependent on, we still need your help.

We need you to come with the conditions of our reopening in mind and help us achieve a drug free environment."
L ondons filthy air has smashed legal limits on annual levels of traffic fumes just 120 hours into the New Year.

A monitor on Brixton Road has already recorded more than 20 hourly readings when concentrations of toxic nitrogen dioxide exceeded 200 micrograms per cubic metre since Big Ben sounded in 2017.

Under European law residents, pedestrians and cyclists should not be exposed to such high levels of N02 - a gas emmitted by diesel engines - more than 18 times in an entire year.

The breach comes even earlier than last year when the limit was broken on January 8 on Putney High Street.

Brixton resident Alan Andrews, a lawyer for the campaign group ClientEarth, said the breach was another shameful reminder of the severity of Londons air pollution.

He added: It is absolutely essential that the Mayor now delivers on his promises and that the national government back him to the hilt.

He has promised to introduce a bigger ultra-low emission zone in 2019 and to deploy the cleanest buses on the most polluted roads.

While these are vital steps in the right direction, we cant wait another three years for action. We need immediate action to cut pollution in the short-term and protect Londoners health during these pollution spikes.

The breach comes the day after new research linked traffic pollution with higher levels of dementia.

Concentrations of N02 were particularly high yesterday when a blanket layer of still cold air trapped vehicle fumes and stopped them being dispersed.

King's Colleges London Air Quality Network monitor on Brixton Road, which is passed by eight bus routes, recorded a staggering 17 hours in a single day when N02 concentrations were above the 200 micrograms per cubic metre.

Levels peaked at about 350 micrograms.

The World Health Organisation has said there is no safe level of exposure above 200 micrograms.

London Assembly Green Party spokeswoman on transport Caroline Russell, who was visiting Brixton today, said: A woman stopped me in the street because her son suffers appalling athsma so it is so important that we tackle this shocking problem.

A spokesman for the Mayor said: The fact that Brixton Road has exceeded the legal safe levels of nitrogen dioxide in the first six days of the year underscores why urgent action is needed to improve air quality across London.

Just today, the Mayor has announced ten additional Low Emission Bus Zones to help tackle some of our most polluted hotspots as part of a broader plan to transform our bus fleet.

"One of these zones will run through Brixton Road, ensuring that only the greenest buses are used on the capitals most polluted routes.

Simon Birkett, founder and director of Clean Air in London, said: When conditions are as bad as they were on Thursday bus services should be suspended, drivers should be advised not to drive and pedestrians should be warned to avoid the area.

We need to ban alfresco dining and the use of outdoor tables for cafes wherever and whenever the WHO guideline for hourly exposure could be breached. Emergency measures are needed.

Cllr Jennifer Brathwaite, Lambeth councils cabinet member for environment & transport, said: This is shocking, but sadly not surprising.

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"We are very aware of the high levels of pollution in the borough which is why we encouraging our residents to change their behaviour, while lobbying City Hall and the Government for improvements.

Friends of the Earth London campaigner Sophie Neuburg said:

With the new year only days old, its scandalous that London air pollution limits for the entire year have already been breached.

Air pollution is a major health threat, particularly to children and other vulnerable people, contributing to almost 10,000 premature deaths every year in London.

Road traffic is the biggest culprit  and diesel is the worst. This is why Sadiq Khan must follow the example of the Mayor of Paris and commit to phase out diesel in London by 2025.
D ozens of firefighters have been tackling a ferocious blaze which tore through an industrial yard in Waltham Abbey.

Dramatic images showed firefighters battling the inferno at the industrial unit in Avey Lane on Friday morning.

Six fire engines and 35 firefighters raced to the scene of the blaze after being alerted by 999 calls at about 6.15am.

A 200-metre hazard zone was set up by fire crews because of a number of gas cylinders at the site.

Hazard zone: A 200-metre safety cordon was put in place because of gas cylinders at the site / Paul Wood

The fire was still burning more than three hours later at 9.30am.

Crews from Essex and London Fire Brigade were attending.

A spokesman for Essex County Fire and Rescue service, which was leading on the incident, said: When crews arrived they reported that acetylene cylinders were involved and immediately set up a 200-metre safety cordon around the cylinders, which is standard procedure for this type of incident.

The crews are continuing to tackle the fire and cool the cylinders.
B MWs self-driving cars have been let out onto public roads in the US  and the Standard came along for the ride.

The new 5 Series drives itself when the motorist pushes a button to instruct the vehicle to take control.

During the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the worlds biggest tech show, the test car headed down a freeway at 60mph while the driver sat with his arms folded for five minutes.

BMW said the autonomous system had not crashed during tests, but an engineer had his finger on the handbrake button just in case.

The German auto giant has announced plans to test 40 driverless vehicles on European and US roads later this year, in a project with Intel and Israeli driver assistance sensor firm Mobileye. BMW said that in future it hoped to extend the trials to Britain.

Cruising in Vegas: a driver sits idle as BMWs new 5 Series takes the controls on a US freeway

When the 5 Series goes into driverless mode, the steering, acceleration and braking are all managed with sensors including radar, cameras and ultrasonic technology. It also uses maps, lane marking and the vehicle in front to orientate itself.

The wifi-connected console gives a countdown for the traffic lights and the vehicles occupants can even make a restaurant reservation through Amazons voice-controlled Alexa artificial intelligence personal assistant.

An Amazon Prime connection allows shopping to be done on the move with suggestions about where to pick it up en route. Software examines where there is a high probability of a spare parking space, into which the car will reverse on its own.

The 5 Series can turn into a cinema, dimming the rear window and adding mood lighting strips as the motorist watches a movie while the car takes over. The driverless technology relies on huge amounts of data being fed in from the Cloud and road intelligence reports from other connected BMWs.

The prototype was one of a growing number of autonomous vehicles on display at CES, with concepts from firms including Ford and Hyundai.

BMW said it hoped to have autonomous models available for sale by 2021. Dr Philipp Reinisch, BMW autonomous driving expert, said: The cool thing is you have a lot of new time you can use now in your car. You can do your work or watch a video.

In the future there would be many advantages in the city, you dont have to look for a parking space  you just send your car to look for it.

BMW also showcased a concept design featuring holographic drivers controls operated via haptic feedback  a technology that enables a user to feel a hologram.

The i Inside Future concept employs a holographic screen projected above the drivers console. The driver interacts with it using finger movements. To allow focus to be maintained on driving, ultrasound pulses provide tactile feedback, as if the motorist was touching the console.

Mark Blunden flew as a guest of Virgin Atlantic, which flies the Boeing 747-400 daily from Gatwick to Las Vegas. More details: virginatlantic.com
R ed Cross volunteers and staff are to help the NHS in England cope this winter as it warns of a humanitarian crisis.

The charity  which works to help people across the globe  said it was helping people get home from hospital and free up desperately-needed beds.

But head of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, said extra cash was vital for health and social care to make the system sustainable.

The charity has already provided support to staff at the East Midlands Ambulance Service across Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln, Kettering and Northampton.

Mr Adamson said: "The British Red Cross is on the front line, responding to the humanitarian crisis in our hospital and ambulance services across the country.

Charity: The Red Cross works in the UK and overseas. / Getty Images

"We have been called in to support the NHS and help get people home from hospital and free up much needed beds.

"This means deploying our team of emergency volunteers and even calling on our partner Land Rover to lend vehicles to transport patients and get the system moving."

Highlighting the need to improve social care, he said: "No one chooses to stay in hospital unless they have to, but we see first-hand what happens when people are sent home without appropriate and adequate care.

"We've seen people sent home without clothes, some suffer falls and are not found for days, while others are not washed because there is no carer there to help them.

"If people don't receive the care they need and deserve, they will simply end up returning to A&E, and the cycle begins again."

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: "The Red Cross being called in to help in our hospitals is just the latest staggering example of how the NHS is now being pushed to breaking point.

"For the Red Cross to brand the situation a 'humanitarian crisis' should be a badge of shame for government ministers."

He added: "The stark reality is the NHS is facing a crisis this winter and in need of urgent help from ministers. It's time Theresa May urgently faced up to her responsibilities and abandoned her policy of systematically underfunding our NHS."
A pilot has launched a bid to reunite a lost bear with its owner after it was found abandoned on an aeroplane.

EasyJet captain Matthew Clutterbuck discovered the shabby teddy lying in the aisle of his plane one morning in December.

He believed the sad-looking bear nicknamed Shackleton was left behind by someone during the rush to embark from the last flight the previous day.

The airline said the teddy was most likely left on the Bordeaux to Luton flight on December 20 and has launched a plea on social media under the hashtag #GetShackletonHome.

Oh his travels: The bear is travelling round with the pilot until the owner is found / EasyJet

Father-of-two Mr Clutterbuck chose to name the bear after famous polar explorer Ernest Shackleton who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic.

The pilot has decided to take Shackleton on all his flights and keep a log book of his adventures until his owner has been traced.

He said: I have two young children of my own who both have soft toys which have to go everywhere, so I can understand how attached children are to their favourite toys and so know how distraught children can be when they lose them and just how stressful if can be for the parents as a result.

Hopefully with a bit momentum behind the search on social media well be able to give the child somewhere a late Christmas present.

Anyone who knows who the bear belongs to is urged to contact EasyJet using the hashtag of via Facebook.
A crude Australian tourism advert for the country's Northern Territory has been declared "obscene" by a standards watchdog.

The profane advert reads CU in the NT  The top end. Different from the bottom end.

The campaign was the work of independent tourism group NT Official, which is not in fact affiliated with the area's official tourist board.

The Australian Advertising Standards Board (ASB) said it had received complaints describing the slogan as "crass", "highly offensive" and extremely denigrating to women.

Complainants told the watchdog they feared it projected a negative image of Australia to overseas tourists. NT Official

The ASB, which has no powers of enforcement, agreed and said it "considered the c-word to be obscene and not appropriate in advertising in any form".

NT Offical, which sold the slogan on a range of merchandise, told the ASB a "dangerous precedent" would be set if the ad was found to breach regulations. It argued that many brands used provocative acronyms, such as French Connection UK.

The group said in its arguments to the watchdog that a finding against it would impose an overly strict moral view on a fine tradition of Australian humour and in particular the great tradition of the Aussie larrikin (sense of humour)".

It added: Neither our social media posts nor our products make any reference or distinction along gender lines and do not advocate anything other than an appreciation of the natural beauty of the Northern Territory.

The organisation had also produced a range of clothing with the slogan on and a spokesman told local media they were "flat out like a lizard drinking" in response to the number of orders.

It said the provocative campaign was aimed at attracting younger people to the Northern Territory where landmark sites such as Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, can be found.
A week has passed since Ali Unal witnessed the aftermath of a massacre. The manager of Istanbuls Reina nightclub can barely sleep or eat after seeing the dead and dying strewn across the clubs dance floor just after midnight on New Years morning.

The lone gunmans attack, which left 39 dead and 69 wounded, has hit Istanbuls trendy young crowd especially hard.

This was their little slice of glitz and glamour, sprinkled with loud music, gorgeous drinks and a stunning view. Getting in could cost upwards of 300 on special occasions, but people flocked here from all over the world.

The owner, Memet Kocarslan, started the club 16 years ago. He wanted it to be a place for east and west to come together, dance, laugh, eat and drink. It became a microcosm of Istanbul: a city that bridges east and west. Kocarslan wanted people to enjoy each others company and forget about any tensions that exist between countries and cultures.

It is hard to describe his sorrow, and painful to watch a man hang his head in shame because he couldnt stop a massacre.

Days after the horrific attack we walked into the Reina. From the waterside it still looked beautiful. But immediately inside a huge bullet hole was visible, then a bloodstain came into view on the wall.

Another step inside saw stylish clothes abandoned by their wearers, then a pile of shoes of every hue, spectacles, scarves and a hat.

At closer glance the hat was caked with dried blood. That was when the terror of the night set in for me. The owners of these items may never reclaim them. The dead have no use for them.

The ideology so-called Islamic State used to justify this attack seems to rest in its vision of erasing the western way of life. On social media it boasted that its soldier committed the act where Christians were celebrating their pagan feast. In fact, more Muslim than Christian lives were lost.

Kocarslan says the devils who perpetrate such acts wont stop him or his city from welcoming both western and eastern ideas with open arms. I for one will continue to bring my family to a city I have loved since the very first time I set foot here. Fear and hate should never kill love and trust.
D onald Trump is reportedly preparing to make an astonishing U-turn on his campaign demand for Mexico to pay for a massive wall along its border with the United States.

The President-elect is demanding funds from US Congress to finance the controversial 10 billion barrier to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing into America, according to reports.

Mr Trumps transition team is said to have reached out to Republican congressmen and women in an effort to have them add US taxpayer funding for the costly project in an appropriations bill within the next few months.

If true, the move will infuriate supporters who rallied behind the property moguls repeated campaign pledges to demand payment from the Mexican government.

He claimed today any US cash spent would be recouped from its neighbour. He tweeted: The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!

During last years presidential campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly whipped crowds into a frenzy with a chant of Build the Wall. He would ask, Whos going to pay for it? and the audience would respond, Mexico.

Donald Trump completes victory tour by declaring 'we have tremendous hope'

The President-elects own transition website puts the wall as priority one on his 10 Point Plan for immigration.

Begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border, on day one. Mexico will pay for the wall, it says.

Mr Trump also told the Washington Post in March that he planned to threaten Mexico with sanctions until they paid for the wall on the southern border.

The apparent reversal drew a backlash against Mr Trump on social media.

Remember, Mexico is gonna pay for that wall! You ****king snake oil salesman, one critic said on Twitter.

Today, Mr Trump was being briefed in Washington over allegations that Russia meddled in the US elections by masterminding a hacking campaign - claims that the billionaire former reality star has rubbished.

The US sports stars who endorsed Donald Trump 1 /13 The US sports stars who endorsed Donald Trump Standard Sport runs you though some of stars of American sport who have offered support to Donald Trump's campaign... Ian MacNicol/Getty Images John Daly The PGA Tour pro was unequivocal in his support of Trump before the election, telling CBS Sports: "He's one of the greatest human beings I've ever met in my life. I love him as a dear friend, and you're dang right he'll get my vote." Robert Laberge/Getty Images Clay Buchholz The Boston Red Sox pitcher told the Boston Globe that he endorsed Trump because "he says what a lot of people think and don't say." Gail Oskin/Getty Images Chase Elliott Trump was endorsed by NASCAR driver Chase Elliott during a Trump rally in Valdosta, Georgia earlier this year. Robert Laberge/Getty Images Mike Tyson The former heavyweight boxing champion of the world told the Daily Beast earlier this year: "I know him. When I see him, he shakes my hand and respects my family. None of them - Barack, whoever - nobody else does that. "They're gonna be who they are and disregard me, my family. So I'm voting for him. If I can get 20,000 people or more to vote for him, I'm gonna do it." Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Tom Brady According to Trump himself, the New England Patriots quarterback voted for the Republican nominee. Trump told supporters before the election that Brady had said: "Donald, I support you, youre my friend and I voted for you" - a claim that Brady's wife Gisele Bundchen denies. While there was no confirmation from the NFL star, a Leicester Tigers rugby player sharing the same name sought to avoid an unwanted Twitter firestorm by declaring that he had "NOT voted for Trump." Billie Weiss/Getty Images Dennis Rodman Trump joins North Korea's Kim Jong-un in among the political friends the NBA star can count on, with Rodman tweeting last year: "Trump has been a great friend for many years. We don't need another politician, we need a businessman like Mr. Trump! Trump 2016". TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images Jack Nicklaus The retired pro golfer spelled it out in simple terms to CBS Sunday Morning back in May: "He's not stupid. He didn't get to where he's at because he's dumb. "He's turning America upside-down, he's awakening the country. We need a lot of that." Scott Halleran/Getty Images Hulk Hogan Hogan told TMZ in September last year: "I don't want to be in the ring with any candidates, I want to be Trump's running mate... did you hear that? Vice President Hogan?" Hogan didn't quite get his wish as Mike Pence is now VP, but the controversial 63-year-old star probably won't be too disappointed with the results. Paul Kane/Getty Images Don King The controversial boxing promoter endorsed Trump at an Ohio church in September, saying: "The system is the problem, and hes the only gladiator who will take on the system. We need Donald Trump, especially black people." MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Last night, outgoing Vice President Joe Biden told Mr Trump to grow up following his attacks on the Americas spy chiefs.

Mr Biden said it was absolutely mindless for the President-elect not to have faith in intelligence agencies.

For a president not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to, the myriad intelligence agencies, from defence intelligence to the CIA, is absolutely mindless, he said in an interview with PBS.

The idea that you may know more than the intelligence community knows - its like saying I know more about physics than my professor. I didnt read the book, I just know I know more, he added.

When asked what he thought of Mr Trumps Twitter use, Mr Biden said: Grow up Donald, grow up, time to be an adult, youre president. Time to do something. Show us what you have.
F ive people have been shot dead by a lone gunman at an airport in Florida, officials said.

Fort Lauderdale international airport announced there was an "ongoing incident" in the Terminal 2 baggage claim area just before 1pm local time (6pm GMT).

A total of five people were killed and eight injured, according to local police officials. One person was detained in custody unharmed.

News helicopters hovering over the scene showed hundreds of people standing on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by and numerous law enforcement officers rushed to the scene.

Five people were killed in the attack / AP

Broward County commissioner Chip LaMarca said the gunman was a passenger on a Canadian flight and had checked in a gun with his baggage.

He said the man pulled the gun from his bag, loaded it in a bathroom and then opened fire on passengers.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted that he was at the airport when shots were fired and "everyone is running".

A witness told NBC News the gunman was shot by police less than a minute after the shooting began.

Armed personnel arrive at the airport / AP

"He was gunned down by police," said Mark Lea from Minneapolis.

"It was absolutely surreal," he said.

"People were scared and frantically running to avoid being shot. People were tripping over each other. They were trying to make a fast exit out of the door."

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida claimed the gunman was carrying military ID in the name of Esteban Santiago, but that it was unclear whether it was his.

"We don't know a motive at this point," Mr Nelson said. "This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism. We can't conclude that."

People stand on the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after a shooter opened fire inside a terminal / AP

The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated at least one bleeding victim on the tarmac.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the shooting by his Homeland Security adviser, the White House.

President-elect Donald Trump said he was monitoring the situation and that he had spoken with Mr Scott.

Mr Trump tweeted: "Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!"

Police officers stand on the perimeter road following the shooting / AP

Video posted on Instagram appeared to show several people wounded in the baggage claim area of the terminal. One person appeared to be lying in a pool of blood with a head wound.

Paramedics could be seen treating a bleeding victim outside the airport. Hundreds of people stood on the tarmac as an ambulance drove by.

Broward County mayor Barbara Sharief told CNN authorities that a lone shooter was responsible for the attack and had been taken into custody.

Flights already in the air and headed for the airport were delayed or diverted, and those that had yet to take off for Fort Lauderdale were held on the ground.
Contact: J.P. Duffy or Alice Chao, Family Research Council, 866-372-6397



WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Family Research Council (FRC) commended Texas State Senator Lois Kolkhorst for introducing the Texas Women's Privacy Act (SB 6), which will protect women and children. The bill prevents public schools, state government agencies, and political subdivisions from adopting policies that would open women's showers, bathrooms, and changing facilities to men and visa-versa.

It also prevents political subdivisions from forcing private entities, including contractors, to open their showers, locker rooms and bathrooms to people of the opposite sex. It leaves private entities free to determine their own policies regarding the use of shared bathrooms and showers.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement:
Growing up 12 miles northeast of Scottsbluff meant trips to town were special. Back then there were no malls, big box super stores instead the majority of the shopping was downtown at the locally owned small businesses.

Places like Russells Music, the Cats Meow, L.B. Murphy, Bluffs Pharmacy and the Ranchway Western Store. I remember always having to visit Toy Castle, it was a kids dream true castle. If I could convince mom to buy me something, the dream came true.

There was a record store, but I dont remember the name. There were two musical instrument stores, Jays and Russells Music. I bought my first guitar from Russells, a Yamaha acoustic I still have and play.

On the way out of town, we would stop at Bailys to load up on groceries.

If I was with dad, we always stopped at Carr Trumbull on Broadway and we had to make a stop at F.H. Schafer Elevator on Railway Avenue.

They were all locally owned. The closest thing to a big box store was Woolworth's. It was an old five and dime with a little bit of everything.

All but Carr Trumbull and Schafers, are gone today, even they have changed, moved and gotten bigger, but still locally owned.

I walked into one of our super stories recently grabbed a shopping cart and as I was about to start shopping I looked around. I saw Toy Castle in the toy section, the Cats Meow in the card and gift sections, L.B. Murphys in the clothing, Bluffs Pharmacy and Baileys all in one store. It is nice having all under one roof, but it is also very sad. The mega stories buy in huge quantities and the small business owner struggles to compete.

Add in the untaxed competition from Internet stores  many of which offer free shipping  and it gets even tougher to keep the doors open.

We saw that play out this week with Western Trail Sports, a locally owned business open for 46 years, closing its doors.

Owner Bruce Rolls, my former accounting teacher at Scottsbluff High School, said, You can combat it to a certain extent, but its obvious nationwide that the chains will be doing business. Somebody told me that the independent merchant is a dinosaur.

It is too late to save the dinosaurs, but the independent merchant is not yet lost. However, they are an endangered species.

We still have locally owned stores such as Main Street Appliance, which we featured in the paper recently. There is Sonnys Bike Shop, which will be featured soon. You can get a new guitar, drum set and more at Crossroads Music or Thrasher Music.

Actually, if you look around you will find a number of locally owned businesses still fighting to keep their doors open. They may not hire as many people as the big box stores or offer no sales tax like some of the Internet stores, but their profits stay here and travel around the community impacting your life in a positive way.

I buy a new guitar from Crossroads. Richard, the owner, buys lumber from Carr Trumbull. Jim, one of the owners, buys a new bike from Sonnys and JR, the owner buys groceries at Fresh Foods and the money keeps flowing in our hometown.

We have brought a number of endangered species back, such as the American eagle. We can do the same with independent merchants.

So as much as possible, do your shopping at a locally owned business. Keep your money at home.
LINCOLN  Conservatives ruled the opening day of the 2017 Nebraska Legislature Wednesday, defeating moderates and Democrats to hold leadership positions.

State lawmakers elected Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk as speaker to replace outgoing Speaker Galen Hadley of Kearney. Scheer prevailed 27-22 over Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg.

They also chose three members of the freshman class to lead legislative committees, ousting two Democratic incumbent chairs and defeating a Democratic challenger.

Scheer was the candidate considered friendlier to the agenda of Gov. Pete Ricketts.

Scheer, a Republican, promised to work with the other branches of government but also to protect the autonomy of the Legislature. Williams placed more emphasis on legislative independence.

Theres a difference between partisanship and political philosophy, Scheer said when asked whether senators had just witnessed a partisan takeover in the Legislature. The majority of the body is conservative.

Ricketts in a statement congratulated Scheer, saying that the gravity of the responsibility of what is before us this session is humbling and that work to balance the budget, control spending and deliver tax relief needed to take priority.

Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb said in a tweet that the results of the elections showed that the governor bought the Legislature.

Folks dont want 1 party control, she wrote. Ricketts millions bought it.

Some predict that the shift to a more conservative-led body may have poisoned the 90-day session.

State Sen. Burke Harr of Omaha said the leadership posts went to people who share an ideology of not working across party lines and of favoring partisanship over the best interests of Nebraskans.

My fear is that today is the day the music died, that we became a partisan body, said Harr, a Democrat in the officially nonpartisan Legislature.

The elections, however, will not change the issues facing the Legislature, he said. It simply changes how lawmakers work on those issues.

By the sessions end, scheduled for June 2, lawmakers are expected to create a new two-year state budget and address taxes, work to fix the troubled state prison system and hear proposals to ease occupational licensing requirements, among others.

Today will be the first day to introduce bills.

Day 1 wasnt all successful for conservative lawmakers.

No state senator made a motion Wednesday morning to change the closed practice of electing legislative leadership, though Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell rose to explain his vote against adopting the temporary rules. He said he would not try to change the rules to require open ballots.

The temporary rules that include the use of secret ballots then were adopted 45-4, with Sens. Bill Kintner of Papillion, Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn and John Lowe of Kearney voting with Kuehn against their adoption.

But Wednesday afternoon, before the days last election, Kuehn filed a motion to require a recorded vote for chair of the Legislatures Rules Committee. That attempt failed when lawmakers voted 29-19 to maintain secret ballots.

Kuehn said he waited to take formal action until the last contested race so as to not interrupt the traditional nature of the sessions first day, which included the swearing in of newly elected and re-elected senators, flanked by their families and friends.

I felt that it was an important enough issue to the people of Nebraska that the body needed to make a decision, and the body made a decision, he said.

But Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, the bodys lone independent and a strong opponent of opening ballots for leadership, called Kuehns move an effort to undercut the Legislatures integrity for the sake of the Republican Party. Kuehn, he said, was acting in bad faith and some members allowed themselves to be used as pawns.

And Harr took issue with a ruling by Lt. Gov. Mike Foley, the Legislatures presiding officer and member of the Executive Branch, to let Kuehns motion go forward, saying we have a separation of powers issue.

Think about what has happened today, Chambers said before senators voted to maintain secret ballots. Think of how youve poisoned the well already. Do you need to add insult to the legislative process to the injury youve done to your colleagues?

Lawmakers elected 17 Republicans, one Democrat and one Libertarian to committee leadership. That compares to last years 15 Republicans and four Democrats.

Veteran lobbyist Walt Radcliffe said it is not unusual to see a coalition of senators come together on the first day of a session. But Wednesday marked the first time he could recall having a freshman senator elected committee chairman, let alone three freshmen.

The freshmen senators elected to lead committees are Mike Hilgers of Lincoln (Rules), Joni Albrecht of Thurston (Business and Labor ) and Justin Wayne of Omaha (Urban Affairs).

Radcliffe said the leadership votes dont necessarily guarantee success for a more conservative agenda, however. There were 27 or 28 votes for most senators who won legislative leadership positions, but it takes 33 votes to end a filibuster.

These votes today serve to further polarize the Legislature, he said.

Kuehn disagreed, saying each Legislature is different. This years body has 17 new members.

Its part of the natural process, he said. While change can be uncomfortable for some, its the basis for new ideas and new innovations.

Sen. Tyson Larson of ONeill said he didnt see the changes as a shift to more conservatism because three different political parties now represent leadership.

Said Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte: In democracy theres winners and losers. The Democrats were never nonpartisan. Theyve always voted as a block.

Sen. Dan Watermeier of Syracuse said now that leadership has been decided, senators will move forward to work through bills and issues.

I disagree with Sen. Chambers that this is going to bring the house down, he said.

But others saw the day as a threat to the Legislatures unique nonpartisan system.

George Norris is turning in his grave right now, said Sen. John McCollister of Omaha, referring to the architect of the Nebraska Legislature.

The divisiveness carried over into the evening as a 13-member committee met to assign individual senators to the 15 standing committees. A skirmish erupted over the political makeup of the Education Committee

Among the leadership surprises was the election of Watermeier as chair of the Legislatures Executive Board, defeating incumbent chair Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha.

Though Watermeier previously had said hed run for vice chair of that committee, he entered the race Wednesday at the urging of members of the body, he said.

They just wanted a choice, he said. It wasnt about personalities. It wasnt about what Sen. Krist has done. Hes done a good job of guiding the body.

***********

Senators elected to legislative leadership:

 Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk was elected as Speaker of the Legislature to replace term-limited Speaker Galen Hadley of Kearney. Scheer prevailed over Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg. Both are Republicans.

 Both Republicans in the officially nonpartisan Legislature, Sen. Dan Watermeier of Syracuse ousted incumbent Executive Board chair Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha. Watermeier nominated himself Wednesday, though he had previously declared to be vice chair of the committee. Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell won vice chair of the Executive Board. Kuehn, a Republican, was unopposed.

 Sen. Lydia Brasch of Bancroft was elected chair of the Agriculture Committee. Brasch, a Republican, was unopposed.

 Sen. John Stinner of Gering was named leader of the budget-crafting Appropriations Committee. He was unopposed. The Republican succeeds term-limited Heath Mello, a Democrat.

 Republican Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha was elected to lead the Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee. Lindstrom follows Scheer.

 Incumbent Business and Labor Committee Chairman Burke Harr, a Democrat, lost to newcomer Republican Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston. Albrecht threw her name into the race Wednesday.

 Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte was named chair of the Education Committee over Sen. Roy Baker of Lincoln. Both are Republicans. Groene replaces term-limited Democrat Kate Sullivan of Cedar Rapids.

 Incumbent General Affairs Chair Sen. Tyson Larson of ONeill defeated a challenge from Omaha Sen. John McCollister. Both are Republicans. Going into the election, McCollister was the only declared candidate. Larson nominated himself from the floor.

 The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee will again by chaired by Sen. John Murante of Gretna. The Republican was unopposed.

 Republican Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston defeated Sen. Sara Howard of Omaha, a Democrat, to chair the Health and Human Services Committee. Riepe replaces Republican Kathy Campbell, who was term-limited.

 The Legislatures lone Libertarian was elected to lead the Judiciary Committee. Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete follows Republican Les Seiler, who lost in the November election. Ebke, who changed her party affiliation from Republican over the summer, was unopposed.

 Republican Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango won against Democrat Sen. Rick Kolowski of Omaha to lead the Natural Resources Committee. Hughes replaces term-limited Republican Ken Schilz.

 The Retirement Committee will again be led by Republican Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward. He was unopposed.

 Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion will chair the Revenue Committee. Smith, a Republican who was unopposed, replaces term-limited Mike Gloor, a Republican.

 The Transportation and Telecommunications Committee will be led by Republican Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson. He was unopposed. He replaces Smith,.

 Freshman Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha prevailed over Sen. Sue Crawford of Bellevue to chair the Urban Affairs Committee. Both Democrats, Crawford was the only candidate to declare for the position. Wayne, who was viewed as more conservative than Crawford and received support from conservative senators, entered the race Wednesday.

 New Sen. Mike Hilgers of Lincoln defeated Lincoln Sen. Matt Hansen to chair the Rules Committee. The committee was previously chaired by Republican Tommy Garrett, who lost in the November election. Hilgers, a Republican, supports ending secret ballots, an issue the Rules Committee deals with. Hansen is a Democrat.

 Republican Sen. Joni Craighead of Omaha was elected to chair the Committee on Committees. She was unopposed.

Also read: 5 hefty challenges facing Nebraska lawmakers
With one hand holding a bottle of champagne and the other an oversized certificate declaring him the winner of $1 million from Publishers Clearing House, Bruce Saunders stood on the front porch of his western Davie County Monday and rattled off a list of things he plans spend his spend money on  medical bills, fixing his lawnmower and helping family members.
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Wizz Air, Ryanair, TAROM and LOT Airlines have decided to cancel a series of flights that were due to take off on Friday, from Henri Coanda International Airport, according to updated information from the Bucharest Airport National Authority (CNAB).

According to the cited source, due to unfavourable weather conditions in Romania, Wizz Air canceled flights 3001/3002 Bucharest - London -Bucharest, 3051/3052 Bucharest -Paris-Bucharest, 3081/3082 Bucharest-Charleroi-Bucharest, 3201/3203 Bucharest-Stockholm -Bucharest, 3091/3092 Bucharest - Dortmund - Bucharest and 3494/3493 Bucharest - Cluj - Bucharest.

Ryanair airline also decided to cancel flights 435/436 Timisoara - Bucharest - Timisoara and TAROM will no longer operate flights 627/628 Bucharest - Oradea - Bucharest and 702 Iasi - Otopeni.

Finally, LOT airline cancels its 645/646 Bucharest - Warsaw - Bucharest flights.

CNAB specifies that presently, both Henri Coanda International Airport Bucharest as well as Aurel Vlaicu International Airport Bucharest, air traffic is carried out in winter conditions, with massive snowfalls and wind gusts.

Moreover, some flights can record delays when taking off, determined by the necessity to defrost airplanes, delays that can reach or exceed an hour in some cases. On both airports of the Capital interventions are carried out with snow clearing devices in order to maintain the runway in optimum conditions.

The runways, the platforms and the taxiways for airplanes are open and operational, all the conditions for safely carrying out air flights being ensured.

Real-time information about the situation of flights on Henri Coanda International Airport can be found on www.bucharestairports.ro web page, and passengers are advised to take the necessary measures to come in due time at the airport.
President Klaus Iohannis on Friday signed into law the bill removing several taxes and fees and which also amends and supplements several regulatory acts.

On December 28 the Chamber of Deputies rejected by a vote of 174 to 85 and one abstention the review of the bill slashing 102 non-fiscal taxes.

The Lower House Budget Commission adopted an amendment according to which the law is to come in force on the first day of the month immediately following the act's publication in the Official Journal.

On November 15 President Klaus Iohannis referred to the Constitutional Court of Romania a constitutional challenge to the Law slashing certain taxes and fees and amending and supplementing several regulatory acts.

On December 16 the Constitutional Court ruled that the law is constitutional, thus rejecting the President's challenge. On the same day, the head of the state announced that he will send the law back to Parliament for review.

agerpres.
SEATTLE  Boeing Co. fell 80 planes short of its goal for new orders in 2016, but likely clinched the title of world's biggest planemaker for another year.

Boeing on Friday said it delivered 748 jetliners last year and booked net orders for 668 aircraft worth about $94 billion at list prices. Boeing had predicted orders would roughly match deliveries, which it forecast at between 745 and 750 planes.

Boeing's delivery total likely means the Chicago-based aerospace and defense company beat European rival Airbus on output. Airbus has forecast at least 670 deliveries in 2016, and is due to reports totals on Wednesday.

Investors watch orders and deliveries closely to gauge future aircraft production levels and revenue, since airlines make most of the payment when aircraft are delivered. Boeing shares were up about 0.1 percent at $158.86 in mid-day trading.

Airlines have slowed their shopping for jets, especially large widebody models, causing Boeing's "book to bill" ratio of new sales to deliveries to fall to its lowest level since 2004.

Even so, Boeing's orders fell less than expected, suggesting aggressive sales campaigns at year-end, analysts said. Airbus has a price advantage thanks to the strong U.S. dollar, putting pressure on Boeing's sales team. Looking to 2017, "it's going to be tough for Boeing not to get more aggressive on pricing," said Ken Herbert, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity.

Boeing's deliveries also slowed as the company began building the new 737 MAX narrowbody at its factory in Renton, Washington. The first MAX planes take longer to assemble than older 737 models, and cannot be delivered until Boeing finishes flight tests and gets government certification.

Even so, Boeing delivered two more 737s in the latest quarter than in the same quarter of 2015. "That says something about the production system," said Howard Rubel, analyst at Jefferies.

Output rising as sales slow

Deliveries likely will rise this year as MAX planes that welled up in inventory are delivered. But the gain will be tempered by a 40 percent cut in production of 777 widebodies. Analysts expect 777 deliveries will fall to 3.5 a month in 2018, from 8.3 currently, as the successor 777X model enters production.

"What we'll be interested to hear is whether (Airbus and Boeing) expect orders to continue to decline in 2017 at the same time that they are raising production," said Rob Stallard, analyst at Vertical Research Partners.

The forecasts are typically released with fourth-quarter results.

The final days of 2016 marked a busy time for Boeing's new sales chief Ihssane Mounir. The sales force booked 198 net new orders since Dec. 20, including 189 orders from unidentified customers. The tally did not include any of its pending orders for Iran, the company said.

The total included 194 orders worth about $21 billion at list prices for Boeing's 737 MAX. It also included an order for four 787 Dreamliners from Uzbekistan Airways.

Boeing had already disclosed a large part of the tally earlier in the week, when it said it booked 80 orders for its 737 MAX.

The new tally lifts Boeing's total backlog to 5,715 commercial jets, equivalent to about seven years of production, the majority of which are 737 planes. Sales of more expensive widebodies such as the 777 and 787 remain sluggish.
"Emerald City," 8 p.m. Friday on NBC  One star (out of four)

Back in 2015, NBC ordered "Emerald City," a 10-episode reimagining of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz," without seeing a pilot. Nearly two years later, after virtually starting over, firing one show runner and bringing in another, the miniseries finally arrives in prime time tonight.

Adria Arjona is a 20-something Dorothy, an adoptee who is trying to connect with her birth mother and caught up in an apparent murder when a whirlwind whisks her from Kansas to a strange and mysterious land. She's accompanied by a police dog (see, she was in a police car when the storm hit) she cleverly names Toto.

Bad things happen, most semi-familiar. There's a witch, flattened, and vengeful natives, and a road covered with intoxicating yellow poppy pollen. Dorothy saves a man (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) she finds hung from a cross, like a scarecrow. Meanwhile, in separate storylines, witches are at odds with one another and with the Wizard of Oz (a bizarre Vincent D'Onofrio).

What positive do I have to say? Well, frequently, "Emerald City" is great looking, with deeply saturated colors and fantastical images.

And? Sorry, that's all I can come up with. The plotting is goofy, the tone is relentlessly dark and the pacing is excruciatingly slow. Worst, the characters are hard to care about.

I've seen only the first two hours of "Emerald City," both airing Friday. Maybe it will get better? Maybe. But I suspect the miniseries will mostly attract a core viewership of people who can't get enough of dark fantasy series.

Hey, I like this stuff too. My favorite series in all TV is "Game of Thrones." But no matter what NBC might have hoped, "Emerald City" is a far cry from "Game of Thrones."
If you wonder what happened to old-school family comedies that were warm and funny and still had something to say, Netflix is here for you.

A reboot of 1975's "One Day at a Time," streaming 13 episodes now, is an unexpected delight. The original premise, with a single mother raising two daughters, has been reimagined for today, with Justina Machado as a Cuban-American nurse in Los Angeles.

Machado's Penelope, an Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan, lives with her own mother, Lydia (the great Rita Moreno), and two kids: smart, super-opinionated 15-year-old Elena (Isabella Gomez) and charming 12-year-old Alex (Marcel Ruiz).

Separated less than a year from her unseen husband, Penelope struggles with loneliness and occasional depression, with sexism at work and culture clashes at home.

That doesn't make "One Day at a Time" at all a downer, though. The real-world issues give it weight, while the warmth of the family gives it heart.

The laughs are real; you can hear them from the studio audience. Yes, "One Day at a Time" is old-school enough to shoot live, with multiple cameras, but it's not one of those joke-punchline sitcoms in which everyone pauses while the audience cheers. Instead, we feel as if we're watching real people, who may fight noisily but come back together out of love.

In the Netflix style, as one episode after another plays, it's easy to get sucked into the "One Day at a Time" world.

In addition to home life, where Moreno is a scene stealer but the kids more than hold their own, Penelope has a work life with Stephen Tobolowsky as her boss, Dr. Berkowitz. That's St. Louis native Eric Nenninger recurring as Scott, the obnoxious male nurse in the small medical practice.

Start watching and you might let four or five (or 13) episodes unspool. Between each, the original theme song plays, reworked by Gloria Estefan with salsa rhythms. This new "One Day at a Time" is just that lively and lovable.

What "One Day at a Time"  3 stars out of four  When Streaming now  Where Netflix
Never. Read. The. Comments.

Thats the advice I often pass on to the people I write about, particularly when the topics involve race or poverty or politics. A couple of years ago, when I was editorial page editor, I turned off comments for a period of time on opinion content because, like a growing number of editors across the country, I believe the comments section to often be a place where the newspaper business has inadvertently contributed to the nations often uncivil discourse.

But this week, I broke my own rule. Alerted by an editor, I read the comments on reporter Stephen Deeres story about Khaled Salameh, the St. Louis business man who owns a $1 million home in Wildwood but votes in the city, listing a car lot on North 14th Street as his residence.

There was one about me.

Well, I for one expected this article to be about Tony Messenger. Boo! wrote one commenter.

Yes, I live in Wildwood. No, my house is nowhere near worth $1 million.

But regular commenters on the stltoday.com website were in on the joke.

You see, every time I write about the city, or poverty, or race, or Ferguson, or anyplace that isnt Wildwood, there are some commenters who use it as an occasion to take a potshot at me.

Why dont you just stay in Wildwood? theyll say. Or, what do you know about the city?

Or, as an emailer wrote me after my most recent column pointing to the need for city-county unification, You, who live in far west St. Louis county in Wildwood, are leading this charge. Great example of Do as I say, not as I do! What a hypocrite you continue to be!

Im not even sure what that means. There are people who live all over the St. Louis region who believe that our economic fortunes would be improved  in Wildwood, in Ladue, in Ferguson, in the city of St. Louis  if we got rid of the city and county governmental boundaries that divide us.

One of those people is St. Louis Blues owner Tom Stillman. At the news conference announcing the Blues plans to seek taxpayer help to modernize the city-owned Scottrade Center, Stillman told me that the effort would be much easier if the city and county were unified. Theres a larger tax base and more opportunities to tap funding sources that wouldnt necessarily have a negative effect on public safety funding, or taxes that disproportionately affect the poor, for instance.

Jake Hollander, who lives in Chesterfield, by the way, reminded me that this was not a new position for Stillman. Hollander is the founder of St. Louis Strong, one of the nonprofits that is pushing for some sort of city-county unification. On its website are numerous statements from civic leaders who live all over the region who believe that St. Louis would be better as one large city, rather than a city within a county that also has 90 separate municipalities. They were originally published by UniteSTL, another of the many unification movements that have come and gone over the years.

Reunification would just reflect reality: We are one community, and we are going to sink or swim together. We can continue with more than 100 jurisdictions, often working at cross-purposes, or we can unite and work together to build a stronger community and a brighter future, Stillman says on the website.

Numerous other business leaders weigh in with similar sentiments. Dave Peacock. Maxine Clark. Thomas Schlafly. Brian Murphy. Jim McKelvey. Jorge Riopedre. Cheryl Jones.

On Wednesday night, Hollander made his own statement.

He went to the Chesterfield City Council meeting and told the leaders there that their opposition to unification is rooted in the sort of small-mindedness that might cause a commenter to suggest that somebody in Wildwood couldnt possibly know anything about life in the city.

Outside of our region, when folks ask me where I am from, I never mention Chesterfield  because none of them know it. I state  sometimes proudly and sometimes sheepishly  Im from St. Louis. Chesterfield and St. Louis are where Ive witnessed the backwardness and corrosiveness of fragmented politics crack along socioeconomic lines; where Ive observed adults act like children and children die like adults, Hollander said, according to the printed statement on his website. My life would be utterly different had I been born a dozen miles from here. What your resolution to oppose a city-county combination plan of any kind, or to even discuss the issue, indicates is your failure not only to see the larger picture as a non-partisan elected official or business leader, but also as a human. We are connected to our neighbors in the deep, whether we like it or not. Lines on a map, skin tones, political parties, and other divisions are illusions of the mind. We all hope for and fear the same things.

Hollander hopes for a day when Khaled Salamehs home and businesses end up in the same jurisdiction, where his vote for mayor of St. Louis affects his tax rates in a wooded neighborhood at the western reaches of what might be the eighth largest city in the country, and where the tax revenue generated by his home would benefit the people who live in the regions urban core.

Republicans, Democrats, suburbanites and urbanites, blacks and whites have come together in Nashville, Indianapolis, Louisville, and elsewhere to combine services in order to grow their region and eliminate redundancies, Hollander told the City Council of the city where he was born. I urge you to reconsider your decision and be open to the free market of ideas.
WASHINGTON COUNTY  A Farmington, Mo., man was killed when his truck slid off of a snow-covered highway here early Thursday and he was ejected from the vehicle.

Darrell Miller, 61, was northbound on Missouri 21 just south of Delbridge Road before 5 a.m when his 2000 Chevrolet Silverado slid off the edge of the highway, flipped over and hit a tree.

Miller was partially ejected through the driver's side window of his truck.

He was transported to Washington County Hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly before 6 a.m.
JEFFERSON CITY  Gov. Jay Nixon on Friday granted pardons to clergy members prosecuted for trespassing after a protest in the Missouri Senate led lawmakers to suspend session.

The protesters had been calling for Medicaid expansion, and they were arrested by Capitol police in 2014 after refusing to leave the Senate gallery.

Typically, charges for these kind of political demonstrations are dropped or not pursued by prosecutors, making their ultimate jury trial and conviction unusual.

Sixteen of the 22 members prosecuted applied for executive clemency. The remaining six found guilty said they wanted the conviction to stay on their records.

The pardons announced Friday round out a total of 110 acts of clemency granted by the departing governor  106 pardons and four commuted prison sentences.

In his eight years as chief executive, Nixon, a Democrat, has granted more pardons than any other governor in the past 30 years, according to the Associated Press.

His second and final term ends Monday, when Republican Gov.-elect Eric Greitens is sworn into office.
AUDRAIN COUNTY  A judge has ruled that the Audrain County-based East Central Missouri Task Force violated the states open records law, but she declined to award attorney fees to the plaintiff or fine the agency.

In a 12-page ruling this week, Judge Rachel Bringer Shepherd found the task force had broken the law by holding a meeting in a place not accessible to the public, failing to post a notice of the meeting, barring Aaron Malin and his attorney, David Roland, from the meeting and not appointing a custodian of records.

However, Shepherd said officers did not knowingly or purposefully commit the violations  the legal standard that must be met in order to award penalties and fees. Proponents of the knowingly and purposefully provisions say they protect small town officials who rarely receive public records requests. But critics argue the terms allow agencies to skirt the law by invoking ignorance.

Shepherds ruling was the first decision made in response to a series of lawsuits Malin has filed across the state. The litigation campaign is aimed at getting records showing how the drug war is fought in Missouri.

Since October 2014, Malin, 23, a Chesterfield resident who is studying law at the University of Denver, has filed nine lawsuits over open records violations. Most are against the states drug task forces.

Missouri has about 20 regional drug task forces made up of officers from participating agencies. The task forces are funded with federal and local money.

Malin estimates he has filed between 500 and 1,000 records requests with the task forces. Some didnt respond or claimed they werent subject to the Sunshine Law. One appeared to deny its own existence. So he began to sue them. He has pending lawsuits against task forces associated with the St. Louis Police Department and St. Louis County Police Department.

In the Audrain County case, Malin and Roland attempted to attend a meeting of the East Central Missouri Task Force at the Audrain County Jail. They were ordered off the property by current Audrain County Sheriff Matthew Oller, who was chief deputy at the time.

A short video of the exchange shows Oller joking that the pair would not be able to file a lawsuit before the meeting ended.

The case was the first of Malins suits to go to trial, on June 8. Leading up to it, the task force admitted in court filings that it had violated the law. The proceeding was largely about whether officers were aware they were breaking the law.

Former Sheriff Stuart Miller testified that he had deleted information from official documents provided to Malin in response to records requests without revealing that he had done so.

Roland has filed a motion for Shepherd to reconsider awarding fees and penalties based on Millers admission. A hearing is set for Feb. 22.
ST. LOUIS  A 19-year-old man has been charged in a slaying last month in the Greater Ville neighborhood.

Keith Christopher Graham was arrested Tuesday night and charged Wednesday with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Graham, of the 2300 block of Fall Avenue, is held in lieu of $500,000 cash-only bail.

Charges allege that Graham killed Dwayne Clanton, 18, on Dec. 26 in the 4400 block of Lexington Avenue. Clanton, of the 100 block of Cameron Road in Glasgow Village, had been shot multiple times.

Court documents say Graham had walked up to Clanton and shot him several times in the head and face. It doesn't address a possible motive for the attack.

Graham has previous convictions, including a 2014 third-degree assault case for which he received one year probation. In 2015 and 2016, he had convictions for unlawful use of a weapon. He received four years probation on the first case and three years probation in the second, court records say. He was still on probation when Clanton was killed, police say.
ST. LOUIS  A man already serving 17 years in prison for robbing someone at gunpoint while on probation was sentenced Friday to 23 more years for slashing the throat of a food delivery driver, who survived.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Philip Heagney sentenced Jerome Wilson, 22, of the 1800 block of Allen Avenue for slitting the neck of the driver on Nov. 3, 2014, then stealing his cash and food order.

Wilson pleaded guilty in November of first-degree assault, robbery and two counts of armed criminal action.

Authorities said Wilson ordered food from a China King restaurant, then lured the driver, 34 at the time, to the rear of a building in the 1800 block of Russell Boulevard. Wilson sneaked up behind him and cut him with a serrated-edge knife. The victim ran back to his car and escaped.

This crime is barbaric, Assistant Circuit Attorney Jeff Ernst told the judge at sentencing Friday. Its gruesome. Were lucky that the victim in this case didnt die.

Public defender Rick Kroeger asked for a sentence of no more than 20 years, saying that Wilson lacks maturity and feels terribly about what he did.

Wilson was on probation at the time for a gunpoint robbery Aug. 31, 2011, in the 3100 block of Keokuk Street. Circuit Judge Thomas Frawley, who had given Wilson three years in prison plus five years on probation for the robbery, revoked the probation in May 2015 because of the attack on the delivery driver, sentencing him to 17 years in prison.

Ernst said in court that Wilson had been out of prison for 66 days when he attacked the driver. Wilsons new sentence is to run consecutively with the 17-year term.
WASHINGTON  Saying he was exercising his First Amendment right, a California congressman on Friday removed from a congressional wall a controversial painting that had won an art contest sponsored by Rep. William Lacy Clay.

A spokesman for Clay, D-St. Louis, said he was aware that the painting had been removed by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., whose office is next to Clays.

The painting, Untitled #1, has drawn criticism from police groups, who said it depicts police as pigs; one officer appears prominently with what looks like the head of a hog or boar.

Steven Engelhardt said Clay would not be available for comment Friday, and Clay was not in his office, a receptionist said.

It was an impulsive thing when I walked by, Hunter said of his decision to remove the painting Friday morning.

It strikes a nerve. Im not a cop, but I was in the Marine Corps, he said, in a 10-minute interview in his office. It kind of strikes the same nerve as when the guys came home from Vietnam, and they called them baby killers.

He said Clay could put it back up if he wanted to. As of late Friday afternoon, the spot where it had hung in a heavily traveled congressional tunnel walkway had only two wires.

It was painted by David Pulphus, then a senior at Cardinal Ritter High School, and had been hanging amid hundreds of other paintings by high school art contest winners in a tunnel between the Capitol and House office buildings since June.

It became a political hot point last week when a conservative blog wrote about it.

Clay defended it as free speech and said he would not take it down.

A Republican who represents a Missouri district, Rep. Ann Wagner of Ballwin, denounced the painting in a statement.

I think the painting is reprehensible, and I would have never chosen it to represent Missouris Second Congressional District, she said.

So did Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth.

If artwork is going to be displayed in the U.S. Capitol, it shouldnt be divisive or offensive to large swaths of Americans. Period, he said in a statement.

Hunter said he first learned of the painting from a Tweet last week, even though it had been hanging in the tunnel for more than six months.

Hunter told the Post-Dispatch that he considered Clay a friend and that his Friday-morning action was nothing personal. He said that after removing it, he dropped the painting off in Clays office and wanted to talk to Clay, but was told Clay was not there.

Its offensive. You shouldnt have something in the Capitol that depicts cops as pigs, Hunter said. Its that simple.

He said his office had received thousands of telephone calls and that a Capitol police officer stopped by to say thanks and drop off 100 police pins, he said.

Asked about First Amendment arguments allowing even objectionable speech, Hunter said: I guess it is my First Amendment right to take it down. Lacy can put it back up if he wants to.

Clays spokesman, Engelhardt, would not say what his boss would do. But if Clay does decide to put the painting back where it was, Hunter said he would not again remove it, saying his point had been made.

He also said he had probably made Pulphus painting famous and worth a lot of money.

Tell him, Youre welcome,  Hunter said.

Other members of a riled-up Republican caucus said they would react if Clay put the painting back up. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said he had ask for a resolution to take it down again and, if that fails, try to put a blue ribbon signifying solidarity with police over the painting.

King said in an interview that he believed the painting depicts a false hands up, dont shoot narrative about the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

It is just a sick demonstration of a piece of our culture that is not patriotic, it does not support American values, and undermines the cultural continuity of the United States of America, King said. And Lacy Clay should have stepped up and taken that kind of leadership. But he is fomenting that kind of hatred.

And I think there are cops now that are at greater risk as a result of this story, he said.

How so?

The Ferguson effect, King said. The I hate the cops Ferguson effect.

Clay told the Post-Dispatch this week that he would not take the painting down because it depicted the artists reality of his life, and because the First Amendment protects provocative art.

Clay said he fielded concerns from House colleagues, and even took some of what he acknowledged were many calls complaining about the painting.

The bigger conversation we should be having is, Why does this kid feel that way? Clay said this week.

Nobody wants to address that, Clay said. I told some of the callers that you dont want to talk about why he feels like that because then we would have to do problem-solving. You just want to blame me because my name is under the picture.

Thats fine. Im a big boy, Clay said. I can take it.

Even before most members of Congress had learned of Hunters move, Reps. Billy Long, R-Springfield, and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., both spoke against the painting in a meeting of House Republicans on Friday morning.

Reichert, a former sheriffs deputy, and Clay had a private conversation this week that Clay and a Reichert aide described as productive.

Clay called Reichert a reasonable man and said that I listened to his side.

He told me about how when they put on that uniform they feel like family, whether they are black, white or indifferent, Clay said, referring to police. I respect that. I said, Every community wants great policing. We all respect good police.

But, Clay added: You cant really say, Hey, every cop is good. That is the impression the (artist) is making. Like his father is saying, it was meant to invoke emotion.

Petition seeks to block use of Missouri painting at inauguration

The Clay-sponsored painting is not the only Missouri-related piece of art drawing political ire as Donald Trump prepares to become president.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the chairman of the congressional committee overseeing Trumps inauguration, has chosen a George Caleb Bingham painting, Verdict of the People, to hang in an area of the Capitol where Trump is scheduled to have his post-inauguration lunch with congressional leaders.

St. Louis artist Ilene Berman and Ivy Cooper, an art historian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, have gotten more than 2,000 signatures on an online petition asking the St. Louis Art Museum to cancel its loan of the painting this month. They object to its use as an implicit endorsement of the Trump presidency and his expressed values of hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia.

Blunts communications director, Brian Hart, said Friday that the painting was selected by Sen. Blunt after visiting in July and in consultation with the St. Louis Art Museum months before the presidential election and would have been displayed regardless of the election results.

This painting is a celebration of Missouri and our uniquely American form of representative government, Hart said.

Museum director Brent Benjamin plans to meet with Cooper and Berman next week but said the museum will honor Blunts request.

Blunt had no comment on the Clay-sponsored painting. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., through a spokesman said she considered the painting distasteful, but that the House of Representatives needed to figure out what to do about it.

Austin Huguelet of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report from Jefferson City.
WASHINGTON  The magic number as Republicans in Congress embark on fulfilling a campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare is 60.

As events on Thursday showed, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is one of a bakers dozen Democrats who could be keys to whether or not Republicans are able to reach it.

The calculus in the United States Senate goes like this:

 When Democrats passed President Barack Obamas signature health care reform law seven years ago, there were 60 Democrats in the Senate, thanks to the 2009 conversion of former Republican Arlen Specter. As long as 60 members of a majority party stick together, they can avert a filibuster by minority-party opponents opposed to legislation. Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote, an act that framed the bitter partisanship of health care to this day.

 Thirty of those 60 Democrats are no longer in the Senate, meaning that the Democratic coalition that pushed Obamacare through the Senates often arcane legislative process is a shell of what it was. But the number 41 for Democrats is more salient now. Since 1975, that has been the number necessary to sustain legislation-threatening filibusters.

 Republicans have 52 senators, a narrow majority tied to big promises. To pass controversial things like Obamacare replacement, they need at least eight members of the opposition party to go along with them.

 Senate Republicans can use parliamentary budget maneuvers to repeal parts of Obamacare themselves. But replacement exposes them to potential filibusters  and to the need for Democratic help.

So self-described moderate Democrats like McCaskill are in a position of power and peril. Their help may be necessary, but if they appear to be too obstructionist theyd look as if they were defending a law that many Americans say has not worked as well as promised.

On Thursday, McCaskill and 12 Democratic colleagues wrote a largely symbolic letter to Republican leaders asking the GOP to work with us now on fixing Obamacare before voting to repeal it.

Asked later if she expected that to happen, McCaskill flatly declared: No.

Republicans, with Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., continuing in a leadership role, think they have a strong case for repeal, and broad thoughts on what can replace it.

Blunt spent 20 minutes on the Senate floor Thursday describing businesses in Missouri he said had been adversely affected by Obamacare, including a nonprofit senior transportation service in Columbia whose premiums for its drivers have risen by $500,000.

Families and small businesses really shouldnt be penalized because the law didnt live up to its promises. If you like your health care you can keep it. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Family costs will go down $2,500 after this plan is put in place, Blunt said, mocking Democratic promises when the law passed. Those things didnt happen. We are in a chaotic situation now and its time to move in a new direction.

McCaskill, who constantly stresses her work with Republicans, knows that direction runs past her doorstep.

They are going to need some Democrats, she said of health care. I dont know if they will need me or not.

I think that all depends on what they propose to do, she said, adding that she would not go along with changes in the law that allow insurance companies to be back in the saddle in terms of having their thumb on whether your claims will be paid, or whether or not you have to pay extra because you are a woman, or whether or not a man can get Viagra under an insurance policy but you are not entitled to the same benefit for birth control.

She said moderate Democratic senators are trying to put a marker down.

We dont want anybody to think the law is perfect, she said. We have been knocking on the door of help-us-improve-it for years. But (Republicans) have been unwilling to do that because they have been more interested in using it as political leverage than they were of actually fixing it.

New Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has replaced an accommodating postelection tone toward the incoming Donald Trump administration with threats of more confrontational and obstructing tactics now that the new Congress has begun.

McCaskill is not as threatening, but on Obamacare, she said: Make no mistake about it. Once they repeal (Obamacare), they own it. They own every problem in the health care system.

Republicans say Democrats have had their head in the sand about Obamacares problems and should have learned that lesson with Trumps victory in November.

Blunt suggested that Republican ideas that were rejected in 2009  cross-state competition between insurance companies, more stress on pre-tax health care accounts, for instance  will be part of a Republican replacement.
JEFFERSON CITY  Sarah Steelman, a former state treasurer and unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate in 2012, is poised to take over a key post in Governor-elect Eric Greitens administration.

Steelman, 58, will be named as director of the governors Office of Administration, which oversees budgeting, hiring and purchasing within state government.

Her pending appointment was announced by Greitens senior adviser Austin Chambers on Twitter Friday afternoon. The governor was expected to formally announce the hire during a stop in Springfield.

Steelman, who was a state senator before serving as treasurer from 2005 to 2009, has been a fixture on Greitens transition team as the political newcomer has worked to move from the private sector into a job as the top official in Missouri.

Greitens, a former Navy SEAL who ran as an outsider in his victory over Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster, has already hired a number of state government veterans, including a lawmaker and a former legislative aide.

In the Capitol on Wednesday, Steelman shuttled between key Senate offices with other members of Greitens new team, including legislative director Jennae Neustadt, who formerly worked for Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis.

Greitens, who will be sworn into office on Monday, also has hired former Rep. Caleb Jones, R-Columbia, as his deputy chief of staff.

Steelman, of Rolla, was first elected to the Senate in 1998. She is married to former state Rep. David Steelman, a lawywer who is a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

If confirmed by the Senate, she will earn an estimated $126,000 annually.

Steelman won a seven-way GOP primary for state treasurer in 2004 and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2008.

In 2012, she ran for U.S. Senate and was endorsed in the primary by former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in hopes of winning support among rural Tea Party voters.

Steelman will replace Doug Nelson, a longtime associate of outgoing Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, who could not run again because of term limits.

Nelson previously served under Nixon during his tenure as attorney general.

The office oversees the governors budgeting staff, state facilities such as the Capitol and other Jefferson City office buildings, personnel and purchasing for the state.